The Mysterious Mystery

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David Stewart (1938– ) received the Ph.D. from Rice University in 1965 and taught philosophy at Rice University and the North Texas State University before moving to Ohio University in 1970. In addition to being a faculty member, Stewart served a variety of administrative roles at Ohio University including that of provost from 1993 to 1996. He was named Trustee Professor of Philosophy in 1996. Among his works on ethics are Business Ethics, McGraw Hill, 1996; Exploring Ethics (co-author), Prentice Hall, 1986; and Medical Ethics: A Reader (co-author), Prentice Hall, 1992. He is also author of Exploring the Philosophy of Religion (6th ed, Prentice Hall, 2006) and co-author of Fundamentals of Philosophy (6th edition, Prentice Hall, 2005). He has lived on St. Simons Island since 1997. After retiring from fulltime academic work he devotes time to a musical group, The Stewart-Law Baroque Trio, in which he plays harpsichord and enjoys traveling with his wife, Audrey.

After retiring from thirty years of full-time teaching I decided to write a mystery novel. As my wife and I were returning to campus one day, and just as we rose to the crest of the hill on the bypass that looks down on campus, she said, “It looks peaceful enough, but it’s a wonder that someone hasn’t been murdered.”

What? A murder in the ivory tower? It’s not really far fetched given the bitterness that often pervades relationships in any organization, and a university is no different. What might lead to murder, I asked myself. Denial of tenure? Fear of disclosure of a falsified academic record? Threats to make public plagarism in academic publications? Jealousy? Sex? Money?

I had written several textbooks, edited collections of essays, and published journal articles, but I knew that trade publishing would be a whole different thing. I searched all the usual reference books for agents whose interests reflected those of my book and began to collect rejection slips. After the number of those exceeded twenty, I began to think there must be a better way. A friend, who worked in book retailing, referred me to a press that he thought might be interested in my book, and I received a nice rejection letter stating that the book was not for them but seemed to the editor there to be perfect for the Mysterious Press imprint of St. Martin’s Press. I sent them a query and was told that they only considered submissions from agents. So, back to square one.

After concluding that agents were looking for the next John Grissom or David Baldacci, I looked for options. One was to publish part of the book on line and hope that after reading the free chapters interested persons would buy the rest of the book, download it and print it out. The complexities of that approach soon deterred me. I wanted to do something that would get the book noticed by a trade house and bypass the writer-editor-publisher track, so I turned to self-publishing.

We all have seen the vanity press ads: “Publisher seeks authors; Publication guaranteed,” and the result is a basement full of unsold books. And who wants to have the tarnish of vanity publication? Getting past that was difficult, but I became convinced that self-publication is different, especially when I found out that iUniverse was owned by Barnes & Noble. One can purchase several different publishing packages from iUniverse, even including editing services. All offer a reader’s report; mine, I am happy to report, got an “editor’s choice” award, and after publication I purchased several advertising opportunities, again hoping to get noticed.

Self-publishing as practiced by iUniverse is publishing on demand. Order the books, and they print them up and ship them out. I have a listing for Murder Most Academic on Barnes & Noble.com, and anyone can order a copy there, as several readers did. The thing about self-publishing is that the author has to do the work of promotion and marketing, which iUniverse aids by offering extensive marketing manual, bookmarks and business cards. The iUniverse contract gives the copyright to the owner and encourages its authors to land contracts with trade publishers.

I have no quarrel with iUniverse; they did everything they promised to do, but my book never got noticed by a trade house. It is my own fault, I’m sure, as I never got into the spirit of self-promotion and marketing. However, it was fun to see the book in print. I bought copies for family and friends, and I have never regretted the decision to self-publish.

David Stewart

Happy Thanksgiving

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When I was a child my Thanksgivings were spent at my grandparents. I attended two Thanksgiving dinners, one just a few hours later than the other. My paternal grandparents served a sit down dinner with tablecloths and polished silver. My maternal grandparents served a buffet with paper plates and a scramble for spare forks and spoons. One was polite exchanges and tales of relatives and friends long absent from this world. The other was multiple conversations all going at once, the worries and joys of those present bursting forth in a loud medley of voices. As a child I was eager to take it all in – including the food.

I’m from Oklahoma and my family’s food of choice is a variety of traditional Southern dishes with some Tex-Mex and barbeque thrown in for good measure. At Thanksgiving we have roasted turkey, baked ham studded with cloves, cornbread and sage dressing, mashed potatoes, giblet gravy, green bean casseroles, candied sweet potatoes, cranberry relishes, Jell-O molds, homemade yeast rolls, a variety of pies (at least one being pumpkin) and iced tea.

Iced tea is a staple in the South. No household is without it. I grew up drinking iced “sweet tea.” You might have to reach a certain age to drink coffee, but “sweet tea” was deemed suitable for all ages. Babies were given bottles filled with the sweet, cold liquid.

Some time in the late 70s, the custom changed to unsweetened tea or artificially sweetened tea. But I’ve noticed in the last five years or so, “sweet tea” seems to be making a comeback. If you walk into a restaurant in Oklahoma today, you’ll be offered a choice. I sweeten my tea with Equal now, but I remember the sweet tea of my childhood with great fondness.

Sweet Tea

To fix sweet tea – boil about six or seven cups of water, then add three large Lipton family-sized tea bags. Let the tea seep for 20 minutes, remove the bags. Pour the still hot mixture into a pitcher containing 1 to 1 ½ cups of sugar. (I have heard of people boiling the seeped tea and sugar, but that’s not how I learned to make it). Stir well. Add cold water to make one gallon of liquid. We would make one or two gallons of tea a day, sometimes more if we were expecting company.

One of my favorite Thanksgiving side dishes is the following:

Cranberry Ring

1 pound of cranberries
1 orange, peeled
1/2 cup chopped nuts
1 cup of drained pineapple
4 teaspoons lemon juice
1 cup chopped apple
1 cup of sugar, or less according to taste
2 packages of cherry, or raspberry gelatin

Put orange and cranberries through food chopper. Mix orange-cranberry mixture with nuts, pineapple, lemon juice, apple and sugar. Dissolve gelatin in 2 cups hot water. When gelatin has cooled slightly, add fruit mixture and combine. Pour into molds and chill until set. Serves 12.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Evelyn David

Surviving Thanksgiving, One Martini at a Time

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OK—so we’ve got all of the basics covered: the sweet potatoes, the green bean casserole, the turkey, the stuffing…there’s nothing left for me to contribute. So, because being together for Thanksgiving can be fraught (and is there a better word to describe being with one’s family answering questions like “how could you have voted for HIM?” or “how much of your savings do you have in stocks EXACTLY?” or even “when do you think SHE is going to have a baby?” and the worst of all “why are you STILL single?”), I’m going to simplify things. Here’s what I can contribute: the good old pumpkin pie recipe.

Take one can of pumpkin pie mix.

Add two eggs.

Add one 5-oz can of condensed milk.

Mix together. Throw in a prepared pie shell. Bake until done. Don’t tell anyone that you didn’t make it from complete scratch. Opening the cans DOES count.

And if that doesn’t make you feel better or help with the family dynamics, here’s my favorite cosmopolitan recipe:

4 parts any kind of vodka
2 parts Triple Sec
2 parts cranberry juice (great for urinary tract health!)
1 part fresh lime juice

Eat all of the pumpkin pie. Wash down with a cosmopolitan (or three). Happy Thanksgiving!

Maggie Barbieri

A Few of my Thanksgiving Favorites

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Because my youngest daughter has invited all of us to travel to Camarillo to have Thanksgiving with her family and told me not to bring anything, I won’t be having two of my traditional Thanksgiving dishes, sweet potatoes and green beans with mushrooms.

My Aunt Flossie always made these and brought them to Thanksgiving dinner when we lived in Oxnard and then after we moved to Springville and continued to have Thanksgiving at our house with all of our relatives–my whole family and my sister’s family.

When my sis moved to Las Vegas along with all of her children, Auntie and my cousin and family went there for Thanksgiving. (I guess Las Vegas was a bigger draw than little Springville.) We still had plenty of guests for Thanksgiving dinner right here–but with I had to take over the cooking of the sweet potatoes and green beans along with cooking the turkey, dressing, and gravy. Fortunately, the guests contributed salads and desserts.

I’d like to share these two recipes. I’m a dash of this and a dash of that cook, so you aren’t going to get exact ingredients. I also like to find the easiest ways of doing things–so both these recipes are simple as well as yummy.

My auntie always used fresh green beans but I made life simpler by using frozen green beans. How many bags depends upon how many people you’re going to serve and whether you want left-overs or not. I cooked the green beans sort of by the package directions but I added cut-up pieces of bacon–so they really are over-cooked to make sure the bacon got done and really flavor the beans. Again, how many fresh mushrooms you want to use depends upon how many people–and how well you like mushrooms. Slice the mushrooms and stir into the beans–you can cook on low for awhile. Actually, this dish gets better the longer it is cooked. (Probably there aren’t many vitamins left–but it’s really good.) You could make this the day before and reheat on Thanksgiving.

For the sweet potatoes–I buy the yellow sweet potatoes, not the orange yams. Put them in a big pan with water and cook until you can pierce them easily with a fork. (Be careful though, you don’t want to cook them into mush.) Allow them to cool, then peel off the skins. Slice in half.
Put in a pan along with lots of butter and about a cup of brown sugar. Cook slowly to melt the butter, stir gently. Or…you can do this the day before and put the sliced sweet potatoes, chunks of butter and the brown sugar into a casserole to cook on Thanksgiving. Yummy! I like these so much better than the yam recipes. (But I also like baked sweet potatoes with butter.)

And for the dessert, these cookies are a pain to make, but oh are they good. My mom made them during WWII when sugar was rationed, and we only got one small bar to eat each evening.

Congo Cookies (This is a bar cookie)

Sift 2 3/4 flour with 2 ½ tsp. baking power and ½ tsp salt. Mix in 2/3 C shortening with 2 1/4 C brown sugar, and 1 tsp. vanilla with 3 beaten eggs, mix altogether with 1 C of chopped nuts and a 7 or 8 oz. package of chocolate chips. Pour it all into a greased oblong baking pan, bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 35 minutes or until a knife or toothpick inserted in the middle of the cookies comes out clean. When they’re done you can cut them into whatever size chunks you please.

And that’s my contribution to our Thanksgiving favorites.

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com

Thanksgiving Revisited

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All this week The Stiletto Gang is sharing Thanksgiving memories and recipes. We hope you’ll share with us your favorite holiday story and dish.

Six years ago my mother-in-law, a lovely, generous woman, had a severe heart attack that left her wheelchair-bound. It was hard for her – for all of us – to adjust to this new reality. But despite her physical frailities, what never changed was her commitment to family, especially her grandchildren.

Holiday traditions, those that we often think are etched in stone, had to be tossed aside that November. She couldn’t travel to our home, as she had for years, to help make the turkey and all the fixings. Instead, we drove to Baltimore, stayed in an over-priced, undersized hotel room, and ate at a nearby restaurant. Instead of turkey, I had filet of flounder. Instead of sweet potato casserole, I had Caesar salad. Instead of apple pie a la mode, I had an éclair.

I wasn’t sure what to think. But then I stopped focusing on what we didn’t have and looked around the table. I saw my children and their grandmother laughing and enjoying one another with such love and devotion. The Thanksgiving menu was from an alternate universe – but the Thanksgiving emotions were the same. We were indeed blessed and thankful.

Best wishes for a joyous holiday!

Evelyn David

Sweet Potato Casserole

6 sweet potatoes
¼ cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
2 tablespoons butter
Marshmallows

Boil sweet potatoes until tender. Drain and mash.
Mix in brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and butter.
Pour into ovenproof casserole.

Can be made ahead and frozen at this point. The night before serving, defrost in the refrigerator. Bake in 350 degree oven for 20 minutes, top with marshmallows and bake for an additional 10 minutes.

Nip It in the Bud!

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I was out raking leaves the other day—a nice break from chaining my butt to my chair during deadlines—and while I breathed in the chilly fall air and cleaned up the gardens a phrase popped into my head: Nip it in the bud.

Maybe it was the appearance of roses still on one of the bushes that got me thinking about buds. More likely it was my subconscious working overtime, always trying to figure out ways to improve myself. When it comes to my brain and the things it conjures up, I have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy; but I’m glad it tossed out the “nip it” idea regardless.

I’m already thinking of the ways nipping it can alleviate a lot of the stress I cause myself. Like when it comes to small injustices that inspire me to fight instead of back down. My grandfather was of the mind that “if it’s only money, it’s not worth it.” My husband feels the same. But I’m dogged when it comes to unfair situations, like companies that have been incompetent or unethical. I’ve cried writing three-page letters detailing work gone wrong or unfounded overcharges. I spent countless hours on the phone dealing with my medical insurance and bills not covered when I went through breast cancer treatment. Have you dealt with the health care industry these days? It’s a lot like running in circles, and it made me exhausted and upset during a time when I needed to heal. Wish I’d been smart enough then to just to nip it in the bud by settling things quickly.

Another stress-inducer: my looooong memory. My husband remarked the other morning, “You don’t forget anything, do you?” Okay, not much, which is one of my problems and a big reason I need to practice more nipping. I can recall conversations verbatim from decades before. I remember the good and the bad, people I’ve loved and who’ve done me wrong, those who’ve lent me a hand and those who’ve torn me up with lies. I’d like to blame my hyper-retentiveness on being a writer. We’re a sensitive lot with skin not near as thick as we’d like. We seem to want to swim through our emotions instead of taking the bridge across them.

That’s why this whole “nip it in the bud” idea rocks and I’m applying it as we speak to a friendship that’s recently gone in the crapper. It’s sad, because I’ve known this pal for years, but we’ve been drifting apart for awhile now. I kept thinking I could build some kind of tunnel to re-connect us, but it just ain’t happening. Some people appear in our lives when we need them most and eventually they travel on their merry way. That’s actually a wonderful thing when you think about it. So I’m nipping this one in the bud, too. I’m not dwelling on it any longer. I’m accepting the situation for what it is, and I’m packing away my fond memories so I can proceed with a peaceful heart and a smile. Ah, it’s like breathing in that chilly fall air again: liberating and refreshing.

I truly admire folks who don’t wallow in emotion, who don’t rehash ill-fated relationships or frustrating conversations nightly in their dreams. My husband has a very healthy “live and let live” attitude. He doesn’t hold grudges. He doesn’t sweat the small stuff. I wish I could be more like that, but I probably never will, not entirely.

I tend to let more people into my circle than he does, and I give folks a chance, even when I’ve heard whispers, like, “don’t trust him” or “she’s a self-absorbed twit.” I’m inclined to form my own opinions. The trouble ends up being that the warning whispers were right on target. It’s then that I usually step in a mess trying to back my way out; but, Lord, how those messes can linger, like dog poop on a shoe tracked all over a houseful of wall-to-wall carpet.

But, from this point on, I’m gonna nip it in the bud. I will see that untrustworthy self-absorbed twit for who he/she is, realize I cannot change him/her like a misguided Mother Teresa, and I will gracefully walk away. Doesn’t that sound good?

Now if I could just nip this latest deadline in the bud, I’d be in great shape.

Susan McBride

Susan McBride’s YA series debut with Random House, THE DEBS, features four prep school seniors in Houston clawing their way through their debutante season. A Fall 2008 Kid’s Indie Next Pick, THE DEBS has been called “Gossip Girl on mint juleps.” The second DEBS book, LOVE, LIES, AND TEXAS DIPS, will be out in June of 2009, and Susan’s busy writing GLOVES OFF. Susan has also penned five Debutante Dropout Mysteries for Avon, including TOO PRETTY TO DIE and BLUE BLOOD. She’s recently signed with HarperCollins to write a trade paperback women’s beach book called THE COUGAR CLUB, about three forty-something women who date younger men. Visit her web site at http://susanmcbride.com/ for more scoop.

The Long of It!

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When I was a child I wanted my favorite books to go on forever – the longer the story the better. Short books were like eating one potato chip – tasty but not enough to satisfy. I wanted to get lost in a book and stay there for days. And I hated reading books piecemeal. Someone was always telling me to turn out the lights and go to sleep, put down the book and go play outside, or warning me that I was ruining my eyes with all that reading.

As I got older I read faster so I could get through more of the story without being interrupted. In college one of my favorites was Stephen King’s The Stand. The original hardback had 823 pages. I’ve read all the Tom Clancy books, lugging them through airports like fat infants straining my arm muscles.

I loved Carl Sagen’s Contact and Colleen McCullough’s The Thornbirds, but at just over 400 pages they were practically short stories compared to two of my later favorites: Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove weighing in at 864 pages and a book that remains in my top ten – Antarctic Navigation by Elizabeth Arthur.

This 798 page book fascinated me. The heroine, Morgan Lamont, had been obsessed with Robert Scott’s 1910 Antarctic Expedition from childhood. The author takes us through Morgan’s early days and her quest to visit the South Pole and retrace Scott’s footsteps. By the time you finish the book, you feel like you’ve made that icy journey with Morgan. It’s not a book that will appeal to everyone. Elizabeth Arthur has been to the South Pole and she uses her knowledge of that remote locale. She makes the South Pole and its harsh weather a major “character” in the book. The plot is dependent on the place as much as Morgan’s need to achieve something Robert Scott did not.

From a recent discussion on the DorothyL internet group, I’ve read with great interest reader opinions on “long” vs. “short” novels. Many seemed to find places in long novels that “sag” or move forward only sluggishly. I confess that with some of Tom Clancy’s descriptions of the inner workings of ships and subs, I only half absorbed the paragraphs the first time through (yes, I’m one of those people who read books over and over.) But Clancy’s books have great plots and more often than not, the technical information he conveys lends depth and atmosphere to his thrillers.

I’m a fan of Nelson DeMille’s books. I just finished his newest, The Gate House. DeMille is great at creating interesting tough-guy characters and exciting plots based on real events. Sometimes the backstory runs a little longer than suits my taste, but as with Clancy’s books, I know the payoff will be well worth the slow bits. My favorite DeMille book remains the first one I ever read, The Charm School – a book I picked up in a hurry in an airport bookstore. A mere 544 pages long, it’s a true page-turner with a Cold-War plot. American MIA pilots from the Vietnam War have been taken to Russia and installed as unwilling teachers in a KGB “Charm School” for Russian agents. Two U.S. diplomats find out about the school and the game is on.

Short books are wonderful and fun – but for books you can literally lose yourself inside, give a longer book a chance.

Evelyn David

Another “Tastes Like Chicken” Blog

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Nothing gives me greater joy than seeing a brand, spanking-new grocery store opening up in the area. Here in our town, we’ve got two rather old and not so great stores to choose from: one offers great prices but not too much in the way of innovation while the other is a little newer, a little more upscale, but infinitely more expensive. (I have heard about the shopping Mecca referred to as Wegman’s and pray that someday they will move downstate so I can experience the wonder of this store. So far, nothing doing. ) So, as I drove home from a work visit the other day and saw a Stop and Shop with streamers wafting away from its brand new storefront, I nearly drove off the road. I was armed with a new recipe and decided that the time was right—despite the fact that the store had only opened seconds earlier—to give it a try.

I love food, think about food, eat a lot of food. And Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and I and my Stiletto gals have been talking about food in our emails back and forth to each other. (I still have to make Southern Evelyn’s apple cake, but promise I will!) I tend to stay toward healthy things and am constantly trying to amaze my family with my culinary prowess. If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that that is a challenge. I’ve got one picky eater, one vegetarian, and one who only likes a few vegetables and nothing really of the root variety, which I love to roast with olive oil, salt, pepper, and some herbs. But while drinking my coffee the other day—and with a great big thank you to Rachael Ray who published this recipe in my hometown newspaper—I seem to have hit on something that everyone loves (with the exception of the vegetarian who I have now turned onto breaded flounder, which can be picked up in the freezer case of the new Stop and Shop just inside the front doors of the building). Let me give you this one roaster, easy-as-pie chicken dinner that will take all of the guess work out of “Mom! What’s for dinner!?”

You will need:

To preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

One (1) whole cut-up chicken in a package. Take out all of the chicken, rinse and dry. I also cut the breasts in half so that they were more of the same size as the other pieces of meat. The chicken I bought cost about $9.00 and fed the family for three nights.

Get a bunch of fingerlings, red potatoes, purple potatoes, or any other kind of small potatoes that you like and wish to use. Cut them in quarters.

Strip the leaves of three stalks of rosemary and coarsely chop.

Crush eight garlic cloves.

Put the chicken on the bottom of the roaster, throw in the potatoes, the rosemary, the garlic, and cover the whole thing with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Oh, and don’t forget some sea salt and pepper to taste.

Stick in the oven for about 35-45 minutes or when the juices run clear from the chicken. You will have a one-roaster chicken dinner that everyone (sans the vegetarian) will enjoy. I also picked up one of my new favorite pre-packaged items: microwavable, steamable French beans. Served with the chicken and potatoes, you really have a winner. Tonight, we’re having the exact same dinner because I’ve never served a meal in which every morsel, down to the coarsely-chopped rosemary, was consumed. We may just eat this every night until Thanksgiving when I’ll probably break down and buy a couple of hamburgers so we don’t go on poultry overload.

I’m going to experiment a little tonight and roast some squash alongside the chicken even though I was admonished by the family not to change a thing. I figured I can doctor this up a few hundred ways and everyone will still enjoy.

Next week: a treat. We at the Stiletto Gang will be sharing additional recipes and ideas for the holidays and I, for one, am looking forward to seeing what the rest of my ladies have up their sleeves. Happy eating!

Maggie Barbieri

Oops, Late Again

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I could’ve sworn I had a post already to go–but obviously I didn’t. Of course it might’ve disappeared into cyber space. That happens to me a lot.

My promotion for Kindred Spirits is winding down. I have three more events coming up: a book fair, a day in an antique store, and two days at an art gallery. Of course all this entailed making the arrangements and doing publicity both online and with the local newspapers and sending out flyers.

Once that’s over maybe I can concentrate on the holidays and perhaps doing some writing. I have two (yes two) new books I need to be working on. I have some ideas for one–but nothing for the other as yet. Sometimes I wonder why I’m doing all this–certainly isn’t to make money because I really haven’t. All the story tellers among us will tell you the same thing–we just have to do it.

My daughter invited us (hubby and me and son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter) to come for Thanksgiving in Southern California and we’re going! For the first time in ages I won’t have to cook. You have no idea how I’m looking forward to that.

For all of you as you head into the holiday season, I wish you all the best–and that you take the time to enjoy your family as I plan to do.

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com

The Art of Entertaining

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The original Evelyn, bless her soul, hated to cook. Maybe a closer truth would be, cooking bored her. That’s not to say that we didn’t have a family dinner every night (six p.m. sharp). It always consisted of some kind of meat or chicken and two vegetables. The original time efficiency expert, my mother would heat two cans of vegetables in a pot of boiling water. Serve the veggies, toss the water. Done.

I was at least 18 before I discovered that meat came in any other color than grey. She overcooked everything, probably because she wasn’t paying attention. Chicken would bake in the oven for hours, seasoned only with paprika, to give it color. But there was always plenty of fresh fruit in the house, lots of store-bought sweets, and the height of her culinary experimentation was to mix two fruit juices together. My family believed she invented orange-pineapple juice — and maybe she did.

But despite the lack of any interest in preparing foods, my mother was actually a wonderful host. She was absolutely right when she insisted that it was the company that was important. She was gracious (she was Southern after all), generous, and inclusive. For my birthday parties, every child in my class would be invited, lest anyone feel left out. When I was in college and would come home for Passover, she would encourage me to invite roommates who might otherwise spend the Seders in the dorm. They were joyous occasions full of love and laughter…and she would order in the whole menu, soup to nuts.

My rebellion was, of course, to love to cook. For me, preparing a new recipe is like writing a mystery — full of the unknown, often some red herrings (figurative ones, though I do occasionally indulge in the fish) — and if put together correctly, a delight to enjoy.

Cleaning out my mother’s apartment after she died, I found no cookbooks or recipes scribbled on cards. I did discover a file of take-out numbers. But of course, she left me with the best recipe for how to entertain. Invite people you want to spend time with; worry less about the food and more about making sure that everyone is comfortable and cared for…and most of all, enjoy the moments when you are together.

It’s easy to get caught up in the holiday season hoopla. Have fun these next few weeks with those you love.

Evelyn David