photo of Rosemary Beach Florida Gulf Coast

Research Adventures: Starting a New Series

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by Sparkle Abbey

photo of Rosemary Beach Florida Gulf CoastHow is it that February is already in the books? 2023 is moving right along and we shared last month that we kicked off the new year by beginning to write a new mystery series. We also shared that the new series is not set in California like our Pampered Pets books, but since we both love the beach, we’re hanging onto the beachy theme.

And that’s where this research adventure begins…

After attending the NINC (Novelists, Inc.) conference in St. Pete last September we decided to research some Gulf Coast retirement communities as that is where we planned to set the new series. We’d already had great fun fleshing out characters, coming up with titles, and plotting murders on the drive down. (Side note: From Des Moines, IA to St. Pete Beach, FL is 1,380 miles or about 21 hours. A few more hours if you take time to track down a fabulous lobster food truck in Nashville, but that’s a story for a different day.)

We’d researched several possibilities that based on their online descriptions seemed to match what we had in mind. For the drive back we’d planned to visit our top four or five and check out some details. Now the books will be set in a fictional 55+ community but we’ve found we really need to have a feel for our setting as it plays such a strong role in a story – especially in mysteries.

  • Stop 1 – Too fancy and almost hotel like. Not the right vibe.
  • Stop 2 – More reasonable but surrounded by a residential neighborhood. Not the close-knit community feel we were looking for.
  • Stop 3 – Almost there. Nice community feel, but no people out and about doing things.
  • Stop 4 – Bingo. There it was. A great gated 55+ village with a community center, indoor pool, golf, shuffleboard, walking trails. There were people out walking their pets and a wonderful friendly feel as the walkers waved at us. And there were plenty of places to hide a dead body. A very important detail.

Success! We found our fictional Shady Palms and were able to take some photos, research details, pick up some materials on the floor plans, download the layout of the neighborhoods, learn the flora and fawn, and so much more.  Feeling good that our mission was accomplished we decided to backtrack and have lunch at a Greek restaurant we’d passed a few miles back. What a great choice. (Well, it wasn’t a lobster food truck but it looked promising and also seemed very busy which is always a good sign, right?) It was amazing. We highly recommend Mr. Souvlaki’s. If you ever get the chance to dine there, you are in for a treat. And no matter how full you are, you must finish up with the Loukoumades – fluffy clouds of pastry with honey & cinnamon. They are to die for! Definitely worth a thousand-mile road trip and we’re trying to figure out if we use them in the books if they can be considered a tax write off. All in the name of research, of course.Poster for Heavenly Puffs

At this point, we’re feeling great, though a bit overstuffed. It’s time to head north and so we leave the more scenic itinerary and move to Interstate travel. But first we need to stop for gas so we can get back on schedule and make some time. Our first stop was a Starbucks (big surprise) with a nice gas station nearby. But wait, they are out of gas.

But what’s an adventure without a little conflict?

Oh, did we mention that there was a hurricane by the name of Ian bearing down on the Gulf Coast? No problem, we’ll navigate to the next nearest option. It’s not far. But all the pumps are bagged. You guessed it – out of gas! It took three more stops and finally following a fuel truck back to our first gas station, but we finally got a full tank of gas and we were back on the road. Heading north and praying for everyone in the path of the hurricane.

We are continuing to research and build the story lines as we work on this new series. We’re loving the new characters who continue to evolve and make us laugh. We hope our reader enjoy the fictional Shady Palms and the new stories as much as we’re enjoying writing them!

If you’d like to keep in touch with us and get updates about the new series, please sign up for our newsletter here: SparkleAbbey.com

Sparkle Abbey is actually two people: Mary Lee Ashford and Anita Carter, who write the national best-selling Pampered Pets cozy mysteries series. They are friends as well as neighbors so they often get together and plot ways to commit murder. (But don’t tell the other neighbors.)

The love to hear from readers and can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, their favorite social media sites. You can also follow them on BookBub to be notified when there are special offers.  Currently Downton Tabby is a featured deal at 99 cents in all ebook formats.

book cover for Downton TabbyIn Downton Tabby, Caro Lamont, amateur sleuth and well-respected animal therapist to Laguna Beach’s pampered pets, works with office mate and tech wizard, Graham Cash, whose beloved Scottish Fold tabby cat, Toria, is purported to have anger management issues. But when Caro drops by the charming Brit’s Tudor-inspired mansion to return Toria, she finds his business partner dead and Cash missing.

Caro is left with the cuddly cat and a lot of unanswered questions. Is Cash the killer, or has he been kidnapped? What’s up with the angry next door neighbor? And what about Cash’s girlfriend, Heidi, who isn’t sharing everything she knows with homicide detective Judd Malone?

Suddenly there are more secrets and intrigues than there are titles in England. Add in a stranger in a dark SUV stalking Caro, feisty senior sidekick, Betty, hiding in restaurant shrubbery, and wannabe investigative reporter Callum MacAvoy who seems to be constantly underfoot, and you’ve got a cat and mouse mystery of the first order.

Clicking Our Heels – Our Favorite Foods and What They Say About Us?

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This month, on Clicking Our Heels…

The Stiletto Gang is reflecting on our favorite foods and what we think they say about us. 

 Donnell Ann Bell – I love food of all kinds. I love Mexican food, chicken enchiladas, chili rellenos. Then the next day I might prepare a spinach salad, with walnut, mushroom, pears, and feta cheese. I guess I enjoy variety. As someone who isn’t a fan of change, you can’t tell it from my monthly menu. 🙂

Dru Ann Love – Baked Ziti – love the aroma of cheese with pasta sauce that makes the place feel warm and comfortable.

Robin Hillyer-Miles – Watermelon. I love everything about watermelon. I craved it when I was pregnant. I love it fresh, in drinks, and pickled. I don’t know what this says about me except that I like simple and fresh things.

Saralyn Richard – Raspberries. I’m sure the gods on Mount Olympus eat the luscious red globes. Favoring them makes me a health-conscious herbivore with a bit of a sweet tooth.

Gay Yellen – Depending on my mood, I’ve been known to crave pasta or sushi or hamburger, pizza, pho, tamales, watermelon… I like food in any flavor.

Kathryn Lane – Homemade guacamole! Brings great memories from my childhood so I guess it shows how sentimental I am.

Lois Winston – Right now, I’d just about kill for nova and cream cheese on an everything bagel. What does that say about me? It says I wish I were back in the NY metro area. You can’t get a decent bagel in Nashville, let alone freshly sliced nova!

Lynn McPherson – My favorite food is macaroni and cheese, with fresh jalapeño. I love all things comfy and cozy, but like to spice things up from time to time.

T.K. Thorne – Chicken tetrazzini the way my mother made it. It has all the sins—loads of butter, cream, cheese, noodles… Sigh.  It was a comfort food that she made because she knew it was my favorite. So it had love in it, too.

Bethany Maines – It’s interesting that I can instantly come up with a list of least favorite (mushrooms, and cake, I’m looking at you), but I’m having to ponder a favorites list quite hard. I think I’ll have to go with crepes. My mom spent a portion of her youth in France and would periodically make them for us on Saturday mornings (when Dad wasn’t making pancakes). What does that say about me? It probably says I have parents who love me and we all like delicious bready products slathered in sugar?

Anita Carter – I have too many favorites to pick just one. I love ramen, tacos, pasta, gyro, Greek salad, a good Cuban sandwich, French toast, and a veggie omelet. Oh! Lately, I’ve been eating a lot of shrimp and chicken stir fry! Okay, now I’m hungry!! What does this say about me???? I like food! LOL

Shari Randall/Meri Allen –  have way too many favorite foods! If I narrow it down, I’d say summer picnic foods – grilled hot dogs, fresh lemonade, and strawberry shortcake would be on the menu. What does it say about me? My husband and I joke about this all the time. I’m a cheap date.

Mary Lee Ashford – My absolute favorite food? That’s like my favorite song or favorite movie – it depends on the genre. I love cheese. All different sorts of cheese. Soft, hard, semi-soft. Alone, on veggies, in casseroles. My favorite cheese is Halloumi which is a Cypriot cheese made with goat and sheep milk and if you fry it in a pan with a little bit of olive oil, it is perfection! So, there’s cheese. But then there’s also chocolate… dark chocolate, milk chocolate, brownies, chocolate cake chocolate mousse. I don’t think I’ve ever met a chocolate I didn’t like.

Barb Eikmeier – Pasta. Maybe it says I never met a noodle I didn’t like.

Linda Rodriguez – I’m never good at this question. I like so many different kinds of food from so many different cuisines, and it’s hard to weigh them up on a scale against each other. Thai panang curry, British scones with lemon curd and clotted cream, Mexican sopes or pozole (Mexican cuisine is so large and various that I can’t even have one favorite food there), Kansas City BBQ (in particular, burnt ends), Japanese teriyaki, true Southern biscuits and gravy, the list goes on and on.

Debra H. Goldstein – Pizza with either a thin crust and lots of cheese or pineapple and ham. There was a time that I preferred anchovies and black olives, but no one in the family would share with me. The change in my choice reflects my willingness to negotiate and let the little things slide.

We’re curious if you agree and what you think your favorite foods say about you?

 

Publishing News!

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Hi all,

I’m so excited to announce that I have signed contracts with two publishers for two new series!! Both will be out in 2024 and I couldn’t be more excited–yippee!!!

I’m a cozy writer to the core so both new series are cozy, of course. One of the series will be with Level Best Books, edited by Shawn Reilly Simmons.

The other is with Crooked Lane Books, edited by Terri Bischoff.

This is a dream come true for me. The last time I published a book was in 2019, and I’ve been working since then to improve my craft and start something fresh.

The three-book series with Level Best Books centers around a social media influencer who draws on the knowledge of her followers to help solve a murder.

My Crooked Lane Books mystery takes place at a B&B in Hudson Valley, where guests like to rosé the day away, until murder kills the vibe.

So there it is, my BIG news!!

I’m excited and nervous all at once.  I’ll keep you updated as time goes on. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you. Any good news you’d like to share?

Lynn McPherson has had a myriad of jobs, from running a small business to teaching English across the globe. She has travelled the world solo, where her daring spirit has led her to jump out of airplanes, dive with sharks, and learn she would never master a surfboard. Lynn served on the Board of Directors for Crime Writers of Canada from 2018-2021. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and International Thriller Writers.

 

Reading Mojo and LCC

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I don’t have much to say. I lost my reading mojo due to medical complications. I got it back by reading a domestic thriller (Teach Her A Lesson by Kate Flora) which is not my preferred genre. Then I followed that up with reading the last book (The Last Remains) in a beloved series by Elly Griffiths. Then followed that up by reading Four Leaf Cleaver by Maddie Day and Gone But Not For Garden by Kate Collins. So I got my reading mojo back.

In the meantime, I am Fan Guest of Honor at Left Coast Crime next month and part of that honor is either being interviewed and being on a panel. I’m not an interview type of person, so I opted to do something else. Yep, I’m doing a LCC Pub Quiz.

First I had to come up with a theme, I did, and then a few questions. I started out with 25 questions but needled it down to 17 questions and even had the form “beautified”. Then two weeks ago, decided that two of the questions didn’t fit the theme, so there will be 15 questions on my pub quiz.

I too straight forward to  be comical, so I enlisted the help of a friend who will be my sidekick. I love this person because he has created a fun-filled interactive experience that will be a hoot. I won’t tell you the details, but if you are attending LCC, come to my pub quiz to see for yourself.

Have you ever done a pub quiz or something interactive at an event?

Three —T.K. Thorne

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Three is a magic number.

Can you hear your mother counting down the time left until unnamed but dreadful forces will compel you to do what you haven’t done yet? Your personality might have made you immediately hop to at “1.” Or (like me) you might have waited until the last possible moment before her lips formed that dreaded last number—

—Which was, and will remain for all time, the number three.  “1 . . . 2 . . . 3!”

Never has a mother anywhere given four seconds or five.

Similarly, everyone engaged in moving something heavy, hoists together, not on “1” or “2,” but “3.” Without argument or consultation, “heave” happens on “3.”

Goldilocks is confronted by the three bears with their three bowls of porridge at varying temperatures.  Only with the third does she find the perfect one.

The very bad wolf huffs and puffs and blows down two of the pigs’ homes before being foiled by the solid brick structure of #3.

The prince makes two failed tries up the ice mountain before rescuing the princess on #3.

Two of Cinderella’s sisters fail at getting their hefty feet into the glass slipper, but on attempt #3, Cindy slips it gracefully on.

Three is a triangle with three points and three sides. The formula for a right  triangle is the basis for the pyramids of Egypt.

For Pythagoras, famous ancient mathematician, the number three was the key to all the hidden mysteries of the universe.

Isaac Newton: The Three Laws of Motion

Isaac Asimov: The (original) Three Laws of Robotics

 

No artist would be happy with two elements in a grouping.

The Oxford comma rule requires commas when the grouping reaches three items. (See next sentence.)

Three is:

  • the family—mother, father, and child;
  • the Three Wise Men who visited the infant Jesus (with their three gifts);
  • the Holy Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and
  • the three primary gods of Hindu mythology—Brahma, the creator, Vishnu, the keeper of reality, and Shiva, the destroyer.

The multiples of 3 come up 3 times in each set of 10 (3,6,9, etc.) And 3 x 6 (another multiple of 3) is 18, a special number in Judaism.

All of life depends on three types of molecules—DNA, RNA, and proteins. The structure of DNA is made of three combinations of molecules.

All this “three” stuff began when I randomly noticed there are three beautiful shells in my home that are special treasures.

One, from a dear friend, lives in my newly created little pond, nestled among stones and an old water pump.

One was a spontaneous gift from a Bahamian woman I met years ago in her little island home, who told how she had almost drowned at the age of 84 and had to swim two miles in the strong currents to survive.

The third shell is the one that sat on the glass top of my grandmother’s porch coffee table for most of my early years of life. I never failed to lift it to my ear when I visited Granny, listening with wonder to the mystery of the whistling wormhole to the sea.

So, that led to the ruminations on the magic number three, which is imprinted into us, perhaps in our cells, and which every writer worth her salt knows is important in telling a satisfying story.

T.K. Thorne writes books that take her wherever her imagination flies. TKThorne.com

Scams, Spams & Caveat Emptor!

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Two years ago, when we moved from New Jersey to Tennessee, my husband and I cut the landline cord. We’d only kept our landline for as long as we had because cell service in our NJ home was spotty at best. If I had to guess, I’d say that at least 75% of the calls that came in on the landline were from spammers and scammers. Now, instead of receiving at least half a dozen spam and scam calls a day, I receive one or less a week.

I never answer the phone unless I recognize the caller’s name or number. Most spammers don’t leave a message because the calls are robocalls made by bots. Answering the phone alerts the call center that the bots have struck gold and they’ve got a live person on the line. If you’ve ever answered one of these calls, you’ll notice a short pause between saying, “Hello” and someone on the other end responding. That’s the time it takes for the system to switch over to a live operator.

Scammers, on the other hand, are usually people, not bots. If you don’t answer, they’ll leave a message, often an intimidating one that threaten you with criminal action if you don’t return their call because you either owe money to the IRS or are a wanted felon. Once you return the call, you’re told they can make the problem go away by paying a fine—in the form of a gift card. Amazingly, too many people fall for this.

A few weeks ago, I received an unusual scam call. Three calls came in within a few seconds, all from the same number, supposedly originating in New York. I didn’t answer, but the caller left a message between the second and third calls. In a very thick Indian or Pakistani accent, he said he was trying to reach Lois Winston, author of Guilty as Framed, because he wanted to invite her to a book festival his company was putting together in a few months in Los Angeles. If I was that Lois Winston, I should call him back as soon as possible for more information.

In the background, I heard lots of chatter. The caller was obviously calling from a call center, and I seriously doubt the call came from New York, no matter what the display on my phone read. New York City real estate is too pricey for call center operators.

I’ve known many authors who have been ripped off by unscrupulous people out to make a buck off them. I have no doubt this was just another scam in a long line of scams that have preyed on authors and would-be authors over the decades.

Back in my early days of writing, before I sold my first book, I even fell for a scam. I had queried a literary agency about my manuscript and received back a response stating that they were interested in seeing the first three chapters. Within days of sending the chapters, I received a note saying my manuscript needed polishing, and if I paid fifty dollars, they’d provide me with a professional critique of the pages I’d sent. If I followed their instructions from the critique, they’d consider representing me.

What I got back were two or three penciled comments, all of a personal nature and having nothing to do with my plot, characters, or writing prowess. One of the comments I remember was, “I knew a person like this.” I later learned I wasn’t the only person to fall for this scam. It was a family operation, and some of the members wound up serving prison sentences.

Unfortunately, scammers have become much more sophisticated since the onset of the Internet and social media, and many of them operate overseas, out of the reach of US law enforcement. Caveat emptor is a Latin phrase that means “buyer beware.” There’s also a saying in English: “If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.”

I have no idea how the book fair scammers planned to relieve me of my hard-earned dollars, and I wasn’t going to return the call to find out. But I’m sure they had a script filled with carrots to dangle in front of me. And unfortunately, there are probably some authors out there who are at this moment falling for their scam. In the age of spam, scams, fake news, and now ChatGPT, more than ever it pays to be skeptical. Caveat emptor!

What about you? Have you ever fallen for a scam or know someone who has? This month I’m giving away several promo codes for a free download of the audiobook version of Revenge of the Crafty Corpse, the third book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series. Post a comment for a chance to win.

~*~

USA Today and Amazon bestselling and award-winning author Lois Winston writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense, chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and nonfiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name. Kirkus Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” In addition, Lois is a former literary agent and an award-winning craft and needlework designer who often draws much of her source material for both her characters and plots from her experiences in the crafts industry. Learn more about Lois and her books at her website www.loiswinston.com where you can also sign up for her newsletter and follow her on various social media sites.

Fences
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by Saralyn Richard

 

Do good fences make good neighbors? In the past few months, I’ve gained new neighbors on either side of my house. There’s a brand-spanking-new fence between my yard and that of the neighbor to the north. There’s no fence between my yard and that of the neighbor to the south. I love both sets of neighbors. We’ve shared lots of visits in our front yards, several barbecues and parties, baked goods, pets, children, home improvement advice, and more. They may be pine, and I, apple orchard, but I enjoy spending time with them and being part of their community.

Robert Frost’s MENDING WALL is one of my favorite poems. His last line is the source for my opening question. I find a lot of wisdom in this poem:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

The same analogy applies to my relationships with fellow authors in The Stiletto Gang. I may be police procedural and they cozy writers, but we have much in common, and we can help each other every time we meet to walk the line and re-build the wall (which might just be the website). I’m grateful for my neighbors, my Stiletto Gang colleagues, and everyone who reads this post. May all your walls be mended, and may all your neighbors be good.

Galveston Author Saralyn Richard

Award-winning author and educator, Saralyn Richard writes about people in settings as diverse as elite country manor houses and disadvantaged urban high schools. She loves beaches, reading, sheepdogs, the arts, libraries, parties, nature, cooking, and connecting with readers.

Visit Saralyn and subscribe to her monthly newsletter here, or on her Amazon page here.

 

The Value of Group Writing Projects

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by Paula Gail Benson

From February 1 until February 18 of this year, the Writers Who Kill blogging partners collaborated on a serial novella titled Broken Hearted Killers. I have to thank Martha Reed and Rosalie Spielman for initiating and organizing this project. When we all gathered for a photo at the 2022 Malice Domestic conference, they suggested the idea and those of us attending agreed we would like to try it. After going through the process, made very manageable by Martha and Rosalie’s diligence, I have to commend it as a great way to improve understanding character development and story structure.

We began with a location, small town Granite Falls, and a group of characters, a book club called Page Turners that met at the local independent bookstore A Likely Story. Two of the characters, Helen and Iris, lived at a nearby elder community. Although life-long friends, Helen and Iris had also been life-long nemeses, with Helen as the more thoughtful and less privileged and Iris as the woman people loved to hate. They walked home from the Page Turners meeting and, the next morning, when Iris was discovered dead, Helen became a prime suspect.

Each participating blogger was assigned a chapter of 500 to 1,000 words, with the last chapter being given latitude to exceed that number to tie up all the loose ends. We didn’t have an outline. The chapter author could take the story wherever he or she wished, then the next writer would pick up the thread and go forward.

With Martha’s help, we kept a list of characters and significant events with notations about when they happened. We also tried to point out inconsistencies and correct them as we progressed so they didn’t become major obstacles to revise.

For me, a short story writer, the value of the process was in seeing how an amateur investigator’s process evolved in a longer work. In addition, I found it important to evaluate the tempo from scene to scene. If several had been devoted to questioning book club members, those following needed to provide some action, suspense, or twists. And, if possible, it was nice to end a chapter with a cliffhanger, to keep readers returning.

What surprised me a bit is how well all our different styles blended together. We all worked hard to make it a seamless product.

I don’t know if this may become an annual project, like our holiday stories in late November and December, but I hope it might. For any groups looking to try their hands at a serial work, I recommend that you give yourselves a few months to put it together and review it in advance of publishing it. Also, designating an editor to give the story a final read and check for consistency is just good quality control practice.

The completed Broken Hearted Killers remains available at Writers Who Kill (from February 1 to February 18, 2023). On Sunday, February 19 and Monday, February 20, Sarah Burr and Debra Goldstein are writing about our mutual experience at Writers Who Kill. Martha Reed also has kindly supplied it to the participants so they could include it in a newsletter or other offer to readers. Please stop by and let us know what you think!

 

The Tenth Child

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By Barbara J Eikmeier

I have eight siblings. The nine of us were together recently for my dad’s funeral. It was a bittersweet day.  My dad was 92 years old and yet, despite the wind, rain, and mud, over 350 people attended his service.

The church ladies served lunch at the church hall. They came out in full force to support my mother who, for 25 years oversaw the funeral meal program. And they brought food: Potato salad dotted with black olives, deviled eggs, sprinkled with paprika, and delicious fried chicken. There were cookies, pies, and cakes. I grabbed the last piece of cheesecake and handed it to my older sister – I think it’s the only thing she ate that day.  She was busy greeting people. Without planning, we nine children spread out in the hall talking to as many visitors as possible.

I chatted with Janet in front of the photo display – she lived with my parents her senior year. She said, “I visited your dad a few months ago.  I asked if I could go upstairs and see my room.” She was like a tenth child. In fact, she’s always claimed that status. But then there’s Ed. Younger than all of us, my dad took a liking to Ed and encouraged him when he started a goat dairy. Some of us even call him our little brother. I knew about these two claims for the tenth child position but was surprised when Sara, a family friend and my dad’s god daughter, asked to take a picture of my mom with the nine of us. She then jumped between two brothers and said, “Now let’s get another with me in it, after all, I’ve always felt like I was the tenth child!”

Later that evening, back at The Dairy, as we call my parent’s place, we siblings exchanged stories about the day. That’s when I learned there are others who claim to be the tenth child.   The common thread was, “He treated me as if I was a member of the family.”  My own best friend since the 6th grade recalled, “I would just come in and sit down at that big ole farm table and eat dinner as if I lived there.” Neighbors who spent summers on the farm said, “He treated me like I was the tenth child.”

I don’t share DNA with any of the tenth children, but I’ll share my family with them. After all, as my mom would say, “When you are already cooking for eleven people, what’s one more?”

Someday I may be able to write about some of the more poignant moments of my dad’s final days and his funeral, but for now I’m finding comfort in the fact that so many people thought so much of him that they wanted to be his tenth child.

Do you have self-adopted family members?

Bob and Doris Martin and their 9 children

Barbara J. Eikmeier is a quilter, writer, student of quilt history, and lover of small-town America. Raised on a dairy farm in California, she enjoys placing her characters in rural communities.

Valentines, Shmalentines

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A couple of weeks ago, I received an email that opened with this: “Not interested in Valentine’s content?” It continued, very sympathetically: We understand this time can be tough. If you would prefer not to receive Valentine’s Day emails this year, you can opt out by simply clicking below. With love, your Etsy friends.

The whole thing made me wonder. Are American consumers so delicate that we can’t deal with Valentine’s Day if we’re without a valentine of our own? Will retailers now follow suit and spare people who are sadly bereft of a mother from the onslaught of Mother’s Day marketing? Or offer non-holiday shoppers relief from the five months-long Christmas advertising blitz?

Valentine’s Day has murky origins. Apparently, there were three different men named Valentine who achieved sainthood. Their individual stories differ, and are not particularly romantic. However, regarding the celebration of love on February 14, there’s this: In the Middle Ages in England and France, that date was commonly believed to be the start of mating season for birds, and thus, a day for romance. Somewhere along the way, those sexy Greek and Roman gods, Eros and Cupid, added their classical spice to the mix.

The oldest known valentine still in existence is a poem written in 1415. I haven’t been able to find the original text, so it may or may or may have gone something like this: Roses are red, violets are blue, thou hast the face of an olde cockatoo.

Times have changed, and romantic love has taken a beating in the past few decades. While I understand the yearning for a knight in shining armor who gallops across the moat carrying a dozen perfect red roses and a two pound box of Godiva, most princesses have moved on toward the notion that true love comes in different flavors, and doesn’t always arrive in the form of a macho man on his high horse.

Houston Museum of Natural Science

More and more women are celebrating Galentine’s Day. Marketers have picked up on the vibe, offering “Cupid is Stupid” specials at taverns, restaurants, and entertainment halls. At least one establishment in town advertises a special axe-throwing night for women only. Makes me wonder what shape or form the axe’s target resembles. Also turns my imagination toward a great plot idea for a Rom-Com Crime story.

This year, the Houston Museum of Natural Science invited its members to contemplate the mutual attraction of our Earth and Moon (above). They also encouraged those of us among the Valentine- or Galentine-perplexed to “Take a Bite out of Love” by giving our special someone this: a cockroach that can be cherished, or squished like a bug, according to your heart’s desire.

Houston Museum of Natural Science

Valentine’s and Galentine’s Days have another sibling. It’s called Palentine’s Day and it gives us all a chance to tell our best buddies that we love and appreciate them. I like this choice the best.

So today, I wish everyone—my readers, friends, family, and colleagues alike—a very Happy Palentine’s Day!

What’s your favorite thing to do on February 14th?

Gay Yellen is the award-winning author of the Samantha Newman Mystery Series, including The Body Business, The Body Next Door, and the upcoming Body in the News!