Maligned Comfort Food & Fond Memories

By Linda Lovely

I’m not sure why April is our chosen month to blog about comfort foods. Maybe it’s the need to seek comfort after completing our tax returns, because we’re either (a) weeping over how much we owed the government, or (b) sighing that we didn’t earn enough to owe a penny. Authors often fall into that second category unless they have a day job, rich parents, well-paid spouses, or some combination of the above. But I digress.

I consider almost all foods a comfort. I LOVE food—including items from every section of the food pyramid. Broccoli and Brussel sprouts. Turkey and gravy.  Potatoes au gratin. Chocolate chip cookies. Any flavor of ice cream.

But as comfort foods, I’m obliged to list two of the most maligned entrees that grace American (well, at least, Midwest) dinner tables—tuna noodle casserole and meatloaf. Both made frequent appearances on our plates when I was growing up.  They top my comfort food list because of the fond memories each provides. (Okay, I liked how they tasted, too. I don’t have a sophisticated palate.)

Let’s begin with tuna noodle casserole. Cost, simplicity, and the ability to reheat leftovers made this a go-to favorite of my working mother. The fond memories come from all the different recipes and ingredients we tried to add variety. As I recall the starter version had canned tuna, egg noodles, frozen peas, mushroom soup, and breadcrumbs. Later iterations featured potato chips, corn flakes, fried onions, green peppers, corn, carrots, onions, pimentos, and cheese.   The winner? A casserole we baked in a bread pan so it resembled a meatloaf (more on that later) and could slice when cold. Cold was my favorite!

I can’t share an actual recipe as I’m not sure we ever wrote one down. But, if I were to make it today (and I might, despite my husband’s avowed aversion to any form of tuna-noodle casserole), I’d cook and drain a package of elbow macaroni, chop and sauté a an onion and a (sweet) red pepper, drain a couple cans of tuna, and stir all the ingredients together in a big bowl. Then I’d make a thick cheese sauce with milk, flour and a combo of Velveeta and shredded cheddar. Mix and pour into a couple of bread pans, top with buttered bread crumbs and bake.  Yum.

Now it’s time to put meatloaf in the spotlight. When I think of meatloaf, I always recall our annual family vacations. Each summer Mom drove us from Keokuk, Iowa, to Spirit Lake, Iowa, where we visited her brother (my uncle) and his family. Mom liked to start out at five a.m. to avoid some of the heat of the day. She always packed meatloaf sandwiches for our “lunch.” I’m not sure if we ever made it past the Keokuk city limits before my sister and I started asking for meatloaf sandwiches—slathered with ketchup, of course.

Mom was convinced that tomato juice and eggs made meatloaf “tough.” So her version was held together with milk and cracker crumbs, kneaded together by hand. She also used a combo of ground beef, pork and veal (it wasn’t that expensive then). I still make meatloaf three or four times a year, though these days the meat tends to be ground turkey, and I use breadcrumbs and tomato juice/sauce, an egg, chopped green peppers, celery, mushrooms & onions, basil and oregano. No recipe. My cooking is like my plotting. Seat of the pants.

What comfort foods bring back good memories for you? Do you still cook/eat them?

Time to quit writing, I’m suddenly hungry.

Small Town Settings-Big Author Challenges

By Linda Lovely

I write romantic suspense and mysteries with romantic elements. My choice of setting—large city or small town—plays a large part in shaping each of my novels. Of the five books I’ve published to date, all but one feature small towns—well, actually small communities, which is slightly different.

My decision about setting is driven by two factors—familiarity and plot. Since I’ve lived in smaller communities most of my life, I have a good grasp of their social fabric and how things work, including who has power/clout and how it can be used for good or evil. This helps me construct credible plots that are intimate and personal.

In big-city thrillers, the villains (and heroines) tend to be individuals we’re unlikely to meet face-to-face. I find plots far more compelling if the villains could be signing my paycheck or passing the collection plate at church. I’m also more passionate about rooting for heroines and heroes who sound a lot like next-door neighbors who share my everyday joys and troubles.

That’s not to say there aren’t problems writing small-town fiction. Here are three biggies:

• Accuracy & Research. If your fiction is set current day in a “real” small town, you’d better be committed to doing solid research. You also have to expect disconnects between your research and readers’ experiences. The trendy restaurant where your heroine hangs out may have gone belly up by the time your reader visits it on the written page. The woods where you have a crucial chase scene may be leveled to make way for a used car dealership. Streets may be renamed. Courthouses may be moved. The list is endless.
• Permission If you plan to include real institutions and commercial entities in your book, seek written permission if there’s any chance someone might think the mentions put them in an unflattering light. An example? Saying your heroine is poisoned at her favorite restaurant—even if the villain (who has no association with the eatery) slips in the poison while your heroine visits the ladies’ room. Still most restauranteurs would not want “poison” and their business name coupled in the same paragraph. 
• Unintended Slurs. Okay, we’re talking fiction, but that doesn’t mean “real” police officers, sheriff’s deputies, bankers, preachers, developers, university presidents, or entrepreneurs who reside in your real burg won’t see the depiction of any unsavory characters in their professions or institutions as being a potential slap in the face.  

So, how can an author solve these problems? Here’s what I’ve done on a book-by-book basis.

DEAR KILLER: I lived on a barrier island outside Beaufort, South Carolina, for a dozen years. I wanted to capture the special flavor of the Lowcountry and life in a small residential/resort community. However, I didn’t want to use any real island since the plot included less than admirable characters in the island’s power structure. My solution? Fictional Dear Island, a composite of several islands. I located it near Beaufort, but in a fictional adjacent county. This compromise allows my characters to visit many favorite tourist spots in Beaufort, Hilton Head, and Charleston without the risk of accidentally impugning anyone’s reputation.  

NO WAKE ZONE: My second Marley Clark mystery is set in Spirit Lake/Lake Okoboji, Iowa. I love this real community, having spent many wonderful summers there with my aunt, uncle and cousins. There’s a statue of my late cousin Steve Kennedy on the waterfront, honoring his contributions to the area. I collaborated on the history of the area with Steve. After he died, I asked for special permission to include the Queen II excursion boat, the Iowa Great Lakes Maritime Museum, and Arnolds Park, a century-plus old amusement park, in the plot. It’s worked out beautifully.

DEAD HUNT: This is the second romantic thriller in my “Smart Women, Dumb Luck” series. I now live in Upstate South Carolina, and wanted to incorporate real and very special Foothills wilderness locations and state parks in this plot. However, I once again decided on a fictional town and county. In this case, the heroine is head of security for a private university, and I didn’t want to associate threats with any real university so I created fictional Blue Ridge University.  

LIES:  Unlike my prior novels, this romantic suspense is not set current day. It takes place in 1938 in a real Mississippi River town, Keokuk, Iowa (my hometown). While I did considerable research to make things as accurate as possible, I also asked two librarian/historians to review the manuscript for accuracy. While I attempted to get most things “right,” I did create a fictional bank to avoid maligning the history of any current institutions. At the suggestion of one of the reviewers, I’ve also changed the names of a couple of my fictional characters to avoid any possibility of offense. For example, I had no idea that the name I picked for one of my characters was the owner of a bank in 1938 and his relatives still live in the town. LIES is set for release this summer.

If you’d like to know more about my settings or my writing process, please visit my website— www.lindalovely.com —or add in any comment here that you’d like to receive my newsletter. Don’t worry, you won’t be inundated. I tend to send an average of one newsletter a year!  

HOPE CAN BE A SLIPPERY LITTLE DEVIL

By Linda Lovely

“There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.” 
― Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems, 1956-1968

This month’s blog theme is hope—a slippery little devil that seems hardest to grasp when we need its restorative powers most. I must admit I’ve all but abandoned hope of finding an amicable solution to a controversy that has me sleeping too little and worrying too much. In this instance, hope eludes me because so many elements are beyond my control.

So what does that say about hope? Let’s pretend my fondest hope is that a leopard will change its spots. Not going to happen. About the only folks who might realistically expect that hope to come to fruition are brave beauticians armed with stun guns and hair dye or, perhaps, geneticists willing to play with DNA in order to alter spots in future generations of leopards.  

This scenario relates directly to both my personal frustration and the turmoil and troubles my heroine encounters in my newest—soon-to-be-released—romantic suspense novel. I think we all need hope. So once it appears a given situation—or at least one aspect of it—is hopeless, I simply transfer my hope elsewhere. I look for a crack in the gloom, a place where a sliver of light can let a new hope take root, a place where there’s a possibility, however slim, that my actions can influence the outcome.

It’s no surprise my fictional heroines react the same way I do when all hope seems lost. They search for those cracks where even a trickle of light shines through. My new suspense novel is set in 1938 Keokuk, Iowa. While I grew up in Keokuk, I’m happy to say the story unfolds long before I was born. Because the book is set during the Great Depression, a number of editors have told me it runs the risk of getting labeled as “depressing” before anyone read page one. That would be a shame since the exact opposite is true. This romantic suspense is uplifting because the heroine doesn’t lose hope for a better tomorrow. She finds ways to live, laugh, and love despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles and dangers she is powerless to change—economic hardships and a few other tiny problems like a police chief determined to frame her for her estranged husband’s death and a faceless foe who wants to kill her and her two-year-old son. Of course, you’ll have to read the book to find out where she finds cracks in the gloom and how she pins her hopes on things she can influence with her own talents and determination.

  

I think this is my best novel, my favorite so far. Will it become one of your favorites, too? I guess I can say I “hope” so, since I’ve already done all I can to make that outcome a reality. The title is LIES. Release date will be early summer.

Hooray for Grass-Roots Nonprofits

By Linda Lovely

Many well-known nonprofit/charitable organizations are national—even international—in scope. Such organizations often have paid staff and sizeable budgets for promotional mailings, websites, and brochures. They may even have celebrities to champion their causes.



Iowa Great Lakes Maritime Museum



That’s seldom the case for grass-roots nonprofits—ones started because a single dreamer or perhaps some like-minded folks see a community need that’s going unmet, a wrong that needs to be righted, or they have a quality-of-life vision. This blog salutes the tireless heroes and heroines who have such dreams and won’t stop working until they breathe life into their goals.   



Captain Steve Kennedy



My late cousin, Stephen Ross Kennedy, was one such hero. A native of Spirit Lake/Lake Okoboji, Iowa, he loved the history of the Iowa Great Lakes. Steve lamented the passing of the golden era when tour boats plied the lakes, ferrying passengers from one grand resort to another, or giving folks who couldn’t afford a boat a chance to experience a sunset cruise. Steve wasn’t alone. Working through the Chamber of Commerce, Steve and his friends raised funds to build the Queen II, a double-decker tour boat. After tour revenues paid off the Queen II mortgage, profits built the Iowa Great Lakes Maritime Museum, located in Historic Arnolds Park, an amusement park that’s entertained Midwesterners for over a century. The museum is another nonprofit gem.

My family with Steve's statue.

Steve became the first captain of the Queen II and the first director of the Iowa Great Lakes Maritime Museum. However, borrowing one of my cousin’s expressions, he’d have been “happy as a clam” even if he hadn’t been honored with these opportunities. He’d also be surprised to know his statue now stands on the Arnolds Park pier. Steve’s love for the lakes was contagious, and the Queen II and museum are gifts that continue to give. The Iowa Great Lakes Maritime Museum offers fun history lessons for every member of a family—from bathing suits our great grandparents might have worn to the evolution of motorboats. The Queen II also retains her regal status as the first lady of the lake. 

 

NO WAKE ZONE, the second book in my Marley Clark Mystery Series, is set in Lake Okoboji/Spirit Lake and opens with a billionaire’s death aboard the Queen. The Iowa Great Lakes Maritime Museum also figures in the mystery. Last summer, I did a book signing at the museum with all profits going to support the museum. I hope every

Has a grass-roots nonprofit made a difference in your hometown? Are you helping?