It's Time to Party!

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

WooHoo! A chance to celebrate is always welcome at our house and since Mexican food is a particular favorite, it’s definitely time to party. I can’t think of a single holiday that isn’t celebrated with a feast and today I’m inviting everyone to attend. I’m also inviting everyone to share a recipe that they have shared to Pinterest. Just tell me where to find it and I’ll follow you!

Not on Pinterest? Just tell me about your most memorable party snack!

Is there anything that’s more fun than a party where everyone contributes a favorite dish? As the hostess, I’m going to be making the Ceviche and Guacamole so that everyone can get started with a fun little appetizer while I’m whipping up a few Margaritas and waiting for everyone to arrive.

Years ago, a friend of my mom gave her a wonderful recipe for Ceviche that I’m still using. Hubby is quite the fisherman so instead of halibut or any other firm-fleshed white fish we usually just use fresh crappie. The lemon juice actually cooks the fish and is a fun, fresh way to prepare it.

Ceviche

1 ½ lbs. fresh fish sliced into small, thin pieces

1 C. lemon juice

2 canned Serrano or Jalapeno chilies (rinsed, seeds removed and chopped)

½ C. minced onion

2 large tomatoes, peeled, seeded & chopped

1 t. salt

¼ C olive oil and/or white vermouth

Place the fish in a glass bowl (metal will react with the acidity of lemon), stir in lemon juice and refrigerate for 4-6 hours. Drain and reserve the juice. Pour juice into another glass bowl and toss with all remaining ingredients. Strain and add this to the fish. Chill for 2 hours, garnish with avocado slices and green olives and serve very cold. I usually place the chilled mix inside another bowl filled with ice. You can use tortilla chips to scoop this up but I much prefer the mix on a fancy cracker.

Guacamole

2 ripe avocados, peeled, pitted and diced
1/2 white onion, chopped

1 chopped tomato

¼ C. cilantro leaves, chopped

Salt to taste

 
Tortilla chips or fresh veggies, for serving. This recipe is supposed to serve 4-6. I usually double it for that number.

***In a pinch, I’ve been known to use prepared salsa instead of chopping the onion and tomato and if you use the kind that already has cilantro, you don’t have to add that either. I do like my guacamole a little chunkier so I’m not real big on mashing it to bits J

Classic Margarita

Lime wedge, plus two lime wheels for garnish

1 T. coarse salt for glass rims

4 oz. Tequila

2 oz. orange liquor (Cointreau)

1 ½ oz. fresh lime juice (from 2 limes)

I did mention that I love a party where everyone brings a tidbit and you can manage to make a meal from appetizers. To add to the festivities today, if you have a Pinterest page with a favorite party recipe, please share. Anyone contributing a pin or a recipe suggestion will be entered to win your choice of either a Kindle copy of my erotic romance novella, NO HOLDS BARRED or the Romance Books ‘4’ Us, ENTICE ME boxed set that includes my story, I’LL BE SEEING YOU.

Let’s get this party started!

Paris Brandon

http://parisbrandon.com

https://www.pinterest.com/parisbrandonaut/

Entice Me/I’ll Be Seeing You: http://www.amazon.com/Entice-Me-Luscious-Love-Stories-ebook/dp/B015YEHP9U/

No Holds Barred

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1082166501

Kobo:  https://goo.gl/XiBjFw

Barnes & Noble: http://goo.gl/7Oyq4j

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CF5X75M

Using Your Ethnic Heritage in Your Writing

            This past St. Patrick’s Day got me thinking about my own ethnic heritage. They say everyone is Irish on St. Paddy’s Day. When we were young, my husband and I did our share of partying on that day, although neither of us has a drop of Irish blood.

Last year, my husband and I had our DNA tested. There were no surprises. Our DNA results were close, both of us overwhelmingly Mediterranean with some West Asia (Turkey, etc) thrown in. My husband also has some Eastern European DNA, not surprising since his father’s family is from the Ukraine.

Some years ago I wrote an article about using your ethnic heritage in your writing. I decided to dig it out and update it.

You’ve all heard the old adage, “Write what you know.” We writers do research to learn about places we’ve never visited, or we make up our own worlds, which is sometimes easier. Regardless of what worlds we write about, we put a little bit of ourselves into all of our stories.

            I hadn’t thought of using my ethnic heritage in my books until my third one. In the first two books I wrote (one published, one not), my heroes and heroines had Irish/English names, as do most characters in American books. Face it, we Americans have an easier time pronouncing English, Irish, Scottish and German names than we do Italian, Polish, French, etc.

            When I decided to write my third book, I had an epiphany. Why not make at least one of my protagonists of Italian descent, as I am? Thus, Doriana Callahan, the heroine of my romantic suspense, Logan’s Redemption (Redemption Book 1). Doriana, named after a woman I know who is an immigrant from Rome, Italy, is half Italian, half Irish. Doriana has the quintessential Italian mother, loving, but intrusive, named after one of my favorite aunts. Doriana’s Nana lives in South Philadelphia and is a sweet, tiny elderly Italian woman who is a terrific cook, modeled after my husband’s grandmother and mine. I had such fun writing these people because they are so familiar and dear to me. I put in a scene where Doriana, her mother, her cousin, and Nana are making Italian wedding soup. Some of my cousins make wedding soup together every year.

            I used my ethnic heritage again in my romantic suspense novel, Murder, Mi Amore, which is set almost entirely in Rome, Italy, with an Italian hero and an Italian-American heroine. I even included a whole chapter set in the small town in Abruzzo where my grandparents were raised. Writing Murder, Mi Amore brought back memories of my trip to Italy in 2006. Every bit of setting — the hotel where my heroine Lexie stays, the streets she travels, even the food she eats — are authentic, based on my own experiences. However, unlike my heroine and hero, I wasn’t chased through Rome by very bad people trying to kill me. 

In Franco’s Fortune (Redemption Book 2), the hero is Doriana’s brother, and of course Italian/Irish. The heroine is a redhead with a French last name. In Luke’s Temptation (Redemption Book 3), the heroine is Doriana’s cousin, and is all Italian. The hero is Hispanic. Although I’m not Hispanic, I’ve written several heroes who are of Hispanic or mixed Hispanic/Native American heritage. As you can see I’ve gotten away from my ethnic roots at times, yet the characters I write about have ethnic backgrounds that I enjoyed researching.

In my novella, Capri Nights, included in the Entice Me: Luscious Love Stories Boxed Set, my hero, Alex, is from the Isle of Capri, Italy. I’m currently writing a story that will be included in a box set of international stories. My hero is, you’ve got it, Italian, from the town of Ravello on the Amalfi Coast. I’ve visited Capri twice, and I’ve visited Ravello also.

            I’ve sold a dozen short romance stories to national women’s magazines, and I’ve used Italian and Polish names for many of my short story characters. However, a few of the magazine editors have changed my characters’ names to something more “vanilla.”

You have to be careful when using ethnic last names. The names must be easy to pronounce - like Russo, DiMarco, Novak, Morelli, Brioni, Cortese. You don’t want readers tripping over the names.

Writing my Italian characters is like writing about my family, people I’ve known all my life. I’ll use an ethnic name whenever it fits, but I know, regardless of ethnicity, the characters’ names must tell the readers a little bit about them. Try it when you write your stories. Spice up your characters a little flavor of yourself and your heritage. 

           Visit my website at www.caramarsi.com for excerpts and information about all my books.

Logan's Redemption:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0040JI3PG/?tag=carmaraut-20

Franco's Fortune:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BNA3JQI/?tag=carmaraut-20

Luke's Temptation:

http://www.amazon.com/Lukes-Temptation-Redemption-Book-3-ebook/dp/B00MYC97LU/?tag=carmaraut-20

The Redemption Series Box Set:

http://www.amazon.com/Redemption-Boxed-Set-Cara-Marsi-ebook/dp/B00RJDKJ1Q/?tag=carmaraut-20

Murder, Mi Amore:

http://www.amazon.com/Murder-Mi-Amore/dp/B009UEVVP0/?tag=carmaraut-20

Entice Me: Luscious Love Stories

http://www.amazon.com/Entice-Me-Luscious-Love-Stories-ebook/dp/B015YEHP9U/?tag=carmaraut-20

 

           

The Gunslinger Principle

There was a time when e-book publishing was compared to the Wild West. The attitude was if you were fast enough, you could be the best. The problem with that was that even during the west's wild and woolly days when gunslingers were the elite, accuracy was the key. It didn't matter how fast you were, if you couldn't hit what you were aiming at, you didn't survive long.

While a good story is key, I think of accuracy in an e-book in terms of correct spelling and grammar and formatting that doesn't drive the reader crazy. I use every tool available to make sure that my books are accurate but the law of averages always makes me wonder if I haven't missed something. Lately, there's been quite a lot of discussion on the self-publishing group I follow about Amazon instituting a new rule that investigates reviewers complaints when a book has too many spelling errors.

How many is too many? How long will it take to convince Amazon that your character is speaking in dialect and that the word isn't really misspelled? How many complaints will they accept from any given reviewer before the reviewer is questioned? I believe this is a fairly new policy so only time will tell.


Nobody said this would be easy. I wouldn't have believed them if they had. My only plan at this point is to just write the best book I can and keep moving forward.


While I work on new projects, I'm revising and self-publishing my back-list. Last year's experience with the Romance Books '4' Us author boxed set, ENTICE ME was so much fun that I decided to try it on my own. NO HOLDS BARRED is an erotic romance novella first published in 2009 and now available at Amazon, iTunes, Barnes & Noble and Kobo. The sparkly new cover design is from SelfPubBookCoversCom./Shardel.


Blurb:

      What's a woman to do when the sexy younger man she can't forget tracks her down after a night spent celebrating her fortieth birthday? Charmed into a year of long-distance Sunday morning calls, Raphella Dotti agrees to spend a sensual week with Jake Truhorn, exploring all of her no-holds-barred-anything-goes, fantasies.
       Jake doesn't understand why anyone would suggest that Ella diet, get a nose job or change at all. She's smart, funny and an artist's dream. She's also the challenge he's been looking for his entire life. He isn't wasting one minute of the seven days he has to explore every one of Ella's desires and convince her that she's the woman he wants forever.

Snippet:

 She’d been leaving first for a long time now, before anyone could suggest a diet or a nose job or her personal favorite, liposuction. Before she fell into the trap of loving someone so much she allowed herself to become their latest project. And she could fall hard for Jake Truhorn. How ridiculous would that be? How dangerous?

She spent the next twenty-four hours convincing herself that she’d done the right thing, all the while frowning into mirrors at least once an hour, trying to smooth the crinkled little creases around her eyes and the laugh lines that she hadn’t paid any attention to before.

From now on she was just going to celebrate the anniversary of her fortieth birthday. And she was probably going to stop looking into mirrors. At least until she found a really great industrial strength night cream.

Two days later Jake Truhorn laid siege to her email, her phone and her sense of humor. She very gently informed him that the ten-year age gap was a problem. He made a joke about being the only one who’d be able to keep up with her in her old age, smoothly transitioning the conversation into their shared love of campy B-movie horror classics, ethnic food and a single-minded, obsessive passion for their work.

One year and innumerable emails and phone calls later he was still making jokes, still charming her—and he knew it.

“Where are you planning on celebrating your forty-first birthday?” he asked during their latest regular Sunday-morning-brunch-with-the-phone-to-their-ear-conversations.

“I’m not. I’m only going to celebrate the anniversary of my fortieth from now on,” she quipped before she thought better of it. The moment of silence that followed felt as if it lasted ten minutes. When he finally said something he sounded as if he’d been holding his breath.

“Then I say do it right. Spend a week with me. We’ll do all of the things we didn’t have time to do a year ago.”

Jack and Ella will always have a special place in my heart. I hope they've found their way into yours:)

Have a wonderful month!

Paris Brandon

http://parisbrandon.com 

No Holds Barred

Available now:

 

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1082166501

Kobo:  https://goo.gl/XiBjFw

Barnes & Noble: http://goo.gl/7Oyq4j

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CF5X75M

 

CHRISTMAS GREETINGS

The theme for December is “Been there, done that, don’t want to do it again.” I have many things I could add to this. However, it’s Christmas Eve, a magical time for me, and I hope for you.

I know most of you are extremely busy with last-minute shopping or parties, or family gatherings. Savor your time with family and friends. Hug them, tell them you appreciate them. The same for the furry members of your family. Hug your cats and dogs. I’ve lost two loved ones this year, and I’m learning to focus on what’s really important in life—the people and fur babies who mean so much.

Take time for yourself. Relax, put your feet up, preferably before a sizzling fire. Have some hot chocolate, a glass of wine, a hot toddy, whatever is your drink of choice. While you’re relaxing, read a romance to put you in a happy mood. I have several Christmas romances I think you’ll enjoy. And for delicious fun, there’s Entice Me Luscious Love Stories, the anthology I’m privileged to be part of with the talented authors of RB4U.

www.caramarsi.com

http://www.amazon.com/Cara-Marsi/e/B002BMIB8S

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ONE AND ALL!