A Meal Made in Heaven

A great meal is the nectar of the gods. It’s heavenly. Sometimes it’s better than sex. I love writing books about chefs and cooks. Such fun.

All four of my grandparents were from the Abruzzo region of Italy. My grandmothers and my Italian mother-in-law were terrific cooks. However, of all the wonderful meals I’ve eaten through the years, one stands out above the rest.

In 2006, my husband and I traveled to Abruzzo, Italy, to join a tour run by my Australian cousin, Luciana. A cousin from Arizona joined us. Luciana had just started her tour company, and this was the maiden tour.

As we traveled through mountainous, wildly beautiful Abruzzo, we ate the most scrumptious food every day. Luciana had arranged the meals and the elegant wines to complement them. We ate at several agrituristicas, farms that grow and serve organic foods and are subsidized by the Italian government in an effort to bring more tourism into the lesser-known regions of Italy.

One such agrituristica, Ill Nespolo, was run by a husband and wife, Maria Angela, from the province of Calabria, and Gabriele, from Abruzzo. Here’s the menu for that meal:

Antipasto consisting of home-made sausage, cheeses with honey and saffron, marinated vegetables, bruschetta with olive paste.

Primo(First Course)-Gnocchi al pomodoro-gnocchi alle verdue

(Gnocchi with tomato sauce and with green vegetable sauce)

Secondo(Second Course)-Petto di tacchino con arancia e rucola (turkey breast with orange and rocket. Rocket is similar to arugula)

Dolce(Dessert)-Home-made biscotti with honey

All served with local Abruzzese wines.

Our hosts provided us with a surprise dish--saffron gnocchi with fresh-shaved truffle. Oh. My. God. That was the best food, hands down, I’ve ever eaten. Ever. In my life.

All the food we ate on that trip was incredible, delicious, wonderful. And the wines were exquisite. But nothing compared to the heavenly delight of saffron gnocchi with fresh-shaved truffle. During the meal, my husband whispered that he might have to divorce me and marry Maria Angela because she cooked like an angel. Couldn’t blame him. I wanted to marry her myself. Our group went nuts over all the food at that meal, but especially the saffron gnocchi. There wasn’t a scrap left of anything when we were done. To this day, I can’t eat gnocchi because nothing will ever be as good as the dish I ate at Ill Nespolo.

Food is more than eating. It’s companionship and memories. I have the most marvelous memories of that trip and of the meals shared with family and new friends. I can’t think of that meal and the others without remembering Luciana and what a great host and tour guide she was. I got to spend more time with my cousin Kevin from Arizona, whom my husband and I traveled with to Australia a few years earlier; the friendship of the others in our group, all Australian, warmed me. As a group, we grew close, sharing some rough times, like when our van got stuck in road ruts in the Abruzzo wilderness. Or when we hiked one of Italy’s national parks on a scorching hot day. Or visited medieval monasteries carved into the sides of mountains. All the memories are bound together with the food we ate.

That trip, and the food, connected me to generations of my family who are as much a part of that region as the stark mountains and hillside villages.

Here are pictures of the gnocchi, the truffle being shaved, and our group. I’m second from left in the turquoise top, holding a glass, conversing with the man next to me.

My romantic suspense, Murder, Mi Amore, is set almost entirely in Italy. Every setting is authentic, based on places we visited and stayed during that 2006 trip. The meals I mention in that book are actual meals we ate. My very first published book, from Avalon Books, A Catered Affair,(reissued under the title A Catered Romance) featured a caterer heroine. Lots of food references in that book. My most current foodie book is Capri Nights, set on the Isle of Capri.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Abruzzo region of Italy or taking a trip there, check out Luciana’s website: https://www.touringabruzzo.com/

Check out all my books at: www.caramarsi.com

Buy Murder, Mi Amore:

https://books2read.com/u/3J8XpP

Danger. Deception. Desire.

Murder, jewel thieves and terrorists intrude on an American woman's Roman holiday; can she trust the sexy, mysterious Italian man who comes to her aid?

Buy A Catered Romance:

https://books2read.com/u/3nY826

Delicious. Hot. Sensuous.

There's more than business brewing between two old high school flames...

Stubbornly self-reliant Mary Beth Kendrick needs financial backing to keep her catering business cooking. A looming corporate buyout forces her to accept help from Tom Sackett, the man who broke her heart and left her with no appetite for love. 

Buy Capri Nights:

https://books2read.com/u/3L9z51

Sensual. Sumptuous. Sizzling.

Love under an Italian sky.

A San Francisco sous chef discovers she might have bitten off more than she can chew when a scrumptious Italian man stirs up a recipe for romance on the delicious Isle of Capri.

When Setting Is a Character

Can setting be a character in a story? You bet. Some places naturally are so exotic, exciting and beautiful that they cry out to star in a movie or book.

I’ve read books, wonderful books, set in faraway places. But the settings served only as a backdrop, mentioned, but forgotten. I’ve always been a little disappointed that I didn’t learn more about the locale during the stories. I love stories where the setting is the framework that holds the story, especially when the story is set in a beautiful place I want to visit or one I want to revisit.

When I traveled to Rome, Italy, in 2006, my second trip there, I was again blown away by the city’s beauty, vibrancy and history. All four of my grandparents came from Italy, so the country itself holds meaning for me.

Rome was bustling as always that June, especially with World Cup fever all around. We stayed at a hotel on one of the most popular and crowded streets, Via Corsi. Trevi Fountain was a short walk away. The Pantheon was around the corner. And so was an amazing gelato shop where we bought too many luscious gelatos, the Italian ice cream. Yum. Kiwi Melon was my favorite. My husband and I ate at least two gelatos a day. Good thing we walked all over the city to shed those extra calories.

Italy is magical and begs to be its own character in books and movies. As we walked the ancient cobbled streets of Rome, ate amazing food (saffron gnocchi with fresh-shaved truffles, anyone?) and drank lots of delicious wine, I just knew I had to set a story there. And I knew the richness of Rome could never fade into the background. It had to be a character.

In the fall of 2009, The Wild Rose Press announced a new romantic suspense series, Jewels of the Night. The stories could be set anywhere in the world, but had to involve a stolen blue diamond. The proverbial light bulb went off in my head. I’d write a romantic suspense set in Rome. My novel, Murder, Mi Amore, was released in December 2010. I’ve since gotten the rights back and have published it myself.

Imagine if you were a young American woman vacationing in Rome to get over a painful breakup, and your Roman holiday is suddenly disrupted by jewel thieves, murder, and one very hot and mysterious Italian guy who may or may not be involved with the strange goings on around you.

That’s the premise of Murder, Mi Amore. Rome and other parts of Italy are as important to my story as my hero and heroine, Dominic and Lexie. Every scene in Murder, Mi Amore is authentic. Even the meals Lexie ate are the same ones we enjoyed on our trip. The hotel on the Via Corsi where Lexie stays is the one where we stayed, but with a different name. I remember well how I felt as I shouldered my way through the throngs of tourists and natives on Via Corsi. I used those feelings to describe Lexie as she makes her way on this same street after she buys the handbag that launches her wild adventure. When Lexie is dragged through dark and narrow streets by her would-be kidnapper, I pictured the little alleyways dotting Rome.

As I wrote about Lexie and Dominic meeting for the first time at Trevi Fountain, I could hear the chattering of the crowds and the snap of cameras and feel the sun’s heat. I could almost taste the wine Lexie orders. When you see pictures of this iconic fountain, it looks as if it’s in the middle of a very wide street. Nope. It’s set in a corner of a narrow cobblestoned street.

While writing Murder, Mi Amore, I was once again in Rome – running my fingers over the walls of the Coliseum, tramping through the Ancient Roman Forum, eating luscious pizza and drinking rich red wine at outdoor cafes while motor scooters darted around us.

A chapter in Murder, Mi Amore is set in the Abruzzo town where my grandparents were raised. Writing that chapter brought me back to the beautiful, mountainous, rural region of my ancestors. On our trip, we traveled the same road to Abruzzo as Lexie and Dominic. However, unlike them, no one was trying to run us off the road into a deep ravine.

Could my story have taken place anywhere else? Yes, but I would have lost a major character – an exciting and exotic character, and one a little bit dangerous. Italy.

My husband and took a Viking River Cruise up the Seine in June, 2016. I plan to write a Gothic romance set in Normandy. The rugged, rainy coast of Normandy is perfect for a dark Gothic.

We spent time in Paris, one of the world's great cities. Here's a picture of a gargoyle at the top of Notre Dame Cathedral.

Because our son lives in Las Vegas, we go there at least once a year. My husband suggested I start writing stories set in Vegas. I loved the idea. I now have two novellas set in Las Vegas, and I’m currently writing a marriage-of-convenience novel set there.

Anyone who has been to Las Vegas knows the place has its own character that can’t be duplicated. The story possibilities set in Vegas are endless.

What do you think? Do you like having a setting as a character in what you read and write?

Here’s the blurb for Murder, Mi Amore:

Danger. Deception. Desire.

Murder, jewel thieves and terrorists intrude on an American woman's Roman holiday; can she trust the sexy, mysterious Italian man who comes to her aid?

Lexie Cortese is in Rome to forget. The last thing she expects is to meet a sexy Interpol agent who suspects her of being part of a terrorist plot involving a stolen diamond. Suddenly thrust into a world of murders, muggings, and kidnappings, Lexie doesn’t know what to think—or who to believe.

Dominic Brioni’s assignment is simple. Befriend the American and bring her to justice. Only Lexie seems the most unlikely terrorist Dominic has ever met. Sweet, determined, and direct, she faces life with courage and fire, a fire that sparks his protective instincts and a longing for something more—something he allowed himself to hope for only once before.

But that woman betrayed him, and his boss isn’t about to let him forget it. With his career on the line and Lexie in danger, will Dominic learn to trust his heart before they both get killed?

  Here’s a little about my Las Vegas story, Bad Luck Partners, in the anthology Season of Promises Holiday Box Set.

Holidays have never brought Las Vegas hotel concierge Laney Sikora anything but bad luck in the romance department. The worst was her fiancé dumping her on Valentine’s Day. Via text. She’s determined to spend New Year's Eve alone with no romantic entanglements. But when her hunky new neighbor locks himself out of his apartment, she can’t leave him standing in the hallway. What's a girl to do?

Las Vegas is just a pit stop for Chicago native and radio personality Chance Carlisle while he waits for his agent to land him something bigger in L.A. But in the meantime, he keeps bumping into—literally—his adorable, but accident-prone, neighbor. Their private New Year’s Eve celebration leads to a plan: they’ll become the Bad Luck Partners, dating only on holidays and special events, avoiding holiday heartbreaks and matchmaking mamas.

 
But Fate might have something else in mind for the klutzy cutie and the hotshot talk show host. Can their temporary partnership become a forever deal?

And from A Very Vegas Christmas in the anthology Holiday Magic, from The World Romance Writers.

A Las Vegas event planner in need of luck meets a mysterious guy who might be her winning ticket. Will his secret split them apart?

Can things get any worse for Las Vegas event planner Amanda Moreau? Her boyfriend dumped her for a stripper; she’s arranging a Christmas wedding for a Bridezilla; and her mother is playing matchmaker from 2000 miles away. When she meets hunky and ever-so-sweet Erik, who’s in town for a conference, she begins to hope her luck is changing. But Erik has a secret that threatens to split them apart. 

Links:

Murder, Mi Amore:

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

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/murder-mi-amore-cara-marsi/1103364955?ean=2940016033266

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/murder-mi-amore/id599801756?mt=11

https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/murder-mi-amore

Season of Promises Holiday Box Set:

https://www.amazon.com/Season-Promises-Merry-Holly-ebook/dp/B01LQUP9AS/?tag=carmaraut-20

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/season-of-promises-holiday-box-set-marian-lanouette/1124742472?ean=2940153535586

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/season-of-promises-holiday-box-set

Holiday Magic:

https://www.amazon.com/Holiday-Magic-Rose-Anderson-ebook/dp/B01MXQQQJM/?tag=carmaraut-20

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/holiday-magic-rose-anderson/1125245793?ean=2940153544717

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/holiday-magic-2

Visit my website: www.caramarsi.com for more on all my books.

Escape Into Romance & Danger

Did you ever have one of those days? Or a lot of those days? Days when you thought your head would explode at the monotony of your life? You rise at the same time each day, go through the same morning ritual, then it’s onto your job. Maybe you’re a corporate drone and cubicle dweller as I was. Mind-numbing. Boring.

Many a morning as I drove to work, I’d fantasize about something extraordinary happening to relieve the boredom. I don’t mean any earth-shattering event, or anyone’s getting hurt. Just something different. Like I’d come upon a bank robbery in progress and be taken hostage by one of the robbers. Oh, wait, I could get hurt. I didn’t want to escape my cubicle-dwelling world that badly. Maybe the robber is really a sexy undercover FBI agent. That led to other kinds of fantasies I won’t go into. But you get my drift.

Escape, romance, danger. Don’t we all need a little of that in our lives? My life isn’t altogether boring, and of course, I’ll take mundane over dangerous. But isn’t it fun to escape once in a while?

That’s where reading comes in. It gives me the escape I crave. As a child, I devoured everything I could find to read – cereal boxes, billboards, clothes tags. It didn’t matter. If it had words on it, I was hooked. Reading opened a whole new world to me and allowed my imagination to soar.

Within the pages of a book, we can be the FBI heroine fighting a deep secret from her past while trying to bring the bad guys to justice. Or we can be the ordinary woman thrust into extraordinary circumstances, caught up in international intrigue and murder. Or we can go back in history and be a young, unmarried daughter of a duke who wants freedom from the constraints of the rigid mores of her class.

And then there are time travels. I love them. Don’t you? I love fantasizing about going back to a time before modern conveniences and learning to deal with a more primitive way of living. I’d probably fall apart if I time-traveled, but the heroes and heroines in the time-travel romances I read always cope with their new environment. And they find love along the way. Pure escapism.

 

Paranormal books and movies offer another hot escape. There are the Twilight movies and books, Harry Potter, the vampire shows on TV, and the very popular zombie apocalypse shows. Some pop culture experts say the uncertainty in the modern world makes people gravitate toward the supernatural. Maybe they’re right. Or maybe the paranormal taps into that dark part of us that civilization can’t completely suppress. I enjoy reading paranormal romances. I love witch stories and shifter stories and fallen angel stories. Vampire stories—not so much. I’m afraid of vamps and believe they exist.

Regardless of what sub-genre I read, a good love story is central. I crave happy endings as much as I hanker for escapism. If, in addition to the romance, the book also has twists and turns, a mystery, maybe a murder or two, and a ghost, werewolf, or witch, that’s even better.

Do you sigh when reading a hot romance and imagine yourself in the arms of that handsome rake of a duke, that sexy tortured werewolf, that pirate who wants to plunder your charms? Then you know what I mean.

Do you ever fantasize about escaping your routine world? And when you do, do you pick up a book and allow it to fly you to exotic places? I hope you do.

If I feel like going to Regency England today, I’ll read that book about the duke’s restless daughter. Tomorrow I might want to sigh over a sexy werewolf. And after that, I may just meet that hunky FBI agent who’s working undercover and takes me hostage.

What about you? What are you reading?

To help you escape into danger and other worlds, two of my books are on sale now for only 99 cents, for a very limited time.

Murder, Mi Amore, multi-award winning romantic suspense.

 Italy. Danger. Desire.

Murder, jewel thieves and terrorists intrude on an American woman's Roman holiday; can she trust the sexy, mysterious Italian man who comes to her aid? 

Lexie Cortese is in Rome to forget. The last thing she expects is to meet a sexy Interpol agent who suspects her of being part of a terrorist plot involving a stolen diamond. Suddenly thrust into a world of murders, muggings, and kidnappings, Lexie doesn’t know what to think—or who to believe. 

Dominic Brioni’s assignment is simple. Befriend the American and bring her to justice. Only Lexie seems the most unlikely terrorist Dominic has ever met. Sweet, determined, and direct, she faces life with courage and fire, a fire that sparks his protective instincts and a longing for something more—something he allowed himself to hope for only once before. 

But that woman betrayed him, and his boss isn’t about to let him forget it. With his career on the line and Lexie in danger, will Dominic learn to trust his heart before they both get killed? 

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

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/murder-mi-amore-cara-marsi/1103364955?ean=2940016033266

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/murder-mi-amore/id599801756?mt=11

Cursed Mates, dark shifter romance.

Scorching. Suspense. Sexy.

"What if you were honor bound to kill the man you love?" 

Nick Radford is a reluctant werewolf who’s been fighting the Beast within for nearly 500 years. He’s never killed a human, but the Beast is gaining strength and Nick may not be able to ward off his inner demon much longer.

 
Kyla Yaeger is an elite were-hunter with a scarred past. Her life’s mission is to slay the werewolves that slaughtered her parents. Her quest has brought her to Maine, where she’s been summoned to destroy the werewolf terrorizing the quaint little village of Heavensent. The last thing she needs is to get distracted by her mysterious—not to mention hunky—new neighbor, Nick Radford.

By the time Kyla learns Nick is her target, she’s already fallen for him, making her task of killing him that much harder. She is torn between her love for him and her duty to kill her sworn enemy. Nick fights his forbidden love for Kyla, knowing she is duty-bound to kill him. Kyla and Nick must join forces to fight an even bigger threat—one that will destroy all humanity. Only by their combined powers, can they destroy the evil and bring an end to a centuries old curse.

http://www.amazon.com/Cursed-Mates-Cara-Marsi-ebook/dp/B00JK5AHLS/?tag=carmaraut-20

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cursed-mates-cara-marsi/1104197347

 https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/cursed-mates/id858952514

http://www.caramarsi.com

https://www.facebook.com/authorcaramarsi

http://www.twitter.com/caramarsi

http://www.pinterest.com/caramarsi

https://www.amazon.com/author/caramarsi

           

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

 

           

Dear Diary. Or Not.

The August theme is “Dear Diary.” I kept a diary for all of two minutes when I was a young teen. My life wasn’t interesting enough to chronicle. However, I found another outlet for my teen angst—poetry.

I wrote my first poem after a family trip out West when I was thirteen. It wasn’t my first trip there. I’d lived in northern Nevada for three months when I was an infant. My father was stationed at the Fallon, Nevada, Naval Air Station during WW2. Other than that, I’d spent my whole life on the East Coast. I fell in love with the West, especially the Southwest desert, on that trip when I was thirteen. This love has lasted all these years since. My first poem was titled, “I Came, I Saw, I Left My Heart in the Western Desertland.” I can hear you sniggering now. What can I say? I was very young. I like to think my poems got better.

I wrote close to twenty poems from my teens until my early twenties. All were angst-ridden. I poured my heart out in those poems. Some of the last ones I wrote were when I was twenty-one. I went to the Jersey Shore with friends one weekend. While dancing in one of the clubs, a group of guys openly mocked my dancing talents, or lack thereof. I have no sense of rhythm and have never been able to dance, but I tried. After being mocked, I stopped dancing altogether, but I wrote a poem about my feelings. I stopped writing poetry as my life got busier and happier. It’s painful for me now to read those poems of an unhappy young woman still trying to find her way in the world.

At the Ancient Roman Forum

The closest I’ve come to keeping a diary was keeping travel journals. I’m passionate about travel but haven’t done nearly as much as I’d like. I kept my first journal on a trip to the Southwest in 1998 with my husband and son. I kept journals for other big trips, including a multi-national family reunion in Australia in 2002. It sounds ambitious to keep a travel journal, but I wrote most of them when the trips were over and I had to rely on my memory. When we travel, we’re too busy doing things for me to find the time to journal. One diary that was especially useful was the one I kept from our Italy trip in 2006. Soon after, I wrote Murder, Mi Amore, a romantic suspense set in Italy. I consulted my travel diary to make the setting as real as possible. Every place mentioned in that book is one we visited, and every meal is one we ate while in Italy. I’ve since written a novella set in Italy, on Capri, again using my diary, and I’m planning a book set in Ravello, another place we visited on that trip.

With Australian and Italian cousins, Melbourne, Australia, 2002

One thing my travel journals have in common is they each start with me chronicling our lateness in leaving for the airport. Remember the airport scene in the first Home Alone? The family running through the airport? That’s my family. On our first trip to Vegas in 2000, we were running very, very late. Philadelphia International Airport is no more than thirty minutes from us. On this day, our lateness was exacerbated by the heavy traffic. When we finally got to the airport and had to show ID, my husband discovered, in all the stress, he’d left his wallet with his ID’s at home. We barely had time to make the plane, let alone go back for his wallet. This was before 9/11. The airline person checking us in let my husband board without ID since my son and I had our ID’s. Can you imagine that happening now? Yes, all this is documented in my journal for that trip.

Cousins from three continents enjoying lunch in Abruzzo, Italy 

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

 

Another theme this month is the gem Peridot. It’s not my birthstone, but I love Peridot because I love green. I have a Peridot ring, a necklace with Peridot nuggets, and two pairs of Peridot earrings. And lots of green clothes to wear with my Peridot.

Sadly, summer is almost over. It’s my favorite time of year. To help you hang on a little longer, I have a deal for you. The boxed set Sizzling Summer, a collection of three full-length novels from authors Lynn Reynolds, Ann Whitaker, and yours truly, is on sale for only 99 cents at Amazon and BN. The price goes up when the leaves begin to turn.

How hot do you like your romance? 

A special three-book set 
Lynn Reynolds 
Ann Whitaker 
Cara Marsi 

Love Capri Style by Lynn Reynolds 
A sexy, sun-drenched romance set on the island of Capri. Can inept journalist Amanda Jackson get an exclusive on playboy Eric Greyford, or will she wind up as just another item on the gossip pages of his newspaper? 

Dog Nanny by Ann Whitaker 
A romantic comedy set in the heart of Texas 
When vet tech Julie Shields agrees to train two delinquent poodles to save them from becoming doggies of divorce, she doesn't count on having to harness her desire for hunky pilot Nick Worthington. 

A Catered Romance by Cara Marsi 
There's more than business brewing between two old high school flames. 
Stubbornly self-reliant Mary Beth Kendrick needs financial backing to keep her catering business cooking. A looming corporate buyout forces her to accept help from Tom Sackett, the man who broke her heart and left her with no appetite for love. 

http://www.amazon.com/Sizzling-Summer/dp/B00JZCE1SG/?tag=carmaraut-20

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sizzling-summer-lynn-reynolds/1119638711?ean=2940149588060

Learn about all my books and read excerpts at www.caramarsi.com