Game of Thrones
My favorite perk of writing historical fiction is exploring sites for my plots and characters. More often than not, the search leads to serendipitous flights of fancy that are great fun despite having nothing to do with the book. For example, when I started researching Creole Son about painter Edgar Degas’s visit to New Orleans, I needed a scene at a sugar plantation to introduce his inventor cousin Norbert Rillieux whose invention for refining sugar revolutionized the industry. The Millaudon plantation Degas actually visited was no longer standing, but since I lived in the French Quarter there were others nearby to provide the ambience I needed to write the scene. Lots of old homes line the Great River Road paralleling the Mississippi, and after some homework I...
Read MoreCommunion of Sinners
My first mystery includes a long-overdue expose of the historic California Mission system. Armed with extensive research, including eighteenth-century eyewitness accounts, I explode the romantic myths surrounding the so-called benevolent Franciscan padres and their Native American converts, lifting the “Adobe Curtain” to reveal a world of slavery, deprivation and cruelty. Once you read Communion of Sinners, you’ll never see the famous missions in the same light again. The plot unfolds quickly as New Orleans travel writer Sam Crockett drives across country to visit friends in Carmel, California. He stops along the way to explore isolated Soledad Mission and ventures into the campo santo where he stumbles upon what he believes is an ancient skeleton. When local...
Read MoreDivine Decadence
Everyone remembers Sally Bowles referring to her green finger polish as “divine decadence” in the musical Cabaret. It could define a number of other things, mostly illegal I suspect, but none more accurately than the cuisine of New Orleans. As an ex-pat of that fabled city, I often get nostalgic for its spell, and the easiest way to shed my Big Easy blues is food. I often cook Creole dishes, especially for dinner parties. Granted, my guests are sometimes taken aback by the richness of the meals, but, like Paula Deen says, you’ll be fine as long as you don’t eat like this every day. Friends who are watching their weight have learned to either check their diets at the door or let me know when they’re ready to splurge and fall way off the wagon. In my culinary...
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