Flowers and Peace
I am continuing my daily quest to find beauty in nature and in my garden.
Wishing you a peaceful week.
Cookbooks And Story Ideas
It was the cookbooks.
My late mother’s cookbooks, to be precise. They launched my latest novel, No Place I’d Rather Be.
There they were, as always, stacked on my kitchen counter beneath her flowered ceramic teapot. Cookbooks with titles like Savor The Flavor of Oregon. The Book of Salads. Better Homes And Gardens New Cook Book.
They had recipes for strawberry jam, avocado and tomato salad, meringue cake, and lemon souffle.
Her personal recipes, handwritten, were in a wooden green box with apples next to the cookbooks. Irish Soda Bread. French Chicken Fettucine. Enchilada Pie. Joyce’s Chicken.
I sat and I stared and I sat and I stared and there it was: An idea for a story that eventually became part of No Place I’d Rather Be.
I would write about a cookbook that was handed down through the generations, from mother to daughter to granddaughter to great-granddaughter and on and on.
I would start this family out in Odessa, in 1904, in the Russian Empire. The cookbook would be carried out as they escaped the flames of the pogroms and fled to Germany. The next generation would take it with them as they ran from the Nazis and onto the Kindertransport. It would survive the near-annihilation of London during the Blitz, and it would end up hidden in a box, in an attic, in Montana.
The cookbook would show each woman’s life, her history. There would be recipes and drawings of families and farms, gardens and red geraniums. Blood and tea stains would spill across the ingredients. Gold lockets, red ribbons, and old photographs would be tucked between the pages.
I had a vision of a family in my head and wrote the vision, my mother’s cookbooks in my kitchen keeping me centered on the plot.
I will give my mother’s cookbooks to my kids. I will write on the inside cover that they belonged to Bette Jean, and I will write her birthdate and death date. I’ll write my name and birthdate. I hope my kids will give them to my grandkids and that they will give them to their children.
As we all know, cookbooks and recipes, from our mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers, aren’t all about the ingredients.
It’s about the love. All that love, handed down with hugs from one generation to the next, right beside the recipe for Irish Soda Bread.
Come And Join Readers Coffeehouse!
We’re hosting New York Times best selling author Eloisa James on Readers Coffeehouse today.
She was our author of the month and she’s giving away eight books! Yes, eight!
Readers Coffeehouse is a place for readers to talk about books (positive talk only, we don’t allow negative comments about books or authors, there is too much stress in the world already) meet authors, recommend books, find recommendations, etc.
My fellow Readers Coffeehouse founding members? Authors Catherine Ryan Hyde, Kimberly Belle, Steena Holmes, Laura Drake, Jo-Ann Mapson, and Barbara Claypole White.
Come and join us!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ReadersCoffeehouse/
A Coma. A Secret. A Husband
My new book. Out October 29th.
Natalie Shelton’s husband has out run his past for a long time.
It’s finally caught up with him.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Man-She-Married-Cathy-Lamb-ebook/dp/B079KTVHGD/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524552497&sr=1-1&keywords=the+man+she+married+cathy+lamb
What A Writer Does With Dirt
…this is what a writer does when she cannot think of a single, blasted idea to write about for her next book to save her own silly life and she orders eight cubic yards of dirt and stone to stack in her garden and as she hauls and lifts she mutters to herself that she should have grown up to be a witch or a UFO chaser or perhaps a cat walker or a circus clown because she is clearly more fit for those jobs than she is for writing and then she sits down after hauling all that garden dirt and writes a post with no grammar and this just proves what a nut-case odd duck she is and perhaps it is time to move to that remote cabin in the woods and talk and sing only to deer or friendly raccoon because an idea for her next story just won’t come…
Breast Power Psychic Night And A Pink House
My weekly check to see which of my books are on sale… Julia’s Chocolates ($7.99 on kindle right now) was my first book. If this one didn’t sell, after many rejections, I was going back to teaching school.
This book is for people who would be comfortable reading a scene titled, “Breast Power Psychic Night,” and, “Your Hormones And You: Taking Cover, Taking Charge Psychic Night.”
It’s for people who would like a house in the country painted pink with a black door to ward off seedy men and giant ceramic pigs in the front named for men the owner doesn’t like.
It’s for people who like reading about women whose lives are falling apart, but who still dance with love and hope in their hearts.
I sure as heck am glad it sold. I liked teaching, but it was exhausting.
Happy day to all.
Chocolate Chip Cookies And Stampeding Elephants
I shouldn’t have made these chocolate chip cookies at ten tonight.
I know I don’t NEED these cookies, but I have little personal control when it comes to overwhelming chocolate chip cookie cravings.
What finally made me grab the vanilla, sugar and flour you ask? What made me give in? A very scientific, fact-based, reasonable and rational prediction. Here it is:
I could get run over tomorrow in my suburban neighborhood by stampeding elephants. On my way up the golden staircase all I would think is, “Damn. I wish I’d baked those chocolate chip cookies.”
See what I mean? Pure logic. So I baked and Innocent Husband and I ate these right up. And we liked ’em.
Wishing you a delicious dessert because you never know when you’ll be run over by stampeding elephants in front of your home.
Simple. Beautiful. Nature.
I am continuing to look for beautifully simple or simply beautiful gifts in nature.
This one is from my garden, too.
Wishing you all a peaceful day.
Huge Sale. Almost All My Books Are Cheap At The Moment
Okay. The Book Fairy is obviously in action.
A BUNCH of my books are on sale, on kindle, on Amazon.
I’ve never seen this many on sale at once, so the magic stardust has been sprinkled.
They are ALL less than eight bucks.
Yes, they all cost less than two mochas.
Take a look: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=cathy+lamb
Beautifully Simple Or Simply Beautiful
I have decided that there is enough negative in the world and I need to look for one thing a day that is simply beautiful or beautifully simple to push my brain in a different direction.
Found these in my own garden…
