rabbi.author

WHERE TO FIND ME

JUDGE’S COMMENTS FROM PSWA PRIZE

Michelle Perin, Chairperson of the Public Safety Writers Association Writing Contest, which awarded 1st place to UNLEAVENED DEAD, emailed me her comments. I have her permission to plaster them all over the ether.

“Judge’s Comments:
What a wonderful story. Although I didn’t know many of the words and the customs weaved into this novel, I didn’t feel overwhelmed by learning them. I felt pulled into a whole new world. The plot was interesting and the characters unique. I liked this story from the beginning to the end.”

Thank you, Michelle. Your check is in the mail. (Joke! Really! It’s a joke! I don’t mess with someone who spent Saturday running for 2 miles, doing yoga, then powerwalking for 2 miles; and then on Sunday ran for 4 miles and then went to the gym and did an arm workout. Whatever that means. I don’t think she was referring to lifting spoonsful of ice cream from a gallon container to her mouth.)

I’M GUEST BLOGGING AGAIN

My thanks to Lelia Taylor for inviting me to post a blog on her Buried under Books site. It’s about Amazon rankings and reading book series in order. Trust me: the topics do intersect.

About Those Amazon Rankings

WELCOME TO KRISTEN ELISE

I am pleased today to host new author Kristen Elise, who has given us a description of her book THE VESUVIUS ISOTOPE, along with an excerpt and comments on the excerpt.

Kristen Elise, Ph.D. is a drug discovery biologist and the author of The Vesuvius Isotope. She lives in San Diego, California, with her husband, stepson, and three canine children. Please visit her websites at http://www.kristenelisephd.com and http://www.murderlab.com. The Vesuvius Isotope is available in both print (www.kristenelisephd.com and http://www.amazon.com) and e-book formats (www.amazon.com for Kindle, http://www.barnesandnoble.com for Nook, http://www.kobo.com for Kobo reader.)

Back cover copy for The Vesuvius Isotope:

When her Nobel laureate husband is murdered, biologist Katrina Stone can no longer ignore the secrecy that increasingly pervaded his behavior in recent weeks. Her search for answers leads to a two-thousand-year-old medical mystery and the esoteric life of one of history’s most enigmatic women. Following the trail forged by her late husband, Katrina must separate truth from legend as she chases medicine from ancient Italy and Egypt to a clandestine modern-day war. Her quest will reveal a legacy of greed and murder and resurrect an ancient plague, introducing it into the twenty-first century.

See Naples and Die
Excerpts from The Vesuvius Isotope

There was a horn and a screeching of brakes. I felt the rush of wind upon my face as a metal blur obscured my vision. I leapt back and turned my head just as a speeding car rocketed away, its driver apparently oblivious. I wondered if I had accidentally stepped into the street, but a quick look down confirmed that I was still standing on the sidewalk. And then I was almost run over again.

This time, an entire family on a moped sped by within inches of my face. A man jerked the handlebars left and right as if boxing. Behind him sat a girl of three or four, not bothering to clutch his waist. A woman straddling the rear of the bike squeezed the girl into place while curling a bag of groceries in one arm and an infant in the other like two footballs.

They scooted deftly over the sidewalk to avoid a slow-moving car, not seeming to mind that they had almost collided with a pedestrian instead. The little girl smiled at me as they passed, perfectly comfortable in her element and apparently unaware that this mode of travel could be dangerous or considered the least bit odd by anyone.

After they were gone, I retreated into the shadows of the museum, away from the edge of the sidewalk, and watched the traffic zipping past me. I breathed deeply and, after a few moments, found that I could think again.


I stepped back to the sidewalk’s edge and hailed a taxi.

The taxi raced down a main street, weaving in and out of traffic that had no apparent legal regulation. There were very few road signs, and the traffic signals seemed only to flash yellow. I could not identify a correct side of the road or a speed limit. The sidewalk was open terrain for motor vehicles as well as for pedestrians. I quickly realized that renting a car was not going to be an option.


The streets doubled as supermarket aisles. Like islands in the center of a fast-moving river stood rows of vendors’ tents peddling food, jewelry, handbags, and countless other goods, while the heavy automobile traffic swirled around them. Hurried pedestrians zigzagged back and forth across the traffic like ants, jumping from sidewalk to vendor’s tent and then biblically parting on cue to accommodate a racing Smart car. Or a bus. Or a moped containing four passengers.

Author commentary:

The Vesuvius Isotope visits several colorful locations in the Naples region, and the character of the city plays multiple roles in the novel. The chaos of Naples is legendary and perhaps best summed up in the famous anonymous quote, “See Naples and die.” The expression has a double meaning. The first is that the visitor to Naples can happily cross the last item from his or her bucket list, revel in the city’s beauty, and die happily. The second is a bit more literal.

My first introduction to Naples took place almost exactly as described in the scenes above, complete with entire families on mopeds and supermarket aisles in the center of the street. A few of my unique adventures there, including a brief and mostly-harmless arrest by the transit police, have also made their way in one form or another into the novel.

Despite, or perhaps because of, its chaos, Naples is one of my favorite cities in Italy.

FIRST PLACE AWARD

UNLEAVENED DEAD just won FIRST PLACE in the Public Safety Writers Association Writing Competition for “Fiction Book Published.”

I managed to restrain myself and not tearfully gush, “You like me, you really like me.” But I did comment to the chair of the Awards Committee, “The bribe worked.”

Here I am with the award certificate. With me are Billie Johnson, publisher, and Sunny Frazier, acquisitions editor, of Oak Tree Press.

Billie Johnson and Sunny Frazier of Oak Tree Press

NEW GUEST BLOG

For all of you who are fans of my meringue cookies, you can read about my hints for getting them right every time. Well, usually. My thanks to Lois Winston, author of the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries, for inviting me to post on her blog site: http://www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com/2013/04/cooking-with-cloris-author-ilene.html?m=1

EAT! EAT! DIET! DIET!

No, the subject heading doesn’t mean I’ve found a great way to lose weight while still eating whatever I want. (I wish.) But J. L. Greger has. Her latest book is tantalizingly titled Murder: A New Way to Lose Weight.

Janet is a fellow Oak Tree Press author. I reviewed her previous book Coming Flu on Amazon, and called it “plausible and scary,” and recommended it to “anyone who does want something else to worry about.”She is well qualified to write medical thrillers. As a biologist and professor emerita of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Janet enjoys putting tidbits of science into her mystery/suspense novels. A third novel is on the way to join Coming Flu and Murder: A New Way to Lose Weight.. She lives in the southwest with Bug, her Japanese Chin, who is featured in her novels.

When I first saw the title of her new book, I immediately flashed back to the “Birthday” episode of “AbFab” in which Edina and Patsy are, of course, drunk and stoned, but also locked in the bathroom. They are convinced they won’t be found until they’re dead, by which time Edina will finally be her ideal weight. One of my favorite quotes (which I found due to the magic of Google, not through my non-existent memory): “You know, there must be a moment, about a week after death, when all those women finally achieve the figure they desire.”

Now, here’s J. L. Greger, disCussing her book:

Have you noticed – many Americans have schizophrenic attitudes about food. If you doubt me, flip on your TV and watch the ads. First there’s one for a restaurant with pictures of smiling people and sizzling steaks or pizzas dripping with gooey cheese. Next comes a commercial for a diet regime or exercise product. The presenter is smiling as she effortlessly performs ten abdominal crunches with some sort of rubber band contraption. After a small break for the program, the ads are back. 

Funny? Sad and pathetic? All of these? That’s why I wrote Murder: A New Way to Lose Weight. 

Let me tell you a little about my new medical mystery/suspense novel. 

Dieting is hard; so is fitting into a new job where you aren’t wanted. Linda Almquist is trying to do both as the new interim associate dean of a medical school. Linda steps into a battle among the cliques of the medical school when she checks out allegations against two diet doctors. They may be endangering the lives of their obese patients by recklessly altering their patients’ gut bacteria. She realizes that’s the least of her problems when she discovers one diet doctor – dead. She and the police suspect the other diet doctor of the murder. Maybe they’re wrong. The murders might be related to something in the past – something involving her boss the Dean. While Linda fears for her job, the police fear for her life.

There’s plenty of action in this novel set in a medical school in the southwest: chases down long medical school corridors on weekends, nighttime whispered phone messages, chaos as faculty members and staff have meltdowns, and threatening doodling left almost everywhere. I was afraid Linda was getting so much exercise that she’d lose weight easily as she scrambled from one scene to another. 

So I set many scenes in real restaurants in Albuquerque. Remember Albuquerque is home to a lot of great southwestern cooking – burritos stuffed with everything but the kitchen sink and dripping in cheese, fried chili rellenos smothered in red or green chili sauce, and pork tamales with guacamole and sour cream on the side. And tension builds as the “dieting” Linda peruses menus and reluctantly chooses salads with dressing on the side.

Now I’ll help you lose your appetite for appetite for food and increase your taste for mystery and suspense. Murders in a medical school don’t have to be routine. Consider the medical examiner Omar Ortega’s comments to the investigating police Ben Hitchings:

“Motive?” Hitchings scanned the crowd and motioned Omar back to him. “Omar, do we even have a murder? Looks like natural causes.” 

“Can’t tell,” replied Omar. 

“But no bullet or stab wounds? So natural causes are likely.” 

“You’re in a medical school.” Omar walked closer to Hitchings and spoke more softly. “Everyone in this building probably knows how to kill someone without using a gun or knife. A complete tox screen will take weeks. And this woman was only in her thirties, pretty young to die suddenly.”

Satisfy your taste for mystery and suspense, order Murder: A New Way to Lose Weight on Amazon, visit my website, or blog, and maybe even consider visiting the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque (“the world’s premier balloon event”) on October 5-13. Then you’ll see how hard it is to control your weight in the midst of good southwestern cooking.

BUY Murder: A New Way to Lose Weight on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Murder-New-Way-Lose-Weight/dp/1610090624/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1365534310&sr=1-1&keywords=Murder+A+New+Way+to+Lose+Weight

BUY Coming Flu: http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Flu-J-L-Greger/dp/1610090985/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363872699&sr=1-1&keywords=Coming+Flu

CHECK OUT JANET’S WEBSITE AT www.jlgreger.com

AND FOLLOW HER BLOG AT http://jlgregerblog.blogspot.com

ANOTHER REVIEW AND GUEST BLOG

Thanks to Lorie Lewis Ham for posting this terrific review of UNLEAVENED DEAD and giving me the opportunity to blog about the appeal of mystery novels, both as writer and reader.

http://kingsriverlife.com/04/13/unleavened-dead-by-ilene-schneider/

AND TWO MORE MENTIONS

1. Thanks to feature writer Sally Friedman for another great article, this one about Passover preparations (& my books!) in the Burlington County Times.

http://m.phillyburbs.com/my_town/evesham/preparing-for-the-passover-feast/article_2105f1f0-4e4f-574f-83f5-73425f59e8b4.html

2. Marilyn Meredith (who guest blogged on my site on March 8 as F. M. Meredith) and I are featured on http://venturegalleries.com/blog/author-showcase-its-a-mystery/