The second Lonnie Squires mystery, TOASTED, available September 1!

Cousin Donna Hancock’s Loaves and Fishes Culinary Ministries evangelical cooking school road show–think about it.  Lonnie Squires has to.

Trying to redeem her good name in the little town of Middelburg, Lonnie volunteers as additional security for Cousin Donna’s traveling program.  Her ultimate goal is supporting her own sanity with her beloved soccer.  But she can’t play by herself and no one will play with her if people are trash talking behind her back.  A good deed might just restore social harmony.

It’s a good plan, until someone partakes of Cousin Donna’s Tasty Toast Points with Sunny Spirit Salmon Spread and ends up decidedly deceased.  People in high places decide it’s Lonnie’s job to prove that the toast wasn’t tainted.

Cousin Donna and her entourage are hiding secrets, but is one of them the secret recipe for murder?  Is Lonnie right to be suspicious of every morsel she eats, wondering if it will be her personal last supper?

Sleuth Lonnie Squires once again discovers that doing the right thing can go very wrong.  This the second title in Josie Gordon’s Lambda Literary Award-winning mystery series combines culinary mayhem with big politics in a small town.

Whoo hoo!  It is exciting to hold a new book in your hands, though I have to confess I’m always a little mystified:  “did I really write that???”  Especially when I’m so embroiled in the next book.

You can order your copy now  from  your local independent bookstore.  Be sure to tell them this is the second in a series and that the first, WHACKED, won a Lambda Literary Award for best Lesbian mystery of 2008.

Can wait to get a taste of the new story?  Read more about it, including the first two chapters to whet your appetite.

Finally getting settled back in at home.  Though “settled” is relative, I guess, since there are still half-filled suitcases in the house and laundry to be done and mail to be sorted . . . and on and on.

I’ve been greeted with such wonderful emails from so many friends and readers since the award and I’m so incredibly grateful for everyone’s support.  These celebrations–starting with the one Bella had the night of the awards and still going on with contacts from friends I haven’t talked to in a very LOOOOOOONG time–have been as fabulous as the award itself!

The luggage is all packed and sitting in the hallway, causing earth-shattering consternation to the household pets.  One of the cats even stole my wallet this morning, but I found it before he dispersed the credit cards all over the back porch.  They love their sitter, but the luggage still freaks them out.

Flying freaks me out, but I’m promising myself not to expend the energy tomorrow when I leave the house at 3 a.m. (!) to get to the airport on time.  I’ll need all my focus just to get in the right lines and not wind up in Maui.  Which wouldn’t be bad, but it isn’t where the award shindig is happening.

Last night I put on my ceremony clothes and made sure I would be comfortable and functional.  Why in God’s name are women’s dress clothes never both?  The clutch I borrowed will barely serve–it’ll hold a lip gloss (my fancy make-up for the evening) and maybe a phone, but not a phone and camera.  And of course, the clothes have no pockets.  I won’t get started on my fashion rant here.  It’s only one evening.  I’ll survive.  In fact, I’ll enjoy it–I’m really looking forward to the whole to-do.  What an experience it will all be!  Cocktails at 6, awards at 7, after party at 9:30.   More social life than I usually have in a month.

And I’m spending an extra two days in New York City, which I’m really looking forward to.  I hope to walk a lot, shop, eat cheap city food, and visit some Episcopal sights (always researching for Lonnie’s future adventures!).

I’ll update from there if I can, otherwise, check back in a few days!

I like to read more than one book at a time.  Unless it’s fiction.  I can only read one novel at a time, but I can have several nonfiction books, art books, books on creativity going at once.  They all mix in my head in terrific ways.  And for the last several weeks, even as I’ve been looking at my other Spring Breezes books on writing, I’ve had the great pleasure of looking at Lynda Barry’s What It Is (Drawn and Quarterly 2008).

“Looking at” describes the experience more than “reading.”  Perhaps “absorbing” is an even better word for my relationship with this book.  It’s almost indescribable.  Barry does with images–collage, painting, lettering–what we normally see people trying to do with words.  She wonders about things like memory and creativity and what images are and where it all comes from within us.  She gives terrific lessons for how to write in more effective and meaningful ways.  And she gives it to you through your right brain.

I felt the book moved through three basic parts:  her musings on the big ideas behind creativity of all kinds, her writing instruction, and a section reproducing some of her notes from her own writing process. 

Some years ago (how many?  I can’t remember!) I had the great experience of taking a one-day workshop with her and it changed my writing forever.  I use a technique or two I learned from her at some point in nearly every workshop I lead.  If you ever have a chance to take a class with her,  do it!  In the meantime, check out this book.

I’m no fashionista.  I thrive in jeans and a corduroy shirt.  So when I find out I have to look really good at a fancy event, I have a little panic.  If it’s late at night, it might turn into a big panic.  I’m already sweating out what I’m going to wear to the Lambda Literary Awards at the end of May.

Well, actually, to be more accurate, I know what I’m going to wear.  I have a great outfit.  I bought new shoes this weekend.  That’s not the trouble.  The trouble is that my fashion-consultant entourage (read:  my mother, my sister, and my ex-model friend) tell me I must carry a purse.  An evening bag.  A clutch.

I believe in pockets.  Hands should be free to function.  A clutch seems like a ridiculous waste of a hand for a whole evening.  “Can’t I get something to sling over my shoulder?” I ask.

They screw up their faces.  “Like what?  A backpack?”

“Well . . . “  I draw the word out.

“NO!”  They are not equivocal on this.

So a clutch it is.  But I won’t spend a lot on it.  I trawled through TJ Maxx this weekend.  My God, purses are funny.  I don’t think I’ve ever really looked at a purse aisle.  The colors!  The shapes!  The prices!  I can’t wait to write a scene about purse-shopping into a novel.

But my sister came through and loaned me four clutches from her extensive collection.  I’m to dress and practice moving around with each and then pick the one that works. 

I’ve got my work cut out for me.  Thank heavens I already have the shoes.