The Mystery in Banbrae Wood

The sixth Mick Malone Mystery, The Mystery in Banbrae Wood, is now live on Amazon.

When I lived in the U.K. there was a wood not far from my house, The Savernake Forest. It is famous as the only ancient forest in Britain that is still under private ownership. The Marquess of Ailesbury, the current land owner, graciously opens the forest to the public nearly every day of the year. I used to walk in that forest often and did a lot of my best thinking there. It is both beautiful and haunting, and I spent many solitary hours there dreaming of what it must have been like a thousand years ago. It was some of those memories that were the inspiration for Banbrae Wood.

The second inspiration for this book was my husband's insistence that the powers that be have invented a weather machine which is controlling the world's weather. It's a fun thing we joke and speculate about. But when I started doing research, the technology is not that far away. These are the kinds of things that make me love fiction. I recently took an online class from the remarkable James Patterson. I loved listening to his advice and his stories. One thing he said that I will always remember  (and I'm paraphrasing, here)  is that he does not write reality. He writes about things that are possible and tries to make them entertaining. So whether you believe that a weather machine will ever be on the horizon or not, in this book you will meet Wanda, my version of what a weather machine might be like.

Soon I will be starting my next Chloe James Mystery. The first book in that series was published last Spring. How the Light Bends was a very fun book to write. Set on the beautiful Monterey peninsula, Tom and I spent many wonderful hours there, golfing, exploring and eating. The James' sisters will be back with another adventure this winter.

As always, thank you all for your comments and please keep them coming!

The Mystery of the Siren Seeds Live in Audio Version

The audio version of the second Mick Malone Mystery, The Secret of the Siren Seeds, is live on audible.com. Again, I have had the pleasure to work with Joshua Story, who has done a fantastic job narrating the story. To celebrate, I am giving away fifteen copies for free!! To receive your free copy, please send your email address to salleepeterson@gmail.com and put "Free Audio" in the subject. I will send you the instructions and the free download code.

These codes work on Audible.com only. If you're not a member of Audible.com and you like listening to audio books (I love to listen to them while I exercise or when driving) I highly recommend them. In addition to your monthly credit, they have daily deals and regular sales where you can pick up audio books at a real bargain.

If you do take advantage of either the free offer above, or just decide to visit the audible site and join, I'd love to hear what you think.

http://www.audible.com/search/ref=a_hp_tseft?advsearchKeywords=sallee+peterson&filterby=field-keywords&x=11&y=10

Two Book Launches on the Horizon

I have two book launches on the horizon. In July, I will be publishing the audio version of my second Mick Malone Mystery, The Mystery of the Siren Seeds. The inspiration for this book was actually a non-fiction book I read, The Omnivore's Dilemma. This excellent book, and I do recommend that everyone read it, is an eye-opening dive into just how "dirty" our food supply really is. My family teases me that I have met the enemy and it is corn. Well, no so horribly far from the truth. Add to that, the book is also extremely interesting and written in a way that keeps you turning the pages. Quite a tribute for a non-fiction book.

After I read The Omnivore's Dilemma, I wanted to write a mystery about a murder that was caught up in the passion of sustainable farming. Sound like an oxymoron? Trust me, it won't after you read the book. There is a lot of money at stake in companies like Monsanto, who in addition to being a chemical company is also the world's largest producer of corn seed. Figure out that one!

But The Mystery of the Siren Seeds is a cozy mystery and Mick Malone must figure out who wants to kill the brave men and women that are forming sustainable farming coalitions around the world in an effort to bring clean and safe food to our markets.

And the story is read by Joshua Story, a young actor that does a brilliant job of being able to switch between American and Scottish accents and bring them both to life. Joshua also re-recorded my first audio book, The Mystery of Glengarron. He is fun to listen to and really brings my story to life.  I expect the audio book to be released around the middle of July.

The second release on the horizon is the sixth Mick Malone Mystery, The Mystery in Banbrae Wood.  Coming in August, the next book in the Mick Malone series uncovers the murder of a university professor and features a weather machine named Wanda that just might bring summer to Scotland year 'round. Sound impossible? It just might be technology that is closer than you think!!!

Stay tuned for more announcements as the time draws near!

Thank You for the Gift, Gracie

Even before I became a writer, I appreciated customer feedback. For a large part of my career, I was responsible for customer and technical support for the high-tech companies that I worked for. One of my golden rules was that I made myself available to talk to the customers. If they called and had a complaint, I would take the call as my top priority. If they left a message, I always called them back. Customer feedback is not just important. I always considered it a gift. It is a gift that someone cared enough about a product or an experience to take their own valuable time and write a letter or make a phone call to tell us what they thought of us. Even if it was a complaint, it was still a gift.

Gracie, a person I do not personally know, bought my latest book.  She read my book and for that I am very grateful. But even better, Gracie sent me a gift as well. She rated my book and she wrote feedback. What Gracie wrote was both embarrassing and inspiring. She liked the plot and the characters. What she didn't like was the number of mistakes in the book. I honestly thought she might be exaggerating, that while I had no doubt there were a few errors, I didn't actually think there could be so many as to be distracting. So I started going through the text with a fine tooth comb.

Believe me, editing is not any writer's favorite thing. And when you've written the book, you read it very fast, because you know what happens next. It's for that reason that many writers hire professional editors. But that is very expensive. So I took my red pen and I printed a copy of the text and I went to work.

Well, Gracie, you were not exaggerating and I am very embarrassed. But your comments also inspired me to start going through all my books. The beauty of print on demand and e-books, is that you can update and fix text fairly quickly. So, I have completed the review of How the Light Bends and resubmitted the new, updated text. It is live on Kindle today and will be live for paperback tomorrow. I have also completed the updating of The Mystery of Glengarron and The Mystery of the Siren Seeds and the new text for those two books is also available in Kindle and paperback. And I'm working hard to finish re-editing the other four Mick Malone Mysteries in the next four weeks.

So, Gracie, thank you. You were right. Far too many mistakes really does make for a rather disruptive read. I appreciate your honesty and feedback more than you will ever know. And I will certainly take far more care with my new books going forward!

Cheers!

Sew, Sallee: From Mending and Hemming to Actually Making Things

This is my new friend: A Singer 9960 Electronic Sewing Machine.

During one of our semi-annual clean-ups, my husband threw out an ancient Brother sewing machine that I had for thirty years. (And I think I bought it used.) The old machine was able to do a couple of different straight and zigzag stitches and buttonholes, if I remember correctly, although I never tried the buttonhole part. I had used it to mend seams and hem pants and that's about it. But still, I wasn't too happy when I'd learned he'd tossed the thing. Actually, he put it out on our curb with a "free" sign, something he does frequently, so hopefully it went to a good home. But what was I going to do if I needed to mend something?
Merry Christmas! He bought me this new, slick, beautiful machine that does absolutely everything! It has 116 different stitches, including 30 some utility stitches and 80 plus decorative stitches. Oh, it does embroider, but only free-hand, darn! Speaking of darning? Yes, it does that too! But the question is, what is a girl who only mends and hems going to do with a machine that was put on this earth to make beautiful things?
Enter Craftsy.com. I happened on this website while I was looking for sewing lessons. I thought there might be some place local that I could go and actually learn how to sew, or re-learn, rather. I did sew when I was a teenager. But that was a long, long.....well, you know. Guess what? Finding sewing lessons in a classroom with a live teacher is not so easy. There are a lot of teachers that will do on-line classes. But the great thing about Craftsy is that once you buy a class, you have access to it forever. You can keep going back again and again, and believe me, I do. And they have everything from beginner to advanced classes. The first class I took was on making a tote bag. A simple bag to take shopping. Well, simple, yes. But lined, and so I learned how to line a bag. That was not a little deal for me.

The other great thing about Craftsy is that they have kits that you can buy that include patterns and the fabric. The two dresses below were from one of those kits. The shorter, white one, is the fabric that came with the kit. The red and white striped dress was fabric I bought at Joann's and used the same pattern, but with longer hem and sleaves. I have since taken a total of nine classes, from a tutorial on different kinds of fabric to how to make bras. I'll do another post on that one. It was pretty interesting.

Anyway, I am going crazy with my new machine and really enjoying the results. And learning a lot. Usually, from my mistakes. And I am making my share of them, so my seam ripper is becoming my second best friend. But I figure it's like hitting the ball into the sand trap. The more times I have to hit out of the sand, the better at getting out I get. And the harder I try not to get into trouble in the first place.
The other thing I was pretty surprised about is that there are precious few brick and mortar stores left that sell sewing fabric and notions. I live close to a Joann's which is about the best one around here. But I am finding a lot of great sources online. I'll share those links in my future posts as well.

Enter: Peanut Brittle

How did I do on my 10 day No Sugar Challenge? Truth? Well, about five days into it, I found the peanut brittle. I had bought it over the holidays as a treat. But this Christmas, unlike most others, I was very disciplined about watching what I was eating. The good news about that? I didn't gain any weight over Christmas. The bad thing was I kept the unopened box of peanut brittle and one day I just happened to find it in the cupboard. Perhaps I should have tossed it then. Or never bought it in the first place. But it served a good lesson. I didn't toss it, I opened it. I ate four or five (ten?) pieces before I even came up for air and then I came to my senses. I stopped. About an hour later, I felt bad. Really bad. I don't think I got any rush from eating it, but I certainly crashed an hour later. Beside that one incident and (oh by the way) wine a couple of times like I already confessed, I did well. No sugar. It wasn't easy. But overall, I'd give myself a B- for the ten day challenge. Maybe I'm too easy on my grading system? Perhaps. But I'm not stopping at 10 days. I am going another 10. And this time my goal isn't to be perfect, but as close as I can be. After a lifetime of failed dieting, I'm going to try a new approach. At 63, there may be a lot of things about aging that are a pain, literally. But here's one that is very refreshing and almost comforting. It isn't about wearing a size 6 anymore. Its about health! So, my new approach is not that I'll lose weight to get healthy, but rather that I'll get healthy, and then, perhaps my body will return me to a healthier weight. And a new path, charted by doctors like Dr. Robert Lustig of UCSF Medical Center, who have fingered sugar as the poison and, as he points out, a whole host of players at the table of blame:

1.The Health Insurance Industry, who will hound you to lose weight, but not pay for the process, because they point the finger at the individual.
2.The Obesity Profiteers (like Weight Watchers), who make $117B a year off of fat people. They do want some of us to be successful to hold our pictures up to the rest of us pathetic souls. But they really don't want to solve the problem for good.
3. The Commercial Food Industry, who took all the fat out of our food and pumped it full of salt and sugar to make up for it. Now HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) is in almost everything because it's a cheap way to get processed food to taste good. And sodium is pumped up in soda (and then more sugar added to mask the salt) to make you thirsty so you have to supersize your drink.
4. The Government, who told the food industry to take the fat out to begin with and continue to blame the individual...oh, and subsidize the corn growers so they can continue to pump more sugar into the food supply.
5. The Medical Community, who keeps telling us to eat broccoli, beans and wild salmon, and exercise until we drop (but in the dark, please, or we might get skin cancer). Red wine is good for you....oh, no, bad....oh, no good, really. But all things in moderation. Reminds me of the French who believe all things in moderation, especially moderation!
6. And us, the individuals, who either give up all together and become fat activists "Big is Beautiful" or just keep beating our heads against the wall, feeling worse about ourselves because we are such failures. Oh, and there's one other outcome for the individual, the saddest of all: those that go to Biggest Loser type boot camps where screaming meanies will publicly humiliate them while networks rack up the big bucks.

This is insanity. The problem according to Dr. Lustig is not the obesity. Twenty percent of obese people are perfectly healthy. On the other hand, an estimated 40% of normal weighted people are sick. The illness is called Metabolic Syndrome. Metabolic Syndrome is caused by our diet (which also happens to make many of us fat). And for that, there is a path to health. According to Dr. Lustig, the path is cutting the sugar and exercising, not because exercising will help us burn calories but because it will help balance our hormones. I already exercise. I will keep it up. And I will continue to cut the sugar as I continue to research this huge national (and personal) problem and try a new approach to turning it around.

Challenge; Day Three

How's the sugar challenge, you ask? We had friends over for dinner last night. The menu included steak, potatoes, grilled broccoli with mushrooms and salad. I skipped the potatoes, since I am already trying to cut down on carbohydrates in general. And since I love to cook and can control the menu, steak, broccoli, mushrooms and salad were all wonderful and very satisfying. I even put a little butter on my broccoli which I haven't done in twenty years, at least. My husband, however, stopped at Marie Callender's and bought a cherry pie (my favorite) and vanilla ice cream (my other favorite). Honestly, it wasn't that bad saying "no" to the dessert. But I'm only three days into it and so still very motivated.

In the last post, I recommended two books. Dr. Lustig is also featured in a UCSF TV series called: The Skinny on Obesity.  This is a seven part series, but the episodes are generally under 15 minutes each. Really, you can find a few minutes here and there to watch this. This is not just important if you are overweight. This is not an epidemic, but a pandemic, affecting all of the developed world and mostly our most precious asset, our children. I know I sound like I'm on a soapbox....well, maybe I am. And if you are not overweight, consider TOFI: Thin on the Outside; Fat on the Inside. According to the medical experts that are in the forefront of the fight on obesity, 40% of all normal weight people are getting fat on the inside. Forty percent and on the increase!!!

So was I completely successful? Well, that's debatable. I did have a couple of glasses of wine. So I looked this up. During fermentation, the sugar in wine is broken down into alcohol and yeast. The residual sugar in a glass of dry red wine is about 1 gram. Spirits is much less. So I guess martinis are in order......do I go too far? FYI, beer has no sucrose in it at all. The sugar in beer is maltose, which, apparently we metabolize just fine. Understanding how we metabolize sugars was also an eye opener, and helps explain why sugar really is addictive. According to some doctors, more addictive than cocaine or heroine. More on how we metabolize sugar in my next post.

And as for the wine? Well, I'm taking it one day at a time. I never claimed to be perfect!!

The Challenge

What a difference three months can make. In October of 2014 there was a lot of hoopla surrounding an initiative on the November ballot concerning a tax on sugared beverages in Berkeley. I, for one, thought this a ridiculous idea. But perhaps not for the reason one might think. It's not that I don't think sugared drinks are harmful, but rather, because I thought why stop at drinks? Why stop at sugared and not include those sweetened with artificial sweeteners? And, to be honest, there is always a part of me that gets a bit concerned when we try to legislate healthy behavior. But more on that later.

In September, I read a very fascinating book entitled The Big Fat Surprise. Written by Nina Teicholz, a journalist, I found it fascinating and it simply rang true for me. She pointed to a lot of research that suggests that it was actually the government's push for a low-fat diet that was actually the catalyst for the obesity epidemic we face today. Her point was that as the food companies reduced the fat from our foods, they added sugar to make the processed food palatable. Because Ms. Teicholz is not a doctor or trained nutritionist, she came under some degree of criticism. So I kept digging.

Enter Dr. Robert Lustig, Chief Endocrinologist at UCSF Medical Center. Dr. Lustig, in his book Fat Chance, echos much of what Teicholz claims. Sugar is the real culprit. In his book, as well as several YouTube videos, and even a full length documentary entitled, Fed Up, Dr. Lustig explains the science behind the claim and why sugar is really poison to our bodies and is making Americans not only obese, but very sick.

Fed UP

Google his name. Follow the links. There are several really good summaries in video form if you don't want to read the books. But in my opinion, these two books by Lustig and Teicholz should be mandatory reading for every parent, school administrator, doctor and every person that has ever struggled to diet and exercise with minimal to mediocre results. You will now understand, scientifically, what you have known in your heart for a long time. You do not eat more than your thin friends. You are not a gluttonous sloth whose terrible habits have made you fat. You have been filling yourself with poison that has made you fat.

I am all for being responsible for myself and the outcomes in my own life. Sometimes, you need to be educated to make that possible. And the education that the government and the USDA and FDA have been feeding us has been ALL WRONG!! Now, finally, I think there is a path forward.

I am taking the no-sugar challenge and cutting out all sugar for 10 days....hopefully more, but let's start with 10 and go from there. In the meantime, check out the links in this post. I urge you.

BTW, twenty years ago the public went on a campaign to get the government to regulate tobacco. Many of us, myself included (and yes, I was a smoker), were incensed that the government was going to try to regulate what was good for us.  Guess what? I finally caved and quit smoking along with hundreds of thousands of others world-wide. I am totally grateful and I am a hell of a lot healthier because of it.

Now let's tackle obesity.