I am so excited to have Pearl R. Meaker here at Mystery Thrillers and Romantic Suspense Reviews with a Spotlight, Guest Post and Giveaway.
Thanks Pearl and Goddess Fish Promotions for allowing me to join The Devil's Flood Blog Tour!
Please take it away, Pearl!
THE DEVIL'S FLOOD
by Pearl R. Meaker
GENRE: Cozy Mystery
BLURB
Can a house vanish without a trace? What is the "super booze" that's available at clandestine drinking parties in Golden County? When mummified bodies show up at an archeological dig and a young man gets shot in a duel at a party, can Emory and Madison find the answers in the midst of a flood year?
Excerpt
“Okay.” Kate said, pulling her phone out of a pocket as Jairus and the crew gathered around me where I stood watching the rescue team go in after my husband. “Here’s a shot of Dr. Crawford.” She held the phone in front of me. “He’s still conscious and managed a little wave, but I’m glad the rescue team is heading in.”
I glanced at the photo. Jebbin lay in a pool of light on what looked like a pile of bedding heaped on a rough wooden floor. His glasses had fallen off. He never looks quite right without them, and
I could tell he was hurting. Probably feeling a bit nauseous as well. In spite of it all he wore a wan grin and had lifted a hand in greeting.
Kate swiped the screen.
In the sharp glare of her phone’s flash a mummified man sat on the floor, his back against a wall. There was a dark stain spilling down his chest from a hole near where his heart would be.
“There’s one part of the company Dr. Crawford mentioned he had.”
She swiped again. “Here’s the other.”
This mummy lay on its back. The flash showed a stain that flowed from his chest and down his side to form a hardened puddle on the floor.
“Which one’s my Grandpa?” Melva gasped.
AUTHOR Bio and Links
Slightly quirky, always creative, Pearl R. Meaker has been an artist, singer and craftsperson her whole life. Although she's always had stories in her head, they didn't come out to play with others until the advent of home computers with their ease of making corrections and moving bits around.
After several years of writing fanfiction in the world of Tolkien's Middle-Earth, she took a couple of writing courses and dove into writing original works of fiction, and The Emory Crawford Mysteries were born.
When not playing with story ideas you can find Pearl playing with yarn either knitting or crocheting, doing other arts and crafts, bird watching and photographing nature, playing bluegrass fiddle (her husband plays banjo) or relaxing with her hubby on the sofa watching mystery shows on Netflix.
Oh - and reading all sorts of books, but especially cozy and other types of mysteries!
The books in The Emory Crawford Mysteries Series are reminiscent of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple mysteries, which is why Pearl has chosen to characterize her stories as "murder genteel."
Links
Website: http://www.pearlrmeaker.com
Blog: https://pearlrmeaker.wordpress.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PearlRMeaker
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PearlRMeaker
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/PearlRMeaker/
Buy Links
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Devils-Flood-Pearl-R-Meaker/dp/1987857577/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1471951201&sr=1-1&keywords=the+devil%27s+flood
B and N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/devils-flood-pearl-meaker/1123854200?ean=9781987857573
Indigo: https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/the-devils-flood/9781987857573-item.html?ikwid=The+Devil%27s+Flood&ikwsec=Books&ikwidx=0
GIVEAWAY
Pearl R. Meaker will award a randomly drawn commenter a $25 Amazon/BN GC.
http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f1968
Guest Post
5 Recipes I Wish I Hadn’t Tried and Other Kitchen Disasters Emory’s cooking and food in general, are an important part of The Emory Crawford Mysteries Series. Sometimes, the dishes in the stories are ones I have made over the years for my family and still make now that it’s just my hubby and me at home. And some of the recipes in the books, I’ll confess, I’ve never made and am hesitant to even try making them – like the Indian dishes that Deepti Chatterjee makes in The Devil’s Flood.
At this point in my journey with Emory and Jebbin, I don’t know about any of Emory’s culinary catastrophes. I’ll have to ask her about them, but for now I invite you to come with me to revisit some of the low spots in my own cooking experience.
1) Instant Vanilla Pudding with Mini Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
This one should have been awesome, but it tasted horrible. I was still a newly wed and thought this would be a great new dessert for my sweets loving man. I had no recipe, I mean really – who needs a recipe for adding chocolate chips to vanilla pudding! And yet, whether it was because it was instant pudding or because it was a generic brand, or that the chips should have been added just before eating, it tasted icky. I’ve never had the courage to try the idea again.
2) Bacon Goulash
I make a dish called Spam Goulash that my mom’s side of the family ate often during WWII. It’s incredibly simple – Spam, elbow macaroni, chopped onions and a couple cans of tomato soup.
Again during our first year of marriage, I thought since I usually fried the chunks of Spam in a little bacon grease, why not just fry some bacon up really crisp and use it instead. It sounded yummy – except the bacon absorbed enough of the tomato soup to end up mushy.
Not nice.
3) This recipe disaster happened later in our marriage when we had two children
who had both been strongly admonished to not complain about the new dish I was trying.
The moussaka was the soggiest, most disgusting thing we’d eaten in ages. I finally asked everyone if it tasted as bad to them as it did to me and they enthusiastically agreed. We went to Burger King for dinner.
4) Within the last couple of years there was this fish dish.
I got the recipe from a healthy diet cookbook and everyone on the company’s online site said it was fantastic. I made it just for myself first, and it didn’t taste all that well, but I’d fiddled a bit with the recipe so it didn’t make as much, since it was only me eating it. So I made it again when my hubby would be home and made it exactly to the recipe.
It was still horrible and got run down the garbage disposal.
5) There’s one kitchen disaster I recall.
I was taking a 8x8 glass baking dish of Chicken Enchiladas out of the oven and had one of those premonition things happen – kind of a déjà vu vision but of something yet to come. Just for a flash of a second before it happened, I knew I was going to drop it all.
And I did.
Gooey, cheesy enchilada and glass were all over the floor just when everything was ready to pop out of the oven to serve. (There was another 13x9 lasagna pan full, so we wouldn’t go hungry). I had a huge mess to clean up – and keep the cats out of.
So there you have it, five of my kitchen failures and messes.
Can you come up with five of your own?
