Thanksgivings

Tradition is a wonderful thing and there are many food and holiday traditions that I have enjoyed over the years. All of these came after I set up my own household because my mother's idea of Thanksgiving dinner rotated between a buffet at a large hotel and buying the meal lock, stock and barrel from a friend who would put two turkeys in the oven. A cook my mother was not.

Our first married Thanksgivings involved my in-laws and there were wonderful meals. Alas, as many times as I stood next to my mother-in-law and her mother and watched as they prepared the cornbread dressing, I never got the touch. Hence, no dressing at my table. Ever.

I'm not much better with gravy, that being one of the few food items my mother was accomplished at. Again, I could watch and could never manage to do. If there is one taste from my childhood I'd like again, it would be my mother's ham gravy. I could think of it as soup.

So, eventually given my own table, I've set eclectic meals. We've had goose, duck, pork tenderloin, spiral-sliced ham, and (purchased) fried turkey. Various vegetables would have accompanied them and always pecan pie. I conquered homemade rolls a long time ago.

Then I found brining. A brined turkey is a thing of beauty. I've been about those for 10 years or so. This year, we got an electric smoker. Guess what we're having for Thanksgiving?

At their insistence--and because they're a skeptical lot (see the fourth paragraph for why I'm not totally trusted)--I practiced on a turkey last week. Very good. Very, very good.

Now tomorrow's bird needs to come up to snuff or it's back to the spiral-sliced ham for us next year!

AFTER THE THUNDER ROLLS AWAY now available in POD format

I guess the subject line says it all: My women's contemporary fiction novel, After the Thunder Rolls Away, is now available in print-on-demand format through Amazon's CreateSpace program.

I received my proof copies and was very pleased. Although it is certainly more economical to purchase the book in digital format, anyone wanting the "hard" copy can now have it.

Yeah!

Coincidence or sign of good things to come?

I'm in the middle of editing another book. I wrote it several years ago, but it was never published. Technology and my voice change and I'm trying to bring it up to date in both.

It's a romantic suspense, heavy on the romance, light on the suspense, set in West Texas on a ranch. There are two feuding families, the Cummings and the McLeods.

Not the most common of names, I'll grant. I pulled Cummings out of the air and McLeod is a tip of the hat to a friend of ours.

So last week, the exterminator was at the house for the quarterly hunt-and-destroy of all things 6-legged. His surname, which I had never known: Cummings. I'm at a flea market and there was a sign, whether for sale or the name of the booth, I don't know: McLeod Station.

Coincidence? A sign that maybe the book is going to be okay?

Don't know. Maybe it doesn't matter. But I know how I'd like it to be.