Happy Fall, and How Not to Get Sick

Me (center) and Mary Anna Evans being interviewed in OKC

Happy All Saints' Day everyone, or All Souls, or Day of the Dead, or Halloween, or Samhain, whichever you prefer. I just returned a couple of days ago from a trip to the old Motherland, which for me is Oklahoma. I was invited to speak at the first ever Oklahoma Book Festival in Oklahoma City on October 20, and since I was in the neighborhood*, I rescheduled an event at the Public Library in Woodward, Oklahoma, that I had had to cancel out on last summer when the husband broke his arm. Both events were fun, though the Book Festival was a little discombobulated. To be expected for the first shake-down year. It didn't help that it had rained like a sun-of-a-gun the night before, and the ground under tent where Mary Anna Evans and I were supposed to speak became waterlogged, so they had to change the location of our venue at the last minute. Fortunately it was a gorgeous day and we were able to hold our session outside.

Yours Truly and Carolyn Hart

After my duty was done, I was able to go back to my hometown of Tulsa and have a mini-reunion with my three siblings, as well as visit with my friend Carolyn Hart. All in all it was a productive trip, and Don did perfectly well without me.

I'm home now, doing the final proofreading on my next novel, trying to recover from several days of being sociable, and being thankful that I don't have a case of the killer flu like I did at this time last year. In 2017 I wrote a novel called Return of the Raven Mocker which was set during the influenza epidemic of 1918 and included lots of early 20th Century home remedies for the flu. I used some of these when I was sick and they are actually helpful, so in the spirit of public service, I'm including a couple of preventative suggestions for you, Dear Reader. It’s fascinating to see what people resorted to before anti-viral drugs were available. When I was doing research on the book I received an email from my sister-in-law Dolores on this very topic. Here is an excerpt:

My Grandmother always baked an onion for a head cold.It loosened the congestion. I had forgotten about it until I read this email (I liked the smell also~)

In 1919 when the flu killed 40 million people there was this Doctor who visited the many farmers to see if he could help them combat the flu. Many of the farmers and their families had contracted it and many died. The doctor came upon this one farmer and to his surprise, everyone was very healthy. When the doctor asked what the farmer was doing that was different the wife replied that she had placed an unpeeled onion in a dish in the rooms of the home, (probably only two rooms back then). The doctor couldn't believe it and asked if he could have one of the onions and place it under the microscope. She gave him one and when he did this, he did find the flu virus in the onion. It obviously absorbed the bacteria, therefore keeping the family healthy.

This email was circulating around the web, and I expect it’s apocryphal, but I was interested because in my research I had found several home remedies that involve onions, and this fit right in. In fact, all the allium plants - onions, shallots, leeks, especially garlic - have volatile oils that seem to be antibacterial and/or antiviral.

We didn’t have much garlic around the old homestead when I was a kid, but garlic is truly useful for fighting disease. Research shows that garlic builds white blood cells, thus boosting immunity. Besides, it’s delicious.

If you’ve never baked a head of garlic, now is the time. Trim off the top of the garlic head to expose the cloves, drizzle a little olive oil over it, wrap the head in some foil or place it in a clay or ceramic baking dish. Bake the head in a hot oven for about 30 minutes, or until the cloves are very soft. Squeeze the baked garlic out of the cloves into a small bowl and mash it up with a fork. At this point you can add oil, herbs, a little salt, whatever appeals. Or you can just spread the garlic on a cracker like butter and chow down. Even if you are not a garlic fan, I can assure you that well-baked garlic is infinitely milder than the raw stuff.

And speaking of the raw stuff, remember that Roman gladiators used to chew cloves of raw garlic to make them strong. You bet it did, in more ways than one.

So, place a few raw, unpeeled onions around the house and chow down on some garlic. It may help you avoid the flu, if for no other reason than your friends will keep their distance. And you won’t be bothered by vampires this Halloween, either.
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*"In the neighborhood" is a relative term. Woodward is a three hour drive from Oklahoma City, way closer to the Texas panhandle than to the middle of Oklahoma

A Trip to the Homeland

I'm not really here today, Dear Reader. I am in Woodward, Oklahoma, as you read this. Last August I had to cancel a trip to speak at some Oklahoma libraries, after My Beloved fell and broke his arm. Fortunately, I was approached by the Oklahoma Department of Libraries with an offer to appear at the first Oklahoma Book Festival, to be held at the Boatyard in Oklahoma City on Oct. 20, and since Beloved (Don) is now in good enough shape to be left on his own for days at a time, I’m taking this opportunity to reschedule the library event n Woodward, Oklahoma, for noon on Thursday, October 18. We’re calling it the If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try Try Again Tour.

Martha (r) and me

My youngest sister, brother, and sister-in-law are coming from Tulsa to OKC on Saturday to go to the Book Festival (and see me) and after the Festival, they are schlepping me back to Tulsa, my birthplace, where I will be staying for a couple days with youngest sister, Martha. We have yet another sister in Joplin, Missouri, who I hope will be able to drive down to the old homestead while I'm there, in which case it'll be a real family reunion. I'm going to get to see mystery author extraordinaire Carolyn Hart while I'm in Tulsa, as well, which will be a real treat.

In anticipation of this long-awaited trip, I worked busily to finish the first draft of the first book in my new series, and I did it, by gum. Don is reading it right now. When I get home at the end of the month, I hope to be able to clean it up quickly and get it sent in to my editor. This book is so different in tone from the Alafairs (it's set mostly in California in the 1920s and is much more Noir) that I'm curious to see what kind of reaction I'll get from my first readers. Once I have an idea of how this book will be received, I'll tell you all about it. But here is a teaser - I'm calling it The Adventures of Bianca Dangereaux, Episode One: Lust for Vengeance.

p.s. Full Disclosure–both above pictures of me are about ten years old. I have gotten a lot grayer and somewhat saggier since then. Martha, on the other hand, looks exactly the same.

Off Into the Woods

Donis here. I've just completed the first draft of the first book in what I hope will be a new series, set in the 1920's in California. It's pretty rough and needs some cleaning up, as my books usually do because the ending I end up with usually doesn't match the beginning I began with...if you get my drift. In other words, things about the story reveal themselves to me as I write. For example, I may start out with Character 1 and Character 2 as uncle and niece and discover half-way through my writing that they aren't related at all.* I think this could be one reason why I am a relatively slow writer. I have tried many times to streamline my process. I would love to be both efficient and good, and be able to crank out two or three entertaining and well-written books a year, like our very own Vicki Delany, for instance.

But outline as I may, I never fail to end up going off into the woods, following some elusive story thread that suggests itself to me in the middle of the story. Sometimes the new idea changes the whole book for the better. Sometimes I waste days writing material that goes nowhere and I have to discard it and go back to Plan A. I'd be much faster, and probably much tighter and to the point, if I'd just stick to the program, but I can't help myself. I'm too full of "what if?"

As an aside, I've noticed that in past couple of years the 1920s have become the hot era in historical mysteries. I can't decide whether I'm feeling happy or feeling unoriginal about jumping on the bandwagon. I didn't plan it that way. Almost a decade and a half ago I started writing the Alafair Tucker Mysteries, a series that began in 1912, and followed it through to 1919. The new series spins off from from there, so I ended up in the 1920s in the most natural way. If it turns out that being on the bandwagon is a good thing, then who am I to complain?

As yet another aside, I'm happy to announce that in two weeks I will be flying back to my native country to participate in the first annual Oklahoma Book Festival on October 20 at the Boatyard in Oklahoma City. I'll be talking about the Alafair Tucker Mystery series, and the new direction I'm taking in my writing. Check it out here: https://okbookfest2018.sched.com/info.

AND since I had to cancel a trip to speak at some Oklahoma libraries last August when My Beloved fell and broke his arm, I'm taking this opportunity to reschedule an event at the library in Woodward, Oklahoma, at noon on Thursday, October 18. We're calling it the If at First You Don't Succeed, Try Try Again Tour. Here's the information on that: http://woodwardlibrary.okpls.org/category/author-visit/

Husband is out of his cast, the arm is functional, he can dress, write, and drive himself, and be left alone for long periods of time. So if you believe, Dear Reader, that the Universe hears your prayers, join me in asking that the Powers That Be keep Donald Koozer healthy and injury free for the foreseeable future.

Thank you.
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*This is just an example. No one in my new book is named either Character 1 or Character 2.