Success: Ruin Meals. Write 5th Grade Prose.

Author Louise Penny has ruined me for any restaurant or pub memories I used to cherish. What’s more, she may have ruined every attempt to enjoy future restaurant meals, no matter how much I might be willing to pay.

Nothing anyone serves me can measure up to the food in her novels. I’ve read most of Penny’s books. The food in them is literally to die for.

Instead of a book page I want a flaky, just-out-of-the-oven croissant stuffed with chunks of maple-baked ham and melted Gruyere wafting out fresh rosemary, and I want it next to crisp Pommes frites with the Bistro’s homemade mayonnaise.

And that is just what she feeds her cops for lunch . . .

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Pithy. Pithy. Pithy! (am so eager for more of it …)

Are you, like me, pining for the world to get a bit more … Pithy?

A pithy phrase or statement is brief but full of substance and meaning. It often feels like a shot of truth.

(I don’t mean a hit of social media that assumes humans’ attention spans are shorter than a cream shot hitting expresso.)

Can a fiction writer be pithy? Use the pithy phrase successfully and not lose readers? Avoid that moment when readers feel an author reaching through to lecture … or (I’m cringing) hector them?

Wow them with that arresting moment that might define a character and have us thinking about a possible truth long after a page is turned?

Yes! Of course. But, like me, it might be surprising.

I’ve been listening to Agatha Christie’s short stories as I drive. The pithy is jumping out at me in the midst of bodies and more bodies, and even more bodies (and lots of stolen jewels).

So here she is. . . .

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The Snake. Jane Goodall. River Evil …

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about good and evil and feeling the power of evil way too much.

And then I watched President Zelensky’s speech to the U.S. Congress (12.21.22). It struck me that this man has come to symbolize both. He is willing to hold close the evil done to his country and his people—hold it so close that he can spill it out raw to people who need to know and even feel it. But the part of him that shines triumphant, even in this dark, brutal winter, is his goodness and his willingness to share the goodness and sacrifice of his people so we can also share it and lean toward it.

Over two decades ago I wrote a letter about good and evil to my daughter as she was deep in despair after September 11th. Today I share it with you on the darkest night of the year. . . .
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Never, Ever … Buy or Eat the Big, Tasteless Ones

My family and friends have given me a reputation for quick or novel fixes to create strategies that add “yum!” to food. My sisters still call me in the middle of gravy-making as that’s always a daunting thing. I love that. (Scroll down for gravy and more tips.)

(And right now, I am writing a character …Patton … who’s hiding out in a hunting tree stand, eating moose jerky and drinking rainwater, so I get no vicarious food-joy from the keyboard.)

I’ve collected some of my go-to tips to share with you during feasting season. And below, look for more info on Maine berries and how to find them.

Better cornbread, muffins, even brownies. Put a couple of very heaping tablespoons of yogurt in all muffin and cornbread recipes (mashed banana too; I keep ‘dead’ ones in the freezer in their skins). Makes everything wonderfully moist: cornbread is fabulous this way.

Quick Fruit Salad. Well, there’s a prerequisite. Always have Wyman’s Wild Blueberries and unsweetened whole strawberries in the freezer. (Big, non-Maine, or generic-brand blueberries not allowed. Tasteless.)
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