Maya Corrigan
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  • Home
  • Bio
  • Writings
    • By Cook or by Crook
    • Scam Chowder
    • Final Fondue
    • The Tell-Tale Tarte
    • S'more Murders
    • Crypt Suzette
    • Gingerdead Man
    • Book Club Topics
    • Stories and Nonfiction
  • Mystery 101
    • Mystery Topics and Timeline
    • Detective Story Origins
    • Mystery Fashions
    • Edgar Allan Poe
    • Poe and Lincoln
    • Holmes and Dracula
    • Christie's Clues
    • Christie's Plays
    • Food and Mysteries
    • Poe Trivia Quiz
    • Christie Trivia Quiz
    • Sleuthing Sweethearts Quiz
  • Food
    • Candy Corn's Haunted History
    • Chowder in History and Literature
    • Gingerbread History
    • Pie's Peculiar Past
    • S'mores History
    • Short Story: Delicious Death
    • Recipes >
      • Five-Ingredient Main Dishes
      • Easy Pies and Tarts
      • Six Sweet Recipes
      • Gingerbread Cookie Recipe
  • News/Contact
  • SmorgasBlog

Valentine's Day Treats

2/13/2017

1 Comment

 
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Val (short for Valentine), the sleuth in my Five-Ingredient Mysteries, was born on February 14th. I'm celebrating her birthday with some Web pages that focus on love for the month of February.  
Read a sweet humorous story about married love: Can Jenny get through the day without uttering the four little words that every spouse loves to say but hates to hear? 

Test your knowledge of Sleuthing Sweethearts by trying the trivia quiz 

Explore how chocolate, love, and murder intertwine 

Try the Fast Chocolate Fondue recipe
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Timesaving Recipes and Tips

10/31/2015

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Cover of We'd Rather Be Writing with images of ingredients, including tomatoes, cheese, peppers, and garlic
Just in time for holiday cooking and gift giving, We'd Rather Be Writing: 88 Authors Share Timesaving Dinner Recipes and Other Tips is available. I'm one of the authors who contributed tips and an easy recipe to the book. Here are some photos of the vegetarian version of my Mediterranean pasta with artichokes, olives, and feta cheese. The recipe in the book includes instructions for making a shrimp version.  
At 99 cents for the e-book version and a comparably low price for the paperback, it's hard to pass up this helpful book, available now from Amazon and Barnes and Noble. For more information about the book and a complete list of contributors, visit editor Lois Winston's page about the book.
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What is Scam Chowder?

6/27/2015

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Book cover of Scam Chowder by Maya Corrigan with a soup tureen, clams, salt pork, onions, potatoes, and creamScam Chowder cover
Scam Chowder (Five-Ingredient Mystery #2) is out.  Here is a preview of the opening chapter from Val, the sleuth in the series.

Cook and run—those were Granddad’s instructions to me this evening. I was supposed to make the chowder for his dinner guests from the retirement village and get out of the kitchen. Then he would add the final ingredients and claim credit for the whole meal. This ruse was part of his campaign to win the heart of Lillian, the Village’s most attractive widow, whose husband had made her gourmet meals. To convince Lillian of his cooking skills, Granddad has no qualms about passing off my recipes and my dinners as his own creations. By eavesdropping, I discovered that more than a romance was at stake tonight. Granddad, egged on by Lillian, planned to confront a dinner guest who’d scammed retirees out of their savings. But someone beat him to it, making tonight’s chowder the last thing the scammer would eat. 

Val makes two types of chowder for her grandfather's guests. When writing the book, I found a helpful video on cooking chowder: How to make three kinds of clam chowder, with Providence chef Michael Cimarusti. The 5-ingredient clear chowder meets Granddad's standards for a recipe. 
Which type do you prefer: clear chowder, red chowder, or creamy chowder? 

4 Comments

Giveaway: Mystery Writers of America Cookbook

3/19/2015

21 Comments

 
Page from the MWA Cookbook with Mary Ann Corrigan's vegetable salad recipe
Thrilled to have a recipe in the Mystery Writers of America Cookbook, I am hosting a giveaway, courtesy of Quirk Books.  Between the handsome covers of this book, you'll find recipes and anecdotes by today's crime writers. You'll also find essays on food in the writings of Poe, Conan Doyle, Christie and other giants of the mystery genre. 

The vegetable salad recipe I contributed is a family favorite for holiday dinners. “Take Your Pick” in the recipe title means you can substitute different vegetables depending on the time of year and your own tastes. The best feature of this recipe is that the veggies marinate for a day, giving you one less dish to prepare at the last minute.  What dish is a favorite when you get together with family and friends? 

To enter the drawing for a free book, leave a reply to this post. For another chance at winning, sign up for my infrequent newsletter. If you've already subscribed, say so in a comment, and I'll add another entry for you.  The contest runs from March 19 to midnight on April 18 eastern time. It is open to U.S. and Canada residents. Check back the last week of April for the winner's name. Good luck!
Finally, if you're a mystery fan, try the trivia quiz on this site, which involves matching a recipe from the book to the writer who submitted it. You'll find clues in the recipe titles. 

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Downton Abbey and Winnie-the-Pooh

1/18/2015

3 Comments

 
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Original cover of A.A. Milne's mystery
Children's author A.A. Milne, creator of Winnie-the-Pooh,  also wrote a detective novel. An odd connection exists between Milne's The Red House Mystery and Downton Abbey. The bones of the classic British mystery are on display in Milne's book:

* the English country house setting
* a crime investigated by an amateur
* a sidekick
* a locked-room puzzle
* a whodunit with clues that play fair with the reader

The book opens "below stairs" . . .

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5-Ingredient Cookbooks (more or less)

12/21/2014

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Now that I’m writing the Five-Ingredient Mysteries, friends give me cookbooks to plump out my collection of low-ingredient recipes. Here are three favorite books you might consider as gifts this season for yourself or someone else.

Cover of 5-10-15 Cookbook
Cover of Robin Takes 5 showing Robin cooking
Cover of Six Ingredients or Less, Third edition
If you have a favorite cookbook with recipes requiring few ingredients, please leave a comment and share your find. Here's why I like these three books. 

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Book Club Discussion Questions

11/17/2014

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A with her finger under her chin and the quote, Let's start a book club. And by book I do of course mean wine.
"What could a book club discuss about your mystery?" The question came up at my launch party for my first Five-Ingredient Mystery, By Cook or by Crook. Afterwards, someone suggested I post book club discussion questions on my website. You can download and print a copy of the questions about all my books on the Book Club Topics page.




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Cover Reveal: Scam Chowder

10/23/2014

7 Comments

 
Cover of Scam Chowder by Maya Corrigan: a soup tureen and the ingredients for clam chowder: clams in the shell, potatoes, and onion, cream, and a bowl of chowderScam Chowder comes out June 30, 2015
Book #2 in the Five-Ingredient Mystery series has a mouth-watering cover . . .  with a missing ingredient. 

The first book in the series had a cover image that set the style for future covers: the five ingredients needed for a dish in the forefront. This book's title made it clear what dish's ingredients would have to appear on the cover.   

When my editor asked me to suggest images for the cover, I proposed the tureen with the series name on it and the bay view.  I also listed five chowder ingredients to depict. For whatever reason, possibly aesthetic, one of the ingredients doesn't appear on the cover. 

Any chowder cooks reading this? What other ingredient would you put in your chowder that's not shown here?

7 Comments

Writing While I Sleep

9/21/2014

2 Comments

 
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This post is part of the Sisters in Crime Blog Hop. The best part of the writing process takes place for me while I sleep. Until I wrote fiction, I had no idea how much creative work goes on while the body sleeps. Sometimes I go to bed with a lingering writing problem. Maybe I can’t figure out how to liven up a conversation between two characters. Or I wonder how to transition from the scene I’ve just written to the one that’s coming up. Or I don’t know how to insert a clue so that it’s not too obvious. The next morning I wake up with a solution to the problem.

During the night while my conscious brain was sleeping, my subconscious took over and came up with answers that eluded me the day before. If I don’t have a particular issue that stemmed from the day’s writing, my subconscious tackles a problem I didn’t even know I had, for example, it tells me about a clue I should have inserted fifty pages earlier.

Because sleep is essential to the creative process, I’ve worked hard to conquer my difficulties falling and staying asleep. A consultation with a sleep specialist helped me immensely. In an earlier blog, I shared the tips the sleep doctor gave me. One of those tips is related to this post:  Keep a notebook on your night table to jot down any inspirations that come to you in the middle of the night. Knowing that you won’t forget your brilliant idea by morning makes it easier to fall asleep.

Unfortunately, sleeping doesn’t help me get the words on the page, the most challenging part of the writing process. In order to finish a 75,000-word book on deadline, I have to sit at a keyboard and write the number of words I’ve set as a daily goal. Some days I reach my goal by mid-afternoon, other days, not until nine at night.
Writing, like so many other things in life, requires both inspiration and perspiration.

For other blog posts that are part of the Sisters in Crime blog hop, visit Carolyn Mulford's blog. Carolyn tagged me and I tagged Shari Randall. Her blog will appear Monday, September 29 on the Writers Who Kill blog. 

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Book Giveaway: By Cook or By Crook

9/9/2014

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Enter to win an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of By Cook or By Crook on Goodreads. 

Over the weekend I poked around Goodreads to see what it was like before becoming a member. A social media procrastinator, I signed up Facebook only a few months ago, fifteen years after the rest of the world, and waited until Goodreads had 20 million members before exploring it. To my surprise, I discovered my forthcoming book joined Goodreads before I did.

Kensington, has made 25 copies of the book available for a Goodreads giveaway. Enter to win one before September 30th on the By Cook or By Crook Goodreads page. 

The first book in the Five-Ingredient Mystery series, By Cook or by Crook contains eight delicious five-ingredient recipes. Learn more about the book. 

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Five Tips from the Sleep Doctor

4/18/2014

12 Comments

 
10 sheep sleep while a woman awake in bed wonders if they're asleep or dead, who killed them and whyWhat keeps mystery writers awake at night
I used to spend hours awake in bed at night. My visit to a sleep specialist changed that.  


In addition to the usual good advice to cut down on caffeine after noon and on alcohol at night, he offered five suggestions that I hadn't heard before and that really helped me break  the habit of sleeplessness. 


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An Edible Book Cover

4/9/2014

4 Comments

 
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My brother's reaction to my book cover image, "Will they produce an edible version of it?" made me laugh. But it's not a bad idea. When the book comes out in November, I promise to serve an edible version at my book launch party. 

My brother correctly guessed what the ingredients on the book cover would make. Do you know a recipe that uses the ingredients depicted? Can you name other books with covers that look good enough to eat? Or books that made you hungry as you read them?  If so, please leave a comment.  

By Cook or by Crook comes out November 4, 2014, from Kensington Publishing. 

"Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably." --C.S. Lewis
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How to Make Murder Palatable

4/3/2014

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A skeleton in a chef's hat mixes food and consults a cookbook while spiders crawl around and a black bird sits on his shoulder bone
The culinary mystery, a popular form of the traditional whodunit, combines murder, food, and humor. Cooking and eating are comforting routines that make murder more palatable, at least on the page. My forthcoming mystery, By Cook or by Crook, like many culinary mysteries, includes recipes for the dishes the sleuth makes while solving crimes. Those dishes make murder even more palatable.

When I tell people I write culinary mysteries, a fair number of them say, "Oh, I love reading those kinds of books." Others say, "I've never heard of a culinary mystery. Did you come up with that idea yourself?" Old though I am, the culinary mystery predates me. Rex Stout, who created gourmet detective Nero Wolfe, is a pioneer in the genre. His 1938 publicity tour for the fifth Nero Wolfe mystery, Too Many Cooks, included giveaways of book-shaped boxes containing recipes for 35 dishes mentioned in the mystery. 

The current Buy-It-Now price on eBay for a recipe "book" signed by Rex Stout is $600. He signed the page containing this description:  

Wherein vagrant tastes and fugitive flavors are sniffed to their hideouts, fingerprinted and imprisoned in savory dishes—by that celebrated Nemesis of crooks and envy of cooks, NERO WOLFE, private investigator.
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    Maya Corrigan

    This blog, like the books and stories I write, combines mysteries, food, trivia, and a bit of humor to leaven the grim subject of crime. Sometimes random subjects intrude here .

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