
I’m slaving and I mean slaving over getting my latest book ‘Flight of the Stolen Children‘ finished and I keep promising myself a ‘treat’ when I hand it in to my editor.
The list is getting longer and longer…
And perfect for today’s blog #EatWhatYouWantDay.
So, what are your all-time favorite treats… something you enjoyed that comes with a memory stamp, like where you ate it and why it’s so special to you.
Here are mine:
Pizza Margheritaat the Ristorante Pizzeria Acqua Pazza in Campo Sant’Angelo in Venice, Italy when I performed at La Biennale Arts Festival (video to come). My editor and I came upon this amazing restaurant late at night with such beautiful golden lights I swear it was lit up by fireflies.
Philly Soft Pretzels at recess at Saint Vincent’s School run by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Joseph in Philadelphia. I would stand at the tall wrought iron gate every day pokinfg my nose through the bars, waiting for the Pretzel Man to come and buy my 2 ooh so good soft pretzels.
Pêche Melba (peaches and vanilla ice cream) at Café Kranzler in Frankfurt/Main Germany — I’ve been to Frankfurt many times since it’s a popular destination airport to Europe from the US. I so enjoyed making a stop at this charming cafe with its lovely pastries and violin ensemble before venturing on to other cities in Europe by rail.
Chicken Velvet Soup at L.S. Ayres Department Store Tea Room on the eight floor in Indianapolis, Indiana — and the dining room at the Grand Hotel Nuremberg where Allied legal teams and the press took their meals during the infamous trials in post WW2 Nuremberg, Germany. The soup was served in a silver carafe and I imagined supping the soup in post war Germany — the trials figure into a chapter in one of my books, Sisters of the Resistance.
And because I need a little Christmas…
The super-big, buttery-richChristmas Tree Cookieswith chunks of red and green sprinkles I couldn’t get enough of in the UCLA Alumni Center dining room. I enjoyed a scrumptious holiday buffet there with the director of my play produced that year at the Malibu CompanyTheatre called ‘The Christmas Piano Tree.’
The best Christmas cookies I’ve ever had (except the cookies my maman made. Nothing beats that.)
So, what’s your favorite treat(s), where you ate it, and why it’s so memorable?
Tell me in the comments section… I look forward to reading them.
Now back to our regularly scheduled craziness… writing book 2 in Lia’s Story.
[PS — I have some cool memory graphics I want to add, but honestly, I don’t have time to find them in my secret room where I keep all my stuff in old trunks, boxes, even a suitcase without wheels (remember those?). I’ll update the post with them after my m/s is done. Thank you!]
My latest Paris WW2 novel:
Check out: ‘The Stolen Children of War’ — Book 1 in Lia’s Story. I’m now writing Book 2 ‘Flight of the Stolen Children’.
A story told in Book 1 of this 2 book series about children hidden in plain sight in Occupied Paris 1943. In the circus.
If it’s not horrible enough my heroine Lia de Montieri, Queen of the Trapeze, has to fight the Nazis and a despicable Gestapo man in 1943 Occupied Paris, she also comes up against a depraved creature known as ‘The Magician’ because of his amazing ability to restore a woman’s face…
He lurks in the shadows only coming out to threaten what Lia holds most dear…
‘The Stolen Children of War’ is the story of a mother’s sacrifice, make that ‘mothers’, when Lia helps a Jewish woman about to be deported by helping her little girl and young boy escape.
And oh, there’s that adorable baby elephant, too.
‘The Stolen Children of War’
Amazon Kindle:
US: https://a.co/d/7iR9Xar
UK: https://amzn.eu/d/9RF8E77
AU https://amzn.asia/d/9hlZVS3
It is 1943 in Nazi-occupied Paris, and nobody is safe. Nobody, except perhaps one small group of people, who’ve always existed outside the law… in the circus.
Boldwood Books
When I recently checked out the DVD for “Black Swan,” it brought to mind another dancer.
Anna Pavolva.
What would it have been like to see her dance?
I decided to go straight to the source: Lady Eve Marlowe, the heroine of my Spice novel, Cleopatra’s Perfume. After all, who would know more about Berlin in the 1920s than someone who was there?
When I asked Eve to take over the blog, she was quick to point out she didn’t come to Berlin until 1928.
I reminded her that she had inhaled the sights, smells and sounds of the city–an elixir of the finest perfume that was Weimar Berlin. Hadn’t she often whispered in my ear about the decadent goings-on in the cabarets, the entertainers, artists, literati? I said. And partaken of the delights that hypnotize with the telling?
That’s when Eve smiled and I saw that sexy gleam in her eye, knowing what she was thinking, how much fun it would be to once again live through those wild times and indulge in the poetry and fantasy that was Weimar Berlin.
And so I give you Lady Eve Marlowe, who will guide you through Hot Weimar Berlin.
********
Thank you, Jina, for giving me this glorious opportunity to write this post.
Sitting at a café, I write the words: Berlin 1921 and it unleashes a completely different world, people racing through a time when they struggled to find their life rhythm in those trying times.
You mentioned several readers were interested to know more about Pavlova’s impromptu dance that night in the cellar club. Oh, how I wished I could have been there, but I was fortunate enough to hear about it from another dancer who knew someone who was there that night.
According to her account, Anna Pavlova was out for a night with friends, sitting in the corner and not drawing attention to herself. Someone recognized her and the buzz began–everyone started looking in her direction.
This was in 1921–she would have been around forty then (she died in 1931). I can see her in my mind, this sophisticated woman with the long, elegant neck and willowy body, knowing she possessed a beautiful gift that belonged not to her but to the world.
Pavlova embraced the wonderment and homage the customers showed her and rewarded them the best way she knew how.
Her dance.
According to this eyewitness, she was wearing a suit and shawl–she removed her jacket and whispered something to the violinist, who no doubt never dreamed his music would accompany the famed ballerina.
Then she began to dance…
Her body floated across the tiny nightclub floor with elegance and grace, her spirit ethereal and dreamlike, her steps as light as the gossamer notes of The Dying Swan played by the violinist, her art of dance shaped by a lifetime of diligence to her craft…but it was her passion that all who were there would never forget.
A beautiful swan who lives on…
–signed
Lady Eve Marlowe
Berlin 1958
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