Guest Author: Cherie Twohy and the I Love Trader Joe's Cookbook

The many talented authors in the Pasadena area have unlimited things to write about. Today we welcome Cherie Mercer Twohy, creator of three cookbooks (so far) based solely on the products at Trader Joe's, a homegrown grocery chain.

I’m delighted to be part of Petrea’s local authors’ series—thanks for inviting me!

My path to writing the I Love Trader Joe’s Cookbook, the I Love Trader Joe’s Party Cookbook, and the upcoming I Love Trader Joe’s Around the World Cookbook has been a wild ride.

I’ve always been a Trader Joe’s groupie. I grew up in Southern CA, as did TJ’s. (I guess you all know that they started in our own Pasadena backyard?) As I became more interested in food and cooking, I found myself cruising the aisles of different TJ stores, as they expanded, first in California, and then across the country. When I got ready to open my own cooking school, Chez Cherie, I decided to see how much interest there might be in classes focused on cooking with Trader Joe’s products. They’ve been so popular and are a ton of fun to teach.

In 2009 I was contacted by a publisher interested in doing a Trader Joe’s cookbook. Since I’d been doing the classes for years, it seemed like a natural next step. The first book came out in November 2009 and so far has sold over 70,000 copies! Yikes—I know my mom didn’t buy all those copies, so there are a ton of TJ fans out there! Since that book’s publication, I’ve heard from so many folks--you can’t imagine what pleasure I get, knowing that people I don’t even know are out there, cooking from my books! I get emails from people who don’t even live near a TJ’s, but remember them fondly, and adapt the recipes to ingredients available near them. I even hear from readers who plan their vacations around TJ locations, so they can stock up. Now that’s dedication! It’s such a kick when gourmet groups and cookbook clubs feature the book, and it’s great fun to hear what they are cooking up.

I literally write the cookbooks on the kitchen table. So easy to dash to the stove or fridge to check a label, adjust a recipe or sneak a taste as I’m writing. I should own stock in 3M, as I go through thousands of Post-its in a week of recipe development. I’m so lucky to have a cheerful test-audience in the TJ cooking classes, so I get quick and personal feedback on what their families have loved. I’d love to hear from you--please let me know your favorites from the books! Cherie@ilovetraderjoes.com 


Do you know a published author in the San Gabriel Valley who ought to write a guest post for Pasadena Daily Photo? Are you that author? Contact me.

 

Guest Post: Dianne Emley and "Love Kills"

Today we welcome guest author Dianne Emley, best-selling crime novelist. Her Nan Vining "thrillogy" is set in Pasadena and features a female Pasadena Police Detective. Dianne was the first author I interviewed for PDP and she's been a friend of the blog ever since. I always wondered how she researched the books and today we get to find out.

Hello Pasadena Daily Photo readers. I'm delighted that Petrea invited me to contribute some words to her blog space. My current series of suspense novels features Nan Vining of the Pasadena Police Department—homicide detective, single mom to a spirited teenage daughter, and survivor of an ambush by a knife-wielding assailant who got away.

I'm often asked whether I do a lot of research for my books. Yes, I do. Research is fun. And since I'm writing about the life, work, and mindset of a police detective and her colleagues, it was absolutely necessary because before I began the series, I had virtually no experience with the real world of law and order. So why did I decide to write about cops?

I had the first glimmer of the idea while attending the Pasadena Police Department's Citizen Police Academy (CPA)—a wonderful program available to anyone who lives or works in Pasadena. I found that I was fascinated with police work, from the tactics and procedures, to the psychological aspects, to the politics. I wondered, could I pull off writing a novel about cops? I knew if I did it, I'd have to nail it. Frankly, I was terrified.

Of course, I read books: cop novels, cop non-fiction books, and police science and forensics textbooks. The books were valuable, but they weren't enough to help me give my story the colors, textures, and emotions necessary to make it seem real. For that, I needed first-hand experience.

The CPA gave me a head start because the program includes a patrol car "ride along." Boy, was that eye-opening. I arranged more ride alongs, with a male rookie recently approved for patrol, a female seasoned officer, and a veteran officer who'd seen it all. A helpful lieutenant let me shadow her. I probed friends and family for other connections, leading me to a prosecutor in the L.A. County District Attorney's Major Crimes division, the first female LAPD Deputy Chief, the first female FBI Executive Assistant Director, and the LAPD Robbery Homicide detective who led the task force that nabbed the notorious "Grim Sleeper" serial killer. Yes, there's value in studying how Joseph Wambaugh's cops talk in his novels but it's richer to hear it firsthand.

A great place to meet real law and order professionals is at conferences. There's a terrific one, The California Crime Writers Conference, on June 11 and 12 at the Hilton Pasadena. It's only held every two years, so don't miss it. Those folks I mentioned are going to be present there, plus several more, as I organized most of the Forensics track. Keep your pen and notebook handy.

Guest Author: Amy Ratcliffe, Geek With Curves

For the third month in a row, I'm happy to present a guest post by a local writer. Today, meet Amy Ratcliffe.

I love her story. She wanted to be a writer. She thought about it. Then she decided to make it happen and bam! 

I think you'll like Amy as much as I do.

My name is Amy Ratcliffe. I'm a geek (that will be relevant in a minute). For most of my life I said I wanted to be a writer. However, I didn't do much to make that dream happen. I wrote as often as I felt like it in my writing notebook, and if you only write when you feel like it, the notebook doesn't fill up very fast. I participated in National Novel Writing Month a couple of times and actually defeated it once. I started blogging and realized it was fun to get feedback on the words I was putting out there. But I didn't know how to translate any of this to making my dream happen.

Then I was watching Star Wars for the nth time in January of last year, and I thought to myself: why not create a blog just for discussing your favorite geeky things?  So I started Geek With Curves. I signed up for Twitter around the same time. This started a new chapter (pun entirely intended) for me. I made myself sit down and write every day whether I felt like it or not. I started making connections. I also found a huge geek community on Twitter. People that didn't judge me for reading comic books or dressing up like Han Solo.

Through these people, I found writing work. Slowly but surely I am building a list of sites that are happy to accept articles about the politics in Game of Thrones or the female role models in The Clone Wars. I contribute to websites such as Tor.com, ScienceFiction.com, and the L.A. Times Hero Complex. I am doing what I love. A talented artist I know always tells people, "Don't tell me how bad you want it, show me." This is the phrase I keep in mind when I've had a long day at work and don't feel like sitting in front of a blank screen. I don't sleep as much I'd like, I definitely don't watch as much television as I want to, but I hope the sacrifices will be worth it when I'm doing what I love to do full time. And I believe I'll get there. Eventually.

Guest Author: Victoria Patterson and "This Vacant Paradise"

Today I'm honored to host guest author Victoria Patterson, the South Pasadena writer whose novel, This Vacant Paradise, was published March 4th. Victoria will be appearing at Vroman's this Thursday, March 24th at 7pm.

 

For the most part, my fiction takes place in Newport Beach, but I live and write in South Pasadena. A tour of the places in South Pasadena (and surrounding areas) where I’ve written, and where my story collection, Drift, and my novel, This Vacant Paradise, came to life, would take quite some time, especially considering the seventeen years we’ve lived in South Pasadena. 

           
For years I worked at the South Pasadena Library (and I still do at times).  I’ve staked out every quiet and isolated work area at S. Pasadena Library, my favorite being the upstairs conference room, although that didn’t last long, considering there was just solitary me. The downstairs partitioned workspace desks near the teen section are great—while said teens are at school—except during “Storytime”(which I used to take my kids to), when the massive avalanche of toddlers’ feet boom from overhead.

Buster’s Coffee on the corner of Meridian and Mission was a mainstay, though ultimately I knew too many people, and would end up visiting and talking rather than working.

For close to three years, I worked at the coffee shop at Vroman’s, and I actually wrote an essay about it.

Pasadena Library, check. Starbucks, check.

For a long time, I worked at Caltech library, on one of the upper floors, with its spectacular view of the mountains. But then it was discovered that a Hummer-graffiti-terrorist civilian was also taking advantage of the library, and Caltech became understandably more restrictive.

This is a small sampling—I could go on and on, because South Pasadena (and Pasadena, San Marino, Alhambra, Sierra Madre) is home to my writing, even if the writing takes place elsewhere. 

Guest Author: Des Zamorano and "Human Cargo"

I'm excited to host my first local writer guest post! Please welcome Des Zamorano, an Altadena author who has just published an engrossing detective mystery set in familiar surroundings.

cover art by Simone Rein

Isn’t it fascinating, that while even from childhood we viscerally know life isn’t fair, we still crave justice? We want a  world where good triumphs jubilantly, and evil, instead of building philanthropic foundations to cover up its crimes, actually withers, dies and rots.

That, in any case, is part of the reason I love mysteries. I’ve loved them since a friend of mine introduced me to the works of Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler, and I’m always looking for contemporary favorites, like Naomi Hirahara, Craig Johnson, and Gillian Flynn.

My protagonist, Inez Leon, a private investigator, kicked down my door  one writing morning, and refused to go away. I told her to beat it, I had a great American novel to write, filled with languorous language and sensuous subtlety. She rolled her eyes at me and sat down, then began pacing while I worked. Losing all patience, she rapped her Beretta on my desk and said, “My story’s the kind you actually read. And it’s all about right where you live, the nooks and corners you’ve never even visited.” I scowled, listened, and began writing it all down.

Human Cargo is the latest story she’s told me.  She has a knack for noticing things other people miss.

(Human Cargo is an e-book. If you can read this post, you can download it.) 

Do you have a suggestion for a local writer guest post? Are you a local (SGV), published writer/author/journalist? Email me. I'd love to hear from you.

Our Invisible Selves

photo by John Sandel

In yesterday's post I said, "I'm sorry some kids don't have art class in school today." I was referring obliquely to school budget cuts, not to any school district specifically. The first comment that came in was from J+P, who some of you know is my husband. I was asleep when, soon after midnight, he typed in his comment, "Kids don't have art classes any more? WTF?"

He must have stewed all day. I asked his permission to use his 5:18pm comment for today's post. The photo, too, is his.

Okay, so, what—now we’re supposed to start calling art & beauty &  self-expression luxuries? Because some benighted wart of a legislature can’t figure out how to reapportion its weapons allowance?

I’m thisclose to resigning my commission in a species which tells me that beauty and losing-one’s-way-in-the-forests-of-metaphor are less valuable than carnage over oil, or someone’s holy book. We can’t afford to teach kids art? So, then, the painters at Lascaux and Altamira—I guess they had it pretty comfy, 15,000 years ago. That must be why they handed their works of hallucinatory reportage down to us … not because they were in constant danger of attack from man & beast, nor cowed by nature’s baffling whims. They could afford art and its fierce timesink.

And what of the heroes lost to Nazi murderers—the Karels, Kleins and Weisses who withstood torture and starvation and still found a way to make art? They smuggled out symphonies and novels written on toilet paper rather than let their inspiration & craft fade away like smoke from a chimney. But we just can’t shift a few bucks out of the “Hummer” column into the “fingerpaint” column.

It makes my head smolder. We spend our present and bankrupt our future; this is no problem merely of money. When Shelley called poets “the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” he didn’t mean just writers and he wasn’t just being smug. Art has a power to drive the human imagination which war nor politics nor terror can ever match. But sometimes I wonder: maybe we know that and it scares us …

Art is central to our survival—it’s food for our invisible selves. Jesse Helms may have vilified Robert Mapplethorpe's photos because he knew about the towering outrage in the “Guernica”; and the subversive punch of Soul On Ice.

That’s pretty risky stuff, no? Better not let the kiddies get none o’that into their heads. But if they’d had a little more free expression as kids, the Stalins and Cheneys and Ahmadinejads of the world might have trained their energies into something positive.

This year, we cut the art budget. Gotta save the bucks, Charlie. Never mind the future—our appropriations guidelines were laid down for us …

Us. Never “them.” Never the kids. Always—us. It’s like we never got past the sixth grade, but we’re the ones with the plutonium.