Marcy’s Musings

Hi, everybody. Angus and I are happy to see signs of springtime. Although it’s still cold here on the Oregon Coast, the trees are budding and we’re seeing more sunshine.

Gayle tried her hand at a new embroidery technique this week: ribbon embroidery. We’re going to spotlight that technique in just a moment. First, take a look at Gayle’s projects, a keepsake box and a tote bag.  The technique is surprisingly easy, but you can’t rush it. Gayle says she caught herself humming that old .38 Special tune Hold On Loosely while she worked!

Before I forget, I want to direct your attention over to FreshFiction where you can enter Gayle’s latest contest. The contest is called Beautiful and Cozy Springtime Prize Pack and the prize is a signed copy of Dead Pan and a Tarte Health Couture Spring Greening Reusable Straw Palette (a $95 value).  Be sure and enter (and you can do so more than once), and good luck!

Embroidery Spotlight: Ribbon Embroidery

Even if you’re new to embroidery, don’t be afraid to give this beautiful needlecraft technique a try. To get you started, here are some links to ribbon embroidery sites:

Beginners’ Silk-Ribbon Embroidery: Five Easy Stitches - Here the editors of Threads magazine provide illustrated step-by-step instructions.

Gathered Flower Demonstration 

Silk Ribbon Embroidery Beginnings - Allow Suite 101 editor Michelle Dompierre Southern to help you learn the basics of ribbon embroidery.

Ribbon Embroidery Patterns and Instructions - Includes links to patterns by various About.com contributors.

If you try your hand at ribbon embroidery, please share your photos here!

Hi, there, Vivian! Thank you for joining us today. Tell us a little about yourself:

Vivian:  I was born to Raymond and Dolly Gilbert, traveled around the world with my military father, and discovered I like staying in one spot. After meeting and marrying Robert Zabel, though, I followed him around for over 30 years before we settled in Edmond, Oklahoma. Through my family, life experiences, and vivid imagination, I found enough material to write poetry, short stories, articles, and novels.

Gayle: Please tell our readers about your “Crazy-Woman Dance”!

Vivian: I was pregnant with my last child, and we were attending my daughter’s (the oldest child) kindergarten Christmas program. I took my dress from the plastic bag from the cleaners, and my coat from its bag. What I didn’t know was somehow, someway, a mouse was inside the dress. When I got out of the car for the program, the mouse started running around and around my middle. I did a crazy-woman dance with all my daughter’s friends and families watching. My middle child, older son, announced to the world, “Momma’s doing a crazy-woman dance.”

Gayle: I’m afraid I might’ve turned that into the naked, screaming crazy woman dance! I believe you handled that situation much better than I would have. What have you done besides writing, Vivian?

Vivian: I’ve already been a wife, mother, motel receptionist, office manager, bookkeeper,  and teacher for twenty-seven years. I’m now an author and publisher. I think I’ll just worry about extending my life long enough to finish all I need to do. *laugh*

Gayle: You make me tired by just reading your accomplishments. Tell us about your path to becoming a writer.

Vivian: 

I started writing poetry when in the third grade, but I had always entertained my siblings and friends with my stories. I remember telling a friend when we were in the seventh grade the plot for a book I was going to write. She laughed, but that plot lives in one of my novels.  I don’t know when I realized I am a “real” writer, because writing has always been a central part of my life.

Gayle: As a mystery author myself, I’m intrigued with your book Midnight Hours. Tell our readers a bit about it please.

Vivian:  Police detective Martin Rogers is recovering from a shooting, working hard to regain the use of his legs. To fill in the long hours of inactivity, Rogers spends time in an internet chat room, playing cards with a regular group of surfers. That is until the witching hour, when he and the mysterious woman known only as Midnight connect via cyberspace and disappear into their own virtual world. Martin finds himself becoming more and more intrigued and enamoured by the elusive woman, who seems to find him strangely attractive despite his disability. When Midnight refuses to reveal any personal details about herself, despite Martin being openly honest with her, he begins to suspect that the woman he is falling for may not be all that she seems.

Martin confides his concerns to two of his fellow detectives, and soon he and his colleagues are joined by Assistant District Attorney Lisa Harris as a web of previous suspicious deaths of disabled victims emerges, all of whom appear to have been in contact with the mysterious Midnight.

A task force is set up to investigate the murders, and soon Martin, Lisa, and the team are involved in a case so complex, and so baffling, that they begin to feel as though they are chasing a shadow, a clever and resourceful criminal who they describe as being “like fog that disappears in bright light.”

Gayle: Sounds terrific! In fact, reviewer Brian L. Porter says, “Vivian Zabel has crafted a beautifully and hauntingly compelling crime drama that leads the reader down one blind alleyway after another as Martin Rogers attempts to unravel the mystery. The tension is wonderfully wracked up as the storyline builds towards its shattering conclusion. Without doubt, this is one for the crime fiction aficionados, a book that cries out to be read, and one which I found very hard to put down once I’d begun. The characters are believable, the underlying romance that builds between Martin and the beautiful Lisa is tenderly and realistically handled, and the fear that things could go disastrously wrong for the heroes of this tale, right up to the end, is so palpable one can almost reach out and touch it.”

Please visit Vivian online where you can learn more about her and buy her fabulous books.

Welcome!

I hope all of you had a happy Easter! I enjoyed having my children home with me Friday and today. Unfortunately, that’s all the spring break they got thanks to the snow. But we had fun during the snow days, too.

I’m sorry I neglected the newsletter in March, but it was a busy month. I, of course, was baking; while Gayle was finishing Stitch Me Deadly, book two in the embroidery mystery series. Soon she will be revising Murder Takes the Cake, for its rerelease in 2011 and finishing Killer Sweet Tooth, an account of my most recent escapades.

Be sure to check out Gayle’s latest Fresh Fiction contest: Beautiful and Cozy Springtime Prize Pack.

Site Spotlight: Sweet Sensations…Cakes & More

Today I’m highlighting a cake decorator from Kentucky. Sweet Sensations…Cakes and More was originally called Cakes by Kaye. Kaye has been baking for more than 16 years. Some of the cake flavors offered by Sweet Sensations…Cakes and More are:

Dark Chocolate
Milk Chocolate
German Chocolate
White
Yellow
Marble
Strawberry
French Vanilla
Italian Creme
Spice

In addition to cakes, Kaye makes candies, cupcakes, cookies and such specialty items as pumpkin rolls! (Yum!) If you live in the Kentucky area and have a special occasion coming up, be sure and check out Sweet Sensations…Cakes and More!