A Painting to Die For by Joan C. Curtis

 
Painting to Die For

Book 3 Jenna Scali Mystery Series

Jenna’s quiet weekend turns upside down when her house is ransacked and a body is found with her name and number in its possession. Meanwhile her long-lost cousins show up with stories about international art theft dating back to World War II.

While Jenna questions the motives of her dead father in his connection to stolen art, the police find a second body with Jenna’s name in its possession and she becomes the primary link in two murder inquiries. Sidestepping the police and dodging the mob, she and her best friend, Quentin, embark on their own investigation to save themselves and Jenna’s cousins from untimely deaths.

Offset by the quiet university town where faculty and students mill about, minding their own business, Jenna is kidnapped and held at gunpoint while her double-crossing, lying cousins chase after the missing painting worth millions.

A Painting to Die For forms a web of deceit that leaves Jenna doubting everything she believes about her father and his Italian heritage.

Dr. Joan Curtis is an award winning writer who has published 8 books and numerous stories.

The e-Murderer: Book 1 Jenna Scali mystery series won the GOLD in the Global eBook Awards for 2016 for Mystery.

The Clock Strikes Midnight has won three major awards. FINALIST in the prestigious Eric Hoffer Book Awards 2016, FIRST PLACE Royal Palm Literary Award for mainstream/literary 2015 and the Silver in the Global eBook Awards for 2015 for Fiction/Suspense

Murder on Moonshine Hill won the SILVER in the Global eBook Awards for 2017 Mystery and the BRONZE 2017 for Southern fiction Reader's Favorite.

Guest Post:

What Are Your Characters Eating? Tips to Add Food in Your Books

Do authors need to spend lots of time describing the hamburger their main character is eating? The juicy delight of a succulent tomato sandwich? The cool refreshment of lemonade? How much is too much? In my opinion the food must have a purpose in your story.

In other words, if it shares something about the character, then authors should use food to help with that description. A robust character, who loves to eat and sits down to wonderful meals, delights the reader. The best example of that is in the Detective Montalbano series by Andrea Camilleri. Salvo looks forward to his lunch and dinners and describes their taste, smell, texture with gusto. It’s all related to his character and his relationship to other characters. He never talks while he eats because talk gets in the way of the pleasure of eating. My imagination takes me to his patio off his house on the sea with him sipping a glass of red wine and eating the delicious Pasta alle Vongole while gentle waves wash on the shore.

If the food has a purpose in the writing, then use t and make it real to the reader. If not, skim over it. Why discuss an entire meal and what they ate if it tells the reader nothing?

Here are some things food can do to enhance your story:

§  Fill in the blanks about the character. As I described above. The food in the Montalbano series is nearly as important as the events of the murder. Rarely does anyone interrupt the detective while he’s eating. If someone does, it must be very important. If he leaves a good meal because of some event, idea or instinct, it must be life and death. The reader knows this because Camilleri prepared us for it.

§  Tell the reader more about the character. Food not only tells us what the character eats but what the character likes to eat. How about a character who has no food in the house? Or one that loves to shop in the open market? The fact the character has no food suggests he or she doesn’t spend much time cooking. Eating isn’t important. The reverse is true of the character who shops for the best potatoes in the farmers market. A character might shun sugar products because he or she is diabetic. Perhaps that’s a clue? A character might eat a lot of carbohydrates because he or she is planning on running a marathon. Is this characteristic of this character or a clue? Imagine how much you can reveal by just sitting the character down to a meal.

§  Tell the reader about the mood of the story. We all recognize a romantic dinner with candlelight and a bottle of champagne. Those items set up the mood for the evening. But imagine a lunch meeting with your boss and being so nervous you cannot eat. You order food that matches that feeling. Perhaps the place where you meet is crowded with people or as empty as a tomb. All those decisions describe mood. Barbara Pym did a beautiful job of describing mood in Excellent Women. The meal matches the mood, often dreary. Her main character, Mildred, is rather dreary as well and her larder usually contains no more than a stale cake or a slice of bread.

§  Suggest characteristics or personality traits of the character. In my current work in progress I describe a character suffering for Attention Deficit Disorder. When she sits down to eat with a rather neat, compulsive detective, her food disappears so fast, he’s astonished. He eats as deliberately as a “snail” according to his fellow policeman. In these instances what is even more important than the food way the characters eat.

§  The cultural habits of the time. In most English books, the characters are enjoying afternoon teas. In the Swedish mysteries, the characters eat hearty stews and lots of coffee. American books are full of fast-food eating. All these types of eating habits and the food choices give the reader a feel for the culture. As writers it’s important of us to share those morays with our readers. In later years our descriptions might be all that’s left to describe the way we lived in the 20th and 21st Centuries.

These are some ways that writers can use food to help make their characters and their stories more colorful. Don’t just say the character ate lunch. Tell us what they ate, how they ate that lunch, who they were with. Put some meat on the lunch plate to make it more palatable to the reader.