GUEST POST and GIVEAWAY
Big Hair & Buttermilk Pie
(A Rose Cottage Cafe Mystery Book 1)
(A Rose Cottage Cafe Mystery Book 1)
by Lori Stacy
Big Hair & Buttermilk Pie by Lori Stacy is currently on tour with Great Escapes Book Tours. The tour stops here today for a guest post by the author and a giveaway. Please be sure to visit the other tour stops as well.
Description
Mandy Hemphill is living her dream, running the successful Rose Cottage Cafe in Orchardville, Texas, from the ground floor of a converted, old - and possibly haunted - downtown home. She even had plans to grow her business with a new outdoor patio … if only the mayor wouldn’t have turned her down.
So when the beloved mayor is found murdered, Mandy finds herself among the suspects. And now business at the cafe is dropping faster than a fallen soufflé. How can she prove her innocence and save the Rose Cottage Cafe?
Thankfully Ben, the new owner of The Orchardville Gazette, doesn’t believe she’s guilty. As the two of them set out to find the real killer, they uncover one small-town lie after the next. But the closer they get to learning the truth about who killed the mayor, the more in danger they find themselves.
Excerpt
Click below to read an excerpt.
Praise for the Book
"Big Hair & Buttermilk Pie is packed with wonderfully worded passages, some super fun characters, and drool-worthy recipes!" ~ Classy Cheapskate
"Quick, cozy, and with many sweet treats, Big Hair and Buttermilk Pie is a quick read, that can easily be read in a day or sitting." ~ Nadaness in Motion
"I thoroughly enjoyed this story as it had everything including the bad people getting what is due to them. Such a great book." ~ Community Bookstop
"Fans of cozy mysteries will feel right at home with this new series, and fans of baked goods in general will be craving a run … to their local bakery … by the time they’re finished reading." ~ Reading is my Super Power
"Loved this cozy set in Texas (and in my neck of the woods). Of course the main character owns a bakery so that always catches my interest … plus there is a recipe for buttermilk pie at the end of the book." ~ Storeybook Reviews
"The story is very well-written, and the characters are extremely likable."~ Book Babble
"Big Hair and Buttermilk Pie is a good, tightly written cozy mystery read with plenty of interesting characters and Texas charm." ~ Sissy – Bubble Bath Books
"Big Hair & Buttermilk Pie is a fun and easy to read cozy mystery. It has a good mixture of humor, mystery, and a touch of romance that will easily keep the reader engaged as they follow Mandy and Ben’s amateur investigative adventure." ~ Jersey Girl Book Reviews
Guest Post by the Author
Who Stole Your Story?
Have you read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) yet? You should. It’s a book about, as the subtitle goes, "Creative Living Without Fear". Much of it is Gilbert’s own story, but whether you are a writer, a reader or someone who loves to make beautiful things, you will certainly appreciate the advice she has about uncovering the creative artist in each of us.
Although I read the book a few months ago - meaning, I have forgotten much of its content - one story from it stood out in my mind, and I doubt I will ever forget it. Gilbert talks about how at one point she had the idea for a novel about a woman from the midwest going to the Amazon rain forest. She had this fully fleshed out story in her head - all it needed was to be written. But life, as it tends to do even for the most prolific of writers, got in the way, and the story got shelved. Fast forward some months later when she is talking to a fellow author, the immensely talented Ann Patchett, and somehow Gilbert’s Amazon story comes up. It turns out, almost the same exact idea had come into Patchett’s mind (after it sort of floated away from Gilbert). But Patchett had actually written the story, called State of Wonder, and had it published to much acclaim.
Instead of stomping her feet and lamenting on how she was robbed, Gilbert instead draws the conclusion that ideas that come to us must be acted upon lest they move on to the next creative soul to be brought to life. I know, it’s a little far-fetched and quasi new-agey, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt she was on to something.
I remember for years having an idea for a book in my head about a woman in her twenties who is just about average at everything - average shoe size, average height, average you-name-it. She’d love to find the guy of her dreams, but it’s not happening for her. Then she stumbles upon a statistic that the average woman will have to date about 15 men before finding Mr. Right. A quick count reveals that she’s nine shy of meeting her mate, so she goes about duty-dating to get to that magic number of 15.
I had everything planned: where she lived, what some of the dates would be, and the sweet ending where number 13 actually turns out to be the one, and she has to sort of shift her thinking (and discover a bit of a mathematical error) to realize he’s the guy.
But I never finished the book. OK, I never started it. And one day in 2011, as I’m flipping channels, I see an ad for an Anna Faris movie, What’s Your Number, based on the book 20 Times A Lady. The premise, while not exactly the same, has to do with finding that magic number of guys before you find Mr. Right. Now I’m not claiming I could have written something as good as or better than Karyn Bosnak’s book, but I did feel as though I had let a good idea just pass me by. And perhaps, as Elizabeth Gilbert says, it found its way to an author who would actually act upon it.
Let’s be honest, for every Facebook or Pioneer Woman or Fifty Shades of Grey, there are probably legions of people thumping themselves in the head for not having acted upon a similar idea before Mark Zuckerberg, Ree Drummond or E. L. James did. Right now, you probably have a fabulous story in your head, practically completely written, that you are not acting upon. But if you don’t act upon it, soon it will float out of your mind and find its way to another creative person, someone who will bring it to life. Or perhaps that fabulous idea that just came to you recently is one that someone else had been brewing in their mind, but it never came to fruition.
You have a limited time with the ideas you have been granted. It’s time to stop procrastinating and share these ideas with the world, or else it's time to let them go entirely. I know I lost one story that I had nursed along for many months, and I don’t intend to lose another.
About the Author
After her twenty-year career in magazine publishing came to a screeching halt faster than you can say "print is dead", Lori Stacy decided it was time to finally turn the many stories she had been crafting in her head over the years into books.
Lori has authored a number of fiction and nonfiction books for young adults, has written articles for both print and online publications, and has written about hotels for one of the world’s leading search engines.
She lives in Texas with her husband and three children. When she is not writing, you can usually find her in the kitchen baking treats (which she says are for her children) or trying to train their hundred-pound golden retriever, an obedience school dropout.
Giveaway
Enter the tour-wide giveaway for a chance to win an ebook copy of Big Hair & Buttermilk Pie by Lori Stacy and a buttermilk pie shipped from Buttermilk Sky Pie Shop, Franklin, Tennessee.
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