Please welcome author Camille Minichino today to the blog. She
has a few thoughts on Cinco de Mayo and the new book, Sleuthing Women: 10
First-in-Series Mysteries.
“A
Holiday By Any Other Name” by Camille Minichino
Thanks to Lois Winston for her work in setting up
a tour for our joint project, Sleuthing
Women: 10 First-in-Series Mysteries, and to Kevin Tipple for the chance to
meet his readers on Cinco de Mayo, a special holiday. One reason it's special:
it earned me my first one-star review. I'll explain.
First, I never met a holiday or
celebration I didn't like. Birthdays, anniversaries, Saints' Days, Countries'
Days—I love them all. When I taught physics in college, my students and I
gathered in the lounge every Friday to celebrate the birthday of a scientist or
mathematician. Enrico Fermi on September 29, 1901; Marie Curie on November 7,
1867; the patent for the Sundback zipper on March 20, 1917.
I may be the only person you know
who begs a friend for a ticket to her son's high school graduation, even though
I met him only once as we passed in her driveway. I love pomp. I love
circumstance.
I grew up just outside of Boston,
where Patriot's Day (April 19) was as big a holiday as the Fourth of July, and
Bunker Hill Day (June 17) overshadowed Labor Day.
I cheered for my father every
year as he marched in the Sons of Italy band on the Feast of San Gennaro.
Technically on September 19, but in reality the feast went on for about two weeks
at the end of September, because there was no end to the number of sausages or
cannoli one could consume in honor of the fourteenth century Neapolitan martyr.
The odor of fried zeppoli would last another two weeks.
One of the biggest fusses erupted
on Columbus Day (October 12) with the city's largest parade taking over the
news. It was a while before I realized that the rest of the country hardly
takes notice of the anniversaries of Paul Revere's ride or our loss to the
British at the Battle of Bunker Hill. It took even longer for me to accept that
some parts of the country didn't even believe in Columbus's achievement.
I was nearly forty when I first
ventured out of the EST zone and traveled to California, where among the
parking meter holidays for October was Indigenous Peoples Day!
I'll join in on celebrations of
any kind, however, and so I was ready to embrace some of the new-to-me holidays
like Cesar Chavez Day (March 31) and the Feast of Junipero Serra (July 1).
Admissions Day had me confused at first— was the whole state celebrating the
arrival of freshmen to various campuses? Some kind soul eventually explained to
me that September 9 was the day California had been admitted to the union.
"How can you not know
that?" a native asked me.
"You're right, I should
know," I responded, struggling to gain back my dignity. "After all,
Massachusetts was on the Admitting Committee."
In other words: give me a break.
Back to Cinco de Mayo. There was
a time when I celebrated May 5 only as the birthday of Peter Cooper Hewitt,
inventor of the mercury vapor lamp, precursor to fluorescent lighting.
My ignorance caught up with me
when my first book, The Hydrogen Murder,
was released. In it, my protagonist, a Boston native like me, refers to Cinco
de Mayo as Mexican Independence Day.
Shoot
me now. I
received a flurry of attacks. Just like a
gringo, they all said.
It turns out (in case you're also
a short-sighted East Coaster) that the real Mexican Independence Day is
September 16. Cinco de Mayo celebrates a short-lived victory over the French,
and apparently is a big deal only in the US.
But count on me to join in on
your favorite holiday celebration. Especially if there's cake involved, I'll be
there. Just give me a few minutes and an Internet connection so I can bone up
on the correct details.
The Hydrogen Murder is one of the ten books featured
in Sleuthing
Women: 10 First-in-Series Mysteries, a collection of full-length
mysteries featuring murder and assorted mayhem by ten critically acclaimed,
award-winning, and bestselling authors. Each novel in the set is the first book
in an established multi-book series—a total of over 3,000 pages of reading
pleasure for lovers of amateur sleuth, caper, and cozy mysteries, with a
combined total of over 1700 reviews on Amazon, averaging 4 stars. Titles
include:
Assault
With a Deadly Glue Gun,
an Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery by Lois Winston—Working mom Anastasia is
clueless about her husband’s gambling addiction until he permanently cashes in
his chips and her comfortable middle-class life craps out. He leaves her with
staggering debt, his communist mother, and a loan shark demanding $50,000. Then
she’s accused of murder…
Murder
Among Neighbors,
a Kate Austen Suburban Mystery by Jonnie Jacobs — When Kate Austen’s socialite
neighbor, Pepper Livingston, is murdered, Kate becomes involved in a sea of
steamy secrets that bring her face to face with shocking truths—and handsome
detective Michael Stone.
Skeleton in a Dead
Space, a Kelly
O’Connell Mystery by Judy Alter—Real estate isn’t
a dangerous profession until Kelly O’Connell
stumbles over a skeleton and runs into serial killers and cold-blooded
murderers in a home being renovated in Fort Worth. Kelly barges through life
trying to keep from angering her policeman boyfriend Mike and protect her two
young daughters.
In
for a Penny, a
Cleopatra Jones Mystery by Maggie Toussaint—Accountant Cleo faces an unwanted
hazard when her golf ball lands on a dead banker. The cops think her BFF shot
him, so Cleo sets out to prove them wrong. She ventures into the dating world,
wrangles her teens, adopts the victim’s dog, and tries to rein in her mom…until
the killer puts a target on Cleo’s back.
The
Hydrogen Murder,
a Periodic Table Mystery by Camille Minichino—A retired physicist returns to
her hometown of Revere, Massachusetts and moves into an apartment above her
friends' funeral home. When she signs on to help the Police Department with a
science-related homicide, she doesn't realize she may have hundreds of cases
ahead of her.
Retirement Can Be
Murder, A Baby
Boomer Mystery by Susan Santangelo—Carol Andrews dreads her husband Jim’s
upcoming retirement more than a root canal without Novocain. She can’t imagine
anything worse than having an at-home husband with time on his hands and
nothing to fill it—until Jim is suspected of murdering his retirement coach.
Dead
Air, A Talk
Radio Mystery by Mary Kennedy—Psychologist Maggie Walsh moves from NY to Florida
to become the host of WYME's On the Couch with Maggie Walsh. When her
guest, New Age prophet Guru Sanjay Gingii, turns up dead, her new roommate Lark
becomes the prime suspect. Maggie must prove Lark innocent while dealing with a
killer who needs more than just therapy.
A Dead Red Cadillac, A Dead Red Mystery by RP Dahlke—When
her vintage Cadillac is found tail-fins up in a nearby lake, the police ask aero-ag
pilot Lalla Bains why an elderly widowed piano teacher is found strapped in the
driver’s seat. Lalla confronts suspects,
informants, cross-dressers, drug-running crop dusters, and a crazy
Chihuahua on her quest to find the killer.
Murder
is a Family Business, an
Alvarez Family Murder Mystery by Heather Haven—Just because a man cheats
on his wife and makes Danny DeVito look tall, dark and handsome, is that any
reason to kill him? The reluctant and quirky PI, Lee Alvarez, has her
work cut out for her when the man is murdered on her watch. Of all the nerve.
Murder,
Honey, a Carol
Sabala Mystery by Vinnie Hansen—When the head chef collapses into baker Carol
Sabala’s cookie dough, she is thrust into her first murder investigation.
Suspects abound at Archibald’s, the swanky Santa Cruz restaurant where Carol
works. The head chef cut a swath of people who wanted him dead from ex-lovers
to bitter rivals to greedy relatives.
Other Buy
Links
Camille Minichino ©20156
Bio: Camille Minichino is a retired
physicist turned writer. When her first book, Nuclear Waste Management Abstracts, was not a bestseller, she
turned to mystery fiction. She has written more than 20 novels and many
articles and short stories. Find her at www.minichino.com.
.jpg)
Posts
