First, let me explain that wild title above.  My series for Penguin/Obsidian Books are all cozy mysteries, and each one has a comfort food theme. You might ask, “Hey, Chris, what is comfort food? “  Well, dear reader, I think of it as food or sweets that grandma used to make, or mom used to make, or dad always made, or Joe at the diner makes.  It’s your favorite go-to food when you are feeling low and need some comfort.  It’s the way mom makes that sweet potato casserole.  It’s that meatloaf you grew up on.  It’s grandma’s apple pie and that you now make every Thanksgiving for your kids.  And, hopefully, one of your kids will make it for their kids. You might also ask, “Hey, Chris, what’s the setting for your comfort food series?”  Well, dear reader, I picked the perfect setting for my series: a diner!  My character Trixie Matkowski’s Silver Bullet Diner, located in small town Sandy Harbor, New York, is on the shore of Lake Ontario. Trixie Matkowski has the same first name as my favorite childhood sleuth, Trixie Belden.  When I was a kid, you could always find me lying on my bed, reading…

We’re in the season of winter and I live in Minnesota, the Land of 10,000 Frozen Lakes. Christmas 2014 is now part of our memory banks, but I know there are people of all ages who were given a snow globe as a gift and are this very minute picking them up, giving them a shaking, and watching the snow settle over a wide variety of scenes. From little on, I have been drawn to the seeming magic of snow globes. I loved giving them as gifts for my children because they always appreciated them. Even now, when I see one on display in a store, I can’t resist flipping it over then back again to see how the scene looks in a snow fall. When the opportunity arose to write a series set in a shop that specializes in snow globes, it was a natural fit. The catch is that Camryn Brooks, the one running Curio Finds, never planned to do anything like that in her lifetime. She had a successful career as a senator’s legislative affairs director in Washington D.C., and thought she’d be working there forever. But a scandal changed her career path and she returned to…

The eighth White House Chef mystery, ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MENUS, debuts January 6, 2015, and I can truthfully say that if it weren’t for my amazing and fabulous readers, she wouldn’t still be at work feeding the First Family and saving the world in her spare time. When my most recent Manor House Mystery, GRACE AGAINST THE CLOCK, came out in July, I came up with a fun quiz about the series. It went over so well with readers that I decided to try it again. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve read one, four, seven, or none of the prior titles¾this is just for kicks and a chance for me to share a little behind-the-book trivia with you: 1. The first White House Chef mystery, STATE OF THE ONION, opens with an intruder racing across the front lawn of the White House. How does Ollie stop him? a) She alerts the Secret Service b) She trips him c) She smacks him in the head with a frying pan d) She full-body tackles him 2. In one of the early scenes in HAIL TO THE CHEF the First Lady attempts to make a love connection between her nephew, Sean, and our…

Most Wednesday mornings, I have breakfast with my bestie who is NOT a writer. She’s a finance professor and we used to live across the street from one another. Guess what we talked about this morning: A. Aliens in my backyard who pooped oil. Or maybe it was an oil-like disgusting substance that is now all over my yard. B. How her son and my daughter look great together in pictures but would be disastrous together in a relationship. Or maybe not… C. My daughter’s cat vs. mouse adventures. Or was that how do you get a mouse away from the cat who caught it? D. How to corner the commodities futures market in…er…something. Answer: All of the above — but mostly D! Our conversation wanders wildly all over the place, but the bulk of our conversation this morning was on the commodities futures market. Seriously. She had to explain it to me (about three times) before I understood. And then we developed a bad guy conspiracy to corner the market on something. So what market will be threatened by my bad guy? A. A true to life story from the headlines: treasury bonds B. A sexier true to life…