{"id":8324,"date":"2020-01-07T07:43:12","date_gmt":"2020-01-07T12:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8324"},"modified":"2020-01-07T07:46:41","modified_gmt":"2020-01-07T12:46:41","slug":"a-juicy-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8324","title":{"rendered":"A Juicy Idea"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The\norigin stories of novels are as varied as their authors. The idea for the Harry\nPotter series first came to J.K. Rowling while traveling on a train delayed between\nManchester and London. (No more whining about airport delays, please. Use your\ntime wisely). Lee Child has variously attributed the creation of Jack Reacher\nto sheer commercial motivation and as \u201can antidote to the all the depressed and\nmiserable alcoholics that peopled the genre.\u201d The writing duo of Douglas Preston\nand Lincoln Child, authors of several crime thriller series, began by leveraging\nthe pair\u2019s publishing and museum experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the firehose of information about authors and their books that flows across my computer screen daily, I recently noticed another intriguing origin story. A mother and son duo created a new book called The Gourmet Gangster<\/em>. It combines episodes in the life of a fictional New York gangster who owns an upscale restaurant with real recipes the apocryphal restaurant serves. And the book\u2019s roots are as quirky as the title suggests. Here\u2019s how it came about, according to author Marcia Rosen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\nwrote the mysteries, and my son Jory provided the recipes. Together we created\nsome murderous <\/em>titles and decided which types of food would best fit the\nstories.\u201d These titles include \u201cHe\u2019s a Dead Duck\u201d paired with a recipe for Duck\n\u00e0 l\u2019Orange and a recipe for \u201cThe Quiche (Kiss) of Death.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the impetus for the collection goes even deeper. Marcia\nsays in the book\u2019s epilogue that her father was a Jewish gangster in Buffalo,\nNew York, who owned a gambling hall and consorted with a tribe of colorful local\ncharacters. She says: \u201cRemembering my father, and picturing him at a restaurant\nhe owned when I was a teenager, initially inspired me to write about events set\nin a restaurant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m a mystery writer, so of course they had to be about\nmurder, mayhem and, I thought, a fun bit of madness. Loving short stories, I\ndecided to write a series of short mysteries, all involving the same criminal\norganization and taking place in a restaurant called Manhattan Shadow<\/em>. The\nstories are from my vivid and sometimes frightening imagination, played out for\nthe pleasure of mystery lovers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe idea of adding recipes made good sense, since my father\nwas a chef. Level Best Books, our publisher, suggested putting a recipe before\neach story. \u2018Great idea,\u2019 I responded. \u2018My son is a fabulous cook; he can\ncreate the recipes.\u2019\u201d And that\u2019s how Marcia and Jory ended up with \u201cThe Chicken\nPiccata Caper,\u201d \u201cThe Sacrificial Lamb,\u201d and, of course, \u201cA Deadly Delicious\nDessert,\u201d based on Marcia\u2019s father\u2019s recipe for donuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Says Marcia, \u201cAs I considered mystery stories for the book,\nI thought about places familiar to me. One story, \u2018He\u2019s A Dead Duck,\u2019 was a\nreminder of a duck pond we lived near on Long Island, years ago. I loved the\nidea of creating a story beginning with a duck recipe!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Son Jory (a marketing\/advertising executive by day) adds,\n\u201cIn my family, today, we truly look forward to our evening meals. I have three\nkids (two girls, ages 9 and 7, and a boy, age 3). My grandfather would have\nadored them. What I cook allows my children to get know my grandfather through\nevery bite of the cuisine he created. I hope the recipes in my mother\u2019s book\ninspire good memories and experiences in others, too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cReally,\u201d Marcia says, \u201cI\u2019m deadly serious!\u201d\n\nRead more about Marcia\u2019s writing and her series,\nThe Senior Sleuths, on her\nwebsite<\/a>.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The origin stories of novels are as varied as their authors. The idea for the Harry Potter series first came to J.K. Rowling while traveling on a train delayed between Manchester and London. (No more whining about airport delays, please. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"A Juicy Idea - love of food and a gangster father inspired a new book of crime stories by the mother-son duo of Marcia and Jory Rosen. Contrary to expectation, she wrote the mysteries; he created the recipes.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,40,174,29],"tags":[1676],"class_list":["post-8324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-fiction","category-first-draft-blog","category-writing","tag-marcia-rosen"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Marcia-Rosen.jpg?fit=1512%2C2016&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2ag","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8324"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8326,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8324\/revisions\/8326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}