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Tag: blog

Recipes

Sausage Bread

Sausage bread is something my family started making when I was a kid. It’s become a family favorite. I make it all through fall and winter to accompany soup, most often potato cheese soup.If I start my (gluten-free) bread dough around 3:30, or even 4:00 PM. I use this Gluten Free on a Shoestring French Bread recipe.  When I have time and plan ahead, I use this Let Them Eat Gluten-Free recipe.You can

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Recipes

Rye Pumpernickel Rolls

Olaya Solis is a master bread baker. In Death Gone a-Rye, she makes Rye Pumpernickel Rolls. A basket of them end up at Owen Culpepper’s house. Everybody loves Olaya’s bread.

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Recipes

Christmas Punch

Ivy helps at a catered party in A Murder Yule Regret, the 6th Bread Shop Mystery. She makes this delicious punch. It is so beautiful and so festive!

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Recipes

Yule Log (BÛCHE DE NOËL)

Lindsay Conchar, founder of Life, Love & Sugar, graciously shared this Yule Log cake recipe with me. It’s so good! Eliza Fox, one of the characters in A Murder Yule Regret, the 6th Bread Shop mystery, attempts this showpiece cake. In the olden days in France, the spirit of love drew families together on Christmas Eve. Family members surrounded the blazing “yule log” to warm themselves before walking to Midnight

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Blog

Which Comes First, the Cover or the Book?

This is a chicken or the egg question. Does the cover come first, thereby influencing the book? Or does the book come first, informing the elements of the cover? For me, I can honestly answer both those questions with a resounding YES! Case in Point(s): Book First: The Walking Bread, Deadly Patterns, and the upcoming (April 27th!) Death Gone a-Rye are both great examples of the book coming first. I

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Blog

Meet Bean and Dobby

If you follow me on social media, you know I am crazy about my two dogs. They’re my little buddies, following me around all day, curling up in my office while I write, and whining just enough to get me outside just when I need a break. Meet Bean! Bean is closing in on 9 years old. We adopted him from the North Texas Pug Rescue when he was about

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Blog

Meet Pippin Lane Hawthorne

Pippin is the heroine of my Book Magic books. She’s 29 years old and has a twin brother named Grey. If you’ve read Murder in Devil’s Cove, you know that Leo Hawthorne, Pippin and Grey’s father, was a huge Tolkien fan. Pippin was named for Peregrin, and Grey for Gandalf. I’ve been doing a #15DaysInMyWritingWorld on Instagram. One of the daily prompts was about my favorite themes. All of my books

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Blog

The Crying Game

I’m what I call hyper-emotional. It doesn’t take a lot for my tears to flow. Try as I might (and do), I really cannot control that emotional side of myself. On top of that, I’m 100% an ugly crier . I can’t talk when I cry. My voice goes weird. It’s not a pretty thing. At all. What is that about?! Here’s the thing, though. If I’m feeling emotionally on edge, meaning the tears are

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Blog

Gifts for Book Lovers

I love all things bookish. My Instagram name is Bookishly_Cozy. I have literary themed tea. Bookish mugs (a mug that actually says, Bookish!). Bookish tee shirts and figurines and tote bags. Basically, a book lover can never have too many things that are bookish. So, I’ve put together a page on my website featuring some (yes, only some!) of my favorite bookish things. It’s called Gifts for Book Lovers (I’ll be

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Blog

Vintage Typewriters

I’ve been on the hunt for a vintage typewriter for so long. They’re hard to find, at least around where I live. I love the look of them…sometimes I think I was born in the wrong era because I’m a pioneer woman at heart, with a love of home cooking, canning, fibers, old rotary telephones, and, yes, vintage typewriters. A friend of mine found this mid-century beauty at a local

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Blog

Listen to Chapter 1 of Murder in Devil’s Cove!

Listen to Chapter 1 from Murder in Devil’s Cove! It’s available wherever you listen to audiobooks. The narrator, Abigail Reno, is absolutely phenomenal. She captures the light Southern tinge in Pippin’s voice and the book as a whole. I hope you enjoy this book and series. It’s pretty special!   XO       “A combination of magic and mystery, “Murder In Devil’s Cove” by Melissa Bourbon is a deftly

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Blog

Every Word You Cannot Say

I like to put quotes or lines from a book or poem at chapter beginnings in my Book Magic books, as well as in the women’s fiction novel I’m currently writing. They ground the chapter for me, and underscore the theme or emotion I want readers to take from it. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀One of my daughter’s best friends gave her this book of poetry for Christmas. I flipped through it one evening

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Behind the Books

Twice I’ve been in the situation where a series I’ve written is finished and I kind of spin around, wondering what in the world I should write next. The first time was after the first two Lola Cruz PI books were done and in the world. They were originally released in hard cover and didn’t sell all that well. This still floors me because I love Lola so, so much, and I

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Book Excerpt: Murder in Devil’s Cove

Read the first chapter of Murder in Devil’s Cove Chapter 1 “Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.” ~Charles Dickens The island of Devil’s Cove lay between the mainland and the barrier islands on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, smack in the middle of four ocean channels. Albermarle Sound was to the north.

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Book Excerpts

Book Excerpt: Living the Vida Lola

Living the Vida Lola   Prologue When I was fourteen years old, I snapped pictures of Jack Callaghan doing the horizontal salsa in the backseat of a car with Greta Pritchard. That’s when I knew for sure I’d grow up to be a private eye. I’d stooped to low levels in order to spy on him: disguising myself as a substitute custodian and pushing a mop cart into the boys’

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Book Excerpts

Book Excerpt: Pleating for Mercy

Pleating for Mercy A Magical Dressmaking Mystery   Chapter 1 Rumors about the Cassidy women and their magic had long swirled through Bliss, Texas, like a gathering tornado. For 150 years, my family had managed to dodge most of the rumors, brushing off the idea that magic infused their handwork, and chalking up any unusual goings-on to coincidence. But we all knew that the magic started the very day Butch

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