Check out Friday’s blog, S2E7: KARIN SLAUGHTER’S THE LAST WIDOW AND SPECIAL GUEST HOW TO FEED A LOON!, for all the links we talked about in our book club and Writer’s Perspective discussions.

We also had a lot of fun with the wine and food discussion! The links for the wine and recipes can be found in Monday’s blog, BOOK CLUB IDEA: HOW TO FEED A LOON’S PECAN PIE AND JAM JAR SWEET SYRAH.

I’m still laughing over our fun talk with Kris and Wesley … and their Cheese Ball! You really have to listen and laugh for yourself!

Listen and subscribe right here!

You can find all our episodes and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play or right here on our website!

Below is a transcript of this episode, but trust me, it is more fun to listen! And you can listen while you exercise, clean, ride the subway, or are on the road.

Welcome to Game of Books with Cathi in South Dakota. That’s me. And Christie in South Florida. That’s me we’re two newbie writers sharing our take on wine, food and mystery books. And the authors who write them. Join us for the fun.

Welcome everyone to episode seven of our killer season two. Time seems to be flying by, no matter how much you want it to slow down.

I know. That’s why I am so glad, Cathi, that we’re taking this time to sit back with a glass of wine and talk about one of our favorite books and authors.

I know, I feel like we say that all the time, but I really love The Last Widow by Karin Slaughter.

I know her books like the really, really fast paced and they’re so tightly woven. You know that I, I ended up bingeing them every time. I just can’t stop. And this book was no exception.

You know, I think we mentioned, um, this when we were talking with Lisa Unger a couple of episodes ago, but we had the pleasure of seeing Karin Slaughter at ThrillerFest interviewing uh, Lisa Unger. And she’s so funny. She’s so funny in person. She has a really dry great wit. Um, but if you have a second check out her social media, it’s pretty great. Her, um, I follow her on Instagram and when she, she’s kind of started this thing where when she gets, uh, like a number one book in a particular country, she does a little dance, like a little celebratory dance. It’s pretty great.

Well maybe one day we can get her on corks and conversation. That would be really cool, wouldn’t it?

I would love to talk with Karin Slaughter.

We’re always dreaming.

Yeah, that’s right. Okay. But for now, what do you say? We twist open this bottle … Okay … of our wines today. You’re going to do that?

Yeah, I’m already, I’m a, I’m a step ahead of you. I’m about to take a sip. You can tell me about the wine though.

Well, okay. I will tell you about the wine, but I also do want to say we have kind of a surprise about the food, so that’ll be coming up also. So just hold on.

Can’t wait for that.

Okay. Yeah, I know. So excited. Okay. But for the wine we are enjoying today Jam Jar, which is just a really cool label and it is a sweet Shiraz.

It is sweet. I just took a sip and it is sweet.

Yeah it is. And so, um, let me just explain. I chose, um, for our book club meeting to have pecan pie kind of a Southern dessert, a bar and featuring pecan pie. And I’ll tell you why because right away and Karin’s book, um, that is what’s being served in just one of the opening scenes and they’re having their Southern meal is listen to this, it’s crazy. Corn bread, biscuits, field peas, black eyed peas, sweet potato souffle, chocolate cake, pecan pie and ice cream thick enough to break a spoon. Oh yeah. I thought, well clearly we’re having as a dessert bar here. So yeah. So I thought the pecan pie would be perfect, right? With the holidays coming up. And so I started doing some searching on what wine you can pair with pecan pie. And I found it was interesting, I found an article from tastingtable.com and they suggest with pecan pie that you actually go sweeter cause I was thinking pecan pie is really, really sweet. And so I was trying to think of what, but they suggest they actually suggested the Jam Jar Sweet Shiraz because a sweeter red works well with the rich nutty pecan pie. So interesting. Take a taste.

Yes. Well I do. I I, I’ve already had a little taste and just say, you know what, it’s, it is sweet. It’s very, it’s Jam Jar make sense? Cause it’s so fruity. Yeah. I mean it’s really very fruity. Yeah.

And so the tasting notes say it’s a fun style, more, more fun than your typical Shiraz. Um, this fresh fruity sweet, some ice sweet wine displays, aromas and flavors of ripe juicy berries with dark chocolate undertones. What do you think? Can you definitely get the Berry?

Yeah, I definitely get the berries and I, do you know what? Because, um, I’m not normally like a sweet wine, but this isn’t, this is sweet, but it’s not, it’s still got the little bit of a red wine. So maybe that’s the dark chocolate coming through or something, you know?

Yeah, it definitely isn’t, wouldn’t be like my go to, I mean this is very sweet, right.

But it’s what we got today, man. So I’m drinking it.

Yeah. But it’s not, I don’t dislike it. I mean, but it’s not, you know, it’s really mild, like when you first drank it, right. It’s not that big bold flavor that we often will go for.

It reminds me of like an after dinner wine, which I guess like a port or something, you know, it’s kinda sweet and, but anyway, we can deal with it.

Yes. Yes. So now for the surprise, this is kind of great. Okay. So we’re going to be talking with ready, talking with Kris and Wesley from How to Feed a Loon. Um, they have this, this two guys, they’ve, um, been together for a long time, cooking together for a long time and they now have this great cooking website. And a YouTube page and they have all kinds of recipes and videos to go along with them. I mean, they do everything from, they do all kinds of cuisine. Oh great. They do a great pecan pie and so I thought maybe they’ll talk to us about it and so they are going to talk to us. So let’s give them a call. Yeah.

Great. Okay.

Hello? Hello, Kris, Wesley? Yeah, this is Christie and Cathi. Hi Christie and Cathi. Thanks so much for talking with us today.

Of course. Well thanks. We’re wanting to talk to us. We’re, we’re so happy that you reached out to us.

Well, we’re big fans of your site and your videos and we’re just really excited to be talking to you today about your pecan pie recipe.

That’s awesome. Well, we’re, we’re big fans of you guys too. Like I said, when you know, when you first reach out to us and we really enjoyed your, your podcast so much and think it’s like really innovative and it, and like you said, it’s kind of, you guys have the same style that we do, is that you like to share some fun information that people like to hear, but also you have fun while you’re doing that too. And that’s, that’s what we love.

Yeah, absolutely. We love to do this every weekend. Um, and we love your recipes. And I have a question just to start out because I think I say pecan weird.

Thank you. So pecan. Not weird at all. Embrace the baby. Hi, this is Wesley. I grew up in the Midwest in a small town in South Dakota and I always said pecans.

Oh really? Oh good. Yeah. Wesley grew up about two hours from me. Wesley, I’m in Brookings and I say pecan also. Oh

yeah, I forgot about that.

Yeah, no, no. See, but you just said pecan and I say pecan. So, see what I’m saying? That the, I looked at a YouTube video today about it and then there’s three different ways and I guess everybody, everybody interchanges it too. So I just thought it was funny. I was like, Oh my gosh, are we going to be able to communicate? So you guys, what I, what I love is that your premise, I stalked your website pretty deep and I love that your premise is that you do really delicious food and you want to have a ton of fun doing it. And I just want to know how you started taking this out of your kitchen or at least recording all of this. Like how’d you guys get started?

Well. Um, I mean that is, well that’s I think sort of our, our premise in life. If you’re to do something, you know, why not have a good time doing it out loud or proud, make it, let’s make it fun, but ever possible. So, I’ll just jump in here cause I, I started the food blog, um, six, about six years ago now, I think it’s almost exactly six years ago. And, um, you know, I was, I grown up in a family that likes to cook and love eating, you know, being from Texas. There’s steak and beef and briskets and all that. All that good stuff … that’s not so good for you. But, um, anyway, so I just, eating was always something that we, that I enjoyed doing and I, and I started cooking and both of my cooks, both my parents were and still are good cooks. So I started cooking when I was in college and then just continued to do it. And I was never afraid to go in there and kitchen and cook something. And, um, Wesley obviously loved to eat my food. Yeah. I don’t mean obviously. Hence the name of the blog, but we’ve, we’ve been together for 30 years, so I’ve cooked a lot of meals for him. And, um, he’s cooked one or two for me.

Kris actually, he made this salad. It was a grilled, grilled shrimp and black bean salad one day and decided to just take a picture of it and he took a picture and all of a sudden all these people on Facebook were like, why don’t you start a food blog? It was one of those things. It was just like, you know, on Facebook sometimes you get like that immediate gratification, you know, where like everyone was like, Oh my God, that looks amazing. You know, I want the recipe. So then I posted another something else a little later, like the next week, and got the same reaction. So it got me thinking, well, maybe I’ll start a food blog just for the fun of it. And, um, so have you started, uh, you know, coming up with the recipes and then I started to learn how to take, uh, pictures too to get better photography. So it’s, I mean, it literally, it really did just start, uh, out as a kind of a hobby for myself. And, uh, and I think another thing that, I dunno, it seemed to get people’s attention was coming. The name was kind of unusual. And then when they man, they got the humor and, you know, people love, we’ve learned, people love good food and they love some, some humor. And, um, so that was the long way of telling you.

Well It sounds right up our alley because we do love food and we do love humor. So there you go.

Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of people are that way. I mean, we, you know, we get some people say, okay, get to the point, you know, and, and we, we’ve kind of refined our style a little bit over the years because there, you know, yeah. A lot of people. I mean, they do. I mean, they find us because they’re looking for a recipe for something and then they enjoy our sort of, our banter and us just being ourselves. And a lot of times we get you know, like, I love you guys, but can you get to the point? Yeah. Tried to find the right medium, those special YouTube, uh, subscribers that, that like to comment things start at minute 25.

Well, when Cathi and I get a little long winded, we just tell our sound editor to cut some of it out.

We’ve done that too. It basically, it just evolved into something that became more than a hobby and now it’s a full time business for us and is, you know, it’s, it’s thriving, but you never know. One day can, I dunno, we feel like we’re knock on wood every day, you know, we have to stay, uh, current relevant, right? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Things like, you know, technical things like search engine optimization and editing and, uh, social media and all of that stuff to sort of, because there’s a lot of other people out there doing similar things to what we’re doing. But no one’s quite like Kris and I, right?

Right, nobody’s like you guys. Exactly. You’re right. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about your pecan pie recipe? Cause we’re gonna use it for our book club idea.

Oh, I love that. I can tell. Well, it’s Wesley’s favorite pie in the whole wide world. Yeah, yeah. I love it too. But he’ll like, well, I will search it out. One of the things that I really try to convey to our readers is that, you know, something like a pecan pie is not difficult to make, you know, you can, you really, it’s a few simple ingredients and I’m, you know, going with quality is always best. And there’s a a few tricks. I’m like, there’s, uh, there’s an ingredient called Lyle’s syrup, um, that I, I discovered a while back. I can’t even remember how I, cause someone told me about it or it’s, and it’s a, it’s a British ingredient, but it’s, it’s very easy to find here on the state. I found it up in New York and New Jersey and it’s here in Texas. It’s in them in the most supermarkets near like the syrup’s and um, and in that, and there’s a home Lyle’s golden here. Yeah. It’s cane sugar syrup and it’s just, it has this kind of, this Amber taste that I just think is so great. So I started using it, and I use a combination of dark corn syrup as well as light. And then, um, some of this Lyles, now obviously if you can’t get the Lyles, I mean it’s, it’s very similar to a corn syrup. So if you can’t find the Lyles, you can just increase the quantity of the, of your corn syrups and it’s still going be delicious. Um, but I think little tricks of like, you know, toasting your pecan, it just really brings out, it just deepens the flavor. Um, and that, that’s a trick that does a lot of people do. But I mean, I, I find it really does make a difference. You know, homemade crust, I mean.

That’s the hard part to me.

Well, wait a minute though, you need to check out Kris’s. I have, I have a version that I do. I mean I’ve done lots of different times. I’ve done the kind, you know, where you like, you really use the heel of your hand to really work the, you know, you will, you can’t overwork it, but, you know, get some flour and the butter to just, you know, sort of come together as a dough. And then what I do and I make time constantly, especially in this time of the year, is I just use my food processor and um, you know, I guess I, again, it’s great. I, I chilled them the butter and then I cube it and I get a little bit of shortening that I do the same thing. It’s really important that, you know, the fat is cold. Um, and then I get my food processor, I put the flour in there and then a little bit of salt and, and then, um, you know, you add the butter, that cold fat and then you just pulse it until it become kinda like, like little pea shapes of butter. And then just very careful, just anywhere from four to six tablespoons of water, um, or are added. And you know, you’re just continuing to pulse just until a ball forms and it makes it just the perfect, most amazing pie crust.

Now do you have, do you have a video of that on your website?

Yes we do. Yes.

Oh good. Okay. So I’m doing this whole thing. I’m going to do the crust, the pecan pie for my Thanksgiving and I’m definitely going to do it. And what other, what other recipe on your site do you think is like your number one Thanksgiving requested recipe?

You know, it’s actually really funny. During the holidays we see a giant uptake on our cheese ball.

Oh really?

It’s probably an early recipe that we did years ago. Like four or five years ago and I mean Google loves it. We ranked like way up at the top. Like I think we’re number one if you do classic cheese ball. We have other, you know, other recipes that rank really well too. But during the holidays it just skyrockets. It’s just incredible. I’m always like how many people are searching for cheese balls? But I guess there’s lots of people who like the good old classic cheese balls or things. Yeah.

I am having a completely out of body like Saturday night live Schweddy balls image right now going on.

You should see Kris and Wesley’s cheese balls. They’re huge.

I bet they’re gorgeous.

I mean I love Thanksgiving so much and so I, I try to, I think I’ve got most of the classic side dishes and Turkey recipes on there. Oh well where’s the one that we just made? Yeah. We’re, I mean we’re knee deep. We’re at that point where we’re going back and revisiting a lot of our recipes and then we’re updating them cause not all of them, we do everything that we do now. We always include a video. So some of the older ones, um, we, you know, Wesley just continues to get better and better with his photography. So it’s fun. It’s good for SEO too, for us to go back and kind of spruce them up a little bit. So we’re, we’ve been knee deep in Thanksgiving, but yeah, we have a recipe that we’re republishing it tomorrow, um, called my gourmet green bean casserole. Made like your classic green bean casserole. But instead of using condensed Campbell’s, we actually make a mushroom sauce that goes on top and instead of using the box fried onions, we make our own little fried onions and blend in the fresh green beans, fresh string beans and also some nutmeg thrown in there.

It sounds lovely, I was just going to say I was watching you, the roasted butternut squash soup the other night with a homemade croutons. Yeah. I want to serve that on Thanksgiving. You know, we don’t have a soup very often in our Thanksgiving meal and I would love to have that, I think.

Perfect. I know that’s a great idea. I think we’re going to do that too, where wherever we moved back to Texas last summer, and so my family loves it for most of the reasons, but mostly I think because they can come over here for Thanksgiving. There’s so much food and so I, it’s the one time I don’t do a lot of like appetizers and things, but that soup is perfect because it’s, you know, it’s not heavy. It doesn’t have heavy cream in it. It’s just really, really delicious. And it is the perfect, perfect kind of lead into a good Thanksgiving feast.

I feel like, you know, you do all this work for Thanksgiving and we’re gathered and as much as I try to slow it down, it turns into such a, it goes, but the meal goes by so fast. And so I thought if we had just a soup kind of portion of the veil, it might really slow it down. So either that or my family will kill me. All right. Well Wesley and Kris, thank you so much and we’re going to direct everybody, all of our listeners to your fabulous recipes on your site and they can watch it on YouTube obviously.

Oh, that’s so wonderful.

Yes. Yes. Thank you so much for joining us today guys.

Sure and such a pleasure. We had a wonderful time with you guys.

Thanks. Bye guys.

Okay, bye. Bye.

Oh, Christie. I love their conversation with Kris and Wesley.

I know it was such a, you had such a great idea to talk to them, um, after finding the recipe on How to Feed a Loon. I gotta say I’m a fan now and I’ll be looking to their site for recipes in the future.

Oh yeah, I just printed out their fajita recipe last night. I’m making it tonight actually. Um, but I will, I’ll put a link on our website. So, um, all our mysterious foodies can do the same. They really have a depth of recipes that are just great to look through.

That’s great. So now let’s talk about The Last Widow by Karin Slaughter.

What a good thriller.

I know, I know another all night read for me. Um, and I gotta tell you though, it’s going to be hard to talk about this without giving too much away.

We will not give out any spoilers. We’re gonna be really, really careful about that. But I agree with you. It’s going to be hard kind of talking about it.

I’ll just start out talking about Karin Slaughter and she has published in 37 languages with more than 35 million copies sold across the globe. She has 19 novels which include the Grant County and Will Trent books as well as the Edgar nominated Cop Town and the instant New York times bestselling novels, Pretty Girls and The Good Daughter and her most recent novel, which we’re talking about today, The Last Widow features Sara Linton and Will Trent. She’s a native of Georgia. Karin is, and she lives in Atlanta and her novels, Cop Town, The Good Daughter, and Pieces of Her are all in development for film and television. So awesome. Awesome.

Yeah, I can’t, I would subscribe to that channel, whatever, whatever format they come in and I would see them. Yeah.

And so this book, like I said, it’s, it is, Oh my gosh! I can just say that once you’ve read it, since we don’t want to give spoilers here, but at your book club, you can talk about it because everybody supposedly has read it. When they show up to the club, you will not be short of conversation because I mean, it starts out, you know, with a mysterious kidnapping. And so there you got talking about kidnappings. There’s two kidnappings in the first two chapters. So you get to, you know, you can talk about that. The first kidnapping victim is a scientist from the Center for Disease Control. So you can just imagine where that one’s going to go. I mean, could be a pandemic, could be, you don’t know. You know, but I’m telling you, you will have a lot to talk about. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And then there’s an explosion, you know, right in the busy part of Atlanta where Emory university is, two major hospitals, FBI headquarters, and the CDC. So then there’s, what’s going on there? So they’re following all kinds of things like that. They’ve all these, you know. And then the medical examiner, Sara Linton, is one of the main characters and her partner Will Trent. He’s the GBI Georgia Bureau of investigation investigator. Um, they get involved cause they happen to be right there when the explosions happen. And um, and then Sarah gets abducted. She’s one of the two, um, kidnappings that I was talking about. So, um, you know, they’ve got, he’s got to try to save his love and save the country and, and there’s just …

And didn’t you think the kind of subplot about their relationship was really, um, layered really well? I mean, I just thought that, yeah, I thought that was really fun.

Yeah, she is really good at character character development too, which is, you know, is understandable because if you’re going to be that successful, you’ve got to have some really good characters and in a way.

Yeah. So she’s, I mean she is really a force. I mean, I think Karin Slaughter is, I mean one of the, what, top five thriller writers working right now? I mean she’s just, she’s just a machine. She is, you know, constantly putting out new works and they’re just, one is better than the next.

I know. And it’s so involved. Like if you go on her website, honestly she has and she even says, you know, spoiler alert, but you can click on a link and it will have the research behind this book and it’s a full page. It’s like podcasts, websites, books that she, you know, that all talk about the subject matters because I mean it goes into a lot of really current events. I mean, I think my nonfiction friends that only like nonfiction would enjoy reading something like this too because it feels like it’s so current and real, you know,

Kind of the way it opens and it’s just down to the minute and it’s different points of view. It kind of feels almost like a newsreel, don’t you think? Those first opening chapters when the explosions are happening and it’s just, it feels like it’s literally ripped from the headlines.

And you know what we should have done, cause we were in Atlanta just a few weeks ago. We should’ve, we should’ve gone to like some of the sites cause they were probably right close to where we were. We could have even gone, you know the CDC actually has a museum right there. Oh really? We could’ve gone to the CDC museum, maybe gotten some ideas for our, you know, our own like murders.

You know I like a museum, anyway.

I know, I know we should have done that. I just, I didn’t research it ahead of time, so I should have, but next time, next time.

This week we want to talk about pacing in our writer’s perspective. It’s something that’s so important in all books, but really, um, really vital in thriller writing.

Yes. Yeah. And, and like we were saying, Karin Slaughter, she’s a master at it. Um, so this is a great day for us to be talking about pacing and also like you said in thrillers, it’s really important to keep the readers turning the pages without getting bored by too much action or too much investigating or too much explaining, which is really hard to do. Don’t you think?

I do because you know, one of the thing I things I love like we talked about with Karin’s book is that I love it when, um, the writer goes deep into research and shares a new world that you know, you don’t know anything about, but you also can’t just bog the reader down with too much research because it was, slows the pace down and you really want that kind of heartbeat page turning a feeling. And so I think it’s a real fine line to, to watch for writers who are trying to do that.

I mean there’s, there’s like we, we had looked into it, there’s a few like different elements that people kind of say to help with pacing. And I think, I think when I, when I looked through them and they’re like, action, cliffhanger, dialogue, word choice. I mean like pacing seems like it’s just, you just have to feel it almost. If you’re doing everything else the best she can. It probably kind of flows like we know don’t talk too much about the research. I don’t know. I guess I do automatically when I’m writing I say, okay, I’m bored with this. Let’s have some action going in my head. So that’s when the action starts again. I don’t know. Um, I don’t have any conscious. Do you have like a conscious like technique you use to keep yourself paced?

No. I did learn two things. I’m just not an experienced writer enough to, to kind of dig through my own experience. But I will say when we, when we were at ThrillerFest last summer, I took two different sessions that talked about pacing and one of them, um, the writer whose name I will include, but I cannot remember who it is right now. Um, he talked about the importance of hanging questions. You know, with every chapter you should be answering some questions that were already hanging, but then leaving new hanging questions, so your reader’s always wanting.

That’s a good way to look at it.

Yeah. And I thought that was a really good way to look at it. Um, and then KJ Howe gave a presentation on pacing that was outstanding. She had all kinds of techniques. Um, even things like when you’re in the middle of your action sequence, you know what language to use when you want to slow it down, just to kind of, um, not have it just fly by, you know, so the reader can kind of really put themselves in that space. Right. Um, or if you do want to pick up the pace, um, you know, the, just how she chooses her language. So she, it was really a, uh, a great session.

Oh. And so that was at Craftfest at ThrillerFest?

It was, yeah.

I think I need that. I need a class like that because I, like I said, I don’t, I don’t really know the techniques, so I’m like, eh, you know, get lucky, maybe, sometimes, but sometimes you don’t, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And, and by the way, KJ Howe, she was on our corks and conversation last week. So if you haven’t listened to that, go back and listen to her because obviously she knows her stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. She does know her stuff and she’s got two thrillers out that we should, we really should talk about one of those, one of our upcoming episodes, cause they’re, they’re great.

Okay, Cathi, it’s time for us to be accountable. Dun dun dun. Hey, guess what? It’s November.

It is November, Christie. Talk to me about your November.

So my November was, is, sort of NaNoWriMo month and so I.

Was, is, sorta…

So I had, you know, okay, so it’s, we’re only a few days into November when we’re recording this. So I haven’t fallen completely off the track, but I’m not on a pace. Speaking of pacing, that is going to give me 40, 50,000 words this month. Unless, you know, I don’t know, one day I just go bananas and do 20,000 words or something, But I am really trying and I’ve gotten back into my work in progress. So I am trying and I’m making sure I’m writing every day, like 500 to a thousand words and fitting it in even, you know, even though I’ve got other things going on, I’m saying, okay, I’m going to do this. And I know from the past it’s gonna start, you know, it snowballs a little bit because once you get into it and your mind starts thinking and thinking and thinking, then then you can get a few more words down each day. Just because you’re in the, you know, you’re on a roll, you know you’re in the zone. So I’m proud of myself for that too. There you go.

Good. So did you actually sign up at nanowrimo.org?

I did not. Well you still can. I still can and I’m, and I may, you know, because I’m trying to keep accountable. It’s just, um, it’s just, I mean, honestly, when November 1st hit, it was kind of a surprise .I’ve had, you know, so I was like, Oh, it’s here. I know. So I’m so, I haven’t gone back and done anything like sign up for anything yet. I’m just like, okay, well at least I’m getting this done.

But I will say that you’re back into your work in progress, which is far progress than you were. So that’s good. And I, you know, even if you don’t achieve the, the, you know, the winning, I guess of the 50,000 words that that is suggested for NaNoWriMo. There’s nothing wrong with big giant goals and then coming closer than you were before, you know. I just, I think that’s a wonderful step forward.

Thank you.

Yes. So you’re, you’re farther along than you were and I’m very happy for you.

Oh, thank you. So how’s it going up there besides the fact that you told me it was snowing today?

It is snowing actually. I’m, I record in a radio station and I’m looking outside and it’s getting dark already towards the end of the afternoon and it’s snowing. I’m thinking is it January or what is this month? But, um, yeah, so things are good here. I, um, before I came, the one thing I was doing is, so I had told you I was gonna read my whole novel front to back cause I was kind of up to that point, editing and reworking some things all and just skipping all over the place. And so now I got to read it all through sequentially and um, mostly out loud and that was really helpful. Yeah. So now I’m going through and I’m doing another edit and some chapters need little work. I’ll happily announce, but some need a lot. And so, so I went and made a editing, um, checklist because you know, I like lists and I like to be organized. And so I thought, Oh, Christie would think I was nuts, but I need the, I needed a checklist. So for each chapter I’ve got my checklist .

So that I’m picturing in my head like, what is the editing checklist? Like do you go through and say check for adverbs or what?

That is on the list. Actually, I don’t think, I don’t think I brought it with me. I should have brought it with me.

Because that’s how I found, like each time it’d be like I’d have one really major flaw that I realized I was doing throughout. So I go through the whole thing for that and then I’d find something else. And then I go through the whole thing for the next thing.

One of the thing I do remember, I put at the top of the list is that I remember watching, um, James Patterson’s masterclass. Remember we talked about that and he talks about, um, with every chapter he said, you have to be there, you have to be there, you have to be there in every scene, in the character’s head. And I could hear him saying that. So that’s kind of, so at the beginning of each chapter, I wanna, you know, remind myself to be there and, and remind myself what the goal of the chapter is, right. To keep things moving along and what the characters needs to get accomplished. And, um, I’ll have to, I’ll have to look and send you the list. But anyway, it’s lengthy and it’s a spreadsheet and that makes me happy. So more editing. That’s where I’m at.

Well, I loved today’s episode and I think the wine is, I think it would be nice for desserts on Thanksgiving. It is sweet and it’s sweeter than what I would normally care for, but I think for a Thanksgiving dessert I can see it being really nice.

Yes, I can too. And like I said, it’s sort of like an after dinner wine but it’s not going to be as strong as say like a port or something. So. So I’m enjoying it for tonight and I will probably really enjoy it with a dessert at a book club. Very nice. Very nice. And so, um, next week, don’t forget we’ve got part two of ThrillerFest Corks and Conversations.

Yes. Have a listen because the author lineup is great.

Yes

Thanks to our mysterious foodies out there for listening and sharing. Check out our website, GameofBookspodcast.com where you can find links to all we talk about. And if you subscribe to our weekly newsletter, you can get those links sent directly to you along with any exciting updates. We are also on Facebook and Twitter under @gobwriters. And if you enjoyed this episode as much as we did, we would love to hear from you and please subscribe to Game of Books wherever you listen to podcasts so you don’t miss any of our book club ideas and Corks and Conversations with award winning and bestselling authors.That’s all for today’s episode of Game of Books podcast, where we share food, wine, and mystery every Friday morning, just in time for the weekend.This is Christie.and Cathi. Saying, thanks for listening.Bye everybody.