I Avoided This Personal Plot Twist for Years. I Finally Gave In...

Last week I did something that feels massive to me. It was something I talked about for several years before I actually did it, something I knew would benefit me, but something I was — ahem — less than thrilled about.

I joined a gym.

I’ve had gym memberships before. In each case, the gym also had a pool where I could participate in aqua aerobics classes, one of the few forms of exercise I actually enjoy. In fact, this quote could describe my attitude toward exercise quite nicely.

He had fearless blue eyes, blond hair with a suspicion of a curl and the thickening middle of one who has always regarded sport as an interruption to finishing a chapter and has given it up the second that they could.

- Death Before Wicket by Kerry Greenwood

On the other hand, I know the advantages of exercise, so I almost always built it into my schedule. Until the pandemic. When my gym shut down, so did I.

Since then we moved to a different city, a much smaller one where I no longer have access to a gym with a pool and aqua aerobics classes.

So I finally bit the bullet and did it. I just came back from my third workout there. Will I stick with it? Time will tell, but I’d like to think I’m sensible enough to focus on the advantages and not the interruption to my writing and reading.

I’m also hoping the enforced boredom (because what is more boring than walking on a treadmill?) will force me to think of more creative ways to challenge my protagonist and readers.

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What I’m Reading

The Secret of Seaside by Agatha Ball

Paige really wants to be in Paris, studying to become a Cordon Bleu chef. Instead, she’s stuck in a small village on an island wowing her granny’s customers at the coffee shop with her cinnamon rolls.

One morning Nate, a mouthwateringly attractive young man, comes in. Turns out, his grandfather is the wealthy old curmudgeon on the hill whose forbears founded the village. His grandfather also happens to be one of the meanest men in existence. So nobody’s surprised when he turns up dead one morning. Suddenly Paige finds herself cooking up more than cinnamon rolls…

First in a series.

The Winter Mystery by Faith Martin

I enjoyed the first Jenny Starling mystery enough to go on to the second in the series. In this story, Jenny is spending Christmas in the Cotswolds. Her visions of a delightful, traditional English Christmas with a little snow and all the good food get blown away when her employer turns out to be a nasty man who’s usurped his brother’s position as the head of a dysfunctional family.

Even worse, a killer strikes, a major snowstorm isolates them and they’re stuck together. Then, when the police finally make it, the inspector in charge is completely incompetent without any notion of how to conduct a murder investigation.

What’s a good cook to do if she wants to get back to her mince pies and brandy butter?

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Notable Quotes

The Maritime was the second hotel in Port Melbourne, but it did not try harder. It had been built in the spacious days when half an acre of foyer was just about adequate, and decorated by someone with a lot of plush, gold foil, cupids, naked marble statues and a forest of aspidistras to spare. The chairs were spindly and gold-legged, and Bert was unwilling to trust his frame to any of them. There was an air of about-to-be-shabby genteel about the Maritime

- Murder in Montparnasse by Kerry Greenwood

Both these quotes are from the same book, and both describe hotels. Both of them also made me smile. I love the way she personifies the hotels — “it did not try harder,” for example, and “it had never bothered much with appearances.” Both also show Greenwood’s ability to write brilliant descriptions with few words.

The Sailor’s Rest was not about-to-be-shabby genteel, it was downright shabby. Even when it had been first port of call for men off the deep-sea ships with money to spend and six months sobriety and celibacy to undo, it had never bothered much with appearances.

- Murder in Montparnasse by Kerry Greenwood

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Wise Words

Thanks to all who played last week, and an apology. When I was typing the excerpt, I omitted a paragraph break. My bad, and thanks to the person who pointed it out to me. If that was your guess, I’m really sorry. I’ll try to do better.

Here’s the quote again — correctly formatted this time.

Sliding one of the mugs over without missing a beat, he said, “Tall drip with two shots of espresso, oat milk, and one sugar.”

The thoughtfulness of the gesture was one thing, but the fact that he hadn’t forgotten how I took my coffee caught me completely by surprise. “Thank you. I can’t believe you still know my order.”

- The Last Phone Booth in Manhattan by Beth Merlin and Danielle Modaferri

As I stated last week, something about this just felt off to me. And no, it wasn’t the formatting (again, my mistake), or a comma splice. The hint was in the factoids that accompanied it:

The narrator and her former boyfriend broke up seven years ago. The scene takes place in Starbucks in NYC. The book was published on January 1, 2024. What’s wrong/ out of place here?

And the answer, which none of my readers guessed correctly(!!!) is this: Starbucks didn’t offer oat milk until 2021. With the book published in 2024 and a relationship that had ended seven years previously in 2017, she couldn’t possibly have been ordering oat milk at Starbucks when they were dating.

And kudos to one reader who presented an entertaining idea about the required cup size for the order!

I’ll post a new puzzle next week.