Just another day at the office....

...being super professional.

I'm back with freaky food

Hello my long lost friends!  I have been AWOL for a long time now and I don't have any fun reasons, life just got in the way, but I am back!  I have reviews to post and pumpkins to carve and alien squash to cook. Yes I said alien squash and that is what I will be bringing to you today. 

Over the weekend, the husband and I met some friends (and their adorable orange tutu clad daughter) for some corn maze action.  We made it out alive and 30 minutes faster than last year so we had extra time to peruse the pumpkin patch.  Well this pumpkin patch sold a variety of squash and I couldn't pass up the blue hubbard squash when I saw it in all its ugly glory. 

Me and the husband with my awesome squash

At this very moment I am watching the Giants kicking some Game 2 ASS (and yes I waited to finish this post until the game was over because I didn't want to jinx anything) while my squash cooks itself into what I hope turns out to be a delicious soup.  Fingers crossed...

It's Alive!

I grew up tending a garden that grew tomatoes, carrots and other delicious items as well as huge, HUGE zucchini that we then turned into delicious zucchini bread. Because of the size of the zucchini that grew due to my diligent watering I thought that I had natural green thumb. Alas, the green thumb belonged to my father who must have been sprinkling fairy dust on his magic beans. Over the years, no matter how hard I tried, my plants shared the same fate as my many goldfish. Oh Nemo how I miss you, and Harry, and Hermione, and Dory, and...well you get the picture. 

BUT!

My luck has turned.  I found some very handy garden gnomes who have gone to work and I have tomatoes!!!!

One month ago

Today!!

If you look closely you can see a missing tomato.  I ate it 3 days ago before the others were ripe and it was DELICIOUS!

And because I live in the wine country...
I did not grow the grapes.

These were growing along the fence of the local high school

The Queen's Vow - C.W. Gortner

 

The Queen’s Vow

By C.W. Gortner

Isabella of Castile is one of those women you read about and become angry you didn’t know more about a long time ago.  Or at least that is how it was for me.  She is the king’s half-sister with a crazy mom and a little brother who has a better chance of ending up on the throne than she does but then royal drama happens and scheming is afoot and her life takes some very interesting turns. 

I was fascinated by the way Gortner told her story and now I want to know more.  Isabella dares to take her life into her own hands and have a say in her future, with both catastrophic and remarkable results.  With one hand she signs away thousands of lives while the other creates a path for women to become educated as well as educators. 

The one thing that bothered me throughout the story was the way she seemed to explain away the actions of her husband.  There were moments when she was, justifiably, upset and the story seemed to brush her emotions under the rug.  She was incredibly determined and independent except when it came to her husband’s feelings of insignificance.  

Overall, the story was not only fascinating but also entertaining.  Gortner was able to show how Isabella’s world must have felt while still mocking in a way that made me uncertain if I wanted to laugh or smack the characters. 

“My brothers drew swords against each other at this very moment on a battlefield, the flower of Castile’s manhood lay dead around them.  Many more would be wounded.  And what did our queen do?

She danced.”

-page 113

I liked the way the book ended but I was also sad that I didn’t get to find out what happened next.  Isabella is the mother of Catherine of Aragon, first wife of Henry VIII, and I wish that I could have read more about the later lives of her five children.  But, I guess there is only so much you can put in 400 pages.  I will have to find out more later. 

 SYNOPSIS:

No one believed I was destined for greatness.

So begins Isabella’s story, in this evocative, vividly imagined novel about one of history’s most famous and controversial queens—the warrior who united a fractured country, the champion of the faith whose reign gave rise to the Inquisition, and the visionary who sent Columbus to discover a New World. Acclaimed author C. W. Gortner envisages the turbulent early years of a woman whose mythic rise to power would go on to transform a monarchy, a nation, and the world.

Young Isabella is barely a teenager when she and her brother are taken from their mother’s home to live under the watchful eye of their half-brother, King Enrique, and his sultry, conniving queen. There, Isabella is thrust into danger when she becomes an unwitting pawn in a plot to dethrone Enrique. Suspected of treason and held captive, she treads a perilous path, torn between loyalties, until at age seventeen she suddenly finds herself heiress of Castile, the largest kingdom in Spain. Plunged into a deadly conflict to secure her crown, she is determined to wed the one man she loves yet who is forbidden to her—Fernando, prince of Aragon.

As they unite their two realms under “one crown, one country, one faith,” Isabella and Fernando face an impoverished Spain beset by enemies. With the future of her throne at stake, Isabella resists the zealous demands of the inquisitor Torquemada even as she is seduced by the dreams of an enigmatic navigator named Columbus. But when the Moors of the southern domain of Granada declare war, a violent, treacherous battle against an ancient adversary erupts, one that will test all of Isabella’s resolve, her courage, and her tenacious belief in her destiny.

From the glorious palaces of Segovia to the battlefields of Granada and the intrigue-laden gardens of Seville, The Queen’s Vow sweeps us into the tumultuous forging of a nation and the complex, fascinating heart of the woman who overcame all odds to become Isabella of Castile.

AUTHOR BIO:

C.W. Gortner is the author of The Last Queen, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici and The Tudor Secret. He holds an MFA in Writing with an emphasis in Renaissance Studies from the New College of California.

In his extensive travels to research his books, he has danced a galliard in a Tudor great hall and experienced life in a Spanish castle. His novels have garnered international praise and been translated into thirteen languages to date. He is also a dedicated advocate for animal rights and environmental issues.

He's currently at work on his fourth novel for Ballantine Books, about the early years of Lucrezia Borgia, as well as the third novel in his Tudor series,The Elizabeth I Spymaster Chronicles (US) or Elizabeth's Spymaster (UK).

 Half-Spanish by birth, C.W. lives in Northern California.

TOUR INFORMATION 
Link to tour schedule: http://hfvirtualbooktours.blogspot.com/2012/06/cw-gortner-on-tour-for-queens-vow-novel.html 
Twitter Hashtag: #QueensVowVirtualTour
Link to book trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1cWBUZkj0M

 **Thank you Amy at Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours for providing me with an ARC for review.

...Did You?

Kristin Cashore Book Signing!

Just me and my new friend Kristin Cashore

Well, Thursday was my big happy day.  Kristin Cashore's book signing at Copperfield's.  My husband didn't have to go to work until 10 pm so he came with me and held my camera (he's so handy).  Since I pretty much got all my gushing out in my previous post, I will try to keep this short and sweet.  I probably don't need to start by saying that Kristin is awesome but there it is.  She started by reading from Bitterblue and then talked a bit about her writing process (along with a slideshow including pictures of her notebooks-complete with motivational phrases she writes to keep herself going!) and then she did some Q&A.  She was entertaining, personable and so...human.  Go figure. 

So pretty!!

But!  I have to say that the icing on the cake was that my husband was actually entertained!  He laughed and learned and at the very end said "we should do this kind of thing more often."  Umm...OK!  That's pretty much the biggest compliment I can give to Kristin at this moment. 

It was an awesome day.  I didn't want to go to sleep that night and I kept having random bursts of giggles on the way home.  I'm a dork...I'm not ashamed!

And the Stars Aligned!

Please excuse any part of this post that doesn't make sense, I am slightly light-headed right now.

I was checking in with Kristin Cashore's blog This Is My Secret because her next book Bitterblue is about to come out and I read the most wonderful, amazing thing.  Seriously, I am getting kinda nauseous just thinking about it and part of me is scared that the moment I put it down something terrible is going to happen I'll find out this was all a joke or a mistake and all my happiness is going to be gone. 

She is coming!!!!

There is a list...a beautiful and yet heartbreakingly short list of her tour dates.  I wanted to care about the others but lets be realistic, I scrolled down until I saw CA.  Seattle, WA...getting close...CA! Only one location...I stared at that CA, refusing to move my eyes a centimeter to the left and see the city until I had willed it to be some place close.  Some place...not LA.  And it said...Sebastopol.  Huh, is there another Sebastopol in CA?  Because grew up in Sebastopol.  It's like...right over there.  In fact I was there last weekend for the annual parade with my mom and we walked past their lovely bookstore Copperfiled's.  What's the bookstore for the book tour?  Copperfield's.  Copperfield's.  COPPERFIELD'S!!!

Oh shit!!  Hard to breathe...vision blurry...must sit down...already sitting down...

AreyoukiddingmerightnowthatsheiscomingtoonlyonecityinCAanditisSEBASTOPOL!  (ps to anyone who cares, it is really hard to type without using the spacebar!)

Reality check, I work.  What's the date on this thing cuz I don't want to feel guilty and call in sick.  Thursday, May 10.  THURSDAY!  That's my day off!  DAY...lightheaded...OFF....blurred vision.

The stars have aligned!  I am cashing in my good karma! 

I just pulled up Copperfield's website and verified it is true!

Please excuse me a moment while I have a giddy scream....

Ok...better now. 

So yes, I am excited about this.  I was getting ready to post about my rereads of her 2 previous books and this is just the icing on the cake of the glass half full.

I'm so happy!!