AUTHOR INTERVIEW—JADE LEE

Today I'm excited to welcome romance author, Jade Lee, to Over Coffee. Jade’s latest title, 50 Ways to Ruin a Rake, is out  and marks the beginning of her hilarious new Rakes & Rogues series. To celebrate her new release, Jade is here for a mini-interview.

 @@@

• What piece of writing advice sticks with you to this day?
  It’s a marathon not a sprint. A little bit every day. In the end, it’ll grow up to be a career. 

• What has been your biggest adventure to date?

Writing funny. It’s a ton harder than I ever thought. But I’m loving the exploration.

• Which one of your characters do you relate to the most?

Flaky heroine with the long suffering hero who (a) GETS her and (b) translates her to the world and the world to her. That would be my husband and me. And a piece of that is in every book I write. 

• Speaking of writing funny, you mention on your blog that 50 Ways to Ruin a Rake is the funniest book you've ever written. Why?

• There’s an escaped turkey in the book. 
• The turkey fights in a duel. Or a melee depending on if you count the turkey as a combatant. Which you should. 
• Everyone in the book has a plan. EVERYONE. And their plans go horribly awry. 
• Because I was focused on joy when I wrote the book.  That’s been my new mantra.  

• Wait a minute. A turkey fights a duel?

There is an escaped turkey who gets in the middle of a duel/melee, but that’s just a small piece of the book. In truth, the main thing is that the whole romp is about people with PLANS. And those plans just don’t work out how they expect. At all. And yes, this is the year of JOY for me. Everything is about being soul-deep happy. It’s not all perfect, but it’s working for me. And this book is one of the results.

                                                                                                                                                                 

Mellie Smithson has a plan…

  

Mellie Smithson is trapped in the country with no suitors and no prospects on the horizon except, perhaps, the exasperating—although admittedly handsome—guest of her father. Unwilling to settle, Mellie will do anything to escape to London... 

  

Trevor Anaedsley has a problem…

  

Trevor Anaedsley’s grandfather has cut off his funds until he gets engaged. Beset by creditors, Trevor escapes to the country—ostensibly to visit his old tutor Mr. Smithson—where he meets Smithson’s lovely daughter Mellie. The obvious solution is suddenly before him—but will this fake engagement go as Trevor and Mellie plan? 

Or will they find that even the best laid plans often go awry?  EXCERPT

BUY: Amazon, B&N, Chapters, Indiebound






                                                                                                                             

USA Today bestselling author Jade Lee has been scripting love stories since she first picked up a set of paper dolls. Ball gowns and rakish lords caught her attention early (thank you, Georgette Heyer), and her fascination with the Regency began. An author of more than thirty romance novels and winner of dozens of industry awards, Lee lives in Champaign, Illinois. 

MISSOURI YELLOWS

Yellow has always been a favorite color of mine, especially in flowers and birds. After a long winter of grays and whites, it brings a lift to the spirit.

Yellow-Belly Sapsucker

Funny how such a cheerful color also has negative connotations, but it does. The color yellow has traditionally been associated with cowardice, treachery, inconstancy and jealousy. Interesting that in France, the doors of traitors’ homes were daubed with yellow. It’s also been used as an insult or challenge. “What are you, yellow bellied?”   I’ve even heard the term, “you yellow-bellied sapsucker!” That term originally applied to birds that literally have a yellow belly, like the yellow-bellied sapsucker. Later came to mean a term for a low down coward. Poor maligned bird.  
 

We do have Yellow-Belly Sapsuckers in Missouri and they forage on trees in forests, orchards, and parks for insects and they also eat fruits, nuts, and berries. Sapsuckers are woodpeckers that drill small, closely spaced holes in trees to reach the sap and insects drawn to the sap. They aren’t bright yellow on the bellies but more of a light yellow wash.

American Golden Finches Male and female at the feeder

Missouri, like many other places, do have bright yellow Goldfinches. We do have them year round although there is an influx of them in March and April.  I smile every time I see them in the trees or at the feeders and they’re like flying yellow flowers. Goldfinches pair up and begin nesting in July and August when the soft milkweed and thistles begin to bloom. They like to use thistle silk for their nests. I keep a feeder with thistle and other goodies for the finches.  I love the contrast of seeing the yellow finches and red cardinals at the feeders.

We also have Eastern Meadowlarks. Very unassuming colored bird and blend right into brown underbrush. In the winter they're much easier to spot against the snow. Like the sapsucker, they’re not obviously yellow, just their bellies.  They’re here year round and I actually see them more in winter as they forage in the fields but I hear them singing throughout the warm season.

Another bright yellow bird that I first mistook for a Golden finch, until I got a closer look, is the Prothonotary Warbler. It’s named after the Roman Catholic clerks who wore yellow robes. They tend to forage for insects in fallen trees or dead standing trees and can be found near water. We have a pond across the county road from the front yard and we have a stream that’s shaped like a giant U around the back of our property. They’re year round residents but, like the Goldenfinches, the rest show up in Missouri in April and begin nesting.

Missouri has lots of yellow wildflowers to delight the senses. They’re common sights along roadways and in fields. I have many, many wildflowers growing in the fields and love my walking track that brings me up close to so many. It makes walking a joy.

Yellow Rocket Flower

 

Yellow Cone-flower, aka Echinea

Finch among the Tickseed Sunflowers

Common Mulleien

Although Missouri has many outstanding features to see and experience, for me, it’s the beauty that surrounds my house on any given day. The animals, birds, and flowers. I love how the birdsong fills the air, the gossip at the bird feeders, the cry of an eagle, the fuzz of yellow-green oaks covering the hills in the spring amid the carpet of wildflowers. It’s a wonderful place to be.

There are so many beautiful places in this world and I hope you've enjoyed a view of my corner of it, here, in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri. 

Alley Springs Mill and wildflowers

Photos: Missouri conservation, Missouri field guide to flowers, and personal

MONDAY MUSINGS: MISSOURI'S WINE COUNTRY

When someone mentions American wine country where do you picture the wine country?   

Many would say Sonoma or Napa Valleys and it is true northern California is world renown as wine country. They produce premier wines well able to compete with their European counterparts and many times surpassing them. California accounts for 90% of American wine production.

What many don’t realize is that there are vineyards in just about every state in the United States. Granted, not all are well known, not all vineyards produce wine grapes, and certainly not all are designated federally approved as an American Viticultural Area (AVA). American Viticultural Area is a designated wine grape-growing region in the United States distinguishable by geographic features such as mountains and lakes as well as climate and vineyard soil.

Nine Winery trails near the wineries in Missouri

Another interesting fact is that Ozark Mountain area, in particular, The Augusta AVA, was the first federally approved American Viticultural Area gaining the status on June 20, 1980, eight months before the Napa Valley AVA in northern California. 

Ozark Mountain AVA is located in northwest Arkansas, southern Missouri, and northeast Oklahoma. 

The sixth largest American Viticultural Area in total size, Ozark Mountain AVA covers 3,520,000 acres.
  

Five smaller AVAs have been established within its boundaries, to recognize those distinct regions whose climate, vineyard soil, or other growing conditions create unique areas for viticulture.  There are now five AVAs within the Ozark AVA in Missouri. In 2009, there were 92,000 wineries. The latest figures I can find (2012) show there are over 100,000 wineries operating in the state of Missouri.
  
In 1855, Frederick Law Olmsted, an American landscape architect and well known travel journalist, said Missouri and Illinois each had 1100 acres in wine. One of the first commercial wineries established in Missouri was Mount Pleasant Winery, founded in 1859 by Georg and Friedrich Muench. They chose the town area of Mount Pleasant (later renamed Augusta) because it reminded them of their home in Germany.

Missouri was instrumental in saving the French wine industry. 

In the 1860’s between two-thirds and nine-tenths of all European vineyards were destroyed by the phylloxera (little aphid like of pests) epidemic. The rootstock of American native species of grapes was immune to the aphids. It was because of Missouri’s state entomologist, Charles Riley, that France’s wine industry was saved. Riley sent millions of rootstocks to France because it was found the french varieties of grapes could be grafted to these rootstocks. There are monuments and statutes honoring Riley and his scientific colleague, J.É. Planchon, in Montpellier, France.

Augusta AVA Wine Area

Meanwhile, back in Missouri, the 1860’s the wine industry centered in the German colony of Hermann, west of St. Louis, and was also known as Missouri Rhineland. Later Italian immigrants also entered wine production. In the mid-1880s, more wine was produced by volume in Missouri than in any other state. Before Prohibition, Missouri was the second-largest wine-producing state in the nation.  Prohibition just about destroyed the United States wineries. It took decades to reestablish wine vineyards and wineries and it wasn’t until the 1960’s that the vineyards recovered sufficiently to consistently produce quality wines. In Missouri, Stone Hill Winery opened in 1965 and Mount Pleasant Winery opened shortly thereafter.

Native Norton wine grapes

Missouri's climate, with its long, hot summers, good sun exposure, and thin rocky Ozarks soil, is excellent for growing grapes. The moderate average temperature allows natural cellaring of wine and many of Missouri’s caves have been used both in storing wine and beer. The most prominent Missouri-grown variety is Cynthiana/Norton, believed to be a variety of Vitis aestivalis. Other varieties grown include native American grapes, Concord and Catawba, as well as French-American hybrids such as Vignoles, Seyval, and Chambourcin. Recently, there has been more interest in planting Vitis vinifera grapes varieties, especially the fine European grapes: Cabernet Franc, Chardonnay, Petit Verdot and Mourvedre.

Some of  Les Bourgeois Vineyards

The three largest wineries in Missouri are (in order):

 

  St.James Winery

 

 Stone Hill Winery

 Les Bourgeois Winery and Bistro

Missouri is home to nine wine trails which host wine events and festivals year round and encourage weekend getaways to some of the established wine regions in the state.

Photos: wiki commons, Dept of Conservation, Historical Missouri Archives, personal