Lois Lewandowski's Blog

In 2003, there was a Bag ‘N Save grocery store at 48th and Vine Street in Lincoln, Nebraska. On a gray November day, I approached that store with my eighty-eight-year-old mother and seventeen-year-old daughter. Catching sight of our reflection in the glass doors, I wondered exactly what gene pool could possibly claim all of us.

My mother: Dark hair gone gray, she was born four years before women had the right to vote. A young woman during the depression, she defines the word conservative. Her view of the world is black and white with little in between.

Myself: Forty-five years old, blond and beleaguered, stretched thin between work and family, I reluctantly toss paper plates and plastic utensils into my grocery cart, spending money on convenience items to shave fifteen or twenty minutes on food preparation. I see the world in many shades of gray, with some right and wrong in almost everything.

My daughter: Magenta streaked hair, she was born into a world of technology and computers. Fiercely independent, she sees the world in varying colors that adjust to her views.

We are at Bag ‘N Save to buy groceries, and also to make my mother happy. She loves to shop for groceries and has clipped a $2 coupon for each of us. The coupons can be used on either produce or ground meat. Seconds into the store, my daughter picks out a pomegranate for $1.98. My mother at first tsk tsks the choice, but then reconsiders. It is a pomegranate, and it is free. My mother is also using her coupon on produce. She surveys the fruits and vegetables, then flutters from display to display, alighting here and there for a bunch of celery, a garlic bulb, an apple, some bananas, a bouquet of a parsley, sometimes exchanging something she’s picked out for a different item.

After she’s done, we continue through the grocery store, isle by isle. I use my coupon in the meat section, and then there’s a subtle change. Somewhere in the dairy section we become a covert operation, with my mother referring to us by the free food we are getting with our coupons. As we emerge from frozen foods, my mother eyes the checkout counters. “We’ll send the pomegranate through first. Hamburger, you’ll go next.”

My mother is last, purchasing a plastic grocery sack of produce for a mere 14 cents. “You are the shopper of us all,” I tell her, and her granddaughter nods agreement. As we exit the store, my mother takes hold of the side of the cart, and her gait changes from that of an elderly woman to the successful child at an Easter Egg Hunt. Out in the parking lot, beams of pink and yellow light peek through the clouds: even the sky can’t stay gloomy in the wake of my mother’s happiness.

One of the first things a writer learns is to engage the senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. A good way to do this is through food: the tantalizing smell of sizzling bacon, a spatter of grease searing your protagonist’s forearm, and you’re right there in the scene with the characters.

Sometimes I get carried away with my scenic food. In the fourth Gillian Jones book, Gillian has dessert at an Italian restaurant in Omaha, Nebraska. It’s based on an actual restaurant, and I love the Panna Cotta there. However, while I was writing the chapter, I met a friend for dessert in Lawrence, Kansas, and ordered the Winter Citrus Crème Brulee. Served in a ramekin, the slight tartness of the grapefruit compote melded with the custard and the sugar glaze, crunching in my mouth in fascinating tastes and textures. And that name: Winter Citrus Crème Brulee. It sounded like this particular dessert had been made from wise and mature fruit while careless citrus frolicked on branches by the beach, burning their peels. I lost track of my dinner companion’s conversation with the thought of changing desserts in the book.

In the end, the Panna Cotta stayed. When I read the chapter to my critique group, they noted that I used the word custard repeatedly. One member also mentioned that parts of the chapter sounded like a food commercial. They were correct; I ended up removing a half a page of Panna Cotta conversation.

The dessert dilemma was soon replaced by the quest to find something unusual for dinner in the fifth book. The cook, Marlene, wanted something out of the ordinary to serve her guests on the Monday before Thanksgiving. A stew I’d made decades earlier came to mind. I located the recipe which included stew meat, black olives, mushrooms, pearl onions, and peas. It called for dry red wine and I bought a dry red cooking wine. During the simmering period, the aroma was not enticing. I lifted the lid and inhaled. It was downright acrid. I asked my husband if he could smell anything from the living room.

“Yes,” he said, “it’s a sharp odor with a chemical undertone. What is it?”

“Dinner,” I replied.

When we sat down to eat, it presented well, at least to me.

“Olives?” My husband shook his head. “I don’t like mushrooms, either.”

“You ate this twenty years ago,” I reminded him.

“Did I? Probably under duress,” he said.

“Very possibly,” I agreed.

I thought the stew was good. The meat and peas tender, the other vegetables firm, and the sauce flavorful. I noted my hubby was demolishing the beef, peas, and the tiny pearl onions. Still, was it the dinner I wanted? I’d already used fish and pasta dishes in previous books. As I contemplated this, my husband said the magic words: “This is different. I’ll give you that.”

Different was the objective. “Good,” I said. “I’m using it in a book.”

“What about that awful smell at the beginning?” he asked.

“I write fiction. It will have a savory aroma,” I answered.

So, without further ado, from The Good Housekeeping Cookbook of 1973 is a “different” beef stew:

California Beef Stew
3 bacon slices, cut into pieces
2 pounds beef stew meat
1 cup dry red wine
1 bouillon cube
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon instant minced onion
2 teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoon thyme leaves
1 strip orange peel
18 small white onions
¾ pound small mushrooms
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 10-ounce package frozen peas
½ cup pitted ripe olives, drained.
About 3 hours before serving:
In large Dutch oven over medium-high heat, fry bacon until crisp; push bacon bits to side of pan. To drippings in pan, add stew meat and cook until well browned. Stir in 1 cup water, wine and next 6 ingredients; heat to boiling. Reduce heat to low; cover and simmer 2 ½ hours or until meat is fork-tender, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile, in covered, medium saucepan over high heat, in about 1 inch boiling salted water, cook onions 10 minutes; add mushrooms, cook 5 more minutes; drain.
In a small bowl, mix cornstarch and 3 tablespoons water until blended; stir into stew and cook over medium heat, stirring in onions and mushrooms, frozen peas and olives, cover and cook 10 minutes or until peas are fork-tender. Makes 6 to 8 servings.

Around the year 2000, I was sending out query letters by the dozen to agents who I hoped would be interested in the first Gillian Jones novel. There were a couple of nibbles, but no bites. I rewrote the book, but still couldn’t get anyone to represent it. “Change your name,” suggested a fellow writer. “It’s too long.”

“Maybe to something like Evanovich?” I joked.

I never used a pen name, and I didn’t find an agent, either. In 2006, I self-published the first in the series, followed by a second in 2009. Sometime after that, when I still had a land line, I received a call from a woman to tell me how much she enjoyed the books. I was elated until the conversation turned to Florida, where (according to her) we both lived.

“No,” I said. “I live in Nebraska.”

“Your series is set in Nebraska,” she agreed. “But we’re practically neighbors here in Florida.”

“I’ve never even been to Florida,” I replied.

I don’t remember exactly how the conversation ended, but I think we hung up, stared at the phone, and said, “huh.”

The internet soon solved the Nebraska/Florida mystery: there is another Lois Lewandowski with a mystery series. She writes under L.A. Lewandowski, but her first name is Lois. Her cyber presence indicated a nice, well-rounded person. She also photographed well and appeared to be sane, both excellent qualities for a writer.

“It’s sort of like The Big Lebowski,” I told my husband.

“Did someone pee on the rug?” he asked. (Note: The Big Lebowski is a profanity-laced movie about two individuals with the name of Jeffrey Lebowski. One is a wealthy older man with a young porn star wife, the other is a stoner on a bowling league. When the young wife racks up bills, thugs try to get the money from the wrong Lebowski and pee on his rug.)

“I wasn’t referring to the rug,” I informed my husband. “I was referencing the fact that we both have the same name, it begins with “L” and ends with s-k-i. That’s what ties everything together.”

Well, without a compromised rug, he didn’t think we qualified for a Big Lebowski comparison. I advised him that he was out of his element.

Now, I’m going to go a bit out of my element: I’m working on two stand-alone novels and neither qualifies as a mystery. That isn’t to say I’ll never write a mystery again. I’ve primed Newt, the Sheriff in the Gillian Jones books, to be the main character in a series of his own. I have some plot ideas for Newt, but sometimes an idea will grow the wings of a novel and other times it doesn’t. Time will tell. I do hope to have another book out by the end of 2018.

In the meantime, thanks for reading the Gillian Jones series, and if you Google me (us), I’m the Nebraska Lois Lewandowski.