ERIC'S BIT or BEFORE CHICKS WORE MINIS
My memories of Easter go way back, to before chicks wore mini-skirts, back to when they gave chicks away at gas stations. Those were the days.Easter was what you get when you substituted a magic rabbit for a magic fat guy from the North Pole and a basket of candy and some dyed hard-boiled eggs for great heaps of brightly wrapped presents. That's right, a sort of second-rate Christmas. On the holiday scale Easter rated below Halloween. My trick-or-treat bag held more candy than my Easter basket and although some spoilsports gave out apples at least no one plopped any hard-boiled eggs into the sack. Even the tangerines that took up so much valuable space in the Christmas stockings were preferable to eggs. What do you do with dozens of hard-boiled eggs? I recall choking down egg salad sandwiches until the Fourth Of July (a holiday that barely deserved a ranking because fireworks were illegal in Pennsylvania and school was out for the summer anyway).
I did enjoy coloring the eggs and hunting for them Easter morning after they'd been hidden by the bunny, even if it wasn't quite as thrilling as roaming dark streets in weird costumes. My family was lucky enough to have a big lawn where eggs could hide behind tree trunks, in clumps of weeds, amidst the stones in the rock garden, up in the crook of the huge maple tree in the front yard, in the corner of the sandbox, underneath a flower pot by the back door, up in the latticework of the rose arbor.
One early Easter it snowed. Four or five inches of heavy wet snow. My gloves were soaked through as soon as I poked around the shrubbery in front of the house. I guess the rabbit must have carried out its task in the small hours of the night because there were no tracks leading to the eggs. Those eggs were a sorry sight after they'd been hunted down and carted inside. Between sitting in the snow and my wet gloves, their colors were runny, the designs smeared. And after I'd worked so hard dipping them into the different pots of dye at various angles, blocking out patterns with a clear wax crayon.(Turned out to be good practice for the glories of tie-dye).
The dyed eggs were left out for the Easter Bunny to retrieve and hide, you see. Which also served to prove the reality of the bunny, just as the absence of the cookies and milk set out for Santa proved that he had, indeed, visited.
There was more to the holiday than colored eggs, but not much that enthused me. I've never been fond of Easter candy. The big, candy eggs are so overly sweet they make my teeth ache and plain chocolate is...well...plain.
The fluffy chicks were more appealing. Not to eat, mind you. Although since my grandparents' chicken coop never got overcrowded, despite the traditional influx of Easter chicks....well, that's something I prefer not to think about. I suppose it taints my memory. That and pondering the fate of all those chicks they used to give away at gas stations. Sure, the ones we brought home had a coop to go too (and never mind the chicken that showed up on my dinner plate months later. I prefer to think I was eating fowl with whom I was not acquainted, that I had not romped with in the grass).
So the egg hunt was the big thing. Mysteriously, almost every year, there was an egg which eluded the hunt, only to be found weeks later, while I was mowing the lawn, or weeding, a thrilling find, a faded artifact of the past nestled somewhere I must have neglected to look. Best of all, you wouldn't dare use a month old egg in a sandwich.
NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP STICKER
Our ticker's devoted to publication news of one kind or another, so let's get to it....
RUINED STONES or GRACE OOP NORTH
We're pleased to report on behalf of our shadow identity Eric Reed that a review of his WW2 mystery Ruined Stones (set in Newcastle on Tyne) has just appeared over on the For The Love of Books blog. The site is owned by a librarian whose name is not given but who opines this novel "hits all the high notes with a spunky, savvy heroine, small town idiosyncracies and a tumultuous time in world history."https://cayocosta72.wordpress.com/2017/04/07/ruined-stones-by-eric-reed-published-by-poisoned-pen/
Ruined Stones will appear in July but is already available for pre-order via the usual suspects on- and off-line as well as the Poisoned Pen Press website. Like to read an excerpt? Point your clicker to
http://poisonedpenpress.com/books/ruined-stones-author-guardian-stones/
JOHN RETURNS or A NEW LORD CHAMBERLAIN SHORT STORY
It's been a while since one of our short stories appeared, but readers could not hope to escape forever. Time's Revenge is our contribution to the newly published anthology Bound By Mystery: Celebrating 20 Years of Poisoned Pen Press. Edited by Diane DiBiase, the collection offers over thirty short stories by authors published by the press -- the irony of the collection's title and that of John's new adventure has not escaped us. A list of contributors, along with mini biographies, is to be found herehttps://www.amazon.com/Bound-Mystery-Celebrating-Years-Poisoned/dp/1464208328
MORE GAD REVIEWS or A DIFFERENT SORT OF LOCKED DOOR MYSTERY
We've uploaded a few more Golden Age reviews to our blog since the last newsletter, to wit one dealing with the mystery half of Conan Doyle's Tales of Terror and Mystery, not to mention Locked Doors by Mary Roberts Rinehart (a novel Constant Reviewer particularly enjoyed, especially the explanation behind all the truly mysterious shennanigans going on), Anthony Rolls' Scarweather, and The Winter Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine. Links to each here:http://ericreedmysteries.blogspot.com/
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