In Beach Happens, Michaela is on a mission to taste every malasada in Hawaii.
Malasadas are a fried doughnut made from a Portuguese recipe. They can be made just by being rolled in sugar or stuffed with cream or jam.  In addition to some restaurants and shops, they're also sold as fundraisers and at the side of the road.  Who doesn't like fried dough, right?

When my family went to Maui, we tried them from a restaurant named Zippy's.  They were with choke sugar (choke is Hawaiian slang for a lot of!) The ones pictured above are the Italian version, called zeppoles from the Olive Garden.  The dipping sauces are raspberry jelly and chocolate. YUM!.  The Maui malasadas were gone before I could take a picture! But they looked like these only puffier.

One of the most famous recipes for malasadas comes from Leonard's Bakery in Hawaii.  He very generously gave Saveur magazine the recipe and you can find it here.

Michaela has a deep reason why she is obsessed with the yummy doughnuts.  You can read all about it in the second book of the Hawaii Heat series, Beach Happens.
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Every restaurant we went to in Old Town, San Diego proclaimed they had the best margarita in San Diego.  So naturally, my husband and I had to try them all.  I found that one should never skimp on tequila.  The bargain brand is never as good as the top shelf, but in the case of tequila it's worth the extra money not to have a cheap tequila hang over the next morning.

The best margarita we had came from a restaurant called El Agave, which was also a tequila museum.  The best chips and dips came from the restaurant pictured above, Barra Barra Saloon.

My husband likes to mix drinks, so here's his version of . . .

The Perfect Margarita
2 ounces of Tres Generacions Anejo white tequila
4 ounces of Margaritaville margarita mix
1/2 ounce Grand Marnier

Pour all the ingredients over ice in a cocktail shaker.  Shake it.  Strain it.  Pour it in a salted rim margarita ice.

Everybody always talks about book boyfriends, those hot alpha males we all love to read about.  But not a lot is said about book girlfriends, those women who you’d love to have next to you in a fight, or as your BFF.  Here are my top BBFF (book, best friends, forever)

• Kate Daniels – kickass sword swinger and magic user.
• Lt. Eve Dallas – tough police lieutenant with mad investigation skills and work ethic.
• Amaranthe Lokdon – charismatic leader with a penchant for getting in trouble and blowing things up.
• Lady Surreal SaDiablo – assassin, former courtesan, grey jeweled witch.
• Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr – Space Marine, ‘nuff said.

A lot of the times, these types of book girlfriends don’t appear in the regular genre romance books.  The above examples have romantic elements in their plots but their books are urban fantasy, science fiction, and fantasy.  I’m not saying that romances don’t have awesome, powerful women.  Just take Jessica Trent in Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels, for example.  You had to have some chops to stand up to Dain, the bane and blight of the Ballisters.  I find that romance heroines tend to be more emotionally strong than the urban fantasy heroines who are usually both emotionally and physically strong.  A lot of the times, it’s the romance genre that holds that back.  You really can’t have a regency heroine who’s a boxer.  They do all their fighting in pretty dresses and in sitting rooms, like Lillian in Lisa Kleypas’ It Happened one Autumn. Sparks fly when feisty American meets snooty English aristocrat.  She gives him hell.  It’s great to watch them fall in love.
In contemporary romance, the strong female usually has self confidence and a great sense of humor.  Take Jenny Crusie’s Min, for instance in Bet Me.  Cal has no idea what hit him. Of course, Suzanne Brockman’s PJ Richards in Harvard’s Education is a sharp shooter, training with SEALS.  I’m not messing with her.  My personal favorite contemporary heroine has a great job like a lawyer or a business owner, who doesn’t take one bit of the heroes’ nonsense. Julie James’ heroines tend to be wise cracking professional women with a low tolerance for B.S.
Carolyn, my heroine in The Queen’s Wings, isn’t kickass.  She’s never been in a fight, unless you count her brother Evan, but he deserved it.  He bent the cover of her signed copy of Jude Deveraux’s Knight in Shining Armor.  She’s just a regular girl who dreams of becoming a dragon.  Yet along the way, she finds a way to be strong, both emotionally and physically.

So I saw a meme like the one above and I should know better to save them to my "funny" file when I see them.  Instead, I passed it along.  But then the thought of it really dug in and when I went back to find it, of course, it was gone in a long line of new posts.  So my friend, Kenny, made this one for me with what I could remember of the post.  Then my other friends came through and found the original post.  Then, my friend Kristan Higgins shared it and BOOM!  The next thing I knew FIVE MILLION people had seen the post.  Holy Viral Outbreak, Batman.  The best part, though, was reading the comments.  I love passionate nerds.  They are my people and my tribe.  I loved all the discussion about the comic books and the book tie-ins and the debate about one of my favorite movies.  I can't tell you how thrilled I am to be sharing Star Wars with my son.  When my husband, son and I sat together in the movie theater, I got goosebumps when the opening orchestra sounded.  We clapped when Han and Chewie came on screen.  We left the movie singing "Da Da Da Da DA!" over and over again.  

But then all the comments about how Carrie Fisher hadn't aged well came out and it wasn't until Carrie responded with "Blow me" and that the comments hurt "all three of her feelings" that I realized that General Leia Organa kind of got the short straw in all of this.  Let's be honest, it's been over thirty years since Luke, Leia and Han soared into hyperspace.  We've all aged, gracefully or not.

So then I thought that maybe Carrie Fisher deserved her own meme. . . .

 
NYC’s First & Only Romance Reading Series
Lady Jane’s Salon® as seen in Time Out New York and The New York Post…
 
Join us Monday, January 4th, 7-9:00 PM at Madame X (NYC’s “sexiest bar”; loft level) as we ring in 2016 with four fabulous romance fiction readings.
 
Guest authors: Jamie K. Schmidt, Nicole Banks, Sylvia Halliday and Marty T. McCarthy!
 
Admission: $5/person. Net proceeds support Win.
 
Cash bar with $5/$6 cocktails & “mocktails.”
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About LJS: Launched in February 2009 by authors Hope Tarr, Leanna Renee Hieber and Maya Rodale and book blogger, Ron Hogan, Lady Jane’s Salon® is NYC’s first, and still only, monthly reading series devoted to romance fiction, now with seven satellites nationwide. The Salon, which donates its net proceeds to Win, has been featured in The New York Post,
Time Out New York and in the award-winning documentary film, “Love Between the Covers.”
 
Visit Lady Jane’s online at www.LadyJaneSalonNYC.com, http://www.facebook.com/LadyJanesSalon & http://twitter.com/LadyJanesSalon.
 
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