Hi, lovelies! It gives me great pleasure today to host Patricia V. Davis and her new book series, “The Secret Spice Café Trilogy”! For other stops on her Goddess Fish Promotions Book Tour, please click on the banner above or any of the images in this post.
Be sure to make it to the
end of this post to enter to win a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble Gift Card!! Also, come back daily to interact with Patricia
and to increase your chances of winning!
Thanks for stopping
by! Wishing you lots of luck in this
fabulous giveaway!
The Secret Spice Café Trilogy
by Patricia V. Davis
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GENRE: Magical Realism, Women's Paranormal Fiction, Mystery
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BLURB – COOKING
FOR GHOSTS – BOOK ONE:
Do hearts broken long ago forever leave a tangible trace?
A
Vegas cocktail waitress. An Indian herbalist. A British chemistry professor. An
Italian-American widow. Four unique women with one thing in common: each is
haunted by a tragedy from her past.
Cynthia,
Rohini, Jane, and Angela meet on a food blogging site and bond over recipes.
They decide on impulse to open The Secret Spice, an elegant café on the
magnificent ocean liner, the RMS Queen Mary, currently a floating hotel
in Long Beach, California. Rich in history and tales of supernatural
occurrences, the ship hides her own dark secrets.
The
women are surrounded by ghosts long before they step aboard, but once they do,
nothing is quite what it seems. Not the people they meet, not their brooding
chef's mystic recipes, and not the Queen Mary herself. Yet the spirits they
encounter help them discover that there's always a chance to live, as long as
one is alive.
An Official Pulpwood Queens Book Club Selection, and read by Ann
Marie Gideon, COOKING FOR GHOSTS is an unforgettable tale of love, redemption,
and divine female power.
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BOOK TRAILER –
COOKING FOR GHOSTS – BOOK ONE:
Check out the book trailer for “Cooking for Ghosts,” below:
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Those words: “I’m a woman, first”
were what made it easier for me. In the end, brunette, or blonde, similar
backgrounds or otherwise, we are all women. We are all human.
Patricia will be awarding a $25 Amazon or B/N GC
to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour.
BLURB – SPELLS AND
OREGANO – BOOK TWO:
A
mother desperate to save her twin sons, a war veteran in torment, a beautiful
young psychic with a terrible secret, a powerful magician with a shattered
soul, and a Queen steeped in history and glory. These extraordinary beings
cross paths and set off a remarkable chain of events in Spells and Oregano:
Book II in The Secret Spice Cafe Trilogy.
Overcome
by despair after a trauma when she was sixteen, Sarita Taylor has spent the
past ten years isolated and lonely aboard her beloved RMS Queen Mary.
Fearful of outsiders, she dedicates her time to managing The Secret Spice
Café, now an award-winning restaurant. Until Luca Miceli, a man with a dark
past, steps on board.
Patricia
V. Davis deftly spins past and present, mystery and magic, into a potent story
of passionate longing and family tragedy all at once. Spells and Oregano is a
compelling tale of atonement, devotion, and undying love, set aboard one of the
world's most magnificent, haunted ships.
Don’t miss Cooking for Ghosts: Book I in The Secret Spice Cafe
Trilogy. The Secret Spice Trilogy is an Official Pulpwood Queens Book Club
Selection.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BOOK TRAILER – SPELLS
AND OREGANO – BOOK TWO:
Check out the book trailer for “Spells and Oregano,” below:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BLURB – DEMONS,
WELL SEASONED – BOOK THREE:
Dare to Believe in Your Power...
A
long-lost grandmother. A stay-at-home mom. A comic book fan. A five-year-old
girl with a star-shaped birthmark. And nine more.
The
cast is bigger, the stakes are higher. When Sarita's grandmother, a Vodou
priestess, foresees a terrible evil, Cynthia, Jane, Angela, and Rohini reunite
on a heart-rending mission to save all that's precious to them, including the
iconic ship, the RMS Queen Mary. They cannot do it alone--the priestess
tells them there must be thirteen on the night of the thirteenth moon. in this
life-or-death pursuit. Yet, can she be trusted?
Spiced
with history and the supernatural, Demons, Well-Seasoned takes us from
1930s Glasgow, to New Orleans and Harlem in the 1950s, to present day southern
California, and back again, on a metaphysical voyage that is both exhilarating
and poignant. But before you embark upon this final sail with the denizens of The
Secret Spice, be warned: expect to lose sleep, and keep tissues at hand.
These valiant characters might just stay with you long after their story comes
to a close.
Don't miss Cooking for Ghosts, and Spells & Oregano, Books I
and II in The Secret Spice Café Trilogy. The Secret Spice Cafe Trilogy is an
Official Pulpwood Queens Book Club Selection.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BOOK TRAILER – DEMONS,
WELL SEASONED – BOOK THREE:
Check out the book trailer for “Demons, Well Seasoned,” below:
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EXCERPT FOUR:
From Spells and Oregano – Book Two:
She
said good bye again, and this time he didn’t stop her. As much as he didn’t
want to admit it, he knew she was right to leave him. She had self-respect, for
sure. He smirked bitterly. What was the meme he’d seen recently? ‘A girlfriend would be nice, but right now,
I'm in a serious relationship with alcohol and bad decisions.’
Speaking
of, he stared at the coffee pot he'd just picked up again. Caffeine alone
wouldn't do the trick if he intended to function at all for the day. With the
dregs of the nightmare still eating at him and Desiree’s declaration of his
shortcomings, his head had started to throb. He needed a drink.
The
carafe shattered with force in his hand, the water hitting his face and bare
chest, drenching him with cold. He sucked in a breath, blinking rapidly as
water streamed down into his eyes. He looked down at the plastic handle, the
only thing that remained in his grasp. “How in the hell …?”
Wiping
his face on his forearm, he took a dustpan out from under the sink, and bent
down to sweep up the wet pieces of glass. He yelped when the door to the fancy
subzero crashed open next. The fridge was stocked with nothing but limes,
lemons, and beer. He watched, slack-jawed, as the beer bottles popped in
syncopated rhythm and a torrent of expensive, imported ale washed down from the
refrigerator shelves to flood across the kitchen tile. He had to crouch down to
the ground as a blur of yellow and green citrus shot toward him like cannon
balls.
The
refrigerator uprising ceased when there were no longer any rebels left. With
caution, Luca bent forward to examine the fridge interior, his heart going like
a jack hammer. One last, unbroken bottle exploded.
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GUEST POST:
The Craziest Thing I've Done in the Name of Research:
Priestess Mirian Chamani of the New Orleans Spiritual Temple
PC – Patricia V.
Davis
Hello, FAB Readers!
As a
brunette myself, there’s nothing I love more than being invited to write a
guest post for a blog named Fabulous and Brunette. Let’s hear it for
brunettes! But, with that said, the women of The
Secret Spice Café Trilogy sport a rainbow of hair colors, and
that’s wonderful too.
It
was in delving into the religion and background of one of my favorite female
characters, Priestess Rosemary, who appears in the last book in the trilogy, Demons, Well-Seasoned, that I did, if not
my craziest thing for research, my most exciting thing. I flew to
Louisiana to interview a genuine voodoo priestess, (called a mambo)
and a genuine voodoo priest (called a houngan).
But
before I go into that story, let me tell you a
bit about me that is relevant to how this particular book series came about:
I
lived in Greece for more than seven years, in an area rife with female ex-pats.
And where had we come from? Pretty much everywhere. We had only two
commonalities. The first was that we were in Greece because we’d fallen in love with a Greek national.
That man might have been in our home country for school or work. Or we met him
in his home country for our work. Some of us had saved money for an adventurous
holiday in Greece after college, and ended up meeting the man we would marry.
Others like my friend, Angela, (for whom one of the characters in my trilogy
was named) were in the American military when we met our future Greek husband.
Whatever
the reason, we were in love, told by our lover that he wanted to live in Greece
or the marriage was off, and so there we were — Americans,
Canadians, Italians, Australians, Irish, English, Black, Asian, Latina,
Lebanese, Filipino — you name it, we were there, and we bonded because each of
us felt like a fish out of water.
We found our commonality in our perceived ‘uncommonness’. Most
of us had to deal with the Greek mother-in-law who thought her son shouldn’t
have married a foreigner, who thought she needed to show us the error of our
strange cultural ways. Everything from what we cooked to how we spoke Greek to
how we raised our children, was critiqued. We were lonely for what we’d left
behind. And we had plenty of Greek women friends too, who, for one reason or
another, also felt like fish out of water among their own.
We outliers formed our own community. If
you longed for a Thanksgiving holiday, which is obviously not celebrated in
Greece, you created one with your new friends. You made the traditional meal
for them and for some you’d gathered around your table, it was the first time
they’d eaten it. They’d bring their own foods too, as we all do. So, your
“traditional” Thanksgiving dinner might also include hummus. And mazapán.
And spanakopita.
It didn’t take long for this all to seem ordinary. We
had first bonded over the fact that we were made to feel “other”, but we soon learned that we were much more alike that it
appeared. Because we were all women. Women who loved, who had
families we loved.
It
doesn’t matter what color skin your friend has, or what part of the world she’s
from, when she tells you she’s learned that her husband is cheating on her, or
her in-laws are driving her mad. Or that, though you might never understand the
Hindi she speaks to her children, you know just how she feels when she finds
out her mother has died, thousands of miles away from her.
In these scenarios, we know just how she feels, don’t we?
As an
author, how could I not write about these experiences? And it was with them in
mind that I wrote The Secret Spice Cafe
Trilogy. Four women from four different backgrounds who meet on
a food blogging site. Yes, a food blogging site,
because it also doesn’t matter where you’re from, we all have to eat.
These four bond over recipes, and each with their own secrets and heartbreaks,
decide on impulse to open a restaurant together aboard an historic ship, the RMS Queen Mary, that’s now a floating
hotel and museum, permanently docked in Long Beach, California.
The
ship is real, the women are not, and the closest I get to any of them is a
shared Italian-American with Angela, the pastry chef. Nonetheless, I see a
little of myself in all four women, as I see a little of myself in all my
friends I met in Greece. My years there taught
me to look for the commonalities in humans rather than the difference, and it
was with that approach I wrote my stories.
I
also did tons of research. I interviewed dozens of professionals in various
fields, and got first-hand information on everything from how to strangle
someone, to how to run a commercial kitchen, to what is happening in a certain
very progressive small village in India. I studied the history of the Queen Mary where the stories take place,
but I also talked to ship aficionados and historians. And don’t get me started
on the ghost tours I took, since this ship is
rumored to be haunted. (I discuss a few personal experiences in that
arena here)
Even
with all this, my most profound research experience as an author was my
interview with a genuine Voodoo practitioner, Priestess Miriam Chamani of the New Orleans Voodoo Spiritual Temple. I wanted
to learn about the real-life priestess, but I also wanted to ask her
permission, if you will, to write such a character — me, a white woman who knew
nothing about Haitian Vodou (another spelling for “voodoo”) before I got
started down this path.
Priestess
Miriam asked me why I wanted to write this character, and I answered honestly. “I don’t know. But I somehow feel as though she wants me
to write about her.”
Her
response was both a relief and an affirmation. She said, “Then you should write
about her. And you shouldn’t be afraid, because remember this: I’m a woman first, then I’m a priestess.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR BIO:
PATRICIA V. DAVIS's debut
novel series, THE SECRET SPICE CAFE, is comprised of three books: COOKING
FOR GHOSTS (2016) SPELLS AND OREGANO (2017) and DEMONS,
WELL-SEASONED. (2019) The audio books will be released in 2020 by Tantor
Media, and narrated by Ann Marie Gideon. Patricia lives with her husband, who
is both a poker player and a rice farmer, so she divides her time between
southern Nevada and northern California. Say hello to Patricia at her author
website: www.TheSecretSpice.com.
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CONNECT WITH PATRICIA:
Website:
Blog:
Email:
patricia@patriciavdavis.com
Facebook:
Twitter:
Pinterest:
Instagram:
YouTube:
TikTok:
Wikipedia:
BookBub Author Page:
BookBub Book Page – Cooking for Ghosts – Book One:
BookBub Book Page – Spells and Oregano – Book Two:
BookBub Book Page – Demons, Well Seasoned – Book Three:
Goodreads Author Page:
Goodreads Book Page – Cooking for Ghosts – Book One:
Goodreads Book Page – Spells and Oregano – Book Two:
Goodreads Book Page – Demons, Well Seasoned – Book Three:
Amazon Author Page:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BOOK BUY LINKS –
COOKING FOR GHOSTS – BOOK ONE:
Amazon Kindle eBook:
Amazon Paperback:
Amazon Hardcover:
Amazon Audiobook:
Barnes and Noble NOOK eBook:
Barnes and Noble Paperback:
Barnes and Noble Hardcover:
The Book Depository Paperback:
The Book Depository Hardcover:
BAM! Books-A-Million Paperback:
BAM! Books-A-Million Hardcover:
Google Play Audiobook:
Kobo eBook:
Kobo Audiobook:
Patricia V. Davis Book Store – Autographed Paperback:
BookBub Book Page:
Goodreads Book Page:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BOOK BUY LINKS –
SPELLS AND OREGANO – BOOK TWO:
Amazon Kindle eBook:
Amazon Paperback:
Amazon Hardcover:
Amazon Audiobook:
The Book Depository Paperback:
The Book Depository Hardcover:
BAM! Books-A-Million Paperback:
BAM! Books-A-Million Hardcover:
Barnes and Noble NOOK eBook:
Barnes and Noble Paperback:
Barnes and Noble Hardcover:
Google Play Audiobook:
Kobo eBook:
Kobo Audiobook:
Patricia V. Davis Book Store – Autographed Paperback:
BookBub Book Page:
Goodreads Book Page:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BOOK BUY LINKS –
DEMONS, WELL SEASONED – BOOK THREE:
Amazon Kindle eBook:
Amazon Paperback:
Amazon Hardcover:
Amazon Audiobook:
The Book Depository Paperback:
The Book Depository Hardcover:
BAM! Books-A-Million Paperback:
BAM! Books-A-Million Hardcover:
Barnes and Noble NOOK eBook:
Barnes and Noble Paperback:
Barnes and Noble Hardcover:
Google Play Audiobook:
Kobo eBook:
Kobo Audiobook:
Patricia V. Davis Book Store – Autographed Paperback:
BookBub Book Page:
Goodreads Book Page:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GIVEAWAY INFO:
**This post contains affiliate links and if clicked and a
purchase is made, I may receive a small commission to help support this
blog. This does not cost you anything,
it just helps pay for all those awesome giveaways on here.**
This contest is sponsored
by a third party. Fabulous and Brunette is a registered host of Goddess Fish
Promotions. Prizes are given away by the
sponsors and not Fabulous and Brunette. The featured author and Goddess Fish
Promotions are solely responsible for the giveaway prize.
Thanks for hosting!
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure :)
DeleteSounds like a great read, thanks for sharing it with us.
ReplyDeleteHi James! Good morning! It certainly does! Can't wait to share my book review on "Cooking for Ghosts," the first book in Patricia's book series next month! Thanks for stopping by and good luck in the giveaway :)
DeleteWhich character was most fun to write for?
ReplyDeleteHi Bernie! Great question! Thanks for stopping by and good luck in the giveaway :)
DeleteHi, Bernie, Patricia here. Thanks for your question. Fabulous and Brunette, thanks for hosting my novel series! I have never seen a lovelier presentation nor a more thorough one. I love that you have all the links to all the indie bookshops too! Bernie, I think I enjoyed writing Jane most, because I have a friend from her part of the world, and while I was writing Jane, I was thinking of my friend the whole time. In fact, my friend even double-checked that I had right all the expressions from her area of the world (Newcastle, England). I hope you'll read the first novel and let me know what you think!
ReplyDeleteHi, Patricia! Sorry I missed you yesterday, I was out for a medical procedure... Anywho, welcome to FAB! Thank you for the kind words - I truly appreciate it! I work hard on my blog posts to make them special for the author's big day! Looking forward to reviewing your book next month! Good luck on the rest of the book tour! :)
Delete:-)
DeleteIt sounds like a cute read. The cover is nice. thanks for the chance
ReplyDeleteHi Lynn! Good morning! I totally agree! All three book covers are quite intriguing! Thanks for stopping by and good luck in the giveaway :)
DeleteSounds like a good book.
ReplyDeleteHi Rita! It absolutely does! Thanks for stopping by and good luck in the giveaway :)
DeleteSounds like a great series!
ReplyDeleteHi Victoria! It absolutely does! Can't wait to share my book review on "Cooking for Ghosts," the first book in Patricia's book series next month! Thank you for stopping by FAB and good luck in the giveaway! :)
DeleteDo you ever suffer from writer’s block and, if so, how do you overcome it?
ReplyDeleteGood morning Peggy! Great question! Can't wait to hear Patricia's answer! Thank you for stopping by FAB and good luck in the giveaway :)
Deletevery nice cover
ReplyDeleteDid you have to do any research when preparing to write your book?
ReplyDelete