Please welcome our guest today: our good friend, a terrific writer and a talent in the kitchen as well as on the page: Shelley Costa.
Shelley is the author of You Cannoli Die Once – a 2014 Agatha
nominee for Best First Novel -- Basil
Instinct, and most recently, Practical
Sins For Cold Climates. Her crime stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and
several anthologies, and in 2004 she was nominated for an Edgar® for Best Short
Story. Her latest novel, A Killer’s Guide to Good Works, was just
published.
She most enjoys writing fish-out-of-water stories, partly because
they’re a great source of humor, and partly because she identifies with them. Today she’ll talk about The Kindness of
Cookies and make us a gift of these fabulous Madeleines. And for you, there’s more than one giveaway: read
RIGHT to the end for details!
And now, The Kindness of Cookies:
They say you always remember your first
love. In terms of humans, mine was an affable, yellow-haired boy named Tommy
Haskell, and we were in second grade. I pined. When Valentine’s Day rolled
around, I gave all the other kids in the class those cheap and cheesy boxed
valentines that show a cartoon space capsule with boy and girl astronauts
wearing upside fish bowls over their heads, with the sizzling message, Valentine, let’s go around together. But
for Tommy Haskell I made a great big heart out of red construction paper and a
white paper doily. You can imagine how that went over with twenty-four
eight-year olds. You would think they were all watching the antics of Clarabell
on The Howdy Doody Show. One way or
another, first loves slide into the vague and forgiving mists of your own
personal history.
But then there’s the cookie. The first
cookie love. The ur-Cookie. The cookie that was always there when you needed
it. For me, this cookie was Chips Ahoy, which debuted when I was thirteen
(okay, so, five years after I really needed it). These marvels were lined up
single file in a narrow rectangular box. The lettering – CHIPS AHOY! – was black. It was a serio