Seeing as how I've never done a blog hop before, I hop you'll all bear with me. As I understand it, this is the point at which I'm supposed to talk about something literary and then something culinary. So, I've decided to post an excerpt from my soon to be released novel, BloodFlow, (due out November 24th) and then give you a recipe for Walnut Graham Bundt Cake with Candied Walnut Glaze (which I'm sure my main character would make if she had time to bake.)
Literary:
“Looks like you finally got your
wish, Kruz.”
Agent Miranda Kruz looked up from
the reams of data spread across her desk to see Supervisory Agent Jim Klein leaning
against the edge of her cubicle.
“Pardon?”
Her brain was still locked in the
process of comparing the paper copies to a different set of electronic numbers,
looking for disparities that might point toward a lead. Of course, she’d been
at the task for better than a week and hadn’t found a single thing with the
odor of domestic terrorism. It was a never-ending list of dates and numbers
with no correlation to anything. No one promised her work on the Terrorism Task
Force would be fun. Then again, no one told her it would consist of this much
drudgery either.
“You hate this paperwork shit. Well,
Tweeg wants you working in the field again. Starting…” He tapped the clock on
her desk. “Geez, is that the time? Kirsten is going to kill me.”
“Sir?”
“What?” He stared at her like she
had a third eye on the end of her nose. Apparently she wasn’t the only one
whose mind happened to be elsewhere.
Problem was, Jim’s mind spent more time at home that at work these days.
“Right. Tweeg sent orders down from on high. You’re on the Reynolds ‘murder’.” He
actually bothered to make air quotes. “Effective immediately. Of course, as
late as it is, he probably didn’t mean tonight.”
She wasn’t so sure. If Deputy
Director Anton Tweeg had anything to say about it, she’d work until the bats
went to bed. Still…
Tweeg
wants me on an active case.
“Wait. The Reynolds murder? You’re
talking about the senator’s wife who had a close encounter with a Detroit
Diesel, right?” And suddenly she knew exactly why Tweeg wanted her on this
case. Being unofficially demoted from field agent to paper jockey had been bad
enough. This case was worse.
Only that morning, she’d watched
the husband’s press conference. If she had to guess, she’d say that the man, distraught
over his wife’s senseless death, cooked up a huge terrorist plot in his mind to
avoid facing the fact that his wife drove in front of a tractor trailer, which
he then spewed to the media. Senator Reynolds had just been assigned to some
subcommittee overseeing Randi’s own department, but still, no clues existed to
point to anything other than a tragic mistake.
Unless
she was drugged.
“Tox screen?”
“I’ll leave the particulars up to
you and Vic Hammond.” Jim nodded toward her computer. “The files have been
encrypted and sent to you.”
She typed the password to bypass
her screen saver and reawaken her system. Sure enough, a new email from Jim
waited.
“Tweeg said to make sure you
understand he wants this case closed as quickly and as quietly as possible.”
Great.
“And under no circumstances are you
to bother the senator with this.”
Son
of a…
“How exactly am I supposed to
conduct an investigation without interviewing the spouse?”
Jim shrugged. “Maybe you should ask
your friend, Payton.” His words drifted back to her as he walked away.
Her friendship with the Director Landis
definitely hadn’t made life easier for her. At least not in the way her
co-workers assumed, hinted, and gossiped about. He’d definitely filled the hole
left by growing up without a father. Still, whatever she’d gotten in life,
she’d earned. Including her spot on this task force. The cases assigned to her
weren’t any easier than her co-workers’; she just solved them faster. No one
gave her kudos she didn’t deserve. No pats on the back for doing busy work. Randi
Kruz busted her ass like she always had.
Eating Sunday dinner with Payton
and Evelyn didn’t mean she came in late on Monday. In fact, to prove how little
her friendship with Payton meant to her work, she came in early every day and stayed late. That didn’t
help. They still assumed she had her nose pressed firmly against Landis’ ass. Or
worse.
The rumor she was banging the boss
started circulating a couple months into her assignment to the TTF. They kept
going until the day Evelyn had been attacked. Payton was so inconsolable no one
could think he’d ever cheat on her.
Back then, Randi still visited him.
She tried to help in any way she could—fixing dinners, watering plants, tidying
up after a distracted husband whose wife was, for all intents and purposes,
gone. Instead of accepting her help like the father he’d become to her, he
slowly backed away.
The final blow came when she got to
the hospice center where Evelyn now lived and they told her that her name had
been removed from the list of approved visitors. She tried asking him why, but
he ignored her. He wouldn’t return any calls that weren’t work related. He
wouldn’t answer any questions via email. When he ordered her to stop wasting
company time, through Tweeg no less, she ate an entire carton of Haagen Dazs. She’d
lost one father before she was old enough to meet the man. Losing Payton had
been a crueler torment.
The biggest blow came when the
Deputy Director started assigning her crap tasks. And Landis did nothing. Her
co-workers never told her to her face that she deserved this treatment, but
they made it clear they felt that way.
“Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”
She shook away the snide phrase
she’d heard too often over the past year and resolved to keep doing her job as
best she could. It might not mean much to anyone else, but she could help a man
find closure. That had to count for something. Right?
And Culinary:
Walnut
Graham Cake with Candied Walnut Glaze
Cake:
1 cup
butter, softened
1 1/2
cups packed brown sugar
3 eggs
1 cup
orange juice
2 cups
all-purpose flour
1 cup
graham cracker crumbs
1
teaspoon baking powder
1
teaspoon baking soda
1
teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon
cinnamon
1 cup
chopped walnuts
Glaze:
1 cup
walnut halves (or chopped walnuts as desired)
1/4 cup
confectioners' sugar
1
tablespoon water
1 cup
packed brown sugar
1/4
teaspoon walnut extract
Preheat
oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour
one 10” bundt pan. In a large mixing
bowl, cream together butter and brown sugar.
Beat in eggs until light and fluffy.
Beat in orange juice until well combined. In a separate bowl, soft together flour,
graham cracker crumbs, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Beat dry mixture into wet mixture by thirds
until well combined. Stir in chopped
walnuts. Pour evenly into prepared bundt
pan. Bake for 40-45 minutes or until
toothpick inserted into center comes out clean.
Let cake sit for approximately 20 minutes and invert pan over cake
plate, dropping cake gently onto plate.
Let cool for another 20 minutes.
While cooling, combine all glaze ingredients into small saucepan (adding
extra water if mixture is too dry). Heat
gently over low heat until ingredients are smooth around walnuts. Increase heat to medium high and bring
mixture to boil. Boil for 45 seconds (do
not over boil). Remove from heat and
stir until boiling ends and remaining froth is incorporated into mixture. Gently drizzle by spoonfuls over cake,
arranging candied walnuts halves along the top of the cake as you go until
entire glaze mixture is over cake. (Be
careful, mixture is extremely hot.) Cool
and serve.
I hope I did this right, I hope you enjoyed what was on the plate today, and I hope you'll visit the other blogs in the hop:Alexia Chamberlynn
Jennie Bailey
