Saturday, August 30, 2014

TOROS & TORSOS: HEMINGWAY AND THE ONE TRUE MOJITO


The first five novels in the Hector Lassiter series—One True Sentence, Forever's Just Pretend and Toros & Torsos—are newly available from Betimes Books. (Ordering information below)



ONE TRUE SENTENCE: Paperback/eBook

FOREVER'S JUST PRETEND: Paperback/eBook

TOROS & TORSOS: Paperback/eBook


THE GREAT PRETENDER: Paperback/eBook

ROLL THE CREDITS: Paperback/eBook

Toros & Torsos is now freshly available in improved form from Betimes Books. The novel, the third in the Hector Lassiter series, is set partly in Key West and Cuba, and features Ernest Hemingway in a significant supporting role. Hem is the author who really put the mojito on the map.

When I wrote Toros &Torsos several years ago, the mojito wasn't yet the trendy drink it has since again become. (I have had a few readers who mistakenly thought it was some gaffe that Hector and Rachel Harper and Hem were knocking them back in the 1930s.)

The rum drink comes in early in Toros:

Hector sipped his mojito, watching her. The woman sat down and Hector rose, walked behind her, and scooted in her chair. She was wearing a white dress that bared her shoulders and most of her back — more than a little sunburn there. He sat back down and gestured at his glass. Hector said, “Ever have one?”
“No,” she said. “I mean, I don’t think so. Not even sure what that is. Is that mint in there with the lime?”
“Mashed in, then some more as garnish.” Hector raised two fingers at his bartender friend. He pointed at his nearly empty glass and then at himself and the woman. “You’ll love this, trust me,” he said. “Calm your nerves. Like my Daddy said, ‘You’ve got to find what you love and let it kill you.’”

A bit later in the book, in Spain, Hector samples a mojito made to Hemingway's specifications and recoils at its bastardized taste:

He tapped glasses with a wary Hem and said, “Here’s to diminishing ourselves this evening.” He sipped the mojito and made a face. “This is no mojito.”
“It’s sweetened with honey,” Hem said. “You know I can’t abide sugar.”

Hemingway's favored version of the mojito was allegedly made to Papa's peculiar specifications in La Bodeguita del Medio in Havana, Cuba.


According to Hemingway & Bailey's Bartending Guide To Great American Writers, here's the straight-up mojito recipe:

INGREDIENTS:
6 fresh mint sprigs
1 oz. lime juice
3/4 oz. simple syrup
2 oz. light rum
lime wedge

HOW TO:
"Crush 5 mint sprigs into the bottom of a chilled highball glass. Pour in lime juice, simple syrup, and rum. Fill glass with crushed ice, and stir gently. Garnish with lime wedge and remaining mint sprig. Sometimes a splash of club soda is added."

INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEO:




ONE TRUE SENTENCE: Paperback/eBook

FOREVER'S JUST PRETEND: Paperback/eBook

TOROS & TORSOS: Paperback/eBook


THE GREAT PRETENDER: Paperback/eBook

ROLL THE CREDITS: Paperback/eBook

Thursday, August 28, 2014

TOROS & TORSOS, HEMINGWAY & THE 1935 GREAT KEYS HURRICANE






The first five novels in the Hector Lassiter series—One True Sentence, Forever's Just Pretend and Toros & Torsos—are newly available from Betimes Books. (Ordering information below)



ONE TRUE SENTENCE: Paperback/eBook

FOREVER'S JUST PRETEND: Paperback/eBook

TOROS & TORSOS: Paperback/eBook

THE GREAT PRETENDER: Paperback/eBook

ROLL THE CREDITS: Paperback/eBook

This Labor Day weekend marks the 79th anniversary of the Great Florida Keys Storm of 1935 — still the most powerful hurricane to strike the United States. 
The storm is a critical element in my novel TOROS & TORSOS, newly available in repackaged and expanded form in paperback and eBook formats from Betime Books (ordering information below).
The ’35 hurricane occurred at a time before tropical storms were given names. Storm forecasting was an uncertain science.

Officials charged with the responsibility of informing and evacuating citizenry in the storm’s path were more grossly incompetent in performing their duties than those who bungled evacuations in the run-up to Katrina.

Toros & Torsos opens in Key West during Labor Day weekend, 1935. It finds Hector Lassiter and Ernest Hemingway preparing for the hurricane and traces their activities during and after the monster storm swept north of Key West.
America’s southernmost island was spared; the hurricane instead swamped and devastated the upper middle keys, killing numerous World War I vets left stranded on low-lying labor camps by dithering federal officials who had adequate time to evacuate them. 

The needless deaths of the vets and others had the effect of politicizing a previously apolitical Ernest Hemingway (admittedly, never an FDR fan) who was among the first to reach the destroyed keys to lend support and aid in collecting storm victims’ swollen, rotting bodies.

Hemingway wrote, “I would like to make whoever sent them there carry just one out through the mangroves, or turn one over that lay in the sun along the fill, or tie five together so they won’t float out, or smell that smell you thought you’d never smell again, with luck when rich bastards make a war. The lack of luck goes on until all who take part in it are gone…You’re dead now brother…Who left you there? And what’s the punishment for manslaughter now?”

In writing the Key West portion of Toros & Torsos, I consulted numerous Hemingway biographies, but the book I leaned hardest on is Phil Scott’s Hemingway’s Hurricane, which is not just the most comprehensive resource for Hemingway’s storm experience, but an excellent overview of the 1935 disaster that will be of interest to anyone who believes Katrina and government officials’ failure to adequately prepare for that gathering storm was an isolated phenomenon.



ONE TRUE SENTENCE: Paperback/eBook

FOREVER'S JUST PRETEND: Paperback/eBook

TOROS & TORSOS: Paperback/eBook

THE GREAT PRETENDER: Paperback/eBook

ROLL THE CREDITS: Paperback/eBook