Saturday, April 20, 2013

TOROS & TORSOS AND THE HEMINGWAY MOJITO

Toros & Torsos is currently available for free download on Kindle at Amazon.com.

The novel, the second in the Hector Lassiter series, is set partly in Key West and Cuba, and features Ernest Hemingway in a supporting role, 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 become. (I 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:


TOROS & TORSOS (HECTOR LASSITER #2) FREE FOR KINDLE




TOROS & TORSOS is currently available for free download as an eBook exclusively from Amazon.com.

Although it is technically the second novel in the Hector Lassiter series, the book is set decades in advance of number one, HEAD GAMES, and so is a perfect starting point for first-timers.

-----------------------------

Here's a bit more about the novel:

Hector Lassiter is a legendary crime novelist who writes what he lives and lives what he writes. But Hector frequently goes a step beyond, drawing friends and lovers into the tawdry and turbulent territory of his fiction. Now, the large-living pulp author has at last met his match in the ultimate performance artist: a phantom killer committed to the art of murder… a blood-thirsty provocateur who leaves a string of macabre tableaus modeled on famous works of surrealist painting and photography…

Against the vivid backdrops of a killer hurricane that nearly destroyed the Florida Keys in 1935, the Spanish Civil War, post-war Hollywood and the first days of the Castro regime in Cuba, Hector engages in a decades-long duel against a cabal of killer artists…

As in its Edgar®-nominated predecessor Head Games, history and myth merge, drawing on recent scholarship pointing to the existence of a dark underground of artists, photographers and art collectors that flourished in Europe and United States through most of the Twentieth Century.

In a blood-limned haze of love, deception, murderous metaphor and devastating betrayal, nothing is what it seems and obsession and creativity collide in a wicked and unexpected climax that will shake the art world to its foundations…

*********
TOROS & TORSOS was also:

• A 2009 Crimespree Award finalist for Favorite Book

• A 2009 Crimespree Award finalist for Best in an Ongoing Series

• One of Woody Hauts' Favorites of 2009 (You can read his take on the book here.)

You can also learn more at my official site, and view additional trailers, access interviews and various other extras related to TOROS & TORSOS, including an interview I gave in France regarding surrealism and serial murder, right here.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

TOROS & TORSOS: FREE FOR KINDLE STARTING SATURDAY


"A bold, ambitious, genre-bending novel from the talented Craig McDonald."
— GEORGE PELECANOS, THE TURNAROUND



TOROS & TORSOS will be available for free download as an eBook exclusively from Amazon.com on Saturday, April 20.

Although it is technically the second novel in the Hector Lassiter series, the book is set decades in advance of number one, HEAD GAMES, and so is a perfect starting point for first-timers.

Here's a bit about the novel:

Hector Lassiter is a legendary crime novelist who writes what he lives and lives what he writes. But Hector frequently goes a step beyond, drawing friends and lovers into the tawdry and turbulent territory of his fiction. Now, the large-living pulp author has at last met his match in the ultimate performance artist: a phantom killer committed to the art of murder… a blood-thirsty provocateur who leaves a string of macabre tableaus modeled on famous works of surrealist painting and photography…

Against the vivid backdrops of a killer hurricane that nearly destroyed the Florida Keys in 1935, the Spanish Civil War, post-war Hollywood and the first days of the Castro regime in Cuba, Hector engages in a decades-long duel against a cabal of killer artists…

As in its Edgar®-nominated predecessor Head Games, history and myth merge, drawing on recent scholarship pointing to the existence of a dark underground of artists, photographers and art collectors that flourished in Europe and United States through most of the Twentieth Century.

In a blood-limned haze of love, deception, murderous metaphor and devastating betrayal, nothing is what it seems and obsession and creativity collide in a wicked and unexpected climax that will shake the art world to its foundations…

*********
TOROS & TORSOS was also:

• A 2009 Crimespree Award finalist for Favorite Book

• A 2009 Crimespree Award finalist for Best in an Ongoing Series

• One of Woody Hauts' Favorites of 2009 (You can read his take on the book here.)

You can also learn more at my official site, and view additional trailers, access interviews and various other extras related to TOROS & TORSOS, including an interview I gave in France regarding surrealism and serial murder, right here.