Spice up Your Summer!

Even in the middle of a heat wave, I love heat: hot sun, spicy food, cayenne, ginger, and jalapenos. So when I saw that Taco Bell had released Bold & Creamy Jalapeno Sauce, I was anxious to try it. They eye pleasing pastel green color with flecks of Jalapeno, hints at the kick to come. The sauce base tastes slightly mayonnaise and pours with the consistency of good ranch dressing. It is not runny the way Tabasco sauces are, it stays where you put it. The jalapeno bite is relatively mild, but definitely there. My mouth tingled a good ten minutes after, and never became overbearing.It didn’t induce perspiration, cause eye watering or make my head feel as though the top if needed to come off to release the heat. It was pleasantly spicy. I put mine on my breakfast egg wrap and loved every bite.

Taco Bell left themselves some room here to increase heat levels (bold, bolder and boldest ever). As far as heat comparisons, I’d say it’s probably in the family with Louisiana Hot Sauce or Red Hot.

My family likes adding Ranch dressing to Cajun Rice; Bold & Creamy will be an exciting addition. This sauce is creamy enough to get away with using as a salad dressing or veggie dip. If you want to try a finishing sauce with a little kick over grilled chicken, I highly recommend this one and will be telling all my spice loving friends about it. Who knows, even the fearful ones may try this. It could lead to more spice in your life!

Sell Your Own &@%^ Movie!

This review is from: Sell Your Own Damn Movie! (Paperback)

Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)

I started reading Sell Your Own Damn Movie by Lloyd Kaufman and had a difficult time getting through it. Even if it's intended to be tongue in cheek, the adolescent humor, f-bombs and obsessive sexual references were tiresome and got in the way of the supposed point of the book:how to sell your independent film.

As I read, the book seemed largely to be a mind-numbing, shameless plug for Lloyd Kaufman's company, Troma Entertainment, which has been around 40 years. As far as information about how to sell your movie, the interviews with indie film producers like Nina Paley (Sita Sings the Blues) Mynette Louie, producer and Tze Chun writer/director (Children of Invention) and others were worth reading.

The book isn't without its good points, for me there weren't enough of them to justify the cost of the book. While it is noteworthy that Kaufman and his company have been around longer than most Hollywood marriages, my copy of Sell Your Own Damn Movie will not be. It literally came unbound at page 175 while I read it. If you are looking to sell your own movie, you may be better off to look elsewhere for how best to accomplish it.
2 out of  5 stars.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the Amazon Vine program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255

Fallen by Karin Slaughter

Fallen is my first Karin Slaughter novel. I have recently become a big fan of audio discs to help pass drive time. This story was read by Shannon Cochran, who gave a wonderful performance giving each character a different accent, cadence or tone. It really mirrored the sort of people I would expect to find in Georgia, (where I have relatives) so as soon as they started talking, I felt right at home.(Find more of Shannon's work on Amazon)

Most of us expect life to maintain the status quo. If we drop our kids off at mom's, then we expect to find them there, relatively intact, when we come to pick them up. But Faith Mitchell, an agent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation found instead, her mother and baby daughter Emma missing, a ransacked house, a lot of blood and after an altercation with armed men, even more questions.

It sounds like an event that should never have happened, especially if your mother is Evelyn Mitchell, an ex-cop. Faith tracks one man from the crime scene, but even while she pins him to the ground and screams to know the whereabouts of her mother, he is bleeding out, refusing to tell her anything useful.

After Emma is found, safely tucked in the garage, I was able to relax enough to run with this fast paced novel. I enjoyed the character reflections that helped me flesh out who they were, how Faith Mitchell came to be a single mother, not once, but twice, and how her partner Will Trent came to be a little backward in relationships. By the time the characters were answering who did this and what did they want? and fitting all the pieces together, I still had no idea how this would all turn out. Because it kept me guessing, it kept me reading.

I give this book five stars because it was a great story, even though I'll back track and begin with the first book, I think this was a fine novel based on its own merits.


Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this DVD free through the Amazon Vine Program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255

Thick as Thieves

Thick as Thieves by Peter Spiegelman

When this book showed up at my door and I saw the page count of 295 I groaned. I didn’t remember ordering the book, and wasn’t quite sure I was ready for it. After putting on my sunning clothes, pouring an iced-tea then grabbing my mp3 player, I reluctantly picked up the novel that Lee Childs called “slick, sophisticated and satisfying” and set out to lounge in the chaise.

My plan was to read the first chapter, close my eyes and listen to music while napping in the afternoon sun. It was the phrase at the end of the first sentence… "Carr hears voices in the walls." that reached out like a tentacle and grabbed hold of my imagination. The next thing I knew, my skin was slightly burnt, my ice tea was empty and I was closing the book on chapter ten. I felt like I was in the middle of the tropical heat they were experiencing in Miami.

While I went about my day, I couldn’t stop thinking about Carr, Latin Mike, Bobby Dennis and haunted by Val. I wonderer what Carr was going to do about his father, and this team—that didn’t seem quite loyal—that he’d just begun to lead on the Prader job.

I fell in love with the story. I’d read a few chapters and stop intentionally to see if I could figure out how things would play out. In this way, the story seemed more real, more surprising ( I was wrong about the way it went) that reading it straight through. I savored that story as much as I could.

Even as the chapters wound down, and I was desperate to see how it all turned out,  didn’t want the story to end. If you like intelligent thrillers that always keep you guessing, Spielgelman’s Thick as Thieves won’t disappoint.


Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the Amazon Vine program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255