#Book and a brew with Ritu

[ritusmiles]

Book and a Brew with Ritu - Love Letters at the Borrow a Book Shop by @KileyDunbar @HeraBooks #NewRelease #BookReview and a #GIVEAWAY!

Is she a glutton for punishment, or does she just like my nibbles? Kiley is back for a third visit! Today, I am thrilled to welcome amazing romance author Kiley Dunbar to my blog for a cuppa and a bit of a chat about all things writerly, especially her newest release, Love Letters at the Borrow a Bookshop. It’s out, TODAY! And, before you read any further, there is a fabulous giveaway! Kiley…

[goodnewsjamaica]

Jamaica Ya Man! Travels to The Land of Bob Marley

New Post has been published on https://goodnewsjamaica.com/travel/jamaica-ya-man-travels-to-the-land-of-bob-marley/

Jamaica Ya Man! Travels to The Land of Bob Marley

Negril, with the longest, continuous stretch of white sand beach in Jamaica, is where the ganja cookie crumbles at a laid-back pace. My husband and I flew into Jamaica’s Montego Bay airport and drove to Negril, about two hours away. Adult-only hotels are tucked into rocky overlooks. Nudist beaches make suntans seamless. Smooth sands give silently beneath bare feet for miles and miles. The white velvet spreads into the ocean where fish dart around in the warm, clear waters. Music drifts down the beach like ganja smoke filling the lungs. Euphoric Negril is a playground of the true lover.

We stayed in the Charela Inn, that is situated right on the beach – one that the owner and hotelier Daniel Grizzle has zealously safeguarded.  Together with his wife (now deceased) the couple forced the Government to shelve plans to mine peat in the Great Morass area in the 1980s, which, according to scientists, would have ruined the legendary seven-mile beach and turned the area into a desert.  

The Charela Inn itself is very attractive and in the center of all action. Each room has either a private patio or a private balcony. Our room overlooked the freshwater pool. The white sand and crystal-clear waters of Negril’s beach, which made it to underwater photographer Tanya Burnett-Palmer’s Top 10 List for CNN Travel, were just steps away.

The best snorkeling spots for beginners are offshore and not accessible from the beach. As someone who cannot swim, I was worried as I scrambled into Captain Mike’s glass-bottom boat. We zoomed to the middle of the [sea] where the live corals sway and Captain Mike led me gently into the waters. As we floated together, he pointed out brain corals and sea urchins. Angelfish, boxfish and goatfish nibbled at my fingers as they ate the breadcrumbs offered to them.

I could have snorkeled for hours enjoying the stunning underwater landscape made by the coral in a rainbow of colors. Some of the most common coral and reef species include green- and purple-base anemone, red cauliflower-, flowerpot-, star- and bubble coral.

Is Life a Jerk for the Vegetarian?

Much to the delight of my vegetarian husband, we discovered that Rastafarian food is Ital or vegetarian, with lots of green vegetables, no milk, no meat and no salt. Perfect at breakfast is ackee, a fruit that obligingly pops open when it is ripe. Ackee looks and tastes like bhurjee or soft scrambled eggs when cooked with onions and tomatoes. Collard greens look-alike callaloo, and doughnut look-alike “festival bread” or dumplings complete the breakfast.

An experience in color and flavor is created by combining bright orange squash, with yellow curried ackee, and yellow plantain.  Scallion, thyme, garlic, onion, pimento, tomato and curry powder are all common seasonings in Rastafarian food.

For meat-lovers, jerk-seasoned grilled chicken, pork and fish are served with a spicy sauce. Fish prepared escovitch-style is seasoned, fried and marinated with a peppery, vinegar-based dressing made colorful with julienned bell peppers, carrots and onions. Goat and other meats are curried too. Beans cooked with coconut milk and vegetables are served with rice. Standard sides include steamed plantains, yams, sweet potato and breadfruit.

Fruits are plentiful in this tropical paradise. We sampled a variety of mangoes at the local market.  In addition to a local one called “Julie” there were East Indian varieties. Sadly, a mango called “Bombay,” which we were told was the sweetest of them all, was not available. Nesberry, familiar to us as sapota or chickoo, also made a delightful snack.

Red Stripe beer, brewed in Jamaica, and rum are the alcoholic beverages of choice on the island. A number of souvenir shops offer rum tastings. “The locals have small shots of rum through out the day,” said the shop assistant at one, where we stopped for a sample. Soursop, a member of the sitaphal or custard apple family, added tang and smoothness to a cocktail with rum and coconut cream. We washed our day down with chilled coconut water sipped from the shell and sugarcane juice freshly squeezed by the roadside.

MONTEGO BAY

We drove back from Negril to Montego Bay where we stayed in “Polkerris,” a well-appointed and luxurious bed-and-breakfast, owned by the Bennetts.  Jeremy Bennett came to Jamaica in 1962, fell in love with the island and his partner Clarissa, whom he married in 1970. Needless to say, he never left. The Bennetts host guests in their beautiful country house, which is just a ten-minute stroll from the restaurants and clubs of the Gloucester Avenue Hip Strip, Doctor’s Cave Beach and the Aqua Sol Theme Park. As a guest put it, you really will feel like you are visiting your rich relatives in Jamaica.

Tale of the East Indian and the Rastafarian

The National Museum West in downtown Montego Bay is a treasure trove of information about the history and culture of Jamaica. With respect to the Rastafarian story however, the Museum tells an incomplete tale.

Classified as both a new religious- and social movement, the Rastafari culture developed in Jamaica during the 1930s when Ras (Chief) Tafari was crowned the King of Ethiopia. The Indian cultural influence on the Rastafarian movement is undeniable. A Kingston couple Laxmi Mansingh and Professor Ajai Mansingh outline the connection between the Rastas and the Indian culture in Home Away From Home: 150 years of Indian presence in Jamaica. The Rastas are vegetarian, family-loving people, who worship the Goddess Kali. They wear their hair like the sadhus of India (devotees of Lord Shiva) and like them, smoke marijuana, which the Rastas also call ganja.

The first Rasta, Leonard P. Howell, took the spiritual name “Gong Guru” or Gongunguru Maragh (Gangunguru Maharaj), say Stephen Davis and Helen Lee in their book The First Rasta: Leonard Howell and The Rise of Rastafarianism. The name Gongunguru is a combination of three Hindi words – gyan (wisdom), gun (virtue), and guru (teacher). Howell started a community called the “Pinnacle,” which was especially known for the cultivation of cannabis, which has religious significance for the Rastafarians.

In the early to mid-nineteenth century, the British recruited Indians – from the tribes in the hills of Eastern India and from the Central provinces of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh – into the sugar colonies. For the indentured black population, the new Indian laborers seemed kindred spirits; their struggles had the empathy of the Rasta. Solidarity was soon established between the communities, both of which were brutalized economically and politically. The Rastafarian culture appears to be a result of the synthesis of these cultural interactions.

The Jamaican dancehall music – which also reflects the merging of East Indian and West Indian influences – is based on themes of survival, suffering and struggle, that inner-city black Jamaicans face on a daily basis, albeit in a more aggressive idiom than the Rasta-inspired reggae. Songs such as “Suhani Gyul” bring a smile to one’s lips as they seek their inspiration from old Bollywood songs and produce a Chutney remix – Arti & Zoelah’s Wine Up on Me.

The Jamaican motto is: Out of Many, One People; unfortunately, both Indo-Jamaicans and Rastafarians downplay each other’s influence, as they look outside the borders of Jamaica towards their mother countries – India and Africa.

Interestingly Edwards, the black security guard outside Ivans Bar, who after careful consideration, decided we were Indian, went on to share that his great-grandfather was Indian.  He proceeded to tell us the story of Bahubali and so immersed was he in the whys and wherefores of the movie that when our taxi came Edwards was very disappointed to see his audience leave.

How to Speak like a Jamaican

English is the official language of Jamaica, but the majority speaks a form of English Creole or “Patois” (pr. patwa). Patois was derived out of a need to communicate between peoples who did not share a common language, the English masters and the slaves.

Here are standard greetings that can be heard around the island:

Waa gwaan? –     What’s going on?

Waddup”       –     What’s up?

Yo                 –      Hey!

One love       –      An expression of unity, love and respect for all. One love, my brudder. One love, Sistreen!

From the time Christopher Columbus first set foot on Jamaica on May 6th, 1494, the island has seen increasing traffic year after year. All-inclusive hotels attract tourists in large numbers. “Enjoy the white beaches and chilled attitude before the island is run over completely,” says our driver Phillips as we head back to the airport, “Fo you can be shore that is coming.”

Yaw so nice, Jamaica!

~To book your room at the Polkerris in Montego Bay, please visit: www.montegobayinn.com.

~Guha Shankar’s book “Imagining India(ns): Cultural Performances and Diaspora Politics in Jamaica” provided good insight.

~Phillips, our fabulous driver in Montego Bay, can meet you at the airport and drive you around.  He can be reached on Whatsapp at 1 (876) 447-0904.

By: Ritu Marwah

Original Article Found Here

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[cathygeha]

REVIEW

Kill Me Why? by Ritu Sethi

Chief Inspector Gray James Detective Mystery #2

Colorado Gold MYSTERY AWARD-WINNING author, Daphne Suspense Finalist. Sequel to Bestseller, His Hand In the Storm.

Dead bodies? Yes

A murderer to find? Definitely

Weird things going on in town? Without a doubt

Characters I could relate to? Not many

Did I enjoy this book? Yes

Do I want to read more in this series? Of course!

After reading book one in the series I was eager to find out just what would happen in Gray James life. His estranged wife and an unknown toddler daughter appeared on his doorstep at the end of book one and I wondered how that would work out. So, this book begins and there is a body found at a body farm and...the body disappears. There is one thing about the body that brings back a case from fifteen years ago that Gray was on the task force for. He needs to catch The Stitcher...NOW. There are more bodies with lips stitched closed...that disappear. There is a group of people in town wanting to oust the body farm. There is a caretaker of the body farm that is...different...but intriguing. Gray’s father makes an appearance. Seymour, the pathologist, is there for the Christmas holidays and a big part of the story. There is smuggling and romance and psychos and sickos and eventually Gray does suss out who did what to whom BUT again, the story ends with a big reveal that leads me to wondering when the next book will be out because...I really wonder how Gray will get out of the mess he may find himself in!

Thank you to the author who bequeathed me a copy of this book through NetGalley – This is my honest review.

4-5 Stars

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43705669-kill-me-why

BLURB

SOME STORMS RAGE INSIDE AND OUT

 Gray is standing in the spot where he killed his only son when he hears the news – THE STITCHER is back after a fifteen-year absence. And the victim – lips sutured shut with medical nylon – disappears within minutes of being found at a nearby Body Farm.  

 Something is brewing in the quaint and peaceful coastal town of Halfmoon Bay – edged between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains near Vancouver. The town of Gray’s youth and where it all began – where he had a hand in his son’s death.  

 With a black hole forming inside him and his family threatened, Gray must catch the Stitcher – before a flood drowns the town, before his wife takes what matters most, before his guarded secret is unleashed.  

 From the prize-winning author of the acclaimed Bestseller, His Hand In the Storm, comes a psychological, page-turning mystery with all the elements one needs on a rainy night: an enigmatic killer, a noble yet haunted detective, and an evocative setting among the crashing Pacific waves and towering mountains of British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast.

            Ritu Sethi needs coffee (her patch for Coca Cola), beaches, and murder mysteries to survive – not necessarily in that order. She won the Colorado Gold Award for the first in the Chief Inspector Gray James Murder Mystery Series, His Hand In the Storm. The book was also a Daphne du Maurier Suspense finalist. She has spent many years in Montreal and Vancouver – and decided to set her Gray James novels in those two cities. She is an avid mystery reader (especially of classic psychological mysteries). When she couldn't find a protagonist like Gray James – a combination of Dalgliesh, James Bond, and Hercule Poirot -- she created him. And the Gray James Novels were born. She likes to write at her dining room table by the fireplace and hopes to one day live by the ocean. Alas, there are not so many (warm) opportunities to do this in Canada:-) As a self-published author, Ritu makes all the creative decisions regarding her work – the blurb, the cover, the plot – and the artistic freedom this affords is thrilling. She’s fulfilling her lifelong desire of becoming a mystery writer. Many thanks to all the readers who are making that possible. Subscribe and get Exclusive content, notifications of promotions, and deleted chapters: http://eepurl.com/gcyurn OR SUBSCRIBE ON HER WEBSITE: www.rituwrites.com FACEBOOK PAGE: https://www.facebook.com/ritusethiauthor AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE: https://www.amazon.com/author/ritusethi BOOKBUB: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/ritu-...

[ritusmiles]

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[ritusmiles]

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[ritusmiles]

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[ritusmiles]

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