VINO COTTO, COOKED WINE; RISKY, TRADITIONAL, UNIQUE
How can you boil your harvest and get away with it? In an obscure corner of Italy they do just that! The result is vino cotto, a semi sweet dessert wine that no one has heard of but is worth getting to know.
STORY BEHIND THE STORY; THE SCRAPS
At the end of Chapter 34, in a scene at the Nyugati train station, Turgut and Ergün, two amiable Turkish criminals running a Budapest chop shop, are bewildered and much impressed when they set eyes on lovely Jasmin, a policewoman and Mark’s dinner date. “Only rich doctors can attract women like that,” says Ergün, unaware that Mark is no ladies man and that his date came about by happenstance. Turgut agrees and says, “The rest of us, we get the scraps.” Nyugati Railroad Station, Budapest This tiny detail with the pun on scraps emerged from a troubled period[...]
STORY BEHIND THE STORY; RED SQUARE, AN INSPIRATION
In 2014, after publication of my second book Appassionata, an anthology of short stories, I mustered the courage to tackle a novel. It was to be a recollection of my Turkish high school days cloaked within the format of a murder mystery. At first I had no idea how to go about it. In late 2015 my mother in law Pat Snyder, an avid reader, recommended Martin Cruz Smith. He is a good crime writer, she said. So I read Red Square, his second book in the Arkady Renko series. The first one, Gorky Park had been made into a[...]
THE MAKING OF A BOOK COVER
The one most worrisome aspect of each book I published was the front cover. Could I ever design a catchy one? As it turned out, all three were easier than I thought. Perhaps my background as an amateur photographer helped. But what helped the most were nameless, faceless graphic artists provided by publishers. When the step-by-step publishing process comes to the cover art, it begins with a detailed questionnaire about the information and mood that needs to be conveyed. Afterwards sample photos are requested. I chose to combine two images with each one of my covers. With Mark to Murder[...]
MARK TO MURDER, GRESHAM PALACE HOTEL
The spectacular Gresham Palace hotel in Budapest is the main backdrop for the plot of Mark to Murder. It is where Mark discovers his old high school mate’s dead body, encounters the sultry masseuse Olga, and experiences an eerie visit from the eccentric Hungarian inspector Karpáty. The luxury hotel is Mark’s home away from home. Built in 1906, the Art Nouveau building was originally the European headquarters of the Gresham Life Assurance Company of London. It was named after 16th-century financier Sir Thomas Gresham who founded the London Royal Exchange, and whose bust Mark observed on the façade of[...]
PUMP YOUR OWN WINE; OLD WORLD VS NEW
“I get my wine from a local winery,” said Vincenzo, our tour guide in the Amalfi Coast. He is a well educated guy, an expert in linguistics, reasonably affluent by local standards. “I fill up three liter jugs. Costs me 3 Euros per liter.” Vincenzo We tried to imagine that. All week we had been chasing after fancy bottles in expensive restaurant wine lists. “It’s really good wine,” he added, mumbling to himself. Next week, on our own, we toured the Marche region in north-east Italy and observed what Vincenzo told us, in real life. The wineries we[...]