Yerba Mate

Annamaria on Monday

Among the plants the first Europeans found in the New World were many that rather quickly became important parts of the European culture.  Tobacco comes quickly to mind.  There was another, yerba maté that slowly gained huge popularity, but then fell out of favor, and is now - once again - increasingly sought after.

Yerba Mate' is an indigenous tree that grew wild in that heart of South America, in an area occupied by the Guarani' people.  They harvested its leaves and twigs and soaked them water to make a beverage that helped them find the energy to deal with their primitive lives.  Mate'contains more caffeine than coffee or Ceylon tea.

Old myths told of a visit to the heart of South America by the goddess of the Moon, who was delighted with the beauty of the place.  But then she was threatened by a Jaguar that wanted to devour her.  An old man came to her defense and killed the jaguar.  In gratitude the goddess gave him and his people the yerba mate tree. 

With the arrival of Europeans, in the 16th Century, the Spanish settlers also began to enjoy the drink they called Mate (pronounced as two syllables.). When the Jesuits began to defend the Guarani' against the Portuguese and Spanish slave takers, they gathered them into Indian "reductions" - communes, and the priests learned to domesticate the plants and create orchards.  With the increase in suppply, mate' became more and more known and more and more popular.

Eventually, when the Jesuits were expelled in 1776, the plantations were taken over by the crown.  The popularity of the yerba mate continued spreading across South America, and eventually to Portugal, Spain, Italy, and France.  And Paraguay became enormously rich.

So rich that it's dictator, Francisco Solano Lopez thought he was wealthy enough to take on a war with Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. That war is the background history to my novel, invisible Country. And in that war Paraguay lost 25% of it land to Brazil and Argentina. The victors, of course of, took the most valuable parts of Paraguay: those where yerba maté grew.

Then and now, mate' is typically drunk from a calabash gourd.  Early on the Europeans' began fashioning special cups decorated with silver that are still popular in Paraguay and Argentina. Here are some close-ups of my mate' cup that is also shown the photo at the top.

 

The straw, called a bombilla, is designed to for allowing a person to drink without imbibing the leaves or the twigs

Customarily, family members, when visited by friends, stand in a circle, and pass the gourd around clockwise. The first person drinks, and then the gourd is refilled for the next person, etc. At the very end, everyone says thank you. It's a social faux-pas to say thank you before everyone has drunk.

Nowadays, in South America, the drink is still very popular. Wherever I went in Paraguay and Argentina, especially outside of Buenos Aires, even in Brazil near Igusu Falls, in the parking lots of places that travelers visit, there were people, mostly men, in or near the cars, drinking mate at all hours of the day.

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Currently, mate' has gained a following in the Middle East, and with the arrival of many South Americans to the US, it is more and more popular here, where it accounts for 5% of the caffein drinks, and growing each year.

What about you?  Have you tried it?  Would you care to? For me, I tried it when I first encountered it Paraguay. I think it must be an acquired taste.  And I think I am too Italian to prefer any source of caffein other than a delicious espresso.

I will leave you with this taste of the brilliant, the gorgeous The Mission, a film about those Jesuit missions in Paraguay.  If you have never seen it, watch it!  Even if you have, I promise you, you will be glad to see it again.

Free Annamaria

Annamaria on Monday

In a few days, crime writers from all over the world will be gathering in Minneapolis for the first in-person Bouchercon conference in three years.  Hurrah and Hallelujah!  To celebrate the event, the eBook of Invisible Country will be offered free from September 8 through September 10!

The Invisible Country story was inspired by something a friend told me: That Paraguay had once fought a war against Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, in which ninety percent of the Paraguay's male population between the ages of 8 and 80 perished.

My book begins like this...

Paraguay 1868

From his pulpit, Padre Gregorio looked out over a sea of lovely spider lace mantillas.  His congregation was almost entirely women.  Only seven males of this village still lived...

 

I dedicated the book to the memory of my father, a WWII combat Marine in the Pacific, who came back a pacifist and taught me to hate war.  I did my best to tell a war story that would have made sense to my precious dad.

"Alfieri has written an antiwar mystery that compares with the  notable novels of Charles Todd." - Kirkus Review "The author's recreation of Paraguay in the 1860s is perfectly  entwined with the plot and never comes off like a travelogue or  historical research. Fans of historical mysteries should  not pass this one up." - Mystery Scene Magazine
This coming Thursday, Friday, and Saturday you can claim your free digital copy here: Free Invisible Country Annamaria at Bouchercon: Author Speed Dating Breakfast - Saturday, September 10, 7 til 9AM Panel- Curiouser and Curiouser - Getting the Details Right             Sunday, September 1, 9 - 9:45AM

Announcing Invisible Country: New Edition

Annamaria on Monday

 

I had intended to take a long-awaited turn at BSP (Blatant Self-Promotion) in this post.  But then, this past Friday, Caro began her blog with these words, "The publishing world is a total confusion to me." She went on to say that she didn't understand it and didn't really want to.  I share Caro's bewilderment!  She asked if the rest of us have any thoughts.  I have lots to share on that subject. I promise I won't say them all here today.  Today, I will bring up only one.  I will take up the a larger discussion some other Monday soon.

I had intended for Invisible Country to be my first novel.  But then a visit to the ancient city of Potosi, now in Bolivia, got me so intrigued that it pushed aside Paraguay and City of Silver launched first.

As my "second child," Invisible Country did not make as big a splash as its older sister.  My publisher - with the introduction of eBooks - had stopped publishing paperbacks.  In their business model, the place of paperback editions was taken by the eBook, thanks to its much lower production costs.  Bookstore owners, however, told me repeatedly, that I needed to be in paperback, that there were lots of readers who would want my stuff at the lower paperback price.  Alas, there was nothing I could do about that.  Thanks to contractual obligations, the paperback had to wait until now.

Once I had the rights back, my agent arranged for the current paperback version. The book is the same.  Here is all about it:

Inivisble Country

Paraguay, 1868
A war against Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay has devastated Paraguay. Ninety percent of the males between the ages of eight and eighty have died. Food is scarce. In the small village of Santa Caterina, Padre Gregorio advises the women of his congregation to abandon the laws of the church and get pregnant by what men are available. As he leaves the pulpit, he discovers the murdered body of Ricardo Yotté, one of the most powerful men in the country, at the bottom of the belfry.

Suspects abound; Eliza Lynch, a former Parisian courtesan now the consort of the brutal dictator Francisco Solano López. She had entrusted to Yotté the country's now-missing treasury of gold and jewels. López himself, who may have suspected Yotté of an affair with the beautiful Eliza. Comandante Luis Menenez, local representative of the dictator, who competed with Yotté for López's favor. And a Brazilian soldier who has secretly taken up with a village girl.

To avoid having an innocent person dragged off to torture and death, a band of villagers undertakes to solve the crime. Each carries secrets they seek to protect from the others, while they pursue their quest for the truth.

Lyrical, complex, and meticulously researched, Annamaria Alfieri's Invisible Country is an ingenious cross between Isabel Allende and Agatha Christie.

Critical Acclaim for Invisible Country

"An engrossing, fast-paced mystery packed full of historical fact that illuminates  the story but never overshadows it; a great read, highly recommended." - Historical Novel Society

"(Alfieri's) excellent historical mystery has...heartache and sorrow, but it also has romance and humor...The mystery is the icing on an already delicious cake....people with whom I fell in love...Invisible Country is a mystery that will nearly impossible to forget." - Gumshoe Review

"Alfieri has written an antiwar mystery that compares with the notable novels of Charles Todd."
- Kirkus Review

"The author's recreation of Paraguay in the 1860s is perfectly entwined with the plot and never comes off like a travelogue or historical research. Fans of historical mysteries should not pass this one up."
- Mystery Scene Magazine

If you want an escape to an exotic place at a dramatic moment, I hope you will choose my time machine!  Ticket price: $12.99 for first class.  $6.99 in coach.

You can’t judge a book…

Annamaria on Monday

Here are the beginning lyrics to old R&B song:

You can't judge an apple by looking at the tree,

You can't judge honey by looking at the bee,

You can't judge a sister by looking at the brother,

You can't judge a book by looking at the cover.

Oh can't you see, oh, you misjudged me.

I look like a farmer but I'm a lover,

You can't judge a book by looking at the cover.

Caro’s post last week about strange titles made me think about how, a few times, my publishers changed the titles of my books.  Most of the time, they turned out to be right.  But there have been a couple of instances when the publisher tried to get me to change the title and I refused:  Notably for my best selling book every—Never Work for a Jerk.  They wanted me to call it HOW to Work for a Jerk, because they thought that a more positive spin might be more appealing.  I debated the point.  And I won.

On the other hand, I have almost never won a battle about a cover.  Almost. 

Generally, publishers, not writers, get to choose the cover art.  Sometimes we are happy, sometimes not. Except for folks like James Patterson and Mary Higgins Clark, authors have little, if anything, to say about book cover design.

This rule is not confined to fiction. My nonfiction went through similar choices. Never Work for a Jerk started with a jackass in a business suit, a splendid choice in my estimation.

But the paperback publisher thought the design too staid. They came up with something much more lively.  I doubt Dell was right about that, because when Barnes and Noble acquired the rights for their own edition, they went back to the jackass cover.

The foreign rights publishers had their own ideas.

         

Only once did I try to influence what a nonfiction book looked like. Both my agent and I tried our very best to put the kibosh on the cover for Monster Boss. Except for the fake tear, it looks to me like the cover of procedures manual on water heater repair.  But the publisher would not budge.  Would this catch your eye?

 

When it came to my novels, I was thrilled when saw the original cover for City of Silver. I had dreamed what it might be many times. During the long years of looking for an agent for the book and then waiting while it worked its way through the publication process, I imagined what the published book would look like. I had, in my mind's eye, the cover of a favorite history used in my research.  When my editor asked me for cover ideas, I sent this image of the whole dust jacket, including the spine and the back cover:

The final design for the novel surpassed all my expectations. It was totally beautiful to me, perhaps because it was my first novel. But it really is a lovely physical specimen of a book. (By the way, its interior is also a knockout. The front pages and the chapter beginnings are all designed to look like a seventeenth century book. What a gorgeous touch!)

Then, when Felony and Mayhem Press acquired the paperback rights, Maggie Topkis, the publisher, thought the original cover too staid for what she considered a lively story. She decided to replace it with a cover she thought did the story justice.

When I first saw the new design, it was so different from its predecessor, I was nonplussed. But everyone I asked liked it a lot.  And I knew that Maggie had had twenty years experience as a bookseller, which meant she had watched what readers reached for.   Sometimes the most aesthetically pleasing is not the most alluring to potential book buyers.

 

Invisible Country’s cover is a knockout.  It never made it into a paperback edition, so here is the only cover it’s ever had.

With Blood Tango, I had a fright on my hands.  The originally cover artist never completed the job.  His replacement came up with this:

It looked to me like a cheesy romance cover.  It said nothing about it being a historical novel, nothing about the darkness of the mystery or the glamor of the historic character who is central to the story—Evita.   I put my foot down.   In the end, they sent me a different cover, with a historic picture of Buenos Aires.  I showed it to my daughter.  She liked the photo but said the cover needed a woman on it.  She was so right.  I asked them to insert a blonde woman in the picture and to give her a red dress.  They did. 

 Then came the African series.  Africa is the MOST photogenic place on earth.  Have you ever noticed how travel companies that deal worldwide always have images of Africa on their promotional materials.  What’s on the walls of photographic equipment stores world wide?  Africa!  An alluring cover was a foregone conclusion. 

I loved the original cover of Strange Gods.

But once again, I am thrilled to say, Felony and Mayhem acquired the paperback rights, and Maggie went for a more striking cover image.

She also created great fanfare for the paperback’s launch last weekend at Left Coast Crime, including a Strange Gods t-shirt and making the Strange God the official cocktail of convention.  Needless to say, I was thrilled about that!

And now we are aiming to launch the second in the series, The Idol of Mombasa at Bouchercon in New Orleans in September.

This post is a whole lot of shameless self-promotion.  MIE’s rules allow us one such entry each year.  I forewent my turn at SSP in 2015 because I had no new book last year.  I collected on that rain check today.   I will have more to say about The Idol closer to the launch date.