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tanmath3-blog · 7 years

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Raised in the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York, but forever longing for the white sands of New Mexico, Pamela has always loved mysteries and the macabre. Combining the two in her own writing, along with her love for historical research and genealogy, came naturally. Hours spent watching ‘Monster Movie Matinee’, ‘Twilight Zone’, a myriad of Hammer Films, and devouring books by Stephen King, Tanith Lee, and Anne Rice probably helped, too.

Outside of her work as a novelist, Pamela has written numerous historic articles for the Tioga County Courier, an Owego, NY newspaper. She has done genealogy research for family and friends and was a Civil War reenactor for close to ten years. In 2014 Pamela joined the ranks of writers for the online magazine, The Good Men Project. She also enjoys scrapbooking, bad B-Movies, road trips with her husband, and feeding the crows that frequent their back yard.

Please help me welcome Pamela Morris to Roadie Notes…………

1. How old were you when you first wrote your first story? I was all of nine when I wrote and illustrated “Bill, The Worm Who Ran Away”. It’s an adventure about a runaway worm who was named after my father. This was soon followed by my first ghostly thriller/mystery “The Strange Well”. Both are 3rd Grade literary masterpieces, I assure you. Thanks to my dad, I still have both of the originals of the above titles in my paper files.

2. How many books have you written? I have written eleven novels, ten of which have been published. One is currently out-of-print as it was never quite what I wanted it to be and it needs a lot of revisions. My first published novel was released in 2006 and started a four-year journey down the road of writing erotica. Once I got that out of my system, I began seriously writing what I love most; mysteries, thrillers and horror. “Secrets of The Scarecrow Moon”, a paranormal murder-mystery, came out in 2013. My most recent title, “The Witch’s Backbone 1 – The Curse”, came out in September of this year and we’re hoping to release the psychological horror “Dark Hollow Road” next spring.

3. Anything you won’t write about? Bestiality, cryptid erotica, and dinosaur porn are at the top of the list. I have no interest in walking down the pure erotica-of-any-kind path again, either. I won’t write about anything that portrays any form of abuse in a positive light. “Dark Hollow Road” does contain both sexual and child abuse, but by no means is it done in a way that glorifies the subject, just the opposite.

4. Tell me about you. Age (if you don’t mind answering), married, kids, do you have another job etc… I’ll be 52 in December and recently (in 2016) remarried. My first husband and I have two children. My son just turned 27 and my daughter is 24. No grandkids as of yet. I’ve worked for the Cornell University Library system for 30 years.

5. What’s your favorite book you have written? This is tough. It’s like asking me which child is my favorite. I love them all for different reasons. I’m very fond of my Barnesville Chronicle books because they are set in the fictionalized region I grew up in. It almost feels like I’m cheating with those because it’s like going back home again and hanging out with old friends. “Dark Hollow Road” is probably the most complex and darkest thing I’ve written. It’s very psychologically dark and disturbing. While working on certain scenes I kept wondering where in my psyche it was all coming from. In that sense, it’s my favorite.

6. Who or what inspired you to write? I’ve loved to write since I learned how, so I don’t think anyone was my initial inspiration. It’s as much a part of who I am as my hazel eyes and brown hair. However, my parents have always been very encouraging of my writing. As I mentioned earlier, my dad is the one who saved those first two hand-written stories I wrote over 40 years ago. My mom’s a big reader and belonged to a book club. Books have always been part of my life. Getting books for Christmas and my birthday was, and still is, one of my favorite things. As far as writers whom I admire and who have influenced me, I’d have to say the stories of Rod Serling have had a strong impact on what I enjoy writing. As a teenager, I discovered the work of Tanith Lee, a British author that a lot of people have never even heard of. She has a very unique style that I very much enjoy. Shirley Jackson, Clive Barker, Wilkie Collins, Poe, Richard Matheson, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, and Anne Rice have all played roles in what I write and how I write, too.

Inspiration for a story can come from just about anywhere. My ghost story, “No Rest For The Wicked” (available through HellBound Books Publishing) arose from a friend and I discussing how he wanted to write a ghost story as if it were being told by the actual ghosts. He couldn’t quite get the idea off the ground so I asked if he’d mind if I gave it a go. He didn’t. I added several ‘dead’ characters from my erotica-writing days to the mix and “No Rest For The Wicked” was born.

“Dark Hollow Road” came about during a trip through Pennsylvania when we passed a side road actually called “Dark Hollow Road”. I saw that and was like, “If that’s not the name of a scary novel, I don’t know what is.” At the time, I had no idea what it would be about, but I had a title! The Barnesville Chronicle titles have a lot to do with my love of local history and historic research. Some of what is mentioned in those books is based on real event that took place (or are rumored to have taken place) in the rural area I grew up on.

7. What do you like to do for fun? Other than writing, you mean? I read a lot. That’s rather part of being a writer, I think, the love of reading. A warm summer day spent with my husband out on the Harley is always amazing. Apart from writing, I think being on the motorcycle with him is my second best form of mental therapy. Whatever stress I’m having, pretty much evaporates during the ride. I dabble a bit with various forms of art; drawing, painting, photography, making book trailers, clay sculptures, and a touch of scrapbooking. And I love to travel to places I’ve never been before.

8. Any traditions you do when you finish a book? No, not really. I sit back and bask in the afterglow for a while, but that’s about it.

9. Where do you write? Quiet or music? The majority of my writing takes place in the living room on the desktop, but I’ve also enjoyed getting work done outside on the back deck with the laptop. Nothing really beats that, to be honest. I’d do it more often if weather and time allowed. For some reason that big mug of hot coffee and those cheerful chirping birds brings out the horror in me. I prefer to write in solitude and when I do play music, it’s the Blues. Anything else I find very distracting. I’m very much a morning writer, too.

10. Anything you would change about your writing? I’m always looking to improve so I guess I’d say fewer typos! That, and to hone my skills to the point that my readers aren’t just reading a book. I want them to feel involved in the atmosphere and setting and invested in what’s happening to the characters.

11. What is your dream? Famous writer? I dream of the day when I can make a living as a fiction writer, but I’m a realist and understand that’s incredibly hard to do. I’d love to have multiple homes, to be able to keep the one I have now, fix it all up properly, and get a second one either in New Mexico or Texas – something that’s very Southwestern. A log cabin in the woods would be nice, too. Mostly, I just want to be able to share my stories with people and hope that they enjoy what I’ve spent so much time and love creating.

12. Where do you live? I live in the Finger Lakes Region of Central New York State. Our house was built in 1886 and I’ve lived here since 1995. It’s a great old house and came with its resident ghost, Herman. He’s an older gentleman who keeps quiet for the most part, but every now and then he’ll make just enough noise so we know he’s still around.

13. Pets? The wild crows who visit and demand peanuts probably don’t count, do they? No, no pets at the time. I’d love to have a cat. My husband would love to have a dog, but it’s also nice not to have the responsibility of having either. We are free to come and go as we please without having to worry about their care while away.

14. What’s your favorite thing about writing? The part about writing that always amazes me is when the characters take over. That’s the magic right there. Although I will have a general idea of where I want the story to go, I don’t outline. I allow each scene to unfold logically from what has come before, while attempting to steer it along. However, there are times when the characters say phooey to what I have in mind and go off on their own little tangent. I let them. I figure they know more about what’s happened or happening than I do and I’m just along for the ride. To a non-writer, that may not make any sense. It’s fiction, how can that happen? Well, it does, a lot. It’s a thrill ride for me to see what’s next and then try to pull in those reins to maneuver that ending I was shooting for. Sometimes that sort of things throws a wrench into what I had in mind, in which case I make the adjustments and follow where the characters seem to want me to go instead.

15. What is coming next for you? As I mentioned, “Dark Hollow Road” is scheduled for a spring 2018 release. I’m really looking forward to getting this one out to people because of its depth and darkness. Half of it is told in 1st Person. That has a lot to do with why it’s so different from my previous novels. You really get into the head of that particular character and that’s not always a place the reader will want to be at all. My current WIP is “The Witch’s Backbone 2 – The Murder”. It picks up exactly where TWB 1 – The Curse ends. I’m about 1/3 of the way through writing the first draft.

Aside from the novels, I was asked to write a foreword for a friend of mine who’s working on his first short story collection. I was both surprised and honored he asked. And, I’ve accepted a gig writing book and movie reviews for The Final Guys website. This will force me (yeah – twist my arms, right?) to watch more horror movies if nothing else.

I have a couple of poems in HellBound Books most recently released anthology “Beautiful Tragedies.” I’ve not been able to get a copy of it myself just yet, but plan to do so as soon as I can. I hear they are doing a second volume for this and although I was asked if I’d be interested in submitting something for that, poetry of the type they are looking for, and that I’m willing to share, isn’t something I produce a lot of.

You can connect with Pamela Morris here: You can find me lurking in a few places in Cyberspace. My main website is http://pamelamorrisbooks.com where you’ll find info on all my books, some free short stories, and my blog where I write book and movie reviews, a monthly author interview, and share a little something called “The Horrors That Grew Me” where I talk about the things and people who have influenced me as a lover and writer of the Horror genre. I post and share a lot over on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/PamelaMorrisBooks/ and you can find me on Twitter as @pamelamorris65. I have an author page on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Pamela-Morris/e/B00BCJTNP6/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0 and one over at HellBound Books where you’ll find not just my titles, but some other awesome authors. http://www.hellboundbookspublishing.com And finally, as mentioned, you’ll be able to read more of my movie and book reviews over at The Final Guys http://finalguys.com/ soon. As of this writing, it’s still a work-in-progress.

Some of Pamela Morris’s books:

Getting personal with Pamela Morris Raised in the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York, but forever longing for the white sands of New Mexico, Pamela has always loved mysteries and the macabre.

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theurbanologist · 7 years

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A Conversation about “Dining Out in Boston”

I’ve always been intrigued by the idea that you can know a city through its food, eateries, and unique culinary ways. Boston is certainly a city known for its restaurants and foodways and I’ve always thought it deserved a scholarly look at these matters. My friend Jim O’Connell recently published “Dining Out in Boston” (University of New England Press), so I reached out to see if he could respond to a few questions.

He took his time and crafted these thoughtful replies.

What brought you to this particular project?

I have always been fascinated by restaurants and the experience of dining out. As an historian and urbanist, I have wanted to know about the history of restaurants. A few years back, I discovered a trove of historic menus from the 1820s through the 1970s in the library of The Bostonian Society. After poring through this menu collection, it struck me that I could put together a history of Boston’s restaurants by tracing the evolution of menus over time. It became apparent that different eras offered different types of dishes. Menus tended to offer a standard set of dishes, though they changed from era to era.

As I delved into Boston’s restaurant history, I realized that it has been completely misunderstood. It is not simply “the land of the bean and the cod.” Nor is it “cold roast Boston.” Boston has a lot of really good food and interesting restaurants. The conventional histories of American restaurants in general have focused on the restaurants of flashy New York, sybaritic San Francisco, or Creole New Orleans. Some writers have argued that New York is representative of the rest of the country because every conceivable type of food has been available in that city. Although Boston’s gastronomic reputation has not been as celebrated as these cities’, its long-standing and inventive restaurant culture provides singular insights into how have Americans dined out.

Boston has had a reputation for good dining dating back to 1793, when Julien’s Restorator (the original French name for restaurant) opened as America’s first true restaurant. Over the decades, the city pioneered many features of American restaurant life, opening some of the first hotel dining rooms, oyster houses, ice cream parlors, tearooms, ethnic restaurants, the twentieth-century revival of traditional New England dishes, student hangouts, and contemporary locavore and trendy foodie culture. With all this, Boston has had a rich culinary story well worth exploring.

During your research, were there any favorite restaurants that emerged? Were there dishes that struck you as particularly appetizing? Were there dishes that seemed particularly repugnant?

The first thing that struck me about Boston restaurants in the 19th and early 20th centuries was the encyclopedic range of the menus. The most astonishing everyday menu was served by Young’s Hotel (1860-1927). Its menu took up 15 pages and included 27 oyster dishes, 14 clam dishes, 24 soups, 38 salads, 27 preparations of sweetbreads, and 57 steak dishes. Spaghetti could be served Napolitaine, Pièmontaise, Parisienne, Sicilienne, or Italienne. Game dishes included English pheasant, English plover, Scotch grouse, and Philadelphia squab. You could even order marrow on toast, deviled roast beef bones, pig’s feet, and crackers and milk. Fine dining meant having the largest selection of dishes. Young’s would have been quite a place to dine.

Even before the Civil War, hotel dining rooms were offering a cornucopian selection. At the Adams House, head waiter Tunis G. Campbell recorded the recipes for the extensive bill of fare in Hotel Keepers, Head Waiters, and Housekeepers’ Guide (1848). Campbell was a free black man, who was an ardent abolitionist and who later served as a state senator in Reconstruction-era Georgia, before being driven out by the Ku Klux Klan. Campbell’s Adams House guide listed dozens of preparations for roast, broiled, fried, and stewed meat dishes; meat pies, oyster patties, croquettes, fritters, stews, salmis, and hash; and soups and sauces. Desserts included tarts, dumplings, fritters, trifles, and puddings.

Probably the most extravagant dining ever to take place in Boston took place at the 19th-century banquets, which were usually held in leading hotels like the Parker House, Tremont House, Revere House, Hotel Brunswick, and Hotel Vendome. Prodigious feasts became a prime form of entertainment for the city’s clubs that met in hotels and restaurants. The Gilded Age was notable for its “conspicuous consumption,” and rotund bellies signaled that one had “made it.” Meals could consist of ten or more courses with matching wines, Madeiras, punches, and cordials.

The earliest printed menu in America that I have discovered was for an 1824 public dinner given for the Marquis de Lafayette at the Exchange Coffee House. The menu described a three-course meal. The first course comprised 25 dishes split between fish and boiled and roast meats and nine French-named dishes. The second course included 11 dishes, which featured such game birds as woodcock, pigeon, and snipe, as well as lobster fricassee and calves feet. The sweet course included orange cream, puddings, pastries, custards, and ice cream. Diners could sample any of these dishes. This menu set the banquet standard for the rest of the century.

The climactic course was usually an array of game birds. For example, the Annual Target Excursion of the Charlestown City Guard, held at the National House in Charlestown in 1854, provided a vivid example of such a game dinner. After taking its annual ceremonial target practice, the Charlestown City Guard dined on roast turkey, chickens, capon, mongrel goose, mongrel ducks, tame ducks, black ducks, red head ducks, brant, widgeon, and teel. Also on offer were prepared fowl dishes that included turkey in oyster sauce, duck and olive sauce, potted pigeons, and bird pies. Lubricated with various wines, beers, and cordials, such a repast was a form of high entertainment, which gourmands of today can only dream about. Those meals will never be experienced again.

We hear a great deal about where the well-to-do ate in your book. Was it much harder to find information about the everyday eateries?

By the mid-19th century, working people ate in inexpensive oyster houses, lunchrooms, and saloons. They basically wanted to grab a bite when at work or away from home (they might also pack a lunch). No matter what their class, unless they were poverty-stricken, everyone would eat out sometimes. Oyster bars, like the Union Oyster House (called Atwood & Bacon in the 19th century) were fast-food eateries, serving plates of oysters and clams and bowls of oyster stew. Cheap eating houses served plain meat and-potato dishes, various pies, and the old standby crackers and milk. “Beaneries” specialized in baked beans and brown bread. Around 1900, cafeterias, such at the Waldorf and Hayes-Bickford, sprang up to serve cheap, quick meals. Cafeterias and lunch counters met their demise in the 1970s with the rise of McDonald’s and similar fast food chains.

It should be noted that the proto-type for the affordable family restaurant was invented in Quincy—Howard Johnson’s. Howard Johnson opened his first ice cream stand in the Wollaston section of Quincy in 1925 and served “28 Famous Flavors,” pioneering the concept of multiple flavors of high-butterfat premium ice cream. When he opened his first full-service restaurant, in Quincy, in 1929, he featured such New England staples as “tendersweet fried clams,” Boston baked beans, Welsh rarebit with bacon, and frankforts grilled in butter. Mr. Johnson exported these concepts and dishes across the country.

Was there anything particularly surprising about the emergence of ethnic restaurants and foodways throughout the Hub?

By the 1890s, ethnic restaurants were becoming established in Boston. With the influx of immigrants, American restaurant cooking began adopting ethnic dishes. French cuisine was long the gold standard, which was adopted by fashionable hotels and restaurants across the country. During these years, German restaurants, led by Jacob Wirth, made their way into the mainstream. Other ethnic groups and their foodways were less readily assimilated. Their restaurants, at first, tended to cater to immigrant communities, but some soon became popular with the broader public. Restaurant offerings evolved dramatically at the turn of the century, with ethnic foods becoming part of the dining experience.

In 1916, the Boston Globe reported that foreign restaurants had expanded significantly, reflecting the impact of immigration in the intervening years. Of the city’s 1,816 eateries, 1,006 had foreign-born owners. The Globe commented: “No one can complain that Boston is not a city of cosmopolitan food, for about the only varieties of victualer not doing business here are a native Hottentot and an Eskimo.” There were 218 Russian-owned restaurants, lunchrooms, and delicatessens, most of them serving kosher cooking; next came Greek (211), Italian (108), Armenian (49), German (43), Syrian (24), French (23), Chinese (21), and Austrian (14). There were even Albanian, Cuban, and Japanese restaurants. Most of these restaurants served a mix of ethnic dishes and American food to attract non-ethnic business and achieve some form of assimilation. Ethnic restaurants did not set out to provide food that authentically replicated that of the old world.

A large mainstream audience for ethnic restaurants developed in the 1970s, when American dining tastes expanded way beyond meat-and-potatoes in search of novelty and foreign authenticity.

Today we see the emergence of food on or near the sidewalk with food trucks and carts. Did you see much evidence of food wagons in your work? As a follow up: Do you have a favorite food truck?

I don’t think that food carts were a big part of Boston’s eating experience Maybe it was because of the bad weather, but most inexpensive eating was done inside—at lunch counters, cafeterias, etc. I think that the recent wave of food trucks is a good development, and I seek them out around the downtown. Roxy’s Grilled Cheese is one of my favorites.

In your time in the Hub, have you developed a nostalgia for a restaurant that is no more? What made it unique in terms of experience, dishes, and the like?

Bailey’s Ice Cream Shop provides my Proustian recollection. My mother introduced me to Bailey’s on Temple Place when I was a kid. It was magical, better than Howard Johnson’s or Friendly’s. Bailey’s, which opened as a candy shop, in 1873, was famous for sundaes with fudge sauce overflowing onto a silver-plated saucer. A soda jerk would place a six-ounce scoop of ice cream in a five-ounce dish and poured 1 ½ ounces of hot fudge or hot butterscotch over the top. Then a customer might request a dollop of whipped cream or marshmallow with a sprinkling of nuts. Bailey’s thrived at Temple Place, Harvard Square, Wellesley, and Chestnut Hill right up until 1989. Nothing replaced Bailey’s lavish nineteenth-century ice cream parlor style, but it has had many successors in creative ice cream-making, ranging from Steve Herrell’s and Toscanini’s to Emack & Bolio’s and J.P. Licks.

For the visitor who might be looking for segments of Boston’s restaurant-going past, can you recommend a few spots to experience these historical moments and culinary experiences?

About the only places to get a whiff of the 19th-century style of dining are Durgin-Park, Union Oyster House, and Jacob Wirth. To experience a somewhat different take on historical culinary trends, I would check out Longfellow’s Wayside Inn in Sudbury, which was one of dozens of neo-traditional New England inns that flourished between the 1920s and 1960s. They were special occasion, white tablecloth restaurants, where diners dressed up. Along with the Wayside Inn, the Colonial Inn (Concord), Wellesely Inn, Hartwell Farm (Lincoln), and Toll House Inn (Whitman) were leading restaurants of their day.

Longfellow’s Wayside Inn is one of the few survivors of this type of dining spot. The Wayside Inn claims to be the oldest operating inn in America, having been founded as Howe’s Tavern in 1716. In 1863, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow gave Howe’s Tavern a new prominence when he set his poetry collection “Tales of a Wayside Inn” there. One of the book’s poems was “Paul Revere’s Ride.” Auto magnate Henry Ford purchased the inn in 1923, playing up the inn’s historical connections. The Wayside Inn still serves such dishes as “traditional” Yankee pot roast, roast turkey with cornbread and sausage stuffing and giblet gravy, deep dish apple pie, and “homemade” Indian pudding.

Such dishes do not just carry on 18th and 19th-century cooking, they also reflect early 20th-century efforts to preserve the rapidly fading past in a movement referred to as the Colonial Revival. Until then, restaurant menus did not explicitly feature traditional New England dishes. Menus simply read “clam chowder,” “boiled dinner,” and “baked beans.” Only by the 1920s did restaurants start serving “New England clam chowder,” “Boston baked beans,” “Yankee pot roast,” and “Boston cream pie.” Such dishes may sound like clichés, but they’re harder to get these days than fish tacos or kale salad.

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