By Julie Hyzy
I’m so eggcited to be here!
Did you watch IRON CHEF Sunday? In addition to celebrity chefs Bobby Flay, Emeril Lagasse, and Mario Batali, they featured Cristeta Comerford as one of their culinary combatants. Cristeta, as you may know, is the White House Eggsecutive Chef.
Er… I mean “Executive” ;-)
As you may also know, I write the White House Chef mystery series where Olivia (Ollie) Paras is executive chef. Although my Ollie is fictional, she shares a few of Cristeta’s characteristics: She’s short; she’s talented; and most importantly, she’s the first female to hold the top chef position
I’m eggstatically happy to talk about her today.
So why all the bad puns?
Let me apologize up front for my fondness for “egg” words. Do you remember Vincent Price when he played Egghead on the old Batman TV show? Once I get started I can’t help myself. I’m eggstraordinarily addicted to finding new ways to make funny “yolks.”
Sorry, sorry.
But there is a method to my madness. The third White House Chef Mystery, Eggsecutive Orders, just came out on Tuesday. And with it, this burst of eggstremely bad puns.
Okay, I’ll stop (for now).
If you’ve read State of the Onion, or Hail to the Chef, you’ve met Ollie and you know she’s always getting into big trouble. But when you work for the leader of the free world, deal with the Secret Service on a daily basis, dodge international assassins, and thwart bomb threats, there’s really no such thing as small trouble, is there?
Eggsecutive Orders is set during the week leading up to the annual White House Egg Roll and Ollie has to deal with the worst kind of dinner guest she’s ever encountered—a dead one. NSA head Carl Minkus did not die of natural causes, and now Ollie and her staff are banished from the White House kitchens until their innocence can be proven.
But that’s not all our intrepid chef is juggling right now. Ollie’s mom and grandmother have arrived from Chicago for an extended visit and a personal tour of our nation’s capital. Problem is they’re being followed wherever they go. Whether it’s a nosy reporter making very public accusations or one of the suspects in Carl Minkus’s death who has set his sights (romantically) on Ollie’s mom, there’s just no getting away. Ollie’s also supposed to be providing food — and 15,000 eggs — for the Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn. But how can her team do that when they aren’t even allowed in the kitchen?
I had a lot of fun exploring Ollie’s relationships with her family and co-workers in Eggsecutive Orders, and Tom plays a bigger role in this installment than he did in Hail to the Chef. He’s got troubles of his own this time dealing with his Secret Service boss who will do everything in his power to break up Tom’s life with Ollie.
Why is it always so much fun to put characters in trouble? I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know that I love dreaming up ways to make things worse for Ollie whenever I can. After watching the IRON CHEF Challenge on Sunday, I’ve got loads of new ideas for Book #5. (Book #4 has just been turned in.) The great thing about writing a series set at the White House is that headlines and real-life happenings keep plot ideas spinning in my brain.
Despite all the tension I try to create for Ollie the White House Chef books are considered “cozy” because there’s limited violence, no “adult situations,” and no bad language.
But here’s what I wonder…Does putting my Eggsecutive chef Ollie in hot water make this particular story “hard-boiled?”
I’ll bet you saw that one coming! Sorry! Couldn’t resist!
Thanks so much to Lonnie and all the wonderful writers on Poe’s Deadly Daughters for inviting me to guest on this eggceptional blog!