When Shelley asked me to contribute a short piece to her But What Are They Eating? blog, my first reaction was that there were no memorable food scenes in Forever Changed. It’s a story about a woman who’s just been given a breast cancer diagnosis. Why would she care about food?
And then I started to think about how food plays such an important role in every facet of our lives, large or small, happy or sad. What was I thinking?
This series takes place in Victoria, British Columbia, a city I know well. I decided to have at least one character that appears in every book. Jodi’s kinda fun… she’s like a spoke, and as each character is featured, they interact with her… sometimes in passing, but in this first book in the series, she’s Ariana’s BFF.
Jodi often grabs lunch at a small restaurant just down from her fitness studio and overlooking Victoria’s famous Inner Harbor. The restaurant owner knows her preference for noodles, and if you read the series, you’ll come back several times with various characters to have lunch with Jodi (and Trang’s noodles). A lot of secrets come out over those noodles, let me tell you!
Then there are Ariana’s visits to her grandmother. A strikingly beautiful woman, Jacqueline Beaumont knows that a nice cup of tea won’t solve the problems of the world, but it doesn’t hurt!
And of course the most Canadian of all is a cup of coffee at Tim Horton’s. Just say ‘Timmy’s’ and every Canadian knows what you mean. One of the most touching scenes in the book takes place at a Timmy’s, where Ariana finds herself after she runs out of Blaine’s tattoo studio. Perhaps not the most romantic setting for our lovers-to-be, I’ll admit. But fast food coffee shops are basically the same all over North America, and I don’t know about you, but I can imagine myself falling in love with a handsome tattoo artist at any one of them.
Sigh.
Thanks for stopping by to share your food for thought, Mona!
You can find Mona here:
Mona tells us she’d had more feedback from readers of Forever series than anything else she’s ever written. Each book focuses on a woman at a crossroads in her life. Novella length, they contain no explicit sexual content, preferring to focus on the woman’s story. There are currently five books in the series, and at the present time Mona’s working on Book Six, which is being told from the point of view of a man. Now that should be interesting… stay tuned!
Mona lives in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, where she reads voraciously and writes daily, except when visiting her family on Vancouver Island.
