Jane Heller

New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author

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Shooting a Video for Three Blonde Mice

June 2, 2016

Velour & me with book

On Wednesday I spent the afternoon at Arethusa Farm in Litchfield, CT. It was a glorious sunny day and as Michael (husband) snapped pics like the one above of me “chatting” with a dairy cow named Velour about Three Blonde Mice, Garrett, our videographer from Digital Video Productions in Brookfield, shot lots of video that will somehow be edited down to a three-minute trailer for the book. Such fun!

Matt Senecal, Arethusa’s farm director, was a delight to work with. He answered all my crazy questions about cows, instructed me in the finer points of milking a cow, showed me how to brush a cow’s tail (and tease it up so it looks fluffy and camera ready) and let us have the run of the place, including their prized John Deere.

me on John Deere

The cow that I milked, Viona, was a white Holstein – a blonde just like my three heroines in the book – and other than a few kicks, she was very cooperative during the milking. She even read the book.

Viona with book

Actually, she licked the book. We had to move it away from her because we were afraid she’d try to eat it.

The purpose of all this was to recreate some of the research I did last summer for Three Blonde Mice, in which three best friends, Elaine, Jackie and Pat, take a “haycation” together – i.e. they spend a week on a farm. They learn to milk a cow, make cheese from the milk, forage for wild edibles and take cooking classes with a famous farm-to-table chef ….only to find that one of their classmates intends to kill the chef before the week is out.

Complicating matters is that Elaine’s boyfriend Simon shows up –  just as she’s getting cozy with a hot guest named Jonathan.

I wanted to share my haycation experience in the video, and I’d love it if you’d share yours. If you plan to milk a cow this summer, pick your own fruits and veggies, make cheese, forage for wild edibles, collect eggs from chickens, please upload your photos to my Facebook and Twitter pages using the hashtags #ThreeBlondeMice and #DairyPrincess. Why #DairyPrincess? Because that’s what Michael calls me these days. He used to call me a princess, but now I’m the Dairy Princess. What can I tell you? If the crown fits…..

Filed Under: Mainly Jane Tagged With: Arethusa Farm, book trailers, CT, Dairy Princess, Digital Video Productions, haycation, Litchfield, Three Blonde Mice

News about THREE BLONDE MICE!

March 21, 2016

ARC ThreeBlondeMice_cover_5-5x8-5.indd

Yup, we have a cover for my new novel, which Diversion Books will publish in August. Why the heart of carrots? Because my “three blonde mice” heroines, Elaine, Jackie and Pat, have taken a farm-to-table vacation together in this sequel to Princess Charming, the book that sent them on a seven-day Caribbean cruise. This time they’re at a farm resort in Litchfield, CT – agritourists on a “haycation.” They not only milk a cow and make cheese from the milk, but they spend the week taking cooking classes with a famous farm-to-table chef. Here’s Diversion’s descriptive copy:

Elaine Zimmerman and her best friends Jackie Gault and Pat Kovecky venture to a farm in Litchfield, Connecticut. It’s been over a year since their last trip together, a Caribbean cruise aboard the Princess Charming, and after dealing with a murderous ex and his hit man, they’re yearning for a no-drama vacation this time. During their Cultivate Our Bounty Week, they and eight other guests will learn how to cook farm-to-table meals with Whitley’s artisan-inresidence, a renowned TV/restaurant chef named Jason Hill. Elaine, the jaded, neurotic narrator, is less than thrilled—especially because the program wasn’t supposed to include a surprise appearance by her former boyfriend Simon, who’s still the love of her life but can’t commit to her. What’s more, after milking a cow and making cheese, she stumbles on evidence that one of her fellow agritourists is out to murder Chef Hill at the resort’s Bounty Fest finale. Is the killer among the freakishly fit Manhattan couple who takes their devotion to organic, hormone-free, non-GMO food to the point of obsession? The grandmother from Wisconsin who’s a groupie of the celebrity chef and follows him to every event? The mother and son from Palm Beach who bicker over whether he should give up his law practice to open his own restaurant? Three Blonde Mice serves up a crackling romance between Elaine and Simon, a twisty whodunit involving a screwball cast of suspects and a satire of current food fads and the farm-to-table chefs who perpetuate them.

Needless to say, I’m very excited that the book is in the promotional pipeline. Now that I’m back in CT, I’ll be doing local publicity as well as national. I’ll post much more in the coming months, but I’m happy to say that Three Blonde Mice is now available for pre-order on Amazon!

Meanwhile, Diversion has just reissued five of my backlist novels, including Princess Charming, with pretty new covers that tie in nicely with the Three Blonde Mice cover. Check them out!

Princess Charming_coverLARGE

 

Clean Sweep_coverLARGE-2

 

The Club_coverLARGE

 

Crystal Clear_coverLARGE

 

Infernal Affairs_coverLARGE

Filed Under: Mainly Jane Tagged With: agritourism, chefs, Diversion Books, farm to table, foodies, haycation, mysteries, novels, Princess Charming, romantic comedies, Three Blonde Mice

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About Jane Heller

Jane Heller is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. Her fourteen breezy, witty novels of romantic comedy and suspense are now entertaining millions of readers around the world, along with her two books of nonfiction.

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