Julie Seedorf
Not an ordinary Granny
Julie Seedorf possibly – quite possibly – loves coffee more than I do. And she has the cups to prove it. We’d love to see the morning coffee mugs you use to start your day. C’mon over to https://sprinklednotes.com/author/sprinklednotes/ or julieseedorf.com and share your favorite mug!
Julie Seedorf grew up in Southern Minnesota, attending grade school and high school in a small community. She learned the value of small-town life and small-town relationships. Still living in rural Minnesota, she cherishes the beauty of the changing seasons and the various landscapes the state offers.
Through the years, she has worn many hats. Her favorite was activity director in a nursing home and finally computer repair and sales, eventually earning her own business before retiring to write and enjoy life.
She is a wife and proud mother of two boys and one daughter, along with four grandchildren. Being a mom and grandmother is her favorite career. Julie feels no other job can hold a candle to raising up a child in the way they should go. Remember the poem? Watching the world through a child’s eyes and seeing them light up with wonder takes us to the beauty of simple things we sometimes lose as an adult.
Julie has four series. Granny’s in Trouble, Fuchsia, MN, Brilliant, MN, and the Whistle Stop Series. She likes to write light mysteries occasionally bordering on silly and fantasy because she believes we need to take ourselves out of the real world for a space of time to laugh and relax.
Julie’s Coffee Cup. And Granny. By Julie Seedorf, Author of the Fuschia, Minnesota, Mysteries
I can’t imagine a life without coffee. I remember my first introduction to coffee. I was nineteen years old and held my first job as a receptionist in an office. Coffee breaks were a fun time in this office. I was at an impressionable age and I started drinking coffee to fit in with the crowd. I wasn’t exactly enamored of my first cup. It tasted awful. Looking back perhaps it was awful coffee and I didn’t know the difference. I coped by adding a lot of cream and sugar to make it sweeter.
I don’t know when or why over the years I quit using the cream and sugar in my coffee. I now like it black and the blacker the coffee, and the stronger the coffee, the happier I am.
My first task in the morning before anything else is to make the coffee and start my coffee maker. Yes, I know I could do it the night before and put it on a timer and it would be ready for me, but my sleepy eyes at night make me forget to do that.
Over the years I have noticed the difference in coffees. I like to try different brands and specialty coffees. I like the ground coffee and the coffee beans that I have to grind. I like some flavored and some hot and plain. The type of coffee I drink can fit my mood and I find it exciting that there are so many choices for us to try.
I love anything to do with coffee. I love unique coffee cups, coffee sayings, coffee pictures and whatever coffee related that I can find. My children, grandchildren and friends worry about me if I don’t have a coffee cup in my hand. Oh, and another thing, I don’t do decaf unless it has a natural process. I am allergic to the formaldehyde in some decaf processes and I get a huge headache and stomach upset shortly after I drink that type of decaf coffee.
Why am I writing about coffee? This post is for a blog that drips coffee and so does my character, Granny, in my Fuchsia Minnesota Series books. It seemed a natural progression for me to include coffee in all of my books. Of course, along with the coffee, my character loves my other favorite foods such as donuts and chocolate. That much of Granny is like me. The rest of Granny is perhaps my dreams of what getting older could be if we took the time to throw out the stereotypes of older people.
Fiction is fiction. Some fiction is far out, but I have to believe that in every work that is written there is a small part of the author hidden somewhere in the characters or a detail in the book. An author that writes from the heart has to unknowingly include some of themselves in the book. That at least, is my opinion.
One of my relatives is exploring the words that are in his soul. When he writes from the heart, whether it be fiction or reality, it draws you in, and lets you live in his world through his words. When he tries to conform to what others expect him to write it loses something in translation. The heart is not in the writing.
I freelance with my writing for newspapers and magazines. I can’t do the town council meeting, the school board agenda or other reality world writing. I can do human interest and lose myself and my heart in someone else’s story so I can create a story that will move others hearts. Each story, though it is about others, has a piece of my heart in that story.
Granny Hooks A Crook and Granny Skewers A Scoundrel may seem silly and totally fun. There is a part of me every day that wants to escape from the reality we all call life. There is a part of the real me in these silly books every time Granny takes a drink of coffee or lets her heart be touched by her menagerie of animals. There is a part of the real me in making Granny over the top. I would love old age to look the way Granny lives it. I would love to live in a community like Fuchsia that accepts the quirkiness and the differences in people and embraces it. Yes, it is wild and over the top but would the world be better if we took time to live in a fantasy Fuchsia world for a few minutes every day?
There is a part of me in my books that mourns in real life the way Granny mourns when someone dies in Fuchsia. There is a part of me in my books when Granny and the residents of Fuchsia pick themselves back up and keep going after a tragedy. Fuchsians just do it in a little funnier way.
We all have something in our life that is our main stay, something that gives us comfort, something that we reach for when everything else in our life has failed. For me and for Granny that mainstay has been coffee. My cup of coffee is held tightly when I am sad or angry. My cup of coffee is held reverently when I am breathing deep and enjoying the fact that I woke up to see another day. My cup of coffee is there when I greet friends and offer them a cup that says: Have a Rainbow Day.
What is the Coffee in your life? If you know what it is, embrace it, share it. You may be the cream and sugar of someone’s life.
Weed Lake: A Fuchsia/Brilliant, MN Crossover
GrannyEdith Press
Hermiony Vidalia Criony Fiddlestadt, aka Granny, and Jezabelle Jingle are supersleuths in their own communities, Granny from Fuchsia and Jezabelle from Brilliant. Because they live only twenty miles apart in rural Minnesota, they are careful not to encroach on each other’s territory. Granny and Jezabelle both believe a rivalry exists on who is the better crime solver.
When Delight Delure, Granny’s friend and Jezabelle’s niece, sends them on vacation with the women’s two best friends, Mavis and Lizzy, they don’t know they will be actual cabin neighbors at Weed Lake in Northern Minnesota. During a skirmish with each other and an accidental plop in the lake, they find a dead body. Adding to the mystery are clues and puzzles left on their doorstep that may warn of danger and others that show friendship and caring. Which one should they believe? Are their lives in peril, or are they being pranked, and to what end?
The two cunning amateur sleuths work together to solve a murder that Sheriff Phil Puxatawny doesn’t take seriously. But mayhem breaks out, having all four women wondering if they’ll leave Weed Lake alive.
We are honored to have the supersleuths visit ePen and share how they work together to solve mysteries. Settle in!
[Granny and Jezabelle are enjoying tea and cookies while sitting on a picnic blanket next to a quiet creek. As Jezabelle looks to the audience, Granny reaches over and sneaks one of Jezabelle’s donuts.]
Jezabelle: It’s so nice to be here. Thank you for having us. Let me introduce myself. I’m Jezabelle Jingle from Brilliant, MN.
Granny: You should have let me introduce myself first. My fame will draw them in. Oh well, it’s already done. I guess I can come in second once in my life. Good day. I’m Hermiony Vidalia Criony Fiddlestadt Crocker.
Jezabelle: [Looks around, lifts the napkins, looks under a plate.] Better known as Granny. The only time she uses her long name is when she wants to distract you, so be careful. You might not get the full story. We’re here today to tell you about a beautiful vacation spot in Northern Minnesota called Weed Lake.
Granny [Delicately wipes her mouth with a napkin.] Weed Lake, you better believe there are weeds and deep sucky mud. The owner of Weed Lake Resort, Maridee Shelby, tells the tourists to take baths in the mud in the lake and advertises it as a spa. And those weeds are dangerous. They almost swallowed up Jezabelle when she lost her balance and fell in the lake the first night we were there. [Granny tosses a set of keys against a tree.]
Jezabelle: What do you mean fell in, Granny? You pushed me. [Leans toward the tree, squinting at something on the ground.]
Granny: [Reaches in the basket, pulls out another donut, and tucks it in her pocket.] You took a dip and thought you should bring me with you. Let’s tell it like it is.
Jezabelle: [Scoots over and grabs the keys, tossing them back on the blanket.] That’s certainly not something you know about.
Granny: Jezabelle pretends she’s an amateur sleuth in Brilliant. They have a puzzling town. At least she thinks they do. She followed Mavis and me to Weed Lake so she could stalk me and learn my supersleuth secrets. I catch criminals in Fuchsia, which is a few miles away from Brilliant.
[Just as Granny is about to fling paper napkins toward the lake, Jezabelle turns back to Granny. They stare into each other’s eyes for a moment.]
Jezabelle: [Smiles at the audience.] I did not follow you. We got there first. Lizzy, who is my best friend, planned this a long time ago with my niece Delight so we could finish our cookbook. We own the Brilliant Bistro.
Granny: So, if I may go on. They rented a cabin right next to us. She pulled me into the lake when we were getting the ground rules down and then she finds a dead body. You see where this is going?
Jezabelle: I’ll ignore that. Phil Puxatawny, the sheriff, was called. I had to hold Granny down when she heard his name so she didn’t get us into more trouble. He deduced the death was an accident, but we knew better. We had no choice. We had to investigate.
Granny: We actually surprised ourselves that we could get along for few minutes. Jezabelle and I had some wacky dacky surprises.
[Granny leans toward Jezabelle and pats her on the back as they both laugh. Granny’s arm circles around and steals a donut from the basket.]
Jezabelle: Dacky is not a word, Granny.
Granny: It is now.
Jezabelle: [Jezabelle reaches into the basket, looks inside and shuffles things around, closes the lid, looks under the basket.] I think they want us to tell the readers more about ourselves. Let’s forget Weed Lake for a few minutes. After all, our lives in our communities prepared us for the Weed Lake adventure.
Granny: I’ll go first. I live in a town that defies the rules. Fuchsia celebrates Christmas with pink flamingos and fills potholes with leaves. We have underground streets that hold lots of secrets. Don’t let the brightness of the city fool you, we always must be on our guard. I’m an undercover detective for the merchants of Fuchsia and I always get my man, woman, but no children
Jezabelle: They have a wrinkle farm too, and Granny’s kids think she needs to live there.
Granny: I did for a little while. The Next to the Last Resting Place Home had so many strange things going on I had to go undercover as an old woman. I also have a motto: if it’s broke, don’t fix it. That’s the trouble with young people today. They’re always trying to fix broke things instead of reinventing them. I reinvent things.
Jezabelle: You are old, Granny, but I won’t go there. Wait, I just did. I live in Brilliant, which is an educated town. I work with my neighbors to solve puzzles that the Brilliant Brothers, founders of Brilliant, left hidden in the walls, floors, and streets of Brilliant, and they’re just being uncovered now. We solve crime in a more orderly and brilliant fashion. I’ve never been married, unlike the gray one over there, but possibly there is a wedding song in my future.
Granny: If he doesn’t leave you at the aisle. I’m married, been married, been single and decided I finally can be who I am, cranky, sneaky, and myself.
Jezabelle: I think we should end this interview before we give away all our secrets. I will say this, we solved the crime in Weed Lake and Phil Puxatawny can maybe keep the town quiet now. Don’t you agree, Granny?
Granny: Not exactly, but I will say this. If you decide to visit Weed Lake, just make sure your name isn’t George, and if it is, change it for the vacation. It may be hazardous to your health.
Jezabelle: Be careful what you say, Granny. We’re at the Editing Pen. Annie will edit you out if you’re too gloom and doom. [Jezabelle reaches into her large tote, pulls out four donuts, sets them on her lap, and happily takes one bite out of each one.]
Granny: [Granny reaches for a donut, but Jezabelle slaps her hand away and takes a huge bite of a donut.] That’s an idea. Annie, edit Jezabelle out. It won’t take much. Just a click on the keyboard. A quick erase and she’s gone. I like that idea.
[Jezabelle takes another bite, smacks her lips, making happy donut-eating sounds.]
Granny: I’ll bring donuts if you’ll do that since we don’t seem to have any here for you.