SUMMER and ALL IT'S GLORY

 https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/279359

I have to say I am enjoying this summer more than I have any for a long time. Maybe it is being home in Maine or I just enjoy the garden I am growing.

I think I am taking lesson from our characters in the series, only my garden is all container gardening. I used everything I could find to grow the veggies. You see we sit of a cliff, so no depth to the soil. The plants hit some snags to start, even a late frost that wiped it all out. Everything finally took on the third try and now they are growing like crazy.

My main goal is tomatoes, I would like to can some for this winter. Unfortunately, the garden is about a month behind so I am not expecting a lot from the squash end of things. But the tomatoes are great and I should get a good harvest of them. 

One big surprise are my eggplants, they are now growing like crazy. I do love to watch this fruit grow they are beautiful plants and to see those globes form is fascinating to me. I do hope, if you have a garden, that it too is doing well.

Next year I want to expand as well as delete many of the plantings. I hope we can start exchanging recipes.

Lily

  PS check out my new website, Jewel and I are sharing :)  https://author-jeweladams-lilysimmons.com/

One Amish Autumn now available!

One Amish Autumn
Falling in love isn’t only for the young but for the young at heart as well.

Widow Ruby Troyer feels attracted to widower David Fisher with his tender smile and easy-going ways.
Paradise Wells in Lancaster County is peaceful, yet problems creep beneath the serene impression.

David hires Susan Lantz as a housekeeper for him, and his young twins and the trouble begins.
Can Ruby dare to dream of David Fisher, or will one unstable woman destroy their budding love?

Sale for FALL

Click the links below 

In Plain Sight

Amish Heritage

AMISH HERITAGE is Released Today!

Get Your Next Read

Amish Heritage is available at your retailer, the link above 

will take you to the list.

Amish Heritage - Book 2 of the 

Quilted Hills Series
Some say Paradise Wells’ Amish are too progressive. Cell phones, 

selling online, and yet, they are steeped in historical lore.
Newlywed healer, a Braucherei, and midwife, Miriam Miller and her husband, Levi struggle with her healing activities in the community. Levi finds he is better with his horses than his wife’s unpredictable schedule.
Amid stolen horses, births, and healings, will love conquer all?

Enjoy the Read!

In Plain Sight is also available at Amazon in print.

Can you Believe it!

It is summer already!
I just don't know where the time escapes to. Here, Piper and I are busy writing our second book, Plain Heritage, oh and is it a good one :), but I look up and it is JUNE. I usually lose Wednesdays but not whole months LOL.

The stores are already putting out summer goodies and all I can think of is that the kids will be out of school. 
I do wish things would slow down a bit. I'd like to catch my breath. I wonder, how is your summer looking? Are you going on any trips?
I think I will be lucky to make it to the pool if only the thunderstorms would slow down...and this is how the summer goes, quick--we really need to tie it down and sit on it.

Lily

In Plain Sight is available at Amazon

I’m Carly Laine and do I ever need a rest. My last case was heart-wrenching, so where better to go than to an Amish Bed and Breakfast? I picked the first one that popped up on my computer screen. Little did I know I’d be neck deep in kidnapping and murder.

I am Ruby Troyer. My son Matthew and I own a large Amish Farm Stay, the Englisch call a Bed and Breakfast, but ours comes with a farm tour and buggy rides. Our border, Carly Laine is a trained detective, here to take a good rest. Instead, the poor dear helps in our kitchens providing meals for the men searching for our missing girls. For sure and for certain, Carly hasn’t had much rest. Carly and I become fast friends, but she drags me, a quiet Amish woman, along in her search for the truth. One we never saw coming.

Read our story, the first book of the Quilted Hills series.

Livers, Gizzards and Hearts OH MY!

Carly is at her wits end with all the preparation Matthew and Hannah's wedding is creating.
She has also made big decisions concerning Asher.
To catch up read Carly's latest post to her journal.

Oh, and if you haven't got your copy of "In Plain Sight"  be sure to get over to Amazon and get your next cozy read.

IN PLAIN SIGHT is now available at AMAZON!

REVIEW

"IN PLAIN SIGHT by Piper Forrest and Lily Simmons opens a charming new series of cozy mysteries filled with great characters, set amid the “Quilted Hills” of an Amish community in Pennsylvania. The writing team of Forest and Simmons is one to watch."

Carolyn Lampman  

Award-winning author of The Jinx and the Pinkerton

IN PLAIN SIGHT

BY

PIPER FORREST AND LILY SIMMONS

I’m Carly Laine and do I ever need a rest. My last case was heart-wrenching, so where better to go than to an Amish Bed and Breakfast? I picked the first one that popped up on my computer screen. Little did I know I’d be neck deep in kidnapping and murder.

I am Ruby Troyer. My son Matthew and I own a large Amish Farm Stay, the Englisch call a Bed and Breakfast, but ours comes with a farm tour and buggy rides. Our border, Carly Laine is a trained detective, here to take a good rest. Instead, the poor dear helps in our kitchens providing meals for the men searching for our missing girls. For sure and for certain, Carly hasn’t had much rest. Carly and I become fast friends, but she drags me, a quiet Amish woman, along in her search for the truth. One we never saw coming.

Read our story, the first book of the Quilted Hills series.

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Catch Up!

Carly's been busy but still found the time to write in her journal. Come on over and catch up on Quilted Hills. It is a busy time to be at the farm stay.

Check it out!

Hi all, I just finished writing in my journal, gosh I hope no one reads it but it does help to write it all down. I am the person that forgets everything, now I have a place to put idea and items that I need to remember.
Hope you do is going well, it is beautiful here all the colors of fall are outstanding.
Carly
https://authorspiperandlily.blogspot.com/p/carlys-journal.html

PS They are predicting snow and lots of it.

Amish Faceless Dolls

Take a look at an Amish doll and you’ll see it has no face. The faceless dolls are believed to deter against pride and vanity.

Source: National Geographic, Image: Wikipedia

Meadow Tea

August 2018 is half over. If you are like me, I enjoy a cup of ice-cold tea on a hot summer afternoon. Here is a great recipe for Meadow Tea. Enjoy
Piper

MEADOW TEA

3½ quarts water (14 cups)

2 packed cups fresh mint, whole

½ - ¾ cup sugar ***see note***

INSTRUCTIONS

This recipe makes 3½ quarts of iced tea - enough to fill an average sized "sun tea" jar.

Boil water in a large pot.

Rinse mint leaves - keep whole. I do this in a colander - inspect and rinse well - I always find lots of sticky little critters on mint.

Add mint to a pot of boiling water.

Cover pot, remove from heat and let steep for 2½ - 3 hours.

Remove whole mint leaves with a slotted spoon. Let leaves drain and dry in a colander. Leaves can be reused once for another batch of tea.

Pour tea thru a fine screen into your storage container. I use a handled screen that fits over the top of my sun tea jar and pour/ladle the tea thru. If you don't have a screen you could use a sifter or even a kitchen towel. Please use something - you don't want bits and pieces of leaves floating around.

Stir in sugar to taste. ***NOTE*** I prefer a lightly sweetened tea so I add ½ cup - ¾ cup sugar. Local Meadow Tea is made MUCH sweeter - I'd estimate they use 1 cup - 1½ cup sugar. Start with the lower amount of sugar and add in any additional sugar until you reach desired sweetness.

Refrigerate, serve cold. Enjoy : )

Welcome to our Amish blog ")

You really have to ask yourself how two individual authors of romance, turned to write together and change our genre, it isn't an easy answer and yet it is.
Oh, and we felt our new venture needed new author names to boot lol, I am Lily.
Piper and I have been together on the internet since 1995, we were part of a group of authors that actually began ebooks. Not only, did we publish ebooks, we figured out ways to sell them from CD's to email attachments, and downloads from our site or one that eventually handled the sales and delivery of an ebook, along with an author based radio show.
All these authors, cover models, artists and techs of the internet really did believe in the future of ebooks and still, do.
The circle of expertise continued to grow into the industry of today, not bad for a very young industry. During all this growth we experience so many changes in the romance genres, this growth opened up some fascinating genres, along with new degrees of heat in the bedroom or outside it. We sort of crashed and pushed our ways past the norm for romance. Even the writing techniques changed, my favorite is the POV (Point of View) that went from a single POV to multiple POVs in a story. You see, I like to know what the gentlemen are thinking about the woman that interest them.
Best get back to the present :)
Piper and I have been writing for a long time and we still love the books we have released, but we needed something new, something neither of us thought about doing and it must be fresh. Like a breeze that tickles your nose, the ideas began to sprout. Piper loves the Amish romance and has for years. I like new anything in romance, fantasy is what I would read in between writing. Together we made a decision we wanted to write in the Amish genre. The surprise came in that we decided to write together on the same story, now this is major.
Authors are pretty much solitary in their writing. Yes, you need other authors to review and give opinions on your writing, but actually becoming a writing team is so different for us. I have to say that I love it!
We have always, as friends, thought the same about things, we even finish our sentences or know each other's thoughts, so writing together really proved to be a simple step for both of us. It is amazing to be writing a scene and as one of us writes the other follows behind and fixed any errors as we go lol.
In all honesty, I am enjoying myself and writing once again.
We have finished our first book in the QUILTED HILLS SERIES - IN PLAIN SIGHT, it is a wonderful feeling and I am so proud of us. Yes, it still needs tweaking but it is written and we are starting the next book in the series. We decided early on that we wanted more than one book completed before we release the first one.
I hope you will visit often as we will be posting writing articles and questions along with recipes and other interesting items concerning our writing in the Amish genre. There is so much to learn and discover about the Amish, please join us.

Lily Simmons