Welcome to the Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt! If you’ve discovered the hunt, be sure to start at Stop #1, and collect the clues through all 30 stops, in order, so you can enter to win one of our top 5 grand prizes!
- The hunt BEGINS on 3/1 at noon MST with Stop #1 at LisaTawnBergren.com.
- Hunt through our loop using Chrome or Firefox as your browser (not Explorer).
- There is NO RUSH to complete the hunt–you have all weekend (until Sunday, 3/4 at midnight MST)! So take your time, reading the unique posts along the way; our hope is that you discover new authors/new books.
- Submit your entry for the grand prizes by collecting the CLUE on each author’s scavenger hunt post and submitting your answer in the Rafflecopter form at Stop #30. Many authors are offering additional prizes along the way!
I am excited to be hosting Carla Laureano today on my site for the Hunt! She’s one of my favorite authors and we’ve often commiserated together over working through our deadlines…while usually being sick…and tired. Her latest novel The Saturday Night Super Club has just released from Tyndale House (our shared publisher!): When a targeted smear campaign costs award-winning chef Rachel Bishop her restaurant and all her dreams, she vows to do whatever it takes to get it back, even if that means joining forces with Alex Kanin, the writer who inadvertently set the disaster in motion. As they work together to rebuild her reputation by co-hosting an exclusive pop-up supper club, Rachel realizes Alex is not the heartless opportunist she once thought he was… and that perhaps there’s life outside the pressure-cooker of her chosen career. Can she trust him with her second chance…and her heart?
Confessions of a Fine-Dining Dropout by Carla Laureano
It will surprise absolutely no one who know me or who has read my latest release, The Saturday Night Supper Club, that I love food. Or that I love the dining scene in my hometown of Denver, Colorado. I couldn’t tell you who is playing in the World Cup, but I can tell you which restaurants opened and closed this week. Fine dining is my entertainment and my sport … and I’ll defend my favorite spots like a Broncos fan defends his team on Super Bowl Sunday.
It started a few years ago when my husband and I picked up a copy of 5280 
Magazine’s “25 Best Restaurants in Denver” issue. We’d lived in the metro area for years, but having young kids, we didn’t tend to venture out much beyond the local chain restaurants that were guaranteed to serve chicken fingers and mac ‘n’ cheese. Now that they were getting older, it was time to reinstitute date night—and we had the perfect excuse. We would work our way through the magazine’s list backwards and see if we agreed with their rankings.
Sounds fun, doesn’t it? I’ll save you the suspense—we didn’t make it. Not even halfway through, we realized that these are really expensive restaurants and more suited for a special occasion than a regular date night. Also, the magazine’s definition of “Denver” tended to be broad, and we didn’t feel like driving over an hour for dinner on a Friday night. So we put the project on hold and chalked it up to a good way to have discovered a few new favorites.
Fast forward to the writing of The Saturday Night Supper Club. All the restaurants in the book are fictional, but they’re based on real dining establishments. We started up fancy date nights again, this time with a more curated list of restaurants that fit the settings I wanted to describe in my book, and we hit the town. And it was fun.
For a while.
The most shocking revelation was that after a while, I get sick of fancy food. When I began perusing a menu that advertised things like “Deconstructed Shepherd’s Pie: foraged mushrooms, foie gras, parsley foam” I started to wish we’d just hit up the barbecue joint down the street. (By the way, that menu item—not a real thing. Thank goodness.) I had finally hit critical mass, maximum saturation in fine dining, where the preparations and over-the-top descriptions and expensive ingredients that had once felt so special and innovative suddenly became ho-hum and vaguely ludicrous in their earnestness. I started wishing for the corner diner where my husband and I could laugh 
over coffee and pie instead of keeping our voices down to a discreet level, or the noisy fast-casual place where we could show each other stupid cat memes on our cell phones without getting judgmental looks from the tables beside us.
Like Rachel does in the book, I began to realize that maybe I was looking at food and dining the wrong way completely. When viewed as diversion or research, the constant demand to be entertained and amazed starts to take your focus off the reason you left home in the first place—to connect with the people you love, in this case, my husband. Sure, it was fun to marvel at the ingenuity of talented chefs and to analyze the food between courses (thank God I’m married to both a patient and a thoughtful man), but mostly it was the interaction at the table with him that I enjoyed the most. Maybe it was time to keep date night, but kick fine dining to the curb.
Now our nights out are a lot more likely to involve pizza and a grown-up movie, a meandering trip through the bookstore, or a late night trip to Target where we look at televisions that won’t fit in our living room and try on hats that we don’t intend to buy. The fancy places still have a place in our routine, but we save them for special occasions and celebrations, or we opt for the more accessible, laid-back weekend brunches served by our favorite restaurants.
The main attraction then, no matter where we go, is some quiet time spent together. The food is just the vehicle by which we get to enjoy it.
Carla Laureano is the RITA Award-winning author of contemporary inspirational romance and Celtic fantasy (as C.E. Laureano). A graduate of Pepperdine University, she worked as a sales and marketing executive for nearly a decade before leaving corporate life behind to write fiction full-time. She currently lives in Denver with her husband and two sons, where she writes during the day and cooks things at night.
Here’s the Stop #12 Skinny:
You can order Carla’s book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, CBD or your local bookstore!
Clue to write down: this
Link to Stop #13, the next stop on the loop: Carla Laureano’s own site!
Thank you for stopping by my site! Before you go, be sure to fill out the entry form below for a chance to win a $20 gift card to Etsy and when you sign up for the gift card and become a part of my newsletter list, you’ll receive exclusive access to my new novella, Revisions, shared just with my newsletter subscribers!
Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt Stop 12: Confessions of a Fine Dining Dropout with author @Carla Laureano https://wp.me/p63waO-2z9 #giveaway #chrisfic Click To Tweet
Comments 41
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Subscribed to your newsletter Thank you!
You are one of my favorite authors.
Sometimes a simple dinner at home is the best option.
Already subscribe!
I absolutely loved Rachel and Alex’s story, but I really love “regular” food more than fine dining! Lol
Hey Karen! If it makes you feel any better, I made spaghetti last night for dinner. Definitely don’t eat like that all the time!
You are a new author to me. I have subscribed. I love the hummingbird in the stained glass!
Thank you, Teresa! Hummingbirds are a reminder that God loves me. I have a hummingbird story about that: “On a Hummingbird’s Wing and a Prayer” https://wp.me/p63waO-Oo
I sent the subscription form and will confirm as soon as I get the email. You are a new author to me.
Thank you for visiting and I look forward to getting to know you. As a new subscriber, you get a free e-novella, Revisions. I hope you enjoy it!
subscribed and liked.
signed up & liked. Looking forward to trying out all the new authors to me. You are one of them & so many wonderful books to read.
Just signed up, thank you!!!
The link to sign up for your newsletter is broken?
Brandi: I’m so sorry you had difficulty with the link; it has worked for others today. My VA will add you to the newsletter mailing list manually.
I love your books
All done!!!! Did everything!!!! Thank you for the opportunity!!! God bless!!!:)
This book made me hungry……..but I loved it anyways 🙂
thank you
Beth your new book sounds wonderful! On my TBR List!
Thank you, Lisa!
Love both Beth and Carla’a books! Beautiful writing and stories. I am currently half way through The Saturday Night Supper Club and I am really enjoying it. Looking forward to Beth’s upcoming release.
Rochelle: Carla is a wonderful writer, isn’t she? We have such fun conversations via Instant Message about our books and life … Thanks for your encouraging words! 🙂
This sounds wonderful! You are new to me so nice to meet you
Release the hounds, I’m on the hunt for Day 2!
Thanks for hosting on this scavenger hunt, Beth!
THANK YOU FOR THE AWESOME GIVEAWAY!
I subscribed, followed on all socials !
Linda Marie Finn
Faithful Acres Books
Beth, your new book looks so intriguing. It’s on my TBR list. I loved Carla Laureano’s new book. It was a fun read!
Thanks, Winnie! And yes, Carla’s book was so much fun to read. Of course, living in Colorado Springs, it also made me want to go visit all the restaurants in Denver!
Great post – very entertaining and relatable! I love food and the idea of fine dining, but if I had to choose I probably go for regular food, too.
Subscribed Thanks!
Thank you for being part of this scavenger hunt. I always have so much fun.
Book Looks Awesome
I am already a subscriber. Beth, thanks for being a part of this year’s CFSH and for your extra giveaway!
Looking forward to reading your work. Glad to discover you here.
Can’t wait to read this book. I subscribed even though I think I already was. Fine dining has its place, but I agree that most of the time I enjoy a good old fashioned home-cooked meal the best. I also agree that the company is the most important part of any meal!
Thank you Beth!
I subscribed to your newsletter! I really enjoy your books.
We love 5280 restaurant week/month. We live an hour from Denver so we choose a restaurant with several friends that all of us have wanted to try. We meet and enjoy the night out. Great fun!
I am a subscriber. Thanks for the chance.