Contessa's Court January 2020 by Contessa's Court

Editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Letter I took a long hiatus because I was sick. I am now better and am back to work. I hope you had wonderful holidays and Happy New Year!

Table of Contents

Page 43 Gold by Gigetta Spear Page 49 Stewing Over Fall Fare by William Maltese Page 61 Amaz’n Murder An interview with the author Page 81 Haute Men’s Fashion Scents Sense by William Maltese Page 93 Interview with YouTuber Whitney Sews by Wanda Julian Page 110 Editor in Chief ’s Faves for January Page 114 Fashion Community Week Fashion Show Page 147 So Tell Me Dalink Happy Valentine’s Day by Brenda Robinson Burgett Page 157 Interview with Cheryl Neve by Wanda Julian

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A sorceress studying at the Mage's Academy was kidnapped and detained by its headmaster for reading and sharing forbidden knowledge with her friends. Her captor spares her, but she is forced to undergo a trial to prove her worth. After succeeding, Edi Nari—a woman once resigned to a quiet life of research—soon finds herself thrust into a small-scale war against the living dead. Controlled by creatures of unfathomable power known as liches, these beings have existed in the small country of Ternisa for generations, though only now have they begun causing mayhem. However, something more ominous than a horde of undead stirs beneath the land… The Lich's Thrall is the tale of a young woman finding her place in a world that, no matter where she goes, seems to wish for nothing less than her death. (Approx. 250 pages.)

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Gold

By Gigetta Spear Gold is more than just that ring, bracelet, necklace or earrings you like. Have you ever wondered how or where gold is from? Per Wikipedia it says: Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from Latin: aurum) and atomic number 79, making it one of the highest atomic number elements that occur naturally. In its purest form, it is a bright, slightly reddish yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. The history of gold is unequaled by that of any other metal because of its perceived value from earliest times. Because gold is visually pleasing and workable and does not tarnish or corrode, it was one of the first metals to attract human attention. Because of its unique qualities, gold has been the one material that is universally accepted in exchange for goods and services. In the form of coins or bullion, gold has occasionally played a major role as a high-denomination currency, although silver was generally the standard medium of payments in the world’s trading systems. Gold began to serve as backing for paper-currency systems when they became widespread in the 19th century, and from the 1870s until World War I the gold standard was the basis for the world’s currencies. Although gold’s official role in the international monetary system had come to an end by the 1970s, the metal remains a highly regarded reserve asset, and approximately 45 percent of all the world’s gold is held by governments and central banks for this purpose. Gold is still accepted by all nations as a medium of international payment.

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STEWING OVER FALL FARE WILLIAM MALTESE

As someone presently to be found in the Pacific Northwest, U.S.A., I’m already noticing the change of weather, at summer’s end, and I have, more and more, begun to contemplate the good eats that will make me feel all warm inside as the temperatures drop farther, snow comes, and inclement weather becomes the rule rather than the exception. Certainly, don’t assume, despite seven cookbooks under my belt, that I’m someone who only indulges in high-end dining. While I have been known to prepare Beef Wellington, or filet steak with pâté de foie gras and duxelles nicely wrapped in puff pastry and baked, I’m just as apt, at this time of the year, to turn my attention to preparing a peasant French stew. Beef Bourguignon — don’t be intimidated by the name — originated in the rustic Burgundy (Bourgogne) region of eastern France, and is prepared with beef braised in red wine (traditionally red Burgundy), in a broth flavored with garlic, and with vegetables added toward the end of cooking. Originally, the meat was “lubricated” with lardons (strips of fat), but modern beef is usually tender enough, with just its natural marbling. If not, bacon easily provides whatever extra cooking fat is required for beginning and/or at the end.

Beef Bourguignon (aka French Stew) Preheat the oven to 325°F 8 oz bacon, cut into ½-inch pieces 3 lb stew meat (or beef roast), cut into 1½-inch chunks 1 tsp salt ½ tsp fresh ground pepper ¼ c flour 2 garlic cloves, minced 3 c Burgundy wine 1 c beef stock 1 sprig of fresh thyme (or ½ tsp dried leaves) 4 large carrots cut into 1-inch slices 1 lb mushrooms, cut in half 2 TBS butter (or olive oil) ½ lb pearl onions, fresh peeled or frozen To thicken, if needed: 2 TBS butter, softened 2 TBS flour In a 6-quart Dutch oven, sauté the bacon over medium low heat, until brown and crisp. Set bacon aside. Discard all but 3 TBS of fat from pan.

Heat pan over medium high heat. Sprinkle stew meat with salt and pepper and some of the ¼ c flour. Toss lightly. Brown stew meat in the bacon fat in small batches until brown on all sides — do not over crowd. Remove browned stew meat and set aside. To the vacated pan, add minced garlic and ALL that remains of the ¼ c flour. Cook for 30 seconds. Turn pan to high heat. Deglaze the pan with the Burgundy wine for about 1 minute, scraping the bottom of the pan. Add the stew meat, bacon, stock, and thyme. Cover and bake in oven for 2½ hours. Add carrots. Sauté the mushrooms in about 2 TBS butter (or olive oil), for about 7 minutes, until golden brown. Add mushrooms and pearl onions to pot. If sauce needs thickening, use above “thickening” ingredients by—mashing with a fork the 2 TBS flour with the 2 TBS butter; removing Dutch oven from the oven; and whisking, a ½ tsp of the flour-butter mixture at a time, into the sauce, until blended. Cover and continue cooking (about another 1 hour) until meat is fork-tender. Makes about 10 servings

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AMAZ’N MURDER

An interview with the author

Autumn weather is a good time to cozy up, in front of a cozy roaring fire, with a good cozy mystery novel! Speaking thereof: Move over, Jessica Fletcher and Miss Marple! Make room for another aging woman amateur sleuth—Carolyne Santire, plant-hunter extraordinaire, whose search for the next major botanical find takes her to Brazil, South America, where she encounters political machinations, mayhem, and…murder. The suspect list includes fellow scientists, Brazilian land barons, prospectors, a cuckolded video director, a rock star—and eventually, even her! Amidst threats from a man-eating jaguar, cannibals, and a mysterious British kidnapper, Carolyne finds the prospect of ferreting out the real killer anything but a leisurely stroll in the park. Can she solve the mystery before the next murder? Contessa’s Court: Why a cozy mystery? Among all your other over two-hundred published novels, I can’t recall another one. William Maltese: I just got to thinking that I hadn’t written one specifically marketed as such. Several of my romance/adventure novels, though, meet most of the genre’s requirements— amateur sleuth, no gory murders, some kind of mystery, no sex. This book, however, is the only one that I intended to be a cozy from the get-go. CC: Set in South America which has been the background for several of your books.

WM: South America is an exotic locale with which I’m pretty familiar, having spent a good deal of time there. Since any cozy is a means by which a reader can momentarily escape from his or her ordinary life, and since small English villages have, I think, been over-used as cozy locales, I figured South America was as good a place as any in which, momentarily, to invite people to escape reality. CC: Your protagonist is a female botanist. WM: Another attempt on my part to pique the readers’ interest by providing a protagonist with a profession unusual and interesting by which to pass on tidbits of information not likely to have been picked up in any typical reader’s ordinary life. Personally, I’ve always found it fascinating how many medical breakthroughs have been the result of advantaging the medicinal properties of flora found in the same jungles that are disappearing today due to one ecological disaster after another. CC: Your protagonist, like Miss Marple, Jessica Fletcher, even Father Brown, isn’t a young chicken. WM: I’ve always enjoyed books with characters of an older generation, although that grouping is seldom represented in literature these days. So, color me more than happy to have been able to insert at least one more elderly heroine into the mix. Aging men and women are getting short-shrift in books nowadays with a declining readership of all books seeming to prefer fantasizing their fictional interactions with young and attractive characters. CC: Then, to what do you attribute the recent resurrection of cozy mysteries? WM: Older people, who enjoy cozy mysteries, are a group who actually still read books. More and more of the other groupings of potential readers, these days, are more apt to be texting on their cell phones, spending their time on social media, or playing games on one electronic format or other.

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Citywatch on the air.. the show that takes you thru’ the in’s & out’s of business. We are very pleased to have Contessa’s Court Corner every quarter with Mrs. Wanda Julian.. Editor & Chief of Contessa’s Court Magazine. Mrs. Julian is exactly the type of guest we look for.. Smart & savvy with real style.

We are doing a new segment called Contessa’s Court Corner started last October. Where Wanda Julian will fill us in on what is hot in fashion.

Podcast of the show w/Mrs. Julian… Don’t miss Contessa’s Court Corner with our special guest Wanda Julian!! Don’t miss “Citywatch on the Air.” Here is the podcast! c62w75.podbean.com Citywatch on the Air is a great place to feature your product or service, get worldwide audience exposure on a weekly basis for as little as $100.00 (per:30sec spot) with our Contessa’s Court Discount.

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Haute Men’s Fashion WILLIAM MALTESE

Scents Sense Some of us are confused by the difference between perfume, eau de toilette, cologne, and aftershave, since they’re not one and the same. Perfume contains the most essential oils, followed by eau de toilette, cologne, and then aftershave. The more oils, the longer-lasting the fragrance. The origins of perfume can be traced back to Mesopotamia, with the oldest known perfumery having been excavated on the island of Cyprus. There’s reference to perfume in The Bible. During the Renaissance, it was used mainly to mask not only body odors that resulted from wretched personal hygiene, but, likewise, from environmental rank smells like coal smoke, open sewers, and rotting garbage. Cologne, the generic term for fragrances aimed primarily for men, originated in Cologne, Germany, compliments of Giovanni Maria Farina, in 1709. Originally very expense, it became less so once more manufacturers entered the field. It was thought, during times of the bubonic plague, to be, when drunk, a preventative that, when exuded from the pores, was detrimental to disease-carrying fleas. In later times, it became the drink of choice for alcoholics, especially in former Soviet countries, where it was more cheaply had than vodka. Although there’s a plethora of men’s cologne on today’s market, including 4711 which has been around the longest, there has been a simultaneous decline in use, along with women’s perfumes, as more and more men and women complain, especially in the work place, that scents used by other people are major distractions that can cause second-hand unhealthy allergic reactions in exposed sensitive individuals. There’s, also, the attending argument that there are already enough fragrances, transferred by soaps and lotions, without any need for cologne overloads. This doesn’t mean there aren’t still men who use colognes. In which case, finding the right one can, admittedly, be difficult. My suggestion is to advantage all the sample-thesecolognes ads in the slick-men’s magazines by ripping them out, rubbing the scent from the page to your body parts, and judging, over time, which selection or selections work best for you … before expending money on any of them.

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Interview with YouTuber Whitney Sews By Wanda Julian

How long have you been on YouTube? I started posting sewing tutorials on YouTube in May 2009, so a little over 10.5 years. How long have you been sewing and doing DIY projects? I had a kid’s sewing machine when I was about 8 years old and would sew line after line of stitching on the fabric scraps my mom would give me. I started sewing actual projects when I was 13 (so right around 20 years ago!) My first real project was a foundation pieced string quilt. I cut squares of paper out of a phone book and sewed strips of plaid fabrics together (leftovers from my mom’s quilt project) on it and trimmed them down to the size of the paper. After they were all pieced the paper was removed and the blocks sewn together. What have been some of your favorite projects? I think my favorite projects are always changing because I’m always learning and trying new techniques. I definitely love the costumes and clothes I’ve made and the quilts. I love the cosplay costumes. What inspires you to make them? I’ve been making generic costumes for about 12 years to wear to a local Medieval Fair and Halloween. Then in 2013 my husband asked me to make a cosplay for him – Tenzin from The Legend of Korra (copying the outfit of a specific character as screen accurately as possible). I made it for him and really enjoyed the challenge of turning a 2D character’s clothing into actual wearable items. I was asked the next year to make a Pema cosplay (Tenzin’s wife) to wear to meet one of the voice actors from the show. I had been wanting to get into cosplay for a myself for a while, but had a hard time figuring out what characters to cosplay because I felt like it needed to be from fairly popular animes. But the more conventions I attended and the more cosplayers I meet I began to realize cosplay can be any character from any movie, show, comic, etc. Even if no one else knows the character it can be cosplayed if that’s a character I like. After that I began to find inspiration everywhere. Cosplay definitely helps me step out of my comfort zone and try new skills and techniques as well as test my pattern altering skills. I start all my costumes with a sewing pattern (or lots of patterns) as the base and alter/combine them as needed to get the right designs. How much fun do you and your family have in the costumes? We absolutely love to dress up together as a family! We are part of a local Star Wars group called JediOKC that dresses up in costumes for different charity events and conventions. They love dressing up at home and at events; costumes are a normal and regular thing for my kids. We want them to know that dressing up is fun, something anyone can do and can be used to encourage others.

Do you get compliments on the things you make? For a long time people didn’t seem to notice in day to day life that I made some of my own things (bags, clothes, etc) so I took that as a compliment. It meant my things looked well enough to be store bought. Now that I make more clothing and costumes I will get compliments from random people and I love saying “thanks, I made it” and getting the “oh wow” or “really, that’s so cool” type of responses. Tell me about yourself. In a nutshell, I am Whitney, known on the internet as Whitney Sews; a wife, mother, and homeschooler. I love to sew and teaching other people how to make their own amazing things. When I was young I was told often that I should be a teacher and I would laugh because I could not imagine myself in a classroom teaching. My intended career, what I went to college for, was reporter/news anchor. I quickly learned that was NOT a career I was cut out for and accidentally became a YouTuber. I posted a video production project on YouTube where I made a sewing tutorial and was asked when the next video would be posted. I graduated that same week and my summer job hadn’t started yet, so I posted another, and another, and another and weekly for 10.5 years. A few years in I realized I had actually become a teacher (the very thing I said I would never be) reaching people all over the world, thanks to the internet...and a more traditional teacher to my own children. So I guess the people who told me I would make a good teacher were right, I just had a very narrow picture of what teaching was in my brain back then. What are your passions? Hmm...dreams and passions. In terms of sewing and youTube, to make things I like and am proud of! I always tell new youTubers the goal is to look back at videos from a year ago, three years ago, etc and be able to cringe a little. I work hard and put my best into my videos, so if my older videos feel a little cringey it means I’m improving and getting better with each new video. (Maybe that’s more of a goal than a dream...) As for personal, I love homeschooling my two kids and seeing them learn new things and understand more and more. My oldest (just turned 5) is learning to read so it’s amazing to hear her read something and know I taught her everything she knows about reading. Where do you see yourself in 5 years? I’m currently taking a bit of a break from YouTube. Designing, filming, and editing a new sewing project every week for more than ten years gave me a little bit of burn out. So I decided to slow down a bit and give my creativity a break. Right now I’m focusing on personal sewing projects, cosplay, and life in general and posting updates on YouTube when I can. In five years I’m sure I will still be on YouTube and DEFINITELY still sewing! I grew up watching my mom sew (she made lots of my clothes when I was younger) and we never plan on stopping! http://whitneysews.com/ https://www.facebook.com/whitneysews/ http://instagram.com/whitney_sews https://www.facebook.com/edwardscosplay/

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AN EXQUISITE 3-DAY SPRING FASHION MARATHON IN SAN FRANCISCO We are excited to invite you to the Fashion Community Week taking place between; March 15 through 17th, 2018 in San Francisco. After achieving growth and success for five consecutive years, we are happy to present our biggest Fashion Community week yet, this year! th

Fashion Community Week is the Global â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Intersectionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; of Fashion in San Francisco, offering business and marketing platform for Fashion, Beauty and Technology industries. The organization received an award by the late Mayor Edwin M. Lee of City of San Francisco for its commitment towards building a fashion community and offering legitimate fashion platform in San Francisco. Since 2013, Fashion Community Week has represented many San Francisco local Fashion designers and welcomed designers from Global Fashion Industry as well. These global designers have participated from Europe, Africa, Australia, Asia, Middle East, South & North America; many coming from under represented backgrounds. Due to the popularity of our Fashion week, starting this year we will be holding the Fashion Community Week twice per year in San Francisco. The 3-day Spring show will commence with a Fashion Industry conference followed by series of exquisite Fashion Shows representing Local and Global Fashion on the runway. Just as every year, the proceeds from our Fashion Week will be benefiting three selected local charitable organizations. The 3-day Fashion extravaganza will be taking place at prominent locations of San Francisco. All details are available on the website at: www.fcwsf.org and you may Contact (Varsha.V) directly at Fashionconsf@gmail.com for further inquiries. We look forward to seeing you during our Spring Fashion Marathon of Fashion Community Week 2018! ####

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SO TELL ME DAHLINK Happy Valentine’s Day Brenda Robinson Burgett I got my secret wish. My beloved second husband, wisely decided to take me for a romantic, Valentine dinner. I assumed it was to be a romantic event? Well, why not it could happen? I was surprised and pleased. It wasn’t our once a year anniversary dinner? To my knowledge he hadn’t done anything wrong and needed to get on the nice list again. This was a puzzle! Of course, I wanted to do dinner and spend time with my football addicted husband. I hadn’t seen him for more than three minutes since last August, when the first pre-season football game aired. I wasn’t sure what we had in common or even what his sign was anymore. Thank goodness for the classic clothing that I had been collecting for years. I could simply open the closet and there would be all of those wonderful coordinated pieces of ready to dazzle clothing! I had not allowed for body change or shrinkage of fabric. My clothing had not aged well. I had filled in my body spaces with layers of more me. (fat.) The beautiful, dazzling red dress I had bought in preparation for a Valentine date a decade or so ago was one of the causalities. Thinking it might adjust to my size, I slipped it on over my head. So far so good! The problem would prove to be the zipper. I had out of respect for quality and age, I carefully pulled at the stubborn zipper. Being a quality piece, it didn’t break, instead it jammed and refuse to budge. It wouldn’t go up or down, but instead lodged just below my ribcage causing a hardship in obtaining a full breath. Well, now what? You don’t just cut a dazzling red dress off without thought. Much thought! My oxygen shortage, decision was to make it work. I reasoned that I could wear a coat or wrap and it would look fine. Again, I mention I wasn’t getting a lot of air to my lungs or brain. It wasn’t like I had a lot of clever answers for being encased in a red party dress with a stuck zipper. I looked at the great shoes I had accumulated and found a nice dressy black patent leather boot. No problem with shoes thank goodness! I had not allowed for the need to bend and pull. It simply was not going to happen. I felt a sharp pain in my side. Is it possible to have a Charlie horse in my intestines? Yes, it is! I fell over and landed in the laundry basket like I had meant to do it. It could be a new gymnastic event! The muffled yells from the closet must had seemed like a call to bark for my three dogs. They howled, and barked off key for what seemed like an eternity. Still no husband to the rescue. If I were to survive, I would need to save myself. Saving myself while saving face would not be a choice I reasoned. I had started to feel the lower body become numb from lack of circulation. I would crawl into the kitchen and find the scissors. It seemed like longer than the thirty minutes, but my best guess was that in around that amount of time I reached up and open the drawer which held my Jaws of Life, (scissors.) I gave very little thought to the value of the red dress by then. It was a matter of life and breath and the scissors threatened to cut me as well as the dress. I have thankfully blanked out the rest of the dress rescue. I do remember the husband had fallen asleep in his sleep chair and missed the rescue. I had no regrets as I taped my valentine to him to his chin and the dogs and I enjoyed a pizza. Happy Valentine Day to one and all and to all a Good Night? Amen?

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Interview with Cheryl Neve By Wanda Julian

What inspired you to start acting? My ‘Eureka’ moment came when I played a nun in Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables six years ago. It was my first ever time on a movie set and it was a night shoot in Winchester College chapel. Hugh Jackman was singing alongside us, and we spent all night singing a song in Latin. In fact, although we were told that our voices would be dubbed over, I can clearly pick out my voice in the actual movie. Working in such beautiful settings, and getting a sense of the camaraderie that exists on a film set, was one of the most magical experiences of my life. It reawakened the love of performing that I’d had when I was a child, but had pushed aside. Since that night, I’ve been on an incredible journey, honing my craft both in front of and behind the camera. That, really, is the beauty of art – you are always learning and pushing forward into new things. What inspired you to direct? Directing my own film was a New Year’s Resolution of sorts! Up until this year I had acted in, produced and written quite a few films, but I had never directed one. I was also inspired by the gender inequality in the industry and the fact that there are very few successful female film makers out there. In fact, Kathryn Bigelow is the only woman to have ever won an Oscar for Best Director! I had a story that I wanted to tell, set in an era that I love – the 1960s – and I wanted to be the one to direct it. However, with a cast that were used to directors like Quentin Tarantino, making Cheating Charlie my directorial debut was definitely a baptism of fire! Can you tell me about The Doorman and what inspired you to write the screenplay for it? The Doorman is a spy thriller about the doorman of a luxury London hotel who is recruited by a government intelligence agency to serve as a cut-out for the agents who use the hotel. I was inspired to write the screenplay when I stayed at a hotel that had a doorman. One day I watched the people walking past him and it occurred to me that he would be the perfect ‘grey man’, because his visibility made him so invisible! Being a big fan of spy movies, I went on to develop the story and was pleased when director Patrick Ryder agreed to co-produce the film with me. We had a brilliant cast and filmed all over London. The Doorman will be going onto Amazon Prime as a short film, but I still believe that the concept has the potential to be developed into something more. Tell me about Gilded. Gilded was the first film that I ever wrote and produced. I was inspired partly by the 1946 film Gilda, starring Rita Hayworth, and partly by movies like Charlotte Gray about female spies who were parachuted into France during WWII. Gilded is about Rosalie, an English Jazz singer who is still tormented by events that happened during her time in Nazi-occupied France. I very much enjoyed playing this role, not only because it was a dream to sing in a film again after my experience in Les Miserables, but also because it was interesting to play someone who out of necessity had darker sides to her character. I spent a lot of time researching real-life women such as Nancy Wake, nicknamed the “The White Mouse”, who had been secret agents during the War. During its festival run, Gilded went on to win Best Drama twice, Film Of The Month, Best Director (Paul J Lane) and I was nominated for Best Actress. What is it like to act in a role you have written the screenplay for? Acting in a role that I have written the screenplay for is great in the sense that I already know the character inside out due to my own research and the hours spent pouring over the script, perfecting the story and the dialogue. When it is my own vision, it is fairly effortless to flow from the writing to the acting. Having said that, I also really enjoy playing characters from scripts that aren’t my own. It is so exciting to receive a fresh script and, almost like a detective, use the clues in the text to develop your character. Lamia looks amazing. Can you tell me what inspired you to write the screenplay for it? I collaborated with Kurdish actor and director Danny Darren on Lamia after playing a small role in his multi-awarding winning political thriller 16/03. He had access to an abandoned tower block on the outskirts of London, and he wanted to create a short horror film set in this dilapidatedbuilding. We visited the site together and discussed ideas for the story

and I went away to write the screenplay. Lamia has gone on to win a number of awards such as Best Horror Short, but perhaps my favourite part about the film is the fact that my daughter, Esther, starred as the ghostly little girl in the story. She was a natural on screen and had a very e nthusiasticovation on wrapping! Can you tell me about The Code and what inspired you to write the screenplay for it? The Code is a story that director Patrick Ryder wanted to tell for a long time. We met over pudding or cake (something tasty, anyway!) and he told me about his idea for it. I scribbled down some notes and turned them into a screenplay, creating some additional characters and plot twists such as the mercurial Captain Penney. The Code is about a diminished group of soldiers from the Royal Essex Regiment who are fighting to stay alive and make it home during the last stages of WWII. When they stumble across an undecipherable code, it has the potential to change everything. The Code is beautifully shot by cinematographer Richard Oakes, who also worked with me on The Doorman and Cheating Charlie, and it has won 22 awards so far during its festival run. I would love to hear about the movie you directed called Cheating Charlie. What is the movie about and what was it like to direct it? Cheating Charlie is a short Cold War thriller set in Germany just after the construction of the Berlin Wall. It is very much a classic East versus West spy film, and it centres around an American diplomat, Nate Barrington, who illegally enters East Germany to buy a priceless painting believed to have been destroyed by the Allies during WWII. However, after coming into contact with a notorious Stasi officer, Nate unwittingly becomes part of a plot to undermine the West. The film has flavours of Bridge Of Spies and The Lives Of Others, and stars a fantastic cast such as Nigel Barber (Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation), Leo Staar (Call The Midwife), Arndt Schwering-Sohnrey (Inglourious Basterds) and Mark Moraghan (Coronation Street). It was great fun to direct because not only was everyone fantastic to work with, but I also loved the 1960s locations, props, costumes and cars used in the movie. My script has already won Best Screenplay Short at the Festigious International Film Festival, and I will be releasing the trailer and entering the film into festivals very soon. Please keep your eyes peeled for Cheating Charlie on the festival circuit! What are some upcoming projects that you are working on? This year I joined Fire In The Hole Productions alongside Rick Roberts and Tim Seyfert as writer and co-producer. While there are many exciting projects in the pipeline, we have been working on a WWII feature film set on the Eastern Front called The Point Of No Return, and I’m co-writing it with Rick. I’m very excited by the number of strong female characters in the film, as we wanted to reflect the many female Russian soldiers and snipers who fought on the front line during the war. We’ve just finished filming a promo for the film with Wartime Productions, and we hope to go into production next year. I’m also playing a Russian sniper called Svetalana in the movie, which will be an interesting role to get my teeth into. Other roles coming up include ADA Olivia Bradley in American TV Franchise The Vice Squad, which is very exciting. What are you passionate about? As you can probably tell, I’m very passionate about film making and telling great stories! There’s nothing I love more than being on set with a great team, creating movie magic. However, there are a lot of things that are close to my heart. For one, my children and bringing them up in a secure, loved environment where they can believe that anything is possible. My Faith, which has kept me on the right path through the years. And world issues. I’ve always cared about social injustice, and I’ve been involved with various charities such as Remar when I lived in Spain, helping drug-addicts and the homeless, Compassion where I sponsor children in Ghana and Peru, and women’s work in my nearest city, helping women in refuges rediscover their worth. These are the things that matter to me. Where would you like to see yourself in 5 years? I would love to continue to do what I’m doing, but on a bigger scale. I’m always seeking to grow and learn and challenge myself with bigger projects. There are always more stories to tell and more characters to play. Although I would very much like my film making journey to take me into the mainstream film industry (as someone once said, if your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough!), as long as I can keep on doing what I’m doing, I’ll be happy. In the meantime, please keep up to date with my work on social media. www.facebook.com/cherylneveactress www.cherylneve.com Twitter: @cheryl_neve Instagram: cherylneve

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