Marvelous Malice

I'm back in body but not spirit yet from the 25th Malice Domestic (my second).  I slept seven hours over the course of three nights and sound as if I've been drinking cheap rum and smoking cigars, when in fact I drank nothing but water and tea and didn't smoke so much as a kipper.

It feels as if I spent the whole weekend taking photos and asking people to take them of me and yet here I am with no pictures at all of my friend Dina Wilner who was powering through her first Malice without *her* friend Sally Fellows, who was Fan Ghost of Honour this year.  Laura Lippmann, as toastmaster, gave many wonderful speeches but none more touching than when she talked about Sally and drank a good glug of red wine in her honour. 

The Guest of Honour was Laurie R King (no photos)

The International Guest of Honour was Peter Robinson (another photo fail)

The Ghost of Honour (non-fan) was Dick Francis.  And finally I got a picture.  This is me, Dick's son Felix and some new kid who's giving writing a go.  Hope he makes it.

The Hyatt Regency Bethesda did Malice proud for the 25th year: dressing the doorman as Sherlock Holmes (here he has apprehended Jessie Chandler):

 

and decorating our pudding at the banquet:

 

 

as well as giving away 5 Charlie-Bucket-style lucky bookmarks in our goody-bags. (I didn't get one.)

 

I was lucky enough to moderate a stellar panel on the topic of research, with Frankie Bailey, (criminology), Jane Cleland (antiques and rare books), DP Lyle, (forensics and medicine) and Rochelle Staab (occultism).  I learned a lot and laughed even more.

 

 

 

Malice-go-round, speed-dating for books and readers, was an exhausting and exhilirating blast.  Going round with Sparkle Abbey, two of my favourite writer (Sparkle defies grammar), made it twice the fun.

 

 

 

There were so many lovely little moments.  Like the one when Joelle Charbonneau, who has written a gazillion books, caught her first glimpse of her brand new one and was instantly turned into a wee girl with a new bike on Christmas day.

 

 

Another lovely bit about conventions now is that you can meet face-to-face with people you already love, thanks to Facebook.  I was particularly thrilled to meet Diane Vallere, who wrote one of my favourites of last year - Pillow Stalk (a Doris Day murder mystery).  She was just as groovy as I imagined.

 

 

But if I had to pick the biggest highlight of the weekend it would be the banquet.  I hosted a table and spent the evening with old friends Vicki Delany of Criminal Minds, Sara J Henry and Michele Sandiford, and made new friends: Jean, Sarah, Deb, Jill, Lee, Maureen, Elizabeth and Irma Baker, who I think has given me the title of my next DG book - thanks, Irma.

 

 

 

Then there was the diamond on the cherry on the icing on the cake.  I was nominated for an Agatha alongside Rhys Bowen, Victoria Thompson, Charles (and Caroline) Todd and Jacqueline Winspear.  And look!

 



 

 

It's such an honour.  I'm still bobbing about somewhere near the ceiling.  And the teapot is on its way west via UPS courtesy of Malice.  Thank you to everyone who nominated, voted and cheered for Dandy.   You rock!  Or as Dandy would say: "Jolly good show."

"Hours of Verbage (sic) and Boredom"

If you don't read reviews you miss people saying things like that about your books!  My best and worst over at Criminal Minds today.  http://bit.ly/ffW8A

I'm blogging about the Oscars (well, the dresses) over at Femmes Fatales today.  Here's one of the nominees for achievement in guacamole and tortilla chip consumption:

Mix thoroughly and bake for fourteen years

Just stopping by here to say I'm really at Criminal Corners today.  It's a serious blog about writing method.  Except it's me, so not really.

Gettin fou and unco happy

We're a bit late with Burns' Night this year.  On the 25th itself I was in Long Beach working and Scotland's Bard might never have been born at all for the celebrations going on there (unless Hooters was having a tartan special; I wouldn't know).

But on Saturday, Groundhog Day, 254 years and 8 days since wee Rab was born, two Scots, one Frenchman, and eight Americans got together to eat haggis, drink whisky and mangle vowels.  The Lion Rampant was flying at the Ugliest House in California.  I don't think I've ever seen it in sunshine before.  It's quite garish.

It was a wonderful gathering, but here's a behind-the--scenes look at how it all very nearly went horribly wrong.

It has been said of me that I never knowingly under-cater; the first sign of trouble came when I looked at the haggis ingredients mixed so far + the four humungous onions still to go + the liquor (sounds nicer than the water the liver was boiled in, eh?) + the note in the recipe to leave plenty room for oatmeal expansion . . .

. . . and couldn't help but notice that I needed a bigger basin. Horrors! The rhubarb and ginger  trifle (half-made) was in the bigger basin! What to do? Two haggises? A thirty mile round trip to the Bigger Basin Shop? Clean out a wheelbarrow and wing it?

Or . . . was it possible?  Could it be done?  Dare we try the world's first recorded trifle transplant?

A fish slice, a spatula, a skimming spoon and a salad server.  Hold your breath and-

Oof!  Transplant successful.  Trifle in smaller basin.  Bigger basin free for haggis.  There's three things to note, though:

1. We should have made two wee ones.  There was a heecher of a hiatus after the cock-a-leekie waiting for a five pound haggis to steam.  Mind you, extra drinking time.
2. The transplant was pre-custard.  Post-custard trifle transplants are still only theoretical.
3. Once the cream was on, the basin was a wee tiny bit full.

After that, our Burns supper was plain sailing. We found enough forks and glasses for everyone:

the Selkirk Grace by Ruisheart McHoenisch, The Toast to The Lassies' by Andy "William" Wallace, The Lassies'  Reply by Eibhliin McRendahl and Icy-Highland-Spring McWarren and The Immortal Memory by Black Douglas McRoberts were fantastic.

And the only mystery was what, in a room full of such clean living Californians, happened to all the whisky?

Well, some of it, and a quite a lot of claret too, ended up in here:

It's what Rab would have wanted. 

Two men and half a shed.

For the second half of October and the first half of November, the old team was together again. Neil McRoberts and Jim McPherson, who last year brought you this:

 

have been at it again.  This year, starting with half a shed and a dead eucalyptus,  





using only a simple household chainsaw,

and the little red pick-up that could,

along with a sander and some brackets, they made . . .

(can you see what it is yet?) 

a very heavy . . .

but absolutely beautiful . . .

 

 

 

(how gorgeous is that wood?) . . . table!

 

 



But wait.  Something's missing.

That's better.

And, because they were tidying up (to the county dump) as they went along,

that ugly bit of the garden with the compost heap and tree stump and half a shed is beautiful now too.

(Garden gnome blogger's own.)

Thanks, Dad.  Thanks, Neil.  Cx

The Next Big Thing

I'm following on from Frances Brody, who writes the wonderful Kate Shackleton mysteries, answering a few questions about my next book out. 

 

What’s the working title of your book?

I have  lot of trouble with titles, but this time was pretty easy.  It was called The New Book and then The Hydro Book and then I sat down to think it out properly.  After that it was A Goodly Measure of Brimstone.  Then it ran through Deadly Dose, Strong Solution and Brimming Phial before we settled on . . . drumroll . . .  Dandy Gilver and A Deadly Measure of Brimstone.  It’s out in the UK next July.

 

Where did the idea come from?

I was up to 1929, so I knew when the story would be set.  And it just so happened that the day before I was going to sit down and open a file called "New Book 1^st Draft", a reader emailed me and said she was missing my detective’s family.  Dandy Gilver has a stuffed shirt of a husband and two gormless teenaged sons, as well as a supercilious butler, a bossy maid and a devoted cook.  I was missing them too, after a couple of stories where we don’t see much of them, so in they went.

As for the setting . . . I’ve just been truffling in my filing cabinet for the very first notes I made and here’s what I found:

Temperance Hotel in the Highlands
Locked Room
**Magazine Publisher!!!** Fashion?  Ladies?  Film????

The finished story is set in the Lowlands; the temperance hotel became a hydropathic hotel; there is no magazine publisher (depsite all those asterisks and exclamation marks) 

When it comes to the plot, I have no clue where the idea came from.  I never do.

 

What genre is does your book fall under?

In the UK it’s what's known as a detective story, a sub-genre of crime novel.  In the US it’s a traditional mystery or cozy (slight shudder), a sub-genre of mystery novel.   Actually, though, I’ve just won the Sue Feder Historical Mystery Macavity Award, so maybe I should say the series is historical.  Only, “historical” still says bonnets to me.  Victoria Wood explains it best.  Look at 01.55-2.51 on this priceless Dinnerladies excerpt (although don’t fast forward through Dolly’s “Ooooh, I can't even look.” And whatever you do, stay for Clint’s mum and Jean’s line about camping.  I love Dinnerladies.))


What actor would you choose to play your central character in a movie rendition?

 

Anna Chancellor, without a doubt.   She looks exactly like Dandy, and she’s marvellousness made flesh.  But that Ann Cleeves has snaffled Douglas Henshall or, as I think of him, Alec Osborne, to be Jimmy Perez.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book? 

Argh, the elevator pitch.  I’m no good at these.  “It’s about some people.” is my usual standard.    Here’s the jacket copy instead:

“Perthshire 1929 and the menfolk of the Gilver family have come dow with influenza, bronchitis, pneumonia and pleurisy.  When an outbreak of scarlet fever strikes the village  Dandy the devoted wife and mother decides it time to decamp.  Dandy the intrepid detective, however, decides to decamp to the scene of a murder she would dearly love to solve.

Along with stalwart Pallister the butler, doughty Mrs Tilling the cook and the irrepressible Grant, Dandy’s lady’s maid, all of whom are recuperating too, the family repairs to the Borders town of Moffat, there to drink the sulphurous Moffat waters straight from the well and to submit to the galvanic wraps, ionized heat lamps and cold salt rubs of the splendid Laidlaw Hydropathic Hotel.

But all is not well at the Hydro.  The Laidlaw family is at war, the guests are an uneasy mix of old faithfuls and giddy upstarts, and the secret of the lady who arrived but never left cannot be kept for long.  And what of those drifting shapes in the Turkish bath?  Just steam shifting in the air?  Probably.  But then the Hydro was built in the lee of a Gallow Hill and in this town the dead can be as much trouble as the living.”

Will your book be self-published?

Hah!  If I was a self-published author I’d be better at one sentence pitches.  Hodder and Stoughton publish Dandy in the UK and Minotaur have given her a home in the US.

 

How long did it take you to write the first draft?

I started as soon as the shortbread tin went away after New Year and the date on the printed-out first draft – more truffling in the filing cabinet - is April the 20^th, so . . . getting on for three months.  Then comes the hard bit. 

Happy NaNoWriMo everyone,

Cx