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

Not alone any more!

Not only am I now one of the 7 Criminal Minds, but I've just been asked to pull on my long gloves, light a cigarillo and be a fabulous Femme Fatale.  First FF blog is up today. I'll still blog about dumpsters and gardening failures here, though.

guest-blogging for Femmes Fatales

It's Halloween - Scottish and American style - at Femmes Fatales today. http://femmesfatales.typepad.com/my_weblog/2012/10/the-great-california-vs-caledonia-spook-off.html#comments