Rhys's Pieces

Making Lemonade

2012-01-28T10:21:00.000-08:00

"When life throws you lemons, make lemonade."

This year, inspired by my friend Deborah Crombie, I decided to start a gratitude journal. I've never been good at keeping a regular journal, in fact I find them regularly at the bottom of drawers. Journal 1986. Jan 1. Cold and bright. That's it.
Not the greatest journal keeper. But I have found it's a good feeling to take out the journal at the end of the day and come up with three things I'm grateful for. Not always easy some days, like the ones I've jsut spent with my husband at the Stanford medical center while he undergoes test after test and still no real conclusions about what's wrong with him.

But I have found that keeping the journal has made me more open to small blessings around me. Usually at this time of year we're in Arizona, enjoying the desert, and the other set of grandchildren. So I was disappointed that I was stuck here in California, until I worked on seeing the small blessings from being here. One of them is that the acacia bush has come into bloom. I usually miss it and it reminds me of Australia, where they are called Wattle and Australia in springtime is dotted bright yellow with wattle bushes.

And when I went out to take a picture of it, look who was standing beside it. I usually see the deer as a horrible nuisance but you have to admit he's cute. And aother blessing is that the weather has been spring-like so far, and I'm not going to miss my granddaughter's 10th birthday and my hiking friends are all here, and we went to a great exhibition at the museum and are going to a murder mystery play next week. So I've nothing to be miffed about.

Yours in gratitude, Rhys

Celebrating Robbie Burns, Scotland and the Celts

2012-01-25T11:00:00.000-08:00

I have to confess that I don't have a drop of Scottish blood in me, but I'm married to someone whose great great grandfather was the 14th Kingairloch of Gairloch and whose great grandmother was Beatrice Lachan Mcclachan of McClachan. So I almost qualify to write this piece, don't I?

Tonight is Robbie Burns night when all good Scots around the world gather to eat Haggis, drink whiskey and recite Burns' poetry. Actually I think you have to be born Scots to enjoy the first bit. I'm told Haggis is really tasty but I can't get over the words 'sheep's entrails in a sheeps stomach". I know it's silly. If I can eat one part of an animal, I can eat any part. But it doesn't sound exactly appetizing, does it.

But the other bits--the whisky and the poetry and toasts to a homeland some of them left two hundred years ago--I can agree with those. As a fellow Celt and Welshperson I'm always amazed how much influence our small Celtic countries have had on the rest of the world. Carnegie and John Knox and Wesley and Tom Jones and Sir Walter Scott and Bryn Terfel! And the bridges that Scottish engineers have built (it was a Scot who designed the Golden Gate, wasn't it?) and the mines that Welsh miners have dug in far corners of the globe.

Wales, with its population of less than a million people, a country one hundred miles by fifty, has left its mark everywhere. If you are called Jones or Roberts or Davis or Powell or Williams or Evans your ancestors came from Wales. Unless you are African American, that is. Then I'm afraid you were named for the ship's captain that transported your ancestor in one of the slave ships and signed for his cargo in the New World--and those ships sailed out of Bristol and the captains were Welshmen.

That's a less than honorable fact to be remembered for. But we Scots and Welsh have so many things to celebrate and so here's to Robbie Burns and Scots Way hay, whatever that means!

If you'd like to know more about Burns Night from a great Scottish writer then jump on over to Jungle Red Writers (www.jungleredwriters.com) and read Val McDermid's post there today.

Lost in a Good Book

2012-01-20T09:25:00.000-08:00

I'm freezing cold and I think I'm beginning to run a fever. My armpits ache. Am I about to come down with some dread disease? Actually no. I'm re-reading one of my favorite books, Connie Willis's The Doomsday Book. For those who haven't read it, it takes place at Christmas in the present and in the middle ages--at the start of the Black Death, to be more accurate. I decided to re-read it because it gives a good feel for a medieval Christmas and I wanted to get into the holiday spirit. I'd forgotten about the Black Death part!

The problem with me is that I immerse myself in a book a like. When I don't really care for a book I skim to get the story. When I like it, I'm in it, not conscious of words on the page, experiencing what the characters feel. And currently it's freezing cold and the Black Death has just arrived. I suppose one of my assets/problems is that I have too much imagination. When I go to a good movie I am not watching it happen--I am there. Same with a good book--I've been frozen in Russia with Dr. Zhivago, I've flown over Africa with Beryl Markham and I knew the Southwest perfectly before I ever visited it because of Tony Hillerman.

It's not only the sense of place in books, it's relationships too. Sometimes I find myself snapping my head off at husband John only to realize that the man I'm angry with is actually in the book I'm writing or reading. I suppose this is a great boon to have--I don't actually have to pay for airfare or really have to visit Antarctica. But it can be emotionally draining. For this reason I tend to stay away from books about children dying or natural disasters wiping out whole communities because I identify too much.

This may be one of the reasons my books work well and readers tell me they identify with my heroines. It's because I identify with my heroines. I don't use them like puppets and put them into scenes in the book. I follow them, being sngry when they are angry, scared when they are scared, stumbling into mistakes with them, and falling in love with them. It's a scary way to work because I don't exactly know where we are going, but it works for me.

So how about you? Do you get lost in a god book?

The Ethics of Murder

2012-01-16T09:25:00.000-08:00

When I posted a blog about the murder on the grounds of Sandringham House, country estate of Queen Elizabeth, I commented that I wished the murder could have taken place during the reign of Edward VII so that I could have tied it in to the notorious Duke of Clarence.

Well, I got a comment that felt like a slap on the wrist. The commenter pointed out that there were grieving family members for this person and that I was being flippant about it. She was absolutely right, of course. One of the problems about being a mystery writer is that we become desensitized to murder. The corpse is a problem for us, a puzzle, a whodunit. We write a story around the body, and not about the body, and too often we forget that murder is a heinous act that tears apart so many lives.

When I think of my own more recent books I find that many of my murder victims were unpleasant people for whom we would not weep--who deserved to die, if you want to put it that way. Maybe this is my way of easing my conscience about the act of killing. When the victim has been an ordinary, likeable person I find that I do try to show how the death affects my sleuth. In the book A Royal Pain a lower class young man who works in a Communist bookshop is killed and Georgie visits his parents for more information about him, only to realize for the first time in her life what his death has done to his family. And In Evan's Gate, which got me an Edgar nomination, the whole book is a study on what a missing child does to tear apart a family.

It was easier in the Evan books to study the ethics of killing and see things from the point of view of the victim and the villain. He was a down-to-earth local policeman and his cases often involved people he knew. M more recent Royal Spyness books are designed to be comedies. Not that I ever make light of the actual murder, but the social commentary around it is expected to elicit a chuckle or two. And so I kill off some truly obnoxious people. One does not weep when a disgusting womanizing army general from Bulgaria is killed. In the Molly Murphy books the victim is often someone she doesn't personally know, or know well, as the murders stem from her detective business cases and from New York City life.

The problem is that we write from the point of view of the sleuth--at least I do, in the first person. And a detective can't get too emotionally involved in his or her murder cases. But I'll try to remember in future that it's not all about the puzzle, or the fast-paced plot, or the suspense of whodunit. It's about one person's death, and that it always leaves a hole in someone else's life and heart.

Death of an Icon

2012-01-14T07:49:00.000-08:00

It was with great sadness that I learned of the death of Reginald Hill--British writer of crime novels featuring Daziel and Pascoe, a fat blustering chief inspector and his young subordinate. The stories are multi layered and written in exquisite prose that sometimes takes my breath away. He has been one of my literary idols for years.

About ten years ago he wrote a book called On Beulah Height, a story about a year of drought, when the water levels drop in a reservoir to reveal a drowned village and evidence of an old crime that ties in with a current vanished child and a traumatic situation in his own family. This book ranks in the top ten of all the mystery books I have read, maybe THE best mystery novel. I hope you will go out and read it in tribute to Mr. Hill. I just hope I can write one book like that in my literary life.

Downton Abbey revisited.

2012-01-12T09:01:00.000-08:00

Big article today in the New York Times about America's obsession with Downton Abbey and the excitement building up to the new series.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/business/media/mad-for-downton-publishers-have-a-reading-list.html?_r=1&hp This is all great news for me and for other writers who set their novels in that milieu and that period. My heroine, Lady Georgiana, is related to the royal family, 34th in line to the throne and through the course of my stories she hangs out with royal kin at Buckingham Palace She sees her cousin, the Prince of Wales, become hopelessly enamored of a dubious American woman called Mrs. Simpson. And because her mother was of lowly birth, she is also a keen observer of the gulf between the haves and have nots.

I suppose I can understand this current fascination with upper class Britain and the time between the wars--in many ways our current situation mirrors it. We have a clear gulf between rich and poor, we have a deep recession with many people losing their homes and a general feeing of uncertainty.. And the life of British aristocrats is so deliciously decadent and so far removed from most of us that we love to take a peek at it.

I have to say that I love to write about it. During my life I've had a chance to take my own peek into that lifestyle. My husband's family used to own stately homes (Sutton Place included, but that was before my time) but I have met older relatives who talk fondly about pranks they played on the butler and dinner parties for a hundred guests. And I have met people who firmly believe that that era has not passed and still think of the world as "them and us"--with other classes only being created by God for their use to the aristocracy.

So it's all great fun and of course my books have the added attraction of a murder or two thrown into the mix. If you haven't read them yet, do give them a try. The latest is Naughty in Nice in which Georgie tangles with a murderer, a jewel thief and Coco Chanel on the Riviera!

Where do I Go From Here?

2012-01-09T07:10:00.000-08:00

I'm about to start a new book and as usual I'm in full panic mode. If I were a sensible author I'd start with the outline, plot out every scene and then feel confident that I could deliver a sound, enjoyable story. But I can't work this way. I wish I could, but I can't. If I wrote an outline I'd immediately lose interest in the story. And frankly I work best with the element of surprise. I start off knowing very little--usually a setting. For example: how about if I send Molly Murphy to one of the "cottages" in Newport R.I or how about if Georgie goes to winter on the Riviera with the wealthy Brits.
And then I start, plunging blindly ahead until she meets someone--in Naughty in Nice it's an encounter with a handsome Frenchman on the boat and then Coco Chanel on the train, and then the whole future of the story hangs on these encounters.
In the upcoming Hush Now, Don't You Cry--the next Molly Murphy book, due out in March, it is the character of the house and the family that owns it that creates the story--much more a story created through atmosphere than many of the Molly books. I also had to make sure that Molly, now married, still has a good reason to be a sleuth.

So the first 100 pages are, as I said, full panic mode. I'm taking baby steps, not quite knowing where plot twists might lead. And then I find a body, a character I didn't expect shows up and things liven up. I begin to see where we're going and the whole thing picks up steam. By page 200 I'm charging along, enjoying myself.
This is probably a stupid way to work, but it works for me. You see, I don't really know where my heroine is going. I'm following her, just watching and waiting, and thus I'm as surprised as she is when something happens to her. I'm not the puppet master, pushing her into a situation and I think this makes it more fun for the reader too.
In every book I've been surprised at what my heroine does, what she uncovers, whom she meets. Plots always go in directions I haven't expected, and remarkably, after 27 mystery novels, they all seem to come to a satisfying conclusion and there has never yet been a story where I've gotten myelf horribly stuck or written myself into a corner.

So now I start Molly book 12. And what do I know? Molly is pregnant and someone in New York is kidnapping babies. Sounds good, huh? I think there must be a good story there, waiting to be uncovered. More about my methods in a couple of days.

A royal Murder?

2012-01-04T11:57:00.000-08:00

I expect you heard on the news today that a body had been discovered on the grounds of the Sandringham Estate, where Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip are spending the holidays. It was a young woman and it has been established that she had been murdered. Now the police are trying to link her to various cold cases, the most likely being a young Latvian woman who had vanished from nearby Kings Lyn a few months ago and had expressed fear for her life.

For someone like me who writes about royals and murder the wheels in my brain started spinning instantly to see if I could weave this into a future story. Too bad it wasn't back in the age of King Edward VII, whose oldest son, The Duke of Clarence was a ne'er do well, dissolute young buck who might well have dispatched of an inconvenient young woman (see my take on his story in my book Royal Flush). He died under mysterious circumstances at Sandringham. However today's royals are all frightfully straight and honorable and are probably seriously miffed that someone chose their estate on which to dump a body and thus spoil their New Year's escape to the country.

Speaking of which, the queen went out riding on New Year's Day. Isn't she wonderful? Riding in her eighties? And the duke has recovered well from his heart surgery and he's over 90. They have both inherited Queen Victoria's tough genes.

In the meantime I'll be watching with interest to see if the police can identify the body and if there is any royal tie-in to the murder. If there isn't, well--I'll have to rely on my imagination to create a good scenario for a future plot. But right now I'm supposed to be starting a new Molly book. Can something interesting please happen in New York?

A good start to the New Year

2012-01-03T19:07:00.000-08:00

I heard today that Glamor Magazine has named Her Royal Spyness as one of 11 must-read books--along with The Hunger Games, Passage etc.
Wow.
I'm gobsmacked as the English would say.
Check it out at http://www.glamour.com//entertainment/blogs/obsessed/2012/01/exercise-your-brain-in-2012-11.html

Happy New Year

2011-12-31T17:53:00.000-08:00

I've listed my resolutions and dreams on my group blog, www.jungleredwriters.com
Do hop on over and see what I and my Jungle Red sisters are resolving.
It will be an uncertain new year as John has health problems and we don't quite know his diagnosis yet so please send prayers and positive vibes in our direction.

Let me wish each and every one of you a blessed, peaceful, joyful, healthy New Year!

The Party's Over

2011-12-29T17:35:00.000-08:00

Today was sad in a way as our Christmas houseguests went their various ways, to Phoenix, LA and Sonoma, leaving us with just our Aussie kin. It was also a big sigh of relief that I won't be cooking breakfast for sixteen people again, nor endlessly loading and unloading the dishwasher. But as the year draws to a close it has reminded me how precious family is to me. To be surrounded by people I love and who love me is a great blessing. To sit around, everyone laughing or singing or playing highly competitive games of Spit or Scrabble is about as good as it gets.

I just wish that holiday celebrations did not have to include so much food. I can see how the tradition started. Long ago, when ordinary people led simple lives for most of the year and a boring diet with little meat and sugar, the Christmas feast really meant something. To be able to have turkey or goose and Christmas pudding full of fruits and brandy was the ultimate in good fortune for those people. For us who eat what we like every day, it doesn't mean much any more.

So now there is enough laundry and housecleaning waiting for me to work off some of those extra pounds. And I'd like to wish you all a happy, healthy New Year.

Merry Christmas to All!

2011-12-23T11:03:00.000-08:00

If you want to see me and my Jungle Red sisters celebrating the holidays, please click on the link below.

http://sendables.jibjab.com/view/C37MGaHNJImVxwwFxQQp

And my very best wishes for a blessed Christmas.

Rhys

A Touch of Magic

2011-12-19T07:24:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I took my two granddaughters, Lizzie and Meghan, aged 12 and 9 to the Nutcracker Ballet in San Francisco. It's a tradition that started when Lizzie had just turned three. The other grandmother and I splurged for the front row of the orchestra stalls. She was entranced by the whole thing, peering down into the orchestra pit and waving at the players as they warmed up. When the music turned scary, she hid under her seat. When we got home she re-danced the whole ballet for us--we especially loved the mouse king dying and her version of the Russian dance!

We've been every year since, adding sibling Meghan when she was old enough. I keep expecting them to tell me they are now too old for such childish pleasures but they still seem to love getting dressed up in party dresses. And I have to confess that I still feel the magic too. All those adorable little girls dressed in their Christmas finery and wishing they were Clara. And that haunting music. And the glorious ballet of the real adult dancers--the pas de deux and the Russian dancers! And the excited children in the audience, really into the story--there was a collective gasp when the first mouse appeared, and when Clara magically turned into a princess.

But this year I found strange thoughts creeping in. I could suddenly see the brother Fritz's point of view. Everyone favored Clara. She was given the toy. He wasn't. He was always scolded. No wonder he tried to snatch it away from her. And during the interval that is exactly what my granddaughters said. The psychology of the Nutcracker!

Another thought always goes through my head as I watch Clara dancing. I am back at ballet school, aged 11, which I guess is about Clara's age. And I have grown too tall. When a ballet is cast my friends are the wood sprites and I.... am a tree. I kid you not. I was a tree in the fricking ballet. I dropped out soon after, not wishing to spend my life as a tree/flagpole/giraffe in subsequent ballets. So I stare at that stage and think "I would never have been Clara."

Hooray for Royal Weddings

2011-12-15T09:53:00.000-08:00

As the year draws to a close and we all start assembling our "best of" lists, I'm thrilled to tell you that Naughty in Nice, my latest Lady Georgiana book, showed up on the immensely popular Tressugar.come list of favorite books. So thrilled.

And for someone who writes about the royals it was a perfect year. Obviously the royal wedding was the highlight--but which royal wedding, do you ask? Apart from Hollywood royalty like Kim Kardashian, there were several real royal weddings this year, each a brilliant spectacle. In Bhutan the king married a well educated, well traveled commoner in a big Buddhist ceremony. In Monaco Prince Albert finally tied the knot. The queen's granddaughter Zara Phillips married a rugby star in a definitely relaxed and not at all royal ceremony and then there was Kate and Will's big day. This has to be my favorite royal wedding ever and the only one that has felt to me like a real love story and happily-ever-after.

Did you have a favorite royal moment this year? Should we take bets on what Kate and Will will name their first child?

The real tree revealed.

2011-12-14T14:59:00.000-08:00

After several people emailed me about the lovely Christmas tree on my blog I have to confess that it's just a stock photo I found and not mine at all. So in the interests of full disclosure, here's a picture of my real tree.
Please do not examine too closely the inadequate nature of the gift wrapping. Luckily it's dark.

It's a Wrap.

2011-12-11T11:17:00.000-08:00

I have skills but gift wrapping is not one of them. That was brought home to me today when my church had its annual giving tree and everyone brought wrapped gifts. Some of them were true works of art--ribbons, bows, sprigs of holly, mini santas. Mine--well, my had paper around it, stuck down with Scotch tape. That is the extent of my wrapping ability.

I suppose at heart I'm a practical person and it doesn't seem worth going to lots of trouble for something that will be ripped off and discarded. At least that is my excuse. Maybe I'm just not good at creating Martha Stewart worthy gifts. But I have to confess that I love to receive them. I have a friend who has a craft boutique every year and her gifts always have such interesting additions to the wrapping--beads and small toys that make the present fun.

Maybe it's because I have to do all the wrapping that I just want it done as quickly and painlessly as possible. Sixteen people all with a couple of gifts makes a lot of presents to wrap. with the smaller ones I now go for bags. They look good with no effort. But there is no bag big enough for a large kitchen appliance. Or for some toys.

One year we decided to have a green Christmas and made fabric bags to be reused every year. I still have them. The problem is that after they've wrapped something once, they need laundering and ironing before they look good enough to wrap something else.... and ironing is another of my lacking skills!

Ah well. It's the thought that counts, isn't it?

Trying to Make up my Mind

2011-12-10T09:16:00.001-08:00

If you're feeling confused this week, it's because I've been trying out new designs for this blog. I thought the old one with the lighthouse was a little blah so I experimented. The black one was dramatic, right for a mystery writer in many ways, but the side bar was hard to read. So now I'm going with the hint of historical and mysterious and I hope ease of navigation.

Let me know what you think.

I'm Dreaming of a Perfect Christmas

2011-12-07T09:40:00.000-08:00

My shopping is almost complete and guess what, I haven't bought a single Lexus to put under the tree. Actually if my family had their way, it would only require a very small tree because so many people want gift cards to their favorite stores. How Christmassy is that? We might as well not exchange gifts at all but set up a clearing house with a debit and credit system. you would have spent fifty dollars on me so that's a fifty dollar credit in my column, but I would have shelved out one hundred on the kids, so I'm minus fifty.

Call me old fashioned, but I am still looking for the perfect Christmas, one with simple home made gifts and lots of laughter around the fire. I got a sample of it a few years ago when I took a Christmas markets cruise up the Danube and we stopped off in small towns along the way. They were selling hand made wooden toys and carved ornaments and the scent of mulled wine and sausages and spices hung in the cold air. Children, bundled up against the cold, looked in wonder at the twinkling lights and the magical toys. And I thought--that's the feeling I want at Christmas!

I understand it's not realistic. How many of us have the time to carve a few toys in the evenings? I'm even thinking of serving store bought cookies this year. The problem is that we have so much, year round that people think we have to raise the hype to make Christmas special. Hence all those commercials about a Lexus with a bow on it. But actually we want to go in the other direction--to retreat from the commerical side of life and make Christmas magical and simple and other-worldly.

When I was growing up in the dark ages Christmas was the only time we had turkey. So it was special. It was the only time in the year that nuts and tangerines and dates appeared in stores so they were special too. And Christmas plum pudding and mince pies were treats. Now we can buy any food we want, any day of the year. So nothing really to look forward to.

This year I plan to try hard to recreate my ideal Christmas. We'll have the whole extended family and I'm hoping it will be cold enough for a fire in the hearth and mulled wine and singing Christmas carols and silly family games that have us all laughing. Any tips on how you conjure up the Christmas spirit?

Are the Royals worth it?

2011-12-05T08:58:00.000-08:00

As the author of the Royal Spyness series, I've been doing royal gossip Mondays on my blog. Today I'm going to be a little more serious, because the news of Prince William's brave and daring rescue last week made me want to counter all those people who complain that the royal family are not worth keeping around.

There is a small but vocal minority in Britain that thinks we should do away with the royals and make Britain into an efficient republic like America (pause to chuckle here). These people think the royals sit around idly doing nothing in their expensive palaces and sip tea while receiving vast amounts of money from the working poor.

This may have been true in the days of King Charles Ist but the modern royals have a work schedule not many of us could emulate. I go on a book tour for about two weeks each year. Two weeks of waking early, flying to a new city, touring bookstores all day, sometimes doing some radio or TV interviews, then speaking at an evening event before collapsing exausted into a hotel bed. At the end of two weeks I am whacked. However the queen has been doing this every day of her life. Every day of making speeches, meeting new people, eating three meals a day with strangers watching and the press ready to jump if you make a false move. Let me tell you that it requires stamina.

And the other members of her family do similar amounts of goodwill and charity work. Princess Anne is the real family workhorse. Prince Charles was mocked twenty years ago when he started an organic farm. Now it seems he was way ahead of his time and his methods are being copied all over the world. And now Prince William is serving as an RAF search and rescue pilot and proved last week that this is not a grace and favor position but he is indeed walking the walk. I watched the video of him holding the helicopter steady a few feet above a raging ocean while his fellow officer rapelled down to pluck men from a sinking cargo ship. And his brother was fighting in Afghanistan until his presence was leaked to the press and he had to be whisked out for his own safety.

As the new Duchess of Cambridge (I refuse to call her Kate Middleton as the press still does) will find out, she won't have a life of leisure ahead. And I bet she'll perform splendidly.

So three cheers for the hardworking royals. Oh, and by the way.... they cost less than President Obama!

Making a list, checking it twice.

2011-12-02T08:39:00.000-08:00

Many people I know are cutting back on Christmas this year, but I'm doing just the opposite... not exactly from choice. It started when my brother in Australia announced that he and his wife would be paying us a visit over Christmas. This would be the first time in ten years so my daughter Clare announced that she and her family had to come and join in the fun. (My son is currently living with us and daughter Jane and family live close by so that's an extra 5 people). Then my daughter Anne from LA asked if she could bring a friend who would otherwise be all alone over Christmas.

So that makes 16. Sixteen people for almost a week.

We are lucky in that we have a big house with enough rooms to put people but I'm currently buying or borrowing air mattresses, a fold up table, and trying to get my list of presents done well in advance.

Then there's the little matter of food. Christmas day is easy. Big brunch then turkey. mince pies, Christmas pudding. The day after Christmas (that we still call Boxing Day) is easy. John's turkey curry.

But the others? I was all set to buy a Costco lasagna until I realized that Anne and her friend don't eat red meat, or dairy and the friend doesn't eat gluten, and my brother and his wife are diabetic and don't eat any refined starches. So I hit on the brilliant idea of a paella one night, a seafood cioppino and brown rice another and one night of soups and baked potatoes.

Any other brilliant suggestions, please? Easy. Dairy free. Red meat free. Refined starch free. And tastes good. What a challenge....

I expect we'll muddle through. I plan to put up a roster so that there are the right number of people to help in the kitchen at all times and I've told John he is on constant food buying runs. And I'm telling myself it will be fun. It will be fun... it will be fun....

Inquiring Minds Want to Know!

2011-11-28T03:27:00.000-08:00

I was standing in the grocery checkout line yesterday and the headline on all the tabloids read "Kate Pregnant".In Touch Magazine actually "confirmed" the rumor, although no word has come from the Palace. This is what the magazine said: ""Since before they even got married, it's been made clear to William and Kate that having children should be their number-one priority," the magazine's source disclosed. "Queen Elizabeth II, in particular, has been dropping so many hints about wanting a great-grandchild - and an heir to the throne - that Kate feared she wouldn't be able to face her without baby news," the insider added." And to add fuel to this rumor the magazine showed pictures of Kate with her hand on her stomach, although I think this just proves she's holding her coat closed!

Obviously Brits want to know when there might be an heir to the throne (especially if it's a girl, a future queen!) but why this fascination around the world? And why this fascination with preganncy in general? If any movie star reaches iconic status the headlines will always debate whether she is pregnant, wants to become pregnant, has been pregnant etc etc.

And all those photos of stars exposing big bellies--why are we suddenly so fascinated? Pregnancy used to be a private time. It was not done even to mention it. Remember those maternity clothes that were so voluminous one could invite an army to come and camp inside them? As if they fooled anybody--we all knew there was a large belly somewhere under those folds and gussets. We just didn't want to look at it.

In a world in which many countries are witnessing zero or negative population growth, why are we then so fascinated with those about to give birth. What springs to mind is Margaret Attwod's The Handmaid's Tale! We want the population to continue--we just don't want to do it ourselves. So any pyschiatrists or pyschologists out there--why do we want to look at pregnant bellies these days?

Poor Kate. When she actually does become pregnant, she'll be photographed at every stage. She'll be observed to see what she eats and drinks, whether she's off her food or eating for two. I hope she stays in Wales, out of the public eye!

Holiday shopping Song

2011-11-25T01:46:00.000-08:00

Will you be standing outside a store at 4 a.m. tomorrow? Not me. There is no item in the universe that is important enough to me to make me do that. In fact more and more lately I've been doing my Christmas shopping online. And last year I wrote a song about it, that I'd like to share with you again today as you rush from store to store:

Dashing through the web,
googling sites like mad
Christmas time is here again,
bargains to be had
Oh
Click click here, click click there,
buy it all online
Overstock and Amazon.
Christmas will be fine.

Click Click here, click click there
Bought it all online
Presents bought and wrapped and shipped
Have a glass of wine!

Happy Black Friday to all!

Small Blessings

2011-11-21T15:30:00.000-08:00

Since it's Thanksgiving week and nobody will have much time to think about anything except turkey and pumpkin pies, I thought I'd concentrate on the small things that make life worth living. Obviously I'm thankful for health and family but this is a good time to reflect on what really makes me happy.

Here are some of the things I've come up with:
A roaring fire on a cold winter night, and a hot chocolate and a cat on my lap... and a good book.
A long hot bath with a citrus scented scrub.
The sound of splashing water on a summer's day.
The sound of children playing in water on a summer's day.
Time to watch the clouds floating by or a good sunset.
An evening walk with time to talk.
Hiking with my friends.
Laughter around the table.

And you know what? None of those things cost a penny (apart from the hot water in the bath) How strange our society has become that we equate happiness with spending (buy Mom a Lexus for Christmas) .
My sisters at Jungle Red Writers are going to be talking about gratitude later this week and suggested starting a gratitude journal. I think that's a fine idea. So I'll start right now. I'm grateful that I'm sitting with my patio door open and warm sun streaming in and that my fingers all work properly to type, and that I have so many online friends who communicate with me and enjoy my posts.

Life is good, friends. Make the most of it. Make every moment special. We are the only species on earth who doesn't live in the moment, but worries about the future and broods over the past.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, won't you, and if you have time, then share your list of small blessings.

Sticks and Stones

2011-11-17T10:55:00.000-08:00

Remember that old rhyme "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me?"
We used to chant it in school when someone insulted us. It never really made us feel better, of course.

And I feel the same way about reviews. I just read one in which the reviewer clearly didn't GET the book. It was Royal Blood, that is supposed to be a comedy spoof on vampires. The reviewer blasts my heroine for being stupid enough to believe in vampires. Well, I guess that reviewer has never been in a castle in Transylvania at night, with no electricity, during a snowstorm. If the situation is right, one starts to believe in anything. I have stayed at various old castles and houses in Europe and trust me, if you hear a strange noise in the night or see something moving that you can't identify, even the most rational of us can begin to believe in ghosts, ghouls, vampires etc.

So why should I feel so upset about one review? It's just one person's opinion, after all, and there are people in the world who actually like Lady Gaga. I don't think most people realize how fragile most writers' egos are. We never believe what we have written is any good until our agents and editors tell us so. As we write we go through pockets of despair in which we tell ourselves that we are writing rubbish and will never write anything of consequence again and all our fans will leave us and the publisher will drop us. Then we get an email from our editor saying "This was fabulous" and we dance around for a few days saying "It's fabulous. I always knew it."

Some writer friends have made a pact never to read reviews. I should learn to follow that advice, but I love reading the glowing kind and I have to say that before online bloggers I always got only good reviews from the traditional sources, PW, Kirkus, Booklist etc. They have all given me starred reviews. RT Reviews always makes me a top pick. So I have to remind myself that online reviewers are not pros. They give a personal rather than an unbiased reaction to what they read.

Sometimes I'm tempted to respond and explain where the reviewer didn't quite understand what I wanted to achieve, but that's not a good idea. And besides, if one person didn't GET my book, then I still have improvements to make in my writing. So it's back to work, I guess.

And tell me--are you ever influenced by reviews? Do you read the Amazon reviews before you buy? I confess to doing that before purchasing something eletronic and if a book got all 1 stars I don't think I'd try it.

Royal Gossip Mondays--Will and Kate to separate!

2011-11-14T11:05:00.000-08:00

This is the kind of headline you'd expect to see on a supermarket tabloid but it's true. In the new year Will and Kate will be eight thousand miles apart. Not from choice. He is being deployed for helicopter search and rescue training in the Falkland Islands. And if case you don't know where they are, they are tiny bleak islands in the South Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of Argentina. They have been settled by the British for more than a hundred years, but Argentina still claims them--hence the Falklands war about twenty five years ago. It was a short, bloody conflict in which a lot of badly trained Argentinian troops faced crack British units with inevitable results. So maybe it's not the smartest thing to send Prince William there to bring world focus to that region and stir up old wounds. In fact there have already been mutterings of an "Act of agression" from certain Argentinians--especially now that oil has been discovered nearby. Stay tunes!

It won't be any beach jaunt for Wills--unpredictable weather and absolutely nothing to do in the evenings, literally stuck at the end of the Earth. Rough terrain with sheep. And really tough flying conditions. That's what William will be facing for eight weeks. A lot like Angelsey in winter, actually. And poor Kate will be getting all the scrutiny, not to mention the ongoing speculation as to whether she's pregnant.

The pregnancy rumor started when she wouldn't eat something that contained peanuts the other day. I suspect she won't remain alone at the farmhouse in Anglesey while Wills is away. Maybe go home to her parents (or the in-laws?) as their future apartment at Kensington Palace isn't quite ready for them yet.
One thing that's clear--they will miss each other desperately. They haven't been apart since the wedding and still have that radiant happiness.

Who am I writing for?

2011-11-10T09:18:00.000-08:00

I'm about to start thinking about a new Molly Murphy mystery and also to come up proposals for the next three Lady Georgie books and I realize this is becoming harder than it was before. Not because I'm running out of ideas--far from it. I keep coming up with fun little twists and interesting plotlines for both series. The problem is that I am now so engaged in social media that I am in constant contact with several thousand fans. And they tell me what they like. I heard a lot of griping because Darcy did not figure prominently in Naughty in Nice. Of course there was the dashing and sexy Jean Paul de Ronchard instead but for keen fans of the series it just wasn't the same.

When I started writing mysteries I literally wrote for myself. I didn't think what might sell, what might make the NYT bestseller list or what might win an award. I knew what story I wanted to read and I couldn't find it on the shelf, so I wrote it. Now I feel all kinds of pressures--good reviews, bestseller lists, and above all pleasing my readers. It's got to be fun and sexy and dramatic and a good story but most readers want the story to be a personal one for Molly and Georgie. They want romance and heartbreak. They want their emotions involved.

This is now mmore of a challenge with the next Molly book because if you read Bless the Bride you'd know that Molly is now married. No more of that lovely romantic tension or the will they, won't they. So I have to think long and hard about where I want to go with that series. Children of her own to worry about, I'm sure. Daniel in danger. Cases that involve her personal life. So.... any suggestions as to what you'd want Molly to do next?

This raises an interesting point: should a writer keep her readership in mind when she writes, especially in a popular series. If the publishers had their way, we'd write the same book, over and over. Find a popular concept and stick with it. Look at Patricia Cornwell--that's exactly what she's done. Until now I've gone where I want to with my heroines, tried new things (like Molly meeting Houdini) and different tones for the books. But now I'm increasingly aware that my readers expect a certain kind of book when they see my name. Added pressure to perform and to please.

So, dear readers, what do you think? Should a writer write to please her readers? Should a series be consistent in tone and darkness so that the reader knows what to expect? Do you get bored and lose interest if the stories are too similar or annoyed if they are too different? I guess I'm trying to please everyone and in the end the only person I can please is myself.

Long Live Queen Kylie!

2011-11-07T03:44:00.000-08:00

Rhys here with my royal gossip Mondays:

It's finally official: parliament has voted and Will and Kate's daughter will be queen, if they have a female child first. This is quite a departure from tradition in which the male always inherited the title--which still holds true for dukes, earls and lesser nobles, as far as I can tell. I can't see that peers would want this to change, as the property always goes with the title and a woman always takes her husband's name. So that would mean that if a duchess inherited the stately home, it might then become the property of her husband's family--or at least that family name. So no, that wouldn't work, would it?

But European royal families have been allowing the oldest child to inherit the throne for ages--ever since kings were not supposed to lead armies, I expect. So the Netherlands and some Skandanavian countries have had queens. And queens, I have to point out, are not a bad idea. Britain rose to heights of great glory under Elizabeth I. Brtain achieved an enormous empire under Victoria and Queen Elizabeth has been universally admired throughout her long life. Even the conquest of Everest happened on her coronation day, which was a good omen. Queens also seem to live longer. Victoria had her diamond jubilee on the throne, and so has Elizabeth. So the country doesn't have to go to the expense of a coronation too frequently!

So hooray for queen Vicki or Lizzie or whatever Will and Kate call their oldest child (let's just hope it's not Queen Tracy or Kylie. I don't think so. Kate has worked hard to fit in to the royal mode, even taking eloqution lessons for months before the wedding so that any trace of a lower class accent was stamped out. It seems that Will and Kate are trying hard not to make waves, to fit in, to be sensitive to their future roles. So I'd be betting on a Victoria II or even an Elizabeth III. That is if they have a girl. The royal family has done rather well in producing heirs and spares recently.

Busy in the Jungle

2011-10-31T15:54:00.000-07:00

Hi, everyone! Happy Halloween!
This week I'm hosting my group blog, Jungle Red Writers. It's pretty much a full time occupation so I won't have time to post on Rhys's Pieces. But we have some great stuff coming up at Jungle Red--
Today we all chat about A Room of One's Own--what our writing space looks like.
Tomorrow we have a visit from a hunky TV actor Blake Berris who plays a bad guy on the new NBC version of Prime Suspect.
Wednesday I'm joined by my internet guru Terry Kate who will share tips about optimizing an online presence.
Thursday I'm reposting my piece on the effect of 99 cent Kindle books on the publishing industry
Friday the Jungle Red Sisters offer advice on Writers Block
and Saturday Vicki Lane comes to guest blog.
Sunday we host a writer's challenge.
So it's a perfect week for writers and would be writers on Jungle Reds.
Visit us at http://www.jungleredwriters.com/, and stop by our Jungle Reds Facebook page.

Prepare to be Scared.

2011-10-29T08:21:00.000-07:00

Getting ready to migrate south to Phoenix for the month of November. Actually I have to be there before Halloween so I can go around trick and treating with our little grandchildren. Since I missed out on Halloween as a child, I have some catching up to do. Today Halloween is also celebrated in England but it certainly wasn't when I was little. I think some people had parties and bobbed for apples etc, but there was no door-to-door stuff and no dressing up.
I remember my first Halloween in California. I was alone in the house one evening when there was a knock on the door and outside stood a very cute black cat. Trick or treat, she said. I had no idea what she was talking about and no candy in the house. It's lucky I wasn't TPed that night or had eggs thrown at me.
The interesting thing to me about Halloween is how long it has survived--a festival of the most primitive superstition in a modern world. It was a Celtic festival, of course, the night when they believed the doorway between this world and the other world was opened and ghosts came forth. People dressed up in scary masks so that the ghosts and ghouls would see them and think they were one of their own, thus not touch the living and take them back to their world. Christians kept the feast day as All Souls and then All Saints, proving how smart they were in incorporating old religions and giving them a new twist.

You can imagine how frightening it was in the days before electricity and how easy to believe in things that go bump in the night. But it's interesting to me how we still love Halloween today. Some kids like it better than Christmas and not just because of the candy. It's fun to be scared in a safe way--which is why mystery books sell so well, I guess!

It's a Mystery to Me!

2011-10-24T09:27:00.000-07:00

This year I am a judge for a children's mystery award and one of our discussions has been what constitutes a mystery. Many of our stories have mystserious elements, but are essentially fantasies. Think of Harry Potter--we want to know the truth of what happened to his parents, why he was the only one to survive Voldemort's killing curse and why he has to stay with the Dursleys. But it is more quest novel-classis battle of good versus evil like the Lord of the Rings.

I suppose my definition of a mystery novel has to involve a central puzzle--be it missing person, stolen jewel or other crime and a central character whose quest it is to solve this puzzle and thus put the universe to rights.

So it was interesting for me to go to my group blog, Jungle Red Writers, this morning and read the comments on how the stakes have been raised in mystery writing and whether people now expect more violence and adrenalin rush. I felt that one way the stakes have been raised is in the involvement of the sleuth and our emotional investment in him or her. Hercule Poirot was an outside obvserver with no personal involvement in the crimes he solved other than a sense of justice. But today's sleuth is dealing with a personal battle in many cases--a tragedy in his or her own life that mirrors the crime she has to solve, personal demons, a villain with a grudge against her... I agree that this makes for a more compelling book. I have always read mysteries for the enjoyment of the puzzle but it wasn't until I found Tony Hillerman in the 1970s that I became hooked because he made Jim Chee and the landscape around him so real and so compelling. My favorite sleuths since then are wonderfully flawed humans like Morse.

So does a mystery have to involve a dead body, a murder, a villain? It seems to be that way these days although not all of the Sherlock Holmes stories involved a murder, did they?

I suppose murder is the ultimate crime in any society which goes along with that raising the stakes idea. If we read a book with no murder, we are constantly waiting for the discovery of the body.

But for me the good mysteries involve personal relationships that lead to that murder. And they rise or fall on the character of the sleuth. Plots are fun, with twists and scary scenes--cellars at midnight with a killer on the loose. Clever methods of killing are fun. But essentially we have to care about the people or it's just like a video game.

So what do you think defines the mystery novel?

Historical Goofs

2011-10-21T09:37:00.000-07:00

A Facebook friend sent me a very interesting link today to an article about Downton Abbey--remember the TV series about the stately home in the 1930s?

The second series is now airing in the UK and all sorts of complaints are coming in about the anachronistic language that jerks viewers out of the period. Apparently characters say thinks like "get knotted" which really come from the Sixties.

Here's the link: http://www.aoltv.com/2011/10/21/downton-abbey-criticized-for-historically-incorrect-language/?ncid=webmail2

Correct language for the period is always a high priority for me when I'm writing both my series of historical mysteries. I want the reader to feel he or she is in New York in 1903, or having fun with Lady Georgie in 1930s England. If a word sounds too modern, I have broken the spell. The funny thing is that some slang I know was in use in 1900 I simply can't use because readers would find it too modern. Phrases like "far out" for example were in use then.

So how do I make sure that I keep my readers in the period, when obviously I wasn't alive at either time? Well, for Molly I try to remember how my great-aunts spoke. They were born in the late 1800s and several things were different about their language:
They were horribly formal. Only close family was addressed by our first names. Other friends were Mrs. this and Miss that.
They had huge vocabularies as a result of all that reading as young women. They'd never use filler words like "you know".
They didn't use any kind of swear word, or any word that might seem delicate--a body part, the bathroom etc.
A lady really remained quiet in the presence of gentlemen.
So I channel them when I'm in Edwardian times--although I can't keep Molly quiet too often!

For Georgie--well, I knew older people who were young in the Thirties. I remember their slang. I had friends who called each other "Old Bean" or "Old Fruit." I also adore P.G Wodehouse and channel Bertie Wooster for my young male characters. I watch Thirties movies. And for the grandfather in the series, who is an old Cockney, I only have to remember the way my father spoke. Actually the grandfather is a re-creation of my father. Because my family background spanned the classes--father self-educated to become a research engineer, mother from a professional and artistic family--her father was an orchestra conductor. Then I married into a family in which Georgie would have been right at home with the cousins with silly nicknames and butlers and stately homes. So I get Georgie right because I have been an observer in all these worlds. I'm only surprised that Julian Fellowes, writer of Downton Abbey and also part of that upper crust, has slipped up in his efforts to get it right.

So watch the new series then tell me what you think.

Does the 99 cent Kindle signal the Death of Publishing?

2011-10-18T09:17:00.000-07:00

I confess to checking my Amazon stats at regular intervals--I know. It's an obsession that results in bleak despair every time my numbers go down, but I can't stop myself.

Today I found myself checking the top hundred mystery bestsellers and what a surprise--I find that most of them are ninety nine cent Kindle books. Several of them are by names I recognize--legitimate writers. So I'm wondering several things--can they actually make a good living by selling their books at 99 cents? That means they earn 33 cents a book. A thousand books gives them 300 dollars.(which it will have cost them to have the book set up in Kindle format) Ten thousand gives them $3000 . That means they have to sell an awful lot of books before this is worth their while.

Perhaps some people do sell a hundred thousand kindle books. But how would readers find out about you if you're not on that bestseller list?

My next point to ponder is whether we are lowering the expectations of the readership. Some of those 99 cent books will be good. Most of them will be poorly written and have been rejected by regular publishers. Will readers come to think that this is how a story should be? Silly question really. They are already used to the fragmented style of TV drama , the lack of characterization of action movies.

And my third point--how will this affect the publishing industry? I've already been given one star reviews by Kindle readers who are angry that my Kindle books are being sold at $11.99 (a price set by my publisher for the first year). Will those readers eventually force down the price of all books as the power and scope of the e-reader grows?

I had an interesting brush with this myself last spring when St. Martin's had me write a free e-story featuring Molly Murphy, to coincide with the release of Bless the Bride. The cover clearly says A Molly Murphy Story. It is not a full book. Suddenly I find that it had risen to #2 on free Kindle. Then I find that I am getting all these one star reviews because IT IS NOT A WHOLE BOOK. This blew me away. It was free. It was a good story. It's like getting a sample chocolate at Sees Candies and then complaining because it's not a whole box.

My point is that readers are becoming entitled. They want the best, right now, and they don't want to pay for it. And those people putting up their own 99 cent stories on Amazon are sadly catering to them. It may just mean the end to legitimate publishing.

What do you think?

Royal Gossip Mondays Resume

2011-10-17T09:15:00.000-07:00

Now I can breathe again after all the promo for Naughty in Nice, I'm going back to my Royal Gossip Mondays, sharing little snippets about the royals from recent news or things I've uncovered from royal history.

Last week the big news was that the Line of Succession is to be debated and reconsidered. Until now a son always took precedence over a daughter. Elizabeth only became queen because there was no son. Now I believe the plan is to overturn that three hundred year old statute and replace it with one that gives a female child equal right to the throne.

So if Will and Kate have a girl first, there will be another queen in our future. Makes sense, doesn't it? I think a queen has more press appeal and glamor and one has to admit that the whole royal thing is great for tourism. Also she is not as likely to have sexual flings as princes seem to be.. and thus disgrace the royal name.

This whole tradition of the heir and the spare seems strange now, but birth order and sex really made a huge difference to lives in the past. Remember Pride and Prejudice--Mr. Collins was going to get the family home because the Bennetts had no son. My husband's grandfather was a second son--the spare. Thus he was sent out to the colonies and when he returned late in life and in ill health, he lived fairly simply in a rented house (okay it was a big rented house and I'm sure there were plenty of servants) BUT his older brother got the property, the money, the title, EVERYTHING.

Today that seems so unfair, doesn't it. My brother-in-law has inherited a large family property. They have eight children and I believe a trust has been set up so that they will all inherit the property equally. How that will work, I'm not sure. Open to squabbling.

The most interesting speculation about the line of succession at the moment will be whether Charles will step aside in favor of his more popular son?

Just Plain Kate

2011-10-11T10:26:00.000-07:00

I was at the checkout counter of the local supermarket yesterday and I read the tabloid headlines while I w.

aited for a slow checker. One of them said "Kate Middleton puts on pounds in preparation for a baby."
A couple of things about this made me think... first why are tabloid headlines so obsessed with babies. In a society where childbearing has become almost a thing of the past, it seems that every popular icon has to be continually pregnant or adopting from Africa to be appealing to the masses. "Is Jen Pregnant?" "Will Angelina adopt twins from Ethopia?" Frankly who cares, but pictures of big bellies seem to sell copies. Weird.

The other thing that I thought was strange is that she is still refered to as Kate Middleton. Actually she is now Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cambridge. So speaking of her as a commoner by her former name is in fact a put down. You're still no better than us--that's what it's saying to me. You may have married a prince but you actually aren't royalty

I've noticed the same sort of attitude with President Obama. When Clinton or Reagan were presidents, no one ever refered to them as Bill Clinton or Ronnie Reagan. They were President Clinton. President Reagan. And yet commentators and tabloid headlines often refer to the current president as Barack Obama. Is that their subtle put down? Are they saying, as they did with Kate, "You're an ordinary person, no better than us?" What do you think?

And as for Kate putting on pounds--she was really too thin for her wedding so that she looked great in her dress. And it's not necessarily for a baby that she's gaining weight, but rather it's lving in a cold Welsh farmhouse with bitter winds howling outside the door. One needs more fat to survive up there. Trust me, I know.

Never Enough

2011-10-05T09:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Apple unveiled the latest version of the iPhone and guess what? Apple shares dropped significantly because..... it wasn't the iPhone 5 that people hoped for and expected. It was only a faster, more efficient version of the IPhone 4 with added brighteners.

I am alarmed by this trend of wanting and expecting more and more. We have become a people of entitlement. I found this out as a writer when I was asked by my publisher to write a Molly Murphy story, a prequel to the series, to be offered free on Kindle so that people who hadn't read the books would have a chance to get to know Molly, and hopefully buy the books.

There was a good side to this. It rose to number 2 on Free Kindle, which was quite amazing. However I started getting all these one star reviews which alarmed and upset me, until I realized that people were not judging the quality of the storytelling. They were punishing me because it was only a short story and not a whole book. Reviews said "I feel cheated. I was expecting a whole book."

Let me reiterate that this was free. They were getting a whole,complete and good story. Did they really think I was going to devote six months of my life to writing a book for which I would receive no payment? Don't they realize that writers have to live and eat?

I'm reminded of that song in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory:
I want the world. I want the whole world.
I want to lock it all up in my pocket. It's my bar of chocolate.
Give it to me now!

Violet came to a bad end for singing that, but it's now the prevailing attidude. It starts with kids who have their own phones, TVs, iPods, computers etc etc by the time they are 8. Then there is nothing left to look foiward to. They want to be excited, entertained but they've been given all there is and they've lost the ability to entertain themselves. I can remember how proud I felt when I saved up for several years for a real new bike instead of the clunky old thing we'd bought at a jumble sale. I earned that bike. It was mine. It felt good every time I rode it to school.

So I'm sorry for this generation becasue there simply aren't enough technological innovations to keep them excited and happy. And I'm sorry for those people for whom a free story wasn't enough. Obviously they've never tried to do anything creative like write a story, so how would they know what goes into it? Too bad.

Rainy Monday Blues

2011-10-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

A rainy Monday in California and I'm feeling lost. My friends from England have gone home. I've worked like crazy to do the copy edits on my next Molly book called Hush Now, Don't You Cry, and I've sent off my next Georgie book to my editor and agent. Now suddenly I have nothing to do except for a large mound of laundry (we had eight people staying over last weekend). And did I mention that it's raining?

If it had been a lovely clear sunny day I could have escaped to the great outdoors to refresh and rejuvenate myself. But frankly when it is dark and rainy all I want to do is to curl up in bed and nap. Maybe I was another species in my past life and I need to hibernate, or at least fly south. My thoughts have definitely turned to Arizona, where we have a condo to which we will be heading at the end of October.

One of the main reasons I bought the condo in the first place was that I don't do winters. I don't mind a big roaring fire and crisp snow outside the door, but dark skies and dreary rain seem to sap all my energy. At the condo I wake early to morning sunlight streaming in through tall arched windows and I'm up and ready to go.
This is necessary because I write two books a year and the Molly book has to be written during the winter months. So pretty soon I'll be tossing around story ideas and then after the holidays I'll settle down to writing Molly book 12.

Writing two books a year is a pretty hectic schedule, especially since they both involve quite a bit of research. I keep thinking of slowing down and doing only one book a year, but frankly I have to admit that I'm one of those writers who has to write. I feel lost if I'm not working on something in my head. I'm simply not good at doing nothing. As for retirement,,, I can't even picture what I'd do if I wasn't writing. I'm not one of those people who can play bridge three times a week or potter around my garden all day. Luckily it's a career that can go on until I'm ninety (I believe P.D. James is over ninety now, isn't she?)

So maybe tomorrow I'll finish that laundry and then start toying with new story ideas--what should Molly do next? How can she go on detecting after her marriage? Any suggestions?

A Perfect Weekend.

2011-09-26T12:25:00.000-07:00

I know I've been rather silent this last week. I've a good excuse, or rather good excuses. I had book signings and a live Facebook chat, but also one of my oldest and best friends arrived with her husband to stay with us from England. Penny and I met on almost the first day of college and have stayed close friends ever since. Her lovely centuries old home in Lincolnshire is always my first port of call when I arrive in England. It's everything I fantasize about when I grow nostalgic for the country of my birth--lovely gardens, old church clock chiming the hour, sitting in the sun eating home grown strawberries and cream, strolling to the village pub for a hearty meal. She even rings the bells in her church and I've been to watch (and tried it without being jerked up into the tower).
It's her first visit to California so I'm cramming as much as possible into their visit. Also Saturday was my birthday and all 4 of my children flew in to be there. We had a lovely family weekend and it made me realize what is really important to me. Not eating out at a fancy restaurant. Not expensive presents. But sitting around the table with those I love, talking and laughing and sharing. That is my top pick for happiness.

Would you like to share yours?

Oh and two bonus reasons for happiness:
I had well over 500 birthday greetings on Facebook, which I found so moving
also
My new paperback of Royal Blood was seen in Costco this week. My happiness is now complete!

Come Chat with Me.

2011-09-18T16:19:00.000-07:00

Great week of traveling, speaking signing my new book, Naughty in Nice, is now over. It was lovely meeting readers old and new in Dallas, Houston, Cave Creek, Scottsdale, San Mateo and Corte Madera. Now I'm back home and catching my breath. And the week ahead features a unique event, one that I haven't tried before. My publisher Penguin has invited me to hold a live chat on their Facebook page, called The Crime Scene.

It's on Wednesday September 21 and it's at 3 p.m. Eastern time, which makes it noon Pacific Time, 8 p.m if you're in England. 9 in continental Europe and very early morning in Australia. I'm hoping that readers from all these places will come and join in. So if you have anything you'd like to discuss, any questions you want to put to me or suggestions for future Georgie book, Wednesday is the time.

There is nothing hard about it. Simply show up at the page and type on the wall the way you would normally.
During the hour I'm chatting I'll be giving away a fun prize or two. Maybe something naughty and French?

I look foward to meeting as many of you who can slip away from work, take a lunch break, an early coffee break or put the kids down for a nap. Get out the brie and crackers, the French wine and we'll celebrate together. Are you in?

Signs of Fall

2011-09-15T16:00:00.000-07:00

Home for a breather from the heat of Texas and AZ. And I've decided I must have been a swallow in my past life. Because I was driving down the street today and I noticed that the leaves were turning yellow. And my first thought was, "It's fall. I need to get out of here."

You wouldn't have thought that someone raised in the bleak damp cold of Britain would need to live in perpetual summer, would you? But fall always stirs flashes of alarm in the depths of my pysche. I suppose it's something to do with the image of approaching old age that I equate with winter. Or maybe it's just that I hate being cold.

At my signing in Houston the other night one of the audience asked, "Do you have a thing about rain?" and she said that my characters always complain of being cold or wet or both. So I guess I must channel my own feelings into Molly and Georgie. I grew up in a big drafty house where the wind whistled down the corridors so I do relate to Georgie and Castle Rannoch. And I love sunshine and warmth. Perhaps there was a tad too much of both for the past few days, but I'd rather be hot than cold.

The audience suggested that someone would be doing their PhD thesis some day on the leitmotif of rain in Rhys Bowen's novels. So I wondered how you felt about weather. Does it affect you much? Do you love seasons? Do you even like rain? And what about weather in books? Is it important to you?

I'm off to get ready for my big launch party at Book Passage tonight. I'm bringing French goodies (not naughty ones but different cheeses and a truffle pate as well as madeleines and meringes and of course lots of champagne) I'll get John to take pictures.

Rhys reports from the Road

2011-09-12T14:30:00.000-07:00

RHYS BOWEN As those of you who Facebook and Twitter will know, I'm on book tour. I didn't like to blog over the 9/11 weekend as I felt weighted with the solemnity of the anniversary.

But I had a great weekend in Dallas including a luncheon with Fresh Fiction and dinner with my fellow Jungle Red Writer Deborah Crombie (who also happens to be one of my favorite people). Oysters, white wine and good conversation. A perfect evening.

Today I'm in Houston, back at the Hotel Zaza--site of last year's encounter with the Afghan tribesman in the bathroom (large photograph of staring tribesman actually). Sorry to disappoint but this year I'm not in the Splendida Suite but an ordinary room, minus Afghan. But there is an eye in my bathroom....

And today I had a real Lady Georgie incident. You know how things sort of happen to her? Well, I was in the window seat on the plane and the flight attendant handed me my orange juice.Only she thought I had a good hold on it when I didn't. And orange juice went everywhere... dripping off my tray, running down my pants and into my seat.I had been reading my Kindle so I kept that held high in the air so it didn't get orange juice in it. It took ages for the hostess to bring me more napkins and I tried to clean up. My pants were light beige linen and surprisingly don't look too bad, except sticky. So I've rinsed them out in hotel bathroom and am hoping for the best. I have a spare outfit but it's not as cool and the temperature is 102. Why do these things happen to me? I never spill things at home.

Off to Murder by the Book tonight. More tomorrow.

Busy, Busy....

2011-09-08T11:45:00.000-07:00

Did you ever have one of those days when you have so much to do that you don't know where to start?
I have one today, and instead of doing any of those pressing things, I'm writing my blog.

Later today I have friends arriving from England. That means making their bed, cleaning their room and making it look welcoming. Also cleaning my kitchen, making sure my husband hasn't left his papers all over the rest of the house, buying enough food and cooking a meal that can be served cold if their flight gets in late.

At the same time I need to prepare for my book tour which starts on Saturday (if you'd like to attend one of my signings please check my website, http://www.rhysbowen.com/, and if you'd like a signed book, but can't make it to one of the signings, you can call one of those stores in advance and I'll be happy to personalize a book for you. Everywhere I'm going will be HOT so how does one look cool, calm and collected when the temperature in all the places will be over 100? Not easy. And I'm supposed to post about the upcoming tour on all the right sites. (On a side note, those of you who followed last year's tour will be intersted to know that I've been put in the same hotel in Houston that had the portrait of an Afghan tribesman in my shower, making me feel I should shower in a burka. I wonder if I'll get the same room... or rather The Splendida Suite as it was called? Stay tuned)

And it's my week to be host at http://www.jungleredwriters.com/ so I've had to make sure my posts will be up and running for the days when I'll be on the road.

And the day I return I'm hosting a launch party at Book Passage in Corte Madera, my local store. Which means planning French food and champagne to be ready. Help. Going a little bit crazy.
Now I know those of you who are working mothers will be sniffing at this and saying, "That's nothing. Stop whining." and you're right. When I had four kids who had to get to morning swim practice by siz a.m. I had four lunches to make at five a.m. Then a day of writing and then in the car from three to six as they did swimming, gymnastics, plays, dance, soccer... you name it. In those days I really was running from dawn to dusk. But I'm out of the habit so this feels like a lot to me.

Those of you who have bought and read Naughty in Nice--thank you. Please make sure you enter my contest...details on the previous post and on my website. And if you liked the book I'd really appreciate your posting a review on Amazon.com. There is one truly terrible review up at the moment and it shows up first!

Okay, back to work.

Book Launch and Contest News

2011-09-06T11:36:00.000-07:00

It's here: Naughty in Nice is officially in stores today. Or on your Kindle or Nook or Google Reader. Maybe it won't have reached your library yet, but make sure you request it.

So to celebrate the launch I'm running a contest. Here's the scoop.

Celebration of Naughty in Nice contes.
Prize: A fun French themed basket including a gift certificate to Barnes and Noble.

How do I enter?: Buy the book in any form during the month of September (or check it out from your library). Read it and answer this question..... Who is the man into whose embrace Georgie rushes at the beginning of Chapter 30?

Send your answer to rhysbowen@comcast.net by September 30.

Simple, isn't it? I look forward to your replies and will announce the winner at the beginning of October.

And now for our current contest winner--for the best comment during my month of French fun. It's Liz, who made so many good comments during the month.

Well done, Liz. Please contact me with info on where to send your prize.

And this week I'll be blogging all week at Jungle Red Writers. Please stop by at http://www.jungleredwriters.com/

Final Countdown, Last Day

2011-09-05T11:48:00.000-07:00

Here we are, folks. Last day before launch. I'm sitting at my computer, making sure everyone knows that Naughty in Nice will be released tomorrow, then rushing out to buy stuff to stock goodie bags for my signings next week. (events schedule is on my website... which is still a work in progress, BTW)

So here's the last snippet that should entice you to read the whole thing. Enjoy:

I pushed open the door to the restaurant to see several men standing around our table. To my horror I recognized one of them as Inspector Lafite.

“Ah there she is now,” one of the men said.

“Inspector,” I eyed him coldly, “What are you doing here?”

“I have come for you, Lady Georgiana,” he said.

“If you wish to ask me more questions, you can see that this is not a good time or place. I have nothing more to tell you, either on the necklace or on the death of Sir Toby,”

“I do not wish to ask you questions at this moment,” he said. “We will do that at the police station.”

“The police station? I’m not going to any police station at this time of night.”

He took a menacing step toward me. “I insist that you accompany me, mademoiselle. I am arresting you for the murder of Sir Toby Groper.”

I stared him. My mouth was probably open, which I know is not acceptable for a lady. But you must admit it’s not every day that one is accused of murder.

“If you will please step outside, mademoiselle,” Lafite said quietly. “I’m sure you do not want to cause a disturbance and scandal in such a place as this.”

Shock does funny things. I looked at his comical face with its exaggerated mustache and I started to laugh as he took my arm.

Jean-Paul however had leaped to his feet. “Are you mad?” he demanded. “This young lady is the daughter of an English duke. She is related to royalty.”

“Her background is of no consequence,” Lafite said. “Please come with me quietly, mademoiselle, and let us have no unpleasantness. I am sure you would not wish to cause embarrassment to Monsieur le Marquis.”

One of his men took my other arm. I was conscious of faces staring at me as I was led through the restaurant and out to the street where several police motor cars were drawn up.

“Now, mademoiselle. Get in please.” Lafite opened a rear door of one of the cars for me. I was moving mechanically, like a puppet, but Jean-Paul stepped between me and the police vehicle door.

“This is absurd,” Jean-Paul said, his eyes blazing. “You know who I am and I can vouch for her.”

“Forgive me, Marquis. Of course we know who you are. However, we have reason to believe that this young lady is guilty of this terrible crime.”

“What reason?” I demanded.

“I am not at liberty to discuss this here. We will wait until we are in the privacy of the police station. Now please enter the automobile.”

“I’m coming too if you are taking her,” Jean-Paul said. He tried to force his way into the motor car.

“I am afraid that is not possible, Marquis. You must realize this is a very serious matter. You cannot be allowed to interfere with the course of justice.”

“Then I will go immediately to telephone a lawyer friend of mine.” Jean-Paul scowled at him, then touched my arm gently. “You are not obliged to say anything until you have a lawyer present. Do not worry, ma petite. It is all a horrible mistake and we will have you back home in no time at all.”

For the first time I realized the enormity of what was happening to me. “Please go and tell my mother where I am. Madame Chanel and Vera will know what to do.”

“They will be hammering at the police station door like ravening wolves,” Jean-Paul said with a smile. His hand touched my cheek. “Courage, cherie. All will be well.”

Countdown: Day 6

2011-09-03T09:23:00.000-07:00

Only two more days before I go into a store and see my new baby book all shiny on a shelf. It's a thrill that never gets old.

Here is today's snippet from Naughty in Nice, and one, I'm afraid, that shows Georgie can be rather clueless at times--not a good trait for a detective!

On Sir Toby's Yacht in the Med:

“Stop it, please,” I said, grabbing one of his hands.

“A touch of modesty. I can understand that,” he said. “Well, we’ve a good selection of bedrooms. Young ladies often like the pink one. Lovely bouncy bed in there. Come on.” He grabbed my wrist and started to drag me across the saloon, then down a long wood paneled corridor My heart was beating so loudly that I was sure it must have echoed back from those walls.

“Let go of me,” I shouted, as anger overtook fear. “I am not going to bed with you and that is that.”

“Frankly you don’t have much choice, my dear.” He continued to propel me forward.

“When we get back I’ll go to the police and report you for rape.”

He gave a great guffaw of laughter at this. “To the police? For rape? A young girl who begs Sir Toby to take her out on his lovely yacht? Flutters her eyes at him? The police would understand that you got what you were asking for. They are men of the world. Now shut up talking and be a good girl.”

“I want to be a good girl,” I said, “and that doesn’t include making love to a complete stranger.”

“Oh come on. You bright young things…”

“And another thing—I’m not a bright young thing. I’m a—“ I was about to say ‘member of the royal family’. I only swallowed it down at the last second. –“respectable girl from a good family,” I finished lamely. It only made him laugh all the more as he tried to shove me down a steep staircase ahead of him. I turned and kicked him hard on the shin, then pushed past him back onto the deck. Then I ran. I don’t know where I thought I was running to. It was a big yacht, but I couldn’t play catch-me-if-you-can forever, could I?

The breeze had turned into a strong wind and met me full in the face as I came out onto the deck. Also there was now a big swell. I thought about diving off and swimming but the land looked awfully far away. Good swimmer that I was, I didn’t think I could make it. Besides, great storm clouds were now moving in closer. I wondered hopefully if this would make us return to port.

“You can’t escape, you know, you silly girl,” came Sir Toby’s voice after me.

I ran to the other end of the deck and ducked behind a life raft. Then, over the throb of our engine I heard the higher whine of a speed boat. I stepped out and waved desperately as the boat came racing toward us, sending up a sheet of spray. The speed-boat driver waved back and approached the yacht. When he was close enough I saw that it was Jean-Paul de Ronchard.

“Jean-Paul!” I shouted.
He slowed the speedboat to a crawl.
“Help me. I want to get off!” I shouted.
“Come on then. Jump!” he shouted back.
It was a long way down to the water and the boat was rising and falling with the swell of the waves. I hesitated.
“You do know how to swim, don’t you?” Jean-Paul shouted.
“Of course, but…”
“Then jump. I won’t let you drown.” He had cut the motor and bobbed alongside.
“Ah, there you are, you minx,” Sir Toby boomed, coming around the corner toward me.
I took a deep breath, climbed over the railing and jumped.

If you want to know what happens next then reserve your copy of Naughty in Nice at your local bookstores, online at Amazon or Barnes and Noble or at your wonderful local library!
Then read the book, answer a question and enter my contest.
Details coming this weekend.

Countdown Day 5

2011-09-02T15:21:00.000-07:00

Tuesday is getting closer and closer and I hope these little snippets of story are convincing you that you need to read Naughty in Nice. I'm not saying "buy" because I know that we can't all afford to buy new books and I think libraries are wonderful resources. What I hope you'll do is read and recommend. Oh, and enter my contest... details coming this weekend.

Here is today's snippet:
flirting is not one of Georgie's major skills, but she is trying it on the dangerous Sir Toby....

“Well, then, miss Georgie, I hope you’ll come down and swim in my pool one day soon. And maybe we could go for a spin on my yacht.”

“Could we really? I adore yachts.” I wasn’t sure if I was overdoing it.

“Then it’s settled,” he said. “Come over and I’ll take you out on the yacht tomorrow. Come any time you like. I’ll have the crew standing by.”

“That’s so kind of you, Sir Toby,” I said. “I’m really looking forward to it.”

“Not at all. Delighted to help out. See you tomorrow then.”

I gave myself a pat on the back as I left. I had positively had him eating out of my hand. Now if I could just find out if he had the queen’s snuff box at the villa, it should be an easy enough matter to slip inside and pinch it when I went down for a swim. Suddenly I felt very daring and worldly. I had flirted with a dashing marquis. I had had invitations from two English boys and wangled an invitation from Sir Toby. All in all a good evening. I chose not to remember the not so good parts.

Final Countdown, Day 4

2011-09-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

It's getting close...only 4 days until launch Next Tuesday!
And on Monday I'll announce the details of my fun launch contest.

So here is snippet number 4.

Coco Chanel has persuaded Georgie, much against her will, to be a model in her fashion show for the elite expats in Nice. Georgie is sure something will go wrong.....

“And for my piece de resistance I give you the royal look, as modeled by a member of England’s ruling family, Lady Georgiana Rannoch,” Chanel announced.

There was a gasp and then applause. The catwalk stretched into darkness, looking about a mile long. I was conscious of upturned faces, sparkling jewels, champagne glasses. I forced one foot in front of the other, trying to walk as I had been taught. I was going to do this. I had done harder things in my life. I was not going to stumble. Step followed step. I was going to get through it.

Then suddenly it was as if my foot wouldn’t move, as if something was holding it fast to the floor. I felt myself pitching forward, stumbling, trying to right myself. I might have done so but the end of the runway was before me. Flash bulbs went off in my face, blinding me. I vaguely heard gasps of horror as I staggered then pitched forward into blackness

Countdown, Day 3

2011-08-31T13:03:00.000-07:00

Five days to go until Naughty in Nice is born--it's like the end of a pregancy: expectation, can't wait to get it over, just a little worried....

So here is snippet three from my new book. And keep watching for a contest announcement toward the end of the week....

On the Train to the Riviera where Lady Georgie is heading on a dubious errand from Queen Mary:

I looked down the rows of white clothed tables, their silver and china gleaming in the glow of little lamps. From here I couldn’t see a table that wasn’t occupied and wondered what the protocol was about joining someone on a train and whether I could ever pluck up courage to do that.

Of course the first person I noticed was the handsome Frenchman, sitting alone with another bottle of champagne beside him. He looked up from his soup and caught my gaze. He didn’t smile or nod as would have been usual. Instead he frowned at me.

“You are English?” he asked in French.

I replied that I was.

“Curious,” he replied. He was about to say something else when a voice from further down the car called to me, “I say. Aren’t you Georgiana Rannoch?”

It was a smartly dressed English lady, probably in her late forties. She was sitting with an exquisite and obviously French woman. I agreed that I was.

“Would you like to join us?” the first woman said. “It’s rather full at the moment but we have room, don’t we Coco?”

The Frenchwoman nodded and smiled. “Bien sure,” she said, waving a cigarette holder in my direction.

The Englishwoman stuck out a hand. “You look the spitting image of your father. I used to know him well. I’m Vera, by the way. Vera Bate Lombardi, and I believe we’re related, at least through marriage.”

I sat down on the chair she had pulled out for me. She waved imperiously and a waiter appeared. “My lady will be joining us, so set another place and you’d better bring us another bottle of Veuve Cliquot.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to dine with a rather bossy Englishwoman who claimed to be related to me, but it was better than standing like a wallflower.

“I actually stayed at Castle Rannoch when you were little,” she continued, “although I don’t suppose you remember me. We went out riding together once. You were a splendid little horsewoman.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I don’t often get a chance to ride any more and I miss it.”

“So do I,” she said. “I’m in Paris most of the year now, traipsing around behind Coco, and one can hardly get a decent gallop in the Bois de Boulogne..”

“You do not traipse behind me,” Coco said in English. “It makes you sound like a dog on a lead. Since you take bigger strides than I, then I am usually running to keep up with you. But you must introduce us, Vera. This very English young lady will not speak to me unless properly introduced.”

I laughed, but Vera said, “Sorry. Bad of me. Coco, this is Bertie’s daughter, Georgiana Rannoch. And this is my dear friend and business partner, Coco Chanel.”

Count Down--Day 2

2011-08-30T11:35:00.000-07:00

Only 6 days to go to the release of Naughty in Nice.

Here is snippet number 2--which takes place with the Queen at Buckingham Palace:

“A valuable snuff box is missing from my collection, Georgiana.”

“Stolen, you mean?”

“I’m rather afraid so.”

“Isn’t that a matter for the police?”

She shook her head firmly. “I can’t mention this to the police. It’s too embarrassing. You see the snuff boxes were on display in one of the niches in the Music room. Two weeks ago we held a large reception there for the New Year honors. Shortly afterward, I noticed one of the boxes was missinGeorgig. So the choice of culprit is either one of the servants, or one of the guests at our reception. I have conducted a secret investigation of the servants, but those who were in attendance that night had all been with us for some time and had impeccable backgrounds. Which leaves only one conclusion—a person who attended that elite gathering made off with one of my snuff boxes

Georgie's task--to retrieve the snuff box from a notorious bounder!

Naughty in Nice in stores Sept 6, or order now from Amazon!

One Week Countdown starts Now!

2011-08-29T11:53:00.000-07:00

Starting a one week countdown to the launch of Naughty in Nice on Sept 6th with snippets from the book designed to make you rush out and pre-order it, or at least line up at your local bookstore at midnight on the sixth!

And watch out for contest details at the end of the week. I'll be announcing the winner of my comments contest and telling you about the new publication contest both of which will offer fun and French prizes (no, not naughty ones)

So here's snippet number one:

The Riviera had never looked more inviting. The sun sparkled on a sea of deepest blue. Elegant couples strolled beneath the palm trees on the Boulevard des Anglais. The scent of mimosa blossoms hung in the air while a seagull soared lazily overhead…I gave a contented sigh.

“’ere, watch it, love. You’re slopping soup all over.” The gruff voice that brought me back to the present with a jerk. I wrenched my eyes away from the poster on the wall and down to the scene in front of me. A long, gray line of shabbily dressed men, muffled against the bitter cold, snaked across Victoria Station. They clutched mugs or bowls and stood patiently, eyes down or staring, as I had been, into a world that nobody else could see but them. I was currently helping out at the station soup kitchen. It was a bitter and bleak January day, and I felt as cold and miserable as those poor wretches who shuffled past me.

Sending Good thoughts!

2011-08-27T19:26:00.000-07:00

I'm not posting today and tomorrow because I'm sending good thoughts, positive vibes, prayers to all my friends who live on the East Coast of the US.

Let's hope the news media has exaggerated the possible danger(as they have been known to do), but I'm also worrying about places in New York where I have spoken in the past--South Street Seaport Museum, Police Museum, both on the Eastern shoreline and certain to get water into them.

And Peter Cooper village where I spend many happy visits and still have friends, and Molly's neighborhood in Greenwich Village--I hope that's far enough from the Hudson to be safe. Oh and Ellis Island, for which I will always have a fondness since Murphy's Law.

Stay safe, stay dry everyone.

French Feast Memories

2011-08-26T21:15:00.000-07:00

Returning to French food today and to some memorable meals I've had in France. When I was sixteen I went to stay with a French family. Usually the meals were simple in the extreme: a green bean salad with olive oil and bread for lunch. A thin slice of steak cooked in butter.
However while I was there they had family from Corsica visiting and Maman cooked a special lunch. To describe this as lunch is an understatement, except that it started at one o'clock. The first course was a whole lobster each, accompanied by champagne. Then followe a pate, duck in a very rich sauce, a salad, a gateau sinfully dripping with cream and liqueur and then a cheese board. Every course was accompanied by a different wine. The meal went on until five o'clock. I had grown up on simple school food and maybe a sip of wine at Christmas and this was all way too much for me. That evening I was extremely sick.
But it did show me that when the French go to town on food, they REALLY go to town.

Wrapped in a Gallic Shrug

2011-08-25T10:37:00.000-07:00

One thing I've always envied about Frenchwomen and that is the way they can manage their scarves. They toss them casually over one sholder, they twist them and tuck them and they look fabulous.
I try the same thing and they slip off as I'm boarding a plane, or look like a hideous knot around my neck.
It has to be in the genes, don't you think? Certain nationalities are born with certain skills, and scarf wearing is definitely a skill of the French--together with that Gallic shrug.

My friend Cara Black--she of the Aimee LeDuc series,with whom I do a lot of events--has learned that shrug so well and even manages a good looking scarf these days.

The problem is that I love scarves. I'd like to toss one over my shoulder and look elegant. But they won't stay put. Perhaps I shoujld go and live in Paris for six months and then I'd learn.

Any tips on scarf wearing for dummies?

Or I could always ask Coco Chanel,with whom I've spent the past year (only in my head, as she is part of the story of Naughty in Nice)

Don't forget to comment for a chance to win a fun and maybe fashionable French prize.

John's famous crepes recipe

2011-08-24T10:48:00.000-07:00

My husband John is a big fan of crepes (yes, real men do eat pancakes).
He worked out a fabulous recipe. Because there is so much butter in it, you just need fruit and/or syrup to go with it. John likes it the old fashioned way with sugar and lemon juice.

4 eggs
2 cups milk
2 cups flour (by weight is 215 grams)
pinch of salt
quarter pound stick of melted butter

blend in blender.

better made the night before.
cook hot pan very thin. Serve with fresh fruit or choice of syrup
OR
Savory fillings like ham and cheese, shrimp with cream sauce etc.

Mmm. Getting hungry.

13 days to go until Naughty in Nice is in stores. Don't forget to leave a comment for a prize at the end of the month.

More French fast food

2011-08-23T11:18:00.000-07:00

Day of anticipation. In exactly two weeks, on Sept 6th, I'll be celebrating the launch of my new book, Naughty in Nice

For the past two weeks I've been focusing on all things French--food, fashion, history. After posting on mussels yesterday my thoughts are still in Brittany and on their other famous fast food--the crepe.

If you want a light meal or a snack, you visit a Creperie. Actually the savory ones are called Galettes and are often made with buckwheat flour. They are topped with ham, cheese, fried egg, shrimp, spinach etc. All delicious.
But my favorites are the true crepes--thin crisp pancakes with fruit, chocolate, cream, honey, all of the above...
Sorry, I'm drooling. Have to stop.
My husband makes a terrific crepe recipe which I'll post sometime. It involves a whole stick of butter in the blender mix. No wonder it's so good.

Showing some mussel

2011-08-22T11:12:00.000-07:00

Only two weeks to go until Naughty in Nice comes to a bookstore near you.

And I'm continuing my month of French fun and facts with some thoughts on French fast food: Brittany is one of my favorite regions of France. My sister in law has a cute little house there and I love the low key life there, and also the food. The first time we visited her she took us to a worker's cafe and we ordered the favorite fast food lunch--moules et frites (mussels with shoestring fries). The mussels come simmered in wine and herbs, the fries in a paper tube.

We learned immediately that there is a right and a wrong way to eat them. We picked up our forks. Sue leaned across the table and whispered, "Please don't embarrass me. Watch." And she picked up an empty mussel shell and used it as pinchers to extract the next mussel. Soon we were old pros and the combination of flavors is incredible. Easy to cook too, if you don't mind scrubbing and preparing mussels.

Mmm. Now I'm hungry.

Pardonnez Moi but ou sont les Parisiens?

2011-08-20T10:51:00.000-07:00

If you happen to be in Paris this week you'll have made a startling discovery--there are no Parisiens there. The place is empty apart from tourists, of whom there are too many.

Let me reassure you there has not been a great plague or invading army that has wiped out the population. It's just that this week is the feast of the Assumption of Mary (August 15th) and Parisians plan their annual escape from the city around this feast--when their city is too hot and full of tourists.

In the days when France was more religious August 15th was a big deal. Processions, and big parties for anyone called Mary (since your name day was more important that your birthday in France). I remember the procession at Le Puy, a small mountain town in the Massif Central--the procession winding up through the streets to the Cathedral, with ordinary people, dressed in their Sunday best, following, singing. It was most moving.
I wonder if it's still there in what has been described by the press as Post Christian Europe. Today you are lucky to find five people at Mass on a Sunday. Churches are closing. Priests are getting old and dying off.
And the Moslem religion? It is flourishing.

I didn't mean this to be a thought provoking post, but that is how it has turned out.

Easy and Delicious

2011-08-19T11:11:00.000-07:00

I promised something a little more cheerful today, didn't I?
I've been thinking back to my time in Nice last summer and one of the strongest memories is of the food (isn't that always the way?)

They do great things with tuna and olives in the South of France, so here is something simple and delicious.

Tuna Tapenade
1 clove garlic
one can tuna in olive oil

3 large garlicky green olives sliced and pits removed

2 Ts lemon juice

2 Ts olive oil

1 pinch thyme (or leaves of fresh thyme)

ground black pepper

drop garlic into food processor to mince. Add tuna etc and pulse until its a spread. Great as a heavy dip with strong crackers or with a fresh baguette.

The Day France Changed

2011-08-18T06:29:00.000-07:00

My post yesterday about Chanel being a spy during WWII made me realize how much everything changed for France in that short time. At the time I write about the English used to winter on the Riviera, living a lavish lifestyle with yachts and hundreds of pounds lost at the casino. It was still the France of lax morals, mistresses, champagne and savoir faire. Then the Germans marched in, people who resisted were shot, most people were starving, Jews were rounded up and sent off to a fate nobody believed at the time.

It's easy to be judgmental about those who chose to collaborate. I could never have betrayed a countryman or woman to the Gestapo. I could never have willingly helped the Germans but might I have entertained German officers in the hope of getting a little more food for my children? I really don't know because I haven't had to make those choices.

It's easy to judge Chanel too. She had lived in the gutter. She knew what it was like to be starving. And she had worked all her life to build the house of Chanel into the fashion icon it was. So if she had a chance to live well, to be able to re-open her fashion house in Paris, she probably jumped at it without too much thought. And after the war she paid for it, tried as a collaborator. She escaped the fate of many French girls who had done nothing more than be friendly to lonely German boys far from home. They had their heads shaved and were cast out from society. She had enough connections to keep going, although there was prejudice against her fashions for a long time to come.

This is day 13 of my month of French fun and facts, to celebrate the release on Sept 6th of Naughty in Nice, which features Chanel and other celebrities of the Riviera (including Mrs. Simpson)
Leave a comment for a chance to win a prize at the end of the month.

Was Chanel a spy?

2011-08-17T12:27:00.000-07:00

This snippet of news that was sent to me yesterday could hardly be more timely for the launch of Naughty in Nice:

A new book suggests that Coco Chanel was used as a German spy during WWII (code name Westminster , after the Duke of Westminster, who was her pre-war lover)
Several friends sent me the link and asked if I knew about this.
Absolutely, and what's more I'm dying to write about it. It's too bad my series is only up to 1934 and I can't really skip ahead to the war yet.
But what I already knew was that Coco became the mistress of a German officer during the war. He had her write to her old business partner, Vera Bate Lombardi, who was living in Italy, having married Lombardi and wanting to be with him. The letter said that Chanel was reviving her fashion house and wanted Vera to come and help her. In fact the letter was to lure Vera to Paris any way she could. Once there she would be threatened and intimidated by the Gestapo until she agreed to be sent to England to work on Winston Churchill, who was a friend. There was even some hint that they wanted her to assassinate him.

Now you can see why I'm dying to use the story some time. Chanel was the ultimate survivor. She came from nothing, an orphanage after being abandoned by her parents, and used one rich man after another to achieve what she wanted. The fact that she was prepared to use her dearest friend in this way showed how little regard she had for people.

A more cheerful subject tomorrow, I hope.
It's Dayd 12 of my month of French Fun and Facts, leading up to the release of Naughty in Nice on September 6th.

Happy Birthday Julia

2011-08-16T08:38:00.000-07:00

It's day 11 of my month of French fun and I'm back to French food today with a celebration:My commenter Liz reminded me that it would have been Julia Child's 99th birthday today. Happy 99th to a character who was larger than life in many ways and proof that eating food that tastes good because of lashings of butter does not lead to an early grave!

I met Julia Child once, when my then publisher had flown in from New York and was taking me out to lunch in San Francisco. We went to a trendy new place that had just opened and there at the next table was Julia Child, with her husband Paul. And what's more, my publisher knew them, so we had a great discussion about what to order. My impressions of her were 1. how much she loved her husband and how solicitous he was of her, and 2. how much she enjoyed her food. She really was a large lady and completely dwarfed him (he was quite old and frail by that time). And I remember one other thing: all through the meal my publisher and publicist were more interested in what she was eating than in me!

I loved the movie Julie and Julia, by the way. Who couldn't? Meryl Streep has long been one of my favorite actresses and someone I'm dying to meet (so if you know her, introduce us!) And the fact that a five foot six slim woman could convincingly portray a big boned six footer was a real tour de force. Of course the directing and camera angles helped a lot but she ACTED that size.

I have a well used copy of the Art of French Cooking and I think I'll go up to the kitchen and decide what to cook in homage to Julia tonight. Coq au vin? Her boeuf bourgignon is sublime.
Any Julia favorites to share?

This month of French fun is in celebration of the launc of Naughty in Nice, on September 6th. Three weeks to go today!! Yipee.

The Scent of Trouble

2011-08-15T09:14:00.000-07:00

Today I'm moving away (reluctantly) from food to talk about one of the most fascinating characters I've come across in ages--Coco Chanel. As I said in an earlier post she was way ahead of her time, she was as tough as any man, she used people to get what she wanted and yet she was, in some ways, terribly naive.

When she decided she wanted to create a perfume, Chanel No 5, of course, she joined forces with Pierre and Paul Wertheimer, who were millionaire owners of a perfumerie house. She was in many ways not a good businesswoman and when she needed money she virtually signed away her rights to her perfumes. Their relationship was stormy. They employed a lawyer simply to handle the lawsuits from "that bloody woman" but she ended up having no control over her perfumes.

It's amazing how timeless No 5 is, isn't it? I have a bottle on my vanity now. And now that I know about Chanel and what she went through, I will think of her every time I put a dab on my wrist and remind myself to be wise and prudent in business dealings.

If I'm writing about all the good things that come from France, then perfume has to be near the top of my list. I used to love Madame Rochas, Je Reviens, Anais Anais, and Chanel. Any other French perfumes that are favorites?

This is day 10 of my month of French fun, celebrating the launch of my new Lady Georgie book, Naughty in Nice, on Sept 6th. Do check it out on Amazon--pure French fun!

Quiche me, my darling

2011-08-14T09:58:00.000-07:00

Today I'm sharing my recipe for a perfect Sunday brunch, using the pate brisee recipe from yesterday. My husband is of the "real men don't eat quiche" variety but he adores asparagus. In fact he'd eat them every night if I let him. So I serve this asparagus quiche and he doesn't complain!

You'll need one recipe of the pate brisee
1 pound asparagus washed and trimmed
1 tablespoon butter
1 medium onion peeled and diced
3 jumbo eggs
half cup heavy cream
three quarters cup swiss cheese.
salt and pepper to season.

First cook the pie shell blind (baked with sheet of foil then filled with rice or dried beans)
cook asparagus in boiling water for 2 minutes. remove and pat dry.
saute onion in butter. When transparent add asparagus and continue sauteing until asparagus are soft to a prod from a fork.
In mixing bowl whisk eggs, cream and half cup grated cheese. Add asparagus mixture then pour into pie shell. Sprinkle remaining cheese on top. Place on cookie sheet and bake at 375 degrees until golden brown and puffy (about 40 mins)
You could also substitute a frozen pie crust to speed things up, but it won't be as good!
I also add crumbled bacon to this sometimes. Any other suggestions?

This is Day 9 of my month of French fun... my countdown to Naughty in Nice on Sept 6th.
Add your comments for a chance to win a fun French prize!

Pastry to Die For

2011-08-13T12:10:00.000-07:00

Day 8 in my month of French Fun, leading up to the grand release of Naughty in Nice on Sept 6,
and I thought it was time for some favorite recipes.

I absolutely love French pastries. Lock me in a boulangerie or patiserie and I would die happy. But I also love French savory pastries--quiches and onion tarts and the like.

What's more, good savory patry (called Pate brisee) is really easy to make.
For one tart shell take
1 and a quarter cups all purpose flour
pinch of salt
7 tablespoons cold butter
3 tablespoons iced water

1.combine flour and salt in food processor. Cut the cold butter into slices, add to flour and process until mixture turns pale yellow, like cornmeal
2. Gradually add water through feed tube while processing with short pulses. Dought should hold together when pressed between fingers.
3. Wrap dough in plastic film and refridgerate at least half an hour.

4. Spread flour on wooden board, rub rolling pin with flour, then roll out from center until you have a thin sheet big enough to fit over pie plate.

The secret is making sure butter is cold, water is iced and YOU DON"T OVERPROCESS.

This can be baked blind, using dried beans as filler for quiches or filled for turnovers.

Tomorrow I'll give you my favorite quiche recipe.

Bon appetit!

Rhys

Certainly Madame!

2011-08-12T09:31:00.000-07:00

One of the comments yesterday triggered a memory of my own. The poster wrote:
A favorite memory, though not about food. I went to the Carnavelet Museum in Paris specifically to see one painting. The room where the painting was hung was under construction. I was disappointed until I asked if there was any way I could get in. Certainly madame! The head curator himself took me to the painting, escorting me through the sawhorses and equipment!

Now the French are known for being remote, bloody minded and difficult. But my experiences are similar to yesterday's poster. In fact last year when I was researching Naughty in Nice I needed to look around the Negresco Hotel. Originally I planned to have a murder take place there. Now the Negresco is still a top hotel, reeeeeely expensive (try $1000 a night). I walked up the front steps and was stopped by a young man dripping with braid. You cannot enter, he said, looking at my non-designer attire. I told him I was a famous writer who wanted to write about his hotel. He took me to his boss and I handed the boss my card.
He opened his arms wide. "Feel free, madame," he said. "Go where you want to."

And so I spent two delicious hours poking into every corner of the Negresco hotel.

Here are some pictures I took. I could also have helped myself to their priceless artwork collection, had I been criminally minded and carried a bigger purse!

It'sDay 7 of my month of French fun and counting down to Naughty in Nice!

Comment on your French experiences for a chance to win a fun French prize (no, it won't be naughty!)

Eating Like the French

2011-08-11T12:44:00.000-07:00

Day 6 of my month of French fun, in anticipation of the publication of Naughty in Nice on Sept 6th:

If you want to know why French food tastes so good, there are big differences in their approach to cooking.

1. The word processed is foreign to them. The French like their food nautral and fresh.

2. Fresh food means shopping daily at the market, smelling, touching, examining each item bought. This is still the norm in France in spite of supermarkets.
Bread is bought every morning for breakfast at the local bakery.

3. The French are not afraid to use butter and cream (unsalted butter for most things) and yet their cholesterol count is lower than ours. Why is that? Could it be the red wine? Could it be a less stressful life-style? Or could it be all those chemical compounds we put into our bodies in that processed food?

4. Most of the time they eat very simply, and one flavor at a time--a green bean salad with oil and vinegar dressing, followed by a grilled piece of meat or fish, followed by some cheese and fruit. On big occasions they go wild with banquets that would daunt the stomachs of anybody not used to them.

Do you have a favorite French food or food memory? I'll share mine tomorrow.

And don't forget to comment for a chance to win a prize at the end of the month.

A Divine French Recipe

2011-08-10T08:34:00.000-07:00

My month of French treats, day 5, leading up to the publication of Naughty in Nice on Sept 6th.

Havings started to write about French food yesterday, I had a brilliant idea. I'm actually going to cook and eat French food every day until Sept 6th. And I'm starting with something basic to go with crusty baguettes. It's called Aioli and it's a basic garlic mayonnaise and will keep in the refridgerator.

8 garlic cloves, peeled

2 egg yoks
Juice of 1 lemon
1 cup olive oil
half cap safflower oil
salt and black pepper

Food procesessor with metal blade.

With machine on, drop garlic cloves down the tube until minced. Remove the lid and add egg yolks and lemon juice. Process until smooth.

With machine running pour in the oils in a slow and steady stream. Season to taste. Will keep for about a week. Do not freeze.

Do you have a favorite French recipe you'd like to share? For me they have to be simple. I'm never going to plunge sweetbreads into ice water and then remove the membrane. Ain't gonna happen.

A Taste of French food

2011-08-09T09:08:00.000-07:00

Day 4 of my month of French goodies, leading up to the publication of Naughty in Nice on Sept 6th:

How could I write a blog about France without talking about food? If I wrote what I liked about French food I could probably write a thicker book than Julia Child.
I love its simplicity: when we were in Nice last year I got up early and went to the Boulangerie around the corner every morning to buy a baguette and some croissants for breakfast. After a few days the woman recognized me as a regular customer and would dart into the back of the shop to bring out bread and croissants fresh from the oven.

Then sit on the balcony, warm croissants, apricot jam, unsalted butter...

my idea of heaven.

Tune in tomorrow for a recipe!

And leave a comment about your favorite French food for a chance to win a prize!

Why I love Coco Chanel

2011-08-08T07:51:00.000-07:00

Month of French Fun, Day 3:

When I started writing a book set on the French Riviera in the 1930s I wanted to see what real people might have been there that winter. And I discovered that one of them was Coco Chanel. How exciting was that?
I have always been in awe of her because she really invented fashion as we know it today.

When women were wearing corsets and flowing skirts and bustles and frou frou Chanel wore tailored men's suits. Can you imagine the uproar that caused? She made French women what they are today with her simple designs and clean lines. The closest I've ever come to owning anything by Chanel, apart from a bottle of Number 5 perfume, was a high end knock off coat, that I absolutely loved (picture of me wearing it, back in my youth),

In my story Chanel is putting on a fashion show combining the masculine and the feminine. Haven't we be doing that ever since?

(the picture shows Chanel with friend Vera Bate Lombardi, who was Queen Mary's illigitimate niece)

This Month of French Fun is to celebrate the publication of Naughty in Nice on September 6th. If you want to read a fun and suspenseful story in which Chanel is a key player, order your copy now.

And do leave a comment for a chance to win a fun French prize at the end of the month!

What I Like About France

2011-08-07T11:04:00.000-07:00

Month of French Fun, Day Two....

I've been thinking back fondly to last summer in Nice and I made a list of all the things that I like about France.

1.The food. This is a no brainer. Even the simplest things like baguettes, pate and cheeses taste fabulous in France.

2. The no-rush mentality. Time for a glass of wine, a coffee at an outdoor cafe.

3. The bistros, outdoor cafes, scent of jasmine, maybe a little music. Perfect.

4. Fashionable women. Only Frenchwomen can throw a scarf over a plain dress and look so elegant.

5. Transportation. Trains are clean and run on time. Local buses along the Mediterranean were fantastic and cheap and frequent.

6. So many stunning landscapes. What other country can offer the windswept coast of Brittany, the magic of Paris, the quaint hillside towns of the Dordogne, the highest mountain in Europe and the majesty of the Alps and Pyrenees and the gem of the spectacular Mediterranean coastline with mountains plunging into sea of incredible shades of turquoise and azure.

7. Paris. Enough said.
8. French films. They don't need car chases and explosions to create incredible drama.
9. So many villages that time has forgotten.
10. Fields of sunflowers. Always so cheery as they seem to turn to look at you.

What a treat it was for me to set a whole book in Nice. If you want a taste of the Mediterranean, look for Naughty in Nice on September 6th at a bookstore near you (or you can order online too)

And don't forget to comment for the chance to win a lovely French gift at the end of the month!

A Month of French Fun

2011-08-06T10:14:00.000-07:00

This time last year I was in Nice, slaving away at research for my upcoming book. You have no idea how much writers have to suffer for their craft! All those bistros to check out; finding the perfect view of the blue Mediterranean, the perfumes of Grasse, the best local wines. Joking aside, I did spend a lot of time in local libraries, looking at books of old photographs and maps, making sure I got everything right for the 1930s. And the famous Negresco Hotel. Research there was a must. It's still a hotel at around $1000 a night so we didn't stay there. I was stopped by an impressive doorman, dripping gold braid, as I went up the front steps. I told him what I wanted and was escorted to the manager (or maybe it was the under, under manager). I handed him my card and told him that his hotel would feature in my new book.

"Madame, feel free," he said. So I spend a fabulous morning peeking into all the hidden corners of the Negresco hotel. Once again I discovered that the word "writer" opens so many doors.

Now it's exactly a year later and I am awaiting the publication of the book. It's called NAUGHTY IN NICE and it comes out on September 6th. So I thought I'd spend the next month celebrating everything I like about France--French food recipes, snippets about fashion and Chanel, and scarves,.
So please join me and add your comments about what YOU like about France.

At the end of the month there will be a fun prize for the best comment.

And look for my new website, coming soon!

A Rather Different Royal Wedding

2011-08-01T11:52:00.000-07:00

Rhys Bowen, your royal correspondent reporting in on the latest royal wedding. Princess Anne's daughter, Zara Phillips married English rugby player Mike Tindall in a church in Edinburgh, Scotland. And it couldn't have been more different. Where Kate and Will's wedding was dignified pageantry, this was definitely one step down--with the guest list including TV celebrities, sportspeople and pop stars. Of course Zara is only thirteenth in line to the throne and she doesn't even have a title. Plain Miss Phillips. And rugby players are not known for their suave elegance on the whole (I speak wherof I know. Our nephew is a professional rugby player who has played for England. I am waiting to hear whether he attended the wedding, actually)

So it was rather low key, apart from the number of royals, who tend to raise the tone of any wedding.

Zara is a low key kind of girl--outdoorsy, top level horsewoman who hopes to make the Olympic team next year. So it was no surprise that they were snapped leaving their hotel the next morning in scruffy old jeans and sweat shirts. But she looked lovely and traditional for the actual ceremony and I'm sure her mum heaved a sigh of relief.

The Duchess of Cambridge, aka Kate, made sure she was dressed in a way that did not steal the show. It was actually a recycled dress she had worn several years ago. And her dress for the reception was the one she wore recently in LA. A thrifty girl is our new duchess, setting a standard for the times.

But will someone please tell me why all hats have to perch precariously to one side of the head these days?

At least Princess Beatrix looked reasonably elegant and... well, normal, after the ridiculous attire for Will and Kate's wedding.

One undertstands that Will and Kate had a really good time and that the reception included Will's impersonation of Bon Jovi.

Teach Me How to Write.

2011-07-25T10:21:00.000-07:00

I'm just getting back my life after the Book Passage Mystery Writing Conference that takes place every summer at my fabulous local bookstore Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA.

It's always an intensive three days of workshops, lectures and private consultations during which around 80 hopeful mystery writers want to find the magic bean that will turn them into published authors. The success rate for this conference is rather impressive: Sheldon Siegel, Cara Black , Cornelia Read,Tony Broadbent, Tim Maleeny are a few of the graduates who not only made it to print but have won awards for their writing.

But every year I come away with ambivolent thoughts. Can anybody really be taught to write?

Some of the attendees I see clearly have the spark and all they need is some suggestion on pacing or focus or plot development. For others no amount of writing classes will ever make them a published author. It's rather like me and painting. I love to paint. I can create a pretty good picture if I copy reality or somebody shows me what to do, but my painting instructor can look at a scene, give a few magic flourishes with her brush and suddenly there it is in living color with an whole new twist to it.

Every year I am asked what writing courses I took before I started out. The answer, none. I taught myself to be a writer by writing. As a small child I lived in a world of pretend. I played the part of princess, good fairy, girl lost in the woods, even queen of my own country. Later I wrote down stories with myself as heroine. I wrote movie scripts I wanted to star in. And during my professional writing career I have usually written a book that I want to read but is not already on the shelf.

What I see at conferences is that everybody probably has one book in them--everyone's life has one riveting moment that makes a good story. But not everybody has the ability to leap from their own life into someone else's world. And certainly not everybody has the ability to tell a story so that it comes alive, so that we ask, "And what happens next?"

So are writing classes a waste of time? I think they can be beneficial, especially for the writer who needs feedback and positive reinforcement as they work. It's hard writing into a vacuum and the writer needs to know that he or she is heading in the right direction. It's also useful to hone skills, find flaws. But to say to someone else, "This is how you create a character" is something I find difficult. I've never created a character. I think of a story I'd like to tackle and a character appears saying "Hello, here I am." It's all an extention of that pretending world I lived in when I was four.

So my one piece of advice that I've given several times this weekend--if you want to be a writer WRITE. Learn to use words as a potter learns to use clay. Practice putting words down on a page. Learn to develop a plot over 300 pages, to describe people and places so that we know them and we are there. And unfortunately the only clear mantra for success is to write the book that nobody has written before.

What are your experience of writing classes? Good? Bad? Do they help?

Romance of the Rails

2011-07-20T11:40:00.000-07:00

I have always loved rail travel, ever since my parents put me on a train in London when I was TWELVE, and sent me to stay with friends in Vienna. When I think about my 12 year old grandson doing this, I just can't believe that I accomplished this alone. I had to find the right ship across the channel, the right train in Ostend, and then spend a day and a night on it. When I arrived in Vienna I remember writing a postcard to my parents to say I'd arrived. Not even a phone call.

Since then I have criss crossed Europe many times by train--and there is something about the magic of being invisible in a train carriage, being able to peek in through lighted windows, to see daily life played out for a second before we are whisked away to the next village and town. I love going to sleep to the gentle rhythm of a train and waking in a new landscape, a new country. I love that feel of crossing borders. In the past it meant customs and border control coming down the train, stamping passports, looking for smuggled goods. Now it's all so easy within the EU,

I've had plenty of adventures on trains--the time we shared our sleeping compartment with the most disgusting old man who wanted to borrow my hair brush for his greasy, shoulder length hair, and had the most awful habits. The time I helped a girl escape from East Germany. The time (recent) when a clever thief stole John's bag. But mostly I've enjoyed striking up conversations with complete strangers, finding a common language to converse in, sharing their sliced salami and cheese and fruit and setting the world to rights between us.

I haven't traveled by train much in the US. Only the corridor between Boston, NY and DC. So it was with great pleasure that I accepted an invitation to be part of a new venture called MYSTERY RAILS. (http://www.mysteryrails.com/) I'll be joining Laurie R. King in mid October aboard a vintage rail car on a journey from Los Angeles to San Louis Obsipo and back. During the journey we'll speak to our fellow travelers and they'll have a chance to socialize with us. Gourmet meals will be served and we'll enjoy the spectacular coastal scenery.

If you're interested in joining us, please check out the Mystery Rails website. Reservations have to be made by mid August.

2011-07-15T08:35:00.000-07:00

IN the news today: a Jane Austen manuscript sold for $1.6 million. Poor old Jane, who was always desperate to make money from her books, must be turning in her grave in frustration.

And I'm feeling frustrated too, because I don't have any manscripts to sell for one point six million. In my early days of writing I wrote the book long hand, then I typed it out because nobody except me could read my handwriting, then I paid someone to type it without mistakes, then it went to my editor.

But for the past twenty years I've written straight to a computer. I save a copy to an external hard drive but that's that. Even my edits are now done electronically. Penguin sends me the manuscript with queries and comments and I go through in the Word review mode and answer them. It's all so painless and quick. But it leaves no paper trail. No more manuscripts in the world to be auctioned off to future generations for enourmous sums.

I've often thought the same about email correspondence. Sometimes I'll be corresponding via email with an important writer and it will suddenly hit me--when I hit the delete key this will all be lost. No more books of the collected correspondence between Rhys Bowen and Jacqueline Winspear or Laurie R King. No future PhD candidates will be able to delve into our characters through our letters. In fact the art of letter writing has vanished. All those bundles of long letters between Victorians and Edwardians will never happen again. I suppose one can say that we now connect via the phone so have no reason to write letters, but I find them so interesting, so poignant. John has letters written by his grandmother to his father,away at school. She signs them Your Affectionate mother, B. Quin-Harkin. Very formal when writing to a little boy, and full of news of activities. No message that she loves and misses him. No wonder the Brits grew up cold in those days.

Anyway, I'm off to the closet under the stairs to see if any old scribbles in notebooks might be suitable to be auctioned off--or prepared for the Rhys Bowen collection at a university library some day!

A Great Day for Real Soccer Moms

2011-07-11T11:07:00.000-07:00

I don't actually blog about sports every often, although I'm a big sports fan. However I just had to write about the USA women's soccer victory yesterday, which was so amazing and so emotional that it had me leaping around with tears running down my face.

For those of you who didn't see it: horrible referee gave completely unfair calls against US. Bralilian women very good at falling over and making it look as if they were pushed (which in slow mo replays they weren't). Anyway, one unfair call after another. US player sent off. Had to play most of the game with ten players against 11.US goalie saved a penalty shot saved then made to take it over again (again a wrong call). And then the worst thing. A Brazlian player acts as if she is hurt. Lies motionless on grass while medics attend to her for 4 minutes. The aim--to see if those four minutes do not get added to the clock. She's carried off on stretcher and the moment she's off the field she jumps up and trots back into the game.

Then right began to triumph. The crowd, not only Americans, were angry about the bad calls and especialldy this last piece of trickery. Every time Brazil got the ball they booed. Especially Marta, whos pretend fall had caused the penalty. And then their own tricks came back to haunt them. There were three extra minutes of injury time given. And during those three minutes the US scored brilliantly to even the match. Had the Brazilian player not pulled the fake injury the game would have been over.

And the last piece of justification: the penalty against the US got re-taken because they said the goalie moved (which she didn't). So during the penalty shoot out their goalie came right out of the goal and of course they now had to make her retake the shot (which the US scored on)

So total justification.

I had intended to write about Wimbledon at some stage and why there are no US men or women in the top ranks any longer. I was going to say we no longer breed champions, that we're too soft on kids over here. Nobody is allowed to fail. We get happy faces and are all made to feel good and equal and that it's not necessary to try too hard. But I take back every word of what I was thinking. Those soccer women showed grit, incredible endurance, depth of character, team spirit, patience and perseverance. They showed the best of what America is made of.

I wish I could have written this on the Fourth of July!

Why do we love the Royals?

2011-07-04T10:22:00.000-07:00

It's Independence Day and the news broadcasts are featuring Kate and Will's tour of Canada. Feature segments are discussing her inate fashion sense (she picks all her own clothes and she did her own make-up for the wedding), how easily she converses with people as if she was born to the role. We are lapping it up in prime time and yet...
we abandoned all this to be a republic.

So why do are we still so fascinated with the royals? They are celebrities to be sure. But if Lady Gaga did a tour of Canada she wouldn't draw those crowds and she certainly wouldn't make news headlines.

Why do ordinary people wait for hours in the rain for a chance to see them pass by in a flash in a big car?

There must be something in our genes that needs ceremony and pagentry. Rousing marches, troops in uniform, flags, somehow stir our humdrum breasts.
And the king/god figure has been around since the dawn of mythology. Clearly those early nomads needed a strong personality to guide them past the wooly mammoths and sabre toothed tigers but when did that figure take on god-like qualities? And have to be accompanied by ceremony? Since the earliest of recorded time if we read the stories on the tombs of the Pharoes.
The worship of royalty also seems to be in our genes. All those little girls playing princesses in a time when none of them can aspire to the role some day (unless their name was Kate?). Or maybe it's just a wish to live a fairy tale life, in a palace, waited on hand and foot, ones every whim obeyed.

Having done a few book tours in my life I can tell you that I would not envy their lives one bit. When I am on the road for two weeks, meeting new people every day, having to give speeches, greet fans, do media interviews it is very, very tiring. I fall into bed exhausted at the end of each day. And that's for a few days.
The royals, especially the queen, do that every day of their lives. Endlessly shaking hands, endlessly smiling, being gracious, never looking bored, never looking as if they wished they were somewhere else. This is a demanding job, folks. And a dangerous one. You never know when a crackpot might decide to assasinate a royal person. (Look what started World War 1)

But I'll share a story about the power of royalty. The queen was coming to my college to open a new building. Another student and I were chosen to welcome her and present her with a bouquet. My fellow student was an ardent socialist. For weeks before the event she griped that this was a waste of money and why should one person be treated as if they were superior to another person. The day arrived. The big black car drew up and out stepped the queen, petite, elegant and with the most radiant smile you have ever seen. My socialist friend breathed only two words.... "She's real!"

They are magic for us and this new generation shows all indications of living up to our expectations.

Royal Gossip Tuesday--another Duke of Cambridge

2011-06-28T11:47:00.000-07:00

Last Monday I planned to talk about another Duke of Cambridge, but I got side tracked into another William and Kate story. I'll try not to get side tracked again about the latest sighting at Wimbledon, but I have to say 1. Her dress was fabulous and so appropriate and it sold out online in half an hour (she should start her own clothing line and could finance the whole royal family), and 2. didn't they look happy together? Turning to each other to share comments that made them both smile. So different from the early days of Charles and Diana--she the blushing and tonguetied bride, he indifferent and supercilious.

Anyway, the title of the Duke of Cambridge has not existed since the last duke died in the early 1900s. He was a Prince of Teck. Cousin to Queen Victoria. Now it gets complicated. The son of this duke, Prince Adolphus of Teck, younger brother to Queen Mary of England and later styled Marquess of Cambridge, had an affair with Rosa Baring Arkwright and this affair produced a daughter Vera. Vera's mother Rosa, of the influential banking family Barings, wanted out of a loveless marriage and secured her divorce after the birth of this child. But Prince Adolphus was already married and thus Rosa was married off to a royal relative for respectability. So Vera grew up as the recognized child of a royal. She lived a glittering, if bohemian lifestyle, friend to the Duke of Westminster, Winston Churchill and other luminaries of the time. But her real claim to fame came when she volunteered as a nurse in WW1 and becamse friendly with fellow nurse Coco Chanel.

Coco and Vera formed a close friendship and Coco was shrewd enough to realize that Vera opened the doors to English society to her. Vera became Chanel's business manager. Together they conceived the idea of the blending of masculine and feminine in haute couture. They borrowed tweed jackets from the Duke of Westminster and even used Queen Mary's jewels to accessorize the outfits.

So why I am so fascinated with all this? Because my heroine, Lady Georgiana, goes to the Riviera in her next book. In my research I looked up who might have been on the Riviera that summer and learned about Coco Chanel and Vera Bate Lombardi and their fashion show and the queen's jewels. Too good to ignore for a mystery writer. And so this book will include fact more outlandish than fiction. That's the fun of research. Oh, and the book is called Naughty in Nice. It's out September 6th.

From New Orleans

2011-06-26T10:45:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in the hotel lobby, waiting for the shuttle to take me to the airport after attending the ALA convention yesterday. What a huge, overwhelming event. I gather that 30,000 people were in attendance. It certainly felt that I was signing that many books yesterday.

I had a panel on the new Miss Marples which was fun, then I had to rush the entire length of the convention center to sign at the MacMillan booth, then rush over to Penguin to sign at their booth. Then back for another panel. Luckily Elaine Viets handed me a salad or I would have died of starvation. Long lines for signing at each of the above and quite a few people who read this blog. I was asked more than once about whether I had gotten the smell out of the Moroccan bag. Answer is that I'm trying perfume next week, having tried all the others. The smell is almost gone but I'd like to get rid of the faint linger.

The reviews on my hotel were not stellar--a mention of bed bugs in May. So Carolyn Hart and I came prepared to strip off all bedding, open all drawers etc. Luckily our room was pristine (this after we had been sent to a room with one double bed and had to come back down again!) But poor Libby Fisher Hellmann had to change her room twice--first awful mold smell and air conditioner not working properly, then the dreaded bed bugs, and THEN the airconditioner died in her third room. This was not a grotty hotel. It was a major chain and I may even mention their name if they are not careful.

It's very hot and steamy and I abandoned the trolley ride through the Garden District I was going to take. The only signs of Katrina were single houses standing amid green where whole blocks used to be. And when you stand on the levee you see how vulnerable this city is--just a few feet of dirt to keep out that mighty river and the city lower than the water level. A disaster waiting to happen all the time.

Royal Gossip Mondays. On The Duke of Cambridge, what to call Kate, and the royal life.

2011-06-20T10:04:00.000-07:00

You all know by now that Prince William and his wife have been made Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. So Kate is not officially Princess Kate and I realize that I must turn to my trusty book to look up forms of address in case I meet her. One addresses a duke and duchess as "Your grace." However not a royal duke. He is "Your royal highness," and thereafter "sir."

Kate is not a princess so I"m not sure whether she is an HRH (Her Royal Highness) officially. I'll need to check on that. Does one call her "Your grace?" One must be correct about these things. Too many historical novels have been hurled across the room by me because someone calls a king "Your highness." (He's Your Majesty) or gets the whole thing wrong with Lady Jane Phipps, Jane, Lady Phipps and Lady Phipps. (It is the difference between the wife of a peer, a baronet and a knight)

I have a book with a wonderful table of precedence--who goes into dinner before whom, who sits where at the dinner table--is a bishop above a duke? Tricky question. Bishops rank equally with normal dukes, but below royal dukes. It's amusing for people outside England to read this but I suspect it still matters to those people who are giving dinner parties for dukes and bishops. And of course in the time I was writing about, the early 1930s, it mattered an awful lot. This is still the time of the great houses, oodles of servants, idle young men like Bertie Wooster, hunts, croquet parties, tea on the lawn and that enviable lifestyle of the aristocrats.

Or was it so enviable? My granddaughter and I were watching Pride and Prejudice for the zillionth time this weekend and she commented how everybody played the piano. I pointed out that girls were not educated, apart from playing the piano, speaking French, sketching and embroidery.

"How boring," she commented and she was right. Their lives were mainly ones of boredom, of filling in hours until the next meal and hoping that someone would come to visit and someone would eventually marry them. Preferable to the lives of those who worked in the dark satanic mills but not enviable to most of us.

Of course the current Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are not living this kind of life at the moment. They are in a four bedroom house without servants in one of the more desolate parts of Britain. Okay, I know as a Welsh person I should be extolling the beauties of Anglesey, and it is very lovely, but it can be extremely wet and windy too. I remember countless summer holidays when it was too wet to go out and we were forced to take walks anyway. So Kate is facing a few gales, shopping at the supermarket, cooking their meals and I expect she's loving it.

I don't know how I wound up here when I started with the Duke of Cambridge and I was going to share some snippets of delicious gossip about another Duke of Cambridge. But that will have to wait for next Monday now.

Wot No Comments?

2011-06-18T09:27:00.000-07:00

I've heard from several of you that you have tried to comment on my posts but couldn't post your comments. You wondered if comments were restricted to followers etc.

This is absolutely not true. Anyone is free to comment and I welcome anything you have to say (unless you want to tell me I'm a rotten writer, in which case the comment section is closed to you !!). I went into blog settings and double checked that I had clicked all the right buttons and there should be no problem with anyone leaving a comment.

So next tme you can't get through, please email me through my website or post your comment on my facebook page and I'll see it gets added to the blog.
I hope you have a glorious weekend. It's sunny and mild here. Perfect for the outdoor art show we're going to today.

Rhys

It's a Small World

2011-06-15T08:57:00.000-07:00

Like most writers, I am obsessed with my stats. I check my Amazon rankings and go away in despair or elation. The number of books I sell means that my publisher either loves me or won't renew my contract. So it's fairly obvious that I've started checking my blog stats--the most interesting of which are where my visitors come from.

USA, Canada, Britain, all fairly obvious. Australia--I'm pleased about that. But Russia? Pakistan? And even Iraq? I am intrigued. Who in Russia or Pakistan or Iraq is interested in what Rhys Bowen is doing? Maybe the interest is in following the British royals. Maybe countries without royalty have a yearning for the pomp and pageantry that goes with a royal family. But it makes me realize what a small world we live in.

My books are sold in some wildly diverse countries. What do readers in South Korea get out of Lady Georgie's antics? What do readers in Finland or Portugal, both of them staunch republics, think about my royal tales? Italy I can understand as these are essentially slapstick comedies with romance and bodies thrown in , and that definitely appeals to the Italian soul.

I suppose that is the wonderful thing about books. They let us travel vicariously. They let me shiver in the Russian winter with Martin Cruz Smith--without having to experience frostbite in person. They take me to China with Amy Tan and offer insights into the Chinese way of thinking that I could never get as a mere tourist. I've crossed the African plains with Beryl Markham, and enjoyed Botswana with Alexander McCall Smith. And I feel that I now know Sweden after those Girl With books.

So we as writers have a great responsibility. We don't just entertain. We provide insights into the workings of our worlds. It behooves us to get it right. Because when we learn about people in other countries and other ways of life we see them as human just like us and there is less chance that we can view them as potential enemies. We writers are also the peacemakers. Awesome responsibility!

What are your feelings? Do books open up the world to you?

Copy Kates--lastest royal updates

2011-06-13T08:09:00.000-07:00

I'm back to my royal gossip Mondays, because people have been asking where they've gone.

And this is a good Monday for royal updates because it was a double whammy weekend for the royals. First the trooping of the color for the queen's official birthday. She used to look splendid riding side saddle in her colonel's uniform, but now she plays it safe and rides in an open coach (although knowing her horsewoman's skills, she could still ride bloody well if she wanted to).

Then yesterday it was the Duke of Edinburgh's 90th birthday. Yes, ninety. Doesn't he look good for his age? The royal family attended a church service of thanksgiving at Windsor before family festivities.

And on both occasions all eyes were on the newest royal, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. (you know she's not really a princess, don't you? Just a duchess at this stage, although she's married to a prince). And she looked stunning on both occasions--elegant, understated and oh so fashionable. She either has a knack for knowing the right thing to wear or some terrific advisors. She still looks so happy and relaxed as if she was born to the role. And she is doing wonders for the British retail fashion industry. If she wears something, similar items sell out of high street shops within hours. A new phrase has sprung up in the fashion world--Copy Kates.

The other thing I like is that she quite openly recycles clothes and hats, knowing that we're in a tough economy and extravagance would be frowned upon. Frankly it doesn't matter how many times she wears something--she still looks gorgeous, and in a way it seems magical to me. When she was first photographed with Will she looked like a nice, pleasant ordinary girl. Now she comes across as a stunning beauty--of course she's had help with hair and make-up and diet along the way, but I think it's the radiance that does the trick. She's clearly happy. Isn't it terrific to have something upbeat to blog about?

The Smell--part deux

2011-06-11T06:52:00.000-07:00

Those who know my books know that I don't write horror--just good historical mysteries, some with a touch of humor and romance. However I'm now in the middle of a horror story... bring in scary music.

It's called The Smell from the Purse. (raise level of scary music)

Two weeks ago I was in Morocco and they specialize in the loveliest leather you've ever seen--bright colored slippers and purses--hot pink, orange, lime green, turquoise. So I had to have one, even though I had been to the tannery and seen and smelled the process. Can you believe that the pelts are cleaned in vats of lye and pigeon droppings? I'm not making this up. There is an actual profession of keeping pigeons for their droppings in Morocco. And the bag smells as if it had spent its early life in such an environment.

And it wasn't as if I hadn't been warned. My friend Katherine Neville (she of those wonderful books The Eight and The Fire) knows Morocco well. The leather will smell, she told me. But did I listen? Noooo. I saw this really cute purse, in this years bright orange and I bargained for it. It was only when I had it back in the hotel room that I noticed the lingering odour. So I sealed it in a plastic bag until I got home.

Then I asked for help on Twitter and Facebook. Got lots of wonderful advice--crumpled newspaper, baking soda, kitty litter, leaving out in the sun... all seem to be working. But I think the best tip was from a friend on the trip. He said "spray it with your favorite perfume so that if you smell anything, it will be that." So I'm about to decide whether it should be L'air du Temps or Fidgi or Anais Anais ... you see I have old fashioned taste in perfumes. I'll let you know whether this works or not. I'm determined not to throw the purse away.

The Road From Morocco

2011-06-08T08:10:00.000-07:00

I've been back a few hours and of course I can't sleep so I thought I'd better blog instead. Lovely trip and many memories to sort out and digest. Thoughts on Spain--they eat lunch and dinner so late because they are really on the wrong time zone. Geographically they are West of Greenwich Mean Time which would make them on a par with UK. But they have the same time as the rest of Western Europe so their noon is really only 10 a.m. Hence if theyeat lunch and dinner by the sun they are correct. But I find it hard to wait until 9.30 p.m. for my evening meal! Food was tasty and cheap. Loved the tapas and paella. Everyone in Spain eats masses of meat, especially pork (apparently because they had to prove that they weren't Jewish or Moslem during the Inquisition and it's stuck!)

You can get a litre of wine in the supermarket for 59 cents (didn't taste it so can't say how bad it was), but a beer or wine in a bar is only a couple of dollars. The restaurant where we ate dinner more than once always brought out free tapas to start the meal and on the last night mojitos as a gift to finish off our meal.

It is encouraging to see so many small dress and shoe shops can apparently make a living. Here they'd have been run off by Ross and Dress Barn. Clothes, I mean good clothes, horribly expensive. Spaniards love kids and make a big fuss of them. I'll never understand bull fights. Did you know the bull always dies? He can never be put in the bull ring a second time because bulls are smart and he'd know not to fight.

My favorite place was the Alhambra (old Moorish castle) in Granada. So beautiful and the setting below the mountains is spectacular. Here's a picture:

Half our group got sick in Morocco. I survived well because I drank a lot of bottled water, cleaned my teeth in it and used my hand sanitizer religiously. The food tasted really good, especially the spicy soups with chic peas and the couscous. The big cities are actually modern and European and the roads are great, but here are some pictures of Fez and the old Medina:

This last is of the tannery, seen from a rooftop. The smell was unbearable and we were given mint sprigs to hold over our noses. The vats take the flesh and fur off the leather, then cure it and lastly dye it. I bought a leather purse and it still smells. Any suggestions for getting out the smell?
Now I need to catch up on sleep. More later.

Road to Morocco

2011-05-27T09:58:00.000-07:00

Sorry I've been so silent lately. I've been touring around Southern Spain and Morocco and haven't had time to sit and blog. Today I'm at a lovely hotel in Marrakesh and have taken an afternoon off after several days of sightseeing.

Morocco is absolutely not what I expected: freedom of religion, women allowed to dress how they choose, free universities and hospitals, roads as good as Europe and beautiful modern hotels. I had expected narrow lanes and donkeys, which there are in the old cities, of course, but not this modern forward thinking country. We were apprehensive about going because of the bombing, but everywhere there are posters saying "Don't touch my country"--words of warning to terrorists.

I had hoped to have pictures, but haven't had time to download any yet. Next time, I promise. Off to Casablanca tomorrow so that I can say "Here's looking at you, kid!"

Report from Madrid

2011-05-20T01:29:00.000-07:00

This was going to be an insightful overview of the city, but alas my time so far has been spent shopping for underwear and deoderant. You see I arrived yesterday morning but my bag didn't. What's more it didn't show up on American Airlines computer.

After about eighteen hours in the same clothes I had to find some clean underwear, something to sleep in and a short sleeved T shirt as the day became warm and all I had was a turtleneck. And behind all this was the worry that the bag was indeed lost or stolen and I'd have to spend my remaining day in Madrid shopping for enough clothes to see me through a bus tour lasting 17 days.

Well allelula! About an hour ago my online update says that the bag has arrived at Madrid airport and is being delivered some time today to my hotel. Huge sigh of relief. You know I've been blogging all this week at my group blog, http://www.jungleredwriters.com/ on stuff, clutter and hoarding. My theme has been how stuff overwhelms our lives these days. Do hop over and add your comments. Well,I've just had the experience of the thought of life without my stuff. How would I survive for almost three weeks with nothing? What was the minimum I'd need to get buy when laundry would be so hard to do? Suddenly that bag was full of things I'd really miss (especially the Hermes camel bracelet I threw in at the last minute because it seemed right for Morocco). But my Chico travel outfit, a new black and beige silk scarf, and my good German sandals. So many things would be hard to replace.

The bag isn't here yet, but I'm hopeful. NowI can look forward to the tour without having to worry about rinsing out the same underpants and socks every night. And I can go out and see some of the sights of Madrid.
More later...
So I guess that stuff does matter to me. I'm

Off on an Adventure

2011-05-17T18:20:00.000-07:00

Rhys writing hurriedly as I leave in the morning for Spain, Morocco and Portugal. I'll try to take interesting pictures and post while I'm away. I'm not sure how easy that will be at the Berber Village, but I'll try.

And in the meantime, if you have a Kindle, I hope you've downloaded my short Molly Prequel The Amersham Rubies. It's free and a great way to introduce your friends to Molly Murphy. If you don't have a Kindle you can always put the Kindle app on your computer and read the story that way. It's not long.

And if you're feeling blog-starved, this is my week to host the Jungle Red Writers blog (http://www.jungleredwriters.com/) We've the delightful Mary Jane Maffini as our guest tomorrow and then some revealing confessions later in the week. What was my most embarrassing moment? Go over to Jungle Red to find out.

Will and Kate--thoughts after the wedding

2011-05-13T10:17:00.000-07:00

When Will and Kate postponed their honeymoon it was announced that he was summoned back to work as an RAF search and rescue pilot on the island of Anglesey in Wales. It had never struck me before, but if he'd been working fifteen years ago, he might well have featured in my first Evan Evans book, Evans Above. In this book a suspicious body is found on top of Mount Snowdon and I talked with the RAF search and rescue team about how it would be brought down from the mountain.

The British press are being kind for once and giving the young couple space, although there have been reports of Kate wheeling her trolley around the local supermarket followed by two bodyguards. So all is well and they have settled into domestic bliss with no servants and an ordinary small house to take care of.

But then came the assassination of Bin Laden and my first thought was--the Brits were tipped off that it was about to happen and warned to keep Will and Kate safely at home in the midst of the British military. What do you think?

I'm off to Spain and Morocco next week, feeling a trifle nervous.

On Brits and Hats

2011-05-09T16:13:00.000-07:00

We're packing ready to go to Spain and Morocco next week and my frightfully British husband wants to take his tweed cap with him. He's ignoring my remarks that it will make him look like a lost tourist.

Last week I met a group of English friends for lunch and we toasted the royal couple in champagne, AND some of us wore hats, even though it was lunch time in a restaurant in the middle of San Francisco! And two of our group had attended a slumber party to watch the wedding and sat wearing hats all night. Those of you who are not British may think this a little strange.

Hats have been a lot on my mind since the royal wedding, especially those two horrifiying and silly creations worn by Princesses Beautrice and Eugenie. So I'm wondering, what is it with the British and hats? We wear them to weddings and royal garden parties and Ascot and the sillier the better. You can even buy those fashionable fascinators --you know, little bits of lace and feather that perch to one side of the head--in Marks and Spencer. Men still wear their bowlers to work in the city. And even Prince Charles wears one of those tweed caps when he tramps over his estates. So why are we so attached to our hats. Personally I'm not a hat person, after having had to wear a hat to school for twelve years--felt in winter, panama in summer. Also I have a small head and most hats come down over my eyes, making me look a bit silly, to say the least.

Is it because we cling to tradition that we bring out our hats on any solemn occasion? Do our hats let others of lesser status know exactly who we are? What do you think?

Okay I confess that I do own one really gorgeous hat. It's raw Thai silk, pale turquoise with fluffy white feathers on the side. I wore it for one of my book tours and it looked smashing. But it became such a bore to hand carry it onto every plane that I have since retired it. However, since my next book is set on the Riviera and does mention a jaunty nautical outfit, I may find a sexy little French sailor hat... who knows.

Matter of National Security

2011-05-04T11:42:00.000-07:00

I'm home after a hectic few days zooming around the Eastern half of the US--Ann Arbor, Bethesda, Annapolis and Pittsburgh. During that time I spoke, met fans, was taken to lovely meals, hung out with friends AND watched history take place.

I was staying at my friend Marcia Talley's house in Annapolis with other mystery writers. We were just preparing for bed after a Barnes and Noble event and a fabulous seafood dinner when a voice yelled, "Get down here. The president is going to make an announcement concerning national security."
We came down in our pjs and sat looking at each other nervously. What exactly did a matter of national security mean? We discussed what we'd do if we learned that a bomber, containing an atomic bomb, was heading to the East Coast of the US. Or chemical weapons. Or terrorists in our midst were about to do.... something nasty.

It's not until something like this happens that one realizes how vulnerable one feels. My first thought was that I was safe enough in Annapolis--well out of DC. Second thought--what if they miss? Third thought--I didn't want to be so far from home.

Then we detected the hint of a smile on Wolf Blitzer's face. It was something good.
Bin Laden, one of our group said. They've got Bin Laden.
And thus it was. And the world rejoiced and it was good.

But call me a cynic.... it's a grand symbolic gesture, but he was in poor health. Had not the leadership already passed to someone more deadly? Did they perhaps want him found and taken out? And of course the ultimate question--are they really sure it was the right man and not his double/bodyguard?
It all sounded like a well planned, well executed operation so I'm hopeful that they did the right thing. My own thoughts--I'm glad they killed him and didn't bring him anywhere for trial. And I'm glad they buried him where there can be no shrine to a martyr.
BUT
I'm about to go to Morocco. I wish they hadn't done it right now.
and an afterthought...
I wish Obama had changed his name to Smith before he ran for office. It all gets very confusing.

Royal Wedding!

2011-04-29T06:37:00.000-07:00

I'm so proud of myself! I woke up at 6 a.m. on the East Coast (which is 3 a.m my time), just in time to tune in to the best part of the ceremony. And I thought it was perfect, didn't you? The dress was simple and elegant (in fact very like the dresses that my daughter's chose) and what struck me most was the rapport between Kate and Will. Those little snuck glances and grins--so endearing.

The other thing that struck me was how well the police managed the crowd. That many people surging forward could have been disastrous. But the police just calmly moved them forward until they were at the palace gates. And it all went smoothly with no security glitches. Pfew.

And what did you think of some of the hats? Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie? They looked like hats out of a period comedy. And I'm sorry, but yellow is not the queen's best color. Harry looked very glam. All in all very satisfying, except that there was no tea in my hotel bedroom. Sorry Hyatt, but some of us like to drink tea in the morning.

Now back to real life and a day ahead at Malice Domestic with friends, fellow mystery writers and fans for the next three days. I hope to see some of you there.

Historic week ahead

2011-04-26T09:25:00.000-07:00

This is one of those weeks we'll probably all remember where we were and what we were doing, in the same way that we remember Kennedy's Assassination if we're old enough, and certainly Princess Diana's wedding.

And I am not refering to Rhys Bowen's visit to Ann Arbor, Bethesda, Annapolis and Pittsburgh either, although I like to think they are momentous occasions. I am, of course, refering to the royal wedding.

A lot of us will get up at an ungodly hour to watch Will and Kate's wedding live. On the West Coast it will mean rising at 1 a.m., or not going to bed the night before. Not sure how many devoted fans will do that. On the East Coast, where I will be that day, it will mean rising at 4 a.m. Still ungodly. I may make it by six, and I'm sure the news channels will re-broadcast over and over.

Now that I learned that Tony Blair didn't receive an invitation, I don't feel so badly about not getting one. In fact when I watch such momentous occasions as this, my one thought is always.... what happens if anyone wants to go to the bathroom? They always make you take your seats hours before the event, especially in these days of maximum security, and I'm sure it will be cold and drafty in the Abbey. It always is in English churches. So in a way I'm glad I'm not there, or one of those lining the royal route, because if I knew I had three or four hours of not being able to find a loo, I'd immediately want to go.

Sorry. I'm a practical kind of gal in some ways. But what about you? Do you wish you could be there?
And I look forward to seeing some of you at Aunt Agatha's in Ann Arbor on Wed, Malice Domestic on Friday and Saturday, Barnes and Noble Annapolis on Sunday and the Festival of Mystery in Oakmont on Monday.

Empty Nesting

2011-04-23T08:52:00.000-07:00

Celebrate with me, please. Yesterday I printed out my next Molly book, tentatively called Hush Now, Don't You Cry. Now it goes to several readers whose opinions I trust and value. When they've given me their imput, I do one giant rewrite and then off it goes to the publisher.

You'd think I'd heave a sigh of relief every time I get through a book, wouldn't you? In a way I do. But that usually comes around page 200 when I know that I can see the climax of the story and how it will end. Actually what I feel when I send a book off is the same feeling as when a child goes off to college. It has gone. Whatever happens to it now is out of my hands. And with this a profound feeling of emptiness. This book consumes my life for at least three months. I write daily. I wake and think about it in the middle of the night. And now, suddenly, I don't have to get up, go to the computer and write any more. So the question looms--what am I going to do with myself until I have to start another book? Clean house? Weed garden? Shop for new toothpaste? Strangely nothing seems to have appeal, and it's worrying because I am already of an age when my friends have retired or are thinking about retirement. I simply can't visualize not writing.

Friends shake their heads in astonishment and ask where I get my energy when I tell them I'm about to zoom off around the country again--to Ann Arbor, Bethesda, Annapolis and Pittsburgh next weekend. And it's true that these trips are tiring. But I love the interaction with fans. (and actually I secretly enjoy it when a limo is waiting for me, which happens sometimes).

So I guess the answer is that I'm going to keep on writing as long as I can sit at a computer. If I'm one of those lucky enough to still have contracts with major publishers, I'm going to make the most of it. Who needs retirement, anyway?

And a blessed Easter or Passover to you all!

Born too Soon

2011-04-19T09:47:00.000-07:00

I've just done a blog on being born too late.
But recently it has also struck me that I was born too soon.
I am not by nature a creature of the 21st Century. I'll tell you when this really struck me. When I was staying at the Westin Bonaventure hotel in Los Angeles at the beginning of April. This is a really futuristic building with four round towers rising from a central atrium area. Towers are connected by walkways, fly-ways etc. It looks like something out of the Jetsons (and yes, I know this dates me horribly).
The problem was that I could never get the hang of this building. I'd emerge from the yellow tower and have no clue how to reach the part of the hotel where the convention was taking place. I'd cross walkways and then re-cross them because I couldn't figure out how to find the restaurant where I said I'd meet somebody.
And those little glass elevators whizzing up and down the outside of those towers. Not my favorite thing to do. All I could think of was what it would be like if an earthquake happened while I was in one of them.

Ditto for my room on the 21st floor. Would my bed going sailing out through that floor to ceiling glass window in an earthquake?

So I don't think I'd survive well in a city of the future. It's hard work for me even to keep up with technology. I've learned to handle my computer and the internet because my livelihood depends on it. But it doesn't come naturally. However it is in the genes of the current generation. I remember my three year old granddaughter Mary Clare being allowed to play a computer game in which she had to click on flowers or jewels or something harmless. We went away, came back to find her playing another, quite different game. Not only had she found this game, but she'd logged herself successfully into the site--at age 3.

I've tried these games and I'm hopeless. Even the harmless ones like steering msyelf through mazes raise my blood pressure alarmingly. When you add figures leaping out to shoot at me, then I'm a nervous wreck. So I have to confess that I'm old fashioned enough to prefer real things--scrabble and Jenga and charades and real people to laugh with.

My grandmother and great aunts used to shake their heads in dismay over the advent of television and air travel. I suppose their parents thought that the automobile would bring about the end of civilized life, and their parents the steam train. I guess I'm beginning to sound old.

Born Too Late

2011-04-16T09:51:00.000-07:00

I was looking through a fashion magazine yesterday and it was full of advertisements for straightening your hair. This made me realize how unfair life is:

I have the world's straightest hair. All my childhood I longed for curls. in my teens I tried home perms--frizzy disasters. Now I have the money to go to a good hairdresser guess what? The styles are all straight.

This is true in other areas too. Now I can afford to go to good restaurants, I can't eat too much or food that is too rich. The all-you-can-eat buffet which seemed so wonderful when we were young and penniless now has no meaning. I'm actually just paying for a salad.

Now I have no responsibilities for children and pets and could stay out all night, I'm pooped by ten.

Now I can afford clothes, nobody designs clothes for anyone over the age of eighteen. Dresses are either up to my thighs or down to my ankles with no shaping. I have been looking for a good dress to wear out to dinner for ages. There are cocktail dresses and prom dresses but the smart function dress, well cut, good cloth, simply doesn't exist. Neither do the "little women" my mother used to go to who would run her up a stunning dress and charge almost nothing.

I used to envy those international jet setters who were whisked around the world in First Class ease. These days everyone has to endure the long lines at security, taking off shoes, jackets, scarves and being groped, even if they are traveling business or first. Not so much fun. And on the plane those lovely meals have been shrunk to a bag of chex mix.

Have you had similar experiences? Were you also born too late?

Prequel takes Kindle by Storm!

2011-04-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

More good news! The Amersham Rubies, which is a prequel story to the Molly Murphy books, is now available for pre-order on Kindle. And the best news is that it's free, free, free.

What's more, it's currently #2 on Mystery and Thrillers free on Kindle and #5 on all the free stuff on Kindle. How cool is that? And it has a gorgeous cover, doesn't it? My publisher conceived the whole thing and did the cover

, hoping, of course to bring more readers to Molly. We'll see if that works.

I should warn you that it's just a story, not a whole book, but it gives readers a glimpse of Molly's detective powers and life in Ireland before she gets to New York. So tell your friends and reserve your copy.

Yeah, New Cover is up.

2011-04-09T16:25:00.000-07:00

I noticed today that my new cover for the next Lady Georgie book, Naughty in Nice, is now up on Amazon and the book is available for pre-order. I'll try and put a sample up on my website so that you can check it out, but I'll say in advance that it will be a lot of fun--Riviera, casinos, Coco Chanel, blue Med and smoulderingly handsome Frenchmen. What more could you want?

And what do you think of the cover?

Reporting from RT Convention

2011-04-08T07:55:00.000-07:00

Much better news to report this morning: Royal Blood won the RT Reviewer's Choice award for best historical mystery AND I was given a pioneer award for being one of the founders of the teen romance genre back in the eighties when I wrote as Janet Quin-Harkin.

So it was a special evening, and no more runaway scooters, falling chandeliers or anything dangerous, except for one elevator that remained with its door open and a cold wind howling out of it. Since I'm at a convenion full of vampires and other kinds of undead, I went to find another elevator bank. You can't be too careful, can you?

Last night was the faery ball--a Venetian masked ball, and the costumes were spectacular. Ordinary attendees had made Venetian ball gowns and wore elaborate masks. Some were interesting fairies with wings. Sorry I didn't bring a camera to share with you. Me--I just wore a sparkly dress and a blue feather mask. Tonight is the vampire ball. I may or may not attend...

Non-royal blood?

2011-04-07T12:00:00.000-07:00

Things happen to me, especially at conventions. Especially in LA. Last year I was at Left Coast Crime and the Starbucks person didn't put the lid on my coffee properly resulting in a brown tsunami over my leather jacket and white turtleneck.

Today I'm at RT convention.... in LA again. Before my morning presentation Hollywood icon Bill Link lost control of his motorized scooter. It careened at me, trapping me between him and the table. Result was a cut arm that bled over my white linen pants. We tried getting out the blood with milk, which worked quite well, but I then had a round dubious-looking stain as I stepped up to the podium in front of 250 people.

I'm beginning to think I am doomed. No wonder I identify so strongly with my character, Lady Georgie. Accidents always happen to her when she wants to make a good impression. Wait a minute--perhaps the accidents that happen to her have already happened to me

At least I have a good supply of disasters for future Georgie books.
Keep your fingers crossed for this afternoon when I get an award for best historical mystery for Royal Blood that I don't trip, fall, stab myself or spill coffee.....

And How Real is Her Royal Spyness?

2011-04-05T08:51:00.000-07:00

I had this question yesterday so I thought I ought to answer it before I am swallowed up in doing my tax, packing up and driving back to California, finishing my book and attending Romantic Times Convention tomorrow.

First I have to confess that if you check the royal family tree, Lady Georgie doesn't exist. I've never actually mentioned which of Queen Victoria's daughters was her grandmother, but one daughter did marry a Scottish nobleman (not called the Duke of Rannoch) so that much is accurate. I chose Rannoch for the family seat because it is so barren, bare and remote and I wanted her to have enough good reasons to flee from her Scottish castle.

But as to the royals around her--I have tried to make them as real as possible. If they say something it is either a real quote or a sentiment they have expressed. Queen Mary's intense dislike of Mrs. Simpson, her passion for antiques, Mrs. Simpson's mocking of the Duke and Duchess of York, the little princesses and their passion for horses... all true. I read biographies, autobiographies of secretaries, nanny, etc and in some cases I've used actual phrases the person uttered. And I should also add that I have met several members of the royal family. I had tea with the queen when I was young and met the queen mum on several occasions (delightful woman).

So the environment in which Georgie moves is colored by my own experiences. My husband's family (mother's side goes back to King Edward III, former owners of Sutton Place and several other stately homes) is littered with cousins with strange nicknames and stories about jokes played on the butler. All I have to do is visit and listen.

The actual background of the times and political happenings is accurate too--(except for the vampire-ridden castle in Royal Blood. That was pure spoof). Struggles between communists and facsists taking place all over Europe and even in England. Bread lines at London stations. Thousands of men out of work. The Great Depression and yet those with money lived as if nothing had changed. A fascinating time to write about. I'm thinking of sending Georgie to America to meet Hollywood stars and Al Capone... what do you think?