Twelve Clues Time

I know I've neglected this blog recently. Sorry. Too many online commitments--I post daily on my page (www.facebook.com/rhysbowenauthor) I tweet daily (@rhysbowen and I am one of the Jungle Red Writers, contributing to the popular group blog and hosting my week in turn.

I'm the host this week and we're having some great discussions (and moans) about travel, food and iPhone apps. Come over and join in at www.jungleredwriters.com

Apart from that it's a good and busy time for me. This week marks the release of the paperback of The Twelve Clues of Christmas. It's being sold at a bargain price on Amazon so will make a great stocking stuffer, with the compendium of Christmas games/recipes/traditions in the back..

And yesterday I received my advance reading copies of City of Darkness and Light and they look beautiful. I'll let you know where I'm going on my book tour as soon as I find out.

I hurried up to finish my Molly Murphy e-story called THROUGH THE WINDOW after I saw it listed as #18 on the historical mystery bestseller list. That was rather shocking to realize it was only a great cover with no content! It will be available on January 6th, and a month later there will be a compendium of the first three Royal Spyness books, provocatively titled A ROYAL THREESOME.

Now I'm about to start writing the next Molly book, plus jotting down ideas for the Molly Christmas book AND I've got plans for a really fun Georgie book featuring a royal wedding (not Georgie's yet)

So stay in touch and if you enjoy my books, tell your friends about them.

Rhys's Twelve Days of Christmas--Day 7

Today I'm going to attempt to continue with my Christmas countdown, reminding ourselves that life must go on and we have to find joy in each other, in family and in small pleasures.

So today I'm going to talk about one of my favorite Christmas traditions--mince pies. My grandmother made them, my mother made them, I always make them and now my daughters do as well. They were always available to be served to people who stopped by, and we ate them warm on Christmas morning as we opened presents.

Mince pies are made in small muffin pans, with short crust pastry filled with mincemeat, sprinkled with sugar. Mmmm. Mince meat doesn't actually contain meat any longer, although it used to. Now it is a mixture of various dried fruits and some rum and sugar. But the origins of mince meat are quite different. In the middle ages small farmers couldn't afford to keep their livestock over the winter as there was nothing to feed them with. So many beasts were slaughtered. But there was no refrigeration to preserve the meat through the winter (the winters in England not being cold enough on the whole to make ice). So the meat was mixed with dried fruits and spices to preserve it. And afterward it was served in pies--mince pies.

I'm not sure exactly when it became a Christmas tradition, but poor peasants rarely ate meat in their diet so having a mince pie as part of the Christmas feast was a logical thing to do.

If you want to make it part of your tradition you no longer have to buy your own mince meat. Crosse and Blackwell make an excellent mincemeat with pippin apples and rum. Roll out the pastry dough nice and thin, cut circles and line muffin pans. Fill each about half full (more and it will bubble over). Cut out smaller circles for lids and press on with a fork to seal the edges. Make a small slit in the top to let steam escape. Bake in pre-heated oven 425 degrees for about ten minutes, until they start to turn golden brown. Let them cool as the mincemeat inside remains very hot.

Enjoy.

Tis the Season to Do What?

Sorry I've been absent for the past week. It was my week to blog on my group blog www.jungleredwriters.com and I couldn't do both.
But now I'm back and I'm going to be blogging all this month with interesting Christmas related snippets, tied in to my new book THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS. So stay tuned for fascinating facts such as the true meaning of the twelve days.

But today I'm a little perplexed. I've just asked everyone what they want for Christmas. One wants a gift certificate to Target, one a gift certificate to a bike shop, one just a gift certificate to Amazon. What happened to gift giving? If I give you a gift certificate and you give me one, why not just not give and buy ourselves a present instead?

When I was younger it was the giving of the gift that was important (at least that is what we were told when we opened Great Aunt Trudy's bright orange hand knitted sweater with the ducks on it). The fact that someone had had serious thoughts about what might make me happy and taken the trouble to find it in a store. Of course the gifts weren't always exactly what we wanted, but did didn't do a mad rush to return them eithre.

Today everything has to be so perfect that people are afraid to give and would rather take the risk out of failure with a gift certificate or even cash. Well, my philosophy is that Santa doesn't carry cash. I'm choosing you a gift. Be grateful.

I remember one Christmas my family decided that the holiday had become too commercial and we'd do homemade gifts for each other. It was fun. I liked it. The results were differing--one made lovely velvet throw pillows that I still use after 20 years. One made great fleece scarves and caps that are still being used. My son in law made wooden toys. My son the actor read CDs of fairytales for his nieces and nephews. Over the years I've tried to personalize presents--last year I made books of family history for each kid. A DVD of ancestors. And to me those are the gifts that are truly precious.

I wish we could do this again, although it is a little stressful trying to get gifts done in time. But I love it. How about you? Any suggestions for homemade gifts?.

The Hotel Enigma

I've just returned from a book tour to promote my new Lady Georgie novel, The Twelve Clues of Christmas. After a week of staying in some very snooty hotels, I am left puzzled about certain things, downright grouchy about others.
.

1. Why does anyone actually need thirty four pillows on the bed? It seems the more expensive the hotel, the more pillows you get.  And I throw all of them onto a chair except one

2. Why does a hotel that charges several hundred dollars a night put really cheap toilet paper in the bathroom? I can afford Charmin double thick. Surely they can too.It would be suitable if they had designer TP maybe with the hotel crest embossed into it. But I'd be content with something thick enough that it doesn't break to pieces when I try to tear it off.

3. Why can't faucets in hotel bathrooms all work the same way? Why does it take me half an hour to figure out how to turn on the shower, and get hit in the face with icy water in the proecess?

4. Aren't hotel bedrooms supposed to be restful places? Then why put scary pictures on walls, strange pieces of artwork on tables. All I want to do is sleep, not admire art, and a large image of a faceless man staring down at me is not going to help.

5. How can anyone charge fifteen dollars for a continental breakfast without blushing with guilt?  I agree that one has to pay a cook to prepare something, but one croissant and tea surely don't take much preparing, apart from putting it onto a plate.

6.And on the subject of food--why this need to come up with strange, new, untried combinations of flavor. I don't actually want pork cheeks with scallops, or anything with organic striped figs. After a long day grilled cheese and tomato soup sounds good to me.

Do you have any pet hotel beefs? Have you ever found the perfect hotel?

Upstairs, Downstairs

Are you addicted to the new Upstairs,Downstairs as much as you were to Downton Abbey? Me neither. I wonder why, as the story is just as much soap opera. Maybe it's just that the house is smaller, and the people are correspondingly smaller. Nobody to compare with the nobility of Robert, Earl of Grantham, or Lady Mary Crawley. Or maybe it's just that I remember the original series so fondly. That seemed to have real drama and pathos without being sleazy or reverting to shock value. I remember the episode when Lady Marjorie falls in love with a young officer, but it's just left as a romance that can never be. She doesn't leap into bed with him. And the heart-stretching triangle at the battle front in WWI when James is wounded and his cousin Georgina is his nurse, desperately in love with him, and his wife Hazel goes out to France to bring him home. Those were dramas that really moved me. The dramas in this series seem sensational or small and petty.

Am I just older and wiser now or is this series part of the new school of writing that has to go for blockbuster all the time? Or maybe it's the time frame that's different. Life in the 1930s had definitely changed for the aristocracy. Servants were no longer so subservient to their masters. Uncomfortable movements like the Black Shirts were permeating all levels of society.

Ah well. Only two months to the next Downton season. I know it's already out in England but I'm being good and not emailing relatives to ask what is happening.

And another snippet: my own new Lady Gerogie novel, THE TWELVE CLUES OF CHRISTMAS, which features quite a bit of upstairs/downstairs action in a lovely old manor house, will be in stores and on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.com tomorrow. Much more fun that the election, I promise you!

Sneak Preview of The Twelve Clues of Christmas, part 3

I hope you enjoyed sneak peeks one and two.
Did I mention that the book includes a compendium of Christmas recipes, games, traditions?
English villages are definitely strange and have plenty of weird customs. This village is among the stranger ones...

Here is sneak peek number  three... Enjoy.

The Twelve Clues of Christmas. Sneak Preview 3.

  As we came out of the gates and into the village we noticed several groups of villagers, standing in tight knots, talking animatedly. A cluster of men outside the pub glanced furtively in our direction, then went back to their chatter. There was something unnerving about this, a tension in the air as if something was being plotted. Bunty didn’t seem to notice there was anything odd in their behavior.

            “So here’s the sum total of Tiddleton-Under-Lovey,” she said. “One pub, two shops, one school, one church on the green and a few cottages.”

            “What about that nicer house beside the school? I asked. “Is that where the schoolmaster lives?”

            “Oh no, he has a cottage on the Widdecombe road. That house belongs to the Missess ffrench-Finch. Three elderly sisters who have lived there all their lives. Their father left them quite well off and they never married. We used to call them the Three Weird Sisters and spy on them when we were growing up. You’ll meet them over Christmas, I’m sure. Mummy always invites them to Christmas lunch.”

            “And what about the pub?” I asked, looking at the sign swinging in the chill morning breeze. “The Hag and Hounds? What’s that about?”

            “Local history.” Bunty grinned. “We had a local witch you know. Back in the seventeen hundreds. They wanted to catch her and bring her to trial, but she escaped onto the moor. They chased her to the top of Lovey Tor with a pack of hounds and then burned her at the stake. We have a festival to celebrate it every New Year’s Eve. You’ll be able to see just how primitive we are down here in Devon.  This way.”

Sneak Preview, part deux!

I hope you enjoyed the first sneak preview of my upcoming novel THE TWELVE CLUES OF CHRISTMAS. Here is a second sneak peek. It will be in stores and on Amazon etc on November 6 (election day) so if you find the election as hopelessly annoying as I do, you may want to escape to an old English Christmas.

Enjoy:

The Twelve Clues of Christmas, Sneak Preview 2.

Lady Hawse-Gorzley motioned me to sit in one of the arm chairs then went over to a table in the corner and picked up a decanter. “Sherry all right for you? Or would you prefer something stronger? A brandy maybe after your travels?”

“No, sherry would be lovely, thank you.”

“Always have one myself before dinner. I suppose the sun has to be over the yard arm, wouldn’t you say? What time is it, by the way? Damned grandfather clock has given up the ghost again. It’s been in the family since seventeen hundred so I suppose one can allow it the odd temper tantrum, but dashed awkward time to do it.”

“It’s about five thirty,” I said, consulting my wrist watch.

“Is it, by George. A little early for sherry, but in the circumstances, I suppose we can bend the rules, what?” She poured two generous glasses and handed me one. “God, how the time has flown today. I don’t know how we’re going to get everything ready for the guests in time. Those damned police tramping around all day.” She perched on the arm of a nearby chair and knocked back her sherry in one gulp. “Like another?” she asked and looked in surprise that I hadn’t yet started mine. “Come on. Drink up. Do you good.”

I knew that good breeding did not allow one to ask too many questions, but I was dying of curiosity. “Lady Hawse-Gorzley, you mentioned that the police had been here all day. What exactly have they been doing?”

“Tramping all over the place and upsetting my servants, that’s what. Damned impertinence. All because our stupid neighbor had to go and kill himself in our orchard. Of all the inconsiderate things to do, especially when he knew I had people coming. Still that was par for the course with him. Didn’t care a hoot about anybody but himself.”

I tried to digest this while she knocked back a second sherry. “Your neighbor killed himself? Committed suicide, you mean?”

“I hardly think so. If you wanted to kill yourself you probably wouldn’t bother to climb a tree first, would you? Not unless you wanted to fall and break your neck and our fruit trees aren’t that big. No, the police think it was an accident. Carrying a loaded rook rifle with him, somehow slipped or knocked the gun and it went off in his face.”

Sneak Preview of Twelve Clues!

Here it is: the first promised sneak preview of my upcoming book, The Twelve Clues of Christmas.

And don't forget that I'll be running a contest through the month of November. Two copies of the book will be given away to the best comments made on this site. So share your thoughts!

FROM THE TWELVE CLUES OF CHRISTMAS, BY RHYS BOWEN

As we set off through the country lanes the sun was sinking in a red ball behind the hills. Rooks were cawing as they flew home to their trees. On a great sweep of upland moor I saw a line of Dartmoor ponies silhouetted against the sunset.

We came around a bend and there it was, Tiddleton-Under-Lovey, nestled under a snow capped tor. Was that rocky crag the Lovey, I wondered. It didn’t look very loving to me. Or was it perhaps the noisy little stream that passed under the humpback bridge as we approached the first houses? On one side of the village street was a small row of shops and a pub called the Hag and Hounds—complete with swinging pub sign depicting a witch on a broomstick with baying dogs below her. On the other side was a pond on which glided several graceful swans, and a village green. Behind this were some thatched cottages and the square tower of a church. Smoke curled up from chimneys and hung in the cold air. A farmer passed, riding a huge carthorse, the clip clop of its hooves echoing crisply in the evening air.

            “Stone me, miss, it looks just like a ruddy picture postcard, don’t it?” Queenie said, summing up my thoughts.

            I wondered which of the cottages was to be occupied by my mother and Noel Coward. I wondered if my grandfather had consented to come and my heart leaped with hope. Christmas at an elegant house party and my loved ones nearby. What more could I want. Darkness fell abruptly as we drove between a pair of tall gateposts, topped with stone lions, and up a gravel drive, Lights shone out of a solid unadorned gray stone house, its severe façade half covered in ivy. This then was Gorzley Hall. It didn’t exactly look like the site of an elegant house party—more Bennett residence than Pemberley, but who was I to judge by appearances?

            We drew up at the front entrance and he chauffeur came around to open the door for me.

            “My maid will help you with the bags,” I said, indicating to Queenie that she should stay, even though she was looking apprehensive, then I went up to the front door. It was a massive studded affair obviously designed to keep out past invaders. I rapped on the knocker and the door swung open. I waited for someone to come then stepped gingerly into a slate floored hallway.

“Hello?” I called.

On one side a staircase ascended to a gallery and I spied a pair of legs in old trousers up on a ladder. He was a stocky chap with shaggy gray hair, wearing a fisherman’s jersey and old flannels and he was wrestling with a long garland of holly and ivy.

            “Excuse me,” I called out.

            He spun around in surprise and I saw that it wasn’t a man at all but a big boned woman with cropped hair. “Who are you?” she demanded, peering down at me.

            My arrival wasn’t exactly going as I had expected. “I’m Georgiana Rannoch,” I said. “If you could please go and tell Lady Hawse-Gorzley that I have arrived. She is expecting me.”

            “I am Lady Hawse-Gorzley,” she said. “Been so dashed busy that I completely forgot you were coming today. Come up and grab the other end of this, will you? Damned thing won’t stay put. It looked so simple in Country Life.”

            I put down my train case and did as she requested. Together we secured the garland and she came down the ladder. “Sorry about that,” she said, wiping her hands on her old slacks. “I don’t want you to think we’re always this disorganized. Had a hell of a day here. Police tramping all over the place, not letting the servants get on with their work. That’s why we’re so behind. Must have the decorations up, y’know. First guests arriving day after tomorrow. ”

Countdown to Christmas? Surely not yet...

I don't know about you but I am seriously miffed when I see Christmas items appearing in the stores at the end of August (the moment the back to school sale is over). Isn't this overkill? How can Christmas have any magic at all if we're bombarded with Silent Night and leaping reindeer all through the fall? I remember my childhood Christmases as magic because they just appeared in the middle of dreary winter. Suddenly there were toys and crackers in the stores, turkeys at the butcher shop, children singing carols on street corners. We bought the Christmas tree on Christmas eve and took it home to decorate that evening. Dark evenings suddenly twinkled with lights. There were good smells in the kitchens. A wonderful sense of hope and anticipation grew inside me. It couldn't be long now! This makes me sound as if I'm a contemporary of Dickens but this was really how it was in an Engish village until recently.

However, now I find I'm joining the enemy and talking about Christmas in October. Actually I'm talking about a book, called THE TWELVE CLUES OF CHRISTMAS, by a fabulous, outstandingly marvelous author called Rhys Bowen (known to be modest as well as a great writer :) and it will be in stores on November 6. Not that anybody will notice because November 6 is election day!
I hope on November 7 that people will feel like celebrating with a good book or licking their wounds by curling up with a good book and will then rush out to buy it.

So I thought I'd start my own little countdown to the launch of the book by posting some sneak previews from the book. The first one is tomorrow. Let me know what you think.

Good Day, Bay Day

Thursday was a day of highs and lows for me. I got great news from my publisher that my upcoming book, The Twelve Clues of Christmas, has received a starred review from Library Journal. This joins a starred review from Publisher's Weekly, a top pick from RT Reviews and a glowing reviews from Kirkus. All great news.
But my joy yesterday was tempered because it was also the day of a friend's funeral. So I've been in reflective mood. Among other things it made me realize how casually I and fellow mystery writers write about death. For us death is usually clever ways to kill, evil murderers to be outsmarted. And wedon't really take into account what a devastating thing death is for a family.

There have been times when I have been aware in my books of the effect death has on families. In my Constable Evans novel, Evan's Gate,(that was my one and only Edgar nomination) the whole story revolves around the loss of a little girl years ago and the disintegration of the family as they live with guilt. That was one of the stories of which I'm most proud. But even in my Royal Spyness novels, that are essentially comedies, I try not to trivialize the actual murder. My victim is often an evil person who deserves what he gets. That way I don't feel so bad about bumping him off.

But I have read plenty of books in which someone falls over dead in the punch bowl at a wedding and the sleuth gleefully says "Oh goody. A murder. Let's solve it." This always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I realize our books are written to entertain. Readers love the puzzle, the suspense, the danger. And they also love that we can bring evil-doers to justice and make everything all right in the end. It's not often that this happens in real life, is it?