Driving in the Dark

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Like many people of, ahem, a certain age. I'm not wild about driving after dark. Which makes it unfortunate that I live in southern Maine, where the sunset time swings between 4:30 to 4:00 and back again in the two months surrounding the solstice (this Sunday! Get your bonfire wood ready!)

 

There aren't a lot of opportunities to avoid driving in the dark during this period, unless you're sheltering in place at home. However, last night, I made the hour-and-twenty minutes drive from Wiscasset, where my grandson and his parents live, to my house, and I realized there was, actually, so much to love about nighttime driving in December.

It's wonderful to see houses lit up, some with extravagant displays that look as if they bought out the entire stock of Home Depot, and some with single white candles in their windows. There are homes swagged with exuberant, flashing multi-colored strands, and stately early-19th century manses with ground-set spotlights showing off their ropes of greenery.

 Her local volunteer fire department has the station house outlined in red, white and blue (I can only guess it also serves for the Fourth of July) and mine has bands of red and green shining over the enormous truck doors. Up the road a bit, the public works department has parked a bucket loader at the entrance to the sand and salt storage, well-polished and shining with festive colored lights.

 

Driving over the long bridge from Woolwich to Bath, the skyline is dominated by Bath Iron Work's iconic "Big Bertha," a maritime crane strung with lights and carrying a whole Christmas tree at the top of its boom. 

 

 

Arriving in Portland on Route 295, you get a sweeping view of Maine's largest city (pop 69,000!) from the spotlight-illuminated Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (1869) to the dome of city hall with its golden flying ship in full sail (1909 - it's the fourth one, the other three burned down) and our weird and beautiful park lights designed by artist Pandora LaCasse. (Are they eggs? Fruit? Aliens? Ornaments? Nobody knows.)

 

It's such a gift; all the work that goes into these decorations, done by employees and volunteers and homeowners and renters. You don't see your lights from the inside, not really. They're a present for all the strangers, like me, driving past your house or your workplace, making it a joy to be driving in the dark.

 

Dear readers, what do you see after dark in your neck of the woods this time of the year? 

What I Did On My Summer Vacation!

 RHYS BOWEN: I have just returned from a short trip to England. It was all very intense as the object was for John to see all his family members.  His sister lives in Cornwall in a fifteenth century manor house (she married into an important Cornish family). Her sons and their families mostly live within reach so we had one big family meal after another.

One of the things I love about being in Cornwall is eating my favorite foods. Cornish pasties:

Cream teas:

The good news is that all calories leave when you pass the Cornish border.

The driving is always interesting as the roads are, well, rather narrow.

One of my favorite excursions is to St. Michael's Mount. This time the tide was up but when it's out you can walk across.

Then we went on to Bath and I spent two lovely days wandering around my home city, evoking memories and enjoying the new spa with rooftop pool. 

In London an extra treat. It was the Chelsea Flower Show and the main street in Chelsea and turned itself into Chelsea in Bloom with every shop doing a fabulous flower display:

As I look at this photos I'm already filled with nostalgia. It seems like a simpler, more sane life over there. 

What are your vacation plans this year? Who is going abroad?

Rhys on Home

 I’ve just returned from a trip to England, mainly to let John be with his many relatives. It was a lovely time, full of big family dinners, delicious lunches, cream teas and an endless stream of people coming and going. I enjoy being there, I love Cornwall and John’s family, but it is not home. Cornwall was somewhere we took vacations when I was very young. As sort of magical place that was different.

We also spent some time in London. London again is a place I know well. I spent a big chunk of time there, both at university and then living on Queen Anne Street behind Oxford Circus, working for the BBC at Broadcasting House (I could get up at eight thirty and be on the set by nine!). But again London is not home.

Which made me consider what exactly home is. I have lived in California for over fifty years. I have raised a family here, but is it home? I do find myself longing for the simple life in England, going to the village shop or the pub and meeting the neighbors. California is always fast paced, lots of traffic, new buildings.

So it was interesting for me to spend a few days in Bath, the city of my birth. I didn’t live there after the war when my parents moved to Kent where my father ran a factory, but I was a frequent visitor. My aunt Gwladys lived there, my godmother,--I could almost say my fairy godmother because that’s what she felt like to me. A single woman who had had a high powered job in the Admiralty during the war only to be kicked back to a secretarial position when the men came back. She quit and started teaching business instead. Long summer vacations gave her plenty of opportunity to travel and she traveled constantly. Everywhere she went she brought me back a doll. .I have them all in a cabinet and can name where they all came from.

From a very early age my parents would put me on a bus in London and Aunt Gwlad would meet me in Bath. There we would do exciting and different things: we’d go to a Persian restaurant and sit on cushions to eat. We went to plays and the opera. We visited her many and diverse friends like the old lady who lived alone in the mansion above the city, and we’d often have morning coffee with her friends in the Pump Room where an ancient orchestra played.

I left John in the hotel and wandered around Bath on my own. That was the road to my grandmother’s house, a lovely Georgian with molded ceiling. That’s the Francis Hotel where we once had an elegant lunch with my aunt’s haughty friend. And Pultney Bridge had a wool shop where I once was bought yarn and skirt material. It all came back to me. Look John,Jollys. They used to have lovely cream cakes (it was now shuttered). I remembered swimming in the Roman Baths before they discovered the bacteria content was not safe!  This time I indulged in the safer but more expensive new Thermae Spa with its rooftop warm pool. Such a treat.

I think a place knows when you were born there. I could feel it whispering ‘welcome home’ to me, and then, more disturbingly, ‘you don’t want to leave again, do you? You could come back here. Live a simple life here. Sit in the Parade Gardens and watch the river fall down the weir.’  So tempting. But we packed our bags and caught the train to London. Now home will have to wait until next year.

So Reddies, do you have a place that is definitely home for you? Or are you still looking and hoping to find it?

Royal Valentine is out today!

BUY NOW!

Jenn McKinlay: Well, this is thrilling! My first novella is out today. It's an ebook romcom set on Museum Mile in New York City in a fictional Museum of Literature. It features a Jane Austen exhibit and a surprise trip to Bath all set around Valentine's Day -- what's not to love? 

     I talked a little bit about how this novella came to be on my last What We're Writing post, you can read the explanation and snippet here: https://www.jungleredwriters.com/2021/11/what-were-writing-spite-by-jenn-mckinlay.html but the short version is that I wrote this ebook out of spite because while the audio book publisher who was looking for original content loved the ideas, they didn't love my existing audio book sales numbers. Huh. Well, I decided I would write the novellas anyway and see what happened. 

     What unexpectedly occurred was that I discovered I really liked having what I have come to think of as a research and development arm in my writing life. The novellas give me a chance to try out new plot lines, points of view, tropes, and other assorted writing mechanics that a publisher might not be on board with in the proposal stage. It is frightening, exhilarating, and challenging, and I love it. In fact, I have an idea that was germinated in this very book that I think might develop into my best series to date which never would have happened if I hadn't decided to play around with novella writing. So, I guess rejection really can pay some dividends.

     Speaking of dividends, I have an update. The audio rights for the novellas (there will be three this year) went to AUCTION! Four audio publishers were in the fray and by the end of it, we had an amazing deal! Needless to say, I am THRILLED since the whole point of writing these novellas (aside from being obsessed with the ideas) was to prove that first publisher wrong. Yeah, I know they couldn't care less but it was important to me. 

    So, here are some thank yous for the people who helped facilitate my bullheadedness. First, to author Jennifer Ashley for sharing her amazing copyeditor and fellow mystery author Traci Hall with me. Traci certainly put the manuscript under a microscope for which I am ever grateful. Additional thanks to author Lori Wilde, who recommended Llewellen Designs for the cover art. They crushed it! And lastly, my agent Christina Hogrebe and her team, particularly Hannah Rody-Wright, at JRA, for gamely taking on the selling of the audio rights. Let me tell you, I feel pretty darn lucky to have so much talent at my disposal.

Royal Valentine should be available wherever ebooks are sold, but Kindle might be the lone holdout on making it accessible. Amazon being Amazon, they like to keep self-pubbed authors exclusive but this was never about money for me so I decided to distribute it wide. Be sure to check out the alternative vendors like Nook, Kobo, etc., and HAPPY READING!

Here's a longer description of the novella for those who are interested: 

Molly Graham doesn't believe in love at first sight or fairy tales. She's been burned too many times before. When her best friend, Brianna Cho, challenges her to aim high and go for men who are out of her league, Molly can't imagine a worse way to spend Valentine's Day. When she stumbles across a very handsome British professor, Albert George, seeking refuge in her office during the Museum of Literature's Valentine's Day gala for the opening of their Austen exhibit, Molly can't help but be drawn to the fellow introverted academic. Together they ghost out of the event and embark upon a month long love affair. Molly is rethinking her stance on happily ever afters and plans to tell Al how she feels, but he disappears. Afraid something bad has happened, Molly searches for him only to discover there is no Albert George affiliated with the university. She's been played for a fool!

Molly is devastated. As registrar for the Museum of Literature, she is tasked with a trip to England to return the Jane Austen exhibition materials on loan from the Whitmore Estate in Bath. It's the only thing she has to look forward to and even this dream trip is a struggle. When she and Brianna arrive at Whitmore Manor, they are introduced to Earl Whitmore and his grandson Lord Insley, or as Molly knows him Albert George. She is shocked and dismayed to discover she has fallen in love with a viscount in line to be an earl. James Albert George Insley Whitmore, called Jamie by his friends and family, arranged for Molly to bring the materials back. He had to leave her unexpectedly, but he hasn't been able to forget her and he wants to win her back. Molly isn't having it. She refuses to be taken in twice. Jamie will have to channel his inner Fitzwilliam Darcy to prove to her that love conquers all and win her heart for good. 

Now what about you, Reds and Readers, have you ever surprised yourself by trying something new? What was it? And how did it go?

     

 

Cakes and Ale. A Guest Post by Marty Wingate

RHYS BOWEN: MY guest today has set her latest book in Bath, which is the city of my birth. A city I adore and always make time to stop over there when we are in England. What I like about it most is that so little has changed: the Georgian crescents, my grandmother's Georgian house on Landsdowne, the Roman baths where I once swam as a child and of course the restaurants and pubs... both dear to Marty's heart. So please welcome her now:

MARTY WINGATE: Give me a mystery with great characters and a compelling story, but also give me an atmosphere to make a book come alive. But by “atmosphere,” I don’t mean just tone—a gothic suspense or dark and gritty noir—but also the practicalities of setting, weather, and the food and drink. For me, these elements combine to give the story life on and off the page. That is why I made Bath, the setting for The Bodies in the Library (book one in my new First Edition Library mysteries) as alive as the places in some of my favorite books.

A sense of place is vital. On a visit to Edinburgh, and deep into Ian Rankin’s Rebus books, I walked across the Meadows toward the city center and marveled that I was following John Rebus’s footsteps. I had half a mind to walk over to Marchmont and find the building and his flat, but brought myself up short. I might’ve been reading the book in which Rebus had let the flat to some students, and so he wouldn’t be there anyway. I kept walking, but, still with the character in mind, to the Oxford Bar to have a whisky.

The Norfolk Broads, in all their flat, bleak beauty, come alive in Elly Griffiths’s Ruth Galloway series. Not just the scenery, but also the weather plays a serious role here—the rain, the icy roads in winter, the remnants of standing stones in the boggy ground, shreds of fog suspended in the air. But when she’s at home, even though surrounded by such a place, Ruth’s main concern is to cook up the quickest meal she can think of.

Certainly I want Andrea Camillieri’s Inspector Montalbano to catch whoever has carried out such a horrific murder, but also I want to know what his housekeeper has left him in the fridge for his dinner. And, I’m not sure I could make it through an entire Bruno Chief of Police book without Martin Walker’s protagonist harvesting from his garden and cooking what always sounds like a feast.

I do keep coming back to the food and drink, don’t I? In The Bodies in the Library, I wanted Bath to come alive in its Georgian splendor, Roman past, and love of all things Austen. Most importantly, I wanted it to exist as the home of the Golden Age of Mystery library, for which my main character, Hayley Burke, is curator. Of course, she is not only a curator of a collection of first editions by Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and the others, but also the practical 45-year-old single mother of a college student, daughter of an invalid mother, and ex of a man that tries her patience on a regular basis.

I enlisted the help of food and drink in this effort to create Hayley as a whole person, and I started with the Ready Meal aisle at Waitrose.

Can you love a grocery store? It’s certainly one of my favorite places to go when my husband and I spend time in Britain. We usually stay in a flat, and those fresh dinners—cottage pie, lasagne, macaroni cheese—are perfect. They’re perfect for Hayley, too, who has slacked off cooking since her daughter moved away.

But there is more to food and drink than dinner—there is tea (or coffee) and cake. These are not just something to keep the character busy; they are vital elements to the story. Without the satisfaction of nabbing the last fruit scone at the Waitrose café the day after the murder, would Hayley have had the clarity of mind to make a plan with Val?

My in-house copy editor (my husband) would not allow this post to go further without mention of pubs and ale.

I stay true to Bath as it is today—I’d like to think a reader could use The Bodies in the Library as a map to walk around the city—except on one tiny point, and that is the pub I call the Minerva. A tiny pub on Northumberland Place does exist, but its real name is the Coeur de Lion. I changed the name, you see, because I wanted that nod to the Roman history in Bath. But otherwise, it’s the same place—you could march right in there and ask for an orange squash with fizzy water and a packet of crisps as Hayley does. Although, her ulterior motive is to question a shady character.

I changed nothing about the Raven, a fabulous pub on the corner of Quiet and Queen streets and not far from the Jane Austen Centre. Eat and drink downstairs or up—Hayley prefers upstairs, where she might be able to grab the corner table by the window. Order one of their house ales (I am instructed here to tell you they are brewed by Blindmans Brewery in Frome, Somerset) and a pie, such as chicken-and-mushroom or beef-and-ale or vegetarian, sitting atop a pile of buttery mash.

Hungry? Thirsty? Join Hayley for cakes and ale as she solves a murder inspired by the Golden Age of Mystery.

Marty Wingate writes The First Edition Library mysteries, set in Bath and featuring Hayley Burke, a curator of rare and collectible books from the Golden Age of Mystery who has never read a detective story in her life. Book one – The Bodies in the Library (Berkley) – was released October 8. She leads garden tours to Britain, spending free moments deep in research. Or in pubs.