Rhys celebrates pub day for GOD REST YE ROYAL GENTLEMEN.

 RHYS BOWEN:  Hooray, hooray, today is publication day!

A week late but never mind, GOD REST YE ROYAL GENTLEMEN is finally in a bookstore near you or arriving on your Kindle or audio. I’ve just been doing a couple of weeks of podcasts, interviews, Zoom events with bookstores as well as signing boxes and boxes of books!

But now I’m excited that the book has been released into the wild in good time for the upcoming holidays. It’s the second Christmas book in this series and I’ve pulled out all the stops to make this the Olde English Christmas to remember (complete with a body or two, naturally). 

Georgie’s family is there is force, all the characters you love or hate. AND the royal family is also there, spending Christmas at Sandringham where something strange and creepy might be happening… enough said. You’ll have to read the book to find out why Georgie might be summoned to the queen. Oh and Queenie is in evidence. What possible disaster can she cause this time. (hint: it’s a big one)

So Jenn and Hank were gracious enough to interview me for various bookstores last week and now my Jungle Red sisters are out in force to pepper me with questions. 

HANK:  How much fun was it to remember your childhood holiday traditions while writing this book?Did any of the escapades come from real life?

RHYS: Hank, first thank you for the fabulous interview questions. I so much enjoyed our chat and you made it so relaxing and fun.

I have to confess that this book is a chance to relive the holidays of my childhood.  I remember it as a magical time, completely uncommercial, with lots of feasting and fun. My school madrigal group went carol singing in a posh neighborhood and we got invited in for mince pies and wassail bowl. The house was decorated with greenery. The feast ended with flaming Christmas pudding containing secret silver charms that foretold your future, and we played lots of silly games, including sardines (which is reverse hide and seek with everyone seeking the hidden person, then cramming in with him when he’s found until you are packed in like sardines!)

All of the above appear in the book.

HALLIE: Rhys, this is the fifteenth Royal Spyness series novel and yet it keeps feeling fresh. Each time out, you reveal something new about Lady Georgie. This time you’ve put her in a particularly ticklish situation, and I’m wondering if she surprised you as much as I suspect she’s going to surprise some of your readers? 

RHYS: Hallie, thank you. I’m glad you still find the series fresh. I try never to put Georgie in similar situations and more importantly, I want the reader to watch her grow. She’s obviously matured during 15 books, gained confidence since being married, and has become more than an accidental sleuth. I have to say that my characters continually surprise me. They do and say things I hadn’t expected and then my plots go off in directions I hadn’t planned. I’ve learned to go with the flow and just follow along.  If I’m surprised then you are surprised.

LUCY BURDETTE: I am a huge fan of this series and can’t wait for next week! Just reading the first chapter about the holiday houseparty that Georgie’s planning to throw makes me worry… I’m wondering whether these are the easiest books to write because you have the voice down so perfectly?

RHYS: IN a way they are easy to write because I do know the characters so well now. It is an ensemble cast and each time it’s like coming to a family reunion. It’s really one long life-story gradually unfolding. Georgie’s voice came to me perfectly in the first pages of Her Royal Spyness and she still dictates perfectly. The books are a joy to write because they are funny. I love to laugh and I’m always calling out to John to tell him what awful thing Queenie has just done, or Mummy has said.

JENN McKINLAY: Lady Georgie is my role model. I want to be her when I grow up! I love that this book is set against the holidays. Does writing about Christmas make you nostalgic for the holiday season across the pond or did you bring your traditions with you?

RHYS: Jenn--fabulous interview yesterday! It went so smoothly and everyone loved it.

And it makes me very nostalgic, Jenn, although it’s for a time and not a place. Christmas in England now has the same commericial hype as it does here. I’m nostalgic for a simpler time: walking through the snow to midnight mass,  smaller gifts, emphasis on family interactions. I have tried to recreate some of the traditions: my mum always baked sausage rolls and mince pies as our Christmas snacks and I do that. I serve Christmas pudding (although nobody likes it except John and me) We do play charades and other silly games.  One year we tried home made gifts (it wasn’t a great success).

DEBS: Rhys, I would love your Christmas pudding!

RHYS: I'll mail you a slice if you like!

JULIA: I am so excited for this book!!! I love all the Lady Georgie novels, but I have a well-known soft spot for Christmas mysteries and romances. Speaking of which, now that Georgie has landed her Darcy (or was it vice versa?) how are you keeping the spirit of romance alive in the series? It can be hard to transition a will-they-won’t-they couple into matrimony without things getting a little less bubbly.

RHYS: Good question, Julia. Obviously I loved the will they/won’t they stories in the earlier books. That delicious romantic tension is so appealing but it can’t go on forever. Neither can Georgie not entirely trusting Darcy to be faithful. But I think readers are ready for the next chapter in their lives and we’ve had romantic episodes with Georgie’s friend Belinda, Georgie’s Mummy to keep a little spice going.

DEBS: Rhys, I think up until now THE TWELVE CLUES OF CHRISTMAS has been my favorite Georgie book--so clever and so funny--so I am especially looking forward to this one! I adore all the British Christmas traditions and we celebrate with some of them even here in Texas (it’s not Christmas without crackers!)

The Royal Spyness books have always had great covers, but this one knocks it out of the box. It is gorgeous!  Were you thrilled when you saw it? Did it go through more than one iteration?

RHYS: It is a lovely cover. My only concern is that the man behind Georgie looks a little too suave and elegant to be Darcy. I picture him a little wilder, don’t you? And hunkier.

Who else is ready for a simple, calm and nostalgic Christmas? Are there any questions you'd like to ask me?

The Christmas Feast

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Happy Christmas to all our dear readers from all of us at Jungle Red! We hope everyone is having a fabulous day, however you celebrate.

And now, let's talk about what we're eating!

We've never really had a set tradition for Christmas Day dinner, partly because we often went to family. But the last couple of  years we've stayed at home, which I absolutely love. I mean, you have to use the good china at least once or twice a year, right? 

But what to cook? I refuse to do turkey. Too much work and mess and I don't like the Thanksgiving foods well enough to want to do them twice. So last year, I brought home from England Jamie Oliver's Christmas Dinner cookbook. I was so excited! We'd have a proper English dinner! Then my darling daughter insisted that we should have....enchiladas. And I made them. From scratch, including the sauce. Two kinds of enchiladas, as one guest was a vegetarian. By the time I got those pans in the oven, my kitchen looked like I'd murdered someone. I was exhausted, and oh, the mess.

This year, I'm sticking to my guns. A standing rib roast from our local organic butcher, a la Julia Child, with horseradish sauce. 

Jamie's baked mashed potatoes with Red Leicester cheese. Jamie's baked creamed spinach. And Yorkshire puddings! (Jamie's recipe is fab.) We'll have Christmas crackers for everyone (the English pull-apart favors, which contain jokes and toys and silly paper hats.) And for dessert, I'm getting out the trifle bowl I haven't used in years for a proper English trifle, and we're buying Sticky Toffee pudding from Whole Foods.

And the vegetarian guest is now a "former vegetarian", so no worries there.

What's on your table, REDS?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Champagne, and oysters Rockefeller. (If I can get it together to make them. It's a huge pain, but so delicious!) Rack of lamb, and yes, Yorkshire pudding! (Which is so much fun when it works.) Asparagus, maybe, grilled, with Hollandaise. (SUPER easy, from Joy of Cooking.)  Dessert, hum. Got to think about that. Maybe something with lemon curd? Any Ideas?

And really, Debs, I think turkey is easy. It just has a long ramp up time. Rack of lamb? 20 minutes tops.

And now I am starving.

HALLIE EPHRON: Christmas eve is the big dinner chez nous. We get dressed up (like Downton Abbey without the servants). But these days it begins at 5:30 and ends at 6... because we re determined to include the grandbabies before they melt down and must be summarily tossed into the bathtub. A hot bath soothes savage beasties. And before the reading of THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS.

To drink: Prosecco and sparkly cider. Lobster bisque. I follow an ancient NY Times (Craig Claiborne) recipe that is spectacular and all the lobster meat goes into it. Potato pancakes with... maybe a rib roast? I'll figure that out at the market. Desert will be mandelbrot, a double-cooked cookie that's full of chocolate and pecans and maraschino cherries.

Christmas dinner we share with friends, Pat Kennedy (who's been a guest here on Jungle Red) and her family. Pat's making beef wellington! And I'm bringing baked stuffed potatoes. Food at her house is always yummy.  


DEBS: Hallie, we want the lobster bisque recipe!

INGRID THOFT: We start the day with a breakfast spread that includes baked French toast or cinnamon rolls, fruit salad, bagels and lox, and sometimes pumpkin bread.  Baked stuffed shrimp has often been on the Christmas dinner menu, and I swear, my mom’s is better than any restaurant version!  Beef tenderloin and prime rib have also been featured, and now I’m craving Yorkshire Pudding, which we don’t generally have on Christmas, but it would be a delicious addition.  A Buche de Noel will be the main event at dessert, and there are usually chocolate truffles that are passed around having been sent from relatives or friends.  We’ll wash it all down with wine or sparkling cider, and for those who still have room, a small glass of eggnog.  Let the food coma begin!

RHYS BOWEN: Our day begins with hot mince pies and sausage rolls. Then a full English brunch late morning. Goodies at tea-time and then turkey, roast potatoes, veggies followed by apple crumble, custard, cream, and Christmas pudding for those who like it! There will be 9 of us this year. Oh, and I've a bottle of good champagne waiting too.

DEBS: One bottle, Rhys???
JENN McKINLAY: Mimosas to start with and ooey gooey pastry. Ham. Always, ham, which I love so it's no hardship. Then it's scalloped potatoes or sweet potato casserole, green beans, a green leafy salad, and dinner rolls (popovers preferred). Those are the highlights and dessert is homemade apple pie, a platter of cookies, cheese cake or maybe a pecan pie, depending on the mood of the chef (me).

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Here on the Big Island (I can't tell you how luxe it feels to be typing that!) we're having a simple made-at-home meal before heading out to the beach, also with champagne, like Rhys! A big, big change from our usual Christmas dinner for 25 - 40 guests! For Christmas Eve, however, we went out to eat at the wonderful Ponds restaurant in Hilo, for the traditional Christmas feast of fresh fish and ridiculously good tropical fruits! It was far superior to our usual Christmas eve dinner of takeout Chinese. I will admit to indulging in a gooey dessert. As much as I love prime rib, ham and mashed potatoes, I'm not sorry to pass them by just for once!

LUCY BURDETTE: I feel a little guilty saying this when you all are preparing such fabulous spreads on Christmas day – we are going out to brunch! We will be in between celebrations with two sets of family, and that makes Christmas a breather day. The night before we will have crabcakes and shrimp and Caramel cake, so that’s my big holiday cooking. Except for cookies, we have lots of cookies on hand! Happy Christmas everyone! (as they say on THE CROWN.)

DEBS: I'm sure we all wish we were having what Julia's having, but if you have a moment, please share your feast with us!

Rhys Bowen Serves up "The Twelve Clues of Christmas"

HALLIE EPHRON: I know we've just cleared Halloween but at Jungle Red, it's lookin' a lot like Christmas with Rhys Bowen's newest A Royal Spyness mystery, "The Twelve Clues of Christmas," launching this week! The series featuring impoverished minor royal Georgina has the fun of a 1930's English manor house with the challenge of an intricately plotted mystery, all wrapped up with a good old fashioned love story, and served with a side of roasted chestnuts.

Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie, daughter to the Duke of Atholt and Rannoch, flat broke and getting by on charm an sheer guts, is such a fun character. What fresh hell is she facing in The Twelve Clues of Christmas? (And PS, congratulations on your **starred** review in Publisher's Weekly!)

RHYS BOWEN: Actually Georgie feels that she has fallen on her feet this time. She has managed to escape from her beastly sister-in-law and the drafty Scottish castle to assist the hostess of a posh Christmas house party in a pretty village in Devonshire. Plenty to eat and drink and those she loves best in the neighborhood too (including a certain dark and dashing Irishman).

What she hadn't counted on was a prison break from bleak Dartmoor prison and a series of mysterious accidents that may not be accidents at all. And the village has more than its fair share of folk law, including the Lovey Curse and the local witch. Georgie will need all her detecting skills to sort out this complicated puzzle (and stay alive).

HALLIE: I love the name of the village where the book's manor house takes place: Tiddleton-Under-Lovey. Tell us you made that up. And what other names did you consider?

RHYS: Of course the name Tiddleton-Under-Lovey is a made up name. But England is full of weird and wonderful place names, even funnier than this. How about Giggleswick or Fudgepack-Upon-Humber, or Steeple Bumpstead and next door Helion's Bumpstead. Then there's Aindersby Quernhow and Burton-le-Coggles. Chipping Sodbury is not far from Upton Snodbury. I also like Nether Wallop and Bishop's Itchington. Upper Slaughter and Lower Slaughter are close to Stow-on-the-Wold and Burton-on-the-Water. Do any British readers have a favorite place name they'd like to share?

HALLIE: Chipping Sodbury sounds like something you could get for lunch at a pub. When we were training about near York I loved the names New Earswick which is near Nether Poppleton. 

Rhys, what are the requirements of a traditional British Christmas, and what are we Americans missing?

RHYS: Christmas pudding for starters, traditionally with silver charms inside, and each charm with a meaning. If you find a boot in your slice you are going to travel, a pig and you're a glutton, a button and you'll remain a bachelor for life.

Then there are crackers (not the dry kind you eat with cheese but paper tubes you pull). They snap with a small explosion and contain a paper hat, a small prize and a riddle (usually bad although we liked last year's Where do you find the Andies? Answer: On the end of the Wristies.)

HALLIE: (Which reminds me of my favorite ever joke -- as in the only one I can remember: Where does the king keep his army? Answer: Up his sleevie.)

RHYS: Christmas of my childhood included going around the village singing carols door to door, being invited in for mince pies and hot sausage rolls, playing silly family games like charades. As a child I really enjoyed getting a snow-house--a cardboard house decorated with cotton wool snow and containing little presents that one pulled out through the windows.

I guess I could sum up the traditional Christmas with one word NON-COMMERCIAL. Nobody expected a Lexus under the tree.

HALLIE: Sounds perfectly lovely.

Okay, shopping list please. If I want to recreate a traditional English Christmas, what should I go about procuring?

RHYS: You can buy good Christmas puddings, although the traditional kind were made on pudding Sunday, first sunday of November then laced with brandy or rum to help them mature. Jars of mince meat for little mince pies. Sausage meat for the sausage rolls. You can find crackers in places like Cost Plus. Then get a CD of the choir boys from Kings College Cambridge singing all those old traditional carols, have a big yule log roaring in the fireplace and heat up a good wassail punch.

Actually this book comes with a compendium of recipes, games, traditions in the back. All you'd need to recreate the Olde English Christmas.

HALLIE: Any clues on where your book tour will be taking you, and will you be home in time for Christmas?

RHYS: All in place and ready to go, Hallie. You can find the schedule on my website, www.rhysbowen.com.

I start off with a launch party at Book Passage in Corte Madera (which you know very well!), then on to Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, Murder by the Book in Houston, two stores and a TV show in Seattle (where I have to demonstrate sausage rolls and silly games on camera!) Then Powells in Portland and several more stores in the greater Bay Area. And yes, I'll be home for Christmas, and making those mince pies and other goodies while I sing along with my favorite carols.

HALLIE: Thanks, Rhys! Hoping everyone's perfect Christmas includes a copy of "The Twelve Clues of Christmas" under their tree.

So, Reds, what do you miss most about the Christmas memories of your childhood? Rhys is giving away a copy of the new book to the best commenter of the day.

Comfort Foods

RHYS BOWEN:If you're anything like me you've spent the last week or so baking. And if you're like me, you've been baking the things your mother baked before you. My family always expects mince pies and sausage rolls to eat as Christmas day snacks. A Christmas cake in the afternoon, complete with white frosting. They are not so keen on Christmas pudding but I have to have to anyway because it's part of the English Christmas tradition--it should be brought to the table flaming with silver coins and charms inside.

The smells and tastes of Christmas take me straight back to my childhood. Isn't it amazing the power smells and tastes have to evoke memory? I use them frequently in my books to create Lady Georgie's world of 1930s England. (I don't want to imply that my childhood was in the 1930s, but I'm sure her childhood was pretty much like mine, down to the freezing houses with no central heating). So Georgie eats what I remember eating--my sumptuous feast becomes her sumptuous feast.

And I love reading about meals in other peoples' books. One of my favorite books in the past few years was Nicole Mones's The Last Chinese Chef--an exciting novel that is all about the legends of Chinese cooking. And of course I'm looking forward to blogmate Lucy's new series making its debut next week, featuring a food critic. I hope there will be lots of description of menus.

So how about the rest of you? Do you like reading about food, writing about food? Was your holiday full of childhood tastes and smells?

ROSEMARY HARRIS: A little food is a nice touch in a book. It helps to know if someone is hanging on the refrigerator door eating out of containers or setting a nice table for herself, even if she's alone. Whether her idea of fine dining is pepperoni pizza or Paul Bocuse. Paula Holliday isn't much of a cook so she relies on diner food - some of which is pretty tasty - to keep her going. MY WIP is partly set in Brooklyn so you know there will be more food involved.

My family traditions have changed over the years. I like to have a pot of apple cider simmering on the stove so the house smells nice when people come over - even though not many drink it! And once it dips under 50 degrees I make a fire. My two fave holiday smells!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Baking. Huh. Nope, not me. Sorry, I'm not a baker. I love to cook, and I am a good experimenter, but you can't experiment with baking. That's--chemistry. I bow to you bakers, and will happily accept cookies.

My Gramma Minnie made a fabulous coffee cake, and it filled her house with cinnamon and mocha fragrance--still, my favoirite. After she died, we all pounced on her recipe file box. And we found the recipe! Hurray. But then--it had no quantities. Flour, coffee, sugar, chocolate, etc. No amounts. So the recipe is extinct.

JAN BROGAN - First off, Rhys, I must have that mince pie recipe - mostly because I've never really understood mince pie and I would love to know what's inside from a real, true, Englishwoman.

HALLIE EPHRON: Oh, Rhys, I LOVE Christmas pudding. With hard sauce. Or just hard sauce, served on an index finger.

My mother did not bake. She did not cook except the occasional command performance after which she left the kitchen looking as if it had been hit by Irene and expected others to do the washing up.

I cook all the time. And for the holidays I'm making hanukah cookies (mandelbrot) and iced ginger cookies and trying out a new recipe for a spice cake with a maple bourbon glaze.

LUCY BURDETTE: My father was the only one in the family who would eat mince pie--which I believe he most appreciated as a vehicle for the hard sauce. I already made my double batch of iced sugar cookies as we'll be visiting family over Christmas and not in charge. Somehow a coffee cake called "Aunt Alvina's crumb cake" became the gold standard amongst my family. It's a recipe in the back of AN APPETITE FOR MURDER, though no one has any recollection of an Aunt Alvina. Nor can we find her on the family tree. It's mostly butter, sugar and flour, and completely delicious!

And Rhys, I loved THE LAST CHINESE CHEF! Also AFTERTASTE, by Meredith Mileti who was a guest here earlier this year. I love, love, love food in fiction!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Ladies, I'm salivating just reading your comments. So let's see: Baking. I make cookies, and Ross does all the cakes and pies. And I do enjoy reading about food in fiction, because it adds another sensory impression for the reader. If I read, "She stirred the orange chicken in the wok," I can see, smell and taste it.

I made the Rev. Clare Fergusson a foodie because when creating the character, I tried to think of what kind of hobbies or pastimes a young, female Army officer constantly on the move might have. Cooking and running seemed the logical choice. It's added some nice downtime moments to the book, as well as giving characters interesting "business" to perform while talking. Chopping, stirring, and tasting certainly livens up he-said, she-said dialog.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I'm not much of a baker, but my mom made wonderful pies when I was child. My fave? Mincemeat! I still love it, but unfortunately I'm the only one in the family who does, and I don't want to make a whole pie just for me. (Maybe I should reconsider that...) I love Christmas pudding, too, Rhys! But again, I'm the odd one out, so must fall back on store-bought.

I don't make Christmas cookies or candy, but I do make lovely gingerbread (the recipe is from Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking.) And nothing smells more like Christmas than gingerbread.

I love books about food, and food in books (so looking forward to our Lucy's Appetite for Murder). What fictional (and real) characters eat and cook and how they feel about food tells so many things about character, personality, background, place... And, as Julia, says, food provides a very nice "bit of business" so you don't have talking heads in your scenes.