Some Real History in this Mystery

LUCY BURDETTE: So happy to welcome our friend Sherry Harris back to the blog. Today she's talking about her new book which has a fascinating backstory...I'm going to let her tell it...

SHERRY HARRIS: Thanks, Reds for having me back! I can’t believe I’m here to talk about my sixth novel in the Sarah Winston Garage Sale mysteries, The Gun Also Rises.

When my editor at Kensington and I were talking about the sixth book I knew I wanted Sarah to organize a book sale for someone. A book sale full of mysteries. My editor thought adding a Hemingway-like character with a missing rare book would be interesting. I read a lot of Hemingway during my high school and college days. And I will never forget an enlightening discussion with a professor about the symbolism in Hemingway’s short story “A Clean Well-Lighted Place” when I did an independent study. But that was a long time ago.

In preparation for writing The Gun Also Rises I started reading more about Hemingway and came across a fascinating story some of you may be familiar with—especially if you’ve read The Moveable Feast—but I had never heard.

Here’s the short version: in 1922 Hadley Hemingway was traveling from Paris to Lausanne, Switzerland to meet Ernest. She packed up his works in progress including the carbon copies.

Ernest had been working on Nick Adams stories for months. Hadley stowed her bags and went to buy a bottle of water. When she came back the bag with the manuscripts was gone. A conductor helped Hadley search the train but the manuscripts were never seen again. If you would like to read more about the story here’s a link: 

I sat there stunned. Could anything be more perfect? But how could I use it? Should I use it? Back to my editor for permission to change from a Hemingway-like character to using the event from Hemingway’s life. He was as interested as I was in the story and told me to go for it.

 I decided that Sarah would find the missing bag with the manuscripts in her client’s attic tucked in with all of the mystery books. She takes them down to her client who is stunned that they are in her house. She asks Sarah to give her some time to process the find so Sarah goes back to the attic to work. When Sarah returns, she finds her client injured and that the maid has stolen the manuscripts. During Sarah’s search for the manuscripts she runs into a suspicious rare book dealer and a fanatical group called The League of Literary Treasure Hunters. They are convinced Sarah knows where the missing manuscripts are and follow her all over town.

The story still intrigues me. At the time Hemingway was a well-known war correspondent, but he wasn’t the famous author he is today. I keep picturing someone thinking, “There’s a nice bag.” They steal it and dump all the manuscripts in the nearest trash bin. Who knows? Maybe they did Ernest a favor with all the rewriting he had to do.

Readers: Are you familiar with the Hadley story? Any guesses as to what really happened to those manuscripts? I will give away a copy of The Gun Also Rises to someone who leaves a comment.

Here’s more about the book:

TO RECOVER A PRICELESS MANUSCRIPT . . .
 
A wealthy widow has asked Sarah Winston to sell her massive collection of mysteries through her garage sale business. While sorting through piles of books stashed in the woman's attic, Sarah is amazed to discover a case of lost Hemingway stories, stolen from a train in Paris back in 1922. How did they end up in Belle Winthrop Granville's attic in Ellington, Massachusetts, almost one hundred years later?
 
WILL SARAH HAVE TO PAY WITH HER LIFE?

Before Sarah can get any answers, Belle is assaulted, the case is stolen, a maid is killed, and Sarah herself is dodging bullets. And when rumors spread that Belle has a limited edition of The Sun Also Rises in her house, Sarah is soon mixed up with a mobster, the fanatical League of Literary Treasure Hunters, and a hard-to-read rare book dealer. With someone willing to kill for the Hemingway, Sarah has to race to catch the culprit—or the bell may toll for her . . .

Bio:

Sherry Harris is the Agatha Award nominated author of the Sarah Winston Garage Sale mystery series and the upcoming Chloe Jackson Redneck Riviera mystery series. She is the President of Sisters in Crime, a member of the Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime, the New England Chapter of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers.

In her spare time Sherry loves reading and is a patent holding inventor. Sherry, her husband, and guard dog Lily are living in northern Virginia until they figure out where they want to move to next.

She blogs with the talented women at Wickedcozyauthors.com

What We're Reading

INGRID THOFT
It's time for another edition of "What We're Reading" here at Jungle Reds.  I always love to hear what the other Reds and all of you are enjoying; my TBR pile threatens to topple over after getting so many terrific suggestions!

I just finished MONUMENT ROAD by Michael Wiley, which is a terrific, unique novel featuring an investigator in Florida.  Michael will be my guest on Wednesday, and I'll let him tell you more about the book.  WILD FIRE the final Jimmy Perez book by Ann Cleeves is off to  strong start, although I suspect I won't want it to end.  I'm looking forward to the latest Jodi Picoult, A SPARK OF LIGHT and I'm saving the new Robert Galbraith, LETHAL WHITE for an upcoming vacation.  I gave in and will be reading that one electronically; if I were to drop the hardcover on my face when drowsy, I might break my nose!

How about you, Reds?  What are you enjoying in the book department these days?

LUCY BURDETTE: What we're reading can never come too often for me! I finished HOW TO FIND LOVE IN A BOOKSHOP by Veronica Henry and loved it. It's perfect for readers who are desperate for some happy endings after difficult life events (like me!) I also loved Juliet Blackwell's THE LOST CAROUSEL OF PROVENCE, with multiple strands from two periods in the past and one in the present and lots of French countryside and chateau viewings. And I've just started Joshilyn Jackson's GODS IN ALABAMA and Hemingway's MOVEABLE FEAST, which I'm chagrined not to have read before!

HALLIE EPHRON: I'm reading THE CHILD by Fiona Barton. Just started it but intrigued by the multiple viewpoint and the SECRET... which I'm sure will be revealed. Also reading Ellen Byron's latest, MARDI GRAS MURDER. And Amy Stewart's GIRL WAITS WITH A GUN. I'm *watching* SCOTT AND BAILEY on Amazon. That show is so smart and so character-driven, it's like reading a many chaptered superb novel.

RHYS BOWEN: I just finished THE STRANGER DIARIES by Elly Griffiths. I'm not sure when it's going to be released in the States but I think it's out in UK now. It's terrific--gothic, multiple narrators, a creepy school, an old story...not usually my cup of tea but it's well written. And now I've also just started a Juliet Blackwell: THE PARIS KEY. I've had such a stressful time recently that I needed a Paris fix.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I love "What We're Reading!" Last week I read LETHAL WHITE, the new Robert Galbraith, which I loved. But it did take me a week! I'm behind on everything else, though. I just finished THE CHALK PIT by Elly Griffiths, so now need to read the newest Ruth Galloway, THE DARK ANGEL, to see what happens next. I've been hearing a lot of good buzz about the Elly Griffiths standalone, THE STRANGER DIARIES so have that on my list. I seem to have read Ann Cleeves' Shetland books in bits and pieces, so would like to go back and start the series from the beginning before I read WILD FIRE. I will be reading a good bit on my Kindle the next month, as on Tuesday I fly to the UK for three and a half weeks. Of course, I suspect there will be some book shop finds there, too!

On the watching front, I discovered the UK TV adaptation of the Cormoran Strike books (Robert Galbraith/aka JK Rowling) which are available on Amazon Prime for a couple of bucks an episode. These are so good that I'm sad I only have one episode left. I'm hoping that LETHAL WHITE will air in the UK while I'm there.

INGRID: I loved the STRIKE TV series, Debs.  I'm jealous you might get to see the newest installment while in the UK!

JENN MCKINLAY: Currently, I am on deadline with a book due Nov 1, galleys due Oct 23, and revisions due Oct 30. There is little to no reading happening for me. LOL! I am, however, listening to ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE while I walk my dogs every day and, interestingly (to me), I don't think I would like this book nearly as much as I do if not for the incredible narration by Cathleen McCarron. She is absolutely brilliant. I'm not a big fan of unlikable protagonists but the narration, hearing Eleanor in my head like this, is making me reluctantly fond of her. I'm halfway through so we'll see how it wraps up.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  I am reading for a contest, so I can’t tell you everything :-) but out of the contest  (not eligible) THE 71/2 DEATH OF EVELYN HARDCASTLE.  It is an amazing tour de force of point of view, and I am loving it.   I also read  Katy Tur’s UNBELIEVABLE,  her chronicle of covering the election of 2016. It is absolutely wonderfully riveting.  And I just finished Louise Candlish’s OUR HOUSE ,  that was also terrific! One of those ideas that you think… Wow.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Raving about Joshilyn Jackson made me check her website, and sure enough, I missed a book last summer. Just downloaded ALMOST SISTERS. I bought and read THE CONSUMING FIRE, the second novel in John Scalzi's Interdependency series, in one night. So good, and I continue to steer people who are SF curious to Scalzi. Very approachable writing that values characters over technological whiz-bang.

Audio book in the car is non-fiction: HERE IS WHERE: Discovering America's Great Forgotten History. The author, Andrew Carroll, traveled all over the country looking for the spots where significant historical events have happened - and then forgotten.  I'm loving it, and it's perfect for the car or brief periods of reading.

What about all of you?  Please add to our already toppling TBR piles!

Book Bingo

INGRID THOFT
Our visit with the librarians from the Seattle Public Library and a comment on Monday’s blog inspired today’s post.  Earlier this week, Ramona talked about the teacher who insisted that she read books that challenge her.  Good advice, no doubt, but how to actually do that with so many books and so little time?

The Seattle Public Library's Book Bingo card

One solution is to play “Book Bingo.”  The Seattle Public Library offers book bingo every summer, as do other libraries.  You can complete the card and be eligible for a prize drawing, but even just reading one selection out of your comfort zone will stretch your mind a bit.  And as Linda and Andrea reminded us on Thursday, you can always “bother the librarian!” for suggestions!

I reviewed the Book Bingo card and was intrigued by square that said, “published the year one of your parents were born.” Hmmm.  I’d never considered seeking out books published in 1936 and 1939 (sorry, Mum!), but Goodreads has lists of the top books published by year.  It turns out those years were treasure troves for great books.

Papa Hemingway

What does 1936 have to offer?  Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, Agatha Christie’s The A.B.C Murders, or The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway.  Should I tackle Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce?  That’s one of the options for 1939, but that might be too much of a challenge!  How about The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck or Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep?

Other squares will be easier to fill.  In the biography and memoir category, Hunger by Roxane Gay is at the top of the list.  I also know what my choice will be in the “author of color” category. I’ve heard amazing things about The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas.  A Separate Peace by John Knowles fits the bill for a book I read in school.

You know what’s going to be tough?  Choosing something for the “genre that is new to you" square.  I don’t generally read science fiction, fantasy, or romance.  I think I’ll have to ask Linda and Andrea for some suggestions!

Our ever-growing TBR piles!

Reds and readers, do you purposely choose books that challenge you?  How would you fill in some of the squares of Book Bingo?

Debs Does 48 Hours in Key West

LUCY BURDETTE: We had the great pleasure of hosting Red Deborah Crombie at the tail end of her book tour for GARDEN OF LAMENTATIONS a couple of weeks ago. I thought you would enjoy following along in her 48 hours in Key West! Some things were on her bucket list, and some John and I added as our favorites...

First stop, almost always, the Sunset Celebration on Mallory Square. Here's Deb with Lorenzo, Hayley's tarot card reading friend, and Lucy's friend in real life...

And here are Deb's cards...she must pay attention to her spiritual side in April...

(DEBS: I must admit, this made me a bit nervous, which I didn't expect!)

There was a cruise ship blocking the view, so Deb had to choose between seeing the sunset and watching the cat man--cat man won out of course!

We stayed in that first night to give Deb a breather from restaurant food...this is Lucy's cornmeal-crusted veggie tart...

(DEBS: Heaven!!!)

The next morning we hiked across the island to a must-see, Ernest Hemingway's house

She couldn't decide whether she liked his office best...

or the bathroom in the main house!

We met several of the Hemingway polydactyls...

(DEBS: I adored the Hemingway House!! And the cats! It was one of the highlights of my trip.)

 

The Key West library was kind enough to help set up this last event on Deb's tour. Don't you love what Michael the librarian did with the backdrop? Lucy got to do the interview...and this was after logging in 15,000 steps on the iPhone counter!

And then we met up for dinner with another mystery writer friend, Barbara Ross--lots of shop talk and a little bit of gossip. 

(DEBS: Such fun to meet Barb Ross. And can I just mention the cucumber cocktail???)

Every visitor to Key West wants to get this shot--the very tip end of Route 1

Deb's last day started off with breakfast in bed--a maple-glazed donut studded with candied bacon and a cafe con leche from the Cuban Coffee Queen

(DEBS: I thought I had died and gone to heaven. They really are as good as Hayley says!)

And then a stop at Books&Books, founded by Judy Blume and her husband George. We scored signed Babar books for our granddaughters and a photo with Judy herself!

(DEBS: Unfortunately, Wren loved the book so much it's now missing half a page... Hopefully, Mr. Brunhoff will sign a few more.)

 

Last minute gift from Debs, as she explained her plotting secrets to Lucy:)

(DEBS: That may not look like much, but I promise it was brilliant:-) And can I just say that Lucy is THE best  hostess and tour guide!!! And that I am in love with Key West!)

Who else has fallen for the Key West magic?

Bouchercon Roundup

RHYS BOWEN: We've had three action-packed days and I'm writing this before we hear the results of the Anthony Awards, but we're crossing our fingers for our Hank, nominated for best novel.

On Friday morning at the Sisters in Crime breakfast Hank handed over the great seal of office as president to the incoming pres, Laura di Silverio.

Then on Friday afternoon was our famous Jungle Red game show panel. This year it was famous first lines. We gave the audience a book title, then we each wrote our own first line for it and read them out, with the real first line among them. Then the audience had to vote on which was the real first line. (Note the Jungle Red pashminas)

Here are a couple to see how well you'd do:
Ernest Hemmingway. A Farewell to Arms.

a.The midday sun. The heat. The sawdust scattered about the ground. And in the center, the bull.

b.There was no other way but the mountains and the ocean.

c.It was manifestly a day when the fish were rising.

d.In the late summer of that year we lived in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.

e.The scent of a woman can carry a man a long way into battle.

So which one was it? And what about Fifty Shades of Grey?

a.I'd never looked at his hands bfore and although I knew I wasn't supposed to be looking, I was drawn, almost irresistibly drawn.

b.Looking in the mirror at my amethyst eyes, glossy hair and porcelain skin I realized the only way I'd lose my virginity was to dump Feminist Theory and switch my major to journalism.

c.I used to think there was something wrong with me.

d.I scowl with frustration at myself in the mirror

e. I tighten the laces of my trainers, then tie my golden hair away from my long, slender neck, then loop the bow of my chemise under my chin so as not to show a whisper of cleavage.

The answers are d in both cases. Did you get them right?
For some of the other books our first lines were better than the real ones, proving that we are terrific writers!!!
It's off home for most of us tomorrow, but I'm heading up to Canada and then joining some of the other Reds for some events in the Boston area. It will be fun.

AND STAY ALERT FOR BIG NEWS.... JUNGLE RED ANNOUNCEMENT COMING ANY DAY NOW!

 

Hemingway's Cats

Hemingway with his sons and cats in Cuba

Hemingway's writing studio

"One cat just leads to another. . . . The place is so damned big it doesn’t really seem as though there were many cats until you see them all moving like a mass migration at feeding time. . . ." Ernest Hemingway

LUCY BURDETTE: So last week Deb talked about her new love affair with Hemingway's words. Me being me, I am crazy about his Key West home and--his cats! 

 We also talked last week about the scary kinds of research we've done for the sake of our books. But sometimes I take on "research" without having any idea how, or even if, I might use it. I go hoping the story will make itself known.


If you've visited Key West, you may have toured the home where Ernest Hemingway lived from 1931-1939. It's a gorgeous, private piece of land with a swimming pool and a wonderful old home, including the little attached studio that housed Hemingway's office. No wonder he wrote so well here!

Hemingway's bed

This was Hemingway's bed. Usually one of the cats can be seen napping on it...but not the day I visited:

Rudy Valentino

One of the most-beloved features of the property is the colony of 50+ polydactyl cats who live on the premises, allegedly descendants of Hemingway's felines. (Although family sources have said that he did not own cats while he lived in Key West, though he owned many in Cuba.)

Late last year, I made a new Facebook friend who happens to work as one of the cat caretakers at the Hemingway House in Key West. Naturally, I was dying to meet Donna Vanderveen and get an inside look at the cats who live on the grounds.

Kitty condos

She introduced me to a number of the residents and explained their routines--in spite of the lawsuit filed against the Hemingway House and Museum by the USDA, believe me, these cats are treated like royalty.  



This little replica of the main house is a place to keep kittens at night or various other fellows who might need a "time out."


 
The cats are named after
historical figures...

Captain Tony--notice the extra toes

Duke Ellington

Tennessee Williams

Okay, so I still don't know how all or any of this will get worked into the fourth Hayley Snow mystery, though her good friend and former roommate Connie is getting married. And there is a lovely place for a ceremony on the grounds of the Hemingway House. And perhaps a character named Donna may have noticed a crime in progress earlier in the week. She has to get to work at an ungodly hour to take care of those cats....and so she might see things she isn't meant to see...

I very much doubt that Hemingway went around soliciting plot ideas, but for me, suggestions are always welcome:). And meanwhile, I feel another visit coming on...maybe the cats will whisper the story.

REDISCOVERING HEMINGWAY

DEBORAH CROMBIE: In one of the those weird synchronous things, the Boston Globe ran a piece yesterday on The Joy of Rereading. 

And yesterday we had G.M. Malliet here on Jungle Red, talking about (at least in part) the importance of language to writers.

Which brings me to my very belated love affair (only on paper, which is probably a good thing, considering his amorous history) with Ernest Hemingway. My introduction to Hemingway was The Old Man and the Sea, given as an assignment in ninth or tenth grade English class.  I don't remember being told anything much about Hemingway--my faint impression was of a crotchety old guy who had committed suicide. Although now I don't think he was old, there was certainly nothing to appeal to the romantic instincts of a fourteen or fifteen-year-old.

And the story? I hated it. Really hated it. (Nobel prizes meant nothing to me, either, callow as I was.)  It made no sense to me. And the teacher only wanted to talk about symbolism, and we were graded on whether or not we interpreted the symbolism "correctly." It sucked. Really. (You may be getting an idea why I didn't major in English... You may also guess that you don't want to get me started on deconstructionism...) 

I went on in the next few years to read most of the Hemingway novels and some of the short stories (by choice) but I still didn't particularly like them. Keep in mind that at the same time I was first introduced to Hemingway, I was also reading Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and there, I was completely hooked. (Am I a plot sort of girl, I wonder?) I developed an intense infatuation with Tolkein and C.S. Lewis and their coterie of tweedy, middle-aged academics, and you'd have to try hard to find less romantic writers.

I can't believe that I knew absolutely nothing about Hemingway and PARIS. I didn't understand what he had gone through in the first world war. I didn't understand the impact of that on his entire generation. (How hard would it have been to have spliced in a little history and biography with the symbolism?)

And for heaven's sake, why did that long-ago English teacher never show us a picture of Ernest Hemingway when he was twenty-two?

So we fast-forward to a couple of years ago. I was staying in London in a charming mews house. There was a fabulous library of first editions, and among them was a copy of Hemingway's A Moveable Feast.  I picked it up (carefully) and took it to bed with me on a cold night. Hours later I was still reading.

The words jumped off the page. Paris in the twenties was as real as if I were there. I could see it and smell it and taste it. And I knew this young man who couldn't contain the words swarming in his mind, who had to put them on paper as if his life depended on it. 

I finished A Moveable Feast and wondered how I could possibly have missed all this.  A year or so later, Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris came out, and Paula McLain's The Paris Wife, which is about Hemingway's time in Paris with his first wife, Hadley Richardson, so there was definitely something going on in the ether.  

As for me, I have gone back to The Sun Also Rises. (Why did they not give us The Sun Also Rises in that long-ago class? Because it had sex in it? Nothing could appeal to a teenager more...) 

It makes me remember why I love writing. And maybe someday I'll be brave enough to pick up The Old Man and Sea again, and even like it.

What about you, REDs and readers? Is there a writer you disliked but have come to see in a different light? 

(And don't you love the cover of the first edition of The Sun Also Rises? What were they thinking!)

P.S. News flash! The winners of the three G.M Malliet books are Marni, Karen in Ohio, and Reine. If you three would email me at deb at deborahcrombie dot com with your addresses, I'll forward them to Gin.

AND be sure to come back tomorrow to get ready for the Superbowl with our recipe for Jungle Red Homemade Buffalo Wings!

P.S.S. One more little bit of synchronicity: Lucy is writing about Hemingway's house and cats on Key West next week. One day I'm going to go there.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

DEBORAH CROMBIE:We've talked about which famous people (dead or alive) we'd all invite to our fantasy dinner parties. Mixing and matching any writer/artist/thinker from any era is fun, but it's a bit of cheat, really, isn't it, putting people together who would never have met?

Having recently seen MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (a bit behind on my Oscar viewing...) which I adored, I started to wonder two things.

First, if we could pick any group of writers/artists/thinkers, a "salon", which would it be? ("Salon" is defined by Wikipedia as: "... a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to please or to educate" ("aut delectare aut prodesse est"). Salons, commonly associated with French literary and philosophical movements of the 17th and 18th centuries, were carried on until quite recently, in urban settings, among like-minded people.")

Would we, like Gil in MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, choose Hemingway's Paris? Or the Romantics of early 19th century France? And what about the Bloomsbury group in Edwardian England--Rupurt Brooke, Virginia Woolf and their set of writers, poets, painters, and philosphers? Or the Beat Poets of 1950s America?

My choice from my teens, and I think still, would be The Inklings, the informal Oxford University discussion group which met from the early 1930s to 1949, often at the Eagle and Child (the Bird and Baby) pub in Oxford, and included J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis among its members. They read aloud from their works in progress--and I suspect downed a pint or two while they were at it.

Unfortunately, except for the occasional inclusion of Enid Blyton, all the members were male... Hmmm. Definitely a gender issue here. Maybe I should rethink Paris...

My second question is whether the physical salon is a thing of the past. In our mobile age, will like-minded artists and thinkers ever again come together as a group in a way that will influence contemporary culture--except on the internet?

And if so, is the virtual salon a substitute for midnight in Paris?

(By the way, if you Google virtualsalon.com, you get beauty shops.)

RHYS BOWEN: I think one would have to go back into the past to find a salon. I'm not sure why, but modern writers tend to talk about anything other than their writing when they are together. I've been at a meal with A list writers and not one of them has spoken of the angst of creation of a work in progress. Occasionally we bitch about the latest twelve year old publicist who has messed up a book tour, but mostly the talk is of non-writing related things.

I'm not a big drinker so I don't think I'd have fitted in well with Scott and Zelda and Hemingway in Paris, although it might have been fun--and I would have loved to have met Dali! But on the whole I'd prefer a gathering of women. Men tend to hog the conversation! I think Dorothy Sayers and her Oxford friends in the 1930s would have been entertaining.

JAN BROGAN - As we all by now know I'm totally hot for Herman Melville, I'd have to go with Anne Charlotte Lynch's Greenwich Village salon in the 1840s (also the period I'm researching). Besides Melville, who was a regular, Edgar Allan Poe allegedly read "The Raven" at the Waverley Place house, and Ralph Waldo Emerson supposedly came to hang out.

As for now? Salon.com, right? And Facebook groups, that's probably the closest you will come.

LUCY BURDETTE: In a great burst of serendipity, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS came to us from Netflix last week so we watched it Saturday night. So much fun! And such a Woody-Allenish leading man--we could picture Woody wishing he could play the lead but realizing he was a little too old...And can't you imagine how many trips to Paris that movie sold? Showed the city at it's absolute best.

Anyway, Debs, back to the subject--I'd choose Gertrude Stein's salon because it seemed like she could manage whoever came. I studied surrealism in college, actually wrote a thesis on Max Ernst, so I'd love to meet that crowd!

As for real salons today, maybe that's why we're still drawn to attending mystery conventions, even if we don't sell enough books to nearly pay our way. We're alone so much of the time--we love getting together with other writers and readers to gab! Speaking of which, 7 of 8 Jungle Reds will be at Bouchercon--really looking forward to that!

ROSEMARY HARRIS: I confess this is something I've never really thought about. I'd love to say "Oh yes! Vita-Sackville West!" and really mean it, but I'm quite happy talking to the dog and my husband about writing! And talking to myself, of course. My favorite salon takes place when I'm in the car talking to myself!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Rosemary, I do love you. (And I adored the movie. Especially the message that NOW is best. I did think, though, that Owen Wilson would never have been engaged to that woman in the first place. But, whatever.)
Anyway, thinking about this, what I'd prefer is to be INVISIBLE, and get to listen in as everyone else talks. Then I wouldn't have to worry about being clever or brilliant, I could just soak it all in. Stephen King, say, talking to...oh, who knows. Paul Simon. Wouldn't that be great?

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I'd sort of like to say the Bloomsbury group for their amazing wit and talent, but I suspect all their adulteries and triangular relationships and seething semi-repressed homosexuality would be exhausting to be around. Sort of like freshman year in a dorm full of high achievers.

So instead, I'd pick Concord in it's 19th century flower. Hawthorne and Emerson, Alcott and Thoreau, and the Bostonians who were their friends, like the Peabody sisters and Margaret Fuller. Transcendentalism! Poetry! Women's rights! All amid the lilacs and maple trees of one of the most beautiful towns in New England.

DEBS: Oh, I can see us going off on SO many fun tangents... Hank, I think you definitely have a thing for Paul Simon... (and I agree that Gil would never have really been engaged to that horrible woman.) Jan, fascinated by the 1840s New England writers. Imagine having heard Poe read! (Isn't John Cusack going to play him in a movie? How fun is that?) Rhys, oh, to have eavesdropped on Dorothy Sayers and her chums... Ro, I talk to the dog, too, and I have a thing for Vita Sackville-West, but that's another post. Lucy, yes, 7 out of 8 of us--as Hank said, the whole point of the movie was that we should make our own glamor, and so let's hope that we do.

Readers, what group would you like to have joined? Or, would you, like Hank, have sat quietly in the corner and listened?