A Bouchercon To-do List--G.M. Malliet

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Fans of G.M. Malliet's Father Max Tudor books can rejoice! There's a new Max Tudor book on the horizon, THE WASHING AWAY OF WRONGS, coming on Kindle in September and in paperback in January.

But first, there is Bouchercon, and

G.M. has some tips to get us ready:

Ah, Bouchercon! That annual mecca for mystery lovers is just around the corner, and this year it’s in San Diego. Writers, readers, and mystery fans: Are you ready? Here’s a partial to-do list:

 

The Swag Hunt

You’ll need to rustle up some irresistible giveaway items. Bookmarks? Pens? This year I have coffee coasters displaying the fabulous map drawn by Rhys Davies for my newest book, Max Tudor #8, now on preorder from Hachette / Little, Brown. It is called THE WASHING AWAY OF WRONGS. 

 

The title is taken from a Chinese handbook for coroners written by Song Ci in 1247.

 

I also have new business cards with the book’s jacket and my contact information. 

The fox features in the story and helps Max solve the crime. The QR code takes you to information about all my books.

 

The Grand Auction Offering

Sure, you could offer up a signed first edition or an exclusive sneak peek into your next thriller. Readers love that. But this year, I’ve offered to gift pages from a television script for the Morse series, given to me by none other than Colin Dexter years ago at the St. Hilda’s Mystery Conference in Oxford. This donation is to benefit local literacy charities , so be sure to bring money so you can bid high. Are you as sad as I am there will be no more Morse stories?

 

The Great Packing Dilemma

To pack the swimsuit or to not pack the swimsuit? That is the question. Remember, Bouchercon is in San Diego. Sunny beaches, lovely weather… But this is a writer’s convention with little downtime and lots of walking between sessions. So, swimsuit, maybe. And comfortable shoes, definitely. Something nice to wear for the awards dinner. But don’t forget the PI trench coat!

 

The Weather Watch

San Diego has surprised us all this year with a stormy plot twist. A tropical storm and, further north, an earthquake. I’ve been texting friends and relatives who say they escaped the flooding and they’re used to the earthquakes. But now the forecast for the conference beginning August 30 is for the usual sunny San Diego skies.

 

The Reunion

Reunions in crime novels are generally times for knives out and watching one’s back, but perhaps the most happy aspect of Bouchercon is reuniting with friends, some of whom you might not have seen since the pandemic. Will they recognize you without your Zoom background? I’ve been scheduling meet-ups and coffee / dinner / party dates for weeks. But I will keep an eye out for suspicious characters. It is, after all, a mystery convention.

 

So, as you prepare for Bouchercon, remember this: While the journey might be filled with its own set of challenges (Where did I put my tickets? My reading glasses? Did my iPad make it through the TSA scanner or did it end up in lost-and-found, as happened on my last flight?), the destination promises intrigue, fun, tons of new books, and perhaps… the inspiration for what to read or write next.

 

My panel is Saturday morning at 10:10. Please join me and Maddie Margarita, Linda Sands, Mark Stevens, Sara E. Johnson, and Sylissa Franklin as we discuss “Place as Character.”

Here's more on THE WASHING AWAY OF WRONGS:

Max Tudor thought he’d left the world of deceit when he resigned from MI5 to become an Anglican priest. Then his bishop asks him to return to his Oxford college, St Luke’s, to investigate the death of its chaplain, and Max realizes there’s no leaving the past behind.

At first, Max agrees with the official police verdict of death by natural causes. The Rev. Ace Graybill was as harmless a man as ever lived. It’s difficult to see how he managed to cross anyone capable of murder.

And the suspects are all above reproach: the celebrated Principal, the cautious bursar, the wise librarian, and a raft of benign students and academics.

But someone in the college wanted the kindly chaplain dead… and looks can be very deceiving.

Agatha Award-winning G.M. Malliet is the acclaimed author of three traditional mystery series and a standalone novel set in England. The first entry in the DCI St. Just series, Death of a Cozy Writer, won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel and was nominated for many awards, including the Macavity and the Anthony.

DEBS: Who else is ready for Bouchercon?? I can't wait for the reunion part. So many friends I haven't seen in much too long!!

G.M. Malliet--Augusta Hawke

DEBORAH CROMBIE: My editor told me that during the pandemic authors seemed to  have either written like crazy, or been totally blocked. I'm happy to say that our guest today, G.M. Malliet, was one of the former. (Not talking about where I fall on that spectrum...!) I have long been a fan of her Max Tudor (dishy former spy, now vicar--what's not to love?) books and her D.C.I. St. Just books, and now there is a new series to love as well. Now, if only some of that productivity would rub off on me...

“From you have I been absent in the spring”

by G. M. Malliet

And the summer, winter, and autumn.

That’s a quote from the incomparable Shakespeare, of course. Sonnet 98. There’s a school of thought he wrote this sonnet during one or another of the plagues that beset London, forcing him to flee, and causing his separation from his beloved, whoever that was. The Dark Lady or the Fair Youth—we may never know.  

Agatha Christie adapted the title for one of her most successful non-mystery novels, writing as Mary Westmacott.

From March 2020, officially the start of our modern pandemic, I have largely been absent from the writing scene. My husband and I, at our ages not willing to play about with this, took the official advice and hunkered down, emerging towards the end only for delayed funerals of family members and for one mystery writers’ conference.

Meanwhile, to pass the time, I wrote. Constantly and as a distraction from reality, as I’ve always done, although this was a bit more intense, more enforced, and resulted in the completion of the better part of five books.

For those who don’t know me, and I’m assuming by now that is most of you, I write as G.M. Malliet and because of all this industry, and thanks to a dynamic new agent, I'm currently juggling three series. DCI St. Just of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary was the protagonist of my first series, started about 15 years ago with DEATH OF A COZY WRITER, and he was revived last year by Severn House with DEATH IN CORNWALL, St. Just #4. 

Max Tudor is my vicar sleuth – former MI5 and devilishly handsome. I did seven of those books for Minotaur starting with WICKED AUTUMN and will do an eighth for Little, Brown next year (THE WASHING AWAY OF WRONGS).

AUGUSTA HAWKE is my new series starring a first-person female protagonist, a mystery writer who notices her neighbors have gone missing. About the same time, she is becoming bored with her writing (which should sound familiar to many authors) and decides to up her procrastination game by investigating. By the second book (AN INVITATION TO A KILLER), coming soon from Severn House, she is still writing mysteries but now she has a PI license.

I also write short stories, and I’m proud to say my story appearing in the July/August 2021 edition of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine was just nominated for a Macavity Award. Winners in all categories will be announced in September at opening ceremonies @Bouchercon2022. 

If it all seems like a lot, it is, but my husband and I recently celebrated just plain surviving with a trip to Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. I’ll spare you the millions of travel photos except for this one, which is of a place I love. 

It is Stirling Castle where Mary Queen of Scots was crowned Queen of Scotland at the age of nine months. It was pretty much all downhill for our stubborn and willful Mary after that, who was beheaded at the age of forty-four after spending nearly twenty years of her life imprisoned. Somehow, despite her colossal lack of judgment, Mary remains a favorite. Perhaps because I can relate.

Godspeed and good luck and, as the Irish say, may the road rise up to greet you all. It’s great to be back.

Sometimes it's safer not to know your neighbors' secrets.

Where are Niko and Zora Norman? Crime writer Augusta Hawke puts her sleuthing skills to the test to solve the mystery of her disappearing neighbors in the first entry in a new series.

While Augusta Hawke is a successful author of eighteen crime novels, since her husband's death she's been living vicariously through her Jules Maigret-like detective Claude and his assistant Caroline. Then a handsome police detective appears investigating a real-life mystery.

Where are her neighbors, the Normans? No one has a clue what's happened - except Augusta. Although she isn't nosy, spending all day staring out the windows for inspiration means she does notice things. Like the Normans arguing. And that they've been missing a week.

Once the Normans' car is found abandoned, Augusta senses material for a bestseller and calls on the investigatory skills she's developed as a crime writer. But she soon uncovers long-hidden secrets and finds herself facing real-life dangers her characters never faced . . . ones she can't write her way out of.

G.M. Malliet is the award-winning author of four St. Just mysteries, seven Max Tudor mysteries, the suspense novel WEYCOMBE, and numerous short stories collected in crime anthologies or published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (EQMM) and The Strand. New short stories will appear soon in EQMM ("The Pact" and "Something Blue"). A new mystery series (AUGUSTA HAWKE) debuts in July 2022 and a fifth St. Just novel will appear in August 2023.

DEBS: Congratulations on the Macavity nomination, Gin!! And we are all certainly glad you're more than back! 

REDS and readers, did isolation make you more productive?

G.M. will stop by to chat, so maybe she will tell us her secret!

Greetings from Nether Monkslip & G.M. Malliet

HALLIE EPHRON: I fell in love with G. M. (Gin) Malliet's writing when I read "Wicked Autumn", her first Max Tudor novel. A traditional mystery with a satiric edge, it was set a world away from London and a breath away from Agatha Christie's St. Mary Meade in a quaint village with copious bucolic charm not a smidge of ethnic diversity. Where once there were blacksmiths and wheelwrights, now shopkeepers peddle New Age crystals and organic jellies and jams. 

Gin's fifth Max Tudor novel, "Haunted Season," is just out in paperback. and I'm delighted to  host her on Jungle Red.
 
Gin, seems like you got shot out of a cannon in 2008 with your first novel, "Death of a Cozy Writer," winning the Agatha Award for best first novel. Did you have any idea where you’d be now, nine books later?



G. M. Malliet: At the moment, I’m just starting to write a tenth series book, and I’m revising a standalone that will be published in 2017. So soon it will be eleven books, which surprises even me.

You make it all sound much more thrilling than it is. It’s not so much like being shot out of a cannon as riding an ageing donkey uphill while blindfolded. I have had many of the breaks in this business and I’m so very grateful, but when you are in the thick of finding agents and so on it feels like a very slow process.

Right now I’m either doing revisions or plotting the next book while I wait for edits for the previous book to land back on my desk. It still catches me by surprise every time it happens. It’s like, oh! You want me to read through all this again? I just sent back to my publisher the copyedited version of the sixth Max Tudor ("Devil's Breath") which won’t appear in print until April 2017. I could paint the Sistine Chapel in that amount of time but I am told it has something to do with the lead time reviewers require nowadays.

Anyway, just when you think you can’t look at the typewritten pages again, back come the page proofs—the typeset version of the book, hopefully now free of typos or, worse, dead people who have inexplicably come back to life in the final pages. Or characters who have changed their names in midstream, or stopped somewhere along the way to dye their hair black.

HALLIE: No kidding!

Gin, I know you write cozies but they are truly wicked. They have an Austen-ish (Barbara Pym-ish) edge to them. Is humor something that comes with the first draft or do you layer it in (or out) in revisions?


GM: First, thank you for that. (I am such a fan of Barbara Pym’s work.)

Well, you know the advice about writing. You simply sit down at your desk and open a vein. But humor is the bonus you sometimes get for all that blood-letting. Your reward for having behaved well the rest of the time, and stayed put during the long slog of trying to come up with another word to describe Max Tudor than “dashing” or “dishy.”

Humor seems to come out of nowhere, but it does seem to crop up during the first or second drafts. If I write something that makes me laugh I am SO happy. And I trust someone else will laugh, too. Otherwise, I feel they would be better served reading something educational like the instruction manual for their new colander. (I always love it when people give their colanders five-star reviews on Amazon, don’t you?)



HALLIE: LOL! I will peruse Amazon with a whole new pespective from here on.

You seem to know so much about English village Anglican church goings-on. Is that a product of great research or a great imagination? 



GM: I don’t know about the “great” but it’s a bit of both. I just love all things British and am drawn time and again to visit and keep my eyes open while I’m there. Every Anglican church seems to be repairing its roof at any given time and that means some rather desperate attempts at fund-raising are always in progress.

Officially I am an Episcopalian (the U.S. branch of the Anglican Communion) but I’m not one of their best—not destined for sainthood, me. I love church architecture and the liturgy and the hymns (which are so blessedly predictable you can be tone deaf and sing very loudly and no one will notice). And there is such poetry in the language of the King James Bible.

[Stepping onto my soapbox]: I do think children not raised in any religious tradition are missing out, just for these reasons of beauty, language, and history [stepping down off my soapbox]. I volunteer here and there at the local shelter but other people do so much more. They turn up every time. That said: People often get up to things in the name of sweet charity that can backfire in hilarious ways. Bring-and-Buy events can positively pulse with unspoken jealousies and animosities long buried.

HALLIE: And the names! Nether Monkslip. Totleigh Hall. Lady Baaden-Boomethistle. They’re downright Dickensian. How do you come up with them? 



GM: You don’t have to go far in the UK before tripping over some wonderful name. Mine tend to be an amalgam of one or two existing names. For example, J.K. Rowling lived for a time in Chipping Sodbury, which the villagers naturally renamed Sodding Chipbury. 

Lady Baaden-Boomethistle was one of those things that came from nowhere but made me laugh as I typed it, so I knew I had to keep the name. My English editor thought it was too Germanic for her UK audience but there are moments where you stand or fall on important principles like this. “But I think it’s funny,” I told her.

This is when you learn what you’re really made of as a writer.

HALLIE: I so agree. You have to draw the line somewhere.

Your new Max Tudor mystery, "Devil’s Breath," comes out in the spring and is now available for pre-order. What can readers expect? Because "The Haunted Season" (the paperback edition was just published) ends with the suggestion that Max might not be bouncing back from the catastrophic loss he nearly experienced.



GM: Max realizes he can’t run away from the world—the world keeps finding him, anyway. "Devil's Breath" returns him temporarily to working a case for MI5, but he’ll not quit the priesthood. The two worlds just start to blend for him. My Fall/2017 standalone is also set in an English village—I can’t seem to help myself. But it’s a much darker book than I’ve done before. 

HALLIE: Thanks, Gin! Gin will be at the Brattleboro Literary Festival (Oct 13-16) as will Hank, Susan, and me. Hope some of you will come out.

Today's question: What are some of your favorite place names and character names, made up or real?
 

Debs Reporting from the Tucson Festival of Books

DEBORAH CROMBIE:  I arrived in Tucson, Arizona, yesterday for my first visit to the Tucson Festival of Books. The festival is only six years old, but already has 120,000 attendees, 1800 volunteers, and more authors than you can shake a stick at. I can't begin to name all the wonderful writers here in all genres, so have a look at the festival website. I think every author who comes wants to come back, so I can imagine the riches growing and growing.

As I can't begin to describe all the activities, I'm going to throw out a few of my pictorial highlights.

Here's the view from my hotel room before last night's event, a literary fundraising author's reception and dinner.

The Girls' Fab Four at the pre-dinner reception: Cara Black, yours truly, Libby Fischer Hellman, and our RED Rhys Bowen.

Wonderful writers Bryan Gruley and Steve Hamilton.

A fuzzy shot of Rebecca Eaton, producer of PBS's Masterpiece Theater, who was the keynote speaker. She was fabulous.

Today's Bloody Murder panel with me, moderator Patti O'Brien, G.M. Malliet, and Jenn McKinlay.

Our best audience, Kendall, our friend Reine Carter's assistance dog. You know we were fascinating!

Kendall giving me a kiss!

Loaning my festival cap to author Brandon Sanderson during our afternoon signing. The sun was fierce!

A little more evening fun--a festival sponsored reception for the authors. With William Kent Krueger, G.M. Malliet, Susan Shea, and Terry Shames.

Kent and I sport our festival caps!

Another panel and more signings tomorrow, and then I'll be sorry to say goodbye to Tucson. 

I hope everyone had as great a weekend, and it was great to be warm!

A last but not least bit of JRW business--here are the 5 winners of Peter Swanson's The Girl with a Clock for a Heart. Winners, please email me your mailing addresses at deb at deborahcrombie dot com and I'll forward them to Peter.

And here I quote Peter:

Joan Emerson, for being first
James Montgomery Jackson, because he gets up at five AM
Kathy Reel, because she's posing with a statue
Denise Ann, because she was up front about wanting to win the book
Beverly Fontaine, because she says there is no such thing as reading too much

G.M. MALLIET: THE JOYS OF BEING LOWBROW

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I'm so pleased to have our Jungle Red friend G.M. Malliet here today. Her first Max Tudor book, Wicked Autumn, was a 2011 Dilys and Agatha nominee for Best Novel, a Shelf Awareness Reviewer's Choice: Top 10 Books of 2011, and an NBC TODAY show Summer Reads Pick by Charlaine Harris. A Fatal Winter, the second Max Tudor mystery, appeared in October 2012. Both Max Tudor books were listed by Library Journal as best mysteries of 2011 & 2012.

And I LOVE these books. I mean, who could resist stories set in the perfect English village of Nether Monkslip, or former MI5 spy turned Anglican priest Max Tudor? (Not to mention that Max is very good-looking, and I'd be willing to bet he was a rower... right, Gin?)

But one of the things I like most about Gin's books is her beautiful use of language, which is not, as she will explain, highbrow.

  

G.M MALLIET:  I long ago realized that my taste is not very highbrow. I go to plays but I don’t go to the opera, and while I enjoy classical music, I tend to divide it into categories: 1) Nice dinner music, and 2) Loud dinner music. It’s rare that I recognize a classical song or composer unless it’s something popular, like Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. I have, however, without meaning to, memorized the lyrics to almost every rock and roll song recorded in the seventies or eighties. And a lot of country-western songs, as well. 

When it comes to poetry, it is pretty much the same story. I tried to improve my mind by reading the classics, because I knew this was good for me, like broccoli, but very few of them stuck. In college, I did acquire an irrational attachment to Ernest Christopher Dowson’s gloomy poem with its long Latin title, a poem most people would simply call Cynara:  

Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;

Heavy stuff, eh? Love that exclamation point, which appears every time Cynara!’s name is mentioned. To this day I can recite much of this poem, but I suspect it is pretty lowbrow. It does have this one famous line:

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,

So I gather Margaret Mitchell liked it, too.

And by the way, when Kate and Wills are choosing royal baby names, I think Cynara! should definitely be in the running.

Still, I’ve often thought anyone who strings together words for a living should have more than a nodding acquaintance with poetry. I figure someone like Ruth Rendell, a prolific crime writer whose style I admire to distraction, must somehow be finding the time to read poetry. 

One day on vacation, I picked up a book in a gift shop called Ten Poems to Change Your Life Again and Again by Roger Housden. That title must have come from one of the publisher’s more feverish marketing meetings—a poem to change your life? really?—but I did feel compelled to pick up the book and buy it. It turns out it is one of a series of books Housden has written, which is a good thing, because I quickly was hooked and will soon own the entire collection. These are actually compilations of ten short poems with Housden’s commentary on each one. Of the Again and Again book, Housden says, “Every one of the poems in this book has struck me a blow, a direct hit, each of them, into the heart of hearts.” I must say most of them struck me the same way. I don’t think anyone, for example, can read Marie Howe’s “What the Living Do,” a poem about her brother, without feeling the tears well up.

I am living, I remember you.

So after all these years, this one little book actually did change my life.

Because I have come to realize how important it is as a writer to be submerged not just in plots and prose, but in poetry as well.

Also to realize that if a song or a poem or a novel speaks to the reader for any reason, definitions like low- and highbrow just don’t apply.

I have to say that as an added bonus, one of the poems in this collection inspired the plot for the fourth Max Tudor mystery, the one I’m working on now.

Do you have a treasured poem, new or old?

And while we’re here, any thoughts on what Kate and Wills should name that baby?

 ~ Photo of Ernest Christopher Dowson from allpoetry.com

~ Photo of Ruth Rendell from Fantastic Fiction

         ~ Photo of G.M. Malliet by Joe Henson

 

DEBS:  Gin, I've ordered the first Housden book and hope to get it today. Thanks for the inspiration! I think I would buy them just for the wonderful covers.

And to inspire all our readers to come up with favorite poems AND royal baby names that top Cynara!, Gin is going to randomly pick 3 of our commenters to receive signed 1st editions of her books!

You can learn more about G.M. Malliet and Max Tudor at www.GMMalliet.com.

P.S. And our winner of NO MARK UPON HER is Lisa Alber! Lisa, if you'll email me at deb at deborahcrombie.com with your address, I'll send you a book.