A BITTER FEAST Redux and a Little Armchair Travel

DEBORAH CROMBIE: A BITTER FEAST, the 18th Superintendent Duncan Kincaid/Inspector Gemma James novel is out in paperback today!!

And never have I wished more for a little bit of magic to transport me to another time and place! When the book came out in hardcover last autumn, I was already missing the Cotswolds. This part of England, encompassing parts of Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, and Worcestershire (like the sauce), was one of the first places I ever visited in the UK, and those green rolling hills and golden villages cemented my lifelong love of everything English. The Cotswolds are idyllic, they are the Shire, they are "the green and pleasant land" of Blake's Jerusalem.

And the Cotswolds also seemed like the perfect place to set a mystery. But first I had to find the perfect village! This took me one research trip, then I had to go back twice more to really immerse myself. 

What a sacrifice that was! Not.

On that first trip, I chose a village I remembered from that very first Cotswold visit with my parents, Lower Slaughter. How could I resist the name? And there's an Upper Slaughter, too. The name doesn't mean what you might think, however, but is derived from "slough", referring to wetlands. The River Eye, a tributary to the Windrush, runs through the center of the village. (And aren't those names right out of The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings?)

So, if a year ago I was already pining for that green and pleasant land, it at least seemed within reach, a plane ticket away. I could imagine having afternoon tea at the fabulous Slaughters Manor House in Lower Slaughter. (Drooling...)

Or having a drink in the cozy bar of the Red Lion Inn in Long Compton. (One of my favorite pubs anywhere.)

Or walking through a beautiful English garden.

Now that all seems like a dream!

What to do??

Open the pages of the book, of course, and transport myself. I think we need a better phrase than "armchair travel," because that sounds so dull compared to the magic of visiting another place and time through a book. Suggestions, anyone?

And, REDS and readers, what favorite place would you revisit, if you could wave your magic wand?

In the meantime, you can travel with Duncan and Gemma to Lower Slaughter on a beautiful autumn weekend, eat amazing food, smell the English roses, and even try some Cotswold Dry Gin!

Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and his wife Detective Inspector Gemma James have been looking forward to a relaxing weekend getaway in the beautiful Cotswolds. But after a tragic accident and unexplained deaths, things in the country take a deadly turn…

Duncan, Gemma, their children, and their friend Doug Cullen are guests at Beck House, the family estate belonging to Melody Talbot, Gemma’s trusted detective sergeant, in the picturesque village of Lower Slaughter.  The centerpiece of the weekend is a posh charity luncheon catered by rising local chef Viv Holland, a Glouscestershire native freshly returned from London. Attended by elites and critics, the event could make Viv a culinary star. But when things go terribly wrong, the detectives are pulled into the investigation, and each new piece of information makes it clear that the killer has a connection with Viv’s pub—or, perhaps, with Beck House itself.

New York Times bestselling author Deborah Crombie is a native Texan who writes crime novels set in the United Kingdom. Her Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James series has received numerous awards, including Edgar, Macavity, and Agatha nominations, and is published in more than a dozen countries to international acclaim.

Crombie lives in North Texas with her husband, German shepherds, and cats, and divides her time between Texas and Great Britain. Her latest novel, A Bitter Feast, is now available from William Morrow in paperback.  She is currently working on her nineteenth Kincaid/James novel.

 

Deborah Crombie and Book Launch Madness

DEBORAH CROMBIE: The release of my 18th Kincaid/James novel, A BITTER FEAST, is just a little over a week away and I am in prep countdown! (Cue music from Jaws here!)

I will be on book tour from the 8th of October, ending with Bouchercon 2019 in Dallas. But there is so much to do before I take off! Written interviews, blog posts, podcast interviews, social media, scheduling! It's all fun, though, and here are a couple of my favorite things from this week:

Last Sunday's mention in Parade Magazine (which was completely unexpected!)

And the release of the teaser from the audio version of A BITTER FEAST, read by my wonderful narrator, Gerard Doyle. This made me swoony with excitement! It is such a weird and wonderful experience to listen to your own work read by someone else. The book takes on a life of its own.

I also, I have to admit, have been shopping. New book, new tour, new conference--all call for a new travel wardrobe. Here's the result of a one-day blitz!

So I am all coordinated, and with the help of a white blouse and couple of scarves (not worn with the animal prints!) hopefully I can do a week at a time without looking like I'm wearing exactly the same thing at every event.

But what about WRITING,  you ask. Well, here's my big news-- 

There is another book in the works--in fact, I've just signed a contract with my publisher, William Morrow, for two more books. 

I have a smidgen of the first book rattling around in my brain. A title, a setting, a germ of a plot, some chapters outlined and bits of scenes written. I just have to clear the decks, focus, and do some necessary research so that I can really dive in. Next time we roll around to What We're Writing I'll have a snippet to share and will tell you more about it.

Next stop after Bouchercon, three weeks in London!

So, dear REDs and readers, how do you keep your cool when life is pulling you in a multitude of directions?? If you have calming mantras, please share. I could use them.

Debs Gearing up for A BITTER FEAST

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Oh my gosh, we have a lot going on at Jungle Red these days. Lucy's newest Key West mystery was out in May, new books from Hallie and Rhys are coming next week, then Hank later in August, Jenn in September, me in October, and Julia in April! It's a fabulous REDS season!! And we are all in some stage or another of promoting these books and writing the next one (or "ones" in Jenn's case!)

Here's where we are on A BITTER FEAST, Kincaid/James #18, coming October 8th!

Here's the first review, and it's STARRED! I am over the moon!

*A Bitter Feast.

By Deborah Crombie
Oct. 2019. 384p. Morrow, $25.99 (9780062271662); e-book, $12.99 (9780062271686)

A weekend in the country turns into more work than play for Scotland Yard detectives Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James. Melody Talbot, Gemma’s detective sergeant, invites the couple and their three children to the Cotswolds estate of her parents, Sir Ivan and Lady Adelaide Talbot, on the occasion of an upscale charity luncheon to be catered by local chef Viv Holland. Things go awry from the start when Duncan, traveling to the Talbots’ alone in the family car, is hit broadside, and the other driver dies as the slightly injured Duncan holds her hand. But attention centers on the passenger in that car, identified as former London celebrity chef Fergus O’Reilly, who’s found to have died before the crash. So, what was intended to be a relaxing sojourn turns into a murder investigation. As the detectives pitch in to help at the luncheon and confer with local authorities, another person close to Viv becomes a victim, and the history between the chefs is gradually revealed. The eighteenth entry in this best-selling series is notable for its portrayals of Duncan and Gemma’s children (especially the oldest, Kit), and for the addition of food as an item of interest, a factor that will extend the appeal from the series' procedural-loving fan base to the foodie mystery crowd. This character-driven series just continues to get better.

—Michele Leber


It is so incredibly nerve-wracking, as we can all attest, waiting for the reviews to come out.

The social media banner are up, yay!  Here's the one for Facebook.

This one was quite a trauma, I can tell you, as the first pass from the publisher was BROWN. All over. Background and cover. I had a good bit of help from my painter sister-in-law, and together we came up with the red overlay behind the gold cover. What do you think? Hopefully it's much more eye-catching.

Today I'm meeting with my publicist at Morrow to talk about the tour schedule, so more on that soon.

Next week, I tackle updating my web page. And maybe (whispering) even contemplating a newsletter. 

So what am I actually writing, you ask?

Seven hundred and sixty of these. These are called tip-in sheets, and they will go in specially bound books for Barnes and Noble. I've done these for independent bookstores before, but never nearly as many, and never for B&N, so I'm pretty tickled. (But boy do I have writer's cramp.)

And there is terrific news coming soon about Duncan and Gemma's next adventures, so stay tuned!

Readers, how important is it to you to have a signed copy of a favorite author's book? I'm not a big collector, but I have a few I will never part with, like my signed Dick Francis and James Herriott books.

Tell us about your most precious signed book, and I'll send one of the very last ARCs of A BITTER FEAST to one lucky commenter!

And just for one more bit of fun, here's Castle Coombe, the beautiful village in the book jacket photo. Anyone who has been there will recognize it instantly. It makes me want to go back to the Cotswolds!

Deborah Crombie on the Tastiness of Research

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I've always loved learning about things in the novels I read, whether it's about history, a profession, or an unfamiliar part of the world. So I suppose it's only natural that the same curiosity worked its way into my own novels, and I've had a blast researching all sorts of things for my books, from Cambridge poets to scotch whisky to rowing to guitars to--well, it's a long list.

But not many of these things have been useful in my personal life. As much as I loved writing about whisky distilling in Scotland, I don't actually drink much scotch. Nor have I taken up the guitar (thank goodness), or trained my big lugs of dogs to do search and rescue.

However, in A BITTER FEAST (a.k.a Kincaid/James #18) I actually learned some things that may come in handy!

I have for years been interested in food and professional cooking, and especially in the role of women as professional chefs. 

So I interviewed chefs. I signed up for Masterclasses. I watched cooking shows. And I read, not just cookbooks, but lots and lots and lots of books by and about chefs and restaurants.

Here's a fraction of my research stack.

Not that I've read all of every book, but what I learned was fascinating, and I hope it informed my characters. 

We meet chef Viv Holland in the present day in the very first scene in the book. But in this excerpt, we see her in the first of a series of flashbacks that occur more than a decade earlier.

May, 2006

The first thing Viv did every morning when she arrived at O’Reilly’s was clean the vent hoods, which had been left in the sink to soak. Ibby had mocked her, saying, “Women’s work,” but she was used to that and she didn’t care. Any kitchen she worked in was going to be clean.

“You think any Michelin-starred restaurant has greasy vents?” she asked.

She’d been in enough London kitchens. At eighteen, she’d left her home in Evesham, having saved up the money she’d made working at the cafe next to her mum’s antiques shop, and set off for the city she knew mostly from television shows.

For her mum, the good life had meant her shop. For her dad, a former London banker, it was a smallholding, raising chickens and pigs and his own veg. Viv had helped him in the farmhouse kitchen for as long as she could remember, and the older she grew, the more she loved it. When her friends were listening to The Spice Girls, Viv was glued to MasterChef on the telly and daydreaming about what she could make for dinner.

For her sixteenth birthday, her parents took her to the Michelin-starred Le Champignon Sauvage in Cheltenham. The food had been sublime, beyond anything she had even imagined, as if every component tasted somehow more itself. She’d spent weeks afterwards trying to recreate the things she’d tasted, crying in frustration when she couldn’t duplicate what she’d eaten.

Now, she saw that meal as the moment her future crystallized. She knew then that she was going to cook.

In the five years she’d been in London, she’d worked her way up from restaurant to restaurant, dishwasher to line cook, in some of the best places in west London. A year ago, she’d set her sights on O’Reilly’s in Chelsea. It had the up-and-coming buzz, and Fergus O’Reilly was the chef everyone was talking about as the next Marco Pierre White or Gordon Ramsay. When a job came up on day prep, she’d jumped at it, even though she knew she was good enough to be on the line.

When she sat down for an interview across from O’Reilly in the tiny basement room that served as the restaurant’s office, she’d found herself unexpectedly tongue-tied. She’d seen him in photos, and in cookery and interview segments, but none of that had prepared her for his height, or for how stunningly good-looking the man was in person. With his curly dark blond hair and deep dimples, he was reputed to have women swooning over him, but none of that charm was wasted on her that morning.

“I don’t like women in my kitchen,” he’d said bluntly, with his Belfast accent. He must have seen her start to bridle because he added, “I don’t mean women can’t cook, so don’t go getting all flustered. But women cause problems in the crew and I won’t have any of that emotional shite on my patch, understood?”

“Yes, chef,” Viv had managed to mumble. She was glad she’d worn a t-shirt and kitchen overalls and not a stitch of makeup.

“Good. My day prep cook quit because he said it was too hard. Can you freaking believe that?” He glared at her as if it was her fault. “You’d better tell me now if it’s going to be too much for you.”

“No, chef. I can do it,” she’d said, looking him straight in the eye. She’d started the next day.

It was hard, she found out soon enough, ten hours a day of working her bum off. The job was as much about organization as physical labor, but she liked that, liked the routine and the sense of accomplishment, liked that everything that came off the line at dinner service depended on how good a job she’d done.

Fergus O’Reilly, however, she thought as she dumped twenty pounds of roasted veal bones into a stock pot, was another kettle of fish.

He was mercurial, prone to shouting at the staff over the least little detail, while ignoring things that drove her bonkers, like the dirty vent hoods. But when he cooked, he was absolutely bloody brilliant, making the kind of food she’d dreamed about since that sixteenth birthday dinner. And lately he’d been listening to her suggestions and a couple of her ideas had turned up on the menu.

But she wanted to be back on the hot line—she missed the adrenaline rush of service and the challenge of getting the plates up. When a spot opened up on the line, she was going for it, no matter what it took.

For more about Viv, you'll have to read A BITTER FEAST.  But the question is, did all this learning actually make me a better cook?

Maybe, just a bit. I'm certainly a more educated diner, and I have a huge appreciation for the work that goes into turning out a top-notch restaurant meal. And I had a lot of fun.

Reds, has any of your research come in handy in real life? And readers, have you put to use things you've learned reading novels?

Do tell, AND I'll give an advance copy of A BITTER FEAST to one lucky commenter!

A BITTER FEAST, from William Morrow, October 8th, 2019

 

Debs on Writing and Not Writing

DEBORAH CROMBIE: What I have actually been writing this week is this:

It does have a title (Yay!), and a little bit of a plot--but I can't tell you any of that!

What I can tell you is that I think it will be set in London's Bloomsbury, in the dark days of late autumn, and--well, stuff happens. And then more stuff happens. And hopefully it will be gripping and intriguing and I'm dying to get started on it.

My agent is looking at the proposal today, and then we'll talk, so cross your fingers that she likes the idea!! 

What I've been working on the last few weeks is this:

First my editor's edits (that's the pile with the stickies) on A BITTER FEAST, then the copy edit. Fortunately, it was the same copy editor I've had for many books and she does a great job.

Here's page 1 of my style sheet (the reference your copy editor makes for names and word usage):

If you were to read through the manuscript, you'd see that I have once again utterly failed at compound words...

Then, today, my page proofs arrive!! These are the typeset pages, and it's the first time you get to see what the finished book pages will look like--and how they will read with all the changes that you made in the copy edit. It's very exciting!

And also very scary, because the only changes you can make at this point are to correct type-setting errors.  So if you're not happy with what you wrote, yikes, it's too bad.

And now, because it's spring, and we are all about flowers, here's a little snippet from A BITTER FEAST. Gemma has arrived at Melody Talbot's parents' house for the weekend, and this is her first view of of the fabulous gardens.

From the garden came the Jack Russell’s high-pitched yips, and Charlotte’s even more shrill squeal of excitement. Gemma realized she’d left the child in Addie’s care too long. She stacked the breakfast plates in the sink and headed for the French doors that led to the terrace.

She stepped out into the crisp morning and stopped, her breath catching at the sight that greeted her. Last night, she’d only glimpsed the garden through the windows in the fading dusk, and then her gaze had been caught by the distant hills.

Now, she marveled at the riot of color and symmetry spread before her. The flagged terrace merged into a smooth expanse of emerald lawn anchored by a rose-draped pergola. Two long tables had been set up in the grass on either side.

At the lawn’s edge she could see drifts of flowers bisected by a shallow flight of steps, and beyond that, more green lawns and steps, leading her eyes down to the curve of the little river.

On either side of the top lawn, double herbaceous borders blazed in a profusion of late summer reds and golds. She’d no idea so many different flowers even existed.

And here's a photo from a very real house near my fictional Beck House. This is the Lords of the Manor hotel, in Upper Slaughter, Glouscestershire.

The borders are lovely but not as beautiful as the ones I made up!

The page proofs also mean that ARCs will be coming very shortly, so look out for a giveaway soon!

  
Kincaid/James #18, coming October 8th, 2019 from William Morrow.

Readers, how good are your copy-editing skills? And can anyone else get compound words right?