What We're Writing - Jenn McKinlay

Jenn McKinlay: Technically, what I'm writing is Buried to the Brim, the next London Hat Shop mystery (2020), but I'm also writing the publicity posts for The Good Ones a bookstore rom-com (Feb 2019), finalizing the page proofs on Dying For Devil's Food, the next Cupcake Bakery mystery (May 2019), copyediting Word to the Wise the next Library Lover's mystery (Sept 2019), writing the proposal for One for the Books, the next-next Library Lover's mystery (2020), revising The Christmas Keeper, the second bookstore rom-com (Oct 2019), and working on a top-secret super special project completely out of my wheelhouse. So, what I'm writing is...well, it's complicated!

After much dithering, I decided to share the opener to Dying for Devil's Food, mostly because I just received the cover art, after much angst on the artist's part, and I have to say it is fantastic!

May 2019!!!

As the New York Times bestselling series continues, it's going to take every recipe the Fairy Tale Cupcake crew has to whip up a quick defense for Mel Cooper when her high school reunion goes from a cake walk to a car wreck...

Chapter One

     “Squeee!”

     At the screechy noise, Melanie Cooper squeezed her pastry bag too tight and frosting shot out of the tip into a big glob on top of the cupcake she was decorating for a wedding the next day.

     “Angie DeLaura, what was that?” she asked. She blew her blond bangs off her forehead as she glared at her business partner, who had just come running through the swinging doors from the front of the bakery into the kitchen where Mel was working.

      “That’s Angie Harper to you, and…” she paused to strike a pose and fan herself with a large envelope and fancy looking invitation, before she continued, “to everyone else we graduated high school with fifteen years ago.”

     “Huh?” Mel frowned at her recently married, petite brunette friend.

     “Our fifteen-year reunion,” Angie said. She pointed to the envelope in her hand. “It’s coming up and guess who they want to bake cupcakes for it?”

     Mel stared at her childhood friend and business partner. How could she put this as tactfully and delicately as possible?

     “No.” Mel used a rubber spatula to scrape the glob off the ruined cupcake and flicked it into the large garbage bin to her right.

     “What?” Angie froze in mid-fan. “What do you mean, no?”

     “I have no intention of baking cupcakes for those people,” Mel said. 

     She bent over the cake in front of her. It was a red velvet cupcake with cream cheese frosting. She was keeping it simple and working the frosting in a thick smooth swirl that she then sprinkled with small red hearts. Just the thought of going to her high school reunion made her want to mainline the frosting and shove a whole cupcake into her mouth like a boss.

     “But…but,” Angie stammered. It was clear she hadn’t anticipated this sort of response, which boggled Mel, but she continued on.

     “No buts,” she said. “You’re welcome to go to our reunion but I refuse.”

     “Mel, I don’t think you’re grasping the big picture here.”

     “Oh, I’m grasping it and I’m tossing it away.”

     “But look at us,” Angie said. She swung her arms wide to encompass the kitchen and beyond. “We’re hugely successful. We have franchises all over the country. That gives us a moral imperative to show up at our reunion.”

     “No.”

     “Mel, I know there were some people who hurt your feelings back in the day—“

     “Hurt my feelings?” Mel straightened up. She grabbed a pinch of heart shaped sprinkles and didn’t sprinkle them so much as threw them onto the freshly piped frosting. She stared at her friend. “Angie, they called me ‘Melephant,’ they bullied me about my weight, and Cassidy Havers, in particular, wrote my name in all of the boys’ bathrooms with my phone number. She was vicious and mean and cruel and if I never see her again, it will be too soon.”

     “She’s Cassidy Havers-Griffin now,” Angie said.

     “Griffin?” 

     “Yes, as in Daniel Griffin.”

     “She married Danny?” Mel asked. She felt her old high school crush spread its wings and rise out of the ashes of her adolescent heart like a phoenix. “When?”

     “A couple of years ago,” Angie said. “I think you were in Paris at culinary school at the time.”

     “And you didn’t mention it?” 

     Angie just looked at her and Mel nodded. Yeah, she wouldn’t have told Angie if her high school crush had gotten married either. Oh, wait, her crush had been Tate Harper and he had gotten married six months ago. To Angie.

     “But you’re going to marry Joe,” Angie said. “And you had a much deeper and longer lasting crush on Joe than on Danny, right?”

     “Well, of course, but I can’t believe he married her,” Mel said. She shuddered. “I mean he was captain of the basketball team and totally out of my league in high school, and she was the homecoming queen so I guess it makes sense, but I always hoped he’d meet someone…”

     Mel’s voice trailed off. She was not going to say it out loud.

     “More like you?” Angie guessed.

     This was the problem with besties, they knew you too well.

***

So, who gets iced at the high school reunion? Yeah, I'm not telling. You'll have to read the book to find out ;-)         

Now how about you, Reds and Readers, are you a fan of high school reunions, or not so much?

Jenn McKinlay--Cloche and Dagger

DEBORAH CROMBIE: You will guess, from the quote on the

cover of Cloche and Dagger, that I really loved Jenn McKinlay's new book. London? A hat shop? In Portobello Road, no less? A heroine named Scarlett? And a murder???? What's NOT to love!

So I asked Jenn to tell us a bit about how she came to write this very English story, and what is the deal with the hats?

(And remember I said to pay close attention to the hat in the photo from the film The Women in Monday's post? See anything familiar in the photos here today?  What goes around, comes around, it seems...)  Here's Jenn!

JENN McKINLAY: 

What was your worst fashion faux pas?

 I remember mine.  In my defense, it was the eighties.  At the tender (read dopey) age of seventeen, I decided it would be fabulous to shave the sides of my head and bleach my brown hair a brassy shade of blonde only found on clown wigs or troll dolls.  Obviously, that wasn’t enough, so I decided to wear a Pea Coat and combat boots bought at the Army Navy Surplus shop because high school guys love asking out a girl who looks like a dude, right?  Yeah, this is one of many reasons why I am so grateful that the Internet was still in its blessedly innocent infancy during my teen years.  The only evidence of my bad choices is a sleeve of negatives in a musty box in my mother’s basement.  Praise be to the stone age!

Now what if your fashion faux pas was photographed, went viral and inspired a traditional mystery series?  Yes, Princess Beatrice, I’m talking to you.
 
Like many of the fabulous authors here at Jungle Red, readers frequently ask me where I get my ideas. They come from a variety of places but for Cloche and Dagger, the first of the London hat shop mysteries, the idea came to fruition in a matter of hours.  On April 29th, 2011, I roused myself (like 22.8 million other American viewers) to watch the royal wedding.  I loved it all – the pomp -- the circumstance – the crazy hats!  And then, there she was, Princess Beatrice with that beige thing on her head.  I simply could not look away.

It became a worm burrowing into my skull.  I couldn’t stop thinking about Philip Treacy, the milliner who designed the hat, which then led my brain to wonder about the British custom of wearing hats.  Milliner is just not an occupation you see much in the States, although I’ve been told since researching this series that the popularity of hats is on the rise.  As I watched the Internet light up over Princess Beatrice’s chapeau, I wondered how she felt and hoped she was blithely unaware of the criticism.  I don’t like to watch people being bullied, I mean, it’s not like she designed the squid replica herself.  Then I wondered if she was miffed at Philip Treacy, and then BAM!  I knew I had to write a mystery series set in a hat shop in London, so I did.


Writing Cloche and Dagger was one of the best experiences of my writing life.  It challenged me in so many ways with a foreign setting, a business I knew nothing about, and it came out in first person in the voice of my American heroine Scarlett Parker.  For this adventure alone, I will be forever grateful to Princess Beatrice and Philip Treacy and that wonderfully inspiring hat.  As a thank you, because Princess Beatrice is too often associated with fashion faux pas, I’m including a picture of her where I think she is quite lovely (not sure who the dude is, but he’s cute – go, girl)!

Now, confess, what was your worst fashion faux pas?  And what would you have done if it went viral (besides cry)?

And now I must take a moment to give a tip of the brim to two of the Reds who were wonderful enough to slog through Cloche and Dagger while I was still whipping it into shape – Deborah Crombie and Rhys Bowen!  You both represent what is so terrific about the writing community – the camaraderie and support.  Smooches to you both!

Jenn McKinlay is the New York Times bestselling author of the Library Lover’s mysteries and the Cupcake Bakery mysteries.  She also writes under the names Lucy Lawrence and Josie Belle.  She lives in Scottsdale, AZ in a house overrun with kids, pets, and her husband’s guitars. 

DEBS: So, readers, confess your worst fashion faux pas and you could win a copy of Cloche and Dagger! (I would love this book for its utterly charming cover even if the story weren't so much fun!)

(And Jenn's right--Bea's BF is quite dishy...)