Round Top Rolls Around Again--Deborah Crombie

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I have to admit that I have NOT been writing this week, and to apologize for being absent from the blog since Monday, because the end of March brings not just spring, but the spring antiques show down in Round Top, Texas. This has become an annual event for me and my daughter, Kayti, and I look forward to it all year. I've written about Round Top in the past, and apparently I've been persuasive enough that my friend Francine Mathews decided to see for herself and joined her sister there. Two other friends, also first-timers, attended as well, and everyone had a terrific time!

Our big event was the Marburger Farm Antique Show, which requires tickets. There are more than half a dozen enormous tents filled with different vendors from all over the country. The tents are set up in a big field in the central Texas rolling countryside, which is so beautiful this time of year! And it being central Texas with the usual unpredictable spring weather, on Tuesday, the opening day, it was HOT. Hats, sunscreen, and comfy shoes are essential, but even being prepared, we just about melted this year. 

But it was cooler inside the tents, and the vendors go all out to make their booths appealing.

Many of the vendors sell lots of different things, and it pays to look carefully. One booth might have furniture, china, vintage clothes, and jewelry, for instance. Or you might see things that you can't imagine somebody would actually take home, like this enormous shell covered urn.

And many things that you (or at least I) would like to take home, like this handsome pair of dogs.

(And, no, I didn't. I didn't even look at the price, but I'm sure it was way over my budget, and that's assuming I had anywhere to put them.)

Marburger is only one of many places to shop in and around Round Top. Here, Kayti found the champagne vending machine in a new venue we discovered this year.

Here's something I thought Rhys should have to remind her of Georgie's granddad.

And something I resisted buying.

These were circa 1920s bulb forcing vases, and I loved the cobalt blue ones and thought one would look gorgeous in my kitchen. Unfortunately, there were really expensive, so I resisted!

Here's what we did come home with, however!

Two hundred miles further south means plants get started earlier, and we can never resist "the plant lady's" beautiful pots and baskets.

Now, after that little mini vacation, it's back to work on the book for me. But nothing is wasted for a writer--maybe one of my characters will have a giant purple shell urn. 

Or at least a few garden gnomes...

Reds and readers, what sort of things on offer would tempt you?

Rancho Pillow--Round Top, Round 2

DEBORAH CROMBIE: When my daughter and friend and I went to Round Top for the first time back in 2017, I was just getting stuck in writing A BITTER FEAST, Kincaid/James #18, and it was only by accident that we did something that would end up playing a big part in the book.  It so happened that we'd bought tickets to a dinner at a place called Rancho Pillow, a ranch property now run as a very quirky motel a few miles outside of the tiny town of Round Top. Here's the view looking over the fields from the ranch. So peaceful!

The guest chef for that 2017 dinner, Robert Lyford, was actually local to us here at home in McKinney, so we were very excited to see what Robert had in store for us.

It was a fabulous dinner, and Robert's menu was a huge inspiration for chef Viv Holland's charity lunch menu in A BITTER FEAST.

Here's a little snippet from the book describing some of the food:

Even with the quirky presentation, the food, Gemma had to admit, had been divine. From the creamy, smoky trout spread, to the delicate salad with roasted pears, caramel, and a local blue cheese, to the meltingly tender lamb and white beans served in camping tins, it had been of absolute star quality. What, Gemma had to wonder, was a chef so talented doing in this tiny village?

She nibbled at the last bit of her pudding. The little jam jar she’d chosen had held a mixed berry crumble with a tangy layer of crème fraiche—a dessert she suspected she’d find herself dreaming about. All around her, spoons were being laid down and empty jars examined in hopes of finding a smidgen more.

So this year, when Kayti and I had a chance to book tickets for the Rancho Pillow Feast in the Field again, we jumped at it.

Here we are pre-dinner, toasting our trip. 

And resting our poor feet after a day of shopping at Marburger Farm.

(I should probably interject here to say that half the fun of the whole Round Top event is playing dress up. It's cowboy boots (my vintage Wranglers!), hats, denim, and skirts or dresses. And lots of turquoise jewelry. Believe me, it's a thing, and we did it up properly.)

Kayti demonstrates!

The Feast in the Field dinners have grown considerably since our first one, when there was only one long table. Now there are three!

So festive, with eclectic table settings that I borrowed for the book from the previous dinner as well. (The yurt is part of the motel accomodation!)

This year the chef was a woman, Karla Subera-Pittol, from the LA restaurant Chainsaw, and all the food was smoked or cooked over open fires. 

Here's Karla cooking.

And some mystery ingredient we never identified.

What do you suppose that was? Below are pinapples and cabbages smoking, and the big smoker where the meat was cooked.

It was all delicious, and we had a great time, the best part of which was the communal dining and making new friends. We don't sit down with strangers often enough in our everyday lives. It turned out the husband of the couple who sat across from us graduated from Austin College, my tiny north Texas university whose enrollment tops out at about 1200 students, the same year I did! Alas, we didn't know each other back then. He was psychology and I was biology and our paths didn't cross, but it was a lovely coincidence that evening.

As Ellen Crosby mentioned earlier this week, writers have to do more than write. It's getting out in the world and experiencing things that gives us grist for the mill. I don't know that this dinner will play a specific part in a book (unless that mysterious ingredient comes into one somewhere...) but you never know. I am open for it!

REDs and writer friends, have chance adventures become major parts of books? And readers, have you had memorable communal meals?

 

A Simpler Type

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Last week I made my now more or less annual trek down to Round Top in central Texas (halfway between Houston and Austin, if that helps) with my daughter for the spring antiques show. I've written about Round Top before--I don't think there is anything else quite like it--and it is such a huge treat, and so anticipated. The big ticketed event of the spring week is a place called Marburger Farm , but there are lots of other venues, most set up in tents, like Marburger, but some in warehouse-like buildings and even barns, plus shopping in the town of Round Top itself. 

Last year I scored a couple of real treasures including a beautiful quilt and my now-beloved Staffordshire dog. This year I said I wasn't really looking for anything, but there was something I'd been keeping an eye out for the last couple of years.

Here's a hint, from this little snippet of a scene in A KILLING OF INNOCENTS where Melody visits her father's newspaper office:

Her spirits rose as she came out of High Street Kensington tube station into the Sunday bustle of the street. Across the way, the bells in the tower of St. Mary Abbott’s chimed one o’clock. The midday sun lit the Great War Memorial, still bedecked in fading poppy wreaths. The flower stall in the church forecourt was doing a brisk business, and Melody decided she’d treat herself to a bouquet of something bright on the way home, red tulips, perhaps.

But first, a little research. When she’d checked in at the paper’s security desk, she took the lift up to the top floor. The newsroom never slept, of course, but the paper always felt quieter to her on a Sunday.

When she was a child, she’d been awed by the clatter and roar of the presses under Fleet Street, but those days were gone, with the presses moving first to Wapping in South London, and now to a huge plant in Broxbourne, in Hertfordshire.

In the newsroom, the clack and ding of typewriters had long since given way to the soft taps of keyboards, but her father kept a collection of vintage typewriters on the sideboard in his office. She had been fascinated by them, and the first thing she’d ever typed had been on his mint-green portable Olivetti. No one had wanted typewriters then—now they were worth a small fortune.

And this year I struck gold.

What a great display! And more!

A bonanza of typewriters!

All working, with manuals, although some of the manuals are copies rather than originals.

There was an Olivetti, like the one in Ivan Talbot's office (although not mint green) but it was way out of my price range. I tried the key action on the ones that were more affordable, and there was one that was just the ticket. In the first photo, it's the one on the righthand side, second from the bottom.

It's a 1957 Smith-Corona, and that was the clincher for me. My mom typed on Smith-Coronas. By the time I was in highschool and hunting and pecking a bit on her machine, she had an electric, but she had manual portables before that. (My parents had their own business and worked from home, so my mom was always typing.) Interestingly, the first Smith-Corona portable electric went on the market the year the same year as this manual model, 1957.

I didn't actually learn to type (because I was lazy and my mom would type my highschool papers for me) until my stint in secretarial school between highschool and college, and that was on an IBM Selectric. That's one of the reasons why my laptop is a Lenovo Thinkpad--it's the same touch keypad as the Selectric.

I love the way the key action feels on the Smith-Corona, too, although it turns out that the ribbon lifter needs some adjustment (Rick says he can fix it for me) so I haven't really had a chance to practice.

One thing I wasn't prepared for is how heavy the thing is! I complain about my little laptop which is NOTHING compared to the typewriter. The typewriter weighs a ton! (Don't think I'l be carrying it on a plane, or anywhere else, any time soon.) And no, I definitely do NOT want to try to write a book on a manual typewriter. I am incredibly grateful for word processing and all the associated modern technology.

But I'm fascinated by the history and development of typing, and I like to think of writers before me, tapping away on those lovely bouncy keys. Not to mention that in a power outage, like our Julia Spencer-Fleming is experiencing at the moment, I could actually work...

REDS and readers, any fun typewriter memories for you? What did you learn to type on?

And isn't it cool that typewriters (and fountain pens) are a big thing with younger people these days? (Next thing you know there may be a cult for rotary dial phones...)

What We're Writing--Debs is Antiquing!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I have been making progress on Kincaid/James #20, now that things have settled down a bit from all the book launch hoopla (which has all been great fun--and just in case you missed this tidbit, A KILLING OF INNOCENTS debuted at #8 on the Wall Street Journal Bestseller List!) For the new book, I have the bones of the plot, many character names and backstories, and maybe, just maybe, a title. But we will talk about all of that the next time, because this week I have been not writing but shopping--I mean researching--as it is once again time for the spring antiques market in Round Top, Texas!

My daughter and I were lucky enough to snag a room actually in Round Top, which was quite a feat. Situated about halfway between Houston and Austin in the rolling hills of central Texas, Round Top is a one-stoplight cluster of old buildings, many of them built by German immigrants in the late 1800s. Here's our little one-room cottage, dating from about 1890.

Most of the antiques markets are set up in big tents in the fields of surrounding ranches. This is Marburger Farm, the show we buy tickets for.

There are eight of these football field-sized, double-aisled tents at Marburger, along with some smaller tents and buildings.

This is one aisle of one tent, and the variety of STUFF for sale is just astounding. China, glassware, silver, jewelry, clothing, art of all sorts, furniture (lots of really hideous mid-century modern again this year!) Even vintage typewriters.

It was so windy our first day that Kayti and I nearly blew away. We had to literally hold on to our hats and more than once they got away from us.

Hats, by the way, are a must, and not just for sun protection. There is an unspoken fashion code at Round Top, which consists of denim, bandanas, hats, cowboy boots, and LOTS of jewelry, especially turquoise. You cannot over-accessorize in Round Top. Add a flowered dress or skirt to the above and you are rocking it!

I would go just for the people/fashion-watching, and to enjoy a few days of views like this.

And this.

It was wildflower season but, alas, we somehow didn't manage to get any photos of the bluebonnets.

I might, however, have figured out how to have shopper's luck. I said that I had no agenda this year other than to enjoy the trip with my daughter, and that I was definitely not in the market for a quilt.

So I brought home this. (Any quilt experts out there want to guess at dates for the fabrics? It came from a collection in Ohio, and is in mint condition.)

And then there was this little darling.

Last year I looked and looked for a Staffordshire dog to commemorate A KILLING OF INNOCENTS, but couldn't find one that I liked and/or could afford. This year, bingo! Now this guy is adorning my mantle!

I'm hoping this allows me to call the trip research...

REDs and readers, have you ever stopped looking for something, only to have it then fall into your lap?