Knitting Up a Narrative by Nancy Warren

JENN McKINLAY: One of the best parts of being a writer is the writer friends you acquire along the way. Nancy Warren is one of my long time writer pals and such an inspiration to me in writing and in life. She had me when she crafted fabulous romantic comedies, and then she hiked the Grand Canyon all by her lonesome. Wow! But she finished me off when she went to Bath to get her MFA (diploma handed to her by Jeremy Irons - yes, THE Jeremy Irons - no less). 

Truly, she's a remarkable woman who I'm honored to call my friend. I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek at the first book in her new series and the knitter, reader, and writer in me, LOVED it! But here is Nancy to tell us more about her latest project. 

Nancy, knitting in Oxford

Nancy Warren: I can’t knit, don’t live in Oxford, and I’m not undead (or not that I’m admitting, anyway) so why would I, a craft-impaired, red-blooded Canadian, undertake The Vampire Knitting Club, a series of paranormal cozy mysteries set in Oxford?

The answer, of course, is one of those What If? games writers love to play. I’m going back a few years, to when literary mash-ups were all the rage. I hate to even mention the abomination that was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but that’s the kind of thing I mean. 

At the time, Kate Jacobs’ The Friday Night Knitting Club was a huge hit. I was also loving the wildly successful Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris, which became the TV series True Blood. Wait a minute, said I. Vampires! Knitting! What a mash-up! Thus was born The Vampire Knitting Club. 

I loved that title and carried it around for years until I found myself living in Oxford. I was great friends with the mystery author Elizabeth Edmondson, now sadly deceased, and we spent an evening or two at the Eagle and Child Pub (where Tolkien and C.S. Lewis used to drinkcritique.) Lizzy and I drankbrainstormed my idea as it became a cozy mystery series. 

I think there’s a good reason that so many mystery books and TV series are set and filmed in Oxford. It’s not only historic, but the atmosphere is mysterious. You slip down Magpie Lane, and you’re transported back in time, you walk into a college quad and feel some of the greatest thinkers in history walking, ghost-like, at your side. Go to the Pitt Rivers Museum and you’ll find a bizarre collection of occult items, including my favorite, a witch trapped inside a bottle. At this very moment, the witch-in-a-bottle is on loan to the Ashmolean Museum’s wonderful exhibit called Spellbound: Magic, Ritual & Witchcraft, which traces supernatural beliefs in Oxfordshire. Where else would witches and vampires go to knit? 

There are also tunnels which run beneath the city. In Medieval times this underground network connected homes in the Jewish quarter. Some of these homes had massive vaulted cellars. Later, T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) claimed he canoed the underground Trill Mill Stream beneath Oxford. What a perfect location for vampires to live and commute. In short, Oxford was the ideal setting for my cozy knitting series.

I still couldn’t knit and, even though my amateur sleuth, Lucy, can’t knit either, she does inherit Cardinal Woolsey’s knitting shop with its colorful undead knitting circle. I felt I should at least learn the basics. Fortunately, there’s an absolutely charming knitting shop, The Oxford Yarn Store in North Parade. Serendipity struck. The owner, Karen, had lived in Vancouver and we knew some of the same people. She invited me to a knitting circle in her shop, where the lovely, experienced knitters helped me in my frequent knitting emergencies. I even discovered a knitting circle set in pubs. The Oxford Drunken Knitwits are my kind of knitters.

Nancy and shop asst James (I love his sweater!)

Inspiration comes in surprising ways, even though the history of how this series came to be is as tangled as my fledgling knitting projects. 

What about you, Reds and Readers, are you a knitter? Have you been to Oxford? What writing mashups are your favorites?

At a crossroads between a cringe-worthy past (Todd the Toad) and an uncertain future (she's not exactly homeless, but it's close), Lucy Swift travels to Oxford to visit her grandmother. With Gran's undying love to count on and Cardinal Woolsey's, Gran's knitting shop, to keep her busy, Lucy can catch her breath and figure out what she's going to do. 

Except it turns out that Gran is the undying. Or at least, the undead. But there's a death certificate. And a will, leaving the knitting shop to Lucy. And a lot of people going in and out who never use the door—including Gran, who is just as loving as ever, and prone to knitting sweaters at warp speed, late at night. What exactly is going on? 

When Lucy discovers that Gran did not die peacefully in her sleep, but was murdered, she has to bring the killer to justice without tipping off the law that there's no body in the grave. Between a hot 600-year-old vampire and a dishy detective inspector, both of whom always seem to be there for her, Lucy finds her life getting more complicated than a triple cable cardigan. 
The only one who seems to know what's going on is her cat ... or is it ... her familiar? 

First in a new series of paranormal cozy mysteries with bite! 

Do Women Write Better Than Men?

DEBS:

Okay, ladies and readers, it's a can of worms, but I had to open it.

I know that Mr. VS Naipul and his assertion that men write better than women is last week's news, and that he did not win any friends or readers from fifty percent of the population (and a much greater percentage of book buyers, since women buy a lot more books.)

I also realize that Mr. Naipul (as he strokes his Nobel prize) obviously does not care.

But as I've mulled over it this last week (when I should have been thinking about my plot line) I've come to the conclusion that I do care.

And what really bugs me is not whether men write better than women, or women write better than men, but rather that anyone should make a distinction.

It never occurred to me when I was growing up that I should like books by female authors better than books by male authors, or vice versa. I just liked BOOKS. I read Nancy Drew, but I also read the Hardy Boys. I discovered Golden Age crime fiction through Christie, Allingham, Marsh, and of course, Dorothy Sayers. But at about the same time, I was reading Galsworthy and Delderfield and Winston Graham. And Ian Fleming, although under the covers with a flashlight, as my parents did not consider James Bond "appropriate reading." Funny to imagine now that those books were hot stuff!

And then I discovered CS Lewis and Tolkien and Charles Williams--the Inklings, as they were known, a group of MALE authors who lived and taught in Oxford, and who met regularly at a pub called The Eagle and Child (The Bird and Baby, as it was known) to talk about writing and books and life. If I was envious of anything, it was not that they were men, but that they enjoyed an intellectual camaraderie that seemed beyond my wildest dreams.

So imagine my shock when I realized a good many years later that there were men who bragged about the fact that they had never read a book written by a woman. I was gobsmacked, as the Brits say.

And it occurs to me now that I've never heard a female reader say, much less brag, that they have never read a book written by a man.

Nor do I think that women write better than men. They may write differently--scientists will tell you that women are biologically programmed from birth to pick up emotional cues, which might translate into a deeper insight into character--but that's a gross generalization and I can think of many male writers who create beautifully nuanced and complex characters, male and female. That's what good writers do.

As for the camaraderie I so envied, I think women writers have achieved it--we at Jungle Red are an example, if I may say it.

But my feminist hackles are up, and not just my feminist hackles, my Humanist hackles. How is it that one half of the human race can consider that the other has nothing worthwhile to say?

Isn't it past time that we moved beyond such silliness?

And in the meantime, I'll keep reading.

It's a Crime--in Oxford

DEB: Want to know the best kept secret in the crime-writing conference world?

It's the St. Hilda's Crime and Mystery Conference. It's been held every August since 1994 in St. Hilda's College, Oxford--and that's England, not Mississippi.

There's no web page. St Hilda's doesn't advertise--it doesn't need to. Because those in the know come back every year if they can, and they tell their friends . . . and now I'm telling you.

Want to have a glorious English summer weekend taking in the dreaming spires of Oxford, staying in an Oxford college, mingling with brilliant writers and speakers? A drinks reception in the college senior common room? Champagne on the lawn overlooking the River Cherwell? And the punting--well, we'll get to that.

Writer Kate Charles gives us the scoop.

KATE: The first St Hilda’s conference was organized in 1994 by Eileen Roberts, then the Alumni Affairs Officer of the college, as an activity for the college’s graduates. Eileen was (is) a great lover of mysteries/crime fiction, and the possessor of a huge collection of books in her office. The number of times they were borrowed was a clue to her that many others shared her passion, and she decided that a weekend event featuring speakers about women crime writers with Oxford connections would be well attended.

It was! Speakers at that first conference included Lindsey Davis, Margaret Yorke (once the librarian of St. Hilda’s), Kate Charles, and Sarah Caudwell. At the end of that first conference, Kate conducted a survey to see whether people would be interested in coming back another year. The response was an overwhelming yes; Kate offered to help organize it, and she and Eileen have been doing it ever since. This year will be the 18th conference.

It differs from other conferences in having a more academic tone - speakers present papers rather than participate in panel discussions. That doesn’t mean it isn’t fun, as well as stimulating!

It’s also a themed conference. Each year a different theme is selected and addressed by speakers (mostly working writers, with a few academics added in) who are invited to focus on that particular theme. Themes have included historical mysteries, academic mysteries, the police (‘Men and Women in Blue’), and other such intriguing topics as ‘Strong Poison’, ‘All in the Family’, ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’, and ‘Behind the Mask’. This year’s theme is ‘The Anatomy of Justice’.

Last year the conference paid tribute to P.D. James during the week of her 90th birthday with a gala birthday lunch. Baroness James has been in attendance a number of times over the years, as has Oxford favourite Colin Dexter. There have been far too many excellent speakers to mention!

The Sunday morning punting competition has been a feature most years, ably organized by Gillian Linscott. The champagne reception on the lawn, held the first evening (on the lawn if the weather is fine!) is always memorable. Mystery Women host a reception after dinner on the Saturday night. There is always a well-equipped book room and a group signing.

At this conference, writers (speakers and others) and readers mingle without any distinction made between them. It has the atmosphere of a large country house party - very friendly, and in the most beautiful of settings, by the river, tucked away from the tourist-ridden centre of Oxford.

Speakers this year are: Natasha Cooper (Chair), Triona Adams (on Sarah Caudwell), Martin Edwards, Penelope Evans, Jane Finnis, Frances Fyfield, Ann Granger, Bernard Knight (Guest of Honour), Val McDermid, Edward Marston, Ayo Onatade, Cath Staincliffe, and Andrew Taylor. The programme will be released in the next few days.

DEB: Although I haven't made it to St. Hilda's nearly as often as I'd like, I have some precious memories. My first year was (I think!) 1995. I was invited as a speaker, and PD James was the guest of honor. This meant that at the Saturday night dinner (which that year was held at Somerville College) I got to sit at the high table with PD James in Dorothy Sayer's college. It seemed an unimaginable honor, then and now.

(In the photo of Baroness James speaking at last year's dinner in honor of her birthday, that's Andrew Taylor on the left and Peter Lovesey on the right. Lovely guys and two of my favorite writers. I'm so sorry I missed that one.)

And the punting? I'll never forget skimming along the Cherwell, propelled by Laurie King, a veritable Valkyrie at the pole. Here, Laurie elegantly punts Marcia Talley and Kate Charles.

If you think a weekend in Oxford with terrific crime writers might be your cup of tea, you can contact Eileen Roberts at

eileen.roberts@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk


And one more picture. Who is that impossibly young writer with the glamorous Kate Charles and Marcia Talley?