Lighten up your holidays with Agatha Christie; a guest blog by Ann Claire

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: What goes better with the holidays that Agatha Christie? Her publisher's habit of releasing "A Christie for Christmas" has been carried on by the BBC's annual adaptations, released around December, as well as homages to the Queen of Crime (Knives Out II or See How They Run, anyone?)

 Ann Claire (who writes the Bookmobile Mysteries as Nora Page and the Santa Fe Cafe Mystery series as Ann Myers) knows in this disorderly world, we all crave the Christie magic. (Go to the bottom of this page and read the description of her new series debut, DEAD AND GONDOLA. Murder in a snowbound Swiss chalet bookstore? Sign me up!)

But since you must, at times, put down the book you're escaping into - if only to avoid dripping turkey gravy and cranberry sauce on the pages - Ann is sharing some delightful Christie tidbits you can throw out as your holiday table conversation lifeline.

 

The holidays are upon us and with them, gatherings from festive to forced. Office obligations, family feasts, Zoom mixers, and strangers stuffed on planes on the way to grandma’s house. Also upon us: all those topics we’re warned to avoid lest we incite an uncle and/or indigestion.

Politics, religion, finances, inflation, pandemics, facial hair, bad relationships, too-good relationships, diets, Jeffrey Dahmer, Twitter, how hot it’s been, and how to carve that turkey.

What’s a small-talker to do?  

I have a suggestion: serve up interesting facts about Agatha Christie. Slice them into diatribes. Sprinkle them around the dinner table just for fun.

Here are a few to get you started:

1.  1.   Agatha Christie loved to surf. I think that’s enough to start, end, or swerve any conversation, don’t you? But there’s more: Agatha Christie was a surfing pioneer, thought to be one of the first (if not the first) western women to practice standup surfing. She learned the sport while on a world tour in 1922 and “surfed splendid waves” in Hawaii and South Africa.

2.   2.  Agatha Christie also adored dogs. When Agatha was five, her American father gave her a Yorkshire terrier named George Washington (Agatha preferred to call him Tony). Perhaps her most beloved canine was Peter, a wirehaired terrier to whom she dedicated the Poirot mystery Dumb Witness: “Dear Peter, Most Faithful of Friends and Dearest of Companions, A Dog in a Thousand.” Peter also appeared on the cover of the first edition and in the mystery as intrepid Bob, who helped solve the crime.  

    3.   Agatha worked as a pharmacy dispenser during both world wars. She applied her knowledge to her mysteries, in which poison was her most-used means of murder. In real life, she stopped a head pharmacist from accidentally overdosing a patient. She hid her heroism by spilling the too-potent pills and crushing them under her shoe so as not to embarrass or anger her boss.   

4.   Twice, Agatha Christie spotted Poirot out in the world. Once, while having lunch at the Savoy in London and again on a visit to the Canary Islands. There’s a good topic of conversation or an escape from the table: Seen any fictional characters lately? Anyone up for a post-dinner stroll to look for Poirot?

 

5.     We have Agatha’s older sister Madge to thank for the mysteries. Madge bet Agatha she couldn’t write a detective story. Agatha sure proved her wrong! Agatha Christie remains the best-selling novelist of all time with over two billion copies sold. Raise a toast to Madge!  

6.      

        Even the Queen of Crime suffered social anxieties. Agatha Christie nearly missed a banquet in her honor because a hotel security guard failed to recognize her and turned her away. Before bumping into a friend, Agatha roamed the hotel’s halls wondering if she should just go home. Who else can relate? 

 

 

Readers, will you be gathering this holiday season? Do your plans include curling up with a good book, possibly an Agatha Christie?   

 

Whatever the season brings, I wish you health, happiness, and smooth conversations. But in case talk does sour, sneak off to the kitchen and mix up Agatha Christie’s favorite drink: Cream. Instructions: Open a container of cream. Pour into a large mug. Thin with milk (optional). Cheers!   

 

Ann Claire earned degrees in geography, which took her across the world. Now she lives with her geographer husband in Colorado, where the mountains beckon from their kitchen windows. When she’s not writing, you can find her hiking, gardening, herding housecats, and enjoying a good mystery, especially one by Agatha Christie. Online, you can visit Ann on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/annclaireauthor/) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/AnnClaireMysteries/) or check out her website for information on all her books and pen names at https://novelmystery.wixsite.com/books.

  Ellie Christie is thrilled to begin a new chapter. She’s recently returned to her tiny Colorado hometown to run her family’s historic bookshop with her elder sister, Meg, and their beloved cat, Agatha. Perched in a Swiss-style hamlet accessible by ski gondola and a twisty mountain road, the Book Chalet is a famed bibliophile destination known for its maze of shelves and relaxing reading lounge. At least, until trouble blows in with a wintry whiteout. A man is found dead on the gondola, and a rockslide throws the town into lockdown—no one in, no one out.

The victim was a mysterious stranger who’d visited the bookshop. At the time, his only blunders had been disrupting a book club and leaving behind a first-edition Agatha Christie novel, written under a pseudonym. However, once revealed, the man’s identity shocks the town. Motives and secrets swirl like the snow, but when the police narrow in on the sisters’ close friends, the Christies have to act.

Although the only Agatha in their family tree is their cat, Ellie and Meg know a lot about mysteries and realize they must summon their inner Miss Marple to trek through a blizzard of clues before the killer turns the page to their final chapter.

Embracing My Senior Sleuth by Nora Page

JENN: My agent never asks me to endorse anyone because she knows I'm usually in one stage of deadline hell or another. So, when she mentioned she had a librarian sleuth that she thought I would enjoy, I was all in and I am so glad I was because I adored Better Off Read by our guest author today. And don't just listen to me, this is what Publisher's Weekly had to say: "Funny [and] fast-paced… A dynamo of a lead in Cleo, who drives with a lead foot and refuses to back down from anything or anyone, including bullies and murderers."


Nora Page Many thanks to Jungle Red Writers and Jenn McKinlay for inviting me to guest post! I’m a huge fan, so right after celebrating the invite, I got down to dithering. Namely, what to write about? Do I have Jungle Red–worthy advice? Doubtful.

Nora Page, aka Ann Myers

I’ve never overcome procrastination or found joy in decluttering. I have poor writing posture (I take the “lap” in laptop seriously), and I don’t have the secret to producing five-thousand words a day or even a few hundred. I kept on dithering.

Then I recalled some memorable writing feedback: You write old.

To backtrack a little, last year I returned to college. It wasn’t like those movies, where—let’s say, hypothetically—a mid-forties, white-haired, work-from-home wallflower discovers her inner party girl. No. It was terrifying, but also enlightening.

The class was a senior fiction seminar at the college where my husband teaches. Classes there run as blocks, three-and-a-half-week sessions taken one at a time. A friend—a professor and writer—invited me to sit in. It was kind and generous, and remember how I take laptops literally? I took the sitting-in part at word value too.

I imagined I’d be sitting back, soaking in the brilliance of the professor and another award-winning novelist. There was brilliance all right, but no relaxing. The students had signed up to write entire novels. Big, meaningful, edgy, fabulous, full-length works of fiction they’d crank out by the end of the semester. Senior fiction seminar was the starting block, the sprint to get down words and dissect them daily in class.

Yikes! I’m a shy sharer, let alone with bright college students half my age. Adding to my terror, I was between projects and floundering for ideas, any idea.  

Under the next-day deadline, I made up something fast. I had a homeless, college-age heroine. She was good with scalpels in a med-student way. I got about 10,000 words down but shelved the idea after the seminar, mainly to start a new project but also because of a seminar participant’s critique: You write old.

The student who said this was being kind and constructive. She thought my main character seemed more aged than her years. She was onto something. The problem wasn’t just a matter of age or slang. It wasn’t the character’s fault either. As characters go, she had fine elements: flaws and noble goals, conflicts and a traumatized backstory. It was me. The seminar student was right. I am drawn to more senior characters, and that’s who I was writing.  

Previously, I wrote a culinary cozy series (the Santa Fe Café Mysteries written as Ann Myers). My favorite character was the bold octogenarian sidekick. She reminded me of my grandmother. She had spunk and experience and said and did what she wanted. I missed her most when that series ended, and I was still hanging on to bits of her.  

Available: June 12, 2018!!!

The Bookmobile Mysteries got the green light from Crooked Lane Books the day the seminar ended. I was thrilled and ready to embrace a new heroine, a senior sleuth! Librarian Cleo Watkins has the starring role in the Bookmobile Mysteries. She’s seventy-five, adores her job, and resists retirement, so much so that she’s wary of crossing into nearby Florida. Together with her feline sidekick, Cleo hits the road in a school-bus bookmobile and rolls into trouble, including murder.  

I have a blast with Cleo. I connect with her, and that’s a key, isn’t it? It’s the broader message behind the student’s critique. Stitching together a handful of traits and troubles won’t cut it. As both readers and writers, we want to feel for the people on the page.

I spend a lot of time with Cleo in my head. She’s also someone I’d want to hang out with in real life. I imagine we’d read quietly on her porch or mix up some biscuits in her kitchen. Maybe we’d do a little sleuthing, although I’d probably stay back in the bookmobile. I’m not as brave as Cleo, not even in writing seminars.

I am glad I sat in, though. I learned a lot from the students, and I hope if they got to critique Cleo, they’d feel her senior spirit. What a compliment that would be. 

What about you, Reds and readers, do you find that you write characters in a certain age demographic better than others? Do you have a preferred age for the characters of the books you read?