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E-mail YingHi, friends. Please forgive today’s blogging fail and join me tomorrow, when I’ll have ARCs of The Traitor in the Tunnel to show you. Woo!
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Until tomorrow
Wednesday, November 30th, 2011The Traitor is coming!
Wednesday, September 28th, 2011Hello friends! It’s been a busy week. I was at Kingston WritersFest on Thursday, where Adwoa Badoe and I read and talked about our books. Adwoa’s first YA novel is called Between Sisters and it’s about 16-year-old Gloria, who goes to work as a maid in modern-day Ghana. You can’t really get further, geographically and culturally, from the Agency, but our terrific moderator, Susan Olding, led us through a lively conversation about social pressures, personal expectations, imperialism, our protagonists’ characters, and our writing process. She bridged the two worlds of the novels beautifully. I loved the really thoughtful audience questions, especially from Beth and Clara (hi!).
with Susan Olding and Adwoa Badoe; photo by Bernard Clark
photo by Bernard Clark
I also stopped in at Lethbridge, AB’s first-ever Word on the Street festival and chatted with readers there about the link between research and writing. Good times.
I’m reading Claire Tomalin’s Austen bio, Jane Austen: A Life, at every stolen moment and absolutely adoring it. It’s not just that I’m an Austenphile; Tomalin is such a wise, sympathetic, subtly observant biographer and she makes me think about things anew. For example, she really challenges my opinion of Sense and Sensibility, until now my least favourite of Austen’s novels. Tomalin argues that S&S is a debate connected to the politics of the 1790s, and that Austen’s characterizations of Elinor and Marianne are much subtler than I’d previously thought. I’m determined to re-read it, now, and see if I agree.
And finally, I have an official North American publication date for The Traitor in the Tunnel! February 28, 2012 is the Big Day. Huzzah!
Snow Day!
Thursday, February 3rd, 2011Yesterday, instead of going to daycare and working, my son and I:
- frolicked in the snow
- marvelled at its relentlessness when all signs of shovelling were obliterated after an hour
- waited for my brother to say he’d arrived safely in Toronto
- built an elaborate railway only to dismantle it after the bridge fell down 15 times in as many minutes
- chanted “Pease Porridge Hot” approximately 50 times
- made cookies
- and played a game based on this book (which my mother-in-law found at a jumble sale, and which is utterly charming):
I didn’t know it until yesterday but writers, like kids, get snow days. Another reason to call it the finest job on earth! What did you do in the snow?
P.S. I’ve done a short interview for Kingstonist. My interviewer was Caitlin Fralick, a public librarian, which feels like an all-round win.
Launch parties, launch dates
Thursday, September 30th, 2010Thank you to everyone who came to my many launch parties! The Twitter parties were gabby, fast-paced, a little chaotic, and terrific fun. I’m very grateful to Walker Books UK and Candlewick Press, who moderated the discussions and so generously gave away books. People asked a ton of good questions, including some that made me panic and flail and type even faster. I love being kept on my toes! If you weren’t able to make it, click here to read the thread. It’s a bit daunting to think all that yakking will end up archived by the Library of Congress, but it’s hardly the silliest of Twitter.
photo by Annette Willis
The real live launch party was excellent, too. People came in waves, rather than in one big crush, so I got to chat with most guests. Our host was Oscar Malan of Novel Idea Books, and Joanna Malan, who provided wonderful nibbles, wine, and the most adorable kiddie drinks ever. Thank you so much.
And there’s one more launch to announce: today is the German pub date for the first Agency novel, which is published by DTV as Meisterspionin Mary Quinn.
DTV has created a very cool mini-site for the series. Check it out here!
Love and poetry
Thursday, July 15th, 2010This week, two of my dearest friends got married. When Sarah and Steve asked me to read a poem at their ceremony, I was thrilled to be part of their wedding – as well as by the discovery of a new-to-me poem: Frank O’Hara’s “Having a Coke with You”.
Here’s O’Hara reading it:
This is the full text of the poem, at the Poetry Foundation archive.
And here’s the abbreviated version my husband & I joked about improvising, in the event that I lost my specially marked-up reading-aloud version (the one with S – L – O – W ! scrawled at the top of the page):
Having a Coke with You
(with apologies to Frank O’Hara)
is more fun than going on a bender with a Eurail Pass.
Art is all right.
But not as all right as you.
Congratulations, Sarah and Steve. I love you – and your taste in poetry.
More loot! aka the “If I were a spy…” contest
Monday, March 1st, 2010Come to my book launch party on March 9! Details here.
To celebrate my North American debut, I’m giving away 3 fabulous prize packages. These will include a shiny new hardcover copy of The Agency: A Spy in the House and an Agency t-shirt. These will be randomly drawn.
There will be a fourth mystery prize, not randomly drawn, and this will go to the entry that makes me laugh really, really, hard. Ideally, it will make me spurt coffee out my nose. Yes, I’m that classy, and also willing to suffer for a joke.
Mystery prize rule 1: I reserve the right not to give this out at all.
Mystery prize rule 2: A randomly drawn winner may also win this extra prize.
So, what do you have to do? Simply leave a comment below that completes this sentence: “If I were a spy…” You can enter more than once by spreading the word on Twitter, Facebook or at your blog (1 extra entry for each means of dissemination). Tell me what you did in your comment. This contest closes on March 31.
Good luck, everyone!
Pure frivolity
Thursday, January 14th, 2010Well, hello! I’m planning a fun new giveaway for next week that will involve Questions and Prizes. I’m also writing like fury (The Agency 3: The Traitor and the Tunnel), which means that this week instead of a thoughtful, long-cogitated, carefully written short essay in response to an FAQ, I’m bringing you a list of some of my favourite sites. Yes, this is a cheat – and a frivolous one, at that.
This is how I fritter away time on the internet at the moment:
India Knight’s Posterous: lovely, lovely things, curated for you by the Sunday Times journalist.
Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century: um, self-explanatory. But curiously addictive.
The Catastrophizer: my friend Sarah Sweet, on a soapbox.
Making it Lovely: again, self-explanatory. It helps if you like pink, brown, and hand-crafted things.
The Beat that My Heart Skipped: terrific name, and new to me. We shall see how we get on.
You’ll notice a preponderance of design stuff, and nothing at all book-related. I’ll compile a list of great writing and publishing blogs another day. In the meantime, I hope I’ve persuaded you to part happily with another precious quarter-hour you’ll never get back. Hah!
Inventing tradition
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009Quick: name three Christmas symbols.
If you’re like me, the first things you picture are Christmas trees, a red-suited Santa Claus (or in England, Father Christmas) and the now-endangered paper Christmas card. Did you know that all three are, in many ways, Victorian inventions or mashups of older traditions? If we were transported back to England, 1840, we’d be celebrating without any of these icons!
Take, for example, Christmas trees – the visual centrepiece of English-speaking living rooms. But the Christmas tree is actually a German tradition made popular in 1840s England by the royal family, who were of German origin. (Queen Victoria’s first language was German and her husband, Prince Albert, moved to England on his marriage at age 20). Victoria and Albert loved celebrating Christmas, and it was their enthusiasm that made the tree (Tannenbaum) popular in England. Oh, and those first Christmas trees were small, potted affairs placed on a table with the gifts beneath – like so (image from the BBC’s Ten Ages of Christmas):
Victoria & Albert's Christmas tree
Santa Claus and Father Christmas are part of a tangled tradition, too. St Nicholas was a 4th-century Christian bishop much admired for his generosity – far from an elf! We get “Santa Claus” from the Dutch name for St Nicholas. Santa’s red suit is a recent revision, too: until the 1880s, he generally wore a long, green cloak. The most popular images of Santa Claus in a red suit were done for a Coca Cola ad campaign in the 1930s, and they’re what we think of now, automatically. Even so… any bets on how long that red suit will endure?
What else would Santa drink?
And oh, the Christmas card: all that paper is harder to justify each year, but e-cards are so soulless. Yet paper Christmas cards are themselves an invention of convenience – a commercial product without much tradition behind it apart from not wanting to write a long letter. Sir Henry Cole commissioned this next image in 1843 and used it to print the first commercial Christmas card. Note the lack of Christian imagery, here – it’s a family drinking wine together – and even the kids are imbibing:
Henry Cole's first commercial Christmas card
Although we tend to think of Christmas as something solid, something that all Christian-influenced cultures have always celebrated, our modern Christmas is pretty new indeed. I find the flexibility and brash (relative) newness of these traditions exciting. For me, it means that Christmas is for adapting, for inventing, for personalizing for my family. How about you? And if you celebrate another holiday – Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Eid, Diwali – how have your traditions evolved?
Either way, I hope your holidays are splendid.
V is for… vegan?
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009The following post has nothing at all to do with Victorian London, Mary Quinn, detective fiction, or, indeed, books. Instead, it’s a recipe for Lian. These muffins are dairy- and egg-free, but moist and fluffy and delicious nonetheless.
A prefatory note: this is a North American recipe in which ingredients are measured pseudo-scientifically in cups. By volume, a cup is 250ml/8oz. A cup of flour weighs about 140g/5oz; a cup of sugar about 225g/8oz. Thanks, Fannie Farmer.
Vegan Carrot Muffins (makes 18)
1 1/2 cups whole-wheat pastry flour
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons cinnamon
half a nutmeg, grated
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup loosely packed brown sugar
3 tablespoons flax seeds, ground and mixed with a generous ½ cup water; let stand until it thickens to texture of beaten eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup vegetable oil
4-5 cups add-ins: finely grated carrots, pineapple, apples, coconut, raisins, nuts or whatever else you fancy
Preheat oven to 350F. Whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, spices and salt. In a large bowl, whisk together sugar and flax seed mixture until creamy. Add vanilla and vegetable oil. Mix together wet and dry ingredients. Add carrots, etc.
Smooth batter into pans. Bake for 12-14 minutes for mini-muffins, 18-20 minutes for regular-size muffins, and about an hour for a large loaf pan.
Next week, we’ll get bookish again and take a look at German cover art.