Politics to Pastry: What Writers Share When They Blog

 sujata massey

A novelist I greatly admire wrote her last blogpost in September. Catriona McPherson, formerly of the Femmes Fatales, declared that that with the election ahead, so much work needed to be done that she felt it useless to write about "cats and courgettes"--nor did she want to turn her blogposts into a political soapbox. 

Catriona (pronounced Catrina) comes from Scotland and is one of the funniest mystery authors on the planet. She was writing with a wink, but the truth is, writers are constantly self-censoring. It occurs when we write novels—editing out lots to make them better—and when we offer up essays to the internet or print publications. ,We become known for one thing—and people expect us to be amusing. Typically, we keep dark, pressing worries and political opinions to ourselves.

 

During the months after Catriona quit blogging, her activism was substantial. She penned 240 personal handwritten letters and mailed them to voters all over the country in the Vote Forward movement, something I also participated in (with just 40 letters written). Currently, Catriona’s working on letters to voters in Georgia. All the while she did this, she launched a new novel, The Turning Tide, featuring her clever and charming Mitfordesque heroine, Dandy Gilver, who lives in 1930s Scotland. 

 

 

I’m glad Catriona put her priorities the way she needed this fall. And we've got to credit today's readers for their choices. Since the pandemic, reader choices are trending toward social activist and apocalyptic books. Although there's nothing wrong with the historical novels we write, either!

You might be reading this particular blogpost because you follow Murder is Everywhere, a blog built by ten writers whose crime fiction set outside of the US. Or you've found my blogposts cross-posted to my website and Goodreads and my Amazon page. Some information you are learning about me—the protests I participate in for Black Lives Matter, women’s rights, post office service and voting inclusion—is probably not the reason you Googled me. Yet I am someone who writes about a female lawyer in 1920s India whose concerns are national emancipation and civil rights for women. What I care about is probably not a shock.

 

Writing about politics is most definitely allowed in Murder is Everywhere, and I learn a lot listening to the accounts of my fellow bloggers, especially when they draw cultural parallels with the past or in other countries. You must sample the words of my co-conspirators Annamaria Alfieri, Cara Black, Kwei Quartey, Caro Ramsey, Zoe Sharp, Jeff Siger, Michael Stanley, and Susan Spann to get a taste of politics and pastry around the world.

 

I’m pleased that there are enough of us writing that I only need contribute every other week. Fourteen days are a lot of time for events to break and then recede and for my mood to change from outraged to mellow. I can almost guarantee I'll be writing about holiday cooking within the next few weeks and post pictures of adorable dogs on the hunt for crumbs. 

 

The cozy and the distressing all part of the world we live in, and I thank you for being here. 

The Wigtown Book Festival

Have you and your SOH (significant other half) ever had a conversation thinking that you were both talking about the same thing.

And then found out you weren't even on the same page.

Or in our case, the same country.

A bit of scene setting: You may have heard of the Wigtown Book Festival which is now in its 16th year. It has over 160 events  spread over ten days from 26th September to 5th October and in the past has welcomed such luminaries as Ian Rankin, Celia Imrie, John Sessions. Kate Adie and Joanna Lumley.

It is  Scotland's National Booktown with over twenty book related businesses. This is in a wee village tucked in the  South West of Scotland, Miles  from anywhere. It's so far from anywhere it is one of the few places with no atmospheric noise or whatever it is called. A great place to look at stars.

As for Wigtown itself? Lovely I am sure but it always reminds me of Wickerman country. Empty streets,  nobody about. Eeerie. Smells of cow pooh.

So the conversation went....

Me :  I am doing Wigtown this year.  Can we leave early and drive down the coast road, lovely sunny  weather,  have a nice lunch on the way. 117 miles.

Him  ; Yes. I'll stick it in the sat nav. Do you have a postcode?

Me :  No, it's in a field.

Him ; Ok,  oh wait, that's the day various children have to be elsewhere first thing in the morning, can            we leave at lunchtime?

Me  :   Ok then.

Him :  We will have to go the motorway, it's longer but quicker

Me :    Really?  so we must cut across country?

Him :  Yes, 129 miles  south then go right

Me ;    Must be a new road

Him ;  Yes.

My house to destination....or is it?

So when we crossed the border into England I questioned the sat nav. Never ever do this to somebody with testosterone. I was reassured we were leaving at next exit.

So I kept quiet for a couple of miles and then pointed out we only had seven miles to go and we WEREN'T EVEN IN THE RIGHT COUNTRY.

He pulled the car over, pressed the sat nav and said... 'See Wigton.'

'Yes dear. Shame I am appearing at Wigtown' 

Wee rejuggle of sat nav.

147 miles back the way, and round the Solway Firth.

Where we were supposed to be going.

In Wikipedia it says about Wigton.. 'Not to be confused with Wigtown, Scotland.'

So to be clear - Wigton is in North Cumbria,  north west England. It is a small market town just outside the Lake District. Wigtown, the book town, is  a  book lovers haven. It is situated in the southwest of Scotland.  It is a "kaleidoscope of beautiful pastoral landscape, rugged coastline, woodland and forest, moorland and mountain is a rich cultural melting pot."

                                                                           Opps

I have no pics of Wigton as we had to drive at breakneck speed back over the border ( still open due to referendum result!) and I made the event on time....

But when we got there (Wigtown) the sun had gone.

Wigtown

the bowling green in the middle of town

book festival causing traffic chaos

                               you can see the tail backs for.... well you can't as there was no traffic at all...

the festival tent.... fake grass

note water barrels to hold tent down in gale force winds

the bowling green from outside tent

nice innit- but not a lot  going on.

he stayed all through out event, a real border collie in the birders.

I tried to sneak a pic of this man's very trendy shoes

tri coloured!

                                                               pre event traffic jam

still nothing

pre event meeting. Catriona McPherson and border collie are hiding behind me.You can just see Cat's green coat.

                                                              Mmmmmmm??

                                                  That'll be us then

Me reading, Cat paying attention.

Me explaining

Cat puzzled

Cat still puzzled

Me giving death stare to audience member

Cat giving death stare to audience member

Audience member survived.

Or we might have burned him alive in a huge wicker cage shaped like a man.... you will never know....

Caro Ramsay Defo in Glasgow  (in Scotland, not the one in Missouri, Kentucky Or Montana)

The Killer Cook Book Non Cooking Cook off

 Here’s a wee question for you. What is a cranachan?

Is it         a) a very small house in a cold and rainy place

                                 

                b) a wee fuzzy creature that lives at the bottom of the garden     

                               

                c)  a whisky based dessert

                           

All will become unclear … 

As you may know I edited the killer cookbook  for the Million For a Morgue campaign. I was rather pleased when  I got the programme for the Bloody Scotland Crimefest and saw that as well as my own event, there was the “Killer Cook Book Cook Off’ based on the  TV programme "the Great British Bake Off". There was to be four crime writers cooking live (and it was to be filmed for TV) plus me running around with a mic. The hotel chef was going to do the Paul Hollywood bit ...  (He’s the chef on the TV)

                                       

             This is Paul Hollywood, I have no idea what the hotel chef looked like. He was keeping well clear.

What could go wrong?

Well, turns out the hotel changed hands and nobody checked with the new owners that they were OK with isolating the fire alarms for the event. And only told us on the Thursday  evening ( the  event was due on the Sunday ). The hotel cancelled it. With about 70 tickets sold. And only my name was on the tickets.

Mmmmm …

I don’t really know what happened next but the hotel seemed to go in the huff. The organisers tried to cancel the tickets and then that wee bit of Scotty recalcitrance came in ... the one thing you don’t say to me is health and safety …. For a morgue !!!!….

All week I had been doing press interviews and being photographed in my own kitchen (!!!!) saying ‘’ oh we are very much keeping it under wraps re who is appearing etc,” basically talking bull pooh.

So I got to work. I baked 70 flapjacks, had to  buy booze for the two cocktails (not the Grey Goose Vodka, this was supermarket cheapo). Then buy all the ingredients, then  go through the non cooking  recipes and think  about what we would need to make them, then serve them ... and … get them to Stirling. I live in Elderslie ( an hour away by motorway). Then there was the real health and safety issue of keeping food in hotel room for 48 hours … fresh cream… raspberries…..fromage frais ….salmonella etc.

In the end, we left some stuff in the  car boot.  Stuck some stuff in the freezer. Alan ran down the very steep hill to Marks and Spencer four times on the day to buy ‘more stuff’. And back up again laden with ‘couldn’t get that stuff but got the nearest I could get’ stuff. He’s used to running marathons so feel no sympathy. Wee cheapo shops were a great  source of comedy bloody hands, plastic shot glasses, napkins,  cocktail sticks ... and slowly a planned formed. I woke  up in the middle of the  night and told the dog that  we would not be downhearted. We were going to do  "can’t cook, won’t cook" but change it to  "want to cook, not allowed to cook."

Who needs Paul Hollywood when you have criminal minds!

                                     

                            Criminal masterminds armed, dangerous, ready to cause liver damage.

 All Sunday we spent chopping and cutting and mixing, the salsa refused to defrost, the flapjacks tray was piled high, the cranachans kept eacaping etc. Five other authors had moments of insanity and because they are scared of me, ( I was wielding a large knife) offered to join in. 'Team bald’ Craig and Gordon (who has guest blogged for MIE) and ‘team blonde’ Alex, Lin and a Californian Scot called Catriona McPherson ( who was then flying out to Bouchercon!)

So ... to set the scene… I walked on behind a table laden with cocktail shakers… this is then what 

happened …

                               

I introduce team bald. They walk in to the tune The Stripper. Gordon is six feet four and was wearing a tall chef’s hat. He was wearing a pink diamante apron. Craig was wearing chef whites covered in fake blood. Well that  is what  we told the police. They both carried their trays aloft and swaggered. Team blonde came in, with a swagger, to the tune of ‘I’m too sexy for my apron...’

                                  

                                        Mr Urqhart in action, see collie dog under Pat's arm

By the time I had introduced the girls, the boys were already on the way to making their cocktails. They had the bottles open. I’ve now seen the photos (at the time I was busy) and they are swigging the stuff behind my back, mm... the boys were supposed to be making the Margueritas donated for the book by the anthropologist’s husband.  The anthropologist said later that she was surprised more of the audience didn’t end up in her morgue the way they were slinging the stuff about, forcing the audience to knock back shorts of almost neat tequila. Team blonde were more organised. One was dressing her homemade scones and the table with jam and squirty cream as her team mates went to town with Peter James’ writing martini. As it was made with four quid vodka not his forty quid vodka, it turned out more like nail varnish remover.

                                        

The olives went down well though.

Two slaves from the audience walking through the crowds with trays  of Martini, shots of Margueritas, (supercharged), Bloody Mary tomatoes,(more vodka but some vitamin C), 70 flapjacks, and some half frozen salsa that  really did look as if it belonged in the  morgue. Mr “Urquhart” was a haematologist and the other was a nice lady called Pat McCollie (see photo and giggle). I think the collie was donated to a nice wee kid in the audience who asked the only sensible question. Probably as the grownups were all puggled by then. Pat  did a  whip round and we got more than a hundred pounds for the charity as well.

                                            

                                                      The green T shirts are crew, muscling in on the event.

Then the boys started on their Ewert Gren’s sandwich donated by new MIE blogger Anders Rosland.  Craig was starting to cut the ham with a whisk. Gordon’s wife had told me he was so hopeless in the kitchen that he couldn’t open a can of beans. I thought she was joking. She wasn’t. Catriona pointed out that the famous McSween haggis people had given her an award for making her own haggis as “there is no good haggis in California”.  Lin was chastising folk in the audience for olive swilling… that might become yet another national sport.

                                                  

                                                Catriona persuading the audience to nibble some frozen salsa.

We then tried what I think might be a world record for cranachan assembly. I have looked back at the video. I had no idea that so many of the TV crew and the Bloody Scotland PR team had wandered into the event, and got on stage  to lend a hand. Or get in the way. Or steal something  to eat.

We had 50 or 60 glasses on the front of the stage and we then tried to fill them all up with cranachan….to the tune of Benny Hill…… never spilled a drop. I hope you enjoy the unofficial photos.

Later Catriona was hiding in the loo and overheard somebody say the event was the highlight of the festival for her, she had seen Jo Nesbo but thought we were funnier!  Someone came up to me in the car park and said they had never laughed so much in their life- was it all rehearsed…..( wit? ) It was a perfect highlight to a great weekend ... oh there was proper stuff like Lee Child,  Val McDermid, Dr David Wilson and others, but none of them had a supporting cast of cranachan the way we did!

The MIE bloggers have supported the campaign all the way through. Here is a video  link   to a spontaneous interview for the daily record you might  like to see, that  is a very sharp knife in my hand. Can  you tell I’m making it all up as I go along?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn-nSzSBOCg

Enjoy, Caro 20th September 2013