A Bookish Tradition with Cookies!

By Vicki Delany

Last week, Barbara encouraged you to check out the Crime Writers of Canada annual catalogue for tips on your holiday giving. After all, books make great presents, and Canadian mystery writers really, really need your support if we’re going to be able to keep on writing.  https://typem4murder.blogspot.ca/2017/11/the-future-as-we-know-it.html

Before that Rick reminded us of the Icelandic tradition of giving (and then reading) books on Christmas Eve. https://typem4murder.blogspot.ca/search?updated-max=2017-11-29T00:00:00-05:00

As it happens, I am just back from a trip to Iceland. Here’s a photo of the tree in our hotel lobby. Isn’t it fabulous? And, yes, those are all real books. The bottom picture shows stockings hung on the wall. 

Tomorrow (Sunday) I’ll be on my local radio station talking with writers Janet Kellough, J.D. Carpenter, and Ken Murray about books we’re giving for Christmas. Tune in online to http://993countyfm.ca/ following the news at noon to hear our picks.  Because I want to keep it for the show, I won’t reveal my selections here. We came up with quite the variety.

And what goes better with a book than a freshly baked cookies?  Here's a reprint of the recipe for my very popular molasses spice cookies.

VICKI DELANY’S MOLASSES SPICE COOKIES

INGREDIENTS

·         2 cups all-purpose flour

·         1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

·         1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

·         1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

·         1/2 teaspoon salt

·         1 1/2 cups sugar

·         3/4 cup (6 oz) unsalted butter, room temperature

·         1 large egg

·         1/4 cup molasses

DIRECTIONS

1.       Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. In a shallow bowl, place 1/2 cup sugar; set aside.

2.      With an electric mixer, beat butter and remaining cup of sugar until combined. Beat in egg and then molasses until combined. Reduce speed to low; gradually mix in dry ingredients, just until a dough forms.

3.      Pinch off and roll dough into balls, each equal to 1 tablespoon. Roll balls in reserved sugar to coat.

4.      Arrange balls on baking sheets, about 3 inches apart. Bake, one sheet at a time, until edges of cookies are just firm, 10 to 15 minutes (cookies can be baked two sheets at a time, but they will not crackle uniformly). Cool 1 minute on baking sheets; transfer to racks to cool completely.

Speaking of holiday giving, right now Penguin Random House is having a sweeps contest for all three of my Year Round Christmas mysteries, including the brand new Hark the Herald Angels Slay, the third in the series. 

If you want to enter, here’s the link. https://sweeps.penguinrandomhouse.com/enter/vicki-delany-holiday-sweeps (Let's not point out that they spelled my name wrong)

And a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all.

The Fun of Creating a Whole New Town

By Vicki Delany

Barbara talked last week about setting in her books, how she’s been exploring remote Canadian locations in person and by map searching for good settings.

I on, the other hand, sometimes just make it all up.

Case in point: my Year Round Christmas Series from Berkley Prime Crime. When I was tossing around the idea of a cozy Christmas-theme-shop book, the first thing I had to consider was if it would be a shop in a nice, typical town. Or in a town totally dedicated to Christmas.

It didn’t take long to decide on the latter, and Rudolph, New York was born. In Rudolph, they love Christmas so much they celebrate it all year round.

Now, I had my town, so I had to fill it with something.  Mrs. Claus’s Treasures sells everything you need for decorating your home, as well as toys and jewellery, and many of the goods are locally made.  Victoria’s Bake Shoppe is famous for its gingerbread.  There’s Candy Cane Sweets, the North Pole Ice Cream Parlour, The Elves Lunchbox, Cranberries Coffee Bar, Touch of Holly Restaurant, The Yuletide Inn, the Carolers Motel. The possibilities are endless.  (Looking at this list it seems as though the residents and visitors to Rudolph like to eat a lot.)

Then we need people.  Merry Wilkinson is the owner of Mrs. Claus’s Treasures.  Merry’s father, Noel, is the town’s Santa Claus. Merry knows her dad isn’t really Santa, but sometimes she does wonder how he knows what people want before they so much as say so.  Merry’s best friend, Vicky, owns the bakery.

The fondest wish of the residents of Rudolph is to be known officially as America’s Christmas Town. But they have tough competition from the likes of Snowflake, Arizona or North Pole, Alaska.  In the first book of the series, Rest Ye Murdered Gentlemen, they’re delighted when a reporter from an international travel magazine arrives to do a feature he is going to title “America’s Christmas Town”.

Delight changes to something else when the reporter dies from eating a poisoned gingerbread cookie baked at Victoria’s Bake Shoppe. And rivals from a nearby town begin to whisper the worst: Christmas Town or Horrorville?

The second book in the series will be released on November 1^st, and it’s titled We Wish You A Murderous Christmas.

This time there’s a Grinch in town when the owner of the popular Yuletide Inn takes ill and his son, Gord, arrives to take over. Gord, unfortunately, isn’t exactly imbued with the Christmas spirit.

The joy of writing cozies, I have found, is the pure fun in it.  I’ve had great fun creating Rudolph and its inhabitants, and I hope you enjoy reading about their adventures. 

We Wish you A Murderous Christmas is now available for pre-order in mass market paperback and ebook at your favourite independent bookstore as well as Amazon, B&N, and Indiebound 

Death and Despair on a Sunny Morning

By Vicki Delany

It’s Sunday June 21 as I write this, and a pleasant summers day here in Southern Ontario, although rain is expected later.

Birds are chirping, grass is growing, flowers are blooming, pool is sparkling, and the coffee is at my elbow.

And now it’s time to plunge into a world of death and despair.

Why would I do that? And why would anyone want to read it?

Funny situation isn’t it? But all over the world, even as I speak, people are writing and other people are reading about horrible stuff.

Why? Perhaps because outside of our comfortable world of a summer Sunday morning, bad stuff is happening, and we have a compulsion to try to understand and perhaps to also try, even if only mentally, to make it right again.

This post is inspired by three things – Barbara’s talk about researching ISIS, Aline and my recent posts about unrealistic police procedures in novels, and last week’s events in Charleston.

In most (all though not all and not all the time) police novels, the officers use their substantial intelligence and sharp wits to catch the clever and diabolical (or just lucky!) bad guy. Motivation has to be excavated by investigating witnesses, the detectives hunt for clues, they follow red herrings, they examine every detail of the victims’ lives and uncover all their secrets.

In real life: not so much. In Charleston, the killer walked into a public building, not worrying about covering his face or trying to leave a false trail for the police to follow later, told one of the survivors why he’d done it, and then walked out again. He also left a “manifesto” outlining his motive. You’ll have read it elsewhere, I have no further need to go into details.

Not exactly a hard case to crack, and he was arrested not long after.

I don’t really know what my point is. Maybe as writers and as readers all we went to do is try to understand.

On a lighter note: while Barbara was researching ISIS, I have been researching historical men’s bathing suits. This is for the third Year Round Christmas mystery which is set in July, so I wanted Santa Claus to wear something suitable in my town’s Christmas in July Parade. This is what I chose.