Rhys Bowen's Blog, page 23

Eating Like the French

Day 6 of my month of French fun, in anticipation of the publication of Naughty in Nice on Sept 6th:

If you want to know why French food tastes so good, there are big differences in their approach to cooking.

1. The word processed is foreign to them. The French like their food nautral and fresh.

2. Fresh food means shopping daily at the market, smelling, touching, examining each item bought. This is still the norm in France in spite of supermarkets.
Bread is bought every morning for breakfast at the local bakery.

3. The French are not afraid to use butter and cream (unsalted butter for most things) and yet their cholesterol count is lower than ours. Why is that? Could it be the red wine? Could it be a less stressful life-style? Or could it be all those chemical compounds we put into our bodies in that processed food?

4. Most of the time they eat very simply, and one flavor at a time--a green bean salad with oil and vinegar dressing, followed by a grilled piece of meat or fish, followed by some cheese and fruit. On big occasions they go wild with banquets that would daunt the stomachs of anybody not used to them.
Do you have a favorite French food or food memory? I'll share mine tomorrow.And don't forget to comment for a chance to win a prize at the end of the month.

A Divine French Recipe

My month of French treats, day 5, leading up to the publication of Naughty in Nice on Sept 6th.

Havings started to write about French food yesterday, I had a brilliant idea. I'm actually going to cook and eat French food every day until Sept 6th. And I'm starting with something basic to go with crusty baguettes. It's called Aioli and it's a basic garlic mayonnaise and will keep in the refridgerator.8 garlic cloves, peeled2 egg yoks
Juice of 1 lemon
1 cup olive oil
half cap safflower oil
salt and black pepper

Food procesessor with metal blade.With machine on, drop garlic cloves down the tube until minced. Remove the lid and add egg yolks and lemon juice. Process until smooth. With machine running pour in the oils in a slow and steady stream. Season to taste. Will keep for about a week. Do not freeze.
Do you have a favorite French recipe you'd like to share? For me they have to be simple. I'm never going to plunge sweetbreads into ice water and then remove the membrane. Ain't gonna happen.

A Taste of French food

Day 4 of my month of French goodies, leading up to the publication of Naughty in Nice on Sept 6th:
How could I write a blog about France without talking about food? If I wrote what I liked about French food I could probably write a thicker book than Julia Child.
I love its simplicity: when we were in Nice last year I got up early and went to the Boulangerie around the corner every morning to buy a baguette and some croissants for breakfast. After a few days the woman recognized me as a regular customer and would dart into the back of the shop to bring out bread and croissants fresh from the oven.
Then sit on the balcony, warm croissants, apricot jam, unsalted butter...my idea of heaven.Tune in tomorrow for a recipe!And leave a comment about your favorite French food for a chance to win a prize!

Why I love Coco Chanel

Month of French Fun, Day 3:

When I started writing a book set on the French Riviera in the 1930s I wanted to see what real people might have been there that winter. And I discovered that one of them was Coco Chanel. How exciting was that?
I have always been in awe of her because she really invented fashion as we know it today.

When women were wearing corsets and flowing skirts and bustles and frou frou Chanel wore tailored men's suits. Can you imagine the uproar that caused? She made French women what they are today with her simple designs and clean lines. The closest I've ever come to owning anything by Chanel, apart from a bottle of Number 5 perfume, was a high end knock off coat, that I absolutely loved (picture of me wearing it, back in my youth),
In my story Chanel is putting on a fashion show combining the masculine and the feminine. Haven't we be doing that ever since?(the picture shows Chanel with friend Vera Bate Lombardi, who was Queen Mary's illigitimate niece)
This Month of French Fun is to celebrate the publication of Naughty in Nice on September 6th. If you want to read a fun and suspenseful story in which Chanel is a key player, order your copy now.
And do leave a comment for a chance to win a fun French prize at the end of the month!

What I Like About France

Month of French Fun, Day Two....

I've been thinking back fondly to last summer in Nice and I made a list of all the things that I like about France.
1.The food. This is a no brainer. Even the simplest things like baguettes, pate and cheeses taste fabulous in France.2. The no-rush mentality. Time for a glass of wine, a coffee at an outdoor cafe.3. The bistros, outdoor cafes, scent of jasmine, maybe a little music. Perfect.4. Fashionable women. Only Frenchwomen can throw a scarf over a plain dress and look so elegant.5. Transportation. Trains are clean and run on time. Local buses along the Mediterranean were fantastic and cheap and frequent.6. So many stunning landscapes. What other country can offer the windswept coast of Brittany, the magic of Paris, the quaint hillside towns of the Dordogne, the highest mountain in Europe and the majesty of the Alps and Pyrenees and the gem of the spectacular Mediterranean coastline with mountains plunging into sea of incredible shades of turquoise and azure.
7. Paris. Enough said.
8. French films. They don't need car chases and explosions to create incredible drama.
9. So many villages that time has forgotten.
10. Fields of sunflowers. Always so cheery as they seem to turn to look at you.

What a treat it was for me to set a whole book in Nice. If you want a taste of the Mediterranean, look for Naughty in Nice on September 6th at a bookstore near you (or you can order online too)

And don't forget to comment for the chance to win a lovely French gift at the end of the month!

A Month of French Fun

This time last year I was in Nice, slaving away at research for my upcoming book. You have no idea how much writers have to suffer for their craft! All those bistros to check out; finding the perfect view of the blue Mediterranean, the perfumes of Grasse, the best local wines.  Joking aside, I did spend a lot of time in local libraries, looking at books of old photographs and maps, making sure I got everything right for the 1930s.  And the famous Negresco Hotel. Research there was a must. It's still a hotel at around $1000 a night so we didn't stay there. I was stopped by an impressive doorman, dripping gold braid, as I went up the front steps. I told him what I wanted and was escorted to the manager (or maybe it was the under, under manager). I handed him my card and told him that his hotel would feature in my new book.
"Madame, feel free,"  he said. So I spend a fabulous morning peeking into all the hidden corners of the Negresco hotel. Once again I discovered that the word "writer" opens so many doors.

Now it's exactly a year later and I am awaiting the publication of the book. It's called NAUGHTY IN NICE and it comes out on September 6th. So I thought I'd spend the next month celebrating everything I like about France--French food recipes, snippets about fashion and Chanel, and scarves,.
So please join me and add your comments about what YOU like about France.

 At the end of the month there will be a fun prize for the best comment.

And look for my new website, coming soon!

A Rather Different Royal Wedding

Rhys Bowen, your royal correspondent reporting in on the latest royal wedding. Princess Anne's daughter, Zara Phillips married English rugby player Mike Tindall in a church in Edinburgh, Scotland. And it couldn't have been more different. Where Kate and Will's wedding was dignified pageantry, this was definitely one step down--with the guest list including TV celebrities, sportspeople and pop stars. Of course Zara is only thirteenth in line to the throne and she doesn't even have a title. Plain Miss Phillips. And rugby players are not known for their suave elegance on the whole (I speak wherof I know. Our nephew is a professional rugby player who has played for England. I am waiting to hear whether he attended the wedding, actually)So it was rather low key, apart from the number of royals, who tend to raise the tone of any wedding.
Zara is a low key kind of girl--outdoorsy, top level horsewoman who hopes to make the Olympic team next year. So it was no surprise that they were snapped leaving their hotel the next morning in scruffy old jeans and sweat shirts. But she looked lovely and traditional for the actual ceremony and I'm sure her mum heaved a sigh of relief.
The Duchess of Cambridge, aka Kate, made sure she was dressed in a way that did not steal the show. It was actually a recycled dress she had worn several years ago. And her dress for the reception was the one she wore recently in LA. A thrifty girl is our new duchess, setting a standard for the times.But will someone please tell me why all hats have to perch precariously to one side of the head these days?At least Princess Beatrix looked reasonably elegant and... well, normal, after the ridiculous attire for Will and Kate's wedding.One undertstands that Will and Kate had a really good time and that the reception included Will's impersonation of Bon Jovi.

Teach Me How to Write.

I'm just getting back my life after the Book Passage Mystery Writing Conference that takes place every summer at my fabulous local bookstore Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA.

It's always an intensive three days of workshops, lectures and private consultations during which around 80 hopeful mystery writers want to find the magic bean that will turn them into published authors. The success rate for this conference is rather impressive: Sheldon Siegel, Cara Black , Cornelia Read,Tony Broadbent, Tim Maleeny are a few of the graduates who not only made it to print but have won awards for their writing.But every year I come away with ambivolent thoughts. Can anybody really be taught to write?
Some of the attendees I see clearly have the spark and all they need is some suggestion on pacing or focus or plot development. For others no amount of writing classes will ever make them a published author. It's rather like me and painting. I love to paint. I can create a pretty good picture if I copy reality or somebody shows me what to do, but my painting instructor can look at a scene, give a few magic flourishes with her brush and suddenly there it is in living color with an whole new twist to it.

Every year I am asked what writing courses I took before I started out. The answer, none. I taught myself to be a writer by writing. As a small child I lived in a world of pretend. I played the part of princess, good fairy, girl lost in the woods, even queen of my own country. Later I wrote down stories with myself as heroine. I wrote movie scripts I wanted to star in. And during my professional writing career I have usually written a book that I want to read but is not already on the shelf.

What I see at conferences is that everybody probably has one book in them--everyone's life has one riveting moment that makes a good story. But not everybody has the ability to leap from their own life into someone else's world. And certainly not everybody has the ability to tell a story so that it comes alive, so that we ask, "And what happens next?"

So are writing classes a waste of time?  I think they can be beneficial, especially for the writer who needs feedback and positive reinforcement as they work. It's hard writing into a vacuum and the writer needs to know that he or she is heading in the right direction. It's also useful to hone skills, find flaws. But to say to someone else, "This is how you create a character" is something I find difficult. I've never created a character. I think of a story I'd like to tackle and a character appears saying "Hello, here I am."  It's all an extention of that pretending world I lived in when I was four.
So my one piece of advice that I've given several times this weekend--if you want to be a writer WRITE. Learn to use words as a potter learns to use clay. Practice putting words down on a page. Learn to develop a plot over 300 pages, to describe people and places so that we know them and we are there. And unfortunately the only clear mantra for success is to write the book that nobody has written before.
What are your experience of writing classes? Good? Bad? Do they help?

Romance of the Rails

I have always loved rail travel, ever since my parents put me on a train in London when I was TWELVE, and sent me to stay with friends in Vienna. When I think about my 12 year old grandson doing this, I just can't believe that I accomplished this alone. I had to find the right ship across the channel, the right train in Ostend, and then spend a day and a night on it. When I arrived in Vienna I remember writing a postcard to my parents to say I'd arrived. Not even a phone call.

Since then I have criss crossed Europe many times by train--and there is something about the magic of being invisible in a train carriage, being able to peek in through lighted windows, to see daily life played out for a second before we are whisked away to the next village and town. I love going to sleep to the gentle rhythm of a train and waking in a new landscape, a new country. I love that feel of crossing borders. In the past it meant customs and border control coming down the train, stamping passports, looking for smuggled goods. Now it's all so easy within the EU, 

I've had plenty of adventures on trains--the time we shared our sleeping compartment with the most disgusting old man who wanted to borrow my hair brush for his greasy, shoulder length hair, and had the most awful habits. The time I helped a girl escape from East Germany. The time (recent) when a clever thief stole John's bag. But mostly I've enjoyed striking up conversations with complete strangers, finding a common language to converse in, sharing their sliced salami and cheese and fruit and setting the world to rights between us.

I haven't traveled by train much in the US. Only the corridor between Boston, NY and DC. So it was with great pleasure that I accepted an invitation to be part of a new venture called MYSTERY RAILS. (http://www.mysteryrails.com/)  I'll be joining Laurie R. King in mid October aboard a vintage rail car on a journey from Los Angeles to San Louis Obsipo and back. During the journey we'll speak to our fellow travelers and they'll have a chance to socialize with us. Gourmet meals will be served and we'll enjoy the spectacular coastal scenery.

If you're interested in joining us, please check out the Mystery Rails website. Reservations have to be made by mid August.

IN the news today: a Jane Austen manuscript sold for $1.6...

IN the news today: a Jane Austen manuscript sold for $1.6 million.  Poor old Jane, who was always desperate to make money from her books, must be turning in her grave in frustration.
[image error] And I'm feeling frustrated too, because I don't have any manscripts to sell for one point six million. In my early days of writing I wrote the book long hand, then I typed it out because nobody except me could read my handwriting, then I paid someone to type it without mistakes, then it went to my editor.But for the past twenty years I've written straight to a computer. I save a copy to an external hard drive but that's that. Even my edits are now done electronically. Penguin sends me the manuscript with queries and comments and I go through in the Word review mode and answer them. It's all so painless and quick. But it leaves no paper trail. No more manuscripts in the world to be auctioned off to future generations for enourmous sums.
I've often thought the same about email correspondence. Sometimes I'll be corresponding via email with an important writer and it will suddenly hit me--when I hit the delete key this will all be lost. No more books of the collected correspondence between Rhys Bowen and Jacqueline Winspear or Laurie R King. No future PhD candidates will be able to delve into our characters through our letters.  In fact the art of letter writing has vanished. All those bundles of long letters between Victorians and Edwardians will never happen again. I suppose one can say that we now connect via the phone so have no reason to write letters, but I find them so interesting, so poignant. John has letters written by his grandmother to his father,away at school. She signs them Your Affectionate mother, B. Quin-Harkin.  Very formal when writing to a little boy, and full of news of activities. No message that she loves and misses him. No wonder the Brits grew up cold in those days.

Anyway, I'm off to the closet under the stairs to see if any old scribbles in notebooks might be suitable to be auctioned off--or prepared for the Rhys Bowen collection at a university library some day!