Robin Stevens's Blog, page 67

Murder is Bad Manners is an ABA Indies Introduce pick for spring 2015

I’m utterly delighted and honoured to announce that Murder is Bad Manners has been chosen by the American Booksellers Association as one of ten Indies Introduce children’s and YA picks, to be promoted in independent bookstores across the USA in spring 2015.

From the announcement on the ABA website:

“After weeks of reading and discussing wonderful debut books, it is an honor and delight to highlight 10 new authors out of such a worthy and talented pool,” said the chair of the children’s panel, Tegan Tigani of Seattle’s Queen Anne Book Company. “The selection process introduced us to dozens of books we can’t wait to recommend, and through much deliberation, we honed our list to a spectacular, can’t-miss 10. Readers will fall in love with these books — and fall deeper in love with reading.”

This is wonderful news – I can’t wait for the US to be properly introduced to Daisy and Hazel’s adventures, and I’m over the moon that the book will be promoted in this way. Thank you, ABA!

September Events, Blogs and News Round-Up

This month’s blog is full of excitement!

First of all, I’m delighted (and only a bit nervous) to announce that I will be having my first public event at Waterstones Oxford on Thursday 18th September at 4:30pm. I’ll be talking about who I am, why I wrote Murder Most Unladylike and why mysteries are such extremely interesting things, and I’d love to see you there. If you’re really nice to me I might even let you try on my Sherlock Holmes hat.

Second, the UKYA Blogger Awards are taking place this month. Some very nice people have nominated me in some of the categories – I’m up for Most Social Author (offline), Best First Line, Best Mystery and Best Friendship. Anyone can vote, and voting will stay open until the 21st September. Please do vote (although don’t feel you have to vote for me) – there are so many fantastic authors on the shortlists, and they all deserve recognition.

I’ve also been blogging up a storm on other websites in recent weeks:

Here I am at Author Allsorts, writing about some of the books that made me a reader.

And here I am at Girls Heart Books, in my very first post for them, talking about how important friendship is to both boarding school pupils and detectives.

For anyone following the progress of Arsenic for Tea, I’m pleased to say that the text has now been finalised, and it’s gone off to be turned into a book-shaped thing. I’ll only see the script once more before it’s actually published (which will be in January 2015, in case you’re interested – it’s already available for pre-order on Amazon, Waterstones and Blackwell’s).

If you’d like to know more about Daisy and Hazel’s second adventure, here’s a blog post I wrote last month introducing you to it.

And if you just can’t wait until January to read more, you’re in luck: I’ve been given the go-ahead to reveal a very special and very exclusive extract from it on this website very soon. Keep checking back here, and follow me on Twitter, if you want to make sure not to miss it!

I’m now busily working away on the first draft of Book 3, which is currently called First Class Murder, and currently features Daisy and Hazel travelling across Europe on a very special and very famous train. As is the way with first drafts, nothing makes much sense at the moment, but I have hopes that things will improve eventually. Wish me luck!

First News review

‘I thought this book was fantastic and a jolly good read. Robin Stevens the author did a great job with this book and I got upset when I finished it, as I didn’t want it to end!’

(Alannah Graham, First News)

Guardian Kids’ review

I really enjoyed reading this book and once I’d started reading I found I couldn’t stop!

The book could be read at almost any age. But because it has murder in, I wouldn’t recommend it to young children.

When Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong (or Sherlock and Watson) become bored of their pacifism society and spiritualism society they decide to start up a detective agency at Deepdean school for girls. There’s only one problem: they can’t find anything to investigate apart from silly little mysteries like why does Lavinia’s tie vanish?

But when their science mistress is found dead in the gym by Hazel, what more exciting a case could they want. The two girls race the police to find out who the murderer is. They spend every minute of their spare time looking for clues and finding suspects.

But can they do it before the murderer strikes again?

This is a well written book full of excitement and mystery. I highly recommend it to you.

(Kung Fu Kitty on the Guardian site)

August update

Greetings! I hope you’re all having exceedingly enjoyable Augusts. I’m having a wonderful, if busy time, I wanted to stop by to give you a brief update on what’s coming up for me and Wells & Wong.

A wonderful mystery display at Waterstones Ipswich – photo by Gemma Cooper

I’m working away on the books, and the good news is that Arsenic for Tea is very close to Being Entirely Done. It’ll be a book before you even know it.

On the topic of books that already exist, I’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has been reviewing Murder Most Unladylike on Amazon, Goodreads and your blogs lately – I genuinely love every single one, and am so grateful that you’ve taken the time to do it. I want to especially mention the brilliant review on The Book Zone, because it says something that I firmly believe:

Although the book is set in a girls’ boarding school, with nary a young male character in sight, I still think this book has great appeal to boys who like traditional, British-set mystery stories.

Hooray! Yes, the book is about girls, but I wrote it for people, and there’s no reason why a boy shouldn’t enjoy it exactly as much as a girl. That’s the joy of reading – you can use a book to step into anyone’s shoes.

That said, I do happen to be a girl, and I do heart books, and so I’m very pleased to announce that I’m about to begin a guest blogger spot on Girls Heart Books. I’m very excited, and I can’t wait to get started! Keep an eye out for my first effort, coming in September.

In other nice September news, the wonderful Nosy Crow Book Group has picked Murder Most Unladylike as one of its titles for September. It’s going to be paired with The Glass Bird Girl by Esme Kerr, which is a fantastic choice – I’ve just finished reading it, and it’s a completely wonderful, imaginative and elegantly-written contemporary boarding school mystery. It’s a great twist on the boarding school story genre, and I’m delighted to be sitting alongside it. I hope as many of you as possible will join in the book group discussion – as a nosy author, I can’t wait to hear what you think of both books!

And finally, if anyone is in the Ely area next Sunday, 17th August, I will be stopping by Toppings Books Ely to sign some stock. It won’t be a formal signing in any way, but I will be there at about 2:30pm, and if you do happen to be around I’d love to say hello!

It’s Time to Get Acquainted With Arsenic for Tea!

Salutations! I am now back from my holiday, and thinking seriously about beginning to write Wells & Wong Book 3. This is very odd, since in the actual real world Wells & Wong Book 2, which will be called Arsenic for Tea, isn’t out yet. This is the problem with being a writer of a series – your brain’s constantly a book ahead of itself. So I thought I’d take this opportunity to properly introduce you to the next book in the Wells & Wong series, Arsenic for Tea.

First of all, it has a beautiful cover (please see above). Second, it has an official synopsis:

Schoolgirl detectives Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong are at Daisy’s home, Fallingford, for the holidays. Daisy’s glamorous mother is throwing a tea party for Daisy’s birthday, and the whole family is invited, from eccentric Aunt Saskia to dashing Uncle Felix. But it soon becomes clear that this party isn’t really about Daisy at all. Naturally, Daisy is furious.

Then one of their party falls seriously, mysteriously ill – and everything points to poison.

With wild storms preventing anyone from leaving, or the police from arriving, Fallingford suddenly feels like a very dangerous place to be. Not a single person present is what they seem – and everyone has a secret or two. And when someone very close to Daisy looks suspicious, the Detective Society must do everything they can to reveal the truth . . . no matter the consequences.

And third, it has a plot. Actually, it has an entire 60,000 word draft – but I’m not going to let you see that. I’m also not going to tell you whodunit. But I do have a few hints about some of the things you’ll find within its pages when you open it next year.

In Arsenic for Tea you will find…

Daisy’s house. Which is extremely posh, and full of exciting things like stuffed owls.
Daisy’s family – made up of her brother, her parents, her aunt and her uncle Felix. Yes, that’s the mysterious Uncle Felix readers of Murder Most Unladylike will already have heard of.
Two dogs.
A butler.
An annoying ukulele (played by an annoying brother).
A very silly nickname or two.
A tea-time spread, with chocolate cake, jam tarts, ham, cream buns … and poison.
Several bunbreaks.
Some daring midnight missions.
A maze.
A dreadful thunderstorm.
And one very, very nasty visitor…

Now, Arsenic for Tea won’t be out until January 2015. Which, I know, is a fairly long time. So if you need some reading material to keep you occupied, may I make some suggestions? The following is a list of the books that I had in mind when I was writing Arsenic for Tea. Country house murders, mad English families and Delicious Death…

 

A Surfeit of Lampreys by Ngaio Marsh

The Lampreys are crime fiction’s battiest, poshest, most delightful family. They’re desperate for money… and then their nasty uncle is murdered. They’re the only suspects – but did they do it? I love this book so much that I spent a large part of my teenage years half-pretending that I was the Robin Gray in this book.

 

Clouds of Witness by Dorothy Sayers

A brilliantly snooty and charming country house murder mystery that, again, is all about family. Mr Denis Cathcart is murdered at the Wimseys’ country residence. He was the fiance of detective Lord Peter Wimsey’s sister – and the prime suspect is Wimsey’s older brother. True story: I wrote my MA dissertation on this book, and it was the most fun anyone has ever had with academia.

 

Sad Cypress by Agatha Christie

Death at tea time – how could I not include this? When I first read this aged 12 I was beyond fascinated by the fish-paste sandwiches that the victim eats. I had never experienced such a flavour, and couldn’t believe that it was a real thing. The 1930s were truly a different world.

 

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

The one that started it all – this is the original detective novel, and it still reads brilliantly 150 years later. It’s set in a country house so posh that no one can believe that any of its residents (apart from the servants) could have committed the crime. Spoiler: that isn’t true…

 

The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford

I love the Radletts utterly. Utterly. They’re the fictional family I most wish I was a part of – and there’s more than a little of Uncle Matthew in Daisy’s father Lord Hastings. Note that this isn’t a murder mystery, but it’s still an excellent book.

 

 

Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey

A beautiful and incredibly haunting murder mystery that, at first, doesn’t seem like a murder mystery at all – it’s the story of a man who uses his weird resemblance to a missing boy to defraud the boy’s family out of his inheritance. But Tey twists the concept wonderfully, turning the fraudster Brat into a lovely character and making you fall for the aristocratic Ashbys as hard as he does. But are the Ashbys as wonderful as they seem?

 

Death and the Dancing Footman by Ngaio Marsh

Another excellent posh-people-trapped-in-country-house murder mystery. Can posh copper Roderick Alleyn discover their secrets and work out the murderer? Of course, but it’s a more than usually enjoyable ride.

 

 

Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers

One of the best poisoning mysteries out there – and featuring arsenic. Lovely Lord Peter finds himself falling for the suspect in the case, the girlfriend of the murdered man, and he rides to her aid heroically (but still logically, of course. He is a detective).

 

A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie

More a village detective novel than a country house detective novel, but this wonderful Christie features the most memorable cake (for me) in crime fiction – the massive chocolate Delicious Death. Daisy’s chocolate cake at her birthday tea is a very affectionate homage to it.

 

You can find this complete list in rather more graphically beautiful form at my Independent Bookshop page – and if this has made you interested in Arsenic for Tea, I’m delighted to say that you can now pre-order it at Amazon, Blackwell’s and Waterstones, and add it to your bookshelf at Goodreads. January 2015′s not so far away really…

And now, I really should get on and write Book 3.

Weekly round-up: one launch, two reviews and three bookshop visits!

It’s been another wonderful week for Murder Most Unladylike! Last Friday I went on a mini bookshop tour of south London with the wonderful Mo O’Hara (she of Zombie Goldfish fame). We visited Village Books Dulwich and Tales on Moon Lane (both of which are very much worth a visit, if you are in the area. And if you’re not in the area, they’re worth the trip), and I signed lots of Murder Most Unladylikes.

Mo and me at Village Books Dulwich – photo by Hazel.

Signing at Tales on Moon Lane – with help from Hugless Douglas!

Zombies and Murder at Village Books! Photo by Hazel.

On Saturday, I visited the wonderful (and very supportive) Blackwell’s Bookshop Oxford.

The book in Blackwell’s Oxford. Photo by theprettybook.

Blackwell’s were kind enough to let me hold a launch for Murder Most Unladylike in their Norrington Room – and since I began the book while I was working in the store, in 2011, it was an incredibly special event for me. I baked a cake, and did a reading, and had an absolutely brilliant evening. Thank you again to everyone who came!

M is for murder (and cake)

With a table of books at my Oxford launch – photo by Rebecca Waiting.

Reading at my Oxford launch. Photo by Rebecca Waiting.

My parents enjoy my launch. Photo by Carolyn Smalley.

This week, Booktrust was kind enough to mention Murder Most Unladylike in their Best Book Guide 2014. There are so many fantastic books in there – and lots of my personal favourites – so I’m honoured to be included.

The book was also reviewed in Teach Primary - it’s a lovely piece, and I’m thrilled to bits. And reader Poppy, 13, has posted a great and very thoughtful review on her blog. Definitely my review of the week!

And finally, I went into Cambridge yesterday and stopped into Heffers. Rather wonderfully, Murder Most Unladylike is in the window, along with the newest book by fellow local author Helen Moss. I love The Phoenix Code – an archaeological mystery about ancient Egypt, with awesome kid detectives: what’s not to like? – so I’m delighted to be sitting next to her. Thank you, Heffers!

Murder Most Unladylike and The Phoenix Code in the window of Heffers!

Before I go, just one small plea. If you’ve read Murder Most Unladylike, and enjoyed it, it would mean a lot to me if you took the time to post a review of it on Amazon.co.uk. This might seem like a small and slightly pointless thing to do, but it actually has a huge effect. The more reviews a book has, the more Amazon notices it – and that really matters. Please don’t feel you have to, by any means – but if you do want to, you would make me a very happy author!

Teach Primary review

‘It’s far too easy to describe this story of murder and sleuthing in a 1930s girls’ boarding school as ‘Agatha Christie meets Enid Blyton’; yes, author Robin Stevens is clearly inspired by those writers, amongst others – but there’s a glorious alchemy at work here in the way she blends her influences, creating something that is simultaneously recognisable and totally original. The slightly claustrophobic atmosphere of Deepdean School for Girls is conveyed with authenticity; the tensions between her two young detectives are explored with intelligent sympathy; and although it’s fair to say there are stock characters throughout, the stereotypes are subtly challenged and twisted in the most affectionate and accomplished way. All in all, this is an immensely satisfying work; neatly planned, stylishly presented, and superbly readable.’

(Teach Primary Magazine)

The Times review

‘I loved Stevens’s tales of ‘pashes’, shrimps (the lower years) and the midnight weird food combination of chocolate cake and cow’s tongue (a match for Blyton’s feast combo of prawns and ginger cake). In fact, her plot is far pacier than a Malory Towers story. The conclusion is wonderfully far-fetched but satisfyingly unpredictable. I did not guess whodunit. Ripping good fun.’

(Alex O’Connell, The Times)

Murder is Bad Manners – meet my US cover!

As you may have seen, the UK edition of Murder Most Unladylike is out now – available to buy, in real bookshops, across the land! But fret not, US readers. I have not forgotten you. Your edition is on its way too, due to arrive in April 2015 – and I’m absolutely delighted to be able to finally let you know that it has a cover!

It was revealed exclusively on The Midnight Garden blog on Monday and it is gorgeous. Just gorgeous. I can’t even begin to compare it to the UK edition’s cover – it would be like asking me if I preferred apples or bears – but I do want to take every opportunity to talk about how much I love it. Its colours are so glorious, and the girls are perfect. When I first saw it, in fact, I couldn’t quite believe it – I felt as though the artist, Elizabeth, had reached into my head and pulled out my exact mental images of Daisy and Hazel.

The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that the US title is different to the UK’s. Please don’t worry – this is absolutely the same book, with the same story inside it (although in the American version, Daisy and Hazel are rather fond of cookies instead of biscuits). It was just felt that this slightly different title would work better for the US market. I think Murder is Bad Manners is a really fun alternative to the original – and since the word MURDER is still there, I feel that the spirit of Murder Most Unladylike has been maintained.

If you love what you see (who wouldn’t?) please do click through to that Midnight Garden cover reveal blog – there’s an interview with me about what it felt like to be an American girl at an English boarding school (hint: it was WEIRD), and also a fantastic giveaway of exclusive ARCs of the US edition. Anyone based in the US or Canada can enter – so what are you waiting for? Go!