The Tale of the Tale of Peter Rabbit

by Barb, still in Key West, where we’re all still complaining about the cold. (68 degrees right now.)

I’ve told the origin story of how I came up with the plot of “Hopped Along,” my story in Easter Basket Murder, in a post on the Jungle Red Writers blog here.

The next step was to write the synopsis, which I submitted to my editor, John Scognamiglio at Kensington, on September 1, 2022. From my brainstorming session with other Maine writers, I had the basics of character and plot. The challenge remained to tie all this together in a way that made it possible for my main character Julia Snowden and her boyfriend Tom Flynn to solve the mystery.

Though the original idea included both Easter Sunday and the Easter bunny, I felt I needed at least a nod to the title of the book, Easter basket. One of the pieces of connective tissue I included in the synopsis was this:

All that remains is the Easter basket, with a note, “for the little guy.” Julia picks it up and realizes it also contains a copy of The Adventures of Peter Rabbit.

The mistake in the title, as is obvious here, is entirely mine. I often find I make the worst mistakes with the things I am absolutely certain of. So certain that I never look them up. As a friend of mine says of his dynamo wife, “Often wrong, but never uncertain.” The same can be said of me.

1901 First Edition, independently printed by Beatrix Potter

After the synopsis was accepted I got on with the business of writing the novella. In a later draft, I realized that I didn’t need Peter Rabbit as a clue. Julia had another reason to look where it pointed. I eliminated the book from my book.

With the Maine Clambake Mystery novels John Scognamiglio always asks me for input on my covers and Kensington has used that input all but once. He also asks for me to write a little marketing blurb, which Kensington’s marketing department always takes and makes much better. (Except for once, when they made it much worse. John let me rewrite it that time.) John sends the proposed blurb to me before it is finalized and has worked with me long enough to ask, “Is the book still about this?”

But with the novellas, I never see the covers until they turn up in my email, finalized. (They’ve all been great). I never see the blurb until the book is on Amazon and the other retailers for pre-order, which is where I discovered it in May of 2023. Here’s what my part of the back cover copy said.

Julia Snowden’s Easter Sunday at Windsholme, a sprawling mansion tucked away on a remote Maine island, looks like it’s been borrowed from the pages of a lifestyle magazine. But when a dead body is discovered in the garden—then vanishes soon after without any explanation—an innocent hunt for eggs becomes a dangerous hunt for answers. With no clues beyond a copy of The Adventures of Peter Rabbit, Julia must find out if April Fool’s Day came early or if she’s caught in a killer’s twisted game . . .

Yikes! I had handed in the manuscript at that point but not yet done the copy edits. I was faced with a dilemma. I could ask Kensington to change the blurb, one of three for the three novellas in the book and already published on the various retail sites, or I could put Peter back in the book during the copy-edits. Peter had been in the book until quite late in the process and reinserting him would only effect two scenes. The solution was obvious.

The copy-edits came back in June of 2023 and I did a deep dive on The Tale of Peter Rabbit. It really is a remarkable story.

Peter began life as a series of illustrated letters to the sickly eldest son of Beatrix Potter’s former governess and lifelong friend. It was she who suggested the story could be a book. Potter was quite the entrepreneur. When The Tale of Peter Rabbit was rejected by publishers, she printed two editions independently. One of the publishers who’d rejected her then picked the book up. Potter didn’t stop there. She patented a stuffed bunny to be sold with the book, followed by a board game, wallpaper and other goods. Thus becoming the first content creator ever to invent that thing we’re all obsessed with now. Merch.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit has never been out of print in over 120 years. Beatrix Potter’s life was remarkable before she published the books and in a wholly different way afterward. She was one of those upper class, late Victorian woman with way more brains and energy than the society she was born into was prepared to let her exercise.

So now I had a bead on The Tale of Peter Rabbit and its publishing history. One challenge remained. As a clue it had to lead back to my regular character Quentin Tupper. Quentin is childless and not interested in anything childish or cute. For the clue to work, the edition of Peter Rabbit that Julia finds had to be worth a lot of money. That’s why Quentin would have collected it. But how much was it worth?

After touring around online auction and antique book sites, I turned to my friend Annette Holmstrom, an expert in rare and collectible books. Her response was reassuring.

Ok if it’s one of the really rare 450 copies Beatrix Potter had personally printed -and signed – it’s worth a LOT – the only copy I could find is priced at $100,000!

Whew! I was off and running. The Tale of Peter Rabbit was back in “Hopped Along.” And you know what? I think it makes the story better.

Readers: Did you have copies of The Tale of Peter Rabbit when you were young? Did your kids?