Lifescapes

Dry & hot through September (at least)

 

This is what an "extreme/exceptional drought" looks like. We have over a dozen cypress trees, all growing along Pecan Creek and Cypress Branch. Those along the creek were planted in 1988, as three-year-old nursery trees. I grew the others from seed collected from this tree. About half of them look like this one, as if they've been hit with the first hard freeze. No freeze. Drought, dry wind, and heat are the deadly combination that's stressing the trees. There's no relief in sight, at least through September. There's an El Nino event brewing in the eastern Pacific that may bring rain in October. Something to hope for, but maybe not too much. This is from Blake Matthews' weather blog, at KTBX in Bryan/College Station:

El Nino for south central/southeastern Texas usually means wetter than average conditions on the order of 4 to 5" of additional rainfall as upper level dynamics shift to favor a wetter and cooler temperature regime down here. El Nino also means higher than average hurricane activity in the E. Pacific. If you remember back to October of 1994, a terrible flood wiped out thousands of homes stretching from the Brazos Valley to north Houston . . . As moisture streamed in from a hurricane in the Pacific and collided with a stalled frontal boundary over the area, many places received 10 to 20 inches of rainfall that October.

While I'm waiting for October, I've mulched like crazy and water the veggie garden carefully every night. Our aquifer (the Trinity) is recharged locally (translation: it is not fossil water), so it's vulnerable to drought and over-development (translation: too many people pumping out too much water). But so far, our supply is adequate.

If you're on city water, you probably leave water concerns to your municipal water district. Here in the country, where we have responsibility for providing our own water, and where it's pumped from nearly 400 feet down in the earth, it's something we think about. (Imagine fire ants crawling into the pump wiring, dying by the 100s, and clogging the electrical switch.) Personally, I'm grateful every time I turn on the tap and water comes out. If it doesn't, we have to trek out to the well and see what's wrong. The animals also suffer in weather like this: nearly a dozen horses died in Parker County this week, due to dehydration. Tough times.

Moving along: 78,000 words on The Tale of Oat Cake Crag. Expecting to finish in about 10 days. Meanwhile, I hear from the Univ. of Texas Press that Together, Alone will be shipping in late August. That, and an early-August visit from my Alaska son have decided me to forego a vacation month in New Mexico this summer. Staying here will also allow me to get a quicker start on the next writing project: the first book in the new Darling Dahlias series. And keep an eye on the pump, the well, the weather, the garden, and the cows. 

Reading note. In an age when man has forgotten his origins and is blind even to his most essential needs for survival, water along with other resources has become the victim of his indifference.--Rachel Carson

Birds of a feather

 

This colorful, vibrant painted bunting is our most beautiful songbird. Not my photo, but borrowed from Wikipedia, where you'll find more information about him. His wife is stunning: bright chartreuse, the color of a green parakeet. I've seen and heard him singing mornings and evenings from the top of the hackberry beside my garden, and this morning, I discovered one of the reasons for his celebration. Hornworms, on my tomatoes. I detained four, tried them and found them guilty of defoliation, denied their appeals for mercy, and sentence them to death by squishing--underfoot, since they are too large to squish them in my fingers. Actually, the bunting hadn't been doing his job. He should have eaten these when they were smaller. But maybe he's been too busy with grasshoppers. We have quite a few this year. If this bunting has any buddies, they're welcome to join the party. BYOB.

The first review of The Tale of Applebeck Farm is out, and nicely positive: "whimsical, fanciful, magical . . . a precious tale." That's the sixth book in the Cottage Tales series, coming in September. I'm planning a "Beatrix Potter Festival" next month, online--details coming in a couple of weeks. There'll be chances to win ARCs of the book and other goodies, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, back here at the ranch, I'm working on the seventh book and making good progress. Oh, my, I do love that dragon!

We've enjoyed a couple of cooler days (86 yesterday, a comedown from 106), and I can see the difference in the garden. The plants really suffer in the heat and were grateful for yesterday cloud cover and cooler temps. But the cool spell ends today, and we'll be back to 100+ by late afternoon. June set records here for hot/dry. In Austin, the average monthly temperature of 86.6 was the second highest on record; the average high of 99.1 was the second highest on record. 17 days of 100+. Did somebody say "global warming"?

Reading note: We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road—the one 'less traveled by'—offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth. —Rachel Carson

Tomato powder

 

Making tomato powder is easy (thanks to Dawn for asking). Here's a quick rundown. The fresh sliced tomatoes (seeds, skins, pulp, and all) go onto the dehydrator tray. (This can be done in an outdoor solar dryer--you might want to google that.) I dry until they are nearly brittle, then remove. If I had a mesh insert for the tray, I would use that--it would make removing the dried tomatoes much easier. The dried tomatoes go into the freezer for an hour, to make powdering easier.

Then they go into the blender, in small amounts. I use a mini-jar (the old-fashioned narrow mouth pint jars fit my blender). I've also used the coffee grinder that I use for my herbs. The trick is to do it in small amounts; otherwise, the powder will gum up the blades: it is really, really hygroscopic. I store the powder in the refrigerator, tightly capped. I keep some in a small capped shaker bottle, mixed with a little salt and pepper, for shaking onto omelets, mashed potatoes, soups. A spoonful of the powder (straight, no salt) adds zip to many dishes. I've also made chile powder, kale powder, zuchinni "flour"--fun to experiment!

More heat here: 106 outside our kitchen door yesterday, 81 this morning when the dogs and I went out just before sunrise. Maybe a shower today--there's a cold front sagging down from the north. (I'm hearing thunder, and the dog just crept under my desk: he thinks a storm is coming.) But that's only a temporary relief. It's due to warm up again tomorrow, 100+. I'm reading about an El Nino developing in the eastern Pacific that could bring rain to us in October and November. The only hope for rain sooner is a hurricane in the Gulf, and nobody wants that!

Forward progress on the book, tieing off the dangling story ends, pulling things together for the conclusion, in another 10,000 words. Loving the dragon--he's a great character, with lots of life and energy. He's like an actor who brings a new kind of energy into the scene when he's onstage. He's also in The Tale of Briar Bank. You can see him on the cover there.

Reading note. After all these years thinking about drying food and planting and harvesting, I believe that the single most important thing each one of us can do to balance the world's food supply is to take more responsibility for securing our own food. By utilizing locally grown food, we can be more independent and self=sufficient. Each one of us can strive to minimize our impact on the planet. Grow food yourself or support those who sell at your local market. Money spent locally strengthens your community.--Mary T. Bell, Food Drying with an Attitude

Texas bluebells: In bloom this week

 

We're lucky enough to have a small stand of native Texas bluebells, Eustoma exaltatum or grandiflorum. They truly are exalted and grand, perhaps the loveliest of all our wildflowers, especially in good years, when there are many of them. This isn't a good year, but it is what it is, and I appreciate what we have. Eustoma is an annual, biennial, perennial, depending on the rain--but whenever, wherever it appears, I always feel blessed when I see it. If you find it, take a photo. Please don't pick them--and don't take the seeds. Chances are you'll forget to plant them, or they won't do well in your garden, and the plant will have lost its chance to reproduce itself. They are disappearing, as their habitat is destroyed by development and as thoughtless people gather them for bouquets. You can probably find cultivated seeds on the Internet.

The big news here (the only news, if you don't count Michael Jackson's and Farrah Fawcett's deaths) is the heat wave: 12 straight days of record-breaking heat (104, 105, 107) in Austin, a few degrees cooler here, but not much. The spring grass crop got mowed this week, and harvested for the compost. The garden is still producing tomatoes and zukes, but the spring beans are finished and the summer/fall beans aren't ready yet. It was too hot to bother with canning, so I dried the tomatoes and made tomato powder, which is a wonderful addition to soups and sauces. Takes less space, too. I'm drying (dehydrating) the zukes and tatume squash, as well. Bill isn't a great squash fan, but he doesn't recognize the bits when they turn up in his favorite winter soups, and I don't enlighten him. I'm sure you have a few little cookery tricks like this one.

 

The Tale of Oat Cake Crag is moving well. I'm at 68,000 words right now, and have been taking a few days to go back to the beginning and rework the text, mainly for style but also to pick up the plot seeds I planted and forgot about. This happens with every book. I have a great idea for a subplot, plant the "seed," then forget what it was meant to grow into. Reworking the text gives me a chance to either "grow" that plot line or drop it. I'm sure you've encountered books where the author and the editor(s) skipped this important step, and a bit of undeveloped, orphan story got left in. (Not the same thing as a continuing plot thread designed to be developed in the next book in the series, which is intentional.) Anyway, I'll finish the reworking today and move on tomorrow, with a clearer idea of what has to be done in the last 20,000 words. I'm expecting to be finished with the book in about three weeks, if no crises intervene.

I've linked this blog to GoodReads and to Facebook's Networked Blogs, so if you're joining me from either site, welcome. Hope you'll keep reading!

Reading note. Practice is essential. If you’re going to learn to write, it has to be your practice. I’ve been fascinated with the job of learning to write, which is unending. And I enjoy writing. Dealing with the problems it presents gives me pleasure. Sometimes there’s frustration, but if I get frustrated or hit an impasse, I just stop and go back to it later. I don’t like to hear writers talk about how they suffer for their craft. If it’s that bad, they ought to quit.--Wendell Berry

Compass Plant: In Bloom This Week

 

Putting down roots, finding directions. Here we have Silphium albiflorum, also known as Rosin weed or white flowered rosin weed—not rare, but uncommon, and a native of the Edwards Plateau and the Central Texas Hill Country. Fifteen years ago, I was used to seeing this long-lived native perennial blooming in a wild meadow along the road into town. It was pretty, and unusual. I enjoyed watching it bloom.

Then somebody planted a house trailer there, mowed the meadow, and the compass plant disappeared. A couple of years later, though, it cropped up again, in the ditch on the opposite side of the road. It's still there, going on ten years now. The flowers and leaves are stiff, with a sticky secretion (hence "rosin weed") that attracts the gritty caliche dust of our road. The leaves are said to be oriented north-south (hence "compass plant"); some are, some aren't. The taproot is said to be 15 feet long. I believe it. A plant that lives in one place for more than a decade is bound to be deeply rooted.

An oddity: the ray flowers produce seed, and the disk flowers don’t. Clued to that by my favorite wildflower book (Ajilvsgi’s Wild Flowers of Texas) I can see the difference. I’ve tried to seed it at MeadowKnoll (against the possibility that it will be destroyed again) but without any luck. I'll try again this year. A plant that can tell directions (sometimes, at least) and puts down a 15-foot root is a good friend to have. There's a metaphor in there somewhere, don't you think?

Very hot here. 105 in Austin yesterday, another record-setting day, one of many we will face in the future, with climate change coming. It's been a few degrees cooler here, but still 100+. The green tomatoes now on the vines will ripen but the plants are done setting fruit for the season, and I'll start pruning them back. Maybe they'll produce in the fall. The kale plants I cut back (thanks, Rhonda!) have put out new leaves, and I'm drying them, along with the ripe tomatoes. I like to make tomato powder--easier to make and store than canned tomatoes. I dried the tomatoes (skins, pulp, seeds, and all), popped the dried fruits in the freezer for an hour (makes them brittle, easier to powder), then put them through my blender. The powder has a bright, tomato-y taste.

Working on The Tale of Oat Cake Crag. At 67,000 words and getting ready to wind up a couple of the sub-plots. Warning: this book has a dragon in it. If you don't like dragons, you won't want to put it on your TBR list. Also working with Peggy on All About Thyme, the herbal eletters we send out every week. She's going on vacation and we need to set up the eletters so they go automatically while she's gone. I've also added a couple of new reviews to the review section of Abouthyme.com. If you haven't visited there, you might check it out. There's always something to keep me busy.

Reading Note. The question is not whether land belongs to us, through titles registered in a courthouse, but whether we belong to the land, through our loyalty and awareness. . . In belonging to a landscape, one feels a rightness, at-homeness, a knitting of self and world. Scott Russell Sanders, Staying Put

Echinacea: In Bloom This Week

 

Do you know the echinacea story? The North American Plains Indians used the plant to treat poisonous insect and snake bites, toothaches, sore throat, wounds, and bruises, as well as measles, mumps, and smallpox. It was their "heal-all," the plant they turned to as a treatment for almost everything that ailed them. The settlers copied these uses of the plant, and by the early 1900s it was one of the most popular medicines available. When plant medicines fell into disrepute in the U.S., echinacea disappeared with the others, although the Europeans continued to find it useful. It was brought back to attention again in the 1990s--unfortunately, with a lot of hype. There's a balanced discussion of this herb here. 

Nice news from my publisher: the large print rights to The Tale of Applebeck Orchard have been sold to Thorndyke, and the audio rights to both Briar Bank and Applebeck Orchard had gone to Recorded Books. RB will be releasing both Spanish Dagger and Wormwood in audio in December, 09. I absolutely adore the British reader, Virginia Leishman, who narrates the Cottage Tales. Love the way she reads the animals--she brings them to life in exactly the way I heard them in my head as I was writing the books. Such a delight. I only wish they weren't so expensive. Please ask your library to get them, so they can be shared.

Making good progress on The Tale of Oat Cake Crag in the past few days, #7 in the Cottage Tales. I love the narrator in that series, who has become a character in her own right. She's so nosy and intrusive and has so many opinions (some of them wrong!) and isn't at all shy about expressing them. When the series ends (#8 will be the last), she's the character I'll miss the most. Funny thing, too: she's not something I planned in the beginning. She wasn't invited. She pushed her way into the books as they went along. Just had to get her nose in there, and then came the rest of her, like the camel under the tent. And now that she's in the books, and in my writing life, I think she may be here to stay. A new discovery. I wonder whether she'll push her way into The Darling Dahlias (the new mystery series, coming next year).

Welcome to my FaceBook blog followers, on NetworkedBlogs! Nice to have you linked in. Hope you enjoy Lifescapes and come back for more.

Reading note: Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do--the actual act of writing--turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.--Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

 

Growing a Gardener

 

This morning's harvest: tomatoes, green beans, zukes, tatume (summer squash, native to Texas and Mexico, does well in arid regions). I'm freezing the beans, drying the tomatoes, and eating the zukes. The squash is wonderful--will bake it for tonight's supper. And since it's a hot day, I'll do it in the solar oven.

A good harvest, and I do love growing things. But as I look at the garden and its produce, what I think about most is the growth of the gardener: in an awareness of what this soil needs (more nutrients, more humus), what kind of gardening does well here (raised beds), what my garden lacks most (rain). The lack of rain is a serious issue, for it means that in order to produce anything, I have to input water--substantial amounts of water. We have two wells--we bought an adjacent property and hooked that well with ours to improve output. But like most aquifers in the US, and across the globe, our Trinity Aquifer is threatened both by drought and by development. I don't like having to use groundwater ("blue" water, as water folks call it) to keep the garden alive and producing. I'd far rather have rain ("green" water). The yield would be higher, the plants more productive, the strain on our water system--and the aquifer--much less. 

But this morning, on a day that promises still more sunshine and a temperature of nearly 100 (and no rain), I am reminded that whatever else the garden grows, its most important growth happens in me, its gardener, as I grow, change, mature, learn, and celebrate all that is good on this earth, all that grows and gives us life.

Reading note, from Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Wake up now, look alive, for here is a day...just to praise Creation: the turkey, the squash and the corn, these things that ate and drank sunshine, grass, mud, and rain, and then...laid down their lives for our welfare and onward resolve. There's the miracle for you, the absolute sacrifice that still holds back seeds: a germ of promise to do the whole thing again, another time.

About bagels

 

Making bagels. Following the advice of Kate Heyhoe in Cooking Green (which I reviewed here), I bought a toaster oven to replace the monster oven in my kitchen range. I love it, just love it. And now I can bake bagels whenever I want them, without heating up the kitchen and adding to the A/C load. These in the photo are plain bagels, which keep for about a week in the fridge. I love them for breakfast with cream cheese and marmalade, or for lunch with a spread made of cream cheese, canned salmon, chopped onions (lots of onions), and chopped parsley. And of course, there are herb bagels, of which rosemary is my favorite. Here's a recipe, with some how-to instructions if you haven't made bagels before. Don't panic. Bagels are easy-peasy, as my friend Dani says. You just have to be around for the length of time it takes the yeast to act, the water to boil, and the bagels to bake.

Making more words today. I always get stuck in the general middle of a book, along about 50,000 words, technically past the middle of an 88,000-word book, but you get the idea. It's usually not a lack of story material or the loss of imagination, but a failure of focus. The problem with this book was last week's storm: power out, roof repair, errant cows, cleanup. I shouldn't blame the storm, really, since it seems to happen with almost every book. But yesterday the story came unstuck, and Beatrix and I (I'm working on #7 in the Cottage Tales) sailed along for our usual 1500 words. Today I'll be making 1500 more words. That's the plan, anyway. I'm with story-meister Stephen King when it comes to making words: I have to do it regularly, day in and day out. Give me a day off, pull me out of my writing schedule, and the energy sags and attention fails. I'm a gone goose.

Of course, I can always make bagels.

Reading note, from Stephen King, On Writing: I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words... On some days those ten pages come easily; I'm up and out and doing errands by eleven-thirty in the morning, perky as a rat in liverwurst. More frequently, as I grow older, I find myself eating lunch at my desk and finishing the day's work around one-thirty in the afternoon. Sometimes, when the words come hard, I'm still fiddling around at teatime. Either way is fine with me, but only under dire circumstances do I allow myself to shut down before I get my 2,000 words.

Storms and wandering cows

 

Not a tornado, but a microburst--that's what our weather gurus are telling us. Whatever, Thursday evening was definitely exciting, not at all the pleasant TV/reading/knitting evening I had planned. Bill is in NM this week--nice for him (it's cool there), nice for me (it's quiet here). But Thursday was anything but quiet.

What you see in the photo (click on it for a better view) is a downed mesquite limb, a broken cedar limb and one of the half-dozen metal sheets that were ripped off the porch roof. I spent a half hour in Archie Bunker (our cement storm cellar) with an indignant cat, hoping that the house would still be there when I opened the door. The dogs refused to go down into that dark hole and got shut up in a closet. Over in Bertram, three miles away, many of the buildings lost roofs and suffered structural damage. No power through Friday night, which made life very hot (Friday's temperature hit 95). No water, either, since our well pumps are electric. But we keep an emergency supply and have plenty of emergency lighting. All in all, we were lucky. What's more, because I couldn't write on Friday (no electricity for the computer), I cleaned up my office instead. I can see my desk for the first time since before April's book tour--no small triumph. I also got up on the ladder and fixed the remaining porch roof panels so they wouldn't blow away.

Cows on the lam. We have some neighbors who have cows but don't have very good fences. What's more, they don't live on the property where they pasture their animals, so they don't regularly monitor them. We have unwillingly hosted their cows a couple of times: there's a story in my memoir about their white bull, who came calling a few years ago, and when Bill and I got back from tour, we found a number of cowpies, evidence that we'd had company again. On Thursday night, the cows--seven or eight, including that white bull--got out of their pasture again and began drifting across Sharon's property (our neighbor to the south--that's her hillside you're looking at in the photo) and then on to our place. We had taken our south fence down to install a gate and hadn't put it back up again, since Sharon doesn't have any animals and our cows live in another pasture, securely fenced. Last night, when the temperature dropped below 90, I put the fence posts up and strung some clothesline in place of the barbed wire (easier for me to handle), with plastic bags tied to the line. I'm hoping this will keep the cows at bay.

 

Wandering cows, violent storms, drought, heat--you may think it's crazy to say this, but I dearly, dearly love it, all of it. This is all part of the land, the place, the terrain. It's what it is. It's real. And while I am often challenged by what happens here, the challenges help me learn who I am, what skills I have, what my resources are. Important things to know in a world that is changing faster than we can keep up with, faster than we can imagine.

Reading note. I explore the terrain where I live through myself, myself through the terrain.--Barbara Gates, Already Home: A Topography of Spirit and Place

Keeping a Series Fresh

When mystery writers sit down to talk about our craft, one of the topics that almost always comes up is the challenge of keeping a series "fresh." Writers think about this (some of us think about this a lot), because the opposite of fresh is stale, repetitive, boring, tedious, and dull. No writer wants to get into the habit of turning out repetitive plots featuring characters who are flat, stale, and stuck in a rut. For one thing, readers (most of whom truly enjoy reading books in a series) get tired of reading the same book over and over, even though the covers are different. For another (and this is a huge thing for me) if a writer writes the same book over and over, she loses spark, energy, vitality, and--yes--freshness.

The mystery genre has come a long way from the day when Conan Doyle pushed Sherlock Holmes over Reichenbach Falls because he was thoroughly sick of his character. (He later resurrected him because Sherlock was, after all, a money-maker and Doyle's other work--historical fiction--didn't pay very well.) We've also come a long way from the days of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, characters who stayed very much the same, book after book, decade after decade. In my years as Carolyn Keene (you know I've written both Nancy and the HB?), that was one of the most frustrating things about both series: the characters didn't grow, didn't change, stayed the same. Okay for kids, maybe. Not okay for adult readers or for writers. Now, the best mysteries have the richness and density of the best mainstream and literary novels, with multi-layered characters, interwoven plots, realistic and evocative settings, innovative styles, and themes that explore the ambiguities and contradictions of our culture.

So. Since I aspire to writing the very best mysteries I can write, I aspire to create characters who mature in some important way in every book; multi-level plots that look something like a three-dimensional glass chessboard; settings that evoke a strong sense of place and remind us that place (to a degree we don't want to admit) defines who we are and sets limits on what we do; styles that command our full attention; and complex themes that require us to think as we read and to test what we're reading against what we know about life and love and loss in our culture.

There you have it. My aims. My manifesto. What I want to do with my books. And since each book represents a large chunk of my life's time (measured in months) and experience and energies (unmeasurable), I spend that time and experience and energy thoughtfully, hoping to achieve at least one or two of these aims with every book. I know I don't. I know I can't. But I try.

Which is why each one of the China Bayles books--each one of all my books, in every series--is an experiment. I am a craftsperson experimenting with her medium in the same way a potter experiments with her clay, or a painter her oils or watercolors. I push characters, stretch settings, play with themes, vary tone and style. I don't want to create a shelf of identical books, like a tray of identical, mass-produced plates, cups, and salad bowls, or a wall full of identical landscapes. I want to learn something new about my craft with each book, and I want to share those discoveries with readers.

That's why Wormwood is not the same book as Nightshade, which is different from Bleeding Hearts and Spanish Dagger. They share some of the same characters, but setting, time, point of view--these vary from book to book. The Cottage Tales are different, as well: there, I'm playing with animal characters and with a nosy, opinionated, intrusive narrator. Each of the Robin Paige books was unique in its use of historical characters and settings.

Readers who want to read the same characters, settings, and themes in each book have plenty of mysteries to choose from. (I know, because I regularly sample mystery series and am regularly disapponted by what I read.) I welcome readers who want to be challenged, are willing to venture out of their comfort zones, and are NOT looking for an "easy read." (In fact, if you believe that you've found an "easy read" in the China Bayles books, I'd have to say that you are probably not finding all that's there.) If this isn't you--well, I'm sorry to see you leave the series, but I know you'll be able to find plenty of books that fit your expectations.

How to keep a series fresh? When novice writers ask me that, I say: keep yourself fresh, as a writer. Keep playing, experimenting, changing, growing. Your books will reflect your growth, and your readers will be challenged by it. And come to think of it, that's life, isn't it? Isn't that what makes us human?

Reading note. One writes in order to know why one writes. It's the same with life--you live not for some end, but in order to know why you live.--Alberto Moravia

Update: 6/15/09. Nina Garrett just sent me a reminder of that wonderful passage at the beginning of Josephine Tey's splendid Adam Grant mystery, The Daughter of Time. Detective Grant is in the hospital, and his friends have brought a stack of current best-sellers to occupy him. But as he looks through them, he sees that they're all predictable, repetitious, boring. In disgust, he thinks to himself:

Did no one, any more, no one in all this wide world, change their record now and then? Was everyone nowadays thirled [look it up!] to a formula? Authors today wrote so much to a pattern that their public expected it.The public talked about "a new Silas Weekley" or "a new Lavinia Fitch" exactly as they talked about "a new brick" or "a new hairbrush." They never said "a new book by" whoever it might be. Their interest was not in the book but in its newness.They knew quite well what the book would be like.

It might be a good thing, Grant thought as he turned his nauseated gaze away from the motley pile, if all the presses of the world were stopped for a generation. There ought to be a literary moratorium. Some Superman ought to invent a ray that would stop them all simultaneously. Then people wouldn't send you a lot of fool nonsense when you were flat on your back...

Thanks very much, Nina. I'm so glad to be reminded of this book, surely one of the very best mysteries of all time. Brat Farrar is another of Tey's successes (in my view), and none of her work could ever be called "formulaic."