Five Minute Watercolors, a "Sparkling" Book Club Opportunity, & More
Free Wine. This is Not a Drill.
I can hardly believe this is even real, but here it is:
My publisher has connected me with the nice people at Prestige Wine Imports, who would like to ship FREE WINE to book clubs who want to do a Zoom with me! I know, how is this even possible?
This beautiful Italian sparkling brut, Rotari, could land on your doorstep! Here's the deal:
You need to gather up 15-20 friends/book club members who will actually show up for this Zoom. (C'mon, you know 15-20 wine-swilling, book-reading people. Invite some friends. Invite your mom. You can do this.)
Sorry, they can't ship wine to PA.
Pick a Kopp novel to read.
Work out a few choices of dates, ideally March/April, but May is OK too. Make sure these are dates when your peeps will actually show up!
We can host this on my Zoom account if you don't have Zoom.
I will collect addresses and they will ship a bottle to every member of your book club!
The good people at Prestige will join the call as we taste the wine and they will tell us about it.
Then we'll drink our wine and have a book club chat!
We're going to pick 2-3 book clubs, so hurry up and get your people organized and let us know you're interested!
But it gets better, because guess who we're Zooming with in April...
In 2018, I had the most remarkable, rewarding book tour experience of my life. My publisher (yes, the same one who hooked us up with the free wine, they're amazing) sent me on book tour with two authors I'd never met: Elly Griffiths and Mario Giordano. We were complete strangers from three different countries, but we got on like a house afire. For a week we toured Florida together, went sightseeing together, ate our meals together, and really bonded in a short time.
I never went to summer camp, but I think I know that feeling of going off to summer camp, where nobody knows you and therefore nobody knows how deeply uncool you really are back home, and all of a sudden you've made friends with incredibly cool people who you feel like you've known your whole life but then camp is over and you have to go back home and you promise to stay in touch, and...
Well, I might be oversharing, but now you understand the particular adoration I have for these two people, and I hope you will join us for a fabulous international Zoom on Sunday, April 11 at 3 Eastern, noon Pacific.
Mario is the author of the delightful Auntie Poldi series, about a boozy, sexy older woman who has affairs with Italian policemen and solves murders. Elly just won an Edgar Award, for crying out loud, and is the author of the Ruth Galloway series, about a British archaeologist turned mystery-solver, and her fabulous stand-alones, The Stranger Diaries and The Postscript Murders. See all their books on Bookshop.org, where your purchase supports independent bookstores.
OMG is that another Kopp novel already?
Hey look! I have a new book cover to share with you!
MISS KOPP INVESTIGATES is the SEVENTH Kopp Sisters novel, and it comes out in September 2021. This is the first book in which Fleurette plays a starring role, and that's her on the cover, lurking about mysteriously on a dark and stormy night.
With this book I am once again picking up with their real life--or as much as I know about it--after the war. There's a bit of fictionalizing going on, but the broad strokes are all true. Available for pre-order now everywhere books are sold.
Are you a writer? Do you want to talk about anything and everything writing-related? That's what these free Zoom events are for. Sign up here--on April 8, 5 PM Pacific, we're talking about research, plus whatever you want to talk about.
Also at your request...the next live art demo will be FLOWERS! Time to get in touch with your inner Matisse! These are free, fun, relaxed events. March 31, 5 PM Pacific, go here to register and get details.
Maybe You Want to Send Somebody a Cake
I did the research so you don't have to: Do you know somebody who needs a cake? Are you missing a birthday with a loved one? Or, you know, does it just sound like fun to have a cake randomly shipped to someone? Bake Me a Wish does a terrific job of packing and shipping these gorgeous cakes around the country. Just passing it on because mailing cakes is a thing we do now. I just sent one to my mom. Happy birthday, Mom.
This is my favorite spring garden cocktail.
I sent this recipe out to everyone who attended last week's event with Abra Lee, but it's so good and spring-like that I wanted to share it here, too.
1.5 oz gin or vodka
.5 oz St-Germain elderflower liqueur
1 chunk cucumber
3-4 basil leaves
¼ lemon
2-3 oz sparkling water or club soda
Garnish with cucumber chunk, lemon peel, or edible flower: Johnny jump-up, pansy, borage
Ice
Combine the first four ingredients in a cocktail shaker. Squeeze the lemon into the shaker and then drop the wedge in. Using a muddler or wooden spoon, gently crush all the ingredients. Shake well over ice and strain into a tall glass or tumbler over ice. Top with soda water, garnish with flower.
Paint a Sunset With Me
New art class! Sunsets! Paint something beautiful!
Asked and Answered...
Ask me a question, and if I answer it here, I'll send you the book of your choice! This month's winner is Patrice from Georgetown, TX. She asks:
For Dear Miss Kopp, which I just finished reading last week and thoroughly enjoyed, how did it come together for you? I loved the epistolary method and wonder if you mapped out storylines individually first for your three mains then applied the stories to letters? And I especially liked the way you demonstrated the naturally growing maturity of Fleurette.
Thanks so much for the question! I thought an epistolary novel would be easy--all I had to do was write these nice short letters in which the characters make witty remarks about the circumstances they're in, and then the other characters send witty replies, and we're done!
Not so fast. For one thing, Norma was off in France, where letters were both censored and delayed for weeks or months. So there could be no back-and-forth correspondence in real time.
Also, I realized that the Kopps might not have necessarily been entirely forthcoming with their sisters about everything they were up to. So I needed other correspondents--Constance's boss, Fleurette's friend, etc.
Finally, I didn't want the letters to be so disjointed that you couldn't keep track of what was going on in each of their far-flung lives. (In most epistolary novels, the various parties are usually writing to each other about the same matter. Now I understand why!)
So I decided to group the letters into chunks--you'd stay with Constance for a while, then you'd stay with Norma for a while, etc. That way you could (I hope) keep track of what was going on.
And yes, I planned out the stories first (just writing them out, paragraph by paragraph, like summaries of the events), and then I wrote all of Norma's letters in one go, then all of Constance's, then all of Fleurette's...and then I spread them all out on the floor (pictured above, with each sister a different color), moved them around, stuck post-its on them, and tried to figure out the chronology of the whole thing so that the events all came together in a way that was plausible and that wrapped up around Armistice Day!
It was not easy! I'm amazed anyone can even understand the damn thing, to be honest.
Ask a Question, Win a Book
Most of you know the drill by now. Ask me a question and tell me which book you'd like to win. If I pick your question to answer in the next newsletter, I'll send you the book you chose. Please head over here to enter, and if you've entered before, ask the same question or a different one! I love all your questions and hope to get to all of them eventually. Only 11 people entered last month. Your chances are good!
Call My Agent is Brilliant Storytelling, and Here's Why
Call My Agent is a French series about film agents on Netflix. They just wrapped up their fourth season, so there's plenty to watch. Here's what makes this show so brilliant (besides, well, Paris): Everyone wants something--desperately--in every scene. Agents want clients, and jobs for their clients. Actors want agents. Actors want good roles. If you think about it, the whole entertainment industry (whether it's film, music, books) exists because of people wanting SOMETHING--an audition, a deal, recognition, awards.
Watch it, and notice how the story is entirely driven forward by how desperately everyone wants SOMETHING or SOMEONE in every single scene.
It's also just hilarious and beautiful and smart, and you might pick up a little French, too.
Plan Your Post-Pandemic Trip on Google Earth Voyager Travel
I've been taking my dad on some armchair travel adventures in Google Earth. Here's what I do: I share screen on Skype (or zoom or whatever) and show him some of the pre-built destinations in Google Earth Voyager (look for the Travel tab) and together we meander around the place virtually and talk about the trip we'd like to take there someday. It's nice. Gives us something to talk about. Recommended.
New Art in My Shop
Flowers! Cocktails! Feel free to stop by my little art shop anytime and have a poke around. You can always see new stuff on Instagram, too.
Book Club Chats and Virtual Events:
No Zoom? No Problem!
As you are by now quite well aware, I have my own damn Zoom account now, so if your book club would like to have a chat about one of my books, but nobody has a Zoom account...we can host it on my account. I'm always happy to do an online chat with a book club, and these days I'm also doing actual presentations, like the sort of thing I used to do on the road in the Before Times. So if you run a lecture series or any sort of event series and you need a virtual speaker, you can go here to see four types of virtual events I'm doing now. Feel free to pass this on if you know someone who's putting on these types of events right now.
I Can Send (Some) Signed Books to You
Some of you have written to me and asked if I have signed books for sale. Well, I do have small quantities of a few titles...or rather, my husband does. Supplies are limited, so get them while they last, and thank you sincerely for your patronage. Go here to browse and order.
What Are You Reading?
Elly Griffith's new one is such fun--and it's about the British crime writing scene, so there's all kinds of insiderish stuff about publishing, book festivals, etc etc. If you loved The Stranger Diaries, you will love seeing her lady cop on a new case. Read it now before our event with her on April 11!