Happy International Angela Lansbury Appreciation Day!  It’s a momentous day for me as I am celebrating completion of the Murder, She Cooked book.  I am on tenterhooks awaiting my final proof copy but I THINK it is finished.

Here’s Jessica reading an advance copy looking for typos, rogue apostrophes and squinting modifiers.  I don’t know what squinting modifiers are, but J.B. does!

I’ll let you all know when it is available to buy here on this blog, and via the newsletter.  I’ll be sending that out at 1 minute past midnight GMT on the 30th and you can sign up here to be the FIRST to know.  I am BEYOND EXCITED!

I am running two cookalong events to promote the book.  One, on launch day at 7pm, for the wonderful writing community who have supported me through the writing, editing and proofreading, The London Writer’s Salon. I have joined writers all around the world at their early morning silent Writer’s Hours at 8am-9am almost every single weekday since the start of the pandemic.  It’s a wonderful, supportive writing tribe so if you are a writer of any type, accomplished or a complete newbie, wherever you are in the world, do dip a toe in.

Here’s a photo LWS writer and photographer Tom Leighton took of me hard at work on the book one early morning.  He snapped it remotely on my iPhone – modern technology, eh?!  Something happens when you are in a zoom room with hundreds of other writers all beavering away on their projects. It’s pure magic.

I bet Jessica would have LOVED the Writer’s Hour…

The other cookalong will be open to EVERYONE (time zone permitting).  Join me to make an Angela Lansbury Date and Walnut Cake and to chat about Murder, She Wrote.  Zoom link will be in the 30th September newsletter.

My food and wine writer chum Sam Kilgour asked me a few weeks ago if there was a Murder, She Wrote cocktail and of course, even though the book was more or less done and dusted I thought, OMG, I MUST have a cocktail in the book!  Behold the TANGERINE TWIST!

To celebrate Dame Angela in all her glory in the role of Jessica, I hereby declare that I have invented a cocktail.  The name of this cocktail is a reference to something that is a CLUE in an episode of Murder, She Wrote and there is a COPY OF THE BOOK up  for grabs for anyone who knows which episode the phrase “Tangerine Twist” appears.  Leave your guess in the comments by 30th September and I will use a random number generator on launch day to announce the winner.  Put your thinking caps on chums!

In the meantime, have a drink on me!  Here’s your only clue for the competition.  The person who invented the Tangerine Twist that appeared in a Murder, She Wrote episode described it as,“a real nice shade, not too orangey, not too pink”, so that’s what we are aiming for in the cocktail. It wasn’t a beverage in the show though, it was something else entirely, do you know what?!

Oh, OK then, here’s one more clue.  I suggest that whenever you make yourself a Tangerine Twist or a Chained to the Typewriter cocktail you drink it dressed head to toe in shades of lavender, just like this character in the episode in question!

 

If you are a Murder, She Wrote fan and new here, welcome!  I send out monthly episode guides with companion recipes from the kitchens of Angela Lansbury and her co-stars, with screen grabs. If you like the sound of that you can sign up here – Murder, She Cooked Monthly Mailouts.

I’m excited to see who wins the competition and to find out where in the world I will be sending the prize copy of the book…  CHEERS!

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