MRS. ROOSEVELT'S CONFIDANTE debuts at #7 on the New York Times Bestseller list!

MRS. ROOSEVELT'S CONFIDANTE is #7 on the New York Times Bestseller list for the week of November 15, 2015! 

Check it out here!

Thank you for the lovely flowers, Team Maggie at Penguin Random House!





Doesn't MRS. ROOSEVELT look lovely next to Neil Patrick Harris? 

MRS. ROOSEVELT'S CONFIDANTE and the great Churchill vs. FDR Martini Battle

(Reprinted from Jungle Red Writers, 11/27/15)

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL:   To celebrate the publication of MRS. ROOSEVELT'S CONFIDANTE, Maggie Hope #5 — which takes place in December of 1941, during Prime Minister Winston Churchill's historic post-Pearl Harbor visit to the Roosevelts' White House— we had our own FDR-inspired "Children's Hour." 

And we pitted (pun intended) the two great leaders' very different versions of the classic Martini cocktail against each other. 

So, let's see who wins the Great Martini Smackdown of 2015, shall we? 

I mixed both Churchill's more pristine ("bow in the direction of France" instead of adding vermouth) and FDR's vermouth and olive-brine heavy Martinis. 

Husband Noel, and our guests, Rob, Victor, and Leila, were encouraged to be candid in their reactions to each cocktail.

Here's my recipe for Winston Churchill's Martini:

Winston Churchill's enjoyment of spirits was legendary, but by all accounts, he preferred his drinks unmixed. According to various accounts he was appalled at the copious amount of vermouth in President Roosevelt’s martinis, but drank them agreeably, in the name of diplomacy.

* gin
 (according to some he preferred Plymouth, according to others, Boodles or Beefeater)

* crushed ice

Shake gin in a container half filled with chipped ice. 

Bow respectfully toward France (where dry vermouth is produced)

Strain into a chilled cocktail glass or coupe. 

Garnish with lemon peel, if desired.

  

And here are the guests' opinions of the Churchill Martini: 

NOEL: This is a really good cocktail — it would be great in the summer. You can really taste the gin but also taste the lemon. Very refreshing.

ROB: I love the simple simplicity of it.

  

SUSAN: Simple simplicity?

ROB: Simple simplicity.

SUSAN: It's elegant. Tastes like the martini at Dukes Hotel, in London. 

VICTOR: The Churchill Martini is very European — "We don't care about driving later — we want alcohol now!" It has a good aftertaste, too — juniper and citrus.

ROB: It's nice to look at the lemon rind floating around in it.

SUSAN: Rob, how many have you had?

ROB: Hey, this is my first drink!

  

LEILA: It's like a tickle in the throat, but a nice one — smooth and not harsh.

SUSAN: It almost tastes like a Gimlet.

NOEL: Is that the one with the little pickled onions?

  

SUSAN: No, that's a Gibson. A Gimlet is gin with lime and sugar syrup. It was Betty Draper's cocktail of choice on Mad Men. But that’s another blog post....Or at least another party.

  

And now on to President Roosevelt’s Martini:

President Franklin D. Roosevelt did always mix drinks at Children’s Hour and reportedly enjoyed making martinis. As far as I can tell there’s no exact recipe, but we know from his personal secretary Grace Tully’s memoirs that they were heavy on the vermouth (which was considered old-fashioned) and he was also known to add a few drops of Pernod, orange blossom water, or olive brine for flavor.

Here’s my best approximation of his martini. Enjoy!

* 2 parts gin
 (according to some he preferred Plymouth; according to others, Beefeater)

* 1 part dry vermouth

* splash olive brine




* 2 olives for garnish


* crushed ice

  

Shake gin, vermouth, and olive brine in a container half filled with chipped ice. 

Strain into chilled cocktail glasses. 

Add garnish.

Reflections on FDR's Martini: 

ROB: I do like a Dirty Martini! Did President Roosevelt invent the Dirty Martini?

SUSAN: I don't know if he invented the Dirty Martini, but he's reputed to have made and served them — much to Churchill's horror. FDR really liked to garnish, apparently. 

ROB: Well, I love it. It has a richer and plumper taste than the Churchill one.

  

NOEL: Plumper?

ROB: Plumper, I say!

  

SUSAN: I like the vermouth and gin together. It's a cocktail for heaven's sake, not just cold gin!

VICTOR: Yes, I can see how this was more popular with the American palate — less alcohol, more ingredients. It's heavier.

NOEL: This is more of a winter cocktail. 

LEILA: This is not a Dirty Martini — this is more like dirty laundry. Yuck.

SUSAN: I like it! More olives, please!

And the winning Martini is.....

SUSAN: So, which do you like best?

NOEL: I think Churchill's for summer and Roosevelt's for winter.

  

SUSAN: That's a very politic answer, dear.

  

VICTOR: I vote for the Churchill. And I'm taking a taxi home.

SUSAN: I must admit I like any excuse to eat olives. I'm going with Roosevelt's.

LEILA: Oh, olives in gin are yucky. I pick Churchill's.

ROB: Must we choose? Can't we just enjoy both? I pick both!

SUSAN: And so the Churchill Martini wins — by one vote! Cheers, everyone!

MRS. ROOSEVELT'S CONFIDANTE: Inspired by the real-life Pauli Murray

From "What We're Writing" week on Jungle Red Writers: 

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: The Reverend Dr. Anna Pauline "Pauli" Murray (November 20, 1910 – July 1, 1985) was an American civil rights activist, a women's rights activist, a lawyer, and also an author. In addition, Dr. Murray was the first Black woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest.

The young Pauli Murray, who graduated from Hunter College, worked with the NAACP, and was the first woman to graduate from Howard University's law school. She was a critic of "Jane Crow" — laws and prejudices against Black women. And Pauli Murray is the inspiration for the character Andi Martin in MRS. ROOSEVELT'S CONFIDANT. 

The real Pauli Murray did have a friendship with Mrs. Roosevelt, and in 1941 tried to persuade the First Lady to intercede when a black man, Odell Waller, was sentenced to death for self-defense.

WUNC, the public radio station in Chapel Hill, North Caroline—Pauli Murray's home and base of Duke University's Pauli Murray Project—to the  has just done a wonderful piece on Pauli Murray, called "Imp, Crusader, and Dude: The Many Identities of Pauli Murray," written by Anita Rao and Frank Stasio: 

"Scholar and activist Pauli Murray grew up in Durham and was fundamentally shaped by its history and culture, and she left a lasting legacy on the city in return. 

Duke University’s Pauli Murray Project has been working to document this legacy and recently reached an important milestone: the project begins the restoration of Pauli Murray’s historic house in southwest Durham this summer.

Today they are also unveiling a new exhibit on view at The Scrap Exchange that features an intersectional look at Pauli’s many identities, from priest to crusader." 

Please give a listen and learn more about the amazing American Pauli Murray — a Black, queer, feminist hero, nearly erased from U.S. history.

MRS. ROOSEVELT'S CONFIDANTE, THE QUEEN'S ACCOMPLICE, and Jack the Ripper

LEAVE A COMMENT TODAY ON THE 

JUNGLE REDS BLOG POST 

TO ENTER THE GIVEAWAY FOR A FREE ARC OF 

MRS. ROOSEVELT'S CONFIDANTE!

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Happy Sunday, lovely readers! I'm delighted to tell you that MRS. ROOSEVELT'S CONFIDANT is now out in ARCs (aka Advance Reader Copies)! And yes, I do have one to give away to one reader who leaves a comment on the Jungle Reds site! And wow, the book's publication date is October 27, 2015 — that's just four months away! As our Hank would say, "Whoa."









The other books in the Maggie Hope series are doing well, too. MR. CHURCHILL'S SECRETARY is now in its 16th printing, the other titles are in multiple printings, and Barnes & Noble has come up with a nifty bookshelf display. This one is from our local B&N, but I hear there are others?











So, in between getting Kiddo through the last of 4th grade (sniff), getting ready for summer (Rhode Island!), and copy edits for MRS. ROOSEVELT'S CONFIDANT (hair-pulling and nail-biting), I've also been researching and writing book #6 in the Maggie Hope series, THE QUEEN'S ACCOMPLICE.


This is now two books ahead for readers — and I want to be careful not to spoil anything for anyone. But I can say that THE QUEEN'S ACCOMPLICE will follow Maggie from Washington, D.C. back to London. And in it, we'll meet a new baddie — the Blackout Ripper — a serial killer (or, rather, a "sequential murderer," since the term "serial killer" wasn't in use back then) who preys on the smart, ambitious, professional women.


I knew Maggie would be back in London for this book — and so I began to think her struggles against the patriarchy as a smart and capable woman weren't getting enough page space, the way they did in the earlier books. And so I deliberately created a killer who was targeting strong professional women — the women who were to be sent abroad to fight in the SOE (the Special Operations Executive — the British black ops organization Maggie has been working for). Since the killer is targeting women of SOE, Maggie's brought in by old friend Peter Frain of MI-5, to work alongside her old frenemy, Mark Stafford — and also a new character, a detective from Scotland Yard. 


[ When I began the project, I became obsessed with the literature of Victorian London. Many of the books I'd already read (women in Victorian lit was my specialty as an English major in college). But I wanted to go back to the really gothic books. So I chose DRACULA and DR. JEKYL AND MR. HYDE. DRACULA, I'd read in junior high or thereabouts, but it was still plenty scary. As well as unintentionally hilarious: "Get Mina recipe for chicken paprika."]


And then there's Jack the Ripper, himself. I started with THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF JACK THE RIPPER, then on to 1880: LONDON MURDERS IN THE AGE OF JACK THE RIPPER, and lots more. Like many, I knew the story without really knowing a lot of facts. The details are grisly.




But — why the fascination with Jack the Ripper, you may ask? 

Good question. 

Jack keeps coming up in the public consciousness as well as literature and pop culture for many reasons. Any plot about about the Jack the Ripper (or a new Ripper) contains coded discussions of the dangers of unrestrained male sexuality, misogynist fears of female sexuality, and censure of female autonomy. 


And so I turned to the scholarly book, A CITY OF DREADFUL DELIGHT, a feminist interpretation of the Ripper murders and their effects. The book also explores how Jack the Ripper (and his many fictional variations) has acted as a catalyst for women’s anger against male violence against women in the public sphere. As author Judith R. Walkowitz argues: "The Whitechapel murders have continued to provide a common vocabulary of male violence against women, a vocabulary now more than one hundred years old. Its persistence owes much to the mass media’s exploitation of Ripper iconography. Depictions of female mutilation in mainstream cinema, celebrations of the Ripper as a 'hero' of crime intensify fears of male violence and convince women that they are helpless victims."


And so, in other words, if I'm going to take on the Ripper myth as a feminist writer with a strong heroine, I'd better tell it in a radically different way. And that's my goal. In the usual Ripper stories and films, the Ripper's challenger is a man — a detective or a journalist usually. The female victims are peripheral to the hunt/catch story. 


In this newest Maggie Hope book, I want to turn that traditional Ripper narrative on its head.

Reading about Jack the Ripper led me to books about our own first serial killer here in the U.S., H. H. Holmes, including Erik Larson's excellent THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY. Jane Addams, the urban reformer who founded Chicago’s Hull House, wrote about the time period — which has its parallel in London of World War II — “Never before in civilization have such numbers of young girls been suddenly released from the protection of the home and permitted to walk unattended upon the city streets and to work under alien roofs.”

I'm also doing research on women in police force during World War II. Yes! It's true! 

And not just researching, but writing, too — it's just a wee bit too early for me to feel comfortable showing any pages. But please rest assured there are about 100 rough pages written, 100 more sketched out pages, and a whole slew of notes and ideas. Maggie's met a lot of horrific people in wartime, but this — a serial killer — is a first. And it's scary. (I'm scaring myself sometimes, which must be good, right?)


Dear lovely readers, please leave a comment here to be entered to win an ARC of MRS. ROOSEVELT'S CONFIDANTE!

It's "What We're Writing Week" on Jungle Reds — today, MRS. ROOSEVELT'S CONFIDANTE

(Cross posted on Jungle Red Writers — do drop by!)

Hello, lovely readers! I'm delighted to show you the cover design for the next Maggie Hope novel, MRS. ROOSEVELT'S CONFIDANTE, which is coming out October 27, 2015 (so not too long to wait!):

I hope you love it as much as I do! I adore Fala, of course, as well as the ghostly figure in the window.... And, um, I'd really like Maggie's coat, please! (With a faux-fur collar, of course.)

And what's on the inside is progressing nicely as well. The manuscript is now typeset and in page proofs. So my job is to go over the book one last time.

Look! It's a book! (Amazing what typesetting will do.)

And I'm particularly proud of the dedication. I asked Miss Edna about the political and racial events of the 1940s often, and it led to great discussions. I treasure the memory of them.

As you may know, I'm also working on the next book in the Maggie Hope series, THE QUEEN'S ACCOMPLICE, and just returned from a two-week research trip to London and Beaulieu, in Hampshire. (It's pronounced Bew-lee — go figure!) 

Fantastic trip and I have so much to share that it will take additional posts, but one of the most amazing thing was visiting the real-life SOE secret agent offices in London and "finishing school" in Beaulieu. I never forget for a moment that although I'm telling a story with a fictional protagonist, real women and men sacrificed everything to be dropped behind enemy lines and, as Winston Churchill instructed "set Europe ablaze!" 

Here are a few of the sites and plaques honoring the SOE in London:

On what used to be one of the main SOE offices on Baker Street.

Now it's a lighting store and anonymous office space.

This building was home of the SOE and Free French. It's now banking offices.

This is the plaque in memory of the Free French and SOE

 


And also in Beaulieu:

This is the SOE memorial on the grounds of Beaulieu Abbey, originally built in 1204

A close-up of the inscription

The outside of what's left of Beaulieu Abbey

Inside the domus. It was originally a dormitory for monks. During World War II, dances were held there and it also served as sleeping quarters for soldiers heading to Normandy.

U.S. soldiers getting some rest before the invasion of Normandy.

 

I'm in awe of the agents' bravery and courage — and so many of them didn't return. But, thanks to their efforts, along with the Free French and La Résistance, so many telephone lines were cut, bridges blown up, and roads blocked before D-Day by the "underground army" that the Allied invasion of Normandy had just that more going for it.

Hats off.

Lovely readers — are you familiar with the work of the SOE? And are there any war memorials that are particularly important to you? What's your personal connection?