Is that baking soda, or did I confuse it with the arsenic again?
Molly MacRae is the author of the award-winning, national bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries and the Highland Bookshop Mysteries. As Margaret Welch, she also writes books for Annie’s Fiction. Learn more about Molly and her books at her website.
Which Came First – the Arsenic or the Book?
Arsenic. That’s the answer to the question posed in this blog’s title, but it’s also a shout-out to a murder weapon about which I simply cannot say enough good things.
Arsenic, known variously as the King of Poisons, the people’s choice, and inheritor’s powder, is sneaky, wicked stuff. It’s been used in all kinds of commercial goods, from wallpaper and candles to sheep dip, beer, blancmange, book covers, clothing, rat poison, and candy. Yes, candy. The candy was actually a mistake—the confectioner meant to add plaster of Paris to his mix, used arsenic by mistake, and ended up killing more than twenty people and sickening several hundred. This was back in the mid-1800s when it was legal to add plaster of Paris to candy. Yes, plaster of Paris.
Arsenic is an element. It’s atomic number 33 on the periodic table. Being an element makes it especially sneaky and wicked. It means that arsenic can’t be destroyed. Burn that treated, green-tinged wood from the old deck you tore down (the green is copper chrome arsenic) and you aren’t getting rid of the arsenic at all. It’s wafting toward you and your neighbors in the smoke from your fire and it’s in the ashes (lying in wait, biding it’s time). Arsenic is odorless unless gently heated. Then it smells like garlic. How fun is that? Culinarily useful, too, if you’re making soup for a certain, soon-to-be-late someone.
But let’s get back to the question in the blog title. What I’m really asking is which came first, the title or the book. The book in question is Argyles and Arsenic, fifth in my Highland Bookshop Mystery series, and the title did come first.
I love coming up with titles for my books and don’t seem to have much trouble doing it. Quite often—mostoften—the title comes first, and I plot the story to bring the title to life. This worked well for my stand-alone books—Lawn Order and Wilder Rumors—as well as for the Highland Bookshop Mysteries and my Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries. The first Highland Bookshop title came to me as an alliterative pairing of words—Plaid and Plagiarism. That set the pattern, and to concoct the subsequent titles, I made two lists. In one I put words that evoke the charm of Scotland and, in the other, words for crimes and criminals. The rest of the titles in the series? Scones and Scoundrels, Thistles and Thieves, Heather and Homicide, and Argyles and Arsenic. With titles like that, the books practically wrote themselves.
I lie. They didn’t write themselves. I did have fun writing them, though, and hope that readers have fun, too.
A Highland Bookshop Mystery, Book 5
After 93 well-lived years, Violet MacAskill is ready to simplify her life. Her eccentric solution? She’ll throw a decanting and decluttering party at her family home—a Scottish Baronial manor near the seaside town of Inversgail, Scotland. Violet sets aside everything she wants or needs, then she invites her many friends in to sip sherry and help themselves to whatever they want from all that’s left. But a murder during Violet’s party leads to a poisonous game of cat and mouse—with the women of Yon Bonnie Books playing to win.
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Thanks, so much, for having me here today, Anastasia and Lois!
ReplyDeleteAlways a pleasure to have you join us, Molly!
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