Murder and Matchmaking

Murder and Matchmaking
A novel mashup of Sherlock Holmes and Pride & Prejudice

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Books I want to write… sort of

I seem to be developing a curious habit of coming up with ideas for books that would be fun to write but are doomed to remain unwritten as they lack any commercial viability or literary merit. Let me now give these poor imaginary creatures a place to live here as they have as much hope of finding a better home as ‘Limpy’, the three-legged, incontinent tarantula has of being adopted from the animal shelter for ridiculously cute orphaned kittens. ‘The problem with you is…’ A book in which I embark on a series of imaginary rants against the characters I have found annoying in literature and let them know what I really think about their irritating personalities. The Macabre Cookbook A recipe book wherein the ingredients are displayed inside the illustration of a gravestone and the cooking instructions are written as a touching eulogy to the food. Wine recommendations and descriptions of how each recipe tastes would be noted as tributes or death notices. Memoirs of imaginary me As a kid I had wanted to be a lot of different things ‘when I grew up’, and not just as a sequence of various vocational preferences that changed over the years, I wanted to do them all at the same time. I’d love to write the auto-biography of the glamorous adventures of the grown-up Debbie that my childhood self imagined: a vet/secret agent who writes best-selling books in between solving mysteries and saving the world. She also had a sidekick horse who could talk like Mr Ed. The best flavour of ice cream to have with every dessert Admittedly I don’t so much want to write this book as I want an excuse to do the copious amounts of dessert-guzzling research involved. An arduous task some might say but I’m willing make that kind of personal commitment to ice cream and desserts.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

The Macabre Cookbook? Awesome. I wonder if you could present it as a a collection of Final Meals of Particularly Peculiar Prisoners at a fictional (...Pretend) Penitentiary, with anecdotes and reminiscences of the Warden, Guards, and Head Chef (who Practices his Pernicious Poisoning on the inmates, knowing they'll be dead within a day anyway so no-one will ever suspect. He has yet to fully mask the taste of the Cyanide, but so far all the inmates have requested Bakewell Tart. He lives in apprehensive anticipation of the day one will order a fruit salad)

Karen said...

Now I want to read some of the memoirs of imaginary you (actually this really appeals and I kind of want to write some of my own... how I was trained as a doctor by Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, perhaps? :-) I read a biography of her when I was about 12 and obsessed for weeks)... any chance you could write one or two as blog posts...

Anonymous said...

So you don't think the James Bond novels are the memoirs of the imaginary Ian Fleming?

Debbie Cowens said...

Rachel - Yeah, I really like the last meal idea.

Karen - Hmm, blogging some of them is an appealing thought.

Donna - I think that the James Bond novels are probably the imaginary memoirs of Ian Fleming and many other men as well :-)