The Official S. J. Bolton Blog

I'm often asked if I 'get much say' in my book covers. None whatever, I gaily reply. In fact I rather suspect the number-one objective of any cover-design team is to keep the author well clear.

An aspiration I have a lot of sympathy with, actually, having worked in marketing and PR for many years. Oh, the times I've put a painstakingly-briefed and time-consumingly visualised piece of artwork in front of colleagues, only to be met with: 'I don't like it.'

Not: 'I'm not sure this will appeal to our target market, or: 'I doubt this will really stand out on the shelves', or even: 'Is this really the image we want to convey to our customers?' but simply: 'I don't like it.'

Back when I was a business student, our marketing lecturer warned us: 'When it comes to advertising, it's all too easy to degenerate into pub-talk.' Which means, everyone has an opinion and no one has really thought it through.

So, I always assume my cover design teams in their respective markets know what they're doing. They know their readers, they know how the crime genre works in their market, they know what will stand out on the shelves. I trust them to make the right decisions for me and my books, and I always, when asked, say that I like what they've come up with.

(Well, nearly always. There was a case not too long ago when I simply couldn't bring myself to say it, so I maintained diplomatic silence)

I never have to pretend, though, when the Transworld team are on the case because She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed becomes She-Who-Will-Accept-Nothing-But-The Best. Each cover Transworld have produced for me has been better than the one before and their first was fabulous. Their latest quite simply takes my breath away. I wouldn't have thought it possible to convey menace, violence and terror on a book cover, and still make it as gorgeous as a work of art, but they've done it. Behold (and you saw it here first): the hardback jacket design for Now You See Me.

It deserves a minute's silence, in my view. Especially as the artwork on the rear is every bit as good.

The male figure in silhouette is Detective Inspector Mark Joesbury, of the Scotland Yard's SO10 division, making his way through the Camden Catacombs. Joesbury is one of the most successful and respected undercover officers in the Metropolitan police force. He loves the excitement and danger of his job; or at least he did, until he met young Detective Constable Lacey Flint. And the woman on the front? Can't tell you that, I'm afraid. That would be a spoiler of epic proportions.

If you've never heard of the Camden Catacombs and want to know more, either Google them now, or keep checking my website in the coming weeks as we get closer to the launch and I try to contain my excitement about unleashing my latest offering on the book-world. I know authors, like mothers, aren't supposed to have favourites and I genuinely love all my pen and ink children but Now You See Me is the book I feel I was born to write. And yes, the cover most certainly does it justice.

I've wanted to go to a Scottish nuptial since I saw Four Weddings and a Funeral in the early 1990s, so when the invitation arrived to watch my young cousin Sarah plight her troth to her long-term boyfriend from the Highlands, I leapt at the chance. I was hoping for - and actually got - misty mountain scenery, the forbidding Scottish Castle with decapitated large mammals on the wall, champagne and Tayside malt to welcome us in from the cold, a bride who looked her best and most beautiful (as all brides should but few actually do) and, best of all, my two favourite guilty pleasures (well, that I'm prepared to admit to here): big, butch men in kilts and Scottish country dancing.

No honestly, if there's a better way to have fun with relatives of all ages than Stripping the Willows and the Gay Gordon, I've yet to discover it.

We also had the chance to witness Sarah and Derek having their happy ending. Not to their lives, heaven forbid, they're far too young for that, but to their story so far. A wedding is how we all want the chapter to close, isn't it, be it on one's first youth, or the final pages of a book.

I'm no different. I'm a sucker for a happy ending. In fact, I won't read a book or watch a film that I know will end sadly.

So why can't I end my books in a flower-strewn chapel filled with big hats and optimism? Why do I have a constant flow of complaints from readers frustrated at the lack of a big, sloppy snog at the end of Blood Harvest and Awakening?

Possibly, it's because I don't see my existing endings as unhappy. I mean, the villainy is uncovered and nobody important dies. What's not to like? It won't wash anymore. She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed (UK editor) has been joined by They-Who-Also-Wield-Enormous-Power (US and German editors) and to keep them quiet I've had to promise for my latest book, not just one happy ending but two, and a full blown, four-way snog on the rooftops of Cambridge.

Trouble is, (and please don't tell 'em) I don't think it can be done. I'm about three quarters of the way through and I've boxed myself into a grim corner. Short of handing it over to Sophie Kinsella at this point, I really can't see a way forward.

Now there's a thought. Anyone got her number?

Huge congratulations, Sarah and Derek, on a fabulous wedding. Glam One and I, our hubbies, children and aged parents, all had a ball. Here's wishing you a long and happy life together.

Rudeness is constrained neither by age nor occasion, I discovered today. At 10 o'clock this morning, a few hundred of us gathered at the war memorial for the brief annual service that remembers the young men of the village who went away to fight and never came back.

It was largely spoilt by the incessant chattering of a group immediately behind us. They weren't young children who knew no better; nor were they teenage hoodies, cocking a cheap snook at the establishment. They weren't even nattering mums, so often the least self-aware group of people on the planet. They were four elderly people.

Each must have been in his or her seventies, each would have some personal recollection of the great wars, each could have lost loved ones to conflict. Quite how they felt it remotely acceptable to talk loudly through such a solemn service is beyond me.

I understand completely that their generation paid a great price for the sake of others, and that mine by contrast is inherently selfish. I acknowledge that they might have suffered hardships I can barely imagine. I accept that Remembrance Sunday is for people of my age and younger to take stock of what we owe to those who went before us.

It was still wrong. It still upset and angered many people there.

Remembrance is important to people of this country and this strength of feeling isn't fading with time. It is doing the opposite. Our favourite babysitter served in Afghanistan last year and my son, at eight years old, discovered what it is to fear losing someone he loves to battle. Remembrance is important to my son, because he thinks about his big friend Tom and wants him to come home safely. It is important to me and my friends, because we know that one day we might see our own children involved in conflict. Above all, though, you would expect it to be important to those who lived through it, who suffered personal loss and who, through the sacrifice of their friends, were blessed with the gift of being able to grow old.

Shame on you lot. Your friends gave everything, and you can't even give the rest of us a few minutes silence to pay our respects.

On a lighter note, I'm cooking Lotte Duncan's Chicken and Anchovy Trust Me Pie for supper. Which will be interesting on two counts. Firstly, because Mr B will go into a week-long strop if he realises I'm trying to smuggle nasty fishy things down his gullet. And secondly, because Tesco didn't actually deliver the anchovies. What do you think, Lotte - Chicken and Sardine Trust Me Pie?  I'll let you know how it works out.

I'm no longer the only author in the village*. Blonde-bombshell celebrity cook, Lotte Duncan, has just published her first book, Lotte's Country Kitchen and mutual friends hosted the launch party a couple of weeks ago.

Lotte is a self-confessed nutty bird who cooks nutty food**. Her recipes call for hazelnuts, pistachio nuts, walnuts and cobnuts. In an age when everyone entering a primary school has to go through a peanut scanner because Olivia in Yr 3 once developed a rash that might have been connected to a peanut she found on the supermarket floor and held in her hands for five whole seconds, I find the return to nuts as an acceptable cookery ingredient rather refreshing.

I don't love this book, though, because it's not afraid to be a bit un-PC. I love it because it's a fabulous book. My favourite cook book in years, celebrating, as it does, a love of life as much as a love of food and written throughout in a friendly, engaging, heart-warming style.

Lotte comes across as the sort of woman you'd love to be your best friend, although I suspect the queue for that honour is very long. For one thing, she's not afraid to admit she likes a drink. You won't hear Lotte say, "oh, that small glass of wine has gone straight to my head!' You won't hear me say it either. From Lotte and me you're more likely to get, 'you know, that last bottle might not have been entirely wise!'

And the food is just to die for. Okay, that's the crime writer in me talking. It's food to make you want to stay alive and enjoy for a very long time. This time of year, when the nights are drawing in fast and the autumn air tastes like a polo mint on your tongue, our thoughts turn naturally to warming, nurturing comfort food.

Lotte's autumn recipes (lamb with damsons and rosemary dumplings, autumn chicken pie, blackberry and elderberry squidgy pudding) are quite simply the food of our long-forgotten, pagan, countryside gods and I'm sure it's just coincidence I've put on four pounds since buying the book.

Her spring and summer recipes look pretty amazing too!

I don't cook as much as I used to. Too busy churning other people's stomachs to worry too much about what I put in my own, but Lotte's book has made me remember why I once loved it. And why I will again.

Thank you, Lotte. And can I join the queue to be your mate?

*Actually, I never was the only author in the village. The only one who can claim that accolade is the talented, critically-acclaimed and diamond-dagger-winning crime writer, Margaret Yorke. But, as Peggie herself knows, I'm not one to let the facts get in the way of a good story.

** Anyone doubting the former should check out what Lotte wrote on our GP's copy of her book. Suffice it to say it referred to a medical procedure you wouldn't normally want to be reminded of when stuffing the Sunday roast chicken.