If you haven’t seen Death by Fruitcake yet, it has just gone up on Tubi and you can watch it free. Please do!
Will we continue the book series? We hope so, but that remains to be seen. The final book on our contract is Antiques Web, which will be published by Severn House (now an imprint of Joffe Books) at the beginning of this coming October.
Pre-order in Hardcover: 
What a pleasure it is seeing Barb grow and develop as a writer. She began writing short stories, a few of which were collaborations with me; but she has a feel and instinct for the shorter form that I, frankly, lack. When we began the Trash ‘n’ Treasures/ANTIQUES series, the drafts she handed on to me were perhaps 200 of the 300 pages we need to submit. Now her draft is closer to 250 (or more) pages and my addition is around 50.
Those aren’t additional pages in the sense that I continue the story for fifty pages – I revise throughout, expanding her chapters. She leaves breathing room for me in dialogue scenes and often leaves action scenes to me. Early on we plotted the books together, but it’s evolved into us just agreeing on a basic idea of what the next book will be, and Barb does the actual chapter breakdown. I don’t see anything till her draft is complete. Rarely she may run into a problem and ask for my input, but hardly ever.
Just as Barb has grown and developed, our two main characters have evolved considerably. When we sold the series to Kensington in 2005, our editor (Michaela Hamilton) told us to write a “chick lit” mystery – lots of fashion and shopping tips. We set out to do so, but midway, Michaela called and said, “Chick lit is dead,” and we adjusted. There are probably still ghosts of that initial concept in the books. What has been most surprising though, is how Brandy and Vivian have changed.
We set out with Brandy as the amateur sleuth and Mother as the comic sidekick; but Brandy soon became the reluctant partner in the pair who would rather not be dealing with mystery and particularly murder at all. And Mother asserted herself, wanting to write her own chapters. While Brandy, as our Watson, still has the lioness’s share of first-person chapters, Vivian shoulders her way into an increasing number of them.
The two women took over, and Barb and I dutifully followed them.
The idea was always to keep in tongue in cheek, and spoof the cozy genre without minimizing the mystery aspect – to make sure murder was murder. Death is no laughing matter.
I know it’s sometimes been tricky to find us, since we left Kensington in 2020, as Severn is a UK house, though they continue to make inroads into the American market. If you have difficulty finding us in a brick-and-mortar outlet, various sites (including Amazon and Barnes & Noble) will help.
Here are the Severn titles: ANTIQUES CARRY ON; ANTIQUES LIQUIDATION; ANTIQUES FOE; ANTIQUES SLAY BELLES; ANTIQUES ROUND-UP; and of course the forthcoming ANTIQUES WEB. These are all available at the Amazon and Barnes & Noble sites.
M.A.C.
Tags: Antiques Series, Antiques Web, Barbara Allan, Death by Fruitcake, Death by Fruitcake Movie, Trash 'n' Treasures
I’ve been a big fan of the Trash ‘n Treasure series since I heard you and Barb discuss the premise at a joint appearance at Once Upon A Crime bookstore in Minneapolis some years ago. I enjoy the goofiness of the characters, the soap elements, the way your own TV and movie interests insert their way into the books and the breaking down of the fourth wall that regularly occurs. Since moving to the Duluth area I’ve found that no libraries in the regional systems carry the books, so I’ve resorted to buying copies online and donating them to my local branch library. I agree that Barb has grown as a writer and I hope the series can continue (and that the oft-proposed TV series becomes a reality).