tea-powered gore fest

Earlier today I was listening to an interview about a novel method of writing, and suddenly the subject of tea came up. In that moment, I knew this little nugget would be mined for the teablog. Such is the way of the teablogger.

But first the interview. Turns out a married couple, who happen to be writers, wanted to cash in on the success of the Swedish brutal-hyper-sexual crime novel (à la Stieg Larsson and his The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). In order to write together, they came up with a pseudonym Lars Kepler and they even went so far as to concoct a few specific habits, that are not their own, for this Kepler character.

One of them is that he's a tea drinker (in real life they both drink coffee), and they arranged to have what they call a 'tea meeting' when they'd actually sit down and write in the name of Kepler. They even brewed tea for these little sessions, and thankfully they actually drank the stuff.

While I was listening to the interview I was half-expecting the couple to say that they brewed the tea for their imaginary friend (sort of an empty chair for Elijah), and then poured the tea out after their session.

This would be a very different blogpost had that been the case. We don't take kindly to discarding perfectly good tea in these here parts. Not that whatever tea these two self-described coffee drinkers are brewing is necessarily decent tea. Can't imagine that it is even remotely acceptable, but you get my point.

I ask myself: What do I think about these two writers getting into character by coming over to the leaf-side if only for some sort of quasi-inspiration? I don't see much wrong with it. Why not? Maybe one or both of these writers will get ahold of some quality loose-leaf tea and start drinking the stuff on the sly. When the other one isn't looking. Stranger things've happened, right?

The original interview that I heard can be found here: The Authors Behind The Author Of 'The Hypnotist'. The book is admittedly a bit brutal and possibly not to be read after eating too many of the same lemon biscuits that the writers themselves enjoy.

But if you happen to enjoy gory crime novels, brew up some above-average tea and dig in.