Free The House of Writers by M.J. Nicholls Page A

the floor, a large conference space where external contractors (mainly in suits—consider suiting up if you have a proposal) come to pitch their ideas to CHAD. A no-nonsense man in Gucci leathers and tailored Cforgzia trousers, CHAD lives up to his capitalised name with his plain talking and head for marketing.
    Among the ideas pitched:
Sean Connery’s Shortbread: The Original James Bond & His World of Shortbread, Scrumptiously Scottish: A Crumbly History of Celtic Cookies, Brought Shed: A Novel of Shortbread, Shortbread and the Third Reich, Hoots Mon!: A Celebration of Hogmanay Shortbread, Gregor Fisher
’s
Shortbread: Rab C Nesbitt & His World of Shortbread, The Role of Shortbread in the Aegean Civilization, Like Oor Granny Used Tae Muck It: Forty Classic Shortbread Recipes, Accept Nae Imitations: Scotland
’s
Triumph in the Shortbread Wars, Wee Tam’s Shortbreid: A Nuvvel ae Shortbreid, Do Salamanders Eat Shortbread?, Simply Shortbread: A Miscellany, Walter Scott
’s
Shortbread: Scotland’s First Novelist & His World of Shortbread, Reeks, Breeks, and Shortbreid!!!, Did William Wallace Invent Shortbread?, Wee Timorous Beastie Eating Oor Shortbreid: Doughy Verse Tributes to Rabbie Burns, Yeast in the East: Shortbread in the Lothians, Tallbread: The Arch Nemesis, Kirkincrankie: A Village of Shortbread, “Yum, we Polish immigrants love Scots shortbread!”: An Outsider’s Take on Yeasty Goods, Ewan McGregor’s Shortbread: Obi-Wan Kenobi & His World of Shortbread, Rockin’ & Rollin’ in the Dough!: 268 Rock & Roll Classix About Shortbread, How Much Shortbread Can YOU Fit in Your Mouth?: A Book of Challenges!, Can Bonobos Make Shortbread?, Can You Dip Shortbread in Irn-Bru, Highland Crofters Eat Shortbread in Kilts, Hot Grannies & Their Grandkids Eat Shortbread.
My pitch was a novel set in the Outer Hebrides, approved by CHAD “as long as you set it in 1920s Hebrides, among crofters and such folk, nothing contemporary. And make shortbread or the making of or the consumption of integral to the plot.” Here’s a sneaky excerpt:
    Alex stood facing the Hebridean sun. He was standing atop a hill abloom with heather, ablooming with beautiful purple heather, looking across the sea at the steamers coming back with their nets full of cod. Alex turned his glance west across the hills towards the stone-brick cottages of the crofters, spotting Old Jim tilling a field and his wife Old Jane milking the cows in the shed. He walked back to his house to return to work on his new shortbread recipe. He was inspired by the sea and the air and the pleasant country folk, and began experimenting with new yeast-beating techniques, such as stringing and flinging it at the walls of his own cottage, and rolling it with multiple rolling pins on the floor. He asked his dog McClusky to sit on the dough. He cut it up into rectangular shapes and placed it in the oven at gas mark six. He whacked the dough into shape with two rolling pins, sprinkling the dew from a thorny Highland thistle into the mixture, and asked Maybelle, the bonny lass from the cottage next door, to kiss the dough for luck, and rolled the dough flat using the wheels of his granny’s motorised scooter. He cut it up into rectangles and punched holes in the pastry with the end of the rolling pin. Opening the oven, he placed the shortbread into a pre-greased tray (pipetted with Irn-Bru) and let it rise at a special temperature, where it swelled to a beautiful Highland plumpness—a Cairngorm of yeasty biscuit pleasure.
    —Hebridean Crumbs: A Novel of Shortbread
(p.178)
    If your proposal is selected (can take forty or so tries), you are invited to a formally informal shindig in the same room with two VIPs from the American offices, where four tables are set up with the top four Scots stereotypes—servings of haggis laid out on the first, kilts of various clans on the second, thistles in soil on the third, and shortbread on the fourth. Two Highland pipers in full kilted regalia