Tag: Easter eggs

Cover of The Clutch of Eggs against a background of coloured mini eggs
Posted in Author interviews, Publishing, Writing

Literary Easter Eggs in Books

Posted on by Debbie Young

Q. What’s a literary Easter egg?

A. It’s a little surprise tucked away in a story to amuse readers smart enough to spot it.

Today I’m going to tell you about some of the Easter eggs hidden in my books, how some of my author friends like to play the same game, and how to get a free Kindle ebook of my fun little novelette, The Clutch of Eggs – the perfect read for Easter weekend.

Easter Eggs in My Books

Referencing a book by a different author is good fun, even when you know only certain readers will get the joke. The title of my novella, Mrs Morris Changes Lanes, is an allusion to one of Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin novels, Mr Norris Changes Trains.  Oh, and without spoiling the plot, my story includes a journey I’d just made with my daughter to a certain university town, where she’s now studying for her MA.

My standalone novella, Mrs Morris Changes Lanes, features a satnav with a mind of its own

In my latest novel, The Importance of Being Murdered, I was a veritable Easter Bunny, hiding Easter eggs all over the place, starting with the title.

If you’re an Oscar Wilde fan, in a game of word association, given “The Importance of Being…” as your starter, you’d almost certainly say “Earnest” – citing the title of his most famous play.

My novel started life as a play for my own village drama group

In my novel, The Bunbury Players, about to stage their production of The Importance of Being Earnest, take their name from their home village of Bunbury in the Cotswolds. (If you know, you know.) You can also have fun searching this story for other Easter eggs referencing Wildean names – and a contentious handbag. (If you know, you know.)

Easter Eggs from Other Authors

With Easter nearly upon us, I thought it would be fun to ask some of some of author friends who are also published by Boldwood Books to share how they choose the Easter eggs they hide in their books. Here is what they came up with.

  • ‘I use a variation of my mum’s name in every book, so she’s always there,’ says Helen Cook. What a lovely idea!
  • I’m a massive fan of the BBC podcast ‘Uncanny’,’ says Victoria Scott. ‘I put the line ‘I know what I saw’ in The House in the Water, which is a ghost story. It’s the last line from the ‘Uncanny’ theme tune.’
  • Keri Beevis says, ‘My thrillers are all standalone, but characters are sometimes mentioned across stories. So for example, the slimy estate agent in Trust No One sold Ellie & Ash their house in The People Next Door, and Finn from Every Little Breath was the detective mentioned at the end of The Summer House.’
  • Keri Beevis and Patricia Dixon also reference each other’s books in their own work. Patricia cites an example: ‘I remember my character reading Keri Beevis’s Every Little Breath in a park in Montparnasse in Paris. In fact her books have been all over Trish world.’
  • Jessica Redland likes to cite real-life connections: ‘My debut book, New Beginnings at Seaside Blooms, was set in a florist’s. I started off by mentioning the owner, Sarah, in all of my Whitsborough Bay books as a nod to it, but I hit one book where I couldn’t find a way to get her in without it being contrived, but I could mention Seaside Blooms. So that shop is mentioned in every single Whitsborough Bay book.’
  • Clare Marchant tucked away an Easter egg for her other half in her latest book,  The Alchemist’s Secret: ‘There was yet another packet of Bombay mix in the bin that morning. He wasn’t yet old, but he was developing a snack-shaped paunch.”  ‘My husband roared at that, even though I had told him that I would get his love of Bombay mix into the book. Usually it’s just a snipe at golf.’
  • ‘My Dorset-set books tend to have mentions of characters and situations from previous books in them,’ says Jane Lovering, ‘and there’s usually a Doctor Who reference somewhere.’
  • Samantha Tonge has fun with a Game of Thrones reference in her novel, The Game of Scones: “I have a town called Tyrionitsa. For those who didn’t watch Game of Thrones, Tyrion is a character.’
  • Sheila Riley likes to include friends’ names as minor characters. (I once added a Madalen to one of my stories, in honour of my friend’s daughter, and to celebrate the unusual spelling of her name.)
  • ‘I’m a big BBC Ghosts fan, so if I can get “damn your eyes!” into a book, I will,’ says Alison Bonomi. ‘I also often have Georgette Heyer references that only other fans will spot.’
As you can see, Easter eggs are as much fun for the authors who hide them as they are for readers to find.

Free Kindle Ebook of The Clutch of Eggs (offer ends 4th April 2026) 

Finally, as it’s Easter, here’s a little egg-themed gift for you. From today until Saturday 4th April, you can download a free Kindle ebook of my fun quick-read novelette, The Clutch of Eggs – a spin-off from my nine-book Sophie Sayers cosy mystery series. It’s set in the spring, featuring birdwatchers, birds’ nests, birds’ eggs, and Sophie’s mischievous black cat, Blossom. What better time to read it than Easter weekend?

Naturally, there’s at least one Easter egg in this story, although only friends of my family will spot it: a scene with two scatty birdwatchers, named after my husband and his best friend, who are forever getting lost when they go for country walks together. I found that very pleasing!

To download your free ebook of The Clutch of Eggs now, click here.
(free until 4th April 2026)

If you read any of my books, I’d be very grateful if you could kindly leave a short review online, to help other readers discover it – or just tell your friends!

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Posted in Family, Personal life

Every Day Can Be Pancake Day (Shrove Tuesday)

Posted on by Debbie Young

A post about Pancake Day, Shrove Tuesday, British traditions and my ground-breaking philosophy of pancakes

Two lemons in a green bowl
When life gives you lemons, make pancakes!

Writing a couple of years ago about the nature of celebrations, after inadvertenty discovering that my second marriage had officially outlasted my first one (more on that story here), I had a Eureka moment about Pancake Day, which I’m going to share here today to mark this special Shrove Tuesday tradition.

For my international friends who may not know what Pancake Day or Shrove Tuesday are, I should first explain those terms.

British Traditions

Shrove Tuesday is the last “normal” day before Ash Wednesday, which marks the start of Lent, the 40-day countdown to Easter during which many Christians choose to deny themselves something they enjoy, in memory of Christ’s sacrifice.

Chocolate is a popular option, because that’s a sacrifice you can revoke with a vengeance on Easter Sunday with the arrival of chocolate Easter eggs. But any bad habit or indulgence that you’re trying to relinquish is fair game – alcohol, cigarettes, overeating, etc. Coming less than three months after New Year, it’s a handy fresh start to those New Year Resolutions that you’ve probably broken by now. For the religious, sticking with it is a test of faith; for atheists, it’s more a test of character, especially if you’re like me and embrace any opportunity for a new beginning.

Orange-shaped lemon
The lemon that aspired to become an orange

One of the traditions on Shrove Tuesday was to use up the last of any indulgent food in the house to make pancakes, including fatty food – which is why Mardi Gras translates as “Fat Tuesday”. These days, few people in the UK will be unaware of the general will to make and devour pancakes today, even if they have no intention of giving anything up for Lent. Pancake Day is an end in itself. Every supermarket in the country will have special displays of pancake mix, lemons, and special pans for frying pancakes. (If you want to snap up a pancake pan for a bargain price, hit the supermarkets tomorrow, when they’ll all be selling them off to cheap to clear their shelves ready for Easter eggs and hot cross buns.)

Pancake Day has thus become an end in itself. We British know how to celebrate – no crazy drunken festivals for us of the kind that you find on continental Europe or South America. No Mardi Gras or Fascing or Carneval here. No, we settle for a nice quiet meal around the tea table, delicately squeezing lemons, quietly sprinkling sugar on our pancakes. Mind you, in some parts of the country, they take this a step further by holding public Pancake Races. These are simple running races made more challenging by each participant having to hold a frying pan in one hand, tossing a pancake over and over as he or she runs.

My Family’s Pancake Traditions

Waitrose own brand equivalent to Jif lemon juice
Cheap long-life lemon choose, posing as posh at Waitrose

This may seem strange to those of you who live in countries such as the Netherlands, where pancakes are standard daily fare, but when I was a child, my brother, sister and I would get very excited about the prospect of Pancake Day, and my mum would toil endlessly in the kitchen cooking them as fast as we could eat them. That was possibly the only day in the year when we’d have fresh lemons in the house – though more usually it was squeezy Jif lemons, juice preserved with God knows what in little plastic lemon-shaped bottles.

When my daughter was little, she loved pancakes, and as she was a fussy eater, I was quick to identify pancakes as a great opportunity to get protein and calcium inside her. Eggs, flour, milk – that’s all it takes to make a pancake.

One day, when she was about three, she requested a “pancake boat”. I had no idea what she meant, so using a pair of scissors I cut a pancake into a sailboat shape. Using the principle of the old joke about sculpting, I just snipped away anything that didn’t look like a boat. She was delighted.

A couple of years later, the pancake boats were still mooring regularly on our tea table, so you can imagine our delight when on a trip to Amsterdam, in which we stayed at the pleasingly named Hotel Botel (yes, it was a boat), we found ourselves looking across the water to a big red floating restaurant called the Pannenkoekenboot (Pancake Boat).

Photo of the Dutch Pancake Boat floating restaurant
Laura’s dream come true: Amsterdam’s Pancake Boat

Laura’s love of pancakes has grown up with her, and it’s an easy catering option to make pancakes for her friends when they come to tea. I’ve never yet met a child that dpesn’t like pancakes, whether with lemon and sugar, in the traditional English way, or with other toppings. Nutella and banana go down well in this household, while I personally favour ham and mushrooms diced into the batter. Pancakes are always perceived as a treat in this country, thanks to their ancient Shrove Tuesday heritage, even though they are so cheap to make and about the simplest and quickest dish to cook. It’s much easier to get a pancake right than even a boiled egg.

And so I come at last to my ground-breaking conclusion: though I wish everyone Bon Appetit for their Shrove Tuesday pancakes tonight, don’t let respect for tradition make you hold out for another year before your next indulgence. It’s not Christmas Day, you know.

Every day can be Pancake Day. All you have to do is mix the batter and buy some lemons.

Happy Pancake Day, however you choose to celebrate!

And for a final fling before Lent, if you subscribe to my new mailing list, I’ll send you a free short story on an indulgent theme: The Alchemy of Chocolate.