It’s so wonderful to be back at the Riskies again!  It feels like this is the Winter That Will Not End (illness, snow, rinse, repeat), but I am finally seeing the sunlight at the end of the tunnel.  And one of the best things about spring (maybe0 being on the way, is the release of a very special project!

As a Risky reader will know, I range among many different time periods in my writing–Regency, Elizabethan, Renaissance, etc.  One of my very favorite time periods (especially with the Downton mania of the last few years!) is the Edwardian/WWI/1920s era.  It’s very reminiscent of the Regency in many ways (warfare, fast-moving societal changes, not to mention amazing clothes…), but I’ve only been able to write one 1920s story in the past (Girl With the Beaded Mask), but all that changed a few months ago.

I have 3 great writer friends I get to see (almost) every Friday night, at 4:30 happy hour on the dot, at the Martini Lounge a few miles from my house.  This is an amazing place, said to have been a speakeasy in the 1920s (though when I was a kid, it was my grandfather’s favorite donut shop, where I could eat as many chocolate pastries as I wanted while he talked to his old-man friends about farming!).  Now it’s an elegant bar/steakhouse, with velvet booths, dim lighting, jazz music, and an astonishing array of cocktails.  Kathy L Wheeler, Alicia Dean, Krysta Scott, and I meet to talk over what we’re writing, and one eveing we had the brilliant idea–why didn’t we write something together!  Set at the Martini Lounge!  So 4 girls from the 1920s had their beginnings in 4 connected novellas that have now been launched out into the world.  Much like our 4 heroines left their English homes for new lives in NYC….

I wondered what those 4 heroines–Lady Jessica (an earl’s daughter who would rather be a journalist than dance at deb balls), Lady Meggie (her schoolfriend, who would rather sing in a jazz band and seek fame and fortune than dance at deb balls), Eliza (a maidservant who fled a lecherous employer–only to find herself in an even worse jam on the streets of NY), and Charlotte (Jess and Meggie’s shy friend, who finds the strength to flee an arranged marriage and follow her own dreams), would drink when they meet at the Martini Lounge’s 1920s counterpart Club 501?

Alicia Dean says Eliza’s drink choice is easy–a Fallen Angel!

Shake all ingredients (except cherry) with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Top with the cherry and serve.

 

 

 

 

Kathy L Wheeler chose Meggie’s–a Virgin Mary (since Meggie is a singer, she doesn’t drink much on the job–but that doesn’t count for after hours!)

4 oz tomato juice, 1 dash lemon juice, 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce, 2 drops tabasco

Fill a large wine glass with ice. Add tomato juice, then the rest of the ingredients. Stir and garnish with a wedge of lime.

 

 

 

 

I found out that one of my favorite (modern day) drinks, a French 75, was also very popular in the 1920s!!!  (even with one of the models for Lady Jessica, Nancy Mitford), so I decided Jess could drink that…

1 oz. gin
½ oz. simple syrup
½ oz. fresh squeezed lemon juice
Brut Champagne or a dry sparkling white wine
Lemon twist, to garnish

Combine gin, simple syrup, and lemon juice in a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake until well chilled and strain into a glass. Top with Champagne and garnish with a lemon twist to serve.

 

 

And for Charli, who has dreams of opening her own bakery, a caramel apple martini!

2 parts Schnapps, butterscotch, 2 parts Sour Apple Pucker, 1 part vodka.  Shake ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass

 

 

 

 

 

We are so excited to have these stories out in the world!!!  To one commenter today, we’ll give copies of the stories (either e-book or, in a few weeks, hard copies), plus a Martini Club 4 cocktail glass for mixing up your own favorite cocktails.  Do you have a favorite drink?  Any special happy-hour rituals with friends??

(to buy the ML stories, here is the link on Amazon, or you can visit my website for more info…)

(and if you’d like a glimpse of the real Club 501, here is their website!)

 

 

 

Hello everyone!  I feel like it’s been ages since I last popped in here at the Riskies, but it has been a long month.  Christmas, a surgery (which went well, and only meant one night in hospital, even though that one night was Christmas Eve!), and deadlines all over the place have been making me a wee bit crazy.  (But I am excited to say my next Amanda Carmack book, Murder in the Queen’s Garden, will be out in a couple of weeks!)

In the meantime, I am at work on the next Elizabethan mystery, Murder at Whitehall, which is set at Christmastime.  Christmas at the court of Elizabeth I was way more complicated than a holiday at my house (I am not feeding hundreds of people who insist on stuff like gilded peacock, for one thing).  But one of my Christmas gifts was a pink Kitchen Aid, which means I’ve been learning all sorts of fun recipes, including cookies, cake, and my own bread.  If I was making bread in the queen’s kitchen in 1560, though, the recipe might be something like this…

Take one Gallon of flowre, two pound of Currans, and one pound of butter or better, a quarter of a pound of sugar, a quarter of a pint of Rose-water, halfe an ounce of nutmeg, & half an ounce of Cinnamon, two egs, then warm cream, break the butter into the flower, temper all these with the creame, and put a quantity of yest amongst it, above a pint to three gallons, wet it very lide, cover your Cake, with a sheet doubled, when it comes hot out of the Oven; let it stand one hour and a half in the Oven.

I am definitely adding some rosewater next time!!!

What are some of your favorite bread recipes???

Happy week after Thanksgiving, everyone!  I hope you had a lovely holiday.  I turned in a WIP last Friday (yay!), and am taking a breath before diving into the next story tomorrow (which is a Christmas book, the next in my Elizabethan Mystery series–I think this is the first Christmast story I have ever written near the actual holiday.  Usually they seem to be due in July, and I have no snowy holiday feelings when it’s 94 degrees outside…).  In the meantime, I am taking a look back at my reading this year…

As usual, I seem to have spent most of my time reading research books, but I also came across some wonderful fiction, and also some new non-fiction!  What did you enjoy reading this year??

I always get so excited when there is a new Jude Morgan book on the shelf!  (I know Risky Janet is also a fan…)  This year it was The Secret Life of William Shakespeare, which did not disappoint.  (There wasn’t actually much “secret” about it, but the alternating POV between Will and his wife was very well done, and the atmosphere of Elizabethan England was wonderful)

IMO, the world definitely needs more ballet novels, and last summer I devoured Maggie Shipstead’s Astonish Me (which was over way too soon…)

Also, the world needs more novels about bookshops.  And secret manuscripts.  And lost love.  Like Charlie Lovett’s The Bookman’s Tale…

There were two non-fiction histories, both of which pointed out in stark terms that the real life of princesses is often far from storybook, but rather isolating, lonely, helpless, and sometimes even terrifying, even though these two sets of royal sisters were 100 years and several countries apart–A Royal Experiment by Janice Hadlow, about the family of George III (6 daughters, kept isolated at home, growing increasingly desperate and bitter) and The Romanov Sisters by Helen Rappaport (4 sisters, kept isolated at home, dying untimely and horrifyingly violent deaths)

I love a good historical mystery, and I also love the history of the Gilded Age in America, so of course I devoured Alyssa Maxwell’s Murder at the Breakers (and can’t wait for the rest of the series…)

Historical romances are always saved as treats for vacation and/or time between deadlines (when I dangle them as “finish the book” carrots in front of myself!), so this weekend I am looking forward to diving into Risky Megan’s Duke’s Guide to Correct Behavior!  (I also read two great new romances a few weeks ago, Meredith Duran’s Fool Me Twice, and Mary Balogh’s Only Enchanting, both of which had wonderful, realistic, heartbreaking characters…)

I’ve also been zooming my way through the DVDs of season two of the “Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries” (one of the few instances where I much prefer the movies to the books!).  The 1920s fashions, cars, cocktails, and Phryne Fisher’s shining bob and naughty jokes are so much fun!

And now i am off to start my reading list for 2015!!!