Today is an exciting day here at Fuse Literary. Two clients have audiobooks debuting on Audible: Toby Neal’s Lei Crime series police procedurals starts out with Blood Orchids, Torch Ginger and Black Jasmine, and Mitchell Hogan’s The Sorcery Ascendant Sequence begins with A Crucible of Souls and Blood of Innocents.
Plus, historical romance author Heather Hiestand continues her popular Victorian Redcakes series with book 5: Christmas Delights. Here’s what she has to say about Christmas, baking, Victorian romance, and more!
Book releases have become confused with baking in my world. When it is time for one of my Redcake’s Victorian romances to be revealed, instead of thinking about how to get the word out, I think about what treats I might bake. Why, you might ask? Because I need photographs of yummy desserts for my blog, and for guest blogs!
Preparation for a book release goes like this: I look through my upcoming release, underlining food I’ve mentioned. This is the “rakes with cakes” series, after all. Maybe I should focus on the “rakes” instead, but I feel like I’d wind up in trouble if I drove around town taking pictures of hot guys…
For Christmas Delights, out November 10th, I went through my novel and found: Marzipan stuffed dates, New Year’s cake, cream scones, beef tea, peppermint sticks, and currant orange zest shortbread. All yummy, except for the beef tea. I think. This is one recipe I have not dared to make.
I’m pretty sure I’ve posted about cream scones before, so I decided to tackle the currant orange zest shortbread this time. To my horror, I discovered that what I thought were currants aren’t really currants, but some form of raisin, and, ironically, I can’t even find those in my small town anymore. So I just made raisin shortbread and posted the picture and the recipe I used on my personal blog. It seems that, with shortbread, you have to decide just exactly how much butter you want. I’ve seen recipes with three times as much butter than others. I’m thinking the truth is somewhere in the middle, so I’m off to test another recipe now. It’s particularly heroic for me to do so, since my husband is on a diet and I have to do all the taste testing. Wish me luck in my baking journey!
I mean, buy my book…Christmas Delights…out today!
