Those heady of 60s food posts are over…except, well, they’re not. Today, we have my favorite Christmas cookies: butter crispies. This is a recipe given to me by my grandmother, and it’s sure to put a retro twist on your holiday baking.
Tag: Fly Me to the Moon
A Midnight Clear is Live!
It took a few days to go live everywhere, but A Midnight Clear is available (and FREE) wherever e-books are sold, including Amazon, iBooks, B&N, Google Play, and Kobo. And it should be free internationally; let me know if this isn’t the case. You can also add it to your Goodreads shelves, join the Fly Me to the Moon mailing list, or check out the book’s Pinterest board (be warned, it’s kind of spoiler-y).
A Midnight Clear is a sweet and romantic holiday cocktail for you from Gen and me. I hope you love it!
Cover Reveal: A Midnight Clear
Don’t say Gen and I never gave you anything.
Annapolis, Maryland, 1948
Frances Dumfries is the perfect admiral’s daughter. She runs the household, hosts the parties, and never falls for the midshipmen surrounding her. Having fun or putting herself first is definitely not on her schedule. And she doesn’t want anyone—particularly not a man too handsome and kind for his own good—to point that out.
Midshipman Joe Reynolds sympathizes: ever since he tumbled headlong into love with Frances, life hasn’t been much fun. With only so much time until he ships out from the Naval Academy, he’s racing the clock, and her refusal to give him a second look, to secure her affection. But this sailor isn’t surrendering in the campaign to win her heart.
Torn between duty and selfishness, it will take a Christmas miracle to show Frances and Joe that love is rare, precious… and worth fighting for.
**
There won’t be preorder links for this one. We’re wrapping up edits and hope it will go live in the next week. If you want to know as soon as it’s available, join the Fly Me to the Moon mailing list.
Follow me below the fold for frequently asked questions!
Seven Days of 60s Food: Wrap Up
So that was longer than seven days. Oopsie! In case you missed one, here was my mid-century menu:
Appetizers
Entrees
Sides
Desserts
I had tons of fun doing it. When we finish the next Fly Me to the Moon book, I’ll probably dig out my cookbooks and make a few more. I owe a thousand thanks to Elisabeth Lane from Cooking Up Romance for helping me out and taking pretty pictures. And if you haven’t, do read the hilarious cocktail series Gen Turner (my co-writer) did.
In the meantime, check out Star Dust and let me know if you make anything fabulous and retro!
ETA: Right after I posted this, I saw this Book Riot piece about election novels. And it features Party Lines! How lovely is that.
Seven Days of 60s Food: Orange Moss
“So what kind of Jello salad are you making?”
As soon as I announced this project, this was the question everyone asked. The dish people most closely associate with the 1960s seems to be Jello, preferably with lots of strange stuff in it.
The only problem was, well, I wasn’t finding many Jello recipes in the cookbooks. This leads me to a few hypotheses: one, I may have had too small a sample size and needed to do more research; two, Jello salad might have been a regional or folk thing where people developed and circulated their own recipes apart from the cookbook industry; and/or three, our historical memory about this might be off. I definitely didn’t put any Jello in Star Dust.
Regardless, the Internet filled in some blanks. If you’re interested in molding Jello, I would recommend that you read Elisabeth Lane’s post about a peach Jello mold, which was inspired by this recipe at The Kitchn, or dive into the deep end by reading the archives of The Jello Mold Mistress of Brooklyn. You’ll also need to peruse your local thrift store for some molds.
I ended up making two Jello recipes: a very weird one that did not work and a more modern one that did. You get the weird failure today.
Star Dust: Opening Chapter
So you’ve seen the cover for Star Dust. It’s gorgeous and it’s about astronauts and so far so good–but what does a space-race romance really look like? Well, I’ve got the prologue and part of the opening chapter for you.
Be advised that there are a couple of adult words, a Soviet satellite, and a dangerous level of chemistry between a pair of unlikely neighbors.
Cover Reveal: Star Dust
As promised, here is the cover for Star Dust.
The cover designer was none other than my amazing critique partner and co-writer Genevieve Turner (did I mention that she’s amazing?). But maybe it’s even better with a blurb:
Houston, 1962
Anne-Marie Smith wanted normal: a loving husband, two beautiful kids, and a well-kept house. But when she catches her husband cheating, she decides that normal isn’t worth it. Now in a new city with a new job, she’s trying to find her new normal—but she knows it doesn’t include the sexy playboy astronaut next door.Commander Kit Campbell has a taste for fast: fast cars, fast planes, and even faster women. But no ride he’s ever taken will be as fast as the one he’s taking into orbit. He’s willing to put up with the prying adoration of an entire country if it will get him into space.
But Anne-Marie and Kit’s inconvenient attraction threatens both normal and fast. As the space race heats up, his ambitions and their connection collide and combustion threatens their plans… and their hearts.
The book is available for preorder at Amazon, iBooks, and Kobo (more links coming soon!). You can also add it to your Goodreads shelves, join the mailing list for the Fly Me to the Moon series, or check out the book’s Pinterest board.
I’ll put up an excerpt later today (ETA: you can now read the prologue/first chapter), but in the meantime, I can’t tell you how excited I am for the book’s release in October!
Coming Soon
Star Dust is the project Genevieve Turner and I have been working on for a while. It’s with the copy editor and we’re very excited about it. We don’t have a definite release date, but we’re shooting for early October.
If you want to be the first to know when Star Dust is live, you can sign up for the Fly Me to the Moon mailing list. And if you want a sneak peek, check out the book’s Pinterest board.
Emma Barry 