I’ve added a new page to our site: Free Reads! We can scarcely believe we’ve been at this long enough for any of our contracts to expire, but “Steam Heat” ran out recently. We decided to offer it as a free read, so it’s now available to download for free at either Torquere Press or All Romance Ebooks.
If you haven’t checked it out before, “Steam Heat” is a (very) short story in which we indulged our love of conventions, costuming, and Steampunk. We hope you enjoy it!
After the success of his two Gourmet Network specials, outspoken Executive Chef Stephen Pierce is offered a sweetheart deal for his own regular show. Everyone believes Stephen has a lot of self-confidence, but he is aware of his own shortcomings and refuses to sign on unless his loyal PA, Robert Logan, agrees to stay with him. Stephen knows Robert is the one person who can keep him in line, but Stephen has always hidden his more personal interest, fearing that if he knew, Robert would be disgusted and leave him.
Robert has been in love with his boss for almost six years, but he’s begun to believe Stephen will never see him as more than an efficient assistant. Resigning himself to never having the man he truly wants, Robert begins to date other men, hoping that one of them will strike the same sparks for him that Stephen does without even knowing it.
Can the efforts of their friends finally get Stephen and Robert together, or will Stephen’s hidden insecurities keep them apart forever?
Cinnamon and Seduction – 138 pages / 41500 words Ebook zipped file contains – html, Adobe and Sony optimized pdf, mobi, epub for $5.99
Note: These aren’t my original recipes; I found them in various cookbooks I’ve collected over the years.
Jell-O-Ween Poke brownies
1 package (19.8 oz) brownie mix
1 1/2 cups cold milk
1 package (4 serving size) vanilla instant pudding
a few drops each red and yellow food coloring
Prepare and bake brownie mix as directed on the package for 8 or 9 inch pan. Remove from oven and immediately use round handle of a wooden spoon (or something of equivalent size) to poke holes at 1 inch intervals down through brownies to pan.
Pour milk into a large bowl and add pudding mix. Beat with a wire whisk for 2 minutes. Stir in a few drops of food colorings to tint the mixture orange. Quickly, pour about 1/2 of the thing pudding evenly over warm brownies and into holes.
Tap pan lightly to fill the holes. Let remaining pudding mixture stand to thicken slightly. Spread remaining pudding over top of brownies as “frosting”.
Refrigerate one hour or until ready to serve.
Ghosts in the Graveyard:
1 package of chocolate sandwich cookies (aka oreos)
3 1/2 cups cold milk
2 packages (4 serving size) instant chocolate pudding
12 oz tub of Cool Whip
Remove the filling from the cookies (eat or discard) and crush the cookies well in a plastic ziploc bag with a rolling pin or in a food processor. They should be little grains, not chunks.
Pour milk into a large bowl and add pudding mixes. Beat with a wire whisk for 2 minutes. Gently stir in 3 cups of Cool Whip and half of the crushed cookies.
You can either spoon the pudding mixture into a 13×9 dish and sprinkle with the remaining cookies, or you can do what I did: get some small clear cups and layer the pudding mixture, the crushed cookies, and Hallowe’en M&Ms.
If you’re really creative, you can create wee ghosts out of the remaining Cool Whip to go on top and maybe some Milano cookies for “tombstones”. This would look especially cool with the dish variety, especially if you got some of those little candy pumpkins that come in the bag of candy corn. They taste like crap, but they make good decorations.
Refrigerate one hour or until ready to serve.
Witch’s Cauldron Cake:
20 Halloween Oreo cookies, divided
1 pkg (2 layer size) yellow cake mix, batter prepared as on package
1 container (16 oz size) ready to spread chocolate frosting, divided
Black shoestring licorice and assorted Halloween candies
2 cups thawed whipped topping, tinted orange with food coloring
1 pretzel rod
Gummy worms
Chop 16 cookies. Fold chopped cookies into prepared cake batter. Pour into greased 10 inch fluted tube pan. Bake and cool according to package directions for tube pan.
Halve two cookies and decorate as bats, attaching two halves side by side with frosting to form bat wings and decorating with frosting and assorted candies for eyes. Decorate two remaining cookies as spiders, using frosting to attach 1 1/2 inch pieces of licorice as legs and assorted candies for eyes. Set aside to dry.
Place cake, flat side up, on serving plate. Frost side of cake with remaining frosting. Frost top of cake with tinted whipped topping. Place pretzel rod into center opening of cake for “wooden spoon”. Decorate cake with cookie bats, spiders and gummy worms.
To enter your chance to win free e-copies of the entire Recipe for Romance series — the three previously published novellas plus “Cinnamon and Seduction” — visit our giveaway link: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/6b17bb6/
“Call it Samhain, Summer’s End, All Hallows’ Eve, November Eve, or Witches’ Night – Halloween has its essential roots in the terrors of the primitive mind, which made no distinction between the waning of the sun and the potential extinction of the self. Ancient rituals of sacrifice and supplication were employed to guarantee a good harvest and, by extension, continued earthly existence.
“In northern climates, harvest time was, or seemed, the very death of nature. As Robert Chambers, the great Victorian chronicler of holidays characterized October: ‘As the fallen leaves career before us – crumbling ruins of summer’s beautiful halls – we cannot help thinking of those who have perished – who have gone before us, blown forward to the grave by the icy blasts of Death.’
“Because life itself was literally in the balance at harvest, the close proximity of the visible world and the spirit world was more than metaphor. And so the tradition grew: for one night each year, permission would be granted to mortals to peer into the future, divine their fates, communicate with supernatural entities, and otherwise enjoy a degree of license and liberty unimaginable – or simply unattainable – the rest of the year.
“The Halloween machine turns the world upside down. One’s identity can be discarded with impunity. Men dress as women, and vice versa. Authority can be mocked and circumvented. And, most important, graves open and the departed return.
“Of course, the ‘return of the dead’ is an evocative allegory for the return or expression of just about anything that’s been buried, repressed, or stifled by the living. What’s ‘dead’ doesn’t necessarily look like a walking corpse – just take a look at the variety of secret selves on parade at any Halloween celebration today. People ‘resurrect’ themselves, besequinned and befeathered, as glamorous movie gods and goddesses, comic-book superheroes, immortal robots, insatiable satyrs, and inflatable sex balloons. Pneumatic breasts and phalluses bounce and bob everywhere. Fantastic, towering wigs and headdresses emblematize the startling energies that lurk in the minds beneath.
But attending these lively carnival images – always – are the classic images of mortality and the grave: skeletons, vampires, zombies, and ghosts. The grand marshall of the Halloween parade is, and always has been, Death.”
From Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween, by David J. Skal, a fascinating look at the holiday, its origins, and its transformations over time.
I’ve been reading Skal’s work since I was a grad student *mumble mumble* years ago because he focuses on topics that are right up my alley: Halloween, Dracula, vampires in general. He’s fascinated by horror and has insightful things to say about horror and pop culture. I enjoy Death Makes a Holiday and try to re-read it every October, but my favorite Skal book is The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, which delves into history, horror, and our cultural predilection for the macabre.
So if you’re looking for something new to read this Halloween season, I’d recommend Skal!
Ari McKay & Rachel Langella 