{"id":2027,"date":"2012-11-23T17:58:53","date_gmt":"2012-11-24T01:58:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/?p=2027"},"modified":"2012-11-25T12:22:32","modified_gmt":"2012-11-25T20:22:32","slug":"grab-a-taste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/grab-a-taste\/","title":{"rendered":"Grab a taste… of a “Brand New Flavor”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Melon-Sorbet-Bakers-Royale\"<\/a>Here’s an excerpt from Brand New Flavor<\/a>, my latest release. This isn’t the Chapter 1 excerpt posted at Dreamspinner and All Romance eBooks. It’s something much more delicious, and it’s part of what I learned when I spent a day at a local ice-cream kitchen for research. That was fun. Very yummy fun. But prepping the ingredients is hard work and so is starting a business.<\/p>\n

Blurb<\/strong>: When artisan ice cream maker Jay Brown first meets food writer Cameron Clay at a charity tasting event, they get along like strawberries and chocolate sauce. Jay’s unique flavors thrill more than Cameron’s jaded palate, but after a delicious encounter in Jay\u2019s delivery truck, where extra-creamy frozen treats are not the only delights sampled, Cameron loses Jay\u2019s contact info\u2014and any hope of a real date.<\/p>\n

Desperate, Cameron convinces his editor to host an artisanal ice cream contest in hopes of drawing out the elusive genius. But more complications threaten to intervene. Will Jay even enter the contest? Or will the chance of a happily ever after melt away?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Excerpt<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Cover art by L.C. Chase<\/p><\/div>\n

On Monday Jay descended the stairway from his apartment over his industrial kitchen, making sure he had his cell phone and that it was fully charged. He even brought the charger with him, just in case. He didn\u2019t want to miss the call from Cameron Clay. Jay believed Cameron\u2019s promise to call, and even if it didn\u2019t turn out to be anything more than the one casual encounter for them, Cameron had enjoyed Jay’s ice cream almost as much as he\u2019d enjoyed Jay. Hadn\u2019t he?<\/p>\n

Jay never had very good judgment when it came to guys. He\u2019d made the mistake of jumping right in with both feet before. Best to take it slow, and not get burned again. He still hadn\u2019t recovered from the last time. One thing to want to get a guy\u2019s clothes off, but it was never a good idea to fall in love too easily. Not that Jay had fallen in love with Cameron or anything. He hadn\u2019t. How could he? Cameron had said \u201cmmmm\u201d and \u201coh yeah\u201d and a few other things along those lines. Certainly flattering to Jay and his ice cream, but not enough to base a relationship on; even Jay understood that.<\/p>\n

But Cameron Clay did know how to speak\u2014or at least write\u2014coherently and use words with multiple syllables. The guy even knew when to use semicolons, which impressed Jay. He\u2019d Googled Cameron Clay as soon as he\u2019d gotten home from his deliveries. He\u2019d read a few of Cameron\u2019s articles and columns and ordered two of his books from Amazon. Real paper and two-day delivery and everything\u2014not just Kindle versions. Fuck, maybe I am in love already.<\/em><\/p>\n

He certainly was in love with the way Cameron thought and wrote about food. Jay had never read anything quite like it and it practically gave him a hard-on just reading Cameron\u2019s words. Okay, it actually had<\/em> turned him on if he was going to be honest about it. Cameron was a mixture of James Beard, Julia Child, MFK Fisher and Ruth Reichl all in one extremely sexy package. A sexy gay<\/em> package\u2014even better.<\/p>\n

For the next thirty minutes, Jay forced himself to concentrate on ice cream and not on Cameron. He went to the big walk-in cooler to see what fruit was ripe. He’d used up nearly everything on hand making the product for the tasting event. He’d use up what he had on hand and then call his suppliers and see what was ripe and when he should go to their farms to collect his orders.<\/p>\n

\"1-sliced<\/a>He glanced around the cooler and selected several baskets of berries. He loaded them into a wide plastic tub, shut the cooler door, and strolled over to the ripening room to see what looked and smelled best. He picked up and sniffed a series of melons, choosing three varieties that were approaching perfection. The heady, sweet scent and just the right give under his thumb. He rinsed everything under warm water in the sink, and then brought his bounty over to the cutting boards. Within a few minutes, he had a pile of delicious chunks of three kinds of melon. He pureed each separately, pouring the thick sweet-smelling result into wide beakers. He did the same with the berries, sieving the ones with seeds, until he had a little rainbow of beakers. From the blue-black of blackberries to the celadon of Persian melon.<\/p>\n

What were Cam\u2019s favorite flavors? That did it. Jay’s concentration broke, and he lost the battle to ignore the phone after only twenty minutes of work. He pulled his cell out of his pocket just to make sure he had a signal: four out of five bars. What the fuck am I doing?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhatcha working on this morning?\u201d Maya\u2019s voice shattered the silence and Jay nearly dropped his phone into a beaker of bright watermelon puree. He hadn\u2019t heard her unlock the door. Had he locked up properly the night before? Probably too distracted with fantasies of Cameron Clay. Maybe he needed to increase security.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothin\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLooks like something. Trying a new combo?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah. Maybe some sweet melons contrasting with a tart berry. Or just layering the melons. I\u2019m gonna play with the proportions for a while before I prepare a full batch.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll help taste test once I\u2019ve made the calls, okay?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSure.\u201d Jay pushed the phone into his apron pocket and grabbed a stack of small Pyrex dishes where he\u2019d mix flavors, like an artist combining shades on his palette.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, do you want to start selling any of the flavors we handed out yesterday?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo. Not ready.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you mean \u2018not ready\u2019? We had people lining up three, four times to get samples. Our clients are always asking for new stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot ready.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJay\u2026.\u201d Maya let her voice drop into the lower register. \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong?\u201d<\/p>\n

Like he was going to admit Cameron Clay hadn\u2019t called yet. \u201cThey\u2019re not ready.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey why aren\u2019t you working with them? Why are you playing with new stuff? Are you just giving up on those flavors?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve gone public. I can\u2019t risk it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCome on, Jay. Don\u2019t you think you\u2019re carrying this stealth thing a bit too far? No one\u2019s spying on you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI won\u2019t risk it. Not after\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJay, that was almost two years ago. You can\u2019t keep hiding in here like it\u2019s some sort of Batcave because you think someone\u2019s going to steal your flavors and your ideas. The way to avoid that is to actually start selling them, get them into the market so everyone knows you<\/em> created them. The longer you wait, the more chance you do have of being scooped.\u201d She clapped a hand over her mouth to suppress a giggle. \u201cSorry.\u201d She dropped the hand and her expression turned serious again. \u201cI mean it. You\u2019re not helping yourself. You\u2019re letting that asshole win if you keep this up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jay took a deep breath and pulled himself up to his full height. He exhaled and watched Maya\u2019s face. His pulse skyrocketed and he heard the sound of glass shattering. He\u2019d dropped the bowl he\u2019d been holding. \u201cCrap.\u201d He bent to clean up the shards, nearly bumping his head against Maya\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll clean this up.\u201d She knelt and pushed at his shoulder. \u201cI shouldn\u2019t have mentioned him. I\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jay stood and watched as Maya swiped a damp towel across the floor, and fought to get his breath under control. Thinking about Paul Rhodes always did this to him. He went over to the sink and washed his hands, lathering up the anti-bacterial scrub and letting the hot water scald away the memories and distract him from the knot in his stomach.<\/p>\n

* ~ *<\/p>\n

Brand New Flavor is available from Dreamspinner Press<\/a>, ARe<\/a> and Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s an excerpt from Brand New Flavor, my latest release. This isn’t the Chapter 1 excerpt posted at Dreamspinner and All Romance eBooks. It’s something much more delicious, and it’s part of what I learned when I spent a day at a local ice-cream kitchen for research. That was fun. Very yummy fun. But prepping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[368,99,923,380,369,921],"class_list":["post-2027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-brand-new-flavor","tag-dreamspinner-press","tag-em-lynley","tag-food","tag-ice-cream","tag-new-release"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pzLgx-wH","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2027\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}