‘sletter weather
Two weeks ago I announced my second book, Saved By The Bellini, which, as the name implies, is a pun-based book of cocktails dedicated to 90s pop culture that is just the right amount of gimmicky and credible. (As I said in my first book, life is all about balance.)
In response, a bunch of people sent me messages of congratulation garnished with wonder at how I was able to find the time to write another book. Well, I….haven’t had the time! I just announced the plan to write the book, now I actually have to get writing because it’s due really, really soon. This is in contrast to Drink What You Want where the kernel of the idea emerged in 2016 and the book did not hit shelves until June 2020.
This tight turnaround is mostly thanks to the fact that I am no longer a first-time writer so the process is much more streamlined. Going into DWYW I had mostly no idea what I was going to say about drinks other than that I wanted to say something and it took a LOT of revising to get to the focused message I ended up with. My first draft was 56,000 words and I had to cut over 18,000 to make it publishable. Like, literally the entire thesis of the book did not come until maybe a week before the final draft was due and I was seriously considering scrapping my entire manuscript and starting over.
For SBTB I’m not trying to educate people on the grand unified field theoryof cocktails. I already did that—and quite well if I do say so myself. Now I’m trying to write a book that cravenly appeals to millennial nostalgia for the last “real” decade of human existence (before we got shunted to the simulation) by picking out cute items from the 90s and creating ~modern~ cocktails that connect to them in some way. Eg. an alcohol-free cocktail based on my fourth grade love of En Vogue called Free Your Mind. See, this book writes itself!
Another bonus to this book writing cycle is that I’m working with the same editor. When I was meeting with various publishers for DWYW, there was a theme of feedback that the overall tone of the proposal was “too much” and that I kind of needed to tone down the “voice” and let my expertise speak for itself. Amanda was the only one who said the opposite. She is a significant reason for DWYW being so sassy and snappy and I expect nothing less this time around.
And it’s too soon to say who’s doing them, but the illustrations are going to be out of control. And a third of the recipes will be zero-proof/non-alc.
The best way to stay up to date with all my writing progress is by not unsubscribing to this newsletter. (I had my first unsub last week and I might need to start therapy again to deal with the emotional fallout.)
This is fun…
I was just made aware that a piece I wrote for the Food Network on Bourbon is (as of 11am today) the number one trending story on Apple News. I am always cautious of wading into “spirits expert” territory because spirits nerds are extremely persnickety but so far I have not been dragged by r/Bourbon so that’s some comfort.
I’ve actually be quietly cranking out stories for Food Network for a few months now and you can check them all out HERE.
And speaking of the 90s…
I am now able to reasonably justify all the time I spend on Youtube watching music videos as “book research” and woo boy let me tell you I have been making the most of it.
I was a big Z-100 kid in the 90s and I LOVED Dutch vocalist Amber’s “This Is Your Night” but I had not seen the music video until about 4 days ago and I have watched it 21831 times since then (I am watching it as I write this.)
There is a lot to love about this video: the red suit, the text projected on the dancers, the dancers themselves, but really I can’t get the shot of her in the water out of my head. There is this single-shot shift from full-color to monochrome that I know they did with lighting (there is no way they did it digitally in 1996) that I think is so cool and I would like for someone to explain it to me and also help me recreate it.
(And maybe it’s because of La Bouche and Real McCoy but I always thought Amber was Black??)
And this is from 2010 but Alphabeat’s Hole In My Heart FEELS more 90s than 90s music? What is it about northern Europeans and balls-out pop music that I crave?
And last week someone responded “not enough thirst traps” so I will leave you with this, a ‘sletter exclusive:
Thanks for reading! Please forward this to someone you like.
Love,
-JdB
