Food for Thought
Tales from the Curious Cookbook
Book 2
Amy Lane
Genre: Contemporary M/M
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Date of Publication: April 8, 2015
Word Count: 26K
Cover Artist: Reese Dante
Book Description:
Emmett Gant was going to tell his father something really important about himself one morning, but his father died before he got the chance. A year and a half later, Emmett's life is a muddle of the life he thinks he should have and the man he really wants. Can the gift of a mysterious cookbook give him the clarity he needs?
Each Book in Tales of The Curious Cookbook
Can Be Read As a Standalone
Prologue
Dust
for Dinner
Emmett Gant
looked at himself in the mirror of his dorm room, and wondered how gay he
looked. He had a long bony face and gray eyes, so usually he looked just… solid
and placid, a sober, rawboned specimen of American manhood.
But he knew he
was gay. He’d known since his long ago junior high crush on his best friend
Vinnie. His crush on Vinnie had gone away—for one thing, Vinnie was just too
awesome a friend to crush on for long. He was the kind of friend who would
sneak all the seniors on the football field in the pissing rain, after the last
home game, so they could perform their competition band show without
instruments, singing their parts at top volume. He was the kind of friend who
would show up at your dorm in Sacramento from his dorm in Chico, with a keg in
the back of his aging Mini Cooper and a plan to go eat sourdough bread and look
at girls on the beach.
He was the kind
of friend who would nurse Emmett through a broken heart and not ask the name of
the person who broke it—wouldn’t even ask the gender.
He was a brother
kind of friend—but he wasn’t a crushing on kind of friend, not anymore.
Emmett had lived
through the crushing on kind of friend, and had broken his heart, and he’d
managed to pull his grades out of the toilet from that semester, and managed to
put on some of the weight he’d lost too.
And now it was
time to tell his father why he’d looked like hell for three months. Because
right now, only two other people in the world knew, and they weren’t likely to
tell a soul.
Emmett decided
that whether he looked gay or straight, his sandy hair wasn’t going to get
thicker or more interesting looking and it was time to go. He pulled out his
cell phone and hit his dad’s picture. Ira Gant had a farmer’s face—but he’d
been a factory worker, so maybe that was just the kind of face he was supposed
to have. Raw-boned, like Emmett, unsmiling, he always seemed to be looking at a
grimmer version of the world than Emmett could imagine, and his picture in
Emmett’s phone wasn’t any different.
“Hey Dad? You
must be outside mowing the lawn. Anyway, just a reminder that I’m on my way
today, okay? I’ll cook dinner—I know you get tired of eating out. See you when
I get there!”
Emmett’s dad
didn’t say… well, anything, but Emmett had figured out that his dad liked it
when he cooked. When he’d been about six, he’d once tried to make popcorn in a
pressure cooker, because he’d been home alone and hungry, and they’d had an air
popper, but he hadn’t been able to reach it. He had, fortunately, not killed
himself by blowing up the kitchen, but the lid to the pressure cooker had
frozen, and when his dad got home, Emmett was crying over the pressure cooker,
because he was starving and all of the popcorn was right there and he couldn’t
pry the lid open.
His dad had
taught him how to make noodles then, and Mac & Cheese, and even open a can
of beans and add hot dogs. Emmett had been the one to find the kids’ cookbook
at the library, and then Vinnie’s mom, Flora, had helped him through the basic
recipes.
Emmett’s dorm
had a hot plate and a minifridge, but once a week and on the holidays, Emmett
went to his dad’s place and made things like chicken cacciatore and roast pork
with new potatoes, and he enjoyed that. He didn’t want to do it for a living,
but being able to give his dad some sort of substantial proof that Emmett was
grateful for his upbringing: that was important.
Emmett didn’t
remember his mom—she’d left before he went to kindergarten—but Emmett’s dad
had… well, been there. He’d hugged Emmett when he’d cried—although he hadn’t
offered any advice on how to stop. And he’d tried to make sure Emmett grew up
as a healthy child, although Emmett had needed to go next door to Vinnie’s
house to know how to grow up as a happy one. No, a communicator Ira Gant was
not, but Emmett was still sort of sure his daddy loved him.
For one thing,
every Sunday when Emmett arrived, his dad was sitting out on the rotting wooden
porch of the old stucco house waiting for him, even if it was near the summer
and a zillion degrees outside.
This particular
mid-April day, it wasn’t supposed to get above 80, so Emmett was surprised at
the end of the two-hour drive to find that his dad wasn’t there on the porch.
The house looked like it always did—the stucco was chipped and peeling, the
porch needed to be painted, and the roof was probably falling down—but Emmett’s
dad was nowhere to be found.
Tales of the Curious Cookbook
It’s called comfort food for a reason.
Not much is known about the cookbook, except that years ago, the mysterious Granny B collected a set of magical recipes and wrote them down. Over the years, each book has been modified, corrected, added to, and passed down through the generations to accumulate its own unique history. The secrets behind these very special recipes are about to find their way into new hands and new lives, just when they’re needed the most.
Food created out of love casts a spell all its own, but Granny B’s recipes add a little something extra. This curious cookbook holds not only delicious food, but also the secrets of love, trust, and healing, and it’s about to work its magic once again.
About the Author:
Amy Lane has four children, two cats, a love starved Chi-who-what, a crumbling mortgage and an indulgent spouse. She also has too damned much yarn, a penchant for action adventure movies, and a need to know that somewhere in all the pain is a story of Wuv, Twu Wuv, which she continues to believe in to this day! She writes fantasy, urban fantasy, and m/m romance--and if you give her enough diet coke and chocolate, she'll bore you to tears with why those three genres go together. She'll also tell you that sacrifices, large and small, are worth the urge to write.
Website: www.greenshill.com
Twitter: @amymaclane
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1 comments:
Congratulations on your new release Amy!
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