A to Z Blog Challenge 2021 Cocktails for You From the Letter B

Hello again and Welcome back.

Today’s drink is one I’ve already used as the title of a Cocktails for you novel. The drink is called a Buck’s Fizz. This cocktail originated in the early 1920’s at Buck’s Club, a men’s club in London, England. Some suggest it might’ve been a way to hide day drinking. I mean, how many of us can honestly say we haven’t had one a wee bit early in the day? A Buck’s Fizz is generally made using one part fresh squeezed orange juice to two parts of Champagne–no cheaper substitutes allowed.

Which brings me to the generic or cheap substitute. About five years later, someone in Paris created the Mimosa, which is similar to a Buck’;s Fizz but using sparking wine, and occasionally an orange liqueur with equal parts orange juice.

I’ll admit that while I’ve had several Mimosas in my day, a true Buck’s Fizz is too rich for my wallet.

How to Make Your Own

Ingredients

• 2 ounces orange juice
• 4 ounces champagne
• Garnish: orange twist

Method

Gather the ingredients.

Build the drink by pouring the orange juice into the champagne glass

Then topping it with sparkling wine.

Garnish with an orange twist!

And, here’s a taste of Buck’s Fizz, a Cocktail’s for You novel.

You can run, but you can’t hide!

In order to escape an arranged marriage to a rude, insufferable man, Jewel Wellington leaves home and The Met to hide with a honky tonk band on a Southern promotional tour. As Jess Wells, she and the other Silvertones step into The Squawking Tomcat, a bar on the outskirts of Alice, Texas, expecting to have a three-week gig. The problem is, the bar’s owner, Lance Corcoran, isn’t expecting an all-girl band.Frustrated at this sudden reverse of fortune, Jess makes a deal with the bar’s owner—pick any song by any artist, and let her prove she and the Silvertones can do it. What she doesn’t expect is to realize that the bar’s crusty cowboy owner is none other the surfer she spent one steamy night on the beach with eight years ago, one she left without saying goodbye.Will Lance recognize her? And if he does, will it cost them the gig?

Buck’s Fizz, like all of my novels is exclusive to Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08Y65XT1D

Excerpt from the novel:

Looking out the partially open window into the darkness, seeing nothing but the reflection of my face thanks to the light from Elise’s electronic reader, I sighed. Who knew life could chew you up and spit you out this way? If I hadn’t hit rock bottom, I couldn’t be too far away.

Up until six months ago, my life had been tolerable, not perfect by any means, at least not as long as my father held a death grip on the purse strings, including my trust fund, which had forced me to live at home. Okay, maybe I could’ve given up some of the perks, but to go from a Manhattan condo to a dive in a neighborhood where the rats were the size of cats was still too big a leap for this poor little rich girl. So sue me!

I’d been one show away from my professional goal, a coveted main role at the Met—that was until my father decided it was time for me to get married, and put all that “singing nonsense” as he called it behind me. There were just two problems with his plan: not only did I not want to give up my singing career, I wasn’t in love. How could I even consider marriage if that vital component wasn’t in the equation?

All I wanted was to be in charge of my own life, make my own choices, and if I made mistakes, so be it. I would own up to them and move on. In the twenty-first century, despite the fact that I was female, that shouldn’t be so hard, and yet…

As the only child of wealthy parents who’d given me pretty much everything I’d ever wanted, I’d had friends, fame, and the job of my dreams. I was almost thirty, but that was still young. I would find my true love in time, and then, the rest of it, marriage and children, would fall into place—or so I’d believed. Unfortunately for me, my father had a different idea. I’d danced at his expense for years; now, it was time to stop being emotional and pay the band.

Emotional? Me? I was the most rational person in either our penthouse condo, our home on Cape Cod, or the mansion in the Florida Keys. I might work in theater, but I wasn’t prone to theatrics, nor did I believe in all the hocus pocus my mother had indulged in for the last thirty years in an effort to deal with the tedium of her life. Not having to work was both a blessing and a curse, and with my father a workaholic, rarely home until late at night, she’d immersed herself in all kinds of New Age thinking, dragging me along as long as she could.

She’d done it all—palmistry, tealeaf reading, visited mediums to connect with the spirits of her past, flooded the condo and the vacation houses with positive energy crystals, had tried Reiki, yoga, and meditation, and most recently was looking into her soul group or family, with a shaman named Bob, helping her prepare for her next reincarnation. Good karma, bad karma. I’d needed her support. Couldn’t she at least wait until this life was over to prepare for the next one?

My father tended to ignore her idiosyncrasies; after all in his world, a happy wife meant a happy life, and if she was off doing God alone knew what, it didn’t matter as long as she entertained his business associates and smiled on cue. But a daughter? That was a different matter altogether, and the reason I was in this van, where the air conditioner had committed suicide yesterday, my long, recently dyed, mouse-brown hair plastered to the back of my neck, driving at night through the desert, on my way to Nowhere, Texas.

Life at home had resembled walking across a mine field. I never knew exactly what might set my father off, and as far as my mother went, she was invisible, preferring to stay out of it. At first, the arguments had been minor, almost trivial, but at the end, they’d become major battles, especially after Montgomery Reginald Harris had been added to the mix. I’d never been one for confrontation, but if I didn’t stand up for myself, who would?

Monte, as he liked to be called, had pockets lined with gold, not that my family needed more money. Sadly, to the rich, the only thing that truly mattered was getting richer. I’d never seen my father as a greedy, covetous man, but then, until this year, I’d probably never seen him for the man he really was. When I did, it broke my heart.

With his nose job, hair plugs, capped teeth, and brooding good looks, Monte considered himself God’s gift to women. In reality, the poster boy for Plastic Surgery R Us was an ass with an overblown, sickening sense of entitlement. He never asked for anything—he demanded it. The first and last time we’d officially gone on a date had been at the end of July, the weekend of my cousin Tara’s wedding. He’d thrown a snit fit when the serving girl had dared allow the condensation on the outside of the water jug to drip onto the sleeve of his shiny, new jacket.

I’d been mortified, hoping against hope that no one would realize we were together. Unfortunately, he and my father had been in cahoots, and Monte had chosen to publicly stake his claim, latching onto my waist, openly proclaiming me his property. I’d struggled momentarily, but then, seeing the paparazzi and the glare in my father’s eyes, afraid His Majesty King Monte would make an even bigger scene, I’d stopped.

Monte had smirked, leaned down, and kissed me, the experience not unlike smooching with a dog that constantly drooled. I’d stepped back and excused myself, running to the ladies’ room to wash my face. What I should’ve done was knee him in the balls before walking away. That would’ve been a Pulitzer prize winning picture for the Society page.

The following morning, I’d tried to reason with my father, but to no avail. After that argument, I realized I wouldn’t get any help from either of my parents and afraid my father would drag me kicking and screaming down the aisle, I stood my ground—and made plans to escape.

Come back tomorrow for another Cocktail for You.

Want to see other blog challenges? Check out the master list! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mvSm8FsuFVkOQulQ0EgzslGiNd8CZWWrqaRhCG8Sv4o/edit#gid=1500973813