K. Stephens's Guide to Books + Booze

 

Time to grab a book and get tipsy!!!

Books & Booze challenges participating authors to make up their own drinks, name and all, or create a drink list for their characters and/or readers using drinks that already exist. 

Today we have K. Stephens joining us with a very special drink to celebrate the recent release of her novel By the Dark 'O the Moon. K. is an award-winning Maine journalist whose debut novel, The Ghost Trap, was adapted into an independent feature film in 2024. Of Irish descent, Stephens traveled extensively throughout Ireland, Scotland, and England to collect selkie folklore from libraries, shops, and storytellers, taking ten years to write the novel. She resides in Midcoast, Maine.

Come have a Prohibition cocktail with author K. Stephens of By the Dark o’ the Moon

 

The Bee’s Knees

This cocktail was invented in the 1920s and its name is slang for “excellent” or “the best.”

·       Gin .75oz

·       Lemon Juice .75oz

·       Honey Syrup

·       Lemon Twist or Lemon Wedge garnish

 

So, I’m sitting in an Irish pub called 8Bells, newly opened in Camden, Maine when I see The Bee’s Knees on the menu. What are the odds? My just released Prohibition-era novel set in Maine features the making of the cocktail, The Bee’s Knees in one of the chapters. Read a snippet here. (Enter the password: selkies)

 

Prohibition in Maine isn’t the same as it was for every other state in the nation. For one thing, Maine enacted Prohibition in 1851, almost 70 years before the rest of the states followed in 1920.

 

Let me back up a bit. I live in Maine (near Camden) and my debut novel about lobstermen called The Ghost Trap, was turned into an award-winning feature film in 2024. I was honored to also write the screenplay and serve an executive producer on the project when we shot it in Midcoast Maine.

 

OK threading it all together, my next novel By the Dark o’ the Moon took 10 years to finish and also features lobstermen as rumrunners. You see, the other unique angle to Maine and Prohibition is that many lobstermen and fishermen were the first rumrunners in America. Because they were on the coast, they could zip out to Rum Row (three miles out to sea to the international boundary of U.S. territorial waters) grab the forbidden liquor off steamers, ships, and schooners, and zip back in on their modified boats with V-12 engines to the rocky coast way faster than the Coast Guard patrol boats could catch them. They most always did this during the dead of night or “by the dark o’ the moon.”

 

In my story, Elray Cross, a one-armed jerk of a lobsterman-turned rumrunner, stands out, not only for his superior distillation of a white whiskey called The White Wraith, but also, for his ruthlessness. Years ago, he captured a selkie’s baby off the storm-ravaged rocks and claimed her for his own. Her stolen sealskin protects him from the wrath of the selkie colony, lurking nearby in the Atlantic waters.

 

Let’s enjoy a sip of The Bee’s Knees. I ordered it off the soon-to-be-changing cocktail menu, and took a sip. It is September now in Camden, and the trees are still vibrantly green, with good weather and 75 degree days still holding on. The wistful feeling is that this is impermanent and hard frost will start hitting a month from now. But for now, as I enjoy the sweet lemony honey of the cocktail, it feels like endless summer in a glass.

 

I am planning a four month book tour of Sip & Signs in New England, where I’ll be talking about the novel, its relation to Maine’s famous Prohibition history, about hidden speakeasies I’ve photographed in the Midcoast as a journalist (yes, real attics and basements that once hosted wild secret parties in the 20s before they got renovated into apartments and stores.) With a book like this, it only makes sense to have a sip of something alcoholic and delicious while having a literary chat. My motto, “"Let's not get healthy, let's just get another round."

 

Cheers and Sláinte to my fellow TNBBC readers and thank you Lori for having me back again!

 

 

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In 1927, with Prohibition luring Maine lobstermen to smuggle liquor under moonlight, a merciless rumrunner steals a selkie’s child from the storm-ravaged rocks. To reclaim her child’s sealskin and return to the sea, she must place her trust in the unlikeliest of allies: the rumrunner’s apprentice, a young man torn between loyalty and conscience.

Publisher's Website: https://maineauthorspublishing.com/by-the-dark-o-the-moon/

Author's Website: https://www.kstephensauthor.com/