Yuletide Potions, Employees Only, & WICKED Black Friday Sale!
New cocktails, new swag, and new news!
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High Priestess for Hire!
When I started Pick Your Potions, it was “just” an Instagram account, a place for me to photo dump and brag about all my concoctions and creations. I had no idea where it was headed.
Then I began crafting booktails in May and the growth accelerated. Suddenly, it wasn’t about me anymore! Pick Your Potions became a vehicle for connecting with authors and supporting their work. A custom cocktail is of course personal, but it’s also rife with magick. After all, turning words into tastes is a kind of alchemy in and of itself. Meanwhile, my kitchen accumulated too many bottles and my shelves were overtaken by dried flowers, leaves, feathers, clay teeth, coffee grounds, and dyed sugar. (When we moved into our house in September, there was about half a pound of blue sugar under all the books. Fairy dust! I regret nothing.) And now it’s time for me to don the robes and come out as a high priestess of home mixology for hire.
I am proud (and also excited, and a little verklempt, as usual) to share that I’m now accepting booktail commissions from authors, publishers, cool, conscientious brands like be., and book box subscriptions. I also offer custom cocktails/mocktails for wedding, parties, and other events, like this one:
But wait, there’s more!
Now through Thanksgiving weekend, I’m running a wicked Black Friday 20% off sale on all custom potions! The discount applies to all commissions, even if your book isn’t coming out til spring or you want to request a drink to celebrate your MFA graduation in two years. (I do ask for a month’s lead time on booktails, and at least 2 weeks notice for custom cocktails for brands or events.) I also take commissions as gifts for your friends and loved ones because FUN!
Speaking of gifts, there’s a lot of great cocktail swag in Pick Your Potions’ shop, including a special edition recipe card bundle featuring four new Yuletide cocktails! Including the Evergreen, The Holly King, Snow Ball and Cinnamon Roll. I may be biased but a stocking stuffed with beautiful, one-of-a-kind cocktail recipes seems pretty great to me.
Ok, Enough Business. On to Cocktails!
On October 5th, THE GOLD PERSIMMON officially became a book. Covid and budgetary issues combined to take a big bite out of my book tour dreams, but I had one in-person event planned at Exile in Bookville in Chicago. This put a lot of pressure on one store to live up to all my author fantasies of signing books and engaging a live audience because at heart I am a big ‘ol HAM.
Reader, the evening exceeded my wildest expectations. I had a fantastic, brilliant conversation partner, Layne Fargo, author of the thrilling, sexy novel THEY NEVER LEARN. The store’s owners, Kristin and Javier, were welcoming, gracious, and generous. I could feel the good vibes coming from Javier throughout the reading and Kristin kept re-filling my red cup with champagne, admonishing ME, the high priestess of home mixology, to drink up! (I am always the refiller, never the refill-ee. I felt so special! So seen!)
After the event, I created a custom booktail for Exile in Bookville, known as the Employees Only, a little inside joke on the employees only section of the store. If you haven’t been, you must go next time you’re in Chicago. Who knows? I might be there too, buying up all the black pencils for Jen.
EMPLOYEES ONLY - for Exile in Bookville
Tea and whiskey are the perfect beverages for reading or writing, chocolate the perfect snack. Now they’re all together to create a delightfully warm cocktail—with just a touch of spice—to complement the stylish, sassy, yet welcoming vibe of this amazing store and the generous bibliophiles who run it.
Served in a Norlan Rauk heavy tumbler, this cocktail is set against a bookshelf background fashioned from a makeshift shadow box, with titles purchased in-store at the center left of the row. Complementary books fill each corner, including several feminist horror titles, plus others I noticed in the shop. The fabulous black pencil we found at the counter that Jen just had to have spears the cherry garnish. (Note: no pencils were harmed in the taking of this photo.)
EMPLOYEES ONLY
Ingredients
2 oz loose leaf chai, steeped til strong
1.5 oz Writers Tears whiskey
1 Tbsp simple syrup
1/4 tsp ginger paste
A few generous drops of chocolate bitters
Instructions
Set a tumbler in the freezer, or at the back of the fridge. While the glass chills, steep a cup of fresh loose leaf chai until very dark and completely cool. Once the tea is ready, add all ingredients to a shaker with ice. Agitate vigorously for a few seconds, then strain the cocktail into the chilled glass. Use a mesh strainer to catch any ginger hairs. Garnish with a cherry and enjoy.
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