Hi Shanna--bye Shanna.
I'd better move along to Shanna's piece about her story in case she makes it back here. Don't worry, I'll get back to demons (and angels) with wings a little later.
Shanna Germain's story, "Devil's Food", sticks in my mind along with Vic's "Vanilla", and makes me even hungrier.
Shanna said:
The idea for Devil’s Food is one of those that I’ve carried for a long time. In fact, I have a fully sketched (but as of yet, unwritten) novel about the idea. This story was the first time I got to bring two of the main characters (well, three if you count the talking toad) to life and to see what they’d do when I threw them together.
I first had the idea when I was standing in a local bakery drooling at pastries through the glass. Right in the front, right next to each other, there was a beautiful Devil’s Food cake and an Angel’s Food cake. I loved the juxtaposition of the two, and I had an instant image in my head of a bakery set in a town that’s on the precipice between the real world and the supernatural one(s), caught between dark and evil, between sweet and bitter, and of course between danger and desire.
I went home right after the bakery incident and Googled “supernatural baked goods.” I didn’t find much (I’d love to hear your suggestions and recipes if you have any!), but I thought that I could make up some cool names for goodies. Fairy cakes, ghost breads, cupid cookies… The story didn’t actually get written until I saw Kristina Wright’s call for submissions for Dream Lover. I guessed that most authors would be doing demon stories, or other dark things, so I wanted to lean toward something sweeter and lighter.
Margipe, the obnoxious talking frog, was actually the first character that showed up on the page when I sat down to write the story. I originally had little tinkly bells that went off when the door to the bakery would open, and I thought, “Hm. How boring is that? This is a supernatural bakery in a supernatural place. Surely she’d have a better doorbell.” And all of sudden, here was this ridiculous frog named after a coffee bean. Readers tend to love him or hate him (at least one reviewer mentioned he was particularly irritating) but I kind of have a soft spot for him. And I think Lire does too, although she won’t admit it. We’ll have to wait for the novel to see if Thad ever comes around to appreciating the frog’s questionable charms.
