From the Author

Dear Chocolate Lovers,

For more great chocolate recipes, go to your favorite online bookseller and look for this novel’s free companion piece. Available only in e-book, it includes a reading group discussion guide and is also posted in PDF format at: www.gailcleare.com.

Follow me on Facebook/GailCleareAuthor and let me know how your cocoa cookery comes out. I’d love to hear your ideas for new recipes to try, and we may even add them to the cookbook, with your permission.

Best,

Gail

Acknowledgements

The idea behind this story came from an event called the Chocolate Lovers’ Festival, which I produced three years in a row in Western Massachusetts with a business partner, Jane O’Connor. She taught me much of the arcane chocolate lore included in this book. We also took turns writing a popular monthly column for America Online called “I Love Chocolate.”

Thanks to Gary Schaefer of Bart’s Ice Cream for his educational tour of the factory in Greenfield, which I have never forgotten. Years later, I was pitching literary agent Meg Ruley, and she saw the AOL job listed on my resumé. “Write about chocolate,” she suggested. So, I drafted the first two chapters, developed quite a few original recipes, and then the project sat on the shelf for several years. I dusted it off and redrafted most of the book in 2016 while participating in a twelve-week writing workshop at Patchwork Farm with Patricia Lee Lewis, who was delightfully encouraging.

My critique group, the Women’s Fiction Critique Group (WFCG) on Facebook, was very helpful in identifying the manuscript’s weak spots and suggesting solutions.

Thanks also to Red Adept Publishing and Lynn McNamee for bringing this book into the world.