The Book Drop Mic with Jason Wright
A celebration of authors and their new books on or around release day. Join New York Times bestselling author, creator, and speaker Jason Wright as he interviews everyone from household names to first-timers about their brand new books.
The Book Drop Mic is brought to you by InkVeins, your source for book publicity, promo, press releases and more.
The Book Drop Mic with Jason Wright
Rebecca Connolly: The Crime Brûlée Bake Off (Claire Walker Mystery 1)
Rebecca Connolly is back! The prolific and award-winning author joins the show to discuss her new genre-bending book and her future. Don't tune out early! You just might miss an appearance by the famous Aunt Edith!
Buy Rebecca's book:
https://www.amazon.com/Crime-Br%C3%BBl%C3%A9e-Bake-Off-Mystery/dp/B0DJDQ76NH
Learn more about Rebecca:
https://www.rebeccaconnolly.com/
Learn more about Jason:
http://www.jasonfwright.com
About the book:
The Great British Baking Show meets a cozy mystery with a contemporary romance and a Regency-era twist.
When Claire Walker is selected to be a contestant on the immensely popular cooking show, Britian’s Battle of the Bakers, she is thrilled. She can’t wait to spend eight enchanting weeks baking at the picturesque estate of Blackfirth Park. She can almost smell the fresh pastries wafting through the air as she and her fellow contestants use historical equipment to bring pre-1900s recipes to life. If she can win the fifty thousand pounds, she’ll be able to ditch her teaching job and launch her baking career.
The Viscount of Colburn, Jonathan Ainsley, is the custodian of Blackfirth Park and an eligible bachelor. With his family’s income dwindling, he reluctantly agrees to host the entire production team, but he refuses to participate since he’s had enough of single women who see him as nothing more than a potential conquest. But when a contestant is found dead soon after filming begins, Jonathan is forced to get involved. To make matters worse, the baker’s death is eerily similar to the legendary death of the tenth Viscountess of Colburn two hundred and fifty years earlier, which sends rumors racing through the estate.
Even as suspicion falls on some of the bakers, a decidedly different kind of heat begins to simmer between Claire and Jonathan. If they are to have any hope of a future romance, they must first solve the mystery before the show gets canceled or someone else falls prey to the Blackfirth Park ghost.
This podcast is brought to you by InkVeins, your source for book publicity, promo, press releases and more. Text 540-212-4095 for more information.
Hello, my friends, welcome to the Book Drop, mike. We are back. What a nice little hiatus that we had. You may have noticed on social media that I had a little bit of a Christmas tour. I was on the road for five out of seven weeks, or something like that, toward the end of the year and, you know, as if I didn't have anything else to do. My sweet wife and I wrote a cookbook and that will be coming out a year from now. So the last few months have been a little wacky, so we paused on the podcast for a little bit, but we're so excited to be back.
Speaker 1:You're going to love our first guest today. By the way, as a reminder, this show is brought to you by Ink Veins. It is your source for publicity, promo and press releases. I hope you've caught our other episodes from last year. You should. We covered some great titles, some terrific authors and books and of course, those episodes are still live. The links to those books are still live. Go check them out. By the way, if you like podcasts, I think you should check out the Scar Dakota audiobook and I have found that people who like podcasts, like you listening right now on your walk or in your car or in your cubicle. You also like audiobooks, so go to Audible and do a little hunt for Scar Dakota and I promise you you will absolutely adore Kirby Haybourne's performance Also, of course, as always, the book is available every place else that books are sold.
Speaker 1:All right, our first post-hiatus guest. Is that a thing? Post-hiatus guest, that's a lot to say fast. She's a dear friend of mine. She's actually one of my favorite humans. I have a lot of humans that I really love, but she is one of my favorite humans. Her name is Becky. Can I call you Becky? Becky Connolly, can I call you Becky?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're friends, you can.
Speaker 1:We're friends Because otherwise it's Rebecca right.
Speaker 2:That's true.
Speaker 1:Becky is back and her brand new book. This week, right February 4th, it's out everywhere. It's called the Crime Brulee Bake Off. Welcome back to the show, my friend.
Speaker 2:Glad to be here.
Speaker 1:How have you been? Tell us how you've been.
Speaker 2:I don't have Kirby Hayborn doing my books, which is unfortunate for me, but I'm getting over it. Kirby, if you're listening, please call me so. But no, I've been great Writing, lots and fun doing it, which is the whole point. I mean the money's nice, especially when it's coming, but nobody gets into writing to become a multimillionaire. We get into writing because we love stories and being able to play in those worlds is just a ball.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting. People ask me that kind of question like well, why did you get into this? Like do you just love writing that much? And I'm like, absolutely not. No, I love telling stories and writing is one of several vehicles to tell stories. There's, I think, a difference between someone who genuinely loves storytelling and someone who loves writing, and I fall in the first camp there, for sure.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, yes, absolutely. We all have these stories in our heads and our imaginations that we love, but at least two thirds of us would rather have Ford shoved into our ears and have the story in our head downloaded into our Word documents, because we do not want to do the writing of the story we want to tell.
Speaker 1:Becky, tell us where you live, a little bit more about yourself and then about the new book. And I want to know, before you tell us about the new book, how many things you're working on at one time, because I feel like you have a new book out about every four days.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm not that good, but I do have friends that seem to be that good. So I live in Indiana, and if we're getting real specific, I live in Zionsville, indiana, and for the lovely people who drive from Indianapolis to Chicago, I will tell you that Zionsville is one of the last exits of the Indianapolis suburbs before you get into the open road heading northwest towards Chicago, and you should go see Chicago because that's my second home. So I live in Indiana and I have been in Indiana for several years on and off. I was raised here from the age of 12. So it's home and I love it, and I love being a Midwest girl. Fantastic Writing is a turned career, not a career choice that I made when I was young, which seems to surprise people, but writing has always been just something I did.
Speaker 2:Storytelling right, like we talked about. I was always telling stories and making up stories, and that's just the way my brain worked, and so writing was kind of the coping mechanism that I had through college and through grad school and through jobs and things like that. My degrees are in sports medicine. I have no degrees in writing creative fiction, anything like that. I did take a class on creative writing in college, though, and that was worth it, and I was told there that in order to be a great writer, you have to be a great reader, and I thought, great, if that's the only requirement, then I'm in. It's not actually the only requirement, but it, you know, it helped because I'm a total bookworm. So that's me, I that I get to write full time.
Speaker 2:Now I have left my career in sports medicine for now. Thanks for all the memories it was great, and all the free clothes from my athletic teams that I still wear, but so fun. It's challenging in different ways, but I love doing it. Okay, so at this moment, prime Brulee something I'm working on because it's not technically out yet we're in the pre-promo at this point, so I guess we can call that one. I just turned in another book for revision, so that's two. I have another book that the ARC is getting ready to go out, that and I am actively writing. Wait, I have another book that's all edited and ready to go in March. That's four. And I have two books that I'm actively writing at this moment, which makes us six, and I'm under contract for at least one more, but I haven't started that one yet.
Speaker 1:And my brain hurts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, mine does too, but you know, I always wonder what my headaches are from, and half the time it's just my ideas.
Speaker 1:Now, so some of these are traditionally published through one of your publishers. I think Creme Brulee is Shadow Mountain Publishing, I believe right.
Speaker 2:It is correct.
Speaker 1:And then some of these are on your own, through your own imprint, that you've kind of been publishing for a long time, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I've got my historical romance. Publisher is a small press called Phase Publishing out of Seattle, so I have one project with them that is ready to go, but we are waiting until the crime, brulee fervor, has died down so both books can have their equal time in the spotlight.
Speaker 1:Awesome, fervor, that's a good way to put it. Well, there's such a cute little story behind this book going from your noggin to reader's hand this week. Tell us a little bit about the book and that little story.
Speaker 2:Okay, so a few years ago I was doing an anthology with a couple of friends and it was set in the the I don't know the Georgian era or something, and we got on the subject of kitchens and cooking and so we had this joke about the great Georgian bake off. It was hilarious for us and I told one of my friends about it, say crafted of a baking show taking place on a historic estate. So a contemporary baking show, I should say, taking place on a historic estate, with the classic historical figure of the brooding Viscount who falls in love with one of the competitors. And so we played with that and made a whole not a full synopsis, but we kind of laid it out and it was hilarious and great and I sent that to my editor at Shadow Mountain as kind of a haha, isn't this funny, slash, cute? And then months later she sends it back to me and says I love this.
Speaker 2:Can you throw a dead body in? Excuse me? I mean, it's not often that, you know, the wheels of my brain actually come to a screeching halt with the smell of the tar and the rubber just filling your nostrils. But that was it and I was like you just said. Yeah, we want to turn this into a cozy mystery. I just had this image of a dead body dropping in front of Paul Hollywood's face and crushing like gorgeous patisserie, and that's the image that this book put in my head and the rest of the time that I wrote this book.
Speaker 2:It was you dropped a dead body into my cute baking rom-com, but you know what it worked and it's hilarious and fun and I don't have any regrets about that.
Speaker 1:I love it and I think um was it library journal that referred to this as a room mystery.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've, we've coined a new phrase and I had nothing to do with it A row mystery. And um, make shirts, and I want key chains and bumper stickers. I want a hashtag and I will lean into this hard. Um, it's a a baking row mystery, so get it going y'all so in this recipe, is it?
Speaker 1:is it equal parts, romance, mystery, comedy, is it? Is it really more kind of the mystery, the crime side with side with a dash of romance? How do you explain? This is so fresh. By the way, that's what I think will make the book ultimately successful for you and for the publisher and for people picking it up this week, is that there's nothing quite like it out there. But if someone's wondering well, I don't know if I like all these three together, I like them individually, but will I like these baked into one? You see what I did there.
Speaker 2:I see what you did there. That was nice. That was nice. I think I give them pretty equal screen time, page time as the story unfolds, so too does the romance, and the baking is throughout decently equal time. Some people like the romance aspects more than the mystery aspects. Other people have said that they couldn't put the book down until they knew who done it, which is the whole point of a mystery, right so? And then there's the bakers that are just excited that I go into detail about baking and that recipes are included.
Speaker 1:Oh, wait, wait what.
Speaker 2:Recipes are included.
Speaker 1:Oh my, I did. I genuinely did not know that. I've not physically seen the book yet. My copy will arrive, I guess, on February 4th when it drops. I had no idea recipes were included. How fun is that.
Speaker 2:And they just decided at the end hey, let's include some recipes. So I had to go back through the manuscript and find some of the foods that are mentioned and then go through my now endless supply of baking references and find recipes to include in the book.
Speaker 1:I love that I love that so much. Well, if you buy only one book in 2025 that includes recipes, it ought to be the Christmas Jars cookbook, if you buy two, then maybe also buy the Crying Brûlée Bake Off.
Speaker 2:If you don't want to wait until Christmas, get this one now and save your pennies for Jason's.
Speaker 1:And if you've not seen any of the fun social media little battles that Becky and I have had, maybe I will include a couple of links in the show notes. Before we talk about what's coming next, tell me just a little bit about the ridiculously absurd, hilarious reels that you posted during the holidays that we can link to in the show notes that you posted during the holidays that we can link to you, jerk.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I did a multi-author project with some friends of mine in November. It's called the Regency Christmas Brides and the idea behind it was that there's this incredibly eccentric, wealthy, generous great aunt who tells a niece and some nephews that she is dying and that she is going to leave them all something extraordinary that will basically make their life if they get engaged by Twelfth Night. And with each of them engaged by Twelfth Night, and with each of them he gives them the caveat that it could be a love match. We're not just going out and marrying people willy-nilly, it has to be a love match. And so we're all writing our books and it's great.
Speaker 2:And because I am a great big dork who appreciates a good pun and word replacement for puns, as evidenced by the crime roulette fake off. Thank you Coming up with carols with word replacement. Because we were trying to come up with taglines for the book and I went a little off the rails. I love Christmas, I'm a great big dork and my procrastination techniques involve wasting a lot of time. So I wasted a lot of time coming up with these Christmas carols with word replacement and they became too funny and too ridiculous. And so suddenly I was filming myself in a Christmas bonnet, wearing a wig, having spectacles on the edge of my nose, singing Christmas carols as great aunt either. Um, my acting career was coming shortly, yeah, um.
Speaker 2:So I sent it to one of our authors who was really good at doing reels, and she threw um, you know, reactions from our characters in there. And then, since that one did so well, we decided that I needed to do a Christmas Carol for each of the books. So I did, I personalized with more of the crazy Christmas carols. And then we decided that aunt Edith had had enough, and so she did her 12 days of Christmas where she's just exhausted and gone. And then, finally, we decided we were going to do a live around the time of 12th night to kind of celebrate the whole thing. And with the new year, we could not possibly advertise our live coming without Aunt Edith singing Auld Lang Syne for New Year's Eve. And so it may come into, you know, aunt Edith may get her own podcast at this point.
Speaker 1:Next time you're on the show, you're going to bring Aunt Edith with you. Cody, my wife and I, we were dying when these were discovered uncovered unearthed. We had so much fun diving into the rabbit hole of Anne Edith, so thank you for that. Again, ladies and gentlemen, we will put links to Anne Edith in the show notes. And before we move on, you do have to give the other authors in this fun little project a shout out. Who are they?
Speaker 2:So that is so. It's myself as the first book. And then there's Laura Beersy stockton and annika walker love it, love it, love it, love it.
Speaker 1:All right, so you've already told us a little bit about what's next, uh, but I always ask my guests as a final question what's the very next thing we'll be able to pick up from you after we read Crime, relay, bake Off, and we're like I need more Becky Connelly or Rebecca Connelly in my life. What will that be and where will they find it?
Speaker 2:The very next project from me comes out March 4th and it is book four in the Agents of the Convent Regency Spy Series called A Pearl Before Spies, and that was really fun to do. It'll be really exciting and entertaining. So that is the very next project from me.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, we will make sure that we talk about that project down the road and thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for being my first let's see what I call you my first post-hiatus podcast guest.
Speaker 2:I want a t-shirt. Post-hiatus podcast guest. Can you say that real fast? I want a t-shirt. Can you say that? Post hiatus podcast guest.
Speaker 1:That's pretty good. Look at you. I wish I could be just a fraction of as productive and prolific as Becky Connolly. I'm exhausted at the amount of good things that you're doing in the world. Thank you.
Speaker 2:My pleasure. And you know what? Not all of them bring in the money, but they sure bring in the laughs.
Speaker 1:And that's why we do this right, we tell stories for laughs. Hey, do me a big favor. As we say goodbye, could you just bring Aunt Edith out to just sign off on the show today?
Speaker 2:no-transcript.