Turning up the heat in Miami with NIGHT GLITTER

Photograph: Lester Lefkowitz/Getty

I recently appeared on “South Florida Today” on NBC in Miami. The good news was, I stayed at my best friend’s house. It’s also the town where I went to high school. Too bad I arrived in Miami with a major respiratory infection. An infection which kept me up nights for two weeks and showed no sign of bidding me goodbye in spite of a prednisone shot and two Z-packs. Cough medicine with codeine finally helped.

On the morning of the TV show, I had my hair and makeup done. In person, I looked scary with dark, dark eyes. A face thick with foundation and powder. And lips the color of Silly Putty.

Night Caps Final Cover (Small) (WinCE) (Custom) I went there to promote my new drink book Night Caps, which has drinks from the 1920s and 1930s as well as modern concoctions. It’s a companion book to my time travel novels, Night Jazz and Night Glitter which take a modern young woman, Jeri Devlin, back to 1929 and through the early 1930s. With me for the TV show was a hunky young bartender named Pavel. A young man destined to be on the cover of a romance novel with his boyish good looks and astounding muscles. Not to mention a waistline most women would kill for. Tall and handsome, he captured every eye at the NBC studio. In contrast, I felt like… well, his mother.

He was nervous. So he began to make drinks from my drink book as we stood off to the side in the gorgeous, modern studio to wait for our segment to go on.

When all was said and done, the real stars of the segment were the recipes from my book, Night Caps. The gobs of make-up on my face actually looked natural on camera, and the handsome sidekick was eye candy that provided mouth candy in the form of delicious cocktails inspired by the 1930’s. Relieved, I happily helped myself to a cocktail (or two) when the segment was done.

The best drink made that morning, a Tall Blonde, is based on my main character Jeri Devlin, who is tall, blonde, and infinitely desirable. The drink is, too. Enjoy!

A TALL BLONDE
½ oz. Gin
½ oz. Vodka
½ oz.   Southern Comfort® Peach Liqueur
1   oz.   Peach Schnapps
3   oz.   Orange Juice
Shake over cracked ice, strain into chilled glass.

Try this drink recipe and many more from my book, Night Caps, inspired by the romance and mystery in Night Glitter and Night Jazz.

Have you done anything recently that was “out of your element?” This TV show was a little bit out of mine – after all, I’m a writer! In Night Glitter, Jeri finds herself out of her element in Hollywood and back in 1930. How to do handle being out of yours?

For FREE sample recipe cards from NIGHT CAPS, visit http://www.jillshure.com. For a link to the video (and screenshots of the oh-so-sexy Pavel), visit my blog, http://jillshureis.blogspot.com.