drinking with blue christmas writers

Here's a video where I talk about Blue Christmas and then do some drinking.

The winning cocktail:

Blue Christmas Cocktail #2

1. Pour 1 1/2 oz of bourbon into shaker.
2. Pour 1 1/2 oz of brandy (we used Cognac) into shaker.
3. Add 1/4 oz of maple syrup into shaker.
4. Add 2 dashes of Bittercube’s Cherry Bark Vanilla Bitters into shaker.
5. Add 6 milk ice cubes* into shaker.
6. Shake.
7. Pour into rocks glass with one, large milk cube.
8. Garnish with cinnamon stick.

*Simple. Freeze milk in an ice tray same way you do water. For the one large milk cube, we used this.

--David Gonzalez

btm's blue christmas

Another kind and smart review of Blue Christmas.

usa today's blue christmas

"So pour yourself a drink, put on Elvis or your own Christmas-mix CD, and give Blue Christmas a read as a welcome break from the usual holiday routine."

johnny dufresne's blue christmas

"She drives home with her fake Ray-Bans on and the radio blasting. Power 96! Amy Winehouse or someone like that. This s Saturday, Christmas Eve, in South Florida, and, still, you could just die from the heat. At the light on Federal by the high school, she changes the station to oldies. The Stones' 'Miss You.' She csranks the volume up to twenty-nine. She sees a woman outside the Dixiewood Motel, wearing snug red shorts, a Santa T-shirt that says HO! HO! HO!, polester antlers, and Rudolph nose that lights up whenever a car appraoches."

"A Wild Night and a New Road"

John Dufresne is the author of four novels, two collections of stories, two books on writing fiction, two screenplays, and a play. He edited the anthology Blue Christmas. And he is I.

We had a great SRO Blue Christmas party at Books & Books in Coral Gables. Blue mojitos, a blue Christmas cake, and readings by Lynne Barrett, Diana Abu-Jaber, Robert Goolrick, and Les Standiford.

Lynne and Jon Clinch and Colin Channer and Ann Hood and I will all be at Newtonville Books this Thursday at 7 P.M. if you can make it.  And if you can't, you can buy the books here.

jon clinch's blue christmas

"Into the riverman's life the dog enters like a thing freely given.

The man awakens in his frozen bed one morning and he stirs up the fire from weary embers and he steps out onto the porch all swept about with snow to assess the dawn, and from down along the riverside the thing barks up at him as if she has him treed."

"The Dog"

Jon Clinchis the author of the novels Finn and King of the Earth. He's been an English teacher, a metalworker, a folksinger, an illustrator, a typrface designer, a housepainter, a copywriter, and an advertising executive. He and his wife live in the Green Mountains of Vermont.

Join us at Books & Books in Coral Gables for a Blue Christmas Party tonight December 10 at 7 p.m.

If you can't make the event, you can still buy the book here.