4 cups flour
1 ½ tsp. salt
1 tsp. soda
2 cups buttermilk
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Grease a round pan. Mix the ingredients
thoroughly before kneading into a ball.
Cut a cross in the top, and bake for 50–60
minutes.
Serve with fresh butter and a Guinness!
And for some background on the history and characters of COUNTESS OF SCANDAL and the Daughters of Erin series, be sure to visit my website at http://laurelmckee.net.
Enjoy!
From the desk of Lilli Feisty
Dear Reader,
For those of you who have read my previous book, Bound to Please, you may have noticed I have a bit of a thing for music and musicians. My latest novel, DARE TO SURRENDER, is not about a musician, but it’s still related to music. It’s about a woman whose emotional release is to dance. She won’t dance in public; she’s much too shy for that. But she dances by herself. A lot.
And it’s not just any sort of dancing; she prefers to belly dance. She’s quite good at it, better than she thinks. In fact, Joy is better at a lot of things than she gives herself credit for, and it was great fun helping her realize that. Because don’t we all have our hang-ups? And working our way through them can be quite an exhilarating release.
If you read DARE TO SURRENDER, I’ll tell you right now that there are a lot of similarities between the heroine, Joy Montgomery, and myself. She’s a redhead. She’s not necessarily comfortable with her curvy figure. She’s totally disorganized. Her handbag is the size of a small suitcase.
There’s more. She works in an art gallery—I owned one. She’s very spontaneous, to the point of getting herself in crazy binds because of it. I do that. A lot. She drives an old Mercedes. So do I.
So you can see we have a lot in common. Except the dancing in public thing. To put it simply, I love to dance. Am I any good at it? Probably not. But I simply can’t help myself. If I’m out, and I hear a good beat, I’m lured to the dance floor. In fact, I tend to dance at any opportunity, however inappropriate. It was quite pathetic, but just the other day, I was reprimanded at the grocery store for doing the Wang Chung in the frozen-food aisle.
However, let me tell you, belly dancing is not as easy as it looks. To be good, you have to be able to move separate parts of your body at varying speeds and rhythms. For some people (me), it’s not easy. But that’s irrelevant—it’s fun, and once you let yourself go, it really doesn’t matter how good you are. You feel the music take over your body and you want to shimmy. To undulate. To dance! I think belly dance is one of the sexiest, most feminine, mesmerizing forms of dance there is.
Some people assume belly dance was created for the sole purpose of entertaining men. In fact, this is not true. It was invented by women, for women. I think that’s why it’s such a sexy form of dance. When you belly dance, you’re celebrating being a female. You use your hips, your arms, your waist. And, of course, your belly. And you don’t need to worry if your belly is a bit round because it’s about having fun and using your body to express yourself. And let’s not forget the costumes. Belly dancing costumes are pretty darn gorgeous.
So this is Joy’s hobby. And it’s mine, too. The only difference is that Joy is too shy to do so in public so she only practices in her own bedroom. (Also Joy is way better at it.) Of course, when she meets Ash Hunter, he slowly begins to chip away at Joy’s inhibitions. But does he get her to dance in public?
Well, I won’t give away the ending. But I will say, by the end of their story, Joy is ready to take the dare to surrender everything, even if it means embracing every facet of her femininity.
I hope you enjoy their story.
XXOO,
Laurel McKee Page 29