Get ready to learn more about the book Christmas Cakes and Kisses in this discussion with sapphic author Anne Hagan.
Join us for an exclusive peek behind the scenes as we quiz Anne Hagan about Christmas Cakes and Kisses, writing, reading, and more.
This book is part of the Foodie Romance category in the 2024 IHS Reading Challenge.
Why did you write Christmas Cakes and Kisses?
This book is a short holiday romance that follows a popular side character, Hannah, in The Morelville Mysteries Series. She’s the youngest regular adult character in the series with a ‘Breaking Amish’ backstory due to her sexuality. She deserved to find love, but the mystery series where she’s not the star wasn’t really the place help her find it.
Who is your favorite character in the book?
Hannah is my favorite as she’s a character I created in another series who ended up involved heavily in a couple of the books in the series. She’s not similar to me at all, and that’s what makes her fun to write. She’s young, with her whole life ahead of her, and she’s finding her way in the world.
How did you come up with the title for your book?
Hannah left the Ohio Amish community after her Rumspringa period – a time when Amish teenagers around 16 get to spend time in the ‘English’ world – because she knew she was ‘different.’ She carried some common Amish female skills that she truly enjoyed with her, cooking and baking, especially baking. She meets her love interest, Morgan, at culinary school when they’re paired to work on a Christmas cake baking project together during the pastry phase of their schooling.
How much research did you need to do for Christmas Cakes and Kisses?
Not as much as you might think. I actually live in a community that has a lot of Amish and we interact with them quite often at their businesses and out in the community so the Amish parts of the story were pretty easy. Culinary school with respect to the curriculum required a bit of research, but I had a picture of the classroom from the culinary school in the TV sitcom, ‘Two Broke Girls’ in my head for all the classroom scenes and the instructor is modeled after ‘Chef Nicholas’ played by Gilles Marini in the same show.
If you’re planning a sequel, can you share a tiny bit about your plans for it?
A sequel is planned and it should have been out long ago, frankly. It’s plotted and there’s a basic first draft. I wrote all of the pre-covid pandemic. It got pushed aside with lots of other plans back then. I’m still going to finish it. These ladies deserve a full happy ending.
Is there a particular genre you would love to write but only under a pseudonym?
I’ve dabbled in cozy mystery and added some elements of magic via witches into the third book in the series. I stopped at three because I wrote those as ‘Anne Hagan’ and they just didn’t catch on with a mainstream audience. My readers who prefer sapphic books liked them okay, but they’re not sapphic. I’d love to take characters from the third book into more of an urban fantasy sort of story, but not fully sapphic either. The main character might be LGBTQ, but that wouldn’t play much into the story. I might have to do that under a different name since I’m not known for urban fantasy at all and my current pen name, except for the three cozies, writes all sapphic books.
