You may remember our delicious Scottish-themed cocktail: Caledon , which we shared on Christmas Eve in 2024. This remains one of our most popular blog posts, so we thought we would share another one for you on this All Hallow's Eve! With that in mind, I am pleased to introduce you to: The Raighvan Park , inspired by Judith Crow's novella, The Folly at Raighvan Park, which you can find here . Here are your step by step instructions for creating this gothic beverage (have we just invented the gothtail ?!) It's deliciously dark, as you might expect, with a hint of the upper-class style of the novella. You will need: 1. Port 2. Patron Xo Cafe (you could use any other coffee liqueur) 3. Soda water with lime 4. Ginger ale 5. Pepsi Max 6. Liquorice Time to put them all together... 1. Pour one shot of coffee liqueur into a large wine glass. 2. Add one shot of port. Remember, a gothic gentleman loves his port! 3. Now onto the non-alcoholic additions... include two shots of soda wat...
Mehrangarh Fort - the inspiration for Caer Cleon in Doorway to the Sunset Writing a blog about writing settings is like writing a blog about the length of a piece of string. The fact is: the setting will likely depend on the genre and, as I have said many times, Middle Grade is an age range , not a genre. But, I can at least offer some hopefully-handy tips on how to get ideas for your setting. Firstly, it helps to have some idea of your setting to begin with. Do you want the scene to be in a forest, or perhaps you're looking for some building inspiration. This is where I get really controversial. When to use AI AI gets quite a bad press in the creative world, and for good reason. But to have a blanket ban on using AI to help you with the creative process is to shoot yourself in the foot. There is a time and a place for AI, and one of those times, I would argue, is when looking for inspiration. There are some good picture generators out there, and all you need to do is write a descr...