Flash Fiction Challenge: A Drink With A Story, A Story With A Drink

So, when I was doing some promo for The Cormorant, I had some fun over at Cabin Goddess and got to make up a Miriam Black cocktail — the “Miriam Negroni.” Which is:

1 oz dark rum

1 oz. Campari

1 oz. sweet vermouth

The juice of a blood orange.

You could go old school and just use gin. While rum fits the part of the book where Miriam descends to Florida, the book also is set around Christmastime and one cannot deny that gin sometimes tastes like liquefied Christmas tree.

To be really authentic you should probably also lacquer the edges with cremated human remains or cigarette ash.

Or just drink the whole thing through a human skull.

And I thought, that was kind of a fun challenge.

So, this is that challenge, modified.

It has two parts:

You will:

a) Invent your own cocktail (and give us the recipe!). It can be real or fictional — meaning, it can be something we can make ourselves or a cocktail purely made from fictional ingredients (“Betelgeuse Tequila and bitters made from Slarm glands”). Name the cocktail, too.

b) Then write a short story with the name of your cocktail as the name of the short story. The story should be tied to the cocktail in some way — some plot or character-hook, or maybe the cocktail is front and center in the plot.

Any genre will do.

Let’s say you have 2000 words this time around.

You still have one week — due February 7th — WAIT IS IT FEBRUARY ALREADY? Crap on a stick.

Ahem. Due in one week, by noon EST.

Post at your online space. Link back here. Same drill as usual.

Bonus: I’ll pick one random participant (sorry, you gotta live in the US for this) who will get an ART HARDER flask, as seen in this image below:

(Available from Zazzle if you click the image. Or from the Merch link.)

That’s the deal. Now go: invent a cocktail, write a story.