Wednesday is the day to celebrate! But what do you celebrate
when you commemorate Piña Colada Day? According to Intoxicology, the Piña Colada (Spanish for Strained Pineapple) got its
start in the 1800s when the Puerto Rican pirate, Roberto Confresi, boosted his
crew's morale by adding pineapple and coconut to white rum. When Confresi died
in 1825, his recipe was lost. But the bartender at Caribe Hilton's Beachcomber
Bar in San Juan (who was said to be Ramon "Monchito" Marrero)
reinvented the drink on August16, 1954. This begs the question, why isn't
August 16th Piña Colada Day? Oh well. Another bartender, at Barrachina
Restaurant in Puerto Rico, brought a Piña Colada recipe home from South America
in 1963. There may be other stories of
the origin, too.
Now they are filled with strawberries and bananas and who
knows what else? Nevertheless, it's the official drink of Puerto Rico.
I had the great good fortune to be invited to St. Croix in
the Virgin Islands a few years ago and toured a rum factory. I won't tell you
that the vats of fermenting sugar are open to the air, shield only by a fabric
sort of tent cover. The alcohol surely kills anything that falls into the
roiling brew. It all turns out all right in the end.
Which bring us to fiction! We can put all sorts of stuff
into our brews and sometimes they come out all right and sometimes they don't.
Then we rewrite, right? I'm putting a tiny bit of paranormal into my next
amateur sleuth, the one coming out in October. According to Wiki,
paranormal has to do with unexplained phenomena. Supernatural means phenomena
not subject to the laws of nature.
Paranormal, according to this article means ghosts,
extraterrestrials, and weird animal-type critters like Bigfoot, the Loch Ness
Monster, unicorns, werewolves. I think vampires are classified supernatural by
these criteria. Personally, I'd put werewolves and vampires in the same
category, since I've seen them appear in the same stories.
You can put some horror into romance, some thriller into
fantasy, some vampires into a travelogue if you want to. There's no end to the
blending you can do. You can even use bananas and strawberries in your plot. The
only question is, will it work? Will the reader buy into it and want to read to
the end? If you've written it that way, let's hope so.
Oh man! I need a pina colada now! Great post. You're absolutely right. You can put anything in the story, but will it blend into something delicious that works? I've certainly cranked out a failed drink or two and the same can be said for a few of my stories!
ReplyDeleteI'm picturing throwing a story down the drain. Hmmm....
ReplyDeleteGood luck with your idea of blending, Kaye. I think the trick with mysteries is making the blend fun and funny, and I know you can do that. I'll be interested to read how it's going as you write. Hope you post here about it every once in awhile.
ReplyDeleteI probably will--here and at Travels with Kaye. Thanks for stopping by, Jan.
ReplyDelete