A Writer Afoot » My books

“They were London rakes, a breed of man beneath Madeline’s contempt….”

Barbara Samuel — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:28:52 +0000

It is blizzardy and deliciously wintery here today, so I thought you might like reading Lucien’s Fall, available now at Amazon Kindle. Lucien is one of my all time favorite heroes, reckless and beautiful and very nearly unredeemable.

A taste, if you’re so inclined:

The riders raced up the road madly. The gleaming, sporty phaeton rocked dangerously in the rain-rutted course. The other man rode on a beautiful, lean black horse; beast and man were illuminated with the bars of hazy light falling through thick tree branches. They were young men, London rakes, a breed of man beneath Madeline’s contempt. She found their arrogance and idleness a bore.

And yet, as they laughed and shouted, each goading the other to a faster pace, Madeline felt her blood rise in a strange excitement. It was in particular the man on the horse who caught her eye. He wore no powder or wig, and his thick dark hair was drawn back into a queue with a black ribbon. His body was long and sinuously made, and he rode as if he and the horse were one being. From where she stood, his face gave the impression of exotic tilts and powerful bones.

But it was the hedonism Madeline ordinarily found so distasteful in such men that drew her now, made her take up her skirts and run toward the opening of the maze so she would not lose sight of him behind the hedge.

She broke through to the open stretch of lawn between the maze and the Elizabethan house of Whitethorn just as the man urged his horse into a full run. Light dappled faster and faster over his dark hair, his dark horse, his long legs. Next to him, only a little behind, the phaeton rocked noisily.

As they neared the end of the drive, Madeline burst into a run. The man on the horse left the road and bolted across the same lawn. His speed was almost dizzying, and he headed with purpose for a shoulder-high hedge that edged the house garden.

Madeline froze. They would both be killed.

But even as she clamped a hand over her mouth, watching in horror, the black beast leaped with stunning grace over the squared hedge. Horse and man hung—haloed and gilded by the afternoon light—for an endless time against the sky.

As he hung there, suspended in midair, looking like Pan, like some untamed beast come in from the wild, the man laughed. The sound rang with robust defiance into the day, and Madeline felt her heart catch with a sharp pang.

To be so free!

Order this book now.

A Piece of Heaven bargain priced

Barbara Samuel — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 02:03:13 +0000

Just noticed that the digital price for A Piece of Heaven has dropped to $4.99. Check it out at

Barnes and Noble Nook Store

Amazon Kindle Store

First Chapter

Filler from The Taos News: Full Moon FactsThe full moon is the phase of the Moon in which it is fully illuminated as seen from Earth, at the point when the Sun and Moon are on opposite sides of the Earth. The full moon reaches its highest elevation at midnight. High tides. Names for the August and September full moon: Full Red Moon, Full Green Corn Moon, Full Sturgeon Moon.

It was a good thing for Placida Ramirez that the moon was full when she set her house on fire at three o’clock in the morning that August night. Because it was the moon, shining like a searchlight through her bedroom windows, that had awakened Luna McGraw. Technically, it was a dream about her long-gone father that yanked her out of sleep. It was worries about her daughter’s arrival tomorrow that kept her awake.

But the moon, so coldly white in the summer sky, took the blame.Dragging on a pair of shorts beneath her sleeping shirt, she got up to make some coffee. It would make her mother crazy to know Luna was making coffee in the middle of the night. Why not a cup of tea? Something soothing and relaxing?

Not her style. Once upon a time, she would have poured a hefty measure of gold tequila into a water glass and sipped that. A part of her still wished she could.

At least coffee had some bite. Measuring out Costa Rican Irazú into her new Krupps grinder, she counted out the seconds to twenty-one. Perfect grind for a latte. Perfect grind for her, anyway. The world was entirely too full of coffee nazis these days—coffee was about individual taste, and no one should let anyone else tell her what to like. She liked hers strong enough to stand and walk by itself, withsteamed milk and a pound of sugar. As drugs went, it wasn’t bad. Also, a good latte took some detail work. The measuring. The grinding. Now she pressed the grounds, the color of good earth, into a tiny metal basket, and clicked on the machine. While it was heating up, she poured one-percent milk into a giant ceramic mug and waited, yawning, for the steam to be hot enough to make a froth.

The actions and the smell of coffee eased some of her restlessness, and she found she could stand there with one bare foot over the other without twitching too much in nicotine withdrawal. Or wondering why it had suddenly seemed like such a brilliant plan to quit smoking right now, when her daughter was coming to live with her for the first time in eight years. Maybe, she thought with resentment, it would be better to try again in a few weeks, when there wasn’t so much at stake.

But of course, Joy was the reason she had decided to try. The reason she could stick with it for a few more days. Joy hated cigarettes and Luna hated feeling like such a failure in front of her daughter. Not smoking seemed like a gesture of earnestness.

And really, she needed to quit anyway—everybody had to quit, right?—it stunk and made you wrinkle faster and it was bad for your health, and it was nearly impossible to go out and have a long, lazy dinner with anyone these days unless you wanted to keep a patch handy, which was almost as sick in its way.

Primary reasons, she said to herself, an old habit. A note taped to her cabinet said it: smoking stinks. Never mind dread diseases or wrinkles. She hated the smell of cigarettes on her body and in her hair, in the air and on her hands. Yuck. The way things smelled mattered to her—perfumes and incense and flowers, herbs and morning on the desert. Coffee brewing in the middle of the night.

The machine started to gurgle, and she stuck the steamer into the milk, bringing a fine foam to the top, then poured the finished espresso into the mug, added three packets of turbinado sugar, and stirred it all together.

Now what? There was a button that needed sewing on her best blouse. A novel, lying facedown on the kitchen table, could be read. In the workroom off the kitchen an assortment of crafts, including a half-painted table, waited. Luna went and stared at it—the wildest one yet, a blooming pink rose with a bleeding heart at the middle of it. Her mother hated it, said it was scary, and while Luna didn’t agree with her, she wasn’t in the right mood to work on it, either.

Tobacco. Tequila. White zinfandel. A long Marlboro, red pack.

At least they would be something to do.

With a half-bored, half-agitated sigh, she carried the mug outside to the porch. The cold moon burned overhead like an evil omen. Luna glared at it, settling into a metal, motel-style rocker she had painted with a kitschy, smiling Virgen de Guadalupe in a pink dress and lime green cloak and a Barbie-doll face. Guadalupe Barbie, she told people who wouldn’t be offended. Even people who really loved her—and frankly, what was there not to love about ‘Lupe?—were pleased by the rendition. Sitting there eased Luna, like sitting on her mother’s lap.

But still that searchlight of a moon blazed over Taos. In the canyons of her mind, Luna’s demons howled at it. She could see them, with their greenish lizard skin and long claws and ears like bat wings, dragging out all the forgotten sins of a lifetime, the little and the big. All the sorrows that ordinarily stayed safely buried, the tattered bits from childhood, the protected velvets of things she couldn’t bear to look at. One demon plucked out a bracelet made of copper links, machine-stamped with thunderbirds, and hearing her gasp of surprise and outrage, ran off cackling with it.

Night sweats, her mother called them, but that seemed to be understating the case a bit. Especially when Kitty had them, she was probably thinking about things like the time she swore at her boss, or the night Luna and her sister Elaine saw her grabbing a boyfriend’s rear end on the way out. Kitty had just not done that much she’d have to regret.

Unlike Luna, with her AA pin and the daughter she’d lost custody of and the career she’d destroyed.

Oddly, though, none of those things were the ones haunting her tonight. Instead, she’d awakened thinking of her father, who’d left home when Luna was seven and never came back. She dreamed about him once or twice a year, so it wasn’t particularly unusual. Sipping her latte, holding the sharp, milky taste in her mouth for a moment, she did think it was amazing how long you could miss a person, especially when he didn’t deserve it.

Sitting now in Guadalupe’s lap, with a smooth wind blowing over her face, Luna heard the trained therapist in her head, Therapist Barbie, who wore big tortoiseshell glasses and her silver hair in a French knot, point out the truth: Not too surprising you should dream about him to- night, when your own child is coming to live with you. That drags up a lot of old issues, doesn’t it?

Bingo.

She was wide-awake in the middle of the night trying not to smoke cigarettes because her fifteen-year-old daughter was coming to live with her for the first time in eight years. More than life itself, Luna wanted to get it right.

A smooth wind, warm from sunbaked rocks high in the Sangre de Cristos that circled the town like a ring of sentries, blew across her face and knees. It smelled of the fields of chamiso and sage it crossed, fresh and utterly New Mexico. She’d missed that scent more than she could say when she’d left home at sixteen. Tonight there was a hint of woodsmoke in it, and Luna imagined a pair of honeymooning lovers curled before a kiva-shaped fireplace. The picture eased some of her tension, some of that crawl of nicotine need.

It helped so much, she did it again, just breathed in the night, hearing crickets and the faint howl of the wind, or maybe La Llorona, the famed weeping woman of legend who was said to walk the rivers here, looking for her lost children.

Lost children.

Bingo, said Barbie, dryly.

It was perfectly normal to be nervous, especially because there was quite a bit of murkiness surrounding the sudden change in custody agreement. Joy had been in a little trouble the past year, but it hadn’t appeared to be serious. Luna had flown down to Atlanta twice, a hardship financially, but hadn’t made much progress. Joy’s appearance had shifted, her attitude was sometimes hostile, and her grades were slipping, but there were no signs of drugs or other substance abuse. Still, Luna had been uneasy, and asked her former husband to consider letting Joy spend a season or two with Luna in Taos. He’d adamantly refused.

Things had grown worse over the spring and early summer, during which Joy had been forced to stay in Atlanta instead of coming to Taos as she usually did, thanks to flunked classes. And then, suddenly, Marc, Luna’s ex, had called to say Joy could come live in Taos. Luna, suspi- cious of a trick, had asked Marc to put it in writing. He had agreed. Even stranger.

Something was afoot. But whatever Marc’s ulterior motives, Luna had a chance to make sure her daughter was all right, a chance to see her and be with her every day, a chance to find out what had caused such a dramatic change in her behavior over the past year. A chance, as the old Quantum Leap show said, to put right what once went wrong.

She’d painted the second bedroom, framed the thick-silled window with gauzy curtains, brushed up on the nutritional aspects of cooking for a child, even shifted her schedule at work to make sure she could be home after school. Friends teased her about it—no fifteen-year-old particularly cared if mommy was home after school, they said—but Luna just smiled. Her own mother had worked nights to be at home for her daughters after school, and it had meant a lot to her.

The crickets went utterly still, as if a giant hand had squashed them. Luna straightened, hearing a gust of wind gather in the distance. It rolled toward her, and she covered her eyes and put a hand over her mug just as it slammed into the little porch. It wasn’t cold, just dusty, and Luna waited, eyes closed tight, for it to pass.

Smoke.

Not cigarette smoke, which she would have gladly inhaled to the very deepest part of her lungs. And not the gentle wisps of a honeymoon cottage. This was full-bodied, almost a taste, the thick smell of a fire that was pretty full of itself. When the gust of wind died, fast as it had come, she peered into the darkness, wishing that moon wasn’t so bright so the flames would show. The summer had been painfully dry and fires were burning all over the Four Corners. The ancient neighborhood, surrounded by fields of dry grass and sage, was particularly vulnerable. Even a small fire could be disastrous.

She put her cup down and dashed out to the road, turning in a circle very slowly to see if she could see it, breathing in the strong smoke smell for clues to direction.

“Oh, shit!”

The fire wasn’t at all distant. Bright orange flames poured out of the window of the very old woman who lived two doors down the street.

Charged with adrenaline—and likely caffeine—Luna dashed inside, phoned in the fire to 911, and then dashed back out, up the dirt road on bare feet, then up the grassy, prickly expanse of yard toward the old woman’s house. A goathead bit her arch and she had to stop to pull it out, hands shaking. Fire danced through the kitchen window, licked at a pine that stood sentry near the back, threatened to burst, any second, through the roof.

Thinking with a sick feeling of the old woman, Luna leapt onto the porch and yanked open the screen door. “Hello!” she cried, pounding with her fist on the door. “Hello! Are you in there?”

Nothing. She tried the door and found it locked. “Hello?” She pounded harder. No answer, and smoke thick enough it was making her want to cough. She tried the window. Locked.

There was a flowerpot thick with chrysanthemums sitting on the step. Luna grabbed it, smashed the window, unlocked it, and stuck her head in the smoky interior. “Hello? Is anyone here? Grandma!” Maybe Spanish would be better. “Abuela!” she cried. “Hola!”

The smoke, sharp and acrid, stung her eyes. An ache of some primal terror burned in her chest. For a moment, she hesitated. The firemen would be here any second. They were trained for this. It was arrogant of her to think it was her job to try to save someone, wasn’t it?

But then she thought of the wizened, tiny old woman, and there was no way she could just walk away and live with herself in the morning. Before she could chicken out, she ducked into the house through the window, dropping to the floor in some remembered bit of lore. The smoke wasn’t so thick down there, and the air felt cool. Crawling on her hands and knees, she made her way through the dark. Living room. Door to a bedroom, closed.

Her heart was skittering so fast that she felt shaky. The fire was beginning to crackle and breathe, an animal gathering power. Get out, get out, get out. Luna resisted the terror. Coughing, she opened the bedroom door.

The room was blissfully free of smoke, at least for this second. She stood up and checked the bed. Empty.

ORDER THE BOOK:

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The Otherlands Chronicles

Barbara Samuel — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 20:56:15 +0000

I am quite pleased to be keeping up, posting almost every day (have had to take two days off, and I suspect there will be another this week). More, I am having a blast discovering this world and story. Who knew there was a magic cello?

He passed the cello over to me, and I almost felt a ripple through the body, as if it was as excited to be in my hands as I was to touch it again. I pressed a palm against the front, and took in a breath. Bartholomew gave me the bow. “What would you like to play?”

“I would happily play Mary Had a Little Lamb on this beautiful instrument,” I said, nestling it closer to me. It reclined against my shoulder, the scroll close to my ear. As if it—no, she—could speak, I almost heard a whisper, a suggestion. “Bach’s Air?” I said.

He was very still for a long moment, then he riffled through a pile of music on the stand, and pulled out the selection. “I have been working on it.”

We shifted, each of us bending into our instruments, finding our balance. I mentally hummed through the first bars, sliding into the notes as if they were a suit. He tuned the G string more finely. Against me, the old cello vibrated very faintly.

I looked at Bartholomew, and he nodded, tapping his foot. I swayed into his lead and we began together, the long sweet notes pouring out, winding around each other. I found him in the music, and he fit himself into my playing, and we fell inside the piece, both of us. It was melancholoy and romantic, and the profound beauty loaned by the cello took the notes to some wilder, deeper place. It seemed to dance against me, the wood warming, glowing. My cheeks grew hot and a trickle of sweat ran down my neck, and I closed my eyes, feeling an electric sense of tingling through my hands, up my arms, swirling through my neck, and somehow into me, into my chest and throat.

READ CHAPTER FIVE, THE MIRROR GIRL

A frank moment on posting in public

Barbara Samuel — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 22:07:25 +0000

The OtherLand Chronicles experiment continues, posting a new scene (almost) every day as a sort of NaNoWriMo exercise. I say sort of because you are technically supposed to just blast through and not edit and there are likely other rules I don’t know about, but this is my gig and I’m playing it my way. My goal was to post new work every day and to be as true as possible to the NaNo idea of moving forward even when things aren’t quite right.

Not that easy! By the time you see one of my books, I’ve been over it a dozen times (at least!). My agent and editor have read it, commented, made suggestions. A line edit and copy edit have been done, weeding out the obnoxious repetitive phrases and clumsy sentences I have missed. None of that has happened with this book, and it’s both thrilling and dismaying.

There isn’t time to edit much, frankly. If I’m going to get the new scene written, I can’t spend a lot of time polishing the work from the day before–I just have to GO. I have been writing the scene one day ahead, and giving myself and a beta reader a chance to catch anything that’s going to mess up the story, a dropped thread or anything like that, but not much more.

And you know what, this is FUN! I’m more worried about getting the story down, keeping the tension up, balancing what the reader needs to know with what needs to remain hidden. Planting clues, pacing, staying true to the character’s voice.

I thought I know all about the story, too, but stories have a way of birthing themselves into whatever they like. I am being surprised and entertained. I tell my voice students to play, to let themselves go, to take a chance every now and then to give the girls in the basement a chance to play. That’s what I’m doing. We are writers. We are in wild mind, beginner’s mind. A very good place to be.

Just posted the first scene of Chapter Four. http://theotherlandchronicles.com/2011/11/chapter-4-scene-1-2/

The Fruit of our Lives

Barbara Samuel — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 00:02:27 +0000

Posted at Writer Unboxed this morning

As I write this, it is the last morning of summer. My yearling kittens are crouched in the garden, watching a squirrel on the fence make his way through the face of a sunflower, methodically plucking out striped seeds with his tiny hands, cracking their shells, devouring the kernels. There are piles of hulls, here and there, through the garden, where I have tied the flower heads to the fence or a branch or a gate. Light angles at a long angle, illuminating the withering squash, the tired corn. As I drink my tea, I’m a little melancholy, knowing that this season is turning. It is such a particular summer.

They all are.

One of the things that has come up in formatting my old books for publication in e-format is the recognition that they are fruits of the years in which they were born. This might seem a simple, clean observation—well, of course they are, you might say. In 1993, the peaches were good and there was a lot of rain, and there were certain political events that influenced my views and ideas. Music always shapes and influences my work, so the popular tunes of the time will add spice and flavor.

When I began the work of going through these books, written from about 1990 through 2000 or so, I never planned to rewrite them in any meaningful way. I have so much work flowing through me currently that that spending time on finished, whole work seemed a bad use of time. It is important to me to update glaring tech issues that date the material in negative ways—changing Walkmans to Ipods, for example, and updating language to reflect the moment.

But even reading to do that much is almost impossible, I find, because they hold too much of me, of my life. It is as if the fruit of those months or years of writing has been bottled and turned to wine that now carries the most powerful notes of that period in a way that I almost cannot bear. READ MORE>>>>>>

Three Reader Favorites now available!

Barbara Samuel — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 16:55:16 +0000

Three of my most beloved novels from my contemporary romance days are now available in ebook format.

The Last Chance Ranch

Amazon Kindle
Barnes and Noble Nook
Smashwords

A full length contemporary romance.

Weary and battered after a stint in prison for killing her abusive husband, Tanya has been dreaming of the day she could renew her relationship with the son she lost. Now cooking at a ranch for troubled boys, she takes the first, tentative steps toward her son…and to his adopted father, Ramon, a man so real and true he might be able to teach Tanya how to trust…and live…again.

Story behind the story:

There was a string of domestic violence cases in Colorado one year. One woman left behind notes to her young sons, and as a mother of young sons at the time, I couldn’t bear it. Another woman was gunned down at Taco Bell right across the street from the domestic violence shelter. Finally, one Easter morning, my street was closed at both ends while an army of police tried to track down the man trying to kill his wife across the street. She had escaped with her daughter out the back door, but my youngest was outside playing when it all happened. I’d finally had enough and decided to write about a woman and child who made it out.

This book won The Janet Dailey Award, a $10,000 cash prize awarded to a romance that best explores a social issue. It was also a RITA finalist, and remains a big reader favorite.

Jezebel’s Blues

Amazon Kindle
Barnes and Noble Nook
Smashwords

Jezebel’s Blues is a full length contemporary romantic novel.

When the Jezebel River overflows her banks and tries to swallow the small town of Gideon in East Texas, Celia Moon is alone and frightened in the farmhouse she inherited from her grandmother. When a mesmerizing and troubled drifter washed up on her porch, she has no choice but to take him in. As the river rises, the pair retreat to the attic to ride out the storm—and discover a compelling attraction.

The daughter of two artists who were besotted with each other, Celia has always felt the odd woman out. She yearns to find a place she can call her own, a family of her own, a life that has some stability and meaning. Her grandmother’s farmhouse in Gideon has always represented that.

Eric fled his grim childhood in Gideon to find a life as an acclaimed blues guitarist, but that life has been taken from him, too, and he’s back in Gideon with a chip on his shoulder that hides the vast, hunger he, too, feels to find his place, his home, his life. Waiting out the storm with sunny, optimistic Celia, he wonders if maybe there’s a place in Gideon for him after all, in the arms of a woman who might know more than she thinks about acceptance.

A novel as rich and deep as a river, Jezebel’s Blues is both a haunting love story and a tale of finding your way to accepting yourself.

Story behind the story

This is one of my personal favorites. It was my first RITA finalist, and the conference that year was in St. Louis, which was flooding that summer. Mainly, I just loved it, and it helped me explore ideas that would lead to In the Midnight Rain, and to another tale set loosely in the same town during WWII (more as I am able to say).

Breaking the Rules

Amazon Kindle
Barnes and Noble Nook
Smashwords

Mattie O’Neal was on the run. She’d stolen a car, cut off her hair, changed her name and was slinging hash in a small Arizona town. She thought she was safe – until Zeke Shephard walked through the door. His rugged, muscled body set every woman’s heart aflutter – but his probing questions made Mattie weak for another reason.

Still, when the bad guys caught up with her, it was Zeke who rescued Mattie and took her to his own retreat. Zeke who comforted her . . . protected her . . . and loved her. Although Zeke insisted he was just a guy for the moment, could Mattie persuade him to make that moment last a lifetime?

Story behind the story:
I have a weakness for road books. What happens when you disappear and start over–what can you find out about yourself, the world, and a great love? Zeke is a bad-boy with a broken heart, and Mattie is a woman who can heal and transform, both herself and her world.

DANCING MOON now an ebook!

Barbara Samuel — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 16:17:35 +0000

This is the only Western historical novel I wrote, and it’s actually very untraditional for that genre. The Irish heroine is fleeing a cruel husband, along with a pregnant slave when their party is overtaken by Indians. The hero is a Comanchero out of Taos who rescues both women and takes them back to the village.

I loved this book, writing it, living in it, exploring the Spanish influence in this area and the native tribes of the Front Range. I read Irish history and Cheyenne history and Spanish colonial history, as well as stories from the women who made this arduous journey at a time when it was extremely dangerous.

Dancing Moon is an adventure and a romance and set in my own neck of the woods at a time when it was wild and quite different than it is now. (Garden of the Gods and the healing springs of the Manitou area figure heavily into the end of the book.) Ruth Wind readers will especially like this book, the setting, the multicultural aspects, and the romance between Tess and Joaquin.

Buy it now at:

Amazon

B&N

Smashwords

Heart of a Knight #1

Barbara Samuel — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 02:49:57 +0000

For the past several days, Heart of a Knight has been bouncing in and out of the #1 spot historical romance spot at Amazon Kindle. Stephanie Laurens knocked me out for a day (curse her superstardom and brilliance ;) ) but Dark Thomas bounced back up again to #1 tonight.

Again I have to give a shout-out to my cousin Sharon Schlicht, who designed the extraordinary cover (and, well, did everything else related to getting it up in ebook form).

The fun side of ebooks

Barbara Samuel — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 21:21:32 +0000

This is what can be fun about the shift in the way books come to market. A Bed of Spices was my first historical. It’s a dark, wildly romantic Romeo and Juliet tale, and I loved it madly. It was, however, set in an unusual location, and it did not sell all that well. Over time, readers discovered it and bought the used edition to a point that I saw copies for sale for really enormous amounts of money.

Today it’s in the top 20 historical romances at Kindle. What makes that thrilling is that a book I adored and worked so very hard on can now find a new readership in a different market than the one in which it appeared.

It is the nature of the Kindle rankings that things move very fast, so likely it will not stay there long. You never know, though, do you? If you’re so inclined, post a review. Let’s see what happens.

Ramona’s Sunshine Fruit and Honey Bread

Barbara Samuel — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 01:16:15 +0000

(A recipe from How to Bake a Perfect Life. )

These are actual texts from my sister a few days ago:

Feb 5, 2011 7:13 pm
Making sunshine fruit and honey bread

Feb 6, 2011 12:36 pm
OMG OMG OMG. That bread is soooooo good I could prolly eat the whole thing!!!

Feb. 7, 2011 12:26 pm
I can’t stop eating this bread ! I feel like the guy in the window in Chocolat. LOL

———

I can’t promise you will like it as much as she does, but it’s one of my favorites, too. It would be an excellent offering at a book club.

RAMONA’S BOOK OF BREADS
Sunshine Fruit and Honey Bread

Sometimes a recipe is born from a moment, and this is the recipe that I came up with after my first night with Jonah. Filled with light and juice and tenderness, it is one of my favorite things. Try it with a cup of sweet chai.

2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp kosher salt
½ cup butter, softened
½ cup raw sugar
½ cup dark honey
½ tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp orange extract
2 tsp grated orange zest
2 eggs
1 cup raspberries, whole
1/3 cup slivered, toasted almonds

Juice of one orange, mixed with enough powdered sugar to make a thin glaze

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease a 9 x5 inch loaf pan

Whisk together dry ingredients. Cream butter, honey, and extracts and zest. Add eggs one at a time. Mix in the dry ingredients just until moist, then gently, gently fold in the raspberries and toasted almonds.

Bake for 55-60 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.

Cool for 20 minutes, then tip bread out to a wire rack and cool thoroughly, then drizzle the top lightly with glaze.