Some thoughts here about the introduction to the book and what it wants to be. Just going to free write from here, release some of the hounds inside my head. I’m thinking now it will be stories intertwined with recipes. I have all of the recipe stuff finished and when I come up with new cocktails I enter them into the pantheon. That’s the easy part, the hard part is how to relate the idea to people and of course how to market the damn thing so I can sell it and make a little extra scratch.

Most cocktail books are fairly cut and dry. The most well written I’ve read is The Dead Rabbit Drinks Manual because the tone is different and it veers toward educating the reader about historical concepts behind their drinks, many of which are super old school like fixes, bishops, possets, cups, and cobblers. Back in the prohibition erea, if you wanted a cocktail you would shout out something like “Whiskey smash!” which meant you wanted a whiskey sour (no egg) with mint. Want egg? Shout out “Whiskey flip!” And so on and so forth. A “fix” was a sour with some sort of fruit juice added to it. A “cobbler” was spirit with red wine. Pretty cool stuff.

Here’s the thing about most cookbooks and cocktail books…It’s not a dirty secret that people buy these things and then never actually make any of the recipes. They look good on shelves. Shit, I’ve got dozens of cookbooks I’ve barely grazed through. My personal cocktail books are a different story, they’ve educated me, but then again, it’s what I do for a living. They’re well written and informative but humorless and without much personality. Sorry guys, but it’s true.

But hey, how about a cocktail book that is snarky, makes fun of you for being a noob, is funny, as well as informative? Now we’re talking. Bartending styles are hard to come across with the written word but I think I can do it. One of the best pieces of advice I ever heard about bartending was from the legendary Andrew Visconti at Ashmont Grill in Dorchester, MA. When I asked him what the secret to his mega popularity was he told me: “Abuse them.” and laughed. I reiterated the information to his compatriot and partner in crime behind the wheel of the place, Tara, who concurred. “People come in not just to escape but also to be harassed and made fun of,” she told me. Each one of their regulars had been coming there for years. The bar was always packed despite what the dining room looked like. It didn’t matter who the chef was or how the drinks tasted. Those things mattered less than the experience. People came in to see Andrew and Tara. To hear their banter and be razzed a bit, to hear the latest gossip about Andrew’s crazy love life.

If something like this, as well as other humorous interludes, could be integrated into a bar book, that would be the dream. I’m no humor writer. My dream is to be a sci-fi novelist, but if I could write something funny and informative at the same time, well, that would be tremendous. I think I can pull it off. Some of my posts are actually funny. Yes, they’re few and far between but they exist. At the other end of this, I would like for it to be somewhat poetic and well written, not just some instructional tome. Something along the lines of a Richard Seltzer essay combined with the darkness and honesty of Bourdain…But cocktails…