Holiday Tour Day 11: Before and After the Book Deal and Ora Cacao

A rose by any other name is... chocolate.

Chocolate makes everything … better. More enjoyable, more fulfilling, more wholesome. Pairing chocolate and writing is as natural as fish swimming in water—hence this Holiday Tour—but you can’t expect to choose just any chocolate and have the same experience.

These next two days on the Tour are working days (remember our equation Work + Chocolate = Joy! from Day 8), and we’re bringing you more of Substack’s best and most interesting—the best of our writing coaches and consultants, and the most intriguing of chocolates.

If you’d like to receive the Tour posts directly in your Inbox (and take part in the Holiday Tour prize giveaway at the end), tap this button:

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So. You’re a writer and you’re on Substack writing a newsletter. And/or you have your own blog. And/or you freelance for magazines and news outlets. And/or you’re writing/have written/have published a book/s. Whatever your game, whether you find yourself before or after the publishing deal, there is always more to learn, more to write, more to get out into the world.

It’s never too late, or too early, to talk about the business of writing. Because we, as writers, reserve the right to earn a living writing.

TCM Holiday Tour Day 11 pairing:

BEFORE AND AFTER THE BOOK DEAL and ORA CACAO

The reason I appreciate Courtney Maum’s Substack is because I’ve “been there, done that” in so many ways myself, and yet there is still so much of the “haven’t gotten there yet” ahead of me. I’ve been published as an author and as a journalist. I’ve published others. I’ve won awards. I’ve given lots of talks and done live events. I’ve done fairly well stringing words into pearl necklaces for numerous well-heeled corporate necks. But I still have plenty to learn and experience. Humility is a writer’s best kept secret virtue regardless of the writer’s status or renown, because that is what opens the door to learning and growing.

This is why spaces like Courtney’s are so refreshing. Here, you can explore all the things you’ve wanted to know about the craft and the business of writing without concerns about judgment or rejection.

Please welcome

Courtney Maum

and

Before and After the Book Deal

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Courtney Maum photographed by Michelle Gevint

The Cacao Muse: Welcome to the Holiday Tour Courtney! Chocolate before books, as we like to say. Let’s start with your favorite.

Courtney Maum: My favorite kind of chocolate is the liquid kind—specifically the hot chocolate at the historic Angelina café in Paris, France. I was lucky enough to live in Paris for most of my twenties, and Angelina was my go-to spot for friend-dates. We’d share a pot of this treat that has so much chocolate in it, you could stand a spoon in your mug and it would stick straight up.

To date, I’ve never found a better hot chocolate than they serve at Angelina, not for lack of trying!

Birgitte: Oh là là, Paris! I think they call it le chocolat chaud à l’ancienne. I hope you’ll forgive me for the slight delay on this post, as I have been searching high and low for just the right drinking chocolate for you, given the incredibly high bar you’ve set. I mean, standing spoons! I had almost given up when I remembered I have the perfect match for you right in my own chocolate pantry.¹

Courtney, may I present to you… Ora Cacao’s Tantric Rose Blossom.

[Sound of multiple chairs falling over. Apparently some readers have fainted.]

Dear readers, this chocolate might send you into unimagined ecstasies, but I promise you it is safe for work as well as public places. The chocolate, that is.

After all… what’s in a name? That which we call chocolate by any other name would taste just as sweet… or would it? The closer you get to real, unadulterated chocolate, the less sweet it becomes.

A little backstory: Jonas Ketterle, the founder of Ora Cacao, is a friend. Ora Cacao was originally called Firefly Chocolate—as you see in the photo above—and Jonas was one of the first chocolate makers I connected with when I was researching my book The Jaguar and the Cacao Tree. He came to a few of my workshops for children and taught the kids how to make chocolate from scratch, on a real metate. Here we are at a workshop in Alemany Farm in San Francisco, and another at Full Circle Farm in Sunnyvale. His personal story is fascinating… well worth the side trip down this short rabbit hole!

Chocolate: Tantric Rose Blossom Ceremonial Drinking Chocolate

Percentage: 100%

Origin: Kokoa Kamili, Tanzania

Ingredients: Cacao beans (Tanzania), pink rose petals (Morocco), orange peel (United States), damiana (Mexico),² licorice root (Turkey)

Price: $29 (1/2 lb)

Tasting Notes: The original Tantric Rose Blossom that I have from Jonas hails from the time the company was called Firefly Cacao; at that time the chocolate only had the cacao and the Moroccan pink roses. No sugar, no herbs, no orange peel. This cacao, which comes in discs of various sizes, is very intense. For those palates used to sugar or honey in their chocolate, it can be a little bit of a shock. But give it a chance to melt, especially if you’re making it into a beverage. You’ll note strong hints of bergamot and rose, and perhaps a touch of lavender.

TCM: While we wait for the discs to fully melt… is there anything you’ve been yearning to ask the experts?

Courtney: I’m going to continue with the topic of hot chocolate because it’s my obsession. I’m curious why quality hot chocolate hasn’t really caught on in the United States. People eat chocolate, they love chocolate, but the drinking of good chocolate doesn’t seem to have caught on here, and I’m curious as to why.

One of my favorite places to visit when I have the time and resources is Mexico—where I can get a beautifully-made hot chocolate nearly anywhere I go! Of course, drinking chocolate has historical roots in Aztec culture so the affection for hot chocolate in Mexico makes sense, but still—as an expert, why do you think Americans prefer solid chocolate to drinking chocolate?

Birgitte: Excellent question, and in fact one that my colleagues in the chocolate world and I have been discussing. We wonder as a society here in North America, we “do coffee” but we don’t “do chocolate.” Ironically, drinking chocolate is by far the most durable form if you look at chocolate’s five-thousand-year history. The original cacao cultures in ancient South and Central America took their cacao as a beverage. Drinking chocolate was all the rage in Europe in the 1600’s and especially the 1700’s, when cafés and coffeehouses served tea, coffee and hot chocolate. It’s only in the past few hundred years that the bar has become commonplace. The bar as we know it was invented by Joseph Fry in 1847, although the ancient Aztecs hold the technical first here—they packed bars of cacao mixed with maize in banana leaves and took them on long journeys.

My personal opinion is that the chocolate bar is much more packageable, transportable, and practical than drinking chocolate—you don’t need to mix it or heat it or serve it. As such, for chocolate brands it’s an easier product to manufacture, transport, and distribute, and for consumers it’s easier to store at home. Way to go, utilitarian lifestyle! I do agree it would be lovely to return to the good old days of hot chocolate in coffeehouses.

TCM: Speaking of the chocolate sector, is there anything you’d change if you could?

Courtney: I’d make generic chocolate brands less sweet!

Birgitte: Amen to that.

TCM: Now that our bellies are full of the heady stuff, tell us more about Before and After the Book Deal.

Courtney: In my fiction and nonfiction, I like to write about people on the cusp of some great change or realization that is going to alter the way they live going forward. Honesty, humor, and vulnerability are crucial to my writing, and also to my Substack, named after my publishing guide: Before and After the Book Deal.

Whether people are just setting out as writers or have three books to their name, my Substack is the place for real talk about the publishing industry—why is it so hard to get an agent? What do rejections actually mean? Is it as hard to sell memoir as people claim, and why?—but it’s also a place of deep and meaningful support where I try to help people find new ways to gain momentum and clarity in their writing.

Paying subscribers get lots of perks such as the ability to have their work critiqued. I love writing my Substack—I take the publication of my weekly posts quite seriously and think of my subscribers as colleagues.

Birgitte: One of my favorite sections is Industry Challenges, where you tackle the on-the-ground, in-the-field matters of making an actual living from your writing. It’s important we writers don’t lose sight of the fact that we deserve not only to be respected but to be properly remunerated, and to have our profession respected by the outside world.

And with that, dear readers, I leave you to the rest of your day to enjoy a cup of steaming hot drinking chocolate and Courtney’s Substack, where you can stand a pen in your notebook and it will point you to a more productive and financially sustainable professional horizon.

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COMING UP! DAY 12 of the TCM HOLIDAY TOUR

Think you’re done with lessons & tips on writing and publishing, and you can now run off to your favorite café to have some hot chocolate and pastries?

Not so fast.

We continue the learning streak with another business-of-publishing rockstar tomorrow.

So much time, so little to do.

But okay, you can have your hot chocolate.

1. Yes, such a thing exists. An entire segment of my pantry is devoted to chocolate. I also have a mini fridge full of them, set to a low temperature of course. My husband is desperate.

2. Damiana is an herb, a wild shrub that grows in Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies. As with any herbs, I recommend you consult your herbalist or appropriate nutritional specialist to learn more about its properties and any potential side effects that might pertain to your personal health situation.