We are excited to announce Nyx Publishing’s third novella, after A Dowry of Blood and The Bone Way, which will be published in the second half of 2021. Nyx Publishing has acquired Hannah-Freya Blake’s queer Gothic debut novella Cake Craft, to be published in digital and paperback formats, combined with other short stories by Blake.
Summary for Cake Craft
I used to know the Devil, only back then he was called Arthur, and he was a seventy-eight-year-old dairy farmer from Yorkshire.
Kat is haunted by memories of her past. Memories of her first job at a nursing home, where Arthur Shipton would raise hell in search of his flat cap. Of boyfriends who preferred prettier girls, and the cakes she ate to fill her hungry heart. Now thirty, no amount of comfort food can help her get over her divorce. But Stella—Arthur’s granddaughter—might.
Beautiful and mysterious, there’s something about Stella that inspires Kat to leave the safety of her couch. She can’t help but think Stella has something to do with Arthur’s recent death, but the closer she gets to Stella, the less it matters. With Stella’s magical pull, Kat feels an old hunger—one long since buried with the crumbs of cake—reawaken.
Cake Craft is a dark, bisexual Bridget Jones set in the Gothic moors of Yorkshire with a pinch of the paranormal. It’s a story of trauma, desire, and hunger—and a whole lot of Grandma’s ginger sponge.
About the author
Hannah-Freya is a PhD candidate, novelist, and poet based in West Yorkshire. Her research on horror and humour in the Gothic bleeds into her creative writing. She is fascinated by the blending of opposites—of elegance and vulgarity, of melancholy and wit. Her short story, ‘Old Jack’, pays homage to Gothic aesthetics in the tale of a lonely man in search of the sun, and won the Creative Showcase at Sheffield’s Reimagining the Gothic in 2018. When she’s not writing, Hannah-Freya is usually eating chocolate and watching cat videos.
You can find Hannah-Freya on Twitter.