8 Lessons that Working in a Bakery has Taught Me About Love and Writing Romance

by Elaine Stock

Hi Seekerville dear ones! And HAPPY FRIDAY!! Carrie here, at least momentarily. Today I have the utmost privilege of hosting my friend, Elaine Stock, as she shares the lessons she's learned about love and writing romance from her work environment. In a bakery. Color me officially jealous. 

Grab one of these virtual cinnamon rolls (no calories! Bliss.) and let's spend some time with Elaine Stock...

Heartfelt thanks and much appreciation to Carrie and the rest of the Seekerville team for hosting me again.

I work in a retail bakery (thus the virtual cinnamon rolls and vanilla French horns I brought today for you to enjoy), which provides me with the delight of giving, getting, and enjoying—great lessons when it comes to writing romances. In this work environment where sugar, rising yeasty dough, and creamy chocolate regularly waft up to my willing and ready sniffer to inhale, I’ve discovered it’s also a great place to check out all types of love.

1. Sweetness is always in season

There are many seasons in the bakery world. A smart retailer hits the marketing of the holidays: New Years, Valentine’s Day, Saint Patrick’s Day and right through Christmas. They also manage to create the in-between celebrations from Green-For-Spring and Fall Foliage that includes apple cider doughnuts to pumpkin pies. Note: I’m writing this article in August and yep, those apple cider doughnuts are already out! However, the season of love is year round, just as the characters in my newest novel, Christmas Love Year Round, discover.

Here are some things I’ve observed about romance and love:

The season of ordering a cake for a gender-reveal party and watching the mom-to-be glow with anticipation while she looks adoringly at her husband standing beside her.

The customer who keeps a furtive look over her shoulder, making sure no one sees her ordering a “surprise” birthday cake with the inscription of I Will Love You Always.

The bittersweet phone order from a grandma whose 2-year-old granddaughter won’t be able to see or taste the cake or hear the Happy Birthday song they’ll sing… or the eighty-something-old woman who orders a birthday cake with the writing of We Miss You Daddy.

Love is year round. This is the exact lesson that Cami and Gavin learn in my newest release. Many people experience a surge of love and forgiveness during the Christmas holiday season but often forget that our Father wants us to love year round. And by love, this means all others, even former enemies as these two are. To love someone with all of your heart is the only thing that matters in this world.

2. You can’t hide from anyone.

I began working in this bakery after a 12-year stint at a national café chain. When I chose last October to leave my former job I’d envisioned making a clean getaway from my old place of work. Oh, how I was wrong. Daily, I see many former customers I’d waited on and had gotten to know on a first-name basis. I can still tell you their personal food preferences. Scary, huh?

I’ve had to face the news: I can’t hide from others. Isn’t this true in romance? Love always catches up with those who are destined to fall in love. Cami and Gavin certainly couldn’t hide from each other. She’d joined other kids back during their school years to bully Gavin and his family. After high school she went her way by marrying, becoming a pre-school director and wife then a widowed mom. He tried to escape by enlisting in the Air Force then living outside of their hometown of Kindred Lake. What happens? They become neighbors! Yep, no escaping.

3. We’re all different; we’re all the same.

Perhaps I’ve been slowly picking this lesson up through the years, but it wasn’t until this bakery position did I truly absorb that while I’m an individual with various particularities that makes me me and uniquely different from others, it’s all okay.

This lesson helped me to vary both the major and minor characters in my new romance. It also helped me to inject the spice of the unexpected. I hope my readers will appreciate these story elements and see how it influenced the characters to relate—or not relate—to each other.

4. Clean is good.

In any kind of food business, there is the dreaded inspection, both planned and unannounced, to check up on food, quality, and health issues. This can happen on either the corporate or state or national level. Let alone, this must happen on the individual employee level, aka, having a conscience, decency, and good morals. No one should want to spread germs, sell out-dated or damaged product, or foster a bad customer service environment. Clean is good!

Many of you read and write what’s known in the book industry as clean romance. I do as well. We tend to like the bedroom door closed. We’re thrilled to see how a man and a woman can fall in love and stay in love and define what love is rather than to explore any kind of sensual mechanics that might fall into the Rated R or I’m-out-of-here categories.

5. Pacing, timing, and leave her alone.

This was one of the most abject lessons I’d recently encountered: I was called from the freezer to the front counter to wait on a customer. Rather than finding one woman, there were two. I asked the woman standing closest to me whether I could help her. Dressed in ruffled clothing, with her gray hair disheveled, and a growing snarl she shouted in high-test volume “What? Do I look like I need help?” Hmm. Okay. I guessed not, after all.

This leave-me-alone lesson can definitely be applied to characters. Whether you’re a plotter or pantser (and I’m the latter), try as you may to control your characters and their destiny, even fictional people have a mind and will of their own. Give them lots of space and time and they’ll come around. If they don’t, maybe there’s an excellent reason and it’s time to put on the thinking caps again.

6. Baby, it’s cold in here.

You’d think working in a bakery means standing perpetually by a hot oven and attempting not to sweat to the point of embarrassment. My grandfather, who was a professional baker and worked overnight back in his day without all the modern equipment, might have daydreamed about jumping into a swimming pool, but believe me, it’s really a cold working environment. No wonder why I was given a felt jacket and freezer coats are available.

But, ah, imagine adding the zest between two characters who need to literally warm up from the winter’s cold? Or perhaps the opposite, having to cool off from the summer’s heat… yet with the romance between them beginning to sizzle, there’s no cooling off (yes, I’m grinning).

Good thing Cami and Gavin had a wiggling puppy to hold between them to add a bit of warmth. And an oven to pull home-baked cookies out from. And hot cocoa. You get the picture, I’m sure.

7. That song again? Really?

Ack. That piped-in muzak! You hear it everywhere—from banks, your fave coffee shop, and yes, the restaurant’s powder room. And uh-huh, I hear the same old songs every day at work that once upon a time I used to enjoy but no more.

Yet, there’s a reason why many readers love romances, and why, thankfully, they can never get enough of them. It’s because love is beautiful. Love is a blessing, to receive and to give. To cherish. It made grandma sigh and fueled a lover to go fight the bad guys so he can make a safe haven for his beloved. Love makes us all want to make up after a spat because it hurts too much to be upset with a loved one who loves us as equally and fiercely as we love him or her.

The love song, whether audio wise or heart wise, will always rock!

8. Yes, you can have chocolate.

These days, unless you have an allergy to chocolate, it’s become a bit easier to enjoy the sweet, though of course, moderation is always best. Sadly, the past year has found me lactose intolerant as well as unable to handle butter. Do you realize how much milk and butter is in baked goods? But, oh my, I work in a chocolate-surrounded, milk-is-us, and butter-is-holy environment. By the weekend when my sweet tooth acts up, I cave. What’s a gal to do? Lactaid pills to the rescue… but definitely, only certain sweets and within sensible measures. And my conclusion…

Chocolate. It’s the food of romance. And for a reason!

Go forth, and continue to enjoy reading and writing those romances.

With the Pre-Sale of Christmas Love Year Round, for the bargain price of only 99 cents, in progress now until the book’s release on September 25^th, I’m offering 1 viewer the choice between a print (US only) or Kindle edition of this novel’s “companion novella,” And You Came Along.

 

Elaine Stock is the author of the novels Her Good Girl, winner of the 2018 American Fiction Awards in the Christian Inspirational category plus the Silver Metal winner in the 2018 Readers Favorite Awards in the Christian Fiction genre. Her debut novel, Always With You, won the 2017 Christian Small Publishers Association Book of the Year Award in fiction. And You Came Along, a novella, released in December 2017. Her novels fuse romance, family drama and faith in a clean fiction style. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers, Romance Writers of America, and Women’s Fiction Writers Association. In addition to Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads, she hangs out on her active blog, Everyone’s Story, dedicated to uplifting and encouraging all readers through the power of story and hope.

Born in Brooklyn, NY, Elaine has now been living in upstate, rural New York with her husband for more years than her stint as a NYC gal. She enjoys long walks down country roads, visiting New England towns, and of course, a good book.

You can connect with Elaine on her website, the Everyone's Story blog, Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.

Her new book Christmas Love Year Round releases for Kindle on September 25 and can be preordered HERE for only $0.99!

Cami Richardson is good at chasing away the men in her life: first Gavin Kinkaid, a former classmate she’d helped to bully, and later, her husband who left her widowed and a single mom. Now all she wants is to bring a smile back to her eight-year-old son. What she doesn’t expect is for Gavin to become her new neighbor.

Gavin wants to settle down after serving in the Air Force and mend the separation between him and his dad. What he doesn't count on is his changing feelings when he sees Cami as a kind woman instead of his former adversary.

When Cami’s son blindsides them both during the Christmas season, is their reunion at risk or will it grow stronger?

Comment below to be entered in giveaway for winner's choice between a print (US only) or Kindle version of And You Came Along, the companion novella to Christmas Love Year Round. 

What is your favorite baked good?
Which of Elaine's observations resonated most with you?