Nicole Locke | Sweet Inspiration

Have you ever had one of those: Everything-Goes-Wrong-Days? As in kids are late
for school, you burned dinner, and the house is a wreck just as guests popped by
for a visit? When this happens, I need something to just get by. Most likely
it’s a cup of tea, some chocolate…a piece of cake.

And I don’t need it because it’s something nice, but unnecessary. It’s because right then I need something normal—centering—and then I can get on with whatever is left of my day. In THE KNIGHT'S SCARRED MAIDEN, Rhain and Helissent’s story is about honey cakes. And they’re not unnecessary for them either; in fact, the cakes give them their happily ever after.

Helissent is a baker. She compares her life’s struggles to failed bakes, and
thinks of people like ingredients. She also talks in baking terminology, which
confuses many a discussion. I loved discovering how she thought.

But the cakes mean something else for her as well. Helissent’s family died in a
tragic fire. Burned severely on the right side of her body, she was healed with
honey. When the innkeepers adopt her, she brings in more patrons by learning to
bake honey cakes.

Then you have Rhain, who irritated a few people in the mercenary business and now has a powerful warlord after him. On the run with his band of mercenaries, he stops at an inn and tastes some cakes. Though it risks his life, he stays.

Because he was introduced in an earlier book, Rhain was already a fully
developed character when I started his story. But since his life was in such
turmoil, I needed to find something to center him.

Maybe I was hungry that day, but I used honey cakes, and that’s when Helissent
arrived on the page. In the beginning, I didn’t appreciate the importance of her
baking nor fully understand how such a normal dessert could be so significant
for both characters. It inspired me to cook Medieval, and bake a lot of honey
cakes and apple fritters. I even tried some of Helissent’s more savoury recipes.
Then I understood as I fed my family why cakes were important.

It’s because of the saying, It’s the little things in life that count. That’s
certainly true for Rhain and Helissent. And I think it’s true in real life, too.