If you could actually change the world...
would you?
Wine and Wisdom
How it all started
What happens when two middle-aged women with vastly different, yet, in many ways, remarkably similar, pasts find themselves sitting in front a fireplace on a quiet winter evening, drinking wine and contemplating life and other various mysteries of the universe? No husbands, no obligations pressing in. Just a bottle (or two) of red wine, and the kind of conversation that only happens when time stretches and defenses fall away.
Somewhere between the first pour and the last, we realized we shared something deeper than friendship: we shared a growing frustration with the state of the world.
We had grown up believing the world was, if not perfect, at least improving. That racism, misogyny, and poverty, while far from solved, were gradually being pushed back. That there was a broad, unspoken agreement that progress mattered, and that it was worth protecting.
We believed in a future with fewer wars, more freedom, and greater equality.
And yet, as we looked at the current state of the planet, we found ourselves asking: What the hell happened?
Ideas we thought had been left behind, dangerous, divisive, and extreme, have returned; they are no longer hidden at the fringes but are spoken aloud, even celebrated. The divide between rich and poor is wider than ever before in history. Hatred of women, of outsiders, of anyone deemed “other” is no longer whispered but declared, justified, and, at times, endorsed by those in power. And all of this is not confined to one place; it is happening everywhere.
We knew we were not alone in feeling this way. Many women of our generation carry the same unease, the same quiet anger, the same question: what can we do?
The wine flowed, reality became a bit more fluid, and we asked ourselves…
What if there existed a group of women, bound not only by shared conviction but by extraordinary abilities? Women who could not only imagine change but could enforce it. Women who refused to accept the world as it is and instead reshaped it into what it could be.
And what if the stories we have been told, about the women who came before us, the ones history half-remembers and half-erases, are not as distant as we think?
These books were born from those questions.
Call it fantasy. Call it escapism. Call it therapy.
We call it Midlife Vengeance Vampires.
From the dark depths of the cellar to the defiant bites of the kitchen, these are the recipes and pairings that fuel our stories.
All the recipes featured come from the Midlife Vengeance Vampires novels.
Ursula, a culinary historian, researches and creates the recipes.
Julia generously volunteers for the demanding and entirely selfless role of official taste tester.