I want to thank for Brigit for having me here on such a special day to romance writers – Valentine’s Day! If you ask people what they think about when someone says “Valentine’s Day”, I bet that at least a few of them would say “chocolates” while some would say “jewelry.” Perfect gifts for people to share to show how much they love one another and while we’re busy sharing the love, we might want to think about thanking the Aztecs!
Why the Aztecs? The Aztecs believed that chocolate was a gift from their god Quetzalcoatl, who descended from the heavens carrying a cocoa tree much in the same way that Prometheus brought fire from Mount Olympus. The cocoa was used by the Aztecs for a cold unsweetened drink called xocoatl. Because the Aztecs did not have sugar, xocoatl was often flavored with other spices, like chile powder.
Aztecs believed that xocoatl was a health elixir and dare we say that for many modern women chocolate is a miracle cure around that “time?” Because of these perceived benefits, Aztecs reserved chocolate for priests, the wealthy and warriors.
Cocoa beans were so important to the Aztecs that they used them as currency and even accepted cocoa as payment from tribes they had conquered!
You might say that chocolate was the equivalent of brown gold, but the Aztecs also had their share of real gold. To the Aztecs, however, gold was as precious as it was to the Conquistadors. In fact, the Aztec word for gold meant “excrement of the gods!”
Aztec gold plays a role in my current paranormal release, AZTEC GOLD, from Carina Press found at the link or click on the book cover below.
In my novella, an ancient Aztec demon is still alive deep in a Mexican jungle. The demon has captured a team of archeologists who were attempting to find a previously undiscovered temple. The team has been missing for several months, but when a museum curator, Cynthia Guerrero, is given papers to authenticate, she discovers that the journal and map are the same as the one her ex-lover, the leader of the team, had shown her months earlier before he disappeared.
Cynthia’s journey to find her missing lover and to help him battle the demon is action packed and rather sexy. The demon is a really nasty villain, guarding something really amazing within the walls of the pyramid.
I hope you liked this little peek into chocolate, gold and my new novella!
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