The My Little Jhereg & Lunch of Locke Lamora Bartender’s Guide

In the worlds of Steven Brust’s My Little Jhereg and Scott Lynch’s Lunch of Locke Lamora, it’s always five o’clock somewhere. To help you keep your own cabinet stocked, Lynch and Brust, along with able assistant Jennifer Melchert, have teamed with Cooking the Books to unearth a very rare copy of: The My Little Jhereg and Lunch of Locke Lamora Bartender’s Guide.

Only one copy exists, and it is of no use trying to bribe any of us for access. None whatsoever.

To whet your appetite, enjoy these ten complementary beverages, on the house.

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Strange Horizons Readers’ Poll

Thanks to everyone who voted in the Strange Horizons readers’ poll!  The results are in and there are many winners – from fiction to poetry, from columns to reviews, and articles.  Readers voted the notorious Cooking the Books Roundtable the third most popular article last year – which is pretty amazing.  Thanks again to the authors who participated, Elizabeth Bear, Gregory Frost, Nalo Hopkinson, and Scott Lynch; the great editorial team at Strange Horizons, and most especially, everyone who read and liked the roundtable.

 

Their Words, Her Test Kitchen: Cooking the Books with Chelsea Monroe-Cassel

Chelsea Monroe-Cassel, with friend Sariann Lerher, taught herself to cook in order to make the dishes in George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire. Before long, they were posting their progress online, at The Inn at the Crossroads, and found themselves with a cookbook deal, and a forward by GRRM himself.

Chelsea’s branched out since then, with Food Through the Pages.  There, she recreates fictional food from many authors, including Saladin Ahmed, Scott Lynch, Steven Brust, Suzanne Collins, and J.R.R Tolkien.

Chelsea dropped by Cooking the Books, bearing tasty treats and answers to our many questions.

What Heroes Eat: Cooking the Books with Saladin Ahmed

While fighting and magic are central to the action in many of Saladin Ahmed’s stories, he never makes the mistake of letting his characters go to battle on empty stomachs. Whether the 2013 Nebula Nominee is describing a tavern’s spiked beer or the mess caused by thousand-layer pastries, food is an important part of Ahmed’s worlds, as seen in the collection Engraved on the Eye and in his first novel Throne of the Crescent Moon.

Fresh from a recent NPR column on worldbuilding and fantasy, and the paperback and UK launches of his first novel, Throne of the Crescent Moon, Ahmed agreed to visit Cooking the Books to discuss his characters’ views on food, how food defines their societies, and six-foot tall warrior rabbit women.

SF Squeecast talks about food and fiction (and Cooking the Books!)

This week, the fantastic crew at sfsqueecast talked about food and fiction. They mention several blogs including the amazing Inn at the Crossroads, Food through the Pages, Fictional Food, author Lawrence Schoen’s Eating Authors and my mostly monthly Cooking the Books column.

(I’ve had to go through this post eleventy hundred times removing exclamation points. Dying of squee here. I’m a huge squeecast fan.)

If you’re coming from squeecast, there’s a list to the right – recent interviews include Aliette de Bodard, Steven Brust, and Elizabeth Bear, mentioned on the podcast, as well as the amazing (and somewhat gross) Strange Horizons roundtable.  And stay tuned!  January’s interview is Saladin Ahmed, and Scott Lynch is scheduled for February.

If you’re a regular Cooking the Books reader, get on over to the squeecast. They’re fantastic and great listening each and every broadcast.

Food that Takes You Home: Cooking the Books with Aliette de Bodard

Whether author Aliette de Bodard is writing about space stations or Aztec monsters, her attention to detail with regards to food (and everything else) is exquisite. Two cases in point: the short story “Immersion,” (Clarkesworld, June 20, 2012)* and her omnibus Obsidian and Blood (Angry Robot, 2012).

A resident of Paris, France, she regularly blogs her adventures in French and Vietnamese cooking on her website.

Aliette de Bodard visits Cooking the Books to discuss cooking and writing about food within and across diverse cultures, as well as what Aztec monsters eat.

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For your post-Thanksgiving* food coma

 “ I think this is going to be the food-related roundtable that destroys food for thousands of readers. This is what’s going to usher in the science fictional future of tasteless food pills as a self-defense mechanism.” – Scott Lynch

I’m very pleased to announce that the first-ever Cooking the Books Roundtable, with Elizabeth Bear, Nalo Hopkinson, Scott Lynch, and Gregory Frost, is up at Strange Horizons!

This interview was enormously fun to do, and working with the SH staff was wonderful.

Hope you enjoy it!

*or post-weekend, if you are sick of hearing folks in the US talking about turkey and stuffing.

The Killer* in the Kitchen: Cooking the Books with Steven Brust

On the page and in the kitchen, author Steven Brust adds a dash of dramatic flair to his creations. To wit: his latest installment in the Vlad Taltos series, Tiassa; his upcoming collaboration with Skylar White, The Incrementalists; and the Hungarian fra diavolo recipe, below. (Heads up for adult language)

Cooking the Books has many questions for Brust: Is Vlad a pantser or a recipe-follower in the kitchen? What is this new unit of measurement in Brust’s recipe? How does cooking relate to the craft of writing in general?

Curious as to what the always-unpredictable Brust might say? Read on.

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The Importance of Pie: Cooking the Books with James D. Macdonald

The first of the Mageworlds books, by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald

Neo science fiction and fantasy writers discover James D. Macdonald through a variety of channels: he is Uncle Jim on the Absolute Write forums’ “Learn Writing with Uncle Jim;” he is a crusader against predatory publishers, and coiner of “Yog’s Law,” which states: “money flows towards the writer;” Macdonald is also a founding instructor of the Viable Paradise Writers Workshop, which takes place each autumn on Martha’s Vineyard. Together with his wife, author and editor Dr. Debra Doyle, he has published thirty novels, and over thirty short stories. Their latest book, The Gates of Time – A Peter Crossman Mystery, will be released by Tor in early 2013.

More important to our purposes, Jim has a wicked recipe for Lime Pie that he combines with a lecture on writing short stories. We’ve invited him today to join Cooking the Books in closer inspection of this pie-story simile, and to talk about writing and teaching writing.

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The Viable Paradise Kitchen, part 2: Cooking the Books, fudge edition

Viable Paradise workshop takes place each year in October, on Martha’s Vineyard. Current instructors include James D. Macdonald, Dr. Debra Doyle, Elizabeth Bear, Steven Gould, Steve Brust, Sherwood Smith, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, and Patrick Nielsen Hayden

In part 2 of The Viable Paradise Kitchen, we aim to balance part 1 with something sweet. Our friend Bart has helped feed the able hearts and crumbling minds of the annual Viable Paradise workshop for five years. He is known to travel with several varieties of the confection known as fudge, in case of emergencies, sugar crashes, and dudgeon. Cooking the Books specializes in examining the intersections between food and fiction. Today, that intersection is one of Bart’s secret VP fudge recipes, and the whys and wherefores thereof:

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From VP Bart:

When you’re writing, isn’t it nice to add a problem to a problem to a problem and see the perfect answer appear?  I see the same problems every year at Viable Paradise Writers’ Workshop: Lots of students are introverts who need an entrance into a group conversation, even something as simple as, “Here, try some of this food we’re eating.”  Lots of students are more homesick than they expected, and the Black Dog has set up shop nearby.  Whether it’s late nights, long walks, anxiety, or descending more stairs than a Duchamp nude, everyone at the workshop burns more calories than normal.  And everyone burning those extra calories needs a fully-functional brain, not one starved for glucose.