Category: The Ramble (page 2 of 481)

It’s 9th century Norway and Rúnr Njalson has been gifted supernatural warrior abilities as Odin’s chosen Berserkr. Enemies and allies quake in fear at his approach. But when the unbeatable hero cannot save his own daughter Yrsa during a rival clan’s raid, his only choice is to seek vengeance to gain her entry into Valhalla.

Plagued with horrific visions and grappling with the loss of his precious child, whose ghost torments his nights, Rúnr seeks the direction of a seeress’s prophecy, and is told he must find a mysterious red temple and there face Yrsa’s killer to save her soul from a fate with Hel. He abandons his homeland on a hunt spanning the dark forests of the Slavs and the Rus to the fabled city of Constantinople, along the way throwing in with a motley band of Viking raiders: Captain Garmr’s ferocity fits the namesake of Hel’s hound; the nervous merchant Erasmus hides secrets he’ll never tell; the warrior Ingimar whose quick temper is going to get them all into trouble; and the fierce shieldmaiden Ingirid who may be the only one able to break through Rúnr’s tough exterior.

While Rúnr’s love for Ingirid grows, his Berserkr rage become more volatile, testing the crew’s bonds and leading him to face an impossible sacrifice.

Lift a horn of ale and taste sweat and blood in this rich and brutal dark Viking adventure.

Video games are legit storytelling

There’s always some asshole out there gatekeeping books. Audiobooks aren’t reading, they spout. Or graphic novels don’t count. Or video games. Can we talk about video games a moment?

I grew up with the original NES. I ran home (literally ran—we lived across the street) from elementary school every day to play Super Mario Brothers. A simple game with minimal plot and endless fun that I felt lucky to have. Then I got The Legend of Zelda,with its storyline and bottomless pouch and the ability to save the game! Then Metroid. Hoo boy, the gatekeepers lost their minds when (SPOILER) Samus Aran took off that helmet to reveal that the hero was *gasp* a woman!

Point is, even back then in the 80s (the late 1900s as my daughter enjoys telling me) video games were doing storytelling things. So when I got all growed up and could afford a new gaming console, I shouldn’t have been surprised when I ran face first into something like The Last of Us.

Pause for…feelings. Don’t tell me that’s not legit storytelling.

We play video games because they’re fun, sure, but also because they’re frustrating and infuriating and enlightening and inspiring. Just like books. And movies and the theater and so on. They’re all “real” storytelling. Hard stop. In fact, the whole reason you’re reading this, the whole reason I wrote Valhalla Burning, is because of a video game. I was between novels, directionless, certain I had no stories left to tell, and then Assassin’s Creed Valhalla dropped, and BOOM: inspiration. I started writing again. And here we are.

Bottom line? Lesson? If you want to write, read. A lot. But also feed your creativity in every other way you can. Watch movies, go to museums, paint something, play video games, whatever. Just don’t listen to the gatekeepers. Love what you love.

(side note: check out the reviews on the back cover of Valhalla Burning—the lead writer of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla read it and loved it! Could I be geeking out any harder right now?!!)

A dead language, sort of

Video games are not the only bit of my childhood that helped inspire Valhalla Burning. There was playing D&D and reading every Dragonlance book I could find and all of that. And now as an adult English professor suffering from massive, perpetual imposter syndrome, I count among my favorite works the epic poem Beowulf.  So while writing this novel, I did the dumbest smart thing I’ve ever done: I decided to personally translate some of that poem. For shits and giggles.

My favorites translations of Beowulf are by Edwin Mogran, Seamus Heaney, and Maria Dahvana Headley (holy jumping epics, friends—read Headley’s translation if you have any interest in this poem, or in Vikings, or the Anglo-Saxons, or anything medieval at all!). So I started my translation work with the introductions written by these translators. Three masterpieces, three different approaches to the poem’s content, vocabulary, syntax, meter, and all that technical stuff. Three different takes on the “soul” of the poem.

Was it fun learning and translating Old English? Yes. And no. It was difficult. Frustrating. Recursive. Dull. Sometimes exciting. In the end, I managed to render about 25 lines spanning the three major battles Beowulf fights against Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon.

What’s my point? Well, first, like Chuck Noland in Castaway, I kind of just want to shout, “Look what I’ve created!”

More importantly, I did this thing that had no need to be done. Because I wanted to. Like I wanted to write a Viking novel. Like I wanted to have ice cream for dinner last night. And I don’t regret any of it. So go do the thing you want to do. And then tell all the people about it. Because you can. Because you’re human. Because humans make and create and do all those artsy things.

Also, fuck generative AI.

Listen to the voices in your head

The first title for this book was Of Vengeance and Valhalla. It was an okay title, but every time I typed it out, I knew it wasn’t going be THE title…because a little voice told me.  

I wrote the first draft of this novel in first person point of view. 65k words in, it began falling apart. I tried to soldier on, but it was a mess. I needed to start over in third person, a little voice told me.

I knew the ending from the start. Until I didn’t. I planned a relationship that never panned out. I wrote scenes that got cut. Why? That little voice.

I could go on. Muse. Intuition. Instinct. Jiminy Cricket. Call it what you want, but you know what I’m talking about. That feeling that authors and artists and fabricators and knitters and chefs and architects know all too well. Our creative, narrative voices. Sometimes we think we know better, sometimes we pretend not to hear, but more often than not we should probably just shut up and listen. That’s how we make our best art, by listening.

Being an author takes patience…and I suck at patience

Do you know how long it takes to make a novel?

Not write a novel. That’s only part of the equation. Make a novel. Bring it from first words to published entity out there for random humans to read.

The answer is: I have no idea.

Don’t hate the messenger. My first novel took five years from first word to publication. My second took half that time. My fastest: 22 months. Slowest: seven years.

Want to know how long it took to bring Valhalla Burning to life? If you’ve read this far, I’m guessing you do.

I wrote the first words in late 2020, deep in the COVID times. As mentioned above, there were hiccups. Crippling doubts. Complete start overs. But I finally finished the manuscript in early summer 2023, and I began querying to find an agent. And (holy shit!) I signed with an agent in spring 2024. We revised, heavily and quickly, and then began seeking a publisher in June of 2024.

Now’s a good time to talk about how I suck at patience. Because every day querying made me sad and angry and frustrated and hopeful and even a bit depressed. Every day with the book on sub felt like a decade. I refreshed my email more often than a lovesick teen checking their phone. I lost hope daily. For weeks. Months. Seasons.

My 50^th birthday approached in June 2025. I told myself that if no publisher wanted my book by then, it was time to throw in the creative towel and quit writing. My birthday arrived. Silence. Can I tell you the feelings that were being all feelingly in me that day?

The next day, the (impossibly true) very next day, I got an email from my agent that a publisher was interested. An agonizingly long week later, I had a promising Zoom chat with the publisher. Then: a month of silence and waiting. Pure torment. Then, in July, an email. A contract offer. Negotiation. Wait. Counteroffer, hurry and read it today. Then, wait. A question, hurry and reply. Then, wait. Finally, I signed the contract in August (only August? Impossible, I tell you! It must have been November three years hence!). Then, in September, I got the first edits and a 4 week deadline to complete the work. This pattern, with ever shrinking windows for me to complete my end, continued for the next six months. Revisions, line edits, copyedits, cover design, back cover copy, blurbs. All a blur, the work breakneck, the waiting anguish.

Have I told you how much I suck at patience? I won’t even stand in line for ice cream if there’s more than three people in front of me.

But in the end, we did it. Valhalla Burning is real as of July 21, five years and eight months since I wrote its first words. Feels like twice that. Some days alone felt like years. And my next book might be slower. Or faster. Your experience might be similar or wildly different. Because that’s publishing.

Only thing I know for certain is: I suck as being patient.

Vikings were brutal. But also beautiful

Vikings. Saying that one word conjures all kinds of images and facts. Braided beards. Axes. Tattoos. Longships. Pillaging. Sagas. The assertion that “Vikings weren’t a people, it was a job.”

That last one is mostly semi-true. “Viking,” as we think of it today, is a catch-all term for Dark Age Scandinavians that was popularized during the Victorian era. It has roots in the Old Norse phrase fara í viking, meaning to go raiding, with the noun vikingr meaning the  raider or the pirate. So when people say “the Vikings” today, they can mean just that small percentage of Scandinavians whom we romanticize as those Norse warriors, or they can mean the entirety of that culture.

One thing that’s accurate is the Viking era was absolutely brutal, with violence and disease and invasions and natural disasters that would make the darkest movies blanche. But the farmers and priests and hunters and slaves and settlers and children and shieldmaidens (yep, they probably existed, though maybe were not common) were real people with real lives. They loved and struggled and made art and sang songs and developed such rich tapestries of ideals, beliefs, identities, and culture. Too much, by far, to be reduced to our familiar cliches. The Vikings were diverse and beautiful, arrogant and oppressive, brutal and kind. Just like we are. And we probably shouldn’t romanticize them as much as we do, nor should we diminish them to a singular characteristic or action as we’re so apt to do.

And yet here I am, telling you all about my “Viking” novel.

So maybe we’ll change that label for a moment. Valhalla Burning is about fatherhood and family, about friends and oaths and monsters, about trauma and humanity and faith, all in a time and in places where the Vikings were doing their thing, leaving their mark on a world that had a little more wonder left in it than, perhaps, does ours.

Bonus: 5 things about Vikings you may not know

• Vikings didn’t wear horned helmets as they’re popularly depicted. That’s a Victorian invention.
• Viking funerals with the deceased floating away on a burning ship as we see in movies were likely not common or even a real thing at all.
• Vikings were renowned for their cleanliness, with a dedicated day for bathing each week; in fact, there’s evidence (thought it’s likely little more than a medieval form of clickbait) that some Anglo-Saxons worried their women would find Viking raiders more attractive than their own men.
• The poem Beowulf was largely ignored by readers and scholars until JRR Tolkien gave a speech about its beauty and importance in 1936.
• Berserkers, those Norse warriors who could morph into near-supernatural heroes, almost like Viking era Hulks, may have actually been real (leaving this one here as a final teaser for you to explore in Valhalla Burning)

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Michael Pogachis the author of the Gothic thriller, Slip, a 2023 PenCraft Award runner-up, as well as the Rafael Ward dystopian series beginning with The Spider in the Laurel, a Kindle Book Award finalist. When not working on his next novel, Michael teaches literature and creative writing in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley where he lives with his wife, two kids, and a black cat named Wednesday.

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Michael Pogach: Website | Instagram | Threads

Valhalla Burning: Doylestown Bookshop | Bookshop.org | Amazon | B&N

Alien first contact tangles up with portal fantasy in this lush, adventurous tale, perfect for anyone who grew up dreaming of visiting Narnia or traveling to the stars.

Lady Ada Quintrall, heir to her grandfather the Duke of Corbridge, wants nothing more than to see her family’s new planet successfully terraformed, restoring their fortune and ensuring them a stable future. That means shutting away her whimsical side (including the beloved Chronicles of Yeneh, a children’s portal fantasy written by her own ancestor)—and refusing the requests of Dr. Zamora, the xenobiologist who is begging to study the planet’s native life before it’s driven extinct.

Ada’s own encounters with the native life are vicious and unsettling. But when Zamora trespasses into an Infested Zone, Ada goes after him and discovers the astonishing truth: Not only does this planet have native sentient life, but those beings share a connection to her family that’s older, deeper, and closer to her heart than she could have imagined.

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1. Blending genres is my happy place

Genres are like ice cream. Sometimes you just want one great flavor with no distractions: your classic chocolate (sci-fi), or strawberry (fantasy). Sometimes you want a twist on the classic—I’m partial to strawberry cheesecake ice cream (let’s call that portal fantasy)—or some sub-genre toppings to add excitement. But what about when the ice cream shop offers you multiple scoops of different flavors?

Picking flavors that go together, sometimes unexpectedly, is its own sort of fun. Genre-blending, if done well, is like the most surprisingly delicious ice cream sundae.

I love the bold excitement of a space adventure, and the thought-provoking politics of a good first contact story. I also love the whimsy and nostalgia of a portal fantasy! So in writing The Final Chronicle of Yeneh, I said… why not both?

This story came out of the parallels I saw between space exploration and portal fantasies. Both involve exploring wondrous new worlds, but with different sensibilities; where most portal fantasies let us daydream about saving the world, the best first contact sci-fi confronts us with how we affect the places and species we encounter, often not in a good way. Blending these genres let me play with both that sense of wonder and the weight of planetary-scale consequences.

Add in some light historical vibes (Ada is the space-faring granddaughter of a duke) and a dose of plantpunk, and I discovered an unexpectedly fun flavor combination, which made it a delight to write!

2. Not every character wants a romance—but friendship stories are underrated

At a recent convention, I was telling a reader about Yeneh, specifically about the scientist, Zamora, who pushes Ada to let him study the planet’s native life. “And then they fall in love,” this reader said. I smiled and told her she’d have to read to find out, but she was quite certain of it.

I can’t blame her, not only because romantasy is so popular, but because I did set out for them to have a romance. But in the course of writing, every time I tried to include romantic moments or lingering glances, it fell flat. I’ve written romance subplots before, but Ada was persistently focused on more important things: first on supporting her family’s terraforming project, and then on protecting the yeheneh. Zamora kept snarking at her, but never quite flirting.

Eventually, I recognized that the romance wouldn’t be true to Ada’s character. What she needed was a friend, and Zamora turned out to be the right one. I think there’s a dearth of friendship stories, especially male-female friendship, especially where neither of them are gay. And with apologies to that one reader, in this story, friendship serves far better than a romance would have.

3. Plants on Earth are as wonderfully weird as aliens

When I want to write a truly alien-feeling alien, I turn to research about species on Earth, which can be so much stranger than what we think about day to day. In The Final Chronicle of Yeneh, I knew I wanted the native species to look and feel like plants, yet intelligent and lovable. How would they move and communicate? How would they experience the world?

Scientists are constantly discovering new things about plants that upend our old ideas. Just a few that I took inspiration from:

• The boquila plant in South America changes its appearance to mimic whatever plants are growing near it, meaning it can look completely different from one location to the next, despite being the same species. It’s well documented, but no one knows how it does this.
• In forests, trees cooperate via vast networks of underground fungi, which help spread messages and warnings and even distribute resources between them.
• Not only do plants produce chemicals tailored to ward off specific pests; some have been found to spread warnings to others of their species when they encounter a pest, so the others can get a head start on chemical production. Even more wild: some plants seem to make chemicals that attract the predators of the insects that want to munch on them!

Ideas like these melded together into the aliens that became the yeheneh, the native beings that turn out to be far more than they first appear.

4. Rewilding has its problems—but it still matters

Rewilding was one of the original sparks of inspiration for Yeneh, and as I learned, it’s more complex and less ideal than it might seem. More common in the UK and Europe than here in the US (where we still have some larger areas of minimally-disturbed wilderness—did you know that England, too, was once covered in forests? Can you picture it?), rewilding is the careful, deliberate process of restoring ecologically wrecked landscapes to active ecosystems resembling what they once were before humans intervened. As a nature lover with a background in environmental advocacy, of course it appealed to me!

Rewilding involves bringing back plants that control drainage and erosion, attract pollinators, feed birds, and provide shelter for other insects and critters. You need insects for the birds to eat, predators to control the smaller animals, keystone species like beavers and wolves… An ecosystem is an endlessly complex web of relationships that we humans still don’t fully understand, no matter how much we study it. The best we can do is help foster the basic necessities for the system to right itself.

(The same would be true for terraforming, which is Ada’s family’s goal in Yeneh. Starting with—or making—a blank slate might seem easier, but an artificially created ecosystem could only be a gross simplification, with a tiny fraction of the species you’d find in any ecosystem on Earth.)

The name “rewilding” implies going back to what was there previously, and as I learned, that’s not actually possible. The exact balance, the full range of species and relationships, can never be entirely reproduced. It’s gone forever. But I also learned that that’s okay. Nature changes over time on its own; if rewilding yields a new balance of biodiversity, it’s still better than barren landscapes. The important thing is finding ways to act in harmony with nature, not wiping away the parts we don’t like.

5. Cynicism doesn’t have to kill our childhood dreams

I started writing The Final Chronicle of Yeneh during the pandemic—not a time that inspired optimism about humanity, to say the least. Perhaps the recent memory of lockdown was part of why weaving some portal fantasy into the heart of this sci-fi story was so appealing to me. Portal fantasy is nostalgia and escape from the everyday. No matter how old I get, I still find delight in the idea of experiencing fantastical new places.

Some adult portal fantasies keep that sense of wonder, while others show them dark and tarnished, made gritty by real-world concerns. There are some heavy themes in Yeneh—colonization, genocide, ancestral guilt—but it was important to me that there also be light, hope, and joy. Ada feels a deep connection to the portal fantasies she read as a child (especially the in-world series The Chronicles of Yeneh, written by her own ancestor), and still daydreams about having her own portal fantasy adventure. I wanted to give her a real adventure when she meets the native beings, the yeheneh—and you, dear reader, get to come along with her.

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Jo Miles writes optimistic science fiction and fantasy, including the Infinite Pantry series. Their short stories have appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Uncanny, and more. Jo lives in Maryland, where they help nonprofits use the internet to save the world, but mostly serve the whims of their two cats.

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The Final Chronicle of Yeneh: Bookshop | Amazon | B&N | Horned Lark Press

Follow Jo Miles: Website | Newsletter | Bluesky | Instagram

Return to the mushroom metropolis of Neo Kinoko, immerse yourself in a sinister world of gangsters, blackmail, and fungal cuisine, and prepare for a Michelin-star tragedy in six courses.

The knives are out in this fast-paced, standalone Fungalverse novel. Set several months after the events of the award-winning Mushroom Blues, this side story combines the culinary wonder of Jiro Dreams of Sushi, the kitchen chaos of The Bear, and the explosive tension of Hong Kong crime thrillers.

In the aftermath of the “Fuyu Massacre,” riots and whispers of revolution continue to plague the Hōpponese capital of Neo Kinoko. As a result, the iron grip of a foreign military occupation tightens day by day. Amidst this, Pocho Jiro, a once-renowned makizushi chef, has chosen to cook for Duncan MacArthur—the Coprinian Military Governor in Hōppon—as his personal chef… and indentured servant.

A run-in with dangerous fungal gangsters sets off a chain of events that Pocho cannot escape from. He’s left with two choices: Assassinate MacArthur, or watch his beloved sister die in front of his eyes. Will Pocho take up his knife and prepare MacArthur’s final meal?

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Shit… writing a second book really is hard

Just before I published my debut novel, Mushroom Blues, I had all these grand, ambitious publishing plans, and even a projection timeline that lined up release windows years in advance. I told myself, “I’ll write and release book two by X date, and then do book three by Y date, et cetera et cetera.” But, well… all of that fell apart faster than a goddamn fungus grows after a rainstorm.

Turns out, writing a second book can actually be as challenging as people say—it certainly was for me. “The Sophomore Slump,” “Sequelitis,” “Second Book Blues” or whatever you want to call it, it’s real! The thing is, as much as I’d prepared myself mentally (even talking to numerous published authors on my podcast about this very concept), I wasn’t ready for how I would actually feel once Mushroom Blues was published, nor was I ready for the weeks and months that followed. I put so much of my mental and emotional energy into that book that I didn’t leave room to enjoy the achievement of debuting, or the successes that followed, or the fact that I had other stories that I wanted to write.

And that’s not to be negative and poo-poo my whole experience—on the contrary. For a self-published debut, Mushroom Blues has done really well: it has sold thousands of copies; it got nominated for a bunch of awards and won many of them; and it even landed 2^nd place (out of 300 books) in Mark Lawrence’s tenth Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off (SPFBO) competition. That’s a lot to live up to for a project that started out as an experiment and has developed into something far beyond my expectations. But that comes with a lot of baggage, too. I set the bar pretty fucking high for my first go at this, so the aftermath of my debut was riddled with starts and stops, ideas that burst into my brain, only to fizzle away after a few self-conscious pages. I found myself plagued with questions that did more to break me down than build me up: Was Mushroom Blues a fluke? Would I be able to write a good book again? What the hell am I even doing? A second book became something that felt more and more distant, even unattainable. 

All this to say, writing a second really can be that hard, because it comes with all of the internal and external expectations of that first book. At least, that was the case for me. I didn’t just produce my first novel through some divine act of inspiration, and I didn’t forget how to write, either. A Murder Most Fungal is proof that I was able to write, finish, edit and publish a second novel, but it took me not writing a direct sequel to get there. (Side story standalones, for the win!) Now, looking back, I realize I was too caught up in the perceived requirements of being a debut self-published author, and I let my entrepreneurial pursuit override the fact that I’m a creator first and foremost. In a kind of self-destructive way, I took the fun away from myself by prioritizing the business side of things far more than the act of writing the stories that would fuel that business in the long term. Speaking of which…

Creativity is sacred (and marketing can only take you so far)

Truthfully, my debut broke my creative spirit. In hindsight, a major reason why the sophomore slump hit me as hard as it did is because I didn’t stop marketing Mushroom Blues for a year-and-a-goddamn-half. I was so wrapped up in making that book a success that I created this tunnel vision scenario for myself, where nothing felt as important as the thing that already existed—this tangible book that had already been published. “I can hustle and get that book into more readers’ hands!” I repeated to myself again and again.

But there was a convergence point that snapped me out of my marketing-induced fugue state: all of my marketing efforts started to plateau, the book had developed its own word-of-mouth snowball effect, and the creative parts of my brain were screaming at me to “WAKE THE FUCK UP AND WRITE!” I realized I couldn’t market this book forever, and the best marketing I could and should do was write and publish the next book. After all, I’d spent far too long desecrating the most sacred aspect of being an author: writing.

With that in mind, I went through a period of serious self-reflection, thinking on how I could move forward in this industry in a way that was creatively sustainable for me. It took a lot of effort, but I began to find joy in the process again. Drafting A Murder Most Fungal really helped, as did my folktale novelette “The Stem-Cutter’s Daughter” (featured in The Book of Spores anthology). Another thing that aided my creative rejuvenation was collaborating on projects with friends, including a graphic novel and an audio drama. I didn’t need to make a sacrifice at the altar of some creative deity, but I did find my way again, bit by bit. And the newfound respect I have for my process is invaluable, such that marketing can occupy the sidecar of my creative motorcycle as opposed to riding the bike itself.

Food makes for excellent worldbuilding fuel

I love me some food. Cooking, too. But at the outset of writing A Murder Most Fungal, I had a lot of trepidations about centering an entire story around food. Not only that, centering it around a chef who is also a mushroom person. Yet as I delved deeper into the role food plays in the culture of the fungal people of my secondary world, the more doors I opened into what it means for them to be them. Ultimately, every biological being requires some degree of sustenance, and that sustenance can take many forms. But once a living being reaches a level where they manipulate their food beyond its natural state, oooooh, that’s when things get fun! After all, even mushroom people have to eat.

That’s because food is a fundamental pillar of most any culture (real, fantasy or otherwise), and it can reveal so much about a people once it becomes cuisine. The food itself represents a culinary chronicle, allowing readers a peek into a culture’s geography and the resources they have access to, the structure of a society and its ability to coalesce around systems like agriculture, manufacturing, transportation and commerce, or how institutions of control (such as governments) impose their authority on how food is handled and distributed. There is also language, storytelling and other forms of communication and how they revolve around eating practices, or the fact that recipes passed down from generation to generation are essentially an adaptive, edible history. Add to that celebrations, festivals and religious practices that incorporate eatables and banquets and the like.

Food is a literal feast of worldbuilding opportunities. You can present these details to readers in a subtle, piecemeal way, through the context of a character and a setting, such that they eat up this information without feeling bogged down or pulled out of the story. I utilized this approach a lot in A Murder Most Fungal, offering readers simple, throwaway details that could add to their immersion and engage their imaginations in the possibilities of this world: “If Adrian describes the main character preparing a meal of fungalfin tuna, what does that mean about other animals in this world? Are they also merged with mushrooms?!” That layering—both by the author and the reader—makes a world feel so much more believable.

So, with that in mind, I will never take the worldbuilding potential of food for granted again—hopefully you won’t either.

Kitchens are a perfect setting for high-stakes drama

Another thing I was hesitant about with A Murder Most Fungal was the narrative potential of a restaurant setting. It’s a pretty confined environment without a lot of space to work with, so would there be enough tension and drama, or opportunities for character and relationship development? But once I started writing the story, my worries were quickly swept away like a crumbs on a kitchen floor. Why? Because I discovered that kitchens are actually an ideal breeding ground for storytelling possibilities!

I look at it this way: kitchens are the modern-day equivalent of a pirate ship. You throw a bunch of random people together, each of whom has a unique background, temperament, skillset, et cetera, and you push them to produce high quality products in a high-stress environment (plus, that environment is filled with things that can burn and stab you). It’s a narrative goldmine! Add to that the interpersonal developments, where intense camaraderie is formed in an almost trauma-bonded kind of way. Or even more complicated if sexual tensions or in-fighting evolve between employees.

So, during the drafting of A Murder Most Fungal, I thought deeply about this particular kind of setting and what it could provide and accomplish. I also spent a good amount of time going back and watching movies, shows and documentaries that I’d seen in the past, sort of as a refresher on how kitchen drama can be done well. There’s the comedic approach of Pixar’s animated masterpiece Ratatouille (chef’s kiss, such a good film!), or the foul-mouthed, fiery approach of Gordon Ramsay cooking shows like Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares. But there’s also a lot to draw from a documentary like Jiro Dreams of Sushi, where the tension stems from an obsessive master chef with high expectations doling out subtle criticisms to his sons and his chefs, in a way that reflects his desire for perfection. And then there’s a show like The Bear, which delivers these anxiety-inducing family struggles and arguments, or coworkers who are at odds, or a business that is falling apart—it’s a shit show, but in the best way possible because you can’t look away. This is trainwreck-style drama, and the restaurant setting is so well suited to it.

Suffice to say, my early doubts were absurd, because restaurants are a perfect scenario for high-stakes drama. After all, a kitchen is bound to get messy at some point, and that mess makes for great stories.

I’m obsessed with fungal body horror

There’s something weirdly captivating about body horror. It’s visceral and unsettling, especially seeing something as familiar as the human body being deformed and altered in ways both subtle and overt. But when it comes to fungi specifically, I love how these organisms can infect the body, making changes from the inside out, until suddenly it becomes this grotesque eruption of mold and mushrooms manipulating flesh and bone.

Looking back, there are two properties that really instilled this fascination in me. One is The Last of Us video games and TV show, which did an incredible job of showing how spores and mycelia creep into hosts, then convert them into freakish fungal zombies with mushrooms blooming from their faces, or bloated bodies that ripple with fruiting bodies and spore-filled pustules. It’s so gross and terrifying, but I always found myself wanting more—even when I was scared shitless.  The other property is Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy (Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance). Those books took a different approach to The Last of Us, instead delving more deeply into the psychological and philosophical aspects of being infected and having your mind taken over by an alien entity. Both are creepy as hell in their respective ways, but the result was that I became a massive fan of how fungi can change a host, both in mind and body.

Now that I write my own fungalpunk fiction, it was inevitable that body horror would play a part in it. And while I dabbled with fungal horror a fair bit in Mushroom Blues, it’s nothing compared to A Murder Most Fungal. This obsession I have took a disturbing turn in the latest book simply because of the story’s focus on food. While planning out the climax, I thought to myself, How could food and fungi come together to create a truly fucked up body horror extravaganza? Well, you’ll just have to read A Murder Most Fungal to find out.

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Adrian M. Gibson is an award-winning Canadian SFF author, podcaster, book designer, illustrator and tattoo artist. He is the creator of the SFF Addicts podcast, which he co-hosts with fellow authors M. J. Kuhn and Greta Kelly. The three host in-depth interviews with an array of science fiction and fantasy authors, as well as writing masterclasses. He is also the Publishing Project Manager at Grimdark Magazine, heading up their line of fantasy and science fiction novellas. He lives in Quito, Ecuador with his family.

Adrian M. Gibson: Website | Instagram | SFF Addicts Podcast | YouTube

A Murder Most Fungal: Amazon | The Broken Binding