Category: The Ramble (page 82 of 479)

Sooooo, hey, look at that? If you’ll remember a little while ago I tweeted that I’d written a middle grade about a girl who inherits a funeral home and cemetery for monsters? Welp, it sold! And here I’m able to announce that Dust & Grim is the first SEEEECRET BOOOOK I had waiting in the wings.

(Only three more to announce!)

I’m excited to see how people react to this — it’s very plainly a kids’ book, as I wanted to write something in line with what my son could read by the time he’s of that age, and this should time out pretty well for that. I’m in the middle of editing the book now, and am very pleased to be working with Deirdre Jones, who like my Del Rey editor Tricia has sought to bring out the best version of the vision I’m putting into the book, which is to me the ideal editor-author relationship. Thanks to Deirdre and LB for wanting this book, and for my wonderagent, Stacia Decker, for helping deliver that deal. Hopefully you all will dig it. We initially considered using a pseudonym for it, but there was the feeling that though I’m traditionally an adult author (though I’ve written YA, and those books are on sale this month at Amazon, btw) with a adult social media presence, it shouldn’t impact what kids that age look for or care about. But maybe that’ll change and you’ll find this book coming out under my carefully-crafted pseudonym, RICK RIORDAN. I don’t think anyone has taken that one yet! Failing that, I could always go with the name of my great grand-uncle, JOHN KENNEY ROWLING, though I think it’d be classier to use the first two initials? Whatever.

More as I have it, folks.

Also P.S. the name Michelle under that photo is not my name, but rather, the photographer credit.

Listen, I think my favoritest urban fantasy book of all time is Stephen Blackmoore’s Dead Things. And it’s since bloomed into a bad-ass series for LA necromancer Eric Carter, who is usually in deep with supernatural shenanigans — ghosts, gods, Death Herself. You know, the usual. I’m a book behind (as I’m awful about keeping up with series), but today the newest is out — Ghost Money is here, and so Blackmoore emerges from the ash and the mist to drop a guest post in your lap. Here, then, is a post about death and dying. (And check out his series — it’s important to support authors right now, and with a huge bonus, you also support yourself too because hey, BOOKS ARE AWESOME.)

* * *

This is a bad time for all of us. The world is in a swirling shitstorm and when the dust, poop, whatever just go with it, settles the world is going to look very different than it does today.

The middle of a pandemic is maybe not the best time to release a book, and certainly not a book where death is a central theme. I recognize this, and I hope this doesn’t come across as flippant, or in any way disrespecting the very real fact that someone reading this may very well have a friend or a loved one sick, in the hospital, dead.

Yes, this is marketing. Yes, I’m writing this because I hope some of you will be interested in my writing enough to buy my books. But stay with me for a minute, if you would. Marketing or no, I do have a couple of things to say on the topic of dying.

The Eric Carter series is urban fantasy about a modern-day necromancer in Los Angeles. His parents are dead, his best friend is not only dead but had his soul ripped to shreds, he’s married (read: shotgun wedding) to the folk-saint Santa Muerte / Aztec goddess of death Mictecacihuatl. He and Death are on a literal first name basis.

For all that death you’d think there’d be more talk about an afterlife. There’s some. Most of the third book, HUNGRY GHOSTS, takes place in Mictlan, the Aztec land of the dead. In Carter’s world gods are real, the dead go to wherever the dead are going to go, Valhalla, Heaven, Elysium, or the Void. But what does that mean? Carter knows about Mictlan firsthand, but beyond that? Hasn’t a clue.

And, of course, neither do I. How much of Carter’s view on the world is mine, just as how much of any character’s viewpoint is the author’s, is hard to nail down. I know I wouldn’t do half the shit he would. Mostly because he can be an idiot. But also because there are lines he’ll cross that I won’t. I’ll keep to myself which ones those are.

One place I know where he and I are in sync, however, is in my view of death and dying.

Regardless where a soul, if it exists, goes, if anywhere, when someone dies, they’re dead. I know that sounds like a remarkably stupid thing to point out, but how many times have you heard someone say, “They’re in a better place.” Really? Better? 24/7 booze fountains and cocaine roadways? Strippers of every stripe giving out lapdances and handjobs?

I don’t know if they’re in a better place. I don’t know if it’s all sparkly unicorn shit, or fire and elephant farts. All I know is that they’re gone. Elvis has left the building, as they say. They are gone and I will never see them again. They’ve left behind an empty shell of rotting meat and we’re supposed to take it stoically and say, “Oh, they’re in a better place.”

Fuck that.

GHOST MONEY opens with the line, “Dying is easy. Grieving is hard.” I believe that. Not saying that dying can’t be agonizing. I know it is. Whether it takes five minutes or fifty years. Our bodies don’t want to die. They fight, sometimes far longer than anyone else will. They’ll sacrifice key systems in a desperate bid to keep the brain alive. But I think it’s still easier than being left behind.

Grieving IS hard. I have a feeling that right now some of you are grieving and it is the hardest thing you have ever done. And I am so, so sorry for that. You are being forced, and I mean forced like ripping a door open with a crowbar is forced, to say goodbye to someone you love. How dare they be taken away from us. How dare death tear them out of our lives and leave a gaping hole that nothing is going to fill.

Death is RUDE. Who said you could come into MY house and steal MY love, MY memories? I don’t care if they’re in a better place, they’re not HERE. They’ll never be here. It’s over. It’s done.

That’s how I see death. Rude. Insolent. The greatest of faux pas. A discourtesy that cannot ever be forgiven. You are, will be, and have been grieving. You and I share that if nothing else. We all know loss. We know what it’s like to have our worlds upended because someone was ripped away from us. Your grief is different from my grief, but it doesn’t make it any easier, any less valid.

I hope that as time goes by, you’ll grieve a little less. You might, you might not. You might mourn the rest of your life or wake up in a week and feel fine. Those rages of gut-wrenching emotion coming out of nowhere might ease. I won’t blow smoke up your ass and say that they will.

But I sincerely hope that they do.

* * *

The Los Angeles Firestorm killed over a hundred thousand people, set in revenge against necromancer Eric Carter for defying the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. Carter feels every drop of that blood on his hands. But now there’s a new problem.

Too many ghosts in one spot and the barrier separating them from the living cracks. And when they cross it, they feed off all the life they can get hold of. People die. L.A. suddenly has a lot more ghosts.

But it’s not just one or two ghosts breaking through: it’s dozens. Another mage is pulling them through the cracks and turning them into deadly weapons. Eric follows a trail that takes him through the world of the Chinese Triads, old associates, old crimes. And a past that he thought he was done with.

Carter needs to find out how to get things under control, because if more ghosts break through, there’s going to be even more blood on his hands.

Stephen Blackmoore: website | twitter

Ghost Money: print | eBook

I’m a pretty inventive guy and so I think we can all agree that I’m the first person who thought to bake a loaf of bread during these here Quarantimes. I’m a pioneer on this one, a bonafide frontiersperson — I thought, gosh, there’s all this flour around, and there’s yeast in the fucking air like a miasma of squirming microbial mist, and so I decided to invent the very concept of baking bread during lockdown. I know, I know. You don’t need to thank me. Acknowledging my originality is enough.

Okay, not really. I have, as Maryn McKenna said of herself on Instagram, become a quarantine cliche. I decided it was time to join the CARBOLOADING MASSES and make some goddamn bread.

I’ve always wanted to do it, and never really had the courage or the patience to try it — I’m generally not the baker in the family. I do all the cooking, but nearly zero of the baking. My wife has an orderly, well-kept mind, and my brain is like a box of otters shaken up and dropped into a tiny tornado? So, cooking works for me. Lotta improv. Lotta feeling your way through it. Lotta just… having a sense of how to build and layer flavors over time.

Baking is unforgiving, though. YOU FUCKED UP, say the baking gods. YOU DID NOT ACCOUNT FOR HUMIDITY AND THE AGE OF YOUR BAKING SODA AND NOW THOSE COOKIES ARE LIKE SOFT LUMPS OF HALF-ROTTEN TREE BARK, YOU PIECE OF SHIT. I do not know how to appease the gods of flour and sugar. Just the same, I’ve always wanted to smell the scent of baking bread in our house. Just to see. Just to try it.

We of course couldn’t find yeast, so I decided to, as all of you have, make my own sourdough starter, and at about seven days it was looking aerated and frothy, and smelled good — but I was also not sure it was ready for primetime. So, I decided to use some discarded starter and put that in this recipe that I found from author and awesome human Amal El-Mohtar’s Twitter feed. (You follow her, yeah?) And I’d long been taking inspiration from Seamus Blackley, who, sure, whatever, is the father of the Xbox and all that, but who also has made BREAD from ANCIENT SUMERIAN MOON YEAST (I might be misremembering the details on that). So, I knew I was not the person for this job, but I decided, fuck it, let’s do it anyway. Lockdown Quarantimes are all about experimentation and failure and so away I went. (I did eventually find yeast thanks to a friend.)

The key to the recipe I used above was the sourdough starter discard replaced a 1/2 cup of the water and 3/4 cup of the flour — and in that recipe I cut the yeast requirement in half, too.

And then I did it in a Le Creuset enameled dutch oven, 7-qt.

And this is what emerged:

It was… pretty great?

I tried it: plain, with butter, with butter and strawberry-basil jam, with cheddar cheese, and then this morning with melted cheddar and a runny egg and a splash of olive oil in a breakfast sandwich and damn. It was really good every time. Soft on the inside, crusty on the outside. A little overdone in some patches on the bottom in terms of its toughness (not flavor), but for a first loaf, I’m exceedingly happy. And proud of myself just for trying it.

THEN I was like, fuck it, I’m doing it again. So this morning I baked up a proper sourdough loaf, starter only, using bolted wheat flour. Stuck to the enamel a little, but got it out. Haven’t consumed it yet. Visual results here.

I’m pretty geeked. Might fuck with some pretzels or even bagels, I dunno. I did find that breadmaking was closer to cooking than traditional baking — there’s definitely some improv in there, some culinary carbo-jazz, some room for imagination and fuckery. A bit of art to go with the science. Which I like. That suits me. Maybe it’ll suit you too.

Once again, there is not One Ring to bind them, but actually a bunch of littler, shittier rings, and these are those less valuable rings — or, rather, think of this as not one blog post, but a bunch of baby blog posts running around, arms flailing, snot bubbles on their ruddy little noses. Hmm, are they baby blog posts, or just mega-tweets? I’ve no idea. Let’s do this.

It’s weird having a president who is literally the least most intellectual person on the planet. Further, one for whom you are required to give your kids warnings about. This isn’t new for him, but it’s a continuing tradition of us having to sit down with our child and give him the frank assessment of what the president said, and why you shouldn’t trust the president. Our kid is going to grow up utterly distrusting the government, which is arguably the whole point of King Dump in the first place. So, it requires the nuanced conversation of, no, the government is not implicitly broken, but a lot of things are and we have to do our best to vote and shore up social systems and education and — and the kid is eight-years-old, he doesn’t know what the fuck is up. But he damn sure knows not to drink bleach or try to eat a tanning bed or whatever the fuck that corrupt criminal dipshit was talking about. God, what the fuck. [Edit: now King Dump says he was just being sarcastic. Ah, the classic “NUH-UH” defense of your average six-year-old. “I MEANT TO PEE MY PANTS.”)

It’s still daily where I have a moment like, wow, this is really our reality. Not just the pandemic. But all of it. All of it. And it never gets old — in the worst way. It feels fresh in its dire dumbassery.

I’ve been saying “Jesus Fucking Christ” a lot more. I’m sure that’s blasphemous in some circles, but I’m of a mind that Jesus is also saying Jesus Fucking Christ a lot more these days.

There are other variants, of course. Christ on a pogo stick, Christ on a carousel, Christ on a cookie, Christ in a crab trap, Jesus Christ on crutches, etc. etc. Get creative with your blasphemy.

All right, onto some happier shit. I miss my mother since she died. Wait, that’s not happier, is it? Whatever, shut up. I’m just saying, normally I’d be calling her to check in, and we moved specifically to be closer to her — just in time for her to pass away. And it was my birthday this week, the first since she’s been gone, and I half-expected a phone call from her. And mother’s day is coming up, too. So it’s hard. Hard also being “The Adult” now — like, okay, I have a kid, a house, a car, a wife, a “””job”””, so I’ve been a functioning adult for a while. But when you lose both your parents, you really start to feel like, this is it, you’re all there is now. No one to call for advice, no more guide rope, no more training wheels, or even a chance at training wheels. That’s not the sad-making part, but it’s occasionally jarring.

Though, awfully, I’m also glad now she’s not here. My mother a couple-few years ago was almost killed my a common cold. A bad cold, but a cold. Because her lungs were not in good shape. (Don’t smoke, kids.) And it really almost killed her. So now, if she were around, she’d be an A+ target for the virus, and worse, if she were going through the cancer right now, oof. Could we see her? Should she see us? How would hospice have worked? I don’t even know, and I’m glad I don’t have to find out. (She also would’ve bristled at the lockdown — less about going out, because she was pretty locked down already, but more at her inability to see family or friends.)

Okay, happy shit for real in 3, 2, 1. My son made me an owl for my birthday, so that was rad. My wife made me a cheesecake that is literally the best cheesecake I’ve ever had, and also her first cheesecake. I have joined the ranks of the sourdough starter crowd, about seven days in and it’s getting effervescent, though I won’t bore you with its diary or anything. (Its name is Steve, though.) I’m about halfway through edits on this secret book, and I think I like it? It’s something very different for me. I’m reading a book about Johnny Appleseed and it’s fascinating. I’m reading Lauren Beukes’ newest and I’m having a hard time reading fiction at all, but her book is incredibly good, as her books always are, for me. Reading some Calvin & Hobbes too these days. Yeah.

We’re good here. “Good.” Some version of good. Definitely lucky, definitely fortunate. I try to keep reminding myself of that while also trying to not force myself into willful rigor-mortis glee over it — like, trying to walk that line between “recognize our fortune and privilege” and also “but it’s okay to feel like this sucks sometimes.”

Some people are not social distancing, but think they are. Sometimes you talk to people and they’re like, ugh oh my god social distancing is hard, this week I could only go to four grocery stores and get my hair cut and take my kids to their friends’ house once and — and holy shit you’re not supposed to be doing most of that. Stay in your goddamn houses. (For the record, this is not an admonishment against people who have things to do, or jobs to do, or groceries to buy, or whatever. It’s people who are defying the lockdown to do what are effectively frivolous bullshit things.)

I’m thinking vaguely maybe kinda sorta of getting a gaming PC. Part of it is simply that I really wanna play Half Life: Alyx, and I have the Oculus Quest, but can only play it if I get a VR-ready PC rig to pass-through to. It’s a stupid idea. I have other shit to do. But it tantalizes.

Time is weird now. Mornings zip by. Afternoons happen before I realize the morning has already eaten its own tail, a temporal ouroboros. A slow-moving, melty maelstrom.

I’ve long said that birds help me. Er, I don’t mean help me — as in, help me get dressed, help me find my glasses. I just mean, they help me cope. I go outside, listen to birds, and it’s nice. But now I have an indoor version of birds helping me to cope — Wingspan. A beautiful game about letting birds settle into various habitats. It’s not hyper-competitive and it’s quite lovely.

Exquisite Corpse is a fun game about collaborative storytelling. And Penguin Random House has put one together today with a whole buncha cool author types like Sarah Pinsker, Kevin Hearne, Charles Yu, Samantha Irby, and more. I kicked it off this morning with this tweet, so go follow the tale of Imogen and the Blue Door.

And I think that’s it.

Here are some photos.

Maybe it’s just me, but although veggies are increasingly hard to come by in this area, one vegetable lingers, reluctantly available: spinach. And I don’t know why. Spinach is goddamn amazing. It’s a nutritional powerhouse, for one. For two, it tastes amazing. No, it may not have the COLON LOCOMOTIVE powers of, say, kale, it’s still green and healthy and all that happy shit.

But, for some reason, people aren’t buying it. Again, around here. Maybe where you are, everybody’s Popeye looking for muscles, but here, they’re leaving that and Brussels sprouts on the shelf. Lockdown still won’t push them to the fringes of the produce aisle, I guess?

(Here’s my Brussels sprouts recipe, before you ask.)

Maybe it’s because The Kids Today are like The Kids Of Yesteryear and just won’t eat spinach. (And only now is it occurring to me that Popeye was some kind of vegetable propaganda. Same way an apple a day keeps the doctor away, and carrots “help” your “eyesight” and other such vegetable legends.) I sure didn’t eat spinach when I was a kid, are you nuts? No, no, I had a discerning palate. It was Spaghetti-Os or nothing, you vulgarian. Toss a couple hot dogs in there? C’est magnifique.

More seriously, I’ve come to believe that the parents of yesteryear — like, let’s say of the 80s — really didn’t get how to cook vegetables all the time. And a lot of veggies available were in cans? It wasn’t a good time for vegetables, no wonder we were all sick and weak. Mushy asparagus. Mushrooms that tastes less like graceful wood ear and more like human baby ears. Steam it, boil it, meh. So, entirely possible spinach just wasn’t winning any awards back then. But we’ve grown smarter when it comes to cooking vegetables and I have a super-hella-stupid-easy spinach dish that will —

Wait, what are you looking at?

Hello? Eyes down here.

Ah. Ah. Yeah, I get it, the photo at the top of the post contains no spinach. It’s tomatoes and okra and potatoes and tomatillo husks and I’m sorry, I don’t have any spinach photos. Settle down. It’s fine.

AS I WAS SAYING

This is a spinach dish my kid doesn’t just eat, but that he eats with delight.

Now, my kid is also a little weird. He likes veggies a whole lot. He likes sushi. For his birthday, he asks for me to make him Brussels sprouts. So, do recognize his tastes are skewed for a kid, but I also like to believe, perhaps mistakenly, it’s because I know how to make food tasty.

And this spinach? Is tasty.

Here’s what you do.

Skillet. Stainless steel for me.

Bit of olive oil or butter, depending on your predilections for particular FOOD LUBES.

Then, some chopped garlic. Again, your tastes matter here. Thinly sliced garlic is nice. Minced is fine. Maybe a shallot instead, who cares. Food is customizable, it’s a menu of possibility and delight. Honestly, if all you have is garlic powder in These Perilous Quarantimes, that’s fine, too, just don’t add it now, add it later. Just note that the bigger the chonks of garlic, the milder the garlic taste will be, because it’s got less cuts to the, I dunno, GARLICKIAN MICROSTRUCTURE and reduced GARLIC SQUARE FOOTAGE or something. Hashtag science. Hashtag shut up.

Get the garlic in the oil or butter.

Cook until fragrant, not until burned.

Then, fill the skillet with spinach.

Here the question is, fresh or frozen? Yes. Whatever. Either. Frozen is fine, and remember, frozen vegetables tend to be plunged into suspended animation at the peak of their freshness. I like the Woodstock brand, because it comes out looking like a batch of cryo-nuggs of sci-fi weed, and it has a delicate tea-leaf taste to it. Shit, maybe I’ve just been cooking tea leaves and weed? That might explain a lot about me. It’s fine. Point is, fresh or frozen.

And it can also be Swiss chard. Or other greens of your choosing.

This application is easy and applies to every cooking green I’ve tried it with.

So.

Heat on medium. Spinach in the pan.

Salt and pepper go onto it.

Cook it down until the leaves are reduced. If fresh, you’ll start with this massive APPLE CART of spinach, and end up with four thimbles, as all that water comes out and the leaves wilt. And in that case you can keep adding spinach to freshen it up. It’s pretty resilient long as you don’t burn it.

Add in couple splashes of chicken broth, just enough to coat the bottom of the pan.

A pinch of Italian seasoning or Herbs de Provence.

(That’s French for Herbert, of Provence.)

Cook, cook, cook.

Ten minutes, fifteen, I dunno. Like I said, spinach is resilient. A good food for these tough times. Spinach doesn’t give a fuck. It has green goodness and it doesn’t care if you don’t like it.

Then when it’s cooked down pretty good and has started to lose its emerald green in favor of a Bob Ross-painted pine-tree, you want to add first a splash of sherry vinegar. How much is a splash? I dunno. A splash. You can add more if you need to so like, think a tablespoon or two.

Then, cook a bit, just a minute or two to incorporate.

Final bit, add in a couple splashes of heavy cream. Twice the amount of the vinegar, let’s say.

Mix-a-mix-a-mix.

There. That’s it. Season again after tasting if need be.

It’s good. Your kids will like it. You will like it, too. Unless you’re one of those weird adults who won’t eat vegetables. Christ in a crab trap, eat your vegetables, you scurvy-sickened ricket-monsters.

All right, that’s it. Go eat some spinach. And buy my books or I die.