Hey, so if you follow me on Twitter, you might know that sometimes I tweet inane, absurd, “motivational” (air-quotes probably necessary) tweets every morning. (Similar to Lin-Manuel’s, though obviously his are far less, um, weird than mine are.)

Aaaaaanyway, long story short, there’s this:

NYT bestseller Chuck Wendig’s YOU CAN DO ANYTHING, MAGIC SKELETON, an illustrated collection of Wendig’s motivational tweets that often go viral, illustrated by Natalie Metzger, to Jessica Fuller at Rizzoli USA, in an exclusive submission, for publication in spring 2021, by Stacia Decker at Dunow, Carlson & Lerner (world).

Soooo, haha, yeah, that happened. It’s a joy to get to work with Natalie Metzger — check out her art here. I think her art will totally suit the cuckoo bananapants vibe the book will give off — equal parts adorable and weirdable.

Twitter has been bad for the world, but fairly good for me personally. I got the Star Wars job that way, there was Sam and my tweets leading to You Might Be The Killer, and now this.

It’s a strange ol’ world, innit?

ANYWAY, let’s see, what else is going on.

Wanderers news? Sure!

Let’s see. “A strong narrative drive, believable characters, and a solid underpinning in real science and current affairs make this one of the better near-future stories…”

That, from an upcoming issue of Asimov’s.

Aaaaand holy crap I was on NPR?! Talking to Neda Ulaby about Wanderers? Woo, it’s true, and you can find the article right here, along with the 4-minute broadcast.

So, that’s that.

Here’s a picture of a red-tailed hawk. BYE

It is no surprise that I like apples.

I mean, I suppose this could be new information for you, if you’ve been living in some kind of subterranean grotto. So, if you have just emerged from your lightless earth womb, let it be said again: I am a big damn fan of apples. Not the phone and tablet products — the actual fruit.

So, I sometimes make oatmeal, and when I make oatmeal, I sometimes infuse that oatmeal with as much APPLETASTICNESS as I can goddamn jolly well muster, and so here is that recipe. Let’s also put this up front that this is not what we could call a perfectly healthy oatmeal — no, it’s not as bad as just snorfling down a rum-soaked Snickers bar for breakfast, but it’s also not what anyone could call “health food.” Or “clean food,” which is I guess the latest nomenclature for healthy? Suggesting that some food is somehow dirty? God, that’s stupid.

Anyway.

MAKE THIS AND PRESS IT INTO YOUR MOUTH PIT

First, I use Bob’s Red Mill Scottish Oatmeal, which makes a porridgey oatmeal. But you can use whatever kind you like. I’m no OAT SNOB. I won’t judge you. Not for that. I’ll judge you for a lot of other reasons, probably? Like those shoes. They’re hideous. Are they made of squirrel pelts? Sure, they’re warm, but ugggh. Do you hear the screaming of the squirrels, Clarice? Whatever. Also if you have a MAGA hat on, I’m just gonna kick you into a pit.

So, admittedly, I can get a little judgey.

(Note: that photo is not Scottish oatmeal.)

The trick is, when you cook the oatmeal using its OATMEAL PREPARATION INSTRUCTIONS, you will not use all water. Rather, you will use a 50/50 split of water and apple cider. Not hard cider, though I’m sure boozy oatmeal would be its own special thing — no, I’m talking about the semi-unprocessed apple juice. You could maybe use apple juice, instead, but I’ve never tried it. Just use cider. You can also use 100% cider, but be advised, you have to watch the pot and stir it more, because that can burn the oatmeal to the bottom right quick. And nobody wants a charred cider oatmeal crust at the bottom. Though that does sound like something you’d get as part of the dessert at some fancy hipster gastrobistropub. “Scallop-foam cheesecake with kumquat microfoam, splashed with a dalliance of aquafaba creme fraiche, and settled delicately upon a charred cider oatmeal crust.” That, or maybe in a recipe an artificial intelligence wrote.

Also into the oatmeal goes a scattering of salt, a teaspoon of vanilla. As it cooks, not after.

That’s the oatmeal sorted.

There are, of course, toppings.

First, you’re going to slice an apple thin, and then cook those slicey-slices during the oatmeal cook time. Put ’em in a stainless steel or cast iron skillet with a pad of butter. Get them a little caramelized — not burned! Just get some color on them. Then put in a splash of the cider and, if the apples aren’t particularly tart, orange juice or lemon juice. Use the liquid to scrape up the apple fond.

If you don’t know what fond is, Google it.

I’m quite *giggle* fond of fond *titter*.

Ahem.

Put it on low, let it cook down. You want the apples soft, but not mush.

Get yourself a handful of pecans. Dealer’s choice as to amount.

Toast them in a toaster oven, or just your… regular oven. Or hold them underneath a tiny dragon’s mouth. I don’t care how you do it. Just toast them, you’re an adult, you can figure this shit out. Again, you don’t want them burned, for fuck’s sake. If they get burned, throw them out and start again, because now I’m judging you.

(And ugh fine, here is how you toast pecans: in my toaster oven it’s like, two minutes on low toast. In a proper oven, it’s like 5-10 minutes on 350. Under a dragon’s mouth, it’s 30 seconds or less, depending on the potency of the tiny dragon’s breath weapon.)

You can also use walnuts, but pecans are better for this, trust me.

Once the oatmeal and the apples are done —

Here is the construction order.

Oatmeal goes into a bowl. Or whatever receptacle you eat out of. One of your ugly shoes, a jockstrap, the skull of an enemy, whatever.

Put a pad of butter atop it. Right there in the center.

Then sprinkle cacao nibs over it, if you have them. They’re good crunch, and they add a little bit of that bitter cocoa back-of-the-mouth taste to the whole shazam.

Then, construct a pyre, a cairn, an obelisk of the cooked apples. Arrange them in the middle as if you were trying to appease some kind of heretical APPLE GOD. Because you are. Do not fail the ELDER PIPPIN, for if you do, the APPLE DEITY will turn your teeth to apple seeds.

Then, atop that go the toasted pecans. A scattering. A smattering. A gleeful toss, as if you’re a wealthy person casting dice in a game of craps where the bet is a million dollars, but who cares because you have a billion more dollars left if you lose.

Then, atop that goes a swirl of foesblood, as in, the blood of a foe.

No, ha ha, wait, sorry, that’s for WIZARD’S PORRIDGE. Different recipe.

In this, a splash of milk or heavy cream around the edges.

Then you stop talking and start eating.

I will await a rain of baubles and treasure now. RAIN GLORY UPON ME IN SERVICE TO THE APPLE GOD. *spreads arms wide, spins around drunkenly, chanting IA IA APPLE TREEIA*

I’m honestly full of light and love and bees about how much people seem to be enjoying WANDERERS — I don’t know that I’ve ever gotten as many emails and tweets and such about any other book, the Aftermath series included. It’s heartening and wonderful and so it’s especially cool to make the Locus Reading List in the category of science-fiction. Which also means it has landed as part of the Locus 2020 poll awards ballot — you can vote for up to five in each category, dontcha know.

You do not need to be a subscriber, but subscribers do have their votes count twice.

You should also vote for Tricia Narwani in the editor section. Tricia edited Wanderers and is currently editing The Book of Accidents, and she’s really an astonishing editor whose caliber is, for me, unparalleled. Please consider voting for her.

Also, I might recommend a couple of write-ins —

For fantasy, Steel Crow Saga. Paul Krueger. So good. Should be on there. Single-serving epic fantasy, some of the finest disaster characters ever.

For SF, The Warehouse, by Rob W. Hart. Tense, taut near-future thriller. Definitely not a dart in the eye of Amazon and capitalism ahem ahem ahem cough cough.

Yay.

Thank you.

Also I ate Mac and Cheese ice cream and apparently that’s news.

Enjoy!

It is I, known applefluencer, Churk Wigdog, back again to bring you another round of vital rankings of grocery store apples.

(You can find Part One, from last year, here.)

It is further known that my favorite apples are of course heirloom apples. They are weird. They are curious. They are oddities. And they are routinely some of the most interesting apples I have eaten. I recognize however that I’m fortunate to have access to such interesting apples — I live at the nexus of many wonderful orchards, chief among them being North Star Orchard in Chester County, PA. Wanna see their whole weird list of available apples? Go for it. You’re gonna think half of those are made up, or that they’re strange hobbit sex moves. “Ah, give ’em the old Coe’s Golden Drop, eh? I prefer the Scarlet Crofton, but Pippin over there really likes the Canadian Strawberry.”

*eyebrow waggle*

But, heirlooms are not always readily available.

Not for me.

Not for you.

So!

From time to time I sample the apple wares of local grocery stores. Now, even here I admit privilege — I live in the opposite of a food desert, with probably a dozen grocery stores within a 20 minute drive, and because of our proximity to farmland, even the grocery stores get a good variety of apples.

I also thought, well, it’s the year of the shiny new apple, The Cosmic Crisp, and I was fortunate enough to receive some in the mail courtesy of… well, the Cosmic Crisp people. (See? See? I’m a real-life applefluencer.) Though I promise of course my review and ranking here are not affected by this very nice gift.

Two caveats, before I begin:

Apples can vary apple to apple, store to store.

And my experience with an apple is not going to be your experience with an apple, because our tastes are subjective. So please know that if we disagree here, it’s not because I’m right, it’s because you’re wrong, and because I’m right. I’m an applefluencer and I’ve trained for this for years, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO PREPARE FOR THE APPLEOCALYPSE, HUH? *cuts to training montage of me punching apples into sauce, and then eating them off my fists* Ahem.

Apples, ranked bottom to top, starting now.

14. Cortland

I’m going to offer a big caveat here — the bottom five apples on this list were all from one store: Wegman’s. And except for the Ginger Gold, they were all watery, bland messes. Which I really can’t believe that they all had similar problematic flavor flaws, unless Wegman’s is just sourcing shitty apples. The Cortland, a classic New York apple, may just be because it’s not a keeper. It’s good off the tree, reportedly, and that’s it — so, you find one in a grocery store, it may already be past its prime, especially if it’s fucking January. Either way, this one sucked the most. Too tart, and had the texture of an old toe. It’s an apple you sit there chewing and thinking, “What mistakes have I made in my life to lead me to this point? What god did I offend? Yet here I stand. Here, I chew.” Chew, chew, chew. A cow with cud. Chew, chew, chew.

13. Macoun

I’ve always heard good things about the Macoun — another New York apple, it’s also not a keeper apple. Maybe a few weeks off the tree, and then it’s game over. If they drop Oct/Nov, then me buying one in January is not ideal. Still. Fine. Whatever — this was watery. Wasn’t sweet or tart — just bland. Had a strong floral component, which was nice: rose and elderflower. Had the trademark butt-white flesh of, say, a McIntosh, but I don’t think the latter is a parent of the former? They must be rivals. Or surly exes. Or grumpy former roommates. Anyway. I’d love to try a Macoun off the tree this coming season, but fuck these ones I got from Wegman’s, bleah.

12. Empire

Big name, fairly small apple. Just slightly more aspirational than the Macoun: almost precisely the same flavor, just sweeter, with a hint more complexity. Also, yup, another New York apple. Also, yup, another apple that doesn’t keep well. Why the fuck is it in a grocery store then? Do you people hate apples? You do, don’t you. This is the heart of some kind of anti-apple conspiracy and I have found it. Whatever. Disappointing apples should be a crime. A CRIME.

11. Pazazz

And so we enter into the “Attack of the Honeycrisp Clones” portion of the list. You will frequently see a new apple enter the world and when that apple reaches shelves a bevy of articles like this one: “[Apple Name]: The New Honeycrisp!!??” The Honeycrisp is popular. Too popular. It’s a fine apple, don’t get me wrong, it’s just — it’s not a really interesting apple. It’s sweet and juicy, cool, fine, whatever, not a lot of complexity, and is subject to bruising. So, everyone’s always wanting THE NEXT HONEYCRISP. It’s not that this apple was terrible. It sprayed juice when I cut into it. And there was a pleasant tartness you don’t find in a Honeycrisp — but it was also, like the other Wegman apples, watery and a little bland. Good crunch, tho.

10. Sugar Bee

Is it Sugarbee? Or Sugar Bee. I dunno. Yet another Honeycrisp market grab — this one, by literally crossing a Honeycrisp with, I dunno, a bag of cane sugar. It, like the Kiku (below), is just a crisp bite and then sugar sugar sugar. Unlike the Kiku, it has flavor for days — it’s like chewing bubblegum, this apple. Not a whiff of tartness of complexity — somehow, they bred what little was in the Honeycrisp right the hell out. What sets this as worse than the Kiku is that though the flavor remains, so does a woody texture, and after that, a lingering taste of chlorinated funk. Which is, as you suspected, nasty business. I do not like this apple, Sam I Am.

9. Ginger Gold

I don’t know that this is a great apple, but I admire it. It’s… odd. It’s not gingery, and yet, it tastes like a piece of apple that would go well in a sushi roll. A bit yuzu? It’s vaguely savory. Was crisp and juicy. Feels like this would be banging in a salad. Not an apple I want to just bite into, though.

8. Kiku

Another aim at Honeycrisp, I think — “Kiku: The Sweetest Apple!” Except sweet isn’t the same as flavor — it’s just sugar. And that’s mostly what you get here. But it doesn’t even really earn its own marketing plaudits, as though it was sweet, it was more syrupy, and the flavor didn’t last. It faded pretty quick, ghosting your tongue in your mouth like a spurned Tinder hookup. It’s fine? It’s fine.

7. Evercrisp

Jesus Christ with the Honeycrisp copypasta. I ate this alongside a Honeycrisp and… it didn’t taste much different. This is reportedly a Honeycrisp x Fuji cross, which, okay fine, but there’s not a significant difference here that earns any reason to buy this. There’s maybe, maybe a hint more tartness than you’d expect in a Honeycrisp, but it’s down to microns of tartness, which is how tartness is measured. Microns. I know this because I am an applefluencer. I had to take a test. Shut up.

6. McIntosh

I’ve always kinda lumped the McIntosh in the “old-timey who-gives-a-shit” apple, something a Grampaw would eat and be surly about, but I shouldn’t have. I don’t know that this is a thrill-a-minute kind of apple, but it’s actually pretty solid. Softer flesh than I was expecting, the McIntosh yielded a lemonbright kick to the teeth, a bit of rose in the nose, and a late dose of sweetness. I can see why a lot of apples are bred from the McIntosh. A classic for a reason.

5. Golden Delicious

Here’s another apple I summarily dismissed in part because the Red Delicious has so poisoned the apple discourse with its Judas Deception of that word, DELICIOUS. Liar! Liar apple! Golden Delicious is… is a pretty tasty apple. Not as tart as I’d like, but pleasantly weird. Has depth. The one I ate had a banana-pineapple tang to it, with a honey-on-the-tongue follow-up with a final, almost-grassy finish. It tastes… golden? Does that make sense? It doesn’t, I know, but there it is.

4. Stayman Winesap

Winey (or “vinous”) and rich, the juicy, crisp, and coarse-grained Stayman Winesap is a pretty dang beautiful apple. Got that Berry Sangria color to it, and then you bite into it and catch a whiff of spice — like the distant promise of cinnamon and honeysuckle. You can see it doing well in cider, or sauce, or even pie. But works too right out of hand. Can’t go wrong with it if you can find one.

3. Cosmic Crisp

I wanted to hate this apple. Because it’s another “Crisp” apple — so desperate to be like the Popular Kid, Honeycrisp, even though the Popular Kid is never the most interesting kid. And it had a big marketing push and, while I’m certainly not mad at people getting excited to eat fruit, I’m also naturally dubious of anytime anything seems overly pushed-to-market. It felt shoved-in-my-face. Everyone asking, DID YOU TRY THE COSMIC CRISP, DID YOU, DIDJA, IT’S SUPPOSED TO CURE ACNE, IT SAVED MY DOG FROM CANCER, IT’S A SPACE APPLE THAT THEY BRED ON THE MOOOOON. Well. I tried it. They sent me a box. And godfuckingdamnit, it’s a really good apple. I daresay it is my favorite standard grocery store apple. Yes, it’s got that sweet Honeycrisp thing, but it’s also balanced by equal tartness — and bonus, it’s crisp like a carrot slice. Satisfying to eat. I like it as much as one of my other faves, the Pink Lady. I can see this becoming a fast favorite for folks.

2. Arkansas Black

Black like the Devil’s own buboes! Not really. It’s just a really really dark red — blood-and-bruise-dark. Now, this isn’t a standard grocery store apple, but I did find it at my local store for just one week. And I was geeked to find it because it’s not easy to find around here. I can tell you now, it’s a great apple. Strongly tart, with a honeyed-vanilla kick to the sweetness. A bit funky, in the best way. It’s a beautiful apple to behold, and hard as a rock. You could break somebody’s jaw with one of these. Don’t fuck with me. I might be armed with a sack of these chonky motherfuckers. I’ll split your kneecap in half like a communion wafer, motherfucker. Kachow.

1. GoldRush

Honestly, I didn’t find this at a grocery store, but it’s not an heirloom. But it is the very best apple, and you will not disagree. I mean, don’t eat it right off the tree — haha, it sucks right off the tree. But a couple weeks, even months, in storage, and it becomes weird and sweet and tart, compelling in a way where you feel like a starving man on a desert island eating a mango after weeks without food or water. It’s clearly got that Golden Delicious parentage, but then kicks in with a pleasing lemon tartness. It’s dense and firm. Holds up real well to cooking — the apple sauce and pies I make with it are legendary. (Er, legendary in my house, anyway. A small legend.) I buy them by the sack. Then store them forever. I just used the last ones yesterday, after getting them in October. Cold storage does them wonders — they might start to look a little weird, like your fingertips after they’ve been in bathwater for too long, but the flesh and flavor remains. Hie thee hence to a GoldRush apple.

HEY GUESS WHAT? (This is where you say, oh my god are we getting a pony and I’m like, what, no, this is a blog, who said anything about a pony, and now I’m worried we’ve begun this exchange on not just the wrong foot, but a broken foot, because suddenly we’re collectively disappointed about the distinct lack of ponies all up in here.)

AHEM

So!

Wanderers is on the preliminary ballot for the Stoker Awards!

Preliminary ballot is not the final ballot, of course, but honestly, it’s an honor anytime there is any signal at all that this book is connecting with readers. Thanks, readers!

I also note here, rather selfishly, that I understand Hugo and Nebula nominations close soon, and so ahem ahem ahem, Wanderers is a book, and maybe it’s a good book, and maybe you think it’s worthy of one of those? I dunno. I’m not you. But a bearded boy can hope.

I have other news, quite a lot of it, but I am not at all free to share any of it yet, which is I have come to believe the author’s curse. We are receptacles fit to burst with news we cannot share.

In the meantime, I offer you photos. These three are test shots I took with a new lens — a 35mm macro lens with built-in ringlite. It’s a neat lens, though you basically gotta get right the hell up on your subject, so no bug shots with this one, I think.

Please to enjoy.