We went to see Into the Spider-Verse and, you already know this because you’re all very smart people, but it’s fucking amazing. It’s the best Spider-Man movie, but only gets to be the best Spider-Man movie because of all the amazing Spider-Man movies (and comics, and cartoons, and games) before it. It’s great. It’s astonishing, spectacular, sensational, amazing. And not to mention really beautiful — one of the prettiest animated films I’ve seen in a very long time, experimental in a way that Pixar movies are not (and indie films often are).

ANYWAY.

That’s not the point of this post.

The point of this post is, we got out of the movie Sunday night, it was later than I wanted it to be, and it was starting to snow and ice a little bit. The original plan was to go out and grab food somewhere but the collective decision was: “We better head home and find dinner there.”

One problem, though —

It was Sunday night.

When I hadn’t gone grocery shopping.

The fridge and pantry were a fucking skeleton stripped of all its precious nutrients, dry as a mouse cough, and so I had no idea what I was going to make for dinner.

So, I went to my default:

GARBAGE RAMEN, or, TRASHCAN RAMEN.

Which is to say, I make a duly non-traditional version of ramen soup containing whatever shit I can scrounge up in my house at the time. Now! I do sometimes make a semi-proper ramen — miso, pork bones, tare, soft-boiled eggs, the whole fucking jim-jam. But garbage ramen is not this. Usually my garbage ramen is whatever broth I have conjured, plus whatever meat remnants I can find, and then at the end I add like, soy, ginger, garlic, splash of rice wine vinegar, mirin, maybe a tickle of sugar. But the recipe that proceeds is not that recipe.

I made something different.

And what I made was accidentally awesome.

I have not yet tried to replicate it, but I am going to put the recipe here, for you to have, so you can try your hand at it, see if it comes out as good as it did — more to the point, far far better than I could have possibly expected.

So, first, the broth.

This I had already made ahead, as I do often.

The broth is this:

Bunch of shiitake mushroom stems (8-10, I think — just stems!)

One carrot

One celery rib

Two hot cherry peppers

Quarter onion, chopped

Bundle of cilantro

Splurp of minced garlic

Sploop of minced ginger

2 tbsp coriander seed

2 tbsp cumin seed

1 tbsp fennel seed

1 tbsp mustard seed

dash of turmeric

a scattered smattering of black peppercorns

probably don’t need much salt, if any

3-4 cups of chicken broth

And I cooked that bubblin’ brew for *mumble mumble* a couple-few hours. Then, strained out of all the stuck it in a container, and into the fridge it went.

UNTIL THE HOUR OF TRASHCAN RAMEN WAS UPON US, as the prophecy foretold.

Soup time.

Get the broth boiling and into it ye shall placeth:

Three carrots, choppity-chopped

One celery rib, sliced into slicey bits for its crimes

Half a green pepper, carved into nifty thin strips

Quarter onion, diced

The caps from the shiitake mushrooms (above), sliced

one can of coconut milk

Three tbsp fish sauce

1 tbsp soy sauce

pinch of sugar

juice of one lime

You don’t need long with this — five minutes starts to soften the vegetables but still lets them feel crisp and fresh, like my buttocks on a spring Sunday morning.

*checks notes*

*notes say: ‘stop mentioning your butt in recipes’*

*nods sagely*

Moving on.

Now, the ramen noodles.

I tend to use these noodles right here, and they’re pretty good — nice texture and what-not. But in this case I only had your standard $0.19 packs of ramen, and I took three of them and those were the noodles I used because they’re oddly very satisfying. The trick is, usually when I make ramen, I make the noodles separate, in their own water, and then dole them out into the bowls of soup. In this case I was lazy and just tossed the NOODLE BRICKS into the soup and —

You know, they soaked up a lot of the broth, which is not ideal, but also, made it weirdly satisfying in that it wasn’t entirely soup anymore? And then for the piece de resistance, a thing I never do, I used the fucking chicken ramen flavor packet. I just sprinkled it in there. Just one. Not all three. I never use these things so I have a small library of those packets hanging around, and…

Okay, listen, this isn’t good in the sense that it’s a refined meal. This is the furthest thing from fine dining. But it’s good in a weird, deeper, more satisfying way — deeply umami, rich and creamy, with the vibe of macaroni and cheese but… not macaroni and cheese, not at all. I need to try making it again, see if I can capture this curious meal for a second time.

Lemme know if you try it.

REPORT BACK, HOOMANS

The greatest dangers hide the brightest treasures in THE SALVAGERS, a bold, planet-hopping science fiction adventure series. A BAD DEAL FOR THE WHOLE GALAXY continues the adventure that began in June’s A BIG SHIP AT THE EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE.

The crew of the legendary Capricious are rich enough to retire in comfort for the rest of their days, but none of it matters if the galaxy is still in danger.

Nilah and Boots, the ship’s newest crew-members, hear the word of a mysterious cult that may have links back to an ancient and all-powerful magic. To find it, hot-headed Nilah will have to go undercover and find the source of their power without revealing her true identity. Meanwhile, Boots is forced to confront the one person she’d hoped never to see again: her turncoat former treasure-hunting partner.

* * *

1. Don’t underestimate the power of a zealous cause.

At the end of the first book, the heroes do their hero thing and bring home the titular Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe. They expose a fundamental lie and the conspiracy of maniacs behind it. The galaxy sets about rooting out the remaining evil, and everyone lives happily ever—

—No, wait. Actually, within months, a group springs up calling our heroes frauds, then uses these claims to radicalize young people to their cause.

These cultists come from two places: positions of power and prestige, and those who feel they’ve been denied their birthright. When the cult asks more of them, it asks for their dignity or morality to provide them with a mere chance at greatness—and so many remain signed up.

I try to write villains a reader can respect. I want the reader to understand their motivations and ask, “Could I become that person in another life?” But over the course of writing A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy, I kept watching the real world and wondering if my bad folks were evil enough. It’s getting harder to have sympathy for the devil, and that came to influence my portrayal.

2. Where you write alters what you write.

Composing a song on guitar will yield different results than composing on piano, because both instruments preferentially accent different chord structures. The same is true of the writing I do and the context in which I do it.

In early 2016, I got a traveling job that kept me away from home for weeks at a time. I’m a creature of habit, and I hated trying to write outside of my nice, established space at home. However, I also had three unwritten books under contract, so I was going to have to toughen up if I wanted to get the job done.

I found that different contexts created different results: writing fun scenes was easy outdoors, and no place is better to write a depressing scene than an airport bar. Cozy spots were good for the sweet bits, and fluorescent corporate breakrooms conjured horror. I could take my notebook to all these different places and plot my work, then drag it back to the hotel room like a prized buck for meat processing.

While I have never been as prolific on the road as I am in my house, writing in new contexts made for interesting results.

3. Building the puzzle is easier than solving it.

A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy is a heist story, and at the core of every heist tale is a puzzle that the heroes must solve along with the reader. The solution must be predictable enough to be satisfying, but twisty enough to be surprising. It’s balancing these contradictory goals that makes writing heists fun, and I originally found the challenge intimidating.

As it happens, the super-smart heist is easier to construct than I thought. Here’s the formula that worked for me:

Start with an obstacle: political, geographical, armed guards, crime families, whatever. Keep adding obstacles until the entire thing seems ridiculous: “Even if we could get in there, how would we get past the bipedal robo-sharks?”

Then cogitate. Give up. Shut your laptop and drink your booze in disgust. Complain to a friend. Take a shower the next day and realize that something you’d set up elsewhere on the story could change the equation. Repeat until you have enough exciting solutions—and throw in a final complication for good measure (“What do you mean the mayor is doing a publicity thing at the bank today?”).

When I wrote this heist, the eureka effect was my best friend. If you don’t think a shower will solve your heist problem, you haven’t seen the original woodcut of Archimedes screaming while he jumps out of the tub.

4. You can never go home again.

One of the hardest things to capture in a series is the imprint each adventure leaves on the characters. You can’t face down some of the worst the galaxy has to offer and emerge unchanged. It leaves scars. It erodes mental stability. What most believe to be your strengths may become weaknesses behind closed doors—stoicism turns into distance, alertness withers into paranoia.

When I first started the sequels, this kind of intimidated me. It was hard enough to create the arc for Nilah and Boots from nasty and selfish to heartwarming and familial. Now, I was expected to create two similarly-entertaining arcs with an overall theme stretched over them.

It turned out that my worries were unfounded. Once I was able to slow down and consider how their previous adventure impacted them, natural character interactions readily emerged. This book taught me to worry less and draw from my good ideas, without repeating them outright.

5. Writing a sequel feels awkward as hell sometimes.

I was so glad to find out most of my author friends deal with some variation of this one.

Writing your characters a second time around, as big heroes, feels self-aggrandizing. I had grown so accustomed to thinking of them a band of down-on-their-luck scoundrels. Describing them as heroes who’d already overcome a great evil against terrible odds was just strange.

To counteract this and return their humanity, I concentrated on the things my characters would hate about success. What problems weren’t fixed by loads of wealth, legal power and the ability to blast off into the stars at a moment’s notice? I started taking stock of their inherent psychological damages, using those to create double-edged interpretations of success.

There’s a reason that winning the lottery can be the worst thing that happens to some people.

* * *

Alex White was born and raised in the American south. They take photos, writes music, and spends hours on YouTube watching other people blacksmith. They value challenging and subversive writing, but they’ll settle for a good time.

Alex White: Website | Twitter

A Bad Deal For The Whole Galaxy: Print | eBook

“A gritty, medieval fantasy full of enchantment” (Publishers Weekly), David Keck’s epic Tales of Durand trilogy concludes with A King in Cobwebs

Once a landless second son, Durand has sold his sword to both vicious and noble men and been party to appalling acts of murder as well as self-sacrificing heroism. Now the champion of the Duke of Gireth, Durand’s past has caught up with him.

The land is at the mercy of a paranoid king who has become unfit to rule. As rebellion sparks in a conquered duchy, the final bond holding back the Banished break, unleashing their nightmarish evil on the innocents of the kingdom.

In his final battle against the Banished, Durand comes face to face with the whispering darkness responsible for it all―the king in cobwebs.

* * *

Of Daughters & Day Jobs

I learned a little about writing and time while I worked but on The Tales of Durand. The final book, A King in Cobwebs, was a wee bit late — it really ought to have been published in the 1850s. And, for this inordinate delay, I would like to blame my family.

When I was an unattached, semi-employed youth, I had a special sort of time. There were whole days and evenings and weekends when time yawned like the sea and I could jump right in. If I wanted to work out ideas and build stories (or worlds) over months and months, I could do it. Magic. Now that I’m a proud parent with a real job and various responsibilities, I’ve noticed some fairly obvious things about writing in scattered fits and starts.
First, if you don’t keep nudging a story along on a nearly daily basis, the whole architecture of the thing tends to fade from the imagination. (I want to use the word “palimpsest” here, or maybe some metaphor with watercolors and drizzle, but I’d better not). When the interrupted writer returns to the work from a long break, the story has become a strange place. And it can take real time to find the blueprints and collect the tools. So, clearly, a monastic life of penury and solitude is the way forward. (Although now that I think about it, there are advantages to love and regular meals which ought to figure in the balance. You may wish to draw your own conclusions).

The Magic of the Jouster’s Armpit

The Tales of Durand is a harrowing story, but researching the books was a great fun. For me, the best finds were those telling, unexpected bits that make a person feel that the past is a real, weird, particular place you’ve never been before. They popped up everywhere. I remember reading a First World War memoir and gathering stories of mud and fleas. A crowd of school kids and I heard an old castle guide explain time (with sundials and bits of dangly jewelry). And modern day jousters? They use the internet to grumble about how a well-struck lance chews up the lancer’s armpit. How can you not collect these things?

I suppose the notion is that readers will, for a second or two, feel like they’re meeting the real people of some real place (at least as peculiar as our own).

Squashing My Orcs

There is great fun to be had in catching cliches, and I caught a few while I was working on Durand.  (I imagine every writer fights with them). If you can spot one of these terrible things — and squash it — the resulting splatter of new and interesting ideas can be immensely satisfying.

Of course, it isn’t always easy to catch the things: they will often arrive disguised in little bits of superficial creativity. I remember, as a teenage writer, feeling quite proud of the unique qualities of “my orcs”, for example. And, to this day, I keep a forest of cunningly disguised elves hiding just off camera. Fantasy is full of such temptations.

But, when you do manage to catch a cliche, what fun you can have! I’d planned a scene where my hero would ride up to a strange castle and call for the man in charge. You can picture a castle wall. Guards on top. A big gate.

Fortunately, before I tried to reupholster scene, I caught myself. What if there was no one at the castle? What if everyone has vanished? What if they’d followed their leader into the hills? It could be a pilgrimage! What sort of holy place could it be? Why would they go? In the end, I was very pleased with the little world of motivations and repercussions that popped up when the story left the well-trodden path. (There’s a scene now where a doomed father grieves a lost but once-promising son in a strange gorge of hanging rags).

Splat!

Time, Tide, and Disappearing Horses

In the future, I may write a novel set entirely in a single room.

In my favorite stories, the landscape is alive. It is its own character, and it has the power to conjure up boatloads of awe and dread and wonder. I’m thinking of the cold, claustrophobia of the Icelandic sagas; the majesty of the Tolkien’s broad spaces; Sherlock’s moors; or Shelley’s arctic wastes. It’s all good fun.

If you are going to take your readers through a few good landscapes; however, you are almost forced to put your characters on horseback and send them trotting all over creation. (This is unfortunate).
Horses are ticklish things. Anybody who knows anything about horses will tell you that nobody knows anything about horses. I gathered useful hints about personality and maintenance from guidebooks and handbooks and conversations with actual people, but no practical amount of research could ever do the job. There is a neat and frustrating divide among historians, for example, about whether a medieval charge was a galloping affair or only a grim and resolute canter full of razor sharp points.  Worse, horses have a curious tendency to disappear from the pages of a novel. During the revision process of The Tales of Durand, horses popped in and out of existence more times than I am comfortable admitting. I suspect that this is where centaurs came from.

When there’s a lot of traveling, time soon becomes a challenge as well. In The Tales of Durand, time is measured by the movements of the sun and moon. In fact, the moon has a new name each month (based on timeless cycles of the agricultural year, because it’s a fantasy novel and people expect things). Sadly, all of this created a record keeping issue. Over the course of the series, I’m not sure how many times I put two full moons in the same month, two sunsets in a single day — and I’m still not sure I understand tides.

(Thank goodness for editors. Really).

Little Actual Exploration

The seed of this trilogy was a flawed little short story about a fellow who felt miscast in the role of hero. He did the job, but he didn’t feel that he deserved the accolades. That was the idea, but I’m not sure I could have told you precisely where the story was going; the notion of the doubting hero felt like something I wanted to explore.

Three novels in, I’ve started to see more clearly where my head was. The reader meets quite a number of tortured souls in these pages, and, typically, their wounds are self-inflicted. People hang onto their guilt or doubt or anger no matter how it hurts them. And, because we’re in an enchanted world, their suffering renders them monstrous and tears at the landscape. Thankfully, by the end, some of my favorite characters are beginning to come to their senses. (They might even have a chance at happiness).

Maybe what I’m saying, in several hundred thousand words is that we should cut ourselves some slack.

And be careful with our armpits.

* * *

David Keck is a New York based writer, teacher, and cartoonist who grew up in Winnipeg, Canada.

David Keck: Portal

The Tales of Durand: Print | eBook