(If it’s any consolation, HE, I’m not that good a cook either, and I sure as heck can’t afford truffles and whatnot. Much of the cooking in this story was wishful thinking. But hey, it’s fun to dream. ^_-)

If y’all are interested in reading Nora’s story in print, it, along with a whole host of other food-related fiction, reside in Scattered, Covered, Smothered, an anthology edited and published by Two Cranes Press, the independent publisher I run with my wife, artist-writer Janet Chui. In addition to Nora’s story, we have contributions from Jeff VanderMeer, Nalo Hopkinson, Bruce Boston, Toiya Kristen Finley, Barth Anderson, Rhys Hughes, and many more.

And now I will stopping pimping myself and return the board to its adulation of this story.

My favourite part … “As she had planned the firebird’s glaze, which contained a few drops of left over frava oil, sparked on the flint gizzard in its mouth and caught fire the moment he tried to carve a slice. The illusory flames billowed and curled around the dish like the birds lost feathers and the slice he’d cut floated gracefully to his plate.”

I’m not entirely sure that we can say a genre has ghettoised itself. The way I see it is that when a genre-defying book comes out publishers start demanding more of the same. Fan fiction is easy to write, and much of the fantasy-genre occupies a world-space not dis-similar to J. R. R. Tolkien because for a long while publishers have been desperate to find something else that would appeal to the LOTR audience. Just because books get published and use different characters and place-names it doesnt lift ‘em much further above Fan-Fics.

The spin-off thing works much the same way; A marketing audience is identified for a particular movie, game or TV-Series and books are commissioned because the publisher believes that there is a captive audience. This audience will recognise brands and possibly buy a star-trek spin-off instead of the work of an unknown writer.

It’s nice to have guest hosts every now and then to break up the flow of the show, and to keep us all on our toes.

Anthony Bourdain (in his Las Halles cookbook) talks about how good cooking truely is magic. that in the simmering of ingredients, the melding of flavors is something that isn’t engineered by a cook, but pure magic that occurs under the lid of the pot itself.

perfect.

Excellent story, great ideas, excellent descriptions.

Thank you, please write more!

On your editorial… the way I look at it – the genre distinctions between mainstream and the fantastic literature written these days has arisen because mainstream fiction has ghettoized itself, not the other way round. I figure this happend mostly because it started playing into mundane character description and prose pretty contests – back in the day – say the 19th century – popular literature (the mainstream) used every trick in the book (pun intended) to tell a good story.