Careful Who You Talk To
Sep. 24th, 2025 09:40 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
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it's FIGURATIVE
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The Shattering Peace is a New York Times Bestseller
Sep. 25th, 2025 12:03 amscalziwhatever_feed
Specifically, it’s at #9 on the Combined Print and eBook Fiction list, which, if I’m being honest, is higher than I expected, inasmuch as I expected it to be at 14 or 15 if it got onto the list at all (the competition for the NYT list is significant right about now). I am, as the kids do not say, gobsmacked. This is a very good day.
If you pre-ordered or bought the book in the first week, thank you. You’re my favorite. And if you haven’t gotten it yet, it’s not too late! Copies are still available!
And to celebrate: I’m gonna have some pizza. And then go to sleep. I’m still on tour and have to get up in the morning.
— JS
View From a Hotel Window, 9/24/25: Shepardstown, WV
Sep. 24th, 2025 08:04 pmscalziwhatever_feed
The parking lot isn’t for the hotel, and it isn’t even really a parking lot, it’s a car wash. Also, there’s this big damn pine in my view. West Virginia is going hard, y’all.
Tonight: Four Seasons Books at 6 pm, which is an hour earlier than I usually start. You should be on your way now!
Tomorrow: Richmond, Virginia! At Fountain Bookstore! Also at 6pm! The Virginias do things early, I suppose.
— JS
Anything Can Happen Day, and it had better NOT
Sep. 24th, 2025 01:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rolanniWhat went before: . . .it is too much; I will sum up. Yesterday, I visited the vampyres, who tithed me two vials, which was enough to make me sick and dizzy for the rest of the day, so nothing of note got done, unless you count new ways to be annoyed with life.
Wednesday. Rainy and chilly.
Especially chilly in Steve's office with the gaping windows that I wish he would have told me about. But, new windows -- actually doors -- are coming, so that was a decision well-made.
For those keeping track at home, I'm feeling much better. OTOH, I've said that before. . .
Breakfast was oatmeal with cranberries. Lunch will be a chicken burger with a side salad. I have a lot of work to do on the business side of things, so this afternoon will be, um, busy. I do not think I will get to the grocery store today. I'm hoping tomorrow afternoon.
This morning, I wrote +/-1,870 new words. I'm starting to worry that this is going to be a very long book. The only length stipulation in our contracts is "at least 100,000 words," so I'm taking that as, "Write 'til it's Done."
Big IRL victory, here! The FedEx guy actually put the Heavy Box o'cat litter in the garage. I mean, it was done in a surly fashion -- dropped directly behind the car and at the very edge of the paving, so I'd be sure to run over it if I hadn't noticed it was there before backing out. However, I did notice it, and used the push broom to scoot it safely further under shelter, and to one side, so all's well and all like that.
The cats have been very attentive. Firefly took a half-shift while Tali and Rook attended me in Steve's office. She accompanied me to the back when I came out to fetch my third cup of tea.
I really don't have much else to offer. Yesterday was awful, and I am very tired of things that shouldn't be a problem suddenly being a problem. *shakes fist at Getting Old*
Even though I installed my wordbook in the place where the native wordbook had been on Steve's computer, LibreOffice is still not accessing them. I mean, it shows me that they're all turned on, but unless I'm typing unusually well, it's just not bothering to cross check. Well. Something else for the to-do list.
How's everybody doing, here at the center of the week?
Hard at work on a rainy day:
The Big Idea: Cadwell Turnbull
Sep. 24th, 2025 03:05 pmscalziwhatever_feed
Reality can oftentimes be stranger than fiction. Author Cadwell Turnbull speculates on this funny thing we call reality in the Big Idea for his newest novel, A Ruin, Great and Free. Follow along to see how our reality helped shape the world for the final novel in the Convergence saga.
CADWELL TURNBULL:
Back in the early months of 2020, a lot was happening. In January, the then-Trump administration killed an Iranian general in a drone strike, an “arbitrary killing” that, according to the United Nations, violated international law. At the same time, cases of infections from a new virus were being reported across the globe.
In November 2019, I read Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel just as the first cases of coronavirus were being reported. Station Eleven told the story of several characters before, during, and after an influenza pandemic which kills most of the world’s population.
I promptly began talking about the coronavirus cases with my friends. Even now, I recognize that what I’d been reading was guiding much of my anxiety on the matter. I possessed no special knowledge.
But then the moment came where it was clear to everyone that this thing was indeed happening. Or it should have been clear to everyone. Instead, there was a split in our collective sense of what was happening—a fracture. As people died, I witnessed personally a very stubborn denialism take hold. As city streets lay empty and hospitals filled beyond capacity, people began protesting the need for lockdowns and other such precautions. The pandemic became a partisan issue. But even on the personal level, among friends and family with politics all across the spectrum, I witnessed a range in how the pandemic was being perceived.
I was surprised and not surprised. The effects of the pandemic were terrifying, but we all weren’t terrified by the same things. It also confirmed in a very dramatic way a speculative hunch I’d embedded into the project I was working on at the time.
Almost a full year before the pandemic I’d created a fictional fracture of my own. It was at the heart of No Gods, No Monsters, the first in what would become the Convergence Saga. In the novel, evidence of the existence of monsters from folklore and popular culture is released to the public. Almost immediately this evidence—two videos: an officer-involved shooting of a werewolf and an act of protest from said werewolf’s wolfpack—is seemingly erased from everywhere all at once.
With the loss of the evidence, the collective sense of reality splits. Some people become obsessed with the videos and their disappearance. But other people—most people, in fact—self-delete the event from their own minds. The reasons for both responses were the same. A terrifying truth can take over a person’s mind or cause a person to look away completely. In the series, I was tying this fracture idea to a bigger one, a question at the center of reality itself, a real-world counterpart to a cosmic puzzle.
As I was drafting No Gods, No Monsters, I struggled a bit with the believability of this fracture idea. Peers that workshopped early parts of the novel questioned it. I also kept questioning the idea. Right up until the pandemic forced the world into lockdown and some people still didn’t believe it was happening.
I started No Gods, No Monsters in late 2018 and it was released in 2021. The following book, We Are the Crisis, was released in 2023. And the final book, A Ruin, Great and Free, was released on September 16th. My work on this series has spanned a very interesting time in our American (and global) politics.
Sometimes basic facts of our current life feel so strange to me that I wonder if we’re all trapped in some collective nightmare. I’m constantly reminded of The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin, where protagonist George Orr has dreams that can alter reality itself. This personal quirk is then amplified by use of a machine called the Augmentor, weaponised by Dr. William Haber, a psychiatrist with goals of remaking the world into a utopia. Naturally that doesn’t quite work out, as Le Guin masterfully shows us the disastrous results of Haber’s hubris.
The Lathe of Heaven envisions for us what it might look like if a subjective ideal is imposed on the objective world. If one person can determine (either by accident or manipulation) what the world looks like, what is the cost?
I think we know this speculative premise has real-world counterparts. As individuals and collectives, we are constantly remaking reality according to our ideals.
In the Convergence Saga a shadowy kabal tries to manipulate the world for its own purposes. Like in The Lathe of Heaven there is a supernatural reality-warping effect at work in the story’s world, but there’s also a very natural one. Ideas have a heat to them. They can be felt, drawing us in. Ideas can make us ignore things right in front of us. They can also make us imagine things that aren’t there. And once we’re under the spell of certain ideas, it can be difficult to root them out. An idea embeds itself.
Like a lot of people right now I’ve been obsessively watching the news. I find it frustrating how much of the news is political commentary. I am even more frustrated by the reality-warping effectiveness of bad-faith commentators on our current reality. Once again I find myself catastrophizing about a future I don’t want to live in, but we seem to be slipping toward. At the same time, I see the split happening. We can’t agree on what we’re seeing.
If the Convergence Saga is about the questioning of reality, it is also about expanding empathy. Trying to find healing for a fractured world. Trying to mend what has been broken. The story does not neatly provide an answer—because I personally don’t have one—but it shows an earnest attempt by the characters to find a way out of the political upheaval they’re facing. Much of that work is in finding new communities, forming new coalitions, and building solidarity networks for economic support and mutual aid. Occasionally, these coalitions of monsters, humans, and cosmic beings have to do battle against nefarious organizations and supremacist groups.
Turns out that in our world there are more people that want a fascist, white supremacist future than we thought. And we’re already glimpsing what that future could look like.
Fortunately, reality remains a collective act. And they’re not the only ones out here. We also get a say in what the future looks like.
A Ruin, Great and Free: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s
Author socials: Website|Instagram|Bluesky
Read an excerpt here.
The Gift Of Encouragement
Sep. 24th, 2025 01:00 pmcakewrecks_feedI remember the first time I told my Mom the publisher wanted me to go on a book tour for Cake Wrecks. She responded by telling me about an author she'd seen at a big warehouse store the previous weekend, sitting alone behind a card table and looking desperate.
"I just don't want that for you," she said.
...
Motherly concern aside, you could say my mom has a real gift for encouragement.
Kind of like these people:
"Oh, and happy engagement. I guess."
This is your moment. Enjoy it.
Q: What do you get the birthday girl who's allergic to birthday cake?
A: A birthday cake with an apology. ("More cake for us! Woot!")
As we get older, we look for signs from our loved ones that age is really just a number, it's about staying young at heart, etc, etc.
"Well, sure, NOW I am."
And there's nothing quite so encouraging as ill-concealed shock at your personal accomplishments:
"We had you guys pegged at two years, tops. Wow!"
And finally:
"Note that we haven't expressed any sadness over this fact, or stated whether Kyle is happy regarding his imminent departure. However, the fact that we're having cake would seem to indicate a celebration of Kyle's coming absence."
"Wow, you got all that from four words?!"
"No, I'm reading the card."
Thanks to Edmund H., Rachael G., Kim K., Sarah C., G.D., & Kyle C. for the encouraging words.
*****
Oh hey, this seems like a good time to remind you this exists:
Cake Wrecks, THE BOOK
It's totes hilarz, and I don't say things like "totes hilarz" in it even once.
*****
And from my other blog, Epbot:
The Metehmorphosis
Sep. 23rd, 2025 09:58 pmquestionable_content_feed
gregor samsa awoke to find he had transformed into a webcomic character
"Perfectly" Punctual
Sep. 23rd, 2025 01:00 pmcakewrecks_feedYesterday we covered parentheses and quotation marks. Today, THE WORLD.
Or maybe just some extra apostrophes:
This Beth belongs to Congratutation.
The booties are anyone's guess.
I see lots of apostrophes where quotation marks should be, but I have to admit, this is the first time I've seen it the other way around:
I blame whatever madness drove the baker to add that L.
You might think periods would be easy to deal with, but if so, you're obviously a man with a death wish.
Or this baker:
I don't really know who St. David is, but I'm hoping against hope he's the patron saint of punctuation.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is the three period run, or if you want to get all technical about it, the ellipsis:
Because nothing conveys sincerity quite like trailing off mid...
With all these confusing options, you might be tempted to skip punctuation entirely, bakers. But that path has its own perils:
Yeah, way to go, Bob. I mean, that was soooo great, that thing you did. Scha.
My personal favorite, though, is the wild card mish-mosh of punctuation patter:
I dare you to do a dramatic reading of this cake.
And finally, the colon cake you've been waiting for:
Come back after we slice it for the semi-colons.
Thanks to Elizabeth C., Miriam A., Doreen L., Ariel F., Sarah C., Gernez, & Kim T. for the excuse to link to Victor Borge's phonetic punctuation.
The Big Idea: Delilah S. Dawson
Sep. 23rd, 2025 01:17 amscalziwhatever_feed
Writing a book is like riding a bike: once you’ve got it down, you never have to learn how to do it again, right? Such may not be the case. In her Big Idea, author Delilah S. Dawson delves into the writing process and learning curves she faced, even after numerous novels. Follow along to see what challenges and changes came with creating her newest book, Thor & Loki: Epic Tales From Marvel Mythology.
DELILAH S. DAWSON:
The Big Idea: Sometimes Your Process Changes, and That’s Okay
I’ve written over forty books and had thirty-two of them—the good ones—published, so you’d think that I know how to write a book.
As it turns out, you would be wrong.
At least partially.
Because the thing about writing books is that just because you know how to write one book does not mean you know how to write another. Books are like fingerprints in that each one is wholly individual, unique in all the world. Books are unlike fingerprints in that they cannot be easily compared to koala bears.
Except—
Well, koala bears are notoriously single-minded and stubborn, and writers can be like that, too. Hopefully, I will convince you otherwise.
When I write a novel, I write the story straight through from the first page to the last page. I don’t jump around chapters, reread extensively, or edit as I go. I think of it like carrying hot laundry from the dryer to the bed: you wrap it in your arms and run, and if you drop a sock, you leave it behind because we all know that one hasty squat can topple the entire basket. I do multiple revisions, lest you think I am publishing the equivalent of inside-out, cat-hair covered socks, but that initial run from page one to THE END is the skeleton on which the meat of my story rests.
This method worked for thirty-one books, and then suddenly, it didn’t.
When I was invited to write Thor and Loki: Epic Tales from Marvel Mythology, I quickly realized that my Hot Laundry Process could not serve me. Instead of weaving a story from my own brain and heart, creating a new world out of the threads crafted from my creative spinnerets, I was tasked with taking an existing mythology and retelling it for a modern audience through the well-known voices of Marvel’s Thor and Loki. The Norse myths spring from an oral tradition, and there is no one, total, mutually accepted, complete source to study. Not only that, but there is no one specific Thor or Loki. Like the myths that bore them, these two ancient gods have been depicted in multiple movies, TV shows, and comics, and each individual fan has a favorite Thor or Loki, a platonic ideal of the character that they hold in their heart.
Thus, my task was to take two well-known, beloved characters that have existed simultaneously as gods and goofs for the past twelve hundred or more years, distill them into a fine mead, and then syphon that golden sauce through the sieve of collective comic memory and Icelandic poetry.
Can’t believe I’m saying this, but it might be easier to do laundry.
I don’t generally suffer from Writer’s Block, not only because I have deadlines and a mortgage, but also because I trust in my process. And yet you must believe me when I tell you that I came to a standstill on this project and began to dread it. When I invent a world, I become its god, and every decision I make solidifies the character and story. In that realm, I am always correct, and reality conforms to my whims. But in the realm of Thor, Loki, and their shared mythology, I had to instead become the bard.
In the Norse tradition, the bard is the keeper of story and memory, a vaunted figure; Odin is considered the god of poetry, and one of the myths that has lasted through the centuries tells the tale of the first bard and the mead of poetry. The bard’s job is not to spin tales from the ether, but rather to pass down the stories from one generation to the next, to remember them in a time with no written record. Each bard carried the myths and told them in a unique fashion, reminding the tavern’s occupants how to live and worship while entertaining them.
Once I realized that my job was to take up the bard’s tankard, suddenly the book actually began to flow. Instead of telling my own story, I broke the project down into chapters, and each day, my task was to look at a particular myth from several different sources and spin my own version. Or, more accurately, to channel the voices of Loki and Thor as they each compete to woo the Avengers to their side using all the bard’s techniques of enchantment and, well, propaganda. Adding in a few famous Thor and Loki tales from the Marvel comics was even more of a challenge. From The First Avenger in 1963 to Thor, Frog of Thunder and the more recent Loki for President, it was a delight to create my own poetry from famous stories never before told in prose.
For the first time, my chapters jumped around. I wasn’t carrying laundry from point A to point B; I was putting a puzzle together. Unlike all my other books, the Norse myths don’t have a specific chronology. Although there is a very distinct beginning, which involves a very large cow licking a giant, and a very distinct ending, known as Ragnarok, what happens in between is fluid. As Loki tells the Avengers, the myths exist to entertain and teach, not help you draw up an accurate timeline. Part of the bard’s art is selecting just the right story to tell.
Now, this is not the first time I’ve had to completely change my process. Writing my first novella, also known as ‘a book that is only 40% of a book’, had quite the learning curve, and I did such a bad job writing my first comic that I burst out crying at a hotel buffet during a Santa Claus convention. I’ve been writing professionally since 2012, and I’ve learned to always trust my process, and when that process stops working, to find a new process. There is no one way to write a book. A writer’s process may change over decades, years, projects, or chapters. Whatever gets the book done? That’s your process.
If you don’t have a process yet, I highly recommend the book Story Genius by Lisa Cron, which teaches you to outline by marrying character arc to plot using the third rail of emotion. And if you already have a process, maybe don’t cling to it too tightly. Don’t be that koala that will only eat eucalyptus if it’s on the branch. Writing is about fluidity and play and experimentation. As Charles De Mar says in Better Off Dead: Go that way, really fast. If something gets in your way, turn.
Thor & Loki: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s
Throwing A Dinner Party Using “Third Culture Cooking” By Zaynab Issa
Sep. 22nd, 2025 07:50 pmscalziwhatever_feed
If my last post over Zaynab Issa’s cookbook didn’t entice you to buy it, this one might just change your mind. After cooking a few things from, and loving, Third Culture Cooking, I decided I simply must have a dinner party using nothing but recipes from Issa’s book.
It probably would’ve been easier to make something I had already made before, but I decided to do entirely new recipes for the party and just have faith that they would turn out well.
I’m happy to report that everything turned out so much better than I could have even hoped for, and my dinner party was a total success! So let’s talk about what I made, what it cost me, how long it took, and how everything tasted.
I spent probably over an hour initially going through the book deciding on everything I wanted to make. I finally decided on Spiced Chickpea Soup, Calabrian Chili Chicken with Caper Raita, Coconutty Corn, Shawarma Spiced Carrots, Chocolate Cake with Chai Buttercream, Ginger Lime Spritz, and Slightly Salty Mango Lassi.
First thing first was to place a big ol’ Kroger pick up order, because searching up everything I needed on their website and adding it to my cart was way easier than wandering all over the actual store with a broken-wheel-cart and spending time searching the shelves and missing what was right in front of my face.
I would say, roughly, I spent $200 on ingredients. A big part of this was that I already had every single spice I needed on hand, like turmeric, coriander, cumin, and cardamom, so that certainly saved me a large chunk of change. Another factor was that there was very little meat I needed to buy, and the meat was just chicken thighs, which are pretty cheap. I wasn’t cooking nice cuts of steaks or salmon, so my protein cost was very low. So much of what I needed to buy was produce.
Besides produce, I had to buy things like coconut milk, whole milk plain yogurt, feta, labneh, just the kind of stuff I don’t normally have on hand. In fact, this was my first time buying labneh, and I was surprised I even found it. My local Kroger had literally one brand, and like, two tubs of it. So I got lucky.
The hardest thing to find, no joke, was the Calabrian chilis. I had to go to Meijer for them, and even then they only had one type. I was supposed to buy Calabrian chili paste for the recipe, but they only had whole Calabrian chilis, so I just made do.
So, with everything bought, it was time to get cooking. I cooked, nonstop, for seven hours. Here’s how I tackled everything.
Starting at 9am, I made the yogurt and Calabrian chili marinade for the chicken thighs, and put them in the fridge to marinate while I cooked everything else. Secondly, I made the soup, because I knew that could just be reheated on the stove top easily when it came time to serve. Next, I mixed up the cake batter and baked the two cakes so they’d have plenty of time to cool before applying the frosting. Following that, I prepped the carrots to be roasted and also mixed up the herb salad that’s meant to go on top when served.
While the carrots roasted, I prepped the sweet potatoes to bake at the same time as the chicken, and made up the caper raita and quick-pickled cucumbers that accompany it. In the chicken went after the carrots came out, and while the chicken was baking I made the corn on the stove top. Finally, I made the syrup for the ginger lime spritz, and while that was cooling I whipped up the chai cream for the buttercream, and made the frosting.
My guests arrived at 4pm, which is exactly when the chicken came out, the soup was reheated, the spritz had been mixed up, and everything was ready to serve all at once.
While everything was definitely a lot to make, let’s talk about how difficult each dish was individually.
The chicken and sweet potatoes were honestly very low effort, despite being the main dish. The chicken can marinate anywhere from 15 minutes to overnight, so even if you’re in a rush to get it in the oven you’ll be all right. It helps that the chicken thighs bake right on top of the cut up sweet potatoes, so it’s sort of like a sheet-pan dinner. The quick-pickled cucumbers are literally so easy, you just slice up some mini seedless cucumbers nice and thin and put them in a bowl with lemon juice and salt. The caper raita is pretty simple too, you just mix the capers with the feta, yogurt, and some more cucumber and you’ve got yourself a delicious, creamy accompaniment to the chicken.
For the soup, you just cut up some onion, carrot, and garlic and cook it for a little bit until it’s ready to have the spices, chickpeas, and chicken broth added. Then you blend it up with an immersion blender and it’s ready to go! Doesn’t get much easier than that! (Not counting the fact that my eyes hurt so bad from cutting the onion I had to walk away for a solid ten minutes while tears streamed out of my eyes.)
The carrots were a breeze, you just mix a ton of spices into olive oil, cut the carrots in half lengthwise, cover them in the oil and roast ’em up. The herb salad that went on top of the carrots was also simple but time consuming from the produce you have to cut up for it. Red onion, dates, jalapenos, and herbs mixed with lemon juice and olive oil. The jalapenos were definitely the biggest pain, since removing the seeds is a task that requires patience. Also my fingertips burned for so long after handling the jalapenos.
The cake seriously could not have been easier, it’s just completely standard flour, cocoa powder, sugar, eggs, etc., mix it on up in a stand mixer, pour into cake pans and bake. Now, the chai cream on the other hand quickly became a true labor of love. While making the cream itself wasn’t too much trouble (just adding a bunch of spices and vanilla to heavy cream and heating it up), the real challenge came when it was time to strain it through a fine mesh sieve. The loose black tea and fresh grated ginger proved to be a huge obstacle to getting the liquid through the straining process. It took so much time to get as much cream as I could through the fine mesh. It really was an exercise in patience.
But, after I had the cream separated from the solids, the buttercream was also very easy. Just three sticks of butter, six cups of powdered sugar, and all the chai cream to make the absolute most delicious frosting I’ve ever tasted.
The corn was another easy dish, mostly because it uses bagged frozen corn. You just add the corn to a skillet and add the coconut milk and spices and you’re ready to go once it’s heated through and thickened up just a tad. Legit the easiest thing I made all day.
For the ginger spritz, the ginger syrup is homemade, and uses an absurd amount of fresh ginger for it. This part was time-consuming because I had to peel like half a pound of ginger and dice it up to cook it in the sugar and water, but letting it cook was super easy. You just have to let the sugar dissolve and the ginger flavor infuse nice and good before letting it cool and straining it. I proceeded to put the syrup in a pitcher and add a big ol’ bottle of sparkling water and ice. I completely forgot the lime, to be honest. But it was fine, okay! It was just really good homemade ginger ale pretty much.
On that note, I know this whole time you’ve been thinking to yourself, what about the mango lassi?! Well, I’m glad you asked, because it was inevitable that I would forget ONE ingredient. And it was the whole milk for the mango lassi. So while I had the mango, the honey, and the plain whole milk yogurt, it was too little too late.
Okay, so buying all the ingredients, making everything, yada yada. How did it all taste?!
Well, I’m not usually one to toot my own horn too much (especially when it comes to food, as I often think there’s multiple things I could’ve done better), but this food was literally the bomb dot com. Everything was so flavorful and fresh and straight up delicious.
The ginger spritz was spicy and had quite a bite from the ginger, but was perfectly sweetened and bubbly.
The chicken was cooked perfectly, and the sweet potatoes were soft and nicely seasoned. The caper raita was creamy and savory, and the quick-pickled cucumbers were bright and acidic to cut through that richness.
The carrots were roasted to the perfect texture, wildly flavorful from all the different spices, and the herb salad was incredibly bright and herbaceous, which paired perfectly with the creamy labneh. Plus, I especially loved the dates in the herb salad for just a touch of sweetness. It was extremely balanced.
The corn was honestly the most subtle dish, with a very mild flavor. It mostly just tasted like sweet corn in a slightly sweet, creamy sauce. Part of this is surely due to the fact I removed the seeds from the jalapenos that cooked in the corn, so if you want more flavor and heat in this dish feel free to leave the seeds in to infuse more spicy-ness.
The chickpea soup was pretty good, too, but definitely pretty mild in flavor compared to some of the other dishes. Even though there’s no dairy in this soup, it actually turns out pretty creamy from blending everything up. The chickpeas have a lot of starch in them that thicken the soup up really nicely.
The soup was warm and comforting, but if you really want it to be the best it can be, take Issa’s advice of adding fresh lemon juice, cilantro, and chili crisp to your bowl. I had never had chili crisp before this soup, and I decided to try Fly By Jing’s chili crisp, as I had heard good things and they’re partnered with another brand I like (Fishwife). Turns out their chili crisp is seriously amazing with just the right amount of heat, and I definitely need to try their collab product with Fishwife now. If I get sick anytime soon, I’m definitely making myself a bowl of this soup loaded with lemon juice and cilantro.
Finally, the cake. I absolutely loved this cake. The olive oil and extra egg yolks make it so moist and dense, and it has a great chocolate flavor from the full cup of Dutch-process cocoa powder. The buttercream is truly decadent. So rich and buttery, sweet but wonderfully spiced from the chai mixture. I definitely recommend using a high-quality butter for your buttercream, as it’s literally in the name (I use Kerrygold). This cake is sure to be a crowd pleasure, because who doesn’t love chocolate cake and luscious buttercream?! My grandma even tried some and said it was the best cake she’s ever had, so yeah.
Everything I made was just the right amount to serve my four friends and myself. Except there was a TON of cake leftover, even though I cut them huge slices that they had to take home.
I highly recommend making everything I made, there were zero misses. I’m so glad I tried out some new recipes and was able to have my friends over to enjoy them with me. It was a nice night, even if my body was seriously sore afterwards and there was a mountain of dishes waiting for me at the end.
I didn’t take many pictures because I was so busy cooking and serving, but here’s just a couple I got.
The chicken and sweet potatoes with the caper raita:
I know it looks like the chicken thighs are burnt but they’re just uh.. extra crispy. Not burnt! Certainly just blackened, like, in the good way.
Here’s the carrots on top of the labneh with the herb salad on top:
And half the cake!
And of course, the aforementioned mountain of dishes:
Funny thing is, I did dishes constantly in between everything I made. And I still ended up with this after everything was said and done. Good thing I have a decent dishwasher!
So, there you have it! A soup, main, two sides, dessert, and beverage all from Third Culture Cooking. Even though it was a lot of cooking and a lot of cleaning up, I loved making everything and I’m so happy everything turned out great!
Which dish sounds the best to you? Would you have decked out your soup with chili crisp? Have you tried chai buttercream before? Let me know in the comments, be sure to check out Zaynab Issa on Instagram, and have a great day!
-AMS
View From a Hotel Window, 9/22/25: Kansas City
Sep. 22nd, 2025 06:51 pmscalziwhatever_feed
Kansas City near downtown is an interestingly medium-density sort of place: Lots of multi-story-but-not-too-big apartment buildings, and a lot of greenery. I like it.
Tonight! 7pm at the Unity Temple, sponsored by Rainy Day books. I think you can still get tickets!
Tomorrow! I’m back in my home state of Ohio, at the Parma branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library, with the even also beginning at 7pm!
Please come see me at one (but probably realistically not both) of these events. It would be lovely to see you.
— JS
Team Orca and other whimsies
Sep. 22nd, 2025 02:29 pmrolanniMonday. Sunny and warm. All windows that open have been opened.
Breakfast was eggs scrambled with the last of the potato salad. Yes, I do this a lot. Yes, I like potatoes far too much. Lunch is in the oven -- a small salmon steak, because I can't remember the last time I actually ate fish, which is not particularly good news, as the cancer docs think that fish three times a week is just about right. Admittedly, my personal best was twice a week for several months, and that was with Steve pushing for all he was worth to make it happen.
I am very much liking this new writing schedule. Sat down at 9, and got up at 11:30 1,280 words the richer, and they're good, says I, as shouldn't.
Tomorrow, unfortunately, a break in the schedule, as I have an early visit to the vampires scheduled, something that hasn't happened in way too long, ref hospital exploding, doctors landing all over the map, having to apply to be a new patient at the practice my PCP landed at, And! all like that.
I was watching a Josh Johnson clip, in which he was talking about the fact that the orcas had attacked another yacht, and the resonate phrase was, "Who expected the orcas would step up?" Which got me to wondering if there was a TEAM ORCA! sweatshirt and how I would go about getting one.
Facebook has also been serving me reels from Quincy's Tavern, which is an ... interesting work perhaps in progress. And it gives me the chance to use the word "ledgerdemain" with non-ironic precision, and with admiration.
Now that lunch is done, I'm on to the business part of the daily schedule: I seem to have a phone call and two letters to write, and! a Sooper Sekrit project to work on. So? I'd best get at it.
How's Monday going for you lot?
Oh, wait! Pictures.
Rosebush update! It's doing splendidly -- new flowers and buds promising more:
And, I had intended to take a selfie, to prove that I was feeling much more the thing, but ... Rookie had a better idea. Admittedly, he is much more glamorous.
The Big Idea: James Kakalios
Sep. 22nd, 2025 03:06 pmscalziwhatever_feed
Look, up in the sky! It’s not a bird, or a plane, it’s author James Kakalios soaring in with a brand new book. Follow along in the Big Idea for his newest release, The Physics of Superheroes Goes Hollywood, to see just how scientific some of your favorite movies can get.
JAMES KAKALIOS:
My first book The Physics of Superheroes, was published in 2005 and used examples from print comic books to illustrate physics principles. Three years later, the release of the Iron Man and The Dark Knight films would light the match that ignited the superhero explosion at the multiplex. Now, not a year goes by without the release of several superhero movies and television series. There is little doubt that future historians will refer to the early part of the 21st century as the Golden Age of Geekdom!
The Big Idea for my new book came a few years ago when I saw a five-year old boy walking with his mother in Antalya, Türkiye. The boy wore a tee shirt with Captain America’s face on the front, a knapsack with the MCU Avengers on his back, and a small, plastic Captain America shield on his right wrist. Captain America. Created in 1941 by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, two young men just trying to make a living writing and drawing comic books in New York City during the Great Depression, little dreaming that their character would continue to inspire all over the world eighty years later. I realized that the penetration of superheroes into the popular culture was so thorough that, even for those who’ve never read a print comic book, I could use these heroes (and the occasional villain) to explain the physics behind a wide range of phenomena that were left out of my first book.
In the All-New, All-Different The Physics of Superheroes Goes Hollywood I consider concepts and situations in superhero movies and TV shows and examine the real-world physics that underlies these fictional scenarios. While I don’t go to the movies with a pad of paper and a calculator, waiting for my physics-sense to start tingling, I’m nevertheless delighted whenever the characters on the screen, big or small, get their science right. It is just such examples, admittedly cherry-picked, that I discuss in my new book.
In this new book, you, Fearless Reader, will learn the real physics underlying the multiverse (true to its name—there are different interpretations of what “multiverse” means); if there really is a Quantum Realm (yes); why someone the size of an ant can knock someone out with one punch and yet be light-weight enough to ride atop a flying ant (it involves the Higgs boson); whether Superman really could reverse time by flying rapidly about the Earth (yes, by becoming a Tipler cylinder); whether nanotechnology can fabricate and alter Iron Man’s suit (not yet, but maybe soon); whether we can create fibers as strong as Spider-Man’s webbing (actually, scientists have made threads sixty times stronger); whether physicists put the word “quantum” in front of everything (yeah, pretty much); whether we can control devices just by thinking (yes); and the connection between the Infinity Stones and one of the greatest mathematical minds of the twentieth century (hint: she’s not Albert Einstein). This book will confirm what we all have long suspected—they couldn’t put it in a movie if it weren’t true!
With illustrations by acclaimed comic book artist and five-time Eisner Award winner Gene Ha, this book will discuss topics ranging from Artificial Intelligence to quantum computers to why your footprints look dry when walking along a wet shoreline. You’ll learn how semiconductor devices work, how information is transmitted in the brain and why an average increase in the global average temperature a few degrees is such a big deal (and what we can do about it).
Prepare to get educated in the nerdiest way possible.
The Physics of Superheroes Goes Hollywood: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Books-A-Million|Powell’s
Can I Quote You On That?
Sep. 22nd, 2025 01:00 pmcakewrecks_feedWoohoo!! National Punctuation Day is coming!
You know what to do!
I stand corrected.
Bakers, contrary to popular belief, those curved thingies are not sideways "happy hugs" for your text; they're parentheses. But I'll make this easy for you: YOU WILL NEVER NEED PARENTHESES ON YOUR CAKES. So don't use them. Ever.
No, not even for a name in all caps.
And not for anniversaries, either.
Gosh. I bet "Mom" is really feeling like part of the family right now.
Which brings me to my next point:
STOP IT WITH THE QUOTATION MARKS ALREADY.
Why are these numbers in quotes? Are they euphemisms or something? Are these people not really 13 and 59? And why does this keep happening, anyway?
Oh.
Thanks to Monica, Debb D., Tamara M., Alyssa V., Amy C., Rachel C., and Aurora C. for helping me cover parentheses and quotation marks. Tomorrow: COLONS! (You'll have to check back to see which kind.)
*****
P.S. And here's the official t-shirt of National Punctuation Day:
Punctuation Saves Lives
Proof that educating can also be entertaining!
*****
And from my other blog, Epbot:
