Five Ways
Subscribe to my newsletter and get a free story!
Share this:

Guest Post: RecipeArium by Costi Gurgu

GOURMET RECIPE: VERMIH IN PLABOS SAUCE

There are three complementary sides that determine a phril personality: gastronomy, politics, and romance. The rest represents salads or pickles to fill the mundane.
I will start naturally, with food for the gourmet side of the phrilic spirit, presenting to you, my dear reader, an absolutely genuine Recipe.

INGREDIENTS:
Mature vermih ““a crawler from the land-worm family, having its vital organ””the sufleida””in the middle of its spindle-shaped body. This in turn is protected by a circular stomach layer, where the ingested food is stored, preparatory to being assimilated after fermentation.
Swamp Plabos Sauce““for plant and insect broths, in a suckitori base.
Sequ-tulapa flavoured oil ““ with hot spices, preferably from Blood-Moth’s wings.

PREPARATION:
The fragrant vermih should be left to rot alive only under the light of the Three Daughters of the Sky. The diffuse light drives it mad and the cool night air makes its stomach layer tremble. The trembling forces its membrane to enlarge to several times its usual size, preparing for future storage. If it doesn’t scream for mercy, it means it has not putrefied enough. However, while it is rotting, ensure it is protected from fright, to avoid wrinkling its flesh.

When it has reached the desired level of putrefaction, immediately place the gluttonous and shivering animal on the sweet maidenly leaf of the moamoam. The two beings will intertwine and the juice of pleasure will flow from the vermih, imbuing the fluffy layer of the maiden moamoam. The vermih, driven by overwhelming hunger, will then devour the leaf. Because its stomach membrane is enlarged, it will not be satisfied with only one leaf. Continue this process with another leaf, luring it by way of the gnawed stem to where the Swamp Plabos Sauce boils vigorously. I have specified that the sauce be flavoured with suckitori. The steam from the boiling sauce will penetrate the vermih’s stomach wall, moistening the ingested moamoam leaves before the vermih throws itself into the sauce, simultaneously ejecting one last fresh spurt of the bittersweet pleasure liquid.

The vermih will sink to the bottom of the pot of boiling sauce, allowing the Plabos liquor to penetrate it just short of its core. It is very important that the depth the crawler will sink and the thickness of the sauce be calculated exactly. Otherwise, the slightest contamination of its vital core with the liquor will cause a hideous death, which would thicken the vermih’s flesh.

As its stomach membrane tenderizes to a suitable degree of sponginess, and with its flesh flavoured by the Swamp Plabos Sauce, the crawler should fall free from the orifice in the pot’s bottom straight onto your plate, where it will spread into a well-blended and sparkling stew surrounding the sufleida, still pulsing within the protective layer of the bitter crystalline coating.

Combine the sequ-tulapa flavoured oil with hot spices, preferably brown butterfly wings, and heat it to boiling. Pour the hot oil over the crystalline coating of the sufleida. This will melt the covering and evaporate all trace of bitterness. Flavour to taste with a sprinkling of Night Daughters Flower pollen and serve with red wine for a truly gourmet meal.

(from The Gastronomic Teachingsof Master Recipear Plabos)

Costi’s scripts have been finalists and semifinalists in numerous competitions.

Costi’s fiction has appeared in Canada, the United States, and Europe. He has sold 3 books and over 50 stories for which he has won 24 awards. His latest sales include the anthologies Tesseracts 17, The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk, Dark Horizons, Street Magick, Water, and Alice Unbound. His story Cosmoboticawas a finalist for Aurora Awards.

His novel RecipeArium is out from White Cat Publications and a 2018 finalist for the Aurora Awards.

To find out more about Costi Gurgu visit www.costigurgu.com
Recently, Costi started Games for Aliens, a tabletop games enterprise. His first two games are Absolutism (a dystopian scenario) and Carami (based on RecipeArium).

Enjoy this writing advice and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

If you’re an author or other fantasy and science fiction creative, and want to do a guest blog post, please check out the guest blog post guidelines

This was a guest blog post.
Interested in blogging here?

Assembling an itinerary for a blog tour? Promoting a book, game, or other creative effort that’s related to fantasy, horror, or science fiction and want to write a guest post for me?

Alas, I cannot pay, but if that does not dissuade you, here’s the guidelines.

Guest posts are publicized on Twitter, several Facebook pages and groups, my newsletter, and in my weekly link round-ups; you are welcome to link to your site, social media, and other related material.

Send a 2-3 sentence description of the proposed piece along with relevant dates (if, for example, you want to time things with a book release) to cat AT kittywumpus.net. If it sounds good, I’ll let you know.

I prefer essays fall into one of the following areas but I’m open to interesting pitches:

  • Interesting and not much explored areas of writing
  • Writers or other individuals you have been inspired by
  • Your favorite kitchen and a recipe to cook in it
  • A recipe or description of a meal from your upcoming book
  • Women, PoC, LGBT, or otherwise disadvantaged creators in the history of speculative fiction, ranging from very early figures such as Margaret Cavendish and Mary Wollstonecraft up to the present day.
  • Women, PoC, LGBT, or other wise disadvantaged creators in the history of gaming, ranging from very early times up to the present day.
  • F&SF volunteer efforts you work with

Length is 500 words on up, but if you’ve got something stretching beyond 1500 words, you might consider splitting it up into a series.

When submitting the approved piece, please paste the text of the piece into the email. Please include 1-3 images, including a headshot or other representation of you, that can be used with the piece and a 100-150 word bio that includes a pointer to your website and social media presences. (You’re welcome to include other related links.)

Or, if video is more your thing, let me know if you’d like to do a 10-15 minute videochat for my YouTube channel. I’m happy to handle filming and adding subtitles, so if you want a video without that hassle, this is a reasonable way to get one created. ???? Send 2-3 possible topics along with information about what you’re promoting and its timeline.

Show more

One Response

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Get Fiction in Your Mailbox Each Month

Want access to a lively community of writers and readers, free writing classes, co-working sessions, special speakers, weekly writing games, random pictures and MORE for as little as $2? Check out Cat’s Patreon campaign.

Want to get some new fiction? Support my Patreon campaign.
Want to get some new fiction? Support my Patreon campaign.

 

"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."

~K. Richardson

You may also like...

Guest Post: TJ Kahn Reveals the Unheard of in Fantasy

The Unheard of in Fantasy: Advocacy for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing in fantasy and science-fiction

Imagine that you are a huge fantasy or science-fiction fan. You’ve watched every Game of Thrones episode. You own all of the merchandise. You’ve seen the “Lord of the Rings” and “Star Wars” trilogies so often your friends never need to ask what gifts you want for the holidays. Even your cat is named “˜Aragorn’.

Now picture the next big movie you’re excited about is announced. You watch all the actor interviews, cling to every spoiler and hint dropped by the studios, and the week before the premier you have your head shaved to carve your favorite clan symbol into your left temple.

Except when the movie comes out, you can’t watch it. It’s in a foreign language and the only way for you to enjoy it is with a small glass device attached to your chair that keeps slipping. You can watch the words or the action, but not both. At the end of the film all of your friends are going on and on about the wonderful fight scene with the main heroes but all you saw was your subtitles dropping away when someone bumped your chair going to the bathroom and you scrambled to put it back.

Oh sure, you could wait for it to come out dubbed in English, but you’ll have to wait for an entire week. A week of all of your friends ruining the best scenes because they’ve seen it already. Or avoiding all social media and TV because you don’t want to stumble on any spoilers. And when it does come out, you’ve scene all the best scenes already because it’s all people put on your fan sites since opening night.

Now imagine you’re Deaf.

There are two kinds of deafness in the United States: “˜small-d’ deafness and “˜large-D’. “˜Small-d’ deafness is the result of hearing loss. Advancing age, congenital hearing loss, or just too many rock concerts can all cause hearing loss.

Big-Deafness is a culture and history within the United States that communicates with American Sign Language, cherishes Deaf History, and fights for equal access to things like captioning for new movies. Deaf, Hard-of-Hearing, and Children of Deaf Adults can all identify with the Deaf Community, and several more like this author work or live with them as friends or colleagues.

With advances in technology, cellphones and texting have vastly improved the access Deaf people have to everyday conveniences like calling the cable installer or booking a restaurant. FaceTime and video relay enable them to call anywhere and anytime for taxicabs or doctors’ appointments. There is so much access in fact, that places where they cannot have access have become the glaring exception.

Like captioning.

Deaf people buy manga and watch drone races. They buy Millennium Falcon replicas and write Elvish. They roll dice, draw orcs, dream about dragons and buy fantasy novels just the same as every other fan of the genre. The only thing they can’t do is hear.

In cultures defined by their ability to supersede reality, shouldn’t all Fantasy and Science-Fiction be accessible? Shouldn’t conventions be close-captioned and panelists interpreted? Can’t more movies or television series use American Sign Language for their characters like The Dragon Prince show does with their Deaf General Amaya on Netflix? Productions that include Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing actors, even as extras, are still woefully small. Do you really need to hear to dress like a zombie and eat people? Or add shadows to an alien monster’s CGI graphics?

A person’s gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity or social class are not the only obstacles preventing brilliant and invested fans from reaching their ideal careers or childhood heroes. Let all people be Writers. Let them be Artists.

Let them be Dreamers.

Biography: TJ Kahn is an American Sign Language interpreter and retired hospital chaplain living in the San Francisco East Bay. A sci-fi/fantasy enthusiast and a devoted dog parent, he stays active supporting Podcasts and various artists, hoping to become a professional game designer himself someday.

Follow him on Twitter as Theopedes.

...

Guest Post: Dan Rice on Inspirations for Dragons Walk Among Us

I knew I needed to become a writer after reading Frank Herbert’s Dune. I must’ve been about eleven years old at the time. I didn’t have an inkling about writing a rough draft, let alone the laborious editing process required to craft a decent manuscript. But I was captivated by how Mr. Herbert spun such a fascinating and realistic world of sci-fi splendor and swashbuckling adventure in such a slender volume. If you discount the appendices, Dune is well under 500 pages. To this day, I’m hard-pressed to think of another author who created such an enthralling and believable world with so few words.

Frank Herbert isn’t the only author I owe a debt of gratitude. My novel Dragons Walk Among Us is a young adult urban fantasy written in first person present tense. I never would have considered such an undertaking when I first found the stick-to-it-iveness to sit down and crank out words. That was before I read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I admit I found the style a bit off-putting initially, but I quickly warmed up to the immediacy the technique gives Katniss Everdeen’s adventure. When I first started writing in first person present tense, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I feared I’d find the first person narrative limiting and the present tense aspect hokey. Not the case at all. Turns out, it’s a heck of a lot of fun.  If it wasn’t for Suzanne Collins’ example, I never would have even considered experimenting with the technique.

Two themes that play essential roles in Dragons Walk Among Us are being an outsider and questioning one’s perception. The works of Fonda Lee and Rachel Hartman helped me solidify my thoughts on these themes. In Hartman’s Seraphina series and Lee’s EXO series, the protagonists are pariahs who end up questioning the social order of their respective worlds. In Dragons Walk Among Us, Allison Lee, the protagonist, is a member of a minority. She often feels she is an outsider and, after being blinded, questions reality, even her sanity. The protagonists’ character arcs in Seraphina and EXO gave me insight into how to elucidate these themes in a manner that I think resonates with readers. Of course, Rachel Hartman’s books include dragons, and just about any book containing dragons is inspirational.

Lastly, I drew inspiration from observing my son’s experiences, who is biracial. Not being a minority myself, I can’t claim to have ever experienced racism. My son, however, has experienced it. He was upset and pensive over the incident but has since moved on. His experience had a profound impact on me. I was already aware of the racial tension permeating the United States, but having my child brush up against the ugly beast of racism brought the issue to my doorstep. I fear the fault lines of bigotry and bias run deeper and wider than many people care to admit. One example is the anti-Asian sentiment emerging in the wake of the pandemic. All this is to say, some of Allison Lee’s experiences are loosely based on my observations of my son’s experiences. I can honestly say, I don’t think Allison’s story would be authentic without my son providing some inspiration.


BIO: Dan Rice has wanted to write novels since first reading Frank Herbert’s Dune at the age of eleven. A native of the Pacific Northwest, he often goes hiking with his family through mist-shrouded forests and along alpine trails with expansive views.

Dan has traveled extensively around Southeast Asia, where many of his in-laws live. He hopes to include some of the locales he has visited and thoroughly enjoyed in future novels. Dragons Walk Among Us is his debut novel. He plans to keep writing fantasy and science-fiction for many years. On his blog, you can find posts about the many books and experiences that have helped make him a better writer. Find out more:


If you’re an author or other fantasy and science fiction creative, and want to do a guest blog post, please check out the guest blog post guidelines. Or if you’re looking for community from other F&SF writers, sign up for the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers Critclub!

...

Skip to content