How To Eat Yucky Food

I ate Ethiopian cuisine last night for the first time. Wow! I love trying new foods, and this was all new to me. Who wouldn't enjoy food you eat with flatbread (think of it like a thin sourdough pancake) instead of utensils?

But, oddly enough, when I was a kid, I would have HATED this meal.

Despite that my parents liked to occasionally experiment with food, I was a VERY picky eater as a child. I was a practitioner of "de-gunkification," which involved removing all onions, olives, mushrooms, and other yucky ingredients. Or, when nothing could be done to fix a meal, I would steadfastly sit at the table staring at the plate until my father's attention shifted somewhere else, at which time I would stealthily dispose of the plate's contents in the garbage. "I'm done eating!"

However, I eventually learned another, much more satisfying trick when it came to dealing with foods I didn't like or foods I had never been served before (and thus didn't like): Eat them, and enjoy doing so!

It proved to be an easy trick of the mind; I pretended I was one of the hobbits in the Lord of the Rings, that I was on a journey across Middle Earth, and that I was being served a banquet in a foreign land by a horse lord, an elf queen, or a returned king. In this guise, every food gained a sort of luster, no matter how green, or oddly textured, or suspicious smelling. It was a magic glamour I was able to cast on myself!

Of course, I no longer employ that trick--I think I've absorbed that sense of appreciation for odd foods into my subconscious. Which means I wasn't a hobbit last night eating a repast prepared by Elrond for the Fellowship. But I imagine the food would have been right at home somewhere in Middle Earth.

And, phsst! Listen up all you picky eaters (who also like Lord of the Rings)--Ethiopian flatbread? What if it was some kind of Lembas! Oh yeah, I think you know where I'm going with this. Give it a try.

A Positive Message

"What new wonders undreamt of in our time, will we have wrought in another generation, and another? How far will our nomadic species have wandered, at the end of the next century, and the next Millennium?"

"Yet it will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very much like us, with more of our strengths, and fewer of our weaknesses."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY59wZdCDo0

Stardeep: A Forgotten Realms Novel

A message summons Kiril Duskmourn back to the hidden dungeon of Stardeep, a message that finds her a full decade after she fled her duties there. Kiril has no choice but to respond. How can she do anything else?

The message is, impossibly, from the long dead man who's soul is trapped in her sword Angul.

Hello! Thanks for your interest in my novel. If you'd like to purchase a copy, you can do so in one of the following 3 ways.

1) You can get an audiobook of Stardeep (performed by John Pruden) at Audible.com.

2) You can get an ebook copy of Stardeep on Kindle, Kobo, or Nook.

3) You can acquire a used copy of Stardeep at a hard-to-beat price.

4) You can also get a new copy of Stardeep, but that'll cost a bit more ;-).

Stardeep is a stand-alone novel, but the a thread of the story continues in the Abolethic Sovereignty trilogy!

One of the stand-out characters in Stardeep is Kiril Duskmourn. Here's what I once wrote about her:

A Profile of Kiril Duskmourn 

Kiril Duskmourn is on the run. She flees the honors she once attained, and the memory of noble deeds she accomplished. She seeks to outrace the price she paid for her triumph: the loss of her love, and then, the loss of her innocence.

Kiril has blood on her hands, and redemption lies beyond her grasp.

So she wanders, a hard-bitten, drunken sellsword perpetually a few drinks from oblivion, courtesy of the bottomless whisky flask strapped to her belt. She curses and swears her way from one day to the next, unable to put behind her the tragedy that changed her life.

How could she forget? After all, strapped to her other hip is the sword Angul. Angul's unforgiving steel contains the soul of her dead lover, a soul stripped of all darkness, doubt, and mortal failing. In Angul burns a righteousness that surpasses worldly virtue. His light burns away all doubt and shades of gray, bathing his wielder in warm, certain, and lethal clarity. When one wields Angul, no wrong is too small to punish.

It was Angul that drove Kiril to the crime she flees to this day. She hates the blade and what it made her. Yet, she yearns for it, too, for it is her last and only tie with her lost love. To give up Angul would be to give up the only thing she still cares for.

Now, a message summons her back to the hidden dungeon of Stardeep, a message that finds her a full decade after she fled her duties there. Kiril has no choice but to respond. How can she do anything else?

The message is, impossibly, from the long dead man who's soul is trapped in her sword Angul.