The dystopia created by Cruz and Johnston is pretty much what the title implies – a bleak world of cold and ice, insufferable to all but the heat-eliteof the RSA (Remaining States of America). You could even say the second social tier is comprised of hooved quadrupeds – the few remaining cattle who are nurtured in expensive temperature-controlled stables. The cows probably [live] better lives than most people, in fact.
Since clearly very few people are eating beef, the only meat available to the common folk consists of whale, walrus, or reindeer. Those who can’t stomach that are left with processed junk like pizza squeezers and Thanksgiving in a can. Like I said, bleak. And perhaps blechas well. ;) Either or both ways, the availability of food provides a great platform for revealing the inner-workings of the characters.
You see, we first meet Ryan Wesson as he is turning down a steak dinner. Or, more precisely, turning down a job offer he can’t stomach. He actually lets the food be sent back to the kitchen, knowing he’s in turn sending himself and his crew back to the food lines. But even in desperate times, he has an ethical fiber that he can’t shed, despite knowing he’d be warmer (and fuller) without it. Yes, he’s in the mercenary business, but his ex-military moral compass forces him to use his skills for protection and rescue. No, a contract to murder for hire is too much.
Now, in drastic contrast to Wes is the proposer of the next job he DOES accept – a girl who needs help getting out of the country ASAP... and who Wes instantly pegs as a liar and a thief.
Still, he agrees to take her to the “Blue” – a perhaps mythical realm where the sun still shines and the water still flows clear and blue, as does the sky – partially because he needs the money and the work doesn’t harm anyone, but equally because he finds Nat so intriguing.
And when Nat finds out mid-venture that Wes first needs her help to get his ship back – as in, he has a ship, he just doesn’t have it right now – she in turn finds herself falling for this Jack Sparrowish-rogue.
Will they make it to the Blue – if it even exists? And what will they eat when the get there? Good thing it looks like there’ll be another installment to this saga, as my hunger for answers was only partly satisfied. ;)
Darling Shelley invited me to guest post on her blog about food. Food my characters eat. Curiously, in my first trilogy, SIREN SUICIDES, there is hardly any talk of food except human souls, which is what sirens sing out of people, for, well, nourishment. But in my second novel ROSEHEAD a 12 year old American girl, Lilith Bloom, and her talking whippet Panther, travel from Boston to Berlin for a family reunion, and there they pig out on hearty German food, which is partially inspired by my own memories of traveling from Moscow to Berlin (I was 11) and marveling at the abundance of food unlike what I have ever seen in my life, considering the fact that while I devoured fat German sausages, most Russians had to get food by coupons.
Upon arriving for the first time for breakfast, Lilith approached it uncertainly:
She expected breakfast to be the usual American fare, but what she saw made her gasp with glee. The table offered all kinds of jam, marmalade, syrup, and nugat-crème; plates of rolls, bowls of yoghurt, and trays of freshly made waffles that issued a delicious smell.
In contrast to this, Panther tells Lilith that he eats mastiffs for breakfast, as a joke. You see, there is a vicious mastiff in the mansion, and, of course, there is an immediate rivalry between the two, although later Panther primarily eats raw steak, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. However, because both Lilith and Panther very much like Holmes and Watson, investigate the cause for the rose garden surrounding the mansion to behave strangely, and suspect it to be carnivorous, there are also many instances when Lilith is close to losing her breakfast, although she never does. She often skips lunch, her and her dog, traversing in the midst of foul smelling greenery, hoping to find the cause for both the stink and the noises the flowers produce. If it were me, I certainly would prefer to do said activity on an empty stomach.
There remains the case of dinners. On most days, exhausted and scratched all over (remember, this is a rose garden we're talking about), Lilith and Panther usually came back to the mansion to eat dinner, and, funny enough, Lilith requested breakfast for dinner, nostalgic of American food:
“Can I please have breakfast for dinner?” She said to the housekeeper. “I’d like an omelet with cheese, American style, with bacon, sausage and blueberry pancakes on the side. Oh, and a bowl of steak for Panther.”
They do, however, eat the typical German sausage, the bratwursts, and rostbratwursts, blutwursts, bockwursts, knckwursts, leberwursts, and, of course, potatoes, fried potatoes, potato salad, potato pancakes and the like, with mustard. Well, now my mouth is watering from just writing this. Panther manages to steal the sausage right off Lilith's fork, all the while telling her (he is a talking dog, after all) that he would prefer squirrels, that he even dreams of squirrels:
“It was the most beautiful dream I’ve ever seen! I was chasing squirrels, a dozen fat juicy squirrels.” He rolled up his eyes. “Then I caught them, they tasted like—” (He gets interrupted and sadly we never find out what exactly they tasted like.)
There are also macabre and grotesque references to unusual food images, like this one:
“Whatever happened to your beret?” Gabby asked suddenly. “I thought I saw you put it on this morning."
Lilith inhaled, exhaled, and resorted to the only defense she had against her mother’s wrath. “Wild elephants ate it, mother. They thought it was a gigantic strawberry from Mars. In fact, the garden was full of them. Elephants, not strawberries. I’m dreadfully sorry we missed dinner. We watched them do a private ballet performance for us. In tutus. Right, Panther?” Panther raised his ears and flashed her a look that could only mean, Did you really say, elephants in tutus?”
I think in all, I had fun writing in food choices into ROSEHEAD and playing with them. And now I will go make myself some German sausage, because all this writing about German food made me hungry. So thanks for reading, and bye. *opens the fridge*Thanks for stopping by to share your food for thought, Ksenia!
You can find Ksenia and her books here:
You know, I really, really wanted to do one post a day from Monday thru Friday, but I came up short one post. But, if you're paying attention, you'll notice I cheated. I rolled back the clock since this happened on Friday night. You dig?
Presenting... (what I'm sure won't be a regular feature since I have the attention span of a gnat)
FIREFIGHTER TALES VOLUME ONE!
This Episode: Stand-by for Steak
First off, a little background: When I'm not writing for kids all across this great land of ours, I'm a firefighter and an EMT. Maybe you've heard of our kind. We squirt water on hot stuff, and put band-aids and such on those who have
owies. Yeah, those guys (and gals!).
Since we occasionally like to spend time celebrating the goofy 2
nd career most of us have chosen, there's need to go out and party up and recount all the adventures we've had over the past year. Typically we call those things Appreciation Dinners. During them, there's dinner and also some appreciation.
With me so far?
Okay. While I'd love to tell you this is the time of the year for
Woodbury Fire's annual appreciation dinner, it isn't. Nope. A neighboring town was having one and they needed some of the fine, upstanding firefighter/
EMTs from
Woodbury to watch their town (a.k.a. stand-by) while they poured copious amounts of liquor-y drinks down their respective hatches.
This is where 5 other guys and myself come in.
Here's the thing about doing a stand-by for another station: It's easy. I'm talking, sitting around at their fire station, figuring out what we'll eat (on their dime) and messing around for a good 8-10 hours easy. In past stand-
bys, I've brought my
Xbox and hooked it up to their digital projector so I could play Burnout Revenge on a seven foot wide space on the wall.
Yes. This is the good life you hear about sometimes on E! Entertainment Television.
I sign up for them whenever I can. It's really a good excuse to just hang out with a couple of the other jokers and do your thing. I decided to be a deluxe nerd this time around and work on
GOODHALO. (Hey! The thing isn't going to edit itself).
On the way to the station where we were needed, I
chitted and chatted with my co-pilot in the grass-rig.
TKT: You know, I hate to jinx it, but for as many times as I've done a stand-by for
LSCV, I've never had a call. It's sweet. Almost like free money.
Chris: Me neither. It's just a good excuse to eat some steak.
TKT: Yeah, I've never really partook of the steak meal option when you guys have cooked it up in the past. I just go the easy route and get a frozen pizza or something.
Chris: I like steak.
TKT: Hey, I like steak, too. I just don't like all the clean-up and dishes and what-have-you.
Chris: Steak. (drools)
(So, the conversation may not have gone exactly like that, but pretty close. Chris really likes steak.) We get to the station and say hello to the captain and the other firefighters who are turning the joint over to us. No sooner are we there, the pager goes off. Seriously. 5 minutes and we're being called to a house where a drunk woman is having:
- chest pains
- anxiety
- difficulty breathing
- a
conniption fit
I jinxed it, all right.
Anyway, long story short, we're gone for like an hour and a half, helping this woman out, dropping her off at the hospital, the whole deal. As we get back, Chris and I start talking about how hungry we are.
Wait a second...you didn't think this post was about firefighting and EMT stuff, did you?
Chris: I hope they didn't make those steaks already.
TKT: You know what? I think I'll have a steak tonight, too. That's it. I want to fit in with you guys tonight. My only hesitation is that I'm having steak again tomorrow night, too.
Chris: Like having steak two nights in a row is a bad thing.
TKT: Just drive, Chris.
Chris: Steak.
Back at HQ, a couple of us are sitting and watching complete garbage on TV, wasting our time in anticipation of the steak. A guy (who I'll call Ben since that's his name) comes in and the following exchange occurs:
Ben: How do you guys like your steak?
Other guys: Medium.
Ben: (points to me) You?
TKT: I like mine medium-well.
At this point,
ol' Ben scratches his head and looks like I asked him the square root of squirrel.
Ben: When you say medium-well, what do you mean?
TKT: You know, just after it turns pink and is about to turn brown. That's perfect.
Ben: So, you like it when it's not pink anymore but just barely brown.
I blink twice and wonder what I'd just said. Since I don't want to be a jerk and want to eat steak with the rest of the dudes, I nod.
Ben: You and I are on the same page, then. That's exactly how I like my steak.
TKT: Fantastic, then.
I offer to help, but I'm waved away. So, I continue to watch some more garbage on
VH1 with the rest of the dudes. I think it was a show about Britney Spears or something that no one has any business knowing.
Time passes and eventually
ol' Ben calls for the other fellas that their steak is ready. You'd think he announced that gold
doubloons were falling from the sky, they left so quick. Knowing my steak would take a moment or two longer, I continued watching the completely engrossing programming that only
VH1 can offer.
After a time, my number is up.
"Thomas, your steak is ready."
At this point, I was so hungry, I'd considered eating one of the couch's pillows and washing it down with a nice remote control malt. I jogged down the hall to the kitchen and Ben was there at the counter, all proud-like.
Ben: There's your steak, Troupe.
TKT: Sweet.
Uh...not sweet.
There, sitting on a plate like something the grill crapped out, was a blackened steak. I'm not even kidding. It was like Satan himself breathed fire on the thing until it was charred beyond recognition, put it out and threw it in the furnace for eternity. The thing looked like a steak-shaped charcoal briquette.
TKT: Oh.
I looked over at Ben's steak, you know, the one that was exactly the same way that I liked my steak? Yeah. His was nice, juicy-looking, and succulent. I watched, almost in slow-motion, as his knife easily glided it's way through the meat to cut off a generous hunk of delicious cow. He popped the nugget into his eager mouth and chewed. As if taunting me, a little bit of steak juice squirted out between his teeth and landed on his poorly-ironed, blue uniform shirt.
My steak was nothing short of ruined.
Mike: Everyone happy?
The other guys held up their forks with their nicely prepared pieces o' meat on it and grunted their satisfaction. I said nothing while I cut through the blackened outer layer of my steak. Flecks of black, scalded meat fell onto my plate like negative dandruff. I took a bite.
It was like tasting a well-burnt yule log.
Like a trooper (hey, I'm aptly named) I finished the whole, rotten thing. I did my best not to wince or watch Ben eat his steak...you know, the one he prepared EXACTLY like mine? I swear he
must've lost count as he pulled the steaks off the grill. I imagined my little ruined steak all alone in the grill, crusting over with char and getting all worried that he'd been forgotten.
Steak: I bet the guy that's going to eat me is sitting in there watching
VH1. I just know it. Also, I'm hot.
Anyway, I learned a valuable lesson that night. Never, ever stray from your instincts when it comes to food during a stand-by. Always get the frozen pizza and cook it yourself.
Oh, and don't watch so much
VH1...nothing good comes of it.
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