The last week or so has been a bit tumultuous for our little corner of the genre community. There have been petitions and commentary and nastiness and apologies and I have to say, whatever other merit (or not) any of that has had, it’s been pretty tiring too. Which is why, in part, it is such a delight to have Juliet McKenna here today, as she is most definitely one of the good ones! She’s one of the authors behind The Write Fantastic, an initiative to promote the literature of the fantastic, and though most of what I write falls on the SF side of the line, I’ll happily get in line to say “thank you, Juliet.”

She also continues the long tradition here at EATING AUTHORS of writers who have had snails slip into their most memorable meals, but I’ll let you read about that below.

Instead, let me remark that one of the things that fascinates me about authors like Juliet who have written multiple books for multiple series, is how readers discover their works or where they choose to start. Do you jump in with Irons in the Fire, the first book in her series The Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution, or with Southern Fire, the book that opens the The Aldabreshin Compass. Do you begin way back with The Thief’s Gamble, her first novel and the first book in her series The Tales of Einarinn, or start with the much more recent Dangerous Waters , which opens her latest series, The Hadrumal Crisis?

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I haven’t done a formal study, but my impression is that the majority of guests here at EATING AUTHORS fall into one of three groups: paranormal romance writers, physicists, and everything else (what the Klingons refer to as chuvmey, but that’s a digression for a different blog post). This may be a bit of distant foreshadowing or omen that this series will end when I find a physicist who writes paranormal romance.

To the best of my knowledge, my guest this week isn’t penning paranormal romance but he is a physicist. Ian Tregillis is the author of the popular alternate history series The Milkweed Tryptich (Bitter Seeds, The Coldest War, and Necessary Evil), which among other things pits Ãœbermenschen created by Nazi scientists against the blood magic of British warlocks, and along the way blends science fiction and fantasy concepts so well you’ll be captivated through all three books.

Ian’s latest book is Something More Than Night, which Kirkus has described as “a Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler inspired murder mystery set in Thomas Aquinas’s vision of Heaven.” There’s a certain chutzpah to writing a detective noir about murdering the archangel Gabriel.

You should also know that Ian’s a contributor to the relaunch of George R. R. Martin’s Wild Cards series.

And finally, this summer a lucky few will find him high upon a mountaintop where he’ll be the special lecturer at Walter Jon William’s Taos Toolbox, a writers’ master class that I recommend without reservation.

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A few months ago, I was at a convention and had the pleasure of being on a panel with Harry Turtledove. We also ended up sitting next to one another during our signing period and in between Harry autographing many copies of his latest book (Supervolcano: Things Fall Apart, the third in his Supervolcano series), I was treated to his wry wit and thoroughly enjoyable conversational style. Naturally, the first thing I did when I returned home from the convention was to send him a note and invite him here to regale you with his most memorable meal.

I’m actually surprised our paths haven’t crossed more, as we both grew up in the greater Los Angeles area (albeit ten years apart). As a teen, my friends and I were regularly riding our bikes out to Westwood and UCLA while elsewhere on campus Harry was working toward his PhD in Byzantine history. Perhaps he hadn’t been lured into the social circles of our genre yet, as I don’t remember seeing him at meetings of the LASFS or the local Mythopoeic chapter. Then again, as I recall my own doctoral years, I didn’t have free time for that sort of thing either.

Like a number of the authors who have been here, Harry has written under multiple names. His first works were published as Eric G. Iverson, but he’s also been Mark Gordian, Dan Chernenko, and H.N. Turteltaub. But it’s for books released under his give name that he was dubbed “Master of Alternate History” as demonstrated by his Southern Victory series in which the South wins the American Civil War (eleven volumes so far, beginning with How Few Remain, which won him his first Sidewise Award), his The War That Came Early series that tells of an alternate version of World War II, and numerous stand alone novels and novellae like Ruled Britannia, The Two Georges (co-authored with Richard Dreyfus), and In the Presence of Mine Enemies.

And that’s not even touching on his works that blend history with SF and Fantasy such as his his YA time travel series Crosstime Traffic, his Civil War with magic War Between the Provinces series, or his Worldwar / Colonization series in which aliens invade during WWII. I could go on and on, but you’ve long since tired of my yammering, so let’s just cut right to Harry’s meal now.

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Last week, James L. Cambias saw the release of his first novel, A Darkling Sea, beginning what I can only hope will be a long and productive new chapter in his career. Which is not to say that James is a newcomer, not by any stretch of the imagination. He’s been writing short fiction for over a decade (full disclosure: we shared a ToC back in 2004 in the All Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories anthology from Wheatland Press), and has been designing games for even longer.

Perhaps most importantly, for my purposes, he hails from New Orleans, which given his obvious creativity and talent means he’s been exposed to and appreciates a wide range of culinary delights from his earliest days. I’ll be honest, I’ve been chomping at the bit for his book to come out so I could invite him here. And, as you’re about to read, it’s been well worth the wait.

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