Eating Authors: Kevin Hearne

I’m writing this the weekend before it posts because I’m out in the Pacific Northwest attending Norwescon, and come Monday while I will no longer be in Seattle, I’ll still be out west, having moved some three hours or so south to Portland where I’m doing a book event at Powell’s. We’ll see if I get to sign the sacred pillar (and cross off another square on my author bingo card).

In the meantime, let me tell you about this week’s EATING AUTHORS guest, Kevin Hearne. I’ve actually been attempting to lure Kevin to this blog for a while now, but it never fit his schedule. Then he went off and read Barsk and began posting very flattering remarks about it to social media. Being no fool, I took advantage of his sudden infatuation to recruit him, and his most memorable meal appears below.

But what else to tell you about Kevin? You surely are already familiar with his Iron Druid Chronicles (number eight in the series, Staked, was released just two months ago), and about this time last year, he also released a well received Star Wars novel, Heir to the Jedi.

I’m pretty certain that Kevin and I have never met. We keep just missing one another as we both bounce around the country for promotional purposes, but if there’s anything to the notion of regression toward the mean it’s only a matter of time until we smack into each other in person. Until that time, here’s his meal.

LMS: Welcome, Kevin. So tell me, what sticks out in your memory as your best meal?

KH: The best meal I ever had was a homemade crawfish bisque that took all day to make because we had to go get the crawfish ourselves first.

We were fishing them out of Willow Springs Lake and Christopher Creek up on the Mogollon Rim in Arizona. Filled up a five-gallon paint bucket with them. Once we had enough, we had to shell them and save the carapaces. The carapaces were eventually filled with a stuffing made from the meat and some other goodies. The bisque had navy beans in them and rice and was delicious. We ate it with cornbread, sucked the meat out of the carapaces and lined them up on the rim of the bowl. It was made by one of our family friends who was from Louisiana and I still remember how much fun it was for us all to participate in making it as well as the heavenly smell and taste. That was back in 1982. Yeah. Wow, that was the highlight of the Reagan administration. It was dang good.

#SFWApro