Eating Authors: N. S. Dolkart

A couple days from now my life gets a bit crazy. I’ll be starting a period of time (let’s call it five weeks) in which I attend four conventions (the qep’a’ cha’maHwejDIch, Confluence, GenCon Writer’s Symposium, and after a week’s break, the WorldCon). Or to put it another way, I’m looking at 23 days away from home out of 35, and that’s a bit much for me.

But have no fear, EATING AUTHORS will still be here for you, bright and early each Monday. As proof of that, even though I’m frantically packing and preparing Klingon certification exams, here’s N. S. Dolkart, this week’s guest. His first novel, Silent Hall debuted just last month from Angry Robot. It’s a fantasy that begins with a plague, and goes on to include wizards, gods, and a dragon. Seriously, he had me ay plague. Better still, Noah (yes, that’s what the N stands for) is already at work on a sequel.

LMS: Welcome, Noah. If you would, please tell me about your most memorable meal.

NSD: My wife and I started dating in college (my third year, her fourth), when “dating” generally meant dorm room shenanigans rather than actual dates. But a couple weeks after we began dating in this manner, I spotted a flier advertising a student discount for the opera in Northampton, which was putting on Rigoletto. So I invited Becky out on a real date, and we bought ourselves tickets to the opera.

We dressed up as fancily as we could, me in my suit and pocket watch, her in a black and white ensemble with white gloves and red lipstick (I’m not usually a fan of makeup, but fancy is fancy, and she looked amazing). Then we hopped on the five-college bus and rode out to Northampton for dinner and a show.

We ate at a Chinese restaurant called the Teapot, where the waitress clearly thought we were the most adorable pair of children, out on a date. I have no idea what we ate – probably broccoli, I imagine. It was our first time out together at a restaurant, and I was dazzled.

What I do remember is that Becky went to the bathroom, and I was struck by an irrational terror that she might not come back. I imagined her sneaking out through the bathroom window, or maybe just slipping out the door of the restaurant while I wasn’t looking. Maybe she’d done it already! Never mind that she’d left her shawl and purse behind on her chair, never mind that she had been excited to come to the opera with me, never mind that we were clearly having a great time together, and never mind that she lived literally two doors down from me in the same modular on-campus apartment. She was going to sneak away and leave me here, because all this was just too freaking good to be true.

She didn’t leave, much to my relief, and hasn’t left yet. We got married less than a year and a half later, have since celebrated our seventh anniversary, and you know what? It’s still too freaking good to be true.

Rigoletto wasn’t bad either.

#SFWApro