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scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-05-21 05:16 pmThe Big Idea: Adam Oyebanji
Inspiration can come from anywhere, even from a nautical legal case from the 1700s. Author Adam Oyebanji lets us glimpse into some marines’ tragic pasts in the Big Idea for his newest novel, Esperance. Dive in and see where the waves take you.
ADAM OYEBANJI:
If I were ever reckless enough to confess my faults, I’d admit to being nosy, easily distracted and addicted to tea. To my mind, at least, these are forgivable foibles. People in glass houses and all that. However, I’m also a lawyer and pretty freaking unrepentant about it. A wig and gown in England, charcoal suits in Illinois, juries in both places. Feel free to judge, but if you do, remember that judges are lawyers too. I’m just saying.
Before I was a lawyer, though, I was a law student. In England. Which is important, because law in England is an undergraduate program in a country where the legal drinking age is eighteen. Torts in the afternoon, tequilas in the evening, and who has time for mornings? The high-pressure seriousness of a US law school is mostly missing. I say “mostly” because some people are incapable of a good time at any age. So, let’s acknowledge them in passing and move on. Law school English style is one part learning, one part good times with a dash of heartache. Oh, and get this. In my day it was ABSOLUTELY FREE. We got paid to go there. Hand to God.
Admittedly, this was a long time ago. So long ago, in fact, that we cracked open actual books instead of laptops. Books that, in addition to the assigned reading, contained hundreds of cases that were of absolutely no interest to my professors.
But if one happened to be a hungover law student who was both nosy and easily distracted, the assigned reading could rapidly lose its allure. Who cares about the rule against perpetuities anyway?
Now that I come to think about it, and having practiced law for more years than I’m going to admit to, I still don’t care about the rule against perpetuities. But I digress.
The point about a nosy, easily distracted law student poking about in a book is that it’s a book. Books, unlike a computerized law report, are completely non-linear. You can riffle the pages and land on something completely different almost without conscious effort. Forward, backward, upside-down if you like, it’s all too easy to get lost in other people’s long-ago legal troubles, because those, let me tell you, are way more interesting than whether X has created a future interest in property that vests more than twenty-one years after the lifetimes of persons living at the time of the creation of the interest. (You cannot make this stuff up).
Rather than deal with the assigned boredom, I spent a chunk of this particular afternoon in the Eighteenth century: duels, infidelity, murder and, of course, marine insurance.
Now, when it comes to boredom, the law of marine insurance is hard to beat. Except for this. If a marine insurance case makes it into a law report, the underlying disaster, the thing that triggers the insurance claim, can be kind of interesting. In this particular case, from 1783, the claim arose out of a voyage of such incompetence and cruelty that just reading about it took my breath away. People died. A lot of people. And all anyone seemed to care about afterward was the value of the claim. I had nightmares about it. Even now, I sometimes have dreams so vivid I can hear the waves slapping against that ancient, wooden hull, the screaming of lost souls as things go horribly, irretrievably sideways.
And that might have been it, had it not been for my addiction to the stuff that made Boston Harbor famous. I’m standing on my front porch, well into my sixth cup of tea when it hits me: the big idea. Why not use the facts of this nightmarish shipping claim as the inciting incident of a novel? And not a historical novel, but a sci-fi one, where the consequences carry forward to the present? A story about a Chicago cop who’s in way over his head, chasing a seemingly invincible criminal dead-set on writing an old wrong. A story about a woman out of her own time and place prepared to do drastic things in expiation of sins that are not her own. A story where human justice clashes with inhuman crimes in a deadly conflict of values. Why not, once I’ve finished my beverage, go back inside and write that story?
So I did. I called it Esperance.
Esperance: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Books-A-Million|Bookshop
Author socials: Website
dinosaur_comics_feed) wrote2025-05-21 12:00 ama comic from the past (but it has dinosaurs in it, so, it's even further past than you're thinking.
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May 21st, 2025: I am in the woods of Juneau Alaska for COMICS CAMP! And there's no internet or cell signals in the woods of Juneau Alaska, so please excuse me if I take a bit longer to write back to emails than normal! I blame THE WOODS – Ryan | ||
scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-05-20 02:40 pmClose To Home: Gem City Catfé
Do you like cats and coffee? Of course you do! And so do I, which is why I’m here today to tell you all about Dayton’s finest cat cafe, Gem City Catfé. If you’ve been reading the blog for a long time, you may remember I mentioned this catfé back in 2020, where I showed off a pretty enamel pin I got from the catfé the first time I went back in 2019.
It had been so long since I’d visited again that it totally fell off my radar for a while there, but I remembered it existed thanks to my friend Lauren, when she said we should go together. So we did! And it was so awesome that I went back the next day with Bryant, and honestly I’m ready to get back in there again already! Between the delicious drinks, friendly service, comfy decor, and, well, the cats, there’s no way you won’t fall in love with this place.
Gem City Catfé opened back in 2018, and is partnered with Gem City Kitties, a non-profit rescue, to provide plenty of kitties for you to come and pet and play with while enjoying a beverage. Whether you’re in the mood for matcha, a specialty latte, bubble tea, or even a cocktail or wine, they’ve got you covered. Personally, I really love their maple turmeric latte, and recently tried their Bee’s Knees matcha, which is a lavender honey matcha that was absolutely divine. I got it both days I went last week, iced of course. And have you ever seen such crazy combos for boba before?
I am definitely going to have to try one of these at some point because they sound wild.
If this all sounds great to you, but you’re allergic to cats, there’s no need to worry. The catfé actually keeps the café and the cats separate. The café itself and the sealed off cat lounge have different air filtration systems. And, you can still watch the cats play and sleep and be cute through the glass if you decide to stay on the café side.
If you want to visit, they do accept walk-ins when they can, but there is a capacity on how many people can be in the cat lounge at one time, so I highly recommend booking a time slot online ahead of time. The cat lounge fee is $10, but you can actually get a membership that’s $25 dollars a year, and then after that initial $25 it’s only $5 for entry for yourself and anyone visiting with you, too.
Alright, I’m done yapping, and now you get your reward… cat pictures!
What a distinguished gentleman!
Look at those beans!
A pink nose and pink beans, a double feature.
The windows are popular spots, apparently.
And here we have my absolute favorite cat from the catfé, Nola. She was the sweetest, friendliest, chillest cat. She was so cute and just wanted to be pet. I love her so much, and unless her adoption fell through last minute, she should be in her new home as of yesterday. Whoever got her is truly lucky.
I am so serious about coming here more often now, so y’all can be expecting some cat photos on my Bluesky or Insta. Speaking of Insta, be sure to follow Gem City Catfé!
Have you ever been to a catfé before? Are you allergic to cats? Which is your favorite from the photos? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-05-19 07:51 pmMy Own Books Come To Me
In this case, in order, the ARC for Constituent Service, the UK ARC for The Shattering Peace, and the Italian edition of the 20th anniversary reissue of Old Man’s War, all of which arrived within a couple of days of each other. It’s kind of neat to see my publishing history represented thus.
— JS
dinosaur_comics_feed) wrote2025-05-19 12:00 amThe Game That Made People Think They Didn't Like Games
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May 19th, 2025: I am in the woods of Juneau Alaska for COMICS CAMP! And there's no internet or cell signals in the woods of Juneau Alaska, so please excuse me if I take a bit longer to write back to emails than normal! I blame THE WOODS – Ryan | ||
scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-05-16 04:06 pmThe Big Idea: Bishop O’Connell
Is being a hero a selfless act if the hero has nothing they’re sacrificing? Author Bishop O’Connell explores what a hero really looks like in the Big Idea for his newest novel, Stain of a Nation. Come along as he shows you what bravery looks like when someone has everything to lose.
BISHOP O’CONNELL:
Lost Cause Mythology is bullshit idea that the Confederate cause during the American Civil War was just, heroic, and not centered on slavery. Spoiler, it was centered on slavery. In Two-Gun Witch, the first book in this series, I wanted to counter that trope. I created a character who actually fought for a just cause and still lost. It served as a rather subtle attack against the myth. In Stain of a Nation, I drew inspiration more from John Brown in how I’d tackle the notion. If the book’s title sounds vaguely familiar, it’s a middle finger to a pro KKK and Lost Cause mythos film from 1915 called Birth of a Nation. That’s about as subtle as this story gets.
I love history for the stories it contains, but also the lessons it can teach. Granted, sometimes those lessons can be hard to learn, especially when dealing with the darker and more shameful periods of our lives. However, if reading your nation’s histories only make you proud, you’re not reading history. You’re reading propaganda. That’s the legacy of Lost Cause mythology; a whitewashing, softening, or (especially recently) a complete erasure, of our nation’s darkest aspects.
Where I grew up, I was taught a fairly honest history of slavery, the civil war, and their aftermath. Even so, what I learned on my own horrified me, both in content and that it hadn’t been in our text books. A lot of people in other parts of the country learned an almost nauseatingly sanitized version of that period. Unfortunately, as more stories are told, America has witnessed a redoubling of efforts to ignore, erase, or explain away our nation’s historical horrors. I didn’t set out to write a book as a direct counter to that, but it seems the timing of the release accomplished anyway.
In Stain of a Nation, a found family (a few of whom worked on the Underground Railroad) learn of a town that decided not to accept the results of the Civil War and the 13th Amendment. They drag the recently freed back into bondage, using dark and terrible magic to do so. The protagonists react as any reasonable person would, they set out to free the enslaved and burn the fucking town to the ground. In the doing, they find examples of how deep human cruelty and depravity can run. I’m sorry to say only the magical aspects of what I’ve written are fictional. The rest actually happened, and more frequently than most, myself included, wanted to know.
Few reading this, especially on this site, will grumble about virtue signaling, or white guilt, or something other such pile of horseshit. Just in case though, rest assured Stain of a Nation isn’t either of those things. Neither is it some self-insert white savior story. I’ll be honest though; it might be a bit of a power fantasy. I do love the idea of those with the power to do something, stepping in and helping those who don’t.
Don’t get me wrong, while I sometimes enjoy the idea of a God mode character curb-stomping slavers and fascists without breaking a sweat, that isn’t a hero. A hero can do something, but also has something to lose, sometimes everything, and does it anyway. History might well abound with such people, but we frequently don’t hear about those who did just as much, but often against more, and with less. In some cases, more socially palatable legends drown the grim histories. More often though, their stories disappear because no one knows. They fought and died in anonymity, their only legacy being the results of their efforts. Mind, that’s a pretty awesome legacy.
I regret we won’t ever know their names, but we can still recognize and celebrate them. While not my only goal, it was one of them when I wrote Stain of a Nation. As impressive as the main protagonist, Talen, is, I made sure to shine the light on others who stood against darkness. Some of whose names you’ll learn, others you won’t.
In short, Stain of a Nation is a book about heroes, big and small, famous and anonymous. None of whom ever enslaved someone because of their skin color. Never donned a hood to terrorize, murder, or torture someone for the same. They marched for equity, not segregation. They stood to be heard and recognized as humans, not to intimidate or coerce silence and obedience.
Stain of a Nation: Falstaff Hardcover|Falstaff Paperback|Falstaff E-Book
Author socials: Website|Facebook|Bluesky|Amazon Author Page
dinosaur_comics_feed) wrote2025-05-16 12:00 amevery day is Friends Day when you're hanging out with your friends
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May 16th, 2025: If you look carefully, T-Rex's "fallback topic" is precisely the topic he was already on about! You should NOT let people get away with this!! – Ryan | ||
scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-05-15 03:51 pmThe Big Idea: Lorna Graham
The future is what we make of it, but what if our past isn’t as solid as we thought? Author Lorna Graham explores the idea that maybe the past isn’t always how we remember it, and how to reconcile with our past selves. Follow along in the Big Idea for her newest novel, Where You Once Belonged, to see what your past has in store for you.
LORNA GRAHAM:
Where do our foundational ideas come from?
And what if they’re wrong?
It all started with a scene from a movie, a scene that made the top of my head tingle in the darkened theater.
The movie, 1998’s Living Out Loud, stars Holly Hunter as Judith Moore, a Manhattan woman whose husband has just left her for a younger model. Judith has few friends and zero confidence. She is so lonely that she regularly daydreams about the strangers around her. In a restaurant, a woman sits down at a nearby table with a friend. The women notice Judith and beckon her. Judith smiles but when she blinks we see the world as it really is: the two women, happily chatting, paying her no mind. Judith returns to her book, dejected.
But, being played by Holly Hunter, we know there’s spunk in Judith somewhere.
Indeed, there are other daydreams, ones that hint that she was once quite the bad-ass. In these dreams, we see Judith as a teenager with a tattoo on her hip, pulling a hot guy into a make-out session in an alley with gusto.
Back to the present, and Judith becomes friendly with Liz Bailey, a singer played by Queen Latifah. One night, Liz gives Judith a pill, presumably ecstasy, and takes her to an underground club in the Meatpacking District. As Judith wanders the dance floor, the lights change, and she’s plunged into another daydream, one in which the women around her begin to dance in unison, as if in a Broadway musical. Judith feeds off of their energy, moving to the forefront and dancing in a way that hints at her long-buried daring and sexuality.
She feels a tap on her shoulder. Slowly she turns and sees her teenaged self, tattoo and all. Judith gazes at her young doppelganger, her eyes full of emotion. The two embrace and begin a tender slow dance. The camera pulls back and they slowly disappear into the sea of dancers. The next morning, Judith starts taking charge of her life again.
When the lights came up, I knew I’d found the idea for my next novel.
Commonly, when we imagine an adult encountering his or her younger self, it’s assumed the point of the encounter is that the elder will counsel the younger. The fantasy is that we, with all our worldly experience, can advise the youthful ones on how to deal with their difficulties and insecurities; we can hug them and provide assurance that everything will be alright. What struck me about the scene from Living Out Loud was that this idea had been turned on its head. Here it is the teenager who has the lesson to impart to her grownup self. In fact, her teenaged self is the only one who could truly remind Judith that she used to be adventurous and bold. Thanks to her, Judith reconnects with something fundamental in herself: the exact thing she’ll need to move forward.
As I began to play with this idea as the basis for a book, a character came to me: a woman who had traveled so far from the idealistic teenager she had been—a woman who had, in fact, become such a cynic and a sell-out—that only a face-to-face encounter with her young self could possibly reveal to her the many errors of her ways and, just maybe, set her back on the right path.
I knew my protagonist would be a newswoman. As a network news writer, broadcast journalism is a world that I know. I also happen to think there isn’t quite enough workplace fiction out there, considering work is where we spend about a third of our lives.
But more than that, I thought the world of journalism was the perfect backdrop for a battle royale between idealism and cynicism. My character, Everleigh Page, is a 42-year old executive producer of an award-winning magazine show. While she loves her work, she’s covered the world long enough to have witnessed terrible deeds done by corporations to consumers, husbands to wives, governments to their people, and religious leaders to their flocks. Her personal motto might as well be, “Expect the worst. Always.”
In truth, it’s not only decades in the news business that have turned her dark. A seed was planted long before. Her mother died when she was a child and, as soon as she graduated from high school, her father moved to Europe and started a new family. Everleigh’s understandable takeaway: People will desert you. They cannot be trusted. These are words that echo so regularly in her mind, it is almost as if she fetishizes her own cynicism.
There is, however, a brief, shining moment when Everleigh is unplagued by these thoughts. In college, she is lucky enough to fall in with an exceptionally kind group of friends. She has a best friend, Dilly, who urges her to work at the school paper, where she flourishes. And she’s invited to join an off-campus house, where she gains eleven “sisters” who quickly become the family she no longer has. With their wind at her back, she writes hard-charging articles for the paper, challenging the powerful and exposing dark doings at their upstate bucolic campus. She basks in her friends’ support, and for the first time since her mother’s death, feels as if she is precisely where she belongs.
But at the first sign of trouble within the group, Everleigh is flooded with doubts and misgivings. She turns against her friends, sure that they’ve betrayed her. She leaves school abruptly, and enters the wider world a guarded, solitary soul determined to become so successful, she’ll never need to rely on anyone again.
Indeed, she rises high within her network, largely because she produces good journalism, but also in part by doing the not-so-honorable bidding of her boss, Gareth: killing an important story that an advertiser won’t like and laying off a pair of talented staffers. Everleigh’s reward comes when Gareth announces he’s tapping her to become President of the News Division, her dream come true.
But when her 20th college reunion takes a magical twist, everything starts to look very different. A portal into the past reveals that her memories of her college days are faulty. The stories she’s told herself—over and over again until they’ve formed a kind of mental crust—about her friends from back then, are inaccurate. The betrayal she’s always believed she endured at their hands was but a figment based on a misunderstanding. A realization dawns: She’s been mistaken about so much, what else might she be wrong about?
I had always planned to explore how time and emotion affect memory in my novel. But as I wrote, I realized I’d stumbled onto something else: the notion that sometimes our beliefs about our selves, our lives, and the world, are rooted in something less than solid ground.
We might all want to look in the mirror on this one. Start small. How many of us bear grudges, whether against family, friends, or colleagues, whose beginnings are murky, lost to the passage of time? So many of us have a side of the family we don’t speak to, sometimes going back generations. When we ask our parents where it all started, what the trouble was all about, we receive defensiveness, or a garbled answer. They don’t remember. Or what about fallings-out with friends? Even if you think you memorized the conversation that ended it all, are you sure you recall it accurately? It’s easy to remember the transgressions against us; harder to remember those we have ourselves committed. Anyone who’s ever had a relationship-ending spat that wasn’t yesterday might want to re-examine what generated it, with some humility around our ability to remember accurately.
But this isn’t just about relationships. It’s also about cognition, even bedrock beliefs that guide us and our principles. Why? Because emotions can significantly affect how we form and hold beliefs, influencing our judgments and decisions. They can underpin beliefs, creating certainty that overrides doubt. Even moods can influence beliefs, as they can act as “retrieval cues” that make it easier to access memories and information that align with our feelings, which can, in turn, reinforce certain beliefs.
An online search reveals hundreds of psychology resources that offer help in uncovering one’s core beliefs and peeling them back to their origins. Most offer this guidance as a way to understand and potentially escape negative patterns in thoughts and behaviors. Advice ranges from looking for recurring themes in our thinking to reflecting on our childhood experiences and significant events to identify potential origins of our bedrock beliefs. Once that is done, we are able to challenge their validity and attempt to replace them with more true, more helpful ones.
This suggests that, unsurprisingly, a good many of us are battling troublesome ideas within ourselves whose power is strong precisely because their origins are murky. Most of us won’t get to travel back in time to determine where any misconceptions began in order to begin the process of unwinding them. But I hope the story of one fictional woman who does, albeit with the help of magic, inspires others to try.
Where You Once Belonged: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop
scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-05-15 01:43 pmLove Death + Robots Vol. 4 is Now Out
Animation nerds, today’s a big day for you: Volume 4 of Love, Death + Robots, Netflix’s acclaimed animated anthology series, is out and available for streaming, with ten new episodes, including two, “The Other Large Thing” and “Smart Appliances, Stupid Owners,” that I wrote both the stories and scripts for. Both are also directed by Patrick Osborne, who won an Oscar for animation, so that’s pretty cool, too. Although Love Death + Robots is animation, I will remind folks that the animation is aimed at an adult audience, so don’t be surprised to see, you know, blood and sex and claymation vibrators (I am responsible for that last one).
The two episodes in this collection mean that I have seven episodes of work stretched out across four seasons of the series. I’ve talked before about how working on the series has been an enjoyable process, and this season was no exception to that; for me, at least, working on this season has been another example of “best case scenario” television collaboration. The folks at Blur (the animation studio making LD+R for Netflix) continue to be the best at what they do, and also — this is no great guarantee in film and TV — respectful and appreciative of the writers whose work they engage with.
Some notes on this season’s episodes from me:
“The Other Large Thing” is based on a story of mine I wrote back in 2011, back when Twitter was still fun and I was about to reach 20,000 followers over there. To celebrate 20K, I decided to write a short story where each sentence was 140 characters or less, that being the max length of a tweet at the time. I did not post the story one tweet at a time (I did it as a long-form post using Tweet.ly), but I could have, and that was the most important thing. Then, of course, I posted it here, because this is where I post most of my very short stories.
There was a fair amount of adaptation required for the script version of the story, not in changing the overall arc of the story, but in getting into it faster; in the original I did a certain amount of scene setting that wasn’t required by animation (because you can see things on screen), and let the cat’s basic nature arrive to the reader more slowly than it does in the animated short, in which who the cat is and what its plans are are right up front. One isn’t necessarily better than the other; it’s just the nature of both media and how you structure story for both of them.
I am delighted that Chris Parnell, who you may know voiced the cats in both of the “Three Robot” episodes of LD+R, is on cat duty here. He does an excellent ego monster of a feline and I believe there is a real future for him in these roles, if he chooses to pursue them. I am equally delighted that we managed to get John Oliver as the robot. He brings a delicious polite British mania to his domestic android.
“Smart Appliances, Stupid Owners” is based on my short story “Your Smart Appliances Talk About You Behind Your Back” which I wrote to read while I was on book tour, and also for my Miniatures short story collection. The premise was simple: your smart appliances know everything about you, and when prompted, they spill the beans to an interviewer, because frankly, you have problems. This short story was very episodic, which lent itself well to animation.
Lovers of animation will note a certain similarity between this episode and the classic Aardman animated short “Creature Comforts,” and those similarities are intentional, and a fond tribute. Mind you, that short had jaguars and polar bears, and our short has a toilet and a toothbrush. There’s enough variation, I assure you. Also, this short features what I expect is the largest number of celebrity voices per capita of any of this season’s episodes, which is nice.
Oh, and watch the credits of “Smart Appliances” for a particularly amusing easter egg.
With both “Other Large Thing” and “Smart Appliances” I provided the words, but it’s Patrick Osborne as director who built the rest of the structure around them, along with his production teams, and the actors. It’s all very much a collaboration. My words were the starting point, but Patrick and his people brought everything to the finish line.
Likewise, my episodes are only two of ten; there are eight others in Volume 4 with their own fantastic writers, directors, actors and production teams. Check them all out; they’ll be worth your time.
— JS
scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-05-14 10:17 pmBearded Iris Week Has Returned
Krissy planted bearded iris plans several years ago, and there’s about a one week window every spring when they’re actually blooming, and this week is that week! After this week there’s just some green plants in front of our yard — which is still nice, but not the same. Sometimes I miss the Bearded Iris Week because I’m traveling, but this year I’m here for it, so I’m going to enjoy it while I can. Such is life: Catch those evanescent moments when they come around.
— JS
dinosaur_comics_feed) wrote2025-05-14 12:00 ami'd written this entire comic when i realized, wait, this is also how my mom tells stories. you ask
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May 14th, 2025: I'm going to Alaska for COMICS CAMP this week, so I'll be answering email a heck of a lot more slowly in the next few days. (There is no cell phone signal where we're going, so by "slowly" I mean "NOT AT ALL :0" and I'm sorry you had to find out this way, in a parenthetical aside) – Ryan | ||
scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-05-13 05:57 pmMy Time In San Antonio
Hello, everyone! Recently I mentioned I had taken a long weekend trip down to Texas to visit a friend from college that lives in San Antonio. While there wasn’t anything in particular from my trip that I thought deserved its own feature post, I figured I would just tell y’all a brief summary of the things I got up to and saw whilst in Texas.
When I flew in, San Antonio was celebrating Fiesta, an annual two week celebration showcasing tons of food, music, drinks, and events. My friend very specifically wanted me to come down during Fiesta so we could try out some of the events together.
We only ended up doing one event, called “Taste of the Republic.” It’s a $150 ticketed dining event that is meant to represent the six culinary regions of Texas: North, West, Central, South, East, and the Gulf. This event had twelve chefs participating, so each region was given to two different chefs, plus there was one dessert chef. Each booth gave out a small plate of their featured dish to represent their area, and each one also had an alcoholic pairing to go with it.
When you checked in for the event, you were given a plastic wine cup to carry around and get pours from the food booths at. However, some had different beverages to offer, like a rum cocktail, a THC-infused non-alcoholic drink, etc. Of course, like the food, these were all small pours so you could just taste everything. The ticket we purchased included all the food and alcohol, and technically you could go back for seconds at any of the stands since it was all inclusive.
While I thought that the event sounded like so much fun and like something right up my alley, neither my friend nor I enjoyed our time there. It was so crowded, it was hard to navigate the small courtyard at all, plus there was nowhere to sit and eat, so you just had to stand and eat, but even then there weren’t any tables or stands to rest your items on. It’s really hard to eat when you have your food plate in one hand and your drink in the other and you’re jam-packed like sardines. I got shoulder-checked multiple times with nary an “ope, sorry” or “excuse me.”
The food was incredibly mid, and only an hour into the four hour event, three booths had already sold out of food entirely. Also, they had a DJ there and it was seriously so loud. Like way too loud. I could barely hear my friend and we weren’t even close to the stage area. It was so overwhelming and none of the food was good. The few alcoholic beverages we did try were just awful. They had the most nasty mango Tito’s slush drink that I swear was radioactive.
Even if you managed to take advantage of every single booth and every single alcoholic beverage available, I still don’t think it would’ve been worth $150. My friend and I agreed that HALF of that is what the tickets should’ve been priced at. There was no reason for an outdoor food booth type of event with small portions and mid food to be priced at close to $200. They clearly sold too many tickets and some of the booths were ill-equipped to go through that much food.
So, that was disappointing, but whatever.
Aside from Fiesta, my friend had some great places to show me. She took me to Summer Moon Coffee, a coffee shop that has over 50 locations, half of which are found in Texas. They roast their coffee beans on oak in brick ovens and use a special ingredient called Moon Milk, which is their “signature sweet cream.” Apparently it has seven secret ingredients in it, but can be made dairy-free and does not contain honey so it can be vegan, if you like.
I got their iced blueberry crisp latte and my friend got the iced apple crisp latte. Both were so good! Very sweet, very flavorful, super yummy all around. Plus, they have pretty cute merch.
We also dined at a restaurant called Best Quality Daughter, which is an Asian fusion restaurant with some off-the-wall items like alcoholic boba.
I wasn’t planning on like, drinking in any substantial way, especially since it was only lunch and not dinner, but I had to have the Dirty Thai-Tini.
Oh my goodness. This was one of the absolute best espresso martinis I have ever had. It was so sweet and rich and creamy. It tasted so much like Thai tea which I just adore. Banger drink for sure. My friend tried a sip and she loved it, too.
For my other drink I just had the Thai salted limeade, which was great, too. Very refreshing.
In terms of actual food, we just wanted to share a couple items. We got the smashed cucumbers which ended up being so much more delicious than I could have anticipated. Not only did it have a super tasty sesame garlic dressing, but also came with some cherry tomatoes and tons of fresh cilantro. The flavors went so well together and everything tasted so fresh and green.
We also split a lunch special. We got the cashew chicken and a spring roll. The chicken was super good and not at all too spicy for me, and there was plenty of rice for us to split. I didn’t know if splitting an appetizer and lunch special would be enough but I was definitely full by the end. And the prices are good! I highly recommend checking them out, and will definitely be back the next time I’m down there.
We checked out so many shops in that same area, just perusing and mostly window shopping with some small purchases here and there. I tried not to buy too much since whatever I got I’d have to fly back home with. I did end up getting a substantial amount of paper goods, though, since I can’t help myself around stationery.
Another one of the nights, we went to an El Salvadorian restaurant called Gloria’s Latin Cuisine, which I didn’t realize until now has over twenty locations, mostly in and around Dallas. They bring you chips and salsa but also bring out a black bean dip, which is neat. We got the ceviche trio as an appetizer and it was bomb, I love a fresh ceviche. We both ordered the red snapper with poblano rice and chipotle butter sauce. I was afraid the poblano rice would be spicy, or maybe the chipotle butter would have a kick, but honestly they didn’t at all but boy were they flavorful! It was a great dish.
For dessert we tried their Cuatro Leches cake which was honestly out of this world. I didn’t expect it to be so dang delicious, but it was so sweet and moist, and the orange zest provided the most incredible brightness. My friend also said it definitely exceeded her expectations.
Now, I did have the single worst espresso martini of my life there (it was tequila based), but the food was bomb for sure.
Other than having fun shopping and dining in San Antonio, we rented a condo in Rockport and drove down to have a lil’ beach day. We ended up finding a great AirBnb! It was so cute and perfect for what we needed, and the host was nice.
While in Rockport we went to the beach, I got stung by a jellyfish, and we walked to a bar close by and got blasted and I accidentally went into the men’s bathroom and took a picture of this Jägermeister sign:
Be the meister, y’all.
So, yeah, that’s about all we did was hang out and eat good food and shop around and go to the beach! And spend quality time together talking and catching up and all that good stuff. I’m so thankful I got to see my friend and happy that I got to visit her hometown finally! She always comes to Ohio to visit all of her college friends so I was glad to go down there instead.
What’s some of your favorite spots in San Antonio? Have you been to the coast in Texas? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-05-12 12:53 pmConstituent Service Signed Limited Print Edition Now Available For Preorder
Yes, Constituent Service, my humorous novella about local politics in a city where aliens live among us, and which was a great success as an Audible Plus exclusive, will be available in print and ebook versions later this year (November, in fact), and you can preorder it now through Subterranean Press.
The print version will be a signed, limited edition, meaning that when they’re all gone, they’re all gone, and if you pre-order directly through Subterranean Press, you will also get an ebook version of the story at no additional cost. Yes! Two formats for the same price (and the ebook is DRM-free to boot)! Plus you get this very cool cover, done by Tristan Elwell, the same artist who did the now-iconic cover for Starter Villain.
(And yes, both the chicken and the scuba gear are relevant to the story.)
Here is the link to pre-order the signed, limited edition from Subterranean Press. Remember that it is indeed a limited edition, so if you want to be sure to get it, you should pre-order, and do it as soon as you can.
And yes, this is a busy year for me: When the Moon Hits Your Eye in March, Love Death + Robots Vol. 4 this month (this week, in fact), The Shattering Peace in September, Constituent Service print/ebook in November and I’ll have something as yet unannounced out as well, probably in October. That’s a lot! But, darn it, you’re worth it. And don’t you forget it.
— JS