Catherynne M. Valente

Through a Window Darkly: Transparent Prose and YOU

Greetings, all! Summer has finally arrived in Maine, along with hordes of people and even greater, gnarlier hordes of complaining from Mainers who view tourists as an invasive species of insect that must be borne with the least possible amount of grace. Ah, life in New England.

I told you all about my garden last year, but this year I’m giving it a miss as ladies in a delicate condition aren’t supposed to go messing about in the dirt (oh, just put it on the list of things I ca...

May Recipe: Vanilla-Scented Fried Rice Topped With Honey Garlic Shrimp

Honey Garlic Shrimp with Vanilla-Scented Fried Rice

Basically my favorite foods group is “fancied-up versions of cheap comfort food” and this is definitely falls into that category. Give me truffled tater tots or gently-disciplined chicken nuggets with some kind of weird selection of sauces and I’m happy. 

And goddamn do I love fried rice. I didn’t eat it for years because blah blah dieting, but it’s one of those things that just always tastes like a good ...

May Livestream Q & A

Hullo, everyone!

The May Q & A is live and viewable for all as of now! Come hear about lizards, Eurovision, my closet, and Dorian Gray, all delivered by my GIANT DUMB FACE. 

Remember that Mad Post Doc Students and above can ask the questions every month, but everyone gets to see the answers. Thank you so much for bearing with me while we figured out the tech! In the future I'll give you guys a day's notice so you can live chat with me if you want to. 

2018-05-24 20:37:01 +0000 UTC View Post

April Experiment: Infinite Well-Meaning Golden Retrievers with Infinite Keyboards

Infinite Well-Meaning Golden Retrievers with Infinite Keyboards: A Guide to Publishing

Greeting, Mad Fictioneers! It is that season known as What the Fuck Is Happening Up in This Here New England Situation. A week ago, it snowed; today it is eighty degrees and everything in the garden is screaming: I CAN’T TAKE THIS KIND OF PRESSURE I NEED STABILITY! It is also the month of my birthday, which makes me always well-disposed toward May, even though May in Maine jus...

ALLCAPS COOKBOOK: I Dream of Poland Green Vinaigrette Spread

ALLCAPS COOKBOOK: I Dream of Poland Green Vinaigrette Spread

When I went to Poland last year for the Polish National Convention, I got to stay in, naturally, Polish hotels. And hotels in Europe, I’m sorry to say to my fellow Americans, have complimentary breakfasts that are so much better than our greasy meatfests that it is to weep as much as one weeps for our lack of universal health care and good public transportation. Why can’t we have nice things? A bount...

Space Opera Winners!

Sorry this took a week to announce--the Lab went mobile and ended up in New York for the book launch, which turned out to be enormous and draining and then I got sick, which I still am, but at least I am home. 

We also made our first Museum Comedy trip over on Twitter, now that we've made that stretch goal! Unfortunately, most of the museum closed while we were there, so it wasn't as long as we'd hoped. We'll make it up with another one soon. 

The winners of two signed copies o...

Space Opera Giveaway!

Space Opera is out and in the world today! It is the crazy Hitchhiker's Guide-meets-Eurovision thing you guys read excerpts from on this very Patreon last year! It's real and you can hold it in your hands!

As is traditional, I have saved a few copies just for you. Comment on this post any time in the next 24 hours and I'll draw two winners who will receive signed hardbacks! 

March Experiment: Consider the Iguana

Consider the Iguana: A Scenework Masterclass

And a good day to you, Mad Fiction Lab! It is finally thinking about, though not committing to, being spring here in Maine. It still needs a little time to get used to the idea, to learn to be comfortable with it, to trust again. Which means it’s grey and thundering and soggy with last years leaves and the only gestures of affection the old wretch is willing to give us are a few snowdrops and crocuses and the hard, al...

ALLCAPS COOKBOOK March Recipe: Charmander Noodles!

Charmander Noodles

Hi everyone! TIME FOR FOOD AGAIN.

So this one is a real comfort dish around the Mad Fiction Lab. It’s CRAZY easy and CRAZY good and CRAZY versatile. Also stupidly cheap. I actually got the original recipe (which I have modified so much over the years that it bears little resemblance to the original) from a Meals Under $5 blog, which called these “Dragon Noodles”. Now, I’m not crazy about calling anything remotely Asian-inspired DRA...

A Return to the Wonders of Live-Tweeting (Possibly) Terrible Things

Just a quick note to let you know that I will finally be returning to regular live-tweeting of strange and possibly awful media tonight in one hour (8:30 EST). 

Tonight will be Krull. I have never seen this and know nothing about it, so all my opinions will be fresh. It could be great, you never know!

All happening in T-60 minutes on my Twitter:

http://twitter.com/catvalente

Anniversary Temporary Unlock Funtimes

Hello there Patrons! And apologies for the flood of notifications, I had no idea that would happen until, you know, it happened. 

Ahem.

So it has been over a year here on Patreon.

A year of experiments and recipes and photos and giveaways and Laboratory hi-jinx. Books have launched, beloved pets have departed forever - gone but not forgotten - the seasons have done their thing, tulips have bloomed, snow has fallen (so much snow) and the world beyond our little Island has ...

February Experiment: Writing Children and Children's Fiction

Big and Small: Writing for Children

Greetings from the Mad Fiction Laboratory! As I write to you, Schrodinger’s Storm bears down upon us—we are warned by the weather service that ALL THE SNOW is coming to dunk on us, and yet, the actual weather report predicts a mild couple of inches. No one knows what to expect, but for some reason every business is closing like Jadis, the White Witch is coming to town. We are meant to be hardy and tough here in Maine, and ye...

February Recipe: The Perfect Cheer. Er. Sandwich.

ALLCAPS COOKBOOK: The Best of All Possible Sandwiches

All right, hungry, hungry hipsters, this one is a request from Twitter.

You see, quite by accident, whilst bumbling aorund the kitchen making Heath’s lunch for the next day’s audiobook recording, I happened to make the BEST SANDWICH OF ALL TIME.

I’m not trying to be a dick, or say I’m the greatest cook or sandwich maker or whatever. Sometimes greatness just happens to you. It’s a legitimat...

First Prize Pack for 2018

Our winner is Jennifer Doyle!

Congratulations to Jennifer. You have won:

Signed copies of Radiance (UK edition)

 THE STILL UNRELEASED UPCOMING Space Opera,

A Hungarian edition of Deathless (the lab has lots of foreign editions slowly gaining sentience in forgotten corners so if you *do* win and you want a non-English book in your prize pack let me know!)

The Grass Cutting Sword (a deep cut from the Archive)

also the non-boo...

January Experiment: Name All the Things

Say My Name, Say My Name: Naming People, Places and Things

Greetings, Laboratory Folk! It is just the most garbage part of winter here in Maine. Everything is alternately shrouded in ice or dripping with goo, and it’s grey, and it’s mushy, and it’s depressing, and it’s cold. The crisp picture-postcard fresh-snow Christmas moment is over, and that stupid groundhog is being a dick again, and spring seems very far away, especially far away in New England, whe...

January Recipe: Muhammara (Syrian Pepper and Walnut Dip)

ALLCAPS COOKBOOK PRESENTS: Muhammara!

So I got it into my head last month that I wanted to learn how to cook a little Syrian cuisine. The fact is, most of my…erm…louder countrymen yell about Syria a lot but don’t know Thing One about the place, and probably wouldn’t recognize a Syrian person if one stopped them on the street and kindly offered to make them amazing food. Restaurants featuring the culinary spread of various other countries in the re...

December Experiment: Writer's Block

Attack the Block: Writer’s Block, Easy Answers, and Hard Truths

Greetings from the Lab! It has been a roller coaster of a 2018 here, full of developments I can’t actually tell you about yet, but which have sufficiently knocked me on my hindquarters that I barely noticed the completely miserable bomb cyclone blizzard thing until my heating bill came. The sentient boiler under the stairs is laughing at me right now. I can hear it. It sounds like gargling dollar ...

December Giveaway: Books, Books, Books!

Katharine Robson, you are December's raffle winner! The Lab will be lobbing you a care package filled with signed copies of all the above books and other wonderful goodies. Please make sure we have your address!

The January drawing will commence...SOON!

In other news, the Wifi Goblins have infested the Lab and forced me to chain my cell phone to even post this, so hang tight, and the other half of the experiment will go up soon. The first 12 days of 2018 have been a hilariously awful cou...

December Experiment Recipe: Mushy Peas

ALL CAPS COOKBOOK PRESENTS: MUSHY PEAS!

So, mushy peas are actually kind of gross. At least, the kind you get in the chip shop. At least, they are to me. They’re a uniform mashed potato consistency, the flavor is pea-ish but neither here nor there, and they’re generally just kind of a allegedly green lump of side dish that you drag your chips through and sort of forget about. They’re fine, they just aren’t spectacular. They don’t stand alone.  

IF YOU ARE ENGL...

We Did It, Patreon!

Patreon has announced that it will not roll out the fee changes that they dropped on us last week.

I'm sure everyone on Patreon is joining me in the current sigh of relief. I really hope this means that Patreon can stay a healthy, positive home for artists. 

It seems that fee-fees have, for once, been valued over fees. Thank the mighty Fee Gods.

I'm also pretty impressed with the way ...

November Experiment: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Write a Decent Query Letter

Answer Me These Queries Three, Ere Publication You See

(posted to all patrons as a thank you for sticking with me through Patreon's fee restructuring, which affects $1 and $5 donors most)

Happy winter, my dearest Laboratory. Today was our first snow here in Maine, which gloriously murdered all the horrible winter moths that show up twice a year here in New England, covering everything in a terrifying, yet dumb-as-mud moth-curtain and mocking our cozy ...

November Recipe: Spiritually and Emotionally Victorious Cranberry Compote

ARE YOU READY TO CRANBERRRRRRY

What you need to know is that I spent approximately a million hours looking for this recipe.

I logged into two separate Yahoo accounts I haven’t used for years. Ten years, if Yahoo herself is to be believed, the minx. 

This recipe, another one for a weird kind of pudding-cake thing, and my coffee table, are quite literally all that remains of my first marriage. A marriage so ill-advised and lost in the mists of time ...

Good News and Bad News: Patreon Fees and Life News

Hey, everyone.

The experiment will go up tomorrow, I have been under deadline and then, all of the sudden, Heath proposed and I am engaged. This...took some time. It's a wonderful shock and the world is different today than it was yesterday. My life has been so full of upheaval these last few years. I cling to the light, and the future of our lives together.

And then, there is the news you will all be aware of. Patreon has changed its fee structure to put the burden of service charges on...

November Excerpt: The Year of Red Snow

This is an odd month for excerpts.

I've been working like crazy, but I can't show you any of it. I'm finishing Mass Effect: Annihilation, and I have an ironclad NDA. Not allowed to release any part of it before publication day. Since this is my first media tie-in novel, I feel confined. But there's not much I can do about it. Other than the vague "it involves the Quarians" press release Bioware put out, they haven't allowed any info about the book into the wild, so neither can I.

FIELD OPERATIVE REWARD PACKAGE #1

Greetings Patroneers!

Way back in April we announced a LABORATORY RANDOM TEST SUBJECT POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT LOTTERY GOAL, and as announced earlier this month thanks to your incredible support we achieved that goal.

So we engaged the Sentient Robotic Arm Who Hangs Around But No One Is Exactly Sure Of Their Origin Or Motives to point its metal digit at a random name on our Big List of Patrons and the winner I am pleased to announce was *drumroll*.... Agnes Kamasi!

Agnes kindly said ...

October Experiment: Love in the Time of Nanowrimo: Life, Books, and the Conservation of Mana

Love in the Time of Nanowrimo: Life, Books, and the Conservation of Mana

Greetings and salutations, mad fictioneers! It’s that time of year again, when the woodsmoke and candy wrappers blow on the crisp autumn wind, when the chimneys quiver at their winters’ work to come, when the trees turn gold and red as bonfires, when the hay lies in the field, as neatly rolled as Princess Leia’s hair, when all the pilgrims of all the nations long to write 50,000 words in ...

October ALLCAPS COOKBOOK Recipe: Steak with Peppercorn Pan Sauce

THE ALLCAPS COOKBOOK PRESENTS: Perfect Goof-Proof Wednesday Night Steak and Peppercorn Pan Sauce

OKAY OKAY YOU GUYS. 

So I like steak, RIGHT? WHO DOESN’T. But I always get a little frustrated that it’s never QUITE as good at home as in a restaurant and it gives me a sad. And everyone always gets all manly with me and wants to show me how to MAKE MAMMOTH STEAK REAL GOOD LIKE LUG IN HIS CAVE but I can NOT deal with the weird masculinity contest involved in making a da...

Of Goals Achieved & Blind Fate

Thanks to the incredible generosity of all you wonderful folk, we achieved the goal we have been hovering around for a few months!

Your support really means the world to me and all of the Lab Denizens. In the game of Pin the Horn on the Unicorn (pictured above) that is life, you all have spun around with vigour, giggled with dizziness, then stuck that candy-swirl magic RIGHT IN MY HEART. 

I'll be the first to admit that that analogy got a little anatomically confusing, but I trust t...

The Future of Q&As

Hey, everyone!

I only received one question for the September Q&A, which, combined with viewing numbers, leads me to believe that, while everyone likes watching the livestream, coming up with questions isn't as fun for the Mad Post-Doc level of support as we here at the Lab had imagined. 

So, let me ask you--what would you like the award for the $20 level of patronage to be? What would be worth it to you, what would excite you and give you a healthy heaping of fun and f...

September's Entry in the ALL CAPS COOKBOOK

Gluten-Free Orange Almond Cake with Pineapple-Bourbon Glaze

This recipe is mainly from the Great British Bake Off cookbook, with the glaze and toppings being my own twist. 

I just can’t watch GBBO without baking something of my own, monkey see monkey do. And the other night, this was the only cake in the book for which I had all the ingredients. Living on an island, after 8 pm, you have what you have and no more, so gluten-free cake it was.

Read...