Fiction To Sink Your Teeth Into, a feature from author and professional chef Rohan O’Duill!
This is my first baking recipe for Night Beats and I have kept it to a very simple sponge cake. However, you really need a stand mixer for this recipe.
by Zilla N.
by Sabitha F.
Ghost in the Vending Machine by Saevelle is a Wattpad novel, but don’t let that stop you from reading it. In fact, that should have you running to it, as not only can you read it for free, you don’t even have to wait for your hold on it to come in at the library. You can read it right now!
Now, as one of the founders of Night Beats, I’m heavily biased. Maybe you are too, since you’re reading this very blog. If you’re new here, though, Night Beats is a Creative Commons-licensed concept for a cheesy early Noughts paranormal police procedural—think X-Files meets Supernatural meets Forever Knight. Basically, you can slip it into your creative project if you need to make a reference that won’t get dated.*
So it’s been used in various creative works quite a bit already, and you can find out more on this very website. But to my knowledge Saevelle is the first person to actually write an entire episode. And it’s glorious. It’s so wonderful.
The story alternates between the episode itself and the behind-the-scenes filming of it. In the episode, a sex worker is murdered by some kind of monster, and Jordan and Jane have to both solve the case and keep her ghost, trapped in a coin, safe. Meanwhile in Toronto, the actors, stunt people, and makeup artists deal with the ups and downs of minor celebrity and on-set romances. It’s sweet and funny and as a Torontonian one degree away from the film industry, I believe she gets it perfectly. And I love the episode itself—it has all the dramatic beats and character moments of a show like this, and Saevelle’s cinematic writing style lets you picture it as if on screen.
Basically, I adore this story with my whole heart, and if you’re a fan of campy, witty, self-aware fiction, I’m guessing that you will too.
*In other words, it exists purely because JKR is a TERF and Rachel had to edit all the Harry Potter references out of the second draft of Cascade. True story.
Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.
Sabitha: We’ve got Macy Lewis here, telling us about her children’s book Nigel and The Festival of Flames. Macy, can you introduce us to your book?
Macy: I wrote my Nigel and The Festival of Flames to help children learn that being different is what makes us unique, which is something we shouldn’t feel nervous about. It also teaches them to be kind and kindness can be difficult to find these days.
Nigel the dragon is competing in the Festival of Flames, but he can’t throw his flames as high as the other dragons can because he’s smaller than the other dragons. When Nigel takes a walk, he meets Princess Rakella, can she convince Nigel to return to the Festival of flames and try again?
Sabitha: Which character do you relate to the most and why?
Macy: I relate to Nigel because I’m blind and sometimes, I don’t think I can do things that sighted people can do, but when I talk with friends or my family, they always encourage me to try and more often than not, I’m able to find a way to do what I have wanted to do. I think we all need a little encouragement like Princess Rakella does for Nigel, and it’s such a beautiful thing to watch as the story unfolds.
Sabitha: What do you love about the writing process?
Macy: I love writing children’s books because it’s a challenge. I always feel like I must captivate children with the first lines of my story, so they’ll want to continue reading my books. I couldn’t have written Nigel without my editor Emily. She’s the one who gave Nigel’s text the rhyming rhythm that everyone loves so much. My illustrator, Miara, hand painted each one of the pictures, and I think they turned out absolutely beautiful. I knew I wanted Nigel to be light blue, but I let Miara do what she wanted with everything else and create her own vision when she read the text.
Sabitha: That sounds really sweet and meaningful. Thank you for sharing. Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?
Macy: They can find my books at their favorite online bookstore, but here’s my Amazon author page. They can follow me on Facebook and Twitter.
by Zilla N.
Now is not the first time the Earth’s climate has changed. Now is not the first time that temperatures changed, that animals were driven to the brink of extinction, that food production dwindled. Noema is a story about human survival through environmental change twelve thousand years ago. But Noema is much more than historical fiction.
This book is about the price of survival, and who pays it: the animals, the people, All Life. It is about the Law of Unintended Consequences and about complicity for what is done in what is done in your name, when you have been the one to teach people your name. Or when those people are the ones who gave you a name in the first place.
Names and identity are major themes in Noema. I still can’t tell you who the narrator is, but then, I think that’s the point. We are interconnected. We are the living and the dead. We are the humans and the horses and the wheat. We are All Life, and sometimes to preserve All Life, we have to make terrible sacrifices.
Noema is a book that lingers with you, that offers up its precious secrets deliciously slowly. It is a book you can read over and over. Find it here.
Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.
Sabitha: Joshua Neal is with us today to talk about his YA science fiction novel, The Debt Diary. Josh, take it away!
Josh: The Debt Diary is dystopian young adult fiction. It focuses on Harry, a teenage climate refugee, as he struggles to survive living on the streets of an inhospitable city. The book also has a supernatural hook in the form of Harry’s debt diary, a book that Harry uses to track his debts but that begins to predict his future.
Sabitha: That sounds very topical. What inspired you to write this book?
Josh: Brexit, mostly. But also a complete and utter disdain for the heat. There was a decent amount of xenophobia tied up within the Brexit narrative, and I’m sure I don’t need to make anyone aware of the continuing discourse about our changing climate. Take these two things to the extreme and you’ve got some very desperate people in very desperate situations. I was also inspired more specifically by the Essex lorry deaths and other similar news stories.
Sabitha: Which character do you relate to the most and why?
Josh: I think Harry is the most relatable character. He has no idea what the future holds, yet he’s forced to make decisions every day that will inevitably change that future. Whether it’s changed for better or for worse, he has no idea. All he can do is make the best, most informed decision that he can and hope the rest falls into place.
Sabitha: We have a lot of writers in our community. What’s your writing process?
Josh: The writing process for The Debt Diary was very different from the process that I’m developing now. The Debt Diary is my first novel, and I pantsed it pretty hard. I just put my head down and wrote until I finished it. Then, I sought direction from a number of sources and used the feedback to fix everything that I’d done wrong (which was a lot). The experience was enlightening but I’m plotting my current projects far more thoroughly.
Sabitha: What was the hardest part about editing?
Josh: Fleshing out act two and trying to ensure that Harry’s transformation was a satisfying and moving one. Also, trying to tie together the two book’s two primary themes and ensure that they synthesise in the final act.
Sabitha: What do you most want your readers to take away from reading your book?
Josh: That the future is uncertain, but that doesn’t mean that you can compromise your morals or hang others out to dry. We can achieve more together than we can alone, and it’s up to each of us to continue to build connections rather than burn bridges.
Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?
Josh: You can find The Debt Diary on Amazon (UK and US) and it is free on Kindle Unlimited. You can find me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
I’m donating 25% of the proceeds of my book sales to a local charity in Norwich. You can find out more about this on my website.
This month’s suggestion is Cujo as a pet owner’s manual. This was submitted by MachiMaquiaveli on Twitter. Tweet us and if Rachel likes your suggestion, she’ll make on in a future issue
Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.
Sabitha: Emma Berglund is here! She was an editor on the Into the Unknown science fiction anthology, a set of short stories which (spoiler alert!) we absolutely loved. She also wrote a story in the anthology, “Birds of Fortune.” Emma, can tell us us a bit about the book?
Emma: Into the Unknown is a science fiction anthology, with eleven new stories covering everything from the aftermath of an excursion to the dark side of the moon, to outer space, to the recesses of a closet, to a mysterious island and to alien worlds. It’s like a well sorted bag of candy; it has something for everyone. The anthology is edited by me, Rohan O’Duill, and Jason Clor.
Sabitha: We know Rohan—close readers will recognize him as the chef behind the Night Beats Feature Fiction to Sink Your Teeth Into. What inspired you and the rest of your team to write this book?
Emma: It all started when Rohan first got the idea of us putting together an anthology in the science fiction writing group that we all are a part of, and both Jason and I weren’t hard to persuade. And luckily, the crew thought it was a fun idea, too! When we had decided on a theme—which also ended up as the title—I settled for an adventurous steampunk story with a touch of romance. And so “Birds of Fortune” came to be. I was going for a matinee feel, with a fast-paced story line and problems to solve along the way. The flirty part happened by itself, I’d say.
Sabitha: Was there any music that inspired you while you were writing?
Emma: I like to have music that matches the mood in the story or a beat that keeps me going. Mostly the latter, or I fall asleep, as I usually write late evenings. I like alternative/indie rock/pop, so bands like Smash Into Pieces, Daughtry, ViVii, and artists like Zayde Wølf, AURORA, Alba August are on repeat, just to mention a few. But honestly, I’m an omnivore when it comes to most things, so don’t be surprised if you find K-pop or classical music on my playlists as well.
Sabitha: What do you most want your readers to take away from reading your book?
Emma: I’d like the readers of the anthology to have an open mind when they read our stories. We are all different and like different things, and that’s how it should be. At the same time, it’s great to read something you wouldn’t have picked up in the first place, and find out that you really enjoy it. Or not. But you tried.
Hopefully the reader finds a new subgenre in science fiction to explore. The anthology is a smorgasbord; pick what you want or eat it all.
Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your stories. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?
Emma: You can find the book here, or read it on Kindle Unlimited; all proceeds from the sale of this anthology go to The World Literacy Foundation. Our press has a website and a Twitter. If you want to get in touch with me, you can contact me on Twitter.
Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.
Sabitha: Tucker Lieberman joins us to talk about his weird and wonderful literary novel, Most Famous Short Film of All Time. Tucker, what can you tell us about your book?
Tucker: Most Famous Short Film of All Time is a philosophical novel. It’s set in Boston in the 2010s. Lev Ockenshaw is a thirtysomething transgender man who works for a tech company. He sees supernatural beings, which isn’t a big deal to him, and he likes telling campfire stories with his friends. One day, he receives an anonymous, threatening email, and things start to get weird.
The literary style is absurdist with nonfiction-style digressions. There’s a bibliography: books, film, pop music.
Sabitha: It sounds absolutely delightful. What inspired you to write this book?
Tucker: Several overlapping cultural problems in the US are of concern to me. First, not knowing what an anonymous threat might mean, given the frequency of mass shootings. Second, the inability to make yourself heard, or a more active silencing perpetrated by people who you hoped would help you. Third, problems of visibility and invisibility, and self-interpretation and being interpreted by others, specifically as a transgender man might experience that. Of course, everyone’s experience is different, and this character is fictional, but his perspective is a transgender one. He’s not giving dictionary definitions of how trans people feel, but many trans people might relate to a lot of what he says. Ultimately, his philosophy is his own. It’s one attempt to unpack some of the cultural experiences of people who are transgender.
Sabitha: What was your favourite thing to write?
Tucker: The first scene I wrote was the Tele-Quiz gameshow where the main character makes 20 attempts to solve a question. I wrote it as a short story, and it was published in an anthology in 2019. That was fun. What came later felt harder. It took three years to write the next 100,000 words. I suffered with it.
Sabitha: The book’s got a catchy title—how did you choose it?
Tucker: In thinking about the stress of watching footage related to mass shootings on television news, I thought about the home video footage of the assassination of JFK in 1963. How much has changed in a half-century—the guns, the cameras. Most Famous Short Film of All Time is a reference to the presidential assassination that was captured accidentally by a bystander with a camera. The book is illustrated with the 486 frames of the film, with permission from the museum that owns it. I was thinking also about how each of us play certain memories on a loop, especially traumatic ones, and those memories become our own privately famous “films” that we examine, looking for clues, hoping to find answers.
Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your story. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?
Tucker: Most Famous Short Film of All Time was released on September 20, 2022. You can find purchase links here. You can find my website here, or find me on Twitter.
Every author has that moment when their book feels real. For some people, it’s signing their manuscript to a press. For some people, it’s holding the print edition in their hands for the first time. For Rachel A Rosen, it was finding Cascade fanfiction on Archive of Our Own. Not just any fanfic. Amazing, hilarious, heartfelt fanfic of Ian, Jonah, and Sujay messing around on government time, by the inimitable SunSalute. Read it here.
Don’t know the canon? You can read Cascade through Amazon, any ebook retailer, or direct from the press.
This month’s suggestion is A Modest Proposal as a cookbook. No one had submitted any ideas so Rachel A Rosen came up with this all on her own. Tweet us and if Rachel likes your suggestion, she’ll make on in a future issue. Please stop her from coming up with her own ideas. Please submit some. We’re desperate.
Night Beats Extended Universe 