Thoughts On Writing Throughout This Past Year
Posted on October 22, 2025 Posted by Athena Scalzi 20 Comments
In my post last week where I mentioned I had been writing “full-time” for a year and shared my favorite ten pieces from this past year, one commenter asked me about my overall experience with my writing career so far. I was going to reply to all his questions in a comment, but then I thought that it was worth a piece on its own.
Talking about how I’ve felt about my job this past year, how I feel as a writer, what’s different now compared to last year, I honestly have more to say about the whole thing than I realized. So thanks, Mike, for the content inspiration! I hope your questions get answered in the next few paragraphs.
First, more than anything, I’m grateful to be able to do this. I’ve been writing on the blog on and off (and with varied levels of uhhh.. talent) since 2018, and since the beginning I have always felt thankful to have such a fun, cool opportunity as what I like to call “doing whatever I want and writing about it.” It can be a struggle sometimes to come up with content when I’m feeling particularly unmotivated, but overall having the freedom to choose what kind of content I want to create is a huge thing that I’m very happy about it.
I feel so lucky to have a fun, stable, not physically demanding job. It’s a rare breed of job. And I have had other jobs, for what it’s worth, but turns out I like sitting at my laptop a lot more than just about anything else. Wonder where I get that from.
Beyond feeling grateful for the position itself, I also feel grateful to have dedicated readers and commenters. I am consistently amazed and surprised at how many of you comment such nice things, always encouraging me and supporting me. It means a lot! Of course, I love my haters, too, and have a collection of screenshots of many jackass comments before they get malleted, just to laugh at later on down the road. So thanks for being here, y’all, I couldn’t do it without you!
This past year of writing has taught me a lot about myself. Mainly that I’m depressed and sticking to a schedule is very difficult for me. This past year I was supposed to have a pretty solid writing schedule, and be in my “office” (in the church) for a set time to do things like blog posts and other writing endeavors. Well, turns out I don’t feel like doing that a lot of the time, so I didn’t.
I actually heavily slacked and neglected my responsibilities over the past year. There were many times where my dad would specifically ask me to contribute more pieces to the blog whilst he was busy traveling or on tour, and I would say no problem, I can do that. And then I’d only put out one piece that week. I would mean to do more, really I would! But I didn’t. And I did that kind of thing a lot.
I’ll get to it later. I’ll find the time to do it later. I’ll just post tomorrow, instead. It was a lot of that sort of thinking this past year. Turns out that that doesn’t make me feel good about myself or my work. I regret how much I didn’t do. I hope that moving forward, I do more, and most importantly, am more consistent. It’s good for my brain to be more consistent, yet harder to achieve. Plus I want to give y’all consistent content to look forward to!
One thing I was supposed to do this past year on top of doing blog posts, was to write creatively, as well. Guess what I didn’t do even once! That’s right, write anything fictional or personal or anything that wasn’t a blog post. Damn. Better luck this upcoming year, I guess!
My life lacks structure and intentionality and it turns out you need both to be a writer. Damn (again). Turns out I’m a procrastinator. Wonder where I get that issue from.
Anyways, all of this is to say that I’m disappointed in myself this past year and I hope to do better moving forward. And I hope to write creatively. That is my dream, after all. Following in footsteps and whatnot. You get the idea.
Aside from all that, this past year is the first time in my life where when people ask me “what do you do for work?” I say “I’m a writer.” Of course, that always leads to “what do you write?” and then “so do you write for a magazine or a newspaper orr..?” and I have noticed that it always always leads to, “so how do you make money from that?” I understand the curiosity, but I also find it to be a strange question.
I can honestly say I have never asked anyone how they make money from their work. If someone tells me they’re an artist, I don’t ask if that’s salary or hourly, or ask the Tik Tok content creator if that comes with benefits and PTO. I think unless the information is offered willingly, it’s best to leave it alone.
It’s important to note that I’m not ashamed about how much I get paid or in the way that I get paid for this job (and it does in fact come with benefits!), but the issue for me is that it feels like a question that is only asked of those in creative fields, and makes them feel lesser than other jobs. It’s feels demeaning, because it’s not like I’m asking every market analyst I come in contact with how they’re putting bread on the table. Why do I have to disclose my salary for you to take my profession seriously?
I guess it’s just been an interesting experience overall telling others that I’m a writer. I can’t say I really like it. I feel awkward every time I say it. I hope I get past that feeling eventually.
All in all, I obviously love being a writer and being able to share all my experiences, both good and bad, with you all. I hope to branch out in topics and push outside of my comfort zone of mainly just restaurant reviews. It’s just what comes easiest to me, so it’s what I do the most. But I’d like to be more varied moving forward.
I’m looking forward to this next year of writing. I feel like I finally understand myself and my craft better than I ever have before, and I’m glad y’all are on this journey with me. Cheers to the year ahead.
-AMS
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The Big Idea: Juliet Brooks
Posted on October 21, 2025 Posted by Athena Scalzi 9 Comments
All work and no play makes author Juliet Brooks write a Big Idea about how the US should have better worker’s rights and conditions. In her newest novel, A Fae In Finance, her main character finds herself in a challenging work dilemma that we can all relate to. Or, if you can’t, at least there’s a cat!
JULIET BROOKS:
In the early pages of A Fae in Finance, Miri, my book’s protagonist, eats faerie food and gets trapped in Faerie. This isn’t a spoiler; it’s on the back cover.
Miri knows she shouldn’t eat the food. She’s seen the subway PSAs warning people not to eat faerie food. The Fae are weirdly evasive about saying that it would be safe for her. She isn’t even particularly hungry. But, feeling cowed by implicit pressure from her boss (he never threatens her aloud) she caves and eats the food.
Early reviewers(1) have loved the cat, thought the writing was fun, and asked why the main character’s mother doesn’t get more air time.* But reviewers consistently have one frustration with my main character: Why is Miri so deferential to such an obviously terrible boss?
And that’s... actually the entire big idea of A Fae in Finance.😑 There are material considerations (food, housing, healthcare) that keep the scales unbalanced in favor of employers. We talk about those regularly. But there are also social and emotional considerations that lead people to stay in suboptimal work environments, and which we should talk about more.
Once Miri gets trapped in Faerie, she doesn’t need money for food or housing or healthcare (the Fae are a lot more progressive than the United States on that front). Since her job security is no longer tied to her material needs, you’d think that Miri would immediately tell her dingbat of a boss to stick it where the sun don’t shine.🔷 Instead, she plods along for another 300-odd pages, apologizing incessantly for breathing weird and also existing.
I’ve been incredibly fortunate in my life to never seriously wonder how I will be able to get my next meal. But I, like Miri, have disengaged from family and friend obligations for one more email, made myself meek in a workplace to paper over management failings, and folded to meet a boss’s insane requests.42 I think most people have, at some point in their careers, done the same.
I’ve bent over backwards to go the extra mile for a shitty job because I feel fungible and am worried an employer could replace me; I have a socially ingrained set of semi-pathologic emotions about being unemployed; and my sense of self-worth is very much tied to my perception of how I’m doing at work.
But, in large part, I’ve struggled to leave workplaces because I have taken most of my past jobs in the hopes of helping people and advancing the climate fight; I’ve gravitated towards roles that I think, if done with care by caring people, could make the world a better place. I don’t want to fail in achieving that mission, even when it means I end up feeling overwhelmed and ineffective.
It’s incredibly important to improve workers’ conditions in the U.S. by advocating for single-payer healthcare systems, family and medical leave, and living wages. But in A Fae in Finance, I wanted to explore the non-material ways in which we are tied to our work, and the impacts of those emotional bonds. What value do we assign our work, and how do our own perceptions of that work influence our actions and reactions?
I don’t have any great answers for you about consciously uncoupling the relationship between work and worth.& I do, however, have answers for you about Doctor Kitten, the cat in A Fae in Finance.
A. Yes, he was named after my cat, Adjunct Professor Moo, who is a professor of moosicology.σ
B. He sheds a lot, and he only sheds the white fur.
C. He’s opening a cat cafe in book 2 of How to Do Business in Faerie, A Mermaid in Marketing, out August 2026.
Footnotes:
1. My dad, brothers, and editor.
*. This last critique came from a small subset of anonymous accounts that oddly all originated in my hometown and had my mom’s initials in the user handle. I remain baffled.
😑. Most readers likely think that the Big Idea of A Fae in Finance is that everyone should adopt at least one cat, but preferably two, as cats are social creatures, which I demonstrate via the relationship between Doctor Kitten (Miri’s cat) and Lene (Miri’s friend). That is a Big Idea but not the Big Idea. You should adopt two cats, or, if you aren’t ready for the commitment, you should look up a local foster organization and foster some cats. But I digress.
🔷. It, specifically, being a cactus.
42. A Fae in Finance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. And for you, my former boss reading this blog post, I was talking about other workplaces.
&. I imagine unions, which create worker communities and advocate for you as a whole person, could help.
σ. The "all characters are fiction" disclaimer doesn’t apply to the cat. Adjunct Professor Moo’s commentary on the state of academia will be a future The Big Idea post if he ever gets around to publishing.
A Fae in Finance: Bookshop|Barnes & Noble|Amazon (US)|Hachette web page
Author’s socials: Instagram |Website
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Couldn’t Sleep; Did a Cover Song
Posted on October 21, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi 11 Comments
I couldn’t sleep because a certain black kitten decided that he wanted to sleep on my face, precipitating a coughing fit that knocked slumber right out of me. So, here: a cover of “Bring On the Dancing Horses” from Echo & the Bunnymen, which I started recording the other night, and now was a fine time to finish it up. It’s a little more drum-heavy than the original version; what can I say, I like drums. Some people are like that.
For those of you too young and/or tragically unhip to have ever heard the original, here it is for compare and contrast:
Now I’m tired. I think I’ll try to go back to sleep.
— JS
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A Quick Shoutout To The Avery Hotel
Posted on October 20, 2025 Posted by Athena Scalzi 12 Comments
While I was staying in Boise last week, my grandma and I roomed at The Avery Hotel, which was also where the reception for the wedding I was in town for was held. I never thought I’d say this, but it turns out I love Boise. Part of what made my time there so great was my stay at The Avery.
In most cases when I travel, the hotels are completely standard in terms of the space and the service, but The Avery Hotel is a rare breed of hotel where my experience was leagues above the standard, and I wanted to share with y’all why I loved The Avery so much.
The Avery is a boutique hotel, which means it has fewer rooms than chain hotels, but they’re more carefully curated and decorated thoughtfully. It makes it a lot more distinct than the “super standard hotel room art that is in each of the 500 rooms” sort of vibe. The smaller set up allows for a lot more of its unique, historic charm to shine throughout the hotel. With original guest room doors, velvet chairs in the lobby, tiled bathrooms for a classy old-world feel, and a seating area and chess board set up on the second floor, The Avery feels like you’ve traveled back in time, but in a swanky, cozy way instead of a “how old is this mattress?” kind of way.
Not only is The Avery quaint while still having plenty of elegance throughout, but it’s in an incredible spot in downtown Boise, making your exploration of the city extra walkable. It’s truly in a perfect spot, with tons of restaurants and shops surrounding it, and there’s even a bodega right across the street in case you forgot some toiletries or need a late-night snack.
The Avery has two places to dine, the first being its Michelin-star chef operated Avery Brasserie + Bar, and the second being its more secluded, more intimate Brunswick bar in the back, Tiner’s Alley. Both of these spaces have the same old-world elegance that the Avery Hotel does, their warm and inviting atmospheres are sure to persuade you to stay for a drink or two, and the sleek wooden bars and funky chandeliers are truly eye-catching.
What really made The Avery stand out to me, though, was its hospitality and customer service. It is so rare that a hotel actually makes me feel like a valued guest instead of just another customer, but The Avery’s staff’s friendliness was exceptional. From the moment I pulled up my car to the valet, to the check-out process two days later, the staff at The Avery made me feel so welcome.
Not to mention The Avery let us check in four hours early! Our room happened to be ready at noon so we just got settled in immediately before grabbing some brunch (offered on the weekends). Definitely grateful for that.
One of the manager’s was especially amazing, offering me recommendations of where to get coffee in the area, complimenting my dress for the wedding reception, and she even helped me with the clasp on my necklace! The Avery is lucky to have Carly; she and her team made my stay all the more special and memorable.
As for the wedding reception (held in Tiner’s Alley), I have been to many weddings (and a bridesmaid in six of them), and The Avery provided the absolute best wedding food I’ve ever had. West Coast oysters, shrimp cocktail, a tower of champagne, crispy Brussel sprouts, halibut, even the mac and cheese was really fantastic!
The reception was open bar, and there was a special menu for the party, with one of the drinks being called “The Veil” (it was an espresso martini). I definitely had my share of champagne, but I did end up getting a dirty martini from the bar, and it was literally the best dirty martini I’ve ever had. It was honestly perfectly filthy. Plus the margarita I had was excellent, too. And the espresso martini. Listen, I was staying three floors up from the bar okay, it’s fine. My grandma had four Crown and 7ups so who’s the real partier here?
All in all, The Avery is an amazing place to stay if for some reason you’re in Boise. I highly recommend utilizing their valet option, as it is thirty dollars a night and you can pull your car out as much as you want. It’s definitely preferable for me than finding overnight street parking 0r a far away parking garage, especially since I was with my grandma who can really only walk short distances.
I ended loving Boise so much but having almost no time to explore because of the wedding stuff, so now I’m thinking I actually need to take a real vacation out to Idaho (wild thing to say), and if I do I’m absolutely staying at The Avery again.
Have you been to The Avery before? If so, did you stay there or just dine? What recommendations do you have for me for Boise when I inevitably go back? Let me know in the comments, check out The Avery Hotel on Instagram, and have a great day!
-AMS
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State of the Scalzi, 10/20/25
Posted on October 20, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi 31 Comments
My stop in Burlington constituted what I consider to be the end of my book tour for The Shattering Peace; I have two other events this year (the Texas Book Festival and a library appearance in Jacksonville, FL) but those aren’t specifically tied into the book, and they are two and three weeks away, respectively. All my tour events took place within the space of five weeks.
So how am I? And what is up with me for the rest of 2025?
1. Well, to begin, I’m exhausted, albeit mostly in a good way. From Portland, OR to Burlington, VT, I did seventeen different events, including bookstore readings, library events and convention appearances. I had a ridiculous number of plane flights, not all of them at decent hours of the morning (although now I have Gold Medallion status on Delta, so, hooray, I suppose), slept in a plethora of hotel rooms ranging from hipster to “we’re not really a murder hotel I SWEAR” and saw thousands of folks at readings, panels and signings, some of whom were friends, and with whom I was happy to spend a little bit of time while on the road.
The tour did what it was supposed to do: The Shattering Peace popped up on the New York Times bestseller list at #9, which was higher than I expected (thank you all!). We have sold quite a healthy number of books, ebooks and audiobooks in the last month and change, both of the new one and of the backlist titles. Plus it was a delight to see so many folks while I was on the road. Also, I have been “on” for six weeks, with only a few breaks in there to be at home and sleep in my own bed and socialize my new kitten, so, yeah. It was great! And also a lot! And I’m looking forward to spending two weeks at home before I go anywhere else, and then after those last two events, being home for the rest of November and all of December.
2. I will spend the rest of the year being at home, but that is not to say that I will be be just turning into a creative lump. There will indeed be some of that, but I also have to finish the upcoming novel, with is the thing I will the most focused on for the next several weeks. Some of you who saw me on tour got a preview of the book because I read from the prologue; the rest of you, I’m afraid, will just have to wait. But that needs to get done, and that’s where my brain will mostly be for much of the rest of the year.
Beyond that I have another project I can’t tell you about yet but which is seriously damn cool, which I will spend at least a bit of time in this last quarter of the year building out. It is actually a Scalzi Enterprises project, so those of you who might have thought the company is just a thing designed to make sure our family has medical insurance, surprise! It’s a real thing! (although of course it is also a thing designed to make sure our family has medical insurance, welcome to America, friends).
Remember also I have two more works coming out this year, both in November: a short story entitled “3 Days, 9 Months, 27 Years,” which will be out for Amazon (if you have Amazon Prime you can already check it out as part of its “first reads” program), and then the print/ebook edition of “Constituent Service,” a humorous novella I wrote last year. Here’s a fun thing: If you order the (signed, limited) print version directly from Subterranean Press, they will give you the ebook edition at no additional cost. Totally worth it.
3. On less thrilling “state of Scalzi” news, this morning I clocked in at 202 pounds exactly, the heaviest I have ever been. I am not feeling very happy about that because I can feel the physical penalties incurring on my body for carrying around roughly 30 pounds more than I would prefer, and also, my clothes just don’t fit right anymore. There are a lot of reasons why my weight has crept up in the last couple of years, but certainly a month of eating not exactly fabulously while on tour didn’t help things any.
A few years ago when I had a similar weight gain, I found that getting a Fitbit exercise tracker helped me stay focused on getting myself in better shape — turns out, gamifying my exercise has actual benefits for me — and when I stopped wearing one, there was a correlation with me exercising less and my weight creeping up. So last week I bought myself the Pixel Watch 4, since Google ate Fitbit and all their exercise and tracking software, and the Pixel watches are where those things live now. Today I started a new exercise and calorie-awareness regimen, and hopefully it will take, because I don’t want to buy a whole new wardrobe, and also would like to feel happier in my own body.
(As always this is not commentary on anyone else’s weight and/or exercise goals. This is about me, my own health and well-being, and my own stack of sarcastic t-shirts I would like to fit into again.)
So that’s where I am today: Lots of plans! Some exercise! And also, looking forward to sleeping in a lot for the rest of 2025.
— JS
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The Big Idea: Marie Lu
Posted on October 20, 2025 Posted by Athena Scalzi 1 Comment
A great idea often comes with the added bonus of a million questions, and it’s up to the writer to have answers for all these questions. In author Marie Lu’s case, this path of answers led to the creation of her adult debut novel, Red City. Come along in her Big Idea to see how transformative one idea can be.
MARIE LU:
Several years ago, I had the enormous privilege of doing something that has been on my bucket list: I got the chance to take a summer course at the University of Oxford, a place I have been enchanted with since I was a teenager. The class itself (Astronomy) was, of course, incredible—but a perk of being a summer student is that you can get a library card to access the university’s Bodleian Libraries, which is not open to the general public. The feeling of sitting inside the Radcliffe Camera, beneath its exquisite dome and encased within its illuminated bookshelves, is a core memory seared into my mind.
At the time, I was struggling with what would become the first full draft of Red City, my adult debut. It is a dark contemporary fantasy, a story about the pursuit of perfection at any cost and the price of ambition. But while I had my characters and setting, and I had my plot and themes, I did not have a magic system to bind it all together. I knew I wanted the story seen through the lens of fantasy, but I didn’t know what that fantasy element was. What could symbolize the idea of our endless hunger to transform ourselves, our eternal dissatisfaction with who we are?
I can still remember picking through the hallowed shelves at the Bodleian while I fought with this essential piece of storytelling. I pulled book after book and brought it to my corner—medieval collections about the heavens and texts about the Renaissance, the history of nations and the advent of early sciences.
I don’t remember exactly which book it was that sparked the idea. But one of the titles I pulled was about the origins of alchemy, the precursor to modern chemistry. And that night, in my room, the first inkling of the idea came together: alchemy is the pursuit of perfection. It is the transformation of something into something more desirable, lead into gold, mortality into immortality.
It was my missing piece.
It would take several more months for the idea to truly solidify. But you can always tell when the idea is the right one, because your mind starts exploding with questions: What if alchemy was real in our world? How did our ancestors use it? Was that ever recorded in our histories? What if its reality was an open secret for all these centuries? How would it be used in the modern age? What is the cost of being an alchemist; what do you sacrifice in the pursuit of perfection; how does this magic damage you and reshape you?
From those questions came wild answers that excited me. Perhaps the Greek gods were actually human alchemists, capable of transmuting lightning from nitrogen and oxygen in the air or capable of changing molecules in the human body in order to heal a wound or improve a mood. Perhaps it is studied in just as much detail as any branch of science—there are classes and sects and philosophies, categories of study and theories and debate. Perhaps the philosopher’s stone, the holy grail of alchemy, would fit into today’s capitalist society, would become a product you could sell. Perhaps it is behind all of the modern age’s inventions and innovations, this symbol for our ruthless desire for perfection—we want more wealth, more power, more life, more beauty, more, more, more. And what if alchemy is the engine behind that? What would that look like?
How would alchemists behave in our modern world? How would ordinary people?
The relentlessness of our world haunts me. I think it may be why I wanted to explain it with magic. There is mystery to magic, a surrendering of yourself to the fact that there are things outside of your control, that maybe we don’t understand everything about ourselves.
In it, we can find solace, and in solace, we might be able to puzzle out the harder aspects of our world. The concept of alchemy helped me find reason in our ceaseless pursuit of success, and in that idea, the story was truly born.
Red City: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop
Author socials: Website|Instagram
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Flying Into Burlington, VT
Posted on October 17, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi 11 Comments
The foliage looks impressive even from far away.
Reminder that tomorrow I will be at the Green Mountain Book Festival, talking about, and then signing, books! Come see me and other very fabulous writers talk about books and writing and stuff. It’ll be fun, promise.
— JS
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The Big Idea: Jennifer Estep
Posted on October 16, 2025 Posted by Athena Scalzi 4 Comments
Much like an oak tree from an acorn, author Jennifer Estep had one small scene that ended up turning into the fifth book in her Galactic Bonds series. Come along in the Big Idea for her newest novel, Only Rogue Actions, and let her set the scene that started the whole book.
JENNIFER ESTEP:
Sometimes in writing, a random image, thought, or phrase can spark a story, a book, or even an entire world.
I’ve had this happen a couple of times in my writing career, most recently with Only Rogue Actions, book #5 in my Galactic Bonds science-fiction fantasy series.
As I was writing Only Cold Depths, the previous book in the series, one image kept popping into my mind over and over again—a woman in a long, flowing white gown running through cold, thick white fog, desperately searching for something (or someone).
Why this particular image? I have no idea. It just appeared to me one day and then kept coming back. Maybe it was my writerly subconscious at work, already thinking ahead to the next book. Maybe I drove through the fog one morning, and the trip got warped and stuck in my mind. Maybe I just thought it was a cool image. Or maybe I had just eaten too much sugar that day.
But somewhere along the way, I started really thinking about the image and asking myself all the usual writing/story questions:
- Who is this woman?
- Why is she stuck in the fog?
- What obstacles are in her way?
- Who is she trying to find?
- Is she running toward something/someone?
- Is she running away from something/someone?
- Or what if she is doing both?
This one image kept playing on a loop in my mind like a ghost wavering in and out of view, but I couldn’t figure out a way to incorporate it into my current book. When I started writing Only Rogue Actions, I thought why not take this one striking image and build my whole book around it? It seemed like the only way to banish this potential story ghost once and for all.
I ditched the long, flowing gown, stuck my heroine Vesper Quill in the middle of a dangerous training course, and made the thick white fog a literal obstacle that she must navigate through. And just like that, the fog cleared (so to speak), and the rest of the story came into focus. Soon, I was writing scenes of Vesper running through the fog and doing all sorts of things (which I won’t spoil here).
Not only did I use the fog as an obstacle for Vesper to overcome, but it also gave the story a dim, murky, menacing atmosphere that was oddly similar to a horror movie. So I decided to really embrace the fog and add a few jumpscares into the story. Bonus!
And perhaps best of all, I finally banished this image from my mind . . . although I’m sure a new ghost will arise to take its place and (hopefully) spark another story.
Authors—Have you ever had an image, thought, or phrase spark a story?
Readers—What are some images that have stayed with you from books, movies, and TV shows?
Only Rogue Actions: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop
Author’s socials: Website|Instagram|Bluesky|Facebook
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A Year Of Blogging
Posted on October 16, 2025 Posted by Athena Scalzi 24 Comments
October 1st of 2024 was my official start date to my oh-so-exciting career as a writer, and I thought we could take this opportunity to revisit some of my favorite pieces over this past year.
I have carefully curated a list of ten pieces for you to examine, if you so choose. In no particular order, these are just ten posts that I think showcase my year of writing the best.
- Celebrating Maialata With Plates & Pages
- A Night & Day Of Eatin’ Good In San Francisco
- Scalzi Reads Scalzi: Lock In
- From Straight Edge to Sloshed
- A Birthday Bonanza In Columbus
- Why Licensed Music Works So Well In "Megamind"
- Close To Home: Grist
- Throwing A Dinner Party Using "Third Culture Cooking" By Zaynab Issa
- Brunching It Up At Alcove by MadTree Brewing
- Unwinding At Panacea Luxury Spa In Columbus
It’s probably pretty obvious based on my selection, but my favorite type of writing to do is food writing, whether it’s restaurant reviews or writing about my experiences with cooking for friends. And spa experiences, apparently.
Let me know if you have any favorites out of this list, or if another piece from this year is one I should’ve put on this list.
Moving forward, what would y’all like to see more of? Movie reviews? Cat pictures? Monday Music recommendations? Let me know, and have a great day!
-AMS
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The Big Idea: Caitlin Starling
Posted on October 15, 2025 Posted by Athena Scalzi 2 Comments
Stick out your tongue and say “ahh!” for author Caitlin Starling’s newest gothic novel, The Graceview Patient. Follow along in her Big Idea as she recounts all of her real-life experiences in the wild world of hospitals that led to the inspiration and creation of this medically based horror story.
CAITLIN STARLING:
I feel like I’ve written a variation on this essay several times already, for various purposes and varied audiences. At first, I felt a little embarrassed–for my past works I’ve had a wide spread of topics to write about–but then I realized that this focusing effect really proves there is one Big Idea behind The Graceview Patient:
how stressful, complicated, and terrifying being a patient is.
My own hospitalization was almost routine. I had a kid. I very dramatically had a kid, but even without the drama, I would have been treated to at least a day or two inpatient, and that might have been enough to plant the seed that would become The Graceview Patient. It is a credit to my care team that the drama was manageable; I came out of a thirty-six hour induced labor (iv penicillin sucks, by the way), an urgent c-section with a surprise failed epidural, lots of meds being slammed into my veins very quickly, and some light hemorrhaging, and some strange blood pressure wonkiness feeling pretty okay with what had gone down.
This, I suspect, is not the norm.
And why should it be? Being reminded of the fallibility and idiosyncrasies of your body, being confronted with your mortality, having to cede control and even awareness, occasionally, of your physical self–it sucks. If anybody claims it doesn’t, I have questions. I do not like the missing time I still have between when the midazolam really hit me post-delivery and coming back to a very unreliably shaky body in the recovery room, even though I’m also very glad I was not aware of a lot of went down in the interim. It’s a funny story in hindsight, but it wasn’t great watching the IV tech try to get better access for a blood transfusion and fail because my veins decided to collapse every time she got near. Getting that blood transfusion (eventually) was great for experiential research, and the weird red phone we had to lift off the hook so that the door out of the NICU would slowly open is a fantastic sensory detail, but, on the whole, I wish we could’ve skipped both.
And that’s a lot of what being a patient is, right? Things we wish we could skip over. I was raised accompanying my mother to clinics and visiting her during hospital stays. She had AIDS, and it was the 90s, and she got to try a lot of experimental regimens. Some worked. Some didn’t. Some royally sucked the whole way through. Maybe having a front seat to all of that is part of why I’ve had this fascination with medicine my whole life, or why I feel oddly comforted being inside a hospital even when the specific experiences I have aren’t the best.
At any rate, I think we can safely say that I am drawn to writing about the body. About the medical. I’ve written Victorian surgeons (The Death of Jane Lawrence) and ill-advised enucleations (Last to Leave the Room) and logistically reasonable but capitalistically horrifying bowel surgeries (The Luminous Dead). Now, for The Graceview Patient, I decided to go all in.
It was time to write a hospital book. A gothic, in particular. The hospital as haunted house, as living setting, as mystery and threat and enticement.
And I immediately was hit by a problem. I did not want to make the doctors and nurses and techs and hospital staff evil. That’s often the way it goes: the sinister nurse, the sadistic doctor. Both bother me a great deal. We already have a lot of tension here in the US when it comes to medicine. It seems like, after a brief wave of treating healthcare workers like heroes (note: the definition and practice of that treatment deserves some discussion too, but perhaps not here), we overcorrected all the way towards disdain and distrust. I did not want to add to that.
I did add a potentially sinister pharmaceutical rep (my conscience allows that much), but even with Adam in play, I probably didn’t entirely succeed. I think, to write a hospital horror novel that avoided those tropes entirely, it would need to be from the perspective of the hospital staff themselves. Writing a book about a patient immediately creates an adversarial set up. Meg, our protagonist, has entrusted her care to people who come and go on shift, who have more insight into her body than she does at many points, that can administer medications that influence her perception of the world. And in a horror novel, the whole point is to delve into that adversity. To explicate on the terror and dread and risk of it all.
To reveal exactly how I solved this dilemma is, frustratingly, too far into spoiler territory for a release week essay. But I can say, at minimum: Meg’s care team are, first and foremost, trying to do their jobs. Meg will admit to you in the first chapter that she is unreliable. Oh, she’s trying her best. She is desperate to sort of fact from fiction, reality from hallucination. But she is, to put it bluntly, Going Through It. Even outside the realm of horror fiction, being a patient is extremely difficult. ICU delirium is a real thing. It’s easy to get disoriented, to grow frightened or angry or withdrawn. A good care team takes steps to ameliorate the problem, but there’s a limit. Hospitals are designed to help before they’re designed to be comfortable. The lights will stay on. The noise will continue. No, you can’t sleep through the night. Yes, it will eventually take its toll.
Something might be haunting Meg. Something might be haunting the entire hospital. There may be a grand conspiracy against her. Or...
Or maybe not. Maybe she’s just suffering. Maybe she’s confused. Maybe, in that confusion, she’s perpetrated horrible things herself. Care is difficult. Healing is not linear. And trust is fragile.
The Graceview Patient: Amazon |Barnes & Noble |Bookshop |Books-a-Million |Powell’s |Midslumber Media |Macmillan
Author socials: Website|Bluesky|Instagram
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Housekeeping Note, 10/15/25
Posted on October 15, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi
It’s a simple one: if you queried about a Big Idea slot for November and haven’t heard back yet, don’t panic, those will be addressed next week. I’m traveling again and punting a number of things until I’m back home. As one does.
— JS
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The Big Idea: Madeleine E. Robins
Posted on October 14, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi 9 Comments
Eras in the past had a focus on manners — a word that in itself was a code for something more controlling. For her novel The Doxies Penalty , author Madeleine E. Robins revisits a past era to look what maneuvers behind the manners, a thing much more interesting and possibly more sinister.
MADELEINE E. ROBINS:
One of the tasks adolescents face is trying to parse the rules of the world they live in — and the potential penalties. Not the say-thank-you or don’t-kill-people rules, but the subtler rules that may not be spoken but that can bring your life to a standstill if you run afoul of them. As a kid I knew they were out there, but figuring out what they were? How seriously to take them? What the penalties were? That’s a lot for a person already dealing with algebra and puberty.
So I suppose it makes sense that when I was thirteen and discovered Georgette Heyer’s Regency novels I fell hard. So many weird rules (a young lady at a party mustn’t dance more than twice with the same man! a woman who drives down St James’s St. is clearly a whore!) that made little or no sense to me. It wasn’t until I went from Heyer to Jane Austen that I began to understand. Many of the rules were there to "protect" women—which is to say, to control them. Flouting the rules could have life or death consequences. These odd, frivolous rules meant survival.
It’s all there in Austen: a damaged reputation could ruin a woman’s chances at marriage. And marriage was not just the presumed goal of every nice young woman, but an economic necessity. Mrs. Bennett obsesses over her daughters’ marital prospects because the alternative is a life of genteel poverty. Marianne Dashwood skates on the edge of ruining her reputation by making her feelings for John Willoughby so public. Both Lydia Bennett and Maria Bertram teeter over into disgrace and are only saved from being handed from man to man by the intercession of family and friends; others (Colonel Brandon’s first love, for instance) are not so lucky.
These unspoken rules, and the weight of their consequences, fascinated me. I began study the Regency: the rules and manners, but also the politics, the wars, the Romantic movement, the rising tide of technology. It’s an astonishingly rich period; the more I learned, the more I wanted to play in that sandbox. At the time I started writing, alt-history and mixed genre books were not a thing. To play in that period I did what was expected of me (I followed the rules!) and wrote Regency romances, with the manners and the clothes and the rom-com happy ending. But by the time I finished the fifth of my romances I was done with happy endings. I switched to writing SF.
But I wasn’t done with the Regency.
I conceived of Point of Honour, my first Sarah Tolerance mystery, as a "Regency-noir:" a Dashiell Hammett story with an Austen voice. I wanted to wander the mean streets that Jane Austen didn’t mention and most modern Regency romances ignored. The streets where the rules were broken, and where punishment for breaking them was inevitable.
In noir, the protagonist is "morally compromised"(in The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade is not a good guy—he’s just better than most of the people around him). But compromised can mean more than one thing. In the 19th century the word attached to any woman with a damaged reputation, a woman who had had—or was suspected of having had—sex outside of marriage. Or just dancing too often with the same man. Compromised, ruined, soiled, fallen, different terms for the same thing. Sarah Tolerance, Fallen Woman and Agent of Inquiry, has a sometimes uncomfortably solid moral compass, but by the rules of her society she is ruined: unfit for marriage or respectable employment.
How did that happen? At sixteen she fell in love with her brother’s fencing teacher and they eloped. Years later when her lover died, she faced the world with almost no options: the respectable jobs open to genteel women (companion, teacher, governess, seamstress) are closed to her. A fallen woman can be one man’s mistress, or prostitute herself to all comers. Neither fate appeals to Miss Tolerance
So she does an end-run around the consequence of her ruin: she invents the role of agent of inquiry, using her knowledge of genteel society, her facility with a sword, and her considerable wit, to do the jobs private detectives do: find people, answer questions, solve mysteries. She is out on those mean Regency streets, tracing straying husbands and acting as a go-between in sordid transactions, and all the while operating in a sort of liminal space in her society. She sees the way the rules of her world keep even the most virtuous women vulnerable. In 1812 a married woman’s money and property belonged to her husband, she didn’t even have a say in how her children were reared, unless her husband permitted it. Single women had it slightly better, but any money or property they had was likely to be administered by a man (who could do whatever he liked—and have her tossed into a madhouse if she complained). And women outside the pale of respectable society? They had only as much freedom as the system allowed—which meant that the poor and ruined were constantly in danger.
The Doxies Penalty is the fourth book in the Sarah Tolerance series. In the first three, Miss Tolerance has dealt with murderers, spies, criminals and courtesans. By now she has settled into her role as agent of inquiry and sometime protector of the vulnerable. Then an elderly woman comes to her with a problem: she’s been swindled out of the meager savings which she hoped to retire on. And because this particular old woman is Fallen, she has even less recourse than any other victim: no one to fight for her, no family to fall back on. Miss Tolerance takes the case seeking the swindler and discovers that her client isn’t the only one—that he has left a trail of victims, all of them elderly, Fallen, and defenseless. Soon, many of them are dead.
By the rules of their society these women don’t matter. They made their choices, they broke the rules, and now they have had the bad manners to survive to old age. Poverty and death are the expected consequence of a moral lapse. When a rule-breaker dies, the Law shrugs. Society shrugs.
Miss Tolerance will not. Even if she has to break the rules.
The Doxies Penalty: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s
Author Socials: Website|Facebook|Instagram
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Time Yet Again For My Annual Endorsement of WordPress
Posted on October 14, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi 9 Comments
With the admission that I somehow missed it last year, probably because I have a head full of mostly cheese these days. That said, Whatever’s been on WordPress now for 17 years, both the blogging software and the hosting of the site, and in that time I’ve been absolutely grateful for WordPress’s platform stability and accessibility. The downtime I have experienced with WordPress has been so small that it’s genuinely surprising when it happens, and even then the issue is usually resolved in minutes, not hours — hours being what I would need to wrangle problems back when I was self-hosting Whatever prior to October 2008. It just works, which is a nice thing to be able to say.
WordPress doesn’t need my endorsement — a sizeable chunk of the internet uses its software and/or hosting — nor does it ask me to write this (mostly) annual post. I do it because I appreciate the service. If you’re looking to create a site, or move a site over from janky hosting, it’s an option I can recommend. Check it out and see if it will work for you.
— JS
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The Big Idea: Catherine Asaro
Posted on October 13, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi 8 Comments
The motto for the Olympics translates to “Faster, Higher, Stronger” — but in Gold Dust , author Catherine Asaro takes athletic competition to heights even the greatest of Olympians might not have ever dreamed of.
CATHERINE ASARO:
With Gold Dust, I wanted to explore sports in the future, track and field especially. My interest in the subject has a long history. In my youth, ballet was my forte; I never considered myself an athlete. But for some reason in my teens, I decided to go run around a grass field in a nearby park. For the life of me, I can’t remember what possessed me to do it, but I got up at some absurd hour, like 6 in the morning, and out I went. After a few laps, I thought, "I feel tired." Then I thought, "Might as well keep going." (ah, to have the blithe durability of a sixteen-year-old again). After a while, I thought, "Hmmm. I don’t feel tired anymore." I kept it up for about forty minutes. Then I went home, showered, and set off to school.
With that auspicious beginning, I decided to run every morning. I’ve no idea why; no one told me to, and I didn’t come from a sports-oriented family. But I loved to run. Back then, girls had fewer options in sports, and it never occurred to me that I could join a track team. Eventually my interest shifted more to ballet. Years later, in graduate school, I started running again, getting up every morning at some god-awful hour, 5 or 6 am. Eventually I stopped, and concentrated on dance instead, because I am very much not a morning person.
However, as a result, I’ve always enjoyed track and field, and as a science fiction writer, it felt natural to extrapolate it into the future. So Gold Dust came into being.
In the main plot, three interstellar civilizations vie for honors in the Olympics. Instead of countries competing, teams come from worlds or space habitats. More populous worlds dominate the Games. In contrast, the team from Raylicon, a dying world with failed terraforming, has one of the worst records anywhere. They draw only from the City of Cries, a wealthy city true, but still just a few million people.
Except.
The people of the Undercity live in ancient ruins below the Cries desert. In their culture, crushing poverty exists alongside great beauty. When your survival depends on how well you fight and how fast you can run, you can produce incredible athletes. The wealthy elite in Cries despise the Undercity, and the people in the Undercity keep to themselves, protecting the fragile beauty of their culture from outside interference.
Then Mason, the coach for the Raylicon Olympic track and field team, discovers the spectacular Undercity runners. When he convinces them to join his team, they encounter his above city athletes. They don’t trust anyone from Cries, and the people of Cries barely consider them human—but now they must all learn to work together.
As I wrote, I wondered if futuristic human enhancement would ruin the Olympics. I decided to have sports divide into two types, leagues that allowed augmented athletes and leagues that didn’t. Meets for enhanced athletes would probably become contests over who could create the most advanced cybernaut. In contrast, Gold Dust involves "natural-body" sports. Athletes not only have to take drug tests, they must also prove they haven’t had genetic modifications, cybernetic augmentation, or other enhancements. Sure, sports training and medicine improves, but those changes involve more basic additions, such a nanomeds that circulate in their blood to help maintain health. And those would be closely monitored.
I also assumed the current trends of women closing the gap with men in many sports would continue. Unlike in the paucity of my youth, women’s sports is huge now. Even in 1989, Ann Transon won the 24-Hour National Championship ultramarathon against all competitors, male and female alike. In the book, I extrapolated that trend to the limit where men and women could fairly compete together.
Another factor would also come into play for star-spanning civilizations. Differences will exist among human-habitable worlds. If you train on a low gravity world and then compete on one with even a slightly heavier gravity, what does that do to your performance? Nuances of atmosphere, length of day, and subtle differences like the hue of the sky or how much dust floats in the air will affect the athletes. That all wove into the plot.
Another aspect of running that struck me was the path to healing it can offer. Six years ago, I was grieving the loss of my husband. I also found out, not long after he passed, that I had cancer. Fortunately, we caught it early and the doctor got it all. But with so much happening, I stopped exercising, no longer dancing or even walking much.
So I started to run again.
This time, I’ve kept at it, mixing outdoor running with inside treadmill work, weights, and rowing—in the evening instead of the morning. It helped inspire my writing Gold Dust. I penned the first draft during the summer Olympics. What struck me as I watched the Games was how the Olympics isn’t just competition, it also represents a dream, using sports to bring the peoples of humanity together in peace. It can help heal a person—or an entire world. I like to believe we will carry that tradition into the future no matter how complex our civilizations become.
Gold Dust: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s
Author Socials: Web site|Bluesky|Facebook|Patreon
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View From A Hotel Window, 10/12/2025: Boise, ID
Posted on October 12, 2025 Posted by Athena Scalzi 5 Comments
Hello from Boise, Idaho! It’s not a particularly exciting view but it also isn’t as non-exciting as the parking lot view from yesterday’s hotel.
I find myself in Idaho for a wedding, which is taking place tomorrow, so I shall be preoccupied with that and flying home on Tuesday, and I hope you all take care until I get back!
-AMS
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The Seediest Cuck Chair in Iowa City
Posted on October 12, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi 23 Comments
Look, the rest of the hotel room I was in was perfectly nice, but this one chair had absolutely the most unseemly aura. I did not sit in it. I did not place anything in it. Indeed, I tried not to look at it. Madness would undoubtedly follow.
I did make note of it to the front desk dude, who grimaced in acknowledgement and assured me that the entire hotel was going to have a visual refresh in December, which presumably means this chair will be on its way to the junk heap. Not a moment too soon, clearly.
On my way home now. All the chairs are immaculate.
— JS
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The Big Idea: Mike Allen
Posted on October 10, 2025 Posted by Athena Scalzi 4 Comments
Creepy crawlies can become less creepy when you characterize them. Such is the case for author Mike Allen, who shares with us his initial fear of spiders that has turned into more of a cautious appreciation. Follow along in the Big Idea for his newest spooky story, Trail of Shadows, and see the web he’s spun for us.
MIKE ALLEN:
My Southern Gothic-meets-surreal horror novel Trail of Shadows is a story of spirit beings and murderous monsters set in the Appalachian Mountains, where I’ve lived since the second grade. Rooted in the condition of living in a community without truly being part of it, the book draws from experiences had while traveling north and south along the mountain range.
But it’s also rooted in close encounters of the arachnid kind — and anyone who thinks that’s a digression rather than a central part of the rural Appalachian experience has not:
- Walked face-first through a spiderweb while hiking a wooded mountain trail...
- Jumped into a hay bale in a barn and found themselves face to face with the spiders that build their nests all through the walls...
- Seen the exodus of spiders and stranger things that scurry toward the house when the backyard creek overflows its banks....
The inspirations for several of the major characters in Trail of Shadows live their lives right outside my front door. I’ve seen as many as five dangling out in the dark, patiently waiting for prey to come to them, their webs strategically positioned around the porch light such that swinging the screen door open leaves them undisturbed.
Once upon a time, I would have struggled to tolerate their presence. But the years spent working on this book have actually had a positive effect on the severe arachnophobia acquired when I was a wee child on Guam Island.
(I cannot guarantee the same for readers — my novel is, after all, intended as a Halloween scare fest, part coming of age story, part fever dream, part nightmare.)
For context, a timeline: my parents met while working toward their degrees in microbiology at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. On completing his Ph.D., my father took a job teaching — at the University of Guam.
I was still a toddler when this young couple moved across the ocean. Thus, despite hailing from the Great White North, my first childhood memories formed on Guam. The constant sun; the coconut and papaya trees; cowrie shells on the beach; the coral beneath one’s feet (ouch!); the jellyfish wrapped around one’s leg (googolplex ouch!); the lizards that always left their tails behind . . . and the bright yellow spiders with leg spans as wide as my head, that paralyzed me with terror.
Really, the spiders weren’t to blame, I know, but an intense fear of eight-legged critters hung with me into adulthood. My journey from spider detestation to spider appreciation began with a private joke shared with my wife and creative partner-in-crime, Anita.
One fine night, we happened to notice that a second couple had taken up residence in our house, underneath our porch’s tin roof. The larger and rounder of the pair was clearly the lady of the manor; the other, smaller and narrower, obviously the gentleman; both with eight spindly legs.
They weren’t exactly cute to our human eyes, but we found something charming about our new tenants all the same. Anita gave them appropriately old-fashioned sounding names: Gertrude and Herman.
Those names carried over; for years, it’s been our routine to call these large orb weavers "Gertrude spiders."
The original Gertrude and Herman live on, or so I like to imagine, in the pages of Trail of Shadows. The story concerns people possessed of the ability to phase into the world of spirits, known as the argent realms or the Underside. Someone who can do this, who can at will cross into the Underside and back again, appears in those lands as an enormous, phantasmal animal.
Early in his journey toward perilous discovery, my bewildered hero encounters an unnerving but helpful couple named Herman and Gertrude Crabbe. I’ll give you one guess what their spirit shapes turn out to be.
It’s hardly a spoiler to share that the Crabbes aren’t the only members of the spider tribe that my puma-form protagonist meets. Their alignments range from neutral but good-natured to malevolent predation. I find myself wickedly fond of even the most frightening of their number.
Living with these characters in my head has made it easier for me to peacefully cohabit with their real-life counterparts. I still can’t say that I’d invite a spider to run across me — though I have allowed a tarantula to crawl over my hand, and was startled by its soft, gentle steps.
Nowadays, though, I can lean close to admire the quarter-sized orb weavers with their legs striped like witch stockings, and watch as they spin their summer webs above our front steps.
Trail of Shadows: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s
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Pizza & Drinks At Forno Kitchen + Bar
Posted on October 9, 2025 Posted by Athena Scalzi 10 Comments
If you saw my post earlier this week over my friend and my’s spa experience, I’m sure you’ve been asking yourself, “but where did you guys go eat after having such an amazing, relaxing spa experience?” I’m so glad you asked, dear reader! My friend and I went to Forno Kitchen + Bar in the Short North area of Columbus. Open daily for dinner, lunch Tuesday through Thursday, and brunch Friday through Sunday, this stone-fired pizza joint won #1 best restaurant in the Short North and best happy hour in Columbus from ColumBEST in 2024, and made OpenTable’s Top 100 Brunch Restaurants in America 2024.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from Forno other than pizzas and draft beers, but I was pleasantly surprised when I walked into an inviting space with tons of natural light pouring in. I was greeted immediately by friendly hostesses, and we were sat at a four-top table where one side was the booth against the wall and the other side was two chairs.
Our waiter came out with water and menus and was incredibly friendly right off the bat. He asked us if we wanted drinks, which was obviously a yes, so I got their Pear-Amore and she got the Strawberry Rose.
My Pear-Amore had Belvedere Vodka, pear, green chile, yuzu, orgeat, Fino Sherry, and lemon juice. I tend to love any cocktail that is pear-focused, plus I think pear is an underutilized flavor anyway. My drink came with two gummy candies which was kind of an interesting choice. I really liked my drink, it wasn’t too sweet and had some nice acidity from the lemon juice.
For the Strawberry Rose, it consisted of Noble Cut Vodka, strawberry cordial, St. Germain Elderflower, lemon juice, and Anna de Codorníu. On the menu it says you can get it with cotton candy for no extra charge, which my friend wanted, but forgot to ask for. I told her she should just ask for it on a plate since she forgot to ask earlier, but she didn’t, and she totally missed out on that cottony goodness.
For our appetizers, my friend said she was for sure doing the arancini. It was much harder for me to decide, as so many of them sounded totally bombski. I ended up choosing the seared scallops.
The arancini was nice and hot with plenty of sauce to go around. I’m pretty sure this was my first time trying arancini and I have no complaints!
[画像:A small serving dish with four seared scallops in a white wine sauce with capers. ]
The scallops were seared perfectly with a fantastic texture, and had just the right amount of capers in the sauce. I will say my friend and I agreed they were just a little bit on the salty side, but it wasn’t detrimental or anything. The scallops are their most expensive appetizer, and they were pretty sizeable, not huge or anything but pretty good overall!
We also got a caprese salad to split:
[画像:A white bowl containing a ball of mozzarella and five big chunks of tomato. ]
I am a huge caprese fan, as it is one of the best examples of how simplicity can be truly delicious. For this caprese, the flavors were all well and good, but I really did not like the presentation. I have never had a caprese before where the tomatoes come in huge chunks like this, and I much prefer thinner, round slices. I did like the addition of the toasted breadcrumbs for some contrast of texture, but it was otherwise a completely standard caprese.
Normally when I’m at pizza places that are known for their pizza, I don’t get their pizza. I don’t know why, I do the same thing with wing places or burger places or anything like that. I basically always end up asking myself, what else they got? In Forno’s case, I actually tried their pizza, and only because my friend recommended it so much and I trust her judgement.
So, I went for their pesto pizza, with balsamic onion jam, ricotta, heirloom cherry tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil pesto vinaigrette.
[画像:A round pizza topped with cherry tomato halves of all colors and microgreens. ]
This pizza was seriously fantastic, and I’m so glad I tried out one of their pies. It was loaded with cherry tomatoes, perfectly cheesy, and had plenty of pesto. I don’t normally like stone-fired pizza, wood-fired, etc., because I don’t like a “rustic char” on my food or an ashy crust. However I didn’t feel that way about this pizza. I thought it was very well done and not too burned or crisp or ashy at all. I would absolutely recommend this pie to any pesto lovers out there. And it’s a great vegetarian option!
My friend got their prosciutto pizza, which comes with ricotta, fontina, arugula, onion, olive oil, and a white balsamic reduction.
[画像:A round pizza pretty much entirely obscured by arugula which is piled on top.]
Though most of what you see is just arugula, there is a decent amount of crisped up prosciutto under there. As my friend was eating her first slice, she noticed that there wasn’t any balsamic on it, which she said was what really made it so good. So she asked for balsamic on the side, which the waiter brought out, but it is odd that it seemingly wasn’t on there in the first place.
As we were eating our ‘za, we decided to refill our glasses with their Kiwi Mule. I asked the waiter if it was pretty good and he said he liked it and it’s a big seller, so we figured we’d give it a try.
Since it was listed as a mule, I was surprised it came in a glass and not a copper mug. It’s made with Ketel One Citroen (which I was particularly excited for because I adore Ketel One), kiwi puree, lemon, and ginger beer. My friend and I agreed we really did not taste any kiwi at all, like even a little bit. It mostly tasted like a very citrusy mule, which was fine enough. I think I would’ve preferred a fresh lime garnish instead of dehydrated, but that’s just personal preference, really.
My friend said that they didn’t have any dessert, so we were kind of bummed about that, but then the waiter came and asked if we wanted dessert! We were very happy to learn that they do, in fact, have a dessert menu. I picked the buttermilk panna cotta, and she picked the chocolate fudge cake.
I didn’t try this cake myself but my friend seemed to really enjoy it!
And here was mine:
I loved that this came in a coupe glass, I thought that was such a cute idea. The panna cotta itself was good, but I think what I appreciated most about the dish was the fresh fruit, making it feel much lighter and sort of summery. The strawberry compote was really good, and the fresh strawberry slices make the dish look extra elevated. The pistachios were actually spiced with cayenne, which totally surprised me. They had quite the kick to them, which was an interesting contrast to the creamy and sweet panna cotta. It was a really unique dessert, I liked it a lot!
Overall, I quite enjoyed Forno Kitchen + Bar, and would love to revisit. I don’t know if I can bring myself to select a different pizza next time, though, as the pesto was pretty dang good. For four cocktails, two appetizers, one salad, two pizzas, and two desserts, it was 150ドル before tip. Honestly not too bad! I think that’s pretty reasonable, all things considered.
I think the most standout thing about Forno, besides the ‘za, was the service. Our waiter checked on us often, cleared dishes consistently, and was very friendly and conversational. Cool guy, really.
What I really want, truth be told, is to visit Forno’s speakeasy, The Marmont. They are only open Thursday through Saturday, but I’m determined to get in there before their Halloween specialty cocktail menu ends. Pizza joint by day, classy speakeasy by night. The perfect combo, really.
What looks the best to you? What’s your favorite pizza topping? Let me know in the comments, be sure to check out Forno Kitchen + Bar on Instagram, and have a great day!
-AMS
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The Big Idea: D. M. Beucler
Posted on October 9, 2025 Posted by Athena Scalzi 1 Comment
Small acts of kindness may not always seem like they change the world, but they certainly change the world of whoever you’re helping. Author D. M. Beucler discusses how acts of kindness are a comfort for her amidst this crazy world we live in. Dive in to the Big Idea for her newest novel, Memory and Magic, to see how her main character makes the choice to change someone’s world.
D. M. BEUCLER:
In 2010 I had my first child. I was home all the time with this adorable alien, who would not sleep, somehow my children had startle reflexes that the twitchiest video gamers could only dream of. And in that general sleep deprived haze I picked up an alpha smart and started writing again.
A second kid came later, and I started to find my way into the writing community, including a trip to ConFusion, back when it was in the hotel with the fountain in the center! It was here I wrote what would end up being the first chapter of Memory and Magic. It was the little draft that could and took me to Viable Paradise, (yes, they did still keep coke zero stocked there for John) and eventually to Luna Press as my debut novel.
The Big Idea, take a Jane Austin heroine, throw her into destitution, and give her blood magic and a mystery to solve. The Regency period was the perfect vehicle to brew a good story and build a brand-new world of magic around. I wanted to highlight its strict class distinctions and reflect on how malleable they were if you had money, and immotile if you did not. With its Grecian inspired gowns, over the top balls and rituals for everything, adding in blood magic, in all its gory glory, seemed a perfect foil. And of all the era’s where I would not be allowed to vote or own property, the Regency is my favorite.
In Memory and Magic, the court politics are once again trying to make the poorest people expendable. And Tamsin, from her place among the lowest classes, is in the right place and time to make a difference with a simple choice, help one man.
It’s that idea of helping I like to focus on. That small acts of kindness and service can change the world. When big things are happening, and everything feels out of control, those acts of helping have given me much comfort this year. Sometime it all comes down to helping one person, and letting those actions ripple from there.
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Read an excerpt.
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View From a Hotel Window, 10/8/25: New York City
Posted on October 8, 2025 Posted by John Scalzi 10 Comments
No parking lots, but copious water towers. Classic New York, I tell you!
I’m here for NYCC, where I am appearing tomorrow for a panel at 11, followed by a signing, followed by a second signing. And then, I’m off to Iowa City for their book festival this weekend, how is that for a study in contrasts. Both great cities! One slightly more inland!
— JS