Some spicules!
& some teeth
Have you tried my blog?
Like oysters to some,
and like
oysters
to others.
(a sample:
Archaeologists, Palaeographers, and Punctuationists fight over
cryptic dohicky)
"I hate quotations. " - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Becoming food is the final stage of living matter. Some are privileged to a delay of the foreshadowed end. They gain lifetime by being preserved. But a chosen few turn into objects and will never be crunched between the teeth of any other living matter.They live anonymous, comatose lives in the hidden food department of a museum." Linda Roodenburg, Unidentified Fermented Objects, in Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2010 (I highly recommend the book) When I read that most, if not all, of the global strategic maple syrup reserve had been stolen, my first response was not to fear for North Americas waffles or pancakes, but rather to wonder at the very existence of such a reserve.
Nicola Twilley, Syrup Stockpiles, Wine Lakes, Butter Mountains, and Other Strategic Food Reserves, Edible Geography Let it roast indifferent long. "Joan", cookbook writer of the 1600s, quoted in Taste: The Story of Britain through its Cooking by Kate Colquhoun Why should a word in a recipe be less important than a word in a novel? One can lead to physical indigestion, the other to mental. Julian Barnes, The Pedant in the Kitchen Last I called by, Muntjac was roasting in the oven, surfaces brimming with mushrooms gathered, some dried, a hoard: Shaggy Parasols; Chanterelles, orange and sweet-apricot-scented; something blue. Another fellow appeared a basket in his hand large to gather wood, in it full Penny-Buns, Ceps, plentiful as a bakers. - Olivia Heal, Notes: On Forage, Mushrooms and the Noma Cookbook Emma lent me a crochet hook so I made many octopi. Several were worn as fascinators and all have found good homes." - Kathleen Jennings, here In the art of postmodernists hedonistic motives are rare; they are basically non-existent in installations and video art projects of recent years. As a kind of postmodernist response, with its intrinsic underlying irony, to the theme of oriental hedonism one can consider the part of a photo-collage diptych inspired by the verses of I. Brodskiy, "We lived in a city the color of petrified vodka". - Akbar Khakimov, Hedonism in Contemporary Art, San'at, (The magazine was created in accordance with the Decree of the Cabinet of Ministers of Uzbekistan 'About the Academy of Arts of Uzbekistan' ") "Like a couple at an okay party, who turn up late and spice things up: the horseradish [in a Bloody Mary] makes your sinuses fizz, the celery leaves tickle your cheeks, and and stalk, with the runnels of tomato juice in its furrows, makes an ideal instrument of emphasis in drunken conversation." - Niki Segnit, The flavour Thesaurus I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions. - Lillian Hellman, in testimony before the US House Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities, 1952 More in The Cellar
Anna Tambour stories that can be read online: Stories & poems in the HMS Beagle: BioMedNet archive Temptation of the Seven Scientists The Emperor's Backscratcher
Travels with Robert Louis Stevenson in the Cvennes The Wages of Food-Play Klokwerk's Heart Me-Too
& Try
Bowl of
Critters
an occasional snack
Now serving: The adventures of discovering the ellemehnopee Skin, Fiction, Mushrooms, & Progress Out-of-the-box Serving Suggestion The Mary Quant Jelly Thing & other surprises from the sea And in Heliotrope Magazine A long poem Succession At Quandong Creek
In memoriam
Asher E. Treat (1907 - 2004)
"Actually, Asher was an excellent dinner companion. Anybody who wears a loupe around his neck at dinner, and tells you how he finally trained his box turtle Mabel to listen to his commands (after 35 years), or sent small boys out to catch bats, and then explain how mites can only live in the left ear (right ear in the old world) of moths to evade the bats, or who would build a mammoth box kite and fly it half a mile high off Cobble, or who would play his French horn so that you'd hear it across the valley, Anybody like that makes an excellent dinner companion." - Edward Perkins, in a letter to A.T. A little Treat " The lepidopterist who seeks an easy introduction to the Astigmata had best leave his collection and visit the nearest cheese shop. "
Home of The Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Bulwer-Lytton a place of compassion in a cruel world
Anna Tambour currently
lives in the Australian bush with
a large family of other species,
including one man.
lives in the Australian bush with
a large family of other species,
including one man.
(Rosie, the beauty
in the picture above, died on the 19th of January, 2006. Her
tributes are firstly
this, and then
this.)
Qs and
As
- Interview by Alisa Krasnostein (as part of Aussie Specfic Snapshot 2012)
- Interview by Iain Rowan (as part of his "Writers talk about writing" series), More News from Nowhere, 19 July 2011
- Interview by Mark Farrugia, Andromeda Spaceways, #48, Nov 2010
- Interview by members of Chronicles Network April 2006
- Audio interview by Evo Terra, Dragon Page October 2005
- Interview by Keith Brooke April 2005
- Ben Peek's 2005 Snapshot of Australian Fiction April '05
- Walking Jeff VanderMeer's plank Feb '05
Some Seasoned Preserves
Winter August 2012
Tea moulds conviviate in a crazed pot.
Autumn March 2011
Jacaranda pod & Quince
Summer December 2011
another
Magnificent Insignificant
Spring October 2011
"Native peach"
Trema
tomentosa
showing leaf curl that could
be caused by a virus, though
"peach" is caused by a delusion
winter July 2011
An oddly
exhibitionistic
mantis
Summer January 2009
Fresh from the ground, a cicada
If
we had been made in the image of Cicada, what price gold and
rubies?
Books by A.T.
Online stories
"She writes so far left field that you need binoculars to see her." - Girlie Jones, Not if You Were the Last Short Story on Earth "I have particularly enjoyed Monterra's fable, and have read it to my pigs Alice, Ferdinand and Isabella, who also appreciated its humour and scope."
Tom Jaine
New November 2012 from the award-winning Chmu Press . . . "At heart Crandolin is a rich confectionery, a tapestry woven out of dreams and nightmares, an Arabian Nights tale for the twenty first century with Tambour as
Scheherazade, lulling us with her
mellifuous voice and artistry. I loved it, and didnt want it to end." Peter Tennant, review in Black Static The only novel ever committed that was inspired by postmodern physics AND Ottoman confectionery: "A fairy tale Dostoevsky would have liked It's like it was written by a demented chef." David Kowalski (with cover art by Christopher Conn Askew)
CRANDOLIN
Immerse yourself in the magical world
ofAnna Tambours Crandolin,a delirious journey that takes the reader through Central Asia and Russia with some fascinating strangers and a donkey, a demanding musical instrument and delicious hints of nougat and honey.
Ellen Datlow
By turns lyrical and absurdist, whimsical and elegantly true, Crandolin is unlike any novel you will ever have read. Anna Tambour is brilliant, a true original.
Lucius Shepard "A sensuous pleasure to mind and senses; it breathes perfume and laughter. If Gogol and Huysmans had ever gone to a science fiction conference together and collaborated, the result would be Crandolin!" Jack Dann
"For gourmands literary and culinary, Tambour is always a treat, and Crandolin is Tambour at her best. Bold and subtle, rich and delicate, this is fiction to savour, fiction to sustain the soul."
Hal Duncan
Epicurean fantasy at its finest. Crandolin is an uncanny mating of passion and precision: that Anna Tambour is billed as author and not magician belies the virtuosity with which she coaxes a whirlwind of gluttonous carnality into her scintillatingly intricate narrative web.
Rachel Edidin Funny and compelling, strangely wise about its worlds ... It can seem like a fun ride or a maze, yet Crandolin is never just a joke. When Tambour finally invokes one storytellers sense of fear and joy, its genuine; we can share in the feeling, at the end of a long, strange trip.
Faren Miller, Locus
Mephistopheles has nothing on this,
a helter skelter through time travel and cookery.
Bring me a Crandolin.
Tom Jaine "...But with the appearance of her new novel, Crandolin, she will surely register Richter-powerful on the delighted synapses of all patrons of weird, funny fabulism.The lively and bold Chmu Press, which touts its catalogue as offering new vistas of irreality, deserves much credit...But what's really central to Tambour's tale is the romance of food." Read the review by Paul Di Filippo in Locus
Open
Crandolin!
BUY FROM
The Book Depository
- free shipping worldwide
Amazon US
Barnes & Noble
Amazon UK
Foyles UK
Even on the back, Crandolin
already looks giftwrapped. Serve a plate of them as a neverending
dessert, to your best friends.
October 2012 releases: "King Wolf" in
A Season in Carcosa
edited
by
Joseph S. Pulver Sr.
published by
Miskatonic River Press
with
more by Joel Lane, Simon Strantzas, Don Webb, Daniel Mills,
Gary McMahon, Ann K. Schwader, Cate Gardner, Edward Morris, Richard
Gavin, Gemma Files, Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., Kristin Prevallet,
Richard A. Lupoff, Michael Kelly, Cody Goodfellow, John Langan,
Pearce Hansen, Laird Barron, Robin Spriggs, and Allyson Bird
Free shipping worldwide from
The
Book Depository
"How Galligaskins Sloughed the Scourge" in
Bloody Fabulous: stories
of
fantasy and
fashion
edited
by
Ekaterina Sedia
published by
Prime Books
with
more stories by Holly Black, Richard Bowes, Genevieve
Valentine, Sandra McDonald, Sharon Mock, Zen Cho, Kelly Link, Shirin
Dubbin, Die Booth, Rachel Swirsky, Maria V. Snyder, Nick Mamatas,
and John Chu
Earlier 2012 releases "Murder at the Tip" in
Light Touch Paper
- Stand Clear
edited
by Edwina Harvey and Simon
Petrie
published by Peggie
Bright Books
with
more stories by Joanne
Anderton, Adam Browne, Sue Bursztynski, Brenda Cooper, Katherine
Cummings, Thoraiya Dyer, Kathleen Jennings, Dave Luckett, Ian
McHugh, Sean McMullen, Ripley Patton, Rob Porteous