Anna Tambour and Others
Spring
November 2012
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 America’s 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 baker’s. - 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 ØØØ 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 Cévennes The Wages of Food-Play Klokwerk's Heart Me-Too & Try 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.
(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
Some Seasoned Preserves Winter August 2012
Tea moulds conviviate in a crazed pot. Autumn March 2011
Summer December 2011
another
Magnificent Insignificant
Spring October 2011 winter July 2011
An oddly
exhibitionistic
mantis
Summer January 2009 |
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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 Chômu 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 didn’t 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 Tambour’s 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 storyteller’s sense of “fear and joy,” it’s 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 Chômu 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 "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
The Dog Who Wished He'd Never Heard of Lovecraft Free to read, and/or download the audio version read by Bruce L. Priddy in Lovecraft eZine #13, April 2012 edited & published by Mike Davis
more free-to-reads: from Phantasmagorium #1 Decemberish 2011 edited by Laird Barron "Cardoons!" a terrifying tale of veg and WARNINGs Read Cardoons! online here"The Oyster and Alice O." in FLURB a Webzine of Astonishing Tales Issue #12 "Fall–Winter" 2011 edited and illustrated (in paintings and photographs) by Rudy Rucker. 2011 New e-editions from infinity plus "Tambour could be called an infinity plus 'discovery' ... Monterra’s Deliciosa is a delicious collection of often startling and outrageous tales." – Paul F. Cockburn, Interzone, May-June 2011
This
edition includes a
Even this infinity plus e-dition includes
never-before-seen additives
Infinity Plus
Singles #10 and #15
More Anthologies & magazines that include A.T.'s stories 2010 Sprawl edited by Alisa Krasnostein Published by Twelfth Planet Press
"Gnawer of the Moon Seeks Summit of
Paradise"
Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine
in #44, the
cover story
"The Eye of Nostradamus Summit"
(cover
art by Marc McBride)
![]()
in #46
"How Galligaskins Sloughed the Scourge"
in #42
"The Arms of Love and Death"
June 2010
"Dreadnought Neptune"
2009 Lovecraft Unbound edited by Ellen Datlow
"Sincerely, Petrified"
2008 The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Sixteen Original Works by Speculative Fiction's Finest Voices edited by Ellen Datlow
"Gladiolus Exposed"
Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy edited by Ekaterina Sedia Published by Senses Five Press
"The Age of Fish, Post-flowers"
Year's Best Australian Science Fiction & Fantasy, Volume 4 edited by Bill Congreve & Michelle Marquardt Published by MirrorDanse Books
"The Jeweller of Second-hand Roe"
Scary Food: A Compendium of Gastronomic Atrocity edited by Cat Sparks Published by Agog! Press
"Tasty Morsels"
& other
stories
2007
EŞİK CİNİ 13
Two stories (The
tiger and the mice &
Sweat, Joy, and Thunderation) and an interview,
translated into Turkish by
Nurduran Duman
Eþik Cini means 'Elf of
Sills'
The Workers' Paradise edited by Russell B. Farr and Nick Evans
"Seahoney"
Subterranean #7 edited by Ellen Datlow
"The Jeweller of Second-hand Roe"
Aurealis Award,
Horror Short Story
Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories edited by John Klima Order here or ask for it at your bookstore
"Pococurante"
Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing edited by Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss
"The Shoe in SHOES' Window"
"The Syncopation Streak"
Polyphony 6
edited by Deborah Layne and
Jay Lake
"The Beginnings, Endings, and Middles Ball"
Read it in Omnidawn's
free sampler
ParaSpheres:
Fabulist and New Wave Fabulist Stories
edited by
Rusty Morrison & Ken Keegan
"See Here, See There"
Agog! Ripping Reads
edited by Cat Sparks
"The Slime: A love story"
Lady
Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 19
edited by Gavin Grant and
Kelly Link
"The Cat Story"
Andromeda Spaceways, #24
edited by Edwina Harvey
"There is No Rice Pudding in the Sea" Fantasy Magazine, #3 edited by Sean Wallace in Mythic Delirium edited by Mike Allen a poem: "Trapped Words" Hear it read by Alistair Rennie A Novel and a Collection by A.T. A Locus Recommended Reading List Selection
I shot him a look that would pierce most people of my acquaintance. He looked blandly back. However, he seemed truthful. Angela Pendergast, escapee from the Australian bush, grew up with the smell of hot mutton fat in her hair, the thought of her teeth crunching a cold Tim Tam chocolate biscuit -- the height of decadent frivolity. Now, though her tastes have grown and she knows absolutely what she wants, her life is embarrassingly stuck. So when the Devil drops into her bedroom in her sharehouse in inner-city Sydney with a contract in hand, she signs. He's got only a Hell's week to fulfil his side, but in the meantime he must chaperone her -- or is it the other way around? The SF Site: Featured Review by Rich Horton "...a wicked, thoroughly unpredictable romp . . . Spotted Lily might just be a particularly inventive comic take on wish-fulfillment, but soon enough it strays far from the beaten path...a dizzying but delightful journey through old myths and modern chaos, turning Faust and Pygmalion on their ear as it cuts its own path toward something like self-knowledge." - Faren Miller, Locus "I hate giving away the story, but allow me to say that this novel is not going where you think it is....teaming with genuine wit and humor... excellent writing...One thing I’m sure of is that it should be required reading for all those who go into writing fiction with dreams of great remuneration and fame. If it were, Tambour would already be both wealthy and famous." - Jeffrey Ford "One of the things I liked most about this book was that it was so difficult to tell where it was going...the book is so well written that for a lot of the time you don’t actually notice that it has a supernatural element to it." - Cheryl Morgan, Emerald City "It's passionate, it's intense, it's profoundly human and humane and honest, and, when it comes down to it, a hell of a read. I was sitting up late into the night to finish it. It's that good." - Keith Brooke Perhaps you would like to read Chapter One Published by Prime Books Cover art for Spotted Lily: The Artist by Norman Lindsay (Australian) c.1921, copyright © Lin Bloomfield Stomates on scouring rush, electron microscope view, copyright © Dennis Kunkel Microscopy, Inc. Book Design: Anna Tambour and another Locus Recommended Reading List Selection
Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & Introduction by Keith Brooke Temptation, indulgence, exploration and shortcuts. Love and compulsion. An ocean in Kansas, the Magic Lino, the real story behind the one told by Robert Louis Stevenson, a chef dying of ennui, gathering bluebirds, paying with candywrap. And the greatest story ever told -- by Asher E. Treat, of course. The glorious chaos of singing, prancing, perfumed and stinking, the dead and the busy, tragic and achingly otherwise--life itself. "A winning, offbeat sensibility is at work in the 31 stories and poems that make up Tambour's first fiction collection, finding the lighter side of potentially sober themes and giving humanist spins to scientific ideas. Certain tales show an exotic spirit that puts them squarely in the magic realist tradition, while others reflect self-consciousness about the craft of writing. All but a handful of these stories are original to the volume, which makes a fine introduction to a writer little known . . ." - Publishers Weekly "Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & could never be mistaken for ordinary genre fiction ...don't imagine this as high falutin' 'lit'rature' accessible only to people with advanced degrees. Anyone with a taste for beauty, audacity, sensuality, and wit can find much to enjoy here." - Faren Miller, Locus What about Medlars? I admit it. These venerable individualists (and I've known many personally) have charmed me ― so much so that they star in "Valley of the Sugars of Salt" and have managed to shove themselves into cameo roles in a couple of other stories here. Table of Contents Published by Prime Books Cover art for Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales &: "Red Blood Cells" electron microscope view, © Tina (Weatherby) Carvalho / MicroAngela "King Parrot (Alisterus scapularis) " by John Hunter, c.1788, National Library of Australia Book design: Anna Tambour
Reviews
etc.
SPOTTED LILY
Review
"food, the devil, and fame" by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy in
his blog Criminal English: April 6, 2006
Nominated for the William L.
Crawford Award
Locus
listing as Recommended Reading: 2005
Listed by Jeffrey Ford as one of
"my favorite reads of 05 in no particular order"
Listed by Vera Nazarian as one of
her
"Ten Most Memorable Books of 2005"
Rich Horton review SF Site, December 2005 Cheryl Morgan review Emerald City "The Devil in Sydney", #121Sept 2005 Jeffrey Ford review in his blog 14theditch Sept 12 2005 Jeff VanderMeer comments VanderWorld Sept 12 2005 Publishers Weekly review June 20 2005 Listed in "New and Notable Books" Locus June 2005 Locus review by Faren Miller, May 2005 Vera Nazarian, review in her blog, Norilana April 19 20052004 Australian Science Fiction (Ditmar) Award Nominee: Best New Talent MONTERRA'S DELICIOSA & OTHER TALES & Faren Miller, review Locus Feb 2004 Publishers Weekly review Dec 22, 2003 Rich Horton, in Lost Pages: "A Different Drum: Anna Tambour's First Collection Reviewed" Dec 2003 Jeff Vandermeer, in Vanderworld, November 15, 2003 Michael J. Jasper in Tangent: Review of "Klokwerk's Heart" January 15, 2001 |
The virtuous medlar circle thoroughly bletted Guest Features Why I like Nudibranchs, marine slugs with Verve by Hans Bertsch The Lowly Potato by A.C.E. Bauer 3 Poems by Robert DeGraaff Elegy for Brussels Sprouts Serial Killers No Parking in Cambridge, Mass. Previous Features... More Irresistibles More in The Cellar . . . December 2012
The
celebrating ~ C.C. Askew ~ Extraordinariest The Art of Christopher Conn Askew "His work challenges my descriptive abilities"
On "Unlikeable Characters"
CCreeping
Geezerdom'
Jane
and the Roadspidere
Theatre of the Gastronomic Absurd
Beet me up
Museum of Soviet Arcade Games<
"Salicornia maritima and I go way
back"
Gopallapuram
by Ki. Rajanarayanan
translated by Pritham K. Chakravarthy
=
The Kitchen as Laboratory:
Reflections on the Science of Food and Cookingedited by Cesar Vega, Job Ubbink, & Erik van der Linden Leng
Dadaoism
(an
anthology)
edited by Justin Isis
&
Quentin S. Crisp
s
Porcelain vases - Botanicals by Natalie Blake
![]() l
by Keith Brooke -
One novel, two titles (Harmony in North America,
alt.human elsewhere)
Koumiss
"What did you say? Hay! What did you say? Nothing? Oh, it's alright" Cryptic creatures: The art of camouflage How easily happiness begins by dicing onionsA Dangerous Lingerie and Other Mid East Street Stories the Spook the West The secret aesthetic code of Chômu Pressu The sandals monument he e Navel gazing Dir Watch an ant colony take up residence inside a scanner over five years he The War of the Gnome and the Mountain Devil The nature of noise WWhen Suva had a Cinema Paradiso m Embrace an indie publisher! New vistas of irreality
2Weird fiction tributes #1 by 2000 Ancient Tombs The First Museum on Turkish CoffeeTh
20 Cats as
Fonts
Some Previous Guest features The Apprenticeship of Isabetta di Pietro Cavazzi by L. Timmel Duchamp Mama by Bharatram Gaba A Love Story by A.C.E. Bauer Terror Australis Incognito by Leone Britt Why Postmodernists Don't Climb Mountains by Alistair Rennie The Lowly Potato by A.C.E. Bauer Turcotte's Battle by Laura E. Goodin The Multidimensional Topology of Department Stores by Spencer Pate Come Tomorrow by Jayaprakash Sathyamurthy (honorable mention, Best Horror of the Year volume three edited by Ellen Datlow) Terminós by Dean Francis Alfar Don't Turn Loose & Heat by Ferris Gilli The Apparatus by Neil Williamson Cat Flap by Chuck McKenzie CHARLES TAN A Retrospective on Diseases for Sale & The chicken spits the cook or Charles Tan Talks (an interviewish thing) A Stone to Mark My Passing by Lee Battersby On the Blindside by Sonya Taaffe Chaloupes by A.C.E. Bauer Four O'Clocks by Ferris Gilli Night of the Living Crickets by Spencer Pate Excreta, etc. by Bharatram Gaba Nobody Did Debris Like Jack Kirby by Jamie Shanks Oysters: A Few Words by Alistair Rennie The Fortunes of Mrs. Wu by Charles Tan & A dead-guests-can't-say-no Featured Classic THE HEAT AND BRIGHTNESS OF THE SUN "(including an experiment with the burning glass, that most boys have often tried)" by Sir Robert S. Ball |