People keep asking me what my novel is “about,” and the honest answer is too long. So instead, here are six specific things that are in the book. If even one of these makes you tilt your head, you are probably the reader I wrote this for.
1. A chocolate milk bottle full of magical spice.
I will not explain how it got there. I will not explain what it does. I will say that it has more agency than most of the side characters, and that it is responsible for at least two of the book’s three major betrayals. The bottle is the closest thing this novel has to a meaningful love interest.
2. A Cambodian spy whose cover story is probably that she is a sommelier, maybe.
She is probably good at the sommelier part. Let’s assume that. She is excellent at the spy part. Mostly. She is unprepared for the part where she falls in love with the wrong restaurant owner, which is, in fairness, a difficult section to study for.
3. A restaurant that serves insects.
Crickets, mealworms, scorpion when it is in season. The chef refers to insect cookery as “menu honesty.” The diners refer to it as “the bug place.” Both are correct.
4. A business rivalry that escalates like a raccoon with venture funding.
Two seafood restaurant owners, one block apart, both convinced the other is the reason they have not yet become great. They are both correct, and both wrong, and both about to discover what either of those things actually costs.
5. A woman with freckles.
Who is described, in the book, as “either holy or extremely well-funded.” I will not say which. I will say that you will know by chapter seventeen, and you will not be ready.
6. The repeated question: how do you keep moving forward?
This is the only part of the book that is not a joke. It is the spine. It is the thing every other strange object is hanging off of. If the book works, you will laugh for a good 300 pages and then close the book and sit very quietly for a minute, because the question will have caught up with you.
If you have already read it, please consider leaving a short Amazon review. One sentence is plenty. Reviews are how weird books find their next strange reader.
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