Catherynne M. Valente

ALLCAPS COOKBOOK PRESENTS: Maple Brown Butter Rice Krispy Treats

Well, I mean, everyone's gonna give you some elaborate deconstructed haut Thanksgiving 12-hour layered mess of a basic casserole this week. I thought I'd go for something fun and quick that doesn't take hours and hours of unappreciated labor.

Yeah, it's rice krispy treats, but bish, do you even remember how good that shit is when it's still warm? Heaven smells like that. Come on, you know it, I know it.

And this has two extra steps that really kick it up. I'm saying four tablespoons of maple syrup, but you could go higher. It...

What to Do When the Light Turns Blue With Orange and Lavender Spots

When the light turns green you go

When the light turns red you stop

But oh, what do you do when the light turns blue

With orange and lavender spots?

--Shel Silverstein

HEY EVERYONE I AM SUPER NOT OKAY!

None of us are! So great, so glad to be part of this trash compactor of a world with SUCH people in't!

Though I didn't start this Patreon until well after the 2016 election, I remember devoting a few essays over the years to how anyone is supposed to make art in an a...

The Beasts Who Fought For Fairyland Until the Very End--and Further Still

Fifteen years ago, I wrote a book, mostly, but not entirely, for children, called 2024-11-08 17:26:16 +0000 UTC View Post

Evening in America

I know it's my job to be one of the people who Says Something About It.

I know it's my job to be one of the people who says something comforting, or at least insightful, or at a minimum cathartic. I'll try soon. I promise.

But I just don't have anything right now. I can't even look at the analysis, or the internet at all. Not yet. I don't even know how to describe what I feel. I would have to actually cheer up to climb my way through to plain old nihilism right now.

And when the post-mortems are all said and done and the n...

Election Eve: Zen and the Art of Doomscrolling

The outstanding rewards for October are coming, I promise, I just am having a lot of physcial issues right now and also I can't think about anything but the election tomorrow so here is my brain at the moment...it's all I got.

***

It’s almost over. One way or the other.

I think I’ve aged ten years since the first primary. Twenty since 2020.

A century since 2016.

And I do feel cautiously optimistic about tomorrow. Cautiously. Because I have SOME VERY REAL PTSD ABOUT 2016. When we were s...

Random Access Mind: Adventures with My Editor…And a Chonk of Big City Crystal

This is actually one of my new favorite objects in this house. But I thought you extra-special folk would enjoy the slightly-unethical yet very nearly old-school editor/author adventuring that one once read about in Smort Peepull Magazines.

Well. The PG-13 version of said adventures, anyway.

On Upcoming Changes At Patreon

Note: I am still recovering from left-hand (of darkness) carpal tunnel surgery, with stitches scheduled out on Friday. But work and Halloween wait on no primate, so I'm going to try to get all the October rewards up before pain takes over. Thank you all for your patience and support while I invest in the radical future of Not Being In Pain Always All the Time. You are all my heroes, and it will never be otherwise. Hold tight.

******

Ughhhh I DON'T LIKE MAKING THIS POST ANY MORE THAN YOU'RE GONNA LIKE READING IT.

No...

There Are No Alternative Facts: Some Rules For Discerning Reality In This Hallucinogenic Hellscape of Misinformation

Note: cross-posted from my Substack, where it was under a paywall. If anyone asks directly for a cross-post I will always do so, so that folks on both sites feel like they're getting their money's worth, even though the Substack's content is considerably less cozy. Don't worry, the essay and other rewards are unaffected by these cross-posts, I'm just having surgery in an hour for the other carpal tunnel'd hand and it'll take me a few days to come round from that. See you on the flip side!

2024-10-21 16:30:03 +0000 UTC View Post

Wait Til Daddy Gets Home: America's Sad, Craven, Masochistic Relationship with the Republican Party

Note: Cross-posted from Substack--if any patron asks directly for a cross-post, I will always post these here as well. Don't worry! Other rewards are unaffected by cross-posts, I'm just having my left hand surgeried upon for carpal tunnel so it'll be a few days before I can get back on it. In the meantime...

I suppose the bright side of, well, every goddamned thing I’m about to say, is that people finally seem to be noticing that the media, whether mainstream/legacy media, or the squalid chaos-bins of TikTok, Youtube,...

Every Three Hours Is A Chance To Make A World: Notes from the Oklo Reactor

In my usual bleary, resentful early-morning delerium, I followed a link in the comments discussing an article about something beyond completely unrelated (oh, concerned piece about long-term effects of America's increasing marijuana use, who knew you came bearing such gifts!) and pitched headfirst down a long rabbit hole, at the bottom of which was a molten ancient nuclear reactor I feel just unreasonably affectionate toward now.

Obviously I immediately went to tell the internet about it, which is REALLY NOT THAT EASY ANYMORE since I g...

ALLCAPSCOOKBOOK PRESENTS: Adobonigiri!

Ok, in fairness this one is really an idea more than a recipe. I used standard recipes for all the components, but I'm reasonably mostly sure the concept itself is my own invention. At least the portmanteau is!

And it's fabulous.

I made a batch of onigiri (rice balls stuffed with something wrapped in seaweed, an old comfort food from my years in Japan) in advance of my carpal tunnel surgery, figuring it was an easy food I would not have to do anything with my hands to shove into my face while recovering.

Bu...

SPACE ODDITY IS OUT!

Well, obviously it came out yesterday, but YESTERDAY, Bastian was creating and distributing a wide variety of colorful fluids every ten minutes all over everything, and thus...well, as launch days go, it was a struggle. TODAY IS THEIR 6TH BIRTHDAY (WHAT) and they're back in school...but it's their birthday and early release day, so my week is essentially that gif of Elmo being engulfed in flames.

Life is beautiful a...

Bonus Excerpt for All: Space Oddity Liner Notes

It's Space Oddity month, so I wanted to give all of you something special ahead of the book launch--you are all the spaceship that takes me to the stars. (Another excerpt will still go up for those at that tier. This is just a gift for the whole fam)

So.

Here is the Great Acknowledgments Essay at the end of SO2, featuring many sadnesses, as has become the tradition with this series. I hope you enjoy it while I scrambl...

One Week Later…

Well, that hurt.

It says something about just how much pain I have been in for the last seven years or so, how high my baseline of “normal” became, that my yet-to-be-fixed left hand hurts more than the repaired right hand that got cut open palm to wrist and has been healing with zero pain management other than “lol Tylenol I guess.”

Sometimes you just forget that you lived without pain at some point. Pain becomes the new neutral resting state.

The recovery has taken longer than I’d like, so I’m sorry for my sile...

Public Denizen of the Month…My Troublesome Hand

This is sort of a denizen of the month post, but accessible to everyone because I’m about to get CUT ON!

My dumb wrist is definitely the MVP this month. I have carpal tunnel to an extent that made my doctor’s eyes get REAL BIG when she saw the ultrasound. She kept looking at me like I should also be alarmed. I said: “Unless there’s gonna be a baby on that screen I have no idea what I’m looking at. Is it supposed to look like that?”

Doc: “It is super not supposed to look like that.”

So I’m heading in for su...

New People Discord Invite Post!

Hello my wonderful Mad Fiction Laboratory/Cozy Cult family!

This is your semi-regular post reminding you that, as part of your Patreon support, you get access to our dedicated Discord, which has become a truly special place where we filter in all the good stuff from the internet and keep all the bad outside the cottage door.

Please come and join us for discussion and camaraderie on many subjects! It is very nice in there, and you'll find out what the Cozy Cult is (if you didn't already know from internet lore long gone pa...

Beat By a Girl: The Harris Campaign's Horrible, Hopeful Road Ahead Through the New Misogyny--and How We Got Here From 2016

(Cross-posted from Substack. This was a paywalled post there, and as usual, if any Patreon member actively asks to see it here, I will cross-post it for you beautiful folk. That codicil is only in place to maintain the Cozy Code here and only bring politics and bad feelings if requested.)

I’m incredibly happy to see people here, there, and everywhere embracing Kamala Harris and rallying to elect a woman of c...

ALLCAPS COOKBOOK PRESENTS: Witch's Garden Cake (Lemon, Rose, and Thyme Poundcake)

You know how cakes in cafes just taste different? More moist, more dense, more perfect than you really ever get at home?

Well, this summer my niece is working in a cafe/bakery where she makes them, so she's been coming home and whipping up the same cakes she makes there, and I have the recipe for the $5 a slice lemon (and nothing else) cake I love at her spot.

Now, I would never just hand out a workplace's recipe, so I've made some changes and I won't say which are mine. But this will result in an amazing moist cake with the addi...

Something Perfect This Way Comes

On the night Ray Bradbury died, I was performing at a large event in New York as part of Book Expo America (may she rest in peace). We’d all heard sometime not long before the authors went on stage, but no one had really had a chance to process or discuss it. The Emcee, Lev Grossman, introduced me, and when he first started to speak, I saw my publicist sit up very straight and make a note on her phone. I knew why. I’m not entirely a naive and idealistic poet. 

Because that night, when we were all rather in our feelings about i...

Informative post for free tier folk

Hi everyone!

I covered this a few months ago when Patreon changed everything all around for whimsy, as they are wont to do, but I wanted to make sure the new new folk are aware:

If you clicked the free tier button thinking that was sort of…the whole of it…as Patreon led you to believe so, you know, totally understandable…you’re missing most of the content. There will be an occasional free post, but most of the goodies are under the tiers. The $5 one gets you the main content package every month, with extras getting spicie...

ALLCAPS COOKBOOK PRESENTS: Spring Lamb Pasta with Pea Shoots and Toasted Walnuts

I don't have a cute story about why this is a meaningful dish. Wish I did, though maybe you're glad given how looooong pre-recipe chit-chat is getting on foodie sites, even after we explicitly told all of them we hated it like a hundred thousand times a year for ten years.

I had ground lamb. I didn't want to make meatballs. I love pea shoots. I grow peas and just eat the shoots because peas are whatever but the shoots are magic. I combined several recipes and added other elements like the walnuts for CROMCH.

And while many don't ...

The Magical Future-Dispensing Bear Meat Claw Machine

When I had the original idea to do this, several deadlines ago, I figured I'd post it as a Denizen of the Month.

But honestly I'm just so pleased with it I'm making it an open post so everyone can see what, specifically, is wrong with me that I would, while literally and actually losing hair over multiple by-wooshing deadlines and struggling to pay the cat's medical bills, feel compelled to buy a novelty claw machine which IN NO WAY TAKES REAL MONEY, and fill it with hand-written fortunes/mini-stories as a stress-reliever.

OKAY ...

ALLCAPS COOKBOOK PRESENTS: Wild Ramps, Lemon, and Pink Peppercorn Biscuits

Ramps! They are amazing!

If you don't know what they are, it's more or less like onion and garlic got together and had a crazy leafy baby. And they grow wild all over my yard and the forest behind it. As soon as spring starts, they come shooting up out of the ground before anything else, bright green patches in the grey and the brown.

I started looking for things to do with them beyond slicing them into my scrambled eggs or to fancy up ramen, and ended up with this. They're soft and savory and lovely with a real ribbon of earth...

Sometimes People Leave You Halfway Through the Wood

Some of you, especially if you're a member of our Discord server, may be aware that one of our own passed away a few weeks ago. John Peacock, who I've known for over a decade, who until recently, single-handedly moderated that server, alongside the hundreds of other things he did for so many people throughout his life. I will not say he's no longer with us, because he, and the ripple-effects of his kindness, will always be.

The image on this post is the dedicati...