Mary Anne Mohanraj's Blog

Vegan Serendib is now available!

It's launch week for Vegan Serendib, my new Sri Lankan vegan cookbook!


Vegan Serendib: Recipes from Sri Lanka

This has been a long road, people, from first drafting Feast, to launching it March 2020, to pandemic, to carrying on with Vegan -- it doesn't feel quite real yet. And yet, it is. Woot!

A few notes:

• if you've already bought Feast, you should know that there are 80 recipes in common between the two cookbooks. If you'd like the 40 new recipes developed for Vegan Serendib, you can certainly buy a copy (and they look very nice on the shelf next to each other), but you can also wait a few weeks for the digital supplement we'll be putting out, A Vegan Slice of Serendib (the tentative title).

• if you're planning to buy Vegan on Amazon or other online retailers, for yourself, for gifts, etc., it would be SUPER-HELPFUL if you can order it today, as a burst of orders help bump up the book's visibility in the rankings, making it much more likely that people who don't know me personally will actually see it.

• if you'd like to buy it directly from me, that's great too (we get a little more money per book). https://serendibshop.com

• if you buy it (and/or Feast) directly from me, and you live in the U.S., you can also add on some of my homemade curry powder

• if you already have a copy of Feast and/or Vegan and feel moved to leave a review -- even just a single line -- on Amazon, that's also SUPER-HELPFUL. Once you hit a critical mass of reviews, that also moves the book up in Amazon's visibility algorithms.

Please like / comment / share for visibility -- tell your friends, tell your family, tell the world. 🙂

Thanks! - Mary Anne

Serendib House with Mary Anne Mohanraj

Serendib House with Mary Anne Mohanraj is coming up on its second issue! For those who don't know, Serendib House is my monthly digital lifestyle magazine. Currently available through Patreon. You can subscribe here: https://www.patreon.com/mohanraj

Serendib House with Mary Anne Mohanraj is a monthly publication that includes Cookbook club recipes, garden logs, and blog-like updates on Mary Anne's life, writing, and travels. The magazine will also feature reviews on books, shows, and products by me!
Grab Serendib House with Mary Anne Mohanraj and find your next favorite magazine!

Art imitates life.

Writing workshop done for tonight; I gave them the first half of "Thin Air," about 10,000 words. I think this will be a novelette when I'm done -- I'm not sure I've actually written a novelette before. They had a few minor tweaks, but basically, they like it, yay. I'm hoping to draft the second half of it in the next few days, fingers crossed.
Here's a little bit one of them particularly liked. No context for you, though. 🙂
*****
“Amara? Are you in back?”
“Hey, Roosh,” Amara called back to her sister. “Yes, in the greenhouse.”
“I’ve got Ravi with me – okay to bring him in?”
“My little terror of a nephew is always welcome,” Amara said, smiling.
Ravi came hurtling across the back garden, flinging himself at her knees. “Chinnamma! Chinnamma! Can I eat a plant?” Amara laughed and bent down to hug him – a little trickier with her belly in the way, but she managed a sniff of coconut-scented five-year-old hair. “If I can eat you?”
“Ha ha ha! You wouldn’t eat me!”
“But you smell so delicious!”
“I just had a bath!”
“In the middle of the day?”
Rooshey stepped into the little space as well, now quite crowded with her and baby Isa wrapped against her chest. She said drily, “You’d take a midday bath too, if you’d managed to smear glittery blue glue all over yourself, the wall, the mridangam…”
“Oh, Roosh!” Amara bit back a laugh, though she knew her sister could see it in her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
Rooshey sighed. “It all came out. Eventually."
*****
(Some of you will remember the day Kavi poured blue glitter glue all over our piano...art imitates life. Or steals blatantly from it, sometimes.)

Podcast

Just finished recording a podcast with Ada Palmer and Jo Walton, two people I could talk to forever, pretty much. This is for their Ex Urbe podcast, and in theory, we were going to talk about food, and we DID, but we also ended up talking rather a lot about politics and governmental structures, which I suppose is not surprising if you know our fiction. 🙂
Not sure when it'll air, will post again when it does!
https://www.exurbe.com

"Among the Marithei" Story Sale

I forgot to post here and say my story, "Among the Marithei," part of my Jump Space universe, is now out at Asimov's. Thanks to Alex Gurevich for Russian cultural help -- any remaining errors are my own! I'm not sure if my Acorns writing group critiqued this story, but to them, and all others who gave me feedback, thank you thank you. 🙂
Here's the opening:
*****
Sergey hummed under his breath as he walked to the Marith temple. His steps retraced a path he knew so well, he could have walked it at night, in the dark, even under assault. Yet the Marith enclave was the most peaceful place he’d ever been—so calm that Sergey didn’t even need to hum to soothe his newborn daughter, fast asleep in her sling, bound tight against his chest.
Three days old, and still Katya mostly slept, which both his wife and the doula had assured him was normal. They laughed at his anxieties, but they didn’t understand how Katya’s small griefs pierced his soul. He was no Marith empath, but he felt what she felt.
“This is your—spawn?”
“Daughter,” Sergey corrected, smiling up at his tall friend, who had stepped out of the temple gate to greet him. “Spawn is technically correct, Bila, but humans prefer child, son, or daughter. Daughter indicates a female child.”
The Marithei bowed down to peer closely at Katya, the pale green fronds that framed his face going temporarily flat. Sergey appreciated the gesture—otherwise, they might have brushed against the baby and tickled her awake. “How can you know the sex so young?”
Sergey said, “Well, you can’t, really. But humans like to take a first approximation. It’s convenient.”
[to be continued...]
*****
More about this issue, from their site:
"Our May/June 2021 issue begins with David Moles’s brilliant novelette about about deep time, sibling rivalry, and the end of the universe. Don’t miss “The Metric”! The issue concludes with Robert Reed’s exciting new Great Ship novelette that shows why “Flattering the Flame” is a very good idea.
You’ll find a lot of other wonderful novelettes and short stories nestled between these must-read works: Ray Nayler depicts a strange alien invasion in “Año Nuevo”; James Gunn lays out a plan for “Reclaiming the Stars”; Ian Creasey takes on some thorny genetic manipulation questions in “Super Sprouts”; Rick Wilber & Brad Aiken tell us the tale of a very modern “Tin Man”; new to Asimov’s author Annika Barranti Klein reveals the tragic secret of “Phosphor’s Circle”; the situation is tense in new authors K.A. Teryna & Alexander Bachilo’s portrayal of “The Chartreuse Sky”; and we find out why “My Heart Is at Capacity” in TJ Berry’s first tale for the magazine. Mary Anne Mohanraj shows us what it means to live “Among the Marithei” and Dominica Phetteplace gives us a stark view of the future in “Ready Gas and Pills.”
Robert Silverberg’s Reflections column peruses “The First Encyclopedia”; James Patrick Kelly’s On the Net introduces us to some “Digital Heroes”; new On Books reviewer, Sheree Renée Thomas looks at work by Alaya Dawn Johnson, Rebecca Roanhorse, P. Djèlí Clark, Andrea Hairston, and others; James Gunn’s intriguing Thought Experiment considers “Religion and Science Fiction”; plus we have an array of poetry and other great stories!"

https://www.asimovs.com/current-issue/

You can buy print or digital copies here: https://www.asimovs.com/store

Jump Space Changes

Made some big changes to the Jump Space book this past weekend -- not big in terms of word count, but in concept.
(Note that there are some spoilers in the graphics, if you look closely (such as who married whom, who fostered whose kid, etc.), so if you haven't read the stories, proceed at your own risk.)
I started sketching out some genealogies, in part just to keep it all straight in my head. But as I went, I realized that I didn't really want to make it just an interstitial story intercut with other separate war stories -- that would be fine, but what would work even better, I think, is if at least some of these people are actually more directly connected.
So when you read "Webs," for example, you're not just reading a story about Anna and Piotr and they're random people, but in actuality, Piotr is the brother of Sergey (protagonist of just-published "Among the Marithei"), and both of them come from war-torn Nadezhda. They were separated by the war as young men, and grew up on different planets, and the fact that they're brothers may never play into any stories I actually write. But you never know, it might. 🙂
I sketched out the family trees on regular paper, then transferred them to a big sheet with colored pencils, to help me visualize all the relationships. That also helped me make sure that I was getting the generations and the timing right -- right now, I think "Jump Space" takes place about 30 years before most of the rest of what I've written in this universe.
Then I redrew them digitally in Procreate, for ease of editing going forward.
I'm not quite done -- I need to check whether "Paper Star," "Hush" and "Communion" have any similar connections. I don't think so? But I'll look at it in more detail tomorrow.
I also don't really know as much about genealogical notation as I'd like -- I'm guessing there's some standard way to indicate first marriage / second marriage / etc.? It'd be helpful to know that. Also if there's a standard way to note simultaneous multi-person marriage?
For now, this was satisfying. Next, maybe a map?

Writing Retreat Day 2

Day 2 of writing retreat. How many days will there be? Well, I'm not sure yet. I have three hanging projects that I'd like to finish up, and I *think* a week or so will take care of that.

I'm stopping back at the house 2-3 times / day -- I stopped back yesterday to sign a bunch of copies of Feast, for example, that Stephanie picked up to ship out (and apologies for the delay, folks, it *completely* slipped my mind to check the order sheet for a few weeks, not sure how that happened. Too many balls in the air.)

I actually slept at home last night, and probably will going forward, because I slept really badly here the first night. (Not sure why, the apartment is fine?) This afternoon, I have 4-5 hours of stuff I need to do at the house, sewing masks and baking milk toffee and packing up things to ship (book and curry powder orders, Interstellar Patreon treats). But I'm going to try to at least spend mornings here for the week, I think, keep myself in writing mode.

I also need to stop eating out, or slow it way down, because restaurant food is too rich and heavy; it throws me off having it for multiple meals a day. I went to Delia's Kitchen for brunch yesterday, and got the salmon eggs benedict (Friday was national Eggs Benedict Day), which were fine, but even though I love smoked salmon, I think I like classic eggs benedict better. Still, novelty in food, always interesting to me. The problem is that two eggs benedict is honestly too much breakfast for me; I need someone to split an order with, because it's not really something that keeps well for taking home.

The downside of eating at Delia's was they didn't have their outside seating open (not sure why), and since I'm very close to fully vaccinated (2 days to full efficacy), I went ahead and ate inside, which is the first time I've done so in over a year, and it felt weird and also, honestly, too crowded. It's not a big place, and I think going there on the weekend for brunch was a mistake; a friend has gone recently on weekdays and had it much more empty.

I don't think it was particularly dangerous, and the wait staff were masked and very careful about maintaining distance (they're all eligible for vaccination now, so I hope they're all getting it), but I think for now, I'm just not comfortable eating with dozens of other people eating in a small space. Not enough airflow for comfort.

Better was walking over to Fairground Coffee -- big space, and they have half their seating blocked off, so you really get some good distance and can't have too many people indoors. They also have lots of outdoor seating. I had my chai latte, and opened my laptop, and opened the file, and started writing, and for a little while, everything felt normal, just like the old days. Normal, yet also safe.

Oh, this pandemic writing life is so weird. More writing specifics in next post.

"Moon Maid"

I thought y'all might enjoy the opening to my story, "Moon Maid"!
*****
1948
Aarti ducked into the Bird and Babe, hoping that she wasn’t too late to snag her favorite corner for lunch. Thankfully, it was free – the Inklings hadn’t descended on it yet with their smeared manuscripts and typical high spirits. They’d probably be in soon – it was Tuesday, after all -- but if she were firmly ensconced, then perhaps they would let her keep it and find somewhere else for their literary endeavours.
She slid onto the bench beside the fireplace, thankful for the heat. After three years in Oxford, she still hadn’t adapted to the dampness of English winters. A nasty February drizzle fell on the cobbled streets outside, and she shrugged off her soggy coat with relief. The dark panelled walls added to the coziness of the room, and for a moment, she could forget England, forget Oxford, maybe even forget that her heart was breaking.
The server came over to wipe down the table. “It’s good to see you, Miss Aarti. How’s the painting going?” He’d seen her in here with paint-smeared fingers often enough.
“Fine, John, fine. Just had a show, actually.” Her first gallery show, which should have been a triumph. Aarti was studying astronomy because that’s what her father expected of her, what her scholarship was for, the scholarship that had brought an Indian woman all the way to England, where she could be a prodigy, a curiosity. A woman at Oxford was rare enough, though more common since the War had taken so many brave young men. A brown woman at Oxford was unheard of. She loved astronomy – the first time one of her teachers had let her look through a telescope at the moon, she had gasped in wonder. But Aarti had a second passion; she loved to paint. Her family hadn’t taken it seriously, but in this town, at least a few people thought she had real talent. Did she have to pick, between the glory of the stars and the glory of paint on canvas? Couldn’t she have both?
“Where’s your young man?” John didn’t mean to be cruel – he was just used to seeing her come in with Raj. Aarti had never actually been in a pub by herself, and Appa would be furious if he saw – but she was twenty years old now, and her father was in Bombay. She didn’t really care what he would think.
“He’s gone, John. Gone for good this time.” Raj had never found it easy, putting up with Aarti’s sharp tongue, but their families had been pushing the match hard, and there weren’t that many reasonable prospects for a boy like him in Oxford. Even fewer for her, of course. And they’d had art in common, at least – attended lectures together, painted dozens of dour English landscapes side by side. But eventually, she abandoned the English landscapes, and started painting her work instead. Galaxies and constellations bloomed across the canvas. The rings of Saturn, the moons of Jupiter.
And the moon – oh, Aarti loved to paint the moon in all Her phases, the craters and mountains. Mare Imbrium, Serenitatis, Tranquilitatis. Mare Crisium, also called the Sea of Crises. Mons Pico, Mons Argaeus. And the craters: Aristarchus, Boussingault, Copernicus – she memorized a host of them, from a to zed. Zagut.
Copernicus, Tycho and Kepler’s bright rays were a pleasure to paint, and she couldn’t resist the Alpine Valley, Bay of Rainbows, and the Straight Wall. But Aarti had her personal favorites too – Mons Argaeus sat between Serenitatis and Tranquilitatis, on their eastern border. She painted it over and over again, drawn to it for reasons she could not name, and with each repetition, the work improved. Another layer of paint, or perhaps a scraping away, highlighting the curve of a dark sea, the play of light and shadow on mountain rise.
At first Aarti painted the images as if from a ship, circling the Moon, gazing upon Her. But over time, the perspective shifted, until at last it was if you walked the surface yourself, and the mountain rose before you in edged chiaroscuro.
As it turned out, other people loved her moon paintings too. As time went on, Aarti’s work started getting more recognition, and Raj’s didn’t. He couldn’t stand it. This last fight had been an ugly one, on the steps of the gallery, in full earshot of dozens of people.
"Everything is about you, isn’t it? Aarti Aarti Aarti."
"Not everything. Just this! Why can’t you just be happy for me?"
"Why can’t you be like other women, and support your man? Is this what it’s going to be like when we’re married?"
"I can’t help it if I’m better than you!"
Raj turned and walked away, leaving Aarti standing there in the rain, knowing it was over. She shouldn’t have said that last. Her mother always said her tongue would get her into trouble. But was she expected to bridle it for the entire length of her marriage? Amma would undoubtedly say yes.
Aarti met John’s eyes and said quietly, “Raj and I are over.”
John clucked his tongue in sympathy. “Sorry to hear that, lass. Chin up – you’re pretty enough to find yourself another man soon. Plenty of fish in the sea.”
Did people really say that? Apparently, but she wouldn’t complain as long as John fetched her drink. He brought it quickly enough, but his hand brushed against hers on the table as he set it down. She pulled back, setting her spine against the corner of the fireplace; John wandered away without saying anything else.
Maybe she shouldn’t be in here on her own. John was handsome, but the last thing she needed was to start something with a white man. If her father got word of it, he’d never let her stay at Oxford, and if Aarti couldn’t have Raj, she could at least have her degree. With it, she could go home and get a teaching job, finally get some independence from her family. It’d probably be basic mathematics taught to schoolgirls instead of serious astronomy, which would break her heart. But it was better than being forced into a loveless marriage. Just one more year… Aarti’s fingers curved around the half-pint stemmed glass, tightening. She would survive this.
Loud voices from the hall – the Inklings had arrived, inevitably. Aarti braced to repulse their invasion.
“Lewis, do you regret agreeing to the debate with that woman? She demolished your arguments regarding naturalism and the possibility of human reason rather handily, I’m afraid.”
“Let’s not discuss it, please. I have some new chapters of my Aslan story that I’d like you to look at – Miss? Miss, are you not feeling well?”
“I’m fine,” Aarti wanted to snap, wanted to demand that they simply leave her alone with the sherry she hoped to drown her sorrows in. She would have said that, but the room was spinning strangely. Aarti tried to stand up, but that was a mistake. The room tilted and fell away, and she fell with it, into the arms of one of them -- Lewis, Tolkien? The pale face blurred and darkness descended.
*****






Joker Moon drops on July 6 -- pre-order now! 🙂
https://www.amazon.com/Joker-Moon-Wil...

New Jump Space RPG wip

Working on a new module for the Jump Space RPG (a bit overdue, sorry Patreon peeps!). It requires world-building, which is not my best thing, so if you feel like brainstorming details of this planet with me -- physical, cultural, etc., feel free to throw suggestions in.
******
Ariel is a low-gravity planet, with steep cliffs and complex wind patterns; modified humans (humods) have genetically adapted themselves to glide there, and with practice and skill, can come remarkably close to flying.
(By attaching small thruster jets to backpacks, humans can come even closer to true flight, but that’s severely frowned on by the majority of Ariel’s flyers, since joozers (jet-users) have a bad tendency to cut across typical flight patterns and make life harder for everyone. The jets aren’t technically illegal, but there’s so much licensing wrapped around getting one that most people don’t even try. Besiders, most agree it’s much more thrilling being solely humod-powered; there’s no thrill in using a jet.)
Ariel has no native sentient life, and is overall hot and dry; much of the planet resembles Bryce Canyon in what was once Earth’s state of Utah. Agriculture is difficult, though there are some genetically-modified human crops that can be grown successfully there – enough for a fairly limited diet, with imported supplements. Humans and humods have only been on Ariel for two generations, and there are some concerns about long-term effects of this diet on their health, but the thrill-seekers who come to Ariel are generally unworried by such potential issues.
Most of Ariel’s flyers are also nudists, which can be something of a shock to visitors. They prefer to be ‘naked as a bird’ when they fly, which also helps with avoiding overheating. (There’s a cooler season, and cooler regions of the planet, but humod settlements cluster near the best flying cliffs, and those are mostly high altitude and quite warm.)
The prime landing spots at cliff-base host small marketplaces (similar to Old Earth souks) where flyers can rent a wrap for the walk home (or rent a ride on a bullock-cart if they’ve overextended their own strength). Wraps may be returned at kiosks at the top of the cliff. Disposable wraps would be a dream, but at the moment, Ariel’s economy can’t support that kind of luxury.
Families survive through small-scale farming (kitchen gardens) and hunting of ubiquitous flying insects and small birds. As the saying goes, “You’ll have to eat a thousand-peck of insects, if you want to live on Ariel.” It’s not the catchiest saying, but at least it’s accurate.
There’s essentially nothing in the way of industry yet, and no real cities or even towns. Aside from the spaceport, the rest of Ariel is for a few thousand residents and quite a few tourists. The latter of whom come to gawk at the humod flyers and rent a jet for carefully supervised use in Tourists’ Canyon. They sometimes try to beg a ride from a humod – how thrilling! – but since humod bones are lighter and thinner than human, the physics generally doesn’t work out, and the tourist must give up, disappointed.
Every day at sunset, a troupe of flyer-dancers perform with colorful trailing pennants in the Green Canyon (‘Green’ indicates ease-of-flight here, and is also where beginners go to train); a percentage of their profits goes to the nascent government, and is used to support the growing tourist industry.
*****

BOOK BIRTHDAY: Feast of Serendib!

We're nearing the one-year book birthday of A Feast of Serendib and to celebrate it we have a full month of giveaways, sales, special events, and more! Check our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram regularly to stay up to date for upcoming events, and be sure to wish Feast a happy birthday this upcoming Saturday 3/6!

Tomorrow (3/5) our GoodReads giveaway starts, and will run for two weeks!
Feast of Serendib GoodReads page here!