It took just the right recipe to make Food for the Gods!

It's Wednesday, and you know what that means!  We're writing - about...it!  The it, of course is, well another incredible shortlisted title for the prestigious Bony Blithe Award.

More specifically, this week, we are featuring a guest post by Karen Dudley, a woman of many, many interests and talents!  With a resume that includes things like field biology, palaeo-environmental studies, production art, writing and maker of gourmet meals, it's no wonder that she's created such an incredible work of fiction!  

Among other things I learned while writing the intro for this entry, one of the most amazing facts about Karen is that she writes wearing pink leopard fleece footie pajamas.  I think she may just be my new hero.  And I'd like to know where I too, can get a pair of those!  

I also learned that she's not only been shortlisted for the Bony Blithe award, but in fact several other awards too - and not just for Food of the Gods!  Once you've read her guest post, not only will you be dying (ba dum dum!) to read her book, but you'll want to learn more about her too!  Here's where you can do that!

With that, I give you, Karen Dudley, "writer of fine novels, preparer of fine foods and all 'round good egg."  karendudley.com

People often ask me about the genesis of my books. For Food for the Gods, serendipity really played a role. You see, several years ago, I was sitting around one day thinking about the Greek myth of Tantalus (yeah, writers really do sit around thinking about weird stuff like that. They also really do write in their pajamas. Trust me.)

In Greek mythology, Tantalus was King of Lydia. The guy had it all: wealth, kingdom, kids, gods for friends. But of course none of that was quite enough for our friend Tantalus. He thought he should be kicking back on Mount Olympus with the rest of his divine chums, and he gets into a fair bit of trouble because of this. There are several variations of the myth

. about what Tantalus does. In one of the more famous versions, he invites all the gods ‘round for a feast, then he kills his own son, Pelops, chops him into bite-sized pieces and serves him to the gods for supper.

 Well, the gods, being their usual godlike and omniscient selves, realize right away what Tantalus has done so they don’t eat anything—except for the goddess Demeter, who at this point in the myth cycle, is distracted for various reasons and she ends up sitting down and having a bit of a nosh.

Well, the gods confront Tantalus with his crime and punish him by sending him straight to the underworld. There, they chain him to a tree, cursing him at the same time with everlasting thirst and hunger. There’s a pool of water at his feet, but every time he bends to take a drink, the waters recede. There are fruits hanging from the branches of the tree, but every time he reaches up to pluck one, a breeze comes up and blows them out of his reach. This myth is actually where we get our verb ‘to tantalize’ from.

After they finish chaining Tantalus to the tree, the gods very kindly remake Pelops, but because Demeter ate part of the ‘Pelops stew’, they have to give him an ivory shoulder to replace the old one.

Well, I was sitting there that day thinking about all of this, and I started wondering what that experience would do to somebody. And what happens to poor old Pelops afterwards? And wouldn’t he make an interesting protagonist. A guy with the proverbial chip on his shoulder. So I knew at that point, I wanted to write about Pelops. The myth continues on with him—where he goes and what he goes on to do—but not in a way I found particularly interesting. I wanted to tell my own version of his story. What happens to Pelops after all this?

I thought at first I might make him a student of Archimedes, the famous Greek engineer and inventor. If I did that, I could write about some of the more interesting inventions of ancient Greece. But somehow, it just didn’t feel quite right. This is where serendipity comes into it. I was leafing one of our reference books—a book called The Life of Greece by Will Durant, when I came across a line that said in ancient Athens when people wanted a special dinner, they couldn’t go to a fancy restaurant, because they didn’t exist yet, so what they would do was hire the services of a professional cook, who was usually a foreigner.

Bingo. Or, more appropriately, Eureka!

After reading that single sentence, I had my protagonist (Pelops), I had his profession (celebrity chef), I had the city that he lives in (Athens) and I had the title of my book: Food for the Gods. After all, that’s what he does and that’s what he was.

So that’s where I got the idea for this book, but the spirit of Food for the Gods was born years earlier when I was at the University of Alberta. I had the most amazing Greek history professor, Dr. Buck, who really brought the Classical period to life for me.

The man was the master of understatement. Whenever he talked about the reasons behind a war, he always started off by saying something like, “Well, when someone steals your women and cattle, you’re liable to get a little cross about the whole thing.” He wouldn’t just give us dates and places for these armed conflicts, he’d act them out, marching up and down the classroom like a hoplite, talking the whole time about how ‘cross’ they all were with each other.

He did tell us things like who won the Battle of Salamis and why, but he also told us about stuff like Alcibiades and the Incident of the Theban Dancing Girls.  He made it real. And when I decided years later, to write a book set during this time, I knew I wanted to make it real in the same way that he had. I didn’t want my readers to feel the distance of history. I wanted them to feel like they’re in the story, in that world. Like the characters really aren’t that different from themselves.

Back in the fall, a reviewer wrote to me to tell me that he was going to review my book and when I could expect to see the review. In his email, he said that he’d loved the way I captured the feel of ancient Greece and particularly, the Aristophanic humour. I thought, what the heck is Aristophanic humour, and is that a good thing? So I looked it up and discovered that it’s humour that is crude, vulgar and surreal. Huh. And here I thought I was just being crude, vulgar and surreal.

So remember this when you read the book. Food for the Gods is not saucy or rude or surreal, it’s simply Aristophanic