LeseLust & LeseLiebe

Food; ‘You canna live wi’out it, Jim.’ SciFi fans will recognise Scottie from Star Trek here. But food is rarely discussed in the genre. I began Blood Red Dust as a one-off story about a possible future on Earth if we fail to stop climate change. But I ‘spect it just growed,’ like Topsy and became a trilogy. The other two books are traditional, but Blood Red Dust is unusual with its mix of ‘reports’ gathered from multiple sources to fit the mood of the time in which it’s set. Mars, where most of the story is set, is a hostile environment where food will be a problem for a long time if we ever make it there in person. For the first colonists it’ll be the stuff they eat on the International Space Station until they can grow their own. Ain’t no fancy eateries on that there red planet! Madonna, a brilliant colonist specialising in robotics, enters the mess room late one morning, ‘I fixed myself a coffee, well, what passes for coffee here till Anni’s got a proper handle on growing the bea...

I’m not much of a cook. My abilities in the kitchen are somewhat a joke in my family’s household. I love food, though, and eating out, trying new foods, is an absolute treat. But it isn’t just the food it’s the backdrop, the feel—the entire ambiance that must be just right. Get that wrong, and you could be eating cardboard. Jenny, Bodie and Matt, the characters in Eden and Hunted (a two-book series), lived in a modern, futuristic world where anything they ever wanted was at a touch of a button, had no problem creating fantastic food in a beautiful setting. They could never have dreamed that their privileged life would end where they had to fight for their lives, pillaging for food and in Jenny’s case, using her body just to stay alive. The three were astronauts and on a mission to explore the uninhabited planet (Eden). Their assignment was to set sensors into the planet’s crust, collect rocks and plant life, gather information on the animal, marine and birdlife and return home. A jou...

Melanie is the ten-year-old POV character of my short story called "Monster," found in my collection entitled Strange Hwy . She’s going trick-or-treating with her older sister Millicent and a pair of neighborhood boys. As the older sister, Millicent has a knack for cheating the younger out of the good treats. And by good treats, I mean the chocolate bars and Skittles—those snacks a girl won’t mind spending her allowance on when it’s not Halloween. Millicent hates jellybeans. Her idea of being a good big sister is to convince Melanie to trade off her chocolate for jellybeans. But Melanie hates jellybeans as well. And as the younger girl grows older, wisdom sets in. She’s no longer compelled to capitulate to her sister’s ideas where candy is concerned. The story unfolds around the house at the end of the block. This is where the monster dwells—a man with a history. Of the four kids in the group, Melanie is the only one who dares approach the front door, seeking a treat, hoping ...

Lacy is officially fed up! She would rather be eating Greek food at her boyfriend’s house, with his Mum giving her cooking lessons. Or even at the local Burger Man with her pals, having a laugh. Instead of which she is babysitting her six year old half-sister, Sophie, and trying to persuade her to eat her vegetables. To make matters worse, Sophie has a severe case of sleepwalking and an imaginary friend called “Betty Ballerina”, and seems to be obsessed with “digging for treasure” in their back garden, where Betty keeps showing her to. Only thing is, there might be something nasty hidden in the garden… Lacy enlists the help of her friend, Karina, who thinks Sophie might be haunted and is seeing a ghost, and persuades Lacy to attend a psychic fair to have her Tarot cards read. Only this makes matters worse when she picks the Death card along with the Tower and black sword cards, prompting the fortune teller to give her money back. In desperation Lacy turns to Barry, a family friend who ...