Eating Authors: Elizabeth Crowens

It’s taken far too much of the past week, but I’m finally over the jet lag from my visit to Beijing last month. I know this because it’s been replaced by the return of my more ordinary insomnia, which has me waking up after only a few hours of sleep, to putter around the house in the pre-dawn dark while my wife and dog blissfully slumber on.

The worst part of all of May’s travel has been the disruption to my writing regimen. I’ve still managed to write every day, but not with the same verve and vigor. I like to think this is only a temporary hiccough and I’ll soon be back on track with my long range plans for releasing multiple titles this year.

Speaking of book releases (see what I did there?), in just two days this week’s EATING AUTHORS guest, Elizabeth Crowens, is seeing the re-release of Silent Meridian, book one in her alternate history series of a time traveling professor (yeah, that hooked me at once!) that includes Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, Harry Houdini, and Carl Jung, just to name a few. But wait, there’s more! The second book in the series, A Pocketful of Lodestones, comes out from Atomic Alchemist Productions LLC on August 1st.

If you’ve not read her fiction, you may know Elizabeth from her wildly popular interviews for John ONeill’s Blackgate Magazine, many of which have been collected in The Poison Apple. She also writes in the Hollywood suspenese subgenre, which until encountering her work I didn’t even know was a thing!

LMS: Welcome, Elizabeth. What stands out as your most memorable or favorite meal?

EC: It’s hard to pinpoint my favorite meal, and I hate to disappoint you by not knowing the name of the restaurant or exactly what I ate, but it was the whole experience… or gestalt that was superior to anything that I’ve ever experienced.

Where was it? In Plovdiv, Bulgaria of all places near the Greek border. I had been part of a film crew shooting a martial arts film in Sophia, the capital of Bulgaria, and on one of our day’s off one of the Bulgarian producers took a large van full of cast and crew out to the countryside. When we stopped for lunch, he took us to the back patio of a restaurant, ordered wine and Ouzo, and all of us sat under flowering trees and enjoyed sublime spring weather considering we had snow in the city the week before.

This was the first time I participated in one of those legendary, multi-course Greek-style, three-hour meals with a group of friends, and on movie sets since you tend to work ridiculously long hours, you tend to make friends and bond with your co-workers. Between the ambiance, the exotic location, perfect weather, the camaraderie, food to die for, and way too much of it including alcohol, that was probably the best meal experience I ever had.

#SFWApro