Forking Good Book Release Day!

Holy Forking Shirtballs!

Our quirky cookbook inspired by The Good Place and full of puns and philosophical meandering is out in the world today! Thank you to Quirk Books, our editor Jhanteigh Kupihea, our illustrator Dingding Hu, and the entire team at Quirk who helped to bring it into the world!

What does book release day look like for this author?

Two misplaced coffee mugs (still full) that I set down someplace until they promptly vanished (fairies, I know), dry shampoo in the eye, a quick breakfast and kid drop-off after minor sock drama, day job login and morning email, internet connectivity issues and phone camera malfunction (I know, I know, they are going to stop supporting iphone 6 soon, my son keeps reminding me) and finally a moment to post this announcement!

This book is a special blend of so many things that I love.  I’ve come to realize that writing and cooking are my creative yin and yang. One enables me to immerse myself in the blissfully solitary imaginative introvert-friendly space of creating stories; while the other allows me to prepare robust sensory meals to be shared with people I love in a setting of open-hearted conversation.

With writing, there is certainly the eventual sharing with an audience and that is a delight, but it’s delayed most of the time and generally less intimate that the sharing of a meal.

I hope that you can find something to delight you in Forking Good, whether that’s a recipe you enjoy or a provocative anecdote that sparks a conversation. I hope that it makes you laugh and think and react and respond. This book, its meals and its playful philosophical contemplation are meant to be shared and talked about, especially as we approach the end of the season and show, The Good Place.

We would love to see photos of your meals and tv-watching parties where Forking Good plays a part. Please tag them! #ForkingGood or #ForkingGoodCookbook. We’ll figure out where the best place to post some will be. Stay tuned for more on that!

You can get our Forking Good cookbook in bookstores and online, and if you have a few minutes to write a review on Amazon or Goodreads, please do! It really really helps! (Thank you to those who have already done so!)

We’ll also have our New York launch party this weekend, and Chicago the weekend after that! We would love to see you, share some food and drink, sign books, and talk about life, afterlife, cooking, philosophy, and The Good Place! (Plus if you are in New York, you can meet our amazing illustrator Dingding Hu!)

We hope you enjoy Forking Good. We are so excited to share it with you!

 

Published by Valya

Valya Dudycz Lupescu has been making magic with food and words for more than 20 years, incorporating folklore from her Ukrainian heritage with practices that honor the Earth. She’s a writer, content developer, instructor, and mother of three teenagers. Valya is the author of MOTHER CHRISTMAS, THE SILENCE OF TREES, and the founding editor of CONCLAVE: A Journal of Character. Along with Stephen H. Segal, she is the co-author of FORKING GOOD: An Unofficial Cookbook for Fans of The Good Place and GEEK PARENTING: What Joffrey, Jor-El, Maleficent, and the McFlys Teach Us about Raising a Family (Quirk Books), and co-founder of the Wyrd Words storytelling laboratory. Valya earned her MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her poetry and prose have been published in anthologies and magazines that include, The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Kenyon Review, Culture, Gargoyle Magazine, Gone Lawn, Strange Horizons, Mythic Delirium. You can find her on Twitter @valya and on Mastodon.social @valya

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