Does creativity have a taste? And, if it does, is it salty or sweet?
January Magazine’s “Authors on Snacks” is not meant to be a judgment. Rather it’s a personal peek at what some of our most beloved authors nibble on while pushing forward on their latest work.
This time out we talk with author and attorney Jonathan Moore whose latest book, The Night Market, is a mind-bending, masterfully p
lotted thriller that will captivate fans of Blake Crouch, China Miéville, and Lauren Beukes.
What do you snack on while writing?
It’s complicated. My son isn’t quite two years old, and he’s blown apart my routines like a 24-pound cannonball. He’s a handful, but a joyous one. Mornings and evenings at home are exciting times full of trucks, and blocks, and Where the Wild Things Are, and spaghetti on the ceiling—all excellent fun, but it’s impossible to do any work. So for the last couple of years, I’ve written most of my books while eating lunch.
Downtown Honolulu and the adjacent Chinatown have some great spots where I can sit at the bar with my laptop, and be left alone. Encore Saloon, on Hotel Street in Chinatown, has excellent street tacos. I particularly like the vegetable ones. I think they have eggplant in them, but I honestly have no idea. They’re just good. Square Barrels, in Tamarind Park, has an ahi burger that’s good, and a Molokai venison burger that’s great. On Thursdays, Duc’s Bistro in Chinatown has fresh oysters, which are always a treat.
Do you consider your snacking to be mostly under control or mostly out of control?
In control—I don’t have a lot of time on my hands, so I do more writing than eating.
Tell us about your latest book.
In The Night Market (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) San Francisco Homicide Inspector Ross Carver arrives at the scene of a bizarre homicide — the body is decomposing before his eyes — when six FBI agents burst in and forcibly remove him from the premises. After taking him to a mobile disinfectant trailer, they shock him unconscious. Two days later, Carver wakes in his bed to find Mia, a neighbor he hardly knows, reading aloud to him. He has no recollection of the crime scene and no memory of how he got home.
As Carver struggles to piece together what happened to him, he soon realizes he’s involved himself in a web of conspiracy that spans the nation.
And Mia just might know more than she’s letting on…
“Outstanding…Moore smoothly fills Carver’s quest for the truth with equal parts hidden menace and outright strangeness. This mystery feels like Blade Runner as if it were written by Charles De Lint or Neil Gaiman.” — Publishers Weekly, starred.
You can see previous installments of “Authors on Snacks” here.
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