Lovely to see one of my old short stories get a fresh airing, this time on the website SF Caledonia.

SF Caledonia is a new online home for Scottish sci fi created by Shoreline of Infinity co-founder Noel Chidwick with the aim of being, “a space for Scotland to show off its talented community of science fiction/ speculative fiction/fantasy writers to the world – and beyond.”

And I’m really proud that Secret Ingredients has landed there after first being published in Shoreline in 2019.

I like to think of Secret Ingredients as a cross between Kitchen Confidential and Monsters, Inc. I wrote it not long after reading the former for the first time, following the death of its author, the great Anthony Bourdain. It’s an incredible account of kitchen life and chimed with my own experiences of working as a kitchen porter.

Both inspired this story about fine dining on an alien world – what AB would think of that I do not know, but if there was anyone who would try a bite of Scrafulax at a table of vultures, hammerheads, Vigintipedes, and Jacintha slugs, it would be him.

You can read the full story here.