I'm baaack. Did you miss me?

The last month has been a blur of fiction and food and precious little else. As you may know, the Fall Fiction Frenzy (31 stories in 31 days) is going on at Dark Valentine. Coming up we have stories by Brian Trent, Cormac Brown, Christine Pope, and Barbara Emrys, among others. Stories already posted include my own "Animal Lover," and "In the Red Room," John Donald Carlucci's "I Love You to Pieces," A. H. Sargeant's "Lost in Transit" and many many more.

I've also been finalizing the order of stories in my upcoming fiction collection "Just Another Day in Paradise." Due out this month.

As for food, I've been getting up close and personal with it all month. In September I worked with Word of Mouth Catering on a film shoot. (Birds of a Feather. You can see a trailer for the original short film here.) It was 113 one of the days we shot. No AC because of sound. Good times. Actually, I had a blast but it was pretty labor intensive.

This weekend I worked on an emergency gig involving 250 wedding guests and a caterer who simply ... decided he wasn't feeling it and bailed out. The day before the wedding. Let's just say I never want to bake another pita chip in my life but a good time was had by all. The biggest hit, chicken salad on the aforementioned pita chips. Couldn't be simpler:

2 large cans chicken (or three of the smaller cans)

Shred the chicken with a fork.

Add lemon-pepper to taste. (I like a lot of it.)

Add only enough mayonnaise to make everything bind together. (This is important. I normally loathe mayonnaise, but in this recipe, it's not intrusive at all.)

Eat with crackers or chips. Also good with plain pita bread. Enjoy.

Except for the one person who said, "This tuna fish tastes funny," the guests snarfed it.