Legends & Lattes

"Legends and Lattes is about an orc. And after war, after fighting, after being what an orc is supposed to be, this orc decides one day that they don’t want to fight anymore. They want to open a coffee shop. Think about that – that’s what the book is about. It’s not about going on epic adventures, or fighting huge, tremendous evil. It’s literally about opening a coffee shop in a little city. I’ve met Travis Baldree a few times, and we’ve been on panels together. It turns out that not only is Travis Baldree a tremendous author who can write amazing books; not only does he narrate his own audiobooks and does them well; he also worked on video games that I’ve played in the past. You know when you see people that are that good at everything, and you think: Gosh, that’s freaking rad. That is so cool. I would never be able to do half of what he does. I never want to record an audio book with my voice on it, that’s crazy to me – I got to record the acknowledgements for my upcoming book, and even that felt weird. But to have him do the audio, to me, that shows just how deeply in love with his characters and his story he is, that he wants to be the one to give them life and a voice. Legends and Lattes , it blew up. It was huge, and it spawned a prequel: Bookshops and Bonedust . Man, if you had told me ten years ago that we could have a book about an orc opening a coffee shop and finding queer love… These are queer women, that’s what these books are about: queer love stories, and books, and the past and what the future could be, and how that could define you, and how it doesn’t always have to define you. All of these wonderful things come together in this perfect little package. It’s one of those ideas where you think: Of course, this makes sense. I wish I had thought of that. I have my own version of a tea shop in a book – but this one, this is just perfect. I would not have thought to do something like that. It is absolutely delightful. Yes! And it can also sometimes help explain the real world in certain ways. Maybe not a one to one analogue for what we are going through in the real world—but when you can talk about stuff like anxiety, like depression, like having a past that isn’t the best, but still having hope for the future and still learning and growing. That’s just tremendous. It’s so cool that we get to do stuff like that. I think that they can be. The problem is that humour is very subjective, so what’s funny to one person is not funny to another person. I’ve had people tell me that my sense of humour is exactly like theirs, and I’ve had people tell me that they don’t understand me in any way, shape or form. And that’s totally fine. But I think good humour writing is much, much harder than, say, writing a big battle scene. It has a cadence to it, a bounce, it has to be a call and response going back and forth. You have to work on those turns of phrase, the metaphors and similes and all those little things – because words can be twisted in such wonderful, delightful ways. That’s where humour can be unexpected. Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett —their turns of phrase are extraordinary."

"Travis Baldree is the only debut author that made the shortlist for the title of ‘Best Novel’, and was also declared the winner in the ‘Best New Writer’ category. Legends and Lattes is a cosy low fantasy in a secondary world, in the cosmopolitan city of Thune, where magical inhabitants of all species are commonplace. We follow Viv, an ogre looking to change careers, as she opens a coffee shop and attempts to convert the denizens of Thune to the delights of coffee and cinnamon buns. Threats from personal vendettas fuel the tension, while a gentle romance and a cast of unlikely friends provide the real delight. As Baldree told me , “I wrote this as someone who did the same job into their forties and decided they didn’t like it, moved to a new city, started a new career, and discovered a whole group of people.” This is a novel about ogres and succubae, but it is mostly about finding a balanced and meaningful life. And it’s funny . A warm hug of a book; must be read with baked goods. The audiobook is a particular treat, as Baldree—an audiobook narrator by trade—reads the book himself. Legends and Lattes was acquired by Tor after initially being self-published, and it now has a sequel, Bookshops and Bonedust. (Seanan McGuire, when we spoke to her about the best urban fantasy books , confirmed that new book to be “delightful.”)"