Heidi: Thank you so much for joining us, Ryan. To start off, could you give us an introduction to who you are and what you do?
Ryan Rose: My name is Ryan Rose; I use he/him pronouns. I grew up in Florida and got out of there as quickly as I could. Growing up as a queer boy was hard at times, but I had a great support network. I was very happy to move to California.
It was in California where I found my writing voice and was opened up to an entirely new world of food, which made its influence on the book. I’ve always been a reader of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Those stories have been with me since I was a little kid. I was always telling my own stories and seeing what I could get people to believe.
As I was figuring out my path in college, I thought I would write as a hobby. Eventually, story after story, it got a little better. Something about 7 Recipes for Revolution just seemed to really strike true. It felt like "the one" in a way that the previous ones hadn’t. Today, I work for the University of California, Berkeley, in democracy and tech policy. My days can be very dark, so working on these books—having characters who don’t normally get to succeed do terrible but powerful things—has been a bright light.
Heidi: You mentioned inspiration from science fiction. Who were your biggest inspirations in terms of authors or books you grew up on?
Ryan Rose: I read pretty extensively. My original inspirations were the Western canon of fantasy that everybody is familiar with: Tolkien and the Inheritance cycle. As I got older, I got a lot more interested in stranger stories. N.K. Jemisin’s books leap out as the first time where I was like, "Oh, you can do this kind of stuff in fantasy."
For 7 Recipes specifically, I was really into the idea of science fantasy. Gideon the Ninth was coming into the queer space and becoming very popular. Specifically, I’ve read a lot of those stories like Name of the Wind and Empire of the Vampire that use framing devices. I loved the idea of an unreliable narrator who could be both loved and hated for the things that he did, and the idea of a Western setting that felt different.
Heidi: I actually have the book right here: 7 Recipes for Revolution. I was hooked from the very first line: "Before he was Papric the Butcher, he was Papric a butcher." Could you introduce the book and tell us what made you want to write this?
Ryan Rose: 7 Recipes for Revolution is about a character named Patrick. He exists in a very stratified, dystopian society where the elites can get basically superpowers from butchering giant kaiju creatures and eating their meat. Patrick is a butcher, but being from the common class, he is not permitted to eat the meat that he butchers to attain those godly powers. That allows the society to oppress him.
The story follows him as he breaks from the mold of what’s expected of him. He has always wanted to be a chef, and he gets his hands on some of that meat—maybe a bit illicitly—and everything spirals out of control. He accidentally invents a new superpower, basically a new recipe, that makes him 20 meters tall. It’s very hard to hide that in a city of 600,000 people, especially when there’s a kaiju on the loose.
He gets wrapped up in a rebel faction’s pursuit of revolution. He tries to balance how he feels about the risk that puts on his moms and his desire to be a chef as he is accepted into the elite society and their culinary school. We find out from the very beginning that he is being tried for some heinous crimes—murder, cannibalism—and the story delves into why that was the choice he made.
Heidi: You mentioned "kaiju" a couple of times. Could you explain what that is for those who might not know?
Ryan Rose: Kaiju is a Japanese word from the culture of imagining giant monsters. You might see it in Ultraman, Attack on Titan, or Godzilla, which is probably the most famous in Western society. It’s the idea of feeling small and wondering where these monsters come from, whether from space or the Earth.
I enjoyed that so many books I grew up with included giant dragons, but then I got disappointed that Western imagination seemed to stop with fire-breathing dragons. I created my own taxonomy of giant monsters that live in this world called MFON.
Heidi: The story has very strong revolutionary overtones. What inspired you to write about rising up?
Ryan Rose: I think it’s a very classic storytelling device. You take your farm boy in the countryside, the king is evil, and all of these things. It stems from a lot of history. But I’ve always found that the main characters in those stories often come from very idyllic, heteronormative norms.
So much of that is influenced by masculinity and father figures. You almost can’t read one of those stories without an absentee father or a murdered father who was actually a king. I really wanted to reflect the queer community that I grew up in, where you see boys who are raised by two women. I wanted to tell that classic revolution story from the perspective of someone who was raised differently and isn't going to appreciate the same masculine norms, but still has his own sense of justice. Much of the internal conflict for Patrick is asking, "Am I doing the right thing?" as he becomes a reluctant figurehead.
Heidi: This year our theme for Penguicon is "Penguicon Pride." I’d like to talk about the inclusivity in your book. You introduce characters with they/them pronouns before identifying them as he or she, which is a great way to introduce that language. What does that inclusivity mean to you?
Ryan Rose: One of the great privileges I feel with this book is that I don’t think the book I wrote would have been published 10 years ago. Back then, a lot of queer storytelling in fantasy was about a heteronormative society that is restricting characters and making them feel lesser for their identity. I’ve never really been interested in writing those kinds of stories.
I wanted people to feel what I feel in a lot of the queer communities that I’m in, which is just open arms. Having a character who identifies as bisexual with two moms being as authentic to himself as possible, I figured I could get away with introducing every character with "they" until they say otherwise. When I was world-building, I thought that if I start from the beginning with it being queer-normative, I can talk about queer oppression in a different way that feels more positive. Getting to write queer characters rising up against oppressive situations and winning is something I’m proud to add to the community.
Heidi: It’s not just the main part of the story; it’s just part of the world. It’s not a drama factor, it’s just who he is. I also wanted to touch on the food. You played with language a lot—like characters being "starving angry." Where did that food-centric world come from?
Ryan Rose: The first and deepest inspiration is that my family has always been a food family. All of our experiences that I can really remember have centered around a major meal. My family was brutally honest about food and having particular tastes. It was also very important to my parents that I always thank servers and chefs and reflect on the fact that they were not only giving us an experience, but doing us the kindness of not having to cook for ourselves. Eating is a basic function, and when someone else does that for you, it’s an act of care.
When I was walking home very late from work one day, I was very angry about my situation at work and I thought of a cleaver going into meat—the violence and the acceptance of it. We slaughter animals with such a blasé attitude sometimes in mass factory farming, and I thought: "factory farm boy."
One of my favorite movies is Pacific Rim. There’s a small sequence where a character steals parts of the kaiju to sell to pharmaceutical companies. I thought, what if it was food? I thought about a society based around one source of food and how impactful it would be to a class system. In French cooking, it’s so precise and there is a whole hierarchy in the kitchen. I contrasted that against my upbringing where everybody pitched in—if you didn't do the cooking, you did the dishes. I thought about street tacos in Los Angeles and Spanish heritage foods, Mexican foods, and Tex-Mex. That really speaks to this book, contrasted with the British and French traditions of fine dining.
Heidi: Out of the recipes in the book, have you made all of them?
Ryan Rose: There is one specific recipe that I won't get into because it’s a bit of a spoiler that I have not made, and I will say very clearly that I have not made it! But everything else in Book 1 was something that I had made dozens of times growing up.
What’s actually most interesting is that every meal in Book 1 contains meat. At the time that I started writing the book, I had stopped eating meat for health reasons and have since gone vegan. I was like, "Okay, I need to retest these things." I spent weeks figuring out alternatives. I would make the meat dish for a friend to try, and then test it next to a vegan substitute style. That taught me so much about flavors. I’ve had a few people reach out to say they tried to make the recipes and the resounding feedback is that it’s too spicy for some people—which means I succeeded.
Heidi: What do you want people to walk away with after reading this book?
Ryan Rose: First and foremost, I want people to have fun. There are so many amazing queer stories that have moments of laughter and sadness, but I wanted to get to the end and feel like I had a good time. I wanted people to close the book and feel satisfied, like a good meal.
I’ve heard wonderful things from readers who say they are using "Be a knife" as their new motto. I know who this book is not for—it’s definitely not for the weak-stomached. But for the people that get in and tuck into that meal, I just want them to feel satisfied.
Heidi: We have a lot of aspiring authors at Penguicon. What advice would you give to someone trying to write or get published for the first time?
Ryan Rose: I think the strongest quality any writer can develop is stubbornness. 7 Recipes is called that because it was my seventh book. There were six books I wrote before that that did not get me an agent and did not get me published. After the first one didn’t go anywhere, I had to stop and ask what I could learn from it, but also how I could still believe that I’m capable.
It took me two and a half years to write the first one, and then it sat in a drawer. You have to be stubborn enough to keep going.
Heidi: Is there a sequel coming out?
Ryan Rose: Yes! The sequel is called 8 Tastes for Treachery. It is coming out on July 21st, 2026. It follows Patrick as he leaves his home city for the first time and goes out into the wider world to see if there are other people like him and other ways of eating meat. It’s been a lot of fun to write.