Tim Starnes here, I'm the founder and creative director for Ethereal Crack's Ghost Tours, which grew to be the largest ghost tour agency in the U.S. (And quite possibly the world) specializing in ghost tours in North and South Carolina small towns. Having started this business from scratch, creating a new formula for ghost tours which has begun to be widely used. (Hour-long short format paired with downtown walking routes, rather than direct-to-location.)

 

Currently, I'm on the pre-publishing publicity campaign for my first book, Agony: Suffering Yesterday, Entertaining Today - a creative nonfiction cookbook centered around disasters from 1400 to 2000, and featuring a cast of Bradbury-esque time travelers who are forced along by a university research project. The book is signed with Adelaide Books and posed for an October 2020 release. I'm beating the media circuit promoting the book, as well as talking about some of the rather revolting occurrences that happen within it. On-show topics can range from the strange recipes, urban legends, or ghastly medical facts included in the book. There are also conversation topics of brand building using a specific image, the dark side of human nature (why these topics are attractive), and the creative process. If the book is of interest, a full 70 page chapter from the book, the chapter on traveling in the 1900s (The Titanic, Orient Express, and Hindenburg) is available for reading beforehand.

 

A perfect Halloween conversation piece! You will find my contact information in the signature. I look forward to hearing from you.

Over five hundred thousand years ago, this swinging party we’re having would have not been possible, as we now of course have the advantage of indoor cooking, plumbing of both cold and hot water, music with no effort, and ready-made meals sold in semi-hygienic supermarkets.

Following this, I’m inviting you to join us on a trip.

 

This will be a trip through the course of human history, examining the diseases and disasters of yesterday, and how that these agitations along the course of history can aid us today in hosting a successful party. To help make sure you understand, and earn you course credit if you’re in community college, we’re going to experience these disasters firsthand. That’s right – get your tissues ready for a stay at a poorhouse in Milan during the height of the plague, a blanket and bottle of whiskey for our stay at the Confederate battlefield hospital during the Battle of Gettysburg, lifejacket for a sail on the Titanic, and a copy of all of your insurance forms for a stay at a modern day hospital bar, to recover from all of our educational experiences.

 

Agony is the mixture of three types of book in one - A historical cookbook combined with information on food-borne disease from 1400 to 2000, joined with home entertaining - as we explore ways that we can use the pestilence of yesterday to help inform our choices on hosting a great party today - all with a bit of fiction tossed in for good fun.

 

Chapter Outline:

Chapter One: Introduction, modern party planning basics, introduction to the fictional characters who will be present in the book as guides.

Chapter Two: Recipes of the 1400s. Foods in a plague colony.

Chapter Three: Recipes of the 1500s. Foods of European lower-classes.

Chapter Four: Recipes of the 1600s. Foods of the French elite.

Chapter Five: Recipes of the 1700s. Popular foods of the colonies.

Chapter Six: Recipes of the 1800s. Confederate and Union army camp foods.

Chapter Seven: Recipes of the 1900s. Foods on the Titanic, Orient Express, and Hindenburg.

Chapter Eight: Alcoholic drink recipes of the 2000s.

 

Mixed in with these recipes are small flash-fiction chapters around the time-travelers guiding the reader along. Satan joins the group - he evolves as the chapters go on - being a physical presence in the beginning of the book, to an ethereal voice from an internet cord in the 2000's.

 

Pull quotes on disease and urban legends share space with recipes related to their subject. Mad cow disease for steaks, on and on.