What do you do when you can open “hyper-space shunt” into a “pocket universe” to store things? Keep some vodka ice cold for any occasion!
Who needs to shake a martini anyway? Be cooler than Bond with think this week's Pick Your Poison—where we create a cocktail inspired by a recently published mystery, thriller, or crime novel—the “Pocket Kangaroo” cocktail, inspired by Curtis C. Chen's unique outer-space thriller Kangaroo Too!
On the way home from his latest mission, secret agent Kangaroo’s spacecraft is wrecked by a rogue mining robot. The agency tracks the bot back to the Moon, where a retired asteroid miner—code named “Clementine” —might have information about who’s behind the sabotage.
Clementine will only deal with Jessica Chu, Kangaroo’s personal physician and a former military doctor once deployed in the asteroid belt. Kangaroo accompanies Jessica as a courier, smuggling Clementine’s payment of solid gold in the pocket universe that only he can use.
What should be a simple infiltration is hindered by the nearly one million tourists celebrating the anniversary of the first Moon landing. And before Kangaroo and Jessica can make contact, Lunar authorities arrest Jessica for the murder of a local worker.
Jessica won’t explain why she met the victim in secret or erased security footage that could exonerate her. To make things worse, a sudden terror attack puts the whole Moon under lockdown. Now Kangaroo alone has to get Clementine to talk, clear Jessica’s name, and stop a crooked scheme which threatens to ruin approximately one million vacations.
But old secrets are buried on the Moon, and digging up the past will make Kangaroo’s future very complicated…
Read an excerpt from Kangaroo Too!
PICK YOUR POISON
“Pocket Kangaroo”
Ingredients:
– 2 oz. gin
– 3/4 oz. dry vermouth
– 2 dashes of orange bitters
– orange twist (garnish)
How to make the cocktail:
- Pour ingredients into a mixing tin with ice.
- Place in the pocket for a few seconds to give it that nice “vacuum of space” chill (or, ya know, just stir it well for 20 seconds or more).
- Strain into a chilled martini glass.
- Garnish with an orange twist.
So have a few “Pocket Kangaroo” cocktails, and don't forget to order your copy of Kangaroo Too today!
Check out Doreen Sheridan's review of Kangaroo Too!
To learn more or order a copy, visit:
Curtis C. Chen graduated from Viable Paradise (instructors included NYT-bestseller John Scalzi) and attended Clarion West (instructors included World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement winner John Crowley and Hugo/Nebula winner James Patrick Kelly). His short fiction has appeared in “Daily Science Fiction” and SNAFU and will be featured in Baen’s MISSION: TOMORROW. On top of all that, he’s a former software engineer and once built a cat-feeding robot. He lives in Vancouver, Washington.