Sue London Writes

 Yesterday I published my 26th (I think, it's hard to keep up) book, To Woo a Rake. You can grab it on your favorite book e-tailer.

Beth Cato Knows Cheese

Hi, I'm Beth Cato, an author with a passion for cheese. I connected with Sue on Twitter because of cheese, because that's what that divine dairy coagulation does: brings things and people together. I'm honored to have been invited here to make a guest post on this God and Cheese Day.

I've always loved cheese, but I didn't discover the artisanal stuff until my adult years. After a few years of trying new cheeses here and there, I realized I should start tracking my effort so that I would know when I had something new and what pairings worked best. This was both a good idea and also a case of, 'Oh no, what have I done?' 

My Cheese Log started in 2015. It's now 2023, and it is near 180,000 words. Probably 2/3 of that is description from labels and cheesemaker/vendor websites, but I also note where I bought it, what I paid, how I ate it, and other relevant personal details around the eating experience. In 2019, I arranged a once-in-a-lifetime trip to England and Scotland around taking a day trip to the Wensleydale Creamery. I've learned what cheeses I can safely haul home in my luggage on long plane trips (aged, dryer cheese can manage without refrigeration for long stints). When I visited New York City for the first time last October, I hit up Zabar's and hauled nine blocks of cheese back to Arizona. Yes, I've had airport security search my bag several times, too, as they deemed my cheese "suspicious." I share pictures of my acquisitions online, and my friends send me about every possible cheese meme out there, multiple times. My love of cheese, weirdly enough, has become part of my author brand. 

Cheese also plays a big role in my new book, A Thousand Recipes for Revenge, which comes out on June 1st from 47North. It integrates food magic into a setting inspired by musketeer-era France, so you know there's a lot of bread, wine, and of course, cheese. 

Writers are often told "write what you know." Well, I know cheese!

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Nebula Award-nominated Beth Cato is the author of A THOUSAND RECIPES FOR REVENGE from 47North (June 2023) plus two fantasy series from Harper Voyager. She’s a Hanford, California native now residing in a far distant realm, usually with one or two cats in close orbit. Follow her at BethCato.com and on Twitter at @BethCato.

My Name Is...

 We have a lot of amazing toys, because that's just how we roll. One of our movies is Princess Bride. We both read the book about the time we started dating and then saw the movie together, so this year for our dating anniversary hubs got me the quoting Inigo Montoya bust. Push a button on the back of his base to hear one of his six iconic phrases. And he came with a little handbook for vengeance! 

It's titled Meditations on Vengeance, and it looks almost exactly like a miniature version of my copy of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius just, ya know, more vengeancy.

Cheese To You

 One of my cheese bucket list items is to visit Cheese to You in Lexington, Virginia. A co-worker recommended it when we were in the town for a conference and regretfully I didn't make it there are the time. Years have passed, but the cheese shop remains. And remains sassy.

Google image by TB, local guide

The Dark Side

No, I'm not talking about the Force, at least not directly. I ran across an article about Jung's take on the Shadow and it's been a few years since I did my deep dive on Jung (inspired by the Synchronicity album, so that gives you a hint how long it's been). You can watch the whole thing as a video:

Or you can read it on their website. I'm a text person so I haven't watched the video yet.

It's been awhile since I've considered my shadow self, and now that I'm older and wiser (at least older) it feels like I have more perspective on it, but less instinct of what that shadow might be. Am I more integrated, or more repressed? Difficult to say. I feel like at my best I am easygoing, accepting, and creative, and at my worst I am difficult, judging, and controlling. The other language I use to understand this are my Myers-Briggs personality type of INFP where my shadow (all INFP shadows) is a dark version of ESTJ. This has come out under stress at my day job a number of times.

If you know your MBTI you can check out the description of your assumed shadow at Introvert, Dear.

Another article for exploring your shadow is this one from Mindfulness Muse. Personality Club has an interesting analysis of Shadow Functions. You may not know how functions work, but if you do it is an interesting read.

A quick visual primer on what the functions are all about:

A quick visual primer on who has what primary functions:

As an INFP my primary and shadow functions look like this:

So, an ESTJ's strengths are my weaknesses. I find this particular analysis fascinating because of the naming of the shadows. It makes me realize that most of my (INFP) and hubs (INTP) conflicts are solidly in that 'opposing role' territory where I have extroverted feeling and he has extroverted thinking. Personality Club writes about the Opposing Role: "This function acts in opposition to your dominant function, questioning the way it sees the world and the goals it sets. This is often the part of you that’s stubborn, argumentative, and refuses to go along with others and events. Basically, this is the part that will lash out when your ego is under threat. If used positively it can be used to strengthen and back up the dominant function, but few people use it in this way."

The most alien function for me is Introverted Thinking, and that doesn't surprise me. My husband, an INTP, has a brilliantly tidy and organized mind and I... do not. I mean sure, I think a lot, but everything is either very simple and linear or it's story. I'm really good friends with my fourth function, Extroverted Thinking, which is how I've succeeded at work in things like project management. It's why one of my favorite ways to relax is doing a crossword or logic puzzle. Introverted Thinking, when done right, is very rich and complicated thinking. Yeah, not so much. No science discovery prizes for me. I have a certifiable squirrel brain that leaps from thing to thing, never dwelling too deeply on anything logical or facty. To dwell I need story. Emotion. But apparently if I will just dig deeply enough the demon I will find is Introverted Thinking.

What do you know about your Dark Side?