Eat Like an Author: MP Johnson

When most people get bored, they eat. When I get bored, I brainstorm new series and features for the blog, and THEN eat. And not too long ago, as I was brainstorming and contemplating what I wanted to eat, I thought how cool it would be to have a mini-foodie series where authors share the things they like to eat. Photos and recipes and all. And so I asked them, and amazingly they responded, and I dubbed it EAT LIKE AN AUTHOR. 


Today, MP Johnson shares his love of all things sugar and sweet! Holy moly, that's a lot of candy!!!

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Last weekend I went to the biggest candy store in Minnesota. It’s a giant yellow barn out in the middle of nowhere. It’s filled with candy. There’s more than 100 kinds of root beer and more than 100 kinds of licorice. They even have root beer flavored licorice. I bought a big box full of candy and soda or, as I like to call it, writer fuel.

I got some old favorites, like Bottle Caps, which are becoming increasingly difficult to find around here, and Cow Tails, a weird, cream-filled dough candy that has always been hard to find, probably because it’s absurd. There’s something not right about a candy that lists its primary ingredient as flour. Anyway, I love Cow Tails.

I had to try some new stuff too. I bought banana soda because I love bananas. I also got some crazy ass imported candy from Denmark because it had a howling werewolf on the package. Weer Wolven Drop. It’s black licorice with some sort of caramel ooze injected inside. It’s gross as fuck. I’ve eaten half the bag.

Sugary junk food is the only thing I consume while writing, outside of the occasional glass of water. This has been true since I was a kid. I think it helps me tap into the spazzy part of my brain that my stories come from. And I type faster when I’ve eaten a lot of sugar too. Although sometimes it also makes me keep standing up and jumping around my apartment, so it kind of balances out.

As a special bonus, I find that if I eat a ton of candy before bed, one of the following happens: 1) I lay awake for hours thinking about stories, or 2) I fall asleep and have really fucked up dreams that I can turn into stories!

MP Johnson’s Recommended Writing Candy:

Bottle Caps

Cow Tails (The vanilla or caramel apple kind. The strawberry kind sucks.)

Junior Mints

Laffy Taffy (Throw away the apple ones. Banana is best.)

Root beer (Either Virgil’s or Bull Dog. Fuck that A&W shit.)

This is not a complete list.

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MP Johnson’s short stories have appeared in more than 35 publications. His debut book, The After-Life Story of Pork Knuckles Malone, was released in 2013 by Bizarro Pulp Press. His second book, Dungeons & Drag Queens, is out now from Eraserhead Press. He is the creator of Freak Tension zine, a B-movie extra and an obsessive music fan currently based in Minneapolis. Learn more at www.freaktension.com.

Also, check out his latest novel Dungeons & Drag Queens on Amazon.