Mixed Media Magazine

Interview with Award Winning Writer Alex Kingsley

Giant crabs, unlikely heroes, and writing empathy into a post-apocalyptic world

“If I’ve done my job, then you come away from one of my novels feeling better about the world than when you first started reading it.”

Mixed Media Magazine is pleased to interview Alex Kingsley, whose novel Empress of Dust was recently named Winner of the 2025 Small Spec Book Awards for Science Fiction. Set on a post-apocalyptic Earth ruled by sentient, gargantuan crab creatures, the book follows an unlikely protagonist navigating survival, moral responsibility, and the limits of empathy. In this conversation, Kingsley discusses the origins of the novel’s strange and striking world, their approach to character and compassion in science fiction, and how humor, tenderness, and danger coexist on the page.

“Empress of Dust” features gargantuan crab-like creatures ruling a post-apocalyptic Earth. What sparked your fascination with monstrous-but-sentient beasts, and why crabs?

I have always been very attracted to the things that freak people out. When you’re queer or neurodivergent or disabled or I imagine really anything that makes you feel different from your peers, you tend to start to see yourself in the things that are often ignored or reviled. That’s why I am really drawn to the “gross” or “unsettling” stuff — pigeons, rats, fungus, and definitely monsters. Because, what even is a monster? What defines monstrousness? I try to stay away from the somewhat played out “but what if humans were the real monsters all along?” and instead look at the broader picture to ask, “Why must anyone be a monster? Why is this a category that exists? To what end? Who lives in this category, and why?” And really it tends to boil down to the question: “Why is divergence from the norm punished?” It turns out there’s not one straightforward answer. So yeah, if you look at my short fiction or my plays or any project I have coming out in the future, you’ll see a lot of CREATURES, and a lot of stuff that is, to put it bluntly, kinda fucked up.

The crabs themselves do have a specific backstory. When I was twelve I read The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. I found that actual story kind of dull, but then the protagonist accidentally travelled too far in the future and saw giant crabs and twelve year old me was like “Damn!!! This is sick as fuck!!!!” (except probably not in those words) and then the guy LEFT to go back to Victorian England!!! WHY would you choose Victorian England over giant crabs??? It made me angry for a long time, so I always had that unfulfilled promise of a crab-future in the back of my mind. Then as an adult I learned about the theory of carcinization (ie evolution tends towards crab because the crab has evolved independently so many times, implying that crab is in fact the ideal form for animal life on Earth) and the conditional immortality of the lobster (the unfortunately false belief that if nothing kills a lobster it will live forever). Together, all these things formed a pretty coherent image of a race of far-future functionally immortal crabs beasts, but I didn’t really have a sense of a story to put them in until I had a dream about desert scavengers. When I woke up, I felt like I had the whole story in front of me.

Harvard is described as small, anxious, and trembling—an unconventional sci-fi hero. What drew you to centering the story on a character who doesn’t fit the typical action-protagonist mold?

Honestly I’ve always hated the action-protagonist archetype. As a kid I was very resistant to superhero stuff — the protagonist was always too competent. It made the story uninteresting to me. Where are the stakes? Where’s the challenge? Beyond that, though, I also didn’t feel very represented. I’ve never had the same physical abilities as my peers. I’ve always been uncoordinated, weak, and like Harvard, very shaky. Only as an adult did I find out that a lot of this was due to a disability. I thought I was just bad at doing things, and all these action heroes only reminded me of that fact.

Basically, my competencies were not the standard competencies you see represented in media, so I was also drawn to characters who seem totally ill-equipped for the situation they end up in. I think this was part of the reason that I loved Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as a kid. Arthur Dent was the perfect useless protagonist. And that’s what made the story so great! Like, no, he’s not gonna have any of the skills required to go on a space adventure, but he will be kinda a bitch about it, and that’s what makes him so delightful to read.

Even more than that, though, I become attracted to characters who are underestimated because they have a skillset that seems useless, but is actually way more important than people think. That’s where Harvard came from. He’s a pretty terrible desert scavenger, but when he’s in a crisis, it’s not strength or intelligence that can save him — it’s compassion, curiosity, and creativity, all of which he has in spades.

To sum up, I think we as a society tend to value certain characteristics over others in the media we consume, and I strive to shift that balance. Give me more heroes who are soft. Give me more heroes who love so deeply it threatens to destroy them.

The novel puts Harvard in a moral dilemma between saving humans or siding with the “monsters.” How did you approach writing a story where empathy toward the ‘other’ becomes the core conflict?

With care, for sure. When writing a story involving the “what if we were wrong to vilify these people” plotline, there’s a lot of nasty tropes you can potentially fall into. My goal was to approach it from a place of authenticity. The crabs are not an allegory. They do not represent an existing group of people. They are crabs. And because alternative cognitions fascinate me so much, I put a lot of thought into how these crabs think, communicate, and build their societies.

One trope I really don’t like is “oh, I guess they were human after all!” because don’t living creatures that are inhuman still deserve our empathy? What is humanity the barometer for personhood? So what I really wanted to do was go the opposite direction. It’s not “we’re a lot more alike than we thought.” It’s, “actually we are incredibly different, but I will not let that stop me from respecting you.” I think that’s a way more interesting direction to take the story, and honestly, more relevant. We anthropomorphize way too much, and that is really becoming a problem with the way we treat AI. It’s crucial, now more than ever, that we are practicing our ability to imagine the perspective of a non-human entity, because ascribing human traits to non-human things can have serious consequences.

The book blends high-stakes adventure with humor, a tone you’re known for across your projects. How do you balance dark or dangerous worldbuilding with comedic or heartfelt moments?

To me, these things go hand in hand. It really all boils down to character, actually. I want these characters to feel as authentic as possible. First, I create a Little Guy, full of qualities and quirks and everything else that makes up a person. Then I put that Little Guy in a situation that is easily the worst possible situation for that character to be in. Not only does this create a high stakes conflict, but it’s also an opportunity for comedy, because that character is probably going to have a reaction that seems completely incongruous with that situation.

Like, putting Harvard in the middle of what’s basically a Kaiju battle is 10x more dangerous than putting any other character in that same situation because he doesn’t know how to handle combat, but because he is the way he is, he’s probably more worried about doing something wrong and embarrassing himself than actually dying. Princeton, on the other hand, sees everything as a game because he’s never had to worry about the things that Harvard has. That means he walks into very obvious danger all the time, and then when he realizes too late that he fucked up, he can’t help but try and minimize the situation because he can only cope by pretending it’s not that bad.

Like one of my favorite scenes in the sequel, Relic of Haven, involves him trying really hard to act non-chalant about the fact that he’s been bitten by a venomous snake; he’s like “pft that didn’t even hurt” and then goes to puke behind a tree. Both of these combinations make for drama, but they also make for some pretty funny moments, in my opinion.

But character is also where the heartfelt stuff comes from! As Sol Stein says, you have to know the characters in the car before the crash. A tender moment is only tender for the audience if they really know and care for these people. And often what makes a moment like this so emotionally impactful is the fact that we’re seeing these characters heal from deep emotional wounds. It wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for some of the darker aspects of the story.

So I guess what I’m saying is: the darkness, the danger, the humor, and heart are all intrinsically connected, and the connective tissue that unites them is character.

Reviewers describe the book as “wild and weird” yet deeply human.
What emotional experience did you most hope readers would walk away with?

If there’s one word to encapsulate the goal of just about all my writing, it’s warmth. (There are some notable exceptions to this. Like I would not call “This is Not a Place of Honor” or “Little Acid Girl” particularly warm-and-fuzzy stories.) Like I am definitely very cruel to my characters. I do not envy the situations I have put them in. But since character is the thing that compels me to write stories, the challenges they face are not as much about plot as they are about developing and exploring those characters’ values and relationships with each other. If I’ve done my job, then you come away from one of my novels feeling better about the world than when you first started reading it.

As a writer, comedian, and game designer, how do your cross-disciplinary creative roles influence your approach to worldbuilding and character design?

Tons of ways! Game design has really changed the way I look at worldbuilding and character. In order to play a TTRPG, you need to have a really strong sense of the world in order to interact with it. Whenever I start creating a world, I make a worldbook. A lot of the information in the worldbook doesn’t end up getting used in the novel, but it’s a great reference for myself. Include basic facts like geography and climate as well as more complex sociological things like cultural values, religion, economy, and class system. One of the biggest ones is language. I have to keep a glossary of all the special vocabulary they use, because I know I will forget. If there’s a magic system, I need to have that codified as well! It’s basically the same as writing the core mechanics for a game, except I’m the only player.

The same is true of character. For every protagonist I write, I make a character dossier, which looks a lot like a character sheet minus the stats. I’ll answer a ton of core questions about the character (motivations, important relationships, fears, etc.) as well as a bunch of questions that seem inconsequential (favorite food, best childhood memory, etc.) because all of that really informs the character and makes them feel like a full individual. This one comes partially from TTRPGs but it also comes from my background in theater. I would always write a bio for any character I played, and the questions were very similar. In fact, when I direct a show, I use a table work document with the actors that looks very similar to my character dossier.

Character is really where theater, games, and writing all coalesce. Playing a character, whether on stage or in a game, is very similar to writing one. When portraying a character onstage, you have to be considering how they speak, how they move, how they hold their body, what they’re doing with their face, etc. You need to know every little detail about them in order to convincingly embody them. In a game, the physical aspects are less important (though you’ll likely do some physical character description) but unlike in a play, you’ll be writing your dialogue yourself, completely on the fly. TTRPGs are more like a form of long form improv than they are like a stage play. Both of those skills are necessary when writing a character. You need to know what they’ll say, how they’ll say it, what they’ll do, and how they’ll move in any situation.

Get the book on Amazon!

Find out more about the author here.

A Lost Generation? It’s Not Just Male Writers, Academics and Media-types Who’ve suffered from Anti-White Racism in America

America has more than one “lost” generation of white men

When I read Jacob Savage’s widely praised essay on “the lost generation” of young white men in America—a generation of men who, like himself, have lost out on prestigious jobs in media and academia for no reason other than the lightness of their skin and the equipment dangling between their legs—I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of recognition. More than a tinge, actually.

You see, between 2015 and 2018, I was a DPhil student at the University of Oxford. My research was on the Reformation in England, the great schism that produced the Protestant and Catholic Churches and set the modern world on its course in so many different ways. I focused on how ordinary people experienced the momentous changes set in motion by Henry VIII’s marital problems and whether really, on the local level, much changed for them at all. My answer was—yes and no. It was more interesting than that, of course.

By most obvious metrics—the ones that are supposed to matter—my research was a success. It was entirely funded by scholarships, and I finished within three years. I passed with minor corrections, nothing more than a few spelling and formatting errors in a 100,000 word document. While doing my research, I also published more than half a dozen peer-reviewed articles. Most graduate students publish none. One of them was in an international journal established academics would be lucky to be in.

Once upon a time, I would have been well on my way to a comfortable, safe career as an academic, probably at Oxford or Cambridge, or at least a very good second-tier university (a.k.a. a “redbrick”).

But 2018 was not that time.

It was clear to me from very early on that I wouldn’t get a job doing postdoctoral research or teaching. My research was scholarly, but passé: There was no trendy theory to speak of, apart from some leaven from my previous training as an anthropologist at Cambridge, nor did I touch on “important” present-day concerns like gender, race, white privilege, colonialism, the patriarchy, disability, and so on.

(During my viva voce exam, the final, in-person, test that decides whether you get the doctorate or not, I remember being asked, “Where are all the women?” The questioner was, of course, a woman herself, and her remark was intended to be devastating, somehow. I simply replied that my sources didn’t say much about women’s religion as opposed to men’s—which was actually true—and so of course I had my work reflect that, rather than pretending otherwise. As an answer, it was simultaneously right and wrong.)

There was something else, too. It’s hard to know, because of course you never really know. Nobody says, “Sorry, you’re a white man: We’re not giving you the job.” You simply never get the interview, no matter how many applications you write. But I was in no doubt that my plummy voice, Willy Wonka name (Charles Cornish-Dale) and (relative) lack of melanin counted against me.

Never mind that my family has strong working-class roots; that nobody has ever paid a penny to send me to a public (i.e. private) school; that all my achievements were my own, through hard work and, of course, some native intelligence—none of that mattered. There was no place for special pleading on those terms.

Mine is hardly a sob story. I quickly landed on my feet, and ended up doing something far more interesting and engaging than writing about obscure saints’ cults in medieval England.

But anyway. That’s enough about me.

There’s much to be praised about Jacob Savage’s essay. It’s well researched, well fleshed out with anecdotes, interviews and human interest, in addition to plenty of plain hard fact and numbers.

It’s impossible to doubt the phenomenon he describes. Here’s one particularly striking set of numbers, for example:

“In 2011, the year I moved to Los Angeles, white men were 48 percent of lower-level TV writers; by 2024, they accounted for just 11.9 percent. The Atlantic’s editorial staff went from 53 percent male and 89 percent white in 2013to 36 percent male and 66 percent white in 2024. White men fell from 39 percent of tenure-track positions in the humanities at Harvard in 2014 to 18 percent in 2023.”

Anybody who raises awareness of any facet of anti-white racism deserves praise. The original tweet announcing the article got something like 10 million views. Even the Vice President was talking about it.

But what’s also clear is that Savage is only telling part of the story—the part that directly concerns him and his own personal interests.

Some of the most perceptive criticisms of Savage’s essay have come from Jeremy Carl, who wrote a fantastic book, The Unprotected Class, about the history and trajectory of anti-white racism in America.

As Carl points out, so many white-collar whites and white liberals like Jacob Savage had little to say “with respect to the travails of earlier generations of White working class men, who had their blue-collar jobs shipped overseas and who were chased from their neighbourhoods decades before.”

I’m reminded of Solzhenitsyn’s immortal remarks in The Gulag Archipelago about Soviet Russia’s intellectual class. The exact phrasing escapes me, but the gist is this: the intellectuals only started giving a shit about the existence of the gulags when they started being sent there themselves. For over a decade, millions of stolid peasants had marched grimly and silently into the freezing wastes of Siberia, never to return. Great hecatombs were offered up to the Dialectic and the Materialist Conception of History, and nothing was written or said. It was only when Stalin came for the wordcels, who assumed their position as the vanguard and apologists of the regime would last forever, that suddenly—suddenly!—the Revolution, the Class Struggle, the Utopia had been betrayed.

Not so.

Because of Savage’s narrow focus on the world of his own experience, he sees the key moment as being about 2014, the beginning of the so-called “Great Awokening.” And when it comes to blame, he assiduously avoids blaming all the groups who have benefited at the expense of white men—women, minorities—and instead blames the previous generation of white men for essentially “pulling up the ladder” and preventing millennial white men from following in their footsteps.

They did so, Savage claims, through a misguided wish to improve the world, and also through moral cowardice, in not speaking out.

There is some truth to this, of course. I know from my own experience at Oxford, where my supervisor—a liberal white boomer—barely lifted a finger to help or mentor me. Jeremy Carl, who was a graduate student in the 1990s, also agrees.

But it wasn’t just pusillanimity. It was also malice and genuine ideological fervor that led the left, in particular, to create, over many decades, a towering edifice of anti-white racism that made white Americans, in many cases, second-class citizens in their own nation, whether they were intellectuals or factory workers. A nation their forefathers built from nothing.

This process began in at least the mid-1960s, when the Civil Rights Act was passed, creating evil institutions like the Community Relations Services—that’s the one that used to cover up anti-white crimes by forcing the families of victims to deny a racial motivation in public, until Trump disbanded it.

But we could probably go back even further if we wanted to, to trace the roots of anti-white racism in America, and the horrible idea that white people, and especially white men, should be dispossessed, disenfranchised and, ultimately, replaced.

In the end, Savage has no real prescription for the problem. He can only describe one part of it. Thankfully, others do. I’ll leave the final, blistering words to Jeremy Carl.

“The establishment that denied opportunities to Savage and his millennial and Gen-Z White male cohort are not, as Savage seemingly implies, basically good people who had the single moral or intellectual flaw that they happened to discriminate against White men. They are horrible people, people who are totally unworthy of controlling the commanding heights of our society. They are moral monsters, racists, sexists, and intellectual cowards. And they, and the corrupt institutions they have run for decades, must either be reformed completely with their incumbent leadership ousted—or else destroyed.”

Exploring the Wonderfully Strange: A Conversation with Evan

Fresh off a Fantasy-category win at the Small Spec Book Awards, Evan shares insights into their worldbuilding, influences, and writing journey

Evan J. Peterson is a boundary-pushing voice in contemporary speculative fiction and game writing, blending dark fantasy, horror, humor, and queer creativity into something unmistakably their own. Winner of the Fantasy category in the 2024 Small Spec Book Awards, Evan has built a body of work that spans fiction, poetry, and interactive storytelling and their debut novel Better Living Through Alchemy.

With work appearing in Weird Tales, Nightmare Magazine, Queers Destroy Horror, and numerous anthologies, Evan continues to champion stories that challenge genre expectations and celebrate the wonderfully strange. In today’s conversation, we commemorate Evan’s recent award win in the Fantasy category at the Small Spec Book Awards and explore the ideas, inspirations, and worldbuilding behind their writing and creative life.

I wanted the book to look like the Seattle I see around me: a community of immigrants and children of immigrants, of Indigenous people who never disappeared, of trans people and queer people and witchy people and weirdos.

Evan J. Peterson

How did you begin your writing journey?

My parents always read to me when I was a kid. Once I learned how to write, I just started writing stories and didn’t know where to stop. I suppose I still don’t. I always wanted to be an author, especially of SFF and horror.

Better Living Through Alchemy mixes occult noir with urban fantasy in a very Seattle-specific way. What aspects of the city’s culture or atmosphere most shaped the book’s tone?

Seattle is a city full of misfits. The rock n roll history, plus the tech boom, plus some other elements has made this a great city to be queer, to be an artist, etc. There’s also autistic spectrum people everywhere, which creates an interesting chemistry. I wanted the book to look like the Seattle I see around me: a community of immigrants and children of immigrants, of Indigenous people who never disappeared, of trans people and queer people and witchy people and weirdos.

Kelly Mun’s heightened sense of smell is such a unique detective trait. How did you develop that ability as a narrative tool, and what does it allow you to explore that a traditional detective story wouldn’t?

Thanks! There’s a degree of synesthesia to claireolfaction that is missing from the other “claires.” Kelly has her detective practice, and the addition of her psychic smell is two-fold. On one psychic level, she can smell the actual chemical scents connected to an event–blood where violence has occurred, cash where money is a central element of the case. But on another level entirely, she gets synesthetic impressions of ideas-as-scents. Lies smell acidic, etc.

Your work often blends multiple genres. What draws you to hybrid genres, and how do you balance them in your storytelling?

I’m pretty antigenre in general. I did a lot of club kid drag in the past, and the concept of “genderfuck” is something I started translating into “genrefuck.” I don’t try too hard to push something outside of a form or genre; rather, I let the story grow and be whatever strange little genre/gender/form it needs to be to express itself fully. The stories are genre-queer, and I try not to enforce a genre on them.

Non-Linear Investigations uses psychic and esoteric methods to solve crimes. How much of that comes from your own research into occult traditions versus playful invention?

Most of the esoteric tools used in the book are not my own invention. I love real world folk magic, hoodoo, and such. I also love the absurdity of imperialist cultures mistranslating native ideas, then believing this new mutant fakelore they’ve created is the authentic folk belief. Ti Kitha Demembre is a real thing, though she isn’t a real goddess or spirit. Hot foot powder and book-and-key are also real folk traditions. The dreamachine is real. The playfulness comes through the monsters and the magical phenomena, but the tools and practices are mostly real.

The drug ‘bardo’ sets off the central mystery. How did real-world conversations about harm, transformation, or altered states inform your worldbuilding around this substance?

I love speculative drugs. I’m a huge fan of William Burroughs, David Cronenberg, and other weirdos who explore fusions of magic, psychic phenomena, urban legend, and sci fi technology. As with the ethnic folk magic I reference throughout the book, there’s also a deep folklore to addiction culture and recreational drug culture. I wanted to treat my users as human beings, with the same respect I try to give to the folk practitioners I write about. And as Burroughs and Cronenberg would probably agree, one person’s recreational drug is another person’s intimate religious tool, and yet another person’s psycho-pharmaceutical medicine. That’s the fusion I’m really interested in: the artifact that can be magic and sacred and recreational and clinically tested, all at the same time.

Find out more and connect with Evan visit the authors official website!

Check out the book Better Living Through Alchemy on Amazon.

How to cook the perfect steak.

Everything you need to know to make a satisfying steak at home.

Cooking a steak perfectly can seem overwhelming. Which type of steak? How long to cook? What about seasoning and pan heat?
I’m going to answer all of those questions, and more, to get you cooking steak like a pro!
Plus I’ve got some fantastic sauces to serve with your steak.

Let’s start with the steak of course. I recommend a good quality thick (2-2.5cm cm thick) ribeye or sirloin steak with some fat running through it.
- Ribeye tends to have a chunk of fat in the middle and some smaller veins of fat (see image above).
- Sirloin just tends to just have the smaller veins of fat.
- We’re going to concentrate on those cuts, but I’ve also got a note on cooking fillet steak in the notes section of the recipe card.
DON’T be scared of seeing fat on your steak – some of the fat renders down to help ensure a juicy steak. We also crisp up that fat when it’s in the pan. Fat is GOOD!
What you do need to look out for is gristle – these are streaks of chewy/rubbery cartillage, that aren’t broken down during cooking. You sometimes find gristle as little wriggle lines of of-white in the steak. A little bit (that you can cut out when eating) is fine, but any more than that makes it a far less enjoyable steak.
For cooking the steak, we also need a high smoke point oil (such as sunflower oil), plenty of salt and freshly ground black pepper, a little butter, and if you want to to add some extra flavour, a few cloves of garlic and some fresh thyme or rosemary sprigs.
For a 2.5cm thick ribeye or sirloin, cooking to a MEDIUM level of doneness (more info further down the posts for different levels of doneness):
After taking the steak out of the fridge to bring it too room temperature, we coat the steak in oil on both sides, then add plenty of salt and pepper on both sides of the steak too.
Add the steak to a very hot pan – preferably cast iron.
Cook for 4 minutes, turning EVRY MINUTE.
During the last minute of cooking, add butter to the pan, plus a few lightly crushed, peeled garlic cloves and a couple of sprigs of thyme or rosemary. Baste the the steak with the butter during the last minute of cooking.
Take out of the pan and leave to rest for at least 4-5 minutes before serving.
If you like, you can serve with a delicious steak sauce (some ideas below), or top with some garlic butter.

PRO TIPS For the Perfect Steak

Type of pan:
Use a heavy-based frying pan (such as a cast iron) or a griddle pan. The retain the heat well, so the pan won’t go too cold when you add the steak to the pan. Cast iron pan also evenly distribute the heat, so you’re less likely to get hot spots, leading to uneven cooking.

Overcrowding:
Cook no more than 2 steaks at a time. If the pan is over-crowded, the heat will be reduced, meaning any liquid that comes out of the steaks won’t be able to evaporate quickly enough, and they’ll end up boiling instead of frying. That means no beautiful char, and therefore a lot less flavour.

Oil the steak:
Oil the steak, not the pan – this is so you get a nice even covering on the steak. You don’t have to worry about the oil not being hot when it goes on the steak. Our pan is going to be so hot, the oil will heat up instantly. Use a flavourless oil with a high smoke point – such as sunflower oil.

Season well:
As well as the oil, we want to season the steak generously with salt and freshly ground pepper.
Some people say that seasoning with pepper before cooking will cause the pepper to become bitter, but I have never found that.
The key is to use freshly ground black pepper that’s a little bit coarse. Don’t use fine pepper powder – that is more likely to burn.
You can make the pepper very coarse if you prefer it that way (just bash the pepper in bag with a rolling pin). Personally, I use a pepper grinder, so it’s just a little bit coarse.
You may think you’re adding too much pepper to the steak, but the flavour of the pepper ‘cooks in’ to the steak as you’re frying it, so it won’t be overwhelmingly peppery.

Steak thickness:
I tend to look for steak that is around 2cm-2.5cm thick. Any thicker than that and you will have to adjust the cooking timings, and are at risk over overcooking the outside of the steak, whilst the middle remains undercooked.

Don’t go straight from the fridge!
Cooking a steak right from the fridge is a BIG no no.
We’re cooking the steak for a short amount of time to get that perfect outside char. We really don’t want the steak to still be cold in the middle when we get to the char stage.

Type of steak:
My recommendation in most cases is to go for ribeye or sirloin steak. Look for a steak with thin veins of fat running through it. This fat will render down during cooking, resulting in a tender, juicy steak.
Try to avoid steak that has a big vein of gristle through it. No one wants to bite into that.
Also, don’t be afraid if the steak has a lovely fat strip of fat on that outside. That fat will give the steak more flavour during cooking. You don’t have to eat it (but I always nibble on a little, because it’s rather tasty).
You can of course use other cuts of steak if you prefer, but they often need different cooking times and sometimes need finishing in the oven.
I have some info below (notes section of the recipe card) on cooking fillet steak – but that one can be trickier, as it’s a lot thicker and leaner than ribeye or sirloin.
Other types of steak include rump, T-bone, flat iron, Denver, skirt and flank. Let me know if you want to info on how to cook any of these cuts in the comments below.

Even cooking:
Rather than cook one side until it’s perfectly browned (which can take a few minutes), then cook the other side for less time (so the steak isn’t overcooked), turn the steak every minute. This will help to ensure even cooking and char on both sides.

Rest the steak:
A good rule of thumb is to rest the steak for at least as long as you cooked it. This will allow the fibres to relax, and you’re steak will be juicier and more tender for it.
Rest on a slightly warm plate or wooden board.

Cooking times (for a 2cm-2.5cm thick Sirloin or Ribeye)

(Turning the steak every minute)

Rare: 3 minutes total
Medium Rare: 4 minutes total
Medium Well: 5-6 minutes total
Well done: 8 minutes total

Top with one of these amazing sauces

Learn more here.

Blonde Blindness

How Blonde is too Blonde? Can you take it too far?

So, what do colourists really think when you badger them to go blonder?

‘I don’t believe there is a rule on how blonde anyone should go, I tend to think of the hair condition first and then the client’s overall style,’ says Lamb (who incidentally couldn’t do a ‘bad’ blonde if she tried). ‘You can be as blonde as you want but only if your hair can take it. Over-processing your hair equals damage and damaged hair makes your colour looks dull, which again gives you that urge to want to be blonder. It’s your colourist’s responsibility to make sure they are not overlapping the colour as that will double process your hair. Your colourist will build up your blonde up to a point in order to give you the desired blonde but it’s all about knowing when to stop and not pushing it to breaking point…literally.’

To avoid being blighted by blonde blindness, Lamb advises keeping on top of your roots rather than dragging out your appointments which then means you’re left with having to overload your hair with foils and/or balayage. ‘A good pick-me-up for when you’re feeling low in between appointments is to go for my signature 12 foils technique which means just placing colour around the high points of your face. It’s the perfect way to lend a natural-looking boost of brightness.’Did I mention I’m seeing her tomorrow?

Why intelligent people are hated

The sad truth about how we function socially

Check out this informative video.

Why do people flock to comforting nonsense?

Schopenhauer’s insights from 200 years ago reveal why intelligence often leads to social isolation. He observed that intelligent individuals make others feel inadequate, activating threat responses in the brain similar to physical pain.

This is especially pronounced in group settings. Schopenhauer noted that intelligence triggers unconscious self-measurement, leading to feelings of being judged. Modern research confirms these patterns.

Schopenhauer’s teachings offer strategies to navigate these social challenges, such as recognizing social dynamics, choosing the right moments to share complex ideas, and finding a supportive community.