An Evening with Travis Baldree

Some friends and I went to the Rio to see Travis Baldree talk about his new book, Brigands & Breadknives. As you can guess from the name, he’s the guy who wrote Legends & Lattes, a book I enjoyed with reservations.

He started off with a speech about his professional history. He originally was a games developer, then got into narrating audiobooks as a side gig. He transitioned into full-time narration, then decided to try writing a book after several failed attempts when he was younger. He talked about his books, including some background for the new one.

Then he read a chapter. I gotta say, it has a tonne of potential (mostly because there’s a magical talking sword named Nigel). Fern seems like a more interesting protagonist than Viv, too.

He finished with a Q&A. I’d expect a software developer and author to be less than adept at handling a crowd, but he was great. The audience had some good questions, from the series to writing to audiobooks to publishing. His answers were interesting and humble.

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Aside: I should be reading a completely different book for book club on Sunday. Err. Doom!

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PS: I poked around his website, and he posted a long article about the process of writing Legends & Lattes. It’s worth a look. I recently commissioned some art, so the back and forth on the cover art was particularly interesting to me.

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Addendum - November 30th, 2025: I was scrolling through my Mastodon feed, and found a relevant tweet thread on Legends & Lattes that I want to preserve.

I had shower thoughts about Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes. For anyone unaware, it’s a cozy fantasy about an orc warrior who retires to open a coffee shop. I posted my thoughts about it ages ago, but to summarize:

• It’s a good book. I love the idea. I like the story and the characters.
• But I wanted more tension and conflict. Everything felt too easy.

Further context: forgreatjustice.ca/2024/12/boo…

Here’s my (not especially wild and crazy) idea to spice it up: Someone should’ve opened a rival coffee shop. It should be someone rich, who’s opening a coffee shop because he recognizes it’s a good idea, but doesn’t have the same investment and care that Viv does.

In the story, the coffee shop keeps adding new bits we recognize from the real world: selling pastries, or adding desserts. A rival coffee shop would give them a reason to innovate their offerings, so they can keep their patrons.

Maybe early on Viv shows the proprietor of the rival cafe how to make coffee properly, because she doesn’t want his bad coffee to destroy the market. Or the neighbour across the street could show Viv this new “coffee” drink she found, not realizing that Viv has been making coffee the entire time.

And then, late in the story, when something actually happens, they could help Viv get back on her feet again. There’s room in Thune for two coffee shops. Everyone wins.

New exciting scenes:

• The rival cafe tries to poach Viv’s cook, but only to reject him when they meet and discover he’s a ratkin. They could say something cruel, like “go scurry back to your gutter.” Hey, those themes of tolerance and overcoming prejudice that are hinted at? This would give ‘em more weight.
• Maybe there’s an actual competition to determine the best coffee in the city.
• They attempt to undercut Viv on price, until the criminal figure Viv befriends (whose name I completely forget) tells them to play fair. In the meantime, Viv introduces a loyalty card programme.

It’s not much, but it would’ve added a little more fuel to the story.

It’s kind of like Encanto, in that it’s frustratingly close to being great. On the other hand, I generally enjoyed Legends & Lattes. Encanto’s failings made me angry and ruined the movie for me.