Stoned History Part One- Three Short Stories Zine. An altered consciousness cookbook zine.
 
by Shwa Laytart
3 Short Stories with Recipes
5.5" x 8.5" chapbook; 12 pages
Intended for mature audiences
 
Signed, Numbered, Limited Edition of 100
© 2022
Book Layout by Sugar Laytart
Printed and Bound in Las Vegas, Nevada
Avantpop Publishing
 
“Thanks for the props. So, just to clarify, what I do when I write these ‘Stoned History’ stories is to find a point in time that I can fill in the blanks with a fun, 'what if', type scenario.”
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That was my response to a newly hired assistant editor at the cannabis magazine that I was writing for, at the time. They were having trouble finding any information on one of the people in my story; it was not surprising since I completely made the character up. They “really enjoyed reading the story” but fact-checking some details of what I wrote was next to impossible. Could I supply my sources? Their unsuccessful due diligence and confused delirium was the exact reaction I was hoping to achieve with each new Stoned History story.
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Stoned History started as a way to promote the cannabis company that my wife and I started in 2015. I would find a recipe that no one was quite sure whom the initial chef was, then originate a scenario involving cannabis and the true(ish) origin story of said recipe. The first stories, complete with recipes, showed up in a local free-press in Northern California. From there, cannabis magazines across the United States published my Stoned History stories.
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With each story, my goal is to write historical fiction origin stories that are somewhat hard to disprove while at the same time creating excitement about the time period and of course, intoxicants and food. And if you enjoy the recipes, you might just believe these origin stories are exactly the way things went down. 
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Like all stories, there are solid truths, gushy elaborations, and complete distortions swirling around in each of these accounts.  
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So as far as I’m concerned- this is how the story goes….
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This zine is just a few of those stories and a precursor for the full short-story cookbook, Stoned History: The True(ish) History of Cannabis Cuisine and Other Intoxicating Concoctions, coming out in 2023.
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Dig in, and enjoy!
Shwa Laytart
April 2022