Link to Episode HERE.

What happens when a pioneer in mixology decides to walk away from booze—and starts writing about mythical cats instead? This week, I sit down with Natalie Bovis, aka The Liquid Muse, and it’s a wild, funny, deeply heartfelt ride through festival burnout, artistic rebirth, and the unexpected magic of letting go.

Natalie is a true force to be reckoned with. There’s no way I could capture everything she does in just one description, so I’ve linked to her ⁠About Page⁠—make sure to set aside some time to really take it all in, it is a LOOOOT!

Natalie’s journey takes us from the heights of the mixology world—creating the first cocktail festival in New Mexico —to the quiet clarity of pandemic reflection, full-time caretaking, and rediscovering her creative soul. She opens up about leaving the alcohol industry, grappling with its dark undercurrents, and channeling her energy into something radically different and more fulfilling: writing about cats, gods, and the mystical intersections of art and nature.

Expect to learn about:

• How the pandemic helped her reset her life
• The evolution of her Cocktails & Culture Festival (and Taco Wars!)
• Starting Mind, Body, Spirits to promote balance in hospitality
• Writing “Cat Gods, Goddesses, Deities & Demons”—and launching a deck of oracle cards!
• Her upcoming children’s book and a retreat in Spain rooted in culinary and cultural healing

This is an episode about identity, transformation, and what it means to live in alignment with who you are—not just what you’ve done.

🎟️ Check out the Cocktails & Culture Festival and NM Cocktail Week ⁠HERE⁠ 📚 Get “⁠Cat Gods, Goddesses, Deities & Demons⁠” and ⁠the oracle deck⁠ 🐾 Learn more about Natalie at ⁠The Liquid Muse⁠

If this kind of conversation speaks to you, please like, share, and subscribe—it really helps.

I talk to people in and around the service industry space, trying to make sense of this wild, beautiful mess of a life. You can find more of my work at ⁠⁠my blog⁠⁠, and all my social links are at the bottom of that page.

As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.

Cheers

Transcript (note, not cleaned up yet, to be done!)

So what have you been up to? You know, I haven’t talked to you in probably eight years until recently. So Well, my life is very different, I think post pandemic, you know, like a lot of people that shook a lot of things up. Prior to the pandemic, I was very ambitious about building my festival. And as you know, you were there from the beginning when I launched my festival 10 years ago this year. I was very excited about building the Cocktails and Culture Festival, which was the first Mixology Festival in New Mexico still is the only really Mixology culinary festival in New Mexico. And my 2019 had grown pretty big. Taco Wars had like 22 chefs and, you know, huge speakers such as Del DeGroff and Tony Abu Ghanem and all these brand ambassadors were flying in from all over the country and teaching seminars. And it was really exciting and I was very proud and I had all these big ideas. And then the pandemic came along and just slash it like it did for everybody in the world. And then I kind of loved the pandemic in the sense that I stopped traveling so much for work. And I was home. I kind of took everything down a notch. I did a lot of introspection. I joined this online Zoom group. Of people doing the Artist Way, which is a book I had done back in the 90s when it first came out. The Artist Way is like a really great tool for like reigniting your own creativity and connecting with your inner artist. And that was really a gift to have the time to go through this. It’s a, is it 12 weeks? I think it’s 12 weeks or 16 weeks. I think it’s 12 weeks. And we would meet on Zoom once a week and there’s like little things you do each week. And you know, people who are a woman from Italy and a woman from Canada and you know, it’s really cool. Like all these different people, women from Ireland. And we all kind of came together and did the Artist Way together. And it was really a gift to have that, that time to do something other than just cocktails, cocktails, cocktails and events, events, events, events and trying to sell home. And all of the, you know, build a liquor, like you’re a brand, you know, like with no money, you know, no budget and just, you know, so it’s really, so anyway. But of course that kind of killed my festival too. So, so since then my life has changed a lot because my, I’ve reconnected with my creative self, which is who I really am and who I’ve always been. I’ve been a writer since I was little. I wrote my first poem in like first grade. I’ve always been an actor and a creative person. And so I’ve been trying to give myself a little space to explore those other parts of myself again. And then of course my mom moved in with me during the pandemic because when I was no longer traveling, I realized how unwell she is and how much help she needs. And that all kind of just when I was traveling all the time and working all the time and seeing her but not spending a lot of quality time really and not really observing exactly what was going on with her. So during that time I decided she needed to move in with me and she has been with me for the last five years. And so I’m a full-time caretaker, which is, you know, a new role and takes a lot of time and energy to manage everything for her. She’s homebound now and still with me, you know, meaning on the planet with me. But it’s a lot, you know, it’s my priorities in life have shifted. So I’m really glad about that actually. Sure. The pandemic being a good thing, I think, is something I’ve heard from actually a lot of people. That moment to take a reset and stop the what I call the undisciplined pursuit of more and just think, oh, what am I doing? And am I spending all my time working? Like what am I doing with my loved ones? And so that’s awesome. Tell your mom I said hi. I know my mom, I told her I was going to talk with you and she says hi too. Yeah, yeah, of course. We’ve known you a long time and care about you. So I’ll tell her. Little Andrew, your little brother from back in the day. Little Andrew, I know, I know you hate it when I call you little Andrew. In my mind, you’re little Andrew, even though it’s like ironic because you’re very tall. But I mean it. I don’t mean it in a pejorative way. I mean it in like a family, like a, you know, a big sisterly way. Yeah. So we kind of just jumped into talking. When I would describe to someone else what you do, I know author is going to be one of the first things to come up, but you do so many different things with the own with the festival. How do you introduce yourself at cocktail parties? How would you introduce yourself to the listener? That’s a great question. I ask myself that all the time. What the hell am I doing? No, I’m in, I describe myself as a writer and event producer. So, and I’m going to let my dog in because she’s barking and being annoying. Little Lula. So your next book is going to be zoom calls with your dog, I think. My two dogs and five cats. Yes. Oh, we were coming to them. Don’t worry. Yeah, I’m a writer and an event producer. I mean, event producing, well, I mean, they’re both streams of income, you know, sometimes one is more lucrative than the other. And that kind of goes back and forth depending on what the writing project is and what the publisher is willing to pay me for a specific book. Sometimes the events are more lucrative depending on what that is and who the client is and what I’m doing. So, you know, between the two, I managed to piece it together. I’m no longer working on Ohm. I don’t think I told you that. Oh, I don’t think I knew that. Okay. Yeah. So Ohm for anyone who’s interested is an organ, Ohm stands for organic mixology. It’s a chocolate liqueur, which I co-founded with someone who became a very good friend over the years, Jason Moncarsh. He was more, it was his idea and he brought me on initially as a mixology consultant because I had done a fair amount of consulting earlier in my career for, you know, a lot of, you know, for like Nestle and like Tropicana and different brands that I worked with earlier on. And so he kind of, and I was doing, I was also teaching organic cocktail classes back in 2008, which was really early in 2008, 2009 and all over the country actually with a client. And so he kind of found me that way. And so we launched Ohm Chocolate Liqueur and, you know, it’s a good product and we put 10 plus years into bootstrapping it. And Jason, you know, was funding a lot of it himself. Like we did have investors, but toward the end he was funding a lot of it himself, including my part-time salary. And so there was a point where last year where he’s like, look, we’re not making enough money for me to justify, you know, paying all these things. And I’m sorry, but you’re going to be the last thing to go. And I was like, well, okay then. So that was really my bread and butter. So that was a little bit of a financial shock to the system. But in a way, I’m really, I’m so grateful that we got to launch the, create the brand together because I got to be involved from everything. So I went from being a consultant to being the co-founder and partner. And so I, we went from choosing bottles and, you know, having labels done. And then we did a rebrand during the pandemic and tasting the liquid in the bottle and working with the manufacturer who was making it. And then marketing. And then I was going all over the country doing trade shows and having sales meetings and, you know, trying to manage, you know, with no money really for marketing, like trying to manage the few brand ambassadors who were doing it very part time for us. And it was just, it was a lot, you know, and I was really like the PR marketing person, like out there talking about tender people I knew around the country from my years as the liquid muse. And I’m very grateful for the journey. And I’m also, apart from like the financial, you know, security being gone, I’m also kind of glad. You know, like the brand is still alive. The brand is still available. The brand is a great brand. It’s still being sold, distributed by price imports or managed by price imports. It’s still a great brand, but I’m kind of glad I’m not working on it anymore because again, taking care of my mom, trying to focus on my inner artist and step away from the alcohol industry a bit and move my life in different directions. It freed me up a lot. For sure. Yeah. I could only imagine the number of hours that I even saw you put in when I was living in Santa Fe. I’m sure increased even after that because you’re trying to get this plane to take off essentially. Yeah. I mean, you know, the goal with any liquor brand, honestly, is to create something, you know, make something good, market it, get it out there and then sell it. That’s the payoff. You know, you’re putting in hours and years of sweat equity. I mean, I put in hours and years of sweat equity, you know, with a little bit of money every month. But, you know, but the big like prize at the end is that a bigger company will buy it and that’s your big payout for all the years that you’ve invested. And there’s so much competition. It’s really, you know, very hard to achieve that goal. And I feel like we did everything we could without a marketing budget. Well, sure. And if you’re listening, you’ve never tried it. It was a really fantastic product. Like that salted chocolate. No, man. That’s the one that we focused on. Yeah. Yeah. We poured, I remember, I don’t know if you continued making the, I think it was coconut leechy with the coyote for a while. And those bottles were beautiful. Like, you know, it was very important for you to, it was a very high quality good brand. I appreciate that. Thank you for that feedback means a lot coming from you because you’ve got an amazing palette. So we did during the pandemic, we dropped all the flavors and just did the chocolate and then we did we got new bottles from France that were fancier and we did a new label and it looks actually, I think it looks fantastic now like way. I’ll have to send you a link because it looks much prettier now I think than it was. Yeah, please. Yeah, I’ll put it in the show notes too. That’s perfect. Yeah. We went a little more luxury with it, you know, which was which was fun. It was super fun. You know, I’m so grateful for that journey. But, you know, all journeys have an ending point. Yes. Well, I think it also it fits really well with, you know, one thing I really wanted to talk about a lot the festival and the mind body spirits part, I think, you know, because he’s got the organic mixology but also. Right. So, yeah, if you could tell me a little bit about the festival because you kind of touched on it and you talked about taco wars but I know people listening. That’s like your big focus and that’s such a cool event. Thank you. Yes, I founded the fest the cocktails and culture festival in 2015 because I had moved back to Santa Fe my hometown where I grew up but I had lived for 20 plus years in LA and Europe and DC as well but mainly LA and when I found I founded the liquid muse in 2006 which is crazy to think next year will be 20 years since I started the liquid muse which is just like insanity but I founded the liquid muse as initially as a blog because I wanted to practice my writing and I wanted to do more travel writing and food writing and I kind of I was very interested. I kind of learned about 2006 you know, mixology was starting to become a thing and I was like, oh, this is so cool. This is like the liquid element of the culinary world. It’s the, you know, the bar side of flavor and learning the history of spirits and how they’re made and a very culinary approach to cocktails. And so that intrigued me and so I started the liquid muse blogging about cocktails and then the liquid muse, you know, got I was one of the first women on the internet blogging about alcohol about specifically about mixology and that’s why the liquid muse got very, very popular in those early years. It was one of the leading blogs about mixology at that time. And, you know, I got incredible opportunities and this is going to lead to the festival because it’s kind of like why I wound up doing the festival. But you know the opportunities that came to me early on, you know, like I got to, as press, I got to go to like Finland and be a judge at the ice hotel for vodka competition and go to Poland. It was so amazing and flying first class. I mean, back in those days in the late 2000s, liquor companies were throwing so much money at the whole mixology thing and being a woman, they were kind of like, oh, you’re a girl. So you can tell girls to buy spirits because right now girls just buy wine and we want them to make cocktails. And so, you know, so that’s kind of like part of like what liquor companies liked about me is that I was a woman writing intelligently about cocktails at that time. I don’t blog anymore and that old blog is on blogger blog spot like wait, might be able to find it. But I mean, you still can. I checked before this. Yeah, and I mean, and you know, and I got, yeah, so I got to do all these cool things. I got to go to Poland and Australia and, you know, all over the place and London and be treated like so wonderfully. But what was I going to say? Oh, and then there was a point where the liquor company started hiring me like, hey, we want to hire you to do bloody blah, you know, teach a seminar or we want to hire you to do an event with these people or we want to hire you to be our spokesperson, which is like the word before brand ambassador, you know, and so, so suddenly I was like, oh my God, they’re going to pay me. I better learn. I better learn something here because I feel like I’m just like talking about stuff, but I’m just talking about what I like, you know, and so then I started really studying spirits and that’s where I was like, you know, I need to become an expert in spirits like I need to really know my shit. And so that’s where I first went to my very first seminar, which was Tony Abuganim and Dale DeGraw teaching together. And I was I just left that seminar. It was about not even a year into the liquid muse and I just spent like my light bulbs went off and I was like, this is it. I love this. This is so interesting and cool. And then I really studied and became knowledgeable. And so as I became more knowledgeable, I started going to tales of the cocktail every year, which is the big liquor convention. I don’t go anymore. I don’t I think it’s evolved and kind of a it’s like, you know, it’s funny, because in the mixology world back then it was like everybody was like, you know, oh, excited and everyone was really cool to each other and everyone’s like learning together and it was like this really exciting time. And as the years went by now, it’s just like the like tales that even bother with any more. It’s like the same like 200 people patting each other on the back who all still work for the big liquor companies. And then there’s like, you know, some of like the newer bartenders who you know, excited to go to seminars and I definitely think it’s worth going to seminars and tales is worth it for that. And I’ve gotten really turned off of all the clickishness and the circle jerking of what you know the the top mixology folks like a lot not all of them, but a lot of them in that in that world have really turned me off. A lot of bro culture, you know, I found it very misogynistic from the beginning and even though they keep trying to make it more woman friendly, it’s just not. And so, or at least not not the way I think it should be. So all of that to say that, you know, in those early years I was teaching a lot I was teaching in Portland cocktail week tales I was doing events during all these things part of other people’s festivals. And so that’s when I moved back to Santa Fe in around, you know, 2015 is when I finally launched cocktails and culture which is, you know, talk awards is the opening party then I was bringing in people to teach seminars, because I thought it was important here, you know, small small market. And I was like eight years behind the trends. And so people you know just weren’t that trained yet in mixology I mean bartending. We’ve always had great bartenders bartending is hospitality and being nice to people and pouring something in a glass, but mixology is really the study of the spirits and understanding classic cocktails and having that foundation the way a chef trains, you know, to be a chef, you know, learning about food and the classics and what goes together and why and techniques and all of that. And so I thought, you know, the such a culinary town Santa Fe is that it’d be really great to have a little bit more education here, and why not bring the best in the world, you know, sad part about it is that I think in the beginning so many people, especially bartenders here in Santa Fe had no idea who people like the bar off were just because they just hadn’t been exposed to, you know, to that world. And so, you know, I feel like the seminars, I know the seminars were great. I feel like we didn’t have as much attendance as I would have liked and I even offered so many free tickets for bartenders because I just wanted people to come and learn. I would have liked to have seen a little bit more like enthusiasm from that crowd, but the consumers loved it and that’s what’s cool is people here love to eat and drink and so we’d have, you know, all the people you saw them every year a lot of the same faces that came every year and love to eat and drink. Oh yeah, the same people I used to serve when I was bartending there. Exactly, exactly. You know, like, and thank God for those people like that’s our culinary community, the consumers of the culinary community, you know, and they’re all really fun because they’re like all ages, and and they love all that kind of stuff. So they like the seminars anyway so but I’m not really doing seminars per se this year, because they always I was always losing money on them. Taco Wars became very, very popular taco competition. I do on the federal trademark to taco wars and there is somebody I won’t go into it but someone in the country who’s been using it and we’ve been sort of going back and forth in the legal way which has cost me a bunch of money which is so stupid because I’m like, I own the federal trademark like why is this thing, but that’s okay you know we’re hopefully finding resolution there. And I said love for that to not be an issue anymore it’s just ridiculous. But my body spirits is the yoga element that I added into the festival. I actually before I started the festival I started my body spirits with Dushan Zarek and Patricia Richards, who are two big mixology names, one from Vegas one from LA. Although Dushan’s originally from Serbia but he was living in he well he’s one of the founders of employees only which is like huge mixology. It’s a big, it’s about as big as they get. Yeah, it’s a huge deal. So Dushan is one of the founders of employees only and they have like bars in like Singapore now and all over the world and they’re really important in the evolution of cocktail culture. And so Dushan is also a yoga teacher. And then Patricia Richards she was running like the bar program at the wind back then you know now Marianne Mercer runs it but and she’s amazing. But but Patricia was running I think she was doing the whole program I can’t quite remember but she was a really talented mixologist in Vegas and so she also so all three of us were seeing people dying left and right in the world of mixology. A lot of big name mixology people since then have continued to die. It’s a very very unhealthy world. There’s a lot of drug abuse, a lot of alcohol abuse late nights partying I alluded to the bro culture of the mixology world you know which is like strip clubs and going out with girls and parting all night and then rolling and stinking to booze and then teaching a seminar that the tales of the cocktail used to be a lot like that. You know party all night be crazy all night roll and stinking a booze teach a seminar. Oh yeah, you know I’m a rock star I’m a rock star. And so that culture is extremely toxic on multiple levels spiritually, psychically, physically, mentally, emotionally, and you know needless to say, a lot of people have passed away. So, which is unfortunate because, you know lifestyle choices can be really, you know devastating. So, so we started mind body spirits in 2014 at tales. And that year people were making jokes about it. Oh, did you see there they’re doing yoga at tales, you know, it was like now it’s normal now lots of people do yoga and go running and do bike rides and do all this balance stuff. In 2014 they were kind of making jokes about it at the Spirit Awards. And, nevertheless, it was pretty popular like we brought it back the following year we got big brands to sponsor it, you know, have them buy into like, hey you’re trying to sell bartenders alcohol wouldn’t it be good if they like live long healthy lives and we’re continue continued customers for you. It’s two or three more years. Yeah, if you’re going to just boil it down to like talking corporate language which is what’s our bottom line here what are we investing in well you’re investing in your customers, you know, even if you don’t care about these people on the human level which you should and you know maybe they did. You should care about your customers like you know, so so that’s where mind body spirits came from and so of course when I started the festival here. I launched that here with my favorite yoga teacher Emily Brandon who’s become friend over the years as well and she’s totally into the balance thing. Emily is also an actor and a writer and a yoga teacher and she’s in a band you know so I really love the many colors of her rainbow. And she’s really great at at sharing balance without being like preachy or like weird about it. So that that is yeah 10th year of mind body spirits in the festival to. That’s awesome. Yeah, that’s, that’s one of those things that when I was in Santa Fe I did not understand either just to be transparent. But you knew me when I was younger so you got to see me unbalanced, which is fine. You were a wonderful intelligent person then the essence of you has not changed and that’s what I’ve always loved about you is how kind and compassionate you are and you’re really, you know, care about the people in your life and you’ve always been that kind of a person. And you know people are young they go off the rails a little bit sometimes and there’s a lot of I mean when you’re working in the bar and restaurant industry. It’s everywhere and it’s kind of like becomes the lifestyle and that lifestyle is toxic so I’m really proud of you that you’ve you know that evolved your life and all the directions you have. Hold back a little bit yes. I’m not the same person as the. So I looked it up because I had to know for this talk, the devil’s delight cocktail and edible cocktails. Oh, so yeah, so yeah listeners, one of one of Natalie’s books, I submitted a cocktail recipe called devil’s delight. And it was whiskey and tequila based a coffee tequila. If that tells you anything about what I was doing in my off time. It was a good drink. It’s a good recipe. But yeah, that definitely walking on the dark side. Exactly. So yeah, just so we don’t stay too long in the industry to what’s going on with your new book. So you’ve been writing about cats and dogs a lot and now you have a cat book that’s booze free. So finally. Yeah, so I’m a huge animal lover and I made the step from mixologist to mythologist is how I like to say it. So my last two so I’ve written six cocktail books my last two cocktail books I was drinking with my dog the canine lovers cocktail book, which is very much doggy trivia. I just like had to do the recipes because it had to be a cocktail book. And I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I mean, I think it’s a nice book, but I was really excited about the doggy trivia part. I think you bring the what’s the thing where you have the blank or mad libs is like blanking with my dog and you just like well put drinking in here. That’ll be fine. Well, it was more like I’ve been wanting to write other books for years. You know, I talked to my agent who I love I love love love my agent. And I was like, you know, I can write other things other than cocktail books like what about this idea and what about that idea and she’s like, you’re my cocktail book writer you’re really good at that and I was like, huh, you know, it’s okay, well what how can I make it more interesting then. And so I made it more interesting to me by bringing animals and animal advocacy into it. So drinking with my dogs very much a trivia book about doggy trivia and with a huge animal advocacy slant cocktails with my cat is the partner book. I have them. I have cocktails with my cat right here. My cat. Oh, yeah. There you go. That’s awesome. And this is a, which is the partner book to it. Kitty trivia very much about conservation wildlife conservation as well as drink recipes. And then what was really fun is one of the drinks and cocktails with my cat was called cat gods and goddesses. It happens that my editor at the publishing house running press is also a big cat lover. So I had said in the head note of that recipe cat gods and goddesses like, oh, it’s just such an interesting topic. I could write a whole book about it, but there we’re going to hear we’re focusing on pasta and segment and bloody, bloody, bloody. So Jordanna sent me a note and she’s like, said you could write a whole book about cat gods and goddesses. You want to explore that? And I was like, could it be not a cocktail book? And just like, yeah. So here’s the results of that. In my research, I found that there are also a lot of demons. And then some mystical cats that fell into not God or goddess or demon, but they were like this deity of some sort. Like I magical would have been, but we wanted the alliteration. So that’s why the title so long because I was like, well, it’s more than gods and goddesses. There’s demons and things. So it was really fun to research it. It’s divided into four sections because I was like, okay, how do I tackle this subject? And so I divided it into four geographical regions. So it starts with Africa and African tales around cat lore, which of course Egypt has the most cat gods and goddesses. And then the Americas, North and South. So Native American culture, I pulled from that, you know, in North America, but then also in South America, the Jaguars are really important symbol and animal and God and with the Native people from South America. So I have a lot of Jaguar stuff in there. And then Asia, there were more demons in Asia, which was really fun to kind of delve into that. And then there’s Europe, which of course, you know, there’s a lot of stories and Viking cats are very important Viking culture and unpronounceable Icelandic cat names. Yes. Yes, there are some very crazy ones. And so and then I don’t have Australia and South Pacific so much because they really didn’t have cats native to that to those areas. And so cats arrived when explorers and colonizers, you know, showed up and brought cats because cats were very important on ships. They would, you know, eat rodents and keep the grain, you know, edible for the humans on board, etc. And so so cats would travel with with sailors and so they arrived, you know, a little bit later into that part of the world. So that’s. No, I was going to ask Aslan, you put Aslan in there, which I made like really tickled me because I was like, oh, Chronicles of Narnia. Yeah. I mean, so that’s my favorite book series from when I was a kid. I read the whole book series. Yeah, I’m way into fantasy. I’m huge into fantasy stuff, fantasy literature. And yeah, that was my Chronicles of Narnia. I read them when I was like eight or something like I was obsessed. I was a big reader as a kid. So I had to have Aslan in there. Yeah, it was a little nod like, oh, okay, I knew at least one good. And of course, the ones like the Greek, I think is Artemis was. Yeah, I did not know any of the ones from Africa. But you know, and they’re so interesting to the one you said is Bastet, right? Bastet and Sekhmet sisters. It kind of reminded me of like an African Dionysus, you know, that like wild energy, the like, yeah, no, no, no. As I was looking through it, I was like, I could see it’s kind of the same tale retold in another place. Totally. Well, and that’s the thing is like with these cat gods and goddesses, especially those with the Roman in the Greek and, you know, that that part of the world, the Egyptian, that basically as the as the cultures were being taken over by other cultures like the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans, you see a lot of the same gods and you would know more. You’re a Johnny. You could teach me about this. I only learn these things as I was researching my book. But but the same kind of God or goddess would be sort of reincarnated in each new culture as the Romans were out conquering the lands. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. And so so that that was actually a challenge for me, like writing this book is like, OK, so this is basically the same cat deity or the same the same goddess who has cat like qualities or is sometimes depicted with a cat head or related to cats, but call different things and different cultures and like, how do I present this? How do I write about that without just being redundant? Like, oh, because so many of these cat goddesses, especially it’s like a goddess of war and fertility, because cats fight and they have a lot of babies. It’s like, OK, how many times I can’t say that about every freaking God. Because it’s very much related across cultures, you know, war and fertility. And I was like, OK, how do I how do I present this? So it doesn’t sound like I’m just saying the same thing over and over and over, you know, that was challenging. And it was also really hard because there aren’t many books. Like this is the only book really like about cat gods, goddesses, deities and demons. I was searching libraries. I love libraries. I write in the library most of the time. And so I was searching libraries. I was searching like Amazon. I was searching like mythical bookstores looking for books about cat gods. And I couldn’t find hardly anything out there. I’d find articles that kind of pull from this scholar wrote about this in their paper, you know, and I’d be kind of pulling through university papers and trying to find information was really hard. There hasn’t been the cat chronicler till now. Yeah. So it was really it was hard, but it was fun. Oh my God. And one thing when I was researching, there was this what this whole like really interesting kind of almost like that. Suddenly a bunch of information about this like cat and I was going through this whole thing. I’m like, oh my God, I’m making notes and, you know, circling back and I realized it’s some kind of stupid frickin video game. I was like, oh my God, I got sucked into some like world of cat mythology that’s not real. And I was like back out of there. Someone’s world of Warcraft characters. Something like that. And I was like, oh my gosh, I got wasted days on that. That’s awesome. So I interrupted earlier, you were about to show me something. I think it’s the cards that go with it too. Yeah. So the publisher said, we think this would also make a really great set of Oracle cards and I was like, oh, I want to see an Oracle card. And so I knew it was kind of like angel cards. Are you frozen? Are we frozen? No, can you see me move? Oh, yep. Can you hear me? I think we froze. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Okay, now I hear you. We froze. Okay, that’s okay. I can always cut that out. I’ll probably have to mention that in the beginning, but that’s fine. We just, so we’re back. Okay, we’re back. All right. So the publisher said we think this would make great Oracle cards. So running press. Are you frozen again? We’re frozen. Oh no. Can you hear me? Or no? I can hear you. I can’t hear you. I don’t know if you can see me or hear me. Can you hear me? Oh, you see me. Okay, you hear me. Okay, you’re frozen to me. Okay. I can’t, I don’t hear. So if that happens again, we’ll just cut it. I mean, that’ll be like, you know, I’ll put a little disclaimer like we kind of got cut off by the connection. So, so, yeah, if it happens again, too bad. Okay, that’ll just be the end. Okay. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. Okay. Which means I may have to have you back on in a couple months after the cocktail festival, right? Sure. All right, well, so I just, all right, I’ll top back into the Oracle cards. So Oracle cards. So the publisher thought these would be really fun to include. So Hachette is the, the big publisher and then they have different like imprints. And so these two are under running press mystic. And so they do all these kind of like witchy books and fairy books and all these kind of things. And so that’s why the Oracle cards came came about and they’re really beautiful. The illustrator is Lucy Rose, this really talented British illustrator. So the Oracle cards have a little booklet, which has each of the cards in there. So as you so the way to use the Oracle cards is to just kind of like shuffle them. Hold on there and play. This is a new box. It’s in plastic. Open it up. Um, there, because here’s the cards. So they’re so beautiful. So that this is what the back of them looks like. And then they’re all color coded by, by geographic region. These are Africa, and the Americas, Asia, and Europe. So, yeah, they’re so beautiful. I mean, honestly, I think they’re, they should be like postcards or I want, I want her to make merchandising with us because they’re so, so, so pretty. Anyway, I would totally get a shirt with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, shirts. Yeah, I don’t know if they’re right. I have to ask get her permission for anything like that and pay her, you know, obviously for royalties for whatever. I don’t know how that works. But anyway, so, so when you’re using it, because people like how do you use them? I don’t know how to do tarot and they’re not tarot cards. I don’t know enough about tarot to do that. But, but basically Oracle cards are like what you call angel cards. So you just get them, you move them around, you get your energy all over them, because if someone else holds your cards, their energy gets on the cards, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s just that when you get them back, you want to sort of like coat them with your energy, if you will, like a chicken cutlet and the breadcrumbs, you know, just want to get your energy all over there. And then you can say, you know, just like, okay, is there a message for me, you know, just be something really general, or you can have a specific message in mind is specific question in mind. And so then you just pull one. So for our little chat here, I’m going to pull one about what’s what’s the what is a message about our little chat from the cat gods. And we got Artemis funny you said Artemis is a nest stream. There you go. magical Andrew. Okay, so now I’m going to find, I’m going to find Artemis. Okay, that’s on page 88. So I’m using a little guidebook. So this is not, this isn’t the big book, this is the guidebook that comes with the cards. So Artemis is on 83. So let’s find her. And this is short, don’t worry, it’s not too long. And so this is about our little chat and then we can like see what we think about this. This is so appropriate. Look what it says, new beginning. And we’ve just been affected. So that’s so cool. So Artemis new beginning, breathe life into the blossoming sensuality of your creativity. Pounce upon the opportunity for a new love or a burgeoning project pulling at your heart, like your podcast. Yeah. And my other writing on my on my mythological writing and our friendship being. And then it says Artemis is considered the Greek equivalent to the Egyptian best at and Roman Diana often called the mistress of animals dancing through forest mountains and waterways with her on to Raj of nymphs and niads. She sometimes took cat form herself, her cult followers associate her with lascivious love affairs and fertility, which is funny because neither of us have kids, but whatever, as both the protector of babies and a patron of hunters. She was associated with the circle of life and death. Her temple whose ruins are in modern day Turkey was once one of the seven wonders of the world. That was actually very fitting. Wasn’t that crazy? That was great. Yeah. So that’s how you work. So I’ll send you these. Oh, thank you. I’ll have to get your energy off of them, but that’d be fine. No, no, you got to rub your head. Get my thumbs off of there. Put them with your. Well, so that is, I mean, that is cool. One of the things I had hoped to talk about, especially at the festival, one of the things that stood out to me was how much money it has actually raised for animal humane societies. And just to see you doing all this work, you know, going in this new direction, that’s super, super fun. Thank you. Yeah, I’m trying to live more truthfully. You know what I mean? It’s not that I was lying with the cocktail stuff when I was into it. I was really into it. But, you know, hopefully in life we evolve and, you know, kind of have different versions of ourselves as we move through life, you know, now that I’m in my fifties, I’m kind of coming back around to the essence of who I was in the very beginning, which is artists and a creator and a storyteller and an animal lover. And, you know, I really want to do more around that, you know, alcohol is. Very great. I’m very grateful for my journey through the world of alcohol. It’s given me a lot. I’ve made a career. I’ve had amazing opportunities. I’ve met lots of wonderful people over the years, who, you know, some of whom have remained friends. And, you know, it’s been a true gift. But the substance of alcohol is quite toxic. And it’s, you know, a crutch that even I struggle with sometimes, you know, like it’s too easy. Like, oh my God, this was such a stressful day. What about that Moscow I have? I’m going to drink some of that now because I need to calm down, you know, and it’s still a crutch for me. It’s something that I think about a lot. Like, should I be getting rid of all the bottles in my garage? You know, like, un-helping for me. Putting them in the garage wasn’t for enough. So, you know, it’s a question that I think everyone needs to ask themselves if they use alcohol as a comment or whatever. But, you know, I would like to still have a nice glass of wine in moderation sometimes, you know, in my world, in my life. I enjoy that. So we’ll see. But I love that my next project, by the way, I don’t know if I told you. No, no, no, no, tell the hell. Just signed the contract. So from these guys, my publisher also has an imprint that does children’s books. So back to the chat about Narnia and Aslan and being inspired by books as children. I’m so thrilled that I get to write a children’s book, which is like the kid version of this. We’re not saying cat gods because that seems a little too much for kids. So it’s more like magical cats. And so I’m going to be writing 18 to 20 short stories, all to do with mystical magical cats for kids. So that’s like really making my heart happy. Yeah. No, that’s awesome. Yeah, it’s really cool. And that just happened, though. No release dates in mind or anything like that, I’m guessing. Huh? Not what? No release dates. Is that all pretty far out, I’m guessing. Yeah, it’ll come out in 2026 is what I have to turn it in by August and I’m so busy with my festival and my James Beard projects that I don’t know how the hell I’m going to get it all written by August, but I will. And then it’ll come out in 2026 next next spring is supposed to come out. So, yeah, well, I guess it is easier to deal with that late nights with cat writing than late nights with booze writing. Yeah, hangover. Well, before I because I do want to talk a little bit about it. When is the next festival and, you know, yeah, all that, like what are what are you doing and what’s exciting and yeah. Well, so the festival itself is May 30th through that’s Choco Wars and through June 1st and June 1st we’re doing a shaking chef and shaker cocktail pairing brunch and then also having my cat gods. And then we have a book party that evening at as above so below a local distillery that you’ll next time you come to town even if we’re not drinking alcohol got to poke your head in there it’s really cool. But, and then I don’t know if I told you that Stephanie Cameron from Edible magazine and I we teamed up and launched New Mexico cocktail week together. So, my festival is still the festival weekend, and that kicks off a whole week of events that are statewide. And so we started this three years ago, and we have bars and restaurants and distilleries all around New Mexico, who are each day. So they just like pay a like a restaurant week you know they pay registration fee, then we put out a guide and we have a website I’ll send you that link to you. They, and so they each do their own events and so we have everything from pairing dinners to classes to tastings to just special featured cocktails. And so the cocktails and culture festival it’s kind of like the first weekend and then it kicks off a whole week of fun things going on. And then, and then Stephanie Edible magazine will do a pool party on the last day in Albuquerque. So, cool. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you got enough of people in Albuquerque and Towson, I’m guessing you can actually that was Santa Fe. I mean, yeah, what is it besides that? Those three have Las Vegas, New Mexico, though the skillet did an amazing pairing dinner last year in Las Vegas that I went to and I really enjoyed that. And then of course there’s little toad Creek down in Silver City in Las Cruces. So we have them doing stuff down there so it’s like we really have people from north to south, you know, like maybe there’s not a ton of, you know, other places in the smaller cities and different outside of Santa Fe and Albuquerque but there are some so it’s really exciting. Nice. Yeah. May 30th taco bowlers. Oh, that’s exciting. That’s that’s coming up soon. Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t tell you before this. So I’m actually going to mess up the order that I’m recording and put you earlier just so this comes out before. Yeah. So you should come out not this upcoming Tuesday but the following one. So I think that I have the date of a little while I can always look it up later. Awesome. The words is sold out but yeah but but we do have tickets left for mind, body, spirits, yoga, which also includes a special spirits tasting afterwards. We have a ticket and that’s on May 31st we have tickets still available for the chef and shaker Pisco cocktail brunch, which is on Sunday, June 1st at noon. And then we then my party is free. My book party is free. It’s at the God’s Goddesses, the 80s and demons and the bar team at as above so below are also doing kitty cocktails. So to come to the party is free but there is a VIP ticket that includes the book, the Oracle card stack and a cocktail and if they want to do a $50 VIP ticket but otherwise they can just come for free. Which you want to do the VIP ticket. No. You get the full experience. Yeah. No and I will say to you because I’ve over the last year been a really big Kindle like reader fan. And so your book was great digital but I would recommend anyone who wants to get it. I think you really want the physical like you want the physical book you want to see those like drawings that I’m sure you know, I think it’s something we talked about before we started talking but it’s one of the things like I should have gotten the physical book. I’ll send you. Oh, well, I mean, if you’re listening, I’m talking for the listener. People who are listening that and the cards I think the cards are so much fun because like, you know, you don’t have to be into like woo woo stuff to enjoy the cards. It’s just kind of like what we did now like what’s the card for our talk. And it was just crazy Artemis that who you had mentioned and the new beginnings with us reconnecting after a while is so like amazing, you know, so it’s just weird how like, you know, like people who read it. Like people who read horoscopes would enjoy Oracle cards, you know, and it’s just sort of in that vein. So yeah, well, Natalie, I want to respect your time. I really appreciate you making some time to talk to me today. Is there anything exciting you’ve got after talk of wars besides that book anything coming up we should look out for her. Well, I get to go. I’m going to be working at the James Beard Awards this year. So that’ll be exciting. Tell me about that. Yeah. Yeah, so I’ve been working on it for the James Beard Foundation for four years now. It’s my part time gig, which I really enjoy. And so I work on the taste of Mary, I work on two things. I work on the Taste America program, which is a series, a national dinner series. And I oversee like the culinary aspect of with the chef and the local event producer in each of the 20 cities. So I get to meet all those chefs. I don’t go to all the dinners, but I do it through zoom. So I kind of guide them on their journey of like planning their dinner and getting that going. And then I also produce the Santa Fe dinner. So I’ll be doing that again in November. So that’s really fun because I meet all these amazing chefs and event producers all over the country every year. And then this year is the first time I’m working on the awards. So my actual role is not the glamorous, not the most glamorous role. And we’re kind of like the coordinator of like the travel, like the on the ground travel coordinator for like the VIPs of the awards. But it’s also cool. So I get to meet all those people. You’re in the building. Yeah. And I get to go to the awards and I get to like see all the stuff happening. So I’m super excited about that. And then I am helping to produce our party, a big tasting that we’re doing in Los Angeles for the James Bird Foundation Taste America kickoff in July. So I will be going out for that and being very, I’m very involved in that event, which is super fun. And then I don’t think I told you my new project, which is again, my new life is I’m planning a culinary and culture retreat in Spain, which is going to be a knock. You didn’t see that on your website. Yeah. Tell us, tell us about that. That’s super cool. So, you know, I’ve, as you know, I’ve planned like multi day trips for like alcohol company, you know, for like the trips I did for those like bartender trips all over the, you know, the country with the Jack Daniels people, which was really fun. And I love doing that kind of stuff. And so again, in the vein of event production and travel and like balance and all the things that I’m really passionate about in Spain where I used to live. So I’ve rented this beautiful farmhouse, which is between Barcelona and Gerona. That area is Catalonia or Catalonia. It’s the Tuscany of Spain. It is wine country of Spain. It’s a culinary destination. It’s full of Roman ruins and beautiful culture. And so the retreat is focusing on so every day we’ll start with some yoga. I have a yoga teacher there who’ll be teaching a little yoga just to kind of start the day like that do some journaling will have, you know, breakfast buffet and then each afternoon we’re doing a different kind of excursion experience. We’re going to be having two cooking classes. We’re going to visit Gerona and see the medieval, what you call it old town area, which is stunning and interesting part of Game of Thrones was filmed there. So we’ll do a tour of that. We’re going to go to Catechesse, which is one of the most picturesque villages in Europe. It’s on like the top 20 of Europe. It’s always ranked there. We’re going to go to the Dalí Museum in Figueras because Dalí is from Figueras and honestly before going to the museum myself, I wasn’t a Dalí fan. I didn’t know much about him. I just know like the melting clocks that you’d see in like dorm rooms, you know, I didn’t really know what it was all about. But that museum is mind blowing and he was front. He just died in the 1980s. Like he was I didn’t even realize he had, you know, been alive so recently. And he was so fascinating and he bought this theater and turned it into this crazy museum. And it’s very like it’s pre-Miawulf, you know, like Miawulf, you know, Miawulf it. But the Dalí Museum is like a much smaller version, but kind of like that type of like craziness. And then we’ll be doing we’re going to go visit a Kava producer. So it’s kind of like there’s a little tourism involved. There’s, you know, learning about local cuisine. There’s tasting the local wine and Kava. There’s a little balance with the yoga. It’s, you know, the kind of trip I would I like to go on. And so I thought there are other people like me out there who would enjoy this kind of, you know, culinary and culture experience for five days in the Costa Brava. That’s awesome. How many, how many spots do you have? Do you still have some spots left? Only eight spots total available. There’s three are already taken. So I have five left and male female, the farmhouse, you know, so if you’re a couple coming, you can have your own room with your own bathroom. We have a few of those. And then other people that are coming on their own. I love solo travel. I’ve gone on a few yoga retreats now as a solo traveler and, you know, shared rooms. And so we have a couple of rooms that have single beds where if you’re coming on your own, you know, people can share a room. So which makes it a little bit more economical too. Yeah. Well, that’s cool. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, hey, it was a real pleasure to talk to you today. It’s been forever. I know. You need to talk more often. And it doesn’t have to be on Zoom. I’m very, very bad at keeping in touch with people, which is part of the reason I did this so I can actually make people talk to me for an hour over the internet. I’m sure you don’t have to twist anyone’s arm. Thank you for having me, Andrew. It was great to come up with you. Thanks for letting me talk about, you know, my journey through the mixology world and my way out of it. You know, I appreciate that. Awesome. Well, I’m going to say goodbye. Bye.