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Meeting Travis Baldree in Cincinnati: The Legends & Lattes Graphic Novel Book Tour
Travis Baldree, author of Legends & Lattes, spoke and Joseph-Beth Cincinnati on October 9, 2026. The two-hour drive was pretty harrowing, I’m not going to lie. I’ll be taking highway 50 instead of 46 less time—fewer wild interstate exchanges.
The leaves are starting to turn and I can’t deny the Appalachian foothills were beautiful, though.
As I walked in, I felt startled at the size of the place. I realized I haven’t been to a “big bookstore” in years. I have little local options now—The Magic of Books, Viewpoint Books, and Lores Untold to name a few—and the nearest Barnes & Noble is a much farther drive.
We found a small sitting area that seemed like the location of the author talk, but I’d seen the massive crowd/staircase photos online, and I soon realized Baldree would be speaking from the staircase. I found a small stool to sit on and settled in to listen.
Baldree was a video game developer for years. He was the senior engineer on the first two Torchlight games, among other major accomplishments in that industry, before he pivoted to become an audiobook narrator. He said that as he wrote Legends & Lattes he found it to be somewhat autobiographical—Viv retires from a fast-paced fighting life to open a coffee shop in a small town, reflecting his own life change, and they both found a new and diverse group of wonderful and supportive people.
He’d started books before, but he never finished them because, he says, he didn’t have a strong enough reason to write. I can’t think of a better reason than the chance to share an uplifting and transformative story like that.
This particular tour was for the release of the Legends & Lattes graphic novel. He talked about the adaptation process—finding an artist, creating concept art, thumbnailing each page of the story.
He read Thimble’s story from his upcoming release, Tales from the Territory. It struck me all over again how contemplative and Ghibli-esque Baldree’s writing is. Deep in Thimble’s point of view, the story carried him through a day in his life before the events of Legends & Lattes, cooking ingredient-by-ingredient under the subtle, low-stakes, relatable pressures of a simple and hardworking life. It reminded of the cooking and cleaning montages from Howl’s Moving Castle and Spirited away that make you feel inspired to go about your every day.
He talked about the challenges and advantages of his background work in video games and audiobook narration. On the video game side of things, he described his experience solving complex creative problems on a budget and a deadline, which comes in handy for projects like the graphic novel. One reader asked a question about a Legends & Lattes video game, and he loved the idea of a cozy, Stardew Valley-style game adaptation, but he wouldn’t want to do it himself. He said he was done with that part of his career “because like 52 games released just since I’ve been talking.”
He built it into his contract that he had to be the one to narrate the audiobook. He knew how these characters sounded and he wanted to show the world, himself. He has such a strong sense of his own voice, from all of his narration experience, that he sees no need to read his stories out loud during the writing process, as many of us do. He already knows; he has the experience to foresee it naturally.
He advised aspiring fantasy writers to avoid glottal stops, hamzas, apostrophe variants, and other linguistic flourishes simply to make names look exotic and fancy. Unless there's a meaning and indigenous relevance to them, they're worth avoiding. They can make their audiobook narrators’ lives more difficult.
I asked a question about his role in the current cozy fantasy movement, and he seemed to deny it. He talked about the predecessors of the movement such as The Hobbit. He said the story started as a joke about a Hallmark movie set in a fantasy world. It was something he personally needed at the time, and luckily enough, a lot of other people did, too.
It got me thinking about those old cozy fantasies, from times before they were called that. The lighthearted fantasies that fit my definition certainly existed, but many of them were marketed to children and to men. The Hobbit was a children’s book, although the rest of the Lord of the Rings books were marketed to adults. I really feel that this is the first time, in my lifetime, that adults and diverse readers have felt welcomed into these safe and enchanting spaces. I don’t think I’m alone in that, either.
To what extent is it a feminist movement, though, with more of these books feeling safer for women? A reclamation of the passions of childhood in the face of rampant corporate corruption that would prefer us to be worker bees?
I talked with my husband about this as we waited in line to get books signed. I’d brought my own copies of Legends & Lattes, Bookshops &Bonedust, and Brigands & Breadknives to get signed. The line wove through the bargain section of the store and I got a discounted copy of The Crescent Moon Tearoom.
This trip would not have been possible without Zach. He kept me company and alert on the drive to Cinci, he helped me navigate, he fixed my car’s map connection, he brought me caffeine, he took pictures of me and Baldree, and he drove us home while I was exhausted and brain-farty (thankfully not the other kind of farty). He did all of this after a full day of work, while fighting a cold. I am extremely grateful.
Every one of Baldree's signatures includes a little creature doodle.
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