Last month’s Balticon was one of the best I’ve ever experienced, due to a combination of good programming, good friends, good food (including visits to two spectacular bakeries which were new to me), and what’s most important as far as you’re concerned — good podcast guests. Kemi Ashing-Giwa, an author and scientist-in-training based in Palo Alto, is the first of three on whom you’ll get to eavesdrop.

Her work includes the USA Today bestselling, Compton Crook Award-winning novel The Splinter in the Sky, the novella This World Is Not Yours, and the forthcoming novel The King Must Die, due out in November. Her short fiction, which has been nominated for an Ignyte Award and featured on the Locus Recommended Reading List, has been reprinted in The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction Volume 3, Some of the Best from Tor.com: 15th Anniversary Edition and 2024, and The Year’s Top Tales of Space and Time 3. She studied organismic and evolutionary biology with a secondary in astrophysics at Harvard, and is now pursuing a PhD in the Earth & Planetary Sciences department at Stanford.

We discussed her conscious decision to not take any creative writing courses in college, the eight never-to-be published novels she wrote on her way to The Splinter in the Sky, how COVID-19 led her to take a deep dive into tea (and how tea then inspired her debut novel), her evolution from pantser to plotter, her outreach to 200 agents before she found the right one, how to craft compelling opening sentences, her tips for writing successful fight scenes, why she was able to handle attending Harvard and writing a novel at the same time, how best to deal with editorial revision suggestions, her love of reading debut novels, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for lunch at Baltimore’s Thames Street Oyster House — (more…)

This episode, which invites you to take a seat at the table with Craig Laurance Gidney, captures a meal which could have taken place during AwesomeCon — but didn’t. If you want to know why — you’ll have to join us!

Gidney’s short stories have been collected in Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories (2008), Skin Deep Magic: Short Fiction (2014), and The Nectar of Nightmares (2022), the first two of which were Lambda Literary Award finalists — as was his 2019 novel A Spectral Hue (2019). He received the Bronze Moonbeam Medal and Silver IPPY Medal for his 2013 novel Bereft. In 1996, at the start of his career, he was also awarded the Susan C. Petrey Scholarship to attend the Clarion West Writing Workshop.

From 2020-2023 he co-edited Baffling Magazine with Dave Ring, and he’s also the co-editor — with Julie C. Day & Carina Bissett — of Storyteller: A Tanith Lee Tribute Anthology, published this month.

We discussed how meeting Samuel R. Delany led to his attending the Clarion Writing Workshop, the influence of reading decadent writers such as Verlaine and Rimbaud, why he kept trying to get published when so many of his peers stopped, the many ways flaws can often make a story more interesting, our shared love of ambiguity, the reason there must be beauty entwined with horror, why he’s a vibes guy rather than a plot guy, the time Tanith Lee bought him a pint and how that led to him coediting her tribute anthology, what he learned from his years editing a flash fiction magazine, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for lunch at the Unconventional Diner in Washington, D.C. — (more…)

Ever since Adeena Mignogna dared to eat a donut on the Capclave Donut Carnival episode of this podcast, I knew I’d eventually host her for a more in-depth conversation. And that time is now!

Mignogna is the author of the the Robot Galaxy series, which so far is a quartet, made up of Crazy Foolish Robots; Robots, Robots Everywhere; Silly Insane Humans; and Eleven Little Robots. As you’ll hear in our chat, there’ll be many more to follow. She’s also the author of Lunar Logic — the first novel in a series which doesn’t yet have an overarching title, though the second book will be titled Moonbase Mayhem, so who knows, perhaps there’ll be something alliterative there as well.

She’s also one of the hosts of the long running BIG Sci-Fi podcast. When not writing or podcasting, Adeena is a physicist, astronomer, and software engineer who’s worked for nearly three decades in the aerospace industry as a Mission Architect.

We discussed how Star Trek changed her life, which Trek character she used as her screen name on fan forums when she first went online as a young teen, why she never wrote fanfic, the feedback from a friend which saved her NaNoWriMo novel from being trunked, how she discovered she’s neither a plotter nor a pantser but rather something in-between, her favorite science fiction novel of all time (and the important lesson it taught her about her Robot Galaxy series), why she went the indie route and how she knew she had the chops to pull it off, the manner in which we gender robots, the reason writing each book in her quartet was more fun than the one before, why she remains hopeful about our AI future, how she finally learned she was a morning writer after years of trying to write at night, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for lunch at Beans in the Belfry in Brunswick, Maryland — (more…)

Awesome Con is always a blast, and not just because it brings back memories of the first comic book convention I attended a lifetime ago when I was only 15. But also because I get to chat with creators I’d never encounter elsewhere on my more science fictional con circuit. This time around I got to dine with and you get to eavesdrop on Jarrett Melendez, author of the graphic novel Chef’s Kiss, which was a 2023 Alex Award winner as well as both an Eisner Award and GLAAD Award nominee. The sequel, Chef’s Kiss Again, will be released in 2026.

As a cookbook author and food journalist, Melendez has written countless articles and developed hundreds of original recipes for Bon Appetit, Epicurious, Saveur, and Food52. He’s written seven cookbooks to date, including My Pokémon Baking Book, RuneScape: The Official Cookbook, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Official Cookbook, The Official Wednesday Cookbook, The Official Borderlands Cookbook, and others.

Melendez is currently working on Tales of the Fungo: The Legend of Cep, to be published by Andrews McNeel, plus Fujoshi Warriors, an action comedy comic miniseries, and a love letter to both fujoshis and magical girl anime and manga. Melendez has also contributed to award-winning and nominated anthologies, including Young Men in Love, All We Ever Wanted, and Young Men in Love 2: New Romances.

We discussed how his loves of food and writing combined into a career, the way running comic book conventions gave him the contacts he needed when it was time to create comics of his own, which franchise inspired his sole piece of fan fiction, the comics creator whose lessons proved invaluable, how he knew Chef’s Kiss needed to be a graphic novel rather than a miniseries, the way he balanced multiple plot arcs so they resolved in parallel, the magical pig whose taste is more trustworthy than any chef you’ve ever met, his early crush on Encyclopedia Brown, how he cooks up recipes connected with franchises such as Pokémon and Percy Jackson, the traumatic childhood incident which became the catalyst for his upcoming graphic novel, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for lunch at Supra Georgian restaurant in Washington, D.C. — (more…)

Carolyn Ives Gilman was one of my earliest guests of the podcast, appearing all the way back on Episode 5. Nine years and two days later, the night she was taking part in the latest Charm City Spec, we decided it was time to chat and chew for you again.

Gilman’s books include her first novel Halfway Human, which has been called “one of the most compelling explorations of gender and power in recent SF;” Dark Orbit, a space exploration adventure; and Isles of the Forsaken and Ison of the Isles, a two-book fantasy about culture clash and revolution. Some of her short fiction can be found in Aliens of the Heart and Candle in a Bottle, both from Aqueduct Press, and in Arkfall and The Ice Owl, from Arc Manor.

Her short fiction has also appeared in Analog, Tor.com, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Fantasy and Science Fiction, The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Interzone, Universe, Full Spectrum, Realms of Fantasy, and others.  She has been nominated for the Nebula Award three times and for the Hugo twice. Gilman lives in Washington, D.C., and works as a freelance writer and museum consultant.  She is also author of seven nonfiction books about North American frontier and Native history.

We discussed the way her ideas aren’t small enough to squeeze into short stories, how she shelved a novel she’d written because she felt her imagination at its wildest wasn’t ridiculous enough to match reality, whether our personal archives will be trashed or treasured, the reason she doesn’t feel she can teach writing, why authors need to respect what the story wants, why she’s terrible at reacting to writing prompts and how she does it anyway, how she generally starts a story not with character or plot but with setting, the ethics and morality of zoos and museums, how she manages to makes the impossible seem possible, our shared inability to predict which stories editors will want, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for lunch at Tamber’s restaurant in Baltimore, Maryland — (more…)

My guest for the 250th episode of Eating the Fantastic is playwright, poet, and fiction writer Tim Paggi, whom I met at December’s Charm City Spec event where he read an excerpt from his recently published novella How to Kill Friends and Eviscerate People. His poetry chapbook “Workforced” won the 2015 Plork “Play/Work” Award for Creative Writing and Publication Arts. His next book, The Other Side of the Hallway, will be released later this year. He holds an MFA from the University of Baltimore. Additionally, for the past 15 years, he’s been giving ghost tours around the neighborhoods of Fells Point and Mt. Vernon.

We discussed the story behind his X-Files-inspired juvenilia, the reason he demanded a refund from Barnes & Noble for a volume of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, why a writing teacher (wrongfully) accused him of plagiarism, how the beginning of the pandemic was also the beginning of his fiction writing career, whether his recent Cthulhu references were intentional or unavoidable, why the Severance TV show has him feeling anxious (it’s probably not the reason you think), the C-word he avoids using in his fiction, whether facing down audiences on stage helped him deal with rejections on the page, the many reasons he loves cosmic horror, the drunkest group he ever led through Baltimore on a ghost tour, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for lunch at The Mint Room in Ellicott, Maryland — (more…)

It’s time for lunch in Baltimore’s Little Italy with David Simmons, author of the horror diptych Ghosts of East Baltimore and Ghosts of West Baltimore. His short fiction can be found in Brave New Weird Volume Two, Kaleidotrope, and This World Belongs to Us: An Anthology of Horror Stories About Bugs. His novel Eradicator will be released later this year.

We discussed how he manages to give such dramatic performances during his public readings, why his answer when asked to describe his genre of writing is “Baltimore,” the way discovering the novels of Donald Goines changed his life, why his wife was responsible for his first short story being written and sold, how he hopes reading him will have you feeling as if you’re in a frenetic car chase, why for him the villains always come first, the extensive research he needed to write Baltimore right, why his rapping career is a thing of the past, the reason a story’s opening line is so important, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for lunch at Sabatino’s in Baltimore, Maryland — (more…)

The latest episode of Eating the Fantastic wasn’t recorded at a convention, but as you’ll learn if you listen to my introduction, there’s a very good reason you could, if you’d care to, pretend it was.

My guest this time around is Robert Greenberger, a writer and editor of more than 100 books and anthologies, many within the DC, Marvel, and Star Trek franchises. He started his professional career an editor for Comics Scene and Starlog Press, and in 1984, joined DC Comics as an assistant editor to Len Wein and Marv Wolfman. He was promoted to editor the following year, and assigned the titles Star Trek, Suicide Squad, and Doom Patrol. The adaptations of several Star Trek films he edited led to him working on the franchise’s novel series, such as the seven-book crossover miniseries Gateways, developed with novel editor John J. Ordover. He continued at DC until 2000, by which time he’d risen to the position of Manager-Editorial Operations. Over the years, he worked on such titles as The Warlord, Lois Lane, Action Comics Weekly, Time Masters, Secret Origins, The Hacker Files, and more.



In 2001, he joined Marvel Comics as Director-Publishing Operations under Joe Quesada, but soon rejoined DC Comics as a Senior Editor for Collected Editions, where he remained until 2006. Since that time, he’s freelanced as a writer and editor, working for such companies as Weekly World News (where he was Managing Editor in 2006 and 2007), Platinum Studios, Syfy, Famous Monsters of Filmland, and ComicMix.com. He’s also a co-founder of Crazy 8 Press.

We discussed our teen experiences at the first Star Trek convention in 1972, how TV taught him about the existence of Marvel Comics, the way George Reeves as Clark Kent made him want to be a journalist, the lecture Wonder Woman editor Robert Kanigher gave him after he dared give feedback, why so many DC Comics staffers walked around without their shoes on Fridays, how he convinced Cable News to launch Comic Scene magazine, the convoluted way Denny O’Neil was responsible for him becoming Len Wein and Marv Wolfman’s assistant, how his editing of Star Trek comics led to his writing Star Trek fiction, the differences he saw in corporate culture while working at both Marvel and DC, what Clark Kent would have thought of his gig at the Weekly World News, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for lunch at Showroom in Frederick, Maryland — (more…)

My guest this episode is Shannon Robinson, whose short story collection, The Ill-Fitting Skin, was released last year. Robinson’s work has appeared in Gettysburg Review, Iowa Review, Water-Stone Review, Nimrod, Joyland, and elsewhere. She has an MFA in fiction from Washington University in St. Louis, and in 2011 she was the Writer-in-Residence at Interlochen Center for the Arts.

Other honors include the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction, grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts, a Hedgebrook Fellowship, a Sewanee Scholarship, and an Independent Artist Award from the Maryland Arts Council. Currently, she teaches creative writing and pedagogy at Johns Hopkins University and lives in Baltimore with her husband and son.

We discussed how best to deal with rejection, the way our opinions about print vs. electronic publication have changed over the courses of our careers, when an untrustworthy narrator can be a feature, not a bug, the many ways readers can be misreaders of stories, how she realized she’d reached short story critical mass and it was time to assemble a collection, the way the genres in which we write are often defined by those who publish us rather than the words on the page, what she tells her students is the only rule in writing, our contrasting experiences with simultaneous submissions, the ways in which she’ll apply everything she’s learned in writing short stories to her upcoming novel, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for lunch at Tamber’s restaurant in Baltimore — (more…)

The Seattle Worldcon has opened nominations for the Hugo Awards, the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, and the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. If you’re eligible to nominate, I hope you’ll consider my Eating the Fantastic podcast in the category of Best Fancast.

Last year, I invited listeners to eavesdrop on 28 culinary encounters with amazing creators. Below are links to all 2024 episodes so you can have a taste and decide whether the podcast — which I launched in February 2016 — is your kind of ear candy. I hope you enjoy eavesdropping!

Join Izzy Wasserstein for Kansas City BBQ in episode 216 of Eating the Fantastic

Munch MVP sandwiches with MVPs Gary K. Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan in Episode 217 of Eating the Fantastic

Nibble garlic naan with Jo Miles in Episode 218 of Eating the Fantastic

Snack on sushi with Ray Nayler in Episode 219 of Eating the Fantastic

Nosh pastrami with Glenn Hauman in Episode 220 of Eating the Fantastic

Join biographer Julie Phillips for Jӓgerschnitzel in Episode 221 of Eating the Fantastic

Join writer Sunny Moraine for dinner on Episode 222 of Eating the Fantastic

Sup on scallops with Arthur Suydam on Episode 223 of Eating the Fantastic

Devour a Georgian dinner with Dan Parent in Episode 224 of Eating the Fantastic

Chow down on cryptid pizza with Lesley Conner in Episode 225 of Eating the Fantastic

Polish off paneer biryani with Tobias Carroll in Episode 226 of Eating the Fantastic

Dig into duck with Alex Jennings in Episode 227 of Eating the Fantastic

Bite into a burrito with writer Elwin Cotman in Episode 228 of Eating the Fantastic

Gab over garlic bread with Sally Wiener Grotta in Episode 229 of Eating the Fantastic

Savor a seafood pancake with Ai Jiang in Episode 230 of Eating the Fantastic

It’s time for tea and scones with Chuck Tingle in Episode 231 of Eating the Fantastic

Breakfast with Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam in Episode 232 of Eating the Fantastic

Join Jenny Rowe (and James Tiptree, Jr.) at the Glasgow Worldcon bar in Episode 233 of Eating the Fantastic

Feast on burgers and fries with Cynthia Pelayo on Episode 234 of Eating the Fantastic

Munch on Mattar Paneer with horror writer William J. Donahue in Episode 235 of Eating the Fantastic

It’s time for two scoops of Sarah Pinsker on Episode 236 of Eating the Fantastic

Chow down on cheesy garlic bread with Jeffrey Ford in Episode 237 of Eating the Fantastic

Share beef noodle soup with award-winning writer John Chu in Episode 238 of Eating the Fantastic

Share a bowl of Cullen skink with the award-winning Wole Talabi in Episode 239 of Eating the Fantastic

Feast on fish and chips with Paul Cornell in Episode 240 of Eating the Fantastic

Chow down on chicken tikka masala with Gareth L. Powell in Episode 241 of Eating the Fantastic

Share scallops with R. S. A. Garcia in Episode 242 of Eating the Fantastic

Settle in for a steak dinner with Marvel’s Tom Brevoort in Episode 243 of Eating the Fantastic

Thank you for your consideration!