Are you up for lunch at a spot in Las Vegas once once dubbed “the best Thai restaurant in America” by Gourmet magazine? Then pull up a chair to the table at Lotus of Siam, where Mary Turzillo and I snuck away to during StokerCon for some great food—and great conversation. You can eavesdrop on the latter, but as for the former, the photos below will have to suffice.

I had the great honor of publishing Mary’s story “Mars is No Place for Children” when I was the editor of Science Fiction Age, and then the additional honor of being Toastmaster at the Nebula Awards banquet the year she walked away with a trophy for that very story.

We talked about whether there’s a Venn Diagram overlap between her horror and science fiction readership, how her Cajun Sushi Hamsters from Hell writers workshop got its name, why she won’t be self-publishing her unpublished novels, what Gene Wolfe taught her about revising her fiction, and much more.

Here’s how you can pull up a seat to the table—

1) Subscribe at the iTunes store. (And if you’re so inclined, download a few of the first nine episodes while you’re at it.)

2) Use the RSS feed of http://eatingthefantastic.libsyn.com/rss to snag episodes on whatever device you use to cast your pods.

3) Or … simply listen below.

And since Mary mentioned her admiration for the Dominic Harman illustration which accompanied her award-winning story—here it it!

Here’s what we ate that day at Lotus of Siam, which so lived up to its reputation that I returned with other friends for another meal later that weekend.

Som Thum

Green papaya, chili, tomato, crushed peanuts mixed with lime juice, fish sauce, and sugar.

Pork larb

Ground pork, chopped onion, green chili, lime juice.

Deep-fried whole pompano fish

Topped with ginger, onions, and black mushroom sauce.

Next up— four-time Bram Stoker Award-winning writer Linda Addison … followed by Gene O’Neill, Fran Wilde, and Cecilia Tan. After that, who knows what Readercon might bring?

I hope you’ll join me!