For the fifth and final episode of Eating the Fantastic recorded in Las Vegas during StokerCon, I headed out to Hash House A Go Go, one of my favorite restaurants—at least in its San Diego incarnation. My breakfast there is always one of my favorite Comic-Con meals. But alas, there turned out to be more than a 90-minute wait that Sunday morning in Vegas, so I moved on to Yard House at the recommendation of my guest, Gene O’Neill, who’d eaten there earlier that weekend.

Gene, with whom I attended the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth, has been nominated 11 times for the Bram Stoker Award, and has won twice, in the categories of Long Fiction and Fiction Collection.

We reminisced about our shared Clarion experience way back in 1979, our reaction upon seeing a stack of Jack London’s rejection slips, the personality trait he shares with Harlan Ellison, what he learned from Carol Emshwiller, what he and Kim Stanley Robinson taught each other during their eight-hour drives to Eugene, Oregon for workshops with Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm, and much more.

Here’s how you can get a seat at the table—

1) Subscribe at the iTunes store. (And why not download some of the earlier episodes at the same time?)

2) Use the RSS feed of http://eatingthefantastic.libsyn.com/rss to snag episodes on the device of your choice.

3) Or … simply click and listen below.

And here’s what we ate that afternoon.

Crispy duck wings

Roasted turkey pot pie

Penne pasta with chicken

The next episode—currently planned to go live on Wednesday, July 20—will feature Fran Wilde, who was recorded during Balticon. That will be followed by an episode with Cecilia Tan (also already recorded at Balticon), and then the episodes I hope will come off during this weekend’s Readercon, with guests Resa Nelson, Jeffrey Ford, and F. Brett Cox.

I hope you like this episode enough that you’ll return for those!