Well, we had a good run, didn’t we? Eight consecutive in-person conversations in a row had me thinking the era of pandemic-induced remote episodes was over, and I was looking forward to continuing to break bread face-to-face with guests during February’s Boskone. But it was not to be, for reasons you’ll hear explained once you check out the remote meal I ended up sharing with Paul Tremblay

Paul Tremblay is the author of the award-winning novels novels A Head Full of Ghosts (2015), which won the Bram Stoker Award and the Massachusetts Book Award, Disappearance at Devil’s Rock (2016), which won the British Fantasy Award, and The Cabin at the End of the World (2018), which won the Bram Stoker Award and Locus Award. His most recent novel is Survivor Song, published in 2020, with The Pallbearer’s Club due out later this year. He’s also the author of the novels The Little Sleep, No Sleep till Wonderland, Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye, and writing as P. T,. Jones along with Stephen Graham Jones, Floating Boy and the Girl Who Couldn’t Fly. His short story collection Growing Things and Other Stories was published in 2019. He is the co-editor of four anthologies including Creatures: Thirty Years of Monster Stories (with John Langan), and is on the board of directors and is one of the jurors for the Shirley Jackson Awards.

We discussed his legendary hatred of pickles, what it was like writing a pandemic novel before a pandemic only to see it published in the middle of one, if reviewers would have reacted differently to his zombies had Survivor Song been published any other year, his feelings about the description of him as a postmodernist, our shared love of ambiguity in fiction, whether horror having a moment means horror will also have an end, the one passage in his most recent novel which caused an argument with his editor, what’s up with the movie adaptations of his books, and much more.

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Here’s what we nibbled as we chatted, my Mexican food from Fiesta Tapatia in West Virginia, Paul’s from Casa Vallarta in Massachusetts —

Paul’s Enchiladas
two mole, one tomatillo
(already slightly nibbled alas by the time of the photo)

Scott’s Carnitas

Scott’s Churros

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Please join me two weeks from now when I’ll bring you another conversation which should have happened at Boskone — but didn’t. I’m not sure which guest that will be because I don’t yet know who will find time in their schedule first, but I do hope you’ll join us.

Thanks for listening!