It’s time to settle in for another lunch during the Washington, D.C. pop culture festival Awesome Con. Last episode, you eavesdropped on my meal with Patrick O’Leary, and this time around you get to take a seat at the table with Sam J. Miller.

You first heard me chat and chew with Sam 5-1/2 years ago in Episode 24, and when I noted he’d be at the con to promote his debut short story collection Boys, Beasts & Men, I knew it was time for us to catch up.

So much has changed since I last shared him with you in late 2016! His first novel, The Art of Starving, was published the following year and was a finalist for the 2018 Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, and won the 2018 Andre Norton Award. Blackfish City, published in 2018, won the 2019 John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and was named a best book of the year by Vulture, the Washington Post, and Barnes & Noble, as well as a must-read for Entertainment Weekly and O: The Oprah Winfrey Magazine. His second young adult novel, Destroy All Monsters, was published by HarperTeen in 2019, and his second adult novel, The Blade Between, was published by Ecco Press in 2020.

We discussed the 1,500 short story submissions he made between 2002 and 2012 (as well as the one story which was rejected 99 times), the peculiar importance of the missing comma from the title of his new collection Boys, Beasts & Men, his technique for reading collections written by others, why the Clarion Writing Workshop was transformative, how Samuel R. Delany gave him permission, the way his novels and short stories exist in a shared universe, the impossibility of predicting posthumous fame, the superpower he developed via decades of obscurity, the differing ideas of what writers block means, and much more.

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Here’s what we sipped and nibbled during our lunch at the fabulous D.C. Georgian restaurant Supra —

Tarkhuna
“the iconic, electric-green tarragon soda”

Sam’s Khachapuri (Pkhlovani)
sulguni cheese blend inside, spinach-herb-cheese blend on top

Scott’s Khachapuri (Kubdari)
svanuri salt-spiced pork & beef filling

Medok
honey cake with fresh berries and berry puree

And since we discussed the new tattoo with which he celebrated the publication of Boys, Beasts & Men …

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Please join me two weeks from now for a trip to Shore Leave, an annual convention held in a Baltimore suburb, where I brunched with Michael Jan Friedman, who’s written more than 70 books and 200 comic book stories, and with whom — since we’re only 24 days apart in age, and both with a New York background — it was fascinating to compare where out timelines overlapped and diverged. I do hope you’ll return to eavesdrop yet again.

Thanks for listening!