I last chatted with Jeffrey Ford — last for your ears, that is — eight years ago during the 2016 Readercon — in a conversation which appeared on Episode 17. Back then, I described him as a six-time World Fantasy Award-winning and three-time Shirley Jackson Award-winning writer whose new short story collection A Natural History of Hell had just been published. But now that it’s 2024 and we’re back for yet another Readercon, he’s a seven-time World Fantasy Award-winning writer and a four-time Shirley Jackson Award winner.

Since that previous meal, he’s also published the novel Ahab’s Return: or, The Last Voyage in 2018, A Primer to Jeffrey Ford in 2019, The Best of Jeffrey Ford in 2020, and Big Dark Hole in 2021, plus three dozen stories or so new stories.

We discussed why writing has gotten more daunting (but more fun) as he’s gotten older, the difficulties of teaching writing remotely during a pandemic, how he often doesn’t realize what he was really writing about in a story until years after it was written, the realization that made him write a sequel to Moby-Dick, why if you have confidence and courage you can do anything, the music he suggests you listen to while writing, the reason he thinks world building is a “stupid term,” the advice given to him by his mentor John Gardner, how the writing of Isaac Bashevis Singer taught him not to blink, why he prefers giving readings to doing panels, the writer who advised him if everybody liked his stories it meant he was doing something wrong, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for lunch at Gennaro’s Eatery — (more…)

I hate eating in hotel restaurants, but never more so than when I’m trying to record an episode of Eating the Fantastic.

Not only does the food there tend to rise only to the level of the merely edible (if you’re lucky), but breakfast during a convention means many interruptions as the usual tablehopping occurs, with people popping by to say hi. Plus you get no sense of place, as one hotel restaurant is pretty much like another, especially when it comes to breakfast.

So when it came time to seek out a good setting in Quincy, Massachusetts to chat during Readercon with six-time World Fantasy Award-winning and three-time Shirley Jackson Award-winning writer Jeffrey Ford, whose new short story collection A Natural History of Hell was recently published by Small Beer Press, I looked for something off-site and more authentic.

And found it in McKay’s Breakfast and Lunch. When I read a review about “a popular townie joint” that served food which was “simple and straightforward (no creme brulee French toast or maple ganache cinnamon bread here),” I knew I’d discovered a spot with some character. So that’s where I took Jeff.

We talked about how being edited by Jennifer Brehl made him a better writer, what it was like to be taught by the legendary John Gardner, why he admitted “I don’t really know dick about science fiction or fantasy,” and much more.

Here’s how you can join us— (more…)

This year’s World Fantasy Convention—which you may or may not have attended—ended Sunday. Even if you were among those present in Saratoga Springs, I doubt you were with me for all of the following 14 readings, which I recorded with a Flip mini-camcorder (mostly balanced on my knee), because I hate for history to vanish.

If you’d like to replication my experience, watch the first three (from Friday) one day, the next eight (from Saturday) another day, and the final three (from Sunday) the last.

Enjoy your virtual World Fantasy convention!

Carrie Cuinn

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Once I learned, only a few days before the event, that Jeffery Ford was going to give a reading at Frostburg State University as part of the Spring 2015 Reading Series at the Center for Creative Writing, I knew I had to be there.

Hey, it’s only 80 miles each way from the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia where I live, and seeing Jeff only once or twice a year at cons is (as those who know Jeff know) definitely not enough. So on Thursday, I jumped in the Jeep and headed over to meet him at the home of Andy and Sydney Duncan, where we caught up for an hour or so before heading to dinner, and then on to the Lewis J. Ort Library, located on the campus of Frostburg State University.

Poet Gerry LaFemina, the Director of the Frostburg Center for Creative Writing (who’d joined us for dinner), introduced Andy …

… who then introduced Jeff, who read his story “Word Doll,” from the anthology The Doll Collection, edited by Ellen Datlow. (more…)

Here are two more readings I attended at the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, bringing the total up to seven. I’d planned to catch one more, but my visit to the James Thurber House caused me to miss Geoff Landis. Sorry, Geoff!

But here’s Jeffrey Ford:

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So there I was, taking a break from putting the final polish on a new short story, and I sat down with Jeffrey Ford’s The Drowned Life. Even though I was already familiar with many of these stories, having experienced a number of them during their original publications thanks to many perspicacious editors, and had even heard him read some of them aloud, including the collection’s title story at last year’s Readercon, as I read them straight through it was like a receiving a blow with a 2 × 4 to the back of the skull.

The highlights for me were “The Night Whiskey,” in which a cloistered town’s strange fruit causes visions in some, while at the same time creating a need for others to pluck the wandering dreamers from the tree tops, and “Present From the Past,” in which the removal of a dead oak from the backyard brings a family together and reveals a forgotten treasure, and “The Bedroom Light,” in which what remains unsaid is far more important than what is said, and …

In fact, why am I bothering to pluck out individual titles and call them highlights? They’re all highlights. In fact, The Drowned Life is the best book I’ve read all year. (more…)

I dreamt this morning that I was crushed inside a small elevator with Jeffrey Ford. We were headed many miles underground to an abandoned coal mine which had been turned into an art gallery and performance space. It was a long and seemingly endless journey down. Once we reached our destination, I wasn’t quite claustrophobic in the repurposed area, but I could feel the weight of the Earth’s crust above me, and was always aware of it throughout the dream.

The exhibits in the dark and narrow room were in small pens behind metal chain link fencing. I could see books, magazines, and bizarre sculptural artifacts on display, but now that I’m awake I can no longer remember the specifics of any of them. There were many other visitors milling about in the tiny space, but the only one I recognized (other than Jeffrey Ford, who had arrived with me) was Bruce Sterling, who was being treated like a celebrity. Bruce was happy and laughing, carefree and casual, the only one seemingly unconcerned that a sudden cave-in might crush us all.

The host of the space brought over a young fan, and offered her to Sterling, as if Chairman Bruce was allowed anyone there as a form of droit de seigneur. But Bruce was a gracious Lord, and waved the punkish blonde woman off.

My attention returned to the exhibits, and I cursed myself for failing to bring along my camera. I thought of returning to the surface for it, but knew that another roundtrip would take hours, and by then it would be too late, for the exhibit space would be dismantled.

I awoke while bemoaning my forgetfulness.

I just finished reading Jeffrey Ford’s novel The Shadow Year, and immediately recommended it for both a Stoker and a Nebula Award. Shortly, I’ll recommend it for a World Fantasy Award as well. But now, I’m recommending it to you.

The Shadow Year is an expansion of Ford’s novella “Botch Town,” which appeared for the first time in his collection The Empire of Ice Cream and went on to win the World Fantasy Award. “Botch Town” was about kids in the ’60s who build a replica of their town in the basement and the parallels that then crop up between that fantasy world and the real world. I loved it. It had me feeling nostalgic for a place I’d never been.

I sensed there was more to tell, and thought that the story was worthy of being expanded to novel length even before I’d learned that Jeff was considering doing so. But at the same time, I was afraid, because “Botch Town” was so perfect, and I didn’t want to see the novel … well … botched.

But I should never have doubted the miraculous Jeffrey Ford, because the novel is as amazing as the novella. I can see no seams from its expansion, no flaws in its construction, no spots at which additional information was clumsily jammed in. I imagine that someday someone will do a doctoral thesis comparing the two, but that’s not for the likes of me. I just plan on enjoying them again and again. And you should, too.

The Shadow Year was published last month by William Morrow.