Did you listen to the 24-hour Scares That Care Telethon, hosted by Brian Keene and his cohorts from The Horror Show with Brian Keene podcast, which ended at noon today after having raised $21,591 for that 501c3 charity devoted to helping those coping with childhood illness, burns and breast cancer? If not, don’t worry. Because though its content was for the most part livestreamed only, never to be seen or heard again, I’ve got some of it for you right here.

Because once again, Eating the Fantastic invaded!

During last year’s telethon, as captured in Episode 34, I brought BBQ and chatted with that best-selling zombie author himself, while this year I picked up takeout from Viet Thai Cafe for dinner with Mary SanGiovanni.

Mary’s the author of The Hollower trilogy, the first volume of which was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, plus the recent novels Chills and Savage Woods. Her collections include Under Cover of Night, A Darkling Plain, and Night Moves. She’s also the host of the Cosmic Shenanigans podcast.

We discussed H. P. Lovecraft’s racism and sexuality (or lack thereof), how having grown up in New Jersey might have given her the toughness she needed to survive her early short story rejections, why she ended up writing horror instead of science fiction even though her father read her Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert when she was a kid, which novella she wrote that will never see the light of day, how watching The Exorcist III changed her life, why she’s no longer afraid of vampires, the reason her motto if she founded a religious cult would be “doorways are meant to be opened,” the first writer she met who treated her like an equal, the identity of “the George Carlin of Horror,” and much, much more.

Here’s how you can help polish off some Pork Pad Thai with us—

1) Subscribe over at the iTunes store—which may inspire you to sample some of the 65 earlier episodes while you’re there.

2) Use the RSS feed of http://eatingthefantastic.libsyn.com/rss to download the episode to your chosen device.

3) Or listen via the embed below.

Alas, while I don’t have the usual food pics of our meal for you, here are a few of the three dozen donuts I brought from Maple Donuts to fill the live studio audience with enough sugar to make sure they’d stay awake all 24 hours of the telethon.

You can thank former podcast guest Lynne Hansen for that photo, as well as the one above of me and Mary, which captures the moment I remembered to pass her a fork so she wouldn’t have to eat that shrimp lo mein with her fingers.

But interviewing Mary wasn’t the only thing I did to in some small way help fill those 24 hours to entertain the live studio audience and those listening to the livestream. I also brought my ukulele along to torment filmmaker Mike Lombardo.

Listeners made sufficient donations that he was required to perform an interpretive dance while I accompanied him by strumming “Monster Mash” on the ukulele, a thing which you may or may not want to watch, because the video redefines both the words “entertainment” and “dancing.”

Those tuning in via the livestream should be grateful that livestream was audio only.

I hope this spectacle won’t put you off from joining me next episode, when I’ll be heading to Pittsburgh for the Nebulas Awards weekend, where I’ll—if all goes well—record five episodes of the show, most of them with authors who are nominated this year. But until then, a reminder—

If you enjoyed this episode and want to support my mission of breaking bread with creators of the fantastic while letting you take a seat at the table, there are several ways you can help—

One easy way is to rate Eating the Fantastic on iTunes and like it on Facebook, because that will help bring this podcast to the attention of potential new listeners.

Also—you could tell your friends about the show by sending them a link to your favorite episode and letting them know what I’m doing here.

But if you’d like to become even more involved, there are three more substantial ways you can support this show. There are expenses such as equipment, bandwidth, parking, the shuttling of guests between hotels and convention centers to and from restaurants, and, yes, the meals which loosen the tongues of those guests, so any contribution you feel up to sending my way to help cover those and other associated costs—such as this episode’s 272-mile roundtrip to and from York, Pennsylvania— would be most appreciated.

You could make a small recurring monthly donation over at Patreon, where there are various perks involved depending on your level of support, such as access to a patrons-only blog, getting a shout-out on the show (a big welcome to new backer Phil Margolies!), stickers, postcards, and more.

Or if an ongoing level of commitment’s not for you, or if Patreon’s just not your thing, then consider tossing a couple of bucks in the tip jar instead and making a one-time donation of any size via Paypal.me.

Or you could head on over to https://ko-fi.com/eatingthefantastic and send me the funds to cover the cost of a cup of coffee—because every little bit helps.

Thanks for listening!