On the final day of StokerCon 2017, I woke ridiculously early for a breakfast recording of Eating the Fantastic at Roscoe’s House of Chicken & Waffles—to the great skepticism of almost everyone I’d told at the con, who doubted those two foodstuffs were meant to be ingested simultaneously.

Luckily, my guest this episode was not a skeptic, and enthusiastically accompanied me for the greasy goodness. Five-time Bram Stoker Award winning-writer Nancy Holder had been the Toastmaster during the previous night’s ceremony, is the author of the young adult horror series Possessions, and has written many tie-in works set in such universes as Teen Wolf, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Smallville, and Wonder Woman.

We discussed her somewhat secret origin as a romance novelist, why her first horror convention made her burst into tears, how she got off on the wrong foot with acclaimed editor Charles L. Grant, what caused her Edgar Allan Poe obsession to begin, why she was a fan of DC Comics instead of Marvel as a kid, what Ed Bryant might have meant when he called her “the first splatterpunk to chew with her mouth closed,” and more.

Here’s how you can take a bite out of that chicken and waffles, too—

1) Subscribe over at iTunes, where you’ll also find the 41 previous episodes for your entertainment and edification.

2) Download the episode to your the device of your choosing via the show’s RSS feed of http://eatingthefantastic.libsyn.com/rss.

3) Or listen right here using the embed below.

And here’s what we ate during our conversation—

Nancy’s waffles and eggs

My Herb’s Special: 1/2 Southern fried chicken + waffles

If listening to this episode leaves you hungry for more, remember to return in two weeks when I’ll serve up my final episode recorded during StokerCon, with guest George R. R. Martin—whom some of you may know from short fiction such as “Sandkings” and “The Pear-Shaped Man” and novels like Fevre Dream and The Armageddon Rag, while still others might know best from his TV work … like … you know … The Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast.

And if you’d like more episodes of Eating the Fantastic to be released more frequently, you can help make that happen through joining with others over at Patreon to someday shorten that gap by making a small recurring monthly donation (with perks for all patrons, of course). This will help subsidize some of the travel, bandwidth, equipment, meal, and other costs associated with the show. (Or, if that kind of commitment’s not for you, you can make a one-time donation via Paypal.me.)

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I hope you join me next time for Thai food with George R. R. Martin.