Last night, my local Alamo Drafthouse hosted a Dr. Phibes Feast, with an appearance by Vincent Price’s daughter Victoria and a five-course dinner prepared from recipes out of the 50th anniversary edition of Vincent and Mary Price’s cookbook A Treasury of Great Recipes. From the moment I learned of the event, I knew I’d have to be there. After all, if you created a Venn diagram consisting of Food and the Fantastic, for me those two circles would surely come close to a complete overlap.

Check out the announced menu above, lacking only the alcoholic pairings accompanying each course, which as those who know me already know, I eschewed. (more…)

I’ve been teasing you for months about my seemingly impossible quest to dine during this year’s World Fantasy Convention at a particular restaurant, one which I’ve avoided mentioning by name so as not to jinx my efforts. I first reached out to the restaurant on January 17, 2014—yes, 21 months ago, and even then I worried that wasn’t enough lead time—as soon as I realized Earlton, New York was only an hour away from Saratoga Springs.

What’s in Earlton? I received word a few hours ago from an extremely helpful and patient reservations manager that I was able to get a table for six the day after the con ends, so now it can be told—next month I’ll have the privilege of paying a visit to a place Eater called “what might possibly be one of the toughest reservations to get in the world”—Damon Baehrel. Some have waited as long as five years for a table, and as the restaurant site reveals, they’re so backlogged they’ve decided to no longer accept new reservation requests.

Since April 1, 2014 Damon has given me the OK to take a break from accepting NEW reservation requests for an extended period in order to process/organize the huge influx that came in by that date. Recent National/International media coverage has resulted in us being completely inundated and overwhelmed with requests from around the world. As we will not be processing any new requests for the time being, we will not be keeping your contact info/reservation request details on file if you do send one. Please check back here every few months as we will post here when we will begin accepting new requests again.

That day has not yet come. (more…)

With my wife’s attendance at the New Jersey Romance Writers annual conference acting as the catalyst, she and I took an extended weekend trip that led us (but mostly me) into Manhattan, Brooklyn, and out onto Long Island for get-togethers with friends seen far too infrequently. And those reunions (of course) involved food.

Here’s what we ate and where we ate it along our journey.

Hometown Bar-B-Que

The first thing to pass our lips once we reached New York was BBQ from Hometown (which I first visited back in July), with a beef rib so amazing it remains one of my favorite bites of the year. New for me this time around was its pastrami bacon, which was sold out last visit. I could eat that all day. (more…)

I accompanied my wife this weekend to New Jersey so she could attend the annual NJ Romance Writers convention, and while she was occupied there, I dashed into Manhattan and Brooklyn for adventures about which more will be revealed later. But we joined together yesterday for what to me is always the highlight of any trip to the New York City area—a visit with our comics friend Marie Severin, my favorite among all the people I met in comics. (Well … except for my wife.)

While typing these words, it occurred to me that I’ve known Marie for most of my life, even longer than I’ve known Irene, with the weekend of the 1972 EC Fan Addict convention being the latest possible date we would have met. And I’ve loved her from the start. If you knew her, too, you’d know … how could anyone not? (more…)

Whenever I attend a convention, there’s always the official con, and then the con away from the con, which typically involves at least one great meal. And that’s the way it was with Capclave, which was just held in Gaithersburg, Maryland. I took part in four panels—three to which I’d previously been assigned plus one I was added to at the last minute to replace a panelist who couldn’t make it.

I enjoyed sharing what wisdom I could on such panels as “Building Your Audience”—which ended with me invalidating all the advice I’d given during the previous hour when I quoted William Goldman’s maxim that “Nobody knows anything”—and “Food In Fiction”—during which I explained why Rene Redzepi uses ants in his New Nordic cuisine.

While I found all of that to be fun—you know me, put a microphone in front of me and I won’t shut up—the most important panel was probably the “Tiptree Retrospective,” which was captured above in a photo taken by Barbara Krasnoff. That’s Jim Freund, Julia Rios, Sarah Pinsker, me, and David Hartwell (who’d been Alice Sheldon’s editor and had actually visited her at home) reminiscing about that great writer in this, the year in which she would have turned 100. (more…)

Each day of this past weekend was split between the Baltimore Book Festival and Baltimore Comic-Con, and while that first event felt forward-thinking, the second was all about the past. Not only did I wander a dealers room in which I recognized every comic published or piece of original art created before 1980 or so, I also managed to catch up with seven people I’d worked beside during my time as a professional in the field.

And some I hadn’t seen in more than thirty years!

My nostalgia ride began with artist Ramona Fradon, whose work I’d loved as a child on titles such as Metamorpho and Aquaman.

Here we are posing with a copy of House of Mystery #273 opened to a story of mine which she drew in 1979! Not only was it a thrill to work with one of my idols, I couldn’t and still can’t imagine any artist more perfectly suited for that particular story. (more…)

I spent the weekend at the Baltimore Book Festival (combined with multiple visits to Baltimore Comic-Con, about which more later), where the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America hosted a tent featuring panels and readings from Friday through Sunday. That’s me to the left on the event’s homepage below, where I appeared for a few seconds at a time in rotation with the many other featured writers.

I was programmed for two items Sunday, but spent many additional hours beyond that at SFWA’s tent as well, enjoying (among other things) the Dangerous Voices Variety Hour gameshow, which put both authors and audience on the spot in amusing ways. You can check out my photos from the weekend over on Flickr.

Unfortunately, I forgot to hand my camera over to anyone to snap any pics of me, but luckily, the Internet provides … (more…)

This year’s list of Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants has just been announced, and though I didn’t hit as high a number of honorees here as I did for the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, I’m happy to see I made it to what’s considered #2 and #3, plus #25 as well.

And man, do I want to get back to #2!

To find out why, and to see what I thought of the other two restaurants I visited, click on the links below. (more…)

Capclave is only two weeks away, so if you don’t get enough of me at this weekend’s Baltimore Book Festival, come track me down then in Gaithersburg.

Here are the three panels—all scheduled for Saturday, October 10—on which you’ll be able to find me.

Tiptree Retrospective
10 a.m.
Alice Sheldon, who wrote as James Triptree Jr. was born 100 years ago. She was a complex individual who kept her true identity secret even from the many writers who communicated with her by mail. Robert Silverberg famously wrote that only a man could have written Triptree’s stories. What did she have to say and what was her best work? Why is she important to the field?

Small Press Vs. Self-Publishing
2 p.m.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of small press compared to self-publishing? Why did you choose one over the other? How will the rise of both affect the creation and distribution of books?

Building Your Audience
6 p.m.
Now that you finished your book and found a publisher, how do you get people to read it? What promotional devices work and what turns potential readers off? And, after you’ve published three or four books, what can you do to expand your readership and get readers of your newest book to look at your older ones?

I hope to see you there!

I was hoping to spend all day Saturday at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda—which I last attended two years ago, where I felt privileged to meet civil rights legend John Lewis—but life intervened, and I was instead only able to spend a few short hours there on Sunday. My abbreviated time that day was because I had to leave early to get to—and I’m sure you’ll understand—a ukulele jam. But my visit, though short, was still fun.

The high point this year was the brief time I got to spend with Bill Griffith, whom I’ve been reading since I was a young teenager.

I first encountered him through his cartoons in the pages of the East Village Other, which spoke more to my sensibilities when I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn than did the Village Voice. And I bought at least one of his underground comics at my first convention. Which means I’ve been reading stories of his most famous creation, Zippy, for about as long as Griffith’s been drawing him. (more…)