The past two years of Eating the Fantastic were quite different due to COVID, and not only because of the conventions and other events which were cancelled, allowing only six in-person episodes out of 22 in 2020, and 12 of 27 in 2022. But also lost were the weekend trips I’d expected to make to New York and other cities, which kept me from many of the guests I’d hoped to host for you.

And since it doesn’t look as if I’ll make it to Manhattan any time soon, I decided I’d waited long enough for a face-to-face get-together Paul Witcover. To prevent COVID from stealing the conversation we should have had long ago, he picked up a pulled pork sandwich from New York’s Hometown Bar-B-Que, I grabbed a three-meat platter from Bonnie Blue Southern Market & Bakery in Winchester, Virginia, and even though there were hundreds of miles between us, we shared an entertaining lunch.

Paul Witcover‘s first novel, Waking Beauty (1997) was short-listed for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. He’s also written five other novels: Tumbling After (2005), Dracula: Asylum (2006), The Emperor of All Things (2013) and its sequel, The Watchman of Eternity (2015), plus most recently, Lincolnstein, just out from PS Publishing.

His 2004 novella “Left of the Dial” was nominated for a Nebula Award, and his 2009 novella “Everland” was nominated for a World Fantasy Award. His short fiction has appeared in Twilight Zone magazine, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine, Night Cry, and other venues. A collection of his short fiction, Everland and Other Stories, appeared from PS Publishing in 2009, and was nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award. He’s been a frequent reviewer for Realms of Fantasy, Locus, New York Review of Science Fiction, and elsewhere. He teaches fiction at UCLA Extension and at Southern New Hampshire University, where he is the Dean of the Online MFA program.

We discussed the reason the pandemic resulted in some of the best years of his freelance career, the way he thrives as a writer when dealing with the boundaries of historical fiction, why his new novel Lincolnstein is “exactly what you think it is,” how he writes in yesterday’s vernacular without perpetuating yesterday’s stereotypes, what can and can’t be taught about writing, the reasons he felt lucky to have attended Clarion with Lucius Shepard, the effect reading slush at Asimov’s and Twilight Zone magazines had on his own fiction, what Algis Budrys told him that hit him like a brick, and much more.

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