The Omicron surge is making me fear for my participation in future conventions, but that doesn’t erase the fun I had in D.C. last month during DisCon III, the 79th World Science Fiction Convention. I recorded five episodes of the podcast that weekend, the first of which was last episode’s pizza dinner with José Pablo Iriarte. This time around I invite you to join me for breakfast with the award-wining writer Fonda Lee.

Fonda Lee won both a World Fantasy Award and an Aurora Award for her novel Jade City, which was also nominated for Nebula, Seiun, and Sunburst Awards. That first installment of her Green Bone Saga, an epic urban fantasy, was followed by Jade War, which was nominated for both the Dragon and Aurora Awards. Jade Legacy, the third book in her series, was released in November of 2021. Her young adult novels Zeroboxer and Exo were both Andre Norton Award finalists. She holds black belts in karate and kung fu, which probably came in handy when it was time for her to write Shang-Chi for Marvel Comics.

Because Fonda is a fan of Eggs Benedict, we headed to the Lafayette restaurant in the Hay Adams Hotel, where I’d been informed by Tom Sietsema of the Washington Post we could find an excellent incarnation of that dish.

We discussed what it was like finishing the final book in her Green Bone Saga trilogy during the pandemic, her secret for keeping track of near 2,000 pages of characters and plot points, why every book project is terrifying in its own way, how much of the ending she knew at the beginning (and our opposing views on whether knowing the ending helps or hurts the creative process), the warring wolves inside her as she writes the most emotionally difficult scenes, why she starts to worry if her writing is going too smoothly, the framing device that became far more than a framing device, why her natural length for processing ideas is the novel rather than the short story, and much more.

Here’s how you can take a seat at the table with us — (more…)

I was reading True Brides’ Experiences #15 (as one does) when I noticed a massive amount of empty space in a word balloon, and assumed this was due the story being a pre-Code reprint, so I tracked down the original publication in First Romance Magazine #18 three years earlier.

Not only did the Code remove any dialogue which hinted at sex, but the nightgown worn by one of the women was made more modest, and her curves were mostly removed.

Plus the story’s title had been changed from 1952’s “Caught in the Night!” to 1955’s “Student Nurse.”

In addition to that, check out the way all the stories were retitled when published under the auspices of the Comics Code Authority. Three years later, and words such as “Temptation,” “Passion,” and “Wicked” were no longer acceptable.

Good thing no child ever read those words!