I took a trip to Brooklyn, New York earlier this week to take part in the latest installment of Brooklyn Books & Booze, which takes place the third Tuesday of each month at Barrow’s Intense Tasting Room. I was joined that night by three other readers — Yume Kitasei, Fran Wilde, and Victor Pineiro.

It was my first chance to talk up and read from my new science fiction short story collection 101 Things to Do Before You’re Downloaded, out this month from PS Publishing. The reason that book cover is so large in my hands is because that isn’t a book I’m holding, as copies haven’t made their way to me quite yet, but a collapsible poster, which I think pops far better in these photos at that larger size than the book itself would have.

If you weren’t in the room Tuesday, you can still hear me read the collection’s introduction, as well as one of the 13 stories inside — “The Lessons Only a Jelly Bean CanTeach.”

Enjoy!

Ever since I saw Dick Bartolo’s video of how he’d arranged with the NYC parks department to install a bench plaque commemorating the late, great William M. Gaines —

— I’ve been wanting to make a pilgrimage to that spot.

And yesterday morning, November 19, 2025, I finally did!

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This conversation comes to your ears not as the result of my convention travels, which is the source of so many of the chats I bring you, but instead due to the bookshop reading series Charm City Spec, which has been been taking place quarterly in Baltimore since late 2017.

One of the last installment’s guests was Alaya Dawn Johnson, an award-winning author of eight novels for adults and young adults. Her debut YA novel, The Summer Prince, was long-listed for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and was nominated for a Nebula (Andre Norton) Award for YA Science Fiction and Fantasy. Her follow-up YA, Love Is the Drug, won the second of those prestigious awards. Her most recent YA novel, The Library of Broken Worlds, won the BSFA award for Fiction for Young People and was a finalist for the Ursula K. Le Guin award.

Her most recent adult novel, Trouble the Saints, won the 2021 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Her short story collection, Reconstruction, published by Small Beer Press in January 2021, was an Ignyte Award and Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist. That collection includes her Nebula-Award winning short story, “A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i,” originally published by The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

Her short stories have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Uncanny, Reactor, Clarkesworld, Asimov’s Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, The Book of Witches, and most notably, in collaboration with Janelle Monáe, the title story in The Memory Librarian. She is currently the visiting professor in the MFA program at Queens College CUNY.

We discussed what led to her “life-defining obsession” with Mexican history, the allure of science fiction’s cognitive estrangement, how the German edition of her vampire novel saved her life, the serendipitous discovery which inspired her first published fantasy story, why she no longer owns any of her rejection slips, which franchise inspired her first fan fiction novels, how a novella which didn’t seem to be working turned into her award-winning novel Trouble the Saints, the way a pajama party led to a novel sale, what she means when she says she’s a pantser while she plots, the way to determine which conflicting  critiques deserve your attention, how to prepare for uncomfortable conversations with editors, the importance of a single word or line to a story, the twin poles of ambiguity vs. explicitness, how Tanith Lee’s The Silver Metal Lover inspired The Summer Prince, the importance of meeting the moment in which you’re living, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at Ethiopic restaurant — (more…)

[If you’ve already read my original post, scroll down for a November 17th update.]

[And a November 26th update as well.]

On August 12, 1971, my 16-year-old self mailed the first story I ever wrote off on its first submission. The publication I hoped would buy that story, my dream market, was The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

My tale was quickly — and justifiably — rejected.

On July 17th, 2025, one month shy of 54 years later, I finally sold a story to that magazine. It was my 85th submission across five editors. (I can tell you those precise numbers because when it comes to my writing, not only am I persistent, but I also keep good records.)

I was thrilled!

And I looked forward to the day I could use that sale and subsequent publication of my story to continue sharing a message which has long been my rallying cry to the other members of my writing community. It’s what I shouted to the world after I finally sold a story to Analog after 44 years of trying — (more…)