I kick off Episode 3 by sharing a regret about Episode 2, which leads me to rattle off a list of regrets about my early days in comics, including being forbidden to attend what should have been my first convention, the questions I never thought to ask the giants on whose shoulders I stood, the missing paperwork which could have taught me lessons about my past, and the immaturity which got me removed from writing Captain Marvel — as well as why I’m fine if I end up being forgotten.

And here’s the photo in which I’d have appeared if only my parents had allowed it!

It’s time to say farewell to Readercon with one final meal there following last episode’s lunch with Jeffrey Ford — so get ready to take a seat at the table with the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning writer John Chu.

John’s a microprocessor architect by day, and a writer, translator, and podcast narrator by night. His fiction has appeared in magazines such as Lightspeed, Uncanny, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, Apex, and at Tor.com, plus in anthologies such as The Mythic Dream, Made to Order: Robots and Revolution, New Suns 2: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color, and others. His translations have been published or are forthcoming at Clarkesworld, The Big Book of SF, and other venues.

He has been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Ignyte Awards, won the Best Short Story Hugo for “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere,” plus the Nebula, Ignyte, and Locus Awards for “If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You.” In the days before our lunch, he surprised us all with the announcement he’d sold his first novel — and you’ll hear my own surprise during our conversation.

We discussed the way he gamified the submission process when he started out, how the pandemic made him feel as if he was in his own little spaceship, when he learned he couldn’t write novels and short stories at the same time, how food has become a lens through which he could explore a variety of issues in his fiction, the rejection letter he rereads whenever he wants to cheer himself up, how writing stories at their correct lengths was one of the most difficult lessons he had to learn as a writer, what it was about his 2015 short story “Hold-Time Violations” that had him feeling it was worthy of exploring as a novel, how he was changed by winning a Hugo Award with his third published story, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for lunch at Pho Pasteur Vietnamese restaurant — (more…)

I posted a second episode of Why Not Say What Happened?, and this time around, my upcoming Guest of Honor appearance at next year’s StokerCon causes me ramble about the night in 2004 Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, George Saunders, and I were all up in the same Bram Stoker Awards category (and all lost), how I used my cousin Herb Edelman to break the ice when chatting with Hollywood stars such as John Astin and Jeff Bridges, why I dragged a fan kicking and screaming from a 1975 comic book convention (which I mistakenly refer to as 1976) while wearing face makeup painted on me by Jim Starlin, and more.

Plus I explain the meaning of these two photos from the 1976 Comic Art Convention!

The first one’s me. But you can tell that by now, even with the intervening 48 years, right?

And the second features Bernie Wrightson, Howard Chaykin, Jim Starlin, Steve Gerber, and Mary Skrenes.

If you want to know why we’re all dressed that way,. there’s only one way to find out.