Last week, I had a dream … and it led me to launch a new podcast. This one will allow me to talk more about myself, which I try my best not to do during episodes of Eating the Fantastic, since I believe on that show, the guests should come first.

If you have any questions, or it there’s anything you’d like me to chat about from my multiple careers in science fiction, comics, horror, etc., let me know!

I last chatted with Jeffrey Ford — last for your ears, that is — eight years ago during the 2016 Readercon — in a conversation which appeared on Episode 17. Back then, I described him as a six-time World Fantasy Award-winning and three-time Shirley Jackson Award-winning writer whose new short story collection A Natural History of Hell had just been published. But now that it’s 2024 and we’re back for yet another Readercon, he’s a seven-time World Fantasy Award-winning writer and a four-time Shirley Jackson Award winner.

Since that previous meal, he’s also published the novel Ahab’s Return: or, The Last Voyage in 2018, A Primer to Jeffrey Ford in 2019, The Best of Jeffrey Ford in 2020, and Big Dark Hole in 2021, plus three dozen stories or so new stories.

We discussed why writing has gotten more daunting (but more fun) as he’s gotten older, the difficulties of teaching writing remotely during a pandemic, how he often doesn’t realize what he was really writing about in a story until years after it was written, the realization that made him write a sequel to Moby-Dick, why if you have confidence and courage you can do anything, the music he suggests you listen to while writing, the reason he thinks world building is a “stupid term,” the advice given to him by his mentor John Gardner, how the writing of Isaac Bashevis Singer taught him not to blink, why he prefers giving readings to doing panels, the writer who advised him if everybody liked his stories it meant he was doing something wrong, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for lunch at Gennaro’s Eatery — (more…)

Welcome to an entirely unexpected episode of Eating the Fantastic. Why, one could almost call it an historic episode! In fact, I won’t almost call it historic — I will call it historic. Because it’s the only episode since this podcast began during which you’ll hear me chat with a creator while we eat a flavor of ice cream inspired by their latest book — in this case, Sarah Pinsker’s Haunt Sweet Home — created by the Baltimore ice cream experts at The Charmery.

Sarah’s no stranger to longtime listeners of the show. She was my first guest way back on Episode 1 in February 2016, my first virtual pandemic guest, during which we recorded while we each ate similar takeout in our own homes in April 2020 on Episode 120 — that was when we discussed her unintentionally prescient debut novel A Song for a New Day — and a guest once again on Episode 151 in August 2021, when she was joined by Karen Osborne and K. M. Szpara, since they’d all recently published second novels.

Here’s Sarah’s bio from the back flap of Haunt Sweet Home —

Sarah Pinsker is the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K Dick Award winning author of A Song For A New Day, We Are Satellites, Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea, Lost Places, and over sixty works of short fiction. Her stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Uncanny, and in numerous anthologies and year’s bests. She is also a singer/songwriter with four albums on various independent labels. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland with her wife and two weird dogs.

The flavor launched on Friday the 13th, and we met at The Charmery yesterday for a taste of that book-inspired ice cream, where we discussed the sculpture she saw at the American Visionary Art Museum which planted a seed for Haunt Sweet Home, the origin of the ice cream collaboration, how she knew her idea was meant to be a novella and not a novel, why she prefers writing books without a contract, how multiple ideas coalesced into one, the narrative purpose of telling a story via multiple formats, how to know a character who doesn’t know themselves, why you can’t tell from the end product whether a piece of fiction was plotted or pantsed, Kelly Robson’s theory about the Han Solo/Luke Skywalker dichotomy and what it means for creating interesting characters, why she’s a fan of making promises in the early paragraphs of her stories, whether our families understand what we’re writing about when we write about families, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for ice cream at The Charmery — (more…)

A personal conflict prevents me from attending the entire Capclave weekend this year, so I’ll only be able to make it on Sunday, but I hope we’ll manage to run into each other there nonetheless.

If you are in Rockville that final day, here’s where you’ll be able to find me.

This Was the End
Sunday, September 27, 12:00 p.m. (Monroe)
*Former* editors/publishers of SFF magazines that were forced to shut down talk about what went wrong, what they learned, and what could be done better.
with Shahid Mahmud, Alex Shvartsman, and Ian Randal Strock

In Defense of the Standalone
Sunday, September 27, 1:00 p.m. (Washington Theater)
Too many stories develop into series. How does a standalone novel advance the craft? Do we love them or hate them and why? Can a series be a standalone novel such as Connie Willis’ All Clear and Black Out?
with Mark Roth, A.C. Wise, L. Marie Wood

Author Reading
Sunday, September 27, 2:30 p.m. (Monroe)
Scott Edelman reads from recent and upcoming works.

I hope we manage to connect!

I always have a fun time at Baltimore’s Charm City Spec reading series, once as a participant, often as an audience member, and sometimes as a podcaster who steals away with one of the invited readers to break bread and record an episode of Eating the Fantastic. So it was prior to that event’s last installment with horror writer William J. Donahue!

Donahue is the author of such novels as Burn Beautiful Soul (2020), Crawl on Your Belly All the Days of Your Life (2022), and most recently, Only Monsters Remain (2023). His short story collections include Brain Cradle (2003), Filthy Beast (2004) and Too Much Poison (2014). When not writing fiction, Donahue works as a full-time magazine editor and features writer. Over the past 15 years, his writing and reporting have earned nearly a dozen awards for excellence in journalism from the American Society of Business Publication Editors.

We discussed the artistic endeavor which had him performing under the name Dirty Rotten Bill, why the first three novels he wrote will never see the light of day, what he was doing with one of those heads from the film 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, why he finds playing with the apocalypse so appealing, the reason he’s neither a plotter or a pantser, but a plantser, how a vegetarian is able to do damage to human flesh in his fiction, the way our journeys were different and yet we managed to wind up at the same destination, how wrestling changed his life, why we keep writing and submitting in the face of rejection, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for dinner at Mt. Washington Pizza & Subs & Indian Cuisine — (more…)