Welcome to 2017, and to my first post of the new year!

I always wonder whether anyone bothers to read what I’ve been writing here, but it turns out—you do. So for my 1,837th post since I began this blogging thing, let’s take a look at the most popular posts from the past 12 months, shall we?

Of the top 10, three were food-related, two were about my new podcast (which I guess means five were food-related), two were about comics, two about personnel aspects of my life, and one about my writing. But that last one was far and away the most popular. The universe was evidently very happy I’d final sold a story to Analog.

Anyway, here they are, all linked, should you wish to relive them:

Never give up, never surrender: My 44-year quest to sell a short story to Analog

Our opening night dinner at Pineapple and Pearls

The first episode of Eating the Fantastic (with guest Sarah Pinsker) is now live!

Can you help ID these comics panels?

Checking out the menu—all of it!—at Pineapple and Pearls

Our opening night dinner at Voltaggio Brothers Steakhouse

Fun in the sun with Marie Severin

My Mother: January 14, 1936-December 30, 2015

Announcing a new podcast: Eating the Fantastic with Scott Edelman

How deep was the snow in Glengary, West Virginia? So deep the BBC interviewed me about it!

Hope you keep coming back to discover what I share during the next 12 months!

My novella “After the Harvest, Before the Fall” is in the January/February 2017 issue of Analog, which went on sale December 20th, and though I took note of that event over on Twitter and Facebook, I made no mention of it here, because I thought I’d said everything I want to say back when I’d made the sale, which was 44 years in coming.

Apparently not.

Holding the issue in my hands, peeling back the cover, and seeing my name at last on the Table of Contents, I wondered … what would 17-year-old me have felt if given a peek into the future, and allowed to peer over my shoulder at his name there?

I suspect he would have said something like, “What took took so long, old man?” (more…)

Otto Soglow, whose comic strip The Little King ran for 40 years and entertained me when I was a kid, was born December 23, 1900—though I wasn’t to meet him until April 23, 1973 at that year’s Reuben Awards banquet held at the Waldorf Astoria. Which was apt, since he was a co-founder of the National Cartoonists Society, host for that event.

Annoying kid with a sketchpad that I was, I wheedled sketches out of Garry Trudeau, Curt Swan, Paul Fung, Jr., Roy Crane … and, of course, Soglow as well, who drew for me the famous character whose newspaper strip he would continue to create until his death in 1975.

I have no special memories of that encounter, only this wonderful souvenir.

But happy birthday! And thanks for making me smile.

For the 25th episode of Eating the Fantastic—which is also the final episode of 2016—my guest and I brunched at Aggio during a break from the Baltimore Book Festival. Aggio is a restaurant from Chef Bryan Voltaggio which the Baltimore City Paper recently dubbed as offering the Best Modern Italian in town.

I’d eaten at Aggio before, but that was when it was still a pop-up within a different Voltaggio restaurant, Range, in Friendship Heights—where, by the way, I recorded an earlier episode of Eating the Fantastic with Carolyn Ives Gilman, which I hope you’ll be moved to download for dessert once you’re done with the entree of this episode.

My guest for this meal was the always entertaining Nalo Hopkinson, winner of the 1999 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. And she’s more than lived up to the promise of that award, winning the World Fantasy Award for her short story collection Skin Folk, as well as winning the Sunburst Award, the Prix Aurora Award, and many others. Plus her novel, Sister Mine, won my own personal award for being one of my favorite novels of 2013.

Over gazpacho and fried chicken cacciatore, we discussed how knowing Nobel Prize winner Derek Wolcott when she was young affected her future, why Samuel R. Delany’s The Motion of Light in Water is “a lifesaving book,” the Lemonade Award, which she launched to encourage generosity within the science fiction community, that time she cosplayed as Lt. Uhura at her first convention, and much more.

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

As you might have noticed if you’ve visited here before, I enjoy reading obituaries. And not just those of the famous, but also those unlikely to make the front pages.

The obituary for Virginia Durr, which appeared in a recent issue of the Washington Post, was particularly fascinating. Here’s why—

I found it odd for the notice to mention within its first paragraph that Durr died “on the 61 anniversary of the arrest of Rosa Parks.” After all, many people die on the anniversaries of famous events. So I was curious why that particular event would be a fact worth bringing up.

The second paragraph provides an explanation … managing at the same time to make me even more curious.

It turns out that Durr’s parents were the ones who “bailed Rose Parks out of jail after she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus on December 1, 1955.”

Was the date of her death a coincidence? Or something more?

Because apparently, this action by Durr’s parents, who were civil rights organizers, “took a toll” on her, as the obituary put it, and led to her being “shunned,” taken out of school, and sent to a private school “up north.”

Was the date so infused with emotion for Virginia Durr that considering the anniversary this year caused her fatal heart attack? The obituary doesn’t make that connection, and the Internet provides no answer.

But I wonder …

There are very few things which would cause me to drive two hours to a casino on its opening day—but one of those very few things was in play yesterday, because I’d managed to reserve a table for the opening service of Voltaggio Brothers Steakhouse, the first collaboration between Bryan Voltaggio, whose hospitality I’ve experienced many times before at Volt, Range, and Family Meal, and his brother Michael, who’s made his name on the West Coast, and is therefore an unknown entity to my palate.

As you know, I love being present as a restaurant begins—I was also at the opening nights of both Range and Pineapples and Pearls—but as it turned out, there were issues surrounding this particular opening we hadn’t anticipated.

Voltaggio Brothers Steakhouse isn’t a standalone restaurant, but rather one within the MGM Grand National Harbor casino, which proved so crowded once its doors opened that within an hour, it had reached capacity, and the venue began advising folks via its Twitter feed that perhaps they should consider coming by some other time. (more…)

Still have the meat sweats thanks to my recent run of episodes centered around Kansas City BBQ? Then you’ll probably welcome a break for Eating the Fantastic’s first vegetarian episode, recorded at Baltimore’s One World Cafe during the Baltimore Book Festival.

My guest who stole away from the Inner Harbor to join me this episode is Sam J. Miller, a writer who’s been nominated for the Nebula, World Fantasy, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Awards, and who won the Shirley Jackson Award for his short story “57 Reasons for the Slate Quarry Suicides.” And who last shared a meal with me during the 2015 Nebula Awards weekend at Alinea, considered to be one of the Top 10 restaurants in the world. His debut novel, The Art of Starving, will appear from HarperCollins in 2017.

We discussed the value of community within the science fiction field, the transformative piece of advice he received from Ted Chiang while attending the Clarion Writers Workshop, how one deals with reviews that are more politically than artistically motivated, the way 9/11 changed horror movies, the importance of the life and works of the great Thomas M. Disch, and more.

Here’s how you can eavesdrop on our conversation— (more…)

I’ve been bemoaning the fact my nights have contained fewer dreams than they used to, and November seemed to have had the fewest ever since I began to sharing them with you. I still haven’t figured out the why of it, which frustrates me. But I guess I should be glad that even though my dreams are dwindling, I still had visits last month from Katee Sackhoff, Stan Lee, Robert Silverberg, and others.

Check out the dreams I originally shared in November over on Twitter.

November 2016

I dreamt I chased another car at high speed, only to have it escape when it shrunk to mouse-size and vanished through a crack in a wall. Nov 30

I dreamt I wandered a hotel heading for George R. R. Martin’s party, patting my pockets for my ticket, sure I’d get in if I found it or not. Nov 30

I dreamt three gangsters collapsed on a golf course, and when I investigated, I collapsed, too! The fertilizer was sending up poison gas! Nov 30

I dreamt I worked in a jewelry store, and the moment my boss took a break and left me in charge, the store was overrun by shoplifters. Nov 26

I dreamt I interviewed Dwayne Johnson on a movie junket — but when it was all over, realized I hadn’t asked any questions about the movie! Nov 26

I dreamt I wandered Brooklyn in search of breakfast and ended up at a 100-year-old knishery. Which I don’t think Brooklyn has in real life. Nov 24

I dreamt my HS pal @marcfrons got cast as a criminal on Law & Order, and I was hired to be his dim-witted sidekick. I used my Lenny voice. Nov 18

I dreamt I was Loki, trapped in the Roosevelt Island tram above the East River. Don’t know why, if I was Loki, I couldn’t escape. Oh, well. Nov 16

I dream I visited @PaulKupperberg in Copenhagen, where he was now in charge of tourism. I kept offering him Starbursts. He kept refusing. Nov 14

I dreamt @BELUTHAHATCHIE asked what I was working on, and I told him a story that existed only in dream. Now to decide whether to write it. Nov 13

I dreamt I was at Bob Silverberg’s house. He was decluttering, and offered me a box of his correspondence with Tom Disch. I took it eagerly. Nov 12

I dreamt I visited a cemetery and got into a conversation with a guy who’d gotten married there only 5 minutes before. Never found out why. Nov 6

I dreamt my mother-in-law built an Eiffel Tower out of cheese as a centerpiece, then grew sad when she realized she could have bought one. Nov 5

I dreamt Katee Sackhoff and I went for tattoos together. She got a skeletal rib cage over her rib cage, while I got zombie flesh on my arms. Nov 5

I dreamt I left a Moscow restaurant and saw @ResaNelson zoom by on a steamroller. I tried to follow on roller skates, but couldn’t catch up. Nov 4

I dreamt I swam to the bottom of a swimming pool and stayed there for hours, safe and happy. There seemed nothing odd about breathing water. Nov 2

I dreamt I found myself wearing wedding rings on the ring fingers of BOTH hands. Which confused me at first, but then I became OK with it. Nov 2

I dreamt I was working in the Bullpen with Stan Lee — ’70s Stan Lee — when a letter came from Larry Lieber suing Marvel for royalties. Nov 1

My final Eating the Fantastic episode recorded during the Kansas City Worldcon was also my final taste of Kansas City BBQ. I chose Q39 for my brisket farewell, as Bonjwing Lee, a foodie I trust, had written that the place offered “some of the most tender and well-smoked meat” he’d eaten recently according to his Eater survey on Kansas City burnt ends.

My guest this episode is the incredible prolific Robert Reed, who’s been writing award-winning science fiction for decades—and I do mean decades—starting in 1986, when he was the first Writers of the Future Grand Prize Winner for his story “Mudpuppies,” all the way to 2007, when he won the Best Novella Hugo Award for “A Billion Eves” (which I was honored to accept on his behalf at the 2007 Worldcon in Yokohama).

We discussed why he believes he isn’t as prolific as we all think he is, the reason Robert Silverberg was a role model for him as he was getting started, what it was like writing 500-word short shorts for the Destiny videogame, why he didn’t read the shooting script when his short story “Truth” was made into the movie Prisoner X, how he really feels about collaboration (hint: he doesn’t play well with others), and more.

Here’s how you can share the BBQ and conversation— (more…)

As I’ve told you before, I’m addicted to the obituary pages of newspapers, and not just so I can read summations of the lives of the rich and famous. I’ve always been moved by the passing of regular folks, too, and sometimes, certain write-ups stand out.

And so, here’s your uplifting obituary of the day.

I regret never having met Henry Frank Kulesza.

I’d have liked to listen to polka and eaten some kielbasa with him.