If you’re a longtime listener to Eating the Fantastic, you might have taken a seat at the table seven years ago for Episode 33 when Sunny Moraine and I had dinner and took a deep dive into their career. And if you’re a short-time listener, you may have heard us chat briefly as we shared a donut six months ago during Episode 208’s lightning-round Capclave Donut Carnival.

What brought us together again this year for our second full-length conversation was the release of their novella Your Shadow Half Remains, a chilling tale which I hope members of the Horror Writers Association will keep in mind next year when it’s once again time to nominate for the Bram Stoker Awards. I loved the book and wanted to get together and discuss what made it tick, so we met for dinner at Commonwealth Indian restaurant, the venue for two of my earlier culinary chats — Paul Kirchner in Episode 109 and Sheree Renee Thomas in Episode 196.

We discussed how the short story version of Your Shadow Half Remains exploded into a novel (and whether either of them would have existed at all without COVID-19), why pantsing is good but can sometimes become a nightmare, the way stories come to them cinematically,  several questions to which I didn’t want to know the answers but only whether they knew the answers, the unsettling demands of Skinamarink, why we both love ambiguity but most of the world doesn’t, how to interpret and when to implement the feedback of beta readers, the writerly gifts given to us by our subconsciouses,  why their short story days seem to be behind them, the two reasons they hate the process of titling their tales, and much more.

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