Jack C. Harris may not be the Eating the Fantastic guest I’ve known the longest — that honor belongs to Paul Levitz, whom I met in 1971 during the 4th of July weekend Comic Art Convention — but I met Jack two years later at the same con where he famously cosplayed at the masquerade as the Batman villain Two-Face, and knowing someone for 52 years is no small thing.

More than half a century later, we got together for dinner the weekend of Ditko Con, which Jack attended because of his many collaborations with the legendary Steve Ditko over the years, including on titles such as The Creeper, Shade the Changing Man, The Demon, Wonder Woman, Legion of Super-Heroes, The Fly, and others. Jack wrote about their relationship in his 2023 book Working with Ditko.

While I was working in the Marvel Comics Bullpen during the mid-’70s, he was one of DC’s Junior Woodchucks, as their assistant editors were called. He worked for a time under editor Murray Boltinoff before becoming a full editor himself. Among the additional titles he wrote were Kamandi, The Ray, Isis, Karate Kid, Metal Men, and others, plus he edited Black Lightning, Firestorm, Madame Xanadu, and more.

We discussed why he decided to abandon his original plan of becoming an artist and chose writing instead, the chance comics shop encounter which led to him being offered a job at DC Comics, why he was astonished when he first saw the colors of Superman’s costume, how his working relationship with Steve Ditko began, an intriguing comparison between Julie Schwartz and Stan Lee I’d never considered, the greatest compliment he ever received during his comics career, the idiosyncrasies of editor Murray Boltinoff, which comics pro was responsible for the flowering of comics fandom, how he felt about the Marvel/DC divide during the time we were both assistant editors, what it was like working with the legendary creators who preceded us, the legacy character he regrets never having gotten the chance to write, his Human Torch story which took 17 years to get published, the contrasting ways Marvel and DC treated their Golden Age characters at the beginning of the Silver Age, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at Laurel & Grouse — (more…)

This episode, I invite you to wander off from the Maryland convention Capclave for dinner with one of this year’s Guests of Honor — the multi-award winning writer Naomi Kritzer.

How multi-award-winning? Naomi’s a seven-time Hugo Award nominee (winning twice for short story and twice for novelette) — a three-time Nebula Award nominee (winning once for novelette) — a three-time Lodestar Award nominee — (winning once) — a four-time nominee for the WSFA Small Press Award (winning once) — and has also won the Asimov’s readers poll. Plus she’s been a two-time Andre Norton Award nominee, as well as a finalist for the Eugie, Dragon, and William L. Crawford Awards.

The stories which won her those honors were published in such magazines as Clarkesworld, Analog, Asimov’s, Uncanny, Apex, F&SF, and others, and in such anthologies as Infinity’s End and The Reinvented Heart: Tales of Futuristic Relationships. Many of those stories have been gathered in her collections Gift of the Winter King and Other Stories (2011) and Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories (2017). Her novels include Catfishing on CatNet, Chaos on Catnet, and Liberty’s Daughter. Her novella Obstetrix, published by Tordotcom, is coming in June 2026.

We discussed why a friend stepped up to start submitting stories for her, the question she asked Madeleine l’Engle when she was nine, why she spent years not reading reviews (even the good ones), her surprise at the way “Cat Pictures Please” went viral, what it’s like when you’re on “that” panel at a convention, why she wishes she’d told the early editors to whom she’d submitted how young she was, the many writers time has passed by (and how we hope neither of us will join them), what she was told by her mentor after confessing she wanted to be Ursula K. Le Guin, the story she sold to a market by deliberately writing the sort of story that magazine said it didn’t want, the inability of writers to know which of their stories will resonate most with readers, whether the stories she’s written in response to prompts might have existed in some other form without those prompts, how our writing has been affected by the times in which we live, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at Silk Road Choyhona — (more…)

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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