Last episode kicked off a run of Nebula Awards weekend conversations as you joined Aimee Ogden for lunch, and now our time together in Kansas City continues as you head out to dinner with Curtis C. Chen.

Curtis C. Chen’s debut novel Waypoint Kangaroo (which was a 2017 Locus Awards and Endeavour Award Finalist) is the first in a series of funny science fiction spy thrillers. That was followed by Kangaroo Too (which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly) and True Blue Kangaroo (a Smashwords bestseller for three months running). From 2008 to 2013, he posted a new flash fiction piece every Friday on a blog called “512 Words or Fewer.” 117 of those very short stories were collected in the book Thursday’s Children. His shorter works have appeared in Playboy, the ENNIE Award-winning Kobold Guide to Roleplaying, The Year’s Best Fantasy: Volume 2, Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey, and elsewhere.

He has written for the Realm original podcasts Echo Park, Ninth Step Murders, and Machina. His homebrew cat feeding robot was displayed in the “Worlds Beyond Here” exhibit at Seattle’s Wing Luke Museum. He is a graduate of the Clarion West and Viable Paradise writers’ workshops.

We discussed how he discovered Star Trek through the bars of his crib, how the super spystar of his Kangaroo trilogy was born, what it was like being critiqued by Pat Murphy and Ursula K. Le Guin when he was starting out, how taking voice acting lessons kickstarted his desire to write, the way to tell when it’s time to quit your day job (or not), how his nearly five-years-long flash fiction story-a-week project began, his creative solution for referencing the 20th century in his future series, an intriguing exercise for writers when watching TV shows based on the written word, why he went indie for the third book in his series, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for BBQ at Buck Tui — (more…)