When is an Awesome Con episode of Eating the Fantastic not an Awesome Con episode of Eating the Fantastic? When the con’s going to keep your potential guest too busy to record on site and you figure out a way to chat and chew anyway.

Salinee Goldenberg is the author of the novels The Last Phi Hunter and Way of the Walker, the second of which was released only a few weeks before we recorded. Both were published by Angry Robot. Previously, she worked at Bethesda Softworks creating narrative trailers for games such as Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Dishonored, and now produces videos for Minecraft. But those aren’t her only artistic outlets, for she also paints and plays in the punk band SexFaces.

We discussed what it was like having to deliver her second published novel on a deadline after having had her entire life to write the first, the Final Fantasy fanfic she wrote as a kid, why she’s attracted more to novels than short stories, how getting critiqued in the gaming industry prepared her to deal with writing workshops, why she considers herself a recovering pantser, how writing the ending of her new novel was almost like being in a fever dream, why she likes reading bad reviews, how to know when it’s necessary to kill your darlings, the way to write battle scenes so readers can follow the fight choreography, how being a guitarist in a punk rock band impacts her writing, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at Bangkok 54 — (more…)

Most of the time when I invite you to tag along as I chat and chew, it’s because I’m at a convention and I’m hoping to replicate for you some of the joy I discovered back at the beginning of my con life — how sneaking away from those cons with friends was as much fun as the cons themselves. And with my con season about to rev up again, there’ll be plenty of episodes like that soon to come your way.

But this time around, I took advantage of a trip to Manhattan earlier this month to catch a theatrical adaptation by the Elevator Repair service of James’s Joyce’s Ulysses at the Public Theater to squeeze in lunch with one of the best editors and best people I know — Liz Gorinsky.

Liz has been a seven-time nominee for the Hugo Award in the Best Editor: Long Form category, an honor won in 2017. Liz also won one of George R. R. Martin’s Alfie Awards in the same category in 2015. After a lengthy career at Tor Books where Liz edited such novelists as Annalee Newitz and Jeff VanderMeer and acquired short fiction for the company’s online component, Liz founded Erewhon Books in 2018, and acted as president and publisher. Liz stepped down from that role in 2022 to pursue personal projects. Liz is also an ardent LARP-ist — which might not even be a word — and fan of immersive theater, so our conversation veered into those topics as well.

We discussed whether either of us would have turned out as you know us without having grown up in New York, the early ambitions to be a comic book editor, the legendary comic book couple who were childhood neighbors, whether or not there’s any difference between editing fiction and non-fiction, how to gracefully navigate the convention community, the first edit letter which made Liz nervous, what makes Liz realize a manuscript shows potential, how to cleanse your palate when reading slush to be sure what you think is good really is good, self-defining success as a writer, what told Liz it was time to take on the publisher role, the appeal of immersive theater, why LARPing isn’t acting, what we might have told James Joyce if we were editing Ulysses, the many reasons whatever you’re doing you should be doing for love, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at Superiority Burger — (more…)

My guest this episode is someone you know even though you don’t know you know him — because, among many others things, Chris Kalb, artist, art director, and pulp magazine maven, designed the podcast icon for Eating the Fantastic, so you met him when you clicked on that flying saucer hoovering up a donut, burger, and chicken leg with its tractor beam. He’s also designed covers for two of my short story collections — the horror collection These Words are Haunted, and my recent science fiction one, 101 Things to Do Before You’re Downloaded.

But Chris is a lot more than the projects he was willing to tackle for me. He’s a Charles M. Schulz Award-winning cartoonist and designer whose work has appeared in books and magazines, on TV and online, and in educational content for the last 35 years. His illustrations have appeared in such books such as ‘Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy and Other Misheard Lyrics, Cooking Rocks: Rachael Ray 30-Minute Meals for Kids, and He Loved Me, He Loves Me Not. That last title, written by comedienne Lynn Harris, spawned the relationship super-hero Breakup Girl, whose subsequent internet advice column and web-comic (one of the first!) were adapted for TV by Oxygen when they launched in 2000.

From 2001-2008, Chris was the designer of the Syfy Channel magazine during the station’s peak period. For the last 13 years, Chris has been using all of his combined talents in storytelling, art, design and coding to craft innovative classroom experiences for Amplify Education, a pioneer in digital curriculum.

Chris has also been a life-long fan of pulp characters such Doc Savage, The Spider, Operator #5, and G-8 and His Battle Aces. Beginning in 2007, he has been able to give back to pulp fandom as the art director and publisher of Age of Aces Books, reprinting the very best in aviation pulp fiction from titles like Daredevil Aces, Sky Birds, Wings, and Flying Aces.

We discussed the comic book company and superheroes he and his brother created when they were just kids, why he once thought Chris Ware was his nemesis, the Batman comic which influenced him the most, how his father caused him to fall in love with Doc Savage, the secret origin of his romantic advice superheroine Breakup Girl, the sophistication  of pulp era writing, one theory as to why Doc Savage never made it as a successful comic book series, the college comic strip which won him a Charles M. Schulz Award, the problem the slabbing of pulps has caused within the collecting community, the pulp premium so rare none may have survived, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at Veselka — (more…)

The L.A Worldcon will shortly be opening nominations for the Hugo Awards, the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, and the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. If you’re eligible to nominate, I hope you’ll consider my Eating the Fantastic podcast in the category of Best Fancast.

Last year, you were invited to eavesdrop on 28 conversations with creators of the fantastic. Below are links to all 2025 episodes so you can have a taste and decide whether the podcast — which launched 10 years ago today — is your kind of ear candy. I hope you enjoy your time at my tables!

Split a pastrami sandwich with Martha Thomases in Episode 244 of Eating the Fantastic

Share shawarma with the award-winning Eric Choi in Episode 245 of Eating the Fantastic

Munch on pepper chicken masala with Larry Hama in Episode 246 of Eating the Fantastic

Chat and chew with Shannon Robinson on Episode 247 of Eating the Fantastic

Have a Nashville hot chicken sandwich with Robert Greenberger in Episode 248 of Eating the Fantastic

Mangia mussels in Baltimore’s Little Italy with David Simmons in Episode 249 of Eating the Fantastic

Rip into roti with writer Tim Paggi in Episode 250 of Eating the Fantastic

Wolf down lamb with Carolyn Ives Gilman in Episode 251 of Eating the Fantastic

Pig out on pork belly with Jarrett Melendez in Episode 252 of Eating the Fantastic

Break for brunch with writer Adeena Mignogna on Episode 253 of Eating the Fantastic

Toast writer/editor Craig Laurance Gidney on Episode 254 of Eating the Fantastic

Feast on oysters with Kemi Ashing-Giwa in Episode 255 of Eating the Fantastic

Bite into blueberry pancakes with Silvia Moreno-Garcia in Episode 256 of Eating the Fantastic

Devour a seafood tower with Samantha Mills in Episode 257 of Eating the Fantastic

Binge on burnt ends with Aimee Ogden in Episode 258 of Eating the Fantastic

Pig out on pork belly with Curtis C. Chen in Episode 259 of Eating the Fantastic

Rip into a lobster roll with Benjamin Rosenbaum in Episode 260 of Eating the Fantastic

Slurp ramen with Mur Lafferty on Episode 261 of Eating the Fantastic

Bite into Cheesy Pav Bhaji with Karen Heuler in Episode 262 of Eating the Fantastic

Tear into tacos with Richard Butner on Episode 263 of Eating the Fantastic

Slurp soup dumplings with Eugenia Triantafyllou on Episode 264 of Eating the Fantastic

Tackle Texas BBQ with John Picacio on Episode 265 of Eating the Fantastic

Polish off pasta with Lara Elena Donnelly in Episode 266 of Eating the Fantastic

Brunch on blueberry pancakes with Natalia Theodoridou in Episode 267 of Eating the Fantastic

Settle in for an Ethiopian feast with Alaya Dawn Johnson in Episode 268 of Eating the Fantastic

Sample samsa with Naomi Kritzer on Episode 269 of Eating the Fantastic

Savor shrimp — and Steve Ditko — with comics writer/editor Jack C. Harris on Episode 270 of Eating the Fantastic

Dish over dumplings with George Gene Gustines in Episode 271 of Eating the Fantastic

I thank you for your consideration!

It’s said water flows to the path of least resistance. But do writers? That’s but one of the topics I tackle during my Burmese lunch with the award-winning writer Emily Mitchell.

Mitchell is author of the novel The Last Summer of the World (published by W. W. Norton in 2007), which was a finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Award, as well as two collections of short fiction, Viral (published by W. W. Norton in 2015) plus The Church of Divine Electricity (published last year by the University of Wisconsin Press not long before our conversation). That latter collection won the 2023 Elixir Press Fiction Prize. Her stories have appeared in Harper’s, The Sun, The Southern Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, The Missouri Review, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere.

Her nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, the New Statesman (in the UK), Guernica, and the Washington Independent Review of Books. She is the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, the Ucross Foundation, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and Can Serrat International Artists Residency. She serves as fiction editor for the New England Review, and teaches at the University of Maryland.

We discussed why she felt the need to flip the first and last stories of her recent collection, the gaps which can sometimes occur between a writer’s intentions and a reader’s perceptions, the appeal of the ambiguity which comes with open-ended closure, how a writer’s career is defined as much by who chooses to publish them as by what they choose to write, why she loves working in the present tense (and why one of her stories originally published that way shifted to the past tense in her collection), what she learned about writing by being an editor, why leaving out much of what writers know about their characters improves what they choose to put in, her story which required the most drafts (and why), how writing longhand has gotten her unstuck, why it’s important to have many writing projects going at once, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at the Mandalay Restaurant Cafe — (more…)

It’s time for a trip to Baltimore Comic-Con, where I had the chance to chat with comics creator Don Simpson, whose work I’ve been reading for more than 40 years, ever since the first issue of Megaton Man in 1984.

Back at the beginning of that series, it seemed (incorrectly) as if Don’s interest was solely in satirizing the Marvel tropes of my childhood, with characters such as Stella Starlight (the See-Thru Girl) and Bing Gloom (Yarn Man) spoofing Sue Storm (the Invisible Girl) and Ben Grimm (the Thing). But he soon started focusing on the natural outgrowth of the characters rather than limiting himself to metafictionally commenting only on the comics themselves. There was some pushback on that from those who wanted him to stick to the nostalgia game, as you’ll hear us chat about a bit.

He also created the science fiction backup Border Worlds, which eventually expanded into its own comic, as well as Bizarre Heroes, plus underground comics such as Forbidden Frankenstein, that last project under the pseudonym Anton Drek. Don celebrated Megaton Man’s 40th Anniversary last year with two major projects — the 608-page The Complete Megaton Man Volume I: The 1980s  and Megaton Man: Multimensions — with more planned collections forthcoming.

Even those who haven’t been privileged to experience Don through those many comics projects might have encountered him via the illustrations he created for Al Franken’s 2003 bestseller Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.

We discussed why he splurged on a special issue of Captain Marvel at the Baltimore Comic-Con, how the business practices of comics affect the artistic side, the way two early visits with artist Keith Pollard taught him he didn’t want to be a Marvel Comics penciller after all, where he feels the Silver Age ended and the Bronze Age truly began, how classic cinema and the auteur theory influenced his creative choices, the lessons he learned from the first few issues of Love & Rockets vs. the unfortunate expectations set up by the first few issues of Megaton Man, how working on DC’s anthology title Wasteland caused him to reinvent himself, what path his publishing life would have taken had Megaton Man been only a one-shot as originally planned, the career differences between Basil Wolverton and Will Eisner, why he’s able to let others play with his characters without feeling proprietary, the alternate universe in which he would have been a Crusty Bunker or one of Romita’s Raiders, how 9/11 caused him to head back to school for a PhD, why he wrote a Ms. Megaton Man prose novel, whether he already knows the final chapter to his comics universe, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at Little Italy’s La Tavola — (more…)

Thanks to Andy Duncan, this episode marks an Eating the Fantastic first.

Andy’s a multiple award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer, having won three World Fantasy Awards, a Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, a Nebula Award, and others, plus he’s been been nominated for the Hugo, Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson Awards as well. His nonfiction has also received recognition, with his essay “It Is Always Time To Think About These Things,” having received a World Fantasy Award nomination last year. His collections include Beluthahatchie and Other Stories (which came out in 2000), The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories (published in 2011), and, most recently, An Agent of Utopia (in 2018) His most recent work of fiction, “The Hodges Meteorite,” was published November 2025 in the Sunday Morning Transport.

And as for the way Andy was a catalyst for a unique episode —

I first chatted with him on the show way back in 2016 on Episode 6, when we squeezed as much as we could of his secret origin and writing process into the length of a meal.

We narrowed our focus in 2018 on Episode 85 for a discussion of his then newly released short story collection An Agent of Utopia.

But this time around, we got even more granular, doing a deep dive into a single short story — “Criswell Predicts!” — parts of which I first heard Andy read at a con in 2014, and was finally published just a few months ago in Storyteller: A Tanith Lee Tribute Anthology. Discussing in detail how his initial idea was across more than a decade written and revised and workshopped until it finally saw print made for a fascinating conversation.

We discussed how his titles are often born decades before the stories to which they’re eventually attached, how his research into Criswell’s predictions “ethically stymied” him, why the way he creates stories isn’t a way he’d encourage anyone else to follow, the epiphany which caused him to realize a perceived bug in his story was actually a feature, what he hoped sending his story through the Sycamore Hill Writing Workshop would unlock, why he’s willing to publicly read aloud sections of stories he hasn’t completed, the essential exclamation point suggested by John Kessel, at what stage in the revision process specific details of setting get added, whether the story would have taken even longer to complete without the eventual pressure of a deadline, what about the story made it fitting for a Tanith Lee tribute anthology, the editorial acumen of Gardner Dozois, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at Mythical Pizza in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia — (more…)

This episode’s guest has intrigued me ever since I first encountered him in the pages of the New York Times, one reason being that in an alternate universe, I could have been him. George Gene Gustines has worked at the paper for more than a third of a century, and during that time, he’s written hundreds of articles about comics books and comics-related pop culture events alone.

And the thing is — when I was a teenager attending the State University of New York at Buffalo and worked on the student newspaper, I continually tried to convince my editors to allow me to write about comics in addition to my other assignments. At the time, my plan was to be a journalist, with no inkling of my eventual career in comics. But if I’d continued on my original path, I can imagine I’d now be doing what Gustines does, and hope my editors would allow me cover the things I love for a mainstream audience as often as I could.

Gustines, like me, started out as a fan, and got his first letter published in an issue of The New Teen Titans when he was 16. He’s even gone on to write comics of his own, with an autobiographical graphic novel in the works. We talked about all of this over dinner at one of his favorite spots near the New York Times headquarters.

We discussed the reason what he’s pulled off would have been impossible a generation ago, why he calls himself “the Forrest Gump of the New York Times,” how he determines which potential articles are right for the paper and which are too inside baseball, what moved him to write his first letter to a comics editor (and his secret to getting them published frequently), why he loves superhero team books, the grace of George Perez, what defines a fan, the story he regrets being the first to report, what he does when not writing about comics, who he wishes he could have interviewed before they passed, what it takes to get an idea approved by his editors, when he rather than another writer gets to write comic book obituaries, his upcoming autobiographical graphic novel about how comics changed his life, the voicemail Stan Lee left which matches what you’d imagine “The Man” might say, how he intends to reach his goal of 1,000 bylines, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at Ollie’s Szechuan restaurant in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen (where I did not spot Daredevil) — (more…)

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…)