This conversation comes to your ears not as the result of my convention travels, which is the source of so many of the chats I bring you, but instead due to the bookshop reading series Charm City Spec, which has been been taking place quarterly in Baltimore since late 2017.

One of the last installment’s guests was Alaya Dawn Johnson, an award-winning author of eight novels for adults and young adults. Her debut YA novel, The Summer Prince, was long-listed for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and was nominated for a Nebula (Andre Norton) Award for YA Science Fiction and Fantasy. Her follow-up YA, Love Is the Drug, won the second of those prestigious awards. Her most recent YA novel, The Library of Broken Worlds, won the BSFA award for Fiction for Young People and was a finalist for the Ursula K. Le Guin award.

Her most recent adult novel, Trouble the Saints, won the 2021 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Her short story collection, Reconstruction, published by Small Beer Press in January 2021, was an Ignyte Award and Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist. That collection includes her Nebula-Award winning short story, “A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i,” originally published by The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

Her short stories have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Uncanny, Reactor, Clarkesworld, Asimov’s Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, The Book of Witches, and most notably, in collaboration with Janelle Monáe, the title story in The Memory Librarian. She is currently the visiting professor in the MFA program at Queens College CUNY.

We discussed what led to her “life-defining obsession” with Mexican history, the allure of science fiction’s cognitive estrangement, how the German edition of her vampire novel saved her life, the serendipitous discovery which inspired her first published fantasy story, why she no longer owns any of her rejection slips, which franchise inspired her first fan fiction novels, how a novella which didn’t seem to be working turned into her award-winning novel Trouble the Saints, the way a pajama party led to a novel sale, what she means when she says she’s a pantser while she plots, the way to determine which conflicting  critiques deserve your attention, how to prepare for uncomfortable conversations with editors, the importance of a single word or line to a story, the twin poles of ambiguity vs. explicitness, how Tanith Lee’s The Silver Metal Lover inspired The Summer Prince, the importance of meeting the moment in which you’re living, and much more.

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

It’s time to say farewell to this year’s Worldcon by brunching with Natalia Theodoridou, the last of four guests from Seattle following Eugenia Triantafyllou, John Picacio, and Lara Elena Donnelly.

Theodoridou’s debut novel, Sour Cherry, was released earlier this year by Tin House (in North America) and Wildfire (in the UK and the Commonwealth). He’s a five-time Nebula Awards nominee, and shared an award earlier this year in the category of game writing for A Death in Hyperspace. He won a Nebula Award for short story in 2018 for “The Birding: A Fairy Tale,” published in Strange Horizons.

He’s also the winner of Moniack Mhor’s 2022 Emerging Writer Award. Additional fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Apex, Uncanny, Psychopomp, khōréō, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and numerous others. He is also a Clarion West Graduate (class of 2018) and holds a PhD in Media & Cultural Studies from SOAS University of London.

We discussed what it felt like attending Clarion the same year he was nominated for a World Fantasy Award, how Karen Joy Fowler’s advice changed the texture of his descriptions, what he needs to know before beginning to write a short story, whether he’s as confident in the writing process as his voice seems to me on the page, why the fact readers won’t need to know anything about Bluebeard to enjoy his Bluebeard-inspired novel is a tragedy, the question to which that novel itself must stand as the only possible answer, why it’s so important for readers to be able to sit with ambiguity and uncertainty, the reason we’ve yet to see a short story collection from him, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at Luna Park Cafe — (more…)

If you believe the meatspace calendar, this year’s Worldcon is already in the rear view mirror, but as far as this podcast is concerned, the party isn’t over yet. That’s because it’s now time for you to take a seat at the table and eavesdrop on my third meal from Seattle, following Eugenia Triantafyllou and John Picacio.

My latest guest, Lara Elena Donnelly, is the author of the Nebula, Lambda, and Locus-nominated Amberlough Dossier trilogy, which consists of the three books Amberlough, Armistice, and Amnesty. Her most recent novel is the contemporary thriller Base Notes. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in venues such as Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, Nightmare, and Uncanny.

Lara has taught in the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College, as well as the Catapult Workshop in New York. She’s a graduate of the Clarion and Alpha writers’ workshops, and has served as on-site staff at the latter. She’s also one of four co-founders at Homeward Books, which currently has a Kickstarter running to fund the company’s first title, The Witch of Prague, by J.M. Sidorova — and if you’re visiting here within the first week or so of this episode going live, there’s still time to back the project, so please check it out.

We discussed the hot tub conversation which led to the sale of her first novel, why the contradictions of her Clarion experience were liberating, the reason her relationship to the writing process means she’s primarily a novelist rather than a short story writer, her complicated emotions about the conclusion to her debut novel, why she got sick of the word “prescient,” the gnarly origins of the perfumes we love (and the reasons she needed to learn about them), why she decided to start a service advising how to write better sex scenes, the novel she wrote without gendering a character (and the fun in following which readers assume which genders), how she and Sam J. Miller were able to collaborate without killing each other, and much more.

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

It’s time to return to Seattle for the second conversation I captured at Worldcon, following my soup dumpling lunch with Eugenia Triantafyllou. Now it’s time to head out for BBQ with John Picacio, one of the most acclaimed American artists in science fiction and fantasy during the past decade.

Picacio is the winner of three Hugo Awards, nine Chesley Awards, five Locus Awards, two International Horror Guild Awards, the World Fantasy Award, and the Inkpot Award. He’s created best-selling art for George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series, the Star Trek and X-Men franchises, as well as over 150 book covers. His body of work features major book illustrations for authors such as Leigh Bardugo, Rebecca Roanhorse, Michael Moorcock, Harlan Ellison, James Dashner, Brenda Cooper, Frederik Pohl, Mark Chadbourn, Sheri S. Tepper, James Tiptree, Jr., Lauren Beukes, Jeffrey Ford, Joe R. Lansdale, and many, many more.

He is the founder of the creative publishing imprint, Lone Boy, which has become the launchpad for his Loteria Grande cards, a contemporary re-imagining of the classic Mexican game of chance. He is the founder of The Mexicanx Initiative. He’s the co-author — with Leigh Bardugo — and illustrator of The Invisible Parade, which released September 2, 2025, by Little, Brown for Young Readers.

We discussed how he’d never have gotten where he is today without comics, why he initially turned down what ended up being his first science fiction book cover (and what made him change his mind), the reason he thinks of a book as a person he needs to introduce at a party, whether he pays attention to the artists who preceded him when updating the look of a book, why one of the most important skills for a cover artist is listening, the catalyst for his creator-owned, self-published projects, how his style and his skills have changed over the years, how his recent collaboration with Leigh Bardgo began, why he’d rather be a marathon runner than a sprinter, how to avoid getting caught up in the trope of the year when it comes to cover art, the reason he launched the Mexicanx Initiative, how stabilization isn’t the same as stagnation, and much more.

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

It’s time to kick off a quartet of episodes recorded last month during the Seattle Worldcon, beginning with the award-winning writer Eugenia Triantafyllou.

Triantafyllou has been nominated for the British Fantasy, Hugo, Ignyte, Locus, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, and was on the Hugo Awards ballot that weekend for her novelette “Loneliness Universe,” published last year in Uncanny. Earlier this year she appeared on the Nebula Awards ballot twice, for both “Loneliness Universe” as well as “Joanna’s Bodies,” the latter of which was published in Psychopomp. 

Last year, she won the Shirley Jackson Award for her novelette “Six Versions of My Brother Found Under the Bridge” which also appeared in Uncanny. In addition to those venues, she has been published in Reactor.com, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Apex, Sunday Morning Transport, The Deadlands, and elsewhere. She’s a graduate of Clarion West Writers Workshop. 

We discussed the online prompt which caused her to write her first short story, why she ended up as a fantasy writer rather than a comic book creator, what it was like being nominated for two Nebula Awards the same year in the same category, the two types of naysayers who thought she’d never be able to write artfully in English, how she terrified Stephan Graham Jones with a tomato, why she never outlines, the reason voice is so important to her process, how a pantser handles world building, why she feels writing mysteries is easy, how her mother’s memories helped teach her storytelling, why writers shouldn’t steal ideas, but ambition,  and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at Din Tai Fung — (more…)

It’s time for Eating the Fantastic to say farewell to Readercon, as I invite you to take a seat at the table for the third and final conversation recorded for you there. You’ve already shared ramen with Mur Lafferty and Indian food with Karen Heuler, and it’s now time to tear into seafood tacos with Richard Butner.

Richard Butner’s short fiction has been published in such venues as Uncanny, The Deadlands, F&SF, Electric Velocipede, Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and others. Many of those stories have appeared in Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror, been shortlisted for the Speculative Literature Foundation’s Fountain Award, and nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award. Those stories have also been collected in his books Horses Blow Up Dog City & Other Stories (2004) and The Adventurists (2022). He runs the Sycamore Hill Writers’ Conference, a long-running invitation-only workshop for writers of science fiction, fantasy, and related work, which was started by John Kessel, Mark Van Name, and Gregory Frost.

But fiction isn’t his only focus. He’s also written articles and reviews of hardware, software and websites for technology magazines such as IBM Think Research, Wired, PC Magazine, Yahoo! Internet Life, and Windows Sources, has written for and performed with the Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern (where he was a Writer-in-Residence), Aggregate Theatre, Bare Theatre, the Nickel Shakespeare Girls, Urban Garden Performing Arts, CAM/now, and Lost Immersive, and played in several bands, including the Angels of Epistemology, and/or, Etheroid and the Sacred Cows, and the Aqua Mules.

We discussed the early influence of Harlan Ellison, the time he went through the same trapdoor as Harry Houdini, which creative career he decided at age nine he was already too old to pursue, the paragraph from his recent collection I adored the most, the ways in which setting can be a character, why he defines his writerly self as being neither gardener nor architect but explorer, how he’s attracted to writing about the type of  characters Bruce Sterling once described as “criminally unemotional,” what ambiguity truly means and why it matters, how meeting John Kessel changed his life, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for tacos at Burlington’s Border Cafe — (more…)

Last episode, my first from the 2025 Readercon, you were able to sit in for my ramen dinner with Mur Lafferty, and this time around, you’ll get to tag along with Karen Heuler for a vegetarian Indian lunch.

Karen Heuler has published more than 100 short stories, which have resulted in her being a two-time finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award, winner of an O. Henry award, and a host of other honors. Her short stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Weird Tales, The Saturday Evening Post, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Ms. Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, and dozens of other venues. Many of those stories can be found in her numerous collections, starting with The Other Door, which was published in 1995, and includes others such as The Inner City, which Publishers Weekly called “one of the Best Books of 2013,” Other Places (2016), The Clockworm and Other Strange Stories (2018), and her most recent one, A Slice of the Dark and Other Stories (2022). Her novels include The Made-Up Man (2011), Glorious Plague (2013) and her most recent The Splendid City (2022).

We discussed how she found herself embraced far more by the science fiction community than the literary one, why she never consciously thought about craft until she had to teach it, the “dud” novels she wrote before she got to the good ones, the students in her writing classes who only wanted to learn how to write bestsellers, why Bartleby the Scrivener seems to have a superpower, the reason she ended up writing science fiction rather than any other genre, the way in which she considers her short stories to be kittens, which character took over control of her most recent novel, the influence of The Master and Margarita, our mutual dislike of writer branding, where we fall on shredding vs. saving our archives, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for ramen at Mehfil Indian Cuisine — (more…)

In the real world, I’m still haven’t fully recovered from last weekend’s Seattle Worldcon, but in Eating the Fantastic’s timeline, we’ve just arrived at the beginning of last month’s Readercon. And my first guest from the first night of that con is the multi-talented Mur Lafferty.

Mur Lafferty is an author and podcaster from Durham, NC. She’s been a podcaster since December 2004, working on such shows as I Should Be Writing, Ditch Diggers, Pseudopod, Mothership Zeta, Escape Pod, and others. Ditch Diggers (with Matt Wallace) won the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Fancast. Her longest running show is I Should Be Writing, which she’s been hosting and producing since 2005. All of those activities have also resulted in her winning the Podcast Peer Award, three Parsec Awards, and being inducted in 2015 into the Podcaster Hall of Fame.



And the awards have come for her writing as well, starting with her being the 2013 winner of the Astounding Award — then called the John W. Campbell  Award — for Best New Writer. She was the 2014 and 2015 winner of the Manly Wade Wellman Award for her novels The Shambling Guide to New York City and Ghost Train to New Orleans. Her 2018 clone murder mystery in space, Six Wakes, was a nominee for a Hugo, Nebula, Philip K. Dick, and Manly Wade Wellman Award in their novel categories.



Infinite Archive, the third book in The Midsolar Murders series — following Station Eternity (2022) and Chaos Terminal (2023) — was released in July. She’s also written Solo: A Star Wars Story, the writing workshop in a can I Should Be Writing, and so much more.

We discussed the problems which come from being a discovery writer who sells a novel via a pitch, how to play fair with readers of science fiction mysteries, the reason everyone’s worried she wants to kill her agent, one major difference between Hollywood and publishing, why the character she often thinks will end up being the murderer doesn’t end up being the murderer, how to deftly recap previous books in a series, whether going too weird might alienate a writer’s audience, what keeps her continuing to podcast after 21 years, the importance of shrugging off rejections, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for ramen at Gyu-Kaku Japanese BBQ — (more…)

It’s time to say farewell to this year’s Nebula Awards weekend, following our lunch with Aimee Ogden and dinner with Curtis C. Chen.

This episode you’ll be able to eavesdrop on my lunch with Benjamin Rosenbaum, who’s been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Harper’s, Nature, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and many other venues, and as a result has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, BSFA, Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards. He’s the author of the short story collection The Ant King and Other Stories, and the Ennie-nominated Jewish historical fantasy tabletop roleplaying game Dream Apart.

His most recent novel is The Unraveling (2021), which first appeared in Germany three years earlier. The Ghost and the Golem, his 480,000-word Jewish historical fantasy interactive novel set amidst the pogroms of 1881, was a Nebula Award nominee in the category of Game Writing that weekend, so as you listen, you can think of Benjamin as Schrödinger’s nominee, existing in a state of many possibilities at once. He is also the co-host of the podcast Mohanraj and Rosenbaum Are Humans.

We discussed the perhaps true/perhaps whimsical reason he ended up in the science fiction field rather than literary publishing, why the story he found the most difficult to sell became his most-read work, how he gamified the submission/rejection process to get into Clarion, the way all stories set in the future are being read in translation, the reason he couldn’t write for a while after his first Nebula nomination, the moral and aesthetic reasons the story of Ghost and the Golem ended up as a game rather than a novel, why he believes “I am very much a child of Chip Delany,” the fascinating differences between the German and English versions of his novel The Reckoning, the intricacies of turning games into novels and novels into movies, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for seafood at Earl’s Premier — (more…)

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…)