Out in the real world, Balticon is around six weeks in the rearview mirror, but here at Eating the Fantastic, it’s not yet time to check out of the hotel and head for home. You’ve had a chance to take a seat at the table with Alex Jennings and Elwin Cotman from that Baltimore event, but we still have one more meal to go — because now it’s time for an Italian lunch with Sally Wiener Grotta.

Grotta’s latest two books are Of Being Woman, a collection of feminist science fiction stories, and Daughters of Eve, a discussion workbook which uses tales of biblical matriarchs to explore the modern world. Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies and magazines such as the North Atlantic Review, DreamForge, Across the Universe: Tales of Alternative Beatles, and others.

Her previous books include Digital Imaging for Visual Artists (co-authored with Daniel Grotta), and the novels Jo Joe, which was a Jewish Book Council Network book, and The Winter Boy, which was a Locus Magazine Recommended Read. Sally is also co-curator of the Galactic Philadelphia Salon reading series. Plus she’s also an award-winning journalist and photographer who has traveled on assignment to all seven continents.

We discussed when we first met (and can’t quite figure out whether it was a third or a quarter of a century ago), how her first storytelling impulse began because she’d fall asleep while being read stories as a child, the importance of the question “what if?,” why she often finds horror difficult to read, the early experience which allowed her to have such a good relationship with editors, the story she wrote in Ursula K. Le Guin’s writing workshop which caused that Grand Master to say “what a darling monster,” when we should submit to editorial suggestions and when we should run screaming, and much more.

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It’s time to return to Balticon for another conversation with a fascinating writer, following last episode’s chat with Alex Jennings. This time around my guest is Elwin Cotman, with whom I slipped away for dinner at the nearby R&R Taqueria.

Cotman’s short story collection Dance on Saturday, published by Small Beer Press, was one of the finalists for the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award. His latest short story collection, Weird Black Girls, was released two months ago as this episode goes live.

He’s also the author of three other books: the poetry collection The Wizard’s Homecoming, plus the short story collections The Jack Daniels Sessions EP and Hard Times Blues. His writing has appeared in Grist, Electric Lit, Buzzfeed, The Southwestern Review, and The Offing, plus many others venues. He’s worked as a video game consultant and writer for Square Enix. His debut novel The Age of Ignorance will be published by Scribner in 2025.

We discussed why forcing science fictional elements into non-science fictional stories can weaken them, the interdimensional cross-genre story cycle he hopes to write someday about a wrestling family, the way the novella is his natural length, why he loves Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age stories, how to create compelling metaphors and similes, the way rereading Tama Janowitz’s Slaves of New York helped him with the connective tissue of his own sentences, the reason Mary Gaitskill is the world’s greatest living writer, and much more.

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In a different world, I’d be in Pasadena right now for the Nebula Awards conference, but in this world, I’ve just survived two consecutive weekends of conventions — first Balticon, then StokerCon — and there’s such a thing as too much fun, even for an extrovert like me. So instead, I’m at home, inviting you to take a seat at the table with the first of three guests I hosted while in Baltimore — Alex Jennings.

Jennings is the winner of the 2023 Compton Crook Award for his debut novel, The Ballad of Perilous Graves. His writing has appeared in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Electric Velocipede, Strange Horizons, Uncanny Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, New Suns, and Current Affairs, and many other venues. Some of his short fiction was published in the 2012 collection Here I Come and Other Stories.

He also writes a regular speculative poetry review column for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction titled “Chapter and Verse.” In 2022, he was the inaugural recipient of the Imagination Unbound Fellowship at Under the Volcano, a writing retreat held annually in Tepoztlan, Mexico. He is also an instructor of fiction and popular fiction at The University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA program.

We discussed his dream which commanded him to move to New Orleans (plus his brother’s dream which supported that decision), how writing his debut novel transformed him into the kind of person he needed to be in order to write his debut novel, how Octavia Butler invited him into the field, which artist he wishes would draw the comic book adaptation of his novel The Ballad of Perilous Graves, what China Miéville taught him at Clarion about the deadly nature of “second order cliches,” how joy is revolutionary in and of itself, the way his experience as a standup comedian helps him help you care about the multiple POVs of his novel, which issue of Uncanny X-Men was the first comic book he ever read, the nature of his quasi-mystical approach to writing, and much more.

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This episode’s dinner didn’t come about due to a convention, but rather because I attended another installment of Baltimore’s Charm City Spec reading series, and invited one of the participants, Tobias Carroll, to join me for an early dinner beforehand, the same as I did with Episode 218’s guest Jo Miles three months earlier.

Carroll is the author of the novels Ex-Members, Reel, and In the Sight, the short story collection Transitory, and the nonfiction book Political Sign. His essays and journalism have appeared in The New York Times, InsideHook, Literary Hub, Tor.com, the Portland Press-Herald, Tin House, The Collagist, The Paris Review Daily, Necessary Fiction, Bookforum, The Collapsar, Joyland, and many other publications. He writes a column on notable books in translation for Words Without Borders. Plus he has a podcast of his own — Framed & Bound, in which bookish people discuss movies set in the literary world.

We discussed which punk rock music made him a fan, why his heart belongs to novella-length works rather than massive epics, the artistic motivation for sometimes not giving readers what they’ve been taught to expect, the reason Ann Nocenti’s run on Daredevil was meaningful to him (and why he believes it aged so well), his fascination with deteriorating physical media, why Edward Hopper’s classic painting Nighthawks would have made the perfect cover art for one of his books, how you know when you’ve stuck the landing with a short story, and much more.

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This episode of Eating the Fantastic came about due to a serendipitous convergence of guest and venue. I drive through Berkeley Springs, West Virginia quite a bit, and one day discovered a restaurant there called Mythical Pizza. When I checked the menu, I found everything they served was cryptid-based, with pizzas and decor inspired by Bigfoot, Mothman, and other monsters. So I of course had to check the place out.

But I didn’t want to do it solo, and with a theme like that, it seemed the perfect place to record an episode of a podcast devoted to the fantastic. Luckily, writer/editor Lesley Conner, with whom I’ve been trying to arrange a chance to chat and chew, was just as enthusiastic about the concept as I was.

Longtime listeners will have heard Lesley’s voice way back in 2017 on Episode 53 when she took part in a Horror 101 roundtable. Back then, she shared the microphone with five other creators, but a lot has changed for her over the past seven years, and now that she’s the Chief Editor at Apex magazine, I thought she deserved a spotlight of her own.

You’ll understand why Lesley was the right dining companion for such a place just from the titles of the anthologies in which her fiction has appeared — all horror-focussed such as Mountain Dead, Dark Tales of Terror, Big Book of New Short Horror, Ruthless, and A Hacked-Up Holiday Massacre. Her horror novel The Weight of Chains was released in 2015. In addition to being the Chief Editor over at Apex magazine, she’s also co-editor of the anthologies Do Not Go Quietly and Robotic Ambitions, as well as of the upcoming The Map of Lost Places.

We discussed why horror is where she feels the most comfortable as a writer, how her role at Apex magazine grew from Social Media Manager to Chief Editor, her “Price is Right” method of filling out an issue’s word count, why she hardly ever reads cover letters, the trends she’s seen in the slush pile and what they mean, the key difference between editing magazines vs. anthologies, her longtime obsession with serial killers, how to go on writing after one’s writing mentor passes away, and much more.

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It’s time to return to Awesome Con for another conversation with a comics creator, following last episode’s chat with Zombie King Arthur Suydam. My guest this episode is Dan Parent, an artist and writer who’s worked for Archie Comics for 35 years. I was excited to talk with him for many reasons, a big one being how little I know about the inner working of that company, which I’ve only touched on briefly for you back during my lunch with Howard Bender in Episode 204.

Parent started at Archie immediately after graduating from the famed Joe Kubert School, another topic I was happy to explore. In 2010, he introduced the first openly gay character in Archie Comics when he created Kevin Keller in Veronica #202, which he wrote and drew. That character eventually got his own title with the publication of Kevin Keller #1 in 2012.

Parent’s been involved with several crossover titles which expanded the Archie universe, such as Archie vs. Sharknado in 2015, and the six-part crossover Archie Meets Batman ’66 in 2018. Parent’s creator-owned work includes Die Kitty Die, which he collaborated on with artist/writer Fernando Ruiz in 2016, and which I found to be a delightful spoof of the comics business and many of the characters I loved as a kid. In May 2013, Parent was presented with the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic Book.

We discussed why we both loved the legendary Ramona Fradon, how a Charlton Comics pamphlet gave him the tools to take his art more seriously, what he learned working at the start of his career with the great Dan DeCarlo, the character fans demand he draw the most during his convention appearances, the Archie artist who tormented him during his early days, how to respect legacy characters while still keeping them fresh, whose blood got added to the ink of which comics, how hopeful artists can do now what he did then, and much more.

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It’s time to take a seat at the table for the first of two dinner conversations which took place during last month’s AwesomeCon in Washington D.C. — starting with Arthur Suydam, whose professional comics career began when he drew a story published in the May 1974 issue of House of Secrets for DC, right around the time my own comics career started at Marvel editing the British reprint line in June. We somehow never encountered each other as we navigated the comic community of the ’70s, and in fact, we never met until the Saturday of our meal.

After a bunch of those horror stories for various DC titles, Suydam moved on to Epic Illustrated, Heavy Metal, and other publications where he could do the kind of painted work most people know him for today, writing and drawing such features Mudwogs, The Adventures of Cholly & Flytrap, and others.

He’s perhaps most well known for his zombie work — which includes dozens of covers for the Marvel Zombie series and spin-offs — which earned him the nickname of “The Zombie King.” In 2008, Marvel even released a hardcover tribute titled Marvel Zombies: The Covers. His artwork has also appeared in such titles as Batman, Conan, Tarzan, Predator, and Aliens, and his cover art was featured on Ghost Rider, Hellstorm, Moon Knight, Wolverine, Marvel Zombies vs. The Army of Darkness, and many others. He’s also provided noir-ish, retro covers for the Hard Case Crime paperback line.

We discussed the way a lengthy hospital stay resulted in him falling in love with comics, what Joe Orlando said to convince him to start his comics career at DC instead of Warren, the permission he was granted upon seeing the ghastly artwork of Graham Ingels, what he learned from dealing with cadavers during his art student days, how Gil Kane hurt his feelings by chewing out his early work, the grief Frank Frazetta got out of dealing with Mad magazine, the way his work for Epic Illustrated made Archie Goodwin squirm, why Marvel teamed him up with Robert Kirkman for its Marvel Zombies project, his reason for avoiding social media like the plague, and much more.

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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.

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I first met this episode’s guest, Julie Phillips, in the dealers room of the 2006 Los Angeles Worldcon, where I was introduced by Gordon Van Gelder, her editor on James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon. That biography had been out only a few weeks by then, and it would go on to win the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Hugo and Locus Awards, and the Washington State Book Award. It’s a truly magnificent achievement, and if you haven’t already read it, you should track it down immediately. Once you do, you’ll understand why I’m anxiously awaiting her next biography — of the great Ursula K. Le Guin.

Her most recent book is The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Mothering, and the Mind-Baby Problem (2022). Her articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Ms., The Village Voice, Newsday, Mademoiselle, and many other publications. She currently lives in Amsterdam, where she reviews books for 4Columns.org and writes about English literature for the Dutch daily newspaper Trouw.

When I learned the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts had asked her give the kickoff lecture of its More than Muses Weekend in nearby Hagerstown, Maryland, I reached out to see whether she had time to break bread so I could share her wisdom with you. And I’m so pleased she agreed. We met for lunch the day after her presentation at Schmankerl Stube Bavarian restaurant, one of my favorite places to eat in Hagerstown.

We discussed why she called The Baby on the Fire Escape “a weird hybrid monster of a book,” the one thing she regrets not researching more thoroughly for her Tiptree bio, the reason there’s more space for the reader in a biography than a memoir, why some children of artistic mothers can make peace with their relationships and others can’t, the three things she felt it important to squeeze into the seven minutes she was given to speak at Ursula K. Le Guin’s memorial service, her writing method of starting in the middle of a book and working out toward both ends, the occasional difficulty of withholding judgement on one’s biographical subjects, the relationship between biographer Robert Caro and editor Robert Gottlieb, plus much more.

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When I realized Glenn Hauman, with whom I’ve been crossing paths for decades on the con circuit, was going to be a guest at Farpoint, I thought it was about time I captured some of his wit and wisdom for you. Here’s just a small taste of what Glenn’s been up to over the years —

He’s an electronic publishing pioneer who founded BiblioBytes in 1993, which resulted in him being dubbed a “young Turk of publishing” in The New York Observer. He was an editorial consultant to Simon & Schuster Interactive for many years, during which time he contributed to many Star Trek CD-ROMs, such as the Star Trek Encyclopedia, the Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, and the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, plus additional projects for many other properties. He’s published fiction in the Star Trek, X-Men, and Farscape franchises.

The particular piece of fiction which has probably brought him the most fame is Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers: Creative Couplings, co-authored with Aaron Rosenberg, which featured the first Klingon/Jewish wedding ceremony, and ended up getting him mass media coverage from outlets such as NPR and the Jewish weekly newspaper The Forward. In 2011, Glen teamed up with Peter David, previous guest of the podcast Michael Jan Friedman, Robert Greenberger, and Aaron Rosenberg to launch an electronic publishing endeavor called Crazy 8 Press. He’s also a columnist over at ComicMix.

We discussed how he shook things up during the earliest days of electronic publishing, the embarrassing high school newspaper writings of Ted Chiang, the way the assembly-line nature of comics keeps many creatives from seeing the big picture, why he’s nobody’s first choice for anything but everybody’s second choice for everything, his pre-teen encounters with another pre-teen fan who became a Marvel Comics Executive Editor, the philosophical question he asked actor Michael O’Hare just before Babylon 5 began to air, the lunch that led to his first published short story being about the X-Men, what visiting Don Heck’s house at age 12 taught him about artists and taking an art class from John Buscema at age 13 taught him about himself, the plot of the Warren Worthington novel he never got a chance to write, the free speech lawsuit which had him going head to head with the Dr. Seuss estate, plus much more.

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