I’d originally planned to break bread with Kaaron Warren — who like previous Eating the Fantastic guest Michael J. Walsh was one of my co-Guests of Honor at the 2018 World Fantasy Convention — during this year’s StokerCon in Grand Rapids. But since her con schedule and mine were so full it seemed as if there wouldn’t be any open overlap for us to sneak away, we got together for some stress-free time together when she stopped earlier in Washington, D.C. on her way to Michigan. We met at the Freer Gallery, and then wandered over for lunch at the Capitol Hill branch of Hank’s Oyster Bar, which opened in 2012.

I first met Kaaron slightly less than 10 years ago, at the 2009 Montreal Worldcon, where her novel Slights was one of the inaugural titles from Angry Robot Books. The publisher even had a robot rolling around the launch party! (It was not angry, however.) She’s published many more novels and stories since then, with one novel, The Grief Hole, winning all three of Australia’s genre awards — the Aurealis Award, the Ditmar Award, and the Australian Shadows Award. Her most recent novel is Tide of Stone. She’s published seven short story collections, the most recent being A Primer to Kaaron Warren.

We discussed how her recent Rebecca reread totally changed her sympathies for its characters, the disturbing real-life crime related to the first time she ever saw The Shining, the catalyst that gave birth to her award-winning novel Tide of Stone, how she came up with new angles for tackling stories about such classic characters as Sherlock Holmes and Frankenstein, the way flea market bric-a-brac has led to some of her best ideas, the only correct method for preparing fairy bread, her go-to karaoke song, and much, much more.

Here’s how you can eavesdrop on our conversation at Hank’s Oyster Bar — (more…)