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…)