It’s been three years since Eating the Fantastic’s last lightning-round donut episode — the Capclave Donut Carnival — so this latest dozen guests daring to down a dozen donuts has been a long time coming. Welcome to what I’ve dubbed — following that most recent experience as well as the Readercon Donut Spectacular, the Balticon Donut Extravaganza, the Nebula Awards Donut Jamboree, and the StokerCon Donut Spooktacular — the Worldcon Donut Divertissment!

The premise is simple — I plop myself down with a dozen donuts in a high-traffic area of a convention, and sit beside a sign offering a donut to anyone who’ll talk to me about their favorite con-going memories. I’m always happy when those memories range not only from guests whose first cons were more than half a century ago, but also those who were first-timers, both of which happened last weekend at LAcon V.

So please join us as and hear Caitlin Rozakis share how hanging out in the halls is often the most fun of all, Cody Goodfellow on pretending to be H. P. Lovecraft at his first Worldcon in 20 years, Nick Mamatas on his jokes being misunderstood at the 2001 Millennium PhilCon, Rosemary Claire Smith about the infamous 1983 Hugo Awards banquet crab mallet incident, Jennifer Middleton on a life-changing meeting at the 2008 Denver Worldcon, Craig Engler on how wild Worldcons used to be in days gone by (or maybe just how people wanted us to think they were), Ursula K. Le Guin’s reply when Neil Rest asked if she was an anarchist, why Kevin Anderson feels Worldcon is an intimate con, Bruce Robertson on watching the Star Wars trilogy until dawn, how dim sum was the cause of Catherine Green’s discovery of Worldcon (and the night she sang Weird Al Yankovic songs with Lois McMaster Bujold), Jordan Hiatt’s first timer experience learning his elevator pitch needed work, how selling and publishing his first novel to Del Rey a lifetime ago brought Lawrence Watt-Evans to his first Worldcon, and more.

Here’s how you can eavesdrop as we nibble on a tasty dozen from M & M Donuts — (more…)

One year ago, Nick Mamatas and I were making plans to get together during Balticon last May and record an episode of Eating the Fantastic. Neither that meal nor the con where it was supposed to happen took place, of course. But because I’m trying to prevent the pandemic from stealing all of the voices I’d hoped to harvest for you while on last year’s con circuit, we had that meal recently, even though there were thousands of miles between us.

Nick has published fiction in genre publications such as Asimov’s Science Fiction and Tor.com, literary journals including New Haven Review and subTERRAIN, and anthologies such as Hint Fiction and Best American Mystery Stories 2013. His fiction and editorial work has been nominated for the Bram Stoker award five times, the Hugo Award twice, the World Fantasy Award twice, and the Shirley Jackson, International Horror Guild, and Locus Awards.

His novels include Under My Roof, The Damned Highway (cowritten with Brian Keene), Love is the Law, The Last Weekend, and I Am Providence, while his fiction has been collected in You Might Sleep, The Nickronomicon, most recently, The People’s Republic of Everything. His writing guide Starve Better: Surviving the Endless Horror of the Writing Life has prevented many a beginning writer from, well, starving, and I suspect also convinced a few to seek a different line of work. Upcoming in 2021, Solaris will be publishing his novel The Second Shooter, and The Planetbreakers Son will appear as part of the Outspoken Authors series from PM Press.

We discussed why there’s a generational divide when it comes to what potential readers might think his upcoming novel The Second Shooter is about, our joint Brooklyn heritage and history with professional wrestling, why he threw away the first dozen stories he wrote, the reason Marvel Comics was always better than DC, his encounters with the famed monologuist Brother Theodore, the first bad book he ever read, the way having been a journalist helps him collaborate without killing his co-writers, why work for hire assignments can be difficult, how we feel about our refusal to pick a genre lane, and much more.

Here’s how you can eavesdrop on our conversation — (more…)