I’ve got two words for you about this episode of Eating the Fantastic: Volcano Shrimp.

That’s what brought me and my guest to Towson Best Chinese restaurant in the Maryland suburbs, where he wanted to introduce me to one of his favorite dishes. Does Towson Best Chinese restaurant live up to its name? Is it the best Chinese restaurant in Towson? Well, it’s the best Chinese restaurant I’ve ever eaten at in Towson.

However—since it’s also the only Chinese restaurant I’ve ever eaten at in Towson, I don’t know that my opinion carries much weight. But the Volcano shrimp was good, even though it wasn’t delivered to the table on fire as my guest had promised.

And who is this episode’s guest? Why, it’s Norman Prentiss, who won the 2010 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Long Fiction for Invisible Fences, and the 2009 Stoker for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction for “In the Porches of My Ears.” His powerful, personal fiction has been reprinted in both Best Horror of the Year and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, and his poetry has appeared in Writer Online, Southern Poetry Review, and A Sea of Alone: Poems for Alfred Hitchcock.

We discussed the day he wowed the other kids on his school playground by reading them Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the movies a Catholic Church newsletter’s warnings made him want to see even more, the supernatural superhero comic that led to a lawsuit against Harlan Ellison, the upside and (surprising) downside of having won a $35,000 college writing prize, how the freebies he got at a Horrorfind convention goosed him to start writing fiction again, why he wrote the last part of his novel Odd Adventures with Your Other Father first, how he’s been able to collaborate with other authors without killing them, what can be taught about writing and what can only be learned, why he ended up writing horror instead of science fiction, and much, much more.

Here’s how you can share that Volcano Shrimp with us— (more…)