{"id":27655,"date":"2021-06-04T09:42:39","date_gmt":"2021-06-04T13:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=27655"},"modified":"2021-06-04T09:42:39","modified_gmt":"2021-06-04T13:42:39","slug":"karen-osborne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2021\/06\/04\/karen-osborne\/","title":{"rendered":"Break a 428-day streak with Karen Osborne in Episode 146 of Eating the Fantastic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Up until my meal with writer Karen Osborne on which you’ll be eavesdropping this episode, it had been 428 days since I’d last seen an unmasked face other than my wife or son. (Except on Zoom, that is.) Due to COVID-19, I hadn’t been able to pull off that kind face-to-face chatting and chewing since Episode 117, recorded in March 2020<\/a> with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Michael Dirda. I’m more thrilled that I can possibly convey to begin the slow crawl back to a new normal.<\/p>\n

Karen Osborne\u00a0was a Nebula Award finalist last\u00a0year for\u00a0her short story\u00a0\u201cThe Dead, In Their Uncontrollable Power.\u201d Her fiction has appeared in\u00a0Uncanny<\/em>, Fireside<\/em>, Escape Pod<\/em>, Robot Dinosaurs<\/em>,\u00a0and\u00a0Beneath Ceaseless Skies<\/em>.\u00a0Her\u00a0debut novel,\u00a0Architects of Memory<\/em>, the first book of The Memory War series, was published in September 2020 by Tor Books, and its sequel,\u00a0Engines of Oblivion<\/em>, was published this past February. She\u2019s the\u00a0emcee for the Charm City Spec reading series, has won a\u00a0filmmaking award for taping a Klingon wedding, and most importantly, accompanied me on the theremin during my late-night ukulele singalong when I was Guest of Honor a few years back at the Baltimore World Fantasy Convention.<\/p>\n

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We discussed her biggest surprise after signing with an agent for her first novel, how she was able to celebrate the launch of that debut book and<\/em> a Nebula nomination during the COVID-19 lockdown, what you need to keep in your head to never go wrong about a character’s motivations, how the Viable Paradise writing workshop taught her to lean in on her weird, the favorite line she’s ever written, how she wrote fanfic of her own characters to better understand them, why she doesn’t want her daughter to read her second novel until she’s 13, the way Star Trek: The Next Generation<\/em> changed her life, how the Clarion workshop taught her to let go of caring what other people think of her writing, what Levar Burton means to her childhood, and much more.<\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s how you can take a seat at the table with us — <\/p>\n

1) Subscribe at Apple Podcasts<\/a> — where I hope you’ll be tempted by some of the 145 previous episodes.<\/p>\n

2) Use the RSS feed of http:\/\/eatingthefantastic.libsyn.com\/rss<\/a> on the device of your choice.<\/p>\n

3) Or listen using the embed below.<\/p>\n