{"id":28651,"date":"2022-05-13T09:06:45","date_gmt":"2022-05-13T13:06:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=28651"},"modified":"2022-05-13T09:06:45","modified_gmt":"2022-05-13T13:06:45","slug":"john-appel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2022\/05\/13\/john-appel\/","title":{"rendered":"Join John Appel for a dry-aged burger in Episode 171 of Eating the Fantastic"},"content":{"rendered":"

This time around, I invite you to take a seat at the table on a sunny patio for lunch with writer John Appel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

John\u2019s debut novel Assassin’s Orbit<\/em>, published last year, was a finalist for the 2022 Compton Crook Award. He\u2019s a former US Army paratrooper, a long-time information security professional, a historical fencer, and a life-long gamer who\u2019s written the occasional tabletop RPG adventure. He co-edited the anthology Skies of Wonder, Skies of Danger<\/em> along with Mary Alexandra Agner. John\u2019s also a graduate of the Viable Paradise workshop and a founding member of the Maryland Space Opera Collective writing group.<\/p>\n

We met for lunch at the White Oak Tavern<\/a>, which is in the Enchanted Forest Shopping Center in Ellicott City, Maryland, and if there was ever a proper place to record an episode of Eating the Fantastic, an Enchanted Forest certainly sounds like it.<\/p>\n

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We discussed how pitching his debut novel as “Battlestar Galactica<\/em> meets Golden Girls<\/em>” got him an agent, why his background in table-top RPGs might be the reason he writes novels rather than short stories, how he deals with the “candy bar” scenes of his plots, the way critique groups and sensitivity readers can help make books better, how to juggle multiple viewpoints and still have them all be equally compelling, the political aspects of his novel which make it a different read than it would have been when it was first begun, his particular set of skills which helped bring fight scenes alive, and much more.<\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s how you can join us — <\/p>\n

1) Subscribe at Apple Podcasts<\/a> — where I hope you’ll be tempted to sample a few of the 170 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 simply listen via the embed below.<\/p>\n