Eating the Fantastic

Feast on oysters with Kemi Ashing-Giwa as we discuss her conscious decision to not take any creative writing courses in college, the eight never-to-be published novels she wrote on her way to The Splinter in the Sky, how COVID-19 led her to take a deep dive into tea (and how tea then inspired her debut novel), her evolution from pantser to plotter, her outreach to 200 agents before she found the right one, how to craft compelling o...

Toast writer/editor Craig Laurance Gidney as we discuss how meeting Samuel R. Delany led to his attending the Clarion Writing Workshop, the influence of reading decadent writers such as Verlaine and Rimbaud, why he kept at trying to get published when so many of his peers stopped, the many ways flaws can sometimes make a story more interesting, our shared love of ambiguity, the reason there must be beauty entwined with horror, why ...

Break for brunch with writer Adeena Mignogna as we discuss how Star Trek changed her life, which Trek character she used as her screen name on fan forums when she first went online as a young teen, why she never wrote fanfic, the feedback from a friend which saved her NaNoWriMo novel from being trunked, how she discovered she's neither a plotter nor a pantser but rather something in-between, her favorite science fiction novel of al...

Pig out on pork belly with Jarrett Melendez as we discuss how his loves of food and writing combined into a career, the way running comic book conventions gave him the contacts he needed when it was time to create comics of his own, which franchise inspired his sole piece of fan fiction, the comics creator whose lessons proved invaluable, how he knew Chef's Kiss needed to be a graphic novel rather than a miniseries, the way he bala...

Wolf down lamb with Carolyn Ives Gilman as we discuss the way her ideas aren't small enough to squeeze into short stories, how she shelved a novel she'd written because she felt her imagination at its wildest wasn't ridiculous enough to match reality, whether our personal archives will be trashed or treasured, the reason she doesn't feel she can teach writing, why authors need to respect what the story wants, why she's terrible at ...

Rip into roti with writer Tim Paggi as we discuss the story behind his X-Files-inspired juvenilia, the reason he demanded a refund from Barnes & Noble for a volume of Emily Dickinson's poetry, why a writing teacher (wrongfully) accused him of plagiarism, how the beginning of the pandemic was also the beginning of his fiction writing career, whether his recent Cthulhu references were intentional or unavoidable, why the Severance TV ...

Mangia mussels in Little Italy with David Simmons as we discuss how he manages to give such dramatic performances during his public readings, why his answer when asked to describe his genre of writing is "Baltimore," the way discovering the novels of Donald Goines changed his life, why his wife was responsible for his first short story being written and sold, how he hopes reading him will have you feeling as if you're in a frenetic...

Have a Nashville hot chicken sandwich with Robert Greenberger as we discuss our teen experiences at the first Star Trek convention in 1972, how TV taught him about the existence of Marvel Comics, the way George Reeves as Clark Kent made him want to be a journalist, the lecture Wonder Woman editor Robert Kanigher gave him after he dared give feedback, why so many DC Comics staffers walked around without their shoes on Fridays, how h...

Chat and chew with Shannon Robinson as we discuss how best to deal with rejection, the way our opinions about print vs. electronic publication have changed over the courses of our careers, when an untrustworthy narrator can be a feature, not a bug, the many ways readers can be misreaders of stories, how she realized she'd reached short story critical mass and it was time to assemble a collection, the way the genres in which we writ...

Munch on pepper chicken masala with Larry Hama as we discuss how cataract surgery changes the way an artist perceives the page, what really happened at a mid-'70s penthouse comic book party, Bernie Krigstein's anger at being asked questions about comics, why Wally Wood felt it was so important for his assistants to learn how to letter, what it was like being part of the famed Crusty Bunkers inking collective, why getting to edit Cr...

Share shawarma with the award-winning Eric Choi as we discuss what William Shatner's Captain Kirk might sound like dubbed into Cantonese, the wonders of fan-run science fiction conventions, how the Asimov competition gave him the courage to make his first submission, what it was like co-editing an anthology with the great Ben Bova, the accident that gave birth to his first short story collection, why his claim never to have experie...

Split a pastrami sandwich with Martha Thomases as we discuss her theory that your popularity in high school determines whether you'll move to New York, why she was into DC rather than Marvel at the start of her comics fandom, Denny O'Neil's explanation of the true difference between Metropolis and Gotham City, the realization she had at 35 as to the true reason her parents allowed her to read comics, the weirdness of Little Lotta a...

Settle in for a steak dinner with Marvel's Tom Brevoort as we discuss how a guy whose first love was DC Comics ended up at Marvel, why he hated his early exposure to Marvel so much he'd tell his parents not to buy them because "they're bad," the pluses and minuses of comic book subscriptions (and the horror when issues arrived folded), how Cerebus the Aardvark inspired him to believe he could build a career in indie comics, the mos...

Share scallops with the award-winning R. S. A. Garcia as we discuss how the idea for her Nebula-winning short story caused her to leap up and walk out of a writing workshop, how editor Ellen Datlow's advice changed her life, why writing is a verb, not an adjective, the way she decides whether or not to rise to the occasion of a themed anthology invite, her convoluted journey in finding an agent to negotiate her first novel sale eve...

Chow down on chicken tikka masala with Gareth L. Powell as we discuss the way a Diana Wynne Jones critique of his teenaged writing was a complete revelation in how to write fiction, how an adversarial relationship with a university professor who didn't want him writing science fiction actually ended up helping him, the New Year's resolution which led to him to both kick smoking and write a novel, how reading William Gibson's short ...

Feast on fish and chips with Paul Cornell as we discuss where he stands on the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby debate, how his UK mind was blown the first time he saw a U.S. issue of The Avengers, why fannish history fascinates him, the reason he went the self-funding route for Who Killed Nessie (and what that did to his blood pressure), how some of his Doctor Who fan fiction eventually became canon, the reason he's suspicious of nostalgia, ho...

Share a bowl of Cullen skink with the award-winning Wole Talabi as we discuss his love of combining contradictory ideas, why failing is an important step toward success, how optimism can be a choice (and why making that choice could also make the world a better place), how to convince others who might fear hurting your feelings you truly want their honest criticism, whether AI could ever actually be intelligent or create art, what ...

Share beef noodle soup with award-winning writer John Chu as we discuss the way he gamified the submission process when he started out, how the pandemic made him feel as if he was in his own little spaceship, when he learned he couldn't write novels and short stories at the same time, how food has become a lens through which he could explore a variety of issues in his fiction, the rejection letter he rereads whenever he wants to ch...

Chow down on cheesy garlic bread with award-winning writer Jeffrey Ford as we discuss why writing has gotten more daunting (but more fun) as he's gotten older, the difficulties of teaching writing remotely during a pandemic, how he often doesn't realize what he was really writing about in a story until years after it was written, the realization that made him write a sequel to Moby-Dick, why if you have confidence and courage you c...