Plugs

There’s a “circle of life” sense to this week’s EATING AUTHORS because my guest is Watts Martin. As I’ve recounted elsewhere, in a very real way Watts is responsible for my writing Barsk. Back in the late 80’s, I was the boy professor at New College in Sarasota, Florida, the ink still wet on my doctorate, living with my dog in the dorms right alongside the students. Watts never took any of my classes, but his roommate did, and one thing led to another and one afternoon Watts invited me to participate in a RPG game based on an anthropomorphic comicbook of the day. The spontaneous generation of some of the core ideas of the Fant and their rainy planet (including the name of it) happened in that instant. So, thanks.

Watts, as you should gather from the preceding remarks, has been writing and editing anthropomorphic fiction for decades. So it shouldn’t surprise you to learn he’s been nominated multiple times for both the Ursa Major and Cóyotl awards, winning the latter for Best Novella with Indigo Rain. He is currently president of the Furry Writers’ Guild, and his first novel, Kismet, comes out tomorrow from Argyll Productions.

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Well it’s another glorious Monday. In part because over the weekend I finished a draft of the BARSquel, and this week in addition to assorted polishing and trimming of the MS, I’ll also be going back to work on a completely different book. And in part because (at least here in Pennsylvania) it is Martin Luther King Day, which many will use as a day of service, a day of giving back, and I think we can all benefit from that attitude. And finally, in part because by the time you read this I’ll have come and gone for a quarterly blood draw, and it makes me feel good to be staying on top of health issues.

In a perfect world, some portion of that last paragraph would provide a brilliant segue for this week’s EATING AUTHORS guest. Alas, Jody Lynn Nye did not help me write my novel. Nor do I know how she’s spending the holiday. And I’m pretty sure she hasn’t any influence on the results of my bloodwork. So the segue is a non-segue, but what I can tell you about her is that I’ve been reading her work for years and even got to publish her one of her stories in the Paper Golem anthology Cats in Space.

Like me, Jody was born in Chicago. Unlike me, she’s authored or co-authored more than forty novels, and more than one hundred short stories. She’s played in some pretty impressive universes like Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series, Robert Asprin’s Myth series, and Piers Anthony’s Xanth series. She writes both science fiction and fantasy, and does so with both action and humor. If you need a good story and a smile, I can’t think of anyone better to read.

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This past Friday I was down in DC doing two final appearances to mark the official end of a year of traveling around and promoting Barsk, one at the Library of Congress, and the other at a meeting of the Washington Science Fiction Association. All in all, I spent 114 days of 2016 traveling to conventions and signings and readings. That’s almost a third of the year on the road. What was I thinking? Just typing about it makes me tired.

And it’s as close as I’m going to get to a decent segue to this week’s EATING AUTHORS guest, Becky Chambers, whose first novel, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, may well be the most delightful space adventure I’ve ever read. Which is why you shouldn’t be surprised to learn it was nominated for both the Arthur C. Clarke and British Fantasy awards. Better still, it’s only the first book in her Wayfarer series. But wait, best of all, according to her Twitter page (which contradicts the presumably older website), she’s working on the third book even as we speak.

Doubtless, many of you are waiting to read that third book right now. And I confess, I feel a little guilty distracting Becky with emails asking her come and talk about food. Alas, not guilty enough to stop myself though.

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Welcome to the start of 2017. I’ll spare you the usual rant either for or against New Year’s resolutions because Yoda pretty much covered it all with “Do, or do not. There is no try.” Short and sweet, kind of like Yoda himself (and just to be clear, I’m talking puppet-Yoda, not CGI-Yoda; don’t get me started).

The place of first EATING AUTHORS guest year goes to Alexander Jablokov, a brilliant writer I’d never met prior to a quiet Sunday last June in New Mexico when I spent what seemed like hours searching an airport for him, racing up and down escalators, accosting innocent travelers in baggage claim, and annoying airline personnel, all while Rick Wilber kept circling the airport in his rental car and running afoul of the parking police. Eventually, we found Alex and drove off to a week long writing retreat, which is where I learned just how talented an author Alex is, both in terms of his own work, and his ability to provide critical insights into others’ fiction as well.

So, naturally, I invited him to drop by and talk about food.
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Welcome to the last week of the year. That span between holidays when no one wants to be at work, little gets done, and everyone is just getting by as best they can as the year breathes its last breath.

Tomorrow the trade paperback edition or Barsk comes out, two days ahead of the anniversary of the hardcover debut. And you have until the 29th to enter to win a free copy, if you’re into such things.

But now please turn your attention to Teresa Frohock, the 51st and last EATING AUTHOR guest of 2016. Teresa writes dark fantasy and horror and is probably best known for her book Los Nefilim, a collection of three related novellas set in 1930s Spain that plays with the conflict between angels, daimons, and the beings caught in the middle (and I don’t mean us regular mortal folk). If you haven’t yet sampled her work, I don’t know what more you need to know to convince you to give it a try.

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The last few days have been difficult ones in my home. My mother died in her sleep late last week, and though she had a full life and had spent the last few years in very poor health, still just now it’s hard to think that she is gone. Some might wonder why I didn’t take this week off from EATING AUTHORS, but others among you know that there is a welcome distraction found in focusing on routine tasks, and preparing this post has given me some peace. To the many readers out there who have expressed condolences over my loss, I thank you. Now let us move forward as though this were just another Monday.

Out guest this week is William C. Dietz, and I have to say one of the things I like best about him is he didn’t start writing his first novel until he was thirty-nine. That was back in 1984 and since then, he’s written more than fifty books, including his extremely popular Legion series, media tie-in books and game novelizations.

Bill’s latest work, Into the Guns, came out a couple months back from Ace and promises to be the first volume in his new America Rising series.

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I’m posting this week’s EATING AUTHORS from the road. I’m in southern California visiting family, and so it’s quite possible that I screwed up the scheduling with respect to the time zones. So don’t be surprised if this shows up three hours early, three hours late, or just right. However it happens, my guest this week is none other than famed author and equestrian, Judith Tarr.

You probably know her from her Avaryan Chronicles series, The Hound and the Falcon trilogy, her the White Magic series (written under the name Caitlin Brennan), the War of the Rose series (written as Kathleen Bryan), and more than a dozen other novels including collaborations with folks like Harry Turtledove, Jane Yolen, and S. M. Stirling.

Judith is a professional medievalist, used to teach Latin, and now breeds and trains Lipizzan horses. Her fiction has been nominated for the World Fantasy, Locus, and Sturgeon awards, and won the William Crawford award. Her latest work is Dragons in the Earth, available from the fine folks at Book View Cafe.

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