Lawrence M. Schoen

Welcome to the morning after an evening of great American tradition. I refer of course to the commercials that aired during the hours between 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. EST. Oh yeah, there was a football game too. Assuming you’re recovered from the quantities of nachos, hot wings, and beer you consumed last night, keep reading because we’re visiting with Howard V. Hendrix as he shares the details of his most memorable meal.

I first met Howard in the Spring of 1999 in Pittsburgh, PA. I was attending my first Nebula Awards weekend, and someone had the idea that some authors should show up at a local club and do a series of readings. There was only a handful of us — myself, a few friends, and Howard. There’s a bond that is formed when reading SF to an audience that has shown up to dance and listen to a different generation’s music. I know, whatever else happens, we’ll always have Pittsburgh.

Howard writes dense, thoughtful science fiction, the kind of writing that takes first place in the Writers of the Future Contest, wins a Sturgeon Award, and earns nominations for the Pushcart Prize and the Nebula Award. His novels include Lightpaths, Standing Wave, Better Angels, Empty Cities of the Full Moon, The Labyrinth Key, and Spears of God . Howard holds a Ph.D. in English Literature (which probably goes a long way to accounting for the scholarly density of his fiction), and when not writing SF pays the bills as Professor Hendrix.

Welcome back to another installment of asking authors about their favorite meals. This feature was inspired by my protagonist, the Amazing Conroy, who in addition to being a stage hypnotist is also very much a foodie. This week, we hear from Myke Cole, an author I’ve shared a number of meals with over the years. I first met Myke way back when he was a member of my local writers’ workshop, not long after he’d snagged third place in the 2003 Writers of the Future competition.

He’s bounced around a bit since then, and I kind of lost track of him as he went off and had adventures as a secu­rity con­tractor, gov­ern­ment civilian and mil­i­tary officer. After three tours in Iraq and lending a hand with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Myke is back to going full force on his writing career. His first book, Shadow Ops: Control Point, is due out tomorrow (though I’m told people have been snatching up copies since last week). This will befollowed by, Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier, and Shadow Ops: Breach Zone in 2013 and 2014, respectively.

We continue our series of weekly visits with science fiction and fantasy authors and their culinary recollections, or as I like to call this feature: Eating Authors. Our guest today is one of my very favorite writers, Mark Tiedemann. Like many of this feature’s guests, Mark is an alumnus of Clarion. He’s best known for the dazzling short stories and novels that make up his Secantis Sequence (Compass Reach, Metal of Night, Peace & Memory, and Other Ways:Three Tales From The Secant ), and if you haven’t read them, you need to rush right out and start because this is galaxy-wide SF unlike anything you’ve experienced before! You’d think that would be enough for an author, but no, Mark also has the distinction of being one of only a few authors to play in Isaac Asimov’s sandbox, penning three robot mystery novels (Mirage, Chimera, and Aurora) set in the years between Asimov’s The Robots of Dawn and Robots and Empire.

When he’s not writing, or committing photography, Mark has the distinction of being the president of the Missouri Center for the Book. I pursued Mark for months, pestering him to send me a description of his most memorable meal. When he finally did, I promptly buried it under a virtual pile of other email (sorry about that, Mark). Fortunately, I found it again, and now I can share it with you.

Hello, and welcome. You’re just in time for another round of asking authors about their favorite meals. This weekly feature was inspired by my protagonist, the Amazing Conroy, who in addition to being a stage hypnotist is also very much a foodie.

Today’s guest is Shauna Roberts, a Clarion graduate, a fellow Hadley Rille Books author, as well as card carying Ph.D. in anthropology. Shauna’s been publishing short fiction since 2002, and her first novel, Like Mayflies in a Stream, came out in 2009 as part of HRB’s archaeology series.

To the best of my addled recollection, Shauna and I have never met (let alone shared a meal), but our respective travels have had us living in pretty much the same places (Philadelphia, Chicago, southern California), albeit in different years. Plus, I always enjoy checking in with other academicians-turned-authors; so let’s get to it and let her tell us about her most memorable meal!