Posts Tagged ‘Eating Authors’

In just under twelve months, thousands of people will converge on Kansas City, and while they’ll doubtless consume vast quantities of barbecue, that won’t be their main reason for the trip. No, they’ll be showing up for MidAmeriCon II (also known as the WorldCon), a wondrous celebration that for many is the highlight of the convention year. And a regular feature of the convention is the Hugo Award ceremony, which includes the coveted John W. Campbell (not a Hugo) Award for Best New Writer.

Long time viewers of this blog know that, as a former Campbell nominee myself, I am a sucker for this award. Which is why each year I reach out to the nominees and invite them to come on down and share the tale of their most memorable meal. Alas, the pickings are a bit slim this year. Of the four nominees, Sebastien de Castell has already graced this space with a meal (back on July 27th of last year), Andy Weir sent his regrets as he’s swamped with books, TV pilots, and screenplays, and Pierce Brown never responded to my queries. This leaves Alyssa Wong (who will be featured here next week) and today’s EATING AUTHOR guest, Brian Niemeier.

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I’m writing this before the Nebula Awards take place, so I don’t know if I’ve won for Best Novel or watched one of my incredible co-nominees take home the prize. What I do know is that I’ll be on a plane flying home from Chicago the morning this posts. But just because I’m going to be recovering from what will (win or lose) be a gloriously exhausting trip is not sufficient reason to deprive you of an EATING AUTHORS post. Especially when I have Bishop O’Connell standing by as this week’s guest.

Bishop is the author of the American Faerie Tale series, with three volumes published thus far and a fourth book (The Returned) coming out in just a couple months (July 12th, to be precise). He resides in Richmond, Virginia.

I’d tell you more about his background and history, but he’s gone on record as making some or all of it up, and it’s a slippery slope to be sure. And attempting to Google him is also somewhat fraught, unless… made he really is a high school in Arlington. Hmmm, it would explain some things…

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As you know, Bob, the Nebula Awards Conference is happening this week (I fly out on Wednesday), it’s always an exciting time, a chance to reconnect with old friends and to make some new ones. Among the latter is Ada Palmer, this week’s guest here at EATING AUTHORS. I first noticed her name when I received my preliminary programming schedule for the GenCon Writer’s Symposium and saw we were doing a panel together. Then I spotted it again when I was perusing the “Ask An Expert” offerings at the Nebs. And again upon discovering that not only is her debut novel, Too Like the Lightning, coming out tomorrow from Tor Books, but also that we share a publicist. It’s like the universe was speaking to me.

And if that weren’t enough to convince me to invite her in to tell us about her most amazing meal, you need to know that this is a woman who is organizing a four-person team to determine, once and for all, the best possible gelato experience in Florence! Ada is also a history professor at the University of Chicago, and I can only imagine that if any of the people who tried to teach me history had shared even a fraction of her passion for empirical gelato discovery, my education would have gone a very different direction.

Also worth noting is that tomorrow’s debut fiction release is just the first volume in her Terra Ignota series. Book two, Seven Surrenders, comes out the first Tuesday in December (but feel free to pre-order it now).

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Welcome to May! I have to say I have mixed feelings about this month, in part because I’ve enjoyed having all of April without the need to do any traveling. The first three months of this year have taught me what a simple pleasure it is to sleep in one’s own bed night after night. For that, as well as other reasons, April was glorious. May, on the other hand, represents a return to more, albeit delightful, travel. I’ll be spending a full third of the month away from home, first as a hopeful nominee at this year’s Nebula Conference in Chicago, and then as one of the GoHs at BayCon in San Mateo, California. Along the way I’m hoping to have some truly memorable meals (Valerie has scouted out and made reservations!), which is a good segue to why you’re really here, so let’s get to today’s EATING AUTHORS guest, and her most memorable meal.

Jennifer Foehner Wells is another indie-author success story, the woman behind the tentacles of Blue Bedlam Science Fiction. Her first novel, Fluency, smashed its way into best seller success via Kindle Direct Publishing, and this past March she followed it with the release of Remanence, the second book in her Confluence series. For my reading, it certainly didn’t hurt that her protagonist starts out as a linguist before transforming (butterfly-like) into the commander of an interstellar starship. You know, as one does.

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One of the best things about traveling to new conventions is the opportunity to meet new authors. It’s also a great time to seek out fresh meat (so to speak) for EATING AUTHORS. While attending Norwescon, I served on a panel with this week’s guest, Nina Post. The panel was entitled “The Languages of Speculative Fiction” and included famed Dothraki creator, David J. Peterson, whom Nina had brought in to develop a language for one of her novels. What more could I ask for?

Well, it turns out, even without asking, there’s more. In addition to writing novels, Nina also does webcomics that confuse and befuddle. Seriously, it can’t just be me, right?

We didn’t get as much time to chat as I’d have liked, but perhaps our paths will cross again, at another convention or perhaps a restaurant.

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Back in March, I traveled to Seattle to attend Norwescon (my first time at that convention). I did a reading of Barsk and afterwards stood in the hallway outside the room chatting with one of the folks who had attended, an agent I’ve had the pleasure of knowing for a few years. As we leaned against the wall talking, a man hovered nearby, listening in and waiting for an opportune time to insert himself into the conversation. That man turned out to be this week’s guest, Ben Reeder. And make no mistake, he was a welcome addition to the conversation. The three of us ended up abandoning the hallway and finding a small table where we could sit and continue our chat for the better part of an hour.

Ben’s probably best known for his Demon Apprentice series and Zompoc Survivor series, each currently holding steady at three books but given the demand of his readers I don’t doubt he’ll return to one or both of them in time. More recently though he’s been breaking new ground, trading in the undead for nephillim, so he may need a while before going back. It’s a win for us either way!

I should also note that Ben’s appearance here marks a change in policy for EATING AUTHORS. He’s the first of what I’m sure will be many other Indie authors dropping by to share their meals.

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Just a couple months ago I was in Dallas for a convention and I found myself on a panel with this week’s EATING AUTHORS guest, Rhonda Eudaly, a longtime author with Selina Rosen’s Yard Dog Press, one of the first small presses I ever encountered back in the day. Rhonda was fun and witty and eloquent, and after the panel I asked her if she’d come share a meal with the readers.

Before she does so, I should give you a little background. Although she’s branched out into novel writing with last summer’s Tarbox Station, you’re more apt to recognize her name from her long list of short fiction sales that have spanned an array of markets and anthologies, as well as several compilations. Perhaps most significantly though, she’s one of the The Four Redheads of the Apocalypse, and nothing I add could ever top that.

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Welcome to the first Monday in April, which means that the Nebula voting is all over and now a small group of authors can only sit and wait for the results (well, sure, we can write too, and we should, but you know what I mean). I hate waiting, but in a show of solidarity (or something or other), this week’s guest is Fonda Lee, whose debut novel Zeroboxer put her on the short list for the Norton Award (alongside past EATING AUTHORS visitors like Fran Wilde and Tina Connolly). Presumably, she’s waiting too.

Fonda is a transplanted Canadian who now resides in Portland, OR. She’s following up on the promise of her first novel with a second (still unnamed) YA book in which a teenaged, bio-enhanced soldier attempts to save the world, all while combatting an extremist group striving to overthrow the alien regime governing Earth. You know, as one does. It’s already been acquired by Scholastic; mark it on your calendar to get a copy in 2017.

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