Posts Tagged ‘Eating Authors’

This past summer, as part of my experience at Sasquan, the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention, I was on a panel about food. This happens more and more frequently (as I’ve mentioned previously) and this blog series is probably a large part of why. Among the audience members that afternoon was this week’s guest, Loren Rhoads, who was so taken with the panel that she followed up weeks later with an email and introduced herself (and her books). Naturally, I sent her an invitation to EATING AUTHORS, and so here she is.

Loren spent a decade as the editor of Morbid Curiosity, described in her bio as a nonfiction cult magazine. It’s a short jump from there to her compelling Wish You Were Here, a book of essays about visits to some of the world’s most famous cemeteries. More recently though she’s the author of the In the Wake of the Templars space opera trilogy from Night Shade Books, with all three books releasing in 2015. The Dangerous Type launched in July, Kill by Numbers came out a month ago, and No More Heroes is expected in November.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the weekend, while the Pope was visiting Philadelphia, I fled south to Maryland and took part in the Balitmore Book Festival. In many ways, that event marks the first point in the run-up to the release of Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard in three months, not least because I signed and gave away a small stack of ARCs. Between now and then I have innumerable blog tour posts and five conventions. First among that last is a day trip up to NYC for Comic Con in about a week and a half. If things go according to plan, the Fab Four (I think I’m Ringo) of Tor’s “Class of 2015” will recreate last Spring’s BEA performance and again join our moderator John Scalzi on stage. The star of the event is likely to be this week’s EATING AUTHOR guest, Ilana C. Myer, whose debut novel, Last Song Before Night, launches tomorrow. She’ll still have that “new book smell” and the audience will doubtless latch onto that, raise her up on their collective shoulders, and parade her around the Javits Center.

Or something like that.

I’ve heard stories about Comic Con, and I don’t know how many of them are true, so I may have things slightly off in that regard. On the other hand, something I’m completely certain of is that Ilana’s debut novel is an absolute delight. And I’m not just saying that because we’re classmates. Pick up a copy, read it for yourself, and then drop me a note apologizing for ever doubting me.

Read the rest of this entry »

So there I was, sitting in the SFWA suite last month at Sasquan, sharing tales and news with various writers as we relaxed and snacked. Naturally enough, I was talking up Barsk, and that’s when I discovered that two other people at the table were also anthropomorphic authors (by which I mean writers of anthropomorphic fiction, not that they were… oh, nevermind). One of them, Kyell Gold, had published several novels, which meant he was eligible for appearing on EATING AUTHORS. I immediately handed him one of the business cards I was packing for just that purpose. We followed up soon after the convention, and lo, here he is as this week’s guest!

If you’re not familiar with his work, then I encourage you to click on one or more of the covers below. Kyell writes furry fiction, sometimes in a contemporary (albeit furry) world, sometimes in a Renaissance-era furry world with nobility and courts. His short stories and novels often contain varying amounts of adult content, which as you know, Bob, is also a common occurrence in a significant portion of furry fiction. And he must be doing it right because over the years Kyell has taken home an even dozen Ursa Major awards, considered the Hugo equivalent for anthropomorphic writing.

Read the rest of this entry »

If all has gone according to plan, it’s the Monday after Sasquan and you are reading this blog post while I am waking up in my hotel room in Spokane. I’ll be lingering here for a couple more days, recovering from the joy and madness that was the 2015 World Science Fiction Convention. I wish I could regale you with glowing accounts of all that happened there, but as I write this none of it has taken place yet. I’m banking this post a week in advance because hey, I’m at the Worldcon, when would I find the time to write it?

And while at the time of this writing I cannot tell you who won the Hugo, since this month is all about awards, I’m happy to use that as a shameless segue to introduce this week’s guest, Brian Staveley, who just a couple weeks ago won the David Gemmell Morningstar Award for Best Debut Novel for The Emperor’s Blades, the first volume in his Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne trilogy. Book two, The Providence of Fire, comes out mid-January, followed by the concluding novel, The Last Mortal Bond, two months later.

In addition to writing epic fantasy, Brian wears a few other hats, hats to give one pause. Depending on how you choose to parse it, he’s a poet who edits (in his case, for Antilever Press), or an editor who writes poetry. But don’t take my word for it, you’ll see the combination of both in the crisp sparseness of the following report of his most memorable meal.

Read the rest of this entry »

Would you look at that, it’s August already. Which means that my late-July birthday came and went last week. It was something of a disappointing birthday, owing to other circumstances such as flying in from a week away with Klingons and the fatigue such events always bring, the incessant itching caused by what seems to have been a poison ivy rash covering much of my torso, and the necessity of spending the morning taking my wife’s aged and ailing dog to the vet to be euthanized. So, yeah, not a great birthday. So much so that I granted myself a “birthday do-over” on Friday. Which is why, boys and girls, I have a time machine in my basement!

That said, tempus is very much fugiting, and so we are here once again at EATING AUTHORS with yet another rousing account of a memorable meal. This week, our guest is Lev AC Rosen. What can you say about a man who apparently eschews periods (and even a separating space!) on his middle initials? Were I a clinical psychologist — and I’m not, I’m a research psychologist — I’d doubtless reach for my copy of the DSM and find assorted case studies that fit this profile. Since that’s a different parallel world, let me instead tell you that Lev is the author of four books, two for adults (All Men of Genius and Depth) and two for middle grade readers (Woundabout and The Memory Wall, the former including a pet capybara, and latter due out in Fall of 2016). I’m willing to trade that capybara for sufficient points to suspend judgment on the whole initials question; it’s a question of priorities, you see.

Read the rest of this entry »

As I prepare this week’s EATING AUTHORS post, I’m far from home and surrounded by aliens. Which is to say I’m attending the 22nd annual conference of the Klingon Language Institute, as I warned you about last week. For days now we’ve been barking and spitting at one another, singing songs of battle, and telling uproarious stories. And we’ve done it all in Klingon. As always, it’s been glorious and alas ends all too quickly.

But it’s a fitting background for introducing this week’s guest, Sebastien de Castell, whose curriculum vitae reads like the description of an over-the-top action hero. Doubtless this lends a level of verisimilitude to the swashbuckling derring do to his The Greatcoats series, which presently includes Knight’s Shadow and Traitor’s Blade. So it’s hardly surprising then to discover — as you will when you read of his most memorable meal below — that the man is a romantic as well.

And I, for one, think that’s a good thing.

Read the rest of this entry »

For most of you, today is just another Monday in July. Not so for me. Today is the last Monday before I head to Chicago for the 22nd annual conference of the Klingon Language Institute (aka the qep’a’ cha’maH cha’DIch), several days spent in the company of people who gather from around the world to share their delight in the galaxy’s fastest growing language. I’ve been pushing Klingon since 1992, and some of the folk I’ll be seeing this week have been in my life that long. So, in some ways, the qep’a’ is like a family reunion. But instead of a three-legged race we have pain sticks.

So if I seem a bit distracted today, it’s only because there’s so much left to get done before I head off to the conference, not least of which is to switch into “Klingon-mode” because, honestly, other than this one week each summer I don’t spend a lot of time speaking or thinking in Klingon.

Okay, so with my excuses firmly in place (majQa’!) let’s move on and get to introducing this week’s EATING AUTHORS guest, Mary Rickert. Not that Mary needs much introduction as earlier this year her novella The Mothers of Voorhisville, landed her on the Nebula Award ballot, and this past June she took home a Locus Award for her first novel, The Memory Garden. And that’s just for 2015. In prior years, her short fiction has earned her the Crawford Award, two World Fantasy Awards, as well as other nominations for both the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards.

Read the rest of this entry »

Why is it that the summer is such a crazy time? It’s not the heat (or not just the heat), and since I’m not in academia any more, on either side of the desk, I can’t blame it on the change in work schedule. Maybe it’s the conventions. I haven’t been to any yet this summer (though many of you reading this may have just returned from Readercon or ComicCon) but I’m still feeling it. Like when everyone around you is coming down with the flu and you’re still fine but a part of you knows it’s probably only a matter of time. Yeah, convention fever. It’s a viral thing.

I haven’t caught it yet — though the 22nd annual Klingon Language Conference, the qep’a’ cha’maH cha’DIch, is little more than a week away — but this week’s guest on EATING AUTHORS has a bad case of it. Rachel A. Marks has been off at ComicCon, and why not? The first volume of her Dark Cycle series, Darkness Brutal, just launched on the first of the month. Book two, Darkness Fair, is already in the can and should be coming your way in February.

Read the rest of this entry »