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 <em>Moby-Dick</em>, why if you have confidence and courage you can do anything, the music he suggests you listen to while writing, the reason he thinks world building is a "stupid term," the advice given to him by his mentor John Gardner, how the writing of Isaac Bashevis Singer taught him not to blink, why he prefers giving readings to doing panels, the writer who advised him if everybody liked his stories it meant he was doing something wrong, and much more.

It's time for two scoops with writer Sarah Pinsker as we discuss the origin of her ice cream collaboration with The Charmery which resulted in their book-inspired flavor, the sculpture she saw at the American Visionary Art Museum which planted a seed for <em>Haunt Sweet Home</em>, how she knew her idea was meant to be a novella and not a novel, why she prefers writing books without a contract, how multiple ideas coalesced into one, the narrative purpose of telling a story via multiple formats, how to know a character who doesn't know themselves, why you can't tell from the end product whether a piece of fiction was plotted or pantsed, Kelly Robson's theory about the Han Solo/Luke Skywalker dichotomy and what it means for creating interesting characters, why she's a fan of making promises in the early paragraphs of her stories, whether our families understand what we're writing about when we write about families, and much more.

Munch on Mattar Paneer with horror writer William J. Donahue as we discuss the artistic endeavor which had him performing under the name Dirty Rotten Bill, why the first three novels he wrote will never see the light of day, what he was doing with one of those heads from the film <em>8 Heads in a Duffel Bag</em>, why he finds playing with the apocalypse so appealing, the reason he's neither a plotter or a pantser, but a plantser, how a vegetarian is able to do damage to human flesh in his fiction, the way our journeys were different and yet we managed to wind up at the same destination, how wrestling changed his life, why we keep writing and submitting in the face of rejection, and much more.