Breakfast with Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam as we discuss how her new horror novel toys with the tropes of reality TV, the importance of balancing multiple POVs in a novel to keep them all equally interesting, our differing views on the revision process, the three years she spent writing 1,000 words per day (and why she stopped), the message she took from her two Nebula nominations, the importance of community, what she learned about herself by rereading her short stories to assemble a collection, why we both believe in ambiguous endings, and much more.
It's time for tea and scones with Chuck Tingle as we discuss how existing is an arrogant act against the forces of the infinite, why it's horror rather than comedy which warms his heart, how he used social media to find a publisher for <em>Camp Damascus</em> (and why that technique probably won't work for you), how to write horror about a gay conversion camp without retraumatizing in an already traumatizing world, the differences between cathartic horror and grueling horror (and why he's more interested in the former), the intriguing comment his copyeditor made about a reference to Superman, which comics subgenre occupies the most space on his bookshelves, the five creators who've most influenced him (and my encounter with one of them during the '70s), how art is more than what's between the covers of a book or within the frame of a painting, what most people get wrong about the term "high concept," and much more.
Savor a seafood pancake with the award-winning writer Ai Jiang as we discuss why being nominated for multiple awards may actually have made her Imposter Syndrome <em>worse</em>, what the Odyssey workshop taught her which helped her finish her first novel (and whether that book might be too ambitious a debut), the novels which made her want to be a writer, what makes us power on in the face of rejection, how writing is like competitive badminton, the secret to writing successful flash fiction, the book she was given which turned her from a pessimist into an optimist, what she learned from her "soul-draining" career as a ghostwriter, how an editorial suggestion turned Linghun from flash fiction into a novella, the most daunting aspects of revision, and much more.
Gab over garlic bread with Sally Wiener Grotta as we discuss when we first met (and can't quite figure out whether it was a third or a quarter of a century ago), how her first storytelling impulse began because she'd fall asleep while being read stories as a child, the importance of the question "what if?," why she often finds horror difficult to read, the early experience which allowed her to have such a good relationship with editors, the story she wrote in Ursula K. Le Guin's writing workshop which caused the Grand Master to say "what a darling monster," when we should submit to editorial suggestions and when we should run screaming, and much more.