For the curious reader of science fiction (scifi) and fantasy
Tomorrow morning, I’ll be speaking with Bria Burton about The Chaos Chronicles, and whatever else she wants to ask me about. This Bria is not to be confused with Bria the gokat, who features in The Reefs of Time and Crucible of Time. They didn’t even know each other until recently, and I didn’t know the human Bria when I wrote the gokat Bria. But one became a fan of the other, and don’t you love those coincidences?
Odyssey Writing Workshop is a long-running, intensive, hands-on training camp for folks just learning to be science fiction and fantasy writers—one of the most demanding and most rewarding in the business. On a couple of occasions in the past, I have been privileged to be a guest speaker at Odyssey, and on one of those occasions, I spoke on the subject of creating believable and interesting characters. I don’t really remember what I said, but I must have hit something right, because the folks at Odyssey have just put up an excerpt as the latest in their podcast series featuring guest authors.
You can listen to it right here, or here. It’s also on iTunes, I’m told.
Better still, especially if you’re interested in the craft of writing, browse the whole Odyssey Podcast home page for the many fascinating topics, by a whole host of authors. Some of them also talk about characterization. In fact, I just found one such by my friend Craig Shaw Gardner.
Lots of good advice to be found there.
I’ll be going live in a little while in a video interview with David M. Kelly and Richard H. Stephens, as part of their show, Lurking for Legends. What will we be talking about? I don’t know! But I’ll bet it has something to do with writing, and possibly lurking, and maybe even legends. Come join us—it’ll be fun!
https://www.facebook.com/RichardHughStephens/videos/441961747498329/
Update: You can watch the completed interview at that link. It’ll be on YouTube, also, but I don’t have that link just yet. (Because it doesn’t exist yet.)
Seriously, come on in. You don’t have anywhere else to be, do you?
Over the last mumblety years, I’ve done a number of interviews in various media, or written essays for other publications or blogs. I always link to them, but mostly I’ve not gotten around to putting them on my own site (after a decent interval), as I’ve meant to do. Well, it’s never too late. I start with one of my favorites.
On November 21, 1997, I was a guest along with author Joe Haldeman on a remarkable public radio series called The Connection, hosted by Christopher Lydon on Boston’s WBUR public radio station. The Connection was a highly respected show on public affairs and the arts. It wasn’t the kind of show where you normally expected any mention of SF literature. But this time it was, and the discussion was lively, with lots of input from callers. I had a great time. I recently found a tape recording of the show, and have digitized it for the modern age. (Edit: I realized the tape reproduction was a little fast, so I have adjusted the recording to what seems to me to be the correct pitch and tempo.)
I hope the producers don’t mind my doing this, since technically I don’t own the copyright. But it’s been over twenty years, so I hope it’s all right. For the record, I’ve stored this recording on my own website, and I’m offering you a chance to plug into my headphone jack. Please don’t distribute this, but if you’ve got a little time and you want to hear our chat with an influential radio personality, just lean over and plug your headphones in right here…
Here’s a picture of Joe and me together at a book signing, a few years later. (Photo by Gay Haldeman)
We interrupt The Ponce Chronicles for a special bulletin: My interview with author, publisher, and podcaster Richard Paolinelli was recorded just two days ago—from right here in Ponce, for my part—and has already gone live. In fact, here it is!
If that doesn’t display for you, you can view it here.
Richard is a good interviewer, and it was a fun change of pace for me. And we didn’t even have a power or internet outage!
If you’d like to see his home page for interviews, you can view that here.
Note, it’s a new platform, so we’re just getting the ball rolling. Spread the news!
I had an entertaining chat with Pen for Hire host Matthew Harms not long ago, and he’s posted it on YouTube so that you, too, can be entertained. (Well, I hope you’re entertained. If you’re not, I guarantee your ticket price back.) You can see it here:
Or, if that doesn’t work for you, here: https://youtu.be/6SyXPmqqtq8
Those crazy dudes at SciFi Saturday Night podcast interviewed me again last week. They always start with some zaniness that as far as I can tell has nothing to do with anything—must be something in the New Hampshire water—and then, wham, we’re into talking books. These guys love books! They read your stuff before you come on, and they really want to talk about it. “Why did you do this?” “You really had me going with that…” It’s a lot of fun. This time we talked about my efforts in audiobooks, over the last year. And a bit about the challenges of putting older books back into (paper) print. You can listen to it right here: http://scifisaturdaynight.com/?p=9834
Shortly before that, I was on the Douglas Coleman Show. This was much more of a general audience broadcast. I don’t think he gets a lot of SF writers on his show, so let’s call it carefully calculated subversion. Get that general audience thinking about otherworldly things they might not tend to ponder very much. One slight problem was that I must have been tired. It was a video interview, and I sat there looking sort of like a low-budget cartoon character—you know, the ones where just the mouth moves. I hope I was interesting in spite of that. You can see it here: https://youtu.be/7_LyRzMJHl4
In more upbeat news, I recently was featured on a talk show called Writers Corner Live with Bridgetti Lim Banda and Mary Elizabeth Jackson. They run a very polished operation and were great, welcoming hosts. I had a lot of fun talking to them. You can view it right here, or visit the Writers Corner Live page on Facebook.
Here’s the YouTube link to the interview if it’s not displaying properly for you.
Beyond the Trope is a weekly podcast about writing, hosted by the lively and welcoming Michelle and Giles. This week, they pick the brain of moi, and we talk about writing in general, touching on research, teaching, and television hosting. I just listened to it, and I was not disappointed! Hopefully you will be, too. Er, not. You know what I mean. Check out all of their podcasts!
Download | iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher
I keep seeing this guy’s face. Who does he think he is? And I wish he’d get a new photo.
Anyway, it seems I have turned up in another part of the pod-o-sphere, this time in a discussion with the smart and friendly, not to mention bestselling and famous, UK-based, dark-fiction author Daniel Willcocks! This one took two tries on two days, because either my audio setup wasn’t cooperating, or his wasn’t. (We never did figure that out.) In any case, everything worked the second time. Listen in, as two writers discuss writing!
If you prefer the channel of a favored podcast app, you can find links to a bunch of different options =here=.
Or, assuming I get it embedded correctly, listen to this interview in your browser here:
Listen to Great Writers Share | with Daniel Willcocks