Fifteen minutes long, because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart.
Spoiler Alert! This week is our deep dive into Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Spare Man. It’s a sci-fi mystery novel often described as “The Thin Man in space.” Deep dive episodes are necessarily full of spoilers because we ask all kinds of how and why questions specific to the writing of…
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler In this episode we interview Howard Tayler, one of the founding members of the podcast, and the creator of Schlock Mercenary. The first question: how did this twenty-year ride change you? And a later question: what comes…
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler In this episode Howard Tayler conducts our interview with Mary Robinette Kowal, leading with a wide-open question: “Where did you even?” Mary Robinette talks to us about how she came to the world of writing, and some…
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler In this episode Erin Roberts very enthusiastically launches our interview with “OG” Dan Wells with a delightfully difficult question, paraphrased thusly: “is there advice you gave back in the early days that you still stand by today?”…
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler As we announced in the first episode of the year (and in this press release), DongWon Song and Erin Roberts are joining us as permanent cast members. Today we’re conducting an interview with Erin Roberts. She is newer to…
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler As we announced in last week’s episode (and in this press release), DongWon Song and Erin Roberts are joining us as permanent cast members. In this episode we conduct an interview with DongWon Song, plumbing a few depths, and…
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Mary Robinette, and Howard This Q&A session was recorded before a live audience aboard ship at WXR 2022, Here are some paraphrasings of the questions our attendees asked: How do you make your world feel big without infodumping? How do you balance a sense of progress…
Your Hosts: Howard Tayler, Dongwon Song, and Dan Wells Thanks to some last-minute schedule changes, we almost didn’t have an episode for today. Only three cast members were able to make it to the session, and none of those three had the syllabus. But we forged ahead anyway, and recorded…
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, C.L. Polk, Fran Wilde, and Howard Tayler Let’s put a stake in the ground here: disabilities do not grant magical powers. And yet that exact trope can be found in multiple genres, across multiple mediums. In this episode we talk about why this happens, and how we…
Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, C.L. Polk, Fran Wilde, and Howard Tayler Let’s talk about pain. It hurts, yes, but we all experience it, so writing about it can be a great point of connection between the writer and the reader. Also, writing about it can hurt. Liner Notes: We referenced “No,…
