09-15-11:Tad Williams Reading and Interview at SF in SF on August 13, 2011
"The Lord of the Rings, so far as I was concerned, took place in the Sierras."
—Tad Williams
Just try to keep up with Tad Williams — just try. Here's a man who describes himself as lazy while talking at about ten million words a minute, working on three or so different series, trying to re-invent his own publishing world — a man who writes books as thick as your fist.
When he read at SF in SF in August, he sat down, told us he hadn't even so much as looked at 'Caliban's Hour' in years and then proceeded to deliver a truly outstanding Shakespearean reading. It's powerful stuff of the sort that sends me, at least, to my computer to order the ebook even before the reading is done. It's that good.
You'll also hear his wife, Deborah Beale, in the intro, as they chat a bit about the creation of the book; after all, she commissioned it.
In our short interview, Tad and I talked about his work as a musician. He told me that he'd been in a band that was going to open for Edgar Winter back in Winter's Frankenstein heyday, thus completing the circle of monsters. We also talked about the influence of California's landscape on his fantasy fiction.
09-14-11:Deborah Beale Reads from 'The Dragons of Ordinary Farm' at SF in SF, August 13, 2011; Deborah Beale Interviewed at SF in SF, August 13, 2011
"...it struck me that I had to go to America ..."
—Deborah Beale
I'll be hosting a new Agony Column Live Show, this Saturday at Capitola Book Café, at 6:30 PM, with Deborah Beale and Tad Williams, and to give readers a sense of how much fun they can expect, I'm going to podcast everything we did at the last show for SF in SF, in August. And that was a lot of fun.
I have to admit, I was intimidated, and I didn't know the half of it. I did know that Tad Williams was a huge bestselling writer, and I'd thoroughly enjoyed 'The War of the Flowers.' I have friends here who have read every word more than once — and that's a lot of words! And had I known what I know now about Beale, I would have been properly terrified instead of merely intimidated. Perhaps in some cases, ignorance is indeed strength. Or at least, it can avert self-induced weakness.
09-13-11 UPDATE:Podcast Update: Time to Read, Episode 9: Laurie R. King, 'Pirate King'
Here's the ninth episode of my new series of podcasts, which I'm calling Time to Read. The podcasts/radio broadcasts will be of books worth your valuable reading time. I'll try to keep the reports under four minutes, for a radio-friendly format. If you want to run them on your show or podcast, let me know.
My hope is that in under four minutes I can offer readers a concise review and an opportunity to hear the author read from or speak about the work. I'm hoping to offer a new one every week.
"...maybe somebody's trying to tell me to write a book about this guy Spero."
—George Pelecanos
I often like to think of what I try to do as a series of successive approximations. I get half way there, then halfway again, and then at least close enough so it seems like I made the journey, if you look at things from the right angle. This approach was definitely in play with interviewing George Pelecanos, one of those opportunities that pop up at the last moment and then require some vectoring to get in place. Fortunately, we ended up in exactly the right place.
The original hop was to run the interview at KQED, but the request came too late and they had no room — which proved to be fortuitous. The next plan was to do the interview in his hotel in San Francisco, which is at the top of a hill, and in a zone where the free parking is as scarce as gold and the paid parking requires a hefty amount of gold. My plan was to arrive about an hour early and circle till I found something free, hoping I wouldn't have to lug my gear too far.
But then the flight was delayed, and the interview was pushed back an hour. Pelcanos' driver called me and was incredibly helpful in this regard, keeping me informed all the way. Along the way, he mentioned that he had to stop by M for Mystery books in San Mateo to do a stock signing, and that was indeed my opportunity to adjust the vector. I proposed doing the interview there, where parking was cheap and plentiful. Not only that, the bookstore is in a pretty quiet part of town.
The folks at M for Mystery were superb and helpful; Pam let me use the perfect office and Ed Kaufman, a man of historic import to the genre (link to audio interivew with Ed Kaufman), was an eminently gentile host. I arrived shortly after Pelecanos and by the time I was set up, he was done signing. We sat down in an office with better acoustics than many studios and set about discussing his latest novel, 'The Cut', his latest work in TV and what's to come.
05-16-12: Commentary : Mark Sundeen Pays Out 'The Man Who Quit Money' : Over the Edges
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2012 Interview with Mark Sundeen and Daniel Suelo : "What would happen if we actually practiced this stuff?"-Daniel Suelo
05-15-12: Commentary : Archive Review: Clive Barker 'Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War' : Impure Life
05-08-12: Commentary : Archive Review: Clive Barker 'Abarat' : Reading in Color
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2012 Phone Interview with Mark Sundeen : "...over the years, I had heard through my friends that he had stopped using money and was living in a cave..."
04-30-12: Commentary : Christopher Moore Follows 'Sacré Bleu' : A Story in Color
Agony Column Podcast News Report: A 2012 Interview with Christopher Moore : "...it often isn't efficient to tell a story in chronological order..."
04-27-12: Commentary : Lisa Lutz on 'Trail of the Spellmans' : Meta-Fiction is Fun
Agony Column Podcast News Report: SF in SF from February 11, 2012 : Panel Discussion Moderated by Terry Bisson and Interviews with Rudy Rucker, K. W. Jeter, and Jay Lake
04-26-12: Commentary : Archive Review: Emmanuel Carrere 'The Adversary' : The Enemy Within
04-23-12: Commentary : T. M. Luhrman Listens 'When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God' : Science and the Supernaturaly
04-18-12: Commentary : Gregg Jones Stirs Through 'Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines and the Rise and Fall of America's Imperial Dreams' : A Dream Of Today From Yesterday
Agony Column Podcast News Report: A 2012 Interview with Gregg Jones : "The Philippinos would welcome us with open arms and greet us as liberators."
04-17-12: Commentary : Archive Review: Caleb Carr 'The Alienist' : Subterranean History
04-16-12: Commentary : Richard Zacks Visits 'Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York' :The Wild, Wild East
Agony Column Podcast News Report: A 2012 Interview with Richard Zacks : "Roosevelt and Riis were out looking, and if they did find a cop, he was talking to a streetwalker."
