08-30-12 UPDATE:Podcast Update: Time to Read Episode 62: Laura Lippman, 'And When She Was Good'
Click image for audio link.
Here's the sixty-second episode of my new series of podcasts, which I'm calling Time to Read. Hitting the one-year mark, I'm going to make an effort to get ahead, so that podcast listeners can get the same sort of "sneak preview" effect that radio listeners get each Friday morning. And yes, I know this means I have one more to go this week — and here it is!
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.
"...once in a while it feels like you're channeling..."
—Karen Kondazian
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Karen Kondazian has been cracking 'The Whip' for some time now, so she was quite comfortable at her latest stop, on Clint Eastwood's ranch in Carmel. We sat down in a cark, cozy conference room. Just outside, she told me, the green pickup truck parked was the one Eastwood drove in the movie version of The Bridges of Madison County. I have to admit I'd not have recognized it; I'm a Dirty Harry fan.
But it was the perfect place to talk about her Western novel, having driven myself past Watsonville, where the real Charley Parkhurst is now buried. Kondazian's reading from her novel was amazing; she read one chapter in the middle and an excerpt from the rules for stagecoach riders.
08-30-12 UPDATE:Podcast Update: Time to Read Episode 61: Karen Kondazian, 'The Whip'
Click image for audio link.
Here's the sixty-first episode of my new series of podcasts, which I'm calling Time to Read. Hitting the one-year mark, I'm going to make an effort to get ahead, so that podcast listeners can get the same sort of "sneak preview" effect that radio listeners get each Friday morning. And yes, I know this means I have one more to go this week — and here it is!
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.
The sixty-first episode is a look at Karen Kondazian, and 'The Whip.'
"In the novel it gets very, very dark and it's sort of Lord of the Flies for the 21st century."
—John Shirley
When John Shirley tells you that his new novel 'Everything is Broken' is, "very, very dark," that's a sign readers should be ready for something worse than they can possibly imagine. Of course, that's the point; we read John Shirley so we can be prepared not for what fiction has to offer, but the real world, which regularly outstrips all but the darkest of noirs.
John Shirley has a pretty agile sense of humor to underscore his darkness though, and it came across as we sat down in the midst of SF in SF to talk about his latest novel. He tells us that there is a bit of speculation around the edges, but mostly what we have here is a very well-worked out what-if scenario. Shirley told me how he set up a classic confrontation between a town that had renounced taxes supporting government and a natural disaster that made emergency services a must.
Of course, Shirley's novel predated the sort of disaster he predicted, and the effects that we've seen in the wake of recent disasters. Here's our chance to hear a writer talk about writing non-futuristic friction that happens to predict all too well certain unfortunate aspects of what is now the recent past. You can hear our conversation by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
08-28-12:A 2012 Interview with Richard Kadrey
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"I didn't start out with the intention of re-writing the history, like I said, of reality..."
—Richard Kadrey
And here is Richard Kadrey, a perfect example of intentions that go astray in the best of all possible ways. I had the pleasure of speaking with Richard Kadrey again at SF in SF in July, and as ever, he is lots of fun to speak with. There aren't many writers who can toss of comments about re-writing the heaven, hell and everything between, but Kadrey is certainly among them.
Kadrey is referring, of course, to his Sandman Slim series. It started out as a sort of hard-boiled detective novels with a supernatural twist. But Kadrey merely had to follow up on the internal lines of logic he laid down in the first book to find himself, some three years later, in the midst of a celestial and philosophical overhaul of pretty much everything we know. As we talked about it at SF in SF, he was clearly pretty used to the idea.
What made this interview was so fun was the great casual tone that Kadrey brings to the highest and most important of subjects. Here he is, to a degree turning the Bible and every other Holy Book on earth into a detective serial, and yes, well, that's cool with him. All in a day's work, one word, one sentence one book at a time.
"...their poetic gift did seem to sort of, come from outside of themselves..."
— Tim Powers
I met with Tim Powers to talk about 'Hide Me Among the Graves' in an oasis of cool and slick technology set among the stony towers of an urban landscape paved over Southern California desert.
We were in the middle of an incredible heat wave, with most temperatures well over 100 degrees. I came from Orange County to San Bernardino on freeway overpasses so immense that could have been built for Egyptian Gods, then drove through scrub suburbs to find San Bernardino Valley College. The campus was neat and trimmed, and there on the corner, was the futuristic entrance to KVCR, where I was very kindly allowed to use the studio to record this interview.
Let me say that KVCR was incredibly accommodating, their studio is great, and the people are accomplished and helpful. I hooked up state-of-the-art mics to my tapeless recorder, and sat down to talk to Tim Powers about his latest novel.
Powers is such an interesting writer to speak with; he's a research-driven artist who knows precisely how far to go into his chosen area of interest to bring back the best story. He makes it sound like he's a prospector looking for gold nuggets who simply finds them laying about in the open. Of course, there's much more to his books than that, but it happens under the hood, so to speak. Powers is a writing engine who takes in the fuel of research and using magic of the sort he writes about so well, transforms the facts into stories that capture our imagination, engage our intellects and ultimately give ud as new perspective on the world around us, what matters and why.
Plus, he entertains the hell out of readers for every second they're staring at the pages and for years afterwards as they revisit the places he has taken them.
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Mary Robinette Kowal Reads "Evil Robot Monkey" at SF in SF on April 20, 2013 : "...not that there's anything remotely Regency about evil robot monkeys..."
05-06-13: Commentary : Glennon Doyle Melton Suggests 'Carry On, Warrior' : Fighting for Life in the Too Much Information Age
05-04-13: Commentary : Reasons Not to Leave the House, Reality Check : The Truth Hurts Edition: 'Down the Up Escalator' by Barbara Garson, 'The Wolf and the Watchman' by Scott C. Johnson,'The Book of Woe' by Gary Greenberg, 'Confessions of a Sociopath' by M. E. Thomas
05-01-13: Commentary : Mario Guslandi Reviews An Emporium of Automata by DP Watt : "...from the bizarre to the grotesque, from the baroque to the uncanny..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report : : Rick Klaw Reads at SF in SF on April 20, 2013 : "...those are the kind of people that don't get work anymore..."
04-29-13: Commentary : Ben Katchor Catalogues 'Hand Drying in America' : Subversive Cities of the Heart
04-27-13: Commentary : Mark Morris Introduces 'Toady' : A New World of Horror
Agony Column Podcast News Report : : Thomas Frank from The Easy Chair and Harper's Magazine: TV's DC Fantasies : "... basically, everyone is corrupt ..."
04-22-13: Commentary : Danielle Trussoni Maps 'Angelopolis' : The Afterlife of Angels
04-17-13: Commentary : How Not to Leave the House : Reach for the Recycling
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Matt Richtel, Sophie Littlefield and Terry Bisson at SF in SF on February 9, 2013 : "You cannot do this all day long." Sophie Littlefield
04-16-13: Commentary : Stephen Kessler 'Scratch Pegasus' : Lens of Language
04-08-13: Commentary : Ruth Ozeki Clocks 'A Tale for the Time Being' : Reading is the Future
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2013 Interview with Ruth Ozeki : "...through the act of writing, she would somehow conjure the reader into being..."
