All Things To All People
This isn’t a podcast for total beginners. We’re going to assume that you know what plot structure is, what a protagonist is, where ideas come from, and how to use a semicolon. This is a podcast for people who can already write okay, but want to do better.
When you send a short story to a magazine, it probably doesn’t go directly to the editor. Instead, it ends up in what’s called the slush pile–the pool of unsolicited work waiting for review. Who reviews it? Weirdos like us.
They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but it is way easier to kill a guy with a sword than with a pen.
The changing of the guard in the early 2000s and the euthanization of the reactionary Sad Puppy movement in the early 2010s should have ushered in a new era of speculative fiction, an era of creative freedom and experimentation.
In this very serious episode, we honor the most important writer of the 20th century, a man forty years ahead of his time: author, visionary, dreamweaver plus actor, Garth Marenghi.
“Here’s my new novel, A Groan of Stone and Bone. It has enemies to lovers, a chaotic bisexual, BIPOC representation, elemental magic, and tons of ‘Buffy’ references!”
Because ‘squeecore’ got so big, we decided to revisit it to address some of the discourse it generated—the good, the bad, and the ugly.
It is time to talk about Bear, Marian Engel’s 1976 Canadian novel about a mousy librarian who falls in love with a bear.
Thanks to Rite Gud listener @gynoidgearhead, we now have a “Guide to Squeecore” transcript—read along with the audio!
What is squeecore? You’re soaking in it! Squeecore is the dominant literary movement in contemporary SFF, a movement so ubiquitous it’s nearly invisible.
Bram Stoker Award-winning author John Langan joins us to talk about cosmic horror, his novel The Fisherman, upstate New York, how much money writers make (none), and how hard it is to get published when you’re a little too literary for the genre crowd but a little too genre for the literary crowd.