We chat speculative fiction vs. sci-fi and we still can’t figure out how publishers define it, how Fadi started out as a blogger to write about taboo subjects before his government cracked down on what you can say as a blogger, and so much more.

Subscribe to MAH SUBSTACKY for more book news, storytelling breakdowns as well as some nervous breakdowns. 

Check out my four favorite contemporary Italian authors here: https://www.youtube.com/@DuShaneTony

Subscribe to DuShane.substack.com and listen to Drinks with Tony on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, and other podcast outlets. It also airs every Tuesday at 4pm and Friday at 11am on 92.9FM, Los Gatos and 101.9FM, Santa Cruz on Pirate Cat Radio.

Alecia McKenzie is the author of A Million Aunties: A Novel out now on Akashic Books.

We chat walking amongst the dead literary spirits of Paris, her start writing as a four year old in Kingston, Jamaica, why every neighborhood needs aunties, and so much more.

Subscribe to DuShane.substack.com and listen to Drinks with Tony on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, and other podcast outlets. It also airs every Tuesday at 4pm and Friday at 11am on 92.9FM, Los Gatos and 101.9FM, Santa Cruz on Pirate Cat Radio.

Tad Crawford is the author of A Woman in the Wild. We also chat his other book, The Secret Life of Monday, and we talk about IQ84 and other Murakami, Proust, long novels, the writing process, creating characters, and the word ‘esoteric’ while being esoteric.

Novel 1 registration is open for August workshops, limited to six students:

Subscribe to DuShane.substack.com and listen to Drinks with Tony on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, and other podcast outlets. It also airs every Tuesday at 4pm and Friday at 11am on 92.9FM, Los Gatos and 101.9FM, Santa Cruz on Pirate Cat Radio.

James Elkins is the author of A Short Introduction to Anneliese out now on Unnamed Press.

Novel 1 registration is open for August workshops, limited to six students:

James and I chat Exegesis by Philip K. Dick, Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses, Proust Smelling the fear of some authors in their work, The Anatomy of Melancholy, and so much more.

Subscribe to DuShane.substack.com and listen to Drinks with Tony on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, and other podcast outlets. It also airs every Tuesday at 4pm and Friday at 11am on 92.9FM, Los Gatos and 101.9FM, Santa Cruz on Pirate Cat Radio.

Ralph Steadman illustrated Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Also a writer, I interviewed Ralph in 2007 for his memoir The Joke’s Over. A deep cut from the Drinks with Tony archives.

We chat Hunter S. Thompson, Oscar Zeta Acosta, and more.

Start your novel immediately, stop procrastinating, join my novel workshop in August. More info at DrinksWithTony.com

Subscribe to DuShane.substack.com and listen to Drinks with Tony on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, and other podcast outlets. It also airs every Tuesday at 4pm and Friday at 11am on 92.9FM, Los Gatos and 101.9FM, Santa Cruz on Pirate Cat Radio.

Kurt Baumeister is the author of Twilight of the Gods on Stalking Horse Press. He’s also an acquisitions editor for 7.13.

We discuss how we lose friends and family when writing auto-fiction, Martin Amis’ Inside Story, Ian Maloney’s South Brooklyn Exterminating, Desperately Seeking Susan, and the delusion and reality of a writing career.

Subscribe to DuShane.substack.com and listen to Drinks with Tony on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, and other podcast outlets. It also airs every Tuesday at 4pm and Friday at 11am on 92.9FM, Los Gatos and 101.9FM, Santa Cruz on Pirate Cat Radio.

Jeffrey Konvitz is the author of The Circus of Satan: A Novel exploring the Irish mob in New York City of the early 1900s. Based on true events, yet fictionalized for emotional truth.

We chat about his first novel The Sentinel and his experience going from rejected writer to best selling author with a film deal. With the new swagger in his step he approached a beautiful woman to flirt with and he introduced himself by showing the large display of his best-selling novel at the bookstore. They soon married and had a kid.

I hope you enjoy this episode, it was lots of fun.

Subscribe to DuShane.substack.com and listen to Drinks with Tony on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, and other podcast outlets. It also airs every Tuesday at 4pm and Friday at 11am on 92.9FM, Los Gatos and 101.9FM, Santa Cruz on Pirate Cat Radio.

Tom Lutz is the author of 1925 A Literary Encyclopedia out now on Rare Bird Lit.

We discuss everything from Fitzgerald to the Harlem Renaissance and more from 1925 A Literary Encyclopedia, his move to France and adjusting to French life and culture, why he stopped taking portraits after his portrait book was published, and so much more.

June 17, 2025 join me for a free online writing workshop. Registration at the link. 

Subscribe to DuShane.substack.com and listen to Drinks with Tony on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, and other podcast outlets. It also airs every Tuesday at 4pm and Friday at 11am on 92.9FM, Los Gatos and 101.9FM, Santa Cruz on Pirate Cat Radio.

Ted Kessler is the author of The Authorized Unauthorized History of Billy Childish: To Ease My Troubled Mind.

June 11, 2025 join me for Books For Breakfast, a non-intellectual conversation about Victor Hugo.

June 17, 2025 join me for a free online writing workshop. Registration at the link. 

Subscribe to DuShane.substack.com and listen to Drinks with Tony on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, and other podcast outlets. It also airs every Tuesday at 4pm and Friday at 11am on 92.9FM, Los Gatos and 101.9FM, Santa Cruz on Pirate Cat Radio.

Jon Ronson is the author of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. I interviewed him in 2015 when the book came out and it’s pretty mind blowing where cancel culture has ‘matured’ ten years since.

Check out Writing Is Hard and Why You Should Write at dushane.substack.com.

Subscribe to DuShane.substack.com and listen to Drinks with Tony on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, and other podcast outlets. It also airs every Tuesday at 4pm and Friday at 11am on 92.9FM, Los Gatos and 101.9FM, Santa Cruz on Pirate Cat Radio.