By Xach Fromson and Lauren Candia
The podcast currently has 12 episodes available.
Welcome back to the Shades & Shadows Podcast! This episode features authors recorded live at our show in March of 2016. If this is your first time listening, please be aware that we feature content that may contain adult themes and language. We do not censor the authors who read for us.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Steph Cha is the author of “Follow Her Home,” “Beware Beware,” and “Dead Soon Enough,” all published by St.Martin’s Minotaur. She’s the noir editor for the L.A. Review of Books and a regular contributor to the L.A. Times. She lives in her native city of Los Angeles with her husband and basset hound.
Carlos Allende is the author of Love, or the Witches of Windward Circle, a horror farce set in Venice, California, throughout the first half of the 20th Century. He was born in Mexico City in 1974, but can pull off 1985 under the proper light. He has three elder sisters, none of whom practices magic. Since he was a kid, he knew he liked boys and that he wanted to be a writer. However, he was too much of a coward to study writing: his BA is in Economics and he has a Master’s in Global Management. He makes a living taking care of the finances for a vacation rental company in Venice, and is currently enrolled in a Master in Media Psychology. He lives in Santa Monica with his husband. Currently, he’s working on Coffe, Shopping, Murder, Love, an epistolary novel about coffee, shopping, incidental murder, and love.
Ben Loory is the author of the collection Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, and a picture book for children, The Baseball Player and the Walrus. His fables and tales have appeared in The New Yorker, Fairy Tale Review, Tin House, and Weekly Reader’s READ Magazine, and been heard on This American Life and Selected Shorts. He lives in Los Angeles and is an instructor for the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. www.benloory.com
For more information, and to purchase the books you heard on this podcast, go to our website, www.ShadesAndShadows.org, and click on the "Podcasts" tab. The books will be linked on the post for the episode the author appears in.
While you're there, you can sign up for our mailing list, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and donate to support us. Shades & Shadows is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and everything you donate goes right back into making the show even better.
Thanks for listening, and we'll see you soon! If you like what you hear, please remember to rate the podcast highly!
Welcome back to the Shades & Shadows Podcast!
This is a very, very special episode. On April 28th, 2017, we recorded our live event at the Horror Writer's Association's Stoker Con. We had a lineup of some of the greatest voices in modern horror fiction join us aboard the Queen Mary, and we now present that show, in its entirety, for your enjoyment.
This episode features adult content and language, and is very definitely not suited to sensitive ears. This was, after all, at a horror writer's convention.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Stephen Graham Jones is the author of sixteen novels, six story collections, more than 250 stories, and has some comic books in the works. His current book is the werewolf novel Mongrels (William Morrow). Stephen’s been the recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Fiction, the Texas Institute of Letters Jesse Jones Award for Fiction, the Independent Publishers Awards for Multicultural Fiction, three This is Horror awards, and he’s made Bloody Disgusting’s Top Ten Novels of the Year. Stephen teaches in the MFA programs at University of Colorado at Boulder and University of California Riverside-Palm Desert. He lives in Boulder, Colorado, with his wife, two children, and too many old trucks.
Barbara Barnett is Publisher/Executive Editor of Blogcritics, (blogcritics.org). Her Bram Stoker Award-nominated novel, called "Anne Rice meets Michael Crichton," The Apothecary's Curse The Apothecary's Curse is now out from Pyr, an imprint of Prometheus Books. Her book on the TV series House, M.D., Chasing Zebras is a quintessential guide to the themes, characters and episodes of the hit show. Barnett is an accomplished speaker, an annual favorite at MENSA's HalloWEEM convention, where she has spoken to standing room crowds on subjects as diverse as "The Byronic Hero in Pop Culture," "The Many Faces of Sherlock Holmes," "The Hidden History of Science Fiction," and "Our Passion for Disaster (Movies)."
Chuck Wendig is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Aftermath, as well as the Miriam Black thrillers, the Atlanta Burns books, and the Heartland YA series, alongside other works across comics, games, film, and more. A finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and the co-writer of the Emmy-nominated digital narrative Collapsus, he is also known for his popular blog, terribleminds.com, and his books about writing. He lives in Pennsylvania, with his family.
Tananarive Due is a former Cosby Chair in the Humanities at Spelman College (2012-2014), where she taught screenwriting, creative writing and journalism. She teaches Afrofuturism at UCLA and also teaches in the creative writing MFA program at Antioch University Los Angeles. The American Book Award winner and NAACP Image Award recipient is the author of twelve novels and a civil rights memoir. In 2010, she was inducted into the Medill School of Journalism’s Hall of Achievement at Northwestern University. Due’s novella “Ghost Summer,” published in the 2008 anthology The Ancestors, received the 2008 Kindred Award from the Carl Brandon Society, and her short fiction has appeared in best-of-the-year anthologies of science fiction and fantasy. Her first short story collection, Ghost Summer, was published by Prime Books in June of 2015. Due collaborates on the Tennyson Hardwick mystery series with her husband, author Steven Barnes, in partnership with actor Blair Underwood. Due also wrote The Black Rose , a historical novel about the life of Madam C.J. Walker, based on the research of Alex Haley – and Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights , which she co-authored with her mother, the late civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due. Freedom in the Family was named 2003’s Best Civil Rights Memoir by Black Issues Book Review.
Elizabeth Hand is the bestselling author of thirteen genre-spanning novels and four collections of short fiction. Her work has received the World Fantasy Award (four times), Nebula Award (twice), Shirley Jackson Award (three times), International Horror Guild Award (three times), the Mythopoeic Award, and the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, among others, and several of her books have been New York Times and Washington Post Notable Books. Her recent, critically acclaimed novels featuring Cass Neary, “one of literature’s great noir anti-heroes” [Katherine Dunn] — Generation Loss, Available Dark and Hard Light — have been compared to those of Patricia Highsmith.
Jonathan Maberry is a New York Times best-selling and five-time Bram Stoker Award-winning suspense author, anthology editor, comic book writer, magazine feature writer, playwright, content creator and writing teacher/lecturer.
For more information, and to purchase the books you heard on this podcast, go to our website, www.ShadesAndShadows.org, and click on the "Podcasts" tab. The books will be linked on the post for the episode the author appears in.
While you're there, you can sign up for our mailing list, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and donate to support us. Shades & Shadows is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and everything you donate goes right back into making the show even better. If you liked what you heard here, please rate the podcast highly on whatever service you use.
Thanks for listening, and we'll see you soon!
We got a chance to sit down with Ana Castillo and discuss her writing, her place in "genre fiction," and much more. She has a piece included in the anthology Latin@ Rising (linked on our website, go to the Podcasts page). Enjoy!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ana Castillo (June 15, 1953-) is a celebrated and distinguished poet, novelist, short story writer, essayist, editor, playwright, translator and independent scholar. Castillo was born and raised in Chicago. She has contributed to periodicals and on-line venues (Salon and Oxygen) and national magazines, including More and the Sunday New York Times. Castillo’s writings have been the subject of numerous scholarly investigations and publications. Among her award winning, best sellling titles: novels include So Far From God, The Guardians and Peel My Love like an Onion, among other poetry: I Ask the Impossible. Her novel, Sapogonia was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She has been profiled and interviewed on National Public Radio and the History Channel and was a radio-essayist with NPR in Chicago. Ana Castillo is editor of La Tolteca, an arts and literary ‘zine dedicated to the advancement of a world without borders and censorship and on the advisory board of the new American Writers Museum in D.C. In 2014 Dr. Castillo held the Lund-Gil Endowed Chair at Dominican University, River Forest, IL and served on the faculty with Bread Loaf Summer Program (Middlebury College) in 2015 and 2016. She also held the first Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Endowed Chair at DePaul University, The Martin Luther King, Jr Distinguished Visiting Scholar post at M.I.T. and was the Poet-in-Residence at Westminster College in Utah in 2012, among other teaching posts throughout her extensive career. Ana Castillo holds an M.A from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D., University of Bremen, Germany in American Studies and an honorary doctorate from Colby College. She received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for her first novel, The Mixquiahuala Letters. Her other awards include a Carl Sandburg Award, a Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in fiction and poetry. She was also awarded a 1998 Sor Juana Achievement Award by the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago. Dr. Castillo’s So Far From God and Loverboys are two titles on the banned book list controversy with the TUSD in Arizona. 2013 Recipient of the American Studies Association Gloria Anzaldúa Prize to an independent scholar.
Spring 2016 Publication of BLACK DOVE: Mamá, Mi’jo, and Me (Feminist Press) released to critical acclaim. It is the recent recipient of a 2016 International Latino Book Award in the category of autobiography. Her most recent novel, GIVE IT TO ME is the recipient of the LAMBDA AWARD, 2015.
As always, go to our website, www.ShadesAndShadows.org for more information. While there, you can sign up for our mailing list, find us on Twitter and Facebook, and make a tax-deductible donation to our 501(c)(3) nonprofit. 100% of all donations go right back into the shows and events we present. And if you liked what you heard, give us a good rating. Thanks!
Welcome back to the Shades & Shadows Podcast! This episode features authors recorded live at our show in January of 2016. If this is your first time listening, please be aware that we feature content that may contain adult themes and language. We do not censor the authors who read for us.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
JOSHUA SCHER has written for the stage and screen since 2006. He holds a BA with Honors in Creative Writing from Brown University and an MFA in playwriting from Yale University. His play, The Footage, has been produced from NYC to Australia and its cinematic adaptation was developed by Pressman Film. Scher’s television pilot, JiGsAw, was developed by Danny Glover with Louveture Films and his film, I’m Ok, starring Dot-Marie Jones, is in post-production, set for a 2016 festival run. His first novel, Here & There, launched in November. io9 says, ““For people who do take the plunge, an incredible payoff awaits…Anyone interested in quantum physics, data encryption, and advanced computing will relish Here and There’s deep meditations on these topics.”
STEPHANIE DIAZ Twenty-three-year-old Stephanie Diaz wrote her first novel at age nine. Ten years later, she landed a publishing deal for a YA science fiction series, Extraction, while studying filmmaking at San Diego State University. She has since written the two sequels, Rebellion and Evolution. When she isn’t lost in books, she can be found singing, marveling at the night sky, or fan-girling over TV shows. Visit her online at www.stephaniediazbooks.com and follow her on twitter @StephanieEDiaz.
SHERRI L. SMITH is the award-winning author of YA novels LUCY THE GIANT, SPARROW, HOT SOUR SALTY SWEET, FLYGIRL and ORLEANS. In October 2015, she makes her middle grade debut with THE TOYMAKER’S APPRENTICE from G.P. Putnam and Sons for Penguin Random House.
Sherri has worked in film, animation, comic books and construction. Her books have been listed as Amelia Bloomer, American Library Association Best Books for Young People, and Junior Library Guild Selections. FLYGIRL was the 2009 California Book Awards Gold Medalist.
For more information, and to purchase the books you heard on this podcast, go to our website, www.ShadesAndShadows.org, and click on the "Podcasts" tab. The books will be linked on the post for the episode the author appears in.
While you're there, you can sign up for our mailing list, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and donate to support us. Shades & Shadows is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and everything you donate goes right back into making the show even better.
Thanks for listening, and we'll see you soon! If you like what you hear, please remember to rate the podcast highly!
Welcome back to the Shades & Shadows Podcast! This episode features authors recorded live at our show in November of 2015. If this is your first time listening, please be aware that we feature content that may contain adult themes and language. We do not censor the authors who read for us.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
ELISE FORIER EDIE worked as a playwright for many years, before turning to writing speculative fiction. Her most recent publications include short stories, “You-Go-Back” in Strange Tales V (Tartarus Press), and “Leonora” in Chilling Horror Short Stories (Flame Tree Publications). She is also the author of a paranormal romance novella, The Devil in Midwinter, which was released in 2014 by World Weaver Press. Elise is a member of the Horror Writer’s Association, Los Angeles (HWA) and the Authors Guild and a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop. She currently heads up the Theater Arts program at West Los Angeles College, where she teaches playwriting.
XACH FROMSON is a Los Angeles native who has been obsessed with horror and dark fiction from a very young age. He received his BA in Creative Writing from California State University Northridge in 2009. He earned his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California Riverside’s Palm Desert program. He appeared on stage at Dirty Laundry Lit in February 2013 and has a short story in the 2014 anthology, Halloween Tales. He is currently in various stages of working on a ton of projects. He is co-founder and co-host of Shades & Shadows…and once, he slew a dragon.
DAVID GERROLD is the author of over 50 books, hundreds of articles and columns, and over a dozen television episodes. He is a classic sci-fi writer who will go down in history as having created some of the most popular and redefining scripts, books, and short stories in the genre.
For more information, and to purchase the books you heard on this podcast, go to our website, www.ShadesAndShadows.org, and click on the "Podcasts" tab. The books will be linked on the post for the episode the author appears in.
While you're there, you can sign up for our mailing list, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and donate to support us. Shades & Shadows is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and everything you donate goes right back into making the show even better.
Thanks for listening, and we'll see you soon!
Welcome back to the Shades & Shadows Podcast! This episode features authors recorded live at our show in November of 2015. If this is your first time listening, please be aware that we feature content that may contain adult themes and language. We do not censor the authors who read for us.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Stephen Jay Schwartz – Los Angeles Times Bestselling Author Stephen Jay Schwartz spent a number of years as the Director of Development for Wolfgang Petersen where he worked to develop screenplays for production. His two novels, Boulevard and Beat, follow the journey of sex-addicted LAPD detective Hayden Glass. Stephen was a judge for the 2012 Edgar and ITW Awards, and is currently judging the mystery-thriller section for the Los Angeles Book Prize. His work will be included in a short story collection with T.C. Boyle, to be published by Red Hen Press in 2016.
Chrome Oxide - A few years ago, because of inadequate discouragement, Chrome Oxide started writing twisted science fiction and fantasy short stories. Since he started writing he has been torturing the Orange County Science Fiction Writers Orbit by learning two bad habits for every one he fixed. He has contributed a short piece to each of their annual chapbooks since 2012. He even managed to get a short story published in volume 29 of the Writers of the Future. He so enjoys writing that even when he is recording bands in clubs he can be found with a microphone in one hand and a manuscript to be edited in the other. Because one of his first submitted stories was accepted, he has been collecting rejection slips to make up for that. Details of his career, such as it is, can be found at his author site: http://www.chromeoxide.com/writer/.
Romina Russell is a Los Angeles based writer, originally from Buenos Aires. As a teen, Romina landed her first writing gig, College, She Wrote, a weekly Sunday column for the Miami Herald that was later picked up for national syndication. She hasn't stopped writing since. When she's not working on the Zodiac series, she can be found producing movie trailers, taking photographs, or daydreaming about buying a new drum set. She is a Virgo to the core.
For more information, and to purchase the books you heard on this podcast, go to our website, www.ShadesAndShadows.org, and click on the "Podcasts" tab. The books will be linked on the post for the episode the author appears in.
While you're there, you can sign up for our mailing list, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and donate to support us. Shades & Shadows is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and everything you donate goes right back into making the show even better.
Thanks for listening, and we'll see you soon!
Welcome back to the Shades & Shadows Podcast! This episode features authors recorded live at our show in November of 2015. If this is your first time listening, please be aware that we feature content that may contain adult themes and language. We do not censor the authors who read for us.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Taylor Grant is a Bram Stoker Award-nominated author, professional screenwriter and award-winning filmmaker. His short films, Sticks and Stones and The Vanished, both premiered at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. His work has been seen on network television, the big screen, the stage, the Web, as well as in comic books, newspapers, national magazines, anthologies, and heard on the radio.
Several of Grant’s screenplays have sold or been optioned by major Hollywood film studios such as Imagine Entertainment, Universal Studios, and Lions Gate Films. His fiction has appeared in two Bram Stoker Award nominated anthologies, and his collection The Dark at the End of the Tunnel, was just released by legendary publisher Cemetery Dance Publications. He is currently working with a successful video game company to bring one of his stories to life as an exciting RPG game. Find out more about him at www.TaylorGrant.com.Scott Tomasheski is a Los-Angeles based novelist, who recently released FORTRESS OF THE DEMON: a TIME DEFENDERS action, his first full-length novel. He has finished an anthology of short novels, to be published in February, and expects to complete another novel, WAR OF THE WILD WEST, next year. He believes that time travel is a physical impossibility but it sure is fun to read & write about! Read more at www.timedefenders.com.
Maureen McHugh is a writer with four novels and more than two dozen short stories published. The best known is probably her novel China Mountain Zhang. A collection of her short stories, called Mothers and Other Monsters, was published by Small Beer Press in July 2005.
For more information, and to purchase the books you heard on this podcast, go to our website, www.ShadesAndShadows.org, and click on the "Podcasts" tab. The books will be linked on the post for the episode the author appears in.
While you're there, you can sign up for our mailing list, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and donate to support us. Shades & Shadows is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and everything you donate goes right back into making the show even better.
Thanks for listening, and we'll see you soon!
On October 21st, 2015, Marty McFly arrived in the--wait, no, wrong story. We recorded our special show as part of L.A. Lit Crawl.
This special episode is unedited and presented in its entirety.
If this is your first time listening, please be aware that we feature content that may contain adult themes and language. We do not censor the authors who read for us.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Robert Payne Cabeen is a screenwriter, artist, and purveyor of narrative horror poetry. His screenwriting credits include Heavy Metal 2000, for Columbia TriStar, Sony Pictures, A Monkey’s Tale, and Walking with Buddha. Cabeen’s latest book, FEARWORMS: Selected Poems, was a 2015 Bram Stoker Award nominee. For more about FEARWORMS, visit fearworms.com.
Nicole D. Sconiers is an author and screenwriter living in the sunny jungle of L.A. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University, where she began experimenting with speculative fiction from a womanist perspective. Her debut short story collection Escape from Beckyville: Tales of Race, Hair and Rage was born there and took on a life of its own after she graduated. Her work has appeared in Neon V Magazine, The Absent Willow Review, Clutch Magazine, DrPhil.com and Possibilities: A State of Black Science Fiction Anthology.
Derek Kirk Kim is an award-winning writer, artist and filmmaker. He is the writer of the “Tune” series, the writer and director of the spin-off webseries, “Mythomania,” and the lead character designer of “Adventure Time”. He won all three major comics industry awards, the Eisner, the Harvey, and the Ignatz Award for his debut graphic novel, “Same Difference and Other Stories.” He won a second Eisner Award for his work on “The Eternal Smile,” a collaboration with National Book Award nominee, Gene Luen Yang. He eats chips with chopsticks.
Thomas Voorhies received a BFA in Illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design. He writes and paints out of a loft in downtown Los Angeles, and together with Lex Hrabe he has written the Quarantine novel trilogy, published by Egmont USA, under the pen name Lex Thomas.
Tiffany Tang is related to neither an ancient Chinese nor a powdered orange drink dynasty. She believes in writing true things and is most proud of the work she has done with the San Diego-based storytelling pioneers of So Say We All. Tiffany is an arts contributor to the San Diego Union-Tribune and a writer for Intrepid Theatre Company. Since the publication of creepy little death poems, she has also become an honorary member of the horror genre, which is surprising considering she spends most of her time avoiding anything attached to the words “scary,” “haunted” or “zombie.” This is Tiffany’s first book. tiffanyanntang.com.
Special thanks to Blastoff Comics for hosting us.
For more information, and to purchase the books you heard on this podcast, go to our website, www.ShadesAndShadows.org, and click on the "Podcasts" tab. The books will be linked on the post for the episode the author appears in.
While you're there, you can sign up for our mailing list, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and donate to support us. Shades & Shadows is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and everything you donate goes right back into making the show even better.
Thanks for listening, and we'll see you soon!
Welcome back to the Shades & Shadows Podcast! This episode features authors recorded live at our anniversary show in September of 2015. If this is your first time listening, please be aware that we feature content that may contain adult themes and language. We do not censor the authors who read for us.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
MALLORY REAVES is an Eisner-nominated writer from Southern California. She has been writing professionally since 2005, her most recent novel being Eternity’s Wheel (published in May 2015.) She currently lives in Corona with a theater major, another writer, a snake, and several cats. Her hobbies include coffee.
TANANARIVE DUE (pronounced tah-nah-nah-REEVE doo) is the recipient of the American Book Award, NAACP Image Award, and the Carl Brandon Kindred Award. The author of twelve novels and a civil rights memoir, she has been inducted into the Medill School of Journalism’s Hall of Achievement at Northwestern University. A leading voice black speculative fiction, in 2004—alongside such luminaries as Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison—Due received the “New Voice in Literature Award” at the Yari Yari Pamberi conference co-sponsored by New York University’s Institute of African-American Affairs and African Studies Program and the Organization of Women Writers of Africa. A former Cosby Chair in the Humanities at Spelman College, where she taught screenwriting, creative writing, and journalism, she also teaches in the creative writing MFA program at Antioch University Los Angeles. Due has a B.S. in journalism from Northwestern University and an M.A. in English literature from the University of Leeds, England, where she specialized in Nigerian literature as a Rotary Foundation Scholar. While working as a columnist in 1992 for the Miami Herald, she he wrote an article that was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning series on Hurricane Andrew. Due and her husband, author Steven Barnes, live in Southern California with their son, Jason.
AIMEE BENDER is the author of five books, including the bestseller The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, and Ny Times notable book The Color Master. Her fiction has been published in Granta, The Paris Review, Harper’s and more, as well as heard on This American Life.www.flammableskirt.com
For more information, and to purchase the books you heard on this podcast, go to our website, www.ShadesAndShadows.org, and click on the "Podcasts" tab. The books will be linked on the post for the episode the author appears in.
While you're there, you can sign up for our mailing list, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and donate to support us. Shades & Shadows is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and everything you donate goes right back into making the show even better.
Thanks for listening, and we'll see you soon!
Welcome back to the Shades & Shadows Podcast! We're proud to bring you our exclusive interview with author Christopher Farnsworth.
Christopher Farnsworth is a former journalist and screenwriter, and the author of the Nathaniel Cade series of books, The Eternal World, and his new novel KILLFILE (August 2016, William Morrow). Chris is a friend of the show, and was on our very first lineup.
[Note: The Skype call almost dropped, and you get to hear me gripe about living in the future while you're living in the future. Future-ception!]
The podcast currently has 12 episodes available.