Kevin Brockmeier Interview

I talked with Kevin Brockmeier in late April 2008 about his latest collection of short stories, The View from the Seventh Layer. He handles SF and the fantastical with a very literary fiction-oriented approach. We also talked about comics. (I had to bluff my way through part of that, my comics knowledge is all second hand from friends. Thanks to Gabe Vaughn, Cold Eth, and the late Rick Driskill for giving me the skills to fake it to make it.)

http://www.mediafire.com/?jtyznb2vvtb

Patrick McGrath Interview

I got a chance to talk to Patrick McGrath a few weeks ago. He has written many great psychological thrillers like, Spider, The Grotesque, and Asylum. His newest novel is Trauma. He was a great interview; I was my typical mediocre self.

Click here for the download.

Fiona Maazel Interview

Last Last Chance is probably the best book that I have read so far this year, but don't get cocky, Ms. Maazel. I have an advance copy of Martin Clark's The Legal Limit in mah grubby mitts, and I am about to pass out waiting for Glen Davis Gold's Sunnyside.

That bit of ego-checking aside, Ms. Maazel has written an incredibly open-hearted and often hilarious novel of addicts, reincarnation, kosher chickens, super-plague, and the complications of family. Never has the potential end of humanity left me feeling more hopeful. Laff, doomed man, laff.

click this for download:
http://www.mediafire.com/?1dmc5t2zuvd

Speed Racer? Eh...

Am I just old, or was I just a grumpy kid? Speed Racer sucked when I was a crumbgrabber, and I have no desire to see the new movie version. The Wachowskis (If that is indeed how their name is spelled, not that I give one whit enough to do even a perfunctory Wikipedia search.) have made progressively worse movies starting with the vastly over-rated and mostly icky, Bound. It is written; I have spoken...

Tony D'Souza Interview

Tony D'Souza got a lot of great press for his first novel, Whiteman, and is getting good notices for his newest one, The Konkans. We had a chat about the latter, had some misunderstandings, and I made him late for a signing.



click here for the download

Harry Belafonte, Jr.

I just got to shake Harry Belafonte, Jr.'s hand. He came to the station to do a program with US Rep. Steve Cohen. Everyone is in Memphis for the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. (Today Show, NBC Nightly News, CSPAN, etc.) Here's a crummy phonecam pic that you can't tell is Mr. Belafonte and Congressman Cohen, but ...

Jacqueline Winspear Interview

Novelist Jacqueline Winspear dropped by the studios a few weeks ago to talk about her new novel, An Incomplete Revenge, the fifth in the Maisie Dobbs series. We talked of the Great War, hops picking in rural England and the Romany people, and even about her former career as a life coach. She is also one of the contributors for the great group blog, nakedauthors.com. (Don't worry, it's SFW.) A nice time, all around.

WGI Wig Out

Vanderbilt University in Nashville was host for a regional for Winter Guard International, which is some kind of competitive color guard drill team thingamajig. The costumes for some of the groups were fruit loopier than Toucan Sam's tummy after a well-balanced breakfast. Enjoy, my retinas still haven't forgiven me.

Stupid Question Tuesday

What happens to a werewolf astronaut on the moon?

Douglas Preston Interview

Douglas Preston is perhaps best known for his Pendergast series he writes with Lincoln Child. I had a chance to talk to him in January of 2008 about his solo novel Blasphemy. It's a story of a particle accelerator and the love triangle it's involved in. OK, maybe not quite, but a particle accelerator starts talking and science and religion are headed for their own collision course.

Chuck Thompson - Book Talk Podcast - March 2008

Man, talking with Chuck Thompson was mighty fun. Not only is he an engaging guy with a sense of humor, but he was also a member of Mood Paint which was a precursor to one of my favorite bands, Pond. He also co-wrote one of my favorite Pond songs, Young Splendor. His book is a travel memoir called Smile When You are Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer. He dishes some dirt, but he also tells some great stories without much snark. Click here for the goodness.

Lauren Groff Interview

On February 21, 2008 Lauren Groff stopped by the WYPL studios to have a chat about her debut novel, The Monsters of Templeton. This was her first in-person radio interview, so a decided shift from the ueber-recognizable Neil deGrasse Tyson from last week. Click here for the interview goodness.

Woo Hoo! I Interviewed Neil deGrasse Tyson!

INTERVIEW WITH DR. NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON

OK, sometimes stuff just falls in one's lap. Last week I got to interview Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, host of NOVA science NOW, director of the Hayden Planetarium, and all-around smart guy. He was in Memphis for a lecture and I had called his people two weeks prior to see if I could get him to come on to the radio program I produce for WYPL Radio called Book Talk. His publicity person didn't call me back until the day he was in town, THREE HOURS before his only window. I was really nervous because I hadn't even bothered preparing for an interview that I wasn't expecting to happen.

So I drove downtown to pick him up at his hotel. We got back to the station and had a nice 30 minute chat. On the way back, he plugged his iPhone into my car stereo, and we listened to "American Woman" by The Guess Who and "Atomic Dog" by George Clinton. Listening to George Clinton with Neil deGrasse Tyson while driving in my Saturn. Life is way too odd sometimes.

I finally have figured out how to store files online, so you can download the interview here. And a bonus for all you, this is the full interview. The one for radio had 2.5 minutes pared off. I will also start posting my other interviews on my blog. It's not quite a real podcast. But I've talked to some cool people over the years, like Walter Mosley, Kinky Friedman, Haven Kimmel, and Bruce Campbell. So check back once a week and listen to me be nervous and listen to authors talk about themselves. And extra bonus, all the interviews are done in-person so the audio quality is usually pretty good.

I've been living with my Palm Centro for a few weeks now, and I have to say that I love the little bugger. Touch screen action is sweet. Great contacts listing. The battery life is a drag. I can't wait till an aftermarket one pops up. I'd recommend this phone to just about anyone. Thumbs up!

Just got in my Sanyo Eneloop batteries! My new digital camera hates old rechargeable batteries. While they work well, they seem to output 0.9 volts after the first few snaps, and the camera shuts down when the voltage drops under 1.1v. The Eneloops are supposed to sustain 1.17v, and the biggest thing is that they come pre-charged and lose their charge much more slowly than traditional NiMH rechargeables. Suposedly they only lose 15% of their charge over the course of a year just sitting around, whereas trad NiMH lose up to 1%/day while inactive. This means they can be used in slow drain devices like clocks and TV remotes. There is really no reason to buy disposable batteries again.

The Impossibility of All Possible Worlds

Okay, so this post comes partially from a dream that I had this morning. The dream itself is unimportant, and my thoughts can probably be refuted by any person who has had beyond two weeks in junior high physics, but here we go...

When I hear people talk about about how all possible universes exist simultaneously, they usually say something along the lines of "There's a universe where you wore a red shirt today, one where Al Gore became president in 2001, where the Cubs win every World Series..." And it is at this point that I know that this premise is false.

The inevitability of the Cubbies ineptitude serves here to illustrate what is the anthropocentric view of the all possible universes conceit. It's always painted as human decision-making that multiplies the universe out to all its possibilities, and frankly, that's BS. Our whims are not the only possibility generators around. When the cat decides to poo in your right shoe or the left one, that is a possibility. But let's go ahead and skip all the way to the pot-head infinite regression scenario. There are an infinite number of possibilities for every sub-atomic particle, so every instant (way shorter than a second, folks) spins off an infinity of its own.

Now, I know infinity is bigger than I can imagine, but multiplying infinity to the power of infinity by an infinite number of yoctoseconds just strikes me as silly. Pardon my incredulity.

I'm the fancy new Book Talk producer, and I've already booked myself an awesome interview, Haven Kimmel, author of A Girl Named Zippy and She Got up off the Couch. I interviewed her a few years ago for her last novel Something Rising (Light and Swift), and we are going to talk about her new one, The Used World. The interview will be at 11 a.m. Friday October 19, 2007 at the Benjamin L Hooks Central Library (3030 Poplar Avenue, Memphis, TN) in the WYPL radio studios.

Hey my fellow VPers, I'm getting this blog rolling for all y'all.

Thanks for scaring me in Detroit, Bethany.

So, I figured out two major holes in my story this morning and wrote 2000 words. Oh sorry, I put the decimal point in the wrong place, 20.00 words. (Using decimals makes e'rthing seem more official, or not. The plot hole thing is for realsies, though.)

I never thought I would have sung Bob Wills' songs with Cory Doctorow. Take me back to Tulsa, I'm to young to marry. Ow!

Yer pal,

Stephen

"Shed not a tear for humanity, go fetch my stars."