All posts by Jonathan Strahan

Episode 124: Live with Graham Joyce

Some Kind of Fairy TaleAnd now the podcast that technology did not want you to hear! When the Coode Street team traveled to Toronto, Canada for the 2012 World Fantasy Convention we planned and recorded a series of podcasts that have become known as the Great Lost Coode St Podcasts. Five podcasts cruelly wiped by idiosyncratic technology (and definitely not incompetent users) featuring Jo Walton, Guy Gavriel Kay, Robert Shearman & Ellen Klages, James Blaylock & Tim Powers, and Graham Joyce.

This week Graham Joyce incredibly kindly agreed to try again, to join us via Skype and have an entirely new conversation about fiction, fairy tale and much, much more.  And five minutes into recording Skype, for the first time in 124 podcasts, crashed.  Ignoring all of the signals from the universe that this podcast was not meant to happen, we pushed forward and despite a slightly tinny connection and the accidental return of the dreaded stereo, ended up with a conversation that we think totally rewarded our persistence. We hope you’ll agree.

Our sincere thanks to Graham Joyce who persisted despite our incompetence and was exceediingly kind and generous with his time.

Recovery

Jetlag is slowly fading. I got out and exercised a little yesterday, and more this morning. Definitely collapsed last night and actually had a fairly unbroken sleep for the first time in several weeks, so things may be heading in the right direction. Still only 80%, though.

Time, however, does not wait for me to recover from jetlag and what may be residual con crud. Part of yesterday was sent tinkering with the table of contents for The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Seven, which is due at the publisher in mid-December. I have perhaps four short story slots I’m tinkering with, and the remaining 30 are set. There are writers I’d love to have had in the book, but permissions or other practicalities have prevented me from doing so. Still, I think the core of the book is coming together nicely. I still have the dreaded introduction to write, but that can wait till December.

At the same time I’m launching a bunch of new projects that will fill the second part of next year, while also desperately looking for new stories for Eclipse Online. I probably need another four or five stories pretty quickly, so I’m looking for them quite urgently. Also trying to work out the structure of a possible new Infinity book and a magazine project. Lots to do.

And reading? I think I’ve abandoned the new Ian McKewan, which hasn’t held my attention. I have some short stuff to read, and the first of the 2013 magazines (!!), but I think some Mike Harrison is next. Busy times, with lots to do between now and year’s end.