I listen to a few podcasts, so I first became aware of the fact that my comments were talked about from a post on Sean the Bookonaut’s website (by the way, if you are in any way interested in the Australian speculative fiction community, Sean’s website Adventures of a Bookonaut is a “must subscribe” – he publishes news, book reviews and other pieces of general interest on a daily basis. Well worth checking out).
I knew which piece of feedback they would be talking about. And I became worried. Was my question so asinine that they had to devote significant amounts of time to mocking it? The question was related to gender and reading habits, had I inadvertently said something massively offensive? I immediately bumped The Writer and the Critic up to the top of my podcast listening list and listened in on my walk to work this morning.
Fortunately and to my everlasting relief, the presenters (Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond) actually liked my question and spent a good amount of time responding to it. If you’re interested, I’d definitely recommend going and having a listen. Suffice to say the answer was excellent, giving me much more food for thought.
My engagement with the broader speculative fiction community is unfortunately constrained by the business of life, so I really get a kick out of experiencing some of these kinds of interactions.