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<\/a> (by the way, if you are in any way interested in the Australian speculative fiction community, Sean’s website Adventures of a Bookonaut<\/a> is a “must subscribe” – he publishes news, book reviews and other pieces of general interest on a daily basis. Well worth checking out).<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Fortunately and to my everlasting relief, the presenters (Kirstyn McDermott<\/a> and Ian Mond<\/a>) 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" <\/p>\n <\/p>Hi,\n