The Virtual Memories Show

The great cartoonist (and designer and illustrator) Seth joins the Virtual Memories Show to talk about memory and time, his love of digression, being "Mr. Old-Timey", and learning to let go of the finish and polish that used to characterize his work.

"When I was young, I thought there were an infinite possibility of stories you could do. As you get older, you realize you're following a thread, and that you don't have as much choice about what you're writing about as you thought."
Direct download: Season_4_Episode_23_-_Haste_Ye_Back.mp3
Category: -- posted at: 12:24am EST

"When I first started out, what I liked was the unlikely image, the unlikely metaphor. What I like now is finding that simple sentence that captures something you haven't thought of before."

Rupert Thomson joins us to talk about his new novel Secrecy (Other Press), a smart thriller set in 1690s Florence. We also talk about how to keep from hitting the reader over the head with research, how to learn archaic Italian curses, and more!

"There is a kind of comfort in having a part of yourself that will never be known, can never be known, by others."
Direct download: Season_4_Episode_22_-_Wax_Rhapsodic.mp3
Category: -- posted at: 6:47pm EST

"I'm never gonna be a parent, but if I were, I'd be like, 'We're skippin' this Goodnight, Moon thing; you're goin' to Pale Fire.'"

Cartoonist Katie Skelly joins the show to talk about her new book, Operation Margarine (AdHouse Books), which is really just an opportunity for us to talk about Barthes, Edie Sedgwick, and The Maxx, before getting to the moment when she was 15 and read the least "YA"-friendly book ever for all the wrong reasons. Along the way, we also talk about how she manages to work on her comics while holding down a (respectable) full-time job, why she'd rather hunt for a rare comic than buy something new, what it was like to belong to a high school anime club that only had two members. Give it a listen!

"6 o'clock hits, it's time to leave the office; what are you going to do with the four or five hours you have before going to sleep?"
Direct download: Season_4_Episode_21_-_Theory_and_Practice.mp3
Category: -- posted at: 8:41am EST

1