It is Wednesday, my dudes, and that means we have a brand new podcast for you.
This week, it’s can i offer you a nice egg in this trying time, originally published in Uncanny Magazine. It’s an absolutely beautiful story that hit me with some unexpected twists in the very best way. Here’s how I introduced it in the show:
I remember being a kid in the late seventies, looking through this book I had called The Catalog of the Future1. It was filled with imaginary vacation destinations, floating cities (in the air and in the sea), rockets, wireless phones, all beautifully illustrated. With a little assistance from my young imagination, I could pretend this catalog had been plucked from the future, that everything inside it was real, and one day, I would live there.
I was a weird, lonely, scared kid. I treasured the escape and the sanctuary I found inside the covers of this book.
Today, in a story that landed on me like an uppercut, I’m going to take you to a Waffle House, somewhere in North America, where we will meet a guy who had his own version of that catalog, his own glimpse of a world where the things that made him weird in our reality made him special and gave his life purpose2. And we’re going to find out how it feels for him to know that he can never go back.
This is Can I Offer You An Egg In This Trying Time?
I can’t believe I’ve already released five episodes. It feels like I’m still waiting for this to begin, in the weirdest way.
I want to remind y’all that I have a Patreon for the show with an ad-free feed, some looks behind the curtain, and my personal reflections on each story. I’m about to do an AMA about the podcast for subscribers using a thing my producer showed me, which lets people leave a voicemail that I can listen to and then answer. I think it’s going to be fun. So look for the official announcement in the coming days.
I’m tired, y’all. I’ve been doing a LOT of writing and there’s been a lot going out, without very much coming in. I’m working on a new audiobook all this week and next week, and my Creative Self is very busy with that. So I don’t have more for you today other than these links to my show in some of the more popular places:
Apple Podcasts
PocketCast
Spotify
Pandora
iHeart
Amazon
or grab the RSS directly from me right here.
And I think that everyone who is going to subscribe to blog posts has already done that, so this is likely the last time I put this thingy into a post:
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Thanks so much for all your support, and for trusting me with your time and attention. I can not overstate how much it means to me.
I misspoke here and regret not fact-checking myself. The book is actually called The Kid’s Whole Future Catalog and you can read it at the Internet Archive. 
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This is my favorite trope in speculative fiction, the one that lands on me the hardest. Oh, to live in a world where the things that made me a weird target for bullies actually made me special (like we all were, but didn’t know when we were kids). ︎