Wolf Podcast

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m back with my cohost Kyle Muntz and Joe Owens, the host of the other podcast I’m part of The Fantasy Pod of the Nine! We’re doing a crossover episode to discuss a story from Joe Abercrombie’s Two’s Company from his short story collection Sharp Ends. From there we range far afield to grimdark as a genre, Abercrombie more broadly, George RR Martin, and on and on.

Please check out Songs of my Mother being serialized on Royal Road!

If you’d...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m back with my cohost Kyle Muntz! We’re discussing several pieces of microfiction by Franz Kafka! This leads us to Kafka’s career as a whole, the nature of a story and the power of a name, and the strength of mundanity.

* Give It Up

* Resolutions

* On the Tram

* The Sudden Walk

* Reflections for Gentlemen-Jockey

Please check out Songs of my Mother being serialized on Royal Road!

If you’d like to recom...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m back with my cohost Kyle Muntz! Today we’re discussing Pierre Menard by Jorge Luis Borges! This leads us to a broad discussion of literature, people’s attitudes and beliefs about literature, and the playfulness of Borges.

Here’s my story Renaissance, which was my attempt at a Borgesian story.

Please check out Songs of my Mother being serialized on Royal Road!

Check out Briar Bay, a Mork Borg/OSR setting zine live right now on Kickstarter!

If you’d...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

It’s been a while since I’ve talked to a game designer, but that all changes today! I’m talking with Andrew Fischer, the designer of Earthborne Rangers, The Cosmere RPG, and others. We spend most of the time discussing his game Earthborne Rangers, especially system, narrative, and mechanical design.

Please check out Songs of my Mother being serialized on Royal Road!

Check out Briar Bay, a Mork Borg/OSR setting zine live right now on Kickstarter!

If you’d like t...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m back with my cohost Kyle Muntz! Today we’re discussing three poems by Edgar Allan Poe! You can read The Bells, The Haunted Palace, and The City in the Sea. We’re discussing music! We’re discussing meter! We’re discussing rhyme scheme and enjambment and caesura!

All good poetics.

Please check out Songs of my Mother being serialized on Royal Road!

Check out Briar Bay, a Mork Borg/OSR setting zine live right now on Kickstarter!

If you’d l...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m back with my cohost Kyle Muntz! Today we’re discussing the most famous and controversial books of all time, Ulysses by James Joyce! Our discussion today doesn’t cover the whole book or even the whole chapter but instead just examines various passages from the first chapter.

I’ve previously written about Joyce a number of times:

* A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

* ULYSSES

* Cormac and James

If you’d like to recommend...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m back with my cohost Kyle Muntz! Today we’re discussing the most interesting novel by Haruki Murakami, The Wind Up Bird Chronicle! We use this as an opportunity to discuss Murakami’s career and our history with him as readers. You can read my previous thoughts here:

If you’d like to recommend a story for us to discuss, get in touch.

Music by Bart Larsen. Everything else done by me, I guess.

Listen on Spotify or Apple or wherever...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m back with my cohost Kyle Muntz! Today we’re discussing one of the most famous stories of the 20th Century. Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway! Often taught, often discussed, but never by us! We also suspect that it, like Hemingway, is quite out of fashion. So let us take this hour to explain to you why it is great, and possibly not for the reasons you think.

If you’d like to recommend a story for us to discuss, get in touch...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m back with my cohost Kyle Muntz! Today we’re talking about Anti-capitalism vs. The Man of Flowers by Naomi Kanakia.

She’s the author of four novels, including The Default World, and the upcoming What’s So Great About the Great Books? She’s also the author of the newsletter Woman of Letters where she discusses Great Books, among other things.

If you’d like to recommend a story for us to discuss, get in touch.

Music by Bart Larsen. Ever...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, Kyle Muntz is doing the episode solo! He’s discussing In Bludd with the great Jeffrey Ford!

Jeffrey Ford is the author of numerous novels and short story collections, including The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Girl in the Glass, The Shadow Year, Ahab’s Return, Out of Body, The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life, Crackpot Palace, and Big Dark Hole. Ford’s fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies, such as Tor.com, Magazine of Fantasy and Science...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m talking with writer and game designer Matthew John! He has worked on a number of games, including one of my favorite board games, Conan from Monolith. He’s also the lead designer for the Conan: The Hyborean Age RPG also published by Monolith. Check out his Maxus Cycle series of Sword & Sorcery stories as well!

If you’d like to recommend a story for us to discuss, get in touch.

Music by Bart Larsen. Everything else done by me, I guess.

L...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m back with my cohost Kyle Muntz! Today we’re talking about Soldiers by Marry Miller! Mary Miller grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. She is the author of two collections of short stories, Big World (Short Flight/Long Drive Books, 2009), and Always Happy Hour (Liveright, 2017), as well as the novels The Last Days of California (Liveright, 2014) and Biloxi (Liveright, 2019). Her stories have appeared in The Paris Review, Pushcart Prize XLIV, the Oxford American, New Stories from the South, Norton’s Seagull Book of Stories, The Best of McS...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, we’re doing something entirely different, talking the movie Evil Dead!

We’re beginning a new kind of episode where I discuss old horror movies with my good friend David Simmons, notorious hater of all things old. David is the author of some of my favorite novels, including his most recent novel Eradicator. Check out the rest of his books.

For the Evil Dead series, we’re also joined by our good friend Grant Wamack! Grant has a whole bag of books, with his mo...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m back with my cohost Kyle Muntz! Today we’re talking about Three View of a Parking Lot by Ken Liu published at The Sunday Morning Transport. We have a wide ranging discussion about the story that leads to how contemporary society deals with political problems, the structure, shape, and purpose of cities, and what consciousness and civilization is.

Check out his new novel All That We See or Seem, which was released last week!

Ken Liu is an American author of spec...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, we’re back with the Beatles! It’s been a few months but we have not forgotten!

We’re discussing their third album A Hard Day’s Night. In some important ways, this feels like the start to the Beatles and who they will become as a band, in part because it’s the first album where every song is written by Lennon and McCartney.

We’re taking an album by album approach to highlight how the most influential band of the 20th Century deve...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m talking with Dan Hallagan of Kayenta Games! He’s the designer of one of my absolute favorite games, Obsession, which is in Board Game Geek’s coveted Top 100 games! It’s a wondrous game and a towering achievement, as he captures 19th Century literature in a boardgame.

Check out his new Kickstarter campaign which will be starting soon!

If you’d like to recommend a story for us to discuss, get in touch.

Music by Bart Larsen. Everything else done by me...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m back with my cohost Kyle Muntz! For the first time in months, we don’t have a guest today! Because of that, we’re doing a very close reading of the first four paragraphs of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. The man and the novel need no introduction, so come and dive in with us as we dig into the style of these luxurious sentences.

If you’d like to recommend a story for us to discuss, get in touch.

Music by Bar...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today I’m talking with Sean CW Korsgaard, Army Veteran, award-winning photojournalist, and editor about his new Sword & Sorcery Magazine Battleborn! It’s currently being crowdfunded on Indigogo, with many stretch goals promising more fiction, more issues, and on and on.

We talk about his prior careers, what brought him to publishing and specifically sword & sorcery, why crowdfunding, and so much more.

Go check out the campaign right now!

If you’d like to recommend a story for us to discuss, get in tou...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m back with my cohost Kyle Muntz! We’re talking with June Orchid Parker and the first chapter of her upcoming novella Suplex & Sorcery currently being crowdfunded! Pro wrestling mixed with sword & sorcery—what could be better?

Listen to the first chapter narrated here!

And help bring the project to life on backerkit right now!

If you’d like to recommend a story for us to discuss, get in touch.

Music by Bart Larsen. Everything else done by me, I gu...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today I’m talking with Jay Springett, writer, thinker, worldrunner, and podcaster. You can find him at his website, his Permanently Moved podcast, or on substack at Experience.Computer.

Today, we’re talking about 301 episodes of his Permanently Moved podcast! We talk about physical media, the end of an era, of an entire creative project, and what that has meant for him as a person, and then what comes next. Check out and subscribe to his zines, which will be a big part of his ongoing crea...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m back with my cohost Kyle Muntz! We’re talking with my good friend David Simmons about his new novel Eradicator out right now from Apocalypse Party! He’s the author of Ghosts of East Baltimore and Ghosts of West Baltimore as well as numerous short stories. He’s one of the very best.

Check out his new novel and listen to us do a deep dive on the first chapter.

If you’d like to recommend a story for us to discuss, g...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m talking with Oliver Brackenbury, the editor and publisher of New Edge Sword & Sorcery! We’re talking about the resurgence of Sword & Sorcery as a genre, the business of publishing, the power of crowdfunding, and so much more.

And here’s the cover for Bryn Hammond’s new novella with New Edge Sword & Sorcery!

If you’d like to recommend a story for us to discuss, get in touch.

Music by Bart Larsen. Everything else done by me, I guess.

Liste...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m back with my cohost Kyle Muntz! Today we’re talking to Sherman Alexie about his short story Light Travels at the Highest Possible Velocity published at The Metropolitan Review!

Sherman Alexie is a poet, short story writer, novelist, essayist, memoirist, and filmmaker. He’s published two dozen books, including The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which won the National Book Award for Young Peoples Literature and was listed by the American Library Association as the Most Banned and Challenged Book from 2010 to 201...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m talking with Cole Wehrle the celebrated game designer of Root, Arcs, and John Company! He’s the Creative Director and lead game designer of Leder Games based in my home state of Minnesota, and the c-founder of Wehrlegig Games. Root is one of my all time favorite board games and one of the few board games I’ve reviewed on my newsletter, so it’s a treat and pleasure to have Cole on today. Check out his newest game, Molly House!

We talk about ga...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m back with my cohost Kyle Muntz! Today we’re talking to Molly Tanzer about her novelette The City of Tears! She is the author of the Diabolist’s Library trilogy, the weird western Vermilion, an io9 and NPR “Best Book” of 2015, and the British Fantasy Award-nominated collection, A Pretty Mouth.

My Kickstarter campaign for my new sword and sorcery novel is currently fully funded! Join the campaign and let’s get some stretch goals here too.

If you’d like to recommend a st...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m talking with Patrick Holleman of Something Classic Games! Check out their new game Quartet. You can play the demo and wishlist their game on Steam right now!

We’re talking JRPGs. We’re talking game design. We’re talking narrative design. This was a fun and insightful episode with someone who has thought a lot about games and narrative.

My Kickstarter campaign for my new sword and sorcery novel is currently fully funded! Join the campaign and let’s get some stretch go...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m talking with the legendary David C Smith! A prolific writer of sword and sorcery novels, he’s back with Sometime Lofty Towers, which is currently being crowdfunded on Backerkit! The novel is fully funded and now they’re heading towards stretchgoals.

We do a deep dive on the first chapter of his new novel, discussing process, dialogue, the energy of a text, and so much more. This is a great novel and truly a masterclass on dialogue. Check out the crowdfunding campaign!

Spea...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m speaking with my good friend J David Osborne, the founder of Broken River Books. We’re speaking about the marketing he’s done for his novel Gods Fare No Better and the ways he’s tried to sell this novel to audiences.

Along the way we discuss a host of topics more oriented to the business side of being a novelist.

Pre-order it here! Subscribe to David’s website here or his newsletter American Shinto!

If you’d like to recommend...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, we’re back with Kyle Muntz to discuss Grant Wamack’s new short story Last Ditch Effort published in Bruiser Magazine!

Grant is one of my good friends in The Broken River Writers' Collective and the author of a whole mess of novels. You can check them out at his Amazon page, but definitely check out his most recent novel, The Frolicking.

If you’d like to recommend a story for us to discuss, get in touch.

Music by Bart Larsen. Everyt...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, Kyle Muntz is doing the episode solo! He’s discussing Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O with the great Michael Swanwick! Michael is the award winning author of numerous books, including The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, The Dragons of Babel, and The Iron Dragon’s Mother. His short fiction has been published widely for decades, and he’s the winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Award, multiple Nebula, World Fantasy, Hugo, and Locus Awards, among many others. You can read Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O in the Tales of Old Earth collection.

If you...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Unfortunately, there was a bit of a recording issue on my side so there’s some echoing near the end of this episode.

Today, we’re discussing With the Beatles by The Beatles, their second album. There’s a lot to love on this album but there’s also a lot of weaknesses. This is the first time either of us had heard the album before, which led to an interesting discussion.

We’re taking an album by album approach to highlight how the most influ...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, Kyle Muntz and I are discussing the short story The Tugwort by Lincoln Michel! He’s the author of Upright Beasts, a short story collection, and the novels The Body Scout and The Metallic Realms. The Metallic Realms just came out on May 13th so go pick up a copy! You can find more at his website and his newsletter Counter Craft.

Along with the story, we discuss the uncanny, surrealism, imagery as a narrative engine, and so much more.

If you’d like...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m talking with Johan Nohr! He’s the artistic vision behind Mork Borg, a doommetal TTRPG that has spawned an enormous community. He’s done quite a lot of art and design for other games as well, but today we’re talking about his short story The Goblin, which is available for free on his itch page, with a physical version available here.

We spend a lot of time discussing creativity and the strengths of a community, process as art, and what can be learned...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, Kyle Muntz and I are discussing the short story Noah’s Raven by Kij Johnson! She’s an the author of dozens of short stories and novels, and the winner of Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy Awards, along with the Theodore A Sturgeon Award, among others. Her most recent books are the short story collection The Privilege of the Happy Ending and her novel The River Bank, a sequel to one of my favorite novels, The Wind in the Willows. She’s also the designer of the Tabletop RPG Th...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, we’re doing something entirely different. Rather than discuss stories or books, my good friend Bart Larsen and I are beginning our journey through the albums of the Beatles.

We’ll be taking an album by album approach to highlight how the most influential band of the 20th Century developed and became what they became. We start here with their first album.

Music by Bart Larsen. Everything else done by me, I guess.

Listen on Spotify or Apple or wherever you list...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, Kyle Muntz and I are discussing the short story Shadows Below Seaway Trains by Ai Jiang! She’s the author of dozens of short stories and some upcoming novels and novellas. Most recently, A Palace Near the Wind.

Given the themes of the short story, we end up discussing parenthood quite a bit, along with a number of other things, including Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Pokemon, societal expectations, and so on.

If you’d like to recommend a story for us to...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m speaking with J. Holt, an illustrator, comicbook writer and artist, gamemaker, and professor. I stumbled across his work on twitter and fell in love with the fact that he was sharing his process for developing and drawing a graphic novel set in Anglo-Saxon era England. You can follow him on his substack and twitter or check out Carthage Workshop, where you can order copies of his card game Panomachea or the first two volumes of his graphic novel Theseus. You can also read Theseus for fr...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, Kyle Muntz and I are discussing the short story Roller Coaster House by Kyle Seibel, which was originally published at HAD. You can pick up his debut collection Hey You A******s right now!

If you’d like to recommend a story for us to discuss, get in touch.

Music by Bart Larsen. Everything else done by me, I guess.

Listen on Spotify or Apple or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Check out our SF series The Shattered Stars.

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, I’m speaking with my good friend J David Osborne, the founder of Broken River Books. We’re speaking about his upcoming novel Gods Fare No Better, scheduled to be released April 17th.

Along the way we discuss a host of topics, from editing, finding your voice, being an obsessive little freak, and, of course, the best novel of the year, Gods Fare No Better.

Pre-order it here! Subscribe to David’s website here.

If you’d like to recommend a story fo...

Welcome to the new episode of the Wolf Podcast.

Today, Kyle Muntz and I are discussing the short story Shriek of the Week by Nick Mamatas. You can read this story in 120 Murders from Ruadan Books. You can get Nick’s story if you pre-order now! You can also pre-order his upcoming novel Kalivas! Or, Another Tempest from Clash Books.

If you’d like to recommend a story for us to discuss, get in touch.

Music by Bart Larsen. Everything else done by me, I guess.

Listen on Spotify or Apple or w...