This June at ALA in New Orleans I was lucky enough to spend a half hour talking to one of my favorite sci-fi writers. John Scalzi is the A-List blogger of The Whatever and author of Agent to the Stars, the Old Man’s War series, The Android’s Dream, and, most recently, Fuzzy Nation.

We had a far-ranging conversation over a wide matter of topics, from the art of writing dialog, to farts, to self-publishing. Enjoy a very funny, gracious, and talented man trying desperately to finish a sentence while yours truly keeps interrupting him. Listen here.

The illustration for today’s Fuzzy Nation strip comes courtesy of my friend, the very talented Jeff Zugale. John actually commissioned this cover from Jeff back before he even had a publisher for the project. Here’s Jeff’s step-by-step on the creation of the art.

Click through for this week’s other book recommendations