Sorry for the poor question title, I'm not sure of the correct terminology to describe what I'm asking.

I have two tables:

posts:

```
p_id | p_author | p_text

```

post\_comments:

```
pc_id | pc_p_id | pc_author | pc_text

```

The pc\_p\_id for each comment corresponds to the p\_id of the post.

I want to select:

1. The p\_id and p\_text for all of the posts from a specific author
2. The number of comments for the corresponding post

I can do the first part with a query like this (supposing "1" is an author):

```
SELECT p_id, p_text FROM posts WHERE p_author = 1

```

And I can get the number of comments for a specific post like this (supposing "12" is a post id):

```
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM post_comments WHERE pc_p_id = 12

```

My question is, how can I combine the two queries so that I get the p\_id and p\_text for all of the posts from a specific author, along with the number of comments for the corresponding posts? 

I tried using a LEFT JOIN like the following, but it gives me a syntax error:

```
SELECT t1.p_id, t1.p_text, t2.COUNT(*)
FROM posts t1 LEFT JOIN post_comments t2
WHERE t1.p_author = 1 AND t2.pc_p_id = t1.p_id 
ORDER BY t1.p_id DESC   

```

Here is the SQL Fiddle:

<http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/e9b975>