Nov. 26, 2024

040 - Walking Behind David Surface

040 - Walking Behind David Surface
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Season 2

Thank you to everyone for your patience. Here's my conversation with David Surface. We discuss incorporating real life into your fictional stories, our favourite writers, and his collection, These Things That Walk Behind Me.

David Surface is the author of two collections of stories, Terrible Things and These Things That Walk Behind Me, and co-authored the novel Angel Falls with Julia Rust. His stories fall into different horror sub-genres: ghostly tales, creature feathers, the weird, and the strange. In this discussion, we discuss how real-life situations and people make it into his fiction, how he approaches writing, co-authoring a novel with his wife, Julia Rust, and what authors and books he enjoys reading.

His work on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/David-Surface/author/B087H2GNJ2

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You're listening to the Weird Reader podcast, an extension of

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Jason's Weird Reads found on YouTube. Welcome, Hello, and welcome

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to episode forty of the Weird Reads podcast. I'm Jason White,

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your host, and today I have an interview with a

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writer who's new to me. He writes a lot of

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short stories, but he has worked on novels with his wife.

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His name is David Surface, and I felt a bit

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of a connection with this guy. I find that I

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have a connection with almost everyone I talked to on

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this podcast, which is it's weird. It's weird in a

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good way. But this one it felt like I was

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sinking and having a discussion with an old friend I

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haven't seen in let's say ten years. It was just

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one of those conversations where it's like we were catching

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up and that was really cool. When I talked to

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eric A. S. Brown, I had a similar similar feel

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with him. It's like we vibed, but I vibed here

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too with David's Surface and it. If you haven't read

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David Surface, and especially if you like short stories, I

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highly suggest you go check out his latest collection of

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short stories. These Things that Walk behind Me, They're almost

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exclusively horror stories, but they are I don't want to

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say horror light because that would seem to take away

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from what these stories are. But they are very They're

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not the gory stuff that I was talking about in

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the last episode. I don't think there's very much blood

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in this at all. But these stories are more spooky

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and they play around with reality. As John Langan says

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in the in the forward, these are more strange and

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weird types of horror stories, and I have to agree.

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And this collection is fantastic. I can't wait to read

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more by David Surface and to talk to him again.

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So without further ado, here is my conversation with David Surface.

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I am welcomed with a writer who's new to me.

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I didn't know who David Surface was until he sent

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me an email asking me to review his latest book.

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And I went and I researched your book, and I

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researched you a little bit just before emailing you back,

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and I was like, you know, this guy kind of

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sounds like he's up my tree for the stuff I

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really like to read. So I asked you to come

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on before even reading the book. So welcome to the show, David.

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Thank you. Thank you, Jason. It's quite a risk you

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took there. I have to say I admire that.

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It's always a risk when you do that, but oh

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it happens. Can you can you give yourself a bit

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of an introduction? What what have you written? And yeah?

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Sure So. My name's David Surfis and I've got two

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collections out, one from excuse Me one called Terrible Things

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and the other one that's from Blackshuk Books over in England.

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And the new one is These Things That Walk Behind

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Me that's from Leafy Press here in the US. I've

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also written co written kind of a crossover ya novel

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with my wife Julia Rust. It's called Angel Falls, and

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we've got a new one coming out in the summer

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called Saving Thornwood.

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Very cool. Is that like continue? Is that a continuation

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of the first novel or.

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Only in the cover art? We got told We got

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told one of our kids saying like, don't use the

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same artist or style because people will think it's a sequel.

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To answer your question, it's not a sequel, okay, standalone,

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but the publisher said no, no, we got to use

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the same if people will see if people get pissed off,

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or if anybody cares.

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Honestly, I don't. I don't think anybody would care. But

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good you said it was your son who said that,

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your your kid.

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That was actually my my, my stepdaughter who said that.

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Okay, so they might have a point there, because it's

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it's like a staple. Like I've seen people use the

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same artist for their books and sometimes it does come

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across as a series. Do you do you think that

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might there might be something to that. There might be

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there might be especially if there's characters on the cover

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and they kind of look the same as the previous.

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Uh yeah, well if you if you hear we've been

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like dragged away by angry mob.

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You'll know how dare you series? Yeah? I wanted this.

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I wanted a continuation, just.

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Just trying to break the rules.

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You know, trying to be your badass self.

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Yeah.

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Right, So I'm curious. I asked this to most of

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the new writers that I've talked that I talked to.

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What's your writing origin story? When did you start writing?

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And what writers made you want to become a writer yourself?

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Oh my goodness, that's that's a that's a big part.

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How far back do you want to go?

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As what where where was the inkling? Were you? Just like,

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I want to do this.

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I want to become a right well it tell you know.

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I love stories. And when I was a kid, I

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was a real little kid, I used to do comics.

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I would always, like every day and there would be

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these big brown rolls of rat, big paper, you know,

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like about you know, times three feet tall, just rat

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packages in and I would, you know, steal it basically

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from my parents and roll out a big piece on

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the floor and cross off the panels. And I would

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do all these wild adventure stories. But but I didn't

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write words on them or leave them blank. The whole

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idea was that I had to be there to like

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speak the words to whoever was unlucky enough for me

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to grab them and make them listen, you know. And

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then you know, after a while, I don't know, I

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just I was always reading. But the you know, I'm

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a I started reading the you know, the two the

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two guys Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft When

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the Right Age, when I was twelve nice and I

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love their stories, but I also loved their backstory. I

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loved the idea of these guys, just the idea that

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there were these guys who just went into a room

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with a typewriter and just kind of made up and

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sent them out into the world, and then people saw them,

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and then they'd make more things up. You know. It

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just seemed like really really cool to me. Yeah, so

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I didn't know what else came along with it, certainly

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with them, those two guys.

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But were you big into like the mythos and all

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that while you're growing up, Yes, Juliu, mythos and all that.

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When I was growing up, I was super into it.

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And I was also super into that whole heroic fantasy thing,

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the Roberty Howard. I mean, much to my detriment, I

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was so into the heroic fantasy that the higher fantasy

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like Tolkien, I could not read it because you know,

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there weren't enough broadswords and buxom girls and things like that,

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you know, and I just didn't get it. So but yeah,

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that you know, at that age, yeah, I was that

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was a sucker. I was a sucker for all that stuff. Yeah.

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I kind of came to Lovecraft and authors like Robert

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ed Howard a little late, like in my twenties. I

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started out on like Dean Koons and John Saul. I

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kind of wish though, that I found HP Lovecraft in

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my childhood, because that would have been that would have

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blew my mind, you know what I mean?

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Yeah, yeah, absolutely, no, it's it's powerful, powerful stuff, and people,

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you know, people like to make fun of him, apart

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from the whole personal.

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Thing about it, Yeah, about his being a slimeball type stuff.

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Yeah, yeah, the slime ball part. But even apart from that,

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before that came to like, people were a lot of

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people have to make fun of it because they said

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it was overwritten and it was pros and yeah it

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you know, they got a point, but he really knew

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how to cast a spell.

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Yeah. Some of those stories aren't quite as purple as

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some say. Some of them are just downright really well

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written stories. Yeah, like, oh, you know, I can't remember

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the name of the story that I'm thinking of that

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that I read it for like third or fourth time

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about a year ago, and I was just like, oh

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my god, this writing is actually really good. It's not

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it's it's kind of purple, but it's not like some

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of his other stories. I wish I could remember what

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it was.

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Was it a mythos story?

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Sorry?

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Was it a Mythos story.

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Yeah, it was, but it wasn't like one of the

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bigger ones, sort of like on the side, there's a universe.

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Of course, there's a university in it. There's a university

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and almost all of them. And there's this giant guy

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who uh uh that's murdered in the library. M and

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that murder is pretty grim mm hmm.

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I'm not sure which one that is, you know, I yeah,

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I think I think it's interesting though, the stories of

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his that are not outright Mythos related, Like, yeah, well.

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The number is the Outsider.

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Yeah, the Outsider is really good too. I like that,

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but it's not the outsider. Uh. And of course there's

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an economicon as in that story too. But yeah, So,

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so who did you move on from? I Lovecraft? Like,

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when you got a little bit older, did you ever

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like move on to Stephen King and stuff like that?

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You know, it's funny I didn't, because what happened was

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when I hit my twenties, I I really got into

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poetry a lot, you know, contemporary contemporary, more contemporary poetry

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than anything else. And then I started becoming really interested

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in you through poetry, fiction writing, and stories, and I

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was doing what you know. I guess we call these

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days literary fiction whatever whatever that is. Yeah, kind of

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fiction where nothing interesting actually happens.

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I think, Yeah, it's like it's like all character, no

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plot type stuff. Yeah, someways say sometimes purple prose, oh yeah.

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Our sign sometimes matchstick then pro But you know, there's

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there's beautiful, beautiful work. So I mean to answer your question,

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I was reading some amazing, you know, literary fiction writers,

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which I do not roll my eyes at these these people,

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the people like uh, you know, of course, Raymondcarver, and

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my favorite was Andre Deboose. I just I just Joy Williams.

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I just ate them up. And I wrote and I wrote,

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and I was just deeply, deeply into that for like

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a long long time, and I didn't really have a

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whole lot of I never rejected like the horror, it

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was supernatural. I was just like a total horror nerd

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all along, but never really thought about bringing it to

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my writing. And then I started to read what Happens

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I started reading. I don't know what put me in

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that direction, but I started reading this journal that was

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coming out of England way back in the day called

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the Third Alternative, and that's the one that became black

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Static a little while later, and I was reading all

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these British writers and they're the whole esthetic of like

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modern horror. I was completely unfamiliar with, you know, I

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didn't know people were doing that, and so my first

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the writers who were really turning me on were Brits,

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Gary McMahon, people like that. And then what happened was

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I sent a story to, uh, there's to Linda Rucker.

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Linda Rucker is just a wonderful, wonderful writer. She's she's

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sort of an ex pat. She's from Georgia, but she

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lived in Ireland for a really long time. And I

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read a story of hers and Best New Horror, and

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I wrote to her because it just it blew my

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mind because it showed what you could do or that

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modern horror approach. And I wrote to her and we

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got to be friends, and I sent her one of

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my literary stories and I didn't realize I was already

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writing about some pretty dark, dark stuff. And she read

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it and she goes, this could totally be like a

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modern this is this is a modern horror story. You

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should kind of move in that direction, see what you

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can do. So so that's I mean terms of origin story.

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That's kind of a that seems like kind of an

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arc to me.

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Yeah. Absolutely, And it's it's kind of funny that you

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mentioned that magazine because well you said it, it became

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Black Static magazine and you were a regular contributor for

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Black Static. Is that correct? Yeah?

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I was.

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I used to be a subscriber to that magazine. I

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used to love it, and I was so sad when

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they went away. Yeah, So what was your Did you

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have a column?

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Yeah, I had a column called One Good Story. I

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was already writing that. I was already writing that and

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posting it on my on my website. It's still there,

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still there, folks can read on my website. But it's

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just it was like literally one story at a time.

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I would pick a story by some writer, sometimes a

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contemporary living writer and sometimes a deceased writer, but it's

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just a story that had any story that's goin of

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blew me away one way or another, and I'd write

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about it, and i'd write about it in sort of

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a personal essay way. I would like to begin by

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a little bit of narrative about something from my life

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that reminded me of a story or that was connected

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in my mind to the story and then kind of

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segue into the story. I used to joke it was

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the only way I'd ever get a story in black static.

251
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It worked, It worked, but it was a lot. It

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was a lot of fun.

253
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Yeah. I was rejected quite a bit by them, but

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that's fine. Excuse me. I'm just coming over cold.

255
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So oh sorry.

256
00:14:16.679 --> 00:14:18.759
You might hear me cough here and there, and I

257
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apologize in advanced apologize. So you wrote and published a

258
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book with your wife, as you mentioned in your introduction,

259
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Julia Rust. I almost called her Frost. I don't know why,

260
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but Julia Rust.

261
00:14:31.200 --> 00:14:33.879
What a cool name. I'll bring it up tonight.

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Honey, Julia Frost. How does that sound?

263
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What do you think?

264
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Yeah, the book is called Angel Falls. Can you share

265
00:14:43.519 --> 00:14:44.679
with us what that's about?

266
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Angel Falls? Well, I said, it's it's sort of a

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it's it's it's a YA book. I mean, that's a

268
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huge topic of conversation, like what is YA anyway these days?

269
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But it's a YA book. It's a crossover y book.

270
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He wrote it for adults to read basically, but it's

271
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also about that. But you mean, what's it about in

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terms of what goes down?

273
00:15:06.360 --> 00:15:07.639
Yeah, Like, what's the story about.

274
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It's about two kids to fifteen year old kids. Is

275
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a girl who her parents through New York City parents

276
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are splitting up. She her father inherits, suddenly inherits this

277
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little house in Seaside Town in Massachusetts. They go up there.

278
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He goes up there to take care of business and

279
00:15:31.360 --> 00:15:34.720
you know, the legal stuff and repairs on the house,

280
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and she goes with him, leaves their mother, which pains her,

281
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and they go to this little little town and while

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she's there, she discovers this place called Angel Falls. It's

283
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up away from the beach and it's a it's a

284
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ghost town basically, it's been deserted. It's like three hundred

285
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years old. And when she's there she runs into there's

286
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this other kid. It's told an alternating perspectives. And the

287
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other kid, Jared, is a he's a local, he lives,

288
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he's grown there, grown up there. His father is a

289
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famous artist who's suffering from depression. He had a suicide attempt.

290
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So he's his fifteen year old kid who's basically supporting

291
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both of them, just working really hard all the time,

292
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and he loves this place. He loves going there, and

293
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they go there and they meet and they discover that

294
00:16:19.639 --> 00:16:23.039
the place essentially is imbued with the sort of power

295
00:16:23.960 --> 00:16:29.000
that allows people to connect to it and to basically

296
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make their wishes come true, to work their will on

297
00:16:32.559 --> 00:16:34.519
other people and things like that. And so the whole

298
00:16:34.519 --> 00:16:36.480
rest of the book, it's sort of about owing his

299
00:16:36.559 --> 00:16:40.639
teachers is kind of sinister and takes him under his

300
00:16:40.679 --> 00:16:43.120
wing and is trying to help him understand what's going on.

301
00:16:43.279 --> 00:16:45.879
But is that all he's doing? We don't know, and

302
00:16:45.960 --> 00:16:48.399
you know, so it's just basically, you know what happens

303
00:16:48.440 --> 00:16:51.799
if your wishes come true? You know, would what would

304
00:16:51.840 --> 00:16:53.960
that do? Would would you do all good? Or would

305
00:16:53.960 --> 00:16:56.080
you do bad things while you were thinking you were

306
00:16:56.080 --> 00:16:56.919
doing good things?

307
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And I imagine there's consequences.

308
00:17:01.320 --> 00:17:02.759
Unlike in life for some people.

309
00:17:02.840 --> 00:17:05.200
Yes, yes, sort of like a sort of like a

310
00:17:05.200 --> 00:17:09.200
monkey'spaw type sort of sort of.

311
00:17:09.240 --> 00:17:12.519
A monkey's paw type type situation. But yeah, we had

312
00:17:12.519 --> 00:17:13.599
a ball, We had a ball.

313
00:17:13.519 --> 00:17:18.440
Write Uh now you wrote it with your your wife,

314
00:17:18.640 --> 00:17:21.279
and I have to wonder what what was that experience?

315
00:17:21.400 --> 00:17:26.880
Like I feel a joke coming on, but I'm not

316
00:17:26.880 --> 00:17:31.759
going to do it. I'm gonna I'm jokey enough already. Seriously,

317
00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:37.960
is the most fun I have writing? Definitely? Uh yeah,

318
00:17:38.119 --> 00:17:40.720
it's it's we love it. We love writing together. You

319
00:17:40.720 --> 00:17:42.839
want to we want a fast origin story, if I can,

320
00:17:43.000 --> 00:17:43.279
if I can.

321
00:17:44.839 --> 00:17:45.240
We met.

322
00:17:45.279 --> 00:17:48.759
We met in a writing workshop right twenty something years ago.

323
00:17:48.920 --> 00:17:55.400
I wrote a piece which was a monologue by King Midas,

324
00:17:55.440 --> 00:17:58.079
basically playing around the Greek mythology. And I was like, well,

325
00:17:58.119 --> 00:18:02.680
what if these what King Midas like was immortal and

326
00:18:02.759 --> 00:18:05.480
lived until the twenty first century, and he's just kind

327
00:18:05.480 --> 00:18:08.880
of incognito and he's doing these jobs. I had him

328
00:18:08.920 --> 00:18:11.319
doing all these different jobs where he had to wear gloves,

329
00:18:11.440 --> 00:18:13.359
so you know, he wouldn't give himself away turn things

330
00:18:13.400 --> 00:18:16.279
into gold. I wondered a little about his sex life,

331
00:18:16.319 --> 00:18:16.839
like in.

332
00:18:16.839 --> 00:18:20.160
The story, so you got it right, you know, how

333
00:18:20.200 --> 00:18:20.799
does that work?

334
00:18:20.839 --> 00:18:23.319
And so I just kind of this is a very

335
00:18:23.319 --> 00:18:27.440
short piece and I read it to the workshop, came

336
00:18:27.480 --> 00:18:29.839
back the next week. I didn't know her. She's just

337
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like sitting across the table, you know, with there's long

338
00:18:32.200 --> 00:18:35.480
hair and turquoise jewelry and blue eyes, and she pulls

339
00:18:35.519 --> 00:18:38.279
out her beece and reads it. And it's an answer

340
00:18:38.400 --> 00:18:41.920
to the King Midas pieces. It's a woman who sees

341
00:18:42.039 --> 00:18:46.839
King Midas and approaches him and get a little of

342
00:18:46.880 --> 00:18:48.920
the answer to your question in the story, you know,

343
00:18:49.079 --> 00:18:51.720
and it goes on from there. And you know, I

344
00:18:51.759 --> 00:18:53.720
was just blown away. I mean, and and the thing

345
00:18:53.759 --> 00:18:56.880
about it is, it wasn't just that the writing was

346
00:18:56.960 --> 00:19:00.480
really good, because it was. And it wasn't just that

347
00:19:00.519 --> 00:19:03.279
I was flattered, but you know, I kind of was flattered,

348
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But it was that she had listened so deeply to

349
00:19:07.599 --> 00:19:12.680
the piece. She listened so deeply that she was connecting.

350
00:19:12.119 --> 00:19:12.839
At it with it.

351
00:19:12.880 --> 00:19:16.240
There's really deep level and this character that was speaking

352
00:19:16.319 --> 00:19:20.000
back and you know, just I you know, it was

353
00:19:20.079 --> 00:19:22.720
it was electrifying for for for me, and and and

354
00:19:22.799 --> 00:19:25.559
so we we did we did a few more. We

355
00:19:25.559 --> 00:19:27.240
did a few more of these things back and forth

356
00:19:27.240 --> 00:19:30.119
of the Hades and perseventy and we're just having a

357
00:19:30.119 --> 00:19:33.440
ball and wrote a couple of stories together, and then

358
00:19:33.519 --> 00:19:35.079
it was a while before we came up with the

359
00:19:35.079 --> 00:19:37.359
idea for Angel Falls. But it's just something we love

360
00:19:37.440 --> 00:19:37.720
to do.

361
00:19:38.400 --> 00:19:41.359
Yeah. Actually, you know, I'm kind of envious of that.

362
00:19:41.240 --> 00:19:45.480
That sounds like a really deep sort of relationship that

363
00:19:45.519 --> 00:19:49.680
you guys can connect with storytelling and uh and whatnot.

364
00:19:50.119 --> 00:19:54.519
I totally respect that. That's awesome. When you were when

365
00:19:54.519 --> 00:19:57.839
you were describing your story as like a young adult

366
00:19:58.079 --> 00:20:01.079
and you said, like, what, what isn't you all these days?

367
00:20:02.039 --> 00:20:04.759
It made me think of Adam Caesar's book Clown and

368
00:20:04.799 --> 00:20:07.640
a Cornfield And you read that at all, because I

369
00:20:07.640 --> 00:20:07.960
have not.

370
00:20:08.000 --> 00:20:08.440
I want to.

371
00:20:08.759 --> 00:20:13.839
Well, it's it's pretty brutal, and it's labeled as as

372
00:20:14.279 --> 00:20:17.599
young adults, you know, and it's like really like it.

373
00:20:18.000 --> 00:20:21.920
It seems like marketers will will just slap that on

374
00:20:22.039 --> 00:20:25.599
because the main protagonists are young. Do you find that

375
00:20:25.680 --> 00:20:28.400
at all? Like you could have been like an adult book,

376
00:20:28.440 --> 00:20:31.039
but they're like, no, we're gonna put this as young adult.

377
00:20:31.480 --> 00:20:36.720
Well yes, it's it's a great, big, confusing mess as

378
00:20:36.759 --> 00:20:47.559
far as I can tell. For one thing, yeah, people

379
00:20:48.119 --> 00:20:52.960
who sorry jamming up a little. The thing that I

380
00:20:53.000 --> 00:20:55.559
heard a while back is that actually, in terms of

381
00:20:56.160 --> 00:21:01.039
the business, the book business, the majority of the audience

382
00:21:01.079 --> 00:21:04.359
for young adult novels. The more the most young adult

383
00:21:04.440 --> 00:21:08.519
novels are purchased and read by adults. Yeah, people in

384
00:21:08.559 --> 00:21:10.839
their twenties and older up through the like that. It's

385
00:21:10.839 --> 00:21:14.000
like some kids do, but it's just buy and large

386
00:21:14.039 --> 00:21:17.160
adults And so what happened. It's kind of what happens

387
00:21:17.160 --> 00:21:17.839
a chicken.

388
00:21:17.640 --> 00:21:18.039
Or the egg.

389
00:21:18.119 --> 00:21:24.720
Did adult flavored novels start creeping in there and adults

390
00:21:24.799 --> 00:21:29.880
noticed and more flocked to them? Or was it a

391
00:21:30.039 --> 00:21:32.880
you know, who knows how it happened, But when it

392
00:21:33.160 --> 00:21:35.880
has a lot of writers like us, you know, guilty

393
00:21:35.920 --> 00:21:38.079
as charged. You know, we were writing a novel that

394
00:21:38.119 --> 00:21:41.960
we felt at first, we're just writing a novel and oops, hey,

395
00:21:41.960 --> 00:21:45.839
look our main characters are both fifteen years old. Maybe

396
00:21:45.880 --> 00:21:49.279
we should market as ya. And we did, and I'm glad.

397
00:21:49.400 --> 00:21:51.240
It's great, but there's kind of a there's a there's

398
00:21:51.279 --> 00:21:53.559
a bit of a controversy about it. Now. It's a

399
00:21:53.680 --> 00:21:59.400
bookstore owner up in that near Salem, wonderful bookstore, copper

400
00:21:59.440 --> 00:22:03.759
dog and wonderful owner and mega blosmer, and she just

401
00:22:03.880 --> 00:22:06.240
likes said she hates it. She's like, yeah, it's just

402
00:22:06.319 --> 00:22:09.000
all these adult writers coming in with their adult novels

403
00:22:09.000 --> 00:22:12.039
pushing out. She goes, you need some novels for actual

404
00:22:12.079 --> 00:22:16.680
novels for kids. Yeah, and so we're working on one

405
00:22:16.680 --> 00:22:17.839
of those. Now.

406
00:22:19.200 --> 00:22:21.720
Honestly, that's good. I find the whole thing interesting. I'm

407
00:22:21.759 --> 00:22:25.119
not criticizing at all, but you're You're right. There's a

408
00:22:25.160 --> 00:22:28.680
lot of adults who read young adults. And if you

409
00:22:28.720 --> 00:22:32.200
ever watch book talk on TikTok or if you watch

410
00:22:34.160 --> 00:22:37.680
book tube on YouTube, that's where you see it. Like

411
00:22:37.839 --> 00:22:40.200
you can see these adults, Like there's people who are

412
00:22:40.200 --> 00:22:42.680
in their forties and they buy up these books and

413
00:22:42.680 --> 00:22:46.000
they read them. And like I I'm not necessarily one.

414
00:22:46.039 --> 00:22:48.599
I have nothing against young adults. I'll read them and

415
00:22:48.640 --> 00:22:49.440
I have read them.

416
00:22:49.599 --> 00:22:51.920
There's some good ones, really really good ones.

417
00:22:52.920 --> 00:22:57.839
Absolutely, so yeah that I'm all for that, honestly. But

418
00:22:57.920 --> 00:23:00.880
I do find the whole argument interesting thing and fascinating

419
00:23:00.920 --> 00:23:03.359
because it does seem like if you have a you know,

420
00:23:03.400 --> 00:23:05.279
a fifteen year old kid in it, it's going to

421
00:23:05.359 --> 00:23:07.680
be it doesn't matter what happens in the story. It

422
00:23:07.680 --> 00:23:11.000
could be like in test inns everywhere, and they're gonna

423
00:23:11.559 --> 00:23:13.799
and they're gonna be, uh, they're gonna be marketing it

424
00:23:13.839 --> 00:23:14.599
as young adult.

425
00:23:15.279 --> 00:23:17.880
Yeah, that's true. It's true. Well, I've been told by

426
00:23:18.079 --> 00:23:21.720
the bookstore, you know, by meg and librarians, you know,

427
00:23:21.759 --> 00:23:24.799
we can't always make friends with the children's librarians, you know,

428
00:23:25.200 --> 00:23:28.839
wherever you go, and they say that kids will self select,

429
00:23:29.279 --> 00:23:31.720
they will you know, grab a book because they're interested,

430
00:23:31.880 --> 00:23:34.440
and they'll they'll bring it right back the next night,

431
00:23:34.519 --> 00:23:38.279
go like no, not for me, or they'll or say

432
00:23:38.880 --> 00:23:40.960
it's too old for me, you know, which you think

433
00:23:41.039 --> 00:23:43.480
kids would want to admit, But there're a lot of them.

434
00:23:43.519 --> 00:23:45.599
The readers are really really self aware.

435
00:23:46.000 --> 00:23:49.640
Yeah, and that's true. Yeah, like my son, my son,

436
00:23:49.720 --> 00:23:52.400
he's eleven years old, and he's totally in with like

437
00:23:52.480 --> 00:23:55.720
the science fiction stuff. Yeah, was he like, oh, he

438
00:23:55.839 --> 00:23:58.279
loves Star Wars, but he'll he loves anything with the

439
00:23:58.319 --> 00:24:01.200
spaceship on the cover. He's carried automatically if there's a

440
00:24:01.240 --> 00:24:03.880
space ship on the cover. But he's really big in

441
00:24:03.920 --> 00:24:07.279
the Star Wars and Halo, the Halo books. He's actually

442
00:24:07.359 --> 00:24:10.799
read some of the Halo books. And and yeah, that's

443
00:24:10.839 --> 00:24:12.839
really awesome, But I kind of wish you would come

444
00:24:12.839 --> 00:24:14.599
over to the creepier horror side.

445
00:24:16.119 --> 00:24:16.960
What about you? Are?

446
00:24:17.000 --> 00:24:17.359
You?

447
00:24:17.440 --> 00:24:21.359
Are you like all horror all the time? Sci fi?

448
00:24:21.759 --> 00:24:24.759
I like all like, I like fantasy, I like science fiction,

449
00:24:25.400 --> 00:24:30.400
but I predominantly read horror, And honestly, my channel is

450
00:24:30.440 --> 00:24:33.079
responsible for a lot of that lately, But I find

451
00:24:33.119 --> 00:24:36.599
myself just reading horror anyway, Like it's just something I

452
00:24:36.680 --> 00:24:38.160
gravitate to and always have.

453
00:24:38.680 --> 00:24:41.640
Yeah, sure, sure, who's the first? Who were the first

454
00:24:41.640 --> 00:24:44.799
writers that really grabbed you? Well, you said Stephen King, right.

455
00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:47.720
No, Well actually I came a little late Stephen King too.

456
00:24:47.720 --> 00:24:51.559
But I started with Dean Koons, Dean Kins and John

457
00:24:51.640 --> 00:24:54.440
Saul And the biggest one for me though, And I

458
00:24:54.480 --> 00:24:56.440
forgot to mention with those two because I think I

459
00:24:56.440 --> 00:24:59.480
went to them first. But the biggest one was Robert R. McCammon.

460
00:25:00.640 --> 00:25:03.799
I started reading him like I read Swan Song first,

461
00:25:04.680 --> 00:25:07.680
and that absolutely that was my book. I was like,

462
00:25:07.720 --> 00:25:09.079
I want to do this. I want to be able

463
00:25:09.079 --> 00:25:11.359
to create worlds like this, right, yeah, And so I

464
00:25:11.400 --> 00:25:14.039
went and I gobbled up everything I could find by him,

465
00:25:14.640 --> 00:25:18.599
and you know, he's I wouldn't say his a favorite now,

466
00:25:18.799 --> 00:25:21.519
but I like his older stuff better, but his new

467
00:25:21.519 --> 00:25:26.279
stuff is really good too. But yeah, like, yeah, Boy's Life,

468
00:25:26.359 --> 00:25:31.519
Yeah yeah, and that They Thirst, That's a fun vampire book.

469
00:25:33.079 --> 00:25:37.200
Stinger is a really cool alien in the desert type

470
00:25:37.200 --> 00:25:40.720
of story. I loved night Boat. They were all just fun,

471
00:25:41.640 --> 00:25:46.680
sometimes silly fun. But yeah, those were the books for me. Absolutely,

472
00:25:48.480 --> 00:25:52.200
speaking of like stories and the love of reading. I

473
00:25:52.240 --> 00:25:55.119
signed up for your newsletter because I thought it was

474
00:25:55.160 --> 00:25:58.440
a really interesting way that you do it, like instead

475
00:25:58.480 --> 00:26:00.799
of just presenting news, which is nothing wrong with this,

476
00:26:01.119 --> 00:26:04.559
Like people, I mean, people want to build their newsletters

477
00:26:04.559 --> 00:26:07.839
and whatnot and share news. It's all great, but I

478
00:26:07.880 --> 00:26:10.480
found you have a unique approach to your newsletters and

479
00:26:10.480 --> 00:26:15.160
that you share other authors short stories like something like

480
00:26:15.240 --> 00:26:18.559
fifteen hundred words or less. Can you tell us about that?

481
00:26:19.240 --> 00:26:22.039
Yeah? Sure, and thanks bother, thanks for signing up, and

482
00:26:23.240 --> 00:26:28.160
thanks for the kind words. I wanted to make a

483
00:26:28.200 --> 00:26:32.200
place where writers could write things that they felt like

484
00:26:32.240 --> 00:26:36.160
they couldn't really write anywhere else. And I don't mean,

485
00:26:36.720 --> 00:26:41.000
you know, spatterpunk. I there's lots of places.

486
00:26:41.400 --> 00:26:42.759
There's lots of places for that now.

487
00:26:43.039 --> 00:26:45.960
H yeah. Yeah, it's right out from under the rock.

488
00:26:46.079 --> 00:26:49.480
You know, it's really blown up. It's crazy, it.

489
00:26:49.480 --> 00:26:51.640
Has blown up hugely. God bless them one and all.

490
00:26:51.680 --> 00:26:55.880
But no, I wanted to create a place where writers

491
00:26:55.960 --> 00:27:01.920
could write, well, in this instance, true stories, things that

492
00:27:01.960 --> 00:27:04.599
it really happened to them. And that's the guidelines. You know,

493
00:27:04.680 --> 00:27:07.359
you write this, you know this short, short and sweet

494
00:27:07.400 --> 00:27:09.880
fifteen hundred words or less, more and more or less

495
00:27:10.599 --> 00:27:15.000
and something that really happened to you, that it doesn't

496
00:27:15.039 --> 00:27:17.960
have to be supernatural, you know, it's as some of

497
00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:21.519
them are kind of supernatural, but then others are just

498
00:27:22.119 --> 00:27:28.119
you know, disturbing encounters or things that are unsettling. And

499
00:27:29.880 --> 00:27:32.680
I was doing that myself already. The newsletter was I

500
00:27:32.680 --> 00:27:35.119
would write one of these one every month, I would

501
00:27:35.160 --> 00:27:38.880
write one of my own. And then I started saying, well,

502
00:27:38.960 --> 00:27:41.880
let's let's hear from some the writers I know, and

503
00:27:42.200 --> 00:27:45.839
they started sending them in and it's just and then

504
00:27:45.839 --> 00:27:48.839
afterwards we have a little discussion about it and about writing.

505
00:27:49.119 --> 00:27:51.680
You know, what's the difference, you know, true life versus fiction.

506
00:27:51.880 --> 00:27:56.319
You know, where's the line for you? And I love that,

507
00:27:56.640 --> 00:27:58.119
you know, yeah, you know it's great to talk to

508
00:27:58.160 --> 00:28:02.480
people about writing, and so yeah, so I I love

509
00:28:02.559 --> 00:28:06.880
doing that. I'm also I'm going to start I'm making

510
00:28:07.079 --> 00:28:11.799
reels real and the videos on YouTube of me reading

511
00:28:12.799 --> 00:28:16.799
my strange little stories, the true stories, and that'll that's

512
00:28:16.799 --> 00:28:19.880
coming up probably in the next next couple of weeks

513
00:28:19.960 --> 00:28:20.920
or more, like, you.

514
00:28:20.839 --> 00:28:26.039
Know, awesome. Now, when you start doing that, can you, like, seriously,

515
00:28:26.079 --> 00:28:27.880
can you email me and let me know what the

516
00:28:27.960 --> 00:28:31.359
channel where where I can find the channeltely, because if

517
00:28:31.680 --> 00:28:34.519
we just stop now and you never email me. It's

518
00:28:34.559 --> 00:28:38.680
gonna it's gonna disappear, and I won't think of it

519
00:28:38.720 --> 00:28:41.319
again until it's time to read some more work by you,

520
00:28:41.440 --> 00:28:43.160
and then I'll be like, oh, I wonder what happened

521
00:28:43.160 --> 00:28:46.200
to that channel. By then it'll be like already well

522
00:28:46.279 --> 00:28:46.920
under its way.

523
00:28:47.039 --> 00:28:49.400
So no, no, I wouldn't do that to you. What

524
00:28:50.039 --> 00:28:52.839
if you're you subscribe to the newsletter or follow it

525
00:28:52.920 --> 00:28:55.599
or it'll be it's on there. I put the it'll

526
00:28:55.640 --> 00:28:57.799
be a teaser and then the link to the to

527
00:28:57.880 --> 00:29:00.279
the full length one, which is not super long, about

528
00:29:00.279 --> 00:29:01.039
ten minutes long.

529
00:29:01.359 --> 00:29:02.920
I'll share it when I see it.

530
00:29:02.920 --> 00:29:04.559
Thank you. You'd be awesome.

531
00:29:04.880 --> 00:29:07.039
Have you ever thought of it? Because some authors have

532
00:29:07.119 --> 00:29:09.599
found a lot of success doing things like this on

533
00:29:09.720 --> 00:29:13.680
podcast format. Have you thought about doing that podcast? Yeah,

534
00:29:14.000 --> 00:29:17.160
like so that people can listen to it on Apple

535
00:29:17.240 --> 00:29:20.240
podcasts or Spotify or wherever they get their podcasts.

536
00:29:20.359 --> 00:29:23.880
I you know, uh, I thought about it. I'm I

537
00:29:23.920 --> 00:29:26.279
have a I'm a slow learner in terms of tech.

538
00:29:26.880 --> 00:29:28.640
Mm hmmm, I.

539
00:29:30.480 --> 00:29:34.200
M so I would be interested in doing this with

540
00:29:34.279 --> 00:29:36.599
the strange little doing that with the strange little stories.

541
00:29:37.039 --> 00:29:40.960
I started trying to do podcasts back at the beginning myself,

542
00:29:41.000 --> 00:29:43.960
back at the beginning of the pandemic, because everyone was

543
00:29:44.000 --> 00:29:46.759
talking about how these poor people got books coming out

544
00:29:46.839 --> 00:29:50.599
and you know, their events or scotched, you know, and

545
00:29:50.640 --> 00:29:52.599
it's there. It's gonna hurt. And so I thought, well,

546
00:29:52.640 --> 00:29:54.240
you know, let me just do this thing. And so

547
00:29:54.319 --> 00:30:00.200
I did an interview show. It's again called One Good Story,

548
00:30:00.519 --> 00:30:04.240
and we picked one story by each writer and we

549
00:30:04.279 --> 00:30:06.559
would just chat about that story and about their writing

550
00:30:06.599 --> 00:30:09.039
process and whatever in the pandemic and whatever else came

551
00:30:09.039 --> 00:30:13.079
to mind. I did exactly too. Oh yeah, because it's

552
00:30:13.359 --> 00:30:16.039
as it's work, you know, yeah, it's a lot of work.

553
00:30:18.079 --> 00:30:21.680
I just released a very short collection of short stories.

554
00:30:21.720 --> 00:30:26.960
They're all Sasquatch attacks nice, and I wanted to do

555
00:30:27.079 --> 00:30:30.480
the audio book for it myself. But I tried. I

556
00:30:30.519 --> 00:30:33.359
tried practicing with some older stories from like you know,

557
00:30:34.039 --> 00:30:37.359
M R. James and whatnot, and I realized just how

558
00:30:37.440 --> 00:30:41.480
much work to get everything clear so that you're not

559
00:30:41.559 --> 00:30:45.960
stumbling over words or mispronouncing words or and I was like,

560
00:30:46.000 --> 00:30:50.119
you know what, I can't do that, But in a

561
00:30:50.160 --> 00:30:52.279
podcast format I could, because you don't have to be

562
00:30:52.359 --> 00:30:54.880
quite so finnicky about it. You know.

563
00:30:55.319 --> 00:30:57.400
Yeah. The idea is it's live, you know.

564
00:30:57.519 --> 00:31:00.599
Yeah, Okay, so you're gonna you're gonna be wanting live,

565
00:31:00.960 --> 00:31:03.400
sort of like what Daniel Brown was doing. We were

566
00:31:03.400 --> 00:31:06.799
talking about him before we went live here quickly. I

567
00:31:06.839 --> 00:31:09.920
really enjoyed his ghost story during Christmas.

568
00:31:10.960 --> 00:31:11.200
Great.

569
00:31:11.599 --> 00:31:13.319
Yeah, that was great. I don't think he's going to

570
00:31:13.400 --> 00:31:15.799
do that this year because he usually advertises it by now, but.

571
00:31:16.039 --> 00:31:19.240
He's been doing it a while and it's great. That's

572
00:31:19.279 --> 00:31:21.599
how I learned a lot of writers from that, which

573
00:31:21.640 --> 00:31:22.200
is the point.

574
00:31:22.640 --> 00:31:25.759
Yeah. Absolutely, he had me on it once.

575
00:31:25.640 --> 00:31:29.519
Or twice, I forget. Yeah, and yeah, it's just did

576
00:31:29.640 --> 00:31:31.039
great stuff, did great stuff.

577
00:31:31.519 --> 00:31:34.799
Yeah. And you know, speaking of short stories, it seems

578
00:31:34.839 --> 00:31:38.359
to me that you have a real passion for the

579
00:31:38.400 --> 00:31:43.039
shorter form of fiction, short stories. What is it about

580
00:31:43.079 --> 00:31:50.200
them that draws you to writing them?

581
00:31:51.279 --> 00:31:54.319
I don't I don't know. I feel like it's kind

582
00:31:54.319 --> 00:31:58.960
of like, you know, you could see it's like a

583
00:31:58.960 --> 00:32:00.920
Swiss watch, you know, you open it up, you can

584
00:32:01.000 --> 00:32:04.359
see all the gears turning and get in there and

585
00:32:04.400 --> 00:32:08.119
make sure that it kind of lands properly at the end.

586
00:32:08.200 --> 00:32:11.279
I mean, I love novels too, but I have to

587
00:32:11.319 --> 00:32:12.920
be honest I have to be honest and say that.

588
00:32:13.000 --> 00:32:16.119
You know, I read far, far more short stories. It's

589
00:32:16.200 --> 00:32:20.599
my reading and same thing, same thing as my writing. Yeah,

590
00:32:20.640 --> 00:32:25.240
obviously absolutely. I mean I've written the two novels with Julia,

591
00:32:25.400 --> 00:32:28.400
and I wrote one novel, well, it's my pandemic novel.

592
00:32:29.720 --> 00:32:32.240
I wrote that than the first year of the Pandemic

593
00:32:32.279 --> 00:32:37.000
sitting outside of a bunch of composition books. But mostly yeah,

594
00:32:37.039 --> 00:32:39.279
I just love short stories. And what is it, I

595
00:32:40.680 --> 00:32:42.960
don't know, I've always loved them. I mean, it's just

596
00:32:43.079 --> 00:32:46.440
like they just make me happy to like bring this

597
00:32:46.559 --> 00:32:48.279
was back in the day when I was doing all

598
00:32:48.319 --> 00:32:51.640
literary fiction. I wasn't reading novels. I was grabbing short

599
00:32:51.680 --> 00:32:56.160
story collections, you know, bringing them home Rate Carver, Richard

600
00:32:56.200 --> 00:33:03.039
Fod Just I don't know. I'm feeling really inarticulate about it.

601
00:33:03.079 --> 00:33:04.039
What about you? Do? You know?

602
00:33:04.279 --> 00:33:07.000
It's the same thing, same with me. I love short stories.

603
00:33:07.079 --> 00:33:09.720
I love reading them, and I love writing them. I

604
00:33:09.759 --> 00:33:12.279
know why I love writing them is because you can

605
00:33:12.319 --> 00:33:16.920
finish them faster, and you get that sense of accomplishment

606
00:33:17.039 --> 00:33:20.440
that you finish something. I went through a period where

607
00:33:20.480 --> 00:33:22.559
I had to stop writing because I was working a

608
00:33:22.599 --> 00:33:26.119
difficult job, and my son was born, and this was

609
00:33:26.119 --> 00:33:28.799
like in twenty thirteen, and so I was working like

610
00:33:28.839 --> 00:33:31.319
twelve hour shifts and whatnot. And my son he was

611
00:33:31.599 --> 00:33:35.480
pretty high demand, right, I mean, every kid is the

612
00:33:35.519 --> 00:33:38.119
first five years, so you get like no sleep and everything.

613
00:33:38.720 --> 00:33:43.279
You know what that's like, I'm sure. But so, yeah,

614
00:33:43.599 --> 00:33:45.359
I didn't write much. But when I did write, it

615
00:33:45.400 --> 00:33:48.559
with short stories, and anytime you had that dreadful feeling

616
00:33:48.559 --> 00:33:50.400
that you're never going to write again, you'd write a

617
00:33:50.440 --> 00:33:53.279
short story and you have that feeling of accomplishment again.

618
00:33:53.759 --> 00:33:56.000
There was a point where I was writing a lot

619
00:33:56.000 --> 00:33:59.440
of flash fiction too, because that was even you know,

620
00:33:59.519 --> 00:34:03.480
more through it. So but as for reading them, I

621
00:34:03.519 --> 00:34:06.519
don't know. I'm like you, I'm kind of stumped. I

622
00:34:06.519 --> 00:34:09.559
think it's just because it's a shorter sort of window

623
00:34:09.639 --> 00:34:13.320
into somebody's else's life, and they're extreme not to say

624
00:34:13.360 --> 00:34:18.599
extreme horror, of course, but there there's situation that I

625
00:34:18.880 --> 00:34:21.360
once heard a quote I can't remember who said it,

626
00:34:21.400 --> 00:34:23.239
but they were like, a short story is like a

627
00:34:23.280 --> 00:34:26.480
window in time to someone's life, to the most important

628
00:34:26.519 --> 00:34:28.599
thing that happened to them in their life, and that

629
00:34:28.639 --> 00:34:31.559
can often be true. And so I think I think

630
00:34:31.559 --> 00:34:33.159
that's why I like reading them, because you get the

631
00:34:33.159 --> 00:34:38.960
most extraordinary circumstance that that that person went through and

632
00:34:38.960 --> 00:34:42.159
and maybe survived or didn't survive. And yeah, I think

633
00:34:42.159 --> 00:34:43.440
that's what pulls me to it.

634
00:34:44.000 --> 00:34:46.039
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I agree.

635
00:34:46.079 --> 00:34:46.760
I agree with that.

636
00:34:46.840 --> 00:34:50.679
Then there there are you. You must have heard this too,

637
00:34:50.719 --> 00:34:53.639
because there are folks who will say then, when it

638
00:34:53.639 --> 00:34:59.079
comes to horror in particular and maybe horror adjacent or stuff,

639
00:35:00.800 --> 00:35:03.639
the novel is just very very very hard to do.

640
00:35:04.760 --> 00:35:11.280
It's hard to sustain, and the short form is the

641
00:35:11.320 --> 00:35:13.360
perfect form for horror.

642
00:35:13.760 --> 00:35:14.119
It is.

643
00:35:14.719 --> 00:35:18.320
And I mean, obviously there are many, many, many horror novels.

644
00:35:19.239 --> 00:35:23.119
Not all of them are created equal, but I think

645
00:35:23.159 --> 00:35:23.840
that may be true.

646
00:35:24.440 --> 00:35:27.559
Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. I used to argue,

647
00:35:27.840 --> 00:35:30.480
not argue. I used to say that on my channel

648
00:35:30.519 --> 00:35:35.119
all the time. You know, heart story for horror stories,

649
00:35:35.159 --> 00:35:38.639
it's better, the shorter, the better, because if you think

650
00:35:38.639 --> 00:35:42.280
about real life, those moments that were absolutely horrifying in

651
00:35:42.320 --> 00:35:45.440
your own life, they were only like maybe at the

652
00:35:45.480 --> 00:35:48.400
most a day or two, right, but or there were

653
00:35:48.440 --> 00:35:51.000
just moments where you maybe got into a car accident

654
00:35:51.239 --> 00:35:54.079
or or somebody you know died in front of you.

655
00:35:54.199 --> 00:35:57.159
Or something like that. Like those horrifying moments they don't

656
00:35:57.400 --> 00:36:03.400
last long, but the repercussions can, of course. But that's

657
00:36:03.440 --> 00:36:05.599
the fun of the short story. You get the situation

658
00:36:05.719 --> 00:36:09.559
and the repercussions or sometimes it's a build up to

659
00:36:09.719 --> 00:36:15.360
the uh, you know, to that, But it's novelette or

660
00:36:15.920 --> 00:36:19.320
novelettes too. Novellas and short stories are perfect for her.

661
00:36:20.159 --> 00:36:22.000
I've always said that, Yeah, they.

662
00:36:21.920 --> 00:36:26.039
Are, absolutely so. The flash fiction that that interests me.

663
00:36:26.119 --> 00:36:27.880
You say you write a lot of flash fiction. It's like,

664
00:36:27.920 --> 00:36:30.360
you know, I love short stories that we're talking about.

665
00:36:31.679 --> 00:36:35.239
I I don't want to say I can't write flash

666
00:36:35.280 --> 00:36:38.760
fiction because that's some of that self limiting behavior there,

667
00:36:38.760 --> 00:36:42.119
and thought, Yeah, I swear it's hard. It's so hard

668
00:36:42.159 --> 00:36:45.000
for me. It was famously when somebody, what's the saying,

669
00:36:45.039 --> 00:36:47.840
somebody said once I, if I'd had more time, I

670
00:36:47.880 --> 00:36:53.039
would have written something shorter. I just you know, I

671
00:36:52.440 --> 00:36:53.519
know that I've tried.

672
00:36:53.880 --> 00:36:57.119
I understand what you mean because I came from that. Like,

673
00:36:57.199 --> 00:37:00.760
I didn't start writing the flash fiction until two thousand

674
00:37:00.800 --> 00:37:04.639
and maybe twenty because I was really burnt out by

675
00:37:04.639 --> 00:37:07.679
that time with the factory job, and I was I

676
00:37:07.719 --> 00:37:10.480
was just scribbling down stories and they would come out

677
00:37:10.840 --> 00:37:13.320
very short. It was like, that's all I had the

678
00:37:13.360 --> 00:37:17.119
mental capacity for. But it's funny that you say that,

679
00:37:17.280 --> 00:37:19.400
and I say, because I don't know if you heard

680
00:37:19.400 --> 00:37:23.360
of the author Mercedes M. Yardley. Yes, I was talking

681
00:37:23.360 --> 00:37:26.320
to I've talked to her on a different podcast. It

682
00:37:26.360 --> 00:37:28.440
was the Darkness d Wells podcast. I talked to her

683
00:37:28.480 --> 00:37:32.239
two or three times, and one of those times I

684
00:37:32.360 --> 00:37:35.559
mentioned my struggles for writing flash fiction. She writes a

685
00:37:35.599 --> 00:37:37.760
lot of them herself, right, So I was saying, I

686
00:37:37.800 --> 00:37:39.719
just can't write them. I don't know how to do it,

687
00:37:40.079 --> 00:37:43.239
and she she looked. She didn't look at me because

688
00:37:43.239 --> 00:37:45.599
we weren't on like a video like this, but there

689
00:37:45.639 --> 00:37:48.320
was a pause and I could picture her looking at

690
00:37:48.320 --> 00:37:51.960
me and she said, oh, Jason, I don't believe you.

691
00:37:56.079 --> 00:38:00.400
And I'm like, oh, man, yeah, okay, But that's that

692
00:38:00.480 --> 00:38:03.639
stuck with me. Honestly, It's like my struggle was real

693
00:38:03.719 --> 00:38:08.199
for it. But once I sat down, all a flash

694
00:38:08.280 --> 00:38:13.039
fiction story is just one tight situation. You don't even

695
00:38:13.079 --> 00:38:17.320
need a repercussion. It's just like something strange or violent

696
00:38:17.400 --> 00:38:20.760
that happened, and you have a character. You only have

697
00:38:20.760 --> 00:38:22.639
a certain amount of words to build a character, right,

698
00:38:22.880 --> 00:38:26.519
But you can do it. It's not that hard. One

699
00:38:26.559 --> 00:38:29.440
of the ones that I wrote was about a couple.

700
00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:32.920
It's only about a thousand words. A drunk, young couple

701
00:38:33.000 --> 00:38:36.639
go to a graveyard at night and find one of

702
00:38:36.679 --> 00:38:41.119
the graves is still still dug up and there's nothing

703
00:38:41.159 --> 00:38:43.599
in it, but there's holes in there, and the girl

704
00:38:43.719 --> 00:38:46.760
falls in and she's taken away by creatures, and as

705
00:38:46.760 --> 00:38:49.199
he's reaching in to try to save her, he's taken

706
00:38:49.239 --> 00:38:52.719
in too. It's just it's like a strange kind of

707
00:38:52.800 --> 00:38:55.599
violent situation and it's over before you know it. You

708
00:38:55.639 --> 00:38:56.079
know what I mean?

709
00:38:56.239 --> 00:38:56.599
Okay?

710
00:38:56.679 --> 00:38:56.960
Cool?

711
00:38:57.440 --> 00:38:59.360
Action action orient.

712
00:38:59.159 --> 00:39:01.239
Yeah, yeah, pretty much action oriented.

713
00:39:01.639 --> 00:39:01.960
Cool.

714
00:39:02.320 --> 00:39:04.239
And you can add in character too, because like when

715
00:39:04.280 --> 00:39:08.079
they enter the graveyard, they're talking about what they're doing.

716
00:39:08.159 --> 00:39:11.159
She's mentioning how you can smell the if it's a

717
00:39:11.199 --> 00:39:13.840
really hot day, you can smell the corpses beneath the

718
00:39:14.840 --> 00:39:16.960
I had a girlfriend who once told me that, and

719
00:39:17.039 --> 00:39:19.480
so this is where the story came from. We went

720
00:39:19.519 --> 00:39:22.079
to the greveyard what night after a really humid day,

721
00:39:22.719 --> 00:39:24.760
and she was right. I don't know if it was

722
00:39:24.800 --> 00:39:26.840
just playing on my mind, but you could smell like

723
00:39:27.119 --> 00:39:31.000
a sort of soft sense of you know, rotting man,

724
00:39:31.320 --> 00:39:33.119
and it was like a really humid day though, So

725
00:39:33.159 --> 00:39:35.880
I don't know how true that it's this kind of

726
00:39:35.920 --> 00:39:38.199
a morbid thing to do, but we were.

727
00:39:39.000 --> 00:39:42.440
Just for fun. How roughly how long between when that

728
00:39:43.000 --> 00:39:46.559
happened the real life thing and when you sat down

729
00:39:46.559 --> 00:39:48.360
and wrote that flash fiction?

730
00:39:48.639 --> 00:39:51.239
Oh, let me see, about twenty years?

731
00:39:51.639 --> 00:39:51.960
Really?

732
00:39:52.039 --> 00:39:53.360
Wow? Yeah?

733
00:39:53.400 --> 00:39:55.719
And did that was that one of those things? This

734
00:39:55.760 --> 00:39:59.280
is what I asked people. Was that one of those

735
00:39:59.280 --> 00:40:04.320
things that you thought of every now and then over

736
00:40:04.360 --> 00:40:07.239
the twenty years or or did it just like come like, Oh,

737
00:40:07.480 --> 00:40:07.800
it just.

738
00:40:07.800 --> 00:40:12.239
Kind of came like I don't think about that. When

739
00:40:12.239 --> 00:40:16.239
I think about her at all, it's it's most Yeah,

740
00:40:16.440 --> 00:40:19.239
but it's uh, actually I don't think about her all

741
00:40:19.239 --> 00:40:22.480
that much either, But but every whenever I do think

742
00:40:22.480 --> 00:40:25.639
about her, it's not that So I'm wondering. I think honestly,

743
00:40:26.199 --> 00:40:28.360
it came from more of like the rats in the

744
00:40:28.360 --> 00:40:30.960
Graveyard type short story where I was I was trying

745
00:40:31.000 --> 00:40:33.039
to emulate that, and then when I was done, I

746
00:40:33.079 --> 00:40:37.159
realized that this story is more about something I experienced,

747
00:40:37.320 --> 00:40:39.920
except for the whole being stashed away by monsters in

748
00:40:39.960 --> 00:40:41.199
the in the graveyard.

749
00:40:41.599 --> 00:40:46.280
Right, Yeah, that part, Well, that's cool, that's cools, a

750
00:40:46.320 --> 00:40:49.760
little bit of real life, yeah, taking taking route.

751
00:40:50.320 --> 00:40:55.159
All right. So your first collection is called Terrible Things.

752
00:40:56.400 --> 00:40:58.719
Can you tell us I haven't ready yet, but I

753
00:40:58.760 --> 00:41:02.400
plan to when I get the of the free reading time.

754
00:41:03.960 --> 00:41:05.840
Can you tell us a little bit about the stories

755
00:41:05.880 --> 00:41:09.519
within and how they differ from your most recent Excuse.

756
00:41:09.199 --> 00:41:12.559
Me, yeah, I was afraid you were going to ask

757
00:41:12.639 --> 00:41:19.039
that because I'm not really sure how they how they differ.

758
00:41:19.079 --> 00:41:23.000
I think no, I know how that. Stylistically I think

759
00:41:24.440 --> 00:41:27.679
people would find that they're pretty similar. It's not like

760
00:41:27.920 --> 00:41:30.440
I can't believe this guy wrote that book. It's not

761
00:41:30.599 --> 00:41:35.559
it's you can believe it. It's it's so stylistically very similar.

762
00:41:35.760 --> 00:41:41.920
I think content wise, the first one, Terrible Things, has

763
00:41:41.960 --> 00:41:50.079
a lot more about really hard, hard life things, a

764
00:41:50.079 --> 00:41:54.480
lot of a lot of divorce, a lot of alcohol

765
00:41:54.559 --> 00:42:02.239
and drugs, a lot of semi homelessness, and not to

766
00:42:02.519 --> 00:42:06.079
you know, not to not to go into it too deeply,

767
00:42:06.159 --> 00:42:09.039
but you know, it just came from, you know, part

768
00:42:09.079 --> 00:42:12.559
of my life that was over by that point, but

769
00:42:13.880 --> 00:42:16.199
sort of like you and the girlfriend in the graveyard,

770
00:42:16.239 --> 00:42:18.719
you know, kind of stuck stuck with me, and I hadn't.

771
00:42:18.760 --> 00:42:21.679
I didn't sort of needed to write those things out

772
00:42:22.400 --> 00:42:25.840
in the in the horror context or the dark fiction context.

773
00:42:25.880 --> 00:42:28.079
So I think that there's a lot more of that

774
00:42:28.360 --> 00:42:32.400
going on in that book, whereas in the new book

775
00:42:32.440 --> 00:42:35.039
there's you know, a little a little bit of that.

776
00:42:35.679 --> 00:42:37.519
But I think it's kind of like next phase of

777
00:42:37.639 --> 00:42:41.960
life sort of influences a lot about children, a lot

778
00:42:42.000 --> 00:42:46.559
about aging. So yeah, it's it's it's it's an older

779
00:42:46.559 --> 00:42:50.239
person's book. I mean only three years five, three four

780
00:42:50.320 --> 00:42:52.400
years apart, but it's an older person's book.

781
00:42:52.760 --> 00:42:55.480
Yeah. And and here you were saying that you didn't

782
00:42:55.480 --> 00:42:57.800
know how to answer that question. I think that's a

783
00:42:57.840 --> 00:42:59.199
pretty good answer, honestly.

784
00:43:01.079 --> 00:43:06.559
Yeah, I fooled you. That's what the setup. Yeah, I

785
00:43:06.559 --> 00:43:07.000
didn't know.

786
00:43:08.320 --> 00:43:12.320
Your latest collection is called These Things That Walk Behind

787
00:43:12.440 --> 00:43:15.280
Me and it's the one that I read. I finished

788
00:43:15.280 --> 00:43:19.760
at just this week, and I was impressed immediately to

789
00:43:19.800 --> 00:43:23.079
see because I wasn't expecting this. But John Langan he

790
00:43:23.119 --> 00:43:25.760
wrote the ForWord, So I was wondering, how how did

791
00:43:25.760 --> 00:43:26.360
that come about?

792
00:43:27.320 --> 00:43:34.239
Uh? John? John lives very near, very near here, used

793
00:43:34.280 --> 00:43:37.159
to teach at the Military Academy New York Military Academy,

794
00:43:37.199 --> 00:43:39.440
just just down the road, and I'd been reading him,

795
00:43:39.920 --> 00:43:42.119
you know, I'd been reading him. I knew who he was.

796
00:43:42.280 --> 00:43:45.280
I was you know, I recognized what a great writer

797
00:43:45.400 --> 00:43:48.760
he is. I mean, there's writers who you want to

798
00:43:48.800 --> 00:43:52.480
like put like in the same box or the same

799
00:43:52.519 --> 00:43:56.079
minivan or whatever, you know, and these are the best

800
00:43:56.199 --> 00:44:01.079
argument for horror is literature. You know, it's real art.

801
00:44:01.280 --> 00:44:04.679
And he's he's right in there. He's he's he's certainly

802
00:44:04.760 --> 00:44:05.840
right right right in there.

803
00:44:05.840 --> 00:44:08.480
But that's why I was impressed. I was like, oh, man,

804
00:44:08.519 --> 00:44:09.840
I love John Langon right.

805
00:44:09.800 --> 00:44:12.920
So guy, he's amazing. Well I I The way I

806
00:44:12.960 --> 00:44:16.559
really got to hook up with him was there's another writer.

807
00:44:16.679 --> 00:44:19.519
Do you know, Glenn Hirschberg.

808
00:44:20.079 --> 00:44:20.760
I don't think so.

809
00:44:21.360 --> 00:44:24.360
Yeah, he's He's on my list of writers and more

810
00:44:24.400 --> 00:44:27.039
people should know. He's a wonderful writer. I'll say more

811
00:44:27.039 --> 00:44:30.159
about him later if I get the chance. But he

812
00:44:32.360 --> 00:44:36.960
invited us to a reading at this wacky bookstore way

813
00:44:37.039 --> 00:44:41.920
up in the woods north north of here. It's called

814
00:44:41.960 --> 00:44:45.440
al Penn Books. It was been there since the nineteen forties.

815
00:44:46.079 --> 00:44:49.159
It's a chicken coop that got converted into a bookstore

816
00:44:49.519 --> 00:44:52.840
and anyway, he invited me and my wife Julia, and

817
00:44:52.920 --> 00:44:56.400
John Langon to join him there for a Halloween pre

818
00:44:56.519 --> 00:44:58.920
Halloween reading. This was last, you know, last year, and

819
00:44:58.960 --> 00:45:02.840
so great and we all went and on the way

820
00:45:02.880 --> 00:45:07.719
there we found out that Glenn had gotten transportation screw ups.

821
00:45:07.719 --> 00:45:11.559
He was flying from the Northwest and he got airport Hell,

822
00:45:11.719 --> 00:45:13.679
got hit by airport Hell, and he couldn't make it.

823
00:45:13.960 --> 00:45:15.679
So just the three of us, my wife and me

824
00:45:15.800 --> 00:45:20.400
and John Langon and John showed up and he's so funny.

825
00:45:20.599 --> 00:45:24.199
He is like funny and friendly, and he brought a

826
00:45:24.199 --> 00:45:27.679
guitar with him and he said I thought we should

827
00:45:27.679 --> 00:45:32.920
do wear Wolves of London. And I was like, okay, then, naturally,

828
00:45:33.039 --> 00:45:35.679
and so would you like to play? And I said sure,

829
00:45:35.760 --> 00:45:38.119
I'll play, you know, because the dog played. So I

830
00:45:38.239 --> 00:45:41.599
got to back up John Langon on guitar on were

831
00:45:41.599 --> 00:45:43.679
Wolves of London for a sing along for the people

832
00:45:43.679 --> 00:45:47.599
who had come. And it was like yeah, yeah, So

833
00:45:47.639 --> 00:45:49.360
it's a nice way to meet.

834
00:45:49.559 --> 00:45:53.199
Yeah. So you said you said he lives close to you.

835
00:45:53.239 --> 00:45:57.039
Do you ever just show up and say hey, man,

836
00:45:57.119 --> 00:45:57.760
how's it going.

837
00:45:58.119 --> 00:46:02.880
No, I do not do that, but you know, I

838
00:46:03.039 --> 00:46:07.599
I'm lucky enough to run into him. There's a great

839
00:46:07.599 --> 00:46:12.320
bookstore right across the river here, a deacon called Stanza Books,

840
00:46:12.360 --> 00:46:14.679
and it's it's like a year old. And these guys

841
00:46:14.719 --> 00:46:18.039
have turned it into kind of a hub of horror

842
00:46:18.039 --> 00:46:21.480
writing activity. I mean so much else, but among the

843
00:46:21.519 --> 00:46:25.679
many things they do, they've become a horror headquarters. And

844
00:46:25.760 --> 00:46:29.360
so I see him there. He does things there, and uh,

845
00:46:29.679 --> 00:46:31.239
you know, so I get to we get to hang

846
00:46:31.360 --> 00:46:34.639
a little, but not a lot. But he's a he's

847
00:46:34.679 --> 00:46:37.719
a great guy and a great, great writer. I feel

848
00:46:38.000 --> 00:46:39.119
really fortunate.

849
00:46:38.679 --> 00:46:44.239
That he he's another like he dabbles in novels too,

850
00:46:44.280 --> 00:46:47.559
but he's another master of the short story. Oh yeah,

851
00:46:47.599 --> 00:46:49.599
one day I want to Actually, I shouldn't say that,

852
00:46:49.599 --> 00:46:51.320
because I have talked to him on the Darkness d

853
00:46:51.320 --> 00:46:54.159
Wells podcast. I once had Lard Baron and him on

854
00:46:54.239 --> 00:46:59.239
and we're discussing, uh, we're discussing weird fiction and how

855
00:46:59.239 --> 00:47:01.920
it came out and everything and where it is today.

856
00:47:02.360 --> 00:47:05.000
It was like back in twenty eighteen. So it's been

857
00:47:05.000 --> 00:47:06.480
a while, but I want to get him on like

858
00:47:06.519 --> 00:47:10.880
a one on one at some point. And in his uh,

859
00:47:11.519 --> 00:47:14.159
in his forward to your book, he mentions the art

860
00:47:14.320 --> 00:47:18.119
of the strange story, and he calls your stories strange stories,

861
00:47:18.159 --> 00:47:22.800
and he mentions Robert Aikman as well. That must have

862
00:47:22.840 --> 00:47:25.480
been like him. Comparing your work to Robert Aikman must

863
00:47:25.480 --> 00:47:29.360
have been kind of mind blowing. And does it make

864
00:47:29.400 --> 00:47:32.679
you feel in a sense that maybe you're you're helping

865
00:47:32.760 --> 00:47:38.519
to kind of carry the torch for strange fiction instead

866
00:47:38.519 --> 00:47:40.360
of the you know, the weird fiction.

867
00:47:42.800 --> 00:47:46.119
Are you making a distinction between weird fiction and strange fiction.

868
00:47:45.960 --> 00:47:48.480
A little bit? Only in the sense that Robert Aikman

869
00:47:48.599 --> 00:47:52.880
really preferred strange over weird When I think everything back then,

870
00:47:52.960 --> 00:47:55.920
anything that was like a ghost story or whatever was

871
00:47:55.960 --> 00:47:59.199
called weird and skult war yeah, yeah, and now it's

872
00:47:59.360 --> 00:48:03.840
it's more called horror. But he was, he was really

873
00:48:03.840 --> 00:48:06.079
big on the strange, and uh he was.

874
00:48:06.199 --> 00:48:10.639
I forgotten, Yeah, the names that different writers apply or

875
00:48:10.719 --> 00:48:14.559
don't like to use or find. No, No, it would yeah,

876
00:48:14.559 --> 00:48:18.559
of course, when I read John's forward, I like, you know,

877
00:48:18.599 --> 00:48:20.719
they had to use the paddles on men, you know,

878
00:48:21.199 --> 00:48:23.119
just I'll.

879
00:48:22.920 --> 00:48:25.039
Admit it right now, I'd be ugly crying.

880
00:48:28.280 --> 00:48:31.119
I don't think I think I reached the happy crying phase.

881
00:48:31.199 --> 00:48:33.880
I didn't go all the way to ugly has to.

882
00:48:34.119 --> 00:48:36.559
Well, there would be a lot of joy behind that that.

883
00:48:36.679 --> 00:48:37.880
Oh yeah, would just be.

884
00:48:37.880 --> 00:48:43.440
Like no, that was great. Uh yeah, Aikman, I mean,

885
00:48:43.639 --> 00:48:48.880
the Aikman thing is really interesting because he It's funny

886
00:48:48.880 --> 00:48:52.719
because everybody when you get the elevator speech about what

887
00:48:52.760 --> 00:48:56.440
Aikman stuff is like, I was like, yeah, nothing, lots

888
00:48:56.440 --> 00:49:00.480
of mood and everything is very suggestive and nothing really happens,

889
00:49:00.599 --> 00:49:03.199
but it's very suggestive in Atmospheric and I was like,

890
00:49:04.159 --> 00:49:08.440
have you read Ring the Change, Ringing the Changes that

891
00:49:08.039 --> 00:49:12.320
that story There's there's a zombie orgy and and that's

892
00:49:13.360 --> 00:49:17.239
it's like he does He's not extremely graphic about it.

893
00:49:17.719 --> 00:49:21.400
Yeah, it's like, hey.

894
00:49:20.360 --> 00:49:23.000
He pulls out all those stops. I mean, it's not

895
00:49:23.119 --> 00:49:26.599
happening off screen, it's happening right there. And it's but

896
00:49:27.119 --> 00:49:28.800
at the same time, the whole build up to it,

897
00:49:28.840 --> 00:49:33.840
all all the suggestions, powers of suggestions so strong. But yeah, no,

898
00:49:33.880 --> 00:49:38.400
I mean John John I think was thinking about that,

899
00:49:38.559 --> 00:49:44.079
just the emphasis on the power of suggestion and now

900
00:49:44.119 --> 00:49:46.679
you can use something like Bakman himself showed, you could

901
00:49:46.760 --> 00:49:49.400
use the power of suggestion be very restrained and slow

902
00:49:49.440 --> 00:49:51.280
burn whatever else you want to call it. But when

903
00:49:51.320 --> 00:49:53.119
you get to the end of the line, you can,

904
00:49:53.320 --> 00:49:56.000
you know, feel free to show show whatever you want,

905
00:49:56.119 --> 00:49:56.679
show it all.

906
00:49:57.199 --> 00:50:00.920
Yeah. Another reason why I bring up string versus weird

907
00:50:00.960 --> 00:50:05.320
as our friend Daniel Brahm, he really holds onto the

908
00:50:05.360 --> 00:50:10.079
strange fiction Moniker as well. He kind of compared. He

909
00:50:10.119 --> 00:50:13.360
doesn't compare himself to Robert Aikman, but he uses the

910
00:50:13.639 --> 00:50:17.079
strange fiction instead of weird fiction. And I think he

911
00:50:17.079 --> 00:50:20.039
he's big on Aikman though, as we both know.

912
00:50:21.039 --> 00:50:24.639
He is. Well he yeah, sometimes when I met him,

913
00:50:25.239 --> 00:50:27.000
When I met Daniel, it was like he felt like

914
00:50:27.039 --> 00:50:30.679
he'd sort of had one of those Saul on the

915
00:50:30.760 --> 00:50:34.280
Road to Tarca's experiences. You know, you just see seeing

916
00:50:34.320 --> 00:50:37.119
the light. You know. He was very, very passionate about

917
00:50:37.519 --> 00:50:41.599
learning all he could about Aikman and talking with people

918
00:50:41.599 --> 00:50:46.039
about it. And it was his you know, is really

919
00:50:46.599 --> 00:50:50.000
energizing to be in his presence and part of those conversations.

920
00:50:50.039 --> 00:50:56.000
But yeah, yes, absolutely, yeah, And uh, I think just

921
00:50:56.079 --> 00:50:58.400
to talk about Aikman just a little bit more. I

922
00:50:58.440 --> 00:51:00.920
think the one the story of his affected me the

923
00:51:00.960 --> 00:51:04.159
most was The Swords. Have you read that one?

924
00:51:04.480 --> 00:51:05.159
I have?

925
00:51:05.360 --> 00:51:10.400
That story is messed up beyond belief and yet, like

926
00:51:10.440 --> 00:51:13.559
you said, very little well I wouldn't say little happens

927
00:51:13.559 --> 00:51:16.039
in it, but when it happens, it happens, and you're

928
00:51:16.119 --> 00:51:19.119
left wondering, what the the hell did you just read? Like,

929
00:51:19.360 --> 00:51:20.639
what is this suggesting?

930
00:51:21.920 --> 00:51:26.519
Yeah? Yeah, and that whole thing about what what the

931
00:51:26.559 --> 00:51:31.760
hell did I just see? You know, people who object

932
00:51:31.840 --> 00:51:35.079
to that in a story, as opposed to like, you know,

933
00:51:35.840 --> 00:51:38.159
I want to see a zombie rip somebody's guts out.

934
00:51:38.280 --> 00:51:41.559
You know, it's like, great, go go for it, you know. Yeah,

935
00:51:41.559 --> 00:51:47.199
But the people who disapprove of one of those odds strangers?

936
00:51:47.239 --> 00:51:50.440
What the hell did I just see? That's what That's

937
00:51:50.480 --> 00:51:54.000
what life is like? What the hell was that? Think?

938
00:51:54.119 --> 00:51:58.639
How many times the hell was that? Yeah?

939
00:51:58.719 --> 00:51:59.519
That's so true.

940
00:52:00.280 --> 00:52:01.880
It's real. It's a real thing.

941
00:52:02.360 --> 00:52:07.119
Yeah. So before we move on to these things that

942
00:52:07.159 --> 00:52:09.960
walk behind me, I was wondering, have you ever I'm

943
00:52:10.000 --> 00:52:12.320
sure you have, but do you ever plan on writing

944
00:52:12.480 --> 00:52:17.119
a solo novel and publishing that I did?

945
00:52:17.199 --> 00:52:20.039
I did well, I said I wrote the one. I

946
00:52:20.079 --> 00:52:24.360
wrote the one during the first months of the pandemic.

947
00:52:24.480 --> 00:52:27.639
So I have written the first draft. It needs lots

948
00:52:27.679 --> 00:52:28.440
of work.

949
00:52:29.039 --> 00:52:31.760
And with the novel, there is a lot of work.

950
00:52:31.960 --> 00:52:36.239
Yeah, yeah, they're in there, so I would like that

951
00:52:36.760 --> 00:52:39.039
I'll to see the light of day because I actually

952
00:52:39.599 --> 00:52:44.239
happened to love it very much. It's it's it's odd,

953
00:52:44.719 --> 00:52:49.719
it's odd as hell. It's David Crosby said about Neil Young.

954
00:52:49.800 --> 00:52:52.559
He said, Neil, Neil's weird as snake suspenders. You know,

955
00:52:52.719 --> 00:52:57.199
so it's kind of this, This novel is weird as

956
00:52:57.199 --> 00:52:59.599
snake suspenders. But I do want to get back to it.

957
00:52:59.760 --> 00:53:02.159
But is there snake suspenders in that novel?

958
00:53:02.400 --> 00:53:07.159
No, but there's time for that. Put it in the revisions.

959
00:53:09.039 --> 00:53:11.119
Yeah, you can do it. You can do that for sure,

960
00:53:11.119 --> 00:53:12.000
to get it in there for you.

961
00:53:12.159 --> 00:53:12.920
I'll get it in there.

962
00:53:12.920 --> 00:53:17.639
Oh awesome. Yeah, okay, And in the acknowledgments you can

963
00:53:17.719 --> 00:53:19.719
say the snake suspenders are for Jason.

964
00:53:21.920 --> 00:53:24.840
I will count on it, all right.

965
00:53:25.000 --> 00:53:27.400
So at the end of at the very back of

966
00:53:27.480 --> 00:53:31.239
these things that walk behind me, readers can find the

967
00:53:31.360 --> 00:53:35.599
explanations and the stories that went into writing these stories.

968
00:53:35.719 --> 00:53:40.480
And in your story notes. I love reading these because

969
00:53:40.519 --> 00:53:45.159
I'm as we've kind of been discussing. I love where

970
00:53:45.239 --> 00:53:48.199
ideas come from and how people incorporate real life situations

971
00:53:48.239 --> 00:53:54.360
into their stories and all that. So I'm assuming, especially

972
00:53:54.400 --> 00:53:56.519
after this talk, that you enjoy that type of stuff

973
00:53:56.679 --> 00:53:57.079
as well.

974
00:53:57.719 --> 00:54:01.440
Oh yeah, you mean delving into life situation.

975
00:54:01.039 --> 00:54:04.719
In real life and you know how they become short

976
00:54:04.760 --> 00:54:05.519
stories and all that.

977
00:54:06.119 --> 00:54:08.239
Oh yeah, definitely, definitely. Yeah.

978
00:54:09.159 --> 00:54:12.199
The first story. I just I brought that up first

979
00:54:12.239 --> 00:54:14.039
of all, just because I know a lot of my

980
00:54:14.159 --> 00:54:17.480
viewers they like that too, because we've discussed it before,

981
00:54:18.159 --> 00:54:21.880
and I think a lot of people really enjoy learning

982
00:54:22.280 --> 00:54:25.480
the origins of a story and the genesis instead of

983
00:54:25.559 --> 00:54:27.480
saying where do you get your ideas from? It's just

984
00:54:28.079 --> 00:54:30.440
it's kind of cool. If you can't remember, then that's cool.

985
00:54:30.840 --> 00:54:33.679
But if you can remember, the story behind the story

986
00:54:33.840 --> 00:54:37.239
is always fascinating because there's something in real life that

987
00:54:37.480 --> 00:54:39.480
you know that happened or whatever.

988
00:54:39.800 --> 00:54:42.280
I'm super glad, Jason to hear you say that, because

989
00:54:42.280 --> 00:54:46.320
I I I chickened out on my first collection. The editor,

990
00:54:47.079 --> 00:54:50.760
Steve Shaw is a great guy, black Shuckey. He says,

991
00:54:51.039 --> 00:54:55.039
do you want to have story notes? And I was like, uh, chicken,

992
00:54:55.159 --> 00:54:58.239
I said no, it's like, who wants to hear my

993
00:54:58.360 --> 00:54:59.000
story notes?

994
00:55:00.239 --> 00:55:01.199
True Love?

995
00:55:01.320 --> 00:55:06.400
That well, I got berated Love Loving be rated because

996
00:55:06.480 --> 00:55:10.159
he doesn't be right. There's this wonderful writer, Welsh writer

997
00:55:10.280 --> 00:55:12.679
named Steve Duffy. It was one of those writers that

998
00:55:12.800 --> 00:55:14.840
started reading when I started coming up, and he was

999
00:55:15.000 --> 00:55:17.239
kind of he wrote me a blurb and we were

1000
00:55:17.320 --> 00:55:21.039
friends long distance friends now and he was like, well

1001
00:55:21.079 --> 00:55:24.480
are you crazy? So you just he said, head, he said,

1002
00:55:24.519 --> 00:55:26.519
I will, I'll review. I'll give you a blurb if

1003
00:55:26.559 --> 00:55:29.920
you promise to do story notes in your next collection.

1004
00:55:30.119 --> 00:55:30.480
Awesome.

1005
00:55:30.880 --> 00:55:33.400
And so it's like story notes are for him. But

1006
00:55:33.639 --> 00:55:35.519
I'm glad. I'm glad to hear you say that, because

1007
00:55:35.519 --> 00:55:38.199
I always like them. I always like I go right

1008
00:55:38.239 --> 00:55:39.719
to but I don't want to go right to them

1009
00:55:39.760 --> 00:55:42.880
first because I want, you know, the spoilers. But sometimes

1010
00:55:42.920 --> 00:55:45.760
I've actually hurried through the last few stories in the

1011
00:55:45.800 --> 00:55:47.760
book so I could get to the story.

1012
00:55:48.119 --> 00:55:51.119
Yeah. Often I just go back and forth. If they're behind,

1013
00:55:51.320 --> 00:55:52.920
if they're in the back of the book, I'll read

1014
00:55:52.960 --> 00:55:55.280
the short story and then the story notes and yeah,

1015
00:55:56.079 --> 00:56:01.280
I've done that. So there's only about four, maybe five

1016
00:56:01.360 --> 00:56:02.880
at the most. Stories. I want to talk about this

1017
00:56:03.039 --> 00:56:05.239
because we could probably talk about this collection all night,

1018
00:56:07.000 --> 00:56:11.000
and I'm sure you have things to do. But the

1019
00:56:11.119 --> 00:56:18.800
first story in this collection is hang On here is

1020
00:56:18.880 --> 00:56:23.039
Give Me Back My Name and this. Once I read

1021
00:56:23.079 --> 00:56:25.119
this story, I was like, oh man, it's on, you know,

1022
00:56:25.519 --> 00:56:29.840
it's I'm like, this is good, right. But I found like,

1023
00:56:30.000 --> 00:56:33.400
after reading that story, I read the story notes, and

1024
00:56:33.480 --> 00:56:38.079
I found that we both had different interpretations of the story.

1025
00:56:38.239 --> 00:56:41.960
And I found that fascinating too. So this story is

1026
00:56:42.079 --> 00:56:44.199
kind of open in a sense. It doesn't really go

1027
00:56:44.320 --> 00:56:47.320
into any fact. It's all about memory and the past.

1028
00:56:47.840 --> 00:56:50.840
So do you subscribe to the idea that somebody could

1029
00:56:50.880 --> 00:56:54.639
come away with a different interpretation of what happened in

1030
00:56:54.719 --> 00:56:55.119
this story?

1031
00:56:55.800 --> 00:57:00.360
Oh? God, yeah, absolutely, I mean, yeah, that's the risk.

1032
00:57:00.760 --> 00:57:02.119
If it is a risk, I mean, it's just a

1033
00:57:02.199 --> 00:57:04.599
thing that happens when if you write a story that

1034
00:57:05.000 --> 00:57:09.039
there's some ambiguity into it. Yeah, that's the dirty a word.

1035
00:57:09.079 --> 00:57:11.280
You know. Some people love ambiguity, some people hate it.

1036
00:57:11.360 --> 00:57:14.440
And I love ambiguity honestly because I like it when

1037
00:57:15.039 --> 00:57:18.280
it's sort of like having a conversation with the author. Honestly,

1038
00:57:18.360 --> 00:57:21.760
they're they're giving you parts and your brain if you

1039
00:57:21.960 --> 00:57:23.679
like this sort of thing, will come up with the

1040
00:57:23.760 --> 00:57:26.599
parts that are missing if it's done right, And that

1041
00:57:27.519 --> 00:57:29.599
sort of makes you collaborators.

1042
00:57:29.880 --> 00:57:33.480
I think absolutely, that's a that's a that's a real thing. Well,

1043
00:57:33.519 --> 00:57:35.679
can I ask you what your interpretation of it was.

1044
00:57:35.960 --> 00:57:41.280
The Absolutely I found that the husband, as you mentioned,

1045
00:57:41.639 --> 00:57:44.719
is lying, and he's lying to his wife as you

1046
00:57:44.840 --> 00:57:48.239
said in the in the story notes. But I thought

1047
00:57:48.840 --> 00:57:51.280
by the end of it, and it made me sad. Honestly,

1048
00:57:51.400 --> 00:57:53.920
it gave me that emotion of sadness. I thought he

1049
00:57:54.079 --> 00:57:57.960
was lying to himself the whole time as well, that

1050
00:57:58.760 --> 00:58:01.480
something tragic happen and to the wife, although I think

1051
00:58:02.360 --> 00:58:04.679
he said that he did leave her alive. Now that

1052
00:58:05.519 --> 00:58:10.400
I'm saying this out loud, but I my brain came

1053
00:58:10.519 --> 00:58:13.239
up with this plot line that where the wife died

1054
00:58:13.360 --> 00:58:16.159
and it broke him up so bad that he changed

1055
00:58:16.239 --> 00:58:18.239
everything in his life to get away from the pain.

1056
00:58:18.960 --> 00:58:22.800
And so when his present wife was saying, Okay, we

1057
00:58:22.920 --> 00:58:26.599
have to go visit the grave and all that, and

1058
00:58:26.679 --> 00:58:29.000
he was getting angry about it, is because he didn't

1059
00:58:29.039 --> 00:58:32.480
want to remember what was going on or what happened

1060
00:58:32.519 --> 00:58:36.199
in the past. That when he changed his identity, he

1061
00:58:36.480 --> 00:58:39.400
was changing himself so he didn't have to face that pain.

1062
00:58:40.079 --> 00:58:43.920
And that was my interpretation of it, which is quite elaborate. Honestly,

1063
00:58:45.159 --> 00:58:45.599
I love it.

1064
00:58:47.360 --> 00:58:51.639
Elaborate's good. So are you saying like the story? He

1065
00:58:51.800 --> 00:58:55.440
obstensibly he believed he was making up when he was

1066
00:58:55.519 --> 00:58:58.280
telling his new wife about when she she realized he'd

1067
00:58:58.320 --> 00:59:02.599
been married before. Yeah, starts like just making this story up.

1068
00:59:02.880 --> 00:59:05.719
He starts spinning out the truth, but he doesn't think

1069
00:59:05.800 --> 00:59:09.199
he's making it up. Yeah, and and so that's what.

1070
00:59:12.199 --> 00:59:14.760
So yeah, So when when he says like, oh, her

1071
00:59:14.840 --> 00:59:17.760
name was such and such and he finds out that

1072
00:59:17.880 --> 00:59:21.320
it's true and she was buried in this town Carlton,

1073
00:59:21.760 --> 00:59:25.199
turns out there is a town named Carlton, and there's

1074
00:59:25.239 --> 00:59:27.320
a graveyard in there and her name is on that

1075
00:59:27.440 --> 00:59:31.960
graveyard tombstone. And he's like, this is all real.

1076
00:59:32.119 --> 00:59:40.400
What the you know, Jason? You get that's brilliant. Really,

1077
00:59:40.760 --> 00:59:42.920
that's a lot more brilliant I could claim it. Yes,

1078
00:59:43.000 --> 00:59:45.079
that's exactly what I know.

1079
00:59:45.840 --> 00:59:47.920
That that's just where my brain went. And then when

1080
00:59:47.960 --> 00:59:50.079
I read your show notes, I was like, or not

1081
00:59:50.159 --> 00:59:54.159
show notes, the story notes. I was like, oh, yeah, okay,

1082
00:59:54.320 --> 00:59:58.519
that wow. But I think I'll always take away my

1083
00:59:58.639 --> 01:00:02.079
interpretation from it because that's that gave me that feeling,

1084
01:00:02.199 --> 01:00:04.559
you know, like of sadness, Like I felt really bad

1085
01:00:04.639 --> 01:00:07.360
for this guy where in the story he's a bit

1086
01:00:07.400 --> 01:00:09.440
of a I wouldn't say a dirt bag, but he's

1087
01:00:09.519 --> 01:00:13.280
not the greatest dude, right, Like he he's a liar. Yeah,

1088
01:00:13.360 --> 01:00:15.320
he's a liar. And I like what you said about

1089
01:00:15.360 --> 01:00:19.000
liars in in that that they're also thebes. That was

1090
01:00:19.079 --> 01:00:21.840
an interesting philosophy I found about liars.

1091
01:00:22.199 --> 01:00:25.519
Yeah. Yeah, Well, like I said, you steal, you steal,

1092
01:00:26.480 --> 01:00:28.920
so when you lie to someone else, especially it's a

1093
01:00:29.000 --> 01:00:33.199
really profound lie and an ongoing lie is you know,

1094
01:00:34.199 --> 01:00:39.039
you kind of steal what they thought was their life

1095
01:00:39.280 --> 01:00:39.840
from Yeah.

1096
01:00:40.199 --> 01:00:44.960
Yeah. And he also he also brought up an interesting

1097
01:00:45.239 --> 01:00:49.079
point about the Golden Arm. That short story. I find

1098
01:00:49.239 --> 01:00:52.400
that interesting because I went and looked it up, and

1099
01:00:52.480 --> 01:00:55.719
I don't know if I heard a similar story, but

1100
01:00:55.840 --> 01:00:59.000
it's on YouTube if you look up the Golden Arm

1101
01:00:59.079 --> 01:01:03.000
ghost story. There's this old recording set to like a

1102
01:01:03.119 --> 01:01:06.840
weird old cartoon, and it tells the story of a

1103
01:01:06.960 --> 01:01:10.079
wife or a married couple, a husband and a wife.

1104
01:01:10.119 --> 01:01:11.880
I don't think they're named, but the wife has like

1105
01:01:11.920 --> 01:01:16.159
a golden arm, and she makes him promise that if

1106
01:01:16.559 --> 01:01:18.760
if she ever dies before him not to take her

1107
01:01:18.840 --> 01:01:21.119
golden arm? Is that the same story?

1108
01:01:21.800 --> 01:01:24.679
It's a version of a did you hear it when

1109
01:01:24.760 --> 01:01:25.880
you were a kid? No?

1110
01:01:26.199 --> 01:01:26.639
I didn't.

1111
01:01:26.760 --> 01:01:28.960
Oh wow, okay, so it may just be a generational thing.

1112
01:01:29.039 --> 01:01:29.199
Good.

1113
01:01:29.360 --> 01:01:33.199
Yeah, maybe, yeah, No, it's it's it's it's folklore. I mean,

1114
01:01:33.239 --> 01:01:35.199
it's one of those stories that's just been passed on

1115
01:01:35.400 --> 01:01:39.440
and passed on from who knows when it actually started.

1116
01:01:39.559 --> 01:01:42.039
But yeah, it's in a lot of kids like first

1117
01:01:42.159 --> 01:01:46.079
ghost story books. Like I can't I can't think of

1118
01:01:46.280 --> 01:01:49.440
even the name of the story without seeing the walls

1119
01:01:49.519 --> 01:01:52.920
and windows of my elementary school library. It's just that's

1120
01:01:52.960 --> 01:01:55.280
where I heard it in library and reading it. But no,

1121
01:01:55.480 --> 01:01:59.559
it's an old, old, old old, almost like the it's

1122
01:01:59.639 --> 01:02:03.480
one about the the phantom hitchhiker where oh, yeah, you

1123
01:02:03.559 --> 01:02:05.440
know you here bar my coat and the guy goes

1124
01:02:05.480 --> 01:02:07.800
to the graveyard and there's his coat on those It's

1125
01:02:07.920 --> 01:02:09.400
it's over. It's way over than.

1126
01:02:09.320 --> 01:02:13.000
That interesting because I I don't think I've heard this story,

1127
01:02:13.079 --> 01:02:15.239
but it's possible I did. And it's just like you know,

1128
01:02:15.360 --> 01:02:16.440
in one year out the other.

1129
01:02:16.559 --> 01:02:18.320
But well, it's a jump scare because at the end

1130
01:02:18.440 --> 01:02:20.880
I could really do it and they refer to the

1131
01:02:21.000 --> 01:02:23.400
jump scare, but it's like give me back my golden arm.

1132
01:02:23.800 --> 01:02:27.000
At the very end, the guy yells, he yells take

1133
01:02:27.079 --> 01:02:30.800
it or you got it or something. Yeah, everybody goes yeah.

1134
01:02:31.400 --> 01:02:34.719
And also get getting back to my interpretation of your story,

1135
01:02:34.920 --> 01:02:37.800
I felt that he was stealing from her her name

1136
01:02:38.719 --> 01:02:42.000
because I don't want to give it away. But there

1137
01:02:42.119 --> 01:02:44.519
is that element of giving me back my golden arm,

1138
01:02:44.760 --> 01:02:47.599
and he was sort of stealing her name and her

1139
01:02:47.679 --> 01:02:53.280
presence for you know, covering up her death. Yeah. Yeah,

1140
01:02:54.960 --> 01:02:57.519
all right. So the next story that I really enjoyed

1141
01:02:58.079 --> 01:03:00.760
was The Devil Will be at the Door. Oh yeah.

1142
01:03:01.320 --> 01:03:04.480
And now this one is interesting because it appears in

1143
01:03:04.639 --> 01:03:08.760
Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year volume thirteen. Yeah,

1144
01:03:09.119 --> 01:03:13.159
now that that's this is like the the golden to

1145
01:03:13.320 --> 01:03:17.000
go back to gold, the gold the golden dream for

1146
01:03:17.199 --> 01:03:20.440
most horror writers. So what what was that like when

1147
01:03:20.440 --> 01:03:23.440
you got that email of her asking you to include

1148
01:03:23.480 --> 01:03:23.960
that story.

1149
01:03:24.559 --> 01:03:28.599
No ugly or happy crying you're talking about, Yeah, it

1150
01:03:29.760 --> 01:03:33.079
was it was more like the happy dancing in the kitchen,

1151
01:03:33.199 --> 01:03:33.320
you know.

1152
01:03:34.119 --> 01:03:34.320
Yeah.

1153
01:03:34.480 --> 01:03:36.760
Yeah, you look down your email and it's from Ellen

1154
01:03:36.840 --> 01:03:39.840
Datlow and the title of your story isn't it. You know,

1155
01:03:40.119 --> 01:03:42.840
it's like, what's you going to say? Open it up?

1156
01:03:42.840 --> 01:03:44.599
He goes, this is the worst story I've ever read.

1157
01:03:45.320 --> 01:03:50.039
How dare you think I'm there? Quit? Now? You know,

1158
01:03:50.119 --> 01:03:54.760
I heard shoe selling is quite popular. It is.

1159
01:03:55.320 --> 01:03:58.159
But obviously that was great.

1160
01:03:58.400 --> 01:04:00.320
That was great. That would have been often.

1161
01:04:00.960 --> 01:04:03.280
Yeah, definitely, it was definitely awesome.

1162
01:04:04.440 --> 01:04:06.760
And you know, I love how spooky it is and

1163
01:04:07.239 --> 01:04:12.440
it plays it plays really well with reality. I love

1164
01:04:12.519 --> 01:04:14.800
that play with reality, which is my cup of tea?

1165
01:04:15.920 --> 01:04:16.199
Thanks?

1166
01:04:16.599 --> 01:04:19.760
Do you do you play with reality and fiction? Do

1167
01:04:19.840 --> 01:04:23.159
you like like to mess things up and make the

1168
01:04:23.239 --> 01:04:24.119
reader kind of question?

1169
01:04:25.840 --> 01:04:29.000
Yeah? Yeah, I do. I mean I never really set

1170
01:04:29.079 --> 01:04:33.599
out like as a as a as a goal or

1171
01:04:33.679 --> 01:04:38.639
as a like this is what I write about. But yeah,

1172
01:04:38.760 --> 01:04:41.639
and most of my stories I think, you know, I

1173
01:04:41.639 --> 01:04:44.400
have to go back and look. But it's not a

1174
01:04:44.440 --> 01:04:48.840
big scary monster. Although sometimes there's a big scary monster

1175
01:04:49.000 --> 01:04:56.760
in there. It's some people whose reality they question their reality,

1176
01:04:58.000 --> 01:05:02.280
little little my cross shifts in reality are like major

1177
01:05:02.480 --> 01:05:05.199
unbelievable ones. But yeah, things that they thought were real

1178
01:05:05.880 --> 01:05:09.639
and trustworthy just suddenly are are different.

1179
01:05:09.760 --> 01:05:11.119
So yeah, I try to do that.

1180
01:05:12.079 --> 01:05:13.639
I try to do that in my fiction. I mean

1181
01:05:13.639 --> 01:05:14.960
that story. Think about that story.

1182
01:05:15.960 --> 01:05:16.360
It's like.

1183
01:05:19.039 --> 01:05:22.639
True that the actual percentage would be. But yeah, I

1184
01:05:22.719 --> 01:05:24.400
mean talk about basing something on real life.

1185
01:05:24.519 --> 01:05:28.000
That's uh, well, I know that the the bus scene.

1186
01:05:28.639 --> 01:05:31.119
He said that, yet you pulled that from your real life?

1187
01:05:31.760 --> 01:05:33.559
Yeah, that was my dad. My dad told that story

1188
01:05:33.679 --> 01:05:38.519
every Easter. Yes on the church bus just scared the ship,

1189
01:05:39.239 --> 01:05:41.559
all these little Episcopalian teenagers.

1190
01:05:41.639 --> 01:05:44.039
Man, that's kind of is very awesome.

1191
01:05:44.960 --> 01:05:45.840
It's very awesome.

1192
01:05:46.519 --> 01:05:50.000
There's also a spooky little country song in there, yeah,

1193
01:05:50.199 --> 01:05:51.800
that you heard with the lyrics.

1194
01:05:52.480 --> 01:05:52.559
Uh.

1195
01:05:52.920 --> 01:05:56.559
So you said in the in the uh story notes

1196
01:05:56.599 --> 01:05:58.480
that you can't find that story. So I went looking

1197
01:05:58.559 --> 01:06:00.519
to of course, because that's what you do, and I

1198
01:06:00.519 --> 01:06:03.480
couldn't find it either. But I did find a country

1199
01:06:03.599 --> 01:06:07.199
song that that was called Devil in the Doorway and

1200
01:06:07.320 --> 01:06:09.519
it was kind of spooky. But did you know that

1201
01:06:09.599 --> 01:06:15.480
there's like a movement of indie country music that does

1202
01:06:15.679 --> 01:06:16.599
like spooky things.

1203
01:06:18.360 --> 01:06:19.280
Doesn't surprise me.

1204
01:06:19.800 --> 01:06:22.679
It's actually pretty cool. I suggest looking it up. I

1205
01:06:22.719 --> 01:06:25.280
can email you some artists, please do, please do?

1206
01:06:25.480 --> 01:06:26.400
Can you name some of them?

1207
01:06:27.079 --> 01:06:28.800
Not right now because I don't listen to it all

1208
01:06:28.840 --> 01:06:32.440
that often, but every so often I do. Yeah, it's like.

1209
01:06:32.480 --> 01:06:34.320
I'll write him, ask him if any of them heard.

1210
01:06:34.239 --> 01:06:37.880
This, Yeah, they might have. There's one guy I follow

1211
01:06:37.920 --> 01:06:41.039
on TikTok who knows a lot about this type of music,

1212
01:06:41.960 --> 01:06:45.760
like the spooky country music. I'll get a list for

1213
01:06:45.840 --> 01:06:47.480
you and i'll email it to you later tonight.

1214
01:06:48.079 --> 01:06:50.159
Thank you, Jason. I would love that. Yeah, I mean, well,

1215
01:06:50.639 --> 01:06:54.199
you know, spooky, bloody things are like you know, whoops,

1216
01:06:56.000 --> 01:06:58.679
can you still hear me? Yep, I'll keep talking. Oh

1217
01:06:58.760 --> 01:07:03.320
that was weird. I transformed myself into a little swirling ghost.

1218
01:07:03.760 --> 01:07:07.119
Oh maybe maybe we've just switched realities.

1219
01:07:13.199 --> 01:07:18.000
I don't know, and we didn't keep keep going. Yeah,

1220
01:07:19.519 --> 01:07:22.079
no that anyway. Yeah, I would love to find that

1221
01:07:22.280 --> 01:07:24.480
that song. I can hear it. I can hear it

1222
01:07:24.679 --> 01:07:26.679
just as plain as day. I could play it, you know,

1223
01:07:26.719 --> 01:07:28.159
I know the chourt. I mean, it's just just a

1224
01:07:28.280 --> 01:07:33.039
simple three chord bluegrass waltz kind of sounded thing. With

1225
01:07:33.159 --> 01:07:36.639
these artists like you sound like the Luvin Brothers or

1226
01:07:36.719 --> 01:07:40.599
the Carter family. There's that kind of real mountain type stuff.

1227
01:07:40.639 --> 01:07:44.360
But yeah, there's a whole school you know, there's old

1228
01:07:44.519 --> 01:07:47.400
folk songs from Appalachia and stuff.

1229
01:07:47.440 --> 01:07:49.719
Like that they have the murder ballads and yeah, the

1230
01:07:49.800 --> 01:07:52.519
murder ballads. That's sort of what I'm talking about. It's

1231
01:07:52.559 --> 01:07:55.519
like newer form of that, but it's it's a pretty

1232
01:07:55.519 --> 01:07:58.400
big well it's not big, it's not huge because they're

1233
01:07:58.400 --> 01:08:01.920
all Indie, but there's a lot of them, I guess. Yeah,

1234
01:08:03.159 --> 01:08:04.800
And I thought that was really cool.

1235
01:08:06.800 --> 01:08:07.079
Find it.

1236
01:08:07.679 --> 01:08:08.920
I think it It would kill me.

1237
01:08:08.960 --> 01:08:11.480
It would probably destroy me if I actually heard it again. Yeah.

1238
01:08:11.719 --> 01:08:14.800
I think it's interesting though, because it's like, maybe it

1239
01:08:14.920 --> 01:08:20.840
went into that house clearly where somebody was listening to

1240
01:08:20.960 --> 01:08:25.000
it on their iPod or their iPhone nowadays, and uh,

1241
01:08:25.359 --> 01:08:27.039
and it disappeared on them.

1242
01:08:27.239 --> 01:08:29.479
It sucked them right in, Yeah, through the door.

1243
01:08:29.640 --> 01:08:36.720
Yeahana is in. Yeah. Now, Angel Mutter, that's a that's

1244
01:08:36.760 --> 01:08:40.560
an interesting name, right there, Angel Mutter. This this story

1245
01:08:40.640 --> 01:08:44.079
comes from your real life as well to a lesser

1246
01:08:44.159 --> 01:08:49.239
degree to like, it comes from a situation. I guess

1247
01:08:49.279 --> 01:08:51.840
that your mom might have told a story to you

1248
01:08:52.039 --> 01:08:54.399
when you were growing up. But your mother was out

1249
01:08:54.439 --> 01:08:57.239
a formula and she traveled with you in tow trying

1250
01:08:57.239 --> 01:09:00.399
to find the formula. And there's an interesting there's an

1251
01:09:00.439 --> 01:09:03.399
interesting story and how it correlates to Angel Mutter, Do

1252
01:09:03.479 --> 01:09:05.640
you care to share with us this story?

1253
01:09:06.039 --> 01:09:07.680
It's it's a lot, yeah, sure, it's a lot more

1254
01:09:07.720 --> 01:09:11.199
indirect than you know, the last one. All these pieces

1255
01:09:11.279 --> 01:09:14.359
like listening to the ghost, to the tapes with the

1256
01:09:14.439 --> 01:09:17.840
folklore professor, that all really happened, this one angel murder.

1257
01:09:18.760 --> 01:09:22.439
So yeah, she my mother. It was out of baby formula.

1258
01:09:22.520 --> 01:09:27.239
And this was like the late nineteen fifties. So she

1259
01:09:28.279 --> 01:09:30.119
was up in the mountains of Kentucky somewhere and she

1260
01:09:30.439 --> 01:09:33.880
was just driving, driving, and she was looking for someplace

1261
01:09:35.000 --> 01:09:38.079
she could get some some formula, and she saw these

1262
01:09:38.159 --> 01:09:40.560
lights and she pulled up in this little country store.

1263
01:09:40.720 --> 01:09:42.760
There was one light burning, and she went inside and

1264
01:09:43.760 --> 01:09:46.119
there were these old men sitting around the barrel, you know,

1265
01:09:46.359 --> 01:09:48.760
just kind of like they looked up at her, and

1266
01:09:49.039 --> 01:09:52.600
she's and I don't know she said anything. First was

1267
01:09:52.720 --> 01:09:55.039
one of the old metal care and he spoke in

1268
01:09:55.159 --> 01:10:02.920
this indecipherable, strange Appalachian Celtic accent, are you looking for

1269
01:10:03.239 --> 01:10:04.159
the women folk?

1270
01:10:07.439 --> 01:10:10.199
So they're all in the woods floating around or something?

1271
01:10:10.319 --> 01:10:13.439
Right, So full car, you know, And yeah, but but

1272
01:10:13.600 --> 01:10:16.279
you know she made it out clearly because here I am.

1273
01:10:16.319 --> 01:10:19.159
And you know she you survived, and so did she.

1274
01:10:19.680 --> 01:10:24.239
We both did. It's amazing. But yeah, so that kind

1275
01:10:24.239 --> 01:10:26.960
of stuck with me. It was one of those what if,

1276
01:10:27.319 --> 01:10:29.760
you know, well, what if the things that had really

1277
01:10:29.800 --> 01:10:33.039
been weird up in there these kind of strange traditions

1278
01:10:33.119 --> 01:10:34.680
in the back, because.

1279
01:10:34.439 --> 01:10:38.600
This story goes into Bunker's kind of territories in the

1280
01:10:38.680 --> 01:10:44.239
best possible way. And James Moore, may he rest in peace,

1281
01:10:45.520 --> 01:10:48.760
Yeah he said. He said on that panel at a

1282
01:10:48.800 --> 01:10:53.720
convention that Angel Mutter was one fucked up story on

1283
01:10:53.840 --> 01:10:56.079
a panel, said an audience.

1284
01:10:55.880 --> 01:10:57.479
That's the thing. He turned to me and he goes,

1285
01:10:57.640 --> 01:10:59.000
that's one fucked up story.

1286
01:10:59.479 --> 01:10:59.800
It's like.

1287
01:11:02.560 --> 01:11:03.600
I did a spit take.

1288
01:11:03.720 --> 01:11:06.880
Man, you must take that as a badge of honor.

1289
01:11:06.960 --> 01:11:07.840
Though I do.

1290
01:11:08.319 --> 01:11:13.000
Jim's Jim Jim, I can't. I wish i'd actually known

1291
01:11:13.079 --> 01:11:15.600
him a lot better. I a lot of guys know

1292
01:11:15.720 --> 01:11:18.119
him a lot better than I ever did. But every

1293
01:11:18.159 --> 01:11:23.359
time I was around him, such a powerful presence. Yeah,

1294
01:11:23.960 --> 01:11:26.920
just powerful and the world's best hugs, as everyone likes

1295
01:11:26.960 --> 01:11:27.279
to say.

1296
01:11:27.359 --> 01:11:29.760
Yeah, the bear hugs. I've heard about, the bear hugs

1297
01:11:29.920 --> 01:11:32.800
I've never Unfortunately I never met him, and I wish

1298
01:11:32.840 --> 01:11:34.560
I had. But I live up in Canada.

1299
01:11:34.760 --> 01:11:37.239
So, oh, where in Canada are you thought?

1300
01:11:37.720 --> 01:11:40.399
Ontario? I lived just about an hour and a half

1301
01:11:40.520 --> 01:11:42.239
north drive of Toronto.

1302
01:11:43.000 --> 01:11:44.840
Okay, cool, cool.

1303
01:11:45.159 --> 01:11:49.000
Yeah, So I used to have a passport, but I

1304
01:11:49.319 --> 01:11:54.239
stupidly let it die during the pandemic. I need to

1305
01:11:54.560 --> 01:11:56.880
get it again, but it's I got to start from

1306
01:11:57.560 --> 01:12:03.520
zero again, that's right. Yeah, yeah, but I should because

1307
01:12:03.520 --> 01:12:05.279
I'd love to go to some of these conventions in

1308
01:12:05.359 --> 01:12:07.720
the States. Yeah, the conventions.

1309
01:12:07.800 --> 01:12:12.960
Yeah, absolutely, Merrimack Valley Halloween Book Festival. That's where. That's

1310
01:12:12.960 --> 01:12:15.720
where I met all those guys. That's nice stomping ground.

1311
01:12:16.079 --> 01:12:20.479
Yeah. Now, the next story I really loved was the

1312
01:12:20.640 --> 01:12:25.680
Sea Shall Be Calm, That the Sea Shall be Calm. Sorry,

1313
01:12:26.680 --> 01:12:30.960
Now this one is interesting because it's based on German,

1314
01:12:31.680 --> 01:12:35.439
a German myth mythological folklore thing that I don't think

1315
01:12:35.479 --> 01:12:37.279
I can pronounce, but I'm gonna.

1316
01:12:37.039 --> 01:12:38.680
Try go ahead.

1317
01:12:40.279 --> 01:12:43.560
Oh god, I had it before this interview, but now

1318
01:12:43.880 --> 01:12:45.800
I'm looking at the word and I'm like, Okay, clobber

1319
01:12:47.000 --> 01:12:52.119
clouber urman cloudber urman cloudber Urman.

1320
01:12:53.039 --> 01:12:54.680
You heard it here, folks.

1321
01:12:54.720 --> 01:12:57.079
This is this is how you say the words. You

1322
01:12:57.159 --> 01:13:00.199
know what YouTube is going to click that out and

1323
01:13:00.279 --> 01:13:02.560
when somebody searches it, they're going to see my face

1324
01:13:02.640 --> 01:13:06.840
going cloud cloud Cloud clouder Urmina Clover.

1325
01:13:07.520 --> 01:13:09.479
Well, you all just have to buy the book and

1326
01:13:09.680 --> 01:13:13.439
then see the word for yourself and sound it out. Yeah,

1327
01:13:13.640 --> 01:13:16.159
Cloudburt cloudbertment.

1328
01:13:15.560 --> 01:13:18.960
Or something cloud. Yeah, I don't know, but it's a

1329
01:13:19.079 --> 01:13:22.800
very interesting, uh myth that they have. I've never heard

1330
01:13:22.840 --> 01:13:26.279
of before either, all right, but that is no I mean, this.

1331
01:13:26.359 --> 01:13:27.800
Is one of these things you talk about like basing

1332
01:13:27.840 --> 01:13:30.560
something on real life. This is like the least I

1333
01:13:30.640 --> 01:13:33.399
mean everything you know people say this is true. Every

1334
01:13:33.960 --> 01:13:36.880
good story anyway is based on your own life, just

1335
01:13:36.960 --> 01:13:39.359
in terms of being able to identify with the feelings

1336
01:13:39.399 --> 01:13:41.560
of the characters even if you've never done any of

1337
01:13:41.640 --> 01:13:44.880
that stuff. But in terms of incidents, yeah, this is

1338
01:13:44.960 --> 01:13:48.359
just made it up out a whole cloth. Someone had

1339
01:13:48.359 --> 01:13:52.399
a sea horror anthology, I forget what it was. There

1340
01:13:52.479 --> 01:13:53.960
was like two of them going on at the same time,

1341
01:13:54.600 --> 01:13:58.720
and they wanted sea stories about myths myths of the sea,

1342
01:13:59.560 --> 01:14:03.960
and you know, I wanted to find one I'd never

1343
01:14:04.039 --> 01:14:06.880
heard of before, and so I just you know, did

1344
01:14:06.960 --> 01:14:10.479
my research and found found the the the the cloud,

1345
01:14:10.600 --> 01:14:17.159
Cloud which at first it doesn't seem at first like

1346
01:14:17.199 --> 01:14:21.159
particularly threatening one until because it was. It's it's this

1347
01:14:22.279 --> 01:14:24.680
man in a in a in a bright yellow raincoat

1348
01:14:25.439 --> 01:14:29.880
with a silver hammer who who he's a phantom presence

1349
01:14:29.920 --> 01:14:33.319
who like comes on board his ship and he goes

1350
01:14:33.359 --> 01:14:36.840
around like Santa Claus when everyone is asleep, fixing things

1351
01:14:36.920 --> 01:14:40.319
like repairing things to help the ship. But if you

1352
01:14:40.479 --> 01:14:44.439
see him, if one of the sailors happens to see him,

1353
01:14:45.159 --> 01:14:48.680
the ship is doomed. What kind of sense that makes?

1354
01:14:48.760 --> 01:14:51.359
I have no idea, But that's that. That's the legend.

1355
01:14:52.039 --> 01:14:54.600
And you know, I don't know why that struck me

1356
01:14:54.640 --> 01:14:56.640
as a cool thing to write a story.

1357
01:14:56.359 --> 01:14:59.560
About, but well, you do really interesting things with it,

1358
01:15:00.479 --> 01:15:07.039
and not just researching that piece of myth, of German myth.

1359
01:15:08.119 --> 01:15:12.520
It's it's got a lot of It doesn't go too

1360
01:15:12.600 --> 01:15:14.560
deep into what it's like to be a sailor, but

1361
01:15:15.000 --> 01:15:16.920
you could tell that you had to research that stuff

1362
01:15:16.920 --> 01:15:19.720
as well. I remember thinking about that while I was

1363
01:15:19.760 --> 01:15:22.079
reading it. I was like, man, this story seemed like

1364
01:15:22.119 --> 01:15:24.000
it might have been tough to write because of the

1365
01:15:24.199 --> 01:15:25.319
research that went into it.

1366
01:15:25.800 --> 01:15:29.279
Yeah, it was, I mean the toughest thing at first

1367
01:15:29.479 --> 01:15:31.640
which sounds like it wouldn't have been. The toughest thing

1368
01:15:31.920 --> 01:15:35.520
was just to be factual about the route that they took, like, Okay,

1369
01:15:35.840 --> 01:15:38.399
where are they going to start? How long is it

1370
01:15:38.479 --> 01:15:41.159
going to take them to get from here to here realistically?

1371
01:15:41.880 --> 01:15:44.920
And then of course there's the added element of how

1372
01:15:45.000 --> 01:15:50.520
I time Too many spoilers, but time sort of warps

1373
01:15:50.600 --> 01:15:54.520
and it takes longer. It's time warping or space warping, whatever,

1374
01:15:54.600 --> 01:15:56.600
it takes them longer to get. But yeah, I did

1375
01:15:56.600 --> 01:15:58.279
a lot of research on how far is it from

1376
01:15:58.359 --> 01:16:02.119
Somatra to in Japan and blah blah blah.

1377
01:16:02.479 --> 01:16:04.640
Another reason why it works so well is because of

1378
01:16:04.720 --> 01:16:09.800
how horror works really well in isolated situations, and this

1379
01:16:10.640 --> 01:16:14.880
just fits perfectly into that. The person that's on their

1380
01:16:14.960 --> 01:16:20.399
ship is spooky as hell, and I loved it. I

1381
01:16:20.640 --> 01:16:22.159
wanted to know more about this.

1382
01:16:22.279 --> 01:16:27.880
Person, about the claubordman. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so did I.

1383
01:16:29.760 --> 01:16:33.800
He didn't cooperate. But I'm really glad you liked that one,

1384
01:16:33.840 --> 01:16:36.159
because I that's one of my favorite types of stories

1385
01:16:36.199 --> 01:16:38.439
to write. There's another one in my first collections, where

1386
01:16:38.439 --> 01:16:44.720
I'm writing all these very more or less contemporary domestic situations,

1387
01:16:44.880 --> 01:16:46.479
you know, and then I just have to go off

1388
01:16:46.560 --> 01:16:50.479
as I just want to write a big, crazy nineteenth

1389
01:16:50.600 --> 01:16:56.840
century sort of florid purple prose, you know, rap. And

1390
01:16:56.920 --> 01:16:59.479
I did that in the first in the first collection,

1391
01:17:00.199 --> 01:17:03.560
uh story called the Last Testament of Jacob Tyler and

1392
01:17:03.680 --> 01:17:06.760
then just sounds like what it sounds like. And then this,

1393
01:17:07.760 --> 01:17:09.479
you know that to see Shelby Calm was just my

1394
01:17:11.079 --> 01:17:14.119
chance to have to have that kind of fun, awesome books.

1395
01:17:14.159 --> 01:17:18.479
I'm glad you like, do you like reading seafaring stories?

1396
01:17:19.520 --> 01:17:21.760
Not as Yeah, when I get around to them, I

1397
01:17:21.760 --> 01:17:23.600
don't really seek them out. I just kind of, you know,

1398
01:17:23.760 --> 01:17:28.479
read them when i've I read the uh the logbooks

1399
01:17:28.680 --> 01:17:33.800
of different scientific scientific you know, journeys like that one

1400
01:17:33.840 --> 01:17:36.399
from the nineteenth century, and those are really interesting.

1401
01:17:36.720 --> 01:17:38.960
Especially if you ever came across one that was sort

1402
01:17:38.960 --> 01:17:43.119
of ambiguous as well. You know, something happened to the

1403
01:17:43.199 --> 01:17:46.000
ship and it disappeared, but they found the log book.

1404
01:17:46.760 --> 01:17:50.920
The last line is like, oh, what the.

1405
01:17:50.960 --> 01:17:52.119
Hell is it I'm looking at?

1406
01:17:52.560 --> 01:17:54.119
No, those are the good ones.

1407
01:17:56.279 --> 01:17:59.000
Okay, So I also wanted to talk about how the

1408
01:17:59.079 --> 01:18:03.239
world works. I love monster stories, but this one also

1409
01:18:03.359 --> 01:18:07.359
had even though it wasn't isolated. It felt isolated, and

1410
01:18:08.399 --> 01:18:12.399
especially from I think his name is Mike that I

1411
01:18:12.479 --> 01:18:14.319
felt bad for that character. But at the same time

1412
01:18:14.399 --> 01:18:17.439
I didn't because of, you know, the type of person

1413
01:18:18.399 --> 01:18:21.920
he is now. I found it interesting that Mike his

1414
01:18:22.079 --> 01:18:26.039
name was Mike, right, Yeah, he he actually comes from

1415
01:18:26.079 --> 01:18:28.680
real life too, from a person that you used to know.

1416
01:18:29.399 --> 01:18:32.920
And he said that Mike makes more than one appearance

1417
01:18:32.960 --> 01:18:34.600
in your stories. Yeah.

1418
01:18:34.880 --> 01:18:38.560
Yeah, if you tune into the strange little story I'm

1419
01:18:38.560 --> 01:18:42.600
about to post before Halloween, he'll make an appearance and

1420
01:18:42.760 --> 01:18:47.520
that too. Yeah, just briefly, Mark, he was. He was

1421
01:18:47.560 --> 01:18:51.680
my best friend from like age six through like twenty one,

1422
01:18:52.199 --> 01:18:56.920
twenty two or something like that. And you know, he

1423
01:18:57.079 --> 01:18:58.560
was a little hard to take. He was just one

1424
01:18:58.600 --> 01:19:01.760
of these guys. He was taller than everybody else, very

1425
01:19:01.840 --> 01:19:05.399
smart thought so he thought he was smarter than everyone else.

1426
01:19:06.439 --> 01:19:08.399
Now everyone has a friend where it's kind of like, yeah,

1427
01:19:08.479 --> 01:19:11.880
we love him, but you know, yeah, we love him.

1428
01:19:12.479 --> 01:19:13.920
He's a great guy, but he's.

1429
01:19:13.800 --> 01:19:17.479
A great guy. He was that guy for us and

1430
01:19:17.600 --> 01:19:20.039
for me, but I was his best friend, so I

1431
01:19:20.640 --> 01:19:22.720
took the brunt of a lot of it. And yeah,

1432
01:19:23.079 --> 01:19:25.600
that sounds that sounds self pitying and that sucks.

1433
01:19:25.640 --> 01:19:26.079
He was great.

1434
01:19:26.159 --> 01:19:27.680
He was a great guy in so many ways, and

1435
01:19:27.720 --> 01:19:31.199
he certainly we all changed as we got older, but yeah,

1436
01:19:31.359 --> 01:19:34.079
that was the that was the dynamic throughout a lot

1437
01:19:34.159 --> 01:19:36.039
of the teenage years, and so it kind of made

1438
01:19:36.079 --> 01:19:38.359
it into made it into the fiction.

1439
01:19:39.079 --> 01:19:42.119
I knew guys like that too, honestly. Uh and there

1440
01:19:42.199 --> 01:19:44.279
I went through periods where one or two of them

1441
01:19:44.319 --> 01:19:46.520
were best friends of mine as well. So I kind

1442
01:19:46.560 --> 01:19:48.760
of that's what kind of drew me to the story

1443
01:19:48.760 --> 01:19:52.560
as well. Not just the monster aspect aspect, wow, but

1444
01:19:53.199 --> 01:19:59.680
just the sort of controlling you know, he'll insult you

1445
01:19:59.800 --> 01:20:05.359
a at a whim. Yeah, yeah, and they were like

1446
01:20:05.439 --> 01:20:09.640
best friends. Playing cards with them was insufferable because have

1447
01:20:09.720 --> 01:20:13.880
you ever played Yuker? Canadians are big with this card

1448
01:20:13.960 --> 01:20:16.159
game named Yuker. So you have to pair up. Yeah,

1449
01:20:17.800 --> 01:20:20.479
you pair up with a partner to play this game

1450
01:20:20.680 --> 01:20:24.520
and you play against another team. And I was I

1451
01:20:24.600 --> 01:20:27.600
always had to be his partner, and if I ever

1452
01:20:27.720 --> 01:20:30.359
made a mistake, he would just let loose on me.

1453
01:20:30.840 --> 01:20:35.479
Oh man, yeah yeah yeah, so I immediately you know,

1454
01:20:35.560 --> 01:20:38.159
funny enough, his name was the same. His name was Mike.

1455
01:20:40.880 --> 01:20:43.800
So you were you locked in, you locked in fast

1456
01:20:43.880 --> 01:20:44.279
and hard.

1457
01:20:44.760 --> 01:20:45.000
Yeah.

1458
01:20:45.119 --> 01:20:50.920
Absolutely, you know, we're chuckling here as we have been.

1459
01:20:51.000 --> 01:20:55.000
But it means a lot to me that someone who

1460
01:20:55.119 --> 01:20:58.960
had similar experience, similar dynamic with someone close to them

1461
01:20:59.000 --> 01:21:02.880
growing up mm hmm, identifies with that. And so that's

1462
01:21:03.000 --> 01:21:03.520
that's nice.

1463
01:21:03.960 --> 01:21:06.479
I you know, I assume like after reading this story

1464
01:21:06.520 --> 01:21:10.600
because I thought of my old friend. He's still with us, thankfully,

1465
01:21:10.680 --> 01:21:12.279
and he's a good guy. You know, he's not a

1466
01:21:12.359 --> 01:21:19.960
bad guy, but sure, but uh, you know being friends

1467
01:21:20.000 --> 01:21:21.000
with him was hard.

1468
01:21:20.840 --> 01:21:27.520
Though, Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is, it is, It is

1469
01:21:27.600 --> 01:21:31.760
really hard. The day we broke up. We broke up actually,

1470
01:21:31.920 --> 01:21:35.800
you know, like like you know, boyfriend and girlfriend and

1471
01:21:35.960 --> 01:21:40.840
didn't get back together for like five six years. But

1472
01:21:41.159 --> 01:21:43.520
he he didn't like the way I was driving, and

1473
01:21:43.960 --> 01:21:46.239
he reached over and grabbed the steering wheel and like

1474
01:21:46.800 --> 01:21:48.840
pulled up and he wanted me to go somewhere else.

1475
01:21:49.279 --> 01:21:52.439
That just snap, you know, that's all it took.

1476
01:21:53.359 --> 01:21:55.720
But yeah, that stuff like that, it's like, you know,

1477
01:21:55.880 --> 01:21:59.239
you're like, you got to reach your limit somewhere, right, Yeah.

1478
01:21:59.600 --> 01:22:03.159
Yeah, but you know, use it in the fiction because

1479
01:22:03.560 --> 01:22:06.720
he was and he loved he loved my stories. He

1480
01:22:06.840 --> 01:22:11.439
was always really supportive about that and that's cool. Yeah,

1481
01:22:11.479 --> 01:22:12.079
he's a great guy.

1482
01:22:12.439 --> 01:22:16.439
Yeah. Now, the reason why you wrote this story, I know,

1483
01:22:16.600 --> 01:22:21.279
is because you were invited to an anthology and you

1484
01:22:22.079 --> 01:22:25.680
realized upon looking at your backwork that you hadn't read

1485
01:22:25.760 --> 01:22:29.560
a creature feature yet or a monster story. So I

1486
01:22:29.640 --> 01:22:34.279
found that interesting because I love monster stories and yet

1487
01:22:34.560 --> 01:22:37.119
a lot of my earlier stuff there's like little to

1488
01:22:37.199 --> 01:22:40.279
no monsters, and I don't get it. But now that's

1489
01:22:40.359 --> 01:22:41.119
all I write.

1490
01:22:41.000 --> 01:22:43.479
Is monster story monsters in there.

1491
01:22:43.560 --> 01:22:46.680
Yeah, so I was it's a really interesting monster too.

1492
01:22:46.760 --> 01:22:50.079
But without spoiling it, how did you how did you

1493
01:22:50.239 --> 01:22:53.000
create the monster in this story? Because it's it's really interesting.

1494
01:22:53.279 --> 01:22:54.840
I found it.

1495
01:22:56.079 --> 01:22:59.000
You know, it was probably guilty as being an extremely

1496
01:22:59.119 --> 01:23:01.239
metaphorical non you know, in a lot in a lot

1497
01:23:01.279 --> 01:23:05.479
of ways. Uh, I just knew that there had to

1498
01:23:05.560 --> 01:23:10.159
be some awful reason why Mike would be in this house.

1499
01:23:10.279 --> 01:23:12.600
There's a payback. It's like he gets all these things

1500
01:23:12.680 --> 01:23:17.359
that he wants, uh, sort of like a mythology and

1501
01:23:17.600 --> 01:23:19.399
like a mythological thing almost, and you get all these

1502
01:23:19.439 --> 01:23:21.359
things that you want, but you have to feed them.

1503
01:23:21.399 --> 01:23:23.319
There's this terrible price. Yeah, yeah, you.

1504
01:23:23.359 --> 01:23:25.600
Feed the monster, which is you know, in itself kind

1505
01:23:25.640 --> 01:23:28.520
of a big, heavy metaphorical phrase. But I just tried

1506
01:23:28.560 --> 01:23:32.800
to make it real and yeah, it just and you

1507
01:23:32.840 --> 01:23:35.039
don't see it. You never see it very clearly, like

1508
01:23:35.680 --> 01:23:38.960
like some some of those ambiguous films you know, but

1509
01:23:39.159 --> 01:23:43.479
people hate. But uh yeah, yeah, just sort of came

1510
01:23:43.880 --> 01:23:44.840
just just like that.

1511
01:23:45.760 --> 01:23:48.920
Yeah, that's that's pretty cool. Like you do get to

1512
01:23:48.960 --> 01:23:52.119
see some of it though, and I know that you

1513
01:23:52.239 --> 01:23:55.680
get to see it mostly through the protagonist's reaction to it.

1514
01:23:55.800 --> 01:23:58.600
I found, uh, he sees like a very small part

1515
01:23:58.640 --> 01:24:01.399
of it, and his action to it though is what

1516
01:24:01.640 --> 01:24:05.119
really sort of sells it, I think, because he freaks

1517
01:24:05.159 --> 01:24:09.199
out and he's like panicking afterwards and he realizes, you know,

1518
01:24:09.279 --> 01:24:10.520
we gotta we gotta leave.

1519
01:24:11.239 --> 01:24:16.640
Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah. I just yeah, it's interesting.

1520
01:24:16.680 --> 01:24:18.159
That's one of those I just let it. I let

1521
01:24:18.199 --> 01:24:21.800
that story, just let it off the leash. It just

1522
01:24:21.840 --> 01:24:23.600
felt like it needed to be as long as it

1523
01:24:23.800 --> 01:24:27.800
is and not just to really feel that texture and

1524
01:24:29.039 --> 01:24:31.920
feel feel real. So I'm glad. I'm glad you liked it.

1525
01:24:32.039 --> 01:24:32.319
Thank you.

1526
01:24:32.960 --> 01:24:37.279
Do you think that you'll approach writing monster stories again

1527
01:24:37.439 --> 01:24:37.760
at all?

1528
01:24:39.640 --> 01:24:41.680
You know, I Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, it's

1529
01:24:41.720 --> 01:24:44.680
funny because you know a lot of people would say that,

1530
01:24:44.720 --> 01:24:47.600
you know, I don't do that generally. I have, I

1531
01:24:47.720 --> 01:24:51.520
totally have. It's just you know, that's that's not the

1532
01:24:51.640 --> 01:24:56.359
main thing. But yeah, i'd love to Two writers, I'll say, right,

1533
01:24:56.520 --> 01:25:00.760
who who do the monster things? So well? Just every

1534
01:25:00.800 --> 01:25:02.920
time I read it, it was a British writer named Ray.

1535
01:25:02.960 --> 01:25:07.239
Clearly he's just I love his stories because he just

1536
01:25:07.359 --> 01:25:09.560
he's not shy. He just brings on the monsters, but

1537
01:25:09.920 --> 01:25:13.800
it's so real and the human human relationships are also

1538
01:25:13.920 --> 01:25:19.239
so real. Clint Smith. It's another guy's an American writer Indiana.

1539
01:25:19.840 --> 01:25:22.279
Same thing, not every story, but when he brings a

1540
01:25:22.359 --> 01:25:25.000
monster on, it's like, you know, you believe it, and

1541
01:25:25.119 --> 01:25:28.319
you believe it because the people are so real, you know.

1542
01:25:29.840 --> 01:25:30.640
Oh yeah, I'd loved it.

1543
01:25:30.800 --> 01:25:33.680
I'd love it. Try it again, Yeah, I think you should. Yeah.

1544
01:25:35.079 --> 01:25:37.079
All right, So those are the stories I wanted to

1545
01:25:37.239 --> 01:25:40.359
discuss within this anthology. All the stories are great, but

1546
01:25:40.479 --> 01:25:42.960
those are the ones that hit home for me the most,

1547
01:25:43.159 --> 01:25:45.600
and so I wanted to keep it down to three

1548
01:25:46.760 --> 01:25:51.199
because that would make the discussion shorter. But but I

1549
01:25:51.600 --> 01:25:53.720
had to talk about It's like four or five of

1550
01:25:53.800 --> 01:25:57.640
them there, so wow. Before we move on to the

1551
01:25:57.720 --> 01:26:00.239
final question, there's one more I have about this action.

1552
01:26:00.880 --> 01:26:04.199
And I was wondering because sometimes there are themes throughout collections,

1553
01:26:04.880 --> 01:26:08.039
and I was wondering if there's any particular theme that

1554
01:26:08.439 --> 01:26:11.720
ran throughout this collection that I may have missed or overlooked.

1555
01:26:13.159 --> 01:26:15.159
No, I don't think so. I mean the themes, and

1556
01:26:15.399 --> 01:26:18.079
especially I think you were saying earlier how you know

1557
01:26:18.399 --> 01:26:22.439
this reading is sort of an act of collaboration between

1558
01:26:22.479 --> 01:26:26.880
a writer and a reader the stories. I think that's

1559
01:26:28.359 --> 01:26:30.920
extra true when it comes to themes. I think you

1560
01:26:31.079 --> 01:26:35.640
find themes later. I mean, what was I saying earlier

1561
01:26:35.720 --> 01:26:38.239
about just you know, how this this was different than

1562
01:26:38.279 --> 01:26:40.600
the first book. I think a little more about mortality

1563
01:26:40.720 --> 01:26:48.159
and aging, a little more about being a parent, Yeah,

1564
01:26:48.720 --> 01:26:54.399
finding your true family. Just yeah. I don't set out

1565
01:26:54.479 --> 01:26:58.000
usually to write about a theme, but I think that

1566
01:26:58.479 --> 01:27:00.840
maybe those are fair those are fair ones.

1567
01:27:01.359 --> 01:27:06.520
Yeah. Okay, Now I emailed you earlier today. I've been

1568
01:27:06.560 --> 01:27:09.560
getting bad at not sending this email out earlier. But

1569
01:27:09.840 --> 01:27:12.039
I have a final question. I ask all my guests

1570
01:27:12.600 --> 01:27:15.760
because I like promoting. I'm obsessed with books and reading

1571
01:27:16.239 --> 01:27:21.000
and writing. And my goal here is to share writers

1572
01:27:21.399 --> 01:27:25.720
and to bring a spotlight to writers, all writers. So

1573
01:27:26.520 --> 01:27:28.319
that's why I came up with this as like a

1574
01:27:28.399 --> 01:27:30.800
final question for all my guests. And I want to

1575
01:27:30.880 --> 01:27:33.319
know And we've already discussed some of them, because you've

1576
01:27:33.399 --> 01:27:37.479
shot out some names, I'm like who, So I want

1577
01:27:37.520 --> 01:27:41.560
to know what author or authors do you think is underrated?

1578
01:27:41.680 --> 01:27:45.439
And people need to be talking about them more often. Now.

1579
01:27:45.520 --> 01:27:47.520
One reason why I asked this question is because I

1580
01:27:47.640 --> 01:27:49.319
watch a lot of book Tube and a lot of

1581
01:27:49.359 --> 01:27:52.920
book talk, and you always hear people talking about books

1582
01:27:53.159 --> 01:27:58.319
and authors, and there's these other authors that never get discussed,

1583
01:27:58.920 --> 01:28:01.319
and it's like, why are you guys talking about these

1584
01:28:01.359 --> 01:28:03.279
guys too, because they're just as good as all these

1585
01:28:03.319 --> 01:28:04.640
other writers you're talking about it.

1586
01:28:05.479 --> 01:28:08.199
Yeah, yeah, well it's it's hard. I mean, I wrote

1587
01:28:08.239 --> 01:28:10.239
back to you and I said that, you know, underrated

1588
01:28:10.359 --> 01:28:13.479
is a it's a tricky word because you know, it

1589
01:28:13.640 --> 01:28:16.439
raises in my mind, it's raises the question underrated by

1590
01:28:16.520 --> 01:28:19.560
whom you know? Because it's like, if you're talking about

1591
01:28:21.720 --> 01:28:24.680
you know, mister and missus America, who you know maybe

1592
01:28:24.960 --> 01:28:29.600
don't read horror, you know, they're they're not going to know.

1593
01:28:30.000 --> 01:28:34.680
Almost almost everyone we read, including Dean Koons, you know there,

1594
01:28:35.000 --> 01:28:38.479
Stephen King, they might have heard of. So then within

1595
01:28:38.560 --> 01:28:42.359
the horror community there are just all sorts of strange,

1596
01:28:42.560 --> 01:28:47.319
not strange at all. There's perfectly understandable things that cause

1597
01:28:47.439 --> 01:28:51.840
people not to know. One is just geographic British writers. Yeah,

1598
01:28:51.960 --> 01:28:54.720
you're right, And and the American writers.

1599
01:28:55.239 --> 01:28:56.279
I love.

1600
01:28:58.239 --> 01:29:01.439
All these British writers that I there's really formative to me.

1601
01:29:01.560 --> 01:29:05.960
When I started writing, Gary McMahon, Steve Duffy, Alison Littlewood,

1602
01:29:06.000 --> 01:29:10.239
Priyas Sharma, Ray Cleuey I mentioned with his monsters and

1603
01:29:10.680 --> 01:29:13.960
aevable human beings. Uh, so many of those guys, uh

1604
01:29:15.079 --> 01:29:17.439
and uh, I don't know. Do you want me to

1605
01:29:17.520 --> 01:29:18.359
rattle off some names?

1606
01:29:18.720 --> 01:29:22.159
Sure? Well? First, can you can you spell Ray Kluey's

1607
01:29:22.239 --> 01:29:28.840
last name clearly is c l u l e Y. Okay,

1608
01:29:30.720 --> 01:29:33.239
all right, now you can go.

1609
01:29:34.560 --> 01:29:36.399
I'm gonna rattle them off. My My wife is sending

1610
01:29:36.439 --> 01:29:39.720
me texts that dinner dinner is getting called.

1611
01:29:39.760 --> 01:29:44.359
So you just mentioned one or two and then we'll

1612
01:29:44.399 --> 01:29:44.760
get going.

1613
01:29:45.039 --> 01:29:47.079
Oh I can't mention one or two, Okay, I'll just

1614
01:29:47.439 --> 01:29:51.119
really fast. Uh. First of all, Mary Rickert Mary Rickart

1615
01:29:51.159 --> 01:29:53.720
who was a k A. M. Rickert for many, many years.

1616
01:29:53.800 --> 01:29:57.920
She's just a fabulous writer with such a deep, deep

1617
01:29:58.000 --> 01:30:01.159
compassion and uh, you know, her collection You Have Never

1618
01:30:01.239 --> 01:30:05.079
Been Here Small Beer Press blew my mind. It just

1619
01:30:05.199 --> 01:30:07.159
made me really want to do what she does.

1620
01:30:07.159 --> 01:30:07.920
To tell you the truth.

1621
01:30:07.960 --> 01:30:10.720
It's like a gold standard. Linda Rucker I mentioned before,

1622
01:30:10.840 --> 01:30:13.560
she's the writer from Georgia. She's back in Georgia right now.

1623
01:30:13.720 --> 01:30:18.640
She's lived all around the world. Incredible writer. Certainly belongs

1624
01:30:18.680 --> 01:30:22.560
to the achman Esque category in terms very very subtle.

1625
01:30:23.000 --> 01:30:24.840
She's got three collections out, but the one that I

1626
01:30:24.960 --> 01:30:28.359
just read called Now It's Dark from Swan River Press.

1627
01:30:29.000 --> 01:30:32.159
I literally people say I couldn't put it down, you know,

1628
01:30:32.399 --> 01:30:34.319
and you always you hear that and you go, really,

1629
01:30:34.399 --> 01:30:37.039
you really couldn't put that. I actually could not put

1630
01:30:37.119 --> 01:30:40.800
it down. It just glued to my hand for until

1631
01:30:41.079 --> 01:30:44.359
first story to the last story, and just so subtle

1632
01:30:44.640 --> 01:30:49.840
and suggestive, but so real and beautifully beautifully written. Anyway,

1633
01:30:49.920 --> 01:30:55.520
She's fantastic. Charles Wilkinson. Charles Wilkinson, this is another brit writer.

1634
01:30:56.880 --> 01:31:00.439
He is like a master of the strange tale. I mean,

1635
01:31:00.479 --> 01:31:03.800
he is just a master his collections, and he's hard

1636
01:31:03.840 --> 01:31:08.399
to find because his publishers are wonderful publisher called a

1637
01:31:08.479 --> 01:31:13.880
Jais Press from England. They're beautifully made books, but you

1638
01:31:14.000 --> 01:31:18.199
can't find them over here. He has a collection called

1639
01:31:18.239 --> 01:31:21.880
Splendid in Ash another one called A Twist in the Eye,

1640
01:31:22.520 --> 01:31:26.039
and they're very odd stories and very very beautifully written.

1641
01:31:26.439 --> 01:31:31.439
Some of my favorites this guy named Adam Goulaski. I

1642
01:31:31.479 --> 01:31:35.880
think a lot of your listeners are the writers you

1643
01:31:35.960 --> 01:31:38.880
had on probably know him. He's a really interesting writer.

1644
01:31:39.000 --> 01:31:43.199
He's in New Jersey. Only two collections of short fiction.

1645
01:31:43.359 --> 01:31:46.000
He's got one called Worse Than Myself and another one

1646
01:31:46.079 --> 01:31:51.039
called The Stone Gods, and they are just strange, strange stories.

1647
01:31:51.119 --> 01:31:53.640
He's a poet. He does a lot of experimental poetry

1648
01:31:53.680 --> 01:31:55.920
and he does anthologies of that, so that kind of

1649
01:31:56.000 --> 01:31:59.800
informs his language and his choice and just make these

1650
01:32:00.119 --> 01:32:06.279
and shifts and direction that you know, it's fascinating. I

1651
01:32:06.399 --> 01:32:08.840
just find his work is just fascinating. And then, my god,

1652
01:32:08.960 --> 01:32:12.000
so many other people Michael wie Hunt. I think it's

1653
01:32:12.399 --> 01:32:16.359
The Inconsolables, that book I've read that recently blew me away.

1654
01:32:17.319 --> 01:32:20.359
Christopher Barzak is interesting. He's he's a guy he doesn't

1655
01:32:20.600 --> 01:32:22.680
get for some reason. He doesn't get mentioned a lot

1656
01:32:22.720 --> 01:32:26.880
in horror circles because his first collection called Before and Afterlive.

1657
01:32:26.880 --> 01:32:31.479
It's also on Leathy Press wonderful book of Horror, Psychological horror,

1658
01:32:31.560 --> 01:32:34.520
ghost Stories. He just put out a novella called a

1659
01:32:34.600 --> 01:32:38.479
Voice Calling. It's essentially a haunted house thing. But he

1660
01:32:38.640 --> 01:32:41.640
really made his name doing by some of it's a

1661
01:32:41.720 --> 01:32:45.000
little supernatural adjacent, some of it's not so much. And

1662
01:32:45.079 --> 01:32:50.560
so that's kind of I think where some people tend

1663
01:32:50.640 --> 01:32:52.960
to find him is in that world. I would love

1664
01:32:53.039 --> 01:32:55.319
to see, you know, just get more props in the

1665
01:32:56.239 --> 01:32:59.399
horror and the strange fiction because he's just he's brilliant.

1666
01:33:00.159 --> 01:33:06.159
H Stephen Dines, Scottish writer one for sp Maskowski m Hm,

1667
01:33:06.359 --> 01:33:10.840
Joshua Rex mean, I think I mentioned Clint Smith, Ralph

1668
01:33:10.920 --> 01:33:17.199
Robert Moore. He is a deeply unique writer that will

1669
01:33:17.319 --> 01:33:20.840
unsettle you, like unbelievable in very strange ways that you've

1670
01:33:21.000 --> 01:33:24.720
never been unsettled before. But he's, uh, he's he's he's incredible.

1671
01:33:24.720 --> 01:33:28.159
And that was Glenn Glenn Hirschburg. Glenn Hurstburg is just

1672
01:33:28.279 --> 01:33:32.199
the gold standard in terms of realistic modern horror. Uh.

1673
01:33:33.199 --> 01:33:36.000
The collection to Sam's. He's got another one called tell

1674
01:33:36.079 --> 01:33:39.840
Me When I Disappear that just came out. He's he's, he's,

1675
01:33:40.000 --> 01:33:40.600
he's a master.

1676
01:33:40.840 --> 01:33:46.239
He really is nice. All right, So thank you for that.

1677
01:33:46.399 --> 01:33:47.439
That was quite the list.

1678
01:33:48.079 --> 01:33:49.199
That's quite the list you got.

1679
01:33:49.439 --> 01:33:52.039
There's a lot of new writers to check out. I've

1680
01:33:52.119 --> 01:33:54.520
heard some of them, but not all of them, and

1681
01:33:54.920 --> 01:33:58.840
uh so I appreciate that. Now, uh, before we go,

1682
01:33:59.159 --> 01:34:01.239
do you have any story worries or books coming out

1683
01:34:01.319 --> 01:34:03.239
soon that readers can be looking forward to.

1684
01:34:05.000 --> 01:34:08.199
Stories of books coming out soon? Just other than my

1685
01:34:08.319 --> 01:34:12.640
new collection in July. In July, the novel that I

1686
01:34:12.720 --> 01:34:16.800
wrote with my wife Julia called Saving Thornwood that'll be

1687
01:34:16.880 --> 01:34:20.680
coming out from Haverhole House and I will let you know.

1688
01:34:21.560 --> 01:34:25.159
And yeah, I'm really I'm editing that right. I'm doing

1689
01:34:25.199 --> 01:34:28.199
the close final round of editing and it's it's really

1690
01:34:28.319 --> 01:34:28.760
enjoying it.

1691
01:34:29.159 --> 01:34:31.960
It's it's good, it's awesome.

1692
01:34:32.000 --> 01:34:32.960
I think people will like it.

1693
01:34:33.079 --> 01:34:36.760
Yeah, all right, So where can viewers find you online?

1694
01:34:38.079 --> 01:34:43.640
H davidsurface dot net. Just my name, no punctuation, David

1695
01:34:43.680 --> 01:34:44.520
surface dot net.

1696
01:34:44.920 --> 01:34:46.800
And I highly recommend that they sign up for your

1697
01:34:46.840 --> 01:34:51.720
newsletter because that's a very unique way of approaching newsletters.

1698
01:34:51.800 --> 01:34:54.600
I find that fascinating and I can't wait to dig

1699
01:34:54.720 --> 01:34:56.000
into when they start coming.

1700
01:34:56.399 --> 01:34:58.319
Well, thank you, Jason, I appreciate that, and thanks for

1701
01:34:58.399 --> 01:35:00.439
having me on. This is really fun.

1702
01:35:00.920 --> 01:35:03.439
Thank you so much for reaching out, and I thoroughly

1703
01:35:03.680 --> 01:35:07.439
enjoyed these things that walk behind me and I'm very

1704
01:35:07.520 --> 01:35:11.039
much looking forward to reading more of your work.

1705
01:35:11.760 --> 01:35:12.079
Thank you.

1706
01:35:16.199 --> 01:35:18.479
If you like what I'm doing here and want to

1707
01:35:18.520 --> 01:35:21.920
support the channel without involving any money on your part,

1708
01:35:22.319 --> 01:35:25.560
you can do so by sharing the podcast on social media.

1709
01:35:25.920 --> 01:35:29.000
You can also write a review on Apple Podcasts or

1710
01:35:29.119 --> 01:35:32.279
rate the show on Spotify. I can't stress enough to

1711
01:35:32.479 --> 01:35:36.239
you how much I would appreciate that alone. Please leave

1712
01:35:36.319 --> 01:35:41.119
a review on Apple Podcasts or rate the show on Spotify.

1713
01:35:41.199 --> 01:35:44.039
As I just said, each and every way you can

1714
01:35:44.119 --> 01:35:48.520
help out the channel and podcast grow would be greatly appreciated.

1715
01:35:48.880 --> 01:36:03.800
Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening,

1716
01:36:04.359 --> 01:36:07.800
and I'm sure David thank you too. This one was

1717
01:36:07.880 --> 01:36:11.039
interesting because I got a couple of comments after the

1718
01:36:11.159 --> 01:36:16.520
show appeared on YouTube and people were saying it was

1719
01:36:16.560 --> 01:36:20.000
a really great and interesting conversation. So I want to

1720
01:36:20.039 --> 01:36:23.359
thank those people who came and commented after the fact,

1721
01:36:23.720 --> 01:36:27.840
I find myself not advertising very far in the past

1722
01:36:27.960 --> 01:36:32.800
before these live events because nobody appears to really show

1723
01:36:32.880 --> 01:36:37.159
up for them, regardless of my advertising. But I might

1724
01:36:37.279 --> 01:36:40.560
go back and try again just to see what happens,

1725
01:36:41.239 --> 01:36:45.560
to see if people show up. Because although the views

1726
01:36:45.720 --> 01:36:49.399
went up after the fact after we had our conversation,

1727
01:36:50.000 --> 01:36:53.159
the views were pretty low while we were talking, and

1728
01:36:53.319 --> 01:36:57.920
that's something I've kind of become used to. But my

1729
01:36:58.039 --> 01:37:00.720
conversation here, I kind of wish there was more people.

1730
01:37:00.840 --> 01:37:03.760
But in a sense, I'm glad that there wasn't because I,

1731
01:37:04.199 --> 01:37:05.920
as I said, I had a lot of fun talking

1732
01:37:06.239 --> 01:37:08.560
with David and it felt like I was connecting with

1733
01:37:09.279 --> 01:37:11.840
a person I've known for a long time but haven't

1734
01:37:11.880 --> 01:37:17.720
talked to in a while. And but anytime I'm talking

1735
01:37:17.880 --> 01:37:22.960
to people on my podcast, you're free to ask questions

1736
01:37:23.079 --> 01:37:25.880
during the live feeds. I don't mind at all. In fact,

1737
01:37:25.960 --> 01:37:29.039
if you're a regular listener, you've probably heard it before,

1738
01:37:29.520 --> 01:37:33.359
so you know what I'm talking about when I say, Okay,

1739
01:37:33.760 --> 01:37:38.800
we have a question from so and so so. Yeah.

1740
01:37:38.920 --> 01:37:41.960
So if you if you want to check out David's

1741
01:37:41.960 --> 01:37:46.359
surfaces work, I highly suggest that you go and pick

1742
01:37:46.439 --> 01:37:51.079
up yourself a copy of These Things that Walk behind Me.

1743
01:37:51.760 --> 01:37:54.760
I don't think you're gonna be sorry. It's a great collection.

1744
01:37:55.079 --> 01:37:57.359
It's one of the best I've read in a while.

1745
01:37:57.600 --> 01:38:01.520
And even if that while is only by a couple

1746
01:38:01.600 --> 01:38:04.159
of months, because as I said that, I was like, well,

1747
01:38:04.199 --> 01:38:07.520
I just read that Stephen King collection. You like it darker,

1748
01:38:08.720 --> 01:38:13.520
and that one is that one is something else. It's

1749
01:38:13.680 --> 01:38:16.640
very special. So that was a lie when I said

1750
01:38:16.640 --> 01:38:18.960
I haven't read one in quite so good in a while.

1751
01:38:19.039 --> 01:38:21.880
I think what I meant was, aside from that Stephen

1752
01:38:21.960 --> 01:38:26.600
King collection, it was definitely. I mean, these stories are

1753
01:38:26.680 --> 01:38:30.680
really good. I'm gonna stop blabbering now and I'm gonna

1754
01:38:30.760 --> 01:38:33.000
give you some suggestions if you want to help the

1755
01:38:33.079 --> 01:38:35.520
show grow. If you want to help the show grow,

1756
01:38:36.279 --> 01:38:38.399
it's very easy to do. So all you have to

1757
01:38:38.479 --> 01:38:41.760
do is go to Apple Podcasts. If you're listening to

1758
01:38:41.840 --> 01:38:44.319
this on Apple podcast you can do it right from

1759
01:38:44.399 --> 01:38:49.720
your phone. Go and rate and leave the show a review.

1760
01:38:50.600 --> 01:38:55.479
This will help Apple decide to share this show with

1761
01:38:55.720 --> 01:38:58.279
other listeners who like to listen to this type of thing.

1762
01:38:58.720 --> 01:39:01.319
So that's the best way, in the freest way. But

1763
01:39:01.479 --> 01:39:03.399
if you want to help the show. Otherwise, if you

1764
01:39:03.479 --> 01:39:07.319
want to spend your money and you want to support

1765
01:39:07.319 --> 01:39:10.079
the show that way, that's easy as well. In the

1766
01:39:10.119 --> 01:39:13.119
show notes is the link to the Patreon and you

1767
01:39:13.199 --> 01:39:17.920
can go there and sign up. We have a we

1768
01:39:18.039 --> 01:39:20.560
have quite a few I have quite a few things

1769
01:39:20.600 --> 01:39:22.039
that I like to add on there. You can get

1770
01:39:22.159 --> 01:39:26.680
fiction by me for free and whatnot. It's it's it's

1771
01:39:26.760 --> 01:39:29.680
something I contribute to as often as I can, which

1772
01:39:30.359 --> 01:39:33.800
I've been a member of other people's patreons, and let

1773
01:39:33.840 --> 01:39:35.640
me tell you, this is a lot more, I think

1774
01:39:36.359 --> 01:39:40.439
than what some others do. And I'm not life is

1775
01:39:40.520 --> 01:39:44.079
hard man and busy. I understand. I struggle to keep

1776
01:39:44.119 --> 01:39:46.920
it up, but I make a point to keep doing

1777
01:39:47.520 --> 01:39:50.760
the special videos like the reading updates or vlogs or

1778
01:39:50.760 --> 01:39:54.039
whatever you want to call them there and to give

1779
01:39:54.079 --> 01:39:57.319
away free friction is sometimes difficult to do because you're like,

1780
01:39:57.640 --> 01:40:03.279
I want people to buy this. So yeah, if you

1781
01:40:03.319 --> 01:40:05.760
want to help the show, there's your two options. Links

1782
01:40:05.840 --> 01:40:08.800
for all of that is in the show notes. So

1783
01:40:09.319 --> 01:40:12.600
thank you so much for listening. Until next time, keep

1784
01:40:12.760 --> 01:40:17.600
being safe, and perhaps most importantly, keep being weird, but

1785
01:40:17.720 --> 01:40:20.640
also keep being creative, and I'll catch you guys in

1786
01:40:20.720 --> 01:40:21.920
the next podcast.