July 31, 2024 • 57 mins
In this episode, Alan and Cat talk to bestselling author Peng Shepherd about multi-verses, meta-fiction, cats, travel, reality TV, morality, and much more.
Just a heads up, Alan had some minor audio issues in this recording, but it shouldn't be distracting.
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Episode Transcript
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Unknown (00:01):
If this goes on, don't panic, bringing Hope to the
world through speculativefiction you
(00:43):
Hello and welcome. If this goeson, don't panic. Today, we have
author, Peng Shepherd cat. Howare things going with
you? Things are pretty good forthe most part. I have I brought
a cat in from my porch.Actually, I took him into the
shelter to get neutered, and itturns out he has feline
leukemia, so I am trying to finda new home for him. So if
(01:07):
anybody listening wants a greatlittle cat, you should contact
me. I know this won't go out fora while, but I think it's going
to take me a while to find him ahome. But if you are interested
in Barry, please drop me a line.Yeah. So that's how it's going
take
care of those wonderful littlekitty cats.
Did I tell you? I think I toldyou that I have a new cat too,
(01:28):
right? Oh no, no. Oh yeah, yeah,yeah, we have a fourth cat now.
Oh my god, Alan, that that'skind of like crazy cat person
when you go to fourth. So what'sthis one's name? Well,
first, let me defend myself bysaying my kids talked me into
it.
Fair enough. His name is Drpipsqueak, Thelonious Bailey.
(01:50):
Hi.
That is a lovely name. It is, itis? Is that a name voted on by a
committee of your children? Ordid you pick
it? Oh, no, no, no. This was byauthoritarian Fiat here. I was
like, All right, you all want afourth cat. I'm gonna name this
cat whatever I want. Fairenough. He already came with a
(02:11):
pipsqueak that we got him from ashelter, and he's a very large
gentleman, very large, 21pounds. Yeah,
it's just it's so good to getkids from the shelter, because
they are so many of them outthere right now. They're
overwhelmed, yes. And this
poor little guy was superterrified. I have never seen a
(02:31):
cat that afraid in my life. Ohyeah. Oh his sad little face. Me
and my youngest son went out andpicked him out. Oh, good. This
was his idea, you know, so andwe are both just taken in by his
sad eyes. So, yeah, God help us.Another thing I want to mention
(02:53):
real quick. This is the 50thinterview episode that we've
done.
Oh, holy cow, that is wild,right? Man, we've been doing it
for what, like three years now,four years, like we started,
four plus four plus, holy cow.Well, thank you for keeping it
(03:14):
going, Alan, because you werethe one. You were the glue that
holds this podcast together.
No problem, no problem. I got todo something with myself. It's
either going to be this or someother thing. So am I as well.
And, you know, do this, I lovedoing it. I love I love getting
books. I love talking to theauthors. You know, it's a it's
fun. Yep, yep. Speaking ofbooks, I want to ask you one
(03:35):
more question before we getstarted here. Have you heard of
all store that's spelled a, l,l, s, t, O, R, A,
no, should I have okay, I
don't know. I don't know. So Ikind of want to give this place
a shout out, because they lookcool, but also I don't know
anything about them. I saw them.God, where did I see them? I
(03:55):
think maybe I saw them on socialmedia or something, but I went
to their website, and this isfrom the website. So take it
with the grain of salt, but Ihope it's true. All right. It
says founded by queer and blackauthors, all store is fighting
to put money back into authorspockets. Always good. They pay
enrolled authors $100 excuse menot, $100 100% of profits from
(04:16):
individual book sales. Themedian full time author makes
$10,000 in book sales below thepoverty line. Our stores goal is
to double this number by 2027,revenue from memberships and
book club subscriptions allow usto keep the lights on and pay
our staff a livable wage. Sothat's like, first thing that
(04:36):
you find on there. And I wentand looked, and it costs a
person like $5 to like, Huh? $5a month to subscribe to them,
and then you can get books forlike, I don't know, it's like,
around 25% ish off, yeah, so Idon't know. One other thing they
did say is, like, they're tryingto fight back against Amazon,
because Amazon's just, you know,the worst. Yeah, I just hope
(04:57):
it's a cool, legit thing. I.
No, this is you should check itwith Corey Doctorow. Remember,
he schooled us in everythingthat was all this. I'm sure he
would have an opinion. Yeah, I'm
sure he would. I should emailhim about
that story. I'm gonna note this,and hopefully I remember to do
it. But I know I thought youwould be interested. I thought
(05:18):
our listeners would beinterested. So if anybody out
there knows what's going on, youknow, shoot us an email. Our
address. Is it? G O, don'tpanic@gmail.com, so if you know
anything about this, hit us up.I'm interested in what's going
on with this thing, and if it'slegit, I hope it helps out a lot
of authors. So awesome. Well, Iguess with that, are you ready
to bring on punk? Shepherd,
(05:39):
I am. Which version of punk arewe bringing on? No, that is
a good question.
The the all new and God version,I think, go, You know what I'm
talking about. Yeah, all right,we'll be right back with punk
Shepherd. Okay, and we are backtoday. We have Peng Shepherd.
(06:01):
Peng Shepherd was born andraised in Phoenix, Arizona, and
has lived in Beijing, KualaLumpur, London, New York and
Mexico City. Her second novel,The cartographers, became a
national bestseller. It wasnamed a Best Book of 2022 by the
Washington Post, and received a2020 fellowship from the
(06:23):
National Endowment for the Artsher debut, the book of M won the
2019 Newcomb Institute forLiterary Arts Award for debut
speculative fiction, and waschosen as a Best Book of the
Year by Amazon L, which isspelled E, L, L, E, we're not
exactly sure how To pronouncethat, so hopefully I'm
pronouncing it correctly,refinery 29 and the verge, as
(06:46):
well as a Best Book of thesummer by the Today Show and
NPRs on point. Welcome, Pang,Hi. Thanks so much for having
me. Thanks so much for comingon. We're very excited to have
you here.
Yeah, yeah. I'm excited to behere. So I think, I think
we should just start with themost obvious thing, cat, your
new book, all this and more, iskind of a choose your own
(07:09):
adventure type situation. Whydid you want to write a choose
your own adventure kind of book?
Okay, so my favorite thing aboutwriting is structure, like as a
writer and a reader. So if I'm,you know, like looking for a new
book to read, or browsingbookstores, anything that says
that it's got a weird structurein the reviews, or, like, I can
(07:30):
tell from the, you know, fromthe back of the book summary,
that's my jam. That's what Iwant. And so I had been really,
really wanting to write a bookwith multiple paths in it for,
like, I don't know, years,probably, like 10 years, but I
wasn't able to until I came upwith a premise for all this and
more. I wasn't able to figureout how to make it work, because
(07:51):
it felt like, if you're gonnawrite a book with multiple paths
for adults, it feels like therehas to be more of a reason to be
doing that. You can't just doit, just just for fun. There has
to be a thematic reason to doit, too. And so that was the
hardest part, was coming up withthe premise that made it worth
it.
So at what point could yousuddenly go, I can solve
(08:12):
everything with quantummechanics?
Yes, I'm an expert on quantummechanics.
No, it was more this gonna soundlike a kind of a funny
roundabout answer, but it wasactually the pandemic that
helped me figure it out.Because, well, you know,
everything went from the crazyrat race, right, 100 miles an
(08:32):
hour all the time, 24/7 to justa stand still for a little bit,
and we were all sitting in ourhouses just waiting to see what
was gonna happen. And so I wasalso climbing the walls, you
know, like everyone else, andjust feeling really unmoored and
unsure and like, bored andterrified at the same time. And
there was something about beingtrapped in that way that made
(08:55):
me, I know it just made it feelmore urgent that I wanted to
write this multiple path thingat that point. Because I was
like, I have zero pass rightnow, you know, there's, there's
nothing. And it was something Idon't know. It was something
about just not having anychoices at that moment that made
me think, well, what if I couldhave, you know, like, what if
there was some kind of a thing,like a game or a reality where
(09:18):
that was the whole point of it,that you had infinite choices,
and that was the purpose of thestory, was that you had to
figure out what was the best oneor what was the right one. And
so that's kind of how the ideafor a game show that uses
something like, kind of likequantum mechanics to bubble off
a section of reality, and thenthe main character gets to play
(09:40):
in that world? Yeah, that'sinteresting, trying and changing
everything that she wants overand over and over, tweaking and
making mistakes and, you know,figuring things out like that.
Yeah,
absolutely. How did you, youknow, how did you track what was
going on when you were writingthe book and going
to wonderfully wild places withthat? Yeah?
Okay. Okay, if you believe it, Idid not have an outline until,
(10:05):
like, really late in the game,because I knew that eventually I
was going to turn this into myeditor, and then the production
editor was going to lose hermind when she was having to
proof it, you know. And so Ithought, You know what, I've got
to build a map. Otherwiseeveryone at the you know, at
William Morrow was gonna killme. And so I, at that point, I
(10:26):
think I was halfway through thesecond so I was like two thirds
to three fourths done. And thenI finally sat down and I drew,
like a flow chart, basically,that they could follow, that
would help them. But yeah, forsome reason I wrote almost all
of this book without a map. Itjust kind of lived in my head,
(10:47):
like a Yeah. It was, it waswild. I mean, I think, I don't
think I meant to do it onpurpose, but when I think back
to it, I think it was a very,that's awesome test of how well
the story was going to work.Because what I really didn't
want to do with the story wasmake it so that choices felt
(11:07):
random. You know, I wantedeverything to make sense and be
meaningful to the maincharacter's life, Marsh, and so
it sort of felt like, if I haveto write it all down to see how
you get, you know, betweenstuff, then it's like not I
could be forcing stuff thatshouldn't be forced. And I so I
just thought, if I can keep itall in my head, then it will.
(11:29):
That means it must make sense,right? It must all feel like
part of the same story, eventhough they are different paths.
Well, I I like the organicquality of that, and I think
that is somehow fitting for thisnarrative. But just have a kind
of let it grow, and then onceyou had it mostly grown, made
(11:50):
sense out of it. I mean, that'sreally cool. Yeah,
it's all it's worth it. Now itwas, it was a, you know, time I
was drafting it, oh,
there's always that moment inthe draft where you're just
like, What am I doing? How did Iget here, where it's, yeah,
yeah, although, in this case, itwas several times. There were
(12:10):
several paths
that's funny, that's funny.Well, I mean, I think that's
more realistic too, right?Because people's lives are
organic, right? They're notlike, I don't know process. Do
you know what I mean? There's noone sitting there saying, Okay,
now it's time to make thisdecision. I mean, I guess
there's a few of those, like,Okay, I've graduated high school
now, yeah, you know what I mean?But mostly, you know, after that
(12:32):
point, it's just kind of like,whatever happens to you, happens
to see right? And you kind ofmake your
decisions as you go, yeah, yeah.Totally agree. Right,
right, yeah. I like how you saidthat you wanted the choices to
matter. I've studied a littlebit of game theory for my job.
I'm not like a game design oranything, but it overlaps with
what I do, and one of the thingsthey always say is, make sure
(12:54):
that your choices matter. Youknow you're it's not just some
nonsense choice that's not goingto change anything, because then
you're the person who's goingthrough your whatever it is,
becomes engaged with it and ownsthat choice. So I really like
that you mentioned that that'sinteresting. Did you have to
build the character out first tounderstand what the choices
(13:16):
would be?
So Marsh is sort of a she'sinteresting. She did go through
kind of a evolution, becauseshe's, she did start out as a
little bit of a kind of a meek,play it safe, wallflower type
woman. And you know, becausewhat I wanted was, I needed a
main character who really had alot of regrets in life and who
(13:36):
felt that she had made a lot ofmistakes and missed out on a lot
of stuff, because that way, whenshe enters the bubble and she
gets to try all these thingsthat she thinks she should have
done if only she had been braverwhen she was younger, and now
she can do it. And so she alwayswas that way. But there was a
period of time where the wholething was in second person, oh,
(13:58):
wow, and yeah, and which wasvery fun to write, apparently
less fun to read my editor. Soat that point, it was I didn't
know if you the reader weregoing to be Marsh, or if you the
reader were going to be a viewerof the show, watching Marsh like
a fan. And so that it made itcomplicated in the earlier
(14:20):
drafts, because I was moredistanced from her. And then it
was only when we got rid of theyou second person that I really
got to say, you know, who, whoexactly is Marsh. I got to get
really specific about herregrets. And so that's where a
lot of the other details of herlife started to come in. And her
daughter, especially because shehas a she has a big fear that
(14:42):
her daughter, who's a teenager,is starting to kind of pull away
from her, and is seeing hermother, not just as a mother,
but as now as a woman, andseeing her as a woman who's not
very fulfilled, and who you knowdidn't reach her potential, and
Marsh doesn't want her to learnthose lessons. And so all that,
all that kind of psychologicalcharacter. Started to come out
much more, really late in thegame.
(15:03):
I think one of the things that Ireally liked about it was the
philosophy of lighted on fire,which Marsh is kind of going
well. This is something Ihaven't done throughout my life.
I needed to light more things,more marshmallows on fire. But
then she gets to the point wherethings are never perfect, and it
(15:26):
seems like lighting stuff onfire is sort of the the opposite
of perfect, and that she hasforgotten. And she's sort of
like absolutely not lightingthings on fire when she gets
down into this rut of, you know,well, no, this house has a
hallway that's too wide. Rand'shair is too short in this
version,
yeah. And I think that would be,you know, that's the really big
(15:50):
danger, is if somebody offeredyou this bubble that you could
go in and make changes that youknow, changes to your past that
would then affect your yourpresent life, and so you could,
you could, you could make yourlife better. You I think it
would be really natural to startlike Marsh, and you would say to
yourself, Okay, I'm just gonnachange like one thing, or I'm
gonna change the little things,or, you know, something like
(16:13):
that. And you would, you wouldenter with a clear vision, but
it would get really addictive,you know, and it would be really
hard to know when to stop, youknow, yeah, and or also, I think
just as hard, because it wouldbe easy to just keep endlessly
tweaking the little things,which doesn't seem that
important. I mean, it would be,you know, it would take up your
(16:37):
whole life, but it's not, itwouldn't they'd just be little
things. But I think even worseis you would probably go in with
a very clear line that you don'tthink you're going to cross
something that you're not goingto change because it's really
important to who you are, or itwould change things for other
people that you love, and thenit would be really hard to hold
that line.
(16:59):
That's a good point.
And I think that having it bethat seductive, and then to
couple that with realitytelevision, which has its own
kind of seductive, weird pull,is just, I think that works
really nicely together.
It was really fun to actuallywrite the show, because I put in
all of the commenters and theviewers you know that
(17:21):
occasionally break in and saythey, you know, make comments on
the choice that Marsh just made,or whether they think she's done
better or worse. And some ofthem are really supportive. And
then also, some of them aretrolls, and they're they're
pretty mean or disruptive, andthat was a really fun way to
look at her, because they got tolook at her from the outside
(17:42):
too, not just from within herown head. That was
actually a pretty interestingaspect. I feel like the one
troll, the the main trollperson, actually has a little
bit of a character arc, becauseI'm trying to find their name in
here. Yeah, it's, it's not amackerel. That's it not a
mackerel, yeah? Because, becausethe other, the other girl, says,
Holy mackerel all the time. Andso his troll name is not a
(18:02):
macro, because at the beginning,yeah, not a macro is a troll,
right? But at the but towardsthe end, not a macro is going,
oh my god, there's somethingwrong. We need to fix this. And
everyone else is just likewatching the show. You know what
I mean? I thought that wasreally interesting.
Yeah, yeah, it was. It was funto write not a mackerel. In my
head. He's a teenage boy. So I'mgonna say he it was, it was
really fun to write him becausein I did kind of wonder where he
(18:25):
was going, because I didn't wanthim to just be an annoying
troll, just to be an annoyingtroll. But it really started to
work out, because I thought thatkind of a person might be the
first one to notice thatsomething's weird, because he's
already looking for stuff that'swrong or bad about Marsh, and
everyone else is just thisrabbit fan, and so when things
do start to get weird, he is theone that's like, wait, wait a
(18:46):
minute. Did no one else seethat? Did none of you see that?
It's funny. I love that. When
Marsh starts making the choices,and, you know, not being content
with anything for me, you know,her character really took a
turn. You know, she really tooka dark turn. You know, I feel
like, you know what I mean,because someone who's so like,
at one point, she's like,changing the color of the
(19:07):
flowers, and she doesn't likethem right in the in the length
of the grass, or something likethat, you know, like, who you
know, I feel like we've gonefull Karen mode here. You know
what I mean, it was good enough,
yeah, but it was so, I mean, itfelt really true at the same
time, you know, the deeper I gotinto the story, because at first
I was also kind of nervous aboutmaking changes as I wrote,
(19:31):
because I was early in thedraft, I didn't know if this was
going to work out, or if it wasjust going to be, you know, a
flaming mess that I wouldn't beable to make a story out of. And
then I did get bolder too, asthe writer, as the story kept
going too, and so it just kindof, you know, together, Marsha
and I got darker, nice.
How did you how did it feel foryou to change the other
(19:55):
characters like because I feltlike one of the things that I
pulled out from all this andpart. This darker turn that I
started losing more is like,we'll just take Ren, for
example. And so the listenersknow Ren is like her old
boyfriend, who kind of comeback, comes back into her life,
right? And then becomes a maincharacter within the book. So
that's that's not a spoiler oranything, but Ren just changes
so much to the point wherethey're completely a different
(20:19):
person from one episode to tothe next. I mean, did you feel
like that was morally wrong, orlike, yeah, yeah, go ahead.
Sorry, yeah.
Well, yes, I so I, I definitelyfeel like that's morally wrong,
but I think it would also bekind of impossible not to change
other people's lives as you werechanging your own. Because
(20:41):
that's the whole thing, right?We are all connected to the
people that we care about, andso Marsh tries to rationalize it
by saying, I'm especially in thecase of her daughter, she's
really conscious of likewhenever she makes a choice,
she's trying to make it in mylike, with keeping in mind that
(21:01):
it has to make things better forher daughter, Harper, too. It
can't make things better forMarsh, but worse for Harper and
and so that's how she tellsherself, I It's okay that I'm
doing this, or is It's okay aslong as I try very hard. But in
that does kind of happen in reallife too, because if you're you
know, for example, in arelationship with someone, and
(21:23):
you get a new job, that's waybetter, but it's in the next
state that is going to affecttheir life, because either
they're going to move with you,or you're not going to get to
take the job, or they're goingto have to quit your long
distance, you know. And so it,it's not necessarily always evil
to make a choice in life thataffects someone else's life, but
it's kind of, this is what Ilove about speculative fiction,
(21:47):
because you I could have, youcould read a story that's set in
a very realistic setting aboutmaking choices that affect other
people's lives, but then if youdo it in the bubble, in a
speculative setting where it'slike, an extremely direct on the
nose example of how you can makea choice and affect someone's
(22:09):
life in the bubble, you areliterally changing their
reality. It's just really, youreally get to explore it, like
in a really, really deep way,because it's so enhanced or
emphasized, I
would like to know what realityTV you consume. I
have that question too.
(22:33):
So I I didn't watch a ton of it,actually, before I got
interested in this is thepremise, because I didn't at
that point, I just didn't have aTV because I was traveling a was
traveling a lot, and then when Istarted writing the book, I
thought, I better watch some ofthis. And so the show that the
show that I always come back to,it's the first reality TV that I
watched ever, that kind of everwatched, and it's the one where
(22:58):
the two people get married, butthe first time that they see
each other is at the altar,first episode, and they have to
say, yes, yeah. It's so wild. Imean, can you imagine? And so
the show is the season is thefirst episode. You get to meet
each of them separately, andthen the, you know, the final
moment of the first episode isthey walk up to the altar,
(23:20):
basically blindfolded, I think.And then they take the
blindfolds off, see each other,and they say yes, and that's the
end. And then the second through10th episodes are them learning
to live together and and tryingto really give marriage in
earnest try. Because the wholetheir whole thing is they
they're desperate for a lifepartner, but they haven't been
(23:41):
able to find one, and so they'reputting they're putting their
lives in the hands of expertswho've chosen someone that's
supposed to be really compatiblewith them. And so the point is,
can you, like, can you learn tolove somebody? And can you, you
know, put in the work to makethis marriage real, even if you
didn't choose them yourself. So,yeah, fascinating. So wild.
(24:04):
As someone who's been marriedfor 15 years, you know, it can
be hard to be, to be married tosomebody you like, I mean, I
can't even, does it ever workout? Does it ever work out?
Actually, it does. And so it'snow, I don't know. It's probably
in its 10th season or something.And so I think with a lot of
these shows, it becomesinevitable that the people who
(24:25):
start auditioning for thembecause they know the gimmick
they're going in with, they'retoo jaded, you know. And so it
kind of seems like the in thelater season, it works out less
and less. But what I think thevery first couple of the first
season, they're still together.They have a couple kids, and
it's kind of wild, because inthe first episode, she is so
(24:47):
surprised and just kind of upsetbecause the guy is totally not
what she was expecting, andshe's just so yeah, just so
upset that she actually criesright there as and then she says
yes, and. She runs out, and itjust seems like there's no I
mean, you just think there's noway. And they are still happily
married with kids andeverything's great. They really,
(25:11):
it really worked out. Yeah, Idon't
even know what to say aboutthat. The only thing we watch
are the cooking shows, andspecifically around Halloween,
when they're making, like, allthe cakes that look like
monsters and stuff, right? Iknow,
yeah. So now I now, I need towatch more reality TV. I am. I'm
open to recommendations. Oh,
(25:33):
do you do? You know the cookingshow where they give them, they
give them a really fancy,beautifully decorated cake, and
then they have to replicate it.And it's people who aren't very
good at cooking. There's a name.It's like the hostess is the
event Brown, I think. But it'shysterical, because the cakes
are just so such disasters thatit's wonderful.
(25:55):
That would be me, 100% rightthere. That would be me.
Oh, that's so funny. You shouldwatch that and then watch the
other the other one is called,is it cake in a people who are
very good at baking cakes, andthey give them an object, and
they have to replicate theobject in cake. Judges,
(26:16):
yeah, no, we've watched thatone. Yes, same, yeah.
Most of my favorites involvecake. Sorry, go ahead. Oh, yeah,
no, that's
a good one. It's actually, it'snice and short, and you're
always amazed. You're alwayslike, oh my god, how'd they
That's amazing. Yeah, people areso skilled. How? Yeah, yeah.
(26:36):
Pung, I'm curious. Like, I wouldcall it like a very Philip K
dickian kind of book, kind oflike, what is reality now and
what's not reality? You know,I'm wondering who your science
fiction and fantasy influencesare. Oh,
that's good question. I mean,well, I think yeah, we can say
Philip K Dick for this one. Iloved you big a lot. Yeah, yeah,
(26:58):
yeah. But I mean, my, you know,favorite of favorites is Ursula
K Le Guin always will be, yeah.And I love Margaret Atwood. I
love Jeff VanderMeer and KayJemison, yeah, Rebecca Rowan,
horse Fonda Lee, it's awesome.
What do you look for in a maybeI should say speculative fiction
work these days?
What do I look for? Hmm, I Well,I love if it's got a weird
(27:22):
structure of some kind, which iswhat really got me into NK
Jemisin work, because she wrotethat is it called the Broken
Earth trilogy. I can't rememberthe name, okay, but the whole,
you know, the whole thing, is insecond person, right? Yeah,
yeah. And so, and that's, youknow, that's really unique.
There are not a lot of wholenovels that are in second
person, let alone truly. So likethat, something like that,
(27:43):
really, if you're going to be,you know, like a little bit
experimental with the structure,I really love that. Or a lot of
times it's, it's like any bookthat you can say halfway through
the plot summary, but then atthe same time, under the
surface, something is going on,like that, kind of a, you know,
(28:07):
something, there's kind of anostensibly normal, ish reality
that we're looking at, butthere's something that we're
something else that's going onthat's going to be revealed
halfway through, but you canfeel it coming like that. That's
interesting. Have you ever readtoday Thompson's Jack DAW No,
but I'm gonna put it on my listnow. Does it do that?
(28:29):
Well, sort of. It's so. So I'veread almost all of today stuff,
and I'm very familiar with hiswork in I think the most
interesting thing is he actuallytook his real life and then made
it into a horror story, and, oh,like, he's the main character.
Like, really like him and thethings about him, oh, yeah, and
(28:49):
he's, you know, isn't it's kindof like a horror story, but it's
also like, very, likepsychological, and then it gets
very meta, you know, as it goesthrough, yeah,
is that, is that called, like,auto fiction? Is
that what that's called? I don'tknow
it was. It's very weird andinteresting. Yeah,
(29:10):
yeah, no, it sounds fascinating.Yeah, yeah, no. I noticed a
lot of meta in your book aswell. You know, a lot of meta
things going on. And I don'tknow if it's just what I'm
reading lately, but I feel likethere's a lot of meta stuff
happening in speculative fictionright now. Like, do either of
you feel like that's a trendright now? Is that something
that's going on? Or I think I'mjust curious what you all think?
(29:32):
I think it is a trend. I mean, Ithink we're seeing more and more
of it in fiction. Oh, God, I'msorry. Yeah. I mean, I think,
like, everything, everywhere,all at once. I think the Spider
Man and the multiverse, and Ithink there is more kind of
acknowledgement of sort of thatthere are multiple just sort of
multiple reality stuff. Doesthat make sense? Yeah, although
(29:56):
you know C S Lewis was doing itway back when. In the Narnia.
Remember the wood between theworlds with all the different
entrances to the differentworlds,
like portal fantasy type stuff?Yeah, yeah.
I Yeah. I think I agree that it,it's definitely like a lot more
prevalent now I'm trying tofigure out why. I don't know if
it's because. I'm sort ofwondering if now, because
(30:21):
speculative fiction has becomeso much more popular, like with
with just the mainstream readertoo, that I wonder if it's like
and also just we, we've becomesuch voracious consumers of
story, because now everybody'sgot, like, Netflix and Hulu, and
there's like, a million bookspublished every month. And so we
(30:44):
just, we consume story at a ratethat I don't think we used to.
And so I'm just, I think thatwe're all really sophisticated
at story now. And so maybe thiskind of, like meta stuff, or
kind of self conscious stuff, ormultiverse stuff, where the
certain realities are aware ofeach other. In some way, it's
(31:04):
sort of, it's like inconversation with that aspect of
the way that readers and viewersare understanding story now, and
like the, you know, there'slike, more of a relationship
between the storyteller and thestory consumer than in a way
that it didn't used to bebefore. I
kind of wonder this is morespecifically about the meta
(31:25):
part. But I feel like, at leastin the United States, we're
really like thinking aboutourselves a lot and kind of
trying to understand what ourculture is going through right
now. So I'm kind of wondering ifthat's part of it as well.
Oh, totally. Because, you know,I think, yeah, yeah. Lately,
over the past couple years, Ithink there were a lot of
(31:46):
moments of this has to be thealternate timeline, right? Like,
this isn't the real one? Is it?Right? Right? Oh, and
which one is the real timeline?
What's like all the tick tocks,the Tick Tock videos that you
see of like animals moving insynchronicity or something, and
they're like a glitch in theMatrix. Well, I'm curious. I'm
(32:10):
curious. All of your books areso different. Like, what are you
working on right now?
Ooh, this is the first time I'veever had to talk about, yeah,
this is exciting. Yeah. This isthe weird thing about books,
right? That you, when you haveone coming out, you're usually
part way into the next one, andso you're just, it's like, so
weird to have these two worlds,yeah, you know, right next to
(32:32):
each other, and they're sodifferent. So anyway, I'm, I'm
probably halfway through thefirst draft of this, and it's,
it's very dark and very serious,and it's probably the least
speculative in that it's, itdoesn't have, it doesn't have,
like, big science fictional orfantasy pieces in it the way
(32:53):
that the book of em and thecartographer and all this and
more do, right? But it's still,it's still, like, very weird.
And it's, it's about bodydoubles. Basically, it's about
body doubles that have beensecretly hired to impersonate a
like a famous, powerful person,and how, as they become more
(33:14):
entwined with each other,everything just kind of starts
to unravel. Well, that soundsfabulous. That's a lot of fun
right now, I'm having fun. I'mmaking a mess in the first
graph. Well,
I think that's part of the joyof writing also, is right? You
do this big, messy thing andthen you get to make it look
nice.
Oh, that's my cat. Sorry.
(33:36):
Class just came in and sang.That's, that's,
that's, I think that's good,but,
um, yeah, I have four. We usedto, oh yeah, well, we, I only
have the one, but he talksenough for four, sure. Yeah, he
really
does. That's awesome. So youobviously travel a lot, and you
can tell from from your books,right? And all this and more,
(34:02):
right? She Marsh moves aroundplace to place, and you've
another book calledcartographers, right? You just
travel for fun. Is this justlike your life has just happened
this way. And you know, what aresome of your favorite places to
go? I think
it's a little bit of both. Someof it was stuff that happened to
me, like study abroad, or, youknow, you get a job, and the job
(34:23):
has business travel, or there'srelocation or something like
that. But I just, I just reallylove it. It's, you know, I just
love going somewhere new,seeing, you know, like different
landscapes, different cities,different people. Like trying
the different food. I'm obsessedwith food, and so I don't know
it's just I it's not like I gospecifically to be inspired. I
(34:47):
go because, just because I loveit and I want to and I want to
see that place. But you know,inevitably, it does kind of
inspire you in some way, even ifyou don't end up putting it
directly in the book. But like,for example, I, I. Did put a big
chunk of one of the episodes inall this and more Marsh gets to
go to Iceland and does a lot ofwild things in Iceland, and then
(35:09):
also all the volcanoes inIceland may or may not decide to
erupt in that episode, because,you know, things are getting
more and more complicated atthat point in her season. So and
I did go to Iceland the yearprior to writing that, and I
didn't go because I thought Iwas going to put it in the book.
But once I got there, I was justlike, this place is so
(35:30):
incredible and so weird. It'sthe it's such a weird place. And
I mean that in a good way, butit's so weird. The landscape is
just so alien looking. You know,you go to the beaches, and
there's this one beach therewhere the sand is pure black,
everything. So you just lookdown the beach, and it's just
(35:51):
like obsidian. And then thewaves are, you know, blue and
white because of cold, coldocean water. And it's just, it's
like the strangest thing I'veever seen. It sort of looked
like what I thought after deathmight look like, but not in a
scary way, kind of in a reallynice way. It just I thought,
when I when I die, I bet this iswhere you wake up. This is what
(36:14):
it looks like. That's awesome.Yeah, it was, it was beautiful.
Yeah, it's
funny, you mentioned Iceland.One of my friends had mentioned
going to Iceland and it beingreally a cool place to go visit
and stuff. And I read it in yourbook, and I immediately told my
wife, I'm like, huh, we shouldprobably go to Iceland. That'd
be really cool. Like, startlooking up the flights and
(36:34):
everything. Like, yeah. I'm alsocurious about you mentioned that
you you live in Beijing? Wereyou an adult when you when you
were in Beijing? Yeah,
young adult. I was, I was in myreally early 20s, which is also
where I got my cat that justcame in and screamed at all.
He's also, he's born in Beijing.Yeah. He was a little scruffy
(36:56):
street buffing thing. I foundhim like, three or four weeks
old and and we've been togetherever since he's turning I think
he's turning 16 this year. Wow.What is it? Yeah, his name is
pinken. No, that's his fullname. His name is actually pink
and lunch box five, but he justgoes by pink and amazing.
(37:18):
Can I ask? Why lunch?
I don't at this point, I don'tremember. I think it was, I
think it was because he, oh yes,it was because when I found him,
he was starving, you know,basically, and so he was just,
he would just steal food rightoff the counter, out of the
stove. He tried to jump into thepan once while I was cooking,
because he didn't know what Imean, it was that was bad. That
(37:39):
was very scary. He's he wasfine, he didn't get hurt, but
he's scary. Yeah, I knowkittens, right? They're just,
they're like, What is gravity?What is what is danger? What is
danger? No,
they have no, no sense of it.Yeah, you watch them blithely do
the stupidest things. Most
of our cats are, yeah, you know,from the shelter, but we have
(38:01):
had one since he was a kitten,and after he got a little bit
older, I told my wife, I'm like,We're done with kittens. Are
too crazy.
Yeah, he's my first cat, andalso first kitten. And so I did
not know what I was getting intowhen I, you know, got him, yeah,
and I think that was good,though, because who knows if I
would have done it. And now it'sbeen so long that I have
(38:23):
forgotten exactly howunmanageable he was. I just
remember most sort of the cutestuff. So you know, I may
someday get a kitten again andmake the same fatal mistake.
I adopted two last year, andthey are nine months now, but I
got two of them because they doentertain each other. Oh
(38:45):
yes, that makes they do they doright now. We're trying to keep
the three from beating up on thefourth one, he's only been here
for a couple months, and they'restill like, in territory mode,
like, Hey, you stranger, we'regonna beat you up for fun. My
wife and I have to go down thereand break it up about once a
week. You know, poor guy, butyou know he's like, he's a huge
(39:06):
cat. And we keep telling him, Iknow he doesn't understand me,
but I tell him anyway, you know,Pippy, if he just smacked him
one time, they would leave youalone. He just looks at me.
Well, these days, would you mindtalking about Beijing a little
bit like, I personally am justvery fascinated with China and
Chinese history and stuff likethat. What was it like? You
know, living there compared tothe US. I
(39:29):
mean, it was amazing. And it wasso different, because I so I
grew up in Phoenix, Arizona,which, you know, as you can
imagine, it's just been there,very different from Beijing,
like, in a lot of ways. Oh, youhave been there. I'm sorry, no,
I'm kidding. It's a good. No,no, it's a good, it's like a
good place to raise a family,you know, because you like the
(39:49):
you've got a yard and there'sgreat Mexican food. So I went
from, I went from Phoenix toBeijing, when I, when I moved
there to study abroad, and then,so that was. Just, I mean, the
change was, it was like a changein every way. It was a change
geographically. It was a changein the way that the city looked.
It was a change in language, itwas change in food. And it was,
(40:10):
I think it was kind of great todo it that way, because if I I
don't know, it was justwonderful that everything was
different and kind of nothingwas familiar, even, I mean, I
can't really say that, becausemy, our family is my my mom was
born in Taiwan, and she cameover to the US, and she was
five. So, like, I, you know, Ihad grown up in like, American,
(40:30):
Chinese culture, but I had neverbeen back over there before.
That was the first time that Iwent back to Asia. I don't know
it was just so the scale ofeverything, and Beijing is even
bigger now, but even at thatpoint in I don't know what was
that like, 2006 2005 orsomething, I was it was just the
(40:55):
biggest city I had Ever been to.And it was like, like,
everything was so tall, and thering roads just went on and on
and, like, it was just, and Iwas alone because I didn't go. I
went for a study abroad program,which was, I think, a couple
weeks, and then I just decidedto stay because I wanted to. And
(41:17):
so the school just left mebecause it, you know, it was
University. So you're an adult,you can do what, you want. So
they just left, and I stayed forabout a year, and it was just, I
don't know, it was wonderful. Itwas so great to be out of your
element and then to find yourelement again, yeah, in that
place. All
right, so couple questions here.We're getting close to the end,
but I'm really curious, wouldyou do something like Marsh?
(41:39):
Like, would you go onto the TVshow, like Marsh, and if you
did, like, what decisions wouldyou make?
Oh, that's yeah. So I think ifsomebody offered me that, I
would not go, because I think itwould be like having written
this book and gone down thatrabbit hole with Marsh. I think
(42:01):
it would be so impossible tostop and it, and also, that's
the thing about perfection,right? Is because none of us can
have perfection right now,because it's impossible for
things to be perfect. It seemslike a great idea, but I think
if you actually got to perfect,it would be pretty horrible and
pretty boring, you know. And soif somebody gave me the chance
(42:25):
to make everything perfect, Ithink I would end up destroying
my life on accident, you know,seeking the thing that I found I
wanted about. So I think I wouldtry very hard not to let myself
go. But if I, if I went, I wouldmake a rule for myself that was,
you can only change maybe onething, and you have to stop at
one right? And I don't know whatthe one thing would be, and I
(42:48):
don't even know if I could keepthat rule like probably not
you'd make as soon as you madethe first choice, you would
totally lose control and allwillpower. But I would go in and
I would say, you can only changeone thing. I feel like this is a
good place
to talk about the endings, but Ialso don't want to tell
everybody the endings to yourbook. Yeah. Everybody the
endings. You're both Yeah,
spoilers, yeah. We can we, Ifeel like we can tell them that
there are three endings, yes,that you get to choose from,
(43:13):
yeah, and yeah. We're just gonnahave to leave it with that. But
you Yeah, you can there. Thereare three endings you get to
pick from. You can, yes, findyour way to all of them. And
I'm, I'm always so curious. Ilove because the the advanced
review copies went out a couplemonths ago, and so now people
have started to finish thething. And I just love hearing
which ending somebody chose, orwhich one, you know, like was
(43:35):
their favorite. It's like, it'svery fun.
And so everybody knows, wediscussed our endings before the
podcast started, and cat and Icheated and read all
three. Yes, no, it's notcheating. We enjoyed the book to
its fullest by reading allthree. That's what. Yeah, I
like that framing. I like thatframing.
(43:57):
Okay, so we have one questionthat we ask everybody who comes
on the show. What is bringingyou hope right now?
Oh, that's a great question.What is bringing me hope right
now? And now I'm just gonna,like, pause and really awkwardly
and like, think of, let me see,well, one thing so I recently
kind of bring it back to travel.I really recently went on one of
(44:20):
my first international trips fora while, because I was being,
you know, I wasn't flying in thebeginning of the pandemic and
and then I, you know, I've beenso busy with with work and
stuff, but I went to Turkey andGeorgia and Azerbaijan, and it
was just so wonderful to besomewhere new again. I had been
(44:41):
to Turkey before, but I'd neverbeen to Georgia, and I'd never
been to Azerbaijan, and theywere really different than I
thought they were going to be.And like that is also amazing. I
love it when I show up to placeand it's not what I was
expecting. And, yeah, it wasjust, I don't know, kind of like
feel myself come alive again. Sothat was. Really, really
wonderful. That's awesome.
(45:02):
I gotta say, I'm jealous of yourtravel. And cat just came back
from, I shouldn't say just cameback. But last year was in in
Spain, Barcelona, right? Yeah,Spain.
I was North of Spain. North ofSpain. Okay, okay, North Spain.
You know, in a 10th centurycastle. Oh, wow. So, yeah, it
was found.
I need to get back travelingagain.
(45:22):
Gotta go to Iceland. I know,right? I know. If you, if you go
to Iceland, you have to email meand I'll tell you the name of
the beach. I mean, you'll,you'll probably see the name of
the beach, because it's veryfamous. But just let me know,
because I'll, I'll send it overand you can, it's very easy to
get there. Awesome.
That's on my list of places togo. So, yeah,
Mine too. Mine too. Yeah. Well,
(45:43):
it's, it's gorgeous. What newwork do you have coming out that
you would like to promote? Oh,well, I mean, it's going to be
this book, all this and more.And where can people find you
online? So I have a website,which is punk shepherd.com and I
am sort of on x and sort of onthreads, but mostly Instagram
and my name at all those places.It's just at punk Shepherd,
(46:06):
awesome and punk Shepherd justso everyone knows is because I
me keep mispronouncing it is, P,E, N, G, S, H E, P, E R D,
oh, it's S, H E, P, H E R D.
I'm sorry. Geez. Okay, so I'vealso been spelling your name.
Oh, it's okay.
No, it's okay. There's like, amillion ways to spell shepherd,
and mine is the least popular. Iguess
(46:28):
I get that totally Well, thanksso much for coming on. I really
appreciate it. Great timechatting with you. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. I had a great time.Thank you.
And that was our interview withHong Shepherd before we keep
going. If you like what we'redoing, please, please, please
share us with your friends onFacebook or x or blue sky or
(46:50):
mastodon. I don't know. Have Inamed them all now, I'm not sure
there's 1000s now, yeah, ifyou're
on whatever you're on, pleaseshare us there. That is honestly
the most helpful thing that youcould do. You could also rate or
review us, if you want to. We'reactually starting to get a
decent amount of reviews, Ithink. What five the last time I
checked. So, I mean, small,niche podcast, I'm pretty proud
(47:15):
about that. So Well,
that's, that's, that's lettingreviewers and viewers listeners,
I guess you're not reallyviewers, but letting them know
you could be review number six,
right? That's right. So go outthere and do that. Go out there
and do that. And if you lovewhat we're doing and really want
to support us on the monetarylevel, there's two ways you can
(47:36):
do that. You can go to coffee,that's k, O, f, i, and just
search us there, and you cangive us a one time donation
there. I think you can subscribethere too and give us a monthly
donation. But mostly I put stuffon our Patreon, and our Patreon
is patreon.com/if this goes on,so you can find us there as
well. And that's kind of when,when I update Patreon and, and
(47:58):
we do patron picks and thingslike that. That's, that's where
you'll get all the stuff. Andcat has, like, discounts to her
classes there, and there's someessays there. There's some bonus
episodes that have never beenreleased on this RSS feed there
that you can find, and a bunchof random stuff that we've built
(48:19):
up over the like four and a halfyears we've been doing this, so
go and check that out. So first,how did you feel about the the
Pung interview? I
thought that was great. It wassuch a smart book, and also not
just a smart book, but a veryenjoyable book.
Yeah, at first, I wasn't surewhat to expect. You know, I
(48:43):
really enjoyed the Choose youradventure aspect of it, yeah.
And she kind of said somethinglike this during the interview.
You don't really expectsomething like that. Of how
could I say like an adult book,right? You know, I mean, right,
right?
No. And I've seen short stories.I've seen people riff on the
Choose Your Own Adventure withshort stories a few times, but
(49:04):
not in a novel that'sinteresting.
And like I said, you know, thechoices were so hard to make. I
seriously, there was times whereI was like, I have no idea which
way to go on this. Right, right.So I love that. But
so what are you reading thesedays? What
(49:25):
am I reading right now? Well,two things. One is I am beta
reading for a friend of mine. Sothe book I'm reading is called
the diplomacy of the knife, andif anyone read cm Chaplin's The
fall is all there is, which is aterrific book I get to read, the
second book in the other bookthat I have just been binging
(49:49):
the series I'm on book six, thelast one now, and slowing down
because it's the last one, isthis crazy series called dungeon
crawler, Carl. I. By Mattdinaman, which, if you play
video games, this is just, it'sa hook, and if you liked the it
actually had some kind of weirdoverlap with peng's book in that
(50:11):
it has a reality televisionaspect to it. But it is a funny,
funny book, and I highlyrecommend it.
Oh my gosh, I need to check thatwent out that sounds super cool.
It
is, it's, it's hysterical, andit's got the hero. The hero is
Carl, but then his sidekick isthis Persian cat named Princess
(50:33):
donut, who happened to kind ofgo into the dungeon with him and
achieve sentience. And it donutis just the best character ever,
ever. I
love that. That is so hilarious.Oh my gosh, I'm gonna have to
check that I am. I'm almostcertain that someone else
brought that book up on thispodcast. I am almost certain of
(50:54):
it.
It's got it's an indie, indiebook. You can get it on Kindle
Unlimited, and I think it's oneof those indie books that became
kind of a phenomenon, like, whatis it? Uh, legends and lattes.
Because just so many because youread it, and you're just like,
oh my god, this is so good.Like, I texted, I texted, like a
couple people, and I was like,you have to read this. It's so
good, you know, which, becauseit's so much
(51:17):
fun, that's awesome. That'sawesome. I'll definitely check
that out. What are you reading?So let me see. What am I
reading? I always think aboutit. Let's see. Okay, I've got,
I've got a good mix going onhere. First, I want to break
this one up. First, I'm readingwomen of horror and speculative
fiction in their own words,conversations with authors and
editors and guess who'sinterviewed in that book
(51:43):
I'd forgotten. I God, I haven'tseen that yet. Okay, yeah,
awesome.
Or at least it's coming outsoon. I'm not sure if it's out
or coming out soon. Sometimes Iforget. I do have to, I do have
to make an editorial comment,though, that I love some of your
answers. Some of the questionsare very academic, right? Yes.
And the one question was, Idon't know it's like, four
(52:03):
sentences long or something, andyour answer is like, nope.
I don't remember when that was,but I laughed so hard when I
read that. I was like, Yeah,okay.
Oh, that was so funny.
Now have you come back and seewhat I wrote? So funny, but that
(52:24):
can't be the only thing you'rereading. What else are you
reading?
No, no, no, no, it's not whatelse am I reading? I'm reading
Countess. Countess Countess bySusan Palumbo, oh, I have not
read it. I literally juststarted that earlier today.
Awesome. It's a novella. It's aspace opera. And listeners
should know, because weinterviewed Susan on here, gosh,
(52:46):
I don't know, six months ago orsomething, and she's mostly a
horror writer, but it's kind oflike it's space opera, but it's,
she says it's on the dark side,right? So it's dark space Oh no,
I guess, yeah, yeah. So far sogood. I'm like, 20 pages into
it. So I'm not very far, verycool, possibly reading. I'm also
reading Persepolis rising theseventh, oh yeah, I like that a
(53:09):
lot, seventh book in The Expanseseries. Yeah, it's like, so I
watched the show before I readthe book, right? So, oh yeah, I
knew most, more or less you knowwhat was going to happen in the
first six but now I haven't theslightest idea.
Yeah, new territory, baby.
(53:31):
I like that. And I will say theexpanse books are good enough
that, in my opinion, if you'veseen the show, you could read
them and it's, yes, it's legit,it's good.
I think, I think if you've seenthis series and you liked it,
you would like the book evenmore, because you get more
insight into some of thecharacters. And, you know,
there's, there's always morehappening in a book than there
(53:52):
is in a dramatic version.Definitely,
definitely. And you know, I lovethose characters so much,
especially Naomi and, oh, mygod, Well, Bobby, too, but
what's the guy's name? Not thelead guy, the, oh yeah, the
crazy one, right? He's like asociopath. You know? He's the
he's the mechanic. I don't
know which one, ah, it's killingme. Oh God, I don't remember his
(54:17):
name. I'm not good with me. I'mterrible
with names, too. That guy, he'sjust,
he's like, the scariest help,and he's also awesome, like, I
don't know. Like, he's kind oflike a sociopathic teddy bear.
Like, I don't know. I think,
I think there's somethingcompelling about sort of that
sort of character. When they'reon your side or on the side that
(54:40):
you you kind of hope for, right?
That's interesting. I neverthought about that. I guess I
can't. I honestly can't think ofany books or that's the case.
LAUREL
K Hamilton has one of in in theAnita Blake books has one of the
characters is a sociopath, buthe's in three. Called to Anita.
(55:03):
This may be more than you wantedto know about Laurel K Hamilton
mythos, but I'm happy to expandon it.
Well, no, feel free to expand.I'm not familiar with her work
at all. Well,
she writes vampire books, andthey're kind of smutty. And I'm
sure she would agree thatthey're kind of smutty. And
there, there is. It'sinteresting because, like, they
start out reasonably tame, andthen there's a point where she
(55:26):
sort of takes a hard turn intosmut, and then kind of comes
back from that. But they arethere. One of my comfort reads,
actually, there's a bajillion ofthem, and whenever a new one
comes out, I reread a bunch ofthem, and I just love her
awesome, awesome, interesting. Ido love super long series, just
for that reason, of, like, Ineed to, I need, I just want to
(55:50):
read something that's that's thesame, but different, because I
don't like to reread very much,but I still want, like, that
same vibe, you know what? Imean,
you know? Yeah, no, I really, Ireread a lot, but usually it's
because, like, a new book in theseries has come out, and so I'll
go back and reread, by
the way, and then, then we'llwrap up. But did you have you
read cadwell's new book yet?
(56:10):
No, I'm looking forward to it,though. I just got it Yes, down
at the bookstore. Yeah. So yes,yes. Have you
not yet? It's, I'm in the exactsame situation as you. It's
sitting right here, right nextto me, but I haven't found the
time to read
it yet. There are so many goodbooks and so so, so little time,
(56:30):
right, sadly, right?
So true, too, true. Anyway, theonly other thing I'm reading is
I'm reading a back issue ofdream Forge, which I'm trying to
catch up on as well. So, oh no.A shout out to Scott and Jane.
Hey guys and yeah, that's it. Soyou ready to wrap up? I think
so, alrighty, okay. So that wasour episode. We are bringing
(56:53):
you, hope one episode at a time.
You If this goes on, don'tpanic. Is edited by Alan Bailey
and produced by Ken Schrader.Our theme music is by Father
flamethrower. Additional musicis by Christopher snyderowski,
(57:13):
and outro music by sable Aradia,Intro by Dave Robinson. Special
thanks to our guest, PengShepherd. Thanks for supporting
us, and We'll see you againsoon. Bye,
(57:40):
been letting go in my catapult Ibelieve in.
If this goes on, don't panic, bringing Hope to the
world through speculativefiction you
(00:43):
Hello and welcome. If this goeson, don't panic. Today, we have
author, Peng Shepherd cat. Howare things going with
you? Things are pretty good forthe most part. I have I brought
a cat in from my porch.Actually, I took him into the
shelter to get neutered, and itturns out he has feline
leukemia, so I am trying to finda new home for him. So if
(01:07):
anybody listening wants a greatlittle cat, you should contact
me. I know this won't go out fora while, but I think it's going
to take me a while to find him ahome. But if you are interested
in Barry, please drop me a line.Yeah. So that's how it's going
take
care of those wonderful littlekitty cats.
Did I tell you? I think I toldyou that I have a new cat too,
(01:28):
right? Oh no, no. Oh yeah, yeah,yeah, we have a fourth cat now.
Oh my god, Alan, that that'skind of like crazy cat person
when you go to fourth. So what'sthis one's name? Well,
first, let me defend myself bysaying my kids talked me into
it.
Fair enough. His name is Drpipsqueak, Thelonious Bailey.
(01:50):
Hi.
That is a lovely name. It is, itis? Is that a name voted on by a
committee of your children? Ordid you pick
it? Oh, no, no, no. This was byauthoritarian Fiat here. I was
like, All right, you all want afourth cat. I'm gonna name this
cat whatever I want. Fairenough. He already came with a
(02:11):
pipsqueak that we got him from ashelter, and he's a very large
gentleman, very large, 21pounds. Yeah,
it's just it's so good to getkids from the shelter, because
they are so many of them outthere right now. They're
overwhelmed, yes. And this
poor little guy was superterrified. I have never seen a
(02:31):
cat that afraid in my life. Ohyeah. Oh his sad little face. Me
and my youngest son went out andpicked him out. Oh, good. This
was his idea, you know, so andwe are both just taken in by his
sad eyes. So, yeah, God help us.Another thing I want to mention
(02:53):
real quick. This is the 50thinterview episode that we've
done.
Oh, holy cow, that is wild,right? Man, we've been doing it
for what, like three years now,four years, like we started,
four plus four plus, holy cow.Well, thank you for keeping it
(03:14):
going, Alan, because you werethe one. You were the glue that
holds this podcast together.
No problem, no problem. I got todo something with myself. It's
either going to be this or someother thing. So am I as well.
And, you know, do this, I lovedoing it. I love I love getting
books. I love talking to theauthors. You know, it's a it's
fun. Yep, yep. Speaking ofbooks, I want to ask you one
(03:35):
more question before we getstarted here. Have you heard of
all store that's spelled a, l,l, s, t, O, R, A,
no, should I have okay, I
don't know. I don't know. So Ikind of want to give this place
a shout out, because they lookcool, but also I don't know
anything about them. I saw them.God, where did I see them? I
(03:55):
think maybe I saw them on socialmedia or something, but I went
to their website, and this isfrom the website. So take it
with the grain of salt, but Ihope it's true. All right. It
says founded by queer and blackauthors, all store is fighting
to put money back into authorspockets. Always good. They pay
enrolled authors $100 excuse menot, $100 100% of profits from
(04:16):
individual book sales. Themedian full time author makes
$10,000 in book sales below thepoverty line. Our stores goal is
to double this number by 2027,revenue from memberships and
book club subscriptions allow usto keep the lights on and pay
our staff a livable wage. Sothat's like, first thing that
(04:36):
you find on there. And I wentand looked, and it costs a
person like $5 to like, Huh? $5a month to subscribe to them,
and then you can get books forlike, I don't know, it's like,
around 25% ish off, yeah, so Idon't know. One other thing they
did say is, like, they're tryingto fight back against Amazon,
because Amazon's just, you know,the worst. Yeah, I just hope
(04:57):
it's a cool, legit thing. I.
No, this is you should check itwith Corey Doctorow. Remember,
he schooled us in everythingthat was all this. I'm sure he
would have an opinion. Yeah, I'm
sure he would. I should emailhim about
that story. I'm gonna note this,and hopefully I remember to do
it. But I know I thought youwould be interested. I thought
(05:18):
our listeners would beinterested. So if anybody out
there knows what's going on, youknow, shoot us an email. Our
address. Is it? G O, don'tpanic@gmail.com, so if you know
anything about this, hit us up.I'm interested in what's going
on with this thing, and if it'slegit, I hope it helps out a lot
of authors. So awesome. Well, Iguess with that, are you ready
to bring on punk? Shepherd,
(05:39):
I am. Which version of punk arewe bringing on? No, that is
a good question.
The the all new and God version,I think, go, You know what I'm
talking about. Yeah, all right,we'll be right back with punk
Shepherd. Okay, and we are backtoday. We have Peng Shepherd.
(06:01):
Peng Shepherd was born andraised in Phoenix, Arizona, and
has lived in Beijing, KualaLumpur, London, New York and
Mexico City. Her second novel,The cartographers, became a
national bestseller. It wasnamed a Best Book of 2022 by the
Washington Post, and received a2020 fellowship from the
(06:23):
National Endowment for the Artsher debut, the book of M won the
2019 Newcomb Institute forLiterary Arts Award for debut
speculative fiction, and waschosen as a Best Book of the
Year by Amazon L, which isspelled E, L, L, E, we're not
exactly sure how To pronouncethat, so hopefully I'm
pronouncing it correctly,refinery 29 and the verge, as
(06:46):
well as a Best Book of thesummer by the Today Show and
NPRs on point. Welcome, Pang,Hi. Thanks so much for having
me. Thanks so much for comingon. We're very excited to have
you here.
Yeah, yeah. I'm excited to behere. So I think, I think
we should just start with themost obvious thing, cat, your
new book, all this and more, iskind of a choose your own
(07:09):
adventure type situation. Whydid you want to write a choose
your own adventure kind of book?
Okay, so my favorite thing aboutwriting is structure, like as a
writer and a reader. So if I'm,you know, like looking for a new
book to read, or browsingbookstores, anything that says
that it's got a weird structurein the reviews, or, like, I can
(07:30):
tell from the, you know, fromthe back of the book summary,
that's my jam. That's what Iwant. And so I had been really,
really wanting to write a bookwith multiple paths in it for,
like, I don't know, years,probably, like 10 years, but I
wasn't able to until I came upwith a premise for all this and
more. I wasn't able to figureout how to make it work, because
(07:51):
it felt like, if you're gonnawrite a book with multiple paths
for adults, it feels like therehas to be more of a reason to be
doing that. You can't just doit, just just for fun. There has
to be a thematic reason to doit, too. And so that was the
hardest part, was coming up withthe premise that made it worth
it.
So at what point could yousuddenly go, I can solve
(08:12):
everything with quantummechanics?
Yes, I'm an expert on quantummechanics.
No, it was more this gonna soundlike a kind of a funny
roundabout answer, but it wasactually the pandemic that
helped me figure it out.Because, well, you know,
everything went from the crazyrat race, right, 100 miles an
(08:32):
hour all the time, 24/7 to justa stand still for a little bit,
and we were all sitting in ourhouses just waiting to see what
was gonna happen. And so I wasalso climbing the walls, you
know, like everyone else, andjust feeling really unmoored and
unsure and like, bored andterrified at the same time. And
there was something about beingtrapped in that way that made
(08:55):
me, I know it just made it feelmore urgent that I wanted to
write this multiple path thingat that point. Because I was
like, I have zero pass rightnow, you know, there's, there's
nothing. And it was something Idon't know. It was something
about just not having anychoices at that moment that made
me think, well, what if I couldhave, you know, like, what if
there was some kind of a thing,like a game or a reality where
(09:18):
that was the whole point of it,that you had infinite choices,
and that was the purpose of thestory, was that you had to
figure out what was the best oneor what was the right one. And
so that's kind of how the ideafor a game show that uses
something like, kind of likequantum mechanics to bubble off
a section of reality, and thenthe main character gets to play
(09:40):
in that world? Yeah, that'sinteresting, trying and changing
everything that she wants overand over and over, tweaking and
making mistakes and, you know,figuring things out like that.
Yeah,
absolutely. How did you, youknow, how did you track what was
going on when you were writingthe book and going
to wonderfully wild places withthat? Yeah?
Okay. Okay, if you believe it, Idid not have an outline until,
(10:05):
like, really late in the game,because I knew that eventually I
was going to turn this into myeditor, and then the production
editor was going to lose hermind when she was having to
proof it, you know. And so Ithought, You know what, I've got
to build a map. Otherwiseeveryone at the you know, at
William Morrow was gonna killme. And so I, at that point, I
(10:26):
think I was halfway through thesecond so I was like two thirds
to three fourths done. And thenI finally sat down and I drew,
like a flow chart, basically,that they could follow, that
would help them. But yeah, forsome reason I wrote almost all
of this book without a map. Itjust kind of lived in my head,
(10:47):
like a Yeah. It was, it waswild. I mean, I think, I don't
think I meant to do it onpurpose, but when I think back
to it, I think it was a very,that's awesome test of how well
the story was going to work.Because what I really didn't
want to do with the story wasmake it so that choices felt
(11:07):
random. You know, I wantedeverything to make sense and be
meaningful to the maincharacter's life, Marsh, and so
it sort of felt like, if I haveto write it all down to see how
you get, you know, betweenstuff, then it's like not I
could be forcing stuff thatshouldn't be forced. And I so I
just thought, if I can keep itall in my head, then it will.
(11:29):
That means it must make sense,right? It must all feel like
part of the same story, eventhough they are different paths.
Well, I I like the organicquality of that, and I think
that is somehow fitting for thisnarrative. But just have a kind
of let it grow, and then onceyou had it mostly grown, made
(11:50):
sense out of it. I mean, that'sreally cool. Yeah,
it's all it's worth it. Now itwas, it was a, you know, time I
was drafting it, oh,
there's always that moment inthe draft where you're just
like, What am I doing? How did Iget here, where it's, yeah,
yeah, although, in this case, itwas several times. There were
(12:10):
several paths
that's funny, that's funny.Well, I mean, I think that's
more realistic too, right?Because people's lives are
organic, right? They're notlike, I don't know process. Do
you know what I mean? There's noone sitting there saying, Okay,
now it's time to make thisdecision. I mean, I guess
there's a few of those, like,Okay, I've graduated high school
now, yeah, you know what I mean?But mostly, you know, after that
(12:32):
point, it's just kind of like,whatever happens to you, happens
to see right? And you kind ofmake your
decisions as you go, yeah, yeah.Totally agree. Right,
right, yeah. I like how you saidthat you wanted the choices to
matter. I've studied a littlebit of game theory for my job.
I'm not like a game design oranything, but it overlaps with
what I do, and one of the thingsthey always say is, make sure
(12:54):
that your choices matter. Youknow you're it's not just some
nonsense choice that's not goingto change anything, because then
you're the person who's goingthrough your whatever it is,
becomes engaged with it and ownsthat choice. So I really like
that you mentioned that that'sinteresting. Did you have to
build the character out first tounderstand what the choices
(13:16):
would be?
So Marsh is sort of a she'sinteresting. She did go through
kind of a evolution, becauseshe's, she did start out as a
little bit of a kind of a meek,play it safe, wallflower type
woman. And you know, becausewhat I wanted was, I needed a
main character who really had alot of regrets in life and who
(13:36):
felt that she had made a lot ofmistakes and missed out on a lot
of stuff, because that way, whenshe enters the bubble and she
gets to try all these thingsthat she thinks she should have
done if only she had been braverwhen she was younger, and now
she can do it. And so she alwayswas that way. But there was a
period of time where the wholething was in second person, oh,
(13:58):
wow, and yeah, and which wasvery fun to write, apparently
less fun to read my editor. Soat that point, it was I didn't
know if you the reader weregoing to be Marsh, or if you the
reader were going to be a viewerof the show, watching Marsh like
a fan. And so that it made itcomplicated in the earlier
(14:20):
drafts, because I was moredistanced from her. And then it
was only when we got rid of theyou second person that I really
got to say, you know, who, whoexactly is Marsh. I got to get
really specific about herregrets. And so that's where a
lot of the other details of herlife started to come in. And her
daughter, especially because shehas a she has a big fear that
(14:42):
her daughter, who's a teenager,is starting to kind of pull away
from her, and is seeing hermother, not just as a mother,
but as now as a woman, andseeing her as a woman who's not
very fulfilled, and who you knowdidn't reach her potential, and
Marsh doesn't want her to learnthose lessons. And so all that,
all that kind of psychologicalcharacter. Started to come out
much more, really late in thegame.
(15:03):
I think one of the things that Ireally liked about it was the
philosophy of lighted on fire,which Marsh is kind of going
well. This is something Ihaven't done throughout my life.
I needed to light more things,more marshmallows on fire. But
then she gets to the point wherethings are never perfect, and it
(15:26):
seems like lighting stuff onfire is sort of the the opposite
of perfect, and that she hasforgotten. And she's sort of
like absolutely not lightingthings on fire when she gets
down into this rut of, you know,well, no, this house has a
hallway that's too wide. Rand'shair is too short in this
version,
yeah. And I think that would be,you know, that's the really big
(15:50):
danger, is if somebody offeredyou this bubble that you could
go in and make changes that youknow, changes to your past that
would then affect your yourpresent life, and so you could,
you could, you could make yourlife better. You I think it
would be really natural to startlike Marsh, and you would say to
yourself, Okay, I'm just gonnachange like one thing, or I'm
gonna change the little things,or, you know, something like
(16:13):
that. And you would, you wouldenter with a clear vision, but
it would get really addictive,you know, and it would be really
hard to know when to stop, youknow, yeah, and or also, I think
just as hard, because it wouldbe easy to just keep endlessly
tweaking the little things,which doesn't seem that
important. I mean, it would be,you know, it would take up your
(16:37):
whole life, but it's not, itwouldn't they'd just be little
things. But I think even worseis you would probably go in with
a very clear line that you don'tthink you're going to cross
something that you're not goingto change because it's really
important to who you are, or itwould change things for other
people that you love, and thenit would be really hard to hold
that line.
(16:59):
That's a good point.
And I think that having it bethat seductive, and then to
couple that with realitytelevision, which has its own
kind of seductive, weird pull,is just, I think that works
really nicely together.
It was really fun to actuallywrite the show, because I put in
all of the commenters and theviewers you know that
(17:21):
occasionally break in and saythey, you know, make comments on
the choice that Marsh just made,or whether they think she's done
better or worse. And some ofthem are really supportive. And
then also, some of them aretrolls, and they're they're
pretty mean or disruptive, andthat was a really fun way to
look at her, because they got tolook at her from the outside
(17:42):
too, not just from within herown head. That was
actually a pretty interestingaspect. I feel like the one
troll, the the main trollperson, actually has a little
bit of a character arc, becauseI'm trying to find their name in
here. Yeah, it's, it's not amackerel. That's it not a
mackerel, yeah? Because, becausethe other, the other girl, says,
Holy mackerel all the time. Andso his troll name is not a
(18:02):
macro, because at the beginning,yeah, not a macro is a troll,
right? But at the but towardsthe end, not a macro is going,
oh my god, there's somethingwrong. We need to fix this. And
everyone else is just likewatching the show. You know what
I mean? I thought that wasreally interesting.
Yeah, yeah, it was. It was funto write not a mackerel. In my
head. He's a teenage boy. So I'mgonna say he it was, it was
really fun to write him becausein I did kind of wonder where he
(18:25):
was going, because I didn't wanthim to just be an annoying
troll, just to be an annoyingtroll. But it really started to
work out, because I thought thatkind of a person might be the
first one to notice thatsomething's weird, because he's
already looking for stuff that'swrong or bad about Marsh, and
everyone else is just thisrabbit fan, and so when things
do start to get weird, he is theone that's like, wait, wait a
(18:46):
minute. Did no one else seethat? Did none of you see that?
It's funny. I love that. When
Marsh starts making the choices,and, you know, not being content
with anything for me, you know,her character really took a
turn. You know, she really tooka dark turn. You know, I feel
like, you know what I mean,because someone who's so like,
at one point, she's like,changing the color of the
(19:07):
flowers, and she doesn't likethem right in the in the length
of the grass, or something likethat, you know, like, who you
know, I feel like we've gonefull Karen mode here. You know
what I mean, it was good enough,
yeah, but it was so, I mean, itfelt really true at the same
time, you know, the deeper I gotinto the story, because at first
I was also kind of nervous aboutmaking changes as I wrote,
(19:31):
because I was early in thedraft, I didn't know if this was
going to work out, or if it wasjust going to be, you know, a
flaming mess that I wouldn't beable to make a story out of. And
then I did get bolder too, asthe writer, as the story kept
going too, and so it just kindof, you know, together, Marsha
and I got darker, nice.
How did you how did it feel foryou to change the other
(19:55):
characters like because I feltlike one of the things that I
pulled out from all this andpart. This darker turn that I
started losing more is like,we'll just take Ren, for
example. And so the listenersknow Ren is like her old
boyfriend, who kind of comeback, comes back into her life,
right? And then becomes a maincharacter within the book. So
that's that's not a spoiler oranything, but Ren just changes
so much to the point wherethey're completely a different
(20:19):
person from one episode to tothe next. I mean, did you feel
like that was morally wrong, orlike, yeah, yeah, go ahead.
Sorry, yeah.
Well, yes, I so I, I definitelyfeel like that's morally wrong,
but I think it would also bekind of impossible not to change
other people's lives as you werechanging your own. Because
(20:41):
that's the whole thing, right?We are all connected to the
people that we care about, andso Marsh tries to rationalize it
by saying, I'm especially in thecase of her daughter, she's
really conscious of likewhenever she makes a choice,
she's trying to make it in mylike, with keeping in mind that
(21:01):
it has to make things better forher daughter, Harper, too. It
can't make things better forMarsh, but worse for Harper and
and so that's how she tellsherself, I It's okay that I'm
doing this, or is It's okay aslong as I try very hard. But in
that does kind of happen in reallife too, because if you're you
know, for example, in arelationship with someone, and
(21:23):
you get a new job, that's waybetter, but it's in the next
state that is going to affecttheir life, because either
they're going to move with you,or you're not going to get to
take the job, or they're goingto have to quit your long
distance, you know. And so it,it's not necessarily always evil
to make a choice in life thataffects someone else's life, but
it's kind of, this is what Ilove about speculative fiction,
(21:47):
because you I could have, youcould read a story that's set in
a very realistic setting aboutmaking choices that affect other
people's lives, but then if youdo it in the bubble, in a
speculative setting where it'slike, an extremely direct on the
nose example of how you can makea choice and affect someone's
(22:09):
life in the bubble, you areliterally changing their
reality. It's just really, youreally get to explore it, like
in a really, really deep way,because it's so enhanced or
emphasized, I
would like to know what realityTV you consume. I
have that question too.
(22:33):
So I I didn't watch a ton of it,actually, before I got
interested in this is thepremise, because I didn't at
that point, I just didn't have aTV because I was traveling a was
traveling a lot, and then when Istarted writing the book, I
thought, I better watch some ofthis. And so the show that the
show that I always come back to,it's the first reality TV that I
watched ever, that kind of everwatched, and it's the one where
(22:58):
the two people get married, butthe first time that they see
each other is at the altar,first episode, and they have to
say, yes, yeah. It's so wild. Imean, can you imagine? And so
the show is the season is thefirst episode. You get to meet
each of them separately, andthen the, you know, the final
moment of the first episode isthey walk up to the altar,
(23:20):
basically blindfolded, I think.And then they take the
blindfolds off, see each other,and they say yes, and that's the
end. And then the second through10th episodes are them learning
to live together and and tryingto really give marriage in
earnest try. Because the wholetheir whole thing is they
they're desperate for a lifepartner, but they haven't been
(23:41):
able to find one, and so they'reputting they're putting their
lives in the hands of expertswho've chosen someone that's
supposed to be really compatiblewith them. And so the point is,
can you, like, can you learn tolove somebody? And can you, you
know, put in the work to makethis marriage real, even if you
didn't choose them yourself. So,yeah, fascinating. So wild.
(24:04):
As someone who's been marriedfor 15 years, you know, it can
be hard to be, to be married tosomebody you like, I mean, I
can't even, does it ever workout? Does it ever work out?
Actually, it does. And so it'snow, I don't know. It's probably
in its 10th season or something.And so I think with a lot of
these shows, it becomesinevitable that the people who
(24:25):
start auditioning for thembecause they know the gimmick
they're going in with, they'retoo jaded, you know. And so it
kind of seems like the in thelater season, it works out less
and less. But what I think thevery first couple of the first
season, they're still together.They have a couple kids, and
it's kind of wild, because inthe first episode, she is so
(24:47):
surprised and just kind of upsetbecause the guy is totally not
what she was expecting, andshe's just so yeah, just so
upset that she actually criesright there as and then she says
yes, and. She runs out, and itjust seems like there's no I
mean, you just think there's noway. And they are still happily
married with kids andeverything's great. They really,
(25:11):
it really worked out. Yeah, Idon't
even know what to say aboutthat. The only thing we watch
are the cooking shows, andspecifically around Halloween,
when they're making, like, allthe cakes that look like
monsters and stuff, right? Iknow,
yeah. So now I now, I need towatch more reality TV. I am. I'm
open to recommendations. Oh,
(25:33):
do you do? You know the cookingshow where they give them, they
give them a really fancy,beautifully decorated cake, and
then they have to replicate it.And it's people who aren't very
good at cooking. There's a name.It's like the hostess is the
event Brown, I think. But it'shysterical, because the cakes
are just so such disasters thatit's wonderful.
(25:55):
That would be me, 100% rightthere. That would be me.
Oh, that's so funny. You shouldwatch that and then watch the
other the other one is called,is it cake in a people who are
very good at baking cakes, andthey give them an object, and
they have to replicate theobject in cake. Judges,
(26:16):
yeah, no, we've watched thatone. Yes, same, yeah.
Most of my favorites involvecake. Sorry, go ahead. Oh, yeah,
no, that's
a good one. It's actually, it'snice and short, and you're
always amazed. You're alwayslike, oh my god, how'd they
That's amazing. Yeah, people areso skilled. How? Yeah, yeah.
(26:36):
Pung, I'm curious. Like, I wouldcall it like a very Philip K
dickian kind of book, kind oflike, what is reality now and
what's not reality? You know,I'm wondering who your science
fiction and fantasy influencesare. Oh,
that's good question. I mean,well, I think yeah, we can say
Philip K Dick for this one. Iloved you big a lot. Yeah, yeah,
(26:58):
yeah. But I mean, my, you know,favorite of favorites is Ursula
K Le Guin always will be, yeah.And I love Margaret Atwood. I
love Jeff VanderMeer and KayJemison, yeah, Rebecca Rowan,
horse Fonda Lee, it's awesome.
What do you look for in a maybeI should say speculative fiction
work these days?
What do I look for? Hmm, I Well,I love if it's got a weird
(27:22):
structure of some kind, which iswhat really got me into NK
Jemisin work, because she wrotethat is it called the Broken
Earth trilogy. I can't rememberthe name, okay, but the whole,
you know, the whole thing, is insecond person, right? Yeah,
yeah. And so, and that's, youknow, that's really unique.
There are not a lot of wholenovels that are in second
person, let alone truly. So likethat, something like that,
(27:43):
really, if you're going to be,you know, like a little bit
experimental with the structure,I really love that. Or a lot of
times it's, it's like any bookthat you can say halfway through
the plot summary, but then atthe same time, under the
surface, something is going on,like that, kind of a, you know,
(28:07):
something, there's kind of anostensibly normal, ish reality
that we're looking at, butthere's something that we're
something else that's going onthat's going to be revealed
halfway through, but you canfeel it coming like that. That's
interesting. Have you ever readtoday Thompson's Jack DAW No,
but I'm gonna put it on my listnow. Does it do that?
(28:29):
Well, sort of. It's so. So I'veread almost all of today stuff,
and I'm very familiar with hiswork in I think the most
interesting thing is he actuallytook his real life and then made
it into a horror story, and, oh,like, he's the main character.
Like, really like him and thethings about him, oh, yeah, and
(28:49):
he's, you know, isn't it's kindof like a horror story, but it's
also like, very, likepsychological, and then it gets
very meta, you know, as it goesthrough, yeah,
is that, is that called, like,auto fiction? Is
that what that's called? I don'tknow
it was. It's very weird andinteresting. Yeah,
(29:10):
yeah, no, it sounds fascinating.Yeah, yeah, no. I noticed a
lot of meta in your book aswell. You know, a lot of meta
things going on. And I don'tknow if it's just what I'm
reading lately, but I feel likethere's a lot of meta stuff
happening in speculative fictionright now. Like, do either of
you feel like that's a trendright now? Is that something
that's going on? Or I think I'mjust curious what you all think?
(29:32):
I think it is a trend. I mean, Ithink we're seeing more and more
of it in fiction. Oh, God, I'msorry. Yeah. I mean, I think,
like, everything, everywhere,all at once. I think the Spider
Man and the multiverse, and Ithink there is more kind of
acknowledgement of sort of thatthere are multiple just sort of
multiple reality stuff. Doesthat make sense? Yeah, although
(29:56):
you know C S Lewis was doing itway back when. In the Narnia.
Remember the wood between theworlds with all the different
entrances to the differentworlds,
like portal fantasy type stuff?Yeah, yeah.
I Yeah. I think I agree that it,it's definitely like a lot more
prevalent now I'm trying tofigure out why. I don't know if
it's because. I'm sort ofwondering if now, because
(30:21):
speculative fiction has becomeso much more popular, like with
with just the mainstream readertoo, that I wonder if it's like
and also just we, we've becomesuch voracious consumers of
story, because now everybody'sgot, like, Netflix and Hulu, and
there's like, a million bookspublished every month. And so we
(30:44):
just, we consume story at a ratethat I don't think we used to.
And so I'm just, I think thatwe're all really sophisticated
at story now. And so maybe thiskind of, like meta stuff, or
kind of self conscious stuff, ormultiverse stuff, where the
certain realities are aware ofeach other. In some way, it's
(31:04):
sort of, it's like inconversation with that aspect of
the way that readers and viewersare understanding story now, and
like the, you know, there'slike, more of a relationship
between the storyteller and thestory consumer than in a way
that it didn't used to bebefore. I
kind of wonder this is morespecifically about the meta
(31:25):
part. But I feel like, at leastin the United States, we're
really like thinking aboutourselves a lot and kind of
trying to understand what ourculture is going through right
now. So I'm kind of wondering ifthat's part of it as well.
Oh, totally. Because, you know,I think, yeah, yeah. Lately,
over the past couple years, Ithink there were a lot of
(31:46):
moments of this has to be thealternate timeline, right? Like,
this isn't the real one? Is it?Right? Right? Oh, and
which one is the real timeline?
What's like all the tick tocks,the Tick Tock videos that you
see of like animals moving insynchronicity or something, and
they're like a glitch in theMatrix. Well, I'm curious. I'm
(32:10):
curious. All of your books areso different. Like, what are you
working on right now?
Ooh, this is the first time I'veever had to talk about, yeah,
this is exciting. Yeah. This isthe weird thing about books,
right? That you, when you haveone coming out, you're usually
part way into the next one, andso you're just, it's like, so
weird to have these two worlds,yeah, you know, right next to
(32:32):
each other, and they're sodifferent. So anyway, I'm, I'm
probably halfway through thefirst draft of this, and it's,
it's very dark and very serious,and it's probably the least
speculative in that it's, itdoesn't have, it doesn't have,
like, big science fictional orfantasy pieces in it the way
(32:53):
that the book of em and thecartographer and all this and
more do, right? But it's still,it's still, like, very weird.
And it's, it's about bodydoubles. Basically, it's about
body doubles that have beensecretly hired to impersonate a
like a famous, powerful person,and how, as they become more
(33:14):
entwined with each other,everything just kind of starts
to unravel. Well, that soundsfabulous. That's a lot of fun
right now, I'm having fun. I'mmaking a mess in the first
graph. Well,
I think that's part of the joyof writing also, is right? You
do this big, messy thing andthen you get to make it look
nice.
Oh, that's my cat. Sorry.
(33:36):
Class just came in and sang.That's, that's,
that's, I think that's good,but,
um, yeah, I have four. We usedto, oh yeah, well, we, I only
have the one, but he talksenough for four, sure. Yeah, he
really
does. That's awesome. So youobviously travel a lot, and you
can tell from from your books,right? And all this and more,
(34:02):
right? She Marsh moves aroundplace to place, and you've
another book calledcartographers, right? You just
travel for fun. Is this justlike your life has just happened
this way. And you know, what aresome of your favorite places to
go? I think
it's a little bit of both. Someof it was stuff that happened to
me, like study abroad, or, youknow, you get a job, and the job
(34:23):
has business travel, or there'srelocation or something like
that. But I just, I just reallylove it. It's, you know, I just
love going somewhere new,seeing, you know, like different
landscapes, different cities,different people. Like trying
the different food. I'm obsessedwith food, and so I don't know
it's just I it's not like I gospecifically to be inspired. I
(34:47):
go because, just because I loveit and I want to and I want to
see that place. But you know,inevitably, it does kind of
inspire you in some way, even ifyou don't end up putting it
directly in the book. But like,for example, I, I. Did put a big
chunk of one of the episodes inall this and more Marsh gets to
go to Iceland and does a lot ofwild things in Iceland, and then
(35:09):
also all the volcanoes inIceland may or may not decide to
erupt in that episode, because,you know, things are getting
more and more complicated atthat point in her season. So and
I did go to Iceland the yearprior to writing that, and I
didn't go because I thought Iwas going to put it in the book.
But once I got there, I was justlike, this place is so
(35:30):
incredible and so weird. It'sthe it's such a weird place. And
I mean that in a good way, butit's so weird. The landscape is
just so alien looking. You know,you go to the beaches, and
there's this one beach therewhere the sand is pure black,
everything. So you just lookdown the beach, and it's just
(35:51):
like obsidian. And then thewaves are, you know, blue and
white because of cold, coldocean water. And it's just, it's
like the strangest thing I'veever seen. It sort of looked
like what I thought after deathmight look like, but not in a
scary way, kind of in a reallynice way. It just I thought,
when I when I die, I bet this iswhere you wake up. This is what
(36:14):
it looks like. That's awesome.Yeah, it was, it was beautiful.
Yeah, it's
funny, you mentioned Iceland.One of my friends had mentioned
going to Iceland and it beingreally a cool place to go visit
and stuff. And I read it in yourbook, and I immediately told my
wife, I'm like, huh, we shouldprobably go to Iceland. That'd
be really cool. Like, startlooking up the flights and
(36:34):
everything. Like, yeah. I'm alsocurious about you mentioned that
you you live in Beijing? Wereyou an adult when you when you
were in Beijing? Yeah,
young adult. I was, I was in myreally early 20s, which is also
where I got my cat that justcame in and screamed at all.
He's also, he's born in Beijing.Yeah. He was a little scruffy
(36:56):
street buffing thing. I foundhim like, three or four weeks
old and and we've been togetherever since he's turning I think
he's turning 16 this year. Wow.What is it? Yeah, his name is
pinken. No, that's his fullname. His name is actually pink
and lunch box five, but he justgoes by pink and amazing.
(37:18):
Can I ask? Why lunch?
I don't at this point, I don'tremember. I think it was, I
think it was because he, oh yes,it was because when I found him,
he was starving, you know,basically, and so he was just,
he would just steal food rightoff the counter, out of the
stove. He tried to jump into thepan once while I was cooking,
because he didn't know what Imean, it was that was bad. That
(37:39):
was very scary. He's he wasfine, he didn't get hurt, but
he's scary. Yeah, I knowkittens, right? They're just,
they're like, What is gravity?What is what is danger? What is
danger? No,
they have no, no sense of it.Yeah, you watch them blithely do
the stupidest things. Most
of our cats are, yeah, you know,from the shelter, but we have
(38:01):
had one since he was a kitten,and after he got a little bit
older, I told my wife, I'm like,We're done with kittens. Are
too crazy.
Yeah, he's my first cat, andalso first kitten. And so I did
not know what I was getting intowhen I, you know, got him, yeah,
and I think that was good,though, because who knows if I
would have done it. And now it'sbeen so long that I have
(38:23):
forgotten exactly howunmanageable he was. I just
remember most sort of the cutestuff. So you know, I may
someday get a kitten again andmake the same fatal mistake.
I adopted two last year, andthey are nine months now, but I
got two of them because they doentertain each other. Oh
(38:45):
yes, that makes they do they doright now. We're trying to keep
the three from beating up on thefourth one, he's only been here
for a couple months, and they'restill like, in territory mode,
like, Hey, you stranger, we'regonna beat you up for fun. My
wife and I have to go down thereand break it up about once a
week. You know, poor guy, butyou know he's like, he's a huge
(39:06):
cat. And we keep telling him, Iknow he doesn't understand me,
but I tell him anyway, you know,Pippy, if he just smacked him
one time, they would leave youalone. He just looks at me.
Well, these days, would you mindtalking about Beijing a little
bit like, I personally am justvery fascinated with China and
Chinese history and stuff likethat. What was it like? You
know, living there compared tothe US. I
(39:29):
mean, it was amazing. And it wasso different, because I so I
grew up in Phoenix, Arizona,which, you know, as you can
imagine, it's just been there,very different from Beijing,
like, in a lot of ways. Oh, youhave been there. I'm sorry, no,
I'm kidding. It's a good. No,no, it's a good, it's like a
good place to raise a family,you know, because you like the
(39:49):
you've got a yard and there'sgreat Mexican food. So I went
from, I went from Phoenix toBeijing, when I, when I moved
there to study abroad, and then,so that was. Just, I mean, the
change was, it was like a changein every way. It was a change
geographically. It was a changein the way that the city looked.
It was a change in language, itwas change in food. And it was,
(40:10):
I think it was kind of great todo it that way, because if I I
don't know, it was justwonderful that everything was
different and kind of nothingwas familiar, even, I mean, I
can't really say that, becausemy, our family is my my mom was
born in Taiwan, and she cameover to the US, and she was
five. So, like, I, you know, Ihad grown up in like, American,
(40:30):
Chinese culture, but I had neverbeen back over there before.
That was the first time that Iwent back to Asia. I don't know
it was just so the scale ofeverything, and Beijing is even
bigger now, but even at thatpoint in I don't know what was
that like, 2006 2005 orsomething, I was it was just the
(40:55):
biggest city I had Ever been to.And it was like, like,
everything was so tall, and thering roads just went on and on
and, like, it was just, and Iwas alone because I didn't go. I
went for a study abroad program,which was, I think, a couple
weeks, and then I just decidedto stay because I wanted to. And
(41:17):
so the school just left mebecause it, you know, it was
University. So you're an adult,you can do what, you want. So
they just left, and I stayed forabout a year, and it was just, I
don't know, it was wonderful. Itwas so great to be out of your
element and then to find yourelement again, yeah, in that
place. All
right, so couple questions here.We're getting close to the end,
but I'm really curious, wouldyou do something like Marsh?
(41:39):
Like, would you go onto the TVshow, like Marsh, and if you
did, like, what decisions wouldyou make?
Oh, that's yeah. So I think ifsomebody offered me that, I
would not go, because I think itwould be like having written
this book and gone down thatrabbit hole with Marsh. I think
(42:01):
it would be so impossible tostop and it, and also, that's
the thing about perfection,right? Is because none of us can
have perfection right now,because it's impossible for
things to be perfect. It seemslike a great idea, but I think
if you actually got to perfect,it would be pretty horrible and
pretty boring, you know. And soif somebody gave me the chance
(42:25):
to make everything perfect, Ithink I would end up destroying
my life on accident, you know,seeking the thing that I found I
wanted about. So I think I wouldtry very hard not to let myself
go. But if I, if I went, I wouldmake a rule for myself that was,
you can only change maybe onething, and you have to stop at
one right? And I don't know whatthe one thing would be, and I
(42:48):
don't even know if I could keepthat rule like probably not
you'd make as soon as you madethe first choice, you would
totally lose control and allwillpower. But I would go in and
I would say, you can only changeone thing. I feel like this is a
good place
to talk about the endings, but Ialso don't want to tell
everybody the endings to yourbook. Yeah. Everybody the
endings. You're both Yeah,
spoilers, yeah. We can we, Ifeel like we can tell them that
there are three endings, yes,that you get to choose from,
(43:13):
yeah, and yeah. We're just gonnahave to leave it with that. But
you Yeah, you can there. Thereare three endings you get to
pick from. You can, yes, findyour way to all of them. And
I'm, I'm always so curious. Ilove because the the advanced
review copies went out a couplemonths ago, and so now people
have started to finish thething. And I just love hearing
which ending somebody chose, orwhich one, you know, like was
(43:35):
their favorite. It's like, it'svery fun.
And so everybody knows, wediscussed our endings before the
podcast started, and cat and Icheated and read all
three. Yes, no, it's notcheating. We enjoyed the book to
its fullest by reading allthree. That's what. Yeah, I
like that framing. I like thatframing.
(43:57):
Okay, so we have one questionthat we ask everybody who comes
on the show. What is bringingyou hope right now?
Oh, that's a great question.What is bringing me hope right
now? And now I'm just gonna,like, pause and really awkwardly
and like, think of, let me see,well, one thing so I recently
kind of bring it back to travel.I really recently went on one of
(44:20):
my first international trips fora while, because I was being,
you know, I wasn't flying in thebeginning of the pandemic and
and then I, you know, I've beenso busy with with work and
stuff, but I went to Turkey andGeorgia and Azerbaijan, and it
was just so wonderful to besomewhere new again. I had been
(44:41):
to Turkey before, but I'd neverbeen to Georgia, and I'd never
been to Azerbaijan, and theywere really different than I
thought they were going to be.And like that is also amazing. I
love it when I show up to placeand it's not what I was
expecting. And, yeah, it wasjust, I don't know, kind of like
feel myself come alive again. Sothat was. Really, really
wonderful. That's awesome.
(45:02):
I gotta say, I'm jealous of yourtravel. And cat just came back
from, I shouldn't say just cameback. But last year was in in
Spain, Barcelona, right? Yeah,Spain.
I was North of Spain. North ofSpain. Okay, okay, North Spain.
You know, in a 10th centurycastle. Oh, wow. So, yeah, it
was found.
I need to get back travelingagain.
(45:22):
Gotta go to Iceland. I know,right? I know. If you, if you go
to Iceland, you have to email meand I'll tell you the name of
the beach. I mean, you'll,you'll probably see the name of
the beach, because it's veryfamous. But just let me know,
because I'll, I'll send it overand you can, it's very easy to
get there. Awesome.
That's on my list of places togo. So, yeah,
Mine too. Mine too. Yeah. Well,
(45:43):
it's, it's gorgeous. What newwork do you have coming out that
you would like to promote? Oh,well, I mean, it's going to be
this book, all this and more.And where can people find you
online? So I have a website,which is punk shepherd.com and I
am sort of on x and sort of onthreads, but mostly Instagram
and my name at all those places.It's just at punk Shepherd,
(46:06):
awesome and punk Shepherd justso everyone knows is because I
me keep mispronouncing it is, P,E, N, G, S, H E, P, E R D,
oh, it's S, H E, P, H E R D.
I'm sorry. Geez. Okay, so I'vealso been spelling your name.
Oh, it's okay.
No, it's okay. There's like, amillion ways to spell shepherd,
and mine is the least popular. Iguess
(46:28):
I get that totally Well, thanksso much for coming on. I really
appreciate it. Great timechatting with you. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. I had a great time.Thank you.
And that was our interview withHong Shepherd before we keep
going. If you like what we'redoing, please, please, please
share us with your friends onFacebook or x or blue sky or
(46:50):
mastodon. I don't know. Have Inamed them all now, I'm not sure
there's 1000s now, yeah, ifyou're
on whatever you're on, pleaseshare us there. That is honestly
the most helpful thing that youcould do. You could also rate or
review us, if you want to. We'reactually starting to get a
decent amount of reviews, Ithink. What five the last time I
checked. So, I mean, small,niche podcast, I'm pretty proud
(47:15):
about that. So Well,
that's, that's, that's lettingreviewers and viewers listeners,
I guess you're not reallyviewers, but letting them know
you could be review number six,
right? That's right. So go outthere and do that. Go out there
and do that. And if you lovewhat we're doing and really want
to support us on the monetarylevel, there's two ways you can
(47:36):
do that. You can go to coffee,that's k, O, f, i, and just
search us there, and you cangive us a one time donation
there. I think you can subscribethere too and give us a monthly
donation. But mostly I put stuffon our Patreon, and our Patreon
is patreon.com/if this goes on,so you can find us there as
well. And that's kind of when,when I update Patreon and, and
(47:58):
we do patron picks and thingslike that. That's, that's where
you'll get all the stuff. Andcat has, like, discounts to her
classes there, and there's someessays there. There's some bonus
episodes that have never beenreleased on this RSS feed there
that you can find, and a bunchof random stuff that we've built
(48:19):
up over the like four and a halfyears we've been doing this, so
go and check that out. So first,how did you feel about the the
Pung interview? I
thought that was great. It wassuch a smart book, and also not
just a smart book, but a veryenjoyable book.
Yeah, at first, I wasn't surewhat to expect. You know, I
(48:43):
really enjoyed the Choose youradventure aspect of it, yeah.
And she kind of said somethinglike this during the interview.
You don't really expectsomething like that. Of how
could I say like an adult book,right? You know, I mean, right,
right?
No. And I've seen short stories.I've seen people riff on the
Choose Your Own Adventure withshort stories a few times, but
(49:04):
not in a novel that'sinteresting.
And like I said, you know, thechoices were so hard to make. I
seriously, there was times whereI was like, I have no idea which
way to go on this. Right, right.So I love that. But
so what are you reading thesedays? What
(49:25):
am I reading right now? Well,two things. One is I am beta
reading for a friend of mine. Sothe book I'm reading is called
the diplomacy of the knife, andif anyone read cm Chaplin's The
fall is all there is, which is aterrific book I get to read, the
second book in the other bookthat I have just been binging
(49:49):
the series I'm on book six, thelast one now, and slowing down
because it's the last one, isthis crazy series called dungeon
crawler, Carl. I. By Mattdinaman, which, if you play
video games, this is just, it'sa hook, and if you liked the it
actually had some kind of weirdoverlap with peng's book in that
(50:11):
it has a reality televisionaspect to it. But it is a funny,
funny book, and I highlyrecommend it.
Oh my gosh, I need to check thatwent out that sounds super cool.
It
is, it's, it's hysterical, andit's got the hero. The hero is
Carl, but then his sidekick isthis Persian cat named Princess
(50:33):
donut, who happened to kind ofgo into the dungeon with him and
achieve sentience. And it donutis just the best character ever,
ever. I
love that. That is so hilarious.Oh my gosh, I'm gonna have to
check that I am. I'm almostcertain that someone else
brought that book up on thispodcast. I am almost certain of
(50:54):
it.
It's got it's an indie, indiebook. You can get it on Kindle
Unlimited, and I think it's oneof those indie books that became
kind of a phenomenon, like, whatis it? Uh, legends and lattes.
Because just so many because youread it, and you're just like,
oh my god, this is so good.Like, I texted, I texted, like a
couple people, and I was like,you have to read this. It's so
good, you know, which, becauseit's so much
(51:17):
fun, that's awesome. That'sawesome. I'll definitely check
that out. What are you reading?So let me see. What am I
reading? I always think aboutit. Let's see. Okay, I've got,
I've got a good mix going onhere. First, I want to break
this one up. First, I'm readingwomen of horror and speculative
fiction in their own words,conversations with authors and
editors and guess who'sinterviewed in that book
(51:43):
I'd forgotten. I God, I haven'tseen that yet. Okay, yeah,
awesome.
Or at least it's coming outsoon. I'm not sure if it's out
or coming out soon. Sometimes Iforget. I do have to, I do have
to make an editorial comment,though, that I love some of your
answers. Some of the questionsare very academic, right? Yes.
And the one question was, Idon't know it's like, four
(52:03):
sentences long or something, andyour answer is like, nope.
I don't remember when that was,but I laughed so hard when I
read that. I was like, Yeah,okay.
Oh, that was so funny.
Now have you come back and seewhat I wrote? So funny, but that
(52:24):
can't be the only thing you'rereading. What else are you
reading?
No, no, no, no, it's not whatelse am I reading? I'm reading
Countess. Countess Countess bySusan Palumbo, oh, I have not
read it. I literally juststarted that earlier today.
Awesome. It's a novella. It's aspace opera. And listeners
should know, because weinterviewed Susan on here, gosh,
(52:46):
I don't know, six months ago orsomething, and she's mostly a
horror writer, but it's kind oflike it's space opera, but it's,
she says it's on the dark side,right? So it's dark space Oh no,
I guess, yeah, yeah. So far sogood. I'm like, 20 pages into
it. So I'm not very far, verycool, possibly reading. I'm also
reading Persepolis rising theseventh, oh yeah, I like that a
(53:09):
lot, seventh book in The Expanseseries. Yeah, it's like, so I
watched the show before I readthe book, right? So, oh yeah, I
knew most, more or less you knowwhat was going to happen in the
first six but now I haven't theslightest idea.
Yeah, new territory, baby.
(53:31):
I like that. And I will say theexpanse books are good enough
that, in my opinion, if you'veseen the show, you could read
them and it's, yes, it's legit,it's good.
I think, I think if you've seenthis series and you liked it,
you would like the book evenmore, because you get more
insight into some of thecharacters. And, you know,
there's, there's always morehappening in a book than there
(53:52):
is in a dramatic version.Definitely,
definitely. And you know, I lovethose characters so much,
especially Naomi and, oh, mygod, Well, Bobby, too, but
what's the guy's name? Not thelead guy, the, oh yeah, the
crazy one, right? He's like asociopath. You know? He's the
he's the mechanic. I don't
know which one, ah, it's killingme. Oh God, I don't remember his
(54:17):
name. I'm not good with me. I'mterrible
with names, too. That guy, he'sjust,
he's like, the scariest help,and he's also awesome, like, I
don't know. Like, he's kind oflike a sociopathic teddy bear.
Like, I don't know. I think,
I think there's somethingcompelling about sort of that
sort of character. When they'reon your side or on the side that
(54:40):
you you kind of hope for, right?
That's interesting. I neverthought about that. I guess I
can't. I honestly can't think ofany books or that's the case.
LAUREL
K Hamilton has one of in in theAnita Blake books has one of the
characters is a sociopath, buthe's in three. Called to Anita.
(55:03):
This may be more than you wantedto know about Laurel K Hamilton
mythos, but I'm happy to expandon it.
Well, no, feel free to expand.I'm not familiar with her work
at all. Well,
she writes vampire books, andthey're kind of smutty. And I'm
sure she would agree thatthey're kind of smutty. And
there, there is. It'sinteresting because, like, they
start out reasonably tame, andthen there's a point where she
(55:26):
sort of takes a hard turn intosmut, and then kind of comes
back from that. But they arethere. One of my comfort reads,
actually, there's a bajillion ofthem, and whenever a new one
comes out, I reread a bunch ofthem, and I just love her
awesome, awesome, interesting. Ido love super long series, just
for that reason, of, like, Ineed to, I need, I just want to
(55:50):
read something that's that's thesame, but different, because I
don't like to reread very much,but I still want, like, that
same vibe, you know what? Imean,
you know? Yeah, no, I really, Ireread a lot, but usually it's
because, like, a new book in theseries has come out, and so I'll
go back and reread, by
the way, and then, then we'llwrap up. But did you have you
read cadwell's new book yet?
(56:10):
No, I'm looking forward to it,though. I just got it Yes, down
at the bookstore. Yeah. So yes,yes. Have you
not yet? It's, I'm in the exactsame situation as you. It's
sitting right here, right nextto me, but I haven't found the
time to read
it yet. There are so many goodbooks and so so, so little time,
(56:30):
right, sadly, right?
So true, too, true. Anyway, theonly other thing I'm reading is
I'm reading a back issue ofdream Forge, which I'm trying to
catch up on as well. So, oh no.A shout out to Scott and Jane.
Hey guys and yeah, that's it. Soyou ready to wrap up? I think
so, alrighty, okay. So that wasour episode. We are bringing
(56:53):
you, hope one episode at a time.
You If this goes on, don'tpanic. Is edited by Alan Bailey
and produced by Ken Schrader.Our theme music is by Father
flamethrower. Additional musicis by Christopher snyderowski,
(57:13):
and outro music by sable Aradia,Intro by Dave Robinson. Special
thanks to our guest, PengShepherd. Thanks for supporting
us, and We'll see you againsoon. Bye,
(57:40):
been letting go in my catapult Ibelieve in.
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