Jonathan Mayberry: A Masterclass in Horror Writing and Folklore

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Nightmare Engine
podcast.
My name is Dave Rugguz, I'myour host, so we are actually
doing a blast from the past.
So as I'm recording this, weare going to release it before
we release the episode werecorded before this.
So we are all over the place onthis one.
But we want to do a veryspecial introduction to a

(00:24):
welcome back to the NightmareEngine podcast after what seems
like a few months now, butthings have been a little bit
crazy on our end.
Unfortunately, my co-host, jayBauer, is not going to be
joining me, so it's just goingto be me this episode, but Jay
did send his warm wishes becausehe did want to be here for this
one.
So this is a really, reallycool episode, friends.
So we've got the one.

(00:44):
The only Jonathan Mayberry onthe line.
John, how are you, sir?

Speaker 2 (00:49):
I'm doing well, man.
I'm glad to be back and glad tobe here, and it's good to see
you again.
It's been a while, yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
It's been a bit.
It's been a bit, so we ran intoeach other last year just
briefly after your talk wasabout.
I know the focus was a littlebit on vampires, but it was last
year at 20 Books Vegas, whichis a huge independent publishing
conference held every singleevery year and has been going
strong and growing bigger everyyear.
But at the end of it it's areally cool event as well, which

(01:16):
is this huge author booksigning that costs nothing from
the author as far as dues go.
I think it costs $50 orsomething, but there's 300
authors there selling theirbooks and that was a pleasure to
meet you at Vegas, you know,coming out to give your talks
about your expertise,specifically about horror, which
has been a little bitunderrepresented just in general

(01:38):
.
It's a small genre but it's avoracious reader group.
So I'd love to talk to youtoday about you, your books,
your knowledge, which is clearlyvast in the industry, and, you
know, tell us more about you sothat readers can get to know who
you are if they haven't, forwhatever reason, ever heard of
you, which is which would be ashame.
So please, jonathan, tell us,tell us all about you.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Well, the brief version of this is I'm a.
I'm a New York Timesbestselling author in a number
of different genres.
I write horror, science fiction, fantasy, epic, urban and dark
fantasy, thrillers, mysteries.
I write comics from Marvel, idwand Dark Horse.
I edit a we're Tales magazineand we just put out a hundredth
anniversary anthology.
Writing teacher and a retiredjujitsu master and college

(02:24):
teacher.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
Wow.
So how long have you been inthe industry, Like what was the
first publication you had andwhat year was that?

Speaker 2 (02:33):
So that's a little.
It's a complicated answer.
So let me, let me give you thecareer path.
I actually went to school, tocollege for it, on a journalism
scholarship.
My intention was to be theintrepid reporter who tore down
the corrupt, you know whomever.
And while that I was graduatedfrom high school, not that long
after a watergate.
So we wanted to be that guy.
You know, woodward andBernstein, every through college

(02:55):
I switched my interest fromnewspapers to magazines.
So, my friend, they always saywrite what you know.
So my very first publication wasan article in Black Belt
magazine, I think 1978.
And then I went on to writeabout 1200 features, you know.
Probably a third of them weremartial arts or self-defense

(03:16):
oriented.
But I also wrote abouteverything skydiving, bartending
, you know, families, all sortsof stuff.
I also did, weirdly, greetingcards.
The short, the short anecdotethere is I was, I was a
bodyguard for years andbodyguards tend to get injured
because they have to protect theperson they're, you know, in

(03:36):
charge of, and sometimes thatmeans you get the first stab,
wound or cut before you thenhave to turn and fight.
And I I won instant.
I got smashed by a van.
I was at home, I was all bangedup and cast and everything.
And I was going through a bookcalled Writers Market and I saw
that one of the listings therewas that Hallmark was starting a
new line called Shoebox.
They were looking for people towrite greeting cards and I love

(03:59):
sarcastic greeting cards.
So I contacted them with, youknow, I sent out, sent 12, you
know jokey, snarky card ideasand they called me and said look
, we're launching within Shoeboxthis line of really nasty cards
about this cranky little ladyand we'd like you to retool them
.
So it would be her saying thesesnarky things.

(04:20):
So the character's name isEdith.
I was the.
I wrote the first 12 in thatline, didn't credit.
The character wrote the first12.
So that was in another earlypublication thing, while I
taught at Tempe University foryears and while I was teaching
there I taught martial arts,history, women's self-defense
and jujitsu and I wrote thetextbooks for my classes and.

(04:41):
But the first book I everpublished was the judo textbook
for a class taught by my friendNorma Sharra, who's now an indie
filmmaker, and that was 1991.
After that I did a bunch ofnonfiction books, some some of
martial arts.
But the moment of change for mein terms of publication is.

(05:01):
I had this four book deal witha small press in Philadelphia.
I did three martial arts booksand when it came time for me to
tell, tell the publisher what Iwanted to do with the fourth, I
said I'd like to do a book aboutthe folklore of supernatural
predators around the worldthroughout history.
And there was this long momentof just crickets chirping he's

(05:22):
waiting for me to drop thepunchline of this joke.
And then he realized I wasserious so he agreed to it
because contractually he had toaccept my pitch.
But he did make me change myname for that one book.
So he came out.
The vampire slayer's field guideto the undead came out in 2002,

(05:43):
somewhere in there by ShaneMcDougall, being being the
Scottish for John McDougallbeing one of the Scottish clans
that my answers came from.
But researching that, the weird, you know, the supernatural
monsters, the folklore, theurban legends, cryptids, all
that got me interested infiction based on the folkloric

(06:03):
versions of monsters as opposedto the Hollywood versions.
But I couldn't find much and Icomplained about it enough at
home.
My wife said oh, you stopbitching about it and just write
the damn thing.
I sat down to write it took methree and a half years to write
that book.
I had never taken a creativewriting class.
The novel Ghost Road Blues waswhat came out of it and I went

(06:26):
up liking it so much I went totry to get an agent, got one
quickly.
She sold it to the secondpublisher, looked at it and then
it came out in 2006, which iswhen my fiction career began and
was nominated for two differentStoker Brom Stoker Awards.
I lost the novel of the year tosome cat named Stephen King.
You may have heard of him.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
Oh, if that guy, we don't talk about him.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, he's up and cunning guy.
I think he has a future aheadof him and I want the category
for best first novel and thatwas actually the one that
mattered most to me because itkind of validated my whole.
Should I try this fiction thing?

Speaker 1 (07:03):
I just love to get beat out by Stephen King.
I could just rep that like theonly person that beat me was
Stephen King.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
Fine you know, the funny thing is when I when I met
him first time I met him was atthe Edgar Awards.
He was being inducted asGrandmaster and we talked for
about 40 minutes and he pointedout and I had one, he had one.
He'd beat me by two votes,right, he pointed out to me that
he had two sons who were votingmembers.
Thank you so, but but it was ahuge great guy, it was great fun

(07:34):
.
And now I mean that was 2006.
Now it's 2023.
I am a third of the way throughmy 50th novel 50.
Wow, I was a writer and I was awriter in my long the way.
I started writing comics.
I've done 150 short stories anda ton of other stuff.
It's weird because I went fromnot knowing anything about
fiction to it being my entirelife.

(07:56):
Right, I wish to how I startedit earlier, like in my 20s, kind
of like my buddy, kevin JAnderson.
He started writing fiction whenhe was 26.
He's published 175 novels.
Wow, like an amateur.
In comparison, I'm in the slowlane, but I'm working to catch
up.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
Yeah, I've been.
I've been blessed to be in acouple of his story bundles.
Luckily I had genre hopped afew times where I was, had the
ability to be in the same Iwouldn't even say it's the same
virtual company as somebody likehim.
So that was quite.
That was quite amazing.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
And if you're.
I don't know if you've met himat 20 books, but he's one of the
nicest guys, one of my closestfriends.
Now he's one of the nicest guysin the world and he's very,
very supportive of up and comingwriters because he's one of
those people that believes weneed more writers in the
business.
They are not competitive, it'sunder.
It's under staffed.
We need more writers, indy ortraditional, doesn't matter.

(08:53):
Get those books out there andhe's all about it.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
Yeah, and one thing that amazed me about him is the
effort he puts into the creativewriting program.
He's got up there and as aColorado state, there is it yeah
.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
Western Colorado, western Colorado state.
He teaches the MFA program for,but he also co-founded the
superstars writer seminar, whichis right Springs.
I'm now on the board of thatand it's it's great because it
was.
It was founded by him, jimButcher, brandon Sanderson, jody
Lynn Nye and somebody elsewho's named James Arnott.

(09:29):
What is his first name?
James Arnott?

Speaker 1 (09:32):
I think so a bunch of no names, right.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
Yeah, I don't know which end of a pencil to use.
And it's become a reallyimportant conference because it
focuses entirely on the businessof writing for indie or
traditional, how to get andprint, how to do it right, how
to build a career out of it.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
Right, yeah, I looked into his MFA program.
I happened to find one that wascheaper because I was in the
service and then I'm a policeofficer, so they gave me huge
discounts that allowed me tobasically go to school almost on
pennies, you know, whatevercost normally, and I was taking
a huge interest because 20 bookswas putting out these

(10:14):
scholarship opportunities aswell.
And so to Kevin's MFA programand had a low residency and so
I'm like, well, I'm workingfull-time, so it would be
excellent to have a lowresidency.
So I ended up going to myschool.
I went to Liberty and finishedmy MFA in like 13 months.
I think I just finished that andI'll be teaching at my local
community college.
They asked if I could pick up acouple English courses.

(10:37):
It's almost like pro bono atthis point because of how much
they can pay, but I'm like it'sfor the joy of it, you know,
it's for the wonder of beingable to share my knowledge of
writing with young students, andbeing able to.
It's not something you get intoit like I'm going to get rich
off of teaching creative writing.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
Nobody gets off of teaching, but one of the
advantages of teaching is itgives you an opportunity to see
another side of the creativeprocess.
You know the academic worldcomes at it from a different
angle than you know guys in thegutters like me who are just,
you know, slogging at it.
There's a lot to learn fromteaching at college.
As I said, I taught at TampiUniversity for 14 years, not

(11:16):
writing, but martial arts and soon, and it taught me so much
about organization andstructural thinking.
So the college experience isreally useful for people.
It's great.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
Yeah, I'm really blessed right now as well.
So I'm a police officer.
I just left patrol and left theagency I was with, and so now
I'm over at a university I'm, soI'm at Concordia University
with a police officer, and sothey love the idea.
So the word has gotten out thatI've written I think I've
written 18 or 19 novels at thispoint but they've gotten out
that I do something other thanpolice and so for the students

(11:49):
to see, that is a really coolinteraction to have, because now
I have something to connectwith them.
I'm like, hey, not only am I,you know, I'm possibly
adjuncting there as a positionopens up, teaching English.
But it's really weird.
Apparently they go throughadjuncts really quickly
Apparently, everywhere does, butit is what it is.
But it allows me to connectwith them, especially young
writers, and say, hey, look,I've been through the ringer.

(12:12):
Like I tell everybody.
My story said I believed in thisso much that I sold my gym.
I had a gym, I sold my gym, Isold my business to jump 100%
into writing and was and failedso miserably that I ended up
having to donate plasma to payfor book covers.
That's, that's how much Ibelieved in it.
And so now to this day, I cansay my blood and sweat equity is

(12:33):
in my books and I think that'sthat's something that's it's
worth holding on to.
So I was supposed to be onebook quickly turned into 18 and
basically the future for me iswhat I'm doing, and it's an
amazing feeling because I was.
I was like you, was very youngand I was like I want to write
and then something shut me down.
You know and that's a longerstory, but I got shut down for
about 20 years.

(12:53):
I didn't come back to writinguntil I was in my mid 20s and
then it was like man, I wish I'dbeen writing that whole time.
I wish I hadn't done that.

Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah, I mean I writing until I did my first
novel.
Writing was never my full timegay, you know it was a bodyguard
as a bouncer, taught women'sself defense and other things at
Tepi University, ran a dojo,even ran a program for police
called cop safe, teaching lawenforcement officers to arrest
people, you know, in a way thatkeeps them the lowest rung of
the force continuum while theofficers safe.

(13:24):
And plus, I did some trainingprograms for SWAT and special
forces over the years.
So you know, all of that is funstuff, but it wasn't right.
Right, I've read the coursematerials, but that's not the
same thing.
But that, that book on monstersI did changed the entire
direction of my life.
And now I am not only making areally good living as a writer,

(13:47):
I am so freaking happy thesedays.
Right, you know this is this isI truly found what I wanted to
do when I grow up.
Right, I figured it out at 48.
I'm now 65.
But you know I'm going to keepwriting.
I often joke that when I die Iwant to be buried with a laptop
and a good Wi-Fi connection.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
Yeah, that's, that's a.
It is a weird.
It feels when it clicks, itfeels like a piece that just fit
in right, you know, and there'sa labor.
To the love.
I would say that, like there's,there are times that I'm like
man it feels like a slog.
I'm like that what I just putdown is crap.
But I think everybody dealswith that, especially when
they're doing something thatthey love.
Yeah, because there are pointsof it that you're not going to

(14:29):
love at some point.
You know, at some point in timeyou're going to be like this is
work and it is work.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
It is work that you love, but it is still work and
that's one of the things I tryto talk, to try to explain to
younger writers or newer writerscoming up.
A lot of them think it's allabout it's some sort of magic,
that they wait for the news andthey mythologize the process of
writing.
And yes, there is a certain Iguess you could call it magic in
the creativity that happens inyour brain.

(14:55):
But that's writing.
Publishing is a different thing.
Publishing is a business and itwas Ray Bradbury who told me
this when I was 12.
He was one of my mentors when Iwas a kid and one of the things
he told me was that writing isan art.
It's the intimate conversationbetween the writer and the
reader.
It's all about art.
Publishing is a business whosesole concern is selling copies

(15:15):
of art, Whether they, you know,they can get into business for
love of books, but it's at theend of the day, it's mercantile.
So when I get up in the morningto write, I am going to work.
I even say you know, even in myoffice, as you're in my condo.
I tell my wife I'm going to workand she doesn't bother me.
And you know I turn off my phoneringer and I'm at work.

(15:36):
And that focus on business notonly I mean people think that
it's some sort of a selling outor cheapening of the creative
process.
It's just the opposite.
Every writer you can name whosebooks you've seen in bookstores
and libraries, approach it likea business.
None of them were just likemagically.

(15:56):
Suddenly their book showed up.
You know, even Jack Kerouac hada literary agent and they
that's how they get to the pointwhere they can write for a
living is being able to managethe business side of things as
well.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
Yeah, I mean managing reader expectations as well.
You know, whatever your genrejust gives us an idea of what
people want to want to read andwhat the boundaries generally
are set.
And your skill that you developthe art allows you to bend and
break and kind of get in betweenthose genre lines but still
tell a story that people willread, that will inevitably sell.

(16:31):
I mean that's and that's.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
That's a big argument for education.
You know, learning not justlike.
All people come to writing witha natural storytelling gift, I
mean those of us who do this.
We have something we're bornwith, but the more you learn the
craft of it, the actualelements of storytelling and
look for those elements in theworks of successful books, the
more easily you're able tomanipulate the language to be

(16:54):
able to tell not only the storybut but a story that carries the
components of emotion andempathy, depth, layered content
and so on.
If the more you know about thestructure of it and how it works
, the more stories you can tell,and you can tell them in a way
that are more easily received bythe reader.
So education is a huge part ofthat.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
Yeah, and I would say that part of my education into
the craft and into thebusinesses is not just reading
books on sales and on mindset,but also on picking up every
great literary work that I canfrom any genre, adding it to my
list of need to be read andstudying it and reading it.

(17:37):
And I have that curse now whereI can't read anything as a
reader anymore.
I read it now as a writer,which means that I get a little
bit of the entertainment.
Then I'm otherwise.
I'm like that's a really goodparagraph.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
I mean, that's kind of how I got my start with
fiction because, as I mentionedearlier, I had never taken a
creative writing class.
So when I sat down to write,what I did is I took the six
books that were the closest tothe genre I wanted to write.
I was writing Small Town Horror, american Gothic is the genre,

(18:07):
and so I you know Sounds Lopak,stephen King, ghost Story, peter
Straub, the Haunting of Hill,help, the Shrink of the Action,
et cetera, read them as a readerand then read them multiple
times as a writer, lookingspecifically for elements of
craft.
You see, like what is thebalance of dialogue to narrative
prose in action scenes, the way, say, stephen King does it, the

(18:28):
way Robert McCammon does it,and you know, not to copy but to
understand how different skillpractitioners of the craft are
able to manipulate things.
So reading as a writer is a keyelement.
You should read, first forentertainment, sure, and then,
you know, deconstruct it.
And I even took it all the wayback to writing outlines, for

(18:48):
you know what I think might havebeen the bones of the book.

Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
I've shown a couple of those.
Like Peter Straub, I had shownhim the outline for Ghost Story
and it matched his outline likeabout 75%.
Wow, because there's aninternal logic to storytelling.
It's an equation of cause andeffect.
This action plus this actionplus this action inevitably
leads to this conclusion.

(19:14):
And if you know, if youunderstand that, understand what
the equation is, you can lookfor it in other books.
You can see where the first andthe second act end.
You can see how they build inmotif and allegory and subplot
and so on.
You see where they lay cluesand you see the carpentry.
That is how the thing got builtand to me that not only informs

(19:38):
me as a writer but it deepenedmy appreciation as a reader to
see how skillfully that wasmanaged.

Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah, it becomes one of those things where you
recognize patterns in thingsthat you enjoy.
You know, you start seeing likeI started writing the books
that I wanted to read or that Idid read, and not for, like you
said, not for copying, butalmost for like emulation, for
understanding the storystructure it gives.
You know, I didn't get my MFAuntil 14 books late it, 14 books

(20:06):
in.
But even then I don't feel likethe MFA gave me anything that I
couldn't have picked up fromreading enough, from writing
enough and from searching forthe information in craft books
and that sort of thing.
So it just condensed theinformation, the bare basics of
it, into an eight-week periodand said here you go, do the
best you can with it.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
It's a tool in your chest use it, and now you know
how to use that tool, so thatmakes you more skillful at your
trade, right, and that's whatit's all about, you know, I mean
.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
So I love this story that you tell us.
You've been telling about thisfirst lore book.
So I it was really impactfuland I've been talking about it
for over a year to my friendsand to my writing group.
I have a small writing group,you know.
You talk about BrandonSanderson.
One of the things that BrandonSanderson did was he influenced
me to go get a writing group,and so I did.
I went and I searched for fivepeople who were like me, in my

(20:55):
similar situation.
You know, kind of kind of myilk, you know, and said I need,
I need help, I want to help you.
Let's help each other, let'scritique, let's be objective,
not subjective, and let's shareour writing.
You know, before it's polished,before an editor's had it,
let's share it.
You know, and I would saythat's probably been my greatest

(21:15):
source of any kind of stepforward in my career has been
having that group.
So I really thank him for thatand so I take these tidbits from
people like him and people likeyou.
And one of the things you talkedabout was I don't know what and
I've been meaning to ask youthis, so I'm really excited to
do it here what was the piece oflore?
What was the?
It was a vampire, but it was ahead that detaches it's what

(21:36):
country to come from?
Detaches from the body andstarts floating around the room.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
It's.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
Vietnam, From Vietnam .
So the Vietnamese believe thata vampire is what?
Can you explain it?

Speaker 2 (21:45):
It's kind of a energy being.
It the head and entrails, tearitself out of the body, looks
around and finds a victim and,depending on which part of
Vietnam, and sometimes they havesimilar beliefs in Laos and
Cambodia.
Some of the versions of thevampires feed on blood.
Some eat I don't know how theyeat if it's just a head and
entrails, but they eat people.

(22:05):
But most often they take outsome life essence, the life,
energy or breath or something,and that's what they feed on.
Then they return to theirbodies.
It's, I mean, and there arevariations of this around the
world the Lugeru Lugeru,depending on the spelling again
in Haiti, it's differentvariations of it, where an old

(22:30):
crone will tear her skin off andbecome a ball of light like a
will of the wisp and fly aroundand again attack people for life
energy and then she returns toher body.
So there are variations of thataround the world and that's one
of the things.
And after I did that first book, I actually wrote five more.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
On Lour around the world.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
Yeah, folklore.
Four are about folklore.
One is about what would happenif zombies were real, and that
was all about asking expertswhat would we do and how would
we research and so on.
But the others are aboutsupernatural predators of
various kinds, ranging fromhundreds of different variations
on vampires and werewolves.
Ghosts Like zombies areinteresting because the only

(23:12):
true zombie is the Haitianzombie from that religion.
But the ghoul that George Romerocreated, the flesh eating ghoul
, is actually based on or theycalled it a zombie.
He didn't, but they put thatname on it but he actually based
it on ghouls from MiddleEastern folklore.
You see, it's something he hadread in college the Al Ghul,

(23:33):
desert Demon and there are anumber of flesh eating creatures
that are sometimes groupedunder vampire, but they're
actually closer to the fictionalversion of the zombie that we
have from the Romero films.
And that's the fun thing aboutthis folklore.
There are hundreds and hundredsof variations of every kind of
monster.

(23:53):
My favorite monster variationis actually a werewolf creature
called the Benendante.
It means the Goodwalkers, andit's from Livonia.
You'll find traces of this inItaly, poland, a couple other
countries, germany, a few othercountries have like pockets of

(24:14):
beliefs where there arewerewolves who claim that,
people who claim they'rewerewolves and they say that at
night when they become awerewolf, they go to fight evil.
So they're actually the guywerewolves and I love that
concept.
I've written a whole bunch ofshort stories about a Benendante
character and in fact I evenadded a Benendante character

(24:36):
into a Solomon Kane short story.
I did for part of the Robert EHoward anthology.
But I find it fascinating thatyou know they're also known as
the Hounds of God, which I thinkis a really cool name, and they
show up all over.
Nowadays the Benendantefamilies who claim to be
descendant of Benendante nolonger transform.
They're more like Wiccan thesedays.

(24:56):
They come to the house and soon.
But these are family historiesthat go back to the Etruscan
times.
Wow, I mean like ancient,ancient beliefs of people who
were evil, fighting monsters,and some of them got arrested by
the Inquisition and tortured totry to force them to admit that
they were apostates of hell.

(25:17):
And there was a couple thatthey couldn't the Inquisition
could not break and, believe me,they tried.
You know they were not halfmeasures.
And there's one guy, tyce.
They couldn't break him.
They finally released him andhe's the one they called the
Hound of God because they couldnot believe that anyone could
endure what they put him throughwere he not protected by God.

(25:37):
I don't think.
Well, that's badass yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:41):
That is the Strigoni Benefitsi, by the way, and
that's actually part of Catholicchurch history, where they
would have warrior monks whowould go out and capture
vampires, torture them untilthey drove the evil out of their
systems and then these vampireswould then embrace God and

(26:03):
they'd become essentiallyassassins for the church and
it's an actual church history.
I love that it's in churchhistory.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
Yeah, I mean, I would really love to see what the
archives are.
That's the one place I want togo in this world.
It's not just to see what's ifthere's anything revelatory
there, it's to see what thechurch thinks is worth hiding.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
That's what I'm interested in.
Yeah, and the fact that you areintrigued by that just shows
you're a writer, because all ofus have been hit with that at
some point or another.
Like damn, I wish I spoke 10ancient languages and had a key
to the Vatican Library.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
Yeah, well, yeah, it's one thing to be able to get
in there, it's another thing toactually know what you're
looking at, and it could take alifetime to.
I mean, I think I read a storyabout a guy who it took him a
lifetime to learn the languageneeded to transcribe one article
and he had to go and becomepart of some sect rise up to the
top in order to get access tothat section to read that
article.
And then the story is hilariousbecause at the end it said it

(27:04):
said it was basically a recipefor pea soup.
He thought it was going to be.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
And that is.
That's an awesome story andthat's probably what some of it
is, and some of it may behistories that there isn't
necessarily anything, you know,life changing.
It might just be stuff thatthey used to believe that's so
stupid they don't want people toknow.
They used to believe it.
Go ahead, you know.
But I just love the fact thatthere are so many types of

(27:30):
monsters out there.
One of the curious things isthat almost everything that
people know about, like, say,fighting vampires and werewolves
, is based on what fictionpeople have created, Right
Folklore.
Some quick examples it nowhereexcept in China, except in the
juncture of China.

(27:51):
No other vampire species aroundthe world throughout history is
afraid of sunlight None Ifsunlight was added to the
vampire lore.
When they were filming thesilent movie Nosferatu, most of
the crew had just walked offbecause they weren't getting
paid.
The lighting guy is one of thelast guys there and they
couldn't afford to fill the bigending.
So he said look, we've beenshooting the vampire in darkness

(28:12):
, let's just make it that hecan't abide the light and have
sunlight kill on the director'slike sure, fine, let's do that.
So the whole thing about avampire not being able to enter
unless he's invited, was made upby Brahms Stoker.
A little side note there theRosenbach Museum in Philadelphia
has all of Brahms Stoker'sresearch notes, so every
Halloween I would give a lecturethere, you know, and talk about

(28:34):
the writing of Dracula.
Well, he had made Dracula sopowerful in the first third of
the book that by the time he gotto ink England he would have
just killed everyone.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
Right, right.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
Stoker, you know, had to go back and create
limitations on his power, notbeing able to walk around.
I'm sorry, not being able toenter unless invited was one.
The other was making themafraid of a cross.
That was folklore.
In fact, there are quite a fewvampires in different parts of
Western Europe, Just as anexample, who live a normal life

(29:05):
by day, go into church andeverything else, but they're
also vampires Interesting.
A lot of things were added toit and because we most people
learn about monsters from booksand movies, they don't know that
there is a different version ofthose creatures and folklore,
which is going back to my firstnovel.
It's why Rook Goes Red Blues,because I wanted to pit human
characters against vampires whenall they knew about how to

(29:27):
fight them came from books andmovies.
Pretty high attrition rate as aresult.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
Yeah, well, and it's doing something different.
Right, and I think that was thetopic of your lecture was one
way I read 20 books was dosomething different with what's
out there.
You know you're talking aboutmaybe a vampire that feeds
people and instead of takes fromthem, it feeds them.
You know, kind of like bloodtype O, universal donor, that
sort of thing, you know.
And so I think that's really,really fun because it gives you

(29:54):
a lot to work with it, lets youstand out and also, at the same
time, is that you pay respect tothe lore, the fiction, the
literature, because you'resaying, look, I know what the
opposite was, or I know what thereal thing is, let's do the
opposite, and if I did it well,then the reader is going to be
like man, this was somethingdifferent and I really
appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
Yep, and also in when we look at some of the folklore
creatures and then writefiction based on it.
We get to explore themes thatare often overlooked.
Like you know, dracula is 500years old.
How the hell do you stay?
How do you not go crazy?
Being an immortal, you're goingto live forever.
That can't be fun, right?

(30:35):
Because if he has any kind ofan organic brain, it's about
only so much storage capacity.
It's like a computer, you know.
Once it gets full, it's done.
So you know, you just have afull brain and you're just
moving through life centuryafter century.
I think vampires are crankybecause they're bored.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
Yeah, we always see them as these.
They're always depicted as highclass and sophisticated,
because sophisticated peopletend to live in.
You know, they live for the.
I would say they live in themoment, as they savor every
moment, but also, at the sametime, they're perspective
towards the future.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
Yeah, and, by the way , that is also a fictional
construct.
The Highborn Vampire wasinvented by John Paul Adori and
Sheridan Lafano and Brom Stoker.
None of the vampires prior tothat in folklore were highborn.
They were.
You know, most often thevampire is just somebody in the
village who became one forwhatever reason, making

(31:31):
different ways to create avampire and they become the
predator.
But the Highborn thing, myguess was it's an attempt at
social commentary, the way therich feed off the poor.

Speaker 1 (31:43):
Yeah, I think.
And horror is an interestingvessel too, because you can.
You can do so much with horror.
That especially because horroris an emotion, a close cousin to
romance, which is also aemotion you have to.
I think in horror you arenaturally expected to feel some
sort of emotion, worst mostother genres.
You have to inject that emotionthrough character.

(32:05):
You have an expectation already, what you're going to assume.
You know then, and that's, Ithink that's really interesting
because you know the vampiresbeing this symbolic right of the
rich on the poor.
You have other lessons that aretaught, like I was.
I just watched Stephen King'snew release movie and I was kind

(32:26):
of like at the beginning of themovie I'm like good luck, good
luck, please do good.
You know, and and this one wason his bloodlines the
introduction to Salem slot or,excuse me, is, it sounds no, no
introduction to I'm so blankingon the name right now, I'm so
sorry, pet cemetery, excuse me,that's right, right and so the

(32:47):
the thing that stood out themost to me was the end narrative
from the main character.
He said sometimes dead is better, you know.
And so that made me really, youknow, think to myself.
I'm like man, like what wouldbe so bad in life that you'd
prefer it dead, you know, andthat's kind of the thing it's
like you, kind of like you'retalking about with the immortals
, and like what, what would yourlife be?

(33:07):
You know, ask those those typesof questions what could, what
could go wrong, you know, if youdon't live, if you live forever
, or what if you do live forever, but your body still kind of
deteriorates over time?
Like what is that like?

Speaker 2 (33:19):
I had a story that I'm going to be.
I get invited to a lot ofanthologies.
I have a story that I'vealready plotted out dealing with
immortality, where a vampire isbitten when they already have
AIDS and the AIDS progresses,though slowly, it doesn't go
away.
It's part of who are once theybecome a vampire.
So the vampires feelingthemselves get sicker and sicker

(33:41):
, but they're never going to die, and that that puts a different
slant on immortality.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
I mean, that's some horror,allows you to ask those
questions and allows you tochannel it through a vessel of
some sort, normally throughparanormal, or it's through a
creature feature.
You know, one of my favorite,favorite books I've ever, and
there's only two things in theworld that really scare me.
They're really weird.
But I, I don't like trains,like trains, the locomotives,

(34:07):
not like Metro, but like oldsteam locomotives, and I don't
like the creature, the Wendigo.
I think that creature to me,especially the old Lord the
Wendigo, that terrifies me andyou know, especially because
when you think about what theWendigo spirit has to do, or
what the person has to do to beinfected basically by the wind

(34:28):
of spirit, they have to be at apoint of starvation, so, so much
that they're willing to eattheir companion, their friend,
their, their family, whatever,whatever they have available.
So that situation is so tenseand so dire, and then they get
to reap the consequences of it.
Which is you become, this, thiscreature?
And so for me, I'm like.
People get put into situationsall the time and it says what?

(34:49):
What is our situation going tobe in that moment?
It's, it's, you know.
People say we don't judge eachother at our best, we judge them
when they're at their worst.
You know, what did you do wheneverything was bad versus when
everything is good?
And so I think horror allows usto ask those questions.
It allows us to present them ina way that people can kind of
personify and embody.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
Yeah, it does, and that's one of the reasons I love
zombie stories so much, becausein the zone in the typical
zombie story you have Monstersthat you know present and, as a
result of the spreadinginfection, the infrastructure
collapses.
When you can no longer call forhelp, you are on your own.
And when you are completely onyour own, you're also who you

(35:31):
really are, not who you want tobe perceived as.
So one of the examples I usebeen talking about this If
there's a zombie apocalypse, youhave a captain of industry,
right Person who can pick up aphone or snap his fingers and
anything is done for him becausehe pays everyone around him and
can afford the best.
Every you know his toiletsclogged.
He gets the top plumber in thearea to come when the zombie

(35:52):
apocalypse happens and there'sno one answering his calls.
Who is he?
You know what is his realidentity and he may not even
know until all of his comfortsand all of his First responders
taken away.
But then you get a guy who'sdown down the street running a
hot dog truck.
You know he's.
He's.
He's the one who fixes thetoilet, he's the one it does all
the stuff, because he can'tafford to call anyone else.

(36:13):
He learned how a whole bunch ofskills that are basic survival
skills that stretch a dollar,find you know what food has the
most value, you know for thedollar.
Because he needs to stayhealthy, needs his kids to stay
healthy, doesn't have much moneyand there's all the different
reasons.
He's learned to becomeself-sufficient.
He may wind up being thecharismatic leader that leads a

(36:33):
group of people to safety,because he's always been Closer
to his true self.
It's true as self as he's asurvivor.
And you know, in zombie films,when our affectation is stripped
away, we get to as writers, weget to explore drama.
When you have characters laidto the bone, you know
personality is gone and it'swhat made movies like night of

(36:56):
the living dead so effective.
George Romero the side note iswas a good friend of mine the
last eight or nine years of hislife and we talked endlessly
about how this works.
The, he said, the characters ofBen, barbara and I forget the
name of the guy in the cell, orDan maybe, I'm not sure Would

(37:16):
probably all like each other hadthey met in any other
circumstance, because nothingwas pushing them to the edge of
their psychological stability orNothing is highlighting their
inability to make good, cleandecisions, decisions in a crisis
.
So they would probably havegotten along if they were on

(37:37):
three seats at the diner thatBen talks about in the movie.
They would probably just chat,you know.
But then you put them in acrisis where they can't be that
and, like you know, the guy inthe cell or his Daughters dying,
his wife is, is freaking outbecause they can't do anything
for her.
Ben is, you know, he's trappedand White rural Pennsylvania.

(37:57):
That can't be a good thing inthe 60s.
And Barbara to solve herbrother murdered and she's
freaked out.
She's in post-traumatic stresslike in Sun Onset.
None of them are the versionsof themselves they play day to
day and that made that movie socompelling.
It's still watchable all theseyears later.

Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, and zombies.
Zombies provide that medium.
That's.
That's a perfect example.
It's never the zombies.
The zombies are the easy partstick them in the head and
they're done.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
It's not.
It's never the zombies, it'salways the people right, which
is why in most zombie films youset it up Zombie, zombie, zombie
and then you have this longmiddle act where it's all about
the cat, the people interacting.
But even shows like the walkingdead they had a whole episodes
where the zombies were not onlyincidental, they were almost

(38:41):
irritating.
Yeah, zombie would come in,you'd kill one just to see.
You can remind the audience.
Yes, we know it's a zombiestory, but the story was about
the character.
You know, the humans.
The zombies have no personality.
You know.
Sure, if you're watchingsomething like girl with all the
gifts or warm bodies orsomething, a zombie has
personality, but they're veryvariants on the theme.
In in the straight zombie story,eventually the zombies become

(39:04):
kind of one note.
That's why, for those funny, alot of people talk about the
zombie rules, as said to have byGeorge Romero.
They never get those rulesright.
He changes the zombies naturein every single film.
Each time the zombie is gettingcloser to a new, evolved state
by Day.
Of the dead.
There they're talking and usingour gun.

(39:25):
In in land of the dead theylead a revolt in diet, in diary.
That's kind of rebooted thefirst film.
But skip forward to survival.
The dead, the zombies evenlearn how to Negotiate with
humans and use animals as a foodsource instead of humans.
It shows evolution.
That's what are always intended, because he said otherwise.

(39:47):
They would be and I'm quotinghim directly boring as fuck.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
Yeah, and I, in my thesis paper, I wrote about
something and I don't think Iwas the original pointer of them
, of this type of idea, and Idon't think I'm the only one to
recognize it.
But zombies provide thatsituation where you take a bunch
of people and you stick them ina confined area and let them
just explode on each other andsee what happens.
Stephen King did that.
It's called the King method, iswhat I called it in my paper.

(40:13):
If it's, yeah, and what it waswas, you know, under the dome,
is a perfect example.
What happens if a dome comesover and all these people are
first to interact with it?
What happens if you take twopeople, stick them in a hot car
where a dog is trying to killthem?
You know what happens when youtake a town you serve, you know,
and the vampires you can't gooutside because the van, the
vampires, are owned.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
The night, you know right.

Speaker 1 (40:32):
So it's, it's, it's the King method is is forcing
the interaction through themedium of the scary thing, and I
just think that that's it's somuch fun and and it's so
different than you know.
There's there's werewolfknocking at the door.
You can do more.
You can do more with what youhave and and and I don't think
in, especially in GeorgeRomero's for films is like if it

(40:55):
weren't for the people, it'sjust zombies wandering around.

Speaker 2 (40:57):
It's it's all about the people all about people and
I, like you know, he and I lovedworking on on some projects.
We did a project called nightsplural, nights of a living dead
anthology and it's Moderatelyclose being picked up by MGM
plus for a TV series Wow.
And we just asked some of thetop zombie writers around To

(41:21):
write stories and all of themgave us character driven stories
.
The zombies were there.
The zombies are the crisis.
They're the canvas on which youpaint a story about human, you
know Survival.
And it goes back to a sayingthat one of the first things I
ever learned about fiction,richard, I mentioned that Ray
Bradbury was a mentor of mine.
So Bradbury and Matheson were,for three years, mentors of my,

(41:43):
from age 12, one for three years.
And one of the things Mathesontold me is that he said we're
not in the business of givinghappy characters a good week.
Our job is to step in, kick,kick the door in, break all the
furniture, chase them out of thehouse with a hatchet and let
them survive on the main streets.
And this is that's, that'sfiction, because Writing fiction

(42:07):
is crisis.
Even a romance boy meets girl,boy gets girl, boy loses girl.
Crisis.
Boy finds girl again, maybe,but the crisis is the turning
point of the drama and you know,look at kids books.
The pokey little puppy lostloses his ball.
Right Curious George doessomething and he's in a crisis.

(42:28):
It's all about crisis.
The zombie stories just make ita little easier.
Monster stories make it alittle easier.
It's strays from the point abit when the monster is Retains
its personality, which is whyoften vampire stories are carved
out From a lot of horrorstories.
Unless they're, you know,pretty edgy, like 30 days of

(42:49):
night, it's a pretty edgy film.
Twilight's not an edgy film,you know the vampires are.
There are bad guys, good guys,but you can reason with them to
a degree, right?
So it that becomes a conflictstory, not a monster story right
, yeah, the.

Speaker 1 (43:08):
But I had a, I had a co-writer, one of my co-writers.
He said he said, man, I'mreally stuck, like I don't know
what to do next.
I'm like, throw a problem inthere, something small, throw
any kind of problem, it could beanything.
Just, you know, this one's aspace horror.
So we're talking, we're we'rewriting about.
Our inspiration is eventhorizon, which is one of my
favorite movies ever and theonly movie that's ever managed

(43:30):
to scare me and Damn good movie.
Yeah, and it went under theradar.
I try to tell everybody aboutit.
I'm like man, you got to seethis movie.
If you hadn't seen it, you'remissing out, and so it it.
So I just told him to put a ripin the suit.
He's walking by a jagged pieceof metal, rip in the suit and
then he's like man.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
That work, just a little bit of a problem, and it
forced a conversation betweenthe characters a great example
of that not a horror film, but,but a great example of that
point is the Martian.
Things just certainly go wrongfor him and if they didn't, it
would just be a guy waiting forrescue, you know, but his
potatoes died because the youknow, the habitat rips, etc.

(44:10):
Etc.
That makes a story.
You know you always want thatextra thing and anytime a writer
is, he doesn't know what to donext.
Have you know, either invent anew character and have him cause
a problem or just havesomething go wrong, and that now
you've got pages of problemsolving and character
explanation that evolves duringthe problem solve.
It's great.

Speaker 1 (44:30):
So here we are, readers giving away our
solutions.
So if you wonder why everythingkeeps going wrong, it's because
we got to a writer's block.
If it seems like we're notgetting anywhere, well, it's
because we came to a stoppingpoint.
We needed something to move thestory forward.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
So yeah, and by the way, that's also one of the
things that editors are good for.
A given example of this in myfourth novel, patient Zero, the
first of my Joe Ledger thrillerseries, I had had a villain that
I thought was really you know,I thought I had crapped them
really well and he was, you know, an elegant nuance, a lot of
different.
You know characteristics, buthe was, he was a loner character

(45:04):
and he was always in his ownhead and my editor said that's
great, but he's not interactingwith anyone.
Give him someone to talk to.
Create a Watson for him.
And I created a character forhim to talk to.
Not only did it bring myvillain much more to life and
give him more dimension, it alsosuggested new ways in which the
two of them could amp up thetroubles for the good guys.

(45:25):
So editors, you know, are verycognizant of the fact that you
may need to put more characters,more subplots, more twists,
more events Into your story.
To take it from the story youwrote to the one that should be
published.

Speaker 1 (45:39):
Right, yeah, I think that's.
Um, you know, circle back alittle bit.
That's that.
That becomes the effort, right,the creative energy that we
inject into these stories, as wesay we need something here and
we add more.
And we, but we had to add theright thing the Watson.
You know, you mentioned theWatson.
Let's, let's give a littlereveal.
I know what the Watson is, butI don't know anybody else knows

(46:01):
what the Watson is.
So can you explain your version, what you think the Watson is?

Speaker 2 (46:04):
Yeah, I mean, if this , if the Sherlock Holmes stories
have been written, you know, inthird person about Sherlock
Holmes, we none of us alivetoday would know about them.
They, the fact that Watson wasthere to constantly ask
questions, to be the person thatthat Holmes and his
theatricality was fooling youknow, and or sort of stalling

(46:25):
for the big reveal, that's whatmakes the story so well.
I mean all those moments whenWatson, you know it's Holmes to
say to I see you've been to thebetting office, you know how, do
you know that that he'd gothrough all the different
reasons, right, and Watson wouldbe amazed and he becomes our
proxy.
A second character creates thatrole.
So a Watson is a great, greatfoil for the main character as

(46:47):
well, as maybe the fact that theDoyle made him the Biographer
for Holmes allowed Watson'spersonality, which was much
richer and more complex thanHolmes, to drive the narrative.
He's likable and approachable.
Is is not at all likeable.
He's.
You know, if you knew him inreal life you'd be like you

(47:07):
could have told me this shit atthe beginning of the case Rather
than stringing me along.
But you know that that's,that's Victorian era.
You know Drama.
But Doyle did something veryprogressive.
He moved the whole SherlockHolmes type of story into the
20th century by having that,that foil.
There's two characters Littleside note, just pet peeve.

(47:27):
I hate when they make Watsoninto a bumbling idiot in movies.
My favorite Watson was EdwardHardwick in the Jeremy Brett
Sherlock Holmes.
He was an intelligent,reasonable, accomplished
individual who just was not asuper genius and he was in the
presence of super genius, but heoften challenged Holmes in some

(47:48):
of his moral and legaldecisions.
They, they argued so and thatgave them not only a reality in
their relationship, it showedthe evolution of an actual
friendship, a believablefriendship, and we like Holmes
more for his affection andrespect for Watson.
Yeah, the battle rathbone.
Nigel Bruce, sherlock Holmes.
You know Nigel Bruce was a wasit was a.

(48:11):
The character play was an idiot.
Yeah, yeah and and Watson's adoctor.
Yeah, he's a medical doctor anda former soldier.
Yeah, you know, man's got awhole lifetime experience.
You know Martin Freeman'sWatson was pretty good in the in
the Benedict Cumberback Holmes.
They went a little overboardwith the Jude Law version in the

(48:32):
Robert Downey juniors, but atleast they went in the direction
of having him more intelligentrather than less.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
Yeah, he became kind of the subject of Sherlock's
pranks and jokes and stuff likethat.
But he kind of viewed him as anequal and almost like I need you
.
And there was that, there wasthat arc in there too.
It was like hey, like you needme, kind of a thing, and that
worked out great.
Oh yeah, but you're exactlyright, if without, without
Watson, I mean, we'd beabsolutely bored, you know.
And so one of the things I liketo to point out and this is one

(49:00):
of the lectures I plan to give,and I asked this question and I
say the parts of the Caribbeanmovies, are you, are you
familiar with them?
Yeah, I asked people say who'sthe main character and they're
like Jack Sparrow and I'm like,well, it's Captain Jack Sparrow
and no, it's not, it's actuallyWill Turner.
Yeah, whole movies about willturn up, but will Turner is so
boring and he is the subject ofeverything that happens in there

(49:21):
.
He doesn't do anythingproactive ever, minus a couple
of sword fights.
Yeah, it's Jack that's actuallygoing after the things that he
wants.
And then he's flamboyant andfunny on top of it and he's kind
of got this superhero-esquequality to him or everything
kind of I like to associate himwith, like Domino from X-Men,
where he just got luck on hisside.
That's his superpower, becausethe dude's been killed a couple

(49:43):
of times, eaten a couple oftimes.
I mean it just somehow makes it, you know, and without, without
you know him it's just aboutwill turn and we'll turn,
doesn't do anything, and so.

Speaker 2 (49:54):
And you know I have nothing against Orlando Bloom,
it's just the character waswritten to be a dull duller.
I mean I think they may havebeen so afraid that he'd be so
heroic he'd outshine thescripted version of Jack Sparrow
, and then one, of course I wasjust Tells his name, the actor I
play, sparrow, johnny Depp.
When Johnny Depp just wentwhole hog and went, you know,

(50:16):
full Keith Richard in In therole.
It even made the othercharacters paler still, you know
, to the point where you can'twait for his, his part to get
over.
So we get back to Sparrow andalso the rest of the crew of the
various ships, because theybecome interesting.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
Yeah, they did that.
Later on in the series.
I think they started, you know,making the other characters
more interesting.
They even gave Barbosa an arcto like who it.
I think they did well to dev toevolve the series.
It became entertaining enoughthat I would watch all the way
through, you know all of themjust to see.
And they and lich and of course,because I'm I love anything to
do with lore they enrich thelore of the world and they made

(50:56):
the world bigger, you know, likethey're supposed to do in a
series, so that that just feltgood.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
Yeah, there are a couple other Things, going back
to the horror world, that thatmake horror such a unique and
fun genre, one of which is, youknow, the Van Helsing character
and it's been borrowed that.
That character been borrowed byalmost every thriller movie

(51:22):
we've had since.
Even if it's not horror,science fiction, just a thriller
movie, there's usually somebodywho knows what's going on and
Stoker built him so beautifullyinto the story that in a lot of
ways it is.
You know, he rivals Mina andDracula as the main character.

(51:43):
Everything he does Makes thestory pivot because of his
knowledge and he's the one thatgives us the information, the
rules of the story.
I love, I love building incharacters like that.
In various works I've done,I've had them be kind of
blatantly Van Helsing's, evenwith the point where characters

(52:04):
joking that refer to he's ourvan Helsing Having characters
that are giving information onthe fly and they serve that role
without it being Too much of anarrative dump, you know, like
info dump and I love.
I love that sort of thing andI'm one of those people that my
favorite parts of, say, aDracula movie is not Dracula,

(52:27):
it's always the Van Helsingright in the air of Peter
Cushing is Van Helsing.
Yeah my second favorite is FrankFinlay from the Louie Jardin
Van Helsing illusion on Draculamovie.
Yeah, and it's.
It's a great character that hasa lot of potential, a lot of
twist to it and there's usuallya bit of innate dignity to the

(52:48):
character too.
He's that, the end product ofus having learned, and therefore
you know the proof thatknowledge is power.

Speaker 1 (52:55):
Yeah, and that's, um, you know, horror can do that
with, with just just theknowledge of something unknown,
right?
Because that's that's what itbecomes down to with with the
horror genre specifically.
It breaks down to the fear ofthe unknown, right?
Because we, because at some, atsome point, we understand how,
if we can understand how to killthe thing, the fear goes away,
because now we're imbued withconfidence.

Speaker 2 (53:16):
So a lot of times it comes adventure story at that
point.

Speaker 1 (53:19):
Exactly, and so you have to be very careful where we
put that adventure in, and westill have to make sure that our
heroes are not Exactly heroes.
The horror point of Horror isnot to defeat the villain, is to
survive the villain, and that'swhat horror is about.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
And and that's one of the reasons that we have so
many bad horror films out therebecause a lot, of, a lot of
script writers Don't understandthat what they do is they, they,
they have the, the characterslearn the rules, follow the
rules, kill the monster and then, for some reason, the monster
is alive again in the postcredits moment.
And that's Lazy storytelling,it's lazy writing.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
Yeah, perfect example is the first alien movie.
Alien is a 100 isolationcreature feature in space and it
is essentially the same Samestart.
A build up as a like a hauntedhouse would be right.
But she gets tools to defeatthe thing along the way.
But it costs her every step ofthe way to get those things and
she fails miserably every singlestep.

(54:14):
The, the creature, is a perfectcreature and we are human, and
that's the thing that that makesit so terrifying is that it is
designed Specifically to be ourcounter and the only thing you
can do is survive.
But then you get into the laterfilms and it's like now she's a
super soldier because somehowshe only only her Knows the inf.
Only she knows the informationabout the alien.

(54:35):
And then it's like that's whypeople complain so much about
whatever.
The alien number I think isnumber three, with all those
space marines.
I think that's.

Speaker 2 (54:41):
I think that's what I think it would come to was that
number two.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
Okay, so the the prison was a little bit better,
but still alien.
Number two was like I was like,okay, this is just more like an
action sequence, but I like, Ilike the alien creature, so I'll
watch it.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
Yeah, no, might, might, take a minute.
I've been.
I've done a lot of work withthe aliens license.
I edited alien bug hunt andaliens versus predator
anthologies uh, aliens.
The second film was actually myfavorite action film of all time
.
Um, because it was shot as anaction film, was never intended
to be a horror film, but jamescameron like, I got to meet him
a few years ago and he talked tome.

(55:15):
I asked him about that becauseyou know I was working on the
anthologies and he said he saidridley scott made a perfect
horror movie.
Why would I go and try to writeit, do a sequel?
Perfect film.
There is nothing about thatmovie that needs needs repairing
through a sequel.
I just wanted I love action.
I, you know terminator was anaction film.
I wanted to write an actionmovie and this is what I did and

(55:36):
it was a perfect Act.
Well, almost perfect actionfilm.
There is one Real flaw in thatmovie and it bugs all my friends
around the navy.
They leave nobody on the ship,seriously nobody.
Apart from that, I loveeverything else about that movie
.
Um, and it was.
You know, it wasn't intended tobe hard.

(55:58):
Right from then on, I don'tthink the script writers really
grasped Either the value ofeither the two films.
They had movies with lots ofaction and they had movies with
jump scares, but they did notcreate a good horror film or a
good action film.
And the only movies in the inthe alien franchise I like are
the first.

(56:18):
Two predators is the same way.
I only like one and threeincredible Because they're
they're similar and you know abunch of really tough characters
up against an unbeatable foeand the only way you're going to
win is through ingenuity, andthat's a hard sell when you have
something an advanced race,that is their entire culture is
hunting you.
How do you defeat?
First film was was a lot of fun.

(56:40):
Second film got a lot of fun.
The rest of them Could bebothered.

Speaker 1 (56:45):
Yeah, I think that and this would be a good point
to leave off on that that thething that allowed the
especially the predator film to,that allowed the character that
was Arnold Schwarzenegger tosurvive, was it was Listen to
the words he used come, kill me,come on, kill me.
He was reducing himself down tothe one from this huge muscly

(57:06):
action figure Guy that wascapable of doing you know insane
Things on the combat, in combatand in general, just being
ultra strong, and all this theyreduced himself down to the
sniveling covered in mud, hidingin a hole kill me, kill me,
kill me.
But that was the moment, thathuman moment, that he basically
knew, like I'm either going todie or this is going to work.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
Yeah, without that moment it would have been as bad
as commando Humanize thecharacter.
That's what made it work sowell.
And he put a little bit of thathumanity into the first Conan
movie.
Second one's on and the remakesucked.
But the first one he he gotbroken all the way down and then

(57:47):
he had to build himself up andit's his loss of confidence in
who he believed he had becomeFaulted.
Yeah, we had to reclaim hisconfidence and, uh, I thought
that that was really really welldone.
And, by the way, I don't knowif you can see Listeners camp
right behind me Is a book on myshelf.

(58:09):
It's currently on the wanderervery first book ever bought.

Speaker 1 (58:12):
Wow, and you still have it.

Speaker 2 (58:14):
I still have it.
I actually started out withConan as as my preferred reading
other than what was assigned inschool, but it when I was eight
, I think Wow, incredible.
But even the character in thestory wasn't.
He wasn't always a good guy andhe wasn't always right right.

Speaker 1 (58:33):
Well, excellent, Jonathan man, we've run the
gambit, holy crap.
That flew yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
Are you going to be at 20 books again this year?
Yes, sir, I am, yeah, you'regoing to have to do more talking
.

Speaker 1 (58:46):
Yeah, absolutely, I think it'd be great.
I think this is just a fun,fruitful conversation and I
think I think our readers willenjoy to see pull pull back the
curtain a little bit.
We went a little bit more intothe craft and stuff like that.
I think the readers are, ourlisteners are really going to
enjoy that, and so that's alittle bit different than we
normally do and I'm starting tofeel like they're interested in

(59:07):
that kind of thing.
A lot of readers are writers,or a lot of writers are readers.
You know, all writers should bereaders, but I think I think
that's that's very cool to seebehind the mind as well, of what
we come up with.

Speaker 2 (59:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:20):
And why exactly?
And we're you know.
It's more than just askingwhere do you get your
inspiration?
I think that's kind of a boringquestion.
I'm like it's kind of dead.
You know, let's, let's godeeper, you know.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
Well it's.
It's like one of the mostcommon questions a horror writer
gets is from people who don'tyet understand I say, yet
understand the genres.
They say you know what makesyou write about monsters, make
you love monsters so much?
I don't love monsters.
I don't write about monsters, Iwrite about people.
I write about people who fightmonsters.
Right, I grew up in a very poor, very abusive household.

(59:49):
My father was career criminalwho ran a local chapter of the
KKK.
Terrible environment to grow upin.
Wow.
I got involved in martial artsas a kid because I knew one day,
one of these days, I was goingto have to fight him, and so I
wound up at age 14 defeating myown monster.
I understand what it's like togrow up in the presence of
something that appears to beoverwhelming odds.

(01:00:11):
It was six foot eight, threehundred and eighty pounds of
muscle.

Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
I'm six four.
I was six two by the time I was14, but you're still tired over
me.
I beat my monster, so I writeabout stories.
I write stories about peoplewho are confronting something
that appears to beinsurmountable.
It's a horror novel, a disasternovel, deep space, science
fiction, apocalyptic story.

(01:00:36):
They're up against somethingthat nothing in their life has
prepared them for that moment.
So how do they level up?
Yeah, and those stories are myfavorite kind of story when you
have to become better than youare by not holding on to who you
think you are, become who youshould be.
And you know, van Helsing wasmy hero as a kid.

(01:00:59):
Yeah, he told them how to beata monster.

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
Yeah Well, what an incredible, incredible story,
and thank you for sharing youknow about, about your childhood
, and what you know brought youto be the person you are today.
I think that's that's reallyimportant for people to know.
I have no shame in tellingpeople I was a soldier and now
I'm a police officer, and thereare people asking me why do you
want to be a police officer?
And so I don't like bullies.
I've never liked bullies andpeople who you know, people who
steal from people, people whobeat their wives, people who who

(01:01:25):
hurt animals and people wholitter these are all bullies in
some respect and I don't likethem.
And so I don't write about Idon't like monsters, I don't
like bullies.
I write about them becausethey're real and they're, and
you know, and sometimes it maytake the form of a when to go,
sometimes it might take the formof a vampire, but this is just
one bully that we got to, we gotto deal with.
You know, and often the bullybullies use power.

(01:01:47):
That's what they use over youis to is is power.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
And and a superpower that that people can use against
them is actually empathyUnderstanding what it means to
under empathy for yourself,empathy for the bully, not
necessarily sympathy.
You're standing and thenfinding out how to be in the
path of that so that it does notdo harm to somebody standing
behind us.
Yeah, empathy becomes anincredible resource in a lot of

(01:02:13):
different areas of life, butalso is a great resources.
Or, as a writer, you have tofeel what the characters feel
good and bad and inhabit theskin so you could write a story
that is no matter howfantastically elements,
believable sort of at realpeople in extraordinary
circumstances.
And it sounds like you're doingthat and that's what I do, and

(01:02:37):
that's why we're probably bothgoing to continue writing and
writing and writing until they,as I mentioned earlier, they
bury us with our laptops.

Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
Yep, I have to.
I have to.
I don't have a choice.
I'm actually one of myprocesses right now is is
writing down where all of mystories are, so that way they
can, my, my family, whoever hasaccess to them, can finish the
ones that I was writing, andI'll leave instructions on how
to finish it so I don't leaveany of them undone.

Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
I have a writer friend I'm not going to mention
names yet because they it's notpublicly announced, but who's
who's?
In really dire physicalcircumstances.
He may not survive, and I'm oneof the people that will
probably be completing some ofhis uncompleted works.
That's that's.
That's an interesting legacy.
Sometimes, you know, we want todo that, so our stories can not

(01:03:29):
only live on beyond us but canbe completed in a way that
speaks to the same humanity thatthat we were striving for, and
we wrote them or started them.

Speaker 1 (01:03:43):
What an incredible ask.
You know.
You know you've reachedsomebody and this is I know this
is a little aside and we'regoing a little bit over here,
but I think it's worth it.
But what an incredible ask whenyou say I think you know me and
my story and the way I writeand what I stand for enough Will
you finish my novel?
Will you finish my series?
Look at what Brandon Sandersdid with Robert Jordan I mean,

(01:04:03):
we're talking about a massiveseries, exactly, and what an
incredible feat.
And you know, and so that'scongratulations to you.
That should be something I'msorry about, your friend, but
that should be something we'recelebrating that you were, you
were potentially asked to finishsomebody else's novel or their
works.
I don't know what he's workingon, but you know,
congratulations to you.
That means that you'veconnected with that person in a
way that they feel comfortablewith something, that that this

(01:04:26):
is, this is their dying breath,right, or something close to it.
I mean, you know their names onit and that's going to be,
that's going to be somethingforever.
So congratulations to you andI'm sorry, if you're a friend,
I'll pray for him, but that's, Ithink that's man.
We'll talk about a tender note,but definitely, definitely a
great place to say you know what.
This was totally worth it and Ithink that the conversation was

(01:04:47):
worth it.
It was all a blast and I'mreally, really appreciate you
taking your time out of yourbusiness schedule.
I don't think you said you hadto interviews every single week.

Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
Every single day this week, yeah, and next week.
I've got 11 in the next 12 days.
But you know, and some of themare, you know, overseas as well.
And the first thing I will sayfor any readers, any writers who
are out there listening, if yougo to my website, which is
Jonathan mayberrycom, and spellmy last name right, it's MAB,
not M a, y, b, m a, b or Y.

(01:05:16):
On my website there's a one ofthe pages is free stuff for
writers how to format a novel,sample of one of my comic book
scripts, how to write a queryletter, how to write a synopsis
really useful stuff.
They're all downloadable, freePDFs.
Go grab what you need, sharewith your writer friends.

Speaker 1 (01:05:34):
Absolutely.
I'll see if I can link that inthe comments below.
So, ladies and gentlemen,Jonathan, I know you told us,
but give us the name of the bookthat you want people to pick up
if they never heard of you.

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
They've never heard me patient, zero patients.
It combines horror and actionand science my three favorite
things and it's the first of myJoe Ledger thriller series.
I am writing the 14th book inthe series right now and have
the next couple sold already,and it's it's a fun, relatable

(01:06:07):
character.
He's emotional damage goods whouses his damage to be able to
be really good at his job.
So and I think you can use exsoldier, ex cop, now spec ops
guy for internationaltroubleshooting organization.

Speaker 1 (01:06:22):
Very cool.
So, Joe Ledger excellent, Ihave seen it.
I've got the first book.
It's actually in my in mylibraries I definitely it's my.
My bump it up on my to be readlist.
That's um.
Thank you for that, Jonathanmayberrycom.
I'll make sure there's a decentlink in there so that people
know how to spell your namecorrectly.
But, John, thank you for yourtime tonight.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
I appreciate it my pleasure, brother, and this has
been quite a lot of fun and Ihope, hope to come back someday.

Speaker 1 (01:06:48):
Absolutely.
Yeah, we do bring repeats on.
I know we've got a couple ofscheduled, so I'll definitely
keep you in the loop.
So, ladies and gentlemen,you're listening to the night
marriage podcast.
This is going to be episodenumber one, season two of the
podcast, and I'm calling in fromOctober 16, so I will be
publishing this one as soon aspossible.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank youfor your time and have a good

(01:07:08):
night.

Speaker 2 (01:07:09):
Take care guys.

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