An Interview With Ryan La Sala

Charles sat down with queer horror/fantasy author Ryan La Sala.

They discuss Ryan's new YA horror novel, "The Dead Of Summer." They also discuss what makes a Young Adult novel, the intersections of queerness and the horror genre, how community is the LGBTQ+ population's secret weapon...and so much more!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Coming to you from the dining room table at East
Barbary Lane. Welcome to another special episode of Full Circle
the Podcast. I am your host, Charles Tyson Jr. Martha
is off doing fabulous Martha things at the moment and
can't join us, but she sends our love. But that
is okay because I am sitting here with a wonderful guest.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
He is an.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Author of a fabulous and thrilling new book called The
Dead of Summer, and I am very excited to talk
to him about it and its themes and all the
wonderful things contained within the brightly colored covers. Ryan Lesala
is in the house. Hi, Ryan, how are you.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
I'm so good good. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Thank you for being had by me. So this is
a great book. I inhaled it pretty quickly, and so
it was pitched to me as a queer young adult
horror novel. For one thing, please explain to me, like

(01:25):
what what do you think defines a young adult novel?

Speaker 2 (01:30):
So you could take this from a few different angles,
from like the industrial angle. It's a marketing category. So
it's books that publishers publish for teenagers, right, basically for
high schoolers and market to high schoolers. But like in reality,
which is where I read and write from, everybody reads

(01:51):
YA stories. Like the whole world is obsessed with books
about teenagers doing heroic and difficult things, and so yeah,
YA is sort of like it tells itself that it's
going to be sold to like teenagers. But the fact
of the matter is is that why stories just center

(02:11):
teen experiences and teen characters. But many, many people older
and younger read those stories.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Okay, good, that makes sense because I'm reading it because
you know, I think of why novels I think of
like that you know, boy Wizard series that I'm not
going name drop, which feels pretty like childish, you know,
as much as I may or may not have enjoyed it,
And this definitely is not that. It's a lot of

(02:44):
fun actually, So tell us a little bit about what
The Dead of Summer is about.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah, absolutely, So. If anyone's familiar with my work, I
focus on horror stories, but within the genre of horror
you can do a lot of different things, so none
of my stories are too too similar. This is definitely
sort of my most ambitious and biggest story. It's the
first of two books. The second one's coming out next year.
I just turned it in. So this one ends on

(03:13):
a very big clipphanger. I've been getting a lot of
messages about but rest assured that the rest of the
story is is on its way. But in this story,
you're gonna encounter the Island of Anchors Mercy, which is
it's a fictional place, but it's this beautiful island off
the coast of Maine, famous for its shellfish and its beaches,
and it's like a summer destination for a lot of

(03:33):
queer people. There's like a vibrant drag community there, but
it's hiding a very insidious secret. And Ali, the main character,
is a teenager determined to figure out what that secret
is because all of his life as a resident on
this island, he has been noticing patterns of secrecy and
shame and sickness, and now his mom is sick and

(03:56):
he wants to figure out what exactly is sort of
causing this, like what aren't they the adults telling everybody.
But before he can really get too far in his investigation,
there's this storm on the busiest weekend of the summer,
and up from the ocean washes basically answers, but they
take the form of this kind of radiant, supernatural organism

(04:16):
that begins to spread itself through the community. And now
it's up to Ali to figure out how all of
these things are connected while trying to kind of stop
it from escaping onto the mainland. And so that's one
side of the story. The other is a scientific researcher
who is three weeks in the future writing about their
investigation into Ali's story because they think somewhere in Ali's

(04:39):
fight to survive is the solution to potentially saving the
rest of the world from a similar fate. So it's
kind of unclear what happens to Ali. That's kind of
the big point of the book. But yeah, that's that's
the gist of it.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Yeah, that is in a nuts nutshell the storm comes
and then wackiness.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Ensues, very wacky.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
Yeah, And I love I love the themes of you know,
how a secret can basically devour you know, an individual,
a community, a location, even which when you tie it
into the queerness of the story, you know has layers.

(05:21):
I appreciated that. I also appreciated because the location of
the story is like this, this gay hub, this like
that's detached from from everyone else because it's an island.
The queerness can exist on its own without having to
you know, be held up in like look queer people.

(05:45):
It can just exist as part of the story. I
definitely appreciated that, you know, because so many times you
read a story and it's like, hey, folks, look at me,
I'm writing a queer book.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Truly, and like, I mean, it's interesting because as like
a queer creator, I feel like I'm consistently caught in
the tension of wanting to like uphold and put the
neon sign on like the queerness of something, while there's
this like just as important tension also asking it to
be commonplace and totally banal, right and like almost expected.

(06:20):
And so I kind of was hoping to achieve both
with a story like this, where like from Ali's point
of view, he was born and raised on this island
where it's really normative to have queer people, right, Like
his piano tutor is this drag queen who also is
a mayor, who also is the person who does like
the story time at the local library, like, which is
to me a kind of fairly queer ecology where everyone

(06:43):
has like nine different jobs and we're kind of all
helping each other put on a big show for one another,
and that's based in reality, right Like, there are places
that are like this, and queer communities tend to kind
of create these sanctuaries, even amongst larger, larger ecologies, like
this particular island is based on Provincetown, Massachusetts, where you'll

(07:06):
find almost like an exact replica of this particular story
or this particular setting. I should say at the same time.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, I haven't been yet.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
They don't worry. Yeah you should go. It's it's still there.
Don't worry. But Province Sound has great history. It's been
there for like hundreds of years. He's always been kind
of this like artistic commune and sanctuary. But at the
same time, places like this, even though from like the
inside they are sanctuaries where it's very normative, they can't

(07:38):
escape being embedded in a world that requires queer people
to create sanctuaries. So they're always in dialogue with the
tension that sort of asks us to kind of enclose
ourselves into these these communities. And so that's also what
the story is about, right Like, the second things start
to go awry on this island of Banker's Mercy. In
the book, there's a quarantine imposed upon the island to

(08:02):
kind of keep things locked down. But like even the
act of kind of locking all these people into their suffering,
so they kind of have to deal with themselves mimics
in many ways, how like institutions often leave in abandoned,
marginalized communities to kind of deal with their problems themselves
when they don't sort of spread into the rest of
the world because it's seen as like a kind of
societal contamination. And so the story kind of has both,

(08:25):
where the actual setting is really very normative, but many
of the strains that play out in this particular book
absolutely arise from kind of the reality of communities and
the sanctuaries that they create.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah, and I love how, like you mentioned, one of
the main characters is, besides being a very well respected
member of the community, is also a drag reformer, And
I love that. I love that, you know, because they're
so respected, they can he can just so you know,

(09:00):
we need to do X, Y and Z, and everyone
goes yes, sir, you know, and just steps into action.
I love that. I also love the idea of, you know,
when shit goes down yes, these are drag queens, but
they are also people who have like varying skill sets,
and so those skill sets get to be put into

(09:21):
practical use. That made me seem like, yes, that's right,
you would be able to do that, wouldn't you.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
Well, it's true. I oftentimes people are like, well, you know,
how come you by queer horror? Right, That's a question
that I get all the time. And I'm lucky enough
to kind of have a career where I've gotten to
center characters like me and the people that I know.
But it does like the question of like what am
I doing sort of putting all of the my my
beloved people in versions of myself through like horrific scenarios.

(09:52):
And the answer is really simple. I just don't think
straight people could cut it in certain scenarios because they
don't have it takes. You would need certain skill sets
to survive my books. And that's why, like, of course
there are straight people in these scenarios, right, But the
main characters they are often the people that have resilience

(10:13):
and adaptability and diversity and elasticity, and they also care
about their community and they sort of understand that like
surviving alone renders you very vulnerable in a crisis, but
figuring out how to survive together, which is a huge
theme of this book. Very very very queer philosophy, very
sort of marginalized philosophy, And that's the result of my

(10:35):
own lived experiences. But I kind of I apologetically tell
people that, yeah, you know, I just don't think a
straight person has like the skill set or the or
the bandwidth or the endurance to kind of make it
through some of the stories, because they are horror at
the end of it, right.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
I've said that many times. It's like, take your average
run of the mill sis head and if they had
to be any one of us for twenty minutes, they'd
be rocking back and forth in the corner.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yes, oh my gosh. Yeah. The way that I sometimes
put this too, is that, like, you know, if people
ask me, like what draws me to horror sometimes, and
the answer is similar to this, where I'll sort of
tell them that, like, well, yeah, I had a really
beautiful childhood, right, Like, I had a really supportive family,
and I was lucky in many many ways, and you know,

(11:23):
I come from like a privileged background in many ways
and underprivileged in others. But if I had to write
the story of my childhood, my adolescence, and my like
teenage years down, I would have to shelve it in horror,
because despite the humor and the love and the compassion
that I had the benefit of, the narrative of my

(11:44):
life was dominated by knowing that I was vulnerable and
that any moment something could hurt me, something could come
out of the blue, someone could turn on me. Society
could suddenly perceive me as a monster, and I would
have no way of knowing, and I would have to
just kind of deal with it and sort of figure
out a way out in the moment. And those are
those are that's like the major tenet of horror, right,

(12:06):
Like the person sort of consents that there's an oncoming
monstrosity but can't necessarily identify where until it's chasing them,
like directly behind their back, trying to stab them. And
so many queer people, I feel like, resonate with that
where they kind of have to hold those two things
hand in hand, right, like the joy and the fear
of a lived experience. And I think that's that's why

(12:29):
I'm drawn to scary stories that also have like a
lot of humor and heart in them because it just
feels much more real to me.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
Yeah, I was thinking about that. It's like, that's very true.
Not only are the their threats out there at any
given time, but they're looking for you.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
They're looking for you, like it's you know, in my
books that leads the characters have a chance to kind
of face off with the monsters. Right, And I feel
like so many so many people today like consense like
this encroaching, you know, retraction of society. Right. That doesn't
necessarily have a form, it doesn't have like a body, right,
it's just something that we can sort of feel happening,

(13:09):
which is I think why we turn to horror stories
where the monster actually has a form that we can
face and that we can sort of either escape from,
or defend ourselves against, or fight or even kill. Right, Like,
I think that's kind of why we like scary stories.
But it's not surprising to me that, like, you know,
now as the world has become much scarier, there's a

(13:30):
there's this huge influx of readers looking for a way
to kind of deal with their feelings and read about them. Right.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
Yeah, if you you can name the monster, it makes
it a little less scary.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
I am a huge horror fan, so I definitely definitely
can understand what you're saying. And Martha is actively a
non horror fan, Like, yeah, she will straight up be likeugh,
not my genre, get away from me.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
People always say that, and then a lot of the
people that I talked to at like signings will be like,
you know, I don't like horror. I'm not a horror person.
Like they've decided this about themselves yet, like they're in there,
like in front of me holding my book being like,
but I loved this, and I kind of let it
go because I think people find their way through what
they want as they need to. But it does always

(14:21):
amuse me that people sort of decide that they don't
like horror until they sort of find the one spooky
thing that they really like, and then that's the exception.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah, well, I always like when someone says they don't
like horror, I try to respect that and not like
force them to try. Except there's been a couple of
times when I accidentally had Martha look at horror things,
like things that I didn't think were horror, Like I'm like, oh,
this is fine, and then it got to the part

(14:50):
and then she was mad at me for like two weeks.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
Can't be helped.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
Well ten Cloverfield Lane was was a good example of that.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
That is absolutely clearly horror.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
But see the first like eighty nine percent of it
is like this character study of these people in the situation.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
In a bunker. Yeah, that's what you're talking.

Speaker 1 (15:17):
It's interesting. The performances are like dynamic and layered, and
it's just like, but the last ten minutes is what
did it?

Speaker 2 (15:26):
I You know, I can really stoop down to see
how you've seen seen it through with like your logic
is cravy, But I get what you're saying because I
agree that, like the reason that I love that movie
is exactly what you're saying. But that is firmly in
the in the I mean, especially because it's related to
like Cloverfield, which is right like a great, great one

(15:47):
of my favorite like ours, so same.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
Well And Okay, so that ties us into into your
book because I noticed there were several themes hord themes
in the book that I'm not going to say you
outright reference, but you definitely nodded towards and I appreciated that,
Like the literary version of the found footage film. You know,

(16:14):
there's sections of the book that are told through journals
and letters, and that also gave me a little bit
of like World War Z, you know, I appreciated that.
One thing I definitely appreciated was that there were no
none of the main characters like everyone was smart.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
Yeah, oh gosh, I hope so I I I wanted
the three main characters. There's three kids sort of at
the heart of the story. There's Ali who I mentioned,
and like fashion A Lisa, But I wanted them to
have like you know, they're best friends, so they've sort
of grown up on this island together. But I did
want them to each have something really specific that they
get to go tribute. But they also have different points

(17:02):
of view into like kind of how to solve problems,
which causes a lot of tension. But I didn't want
like oftentimes Ya, especially with like teen casts, gets knocked
for being like mostly angst and mostly miscommunications and like
problems that adults like to claim that they no longer
that they've grown out of, which is debatable but right.

(17:24):
But in my stories, I often like to find a
way to test characters who are whip smart, who are
really logical and who are like highly emotionally intelligent, and
they're still like fighting for their lives. Like that to
me makes something feel a lot tenser, because you know,
if you're reading this, you're not thinking, oh, I would
never do this. You're thinking, well, it's probably exactly what

(17:46):
I would do and it's still going wrong. Like that's
kind of a better story to me.

Speaker 1 (17:50):
Well, yeah, and the ones that aren't that smart or
aren't that swift, those are the ones that get got so.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
Right, and people do get got kind of consistently the books.
So don't fall in love with anyone for too long.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
Right, Yeah, that was the other thing. You weren't afraid
to like set us up to enjoy a character and
then take them from no.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
I got, well, thank you, thank you, But I got
like someone posted like a review recently, and this won't
have any spoilers in it. Don't worry if you're a
thinking about reading the book out there, but.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
I'm not spoil.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
They mentioned, like, you know a character that doesn't make
it to the end, and how like it felt pointless
that this person sort of was there one second and
then gone another one of the main characters, but I
was like thinking to myself, I was like, well, yeah,
but that was kind of the point for me because
in a crisis or in a disaster, like not every
demise has like symbolic integrity, right, Like sometimes people die

(18:55):
well before you know, they sort of get to pressed
in their use for like a narrative, and that's kind
of that's it's kind of the horror too, write like
sometimes deaf is really swift and we don't see it
coming and it's not supposed to happen, but that's part
of what makes something horrific. So it's interesting sometimes people
have kind of a negative reaction to that, whereas I
feel like that's kind of the point at least sometimes.

(19:16):
But yeah, I won't I won't say more, right.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
That's the thing. It's like, it's so much that I
want to ask you, but it's like I don't want
to spoil anything.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yeah, yeah, no, that's that's all right. I know a
lot of times my books are kind of hard to
describe some people. The recommendation is always like I can't
tell you anything about this, just like sit down and
read it, which makes it very hard to like recommend
to the people because I'm like, yeah, there's a lot
of suspense. I can't give you any detail, but I
can't tell you, like, the cover's really pretty and a

(19:46):
lot of people have sent me dms of them crying,
So if that's something you would love to do, like,
go for it. But but yeah, that's kind of the
it's like the catch shorty too of trying to promote
like a horror novel.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
The cover is really pretty and it kind of like
gives you a clue of what's to come, but you know,
you don't realize it until you're in it, and then
you're like, oh, then you find yourself going back to
the cover and looking at it as a reference for
what you're imagining. Is that okay to say?

Speaker 2 (20:19):
Yeah? Right, Well, you know books have covers for a reason,
so judge the book by its.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
Cover this way, right, Yeah. Well, sometimes it's just like, Okay,
you sent this to a graphic designer and this is
what you get. Okay, great, but no, I love this.
So how much of yourself would you say is in
these characters?

Speaker 2 (20:42):
I mean a lot. I feel like, even as an adult,
I feel pretty undefined and like something I know about
myself right, Like I know who I am at like
my core but I also feel like the mutability of
like changing over a lifetime is something that has been
pretty inspiring. So a lot of my characters like definitely

(21:04):
come from pieces of me. There's a ton of meat
in this book, but it's probably not where people think
to look like. For instance, like Ali as a main character,
we don't really have a similar life at all, aside
from being gay, right. But the whole setting for the
book Anchors Mercy is inspired by going to Provincetown in

(21:26):
this case Problemsuth, Massachusetts with my family every summer for
like a week, and understanding as a result of that that, oh,
there are communities full of queer people. And also at
a certain point, all these people that I'm seeing in
the street, like they go home, they're out there in
the world, like they go back to you know, whatever
flyover state they decided to leave in order to come here,

(21:50):
which was amazing. Rite this idea that like we can
all come together and sort of go back to our lives,
and that there's queer people sort of everywhere as a
result of this exchange. And so a lot of those
feelings about like community and the respect that I have
for the sanctuaries that like people who had it way
worse than me still found the strength to create is

(22:12):
like a huge part of like this particular story. But
I don't know that like I can point to any
singular character and tell you, like, oh, this is a
foxy for me. A lot of people have asked because
the main character in this book is his mom. Gracie
is like such an important figure in the book. They've
they've sort of insinuated that, like, oh, is that based

(22:32):
on your mom? And Luckily no, because Gracie, while she's
like a great lovely character, and you know, at the
very beginning of the book, there's there's a there's a
difficulty sort of between her and Ali that like is
sort of the central conflict between the two of them.
But but her cancer diagnosis, which is like a huge

(22:53):
part of like Ali's motivation to solve the problems on
his island. That's not something that I've taken from my
real life, but it is it kind of does wrap
around my actual fear around like the mortality of my parents,
which is a which is a pretty big theme in
the book. It's sort of understanding that your parents are people,
they're not just like you know, parents are not going
to be there forever. They had to make hard decisions

(23:14):
in order to defend you or protect you, right, Like,
those feelings are very much wrapped up in in like
this Gracie character. But but I'm lucky enough to kind
of like I still have my mom and I love her,
And much of the love in this book is definitely,
you know, from that relationship. But the fight that they're
having at the beginning of the book that sort of
spans the entire thing is not is not a personal

(23:36):
fight that I have with my mom. So I always
try to make sure that I that I defend my
mom because people think that I'm writing about her. But
the fact of the matter is that she's a She's
a lovely, lovely lady, and and I wouldn't want I
wouldn't want people to mistake that.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
Right, Yeah, because in real life, if Gracie was an
actual person, I feel like she would be kind of insufferable.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
Yeah, she definitely is. I mean, Like again, like another
person who had like an early reaction of the book
was like, I don't know why everyone's like loving this book,
Like I found the mom to be insufferable, which is
the point. Like the Ali starts the book by being
like I love my mom, like especially when I hate
her right like she is totally a mess, and I

(24:23):
don't know what to do about it. Like that's the
major conflict between the two of them, is that she
is recovering from the sickness and as a result, has
sort of changed her attitude, her outlook towards life, like fundamentally,
like she's unrecognizable as a result of this crisis that
she's just survived, and Ali is sort of her caretaker
and it's fundamentally changed the nature of how they sort

(24:44):
of interact, and he no longer has the right to
feel sad about anything because everything should be good, should
be positive, right, Like we've made it to the other
side of this trauma. But Ali is like seventeen and
still sort of left with the inertia of almost watching
a parent die and can't sort of shake this gloom
that it's given him. And it's totally popped the bubble
on his childhood right like now he is almost like

(25:10):
having to grow up against his will because of what
he's witnessed and what he's survived and now what he
kind of knows about his island. So it's it's a
pretty pivotal conflict between the two of them, and it's
like the main driving force of his motivation in the book.
So I'm not surprised when people are like, yeah, Gracy's
kind of crazy, but I love her because I also,
as an adult, can understand, you know, the decision that

(25:33):
a parent might make to protect their child and to
kind of shield them from a darker truth about like
the existence of their home or something like that. So
I feel like I understand Gracie, but I can't necessarily
defend her because she does make some kind of bombastic
decisions in the book exactly.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
It's like you're doing too, Marsis.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
Yeah, totally like I would. I would. She would annoy that,
she would drive me up a wall, right, So I
understand that why people are reacting that way.

Speaker 1 (26:03):
It is the point she would be one of those
people you would you would call every now and again
because you want to you want to get that woo
woo woo from from someone. But then after like about
fifteen minutes, say, well gotta go, I gotta the oh,
the dog's on fire, gotta go.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
Right, yeah, you you it's the person that you call
when you know that like something's going to interrupt the
call in like ten to twelve minutes, right, Like, you
can't get too far into it with them.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
Because you call your friend and be like, Okay, I'm
going to call Gracie. So in ten to twelve minutes,
you need to call me something to be on fire.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
There's there's certain people that I call when I'm on
a walk between two points, right, Like I'm on my
way to like the grocery stores. So then I'm like, oh, well,
you know, I'm outside the I gotta go in, but
you know it's good, they'll catch up and uh, and
then you call someone else on.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
The walk back, right exactly. It's gonna sound like I'm
hanging up on you, but.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (26:55):
So I gotta say that the horror themes in this book,
like the actual threat is not something that I've ever
really seen before.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
Really.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
Yeah, it's it's because I was thinking about I'm like,
you know, there's been I've read a lot and seen
a lot of like quote unquote zombie stories, I guess,
and monster stories, but this one has a specific twist
on it, like I guess I can like a nautical twist.
I guess, we'll say and that's not something I mean,

(27:32):
and that just could be a testament to the things
that I've consumed. But yeah, it's something that I've I've
not really encountered before. Like is this something, Is this
a theme an element that that you are already familiar
with or they just like pop it out of your head.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
So the if I mean again, if anyone is looking
at the cover, it's kind of clear kind of what
we're we're chatting, but we're talking about sort of the
the organism that washes ashore from the deep ocean and
starts to kind of not manifest but like spread itself metastasized,
say through Like this community is definitely like marine in nature,

(28:12):
and it it's because I wanted to write about I mean,
there's a few different reasons for this. There's the the
just physical revulsion that I have to the idea of
like coral or barnacles being able to like grow on
human skin, which it can't. So please anyone out there
who's like shivering, don't worry, like this is not possible.

(28:34):
But I do love the idea of like a marine
ecosystem kind of being an act like a threat, right,
and coral is colonial in nature. So it has to
exist in these large colonies, because each little polyp of
coral is an individual organism, but they live in sort
of these large reefs, right. And I wanted to sort
of write a monster that was beautiful that you'd never

(28:57):
suspect of horror. But the second that something like that
can grow on you can spread between like people and flesh, like,
that's much scarier. And I love reveling and sort of
taking something light and beautiful and ornamental and sort of
turning it into a force of fear. A lot of
my books sort of aim at that particular like inversion,

(29:19):
but also the sort of the metaphor behind it for
me was that Ali is this like completely isolated kid
at the start of the book, and he's turned his
back on his island, his best friends to some degree,
like his own mom, like, because that's where the fight
sort of is located for him at the start of
the book, and then the force that he's up against

(29:41):
for the rest of the book and then the book
after is this organism that, against your will, will sort
of merge you into a much larger system. It'll sort
of lock you into a colonial community, right, Like it'll
bring you into itself, and now you're part of something,
but you're part of it forever, right, you've sort of
given up your adit well, your humanity, and you're brought

(30:01):
into kind of this like smothering enforced community because it's
a reef and it's an organism kind of trying to
build itself out and emerge people together. And there's a
moment in the book where Ali is about to get
sort of like fused into this monstrosity, and he even thinks,

(30:22):
is this really as bad as I think it is?
Like is the fear that I have around this, you know, genuine?
Or would it be so bad to sort of be
brought into a community an embrace that I can never escape,
Like is it okay to kind of give up right
in this moment? There are fates worse than death, but
maybe this is slightly better than death. And I wanted

(30:45):
I wanted something to kind of test them, in part
because when we see when we see zombies, and we
when we see sort of like the way that they're
like typically depicted in media, right, Like there's sort of
these like mindless, avid animalistic things falling after you, or
they're like a shambling corpse like there's nothing sort of

(31:07):
within them any more. They're just kind of like an
automated threat. But I wanted to kind of create a
version of them that that still retain their humanity, that
still sort of like look like people, but kind of
have this like enhancement to them, and instead of them
being rabid and scary, they're they're tearful and they're laughing

(31:28):
and they're smiling and they're singing, and there's a sort
of undeniable joy to the way that they're sort of infected,
which just makes me so uncomfortable, right, this idea that
like there could be a pleasure in giving up that's
a really seductive thing that I think a lot of people,
you know, are uncomfortable with. And so that that's kind

(31:48):
of where that's kind of those are the few pieces
that kind of fuse together to form like the they're
called weepers in the book, if anyone's wondering, Yes, but
that's where that's where they come from.

Speaker 1 (31:59):
Yeah, that that's the thing Like usually with zombies, once
you become one, you're not you anymore.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
So.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
It becomes easier to I guess, like you get over
the initial loss, like oh no, they got x y
Z and then you got to like fight them just
double tap to the head and is over. But when
they're still in there after that head, Yeah, where there's
still in there, that's what's scary.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
Yes, yeah, I think that's a much Well Okay, So
if we're really getting to kind of like the queer
discussion here, A big part of like, you know, the
onus that I sort of put on myself is like
a creator who announces to the world that, like I
write queer horror, right, is that, like the queerness, my
queer perspective doesn't just sort of shed itself when it's convenient.

(32:51):
So when I'm picking up the theme of zombies, I'm
also looking at like how queer communities have historically dealt
with contagion, how we tried to protect each other right
from something spreading amongst ourselves. And we have a history
of this. We know from historical records and the survivors

(33:12):
of like the AIDS epidemic, what it was like to
sort of be within these communities and to sort of
sense something spreading and to try to raise the alarm
on it, and to be completely ignored and to be abandoned,
and to basically have to solve these things ourselves, to
create structures ourselves. And so while this book is not
necessarily about the AIDS epidemic, it is, it does take

(33:35):
place in a world that has endured that, and the
sanctuary in the book is a result of that. And
it's clear that these people, the elders in this community
have systems and measures to take it sort of against
something similar happening. So they try to shut the town down.
They go to the drag queens and they sort of
spread through the drag network that like something has been

(33:57):
happening to people. They try to keep people home, but
in the end it fails because of a bunch of
straight people, a bunch of bachelorettes who I love, that
decide that right like they they have to have their
night out, they have to have their karaoke, it's my
bachelorette party, and so they defy the stay at home order.

(34:18):
And it's because of this entitlement of these cultural tourists
that can come in are not part of the community
but absolutely feel entitled to like the entertainment of it,
that this island is absolutely devastated by you know, this
this infection, and that's a that's not just that's commentary.
It's not a metaphor whatsoever. It's it's outright critique. And

(34:39):
then on the other side of it, the other thing
that I wanted to say about this is that like
in also dealing with an infection that sort of spreads rapidly,
that is that that monstrofies humans. I wanted the main
character Ali to figure out that the people who are
infected are not necessarily a foregone conclusion. They don't just
turn into this force of evil. They're still humans, They're

(35:02):
still in there. Because I wanted to talk about the
fact that, like our gut reaction to seeing infections spreading
our community like might be stigma and disdain, right, but
you know, perhaps if we listened to these people, the
ones the actual victims of what's happening, not that people
trying to sort of save themselves, with the actual people
who are sort of undergoing this transformation or the degradation

(35:27):
of their health, like we could learn something and that
actually could lead to the salvation of everybody. And so,
you know, not once does AIDS come up in this book,
not once, but but it's absolutely sort of built into
the marrow of how these characters fighte against this like
the decision that they get to make and also like
the type of hope that ends up saving them.

Speaker 1 (35:48):
Yeah, hell yeah, I made that parallel pretty quickly. And
I can hear Martha like when we were talking, when
we talk about COVID should be the first one to say,
this is not our first pandemic. Yeah, you know, yeah,
And you can tell like who learned something, who didn't you.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
Know exactly, And I mean I remember specifically one of
the main things that inspired this book is when the
Delta variant was coming out right during like the sort
of the summer after the lockdown, and like the Delta
variant was sort of the first big variant that was
hitting the headlines, and it was sort of this like,
oh my god. We thought we were sort of through this,
but now here we are there's variants like oh my god,

(36:33):
I remember this right exactly right, like oh no, And
it was sort of the moment that we realized that, like,
oh my gosh, like this is maybe never ending. And
in that variant, the Delta variant was it was named
and caught because in Provincetown enough gay people exhibited health

(36:55):
seeking behaviors to get themselves tested that we were able
to sort of figure out that this thing is mutiating.
But as a result of it, the delta variant was
blamed on the people of Provincetown and the people that
were getting tested. But it's just because of a health
seeking behavior, right, And we as queer people often are
told that we have a risky lifestyle, but the fact
of the matter is is that we often are like

(37:17):
very cautious and very protective and we seek out solutions.
And the irony is that we then get saddled with
the blame for sort of raising the flag on something
that affects everybody. That variant was in every little beechy
community that was shirking their COVID guidelines that summer, and
it was everywhere, but we just happened to catch it,
but then we got blamed for it. And I wanted

(37:39):
to sort of discuss what it's like to sort of
be the people like raising your flag about something and
then having to sort of own it as a result
of it.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
Yeah, that's a common unfortunately, a common theme. If you
point out the thing that makes you the thing like exactly,
for instance, if I'm going that's racist, well that's racism.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
Yeah, pointing out racism, right, Yeah, suddenly race matters only
to you.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
How do that work?

Speaker 2 (38:11):
Right?

Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (38:13):
No, it's insane, And I think that it's something that
like anybody in our community, especially people with like intersectional identities,
like we know this, we've sort of had to endure this,
and then oftentimes the behavior as a result of it
is like I'm going to step out, I'm going to
step back, right, I'm going to sort of abandon my
position in this particular fight, which I understand. I totally

(38:37):
understand the weirdness around that, but I want to sort
of offer some alternatives, right.

Speaker 1 (38:41):
And you know, you can't hold back but so much
because if everyone pulls back, then it's coming for you,
you know exactly.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
Yeah, we have to the main the main like motto
that the kids in this book have, or the three
main characters, because they were born and race together, and
everyone in their community calls them the SuDS because they
like they stick together, right, Like they're like these like
they're always together, right, I love their and there's thank you,
and they're slippery, right, like they they're always causing mischief,
but they're always getting away with it, right, which then

(39:11):
becomes really important when suddenly, like the navy puts the
island on quarantine, tells everyone to sort of like lock up,
and like these kids have to kind of slip through
these gas to figure out how to kind of travel
and figure out what's going on. And so, but their
motto is SuDS stick together. And even when it's like
these kids are fighting the entire book, they're at each
other's throats, right, Like they're not holding back about the

(39:34):
big feelings they have about each other about what's going on,
Like they're having real discussions about this, in part because
it just annoys me when characters like don't speak over themselves.
And so I have now three kids that are constantly
yapping and fighting with one another, but they still stick together.
They find a way to sort of prioritize the togetherness,

(39:55):
the surviving together part of it, which I think is
ultimately why they're compelling, at least for me as a writer, right,
Like they understand that surviving individually is ultimately not worth it.
Like if you are the last lone survivor of something,
like you really haven't lived, you really are not surviving anything,
Like you're just the only victim left of something. But
if you can find a way to kind of bring

(40:16):
everyone with you to survive altogether. Like that's that's worth it,
that's worthy of hope.

Speaker 1 (40:22):
Right, that's growth fighting back basically.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
Yeah, yeah, I totally think so. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
I love the dynamic of the SuDS. It's like they're
best friends and then there's like a well not a
love triangle but not not.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
Explations. Yes, yeah, and it used to be, oh my god,
it used to be more pronounced. I ended up taking
it out, but there there was there used to be
a little bit more I don't want to say romance.
You know. Again, these are like teens, but there was
there was a little bit more of like a heavy hand.
It's sort of like triangle between three of them. That

(41:02):
ended up being cut for time. But you know, in
the in the HBO adaptation.

Speaker 1 (41:06):
I'll make sure we put it back in, right, Yeah,
it's it's there. I felt it because like some things
are are are actually said, and then other things are
like you wouldn't feel that, you wouldn't get that angry
if you didn't certain feelings. Totally, yeah, I see you.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
So yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
I definitely loved the element of the bachelorette party being
the moment that fucked it up for everyone because that
much is in life.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
Yeah, that's not fiction. I mean, that's truly not I
mean the thing is, though I don't know, Like, I'm
friends with a lot of drag queens, and they can't
necessarily speak ill about the bachelorettes because have money, right,
They bring in like an infuge of tourism that like
we kind of need in order to provide what we

(42:05):
need for like the rest of our community in those spaces.
And so I like the idea of like a necessary
evil being part of part of this particular world. That's
how I think about them. But even when you go
to these places, right, like Rovin Soon, or like if
you go to like gay bars and stuff, like even
the physical invasion of a bachelorette party, like all of

(42:26):
these people dressed identical. And I'm talking about like the
straight bachelorette parties, because you've seen plenty of lesbian bachelor
parties roll up and they look fantastic, right, and I'm
glad that they're there. But I'm talking about the like
you know, like the Savannah girls, and like they they'll
probably be a little bit more at home in like Nashville, right,
but they've decided to come to like this gay.

Speaker 1 (42:46):
Bar and the Woo girls, so the Wu.

Speaker 2 (42:49):
Girls, right, and like there is this out like there
is this sense of like invasion about them and the
way that they look and there it kind of feels fungal,
right to see all these people like they're like pink
buzzy shirts, but they're as like im. And I'm gonna, like,
you know, I'm scared that I'm gonna like leave the
bar and find like a feather boa like snaking around
my neck right like it it feels contagious.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
All of a sudden. The only thing you that will
sustain you is rose, right.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
I know, I know, And I need to cry off
my Nescara twice in one night, but then reapply it
in the bathroom and be like built back up by
my girls, right, Like I do feel a tender thing
for these these bachelor parties, but you know, I wanted
to write about that particular like entitlement and and how
it can sometimes spell disaster for a place.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
Yeah, I'm getting a little PTSD from moments and certain
gay bars. And here they come.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
I know, I know they I they're And the thing is, like,
I it's very funny watching the reaction of the book,
because all the queer people the second these girls show
up are like, oh God, like I know, I know
what's gonna happen. Everybody else is like I thought that
that was really creative, and I'm like, yea, I'm gonna
take the points from either party in this. I'll say, yes,
thank you. It was so creative of me. But it's

(44:10):
like it's also I feel like it's kind of a
common Yeah, it's a common threat.

Speaker 1 (44:16):
Yeah, exactly, Like I'm thinking about so one of our
favorite bars in it's all configuration. There's like the piano
was here, and then there's like little princess bar here,
and one girl she's leaning over the princess bar, which
is unmanned at this particular night, and she's like reaching

(44:38):
and grabbing bottles and pouring herself a drink and then
being surprised when she got kicked out.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
Shocked. Shocked. Yeah, I'm sure.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
And it's like, you know, you don't do this kind
of shit on your home turf. What makes you think
this is gonna fly here?

Speaker 2 (44:54):
Well, because because gay people are fabulous, and I thought
gay people were fun and like I thought that you know,
they loved women, right, Like these are the the psycho.
This is the psychosis that that leads people to kind
of helping themselves.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
It's all about me, and everyone will just flapped chong.

Speaker 2 (45:12):
It's my special day, I know. And there's something very
like insidious about especially with like gay rights and like
marriage being sort of back in a contested territory about
like sayn ewing up for their like heterosexual wedding and
coming into like our spaces some sort of like flaw

(45:32):
law right with zoo. And then the second there's like
the most minor of repercussion, like the second someone not
smiling and wooing at them. It's like World War three, right,
Like the devastation occur is there's such an irony to
that that I think goes sort of unnoticed by by
these people when they feel like, you know, why wouldn't

(45:53):
you want me here? You know? And I'm like, well,
you know, maybe maybe the people have been fighting for
like the right to marry one another for like years
and years and years and years and years feel a
little bit disregarded when the saying short that they've built
for themselves and the people like them is invaded by
someone who is here like as a mascot, of like
heterosexual union. I don't know, maybe think about it for

(46:16):
like two seconds.

Speaker 1 (46:17):
You're the reason why this place exists in the first place,
han Nick.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
Right, exactly, Like, and yet here you are and you
want to see karaoke and you want to sing the
twelve minute version of It's All Coming Back to Me
Now by Celine Dion, and you want us to listen
and give you dollars Like that's crazy, but okay, sure,
get on up there, girl.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
I saw this guy proposed to his girlfriend in the
middle of a drag show. Yeah. I if it wasn't
for the fact that I was enjoying my drink, i'd
have thrown it.

Speaker 2 (46:51):
I know, I know, I you know, mazzle to them.
I guess right, you know, couldn't find a better time
they have to do with that, right.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
I'm glad she said yes, because y'all deserve each other show,
right right?

Speaker 2 (47:06):
Yeah? Oh my congratulations.

Speaker 1 (47:08):
Can you tell I have feelings?

Speaker 2 (47:11):
I will, you know. I think a lot of people
have feelings about this, but I feel like a lot
of them can't necessarily be expressed, because these are feelings
that make the most sense in person, like in these
spaces and like exhibited by people who have been in
these spaces for like a long time, but so much
of queer culture now is just bickering on the internet.

(47:33):
And like, for me, being queer has always been a verb, right,
Like it's it's how I go through the world. It's
the nightlife that I get to enjoy, but it's also
like everything else about my day to day because I'm
like I'm like a visibly queer. I mean, I'm in
like a tank top of a hat right now, but
like typically in the world, like I'm very flamboyant, right
so I can't really even escape it or step out

(47:54):
of it. But that's really different than like the the
putting on of like rhetoric to like debate and pick
one another on the internet. So like I know in
past times, when like the bachelotte party has come up,
like people will swoop in and be like, well, how
do you know the sexuality to freak girl on that
bachelorette party, or how do you know like that, Maybe

(48:15):
they're there because they feel like they wouldn't be safe
in like a straight place, and so they're going to
like a gay place because they're they're they're protected from misogyny,
right And I'm like, Okay, so now we have like
a fictional bachelorette party that is like full of full
of diversity, secret hidden diversity that I now need to

(48:37):
consider in my discomfort in like that equation of like
my actual life. Right, Like I suddenly no longer have
a right to just having a reaction, right like you
with your drink looking at at a proposal, because I
now have to now to calculate into my mental calculus
every single just qualification that could come up on like
a Twitter thread, right, Like is that useful? Well, I

(49:00):
don't know, because it seems like maybe it's not that
useful to do to do math that way, right, That's
kind of what happens sometimes.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
Martha and I have had this discussion a lot. We're
gonna get back to the book, but we're sidebarring right now.

Speaker 2 (49:13):
Yeah, sorry, guys, No, that's okay.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
Our listeners are used to it. So like the fact
that in really just one generation, we have this group
of queer kids who have always had rights, have always
had that sense of self, that ability to be themselves,

(49:38):
and so since they hadn't had to go through nothing,
all they have is naval gazing on the internet. So
as annoying. It's like we should be proud of that.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
Yes, Oh my god, I'm so glad that that's how
you earned this, because that's how I feel too. I'm
like almost it like the naivety. I think it's like
something that I kind of cherish because I'm like, oh,
the only reason that you're acting so annoying about this
is because you can, right, because you haven't had to
kind of go through all of these things. And so
I'm like, this is actually so there's a getting Oh,

(50:12):
here's our connection back to the book. So in the book.
In the book, Olli is a character who's sort of
always had Yeah, like I'm like back to me, Alli
is sort of always at the benefit of the supportive community,
and he doesn't necessarily know what it would be like
to turn his back on it, right, like, because it's
something it's a decision that he doesn't even really mean
to make. And it's only because of like the darkness

(50:34):
of like his mom's sickness and that experience that he
kind of feels uncomfortable in this. But his mom understands
like no, no, no, like you're gonna need these people, You're
gonna need all of this like once once I'm gone.
But the fact that like you know, you can sort
of come and go as you please, that you don't
feel desperate urgency to maintain contact with like this Queer

(50:57):
Island like in a way is a byproduct of a
of a world sort of slowly accepting people, and those
barriers of sanctuary becoming orus as a result of it, right,
that no longer needs to sort of be strict, And
so that's more of a discussion that it ends up
in the second book, the one that I just turned in,
so the sequel to the Dead of Summer, there's a

(51:18):
clear sort of moment where in a Dragmen actually tries
to sort of have a conversation with the character and
it's like, you know, I know my decisions in the
things that I had to do in order to save
myself back in like the eighties and the nineties, Like
they're not going to make sense too, but I almost
love that they don't, because it means that you as
a person are so far removed from the hard decisions

(51:40):
that like basically your ancestors had to make to give
you this moment in time right now. And in the
context of their conversation, it then turns into but like,
but now you have to understand that you, as someone
who is in a crisis, you are the ancestor of
whoever is going to you know, come generations after, and
you need to now make decisions, you know, for the

(52:00):
welfare of a community that's going to outlive you, right,
because that's what that's what That's what it means to
be an elder in a community. And we don't often
have a vocabulary in the Queer community of a lineage
or inheritance or elders or ancestors because of you know,
the divorce that like the AIDS epidemic has sort of caused.
And I think, now I love that I get to

(52:23):
be an elder in the Queer community, right, like, and
I'm like thirty and thirty four, so not actually like that, yeah,
but like you know what I do, I look.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
Forward to being I'm still both though with your elder
that's fine.

Speaker 2 (52:39):
I guess what I'm trying to say is that, like
I look forward to sort of being, you know, able
to kind of make decisions that are for you know,
some kid in the far distant future will never know
who I am, but gets to sort of sit in
comfort that I've afforded them in sort of the actions
that I get in the choices that I get to
make like right now with like whatever platform I have.

(53:01):
So I don't know, I have a lot of feelings
about a lot of feelings about like queer communities and
sort of how they how they build each other over time.

Speaker 1 (53:10):
Yeah, And and the thing that's interesting, it's like, like
I said, they hadn't had to go through anything, and
cut to now It's like, yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:20):
Well now we are all going through something, right.

Speaker 1 (53:23):
Right, And so like these kids that have had nothing
to do but naval gaze have are also the ones
that are some of the fiercest activists. It's like they
scare me. I'm like, yes, go point them in that direction,
get them. And I love that too. You know, It's true.
We can create both of those things at the same

(53:45):
time in the same generation.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
I know. My greatest hope is that, like the infighting
that we subject to one another to like we find
a way to kind of unify and focus on something,
and I unfortunately threats to the unity attempt kind to
be the unifying force, right, like a common enemy, right
is often what what you need to kind of get

(54:08):
get out of each other's faces when but you know,
having these little squabbles sometimes are useful, sometimes they're not.
But I agree. I'm like a lot of the a
lot of the ways that we sort of treat each
other on the internet seem to be more about like
policing one another than they do about like preserving sort
of a larger entity. And so I kind of wonder
when that shift will happen, especially now that like real

(54:30):
threats have started to become like way more common.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
Exactly. It's like, now that you've got your claws sharp
and Mary, how about you use them over there?

Speaker 2 (54:39):
You know, right right right? And I always wonder. I'm
also just like people got to get offline, they really do.
They need to, Like I don't like leave the grass
out of it. I don't even care about the grass.
I'm like, I'm like, you need to get offline, and
you need to like find your local Y m c
A and see if you can volunteer there, right, you
need to. I'll go at your school board meetings and

(55:02):
sit tight. And the moment that they put a queer
book on the stand for being banned, like you got
to stand up for that, right, Like there are real
world moments that are way more impactful than sort of
like sitting and like nitpicking each other on the internet.
And at this point, like the way the algorithms work,
like those conversations are self enclosed and they're they're kind
of bubbled up, and they're not necessarily bleeding out to

(55:25):
sort of make or exert any pressure on people who
are like, you know, against LGBTQI rights. And those people,
the ones that are trying to take away rights, like
they're not doing it on Twitter, you know, they're doing
it in the courts. I think they're doing it in
real world scenarios, which is unfortunately kind of where we
need to show up to. So if the only way
you know how to fight is through a keyboard and

(55:46):
online and with each other, you're very much in the
way when it comes to having to actually take the
fight like into like a like a real world setting. Right.
But I hope that people sort of forge their way
back towards their local communities as a result of this,
Like that can only really lead to good getting to
know like the problems in your area, right, the problems

(56:08):
that are going to affect you. Like that's that's a
good vocabulary to have. As an activist.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
Right, it's like you have the intelligence, you have the vocabulary,
Lord knows, you have the energy. Take that and put it.
Take it from the theoretical, which is what the internet is,
and put it into practical application, because without practical application,
like theory means nothing.

Speaker 2 (56:35):
Right, yeah, and it's it's it's dire, right, like it's
now or never truly literally, book bands come up a lot,
especially with me, because I've had books that have been
challenged only because of the like my queerness as a creator,
or like the inherent queerness of like the characters, but
not ever because of anything content wise in the books.

(56:55):
Like often they'll be challenged because of like sexual content, right,
and and there's my books are hard. The characters don't
have time a lot of making out right, they're running
for their lives half the time. And so my books
also end up being put back on shelves quite often,
but only after they've gone through like an arduous review
that has of course caused some poor librarian or bookseller

(57:17):
like a ton of pain. And so people ask those
as a result, like well, you know, what can we do?
And showing up in your actual like the fabric of
your actual community to like at your bookstores, in you know,
the school meetings. It ends up being really meaningful because
it only takes one voice to sort of like cause
a book to receive a lot of backlash, right, Like

(57:38):
one loan shut in is like I think that this
book is teaching children, you know, wrong lessons, right, and
suddenly that book has to be pulled into a review
and pulled off shelves, and it's creating all this paperwork,
right Like, who knows that it'll make it back on
to the shelf, right if it's causing all this trouble,
But if there are voices that are already in the
room that are like, actually, like I disagree or I'm

(57:59):
going to advocate on behalf of this thing before it
gets challenged, right, Like, that ends up being really meaningful,
and it gives support to the people in the community
that end up having to have this fight. Like the
fight is not from me, the author. I get to
kind of sit back and keep writing. The fight for
book bands, for instance, is often left with like the
librarians and the teachers that they can't be if they're

(58:20):
embedded in the community. They have to have that conversation
with that patron or that parent, so lending them your support,
you know, way more meaningful, and of course, like you know,
I love your support too if you're linked to this,
like I too appreciate the kudos. But just like you said,
like the the like I'm the theory of all this,
but the physical, the actual like practical application like that
happens sort of outside of my books, right, and it

(58:43):
happens like on the shelves where they're put.

Speaker 1 (58:45):
And unfortunately that's the thing. It's always it's usually just
one or two loud mouths that cause the kerf offfle
And you know, Martha and I have both said this
many times, like before you open your mine, have to
say this book needs to be banned. You need to
submit at least a ten page book report on that
book to prove that you read it, like yes, absolutely,

(59:10):
because so many times it's like you barely made it
through the dust jacket boo, I can tell.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
Yeah yeah, And if you made it through, like oh
my god, someone in someone challenged one of my books,
The Honeyes, which came out two years ago or three
years ago at this point, and they were like this,
this book promotes killing your family members. Like that was
the big that was the big crime that I had submitted,
or that I had committed, as like the author of

(59:39):
this book, and like, I think about that because that's
such a crazy interpretation of what happened to the book,
which is on page six, the main character is attacked
by their sister who's like in a crazy fugue state,
and in the ensuing fight, the sister ends up perishing.
And it's not a plot twist, it's general. It's like

(59:59):
the app salute, like a lot of the book. It's
the thing that sort of launched the rest of the book,
And the whole rest of the book is the guilt
around like what's happened with this character and investigating their
life and sort of trying to understand, like why they
went crazy? Right, Like, And clearly, if an entire book
is sort of written around the regret of something, the
book itself is not trying to tell people do this right, right, Like,

(01:00:21):
if that happens on page six and the ensuing three
hundred and ninety four pages of a four hundred page
book are dealing with the alcohol of that, it simply
cannot be a promotional tool for homicide.

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
But people read like ten words and then they're like,
I got it. And if you're reading a horror novel
word horrific things happen like and you have no media
literacy or no willingness to interrogate the text because you're
just trying to you know, hurt an author or a community,
then it's really really easy. So that's why I try
to tell people like, you know, especially with like queer stories,

(01:00:55):
diverse stories, standing up for these things and sort of
being in the room to counter these particular debates, it's
very valuable. Nice.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
So what is the last horror book or movie that
scared you?

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
Ooh, I watched the movie Bring Her Back a few
months ago, and there are still scenes that I sometimes
flash back to and like physically WinCE. That was a
really hard watch. I also loved weapons I have seen. Yeah,
it was fun. It was fun, but I think part

(01:01:31):
of the fun was seeing it like a theater full
of people like screaming. So I don't know, like I
would say you should see it, but I think part
of why I loved it was was that particular experience
I love, like, I love that experience. Yeah. As for books,
I'm reading The Deep right now by I think Nick
Cutter I want to say, I've only just begun it.

(01:01:52):
But if people really like my book The Dead of
Summer we've talked about like a little bit, then I
would say, check out Our Wives under the Sea or
they Bloom at Night, are both sort of in the
world of like marine, transformative, like horror, like science thrillers. Nice.
That's our recommendation.

Speaker 1 (01:02:13):
So if we wanted to get our own copy of
the Dead of Summer, where is your favorite place to
point people to purchase it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
I try to tell people to, you know, because reading
is decline so long as we're getting books like thumbs
up for me. But if you want, and if I
can sort of invade your shopping habits, buying from your
local independent bookstore is always something that's gonna be worth
while because you're gonna ma connections with booksellers who are
gonna learn what you like, and they're gonna tell you
what's something that you're gonna love. So finding that in

(01:02:47):
your own community a great thing to do. My local
indie that I adore is Books of Wonder in New
York City. I signed stock there all the time, so
anytime I'm in there, they have a big stack of
books for me. To sign. So if you want to sign,
be in one of my books. They tend to have them,
but yeah, books of wonder they ship all over the place.
So I got a website. You can check them out.

Speaker 1 (01:03:07):
Okay, wonderful and I'll make sure to be definitely push
push push, because this is a fabulous book. If we
wanted to find out more about you, Ryan, where would
we go?

Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
My email? Oh my god, my email, don't email me.
My website which does have a contact for you. Contact
for is Ryanlsala dot com. So very simple. But I'm
on TikTok and Instagram and threads right now as the
Ryan Losala.

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
Okay, and we will put that information in the notes
to this episode. The book is The Dead of Summer
and the fabulous author is Ryan Lesalah. Ryan, thank you
so much for spending time with us at the Full
Circle Table. The book is great, It really is. I
can't say enough good things about it. I read it

(01:03:59):
so quick and like, whenever I had to stop, I
was mad.

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
Thank you, thank you. I really appreciate that, and thank
you for this was such a lovely conversation. I'm really
glad that I uh that I got to meet you
and you know if I ever come back, would be
great to meet Martha.

Speaker 1 (01:04:16):
I was gonna say, I have a feeling this will
not be the last time we sit in chat, and uh,
I'll have to give her the Cliffs Notes versions because,
like I said, not a horror.

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):
Fan, right, But that's all right, you know, she she
missed a good conversation. But but maybe maybe we'll find
a way to to convert her. Yeah, definitely, thank you
so much, Thank you, bye everyone. Bye.

Speaker 1 (01:04:42):
Full Circle is a Never Scured Productions podcast posted by
Charles Tyson Junior and Martha Madrigal, Produced and edited by
Never Scured Executive Produced by Charles Tyson Junior and Martha Madrigal.
Our theme in music is by the jingle Mary's. All names, pictures, music, audio,
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