040 - Walking Behind David Surface - Weird Reads

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to the Weird Reader podcast, an extension of
Jason's Weird Reads found on YouTube. Welcome, Hello, and welcome
to episode forty of the Weird Reads podcast. I'm Jason White,

(00:33):
your host, and today I have an interview with a
writer who's new to me. He writes a lot of
short stories, but he has worked on novels with his wife.
His name is David Surface, and I felt a bit
of a connection with this guy. I find that I
have a connection with almost everyone I talked to on

(00:55):
this podcast, which is it's weird. It's weird in a
good way. But this one it felt like I was
sinking and having a discussion with an old friend I
haven't seen in let's say ten years. It was just
one of those conversations where it's like we were catching
up and that was really cool. When I talked to

(01:17):
eric A. S. Brown, I had a similar similar feel
with him. It's like we vibed, but I vibed here
too with David's Surface and it. If you haven't read
David Surface, and especially if you like short stories, I
highly suggest you go check out his latest collection of

(01:38):
short stories. These Things that Walk behind Me, They're almost
exclusively horror stories, but they are I don't want to
say horror light because that would seem to take away
from what these stories are. But they are very They're
not the gory stuff that I was talking about in
the last episode. I don't think there's very much blood

(02:01):
in this at all. But these stories are more spooky
and they play around with reality. As John Langan says
in the in the forward, these are more strange and
weird types of horror stories, and I have to agree.
And this collection is fantastic. I can't wait to read

(02:21):
more by David Surface and to talk to him again.
So without further ado, here is my conversation with David Surface.
I am welcomed with a writer who's new to me.
I didn't know who David Surface was until he sent

(02:41):
me an email asking me to review his latest book.
And I went and I researched your book, and I
researched you a little bit just before emailing you back,
and I was like, you know, this guy kind of
sounds like he's up my tree for the stuff I
really like to read. So I asked you to come
on before even reading the book. So welcome to the show, David.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Thank you. Thank you, Jason. It's quite a risk you
took there. I have to say I admire that.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
It's always a risk when you do that, but oh
it happens. Can you can you give yourself a bit
of an introduction? What what have you written? And yeah?

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Sure So. My name's David Surfis and I've got two
collections out, one from excuse Me one called Terrible Things
and the other one that's from Blackshuk Books over in England.
And the new one is These Things That Walk Behind

(03:38):
Me that's from Leafy Press here in the US. I've
also written co written kind of a crossover ya novel
with my wife Julia Rust. It's called Angel Falls, and
we've got a new one coming out in the summer
called Saving Thornwood.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
Very cool. Is that like continue? Is that a continuation
of the first novel or.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
Only in the cover art? We got told We got
told one of our kids saying like, don't use the
same artist or style because people will think it's a sequel.
To answer your question, it's not a sequel, okay, standalone,
but the publisher said no, no, we got to use
the same if people will see if people get pissed off,
or if anybody cares.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
Honestly, I don't. I don't think anybody would care. But
good you said it was your son who said that,
your your kid.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
That was actually my my, my stepdaughter who said that.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
Okay, so they might have a point there, because it's
it's like a staple. Like I've seen people use the
same artist for their books and sometimes it does come
across as a series. Do you do you think that
might there might be something to that. There might be
there might be especially if there's characters on the cover

(04:56):
and they kind of look the same as the previous.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Uh yeah, well if you if you hear we've been
like dragged away by angry mob.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
You'll know how dare you series? Yeah? I wanted this.
I wanted a continuation, just.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Just trying to break the rules.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
You know, trying to be your badass self.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Right, So I'm curious. I asked this to most of
the new writers that I've talked that I talked to.
What's your writing origin story? When did you start writing?
And what writers made you want to become a writer yourself?

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Oh my goodness, that's that's a that's a big part.
How far back do you want to go?

Speaker 1 (05:43):
As what where where was the inkling? Were you? Just like,
I want to do this.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
I want to become a right well it tell you know.
I love stories. And when I was a kid, I
was a real little kid, I used to do comics.
I would always, like every day and there would be
these big brown rolls of rat, big paper, you know,
like about you know, times three feet tall, just rat
packages in and I would, you know, steal it basically
from my parents and roll out a big piece on

(06:10):
the floor and cross off the panels. And I would
do all these wild adventure stories. But but I didn't
write words on them or leave them blank. The whole
idea was that I had to be there to like
speak the words to whoever was unlucky enough for me
to grab them and make them listen, you know. And
then you know, after a while, I don't know, I

(06:33):
just I was always reading. But the you know, I'm
a I started reading the you know, the two the
two guys Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft When
the Right Age, when I was twelve nice and I
love their stories, but I also loved their backstory. I
loved the idea of these guys, just the idea that

(06:54):
there were these guys who just went into a room
with a typewriter and just kind of made up and
sent them out into the world, and then people saw them,
and then they'd make more things up. You know. It
just seemed like really really cool to me. Yeah, so
I didn't know what else came along with it, certainly
with them, those two guys.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
But were you big into like the mythos and all
that while you're growing up, Yes, Juliu, mythos and all that.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
When I was growing up, I was super into it.
And I was also super into that whole heroic fantasy thing,
the Roberty Howard. I mean, much to my detriment, I
was so into the heroic fantasy that the higher fantasy
like Tolkien, I could not read it because you know,
there weren't enough broadswords and buxom girls and things like that,

(07:45):
you know, and I just didn't get it. So but yeah,
that you know, at that age, yeah, I was that
was a sucker. I was a sucker for all that stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
I kind of came to Lovecraft and authors like Robert
ed Howard a little late, like in my twenties. I
started out on like Dean Koons and John Saul. I
kind of wish though, that I found HP Lovecraft in
my childhood, because that would have been that would have
blew my mind, you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, no, it's it's powerful, powerful stuff, and people,
you know, people like to make fun of him, apart
from the whole personal.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
Thing about it, Yeah, about his being a slimeball type stuff.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yeah, yeah, the slime ball part. But even apart from that,
before that came to like, people were a lot of
people have to make fun of it because they said
it was overwritten and it was pros and yeah it
you know, they got a point, but he really knew
how to cast a spell.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
Yeah. Some of those stories aren't quite as purple as
some say. Some of them are just downright really well
written stories. Yeah, like, oh, you know, I can't remember
the name of the story that I'm thinking of that
that I read it for like third or fourth time
about a year ago, and I was just like, oh
my god, this writing is actually really good. It's not

(09:02):
it's it's kind of purple, but it's not like some
of his other stories. I wish I could remember what
it was.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
Was it a mythos story?

Speaker 1 (09:10):
Sorry?

Speaker 2 (09:11):
Was it a Mythos story.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
Yeah, it was, but it wasn't like one of the
bigger ones, sort of like on the side, there's a universe.
Of course, there's a university in it. There's a university
and almost all of them. And there's this giant guy
who uh uh that's murdered in the library. M and
that murder is pretty grim mm hmm.

Speaker 3 (09:33):
I'm not sure which one that is, you know, I yeah,
I think I think it's interesting though, the stories of
his that are not outright Mythos related, Like, yeah, well.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
The number is the Outsider.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
Yeah, the Outsider is really good too. I like that,
but it's not the outsider. Uh. And of course there's
an economicon as in that story too. But yeah, So,
so who did you move on from? I Lovecraft? Like,
when you got a little bit older, did you ever
like move on to Stephen King and stuff like that?

Speaker 2 (10:05):
You know, it's funny I didn't, because what happened was
when I hit my twenties, I I really got into
poetry a lot, you know, contemporary contemporary, more contemporary poetry
than anything else. And then I started becoming really interested
in you through poetry, fiction writing, and stories, and I

(10:26):
was doing what you know. I guess we call these
days literary fiction whatever whatever that is. Yeah, kind of
fiction where nothing interesting actually happens.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
I think, Yeah, it's like it's like all character, no
plot type stuff. Yeah, someways say sometimes purple prose, oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
Our sign sometimes matchstick then pro But you know, there's
there's beautiful, beautiful work. So I mean to answer your question,
I was reading some amazing, you know, literary fiction writers,
which I do not roll my eyes at these these people,
the people like uh, you know, of course, Raymondcarver, and
my favorite was Andre Deboose. I just I just Joy Williams.

(11:05):
I just ate them up. And I wrote and I wrote,
and I was just deeply, deeply into that for like
a long long time, and I didn't really have a
whole lot of I never rejected like the horror, it
was supernatural. I was just like a total horror nerd
all along, but never really thought about bringing it to
my writing. And then I started to read what Happens

(11:25):
I started reading. I don't know what put me in
that direction, but I started reading this journal that was
coming out of England way back in the day called
the Third Alternative, and that's the one that became black
Static a little while later, and I was reading all
these British writers and they're the whole esthetic of like

(11:46):
modern horror. I was completely unfamiliar with, you know, I
didn't know people were doing that, and so my first
the writers who were really turning me on were Brits,
Gary McMahon, people like that. And then what happened was
I sent a story to, uh, there's to Linda Rucker.

(12:07):
Linda Rucker is just a wonderful, wonderful writer. She's she's
sort of an ex pat. She's from Georgia, but she
lived in Ireland for a really long time. And I
read a story of hers and Best New Horror, and
I wrote to her because it just it blew my
mind because it showed what you could do or that
modern horror approach. And I wrote to her and we
got to be friends, and I sent her one of

(12:28):
my literary stories and I didn't realize I was already
writing about some pretty dark, dark stuff. And she read
it and she goes, this could totally be like a
modern this is this is a modern horror story. You
should kind of move in that direction, see what you
can do. So so that's I mean terms of origin story.
That's kind of a that seems like kind of an

(12:51):
arc to me.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
Yeah. Absolutely, And it's it's kind of funny that you
mentioned that magazine because well you said it, it became
Black Static magazine and you were a regular contributor for
Black Static. Is that correct? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (13:03):
I was.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
I used to be a subscriber to that magazine. I
used to love it, and I was so sad when
they went away. Yeah, So what was your Did you
have a column?

Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, I had a column called One Good Story. I
was already writing that. I was already writing that and
posting it on my on my website. It's still there,
still there, folks can read on my website. But it's
just it was like literally one story at a time.
I would pick a story by some writer, sometimes a
contemporary living writer and sometimes a deceased writer, but it's

(13:35):
just a story that had any story that's goin of
blew me away one way or another, and I'd write
about it, and i'd write about it in sort of
a personal essay way. I would like to begin by
a little bit of narrative about something from my life
that reminded me of a story or that was connected
in my mind to the story and then kind of
segue into the story. I used to joke it was

(13:56):
the only way I'd ever get a story in black static.
It worked, It worked, but it was a lot. It
was a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
Yeah. I was rejected quite a bit by them, but
that's fine. Excuse me. I'm just coming over cold.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
So oh sorry.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
You might hear me cough here and there, and I
apologize in advanced apologize. So you wrote and published a
book with your wife, as you mentioned in your introduction,
Julia Rust. I almost called her Frost. I don't know why,
but Julia Rust.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
What a cool name. I'll bring it up tonight.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
Honey, Julia Frost. How does that sound?

Speaker 2 (14:38):
What do you think?

Speaker 1 (14:38):
Yeah, the book is called Angel Falls. Can you share
with us what that's about?

Speaker 2 (14:46):
Angel Falls? Well, I said, it's it's sort of a
it's it's it's a YA book. I mean, that's a
huge topic of conversation, like what is YA anyway these days?
But it's a YA book. It's a crossover y book.
He wrote it for adults to read basically, but it's
also about that. But you mean, what's it about in
terms of what goes down?

Speaker 1 (15:06):
Yeah, Like, what's the story about.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
It's about two kids to fifteen year old kids. Is
a girl who her parents through New York City parents
are splitting up. She her father inherits, suddenly inherits this
little house in Seaside Town in Massachusetts. They go up there.

(15:28):
He goes up there to take care of business and
you know, the legal stuff and repairs on the house,
and she goes with him, leaves their mother, which pains her,
and they go to this little little town and while
she's there, she discovers this place called Angel Falls. It's
up away from the beach and it's a it's a
ghost town basically, it's been deserted. It's like three hundred

(15:51):
years old. And when she's there she runs into there's
this other kid. It's told an alternating perspectives. And the
other kid, Jared, is a he's a local, he lives,
he's grown there, grown up there. His father is a
famous artist who's suffering from depression. He had a suicide attempt.
So he's his fifteen year old kid who's basically supporting
both of them, just working really hard all the time,

(16:13):
and he loves this place. He loves going there, and
they go there and they meet and they discover that
the place essentially is imbued with the sort of power
that allows people to connect to it and to basically
make their wishes come true, to work their will on
other people and things like that. And so the whole

(16:34):
rest of the book, it's sort of about owing his
teachers is kind of sinister and takes him under his
wing and is trying to help him understand what's going on.
But is that all he's doing? We don't know, and
you know, so it's just basically, you know what happens
if your wishes come true? You know, would what would
that do? Would would you do all good? Or would
you do bad things while you were thinking you were

(16:56):
doing good things?

Speaker 1 (16:57):
And I imagine there's consequences.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
Unlike in life for some people.

Speaker 1 (17:02):
Yes, yes, sort of like a sort of like a
monkey'spaw type sort of sort of.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
A monkey's paw type type situation. But yeah, we had
a ball, We had a ball.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
Write Uh now you wrote it with your your wife,
and I have to wonder what what was that experience?

Speaker 2 (17:21):
Like I feel a joke coming on, but I'm not
going to do it. I'm gonna I'm jokey enough already. Seriously,
is the most fun I have writing? Definitely? Uh yeah,
it's it's we love it. We love writing together. You
want to we want a fast origin story, if I can,

(17:43):
if I can.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
We met.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
We met in a writing workshop right twenty something years ago.
I wrote a piece which was a monologue by King Midas,
basically playing around the Greek mythology. And I was like, well,
what if these what King Midas like was immortal and
lived until the twenty first century, and he's just kind

(18:05):
of incognito and he's doing these jobs. I had him
doing all these different jobs where he had to wear gloves,
so you know, he wouldn't give himself away turn things
into gold. I wondered a little about his sex life,
like in.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
The story, so you got it right, you know, how
does that work?

Speaker 2 (18:20):
And so I just kind of this is a very
short piece and I read it to the workshop, came
back the next week. I didn't know her. She's just
like sitting across the table, you know, with there's long
hair and turquoise jewelry and blue eyes, and she pulls
out her beece and reads it. And it's an answer
to the King Midas pieces. It's a woman who sees

(18:42):
King Midas and approaches him and get a little of
the answer to your question in the story, you know,
and it goes on from there. And you know, I
was just blown away. I mean, and and the thing
about it is, it wasn't just that the writing was
really good, because it was. And it wasn't just that
I was flattered, but you know, I kind of was flattered,

(19:03):
But it was that she had listened so deeply to
the piece. She listened so deeply that she was connecting.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
At it with it.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
There's really deep level and this character that was speaking
back and you know, just I you know, it was
it was electrifying for for for me, and and and
so we we did we did a few more. We
did a few more of these things back and forth
of the Hades and perseventy and we're just having a
ball and wrote a couple of stories together, and then

(19:33):
it was a while before we came up with the
idea for Angel Falls. But it's just something we love
to do.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
Yeah. Actually, you know, I'm kind of envious of that.
That sounds like a really deep sort of relationship that
you guys can connect with storytelling and uh and whatnot.
I totally respect that. That's awesome. When you were when
you were describing your story as like a young adult
and you said, like, what, what isn't you all these days?

(20:02):
It made me think of Adam Caesar's book Clown and
a Cornfield And you read that at all, because I
have not.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
I want to.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
Well, it's it's pretty brutal, and it's labeled as as
young adults, you know, and it's like really like it.
It seems like marketers will will just slap that on
because the main protagonists are young. Do you find that
at all? Like you could have been like an adult book,
but they're like, no, we're gonna put this as young adult.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
Well yes, it's it's a great, big, confusing mess as
far as I can tell. For one thing, yeah, people
who sorry jamming up a little. The thing that I

(20:53):
heard a while back is that actually, in terms of
the business, the book business, the majority of the audience
for young adult novels. The more the most young adult
novels are purchased and read by adults. Yeah, people in
their twenties and older up through the like that. It's
like some kids do, but it's just buy and large

(21:14):
adults And so what happened. It's kind of what happens
a chicken.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
Or the egg.

Speaker 2 (21:18):
Did adult flavored novels start creeping in there and adults
noticed and more flocked to them? Or was it a
you know, who knows how it happened, But when it
has a lot of writers like us, you know, guilty
as charged. You know, we were writing a novel that
we felt at first, we're just writing a novel and oops, hey,

(21:41):
look our main characters are both fifteen years old. Maybe
we should market as ya. And we did, and I'm glad.
It's great, but there's kind of a there's a there's
a bit of a controversy about it. Now. It's a
bookstore owner up in that near Salem, wonderful bookstore, copper
dog and wonderful owner and mega blosmer, and she just

(22:03):
likes said she hates it. She's like, yeah, it's just
all these adult writers coming in with their adult novels
pushing out. She goes, you need some novels for actual
novels for kids. Yeah, and so we're working on one
of those. Now.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
Honestly, that's good. I find the whole thing interesting. I'm
not criticizing at all, but you're You're right. There's a
lot of adults who read young adults. And if you
ever watch book talk on TikTok or if you watch
book tube on YouTube, that's where you see it. Like
you can see these adults, Like there's people who are

(22:40):
in their forties and they buy up these books and
they read them. And like I I'm not necessarily one.
I have nothing against young adults. I'll read them and
I have read them.

Speaker 2 (22:49):
There's some good ones, really really good ones.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
Absolutely, so yeah that I'm all for that, honestly. But
I do find the whole argument interesting thing and fascinating
because it does seem like if you have a you know,
a fifteen year old kid in it, it's going to
be it doesn't matter what happens in the story. It
could be like in test inns everywhere, and they're gonna
and they're gonna be, uh, they're gonna be marketing it

(23:13):
as young adult.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yeah, that's true. It's true. Well, I've been told by
the bookstore, you know, by meg and librarians, you know,
we can't always make friends with the children's librarians, you know,
wherever you go, and they say that kids will self select,
they will you know, grab a book because they're interested,
and they'll they'll bring it right back the next night,
go like no, not for me, or they'll or say

(23:38):
it's too old for me, you know, which you think
kids would want to admit, But there're a lot of them.
The readers are really really self aware.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
Yeah, and that's true. Yeah, like my son, my son,
he's eleven years old, and he's totally in with like
the science fiction stuff. Yeah, was he like, oh, he
loves Star Wars, but he'll he loves anything with the
spaceship on the cover. He's carried automatically if there's a
space ship on the cover. But he's really big in
the Star Wars and Halo, the Halo books. He's actually

(24:07):
read some of the Halo books. And and yeah, that's
really awesome, But I kind of wish you would come
over to the creepier horror side.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
What about you? Are?

Speaker 1 (24:17):
You?

Speaker 2 (24:17):
Are you like all horror all the time? Sci fi?

Speaker 1 (24:21):
I like all like, I like fantasy, I like science fiction,
but I predominantly read horror, And honestly, my channel is
responsible for a lot of that lately, But I find
myself just reading horror anyway, Like it's just something I
gravitate to and always have.

Speaker 2 (24:38):
Yeah, sure, sure, who's the first? Who were the first
writers that really grabbed you? Well, you said Stephen King, right.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
No, Well actually I came a little late Stephen King too.
But I started with Dean Koons, Dean Kins and John
Saul And the biggest one for me though, And I
forgot to mention with those two because I think I
went to them first. But the biggest one was Robert R. McCammon.
I started reading him like I read Swan Song first,
and that absolutely that was my book. I was like,

(25:07):
I want to do this. I want to be able
to create worlds like this, right, yeah, And so I
went and I gobbled up everything I could find by him,
and you know, he's I wouldn't say his a favorite now,
but I like his older stuff better, but his new
stuff is really good too. But yeah, like, yeah, Boy's Life,
Yeah yeah, and that They Thirst, That's a fun vampire book.

(25:33):
Stinger is a really cool alien in the desert type
of story. I loved night Boat. They were all just fun,
sometimes silly fun. But yeah, those were the books for me. Absolutely,
speaking of like stories and the love of reading. I
signed up for your newsletter because I thought it was

(25:55):
a really interesting way that you do it, like instead
of just presenting news, which is nothing wrong with this,
Like people, I mean, people want to build their newsletters
and whatnot and share news. It's all great, but I
found you have a unique approach to your newsletters and
that you share other authors short stories like something like

(26:15):
fifteen hundred words or less. Can you tell us about that?

Speaker 2 (26:19):
Yeah? Sure, and thanks bother, thanks for signing up, and
thanks for the kind words. I wanted to make a
place where writers could write things that they felt like
they couldn't really write anywhere else. And I don't mean,
you know, spatterpunk. I there's lots of places.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
There's lots of places for that now.

Speaker 2 (26:43):
H yeah. Yeah, it's right out from under the rock.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
You know, it's really blown up. It's crazy, it.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
Has blown up hugely. God bless them one and all.
But no, I wanted to create a place where writers
could write, well, in this instance, true stories, things that
it really happened to them. And that's the guidelines. You know,
you write this, you know this short, short and sweet
fifteen hundred words or less, more and more or less

(27:10):
and something that really happened to you, that it doesn't
have to be supernatural, you know, it's as some of
them are kind of supernatural, but then others are just
you know, disturbing encounters or things that are unsettling. And
I was doing that myself already. The newsletter was I

(27:32):
would write one of these one every month, I would
write one of my own. And then I started saying, well,
let's let's hear from some the writers I know, and
they started sending them in and it's just and then
afterwards we have a little discussion about it and about writing.
You know, what's the difference, you know, true life versus fiction.
You know, where's the line for you? And I love that,

(27:56):
you know, yeah, you know it's great to talk to
people about writing, and so yeah, so I I love
doing that. I'm also I'm going to start I'm making
reels real and the videos on YouTube of me reading
my strange little stories, the true stories, and that'll that's

(28:16):
coming up probably in the next next couple of weeks
or more, like, you.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
Know, awesome. Now, when you start doing that, can you, like, seriously,
can you email me and let me know what the
channel where where I can find the channeltely, because if
we just stop now and you never email me. It's
gonna it's gonna disappear, and I won't think of it
again until it's time to read some more work by you,

(28:41):
and then I'll be like, oh, I wonder what happened
to that channel. By then it'll be like already well
under its way.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
So no, no, I wouldn't do that to you. What
if you're you subscribe to the newsletter or follow it
or it'll be it's on there. I put the it'll
be a teaser and then the link to the to
the full length one, which is not super long, about
ten minutes long.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
I'll share it when I see it.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Thank you. You'd be awesome.

Speaker 1 (29:04):
Have you ever thought of it? Because some authors have
found a lot of success doing things like this on
podcast format. Have you thought about doing that podcast? Yeah,
like so that people can listen to it on Apple
podcasts or Spotify or wherever they get their podcasts.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
I you know, uh, I thought about it. I'm I
have a I'm a slow learner in terms of tech.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
Mm hmmm, I.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
M so I would be interested in doing this with
the strange little doing that with the strange little stories.
I started trying to do podcasts back at the beginning myself,
back at the beginning of the pandemic, because everyone was
talking about how these poor people got books coming out
and you know, their events or scotched, you know, and

(29:50):
it's there. It's gonna hurt. And so I thought, well,
you know, let me just do this thing. And so
I did an interview show. It's again called One Good Story,
and we picked one story by each writer and we
would just chat about that story and about their writing
process and whatever in the pandemic and whatever else came
to mind. I did exactly too. Oh yeah, because it's

(30:13):
as it's work, you know, yeah, it's a lot of work.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
I just released a very short collection of short stories.
They're all Sasquatch attacks nice, and I wanted to do
the audio book for it myself. But I tried. I
tried practicing with some older stories from like you know,
M R. James and whatnot, and I realized just how
much work to get everything clear so that you're not

(30:41):
stumbling over words or mispronouncing words or and I was like,
you know what, I can't do that, But in a
podcast format I could, because you don't have to be
quite so finnicky about it. You know.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Yeah. The idea is it's live, you know.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
Yeah, Okay, so you're gonna you're gonna be wanting live,
sort of like what Daniel Brown was doing. We were
talking about him before we went live here quickly. I
really enjoyed his ghost story during Christmas.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
Great.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
Yeah, that was great. I don't think he's going to
do that this year because he usually advertises it by now, but.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
He's been doing it a while and it's great. That's
how I learned a lot of writers from that, which
is the point.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
Yeah. Absolutely, he had me on it once.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
Or twice, I forget. Yeah, and yeah, it's just did
great stuff, did great stuff.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
Yeah. And you know, speaking of short stories, it seems
to me that you have a real passion for the
shorter form of fiction, short stories. What is it about
them that draws you to writing them?

Speaker 2 (31:51):
I don't I don't know. I feel like it's kind
of like, you know, you could see it's like a
Swiss watch, you know, you open it up, you can
see all the gears turning and get in there and
make sure that it kind of lands properly at the end.
I mean, I love novels too, but I have to

(32:11):
be honest I have to be honest and say that.
You know, I read far, far more short stories. It's
my reading and same thing, same thing as my writing. Yeah,
obviously absolutely. I mean I've written the two novels with Julia,
and I wrote one novel, well, it's my pandemic novel.
I wrote that than the first year of the Pandemic

(32:32):
sitting outside of a bunch of composition books. But mostly yeah,
I just love short stories. And what is it, I
don't know, I've always loved them. I mean, it's just
like they just make me happy to like bring this
was back in the day when I was doing all
literary fiction. I wasn't reading novels. I was grabbing short
story collections, you know, bringing them home Rate Carver, Richard

(32:56):
Fod Just I don't know. I'm feeling really inarticulate about it.
What about you? Do? You know?

Speaker 1 (33:04):
It's the same thing, same with me. I love short stories.
I love reading them, and I love writing them. I
know why I love writing them is because you can
finish them faster, and you get that sense of accomplishment
that you finish something. I went through a period where
I had to stop writing because I was working a
difficult job, and my son was born, and this was

(33:26):
like in twenty thirteen, and so I was working like
twelve hour shifts and whatnot. And my son he was
pretty high demand, right, I mean, every kid is the
first five years, so you get like no sleep and everything.
You know what that's like, I'm sure. But so, yeah,
I didn't write much. But when I did write, it
with short stories, and anytime you had that dreadful feeling

(33:48):
that you're never going to write again, you'd write a
short story and you have that feeling of accomplishment again.
There was a point where I was writing a lot
of flash fiction too, because that was even you know,
more through it. So but as for reading them, I
don't know. I'm like you, I'm kind of stumped. I
think it's just because it's a shorter sort of window

(34:09):
into somebody's else's life, and they're extreme not to say
extreme horror, of course, but there there's situation that I
once heard a quote I can't remember who said it,
but they were like, a short story is like a
window in time to someone's life, to the most important
thing that happened to them in their life, and that
can often be true. And so I think I think

(34:31):
that's why I like reading them, because you get the
most extraordinary circumstance that that that person went through and
and maybe survived or didn't survive. And yeah, I think
that's what pulls me to it.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I agree.

Speaker 1 (34:46):
I agree with that.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
Then there there are you. You must have heard this too,
because there are folks who will say then, when it
comes to horror in particular and maybe horror adjacent or stuff,
the novel is just very very very hard to do.
It's hard to sustain, and the short form is the

(35:11):
perfect form for horror.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
It is.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
And I mean, obviously there are many, many, many horror novels.
Not all of them are created equal, but I think
that may be true.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. I used to argue,
not argue. I used to say that on my channel
all the time. You know, heart story for horror stories,
it's better, the shorter, the better, because if you think
about real life, those moments that were absolutely horrifying in
your own life, they were only like maybe at the

(35:45):
most a day or two, right, but or there were
just moments where you maybe got into a car accident
or or somebody you know died in front of you.
Or something like that. Like those horrifying moments they don't
last long, but the repercussions can, of course. But that's
the fun of the short story. You get the situation

(36:05):
and the repercussions or sometimes it's a build up to
the uh, you know, to that, But it's novelette or
novelettes too. Novellas and short stories are perfect for her.
I've always said that, Yeah, they.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
Are, absolutely so. The flash fiction that that interests me.
You say you write a lot of flash fiction. It's like,
you know, I love short stories that we're talking about.
I I don't want to say I can't write flash
fiction because that's some of that self limiting behavior there,
and thought, Yeah, I swear it's hard. It's so hard

(36:42):
for me. It was famously when somebody, what's the saying,
somebody said once I, if I'd had more time, I
would have written something shorter. I just you know, I
know that I've tried.

Speaker 1 (36:53):
I understand what you mean because I came from that. Like,
I didn't start writing the flash fiction until two thousand
and maybe twenty because I was really burnt out by
that time with the factory job, and I was I
was just scribbling down stories and they would come out
very short. It was like, that's all I had the
mental capacity for. But it's funny that you say that,

(37:17):
and I say, because I don't know if you heard
of the author Mercedes M. Yardley. Yes, I was talking
to I've talked to her on a different podcast. It
was the Darkness d Wells podcast. I talked to her
two or three times, and one of those times I
mentioned my struggles for writing flash fiction. She writes a
lot of them herself, right, So I was saying, I

(37:37):
just can't write them. I don't know how to do it,
and she she looked. She didn't look at me because
we weren't on like a video like this, but there
was a pause and I could picture her looking at
me and she said, oh, Jason, I don't believe you.
And I'm like, oh, man, yeah, okay, But that's that

(38:00):
stuck with me. Honestly, It's like my struggle was real
for it. But once I sat down, all a flash
fiction story is just one tight situation. You don't even
need a repercussion. It's just like something strange or violent
that happened, and you have a character. You only have

(38:20):
a certain amount of words to build a character, right,
But you can do it. It's not that hard. One
of the ones that I wrote was about a couple.
It's only about a thousand words. A drunk, young couple
go to a graveyard at night and find one of
the graves is still still dug up and there's nothing

(38:41):
in it, but there's holes in there, and the girl
falls in and she's taken away by creatures, and as
he's reaching in to try to save her, he's taken
in too. It's just it's like a strange kind of
violent situation and it's over before you know it. You
know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (38:56):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (38:56):
Cool?

Speaker 2 (38:57):
Action action orient.

Speaker 1 (38:59):
Yeah, yeah, pretty much action oriented.

Speaker 2 (39:01):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
And you can add in character too, because like when
they enter the graveyard, they're talking about what they're doing.
She's mentioning how you can smell the if it's a
really hot day, you can smell the corpses beneath the
I had a girlfriend who once told me that, and
so this is where the story came from. We went
to the greveyard what night after a really humid day,

(39:22):
and she was right. I don't know if it was
just playing on my mind, but you could smell like
a sort of soft sense of you know, rotting man,
and it was like a really humid day though, So
I don't know how true that it's this kind of
a morbid thing to do, but we were.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
Just for fun. How roughly how long between when that
happened the real life thing and when you sat down
and wrote that flash fiction?

Speaker 1 (39:48):
Oh, let me see, about twenty years?

Speaker 2 (39:51):
Really?

Speaker 1 (39:52):
Wow? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (39:53):
And did that was that one of those things? This
is what I asked people. Was that one of those
things that you thought of every now and then over
the twenty years or or did it just like come like, Oh,
it just.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
Kind of came like I don't think about that. When
I think about her at all, it's it's most Yeah,
but it's uh, actually I don't think about her all
that much either, But but every whenever I do think
about her, it's not that So I'm wondering. I think honestly,
it came from more of like the rats in the

(40:28):
Graveyard type short story where I was I was trying
to emulate that, and then when I was done, I
realized that this story is more about something I experienced,
except for the whole being stashed away by monsters in
the in the graveyard.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
Right, Yeah, that part, Well, that's cool, that's cools, a
little bit of real life, yeah, taking taking route.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
All right. So your first collection is called Terrible Things.
Can you tell us I haven't ready yet, but I
plan to when I get the of the free reading time.
Can you tell us a little bit about the stories
within and how they differ from your most recent Excuse.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
Me, yeah, I was afraid you were going to ask
that because I'm not really sure how they how they differ.
I think no, I know how that. Stylistically I think
people would find that they're pretty similar. It's not like
I can't believe this guy wrote that book. It's not

(41:30):
it's you can believe it. It's it's so stylistically very similar.
I think content wise, the first one, Terrible Things, has
a lot more about really hard, hard life things, a
lot of a lot of divorce, a lot of alcohol

(41:54):
and drugs, a lot of semi homelessness, and not to
you know, not to not to go into it too deeply,
but you know, it just came from, you know, part
of my life that was over by that point, but
sort of like you and the girlfriend in the graveyard,

(42:16):
you know, kind of stuck stuck with me, and I hadn't.
I didn't sort of needed to write those things out
in the in the horror context or the dark fiction context.
So I think that there's a lot more of that
going on in that book, whereas in the new book
there's you know, a little a little bit of that.
But I think it's kind of like next phase of

(42:37):
life sort of influences a lot about children, a lot
about aging. So yeah, it's it's it's it's an older
person's book. I mean only three years five, three four
years apart, but it's an older person's book.

Speaker 1 (42:52):
Yeah. And and here you were saying that you didn't
know how to answer that question. I think that's a
pretty good answer, honestly.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
Yeah, I fooled you. That's what the setup. Yeah, I
didn't know.

Speaker 1 (43:08):
Your latest collection is called These Things That Walk Behind
Me and it's the one that I read. I finished
at just this week, and I was impressed immediately to
see because I wasn't expecting this. But John Langan he
wrote the ForWord, So I was wondering, how how did
that come about?

Speaker 2 (43:27):
Uh? John? John lives very near, very near here, used
to teach at the Military Academy New York Military Academy,
just just down the road, and I'd been reading him,
you know, I'd been reading him. I knew who he was.
I was you know, I recognized what a great writer
he is. I mean, there's writers who you want to

(43:48):
like put like in the same box or the same
minivan or whatever, you know, and these are the best
argument for horror is literature. You know, it's real art.
And he's he's right in there. He's he's he's certainly
right right right in there.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
But that's why I was impressed. I was like, oh, man,
I love John Langon right.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
So guy, he's amazing. Well I I The way I
really got to hook up with him was there's another writer.
Do you know, Glenn Hirschberg.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
I don't think so.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
Yeah, he's He's on my list of writers and more
people should know. He's a wonderful writer. I'll say more
about him later if I get the chance. But he
invited us to a reading at this wacky bookstore way
up in the woods north north of here. It's called

(44:41):
al Penn Books. It was been there since the nineteen forties.
It's a chicken coop that got converted into a bookstore
and anyway, he invited me and my wife Julia, and
John Langon to join him there for a Halloween pre
Halloween reading. This was last, you know, last year, and
so great and we all went and on the way

(45:02):
there we found out that Glenn had gotten transportation screw ups.
He was flying from the Northwest and he got airport Hell,
got hit by airport Hell, and he couldn't make it.
So just the three of us, my wife and me
and John Langon and John showed up and he's so funny.
He is like funny and friendly, and he brought a

(45:24):
guitar with him and he said I thought we should
do wear Wolves of London. And I was like, okay, then, naturally,
and so would you like to play? And I said sure,
I'll play, you know, because the dog played. So I
got to back up John Langon on guitar on were
Wolves of London for a sing along for the people
who had come. And it was like yeah, yeah, So

(45:47):
it's a nice way to meet.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
Yeah. So you said you said he lives close to you.
Do you ever just show up and say hey, man,
how's it going.

Speaker 2 (45:58):
No, I do not do that, but you know, I
I'm lucky enough to run into him. There's a great
bookstore right across the river here, a deacon called Stanza Books,
and it's it's like a year old. And these guys
have turned it into kind of a hub of horror
writing activity. I mean so much else, but among the

(46:21):
many things they do, they've become a horror headquarters. And
so I see him there. He does things there, and uh,
you know, so I get to we get to hang
a little, but not a lot. But he's a he's
a great guy and a great, great writer. I feel
really fortunate.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
That he he's another like he dabbles in novels too,
but he's another master of the short story. Oh yeah,
one day I want to Actually, I shouldn't say that,
because I have talked to him on the Darkness d
Wells podcast. I once had Lard Baron and him on
and we're discussing, uh, we're discussing weird fiction and how

(46:59):
it came out and everything and where it is today.
It was like back in twenty eighteen. So it's been
a while, but I want to get him on like
a one on one at some point. And in his uh,
in his forward to your book, he mentions the art
of the strange story, and he calls your stories strange stories,
and he mentions Robert Aikman as well. That must have

(47:22):
been like him. Comparing your work to Robert Aikman must
have been kind of mind blowing. And does it make
you feel in a sense that maybe you're you're helping
to kind of carry the torch for strange fiction instead
of the you know, the weird fiction.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
Are you making a distinction between weird fiction and strange fiction.

Speaker 1 (47:45):
A little bit? Only in the sense that Robert Aikman
really preferred strange over weird When I think everything back then,
anything that was like a ghost story or whatever was
called weird and skult war yeah, yeah, and now it's
it's more called horror. But he was, he was really
big on the strange, and uh he was.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
I forgotten, Yeah, the names that different writers apply or
don't like to use or find. No, No, it would yeah,
of course, when I read John's forward, I like, you know,
they had to use the paddles on men, you know,
just I'll.

Speaker 1 (48:22):
Admit it right now, I'd be ugly crying.

Speaker 2 (48:28):
I don't think I think I reached the happy crying phase.
I didn't go all the way to ugly has to.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
Well, there would be a lot of joy behind that that.
Oh yeah, would just be.

Speaker 2 (48:37):
Like no, that was great. Uh yeah, Aikman, I mean,
the Aikman thing is really interesting because he It's funny
because everybody when you get the elevator speech about what
Aikman stuff is like, I was like, yeah, nothing, lots
of mood and everything is very suggestive and nothing really happens,

(49:00):
but it's very suggestive in Atmospheric and I was like,
have you read Ring the Change, Ringing the Changes that
that story There's there's a zombie orgy and and that's
it's like he does He's not extremely graphic about it.

Speaker 1 (49:17):
Yeah, it's like, hey.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
He pulls out all those stops. I mean, it's not
happening off screen, it's happening right there. And it's but
at the same time, the whole build up to it,
all all the suggestions, powers of suggestions so strong. But yeah, no,
I mean John John I think was thinking about that,
just the emphasis on the power of suggestion and now

(49:44):
you can use something like Bakman himself showed, you could
use the power of suggestion be very restrained and slow
burn whatever else you want to call it. But when
you get to the end of the line, you can,
you know, feel free to show show whatever you want,
show it all.

Speaker 1 (49:57):
Yeah. Another reason why I bring up string versus weird
as our friend Daniel Brahm, he really holds onto the
strange fiction Moniker as well. He kind of compared. He
doesn't compare himself to Robert Aikman, but he uses the
strange fiction instead of weird fiction. And I think he
he's big on Aikman though, as we both know.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
He is. Well he yeah, sometimes when I met him,
When I met Daniel, it was like he felt like
he'd sort of had one of those Saul on the
Road to Tarca's experiences. You know, you just see seeing
the light. You know. He was very, very passionate about
learning all he could about Aikman and talking with people

(50:41):
about it. And it was his you know, is really
energizing to be in his presence and part of those conversations.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
But yeah, yes, absolutely, yeah, And uh, I think just
to talk about Aikman just a little bit more. I
think the one the story of his affected me the
most was The Swords. Have you read that one?

Speaker 2 (51:04):
I have?

Speaker 1 (51:05):
That story is messed up beyond belief and yet, like
you said, very little well I wouldn't say little happens
in it, but when it happens, it happens, and you're
left wondering, what the the hell did you just read? Like,
what is this suggesting?

Speaker 2 (51:21):
Yeah? Yeah, and that whole thing about what what the
hell did I just see? You know, people who object
to that in a story, as opposed to like, you know,
I want to see a zombie rip somebody's guts out.
You know, it's like, great, go go for it, you know. Yeah,
But the people who disapprove of one of those odds strangers?

(51:47):
What the hell did I just see? That's what That's
what life is like? What the hell was that? Think?
How many times the hell was that? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (51:58):
That's so true.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
It's real. It's a real thing.

Speaker 1 (52:02):
Yeah. So before we move on to these things that
walk behind me, I was wondering, have you ever I'm
sure you have, but do you ever plan on writing
a solo novel and publishing that I did?

Speaker 2 (52:17):
I did well, I said I wrote the one. I
wrote the one during the first months of the pandemic.
So I have written the first draft. It needs lots
of work.

Speaker 1 (52:29):
And with the novel, there is a lot of work.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
Yeah, yeah, they're in there, so I would like that
I'll to see the light of day because I actually
happened to love it very much. It's it's it's odd,
it's odd as hell. It's David Crosby said about Neil Young.
He said, Neil, Neil's weird as snake suspenders. You know,

(52:52):
so it's kind of this, This novel is weird as
snake suspenders. But I do want to get back to it.

Speaker 1 (52:59):
But is there snake suspenders in that novel?

Speaker 2 (53:02):
No, but there's time for that. Put it in the revisions.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
Yeah, you can do it. You can do that for sure,
to get it in there for you.

Speaker 2 (53:12):
I'll get it in there.

Speaker 1 (53:12):
Oh awesome. Yeah, okay, And in the acknowledgments you can
say the snake suspenders are for Jason.

Speaker 2 (53:21):
I will count on it, all right.

Speaker 1 (53:25):
So at the end of at the very back of
these things that walk behind me, readers can find the
explanations and the stories that went into writing these stories.
And in your story notes. I love reading these because
I'm as we've kind of been discussing. I love where

(53:45):
ideas come from and how people incorporate real life situations
into their stories and all that. So I'm assuming, especially
after this talk, that you enjoy that type of stuff
as well.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
Oh yeah, you mean delving into life situation.

Speaker 1 (54:01):
In real life and you know how they become short
stories and all that.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
Oh yeah, definitely, definitely. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
The first story. I just I brought that up first
of all, just because I know a lot of my
viewers they like that too, because we've discussed it before,
and I think a lot of people really enjoy learning
the origins of a story and the genesis instead of
saying where do you get your ideas from? It's just
it's kind of cool. If you can't remember, then that's cool.

(54:30):
But if you can remember, the story behind the story
is always fascinating because there's something in real life that
you know that happened or whatever.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
I'm super glad, Jason to hear you say that, because
I I I chickened out on my first collection. The editor,
Steve Shaw is a great guy, black Shuckey. He says,
do you want to have story notes? And I was like, uh, chicken,
I said no, it's like, who wants to hear my
story notes?

Speaker 1 (55:00):
True Love?

Speaker 2 (55:01):
That well, I got berated Love Loving be rated because
he doesn't be right. There's this wonderful writer, Welsh writer
named Steve Duffy. It was one of those writers that
started reading when I started coming up, and he was
kind of he wrote me a blurb and we were
friends long distance friends now and he was like, well
are you crazy? So you just he said, head, he said,

(55:24):
I will, I'll review. I'll give you a blurb if
you promise to do story notes in your next collection.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
Awesome.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
And so it's like story notes are for him. But
I'm glad. I'm glad to hear you say that, because
I always like them. I always like I go right
to but I don't want to go right to them
first because I want, you know, the spoilers. But sometimes
I've actually hurried through the last few stories in the
book so I could get to the story.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
Yeah. Often I just go back and forth. If they're behind,
if they're in the back of the book, I'll read
the short story and then the story notes and yeah,
I've done that. So there's only about four, maybe five
at the most. Stories. I want to talk about this
because we could probably talk about this collection all night,
and I'm sure you have things to do. But the

(56:11):
first story in this collection is hang On here is
Give Me Back My Name and this. Once I read
this story, I was like, oh man, it's on, you know,
it's I'm like, this is good, right. But I found like,
after reading that story, I read the story notes, and

(56:33):
I found that we both had different interpretations of the story.
And I found that fascinating too. So this story is
kind of open in a sense. It doesn't really go
into any fact. It's all about memory and the past.
So do you subscribe to the idea that somebody could
come away with a different interpretation of what happened in

(56:54):
this story?

Speaker 2 (56:55):
Oh? God, yeah, absolutely, I mean, yeah, that's the risk.
If it is a risk, I mean, it's just a
thing that happens when if you write a story that
there's some ambiguity into it. Yeah, that's the dirty a word.
You know. Some people love ambiguity, some people hate it.

Speaker 1 (57:11):
And I love ambiguity honestly because I like it when
it's sort of like having a conversation with the author. Honestly,
they're they're giving you parts and your brain if you
like this sort of thing, will come up with the
parts that are missing if it's done right, And that
sort of makes you collaborators.

Speaker 2 (57:29):
I think absolutely, that's a that's a that's a real thing. Well,
can I ask you what your interpretation of it was.

Speaker 1 (57:35):
The Absolutely I found that the husband, as you mentioned,
is lying, and he's lying to his wife as you
said in the in the story notes. But I thought
by the end of it, and it made me sad. Honestly,
it gave me that emotion of sadness. I thought he
was lying to himself the whole time as well, that

(57:58):
something tragic happen and to the wife, although I think
he said that he did leave her alive. Now that
I'm saying this out loud, but I my brain came
up with this plot line that where the wife died
and it broke him up so bad that he changed
everything in his life to get away from the pain.

(58:18):
And so when his present wife was saying, Okay, we
have to go visit the grave and all that, and
he was getting angry about it, is because he didn't
want to remember what was going on or what happened
in the past. That when he changed his identity, he
was changing himself so he didn't have to face that pain.

(58:40):
And that was my interpretation of it, which is quite elaborate. Honestly,
I love it.

Speaker 2 (58:47):
Elaborate's good. So are you saying like the story? He
obstensibly he believed he was making up when he was
telling his new wife about when she she realized he'd
been married before. Yeah, starts like just making this story up.

Speaker 1 (59:02):
He starts spinning out the truth, but he doesn't think
he's making it up. Yeah, and and so that's what.
So yeah, So when when he says like, oh, her
name was such and such and he finds out that
it's true and she was buried in this town Carlton,
turns out there is a town named Carlton, and there's

(59:25):
a graveyard in there and her name is on that
graveyard tombstone. And he's like, this is all real.

Speaker 2 (59:32):
What the you know, Jason? You get that's brilliant. Really,
that's a lot more brilliant I could claim it. Yes,
that's exactly what I know.

Speaker 1 (59:45):
That that's just where my brain went. And then when
I read your show notes, I was like, or not
show notes, the story notes. I was like, oh, yeah, okay,
that wow. But I think I'll always take away my
interpretation from it because that's that gave me that feeling,
you know, like of sadness, Like I felt really bad
for this guy where in the story he's a bit

(01:00:07):
of a I wouldn't say a dirt bag, but he's
not the greatest dude, right, Like he he's a liar. Yeah,
he's a liar. And I like what you said about
liars in in that that they're also thebes. That was
an interesting philosophy I found about liars.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
Yeah. Yeah, Well, like I said, you steal, you steal,
so when you lie to someone else, especially it's a
really profound lie and an ongoing lie is you know,
you kind of steal what they thought was their life
from Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
Yeah. And he also he also brought up an interesting
point about the Golden Arm. That short story. I find
that interesting because I went and looked it up, and
I don't know if I heard a similar story, but
it's on YouTube if you look up the Golden Arm
ghost story. There's this old recording set to like a

(01:01:03):
weird old cartoon, and it tells the story of a
wife or a married couple, a husband and a wife.
I don't think they're named, but the wife has like
a golden arm, and she makes him promise that if
if she ever dies before him not to take her
golden arm? Is that the same story?

Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
It's a version of a did you hear it when
you were a kid? No?

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
I didn't.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
Oh wow, okay, so it may just be a generational thing.

Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
Good.

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
Yeah, maybe, yeah, No, it's it's it's it's folklore. I mean,
it's one of those stories that's just been passed on
and passed on from who knows when it actually started.
But yeah, it's in a lot of kids like first
ghost story books. Like I can't I can't think of
even the name of the story without seeing the walls

(01:01:49):
and windows of my elementary school library. It's just that's
where I heard it in library and reading it. But no,
it's an old, old, old old, almost like the it's
one about the the phantom hitchhiker where oh, yeah, you
know you here bar my coat and the guy goes
to the graveyard and there's his coat on those It's
it's over. It's way over than.

Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
That interesting because I I don't think I've heard this story,
but it's possible I did. And it's just like you know,
in one year out the other.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
But well, it's a jump scare because at the end
I could really do it and they refer to the
jump scare, but it's like give me back my golden arm.
At the very end, the guy yells, he yells take
it or you got it or something. Yeah, everybody goes yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):
And also get getting back to my interpretation of your story,
I felt that he was stealing from her her name
because I don't want to give it away. But there
is that element of giving me back my golden arm,
and he was sort of stealing her name and her
presence for you know, covering up her death. Yeah. Yeah,

(01:02:54):
all right. So the next story that I really enjoyed
was The Devil Will be at the Door. Oh yeah.
And now this one is interesting because it appears in
Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year volume thirteen. Yeah,
now that that's this is like the the golden to
go back to gold, the gold the golden dream for

(01:03:17):
most horror writers. So what what was that like when
you got that email of her asking you to include
that story.

Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
No ugly or happy crying you're talking about, Yeah, it
was it was more like the happy dancing in the kitchen,
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
Yeah, you look down your email and it's from Ellen
Datlow and the title of your story isn't it. You know,
it's like, what's you going to say? Open it up?
He goes, this is the worst story I've ever read.

Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
How dare you think I'm there? Quit? Now? You know,
I heard shoe selling is quite popular. It is.

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
But obviously that was great.

Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
That was great. That would have been often.

Speaker 2 (01:04:00):
Yeah, definitely, it was definitely awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):
And you know, I love how spooky it is and
it plays it plays really well with reality. I love
that play with reality, which is my cup of tea?

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
Thanks?

Speaker 1 (01:04:16):
Do you do you play with reality and fiction? Do
you like like to mess things up and make the
reader kind of question?

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):
Yeah? Yeah, I do. I mean I never really set
out like as a as a as a goal or
as a like this is what I write about. But yeah,
and most of my stories I think, you know, I
have to go back and look. But it's not a
big scary monster. Although sometimes there's a big scary monster

(01:04:49):
in there. It's some people whose reality they question their reality,
little little my cross shifts in reality are like major
unbelievable ones. But yeah, things that they thought were real
and trustworthy just suddenly are are different.

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
So yeah, I try to do that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
I try to do that in my fiction. I mean
that story. Think about that story.

Speaker 1 (01:05:15):
It's like.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
True that the actual percentage would be. But yeah, I
mean talk about basing something on real life.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
That's uh, well, I know that the the bus scene.
He said that, yet you pulled that from your real life?

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
Yeah, that was my dad. My dad told that story
every Easter. Yes on the church bus just scared the ship,
all these little Episcopalian teenagers.

Speaker 1 (01:05:41):
Man, that's kind of is very awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:05:44):
It's very awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:05:46):
There's also a spooky little country song in there, yeah,
that you heard with the lyrics.

Speaker 2 (01:05:52):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:05:52):
So you said in the in the uh story notes
that you can't find that story. So I went looking
to of course, because that's what you do, and I
couldn't find it either. But I did find a country
song that that was called Devil in the Doorway and
it was kind of spooky. But did you know that
there's like a movement of indie country music that does

(01:06:15):
like spooky things.

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
Doesn't surprise me.

Speaker 1 (01:06:19):
It's actually pretty cool. I suggest looking it up. I
can email you some artists, please do, please do?

Speaker 2 (01:06:25):
Can you name some of them?

Speaker 1 (01:06:27):
Not right now because I don't listen to it all
that often, but every so often I do. Yeah, it's like.

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
I'll write him, ask him if any of them heard.

Speaker 1 (01:06:34):
This, Yeah, they might have. There's one guy I follow
on TikTok who knows a lot about this type of music,
like the spooky country music. I'll get a list for
you and i'll email it to you later tonight.

Speaker 2 (01:06:48):
Thank you, Jason. I would love that. Yeah, I mean, well,
you know, spooky, bloody things are like you know, whoops,
can you still hear me? Yep, I'll keep talking. Oh
that was weird. I transformed myself into a little swirling ghost.

Speaker 1 (01:07:03):
Oh maybe maybe we've just switched realities.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
I don't know, and we didn't keep keep going. Yeah,
no that anyway. Yeah, I would love to find that
that song. I can hear it. I can hear it
just as plain as day. I could play it, you know,
I know the chourt. I mean, it's just just a
simple three chord bluegrass waltz kind of sounded thing. With
these artists like you sound like the Luvin Brothers or

(01:07:36):
the Carter family. There's that kind of real mountain type stuff.
But yeah, there's a whole school you know, there's old
folk songs from Appalachia and stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:07:47):
Like that they have the murder ballads and yeah, the
murder ballads. That's sort of what I'm talking about. It's
like newer form of that, but it's it's a pretty
big well it's not big, it's not huge because they're
all Indie, but there's a lot of them, I guess. Yeah,
And I thought that was really cool.

Speaker 2 (01:08:06):
Find it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:07):
I think it It would kill me.

Speaker 2 (01:08:08):
It would probably destroy me if I actually heard it again. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:11):
I think it's interesting though, because it's like, maybe it
went into that house clearly where somebody was listening to
it on their iPod or their iPhone nowadays, and uh,
and it disappeared on them.

Speaker 2 (01:08:27):
It sucked them right in, Yeah, through the door.

Speaker 1 (01:08:29):
Yeahana is in. Yeah. Now, Angel Mutter, that's a that's
an interesting name, right there, Angel Mutter. This this story
comes from your real life as well to a lesser
degree to like, it comes from a situation. I guess
that your mom might have told a story to you

(01:08:52):
when you were growing up. But your mother was out
a formula and she traveled with you in tow trying
to find the formula. And there's an interesting there's an
interesting story and how it correlates to Angel Mutter, Do
you care to share with us this story?

Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
It's it's a lot, yeah, sure, it's a lot more
indirect than you know, the last one. All these pieces
like listening to the ghost, to the tapes with the
folklore professor, that all really happened, this one angel murder.
So yeah, she my mother. It was out of baby formula.
And this was like the late nineteen fifties. So she

(01:09:28):
was up in the mountains of Kentucky somewhere and she
was just driving, driving, and she was looking for someplace
she could get some some formula, and she saw these
lights and she pulled up in this little country store.
There was one light burning, and she went inside and
there were these old men sitting around the barrel, you know,
just kind of like they looked up at her, and

(01:09:49):
she's and I don't know she said anything. First was
one of the old metal care and he spoke in
this indecipherable, strange Appalachian Celtic accent, are you looking for
the women folk?

Speaker 1 (01:10:07):
So they're all in the woods floating around or something?

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
Right, So full car, you know, And yeah, but but
you know she made it out clearly because here I am.

Speaker 1 (01:10:16):
And you know she you survived, and so did she.

Speaker 2 (01:10:19):
We both did. It's amazing. But yeah, so that kind
of stuck with me. It was one of those what if,
you know, well, what if the things that had really
been weird up in there these kind of strange traditions
in the back, because.

Speaker 1 (01:10:34):
This story goes into Bunker's kind of territories in the
best possible way. And James Moore, may he rest in peace,
Yeah he said. He said on that panel at a
convention that Angel Mutter was one fucked up story on
a panel, said an audience.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
That's the thing. He turned to me and he goes,
that's one fucked up story.

Speaker 1 (01:10:59):
It's like.

Speaker 2 (01:11:02):
I did a spit take.

Speaker 1 (01:11:03):
Man, you must take that as a badge of honor.
Though I do.

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):
Jim's Jim Jim, I can't. I wish i'd actually known
him a lot better. I a lot of guys know
him a lot better than I ever did. But every
time I was around him, such a powerful presence. Yeah,
just powerful and the world's best hugs, as everyone likes
to say.

Speaker 1 (01:11:27):
Yeah, the bear hugs. I've heard about, the bear hugs
I've never Unfortunately I never met him, and I wish
I had. But I live up in Canada.

Speaker 2 (01:11:34):
So, oh, where in Canada are you thought?

Speaker 1 (01:11:37):
Ontario? I lived just about an hour and a half
north drive of Toronto.

Speaker 2 (01:11:43):
Okay, cool, cool.

Speaker 1 (01:11:45):
Yeah, So I used to have a passport, but I
stupidly let it die during the pandemic. I need to
get it again, but it's I got to start from
zero again, that's right. Yeah, yeah, but I should because
I'd love to go to some of these conventions in

(01:12:05):
the States. Yeah, the conventions.

Speaker 2 (01:12:07):
Yeah, absolutely, Merrimack Valley Halloween Book Festival. That's where. That's
where I met all those guys. That's nice stomping ground.

Speaker 1 (01:12:16):
Yeah. Now, the next story I really loved was the
Sea Shall Be Calm, That the Sea Shall be Calm. Sorry,
Now this one is interesting because it's based on German,
a German myth mythological folklore thing that I don't think
I can pronounce, but I'm gonna.

Speaker 2 (01:12:37):
Try go ahead.

Speaker 1 (01:12:40):
Oh god, I had it before this interview, but now
I'm looking at the word and I'm like, Okay, clobber
clouber urman cloudber urman cloudber Urman.

Speaker 2 (01:12:53):
You heard it here, folks.

Speaker 1 (01:12:54):
This is this is how you say the words. You
know what YouTube is going to click that out and
when somebody searches it, they're going to see my face
going cloud cloud Cloud clouder Urmina Clover.

Speaker 2 (01:13:07):
Well, you all just have to buy the book and
then see the word for yourself and sound it out. Yeah,
Cloudburt cloudbertment.

Speaker 1 (01:13:15):
Or something cloud. Yeah, I don't know, but it's a
very interesting, uh myth that they have. I've never heard
of before either, all right, but that is no I mean, this.

Speaker 2 (01:13:26):
Is one of these things you talk about like basing
something on real life. This is like the least I
mean everything you know people say this is true. Every
good story anyway is based on your own life, just
in terms of being able to identify with the feelings
of the characters even if you've never done any of
that stuff. But in terms of incidents, yeah, this is
just made it up out a whole cloth. Someone had

(01:13:48):
a sea horror anthology, I forget what it was. There
was like two of them going on at the same time,
and they wanted sea stories about myths myths of the sea,
and you know, I wanted to find one I'd never
heard of before, and so I just you know, did
my research and found found the the the the cloud,

(01:14:10):
Cloud which at first it doesn't seem at first like
particularly threatening one until because it was. It's it's this
man in a in a in a bright yellow raincoat
with a silver hammer who who he's a phantom presence
who like comes on board his ship and he goes

(01:14:33):
around like Santa Claus when everyone is asleep, fixing things
like repairing things to help the ship. But if you
see him, if one of the sailors happens to see him,
the ship is doomed. What kind of sense that makes?
I have no idea, But that's that. That's the legend.
And you know, I don't know why that struck me

(01:14:54):
as a cool thing to write a story.

Speaker 1 (01:14:56):
About, but well, you do really interesting things with it,
and not just researching that piece of myth, of German myth.
It's it's got a lot of It doesn't go too
deep into what it's like to be a sailor, but
you could tell that you had to research that stuff

(01:15:16):
as well. I remember thinking about that while I was
reading it. I was like, man, this story seemed like
it might have been tough to write because of the
research that went into it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:25):
Yeah, it was, I mean the toughest thing at first
which sounds like it wouldn't have been. The toughest thing
was just to be factual about the route that they took, like, Okay,
where are they going to start? How long is it
going to take them to get from here to here realistically?
And then of course there's the added element of how
I time Too many spoilers, but time sort of warps

(01:15:50):
and it takes longer. It's time warping or space warping, whatever,
it takes them longer to get. But yeah, I did
a lot of research on how far is it from
Somatra to in Japan and blah blah blah.

Speaker 1 (01:16:02):
Another reason why it works so well is because of
how horror works really well in isolated situations, and this
just fits perfectly into that. The person that's on their
ship is spooky as hell, and I loved it. I
wanted to know more about this.

Speaker 2 (01:16:22):
Person, about the claubordman. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so did I.
He didn't cooperate. But I'm really glad you liked that one,
because I that's one of my favorite types of stories
to write. There's another one in my first collections, where
I'm writing all these very more or less contemporary domestic situations,

(01:16:44):
you know, and then I just have to go off
as I just want to write a big, crazy nineteenth
century sort of florid purple prose, you know, rap. And
I did that in the first in the first collection,
uh story called the Last Testament of Jacob Tyler and
then just sounds like what it sounds like. And then this,

(01:17:07):
you know that to see Shelby Calm was just my
chance to have to have that kind of fun, awesome books.
I'm glad you like, do you like reading seafaring stories?
Not as Yeah, when I get around to them, I
don't really seek them out. I just kind of, you know,
read them when i've I read the uh the logbooks

(01:17:28):
of different scientific scientific you know, journeys like that one
from the nineteenth century, and those are really interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:17:36):
Especially if you ever came across one that was sort
of ambiguous as well. You know, something happened to the
ship and it disappeared, but they found the log book.

Speaker 2 (01:17:46):
The last line is like, oh, what the.

Speaker 1 (01:17:50):
Hell is it I'm looking at?

Speaker 2 (01:17:52):
No, those are the good ones.

Speaker 1 (01:17:56):
Okay, So I also wanted to talk about how the
world works. I love monster stories, but this one also
had even though it wasn't isolated. It felt isolated, and
especially from I think his name is Mike that I
felt bad for that character. But at the same time
I didn't because of, you know, the type of person

(01:18:18):
he is now. I found it interesting that Mike his
name was Mike, right, Yeah, he he actually comes from
real life too, from a person that you used to know.
And he said that Mike makes more than one appearance
in your stories. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:34):
Yeah, if you tune into the strange little story I'm
about to post before Halloween, he'll make an appearance and
that too. Yeah, just briefly, Mark, he was. He was
my best friend from like age six through like twenty one,
twenty two or something like that. And you know, he

(01:18:57):
was a little hard to take. He was just one
of these guys. He was taller than everybody else, very
smart thought so he thought he was smarter than everyone else.
Now everyone has a friend where it's kind of like, yeah,
we love him, but you know, yeah, we love him.

Speaker 1 (01:19:12):
He's a great guy, but he's.

Speaker 2 (01:19:13):
A great guy. He was that guy for us and
for me, but I was his best friend, so I
took the brunt of a lot of it. And yeah,
that sounds that sounds self pitying and that sucks.

Speaker 1 (01:19:25):
He was great.

Speaker 2 (01:19:26):
He was a great guy in so many ways, and
he certainly we all changed as we got older, but yeah,
that was the that was the dynamic throughout a lot
of the teenage years, and so it kind of made
it into made it into the fiction.

Speaker 1 (01:19:39):
I knew guys like that too, honestly. Uh and there
I went through periods where one or two of them
were best friends of mine as well. So I kind
of that's what kind of drew me to the story
as well. Not just the monster aspect aspect, wow, but
just the sort of controlling you know, he'll insult you

(01:19:59):
a at a whim. Yeah, yeah, and they were like
best friends. Playing cards with them was insufferable because have
you ever played Yuker? Canadians are big with this card
game named Yuker. So you have to pair up. Yeah,
you pair up with a partner to play this game

(01:20:20):
and you play against another team. And I was I
always had to be his partner, and if I ever
made a mistake, he would just let loose on me.
Oh man, yeah yeah yeah, so I immediately you know,
funny enough, his name was the same. His name was Mike.

Speaker 2 (01:20:40):
So you were you locked in, you locked in fast
and hard.

Speaker 1 (01:20:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:20:45):
Absolutely, you know, we're chuckling here as we have been.
But it means a lot to me that someone who
had similar experience, similar dynamic with someone close to them
growing up mm hmm, identifies with that. And so that's
that's nice.

Speaker 1 (01:21:03):
I you know, I assume like after reading this story
because I thought of my old friend. He's still with us, thankfully,
and he's a good guy. You know, he's not a
bad guy, but sure, but uh, you know being friends
with him was hard.

Speaker 2 (01:21:20):
Though, Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is, it is, It is
really hard. The day we broke up. We broke up actually,
you know, like like you know, boyfriend and girlfriend and
didn't get back together for like five six years. But

(01:21:41):
he he didn't like the way I was driving, and
he reached over and grabbed the steering wheel and like
pulled up and he wanted me to go somewhere else.
That just snap, you know, that's all it took.

Speaker 1 (01:21:53):
But yeah, that stuff like that, it's like, you know,
you're like, you got to reach your limit somewhere, right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:21:59):
Yeah, but you know, use it in the fiction because
he was and he loved he loved my stories. He
was always really supportive about that and that's cool. Yeah,
he's a great guy.

Speaker 1 (01:22:12):
Yeah. Now, the reason why you wrote this story, I know,
is because you were invited to an anthology and you
realized upon looking at your backwork that you hadn't read
a creature feature yet or a monster story. So I
found that interesting because I love monster stories and yet

(01:22:34):
a lot of my earlier stuff there's like little to
no monsters, and I don't get it. But now that's
all I write.

Speaker 2 (01:22:41):
Is monster story monsters in there.

Speaker 1 (01:22:43):
Yeah, so I was it's a really interesting monster too.
But without spoiling it, how did you how did you
create the monster in this story? Because it's it's really interesting.
I found it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:56):
You know, it was probably guilty as being an extremely
metaphorical non you know, in a lot in a lot
of ways. Uh, I just knew that there had to
be some awful reason why Mike would be in this house.
There's a payback. It's like he gets all these things
that he wants, uh, sort of like a mythology and

(01:23:17):
like a mythological thing almost, and you get all these
things that you want, but you have to feed them.

Speaker 1 (01:23:21):
There's this terrible price. Yeah, yeah, you.

Speaker 2 (01:23:23):
Feed the monster, which is you know, in itself kind
of a big, heavy metaphorical phrase. But I just tried
to make it real and yeah, it just and you
don't see it. You never see it very clearly, like
like some some of those ambiguous films you know, but
people hate. But uh yeah, yeah, just sort of came

(01:23:43):
just just like that.

Speaker 1 (01:23:45):
Yeah, that's that's pretty cool. Like you do get to
see some of it though, and I know that you
get to see it mostly through the protagonist's reaction to it.
I found, uh, he sees like a very small part
of it, and his action to it though is what
really sort of sells it, I think, because he freaks
out and he's like panicking afterwards and he realizes, you know,

(01:24:09):
we gotta we gotta leave.

Speaker 2 (01:24:11):
Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah. I just yeah, it's interesting.
That's one of those I just let it. I let
that story, just let it off the leash. It just
felt like it needed to be as long as it
is and not just to really feel that texture and
feel feel real. So I'm glad. I'm glad you liked it.

(01:24:32):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:24:32):
Do you think that you'll approach writing monster stories again
at all?

Speaker 2 (01:24:39):
You know, I Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, it's
funny because you know a lot of people would say that,
you know, I don't do that generally. I have, I
totally have. It's just you know, that's that's not the
main thing. But yeah, i'd love to Two writers, I'll say, right,
who who do the monster things? So well? Just every

(01:25:00):
time I read it, it was a British writer named Ray.
Clearly he's just I love his stories because he just
he's not shy. He just brings on the monsters, but
it's so real and the human human relationships are also
so real. Clint Smith. It's another guy's an American writer Indiana.
Same thing, not every story, but when he brings a

(01:25:22):
monster on, it's like, you know, you believe it, and
you believe it because the people are so real, you know.
Oh yeah, I'd loved it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:30):
I'd love it. Try it again, Yeah, I think you should. Yeah.
All right, So those are the stories I wanted to
discuss within this anthology. All the stories are great, but
those are the ones that hit home for me the most,
and so I wanted to keep it down to three
because that would make the discussion shorter. But but I

(01:25:51):
had to talk about It's like four or five of
them there, so wow. Before we move on to the
final question, there's one more I have about this action.
And I was wondering because sometimes there are themes throughout collections,
and I was wondering if there's any particular theme that
ran throughout this collection that I may have missed or overlooked.

Speaker 2 (01:26:13):
No, I don't think so. I mean the themes, and
especially I think you were saying earlier how you know
this reading is sort of an act of collaboration between
a writer and a reader the stories. I think that's
extra true when it comes to themes. I think you
find themes later. I mean, what was I saying earlier

(01:26:35):
about just you know, how this this was different than
the first book. I think a little more about mortality
and aging, a little more about being a parent, Yeah,
finding your true family. Just yeah. I don't set out
usually to write about a theme, but I think that

(01:26:58):
maybe those are fair those are fair ones.

Speaker 1 (01:27:01):
Yeah. Okay, Now I emailed you earlier today. I've been
getting bad at not sending this email out earlier. But
I have a final question. I ask all my guests
because I like promoting. I'm obsessed with books and reading
and writing. And my goal here is to share writers

(01:27:21):
and to bring a spotlight to writers, all writers. So
that's why I came up with this as like a
final question for all my guests. And I want to
know And we've already discussed some of them, because you've
shot out some names, I'm like who, So I want
to know what author or authors do you think is underrated?

(01:27:41):
And people need to be talking about them more often. Now.
One reason why I asked this question is because I
watch a lot of book Tube and a lot of
book talk, and you always hear people talking about books
and authors, and there's these other authors that never get discussed,
and it's like, why are you guys talking about these
guys too, because they're just as good as all these

(01:28:03):
other writers you're talking about it.

Speaker 2 (01:28:05):
Yeah, yeah, well it's it's hard. I mean, I wrote
back to you and I said that, you know, underrated
is a it's a tricky word because you know, it
raises in my mind, it's raises the question underrated by
whom you know? Because it's like, if you're talking about
you know, mister and missus America, who you know maybe
don't read horror, you know, they're they're not going to know.

(01:28:30):
Almost almost everyone we read, including Dean Koons, you know there,
Stephen King, they might have heard of. So then within
the horror community there are just all sorts of strange,
not strange at all. There's perfectly understandable things that cause
people not to know. One is just geographic British writers. Yeah,

(01:28:51):
you're right, And and the American writers.

Speaker 1 (01:28:55):
I love.

Speaker 2 (01:28:58):
All these British writers that I there's really formative to me.
When I started writing, Gary McMahon, Steve Duffy, Alison Littlewood,
Priyas Sharma, Ray Cleuey I mentioned with his monsters and
aevable human beings. Uh, so many of those guys, uh
and uh, I don't know. Do you want me to
rattle off some names?

Speaker 1 (01:29:18):
Sure? Well? First, can you can you spell Ray Kluey's
last name clearly is c l u l e Y. Okay,
all right, now you can go.

Speaker 2 (01:29:34):
I'm gonna rattle them off. My My wife is sending
me texts that dinner dinner is getting called.

Speaker 1 (01:29:39):
So you just mentioned one or two and then we'll
get going.

Speaker 2 (01:29:45):
Oh I can't mention one or two, Okay, I'll just
really fast. Uh. First of all, Mary Rickert Mary Rickart
who was a k A. M. Rickert for many, many years.
She's just a fabulous writer with such a deep, deep
compassion and uh, you know, her collection You Have Never
Been Here Small Beer Press blew my mind. It just

(01:30:05):
made me really want to do what she does.

Speaker 1 (01:30:07):
To tell you the truth.

Speaker 2 (01:30:07):
It's like a gold standard. Linda Rucker I mentioned before,
she's the writer from Georgia. She's back in Georgia right now.
She's lived all around the world. Incredible writer. Certainly belongs
to the achman Esque category in terms very very subtle.
She's got three collections out, but the one that I
just read called Now It's Dark from Swan River Press.

(01:30:29):
I literally people say I couldn't put it down, you know,
and you always you hear that and you go, really,
you really couldn't put that. I actually could not put
it down. It just glued to my hand for until
first story to the last story, and just so subtle
and suggestive, but so real and beautifully beautifully written. Anyway,

(01:30:49):
She's fantastic. Charles Wilkinson. Charles Wilkinson, this is another brit writer.
He is like a master of the strange tale. I mean,
he is just a master his collections, and he's hard
to find because his publishers are wonderful publisher called a
Jais Press from England. They're beautifully made books, but you

(01:31:14):
can't find them over here. He has a collection called
Splendid in Ash another one called A Twist in the Eye,
and they're very odd stories and very very beautifully written.
Some of my favorites this guy named Adam Goulaski. I
think a lot of your listeners are the writers you

(01:31:35):
had on probably know him. He's a really interesting writer.
He's in New Jersey. Only two collections of short fiction.
He's got one called Worse Than Myself and another one
called The Stone Gods, and they are just strange, strange stories.
He's a poet. He does a lot of experimental poetry
and he does anthologies of that, so that kind of

(01:31:56):
informs his language and his choice and just make these
and shifts and direction that you know, it's fascinating. I
just find his work is just fascinating. And then, my god,
so many other people Michael wie Hunt. I think it's
The Inconsolables, that book I've read that recently blew me away.

(01:32:17):
Christopher Barzak is interesting. He's he's a guy he doesn't
get for some reason. He doesn't get mentioned a lot
in horror circles because his first collection called Before and Afterlive.
It's also on Leathy Press wonderful book of Horror, Psychological horror,
ghost Stories. He just put out a novella called a
Voice Calling. It's essentially a haunted house thing. But he

(01:32:38):
really made his name doing by some of it's a
little supernatural adjacent, some of it's not so much. And
so that's kind of I think where some people tend
to find him is in that world. I would love
to see, you know, just get more props in the
horror and the strange fiction because he's just he's brilliant.

(01:33:00):
H Stephen Dines, Scottish writer one for sp Maskowski m Hm,
Joshua Rex mean, I think I mentioned Clint Smith, Ralph
Robert Moore. He is a deeply unique writer that will
unsettle you, like unbelievable in very strange ways that you've

(01:33:21):
never been unsettled before. But he's, uh, he's he's he's incredible.
And that was Glenn Glenn Hirschburg. Glenn Hurstburg is just
the gold standard in terms of realistic modern horror. Uh.
The collection to Sam's. He's got another one called tell
Me When I Disappear that just came out. He's he's, he's,
he's a master.

Speaker 1 (01:33:40):
He really is nice. All right, So thank you for that.
That was quite the list.

Speaker 2 (01:33:48):
That's quite the list you got.

Speaker 1 (01:33:49):
There's a lot of new writers to check out. I've
heard some of them, but not all of them, and
uh so I appreciate that. Now, uh, before we go,
do you have any story worries or books coming out
soon that readers can be looking forward to.

Speaker 2 (01:34:05):
Stories of books coming out soon? Just other than my
new collection in July. In July, the novel that I
wrote with my wife Julia called Saving Thornwood that'll be
coming out from Haverhole House and I will let you know.
And yeah, I'm really I'm editing that right. I'm doing

(01:34:25):
the close final round of editing and it's it's really
enjoying it.

Speaker 1 (01:34:29):
It's it's good, it's awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:34:32):
I think people will like it.

Speaker 1 (01:34:33):
Yeah, all right, So where can viewers find you online?

Speaker 2 (01:34:38):
H davidsurface dot net. Just my name, no punctuation, David
surface dot net.

Speaker 1 (01:34:44):
And I highly recommend that they sign up for your
newsletter because that's a very unique way of approaching newsletters.
I find that fascinating and I can't wait to dig
into when they start coming.

Speaker 2 (01:34:56):
Well, thank you, Jason, I appreciate that, and thanks for
having me on. This is really fun.

Speaker 1 (01:35:00):
Thank you so much for reaching out, and I thoroughly
enjoyed these things that walk behind me and I'm very
much looking forward to reading more of your work.

Speaker 2 (01:35:11):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:35:16):
If you like what I'm doing here and want to
support the channel without involving any money on your part,
you can do so by sharing the podcast on social media.
You can also write a review on Apple Podcasts or
rate the show on Spotify. I can't stress enough to
you how much I would appreciate that alone. Please leave

(01:35:36):
a review on Apple Podcasts or rate the show on Spotify.
As I just said, each and every way you can
help out the channel and podcast grow would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening,

(01:36:04):
and I'm sure David thank you too. This one was
interesting because I got a couple of comments after the
show appeared on YouTube and people were saying it was
a really great and interesting conversation. So I want to
thank those people who came and commented after the fact,
I find myself not advertising very far in the past

(01:36:27):
before these live events because nobody appears to really show
up for them, regardless of my advertising. But I might
go back and try again just to see what happens,
to see if people show up. Because although the views
went up after the fact after we had our conversation,

(01:36:50):
the views were pretty low while we were talking, and
that's something I've kind of become used to. But my
conversation here, I kind of wish there was more people.
But in a sense, I'm glad that there wasn't because I,
as I said, I had a lot of fun talking
with David and it felt like I was connecting with
a person I've known for a long time but haven't

(01:37:11):
talked to in a while. And but anytime I'm talking
to people on my podcast, you're free to ask questions
during the live feeds. I don't mind at all. In fact,
if you're a regular listener, you've probably heard it before,
so you know what I'm talking about when I say, Okay,

(01:37:33):
we have a question from so and so so. Yeah.
So if you if you want to check out David's
surfaces work, I highly suggest that you go and pick
up yourself a copy of These Things that Walk behind Me.
I don't think you're gonna be sorry. It's a great collection.

(01:37:55):
It's one of the best I've read in a while.
And even if that while is only by a couple
of months, because as I said that, I was like, well,
I just read that Stephen King collection. You like it darker,
and that one is that one is something else. It's
very special. So that was a lie when I said

(01:38:16):
I haven't read one in quite so good in a while.
I think what I meant was, aside from that Stephen
King collection, it was definitely. I mean, these stories are
really good. I'm gonna stop blabbering now and I'm gonna
give you some suggestions if you want to help the
show grow. If you want to help the show grow,
it's very easy to do. So all you have to

(01:38:38):
do is go to Apple Podcasts. If you're listening to
this on Apple podcast you can do it right from
your phone. Go and rate and leave the show a review.
This will help Apple decide to share this show with
other listeners who like to listen to this type of thing.

(01:38:58):
So that's the best way, in the freest way. But
if you want to help the show. Otherwise, if you
want to spend your money and you want to support
the show that way, that's easy as well. In the
show notes is the link to the Patreon and you
can go there and sign up. We have a we
have quite a few I have quite a few things

(01:39:20):
that I like to add on there. You can get
fiction by me for free and whatnot. It's it's it's
something I contribute to as often as I can, which
I've been a member of other people's patreons, and let
me tell you, this is a lot more, I think
than what some others do. And I'm not life is
hard man and busy. I understand. I struggle to keep

(01:39:44):
it up, but I make a point to keep doing
the special videos like the reading updates or vlogs or
whatever you want to call them there and to give
away free friction is sometimes difficult to do because you're like,
I want people to buy this. So yeah, if you
want to help the show, there's your two options. Links

(01:40:05):
for all of that is in the show notes. So
thank you so much for listening. Until next time, keep
being safe, and perhaps most importantly, keep being weird, but
also keep being creative, and I'll catch you guys in
the next podcast.

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040 - Walking Behind David Surface

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}040 - Walking Behind David Surface