042 - Going to SYCAMORE with Ian Rogers - Weird Reads

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to the Weird Reader Podcast, an extension of
Jason's Weird Reads found on YouTube. Welcome, Welcome to the
Weird Reads podcast, episode forty two. This week, I sat
down with Ian Rodgers and we talked about his book Sycamore.

(00:34):
It's a fun read. It's so fun.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
If you like occult detective books, then this book is
right up your alley. I can't recommend it enough. I
think it's one of my favorites. One reason for that
is that it is it takes place in my backyard basically,
so I recognized all the places that are mentioned in
the book, and I absolutely love it when that happens.
But there's so much more to this book. It's funny,

(00:59):
it's got some maybe light spooky stuff, and it's just
it's just fun. I can't recommend it, recommend it enough.
And Ian and I, I dare say, we became friends
on this podcast. I think stay tuned for that, because
that's interesting, isn't it When you make a friend. I

(01:21):
think it's it's interesting. Anyways, without further ado, here is
my conversation with Ian Rodgers and his book Sycamore.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
If you like what I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Doing here and want to support the channel without involving
any money on your part.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
You can do so by.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
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 please, I don't want to bag here,
but please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or rate
the show on Spotify. As I just said, each and

(02:00):
every way you can help out the channel and podcast
grow would be greatly appreciated.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Today I am joined by yet another author that's somewhat
new to me, but not all that new to me.
I was introduced to Ian Rodgers' work through Daniel Brahm
and if Daniel, if you're watching it all, I just
want to say thank you for suggesting that I not
only read Ian rodgers work, but also that I invite

(02:32):
him on the show. Welcome to the show, Ian.

Speaker 4 (02:34):
Thank you very much for having me.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Can you give yourself an introduction?

Speaker 4 (02:39):
Well, I am I'm a writer of supernatural horror and
some detective fiction. I've gone into mixing the two of
them together into what I call supernatural noir or super supernatural.
It takes a long time to figure out how to
say that word properly.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
You know, we're kind of joking around about that before, so.

Speaker 4 (02:57):
Holdly against anyone that that can't say it. But yeah,
I've I guess most people have probably known me from
my debut collection Every House is Haunted, probably because it's
been adapted or it's been optioned by Sam Raimie and
he's in the process of producing an adaptation of one
of the stories in the book. And then I had
a I would say there was a good almost ten

(03:19):
year gap where I was still doing stuff, but for
various reasons, I hadn't really had a lot out other
than some short stories and some stuff at tour dot com.
And then in the past year I've kind of been
making up for lost time or lost books rather than
I've been publishing quite steadily this past year.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah, I noticed there was a huge gap in publication,
especially like where it's just your name attached, like discounting,
like anthologies or magazines. There was like you had that
collection out and then it was like what twenty thirteen,
twenty twelve.

Speaker 4 (03:57):
Yeah, they were both out. Every House of Honey came
twenty twelve, and the original edition of supernarent Real Tales
came out like shortly thereafter, and then yeah, it was
again it would seem like I had just sort of
had gone away or went to law school for ten
years or something, real life work. But it was just
your your classic case of trying to find the right agent.

(04:17):
I was shopping stuff. I was still doing it, but
wasn't really getting a lot of headway that way. And
just you find the right agent, you find the right people,
and it's almost like the stars align. And again it's like,
it's weird. Nothing's really different that I was doing. I've
always been there, but now it's sort of as you said,
there's been a lot of people who are sort of like,
who who is Ian Rodgers? Where has he been? Which

(04:38):
is great, you know, it's always nice when people are excited,
but yeah, it's it's kind of wild even for me
to say that it's been ten years since Every House
Is Haunted, because there's been a whole new crop of
readers and writers who don't know that book and are like,
who is this guy? It's like rebooting my career in
a way.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Your book Every House Has Haunted has has warmed its
way into other forms of media. I read A Head
Full of Ghosts for the first time this year, and
and your name. I was like, I wasn't astonished, but
I was surprised that your name appears as a movie

(05:16):
director and you're you're the director in this.

Speaker 3 (05:20):
Book Head full of Ghosts, Right, You're the director of
Every House is Haunted.

Speaker 4 (05:26):
But I didn't get too big ahead in that. He
made sure that wasn't just a filmmaker. I was a
hack filmmaker, yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
But you you were an Oscar Award winning filmmaker as well.
So that's so he's kind of he's kind of complimenting
you well at the same time taking a small dig
by calling you a hack.

Speaker 4 (05:43):
I love it. I'm part of the culture now. It's
a there's a whole bunch of people in there. There's
that book is Rife with Easter egg. It's actually funny.
I paid Paul back on that one in a book
that I wrote several years ago that's now finally coming
out next year. It hasn't been announced yet, so I
can't talk too much about it. But I pay him
back in kind in that book. And it's funny. There's

(06:03):
a there's a priest in my book. They're very minor
character named Father Gavin, who is named after Richard Gavin,
a friend of mine. But there's a Father Gavin and
Head full of Ghosts as well. It's like the books
are even more connected than I thought. And it was
funny because I didn't do that on purpose. It was
only when I had reread Head full of Ghosts a
few years later because I'm a big fan of Paul's

(06:25):
work and I want to go back and reread that one.
I was sort of reminded that and said, oh, that
is this book that I've got where I'm paying back
Paul for the reference actually has a second connection to
Paul's books. So him reading that.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
That was quite the pleasant surprise though, because I wasn't
expecting that. But Paul Tremblay, he also wrote the ForWord
for the Semi Cemetery Dance re release.

Speaker 4 (06:50):
Of He actually for the original, but yeah in the
it's in the re release, but yeah, he's Paul was
obviously very generous and he was just the perfect person.
I like to think of him as he's my my
American doppelganger in that sense. Yeah, we have a lot
of the same sensibilities. And even when he was doing
his detective books. We both are big fans of detective

(07:10):
fiction as well. Yeah, just super nice guy, extremely talented writer,
can be happier for all of his success much much deserved,
as they say.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
Yeah, from my understanding, you alluded to his detective work.
He's he's written a lot more than I think what
most average readers know about, and that has like either
gone unpublished or or has been in print but then
gone out of print, and that that's pretty interesting, I think.

Speaker 3 (07:39):
And another thing I think that's interesting is that.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
You and I we could have crossed paths here and
there and not even known it because we live in
within the same sort of area I'm in, like I'm
close to Barry right, and that that actually makes a small,
very small appearance in Sycamore, which we'll get to.

Speaker 4 (08:01):
But I didn't know that until I think we became
Facebook friends, and I was like, I was just actually
just saying that to my wife earlier that I was
telling her with the podcast night and I I had forgotten.
And then when I looked at it again, I was like, oh, right,
he's uh, he's a fill all Canadian. And then yeah,
when I saw where you were, it was like, I
wonder if that'll come up, because yes, Sycamore takes place
in my fictional version of six is a fictional town.

(08:22):
But where I've stuck it, I mean, if.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
You know, you know, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 4 (08:27):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
We'll get to that in a minute. So I actually
have a question or at least a statement about that.
But I want to go back a little bit too.

Speaker 3 (08:35):
Uh uh. Every house is haunted.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
I mentioned to you before I hit the live button
that my book club actually nominated that book for I
think it was May, but I could be wrong. It
could have been June or even April. I don't know,
but it was around that area and and it won
the It won the voting, so we read it and
that was that was a lot of fun, and I

(08:59):
wanted to ask.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
You about the actually before let me back up just
a little bit.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
When we were talking about it before I hit the
live stream, you said that some people are like, oh,
I thought it was like a collection about haunted house stories,
and that's not what surprised me. What surprised me was
how it kind of ranged in its genres, because it
doesn't just focus on horror. There's different genres involved.

Speaker 4 (09:25):
Yeah, you know, I was haunted at such a loaded word,
and I really just wanted to explore the word in
home and house, it's its own thing. I mean, people,
you don't have to live in a house to have
a home, So I really just wanted to explore that.
I mean, the book really represents my first five years
as a published author, which was of course short fiction.
So I think there's a lot of reasons why that

(09:45):
collection is a bit I would like to say scattered
in the best way, hopefully if people enjoy it, that
there's a little bit of everything. My very first story
that I got paid money for was a story called
The Tattletale and it's I mean, you could say it's
kind of middle grade or young adults because it deals
with children and sort of a debonic talent show for

(10:07):
lack of a better term. But I still think of it
as being quite dark. I'd say he was closer to say,
Stephen King is The Body, which again it's about children,
but I don't think anyone would call The Body a
children's story. It's quite quite dark in its own way.
But yeah, I mean I think for me that's the
fun of a collection like that. You can you get
a little bit of everything. So yeah, when when I
when I did see the one or two reviews that

(10:28):
were surprised that it wasn't twenty two Haunt the Stories,
I never really felt bad about it, not for any
real length of time, because when I read a collection
from us from someone else, I'm kind of just expecting that.
It's like it's like Stu, you know, like you're getting
a little bit of everything in the pot, you know.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
I like that.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Though there's other writers like Danielle Brohm. He likes to
play with genre, and I really enjoy it when.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
I come across that.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
But it it's for some reason always surprises me because
when I first heard of you and I was looking
at your I was like, oh, this is this is
a horror writer, like you know, period horror writer, period.
And then you find like other genres and you're like,
oh well.

Speaker 3 (11:10):
And one thing.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
One reason why I like that is because I think
it comes across that you like to read more than
just one genre. And I'm assuming that you do as well.

Speaker 4 (11:20):
I read everything, and you know, it's it's funny for
me because you're You're exactly right, and thank you. I'm
glad to appreciate that because some people would read that
and they would see a story that there's one called
The Riffs between Us in that story, and it's sort
of sci fi horror. It's definitely still a horse story.
It's dealing with death, but from a science fiction angle,
and it's not like Spaceships until inpretation, but it's still

(11:41):
still a science fiction story. And I could see some
readers walking at that who just think they're getting pure horror,
and there's nothing wrong with that, but I have to
I can only be myself. I can only write the
things that I want to write, and you just hope
that people are going to come with you on the ride.
So I would never apologize for what I'm doing, much
less including say a story like that in the election.
Well at the same time understanding why maybe that one

(12:03):
doesn't resonate with someone who just wants a pure horror collection.

Speaker 3 (12:06):
You know, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
Do you think it's important for writers, especially to read
a wide variety of genres?

Speaker 4 (12:15):
And if so, why, I mean I can only speak
for myself. I mean, if I was if I was
talking to say, a group of kids who are or
even you know, adults who want to write. I just
believe in reading broadly because I think if you if
you say are say if you're a science fiction writer
or a romance writer, and all you read are those genres.

(12:35):
To me, all you're going to do is be is
writing derivative fiction. It's just if that's all that's coming in,
that's all that's going to come out. And there are
some people that they want the formula, they don't want
anything different, and there's again there's nothing wrong with that.
People should should want what they want. But for me,
and I think any writer who's driven ultimately by their passion,
that's what's going to sustain you in the longer. It's

(12:55):
not going to be awards, it's not going to be money.
It's going to be how badly do I want to
do this story? I have to do what I want
to do. And the way for me to to to
constantly keep that fire burning is to read lots of stuff.
And for me, I can't Again, I can't speak for
other authors. I read broadly, like I read everything I
read or romance. I read westerns. I love westerns, you know,
I've even written a couple if they're very good. But

(13:16):
I for me, it's just the story, you know. I
never really cared about the genre. You know. It's I
could not believe if someone was recommending me a story
like a book or something and they said this is
I love this story. I love these characters. And I
said to them, what, well, what is it? And they said, oh,
it's a it's a historical romance. And I was like, nope,
not interested. You know, I just think you're missing out,

(13:37):
you know. And again, if people don't want to read
what theyone want to read it absolutely, But for me,
I try to keep an open mind. You know. It's
for me, it's like like trying new food, you know,
like I think, you know, I don't gain anything. I
don't lose anything by not trying to. I might not
like it, but it's I don't want to sound like
a four year old who's there going No, I'm not
even gonna taste it. You know, it doesn't cost me anything, right, Yeah,

(14:00):
can tell a good story if I come up with
I've been doing a lot of work in film and television,
and some of it is adapt adaptations of my work,
and some of it as original material, original films and
television projects. And ironically, some of the ones that I'm
most excited but I aren't even horror you know, like
the there are other genres because I love movies. You know,
if you see my movie collection, it's everything. I watch everything.

(14:22):
So there's a certain freedom with with film and TV
where it maybe it doesn't take me as long to
write a pilot or write a screenplay, so I'm more
likely to say, well, if I have an idea for
a wrong com, I'll write the wrong com if i'm
really if I'm really inspired by, or if it's a Western,
I'm going to write that. Whereas if it's a novel,
maybe I probably hew closer to horror because it takes

(14:43):
a lot longer to write a novel that's something that
you know, horror is my base, horror or is definitely
what I love, Whereas with film and TV, I can
go closer to what I watch, and I watch everything,
you know, It's just it's a different if it's a
different level of work, it's a different level of involvement
where I think, you know, even though I read everything,

(15:05):
I don't see myself writing a paranormal romance or an
alternate history book. I love those subjects and I'll always
read them. But I was born and bred a horror guy,
you know, Like, yeah, I've always been that way, so again,
that's where my passion lives and that's probably where I'll stay.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
I like that answer because I'm somewhat similar. I do
love to read broadly, but for me, it's like I
swear to God, I always have something that's horror going.
It's either like a collection or an anthology of short
stories or a novel novella, but then I read. I
always read a second book at the same time, and
usually that's where I branch off with like fantasy or

(15:43):
science fiction, or thrillers or you know, detective novels.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
But you know, I.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
Love the whole scope of reading and just I don't
know it. To me, it's like a drug. Honestly, reading
is like a drug, and I I like to pull
from different I guess flavors. And I found it awesome
that Sam Raimi he optioned the House on Ashley Avenue

(16:12):
from Every House Is Haunted. That happened I think around
the pandemic, didn't it, and then everything had to slowed down.

Speaker 4 (16:19):
Yeah, I'd have to look it up. I think it
was around twenty eighteen or twenty nineteen. He actually optioned
the whole book. He optioned all twenty two stories. I
think it started with the House of Ashally. I mean
that's the one that he's adapting right now, because that
was the one that Roy Lee, the producer, and NBC
Universal have been developing as a TV show shortly after

(16:39):
the book came out. It's a long story. Basically, Ellen
Datlous selected it for Best Horror of the Year. It
fell into the hands of Roy Lee, who's this really
big producer. He basically started the whole American remakes of
Japanese horror movies like The Ring, The Grudge, The Eye.
He did all of those, and not even just horror
movies like The Lake House, which is a remake with Keannery,

(17:00):
Departed with Leo DiCaprio, and Jack Setser remake. He produced
all of that stuff. So he's incredibly talented with a
great eye for story. And we met in Toronto while
he was doing the Poultergeist remake with Sam Rockwell, because
that's where they shot it. So we met in person
and just really hit it off. And the idea was
to do the story as a TV series, and I

(17:20):
was hired to as a consultant, so I was working
with him on it. I wrote the Bible for the
TV show, and like a lot of TV shows, it's
way harder to do a TV show than to do
a movie. So we got to the pilot stage, a
pilot was written and they just didn't shoot it and
it kind of just went away. So what happened was
a few years later, around yeah, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen,

(17:43):
Roy brought the story to Sam because they were friends
that they'd actually worked on the Grudge, the American remake
of The Grudge, and they worked on the poulter Geist
movie as well, so they were friends and he just
basically said to Sam, I tried to do this as
a TV show and couldn't get it going. Maybe you
want to do it as a movie. So Sam read
the story and really liked it, had his people contact me,
and I said, well this the story is actually kind

(18:04):
of connected to some other stories in the book. So
he he got the collection and then loved it, so
he he optioned the entire book.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
And that's where did you grow up watching his movies?

Speaker 3 (18:15):
Like I did?

Speaker 4 (18:16):
Like, oh yeah, you can over here, there's an evil
dead post. Oh yeah, yeah, there's no place in my
office to hang in my wall. They're all bookshelves, so
I just keep moving it around the room. But after
he after he optioned it, he asked for my address
and I was like, oh, please, let it be a visit.
He's he coming over for coffee. He sent me an
Evil Dead poster that he signed, just saying how excited

(18:38):
he is to be working on the book with me.
And yeah, I mean, you know what you can talk about.
It's it's it's it's exciting, it's good for their writing career,
the money is good and all stuff like. I'm not
going to say that it's not, but it means so
much to me more on a personal level, because I
grew up watching horror movies. My parents didn't really believe
in censoring us within within reason. The one rule in

(18:58):
the house was if you have nightmares, or off, and
the original Evil Dead was the only movie my sister
and I had to turn off halfway through and rewatch
in the morning because it was so messed up. So
that was something I was I was really glad that
I got to actually tell Sam that we had a
skype chat, and he's a really nice guy, so he
was really touched by that. And I remember when when

(19:19):
all this stuff was going down. I told my sister
and and she started crying, and she said, she said,
Mom would be so exciting my mom had passed away,
since Mom would be so excited because my mom was
the horror influence. She was the one that showed us
all this stuff. So yeah, I mean it's great, but
on a personal level, it just really really means so
much to me. And and that's that to me, is
my main takeaway from this is that Sam's got this

(19:42):
reputation is just being a really nice, down to earth guy.
I can tell you, I could report from the front.
It's totally true. He's the best.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
Yeah, absolutely, I mean that would make me a faint maybe,
I don't know, maybe ugly cry for a little bit.

Speaker 4 (19:56):
There was there was a couple of the first week
we spoke for about an hour, and because he's busy guy,
he was just in the middle of post production on
the Doctor Strange movie that he made, so I knew
he was busy. But yeah, so the first five minutes
or so was a bit of a bit of fan
Boyingta He's just talking to me like he's complimenting my work.

(20:16):
He told me that every house is haunted with like
the best collection he'd read since Stephen King's Knight Shift,
because I didn't believe him at all, But it's like
I'd still nice to hear.

Speaker 3 (20:24):
That, especially coming out of him.

Speaker 4 (20:28):
Yeah. Well, and that's that's what my wife always says whenever.
I mean, even despite all that, I mean, this is
I mean, Paul will tell you the same thing. I'm
sure imposter syndrome is real. It doesn't matter what kind
of success you've got. I still feel that way. I
still have constant doubts about my work. But my wife
is my number one fan and and nothing, nothing bucks
me up more than her saying Sam Raimi knows who

(20:48):
you are and he's a fan of your work. Oh yeah,
that helps helps a lot.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
So so his house son Ashley. Still moving forward.

Speaker 4 (20:57):
Yes, Actually we're supposed to be gain an update shortly.
There's stuff obviously going on that I can't talk about,
but that's all I can say between the because you're right,
it was going on right before the pandemic started. So
between the pandemic and then the streaming wars that are
still sort of ongoing, lots of shuffling at Netflix, lots
of people, different regime changes constantly. But the fact that

(21:19):
they keep re optioning it. That's I mean, it's like Hollywood, right,
I mean, money talks. So if they keep paying me
to keep re optioning the book, that means that they're interested.
But because I'm involved, because I'm actually working on the
picture as a consultant, I can tell you for a
fact that it's still it's still definitely happening, and hopefully
there'll be an updates that I can actually talk about soon.

(21:41):
And I hate saying tunes. I don't really know when,
but it's really just I'm at the whim of them
sort of telling me this is what's going on, and
here's what you can actually talk about, because when you're
in the inner circle, and I don't want to get
kicked out of the inner circle and go blabbing about
stuff that's that's obviously.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
I'm just happy to hear that it's still moving forward. Yeah, yeah,
so that's that's great news.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
Now.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
From my understanding, last year was a really good year
in terms of getting book deals and whatnot. And we
have a question actually in the chat room here that
that reflects that, and I thought i'd put it up
because I had a question about it, and they have
a question about it. So here it is a question
for Ian. This is from Emmalayan. I think that's how
you pronounced their name, and I hope I got that right.

(22:25):
Upon reflection, what do you put down to your success
in terms of small press publishers, given that you've had family, Sycamore, Gray,
et cetera, all published in a short space of time.

Speaker 4 (22:37):
Well, you know what, the part part of the reason
why I hadn't published for so long was because, first
of all, I went through an agent or two. And
that's a whole other story. It's just they're not not
bad people, but they just it's like dating, and just
they just weren't the right ones for me, and that
that takes time to sort of. You work with them,
you you find it they're not right for you, and
then you have to go find someone else, and that

(22:57):
could be a year. That's that's a year or two
right there, right Because the people I was working with,
we were sending stuff exclusively to the big five. You know,
start at the top and then work your way down.
So I was getting rejections, very very kind rejections from
people who liked my work but a book wasn't right
for them or or whatever. But when those things are
being rejected, you don't have anything out, So it looks

(23:18):
like again there's this there's this optics of oh yeah,
ian Ian hasn't published it a while, he must not
be doing anything. Maybe he's gone off. If he quit,
he's doing something else. So I was doing a lot
of stuff behind the scenes between the time it takes
to find the proper representation, trying to find a place
that wants to buy your books, that sort of thing.

(23:39):
It was, that's that's where I would say, good seven
eight years went, you know. And then I finally found
the right agent. I'm represented by Jack Gernert at the
Gernert Company, a fantastic agent. And again it's it's like daity,
he's just he was the one who really gets my work.
He's the champion, he gets it out there in front
of everybody. And and again it was just really really struggling,

(24:00):
or is a hard sell with the with the big
five publishers, there's only a handful of infrints that really
do it, you know. So and when I was trying
to sell Sycamore in the black Lands, trying to sell
a horror series isn't even harder sell. It's if they
If if they're interested in it, they they want everything,
they can really see the possibilities. If they're not, they
just see it as a huge inconvenience. It's like, oh no,

(24:23):
that's too much. It's just like it's it's it's like
a cat with a trail of tin cans, you know,
tied to it. It's just the only part of it.
So it really is just trying to find the right
home for for a series. So that was it was
me that that decided. I said, well, I'm going to
go to the small presses, you know, the small presses,
and see if maybe some of these people and try
and build my career that way because the Big five

(24:45):
just wasn't happening and I just needed to have something out.
I needed something new. So I just went to the
small presses that were the ones I buy books from
all the time, you know, Cemetery Cans, Earthlinge, you know,
Thunderstorm on all these people, and I just sent out email.
You know, these weren't even from my agents. My agent
wasn't familiar with the small presses and the specialty presses.

(25:07):
So I just sort of said again, it was almost
like rebooting my career. I'm Ian Rodgers. I had this
book out a while ago. Here's these books I'm trying
to sell. And the one positive from the beginning was
a lot of them arenay knew who I was. You know,
they either knew what Every House Is Haunted was even
if they hadn't read it. They obviously knew about the
Netflix movie, so that definitely helped. I mean, the proof

(25:28):
still has to be in the pudding and they still
have to like your book. But yeah, it was really
just sort of taking the reins of my own destiny
and saying, I can't break into the Big five. No
one wants these books yet. I'm going to have to
try and do this another way because I just want
the books sad. I want to start building the readership.
So then yeah, Earthlane published my debut novel, Family, which
is a haunted house story. Cemetery Dance published Sycamore, which

(25:52):
is the first book in my black Land series, and
PS Publishing published a short novella of mine called Gray
that came out in the summer, which is kind of
like a John Wick with angels and demons, is how
we sort of describe it. Kind of a action fantasy,
definitely weird, definitely not like anything that I've written. But
these are stories that I've been writing for the years
and just haven't been able to find homes for and

(26:14):
then suddenly it just sort of came all at once,
and like, Yeah, last year, I think I sold all
together five books. Three of them have come out, two
more are coming out next year. One of them hasn't
been announced yet that I can't quite talk about yet.
The one actually that Every House Is Haunted, has a

(26:35):
little reference to Paul Trembling in that because he paid
me a reference in A Head Full of Ghosts. Again,
I wanted to pay him back. It's taken me a
little while to get that book Paul published there, Paul,
so it's hopefully you'll still get the reference. It's governed.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
Sycamore and Family.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
They were kind of released, not at the same time,
but around the same time. Can you tell us a
little bit more about family and and whatnot.

Speaker 4 (27:03):
Yeah, I mean I was. I wouldn't say I was nervous.
I mean I I made sure that I talked to
the publishers and everyone was cool. With the books that
are coming out back to back, They're they're very different
books stylistically, even in terms of the publishing markets. Family
is A is a deluxe hardcover, so it's more for
the collector's market. It's an expense more expensive book, whereas

(27:25):
Sycamore is a trade paperback. So again, I the publishers
were fantastic. I cannot sing the phrase is enough of
Paul Miller at earth Lane or Kevin Lucia and Dan
you know Dan Franklin who I worked with at Cemetery Dance.
Everyone has been so accommodating and so supportive, and they
just know. One was concerned that these books are going
to be coming out kind of back to back, and
they're in the sales wise, they're both doing really really well,

(27:48):
So obviously it hasn't been a problem because again, you
the collector's market and the the the regular book buyer's
marketer are very different almost you know, customers and revenue streams.
So I didn't think it was going to be a
big deal, and no one else has either. But you know,
things will slow down a little bit. There's not going
to be like five books coming out next year.

Speaker 3 (28:09):
Yeah, well, there tends to be like a slow release.

Speaker 2 (28:11):
Like working with publishers that can take up to like
five years to release.

Speaker 4 (28:14):
A book, right, Yeah, And I didn't. I didn't. I
didn't want to really go after people's purse strings too much.
It was it was really more for me that I
just really felt like I needed to get some more
books out, and I didn't want to do it one
book a year, because I mean, if I did that
with these books, that would be my books for the
next five years. And I'm already writing new stuff. So
the good thing with the book, and I've talked about
this with my agent and even my film and TV manager,

(28:35):
is and it's funny because they've all said this very independently,
but they've said, like, releasing the book is a marathon.
It's not a sprint. So this is not a movie
that has to open big on a weekend. As long
as the book is in print, it'll find It's always
especially a series. When I was talking to the Spotify
people who have done the audiobook, my Spotify team is
fantastic there. They love the series. They loved it so

(28:56):
much that they fast tracked Sycamore. They produced that audiobook
and like just over two months, which is unheard of
if you know what it takes to produce an audiobook.
But they want more black Lands books right away, and
they said they're not even looking at sales. They don't
they don't care about that. They're invested in the long run.
This is this is a this is something that builds.
Like with a series, you get invested. There's gonna be

(29:17):
people that get in on the ground floor, and then
there's gonna be people that aren't going to pick up
the book until book three or four when they realize
that I'm not pulling something that another series authors. That's
where they walk away from it, or they just get
too busy or get too distracted, and then they'll just
go back and buy all of them. Right. So that's
the way it is typically with a series. So as
long as I keep writing them, they said, they'll keep

(29:38):
publishing them. So yeah, yeah, I can do that.

Speaker 3 (29:41):
Awesome.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
You mentioned the the audiobook. I want to thank you
first of all for sending me the ebook air and
skip copy, which I ended up not reading. I went
and I got the audio book when I noticed it
was there, and I have to say that the narrator
really nails down Felix's voice.

Speaker 3 (30:03):
At least I got to.

Speaker 4 (30:04):
Take them again. The Spotify I cannot tell. I cannot
tell you how how excited I was. The Spotify thing
was a bit of a surprise. And when my agent
brought me the deal because we of course we were
shopping audio rights and foreign rights. But he he sends
me this text message, and my agent doesn't text usually
emails me. I even know he had my text, and
he was just like it was like good news Friday.
And I was like, I didn't even know what he

(30:24):
was talking about and what he told me. It was like,
I have to be honest, I know what Spotify is.
Did not know they had a publishing arm. Did not
know that they did audiobooks.

Speaker 3 (30:33):
Yeah, neither did your book.

Speaker 4 (30:34):
Well, And when I spoke to them, when I when
I this actually came up when I when I spoke
to the team, and they said that, yeah, it's only
been like the last I think two years that they've
really got into audiobooks and they've gone into it really hard.
They're doing really, really great things. But they have been
so fantastic, and they've had me really involved in the process.
I got to audition the narrators. So that's why I
thought it was great when you said that the narrator
was great, because all I think I auditioned three of

(30:57):
them and then they were all great. They're all very
very talent linted when you see their bios, like one
person works with I think it was Tina Fey at
Kya lib or something like they have their they have
their own company together, like these are these were heavy hitters,
like narrators who do really big books. But one person
was very much doing a Humphrey Bogart PI accent, and

(31:18):
I was like, no, it was like the way that
it was the only note that I gave, And I said,
Felix is the anti PI. He is not. He's not
former military, he's not the next cop. He is a
very different background. That was how I wanted to distinguish
himself and stand out different from other PI series. And
they love that. They they they love that note, the
anti PI, and that was what they used to to,

(31:40):
you know, sort of hone the list down to these
other people and that then, yeah, I think it was
Andrew Tell. I think is his name or if that's
actually his narrator name, I think he's got that's just
like a pseudonym. But he was fantastic and he just
really gets the voices and Sandra, he looks his ex
wife is is quite prominent in the book, especially in
the first chapter. So when they were auditioning, they were
in the first chapter and one person was making her

(32:02):
really shrill and bitter, and I was like, no, no, no, Like,
Sandra's not not the shrill ex wife. She's a very
strong person. She's very angry in that scene, but I
did not want her characterized in that way. She's a
very she's a very strong and very important character in
the series. And the narrator that we picked just really
got that, you know, in my opinion, he you know,
you're not just picking this narrator for this book, and

(32:24):
hopefully you'll be doing you know, more books in the
series as Felix. I would like him to be the
voice of Felix if he's interested in available, you.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
Know, so decision that would be really good because I
really enjoyed the audio book. Like I said, I was
surprised because I got it from Audible, but instead it
was a Spotify production, and I'm like, this is weird.

Speaker 4 (32:45):
Yeah, no, and I saw that too. Yeah, It's it's
sort of how they're doing things where yeah it's available
through Audibi or Audible, but Spotify produces the book. Yeah,
I don't. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
Yeah, so this is a series. This is the first book.
Second is the first punk series. Does the series have
a name yet?

Speaker 4 (33:03):
Yeah, it's called The black Lands, and it's actually kind
of funny, unlike a lot of other series. I don't
know if I'm not trying to say I'm on a
kind of class or anything about it. Maybe I'm doing
it all wrong. But like, I've been writing Blackland Stories
for fifteen years. I started writing short stories and novellas
with this character in the world, and it's taking me
this long to do the first novel. So again, whether

(33:24):
or not that's the right way to do it, but
that's why I like Sycamore. Sycamore sort of honors those
stories that came before without excluding the casual reader or
the new reader who's reading the Blackland Stories for the
first time. You probably read Sycamore and you realize that, oh,
Felix has got a bit of a history investigating supernatural cases,

(33:45):
and that's really all you need to know. You know.
It's a I really took a cue from Jeffrey Thomas's
Punktown Stories. Jeffrey Thomas is a friend of mine, and
I've been a fan of his work for so long.
If you read a Punktown story, you don't need to
know the whole world. He's published those in stay alone anthologies.
But it's you know, he's just a very talented that way.
It means a talented author anyway. But he knows how

(34:07):
to write a story where it just functions as a
standalone and if you like it and you want to
know more, you can pick up more punk Town stories.
But if you don't and you just like it on
its own, that's okay too, you know. It's it's like,
it's like when Stephen King makes a reference to some
of his other characters. So a lot of his a
lot of his world is sort of shared, and if
you catch that reference or that easter egg, it enriches
your experience and you say, hey, I know that person
that's the character from the Dead Zone or whatever. But

(34:29):
if you don't catch it, it doesn't it's not going
to affect your enjoyment of that story. You know. He's yeah,
it's not a private club. He's just he wants to.
He wants to, he wants to, he wants to, you know,
reward people who are kind of paying attention. But he
doesn't want to exclude someone who just is reading the
book on their own right. It's trying to be everything
to everyone. It's not easy, but I'm trying to do

(34:49):
the same thing with the Black Plans.

Speaker 2 (34:51):
YE have to say that I love those punk Town books.
I haven't read them all, but I have like a
I swear to god, I have most of them on
my Kendall. Yeah, that you can get, but I've read
a lot of them, and that is that is quite
the Uh.

Speaker 3 (35:07):
That is quite the Uh. It's kind of lengthy.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
I'm surprised that more people aren't into punk Town.

Speaker 4 (35:12):
So anyway, that's something that's one of those things where
he's been doing it for a long time, even before
I was even really publishing seriously, he was doing it
like in zines like the staple bound ones that you
would just get at, like like zan fairs and stuff.
But it's one of those ones where I just feel
like he's one of these really. I don't know if
I would say underappreciated or underrated, but I just I

(35:32):
feel like there should be a TV show of punk Town.
It's like the Blade Runner meets the Cthulhu mythos, you know,
like alls itself. I mean, and I don't see anyone
else who's really done that. You can see pieces of
things that where people have done something like that, but
what he's doing is so unique that when you wonder,
how come no one did this before? And too at
the same time, how come you know Steven Spielberg or

(35:56):
JJ Abrams hasn't just gone to him and bought the
entire thing and then put him in a position and
said you need to show run everything. I would watch
the hell out give me what they say the five
seasons in the movie. Give it to me, you know, absolutely,
I would too, Uh.

Speaker 2 (36:11):
And you know what I in reading Sycamore, I going
back to that the history of of Uh, of of
Felix Ren. Do you get the sense that there's this
isn't just the first story. And I really appreciated that.
I didn't realize that there was more uh until I
was reading it, because you get that sense of history.

(36:35):
They mentioned cases that I guess went kind of sour
uh in the past, and he doesn't.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
Want anything to do with the black Lands.

Speaker 4 (36:44):
Yeah, you know what, Well, it's funny because I mean,
they're they're they're horror stories, they're kind of urban fantasy,
but I'm always I'm always trying to ground them in
some way. So I always think that if if a
person is working these types of cases and you have
any element of wherewithal, you're gonna know that in Likes
has said this, the more of these cases I work,
the more likely I'm going to get killed one day,

(37:06):
Like this is this is an aultery and insurance fraud,
this is like vampires and wareholes stuff. Again, I've always
wanted to sort of explore various walks of life in
this world where paranormal has become the normal. People have
grown up in a world where ghosts and losters exist,
and I love the occult detective character, so I kind
of also wanted to do my own spin on that.

(37:26):
But I also wanted to sort of like I mean,
I would say the two biggest inspirations for me on
the on the black Lands, two shows that that I
love that are due to my heart are Twin Peaks
and The X Files. Yeah, you know, supernatural paranormal procedurals
where you've got just as much emphasis on the crime

(37:47):
detective aspect as you do on the supernatural. But I
wanted to get past the whole you know, week after
week Malder has to try and convince people that the
stuff exists, right, and you never really succeed. Even Scully,
who's seen the stuff half the time, does really believe
it because she's the logical one and you can't blame her.
But for my world, it was like no, no, I want,
I want the world everyone knows that monsters exist, and

(38:07):
that was something that were my manager and I are
actually shopping the black Lands Moving in a series right now.
And the way that we sort of describe the studio
executives to sort of reduce it to its purest form,
like as a feeling is imagine your kid as a nightmare,
a been a monster, and you go up to sort
of make them feel better. You can't tell them that

(38:28):
monsters don't exist, because monsters do exist in this world.
They're going to learn about them in school eventually, So
what do you say to your child? Right? So, like,
that's the world these people are living in, and I
feel like that's the great equalizer. That's something that I said,
take away all the action sets, take away the cool
set pieces that I'm trying to come up with and design.
That to me is a way of an access point
to really sort of describe this series in the way

(38:51):
these people are living in this world. It's not cool.
People aren't They're not using magic to walk their dogs
or do their taxes. As supernatural is a dangerous force
that they've got a bit of an understanding of, but
there's still lots they don't understand. That's what I always
say about the world is like it's full of vampires
and wear wolves, all these creatures that we know, but
there's all kinds of other creatures and the Blackmans that

(39:11):
we don't know, that we don't have names for. And
that's that's another thing that I really like about writing
the series. I'll write about vampires and wear wolves, but
then I'll also write about a completely original creation. When
when I want to do do something on my own,
I come up with my own monster. You know. I
love I love working in the Black Pans. It's very
there's no boundaries on it, you know.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
Yeah, just a clear things up for people who are listening.
Can you tell us a little bit about what Sycamore
is about and also explain what the Blacklands are a
little bit so that people understand, you know, because we
understand what you're talking about but they might not.

Speaker 4 (39:49):
Yeah, So Sycamore is it's a supernatural noir or a
supernatural as I call it. It's sort of a detective supernatural
detective story about a private investigator named Felix Ren and
he lives and works in a world where paranormal has
become the norm. Since the nineteen forties, these portals have
been showing up all over the world, and they're doorways

(40:11):
to a dimension that lies next door to our own.
And because it's a world of perpetual night, there's no
sun over there. They've dubbed it the black Lands. And
this dimension is filled with every supernatural creature that you
can imagine, and whole lots more that you can even imagine,
and occasionally they get dumped over into our world and
occasionally we cross over to their world. So there's a

(40:33):
bit of a stalemate that's going on. We've been trying
to study them and understand them. We can't close these portals,
so various world governments will put up barriers, you know,
they'll build facilities around them so they can study them.
It's a containment, you know, but it's very much trying
to put the finger in the dike. You can only
do that so long before you reach a critical mass.
So that is sort of the dread that's hanging over

(40:54):
the heads of the people in this world. That's that
what I would say, is the endgame, the longer arc
I'm sort of tentatively dealing with. But I also like
the sort of the people on the ground, and that's
why I like Felix. He wants to help people, so
he's trying to help them with their paranormal problems. But
Sycamore starts off. He's just kind of fed up. He's
he's kind of he's afraid. He knows that if he

(41:16):
keeps continuing this kind of work, it's it's going to
kill him eventually. This is this is very dangerous work.
So a woman in the town of Sycamore contacts him
to find her missing husband. So he figures this is
just a regular missing person's case. I'm going to take it.
I mean, it's practically a vacation for him. I'm just
going to go up to this town and and help
this woman with her case. But what he finds out

(41:38):
is that this woman's husband is dead and she wants
Felix to find his body. And then he also finds
out that Sycamore has come kind of the hunting ground
for a serial killer that's active in the area. So
it's not so much the vacation that you thought it was. Yeah,
and of course things are going to go sideways in
a supernatural way. Or I Phelis kind of just realized,

(42:00):
is that even though he doesn't want to have anything
to do with the supernatural, sometimes it doesn't really matter
what you what you want, your your destiny, you're what
what what what your life is meant to be is
going to course correct you into this. You know, I'm
not spoiling anything might say the case takes a supernatural
bend in that way. It's but I like the fact

(42:21):
that it's something that he's sort of fighting against, you know,
it's it's something that he knows he's good at but
doesn't want to do. You know, it's it's it provides
a very interesting character dynamic, you know, as much as
it is with him and his ex wife, his ex
wife is his partner. And again that was me sort
of playing with the detective trope where you've got this

(42:43):
back talking secretary with the sexual tension. I wanted to
sort of take that and do my own thing with
it and say, well, I don't want to have this
whole thing, whether it or are they ever going to
get involved? Are they ever going to hook up? Let's
let's go past all that. Let's say they've already done
all that. They've been married, now they're divorced, and now
they're trying to see can we be friends again? They
kind of need each other. Felix needs an assistant. Sandra

(43:04):
needs a job. She's a former scream queen. She used
to be an actress, but now she's too old. She's
she's a whopping forty, and she can't get jobs anymore,
you know, because that's the way the Hollywood system is.
So she has this background, she knows Felix. They they
can sort of tolerate each other. But that's you know.
I like that dynamic. I like writing their characters as

(43:25):
much as I like the writing the supernatural stuff. I
think it's fascinating because for me, I don't have to
deal with, oh, are they ever going to sleep together?
Are they ever going to do this? They've already done
all that. It's got really history, some of the good,
some of it bad. But that's something that I think
is really exciting for me as a writer and hopefully
as a reader, that when you see them working together,
it's like, oh, they've got this history and that's going

(43:47):
to work against them as much as it's going to
work for them. But it's never really going to be
this Oh my gosh, are they going to are they
going to sleep together? We're going to hook up? Like no, no,
I'm just doesn't interest me. It's happened Malder and Scully right.
I wouldn't say it ruined the series, but there's a
reason why it was probably better that they didn't, you know,
like that dynamic is probably better without them, you know,

(44:10):
it would.

Speaker 3 (44:10):
Have been better.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
I remember when I went to the movies to see
the one of the movies, I forget which one, but
the opening scene with them, and it is them waking
up in bed, and I was like, did we really
have to go there?

Speaker 4 (44:23):
Like they used to make fun of stuff like that.
Then when when when I remember in early days, because
again I was a hardcore X fell fan still lamb
and they said that, oh no, we don't really see
them getting together. And they, and I think it was
the company, said well, could you really see us, you know,
waking up looking into each other's eyes, turning off the
alarm clock and then going out and hunting aliens together,
and it was like and then you're right, they did that,

(44:44):
and then.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
Oh it was Yeah, that was a little disappointing, but
it's like whatever.

Speaker 4 (44:52):
You know what, there's some good writing. They're both great actors,
so I mean, they make it work as much as
they can. Yeah, for sure, I'm still a fan. Like
I still even even if I don't like the later
seasons as much as those early ones, they're still great
to watch together. Even even the revival stuff when they
came back. Is it as good as the other stuff?
Of course not. It's still great to see them. You know.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
I totally agree with you on that. Getting back to
the black Lands, we talked earlier about how the Blacklands
have appeared a lot over the years, Like you could
almost say it's moving into decades now. Did you always
know that because you were doing it in short form,
did you always know that it was going to become
a novel?

Speaker 4 (45:33):
Well, it's funny because yeah, you're right, Like I was
writing Blackland stories the minutes that I started publishing, like
my standalone stories. So I think the reason why I
didn't go right into the novel was because I wasn't
writing other novels either, so I just wasn't really ready.
I was probably taking the same baby steps towards A
Blackland's novel as I was taking the baby steps towards
the other regular standalone novels that I was writing. And

(45:54):
I really, I really look back at a lot on
what Jeffrey Thomas has done were I just felt like, oh,
that's okay. If I take five or ten years to
do the novel, that's okay. Like there's no there's no
order I have to do this. And I always thought that, well,
if people are fans, they'll just go back and they'll
pick up all the other stories. Cause's because that's what
I did with Jery Thomas. If you're a fan, you

(46:15):
seek this stuff ahead. I would just go and buy
I would buy an anthology just because it's got one
of the stories or any of the stories, bring the authors.
I'm just kind of I can't tell you how many
anthologies I've bought because five of my favorite authors are
in it, and I'll book done. I'll buy it right
because because I'm a fan. That's that's what fans do.
So for me, it was never really a concern. And
even the stuff that goes out of print, well, you
know now that now that I'm doing the novels, well

(46:37):
I'll just do a Blacklan's collection and then I'll put
all the stories into one big book. So for me,
it was as long as I keep wanting to do
them and I've got that passion. I don't know, maybe
it just sounds really naive, but I feel like I
feel like passion is contagious, you know, like people are
really excited. You know. That was That was the one
thing that that I've been dealing with to a certain

(46:58):
amount with the film and television pitching. I pitched to
all these people so many meetings, and your eyes glaze
over because they reject everything. My manager basically says, they're
always looking for a reason to say no, not because
they're bad people, because it's it costs a lot of
money to make a movie or a TV show. It's very,
very involved, So they're always looking for a reason to
say no. And I've never been the kind of person

(47:19):
who's been really thin skinned. I've got pretty good armoor.
I don't I never take this stuff personally. You really
can't take it personally. In film and TV or it'll
we eat you alive. But the one thing that I
always say, and I say this to Peter, my manager,
was I'm never trying to convince them that my idea
is a good idea. I'm trying to convince them that
I'm excited about this idea. I want them to see

(47:40):
me being really excited and really enthusiastic, being like, oh,
I want to go to his party. His party sounds awesome.
Why is he having such a good time. I don't
want to conform to someone in saying oh, this is
why you should like this. It's like, no, no, no, The
Black Plans is awesome. That's why I write it. I'm
excited by it. That's why I've been writing these stories.
I want them to be like, why is he so excited?
Why is he so It's not to say that they're

(48:01):
going to find common ground. But even if they turn
me down and this has happened where they say, you
know what, this isn't for us, but we totally know
someone who would love that. You should meet with these people.
So never try. And I would say that this obviously
goes with publishing too. You never try to make someone happy.
You never trying to convince them that they should buy

(48:21):
your book. You just show that you're excited that you
did it, that this is something that you're passionate about,
and then they're gonna be like, why is this person
so excited? Why is this person so jazzed for this idea?
You have to really believe in yourself. It's tough. I'm
not saying that it's easy. I've got DoBeS constantly. But
all I ever fall back on is when I'm doing

(48:41):
the work, it's because I'm excited. It's because I'm passion
and it's not all the time. There's lots of times
I don't feel like writing. Everyone goes through that. But
the great, you know, the common denominator, the great equalizer
is I'm excited by this thing. And all I can
hope is that that's going to be contagious and that
you'll find those people, whether it's a publisher or a producer
or a studio executive, who is like, oh I love

(49:03):
that too, you know, Like there was there was one
person we were pitching the black Lands movie too, and
his father had worked he was he runs a company,
say who was? But his father used to run Fox
and had worked with James Cameron on a number of movies,
and so it was me and the screenwriters, and we
just spent the first tent or fifteen minutes of this
new movie of this meeting talking too Aliens because we

(49:25):
all love the movie Aliens and them, and so it's
just we were just geeking out. Even even the executive,
the guy who runs this company, super nice guy, we
were just geeking out on Aliens and the Abyss and
Terminator because they're they They're they're business people obviously, but
they're in the movie business. Presumably they like movies. And
this was definitely someone who was just still had that love.

(49:47):
And you know, it's nice, you know, because again it's
it called. It all falls back to passion. You know,
if you're excited, that's what's gonna sustain you. It's not
can mean let any it's not new awards. You know,
it's going to be passion and a sport system. You know,
I think, yeah, yeah, you can't do it in a vacuum.
I definitely couldn't be doing this without without my wife.
Last year when I sold all those books, I won't

(50:10):
go into it, but it was probably the worst year
personal wise for my family and my wife's family for
medical reasons. For not us. We're fine, but everyone around
us has been going through and it's continuing to go
through various medical issues. So it's been a whirlwind man
like that. Like last year, I said, last year was
the summer of this and this. There there was no

(50:31):
middle ground last year, and it was really hard to
be excited about everything that I was doing while your
family is going through all this kind of medical hell.
And as I said, it's still sort of ongoing, but
it's it's also another reason why you have to have
that support system. You have to have something else in
your life, because no one my family's fantastic, My wife's

(50:53):
family is fantastic. No one is telling me. They're all
telling me, you know, have your success. We want to
sell the don't don't linger on this. We want to
have fun stuff. They all they all want to have
things bad. But I always feel bad. I feel bad
when I want to tell someone about a good review
or I got the cover art for this new book.
It's like, how how do I tell them this one?
So and so just came back from a hospital visit
after that, But I get it. It's just where I'm

(51:15):
living a very concentrated version of life right now where
it's just really really happy and really really depressing. Yeah,
And honestly, man, I couldn't do it if I didn't
if I wasn't married to such a incredible woman, you know,
if I have a family.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
I'm sorry to hear that you're going through that, but
I've found weird parallels in life where you you have,
like you go through periods where nothing's happening, and then
you go through periods where everything's happening all at the
same time, like they're really good things and they're always
paired with really bad things.

Speaker 3 (51:49):
Do you ever find that.

Speaker 4 (51:51):
Oh well, and other than just again, it was you're right,
it was years of nothing. Everyone was basically healthy more
or less. Everyone's getting old. But it would is just
last year. And it wasn't even the summer, like I'm
talking like, it was like six weeks. There was a
six week period of time when I was getting all
these you know, acceptances for these books, and then my

(52:12):
family was getting all this horrible news and my wife's
families gained this horrible news, and it was just it
was whiplash. Man. It was just like, oh my gosh,
how how is all this happening now? It was like
is there an eclipse? Like what's going you know? But yeah,
it's just it was. It was great, it was awful,
but overall it was just really really overwhelming and exhausting

(52:32):
and in that sense like exhausting in the sense that
not not not even in a necessarily a bad way.
It's like you it's like exhausting emotionally but then exhausting,
like you've been to this really great party and you
just need to sleep for a week. It's I'm just
gonna look back line as this really wild, wild year.
But again, it always goes back to I'm just so
glad that I'm not alone. I'm glad that I've got

(52:54):
a really really good support system because I don't know,
you can't do it alone. It's funny because you're writing books, right,
and I think when you read books and you always
see that acknowledgment section everybody everybody says like, no one
writes this book alone. You know, like my name is
on the cover, this person's name is on the cover,
but you see every section is got I'm not even
just talking the research stuff. Oh this person gave me

(53:16):
this advice on guns this person gave me this advice
on dead Body. Forget all that. I'm talking support system man.
And that's why I love it. I'm just I cannot
I love the community. And that's the other part too.
They're their family as well. Like I said, we're talking
about people like Paul Tremblay. Josh Malerman gave me a
fantastic blurb for family and it just really like Josh

(53:40):
Malerman is like a performance artist of the written word.
He was just it wasn't just it, It wasn't just nice.
It was just like, oh, it was such a Josh
thing to say. And I was just so so touched
by it. Because we've swapped a few messages. He doesn't
live that far away from me. I've always invited him
up and say, hey, you can come up to have
some cocktails, you know. But that's what it is. I
just I love this community and it's it's something where

(54:01):
you're working with people who are we're working in a
business where you're doing it alone, right like you write
a book by yourself. So if you can make those connections,
it's great. And what I've realized is that I need
those connections. You know, I'm a loner. I'm pretty much
a learner. I don't have a lot of friends, and
the ones that I have a really strong my friends
sort of live broadly. But that's one thing I have

(54:21):
realized over the past year is the importance of those connections.
You know.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
Yeah, that's that's beautifully sad man.

Speaker 3 (54:28):
I totally feel what you're saying.

Speaker 2 (54:31):
I have my own little support system and I don't
think I could do anything without them.

Speaker 4 (54:36):
Yeah, well the kids say these days, man, if you
know you know? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:42):
So So getting back to the black Lands, I wanted
to talk a little bit about super noirtol. I said
that slowly so that people can hear the noir in
the middle. It's not supernatural, it's super noir toal it's sort.

Speaker 3 (54:58):
Of like noir fiction.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
The noir part put rate in the middle there. Now,
this was a collection, it was released. I think we
were talking about this before I hit live in twenty twelve,
I think it was, and it's no longer available, But
is it coming back.

Speaker 4 (55:15):
Yeah, it's going to be the second book in the series, ironically. Yeah,
you're right. It was the first collection that was done
over ten years ago. The reason why we decided not
to do it as the first book and reprint it
again was well. First and foremost, I wanted people who
have been following the black Lands to have something new,
you know, I didn't want to do this reprint that
they might already own. And second of all, I think

(55:38):
you need to start a series with a book, with
a novel. I think novels are bigger sellers. I think
that that was going to make the biggest imprint with
this series as opposed to reprinting supernatural tales right away,
and even creatively, it actually worked out very, very well
because from a narrative point of view, the supernatural tale

(56:00):
to the collection, it's four novellas and a short story,
and the four novellas actually lead up to the events
in Sycamore, and then the short story at the end
it's kind of like a coda or an epilogue to
the events in Sycamore. It actually takes place the night
of Felix driving away from Sycamore at the conclusion of
the case, something that happens to him on the drive home.

(56:22):
It's so in effect, actually it's kind of a prequel
and a sequel to Sycamore. So it's actually perfect that
it's being published as the second book, and it gives
me a little bit of breathing room. I'm actually working
on the second novel now in the series, which will
be the technically the third book in the black Lands series,
and then we'll have at that point it will be
three Felix books. It will be Sycamore Supernatural Tales, the

(56:47):
second Felix Rand novel, and then I'm actually going to
pivot and I'm going to do the fourth book will
be an Alice Baffle novel. Because again, my whole point
of the series is that black Lands itself is the
is the main character. I want to see different people,
and I love it. I love a supernatural noir. I
think these stories he as much to the detective side

(57:08):
as they do to the supernatural, because I'm a big
detective fan. I love DASHL Hammett, Ross MacDonald, Robert D. Parker,
Lawrence Block. There's so much of those characters in Felix.
At the same time, I'm trying to distinguish himself and
make him very different. But then once I get to
this Alice Baffle novel, which again is already mapped, and later,
I know everything that's going to happen. I know how
it's going to feed into the series. Her story, her

(57:31):
her books are very different from Felix. They're they're more
like I call them paranormal procedurals. It's one part Silent
of the Lambs, one part X Files. That was how
I sort of described it to and to my manager
and my agent, was what if Clarice Starling from the
Silence of the Lambs instead of working for Behavioral Science
she went to work for the X Files. Both f

(57:52):
g I and It's it's a very easy jumper. It's like, oh,
that's kind of cool. Whereas Alice Baffle herself is obviously
definitely not Clarice Starling. He's definitely not Dana Scully. No
one is going to draw that parallel. She is much
closer to Daniel Craig's blunt instrument portrayal of James Bond
in the more recent James Bond films, where she is

(58:14):
a hardcore loaner. She does not work well with others.
She is She's not arrogant, she is just obsessive.

Speaker 2 (58:23):
She's very, very to the point, to the point she's.

Speaker 4 (58:25):
Driven by a lot of there's a lot of anger there.
You're gonna get You're gonna get a lot of the
background on why she is the way she is, why
she's not a good person who works well with others.
There's a reason why her age or her partner is
an agoraphobe who works from home. It's as much for
her safety as much for Alice's sanity that this is.
They actually work really well together. But I thought it

(58:46):
was a really fun, fun dynamic, and I want to
explore that in their own book. So that was something
else I like about the Black Plan series that even tonally,
the stories could be different that Felix's stories are straight
up protective noirs, Alison's are going to be more like, yeah,
kind of if you like Thomas Harris, if you like
more of the government conspiracies, police procedurals, but with a

(59:07):
supernatural angle. There're a lot more global in scope. Like
Felix is trying to help individual people with their problems,
Alice's stories are far reaching. They're dealing with government conspiracies,
secret stuff that no one knows about the black Lands.
There's going to be a lot of really creepy stuff
about you know, Felix knows this, He knows about vampires,
he knows about stuff that's comes to the world. Alice
has got the inside track of what the government really

(59:30):
knows about what's going on over there, and I'm really
excited to explore that. And I feel after two or
three books, that's a great way of sort of expanding
the series and going, oh, you know. What I can
say about the first Alice book is that it takes place.
It starts to take place in Florida, and that's where
the highest concentration of portals is. The Bermuda Triangle has

(59:52):
got more portals than anywhere. That's where the black Lands
phenomenon started in the nineteen forties, and that's where the
headquarters is of the Para Normal Intelligence Agency. It's located
in Florida. That's where their their base is because that's
where they need the most concentration of workers to really,
you know, confront this threat.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
Yeah, I really I really loved Alice Baffle.

Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
She's such a serious character.

Speaker 2 (01:00:18):
But you know, talk when Felix and her are talking
to each other, there's this tension and banter, uh that
I just got a kick out of.

Speaker 4 (01:00:31):
How did you?

Speaker 3 (01:00:33):
How did you? Sorry? What would you say?

Speaker 4 (01:00:35):
I was just going to say, like I wanted to
make sure that its Felix is very sarcasic, be kind
of funny, and I just really wanted to show that
if anyone finds that either too much or or if
they're very clear that he's using a defense mechanism, Alice
is kind of like the audience's character there who's just
not impressed by him and kind of a time. So
now Alice is tough as nail. It's not like she

(01:00:55):
doesn't have her own little little idiosyncrasies. But that's why
I thought that they would like they're not. They're not.
They're not hooking up. They're they're not. Like I'm saying,
if you're in a partnership where they want to work
together again, they don't really want to have it. That
gets It's sort of like strange bedfellows, right. They meet
each other in Sycamore because those circumstances demand. But this
is definitely not some sort of a meet cute.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
No no, no, uh yeah, it's uh.

Speaker 3 (01:01:22):
They don't get along. Let's just say they don't.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
Outright fight, but they they disagree on a lot of
things and uh, and the way they sort of pick
at each other is what I was getting at their
banter there you sort of get the idea they don't
really like each other, but they're stuck here.

Speaker 3 (01:01:38):
So, uh so.

Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
How do you approach that when you're writing, when you
get that witty sort of banter is this is this
just sort of maybe the voices that are in your
head already or or do you really work at that?

Speaker 4 (01:01:50):
Yeah? Actually, you know, that's a really good question. There's
definitely an organic quality because I've written a lot of
screenplays and screenplays if you I'm a chesa, you know,
they're they're all dialogue, right, So I come from a
dialogue background, and I want the dialogue to really not
not just to really popit but's but to sound realistic.
And at the same time, I don't want it to

(01:02:11):
be too quippy, you know, I don't want it to
be this very everything sounds like a line, you know, like, oh,
they sound so clever. Felix is very capable in some ways,
but I also want to make him very humans. He's
very vulnerable in some ways, and there's definitely an element
of vulnerability that I don't want to spoil in the
story that I think really humanizes Felix even more. And

(01:02:32):
Alice sees that, and I wouldn't even say she appreciate it. Alice. Actually,
I want to say it disgusts her or she's annoyed
by but she but Alice is Alice really is kind
of a blunt instrument. There's there's things she respects about Felix,
and there's things that she just does not at all.
This is this was not something where it's like, hey,
you know, it's not it's not Casablanca. You know, they're

(01:02:54):
not going to be friends walking off into the mist
in the end, like there, they'll probably bump into each
other again, and they'll probably work with each other again,
but it's not because they want to. It's gonna become
because circumstances allow. Alice can barely work with her partner,
you know, like and the only reason they do that
is because she lives, you know, two thousand miles away,
works from home. So but I like that. I feel
like I'm trying to make this series as realistic as

(01:03:15):
I want. I don't want. I don't want to ever
give this impression that oh everyone's recruiting there' suddenly they're
going to become the Avengers and they're going to be
this group that takes on the black Lands like that
doesn't interest me. I humans interest me. Their flaws interest me.
I like when those flaws make them shine. I'm not

(01:03:36):
a fan of oh my, my, my, my weakness is
a superpower. I don't I don't like those stories. No, no,
you're there's nothing wrong with happening week is they make
you human. They're not supposed to make you strong necessarily.
They make you human, so they make you relatable. Everything
isn't about something making you strong. You get strength from
other places. And I think that that's something that I
really like about Sycamore is with the way that certain

(01:03:59):
characters come out in the end and they don't all
make it. There is a strength, but there's but it's
not necessarily a strength of Oh I overcame this, Now
I can do this thing again. I think when Felix
comes out of it, and especially you'll see that in
the next book. There are scars, you know. I don't
want this to be a series where you don't have

(01:04:20):
anything where it's just there's no baggage from the next book.
There there as much as there are story arcs in
this series, there's character arcs. There's there are things that
people are going to go through that they're developed. There's
a there's a novella that I'm working on right now.
It's a black Lands novella, and it's it's a story
that takes place between Sycamore and in the second Felix
r n novel. And again, you don't need to read

(01:04:42):
it to know you know, it's still stands alone. But
for me, it was a way to really explore something
very traumatic that happens to Felix in Sycamore. And I
don't want to spoil it, but I really wanted to
deep dive into that before I got into Miss Paranormal,
because by Miss Paranormal is the title of the second novel,
I didn't really want to to not acknowledge it. But

(01:05:03):
Miss Paranormal is telling its own story, as it should,
and if you read Sycamore, that's great, But if not,
I don't want to exclude that that reader. So this
this connective tissue with this novella that I'm working on
right now. I wanted to say, well, you know what,
if you're a purist and you're a completist, you'll read
the story you say, oh that's really awesome, I really
love this story. But if you don't read it. You're

(01:05:25):
not You're not missing out. You know. It's it's hard.
It's hard to do these types of stories because you
sort of reach a point where you want people to
read everything. But I've never been afraid of a challenge,
you know, And and I'm learning a lot from what
other people have done another series. You know, that's that's
all you can do. You know, you're exactly right when
you talked about reading broadly my enjoyment, but I'm also

(01:05:46):
doing to learn as a writer.

Speaker 2 (01:05:47):
Yeah, I'm excited to learn that you have so many
plans for this because I really enjoyed the first book, Sycamore,
and I want to devour more.

Speaker 4 (01:06:01):
Were you going to say something No, No, I was
just gonna say thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:06:05):
Another thing I loved.

Speaker 2 (01:06:06):
We're gonna get back to the characters in a second here,
because I came up with a fun question that I
shot to you yesterday over Messenger. But before we get
to that, I just want to talk.

Speaker 3 (01:06:17):
Briefly about the locations.

Speaker 2 (01:06:19):
And it meant something to me too, because like we
live in like central Ontario, Canada, our area of the
woods don't really make we don't really make it into
novels and whatnot. Very often I had the funny thought like,
if you lived in New York City, you'd be like, oh, yay,
this book takes place in New York City, like all

(01:06:41):
these other hundreds and thousands have, right.

Speaker 3 (01:06:43):
But when I'm reading a book that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:45):
Has like a Realia and Barry mentioned in it, I
was like, this is awesome, man. So do you think
you're going to branch out at all though, like go international?
Or is it always going to be like around this area.

Speaker 4 (01:07:00):
Well, first of all, it's very funny that you say that,
because when I was originally writing, when I first writ
was writing Sycamore, I was really nervous about you know,
is anyone going to want to read a story that
takes place in Canada, you know? Or should I be
bumping this to New York City? You know? Actually, not
just because of an American city, but it's also the
site of a lot of detective novels in noir. I

(01:07:22):
mean two of my favorites. I mean, following Angel by
William Gyortzberg is like my bible of supernatural noir. That
was a novel that was filmed as Angel Heart, which
is also a great adaptation which almost never happens where
You've got a great book and a great movie that
happens there. And even Clive Barker's Harry Demore stories are
largely said in Europe. You know, Harry Damore is a
New Yorker, you know, So the temptation to do that,

(01:07:46):
but it was funny. It was all the American people, readers, editors,
agents that said, no, no, no, it should be more Canadian,
you know, don't be ashamed of where you are. And
they were always like, we from all your movies, all
our movies in Canada. We know Canada. So Toronto is fine,
you know, right, which, you know, like you don't have
to try and do something that you're not, be somewhere
that you're not. I've never even been to New York City,

(01:08:07):
so I can't write about it. I could probably write
about it to a certain effectiveness because I've absorbed so
much media, you know, and let's face it, with Google
maps and everything. Yeah, I could probably pull it off,
but I would still feel like a phony because I've
never even been there, you know. So I've never written
the story set in New York City. I can say that.
I can say that quite firmly because I know that

(01:08:27):
I know what I've written. So yeah, there was some
there was some very early reluctance about setting this in Toronto,
and yeah, mentioning places that are really in barrier people
are going to care? Are they even going to know?
But this is one of these things where you just
you got to put your passion in the driver's seat
and say, I don't care what other people are gonna think.
This is energizing me. I know these places I've been to,

(01:08:49):
the place absolutely you you are writing from a place
of confidence. Is anyone gonna like it? Hour? But that later?
You know, I'm having too much fun right now. So
I would go on road trips with my life, which
we always did, but we were doing more than we
would drive up to yeat Berry or a really a
sycamore is, you know more or less? I wouldn't. It's
not it's not a really it's more or less where

(01:09:11):
it really is to a certain degree, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:09:13):
And it's not a real town, right, it's not a
real town.

Speaker 4 (01:09:16):
It's not it's not doubling for a real town. I
didn't want to do that because I'm kind of doing
some horrible things. I didn't want to say, oh, it's
just a really, but I've changed the name even geographically
or the stores. It's not it's definitely not a really.
It's kind of next door to a realia and it
really it gets mentioned quite a bit. But again, it's

(01:09:37):
also kind of fun to make up your own town.
I mean, Stephen King obviously did it with Castle Rock.
Lots of other authors have done it with other towns.
There's certainly a thrill and uh and some fun from
doing that. But yeah, it was really just a chance
to sort of say, yeah, this is this is my
neck of the woods. I was born in Toronto, I
grew up in Whitby. This this is my neck of
the woods. I've lived in Peterborough for the past twenty

(01:09:57):
years because that's where my wife is from and that's
where we've we've settled and I love it. It's like
it's my second home. I love it here. Will I
ever go international with these stories with Felix, Maybe not
as much, but again, because I'm telling other stories with
other people, Well, it's it's it's international, right, this is
an international issue. So that's the great part is when

(01:10:20):
one of the other things we talk about when we've
been pitching this Blacklands TV series is the comparison we
use is that I say it's it's a supernatural version
of The Wire, where The Wire is the series about
crime and police in the city of Baltimore, but each
season is different characters. The really the real recurring character
on in the Wire is the city of Baltimore. It's

(01:10:41):
not the characters. You know, they change each season. Some
of the cops stay the same, but like, the first
season is this the first second season is like, I
think it's the Stevedores, the the Docs. I think the
third season is the school district, so you're seeing teachers
and everything. It changes, and I thought that was fascinating,
think that I'd ever really been done before. So that

(01:11:02):
was how I said the black Lands is the recurring character.
I could tell stories everywhere to say how different people
from different walks of life are dealing with the supernatural
in their lives. So Alice is definitely one that I
could see moving around. But that was sort of the
purpose of her character is that she is so difficult
to work with, but she is still so good at
her job that she's never going to be fired. So

(01:11:22):
what they do is they just bump her around from
field office to field office where they need the work.
And narratively, that's great for me because now I can
have stories from different cities, whereas Felix is sort of
helping people in more or less the Toronto, the GTA,
the Greater Toronto area. He might go a little bit,
but it was just but mostly it's going to be
in there, and then other stories other characters would would

(01:11:45):
sort of go, would be elsewhere. But yeah, it's it's
definitely my intent to sort of say, here's how different
people in different countries are dealing with different types of
black Lands phenomena. Mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (01:11:56):
That sounds very exciting, all right. Going back to that
question I mentioned while I was listening to the audiobook
for this, I had like this feeling that this would
make a really good TV show, like a serial. We
kind of brushed on that a lot while while talking
on this without actually hitting it, but it reminded me

(01:12:19):
of why I used to love series like Buffy and Supernatural.

Speaker 3 (01:12:23):
You know, So I was wondering.

Speaker 2 (01:12:27):
I thought i'd have some fun, and I prepped you
for this because I didn't just want to like blast
it at.

Speaker 4 (01:12:32):
You and you'd be like, oh god, I don't know
I always appreciate it because.

Speaker 2 (01:12:37):
I've had that happen to me, and I hate it
when my mind goes blank. So the question is, if
Sycamore were to become a television series, who would you
like to play the main character? So we're I was
going to focus just on three characters, the three that
that are in that mostly, and it's Felix, Alice, Baffle,

(01:12:57):
and Sandra.

Speaker 3 (01:12:59):
So so let's start with Felix. Do you think would
you like to see play Felix?

Speaker 4 (01:13:06):
He shot me if you yeah. When we were talking
about this, I had these initial ideas and it was
playing that. I was talking to my wife about it
and she was like, well, you always said this person.
I was like, that's the right I did'n id even
mentioned that to Jason. How did I forget this one
character or this one actor? But it was like, I was,
so Felix is so again, he's the anti PI. Right.
You can't cast someone who's like a big, muscle bound

(01:13:28):
guy because it's just not who he is. He's capable,
but he's not. You wouldn't look at him and think, oh, yeah,
he's an XPI much less he's gonna he's out there
kicking all this ask because he doesn't, he doesn't do that.
He's this doesn't interest me. Not the character I wanted
to write. It's not the character that he is. But
he's not some milk toast and capable person who's getting
this butt kicked all the time, either, So it's tough.

(01:13:48):
What what is he? So I was I was trying
to think of character or actors, and it was funny
that I was watching one of the more recent movies
that I like rewatching. It's a beautiful movie. Canadian director
and a Canadian actor was Denis Villeneuve's A Blade Runner
twenty forty nine, and was Ryan Goslin, And I thought
Ryan Goslin, it was just you don't look at him

(01:14:09):
and say that, oh, this guy kicks a lot of hats.
He's not there with like the washboard apps. He's not flexing,
he's not lifting piles of cinder blocks, you know, but
he's quite He looks very capable, you know, and he
looks and he's a detective. He's got the coat. So
I thought that's actually I would say he's a great actor.
You know, he's a Canadian. He's uh, he's he's he's
he's good. Looking, but he's not like a pretty boy,

(01:14:31):
I guess in my sense, So I mean like, I
feel like he would have that kind of appeals as
a leading actor. So I would say, yeah, you know,
Ryan Goslin, I think would make a good Felix. It's
funny because when I write these things, I'm actually not
picturing actors, even though when I read other books sometimes
I do picture actors. I can't reread the Stand without
thinking of the characters from the mini. It's just in
my head now. Because I love this band. I've re

(01:14:52):
redd it sometimes and I've watched the series many times,
but with my own stuff, I don't. I tend not
to really think of it that much. So it was
funny when you asked me, it was like, oof, you
know again. I had to go back with my wife,
who reminded me you always said Ryan Goslain's like, you're right,
How would I not go? Did I forget about that?
So I would say, yeah, Ryan Goslin for Felix, for

(01:15:14):
Alice is Again it's kind of hard. These are not
you want to go to, like, well, who is popular?
Who who are the who are the young up and
coming ones? And I was like these characters aren't young,
you know, like these aren't twenty somethings, and these guys are,
you know, Felix and Sandra are I would say like
mid to late thirties. They're not kids, and largely because

(01:15:35):
they had this history, you know, and they couldn't be kids.
They were married for seven or eight years. They're divorced,
so I knew that they were. They were a bit older.
Alice might be a little bit younger. I would say
that she is like between thirty and thirty five tops.
She's got a bit of a history with the Pia.
She's definitely not a rookie agent, but she's not I
don't see her as necessarily as old as Felix. So

(01:15:56):
I was thinking more of a like an Aubrey Plaza
or maybe a I mean Florence Pugh is I guess
is like everyone loves her and I love her too.
It's like she feels like it's an easy one to
go to. I was trying to think of someone a
bit more obscure, and I also I think it's quite tall.
I think Florence Pugh is kind of short. So I
would say like an Aubrey Plaza or against Sidney Sweeney

(01:16:18):
against another one. It's like she's popular right now, everyone
goes to her. So it's tough. It's it's really really tough.
It's like I would rather someone came to me and said,
here's ten people we were looking at, or here's here's
a couple of actors who who love this character and
they want to do it, right. That's that's the way
it is a lot of these things. Now. It's an
author like to read your book and they want to
do it. It's like whether or not they think they're

(01:16:38):
ideal or not. If especially if they're huge, they're going
to get your movie made, let them play the character. Yeah,
and Sandra again, because she's she's a former screen queen.
My mind immediately goes to like Jamie Lee Curtis or
t Wallace Stone. And again they're they're like in their
sixties now, so again like not.

Speaker 3 (01:16:59):
That would be kind of weird.

Speaker 4 (01:17:00):
Maybe it would be weird. I mean, I think they
could still do it. But again, you want to find
an actor who's more age appropriate, especially to go with Felix. Yeah,
so I say, someone who's who still has that sort
of gravitas and that presence. I immediately fell in love
with with Carrie Kune after I watched The Leftovers, which
was one of my all time favorite TV series, where

(01:17:21):
she's just got such a depth and complexity and but humor.
Then you see her in something like Ghostbusters, Afterlife or
the new one Frozen Empire, and she can do comedy
and it still bring a lot of good acting chops
to it. So it's like, for me again, it's something
that I had to think about, but now that it
came up in conversation when we were texting, it was like, yeah,

(01:17:42):
I could see her. I could really see someone like
Carrie kuns As as Sandra. Now now now I want that,
So thanks a lot. Now I've got to try and
find these people to be in my TV show. I
gave you a good yeah, that's aat all.

Speaker 2 (01:17:56):
Right, final question before I take the chains off and
let you go for the night. I asked this of
every guest and I've been doing I've been doing this,
I think all of twenty twenty four. So now let
me give you just a little bit of a background
as to why I asked this question. One reason is

(01:18:16):
because I watch probably way too much of book Talk
and book Tube. I just love watching people talk about books,
and so it came to me like, sometimes there's these
authors who are doing really amazing things, but nobody's talking
about them.

Speaker 4 (01:18:32):
Why is that?

Speaker 2 (01:18:33):
And so I thought I would ask authors to talk
about who do you think is being left out of conversations?
Which authors do you think need to be talked about
more often?

Speaker 4 (01:18:47):
Right? That's and again that's a tough one because it's
weird for me because like I really we had this
conversation earlier, like I read everything, so I say it,
and I admit that I'm not necessarily have that pulse
where I think, oh, this person is underrated or this
person hasn't talked about enough, because I'm usually talking about them.
So it's I'm always surprised, Oh, this author should be rich,
this author should be have this TV show. So it's

(01:19:09):
sort of shocking to me when when they're not. So
I it's funny. We sort of organically came up with
Jeffrey Thomas, and I would say there's someone who's been
publishing for a long time, obviously has his fans, obviously
is doing very well for himself. But he was He's
definitely someone where it's I feel like, how is like
a big five publisher, not scooped up everything, start with

(01:19:32):
the start with punk Town. But he's got all kinds
of other stuff that he's that he's still doing, and
he's a good writer. It's not even like, oh well
he does he does this stuff, but he's not there.
He's not the greatest word craft or wordsmith whatever saying
oh no, he's he's highly readable, very literary if if
that's if that's a matter like it's but but still

(01:19:53):
with a very pulp sensibility. You can tell that. You
can tell he's a very intelligent person. But you can
also tell them there's a lot of heart there, like
it's it's not you really are pulling for these characters,
you know, Like it's just and that's what it is.
I mean, he really gets what character is. It's it's
stuff happening to people. You've been made to care about
that plot, you know, it's just it's something that I

(01:20:15):
always try and do. It's the lesson that I've learned
is that if you have characters who are realistic and
that you care about them, then you're going to care
about what happens to them. And since we're writing horror
stories and stuff, it's usually awful things that are happening
to them, so you better care about them. There's a
reason why when we watch By the Thirteenth part twenty seven,
it can be kind of fun. Let's face it, we're

(01:20:37):
usually rooting for Jason because we don't care about these
stupid teenagers that he's hacking up because you don't know
them and they're just kind of you know. But if
you care about these people and you care about their peril,
it's you have more of an investment with them. So
I would say, yeah, I would say Jeffrey Thomas is
someone that I just I wish that he won the

(01:20:58):
publishing lottery and someone just came in and just bought
everything and came up with new additions for the punk
Town Omnibuses, and then he got he just gets to
do more. And I know he's still doing more punked down.

Speaker 2 (01:21:09):
You know, It's it's not over for him yet. Yeah,
it could still happen, and it's absolute.

Speaker 4 (01:21:14):
Yeah, yeah, I hope. And I would also say from
from the from another point of view, s P. Maskowski
is one of my favorite writers, and and again I'm
sure she's doing well. I don't know how well because
but I mean she's still publishing, obviously, but she's one
of these people where I'm thinking, oh my gosh, these
you know, the Scalute cycle that should be like a

(01:21:36):
big five, should be scooping it up and again re
releasing that as some you know, massive addition. I love
those stories. It's Pacific Northwest. It's it's small town, it's witchcraft,
it's ghosts. It's like she is she is ringing my
twin peaks bell, you know. It's just like I love
that area. I love that kind of stuff. It's she's
just one of those writers where I feel like she's

(01:21:57):
reading this for me. I feel like I feel like
I've I've hired her to write these books because it's
so my jam, you know so and when you see
these people and these are good people, like I know Jeffrey,
I know sp She wrote the introduction to the Family,
my debut novel with Earthlings. And it's not that she
just wrote good things about my book. I mean she

(01:22:19):
really understood what I was trying to do with that.
And that's always even better, right It means it means
isn't just that they read your book, It's that they
really understood it. And it was like one, I was
really touched, and two it was like, oh, this is
why I asked her to do this, because she's not
just talented, she is insightful and she's just got a

(01:22:40):
good heart. And when you see people like that, you
just want good things to happen to them. And so,
like I would say, among those Punktown books and the
Scalute cycle books starting with Knock Knock, I cannot tell
you how many times I recommended those books, gifted those
books to people at Christmas and holidays. Yeah, it's it's
like anything good, right, I mean, you recommend it. The

(01:23:00):
best type of marketing is word of mouth. It's the
one thing that that you can't predict, that you can't control.
It's it's grassroots, man. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:23:08):
Before before I did this show, I I uh, I
did another. I did a podcast called The Darkness Dwells
Podcast and I had sp mccowske on there with Lard
Baron and uh uh John Lang and we were talking
about weird fiction. And that was a last I enjoyed.
I enjoyed talking to all three, but I you know,

(01:23:28):
I bring her up and and yeah, she was fantastic.

Speaker 3 (01:23:32):
I love talking I.

Speaker 4 (01:23:33):
Love all those people. By the way. I consider them
all very good friends.

Speaker 3 (01:23:36):
Lard.

Speaker 4 (01:23:36):
Lard and John gave me some of my very first
blurbs for Blackland's stories. They they both blurbed. Uh Supernashal
Laird blurbed give me a wonderful blurb for Sycamore. They
are They're They're as kind as they are talented. You know,
I'm I'm really really glad to I haven't seen them

(01:23:58):
in years because I between the pandemic and just not
having had a lot of new books out, I haven't
been to a convention and so long. But I mean,
you see them online, so you never feel like they're
too far away. But I love all those guys, great
great people.

Speaker 3 (01:24:11):
Yeah, awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:24:13):
So I want to thank you for coming along and
talking about Sycamore and your other works with me. And
I want to thank everyone who came along and watched
and the people especially who are going to come in
the future to watch and listen to on the podcast.
Where can people find you online if they want to

(01:24:34):
they want to get updates or whatnot?

Speaker 4 (01:24:37):
Yeah, you know, I'm I'm on all the usual social
media channels. I'm on Facebook, not so much on x
I think there's been a mass sort of Exodus. I'm
still there, but I just post updates like it's all
for the business as usual. I'm I'm on Blue Sky,
though I'm on threads. I spend most of my time,
I would say, on Instagram, just because it's just it's pictures,

(01:24:58):
no conversation. So it's me of my books and my cats.
It's very it's very chill. You know. I'm going for
that vibe right now, you know. It's just I've got
a newsletter. I've got lots of websites. If you go
to Ian Rodgers dot ca A or Ian hyphen Rogers
dot com is my main web presence, but I was
a web guy before I started writing full time, so

(01:25:18):
I've got various websites. If you go to the black
Lands dot com, that's a website devoted entirely to the Blacklands.
If you go to Every House is Haunted dot com,
That's where I'm posting all the news and updates about
the movie and the book as well, obviously. So yeah,
I'm out there. Just Google me, you'll find me awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:25:38):
And do you have anything coming out?

Speaker 2 (01:25:40):
Any short stories or other novels that are coming out
soon that you can talk about that Readers can look
forward to.

Speaker 4 (01:25:47):
Yeah, you know what I have. I can't really talk
specifics yet. I have an original horror novel coming out
early twenty twenty five. It should be announced soon. I
don't really know how much I can say. All I
can say is it's a non black Lands book, but
it's sort of a it's kind of The Ring meets
the Blur Witch Project. It's kind of a haunted film,

(01:26:10):
cursed film, kind of a book that I'm really excited about.
And yeah, there's there's actually a new edition of Every
House Is Haunted that's coming out right now. It went
out with a book box subscription service from a company
called Twisted Retreat. It's actually shipping right now. I just
got my copy on Friday. Nice, I can actually show
you a quick little preview. This is kind of fun.

(01:26:31):
So this is the new expanded edition of Everything. I
call it a newly renovated edition of Everything Sponted. So
it's got three never before published bonus stories at the end. Awesome,
nice sam Remi blurb on the back there. So, yeah,
it went out with the book box subscription, but it's
it's done really well. So there's going to be extra

(01:26:51):
copies that are available at the Twisted Retreat store, so
I don't think those will be available until next month.
But again, if you're following me on social media, I'm
definitely gonna bang the gong on that one, because again
it's doing really well. The box sold out completely and
I think it was over six hundred copies, so they
want to make sure they had some extra copies. I

(01:27:12):
think they'll be around thirty or fifty extra copies just
for the Twisted Retreat store for people who didn't buy
the subscription service if they just want to buy the
book itself. So yeah, that's Twisted Retreat dot com I
believe is their website, but I'll be announcing that once
it's available.

Speaker 3 (01:27:28):
Awesome, yeah, awesome, awesome stuff. All right. I can't wait
to read more.

Speaker 2 (01:27:34):
And you have an open invitation to come back, especially
when the next black Lands books come out. I would
love to read them and I'd love to discuss them
with you if you're willing to come back.

Speaker 4 (01:27:47):
Oh yeah, absolutely. I had a great time. Thank you
so much for the great questions and oh this has
been great. I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:53):
All right, we'll talk to you again soon, all right.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode my
conversation with Ian Rodgers. I've interviewed a lot of people
over the years. I don't have an exact number, but

(01:28:14):
I think it's around eighty horror authors that I've talked
to in the last ten years, and this one was
one of the more fun ones. I've talked to authors
who have written books in my area before, but Ian
was probably one of the most friendly and giving people
that I've ever talked to. So I was more than

(01:28:36):
happy not only to read his book, but to talk
to him about it. And I can't wait until more
books in the black Lands series come out, So stay
tuned for that because Ian will be back on the
show at some point and he will also be a
guest on what I'm hoping will be a very big

(01:28:57):
project starting in twenty twenty five. So, as I said,
stay tuned for that. So if you want to support
the show, there's a few ways you can do. So
the first and easiest way is to go on to
Apple Podcasts and give the show a five star rating.
When you do that, that shows Apple that you're interested

(01:29:19):
in it, and so it's more willing to share this
podcast with other listeners who like this type of content,
So if you're willing to do that, I would appreciate
it so much. And also, if you want to support
the show with your hard earned money, you can join
the Patreon. The links for that are in the show notes,

(01:29:39):
so definitely check that out. All right, So that is
it for this episode. I thank you so much for
coming along and we will see you guys in the
next podcast. Litt

All Episodes

042 - Going to SYCAMORE with Ian Rogers

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

Stuff You Should Know

NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}042 - Going to SYCAMORE with Ian Rogers