046 - Incarnate With Richard Thomas - Weird Reads

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to the Weird Reader podcast, an extension of
Jason's Weird Reads found on YouTube. Welcome, Welcome to episode
forty six of the Weird Reads Podcast. I am your host,
Jason White, and today I have finally got together my

(00:36):
episode and I've edited it and it's here for you
to listen to my interview with Richard Thomas regarding his
book Incarnate, which was quite the trip. I have a
funny little story about reading this book. I read about
I don't know how far I read, like, let's just

(00:57):
say twenty five percent, and I was like, this book
is Bonker's. And so I went and asked Richard Thomas
if he would come on the show and discuss it
with me. But what we planned on was like a
couple of months ahead, and so or not maybe a
couple of months, but it was a good solid month,
maybe a month and a half ahead. So I stopped
reading the book, and then I returned to it in

(01:18):
a few weeks and read everything over again. And so
I read some of it twice, and I do like,
I know what happens in that book. I think I
have a good grip of what happens in Kurnits but
there's still it's like it's almost as though my brain
still doesn't accept that fact. It's like, no, you don't

(01:42):
understand anything. And I think it's just the way it's written,
and I think you need to read it honestly in
order to understand what it is I'm talking about. But
this book is filled with a lot of it's filled
with a lot of hurt, and it's very emotional and
it touched me any times. That's all I'll say about it.

(02:03):
But talking to Richard about this process was really really fun.
I talked to Richard I think it was way back
in twenty seventeen, so it was good to talk to
him again to catch up a little bit. And so,
without further ado, here is my conversation with Richard Thomas.

(02:25):
Welcome everybody today. I have a guest that I have
spoken to before, but it's been like eight or nine
years or something like that. Wow, it's been a long
long time. So I'm here with Richard Thomas and we're
going to be talking about his new book in Karnate.
Can you give yourself a brief introduction?

Speaker 2 (02:43):
Richard? Sure? Sure. So I'm Richard Tom. I've been writing
about fifteen years I'm a writer of speculative fiction, so
somewhere under the fantasy, sci fi, horror umbrella. Four novels,
four collections, over one hundred and eighty stories in print.
I've edited five anthologies, i added a magazine in a press,

(03:04):
and I've been nominated for a Bram Stoker Award twice,
Shirley Jackson Award once, and then a Thriller Award. And
I currently spend my time writing, editing, teaching, and publishing.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
So yeah, awesome. Now, Richard Thomas is an interesting name
because I went to research you just to find like
your website and whatnot. First thing I see is the
actor from like the IT movie or I forget instance.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
Yeah, yeah, that's what I get all the time. Yeah,
you wouldn't believe how many many women slide into my
profile really talking of John Boy and I'm like slower, all,
it's not I'm not him, but yeah, there's a fan
of a certain age definitely sees Richard Thomas. And thanks

(03:49):
John Boy Walton. I had to. I have had to
battle him on Google for a long time to try
and get my name to appear above his in any searches.
It's taken a long time. And then the funny thing,
like you said, he was also an IT So that
was I think back when I was in the eighties,
when I was in high school, maybe yeah, like es
and then he played the character who was also the writer.

(04:09):
So it was this really weird meta kind of moment.
And every night it would have the list of the
characters and they would say and Richard Thomas, I think
because it was just alphabetically last, yeah, and so I
was always like yeah, But that was back when I
was just a fan of Stephen King, and you know,
I hadn't even really started writing anything.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
So yeah, are you still a fan of Stephen King?
I am? I am.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
I mean, I've probably read more of his stuff than
any other writer. I've probably read, I mean, just about
everything he's written. The last couple of years. I haven't
been a big fan of like the Holly Trilogy or whatever.
I mean, I liked some, but I like it, okay,
I guess to me, the last really great book he
wrote was probably eleven twenty two sixty three. That was
by my last big favorite of his. I like reading him.

(04:52):
His collections and shorter stuff has been really good, but
I mean it's it's hard I couldn't imagine. I mean,
I've been have four books out. I can't imagine trying
to come up with ideas for forty or fifty or sixty.
And so I think, I think about how many of
his books have really been a huge influence on me,
and you know my favorites, everything from The Stand and

(05:13):
It to The Long Walk, Dead Zone, you know, all
the like the word, novella collections, short stories like, He's
just been a really big influence on my right, although
I don't tend to really write a lot like him.
He's more of a story teller and more of a
story shower. I think. Yeah, it's funny though, because the
one story of my last short story collection, Spontaneous Human

(05:35):
Combustion called Notice Tolans, was definitely the most telling I've
ever had in the story, it was a little long,
like sixty six hundred words, more convoluted, more plot heavy.
I'm usually more character driven or atmosphere driven. And that's
the one that has had more people attached to it
in Hollywood, screenwriters and people pitching it and trying to

(05:56):
turn it into something. And I guess that kind of
voice comes through. So I'm going about to write more
like him.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yeah. Yeah, Uh, there's another Richard Thomas. I think it
was either Richard J. Thomas or Richard P. Thomas. And
he actually lives near me. He's an also a writer,
but he doesn't write fiction. He writes like history books
about his area. He's about three hours away from me.
I think it's like going sound or something.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
I was like looking at him, I'm like, that's not
Richard Thomas. I am Richard Thomas.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
Yeah, I am Richard G. Thomas. Richard Gordon Thomas, the third.
My dad was a junior, my son's the fourth. There
was also an animator for like bug Bunny cartoons. I
think it was a Richard H. Thomas, and so I
would get excited as a kid because it was like
so close, one matter away. But he did he did
like background design or something whatever for the cartoons. But yeah,

(06:49):
that's it. Excuse me.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
Yeah, and uh we first talked, as I mentioned right
at the beginning here, we talked on the Darkness d
Wells podcast when I was doing that show, which feels
like forever ago now, and it was way back. It
was way back when this was released.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
Oh yeah, yeah, I got a beautiful horror story.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah, I talked to This got me an interview with you,
It got me an interview with Mercedes Yardley, and I
believe it also got me an interview with let me
see if he's in here before I embarrass myself. Uh,

(07:31):
you know, I'm not sure. I must be thinking of
something else. Oh no, no, no, he's here. So it
got me an interview with Ramsey Campbell too.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
Nice.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, that was that was an awesome time. But it
was also funny in that a couple of months after
I talked to you, I talked to Larry barn for
something else, and and he said, while we were talking,
He's like, I listened to your show. It's like I
listened to that episode you did with with You with

(08:01):
Richard Tumash.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
Really wow. Yeah, it's amazing. I love Laird. Yeah. I
think my story in there was Repent, which actually ended
up being in my last short story collection. And Laird
is just a gift. He's a saint. I love Laird.
Amazing writer. I love his work. He also was kind
enough to write the forward the introduction to the anthology
I edited The New Black, which was my first anthology

(08:22):
I edited. It was all reprints, kind of just some
of my favorite neo noir stories. So funny because when
I was putting that together and then I was looking
for somebody to write the intro, I was like, who
did I leave out? Like whould I forget who? You know?
I tried, I try to get stories for like Dennis Layne.
I was like all over the place trying to get stories.
I did talk talk to A big part like Ben
Percy's story was. I wanted the title story, a refreshed

(08:45):
refresh from his collection, and like his publisher, I'm forget
who was Penguin Random House. They're like one of like
twelve hundred dollars. I'm like, I can't pay that, and
he's like, I have his old story. You a dial
tone if you want No. It actually turned out to
be a better story, but I ran across the Laird
and I'm like, oh, I should have asked Laird for
a story. But then he wrote the intro and it
was just amazing. So I just really feel blessed. I
got lucky that ended up getting him to do that,

(09:06):
because he really understood kind of the intersection between crime
and horror and what kind of where neo noir sat,
and that was kind of early in my career, and
that just really was a just a super cool guy.
I love his work.

Speaker 1 (09:20):
Yeah, me too, I'm a huge fan. But that that
was an interesting story with the Gutted anthology because uh.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
Uh, what's the what's the guy.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
Who runs Crystal Like Publishing? It's Mine Minehart. Yeah, yeah, Minehart. He.
I was in talking with him through emails and he
was like, Okay, we got this book coming out which
was Gutted, and he was like, I'd like you to
help me promote it. And he's like, name like three
or four people he'd love to interview for your podcast,
but don't go crazy. And I knew when he said
don't go crazy that means don't ask about Ramsey camp Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
And so I put I put his name, I put
your name, Mercedes Yardly and m Campbell. I was like,
you know what, I'm gonna shoot for it. Why not? Right?

Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yeah, And he was able to set it all up
for me and that was that was a great time man.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
Yeah. Now, speaking of you being like an editor and whatnot,
you recently you ran Gamut magazine and for how long
did that go for?

Speaker 2 (10:20):
Well, we had two iterations like the first one. I
don't even five or six years ago, I did a Kickstarter.
We raised like fifty two thousand dollars. It was a
whole crazy thing. I didn't I didn't think it was
gonna happen.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
Then it happened. I remember when that happened.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
Yeah, it was a really great year. And we're paying
ten cents a word, which back then not a lot
of people were paying. I made a lot of mistakes,
but mostly just I think I didn't realize how how
long it takes to build a brand, how long it
takes to kind of build up a body of work.
And I think if I had, you know, maybe if
i'd paid people five cents instead of ten, or maybe

(10:55):
paid little, you know, a little less than ten something.
Maybe if I'd budgeted for three years instead of one,
because we had like six hundred people subscribe at like
thirty bucks ahead and then in order to like stay
in business and to cover our cost, we had to
like double that, and we got to about nine hundred
and just couldn't quite make it happen. And so, you know,

(11:17):
you'd think I was an advertising for fifteen twenty years
before I became a writer and you think I would
understand how long it takes to build up a brand
and get your image out there. And I at the time,
raising fifty grand just seems like it seem like a
lot of money, and so the whole thing seemed crazy
to me. And so the idea of raising like one
hundred and fifty, or raising one hundred, or making it
work on fifty, like I just whatever. I just couldn't

(11:39):
fathom it. And so we had one glorious year and
then we shut down. We resurrected it this past year
with the help of my partner, Richard Wood, and it
was a great year of quality writing. I think the
stories are amazing. I'm really proud of the body of
work we did. We got to publish a lot of
really great news stories. I just sent out all the

(12:02):
stories I had. John Joseph Adams sent me an email
asking about stuff for Best Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy,
and I sent Ellen Datlow everything for Best Horror, and
I send everything in for awards and whatnot, and we just, Uh,
it's just kind of a weird combination of things. I
think we tried to do too much too fast. I
think going magazine and classes and publishing arm. I think

(12:26):
we just were running when we should have been trying
to walk. When when lit Reactor went under, I thought
there'd be a real gap in the market for like
classes and stuff, and so I thought, oh, we'll fill
that void. Because I've been teaching over there and writing
a column for like ten years. I thought I thought
it'd be easy, peasy, you know, throw up some classes
a couple hundred bucks, you know, with no problem. And
then just like nobody signed up, and so I don't

(12:46):
and and then and subscriptions were like very low, and
so I think I think it's a combination of there's
just a lot of really great free writing out there,
and so I whether you're going to some it's like
tour who has a great backer McMillan, who can kind
of throw money at it. You know, they have deep pockets.
I mean, it could be a lost leader for them.
They can just use that to like set up their

(13:08):
publishing arm or whatever. But you know, when you can
get the stuff, when there's stuff online, you know, The
Dark Nightmare, Clark's World, you know, everybody. I think it's
just so much great quality content out there that people
aren't gonna pay big bucks for a subscription, which I
still thought was pretty cheap. Like, I mean, anything under
fifty two bucks a year to me seems you know,

(13:28):
it's a dollar a week. It just seems pretty Four
bucks a month doesn't seem like a lot to me.
But yeah, for whatever reason, people people balked at it,
and so he had to shut down. Richard ended up
taking the books he was gonna do and is rolling
him into his press, Rudan, and so he's gonna keep
doing the publishing arm. The teaching didn't work, but I'm
I'm still you know, through all this stuff, I've still
been writing, teaching my classes, you know, editing and publishing

(13:53):
for Gamut. So it was a really great second year.
It was really fun. I got to also reprint a
lot of really great stories by authors that I love
as well, and so between like new content from people
I know and new content from people that were totally
new to me. You know, I know there are definitely
some people that was their first pro sale because they
told me so, and they're very happy and excited about it.

(14:16):
It was just really a great experience. I discovered so
many voices. I was really happy. We got a really
nice one of the cool things about the original Gamut
and even when I ran Dark House Press too was wet.
We really got stories from all over the world, and
so I just kept being more broadly. We have a
great reprint out of Faia, which you know is black
speculative fiction, and we just you know, really a number

(14:37):
of like LGBTQ plus people all over the world just
really really excited a lot of voices that I either
knew or didn't know or have come to know, and
just I thought it was a really great mix of stories.
So you know, you try, it works or it doesn't
for whatever reasons. You know, I don't think coming through
COVID and everything and everything's just kind of weird right now,

(14:57):
and I think somebody people are kind of hunkered down
a little bit. But you know, we did our.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
Best, yeah, and that's all you can do. It sounds
like the the experience was quite stressful just because of money.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
You know, it was never stressful to me for money,
because I was never the money. My partner was. But
I think it was I think it was just frustrating
in that I didn't understand why certain things were happening, right, So,
like we even did all these surveys with people and
stuff when they said they want a B and C

(15:31):
and then we do a B and C and then
nobody showed up. So just I didn't know what happened.
Maybe people were sick of looking at my face. Maybe
they want to read other stuff. Maybe price point was
too high. Maybe I don't. I don't know, because I
thought with you know, like I said, with let ractor
going away, I thought we could fill that gap and
fill the classes. And you know, publishing is always a
tricky thing. So I don't know if we were publishing

(15:52):
the wrong things, the wrong way or what, but I
think I think it's a lot of different convergences at
one time just kind of led to it not being successful.
And so I can just try and put it out
there and you know, the public will tell you whether
whether they wondered or not.

Speaker 1 (16:09):
Yeah, now it went away before and then came back.
Do you think it'll ever come back again?

Speaker 2 (16:14):
Or My first reaction is god no, But I mean,
if the right situation, I guess, I don't know. I
try to never say never, you know, I think with
the right back, in the right setup, with the right
people involved, who knows. I mean, I've worked with a
number of different publishers with my writing as an editor.

(16:36):
You know, I had lunch with Ellen datloud Stock her
con two years ago, and I was like, maybe she's
gonna ask me to come be an editor at TOR
and like, no, she went, she just wanted to talk
and hang out. I was honored and I had great
lunch with her. But you know, I have all these
big ideas, you know, John Joseph Adams. I got a
story into Light Speed magazine this year and I've been
trying to get in there for like fifteen years, and

(16:57):
so I was very excited about that. And then talking
to John, I'm getting to know him a little bit,
like that was just super cool, super cool for me.
And then when I dropped me an email ask you
for the Gamut stuff, I was like, oh, that's cool.
And then I was like, you know, sitting off my
stuff as well, because I had that, I had the
story in Life Speed. I want to make sure it
gets back in front of you know, the whoever's reading
for that as well. And so I'm like, well, maybe

(17:18):
something will happen with John. Maybe maybe John will take
a look at all the great stuff I published a
Gamut and say, you know, I'm getting old. I want
to retire. Why don't you take over? The best Americans?
I don't know, I have these these crazy delusions. That's
what I thought. Elm I did too. I'm thinking about retiring, Richard.
Do you want to take over? You keep out of
did some stuff?

Speaker 1 (17:36):
I don't know. I think honestly, that's just a part
of being a creative person and where you'd like to
see yourself, right, because I have similar things. I'm like,
I'm gonna go do this, and this is gonna be awesome,
and all these people are gonna notice, and they're gonna
love me, and and they're gonna want me to go
do this, this and that, and then it never happens,
and you're like, well, yeah, okay, but.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
I think it's just stay open to it, you know,
and you never know. I mean enough crazy things have happened,
you know. I think about just my relationship with like
Cemetery Dance, for example, what a crazy roller coaster ride
that has been from being just a fan of their
work to my first pro sale was with Cemetery Dance.
End up being in an anthology called Shivers six alongside

(18:17):
Stephen King and Peter Straw and that was a big
deal to me. I think I cried when I got in,
and then I got into Cemetery Dance Magazine twice that
they ended up publishing my third short story collection. They
did the ebook and then Crystal like did the print version,
and so like I'm batting a thousand. It was this
whole crazy thing. And every time it's happened, I've had
to look at the email to be like, I think

(18:39):
I read the word not, you know, cause you get
you get the form letter, and when you get the
accepted sometimes it's just like it's not that much different.
They take out the word and then you get some
nice words at the end of you know, about why
they took it, while they liked it whatever. Even though
one was like for lf Speat, I was like, I
had to read it three times and make sure it
was true. So I mean, who knows. I mean, I
think it's your work. There's so many amazing writers out there.

(19:01):
Every year when I look at everybody who's nominated for
awards on the Recommended Reading List, all my friends, all
my students, there's just so much great stuff out there.
It keeps me young, it keeps me reading keeps me
inspired to write new stuff. And I tell my students
and my clients just take the shot. You never know,
you know, I go through my process. I always send
it to the dark. They reject me in two days

(19:22):
and I move on. You know, nightmares open over there.
They're reject me in four days. It's just like I
just I used to but I used to not even
take the shot, you know, I think, I don't even
think I even set my stuff to tour for a
long time because I just didn't think my stuff was
good enough. And they take a really long time. But
I'll say that I just i was like trying to
pre qualify and I'm like, oh, this story is okay,

(19:42):
and this was okay, and I'm like I want to
send them something really good. And then they'd also take
like nine months, and so I just I think sometimes
we show ourselves in the foot. But most of the
markets these days don't take as long anymore. They tend
to be pretty respectful about it. And you know, three months,
maybe three six months on Max, you know. I mean,
Cemetery Dance is so weird and so infrequent. I remember
when they opened up. I had a story sitting at

(20:04):
tour and I was like, oh, man, do I do
I simultaneous submit. It was like the last time tour
is going to be open, and I was like, oh,
I have to and then like then they the deadline
was coming. I'm like, I'm gonna send it to them,
and then Tore rejected me. Already I'd already been out
shopping there for like nine active months, and then I
sent to Cemetery Dance and then it was like another
six months before I heard it. Yees. So it's just

(20:25):
a year and a half on a story. It's crazy.
But if you never take the shot, and I think,
if you don't read the publications, if you don't get
a sense. I think one of the things I keep forgetting.
I tell my students is if you look at the
cover of Cemetery Dance, it says a magazine of horror
and suspense, and people forget the suspense part. The two
stories I got in are both kind of paranoid thrillers.

(20:47):
Not the second one definitely has a more horrifying ending,
but uh, they're kind of old school Cemetery Dance. So
I think, I don't know. I think it's always a crapsheet,
but I think if we read the read the work
by people, and I tried to read the you know,
a couple different best of the years every year from
one of my classes I teach. It really helps me
to get a better sense of what's happening, what are
people buying, what's working? Are there any trends, you know,

(21:10):
like who's getting in and why? And that's part of
what I teach in my workshop, is my Advanced Creative
Writing Workshop. You read Best Horror of the Year, Best
American Science Fiction and Fantasy, and Best American for Literary
and then we workshop two stories. So we read two
stories from the best and two stories from students, and
we compare them and we go where are they and
where am i? And how do I close that gap?
And what are they doing right? How can I apply

(21:31):
that to my work? And then when you when you
look at stories and they don't work, ask yourself why
and what do you not want to do in your writing?
And when you read stuff that you really like that
you give like an eight or eight and a half
or a nine out of ten, why what do you
like about it? And can you incorporate it into your work?
And then go read more of their work you know
you mentioned Laird. I've read a ton of layered stuff.
His story Tiptoe is when we taught in class recently.

(21:53):
Loved that story. Super creepy, Stephen Graham, Jones, Brian Everdson.
There's so many people I've read over the years that
have just really blown my mind. And really, Jeff vandermir
changed me as a writer, and I think that's you know,
that's why we read, and that's why I read and
write and edit and teaches. All that together, I think
helps me become a better writer.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
I know that you speak of being a teacher, and
I know that you used to run online courses. Is
that something you still do that? Is that what you're
talking about?

Speaker 2 (22:21):
Yeah? Yeah, I still have my website, Storyville, and I
teach my short story Mechanics class on there. I do
an at your own pace version you can download now.
Because lit Reactor used to do I did it for
ten years lit Reactor, I teach you like three times
a year, twenty students and would always sell out. Did
that for ten years, and then when they went under,
I didn't have a place to host it. So now

(22:42):
I'm in the process of finding a new place to
do that. But the mechanics class was one I came
out of my MFA program and I was like, well,
I feel like I could teach a basic class now.
And so I've been writing a column for lit Reactor
and I said, hey, I like to teach a basic class.
You guys up for it, and they're like sure. Next thing,
you know, ten years later, you know it's a success.
And been working really well studying Frey Tag's trying gole

(23:04):
freight Tex pyramid, you know, really kind of basic stuff,
but old school, you know, back to Plato and Socrates,
dramatic structure. But it's pretty to me if you aren't
doing these things, a lot of times that's where you
screw up. So you know, inside the incident, narrative, hook, exposition,
your world building, rising tension, internal external conflict, building to
a conclusion, a resolution, change, something has to change, and

(23:27):
then the denoment or Danie Maul, the epiphany, the understanding
of what has happened. That's often at the end of
the story. If you're crying or your move, it's often
that denoment. And I started doing that class. I taught
that for a while and then people were like, do
you have any do you have more advanced class, and
I was like, h I should develop one, and so
I put together my contemporary dark fiction class. And it
was a really nice intersection of was teaching four books

(23:49):
that I loved, Josh Mallerman's Bird Box, Jeff Vandymir's Annihilation,
Sarah Grand's Come Closer, and then China Miable's Perdito Street Station,
and that I taught. Each week would be a column
and an essay and an exercise, and I had the
columns I wrote and then the essay. The stories came

(24:10):
out of the anthologies I'd edited, So I pulled them
from the New Black and Exigencies and the Lineup and
all all the anthologies I've edited, because I knew those
stories really well, I'd edited them, I published them. They
meant something to me. There were personal stories to me,
and so I grab one of those stories and it
would talk about character, talk about studying it, talk about
you know, conflict or whatever, and then we that class

(24:32):
is sixteen weeks, a more expensive class, and then it
did that for a couple of years, and then people
were like, you know, you should do a workshop. I
was like, I should do a workshop. So I was like,
but I wanted to do in like a more advanced workshop.
So like my short story mechanics is like kind of
your basic rud of entary first time student, or like
high school level class. Dark fiction, I'll say, is like
a collegiate level class. It's six sixteen weeks, you know,

(24:54):
it's length of a semester. And then the workshop is
really critical analysis, and that's kind of like a the
MFA program where we assume you understand a lot of
things and we're trying to get better, get up into
that rarefied air where we can publish with these laite markets.
And so I teach that one a lot now, and
then I do like a novel in a year class,
which is a big class. It's a huge commitment, a

(25:15):
lot of time and money and effort, and it goes
all year long, and we have daily prompts and then
we meet the third Thursday of every month and we
write a book. First month is all pre writing, six
months of writing eleven thousand words a month rough drafts.
Then we do four months of editing, and then a
month in December of all exhibisson prompts. So the goal
in the year is to rough draft a book and

(25:36):
then fine tune it, turn it in a final so
I read it twice, get it over that like sixty
five thousand word mark, and then send it out and
shop it and publish it. And so those are that's
kind of the core group of the classes I teach.
And that's that That's been a really good kind of
mini program that I developed over the years. So if
people want to come in instead of spending you know,

(25:57):
thirty grand to get an MFA, you know, they go
through the mechanics of dark fiction to the workshop for
the novel, and you know, you're doing the whole thing
for like seven grand or something. You don't do the
novel in your class even less. And so that's been
a lot of my stuff I'm doing. I also do
some stuff for writers Digest online Writers I just at university,
and then I've been working for a group called the
Gillian Writers Group, where I've been a writing coach. So

(26:19):
that's been a whole new thing I've been doing. Just
been really interesting, trying to a whole different market of
people who are looking for someone to help coach them
through different projects.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
That is incredibly awesome. That's a lot.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
Thanks. Yeah, Well I'm doing this full time. Now. So
you know, I wasn't like I said, I was an
advertising for like seventeen eighteen years, and of those eighteen years,
I probably was writing for seven five and it basically
over time was trying to kind of, you know, reduce
my advertising and raise my writing. And so my living

(26:50):
now is a combination of what I earned as a
writer an editor. I edit manuscripts and novels just in
an addition to my class work teaching, and then any
publishing I do. So all that together is you know,
how I survive. And it's kind of terrifying because we
all here hustling, but you know, I control my life
to a certain degree. And then you know, I'm always

(27:11):
looking for cool opportunities. And then I you know, I
try to publish, you know, four to six short new
short stories a year and then Incarnate coming out this year.
You know, I haven't had a book out I think
three or five years, so I'm trying to be a
little more a little faster about it. But you know,
really I should be working on the next one right now,
and I'm not.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
I think that's every writer's yeah, of course, like there's
that saying, you know, I should be writing and a
lot of writers feel that way. Excuse me, now, Uh,
just to clarify people, if they're interested, they can go
to your website and find that information for classes and whatnot.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
Yep, I'm I'm on social media everywhere. I'm on. I'm
on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and blue Sky and
threads and everywhere. But yeah, it's just storybell Online dot
Com is my website and that's where all my classes
are hosted. That's also my editing stuff. It has all
my testimonials, all my students, and it has like a

(28:07):
section for a students work and where they've gone and
what they've done.

Speaker 1 (28:10):
And yeah, awesome, Yeah, all right, So moving on just
a little bit. You've written a lot of short stories.
I mean, you have four collections and that that's like
so many more stories than just say novels. Right, So
I when I see that, I assume automatically that you
have a love for the shorter form of storytelling. And

(28:32):
so I'm wondering, and I asked this because I have
a lot of authors on here who do that, and
I'm fascinated by that because I love short stories myself.
So I want to know from you, what is it
about short story that draws you.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
Yeah, it's a lot of things. Writing a book is hard,
and what I tell my students is, don't write a
book until you're ready. And what I when I usually
tell them ready is when you've kind of honed your
craft for a couple of years. And usually the way
you do that was short, And so I tell us too,
that's kind of what I did. That's why it's coming up.
I spent a number of years writing short stories before

(29:05):
I wrote my first book, because I think we need
to understand. We need to understand a couple of things.
We need to understand our voice. Who are what are
we saying? Where do we come from, what are our influences?
Who are the authors that influence us? What kind of
stories are we trying to tell? When I came up,
I was writing a lot more kind of neo noir
transgressive realism. And that's what my second third book, Disintegration

(29:27):
and Breaker, were a lot of my short stories were
like that, you know, the thing with like thrillers and
crimes that can easily lean into horror, realism can lean
into horror doesn't have to be supernatural. I did that
for a long time, and then one day I realized
that there weren't a lot of markets for mystery crime
thriller short stories. There's like Ellery, Queen and Hitchcock, and
like that's it. It's like they are in a whole

(29:48):
lot of places. But if you just push a little
bit into the dark, if you push into horror, if
you push into fantasy and science fiction, then opened up
this whole other realm of possibilities. So I write fantasy,
science fiction, and horror, and then every other kind of
subset under them. I write magical realism and new weird
coming out of the old weird, transgressive, Southern Gothic, you know,

(30:09):
you name it, and literary fiction too. Writing short stories,
you get to experiment. You can try out new things
once you figure out what your voice is. I was
doing a lot of kind of leaning into the new weird,
I think, you know, post Pretty Dell Street Station, post
Jeff Vandermers Annihilation. I had this new love of the
uncanny and the weird, and I just started pushing in

(30:31):
that direction a little bit more, and so I just
started You can experiment with things first person, third person,
one point of view, multiple points of view, past present tense,
second person. You can try out write a vampire story.
You can write a zombie story. You can write psychological horror,
you can write supernatural horror. You just start. There's so
much There's so much room in there to play and
write these different stories. Write a couple of the last

(30:52):
stories of a full corror story, like Puritanical Times that
has like a biblically accurate angel in it, that was
partly inspired by like Ted Chang's work, his story Hell
Is the Absence of God, with a story that kind
of blew my mind. And so you know, I you
know coming I'm post post Black Mirror. My work changed
a lot too, right, there was so many different places

(31:13):
where my voice change. Coming out of my MFA program,
my work changed a little bit. So short stories they
allow you experiment, to have fun, to play, and you
don't spend as much time on them, you know. I
might spend anywhere from a day to a week to
a month on a short story. But I'm not too
precious with my work. I'm kind of a feast or
famine kind of writer. I've been lucky enough to get
to know Stephen Graham Jones over the years and we've

(31:35):
become friends, and I consider him kind of an informal mentor,
and every time you've got to hang out and talk
about stuff, I just love talking shop because he's just
so down to earth. We're both like that. I think we,
you know, somewhere around like the fortieth or fifty story,
we were what we thought, Oh, I think I know
how to write short story now, and we're just also
not that precious with it. So, I mean, I've written
stories that I've started in the morning, you had a

(31:57):
deadline at midnight, you know, wrote a rough draft five thousand,
six thousand words, put it aside for an hour, came back,
reread it, cleaned it up, turned it in, got accepted.
The anthology ended up being the anchor story and an anthology,
and the anthology wins a Bram Stoker Award. So I mean,
but and then I have days I get absolutely nothing,
you know. So but I think I think part of

(32:17):
it is, you know, I don't know if you can
tell I have a little adhd I have a little
I'm a little bit of a spass. I a little bit,
you know, I get a little I can spiral and
get a little excited about things. But I like to focus.
And so like when I'm my short story. Once I'm
in that world, once I figure out where it is,
and when I understand what I'm doing, I want to
stay with it. Once once the cameras rolling, I can
see it all happening, like I just want to buckle

(32:38):
up and write it till it's done right. And so
I type pretty fast. I have like seventy words a minute,
and so I can, you know, I can. I can
do a story in a day. It doesn't happen all
the time, but I like that. The same thing with
books like I you see Me a long time. I
wrote the first half of my novel, Just Disintegration in
my MFA program, went to my second semester. My first

(32:58):
professor loved it. He didn't like it. He said he
thought that it was not it was that thesis material,
which means not good enough, and wanted me to write
literary short fiction with him. And I almost left the
program because I was so freaked out and bummed out,
and I realized it was an opportunity, and so I
studied with him and I learned a lot, and I'm

(33:20):
glad I did because it was kind of a little
bit of a gap in my knowledge, and I'm glad
I did not just authors that wouldn't have read, literary
authors that wouldn't have read, you know, I discovered on
the way, you know, Joyce, Carol Oates and Margaret Atwood
and Tony Morrison and Huuki Murakami and Cornracke McCarthy and
Dennis Johnson and Mary gate Skill, all these dark sheep
in the literary world. When he introduced me when I graduated,

(33:43):
like he he made me cry. I thought he hated me.
And he said, Henbane's gonna be the next even king
came out of this program, It's gonna be Richard Thomas,
and I was like, wow, I was like, I just
like it turns out that he was harder on than
people he he thought had a chance to. Yeah, and
so he really kind of cracked the whip. But my
work changed. It became more more, more weird, more uncanny,

(34:06):
and then kind of I think during COVID, I couldn't
just I couldn't be as bleak anymore because so much
was bleak around us that I kind of leaned a
bit more into hope punk So I started having more
hopeful maybe the ending, maybe the outcome, Maybe it's justice served,
maybe it's vengeance. Maybe it's just surviving the horror. Sometimes
the horror wins. But I couldn't just have bleak bleak,

(34:27):
bleak down, bleak, stay down, everybody dies everything was. I
can only write so many of those stories, right, Yeah,
So I think that it's very nature kind of leaned
more into the uncanny, lean more into a sense of wonder. Right.
I want the light and the dark. If you look
at the word awful, it just means full of awe, right,
And so that all can be a good or a
bad thing. And so I think along the way. You know,

(34:48):
my last short story collection is Spontaneous Human Combustion, was
a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award, and there was
a lot of hope punk in there, and it made
me feel really good to make that final ballot because
I wasn't sure how this stuff was working for the
people out there and how people in a wa you
felt about the horror I was writing. Was it horror enough?
And so that made me feel really good out of
like whatever sixty four collections that were recommended that you

(35:09):
be in the final six is pretty cool. So you
can write different stuff, you can experiment, you can dabble
in different genres, you can try out different genres you can,
and then you can connect with a huge group of people.
You connect with editors, you connect with publications, the art staff,
the not just the editors who acquire the work, but
the editors who edit the work. I've met so many people,

(35:32):
got to know so many editors, and met so many
authors and shared table of contents, and they help boost
your signal and they get your name out there, and
all of that is beneficial to you as you kind
of build your platform. If you build your you know,
your body of work, get your name out there, try
and get discovered, try and get invited into things, try
and you know, make a name for yourself. And so
all of that is why I write short stories. Plus

(35:52):
I just love doing it. It's the kind of thing
I can do between books what I'm writing a book.
I don't write short fiction at all, because I tend
to write my book. It's pretty fast. The last one, Incarnate,
I wrote fifty two thousand words in two weeks, four
thousand words a day. It was just four one thousand
words scenes, and then it was like three acts of
those you know, six chapters. Each chapter had four scenes
each seen thousand words, and it just it just seemed

(36:14):
to work really well for me, and once I got
the But I mean, I've been doing research for two years,
you know, watching the Thing and watching the entire TV
series of The Terror, and reading the book The Terror,
and like reading anything on Arctic and sin Eaters and Alaska,
and I watched documentaries and YouTube videos and I had
to fill my head with all the imagery so I

(36:36):
could push everything I learned aside, everything i'd read and
forget it and then just be in that space, right. Yeah,
And that's and that I think when I got it rolling,
that's that's how it works for me. That it's feast
or famine that works. But I tell my students, don't
write a book until you really have a strong sense
of who you are, because the biggest thing people don't
understand is it's like ten or fifteen times longer than
anything you've ever written, as far as the short story

(36:57):
five six thousand words, and the pace, the depth, the layers,
how much you have to talk about, how much meat
needs to be on the bone, and how much story
you have to tell and not just wander for you know,
seventy thousand words. Purposeful writing is hard, it's a marathon.
Whereas short stories, Stephen King said short stories like a
stolen kiss in an alleyway, I think stories are more

(37:19):
like a one night stand or a plank slash fiction.
Maybe a stolen kiss in an alley. But it's a
whole different beast. And I love writing books, but man,
they take a lot out of you. They take a
lot of work, and I just can't do them all
the time. And so in between those or be creative
and to connect with other people and get my name
out there and get recognition and make a little extra

(37:40):
money and connect with all these wonderful people like I
write short fiction. YEAHY has a long answer.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
No, No, great, you know, it's an awesome answer. But
I have to wonder, especially with writers, and I always
ask this too, who have a lot of collections out,
how is it that you go about choosing the stories
for a collection.

Speaker 2 (38:03):
It's interesting, spontaneous human combustion. I'd been, as I mentioned,
I've been kind of going through this kick where I
was writing a bit more hope punk, and so a
lot of the stories from just those three years just
made sense together because they all were kind of coming
from a very similar place and so they felt like
they belong together. Now there are some stories, and they're

(38:24):
the one you were just talking about that was in
Gutted Beautiful Horror Stories. Repent is a realism story and
it has kind of a heartbreaking ending to it. There's
hope in there, just not necessarily for a protagonist. And
so depending how you look at it. So there was
a grouping of stories, it seemed to fit together pretty well.
I'm putting together my fifth one now, and it seems

(38:45):
like I just kind of work in these clumps of
perspective for a while. And so I'm looking at everything
I've written in the last couple of years going into
this story, and they seem to all fit well together.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
There are a.

Speaker 2 (38:58):
Couple I'm not putting in stories that are just a
little weirder or don't quite fit the theme, or there's
like one I just have never really believed in. I
just don't think it's good enough, so I'm just not
gonna put it in. But aside from that, it's I mean,
I usually it's my stuff's always kind of a weird combination.
I mean, even spontaneous human combustion. There's like the last
story the novelette in their Ring of Fire is like

(39:19):
a it's a science fiction horror story, and like, you know,
but I think the heart of it is similar to
the heart of the other stories, even if they're slightly different.
So I like having a little bit of a variety.
I see it like a fifteen course meal. You know,
we're all gonna work well together, but you know this
amused boosh in this dessert and this you know soup
course versus this you know meat course. Is they're different flavors,

(39:42):
but they're all coming from the same chef, right. Yeah,
So I think I think a lot of what I'm
doing now is is again kind of in that uncanny space,
maybe pushing a little bit more into some places I
haven't been before, like the couple full core stories and
then a little science fiction here and there. I think
the Live Speed story will fit. It might be the

(40:03):
kind of the odd ball in the collection, just that
it's a little slightly different flavor. But I think I
think the heart of it is what feels the same
to me.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yeah, your answer there kind of reminds me of something LARRD.
Baron said once, or at least compared, you know, putting
together a short story collection is sort of like, at
least I think it was. Laireder said, this just sort
of like making a record, a music record, you know,
the songs, and you always have like a bunch of

(40:30):
stuff that you can choose from, but you always gather
the ones that make sense to go in that And
that always makes me think of B sides, Like, do
you think you could ever release like a B sides
where it's just like there's no theme or feeling. It's
just like all the ones that didn't make it into
a collection.

Speaker 2 (40:45):
There definitely are some oddball ones out there that probably
could be B sides. Yeah, I like what you say
about an album because it is kind of it is
kind of an orchestral movement is kind of a progression
for one thing the next. They have to have a
relationship to each other. You know, they're by the same band,
but doesn't mean they're gonna have the same flavor of
the same emotion. You know, it might be an upbeat one,
it might be a ballad, it might be you know,
a hard driving one. And you know, I'm one of

(41:07):
my favorite My favorite bands are probably like Radiohead and
like The Cure, and like, you know, The Cure has
kind of a strong flavor that usually is indicative in
most of the work. But Radiohead, it's such range and
such weirdest from album the album. You never know what
you're gonna get, right, So I think if I could,
if I could compare myself to anyone, well, I'm probably
more of the Cure than I am Radiohead, but I
would like to think I would like to think I

(41:28):
had Radiohead.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
I mean, well, you know, there's nothing wrong with saying
you're like the Cure. That's pretty damn good too.

Speaker 2 (41:34):
Yeah. Yeah, well, but I mean I think I'm probably
a bit more email, probably a bit more dark in moody,
you know that.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
I don't know, honestly. If I were to put your music,
your your work to music, I would go with more Radiohead. Yeah, yeah,
because it has that dark undertone Radiohead that I mean.
Obviously the Cure can too, but they do have like
their pop poppy songs. When Radiohead do their poppy songs,
it's still dark as shitty, you know.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
Yeah, it's funny to say that. We'll during COVID one
of the things my family did, my wife and my
son and my daughter, we would listen to albums together
and that was a really cool experience because I can't
remember the last time when I was a kid, you
drive around and either had a cassette tape or you
had a CD, but you pop it in and you
just played the whole thing, right. You know, if you
had a cassette tape, you aren't stopping and picking songs.

(42:20):
You're putting a cassette tape in and you're just letting
it go. It hits the D and it flips over
and then it keeps going, like you just listen to
the whole fucking album, right, And so I can't. I
was just so funny because my son's just starting to
get into some of my some bands I like, and
I was looking at some old You two and R E. M.
And I was like, I was like, thinking about the album.
I what's the orange cover on the album? One of
the albums I listened to college, listened to it over

(42:42):
and over and over again. I'm like, I listened to
the album front to back all the time. And so
I think the experience of a collection, it should be
this progression, it should be this relationship from the same chef,
from the same band, the same painters, series of war artworks,
you know, there's a relationship to each other. But I

(43:02):
think I think you can have a little fun with it.
I mean, I think people people who've been reading If
people have been reading my work for years and this
is not their first of my work, if there they've
read a number of my collections, I think they have
a pretty good idea of what they're going to get
when they re won my stories. And so I try
to give them what they come to me for, what
they come to expect. What you know, I want to
satisfy and make them happy, but I also want to

(43:23):
kind of do something I don't want to keep disregard
to chain the same old story. Yeah, so you know,
I was really happy to write this puritanical horror story
because I don't write a lot of historical fiction because
I find it hard as to do the research. But
I kept seeing the movie The Witch and it really
just drove that vision. And so that, paired with the
biblically accurate angel, turned into a pretty cool story. Thought

(43:43):
was quite weird. I liked that quite a bit. And
then I had like another some other folk coreps I
was doing too, So I think, you know, I like
to I think at the end of the day. It's
still going to be me, you know, but I want
to be able to surprise you a little bit too, right.

Speaker 1 (43:59):
Yeah, absolutely, Keeping your Toes now recently released in Karna.
Yeah that that came out? Was it early October?

Speaker 2 (44:06):
September?

Speaker 1 (44:07):
December eleven's actually oh wow, okay, what what a date?

Speaker 2 (44:11):
Yeah? Yeah, I don't know what we're thinking.

Speaker 1 (44:16):
Well, well, you know what, it doesn't matter because it's
a good it's a great book. Can you can you
please give us a synopsis? What's what's the.

Speaker 2 (44:26):
Yeah. When I think of the word incarnate, I mean,
to me it means made flesh and so part of
what inspired this book, it was a couple of different things.
There's a short story I teach in one of my
classes by Mikayla Moore. Mikayla Moore a set called the Familiars.
It was in the Van and Vandair Giant Bible called

(44:47):
The Weird. It's like eight hundred pages, that one. When
I was looking for stories for The New Black, the
first anthology I edited, that's one of the stories it took.
And there's this entity under the bed of the young boy.
It's easy to I say, it's an imaginary friend. It's
a creature under the bed. It's a ghost or a
spirit to me, it's something else. To me, it's a

(45:08):
manifestation of grief and loss from his dead father. And
so it's not just a ghost or a spirit, it's
something else entirely. So that had been in something I've
been chewing on for a long time that I wanted
to put into a book. Pair that with the idea
of the sinator, and I've been fascinating with the idea
of a sinator, and then the idea of like Barol, Alaska,

(45:28):
in like the sixty eighty Days of Darkness, I thought,
what would grow, what would flourish the darkness living in
Chicago and the cold winters, and so it all came
together in kind of this perfect storm of I want
to tell a story about a sinator who lives in Barrel, Alaska,
and he's there to kind of help the community. So
the book is three acts, three different characters, and Sebastian

(45:52):
is the first protagonist, and he's been doing this a
long time and this is his latest assignment. There's a
tear in reality, and through the terear come these monsters.
What we're not sure of is is this a bad
place is drawing the creatures to it? Are the creatures
by coming here? Are they making it bad? The other
thing that happens when he absolves people of their sins.

(46:13):
He goes to their deathbed or after they've recently died,
and he eats a meal, something special, and then he
absolves them of all their sin so that when they
die or when they can move so they can move on,
whether they move on to heaven or reincarnate or valhalla,
whatever you believe. His job to make sure that they
are forgiven and can pass on to wherever they need

(46:34):
to go next. But then he has to do something
with that sin he eats, so instead of ingesting it
and keeping it, he bursts it into life. And so
that's kind of the incarnate part of it is these
people's souls made into flesh. Now there's no tear in
reality because there are rules of when he could do
this and when he can't do it. If the terror
is closed and he bursts something into existence, there's nowhere

(46:58):
for it to go. Sometimes bad things happen and people
betray him, or things or whatever goes on in the community,
and he might birth the creature into existence that has
nowhere to go but to stay there. And so that
also accumula helps to make the place this kind of
dark stain, this eighty days of darkness, and all the
bad things that happened there. There's enough already going on
there in Alaska as it is, you know, being alone

(47:20):
for so long, they're locked in. It's frozen, no cars
in and out, no boats in it and out, no
planes in and out. You know, it's like isolation. The cold,
the drinking, the death, the violence. It's just it's a real,
a really dark place to be. And so that seemed
like a fun thing to write about. And so I
wanted to write about the sin, eating and the creatures,
and so I knew it was gonna be like one, two, three,

(47:42):
four meals. I'm also I like to cook. I have
been a bit of a foodie. I love food, and
so every meal in the book is something I cook.
The first meal he has is my chili recipe, down
to every ingredient I have in there. And so it's
just again it's this balance of beauty and horror, right
back to the magic lightness and the darkness of wanting

(48:02):
you to eat the meal and to salivate and enjoy it,
and then things turn sour, things go bad. The rules
are he has to also eat whatever they put in
front of him. He has to finish the whole thing,
no matter how bad it is. And so you know,
that is his own experience of what he has to
go through. And so his whole first act is all about,
you know, creating these creatures. He's trying to send them

(48:22):
through this tear to battle these other creatures. But by
the nature of what he's doing, he can't take a
knife till gunfight. He can't, you know, take a puppy
dog to battle this like kaiju dinosaur like creature that's
coming through. He's gonna lose. And so he has to
work with the worst people in the community because they're
the ones that have these nasty, tainted souls and here
are the ones that give birth to these the worst monsters, right,

(48:44):
So it's this really tough relationship he has. The second
act is a switch over to a desert wasteland with
this creature, this mother monster, and how she's trying to
save her children and save the land. And there's a
connection with that that comes back to the first act.
I don't want say any more about that, and then
the third act comes back to the young boy Kalik,
who'd been studying with our protagonist in the first act.

(49:06):
So now he takes over as a sinator. But much
like kind of my generation or my parents' generation to
my children's generation, now klik Uh he feels he feels
like the absolution is bullshit, right, He's He's like, uh so, basically,
you're a bad person. On your deathbed, he ask God
for for goodness, and you know, you get forgiven and

(49:27):
you could come back and do it all over again.
And he's like, no, no, I'm not gonna do that.
He's like, if you're bad, I'm gonna there's gonna be consequenced.
And so he changes it the way he practices his
magic to amplify whatever you are. And if you're good
with flaws, you're gonna get into heaven anyway you're you're
you're always going to get in. God's not asking for perfection, right,
But if you're bad, then there's gonna be consequences. And

(49:50):
so he changes things. And so that's his own journey
of what he does and how he feels about his
community and the ride that he goes on. It was
a lot of fun to write. It was a hard book,
I think, one of the probably the hardest books. I've
had to write. So much research, so much I had
to learn before I could really feel the confidence to
write it. But then I also wrote, like I said,
fifty two thousand words in two weeks and remaining like

(50:11):
it was a total seventy eight the ust. I wrote
every Friday for the next like six weeks and got
it done. So it just kind of came spilling out
of me for the most part.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
Does it feel like maybe like all the work you
did for like the two years before you started writing,
it just built up until when you started writing it
just kind of exploded at it.

Speaker 2 (50:30):
Yeah. Yeah, it's a weird thing because I don't know
how much you've written stories and books and whatnot. But
it's it's a process and it's a it's I never
feel confident writing anything, whether it's flash fiction or five
thousand or a novel it or a novella or novel
if I don't know what the hell I'm talking about,
and I have to know it so well that I

(50:51):
can write to it without having to constantly stop and
do research. I did. I even hired a guy RepA Kemp.
We wrote a short story together that actually made Ellen
dat Loo's long list for Best Hour of the Year.
He's a great writer in and of himself, but he
spent time in Alaska in the Arctic, and so I
hired him to help me get it right, you know,
like Stephen king Hire is like a firearms expert. I

(51:12):
heard rebuilt to let me know what I was screwing
up and then to give me, you know what else
I've been missing. You know. There was a great example
he talked about this ritual of when new people came
to the Arctic or Alaska, depending where are, they would
be gifted with a block of this pure like glacier ice.
So they just you come out on your front porch
and then be a big block of ice with like

(51:32):
an ice pick in it. And it was actually when
you chip it off and let it melt, it's like
this really pure, amazing water, like glacier water. And but
if you didn't know better, you'd be like, what's this
threat of ice? And a picture? So yeah, so it
was it was a lot of research, and I think
it's it's one of those things that you went I
prefer not to do research I really like to write

(51:53):
from a place of one emotion or I like to
write from things I feel I right to have feeling
to drive my work. But it's like, know, hours of
research to get a page of material, a page of
notes to give you a sentence of detail. So I
don't know what all I absorbed over, you know. Then
visual mediums worked better for me, Like watching The Terror
for like three years or however long it was. There

(52:13):
was so much imagery and so much winter and ice
and wind. It just really helped fill my head. So
when I sat down to write the story, I knew
exackly where I was and it was just a matter
and I knew the characters. And then depending on the act,
like the first act or twenty four chapters, I knew
that one the most, and so out of those twenty four,

(52:35):
there are maybe sixteen scenes that I knew. The others
I had to find along in the way, and there
was a lot of really fun, happy accents. I like
to find things kind of organically as I go, and
so when I run into something, I'm like, oh, that
makes sense. Besides the three characters, the fourth character in
the book is really the place, the land, the Arctic wasteland,

(52:57):
this really cold, dangerous place. Sure that doesn't care about you.
If you go outside and you're stupid, you're just going
to die. Yeah, no one's looking out for you. You're
just gonna freeze to death, right, And so that's whenever
I got stuck, I would just lean into you know
what I what I like to do, what I think
I do best. You know, I'm a maximalist writer, so
I would lean into setting and sensory detail, and I

(53:19):
would lean into the setting, so the place and the
danger and nature. There's a scene early on in the
book where Sebastian is walking from his house down to
the diner and he's talking to a local guy about
you know, this this pool and when they're going to
close the bridge, and this woman's unloading your trunk and
her toddlers just kind of behind her in a little
pink snowsuit, just kind of you know, bobbling along, and

(53:42):
out of the woods come tumbling these two feral dogs, yea,
and they're attacking each other and they're rolling around and
it happens so fast, and then next thing you know,
they're like they tumbling to the girl and it's just
his ball of fur and pink and fluff and everything,
and they're like, holy shit. And so he's like Sebastian's
talking to this guy. The guy run and gets his gun.
It comes over, he takes it. He's like, take the shot,

(54:02):
Take the shot, you know, and it's like he shoots
one dog, shoots the other dog kills him. It's bastard
runs over, you know. The mother comes, run over my baby,
you know, like it gets like he pulled right, you know,
the fluff and the coat and like there's a smear
of blood across her head. And he checks her out
and she's totally fine. Yeah, it's his blood from the
dog or like a scratch on her head, like all
the padding and all stuff. Like they could never really
get to her, and she was just totally fine. But

(54:24):
in that moment, you think, oh shit, she's dead, right,
tearing her to piece. And so I I purposely this
is me leaning away from the bleak and towards the
badgup in wonder, I didn't want to kill this girl,
this little baby girl, toddler, both the rabbit dog, but
I wonder remind people of how dangerous it is if
you're not paying attention. You're unload the truck of your car,
and you let your daughter wander away. Bad things happen,

(54:45):
so they got to pay attention and so that like
that was a scene I hadn't planned on writing, but
it felt organic to the moment and seemed to work
for me.

Speaker 1 (54:51):
So yeah, I just wanted to mention that Inkurnate is
one of the most unique books I have ever read,
thank you. The three parts are all very different from
each other, well, the first and the third have obviously
they're similar for a reason. Yeah, but they're still very different.

(55:13):
But what really kind of threw me at first was
the second act. And I want to mention also that
there's a lot of heartbreak in this book, Like, especially
in that second act, there's like so much heartbreak, but
there's also a lot of hope too, like there is
a balance, And I was really impressed with that, Like,

(55:34):
how do you that's got to be hard to write.

Speaker 2 (55:39):
Yeah, when you understand what's really going on in the
second act, which I'm sure you do, you understand it's
connection back to the first act. There's a lot of
sympathy for the mother Monster on what she's going through.
She comes into that story talking about the loss of
her family and her children and all these things, and
it's just like she's alone, and she's become kind of

(56:01):
bitter and angry and doesn't give a crap about anybody.
But that realizes that, yeah, yeah, but as is the
way of the Arctic, as is the way of the desert,
you have to survive, you have to be kind of,
you know, cold hearted at times. But what she discovers
along the way is that she cares about this land,
and she cares about the animals. She realizes she's a

(56:22):
part of something bigger than her, right, and so she
works hard to try and save that that place. And
over time, as you really you start to understand her
connection with the other side and the connection with the
first act and what's going on, what's passing back and forth,
how that works. And so she goes on this journey,
and if you're paying attention and the second act, you'll
also pick up on what her journey is really about

(56:43):
and where she really comes from. Right. And then when
we flip back over to kind of like like he's
taking over based on what happens to the first act,
and he feels that things should be different, and so
that it's a really interesting journey because I think it
all the first act is kind of everything I thought
of be in a Sineator story, Like it was kind
of the conventional point of view and the conventional way

(57:05):
I thought this book would play out. Switching over to
her act was a departure, but I just felt like
I couldn't do the whole thing in the Arctic. I
felt like it was too much, too cold, too much
for repetition and redundancy. And when I realized who she was,
it really pushed me to I wanted to write a
desert horror story. I wanted to write, you know, a

(57:25):
dying land story. And so it gave me a chance
to have a different flavor on this trip, right, you know,
as opposed to all the cold. And then when it
comes back to Calik, he's like he's a different person,
So he sees the community differently than Sebastian does, and
he has different goals and yet there's still a lot
of threats to the people that live there, and he

(57:46):
decided to do his own thing there. I think some
of the more chilling moments of the book come in
some of his passages. I will say though, and first,
I appreciate the compliments. That really means a lot to me,
because I was very worried that this structure in the
format was going to be a problem for people. And
my agent even said she wasn't entirely sure about it,
and I said, I said, well, let me finish it.
Let's see how it goes. I like it where it is.

(58:07):
I know it's a little weird. I don't know how
the movie would work. Maybe the middle section will just
be it be an a twenty four film. It'll be like,
you know, yeah, weird Arctic in the first half. The
second act will be all animated, and then the third
act will I think I have an idea of what
they could do, but I want to say out loud
because I might spoil some pots. But I think getting
to the third act with Klik, like some of the
things that he sees, the way he's connected to his people,

(58:30):
and the way he changes and decides. You know, I'm
not gonna you could say it it's a progressive push
left in this country or left in the world towards
you know, just more more community, more support for people
in general, towards socialism or whatever you want to call it.
Of the support and community and then he he says,
you know, if you do bad things, you're gonna be
punished and if you need help, I mean, we're gonna help,

(58:52):
but we need you know, we're doing this together, but
you're not gonna be forgiven. You know. It's like there's
a difference between the difference between you know, salacceees somebody
and just a consequence of your actions. And you know,
I think we're starting to see some things happen in
this country. And I didn't write it as a political
manifesto of or any but there are some issues at
the heart of it that do mean something to me.
And I you know, at my heart, I care about people.

(59:15):
And it's really frustrating when we realize we have enough
food to feed everybody, we have enough for everybody, that
this country isn't doing the things a lot of developed
nations are already doing. I just feel like we're just
falling short to where we could be. So this is
a horror story, and it's a weird horror story, but
there's no there's underlying meaning in there. I also try
to I try to write my books Jason kind of

(59:36):
on different levels. I try to write it body mind
and soul, in that. If you just want to be entertained,
if you don't want to think about stuff, if you
don't want to look at politics, you want to look
at symbolism, you don't have to. You can just read
the book, be entertained, watch the chest pieces, little around
and be entertained. That's my first goal is can I
grab your attention, get you turning the pages, and then
be an exciting read. If you want more, I then

(59:59):
try and write it another level where there's emotion, where
if you're open to it emotionally, I will try and
move you. I will try and scare you, turn you on,
freak you out, like whatever's happening. I want to have
an emotional connection with you if you're open to it.
And then intellectually is I want to try and do
something that will kind of blow your mind, stimulate your
brain pan so that when you're done reading the book,
you're still thinking about parts of the book later. And

(01:00:20):
so yeah, that's that's what I'm trying to do. You
talked about writing and how you know what it takes
out of us. I think when I do my best work,
I feel spent when I'm done. When I wrote the
second half of my book Disintegration, forty thousand words in
a week. I tried. I thought I was going to
throw up. I was like, I was empty. I'd been
that guy, I'd been through hell with him, and it

(01:00:41):
took a lot out of me. Same thing with Incarnate,
you know, writing the bulk of that in two weeks
took a lot out of me. When I write a
really intense short story in a day, I'm it's method writing.
I'm in there, it's a character, it's myself, it's a camera.
We're all together watching this thing. It's unfolding, and I'm
I'm in that moment. I'm living it right. And when
you go through these really traumatic, intense, wondrous experiences, man,

(01:01:04):
it takes a lot out of you. So I feel
like when I'm writing, if I don't feel spent at
the end of what I've done, but I don't feel
like vulnerable, if I don't feel a little sick, a
little exposed, a little uneasy about what I've done, then
then I feel like I probably haven't pushed myself hard enough.

Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
Awesome, like, this book will stick with me for a
long time. I think it might make my like my
top ten list at the end of the Year isn't
necessarily a big deal, but I think it's going to
make It's going to make it a spoiler earliert, it's
going to make it because this book, this book haunts
me for various different reasons.

Speaker 2 (01:01:39):
Yeah, can you talk about that. I would love to
hear what your experience has been like in what ways.

Speaker 1 (01:01:44):
In reading the book?

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
Well?

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
Yeah, well, while reading it, the language and the things
that happened in the book, just my brain was able
to just latch on and hold on for the ride.
So when the emotions came, I felt the emotions. But
there are certain scenes in this book that are really
hard to read, especially in the third act, and I

(01:02:08):
think you probably I don't want to say it in
case I spoil something, but there's a certain situation with
a dog that was really hard to read through. I
was like, oh my god, I remember, I remember where
I was reading that, and I think I'll always remember
and uh, it's just that scene. But the ending too,
just with the I'll just say the mob Boss that

(01:02:30):
was fascinating and interesting. The whole ride itself. It's such
a roller coaster. You're up and then you're down. You're
up and then you're down. Then for a little while,
you're down a lot. There's a lot of dread and sadness,
and then you go back up, and then you go
back down. It's just a ride, man. It's like it's
like every time I sat down to write, I didn't
know what drug I was going to be.

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
Thank you, thank you. Yeah, I try to well. I
talked to my students about it. You know, when we
move on to books, I say, let's let's do that
one hundred and twenty crayon box, right, Let's lose all
the colors, the burnt sienna, all the weird color. I
wanted to I want it to be a tapestry, right.
I wanted to be the full experience. And when you
when you write all, I didn't want it to all
just be the one note, the one dark note, the

(01:03:13):
one piece of dark chocolate, just the banging the gong,
just the heavy metal on the ending. I want that
in moments, but I want it to be balanced by
the balance, by bird song, balanced by magic and light.
Because whatever you do, if you do it too much
in a row, you just it just deads your sentence
to that experience. And so there is a lot of dread.
There's a lot of darkness, there's a lot of bleakness,

(01:03:35):
but there's a lot of hope in there too.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
There's a lot of hope too that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
I tried with every story to find a way to
at least speak to what they've been through, if not resolve.
And you know, some people are gonna win, some people
are gonna lose, but I think there's also a lot
of awareness of their place in everything. And I purposely
did try to put some hope at the end because
I had to right yea these days especially right.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
But that's that's part of the thing. I'm used to
reading dreadful stuff because you know, I read a lot
of horror, and some people never leave that dread.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
They stick.

Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
They stick there, which is fine, honestly, But I love
it when you have those sprinkles of hope or good
things thanks that that really changed the way you feel
while you're reading.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
Yeah, I wouldn't compare this to the books I'm going
to mention, but when I think about epic sagas, when
I think about Perdida, when I think about The Stand,
when I think about the when I think about like CLIVEE.
Barker's Weve world. I think about McCammon swan song, like
these are journeys, these are epic sagas that it should.
It puts you through the ringer, and like, you know
this while this is only seventy eight thousand words, like
I want the full experience for you, right, And so

(01:04:40):
I wanted to. I want to. I want you to
come away from it, you know, as broken and moved
and hopeful as I was writing it. Right. Yeah, I
remember reading the end of it. My daughter. She used
to walk around the block with me when I was
writing the book, and I talked to her throughout the
whole process. She and I talk about my writing a lot.
She's read a lot on my work. Now that she's older,

(01:05:00):
she can read it off. She read my last collection.
She likes my work. And I wanted to read the end,
and I wanted to. I was worried it was gonna
be too preachy, too sappy. I don't want to be
pushing anything down anybody's throat. And I read her the
last couple of scenes and I look over and her
tear your eyes are tearing up, and I was like,
I was like, oh, was it good? She's like yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
I was like Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
I was like, okay, because I want to. I want to.
I'm reaching for that. You know, Chuck Pollinick says, you know,
teach me something, make me laugh, and break my heart
if you're not a humorous I think there is some
humor in this book, but it's dark humor and not
a lot of humor. But I also like to teach
me something, you know, scare me, freak me out, and
break my heart. And so I think it's it's the

(01:05:40):
heartbreaking stuff I think that I like to work towards,
because that's just compassion, that's just feeling, that's emotion, and
so you know, the opposite of love is not hate.
The opposite of love is apathy. And so whatever I
want you, I want you to experience some strong emotions.
My wife won't even read myself. She won't read my
literary stuff from my MFA because she said she can
feel herself being manipulated. And I made her cry with

(01:06:02):
the stuff I've written, and I'm like, well, that's one
of my literary stories. I'm like, well, you definitely don't worry.
Although I will say I will say that she has
been reading Incarnate. She came to a reading I did,
and I was like, you sure people gonna be reading horror?
Are you okay with this? And she's like, yeah, no,
I want to come support you. I was like, okay,
and I read. I read the opening of the book
and she she's like, that's like really good. You think

(01:06:24):
she has read myself for like ten years. She's like,
you've gotten a lot better. She's like, I would like
to read your book. And I was like, what we're
getting on the plane we're coming back from Stoker Can
and she started reading the book and I was just like,
I've arrived. So I get it. And I know it's
not for everybody, but you know, when I look at
the comps on this book too, obviously the thing in
the Terror, but you know John Language, the Fisherman, Stephen Graham,

(01:06:45):
Jos the only good Indians, but also Lois lottery is
to give her. And so there's like a rural kind
of native kind of folk horror kind of gif there's
a hopeful part to the story that I wanted to
weave into it that was important to me. And so
I think if you and then the Giver, if I
remember correctly, was kind of a set of three or
four novellas. Each book was really short. There were a

(01:07:07):
couple and they continue the story, which is kind of
how I did mine. And so I I think some
of that literary stuff, you know, got folded in as well,
because I wanted I wanted it to be there, and
I didn't want it to be just even going through
the first act where you're starting to see the repetition
of some of the things of the meals and the creature,
even then, I had to look for a variety and
obviously building up to the climax at the end of

(01:07:27):
the first act. But yeah, I don't like I don't
like repeating things, but I understand repetition for effect. I
love a progression of things. I like the rule of threes.
And then I have a thing called the Brian Evanson
rule of four where he or he often does, we'll
do the rule of threes and the fourth thing he
does is like really weird and abstract, and so I
try to follow that as well, and so, you know,
I want it to be all those things, which is

(01:07:50):
a lot to ask of a book, I know.

Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
But yeah, one final question about this, and actually this
could go to all your work, is the pros now
I've read dense pros where my brain just it kind
of repels it. It's like, I don't like this right,
and it's a struggle. Your pros can be kind of
dense too, but it's dense in such a way that,
like I mentioned earlier, my brain just grabs onto it

(01:08:14):
and suddenly I'm there. I'm not saying that your writing's
like Margaret Atwood, but it kind of because Margaret Atwood
has a similar sort of her pros can be kind
of dense, but my brain will latch onto it in
a similar way. So I can't write like that at all.
I've tried and it just doesn't work. So I'm wondering
how how how do you do that? Like how when

(01:08:35):
you get into the language, the meat then the potatoes
of it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:39):
Yeah, it's it's tough. I think it's a lifetime of learning.
It's a lifetime of reading the people that I ape,
the people I look to. You know, when I read
Cormack McCarthy when I was in my MFA program and
so like Blood Merdian is a book that had a
profound effect on me. And that's a very dense book.
I can read that in small bites. I would say
the same thing for other maximalism people like China Milk

(01:09:01):
mihaibles A. Prettio Street Station was a big influence on me.
That book is such a perfect mix of fantasy, science fiction,
science fiction, and horror. And then more recently Jeff Vandermire's work,
especially Annihilation. There is stuff in there I've never seen before,
echo horror, environmental horror, the stuff he does with things
that are not blood and guts violence but are ash
and moss and fungus and greenery, and the things he does.

(01:09:26):
I'm just really the crawler. I think about Perdido with
the Weaver and all these different Really, for me, it's
all those people I've always loved, like you know, dense music.
You can look at people like like I mentioned Radiohead
and The Cure, like poetry. I've always appreciated music. I'm
I'm a I used to play saxophone for a number
of years. I'm a class trained tenor. I sang in

(01:09:48):
choir in high school and college. I went to Bradley University,
performed with the pure A Civic Opera and the orchestra,
and so I my whole life, I've sought out these
moments of these larger than life, you know, experiences, right,
And so I think when I write, it's it's me
trying to tell the story but in a way that

(01:10:09):
goes as deep as I can without without it being
patting and without it being purple. I don't know if
that makes sense, but it's yeah, it's exactly part of
it is.

Speaker 1 (01:10:18):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
It's been a long time kind of figuring out my voice,
and I think I'm different. If you read some of
my earlier work, is it probably a little more stripped down.
This book was definitely me leaning into all the sudding
and sensory because, like I said, the backdrop, the place
in nature is like the fourth biggest character in here,
and it's in here a lot. It's the tapestry upon
which I hang all of their stories. So I wanted

(01:10:41):
it to be immersive. I wanted all these you know,
I tell my students when it comes to setting in
sensory detail, you know, it's all five that sight, sound, smell, taste,
touch all of them. And so I just I've gotten
used to looking for those opportunities to use all five
senses whenever I can, and then I just I try
on my rough drafts, I just try and get it down.
But on my edits, I try and improve, and so

(01:11:04):
on the first draft maybe I say, you read, and
maybe on the next draft it's you know, it's it's
a different shade of red, or it's a color that's
really an emotion or something else. I try to create
things that don't exist. I like juxtapositions, like putting things
together that are a weird combination, because I think, like
in poetry or other dense maximalists, you're creating something that

(01:11:25):
nobody else is created by not in your verbs and
verbing your nouns and just kind of shoving things together
in weird ways. Because I'm trying to create something original,
something new and fresh and different at the same time
trying to be accessible and be familiar in a way
that you can read my work, you know, without it
being too much. I've had people call my work purple.

(01:11:45):
I've had people say it's too much, and I know,
I'm sure I am not for everybody, but I try
to make sure that you know. I think it's vonnega
It says every sentence must advance the plot or reveal character,
and I think Legwin or somebody said, or build the world,
you know, setting so between the I'm constantly going between
those three things, and so I'm always looking at the
place I'm in and the people I'm with and what's
going on in the moment, and then I try and

(01:12:07):
play up what's happening in that moment. So like you'll
notice there isn't a lot of food in the book
until we get to that first bowl of chili, and
then it's like hyper focused on the food. When we
get to like calic later or the first time we
go into the diner, it's like suddenly everything's cold and
like blue and white and just like empty and sterile
out and then you come into a space and it's
warm and it's colorful and it's all these smells and

(01:12:29):
garlic and onions. Like I just try to be open
to what I see in the world when I write it,
and if I'm really if I'm channeling it, well, then
I'm kind of a method writer. I kind of I'm
in that moment. So I just try to record and
recount what I see. And then the last edit I
do when I edit something is like down to like
the ed versus I how does it read. I either

(01:12:52):
read dialogue out loud or have a very loud internal voice.
They have noticed tonight I'm very talkative that I can
hear dialogue very They don't have to read it out,
but I will see what words that trip over, and
I'll change a needy to an i g if it
flows better, or if I see a repetition of words,
I'll change every book, I'll have one word. I mean,
obviously this one it was like ice and snow and
I had to change. Poor repo helping me get this

(01:13:15):
book right. But I had a book where they used
the word sheen like twenty seven times for no reason.
Maybe it was a hot book. I look for opportunity
to be weird. I look for opportunity to be you know,
I want to be human. I want to be emotional,
and I try to just tap into whatever's happening in
that place in time, so that you know, I haven't
been to the Arctic. I also haven't been to Mars.

(01:13:36):
I also haven't killed anybody. So I just try and
absorb everything I've ever seen. That's why I constantly go
and like see all these E twenty four films and
Neon and Bluemhouse, and that's why I'm constantly reading all
his anthologies. Is I'm trying to pick up what I
can from all the people around me, surround myself with
geniuses and just kind of absorbed through osmosis what they're
doing and see if I can't get a small model
that back on the page.

Speaker 1 (01:13:57):
Absolutely, that's a great answer. That's something what I've I'm
trying to do to surround myself with people who are
smarter than me, is what I The way I like
to say it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:06):
Yeah, but if I walk into a room and I
think I'm the smartest guy in the room, I need
to find another room.

Speaker 1 (01:14:11):
Yeah, absolutely, because I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:14:14):
I don't learn that way, you know. And I love
I definitely love teaching. I love helping people. And I
hold open doors and windows because people did that for
me for many many years and still are and so
I try to, you know, pay that forward. But you know,
I have to keep reading. You know, there was a
time I couldn't read Cormack McCarthy. I'm still trying to
get through House of Leaves. There's a lot of Ted

(01:14:35):
Chang's work I just don't get, but I try. And
then you know, when stuff works for me, it works,
and you know that's those are the moments where I
have epiphanies. That's why we have you know, changes, and
that's where I have an evolution of whatever we're trying
to do.

Speaker 1 (01:14:47):
Right. Yeah, all right, So we have a question, yeah,
from the audience, just just one sure, and I'm not
too sure I can answer this one myself. We'll see
if you can. I usually I usually ask a question
at the end of each interview to each guest, asking
what authors you think you should people should be talking

(01:15:09):
about more. So I'm gonna kind of combine that with
this one. And the question is readings. Gentlemen looking for
some scary reads just started to read more again? What
top five horror books would you suggest to pick up? Thanks?
And this by Steve Mayers. Thank you Steve for asking
that question. This is tough for me because I get

(01:15:30):
creeped out sometimes, but I don't typically get scared when
I read horror. I can get scared when I'm watching
a horror movie, but not so much when I'm when
I'm reading. It's not easy question to answer, but I
guess first I would put I think, honestly like Stephen

(01:15:51):
King's Pet Cemetery was the last half of that book
is pretty scary. It's scary for many different reasons though,
So I don't know if that would if that's something
you would be looking for, Steve.

Speaker 2 (01:16:04):
Yeah, So the books I teach teaching my dark fiction class,
I teach him because I love them. So I'll give
you five books I don't and then we'll see which
one works for you. But if you haven't read Josh
Mallerman's Bird Box, it's a great book. When I read it,
I read it the day after Thanksgiving. I read it
in one setting at my mole's house, by the fireplace,

(01:16:25):
sweating for like three hours.

Speaker 1 (01:16:27):
So that book, you know what, you're right? That book
is pretty spooky too.

Speaker 2 (01:16:31):
Yeah, goes back and forth with the two timelines. I
love that. To me Josh's work, it was like a
rebirth of Stephen King. So I read that book like
I had read you know, the Shining back in the Day, right,
So that's one if you like stuff it's a little weird.
Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation is a wonderful book. It's really strange,

(01:16:52):
it's really unsettling. It's quite creepy, also quite moving. I
love that book a lot. I would put Annihilation in
my top ten books of all time maybe.

Speaker 1 (01:17:00):
Of that product. What did you think of the movie adaptation?

Speaker 2 (01:17:03):
I wasn't happy with it. I should have listened to
Jeff because I saw him post on Facebook and he's like,
it's in maligny, it's all. It's kind of everything, put
the kind of go into it thinking inspired by theos.
I wanted the book and I'm like, just do the
goddamn first book and didn't, And so I was disappointed
because it wasn't what I wanted. But there were some
cool moments, the bear, the the flowers of the Bear,

(01:17:27):
There's some good stuff in there. I'm working. I'm refinishing
the trilogy I teach. I teach Aniolation in my class
a couple of times a year, but I just recently
reread Authority, and I'm working through the third one because
I want to work up towards Absolution. The new one.
I don't second third I don't like as much. They're
very different, but I'm enjoying them. So I would say
Jeff's work Sarah Graham's Come Closer. I put Bird Box

(01:17:53):
and Come Closer as straightforward, fairly simple, straightforward reads, but
so many am Come Closer. The Possession book gets under
my skin and freaks me out. It's gonna work, Art's not,
and it may not work for you at all, But
if it does, I think, I think that's a really
good fun read. I used to teach Stephen Graham Jones
All the Beautiful Sinners in that slot, but going from

(01:18:14):
Annihilation to All the Beautiful Sinners to Perdida was too
much for people, and so I put Sarah shorter and
more straightforward. But I will say All the Beautiful Sinners
is my favorite Stephen Graham Jones book. It's a more
serious book. It's kind of Silence of the Lambs meets
No Country for Old Men with a Native American slant
to it. It's brilliant. I think they're reissuing it, but
I have the old book hardcover, paperback, get it. And

(01:18:38):
then Perdido Street Station is a book I love. It's
a it's an epic one. I would put that out there. Fantasy,
sci fi, horror. It's complex, but he's just so original.
I love Clive Barker's Weave World. I would say American
Psycho something about that. That's the only book that ever
made me gag. But it's it's weird, it's a weird voice,
a lot of pop culture and stuff, so I don't
know it either. Again, it's like house, it leaves either

(01:19:00):
works for people or it doesn't. Those are some of
the ones that pop out to me. And if I
could give you a couple of short stories, because out
of my like my workshop, every year I pick like
anything I give like a nine rating or higher, I
put on a special list. So I'm gonna throw some
names of authors and stories at you. Guys, hunt them down.

(01:19:21):
So Steve Rathnicktam Between the Pilings, Alyssa Wong's Hungry Daughters
of Starving Mothers, Stephen Graham Jones, Daniel Sirian Dolls one
of my favorite stories of his. Brian Hodge, I love
his stuff. Check out It's all the same Road in
the End. Lyvia Llewellen's Bright Crown of Joy A c
Wise's Harvest Song Gathering Song is one of my favorites.

(01:19:42):
A lot a bunch of these are free online. They
might be up at like Nightmare of the Dark and somewhere.
Kelly Robson is a human Stain. I love that one.
That's a tour ousman. Maelix's work. He has a story
called dead lovers on each blade hung, both parts are up.
I think it's a nightmare of the dark. I'm trying
and focus on horror. Rich Larsen has a story called

(01:20:02):
Painless is a tour that I love. Victor Lavalle's Up
from Slavery was amazing. Uh what else? Catrion Awards a
hotel in Germany. I like a lot. Sarah Pinskers to
Truth and a Lie. Oh another Steve Toast Dancing Sober
in the Dust. Love that one I mentioned. Larry Barn's
Tiptoe Kelly link Skinders Veil was really great. All of

(01:20:25):
these were either in Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy
or Best Horror of the Year or Best American or Tour.
What else? Danielle at Tabova has one a tour called
The Lowthliness of the Long Distance Reporter. That's really great.
Rich Larson has another one. It's a funny one, but
it's really great called Quandary Eminu Versus a butterfly Man.

(01:20:47):
Jemiphiles the story B Sharp Minor Or The Suicide Choir.
Luigi Musolino has won the Last Box. It's great. Yeah,
those those are all stories I think that would really
so those authors in general check it out and then yes,
if anybody out there in the sound of my voice
wants this list, I will give it to you. I

(01:21:07):
also have like a recommended reading list of like books
and stuff, but you know, happy.

Speaker 1 (01:21:11):
Would you be willing to email me that list, especially
if the short stories, because like the books, the books
I'm familiar with. I really love Perdato Street Station. That
book is so it's out there. It's so good though, right.

Speaker 2 (01:21:25):
And then the ending you just like want to throw
the book across the room. I'd read that book fifteen
years ago. Had an advertising agency. I walked to a
bus to a Blue Line l to a metro train
station out to Elgin. It's like two hours each way.
And I worked with this like boutique of an agency
out there, and every day I go down to this
little Thai restaurant and get my little lunch for ten
dollars and then read a chapter of the book. And

(01:21:47):
that was an epic book. I just loved it, but
I forgot the ending. So when I taught it for
the first time, I was like, oh God, I was
just like, why it is so intense?

Speaker 1 (01:21:57):
Yeah, yeah, Steve says, great, we appreciate the recommendations. He
hasn't read any of those, but he appreciates you. Or
he mostly reads King and Koonts.

Speaker 2 (01:22:07):
Yeah, yeah, a lot, definitely. So then I kind of
got off Kuons for a while.

Speaker 1 (01:22:10):
But yeah, me too when I actually Kont's kind of
got me. Him and McCammon, Robert R. McCammon got me
started in reading and John Saul That's what I was
reading when I was like fourteen, and then I moved
on to King, and then in my twenties I got
like to uh uh, you know, love Craft and all
the more weirder stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:22:29):
Yeah, for sure, for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:22:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:22:32):
All right, Well.

Speaker 1 (01:22:34):
Before we go, what are you working on right now?
Just out of curiosity and what do you have coming
out soon that you can talk about?

Speaker 2 (01:22:41):
Yeah? Uh so obviously Incarnate came out in September, so
that's been taking up a lot of my attention. I
am trying to think what I have coming out. I
have a couple of throats come out this year. What's
next year?

Speaker 1 (01:22:59):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:22:59):
Because I like speed? And then yeah, I was in
the the off Season anthology a short story called Sunk
and then next year there's an anthology called The Earth
Bleeds at Night. I have a story in there called Supplication,
and then there's this cool anthology called in One Day
We Will Die strange stories inspired by the music of
Neutral Milk Hotel. And so I have this story in

(01:23:22):
there called Naomi a Sens And that's the puritanical which
biblically accurate angel story. Other than that, I'm gonna be
writing a new one for three Low, Bernie and Eye.
I don't know what I'm gonna do yet. I have
to figure that one out. Trying to figure out something
I haven't done before. I was thinking about maybe doing
a baton handoff story where you kind of go for
one to two, three to four to five and you
never go back. I haven't done that a long time.

(01:23:42):
Someone had a story like that, and I thought that
was cool. I was also thinking, I have teaching a
story in class that was like, it was just an
unlikable character from start to finish. How was it, sarahlanagain?
Was this a this? Really? U? I have to add, sorry,
I have to tell you what story is because it
was such an intense story and people were so divided

(01:24:03):
on it in class, but it was just really intense.
Let me sure get the name right. Telltale Tit by
Margot Lanigan, and it's this whole story like it's about ceiling,
about tongues, and it's just it's a brutal story. But
what it made me think of was, have I written
like a really unlikable character that was just unlikable and

(01:24:25):
mean and evil from start all the way to finish?
Because usually I have a bad guy turns good or
a good guy goes bad, like I like the strong reversal,
But ever, have I written one recently that was just
start to finish just a real piece of crap? And
then how do I write that in a way that
people don't want to eject from the story? Right?

Speaker 1 (01:24:41):
Yeah? I think honestly my opinion on that. You got
to make it interesting. Yeah yeah, if it's interesting at least,
that's my point of because I've read plenty of unlikable characters. Yeah,
and if it's interesting, I'll keep going. But if I
really can't stand them and it's just repulsive, then I'll
sometimes kick out. Yeah yeah yeah, all right, So, uh,

(01:25:03):
you were a phenomenal guest. I had so much fun
picking your brain over everything. Man, So where can people
find you online? You mentioned earlier where we are all are,
but uh sure if you can mention it all again.

Speaker 2 (01:25:18):
Yeah, So I'm basically Richard G. Thomas three everywhere. So
I'm on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and blue Sky
and threads, and then my webs website for my classes
is storyville Online dot com. And so that's got all
my classes and everything up there. I feel interested any
of that stuff. Yeah, must you be? Oh and I
have a website sorry, yeah, called what does Not Kill

(01:25:42):
Me dot com? A big Kelly Clarkson fant no kidding,
it's a it's a Nietzchure quote. But you know, I
don't like claim me me stronger, study philosophy in college,
battle out with monsters. Let's you become a monster for
when we stare into the abyss, the abyss.

Speaker 1 (01:25:56):
It would be funny if you're like, I want all
my my stories to be like Kelly Clarkson.

Speaker 2 (01:26:01):
Yeah, yeah, one of the time.

Speaker 1 (01:26:05):
Not that I'm anti Kelly clark like, no, no, no,
there's nothing wrong with that, but it would just be
funny after everything we talked about it, right right right right, yeah,
all right, well, thank you. The invitation for you to
come back anytime is out. Just let me know and
I'd love to talk to you again, and I want
to thank to everyone who came out during the live

(01:26:27):
stream here to watch and listen and ask Thanks to
Steve for asking a question, and also thanks to the
future people who will be coming along and listening. And
thanks to you Richard for coming and giving me an
awesome conversation, and we will see you well again shortly cool.

(01:26:48):
Thanks Jason, thank you. If you like what I'm doing
here and want to support the channel without involving any
money on your part, you can do so by sharing
the 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

(01:27:10):
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
every way you can help out the channel and podcast
grow would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much, Thank
you so much for listening. That was a fun interview,

(01:27:34):
So thank you all for listening. If you want to
support the show, it's very easy to do so. You
can join the Patreon links for that or in the
show notes. But o there basically at this time is
just to support what I do. But there will be
some exclusive content coming up shortly in the Patreon, but

(01:27:55):
there's only like, there's not very many paying patreons right now,
so I kind of want to get the numbers up
maybe just a little bit before I start working on that.
Maybe maybe not. There's some things I want to talk about,
and I have ideas of what I want to do
for the Patreon exclusive content, so maybe you will see
something there even before that. But it's easy to do,

(01:28:18):
and there's a couple of different tiers. Some of them
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(01:28:39):
and go to my show and leave a five star review.
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(01:29:01):
then a lot more people will find me much more easily,
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everyone for listening. You don't know how much I appreciate
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catch you next time. Until then, keep being weird my friends,

(01:29:22):
and keep being safe and I'll catch you guys in
the next podcast. Ly

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046 - Incarnate With Richard Thomas

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