058 - Going To Tick Town With Christopher A. Micklos - Weird Reads

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to the Weird Reader podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
An extension of Jason's Weird Reads found on YouTube. Welcome, Well, Hello,
and welcome to weird Reads. I'm your host, Jason White,
and today I'm welcoming Christopher a miclose to the show.

(00:37):
Christopher's book, Ticktown is a great throwback to nineteen eighties
horror with a lot of nineteen fifties and sixties big
bug monster appeal. He's also a writer and co director
of the feature horror films The Nursery from twenty eighteen
and The Headmistress from twenty twenty three. He is a
life long horror fan, which means he's the perfect guy

(01:00):
for Weird Reads. Welcome to the show, Christopher.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
Jason, thanks so much for having me. It's great to
talk to you.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Is it okay if I call you Chris or do
you prefer Christopher?

Speaker 3 (01:09):
Absolutely, Chris is fine. I thought Christopher would be more
pretentious on a book title, and so that's what I
wanted to go for.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, yeah, Well I asked that because I know a
lot of Michaels, especially in the podcast Realm Here, and
a lot of them way more than when I was
growing up with Michaels prefer Michael over Mike.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
Oh really interesting, Okay. I actually I have a Michael
friend as well, so maybe that's a thing.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
I think it is because like I grew up with
a whole bunch of Michaels, but they all went by Mike,
and now it's all Michael's.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
So yeah, it's just a little weird.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
You know, when you're eight, you don't want to be
called Michael. It's just not you know.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
So well, I'm I'm very happy to be here. Thanks
for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah, and I have to apologize because this is our
second I did go through a bit of a medical
thing and my I wasn't in the right head space.
I was, uh it's kind of terrified honestly for a
little bit there and but everything turned out okay.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
But we had to reschedule, and I apologize for putting
you through that. But uh no, but thank you for you.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
You know, you let me know, which I appreciate. I've
only been I've I've been in a little bit of
a media tour here and I've only been stood up
once entirely showed up for the for the interview and
they didn't show up, and then I followed up with
an email and said, hey, we might have got our
signals crossed, and I never heard anything. I won't say
where they were, but I was like, well, that's odd.
I used to do, As I mentioned, I used to

(02:33):
do a podcast myself, and I can't even imagine doing that.
So you almost you almost think the worst is something
is going on. You know that something horrible happened to
the person. But it was three weeks ago and I
still haven't heard. So I hope everything's okay.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Yeah, I hope. So it's kind of weird when you
hope you were just ghosted.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
Exactly exactly.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
So in your bio and the bio I stole the
uh that you're lifelong horror fan from your bio from
your website. Yeah, And so I asked this question. I
was glad you put that in there because I love
asking this question. What what What's your horror origin story?
How did you get into horror?

Speaker 3 (03:13):
That's a great way to ask it. The horror origin
story For me, it was when I was when I
was growing up, when I was really young, I used
to spend a fair number of weekends at my grandparents
and this was you know, I'm a I'm not a
young pup. So this was back in the nineteen seventies,
and so it was pre cable, pre VCR, all that,

(03:35):
and at that point you get a lot of your
movies through the through the regional superstation, and so on
Saturday nights, my grandmother would let me stay up often
with her and watch these old superstation movies. I don't
even remember who the horror host was, but I had
one of the zombie hosts or one of the you know,

(03:57):
werewolf hosts or whatever, and they used to play these
old especially universal movies or you know, the nineteen fifties
sci fi movies, and I remember especially just being totally
into the horror comedies, like you know, they have old
they haven't Costello movies, of course, but you know, Bob Hope, like,

(04:20):
you know, they weren't really horror movies, but they were
kind of pseudo horror, like The Cat and the Canary
or the Ghost Breakers or the Ghost and Mister Chicken
with you know Don Mattz, you know those old horror comedies.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
I love those.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
Movies and they were totally a gateway I think to uh,
they were my gateway drug to actually real horror. You know,
once I once those started not spooking me anymore, you know,
I kind of moved on to the more classic, you know,
the old school, uh, you know, Frankenstein, Dracula. And then
I remember the first, the first like real life horror

(04:55):
movie that I watched my sisters. I had two older
sisters and they might been watching me one night, and
we all watched when a stranger calls together about you
know the guy, you know, the the classic you know,
he's he's in the house. You know, we trace the
call and he's in the house where they the babysitters babysitting,
and and the kids are murdered by the guy who's

(05:17):
already in the house. And I just remember being like,
oh my god, this is nothing like these movies that
I have been watching before. This is actually, you know,
scaring the living beep out of me, an exactly, the
old universal stuff seemed offully quaint compared to uh, you know,

(05:37):
kids being babysat being murdered. So it was that was
then I was off and running. And then it was
Halloween and you know the eighties horror movies, and I just, uh,
I've just always loved horror from from from the Child
on so nice.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
I remember I did the similar when I was growing
up during the summer months. I would stay up late
in my early teens and whatnot, and those shows would
come on. I was already introduced to horror at that time,
but I loved that era of TV because you'd always
at least one channel would have something like that on.
And I've seen the most obscure, weirdest horror movies that

(06:13):
I've never seen again.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
Or I've tried to find some of them. And yeah,
and you just don't know.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
What the title was because you caught like parts of it,
or maybe you saw the whole thing, but you just
forget what the title was. And I mean, it's right,
TV now, it's either either you got infomercials on all
night or it's the same damn television show on repeat.

Speaker 3 (06:34):
Well, and plus you can find now anything you want
to find, I mean, the title and stuff. And so
but that boy, that time when you would just be
stumbling across channels and you might be ten minutes in,
you might be twenty minutes in, you might be an
hour in, but it's like, WHOA, there's a monster. I've
been to stop here and watch this. You know, that
was a pretty special special time. And then plus that

(06:54):
was you know again in that same era, there were
TV shows like, you know, The night Stalker was on TV,
which I didn't watch regularly, but I remember seeing a
little bit of or even you know, something like The
Planet of the Apes. When you're that age, that was
like almost like a horror you know thing. So I
loved all that when I was a kid. I just
I just I've never lost my taste for it, and

(07:15):
I still love I mean, I like more traditional horror now,
but those classics still have a very very special place
in my heart. I collect classic you know, memorabilia from
the forties and thirties and forties and fifties, and I
just I've never gotten over that.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
Were you a big reader at the time too, You know,
I wasn't the closest thing. I mean, I was a reader,
but I wasn't reading like horror stuff. I would say
the closest stuff I got to horror was the Hardy
Boys books or you know, and every now and then
there'd be a ghost story or I was a big
fan of the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators books,

(07:55):
which and then then there came a series of I
think House, the House with the Clock in its Walls series, Yeah,
became a thing, and so I got into it over time,
but I kind of started with again with the more
benign stuff, and then I didn't actually even start reading
horror honestly until probably I was in my I would say,

(08:15):
even in my twenties when I, you know, started picking
up horror. And even then it was classics, you know.
I wanted to read like Frankenstein and Dracula, and I
fell in love with Poe at that time. And then
as I got older, even into my thirties, that's when
I started discovering like the writers that I ended up
really falling in love with, like Richard Matheson, who's my
favorite horror author. And then later even later, more recently,

(08:39):
the pulp horror writers like Guyan Smith and Graham Masterton
and and Sean Hudson and those kinds of authors. I've
really only discovered them in the last like five years,
and WHOA boy, did I fall in love with them
so much so that that's kind of what I wanted
to pursue when I wrote.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
My first novel, Nice so now you started your your
career in horror by making movies.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (09:07):
What how did you get involved? First of all, because
you've had you had a career, uh quite extensively in makeing,
like in politics before all this, right, and then you
start making movies. How did you get involved? Uh, writing
and directing movies?

Speaker 3 (09:24):
Yeah? I was. I was when I went to college.
I was actually a film student in college at a
at a state school here in Wisconsin, and I had
always intended to want to, you know, pursue movie making.
I applied to grad school to like U C l
A and n y U and those you know kinds
of schools. But then late in my college career, I

(09:46):
got really passionate about politics, as you know kids often
do when they're that age. I had a professor who
really inspired me, and so I decided I wanted to
change gears. And I ended up going to grad school
for political communication, and then straight out of grad school,
I started running political campaigns. Ran a mayor's race. Right

(10:07):
out of grad school. I came back to Wisconsin, and
I I worked in state politics for several years. I
was the spokesman for the Senate major majority leader here
in Wisconsin. And then I left and joined a couple
of friends and we built a business called Visuality that
was a media consulting and production firm, and we worked

(10:28):
mostly in politics and advocacy. So we'd work with candidates
to make ads, we would do media consulting on campaigns.
We'd work for big organizations that were involved in politics,
a lot of teachers groups that wanted to impact state
politics here and then around the country. And but we

(10:49):
made a lot of ads and videos and stuff like that,
and we always, you know, my partners and I were
always big movie fans, and we thought, oh, you know,
we've got the means, you know, why, why why wouldn't
we make a movie? You know, it seems silly. We've
got all this like state of the art equipment, and
we love movies, so why don't we try it. So
we fooled around with that for about twenty years before

(11:10):
we actually decided to go for it. You know what,
why do something now when you can wait twenty years.
So after about twenty years, we were like, now's the time,
now that we're in our mid forties, we're going to
actually make a movie. And so we set out back
in twenty sixteen to just see if we could do it.
And so we decided we're just going to take it
stage by stage, and so we're going to see if

(11:32):
we come up with an idea. We came up with
an idea. We're going to see if we can write
a script. We could write. We wrote a script. It
was you know, we didn't have much money, so we
had to like look at local cast and so I
wonder if we could find actors that can actually, you know,
pull this off. And we did cast in and we
found actors. And then at that point, you're like, well, geez,
you know, now we've got actors involved, we better make

(11:52):
this stupid movie. And so we did, and we we
we shot I think I think our first movie. We
shot thirteen days over about six weeks. We were shooting
like Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights overnight at a location
about an hour from where I live. And all of
a sudden, we had all this footage in the can.
We looked at it. It was terrible. It was just

(12:15):
like the It was just you almost wanted to cry
when you looked at the footage. But as you you know,
I don't know what movie making, but as you go
through it's like, oh, there's a take that works, and
there's a shot that works, and we pieced together a
movie that, you know, we ended up being pretty proud of.
And we shopped around to distributors. We got lots and
lots of offers on it. We won some festival awards,

(12:35):
and it was called The Nursery and it came out
it was distributed by Uncorked Entertainment in twenty and eighteen.
We had a great experience, and so we decided a
couple years later to make another movie. It was called
The Headmistress, and that came out in twenty twenty three,
and it was just just a great experience. We just

(12:56):
we had a we had like the actual production period
of a movie, when you're on sad and you know
things are going haywire and you're working with the actors
is just a ball. It's it's the most fun you
can possibly have. And so my partners and I are,
you know, thinking about what might be next. We haven't

(13:16):
really come up with anything yet. So I decided, well
we were kind of trying to figure that out, maybe
I would try my hand at a novel. And and
that's where my debut novel Tiktown kind of grew out.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
Of lo and behold, here we are, Ticktown, Here we are. Yeah,
I find that interesting.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
I've talked to a couple of movie people in the past,
people who do movies and and write books, and I
actually watched The Headmistress Oh, and it was really interesting movie.
I liked the long shots off the hallways. It's it's
a bit of a slow burn, and I really enjoyed

(13:55):
that things aspect of the film. Kind of what was
the genis us behind that movie and how did you guys, like,
how did you guys work it into a story?

Speaker 3 (14:06):
Well, it was actually kind of an interesting story how
it came to be. We we had made a connection
through the nursery with a couple of local folks who
were really interested in in investing in a movie, and
so they one of them was a co owner of
a local micro brewery, and so we wrote a concept

(14:31):
that we thought would be fun for a horror comedy feature.
We called it The Witch's brew House, and it was
you know, it all would take place in this person's
micro brewery. So we had a location for it, and
it was kind of horror, it's kind of comedy, and
we were in the process. I mean, we were quite
a ways in several drafts into the script, and we
were starting to think about casting. And then one of

(14:54):
the other investors texted my he's closer to one of
my other partners, and he texted my partner and said, hey,
you know, there's this abandoned nunnery a buddying my property
here in O'connomwak, Wisconsin. He said, and I think I'm
going to buy it because we want to clear the
land and build something else. He's like, why don't you

(15:15):
just come look at it? And so my two other
partners went and looked at it and they started, I
don't remember what I was doing with They sent me
some pictures and it was this amazing two building structure.
It had been built like in the nineteen fifties. It
was just it was creepy and it was completely abandoned,
and they were like, you know, this fantastic attic of

(15:38):
just crazy sellar. There were these cabinets that locked only
from the inside, which we never could quite figure out
what that was about. You know, it was the weirdest thing.
But anyway, and so the so this individual had basically said, hey,
you know, this was This must have been in like
February of know, whatever year it was. February. I'm buying this,

(16:04):
you know this month, I'm going to burn it down
in December. You can do anything you want to it
between now and then. Do do you think you can
do something with it? And so we abandoned the Brewery
script and we we started working in another concept using
the the nunnery as kind of our starting point. And

(16:25):
we found a concept that we liked using the nunnery.
Starting in gosh h September, I guess it was, we
moved in. We like literally moved into the nunnery with
our actors for about two weeks, maybe a little little
under two weeks. We all lived there. We shot there
day and night. It was like summer camp, movie movie

(16:47):
making summer camp. We flew actors in, we had actually
come in from Chicago. We had someone from Portland, we
had someone from Los Angeles at a couple of local
people as well, and we just I mean again, it
was just a blast. It was, like I said, it
was just summer movie making, summer camp. And we had
a great time making the movie. And then but then

(17:09):
COVID hit immediately afterwards, and so it kind of delayed,
you know, our ability to do the post production and
that sort of thing. So it took a while to
get out. But it was another great experience and and
it was definitely just quality wise, it was definitely a
step forward from the Nursery. I mean, your your first child,
you're gonna you're gonna love unconditionally. But Mistress is definitely

(17:31):
a better movie. And and again we got another We
had good offers on it. We found a distributor that
we liked called uh indikin Pictures and uh and and
we were off and running and the movie came out
in twenty twenty three. So we actually got limited theatrical
play with this one. We were in several theaters here

(17:52):
in Wisconsin, we were in some theaters in California. So
that was cool. That was a step forward something we
hadn't anticipated. And and so yeah, so we we had.
It was a great time.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
The the in the film, the outdoor view of the nunnery,
is that is that the same building?

Speaker 1 (18:10):
Because that that's a beautiful place.

Speaker 3 (18:12):
Yeah yeah, gone, yeah it's gone now, it got it
got raised. It's funny too because it was two like
I said, it was two buildings. Uh. We used one
building primarily for the exteriors. We kind of we kind
of faked that both buildings were the same building and
we used the uh uh exterior of one building is
the you know, is the exterior for the whole place.

(18:33):
And it looks like this massive state or something.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:37):
But then when it was raised, we you know, we
went out there before they like really like developed the
land and we looked at the footprint and the footprint
was like it it felt like it was the size
of a volleyball quarterorth like that. I was like, holy cow,
you know, like this is nothing like when we were
inside it. Wo, So it was pretty cool. It was
pretty cool. We I remember I when I was saying
when we started. We we actually moved in to the

(19:00):
Nunnery on a Friday, the thirteenth in September, right and
back in twenty nineteen and so yeah, so that was
like it was just me and my my co director
Jason Pyro, and then two of the actresses had come
in that night, and then everyone else was coming on Saturday.
So we were in this big complex. We went out
and got you know, dinner, brought it in. But it
was pretty creepy that first night, it was like, yeah,

(19:21):
this feels a little weird. This feels like we're in
a horror movie. Not horror movie.

Speaker 2 (19:27):
Did he experience anything that was actually kind of made
you think, you know, like, is this is this supernatural?

Speaker 3 (19:34):
Or honestly, we didn't. I would I would love to
say we did. One of my my co director, at
one point, swears that he had tacked some stuff to
the wall of his room, like he likes to make
notes all over and he he swears he tacked something
to a place on a wall, and then when he
woke up the next morning, it had been moved several

(19:55):
feet over. He swears that happened, but he didn't document it. Unfortunate.
So I'm a professional skeptic, so I don't know if
I believe it or not. But uh, I mean, if
the place wasn't haunted, it should have been haunted, because
it was. It was the easily the creepiest place I've
ever been in my life. It was pretty cool. It

(20:17):
was pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
Awesome.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
Now, before we move on to tech town, I did
want to ask about your podcast because you and I
forget his name, I think he just mention was my
co director. Yeah, you guys did a podcast together, and
you guys stopped doing that though.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
What happened to that? Why why have we not had
any new episodes?

Speaker 3 (20:39):
Yeah? We It was called Indie Horrorrizing, and we actually
we started it around the time of our first film
because we thought it would be kind of a cool
promotional thing to do, and we we talked about the
making of our our first movie and kind of talked
to the actors in different episodes, and then and then

(21:00):
you know, we did a couple of we did a
couple of film festivals, and we thought it was just
so fun meeting other indie filmmakers, and so we thought,
let' why don't we transform this thing into a vehicle
where we can, you know, interview filmmakers like us, like
not indie filmmakers like who only have ten million dollars

(21:21):
to make their movie, but indie filmmakers who are making
thirty thousand dollars movies. They're fifty thousand. You know. We
had some bigger ones, but not many, you know, and
so so we you know, we're very open if people
approached us, but mostly we went out and find move
found movies that were coming out In the next couple

(21:42):
of months, we'd reach out we you know, our our
distributor at the time, indic I'm sorry, uncorked. We would
you know, we would talk to filmmakers that were on
their roster because they were easy to get in touch with.
We would track other filmmakers down on IMDb and basically
just say, hey, when your movie comes out, you know,
we would love to talk to you about it. We
don't send us a screen or copy, and then we'll
spend a half hour, forty five minutes, an hour whatever

(22:04):
talking about the you know, making indie horror movies and
all the challenges and all the kind of rewards. And
it was a blast. I mean, we we just had
the best time doing it. Honestly, it was. It was great,
especially during those couple of COVID years when there weren't
film festivals going on, you know, in any it was
just a great way to meet other people who were

(22:25):
going through the same stuff that we were going through.
And I mean it is it has been an outstanding
Like the relationships that have still been able to maintain
as a result of doing the podcast have been wonderful.
You know. When we needed when we needed to find
uh uh, some additional special effects help for our last movie.

(22:48):
I reached out to all our you know, all our
filmmakers and said, hey, who do you guys use for
you know, special effects? When we were looking for composers,
we were getting suggestions and you know, it's just been great.
But it just it got to be a lot, you know.
We we were trying to we were trying to do
it weekly, and then we did it every couple of weeks,

(23:08):
but it just got to be you know, we were
at the time, we were still running our business. I
was trying to write a novel, and it just it
got to be too much, unfortunately, so we got away
from it. But it's funny. I was just talking to Jay,
who's you know, my best pal, last week, and I
was like, god, you know, I just as much as
it got to be too much, I just miss it

(23:31):
so much because it was so fun to meet so
many different people, kind of the way I am now
going on this you know book media tour. You just
meet people that you're not going to meet otherwise, and
so it was it was a great experience. And so
we're like, well, maybe we could try it again, you know,
maybe we don't have to you know, do it every day.
Maybe we can go onto like a more relaxed schedule

(23:52):
or something, but but we we both miss it quite.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
A bit, we both.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
I mean, yeah, you don't even need to be regular,
just put out, you know, an episode.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
That's pretty much how I do it.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
Because although I'm once every two weeks approximately, and I
really relax it during the summer.

Speaker 3 (24:11):
Oh yea.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
But yeah, I'm like currently doing two podcasts right now.
Oh good for you. That's I mean, I love doing it,
though I also write like like you do. But you know,
I know what you're talking about because I was doing
YouTube what we call book tube content. I was doing

(24:31):
that for the longest time, where you know, you do
like your top ten lists of your favorite horror books
and all that kind of stuff, right, And when I
switched a job that was pretty much eating up ninety
percent of my time to a more relaxed job, suddenly
I had all this time. So I started writing again,
and when the writing came in, something else had to go.
And so the book tube videos have really dropped off

(24:54):
by a lot because I need the I need the
writing time, right, But I can't stop talking to other people,
other authors, because it's just uh, it's it's a lot
of fun. I'm having like the time of my life
doing this, and I've been doing it off and on,
but mostly on for the last ten years or so,
which is Yeah.

Speaker 3 (25:14):
I would say that when we were doing indie horrorizing,
I'm trying to think, like, did we ever have a
conversation where we were just like, oh god, you know,
it's like, boy, that was a dud, or like I
didn't like those guys at all. I can't think of
a single one. I mean, it was just a great
way to meet people again who are who are in
the same space as you, right, I've mean the same
way you're doing it with as a writer. Talking to writers,

(25:36):
it's like they're in the same space that kind of
have the same you know, similar backgrounds often I'm sure,
and the same challenges. I mean, this is not it's
not easy to be an independent writer, you know, in
horror or anything else, I imagine. But so it's interesting
to like be able to trade war stories and you know,
talk to people wore going through the same stuff you're

(25:57):
going through.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
Absolutely, Yeah, So you came here not to talk about
all that stuff, although that stuff was a lot of
fun to talk about. We are here to promote your
newest book, Ticktown, which thank you for giving me the
ORC for I had a lot of fun reading it,
and I also listened to the audio book because it
came out well, because it it came out after like

(26:21):
we were supposed to do this interview around the release time, right,
and that's why you gave me the e ORC. So
I read the E York but then I ended up
going back and re listening to the audio and that
was really well done too.

Speaker 3 (26:34):
Oh good.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
So I want to know because it's such an interesting premise.
I said in my introduction to you that it's like
a it's a throwback. It feels like a nineteen eighties
horror film that was inspired by nineteen forties nineteen fifties
title of Big Bug Movies. So I want to know
what is the inspiration behind Ticktown and also what is

(26:56):
it about?

Speaker 3 (26:58):
Well, so, yeah, well, I love I love the fact
that you drew those connections because that's definitely what it is.
I mean, it's it's four people who love. You mentioned
those eighties movies and definitely that. But I think of
it as kind of a blend of the seventies and
eighties pulp horror paperbacks that were you know, a lot

(27:20):
of big bugs stuff during that area, mixed with those
nineteen fifties and sixties sci fi movies I mentioned earlier.
Some of those pulp horror writers like Dianne Smith and
some of those others. I discovered them about five years
ago when I was I read this book called Paperbacks
from Hall. I don't know if you ever heard of
that gray over there, Oh yeah, yeah, Grady Hendrix and

(27:45):
will Erickson, and it's this survey of this crazy era
of paperback horror from the seventies and eighties, and it
just basically, I mean, as you know, it just goes
through like you know, oh and there's this book, and
there's this book, and this is the plot, and this
is you know, these are the covers. And I was

(28:06):
just so turned on by some of these like ridiculous
plots that were outlined in this book and some of
these crazy premises, and I was like, well, that's really interesting.
So I started picking up some of the books, and
I I started with authors like Graham Masterton and moved
quickly to Guyan Smith and his seminal book, which is
Knight of the Crabs, and I was just so flabbergasted

(28:29):
with how much fun Night of the Crabs was, and
it's basically about giant mutant crabs run amok in the
Welsh countryside. And I started reading more of his stuff
and it harkened back. Even though it wasn't quite as
light as those fifties and sixties U sci fi movies
were mean, it was finding me very much of those

(28:49):
which I'd always loved. And so when I decided I
think I want to try writing a novel, I that
was the that was the playground I wanted to play on.
I was like, you know, I really want I really
liked this creature feature type of horror. I really like
this kind of pulpy approach to writing, and I think
it's something that I can do. And so I sat
down I started thinking, well, I don't want to do

(29:11):
Crabs because you know, I'm definitely gonna rip off guy
in Smith, but I don't want to rip them off
that much. I don't want to betting about it. And spiders,
you know, obviously have been done to death. You know,
ants is obviously a class.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
Actually, the two movies that came to mind while I
was reading this as them, which I always want to
call the Ants. Every time I go to reference that movie,
I want to call it the Ants. But it's not
the Ans, it's them and Transula of course, yeah, Transula, right.

Speaker 3 (29:42):
But them. Actually, it's funny that you mentioned them, because
when I did my book launch here in Madison, Wisconsin,
we secured a local theater, we got a copy of them,
we showed it on the ultra screen, and basically the
deal was if people brought in their paperback copy of Ticktown,
they got in free to the MOVI And so we
had we had like eighty or ninety people come. You know,

(30:04):
I would say I knew maybe half of them, and
half of them were just kind of community members. I
wanted to see them, you know, it was great. It
was like amazing to see that on the big screen.
That would be, oh, this is yeah, it's so cool.
So anyway, so that's what I wanted to do. I
wanted to do something similar to that. As crazy as
those seventies and eighties paperbacks were, I personally found that

(30:29):
they weren't written with a lot of I mean, the
plots are just nuts and they're not you know, they're
they're they're wild, and they're so fun to read, but
there was a lightness and kind of fun I thought
that was missing from just kind of the approach to
the stories that you might find in an eighties movie,

(30:49):
eighties horror movie, or a Them or a Trantla or
or some of these other creature features. And so I
wanted to kind of do one of those pulpy paperbacks,
but I wanted to put a twist on it that
made it just a little more light, a little more
fun a little. I didn't want it to be jokey.
I mean, I like writing. I write a lot of humor,

(31:11):
fiction humor, but I didn't want it to be like
a Woody Allen take on a creature feature movie or
something like that. I wanted to be a straightforward creature feature,
but I wanted it to be fun. And he asked
what it was about. So basically, the log line is
that a rural Wisconsin tourist town becomes the feeding ground

(31:33):
for a band of giant mutant ticks. And that's what
it is. It's a it's a it's a small town
in Wisconsin that you know, basically, they've livestocks start disappearing,
tourists start disappearing, local townsfolks start disappearing, and a couple
of local reporters, you know, go out and discover that

(31:53):
there's this, uh, these mutant ticks in the woods that
are they don't know where they came from, and so
they've got to kind of figure out what's going on
where they came from. There's a lot of pulpy influences,
you know. I found when you read those seventies and
eighties books, there's got to be some sort of Nazi involvement.
And so I don't have Nazi involvement, but I've got

(32:14):
pseudo Nazi involvement. And you know, we're in the twenty
first century here, so there's got to be some sort
of you know, terrible corporate behemoth out there behind. So
I tried to include all of that and tried to
make it as fun as I could. And when I
was done. When I was finished, I gave it to
my co director on my movies, Jay, who's who always

(32:36):
reads my stuff. And I was very apprehensive, but I
you know, I gave it to him and I said, look,
I mean, honestly, I've never read anything like this before.
I have no idea if the writing's any good. I
have no idea if I can reaven write fiction, you know,
in this kind of format, I said, but I read
it and I love it, and I it's exactly what

(32:57):
I wanted it to be. It was it was the tone,
the hat seeing kind of the whole whole thing was
exactly what I wanted to be. So I said, I
definitely want your feedback, but this is the book that
I'm set out to write, so I hope it's okay.
And he said, yeah, it's okay. Gave me. He gave
me really good feedback, was very encouraging, and that gave

(33:17):
me the confidence to go out and and start pitching
it to literary agents and and uh and and small
press publishers and and just see if anyone was interested.
And uh and I got lucky and someone was interested.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
Nice.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
You brought up an interesting point there in that you, uh,
you loved uh, you loved what you wrote, and uh,
I think it's important for artists to be able to
love their own work, because I see too many and
like sort of ship posts on social media where people
are dissing themselves and how much they hate their own

(33:54):
work and stuff like that, and I and there's even
some people who would argue that it's important to hate
your own work. But I think it's important to love
your work but be able to be critical of it
at the same time.

Speaker 3 (34:04):
Yeah, yeah, because I know I agree with that. Yeah yeah,
I agree with that.

Speaker 2 (34:09):
Because you in the end, you're the only one that's
going to be holding your flag waving it right, So
you can't really go online saying, oh man, this is
a piece of shit you.

Speaker 3 (34:21):
Yeah. Yeah, It's funny with with with movies, I found
it was harder because we were you know, we're working
with such a small budgets on our movies and even
in their final form, which I am extremely proud of.
As the filmmaker, you see every warped, you know, I

(34:42):
know every I know it's just beyond the frame of
this shot. I know the stumble that happened right after
this take and all that, and so sometimes it's hard
to just let go of all that. Whereas you know,
I obviously I don't have the same talent as an
author as the great authors who I love, or you know,

(35:02):
the great authors that people love, but we have the
same tools, Like, it doesn't matter what budget I have,
it doesn't matter, you know, we're sitting down. They've got
a typewriter. I've got a typewriter, and so I've got
no excuses. And so in the end, you know, you
just got to do what you're proud of. And I
was and am extremely proud of Ticktown. I mean, I
it was the book I set out to write. But

(35:25):
when I revisit it, whether it's for editing or you know,
when I'm going through for whatever reason, trying to find
a passage for a reading, which I've been doing the
last you know, a few weeks, I just I really
enjoy the book. I'm super, super, super proud of the book.
And when when it's been when I've been getting feedback
from people who I'm not related to or aren't my

(35:48):
best friend, who you know, profess to enjoy it for
the same reasons that I enjoy it, that makes me
really happy. You know. I A lot of my reviews,
you know, on Amazon have been things like, you know, oh,
this this is like those great creature features from the fifties.
You know, I just I light up when someone writes
something like that because it's like, Yeah, you're the You're
the one I was trying to reach. You know, You're

(36:10):
the You're who this book is for, and so I've
been real happy. But but I think you're right, especially again,
especially as an independent author. It's like, I mean, I
have a publisher, I have an agent now and all that,
but nobody's beating the drum like you're beating the drum,
you know, And no one's going to beat the drum
like you got to beat the drum. So it's important
to be enthusiastic. I think.

Speaker 1 (36:30):
Well. I enjoyed Ticktown as well for the reasons that
I stated.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
Uh, it just reminded me of those older movies I
used to watch, you know at night. Uh, And I
had no idea what the hell they were on the couch.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
You know.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
One thing I liked about Ticktown is that it has
its gory moments. And I was wondering because there's this
weird sort of divide in the horror community where people
seem to not like Gore too much, and then and
there's the people who are more like me. I like both, Honestly,
I like quiet horror without the Gore. Gore for Gore's
sake can be annoying sometimes, but I also don't mind

(37:10):
a good romp through like nastiness right, So what's your
take on gore and how did you apply it?

Speaker 1 (37:18):
And ticktown.

Speaker 3 (37:20):
Yeah, it's funny. The gore question to me is like
a really I mean, it's a kind of a key question,
and I mean, definitely, I couldn't the playground that I
was playing on, the pulp horror playground, you have to
have gore, you know. I mean, you couldn't. I couldn't
go without. But I'm a little sensitive to gore in

(37:41):
terms of I don't. When we had our podcast, for example,
it was pretty rare, but once or twice we got
films from filmmakers that were incredibly exploitative with the gore
and with the violence and particularly the misogynistic violence, and

(38:04):
a couple of times it was kind of uncomfortable. And
once we actually told the filmmakers, you know, thanks for
giving us a chance to look at your movie, but
we're not interested because we you know, and we're honest,
we think what you're doing is exploitative, Like you don't
really care about the rest of the movie. You just
wanted this scene to like, you know, for pr sake,
and so you know, so I think, of my it's funny,

(38:29):
it's funny when people mentioned the gore in my book
because to me, it was the hardest thing to write,
because I felt like I don't know if I again,
having never written in this field before, one you don't
know if you're any good at it. And two, when
you're writing this stuff, you're like, okay, am I just
you know? Am I? Am I just writing nonsense here?

(38:50):
Or is this actually painting a picture? But what I
set out to do was I wanted gore, but I
wanted it to be kind of over the top gore.
I wanted it to be fun gore. And so I've
got a lot of you know, green goo shooting out
of the eyes of the ticks, and you know, and
I've got you know, intestines spilling out the bottoms of

(39:13):
people that have been cleaved in half. And so I
tried to approach it again with that kind of a lightness.
But but I really struggled with it, not whether or
not to do it, but how to approach it. And
just like, you know, can I even do this? You
know that? And like trying to and writing suspense, I
found like these are the ingredients that build a book

(39:36):
like this, and I'm gonna take my best shot at it.
But I have no idea if I'm doing it right,
and so it isn't until people start to read it
and say, oh, you know I liked you know that
that You're like, okay, good, you know I pulled it off.
But but I think that I think if I had
to write like a you know, if I which I

(39:56):
probably wouldn't do, but if I had to sit down
and write a torture porn kind of book, I don't
think I could do it. I think it would freeze
up because one it makes me uncomfortable, and two, I
just don't know how I would do it without having
fun with it, and you don't want to, you know
the whole point.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
I know exactly what you mean.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
I have a writer friend who loves that type stuff
and he loves writing it.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
But I couldn't do it myself.

Speaker 2 (40:22):
Like when I write the gory stuff, it's meant to
be over the top and fun. It's not meant to
exploit anyone or or hurt anyone. It's just meant to
be like, oh, this is silly, right, Yeah, but you know,
even if there's a message or not a message whatever.
But uh, but yeah, I totally get where you're coming
from with that.

Speaker 3 (40:41):
Do you do find it hard to write that? I mean,
when you're writing gore, even though you're going over the top,
do you find it difficult that, like, oh, yeah, now
I'm now I know what I'm doing.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
For me, it's just fun.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
Like I've always kind of lent or lean lent is
that a word? Lent leaned towards. I always lean towards
doing gory stories. But I just finished a novella that's
not gory at all. It's it's got some like nastiness
to it, but it's not. Yeah, there's no there's no intestine,
there's no nastiness like that, right, which is actually kind

(41:12):
of a first for me. So so maybe I'm evolving
in a sense, but uh yeah, I have no problems
with doing it myself.

Speaker 3 (41:22):
Yeah. Did you set out to do one where you're like, Okay,
I'm gonna try this without that stuff or did it
just is that that's how it evolved.

Speaker 2 (41:29):
It was just the way the story presented itself. There
was no need for it, right, So if there's no
need for it, then I'm not going to do it.
But often, like I've always equated, like if you have
a werewolf story, you gotta have some gore, because werewolves don't.
They don't kill you by scaring you to death. They
tear you in pieces. Right, So if you want to
go into that scene where somebody's getting mauled to death,

(41:50):
it's not going to be pretty.

Speaker 3 (41:52):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I think that's absolutely right. I
think where I whether it be in literature or whether
it be in you know, I've read when I was
looking for pulpy stuff to read like that was more modern.
After I kind of you know, sampled the kind of
the classics, I found that it was you know, there

(42:13):
was a there was a line between pulp and then
extreme horror and and some of the extreme stuff I thought, oh,
some of this is kind of good, but some of
it it's like, well this is this only exists to
like shock, you know, this is like and that was like,
you know, to me, that's fine. I mean, if that's
the direction you're gonna go, that's fine. It's not something

(42:34):
I'm interested in. It's certainly something I would never do.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
So yeah, I can only read maybe one or two
of those books a year, if that. The most like
extreme stuff I read are It's hard for me to
go into that territory. Because you don't know if you're
going to go into something that's going to mess you
up in the head or if it's just going to
be fun.

Speaker 1 (42:52):
And I prefer the fun. If I'm going to go
into the nastiness.

Speaker 3 (42:57):
Yeah sor so we're work. We're compatible on that.

Speaker 1 (43:03):
One thing.

Speaker 2 (43:03):
I want to know, because you started out writing movies,
what was the challenge in changing from writing a movie
to a book.

Speaker 3 (43:16):
That's a great question. I think the again, the playground
that I decided to play on, the kind of the
pulpy horror playground kind of was was advantageous, uh, to
go from script writing to that, because when I started
writing scripts, my own script, like the first the first

(43:38):
movie script that I wrote for the nursery, I thank
god I wasn't trying to sell that script because it
was it was awful in terms of like how it
was written. You know, I had like I had pages
of like description and that. And you're not supposed to
write a script like that. You know, theoretically, you're supposed
to have four, no more than four lines to every paragraph,

(44:01):
you know, no more than the four lines for every break.
And you know, you know, short punchy, you know you're
not you're not supposed to get into that. And so
so as I wrote my scripts and then I wrote
you know, some spec scripts and was trying to market
scripts for a while, I got better at it, and
I learned to write shorter and punchier, and and that

(44:22):
really helped me moving into writing Ticktown, because, uh, that's
kind of the approach I took to Ticktown. I wanted,
you know, again, I was trying to recreate something that
I that I fell in love with from those seventies
and eighties paperbacks, and a lot of those were short, punchy,
you know, uh, don't get flowery with your description. You know,

(44:45):
in Ticktown, there's a I can probably count on one
hand the number of like multi paragraph descriptions that I
have of like, you know, the the hunter's shock that
come upon in the woods. You know. I spent some
time on that because I really wanted people to feel that,
or the when they you know, near the in the
third act, when the when the two heroes go into

(45:07):
the ticks nest. You know, I spent a few paragraphs
kind of trying to give a sense of that. But
other than that, you know, it's like, oh, there's you know,
they go into the house, they get onto the boat,
you know, whatever whatever it is, you know, use some
impactful verbs of you know, some some quick sentences, and
and writing this script and then moving to to that

(45:29):
form of writing of a novel was very natural. Where
I where I think it was difficult was when I
had to get more you know, descriptive again because I
wasn't used to doing it. It was like, okay, you know,
this is boy if I put if I put this
kind of descriptive paragraph into a script, you know, I like,

(45:52):
I get laughed at by you know, a producer or
a manager. But it belongs here. So I've just got
to be confident that it belongs here, and that I've
got to you know, I I don't want to like
demolish it in you know, in the in the edit.
So that was that was difficult. But but actually I
found that the script my scriptwriting experience was very helpful

(46:14):
with this form of writing.

Speaker 1 (46:17):
Did you find it was way more solitary than working
in the movies?

Speaker 3 (46:22):
I mean it had to have been, right, yeah, this,
I mean there's a script writing. The way we did
I've done it with with my movies is my partners
and I would kind of uh we we'd pound out
an idea together and then I would disappear and write
a script. And then when I wrote my specscripts, I
was just writing, you know, I was just sitting in
my office writing scripts or at a coffee shop. And

(46:42):
that's very much what it was with with the book.
I mean, but you're absolutely right. It's uh, you know,
I haven't done a lot of short fiction, but the
you know, maybe a dozen short stories I had written
and have written and had published. You know, you work
on that for like a week, and then you do
some and then you know, I go play times with

(47:03):
my friends or something. But with a novel, you're like,
you know, day after day, you're just kind of like
isolated and alone. And because I don't and I don't
know how you work, but I will. You know, it's
hard enough for me to give something to someone to read,
you know, So you're working on this novel. You know,
for me, it probably the first draft took you know,

(47:24):
nine months or something like that. It was like, I've
got this thing that just keeps piling up and gets
bigger and bigger, and I have no idea if it's
any good, But I'm not going to get any feedback.
I don't want any feedback from anyone until I get
to draft three at least, because I want it. I
don't want, you know, to be horrible, you know. And
so you go through this process that's so isolating, and

(47:47):
you have no idea what you're sitting on, and that's
really hard, you know, just to have no idea if
you're sitting on anything that has any value at all.
So that that was hard. That was really hard. At
least with my scripts. You know, you might you might
work on a draft of a script. Uh you know,
you might spend two months or three months working on
a draft of the script and then at least I

(48:08):
can give it to, you know, my buddy and say hey,
you know, is there anything here and he can read
it and say yes or no. But to get you know,
nine months and then you know, another three or four
while you work on the next couple of drafts without anyone,
you know.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
I mean.

Speaker 3 (48:21):
The nightmare at the end of that is you give
it to someone, They're like, is this really this is
what you've been doing for the last year.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
At least don't say, uh, actually it might be good
because you're you're if you're if you're making them respond
with an emotion, but if it's just like if it's
more like eh.

Speaker 3 (48:44):
You know, meh, that's bad, I think, or just a
silent Yeah. Yeah, no, So yeah that was hard. That
was really hard. I'm I'm you know, I've I've been
working now for about the last year now on my
second novel, and and it's funny, it's like right back
into the same thing. You're like, okay now, and now
it's the same question. It's like, okay, now, am I

(49:06):
just trying to recreate what I did with the first one?
Or you know, should it be the same structure, should
it be completely different? Should it be you know, it's
it's just so hard. But hey, you know, there are
also people who work in coal mines and that's a
hell of a lot harder than this, So you.

Speaker 1 (49:21):
Know, yeah, I would not be happy doing that.

Speaker 3 (49:24):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
I want to disagree with you on one thing that
you said on another podcast. You said that there's there's
no deep meaning in Ticktown. There's no deep meaning in Ticktown.
You said it was all fun and uh and and schlocky.
But I found that there might be a bit of
a theme around playing god and genetic engineering. Was that

(49:48):
is there is there something there? Or am I just
looking too hard for a meaning? Or maybe it was
just like the mechanic of the story that had to
be there.

Speaker 3 (49:58):
Well, it's definitely that you can cantish this story. I mean,
if you will believe the pitch that I send out
agents when I when I read that you need to
like talk about the theme when you pitch an agent,
then yes, there's definitely a theme like that, because I
definitely told the agents that I pitched that that there

(50:19):
was that theme. I mean, there definitely is. When honestly,
when I sat down to write it, I was very
much in the headspace of I kind of I started
with the giant ticks, of course, but I also started
with this small town, rural newspaper because I liked the
idea of this thing that was going extinct and was

(50:39):
being swallowed up by something bigger and more modern, you know,
you know, the Internet, you know, and and and big
newspaper conglomerates, and you know, especially the Internet is making
these small town newspapers which used to be the heartlet
of communities, you know, completely obsolete. And so I started
with that, and I kind of wanted to kind of
metaphor the you know, the tics kind of you know,

(51:01):
overwhelming society. And then and then I think I got
away from that a little bit and I started playing
with with some of the thematics that you're talking about.
But as as much as as much as that is there,
I honestly didn't spend a lot of time thinking about
that or trying to infuse that into I just wanted

(51:23):
this to be fun, and I wanted it to be gonzo,
and I wanted to be kind of crazy. But obviously,
I mean, if you know, I don't know if we
do spoat. You know, I haven't really even thought about
doing spoilers on this before, but there definitely is science,
you know, involved in this, and you know, maybe you
could even like, you know, you know, maybe it's a

(51:46):
metaphor for AI. I don't know, you know, as a writer,
I think I've been thinking a lot more about AI
the last two years and and kind of the threat
that it poses to, you know, people in the artistic space.
And maybe there's even some of that in there that
I wasn't aware of.

Speaker 2 (51:59):
But maybe, yeah, that's interesting. I never thought of it
on that angle, but you know, you could be right, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:06):
There's there's definitely I mean, you know, there's there's definitely
in this book there is something bigger and better that
might make something else extinct. And so you know that
can be a metaphor for a lot of things. That
can be a metaphor for a lot of things.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
Do you do you think that AI could wipe out writers?

Speaker 3 (52:30):
You know? I mean, I mean honestly, I honestly don't
know like how good it can really get. Like when
I've when I've read AI stuff, it hasn't been very good.
I mean it's then you know, there definitely is not
a spark there, and maybe it gets to a spark.
But I also have, you know, in publishing, right and

(52:54):
in like in the limited experience I have in publishing now,
like no one is just discovering my book. You know,
people are discovering my book because I am out there
beating the drum. I'm out there on social media, I'm
doing podcasts. You know, I'm going to be setting off
on a tour of Wisconsin bookstores and hopefully beyond. I'm

(53:15):
reaching out to I'm reaching out to brick and mortar
bookstores saying hey, will you you know, will you will
you shelve my book, and so I think that in
the current publishing environment, something that's just written entirely AI,
even if it's outstanding, it's like, well, there's no one there,

(53:37):
And I don't know that people will give a damn
about something where they can't find the author on social
media or they can't you know, they don't know that.
I just don't know. I mean my and again I'm
talking indie publishing. So maybe it's different with like you know,
the people who are but I don't think it is
because the whole idea, the reason that small people like me,

(54:01):
I don't know about you maybe can't get into bookstores
is because oh no, you don't be famous already. You know,
you need to be famous already to get into a bookstore.
So I don't know how. You know. Hopefully, hopefully AI
written stuff will face the same challenges I'm facing in
terms of finding an audience.

Speaker 2 (54:19):
Yeah, honestly, I would like to be the ray of
hope or at least positivity in this. I don't think
it can ever mimic human emotions and human experiences. It
can try, but I think people are going to want
something deeper, even people who don't think that they're reading
for deeper meaning I think they are. Maybe not one

(54:43):
of readers are, but I think a good ninety five
percent of them are, even if they're unaware of it.
And I don't think AI isn't sentient, and I don't
think it's possible for it to become sentient when it
comes right down to it. So I you know, you
have these like these people coming out with like these
companies who want to publish like a thousand books a year.

(55:05):
Do you really think that those thousand books a year
are going to sell?

Speaker 1 (55:08):
They're not exactly?

Speaker 3 (55:10):
Yeah, that's that is absolutely for sure. I will say
I read I read something, and I won't mention names
by an author, an India author in the horror space
who's quite popular I've noticed, and when I read I
read one of his books, like Something came out a
couple of years ago, and my first thought was like, oh,

(55:31):
this is entirely AI written, because it was just so flat,
and but then there were so many mistakes in it.
I was like, well, that couldn't have been AI written. Say,
I wouldn't make all those mistakes, you know, But but
I definitely agree with you. I mean, there's something that
you know, even even in Ticktown, you know, you mentioned

(55:51):
the thematic stuff, I did not, you know, I mean,
you want the characters to be to connect with the characters,
but I didn't set up to write you know, you know,
really super fleshed out characters and relationships. But just in
going through the process as a person, as a writer,
you start to care about these characters and you start

(56:12):
wanting to give them their own personalities. And honestly, again
without any spoilers, every time I've edited the book, when
I get to the last chapter in which, you know,
two of the survivors are you know, kind of there's
a scene involving two of the survivors, I missed up

(56:32):
every time because by that point in the book, I
really care about those two characters, and I really love
those two characters, and I want them to be happy,
you know, moving forward. And so even as the author,
I find myself like wiping you know, some moisture out
of the corner of my eye every time that I
you know, went back to edit it or went back

(56:53):
to read it for proofing or whatever, and I felt
like an idiot every time, because it's like, dude, you
know what happens you know what's going on in this chap.
But every time I read it, you know, so, whether
it was by accident or just the human human part
of you just gets into it. And and maybe AI
can't do that. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
Yeah, I honestly don't. I think it's important to keep
fighting and pushing back against it. But at the same time,
I don't think it's ever especially if we continue pushing
back against it. I don't think it's gonna take over
like everyone fear. People feared the same thing when ebooks
came out. They thought it was going to replace physical books,
and it has yet to do that. So yeah, I'm

(57:32):
going to remain optimistic with the you know, with the
understanding that we still have to push back.

Speaker 1 (57:39):
That's just my take.

Speaker 3 (57:40):
Yeah, so, Jason, you're my computer is shutting down. I
don't know why. I think something is taken control and
it's shutting everything down. I don't uh as ayes h
as we go. Yeah, yeah, they're coming for us now,
They're coming for us right now?

Speaker 2 (58:01):
All right, So I have I have a couple more
questions about Ticktown and then I'll let you go. First
thing is what I actually I think I know the
answer to this question because we pretty much discussed it.

Speaker 1 (58:13):
But what do you want readers to take away from
reading Ticktown?

Speaker 3 (58:18):
I honestly, I want them to have fun. I just
want them to have.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
A good time, exactly what I thought you'd say. Yeah,
because it is fun. I mean yeah, I mean it's fun.
It's a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun.

Speaker 3 (58:29):
I want them to look for my next book too.
That's the other thing I wanted to take away from it.
I want to read this guy's next thing.

Speaker 1 (58:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
Now, the next question is just for fun. If you
were to go to sleep tonight and tomorrow morning when
you wake up, you're in Ticktown? Yes, what is your
survival strategy?

Speaker 3 (58:54):
Wow, what's my survival strategy for Ticktown? Well, I'm I mean,
first thing, I would get in my car and get
the hell out of town first and foremost that would
be Yeah. I probably my wife and daughter wouldn't be
so thrilled with me and that if I did that. Crisco,
that's right, that's right. But I would say, you know,

(59:16):
the characters that did their best in this one had
fire on their side, so I would probably go find
myself a flame thrower and U. I mean, you know, again,
without getting too far along with any spoilers, there's there's

(59:37):
a fair amount. There's a fair amount in Ticktown that
I was just not familiar with. So I was doing
a lot of I was doing a lot of research,
you know, online, And so I spent a fair amount
of time in the writing of Ticktown trying to find out,
like how one would create an explosive device to blow
up in the structure. And I always expected the FBI

(59:59):
to be knocking my door. But so but as part
of my survival strategy, I would say a flamethrower and
some plastic explosives would probably be a pride. I'd be
in decent shape. You know.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
You know, you're in a fun or book or a movie.
If flamethrowers solve exactly, that's like code for fun right there.

Speaker 1 (01:00:26):
All right, So.

Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
I want to thank you for coming on. I had
a lot of fun talking with you. But before we go,
I want to know what's next, uh for Christopher Mechlos.
What can we look forward to? You mentioned that you're
working on your second book. You can give us any
any inclination as to what it might be about.

Speaker 3 (01:00:50):
Sure, So the second book is also going to be
in the pulp horror playground. Uh, it's going to be
more of a lake rr sort of thing.

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

Speaker 3 (01:01:02):
Also takes place here in Wisconsin. We have a we
have a we don't have any great cryptids here in
Wisconsin legends, but we have a few. And I found,
uh there's a there's a there's a lake about an
hour from from where I live called Devil's Lake, and
there is supposedly a creature that lives in Devil's Lake.

(01:01:26):
It is not a particularly well developed legend. It's a
it's like one of those legends that you know, you
really have to struggle to find, and it only there's
only like, you know, a few lines here or there
about it. But so I decided to borrow that legend.
I fictionalized it doesn't take place at Devil's Lake, but

(01:01:46):
I but I'm I'm I've been building a book around
kind of a lake monster cryptid sort of story, and
and I again the same sort of thing. I've just
had a ball with it. I've just been having so
much fun writing it. I borrowed kind of a lot
of the same sort of tropes and stuff that I
used in Ticktown. But it's it's its own thing. It's

(01:02:07):
it's brand new. I do want to do a sequel
to Ticktown, but I didn't want to do it right away.
So I'm gonna do this. I've got an I've got
another thing planned for when I finished this, which I'm
which I'm almost done with, and so yeah, I'm off
and running. I think I think I like novel writing.
I've been having a real good time of being a
novelist these last couple of years, and so I think

(01:02:29):
I'm gonna stick with it for a while.

Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
Awesome, Well, I'm excited for you in that venture. Are
there are there any uh movies in the horizon?

Speaker 3 (01:02:39):
We're talking about it? We are, we we talk about it.
We have not settled on anything. Actually, it's funny. We
just got a Every every like six months or so,
the people who invested in our last movie will send
us a note and say, hey, you guys, come up
with any ideas yet. And I was just texting with
my friend Jay. I was like, oh boy, they really
want us to make another They really want to make

(01:02:59):
another movie. We should really think us on Yeah. So yeah,
so so we'll get there, but not nothing. Nothing is
on the immediate horizon. I'm I'm sticking, sticking with this.
It doesn't take as long I've found, and uh, it's
a lot cheaper to write the novel. So I've got
a couple more of those in me and then maybe,

(01:03:20):
uh maybe we'll be back on the movie in the
movie game.

Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
All right, So before we go, where can people find
you online? Should they wish to keep up with whatever
you're doing?

Speaker 3 (01:03:30):
Yeah, best place to get me is is I've got
a website, Christopher Michelos dot com. It's very easy. You
can find links to you know, Amazon and the book. There,
you can find links to all my social media. I'm
on Facebook, you know, at Facebook dot com, slash Christopherymichlis.
But if you just search me, if you search Ticktown,

(01:03:51):
you're gonna cut up with a lot of a lot
of my Facebook links. I'm on the Instagram, but I'm
probably most active on Facebook. So check me out on Facebook,
and then my website. I've got a blog going there.
We've got links to a lot of my short stories,
the movies and all that. So Christophermichlis dot com is
the best place to go.

Speaker 2 (01:04:09):
Awesome, Well, before you go, I hope that when you
release your next book, you think of weird reads here
and me, and we can do this over again.

Speaker 3 (01:04:21):
All I would love. This has been an absolute blast.
It's so much fun to talk to like minded you know,
writer horror lover. You know. This has been a blast.
So thanks so much for having.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
Me absolutely, thank you for coming on, and thank you
again for your patients, and we will talk again to.

Speaker 1 (01:04:40):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
I want to thank everyone for listening to this episode
with Christopher Miklos and his book Ticktown. I recommend going
and checking out Ticktown, especially if you like giant monsters
or giant bugs, especially giant books. If you like giant
bug horror, then you're gonna like this. Before I go,

(01:05:02):
I wanted to mention that, well, we did talk about AI.
You may have noticed, and I said that I said
that I don't think that AI is going to ruin
writers very much. I don't think it's going to ruin
anyone's careers, at least I hope I'm not wrong on that.

(01:05:24):
But I do want to add that I think that artists,
people who draw, paint, do digital art, I think they
are at some serious threat. Of course, writers could fall
into the same thing, especially freelance writers. Freelance writers are
definitely they're in for a challenge, but so are freelance artists.

(01:05:49):
Just in the last two weeks, and I don't know,
I forgot to mention this while I was talking to
this or about this with Chris, But just in the
last two or three weeks, I have been approached by
authors with AI covers and they wanted to either be
on the show or for me to review their books.

(01:06:12):
And I didn't think I was good at identifying AI covers,
but I think I have actually gotten good because I
noticed both those covers right away, And so I just
wanted to mention that I'm not completely ignorant to the
dangers of AI And honestly, I wish AI art would

(01:06:35):
just go away. I'm sick of seeing it. You see
it all the time now more and more, I noticed
that quite a few podcasts are using AI art. I
see advertisements for new podcasts or even older ones that
use a ton of AI art, and I think that,

(01:06:56):
you know, I sort of understand to do the amount
of art that you want to do, that would be expensive.
I mean, you wouldn't be able to sustain that, but
you can't you get around it. Some other way, do
you really need that picture of that piece of AI art.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
You don't.

Speaker 2 (01:07:15):
You can make your page, your Instagram page or whatever
look just as neat without it, I think, and your
Instagram ads and your podcast logos. Just to get a
podcast logo, you could either create it yourself or you
can pay somebody to do so. Paying somebody to do
so helps keep food on the table for them, and

(01:07:38):
it also helps them avoid getting a really awful job,
which they probably already have. You know, there's nothing wrong
with wanting to create art and sell it and sell
your skills, obviously, and AI is obviously going to come

(01:07:59):
and help destroy that in certain areas. I don't know
about fiction yet. That is a hard one fiction writing.
I just don't see it happening in fiction writing. So
with that, I just want to make sure that we're
all clear on that and I'm not totally ignorant. Feel
free to send me an email though at Weirdreads podcast

(01:08:22):
at gmail dot com and let me know what you
think about AI and anything else that you found interesting
about this episode or any other episodes. So that's it
for now, Thank you for listening. Until next time, keep
being safe, and most importantly, keep being weird because weird
is important these days, and we'll catch you on the

(01:08:44):
next podcast

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058 - Going To Tick Town With Christopher A. Micklos

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}058 - Going To Tick Town With Christopher A. Micklos