October 3, 2025 • 27 mins
Tonight we’re chatting with Brian Asman, who’s been called “a singular voice in horror fiction,” author of MAN, F*CK THIS HOUSE (AND OTHER DISASTERS) from Blackstone Publishing, a collection of six brand-new stories of hauntings and California Weirdness. Brian Asman is a writer, actor, and director from San Diego. He’s the author of Good Dogs from Blackstone Publishing. His other books include I’m Not Even Supposed to Be Here Today, Neo Arcana, Nunchuck City, Jailbroke, Our Black Hearts Beat as One, and Return of the Living Elves. Find him on social media (@thebrianasman) or his website (www.BrianAsmanBooks.com).
In the titular “Man, F*ck This House,” Sabrina Haskins and her family have just moved into their dream home. At first glance, the house is perfect. But things aren’t what they seem. Sabrina is hearing odd noises, seeing strange visions. Their neighbors are odd or absent. And Sabrina’s already-fraught relationship with her son is about to be tested in a way no parent could ever imagine. Because while the Haskins family might be the newest owners of this house, they’re far from its only residents…
Join us!
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/castle-of-horror-podcast--4268760/support.
In the titular “Man, F*ck This House,” Sabrina Haskins and her family have just moved into their dream home. At first glance, the house is perfect. But things aren’t what they seem. Sabrina is hearing odd noises, seeing strange visions. Their neighbors are odd or absent. And Sabrina’s already-fraught relationship with her son is about to be tested in a way no parent could ever imagine. Because while the Haskins family might be the newest owners of this house, they’re far from its only residents…
Join us!
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/castle-of-horror-podcast--4268760/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Castle Talk, where we talk to
writers and creators of today's genre worlds. I'm your host
Jason Henderson, publisher at castle Bridge Media, home of the
Castle of Horror anthology series. Tonight's Rich chatting with Brian Asman,
who's been called a singular voice in horror fiction. He
is the author of Man f This House and Other
Disasters from Blackstone Publishing, which is a collection of six
(00:30):
brand news stories of huntings and what his publisher calls
California weirdness. The main story is man This House asmon
Or I'll call you, Brian. I guess I can.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yeah, please call me Brian.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Brian is a writer, actor, and director from San Diego.
He's the author of Good Dogs from Blackstone. His other
books include I'm Not Even Supposed to be here Today,
Neo Arcana, Nunchuck City, Jail Brot, Jail Broke, Are Black Hearts,
Beat as One, and Return of the Living Elves. You
can find him at at the Brian Asman or his
(01:03):
website brianasmand Books dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Welcome Brian, Hey, Jason, thanks for having me on. I'm
really excited to be here today.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
You said that, you said that very vociferously like that.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
I've done a few of these before, so this is
not my first rodeo.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Yeah, I wouldn't think. Okay, all right, man, f this house.
Here's the thing, So this story is in set up
a very familiar story, and I think that's one of
the things that's wonderful. It fits into Amelia that we know,
which is a middle class family moves into an excellent
house because dad got a new job and they've moved
(01:38):
and no sooner did they move in. But but you know,
weird stuff starts happening because it's a haunted house story.
It is, and uh, the first thing, like, there's so
much wonderful stuff going on, and I want to I
want to dig into it. But the first thing is
when you set out and did you go? I would
like to write a haunted house novella. By the way,
(01:59):
there's several mid honted house stories, but this is the
particular kind of family on a haunted house as opposed
to like Legend of Hell House, which is an expedition. Right,
this is a family haunted house. Did you go, Hey,
I like these, I'd like to do one of my own.
Or how did it come about?
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Yeah? Well, It actually started as a Twitter joke. So
I was on Twitter and I was just like, you know,
what would be a great name for a haunted house book,
Man Fuck this House? And a bunch of people were like,
that is a good name, and so you should write that,
And so I was like, Okay, I got to give
the people what they want. So I'm going to go
write a book called man fuck this House. Yeah and yeah.
(02:34):
So I think as far as the decision, the particular
setup I was, I think I had recently rewatched Poltergeist
right around the time that this book was germinating, and
so this was like definitely a response to a number
of things. One was, you know, movie is like Poltergeist
or even like the conjuring stuff like that where family
moves into a house and spooky things happen. And also
(02:56):
the trope of the spooky kid in horror. A lot
of the time, I think in horror or I've read
I've read things from a child's POV where it really
sounds more like an adult, like an adult like you know,
as a child, like the child thinks like an adult,
you know, And I wanted to like trying to subvert
that a little bit play with it a little bit.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
A little bit about Damien, the son in this in
this family.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Yeah, so Damien is ten. He's a very precocious child,
quite intelligent for his age, and he has a very
weird relationship with his mom. Like his mom from birth
has really kind of favored the sister. She is unsettled
by Damien, partially because he consumed his twin in the womb, right,
which is a real thing that happens and has no
(03:41):
moral vaillance whatsoever. But in this case, the mother, through
a combination of postpreum depression and kind of not really
necessarily wanted to be a mom in the first place,
just kind of stumbling into this because she wasn't sure
what to do with her life, and her husband was there,
and you know, this was just a door she could
walk through. And then yeah, you know, kind of a
several things happened just kind of like make her kind
(04:02):
of believe that the child is evil, and because Damien
is he's not evil, but he's very smart, he's emotionally intelligent.
He recognizes this, and so he plays into it, you know,
and his whole life becomes this this sort of game
with his mother, this game of cat and mouse where
he's you know, trying to basically just you know, reinforce
the idea with her that he's.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
He's kind of jacking with her his whole life, you know. Yeah,
And he's because he's smart enough to know the things
that freak her out, and he kind of it reminds
me a lot of the guy in Harold and Maud
who's just constantly putting on these like horror a melia
for his mom to find. It's just the thing that
he does, and it's it's really interesting. I mean, it's
an interesting character because he could have used almost any
(04:44):
kind of character in here, and and I love that
as smart as he is, he's still a kid. Like
he's still afraid of going to the bathroom at school.
You know, he's still he still has a lot of
kid thoughts. He's just really smart and really really well rid.
But the main point of view of the story is
Sabrina and what I what I really think is beautiful
(05:06):
in it is you. She calls herself, you know, one
of many college dropouts who have become a homemaker, and
her inner monologue is a constant analysis of her place.
She's thinking about it all the time, about her place
in the middle class, in the family, in like alternate
lives that she could have lived if she hadn't gotten married.
(05:28):
And it doesn't mean that she hates this life. Yeah,
these are you know, but it is. It's it's constantly there.
And I wonder if this is sort of an open
ending question, but yeah, I wonder if horror and haunted
stories are ways of getting at those anxieties that you
know that everybody feels like, like everybody has that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Absolutely. Horror is definitely the genre where you can work
out any anxiety you can think of, any fear that
you can think of. It works particularly well for that
because you know you can you can either explore it
directly or explore it through metaphor, you know, like you know,
something like the zombie for example, Like I heard, you know,
someone mentioned to me this to me once, but they
(06:09):
were like, you know, the zombie. If you think about
it as kind of a metaphor for communism, it's being
subsumed into a collective and losing your individuality, right, And
I was like, oh, interesting, So there's all kinds of
different ways that we can explore fear and anxiety through horror.
I think in Sabrin this case especially, we're living in
a moment right now where we are very much encouraged
(06:29):
to ruminate. We're encouraged to like, despite the fact that
like we have more, we're more connected with the world
than ever before, we're also in some ways more encouraged
to turn inward. And you know, like really we're just
kind of like, like, you know, why are we posting
pictures of our lunch because we want other people to
see us a certain way, and we're obsessed with the
way that we're seeing and the way we think. Right,
(06:51):
but are we really going out and looking at pictures
of other people's lunches and getting any sort of value
from it whatsoever other than the certain and jealous see
that like this person went to toast last weekend with
their friends. I was saying at home in my pj's, like,
you know.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Oh, man, what you just said really hits home that
that thing? You know, do we share that we're out
at the thing because we want people to say, hey,
look at me, I have friends they like to hang
out with me. I'm a person that people like to
hang out with. You know. Look, we're getting martini's, you know, yeah,
and here She's the whole process. It's not just toned houses.
(07:29):
It's the moving, because I believe nothing brings out your
anxieties and your stresses more than moving your whole ass house,
like moving everything into a new place, and everything's up
in the air for that amount of time. And in
her case, you're careful to point out the internet's not
hooked up yet and the cable's not hooked up yet.
She is living in the seventies when she likes it
(07:50):
or not, although she has a phone, you know. But yeah,
But which means that to an extent, the world that's
happening to her could be happening in a pre internet world.
It could be happening in this in like a Marion,
you know, Mary Higgins Clark novel, in this eventies.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
You know, or on Gilligan's Island for that matter.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Yes, And we were just talking, by the way, right
before the show about about how much we both know,
way too much about Gilligan's Island.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Yes, and I had to get that reference in there.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yes, I yeah, ill especially because we're both enthusiasts of California.
I wrote, I wrote a couple of books about California.
One was Hollywood Tiki, and one was California Tiki, and
I've lectured about Gilligan's Island, which is embarrassing to say.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
But I really have to check out your tiki books,
like I love teki stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Oh go, well, the second one's a lot of fun
because it's just a review book. It's just it's just
Hollywood Tiki is just like just a just a bunch
of movie reviews. But enough about my books. Let's talk
about Let's talk about yours. The there are references by
the way that I really love that. There's a point
where she says she doesn't want to become somebody who
starts seeing things in the wallpaper, which is such a
(08:58):
wonderful reference to Yelman's Yellow Wallpaper, which was about a
woman who is going crazy and the people around her
are not listening. I like that. The dad, We'll get
back to Sabrina a second, but I want to talk
about the dad for a second, because the family moves
into this haunted house and dad is this like Ned
Flanders g Willaker's you Know guy, And when she thinks
(09:21):
about him, she thinks about him in terms of how
he's better than you might expect, like like that you
know that he's nothing special, but he's pretty good. And
that's I guess what I'm trying to get at is
you have not filled your book with people who are
perfect or even remotely perfect.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Yeah you know, well the world isn't filled with perfect
people for sure.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
But isn't it a temptation when you start out writing
is go, well, you know, maybe I'll make the dad
like a high power lawyer or or something like that,
or you know, but you know, and I could make
the kid, you know, just some random normal. The only
person who's really normal is the sister. Like she's of
Marilyn in the Monsters. Here, she's the she's the only
one who like kind of has has it all together
(10:05):
and is acting. In fact, when that.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Is actually so normal, he becomes abnormal again, Like oh yeah,
he's so straight laced and like, you know, just kind
of standard issued dude that he becomes a curiosity again,
I think. But you're right, MICHAELA is like the one
who's just like a regular person with all these other
people around her, just like what the hell.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Well, there's a point where sab Sabrina says about the dad.
She goes, I got so lucky out of all the
people I could have married who were like hitting on
me at Hooters when she worked. You know, I got
so lucky that I got some nice guy who doesn't
hit me and doesn't curse and is not a religious
nut like that. That's such a such a well observed
(10:46):
like thought, have you talked to any It must be
difficult writing in the pov of a of an adult woman.
I mean you use flights of your imagination or did you?
Or or you don't talk to anybody? Go, how do
I get into the head of this character?
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Well, I think generally there's a couple a couple of
keys to writing characters that are different than you and I,
you know, honestly, really just the first is that make
sure they're characters, so I you know, I think when
when people write outside their perspective, sometimes they can write
someone who is very one note right, Like you know,
sometimes you read I don't know if someone's rain, like
(11:21):
say a black character, for example, and then every scene
is about them being black, And like, you know, I
think probably any of your black listeners are probably well
I think about sandwiches, and I think about dogs, and
I think about like what that cloud looks like, you know,
it's not just a running like black person, black person,
black person, black person like all day. Right, And same
thing with women, right, they don't think about how they
are a woman all the time, although I think there's
(11:43):
a lot of content on social media that's that's kind
of like geared towards making them think about like as
a woman this, as a woman that. But you know,
so I think as long as you write characters that
have things they want, things they need, I think that
is really the key to writing fully realized characters, even
if you're they're outside your own particular experience. You know,
give them things they care about, and then make sure
(12:04):
they aren't surprised by their own existence, right, And so
that's the like people on men writing women forums like
the kind of joke you know, her boobs bounce boobly
or something like that, right, and like just think of
it this way, right, you know, for you know, ladies
out there in the audience, for example, think of this.
Like I've had so many women tell me this that
like if they if they were suddenly transported to the
(12:26):
body of the man, They're like, yeah, the first thing
I do is go stand in front of the mirror
naked and just swing that thing around and see what happens.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
It's like but like when you live in your body,
your entire life, your body isn't a novelty to you.
Like you can be surprised by your aches and your
pains and your things like that, but literally the exist
Like I don't wake down, wake up every morning and
go to the bathroom and look down and go, holy fuck,
I have a penis. Oh, by the way, am I
allowed to cuss on this?
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah, before I started talking about my dick, I apologize, yeah,
but so yeah. I think the thing is, like that's
where people get taken out of things, right, is when uh,
when when people seem surprised by normal aspects of their
own existence, you know, or or when people act in
(13:16):
ways that are really outside the way that you would
expect someone to act, and you know, and everyone everyone
is very different. I think there's a lot of leeway
that you can get when you're writing characters, you know,
because some people will go, well, I wouldn't do that,
but like you know, you know that's not necessarily you know,
just completely off the off the off the list of possibility. Either.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
What I love that she's so beset with thoughts that
she doesn't really particularly want. But they're not like criminal,
It's not like criminal unwanted thoughts. It's just the sort
of the things that we all have, guilty thoughts. That's
about how you're mad at your child and you don't
know exactly where to put your emotions for that. Or
and again, in a haunted story where the spirit world
(13:58):
is starting to uh affect you and impinge on your
on your world, it brings that stuff out more because
you're basically kind of being rubbed raw all the time,
and so all those under normal circumstances, these things would
just simmer for months or years, they kind of the
kind of bubble up because and maybe that's what's great
(14:19):
about about a haunted house story that let me ask
you something. This is a novella, right, and and so
now that it's being published with other short stories, you
have something that's like, you know, a book length or
five hundred pages, you know, but is it is it
challenging as a writer to like do you do you
sit down and go I think I I think I
(14:39):
want to make this a novella, or or like I'm
just because I know novelists and a lot of them
are like, no, I do novels, that's all I do.
I don't know how, I don't know how to make
it any shorter. Do you think of yourself as a
as a short story writer or or does this even
come into your your process?
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Well, I'm definitely a novelist now, for sure, and I've
always thought of myself as a writer per se. It's
interesting because I always say, the kind of writer people
think you are is based on what you've published, not
what you've.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Written, So you know that's funny.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Yeah, yeah, you know. And in the case of Man,
Fuck This House, I had written approximately five novels, including
a three hundred thousand word epic novel, prior to writing this.
And I'd written probably five or six at least five
or six novellas prior to writing this, right, And so
there's a specific reason why this was a novella. Yeah, yeah, yes,
(15:33):
And so essentially in twenty twenty, the publishers all closed
to agent and submissions for the first time ever, and
my agents and I were talking about, well, okay, the
book that I had on submission, that's now, like, you know,
just on hold, indefinitely, sure, just circling around. Yeah, it's
like nothing's happening. We don't know what's going on. We
(15:53):
don't know when publishers are going to start looking for
new books again or if, like eventually, when things start
to open up again, they're like, yeah, we're really going
to double down on the James Patterson stuff and so
we're going to just like not look look at new
writers anything, you know. And so my agent and I
talked about this, and I was trying to build up
my platform and you know, I was writing so much,
and she's like, well, why don't you just self publish
(16:15):
some novellas? And so the reason why we said novella's
was because we wanted to be able to sell my
debut novel to a publisher, right which Blackstone picked up.
That was Good Dogs, which out last year. So it
was very intentional novella from a from what I understand too,
novellas are looked at differently from a sales perspective by
like bookstores for example. Really, so when you're considering whether
(16:38):
to buy whether to order your new novel, you know,
so we'll go back and look at the sales figures
off your previous novel and go, well, that did X
number of copies, cool, I can sell the new one,
or that didn't do so well, I'll probably used to
order one copy of the new one and see what happens,
you know, right, whereas novella's they don't really have They're
not looked at the same way. And so that's why
we decided to do novellas, because they were low risk,
(17:01):
allowed me to build a platform, and we could still
sell my debut novel, so I had to keep it.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
But this is great hearing this. Yeah, this is so
much inside baseball.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Yeah yeah, so manfuck this house had to be forty
thousand words no longer when in the first version, this
new version is forty seven thousand words because I got
to go back add some new chapters in kind of
rework some parts, add some new references in stuff like that.
So this is more like the there's the original version
(17:31):
took place over four days. This takes place over five days.
So this is really the version of the story that
I wanted to tell the first time that I was
limited by space constraints. So it's now graduated from a
novella to actually a short novel at this point, you know,
because forty thousand is the generally accepted novella cut off.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
I hadn't actually thought about it. Yeah, you're right, I
guess forty seven is a short novel. I mean if
you think of like classic stuff like Psycho, it can't
be much longer than that, you know.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Yeah, yeah. And that's so all of this is essentially marketing, right, right,
because you know, there's there's generally accepted kind of word
length cutoffs, like anything over anything between ten thousand and
twenty thousand, I think is a novel lette, and then
anything over twenty thousand to forty thousand is a novella,
and anything under ten thousand is a short story unless
(18:20):
it's under you know, two thousand words, and then it's
like what micro microsfiction, or it's one hundred words exactly,
and that's a drabble. And you can tie yourself in
knots with all this stuff because there's books that are
like novella length that are marketed as novels. Also, so
Drive by James Sallas, for example, it's a probably word
(18:40):
word count wise about forty thousand words, maybe a little
bit longer. It's a super slim novel, but it's excellent.
It's always been marketed as a novel the art like
you know, stuff like that Last Night a Lobster by
Stewart O. Nann is like novella length, which is a
great one, but you know that's a standalone.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
I actually really like those those sort of lunchable sized novels.
I wish that there were more. And I hate the
fact that marketing does this to us, where a book
that that would have been perfectly happy at fifty two
thousand words is instead one hundred and fifty two thousand words.
And like, I don't understand, I'm curious, what without giving
away too much, when you went back to add over
(19:18):
ten percent to the size of the book, what what
what did you want to go back in and do well?
Speaker 2 (19:23):
I want I wanted to like flesh out certain parts
of the story. There were there were entire There was
an entire like I said, there was an entire day
which I just had to cut out essentially, And so
stuff kind of escalated much faster. In this case. I
was able to kind of, like you know, just wade
into the haunting in a little bit more in certain
ways and some of the reveals and things, and I
(19:43):
also got to bring in a character that is not
it doesn't who doesn't actually appear in the first one,
but is a major figure throughout the book. And he
actually appears as a real person this time, which is
super exciting.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
And I know what you're talking about, and that's that's
that's really cool. I like that. Did you have any
models in your head, like if you were to say this,
this is what you said, poultrygeist. So I was wondering,
you know, and I was thinking actually about what was
it called the hearse, which is this woman goes and
buys a house and one of the biggest thing is
(20:18):
just asinine townies who are so mean to her, you know,
when she buys this house. You know this again, the
anxiety of moving to a new place and everything. Are
you a big fan of this kind of of on
an out stories?
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Of course, yeah, I mean I am a I'm just
a big fan of a lot of different things, you know.
I'd say as far as like horror, the thing that
I gravitor, gravitate towards the most. I don't know, it's
just all over the place, you know. I love I
love low budget movies, I love haunting movies. I love
you know, anything involving like kind of sci fi horror
(20:51):
or like toxic waste. Like I just saw the new
Toxic Avenger and it was so much fun. I like
a reverent stuff. I like creepy stuff, you know, kind
of if I were to go through my favorite couple movies,
they're kind of all over the place.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
What's your if you were to go out tonight and
watch a triple feature of haunted house stories, what would
you What would you watch?
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Oh, that's a good question. Okay, let's see. Probably The
Witch in the Window would be on there, which that
is a fantastic indie film Haunted house story, and it
is it's a very simple, minimalist haunted house story, but
it is excellent. So I'd probably watched that. I'd probably
watched The Innkeepers, which is one of my favorites from Thai.
(21:34):
Like I'm actually not a huge Thigh West fan, like
most of his movies just kind of like don't quite
click for me, but that one I really enjoy. And
maybe it's because that's Pat Healy, but love The Innkeepers.
And then you know what brought Hell House LLC?
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Hell House LLC? Is that the that's is that the
I'm sorry is that a found footage movie.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
That is a found footage movie. Yes, exactly. It's set
in a in a in a in a and in
hotel that this group of people is turning into like
a haunt for Halloween.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Got it right. Okay, those are some cool suggestions. I
really like that. And and it's following the Tarantino theory
of if somebody asks you for a recommendation, you know,
don't if they ask you for an Australian movie, don't
don't say what is it? He said? He said, you know,
don't say crocodile dundee, say road Game like pick one
(22:25):
that people haven't thought about in a while. That's really
that's that's really great. Okay, So we're going to work.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
The Witch in the Window in the conversation just because
I find it's it's honestly one of the scariest movies
I've seen.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
I'm embarrassed to say so, I'm interested.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Yeah, yeah, very few people have seen it. They it's
if you've ever heard a Yellow Brick Road. It's the
same filmmakers as Yellow Brick Road, which is also fantastic cool.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Okay, so tell me about uh so, man, fuck, this
house is not the only story here. You've got several
others that are that are short stories rounding out the collection.
So what would you like to call out? One is
about the internet and I don't understand because I have
not read this one yet, but it involves internet memes.
What is the deal with this story?
Speaker 2 (23:01):
So this? Yeah, so this is Beware the Hurley Burley,
which is actually we're the script is being finalized right now,
is optioned and you know, we'll see what happens with it,
you know. But yeah, it's that's the film stuff is
really moving along for that one. It's super exciting. But
that was very much inspired by the Slenderman uh thankfully
(23:24):
not murder, but slenderman attack. Yeah, in Wisconson the two
girls who stabbed their friend who thankfully again thank god survived.
But it's the idea of this like kind of like
mean creature on the internet who's manipulating your mind and
making you potentially commit violent acts.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Where was it published that that that you managed to
then flip it into an option?
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Oh so my editor at Blackstone is also my film agent,
so lazy. So yeah, there's a couple. So the main
main book, Manufucked This House, has been optioned, and then
there's one other one in there as well, which others
in rushes, and then and then hopefully the others will
still we'll be able to sell to.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
So that's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
I mean the books really well, then you know, I'll
get some momentum and then hopefully some of the other
ones we can.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
I love how you you, you know, having this familiarity
with the business, you're able to sort of you can
kind of wear both hats. You can go, I'm a
creator and I'm creating this material, but I'm also an
IP holder, and I can I can license this material,
which is which is probably something that is not necessarily
is at least in the back of your mind whenever
(24:32):
you're you're creating something and going you know, I think
this would have legs.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Yeah, honestly, it's for everything I do at this point
really because I want to go as wide as possible
with my work, you know, I want to have access
to the biggest audience possible. And some of my really
wacky writer dreams, for example, having a fun coat pop
made out of something I created, or having a skin
in Fortnite or something like that. You know, those all
(24:56):
require you know, film and TV basically to happen eventually hopefully.
So yeah, yeah, you know, so I think for me,
it's that desire to like see my work reach the
widest audience possible, and so everything I approach I think about, like,
how could this be a movie? You know, when I
was in grad school, I did a lot of screenwriting
courses and so, and I have done some film work,
(25:19):
and so now I think about like every everything, every
novel I do, I'm like, you know, how could this
be a movie? Can I make this more visual and
cinematic and appealing and stuff like that?
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Right?
Speaker 2 (25:28):
And that doesn't mean I necessarily sacrifice anything creatively, you know,
in service of a movie that will probably not happen.
But it's it's more just like, you know, when I'm
thinking looking at my list of here are the seven
books I could write next, you know, the question of
which one of these is gonna be not not even
make the best movie, but be the most logical cell right? Right?
(25:49):
What's gonna be something that could be done relatively lowish budget,
single or few locations, but also visually captivating and interesting
with a hook man.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Fuck, this house is a perfect solution for that. I mean,
this is this this will make a beautiful like Netflix
series or something. I mean, honestly, because just a nice
tight four basically, and you know, because you could stre
nowadays you don't have to cram something into ninety minutes anymore.
You can. You can let it breathe and take up
you know, four or even six hours of streaming. And
(26:24):
I think that's just fantastic.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, well, hopefully there will be some news on that
front relatively soon. You know, you never know, but we're
my agent, Brendan is fantastic and we're doing everything we
can to make some of these projects happen.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
So of course, absolutely all right, So the book comes
out in a couple of weeks, I think from Blackstone Press,
the seventh.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
A week from today, so October seven.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Fantastic. I've been talking with Brian Asman about a new
collection called Man, Fuck This House and Other Disasters. I
am just really enjoying the writing. I think it's it's
really personal and and uh, I like these characters a lot.
So I just want to congratulate you, and I hope
you have a fantastic release with it.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Oh, thank you so much, Jason, thanks for having me on.
I really appreciate it. This has been a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Let's touch base soon, all right, hang in there, you too,
all right too,
Hello, and welcome to Castle Talk, where we talk to
writers and creators of today's genre worlds. I'm your host
Jason Henderson, publisher at castle Bridge Media, home of the
Castle of Horror anthology series. Tonight's Rich chatting with Brian Asman,
who's been called a singular voice in horror fiction. He
is the author of Man f This House and Other
Disasters from Blackstone Publishing, which is a collection of six
(00:30):
brand news stories of huntings and what his publisher calls
California weirdness. The main story is man This House asmon
Or I'll call you, Brian. I guess I can.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yeah, please call me Brian.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Brian is a writer, actor, and director from San Diego.
He's the author of Good Dogs from Blackstone. His other
books include I'm Not Even Supposed to be here Today,
Neo Arcana, Nunchuck City, Jail Brot, Jail Broke, Are Black Hearts,
Beat as One, and Return of the Living Elves. You
can find him at at the Brian Asman or his
(01:03):
website brianasmand Books dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Welcome Brian, Hey, Jason, thanks for having me on. I'm
really excited to be here today.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
You said that, you said that very vociferously like that.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
I've done a few of these before, so this is
not my first rodeo.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Yeah, I wouldn't think. Okay, all right, man, f this house.
Here's the thing, So this story is in set up
a very familiar story, and I think that's one of
the things that's wonderful. It fits into Amelia that we know,
which is a middle class family moves into an excellent
house because dad got a new job and they've moved
(01:38):
and no sooner did they move in. But but you know,
weird stuff starts happening because it's a haunted house story.
It is, and uh, the first thing, like, there's so
much wonderful stuff going on, and I want to I
want to dig into it. But the first thing is
when you set out and did you go? I would
like to write a haunted house novella. By the way,
(01:59):
there's several mid honted house stories, but this is the
particular kind of family on a haunted house as opposed
to like Legend of Hell House, which is an expedition. Right,
this is a family haunted house. Did you go, Hey,
I like these, I'd like to do one of my own.
Or how did it come about?
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Yeah? Well, It actually started as a Twitter joke. So
I was on Twitter and I was just like, you know,
what would be a great name for a haunted house book,
Man Fuck this House? And a bunch of people were like,
that is a good name, and so you should write that,
And so I was like, Okay, I got to give
the people what they want. So I'm going to go
write a book called man fuck this House. Yeah and yeah.
(02:34):
So I think as far as the decision, the particular
setup I was, I think I had recently rewatched Poltergeist
right around the time that this book was germinating, and
so this was like definitely a response to a number
of things. One was, you know, movie is like Poltergeist
or even like the conjuring stuff like that where family
moves into a house and spooky things happen. And also
(02:56):
the trope of the spooky kid in horror. A lot
of the time, I think in horror or I've read
I've read things from a child's POV where it really
sounds more like an adult, like an adult like you know,
as a child, like the child thinks like an adult,
you know, And I wanted to like trying to subvert
that a little bit play with it a little bit.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
A little bit about Damien, the son in this in
this family.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Yeah, so Damien is ten. He's a very precocious child,
quite intelligent for his age, and he has a very
weird relationship with his mom. Like his mom from birth
has really kind of favored the sister. She is unsettled
by Damien, partially because he consumed his twin in the womb, right,
which is a real thing that happens and has no
(03:41):
moral vaillance whatsoever. But in this case, the mother, through
a combination of postpreum depression and kind of not really
necessarily wanted to be a mom in the first place,
just kind of stumbling into this because she wasn't sure
what to do with her life, and her husband was there,
and you know, this was just a door she could
walk through. And then yeah, you know, kind of a
several things happened just kind of like make her kind
(04:02):
of believe that the child is evil, and because Damien
is he's not evil, but he's very smart, he's emotionally intelligent.
He recognizes this, and so he plays into it, you know,
and his whole life becomes this this sort of game
with his mother, this game of cat and mouse where
he's you know, trying to basically just you know, reinforce
the idea with her that he's.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
He's kind of jacking with her his whole life, you know. Yeah,
And he's because he's smart enough to know the things
that freak her out, and he kind of it reminds
me a lot of the guy in Harold and Maud
who's just constantly putting on these like horror a melia
for his mom to find. It's just the thing that
he does, and it's it's really interesting. I mean, it's
an interesting character because he could have used almost any
(04:44):
kind of character in here, and and I love that
as smart as he is, he's still a kid. Like
he's still afraid of going to the bathroom at school.
You know, he's still he still has a lot of
kid thoughts. He's just really smart and really really well rid.
But the main point of view of the story is
Sabrina and what I what I really think is beautiful
(05:06):
in it is you. She calls herself, you know, one
of many college dropouts who have become a homemaker, and
her inner monologue is a constant analysis of her place.
She's thinking about it all the time, about her place
in the middle class, in the family, in like alternate
lives that she could have lived if she hadn't gotten married.
(05:28):
And it doesn't mean that she hates this life. Yeah,
these are you know, but it is. It's it's constantly there.
And I wonder if this is sort of an open
ending question, but yeah, I wonder if horror and haunted
stories are ways of getting at those anxieties that you
know that everybody feels like, like everybody has that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Absolutely. Horror is definitely the genre where you can work
out any anxiety you can think of, any fear that
you can think of. It works particularly well for that
because you know you can you can either explore it
directly or explore it through metaphor, you know, like you know,
something like the zombie for example, Like I heard, you know,
someone mentioned to me this to me once, but they
(06:09):
were like, you know, the zombie. If you think about
it as kind of a metaphor for communism, it's being
subsumed into a collective and losing your individuality, right, And
I was like, oh, interesting, So there's all kinds of
different ways that we can explore fear and anxiety through horror.
I think in Sabrin this case especially, we're living in
a moment right now where we are very much encouraged
(06:29):
to ruminate. We're encouraged to like, despite the fact that
like we have more, we're more connected with the world
than ever before, we're also in some ways more encouraged
to turn inward. And you know, like really we're just
kind of like, like, you know, why are we posting
pictures of our lunch because we want other people to
see us a certain way, and we're obsessed with the
way that we're seeing and the way we think. Right,
(06:51):
but are we really going out and looking at pictures
of other people's lunches and getting any sort of value
from it whatsoever other than the certain and jealous see
that like this person went to toast last weekend with
their friends. I was saying at home in my pj's, like,
you know.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Oh, man, what you just said really hits home that
that thing? You know, do we share that we're out
at the thing because we want people to say, hey,
look at me, I have friends they like to hang
out with me. I'm a person that people like to
hang out with. You know. Look, we're getting martini's, you know, yeah,
and here She's the whole process. It's not just toned houses.
(07:29):
It's the moving, because I believe nothing brings out your
anxieties and your stresses more than moving your whole ass house,
like moving everything into a new place, and everything's up
in the air for that amount of time. And in
her case, you're careful to point out the internet's not
hooked up yet and the cable's not hooked up yet.
She is living in the seventies when she likes it
(07:50):
or not, although she has a phone, you know. But yeah,
But which means that to an extent, the world that's
happening to her could be happening in a pre internet world.
It could be happening in this in like a Marion,
you know, Mary Higgins Clark novel, in this eventies.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
You know, or on Gilligan's Island for that matter.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Yes, And we were just talking, by the way, right
before the show about about how much we both know,
way too much about Gilligan's Island.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Yes, and I had to get that reference in there.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yes, I yeah, ill especially because we're both enthusiasts of California.
I wrote, I wrote a couple of books about California.
One was Hollywood Tiki, and one was California Tiki, and
I've lectured about Gilligan's Island, which is embarrassing to say.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
But I really have to check out your tiki books,
like I love teki stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Oh go, well, the second one's a lot of fun
because it's just a review book. It's just it's just
Hollywood Tiki is just like just a just a bunch
of movie reviews. But enough about my books. Let's talk
about Let's talk about yours. The there are references by
the way that I really love that. There's a point
where she says she doesn't want to become somebody who
starts seeing things in the wallpaper, which is such a
(08:58):
wonderful reference to Yelman's Yellow Wallpaper, which was about a
woman who is going crazy and the people around her
are not listening. I like that. The dad, We'll get
back to Sabrina a second, but I want to talk
about the dad for a second, because the family moves
into this haunted house and dad is this like Ned
Flanders g Willaker's you Know guy, And when she thinks
(09:21):
about him, she thinks about him in terms of how
he's better than you might expect, like like that you
know that he's nothing special, but he's pretty good. And
that's I guess what I'm trying to get at is
you have not filled your book with people who are
perfect or even remotely perfect.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Yeah you know, well the world isn't filled with perfect
people for sure.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
But isn't it a temptation when you start out writing
is go, well, you know, maybe I'll make the dad
like a high power lawyer or or something like that,
or you know, but you know, and I could make
the kid, you know, just some random normal. The only
person who's really normal is the sister. Like she's of
Marilyn in the Monsters. Here, she's the she's the only
one who like kind of has has it all together
(10:05):
and is acting. In fact, when that.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Is actually so normal, he becomes abnormal again, Like oh yeah,
he's so straight laced and like, you know, just kind
of standard issued dude that he becomes a curiosity again,
I think. But you're right, MICHAELA is like the one
who's just like a regular person with all these other
people around her, just like what the hell.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Well, there's a point where sab Sabrina says about the dad.
She goes, I got so lucky out of all the
people I could have married who were like hitting on
me at Hooters when she worked. You know, I got
so lucky that I got some nice guy who doesn't
hit me and doesn't curse and is not a religious
nut like that. That's such a such a well observed
(10:46):
like thought, have you talked to any It must be
difficult writing in the pov of a of an adult woman.
I mean you use flights of your imagination or did you?
Or or you don't talk to anybody? Go, how do
I get into the head of this character?
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Well, I think generally there's a couple a couple of
keys to writing characters that are different than you and I,
you know, honestly, really just the first is that make
sure they're characters, so I you know, I think when
when people write outside their perspective, sometimes they can write
someone who is very one note right, Like you know,
sometimes you read I don't know if someone's rain, like
(11:21):
say a black character, for example, and then every scene
is about them being black, And like, you know, I
think probably any of your black listeners are probably well
I think about sandwiches, and I think about dogs, and
I think about like what that cloud looks like, you know,
it's not just a running like black person, black person,
black person, black person like all day. Right, And same
thing with women, right, they don't think about how they
are a woman all the time, although I think there's
(11:43):
a lot of content on social media that's that's kind
of like geared towards making them think about like as
a woman this, as a woman that. But you know,
so I think as long as you write characters that
have things they want, things they need, I think that
is really the key to writing fully realized characters, even
if you're they're outside your own particular experience. You know,
give them things they care about, and then make sure
(12:04):
they aren't surprised by their own existence, right, And so
that's the like people on men writing women forums like
the kind of joke you know, her boobs bounce boobly
or something like that, right, and like just think of
it this way, right, you know, for you know, ladies
out there in the audience, for example, think of this.
Like I've had so many women tell me this that
like if they if they were suddenly transported to the
(12:26):
body of the man, They're like, yeah, the first thing
I do is go stand in front of the mirror
naked and just swing that thing around and see what happens.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
It's like but like when you live in your body,
your entire life, your body isn't a novelty to you.
Like you can be surprised by your aches and your
pains and your things like that, but literally the exist
Like I don't wake down, wake up every morning and
go to the bathroom and look down and go, holy fuck,
I have a penis. Oh, by the way, am I
allowed to cuss on this?
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah, before I started talking about my dick, I apologize, yeah,
but so yeah. I think the thing is, like that's
where people get taken out of things, right, is when uh,
when when people seem surprised by normal aspects of their
own existence, you know, or or when people act in
(13:16):
ways that are really outside the way that you would
expect someone to act, and you know, and everyone everyone
is very different. I think there's a lot of leeway
that you can get when you're writing characters, you know,
because some people will go, well, I wouldn't do that,
but like you know, you know that's not necessarily you know,
just completely off the off the off the list of possibility. Either.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
What I love that she's so beset with thoughts that
she doesn't really particularly want. But they're not like criminal,
It's not like criminal unwanted thoughts. It's just the sort
of the things that we all have, guilty thoughts. That's
about how you're mad at your child and you don't
know exactly where to put your emotions for that. Or
and again, in a haunted story where the spirit world
(13:58):
is starting to uh affect you and impinge on your
on your world, it brings that stuff out more because
you're basically kind of being rubbed raw all the time,
and so all those under normal circumstances, these things would
just simmer for months or years, they kind of the
kind of bubble up because and maybe that's what's great
(14:19):
about about a haunted house story that let me ask
you something. This is a novella, right, and and so
now that it's being published with other short stories, you
have something that's like, you know, a book length or
five hundred pages, you know, but is it is it
challenging as a writer to like do you do you
sit down and go I think I I think I
(14:39):
want to make this a novella, or or like I'm
just because I know novelists and a lot of them
are like, no, I do novels, that's all I do.
I don't know how, I don't know how to make
it any shorter. Do you think of yourself as a
as a short story writer or or does this even
come into your your process?
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Well, I'm definitely a novelist now, for sure, and I've
always thought of myself as a writer per se. It's
interesting because I always say, the kind of writer people
think you are is based on what you've published, not
what you've.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Written, So you know that's funny.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Yeah, yeah, you know. And in the case of Man,
Fuck This House, I had written approximately five novels, including
a three hundred thousand word epic novel, prior to writing this.
And I'd written probably five or six at least five
or six novellas prior to writing this, right, And so
there's a specific reason why this was a novella. Yeah, yeah, yes,
(15:33):
And so essentially in twenty twenty, the publishers all closed
to agent and submissions for the first time ever, and
my agents and I were talking about, well, okay, the
book that I had on submission, that's now, like, you know,
just on hold, indefinitely, sure, just circling around. Yeah, it's
like nothing's happening. We don't know what's going on. We
(15:53):
don't know when publishers are going to start looking for
new books again or if, like eventually, when things start
to open up again, they're like, yeah, we're really going
to double down on the James Patterson stuff and so
we're going to just like not look look at new
writers anything, you know. And so my agent and I
talked about this, and I was trying to build up
my platform and you know, I was writing so much,
and she's like, well, why don't you just self publish
(16:15):
some novellas? And so the reason why we said novella's
was because we wanted to be able to sell my
debut novel to a publisher, right which Blackstone picked up.
That was Good Dogs, which out last year. So it
was very intentional novella from a from what I understand too,
novellas are looked at differently from a sales perspective by
like bookstores for example. Really, so when you're considering whether
(16:38):
to buy whether to order your new novel, you know,
so we'll go back and look at the sales figures
off your previous novel and go, well, that did X
number of copies, cool, I can sell the new one,
or that didn't do so well, I'll probably used to
order one copy of the new one and see what happens,
you know, right, whereas novella's they don't really have They're
not looked at the same way. And so that's why
we decided to do novellas, because they were low risk,
(17:01):
allowed me to build a platform, and we could still
sell my debut novel, so I had to keep it.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
But this is great hearing this. Yeah, this is so
much inside baseball.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Yeah yeah, so manfuck this house had to be forty
thousand words no longer when in the first version, this
new version is forty seven thousand words because I got
to go back add some new chapters in kind of
rework some parts, add some new references in stuff like that.
So this is more like the there's the original version
(17:31):
took place over four days. This takes place over five days.
So this is really the version of the story that
I wanted to tell the first time that I was
limited by space constraints. So it's now graduated from a
novella to actually a short novel at this point, you know,
because forty thousand is the generally accepted novella cut off.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
I hadn't actually thought about it. Yeah, you're right, I
guess forty seven is a short novel. I mean if
you think of like classic stuff like Psycho, it can't
be much longer than that, you know.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Yeah, yeah. And that's so all of this is essentially marketing, right, right,
because you know, there's there's generally accepted kind of word
length cutoffs, like anything over anything between ten thousand and
twenty thousand, I think is a novel lette, and then
anything over twenty thousand to forty thousand is a novella,
and anything under ten thousand is a short story unless
(18:20):
it's under you know, two thousand words, and then it's
like what micro microsfiction, or it's one hundred words exactly,
and that's a drabble. And you can tie yourself in
knots with all this stuff because there's books that are
like novella length that are marketed as novels. Also, so
Drive by James Sallas, for example, it's a probably word
(18:40):
word count wise about forty thousand words, maybe a little
bit longer. It's a super slim novel, but it's excellent.
It's always been marketed as a novel the art like
you know, stuff like that Last Night a Lobster by
Stewart O. Nann is like novella length, which is a
great one, but you know that's a standalone.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
I actually really like those those sort of lunchable sized novels.
I wish that there were more. And I hate the
fact that marketing does this to us, where a book
that that would have been perfectly happy at fifty two
thousand words is instead one hundred and fifty two thousand words.
And like, I don't understand, I'm curious, what without giving
away too much, when you went back to add over
(19:18):
ten percent to the size of the book, what what
what did you want to go back in and do well?
Speaker 2 (19:23):
I want I wanted to like flesh out certain parts
of the story. There were there were entire There was
an entire like I said, there was an entire day
which I just had to cut out essentially, And so
stuff kind of escalated much faster. In this case. I
was able to kind of, like you know, just wade
into the haunting in a little bit more in certain
ways and some of the reveals and things, and I
(19:43):
also got to bring in a character that is not
it doesn't who doesn't actually appear in the first one,
but is a major figure throughout the book. And he
actually appears as a real person this time, which is
super exciting.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
And I know what you're talking about, and that's that's
that's really cool. I like that. Did you have any
models in your head, like if you were to say this,
this is what you said, poultrygeist. So I was wondering,
you know, and I was thinking actually about what was
it called the hearse, which is this woman goes and
buys a house and one of the biggest thing is
(20:18):
just asinine townies who are so mean to her, you know,
when she buys this house. You know this again, the
anxiety of moving to a new place and everything. Are
you a big fan of this kind of of on
an out stories?
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Of course, yeah, I mean I am a I'm just
a big fan of a lot of different things, you know.
I'd say as far as like horror, the thing that
I gravitor, gravitate towards the most. I don't know, it's
just all over the place, you know. I love I
love low budget movies, I love haunting movies. I love
you know, anything involving like kind of sci fi horror
(20:51):
or like toxic waste. Like I just saw the new
Toxic Avenger and it was so much fun. I like
a reverent stuff. I like creepy stuff, you know, kind
of if I were to go through my favorite couple movies,
they're kind of all over the place.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
What's your if you were to go out tonight and
watch a triple feature of haunted house stories, what would
you What would you watch?
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Oh, that's a good question. Okay, let's see. Probably The
Witch in the Window would be on there, which that
is a fantastic indie film Haunted house story, and it
is it's a very simple, minimalist haunted house story, but
it is excellent. So I'd probably watched that. I'd probably
watched The Innkeepers, which is one of my favorites from Thai.
(21:34):
Like I'm actually not a huge Thigh West fan, like
most of his movies just kind of like don't quite
click for me, but that one I really enjoy. And
maybe it's because that's Pat Healy, but love The Innkeepers.
And then you know what brought Hell House LLC?
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Hell House LLC? Is that the that's is that the
I'm sorry is that a found footage movie.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
That is a found footage movie. Yes, exactly. It's set
in a in a in a in a and in
hotel that this group of people is turning into like
a haunt for Halloween.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Got it right. Okay, those are some cool suggestions. I
really like that. And and it's following the Tarantino theory
of if somebody asks you for a recommendation, you know,
don't if they ask you for an Australian movie, don't
don't say what is it? He said? He said, you know,
don't say crocodile dundee, say road Game like pick one
(22:25):
that people haven't thought about in a while. That's really
that's that's really great. Okay, So we're going to work.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
The Witch in the Window in the conversation just because
I find it's it's honestly one of the scariest movies
I've seen.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
I'm embarrassed to say so, I'm interested.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Yeah, yeah, very few people have seen it. They it's
if you've ever heard a Yellow Brick Road. It's the
same filmmakers as Yellow Brick Road, which is also fantastic cool.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Okay, so tell me about uh so, man, fuck, this
house is not the only story here. You've got several
others that are that are short stories rounding out the collection.
So what would you like to call out? One is
about the internet and I don't understand because I have
not read this one yet, but it involves internet memes.
What is the deal with this story?
Speaker 2 (23:01):
So this? Yeah, so this is Beware the Hurley Burley,
which is actually we're the script is being finalized right now,
is optioned and you know, we'll see what happens with it,
you know. But yeah, it's that's the film stuff is
really moving along for that one. It's super exciting. But
that was very much inspired by the Slenderman uh thankfully
(23:24):
not murder, but slenderman attack. Yeah, in Wisconson the two
girls who stabbed their friend who thankfully again thank god survived.
But it's the idea of this like kind of like
mean creature on the internet who's manipulating your mind and
making you potentially commit violent acts.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Where was it published that that that you managed to
then flip it into an option?
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Oh so my editor at Blackstone is also my film agent,
so lazy. So yeah, there's a couple. So the main
main book, Manufucked This House, has been optioned, and then
there's one other one in there as well, which others
in rushes, and then and then hopefully the others will
still we'll be able to sell to.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
So that's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
I mean the books really well, then you know, I'll
get some momentum and then hopefully some of the other
ones we can.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
I love how you you, you know, having this familiarity
with the business, you're able to sort of you can
kind of wear both hats. You can go, I'm a
creator and I'm creating this material, but I'm also an
IP holder, and I can I can license this material,
which is which is probably something that is not necessarily
is at least in the back of your mind whenever
(24:32):
you're you're creating something and going you know, I think
this would have legs.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Yeah, honestly, it's for everything I do at this point
really because I want to go as wide as possible
with my work, you know, I want to have access
to the biggest audience possible. And some of my really
wacky writer dreams, for example, having a fun coat pop
made out of something I created, or having a skin
in Fortnite or something like that. You know, those all
(24:56):
require you know, film and TV basically to happen eventually hopefully.
So yeah, yeah, you know, so I think for me,
it's that desire to like see my work reach the
widest audience possible, and so everything I approach I think about, like,
how could this be a movie? You know, when I
was in grad school, I did a lot of screenwriting
courses and so, and I have done some film work,
(25:19):
and so now I think about like every everything, every
novel I do, I'm like, you know, how could this
be a movie? Can I make this more visual and
cinematic and appealing and stuff like that?
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Right?
Speaker 2 (25:28):
And that doesn't mean I necessarily sacrifice anything creatively, you know,
in service of a movie that will probably not happen.
But it's it's more just like, you know, when I'm
thinking looking at my list of here are the seven
books I could write next, you know, the question of
which one of these is gonna be not not even
make the best movie, but be the most logical cell right? Right?
(25:49):
What's gonna be something that could be done relatively lowish budget,
single or few locations, but also visually captivating and interesting
with a hook man.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Fuck, this house is a perfect solution for that. I mean,
this is this this will make a beautiful like Netflix
series or something. I mean, honestly, because just a nice
tight four basically, and you know, because you could stre
nowadays you don't have to cram something into ninety minutes anymore.
You can. You can let it breathe and take up
you know, four or even six hours of streaming. And
(26:24):
I think that's just fantastic.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, well, hopefully there will be some news on that
front relatively soon. You know, you never know, but we're
my agent, Brendan is fantastic and we're doing everything we
can to make some of these projects happen.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
So of course, absolutely all right, So the book comes
out in a couple of weeks, I think from Blackstone Press,
the seventh.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
A week from today, so October seven.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Fantastic. I've been talking with Brian Asman about a new
collection called Man, Fuck This House and Other Disasters. I
am just really enjoying the writing. I think it's it's
really personal and and uh, I like these characters a lot.
So I just want to congratulate you, and I hope
you have a fantastic release with it.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Oh, thank you so much, Jason, thanks for having me on.
I really appreciate it. This has been a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Let's touch base soon, all right, hang in there, you too,
all right too,
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