June 19, 2025 • 22 mins
Tonight we’re chatting with Christopher Micklos, author TICK TOWN, which comes out this month from Castle Bridge Media.In the book, “When a northern Wisconsin tourist town becomes the feeding ground for a band of giant, mutant ticks, a young reporter, her cop ex-boyfriend, and a veteran newspaperman must track down and destroy the queen tick and her nest before the monsters overrun and slaughter the entire town.”
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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, RI chatting with Christopher Michlos,
author of and I love this title, Ticktown, which comes
out this month from castle Bridge Media, which full disclosure,
(00:29):
I am a publisher at castle Bridge Media, so I
am instrumental in this. But I love this book and
I love its icky content. It is the kind of
paperback from hell I've been wanting to talk about for
a long time. So here's the deal. In the book,
I have this right in front of me. When a
(00:49):
northern Wisconsin touristtown becomes the feeding ground for a giant
band of mutant ticks giant ticks, a young reporter or
copbex boyfriend and a newspaper man have to track down
and destroy the Queen Tick and her nest before these
monsters overrun and slaughter the entire town. It is grody,
it is summary, and it is full of giant I
(01:12):
can't stress this enough giant ticks. So welcome Christopher.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Hey, thanks so much. Jason, I really appreciate it. You
know it's funny.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Oh. I just started the last I would say the
last couple of weeks.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
I didn't realize what a perfect summer book it is,
because especially here in Wisconsin where I am, there's ticks everywhere.
And my daughter was My daughter's been convinced. And maybe
it's just because I've had the advanced copies of the book.
Later on, she's convinced she had ticks in her hair.
We always think we've got ticks on the dog. I
mean it's it's the summer brings ticks in Wisconsin, and
(01:44):
so I didn't quite realize what great timing we were
going to have in releasing this book.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
But these ticks are like the size of They're like
when you think of Rob and Batman and Robin when
Robin gets eaten by a giant clam.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
They're like that.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
They're like they are they are big, and so they
can cleave a person and do cleave a person in half.
And I okay, so let me ask you. You you've
said that you had a distinct vision in mind basically
that this was your ode to well, probably several things,
because I think of like giant bugs, you know, like
(02:19):
like you know James, like, uh, you know, Peter Graves
versus the Big Ants, but also the the nineteen seventies
Paperbacks from Hell. So talk to me a little bit
about about that, that gulash of inspiration.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Well sure you actually earlier you used the phrase Paperbacks
from Hell, and I read, you know, I would say,
maybe five years ago something like that, the book Paperbacks
from Hell, written by Grady Hendrix and will Ericson, which
is this survey of seventies and eighties pulp paperbacks, so
(02:57):
paperbacks in general, but a lot of pulp or paper
and I had had very little exposure to to that,
to those books and tell that.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
And as I read this book.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
I was just flabbergast about how wonderfully gonzo and terrific
it all sounded, you know, these these crazy plot lines,
these over the top.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
You know heroes, and on and on.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
And after I finished the book, I started picking up
and reading some of these books. One of my first
was was Knight of the Crabs by Guyane Smith, and
I fell so in love with his his vision of
these giant crabs terrorizing the Welsh countryside. And I think
in part because it brought me back to the movies
(03:45):
I loved when I was a young kid.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
I grew up on classic.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Old horror, the Universal, Frankenstein and Dracula and Wolfman, all
those yes, But I loved, loved, loved the giant creature
feature of movies like them. From those were the paperbacks
that I started to gravitate towards. And then I so,
I'm a filmmaker. A couple of movies last night, small
(04:13):
independent features, but I started to think that I wanted
to I wanted to write a novel, and so it
became clear that the kind of novel that I was
going to write was going to be a pulpy paperback novel,
and I wanted to do something that was somewhat of
a mash up between those fifties and sixties sci fi
(04:34):
movies and the seventies and eighties pulp horror paperbacks and
giant mutated tics in Northern.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Wisconsin ended up being the perfect the perfect mix of
the two.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
So you've actually, you know, you've tried to kind of
get people into the spirit of of you know, monsters
in the summer, like sort of harkening back to that vision,
like don't you have an event? Were you gonna be
showing like some monster movies.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Or something super excited.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, So the book comes out on Tuesday, June twenty
fourth in paperback and kindle, and that next weekend on
June twenty eighth, Saturday, June twenty eighth, my books launch event.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Is going to be screening.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
I'm going a host of screening of the nineteen fifty
four movie Them that I referenced at a local theater
at Marcus Palace Theater. Have a loan Madison is going
to introduce the movie and say a few words about
the movie. We're going to have a screening, and then
afterwards they have a nice lounge with a bar and
food and that sort of thing right in the theater,
and we're going to go over there and do a
(05:42):
book signing and a reception and the lounge.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
And what is really.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Fun about the event is the screening. The movie screening
at four point thirty on Saturday afternoon. Your ticket to
the event is going to be a paperback copy of
So if you get a paperback copied of Ticktown you
bring it to the event, it's worth two seats to
the screening. So I'm going to be doing local media
(06:11):
and pr you know, interviews and some other things locally
to promote where here in Madison. There's gonna be several
bookstories that are carrying the paperback of a book when
it comes out on June twenty fourth. If people can't
get that, you can't get their hands on that, they
can always order from Amazon, you know, if they have Prime,
(06:32):
they'll definitely get it by the weekend. And worst case
scenario is that we'll have some books for sale at
the event that people can get it.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
But I thought it would be a fun thing.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I have a good relationship with the theater because of
my film background, and they were just absolutely ecstatic about
the idea, like super supportive. In fact, I'm going over
there in the morning tomorrow to test out the movie.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
And kind of talk to them about logistics.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
So I appreciate you mentioning it because I'm just so
excited about it.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
I really love that though. I mean that that because
to me that those are those are memories. Like when
I talk to my dad, one of his clearest memories
of when he was a kid was going to some
event where they were showing creature from the Black Lagoon,
and and you know, he just has it, and you know,
that just the community, community of Monster kids and the
(07:22):
community of Monster movies is just to me one of
those weird American things that that is just always worth celebrating.
Especially I mean, I know I'm hitting the summer really hard,
but it's so true, like in the summer, I think,
at least since in my lifetime, at least since Jaws
came out, summer is the time for monsters, you know,
And and so I just love that you've sort of
(07:46):
gone after that talk to me a little bit about
like that's fantastic, But getting down to the nitty gritty
of your process, how did you knock yourself into getting
a book done? Like, how did it? How did it?
How did it come together? Did you like have to say, well, Chris,
I'm gonna have to sit down and knock out five
hundred words a day, or I'm going to get this
(08:08):
done by labor day, or or how did it come
together for you?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
That's actually an interesting question because I wasn't really thinking
of it in those in those terms. Even though I
hadn't written a novel before, I've written several screenplays, and
so the process for me of writing down and writing
a screenplay is, you know, just kind of sitting down
kind of you know, really roughly plotting it out and
then just banging through it. I have a I have
(08:34):
a daughter who's now eleven, and so during during the
school year, I try to get up, you know, five
o'clock five thirty because I worked best in the morning,
try and knock out, you know, as much as I
can for a few hours before I you know, get
it ready for school. Then a couple hours after I
get her off to school, and it was just a
(08:54):
matter of trying to uh, you know, try to do
it as as efficiently as I can. I was actually
I started writing the novel because I was writing the
screenplay that I was extremely excited about. I won't tell
you too much about it. I want to tell you what
it's about, but it's called Jingle Bell Chop, and it
was I was. I was just loving writing.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
It was kind of a horror comedy, of holiday horror comedy.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
And I literally got to the halfway point and I
just froze and I could not figure out where to
go with it.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Next.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I plotted it out, but it just seems so suddenly static,
and so I thought, oh my god, I've got to
put this aside.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
You know, I can't go any further right now.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
I thought, maybe this will be a good time to
start writing a novel, so I threw myself into Ticktown.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
It had been, you know, it had been germinating in my.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Head up to that point, but I decided that that
was going to be my focus. I would say I
probably started in you know, February ish of or maybe
maybe a little later March or April of twenty twenty three.
I think it was done by the end of the year.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Just in terms of the you know, the book itself.
I go.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
I went through a couple of drafts, a few drafts,
and then, you know what I'm really bad at is
letting people read my stuff. But I had this book
that had gone through several drafts. I took it to
my best buddy, Jay, who reads my He's always my
first reader with short fiction, and he's not that.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Into horror at all. He's my code director on my
horror movies, but he doesn't read horror.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
And I gave it to him and I said, you know,
I don't know if you're gonna like this at all,
because it's not what you read. I don't know if
it's any good. You know, the writing may suck. I
have no idea. But I realized when I was done
with it and when I was giving it to him,
and I told him, I said, all that doesn't matter,
because I realized that it was exactly.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
The book that I wanted to write.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
The tone, the pacne, the just kind of the approach
of it, how it kind of read like one of
these seventies eighties pulp horror things. It was just exactly
what I had meant to write. So I told him,
you take it. You know, I want on his feedback,
but honestly, it's it's what I want. So that's good enough.
You know, it was what I wanted it to be,
and that was well good enough. But he was very encouraging.
(11:05):
He said he had a great time reading it, and
so that gave me a lot of a lot of
confidence to pitch it to agents and eventually to publishers,
and it was a it.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Was a great process.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I just you know, I was very lucky to find
an agent pretty quickly. I was very lucky to get
offers from people at castle Bridge Media. And I don't
I don't I don't overlook or miss the fact of
how lucky I am. You hit the right people at
the right time, and good things can happen.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Well, I I just sort of think it's it's when
it's difficult because speaking as a publisher, it is exactly
what it is intended to be. It is a celebration
of this kind of story that I don't get to
see enough of. Actually, let me ask you a question
about that. Why do you think we gravitate to you know,
(11:56):
because right now, everybody's worried about tariffs, and they're worried
about the worried about the Middle East, and they're worried
about they're worried about the four oh one K. Why
does somebody go all right, I want to sit down
and read a story about ticks eating people like like
and some and a couple of good guys trying to
stop them, Like, like, why why does that keep? Why
are we like that? Why is this so interesting to us?
Speaker 2 (12:19):
I think I'd be extremely wealthy if I had an
answer to that question, And to be honest with you,
I will say that, you know, for me, it's just
it's very nostalgic. Like I said, I I love these
old horror movies. When I was a kid, I used to.
I used to spend a lot of time with my grandparents.
You know, my parents would love to go out on
(12:40):
the weekends, and I'd go spend a night or two
with my grandparents, and my grandmother always let me stay
up with her and watch, you know, the local superstation
that was showing you know, I don't even remember who
the horror host was, but you know, one of those
one of those goofy, undead horror hosts, and they'd play
a lot of these movies and I have very fond,
warm memories of watching those with my grandma. And it's
(13:01):
a very nostalgic thing. And you know, I'm not I'm
a new author, but I'm not a young kid, and
I think that there is definitely something about that kind
of nostalgic take you back to.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
When you were young, and when you were kind of
you know.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Free spirited and and all those things that made you
happy in a much simpler time.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
I'm, you know, someone.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Who's very interested in the terrif issue, and he is
very politically motivated. My background is political communication. I spent
twenty years as a partner in a political media firm,
do an advocacy and political media and working for candidates
and organizations and all that. So that stuff is very
important to me, but it ain't fun at all. And
(13:45):
so sometimes you just want to have fun and you
want to, you know, you want to just kind of
put that stuff in the background and kind of indulge
something that just makes you happy. A close friend we
had some friends over for a dinner who we don't
see very off and several weeks ago, and she was
asking me about the book and she said, well, what's
(14:05):
the what's the political you know what, you know, what's
the political message of the book or you know, is
it global warming or is it? And I was like,
there's not any political message to this book. It is sheer, propulsive,
nostalgic fun.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
That's all it is.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
It's so that's so funny. There's real joy that comes
across in it. That's the funny thing Like that just
sort of gonzo uh uh. You know, bedlam of the
of of the book comes across as a real joy
and it reminds me, you know, like Stephen King talked
about Horror of Party Beach, basically where monsters are created.
So because some dufices drop like some nuclear waste into
(14:46):
this into the near the beach, and it makes monsters
and they eat they eat bikini girls. And like those
guys were not interested in nuclear power like that is
not the creators of that movie didn't really care about
nuclear waste. It was just it was just a handwavy
thing to say, monsters, Right, So I love it. I
(15:09):
think that's okay. Before we go, I want you to
tell us a little bit about your main characters because
people want to know, all right, giant ticks, So who
is tell us about about who the characters are that
people can come to know as they're as they're bound.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
So the story takes place in a fictional town in
northern Wisconsin, a small tourist town, kind of tucked in
the woods.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
It's called Tomahawk Hollow.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
It doesn't exist, but it is, you know, very much
the kind of town I imagine is that is all
over the country, but it's definitely very much a Midway.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
A lot of people in the Midwest will recognize this town.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
A small population, you know, rural nestled in the woods.
You know, you drive through them in Wisconsin all the time.
There's usually a church, a bar, a school, and sometimes
that's about it. Tomahawk coll is a little more developed
than that. But the uh, the the story. The central
(16:10):
characters in the story are Jackson and Emmeline. He's the
publisher of a of a small town newspaper, and Emmeline
is his cub reporter. She's a Native American, a young
Native American woman who's been working for him, you know,
for for a short period of time. Honestly, when I
started to write Ticktown, I I I meant to make
(16:32):
it kind of a somewhat of a commentary on the
you know, the dying out of of local media like that.
You know, you don't find these small town newspapers that
much anymore.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
They used to be a big deal. They're not anymore.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
And I thought the idea of of of big media conglomerates,
you know, swallowing up and you know, uh evolving and
destroying the you know, the the smaller would be an
interesting theme to you know, uh, to go along with
giant ticks who have evolved, you know, to gobble up
you know, local So there's a little bit of that
(17:07):
in there, But I didn't go too far with it
because I lost interest in that and started having fun
with cleaving people in half. But Jackson and them line
are they you know, they start hearing about local local
livestock being slaughtered, they go to investigate it, and and
you know, they discover, you know, that that there's not
(17:30):
only giant ticks in the woods that but that it
may be tied to a shady overseas organization that that
owned the local pesticides plant. I learned very quickly and write,
in reading the pulp horror stuff of the seventies and eighties,
you gotta have vaguely Nazi characters involved in this. You know,
there's got to be some sort of you know, nastiness
(17:50):
out there. I'm there's Jaws in the DNA because there's
kind of a corrupt mayor in Ticktown, which was who
was a ton of fun to write, Mayor Cankerby, who
is kind.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Of a uh he's a.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Cross between Mayor Vaughan from Jaws and Boss Hog from
The Dukes of Hazzard. You know, that's kind of how
I thought of him. But he was he was a
ton of fun to write.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Uh So, so those are the main characters.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
There's also a cop, the local chief of police, who,
as he says at.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
One point in in the uh in the book.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
That it's a kind of a uh, it's kind of
an uh, just an honorary title that goes to the
only cop in town. He becomes the chief of police,
so he's he's on his own, and he's got to
figure out what's going on, not just these tics, but
with this foreign company and these people who've come into
the town. And this is all of course happening in
amid the amidh the preparations for the big Fall festival,
(18:49):
the Harvest Moon Jubilee, so you know, it's all very
people will find it very familiar. The characters are very familiar.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
I interesting.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
This is my first book, so I don't know, I
never knew what to expect from arc readers, but my
ARC readers have been extremely enthusiastic. And what I hear
a lot from the ARC reviews has been, you know,
very tropy, but with an original twist. You're going to
recognize the characters, but you're going to love the characters.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
You know.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
I think, kind of getting to what we talked about
earlier about this nostalgic factor. I've heard a lot of
that in the ARC reviews and in the traditional reviews.
You know, people have have reacted to this idea that boy,
this is all very familiar, but it's it's updated and
it's more modern, and it's got its own twist to it.
I mean, I think I think people have and will
(19:43):
like that kind of combination of nostalgic fun, you know,
characters they recognize, but that are you know, that have
cell phones, you know, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
So, uh, yeah, I that's what I think. That's I
loved the characters and I felt like they were really
well drawn. I mean, you know, I like the bad
guys checking in at the hotel and everything.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
There's just wonderful details. And I did recognize this town.
This is like this is like a dark shadow of
a Hallmark movie, really, where you've got everybody knows one another,
but they are ticks seating people. I just really love that.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
All right.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
So I've been talking to Christopher Miklos. Tell us again
about the date of your event and the release. The
release is tuesday, but yeah, give us your dates and
where can people find it?
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Sure? So the.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Release date is Tuesday, June twenty fourth. My event is
on the book launch event is on Saturday, June twenty eighth.
My website is Christophermichlos dot com. It's my name, and
I've got information about the book launch there. I've got,
of course links where you can buy, and I've also
got a running list of bookstores that are going to
be stocking the book.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
I've been very excited.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
There's a lot of Wisconsin bookstore that are going to
stock the book. I you know, as my publisher, you'll
be interested, you know. I was reaching out to several
several bookstores in the state and in the surrounding area,
and I reached out to this horror bookshop in Chicago
called Bucket of Blood and said, hey, you might be
interested in this book, and they wrote me back and said,
(21:20):
oh yeah, we've already had that on pre order now
for a couple of weeks. So I was just thrilled
about that. Hopefully there's more of that out there that
I haven't come across, but I've got so I've got
a Chicago bookstore, I've got some books that are going
to be in Brooke and Mortar store in San Francisco,
in Brooklyn and and all around the state here. And
I'm still working it so I'm not done yet. So
(21:41):
hopefully people will be able to find the book in
some local bookstores. Definitely get it online at Amazon, Barnesonoble
dot com, wherever you shop for your books. But come
to my come to my website Christopher Michelos dot com,
and you'll be able to You'll be able to see
information about where it is and how you can get it,
end where you can go to not just this first event,
(22:02):
but other signings that I've got lined up over the
next several months.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Fantastic, Chris, it's been such a delight talking about this.
I think it's such a fun book. I hope you
have a wonderful event. I will talk to you soon.
Thank you very much, sir, thanks so much. We'll talk
to you soon.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Have a good night. Bye.
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, RI chatting with Christopher Michlos,
author of and I love this title, Ticktown, which comes
out this month from castle Bridge Media, which full disclosure,
(00:29):
I am a publisher at castle Bridge Media, so I
am instrumental in this. But I love this book and
I love its icky content. It is the kind of
paperback from hell I've been wanting to talk about for
a long time. So here's the deal. In the book,
I have this right in front of me. When a
(00:49):
northern Wisconsin touristtown becomes the feeding ground for a giant
band of mutant ticks giant ticks, a young reporter or
copbex boyfriend and a newspaper man have to track down
and destroy the Queen Tick and her nest before these
monsters overrun and slaughter the entire town. It is grody,
it is summary, and it is full of giant I
(01:12):
can't stress this enough giant ticks. So welcome Christopher.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Hey, thanks so much. Jason, I really appreciate it. You
know it's funny.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Oh. I just started the last I would say the
last couple of weeks.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
I didn't realize what a perfect summer book it is,
because especially here in Wisconsin where I am, there's ticks everywhere.
And my daughter was My daughter's been convinced. And maybe
it's just because I've had the advanced copies of the book.
Later on, she's convinced she had ticks in her hair.
We always think we've got ticks on the dog. I
mean it's it's the summer brings ticks in Wisconsin, and
(01:44):
so I didn't quite realize what great timing we were
going to have in releasing this book.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
But these ticks are like the size of They're like
when you think of Rob and Batman and Robin when
Robin gets eaten by a giant clam.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
They're like that.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
They're like they are they are big, and so they
can cleave a person and do cleave a person in half.
And I okay, so let me ask you. You you've
said that you had a distinct vision in mind basically
that this was your ode to well, probably several things,
because I think of like giant bugs, you know, like
(02:19):
like you know James, like, uh, you know, Peter Graves
versus the Big Ants, but also the the nineteen seventies
Paperbacks from Hell. So talk to me a little bit
about about that, that gulash of inspiration.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Well sure you actually earlier you used the phrase Paperbacks
from Hell, and I read, you know, I would say,
maybe five years ago something like that, the book Paperbacks
from Hell, written by Grady Hendrix and will Ericson, which
is this survey of seventies and eighties pulp paperbacks, so
(02:57):
paperbacks in general, but a lot of pulp or paper
and I had had very little exposure to to that,
to those books and tell that.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
And as I read this book.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
I was just flabbergast about how wonderfully gonzo and terrific
it all sounded, you know, these these crazy plot lines,
these over the top.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
You know heroes, and on and on.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
And after I finished the book, I started picking up
and reading some of these books. One of my first
was was Knight of the Crabs by Guyane Smith, and
I fell so in love with his his vision of
these giant crabs terrorizing the Welsh countryside. And I think
in part because it brought me back to the movies
(03:45):
I loved when I was a young kid.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
I grew up on classic.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Old horror, the Universal, Frankenstein and Dracula and Wolfman, all
those yes, But I loved, loved, loved the giant creature
feature of movies like them. From those were the paperbacks
that I started to gravitate towards. And then I so,
I'm a filmmaker. A couple of movies last night, small
(04:13):
independent features, but I started to think that I wanted
to I wanted to write a novel, and so it
became clear that the kind of novel that I was
going to write was going to be a pulpy paperback novel,
and I wanted to do something that was somewhat of
a mash up between those fifties and sixties sci fi
(04:34):
movies and the seventies and eighties pulp horror paperbacks and
giant mutated tics in Northern.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Wisconsin ended up being the perfect the perfect mix of
the two.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
So you've actually, you know, you've tried to kind of
get people into the spirit of of you know, monsters
in the summer, like sort of harkening back to that vision,
like don't you have an event? Were you gonna be
showing like some monster movies.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Or something super excited.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, So the book comes out on Tuesday, June twenty
fourth in paperback and kindle, and that next weekend on
June twenty eighth, Saturday, June twenty eighth, my books launch event.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Is going to be screening.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
I'm going a host of screening of the nineteen fifty
four movie Them that I referenced at a local theater
at Marcus Palace Theater. Have a loan Madison is going
to introduce the movie and say a few words about
the movie. We're going to have a screening, and then
afterwards they have a nice lounge with a bar and
food and that sort of thing right in the theater,
and we're going to go over there and do a
(05:42):
book signing and a reception and the lounge.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
And what is really.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Fun about the event is the screening. The movie screening
at four point thirty on Saturday afternoon. Your ticket to
the event is going to be a paperback copy of
So if you get a paperback copied of Ticktown you
bring it to the event, it's worth two seats to
the screening. So I'm going to be doing local media
(06:11):
and pr you know, interviews and some other things locally
to promote where here in Madison. There's gonna be several
bookstories that are carrying the paperback of a book when
it comes out on June twenty fourth. If people can't
get that, you can't get their hands on that, they
can always order from Amazon, you know, if they have Prime,
(06:32):
they'll definitely get it by the weekend. And worst case
scenario is that we'll have some books for sale at
the event that people can get it.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
But I thought it would be a fun thing.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I have a good relationship with the theater because of
my film background, and they were just absolutely ecstatic about
the idea, like super supportive. In fact, I'm going over
there in the morning tomorrow to test out the movie.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
And kind of talk to them about logistics.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
So I appreciate you mentioning it because I'm just so
excited about it.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
I really love that though. I mean that that because
to me that those are those are memories. Like when
I talk to my dad, one of his clearest memories
of when he was a kid was going to some
event where they were showing creature from the Black Lagoon,
and and you know, he just has it, and you know,
that just the community, community of Monster kids and the
(07:22):
community of Monster movies is just to me one of
those weird American things that that is just always worth celebrating.
Especially I mean, I know I'm hitting the summer really hard,
but it's so true, like in the summer, I think,
at least since in my lifetime, at least since Jaws
came out, summer is the time for monsters, you know,
And and so I just love that you've sort of
(07:46):
gone after that talk to me a little bit about
like that's fantastic, But getting down to the nitty gritty
of your process, how did you knock yourself into getting
a book done? Like, how did it? How did it?
How did it come together? Did you like have to say, well, Chris,
I'm gonna have to sit down and knock out five
hundred words a day, or I'm going to get this
(08:08):
done by labor day, or or how did it come
together for you?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
That's actually an interesting question because I wasn't really thinking
of it in those in those terms. Even though I
hadn't written a novel before, I've written several screenplays, and
so the process for me of writing down and writing
a screenplay is, you know, just kind of sitting down
kind of you know, really roughly plotting it out and
then just banging through it. I have a I have
(08:34):
a daughter who's now eleven, and so during during the
school year, I try to get up, you know, five
o'clock five thirty because I worked best in the morning,
try and knock out, you know, as much as I
can for a few hours before I you know, get
it ready for school. Then a couple hours after I
get her off to school, and it was just a
(08:54):
matter of trying to uh, you know, try to do
it as as efficiently as I can. I was actually
I started writing the novel because I was writing the
screenplay that I was extremely excited about. I won't tell
you too much about it. I want to tell you what
it's about, but it's called Jingle Bell Chop, and it
was I was. I was just loving writing.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
It was kind of a horror comedy, of holiday horror comedy.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
And I literally got to the halfway point and I
just froze and I could not figure out where to
go with it.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Next.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I plotted it out, but it just seems so suddenly static,
and so I thought, oh my god, I've got to
put this aside.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
You know, I can't go any further right now.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
I thought, maybe this will be a good time to
start writing a novel, so I threw myself into Ticktown.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
It had been, you know, it had been germinating in my.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Head up to that point, but I decided that that
was going to be my focus. I would say I
probably started in you know, February ish of or maybe
maybe a little later March or April of twenty twenty three.
I think it was done by the end of the year.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Just in terms of the you know, the book itself.
I go.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
I went through a couple of drafts, a few drafts,
and then, you know what I'm really bad at is
letting people read my stuff. But I had this book
that had gone through several drafts. I took it to
my best buddy, Jay, who reads my He's always my
first reader with short fiction, and he's not that.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Into horror at all. He's my code director on my
horror movies, but he doesn't read horror.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
And I gave it to him and I said, you know,
I don't know if you're gonna like this at all,
because it's not what you read. I don't know if
it's any good. You know, the writing may suck. I
have no idea. But I realized when I was done
with it and when I was giving it to him,
and I told him, I said, all that doesn't matter,
because I realized that it was exactly.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
The book that I wanted to write.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
The tone, the pacne, the just kind of the approach
of it, how it kind of read like one of
these seventies eighties pulp horror things. It was just exactly
what I had meant to write. So I told him,
you take it. You know, I want on his feedback,
but honestly, it's it's what I want. So that's good enough.
You know, it was what I wanted it to be,
and that was well good enough. But he was very encouraging.
(11:05):
He said he had a great time reading it, and
so that gave me a lot of a lot of
confidence to pitch it to agents and eventually to publishers,
and it was a it.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Was a great process.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I just you know, I was very lucky to find
an agent pretty quickly. I was very lucky to get
offers from people at castle Bridge Media. And I don't
I don't I don't overlook or miss the fact of
how lucky I am. You hit the right people at
the right time, and good things can happen.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Well, I I just sort of think it's it's when
it's difficult because speaking as a publisher, it is exactly
what it is intended to be. It is a celebration
of this kind of story that I don't get to
see enough of. Actually, let me ask you a question
about that. Why do you think we gravitate to you know,
(11:56):
because right now, everybody's worried about tariffs, and they're worried
about the worried about the Middle East, and they're worried
about they're worried about the four oh one K. Why
does somebody go all right, I want to sit down
and read a story about ticks eating people like like
and some and a couple of good guys trying to
stop them, Like, like, why why does that keep? Why
are we like that? Why is this so interesting to us?
Speaker 2 (12:19):
I think I'd be extremely wealthy if I had an
answer to that question, And to be honest with you,
I will say that, you know, for me, it's just
it's very nostalgic. Like I said, I I love these
old horror movies. When I was a kid, I used to.
I used to spend a lot of time with my grandparents.
You know, my parents would love to go out on
(12:40):
the weekends, and I'd go spend a night or two
with my grandparents, and my grandmother always let me stay
up with her and watch, you know, the local superstation
that was showing you know, I don't even remember who
the horror host was, but you know, one of those
one of those goofy, undead horror hosts, and they'd play
a lot of these movies and I have very fond,
warm memories of watching those with my grandma. And it's
(13:01):
a very nostalgic thing. And you know, I'm not I'm
a new author, but I'm not a young kid, and
I think that there is definitely something about that kind
of nostalgic take you back to.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
When you were young, and when you were kind of
you know.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Free spirited and and all those things that made you
happy in a much simpler time.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
I'm, you know, someone.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Who's very interested in the terrif issue, and he is
very politically motivated. My background is political communication. I spent
twenty years as a partner in a political media firm,
do an advocacy and political media and working for candidates
and organizations and all that. So that stuff is very
important to me, but it ain't fun at all. And
(13:45):
so sometimes you just want to have fun and you
want to, you know, you want to just kind of
put that stuff in the background and kind of indulge
something that just makes you happy. A close friend we
had some friends over for a dinner who we don't
see very off and several weeks ago, and she was
asking me about the book and she said, well, what's
(14:05):
the what's the political you know what, you know, what's
the political message of the book or you know, is
it global warming or is it? And I was like,
there's not any political message to this book. It is sheer, propulsive,
nostalgic fun.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
That's all it is.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
It's so that's so funny. There's real joy that comes
across in it. That's the funny thing Like that just
sort of gonzo uh uh. You know, bedlam of the
of of the book comes across as a real joy
and it reminds me, you know, like Stephen King talked
about Horror of Party Beach, basically where monsters are created.
So because some dufices drop like some nuclear waste into
(14:46):
this into the near the beach, and it makes monsters
and they eat they eat bikini girls. And like those
guys were not interested in nuclear power like that is
not the creators of that movie didn't really care about
nuclear waste. It was just it was just a handwavy
thing to say, monsters, Right, So I love it. I
(15:09):
think that's okay. Before we go, I want you to
tell us a little bit about your main characters because
people want to know, all right, giant ticks, So who
is tell us about about who the characters are that
people can come to know as they're as they're bound.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
So the story takes place in a fictional town in
northern Wisconsin, a small tourist town, kind of tucked in
the woods.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
It's called Tomahawk Hollow.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
It doesn't exist, but it is, you know, very much
the kind of town I imagine is that is all
over the country, but it's definitely very much a Midway.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
A lot of people in the Midwest will recognize this town.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
A small population, you know, rural nestled in the woods.
You know, you drive through them in Wisconsin all the time.
There's usually a church, a bar, a school, and sometimes
that's about it. Tomahawk coll is a little more developed
than that. But the uh, the the story. The central
(16:10):
characters in the story are Jackson and Emmeline. He's the
publisher of a of a small town newspaper, and Emmeline
is his cub reporter. She's a Native American, a young
Native American woman who's been working for him, you know,
for for a short period of time. Honestly, when I
started to write Ticktown, I I I meant to make
(16:32):
it kind of a somewhat of a commentary on the
you know, the dying out of of local media like that.
You know, you don't find these small town newspapers that
much anymore.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
They used to be a big deal. They're not anymore.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
And I thought the idea of of of big media conglomerates,
you know, swallowing up and you know, uh evolving and
destroying the you know, the the smaller would be an
interesting theme to you know, uh, to go along with
giant ticks who have evolved, you know, to gobble up
you know, local So there's a little bit of that
(17:07):
in there, But I didn't go too far with it
because I lost interest in that and started having fun
with cleaving people in half. But Jackson and them line
are they you know, they start hearing about local local
livestock being slaughtered, they go to investigate it, and and
you know, they discover, you know, that that there's not
(17:30):
only giant ticks in the woods that but that it
may be tied to a shady overseas organization that that
owned the local pesticides plant. I learned very quickly and write,
in reading the pulp horror stuff of the seventies and eighties,
you gotta have vaguely Nazi characters involved in this. You know,
there's got to be some sort of you know, nastiness
(17:50):
out there. I'm there's Jaws in the DNA because there's
kind of a corrupt mayor in Ticktown, which was who
was a ton of fun to write, Mayor Cankerby, who
is kind.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Of a uh he's a.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Cross between Mayor Vaughan from Jaws and Boss Hog from
The Dukes of Hazzard. You know, that's kind of how
I thought of him. But he was he was a
ton of fun to write.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Uh So, so those are the main characters.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
There's also a cop, the local chief of police, who,
as he says at.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
One point in in the uh in the book.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
That it's a kind of a uh, it's kind of
an uh, just an honorary title that goes to the
only cop in town. He becomes the chief of police,
so he's he's on his own, and he's got to
figure out what's going on, not just these tics, but
with this foreign company and these people who've come into
the town. And this is all of course happening in
amid the amidh the preparations for the big Fall festival,
(18:49):
the Harvest Moon Jubilee, so you know, it's all very
people will find it very familiar. The characters are very familiar.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
I interesting.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
This is my first book, so I don't know, I
never knew what to expect from arc readers, but my
ARC readers have been extremely enthusiastic. And what I hear
a lot from the ARC reviews has been, you know,
very tropy, but with an original twist. You're going to
recognize the characters, but you're going to love the characters.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
You know.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
I think, kind of getting to what we talked about
earlier about this nostalgic factor. I've heard a lot of
that in the ARC reviews and in the traditional reviews.
You know, people have have reacted to this idea that boy,
this is all very familiar, but it's it's updated and
it's more modern, and it's got its own twist to it.
I mean, I think I think people have and will
(19:43):
like that kind of combination of nostalgic fun, you know,
characters they recognize, but that are you know, that have
cell phones, you know, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
So, uh, yeah, I that's what I think. That's I
loved the characters and I felt like they were really
well drawn. I mean, you know, I like the bad
guys checking in at the hotel and everything.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
There's just wonderful details. And I did recognize this town.
This is like this is like a dark shadow of
a Hallmark movie, really, where you've got everybody knows one another,
but they are ticks seating people. I just really love that.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
All right.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
So I've been talking to Christopher Miklos. Tell us again
about the date of your event and the release. The
release is tuesday, but yeah, give us your dates and
where can people find it?
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Sure? So the.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Release date is Tuesday, June twenty fourth. My event is
on the book launch event is on Saturday, June twenty eighth.
My website is Christophermichlos dot com. It's my name, and
I've got information about the book launch there. I've got,
of course links where you can buy, and I've also
got a running list of bookstores that are going to
be stocking the book.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
I've been very excited.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
There's a lot of Wisconsin bookstore that are going to
stock the book. I you know, as my publisher, you'll
be interested, you know. I was reaching out to several
several bookstores in the state and in the surrounding area,
and I reached out to this horror bookshop in Chicago
called Bucket of Blood and said, hey, you might be
interested in this book, and they wrote me back and said,
(21:20):
oh yeah, we've already had that on pre order now
for a couple of weeks. So I was just thrilled
about that. Hopefully there's more of that out there that
I haven't come across, but I've got so I've got
a Chicago bookstore, I've got some books that are going
to be in Brooke and Mortar store in San Francisco,
in Brooklyn and and all around the state here. And
I'm still working it so I'm not done yet. So
(21:41):
hopefully people will be able to find the book in
some local bookstores. Definitely get it online at Amazon, Barnesonoble
dot com, wherever you shop for your books. But come
to my come to my website Christopher Michelos dot com,
and you'll be able to You'll be able to see
information about where it is and how you can get it,
end where you can go to not just this first event,
(22:02):
but other signings that I've got lined up over the
next several months.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Fantastic, Chris, it's been such a delight talking about this.
I think it's such a fun book. I hope you
have a wonderful event. I will talk to you soon.
Thank you very much, sir, thanks so much. We'll talk
to you soon.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Have a good night. Bye.
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