January 12, 2025 • 32 mins
Today, Paperback Warrior introduces an exciting new segment to its video and podcast programming called Conversations. In this inaugural episode, Eric sits down with horror author Brian G. Berry to discuss his action-adventure, horror, and science-fiction novels, his unique writing style inspired by cult cinema and trash VHS, and the recent controversy surrounding his novel's removal from store shelves and his dismissal from Encyclopocalypse Publications. Stream the audio portion only HERE. Watch the full visual experience HERE.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thanks so much for tuning in. This is an exclusive
broadcast and I have a very special guests that I
have invited to join me.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
His name is Brian G. Berry.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
He's a prolific author of horror, science fiction, action adventure
and he writes in the style of cult cinema, specifically
my favorite of the genre, which is the eighties and
the nineties era. He's authored numerous books, including A Cursed Ground,
Death Commando, The Pale, The Night Mutilator, The Child Eater,
and a lot of series titles like Splatter Madness and
(00:28):
VHS Trash. Not only is he a writer, but he
also owns and operates his own publishing house called Slaughterhouse
Press that's released a collection of sword and sorcery stories
influenced by weird Tales titled Broadswords, Battle Axes, Barbarians, as
well as a nineteen eighties action anthology book titled Maximum Firepower.
So obviously, Brian Barry is right in the wheelhouse of
(00:51):
what we cover here at Paperback Warrior, which is one
of the reasons I wanted to bring him on. There's
a crazy event that recently happened between Brian and his publisher,
Cyclo Apocalypse publications, and we're going to get into that,
or at least as much as we can and just
a bit, but I want.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
To cover some other things prior to that.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
So with that being said, Brian, welcome to Paperback Warrior.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Thanks for agreeing to join me in this conversation. I
think I did an okay job in introducing you with
just a little background or what type of author you are.
But man, you're really hard to pin down for someone
unfamiliar with your writing and style.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
How would you even describe it?
Speaker 3 (01:28):
I don't know. I'm a mood writer, you know, and
I really take a shine to the eighties horror and
I try to capture that with everything I do. I
have a lot of ideas and I just want them
out of my head and I put them down, you know.
And I've had this question before and I really don't
know how to answer it. People said, well, I don't
know what kind of horror you are, this and that
and this. You know. It's like I don't know just
(01:48):
the stuff that I like to write. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Right well, it makes sense, but you you hit, you know,
horror really hard with your writing. But you also do
action adventure, some science fiction, creature feature type of stuff.
Can you drill down to, like a particular moment in
your life when you became fascinated with this kind of
stuff horror sci fi?
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Oh yeah, definitely. Really young. I can't even remember the age,
but I maybe six. My mom had Fangoria magazines and
I was all over that. You know. She was completely
into horror movies and it got me into it. My
first one I ever saw was Reanimator, and I fell
in love with it. I mean, it scared the hell
out of me back then, you know.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, it's funny that you say that, because, oddly enough,
my mom got me into horror movies. We were watching
WGN cable television one night when I was really young,
and Halloween came on, followed by Halloween two, and we
watched both of them, and I was pretty much glued
at that point.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
With horror movies.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
So what are some of your favorite films When we
talk about cult cinema, do you have any favorites?
Speaker 3 (02:53):
A lot of slashers. I'm a big slasher guy, you know,
Slumber Party, Massacre, The Burning, the Mutilator. I can go
on and on. Side of nine Deadly Nye, blood, Rage, Intruder.
I love all those kinds of movies. Creature features I
love too, humanoids from the deep. I don't know, there's
so many. But mostly I like to stick to the
(03:15):
eighties and the nineties. I like some of the seventies
as well, and I like the fifties and sixties sometimes
usually around October, right.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, I like the eighties nineties, but I like the
hammer horror stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I love watching those movies. Are so colorful.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Oh yeah, yeah, they are great movies.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Do you think do you think the the old I
know we're nostalgic here and it we're a little bit older,
But do you think the old stuff that we kind
of grew up with is better than some of the
new stuff in terms of the writing and plots and
things like that.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
That's a tricky one. I'm not much into the newer stuff.
I will watch some of the things and it does
grip me, but a lot of it I just can't.
I just I can't get into it, just because I'm
so you know, stuck in that period to the eighties
and nineties, and I don't know, I like the cheese acting,
you know, the bad lines and all like, I just
(04:07):
watched Demon Wind last night, and I've seen that movie
so many times, you know, and it's so bad, but
it's so good and I just there's there's a special
spot with that, with that kind of acting writing. I
don't know something about it. It's very addictive.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
It's funny you mentioned Demon Wind.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
I remember back in the day when we would go
to the rentals shops, Demon Wind was one of the
boxes that always cut myttention because I think, if I'm
not mistaken, that's what they had, like.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
The three D cover, the hologram cover. It was.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
It really stood out in front of all these other
horror boxes. I was like, Demon Wind looks amazing.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Yep, yep.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Oh yeah, and uh and you're right, it's a it's
a good movie. It's just it's just kind of a
B movie that's that's great in all the wrong ways,
I guess.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Well, in terms of authors, like who do you look
up to?
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Both in the early days of developing as a writer,
who were some of your inspirations.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Robert Howard, Love Crowd and Clark Ashton Smith from my
biggest ones, and then as I went along, Guy Smith,
Tim Kern, Sean Hudson, a little bit of Layman, and
just random authors usually from like Zebra Publishing, you know
all those Like I just got into those so much,
(05:17):
and that's pretty much that's pretty much my area.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah, you hit all the superstars right there.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yeah, those are great.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Yeah, before we jump into the hot topic, I'm wondering
if we could briefly just go through some of your
series titles. I've been browsing your Amazon page for a
while now and there's so many books, so it was
okay with you. I just want to go through some
of your series titles and just get maybe a short
description of what the overall theme is that you're going for,
and maybe what you feel is the best book of
(05:45):
the series. For example, let's say the Slasherback series. You
mentioned Slashers earlier, So the slasher Back series, which if
I'm not mistaken, contained six books with titles like Sleepover, Massacre.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Blood, Laanes, Fragment. What's the deal with Slasherback series?
Speaker 3 (06:03):
That's like my homage to the classic eighties Slashers, you know,
the trash Slashers, just like the movies I mentioned a
minute ago. That's pretty much what it is. I try
to bring that back into book form.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Yeah, it makes sense.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
And you know it's funny when I read a lot
of eighties and nineties horror and even seventies horror, I
don't really get the slasher.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Vibe out of those books.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
I mean, you get the haunted houses, you get the
ghost you get the evil kids.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
But there's not just a straight up slasher.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
There is one. It's called joy Ride. I don't know
if you've heard of that book. I don't know who
the authors. I forgot, but that one has heavy slasher
vibes and it was written in the eighties.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Nice all right, So Joyride is one to look for
for slasher on page it sounds good. You have also
the VHS Trash Series, which is nine total books, titles
like Ogre, Death Commando, Laundry, Matt Sharpshooter, Terror.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
What in the World's going on with.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
These trash or is again like my omach to like
the trashy B movies and but not necessarily the slasher genre.
It's more like creature feature pretty much in that in
that style, like Death Commando is mostly like Strike Commando
the movie. It took a lot from that and American
Ninja threw it in there. Laundry. Matt was just like
(07:20):
this little creature feature about a laundry, like a laundry
mat that was possessed by some like creature underground. Sharp
Shuter Terror is probably my favorite, that whole whole bunch
right there.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
So when you mentioned Death Commando and American Ninja and
things like that, it reminds me. When I saw that title,
I was thinking immediately of the Cannon films back in
the eighties.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yes, that's heavily influenced.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
It's funny.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Funny when you saw that logo come up on the screen,
you knew exactly what you were gonna get.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Oh, yeah, it's the best. I just watched American Ninja
one and two the other day.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yeah, I mean these are those are great. I like
everything Michael Dudakov does.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
He's great.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Oh sure there's another series, I think maybe, well may
maybe a trilogy, Chatter from the Tomb. The books are
Night Weaver, Abominable Snowman, and Jungle Rot.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
What are those mm hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
I was gonna merge those into VHS trash. I wrote
those initially to be have a little bit more serious edge,
but it didn't turn out so well. Because I liked
writing in the trashy style. So I kind of messed
up on that and I haven't included anymore into that.
I meant to merge it, like I said, but I
just haven't gotten around to it.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
That makes sense.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
You've got the Splatter Madness, which I think these are
novella's or maybe short stories.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Yeah, they're like novel ettes and novella's Rabbin Madness, is
it the two or no Mount? Yeah, Mound. There's a
couple more in there. I'm actually about to release another
one this week for it, Rabin Madness too. Those are
just basically pure extreme splatter books. That's all there is
(08:54):
to it.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
When I think of those kind of books, I think
of Brian Smith maybe times. Maybe Brian Keane does a
little bit of that too.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Last one I want to bring up is the I
may not be getting this right. It's SRS Cinema LLC
novelizations with looks like a motor boat, She Kills flesh Eaters.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Those are movie novelizations from the company SRS and the
film company. So I've taken several other movies and adapted
them into books. I've also done it with Wild Eye Publishing,
also done Commando Ninja with Benjamin Combs, and I've done
the Barn novelization on which I'm working on the second
one for this year, and there's a few more like
(09:35):
I worked with Brett McCormick, who did Abomination in nineteen
eighty six, I think it came out, and he also
did a Replicator. I don't know if you ever heard
of that movie.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
So are these movies?
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Are they newer movies or are they they call it cinema.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
They are new movies. Most of them are new.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Cool, all right, So yeah, I haven't I haven't watched
any of those, haven't heard any of those. There are
titles and the way that you describe them reminds me
of the old Asylum movies. But I don't know if
they still make those.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Yeah, yeah, that's good. That's a good comparison.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Yeah, okay, cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Anytime you went to like back in the day, went
to red Box, or you were trying to scroll for something,
asylum would always come up. So if you're looking for
like alien, they would come up with asylums like Alien
Force or something, but it would look the same, so you.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Could kind of kind of confused.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah, Yeah, they're amazing. Marketing team that did that. I
don't even know if they're still around, but they were
really cool.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
I don't know, I see stuff still like that though.
It's funny, like predators instead of predator or whatever.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Right, Yeah, it's it's it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
So so getting into this this recent event that everyone's
been talking about, and I'm going to set the table
real quick on what publisher we're discussing. The name is
in cyclo Apocalypse Publications. They were founded by New York
Times bestselling author Mark Miller, who also serves as the
publisher's president. Miller became the assistant editor or editor for
(11:01):
horror icon Clive Barker. Some of the roles that Miller's
held over last decade or so, He's had his hands
in Clive Barker related properties like hell Raiser or writing
Dark Horse comic titles to animated shorts, and contributing to
podcast so he's kind of got his hands in everything.
He eventually started his own publishing company, which again is
(11:22):
in CycL Apocalypse Publications. Their mission statement, according to their
website quote, the archiving of the written word is one
of the oldest and most important practices in human history,
and cyclo Apocalypse was founded as a place where books
can live on, from independent novels to literature published published
before the digital age. Our goal was to create a
home for every great book that hasn't yet been heard
(11:45):
end quote. The publisher focuses on the same type of
stuff we just talked about, cult cinema novelizations, original horror,
sci fi, action adventure content. The companies even reprinted horror
novels from the eighties and nineties, and even just recently
published a book by Joe R. Lansdale. So, Brian, how
did you first come into contact with this publisher? What
(12:05):
drew you to them in the very beginning?
Speaker 3 (12:08):
It was after I released snow Shark and Sean Derriger.
He came into my messages on Twitter and he's asked, Hey,
this is my kind of shit. I was wondering if
maybe you'd like to do an audiobook, and I was like, well,
I don't even know what to do with that, so yeah,
I mean we could talk about it, and so he
got into that and we did an audiobook, and that's
how I got pulled into.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
EP Okay, so you got pulled into that, and then
you know, I had read I'm going coming maybe back
to twenty twenty three or early twenty twenty four. I
remember finding you on Facebook and reading your comments about
the movie Chopping Mall and how much you love that movie.
Like I could tell your passion about that movie in
(12:50):
the comments. So what originally drew you to the movie
Chopping Mall? Like, what makes you a big fan of that?
Speaker 3 (12:58):
It was back like one of those memory he's back
in the video rental store, you know, and went to
the horror aisle and saw that cover and it scared
the shit out of me. It was that hand, you know,
in that bag and was I not sticking out of
the bag? And there was just something about that movie
that scared me. And I rented it. I watched it
wasn't scared, but I loved it. And then from then
(13:18):
on I rented that thing almost every weekend, and I
just fell in love with it. And it's still a
favorite of mine, and it just, yeah, it attached itself
to me in every way.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yeah mine too.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
In case listeners don't know Chopping Mall, first off, shame
on you for not knowing Chopping Mall. But if you
don't know Chopping Mall, it was in nineteen eighty six,
film released by Roger Corman's Concord Pictures. The idea was,
I think his wife came up with the idea of
coming up with a horror movie set in a shopping
mall locale. They brought on Jim Onnarski and Steve Mitchell
(13:51):
to direct, and eventually led to I guess the Corman's
eventually created a partnership there and they made Big Bad
Mama Too, Death Stalk or two. The movies that you
recently mentioned Sorority House, Masaker two and three, or actually
maybe you mentioned Silver Party Masker, but that's so Alreaty
House Masker. Anyway, these are cult cinema classics. But Chopping
(14:12):
Mall is about a security robots that malfunction after a
lightning storm. And these robots they possess all types of
crazy weapons, and they go on the prow and a
shopping mall overnight while the businesses are all closed, and unfortunately,
a group of young women and women, young men and
women choose that night to throw a party in the
(14:32):
it's like in the furniture store, and it spills out
into the mall. But then all help breaks loose. So
it's a great movie and kind of Brian. It kind
of reminds me of like when we got into like
that little tiny era in the eighties where you had
like Terminator and you had run Away and even like
short Circuit. It's like technology turning against humans was kind
(14:56):
of like the subgenre.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
I guess.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Oh yeah, there are tons of them. I can't even
think of them all, but I think there was one
called mind Speak maybe something like that. Yeah, there's quite
a bit of him there. A lot of them are hidden,
but there's some good ones out there.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Actually, to me, I think Chopping Ball is probably the
best of the bunch, definitely.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
So you obviously liked the movie.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Did they approach you about doing a novelization of the
movie or did you reach out to them and just
pitch the idea?
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Uh? Sandra Riger approached me and you approached me for
about a year or almost about fourteen months ago, and
he said, Hey, I'm gonna get you a nail gun Massacre.
I was like, oh shit, I love that movie, you know,
And I was like, okay, so got a contract for it.
Never happened. And then he contacted me about a month
(15:44):
later and he said, Hey, I got something really good
for you. You're gonna love this. I was like, what
is it? And then he's a what do you think
about Chopping Ball? And I was like, you mean one
of my favorite movies. So yeah, I'm all over, like
let's do it, and he's all right, I need it.
I need it done in two weeks. Can you do that?
I was like, yeah, I could do that. Gave them
thirty five thousand word manuscript in two weeks and it
(16:05):
didn't see the light of day for over a year.
And then he said, hey, now we're on our timetable,
so I need you to pump it up. I need
you to pump it up, you know. So I got
it to like I think it was like forty five
thousand or some shit, and then they cut it down
to like twenty four thousand or something. I don't know.
It was weird. It was weird.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
So I found out about that novelization I think in
late summer of twenty twenty four. So you're saying that
you wrote that book back in like twenty twenty three,
it just never just wasn't published, correct, Okay, Well, I
mean what was the delay?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Did they give any reason why?
Speaker 3 (16:41):
They said Shout just was taking their time.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Well, that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Yeah, it wasn't a priority for them or something like that.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Okay, got it all right.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
So we get up to late summer twenty twenty four.
I think that you know, the news gets out there
that's actually going to be published. I think I reached
out to Encyclo Apocalypse August or September and they sent
me the ebook of your novelization, which I read, loved,
reviewed it on the Paperback Warrior blog back in October,
and I really I liked what you did with the
(17:12):
uh with your novelization because you added a couple of
little extra things to it that weren't in the movie.
Do you want to tell listeners what you kind of
added or what your what your idea was behind it.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Yeah. One of them was the horse scene, and that
was a deleted scene that they wanted in the book,
so I had like a little script to go by.
There's no video of it or anything, so I just
went with it. And I like that scene a lot.
It was funny. There was like little minor things that
I changed. I loved writing about Dick Miller and that
(17:44):
that was such a fun scene. And then the very end,
I don't well, I guess I can spoil it now.
But at the end there was a whole different like
climax to the movie. It was like Protector, there was
a new Protector like these Protector by actually was a
military project, you know, and they were there as a
(18:05):
as a test phace essentially, and they got set off early,
so it kind of screwed up their plans. And then
out in this facility a few hours from the mall
or whatever, shit goes to hell and there's a new
Protector out out about you know. Basically, it broke out
the facility, killed a bunch of soldiers, and now it's
out in the world about to do its own thing.
And that's pretty much you know what I added to it.
(18:27):
I thought it. I thought it turned out pretty well.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
I was surprised because I was, you know, knowing the movie.
I was thinking that's where it was going to end.
But then you had that extra section in book. I
was like, oh, wait a minute, there's something else going
on here. And so that was that was cool. I
really liked that little twist on it. And when you
said you were looking at like a script or something,
did they provide you the script from the movie, like
this shout give that to you or.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
No, it was actually on the Blu ray or on
the special edition, and there's like a little section there
and just and it was just a little scene.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Awesome, Okay, cool, So all right, so you're right then
the novelization. It looks like everything is set for this
book to come out. I think they put the pre
orders out on Amazon. In fact, you can still and
I guess on my Internet, I saw my cachet in there,
and I can still pull up your book showing in
Amazon with your name on it.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
But yeah, they did pre orders.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Did the book actually hit store shelves or was it
pulled prior to even coming out?
Speaker 3 (19:21):
I have messages that said Sean had it in stores,
that they shipped a couple hundred copies to these stores,
And that's all I know about that side.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Yeah, so there are physical editions that exist, probably out
there somewhere.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Oh yeah, Europe was still selling them. I think they
still are actually my versions. I've had a lot of
people send me messages, hey, look what I got. I
was like surprised.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
I can only imagine how much this are going to
be worth, like in twenty years. What I mean, what
led to them reaching out to you? And saying, hey,
we're pulling you. We're going to go in a different
direction with the novelization, and we're going to severitize with you.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
I mean, how did this happen?
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Okay, this was the most confounding thing that ever happened
to me in publishing. So this all came about with
a private relationship of mine with a girl. And I
broke up with this girl. There was a big breakup
me and her. So she comes up with this huge
thing saying how I abused her and how I was
(20:20):
this way in this way to her, and all these
fabrications because she's so angry with me, And so she
goes and tells Sean all this stuff she send her.
She sent him a huge email and he sent that
email to me so I could see all these essentially fabrications.
They're lies there. I don't want to like talk bad
about her or anything, but she was twisting words and
(20:43):
twisting scenarios to fit a certain you know, angle on it.
And John told me, uh, you know, I'm receiving a
lot of things from a couple of women. They're saying
that you abused you abused one of them or whatever.
And I was like, what what. I don't even know
what the hell's going going on. And he's like, yeah,
I'm not going to worry about it. You know, I
have all these messages, you know, from him, like this one.
(21:05):
I'll tell you right now. He says, well, I ain't
slowing shit down. It's Brian Barry pedal to the metal.
I don't make business decisions based on romantic squabbles and
people's personal shit. And then he says, that's all this is.
Person relationship bullshit has no bearing on you as an
author and storyteller. I'm sorry, dude, And then he says,
I'm not going to bring any attention to it, but
he does bring attention to it. And he just severed
(21:28):
all ties with me with no word at all, and
he went all over social media and he was shmearing
my name, saying a bunch of bad stuff about me
that wasn't even true. And so I came out with
this huge statement telling exactly what happened on Facebook. It
was like six seven thousand words, and that was the
(21:53):
truth of it. And he still didn't want to see it.
Nobody wanted. They didn't want to see it, so he
just pulls it. He doesn't tell me anything Mark sends
me an email, Hey, consider this our severance of you.
I was like, what does that mean? He is that
we're pulling, we're pulling all your titles, we're pulling all
of this because they were afraid of the fallout from
this woman. And I just I don't understand that. I
(22:16):
did not get that at all. I'm still confounds me today,
like I'm shaking because I don't understand it.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Going back to this, so they're just going off of
word of mouth of an ex girlfriend and maybe another
acquaintance or ex girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
So they're just going off for word of mouth.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
There's no I mean, they're not going out and finding
like police reports or any kind of domestic assault that's
been filed in court or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
No police reports, nothing happened at all.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
So I'm just saying, like, if from your perspective, these
women that you were involved with, you know, you apparently
abused them, that you did all these bad things, but
they never went to the police or did anything like that.
They never filed any reports, correct, I guess in just
a revenge kind of thing, or they just you know,
whatever it is, animosity from the breakup or whatever they
say Hey, we're just going to ruin his little his
(22:59):
little public had deal with this, uh, with this publisher,
and we'll just reach out and let them know what's
going on.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
I mean that exactly.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yeah, it actually actually happened.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
I mean it seems like from your your standpoint, I mean, you're,
you know, fairly established an author.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
You've got tons of books.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
You know, you're obviously a professional, You've got great artists
involved in your work, you've got your own public publishing company.
It just seems like they would at least say, hey,
is any of the stuff true? You say it's not,
and then they at least come to your defense. But
it sounds like they were just ready to just wash
their hands of it completely.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
That's exactly what it was. The girl that I broke
up with, she told me the day that I broke up.
She said, she hates me, she hope I hopes I die,
and that she's gonna tell everyone and she's gonna ruin
my career and take chopping them all away from me.
That is exactly what she said. And then three months
later it happened.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
What a weird what a weird thing Like I was
trying to think about, well, first off. I hadn't read
any of your response. I just I saw that they
had pulled you, and then I went straight to X
contacted you and said, hey, can we do an interview.
I want to hear your side of it. I have
read anything, so everything you're saying to me is a surprise.
I didn't know what the backstory was. The only thing
I can think of that even remotely compares to this
(24:08):
kind of situation, and I mean it's not even really close.
But there was a novelization written by Michael Avaloni. He
was hired by Leisure to write the Friday the Thirteenth
Part three novelization, which was released around the time of
the movie premiere in nineteen eighty two. But for whatever reason,
Signet hired an author named Simon Hawk, who had wrote
(24:30):
the prior to novelizations of frid thirteenth and frid Thirteenth
Part two, and they got him to write a new
part three novelization. But that was six years later. I mean,
this was after Avaloni's book already came out. We're talking
six years later they come up with their own novelization,
which I never really understood why they did that in
the first place. But That's the only thing I could
really think of that would even compare to this situation
(24:52):
where they just hire somebody else to write a novelization
and just you know, just kind of kick you.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
To the curve.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
That's the only thing I'm gonna think. I can't think
of any other situation where that happened.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Oh yeah, he attacked me on side, like he didn't
even he didn't even talk to me. I was like
really good friends with Sean, like very good friend. I
considered him a best friend. I really did. And then
he stops talking to me. And then I had people
like screen capturing because he blocked me on everything. I
had people screencapping what he was saying about me, and
it blew my mind. I could not I could not
believe it. Like I just lost my mind. I didn't
(25:26):
know what to say about it. It just like, Sean,
you're making me out to be like some bad guy.
And he would go on there saying how I was
making T shirts a chopping mall and it was just
some algorithm on social media, but he captured that put
it on there, and he had people hating on me
about making T shirts that I was never making T
shirts of and just little things like that. He would
(25:46):
go around, Oh I'm getting tired of this Brian G.
Barry guy. Like it just blew my mind. I was
waiting forever for that, you know. I did what they
wanted me to do. I did it as fast as
I could. I got it out there for him, and
then he bent they to social pressure from these women.
They were afraid. That's what it was. And that's what
I've been hearing from a couple of reliable sources. I'm
(26:08):
not going to spill them because they're pretty close, you know,
with him and whatever, but it's it just blows my mind.
I have all these texts from him, you know, where
he's actually I'm really not trying to start any fires
here or anything, but he is literally belittling the people
that he's supporting. You know, I could throw these out there,
but I'm not going to do that. And it just
(26:28):
it just blows my mind what he did, and he
took it from me. He didn't say anything at all.
He just disappeared.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
And you don't have to mention any other authors, you know,
any other authors names, but has any other authors from
that public from a Psychopocalypse reached out to you about it, Yes, okay,
And they mean did they have your back on this
or do they feel like this.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Oh yeah, totally from here.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Do you have any recourse to get the book out
to the public. Do you have any like legal right
to the work? Can you do anything with it?
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Mark saw a Chopping Mall cover on my Instagram and
he sent me an email saying that he's threatening to
sue me. He said, you can't put out that book.
You don't own the rights to it. And I was like,
I never said I was putting out that book. I said,
EP is not going to take away my dream. And
he was, you know, saying, oh, well, this is what
(27:17):
it looks like or whatever. And I was like, I
don't care what it looks like. I'm not putting it out.
I can't put it out. So I wrote Hacking Mall instead,
which was my version, and I wrote it. It was
like forty six thousand words. I just put it out recently.
But you know, if people want like a copy of
this Chopping Mall, I have arcs, they can have them,
because you know they want it. I'm gonna give give
(27:39):
it to him, as simple as that.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Yeah, it's funny. I saw I saw hacking Mall before.
Before I talk with you today, I saw it on
your Amazon page. I was wondering if that was related
in any way the chopping Mall. But it sounds like
you kind of did your own thing with it.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
I did, yeah, a lot. I was wondering if people
are like, oh, he's probably you put it out under
a different title or whatever and change it up. No,
it's completely different. It's almost like a RoboCop terminator chopping
mall scenario.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Okay, yeah, I need to read that well. In Psychic Apocalypse,
they so they hire Joshua Millican, who I'm not familiar with,
to write Chopping Mall, a new novelization of chopping Mall,
and they gave him, I think, two weeks to do it.
I'm not familiar with this author. Did this author reach
out to you in any way.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Like, uh no, no he didn't. But I have a
feeling that that book was half written by Mark, because
that's what Sean told me what happen. If something ever
happened like he had to hurry up, then then Mark
would probably write half of it or whatever.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Okay, do you do you fault Millican for accepting the
job of writing it?
Speaker 3 (28:39):
Not at all, not at all. I have nothing against him.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Do you have any interest in reading his version?
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (28:44):
No, I don't because it's a star topic for me,
so I probably.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Won't, right, Yeah, I know there's like bands like Judas
Priest comes to mind, Judas Priest.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
They're singer Rob Halford.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
He says he'll never go and listen to the studio
albums that he didn't sing on because he says it's
like it's like like like listening or watch your your
girlfriend with somebody else prior to you, And he says,
you just can't do it. Yeah, So you've you know,
you've turned the page on this, You've turned the corner
on it. You put it behind you, you know, you know,
you just power on. So what's next for you? What
(29:14):
have you got planned as a writer for twenty twenty five?
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Oh a lot. I'm about to release one this week.
I want to continue with my series, start a new series.
I have a couple of really cool projects that are
very die hard, cannon like, and uh, I'm just going
to keep going on putting out stuff I put out.
You know, I'm going to start one that's going to
be a bigger book of mine and probably release at
(29:38):
the end of the year because I want to take
my time with it and really you know, put it
out there. But pretty much just carrying on, carrying on.
I'm going to put out more stuff at Slaughterhouse. Got
more apology and publishing a couple of authors.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Yeah, so you're, uh, you know, obviously you're it seems
like you're a full time writer. Are you able to
do this as your as your as your career or
do you still have to supplement it somebody with job
with another job.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
As of now, I'm still able to do it as
a career.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
I love it, very great.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
That's great.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
What do you have on tap for your publisher, Slaughterhouse Press?
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Right now? I have a military anthology that I want
to put out. I mean, I started out with a
video game one Christmas one in the eighties, Action and
the Sort and Sorcery. I always want to do something different,
even though military has been done a bit, but I
then I love military horror, so I wanted to see
if people could send me and I'm going to have
a sports one. I'll have a few different ones out
there this year, for sure.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
It's fascinating. You've got quite the mind working all the time.
It sounds like you've always got ideas going, oh yeah,
so do you take anyse submissions for your Slaughterhouse Press?
And if so, how can writers get in touch with
you about submitting their manuscripts.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
I don't write. I don't take like novels or novellas
or anything like that. Right now. I'm just focusing on
anthologies unless you're invited as an author, like I invited
David Irons and he put out Deaf and Dumb Danny
does Christmas. But it didn't come out for Slaughterhouse Press
because of the whole situation, and you know, people are
(31:09):
afraid of certain things and everything. I won't get into
that he released that that was gonna be a Slaughterhouse line.
I have a couple of other authors that have their
manuscripts and I'm gonna put them out later this year.
I'm very, very excited about him too.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Has this situation with encyclic Apocalypse helped your career? You
think that sell more books? Do you think it's heard it?
Speaker 3 (31:31):
At first, I was wondering because the dreaded cancel culture thing,
you know. I was like, Okay, well, I guess I'm screwed,
but nothing changed, nothing, and I've actually sold more I've
noticed over the past few months.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
All right, well, Brian, thanks a lot for your time today.
I know this was a sensitive subject and I do
appreciate all your candor and patience today, and I wish
you the best of luck in the future, and I
want you to stay in touch with Paperback Warrior. Send
us what you have and we'll review it and get
it out there.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
Man, I appreciate that topping mall review. By the way,
I loved that review so much. That really looked at
me up. So I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Awesome, awesome, glad we could help out. All right, Brian,
I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Thanks so much for tuning in. This is an exclusive
broadcast and I have a very special guests that I
have invited to join me.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
His name is Brian G. Berry.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
He's a prolific author of horror, science fiction, action adventure
and he writes in the style of cult cinema, specifically
my favorite of the genre, which is the eighties and
the nineties era. He's authored numerous books, including A Cursed Ground,
Death Commando, The Pale, The Night Mutilator, The Child Eater,
and a lot of series titles like Splatter Madness and
(00:28):
VHS Trash. Not only is he a writer, but he
also owns and operates his own publishing house called Slaughterhouse
Press that's released a collection of sword and sorcery stories
influenced by weird Tales titled Broadswords, Battle Axes, Barbarians, as
well as a nineteen eighties action anthology book titled Maximum Firepower.
So obviously, Brian Barry is right in the wheelhouse of
(00:51):
what we cover here at Paperback Warrior, which is one
of the reasons I wanted to bring him on. There's
a crazy event that recently happened between Brian and his publisher,
Cyclo Apocalypse publications, and we're going to get into that,
or at least as much as we can and just
a bit, but I want.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
To cover some other things prior to that.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
So with that being said, Brian, welcome to Paperback Warrior.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Thanks for agreeing to join me in this conversation. I
think I did an okay job in introducing you with
just a little background or what type of author you are.
But man, you're really hard to pin down for someone
unfamiliar with your writing and style.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
How would you even describe it?
Speaker 3 (01:28):
I don't know. I'm a mood writer, you know, and
I really take a shine to the eighties horror and
I try to capture that with everything I do. I
have a lot of ideas and I just want them
out of my head and I put them down, you know.
And I've had this question before and I really don't
know how to answer it. People said, well, I don't
know what kind of horror you are, this and that
and this. You know. It's like I don't know just
(01:48):
the stuff that I like to write. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Right well, it makes sense, but you you hit, you know,
horror really hard with your writing. But you also do
action adventure, some science fiction, creature feature type of stuff.
Can you drill down to, like a particular moment in
your life when you became fascinated with this kind of
stuff horror sci fi?
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Oh yeah, definitely. Really young. I can't even remember the age,
but I maybe six. My mom had Fangoria magazines and
I was all over that. You know. She was completely
into horror movies and it got me into it. My
first one I ever saw was Reanimator, and I fell
in love with it. I mean, it scared the hell
out of me back then, you know.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, it's funny that you say that, because, oddly enough,
my mom got me into horror movies. We were watching
WGN cable television one night when I was really young,
and Halloween came on, followed by Halloween two, and we
watched both of them, and I was pretty much glued
at that point.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
With horror movies.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
So what are some of your favorite films When we
talk about cult cinema, do you have any favorites?
Speaker 3 (02:53):
A lot of slashers. I'm a big slasher guy, you know,
Slumber Party, Massacre, The Burning, the Mutilator. I can go
on and on. Side of nine Deadly Nye, blood, Rage, Intruder.
I love all those kinds of movies. Creature features I
love too, humanoids from the deep. I don't know, there's
so many. But mostly I like to stick to the
(03:15):
eighties and the nineties. I like some of the seventies
as well, and I like the fifties and sixties sometimes
usually around October, right.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, I like the eighties nineties, but I like the
hammer horror stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I love watching those movies. Are so colorful.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Oh yeah, yeah, they are great movies.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Do you think do you think the the old I
know we're nostalgic here and it we're a little bit older,
But do you think the old stuff that we kind
of grew up with is better than some of the
new stuff in terms of the writing and plots and
things like that.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
That's a tricky one. I'm not much into the newer stuff.
I will watch some of the things and it does
grip me, but a lot of it I just can't.
I just I can't get into it, just because I'm
so you know, stuck in that period to the eighties
and nineties, and I don't know, I like the cheese acting,
you know, the bad lines and all like, I just
(04:07):
watched Demon Wind last night, and I've seen that movie
so many times, you know, and it's so bad, but
it's so good and I just there's there's a special
spot with that, with that kind of acting writing. I
don't know something about it. It's very addictive.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
It's funny you mentioned Demon Wind.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
I remember back in the day when we would go
to the rentals shops, Demon Wind was one of the
boxes that always cut myttention because I think, if I'm
not mistaken, that's what they had, like.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
The three D cover, the hologram cover. It was.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
It really stood out in front of all these other
horror boxes. I was like, Demon Wind looks amazing.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Yep, yep.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Oh yeah, and uh and you're right, it's a it's
a good movie. It's just it's just kind of a
B movie that's that's great in all the wrong ways,
I guess.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Well, in terms of authors, like who do you look
up to?
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Both in the early days of developing as a writer,
who were some of your inspirations.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Robert Howard, Love Crowd and Clark Ashton Smith from my
biggest ones, and then as I went along, Guy Smith,
Tim Kern, Sean Hudson, a little bit of Layman, and
just random authors usually from like Zebra Publishing, you know
all those Like I just got into those so much,
(05:17):
and that's pretty much that's pretty much my area.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah, you hit all the superstars right there.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yeah, those are great.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Yeah, before we jump into the hot topic, I'm wondering
if we could briefly just go through some of your
series titles. I've been browsing your Amazon page for a
while now and there's so many books, so it was
okay with you. I just want to go through some
of your series titles and just get maybe a short
description of what the overall theme is that you're going for,
and maybe what you feel is the best book of
(05:45):
the series. For example, let's say the Slasherback series. You
mentioned Slashers earlier, So the slasher Back series, which if
I'm not mistaken, contained six books with titles like Sleepover, Massacre.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Blood, Laanes, Fragment. What's the deal with Slasherback series?
Speaker 3 (06:03):
That's like my homage to the classic eighties Slashers, you know,
the trash Slashers, just like the movies I mentioned a
minute ago. That's pretty much what it is. I try
to bring that back into book form.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Yeah, it makes sense.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
And you know it's funny when I read a lot
of eighties and nineties horror and even seventies horror, I
don't really get the slasher.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Vibe out of those books.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
I mean, you get the haunted houses, you get the
ghost you get the evil kids.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
But there's not just a straight up slasher.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
There is one. It's called joy Ride. I don't know
if you've heard of that book. I don't know who
the authors. I forgot, but that one has heavy slasher
vibes and it was written in the eighties.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Nice all right, So Joyride is one to look for
for slasher on page it sounds good. You have also
the VHS Trash Series, which is nine total books, titles
like Ogre, Death Commando, Laundry, Matt Sharpshooter, Terror.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
What in the World's going on with.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
These trash or is again like my omach to like
the trashy B movies and but not necessarily the slasher genre.
It's more like creature feature pretty much in that in
that style, like Death Commando is mostly like Strike Commando
the movie. It took a lot from that and American
Ninja threw it in there. Laundry. Matt was just like
(07:20):
this little creature feature about a laundry, like a laundry
mat that was possessed by some like creature underground. Sharp
Shuter Terror is probably my favorite, that whole whole bunch
right there.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
So when you mentioned Death Commando and American Ninja and
things like that, it reminds me. When I saw that title,
I was thinking immediately of the Cannon films back in
the eighties.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yes, that's heavily influenced.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
It's funny.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Funny when you saw that logo come up on the screen,
you knew exactly what you were gonna get.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Oh, yeah, it's the best. I just watched American Ninja
one and two the other day.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yeah, I mean these are those are great. I like
everything Michael Dudakov does.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
He's great.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Oh sure there's another series, I think maybe, well may
maybe a trilogy, Chatter from the Tomb. The books are
Night Weaver, Abominable Snowman, and Jungle Rot.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
What are those mm hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
I was gonna merge those into VHS trash. I wrote
those initially to be have a little bit more serious edge,
but it didn't turn out so well. Because I liked
writing in the trashy style. So I kind of messed
up on that and I haven't included anymore into that.
I meant to merge it, like I said, but I
just haven't gotten around to it.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
That makes sense.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
You've got the Splatter Madness, which I think these are
novella's or maybe short stories.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Yeah, they're like novel ettes and novella's Rabbin Madness, is
it the two or no Mount? Yeah, Mound. There's a
couple more in there. I'm actually about to release another
one this week for it, Rabin Madness too. Those are
just basically pure extreme splatter books. That's all there is
(08:54):
to it.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
When I think of those kind of books, I think
of Brian Smith maybe times. Maybe Brian Keane does a
little bit of that too.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Last one I want to bring up is the I
may not be getting this right. It's SRS Cinema LLC
novelizations with looks like a motor boat, She Kills flesh Eaters.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Those are movie novelizations from the company SRS and the
film company. So I've taken several other movies and adapted
them into books. I've also done it with Wild Eye Publishing,
also done Commando Ninja with Benjamin Combs, and I've done
the Barn novelization on which I'm working on the second
one for this year, and there's a few more like
(09:35):
I worked with Brett McCormick, who did Abomination in nineteen
eighty six, I think it came out, and he also
did a Replicator. I don't know if you ever heard
of that movie.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
So are these movies?
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Are they newer movies or are they they call it cinema.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
They are new movies. Most of them are new.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Cool, all right, So yeah, I haven't I haven't watched
any of those, haven't heard any of those. There are
titles and the way that you describe them reminds me
of the old Asylum movies. But I don't know if
they still make those.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Yeah, yeah, that's good. That's a good comparison.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Yeah, okay, cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Anytime you went to like back in the day, went
to red Box, or you were trying to scroll for something,
asylum would always come up. So if you're looking for
like alien, they would come up with asylums like Alien
Force or something, but it would look the same, so you.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Could kind of kind of confused.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah, Yeah, they're amazing. Marketing team that did that. I
don't even know if they're still around, but they were
really cool.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
I don't know, I see stuff still like that though.
It's funny, like predators instead of predator or whatever.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Right, Yeah, it's it's it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
So so getting into this this recent event that everyone's
been talking about, and I'm going to set the table
real quick on what publisher we're discussing. The name is
in cyclo Apocalypse Publications. They were founded by New York
Times bestselling author Mark Miller, who also serves as the
publisher's president. Miller became the assistant editor or editor for
(11:01):
horror icon Clive Barker. Some of the roles that Miller's
held over last decade or so, He's had his hands
in Clive Barker related properties like hell Raiser or writing
Dark Horse comic titles to animated shorts, and contributing to
podcast so he's kind of got his hands in everything.
He eventually started his own publishing company, which again is
(11:22):
in CycL Apocalypse Publications. Their mission statement, according to their
website quote, the archiving of the written word is one
of the oldest and most important practices in human history,
and cyclo Apocalypse was founded as a place where books
can live on, from independent novels to literature published published
before the digital age. Our goal was to create a
home for every great book that hasn't yet been heard
(11:45):
end quote. The publisher focuses on the same type of
stuff we just talked about, cult cinema novelizations, original horror,
sci fi, action adventure content. The companies even reprinted horror
novels from the eighties and nineties, and even just recently
published a book by Joe R. Lansdale. So, Brian, how
did you first come into contact with this publisher? What
(12:05):
drew you to them in the very beginning?
Speaker 3 (12:08):
It was after I released snow Shark and Sean Derriger.
He came into my messages on Twitter and he's asked, Hey,
this is my kind of shit. I was wondering if
maybe you'd like to do an audiobook, and I was like, well,
I don't even know what to do with that, so yeah,
I mean we could talk about it, and so he
got into that and we did an audiobook, and that's
how I got pulled into.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
EP Okay, so you got pulled into that, and then
you know, I had read I'm going coming maybe back
to twenty twenty three or early twenty twenty four. I
remember finding you on Facebook and reading your comments about
the movie Chopping Mall and how much you love that movie.
Like I could tell your passion about that movie in
(12:50):
the comments. So what originally drew you to the movie
Chopping Mall? Like, what makes you a big fan of that?
Speaker 3 (12:58):
It was back like one of those memory he's back
in the video rental store, you know, and went to
the horror aisle and saw that cover and it scared
the shit out of me. It was that hand, you know,
in that bag and was I not sticking out of
the bag? And there was just something about that movie
that scared me. And I rented it. I watched it
wasn't scared, but I loved it. And then from then
(13:18):
on I rented that thing almost every weekend, and I
just fell in love with it. And it's still a
favorite of mine, and it just, yeah, it attached itself
to me in every way.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yeah mine too.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
In case listeners don't know Chopping Mall, first off, shame
on you for not knowing Chopping Mall. But if you
don't know Chopping Mall, it was in nineteen eighty six,
film released by Roger Corman's Concord Pictures. The idea was,
I think his wife came up with the idea of
coming up with a horror movie set in a shopping
mall locale. They brought on Jim Onnarski and Steve Mitchell
(13:51):
to direct, and eventually led to I guess the Corman's
eventually created a partnership there and they made Big Bad
Mama Too, Death Stalk or two. The movies that you
recently mentioned Sorority House, Masaker two and three, or actually
maybe you mentioned Silver Party Masker, but that's so Alreaty
House Masker. Anyway, these are cult cinema classics. But Chopping
(14:12):
Mall is about a security robots that malfunction after a
lightning storm. And these robots they possess all types of
crazy weapons, and they go on the prow and a
shopping mall overnight while the businesses are all closed, and unfortunately,
a group of young women and women, young men and
women choose that night to throw a party in the
(14:32):
it's like in the furniture store, and it spills out
into the mall. But then all help breaks loose. So
it's a great movie and kind of Brian. It kind
of reminds me of like when we got into like
that little tiny era in the eighties where you had
like Terminator and you had run Away and even like
short Circuit. It's like technology turning against humans was kind
(14:56):
of like the subgenre.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
I guess.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Oh yeah, there are tons of them. I can't even
think of them all, but I think there was one
called mind Speak maybe something like that. Yeah, there's quite
a bit of him there. A lot of them are hidden,
but there's some good ones out there.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Actually, to me, I think Chopping Ball is probably the
best of the bunch, definitely.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
So you obviously liked the movie.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Did they approach you about doing a novelization of the
movie or did you reach out to them and just
pitch the idea?
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Uh? Sandra Riger approached me and you approached me for
about a year or almost about fourteen months ago, and
he said, Hey, I'm gonna get you a nail gun Massacre.
I was like, oh shit, I love that movie, you know,
And I was like, okay, so got a contract for it.
Never happened. And then he contacted me about a month
(15:44):
later and he said, Hey, I got something really good
for you. You're gonna love this. I was like, what
is it? And then he's a what do you think
about Chopping Ball? And I was like, you mean one
of my favorite movies. So yeah, I'm all over, like
let's do it, and he's all right, I need it.
I need it done in two weeks. Can you do that?
I was like, yeah, I could do that. Gave them
thirty five thousand word manuscript in two weeks and it
(16:05):
didn't see the light of day for over a year.
And then he said, hey, now we're on our timetable,
so I need you to pump it up. I need
you to pump it up, you know. So I got
it to like I think it was like forty five
thousand or some shit, and then they cut it down
to like twenty four thousand or something. I don't know.
It was weird. It was weird.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
So I found out about that novelization I think in
late summer of twenty twenty four. So you're saying that
you wrote that book back in like twenty twenty three,
it just never just wasn't published, correct, Okay, Well, I
mean what was the delay?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Did they give any reason why?
Speaker 3 (16:41):
They said Shout just was taking their time.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Well, that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Yeah, it wasn't a priority for them or something like that.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Okay, got it all right.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
So we get up to late summer twenty twenty four.
I think that you know, the news gets out there
that's actually going to be published. I think I reached
out to Encyclo Apocalypse August or September and they sent
me the ebook of your novelization, which I read, loved,
reviewed it on the Paperback Warrior blog back in October,
and I really I liked what you did with the
(17:12):
uh with your novelization because you added a couple of
little extra things to it that weren't in the movie.
Do you want to tell listeners what you kind of
added or what your what your idea was behind it.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Yeah. One of them was the horse scene, and that
was a deleted scene that they wanted in the book,
so I had like a little script to go by.
There's no video of it or anything, so I just
went with it. And I like that scene a lot.
It was funny. There was like little minor things that
I changed. I loved writing about Dick Miller and that
(17:44):
that was such a fun scene. And then the very end,
I don't well, I guess I can spoil it now.
But at the end there was a whole different like
climax to the movie. It was like Protector, there was
a new Protector like these Protector by actually was a
military project, you know, and they were there as a
(18:05):
as a test phace essentially, and they got set off early,
so it kind of screwed up their plans. And then
out in this facility a few hours from the mall
or whatever, shit goes to hell and there's a new
Protector out out about you know. Basically, it broke out
the facility, killed a bunch of soldiers, and now it's
out in the world about to do its own thing.
And that's pretty much you know what I added to it.
(18:27):
I thought it. I thought it turned out pretty well.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
I was surprised because I was, you know, knowing the movie.
I was thinking that's where it was going to end.
But then you had that extra section in book. I
was like, oh, wait a minute, there's something else going
on here. And so that was that was cool. I
really liked that little twist on it. And when you
said you were looking at like a script or something,
did they provide you the script from the movie, like
this shout give that to you or.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
No, it was actually on the Blu ray or on
the special edition, and there's like a little section there
and just and it was just a little scene.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Awesome, Okay, cool, So all right, so you're right then
the novelization. It looks like everything is set for this
book to come out. I think they put the pre
orders out on Amazon. In fact, you can still and
I guess on my Internet, I saw my cachet in there,
and I can still pull up your book showing in
Amazon with your name on it.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
But yeah, they did pre orders.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Did the book actually hit store shelves or was it
pulled prior to even coming out?
Speaker 3 (19:21):
I have messages that said Sean had it in stores,
that they shipped a couple hundred copies to these stores,
And that's all I know about that side.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Yeah, so there are physical editions that exist, probably out
there somewhere.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Oh yeah, Europe was still selling them. I think they
still are actually my versions. I've had a lot of
people send me messages, hey, look what I got. I
was like surprised.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
I can only imagine how much this are going to
be worth, like in twenty years. What I mean, what
led to them reaching out to you? And saying, hey,
we're pulling you. We're going to go in a different
direction with the novelization, and we're going to severitize with you.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
I mean, how did this happen?
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Okay, this was the most confounding thing that ever happened
to me in publishing. So this all came about with
a private relationship of mine with a girl. And I
broke up with this girl. There was a big breakup
me and her. So she comes up with this huge
thing saying how I abused her and how I was
(20:20):
this way in this way to her, and all these
fabrications because she's so angry with me, And so she
goes and tells Sean all this stuff she send her.
She sent him a huge email and he sent that
email to me so I could see all these essentially fabrications.
They're lies there. I don't want to like talk bad
about her or anything, but she was twisting words and
(20:43):
twisting scenarios to fit a certain you know, angle on it.
And John told me, uh, you know, I'm receiving a
lot of things from a couple of women. They're saying
that you abused you abused one of them or whatever.
And I was like, what what. I don't even know
what the hell's going going on. And he's like, yeah,
I'm not going to worry about it. You know, I
have all these messages, you know, from him, like this one.
(21:05):
I'll tell you right now. He says, well, I ain't
slowing shit down. It's Brian Barry pedal to the metal.
I don't make business decisions based on romantic squabbles and
people's personal shit. And then he says, that's all this is.
Person relationship bullshit has no bearing on you as an
author and storyteller. I'm sorry, dude, And then he says,
I'm not going to bring any attention to it, but
he does bring attention to it. And he just severed
(21:28):
all ties with me with no word at all, and
he went all over social media and he was shmearing
my name, saying a bunch of bad stuff about me
that wasn't even true. And so I came out with
this huge statement telling exactly what happened on Facebook. It
was like six seven thousand words, and that was the
(21:53):
truth of it. And he still didn't want to see it.
Nobody wanted. They didn't want to see it, so he
just pulls it. He doesn't tell me anything Mark sends
me an email, Hey, consider this our severance of you.
I was like, what does that mean? He is that
we're pulling, we're pulling all your titles, we're pulling all
of this because they were afraid of the fallout from
this woman. And I just I don't understand that. I
(22:16):
did not get that at all. I'm still confounds me today,
like I'm shaking because I don't understand it.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Going back to this, so they're just going off of
word of mouth of an ex girlfriend and maybe another
acquaintance or ex girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
So they're just going off for word of mouth.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
There's no I mean, they're not going out and finding
like police reports or any kind of domestic assault that's
been filed in court or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
No police reports, nothing happened at all.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
So I'm just saying, like, if from your perspective, these
women that you were involved with, you know, you apparently
abused them, that you did all these bad things, but
they never went to the police or did anything like that.
They never filed any reports, correct, I guess in just
a revenge kind of thing, or they just you know,
whatever it is, animosity from the breakup or whatever they
say Hey, we're just going to ruin his little his
(22:59):
little public had deal with this, uh, with this publisher,
and we'll just reach out and let them know what's
going on.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
I mean that exactly.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yeah, it actually actually happened.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
I mean it seems like from your your standpoint, I mean, you're,
you know, fairly established an author.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
You've got tons of books.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
You know, you're obviously a professional, You've got great artists
involved in your work, you've got your own public publishing company.
It just seems like they would at least say, hey,
is any of the stuff true? You say it's not,
and then they at least come to your defense. But
it sounds like they were just ready to just wash
their hands of it completely.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
That's exactly what it was. The girl that I broke
up with, she told me the day that I broke up.
She said, she hates me, she hope I hopes I die,
and that she's gonna tell everyone and she's gonna ruin
my career and take chopping them all away from me.
That is exactly what she said. And then three months
later it happened.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
What a weird what a weird thing Like I was
trying to think about, well, first off. I hadn't read
any of your response. I just I saw that they
had pulled you, and then I went straight to X
contacted you and said, hey, can we do an interview.
I want to hear your side of it. I have
read anything, so everything you're saying to me is a surprise.
I didn't know what the backstory was. The only thing
I can think of that even remotely compares to this
(24:08):
kind of situation, and I mean it's not even really close.
But there was a novelization written by Michael Avaloni. He
was hired by Leisure to write the Friday the Thirteenth
Part three novelization, which was released around the time of
the movie premiere in nineteen eighty two. But for whatever reason,
Signet hired an author named Simon Hawk, who had wrote
(24:30):
the prior to novelizations of frid thirteenth and frid Thirteenth
Part two, and they got him to write a new
part three novelization. But that was six years later. I mean,
this was after Avaloni's book already came out. We're talking
six years later they come up with their own novelization,
which I never really understood why they did that in
the first place. But That's the only thing I could
really think of that would even compare to this situation
(24:52):
where they just hire somebody else to write a novelization
and just you know, just kind of kick you.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
To the curve.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
That's the only thing I'm gonna think. I can't think
of any other situation where that happened.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Oh yeah, he attacked me on side, like he didn't
even he didn't even talk to me. I was like
really good friends with Sean, like very good friend. I
considered him a best friend. I really did. And then
he stops talking to me. And then I had people
like screen capturing because he blocked me on everything. I
had people screencapping what he was saying about me, and
it blew my mind. I could not I could not
believe it. Like I just lost my mind. I didn't
(25:26):
know what to say about it. It just like, Sean,
you're making me out to be like some bad guy.
And he would go on there saying how I was
making T shirts a chopping mall and it was just
some algorithm on social media, but he captured that put
it on there, and he had people hating on me
about making T shirts that I was never making T
shirts of and just little things like that. He would
(25:46):
go around, Oh I'm getting tired of this Brian G.
Barry guy. Like it just blew my mind. I was
waiting forever for that, you know. I did what they
wanted me to do. I did it as fast as
I could. I got it out there for him, and
then he bent they to social pressure from these women.
They were afraid. That's what it was. And that's what
I've been hearing from a couple of reliable sources. I'm
(26:08):
not going to spill them because they're pretty close, you know,
with him and whatever, but it's it just blows my mind.
I have all these texts from him, you know, where
he's actually I'm really not trying to start any fires
here or anything, but he is literally belittling the people
that he's supporting. You know, I could throw these out there,
but I'm not going to do that. And it just
(26:28):
it just blows my mind what he did, and he
took it from me. He didn't say anything at all.
He just disappeared.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
And you don't have to mention any other authors, you know,
any other authors names, but has any other authors from
that public from a Psychopocalypse reached out to you about it, Yes, okay,
And they mean did they have your back on this
or do they feel like this.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Oh yeah, totally from here.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Do you have any recourse to get the book out
to the public. Do you have any like legal right
to the work? Can you do anything with it?
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Mark saw a Chopping Mall cover on my Instagram and
he sent me an email saying that he's threatening to
sue me. He said, you can't put out that book.
You don't own the rights to it. And I was like,
I never said I was putting out that book. I said,
EP is not going to take away my dream. And
he was, you know, saying, oh, well, this is what
(27:17):
it looks like or whatever. And I was like, I
don't care what it looks like. I'm not putting it out.
I can't put it out. So I wrote Hacking Mall instead,
which was my version, and I wrote it. It was
like forty six thousand words. I just put it out recently.
But you know, if people want like a copy of
this Chopping Mall, I have arcs, they can have them,
because you know they want it. I'm gonna give give
(27:39):
it to him, as simple as that.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Yeah, it's funny. I saw I saw hacking Mall before.
Before I talk with you today, I saw it on
your Amazon page. I was wondering if that was related
in any way the chopping Mall. But it sounds like
you kind of did your own thing with it.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
I did, yeah, a lot. I was wondering if people
are like, oh, he's probably you put it out under
a different title or whatever and change it up. No,
it's completely different. It's almost like a RoboCop terminator chopping
mall scenario.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Okay, yeah, I need to read that well. In Psychic Apocalypse,
they so they hire Joshua Millican, who I'm not familiar with,
to write Chopping Mall, a new novelization of chopping Mall,
and they gave him, I think, two weeks to do it.
I'm not familiar with this author. Did this author reach
out to you in any way.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Like, uh no, no he didn't. But I have a
feeling that that book was half written by Mark, because
that's what Sean told me what happen. If something ever
happened like he had to hurry up, then then Mark
would probably write half of it or whatever.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Okay, do you do you fault Millican for accepting the
job of writing it?
Speaker 3 (28:39):
Not at all, not at all. I have nothing against him.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Do you have any interest in reading his version?
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (28:44):
No, I don't because it's a star topic for me,
so I probably.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Won't, right, Yeah, I know there's like bands like Judas
Priest comes to mind, Judas Priest.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
They're singer Rob Halford.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
He says he'll never go and listen to the studio
albums that he didn't sing on because he says it's
like it's like like like listening or watch your your
girlfriend with somebody else prior to you, And he says,
you just can't do it. Yeah, So you've you know,
you've turned the page on this, You've turned the corner
on it. You put it behind you, you know, you know,
you just power on. So what's next for you? What
(29:14):
have you got planned as a writer for twenty twenty five?
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Oh a lot. I'm about to release one this week.
I want to continue with my series, start a new series.
I have a couple of really cool projects that are
very die hard, cannon like, and uh, I'm just going
to keep going on putting out stuff I put out.
You know, I'm going to start one that's going to
be a bigger book of mine and probably release at
(29:38):
the end of the year because I want to take
my time with it and really you know, put it
out there. But pretty much just carrying on, carrying on.
I'm going to put out more stuff at Slaughterhouse. Got
more apology and publishing a couple of authors.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Yeah, so you're, uh, you know, obviously you're it seems
like you're a full time writer. Are you able to
do this as your as your as your career or
do you still have to supplement it somebody with job
with another job.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
As of now, I'm still able to do it as
a career.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
I love it, very great.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
That's great.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
What do you have on tap for your publisher, Slaughterhouse Press?
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Right now? I have a military anthology that I want
to put out. I mean, I started out with a
video game one Christmas one in the eighties, Action and
the Sort and Sorcery. I always want to do something different,
even though military has been done a bit, but I
then I love military horror, so I wanted to see
if people could send me and I'm going to have
a sports one. I'll have a few different ones out
there this year, for sure.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
It's fascinating. You've got quite the mind working all the time.
It sounds like you've always got ideas going, oh yeah,
so do you take anyse submissions for your Slaughterhouse Press?
And if so, how can writers get in touch with
you about submitting their manuscripts.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
I don't write. I don't take like novels or novellas
or anything like that. Right now. I'm just focusing on
anthologies unless you're invited as an author, like I invited
David Irons and he put out Deaf and Dumb Danny
does Christmas. But it didn't come out for Slaughterhouse Press
because of the whole situation, and you know, people are
(31:09):
afraid of certain things and everything. I won't get into
that he released that that was gonna be a Slaughterhouse line.
I have a couple of other authors that have their
manuscripts and I'm gonna put them out later this year.
I'm very, very excited about him too.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Has this situation with encyclic Apocalypse helped your career? You
think that sell more books? Do you think it's heard it?
Speaker 3 (31:31):
At first, I was wondering because the dreaded cancel culture thing,
you know. I was like, Okay, well, I guess I'm screwed,
but nothing changed, nothing, and I've actually sold more I've
noticed over the past few months.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
All right, well, Brian, thanks a lot for your time today.
I know this was a sensitive subject and I do
appreciate all your candor and patience today, and I wish
you the best of luck in the future, and I
want you to stay in touch with Paperback Warrior. Send
us what you have and we'll review it and get
it out there.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
Man, I appreciate that topping mall review. By the way,
I loved that review so much. That really looked at
me up. So I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Awesome, awesome, glad we could help out. All right, Brian,
I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
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