Voices in Horror: Stephen Graham Jones and Paul Tremblay

[00:00:04] Speaker A: The Right Mind is a podcast hosted by the Creative Writing Department at Austin Community College, featuring discussions about craft, creativity, and what it means to be a writer. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed are the speaker's own and do not represent the views, thoughts and opinions of Austin Community College. The material and information presented here is for general information purposes only. The Austin Community College name and all forms and abbreviations are the property of its owner and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization, product or service. Welcome to the Right Mind. I'm Professor Eli Reiter and I teach full time in the Creative Writing Department at Austin Community College. For this episode I am joined by Stephen Graham Jones and Paul Tremblay, two top tier voices in horror. We discuss the ways horror transforms characters and readers, how horror sits in literary conversations, balancing writing with the obligations of our lives and early career writing advice. Every moment of this conversation is gold and I glad you're here for it. [00:01:12] Speaker B: This is the Right Mind. It's Austin Community College's Creative Writing Department discussion series with with the smartest people in the Business and we have the two probably I'm going to say smartest horror writers working right now. Stephen Graham Jones and Paul Tremblay Stephen Graham Jones is the New York Times Best selling author of 35 or so novels and collections. There's some novellas and comic books comic books in there as well. Most recent are Earth Divers, I Was a Teenage Slasher and the Buffalo Hunter Hunter Before Too Long, the Third True Believers and Killer on the Road, the Babysitter Lives, which this Killer on the Road babysitter lives are in the world. They're out in the world now. Out on the road, as it were. Stephen lives and teaches in Boulder, Colorado. Paul Tremblay has won the brilliant Bram Stoker British Fantasy and Massachusetts Book Awards and is the author of Survivor Song, the Cabin at the End of the World, Disappearance at Devil's Rock, A Head Full of Ghosts in the crime novels the Little Sleep and no Sleep till Wonderland and the short story collection Growing Things in Other Stories. His essays and short fiction have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Entertainment Weekly Online, and numerous years Best Anthologies. He has a Master's degree in Mathematics and lives outside Boston with his family. Thank you so much to both of you for being here. We are really lucky to have your time and thank you. Welcome. [00:02:40] Speaker C: Happy to be here. [00:02:41] Speaker D: Yeah, thank you. Although I don't know how smart I feel since I finished eating a really big burrito at 4:45. I apologize if things happen I just. [00:02:49] Speaker B: Saw a friend of mine begging for mission style burritos. These giant, like, bigger than your forearm. It's a California thing. [00:02:58] Speaker D: Really. [00:02:59] Speaker B: Yeah. In Austin we don't have them have all of the breakfast tacos you could possibly want. Burritos. Another thing, though, and I even. [00:03:07] Speaker D: I asked the guy, not that anyone needs to know, but for. Instead of two scoops of rice, I asked for one scoop of brown rice. Because that's sort of like Tenacious D when Jack Black says he wants a soda, half Coke, half Diet Coke to be healthier, but he didn't listen to me. He gave me the two scoops of rice. [00:03:22] Speaker C: Oh. [00:03:25] Speaker B: Anyway, so let's. Let's dive in. I want to start, Paul, the. The list of. The list of novels in your bio. Survivor Song, Cabin at the End of the World, Disappearance at Devil's Rock, Head Full of Ghosts, all deal in some way with. With family trauma and kind of become becoming of some kind. Lots of adolescent, we might call them, Coming of Age, Survivor Song, Becoming a Survivor. And I want to think about. And I want to talk about how, how horror ends up being the best vessel for those themes for you. [00:04:08] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, so, I mean, part of it is just as I'm sure you've all discussed in writing classes that, like, write what you know is terrible advice, but right. What you're obsessed about is great advice because it's going to be there anyway, you know. And for much of the first decade of the 2000s, when I was mainly writing short fiction, a friend pointed out to me, he's like, you know, you write about a lot about teens and kids and parents. And I had no idea. I mean, it was so obvious. So by the time, you know, A Head Full of Ghosts came around, you know, it was something I obviously, you know, once I had the spark for the story, I sort of leaned into it. And then the next two books, in my mind, it became like this. Not a trilogy per se, but three books with similar themes. So Headfellow, Ghost, Disappearance of Devil's Rock, and the Cabin at the End of the World, you know, all thematically linked by different kinds of families and extremists and, you know, dealing with like, horror that's sort of like being visited upon them from outside forces. You know, it isn't necessarily, and it's definitely not necessarily, not even at all their fault as to what's happening. So, yeah, I don't know. I can't say that. You know, the becoming part of it, which is really cool. Like, I've never Even I've. You know, all the interviews I've done, like, no one's ever put it to me that way, but I think you're 100% correct. I've never sort of thought of it in those terms, so I've never been sort of that intentional about it. I'd be interested to see what Stephen says about that. But, you know, for me, it's just sort of. I don't know, sometimes it's a little bit of a logic game about, like, when I put these people into a situation and then try to build out from it, you know, just to try to, you know, I. I think the thing that I am intentional about. Let me answer this slightly better, or attempt to. Is. [00:05:48] Speaker B: I don't know. [00:05:48] Speaker D: I want my stories to feel as realistic as possible, which is maybe a little bit glib to say, but, like, I really, you know, have this, like, inner skeptic, agnostic in my head, especially with novels. And so, you know, when I take these scenarios, I want to try to make them. This is. If this was really happening, like, right now, what would this feel like? What would this look like? Those are probably the most intentional parts that I approach it. And then so much of it is just trusting your gut, following your subconscious or my subconscious. Anyway. [00:06:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, we kind of got into that conversation in my creative writing class today about I know you're there and how thematically we're kind of coming back to. As writers. We're coming back to theme in later drafts and later thoughts because we start with, as you were saying, like, characters. We care about wanting something and then reacting to a situation that's put upon them. Right. And that. And that. And you're kind of echoing that. So it's validating for me and my students that are here now. They know that I know what I'm talking about. [00:06:48] Speaker C: Also, to add on to Paul's answer, not for him, maybe for me. Like, just mechanically, if. When you include family in a horror story, I think that story or novel gets to be 15, 20% shorter. Because if my protagonist or somebody in the novel is having to care about saving their sister as opposed to saving a random person at a book bus stop, that the audience, the readers understand why I want to save that sister, you know, but if they understand why I want to save that person at the bus stop, I've got to write 40 pages to make that person a real person, you know? [00:07:22] Speaker D: Yeah, that's a great point. I'm actually kind of having the not that problem, but confronting that with this Book that just barely started. It's not going to be siblings. I'm like, oh, if I add these two college friends, I kind of have to add more of them. [00:07:33] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:07:33] Speaker D: They can't just be there to. [00:07:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:35] Speaker D: Hold up a sign. [00:07:36] Speaker C: You know, you can, like, call them important college friend, you know. [00:07:39] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:07:43] Speaker B: I wish we could just throw the word important in front of a character and be like, that's. That's all. That's all we need there. Right. That'd be pretty great. So I want to think about. I want to think about the same thing, Stephen. A lot of becoming as well. Becoming a slasher, becoming a vampire, becoming a werewolf. And we read. For our conversation, we read I Was a Teenage Space Jockey, which I think. I think we can pretty firmly say is very much becoming, earning an identity. Right. And I come back to the question about horror, about the darkest parts of literature. How do these. Becoming, these ideas of identity work best in horror for you? [00:08:28] Speaker C: Oh, I think it's just horror is usually a pressure cooker, and pressure cookers transform things into other things, you know, So I think horror stories. Horror stories are really built to be transformation chambers for characters. [00:08:40] Speaker B: Transformation chambers. I like that. And where baby red transforms into red, right? [00:08:48] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:08:49] Speaker B: It's good stuff. [00:08:50] Speaker D: And the fly always works its way into that transformation chamber or some version of it. [00:08:54] Speaker C: It does, Yeah. [00:08:58] Speaker B: I want to hear from both of you because we read a lot of. In. I hate to use the word. I don't even want to say the word literature, but kind of canonical, especially in academics. We read a lot of coming of age that isn't in these dark spaces. I want to hear from both of you about kind of the divide between what is called literature and maybe what is called commercial or kind of the views on genre and how that separation comes about or how we can kind of put that back together. Do you think? [00:09:32] Speaker C: I think. I mean, for me, the, like, thumbnail distinction is commercial makes money, literary wins awards. You know, I mean, there will be. There's a little crossover down again, but that also breeds a lot of resentment, you know, because the commercial writers want the awards and the literary writers want the chicks, you know? [00:09:55] Speaker B: Yeah. What do you think, Paul? [00:09:58] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a lot of truth, if not like a ton of truth to that. And even experiencing a little bit recently. It's funny, I mean, I feel like Stephen and I have been a little bit more accepted into, like, literary circles maybe than most horror writers, which is a shame. Sort of, you know, in both directions. Yeah. We got to like a Pen America. So it's funny, like, so I feel like I have a lot more sort of like literary, what would be considered literary writers, you know, sort of following on my Instagram and stuff. And it's just kind of funny to, to see the two different sort of communities and how they, how they, how they interact with each other and how they interact with readers and it is interesting and I don't know, I think very shortly, if not now, I mean, I think horror is way more accepted than it used to be in sort of, you know, serious quote, whatever that means, you know, literary circles. But yeah, I mean, I think the circle is going to shrink enough that it's all going to have to, we're all going to be, we're all going to have to accept each other because what is it, like 16% of adults read for pleasure. [00:10:59] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:11:00] Speaker D: You know, 16% of like, you know, millions and millions of people. Still a lot of people. But I don't know, like, you know, I'm on both sides. Like, oh man, like Stephen said, like, you know, I. The book I just finished, you know, I dream of, you know, I try to dream big. So I always get disappointed and that keeps me going because I really survive on spite. That's probably really sad to admit, but yeah, no, like the next book, like, you know, if it's good enough, I would love to have it win sort of like non genre awards and hope, you know, hopefully people would consider it for it. At the same time, you know, some of the people in our heart community, it's like, man, you know, you could take. Not take yourself more seriously, but you could take your work more seriously. You could write better sentences. I don't know. I mean some of that's maybe just me, you know, having been around for a little bit longer and as an older writer and you know, the weird conundrum as rice. I don't know Steve, if you ever thought of it this way. But like, you know, I'm finally getting to a point. Like, you know, I hate when people use the term master of horror or master of anything. It's like because no, you can't master writing. [00:11:58] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:11:58] Speaker D: You know, in any other sort of loaded terms that are on with master. However, like, you know, I have like, oh, like I feel like you get to a point where you can do some cool stuff that maybe, you know, you probably couldn't have done 10 years ago, but sometimes it feels like the people reading it haven't changed. Like you have changed, if that makes sense. But I don't know. I mean, it's all fun. Any writer I have, like, I'm so grateful, or any reader, excuse me, I have, I'm so grateful for it. So I don't know. Again, I'm talking around answers I don't have. [00:12:28] Speaker C: I think as far as, like, writers called literary and then writers called horror, I think that if there is any friction between either their, their readerships or them themselves, it's that since horror can provoke a visceral response, it's considered kind of lowbrow or base or not serious. You know, whereas other lit fiction might provoke a cerebral response, an intellectual response. And I don't think horror is limited to visceral. I think horror can do visceral better than anything. Except erotica, maybe. You know. [00:13:04] Speaker B: I always. The word visceral definitely applies to erotica, right? But that's still so far on the. On the fringe of acceptable that, you know, it's gonna be tough to find classes that are teaching. [00:13:15] Speaker C: I mean, yeah, it's tough, but I mean, Romanasy is the king of the world right now. The queen of the world. The boss of the world. [00:13:21] Speaker B: You are not lying. You are not lying. I. I can't. I can't tell you how many. I was teaching dual credit for a little while and how many of my. My high school students were kind of sneaking reads of A Court of Thorn and Roses in and then trying very hard to make sure that I didn't really know what they were reading. Yeah, I get you. [00:13:39] Speaker A: I get you. [00:13:39] Speaker C: But, man, back in the 80s, it was Clan of the Cave Bear. They had. That also had all the. The over the top sex scenes, you know, just with cave people. And I think that. I think what we can. The lesson we can take from that is people need those sex scenes, you know, so just wrap them up in a different rapper every decade. [00:13:55] Speaker B: Yeah, to wrap up the sex scenes. There's a. There's layers of wisdom in there. So I want to. The last thing I want to. I want to get at before we move on to my next setup is we. We mentioned, like, the cerebral nature of literature, like getting an intellectual reaction. What is your sense? I mean, I teach. I'm fortunate to teach for an institution that celebrates. That celebrates genre, celebrates horror, and not just lets me teach a horror class, but is excited to actually have it happen. And I know, Stephen, you got some support like that too, but in kind of those circles where the expectation is that writing is literary, are either of you still getting some kind of resistance or still Having to explain the merit of horror. Anyway. [00:14:53] Speaker C: I don't have to. At my work. No, at my work, people, like a lot of my colleagues in the department, teach my books, you know, And I come to their classes and talk to students like this. And it's all good and they like it. They're, to a person, disappointed with my answers, you know, because they say, did you mean this? [00:15:10] Speaker B: This, this? [00:15:10] Speaker C: And they have this huge argument and I'm like, it's just a Def Leppard lyric that's complicated. Because I don't think complicated thoughts, you know, I just think of things that I think will be fun or funny. And I do those things and I try to make it worth. Try to make it work with itself, you know. But the one, the one time I will sometimes feel a little. I don't know if friction is the right word, but like, at different festivals, conventions, I'll get on a panel with fantasy and science science fiction writers. They'll want to do, like, one of each of us or something, you know, And. [00:15:40] Speaker B: And the whole set. [00:15:42] Speaker C: Yeah, the whole set, right. The collector set. And. And I generally will at least have tried to read some of their work so I can know who these people are and what they're doing and what they're saying. But then they like. But then they generally say to me, oh, horror. I can't read horror. You know, and so it's kind of funny that we're expected to kind of know all. Everything because we write horror. Nobody has to engage us, you know. [00:16:04] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. [00:16:06] Speaker B: A little out of balance. [00:16:10] Speaker D: Yeah. I mean, similar experience. I mean, although I teach at a high school and I teach math, which is in itself its own thing. Although this is going to be my last year, barring the unforeseen. But yeah, like I said, I think the response is. Has been more accepting, but, like, it's fine. I still. The reaction that Stephen describes, I see more just from, like, the general public. And, you know, you see it. You definitely see it at general festivals too. But, you know, I'm pleasantly surprised by, you know, from some, you know, quote unquote literary writers that I meet, like, oh, you know, I read this book of yours and really loved it, which has been cool. But, yeah, but like, you know, at my school, like. Or again, just like, if someone asks you, hey, what do you, you know, what do you do? And if you happen to slip out, you're a writer and they ask you what you write, you know, if you say horror, most of them are like, you know, I can't do that in my, in my head. Like, why can't you? Like, I have a harder, I have a much harder time understanding the other person who says, oh, I can't do anything scary because, I mean, I don't know how you get through your life without that. [00:17:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Avoidance, right? [00:17:12] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:17:14] Speaker B: Hiding in a hole. I, the magic systems escape me. Like, I, I, I love dragons, I love swords. I love this in D D. And I, and I'm stuck sometimes. Systems. [00:17:25] Speaker C: Yeah, no, the magic systems are tricky to make consistent and. Yeah, not, not like just whimsical, you know. You know, Paul and I, we often get called like literary horror writers, which is of course an insult to the rest of horror, you know, so we try not to like wear that cap. But I really think that when the, the readership, the audience, the crowd, whoever says literary horror, what their meaning is. I don't like horror, but I like this. So I have to call it something different in order to like it, you know. [00:17:51] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:17:52] Speaker B: Again, relabeling it to make it, you know. Yeah, yeah. [00:17:55] Speaker D: You know, and I try to think of it and I'll try to explain to people if, you know, if they haven't run away. Well, like, you know, literary fiction is, you know, it's a genre. It's, you know, it's the idea of employing obviously, you know, theme symbol and you know, and I think commercially, if you say literary fiction, that sort of implies less of an intention to plot, which I know Victor Lavalle has talked in interviews about this way, you know, way smarter than I am, you know, so if you say to someone, literary horror, you say that. To me it's like, oh, this book is more interested in the characters, you know, and other stuff, as opposed to just like the plot and like the plot focused stuff. But yeah, everyone, not everyone is gonna sort of go to that sort of understanding, I guess. [00:18:37] Speaker C: I wish that literary could just be an adjective that could go in front of any genre. Because to me, literary means you can return to it time and get more and more out of it, you know, which doesn't mean that, that doesn't denigrate one read books either. Like, I can read Dan Brown and milk it for all it's worth in one read. And that doesn't mean it's a bad book, you know, it just means it's not what I call literary because I'm not going to return to it to get more and more. [00:19:00] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, the, the, the complexity and I think there's, there's something about, about prose too that gets that Gets. That gets caught up in the. In the literary, too, which is not. Which is not a denigration of straightforward, direct. Right. [00:19:14] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, like, my take on it is like, when you see the thrillers on whatever the version of the spinner rack is in today's world, you know, maybe that's an Amazon carousel or something. But those books, they're fat, you know, 500, 600 pages. Whereas literary novels, they tend to tap out, you know, under 300 pages. Anyways. And the reason for that is often that these literary novels are making the story happen in the sentence instead of the sentences and the prose being a lens which focuses on the story and delivers a story like. And in a lot of books, it's basically a movie on the page where the words are what you look through to see the. See this magic thing happen. It's like Jack Reacher doing his thing or whatever it is. You know. But then other books, the story is the writing, the punctuation, the word choice, the verb, everything, you know? [00:20:05] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I think for that, I mean, I want to pull those back to examples from both of your. From both your careers. I'm thinking about mongrels and buffalo. Hunter. Hunter, Which I think are in some way maybe distant, distant cousins of. Of becoming. But happening in the. In the structure, in the sentence. And. And I'm also thinking about. I'm going to go maybe a little obscure, but 19 snapshots from Dennisport. Right. Where. [00:20:33] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:20:34] Speaker B: Which I didn't have my students read that I was. I was torn. But. But where. Where rather than. Rather than we, you know, having a character experience some things, we're getting these little vignettes that are really descriptions of stills that create a narrative where we're getting that story out of those individual moments rather than following, like, being taken through. [00:20:57] Speaker D: Right, right. [00:20:58] Speaker B: And I. And I really like. And I want to hang on to the idea that, you know, I don't want to say literary, but I want to say. I want to say there's an elevation that we can achieve in writing where the story is in the prose and not behind the pro. Whether that's structure or sentence work or word choice, I really love that idea. I love that idea. So I'm going to hang on to that. I'm going to put that in my pocket. Sure. We just talked a little bit about jobs, and I want to think about making time for writing. And I think the general question is just how do your day jobs interact with or interfere with or synergize with your writing? [00:21:44] Speaker D: Whenever I tell someone I'm still teaching high school, I feel like I crushed their dreams and they're so disappointed. Like what? Like you're not full time. I mean, partly because I foolishly chose like a middle class lifestyle with the house and a couple of kids in college and stuff like that. And honestly I probably could have quit a few years ago if not just for like this ingrained averseness to financial risk. I don't know. And like, you know, born from. If I'm going to self analyze myself, you know, my dad was a factory worker, my mom was a bank teller and you know, they fought all the time about money. So like, you know, working two jobs for me it was like, okay, as long as I don't have to worry, have those sort of like discussions. So I mean, part of it's there. And I also enjoy teaching too. I probably should say that. So for me, like I didn't start writing until I started teaching. So they've always been sort of intertwined. It's always been like this constant state of time management and looking for, you know, looking for time, stealing an hour, stealing to, you know, during the school year. And for me, actually when I was younger, it was a great lesson. I couldn't afford to, to light candles and, and do, and do magic shrines to the muse, you know, I couldn't fuck around. I had to have an hour. I'm going to sit down and write for an hour. Yeah, you know, I think if you. Obviously it was hard at first, but if you do that enough time like you train. I mentioned your subconscious before. I'm totally convinced you train your subconscious just, just like you would train any other muscle. Just the act of repetition gets it going, you know. And the fun part for me is like sometimes you train your brain without even recognizing it. Like if you're listening to a certain soundtrack for a book or you know, anyway that just lets you sort of fall into the hole in a page. So yeah, it's always been, you know. So actually for me, like the hard part sometimes is when I have more time. Like I wish I could write for like three hours straight. I can't. Like I usually tap out at like two when that's a long time. You know, maybe if I have time I'll go back later in the afternoon. But the one year I did take off. Sorry, this is a long answer. The one year I did take a sabbatical from writing. I did find that I, I could build up to longer times, but it took, you know, it took again, it Took practice. So the only other thing I would mention for everybody else working a day job is for me, what worked was setting reasonable makeable goals and building in that, hey, you're gonna miss some of your daily goals. And that's okay. I would break into daily, weekly, and monthly. And the monthly I would try to hue close to the. With the wiggle room left open in the daily and weekly because, you know, I don't know, like most people I don't know, you know, I beat myself up a lot when I'm writing. My inner editor never shuts up, up. You know, it's hard enough dealing with that, then feeling disappointed that, oh, I didn't make this word counter. I didn't work today. But for me, I found setting manageable goals helped. [00:24:37] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes. [00:24:37] Speaker C: Yeah, I also like. I like teaching too. That's why I'm still doing it, you know. But yeah, the last like two hours I've been sitting outside critiquing stories and I just wrote. I wrote one of my students a three page single space letter about a comma, you know, and I. That I live for that. I love talking punctuation, I think. I think I missed my calling. I should have been a punctuation teacher because that is what I love more than anything. It's so much fun. But, yeah, who knows how much longer I'll keep doing it? Because not every aspect of teaching is great. In the classroom with the students is great, but there's other junk that comes around, as you all know. But how to schedule time? And I'm like, Paul, my writing sessions are each 90 minutes, maybe 100 minutes. Any longer than that, I can write for 14 hours straight. But I'm going to have to delete 12 and a half of those hours because it's just junk, you know, it does. Doesn't matter. [00:25:27] Speaker B: The. The idea of deleting entire hours instead of blocks of words is so frightening. [00:25:33] Speaker D: But Stephen, I've also, like. You write small chunks too? Yeah. [00:25:36] Speaker C: Oh, I do. I write for. I come in here and write for 12 minutes, you know, and, yeah, and. And man, when you were talking about goals, I was like getting nervouser and nervouser because I'm. I'm terrified of. I've got to make a thousand words a day, you know, I don't know. I don't think I could. I don't know if I have the discipline for that. You know, I just. I'm more of a burst rider. Like, when it's on fire inside, I load up my fingers, you know, and Since I don't, I never feel guilty. I'll go two or three days without writing, and that's great. But, you know, like I said, I spent the last couple hours critiquing stories, and those are hours I could have been writing. But to tell you the truth, I wouldn't have been writing. I would have been playing outside in the sun, you know, So, I mean, it doesn't make that much difference, you know. And, you know, I have had time off. Like, I'll take sabbaticals or just have a, take a semester off or something. And I'll think, man, I'm going to do so much work. I just watch Rockford Files for like four months, you know, and I don't. So I've, what I found is the I have to do, the more I get done, you know. [00:26:31] Speaker D: Oh, 100%. Yeah. And I tell that to, like, high school parents all the time. Like when kids are struggling, they're like, oh, we're going to take them out of this sport or this activity. Like, no, like, that doesn't, it never works that way. Like being, being busy forces you because it becomes so much easier to procrastinate and just look at your phone and. [00:26:49] Speaker C: Yeah, watch Rockford Files. But I mean, Rocket Files is not a bad pastime either. You learn a lot watching Rockford Files. [00:26:57] Speaker D: Like, Stephen, you also, like, you write stories on planes. [00:26:59] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:27:00] Speaker D: I was sitting on a panel with you once, you know, or most of us had, like, little notes out while, you know, writing down what people are saying. I was watching you and I was like, you're writing a story right now, aren't you? He's like, yeah, right over here, I. [00:27:11] Speaker C: Just found on the ground, I've got all these stacks of. I do that everywhere I go. And I've got all these little stapled sheets of paper I tear off that are stories and I just never transcribed them. They're just all building up over here because I don't like transcribing. I like writing, you know? Yeah, yeah. [00:27:25] Speaker B: I, I, I also once heard, I once heard you say, Stephen, that, that while you're, if you're writing something, you should write it with the same veracity, the same hunger as if you're devouring a really good paperback. [00:27:36] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah. [00:27:38] Speaker B: And I think that kind of speaks to what both of you were saying. With these small moments, these little, these small moments, these little bursts of time while we're busy. We know that 12 minutes is like, there's, we have 12 minutes. And that's it right. So those 12 minutes need to be really vitally spent, really intentionally spent. Whereas if you have four months, 12 minutes suddenly feels like. It feels like we have all. We have all the time in the world. [00:28:03] Speaker C: You're totally right. And actually, there's a step above that, too. If you steal time, then you spend it even better. Like, if I'm supposed to be picking someone at the airport and I choose to write a story instead, then I know that better be a good story because they are just mad at me, you know? [00:28:17] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:28:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Which I think that gets me to. That gets me to something we. That we kind of. It was a question I was going to ask that I think we've answered just a little bit. So I'm gonna ask it a little different way. Neither of you, in your making time for writing have mentioned any kind of ritual, any kind of. Any kind of circumstance that must exist. You know, setting goals, but also kind of letting go of those ideas. Do you have set practices when you're writing, or are you just reaching for what you've got and going forward? Is there some kind of blend? What's the. What's the actual practical daily minutiae look like? [00:28:56] Speaker C: I think, for me, anyways, ritualizing your writing is just stalking yourself with excuses not to write. You know, if you're. If the. If your cat is not over here, if the glass of tea isn't here or whatever, you know, there's all these rituals. We're all superstitious as writers, you know, and it's really easy to come up with rituals, but the only ritual I have is, I guess I like to have music on. Maybe that's a ritual. I don't know. [00:29:23] Speaker D: I'll have music on if there's other live stuff happening. But otherwise, like, I think I would prefer silence. Although sometimes, like you, you listen it so often. Like, if I feel stuck, I'll turn on the music. With my. With the novel I just finished and turned in, I suppose I did have a little bit of a ritual, but. But I don't want to call it a ritual. I think it was more with each novel, not so much the short stories, but now that I've written, was it 10, 11 novels? I'm trying to balance it. I want the confidence that I've done this before, but I also want to make it feel completely different. I'm approaching this in some different way just to fool me into being. Not fool me into being excited, but I wanted to feel different. I want it to feel challenging. And so this book that I wrote was going to have a lot of humorous elements to it. Hopefully the one I settled on doing just to help. Help me get in the mindset or remind myself, hey, this, you know, certainly parts of this book are going to be different. I reread some Patrick DeWitt novels who's a humor writer that I really love. But before I would start writing, I would re. I'd only reread three pages every day when I sat to write, I reread three pages and actually I found it was like I was. Instead of avoiding going to the computer, I was like, oh, I get to reread three pages and then, then dive into this book. Like I found it as like a new sort of exciting way to, to approach the book. And I was a little worried, like, oh no, am I going to be addicted to this? But I've started the next novel and that approach isn't going to work. You know, I'll have to find another one. Yeah, yeah. [00:30:57] Speaker C: You have to like start catching cats and torturing them or something. [00:31:00] Speaker B: Wow. I can only, I can only put cat blood on the pages. Ink. That's the, that's the way it's go. And it's got to be scared cat. I was thinking about writing to music. I've tried and I kept getting feedback like, why do your characters all talk in BlackBerry smoke lyrics? Yeah, I knew that I kind of had to step away from that. [00:31:22] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:31:22] Speaker D: I can only listen to instrumentals while I'm writing. I can't listen to things with lyrics. [00:31:25] Speaker C: Well, like Paul said, like, I can only. The music I listen to when I write is stuff that I know so well. I don't have to actually think about it, you know. And the reason I like to listen to music is because it occupies like some critical part of my mind that if it doesn't stay occupied, it's always going to be second guessing what I'm putting on the page, you know, And I don't need, I don't need that critical component in the act of writing that just slows me down. [00:31:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. The, that kind of brings me to what your, what your process or practice would be. But I think we've, we've kind of talked about that. But thinking back to maybe early career when first getting started. What did that look like? What did that look like for the first stories for the first books for you guys? [00:32:10] Speaker C: What did, what did what look like? [00:32:11] Speaker B: I'm sorry, what did you, what did your process or practice look like? Early. Early on? [00:32:18] Speaker C: My process early on was, I remember On Thursday. I have a story due on Friday, and I have to write a story on Thursday. And that's still my practice. That's still what I do. The editors always send me, like, polite emails. Like, stories are due Tuesday, they'll send me this on Monday, and I'll. I'll remember. I have this like, weird after school special flashback to me saying, yes, I'd write that story, you know, and then I have to write that story really fast. So that's the way I always do. [00:32:43] Speaker B: It, in an actual thought bubble. Materializes in the real world. [00:32:50] Speaker D: Well, for. I mean, when I was first starting out, I was much better at stealing time. Like, I would be writing when my kids were taking a quiz. You know, they could have been cheating their asses off. I had no idea. But for novels, I would say my first novels, I. For. I would say, like, about three fourths of maybe the first eight novels that I wrote. I wrote, like, plot summaries first. You know, some would be more detailed than others. And it started with this weird detective novel I wrote called the Little Sleep, because I definitely did not feel confident enough to be able to make up the. The mystery, the plot of the mystery as I was going. So it was helpful to have sort of, you know, things changed as I went. But I found it helpful to have a little bit of a skeleton or a map there. But I didn't do that for a handful of ghosts. That one I didn't do an outline. And some, like, sometimes I don't know if Stephen is. I don't know if this has ever happened to you, but like, when I was trying to get new book deals, they would say, hey, you know, we need to see 50 pages in a summary. So sometimes I was forced to write summaries why it wasn't necessarily going to write one, you know, and some of those, maybe I only summarize, like, parts of the book book. But with the. With this most recent run of. I guess it's four, the last four novels, I haven't written a plot summary, so I don't know if that means I'm getting lazier. I do take, like a ton of notes as I go, though. And usually, like, when I'm going like, I'll. I'll write what I think might be happening next. So I'm sort of like outlining the plot as I go, but just a little bit of a peek ahead at a time. [00:34:21] Speaker B: I think that kind of gets us to. To talking maybe about. About planners and pantsers and plantsers. [00:34:28] Speaker C: Right. [00:34:28] Speaker B: And I think I have this idea that a pantser can become a planter. Like somebody who's. Who's just writing, letting the story grow as they go, can become a planner. But I don't know if the flowchart works in the other direction. Do you think you can go back from Paul, you're the first. You're the first person who I've heard say, like, starting with planning, but now kind of just backing off of it. Right. [00:34:56] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:34:59] Speaker B: I don't know if I have a question with that. I'm thinking I might be observing. [00:35:04] Speaker D: I don't know. Like, I. I like. I said, like, I. I like. And I'm definitely actively trying to make every book approach it differently. You know, it's not to say I'm gonna take an entirely new approach to writing because I'm going to have sort of the things that I do. But, like, yeah, I think, you know, it's. With the idea that I'm trying to, you know, I do want to challenge myself. I shouldn't feel uncomfortable. I don't want to feel totally comfortable. I don't think it would be a very good book if I felt, like, 100% comfortable. And it was just like, ah, all right. It's just a matter of typing it out. [00:35:31] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:35:32] Speaker D: Yeah. So I'm sure I could go back to outlining if I felt it was necessary, but hasn't really come the last four anyway. [00:35:41] Speaker C: You know, for when I'm considering a book, I'll have, like six ideas. Five of them are doable, and one of them is completely stupid. And I always do the stupid one, you know, I only want to. That's the only novels I'm ever interested in writing are the ones that seem like they're built to fail, you know, or always trying to set a challenge for myself with each book. Again, maybe. Maybe that's another way to say it. Like with Buffalo Hunter X Hunter, I thought, I wonder if I can keep cats alive, because I know I can't keep dogs alive, but I might keep a couple of cats alive. So that was really hard. And in other books, I'll have somebody drink a cup of coffee and not throw up. And that's a huge feat for me. I can't imagine that being in the real world. And so I always had these little challenges and obstacles in there that I then try to, like, ramp up to and ramp away from or insulate, maybe I should say, such that the reader doesn't see how weird that is to me, you know? [00:36:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I. Yeah, I think. Yeah. Thank you. For that. That's all I've got for that. I want to, I want to throw out to students. If you have questions, throw them in the chat for me. Please, please do not ask them out loud. Throw them in the chat. We will get to this last little section and then we'll start getting to student questions that I'll read off for you. The first thing, these are kind of, these both are, are kind of big questions. What do you wish you'd known about writing and the publishing industry before you started? Let's, let's just drop into that one first. What do you wish you would have known? [00:37:10] Speaker C: I think what I wish I would have known doing my first couple of books, maybe first three books was. [00:37:18] Speaker D: You. [00:37:18] Speaker C: Can'T do everything at once. Like I think starting out my career. Well, number one, I didn't know it was a career, but number two, I thought I'm never gonna have this chance again to get to the bookshelf. And so I want to put everything I can think of onto the page with, with every single page. And the result, I think are books that are kind of like, you know, ten pounds of sausage stuffed in a five pound little skin or whatever, whatever. [00:37:44] Speaker D: Smells like my burrito today. [00:37:45] Speaker B: Sorry, too many scoops of. [00:37:49] Speaker C: But as I started to get into more and more books, I realized that that's not, that's not how you do it really, you know, or that's not, that's not a way that's going to connect with readers necessarily. What I tell my students is every novel is basically you have three or four events. Those are like tent poles in the book. And It'll take you 60 pages to get up to the tempo, the top of the temple, 60 pages to get down, 60 pages up to the next one. And that's kind of how you. That's the. To me, that's the way to think about a novel. And the way not to think about a novel is tent poles into the horizon that goes forever and ever. Because the book is probably not going to be 2,000 pages long, it's going to be 400 pages long, but it's going to be over packed. It's going to have not enough space between the tent poles. [00:38:35] Speaker D: I guess my answer will be a little bit more about I don't know how to write a novel. I just know how to write the books that I write or I guess more based on just big publishing stuff. So like, you know, I mentioned my novel Little Sleep, which sold to Henry Holt and was published in 2009. And so when that sold, I thought like, ah, this is it. I made it. Like, I'm with a big publisher, you know, after having done like a couple of books with the indie presses, you know, and I just like, oh, like they're going to take care of everything. I don't have to worry about publicity and stuff like that. It was no, like, you have to do as much of your own stuff and be as much of an advocate for yourself, even more so with a big publisher compared to a smaller independent publisher and sort of learn that lesson the hard way. I also wish I knew I could say no. I mean, it worked out. But I also think that's an important thing for young writers to hear, or new writers, is you can say no to the editor. Now, granted, you feel like it's totally human to think, oh, if I say no, they're not going to put much stuff behind the book and they're not going to want to work with me. Obviously you can't be a jerk about it. [00:39:45] Speaker B: But. [00:39:45] Speaker D: But, you know, and the saying no bit was, was I had a debut, no novelist, and we were talking about that. Now, granted, she had worked in publishing, so she knew a little bit about how the sausage, if we continue with that metaphor, was made. You know, she reminded me, like, yeah, I wish more writers knew they could say no. Like, if you don't like the COVID or if they insist on changing your title, you can say no. Because the, the reasons that some publishers are wanting to change your title grow more stupid with each passing day. It's because it's about, like, it's not searchable, it doesn't fit the algorithm. It's, you know, people ruining the world with math who don't understand math at all, which is a whole other side topic. [00:40:22] Speaker B: But anyway, yeah, I mean, I would imagine trying something out that trying something like that with you would be just the wrong wall to try to climb. [00:40:30] Speaker C: Messing with the math Editors often do want to change the titles I've found. And sometimes they're 100% right. And sometimes you don't know where they're coming from. I guess all the time you don't know where they're coming from. But sometimes they're right, too. [00:40:41] Speaker D: Yeah, I know, and that's hard. Like, they shouldn't automatically be in each jerk. No, Like, I think the only title I changed was the Cabin at the End of the World. When I turned it in, it was the four and they were right. My second choice was a much better title. [00:40:55] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Like, let's see, only Canadians change Titles. My Heart is a Chainsaw changed titles. Babysitter Lives Changed titles. Also, Last Final Girl changed titles. My initial title for the Last Final Girl was Part two, which I thought was brilliant. And everyone told me, this is not brilliant. And I insisted it was brilliant. And then one of them finally said, just call it the Last Final Girl. And I said, whatever, I don't care about this book anymore. And that's the much better title than Part two. [00:41:23] Speaker B: I mean, I think Part two is brilliant for that book after you've read it. [00:41:27] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:41:29] Speaker D: Well, the other secret, I don't know. You probably can only do this once in your career though. But like, if. So they wanted to change Survivor Song the title, and so they asked me to come up with suggestions. And so I gave them a title that I knew that they were not going to. Like I was going to call it you will not feel me between your teeth because it was way too wordy. He's like, we can't have teeth in the title. I'm like, why? And so they're like, fine, we'll go back to Survivor Song so you can pull the old switcheroo. Although I kind of weirdly like the other title I suggested better. So no one was happy when we stuck with Survivor Song. [00:42:01] Speaker C: Yeah, like Babysitter Lives. My initial title for it was the Long Halloween. And the publisher, the audio, it came out audio first. They said, we don't want this to be an October book. We want it to be a year round book so you can't have Halloween in the title. Like that kind of marketing stuff, you know. And I was, I kind of was bummed about that. I liked the Last Night Before Halloween. But then. So I then elected to call it the Lizard with a Glass Throat, which everyone was like, yes, that's a great title. But then publishers often do a thing. I've found where they all get behind a title until like two days before it's finalized and they say, nope, not that title. Think of another one in 48 hours. You know, that's what they did with this one. [00:42:37] Speaker D: So. [00:42:38] Speaker C: Yeah, that's fun, man. [00:42:39] Speaker B: Wow. [00:42:40] Speaker D: Say no, Stephen. You can say no sometimes. [00:42:45] Speaker B: So we. The. We have. I have one more question before we do. We do have some questions in chat. I'll ask one more quick question and then we'll get to those, those chat questions. What piece of advice would you give to writers at the beginning of their discovery and education processes? Just barely on their wobbly baby deer legs? [00:43:06] Speaker D: Oh, man. Do your math homework. Don't use. Don't use chat, GPT or AI. Yeah, I mean read. I mean for any course of study that you're doing reading, you know, it could be non fiction, it could be your interest, it could be outside of your interest is only going to make you, you know, a better student, better reader, better writer. Just read. [00:43:28] Speaker C: Yeah, I agree with reading. I think I would, I would, would use that old maxim from poetry that you can't write free verse until you can write form, you know, so which is to say make a mess if you want but know the mess you're making. You know, like don't play with punctuation if you don't actually know how punctuation works. [00:43:51] Speaker B: Yeah. What if that's the bait though? To get a three page, single, single, three page single space letter from Stephen Graham Jones. All right, so we'll get to the questions in the chat here Devin asks, Stephen writes about drinking coffee to have a vomit follow. Or is that something you do yourself in real life? You're not a coffee guy, Stephen. [00:44:15] Speaker C: Yeah, I have not. I'm not. I've drank coffee on accident a couple of times when I was young, maybe about 12 years ago. No, it's about 20 years ago. I was really tired at 3 in the morning, driving many hours and I stopped and bought a little like espresso in a can and I told myself I gotta stay away so I slammed it and then I was throwing up like a quarter while later. But like people always come through town and they say let's I want to interview you. Meet me at a coffee shop. And I always say Nana, how about we go to a burrito place? You know because coffee shops have the quality of smelling like coffee, you know and that makes me have to hold my breath and when I hold my breath I can't do an interview very well. I get all swimming in the head, you know. So yeah, coffee to me like when my wife leaves coffee grounds in the sink, I have to run away and go stand in the backyard for a while because it's dangerous times, man. [00:45:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I think if, when I get start to get to do these things in person, I think it's going to be candy shops. Like we'll do, we'll. We'll talk over some gummy worms or something. [00:45:12] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. [00:45:12] Speaker B: Six, let's even six. [00:45:14] Speaker C: Lets are the best man. [00:45:15] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:45:17] Speaker B: Maya asks, what is your process to go from idea to story? To turn an idea into a story? [00:45:26] Speaker C: I mean for me ideas are worthless. Like I've. I sold all my idea notebooks to a To a library, because they were. They were no good. I had, like, probably 120 journals of them. Yeah, ideas are. They're easy. They're like. You can come up with an idea in 10 seconds. Ideas just mean nothing. But it's the voice. I don't mean the diction, but I mean the, like, angle at which exposition and story flows onto the page. That's what you need to make anything work. And so the way an idea splits sparks into, like, some sort of product or story is I just move through the world. And like, I guess the way I would say it is I just go around the world rubbing my heart on all the handrails, you know, and I just be open and wait for that void, that thing, to come alive in my head. And then I write the thing really fast. But I found I can't muscle it onto the page. I just have to wait for, like. [00:46:25] Speaker D: Like. [00:46:25] Speaker C: Like a fairy godmother touching me on the head with her sparkly wand. And then it's alive in my head. And I. I wish there were, like, a mechanism I could activate or a muscle I could use, but there doesn't seem to be. [00:46:35] Speaker D: That's a great answer. So, I mean, I'm not, like, swimming in ideas. I mean, I have, like, a lot of notebooks. I mean, because I guess I think less of them as ideas is like little scenes. And if it feels like, oh, this would be part of, like, this really big thing, you know? Know, I've never. I'm stumbling around this, but I've never had, like, a short story blow up into a novel. And I've never had what I thought was a novel, like, Peter out as a short story. I mean, I've had novels that failed. So I don't know. For some reason, I. I just know, okay, this is a novel or this is a short story. For me, the test is if something new and shiny, like, pops into my head, you know, I might jot it down. But I won't do anything with it right away. I'll let it lie for a few weeks. And then if I find that I'm continually going back and thinking about it and thinking about it when I'm not actively thinking about it. Like, if it just occurs to me while I'm making food or doing dishes or something like that, to me, it's like, oh, okay, I'm trusting again my subconscious. It's letting me know that I do want to. If it's a novel, I do want to spend a year with this thing. [00:47:39] Speaker C: Yeah, that's Kind of what Stephen King says, right? He says he doesn't write ideas down because those are just bad idea notebooks. If it's a good idea, it'll come back over and over and over, and you won't be able not to write it, you know? [00:47:48] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. So Heidi asks for Stephen. Dark Mill south is one of the best character names ever. And then let me find it. There it is. Best character names ever. Your character names are unique. Do they come to you with the character, or do you shape them to carry meaning? [00:48:07] Speaker C: Dark Mill south to me is my mishearing of a lyric in a Jerry Reed song. What is that? What is that song? I can hear it in my head. Anyways, it's just a mishearing of a lyric. A lot of my stuff comes from mishearings. You know, lately I have. I was talking about bad idea notebooks. But I have started keeping a list lately of character names. And I usually nab those last names from the credit rolls of movies because there's a lot of wild names in there. I would never hear otherwise. And so I scribble them down, and sometimes I use them, sometimes I don't. But I do that because I have a bad problem of naming all my characters Martin. And that's not gonna work. [00:48:47] Speaker D: Work. You know, I named so many of the same characters Tim or Timothy. Like, when I put together growing things, like I had all these short stories, I'm like, oh, my God, how many Tims are here? I gotta change a couple. [00:48:59] Speaker B: The movie credits thing is great. You might be the only person sitting through the credits in a Marvel movie for the actual names and not the scene. [00:49:07] Speaker C: Not for Samuel Jackson to pop up at the end. [00:49:12] Speaker B: Professor Heidi Jewell asks, stephen, you seemed to have a purpose and built to a point. Point in the Buffalo Hunter X Hunter, which is her second favorite after the Fast Red Road. But did you have an intended audience in mind for either of those books? [00:49:27] Speaker C: Fast Red Road was me trying to be Thomas Pinchon or Gerald Visitor. So I was appealing to, like, 600 people, you know, and across 40 years. Buffalo hunter. Hunter. I wanted to talk to the vampire people, I think. [00:49:40] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense. Makes sense. [00:49:43] Speaker D: Like literal vampires or people who, like the fans. [00:49:47] Speaker C: The people who are die hard, who, like. Who, like. Who, like, live in the hunger, you know, they love it. [00:49:52] Speaker B: Hunger. Get. Get the. Get the. The. The. The fangs and everything. Permanently. [00:49:58] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:50:00] Speaker B: Fire people. You've given them something to chew on there for sure. [00:50:03] Speaker D: Oh, boy. [00:50:04] Speaker B: DJ Asks, any tips for cultivating a better attention span? Suggestions for being able to sit down and engage fully with writing or even reading without internal distractions. Huh. [00:50:17] Speaker D: So I. I haven't gone as far as the following, but when I first started writing, one of my mentors is this great American novelist, Stuart Onan, who. His career is like. He's written every different kind of novel that you could imagine. Really gracious person, and I really admire him. Anyway, he used to talk about how he would literally belt himself into a chair for two hours so he couldn't get up. So I. I have adopted, without the belting in the chair. I've adopted, hey, if I'm gonna sit here for an hour, I'm gonna sit here for an hour. If that means I'm gonna stare at the screen and two words get written, I will do that for an hour. Part of that is just a train. But honestly, what ends up happening more often is, like, my brain is like Homer Simpson's brain. Like, where so many of the episodes is like, this is boring. I'm gonna do something else. So typically, if it's rough going, nothing's happening. My brain will be like, after five minutes, like, fine. This sucks. I'll give you something. Something, you know, and. And then stuff starts happening. [00:51:13] Speaker C: Right. Yeah. [00:51:14] Speaker B: No, that. [00:51:14] Speaker C: Paul's answer is my answer. What I was gonna say. Let me. I did have something else to add. What was it? You know, I used to put knives all around my keyboard to keep me from taking rests, you know, and that. That'll keep you, I guess, not literally on point, but it'll keep you. [00:51:36] Speaker B: It'll keep you upright. [00:51:38] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:51:39] Speaker C: Right. [00:51:40] Speaker B: Good. Imagin asks any advice for. [00:51:43] Speaker C: I remember it. I remember what I was gonna say. I was on a panel with a woman once, and she said the way she keeps herself focused when she wakes is she wants to write for like, an hour after she wakes up. She'll get up, go straight from bed to the keyboard, and she won't let herself use the restroom until she's gotten X amount of words done, you know, And I think that'll make you get some words done, you know, I sure will. [00:52:04] Speaker B: Sure will. They might. Some of them might be out, but. Yeah. Before I get to Imogen's question, Nikki suggests that the song is Amos Moses. Jerry. [00:52:14] Speaker C: Yeah, it's Amos Moses. Yeah. Yep, that's it. [00:52:17] Speaker A: All right. [00:52:18] Speaker B: Imogen asks, any advice for someone who is a, quote, baby writer at an older age? And then, what are your top three artistic influences? Doesn't have to be another writer. [00:52:30] Speaker C: Can Def Leppard be all three? [00:52:32] Speaker B: Yeah, you're the boss. [00:52:34] Speaker C: No, no. For me, probably Larry McMurtry and. Yeah, probably Def Leppard and Philip K. Dick. And I think as far as a baby rider, starting at an older age, I think that's an advantage really, because I see so many people come out of MFA programs with dazzling skills, techniques, but they haven't lived enough to have stuff to say, you know, and so if you're starting at a later age, you've already got stuff to say, you've seen things happen. [00:52:58] Speaker B: And. [00:52:59] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, that part of it is my answer. That's not to say like a young person. Obviously there are plenty of young people have experience to write, but yeah, I mean, I tend to find some of my favorite writers tend to be start even, you know, starting older. Starting to start at an older age. My first novel wasn't published till I was 38. I mean, not. I don't think that's old anymore. I would kill five goats to be 38 again in maybe. Maybe even six, if you get to push me. Yeah, it's funny, like, some. Some of my artists as well would be musicians like Bob Mold, Slash, who. It was really sort of like the first artist I fell in love with that made me want to, like, I want to try to play that in the guitar. Like, I want to try to mimic the creation of something that I, I. That I think is really cool, you know. And Stephen King was, you know, turned me into a reader when I first read the Stand. But actually I'm wearing one of my favorite novels as a T shirt right now. Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut. [00:54:01] Speaker C: 40S, right? He was in his late 40s when that came out, wasn't he? Yeah, yeah. [00:54:04] Speaker D: And for that was like, oh, I didn't know, like, I know you could do that. Like, some of my favorite reads were like, I didn't know you could do, like, Stove Vonnik. It was just the voice and the weird structure, but it just seems so conversational. But still also, like, really smart and well written at the same time. No, I mean, my favorite. Steve. I'm sure the same way, because you're a big music fan, you talk about music inspiring stuff all the time. Like, so many of my books have either started from lyrics or the titles come from lyrics. So music definitely is something that I go to frequently for inspiration. [00:54:36] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Tonya Ramirez, our dean, actually. So that's the kind of support we're getting, which I really appreciate. Tony asks, as a genre, horror is of course, full of tropes. Do you think that there are tropes that arise within criticism of horror or the way that people talk about the genre, and if so, which ones interest you? [00:54:58] Speaker C: It's a really good question. That's what I say when I don't have an answer. I'm just stalling. But it is a really good question. I've never thought about that before. I think. [00:55:12] Speaker D: Like tropes within criticism. [00:55:14] Speaker C: Yeah, that's neat. Like that. I'm trying to think what I've seen that happens over and over, I think. I mean, I see a lot of horror criticism say this is the same old thing, you know, and, but then they'll, they'll, they'll say this the same old thing, but they put their own spin on it, you know, and so that, that trick of saying that's a, that's a way of like smuggling across to the reader that we all know the formula of the haunted house or the slasher or whatever, you know. And I think it's, I think it's a way that the critics situates you in a comfortable spin face and then tries to tell you in spite of the fact that you know the formula, this still has something to offer, you know. [00:55:51] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, that's hard to answer. I mean, I think because my mind keeps going to stuff that like happens online or in Goodreads. And I wouldn't consider that like serious criticism, you know, just like knee jerk reactions or like, you know, I think the most annoying ones like, oh, this isn't scary, so it's not horror, which is just such an absurd statement. And if anyone says that, I just glaze over and discount that person's opinion on pretty much everything for the rest of their lives. But also like, again, this represents me being an old. And this is not meant for me like the tick tocking of, of criticism where it's like a book cover, trauma, friendship, like all these arrows and like, is that like how we distill books now? Like, I mean, I think there, there's problems with that too as a, you know, treated, I don't know, treating stories like they're that sort of boil downable, like to me, like the reason why I'm a reader. I mean, I didn't know this when I first started, but like my favorite stories are the things that describe emotions and feelings that can only be described in that story. Like it takes 400 pages to, to say what this is saying, you know, and if I were to try to say it would not come out as good. You wouldn't replicate that same same sense or that same emotion in the same way, you know, So I don't know how you talk about that. So I'm a math teacher. I don't write criticism, so I don't know how that would translate to criticism. [00:57:13] Speaker B: But anyway, yeah, I think that the idea that you can take a novel, which is this just wealth of ideas, and then suddenly in six seconds, tell it. Tell somebody everything they need to know about it. [00:57:26] Speaker D: Slow burn. Sorry, I hate that. [00:57:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:57:30] Speaker D: Like, what does it mean most people? It means, frankly, you're sort of admitting that, like, you were, you know, your attention wasn't kept, I guess. But for most people, like, when they say slow burn, it means there wasn't like a lot of stabbings, you know, in the first 40 pages or something. [00:57:47] Speaker C: But, you know, a slow burn is a more thorough burn. You know, a fast burn just burns. [00:57:51] Speaker D: See, that's a better way I should say that from now on. [00:57:55] Speaker B: All right. Heidi asks, ask Paul. Gloomy Sunday has the rep of being the saddest so ever written. Did it inspire the storyline of Head Full of Ghosts or come into play later as the novel developed? [00:58:06] Speaker D: Yeah, that came into play pretty early on. But as. As the story started happening, you know, the fun part for me for that book was once I knew I couldn't avoid it's a possessions, you know, novel. And once I knew I couldn't avoid the William Peter Blatty elephant in the room that, like, freed me up to, like, oh, I'm going to just, like, roll in all the references and. And pull in as much as I can. So somewhere in my research, I came across Gloomy Sunday and sort of the apocryphal idea that that song was forcing or people who were listening to that song were then committing suicide, which to me in my mind felt like it played a little bit with the idea of possession, et cetera. So I was like, oh, I have to work that song into the. Into the book. [00:58:49] Speaker C: I didn't know Bloody's middle name was Henry. I'm just learning this, man. [00:58:53] Speaker D: Neither did I. Yeah. [00:58:56] Speaker B: Steven talk. This is from Bensu. Steven talked about in the coffee conversation about writing things that challenged him. Keeping cats alive and such. Do you mean writing things that are alien to you is the challenge, writing about an experience that you don't have? The stupid story idea? [00:59:11] Speaker C: You know, I think, I mean, yeah, I do like those little challenges of keeping a cat alive or drinking coffee or, you know, those kind of little things. But in a bigger sense, it's stories that seem just like bad ideas. Like, I was a teenage slasher. I think it's a bad idea, you know, like, how are you gonna. How are you gonna get the audience to identify with the person with the machete going around town chopping heads? You know, how are we gonna get the audience, the readers, to care about that person? And that seems, like, just stupid. Why don't you try that? You know? But when things are stupid, that's when I want to try them the most, you know? [00:59:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:59:47] Speaker D: Did you start with the title first? Like, literally? Yeah, I was a teenager. [00:59:50] Speaker C: I think I did. I think I did. [00:59:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:59:52] Speaker C: And actually, I've used that title three times. I should stop using it. Like that story you were talking that y' all read for this. I was a teenage space jockey, and years ago, I did a short story somewhere. I was a teenage slasher victim, you know, so if people, like, try to search that novel up, they probably get. [01:00:05] Speaker B: Other hits, you know, it's effective marketing, I guess, right? [01:00:09] Speaker C: Yeah, maybe. [01:00:10] Speaker B: For distinctive numbers. [01:00:11] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:00:12] Speaker D: I do love starting a novel with, like, a title like, that's happened a couple times. [01:00:16] Speaker C: Yeah, I like it too. You know, my novel Growing up dead in Texas, that I remember. That's not my title. That's one of my grad students titles. She came to my office and she said, I'm going to write a book. And I thought of the perfect title, and she said, I shouldn't tell you. And I said, yeah, you shouldn't tell me. And then she said, I'm gonna tell you. And so she leaned forward, like, whispered, my office would make it secret, you know, and she said, growing up dead in Texas. And I was like, that is a good title. And. And then, like, three years later, I'd written a book, and I emailed her and I said, hey, did you ever use that title? And. And she said, no, no, I might still. And I said, can I buy it from you? And she said, you can just have it. So I took it. But what she doesn't know is I was going to take. [01:00:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I feel like there are times I feel like I'm a much better title writer than a writer. Yeah. [01:01:01] Speaker C: I think if I could have any job in the world, I'd want to be a racehorse namer. That would be so fun because they have great names. [01:01:07] Speaker D: A resource. [01:01:08] Speaker C: Neighbor. [01:01:08] Speaker D: I thought I said neighbor. [01:01:11] Speaker C: What? [01:01:11] Speaker B: Yeah, that would be cool. [01:01:13] Speaker C: I wonder how they're peeing next door, man. [01:01:17] Speaker B: Jeff Kahn asks, Steve, Stephen, I heard you read from. And you graciously. Graciously signed the bird is gone at a faux opium den. Bar in New Orleans called the Dragon's Den or something. [01:01:30] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:01:31] Speaker B: Looking back, is there anything you wish. 2003. 4. Stephen knew about writing that, you know, now something you think young writers would be better off knowing? Paul, same question. Although, Paul, I don't think that you probably signed to that book at that opium den. [01:01:44] Speaker D: I did not. [01:01:45] Speaker C: I think if I remember correctly, that might have been an absinthe bar. And my publisher at the moment, me, a party or something. I don't remember exactly. But obviously if it's an opium bar, you're not going to remember. [01:01:55] Speaker A: Right. [01:01:56] Speaker C: But, yeah, there is something I wish I knew, which I've been navigating it for about the past two years, is be careful about what contracts you sign. You know, because I've had so many of my old books wrapped up in battles and just lost forever and stuff like that. And I've been trying and trying to get them back. And it takes some, like, entertainment lawyers and just so much maneuvering and registered letters and so much trouble that I could be. That's time I could spend hacky sacking or something, you know. [01:02:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:02:26] Speaker D: I don't know if this even is going to answer the question, but like, I don't know if, like, I would. You know, making the mistakes is part of the deal. Like, as long as they're not catastrophic. Right. As long as, like, you know, you don't pay like $2,000 for someone to publish your novel and they just run away with it. Like, that would be really bad. Everyone's gonna. You're all gonna make mistakes along the way. Way, you know, and it's okay, like, you're not. No one's. No one's expected to be an expert when it comes to this. And especially in an industry that is so inexpert, like, it's. There's no guarantees anywhere. So, like, you know, any. What I would say, like, going back. It's not even what I knew. It's like, I just wish any. Anything that would alleviate, like, the pressure off of the writing would. Anything that would make, you know, that the writing experience feel a little bit less fraught is worth it. So, I mean, hopefully that answer helps you, like, if you, you know, don't. Just little mistakes are going to happen. It's not going to be the end, you know. Steven and I did an interview for, or I interviewed him for a Gothic American lit journal. And at one point we both talked about how we were sort of glad that our paths sort of really, really were sort of very stumbling in the beginning and very meandery, you know, partly because, like, it would have been a lot of weird pressure, and I don't know if I would have been able to handle it if, like, for whatever level my books are successful now. If they were way back then. Yeah, I think that would really mess with my head. [01:03:55] Speaker C: I see so many writers have success with their first. Their debut novel. Yeah, I feel sorry for them. I mean, I'm jealous of them because of what if that happened to me when I was 28 or whatever. But at the same time, those writers. Writers get locked into having to follow up that success with another huge success, and they usually get locked into writing that type of novel only, too. And that. That can't be fun. [01:04:22] Speaker B: Sorry. I've got two more questions. We've closed the chat. A student named Francisco asks Paul, do you feel like the characters in Cabin at the End of the World or Knock at the Cabin were portrayed the way you imagined them in the movie? [01:04:38] Speaker D: Yeah, I thought my favorite part of the movie, which I like, but hate the ending and hate the title. Talk about titles, man. What? Not even grammatically correct. Knock at the Cabin sounds like a British comedy of manners. A Knock at the Cabin. Anyway, no, my favorite part of the movie was the performances by. By the actors. I thought they really sort of knew. Nailed sort of the emotional lives of those characters, and it was fun. When Bautista was first announced, initially I was like, oh, that's not at all who I imagined. Because in the book, Leonard is described as, like, being in his early to mid-20s, big giant guy. But after seeing the movie, I thought Batista was perfect. He had that menace, but he also had that sort of vulnerability as well. [01:05:22] Speaker B: Right on. And then our last question. And thank you so much for sticking around. Around. How often, if you. This is Imogen asking, how often, if you ever still do. Do you feel a little imposter syndrome, or is it going to be a constant thing? [01:05:41] Speaker C: Sometimes if I'm wearing, like, nice clothes, I feel like. [01:05:46] Speaker D: I don't know if. [01:05:47] Speaker C: I don't know if imposture is the right word. I feel like a traitor to my younger self, you know, if that makes sense. I'm like, so. I don't know if I've ever felt actual imposter syndrome, though. I mean, I've been all kinds of places I don't belong, but it's always fun for me, you know? [01:06:05] Speaker D: Yeah. I mean, there's always the fears, like, oh, when are people gonna find out that I don't know what the hell I'm doing? [01:06:11] Speaker C: But. [01:06:13] Speaker D: But that's a part like that. That. That continues to drive me. Like, I wasn't trained, you know, in English. I don't have an English degree. You know, I feel like I'm always playing catch up in terms of, like, you know, I do try to read things that I didn't read that, like English major friends or, you know, you know, someone incredibly, you know, like Stephen or someone really also really smart, like John Langan, who's read everything like, you know, and neither of them ever lord over. They're good about not. They don't lord over you. Like, hey, I read this and you didn't. But just when I hear them talk smartly about these books I haven't read, it's like, ah, I have to try harder. I have to try more. So. [01:06:44] Speaker C: So. [01:06:45] Speaker D: But I hope that's, like, in a healthy way, too. Like, I would hope neither of us ever gets to the point where we're like, here's our entourage. We are geniuses. [01:06:54] Speaker C: Exactly. Like, I never want to feel like I have a. [01:06:56] Speaker D: Give me my sixlets. [01:06:58] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. I always felt like. I always felt like John Updike, like, in his head, sat on a throne and looked at everybody else. You know, I never want to. I never want to be like that. That would be scary. I think I just can't be trusted with anything approaching power. [01:07:11] Speaker D: Yeah. No, I mean, in 30 years of teaching high school math will forever leave me humbled. Not that I need it. I can't tell you how many times I've had kids give me in, like, in a geometry class. And I've said a few times, like, outside of here, there are people that think I'm cool. You don't understand. And they're like, like, so. [01:07:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm gonna. I'm gonna save that line. Somebody outside this room thinks I'm cool. [01:07:34] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:07:35] Speaker B: Use it. Yeah. That was great. All right. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you very much. Stephen and Paul, you're awesome. Thank you for spending time with us. This has been the Right Mind. Have a fantastic day, and, yeah, cheers. Thanks for being here, everybody. [01:07:49] Speaker D: All right, thanks, everybody. [01:07:50] Speaker B: Appreciate it. [01:07:51] Speaker C: See you Friday, Paul. [01:07:52] Speaker D: Oh, yeah. [01:07:52] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:07:54] Speaker A: That was the Right Mind with Stephen Graham Jones and Paul Tremblay. I'm sure glad you were here with us. [01:08:00] Speaker B: I hope you enjoyed. [01:08:01] Speaker A: Thank you for listening. Listening. And we'll see you next time on the Right Mind.