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All right brothers, we're going to get into the actual intro, but first Big Red has something to tell you.
I do have something to tell you.
Today, we have somebody very special on the pod, in the pod lab, the second pod lab.
Ashkel's pod lab.
Ashkel's pod lab.
Welcome to the pod lab.
It's still a little bit under construction, but we're working on it.
It's pretty great.
We have... Whoa!
Thanks, Mikey.
That was badass.
We have Paul Tremblay on the pod today.
Paul is the critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Head Full of Ghosts, The Paul Bearers Club Cabin at the End of the World, and actually that one had has already been adapted to a film.
It's Knock at the Cabin, I believe it's called.
So go check that out.
And Head Full of Ghosts is going to be adapted to a movie.
So cool.
Wait for that.
His newest release right here, Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep, which is an amazing title.
It's coming out June 30th.
That's wherever you can find books.
We have actually already recorded with Paul and had a fucking fantastic time.
He was so nice.
He's phenomenal.
His books are phenomenal.
And I urge you to go check them out.
And we're really excited for you to see our conversation with him.
Before we get into the episode, we do just have to thank our sponsor one more time.
Ashley is such an icon.
I'm not talking about myself.
I'm talking about this gorgeous furniture that we are sitting on and our feet are upon and our drink are upon.
We got this is the Revion Lake sofa that we're sitting on.
It's comfy.
It's really comfy.
It's chic.
I love the color and it's washable, which is nice.
I got the, the love seat over there.
And then we have the Maile coffee table, which I'm actually ordering another one to put in my living room downstairs because I love it so much.
I'd like to say really quick that the Schweppes on there was a mistake.
A mistake.
Instacart, I'm not talking to you right now.
And finally, these are the core stone tables, the end tables.
What I love about these is that I feel like I'm like a QVC girl.
Yeah.
I love that you can dress them up like the shelves.
You can kind of just like put all your accoutrements, all your decor, your trinkets, your tchotchkes.
Yajara movies.
Yajara movies.
Your awala.
Yeah.
Your game that you crafted with your sister in Hunt a Killer.
You can just put anything on the end table.
It's true.
So thank you to Ashley for sponsoring today's episode and for sending us this really cool furniture.
Because it's sick.
And without further ado, let's get into it.
Yeah.
Hey, weirdos.
I'm Ash.
I'm Elena.
And I'm Grady Hendrix.
No, wait.
I'm Paul.
We said, Paul, you can be whoever you want to be today.
And he chose Grady Hendrix.
Oh, yes.
This is morbid.
This is a very special Morbid.
We have an amazing, we already introduced him, but I'm going to introduce him again.
This is Paul Tremblay.
If you don't know him, go figure it out, because there's a body of work that you need to get into right now.
He's an amazing writer and you're missing out if you haven't read his books.
So get to it.
And also there's several adaptations that have been happening lately.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
You're welcome.
The most recent would be Head Full of Ghosts wrapped filming in the Dublin area, which is where actually Victorian Psycho was filmed, in Ireland as well.
Oh, that's cool.
Virginia and I talked a little bit about, but anyway yeah, wrapped and probably out in a year from now.
Yeah, super excited.
I'm really excited for that.
That's actually one of my favorite of your books.
Thank you so much.
So I'm very excited about that.
It's going to be a scary movie.
Yeah, love that.
They didn't pull any punches.
So the directors, it was weird.
We were talking, my wife and I on the way over.
The director is our Austrian niece and nephew.
Like, it's just kind of fun that you guys have.
Oh my God, that's so cool.
Oh, that is funny.
Like us.
Like us.
Or I should say aunt and nephew.
Yeah.
Yeah, there you go.
Right.
Cool.
That's so cool.
That's rad.
I love that.
Well, we mentioned Victorian Psycho.
Yes.
That's what we're going to be talking about today.
Yes.
This was actually your pick, which we are very excited.
I had heard about this book.
It's by Virginia Fato, excuse me.
And I've heard about this book everywhere.
Like I'm on TikTok, like BookTok loves it.
I've heard about it.
So many people have told me you have to read this book.
And it's been on my TBR forever.
So when you mentioned it, I was like, well, perfect time.
Right.
I ate this book up in one day.
Like one sitting.
Literally just ate it up.
It's so easy to read.
It is such a good book.
I think it's so unique.
I feel like I've never read anything quite like this.
Yeah.
Truly.
Yeah.
And we're going to get really into it in a minute.
But first, I want to talk to you about you.
Okay.
Because you guys got to know who Paul is.
I'm not Victorian.
You're not Victorian.
Are you a psycho?
Yeah.
To be determined.
We'll figure it out through this.
So we were actually just talking about this.
Congrats on finally becoming a full-time writer.
Thank you.
That's incredible.
I appreciate that.
Yeah, it's a little weird, a little daunting.
Yeah, I've been a high school math teacher for 30 years and people usually react more in horror to that than they do to horror writing.
I was going to say that's horror to me.
Yeah.
No, I totally get it.
You know, at a small school local to here, and they were always super supportive.
Let me be the weirdo horror writing agnostic math teacher in a Catholic boys school.
Oh, hell yeah.
That's badass.
That's awesome.
That's so cool.
That's a story in and of itself that you need to write a thing.
That really is.
Very thankful.
If I missed a day or two to go to like a festival or something, they were great.
Oh, that's so cool.
That's so rare.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I can see why you stayed there for so long.
No, it was like, I mean, my artistic writerly safety net.
Yeah.
Maybe similar to you.
Like you were just telling me how you kept your job for a long time.
I mean it was, it was just nice to know.
Hey, I had this job that sometimes paid our shitty health insurance.
And then, you know, I could write a book and if it was weird, that's okay.
If I needed to say no, I could, because I didn't have to like do what the publisher said or what people expected.
I know.
And I think that actually makes it better.
I feel like you probably were a little able to be more free and creative with that, when you have that safety net.
Because when it's all on you, it's like, this has to work.
It has to be what everyone likes.
No, 100%.
Always admire friends who make a go of it. you know, full time.
And that's how they've been supporting their family for years.
I mean, that's a pressure that I'll have to figure out.
Well, my kids are older now, so they're on their own.
Well, you're definitely like the most successful, like part-time writer I've ever seen.
Like, that's crazy.
When I saw, I think I saw you post about it and I was like, Wait a minute.
I was like, he's not full-time doing this.
What the hell?
But you seem to have come to the full-time side of writing at the right time, because I feel like horror is having kind of like a cultural renaissance right now.
Even like with movies and stuff like Back Rooms, Weapons, Sinners, Frankenstein, Obsession.
Why do you think that's happening right now?
Yeah, I mean, that's hard to answer.
I'm not sure.
I mean, I think some of it was funny.
Let me back up.
So A Head Full of Ghosts was the book that sort of made me, like, that broke out.
And when we were trying to sell that in early 2014, a lot of publishers were like ah, but it's horror.
And, like it was, we eventually did get a publish, which was amazing, but just it's not that long ago.
Like now, like 11, 12 years later.
It's like you know, publishers weekly reports and like oh, the sale, like the, the publisher acquisition of horror novels is up 25 from last year, which was up 25 from the year before.
And it's just, You know, the worst case scenario person in me that you know powers my books is like oh no, it's going to be a bubble that pops.
Yep.
That's going to happen.
That's nerve wracking.
But no, I mean, I think it's a healthy place.
We're finally getting to see it's not just...
You know, authors who look, you know, white, straight authors who look like me and Grady.
It's, you know, we're getting to see way more own voices.
And you know, to me that's like one of the most exciting parts about what we're seeing both in film and in publishing.
Oh, yeah, I agree.
I think it's like different point of views coming into it.
I think finally people are being open to that, which is nice.
I love seeing that.
And I love seeing them like win awards.
I love all of like seeing this happen.
I'm like, it's time.
It's our time.
No, I mean, the other part of it is I think, you know, I mean, I'll talk about Gen X a little bit.
Like I mean, so many of us grew up reading Stephen King and watching the movies.
And then you know the later half of the previous decade, you know so many of us were now publishing books, like you know, the children, if not of Stephen King, but of of that time.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Like I say, there's less of a.
There's still a stigma with horror which I hope never leaves.
Frankly,
I mean, I always want horror.
Horror should be poking and prodding at uncomfortable things and on the boundaries.
So I hope it doesn't lose that, um, Yeah.
So I think honestly, Get Out has a lot to do with it.
Like when that came out, like that was the first time.
Yeah.
Broader culture, especially academia, and mainstream reviewers were like oh, there were.
I remember literal articles in New York Times.
Like, do we need to take horror seriously because of that movie?
They were like, we need to change the landscape a little.
That movie is flawless to me.
I love that movie.
Truly flawless.
I love that movie.
So good.
Now, do you remember the exact moment that you realized that you wanted to write horror?
Oh, geez, no.
It's a tough one.
No, it's hard to explain how I got there.
I mean, I'm a lifelong scaredy cat for one.
So I've always had like a love terrified relationship with horror.
That's how I feel.
Yeah, still like if I'm alone in the house, I'm not above sleeping with like a desk lamp on.
Oh, yeah, same.
Or noise machines and still go up the basement steps too quick just because I'm ridiculous.
But I mean, I wasn't even like a huge reader as a kid.
Like I was just sort of like a nerdy math person, you know, loves the Celtics.
And it wasn't until college or I met my wife, Lisa.
She bought me right after I graduated.
Two things happened.
My last, and I hope this isn't too boring.
You can cut it.
I had to take an English requirement.
I was in a freshman English class, second semester senior year.
Oh, damn.
It blew my mind.
I had like the stereotype experience.
Okay.
The teacher was a big punk music fan.
I was too, so we connected.
But anyway.
Oh, hell yeah.
One of the stories I read in that class was Joyce Carol Oates' Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
And I remember reading it and I actually said aloud.
I was like I didn't know.
People wrote things like this
I love that.
And shortly after that, Lisa bought me The Stand after graduation and I hailed that.
I went off to grad school for two years and struggled by the skin of my teeth to get a master's degree.
That's when I was reading everything Stephen King wrote.
And from Dance Macabre, I branched out to like Peter Straub and Clive Barker and Shirley Jackson.
And then, two years after that, I got my first teaching job and I had the weird itch to try writing a story.
Inexplicable.
Like, why would I try writing a story?
I love that though.
That's so cool.
That's how I felt too.
When I first started writing like my first book, I was like, I don't know how to write a story.
Like I was like, I can't write a whole book.
What am I doing?
Everybody feels that way when they first write something.
I feel like everyone has to feel that way.
You know, in the beginning, being like I'm not going to get to the end of this,
Yeah.
This isn't going to be something someone reads.
Right.
I'm terrible at writing advice, so I don't give it.
The only thing I tell, especially to younger people, it's like hey, you know, hopefully you come to this realization a lot earlier than I did, but hopefully, you know, you come to the realization that it's okay to like things.
It's getting harder and harder to do that with you know obviously, with just you know social media life and everyone hates everything.
Mm-hmm.
It's okay to like things.
That means it's okay to be passionate about it and maybe want to try it yourself.
And I mean, that's such an important, it has to be your first step.
Yes.
I'm so glad you said that because I'm constantly trying to tell my kids that.
I'm like I want to tell you now, when you're young, like you can be passionately excited about things and not feel weird about it.
Like don't make people feel like make you feel like you can't be all in on something right and want to do it or want to experience it or want to learn everything you can about it.
Like i feel like we have got to a place now where like, everybody wants to be the same and everything's cringe and it's like that's so cringy that you're into.
It's like stop, i hate that, Unless they like Grady Henrik's books.
Then we should really stop.
Then that's cringe.
I love Grady Henrik.
Grady?
Grady's a friend.
I just like making fun of him.
We love Grady.
We had him on and we had the most fun with him.
He's great.
That was a fun episode.
He is so much fun.
He's so funny.
He was really fun with the Would You Rather.
So you're ready for that.
I know.
Yep.
And actually like this kind of leads into my, what I wanted to talk about next.
So speaking of like a love of writing and getting passionate about things, AI.
Yeah.
I have to rant with you about it, because I think we feel the exact same way voted.
Oh yeah, i.
It's upsetting me so much that because, like books, like this, like victorian psycho, aren't gonna happen with ai, and it's making me crazy, Yeah.
That it's become a thing.
And I feel like you need to go through the whole.
Like being inspired to write something, coming up with the idea, like working through it at some point, like reading your own writing and being like, oh my God, I'm a genius.
And then the next day reading it and being like, I'm a hack and I should never do this.
Right.
And then fighting through that feeling and coming out on the other side like you need to have that full experience.
Yeah.
And I feel like all of a sudden we're going to get these books that don't have that behind it.
And I feel like you need that injected into the book for it to be.
Yeah.
I have no, no interest in reading it.
I mean, the whole idea to me is reading something or watching a movie or any other piece of art.
What the connection is, oh, this person felt like I did.
Yeah.
It feels like I do too.
Right.
And there will never be any of that.
No.
You know, with AI, nevermind that they steal our books.
Exactly.
You know, give you know.
Uh, and I was a part of the first lawsuit suing open AI on behalf of writers.
Uh, I love that.
For two years.
It's myself, other horror leading the way.
Christopher Golden, another horror writer.
Yeah.
And Richard Cadre.
And also weirdly, well, not weirdly, but like not horror writer, but Sarah Silverman.
We were the first four and spent two years as a part of it.
Um, they can.
There's so many lawsuits they consolidated all to one.
So then, like i didn't continue because they also chose different lawyers.
It was weird.
But yeah no, i mean, you know, i'm sorry if it makes people uncomfortable but, like you're not a writer or a visual artist, if you're using it, you're a scab to use.
Like we don't have a union, but i'm going to use union.
Yeah, you're a scab, exactly.
Um Yeah,
It's stolen work.
Yeah.
At the end of the day.
It makes me crazy.
And there's just no humanity behind it.
Like, AI can't come up.
I mean, you can always see it in, like, metaphors and stuff that you'll see written by AI.
You're like, that doesn't even make sense.
Because you don't have the capacity as a computer to compare two things.
Like, you just don't.
Like, it doesn't make any sense.
No.
I mean, in one way it's like it's helped crystallize, like why I'm still passionate about reading and watching movies and viewing art.
But, you know, it's the connection components.
It's like, why do we have to defend this or explain why that this is important?
Exactly.
Yeah.
And it makes it so.
You have a book coming out on June 30th and it's Dead, But Dreaming of Electric Sheep.
I love that title.
It's such a good title.
And it has some like AI components in it, like in the story.
It's about that.
The plot seems so interesting to me.
Can you tell us a little bit about it?
Yeah, sure.
I'm bad at the quick pitch.
I'm terrible at it, so don't worry.
I think that's like a thing across the board.
Now that we have that out of the way.
Yeah.
So you know, the main conceit is that there's someone who's like my age and build, working for well, not Google, because I didn't want to get sued.
I think I called them Sicilian, a giant tech company in the Silicon Valley.
Okay.
He's working on campus in the mailroom and he doesn't drop dead, but he has a massive stroke where you know he can breathe and his heart's beating but he's not.
You know, there's no consciousness.
He's in a vegetative state, so they say.
He signed his body directly over to the company, though, prior to this happening.
As one does.
As one does.
And they implant AI and nanobots into his brain so someone can remote control him like they're playing a video game.
That's the creepiest thing.
So most of that happens off page.
The...
Semi estranged 24 year old daughter of the CFO.
She was an ex professional gamer is hired to basically weekend at Bernie's him across the country.
So I'm hopeful.
Like I hope that a big chunk of this book maybe the first two thirds of her her chapters, Julia chapters is definitely satire and hopefully very funny.
Yeah. even though it's ultimately a serious thing.
The, So the book is split between her chapters, and chapters are titled You, which is from the point of view of the man with the tech in his head.
So he is still conscious because of what they've put in his head.
He's going through like a phantasmic oracle hellscape.
Oh, I love that.
And then the two narratives sort of link up at the end and everyone's happy and hugs.
Oh, I love this.
I love the dual POV.
I don't know about that ending, but yeah.
That's going to be good.
I'm really excited about that.
Yeah, I love a dual POV.
Yeah, love it.
That's really cool.
And to think about just like being unconscious but conscious at the same time, that's wild.
That's honestly my thing.
No, definitely very horrific.
Yeah, very Black Mirror.
And the control aspect of it is my literal worst nightmare.
I am the biggest control freak in the world.
The idea of somebody controlling me when I can't.
Right.
One of my fears writing the book is, even though the premise seems absurd, I was like man.
I got to get this done before it can actually happen.
Two weeks ago there was a story where some company has brains in jars, like some companies do, apparently like Futurama.
Right.
And they were testing either both pain medication or addiction to drugs, testing the brains.
And one of the the.
The spokesperson said oh you know, the wiring is almost taken out of what it would take for them to be conscious.
Almost.
Stop.
I hate that.
You're like speed writing.
You get it into your editor.
You're like, please hurry.
Oh my God.
Oh, I hate that.
I want to go back to something that you said earlier, because I related to that so much.
I'm such a horror fan, but I'm also such a Freedy cat, and you said the same thing.
I wonder do you have any fears that you've never explored in your writing, that you would eventually want to someday?
That's a great question.
I don't think no one's ever asked it in that way.
Hey, all right.
Look at that.
I mean, there's some fears that I won't write about just because it's too scary for me.
And being just a child, teen of the 80s, like nuclear war stuff, really Anything that brushes up against that is too much for me.
That's how I feel too.
I don't write about it.
Avoid... So I won't watch Oppenheimer.
Yep.
I'm sure it's a good movie.
End of the World stuff to me is like too real.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I mean...
I use so much of my own life, much of the chagrin of my family in my books.
You know, it's hard to say what's coming next.
And I wish I was someone who had like a bullpen of of ideas and for novels.
I just go from novel and then i'm like, oh no, what am i gonna do now?
Oh man, and just try to start from scratch and hopefully there's some inspiration.
So, all right yeah, like i don't know, i can't say like oh, i definitely want to try this or that.
It's like i don't know, like i'm just totally focused on the thing i'm working on.
Yeah Oh, that's cool.
You got to see it through.
Yeah, I get that.
I have the weirdest notes in my note app of like ideas, but they're like, they're like.
Sometimes I'll look at them and I'm like I don't know what I meant with this.
Like, I will never go back to that.
You also have the weirdest dreams that I feel like nightmares, I should say.
I feel like so many of your ideas come from a little blip in your dream.
Yeah.
Or my kids weirdly, when they're at the age where like, they'll tell me a little bit of a like nightmare or something that they're scared of.
And I'm like, can I use that?
Like, is that cool if I put that in a book?
Oh, you even ask them permission?
Yeah, I'm like, is it good?
I know, I should just take, I'm like, I made you.
My poor children.
Yeah.
I've done taking things without permission, including a head full of ghosts.
I scarred my wife Lisa with it, because young Mary, the eight-year-old character, was definitely our daughter Emma when she was eight years old.
That was her personality.
Yeah.
That's so cool.
I mean, hey, you have to write what you know, right?
You do.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think my youngest had an imaginary friend.
Well, Skelton was one, but he's not going to be in a book.
The Mister.
The Mister?
And she named him The Mister.
That's creepy.
And she once told us, he'll always find you.
Yeah.
So like she literally sat on a cover.
She said, don't worry, the mister will always find you.
I think it was because they were playing hide and seek, her and my husband.
And they were like hiding under a blanket.
And he was like, who are we hiding from?
Like, who's finding us?
She was like, the mister.
And he was like, I'm sorry, what?
And she was like, don't worry, he'll always find us.
And he was like, I hate this.
What does that mean?
That's terrifying.
That's a great Baroque title, The Mister Will Always Find You.
The Mister Will Always Find You.
I like it.
Damn.
It's mine.
Going back to scary memories or anything like that.
Do you know, or can you think of the first story that ever scared you so badly that it's still with you to this day?
Maybe you read it or you heard it.
Oh, yeah.
So, I mean, for me, it was all movies.
I mean I think I'm trying to think age-wise there was I mean in this.
When I say this area, I don't want to give away where you guys live, but in the New England area.
Sure.
I was.
I'm old enough that there was a program called Creature Double Feature that played man.
This was like late 70s, early 80s.
Okay.
On Saturday, so they show two movies.
The first movie was always like Godzilla or Gamera, a kaiju movie.
And that's what drew me in.
Yeah.
The second movie was a horror movie, like a Hammer horror movie or Black and White.
I love this.
You know some of the like just dumbest horror movies that get eventually were on Mystery Science Theater.
Right.
Oh, hell yeah.
Those gave me nightmares.
I had a attack of the killer shrew nightmares.
Yeah.
Nightmare that I still remember.
It's such a bad movie.
I had nightmares from the movie Alien before seeing it, because I was listening to my parents and my aunt talk about how scary the movie was.
Oh my God, I love that.
That used to happen to me when I was little all the time.
In fact, I remember you were there at one of my uncle's houses and all of you guys were talking about it.
And I just heard like the tail end and like little bits of your conversation.
And I was afraid of whatever it was.
I didn't even know what it was, but I was so scared of it for like months.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Yep.
But by far, Jaws gave me the most nightmares by far.
Jaws is such a foray into horror, isn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It started at my high school, which is weird.
When I was like in fifth grade they were showing summer movies in high school because they had like an auditorium.
Okay.
And my dad took me and he pitched the movie to me this way.
He's like, oh, there's a scene in this movie that captures of what it feels like to catch a fish.
That moment right when you catch it on the hook.
And you're like, awesome, I'm in.
Let's watch that.
I mean, yeah, that scene where Quint hooks him.
It's there.
It's there, but you could have told me some other things about that movie.
You left out some bits.
A little different feeling.
So it's one of my favorite movies.
I've seen it 50 times since, but I still cover my eyes when Quint gets.
Sorry for the spoiler, but
Spoiler alert for Jaws.
When he gets bit in half, that broke my little 10-year-old brain.
I'm sure.
I had 10 years of shark nightmares after that movie.
Oh, I believe that.
So I've seen the movie.
I've watched it with my kids and we'll ceremoniously put the pillow over our faces when the scene comes.
I love it.
I've seen way more gorier stuff.
I'm just like afraid that my brain will return to the 10-year-old brain.
It probably would.
It could.
It's a core memory, you know?
Your kids want to see Jaws so badly.
So now we're going to rethink that one.
And my oldest are 10.
They're 10 year old twins and they want to see it so badly.
So I've been like easing them in by being like, here's a picture of Bruce the shark as a robot.
Like it's not real.
I'm trying to be like, here's the behind the scenes of all of it.
So hopefully it'll help, but I'm like, I don't know.
You have a pool or friends with a pool and put the TV and be on floats while you're watching.
I want to do it so bad.
That would be so good.
We have the projector too.
We do need to do that.
You know, they're so brave.
Like they're so brave at first about horror things.
They're like, I can do this.
Let's do it.
But then the nighttime turns around.
They should be brave during the day for sure.
And we regret it immediately.
That's how I am still.
Yeah.
Very brave during the day.
So brave.
And then at night I'm like, this is so scary.
And I don't want to ruin horror for them.
So I'm trying to like ease it in.
I'm like, I don't want to give you trauma right off the bat.
Yeah. yeah gremlins have you seen have they seen gremlins they haven't yet we were just calling them i was gonna say i refer to them as gremlins a lot because at nighttime they always have like an assortment of ailments and they're always eating nightmares and eating i'm like literally i can't feed you after midnight can you wet straight up very precarious I do wonder, going back to your writing process, what's the strangest place that you've gotten inspiration from a book that you can think of?
There was a moment of like panic when I was on a train in England.
Okay.
I was doing an amazing book tour over there for The Cabinet at the End of the World.
Okay.
And I knew the next book was due in less than a year at this point.
And the novel I was imagining doing was going to take was going to be a big one and it was going to take way longer than a year.
I'm like, Oh no, what am I going to do?
I got to come up with an idea.
And I had this weird what if?
For a zombie that I don't want to say necessarily because it's spoils the book.
Okay.
Um, so that was sort of like forced.
Yeah uh yeah, i guess panic induced inspiration other ways.
It's just fun, like where it comes from, you never know.
Like my book horror movie came from friend, an amazing writer, sorry to name drop it i've already mentioned grady, but stephen graham jones, you know amazing guy right, an amazing.
Hey, you should watch this youtube.
Uh, my friend walter chow is this a you know great critic and he hosts these matinees and then talks about the movie.
So basically, it was an hour of Walter and writer, musician John Darnielle, talking about Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which was a movie that I didn't.
I wasn't brave enough to watch until I was in my late thirties.
I love that.
But since I've seen it, I love that movie.
Such a good one. their discussion sent me into a rabbit hole that became horror movies.
So I don't know.
It's just, you never know where it comes from and just try to be open to it.
Yeah.
Nice.
I'm actually, I am in the middle of reading horror movie right now and I love it.
So there's that.
That's on my TBR list here.
You're coming up close.
Once you read it, I'll just steal it from you.
Yeah, you're all handed over.
So going with the writing process still, do you start with an ending in mind or do you just kind of like torture it out of your characters and see what happens?
I like how you put that.
Um, I typically have some notion of the ending.
Sometimes it's really foggy.
Sometimes it can be, this is the last line.
I have to earn my way there.
So I'd say, most of the time it's obviously I have a beginning in a, in a vague, or sometimes the end in mind.
And it's like, the hard part is all the stuff in between.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you're kind of, so you're like kind of the king of ambiguous endings.
I feel like that you have to figure it out.
You get to decide kind of.
Yeah, I've done that a few times.
Yeah, that's fine.
I don't know if you've heard that.
But do you always know the true ending or are you kind of feeling that way too?
It depends on the... I guess it depends on the story.
So A Head Full of Ghosts, in my mind, there's no true ending.
I think you know when I wrote it, I had to purposely divorce myself from thinking there was a true ending.
So I thought... then a true, like the true ending would have leaked through.
And I didn't want that.
Like I want a head full of ghosts, if it was scary at all, to be scary precisely because we didn't know and have that you know.
To me that's just the scary part of life.
Like we have beliefs and, but ultimately we just don't know.
And I think anytime you use ambiguity it It helps trigger that a little bit, which you know helps maybe scare people.
If it works that way.
I like that.
You know the cabinet at the end of the world.
I way underestimated how many people were going to be upset, not knowing if the world was ending or not.
Because to me, the story became not about that.
It became about the two, the two, the husbands and what they were going to decide.
To me that was the story, but something like the Paul bears club.
You know it plays with ambiguity, but yeah, I'm pretty sure she's a vampire.
Yeah.
If you don't want to believe she is, that's fine too.
Yeah.
I would not, you know, I would definitely wouldn't want to like, spoil someone's reading experience.
But uh, But she's a vampire.
I mean, that's fun.
Who wouldn't want that to be the ending?
I think so, too.
I like that.
I think it's more fun that way.
I think so.
Because it lets somebody it like stays with someone longer, when they have to sit there and think about it and wonder.
Yeah, I think so.
I hope it's never, I never want it to be, like, a cheap, like, twist thing.
Twists are fun, but I don't want that to be just a gimmick.
Yeah, you don't want that to be a thing.
Even if anyone out there has read it and doesn't like it.
I don't know if this assures you or makes you feel better, but I thought hard about it.
If I'm going to do this I know I'm asking a lot to read 300 pages and then maybe having open-ended stuff.
Yeah.
I try to write books that I want to read.
Yeah.
And like I like I like having sort of the questions linger afterwards.
Yeah, I like that, too.
I think it's scarier, like you said.
One last question for you about your writing process or just writing in general.
If readers can take one thing away from your work beyond the scares, what would you want that to be?
Oh, wow.
I know we're ending on a heavy question.
Yeah, that's hard.
Especially with the novels.
What I typically lean towards doing is I'm trying to make it feel as realistic as possible.
This is what it would feel like if there was a maybe demon possession, or this is what it would look like.
Okay.
And maybe just hopefully people take away the characters.
I can really only think of...
Prior to the novel, it's coming out like one mustache-twisting villain.
In all my prior books in Cabin, there's one character who might be a villain.
But everyone else.
I want people to to again.
Some of the horror, I think, is these people are doing terrible things.
You.
I write them in such a way hopefully, that you still understand why they did it and maybe recognize like Oh, if not, but for other circumstances in my own life, and the luck that I've had and the privilege that maybe that would be me, to me, you know, and that's a scary sort of realization.
Yeah.
But yeah, I mean, But, you know, it depends on the story.
I mean, these are just the things that aren't right.
Like in the book that's coming out.
You know the AI in the book is definitely not to be sympathized with in any way.
But yeah.
All right, guys.
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All right, so let's talk about your book club pick, Victorian Psycho.
Excellent, excellent pick.
Top notch.
Such a good pick.
This book is little, but she is fierce.
She is.
To quote.
Who is that?
Is that Shakespeare?
Sure.
Mighty, I don't know.
She's mighty.
So let's talk about moments that made us cringe throughout the book, because I cringed throughout this entire thing.
It was a lot of cringe.
Yeah.
I tabbed the hell out of this book.
I could not stop.
Also, can I just say, like, I love Winifred.
She's awful.
Yeah.
But she's hilarious.
And I was, like, rooting for her in a weird way.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
I was like, yeah, kill that family.
No, like, I was laughing and gasping.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Less, less cringy.
Like I couldn't.
Yeah.
So we're going to get spoilery.
This is good.
Yeah.
We're going to get spoilery.
It'll be in the notes too.
So you guys know.
Yeah.
We're going to be talking about the book.
Yeah.
No, for sure.
I mean, I was sent, I was lucky to be sent like an arc and I happen to have the time to, you know to to, to be able to read it.
And I was a little nervous going into it only because like anytime, like and I know this from experience like using a title that references like a famous work yeah, you know like oh, we'll see which i've read, and actually, you know, you know it's pretty awful, you know, i really do like that book yeah, um.
So i was like all right, we'll see what happens.
But man, she had me at the end of the first chapter.
Mrs Abel, I'm used as a woman who has never held a penis.
It was just the timing of it.
She was describing.
You know like I'm so bad at remembering the character names, but describing the woman who was in charge of the house and everything.
It's just like you were not expecting that line.
There were so many lines that you were just not expecting.
It was just said so plainly.
That's what I loved.
She was just so funny.
And then like the little asides that she would make to the reader were so funny.
I felt like we were like friends throughout the reading process.
Cause she would say something like, like dear reader or something.
And I was like, I know girl.
Like I was like, we're in this together.
Yeah.
You're right.
Yeah.
And I love that she had like the.
It was like the little asides that you didn't see coming where she was like.
I teach them history and arithmetic and what corpses smell like, and French.
And I was like, wait, what?
Back up.
That's part of it.
And they're just sprinkled everywhere in this book.
They really are.
I loved it.
She surprised me everywhere.
She did.
Yeah.
Also, like with the like cringy moments, I felt like there was so many genuinely hilarious moments that I felt guilty laughing at at times.
Yes.
Like there was a point when she...
This is awful.
But with like original baby when she's like original baby and baby was killing me the entire time.
And when she says I spit out the blood and see as so often happens when one slits an infant's carotid artery that the baby is dead.
I was like, why is that funny and awful?
I was so nervous going into it because one of my friends read this before me and she was like, just so you know, there's like kid death and like she kills babies.
And I was like, I don't know if I'm going to like that.
And then she's like, you know, as so often happens when you kill a baby.
And I was like, why is that hilarious?
No, I don't know how that is.
I knew nothing going in.
That was so shocking.
That was like a gasp.
Yeah.
And again, laugh despite yourself.
Yeah, I was like, I shouldn't be laughing at this, but this is hilarious.
It's one of the magic tricks of Winnie is... And, you know, Virginia is manipulating the reader.
Yes.
Like, you know, to get you to be somewhat on her side.
And I think people, based on what I see online, have like false memories of this book because they want to root for her and they assume, oh no, she's only killing bad people.
She's killing the patriarchy and she's killing like, you know, the rich people.
She's kind of killing everybody.
She's killed babies a lot.
Nobody is spared.
She's an equal opportunity killer.
Which I really admired about her approach because it could have been like I mean, it makes us feel good, but it could have been like yeah, like superhero, like she only kills the bad people.
Right.
Like, I don't know.
I only get so much mileage out of some of those stories because it doesn't feel like real life.
Yeah.
Like when I read like happy, not all happy endings, but like when I read stuff like that, like I actually feel worse because it's like, oh, that made me feel good, but That's not what it is.
But that's not real.
Yeah.
And even though as wild and fantastical in some ways that this book is, it just feels like, oh.
She just went for it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love that.
Yeah, because she says like the dead babies in the boxes that she sent to the nuns.
With like the sorry, here's another one note.
I was like, I'm sorry, what?
Sorry, here's one more.
And they kind of like touch on that earlier.
I think when she's sitting down with them and she's like about to eat and kind of interview with them.
They're like, oh, that's so awful that that's happening.
And in the back of your mind, you're like, is that her doing that?
And then she's like, can confirm.
Yeah, can confirm.
Just with the note, sorry, here's another one.
I was like, what?
And just like breaking out of sort of the Victorian speak a little bit too.
Yeah.
There was a few times she did that for sure.
And it worked so well.
And I think just like at one point she says, reader, she doth make a fine point about Priscilla.
And I was like, she does.
She really does.
I'm with you on this.
I know.
When she found the tooth in her mouth that wasn't hers and then it just never was explained again.
Right.
Whose tooth was that?
Whose molar was in her mouth?
And like, did that happen?
There were so many things that happened that I was like, did that happen?
Yeah.
Like I think when she's really starting to unravel, she walks by one of the rooms and there's a bunch of like plague doctors.
And you're like, they're not there.
It's Christmas.
Like what?
But they're all just like, shh.
And then they just close her out of there.
Yeah.
Or an original baby just talks to her out of nowhere.
That's how original baby got got.
Yeah.
I just started talking.
I loved that.
Yeah.
On my second read.
You know to prepare for this because I wrote it.
I read it, like you know two, two and a half years ago at this point.
Wow.
Because I got the early, early copy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was like, Oh, maybe this is a little bit more way more ambiguous than I thought.
Um, you know, like cause it's written in present tense and there's some times where I forget the end of one chapter was like, It's not like.
Will they survive the night?
And then she says, they don't.
Yeah.
It breaks from presentation, wondering about the state of these people in the house, to her saying no, they don't.
Like, no.
Right.
Yeah.
So I mean her as a storyteller is Part of.
It could just be explained away, as it's a choice of how she's telling it, because
You know, by the end, you know, when she's on the gallows sort of explaining things.
Like, it just made me think, how am I learning the story?
Like, how are we hearing this?
And she even, like, says, you know, sometimes I'm not right in the head.
Yeah.
Not in those words exactly, but... Yeah.
She's truthful.
She is.
Which I love because that was like, oh, this is a book that I could read multiple times and still...
And still wonder.
And still even know, like I, won't have the shock of the baby that he killed and replace with some poor farmer's baby that she just plucks from the grounds.
She just runs down the street.
Who's going to have a different nose later on.
I loved that.
There's still so many other pleasures to get from this when you read it.
And I like that she foreshadows the gallows a couple of times for you, where you're like I'm sorry, what?
You're just like, okay, you're going to get caught after this?
This isn't the end?
I loved that.
That was really cool.
Yeah.
Do you think Winifred?
Do you think of her as a psychopath, a villain or the most honest person in the room?
Or all of the above.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I got to be all three, I guess.
I mean.
Yeah.
That's what I think.
Do that to a baby.
Yeah.
I feel, I feel that's.
Yeah.
That's it.
The baby line.
But you know, the rest of the people in the house are.
Awful.
Probably as bad as she or as bad as she is in different ways.
I think so.
I think so for sure.
Mrs. Pounds.
I hated Mrs. Pounds.
I was ready.
From the jump too.
Yeah.
And the green dress she gave her, that was probably poison.
I missed that on the first read somehow.
Oh, yeah.
On the second read, there was more time spent with that.
And that could be messing with her brain.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, because they used to make those.
We looked it up.
They used to make those dresses out of like arsenic.
So like wear them a few times and then start dying.
Yeah, literally.
They put it in wallpaper, too.
Like any vibrant green thing back in the day was probably laced with arsenic.
Wild.
What was the first scene that made you realize this book was going to be feral?
Was it the one that you already read?
I think it was probably.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think it was the first chapter at the end, when she says in three months, everyone in this house will be dead.
I was like, I took notes, a couple of notes, and that was the first thing I wrote down.
I was like, oh, okay.
That was the first one I tabbed.
I was like, damn.
And she's.
I think she starts it off by being like yeah, it's going to be like really cold and it's going to get colder, and then everyone's going to die.
Yeah, it's crazy.
Okay.
Wow.
All right.
I'm into it.
Yeah.
And again I feel like we just were all – I was rooting for her pretty early on, which I was shocked by.
Because at first when I read that, I was like, oh, no.
Like, she's going to be – is she going to be irredeemable?
When she's going to kill, like, a whole family.
And she is irredeemable.
That's the weird thing is, like, she's completely irredeemable.
But, like – why did I like her?
I was like, that is so hard to write a character that way and have it work.
Yeah.
It's impressive.
Yeah.
It's like the voice is just so humorous and inviting and like, and she's letting you in on it.
So obviously that sort of like gets you over to her side.
Yeah.
She is, you know, These people are pretty terrible, right?
Don't you think?
Except, you know, the people who aren't so terrible who are also getting it.
It's true.
She's equal opportunity.
Now the scene in the book.
Also, like you were thinking, the feral scene.
What comes to mind to me is the decayed crow pudding.
Oh, my God.
When she was away at school.
All those kids.
Oh, my gosh.
Clergy daughter's school or whatever.
That actually made my stomach turn when I was reading it.
That was...
And she's like covering it up like with the maggots and everything.
I was like, oh my God.
That was, yeah, that was a lot.
That's, I think, when she one of the first mentions of like and I will be hung at some point during this.
I was like, yeah, probably girl.
I was like, that's not good.
But then I also felt, like, weirdly bad for her because they were so mean to her, she was saying.
And that was the one time that, like, they needed her.
I know.
It reminded me, have you seen Yellow Jackets?
I haven't, sorry.
Oh, okay, that's all right.
It kind of reminded me of Misty, one of the characters who, like she's a psychopath but she like wants to be needed so desperately.
And she's like bullied and kind of pushed around a little bit.
Yeah.
Yeah, so when she's needed, she like...
She makes a situation where she is needed, essentially.
It felt very much like that.
And that's what she did.
She made a situation where she was needed.
She's like, it's the only time that they ever were nice to me.
It made me sad.
And I like, too, that we were just saying, we don't know who the worst person in the book is.
Winifred is the worst person in the book.
Probably.
There's other people that you're like, These people are also really terrible.
Like, Mr. Pounds is gross.
Mr. Pounds is really gross.
Like, all those people at the dinner party, like the dowager.
I hated the dowager.
She was such a bitch.
With her cane just hitting people.
When she finally got caught with that cane, I was like, all right, I'm into that.
That's the perfect way to take her out.
Yeah, it really was.
And...
I mean, she the thing with Winifred is she exists in this like weird space in the book.
And I think it makes it really interesting because she's a governess.
So she's in charge of the kids and she she's not she's not known to be family in the beginning.
She's not one of the servants, technically.
And she's also definitely not an equal.
No, not at all.
But she's like.
She has this unique ability to be able to like, wander around the house and sit at the table and have more access to places and people without getting the same kind of respect that someone would.
And I feel like that helped tell the story really well.
Yeah.
Because she has all this access, but she's treated so poorly.
Right.
You know, and I really liked that.
I thought that made it unique for sure.
Absolutely.
And I think there's a lot of obviously the Victorian high society is like a character in this book.
Yeah, the setting like it does become a character.
In and of itself.
And I think it's like kind of flipped on its ear here, because a lot of people think of Victorian high society is, like you know, fancy and like gilded and like everything was so.
Like you know, like they're elite, they're this, but she portrays them as disgusting filthy, disgusting.
Like the Victorian elite are just foul.
Yeah.
And I loved that.
It was like little things, like when she's going upstairs and looking in all of their rooms and she mentions the earwax on the pillow at some point.
I was like, oh, like what?
And like just little things like lard was in one of their hair to keep their hair back.
The scene where they're all eating.
Yeah.
I think Mikey had warned you beforehand because Elena has misophonia.
So like hearing things, I swear you could hear it as you were reading.
It was foul.
That scene was gross.
That was almost like a nice counterbalance to the crow scene.
Yes.
Like that meal was just as disgusting, even though these were things that were specially prepared.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And how they were eating it.
Oh, I know.
They're just like.
Oh, it's horrifying.
Like gouging it into their faces.
It's so gross.
And I think it's.
I love that they presented it that way that, like these people look like may have all this money and they're they have all the power, but They are just as disgusting, if not more than all of us.
Than everybody else.
Yeah, like I loved that.
I know it was almost like the servants in the house were like higher society than the high society people.
They had it more together, I feel like.
And the high society parents of other baby never even notice.
That blew my mind.
Like attuned to like their own kid.
Yeah.
And the fact too that Winifred knew that that wouldn't be an issue.
She's like, yeah, I feel like she had done that before.
You know?
And I was wondering, too, when she brought new baby in, I was like, what's going to happen here?
Right.
Because in my head, I'm like, of course she's going to know.
That seemed like a corner impossible to write out of.
It did.
It really did.
Or she really was just like, eh, you're not going to notice.
I love it.
Oh yeah.
Like that's, and it was part of the whole, like, look how disgusting these people are.
She doesn't even know her own child.
Right.
Like even, and it wasn't like, oh, I picked a baby.
That's like the same size.
It seems she was like, this doesn't look like this baby at all.
And not only that, it's like it's not as big as this baby.
It doesn't look like this baby.
It has a mole that that baby doesn't have.
Oh, and she scrapes it off with her thumb.
She just scrapes it off.
I'm also like, is the baby bleeding when you return it?
Like what?
Like that outfit it was wearing was like covered in blood.
But she's like, ah, I don't know.
Like babies, they throw up.
Well, she said, she's like, I've learned through experience that mess looks like blood.
It's fine.
Yeah, it's the same.
And I was like, and it worked.
They just showed up at the next thing being like, here's the baby.
I love it.
And at the next thing with the baby a little older and looking even less...
Even less like it should have looked.
I loved it because she was like its nose is going to look different and that's going to be a conversation later.
I was like, oh my God.
I thought that was so funny.
But yeah, it was, and it what's.
What's cool too is she obviously like, did a lot of research about Victorian times and like weird Victorian customs because they were nuts.
Like that whole mummy unwrapping part, I was like, what is this?
And in my head I was reading it and being like, this is crazy.
And then I looked it up and I was like, oh, that was a thing.
Like they actually like wealthy Victorian families would go to Egypt.
They would buy an entire mummy as a souvenir, bring it home, have a party, and then they would all just unwrap the mummy.
And I was like, what?
That's the weirdest.
I'm sorry, what?
We're a strange society.
And like, for what purpose?
I don't understand the practice.
Why are we doing this?
Bored rich imperialists.
Because we can.
Very much that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we were reading more like they were.
You know they were talking like when she's dressing Drusilla and getting her ready and like all these like features that they find to be desirable are all like features of like tuberculosis.
Like that's, and that was considered desirable back then.
It was like, Being super pale and, like, super frail and, you know, the flush in the cheeks.
Like, literally looking sick.
Looking consumptive was the cool thing.
Wow, you're gorgeous.
And I love that she put it in there.
Yeah.
Because it was all very real.
Like, again, the green dress.
Like, that's a thing.
I think she mentions the belladonna.
That was a thing to dilate their pupils.
And they would just go blind after a while.
But they'd be gorgeous.
They'd be gorgeous with big eyes.
Like, what?
But one thing I really liked about this was...
In the end, when Drusilla joins in and is doing all the things for days.
The 12 days of Christmas.
The 12 days of Christmas.
And when they set them all up at the table. and feed them food.
They're just having a whole feast with them.
I was like, this is the most fucked up thing I've ever read, and I love it.
But do you think that Drusilla actually was taking part in that, or do you think she was chained up the whole time?
Yeah, it's a great question.
I loved this.
I was going to ask what you thought about Drusilla at the end, too.
Yeah.
To go back to how much more of this is ambiguous than maybe we think.
There's a line early on the book where I think you know when he is confessing stuff, you know she says I fear I am succumbing to elaborate flights of fancy.
Um, you know, there's chance to be like other times or something, you know?
Yep.
So she's like fairly early on.
So, Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, I think, just because it's so weird to say that you enjoy your time with Winnie that you want to think all of this happened.
Yeah, just as she says.
Just as she says and that you're there with her at the end.
And so you actually, we feel, or as the reader, I felt betrayed by Drusilla.
Yes, I did too, yeah.
Yeah.
Which is so weird.
I'm like, why do I feel this way?
When I got to the end, I was like pissed at Drusilla.
I'm like, come on, that's your sister.
You're supposed to like ride together.
But then, once I finished reading, I was thinking about just her being kind of an unreliable narrator.
And I was like, Maybe.
I don't think Drusilla actually did help with all that.
And then I think when she sees Drusilla in the crowd at the gallows and she's crying, I don't think Drusilla's crying because they had this killing bond together or anything like that.
I think she's crying because of what happened to her family.
Yeah, like she massacred her whole family.
I think she was chained up for the whole thing.
And I think Winnie just didn't want to be in it alone maybe.
Yeah.
Right.
Because that's a hard switch to flip.
I mean, I think there were no clues of Drusilla's potential psychotic behavior.
Right.
Yeah.
Anywhere else you know prior to the, you know just to the like Caligula sort of 12 days of Christmas.
Seriously?
Yeah.
Yeah, that Winnie says she took a part in.
Yeah.
And that's the only thing I could think of with that that I went back to.
And I think this was smart of her to plant these little things in there.
It was like the painter, like the lecherous painter that she was into.
And now, you know, the mother got mad and then the father made her hold the locket up and –
Shot it out of her hand.
She had anger toward them.
So it's like you planted that which like, obviously you're not going to be like, so you should kill your whole family.
But you could at least go back to it and be like, did that like break her a little bit?
That's true.
That's a little hardcore to have that shot out of your hand.
Yeah, like having to hold a locket and have it shot out of your hand.
When I think the painter said something to her and again we can't be sure that he did, but she finds a note when she's putting Drusilla to bed and he says something like you have weird tendencies.
So like, please stop writing me.
That's right.
That's a good point.
So who knows?
Was that real?
Like, could that be just Winifred?
Trying to justify the whole thing.
Or trying to be like, she's with me.
Like this did happen.
That's why I think the end is so fun, because you really can't be sure whether Drusilla was part of it or if she wasn't.
Yeah.
It's strange to be made to want to think, oh, Drusilla is going to carry on.
It's like the next Victorian cycle to Electric Boogaloo.
Hey, it leaves it kind of open, you know, maybe Drusilla's story is next.
Who knows?
And I don't know, like, which, which would you prefer to be?
Like, was she taking part in it or was she, would you rather her have been?
I feel like I prefer her to take part in it in a weird way.
Yeah.
This is the fun part of me, which I don't let out very often. is rooting for that.
Right.
Yeah, but I think you know, the more I think about it, I was like ah, I think you know, it's more.
You know most of the stuff happened, but it's being refracted through Winnie, and go towards more realistic interpretation.
Yeah, she was probably, she ended up there.
It makes sense.
It does make sense in the end.
I feel like, unless and again unless she's like this, like criminal mastermind, and she like partied with her for a few days and then realized they were going to get caught and was like well, I'll just quickly do this.
No one's going to believe her over me.
They are related.
So you do have to wonder, is there something, are they both missing the same screw?
But then again, are they related?
Because Mr Pound said that's not my daughter.
That's true, i think, mr pounds, which made me wonder too.
I'm like is he just saying that to be an asshole, or i think so.
Is that really not when he talks about being?
She talks at different times about being observed and she's not sure quite by who, and maybe it's drusilla, and for a while she thought it was drusilla.
Yeah um yeah, i don't know, interesting Yeah.
There's a lot that you have to wonder from Winnie's perspective.
There definitely is.
And I think that's just fun.
You mentioned people that hate before.
I hated Andrew the most.
Oh, my God.
I hate Andrew so much.
And I was like, why do we have this eight-year-old child?
Is he the only eight?
Yeah, i think he's literally eight years older, but yeah, he's only.
Yeah, he walked.
He walked in on the first day and he was like screw you, this is how it's gonna go.
My last nanny was better than you and i was like you don't run stuff around here, little andrew, and i think he was like licking food off of one of the nurse's fingers and i was like no well, i'm not.
No yeah just, you know, mr pound, and training, like yeah, that's exactly what it felt like, that's the thing.
Well, it's funny, you know, thinking of that, because lisa's a huge fan of like jane austen and other victorian novels.
I wonder, are you all victorian readers austin, etc.
I haven't been a big victorian novel reader what they would think of voice, of the style yeah, that would be interesting yeah actually yeah, i haven't read a ton of that.
So yeah, i thought it was really fun, i know, because i feel like victorian novels usually like the ones i've read from like school and such yeah, i feel like they do present the victorian age as like this, very like fancy, whimsical and romantic time, which I'm sure it had elements of.
But like this one, I was like Oh, I mean, I do think there's an element of like the manners.
You know, Jane Austen, you know, was riffing on like the manners and using that for sure.
Using that to represent the difference between the classes, as opposed to killing babies.
There is that. there is the manners component to it.
Like you know the dinner that we talked about and just how Winnie is treated and you know how she'll say things that probably in reality would have gotten her like, fired right away.
But you know, for our benefit that that's funny.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I loved the couple times where they'd be like excuse me, and then she'd say something completely different.
That was great.
Like when she says, are we not allowed to eat the children?
Right.
She's like licking a calf head on like a – I was like, what?
I also just love that everything that went ignored that she did like even I think it was like the first day that she was there.
She bites into the calf's head.
Yeah, that's the part.
Is that what you're talking about?
Yeah.
And somebody finds her.
She turns around and she's like, oh, we're not allowed to eat the children?
Yeah.
I didn't know that.
And they were just like, what?
They're like, okay, you're strange.
I love her.
I just love how unhinged she is.
And she's always weirdly ruder to her coworkers.
She was, yeah.
She talked at times about dreaming of being, this is my forever family.
She says that a couple times.
Yeah.
You know, she has nothing but disdain for the pounds.
She also leaves.
But there's still like.
She wants to be part of something.
Yeah, I don't know if it's sometimes, if it's humor or her, I don't know like I'm not 100 sure like why.
Yeah.
That's what I meant, like earlier, wasn't just like you know, she's just you know she's just scything her way through the upper class.
Right.
Like there's no one to spare.
No.
Which I think makes her really difficult.
And even stranger, like, how much we enjoy her.
Yeah, I know.
Because she talks about having, like, shelves lined with dead babies at home.
As a child, too.
As a child.
And that, like, she had a full-grown woman, like, outside dead.
And she was like, she didn't fit on the shelf.
And it was like, is that real?
Like, did you really do that?
And I think it is.
I think it might be.
Yeah.
I think one thing that we didn't touch on that I would love to hear like, how you guys felt.
Were you absolutely shocked when you found out that Mr Pounds was her father?
And do you believe that he actually was?
Uh, I'd say yes and yes.
I think that's very believable.
Even, you know, of other stuff is of her sort of creation.
I think the same thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I was shocked.
But I was, yeah.
Yeah.
I got to that point when it was like John Pounds and my mouth literally dropped.
And then you have to wonder, you're like, okay, like, is this the Mr. Pounds?
So then I kept reading and it was then confirmed.
I was like, holy shit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I didn't see that coming.
And she went in there with a mission.
So like when it was revealed, I was like oh, like this makes sense why she went in there with like a mission.
When she had it, like, arranged that she got that job, too.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I thought that was crazy.
I know.
It was wild.
I thought that was a really good, just, like, like.
All of a sudden, just like, oh, my God.
And it was weird, too, like going back to like Drusilla.
Now that I'm thinking about it, it's weird that Drusilla did survive this whole thing if she wasn't a part of it.
Because I'm like, why did you save her?
Like, did you see something that you like?
And you kind of see throughout the book that she does kind of try to like guide Drusilla a little bit more than like Andrew or anyone else.
Like, I wonder what that was, like what that connection was.
I wonder if it was like the unwanted daughter thing.
Cause she's an unwanted daughter.
And then they're always like, whenever she brings up Drusilla to Mr Pounds, he's like yeah whatever Andrew, like he's going to take over the name, the family name.
So maybe it was that.
And like he gets all like the classes and all the people coming to teach him things and you know she's just going to learn needlework.
And get married.
Yeah.
To get married.
So maybe that is it.
Maybe.
But I think it kind of lends itself even more to the ambiguity of the whole thing, because now I'm like well, I don't know.
Maybe she was chained to that whole thing the whole time or maybe she was part of it.
I don't know.
Yeah.
But I also love that this has like there were.
I was reading it out loud like certain parts of it to my husband last night because I was just like laughing at certain parts.
He's like, what is this?
So I'd read him a line every once in a while.
And he was like, what is this story?
What is going on? but I think it has such a good mix of like pure horror.
Like the end is horrific.
The baby being killed, horrific.
And like them, even them eating, but so funny.
It's like, but there's real comedy in there too.
It's like such a good mix.
And I feel like that's really hard to accomplish because you're either it's going to go too horrific and you're going to be like the comedy doesn't fit here and it makes it weird.
And like, I'm uncomfortable with it or it's going to go to like goofy.
And then the horror feels goofy too.
And neither of these felt goofy.
It felt like a perfect mix.
And it reminds me of that.
Have you watched widow's bay?
Yes.
Oh yes.
I haven't started it yet.
I've been trying, I'm like trying to recruit people to watch one of those.
It gave me the cause.
I think that show that's how I've been describing it to people is like the horror in it is genuinely scary at times, but it is so funny.
And the funny isn't overly goofy where it like, you know, waters down the horror of it.
Yeah.
So it gave me that.
It's a great point.
And I've...
In other interviews, I've... I mean, because I love... I like horror comedies, but I think it's really hard to sort of say what you described is not to have the source of the comedy be the horror.
Yeah.
Right.
That's what most horror comedies are.
It's really hard to find, in my mind, horror comedies that are both scary and funny.
Yeah.
Especially in terms of film.
And I agree.
This book...
Does it, Widow's Bay is doing it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think it's, and I was.
When we first started watching Widow's Bay I was like, oh my God, they nailed this combo.
And again, like you were saying, you just like, don't really see that work ever.
And so I was like, oh, this is like a diamond in the rough.
Like, holy shit.
Yeah.
And then reading this right after we started watching this, I was like how have I come across two pieces of media that have done this so well in the same, like two weeks span?
It's the horror renaissance.
It's the horror renaissance.
I tell you.
It is.
That's what makes me so excited for this to now be translated into film.
I feel like it's going to be really fun on screen.
Yeah.
I'm nervous.
I know.
I'm nervous.
I'm scared.
I'm excited.
Cautiously optimistic.
Cautiously optimistic.
We always have this.
Yes.
If the film does not work, we have this.
And the fact that you said she wrote the screenplay, that gives me a lot of optimism.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right, now I think we have to get to what I think you might have come for, which is the rapid fire.
Would you rather kind of slasher edition?
Yeah, we got a mix.
Yeah, we have a whole mix in here.
There's some like New England stuff in here.
There's Victorian Psycho.
There's some of your work in here.
All right.
All right.
So number one would you rather be trapped in a manor with Winifred for 24 hours or trapped in a group chat with every villain character from your novels?
I think I'll go with the group chat just because I feel like I won't die.
I might be really annoyed and disturbed, but like I think I wouldn't last very long with Winifred in the house.
Fair enough.
And you can always throw on like, do not disturb, you know?
That's valid.
Yeah.
I think that's valid.
I think that's what I would do.
I'd be afraid she would kill me and replace me with other Paul, and people would be like oh yeah, that's Paul.
There's original Paul and then there's new Paul.
See, I hate, like I'm one of those people that people will text me and I'll look at it and be like I should answer that.
And then I just don't for like five days.
And then I'm like, I'm so sorry.
And it's like, I'm just bad at it.
And I get overwhelmed and like executive dysfunction.
So I feel like being in a group chat is my nightmare.
Well, and the villains in your book might kill you.
They might just, I don't want to listen to them.
So I think-
And I don't know.
I feel like me and Winifred for 24 hours, we might be okay.
Could be a cool hang.
I feel like we might be okay.
You could have like a Drusilla and Winifred kind of vibe.
Yeah.
I just want to believe that.
Would there be other people in the house for her to kill just in case?
Or is it just you?
No, one-on-one.
Just one-on-one.
One-on-one.
So you do have to survive that.
Yeah.
Because she is going to have to go 24 hours without hurting someone.
She started off pretty chill.
She did.
Give her a calf's head.
Yeah, there you go.
Let her lick you every once in a while.
Yeah.
Give her your earlobe.
That's all you need.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think it's fine.
You know what?
Yeah.
I'm going Winnie.
I'm going Winnie.
I mean, I don't want her to lick me, but.
All right.
So the next one is would you rather have a ghost follow you forever, just follow you around, or a book reviewer follow you forever?
Oh man.
I think I'll have to go with the ghost.
I mean, that'll be very scary at night though.
Um, but like I don't know how you do it, but like I actively avoid reading any good reads or Amazon.
There lies madness.
So I mean, if you're talking like Oh like uh, I don't know like a New York Times review is following me around.
I feel like they might be a little bit more polite, but I don't know.
Maybe they wouldn't harangue me as much.
So let's make it, we're making it a random internet reviewer.
If it's random internet, then there's no choice.
I would do the ghost.
Yes, 100%.
I agree with you 100%.
I'd pick a ghost too, just because I think that's fun.
Yeah.
And I feel like ghosts have followed me in my life, so nothing new here.
And I feel like you could eventually become friends with ghosts.
You could have a rapport at some point.
You get used to their tendencies.
It's like we're mates.
I'd fear I'd annoy them because I'd start calling them Casper or something and they'd get pissed off.
And they'd be like, maybe that's your bond.
That's true.
That's your thing.
All right.
Would you rather receive one life-changing, terrifying supernatural visitation, like earth shattering?
Just one.
Just one.
Or would you rather receive one brutal Goodreads review every morning?
So I have to review it.
I have to read it.
Mm-hmm, just one every morning, which is a probably tough way, like a really brutal.
That's a hard start.
Yeah geez, maybe i mean so like 98 of my day.
I'm a card carrying skeptic atheist, don't believe in anything, but there's like the two percent where i wake up in the middle of the night and i'm totally freaked out the next day.
I'm like paul, are you such an idiot?
So, like you know, I tell people that I don't believe, but I don't want to be proven wrong.
So, even though I'm leaning towards the first thing, because in some ways that would actually still also be really cool
Like, whoa, there's this.
There it is.
Yes, there it is.
This exists.
Yeah.
I think I would go with the first.
Yeah.
It would probably scare the shit out of me and I'd be like, Yeah, because it's going to be brutal.
But at least it's just one.
It's not a bad review every day for the rest of your life.
Yeah.
That'll get you down.
That's the thing.
I feel like with proper therapy and help I can get past the brutal supernatural experience that I can't explain.
That's true.
But having it happen like a brutal Goodreads review every morning for the rest of my life, I feel like that would.
That would take years off my life.
It's too close to home because I could do that easily.
Yeah, that's the thing.
I could do that right now, but I don't want to.
Don't do that, you two.
Yeah, no, no, no.
So this one I'm really interested in.
Would you rather be able to write a first draft in one week or...
Like Stephen Graham Jones.
Yeah, just like boom.
Exactly.
Like boom, here we go.
Or would you like to be able to revise a manuscript perfectly on one pass?
I'll do the one pass.
One pass.
One pass on the manuscript.
I was hoping you would answer that way because I also feel that way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because I'm fine with the first draft taking forever.
Yeah.
I mean, as hard as it can be, I love how life sneaks in.
It usually takes me 12 to 15 months to come up with a draft.
And it's kind of fun.
The book gets better by... living with that book for that time.
Things happening around.
Things that I never would have, in that week, I never would have come up with.
Like, it took that time, so.
I like that.
I think I'm taking this too realistically, but yeah.
No, it's true, though.
It's a realistic one, you know?
It makes sense because it kind of like dips into you know if like, something's happening that week, the writing's going to change a little bit and the story might change with it, or a character might change with it.
Mm-hmm.
So I feel the same way.
I think I don't mind like sitting with a draft for a while and like tinkering with it.
Yeah.
But once it comes to like the first passes and the edits, that's when I'm like let's get through this.
So definitely that one.
Me too.
Yeah.
You know.
Yeah.
So the next one, this is also a really good one, I feel.
Would you rather encounter a ghost from 1692 Salem or the ghost of a really salty sea captain from Cape Cod?
We're saying salty personality.
Yeah.
And maybe he's salty.
And probably physically salty.
He's probably physically salty as well.
My knee jerk is to go with the salty person, but I think I would become really annoying because I know I would just start talking like them.
It's so bad.
If I talk to British friends for more than five minutes, I start.
I get that way too.
I'm not doing it on purpose and I feel like such an asshole.
It just happens.
It just starts happening.
Yeah.
But I think maybe for the comedy of it, the salty sea captain.
I think that's a fun one.
Because then I would have a new impersonation.
There you go.
Or speech patterns.
That you could just slip into every once in a while.
I would pick that too.
I grew up in Beverly next to Salem.
So I'm like, ah, I mean, I love that area, but like, ah, give me the new, give me the new guy.
Yeah.
1692 ghost just sounds really scary.
They probably really like faced a lot in their life.
And I wouldn't understand what they're saying, like how they talk.
That's true.
Have you ever seen the movie The Witch?
Yeah.
You know, I love that movie, but like I don't know what they're saying.
You'd have to constantly be like, what?
And then you might start talking like that.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
See, I might.
Regardless of all of that, I might pick the 1692 ghost.
That just makes sense for you.
Because I just want to know everything.
Like, I think I'd be like, sit down.
Tell me it all.
Like, what happened here?
Yeah.
I need to know.
I want to know everything.
That's fair.
I also want to know, like are there still bodies under?
You know, gallows hill yes, burial point, you're still thinking widow's bay.
You want to hang out with hamish exactly, the warren guy?
Yes, i want to know.
Yeah like, tell me, tell me what it is.
Like we haven't used, they haven't figured out if there's still bodies buried in the area and i'm like you gotta tell me.
So yeah, you'd ask about, like giles corey, Oh yeah.
I'd be like, what was he like?
He was kind of a dick.
Yeah.
Like, iconic at the same time.
Yeah.
I'd want to know all of that.
I get that.
I'm going to see Captain.
I get it.
Yeah, just fun.
Yeah, that's fine.
So I'll get the 1692 person.
Yeah, and we're together all the time.
And we'll sing sea songs.
Yeah, I love it.
And we'll all get together and we can learn things.
Compare notes.
Yeah.
All right, this one's kind of heady.
Would you rather have definitive proof that ghosts do exist or definitive proof that they do not?
Which we kind of touched upon, but we did sort of.
Hmm.
Again, the first one would be more fun.
Like...
Like I would say, like, I don't have to prove they don't exist.
To me, that's almost like the assumption.
Like you would have to prove the other way.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I could be like the most famous person on earth and it's true.
It totally cash in on proving.
I'm just thinking I want money.
I'm a full-time writer now.
I need money.
I'm desperate.
So yeah.
Let me prove the ghosts and.
You know, write four tell-alls on it.
Or interviews, like, one-on-one.
Yeah.
Experience.
I want proof that they exist, simply because that's just.
I don't want to live in a world where they don't exist.
That's how I feel.
The fun in that.
Because I always say the same thing.
Like, I'm a very healthy skeptic at times, but I...
I want to believe more that they do exist.
We've had so many experiences that it's crazy to me that you're still skeptical.
My first knee-jerk instinct is to try to explain it with some kind of logic.
We grew up in a haunted house.
And I try to explain it, and sometimes I can, but sometimes I can't.
So many things in that house we grew up in.
Inexplicable.
Yeah.
There's definitely been a lot of things.
And that's why I'm more over on the side of like, okay, I think there are something.
I don't know what.
Yeah.
When I'm always posed that question, I feel like I disappoint people.
I say, yeah, like, you know, because I've never experienced anything.
Yeah.
And I've always said I feel like if I were to experience it wouldn't be like Slimer from Ghostbusters.
It would be really subtle and just off.
And as time passes, I would be...
I would want to explain it away.
Yeah.
And that would just be the way it would go.
Yeah.
So, but anyway, I don't know if that adds anything.
I was just thinking about it.
I think well, and I had like like one thing that happened in our house growing up that I, to this day, like cannot explain.
And that's the one that really like got me like, what was that?
We had like, my house used to be like an old farmhouse.
So it's got all this like crazy history and it's super old.
We found like weird shit buried on the property.
Yeah, there was always weird shit buried there.
And the primary bedroom like they added.
My parents added onto the house, but the primary bedroom like used to be my bedroom.
And it always had weird shit going on in it.
But again, I was like, it's fine.
Nothing's weird here.
And it became my parents' like art studio when I, kind of like, got older and I moved into another room.
That room is scary as hell.
And it's scary now.
And we had like – it was when we had – which like RIP computer rooms, where it was like the room where the computer lived.
They used to shut the door every time.
And you had to go past the primary bedroom, the old one to get to the computer room.
And one night I was walking past it to go to the computer room and The door was shut and something from behind the door hit the door from inside so hard that I jumped across the hall like into the wall.
My dog like jumped up and was like, what the hell was that?
I think my dad heard it and was like, what did you just do?
Like, what was that?
And I was like, I have no idea what that is.
It was in there.
He opened the door and nothing was against the door.
It sounded like somebody took fists and slammed them against the door.
And it was right when I walked by.
That's terrifying.
And that's the one that I'm like, I don't know how that happened.
That's a good one.
Yeah.
That same room.
I used to spend the night in that room.
It's like you had people over or something.
I would sleep in that room.
And I was on an air mattress like watching the Disney Channel probably.
I was like 10 years old.
And there was this like Tupperware like container thing full of old magazines.
And it was probably like 2 o'clock in the morning.
And it just slid across the room with like crazy force.
I screamed so loud.
My grandparents came running.
You came running.
Yeah.
And nobody.
There was no way to reenact that or anything.
It wasn't tilted all of a sudden.
No, because it was so forceful.
Yeah, that room has weird energy.
So see, if you tell me that and then say you have to go stay overnight in that room, I would be like hell.
No yeah, I never slept in that room again, even though I say I don't believe like go stay in this reportedly haunted house, I am not going to do that.
Yeah, so I guess on some level I
I fear, I believe.
Yeah, see?
You have a healthy fear of them.
I feel most skeptics feel that way.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
Healthy fears there.
Yeah.
All right, so bringing it back to the Bridgewater Triangle.
If you were dropped into the Hockamock Swamp, just right in the middle of it, would you rather find giant cryptid-type footprints everywhere, or perfectly normal human footprints that should not be there?
I would uh, i was gonna say cryptid, but then my daughter would just make fun of me because she was.
When she was a lot younger, she still loved bigfoot stuff.
Oh my god, there's no such thing as bigfoot.
And she gets so mad at me.
Um, What would I?
I mean, I guess I would rather see the cryptid.
I mean that would be so cool to be wrong and be like oh wow, there is this weird giant eight-big-foot thing that runs around.
And humans are...
I was going to say, who wants to come across a serial killer in the woods?
No one.
Like I don't want to come across a random person in the middle of the Hawk Mug Swamp.
That's my worst nightmare.
I'd much rather run into Bigfoot.
Just be one with Bigfoot at that point.
Yeah, truly.
Yeah like, take on their customs and everything everything, i'm ready.
Yeah, let's go.
I love it.
Yeah, start knocking on trees with rocks.
Yeah, communicate with them really long.
Yeah crazy, with it we can bond.
Yeah, that's what i'm doing.
I like it all right.
Would you rather have winifred plan your wedding or host your funeral?
Oh, geez.
Well, it seems like family and loved ones are both in danger and jeopardy in both scenarios.
That's true.
That's very true.
At least she doesn't have to be at your wedding.
I'm going to be really selfish.
I'd say plan my funeral because I'm already dead.
There you go.
Like if it was my wedding, there's a chance that I could be one of.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's true.
Right.
I want my wedding to be a bummer.
My, my, Funeral's already going to be a bummer.
Yeah.
So she could just make it more of a bummer, I guess.
She might liven it up even.
Yeah.
That's true.
And you just don't have to deal with the aftermath.
So it's nice to not have to clean up after her.
Yeah.
You know?
I feel that too.
I feel her wedding plans would be a little too macabre for me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, so she can do my funeral.
I agree.
So back to some ghosties.
Would you rather be haunted by a Puritan ghost who judges everything you do, or a Victorian ghost who constantly corrects your etiquette?
Both horrific.
Yeah.
You might go Victorian.
Yeah.
The etiquette stuff doesn't bother me.
Probably much of the chagrin of some people that know me.
It'd be easy to laugh off that ghost.
Yeah.
The etiquette ghost.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I feel like Ma is kind of an etiquette ghost.
I was going to say, I think I grew up with a mom.
Who is that?
So I'll just take that.
I'd be used to it.
Same.
Cause the Puritan ghost.
Yeah.
Would make me crazy.
Like again I'll take the 1692 Puritan ghost that like hangs for a second and just tells me things.
You got to go after that.
Yeah.
You can't stick around.
And I would I mean just to take the logic out further like if the Puritan ghost is telling me not to do things, it's like well, if there's a Puritan ghost, maybe you know the god is their god like oh yeah, i shouldn't be doing this stuff.
So there you go, mess with my head.
That's oh, that's true, that's a really good.
I can ignore the etiquette, but like yeah puritans, like you're gonna go to hell if you do this, this and this.
You're like maybe i am.
That just becomes like ocd.
Yeah, that becomes too existential for me and i would start losing my mind.
I think for sure yeah, Victorian etiquette goes for sure.
Yeah.
And after reading this book, you could just be like, you're gross.
Yeah.
I know about you.
Why are you telling me this?
Did you unwrap a mummy?
Yeah.
I'll unwrap a mummy.
All right.
You are dropped into the middle of the Bridgewater Triangle at midnight.
You can choose one companion, a ghost hunter, a cryptozoologist, a priest, a witch, or Stephen King.
Who do you choose?
Um, I've, Steven and I have exchanged a bunch of emails, but I've never met him in person.
It'd be kind of fun to be in the woods with Steven.
Hell yeah.
Hope he's okay with that.
I don't know if he would want to be in the woods.
He gets pumped in there no matter what.
Yeah.
He's just there.
Yeah.
Steven.
Yeah.
That'd be, yeah.
That's definitely for sure.
Yeah.
That's your choice too.
That was my choice.
Cause I could be my own ghost hunter.
Like I don't, I don't need help with that.
A cryptozoologist I feel like would just be like, Oh look, that's Bigfoot.
And I'd be like, no, I know.
Like I've done my own research.
That's a Pukwudgie.
I know I've researched this.
I'm from here.
A priest.
No.
No.
No, thank you.
A witch.
We are.
Yeah, I was like, I could be my own witch, so that's fine.
And then I was like Stephen King in the middle of the Bridgewater Triangle, or like the Hockamuck Swamp.
I was like, just start writing together.
I was going to say, then maybe we could be like, let's come up with a story together.
Yeah, based on your experience.
Yeah, just to have a hang with Stephen King in a weird space.
I mean...
Steven here is just thinking he's going to start writing misery too.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
We're like, we want to be in the middle of the woods with you.
God damn it.
Like, Oh help.
I love it.
Yeah.
That's what, what is yours?
Oh, good call.
Yeah.
I feel the same as you.
I can be a ghost hunter.
Yeah.
All the same reasoning.
And I've never met Stephen King, so.
Yeah.
Why not?
I'd hang with him.
I have a lot of questions.
Me too.
I want to know about Mambo No.
5.
Yeah, I really want to know about that.
How he became obsessed with that song.
Yep.
What if you, like, tried to be, like, a real woodsman and was really bad at it?
It's like, hey, you know, we can eat this mushroom.
Trust me.
I'm Stephen King.
It's fine.
Like, oh, my God.
Like, trust me.
I'm Stephen King.
I mean, there are some potential pratfalls to it, I suppose.
There are.
It'd be silly.
Because I might believe him.
Like, if he ends the thing with, trust me, I'm Stephen King, I might be like, yeah, you are right.
So you are Stephen King.
Well, then you'd just be tripping in the woods.
That's kind of fun.
With Stephen King?
Yeah.
Who can say they did that?
There we go.
I definitely would choose him over Grady Hendrix.
Like, Grady would be in the woods.
Every time.
Of course.
Grady.
We're not plopping you in the woods.
You'd just be complaining about, like, bugs.
Yeah.
Ask you to hold his blazer.
I know.
He's not used to New England.
Although his lime-colored blazer might help us see as we work our way through.
It could be like a flair.
That could be.
That could be advantageous.
That could.
He's going to listen to this and be like, damn, I thought we had fun on that.
I know.
Well, I guess I won't be joining them again.
Real nice.
Barring them for my next event.
Well, speaking of Grady.
Yeah.
Last question.
Would you rather fight one Stephen King clown?
Pennywise, essentially.
Or one Grady Hendrix possessed Ikea product or horror store product?
I think I'd go with the horror store.
I don't know.
I think the clown is, you know, too Morphe.
Yeah.
I've read horror store was a while ago.
I don't have as much a memory as what they could do besides like suck me into the store and like the other dimension.
I know, but I could, I feel like I could fight a bookcase name.
What's it called?
Like Benny or something like that.
Yeah.
It's hard to be scared of.
Of Benny.
Of Benny.
That's true.
If that's my, I have some of those in my house.
Yeah.
Now I'm going to look at them ask ants.
And put your dukes up.
Yeah, square up.
See, I thought this was easy.
And I think it still kind of is.
Oh, it's easy for me.
Like Pennywise is too much like every fear of yours he can just become.
So like, no.
And especially like the big spider.
No, thank you.
But I'm also like, it's also one of my biggest fears to be locked in an Ikea.
Like when you get lost in that loop and you can't find the right way.
Yeah.
That's horror.
See, for me, I'm going to find the meatballs.
You are going to find the meatballs.
So I'll survive.
That's actually smart.
Thank you.
They have cinnamon buns too, I think.
They do.
So that, okay.
Yeah, they have good stuff.
I'll fight Grady Hendrix's products.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That is survival.
Yeah.
It scares, Pennywise scares the shit out of me, so.
I think it's colloquially, I think it is it.
Yeah.
I think everybody thinks of it as it.
I know, it's so true.
But yeah, that's our would you rathers.
You survived it.
You killed it.
Yeah.
I think I got too mathy with it with my logic.
No, I like that.
You're a math teacher.
That's smart.
You're only recently retired.
It's not completely out of you.
I haven't gotten rid of it yet.
It's going to leach out every once in a while.
And honestly, Grady got very into it as well.
He thought through them.
I know.
I heard him.
He asked for extras.
Yeah.
He was like, let's go.
We had to get them on the fly.
I know.
We were like, Oh my God.
I was like, shit.
But I think that went well.
I think we all survived that.
Oh yeah.
I mean, I was a blast.
Thank you for being here.
Thanks for joining us.
My absolute pleasure.
This was so much fun.
We've been so excited for this.
Oh, same.
Well, thank you.
Thank you.
And everybody, read Paul's books.
Yes, please.
Go watch the adaptations.
They're amazing.
And Stephen King, don't send us a cease and desist.
We just want to be friends, Steve.
Just in the woods.
Yeah, we just want to hang in the woods with you.
That's all.
You can go anytime.
Yeah, that's all.
So before we go, Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep coming out June 30th.
Go get it.
You heard what it's about.
It's going to be awesome.
And Paul, if you have anything else to plug or you want to further plug.
Um, I guess I would.
Just, I don't know when this podcast is going to run but uh, on July 2nd, since we mentioned Grady, like he and I will be at the Strand New York City bookstore, you know, trying to sell this book.
Go there.
I've tried to convince him I'll wear the suit and he'll wear a t-shirt with tattoos.
That would be amazing.
You should wear the lime green blazer.
I love that.
I love it.
So go check them out.
Go see where Paul's going to be and go get his books.
Or else.
Yeah.
We'll fight you.
All right.
Well, guys, thank you for listening.
We hope you keep listening.
And we hope you keep it weird.
But not so weird that you don't go buy false books.
Do it.
You better.
Amen.
And I'll see you in the next one.
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