Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back to the Capes and Tights podcast right here on capesandtites.com. We are back for another episode. We're back for the first guest, celebrity guest of 2024 here on the Capes and Tights podcast. This episode includes Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of books like Road of Bones, All Hallows, and his upcoming book the House of Last Resort, coming out January 30 over there at St. Martin's Press. He also is a comic book writer of things like Baltimore, Buffett, the Vampire Slayer and his current series, Mortal Terror over at Dark Horse Comics. Christopher is a New Englander just like myself. So we talked comics. We talked the comic book industry, the book industry and his book, the House of Last Resort. So yeah, enjoy this episode. But before you do, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, blue Sky, like share, do all that stuff. Also subscribe, rate, review on Apple, Spotify and all your major podcasting platforms. And check out our YouTube channel over on YouTube as well. Visit capestites.com for all kinds of stuff. But this is Christopher golden talking mortal terror at Dark Horse Comics and chatting a little bit about the house of last resort at St. Martin's Press. Enjoy, everyone.
Welcome to the podcast. How are you this morning?
[00:01:29] Speaker B: I'm doing great. How are you doing?
[00:01:31] Speaker A: I'm doing wonderful. I always love that because we feel like you have this pleasantries to say hello when you sign on to Zoom. And then I press record and we're like, how's it going?
[00:01:40] Speaker B: Yeah, well, we're pretending we just started the conversation, but we've been talking about snow. And the real answer to how I'm doing is my back is killing me from clearing my driveway last night.
[00:01:54] Speaker A: I'm only a couple of hours north of you, and I was saying how I just sneezed and it came off my car. So I do feel for you.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: And we had a foot and a half of snow.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: I do remember those days. And we'll see that here eventually. I will get those days here in Maine. But, yeah, definitely New England. Saw some snow this weekend, and we're in the warmth. It is warm. I got a, got a fireplace going. It's nice in here. So we can talk some comics and some books and stuff like we get before we jump right into it. This is the first time, Christopher, you've been on our podcast. You are a New York Times bestselling author, but you also write comics. What got you into writing itself? Like, the actual art of writing?
[00:02:36] Speaker B: I mean, just writing in, think, you know, I was just such a voracious reader as a kid.
And I think that the impact of stories that, you know, I don't know, it made you feel a certain way. It allowed you to escape. It drew you into a story, and I just wanted to do that. But I think it's also because I've always been the kind of person who, when I like something, I want everybody else to like it too, could be excited about it too. And so I just thought, well, I want to be able to give other people the experience that I've been given, if that makes sense.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: Absolutely. I could understand that for sure. And you've written a number of novels.
You've also been writing comic books.
I don't want to age you here, but for a while. You've been doing it for a while. No, I don't.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: I'm 56. I've been writing full time since 1992. So I had just turned 25 when I quit my job and moved back to Massachusetts.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: You've been doing it for a while?
[00:03:44] Speaker B: Yeah. I had sold my first novel, which was not published until 1994, and then I quit.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: Okay, there you go. It's been a while.
I've talked to other people. I've talked to other authors who also write comics. Adam Caesar, Daniel Krause over the Stephen Graham Jones over the years, and they've all got into it fairly more recent know. They've been writing books for a little while, but then they got into the art of comic book writing. You've been doing it for a number of years now. What's the balance been like? What's it like between writing a novel and writing something like a comic book? Is it easy to do, or is it, like I say, easy to do? That sounds like brushing it off the.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: Balance or the actual active look I always talk about, I've written comics. I've written novels, graphic novels, short stories, novellas, video games, screenplays, tv scripts, animated series, audio series. And so every single one of those things is sort of its own different discipline and different thing you have to learn. But I started out loving comics and wanting to write comics and also loving books and wanting to write novels.
So I kind of pursued them both at the same time. And I actually made my first deal to write comics around the same time that I made my first novel deal.
The first comic book gig that I ever had was to adapt Joe Landsdale's novel the drive in for comics for Horse. But, and I'd written all four issues, and then Dark Horse and Joe had sort of a falling out over the contract that they had so that was eventually published many years later by another.
Yeah, I mean, I just always have loved comics, but I had stopped pitching for a long time because comics is a rough business.
It's a very difficult business to make money in, to earn a living in, for sure, and to make it worthwhile. So if you're going to do it, you have to do it because you love it.
Comics, as an industry will almost never love you back.
No, this is true.
[00:06:10] Speaker A: Yes, it is.
[00:06:12] Speaker B: The people who get loved back by the comics industry are few and far between, and you have such little control over what you can and can't do.
So it was really my friendship and relationship and working relationship with Mike Mignola that sort of kept me involved in comics. It was a stretch where I didn't do comics for a long time, and then I sort of got back into it when Mike and I started to talk about doing Baltimore, which we had done as a novel in comics, and that sort of started the ball rolling for all of the stuff I've done since then.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: Do you feel that there's, like, certain stories that are made for comics, in your opinion, or some of them just depending on how you tell the story?
[00:06:58] Speaker B: I think it depends how you tell the story, and I also think it depends on who your artist.
I've. I've worked with Mike, obviously, although I've never written anything that he drew, which makes me sad, although he's illustrated novels that I've written and I've worked with, you know, in later years with Ben Stenbeck, with Peter Berg, ting with Bridget Connell on the various things I'm doing at Dark Horse. So I've been really lucky to work with extraordinary artists who can really make the world come alive on the page, and that's when the story deserves it.
I've also been not as lucky, but I'm not going to name any names in those cases. It's sort of, you know, did I have.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: So that transitions pretty well over Mike Mignola, Dark Horse, Peter Bergding, all that stuff to mortal terror, which is your most recent comic to come out from Dark Horse?
Is it most of your comics at Dark Horse? All of your comics at Dark Horse.
[00:08:16] Speaker B: What's the percentage, I would think, for the last x number of years, I'm not even sure how many years it's been. Almost all the comics I've written have come out from Dark Horse, and they've been a fantastic.
Know. The other exciting thing about mortal terror, which I know we'll get into, is that I'm co writing it with Tim Lebanon, who is not only one of my best friends, but one of my favorite writers.
And that's the thing with that. And to have Peter on the art again, I'm sure we'll get into. But yeah, so it's Dark Horse, and it's Tim's first comic book, Tim Levitt's first comic book work. So it was exciting to sort of bring him into this world as well.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: Tim's done, I mean, I've seen other stuff. He's done Star wars stuff. He's done all kinds of stuff like that in novel form. It is nice. The book's excellent. I was able to read mortal terror early, obviously. Caitlin from the PR department sent it over to me just when they do their soliciting for reviews, and I thought it was excellent. You did a great job, I think, with turning something like vampire lore on its head kind of, and changing things up and making it your own story. But it does, and you mentioned the artwork part of it. I wrote a note here that it fits so well with story is I feel like you guys would have been able to nail it as a novel as well. It would have been great just to read it as a novel, but seeing the imagery from Peter, I think just adds that another level to know, honestly.
[00:09:44] Speaker B: This is the thing about Peter. First of all, Peter's extraordinarily talented, but it's really been interesting. I've worked with him for a long time. He's the artist I've worked with the most, for sure, in my career.
He worked on Baltimore, he worked on on we did Frankenstein, New World together with Tom Snagoski, and now mortal terror. And it's been fascinating to see Peter's evolution, because prior to all of this stuff, he's been know his stuff had more of a fantastical flair, very sort of fantasy element, which you could see in a lot of his original work as well, which doesn't mean he wasn't capable of doing the more grounded stuff.
But we sort of put him through the wringer on the various books that we did. And it feels to me like everything we have done together has been building up to mortal terror, which I think, honestly would be a huge challenge for any comics artist to do this world, which is sort of a subterranean vampire London world.
And also, I feel like we're asking him to communicate a lot of information in the art, and it's a big challenge and he's just risen to it. I mean, I just saw the last five or six pages worth of art for the third issue, and he's just doing such a fantastic job with giving us the mood and the atmosphere for it, because it's a weird story.
And Tim and I, we had to make a decision that our focus was going to be on the plot. And the world building is all in the background. It's a lot of world building, but Peter. We're relying on Peter so much to give us a lot of information that is the world, as opposed to the story we're telling about the characters in this world.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: And before we go too far in this, too, it's my fault, but can you just tell people what mortal terror is about in a little bit of elevator pitch of sorts?
[00:11:55] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it started out just with a very simple idea, which was what if we turned the story of Bram Stoker's Dracula on its head and inverted know, kept the characters sort of basically the same, except that the mortals are vampires and the vampires are mortals.
So essentially, mortal terror takes place in a world, in a London alternate history, London in the 19th century, where vampires, basically, centuries ago, overran the world. And most vampires don't even know that mortals are anything more than a myth, because in their world, mortals are what vampires are in our world, in the sense that they're boogeymen. Their scary things that they talk about are mortals. Because if a mortal bites you, your heart will start to beat, and that will slowly turn you human, and it will be basically like they look at the beating of your heart like the clock ticking down toward your eventual death. So you're no longer immortal. You're going to die.
And once we had that idea, it was about, okay, what kind of story do we tell about this mortal Dracula, who is sort of preying on the vampire world in London?
And the conversation about it and the world building about it was one of the most exciting things I've ever done, because it was so freeing to then be able to just build this story and this world and these versions of these characters.
I love our Renfield so much, and we have plans for him, and our Quincy Morris is just so.
We've. I don't know, we've just been having a great time with it. And I'm really glad you enjoyed it, because it is not a typical comic, in the sense that we are asking a lot of the readers.
We are really sort of throwing you in the deep end of what this world is, and we're not.
I would say it's not a light read, but I think it's really cool.
I do say so myself.
[00:14:25] Speaker A: I love how you sit out light read. I tend to read a lot before I go to bed.
When I get into comics like this or any other horror comic, I'm always like, it depends on the comic, but really there's some that I've been like, why am I reading this right before I go to bed? It's just so much to, a, think about and take in, and b, can be scary sometimes. And I'm like, I'm just asking to give myself night terrors and nightmares and things like that. But there is a lot. But I feel like it's a love letter in a sense, to those who might want something more than just the service, more that you have to almost like, I read it when I first got it, but obviously I read it again, issue one again last night before coming on and discussing this with you. And you get so much more out of reading it multiple times. I think, too, because you have to look at the backer and look at the artwork a little bit more. Sometimes people just skim through comics, especially.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: Once you know kind of what it's about.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:15:19] Speaker B: Once you know what's really going on, then you take a closer look at, we have. We have plans, but it is. And I felt this way about Baltimore, and I felt this way, for the most part about Joe Golem.
I really am trying to give in all of this stuff.
I try to give more world and more story than I get out of a typical comic. And that's not, I love comics. I mean, I read a really sort of random array of things, but I feel like, for me, if I'm going to take the time to tell this story, I just want there to be a sort of texture to it.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: It makes sense. I mean, the best thing I love about comics right now in the world, and something that dark horse has been doing for years, but it's like telling something a little bit different than what you typically get at a comic book. I mean, you have this world of superheroes and things like that, or straight up horror or thriller.
This book takes a story that we all basically know and you mentioned, turns it on its head and shows you something different. Is there something with vampires or Dracula that you really like? I mean, you did a run on Buffy, but is there something that calls you to Dracula and vampires and things like that?
[00:16:46] Speaker B: It's funny because I guess there is. I've said so many times over the years that I don't have a special love for vampires compared to other monsters or other supernatural creatures. But I guess there is, because I've revisited vampirism as a theme so many times over the years.
I don't know, I think it's the immortality element that makes it really interesting.
But there's also that this story, I guess one of the other things that really fascinates me is the question of who the villain is, not just in mortal terror, but just in general. Right. So if you look at any story with a bad guy, which is almost all stories, you've got to sort of think about what is the motivation of the villain, of the monster. And so from the perspective of whoever the monster is, they're not the bad guy in the story.
And so that was the sort of fun thing about this, which is to say we're sort of following the vampire characters more. We're with Harker and Lucy Wessonra and all these characters, and they're the vampires.
So we play them, we put them in the position of protagonists.
But is Dracula in this story evil? He's a mortal man whose world was completely overrun, and he's trying to take little pieces of it back. So is he bad?
So that's one of the things I really like about vampires, is it's like, how can you blame the wolf?
[00:18:34] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:18:35] Speaker B: If you have a bear attack or some idiot climbs into the gorilla pan at the zoo and he gets his arms torn off. Is it the gorilla's fault? I don't think so.
This is one of the things that has always fascinated me about vampires.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: It's a unique, because you read it as a vampire story, if you just ask someone, what's the story about? It's about vampires in a boiled down, just simplistic description of it. But that's not exactly what this is. And that's what I love about books. When my budy Paul, who owns my local comic book shop, galactic comics here in Bangor area, he talked about this year's, the year in comics in 2023 for, say, it was just what we wanted to was at our end of the year countdown for top comics was like I wanted something that was different all the time. It was like every time I used to be a humongous Marvel zombie, just everything had to be marvel. I wanted interconnected stories. I wanted all that stuff. Now I want to go into these things where I'm like, when I pick up this thing, I want it to be different. And that doesn't say that I need it to be like this entirely new story. I just need it to be a new take on some sort of story. And that's what kind of drew me in when I was reading about moral terror. The other part about it was the COVID I mean, honestly, the COVID itself is just beautiful. The design on the logo is beautiful as well. And not just cover a. You talk about COVID b.
Manola did a cover b for issue one, right? And you get Frank Avilla to do a cover on issue two.
That alone, to me, pulls me in. And so there's a whole array that makes this comic book one of those ones that just stood out for me in this.
[00:20:19] Speaker B: You know, we're just thinking about who are the horror artists that are most appealing to us, that give us the atmosphere that we are looking for? Because again, the other thing about this story is that it's all the things we've already said it is. But fundamentally, our Jonathan Harker is an agent of the king in his London, and they've suffered at least one terrorist attack and they're dealing know, sort of rebels in the hills that are attacking their forces and all of this stuff.
And there's a lot of mystery involved in it. There's a lot of this other. So you could strip out all of the Dracula stuff and all the vampire stuff and say our plot is something else.
And that's what I was saying is that Tim and I really wanted to have this thing layered so that you have all the Dracula elements and the vampire elements is a layer of the story, but the plot existing within that world is its own thing. And this is the thing that I go crazy with movies and stuff all the time because I want to care.
This is like, you go to a lot of these movies, and if you don't care about the characters and what's going, I'll give you a really weird example.
Every year, my wife and I try to watch most of the movies that we think are probably going to be nominated for the Oscars. And we make sure that we watched all of the best picture nominees in addition to some other stuff. And so a week ago, we started watching Maestro, the new film from Bradley Cooper. And for the first time ever, we shut the movie off halfway through. Like, we just were like, this movie is so boring. And we watch a lot of slow movies. When you're dealing with the Oscar contenders, we're not looking for that, but because the movie is so superficial in the life of Leonard Bernstein, it's just like he failed to make us give a crap.
And I feel like that's the secret ingredient in a horror movie or a horror comic or whatever, is like, we want you to be engaged with the characters and go along for the ride with them. Obviously, it's different in a comic. You can't get as deep.
But that's the thing with this, is we want you to be here for the plot. If the hook is to bring you in with the vampires and Dracula, great. But in order to make a reader stick around, you have to give them a story.
[00:23:07] Speaker A: And that's what this does. It does it in a wonderful way. And again, there's a whole package here, though, you and Tim writing this. Peter's artwork, Chris O'Halloran's colors. Right? Am I right on that? And then Clem Robbins lettering. There's a package here that I don't feel like it stands different above and beyond by drastic amounts. About other comics I was reading currently, I just thought there was some sort of complete package about mortal terror that really drew me in and kept me wanting to read issue two.
I think anybody can cook me on issue one. I feel like that's a very easy thing, and that's why we're living a world of there's thousand Spider man number ones and whatever there is, because they want you to look at number one and go, oh, I could get involved in issue number one, but that pushed me into wanting to know what happens to these characters. And you mentioned that it's something about caring about the characters, caring about the story, caring about where it goes. And they could be both sides of that, though, Christopher, like, you could have this. I want to see where it goes, because I have no idea. This is horribly written, issue one, and I don't know where you're going with this. And it could be the opposite, which is what this was. I want to know where we end up. I want to know what the end of the story is like. And you could care less, I guess, in maestro, obviously, you kind of know where the story is going, but you don't care where the story goes because you don't care enough about what's going.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: On with the character engaged.
It's a very superficial telling, which is crazy to me.
The other thing about. Let's talk about economics of comics for a second.
We had to sort of go back and forth. We have a plan for mortal terror and what our whole full arc is going to be, and we sort of had to go back and forth on the economics of it. So each issue is 24 pages rather than the typical 20. What's typical now?
And dark horse had to do the economics of that. But I have no problem talking about the fact that Tim and I aren't taking any money, we don't get paid anything. And the reason we don't get paid anything unless it sells and is successful on the back end is because we wanted to make sure if we were going to take the time to do this comic, we were going to be able to deliver to you, Peter Bergding and Christopher Halloran and Clem Roberts.
So we worked out our now, Tim and Peter and I own this thing together, but everybody gets a piece of the in success if it does well enough to earn any money afterwards, everybody gets something out of that. But in order for us to be able to get the team we wanted, that would make it worthwhile for us, we were like, no, we won't get any money from the scripts because it's not worth doing if it doesn't look great.
[00:26:05] Speaker A: It's interesting to hear you say that, because it's a nice thing to hear a creator saying that with other companies, too. I don't know if you've seen recently with vault, have released two comics now where issue one was free to the comic book stores, so they was able to just get it out there. Comic book stores could either charge if they wanted to, or give it away to their customers and so on and so forth. So seeing that the comic book industry, including creators like yourself, doing something different to get that team together, as well as some publishers doing that to try to figure out how to strike new, I don't know, sales new things, I don't know. It's an interesting thing to see because, and honestly, I like hearing it from both sides, the distributor or the publisher doing it, as well as someone like a creator doing this and working together, because it makes a difference what team you work. Like, if you and Tim were put together on this project, almost forced together, be like, oh, we like Tim's work. We like Chris's work. Let's put it together. And you had to work together. It might not have the same product, whether or not you guys are excellent writers. No, you have to have this relationship.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: He's one of my favorite writers and one of my closest friends, and we've written a bunch of novels together and other things, but this is his first comic. But in this case, again, it was just that I've been doing this long enough that I understand the financial metric of it. When dark horse goes and does their costing, they've got to figure out what kind of risk they're taking, and they come up with a. So, you know, when we look at that budget, it's like, well, we can do this so we can make a little bit of money up front and hire somebody to draw it. Who's.
We have no idea. Not only do we have no idea what it's going to look like once they're under the gun of a deadline, but we have no idea if they're going to ghost and vanish on us.
So it wasn't worth doing if we weren't going to be able to do it with Peter and with a colorist and letterer the caliber of Chris and.
[00:28:09] Speaker A: Yeah, and you work hard on these things. I can't imagine being someone whose job is specifically to screenwrite in Hollywood, knowing how many projects they put their heart and soul and things into, and they sold a script or so on, and it just never goes anywhere.
[00:28:24] Speaker B: It ends up in a drawer, and they don't own it. They can't take it and create it in a different environment.
I've written scripts. I've been paid to write scripts, usually adapting my own stuff that vanish into the ether. There's nothing you can do about it.
And I hate it.
Yeah, I like doing it in this.
[00:28:52] Speaker A: Way of doing it and having this ability to potentially. And you're in a position where you have the ability to do that. There are obviously some comic book creators and writers who may not be in the position that you're in, having multiple avenues. You have a book coming out, so on and so forth, that allows you to do this. You and Tim allows you to take money at the back end, not at the beginning, but this also almost guarantees that it will get in front of people's eyes. And that's, I think, one of those things that goes back to also the art of creating comics. And the idea behind telling your stories in this format is you want people to read these things.
You're up there on the guest number 100 and something now on this podcast. But I really wish I got to go back and listen to some of these and find out which creator said that one of their number one goals in comic books is creating comic books that people read. And that's the number one. He says, I want to make a living at it, but I really just want people to read my stuff. So if I have to give it to people, if I have to do these random things and special things to get people to read this book, I want. That is my number one goal, and hopefully that turns into potentially a financial success for you on the back end. But the number one thing is that people buy this comic book and put it in front of their eyes.
[00:30:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:02] Speaker A: Only way it's going to be successful.
[00:30:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
Most creatives have a non creative job.
Sorry about that with it. Good spam surprise. The only time that phone rings, it's almost always spam.
[00:30:24] Speaker A: Spam. It always usually says possibly spam. And I'm like, well, that's pretty sure that's spam.
[00:30:31] Speaker B: Funnily enough, that says on the can now possibly spam.
[00:30:35] Speaker A: Exactly.
You have that ability to get it out in front of people's eyes, and then that's, I think you are, and I can't speak for you, but I'm guessing you're lucky enough to be able to do what you're doing anyway. So it's not like if mortal terror ends up not succeeding, you want to make sure that Chris and Clem are paid. Obviously.
You want to make sure that dark horse doesn't lose money on this comic book. But in the end, it's really just trying to get the story out there. And then if you make some money, great. If not, it was a nice shot.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: And I hope, well, that's, know. Tim and I were passionate enough about this story that we just wanted to be able to do know I get paid for the other stuff.
You know, obviously people have a. Most people are supremely delusional about the amount of money they think writers make.
[00:31:31] Speaker A: You're not all Stephen King.
[00:31:33] Speaker B: Yeah, no, no one is Stephen King except King.
Yeah, no, we can. That's a whole other podcast about, like, you could go through. I blame tv and films usually for the way that they portray. I don't remember what movie it was. There was something that I saw a few years ago.
I can't remember now what it was where the guy had had an advance for his book, where they'll pay you half of the advance money.
And he was like three years late delivering this is a first novel, three years late delivering the book. And he was living in this swanky apartment in New York City with no job. Just being a first time novelist with one contract and three years late on your book.
And I was just like the screenwriter of this movie is the problem.
[00:32:35] Speaker A: If anybody actually reads a novel. Most novels about writers are about struggling writer. Yeah. It's not about this super successful writer who's making millions of dollars. It's about the person who's struggling. They need to get this book out so they can get paid.
[00:32:53] Speaker B: I always refer to the Jetsons. I don't know if that's from my generation, but I think a lot of people have the. At the opening of the Jetsons, he's on that treadmill, and it's going too fast. And he yells, jane, stop this crazy thing. And that's the life of a full time freelancer, period.
You're just like, you got to stay on that thing and it's out of control. But anyway.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: And if you think that writers themselves are not making as much money, then you put in the category of comic book writers, or in that even lower category than that. And I have had this discussion, this is a common discussion when an author who also writes comics comes on the podcast and talks about this. Daniel Krause and I had a long conversation about this as well, that his writing comic books is literally, truly just almost treated as a hobby in a sense that, yeah, it's nice to get paid for it. It's nice to get paid always for the work that you do. But in the end, it's really just a story that needed to be in comic book format. It made more sense in comic book format to tell the story. Or he was brought or AWA studios or someone contacted him and said, hey, can you do a comic book for us? And so on and so forth. And that's the reason why he did it. It's not specifically another massive revenue generator for him. And truthfully, it's good. Do you think most people know you, Christopher golden, as New York Times bestselling author, more than they do as a comic book writer?
[00:34:20] Speaker B: I feel like I'm the story of the five blind Men and the Elephant, you know what I mean? Some people have only seen the trunk.
Some have only seen the tail, the ears.
So I do think probably I'm better known for my novels, but again, I've been writing comics for just as long.
And again, lots of people only know me from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Lots of people only know me from Hellboy, but that's how you make a career for 30 years.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: Yeah. And luckily there is some crossover, as in, like myself, I have a reader as well as comic book reader, so there is this crossover in both of that. But obviously you find joy in both. Like, you find joy in just writing. You mentioned that more off the top, that writing stories and finding the right avenue, and sometimes these are mortal tarot could be adapted and you have to write a screenplay for this now. So now it's both writing a comic book format out of it, but also writing it in a different format. But you also obviously spend a lot of time writing novels. Promoting them is similar, but also different. How long have you been promoting the House of last resort?
[00:35:39] Speaker B: And I've been promoting it less so a little bit than the previous couple just because I've been so busy. But probably I don't remember when they released the COVID And usually I wait until the COVID is available to share before I start putting it out there. But usually it could be 910 months before the book comes out. And then the last couple of months is when you start getting more into it.
It's a necessary evil, honestly.
Writers should not have to spend this time doing marketing and publicity unless you're self publishing.
But unfortunately, it absolutely, positively must happen.
And I think most people know that I'm sharing about it all the time on social media. And usually when something like I noticed last night, I shared this this morning, was very excited, actually, that Goodreads had a list that was the 15 most popular books on Goodreads for January 2024. And the House of last resort was on the list, which was really cool because it was up there with the new Sarah J. Maas book and stuff like that. So that was really cool.
So I share that, and it's great when you have news to share instead of just like, hey, don't forget to pre order this book, but you have to do it, especially because Twitter is a total shit show and cesspool now, and the number of people who see the average tweet is minuscule in comparison to what it once was because they've throttled anybody who's not paying.
And Facebook algorithms are also throttled so that the number of people who see the average Facebook post now because they want you to buy ads.
So social media as a tool is nowhere near as effective as it once was, which means that you either have to abandon it completely or just double down on how often you post.
Obviously you have to have a presence there that isn't just about marketing, but hopefully people understand that if they're seeing it too much, it's the requirement of the job.
[00:38:20] Speaker A: Exactly.
I would say most people who are fans, obviously, you're on here discussing your books on a podcast, but I'm a fan of yours. So it's like, I like to see those kind of things. I look at people's stories.
Daniel Krause and I had become friends. We did a beer collaboration, actually together at my day job for his. So we've, and he came and visited here and did a signing and so on and so forth. But I spent a weekend with my, it was my favorite book of last year, so I will say know. And it wasn't even because of that, just there was something special about that book but seeing his stuff, I like seeing that as I'm a fan of Daniel. So seeing your stuff, I like seeing that. So most of us are going to be okay with you posting, quote unquote, too much. The book industry, at least you have something that you have a book to promote, and you can pre order it on Amazon or your local store, so on and so forth. Whereas the comic book industry, when I found out about moral terror, was when everybody else found out about moral terror, basically. And it was like a couple of weeks prior to when you had to get your pre order into your comic book store. And then hopefully enough people ordered it or comic book shops ordered it and so on and so forth. At least in the book market, I know your book comes out on the 30 January, and I could preorder it ahead of time and have that. The comic book industry is just this. I've tried to have this discussion, like, we could have had this discussion prior to issue one of mortal terror, enough time in advance for you to actually get people to preorder it, so your comic book stores get it and so on and so forth. But a lot of times you're finishing up the final parts of issue one when they're trying to get it on presale, so there's not an advanced copy to read to help promote it and so on and so forth. So the comic book industry has some work to get ahead of this.
[00:40:08] Speaker B: And I also think, for me, one of the big problems as a reader, one of the big problems with the way that the comics industry has changed over the last few years is the fracturing of the distribution model, because now it used to be you'd pick up diamond previews and you had a very cohesive, coherent catalog to go through and to find what you were interested in. And now it's a mess because obviously the various companies have pulled out and they're soliciting elsewhere, and so they don't have the promotions there. But you have to spend way more time digging through, figuring out what you want. And as the person who's got mortal terror in the catalog, far fewer people are going to find that now, I think, than did in the previous iteration. And it's a problem.
[00:41:11] Speaker A: And you have three different catalog. You have your Marvel catalog now because that's at Penguin Random House, and then you get your lunar one, and you got your previews world one. And it's hard. And also, dates are crazy. My local comic book shop gets their lunar order a week after the release of the book. So if you have obviously, dark horse comes in. Actually, no, sorry, not all of it. Image comes in on time, but for some reason, there's some sort of thing, and they're not the only one. We've had this discussion with other people that comic books that are strictly on Lunar, that are not your DC, your independent publishers on lunar, it comes in a week late. And so, like, you could. Oh, it comes out on the 30th when it really might actually come out on the following week at that local comic book shop because of just something to do with it. So there's all these things that have to do with that, but it's just crazy. And that's something that I've liked about the book world, is that I can promote a book for months and months and months in advance, knowing it's going to come out a certain time. Yes, there's printer errors and there's shipping delays, and there's things that happen, but for the most part, your book is going to be in shops. What it says.
[00:42:16] Speaker B: I feel like there's a business to be made of creating a third party catalog for pay, like an actual magazine that serves the need to have this sort of collective presentation so we can see everything, because my retailer doesn't have the lunar catalog.
So I'm combing through now to see what does image have out now. And then I have to go online. If there's anything that sounds interesting, I have to investigate what that thing is. I have no way to know what it's know. So now it's sort of like, even more so. Okay, it's Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. I will buy anything that they do. Great. But my ods of picking up something brand new when I don't have any real information that I didn't have to go look for is a problem.
[00:43:21] Speaker A: And you mentioned earlier about promoting your book without a cover. That's also a possibility. I've gone through preview catalogs where the entire page was cover coming soon because they had to start pushing it before the comic book cover was even done, or they released the COVID And so it's like covers, you're a writer, but, you know, covers sell comic books very well. And the fact that I can't even see what the COVID looks like is a hard thing to do. A book to get on the book, back on the book thing, I absolutely love the COVID of the House of last resort. That was one of the things that made me the way the letters go all the way across the top, the front, the colors, everything about it. And that would draw me in if I was just going into a bookstore and knowing nothing about a book.
[00:44:05] Speaker B: I've been really lucky for my last, like three or four books.
[00:44:10] Speaker A: House of last resort, we got all hallows here.
And then all the other ones too are excellent, too. But yeah, this cover right here, I think, will sell your book alone.
[00:44:24] Speaker B: They've all been done by a designer named Jonathan Bush, and he's terrific.
[00:44:29] Speaker A: It's excellent. But yeah, more like I mentioned, mortal terror, too. Mortal terror was great, too. The COVID would draw me in if I didn't already know about it or know about you. And that's a huge thing. And so missing those is also a huge thing. But yeah, the comic book industry, there's some things that definitely could be working out on the distribution level to make it easier for people who are just novice readers who want to go in your comic book shop and buy some things. But luckily, the book industry, your other side of what you do. It's fortunately enough that you have ability to preorder and stuff like that. But mortal terror, before I forget, issue two just dropped at your local comic book shop. And the possibility, hopefully they have sold out. But if not, go grab issue one and two because those are out. And then issue three, I believe, comes out in February. Am I right about that? Yeah, in February. So you should be able to, at this point, still go and have your local retailer get it for you. And then I'm guessing your plan is to put this out in a dark horse collected edition at some point.
[00:45:31] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm not sure if I'm supposed to talk about it, but I'm going to anyway.
Which is that, yes, the mortal terror collection will say volume one on it.
[00:45:46] Speaker A: Cool. That's awesome. But I like that. That's the big thing about miniseries nowadays. I really like it. The idea that you could just, most likely you're going to cap this chapter of mortal tower off with a fitting ending that would be like, okay, if this didn't go any further, we'd be satisfied, but with the ability to leave.
[00:46:04] Speaker B: It open ended, just so you know, we are not.
[00:46:10] Speaker A: But I see both sides of it. Yeah, that is my thing. But I will say we are in a world, and you live in a book world, too, so we're in a world that people do. Like this collected edition, too. I love floppies. So buy floppies. They're amazing. I love collecting them, sorting them. It's more of a cathartic thing for me to do. It's just to organize comics, move them and change bags and boards and all that stuff. But I do understand. I do collect trades as well. And I do understand that people want the bookmarket trade version of it, which is also great because not everybody has a comic book store, but your local bookstore can get the trade because then it falls into the book market, and that's pretty cool, too. But speaking of that, you have House of last resort. I wanted to quickly talk about this before we sign on.
[00:46:51] Speaker B: Yeah, man. House of last resort.
It's my favorite thing I've written in a long time. It's set in Sicily, where my wife's parents grew up and my father in law passed away last year. But my mother in law still owns a home in Augusta in Sicily, which is the town where they grew.
Sicily is gorgeous, but also ancient.
And I've been reading all of these articles about towns in Italy that essentially Italy, like many other countries, young people are born into these sort of towns that are in the middle of nowhere. And no matter how beautiful they might be, there's very little opportunity there. And they leave to go to the cities. And a lot of these towns are almost ghost towns now.
Their population is dwindled to 20% of what it once was. So there are all these empty buildings. And so in a lot of these towns in Italy and Japan and other countries, they will sell. In Italy specifically. It'll be like, okay, we will sell you this house for €1, but you have to promise that you'll live there yourself. No Airbnb. You have to live there yourself for at least five years, and you have to spend at least 50,000 euro fixing it up, which sounds like a dream, right? Especially because we live in an environment where so many people, particularly post pandemic, are working from home.
And so it's about this young couple who says, screw it, let's go buy this house. And the guy in the couple, his grandparents, still live in this town.
So that's the sort of setup. But when they move into the house, they discover that it has a history that they were unaware of that involves the Vatican and very dark things.
[00:48:57] Speaker A: Very dark things. You obviously don't want to spoil it for anybody out there, but I was one of those ones that I couldn't put down. When I started reading it, it was definitely fun. It made you think, because what draw me in is what drew me in is the idea that I would, and I can work remotely. So it would be an amazing thing. And I've explained this to people about how the idea for a euro or a dollar, I could buy a house and do that. My wife and I would probably write on that. We would do that in a heartbeat.
[00:49:25] Speaker B: You could literally do it right now.
[00:49:28] Speaker A: I don't know if my wife would be like, let's move to Sicily. But that's a different story to go on.
[00:49:34] Speaker B: All over Italy, there are places, and.
[00:49:36] Speaker A: So it was just kind of one of those cool hooks that makes me. Oh, that'd be interesting to do. But obviously, I'm a big horror fan, so the idea that something more sinister is there added the entire allure to me wanting to read it. And the fact that you were coming on here. St. Martin's was nice enough to send me an advanced copy to read, and I was so happy to read it because I also visualized it more than a lot of books. I could actually picture myself a lot more in where this couple is, in what their house looks like and what happens and so on and so forth. It's pretty cool on that side of things, but it's a wonderful book. It comes out January 30, but you also have other books out there. Like I just mentioned, you have rotobones all Hallows, which is amazing, too. And actually, look what I found at a yard sale this summer.
[00:50:22] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
That one's easier to find. The ones that are really hard to find.
I did the only existing, as far as I know, Star wars. Choose your own adventure novels, which were adaptations of the original trilogy, as choose your own adventure stories.
[00:50:45] Speaker A: That's amazing. I'll have to look for. That was just, like, one of those things. I'm, like, a big Star wars fan. I saw this. I saw your name on it. I was like, I had no idea. But this also goes back to how long you've been writing, too. But when would this come out?
[00:50:55] Speaker B: I don't even remember.
[00:50:57] Speaker A: It's probably not right. Easily defined, but here we go. 96.
[00:51:03] Speaker B: 96. Yeah. That was a very busy time, but, yeah.
[00:51:09] Speaker A: Star Wars, Shadows of the Empire, junior novelization. I thought this was amazing. I think it'd be fine. My son's three, so at some point, he'll have to get into reading. He'll read that book, I'm guessing, before he reads any of your other books.
[00:51:23] Speaker B: I would think so, yeah.
[00:51:25] Speaker A: I hope so. I'm a cool dad, but not that cool.
[00:51:28] Speaker B: Not that cool. Yeah.
[00:51:29] Speaker A: But I'm hoping people are liking it and reading it and people are out there preordering it, because I do definitely think that you've written a lot of great things. But I will say this is my favorite that you've written. So far.
That's a pretty cool thing. And I'm happy to have preordered already at my local store, briar Patch in Bangalore. I was able to get it from them, which I'm super excited for. So January 30 that comes out. But yeah, I'm guessing you're still writing other things. You got things in the hopper that you can't talk about. I'm guessing that's true.
[00:51:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
Let's see. What can I talk about? Well, I co wrote and co directed slayers, which was a buffy verse audible series that came out last year. And boy, let's see, I'm working right now on the third of the audio adventures in the Hellboy universe for these stories. The first was a plague of wasps. Sorry, my crazy head. Hellboy, a plague of wasps. And we did lobster Johnson. And now Tom Snagoski has come on with me and we're doing Hellboy and the BPRd story called Goddess of Manhattan. So we're wrapping that up like within the next ten days or so. And I'm working on my next novel at the same time, which I haven't talked about the title or anything, but I expect that'll be out around this time next year.
And other comics are on the way. There's more Frankenstein new world coming and more Hellboy in love coming.
[00:53:12] Speaker A: That's awesome. I'm so excited, Christopher.
You could write something on a napkin. I'd read it at this point, so keep up the great work. We appreciate it. Hopefully there's not as much snow. I don't know what the rest of the week looks like here in New England. I know it looked like it possibly could have snowed on Wednesday, but we're going to get like 46, 50 deg weather on Wednesday here.
[00:53:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, it's going to rain here, which will be great. I'll just be watching my basement all day and pray.
[00:53:40] Speaker A: That seems like the new thing to do is the floating basements and all that stuff here. I feel like I'm lucky enough I live in a building. I live in a townhouse that was built in 2018. It's dry basement. I can watch other people. I can go help other people pump their basements out.
Yes, exactly.
[00:53:56] Speaker B: And we were actually pretty Wednesday afternoon. No, my basement should be.
[00:54:00] Speaker A: I'll be down there. It takes a few hours. My parents live in Connecticut. I'll swing by on the way back in Massachusetts. Connecticut up? No. But yeah. So mortal tarot is available right now. Your local comic book shops grab that. Grab house of last resort. You can pre order that. I recommend pre ordering at your local comic book shop or, sorry, bookstore. I mean, bookshop.org. You should be able to get it as well. But if you can't get it or don't know a local shop, buy it on Amazon. Just buy the my, that's my whole spiel. Like, just buy the book. That's my biggest thing.
Tomorrow, buy it locally. But if you can't buy it locally or don't want to buy it locally, just buy it. That's all.
Show St. Martin's that we should go to your library.
[00:54:39] Speaker B: Your library.
[00:54:40] Speaker A: That's too.
Is there a plan for an audiobook or is it just going to be.
[00:54:45] Speaker B: No, it'll definitely be on audio.
[00:54:47] Speaker A: Okay. I just didn't know at the time. Usually it's promoted around it. Right now it's not. But at some point it will be out in audiobook format too, which I recommend as well. And that hopefully will be over at Libro FM because they help support local shops as well. So you can listen to all Hallows and rotobones and all those stuff over there as well. So check that out. Libro FM, because that supports local bookstores, which I am fond of. But yeah. Thank you so much, Christopher, for taking time out of your day to talk comics and books and all that stuff and so much more. Keep up the great work and hopefully we'll have you on again in the future. Okay?
[00:55:21] Speaker B: Thanks, Justin. Take care, man.
You.
