Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back to another episode of the Capes and Tights podcast right here on capesandites.com. I don't know why I'm so amped up right now. It's probably because I just got done talking with Brian McAuley. The author of Candy Cane Kills came out in November. Awesome short novella, holidays, Horror Slasher, as well as the amazing curse of the Reaper novel that came out in 2022. Recommend to us by Stephen Graham Jones, New York Times bestselling author. But Brian came on to talk about those books, the writing industry in general. He's also a WGA screenwriter, so we talked a little screenwriting. He's a professor out in Arizona, so we talked a little bit about that. But before you listen to this episode, check us out on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Blue Sky Rate Review, subscribe, all those things over on Apple and Spotify in all your major podcasting platforms. Follow us over on YouTube. This is Brian McCauley, author of Curse of the Reaper, as well as Candy King Kills, right here on capes and Tights podcast. Enjoy, everyone.
Welcome to the podcast. Brian, how are you today? Even though I've already asked you that question, but, you know, now we're recording. How are you today?
[00:01:18] Speaker B: If I just gave a drastically different answer, just like it's terrible day is going well so far. Thank you. I'm settling into a new semester of teaching, and all's good so far.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: That's awesome. Yeah, you're like, I'm going to save the really good stuff for when he presses record.
Yeah.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: I woke up in blood and don't remember the night before. So far off to a good start today.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Yes. I just came back for the shovel with dirt in my trunk. I don't know what happened, but typical book Mondays.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: All right. Yeah.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Well, so shock I mentioned, too, I was like, we have an episode with CJ lead, and I was talking about how it's a fictional story, and I was like, well, it might be. I don't know. You could be basing this off a true story. I don't know. I'm not you.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: The best cover story. Being a horror author, you never know.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: There's no way this could be true. They wrote about it in a book. There's no way this could be real.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: But guess it is too bold.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: So, yeah, you're now a multiple time published author, which is exciting. And you are a professor assistant. What's your actual title at your school?
[00:02:27] Speaker B: I am a clinical assistant professor of screenwriting at the Sydney Platier new American Film school at ASU. So I'm here in Arizona. I just moved here from.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: It's a. It goes a long title on a business card.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: Yep. It's multiple.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: Yes, it's multiple times. This actually has a chapter break in the middle of it. You don't know about that, but suspense. Exactly. So you spend most of your time teaching and molding the minds of America, but you also are a writer. You consider yourself a professor first and an author second. Is that what you would consider? Yeah.
[00:02:59] Speaker B: I mean, it's been a shift. Literally just this past fall was when I started teaching full time. I had been teaching part time in LA at various schools, and I'm also a WGA screenwriter in addition to an author. So it's been a sort of balance of screenwriting, fiction writing, teaching. But now that I'm teaching full time, that's definitely my main kind of what takes the most time. And I end up writing most in the mornings and then late evenings. So it's been interesting, just kind of adjust my work schedule. But it takes a lot of the pressure off of writing as a financial career and more just on the joy of getting to put more work out there.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: I could see.
I talked to Christopher golden about his upcoming novel, and he was mentioning about how it's the fictional thing you see in stories and movies and all this is that people who have been published authors are these. All of a sudden I know, where multimillionaire authors that you see like, they've got their advance from their book and they're just living like royalty. They're spending money freely and all that stuff. The truth of the matter is, most people who are writers have to have a second job to pay the bills and help supplement their writing ability.
It's a funny world.
[00:04:23] Speaker B: It's really true. And I don't know if that has shifted a lot or if just fiction has always been a bit false on that front. I mean, I'm very grateful that I always wanted to teach full time because it's just incredibly fulfilling for me. And to be able to be a writing teacher means I get to spend every day talking story and character and working with young people to develop their voice. So it's incredibly fulfilling. And I know a lot of people, their goal is to become successful enough as a writer that they can quit their day job. But for me, that was never really, never really the goal because I did that for a while as a screenwriter. I was working enough and making enough money that that was the only job I had. But it's an inconsistent financial situation that for me does not lead to good writing. There's like a desperation that came from that. But now I'm just like, I get to write what I want to write and have a nice balance with it.
[00:05:18] Speaker A: That's awesome. Where did you get the passion for writing? I mean, obviously you mentioned, you said you wanted to teach, but was this a younger thing when you were a kid? Teenager and stuff like that. You wanted to write stories? Yeah, for sure.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: I actually was just back home visiting my family in Jersey and I've got a box of these old notebooks. Even when I was super young, I wrote a two page story for tremors three graboids revenge. So that tells you that this was before there was a tremors three. But I was obsessed with those first two movies. As a kid.
I wrote like a blade rip off called Edge. I was always very inspired by horror movies, writing my own stories.
But definitely, even though I was writing short stories, I moved quick. Film was my first passion and that's what I studied in school, but was always taking creative writing classes. I just never thought that I could ever write a full novel until some years later.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: I read on your website too, about how you grew up on goosebumps and are you afraid of the goosebumps books? And then are you afraid of the dark tv show and stuff like that? Actually, this past weekend, I've decided that every month for the next year, for I don't even know how long I'm going to do it, but I'm going to read goosebumps book over again as an adult from an adult's point of view and adult eyes and what I've lived through and so on because I've read them as a child. I was born in the mid 80s, so obviously I grew up with Arnold Stein. The name is synonymous with horror as a kid and stuff like that. But I was like, oh, I want to see these freaking hold up. I'm thinking about. It's like one of those things that I've talked to Adam Caesar about, clown of Cornfield. And I was like, your books are young adult horror, but the idea is that they should be read by people younger than what your thing is. It's not like the limit. You have to be in that age frame to be like, okay, you can look at this. No, this like an 80 year old person could read Connor McCornfield as I like horror and get it. I feel like the same with RL Stein and goosebumps. It's not going to be gross. It's not going to be over the top. It's going to be just enough to potentially give them a few kids, a few nightmares here and there, but not to the point where they're never going to want to be in the dark again or so on and so forth.
I don't know. It's well written. I was like, this is going to be so much fun, 100 and 2150 pages. Just bust through them in the weekend and have some fun reading these. And I'm like, they so hold up still.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: Yeah. I recently reread say cheese and die, which was one of my favorites. And he's so good at those quick chapters with the cliffhangers. And I wasn't consciously doing that when I wrote Candy Cane kills. But it was really interesting that my book is the second in the killer BHF series. And the first book, Melan Head Mayhem, had a review that said it's goosebumps for grownups. And I had already written my book by then, but when I looked at it, I was like, oh, it totally. I forgot how much I internalized that. When I went to write 150 page book, I was like, well, it's going to be short chapters. It's going to make sure that it flows in that goosebumps cliffhangery fashion. And that's been really fun to have it reflected back and realize, of course, that's ingrained in me from being such a kid obsessed with that story structure.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: It's just so funny. So I have like, obviously I read welcome to Dead House, and then I think, monster Blood, I'm going to read next, and I'm Sage season dies on that list of books I want to get through, and so on and so forth. It was just one of those things that I'm like, sometimes I just mentioned I read Mayfly this year. We talked to LEed. Like, that is the opposite of the book.
The intenseness that goes into CJ's book and what Errol Stein writes in something like, welcome to Deadhouse. But it's just fun. And it's like I said, it's like one of those things that I could just, it's almost a palate cleanser between books and so on and so forth. Plus, it wasn't until, I don't know, ten years ago that I even could read that well. I read a lot of comics and things like that, but me sitting down and actually reading an actual novel was like pulling teeth. And I got into falling into love with reading these things. And it's like, okay, it's nice to go back to when it was easier to read some things instead of picking up a Stephen King book that's 1200 pages long or something like that. So it's a nice little weekend getaway. And I was glad to see that you also grew up reading goosebumps books, which makes sense. I mean, if you're into horror stuff. Yes, that was under the age of like 40. You should probably have read goosebumps as a kid.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: Yes, that was just a defining feature of childhood. And yeah, I'm a big proponent of just accessibility with books and leaning towards the things that will currently bring you joy rather than anything of like, you should be reading this. There's no need for that. It should all be for fun. And yeah, lately I've just been gravitating more towards the novella format in general. As a reader and a writer, I don't know if it's just because my shrinking attention span or what, but novels are longer.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: Here's my thought, and you mentioned the whole short chapters and things like that. Like, I'm reading the new couple in five b from Lisa Unger. It comes out in March. And it's great. It's a great book so far, but it's like I find myself when I read, I'm like, okay, I want to get to the end of a chapter to just basically keep track of where I am. I can stop on any page and just move on, whatever. And the chapters are slightly longer than I expected or wanted. And so it's like I find myself forcing myself to potentially read faster to try to get to that ender of the chapter. I feel like I would be so much more accomplished if I could read a chapter and then do something, another chapter. And having the short chapters makes you almost fly through a book faster but still retain the information.
It's not like one of those things where I'm flying through it, I'm like, what was the book about again?
Something like candy cane kills. Speaking of that was like that. And also for the busy holiday season, so much shit going on. Like having a book that you can, I don't know, take off from reading 500 page books and read something like this. It was so nice to have.
[00:11:19] Speaker B: Thank you. Yeah, no, it was really gratifying to see a lot of people saying that they read it in one or two sittings over the holidays, like in front of the Christmas tree. And I was just like, that was my dream. Writing it was to create that cozy reading experience.
Yeah.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: The funny thing is also I'm more apt to read the book over again, if that makes sense, too. I'm picking up, I don't know, under the dome from Stephen King or something like that. It's like going to read that once. In all likelihood, you're potentially never going to read it again because there's so much to read out there and you're not going to pick the book that's 1200 pages long. You're going to pick a book that's a little bit more accessible and that's what's cool about this. But you started, your first novel that came out was cursed the reaper and curse the Reaper, I have the hardcover here right now was recommended to me by, I believe it was Stephen Graham Jones or it could have been.
[00:12:15] Speaker B: Yeah, it was. I remember that article on your website and I kind of lost my mind a little bit just seeing like cool, no big deal. Stephen Graham Jones recommending my book.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: Sometimes you feel like the fact that when someone knows you for something and then not only knows you and knows of you and potentially read your stuff or done something with you and then recommends it to someone else, that's like the other level. The fact that he even knew your book, it was probably like, oh, that's gratifying. That's pretty cool. But now that he's recommending it as one of his five books, you should read right now was pretty cool, honestly. Yeah.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: No, it meant the world. And he's just such an impressive human being and writer.
I'm such a fan and I'm grateful that he's been obviously a huge part of this wave of bringing slashers to the forefront in fiction right now. And I had no idea when I was writing Curse of the Reaper that because it came out not too long after my heart is a chainsaw. So there wasn't a huge slasher boom happening while I was writing it. And so I didn't know if that was a viable kind of market space. But it just very quickly now it's become pretty popular, which is great.
[00:13:37] Speaker A: Which is great. And I do think that what I will say to anybody, and I want to recommend that to anybody with Stephen Graham Jones, first of all, unbelievable, award winning New York Times best author, he also writes comics. So if anybody's interested in comics, he writes earth divers, which is amazing over at IDW.
But the fact that his trilogy, the first book, if you don't know slashers and you're big into reading my heart is a chainsaw has also the slasher 101 chapters, which kind of like gives a humongous synopsis of slashers over the past number of years. And it's like if you don't know much about the slasher world in movies, if you read this book, you're not only going to get a great novel, but you're also going to get knowledge based on the actual true stories of slashers, which is awesome too. So I was always recommending someone. I'm like, oh my slashers. Read my hires a chainsaw and then read whatever else you don't have to go ahead and read. Don't fear the reaper, but just go out there and read that one. So you get, not only you get a good story, we also get some little background on what slashers are all about.
[00:14:38] Speaker B: Yeah. And what's cool about it too is I feel like he's been part of.
Slasher is a genre that not everybody immediately gravitates toward.
I grew up on them and I've always loved them. So reading that book was like an encyclopedia of my own brain and just being, I didn't know that anybody else thought this deeply about this subgenre, knew all these movies. But there's so many people that are not huge Slasher fans that did not, as you said, grow up on them, but they get that access point and get to see like, oh, maybe there is something for me in this genre that I can enjoy and appreciate and that's the best, is constantly breaking down those barriers for readers.
[00:15:16] Speaker A: It's almost like he couldn't decide whether writing a nonfiction book about slasher history or writing a fiction book about a know J. Daniels. And so he's like, no, let's do both in the same. Give check both boxes off, sell a book and so on and so forth. But you mentioned slashers and so I'm guessing you grew up on slasher films.
You have a love for slashers and that's why curse the reaper was born. Is that what I'm guessing?
[00:15:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I think scream was my big entryway when I was nine or so. And it was just so much fun. It was just that sweet spot of mixing the kind of teen drama comedy with something super scary to me when I was that age. And it also similar to kind of how my heart is a chainsaw can do this in book form. Scream was like, here's the bibliography, here's the study sheet of all these movies. And so I got to go back and watch all the Halloween and Nightmare and Friday the 13th franchises and just found them so much fun. I just loved those ongoing franchises with the iconic slasher villain and the way that each one just got progressively more kind of zany, and the mythology just gets more and more compounded and convoluted and know, realizing, like, oh, that these were inspired by italian giallo films. So going back to Dario Argento, and it just kind of, like, one thing led to the next, and I was just an obsessive movie.
[00:16:48] Speaker A: Then you're obviously, like, you mentioned about being a screenwriter, know this book is like a crossover between a novel and there's screenwriting in it because there are pages in there from scripts, there's based in the movie industry and stuff like that. Was that your history as a right screenwriter? One of the reasons why this novel came to get like this, be like.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: This 100% because it started as a feature film screenplay that I was, like, a finalist at Austin Film Festival and got really great feedback. And this is such a common thing in the industry, is like, everybody loves it, nobody buys it. And I think at that time, this was way back in 2013, a lot of the response was, I love it, but there's almost, like, too much character development for me to sell this as a horror movie. So can you just cut out all the character development? And I was just like, no, that, to me, is so boring. And that's the exact opposite of what I was trying to do here. So it just sat on a shelf until I got to a point in my screenwriting career where I felt a little burned out and felt like I needed to refresh myself in some way. And that's when I realized, like, well, if I wrote that script as a novel, I could lean even deeper into character development. I could go even further into the psyches of these two characters. And it just all of a sudden made so much more sense, too.
[00:18:14] Speaker A: It's funny, too, because it'd be funny and funnier if it's eventually optioned for a movie. And the fact that you tried to sound on the screenwriter first and then a novel, and then it'd be like, wait, hold on. Where were you when the actual thing was being written as a screenwriter script?
[00:18:30] Speaker B: This hasn't been officially announced, and it won't be until, but it has been optioned for film development, which was kind of surreal for it to come full circle in that way.
[00:18:43] Speaker A: It's a crazy world. It's almost like I feel like there's a lot of people out there in the movie industry and the tv industry that just would rather have it be a book first so they can say it's adapted because of the fact that a you built in an audience, right? You already have all these people that like your book, Esquire rated it as one of the top books of 2022. Horror books, 2022.
It has this built in audience now that they can actually have a proven concept to it. But also, it's like, yeah, but it was a book first, so you guys should like this because everything is now was something else before it was something else.
It seems like they almost wanted it to go that way first, write it a book, and then we'll pick it up.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: No, and that was one of the practical reasons that I wrote it. I had sold an original series to Sci-Fi Network and spent a year in development writing a pilot script. And they bought it the idea because it was so original. And then a year later, they rebranded the network and said, we're actually only doing IP now. So they didn't make my show. And that's when I was like, okay, if IP is the only thing happening, can I create my own ip?
So far that's worked.
[00:19:51] Speaker A: Talking sidebar on that, the screenwriting side of things is, I'm guessing you've written things that have been optioned like that, or an option but picked up or purchased that never actually sees the light of day.
That probably happens a little bit more to people in the screenwriting and writing on tv and television and movies than it does in books. But what's that experience like that they had now had this story that you wanted to tell that they bought from you, but you actually don't ever get to make.
[00:20:19] Speaker B: I mean, it's a bummer. I will say that I'm very fortunate that I think that was. I mean, I've written so many scripts on spec that didn't sell, but I also had a run where a company was hiring me pretty consistently to write movies for them. They would give me the concept and I would pitch them the story and they'd say, cool, we're going to pay you to write it. Those were all mostly lifetime movie thrillers. There was one indie thriller called dismissed that had a bit of a bigger.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: Cast and was, I've seen dismissed and I have seen Danny Cam.
[00:20:54] Speaker B: Oh, man. Thanks for watching. I always do. The disclaimer of, like, this is one of the reasons I moved into books is because the final products are never quite matching the initial vision or the screenplay. So there is a lot of kind of heartache and disillusionment in the film and tv industry that I then channeled even deeper into the adapting curse of Reaper into book.
But what's ironic is that there's so many projects that didn't move forward in film and tv, like a tv pitch that I never sold, I then wrote as a short story that sold to a magazine and now is in development with a production company. Or that Sci-Fi tv. Even though I sold it, their ownership of it has lapsed and I wrote it as a flash fiction piece that just got published in a magazine. So now my agents can take that out to try to sell it again.
[00:21:55] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. And that's one of the reasons why having a professional being a teacher probably is nice, because it's like, if that all stuff comes to fruition, awesome. If not, I still could pay my mortgage, I can still pay my rent, I can still pay the car bills, whatever you mean because you have a steady job. So if anything comes to fruition, awesome. And if one day you have too much of that stuff comes to fruition and you can't handle both, then you'll deal with that then. But it is nice to have that. It gives you a little bit more freedom to have some fun and do what you want. In that sense, I'm guessing no 100%.
[00:22:27] Speaker B: It really is like the icing on the cake of just like. My primary goal is I want to enjoy the process of writing and get joy from that. If I'm not doing that, then what's the point? And then the extra thing is, if it can get published and I can have readers, all the better. But, yeah, I think I had heard an interview, actually, with Stephen Graham Jones, who's also a college writing professor, and he said something similar of feels like being a teacher for a day job. I think he said it kind of feels like cheating because it's the best possible balance. But he said, right now the balance works, but if the scales tip, he's a writer first and foremost. But, yeah, one of the other benefits is I get to bring that into the classroom. Like, quite literally bring in lessons from the front lines of all these industries and say, here's what I just experienced. Or like, I brought the first chapter of Candy Cane kills in, and we did an adaptation exercise where they adapted it into script pages, and we talked about, all right, what's the difference between these two mediums? What works in this one and doesn't in the other? How do you make changes? What do you lose in the process? So I'm always thinking of using that professional experience in the classroom to create new lessons for them.
[00:23:38] Speaker A: That's awesome. I love to hear that stuff. And it's cool because I'm guessing it's probably a fun thing for your students to also to be like, it's nice to have a teacher who has had published work, who's had both published work and made work in tv and movies, books. To have all of that and actually have, like, it's like when I used to be a bar manager, it was like, I wouldn't let make someone throw up, pick up, puke in the bathroom until I did it. I wouldn't be like, go clean that up. I was the one that did it first. And then once they saw me do it, be like, okay, my manager will do it now I can say for the rest of my life, long as I'm a bar manager, you have to do it because I've done it. But it's like one of those things that you actually have been in the trenches. You've done these things. You've written books, and you've pitched books to publishers, you've pitched scripts to people, stories to people. And so it might be like taking your class and be like, oh, yeah, this person's actually done this. This is pretty cool.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: Yeah. There is a level of legitimacy and, therefore, kind of trust of like, I've been through this. I know what the process is, even down to the basics of in screenwriting workshops of, like, part of your job is to know how to give and receive notes. And that's what we're practicing here. And it can't just be that movie sucks.
That's not valuable, constructive feedback. We have.
[00:24:52] Speaker A: Wait, that's how the Internet works, isn't it?
[00:24:54] Speaker B: Right. It's a lot of deprogramming on that.
[00:24:59] Speaker A: It's pretty funny.
Obviously, like I said, you have the history of screenwriting. You have the history now of writing novels. This deals a little bit of both in this book, but you also deal with addiction, and I don't know what the words are of it, but also aging out of Hollywood, in a sense, we live in a world of reboots and continuations and sequels and that. It honestly didn't really dawn on me until I read something like Curse of the Reaper, that there's a time where you can't continuously use the original.
Like, you have to almost reboot. I hate to use the comparison of Michael J. Fox, but doing a reboot with Michael J. Fox in it is practically impossible at this point in his life of back in the future, I should say. I don't know if I said that, but you could do something slightly different. I don't think we'd potentially see someone recasted as Marty McFly. But you might be able to use his kid or something along those lines as some sort know version of it. So you deal with a little bit of everything in this book. Not know slasher movies. And the book is a slasher as itself is the fact that you have addiction in there, recovery. You have, like I said, this aging out of Hollywood. I don't know what the actual terminology would be, but it's a little bit of everything in this book. It's not just the slay to head slasher.
[00:26:14] Speaker B: Yeah, that was part of the goal too, was I knew that it wasn't just going to be a straight up slasher and that I wanted it to be a character driven drama within the slasher million. I mean, it's more of a psychological thriller in structure and then it keeps building in towards that slasher third act, I'd say. But that was one of the things I wanted to preserve from the screenplay through the novel was like lean more into that.
Make us really care about these people so that it feels very real. I wanted also the contrast of the screenplay pages and excerpts get more and more campy. And the reaper in the movies is ridiculous and not scary. But by contrast, like seeing it in the real world as Howard is seeing manifestations of this character that feels more real, including the murders in the real world, don't feel as over the top. But it was fun to kind of play with that balance. And that for me is always the goal. How can I take elements of things that I love? I grew up watching Sundance indie drama movies as much as I did slasher movies. So I was like, why can't I make something that melds both? And then that kind of becomes my thing and it kind of carried into candy king kills. A lot of the reviews were talking about the character development as being like a pleasant surprise. Now that's the benefit for me of having written two books and getting reviews back to be able to see what people are responding to and be like, great. If you love that, that's what I love to write. So I'm going to keep leaning into that.
[00:27:55] Speaker A: It's one of those things that my wife reads a variety of books, but she tends to lean towards your romance novels, your cheesy things that I haven't been able to get into for multiple reasons. One of them is I think she thinks that you can't care for the characters in a slasher or a horror book. There's this weird thing that obviously slashers are the villains in a sense that it's hard to care for these people. But I felt like in both candy cane kills and in Christ the Reaper, I cared what happened to them. Whether that the bad people or good people or whatever, it's like you felt like you wanted them to succeed. Whether it succeed at killing people or succeed at changing their lives or going a different direction, you want to see them make their way through the book. And that's something that, with your character development in the beginning, the first few parts of each book is so good. That made me actually care for these characters and care see what happened to them.
[00:28:50] Speaker B: Thank you. It means a lot, and it really is, I think, a big difference in the movie versus book stuff, because it's harder to do that in a screenplay and in a film, especially to do it with as many characters. For example, like in Candy King kills, we get into twelve different characters heads in 150 pages. And to be able to dip into their interior life and experience and hopes and fears is much more of a benefit of a novel than it is a screenplay. So as I write in this new medium, I'm like, I'm going to enjoy and lean into that because it's not something I really get to do in screenplays.
[00:29:37] Speaker A: Curse of the Reaper came out, as I mentioned, in 2022 in hardcover. Is it available in paperback right now?
[00:29:44] Speaker B: It is not yet. The publisher has still not put out the paperback. It is available in ebook and audiobook. And a lot of the reviews of the audiobook have been very positive because the Eric Alfie did a great job with the narration on that.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: I think that's one of the reasons why. There's two reasons why I like to consume.
I have a two and a half year old, I have a day job, I have this. So there's a lot that goes into my life that I have to do, and I want to spend time with my wife and my family and all that stuff. So it's hard for me to always sit down and just focus on. And plus I read comics and all that stuff as well. So a lot of times I'm thinking to myself, like in the car, I drive about 25 minutes into my office is wasted time, in my opinion. Obviously, I have to get to my office, but it's just sitting there listening to music or the radio. It's like, what do I get out of this? So a lot of times I'm like, okay, I'm going to read an audiobook, listen to audiobook to and from the office. If I'm doing dishes in the kitchen, I'm listening to an audiobook. Because I can, obviously just scrubbing dishes you can focus more on. Maybe there's a couple of dishes that come through, not that clean, but I do that. I want to read the book because I like physically sitting down and reading the book. But I also think that the audiobook takes up the time that you can't physically read books, but also gives me the ability afterwards to kind of give a full, great review and perspective of what this book is about when you have the narration and reading it yourself. Because I do feel like there's some books that I've, like, I'm glad I listened to this audiobook, because if I didn't listen to this audiobook, I might not have gotten the same experience out of it. Because the narrating of the book gives you that character feel that you can also take into when you read it. So if so, one emphasizes certain words or does certain dialect or certain whatever. You didn't take that into your mind when you go to read the book the rest of the way and keep that in it. So audiobooks are great for anybody who doesn't really know about audiobooks or read through audiobooks.
[00:31:29] Speaker B: Yeah. No, and I am only learning about it since I've become an author and started listening to them more and realizing, first of all, what an incredible art form it is for these performers is to be able to inhabit all the characters. I think my previous misconception was like, oh, audiobooks are just somebody reading the book. Like, no, this is an audio drama performance. And they're finding voices for each of these characters. And it's an incredible experience to be able to kind of immerse in a book in that way.
[00:32:05] Speaker A: And I think there's just audible originals, too. Like, Adam Caesar just had one this year, influencer, which is absolutely, I think. I think the book would have been great, too, if it came out in an actual printed novel. But I do think that the cast that he had, or audible put together, there's like three or four people that were in this book, I think, added to the whole experience of what this book was all about. And so there is this, like I said, depending on who you get. Sometimes I've listened to audiobooks and I'm like, did someone listen to this before they put it out?
A, the recording of it is horrid, and b, this person. Why would you do this dialect the entire time? I understand you're trying to get across the character, but I can't understand a word this person is saying.
It's one of those things that someone was just like, we got to get an audiobook out there. Let's throw it out there. Not naming names or books, but it's just funny how sometimes that's like that. Curse of the Reaper is definitely not like that. Candy Cane Kills is also not like that because I did read Candy Cane kills both physically and audiobook as well. And did Candy Cane kills come out of your success with Curse the Reaper, or was this already in the making? When cursed the Reaper was released in some ways.
[00:33:15] Speaker B: So basically the way it happened was I had written a short story called won't last long, and I sold it to shortwave books, to shortwave magazine. They have an online magazine. And in talking to Alan Lestuffka, the editor there, through that process, he was like, hey, I wanted to throw this pitch at you for this killer VHS series that I'm doing. We have the first book.
Basically, it's going to be novellas, individual authors for each one. Throwback to those 80s VHS covers you used to see. I'm going to package them in blockbuster type boxes. Everyone's going to get a membership card. Does this sound up your alley? And I was like, well, yeah, because he had read Curse of the Reaper and was like, this feels like it's probably in your wheelhouse. So do you want to pitch an idea for something?
And he told me, because it was the second book, he's like, yours would probably come out in the November December timeline. And that was when I was like, so could I do a Christmas horror? And he was like, yeah, what do you want to do? And I didn't have any ideas at the time. I just knew that sounded fun to me.
But candy Cane, C-A-I-N was the first thing that came to me and then was like, okay, if that's the name of the slasher, who is. Is, what is the legend, the lore? And I kind of built the character first and then the story around it, and it was probably the fastest I've ever outlined anything in my life. It just all of a sudden I just saw it. Like I was watching a movie in my head and transcribing the outline and sent it to Alan. And he was like, you understood the assignment.
[00:34:52] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:34:53] Speaker B: Let's do it.
[00:34:56] Speaker A: That's so awesome to hear that. It's a fun thing. I'm a big proponent. People make fun of me. They're like, oh, Christmas is Christmas, and so on and so forth. But I'm big into campy Christmas horror movies, slasher movies. I loved watching all those this Christmas. Like, I watched Rudolph with my wife and my son and all that stuff. But on the side I'd be watching silent night, deadly night. You know, those kind of movies. I thought it was just, they're unbelievably fun because it seems like everybody thinks that slashers and horror movies happen only around Halloween. Like people only get killed around Halloween. And that's not true. These movies take place all over or summertime during summer camp or whatever. And I'm like a horror Christmas thing. Stories can definitely revolve around Christmas and be horrify, horrifying. And that to me was like, it gives me something to read, especially in novella format. Something to read every Christmas. Like you do a Christmas movie and you watch a Christmas movie and get something different out of it. I think it's exciting how it came out right around that time around Christmas. And like I said, we talked a little bit off recording, but we were supposed to record prior to Christmas. My hope was that we get it out and that people had like a week or two before Christmas. They could buy it and read it. But we're going to go now is that you can do Christmas in July, right? You can read it this summer or you can pick it up now so that you can read it next Christmas. And we ended up having a huge storm here and it was funny. So I emailed you and I was like, yeah, I don't know if we're going to be able to do this. The storm, da da da. I had recorded earlier in the morning and I literally was saying thanks for coming on and the power went out and so it was like, I finished the recording and the power went out and I was like, that's like the podcasting God ods over watching over me and then it came back on like a half an hour later. I'm like, well, is that it? Is that all? We're going to lose power for today. But I was like, I don't want to risk it. So I emailed you and it was like, yeah, we should probably just delay this and maybe do it in January and so on and so forth. And we were supposed to record like 03:00 my time and it ended up like 320. The power went back off again and didn't come back on for three days. So it was like 20 minutes in and it would have been like rolling. We would have been awesome. Some talk. This has been great. It would have cut off. I would have had to do it now anyway. And so it was a great call to do that, but I'm so glad we did we missed Christmas.
[00:37:13] Speaker B: No. And that was one of the things with this book. We knew going in was like, okay, well, it's going to have a big, we're going to push it for Christmas, obviously, but we don't know how much people are going to read it after Christmas. Except, yes, we're going to do a big push, Christmas in July. But that was part of it, too, is just know that, as you said, it's a novella and it's one that every Christmas, and gratefully, a lot of the reviewers have said that, that they're like, I'm adding this to my yearly read list because we horror fans love to have that coziness of like, I know this story. I want to settle back into it, enjoy it.
So it's just kind of part of the trade off of just focusing in on a specific season and just being like, but it's going to be every season, we'll be there for you.
[00:37:59] Speaker A: And I'm guessing you said you hadn't read Melon head mayhem yet, or had you?
[00:38:06] Speaker B: No, I read it. I can't remember at what stage I had read it. I maybe had already done the outline, so I didn't know exactly what I mean. I'd seen the COVID design and that was a big selling point. I was like, oh, if this is what the covers are going to look like, awesome. But I did read Melanin Mayhem at some point and loved it and just loved the critters throwback feature vibes. Alex did a great job with it and it just really kind of set the tone for the series that Alan is building with the killer VHS. And a couple more have been announced now that are coming out next year.
That is just like every author has a different kind of take because the other factor is each one has to have some kind of sort of found footage element to it and deal with some kind of tape or audio thing or film. But yeah, that kind of has a nice through line to it. So it all feels like it's of.
[00:38:59] Speaker A: A universe you're in the thick of. Obviously, this book came out in November, so you're still in the thick of promoting that. Now it's been out. If someone asks you about what books you've been released now, your latest release is Candy Cane kills, so some people may have not heard it yet. Can you get a little synopsis, little elevator pitch of what Candy Cane kills is?
[00:39:17] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So Candy Cane kills tells the story of Austin, who's a teenage boy, and he has younger sister Fiona. Their parents are dragging them from LA to a remote cottage in the snowy wilderness around big bear to try to mend broken bonds. The parents have been on the verge of divorce for a while. He and his sister are at odds. And unfortunately, things get even more tense when they discover that ten years ago, a family died in this house that they'renting on Christmas day. And it is known as the candy Cane killings.
And that this legendary killer candy cane might be back for some more Christmas mayhem.
[00:40:07] Speaker A: Yeah, the book, like I said, you followed Melon head mayhem, which, again, they're not connected, so don't feel like you need to go out there. I recommend you go out and reading every killer vhs book that's out there, including the ones that are coming out, but you don't need to. That's what's great about it, is that you can actually pop into one if you like, the author pop out. If you like the theme behind each one, you can go in and read those, which is also pretty cool. But, like someone like myself, I'm going to own every one of them because I need to have that line up in my shelf that has, like. It's one of those weird things, though. Like, do I put this with your books or do I put it in its own little section? It's going to be.
[00:40:49] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:40:49] Speaker A: Difficult decision to make, especially when there's more than there. Now that there's only two, it's like, okay, whatever. But once there's like three, four or five of them, it's like they got to be all in one spot. Like, right, with the goosebumps books all got to go in one spot, so on and so forth. But they've got teleportasm Joshua Milliken coming out and also Cicada from Tanya Powell coming out. Those have been announced. And then there's been teasing of a follow up.
It's like, we can say that because at least publishing has put out a picture with the candy cane kills and a two on it, and that's it. It's like when I freaked out when Apple TV posted a picture of what's his face from.
Now I can't even think of the name of the show.
Adam. What's his name?
[00:41:37] Speaker B: Adam. Adam Scott.
[00:41:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Adam Scott from. That's that show.
[00:41:41] Speaker B: Severance.
[00:41:42] Speaker A: Severance, yeah. Twitter on X. Apple TV posted just a picture of Adam Scott from severance, and that was it. And I'm like, you mother, what are you doing to me? This is just teasing me. I want to know when it's coming out. I want to know all this stuff, same thing with candy. It's like you just finished reading the book and I was a little behind, obviously, because I read it, not behind, I guess a couple of weeks behind.
Was that when you announced this thing? I'm like, oh, I'm excited. But obviously it's going to be a while before anything even officially gets announced. And so now you have to sit there. But again, because it's a novella, it's going to be easy to read this one over again when there's more from Candy Cane in the future, which is awesome.
[00:42:20] Speaker B: Yeah, it's been really great to work with Alan for so many reasons, including that he is a brilliant graphic designer and we got to have a lot of fun thinking about, okay, when do we want to tease it? And then we decided, like, day after Christmas, let's drop it and what's the image going to be? And he had had the idea of like two candy canes and I was like, what if we do a candy cane broken in the shape of the number two? And that's the only, we toyed with the idea of putting some blood in there, but it just looked so nice and clean. And the broken aspect just adds.
We both were blown away by the response. I'm so grateful that folks, even that soon after the first one came out were so excited that there would be a sequel. And that really was encouraging to be like, great.
Yeah, it's the dream as a slasher writer to get to write a sequel.
[00:43:13] Speaker A: Sequel.
I'm guessing the original plan from shortwave was just to sell individual ones. Was it the success of this one that the people liking it so much, they're like, okay, now we have to go back to this and do something else. My guess is that you weren't going to do another one when this was originally pitched to you and done to you.
[00:43:30] Speaker B: Yeah, it was always intended to be a one off, but with the caveat. Alan had always said there could be a sequel if it makes sense, which means if it's successful enough, if it seems like people would want that. So the response was pretty clear. So I had been noodling on what the sequel might look like, but never fully outlined it until we had the conversation of like, okay, if we do this, I want to make sure that I, as the author, feel like the sequel deserves to exist. And so once I cracked, especially, like, the ending of the sequel, I was like, okay, now I know for sure that this has to happen. We got to do it.
[00:44:16] Speaker A: And that's awesome. And that leads me to question are you planning, and this is like I said, you don't have to reveal any secrets. Is there more in the curse of the reaper world that you would like to explore? Or is this like, you don't have to say anything official or anything like that, but is this something that because it is a slasher, that is something that you would potentially want a sequel to it? Or is it just basically like, okay, I like the ending, I like everything about it, and it's time for a different book.
[00:44:42] Speaker B: Yeah, gratefully. Like folks, there are readers who want a sequel to that one. And I have some ideas of where it could go. And at the same time there is sort of a, I'm very happy with where the first one ended. I think right now the focus is to hopefully have that film adaptation happen because that's the other thing that a lot of people responded to was how I want to see this as a movie. And I also love people being like, no, but I want to watch all eight night of the Reaper films.
[00:45:17] Speaker A: Yeah, no one wants to actually see Crystal Reaper. They want to see the Reaper films.
It actually would be a cool marketing behind it to do not each individual, all eight films, but like trailer trolley films, be able to go to YouTube and put on trailers of all those films as the film comes out. Like a trailer for a film that's not about the or that's in a film which has been done. Who did that recently? Didn't they do it like a couple of years ago? Someone put a trailer out. I know, Thanksgiving.
[00:45:44] Speaker B: I mean, I'm thinking of Thanksgiving, but.
[00:45:46] Speaker A: Yeah, there was one before that. Maybe that was it where they just put a trailer. It was in another movie and they made a movie of a trailer.
[00:45:53] Speaker B: I almost said Thunder Road, Tropic Thunder did a lot of those fake trailers before it. But yeah, I mean, my thought for Curse of the Reaper would be, it would be great to do a series of eight one shot comics for each of the because then it's way less budget and you could really do the insane gore effects without worrying about.
[00:46:19] Speaker A: That.
[00:46:19] Speaker B: Would make a nice little omnibus at the end.
[00:46:21] Speaker A: But red band trailers for movies that are actually not being made, it's just fake trailers. We can't actually show you the real trailer. We actually have to put the red band on it because it's actually that gory and graphic. But yeah, so you have candy Cane kills, obviously there hopefully more in the world. Again, there's a teaser out there of that. Are you working on other book projects in the background or is it focusing on teaching like you mentioned, or is it more screenwriting that you're focusing on right now?
[00:46:51] Speaker B: I have a new novel that's out on submission, so looking for a new home for the next novel and then developing the book idea after that. So my focus now has been on the fiction front and then short stories, like I just had a drabulf published at Horror Tree and a short story and the upcoming debut issue of Monstrous magazine.
For me, that's the goal, is to get stuff published and then have conversation with my film and tv folks about like, okay, is this something we want to take out into the film and tv world?
It's just been kind of the group that makes sense for me at the moment. Rather than writing something on spec I did for Candy Cane kills because of the writers Guild strike, we couldn't take the book out on submission to potential producers. So in that waiting period, I was like, all right, I'm going to write the screenplay myself so that when we do take it out, it's already ready to go.
So that just went out as well. And fingers crossed that it finds a home because I think that one would, it's just such an easy, it's the easiest screenplay I've ever written because the adaptation is just pretty clean.
[00:48:12] Speaker A: I think as you've seen over the past couple of years, with things like Thanksgiving, with things like Violent Night and something like that, Silent Night. Over the past couple of years, there's these movies that have come out over the past five, six years that are holiday themed slashers or horror movies that people want. People want to see these things. I think it's one of those things that, I don't think that candy Cane kills as a summer camp story. Remove all the holiday aspects of it would be good, but it might not be one of those things that people are like, I really want this.
That story could easily be translated into a big blockbuster. I say blockbuster. No, horror movies nowadays are that much of a blockbuster. But blockbuster in the world of horror movies, I should say. I think people would want to see that. I think that's proven that there's this need for it and want for it. And so, yeah, you're right, that would be a pretty easy sell in my opinion.
[00:49:03] Speaker B: But again, I hope so. Thank you. No, and I'm also grateful to see that we've had this spat of elevated horror with the a 24 of it all.
But there is also now after movies like Barbarian and Megan and Thanksgiving, there have been some real successes with kind of more fun, campy, just outrageous horror and I love that. I'm so happy that those sort of, the balance of humor and horror is coming, finding success as well. I mean, horror is always successful at the box office, but I'm glad that that tone that I think Candy King kills fits into that sort of barbarian Megan arena Thanksgiving, that it's just like over the top but also fun. Like you want to go and laugh and shout with your friends and have a good time.
Those are the best movies for me. Seeing Freddie versus Jason was my first time seeing either a nightmare on Elm street or a Friday the 13th in the theater. And it was a packed theater and it was so much fun. It was just like cheering in the crowd and just like, that's the kind of energy I want from a movie screening.
[00:50:28] Speaker A: People like it. I mean, it's taken over pop culture in general. Horror itself is like, I've met a number of horror legends because of comic book conventions.
They just now are out on the convention scene again. I've met, you know, I've met Roger Jackson, voice of Ghostface. I've met these people who have been these horror slasher people in these movies at comic book conventions, which is saying that they're just part of the pop culture zeitgeist that's out there. And I think that's cool. And so I think that there is a need and want for horror. And, you know, that's like, horror books are huge now, too. That's a resurgence in the sense of it. You mentioned the slasher, slasher book subgenre that people are liking with. We just mentioned, know this Stephen Graham Jones books.
It's exciting to see this go. And I'm excited that, like I said, something about this would be so much fun to watch.
Forget it. It could be on Netflix or whatever, those places. It doesn't have to be in theater. Theater would be fun, though, because I think going out in the holiday season when everybody's out there to watch the holiday blockbuster, like, no, I'm going to go watch candy cane kills over here. I want to watch this flasher movie over here. Not this Aquaman two.
[00:51:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I wouldn't be mad if Shudder wanted to make it because I could see that being a home for it. But yeah, the big screen is always the dream.
[00:51:55] Speaker A: You got me all the feels inside hearing that shutter noise, the shuttered logo coming on the beginning of the king. I could hear it in my head and I was like, this looks nice.
I also feel like just thinking that we mentioned Halloween, Thanksgiving, at some point they're going to come up with a movie just called Christmas. Right. It's going to be a horror movie based around Christmas. Right. I feel like we just need all the holidays.
[00:52:16] Speaker B: Just name just plainly what the holiday is. Yeah.
[00:52:19] Speaker A: 4 July. They already had Independence Day. They've had Independence Day. So there's that.
[00:52:23] Speaker B: Oh, that's true.
[00:52:24] Speaker A: Independence Day, Halloween, like Arbor Day. We've had Valentine's Day.
[00:52:29] Speaker B: Valentine and my bloody Valentine.
[00:52:32] Speaker A: But I feel like it just needs to be called Valentine's Day, though. And it needs to trick everybody because they all either think it's like some sort of love story and then somebody murdered. Yes.
Straight up pulling the rug out from underneath them.
But yeah. So that's awesome. I'm so happy that people have loved first the reaper, because again, I missed the boat. I didn't get really into reading novels again until about a year or two ago.
I was just so far behind on things and I was reading a book a month maybe, here and there. Now I'm into the point where I just can't put them down. I'm going to be like 15 novels in this month.
[00:53:10] Speaker B: That's amazing.
[00:53:12] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a lot. But it's fun. I'm excited to start the next one. It's fun to do. And then I'm talking to more authors nowadays too, which is pretty fun. But I'm glad I read it. And again, I'll tell you right now, Stephen Graham Jones is the reason I read.
So that's, there's that. You know what saying. It's the same thing I mentioned to CJ about CJ Leed about Mayfly, because Adam Caesar and Stephen Graham Jones both had them mayfly on their list. So it was really cool to see that too. And Candy Cane kills Holiday horror slasher. I love that. It's amazing. It was my 10th favorite book of the year. I know. That's top ten.
[00:53:50] Speaker B: That's amazing. That's huge.
[00:53:53] Speaker A: It slid right in there.
Again, I think it's the novella part of it. I think you're writing. I love your writing. That's to be said now, but also, like I said, the killers of vhs stuff are awesome. I'm in for every single one of them. And that's a benefit also of having the different writers is the fact that now shortwave is going to have followers now that are followers of you read Melon head Mayhem in the future ones, and all your other authors are potentially going to read the other ones because they follow a specific author, which is pretty cool. Having a different author write all the different stories is pretty cool. Yeah.
[00:54:26] Speaker B: So really it's a win win where people get to discover new authors or if Candy King kills is their first book they've read of mine, then they're like, okay, cool. I'm going to go check have curse of the reaper and it just kind of expands out from there.
[00:54:38] Speaker A: It's exciting and if you want, you can watch dismissed.
Tell you right now, that kid creeped me out. I will say it was definitely, I think stole the show in a sense, even though he was basically one of the main characters, but just like seeing. And then I now see when I see the picture of the COVID of the movie, I'm looking at the kid, I'm like, oh God, this kid creeps me out.
[00:55:00] Speaker B: He did such a great job. Dylan Sprouse, former Disney kid ironically is kind of like similar to Trevor in Curse of the Reaper. He was a Disney child star who he chose to do dismiss because he wanted to do something different, something darker.
[00:55:19] Speaker A: Is he up there in the running for potentially.
[00:55:24] Speaker B: You got at least audition of Meta?
[00:55:27] Speaker A: Yeah. You got at least audition for the role, right? I mean, you got to get him up there to do that. But no, I like the movie. It was a good movie. Nanny Cam felt like a movie that was made for not me. Yeah, but it was good there. And again, same thing.
I was captivated during it, so obviously it grabbed me there. Not that I'm going to go back and rewatch it again, I will tell you that much.
[00:55:51] Speaker B: No, sorry. That's quite all right.
[00:55:54] Speaker A: I brought you way up with saying how much I like curse the reaper in Candy Cane kills and then just shoved it right down.
I got to pick you back up, right? Here we go. No. Yeah, so they're both available. Candy Cane Kills is available.
You can only buy this the way it is now. Right? Can you get it as the whole package again with the box and all that stuff from shortwave? I figured that out.
[00:56:18] Speaker B: I think if you order direct from shortwave, you might be able to get the package, the whole thing. Yeah, but yeah, it's available in ebook and audiobook as well.
And yeah, the audiobook is only like three or three and a half hours.
[00:56:33] Speaker A: It's a super fast read. Yeah, they say the pit print like 172 pages, but it's really like you're having acknowledgments and all that stuff at the back on the book. But it's a super fast read. You can read it in a weekend and just because Christmas is over does not mean you can't read it now get on it. Read it.
[00:56:50] Speaker B: Cozy winter. Yeah.
[00:56:52] Speaker A: And then Curse of the Reaper is obviously available wherever books are sold.
The bookshop.org is a great one because you can get your local shop, your local bookstore gets credit for that, which is pretty awesome. And I think it's also available on Libro FM. If you're looking for an audiobook version of this, Libro FM has it. And your local bookstore, as long as you enter them in, gets a kickback for listening it through there, too, which is pretty cool. So you can support local. However, my caveat to the whole thing ever is if you can't get to those places and do those things, just buy it on Amazon. I'm sorry, I hate to support big stores and corporations like that, but in the end, the more people that buy these books, the more the publishers see that Brian is worth investing time, energy and money into. And so just buy the book in general. Buy it for gifts. This should be a stocking stuffer in all your people's stockings next year.
[00:57:48] Speaker B: Yeah, if you're trying to get rid of family, that's a good.
[00:57:51] Speaker A: Exactly. You don't care. I don't like slashers. I don't care. You're getting candy cane kills for Christmas. That's what you're getting. No, but yeah, and look for the future. Hopefully there's some more coming from Candy Cane kills. We'll see. We'll leave it at that.
And yeah, I'm hoping your next book gets picked up soon so we can hear about that and start publishing or start promoting that, because I'm looking forward to it and I'm hoping I see a movie at some point. I appreciate it.
[00:58:16] Speaker B: Thank you so much, Justin. It's been a pleasure chatting with you.
[00:58:19] Speaker A: Absolutely. And don't be a stranger. You'll have to come back on at some point in the future. Maybe next Christmas we'll come on, we'll just talk about horror Christmas movies in general.
Promote this.
[00:58:28] Speaker B: Maybe there will be something more to talk about next year.
[00:58:31] Speaker A: Maybe. Exactly. We got to do a set a date and then cancel that date because something's going to come out in between the number of times I've recorded things and literally hang up and like an hour later, news about what I recorded about happened.
Are you serious right now? I don't think I can say anything. And then we stop recording and like an hour later it's on Associated Press. I'm like, what the heck?
But yeah, so check those books out. We have candy Cane kills and curse of the reaper. Recommend curse the reaper, recommended by Stephen Graham Jones, everybody. So if you're a Stephen Graham Jones fan, I really appreciate we taking the time to talk to me, Brian, good luck in all your endeavors, and we'll talk again soon. Okay, man.
[00:59:15] Speaker B: Thank you so much, man. It was a pleasure. You have a good day.
