[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back to the Capes and Tights podcast right here on capesandtights.com dot. I'm your host, Justin Soderbergh. This episode is proudly brought to you by our friends over at Galactic Comics and collectibles on Hammond street in Bangor, Maine. But you can visit
[email protected] or find them over on social media. But this episode is Josh winning, acclaimed author of books like the Shadow Glass Burn the negative in his upcoming book heads will roll. Who? Which shelves on July 30, 2024, right here in the United States and a week later in the UK. But Josh is a senior film writer, has been a senior film writer at Radio Times, and has written for total film, Gay Times, Den of Geek and more. He's been on the set to cover things like the Walking Dead and Game of Thrones. He's even met Kermit the Frog. But no, he's a crinity acclaimed author and one of our favorite books of 2024 so far. Heads will roll his shelves July 30, so check this episode out. But before you do, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, bluesky, Reds, all that stuff, as well as subscribe rate review, all that stuff on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, and all your major podcasting platforms. And as always, you can find much more content
[email protected] dot. But this episode is Josh winning, critically acclaimed author of the book heads will roll, hitting shelves July 30. Enjoy, everyone.
Welcome to the podcast. Josh, how are you today?
[00:01:31] Speaker B: I'm good. Thank you so much for having me. It's an absolute honor. And I think you were one of the first people to review heads will roll. So it's like a double honor.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: It's one of those weird things. And you get advanced copies of how soon? You know, sometimes publishers, especially on Netgalley, because they send you that email that says you've been approved. Enjoy the book. Yada yada. Usually it says like, tag the publisher in it, so on and so forth. Um, and some of them, like Josh Mallarman's horror movie, it said, like, do not post anything until June 1 because they want to make sure all of the stuff is in the month of the book release. Yeah, and other ones, they just are arbitrary. Like, whenever you post it, post it. So sometimes I'm like really excited to read a book. And I'm like, I just, let's just get it out there. Let's just get it out there. I want other people to buy the book. And so, like, I really liked it. So let's put it out there, and then there's other ones that, you know, you try to figure out a month before, six weeks before. So it's always difficult. But, yeah, I was probably one of the first early ones out there because I was super excited to read it after reading burn the negative, and I wanted people to know how good heads will roll was, so I got it out there. And you know what? It worked out pretty well.
[00:02:40] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. Well, actually, it's on the. It's on the book cover, which is awesome. So thank you for that. But also, it's great for authors because obviously, we're quite a nervous people by nature, so it's nice to get a little bit of early sort of approval, I guess.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: Yeah, as long as it's good review. You don't want that negative review going in early. You're like, ah, man, is this how it's gonna go? I talked to another author, a writer who has a graphic novel coming out, and I was just like, yeah, is it unnerving reading some of those early reviews? Like, I just worked so long to make this thing. Are people actually gonna like this thing?
And he was like, yeah, it's a little stressful, but it's good to get those couple good ones. And you're like, okay, there's gonna be negative ones. You know that, Josh. There's gonna be people out there who don't like your book. But that's just, you can't write a book.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: They're wrong.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: Exactly. There are other opinions. Even if their opinions are wrong. No, because I got villainized on a review I did. I was going through and reading all Stephen King's books, and I'm gonna do some reviews and so on, and I got villainized from a person who emailed me directly, which is kind of interesting. Not a comment on social media or a comment on the website, but an email directly saying that, why do I hate Stephen King? And I was like, oh, that's an interesting statement to make. Why do I hate Stephen King? Because I didn't like the book sell. I wasn't a fan of the book sell from Stephen King, and he thought that I should like everything Stephen King wrote and that I'm never going to be as good as Stephen King, and that's why I didn't like it.
[00:04:18] Speaker B: Wow. Okay. Someone's drawing some pretty bold conclusions there.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: And I was just like, I'm pretty sure that Steven even himself knows that not every one of his books are going to be extremely well liked. There's probably some books that he wishes he didn't write, and it just, you know, it happens. It's not going to be 100% approval, but, yes, getting an earlier review that's good. Is always a.
This is good. Okay. We're going to be okay.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: Yeah, it's going to be okay. That first one. Yeah.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Yeah. So let's jump into, like, some more, like. So people who don't know who josh winning is, like, do you. Have you been a horror fan? Have you been a fan of literature and reading and writing most of your life, or is this something that came up on later in life, a little bit of background on how you got into writing some horror books?
[00:05:04] Speaker B: Oh, how far back do you want to go? Because, I mean, I pretty much go.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: Ahead as much as you want to do.
[00:05:11] Speaker B: Okay.
I mean, as a kid, I was writing basically, so I started extremely young, and a big thing that I used to do was I would rewrite books that I didn't think that, you know, that didn't work for me. So, like, I would maybe rewrite the ending, or I would take out the scenes that I felt were boring.
You know, obviously, nobody saw these apart from my family, but that was, like. That's kind of where I started, was taking books I loved and then trying to do my version of them, and then also, obviously, coming up with my own stuff as well. And, like, if you want to go really back. I was determined to be an olympic gymnast as a child, and that, sadly, did not come to be.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: You're not competing in the Olympics this summer. It's not.
[00:06:01] Speaker B: That's not even not competing in the Olympics. No. Maybe in the, you know, back. The back aching Olympics, but, yeah, I think I've always written. I've always loved stories. I love. I've loved stories in all their many different forms.
So I never really distinguished between movies and books and tv shows. It was all part of this joyful well, of storytelling that I loved and still do love. And so, yeah, I just. I kind of have always written. I've always written, and when I was really looking to actually get into publishing and trying to make it as an author, after university, I went to see my lecturer to say I wanted to be an author, and she kind of looked at me a bit funny and said, well, have you thought about journalism instead? And I kind of hadn't really, because I just. I equated journalism with newspaper, like, hard news, breaking news.
Lots of very intelligent people work in those places, and they are extremely well versed in the world in various ways, which I'm sadly not. So I kind of thought about it, and then I realized that actually, one of the biggest things that I was ingesting as a consumer was magazines, Sci-Fi movie magazines, and, like, fantasy movie magazines, film magazines, total film.
And so that spurred me into the world of journalism. And I really have really loved being a journalist, especially working as a film journalist, getting to do set visits and interview people and see great films. But I've always wanted to be an author as well. And I think those two things aren't mutually exclusive. I think that I wouldn't have made it if I can say that I've made it. I wouldn't have got this far as an author if I hadn't been a journalist, because I learned so many things about writing and the craft of writing through journalism.
So, yeah, that's, that's me on sort of writing. But, yeah, horror. Horror has always been a huge thing in my life.
Started out with, for me, my early horror stuff was Jim Henson.
So his tv series, the storyteller with John Hurt, that there's some really great horror stuff in there. His movies, the Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, they've got a great vein of darkness running through them, as do many of those sort of dark fantasy films from the eighties, like, never ending story.
And so, yeah, I've just always loved horror, and that hasn't changed.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: Essentially, it shows in multiple facets of your, you know, the love for storytelling in movies. I mean, if you think about, like, the shadow Glass has that movie connection to it as well as obviously burn, the negative does. And then I even wrote in our review about how this, like, felt like a horror movie in, in book format with heads will roll, and so it shows and oozes from that. But your JIm Henson love really oozed out in the shadow Glass, I'll tell you that much, because that was basically like you were writing a JIm HenSon story, in a sense, with, with the shadow Glass characters being, you know, inspired by the dark crystal type characters and things like that. And I actually, two years ago, my wife and I went to New York City on vacation, and there was a, there was a art museum there that had a huge walking Dead exhibit, and I'm a huge walking Dead fan. So they had, like, you know, Lucille from the Moose, the tv show, and they had, like, you know, Daryl's jacket and things like that all on display. They had all 193 issues of the comic book on a wall, which was really kind of cool. And, but one of the things they had in a different level of the museum was actual props from the dark crystal, which I thought was pretty fascinating to see in real life, to see those things. And they're creepy.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, yeah. The Skeksis, they are. They are not nice creatures to look at, definitely. We actually had a similar exhibit in London that was for the Netflix series.
It was at the BFI, the British Film Institute. And they had sort of lots of props from the tv show and included this amazing book that they'd created for the show that was like a folding triangle book. And the level of detail that they put into those props is just unbelievable. Like, the level of love and care and dedication that goes into that stuff is just mind blowing. And it can never be anything other than hugely inspiring. It inspires so many creative people in so many different ways. People who do cosplay, they create these amazing, immaculate costumes based on these properties.
So, yeah, like, yeah, I'm right there with you. It's just. It's phenomenal stuff.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: It's. It's phenomenal. And it's also, I can't believe how I wasn't more scared watching this movies as a kid. I feel like I should have been more frightened. But it's also now crossed platforms, in a sense, and Jim Henson's storytelling is being explored now. And there's. There's a boom. Studios has a comic book series that's come out over the past few years that includes the thing they're rereleasing or releasing new. I can't remember re releasing or raising new stuff from the dark crystal in comic book format as well. Coming up here, I just saw in one of the previous catalog. So, like, this crossed, you mentioned the whole storytelling as a whole. I feel like that's the way the world is also moving. It's like it's, you know, books are being written to hopefully be adapted comics the same way. You know, there's movies being adapted into comic format, or there's still people out there doing novelizations of adaptations of movies. And so when we talked to Joshua Milliken, who just wrote teleportasm for shortwave, and they had mentioned as well that he loves doing these adaptations of old horror movies into. Into book format. And I think that's in this scripted podcasts, regular podcasts, you know, there's. There's audiobooks, there's, you know, performance audiobooks. There's just so much more that I feel like, yeah, it's. Boil it down. It's a story. And I think that's a great way to go at it, is just telling new stories. And I think that heads will roll could have easily just been written as a script I and sold to a Hollywood studio and made into a movie. It would have been wonderful, but reading it in a book format was just so much fun. And I think that you do have this storytelling ability that I love. And like I mentioned earlier about Stephen King, there's a book that some people just don't like. I've read the shadow glass, burn the negative, and heads will roll. And they're all phenomenal. So not to make your head really big, I mean, we gotta keep it on the screen here. But. Yeah, I don't believe you.
[00:13:02] Speaker B: There's no chance.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: But they all, like, they all have a similar. Similar thread. Like I mentioned, like, the movie connectivity of, like, the shadow glass. And if anybody doesn't read shadow glass, it being the props and things coming to life from the movie, it kind of reminded me, honestly, in such a good way. I don't know why it was this way of small soldiers. Do you remember that movie, small soldiers? Yes, that, like, the characters that are, like these fantasy characters come to life and try to go to war. And I'm like, that. Had that, like, in such a good way. I don't want to say that it's a, like diminishing the shadow glass, but, like, in a good way. That book had that, but it's characters from a movie. And then you have burn the negative, which obviously has that movie connection. And then, like I mentioned, heads will roll. So there's. But they're all different. So they all have that movie thread, in my opinion, but all have their own individual stamp. What makes, in my opinion, or what makes, in your opinion, heads will roll that much different than something like burn the negative and the shadow glass?
[00:14:10] Speaker B: That's a really good question. I think that.
I think heads will roll maybe has more in common with the shadow glass than it does burn the negative. Weirdly, with burn the negative, I was thinking about this recently. It's a book that I wrote during the Covid-19 lockdown in the UK.
And that's. I think that's kind of why it ended up being a road. Road trip kind of book. I was kind of like living my. My escapism through that story. Like, getting out on the road, not being confined to my tiny London flat with my partner and my cat, you know, just driving each other crazy.
And even though Ben, the negative is very much a love letter to fit to nineties horror films like Candyman and Wes Craven's new Nightmare, and you know, various wheel owner rider properties. I think that it kind of ended up being a bit darker and a bit more of a downer than I, than I originally intended it to be. Like the ending, I knew the ending was going to be so divisive. And so I'm not surprised at all that some people absolutely hated the ending.
Some people loved it and I, you know, that's great as well. But it's definitely something, you know, it's an ending that doesn't have necessarily inspire much hope. And I think that with heads will roll, I kind of wanted to get more back into the mind frame of hopefulness, which might sound strange for like a slasher novel, but I think that some of my favorite slasher stories are the ones that put characters to the fore and ultimately are about survival and are about overcoming adversity.
So I'm a huge, huge scream fan. And scream for me is sort of like, I don't want to be disparaging it, but I mean, for me it's kind of like slasher for grown ups. You know, they're slasher films that are thrillers essentially. You know, you can enjoy scream as a thriller lover as much as a slasher lover. They've got, they've got both of those things going on and they're all about the characters. The reason I keep going back to scream and watching all of them over and over and over again is because they're all about the characters. I love Gail Weathers. I love Sidney Prescott.
I love the new. I love Melissa Barrera. I know they're not coming back for the 7th film, but I love Melissa Barrera. I loved Jenna Ortega.
So it's all about the characters. So with heads will role, I kind of wanted to write almost like a pure slasher in the scream mold. Like burn the negative. When people very kindly started reviewing it, they were talking about it as a slasher book. And I'd never really envisioned burn the negative as a slasher story. It was more of a, it's about cursed film. You know, it's, it's more in that vein. Whereas with head school roll, I was like, I'm just going to tell a slasher story now.
[00:17:16] Speaker A: It's a slasher story.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it's 100% slasher.
But I also had this feeling of though, with burn the negative and henceforward role, they were part of a two book deal with GP Putnam's sons in the US and I was just like absolutely gobsmacked to get a deal with them because they are Penguin, Random House, which to me has always been like, the end goal of being an author is to be published by Penguin.
And so after burn, the negative was done and dusted, and I was pitching ideas for the second book in that deal.
I was really sort of heartened by how much Putnam really went for the horror, because even though they were telling me, you know, this is a horror book, this is a horror book, there was a little part of me that was thinking, I think you're going to market this as a thriller, and I don't think that you're actually going to allow it to be a horror book. And they did. They really, really did. So with heads warell, I was a bit like, okay, so you're in. You're on board for the horror. I wonder how on board you are for, like, queer horror and how much you actually would allow me to write an LGBTQ story.
And they were completely to my joy.
And so that's why the book ended up being the way it is. It's kind of me thinking about what I truly, really want to write and testing to see if Putnam would, like, allow me to do that. And I feel incredibly grateful that they did. And have.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: I tell you one thing as I stutter over my words here, the COVID of the us edition is definitely a horror cover.
Dripping blood off of an axe with some marshmallows. Yes, exactly.
That's a horror cover for sure.
And that's one thing I love about the publishing, you know, book publishing industry over comic book industry, where we also talk on this podcast, is that, like, the comic book cover is like, I used from solicitation, basically. Like, the day they announced the comic book, the COVID is there to help sell the thing. And I have books, like, in my queue to read that are, like, cover to be revealed. It's like the story, the synopsis of what's going on, the publisher, the authorization, you know, all that stuff. The genre is what's trying to get the initial pre orders or the initial hype for the book, and then they're like, cover reveal, and it's like, that's what's cool about it because, I mean, I. Ted's raw was on my list of reading, you know, want to read. And then you released the COVID for the. For the us edition, which is amazing. But the, you know, getting cover. Yes, they did.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: Sorry. Just. They designed this cover before I had finished writing even, I think, the first draft of the book, they just. They really wanted to, like, get it done, get it out there. Yeah. I don't know what kind of like time deadline situation they had going on, but they did the COVID very, very, very early on. And that, I've never had that happen before, ever. And it weirdly really helped me to calcify in my mind exactly what this thing is that we're doing. And every draft, every time I was redrafting, redrafting, I was trying to capture the essence of that cover.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: And I laugh sometimes. And they put out the temporary covers, too. And then they get out. They finally put out the real cover. And I'm always like, well, the temporary cover was better. And I think that they learned that. I mean, Nat Cassidy's new book, rest stop, they just are like, people like, the rest stop cover so much. They're like, we're just going to use this cover with some tweaks and put that out there. Like, this is the COVID of the novella. But, yeah, it's one of those weird things that, like, you know, it shouldn't be. We joked last night, my mom's visiting from Connecticut, and we were talking about, don't you judge a book by its cover. And I'm laughing, and I'm like, as a designer myself, I'm like, no, that's what I first do. Can I see the COVID I'm scrolling through the Internet and being like, what book's coming out? I'm like, that's a cool cover. I want to read that book. And then I read the synopsis of it. Not that I, I don't think I've ever read a book solely based on the COVID Like, if the synopsis is not that great, then I'm not gonna be like, well, the cover's cool, so the story might be good, but I think that it does go into play, and I think that you're, you know, both, you just mentioned as the author side of it, it went into play as well as, you know, on our side, who horror books, there's a whole, not saying that they're the only one. There's romance subcultures and all that stuff. There's a horror subculture that's really on the rise, even right now, where, like, there's groups of people that all they read is horror novels. And having a horror slasher cover probably is did do well for you. We probably did get a number of pre orders having that cover out there.
You're like, fingers crossed. Let's see. Yeah, I think as our review, that's what made people order the book sell.
That's only people are buying because of that. But, I mean, as we get in, we're talking here about heads of rules. Do you have like an elevator pitch that you usually talk about what this book is actually about or you usually just read what you have on the back of the book or in the jacket?
[00:22:26] Speaker B: I pretty, yeah, I pretty much readdevelop that, like a very brief version of that. But I kind of, I've been pitching it as Friday the 13th meets white Lotus, I guess. So it's, it's, you know, it's got the slasher elements, but it's also got the, the retreat from the world with weird stuff going on with various characters that are very much not at home. You know, they, they are, they are almost allowed to behave badly because they're away from their real lives.
So. But if you want me to go, like, into more depth, I can.
[00:23:00] Speaker A: No, that works perfect. I mean, I think, I think, I think mainly it's one of the cool things and I think I put in our thing is it's a modern twist on a slasher, too, because if you go back and read or watch like Friday the 13th or any of those ones, and before we go too far, scream is my favorite horror movie, by the way. I'll let you know that right now. I think it's one of the most purist and one of the, I met Roger Jackson, which was one of experience, like, no, tomorrow, listening to him say, speak like Ghostface was phenomenal and all that stuff. But no, I think scream is amazing. But if you go back and watch Friday the 13th or these horror movies, they're like, I don't know, there's like the whole summer camp. Like, I have to go to a summer camp because I'm a teenager and it's this, I don't know, this cliche part of it that, this modern twist on it of a, of a retreat in the woods for these people that are like, have all these issues that, that they bring that baggage in with them. A summer camp where like camp counselors and campers are there, it's like they're just going to have fun for the summer. No one. And people might have baggage, but they're not. Like, they're not a bunch of people with baggage. It's like one or two people might be the outcasts of that baggage.
But, like having a horror story where like, even if there was no slasher, this movie could, this book could have been a horror story just of all the people with their baggage and their secrets.
[00:24:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:24:17] Speaker A: Like just having a bunch of people with a bunch of baggage in one room or one area for a couple of weeks at a time probably is not the greatest thing.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. They're either going to fix each other or kill each other.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: Yes. That modern twist on a classic slasher or campy slasher was fun too. And the idea that it's a summer camp still, but more of an adult summer camp, it's also kind of a fun thing. They're not the counselors that are the ones that are the adults there and the kids that are taking care of or before the kids arrive, they're there for the night before and a slasher comes. This is an adulthood slasher thing, not an adult as in like a bunch of naked people running around, but like as an adult slasher story. And I think that's what's cool about it to me too, because it's, some people might be like, oh, just another slasher story. But it's like you have to make that twist and make that change in that to make it more a unique twist, a unique stamp on. And I think you did that by having that, that back subplot of having the people with problems, people with some emotional and physical baggage that they bring to this story.
[00:25:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that sort of like a straightforward slasher would have been fine as well. But I think that for me, I kind of find it more interesting to dig into something related to popular culture. I just think something happened to me when I watched Scream.
And actually this actually goes even further back to the never ending story, which similarly plays around with structure and with whats real and what isnt real and the merging of fantasy and reality, but specifically scream, I think it just planted something in me at an impressionable age that was basically wanting to look around at the things I love, look around at popular culture and just sort of like, just like think about them, just sort of deconstruct them and take them apart and see what makes them interesting and why they work. And so I think that whenever I'm writing anything, I am to a certain degree playing around with that self awareness, that scream just completely epitomized in the most brilliant way. And I'm not sure that I actually, I am writing a YA book at the moment that my editor, my agent actually, she said she dared me to take out all of the pop culture references because she worried that they were becoming a little bit of a crutch and I was a bit like, oh, but that's my thing in my head. But she was completely right because it wasn't in that instance, it wasn't allowing me to truly engage with the characters in a way that would have worked. So, you know, I think there's pros and cons to it completely. But yeah, that's why I couldn't just write just inverted comments and a slasher book. It had to have something a bit more, something else going on under the surface, I think.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: Yes.
I can't remember it. I'm obviously not going to call it out on this recording, but there was a book I read recently over the past six, eight months that had so many, it was trying to put itself in a position of, this is based in the eighties. And so everything just had like on top of, on top of, on top of. Instead of saying the video store, they're like, oh, and blockbuster, you know, it's like, it was like they were saying these things over and over and over again that I was just like, oh my gosh, that's a little much. But I do respect and love.
I was born in 86. So I'm a product of the eighties and I love those books that make me go back and think nostalgically. And that's like why I'm really into the killer VHS series from short wave right now. That all of those have that like touch of nostalgic in it and I love that part of it. And you do. I think you strike a good balance on that. And I think that's in these books. I did love the shadow glass because of that. Like it made me go, oh, now I wanna watch the labyrinth and I wanna watch, you know, dark crystal over again because, you know, and the Jim Henson company can thank you for that. Cause, you know, I probably paid for something that, you know, that you not directly advertised, but made it so that I wanted to watch same thing. Now I'm probably gonna go watch scream again tonight just cause after talking about this, I'm like, I really wanna watch that movie again.
And I'll probably still be surprised at how it turns out. I don't know why. I'll probably still end the movie going, oh, wow. Because I know how it ends. But like, I probably will still be surprised by it somehow. But yeah, adding those nostalgic reference in it, I think it's right now. I think it's super popular too. I think that's. I think a lot of people don't want to live in the world we live in right now. So a nice little touch of what we liked when we were happy and things were to not great. But there was moments when you're a childhood, you're innocent and things were innocent for you. So listening to pop culture references from the past or even the current stuff, it's fun to escape the world we live in right now, especially for us in the US right now, it's not very fun.
[00:29:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I think that also there's like a sense of belonging as well.
You know, when I was writing the shadow glass and there's a, there's a guild in the shadow glass, there's the shadow glass guild of a bunch of fans who love this film and they will talk about it endlessly and they all understand each other's references and they understand each other's.
I mean, that's it. References. And so it's like this feeling of coming together as a community but through writing. I think Stephen Graham Jones does that.
He's the best at that. He is the king of the slashers and he does it so, so well. And he does it through the storytelling. He doesn't just throw references in just for the sake of it, which is a risk. And I think there is a line and you kind of have to feel that line through writing it.
You can take stuff out. And my editor did take some references out of Hetzel role and I fought for one of them, actually, because I was like, people are going to know what I'm talking about. It's nothing. It's not that niche.
So, yeah, I think that there is a way of keeping those things alive through your writing in a way that doesn't feel reductive or exploitative or just nostalgia for nostalgia's sake.
[00:30:39] Speaker A: Yes.
You mentioned Stephen Graham Jones. I always tell people that my heart is a chainsaw is the perfect book for you. If you want to learn more about the slasher horror genre, but don't want to read like a actual, like, book on the history of slasher horror genre, you still want to hear it, read a fiction novel, a horror novel. You want to read that. Read that. My heart is a chainsaw because it teaches, teaches you about the horror genre, but also is a great story. It's like a mixture of the two. It's not, it's not a study book, but it's a book that you learn something from as well as get a good story as well.
[00:31:12] Speaker B: Totally. Yeah. And he, there are some deep cuts, like, like deeper than deep. Like he has bone.
The references are unbelievable. And I learned stuff and I've made a list of films that I need to watch based on Stephen Graham Jones's referencing them. So, yeah, it's, why does he find.
[00:31:31] Speaker A: Time to watch these movies. He's too busy writing 700 books at the same time. I don't understand this. He's got, he had, he's another book coming out this month.
[00:31:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And he's got another book coming out next year. The Buff Buffalo Hunter. Hunter.
[00:31:43] Speaker A: Yes.
Yeah. I was a teenage slasher. So there you go. You got two, I think, two weeks apart from each other. I think his is the 16th in the United States and yours is the 30th for heads. Roll. Roll. So this is the month of slashers right here. Pick up both of them. It's two weeks apart. You have paychecks in between there, people. You can grab both. Don't worry, it's not going to break your bank.
[00:32:03] Speaker B: I'm loving everyone's. A lot of people on Instagram are doing Summerween where they're what? They're reading horror as part of like a, like a summer camp style scenario, which is so great. It's really fun. I'm going to do it one year. Yeah.
[00:32:19] Speaker A: And so, yeah. So the big thing to me, I felt like is that anybody who, to me personally with Heidi Roll is one of those things that like if you, if you haven't, if you're not into big, into reading books, like if you're just a horror movie kind of person and so on and so forth. My whole thought was like, this could be an entryway in my opinion, because it reads a lot. Like I said, like a horror movie, slasher movie in a sense. Not, not as much as a horror movie did right now, but like that was like written like a movie. This was, this has that slasher movie feel.
And I've said it multiple times on this podcast is you can't always watch movies. Like, you don't have enough time in a day to sit there and watch a movie. You just don't have it. And so having the ability to sit on your deck in the summertime by the lake or whatever and read something is worth it. And this would, I think, scratch that. Itch for someone. Heads will roll for someone who was just like, I just want to watch a horror movie. Well, this would do it. And I think it's great because I think it's coming out in enough time that if someone wanted to be like, buy it for a gift or something like that for the, for the fall so that you like, you know, buy in July and then have it re ready for you, someone read it and then give it to someone else or buy a copy for the October season, for Halloween. I think it's perfect. In that sense, too, because you could have easily just jumped on that board and been like, okay, we're putting it on October 1, but I like it coming out in the summer because people have more time to read in the summer, in my opinion.
[00:33:43] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, hopefully. Hopefully.
[00:33:47] Speaker A: So, yeah. Heads of roles, phenomenal. One thing I wanted to quickly touch on before we were to wrap up here, too, is that you're from the UK or you're based in the UK. Were you born and raised in the UK?
[00:33:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:58] Speaker A: Is that. It's something that I learned a little bit more because I've always. I've been getting into novels and books more in the past two or three years now than I had in previous years. And I've been into comic books for a number of years, and there's no such, there is such thing as UK printing and us printing and all that stuff, but no one pays attention to that in the comic book industry. Like, we don't live in the UK, it doesn't matter to you. But in the, in the book publishing industry, it's gone as far as there's two different covers, there's sometimes different stuff that comes in some of them, and so on and so forth. What's it like being a UK author? Having to promote something that it comes out at a certain date in the United States, a certain date in the UK, as well as having different covers to try to push out there? Is it difficult? Is it fun? What's the feel for an author that it's based in the UK? Publishing in both US and UK?
[00:34:48] Speaker B: This is my first time heads will roll is my first time doing it, actually.
It's interesting.
I think there's a week between the US release and the UK release. And so I think because the US cover has been out for so, so long, we have more assets to share. So we have the trailer with the US cover. We have various social media things that I can share with the US cover and the UK cover, I think, was revealed about a month or two ago.
[00:35:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:17] Speaker B: And I've only just got my first sort of, like, finished copy of it. And it's. Yeah, it's kind of. It's like, it's nice. It's like a double dip, you know, it's like I've got two amazing covers I kind of love. People have been dming me saying, I prefer this one or I prefer that one. How do you feel? And I'm sort of like, pleading the fifth slightly because I just think it's awesome. I get one, let alone two. You know.
Yeah, I don't know. I don't really know how it's going to work. I guess I'm just sort of waiting for the UK assets to become available, then I'll just start sharing those. That's as mundane as it is, really.
[00:35:53] Speaker A: It is. It's different. I just. I do think it's kind of funny. I talked to my. So Jabron Graham is our. The proprietor of my local bookstore that I go to, the briar patch in my hometown. And I was just in there last week grabbing a book. And I was saying to him, because we talked about a couple things and one of them, I think, came up as this book and how it kind of annoys me as a person who lives in the United States that sometimes the COVID Oh, no, it was. He was talking about, you like it darker, Stephen King's short story book that came out recently and how he loved the UK cover way more than the US cover. And he was like, it's kind of annoying because it's like, why? And it says he goes. And it actually happens more often than not that I actually do like the UK cover better. And I'm like, all that does is make me have to try to find a way to get the UK cover. Now I own two copies of the book. Instead of, like, in my background of being a comic book fan, buying multiple covers of the same issue, I'm like, now I'm going to start doing that with books. I mean, I like the Stephen King UK version. I have to order from a UK person and have it shipped over and. And all that stuff. Heads of a roll one. It's. It's like, has a similar feel, but definitely is different, you know? I mean, like, it still has the axe on there. It's still. But it's just like a. I don't know, it has that.
It's brighter, for one thing, because it has more color in it, but, yeah, I don't know, it's just a different feel. But I'm like, is that Gorier? Yes.
[00:37:11] Speaker B: It's weirdly gorier than having a bloody axe. Like, it's a. It's a massive throat slash. Which. Yes, I was like, are we allowed to be gory on the front cover? Like, are people going to start going, think about the children and stuff?
I'm going to get cancelled for my book about cancel culture being too gory.
[00:37:30] Speaker A: Hey, it would be fitting, right? Any publicity is good publicity right now.
[00:37:33] Speaker B: Bring it on. Yeah, actually, it was Waterstones. You have Barnes and Noble and we have Waterstones.
[00:37:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:40] Speaker B: And the horror guys at Waterstones really wanted the gory cover, so that's what we went with. And I'm so pleased that we did because the version without the slash throat was weirdly more confusing. It was sort of like, well, what's she looking at? And, you know, it just didn't have that same. That kind of, like, boo kind of reaction.
[00:38:05] Speaker A: She's just stargazing. Don't worry.
[00:38:07] Speaker B: She's just being a stargazer. Fish. Yeah.
Creepy. It's pretty creepy.
[00:38:12] Speaker A: Yeah. But, yeah, it's one of those things that I think that you may not even notice because the axe on the UK edition is above the title. And so if you didn't have. She's just looking up, you may even miss the axe altogether. And so it will just look like, you know, a character looking up to the sky and not actually looking, oh, hey, they're looking at an axe. And then this, the throat slash might go away. There's more to this cover than meets the eye. I think that's there, but I think it's really cool. I could say. I don't know, something about it. And that cover looks more vintage, too, if you think about it. It has that nineties or eighties slasher style to it, whereas the COVID for the United states version is more modern, which is kind of cool. So you have a little bit of taste of both on that, which is awesome. But, yeah, I just didn't know if. Go ahead.
[00:38:58] Speaker B: The UK designer. Sorry, my UK publicist, who was sort of very, very much involved with the COVID design, she was referencing Grady Hendrix, and she absolutely loves the. My best friend's exorcism cover with that faded vhs scuzziness going on. So I think that because Grady Hendrix is like, he's pretty huge over here.
[00:39:22] Speaker A: He's pretty huge in general, but, yes.
[00:39:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it's just. He's just. I mean, his books are phenomenal. I love his stuff.
He's actually. I agree with Sadie Hartman, mother horror, in her book. Is it 100 or 101 books to read before you're murdered? She says that Grady Hendrix is pretty much responsible for the horror boom because he sort of made it cool and hip and readable and, you know, Moorish in a way that has just taken off in such a huge way. And I kind of agree with that.
But, yeah, and also this. I don't know this for sure, but graphic novels are just, like, huge over here.
You know, whole stores have been rearranged in order to put the graphic novels right near the doorste to entice people in. So I wonder if the kind of graphic novel ish nature of the UK cover is tapping into that a little bit as well.
[00:40:17] Speaker A: It's a big thing all over the, I think, world right now with graphic novels. I think as a comic book collector, I'm a single issue kind of guy. I mean, I have a comic book right here. But I think that there's a huge boom in graphic novels because people want that complete story. And I think the big thing about that to me, and as a fan of both comics and novels, I think that that crossover could be huge because people are like, oh, that's kind of cool. I'd like to read these complete stories. But guess what? For years they've been writing complete stories and books for there's a lot more words, but I think you can handle it, people. And so it's just kind of funny. But also seeing authors do the crossover as well. I mean, like, we talked a bit before we started about Daniel Krauss. Daniel Krauss has written a number of comic books nowadays, too, as well as an author doing kind of crossing over and doing both. And there's a number of other people out there. I mean, Joe Hill obviously, being from Maine, Joe Hill, Stephen King's son, you know, that has done that. Stephen King has done it with Gunslinger and things like that. But, you know, there's that crossover in that sense. So maybe the opposite will work too. Graphic novels will sell people on some books and we'll get some more book readers out of it, so on and so forth. Have you ever wanted to write a comic book or a graphic novel?
[00:41:29] Speaker B: I've been too scared to because I just know that it's just such a completely different medium.
[00:41:35] Speaker A: It is that.
[00:41:36] Speaker B: I just wouldn't know where to begin, to be honest. I'd rather leave it to the professionals.
[00:41:41] Speaker A: Well, I've always said, even being a fan of it, I've always been like, I probably could get together with someone who is great at scripting a comic book and actually putting the word bubbles together and all that stuff and come up with a plot and an overall arching idea. Like, I could probably write the story and it's something you're probably really good at. It's like, okay, this is what's going to go on. And then you hand it off to someone else who's really good at scripting a combo and putting pages together and making sure that the jump scares are on the next page and yada, yada, yada and so on and so forth. Um, but like, it's, you know, Joshua and someone else. Because you're like, I came up with the idea and then someone else is the one that's finishing the thing. I feel like I'd be good at that. I don't think I'd be actually good at crafting the physical, you know, where speech bubbles are and all that stuff. I don't think I'd be good at that. Overall, arching ideas is probably more my, uh, my forte. And someone who writes books for a living, it's probably that too. For most people is like, I could come up with the idea for it, but someone else actually writes.
[00:42:35] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a really good point. Maybe I should not. Maybe I should start thinking about that for real. I do love, I love sort of visual media like that. I think that the sheer amount of amazing art within one comic book is sort of mind blowing. So that is very appealing. But yeah, I just.
[00:42:56] Speaker A: Some of your stuff, Shadowglass would be great if just adapted it into a comic book or graphic novel. That would be, that would be fantastic, in my opinion. You know, some people are out there going, I can't wait for become a movie. It's like sometimes I'm just like, well, maybe someone will adapt it into comic book format. That'd be great.
[00:43:11] Speaker B: Yeah. I would absolutely love that scene.
[00:43:16] Speaker A: You get, you know, get to see all the different characters on panels. That'd be great. But no, but heads of a roll is definitely, you know, you've grown. You can tell the shadow glass is wonderful. Absolutely love it. You know, to me, burn the negative was like that slightly bit better. And then now heads and roles, you know. You know what I'm saying? Like, you've grown and you can show it through your, through your novels that they've grown into better and better and better novels. So the next one's gonna be like perfect. Award winning.
Let's hope that Hezbollah.
[00:43:48] Speaker B: I should actually start writing that one.
[00:43:49] Speaker A: Exactly right now. But yeah. So thinking of that, I mean, you have heads of roll coming out in the US. I think it's July 30. The UK is a week later. It's in August, right?
[00:43:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:59] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:44:00] Speaker B: 8 August.
[00:44:01] Speaker A: Yeah, 8 August. And that's my anniversary.
[00:44:04] Speaker B: Oh, congratulations.
[00:44:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you. But the book has a role. Burn the negative. Just hit the paperback, which is cool. It must be a nice little surge to and seeing people who wait in book industry. You do have people who trade wait. So you wait for those issues to come out and paper trade paperback, the same thing in the published book. Publishing people are like, hardcover is too expensive. I'll wait till it comes out. And they wait for paperback.
[00:44:29] Speaker B: I say, fair enough, frankly.
[00:44:32] Speaker A: So, like, that paperback came out at the end of May in the United States. I don't know if it was just the United States or if it hit everywhere too, but I know that.
Okay. And then the shadow glass is out, too available. So I think it's still in print, right?
[00:44:46] Speaker B: It sure is. Yeah. Yeah, it's.
[00:44:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:44:49] Speaker B: I feel nice to have three. Thanks.
It feels nice to have three under my belt. And it's sort of like, okay, that feels like something that readers kind of can figure out who I am from. Hopefully it's all about the brand. So you kind of want to have a number of options for somebody to look at to go, oh, I think I can figure out what this stuff's going to be.
[00:45:14] Speaker A: It's nice because, again, I think that you have your Josh winning stamp on all of them, but they're all different. It's one of those things that I talked to some of the authors, I'm like, there's some books that even Daniel Krause, we talked about earlier, he's been like, he's like, I write a different book every time I write a book. It's completely different. Different genre different. Completely different. And so there's some people who love will fall, but are not going to like, you know, this book he has coming out, pay the piper. It's just, they're just not the same. And. But I feel like yours have a thread that goes through it that goes, okay, this is a Josh book, and I like it. And I like the storytelling ability you have, but each one has their own stamp on it. So you're not just like, I'm tired of him telling the same story over again. This is a different story. Exactly. Exactly. But they're different. That's pretty cool. So, so you mentioned, as we finish up here, you mentioned your two book deal. Obviously, this is the end of it. Are you a young adult book? Not that you have to share anything, because obviously things, there's NDAs, there's things you don't want to announce yet and so on and so forth. But are you currently working on things like this young adult thing?
[00:46:17] Speaker B: I'm working on two things, yeah, deadlines are catching up with me slightly, but obviously very grateful to be working.
But yes, I'm working on two things. I've got this Ya book that I'm really enjoying. It's been painful in places. I mean, I had the idea in like 20.
I want to say 18, like, it's been a while coming. And the first draft I wrote was kind of in the wrong genre, and then the second draft didn't quite have all the right pieces. So now I'm in the, into the third draft, where I'm really hoping that this is the one that's going to actually stick.
So that will be going out on submission at some point this year, I think, hopefully. And then I'm also working on another adult book, which I'm not allowed to talk about. But again, it actually is a bit of a bit of a departure from the three books I have already, my adult books, but hopefully it still taps into something that people will enjoy.
[00:47:24] Speaker A: I think also with you mentioned the three books, I think also nowadays there's this thing that not to talk about Daniel again, but Daniel has people who just buy his book, they like his writing. It doesn't matter if the same genre. I think with three books now and having people be able to read three books, no matter what you come out with after this, there's going to be, Josh, fans of your books. There's going to be like, I'm going to buy anything this person comes out with. Whether you wrote a young adult superhero book book, someone would still probably read it because of the fact that you were writing it. And I think that's what's cool, having that three books on the shelves. And people have the ability to read your stuff right now. And the audiobooks are great, too. I haven't, I don't know. It has a role, getting an audiobook. I'm guessing it is, but I haven't heard that obviously yet. But like the shadow glass, audiobooks are phenomenal. And the brain, the negative one, is phenomenal as well because I do a little bit of hybrid reading when I read. I do car reading it on audiobook, and then when I'm at home, I read the physical novel and so on and so forth. So, yes, there's, there's, audiobooks are fun. And I think people, yeah, I think more people will read if they actually read audiobooks, which is pretty cool.
[00:48:26] Speaker B: Yeah. I actually always tell people to listen to burn the negative, even though the, the designer, Laura Corliss, she designed the interior of burn the negative, and she created, like, a piece of art. Like, it's just phenomenal.
I say that the narrator, Stephanie Cannon, for the audiobook, did such an amazing job with all the different voices and just the tone of the book, she nailed it perfectly. So if, even if you're not sure about audiobooks, I would say that she does fantastic work. So check out anything that she's done, basically.
[00:48:59] Speaker A: Yeah. And you can pre order. We always like to promote Libro FM as a place you can get audiobooks, which is amazing. They support local bookstores and things like that. So they're available on there, which is amazing. And you own the rights to it. Them. You purchased it, you download it, it's yours, which is a huge thing nowadays because digital media, I don't think a lot of people understand when you download something on Amazon prime that they lose the rights to it. Then you lose the rights to it and you just pay money for nothing. And so it's terrible.
[00:49:27] Speaker B: Such a bad model.
[00:49:29] Speaker A: So that's a great thing. It supports local bookstores as well as you actually own the, own the media yourself. So you can put it on your phone, you can put it on, you know, it's great to have that option. But I do recommend the same thing. I've done it before where if I opened up a book and read the book as someone was reading to me in my ear, because I still want the experience of reading it, but most of the time it's read a few chapters in the car, driving to work, read a few chapters physically and then back and forth and so on. So it can get annoying because you're trying to find where you were.
But holding a physical book as something, I don't know, I feel like I can ingest it a little bit more when you hold a little physical book than you can even digital on iPad or something. But, um. But heads roll.
[00:50:12] Speaker B: That's a clever way to, yeah, that's a clever way to read, is to basically make sure you're reading 24/7 I'm doing the dishes.
[00:50:22] Speaker A: I have my Airpods and I'm doing the dishes because, you know, my wife, we have two kids. They have a four month old and a three month three year old, but they're my mom, like, my wife might be doing a to doing bath time with a three year old while the four month old sleeping. And so I'm in the kitchen doing dishes and I, it's like, well, no one else is in here. So I pop an audiobook in and, you know, you're not really focusing on much. You're doing dishes, you're floating the dishwasher or whatever. And I have that in my background. If I'm driving to work, same thing. If I'm, you know, anything like that, I'm just like, oh, I've watched basketball games, I watched the Celtics in the championship with a volume on mute in an audiobook in. Because I'm like, I want to finish this book. Yeah, but I also want to see my Celtics win the championship. So I'm like, what do I do? I'm in a predicament here. But, yeah, I've done it. And people were like, how do you read so many books? I'm like, that's one way to do it, is like, I try to fill every moment so on. So I'm not scrolling through instagram.
I'm reading a novel or listening to it. So, yeah, it's a fun way to do it. And you get to see that because I think that there is something to be said. The big thing to me, Josh, is if you have a name, it's hard to pronounce in your book. Someone reads it to you in your ear, and you now know how to pronounce it without having to be like, I think that's how you say it. That's a big one to me. Is that stuff? And also, the accents is great. It helps you kind of, if someone does an accent or a different voice, it helps you kind of separate characters in that, which the final thing I'll say is, I think one of the things I have a problem with, with reading is there's a lot of characters in a book. It's hard to keep track of them. And I think that you did an excellent job developing and creating the characters that are, in henceforth roles enough that I could tell who is who and where they are and all that stuff. I think sometimes people just jump from character to character or have so many characters in one chapter that you're just like, who is that person again? And I think you did an excellent job on developing those characters and creating different personalities so you kind of understood who's who.
They're not just all one amalgam of a character.
[00:52:15] Speaker B: I take no credit for that, actually, that was my editor's advice.
I initially had more.
I think I had a few more counselors and a couple more, maybe one or two more campers, and we just refined them back. And then we tried to come up with sort of, like, memorable, sort of like, what's the. What's the word? Like, sort of templates, I guess, like things that were memorable in, like, a very quick shorthand kind of way. So, you know, Kurt, the sneezy young one, Danny's sort of like the love interest. And then you have buck and cat, who are like, the stoner duo. So if you can find little ways to give them, like, a shorthand for the reader. I think that really helps. And I'm similar. Like, I find it almost impossible to keep track of a massive cast of characters as a reader, let alone as a writer. So I think, yeah, any of those little tricks for me? Like, perfect.
[00:53:13] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. And I said, the audiobook does. It does wonders in that sense, too, because if someone does, if there's multiple people reading it, even better. But if there's one person reading it who is very good at doing different voices, just the slightest difference. If I start with that and then go over the book that has a bunch of characters in it, at least that way, I now have my mind. I go, okay, this is what this person sounds like, and this is what this person sounds like. So when I read them differently in the book, I can get that in my head and so on. But, yeah, I think that there's a. A weird divide against people who think that whether or not audiobooks actually reading it doesn't really matter. We just talked about off the top of this podcast episode, which was like, it's still a storytelling. So that's. You're telling a story. Just because your story is in a print novel format doesn't mean it's not a story. And so I think that having someone read it to you is no different. I mean, I read books for my son. Is he not reading the books? I mean, like, yeah, yeah.
[00:54:00] Speaker B: I feel like you're just putting the story in a different orifice and you're.
[00:54:04] Speaker A: Getting it to someone. You're selling a book, and that's your goal. I mean, you're an author. You're trying to make a living here. As long as someone buying the book, does it really matter what format they buy it in? Hardcover, paperback or audiobook? It's like you still want. You wrote the story for people to read it. Yes. You want to make money and have a living, but you did write the story. Not for you to love. It's for other people to read. And so whether or not they listen to an audiobook or they read the actual book, they're still ingesting the story. Just as long as they paid for it. That's all that important.
[00:54:31] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:54:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm renting it from the library is fine, but I'm saying, like, don't steal it from the Internet, is what my point is. Here, pay for the book. But, yeah, I really appreciate you coming on and talking. Head to a roll. I burned the negative a little bit. And even the shadow glass and horror movies and horror genre in general. You're a busy person, and I hope you got a good break from editing there to come talk with us a little bit about your books.
[00:54:59] Speaker B: I love talking to people who love the same stuff that I love. So meeting you, talking about scream, and, yes, you know, Jim Henson, that is just, for me, absolutely golden. So thank you.
[00:55:09] Speaker A: No problem at all. I was jokingly. My mom is watching my daughter right now, and I was joking because my uncle lives in the UK. And I was like, you think Josh knew? It's my uncle. Just kidding. It's a small.
My parents always talk, we live in Maine, and you go to somewhere else in the country, anywhere else in the world, and someone goes, oh, you live in Maine? Do you know so and so? We're always like, oh, my gosh. We're a small state. I understand.
[00:55:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:55:32] Speaker A: Actually, we do know that person. It's the funniest thing. We're always like, no, actually, I do. They're my neighbor. They live down the street. And so I was laughing about how you're in the UK. I'd be like, I wonder if he knows my uncle John. Oh, yeah, he's actually my neighbor. That's.
[00:55:43] Speaker B: Wait, I know John.
[00:55:45] Speaker A: No, but I really appreciate you coming.
[00:55:47] Speaker B: He's an american guy.
[00:55:48] Speaker A: He's that american guy, right? Yeah. Well, he's lived in the UK for, like, I don't know, 30 years now, so I don't even know if he would be that american guy anymore. He's. He's been there for a long time. I haven't seen him in years. But, um. But, yeah, I really appreciate you coming on, chatting with us. It's always fun to talk to someone that I love their writing and enjoy, you know? It would be very not fun, I guess, if it was. If I hated your.
Yeah, I don't know how long you would have stayed on.
[00:56:13] Speaker B: Some of the most awkward interviews I've ever had. When I. When I've been interviewing as a journalist, I've interviewed actors. I've interviewed actors where we've watched the film, immediately before the interview, gone to the interview room. The film wasn't very good. I know it's not good. The actor knows it's not good. And then you've got to talk about the film, and that is just uncomfortable for everybody involved, so.
[00:56:34] Speaker A: And you're trying not to just crap on everything. You're like, yeah. So what went into the decision of doing the voice that way? It's not very fun.
[00:56:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
Did you enjoy the movie? It's like, if they don't say that. Then you know that they know it's bad.
[00:56:50] Speaker A: That's awesome. But, yeah, I really appreciate it. And we'll talk soon again at some time in the future. We'll have you back on. Thanks, John.
[00:56:57] Speaker B: Thanks so much for having me.
