Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back to the Capes and Tights podcast right here on Capesandtights.com, i'm your host, Justin Soderbergh. This episode is once again brought to you by our friends over at Galactic Comics and Collectibles at galactic comics and collectibles.com welcome back to Horror Week here on the podcast. This is technically a bonus episode if you haven't listened to the podcast before. We usually come out on Wednesday. This is a Thursday episode. This is Becky Siegel Spratford talking to us this week or this episode, I should say, about why I love horror.
This is essays and literature. It's an anthology style book with all these different authors telling why they love horror. But Becky is a librarian who specializes in serving patrons ages 13 and up.
She also writes reviews for Book List and horror review column for Library Journal and so much more. She's the author of a couple of books, the Reader's Advisory Guide to Horror. But again, this is what we talked about, why I love horror in the horror genre as a whole. So. So yeah, check out Becky on this episode. But before you do, listen to us on Facebook or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, bluesky, threads, all those places. You can rate, review, subscribe over on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you find your podcast. You can also find us on YouTube as well as capesandtights.com for so much more from all over the genre of horror, comics, pop culture, all that stuff. Movies, tv, all that stuff. But also specifically about Horror Week with tons of new stuff coming out this week. For this celebration of horror, check out Pennsylvania, Becky Siegel Spratford right here on the Case and Tights podcast. Enjoy everyone.
Welcome to the podcast. Becky, how are you today?
[00:01:35] Speaker B: I am actually great. I've been on book tour and I got home and I'm actually home for a whole week. And I will be home for Halloween, which I am so glad that past Becky planned that.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: I see it's funny and I'm actually in a new spot. I moved into a new house in May.
It was funny. So my last house I was, I have a 4 year old and an 18 month old or she's like 20 months old now. I keep on saying 18 months old, but it's time has passed since then but and so we're excited because we actually have a neighborhood. We used to have to drive somewhere to go trick or treating. Now it's like I can literally walk them around my neighborhood and be back at my house and not have to like navigate navigating streets that trick or treating is happening on is the most dangerous thing in the world for both people in cars and people on the streets.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: Oh yeah. And we live in a great neighborhood where there's trick or treating. And my kids are now in their 20s. But you know, it's funny, I mailed them Halloween candy still.
And we are the house that gives out the full size candy bars.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: See, there you go.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: And my neighbors are a little bit older than yours, but like littles. The oldest is in first grade and they love showing me their costumes. So I've already gotten a little preview. They did a practice Halloween by my house.
Yes, a great time.
[00:02:45] Speaker A: Here we go.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: Yeah, no problem.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: My wife made this for my Scooby.
[00:02:53] Speaker B: Doo Introduction to horror. Excellently well done.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: So my 18 month or 20 month old will be wearing that. And then my son wants to be. He's four. So this is supposed to be his fourth Halloween, but the first Halloween he was like five months old.
He wants to be Spider man again. So this is the second time he's been Spider Man. But you know what, I'm not arguing it.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: My neighbor's around 4 and he's Spider Man 2. It's a thing. And I am not going to get mad about it. Spider man is a great role model.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: It's also funny because it's such an easy. I could get it used if I wanted to. I could go to like the thrift shop and get a Spider man costume because it's very common. If he's like a random character that I. No one ever has ever dresses up for Halloween, then it becomes more difficult. But it's such a fun season, you know.
And what I'm glad about, and this is I've had the conversation with some people about in your book why I Love horror, Clay McLeod Chapman wrote his new book Shiny Happy People is coming out. And one of the things I continue to talk about with people is the. My favorite author is writing stories for younger generations. And we'll get to that. But my point was I can't wait to share these things with my kid. He's too young now because he's already having nightmares about watching like scary parts of Garfield. So like we're tiptoeing into this right now. But like the idea that I have my Goosebumps collection, which he loves to look at, I have to keep on telling him that their costumes, they're not really monsters on the pictures on the COVID They're just people dressed up for Halloween.
But yeah, this, this, this I Can't wait for more of this. But there's this. Now we have Arlstein, and then we're going to be able to get into, you know, Paul Tremblay is another, you know, you got Movie. Movie Night. Is it Movie Night by Chuck Wendig and Monster Movie. That's what it was. Monster Movie. That's what it was. And then. But yeah, so there's all these things. So I'm excited. It's a great Halloween season for me because they get the candy. But eventually I'll be like, we can watch Halloween the movie and like, things like that together. So that's what I'm looking forward to.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: But you know what? Middle grade right now is such a fertile place. And it's not just those writers. It's great that, like, Wendig and Tremblay and Clay are doing it, but, like, people like Ali Malonenko are just writing these novels that are just existentially terrifying and all they have to do is leave out some of the gore, but the fear is there. And I run a summer reading program with the Horror Writers Association Book List Book Riot. I try to remember all my sponsors, and I read a novelist. And we do. We're about to announce on Halloween our spokesperson for 2026. But we pick every year. This is like our eighth or ninth year. We pick three adult, three middle or three ya, and three middle grade titles that we vet and then we get out there. So we're just wrapping up our visits this past year with all of our authors.
But, you know, it's been so much fun to follow. We have a middle grade expert, because that's not my expert area from Booklist. But to follow middle grade and its rise over the last eight or nine years has been just a joy. I mean, literally a terrifying joy, but a joy.
[00:05:49] Speaker A: And I always say this feel there has been other people other than R.L. stein. And I was a little sheltered, I think I sense, in a sense that, like, my parents didn't read that much and. And they didn't like horror and stuff like that. So it took me till an adult basically to like this stuff. And. And I did read a little bit of Goosebumps. I've read, I said a little bit, quite a few Goosebumps books. But. But I read more of them as an adult, honestly, than I did as a. As a younger lad. But I just feel like there's this. There's this. There was this gap for a while there that. That for the mainstream people, it was like R.L. stein. And then it was like, okay, now you're reading Stephen King. Cool. You know, and there was other people. There was other people. I won't discredit that. But, like, now it seems like there's a. There's a. There's a spot for everybody. There's, like, now there's good, good, good horror books being written for all ages.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: What you said is exactly correct. There was this gap in the mainstream and actually the same thing was happening in horror. And that's why, in my book, why I love horror, I wanted to really focus on this current generation. I did not want to ask Stephen King.
[00:06:48] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: I wanted it to be. And if you read the book, you know, it's. It's the generation that is built on, really, Brian King and Christopher golden, and it's Brian Keene at the start and what he's built. And I was so lucky that, you know, his End of the World as We Know it with Christopher Golden. The stories of the Stand came out this year, which I loved.
And it's building that generation as well. And so the idea is, there was even that gap for us for so long, and unless you really knew and cared, it was. You had to search. And so what we see is with these authors that I've presented, they're the ones that are really pushing it forward in a mainstream. I was so excited. We had our fifth or sixth person in the book land on the New York Times bestseller list right before it came out, which was Rachel Harrison.
I'm not making this up, right? People who love horror know, but there's other people finding the book. I mean, it's in its third printing already, and it came out at the end of September. So there is an audience for this, that they're like, oh, I heard about horror. I heard of one of these authors, and they're discovering more. But that was the big problem, right? There was this gap. And now, like, one of the biggest things in horror. And you had Laurel Hightower on Short Wave's a great example with those VHS books, these small presses, who I've worked with, Alan is one of the people I've worked with. If you don't get in a library, people aren't going to find you.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[00:08:13] Speaker B: And the big problem with horror after the Leisure books collapse is that libraries weren't getting horror. So I've worked with Alan, I've worked with Doug from Bad Handbooks, I've worked with Raw Dog Screening Press, a whole bunch of these great small presses, to make sure their books are available in places like Ingram which doesn't mean a lot to those of you who don't work in bookstores, but to libraries, if they have to go. Some of them aren't allowed to go outside of Ingram. They can't even go to their local bookstore and buy books for the library. And so I have been working for the past, I don't know, 15 years as part of how why I Love Horror came about. But I've been working to get it so it's easy for people. Because if readers don't find the books in the library and that's why they read Goosebumps, they were in the library. If people don't read horror in the library, they won't go out and buy it because they don't even know it's there.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: But it's getting people to want to take a chance on horror in the first place. I think too. I think this is just before that because I think that I still get this question and why I love the title so much is that there's so many questions. I'm like. I feel like I have to justify myself. My entire life I've had to do this. And this is a theme of this week. Honestly. I think most guests on this week of Horror Week here I've had this conversation with. But. But the idea that I listen to heavy music growing up so screaming music. And I always had to justify why I listen to this music. I'm into comic books. So I had to justify why I'm reading funny books. And then in the horror genre, it's like, well, I had to justify why I like this stuff and what. What the change in the past 10 or 15 years. I think we're really in having a moment. I hate to say that because I wish it was just always like this, but I feel like horror is having a.
[00:09:49] Speaker B: Totally agree. Yes.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: But I think it's having a moment.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: It's true.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: It's. The mainstream is getting this. And I talked to Dave Schilling about this. This episode comes out tomorrow is that films are the same way that, you know, the Black Phone just premiered Black.
[00:10:02] Speaker B: Phone to just number one.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: It's just fantastic how much it's making money. It's doing everything it's supposed to do. It's a horror film. It's a sequel horror film, which is even crazier. But I think people getting people to try horror. And I think one of the things that we'll get into in talking about why I love horror is to find people's stories and actually understand. I think it's one of those things that I always got annoyed with the trying to explain to why I like the thing I like until I realized a switch flip that it was like. But this is my opportunity to share this to people, understand why, and maybe they could give it their own reason of why they want to do this. And so what this does is great. And I think that it's meeting people like myself who've always loved horror or always. But I'm a big fan of horror and why those people who don't try it can maybe get into it and get to hear from the authors themselves instead of just, you should read this new story because it's amazing. And I'm going to say Shiny Happy People is a fantastic book by Clay McCauley Chapman. Let's find out why he wrote this.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: But, Justin, you've just done an amazing job at summarizing every comment I've got on my book tour. People are like, this is what I hear the most. Thank you for writing this. So now I can give it to my family and let them know, you know. And, like, look at me, too. Like, people find out I'm a horror expert, they're like, what you like, this is how I look all the time. I don't think I'm wearing black today. I tend not even to wear black. Like, that was like. Because I have more to go, right?
[00:11:21] Speaker A: And I. Tanya Powell, we're just talking about Tanya.
She wears pink all the time and she likes horror. So, like.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: But also the two things of, like, being able to explain to people why, like, I give this to my family. I'm buying this for my family. Or I've always wanted to try horror and I'm not sure. How do I dip my toe in? Oh, let me read them writing about it. In fact, Sadie Hartman and I are doing an event at the Seattle Public Library. If you live out there on. It's free on November 6th in the evening. And it's actually, we're transitioning away from Halloween and moving toward the holidays. And our event is about. Because we write books about books and our event is about what to buy the book lovers in your life. Right? How to show them that. Because, you know, if you don't read horror and you. And I'm buying a gift for Justin and I don't read horror. I'm not buying him a book because I don't know what he's read. I don't know what he likes. I don't like it. But if you know Justin loves horror, you can buy him My book or Sadie's books, and show that you care. Because gift giving is about showing you understand someone, even if you don't.
[00:12:20] Speaker A: Mm. It's. It's. It's. It's awesome. And here's the deal. I feel like part of this.
People are lucky to have a librarian like yourself. And, you know, not to like you, make your head bigger and like that, but, like, the point to the matter is, is that I don't think that I'm gonna be stereotyping here, and I want to be judgmental here, but I don't know if I've ever met a librarian in my life who. Who was big on recommending horror and.
[00:12:44] Speaker B: Starfair, though that's important.
So I've written three books before this for librarians, textbooks about horror. And one of the. And one of the things in the most recent edition, the third one is. You're absolutely right, Justin. Horror is one of the genres, pun intended, that librarians are most scared of.
And it's not. It's not just you saying that. Now, as my work as the head of the library committee for the Horror Writers association, and because I'm an active member, having written four books, I am able to help get the. We call them the. I dedicate the book to the core ones, the Halloween Library League of Librarians who Love horror. And we are pushing it, but we are in a minority. You're absolutely correct. And what I have done with my entire career is train librarians to help library readers.
Earlier this month, on the 21st of October, I trained the entire state of Connecticut on how to help horror readers. Right? This is something I do for my job.
And so the thing I want it to do is take it from the library world, where my keen comment to them is my phrase I give them is, your horror readers aren't monsters. They just like to read about them. But take that voice and take that knowledge of my years of doing this to the people. And it was a big leap for me. Like, does anybody in the world want to listen to me beyond the reviews I write? I mean, I know they listen to me because I write reviews, right? For Library Journal, so. And I'm in. I'm in their books, right? Star Review, blah, blah, blah. But I've been so heartened to see that people do not. Do not mind the librarian talking at them about horror. In fact, they might listen harder because they're like, wait, she knows what she's talking about.
[00:14:25] Speaker A: Yes. It's having that ability to. To. To lay a foundation for people that they don't know. The thing is, if I was a librarian right now, which I never thought I'd want to be, but now like as a 40 year old man, I'm like, I feel like I now want to be. It's weird, but I wouldn't have to explain to people that you should carry romance books or something like that. I just feel like. And this, I hate doing this because I always pick on romance because my wife reads romance and I feel like it's just one of those natural things to pick on. But it's that I don't think my wife has ever explained that she's reading an Emily Henry book. She never has to actually say or have to worry about being able to get it at the library. The only time she has to worry about getting at the library is someone else already has it, not the fact that it's not there. And so horror has always been this one once. And even in Maine, I'm talking like even in a place where horror is pretty predominant because of the fact that we have Stephen King's home state. There are places where you're like, it's still like a section even at the library or at a bookstore. You know, I go to a bookstore and it's like massive shelves and there's like this one section that's like, oh, here's our horror books. We're going to put you over the back corner and you know, you can do your own thing over there and we'll be over here. And so having you write these books, like, you know, your library book about writing horror, what's the actual title? It's the Reader's Advisory Guide to horror.
And then, then also why I love horror. And having this speaking for us, speaking in the place for us. And yes, we all want to hear from you. And yes, you're right, typically I want to hear from you because I want to hear what you have to say about the Long Low Whistle by Laurel.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: Hightower, which I love to.
[00:15:58] Speaker A: I don't care, it's Becky. I just want to hear what you have to say, good or bad about this thing. Yes, you're right. But the truth of the matter, and once you start to read your reviews and things like that, okay, I want to hear what Becky has to say kind of thing. But, but I want to read this now because I wanted to read. Your name was on it. And I know you have a tendency to have well put together books about horror or horror books. And so then it was the title, the people that said it like let's be honest. Like, it's not. And I actually will say this. I have so many books to read. Right. You know this. You've talked to other people. There's so many things I get inundated. I got three emails this morning. And it's so funny how I, I, I feel for the PR people and the publicists and all that stuff. But you read XYZ book, you know, by, by Eric LaRocca. Cool. You should read this middle, middle grade book. I'm like, I don't. Where are you connecting the two of this thing? Are they. You just. In the section that it's all horror and, and. Or like, you read this horrible world too?
[00:16:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm like, I don't know where.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: You'Re getting it, but whatever. And so Saga reached out, and they reached about why I love horror, and they reached out about Night and Day, which. Which is a. Was a phenomenal anthology as well. And I was like, yeah, find time to. And Anna, Anna Dupree. Anna Rose reads, writes for my website as well. And so Anna was reading it, and so I was like, hey, we're covered. At least, like, we have someone reading it. And then I was like, oh, you know, I probably should read it. So they sent me a copy and I read your introduction, thinking to myself, I'm going to read the people that I really like in this book or our guests who have been guests in the podcast, or I plan on having guests on the podcast. And then I read your introduction and I read Brian Keane's, and I said, okay, I'm gonna read this whole thing.
It was like I was trying to set myself up for time, not for quantity and quality. It was more like the time I have. And then I was like, well, I'm just gonna read all of these. I don't care. I don't have the time. I'll push whatever else back. And that's true. I think that people will pick this up because they want to find out about why someone likes horror. They're gonna pick it up because your name's on it. They're gonna pick it up because the authors they know are in there. And I'm hoping that people discover other authors because of this or that's what.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: I did in the book.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: Yes. Because I had to. I said, look, I'm going to do this, and I'm going to get these essays, but I'm going to librarian it. Like, I can't not. So as you know, at the start of each essay, not only do I tell People because I don't want to assume they know who the authors are. Yes, yes, I did pick a few that they might not know, but who are influential. And so I would introduce who the author is. What basically without saying this is why they're in the book, tell them why they're in the book and then tell them how the essay fits, why it's in the place it is. Because I did really think about this. Look, I'm Gen X as a mixtape, right? I wanted this to be a mixtape. And there's a reason that they go the way they go. And I'm not going to bum you out too much, the ones that are more serious or you know, have some lighter ones, but then also tell you where to start with that author if you don't know where. And that's something librarians do all the time, start with titles and then secondly give you a read alike of an author who isn't in the book. So you actually get. Out of 18 authors, you actually get 36 recommendations. So sorry, not sorry for blowing up your, your reading.
[00:19:02] Speaker A: Well, which is, which is great. And actually do a thing at a horror week, which has been a tradition. We've been doing this, this is 2025, so 25, 24, 23. This is the third year of doing this horror week on, on the podcast and on the website. Which is kind of funny because I laugh because I'm like, I did it. I've done a Star wars week on the podcast. And it's like, well, I focus a lot of stuff of Star wars in that week. But the truth of the matter is I, I focus on like comics and horror on the, on the website mostly. And so it's like, it's kind of funny. I do like a week of horror where I'm like, well, last week I posted things about horror and next week, and then guess what? The week after Horror week is Clay McLeod Chapman talking about horror. So it's just like, it's so it's like kind of funny.
Yeah, exactly. So it's like all this thing, I'm like, okay, it's really horror all the time. But during Horror Week I do this thing.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: Nothing wrong with that.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: Not at all.
I do this book where I get authors to give their recommendations and horror books that are out there right now. And I think we've discussed this otherwise on the podcast, but like the community that's around here. And so like you have these people in there, you said they recommend or you say it's for, if you read this person you might want to try this other person is. Because they would recommend that too. Like, it's, it's insane. I work in the beer industry too. Like, my day job is actually a creative director for a brewery. And so we've noticed this. Like, if I need hops, we'll just call it a local brewery and then we'll. We'll trade hops if I need this or that. The other thing. Oh man, we ran out of this. They'll come over and like, like, we can't get it back to you for another two months because that's when our orders come in. They're like, nah, don't worry about it. The community in the beer brewing industry is phenomenal. And I feel like that is also like this in the horror genre. For, for at least the book genre or book segment is the. It's like recommending. There was like, the list is Philip for Cossey, Clay McLeod Chapman, Eric LaRocca and Keith Rosin. Those four people recommended books for other people.
And, and they were like, cool. And they said they rattled off a list and sent an email back. It wasn't even like a. Let me think about it. It was like they know what they want other people to read. And you know, Eric obviously is, is in his, you know, or their segment of, of. Of horror and so on and so forth. So like he. Eric recommends Haley Piper. And that makes sense. Like there is that sense. But they were just like, we know how. So like, yes.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I did an event with Eric for the release of his latest book in the Bert Sparrow trilogy, first book. And yeah, all of these authors know when I meet with them, I'm just going to ask them to tell me about books, you know, and never are the same. Like, I have appeared for why I love horror with Rachel Harrison and Clay a whole messload of times. And every time they have suggested different books. Same with me. Because even though we know the audiences are different, we don't want to talk about books, the same books all the time. We want to make sure we're promoting as many authors in as many places. And that is all of the horror community. The horror community is one of the nicest communities in terms of supporting each other. Now, like any community, not everybody feels that way. And there are some people that complain that maybe they don't get the support they want. But I can tell you from working with so many authors from voices that I don't even know about, that I identify early because I see that their books look good and I want to review them and give them a chance to people I've worked with for years, like Paul Treplay, you know, and Stephen Graham Jones, who I've been friends with for years. We all help promote each other.
And one of my favorite people to work with is Daniel Krause, because the two of us met years ago at Booklist. We both worked together at Booklist magazine. We would fight over the horror books. He was technically head of the team, but he would steal the good adult books. And our friendship has just. It's been based on that. Who's going to read more and who's going to recommend more? Not on the fact that he's a New York Times bestselling author. And in fact, he was one of the first people to write a why I Love Horror essay for me before I even called it that.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: This book has gone back to my blog for librarians to teach them to like horror or not like it. More about who likes it. Because I'm not going to make anybody like something they don't like by having authors who I invite to my blog. That's going on right now, too. Right now, this year, but invite people to tell the library audience why they love horror. And I gave them 1500 words and carte blanche, right? And. And I did that for. Gosh, I think I looked. I have like 300 essays now for that. But even before that, I got all my friends at Book List when I was writing for booklist, like 10 years ago, I got them all to be like, hey, you write for Booklist. You're. You know, tell me what. What about horror? Because, you know, it's like, I'm trying to let them know. Book List is all about recommending books to people, to library people. And Dan wrote one of the earliest ones. And if you go search it, I'm not going to give you the link, but if you go search it on. On RA for all horror. Oh, my goodness. The. I always make fun of him. That headshot. He's like a baby. He is. He's a baby in that headshot.
[00:23:49] Speaker A: I didn't know I'd know Dan Daniel now for. For three years or so. Daniel first came on the podcast to talk about his comic book back in the day. And then in that conversation, he was coming out with Whale Fall, and he asked my brewery. So I did a beer. We did Whale Fall ipa.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: I know you made the beer.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: And then we just did I sexually back here Pay the Piper ipa. And that was more. I said, daniel, no offense, I want to do a beer. That has George A. Romero's name on it. So that's not your. I don't think he took any offense to that at that point. And then this year we did the one with, with Christopher Gold in the Nightbirds ipa and I have some people in the hopper potentially for 2026. But, but yeah, the idea that Daniel and I went back and, and I've read, I'll read anything he writes, whether it be. I'm actually following him now on letterbox about his movies he's watching for horror. And I'm like, cool, Daniel, like this movie, I'm probably going to watch this movie. So like Daniel has a horror voice.
[00:24:38] Speaker B: Movie he hasn't seen.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: No, I know that too.
[00:24:40] Speaker B: That man watches every horror movie, good or bad.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: Yes. And I'm like, I've never even heard of this movie, man, but I'll watch it. Like, this is cool. But like Daniel's a voice of horror and I think that's, that, that's a, that's a big thing. And, and, and see, that would have been easy to put that in here, right? That would have been easy to be like New York Times bestselling authority. He's known for what he's done, so on and so forth. He's obviously wrote in a couple books with George A. Romero. Like people are gonna know this, this, this guy. And so that would have been easy to put in here. But you, you only put a couple of people where it's like transcends the, the horror genre. I mean, Paul Tremblay's name with, with books being adapted and things like that have, has slowly, you know, slowly but fairly quickly transcended the actual genre of horror because people don't know who, because of feature films and things like that. But like, there are other people in here that like Brian Keane's name is, is synonymous genre. But I don't know how many people that I would just talk to be like, they'd be like, who the hell is Brian Keane? Like, even, even some, even some bookstore owners. I'm like, oh, Brian Keane.
[00:25:37] Speaker B: You know why? Because, because he was a name and, and this is in the acknowledgments. I talk about this.
I met Brian Keane when his life was literally falling apart because Leisure Books collapsed at, you know, back at the beginning of this century and he was one of their best selling authors. And instead of just being like crap, my life's, my writing life's over. I gotta go figure it out. He was on CNN talking about, and I just emailed him and he answered my email, you know, I'm like, what's going on? What am I supposed to do? I can't get books anymore for libraries. And when Leisure Books collapsed, an entire generation of horror authors who were growing their voice were gone from bookstores and libraries. And only a few of his books ever came out in from a major press.
That one of them was pressure that came out from a major press and was able to be in bookstores. So unless you worked as a reader to find him, unless somebody else who was getting published and in bookstores told you you didn't know who he was. Obviously now more people are starting to realize it, but my goodness, like I said, that's. That's where we stood at the base of this generation. When I talked to Joe Monte from Saga about the book, he was like, absolutely. Brian Keane is the base. You know, I didn't want to. Brian and Christopher. So Chris.
[00:26:55] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:26:55] Speaker B: Is a read alike for Brian. And same with Dan. I talked to Dan, I'm like, look, Dan, you know I adore you, you know, we're friends, but I'm not going to put you in this book because I'm trying to make. Well, first of all, I was trying to make it more horror only. And he writes everywhere.
[00:27:07] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:27:08] Speaker B: And I was trying to get. Like you said, I wanted a breadth of names and not necessarily the ones, because honestly, it's Stephen King, then it's Paul Trendlight, Stephen Graham Jones and then Daniel. So I needed Stephen Graham Jones in the book because my life with horror was like bookended by meeting Brian Keane and meeting Stephen Graham Jones. And I met him back in Stephen Graham Jones and I met in 2017 on the Queen Mary when we were guests of honor at Stoker Con. And we've become friends since. And reading his books, I'm watching the genre change through Stephen Graham Jones and to not have him there as that. And he did this on his own. He wrote me that final argument that his essay is literally like the attorney standing up and arguing why horror. I didn't ask him to do it. I let him know. I really would like to put you last, but I gotta see what you give me.
[00:28:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:01] Speaker B: And then same with like, you know, these people who are high up in the genre, like Josh Malerman also transcended.
[00:28:06] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[00:28:07] Speaker B: He wrote me something that is the perfect story for the middle.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:28:11] Speaker B: Of the, of the, of the book, because it's an essay about actually being on a train and talking about horror, you know, and whether or not that actual conversation happened. I know it's an amalgamation of many. Yes, that. But it's like he knew. It's like he knew. And then, of course, the essay. I get the most comments about Grady Hendrix. Yes, Grady Hendrix's essay is phenomenal. And. And. And it is also an amalgamation of things that. That happened in his life, some to other people, but the core of it is his relationship with his father. And this is something I want to say about the book and the authors. Grady doesn't write about his father. I've known Grady for years. He has never written about his relationship with his father. It's always about his. His. His mother, his sisters. Like all books, you know, really are about his mother.
[00:29:00] Speaker A: And.
[00:29:01] Speaker B: And then Witching for We Were Girls was about other family members that he found out, went through that situation. But he gave me an essay about his father, and I told him, and I told him this on stage at New York Public Library when we did an event. You.
I will never take for granted that you trusted me. For you to be as vulnerable as I've ever seen you. And even when I said that, he still moved away from talking about it. But he put it on the page, and everyone did that. I mean, oh, my goodness, there are stories. I mean, Rachel Harrison and I have talked about this. She was afraid to write her essay because she had to share that she really wasn't a horror girl, that it took her a while, and she was worried what people were going to think about her. There has been an amazing response to her essay. In fact, I now know of three schools that are teaching her essay, three high schools that are. And the book's only been out a month.
[00:29:51] Speaker A: Right.
[00:29:52] Speaker B: Teaching her essays. So I say this in the acknowledgments, but I say this every time I appear with these authors on stage. Thank you for giving me your true selves. They could have phoned it in and wrote something, you know, all of them. Victor Laval, who I was just on stage with, as well, with Grady, literally, how horror saved his Life. He shared, and he talked about it on stage. He shared so much about his own personal struggles as a writer. I mean, my gosh, Victor Laval, like TV adaptations, major writing awards, teaches creative writing at Columbia University.
His, you know, anxieties and what horror did for him to make him who he is.
That's a big deal to share with people. Oh, oh, and a secret. I'll make it big out here. If you weren't at New York Public Library, you didn't hear this. His book he's working on is a Vampire Novel set during the crack academic epidemic in New York City. And he wants to call it Crackula. So we all loved it. And he's like, see, my editor doesn't. Or my publisher doesn't want us to call it Crackula. And we're all like, nope, nope, you'll want it. Everybody write this publisher and say, we want.
So we're gonna start a grassroots. It's not coming out for a while, but we're starting it.
[00:31:04] Speaker A: I think it's great, you know, and what you see with some of these people, people you mentioned in the people that weren't in there. But I think that talk about these things like, like Brian McCauley teaches screenwriting and things like that. There's other people who teach things in the thing. But this is not teaching you how to write horror. This is, this, is this, this net. They can easily have done. It could easily been like, I write horror because of this X, Y and Z. But like, they were even like Victor Lavelle mentioned, like you telling the story of why you like horror. Then get someone if they're ever interested in writing horror, they have a reason. I have a similar story like, or my, you know, upbringing was this, that and the other thing. And Rachel Harrison's point about people not. It's this community. This community doesn't. They do and they don't. There is this. There's a fringe, there's a. There's a part that still needs to be fixed.
You know, there's. There's definitely a part that you know that needs to be talked about and discussed and things. But for the overall scheme of things, this community supports each other. And so like Rachel Harrison writing about something that's true, truthful, and being afraid that someone's not going to accept it because she's not a horror person. And that's, you know, whatever is, they know because you are now like, it doesn't matter where you come from because. Because right now you are the. One of the leading female voices in horror. And that's insane. New York Times best selling authority.
[00:32:19] Speaker B: Yeah, best. I got to introduce her for her first event. After that, we were at Parnassus Books in Nashville and it was. I was, I was like, I'm so glad to do this.
She was so excited. That.
[00:32:33] Speaker A: And that speaks. And because we do see it and you know, the End of the World as We Know it anthology was actually on the audiobook portion of New York's Best Italian bestsellers as well. And so there is like a mixture of things here. But like, I think that it's harder for. For a horror author to be having New York Times bestseller. So it's even more of an achievement in my opinion on that sense. And that's not because I'm a big fan of I'm waving the banner for horror. It's just truth. This is a number of reasons. We've already talked about why that is that way, but I'm just glad. And you also didn't include some people, which obviously you probably wanted to include. There's probably some people that like, didn't. But that's because you need why I love horror again. Right. It's because you need volume too.
[00:33:10] Speaker B: You know, it's so funny because, like, Sylvia Moreno Garcia was so kind. I sent out to all these people and I had an original toc. And I talk about some of the authors who didn't get in in the back. And there were reasons that they couldn't do it.
And. And all of them were so kind. And Sylvia sent me a blurb which they put on the front of the book. And I was like, well, of course she did because we like work together. And she did summer scares with me. And then they told me at my editor, no, she doesn't give blurbs.
Like, it's really hard to get a blurb from Sylvia. And I was very touched. I mean, she was very kind about all but about doing it again. I'm really struggling with that, Justin, because I don't want to just be the person who does the same book over and over.
[00:33:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:52] Speaker B: And one of the things I love about this book is that it's evergreen. Right.
When I wrote my textbooks, a lot of my textbooks for libraries had like annotated lists of books.
[00:34:01] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:34:02] Speaker B: It goes out of date the second you publish it. It's so frustrating. Right. But this, this I. And I'm appearing with people who aren't in the book book because I have for years. And I always ask them why I love horror. I did an event for this book with Cynthia Palayo, who's in the book. Oh my goodness. And she read. And I do have a warning on her essay.
She read from it at my book release because she lives here in Chicago and had somebody in the front row who works for sourcebooks crying because that one is intense. But.
[00:34:30] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:34:31] Speaker B: But also she talked about at my event, like, she didn't know what to write. She didn't know what to write. Her dad had just died. And I said, take those feelings and put them in an essay. And she's like, that was the Most painful thing I've ever written. And I'm so glad I did it. But, you know, we are doing these things together and I'm sharing these voices. But do I want to do it again? I don't know. Like, I did a panel with her, but then we had James Kennedy, Nick Medina, S.A. barnes, who are all Chicago people, and Ananda Lima, and we did this with all horror people and only seen it was in the book. But guess what? They all were asked why I love her.
[00:35:08] Speaker A: Yes, yes. And I mentioned this. I mentioned it to Tanya, and I mentioned to Anna and Matt, who were on episodes before you, that I was like, I'm gonna pull this word from them. And I'm almost. Honestly, it's one of those things where I'm like, quote, unquote, gonna steal it from you. For any author that I talked to.
[00:35:23] Speaker B: You on the post, I'm borrowing it.
[00:35:25] Speaker A: I'm checking it out of the library. I'm checking it out of the library.
But the idea that. And I usually say. I say, you know, stealing or stealing from the. From the book. Why love? Why do you love her? What? Why? Why horror and all that stuff. And again, I preface it with the whole. I know you get this a lot. Like, so I was at Spooktastic Book Fair in Massachusetts back in September, and Brian McCauley was on a panel, and they were talking about how you have to justify. You have to justify because he writes slashers and things like that. So there's like this.
Yes, yes. And so you have to justify to people what you. What you do. And he goes, no, I have to justify more that I've written an episode of Fuller House to people because they know who I am now, and they know I write horror novels and the horror movies and things like that. And so, like, when you're like, hey, by the way, I read this. I wrote an episode for a family comedy drama.
That's where I get to justify yourself more. But, like, they're always going to be that question out there. And the only way I would say that I would love to see another one is ten years from now with all the authors that are horror authors who have come out since then.
[00:36:23] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:36:24] Speaker A: Who are trying to tell a story. Yes.
Because I want to hear Daniel's story. But again, you have it already out on the Internet, and you will hear it from other people. And obviously, would it be nice to hear that from. I mean, Stephen King's probably said this story in some sort of fashion at some point, in some way. But, like, it'd be nice to hear about these critically acclaimed best selling authors. But in the same sense, I said, they have their time, but we want to hear from the new people.
What people in 2028 started writing novels in the horror genre. Why they decided on it? Because it's going to be different than these people. I think. I think it's one of the. Yeah, go ahead.
[00:36:56] Speaker B: Two things there I want to say about it. One, that's the best idea I've had because everyone's like, what's your next book? What's your next book? And I don't want to saturate the market. But two, because of the place I'm in, I for years have been a paid moderator or like, you know, a picked moderator by. So like, I got to interview Joe Hill in front of, you know, 1500 of my closest friends at the American Library association on stage. And I asked him why I love horror, right? I said, this book is coming out. You know, I asked this to everyone. I've asked Daniel. We are, Daniel and I are doing an event actually for Comfort Library Con Live for Library Journal. It's for librarians and it's a comic thing. We're doing the keynote. We're doing a conversation together, right? I've gotten to ask all these people. I'm interviewing R.L. stein for a whole bunch of Illinois libraries coming up. I've had the pleasure of getting to ask this question to so many people. You're absolutely right. We need to ask everyone. And thankfully I am in a position where I get to do that. I do a column four times a year in Library Journal with eight books. And that's my review column. And it comes out in January, April, June and October. And then in July, I also write them. A horror genre preview. There's a lot of rules. It has to be only books that come out, like August to January.
I get to do an interview in all of those five issues.
And every issue I pick the author. So I have interviewed Brian. I did Brian and Chris for June when I did End of the World as We Know It. And all those are available if you just type my name into the Library Journal. You don't have to have a subscription to read those, the Library Journal webpage. But I ask every single one of them, why horror? Why do you love horror? And I been doing it for years. And so Chuck Tingle and Christopher golden and Nat Cassidy, like all these people that aren't in the book, I've gotten to ask that question to some of them are people I, you know, People barely heard of. And it's been fun, so I get to keep doing it. I don't know. Maybe a book in 10 years sounds like a good idea.
[00:38:50] Speaker A: Yeah. I just feel like things will change. Like, you know, my son's, you know, four now. By the time he's 14, hopefully. All the people that are in this book are like, just. Just names and horror people are like film adaptations and sequels and all this other stuff are coming out. Great books and New York Times bestsellers and all that stuff. And at that point, it becomes a point where a lot of these stories may already be known by people. And it's the next generation of people who are just starting. The people that are at Spooktastic selling their books independently that haven't been published by. By even a small press or something, that they're printing themselves or selling them only on Kindles or digital format or whatever, that the next generation of people who are coming up that are the next Clays and Nats and all these people, like, that's what I'm looking forward to in the next thing. Maybe it's not you. Maybe someone else does it. I don't know. It's just one of those things that I like the idea of hearing from the heart. And I think that this was also. I hate to say it, but a good pallet cleanser in the sense that I'm diving so much into the horror genre so much that I'm just reading it. I mean, I just. I had never read. I've read a couple other Clay's books, but I'm seeing him this week, so I was like, you know what? I'm gonna read Ghost Eaters. Hadn't read that one yet. And I just finished reading Ghost Eaters.
[00:39:58] Speaker B: And I'm like, oh, your heart, your heart.
[00:40:01] Speaker A: But I can't. I can't. I feel like I can't just jump sometimes back right into the next thing or. Or every time I finish an Eric LaRocca book, I'm like, okay, I need something different. I love it. Absolutely love it. Eric's one of my favorite authors. But the next thing can't be another Eric LaRocca book or a Haley Piper book or something similar to that. So this was great because I feel like I finished up a book and was like, okay, what was the next book that I want to read? And this ended up being that book. And it was like, cool. I get to hear from horror. I get to be in horror. I get to live in horror, and I get to sometimes be in real Life horror and find out why these people are making it. And then what happened after that. It was like I picked up people out of this book to be my next chosen. Like, I have some arcs that I need to read, but like, the next book that I read that was chosen, that this is a feeling read was authors from this book. And that was really cool to see and so on and so forth. So I feel like this is a companion book to a lot of the other things that are out there. But it could be a palette cleanser and it could be, you pick up, you read Clay's story, you read one of his books, then you read Rachel's story and you read one of her books. It could be that way too. So it could be done in different ways. And I feel like it is evergreen in the sense that I. I'm probably going to pick it up in a couple of years again and read it again just to like refresh my memory on some of these stories. Maybe I'll read if I. When Clay is on, maybe I'll read Clay's story over again so I could talk about it with Clay on the podcast and so on and so forth. So I feel like that is cool about it. I think that it's like, it's a horror book for horror fans and non horror fans. That's not, you know, you have to be deep involved into. You don't have to.
[00:41:26] Speaker B: Let me give you one of the, one of the compliments I got about this book, which I don't think I told the person. This isn't a compliment, but I'm glad you said it.
This friend of mine who read it, because they're a friend of mine. And, and he said, you know, I really have never read horror, even though his daughter's a huge fan, his grown daughter, he's like, these people are good writers.
And I said, sir, that is.
[00:41:51] Speaker A: That seems like a backhanded compliment, but that's.
[00:41:53] Speaker B: I know you think that's a compliment and I'm so glad you thought that. But please spread.
Don't say you're surprised, right? Because they are. They are. I mean, I'm like, my goodness. Stephen Graham Jones has won a teaching award from the University of Colorado as like the year's best teacher. Yeah, these are not to not review do. My goodness.
I mean, so, so what I need to say to you is thank you. But also, when you talk about it with your non horror friends, don't say, but guess what they're gonna be like. You know, horror writers are, are good Writers.
[00:42:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:25] Speaker B: And this is how, you know. And he's like, oh, I will change it to that. Thank you. But that is the feedback I'm getting, which I hope that is what comes through to the non horror.
[00:42:35] Speaker A: Because that's judgment. That's driving a book by its cover. It's all that stuff. It's like, okay, it's horror. It's obviously less. It's low brow.
And there is. I understand. Okay. So if you're a horror film, you're tipping your toes into horror films. Don't watch Terrifier. Like, that's just like, it's just not like hereditary either hereditary or, or, or, you know, some of these. But don't watch these films because they're not going to be. Unless you're like insane. But like, there is places, there's places to do this. Watching horror films for Halloween. Like, watch Halloween. Like, don't watch some of these. Like, more. Yeah, my favorite movies of all time. But, but there's, there's, there's places. Here's the thing. If you've never read a horror book, I'm gonna say probably not gonna recommend Eric LaRocca.
[00:43:17] Speaker B: First I'm gonna recommend or even wait. I got in an argument with some people. Not an argument, but I posted online, someone asked, hey, what's the first book I should read by Stephen Graham Jones? And somebody tagged me like a librarian. And, And I said, you really should start with if you're not really into horror, try Mongrels. But if you, if you want like horror, the only good Indians. But I said, but the best one, I said, that one's if you already are into horror. But the best one, if you just want to see the state of horror, is I was a teenage Slasher. Yes, it gives you that sense. And someone's like, no, it should be My Heart as a Chainsaw. And I said, no, my dear, I love that book, but it's a love letter to horror. Anything about horror, they are going to be scared.
Right.
They don't understand all the references. So I've been telling people I was a teenage slasher if you want to know what adult horror is right now.
[00:44:06] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:44:07] Speaker B: And it gives you a sense of like, why people love the slasher and it gives you the backstory.
But I also often suggest Mongrels if they want a little less scary.
[00:44:17] Speaker A: You know what's funny is one of my favorites is honestly, Night at the Man, Night of the Mannequins. Like, it's something about that book that does. So I'm actually Also, like, you couldn't have done this at Saga and not had. Like, that seems like it would be like anti horror, anti everything. Like, you kind of. Not that you owe it to Saga, because obviously it doesn't. They're not connected in that way. It's like, not like, hey, you could do this book as long as you include Stephen Graham Jones. But it's like almost one of those things. It's like. Almost like it would be obvious.
[00:44:40] Speaker B: Well, let me say this. That's a great point. So when I was working, getting this book out, we offered it. My agent. I offered it to Joe first.
And not just because I was. I already had the authors. The authors already said yes to me before we shot. Yes. So I had the table of contents already.
And so they didn't know where it was going to go, and they all said yes. A lot of it is because it was nonfiction, so they're allowed to put that anywhere, which is great. And in fact, very few of them even went through agents for this because it's nonfiction.
So I offered Joe first, and Joe immediately said, don't talk to anybody else. I'm literally bringing this to the head of Simon and Schuster tomorrow. Yeah, but here's the thing. When we have been out, the two of us talking about this book, and he wrote the letter in the ark, and we did a preview for librarians.
Joe and I have known each other for years from the opposite sides. Right. And we are both. We were both, and this is his words, the champions of moving horror up, up from not just being a niche thing that weirdos read to being a genre that needs to be read by everyone.
And he has said this, and I. And I know this, but he's like, I feel like this is the culmination of the work we've done parallel to each other coming together. And honestly, I have a great relationship with almost every publisher because of my work as a reviewer, but I really didn't want this anywhere else. And I'm just so glad that Joseph, because it wasn't a given. You know, Saga had not put out nonfiction before this, but now they're putting out more.
They have some in the pipeline.
[00:46:11] Speaker A: Yeah, but. Yeah, no, it's. It's so. So. So we've talked a bunch about. About this book in. In. In various parts and stuff like that, but, like, boiling it down to those who don't like her or have never really read. Not that they don't like it. They just have never dipped their toes into it yet.
And those that are die hard like, only thing ever read is horror. What would. What was the goal in your mind? We've talked about a little bit, but summarize a little bit here is in what they would get out of this book. So, like, those who don't like horror or haven't touched horror, and those who absolutely love horror, well, so I think.
[00:46:42] Speaker B: It'S on the COVID What I. I mean, I cannot say enough about this cover art by Jeremy Allen. Love. And yes, it is me taking people through the genre, which is what I've done for my entire career. Let me just give you a little example, because this is what I do when I give my talk to librarians.
I talk about helping your patrons of the scariest genre. And what I want to tell to them is I actually start with a. With a survey. And when I wrote the book, I thought of this. I asked them to say, are you one through four? One being.
[00:47:13] Speaker A: Or.
[00:47:13] Speaker B: Yeah, one being, like, you're a huge horror fan. You are, like, the biggest fan. Two, you know about it and you know how to help patrons. Three, you're a little nervous and you don't like to read it. Or four, I am too scared to even take this webinar and someone made me, and I really get a couple ones, ones, and then a lot of is in fours. And so I know that that's the audience. So I've always looked at it as me taking people's hand through the genre from wherever they are. In libraries, we meet people where they are for everything. We meet people where they are when they walk in the door. Do you need expert help or do you need the basics, like how to start getting an email?
And so I bring that librarian attitude to the book. So here are the people I think you really should know. I only. I actually had to cut some first base, too, so I was allowed 18.
These are the people I think you should know because they represent a breadth in identity, in how they write. Like, I thought about that very. There are half women, half men. There are people of color. There are LGBTQ representation. And I didn't ask them to write from their identity, but I wanted to make sure that I represented that. But not just based on who you identify as, but also how you write.
So the goal was, again, there's an essay and an author here for every person. I even thought about age, right from Nunzo and Brian, who are the oldest, to down to, you know, Haley and Rachel and. And Cynthia, like, younger voices. I wanted to make sure that's it. That's my goal. Meet people where they are. So if you like reading. Because I truly believe there's a horror book for every reader. If you like reading, there is someone here in this book who will speak to you no matter what genre you like reading. And I think because I took that librarian attitude and training in years. I mean, I have a master's degree in library science. So I've actually thought about this, right, that, that meet people where they are. I took that library mentality of not judging people who are going to come to the book but meeting them where they are. So that if you are an expert, you will love it. But if you are terrified of the COVID which I think isn't very scary, but my sister in law is that person terrified of the COVID She's been allowing herself like one essay a week. She got it early because she's essential and she's getting through it. She's like, all right. I had to like, like with Grady. She's like, I needed a break. I needed a break for two weeks. But then she keeps going, you know, and, and she's loved it because now she feels like she's part of the conversation.
[00:49:42] Speaker A: And here's the deal. I would probably read this version of it. This is why I love romance. Like I would probably because. And it's not. I don't know if I would have in the first place because I. I don't. Something about this format and just knowing people's backgrounds. I'd love to hear about comic book writers. Why. Why comics? You know, why not? And I've asked people who are both, like Daniel, for example. Daniel's written books. He's written now he's written movies because he wrote adaptations for comics. Is. I asked why this was a comic. He just came out with, with the recent superhero horror story graphic novel that, that I'm like, okay, this was in a comic book format. But like it didn't need to be. There's. There's superhero books too.
But like, you know, Alex Segura, you know, he, he wrote Entity as a novel, not as a comic. And Alex, I love that book so much. So good. And so why. And so they discuss it. There's certain mediums that need certain. Certain stories and story. Story is a certain needs to memes. So maybe I would read something that says why I love romance or why I love mystery or why I love, you know, whatever it may be.
And so because the fact that hearing from the people, I could listen to you. I would listen to you. I'm a fan of you. So I would Listen to you say why horror writers write horror. If this whole book was that, I still probably would have read it. But hearing from the people, the actual authors, why they chose their story in this spot and why they have a history with it and why they're so champions for it, and this is. Everybody in here is a champion for this, this genre. This is not just I write horror because I write horror. They're all a champion for it. They're all like, you need to read more horror. Because there are actually some pretty good writers out there.
No, like, they're champions for it. So I feel like I would want to hear from some of these romance novelists and yes, the Emily Henry's and the Nicholas Sparks of other worlds, but also the people who are like, oh my God, I made the New York Times bestselling list, like, those people too. And I think that's just because I think that hearing from these authors, this is some of the stuff we've heard from panels, like, if you go see a book relaunch and Daniel's there with someone else and you get to hear from that author maybe you'd never heard of before, who's more local, and you hear their story. This is similar to that, but they're expanded and they're not too long. That's the other thing about it. It's not like you're like, oh my gosh, thank you.
[00:51:51] Speaker B: 2,000 to 4,000 words max. Only Grady and John Langen went over and only by a few words.
[00:51:56] Speaker A: And so if you read, if people are, if you haven't. Well, I guess if you read the, the, the Stand, you're probably okay with the.
[00:52:03] Speaker B: The anthology being that long or the Stand anthology.
[00:52:07] Speaker A: Yes, that's what I'm saying. If you're, if you're okay with the Stand that being that long, then the, the anthology being that long is. Probably doesn't faze you. But for most people when you read that, you're like, oh my gosh. And every single author pretty much in that entire anthology went over. So it's not like. It's not like it's supposed to be that long, but it's daunting. And so, like, this is like, it's not daunting. Like, and especially with someone who, when I first I was a horrible reader, I took special classes in high school for reading because I just wasn't very good at it. And what got me into reading more books is actually Jason Hawes and Grant.
I forget his name. Jason.
Their ghost hunters that were on sci fi. They Wrote multiple books with some of the stories about their ghost hunting that weren't on tv. And what it was was the stories were so short that it was like I felt accomplished to read something. Like I got to the point where I was like, I know the story, I can move on to it. So basically it was an anthology of, of horror, you know, real life ghost stories.
[00:53:05] Speaker B: We had those at the library.
[00:53:06] Speaker A: Yeah, it was awesome. I still have them on the shelf. I visited when I was in Connecticut. I visited the TAPS organization because it was something special about it. But this is the same thing to me. I feel like if you aren't into reading at all yet either, not just horror, not just anything. If you just. This is like you could you read a small segment of something and then move on to the next thing and feel like you're like your sister in law. Like the idea that it's a small piece that you can get into and then go to the next thing, come back to. To it.
[00:53:29] Speaker B: Well, thank you for saying that because that's one of the reasons why Joe fought so hard for me to keep it in paperback and not do a hard cover. Because a paperback is going to be more accessible, but also it was going to keep the cost down so that we could get this book into the hands of high school students.
[00:53:42] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[00:53:43] Speaker B: And we had. I had a reader, my friend Rain, who's a librarian in Indiana, who pre read it and she said, absolutely, this can be in high schools. And like I said before, multiple high schools are starting to add it to their curriculum. And specifically, you know, they pick the essays or they let the kid. I heard one school said next semester we're going to have this book they can read. They have to read one essay that they then use. They can read more, but they have to pick one essay to read and they have to write a paper about what that. What they read there in one paragraph and then how it made them think about why they love the media they love and just media. Not. It doesn't have to be books, doesn't have to. It could be movies, it can be music. And that they're going to encourage them to write about in writing a narrative, you know, because personal essays are things you have to write and you have to write them to go to college. They're using it literally to help them with that personal narrative and using something they love. And I'm so happy to hear that because there are so many people who. Horror is the lens through which they found their love of reading. Just like with graphic Novels as well, too. I'm a huge proponent when I train librarians. One of my trainings I start with. With my general readers advisory training. I start with a statement that says.
I basically say, it's a quote from Kathy Koja, and it says, the story is. Is like, what they're. You know, the narrative, not the way it comes to. Not the format. It's nicer. And I say, if you don't believe audiobooks and graphic novels are reading, you're wrong, you're right, and you need to stop. And I'm not having that argument with you because so many librarians still do that. And actually, teachers are still the worst.
I have had libraries or librarians hire me to go to their schools to yell at the teachers to tell them to let graphic novels be read. I. I can't even so.
[00:55:27] Speaker A: Well, that's. That's. As someone who was a challenged reader, as a younger person, it was graphic novels of comic books as an entry point to me reading more because I was able to read bubbles and things like that. And honestly, there's still a point in comics where I still want the minimalist. There's a few comic book writers, Jonathan Hickman's one of them, who has. There's too many words.
Yeah, I want my novels and my novels and all my graphic novels, my graphic novels. But like, that. There's the point where, like, I'm opening a comic book to read speech bubbles, and if you have full pages of text in it, it just turns me off. And that's it. And that's mainly because I'm thinking about my younger self and the fact that I probably would have put that comic book down. So I'm like, you need to be where. Meet the people where they are. And that's. And that's, I think, part of it. But audiobooks, there's sometimes I get so much more. More of an audiobook than I've ever gotten out of a book. And that's possibly because the timing of an audiobook, like, for a longer book, for an example, I just read King Sorrow on audiobook because it was.
I'm a Libro FM advanced person. So I got it on October 1st and immediately started listening to it. And that part of it was because that book by Joe Hill is daunting in size.
23 hours, 26 hours of audiobook is less daunting to me than seeing and flipping pages and being like, my God, I've got so much left, even though it was amazing. And so there's this spot where people need to. And so the smaller stories and paperback like you mentioned, and cost and all that, if you can avoid all the stumbling blocks to people. And I wanted to touch about the audiobook really quickly is that the audiobook's written by a number of narrators for why I love horror, which is amazing, too.
[00:56:56] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:56:57] Speaker A: Which is the same thing. I actually, I hybrid read a lot, too. And so Horrors, New Wave, that book I mentioned from Dave Schilling in Blumhouse that came out recently, that audiobook was similar because they had voices from Scott Derrickson and Jason Blum and all these people that weren't those people, but it was the version of them. They were acting as them. And so that's what's cool about this kind of an audiobook, too, is you get the different voices from different people, so you know they're being told by different people. But it's not like you had Clay read his story and Rachel. He read his story.
[00:57:24] Speaker B: No. When they came to me, they gave me six narrators. They said, the is our plan. Here are the six narrators. Here's their background, here's what they sound like. But the thing I liked the most was that they had basically three male readers for the men, two male readers for the. For the women, and one that was just me because I do have an essay, but I also introduce the essays. And so the narrator switches from, like, if you're reading the. Especially when it's a female author. Right. So if you're about to get Mary saying Giovanni's essay, you have my voice introducing it and then the voice that does her. And I was so appreciative that they put that much care into it. I had no idea what was going to happen. It's been really a great experience because I am a huge audiobook listener. In fact, I read so many books for review for my job that I don't get. I had to read King Sorrow because the audio wasn't ready to read it. I had to read it back in June, and I loved it. But here's the thing. My brain, when I listen to a book, my brain knows I'm reading it for fun. Yes.
[00:58:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I can see it. I also can't. To me, I want. Every second I listen to audiobooks when I'm doing the dishes, I listen to audiobooks when I'm driving in car. Like, there's times where I'm just like, I need and I'm consuming it. Someone's like, how did you read 20 books this month? And I'm like, that's why. Because I read books when I had time to read books, like a physical copy, but then also like if you can read it, I have a 35 minute ride to my office that's hour and 10 minutes a day that I can get an audiobook in. And so to me it's like. And I do read not 1.7 or 8, but I read at 1.2 or 3. So like, I do read a little bit faster than the author, depending on the author and the narrator. But the, the, the. You can get so much more in because I want more. And so that's how I finished some. So that when I had kick, I had got approved on NetGalley for King Sorrow like a while back, like the first.
And I was just like, okay, I get to. I'll get to. I get to it. Get to it. And then October 1st came around. I'm like, okay, I've got to get to this. And then I logged on to Libro fm and that was one of the books that was available. My God, thank.
I waited for a reason and I crushed that book. I mean, I'm talking like I had segmented out like basically putting out a review on November or October 21st or 22nd when the book came out. But I like finished in like six days because I was just like, I crushed it.
[00:59:36] Speaker B: Well, you know why? Because it's in those five books he has skipping ahead. So even reading the advanced copy that I had to read for review and to interview him, I was like, oh, I just have to read this section. But each section was so well paced that I was like, okay, deep breath for one day. Dive back in, read a whole nother section super fast. Because when you, when you take a 900 page book but put it into five chunks, it's much more doable.
[01:00:00] Speaker A: Well, it's also to me, I'm like, so, so I have. This is a funny story, so personal story. I have no teeth. This is my. This, I've dentures. This is like the first. I think it's the first time I've actually talked about this on the podcast. I have dentures. So I had bad teeth and I was in a major car accident back in 2017 and, and so a bunch of them fell out and I went to a dentist and the dentist was like, we can do this, we can repair this, but really you should go see an oral surgeon, get them all removed, get dentures. And at that moment in my time, I said, if I'm. My dentist is saying, I don't want Your tens of thousands of dollars to, to fix my teeth.
Then, then. And you tell me to go somewhere else. You're probably being making the right decision. So I did that.
And in this I'm thinking to myself, I compare it and it's weird how this is a comparison to this, but in this I'm like, there's five books in this that probably could have been five books. Right. Joe wrote this book over nine years basically. And the last book he came out had was nine years ago. So I don't. Probably would've taken. Didn't take nine years to write the book, but you know what I mean? And it could have been five things. A 900 page book in hardcover sells for roughly the same as a 400 page book.
[01:00:57] Speaker B: It does.
[01:00:58] Speaker A: It's $29 likely at most bookstores, $30. And that's what's going to sell.
[01:01:03] Speaker B: So.
[01:01:03] Speaker A: So you're not making any more money having a book that's twice or three times the size of a normal book that you'd see on the market. And so you could have done it that way. He could have split it up to be like, okay, this is, this is a King Sorrow trilogy and it's me, three 300 and something page books. But he didn't because it worked this way, even though he separated the book out to books in the actual book.
Which at moments where I'm like, oh God, Joe, you did this to me. And I could have been reading the first part of the three years ago. No, but no. And there's a reason behind that. And so I think that you're right. It also like to me, as someone, I like shorter chapters, as someone who has a difficulty sometimes of reading. And so like the shorter chapters or the books of. The segmenting of the book makes me feel like I completed something. So yes, there was, there was a multiple. And the narrators have something to do with that, I tell you that much. You have the right narrators doing right things. Yeah, I've talked about this with a couple of people.
There was a male voice and a female voice voice cast as the narrators. But there was like three female and three male characters. And so the male did the male characters, obviously the female did the female characters. But I'm like. But then I got lost on who was who because the voice was the same for all of them. And they didn't do very much inflection or a voice changing or anything like that.
[01:02:07] Speaker B: And those characters are all very different people in that sense.
[01:02:09] Speaker A: Yes. And so this was great in that sense. And in Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay, that that book is phenomenal too, because he's also added in, there was characters who said the lines over again because that's what someone would be doing if they're reading a script and all this stuff. And someone had messaged him and told him that there's a mess up on his book. And he's like, no, that's on purpose. So all those things. So there is this point that audiobooks is a completely different experience to you. And that's where I've always recommended. If you really like picking up a novel, pick up a novel and read it. If you really like the audiobook, do that. If you read it again. Like, for me, if I read something different format.
[01:02:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:02:41] Speaker A: If I read King Sorrow as an audiobook, if Joe comes on the podcast next summer and I want to read it again to talk about what them, I'll probably pick up the physical novel and read it because it's a different experience and vice versa. And I think that's what it is. I think meeting people where they are is a great point on this, because if you can't physically pick up a novel and it's available in audiobook, there's no reason to not listen to it. The only thing, it reminds me of the Seinfeld episode when George wants to read the book for something George Steinberger wants him to do, and he wants it on audiobook and he has to fake that he's blind. And I'm like, you don't have to do that now.
The only thing I will say it sucks is that there's certain books nowadays that are only available through certain providers. And that's where it becomes harder. And that's where.
[01:03:22] Speaker B: And let me tell you, for libraries, that's very difficult.
[01:03:24] Speaker A: Very difficult.
[01:03:25] Speaker B: To the Libro fm. We can only do the Libby.
[01:03:28] Speaker A: Like, yes.
[01:03:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:03:30] Speaker A: So if it's on. On a specific provider and it's exclusive to them, they won't let you do it.
[01:03:34] Speaker B: And they won't be any patrons get mad at us. Why are you not carrying this story? And I'm like, because we can't.
[01:03:41] Speaker A: They don't let you do that. And there's a. There's word about this big company wanting to do the library thing, too. I've not. I've heard about some things, but, like, yeah, it's a. It's a.
Yeah.
[01:03:50] Speaker B: We have a lot of battles in libraries, and right now we're focused on not being labeled groomers and literally put in jail. Like, there are librarians that are in some states that are risking jail. So we're going to take it one battle at a time.
[01:04:03] Speaker A: But like I said, there is ways of doing this. If it's digital, there's physical and there's audio, there's all these things. I'm a hybrid reader, so I will pick up a book if it's available on both, and I bet I'll read a couple of pages at home. I get in the car, I'll find out where I am and go from there. And there are.
It's just. It's just the way it is. Libro FM is awesome, by the way.
Literary criticism, number 12 on the bestseller list is this book. Just so you know.
[01:04:25] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Thank you. And it's been number one in all essays and new releases for many weeks.
[01:04:30] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:04:31] Speaker B: On other sites, which has been great. But here's the thing. Also, why I love Horror is available in Libby, which is available at most libraries in audio and print. And let me tell you, some authors get mad because when you. When you get a book in a library, that's one sale. Absolutely not. Don't be that author if you're listening to this, because libraries are where people discover authors. Stephen Graham jokes behind me, Rachel Harrison, we're huge in libraries. Grady Hendrix, Paul Tremblay. And because they were huge in libraries, library users, first of all, that gets your book discovered by readers. Secondly, they buy books at a higher rate than non library users. And third, they tell friends about books more than non library users. So I have been telling everybody, do not feel like you need to go buy my book. Go to the library. Most libraries have it in print and then an ebook and an audio. And I've seen that across the country and I am very thankful for it.
[01:05:26] Speaker A: It again, it's how we can get people to read these books. And yes, you're right, it is one sale versus, you know, all those people.
[01:05:33] Speaker B: But it makes more sales in the future.
[01:05:34] Speaker A: You're right. Because I'm also the kind of person where I'm like, if someone. I hope publishers don't think that by sending me an advanced copy means that they're losing a sale either. Because the fact that hopefully my reviews or discussions with people like yourself is generating more sales. But to me, I don't have an arc that's over here that I liked, that doesn't have a book on the shelf. Like, there is no arcs that I get that I don't buy the physical copy for.
[01:05:57] Speaker B: I take you a step further. I give away every arc To a library user. Library patron. Sorry.
[01:06:03] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:06:03] Speaker B: I have a horror for libraries giveaway every week. So my King Sorrow signed Arc. Somebody has it out in library.
[01:06:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I put mine in the little library books. Like the boxes where people have those. Like libraries, like the, the. Yeah, I put them in there before, before I give them to, I've given them to people who are maybe a little bit down on their financial constraints and they need, they want something else. And I'm like, you really need to get this. In all likelihood, when they're ready to buy something, they'll buy something. Maybe not that book, but another book from that author. And so like to me, I'm like, you know, there's such a word of mouth thing nowadays that if someone reads something they're going to trust my buddy who rented or took the book out of the library and like this book and recognized recommend it to someone else that's going to go buy it than there is.
You know, if you didn't have it in the library. You're right, you're 100 right on that, I think. Yeah. So it's all about, it's all about finding people where they are. And I love that. That's a, that's a great, great, great, great statement on that because it's, it's just, it's true. It's so true. There's so much to talk about in the horror industry and I feel like we could talk about forever and ever and ever.
But horror is real. It's here, it's, it's, it's, it's alive. It's, it's, it's, it's growing. It's amazing. Right now I'm loving the world that we live in right now with horror. I'm not loving the world we live in.
[01:07:16] Speaker B: We have to specify we are living in a horror, real horror right now also.
This is the horror we can escape to that isn't happening in our lives.
So it is a nice, that actually is something I talk about in my other books. Like people turn to horror either to, you know, assuage their own fears or as an antidote to the real news.
[01:07:39] Speaker A: Yes, it's gonna escape. That's comics. That's one of the reasons I like comics and I got. One of my number one comic genres is horror right now. I mean, there's just so much good horror out there in comic books too. And graphic novels, which you can also get at a library. So graphic novels that people don't know about or not as many people know about. And so and sometimes you can get them when they're done and they're moving out for like 50 cents a copy. So that's another thing you can get. You can buy them at you library.
[01:08:02] Speaker B: Book sales.
[01:08:02] Speaker A: Yeah, they're amazing. I just saw him, a buddy of mine, post a stack of books that he got at the library, which is awesome. But yeah, so there is a. Such a great place to be with horror right now. And that's to me, I'm reading Ghost Eaters because it's fake, it's not real. It's amazing that I get.
But as I finish it, before I had kids, a buddy of mine who said, we watched that Hugh Jackman book, a movie that was about kidnapping, his kid got kidnapped. I don't remember the name of the movie now, but whatever. Whatever the name of the movie was. And I don't owe a Hugh Jackman anything. I think he's doing okay. I don't think I need to worry about it. About him, is that he is. You can't watch this when you're a father because it's so right. You're right. I think differently as a father now. However, I still have the ability to go, that's not real. That physical movie is not real. Yes, there are real horrors like that in the world we live in right now. And watching something like the Purge is probably more realistic than not, but it's still fake. And so I have that ability and that horror is a place I can escape and get that scariness that I can go, this is fake scary. Not to turn on the news and go, this is real scary. And it's a difference there. And I think that's what's cool about horror is that they take and weave in real life horrors and a lot of books, but also amplify it up to different statures in different places and different, different things. Like, you know, King Sorrow for an example, deals with some real life horrors, but so many. But it's also a fantasy in the same sense too. So like it's not. There's no real actual King Dragon, star Dragon thing in real world. Just so people know.
[01:09:39] Speaker B: But let me tell you though, that book does. It's great in that it makes you rethink history as well.
[01:09:45] Speaker A: It does. And it makes you also think in general that if you had this ability, what would you. You do with it? And, and what would you. It also makes you. Because I think in my mind there's a couple people that I don't want to kill. Let me make sure that's There. But if they weren't here anymore, I wouldn't be like, oh, that sucks.
Not. Not saying they didn't really dead. Just they didn't. Weren't in the public eye anymore.
[01:10:06] Speaker B: They're just gone.
[01:10:07] Speaker A: They're in a room somewhere. They're just on an island. I don't care if they're on an island being happy, just not anywhere near me in. But in the same sense, if you had to get rid of someone, that makes you think you had to, right?
[01:10:19] Speaker B: That's the book you have.
I know people will love it.
[01:10:23] Speaker A: Yeah, it's great. And now. But I'm here for the. Was it Taylor Swift has her era. I'm here for the Joe Hill era now because he's talked about wanting to be like his dad in the sense that I want to have a book every year. I'm ready for that.
[01:10:34] Speaker B: Joe, Hillary, we'll see.
[01:10:37] Speaker A: I don't care if it's every two years. If I want five books or four books for the next 10 years, I'm good. I don't want this nine years.
[01:10:44] Speaker B: When I interviewed him on stage, he had the next 10 years of books planned out.
So he listed them all. So he's got a plan. So we'll see.
[01:10:52] Speaker A: I hope so. I guess I just don't want 2026 or 2036 to come around and be like, okay, this is the next Joe Hill novel. That's. That's that. I don't want anything in between there. I'm okay with. Let's finish up here. But one thing I want to finish up with this. I.
I follow some people online. One of them is a library. And there's Olivia and the stacks that you probably know or have seen that on there. And she just asked this question to other librarians, how they organize their books. And so I wanted to quickly touch on that. So you have a bookshelf behind you. Obviously you have more books and so on and so forth. Do you organize your books like you would at a library? Or is there a different way that organizes? Or do you not even organize your books?
[01:11:29] Speaker B: So for this behind me, this is my office.
I don't have them organized in any way except in very loose categories. Like, I'm looking back there.
I don't, because this is my, like, sort of inspiration room where I work. And I do have, like, categories. Like over there I have like, well, my favorite thing is Monsters over there with paperbacks, but. And I have some books that are like, non. That are more library. And like, I have a few of the books that I was on the Carnegie Medal committee. So I have the books that were on that. And then like, I sort of just keep the books that I return to often in my work or for inspiration. Now, upstairs in my house, in my main room, I do have things. I have a fiction shelf and a nonfiction shelf, and I do them alphabetical by author. I do that. And there's no genres or anything. And that's in the main part of my house. But that's also my books, my husband's books, family books.
But this is really the books that spark the joy for me of my work and the books I'm going to refer to or I wanted, I need to have near me. Yes.
[01:12:31] Speaker A: No, that makes sense. I think it's great. I think it's ready. I think it was funny that she asked like five different librarians and they all had different answers. And it was funny. The tall people organized their books by height. It was really weird. It was like, I am very sure.
[01:12:46] Speaker B: I am 5 foot 3 with shoes on. So that does not work for me.
[01:12:49] Speaker A: So I'm like, okay, I can understand that. So now I see this about the fourth person I've talked to about this. And they had their non fiction and fiction separated. See, mine is just authored and last name from beginning to end. And then there's books that I have displayed that I try to keep in the spot of where they're supposed to go, but they're just there like, so like. And most of them are either signed or guess the podcast or. Most of my books have been signed by guests of the podcast. But yeah, it was just interesting to hear from a librarian.
I don't understand the people who are like, oh, I separate my mind by color. But every day I'm like, how do you do that? How do you separate that? How do you go from work where you're putting them by alphabetical and then you're going home and putting it by color? That's insanity in my opinion.
[01:13:26] Speaker B: But hey, but you have to remember for librarians that the our personal collections are nothing like the collections we're dealing with.
[01:13:32] Speaker A: You're right. You're right.
[01:13:33] Speaker B: I mean, I'm talking about like 100,000 volumes that I was in charge of at the library. And so we need to have a way to do it, but we also have a computer to retrieve them at home. Do again, do what makes you have joy?
[01:13:45] Speaker A: I have a computer. So I. So I wrote an article back during the pandemic about how comics or comics and books at the Time saved my life in a sense that we were going through some crazy times at that time, too. We didn't know what's going on. We were home all the time and so forth. So just taking and buying comics and not even reading them, but just putting them in bags and boards and putting them away was cathartic and escaped what the world was like outside my door. And so the same thing happens here. I'll organize things and move things around and so on and so forth. So. But I have. I use clz books.
[01:14:16] Speaker B: Which.
[01:14:16] Speaker A: Which, which. Or I have my. My database. And so I do put them into that too. So they could be anywhere, honestly, and I could organize them somehow in that place.
[01:14:24] Speaker B: But you are not the norm.
[01:14:25] Speaker A: No, no. And so. But that's so to me, I'm like, I have a little app on my phone. Every time I get a book, I scan it and I don't edit right away, but at one point there'll be like 50 books in there.
[01:14:33] Speaker B: You are a librarian. Just.
[01:14:35] Speaker A: I told you, I said that I.
[01:14:38] Speaker B: Would probably doesn't work out. Go get a job at the library. They'd hire see.
[01:14:42] Speaker A: And my library was expanded by a donation from Stephen King. So I can see. I work in Stephen King's library, so there's that too. Right.
But yeah, you know what, Becky, this has been amazing. I'm so glad you took the time out of your day to talk to us here. You've been busy with the book tour and everything that's going on. I'm hoping. I mean, do you usually go to Stoker Con? Is this something you typically do because you were on.
[01:15:02] Speaker B: I am the secretary of the Horror Writers association, so I'm kind of have to be there. But I also run with my colleague Conrad Stump, the library committee and we present Librarians Day.
Actually, I think Anna Rose Reads is going to be part of our Librarians Day this year.
We do that on the Friday of Stoker Con, so that day I'm sort of hiding in there. But we present programming all day, including a book buzz that comes with free arcs if you and library stays included with your ticket to come or if you're a library person, you can just buy a ticket for one day. We'll be in Pittsburgh this year. It's always the Friday of Stoker Con, and we do that all day and then I'm there the rest of the time. We normally provide at least one program for authors about how to work with your library.
Conrad and I have tried to pull ourselves. When we started, it was Us doing all the programming, we've tried to pull ourselves out and feature more people and more library workers and more book influencers as well, to talk about. We always have Emily Hughes on our panel. She's our honorary librarian. We've had Sadie Hartman do it for us.
So we work really hard to present that and make it an inclusive space for the people who love horror and promote horror in their libraries. But also, we invite the authors in as well. So we're very excited.
[01:16:15] Speaker A: That's awesome. And I'm hoping to come this year. It was actually funny. I live in New England, and it was in New England this year, and I was like, oh, I'll go to it this year. And then things, they just like, you know, I bought a house, all this other stuff. So it was just craziness this summer. And then I'm like, well, Pittsburgh's not that much further. I can. I can make it happen and make this happen. And it's this year and next year's in Pittsburgh. Is that what I'm hearing?
[01:16:33] Speaker B: Do we have two years in Pittsburgh to sort of. We're growing so fast.
I mean, we are. I'm gonna work anticipating a thousand people this year. Just a couple years ago, after the pandemic, we had like 400. So as a board, we have decided to keep it in one place where we know we have support, because we have University of Pittsburgh Horror Studies collection and their staff, including Ben Rubin, who runs it, but all of their students. And we have a lot of volunteers from that, and we're going to keep it there, and we're going to really make sure we know what we're doing and that we grow with intention so we don't just implode, because it is very easy lose track. So we are being very intentional, and I'm really excited. I'm sorry if you live far from Pittsburgh, but there won't be Stoker kind in the future if we didn't do this.
[01:17:21] Speaker A: But in the same sense, I mean, like I said, I was close to being in New England, and it's further away is where it is. San Diego Comic Con happens in San Diego every year. New York Comic Con happens in New York. So these Comic Cons that are massive comic conventions now that. Not that have transcended their location that people go to are in this, but they just happen to have the name of their title in their title.
But, you know, Socrates obviously doesn't have that in the name of their title. But, you know, people have to travel. It's what it is. I know it was lucky enough that it did travel around for a little while that hopefully maybe one day it does in the future or again, I would be happy with the staying in Pittsburgh forever.
[01:17:56] Speaker B: We're evaluating. I think our idea is to Pittsburgh and then go other places and come back to Pittsburgh to regroup and go other places. But again, we're still. This is the two years we're really going to figure it out. We're going to be able to get everything in place without having to move every year.
[01:18:11] Speaker A: Yes, yes. And that's the hardest part. I put on a one day comic convention here in Maine and it's the hardest part is staffing it and figuring the timing out and figuring out the date out and all this other stuff and guests and all that stuff and then trying to figure out if you're trying to do this all over the place. I can understand that. While also growing exponentially. So, you know, Pittsburgh is like I said to me, it's not that far away and actually it's more tour closer to everybody than other places are. So I mean, I'm okay with that.
[01:18:33] Speaker B: And there's a ton of hotels in the town.
[01:18:36] Speaker A: There's an airport. I mean there's, there's everything there.
[01:18:38] Speaker B: Yeah. So like the two, the hotel right there I think think is sold out, but the one across the street isn't. But there's also like a million places to stay in Pittsburgh. Some people did Airbnbs last time we were there. Really easy to get around and an affordable city. So we're really excited about that.
[01:18:53] Speaker A: That's really, it's really exciting. It's funny, I just watched the clip online of It's Always Sunny and what's his name really doesn't realize there's another city in, in Pennsylvania. In Pittsburgh. Wait a second.
Oh my gosh. Wait a second. I thought Philadelphia was Pennsylvania. Penylvania. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, it's, it's great. It's, it's awesome. But yeah, I'm excited. It's gonna be fun. I'm hoping to make it out there this year. I'm gonna this as a recording this. I'm gonna see Rachel, C.J. lead and Clay on Wednesday and I'm super excited about that. Clay is one of my favorite people and CJ is one of my favorite people. CJ's been on podcast.
[01:19:23] Speaker B: They're both excellent humans, so.
[01:19:25] Speaker A: And they've got energy and they just like love the industry.
[01:19:27] Speaker B: Presented for Librarian's Day before.
[01:19:29] Speaker A: See, look at that. And actually Funny. I went to the Bull Moose Music as one of the music and bookstores here in New England. And I went there with my wife's. My sister in law had a baby shower at my house on Sunday.
[01:19:40] Speaker B: I'd actually been to Bull Moose Music. I went to college in New England.
[01:19:43] Speaker A: Yeah, there you go. And so one in Waterville, which is near my house, and my son, who's 4, was. We were kicked out of the baby shower. There's a baby shower at my house on Sunday for my sister in law. And so we're like, let's go somewhere. So I brought them to bomo's Music and I laughed because I went in there for $3.
There was the anthology that was put up by Aardvark. I got it in my aardvark box. I had one, but for $3, I was like, I can't not grab this. So. So now I'm gonna. I think I'm gonna get CJ because CJ's in it. I'll get CJ to sign it on Wednesday and I'll probably give it to someone else. But I was like, for $3 of 297, I'm like, someone read this, they rip through it and we're like, okay, I'm gonna go turn it in at Bull Moose Music. Because I'm like, this literally is October's book. Like I. I ordered at the beginning of October.
So it was kind of funny that I grabbed that I grabbed 20th Century Ghost and hardcover was there too. And a couple of Fear street books.
[01:20:35] Speaker B: Fear Street, Yeah.
[01:20:37] Speaker A: That's a good find.
[01:20:38] Speaker B: We had them all at the library. Yeah.
[01:20:40] Speaker A: So, yeah. Yeah. So I love anything R.L. stein I absolutely love. And so I tried to get RL on the podcast once, but I think it's getting to the point where it's either like paying for someone or specific things. And so.
[01:20:54] Speaker B: Okay, well, I'll be interviewing him for libraries and I then on the. When we're off the live stream, I'll mention your name and say how much.
[01:21:02] Speaker A: You love him and see, so, yeah, so it was. It's. It's kind of fun. He's one of my. Obviously the best thing. You write comic books too? That's the big thing to me too.
[01:21:10] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:21:11] Speaker A: He writes a bunch of Graveyard Club and things like that. But yeah, I appreciate everything you do and all this stuff. I appreciate you putting this together and the hard work you put on to why I love horror. It's available in bookstores everywhere as well as on Libre FM and bookstores. A bookshop that if you want to support your local bookstore, grab them from those places. Grab it from the library. If your library doesn't have it, ask them to get it because they can get it. And so much more. Libby, you mentioned and all that stuff, too. So check out that. As well as obviously you have other books out there, so check. Check out your stuff.
[01:21:38] Speaker B: They're for librarians. Read this.
[01:21:39] Speaker A: Check them out. They're fun, though. It's just. It's worth. If you're into it, it sold well.
[01:21:43] Speaker B: In the library world. But I. This one is the one.
[01:21:45] Speaker A: This is the one. So why I love horror. I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to talk to us and chat with us here. We'll have you on again in the future if you. If you willing to.
[01:21:53] Speaker B: But yeah, Dustin, this was great.
[01:21:55] Speaker A: Good luck with the rest of your year. Happy holidays, all that stuff. And let's everybody read horror in all formats. Read horror.
[01:22:03] Speaker B: And happy Halloween, everybody.
[01:22:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
[01:22:17] Speaker B: It.
