TIH 017: Stephen Graham Jones on What You Can and Can’t Learn From Creative Writing, Slasher Movies and Self-Doubt

Michael David Wilson 0:00
Welcome to the this is horror podcast. I'm your host. Michael Wilson, I'm joined with my co host, Dan Howarth evening, and today, joining us on the podcast is Stephen Graham Jones, hello. So Stephen is the author of the latest This is horror cat book the Elvis room, and I wondered if you could tell us a little bit about yourself and your career to date.

Stephen Graham Jones 0:50
Oh, I've got 20 books, I guess 15 novels, five collections. I've been I think my first novel came out in 2000 so I've been at it nearly 15 years. Had some 200 stories published. I'm just always writing. I write mostly horror. I'll sometimes go in science fiction and fantasy literary just I go all over the place. I guess. I grew up in West Texas. I live in Boulder, Colorado now.

Michael David Wilson 1:17
So I was looking through some of the things online, and I found an older biography, in fact, where it said you started writing in 1990 in an emergency room.

Stephen Graham Jones 1:32
I did, yeah, it was, um, one of my uncles had been burned real bad, and the town I was going to school in had the best Burn Unit in, you know, that part of Texas, and so they airlifted him there, and some police officers came and got me out of class, and I was the only family member that was there. And so I went to sit in the emergency room or the ICU waiting room for three days just, you know, waiting to see what was going to happen. And all I had with me was what I'd had with me in class, notebook, a spiral notebook and a pen. So I read all the magazines I could. And then after that, I got bored, and I started writing. And I wrote my first story there, and I think it won some award. I turned it in my composition class because I didn't have my paper done. And that won some award, and I just stuck with it after that.

Michael David Wilson 2:23
And so was this when you were studying philosophy, or was this when you were doing the creative writing?

Stephen Graham Jones 2:30
No, I was a philosophy major. Then I was a philosophy major for all four of my undergraduate years only, I think, my last semester of undergrad, I finally added English to my majors because I had been taking enough classes. My advisor said, you get, just got to take one more class. You've got two majors. And so I said, What the heck?

Michael David Wilson 2:50
And how do you think the philosophy shaped you as a writer, and what do you think you've taken from it?

Stephen Graham Jones 2:58
You know, I think philosophy we, you know, we study how to dissect the arguments and just how to argue. Well, argue well and um, and part of that is anticipating objections, of course, seeing holes in your own arguments. And I think that has helped me in writing fiction, because, um, I kind of am always anticipating a misread, I guess. And so I try to, I try to write such that that misread will maybe not happen.

Michael David Wilson 3:22
And so at the moment, you're lecturing a creative writing school in a university. Is that right? I am

Stephen Graham Jones 3:30
I teach at CU Boulder, here in Boulder, Colorado, and also teach in the low residency program at UCR Riverside out in California. Yeah, I just teach fiction workshops. I'll teach literature. Every once in a while when I teach literature, it's usually some brand of horror or comet I'll use. I'll teach comic books sometimes too.

Michael David Wilson 3:48
So I know that there's quite a bit of debate in terms of what you can and what you can't learn in a creative writing class. So I wondered if you could weigh in a little bit on that.

Stephen Graham Jones 4:00
Yeah, I think you know, really you're going to be the writer you're going to be. It's just a matter of how long it's going to take. I think what a good creative writing program can do is it can accelerate like it can cut 20 years down to four years, five years, something like that. Because you go in and you're just completely immersed in the land of fiction, and you learn all kinds of craft, tricks, techniques, you learn about the industry, just you soak everything in that it would have taken you so much longer to soak in. And you're you're put on deadline for classes, so you have to keep producing over and over and over instead of writing at your leisure when you have time. You that's your job, kind of. Mr. Right? So, yeah, you it, what a program, what a writing program, does is it accelerates, it doesn't you do come out a better writer, of course, but, um, you probably would have been that writer if you'd have just waited for 20 years, you know,

Michael David Wilson 4:55
I mean, for new writers, and for people looking at getting. Into writing. What kind of advice could you give to them?

Stephen Graham Jones 5:05
You know, one thing I'm real big on is reading outside your area, like, um, you know, horror, horror is what I prefer and what I write. But, um, I'm always real careful. I try to read all across the spectrum. Because I think if, if, like, say you're a horror writer and you only read horror, then your stuff is your fiction is going to get more and more insular and less and less like readable or available to a wider market, bigger audience. So I think it's important to know what's going on in young adults, in spy novels and literary just everywhere, and they all have tricks that we can import back and use in our chosen genre or our mode whatever we write,

Michael David Wilson 5:44
speaking about covering various genres, I think your career and your writing portfolio to date has just spanned so many different genres already. I think the exciting thing about reading your fiction is you never quite know what direction you're going to go in next.

Stephen Graham Jones 6:07
Yeah, I never, I never know either. You know, it's not for nothing. Novel that just just came out. I wrote it because a student asked me one day in the hall. She said, How does detective fiction work? And so, you know, I gave her kind of my response from reading a lot of detective fiction, but then I walked away, and I realized that that answer wasn't completely authentic, because I'd never actually been inside a detective story, and like taking the engine apart with my hands and gotten all dirty. And so, you know, I went home that afternoon and I started writing, not for nothing, and it took a lot of tries to get it right. I had to take that engine apart a lot of time. Lot of times. But, yeah, that's the way I understand things, is by doing them, I guess. And I want to understand all the books I can.

Michael David Wilson 6:55
And the other thing which is unique about not for nothing, is that it's written in the second person. Was this a decision that you made from the start? Or did it adapt and become a second person? Narrative?

Stephen Graham Jones 7:09
It became a second person. I think the first time I wrote it, I think it was probably third person, and it was set in LA and no, you know, might have been first person in the first place. And then I went back and changed it all and made it third person, and it was still in LA and it wasn't working. And I thought, I'm gonna I thought I was gonna throw that novel away because I couldn't figure out how to do it. And then I found a couple of sections of it where I dropped into that gritty pi voice, and I adopted second person. And those, those felt the most real to me. And so then I thought, why not do the whole thing second person? So I tore it all down and built it back up as second person. And instead of sitting in LA, which I didn't know very well at the time, I said it in my hometown, where I grew up, in West Texas, little place, 3000 people, you know, and it worked a lot better that way.

Michael David Wilson 7:59
What was it that made you take on the second person challenge?

Stephen Graham Jones 8:06
Um, you know, part of it, I mean, part of it is that I knew it would be difficult, and I like to do things that I think aren't going to, that are going to be hard, that I don't think I can do. I like, I like that feeling of accomplishment, I guess. Um, but you never want to do something just for that. The reason for the real the final the real reason I did, I think, is just that none of the first and for first and third person were not working for the story, and that left only second person, because we haven't invented a fourth person yet, as far as I know. So I was stuck with second and it seemed to be a good pairing with, like, a private eye, always kind of muttering to himself, you know.

Michael David Wilson 8:47
And were there any second person texts that you'd read that had an influence or had helped shape it? At that

Stephen Graham Jones 8:55
time, I had only read bright lights big city, I believe, Jay McInerney, and, I was so impressed by that I've read that book a couple of times, and it always blows me away, just the way the second person is used as an immediate bridge, almost like a teleportation, into that character, such that we inhabit it, like, you know, most characters we engage and we kind of Root for with second person. You do inhabit that character space. More, I think,

Michael David Wilson 9:26
what kind of reaction are you getting to, not for nothing, at the moment? Um,

Stephen Graham Jones 9:32
near as I can tell, people, people are all right with the second person. The the way you know if second person's working is when you're when you're reading it, if you forget it second person you know. And hopefully that's happening for the majority of the readers. You know that when second person fails is when the reader is kind of they feel assaulted by all those U's on the page, you know, and they resist. They say, that's not me. Why is it saying you so? Let me. Maybe happening for some people, I don't know, but from what I've heard, people seem to like it.

Michael David Wilson 10:06
I mean, I was thinking about the second person narrative before this interview, and I wonder in in reading a second person narrative, is the reader somehow becoming that character, or becoming complicit in all of the things that happen. So it's so I guess the more negative and the more challenging you make the protagonist, the more dangerous it could almost be for the reader,

Stephen Graham Jones 10:36
it can be. I mean, that's also the like a opportunity for kind of that transgressive fun. You know, if you have, if you have a character who's somewhat reprehensible, then it may be fun, like a rollercoaster ride, to jump into those shoes and occupy that space for a while, but, um, but yeah, that's why second person is usually in either present tense or kind of a future tense, modulated Second Prince, second tense, because if second person is in past tense, then immediately the readers defenses come up, because if it says you, you went, you went, there, you went, here, you said this, then, then the reader kind of looks into their own recent history and they say, No, I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't but with present tense and kind of a weird future tense. It allows the reader to make believe better. I think it's the way all those choose your own adventures work as well. You liked being the pirate. You liked being the Space Captain and and you knew you, of course, you know you're not really a Space Captain, but, um, for the duration of this book. You jump into that captain's chair and you look out at the stars, and that's what second person can really deliver, I think.

Michael David Wilson 11:48
And did you read a lot of the cues Your Own Adventure books growing up?

Stephen Graham Jones 11:51
I definitely did. I lived inside of those. I had all these techniques for tracking the different storylines and everything, and I've still got a big on a stack of them. But yeah, I love, I love those two genre entries. They're all kinds of fun.

Michael David Wilson 12:06
So I said before that there's a lot of genres that you've spanned. Is there a genre that you wouldn't consider and is there anything that you're working on at the moment that is exploring a genre you haven't previously explored.

Stephen Graham Jones 12:23
You know, there i'll try to answer, remember, to answer both. I was asked. I was trying to figure that out. The idea, if there's a genre I would not do, I can't, you know, one thing I really want to try is romance, or at least a romantic comedy on the page. It's so difficult, you know, and I love the idea of just trying to control, not contrive, but to earn a happy ending. That's really, really tricky, and to do it in such a way that it doesn't insult all the women out there by saying you're incomplete without a guy or anything like that. I don't like that kind of romance, but when a romantic comedy works, man, it works as well as anything, I think, as for stuff I'm working on now that may be poking at the edges of, you know, genre boundaries and stuff. Um, yeah, I just wrote a werewolf novel that, um, you know, for me, werewolves, you know, of course, it's a creature of horror. But um, the way I wrote this novel, it's actually, I would consider it a literary novel, not a horror novel. And so I feel a little transgressive myself in that I've kind of abducted a horror creature onto the literary stage. And, um, I feel kind of bad about that, because I, you know, horror is what I champion. But, um, I mean, yeah, horror stuff happens in this werewolf novel. People get, you know, eaten and killed, and their transformations and all that typical stuff you associate with a werewolf story, but, um, the final effect is not one that disturbs you, I think, in which case, I don't think it's really horror. So I didn't, I didn't plan for that to happen either. I planned to write a horror novel, but it kept on wanting to be something else, so I just had to back off and let it do what it wanted to do.

Michael David Wilson 14:09
Often, the stories that do explore different genres and combine two together and can't be neatly pigeon holed into a genre box, are often the best stories.

Stephen Graham Jones 14:25
I think so. I think so too, definitely. Um, I mean, there's definitely something to be said for a mystery that is only a mystery. I like reading those a lot. But, um, I mean, you never find, like, a Western that doesn't also pull in a little bit of action adventure, a little bit of romance, um, maybe a little bit of, I don't know, political commentary. Um, yeah, I think that you very rarely find any genre that's only, only that, you know, and and, you know, I'm using literary like it's a genre, but really, literary is an adjective. I think it just, it literary just, really is a stand in for quality. It's what we it's the adjective we use when we. Mean quality as pertains to books. So something that's literary is something that has layers. It's of quality that you can return to it again and perhaps get more out than the first time. And literary isn't just that which doesn't have UFOs or werewolves or elves or princesses or pirates. You know, literary is that which is good writing? I think,

Michael David Wilson 15:27
yeah. I mean, you only have to look at the best American short story collection, which is one that we mentioned quite a lot on this podcast, to see that variety of literary works. And if you look at the one that Stephen King edited, it's no surprise that you'll see this meshing of literary and genre within a lot of those stories, definitely,

Stephen Graham Jones 15:52
definitely, you know, Michael shaven was he did that issue McSweeney's thrilling tales back that's probably been 12 years now, or something where he specifically was trying to mesh those, I think, or he's trying to champion genre, but bringing on the literary scene, and, yeah, all those kind of hybrids and cross pollinations, they create wonderful mutants that need to Live forever, I think.

Michael David Wilson 16:20
And you mentioned a rom com? I'd say that there was maybe an argument that even Sean of the dead was actually a bit of a rom com.

Stephen Graham Jones 16:30
Yeah, I agree. It's built like that. I mean, it has zombies, it's got the horror like it's got some of the horror characteristics, but it's built like a romantic comedy. I agree.

Michael David Wilson 16:41
Yeah. And speaking of zombies, I've recently been reading your zombie Bake Off, which is quite a crazy and trippy novel, but I particularly like the nods you've got to pro wrestling as well as a fan of the sport. Yeah,

Stephen Graham Jones 16:59
no, I grew up. I grew up in the 80s watching pro wrestling. It came on, I believe, on Friday nights, and I would it was like my soap opera, you know, I wanted to see what the Iron Sheik was going to do with junkyard dog. You know, it's also fascinating. And I was totally invested in the success of one and the downfall of another, you know. And then after, after wrestling, they started doing a 30 minute program, gorgeous ladies of wrestling, which was, it was, it's, I mean, looking back on it's like a parody of wrestling. But at the time, I was pretty invested in that as well. You know, it's pretty amazing, pretty amazing stuff. I thought,

Michael David Wilson 17:37
have you seen what the iron sheep's up to these days? He's got quite a prolific Twitter account.

Stephen Graham Jones 17:45
Oh, it's exciting, great,

Michael David Wilson 17:50
of course, the sad news for pro wrestling fans recently was the passing of the Ultimate Warrior. Oh,

Stephen Graham Jones 17:57
really, I did not know. Oh, no, I did see some news about that. That's right, yeah,

Michael David Wilson 18:02
yeah. So he, I think he's fallen out with a WWE about 18 years ago or so, and then only last year had they made amends and made up with one another. He got a deal to have his own video game. So he was the cover star WWE 2k. 14 was inducted into the Hall of Fame on Saturday. Did a promo on Monday night, raw talking about how even when he's gone, the warrior lives forever. And then on Tuesday, passed away. So, you know, it was pretty chilling, and it, yeah, seemed as if the guy knew, because when you look back at that promo, it's prophetic,

Stephen Graham Jones 18:56
wow, yeah, it's crazy, right? You know, maybe

Michael David Wilson 19:00
this is horror fans don't want to pro wrestling. But, yeah, yeah. I mean, we were talking about zombie stories, and I found out that you used to run an online course called Zombie Renaissance,

Stephen Graham Jones 19:19
yeah, yeah. It was, I do it through cu Yeah, I probably run it again. It's, you have a zombie Renaissance. It's a really fun class, because, of course, since 2002 we've been in kind of a zombie Renaissance, or a zombie boom, which I think is, I think, I think it's like a tail off, you know, now, like now that World War Z got adapted to the screen with Brad Pitt starring that was like a towering thing. And I think everything after that is kind of going to be a downslope, you know, as we prepare ourselves, whatever the next monster might be. But yeah, since 28 days later, you know that that pretty much started the new zombie craze at. Think. And it's a fun class to teach, because I have to take them all the way back to pre history of zombies and everything, and then take them up through through Haiti and, you know, through White Zombie and all the way to Romero. And then we finally crash land at 28 days later. And things start going very fast then. And you know, I think one of the most important zombie films we've had recently has been doghouse. I don't know if you saw doghouse, I think it was 2010 because in doghouse, like in zombie Bake Off, I guess there is the zombies come in stages, like they develop. And I think for the zombie to live, the zombie has to keep changing. And I think doghouse is one of the movies that's letting the zombie change.

Michael David Wilson 20:46
Yeah, no, it's not a film that I've seen, but I'll certainly add it to watch list. Yeah. So did it get a wide release? You

Stephen Graham Jones 20:56
know, I just saw it on DVD, or, yeah, thrown a DVD The first time I believed. So I don't know, I don't know if it got wide release or not. It's a, it's a UK movie. It's, it's, it's kind of tapping into the same audience that Sean and the dead tapped into the the horror, people who like some comedy with it. Because I would it's, it's pretty much a comedy as well, but it's really got some good zombies, some good effects. And it's probably my favorite zombie movies, really.

Michael David Wilson 21:26
So given that we've had a real surge of zombie stories since the early noughties, how do you think somebody can make a zombie story stand out in what is now such an oversaturated and crowded market?

Stephen Graham Jones 21:40
Yeah, man, that's the trick. That's exactly the trick. You know, like Dan Simmons, like he has one of, what I think is one of the best zombie stories this year's class picture. And what he does there is he doesn't focus as much, or the zombies are little kids, they're second graders. And he focuses kind of on the, I don't know, emotional journey of their teacher. And I think that that's the way that zombie stories are trending more it's less about survival and more about character development. Like the zombies are the backdrop and in the foreground are us humans, kind of learning to be ourselves better, you know, like that. That short film I love, Sarah Jane does exactly that. I think it's all over YouTube. It's just about a kid who likes a girl in the backdrop. They're zombies. They live in a zombie world. And, yeah, those kind of stories, that's where the zombie is going to live the best of the next few years, I think.

Michael David Wilson 22:45
And how do you feel about writing another zombie story yourself? We've had a couple of guests on before that have, I guess, specialized in zombie fiction. So last episode, we had Wayne Simmons, and before that, we had David moody, but both of them have have been writing about zombies so much that they're actually quite sick of it and are now looking at moving on to other things. But I guess if you've had a more, you know, diverse career, is it something that you have put a line under, or would you consider writing another No,

Stephen Graham Jones 23:27
yeah, you know, I'll probably write a zombie story in the next month. You know, I'm always dashing off zombie stories. I think I've got, actually got a zombie story coming out on tour.com, here in what, two, two months or something. Yeah, yeah. I think it's always going to be an area I write in, I think. But I also have recently written a mummy story, and I said I wrote that werewolf novel. I need to write a vampire novel. I've written some vampire stories, but I've never written a vampire novel. Yeah, it's just like it's as a horror writer, you kind of reach back into your your toolbox and pull pull out action figures, you know, and sometimes you pull out a zombie, and sometimes you pull out a mermaid with teeth, you know. I think it's just important to keep a lot of characters in your toolbox that you can use.

Michael David Wilson 24:15
So this year, you've already released gospel of z not for nothing, and of course, the Elvis room. Yeah, you've also co authored or ya, is it a novel or novella with Paul Trembley?

Stephen Graham Jones 24:32
It's a novel, yeah.

Michael David Wilson 24:35
So I think it's fair to say that you're fairly prolific. In addition to that, you're lecturing in creative writing. So how on earth do you keep on top of it all, and what productivity tips have you got for other people?

Stephen Graham Jones 24:55
Yeah, you know that staying on top of it all, that is the trick, man. So some days I feel. Like I'm I'm just running from from place to place, trying to do everything at once. But then, you know, some days I kick back and watch Rock Creek files for three hours, you know, so it all. It all works out, I think, um, as for how to stay productive? Um, you know, I'm not. Maybe someday I'll figure out how to have a schedule, like, get up at 530 and write until 10. I know a lot of writers kind of have something very similar to that. I think it's a great idea. I've never fallen into it, just because every semester I have different classes at different times, and so I have to adjust my writing time around that, of course. And I've got, you know, family and kids too, and they have all kinds of scheduling needs. And the only solution I've ever found to stay productive is to write all the time. Like, if you get 10 minutes between this and that, then sit there in the car and write, you know, if you're standing in line at the bank and pull out your notebook and write, I just think, like, that's the same way you read a good book. You know, it's a real like, like, when you read like Harry Potter or Dan Brown or something that are really paced well, and you keep having to turn that page, then you do that. You're always sneaking in a page during a commercial or doing whatever you're doing. And I think that's the way to stay productive with fiction, is just to always be writing. But, you know, also, I don't watch any reality TV, so that, like, frees up a lot of hours in me. I think,

Michael David Wilson 26:20
yeah, I don't think you're missing out much from what I understand when I try and give that a wide berth myself,

Stephen Graham Jones 26:31
although, although I like, like, let's see that. I think in certain Britain as well, that dead set zombie series, oh

Michael David Wilson 26:37
yes, yeah, yeah,

Stephen Graham Jones 26:39
I think I missed a lot of the jokes, because I don't know reality TV, but nevertheless, I thought that that's one of my favorite zombie things alone that was really done well.

Michael David Wilson 26:48
So you said that you don't have a writing schedule as such, but what's your method in terms of the drafting and the redrafting and the research?

Stephen Graham Jones 27:02
Yeah, you know, for as far as that goes, I guess the first thing I do is I make a playlist for every novel I write, so that whenever I plug in to write, I can put in my headphones or and the same songs come up, and that tells me I'm back in this novel, and it's really helpful. But as far as drafting, um, I mean, we all do it. We all like massage the story as we go, you know, because the way you the way you get back into chapter 22 is you go back and read like chapter 18 to 19, and then you have enough momentum that you remember what you're doing, and you go into the next chapters and all but um, so we clean it up as we go, of course, which is often why the first 50 pages of a novel look so polished, you know. But what I do is that once I'm done, I usually let it sit for a couple of weeks, if I can, and then I go back and look at it with a more critical eye. I hope I kind of the idea is that the love affair with this novel is over. Now it's time to chip away and be mean to it, you know. And and hopefully I find some things that are in dire need of repair, and do my best to fix them. And I do that maybe once or twice, you know. And I'll sit on the novel probably three weeks or four weeks total in that and then I'll mail it to friends I have. It's not always the same friends. Like different novels good at different people, you know, because they have different different tastes and different expertises and and they'll get back to me, and they usually don't get back with specific fixes, like, well, not not like line editing or anything like that. But they'll just say, over overarching things, usually not too awful in depth. But from that, I can gage whether this novel is ready to send to my agent, or whether I need to take another run at it, like a gospel Z, you know, which came out this year. I wrote it in the first place. It was probably 500 pages long or more. Gave it to some friends, and they all got back to me, and they kind of said the same thing. They said, This is good, but, man, it's complicated. And when, when people say that, they mean they don't like it, you know, they couldn't follow it. And so I took that, and I thought my first impulse was, well, I need to throw this novel away because it's not working, and I couldn't see any way to make it work. But I really liked it too. So I took 10 months. It was a slow process for me, and I adapted that novel into a screenplay, and only gave myself like 106 pages for a 500 page novel. And what that made me do was just strip off all the extraneous stuff, all the extra flesh, such that all it was left was like the dramatic skeleton. And then I printed that out, that screenplay. Once I finally got it working, I worked with a guy who does screenplays to make sure it was working, and then I printed that out and used that as my outline for the next draft of the novel. And it was so much in the end. Result is a novel that probably goes 280 pages or so, and it is so much cleaner and more direct, and it's not no longer that same kind of complicated it was in the first draft. But you know, some novels I've written, like lead feather or the long trial of Melinda Gotti there, the way they're published is the way they were when I had that last period, pretty much, except for, like, a Spell Check PASS or something. So every novel just requires a different approach, it seems like. And, you know, once I get it well, what I consider good enough to send to my agent. My agent gives me notes, and I make whatever changes we think, help it. Then we send it to publishers and and if one of them accepts it, I end up working with an editor, and the editor will just overhaul the novel completely sometimes and save me from all kinds of embarrassing stuff. And that's a vital, vital stage of the process for me.

Michael David Wilson 31:00
And so are you working on just one novel at a time? I've only

Stephen Graham Jones 31:05
ever been able to do one at a time. Yeah, I don't have the brain power to do more than that. No one story at a time as well. And however, as I get close to the end of a novel, I always lose my nerve, and I think I don't have what it takes anymore. I don't have the juice. I can't I can't figure out this ending. I'm not going to be that lucky again. And so what I always do is I close that file when I only have like, 12 pages left to right, and open up different files, new, new, new documents, and I make myself write a few flash fiction pieces over the course of a few days. And what flash fiction it like? Retrains my muscles, my writing muscles, because as soon as you start flash fiction, you're ending. And so what I'm doing is I'm trying to condition those muscles that that know how to end, you know? And so once I've written a few flash fiction pieces and I feel confident I can do an ending again, then I open up that novel document and I take a run at it and see what I can do. And generally, the first ending I get down is not the final ending. It I'll usually go in 10 days later and tear down the last 10 pages and do it a completely different way. But it's, it's the important part is to reach that final period. You know, and you know that you've got some some clay on the page that you can mold and make a story. And

Michael David Wilson 32:19
the self doubt that you talk about, is it something that has improved as your career has progressed, or has it stayed fairly constant? Because, I mean, one of the most depressing things, I suppose, about writing is, you know, any writer worth their soul to just has this crisis of confidence and self doubt that seems to punctuate their career, and quite frustrating. I

Stephen Graham Jones 32:47
totally expected that now I've got 20 books. I thought I'm not going to have that anymore. But, man, each time out, it's the same deal, as near as I know, you never get over that. You know I no longer have or I guess I should say I now have confidence that when I start the novel, I can see it through, I can go how many pages it's going to take, and I'm not worried about that. That was my initial concern when I first started writing novels, that I wasn't going to be able to corral the story. I wasn't able to that my conception was flawed, that kind of stuff. But I no longer have those kind of doubts. But as I get closer and closer to the end, then what you talk about, that crisis of confidence always happens. It happens in stories too. I never, always get three quarters of the way through them and I think, well, this is trash. I'm just gonna see it through for the heck of it, you know, but then I'll get lucky and find an ending. Sometimes,

Dan Howarth 33:38
if you have, like, a project with some finish, you know, like you, you're Everest, you've still not been able to page this

Stephen Graham Jones 33:48
one novel, The dog mother, the first. I published part one of it as a novella in this three miles past novella collection I did, and I think, I think the first part works as a novella, but really, it's a that's only like, I don't know 20, 25% of the whole work. It's a big old novel about a killer and people who wear dog heads on top of their heads. And it terrifies me to know, and that's my probably most basic fear, is somebody with a dog head. But I've never quite been able to make that story work. It's got some really cool scenes in it, a novel that I return to every few years and look into it again and kind of trying to discover if I've, if I can look into the right way to do it, and I've yet to do it. So yeah, if I haven't Everest, that's probably it for now.

Michael David Wilson 34:37
So where there are a lot of unfinished novels that you had before you wrote your first novel. No,

Stephen Graham Jones 34:45
my first novel was my very first try at a novel, and I wrote it because I was at a publishing party, and I got introduced to a high powered editor, and then left alone with that editor, and the editor turned to me and said, So I. Um, tell me about your project. And I had this like, weird out of body experience where I heard myself telling her about this novel, and I was making it up as I went to her, as if I'd already finished it. It was in the can, but um, so about two o'clock that night, and I started that novel, and it became my first novel. But um, so, yeah, that was my very, my very first try. I do I have, let's see, over the last what 1520, years, I have abandoned one novel that I wrote or that I started. I got about 20, 30,000 words into it, and I realized that it was probably only funny to me. It wasn't funny to everybody else. So quit writing it. Let me think. And I have another novel, A werewolf novel I wrote that is just broken. And I have a vampire novel I wrote which is broken. I need to go back and kind of mine the premises out of those and build a different story, I think. But, man, probably 90% of this stuff start, I finish.

Dan Howarth 36:02
It's a pretty good hit rate, isn't it? 90%

Stephen Graham Jones 36:06
Yeah, elegant. It would be a good score. You know,

Dan Howarth 36:10
it's interesting. The, you know, you say that you're working on one project at a time, you know, somebody is prolific as you are, you know, I had the impression of kind of a plate spinner, somebody who's, you know, maybe, and this isn't kind of meant disrespectfully, maybe, as a shorter attention span, you know, in terms of work, you know, you keep your hand in on a few different projects and stuff. I find that quite interesting. Your your approach there really kind of, you know, making yourself see something through to the end. It's not always, you know, the case that writers have the discipline to do that is quite an interesting thing to hear.

Stephen Graham Jones 36:43
Yeah, that I like that plate spinning. Well, I never thought of it like that, but yeah, it would be, I would be a poor plate spinner, because I have tried to do two things at once, and the way it tends to come out is that I end up with a favorite and the other one becomes a chore. And in I don't want writing to ever be a chore like that. You know, like in I found the same thing in teaching. If I'm teaching the same class back to back, then it always seems like one class is getting it, the other class is not getting it. And it's really, I don't think that's really the case. I think it's really my own perception of it, and but that's what I find. If I try to write two novels at once. Then I think one of them sings and one of them doesn't know.

Dan Howarth 37:25
How do you find them sorry? How do you find that, Michael, you're attempting to at once? I know.

Michael David Wilson 37:33
I mean, when I'm writing two things at once, I try and write I'll try and write one until I get to a point where I'm struggling, and then I will go on to something else at that point. But I think only only working on a maximum of two at the same time is a good way, because otherwise it gets ridiculous. Although, having said that, our last guest, Wayne Simmons, says that he does like, five or six projects at the same time. So I guess it's just different things for different people.

Stephen Graham Jones 38:07
Yeah, that's the case, definitely. Then you gotta take, you take the work as it comes at you, you know, like somebody might, um, commission a screenplay from you, and somebody else wants a short story. Then you've got to both of the same week or something, you know.

Michael David Wilson 38:22
And how about the the research for each novel, any story, where about, does that fit in? That's it.

Stephen Graham Jones 38:29
Yes, a good question. I did have to do research for something I wrote recent, oh, I know I was trying to do an anthropological thriller, a story about, um, trying to discover why humans, why monkeys stood up and walked into humans, kind of, you know, which is just endlessly fascinating to me. And I did so much research for that. I've got this huge file, but I haven't written that novel, you know, and I think for me anyways, and I found this with other projects as well. When I do too much research, then, like, that's where the discovery is, for me, is in the research, and I never actually get the thing written. I just wanted to learn about anthropologies. It turns out, you know, maybe I'll write that novel eventually. I need to, need to let the data all simmer and stew such that I can distill out what I need, I think. But one of my professors, Janet burrowway, she said, you know, she she did a lot of research for her novels, and she said the trick she finally settled upon was, yes, go to the library and do hours and hours of research, but don't keep notes that way. Only what is actually vital will stick in your head. And I think that's really the way to do it. I think I should have done that for my anthropological thriller. I think I probably would have written

Michael David Wilson 39:43
it. Then, sounds like a good tip.

Dan Howarth 39:45
How much research? I'm not sure if you touched on this while I was offline. Shall we say? How much research did the Elvis room take? Because there's, you know, there's a reasonable amount of science in there to well, at least it seems that way to a layman like myself. So, so what kind of things did you research for the Elvis room? And how, you know, how difficult was that, you know, research in a novel as compared to research in a chat book? You

Stephen Graham Jones 40:10
know, I did no research for the Elvis room, or my research was the way I was living there, which is kind of the way I'm living now, like going somewhere every week, and so I'm always on, always in hotels. And, you know, you get hills, and you realize they're kind of all the same, and you start to get creeped out by people who you can't see their face, that kind of stuff. That's really where the elbow stream came from. For me, it's science stuff. Yeah, I say I didn't do research, but I'm always reading science literature. You know, I love to read the pop science books and, uh, subscribe to the science magazines and I read science blogs. I just science really, really fascinates me. I think I probably could have gone that way as far as a career or something, um, except for math. I never can get past math. I think that really has kept me out of the sciences.

Dan Howarth 41:01
Yeah, I'd agree with that. I'm definitely more letters than numbers, as far as my brain works.

Stephen Graham Jones 41:06
Yeah, in undergraduate, I had to take, I think it took me three times just to pass college algebra. You know, take a lot of symbolic logic classes which satisfied math requirements. That was quite nice. I love symbolic logic to no end. But once you get numbers on the on the page, I just kind of my mind shuts down and I don't know what's going on.

Dan Howarth 41:27
Yeah, like pretty much opposite rate to the Rain Man, I said just numbers just do not compute for me whatsoever.

Michael David Wilson 41:35
I mean, speaking of the Elvis room, which I hadn't brought up yet because I didn't want it to be too self gratuitous, however, that is what we're talking about now. So I mean that that explores ghosts and it explores science. And so I wondered if you had any supernatural beliefs, or if you don't, though there was any kind of empirical evidence of something maybe a little bit supernatural, in terms of your own research, in your own life,

Stephen Graham Jones 42:10
you know, I always suspect that there is empirical evidence, or, you know, supernatural stuff, but it probably gets dismissed as an error in the data or something, you know, because people, the researchers, like, I don't know, hypothesis is not set up such that it can contain the possibility that a ghost walk through the room or something. As for myself, yeah, I think probably just from abject fear. I think not believing in ghosts would set me up for a haunting, you know, always believe very, very studiously, you know, and not just ghosts, but Bigfoot and aliens and blackness monster and everything I think I don't a cheaper camera is, I think I can't think of any of that stuff that I do not Believe in. Actually,

Michael David Wilson 43:00
it sounds like a good self preservation tactic. So, I mean, the Elvis room is amongst your most scary stories, I would say so. I mean, what is it that you feel makes a scary story? And how do you scare people?

Stephen Graham Jones 43:22
You know, I think the way you scare people is, um, you it's like a technique where you you open a closet door and there's nothing in there, you open the next closet door and there's nothing in there, and you do that the whole way down the hall, and then the person turns around and the ghost has been behind them the whole time. You know, that stuff that gets to me anyways, as a reader, and so that's the kind of stuff I try to do in my writing. It's about tension. I guess the trick with the tension in a horror story is that you need little pressure release valves periodically. Lots of people use humor. I think humor works great. But um, you need little, little payoffs in between. You can't just ramp it up for 30 pages for one big scare. You got to have a, it's like a, like a heart goes up and down and up and down and up and down. You need that rhythm for horror. I think,

Michael David Wilson 44:19
yeah, no, I think that's a good answer. Another book that, of course, won at this is horror award. Was the last final girl. And you've spoken before about, I think you said you live for slash years and it's your favorite genre. Yep, so I was that one of the most enjoyable books for you to write.

Stephen Graham Jones 44:45
It definitely was, yeah. I mean, they're they're all joys and pains and all, of course, but um, what I was trying to do there was my novel demon theory is also part one of that is a slasher as well, written in very much the same voice, but it has all these footnotes. I. And so with last final girl, I asked myself, What would happen if the footnotes were all up in the top portion of the text, you know, and and it was. And so I ended up with a character, Izzy Stratford, who kind of embodies those footnotes. You know, she's like, what Jamie Kennedy and scream, you know, Randy and scream, walking, talking slasher encyclopedia. And, um, it was really, really, really fun. Yeah, you know, if I can get away with it, I'd probably write a slasher every single novel.

Dan Howarth 45:32
Yeah, it was just while, while kind of talking about genre. I was interested to see your your list that you put forward of the 20 greatest books of the 90s. It's interesting to see that it's you know, as eclectic as your as your work has been. Is there anything in particular that you know? I know, we've we've touched on the slasher stumbling. It slasher genre. Is there anything in particular that you know, other than a dog headed man that you're in particularly you know, kind of burning to to get out there.

Stephen Graham Jones 46:04
Yeah, I am. I've got this big novel kind of simmering in the back of my head right now about a haunting, basically, a little girl haunting a family, kind of, and I keep wanting to write it, but it's so scary that I don't know how I'm gonna write it, because I have to sleep as it's in my head. And so when I wake up at three in the night for no reason I can figure out, then that novel is always the first thing I think of, and that's what keeps me from going to the kitchen to get a glass of water. You know, I think I'm better off being thirsty than having a faith.

Dan Howarth 46:38
Maybe it'll be a cathartic for you to write it, and then, you know, maybe you'll be able to get up and get that glass of water after you've done it.

Stephen Graham Jones 46:44
That's always the hope. I always hope that I can get trapped the horror on the page and walk away from it. But so far, it's never happened like that that, you know, I say dog headed people are one of my primary fears. So I wrote the dog mother about that, about the dog headed people, and, um, I thought, That's it. I can move I can move on to some new fear now. But sure enough, I wrote the novel. I'm still terrified of dog headed people. So

Michael David Wilson 47:10
do you think in perhaps writing things like the Elvis room, it may now make it more difficult for you to stay at hotels?

Stephen Graham Jones 47:17
Oh, no, it already does. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it already has. Man,

Dan Howarth 47:25
actually never try and look people in the eye when you're in a hotel. Then Exactly,

Unknown Speaker 47:30
yeah, yeah. So

Michael David Wilson 47:32
as you're a massive slasher fan, what do you think are the greatest slasher films of all time?

Stephen Graham Jones 47:39
Oh, man, what do I think? I love them, of course. I mean, from Black Christmas to Halloween and Friday the 13th, the Nightmare on Elm Street, scream Kevin in the woods, you're next. I love all the I think all the boys love Mandy lane is a far underrated slasher. I love them. I think they're great. They do new things. They do new things, and they do the same things. And that's that's the hard thing. I think that's why I like to slasher so much, because they have to innovate, they have to surprise the audience, but they have to surprise the audience with the exact same tool set, you know. And I think that's very, very difficult to do. People don't really realize how difficult that is. I think,

Michael David Wilson 48:16
do you have a favorite slasher scream?

Stephen Graham Jones 48:18
Probably when scream came out, and I saw it at the dollar theater. I actually, I didn't know it was at the theater. I didn't have it on my radar. I was home writing. I was living in Tallahassee, Florida. At the time, a friend came over and knocked on the door, and he said, Hey, man, you gotta come see this movie. And I said, No, I'm writing. And he said, No, you gotta come see this movie. And he kind of dragged me out, and I went and saw it. And he was right. And so for the next six nights after that, I saw, I went back and saw it every night. You know, saw it seven times in a row that week. Watch it probably once every six or seven weeks now. And I read the screenplay pretty regular also, really, I think it really did a lot of things, right.

Dan Howarth 48:57
Yeah, do you have any kind of up to date? You know, obviously scream changed the ball game in terms of slashes since then. Have you got any, any recommendations that you think live up to, you know, the classic slasher status next

Stephen Graham Jones 49:11
is the, the most recent one I can think of that lives up to it quite well, because it's, it's not like glib in the same way, scream wise, glib and genre where it's that kind of awareness, where you know the writer and the director intimately know this genre, and they're kind of playing with it a little bit, but the characters don't necessarily know the genre. They just know that there's people with masks that are killing them. Yeah, it's probably the hottest slasher I've seen recently. Before that, it was cabin in the woods, I guess. And before that, it was Tucker and Dale versus evil, which is comedy. But I mean, slashers are built for comedy, of course. And man before that, it would have been all the boys left. Mandy Lane before that, probably behind the mask, the Leslie Vernon story that ducky. Henry,

Dan Howarth 50:00
yeah.

Stephen Graham Jones 50:03
And, you know, I think that this is probably from what 2003 or something, maybe, maybe five, I'm not sure, but that that movie, Jon Bon Jovi is in cry wolf. I think that's far underrated. I think it does a lot of things really right as well. And also, there's that movie with Keira Knightley, the whole which I kind of always, always want to read that as a slasher. I don't think it, I don't think, I think it actually just has slasher elements, but it's really neat to watch. I think, Well,

Michael David Wilson 50:30
the thing that makes your next and the cabin in the woods unique is the the ending for both of them, the reveal that final act. I mean, particularly the cabin in the woods would just completely turn the film on its head. But I don't the the ending was particularly clever, also for your next and so perhaps that's what's what kind of puts them above other slasher films that have came out in the last couple of years, I

Stephen Graham Jones 51:02
could, you couldn't be right about that, because, um, Tucker and Dale versus evil also has a third act which is very clearly divorced from the thrust of the first two. You know, everything kind of turns around, and we look at it off from a different angle. Um, you might be right. Maybe that's the new trend in slasher movies is to have a third act which isn't just a single escalation, but it's like a three level up escalation. You know,

Michael David Wilson 51:25
is there as someone who's watched the original scream countless times? How do you rate the sequels?

Stephen Graham Jones 51:33
You know, I like number two well enough. It wasn't perfect. I'm always kind of nostalgic for what we never got, which was the script for scream two, because, if I remember correctly, it leaked to the internet or and so Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven altered it and shot a different movie. So I always wonder, you know who the killer was supposed to be, really? I thought scream three kind of was a little bit too, I don't know, prep itself or something. I guess scream four was, I thought it was pretty fun. It kind of did a final girl handoff. You know, things are not what you thought, which is, that's what, that's what we want from a slasher. But, um, I think scream lost its nerve a little bit, and that it preserved everybody. We needed some real character deaths. I think some of the we needed some of the core cast to go down such that they couldn't be in a scream five. Should that ever happen?

Michael David Wilson 52:29
Well, I think the problem with scream four was it almost became another scary movie. So it was more more comedy. And I know that, of course, the original scream did have a lot of comedic elements, and it had nods towards other slashes that had gone before it, but scream force seemed to take that a little bit too far. So it was scary movie or or not, another teen movie was more the vibe I was getting from it.

Dan Howarth 53:02
Do you think, I think it needed to go the way that Steven said in that the news, be some high profile blood spill in that film to kind of re energize the franchise? You know, the whole thing that kind of kicked off with scream, wasn't it? You know, Drew Barrymore was the main name on the poster, and she was the first one down. I think if they were going to reestablish that as any kind of series with any credibility, I think Courtney Cox, you know, David Arquette, somebody like that, that's the go down early doors. I think to, you know, set the playing field, you know, for the rest of the film, or a subsequent sequel. But I think that's an opportunity that they missed

Stephen Graham Jones 53:41
two thing that scream four, um, might have had a misstep on was um, you know, when you watch scream the original, you realize, of course, that all these actors playing these high schoolers are really, you know, in their mid 20s, probably um, whereas actors playing the high schoolers in scream Four looked like they could really be high schoolers. And somehow that that messes up our our viewing of it, I think, like all the slashers from the 80s, like happy, happy birthday to me and April fools and all those that was playing kids, but it was always, You were always playing, like six or eight years under your actual age, and that almost made it okay to kill them in the most gory ways possible. But with scream four, that actor, that crew, that those actors, they looked actually young, and so you kind of had an impulse to protect them a little bit. And in slashers, your count, your impulse is supposed to watch that person die. Yeah,

Dan Howarth 54:41
that's pretty much true.

Michael David Wilson 54:42
Do you think there's any way that you can translate that to the page in terms of, I guess, like having a slasher book where you feel a little less sympathetic? Because, of course, if you're feeling less sympathetic for the. Characters. Then perhaps as an argument, why would you continue to read it? Yes,

Stephen Graham Jones 55:05
really good point. I had never considered that how to translate that playing below your age to the page. Honestly, have no idea how to do that. It would have to be in self aware way, I think. But the audience is getting a little bit tired of that self aware trick as well. So, yeah, I'm not trying to do that. If it's even possible, it'd be a cool thing to try, though.

Michael David Wilson 55:29
I guess that could be a new project, a future project for you, perhaps

Stephen Graham Jones 55:34
exactly

Michael David Wilson 55:38
so one of the I was gonna say organization, but I guess that's not really the right word, but you're part of a group of writers called the velvet, and I wondered if you could tell our listeners a little bit about the velvet, how that came about.

Stephen Graham Jones 55:59
It's initially a discussion board for fans of will, Christopher Bear's Phineas Poe books, that trilogy, and then probably in the early 2000s Craig Clevenger kind of got in the masthead as well. So it was like a fan base of writers who all fit under the umbrella of we like Craig clever, and we like will Christopher bear. And then I want to say around 2005 they reached out and invited me to also put my name up there. And of course, I was willing. It was a vibrant group. We had a lot of fun for a lot of years just talking about writing, talking about film, talking about everything. And then as Facebook surfaced and became more the locale for, I don't know, social media, I guess which is what we were doing at the velvet. Then the velvet kind of is still around, but it seems like most of the discussions take place on Facebook these days.

Dan Howarth 57:00
And how useful Do you think that is to you as a writer? You know, having that kind of network of people that help you out,

Stephen Graham Jones 57:08
well, it's wonderful to have access to smart people who are also writing, you know, that's that's that improves your work tremendous. You're not working in a vacuum anymore. If you need to know this, that or the other. You just say, Hey, does anybody know this? And, Or does anybody, has anybody seen this before? And you nearly always get an answer.

Dan Howarth 57:29
Find that interesting, really, because it's kind of, can be a double edged sword, can't it? Really, you know the the growth of social networks, and you know how little time you have left for writing once, once you've, you know, been chatting with your with your co workers, or, you know, your peers, however you want to describe them, on social networks, or a lot of people who kind of do a lot of talking on these things and not a lot of writing. So, you know, clearly, clearly, that doesn't apply to you if you're writing as prolifically as you are. But

Stephen Graham Jones 57:56
sometimes I do wonder if I produce more work if I was not on social media, you know, so, um, but then again, I'm, I'm really bad about going out and actually socializing, so I probably wouldn't talk to anybody if I didn't have Twitter and Facebook. That's

Dan Howarth 58:13
interesting, really, because when you were talking before about the amount of stories you'd have published and stuff out and, you know, the amount of books that you'd read, I was beginning to wonder when you slept, so I assume you do that instead of going out.

Stephen Graham Jones 58:24
Yeah, pretty much that was what grad school. Everybody would always be going to the bar. And I'd always, I'd always veer off and go home to write. You know, that's always, always writing was my calling, not not hanging out and talking, you know,

Dan Howarth 58:38
fair enough. Well, it sounds like a good decision from our point of view as readers. So So Thanks very much.

Michael David Wilson 58:43
But you mentioned social media, and you do seem to have a fairly decent presence on both Twitter and Facebook. So do you schedule specific times in terms of when you will check your social media just said that it doesn't interfere with your writing time and other projects,

Stephen Graham Jones 59:04
you know. I really should. I've been seriously considering doing something like that, becoming more disciplined, you know. But with the social media I will tap to, you know, usually about seven or eight in the morning, and I try not to live on it too much for the rest of the day. But of course, if you look at my timestamps, I'm probably on there more than I should be, you know. But I try to, I try to make in the morning my main time to do social media and but I should be more disciplined. I should figure out a tighter schedule, I think.

Michael David Wilson 59:39
And how beneficial would you say that both social media and the internet generally has been for your career?

Stephen Graham Jones 59:50
You know? I really I can't track it because I don't have a control. I can't I can't know what it would have been like without it, you know. But I think it's allowed me to connect. With a lot more people, and so I think that's how that has to be good. You know, I read articles and studies that say all these writers who are promoting them social media, it doesn't actually translate to sales, and I believe that too. But there's also something to be said just for interacting with other readers and writers, you become part of a community, and it's nice to not feel isolated, I guess,

Dan Howarth 1:00:28
because it led to more writing opportunities for you. Do you think you know, getting to know kind of different editors, you know, opening up different markets to you, maybe British markets that you wouldn't have previously known about, and things like that, you know, is that because it translated into, you know, other than sales, is it translated into something else for you?

Stephen Graham Jones 1:00:47
I think it has Yes, simply because, before social media, when somebody wanted to get a hold of me, they had to do all these nefarious things to dig up my phone number, and then they would call me, and it always be all weird, but with social media, you're so much more available. They can just hit you up on your wall or on your feet or whatever, and you can get in touch. And a lot of that stuff has translated into more opportunities. Yeah, that probably is the best thing that social media has done for me. Really,

Michael David Wilson 1:01:18
the one thing that you haven't done yet, as far as I understand, is make the decision to go to self publishing group with any of your stories. Is that something you would consider and how do you feel about the idea of self publishing generally

Stephen Graham Jones 1:01:36
used to have a stigma, of course, when we called it vanity publishing, but now, of course, that stigma is being washed away. And yeah, I would consider it getting a larger cut of the sales. You know, it's very attractive. What is the absence of distribution and marketing? You know? Because that's, that's really what a publisher provides. I mean, they provide good editing, copy editing, all that stuff, but distribution and marketing is where it's at. And I don't have that. I don't have that apparatus myself, of course, which would be my first impediment, but, yeah, I mean, I don't want to say I would never do it. Maybe I'll do it tomorrow. I don't know. I don't think it's as bad as it used to be, which isn't to say, like at panels, at cons, people will usually ask me, I've had my novel rejected by, you know, 15 publishers. Should I just self publish it? And my answer is always, No, you shouldn't. You should write another novel that's better, because that's the way it is for all of us, you know, we start out writing and our early projects usually don't get published, and instead just publishing them anyway, we all had to learn to be better writers, and I think it's important to preserve that a little bit.

Dan Howarth 1:02:49
What's your what's your approach as a reader to self published work?

Stephen Graham Jones 1:02:56
If, if someone I trust tells me a book is good, I'll generally give it a chance. That's, I guess, the problem with self publishing is that we imagine that publishers act as a bottleneck for quality, that what comes out their narrow, you know, whatever never narrow production engine is automatically good because it's been vetted. It's one of 500 manuscripts that came in, and it's worth our time, worth self with self publishing, you don't have the illusion of a bottleneck, you know, um, and so you do have to rely on either critics you trust or friends you trust, or both, of course. And yeah,

Dan Howarth 1:03:37
I just find that interesting. I mean, you know, when I first got my Kindle, I I felt like I was kind of burnt a little bit by some self published authors. You know, you kind of spend time on social media, and every book sounds good, and then, you know, you read a few that aren't, and you become a little bit jaded by it. So I was just wondering, you know, as a writer and obviously a very prolific reader in your own right, I just, just thought it'd be interesting to get your thoughts on that really,

Stephen Graham Jones 1:04:03
yeah. But I've also been burned by the big corporate publishers, you know? I think it's you just get burned, you know? But next book, even better. Her, the trick is just to not, not let it take away your hope. You know that this next book is going to be the perfect goal, I guess so,

Michael David Wilson 1:04:24
aside from the story that you mentioned previously, are there many other works that you've decided to abandon after they've been rejected, or do you generally go back and have a fresh look at them and rewrite and improve

Stephen Graham Jones 1:04:41
with novels. That one novel I mentioned is the only one I'm doing that with currently that I'm kind of keeping on the back burner with stories. If I write them and I send them out to 20 places and 20 editors reject them, then generally I stop sending that story out. I think something must be wrong with it. And I'll let it sit for two or three years, and then I'll read again, and if I see something to change, I'll change it and mail it out again. But if I don't see something to change, then I will just let it sit. Usually,

Dan Howarth 1:05:12
What's the longest you've gone between writing a novel or a story and actually having it published? It

Stephen Graham Jones 1:05:18
wouldn't be this, not for nothing, that just came out in, like, a month ago, or whatever. I wrote that, as it turns out, back in 2003 and it just came out in 2014 so that's officially the longest.

Dan Howarth 1:05:31
Wow. Was it a case of, you know, significant problems with it when you first wrote it? Or is it just finding the right place for it,

Stephen Graham Jones 1:05:39
finding the right publisher to take a chance on a 70,000 word, second person small town detective novel. Yeah, I

Dan Howarth 1:05:48
can imagine that was quite difficult.

Stephen Graham Jones 1:05:52
But really, you know, I say it was a matter of finding the right place, but my agent might have a different story, but the way I remember it, the publisher it's with now, is the only publisher we mailed it to, because we always me and my agent always knew we had this novel, but we never could find, like, think of anywhere that would be a natural fit for it, until the zinc, which turned out was a natural fit for it.

Michael David Wilson 1:06:17
Just to wrap things up, what is it you're reading at the moment,

Stephen Graham Jones 1:06:21
I'm reading The Shining. Stephen King's The Shining probably for, I would say, the fifth time, maybe the sixth time. And I'm seeing all kinds of new stuff, and I'm learning so much about how to construct horror. It's really, really fascinating. I'm so happy I'm doing it.

Michael David Wilson 1:06:36
And did you read Dr sleep,

Stephen Graham Jones 1:06:38
I'm reading the shining as set up for me to finally read Dr sleep. I was when he came to Boulder to debut that novel. I got to go out and, you know, sit up close and get my book signed and all that. And, um, but I plan on reading it over December. Then in December, I ended up reading a stack of Werewolf novels for a course on teaching. And so I'm finally finding time for Dr sleep, and I'm really excited to go into it. And

Michael David Wilson 1:07:04
did you get much of an opportunity to talk to Stephen King at all? I know that you've previously listed him as one of your influences, alongside Joe Lansdale and Nabokov.

Stephen Graham Jones 1:07:17
Yeah, definitely. No. I'd love to talk to him someday, but I have never had the chance

Michael David Wilson 1:07:22
for our listeners. Are there any new writers that you'd like to recommend? They seek out? You

Stephen Graham Jones 1:07:31
know, I've never recommended her before, and I don't know her at all, but Michaela Morissette, she has a story, and Ann and Jeff VanderMeer is the weird the story is called the familiars. It's also coming out in the New Black, which Richard Thomas is editing. He pulled that together for Dark House Press. It's a really cool anthology, but this story of hers, the familiars is in that as well. And you know, just going off the strength of that one story, I would probably, I would recommend her with confidence. It's a really unusual, strong story.

Michael David Wilson 1:08:05
So I was fortunate enough to be given an advanced copy of the New Black, and I've got to say, actually that it's a great anthology, and at the moment, has to be an early contender for anthology of the year. I mean, if you look at the contributors as well, it almost reads as a best of genre. And also for literary fiction, there's a number of authors in there who have had things published in, the likes of The New Yorker and the Best American Short Stories too. Oh,

Stephen Graham Jones 1:08:39
definitely, yeah. Richard is really get together and knock out anthology, I think, and I hope it does go far. Yeah.

Michael David Wilson 1:08:45
So it's coming out next month, I believe. So anyone listening should pick it up. It's the new black edited by Richard Thomas.

Dan Howarth 1:08:55
And just to give you some context on that listeners, Michael texted me roughly about three times a day telling me how good this book is. So definitely get out and get yourselves a copy. I know I will be doing, if only to show them up,

Michael David Wilson 1:09:09
which is, like every time I read a really good story, I had to tell someone. And, you know, rather than trouble social media all the time, I thought you could be my outlet for that. Dan, yeah,

Dan Howarth 1:09:20
wow. Thanks very much. You know, you've convinced me to pick up a copy so you know, you've, you've passed on some knowledge. So, yeah,

Michael David Wilson 1:09:29
I think it's gonna really rival last year's winner, and a book anthology, an anthology that I was surprised you weren't part of Stephen I

Stephen Graham Jones 1:09:40
was supposed to be and they kept, I just didn't get, I didn't get a story to them under the deadline. You know, I had, I think that month it was due. I had a lot of anthology deadlines, and I dropped a lot of them, and that was, sadly, one of the ones I dropped. Man,

Michael David Wilson 1:09:57
Fiona burn, Robin Livius, she. You all right, are there any final thoughts or anything you wanted to promote before we sign off? No,

Stephen Graham Jones 1:10:10
just the Elvis room. Man, I think everybody, everybody should read it, you know,

Michael David Wilson 1:10:14
yeah, well, I mean, it's done incredibly well so far. It's the only this is horror chat book that we've managed to sell out well ahead of actually releasing it. So people should go over to Amazon and buy a copy there on Kindle, and also leave

Stephen Graham Jones 1:10:34
a review, definitely, definitely.

Michael David Wilson 1:10:37
All right. Well, thank you so much for joining

Dan Howarth 1:10:40
us this evening. Yeah. Cheers, Steven,

Stephen Graham Jones 1:10:43
thank you.

Michael David Wilson 1:10:43
We apologize to our listeners for Dan's, yeah, lack of the first 40 minutes. Sorry.

Dan Howarth 1:10:50
Sorry guys, technology is not my friend. You.

Michael David Wilson 1:11:14
Uh, Steven, I just noticed that Dan has dropped out of the cool even though it says that he's in it my end, but he just sent me a text message saying that his computer's gone crazy, so we'll just like have to wait for him to come back. Because, yeah, I thought he was being awfully quiet. Dan, Oh God, what

Dan Howarth 1:11:41
an absolute nightmare. This is ridiculous. I mean, this week I've had my work laptop, the Witch cannons send and receive emails, and now now this having an absolute horror show. Sorry about that. That's nearly as bad, Michael as when we had the books guys on and I had the power cut. Do you remember that?