Michael David Wilson 0:10
Welcome to the this is horror podcast. I'm your host. Michael David Wilson, and today we are going to be reconvening with Paul Tremblay for part two of our interview, if you missed part one, and just head on back one episode part 98 where we spoke to Paul about his new novel, disappearance at Devil's rock, his novel of the year into this is horror awards last year, a head full of ghosts, story ideas, the power of a Stephen King tweet, and much, much more. Now, before we get into the interview, just a quick word from the first one of our sponsors, gray matter press, they're

Bob Pastorella 0:57
among us. They live down the street in the apartment next door and in our own homes, where they stare back at us from our bathroom mirrors. Peel back to skin. Is a volume of horror that rips the mask off the real monsters of our time, mankind, featuring a Star City cast of award winning authors, Jonathan Mayberry, Tim labon, Ray garden, Graham Masterson and many more, peel back to skin is the powerhouse new release from gray matter press. Get More info at peel back to skin.com.

Michael David Wilson 1:30
Okay, so that was gray matter press talking about their new anthology, peel back the skin. Lots of great offers on that. So if you haven't then, yeah, do head on over and check it out. As you know, this is episode 99 of the this is horror podcast. So next weekend, which is Saturday the second and Sunday the third of July, we will be hosting a live podcast for Episode 100 with David moody. We just finalized under details, but it is looking like it will be on Sunday, the third of July, at around 5pm Greenwich, mean time running until around about 7pm and we thought that would be a great time to do it, because at 8pm it is the quarter final of Euro, 2016 and if England have defeated Iceland, then they will be playing France. And so we know what a lot of our listeners, and probably Dan Howarth, more than anyone, would like to tune into that at 8pm. So yeah, five till seven. No conflict with England's match, if they even get that far. Who knows. Okay, so before we get into the interview with Paul, we have a second sponsor message. And this is from perpetual motion machine publishing,

Bob Pastorella 2:59
Cherrywood Lodge is haunted and Thank fuck for its ghost. Rebecca Malone has problems not just alcohol. Her biggest issues start with the moment she discovers a chest of ancient majon tiles in the basement of her new house, causing her life to spin out of control with hallucinations, sexual deviances and grossly murders, ghost dongs and the haunted houses and demon orgies. Oh my Jessica McCue is the train derails in Boston. Is now available online wherever books are sold. Alright?

Michael David Wilson 3:30
Fantastic message there for the train derails in Boston by Jessica McHugh, a novel that I'm very excited to start reading probably should have started already, to be honest. I mean, there's been goodness enough buzz about it, and I do hope that one day, yeah, maybe, maybe even next month, we can get Jessica on the podcast. This might even be the first time that Jessica's finding out about this. I know she's a Patreon supporter, and I know that she listens to the podcast, but yeah, Jessica, let's do it. Let's get you on the podcast and run an interview. And of course, speaking of interviews, here we go. Let's get into it Part Two, the one and only Mr. Paul Tremblay.

how long do you find it takes you to write those 500 words? I mean, I'm imagining. It really does vary from day to day. And I remember from the last time that we spoke that you said in terms of where you write or when it could be anywhere, I remember you saying that you wrote on the basketball court, or probably not on it, but at the sidelines. Yeah,

Paul Tremblay 4:56
no, yeah, yeah. So I. Mentioned last year that for when I was working on disappearance of Devil's rock, my son was doing baseball clinics in the bottom of the school gymnasium, college gymnasium, you know, one end it was basketball courts, and the other end they were playing baseball, and I was going to be there for an hour and 45 minutes, like, well, I could just sit here, or I could actually get some of the work done that has to get done. So, yeah, I wrote, like, a fairly sizable chunk of the book sitting in the bowels of that gymnasium. Yeah, the time could depend, like last night, for example, I wrote for an hour and a half and only managed 400 words. I say only because I did make my 500 word count, but I felt like I had untangled like a snarly, snaggy paragraph that was sort of bothering me for a couple days. So I felt good about that. And like I said, you know, it's okay. You gotta allow yourself to not hit the daily word count and not get too crazy about it. Well, I'm

Michael David Wilson 5:50
glad that it was a baseball clinic rather than, you know, the game. It's like, oh yeah, I'll go and watch your game. But also, come on, an hour and a half, I've got work done. I Right?

Paul Tremblay 6:03
I would. I might sneak a book to a game, but yeah, I won't sit there with my laptop. Yeah, headphones, yeah.

Bob Pastorella 6:12
So in regards to writing in this book and head full of ghost, one of the things I noticed is that you do the first person, present tense, and it's not just that you do it that way. Is that you probably do it better than anyone else I've ever written. So is that, is that like a conscious effort, or is that from editor saying, hey, you need to try it this way? Maybe you could elaborate on that actual technique. Because, like I said, I've read some, some pretty good first person present tense, and yours is smooth. It's good,

Paul Tremblay 6:51
yeah, I've, I have, sort of, it's sort of a style that I've fallen in love with. And the first writer that I can remember sort of encountering who used it a ton was, you know, is Chuck Palahniuk. I read his the first novel of his that I read was choke, and I just loved it. It's like, Oh, wow. This just sounded so like immediate and fresh to me. I was sort of instantly drawn to the idea of present tense. I feel like writing present tense. It's easier to deal with when you go to the past too, instead of, you know, perfect past or whatever the heck the name of those clauses are when you're writing in past tense, as far as point of view. I mean, I tend to be drawn to first person as well. I sort of like that challenge. I mean, we exist in first person. Obviously, we exist in first person present. Or most of us do. To me, I love the idea of building characters other characters through one person's point of view. Because, I mean, that's, that's all how we know other people, like we can't get in their heads. We can only know other people by what they say and what they do. But you know, as I've gotten older, I really do try to make point of view. The choice of point of view has to be it has to fit the story. It has to work with the story. I can't force it on there. So, you know, for instance, a head full of ghosts would not have worked in third person. It would have felt like a cheat, you know, with all the information, you know, with if I were to do it as third person, and then sort of, you know, muck around with, did this happen, or did this not happen? I think that really would have felt like a cheat to the reader. The only way to do that story, or the only way to tell that story, would be through Mary, right? And consequently, when I, when I had the idea for disappearance at Devil's rock, I knew that it would not work as first person as well. I had to, I had to do it from multiple point of views. I think it would have been a mess to try to do first person, different voices. You know,

Bob Pastorella 8:39
the story required multiple perspectives.

Paul Tremblay 8:41
It did. And you can do multiple perspectives in first person, but I think it has to be like a really long novel like Marlon Jones's Brief History of Seven Killings is this huge. You know, that's probably like 200,000 words. It's a brilliant novel, and it's all it's a bunch of different characters, and it's all first person, but because the book is so long, he has the room and the space to be able to create, you know, to be able to create the distinct voices for each of the character, point of view characters that he uses. I wasn't planning on, I couldn't do that with disappearance of Devil's rock. It didn't need to be that big of a novel. So, yeah, so I knew that that couldn't be first person, although I did sneak in some first person stuff like, you know, diary entries and and police reports and stuff like that. So I couldn't go totally without first person. And actually, that felt like a big challenge to me, because all my novels previously were first person, you know, I'd written, I have written short stories that are third person, but never a novel so already. So even when I started the book, that made me feel a little bit uncomfortable, you know, in a good way. You know, because if you're not feeling uncomfortable, I don't think you're challenging yourself at all, but that just added it to the list of sort of pressures that I was putting on myself for Devil's rock. But it all worked out in the end,

Bob Pastorella 9:55
definitely,

Paul Tremblay 9:56
I bet,

Michael David Wilson 9:59
speaking of. Discomfort and making yourself uncomfortable. I think that ties in to self doubt, which is something you spoke about as part of a lit reactor column that I put together, and you said that you struggle with self doubt every time you write, so I don't if we could tap into that a little bit. I mean, where do you think it stems from? What have been some of your lowest points, and how do you tackle it? And as I'm saying that I'm feeling like, bloody hell, it's turning into a counseling session.

Paul Tremblay 10:38
Yeah. Geez, lowest points.

Michael David Wilson 10:42
Just that, like, lovely, scary question for a Sunday morning.

Paul Tremblay 10:50
Yeah. I mean, well, you know, we joke about but it is. It's sort of, I mean, it's part of, it's part of being a writer, unfortunately or maybe fortunately. I mean, if you're able to sort of work through it, you're going to succeed, and if you're not, and that's okay if you can't get over it, because it can be a soul sucking, pride beating, you know, profession or or, yeah, we'll call it profession for now. I think my lowest was when no sleep to Wonderland came out with Henry Holt. It had an awful cover, my edit, my the editor who acquired me had left. I mean, the editor I had after that was very good. But you know, usually when you get a when your editor leaves, you know your that's your champion for the book. You know that's the one who bought your book and you know who believed in you in the first place. You know, to put their reputation in line to sign you. So when your editor leaves, it's usually not a good sign of things to come. And also, like the publisher itself was going through a change in leadership. And so this was the book was coming out February 2010, and this is when Macmillan, who owns Henry Holt and you know, a bunch of other publishers, was fighting with Amazon over the price of ebooks, and Amazon decided to pull all of McMillan's books off their shelves for a week, and that week happened to be my release week, yeah. So that just, you know, basically killed the book dead. I mean, I was going to be dead already, but it certainly didn't help to to not have your book available the week it comes out on Amazon. So that was definitely a low point. And Henry Holt was just kind of like, see you later. So I think I mentioned that lit reactor column that was, you know, a year or two after that, I was pretty bitter and full of self pity, and it took a while to, sort of, you know, to work out of that, to get out of that. It's funny though, I feel like he can remember sort of low points in books that you're writing, like, with a head full of ghosts. I sent my agent the first, like, 100 pages. He was, you know, this is pretty good, but, you know, doesn't have to be first person, which sort of threw me for a loop. I wasn't really expecting that. And actually it, you know, it threw me into like a mini tail spin for like, three days where I didn't work on the book at all. It's like, you know, because that's always like, a precarious point in a novel, like 100 pages, because you feel like, if I'm going to keep going, Yeah, I'm going to go to the end, or if I quit, you know, 100 pages, you know, I can work with that later, or something like that, but

Bob Pastorella 13:10
that's a lot of time and work investment. 100 pages. Yeah? No, it is. So people who don't write, they don't understand that it's like 100 pages, 200 more, you have a full book,

Paul Tremblay 13:21
right? No, absolutely. So, you know, I luckily, you know, I took a few days off and sort of just recalibrated. It's like, well, you know, he doesn't know, like, he's only seen this part of the story. He doesn't know, like, sort of the twists that are coming, or what I'm really trying to do with the book just yet, so I'm going to do it my way. It has to be first person, you know. So luckily, I'd had enough writing experience to believe in myself to be like, Okay, this is how it's going to get done. So, you know, I just wrote the book. Put my head down and, you know, thought to myself, my agent doesn't like it, you know, I'll deal with it later. You know, we'll deal with it if we come to that. To my agent's credit, when I sent him the finished draft of a head full of ghosts, he stayed up all night reading it, and his email to me was like, I've never been so happy to write an email to say that I was wrong and you are right. So, you know, he, once he read the whole book, he understood, you know, which was very, you know, once that happened, I kind of knew I felt really good that we were going to be able to sell the book and that it would do okay. So see, we started with dark points and we ended with a moment of triumph.

Michael David Wilson 14:18
Yeah, ideal. Okay, well, we have a question from Michael we hunt, so he would like to know via Patreon, in terms of audience, craft and career intentions, what do you feel is the major difference, if any, between the writer you were when you wrote and published your first few novels compared to the writer who approached a head full of ghosts and beyond.

Paul Tremblay 14:52
I feel like you know, having gone through sort of the big publisher experience with Henry Holt and it not being such a positive experience. Yes, with a head full of ghosts, even though I was with a great new publisher, and I love my new editor, I also knew that I sort of had to try to make my own I had to, sort of, you know, not be like an obnoxious self promoter, but I did still, even with having William Morrow behind me, I knew that I had to sort of take advantage, or at least reach out to the different people and within my network to try to get the notice out there, you know. And I'm not going to get into any specifics, but, you know, a lot of the good press that sort of happened with a head full of ghosts were was indirectly, a result of, you know, some people, I know, helping to get books to different people, and even the Stephen King tweet. I mean, this was, wasn't something that I necessarily, I mean, I tried to get the book to Stephen but sort of unrelated to my efforts to getting the book to Stephen King, I had two, two good friends who who were friends with Stephen King, and unbeknownst to me, they had sent him. They both sent him a copy of the book and told him he should read it. So I mean that obviously that was amazing. So I guess the short of it is, you know, the thing that I had in place with a head full of ghosts, and even if I wasn't actively using it like in the case of two friends sending it to Stephen King, was just by the very fact that I had stuck it out so long, I should say so long. I mean, I still feel like a young person who's only started writing, but really, I've been writing for 15 years, at least professionally. So my name is gotten out there and dribs and drabs for a while, but it's certainly gotten out there. So when it was time to, you know, or when I was fortunate enough to have, you know, these new books coming out with the big publisher, having sort of my name out there already in even the littlest ways, was a big help. And so that certainly wasn't the case. In 2009 when the little sleep came out, you know, part of that was they were trying to present me as a crime writer, you know, just fine. It was my first crime writer or crime novel that I ever written. Yeah. So otherwise, I don't know. I honestly, I try not to think too much about career, other than just, you know, what's the next book that I'm going to do and write? Because I don't know if this is a comfort or not. In some ways, it feels like it's still so beyond my control. The only thing that I can control is writing the best stuff that I can? Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 17:03
that's a very comprehensive answer. And I guess in terms of thinking about the career intentions, what is it that you're kind of looking to achieve now? What would you like to do next?

Paul Tremblay 17:19
So I'm sure I'm focused on, hopefully, the next two books. And, you know, I don't want to speak too ahead of sort of what's going to happen, but I'm hopeful that William Moore will publish a short story collection and a novel. That's my goal, anyway, because I have enough for a collection. And I'm actually also planning on writing a couple of short stories that would be connected to a head full of ghosts and disappearance of Devil's rock, which I think would be fun to have after that. I don't know. I've sort of toyed talking to some friends who went to comics, maybe using one of the novel summaries that I've written, that wouldn't necessarily work as a novel, but maybe it would be a fun comic. You know, maybe that might be kind of fun to mess around with. I'd also love to write, go write like a comedy again at some point, because I have written some hopefully humorous novels, and I don't know, I feel like after the next books that I'm working on, it might be fun to leave the total darkness aside for a book and write something that's kind of fun, but we'll see.

Michael David Wilson 18:17
Yeah, and there's often quite a crossover between comedy and horror, just in the sense that the reaction they're both looking to elicit is a very visceral one, whether it's to scare you or to make you laugh. Oh, absolutely,

Paul Tremblay 18:34
I think sort of the impulse comes from the same place like my reaction is to the absurdities of life is either to be terrified or or to shake my head and laugh. I mean, for years. I mean, a handful of ghosts is really my first horror novel. All previously in my writing, like all my short fiction was, was pretty much a horror or horror stories. But when I wrote the longer stuff, like, you know, the little sleep, no sleep, to Wonderland, swallowing donkeys. I mean, those novels are still pretty dark, but, you know, they are satirical, they are hopefully humorous. So, yeah, you're either gonna, I guess, laugh or be afraid. Is that? Is that healthy mental mentally? I don't know.

Dan Howarth 19:13
And do you have any update on the screen adaptation of a head full of ghosts? Uh,

Paul Tremblay 19:17
they're working on it. I do know that the screenwriters have turned in, like their first official draft, to focus and and focusing to really like it. So I think, you know, that's still, I guess, going then, you know, hopefully, hopefully it goes all the way. So, so far, all, all reports have been positive on that front.

Dan Howarth 19:37
Oh, that's good. So have you not had any involvement with that? Then? No,

Paul Tremblay 19:41
no, I have no, yeah, contractual say, or anything like that, which is fine by me. I'd be hypocritical of me to like, say, Oh, this book or this movie must be like the book, because a lot of ways, a head full of ghosts is about like, influence, the influence the horror genre has had on me and story and narrative. You. So I really can't wait to see sort of how, you know, other people sort of take that source material and put their own spin on it.

Dan Howarth 20:07
See, I always find that interesting. When you speak to different writers, you know, people want different, varying kind of levels of control over how their work is adapted and where it goes once they've, you know, once they've put it into the world. So, yeah. I mean, you know, some people maybe more kind of control freaks than than maybe you are, yeah. I

Paul Tremblay 20:28
mean, maybe if I knew more about, like, screenwriting or movie making in general, I might have a different opinion. But since you know, the idea of writing a screenplay kind of fills me with agita, yeah, I'm happy to let somebody else Have at it fair enough.

Bob Pastorella 20:42
Anybody wants too much control if they're going through an adaptation, should write a screenplay. I've tried it and I've got, I got halfway through it, and I'm like, screw this. It's not for me. I mean, maybe later, but at that time in my life, no, I thought I was No. I

Paul Tremblay 21:00
mean, no, I mean, it's a different kind of writing. It's a, you know, it's another, it's a different skill set, one that you have to put the time into practice and learn about. And I'm just, you know, it took me this long to get pretty good at writing fiction, so I'm not in a rush to have to start from scratch and learn how to write screenplays

Bob Pastorella 21:19
Exactly.

Dan Howarth 21:20
And have you written for comics before speaking of them?

Paul Tremblay 21:23
No, yeah, I have not. So, like, if I were, I would certainly, you know, I've talked to a friend about, hey, how about if we co write this? Or, you know, the part of it is just so I could learn what the hell you know how to, how to approach something like that. Cool. Yeah. Did Bob just leave? Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 21:45
it sounded like

Bob Pastorella 21:50
that's not even for me. Usually.

Michael David Wilson 21:51
I think that's Daniel's end. Yeah, nothing

Dan Howarth 21:54
to do with me. I'm not sure. I'm not sure what that was. We all kind of paused, like, what's happened?

Paul Tremblay 22:03
You'll have to do some special effects when that, when this interview is over and I say, Bye, play that sound. Yeah,

Bob Pastorella 22:10
that was there. Well, I

Michael David Wilson 22:12
like that. Every actual denying it, we're talking of a spectral presence. And see, I'll try and segue with anything, even the bits that I'm probably gonna cut out. So Daryl foster would like to know what was the inspiration behind a head full of ghosts, and is there a significance personally or a reflection of yourself in that novel. I

Paul Tremblay 22:44
thought Darryl, because I know Darryl was going to ask about Brett savory, I am disappointed, okay? And

Michael David Wilson 22:49
then Darryl also asked about Brett savory.

Paul Tremblay 22:55
Yeah, so a head full of ghosts. It started with sort of a combination of just like cool sort of happenstances. One, I was doing research for that Manson novel, just trying to read like different texts that might have related to the apocalypse or horror stories in general. And I came across centipedes press centipede presses the exorcism, or The Exorcist, excuse me, studies in the night film. They've got like six or seven volumes of these books of essays and reviews and interviews of all these different horror movies. It's a great series. They actually just came out with one for Guillermo del Toro's the devil's backbone and Pan's Labyrinth, which is really great too. So anyway, I was reading, I was reading that book, and I was reading these essays about The Exorcist, and a bunch of the essays were talking about, sort of the politics of the film, I don't know, and I hadn't seen the movie in a while. I'd never really thought of the movie in those terms, and I was totally into it. And it sort of occurred to me, I thought about the market for a second. I was like, Huh, you know, the zombie novel's been around, or there's been plenty of literary updates about the zombie. You know, in the last 10 years there's been a bunch of really cool sort of literary werewolf novels, too. The vampire never seems to go away. I had a hard time coming up with some recent examples of novels that were about possession or exorcism stories. There have been plenty of, like, crappy Hollywood movies. You know, they never stop pumping those out. But, I really couldn't think of many books besides Sarah Grant's come closer, which had been published 10 years prior. So I started thinking, how would I write an exorcism story or a possession story? And that's how sort of the ball got rolling. And initially, right away, I was like, I want to do sort of like a postmodern, secular or skeptical approach to it. So in terms of my own piece to it, I mean, there's that part of it, the skeptic in me, you know, so that obviously the story grew from there. I feel like every book's got pieces of me in it, you know, my daughter and son made their way into Mary quite a bit. My daughter was the same age as Mary's character was when I was. Writing the book. But some of the stuff that my son, you know, that, or his characteristics, are really important to the novel as well, including his, My son doesn't like spaghetti sauce. Yeah. So it's funny, you know, when I finish these books, I don't have a hard time sort of separating myself from any personal details that might have made its way into the book. Because, you know, I have the images of who these people are in my head, and they are not like, they're not my friends, they're not my family members. They are these other people. But it's funny to get the reaction from my family, you know, when they read it, because like, Oh, this is dad, or this is, this is Emma? Like, no, this isn't Emma. Yes, I took some things, but it's not her. So, I mean, the pieces always sort of make their way in. They have to

Michael David Wilson 25:45
Okay. And if you could give your 20 year old self some advice, what would it be?

Paul Tremblay 25:55
Don't drink so much Coca Cola. Eat better. Actually, I'm eating better. Now. She's a 20 year old. I wasn't even a writer then, uh, barely a reader. When I was 20, I was, uh, geez, like a junior in college, senior, college, Junior. I don't know. I mean, that kid just knew so very little about anything. I feel like I could, I could tell him anything. Uh, like, hey, you know, make sure you remember to sharpen the blade of your lawnmower every once in a while. I don't know. I can't really think of anything other than, yeah, I don't know. Sorry, I've awfully answered that question, because I wasn't even like, a writer at age 20. I was just then I was, I was super obsessed with punk alternative music, you know, going to shows all the time, you know, which was a lot of fun, I mean, so I feel like that was sort of like, you know, the formative years of years later when I, when I certainly had a want to, I had a creative itch, you know, a few years later, and that's definitely because of, you know, my really falling in love with music, you know, during those years. So there you go. There's an answer. Stick with music, but start, start writing at some point,

Michael David Wilson 27:05
yeah. Well, how would your answer differ if it was to your 30 year old self? So at the point where, yeah, you were relatively new to writing, right?

Paul Tremblay 27:16
So I would tell my 30 year old self to not take edits and criticism So personally, I have since crafted what I call the 24 hour rule, which is indispensable for me If anyone gives me a critique or even like bad reviews or but usually it's for edits or critiques. I do not allow myself to respond for 24 hours, and I give myself those 24 hours just to be like a whiny, petulant baby, like, why they don't get it? You know, in my head, I can storm around like they don't get this, you know, they don't know what they're talking about. Usually, after the end of 24 hours, I can be rational about it and say, oh, you know what? This is actually right. Or I can be more rational say, you know, I think I can see what they're saying, but they're wrong, because when I first started, I definitely made a few mistakes by responding to edits in not a good way. You have to learn the hard way, I guess. And I guess the other thing I would tell a 30 year old me would be to not worry about what other writers were doing or accomplishing, and don't waste time being jealous, because it doesn't help.

Michael David Wilson 28:20
Yeah. And I think the 24 hour rule, I mean, it's good for a lot of areas of life. I mean, if you get an email or a message and you kind of have a knee jerk reaction to it, particularly a negative or angry one, just right step away from the computer, maybe go, go for a walk, calm down, have a think about it, and then decide, is that really what you want to send? I mean, absolutely, sometimes maybe it is what you want to send, but, you know, make, make sure that that is the case, because, you know, you can't really recall those messages, not anymore anyway,

Dan Howarth 29:03
right? Is it what you should send rather than what you want to send? Yeah? Yeah.

Paul Tremblay 29:09
Now there's definitely obvious. I mean, it gets obvious. There's something about the electronic format of communication that sort of is a direct main line into anger. Yeah, I mean, think, I mean, if you're going to have it, you know, when I think about the editing sort of conversations I've had with people, I definitely don't react the same way, like just, there's something about seeing it and being able to not, you know, not having that person in front of you to see their facial expressions, or even just to have that person there. For some reason that's, I guess, makes us want to jump to anger. I mean, you can just look at Twitter and comment sections just to see, you know, see that ugliness play out all the time.

Bob Pastorella 29:47
There's no 24 hour rule there. No, there is not. There's a 24 second rule.

Paul Tremblay 29:55
Hey, that's my rule for food on the floor. Yeah. 24 seconds is probably too much.

Michael David Wilson 30:01
Yeah, I thought it was the two second rule. Yeah, I

Paul Tremblay 30:05
guess it's normally five. Yeah,

Bob Pastorella 30:11
it's a peanut. If it's a peanut, Eminem, there's no time. Oh, it's

Paul Tremblay 30:15
like a 24 hour rule. Yeah,

Bob Pastorella 30:16
yeah, exactly.

Michael David Wilson 30:19
What is this saying about the podcast that the two discussions where we've all been so excited that we had to interrupt one another, it's food on the floor and the pronunciation of CU

Paul Tremblay 30:34
scene, it's horror writers, I guess, looking for always looking for their next meal.

Michael David Wilson 30:40
We're talking enough food, I believe Bob, you've got a question tie in nicely to that.

Bob Pastorella 30:47
What would you know? Would Stephen Graham Jones and you what's the deal with the pickles? I just gotta know. I gotta know Steven gave me a really good pickle story, so I want a good pickle story from you. Oh

Paul Tremblay 31:00
yeah, all right. Well, I mean, I've always hated pickles, just like really hated him. I was a very picky eater as a child. I mean, I didn't like anything, but my hatred of pickles is always stuck with me. I will tell you the strangest pickle story. This is not like, this is not pickle zero, like patient zero. This isn't why I hate pickles, but, or maybe it is, I don't know. Anyway, I was very young, probably like seven or eight, and my one of my friend's older sister, who was in high school, was babysitting us. My sister and I, actually the three of us. My brother was really little too. And I remember being in bed and I hear giggling. So my babysitter at one of her friends, and they must have been high or something, but they woke me up. They had, actually, they were, they were sticking it. They stuck a pickle into my ear. Well, I was asleep. I was an eight year old asleep, and they were giggling and sticking a pickle in my ear. And I was like, Oh, stop it. I forget. Like that wet ickiness in my ear was awful. So there's your pickle story right there.

Bob Pastorella 32:03
That would be pretty gross. Yeah,

Paul Tremblay 32:06
I think I got her back next week. I flashed her, or maybe that happened before the pickle, I don't know, and the pickle was revenge for my flashing her, yeah, I was only eight. I cannot be held responsible for these actions.

Bob Pastorella 32:24
Yeah, that's anything under 13. You just, you know, there's no responsibility people in the ear. See, that would, that would probably gross me out, because I don't even like Q tips in my ear. Oh, yeah. So, I mean, it's like, you know, of course, you know, you hygiene and all that, you got to do that. But it's just, you know, it's always been like, you know,

Paul Tremblay 32:44
I'll try, maybe try a pickle. I don't know. Maybe after the pickle, the Q tip won't seem so bad.

Bob Pastorella 32:52
So it's a tactile thing, yeah, that's weird. That's very strange.

Michael David Wilson 32:56
It is well away from pickles and things that make you unhappy. What makes you happy in life?

Paul Tremblay 33:09
I'm just laughing. We should juxtapose that with the, you know, the darkest moments in writing. Yeah, happy life. Yeah.

Michael David Wilson 33:16
See, I'm just like analyzing all facets and areas.

Paul Tremblay 33:23
I mean, my my family makes me extremely happy. They're a lot of fun. My kids are very cool kids. They're extremely nice, somehow, despite having me, partly because no one's ever stuck a pickle in their ears. Yeah, that's what. That's what. That's what turns you like Wolf pain. I don't know, honestly, I wish more writers, and I think a lot of horror writers, find this I wish more writers, in general, have sort of found the warmth of the community that I have found with the friends that I've made. You know, over the 15 years writing, I don't think there's any way I would be sort of the writer that I am without the support of so many friends and so many other writers. I mean, really, that's been like we talked about meeting, like, some of my musicians and heroes that way. But, you know, just there are so many writers that, you know, and colleagues who are my best friends that are doing such amazing work. And, you know, you know, so John langen and, uh, you know, Laird Baron, right off the top my head, you know, I talked to John at least once a week on the phone. You know, Stephen Graham Jones, too. We're always texting each other, and it's, I don't know, it just makes it feel like you're in this together. You're all working toward doing the same thing, right? You know, which is sort of trying to add to this, you know, centuries long conversation. That is horror fiction, you know, to me, that's the cool one of the cool parts about horror is there was so much great work before it, and the people who read horror, most of them have read all these stories that have come before it. So you get to have this dialog that spans decades, and your stories get to react to other stories. I just don't know how many other genres or modes that you get to do that in, in such a sort of in. That way. So, yeah, I love horror, and I hate it too. I mean, I hate the bad horror, but, you know, horror sort of makes me happy. I like playing basketball, like going for walks in the woods, not so much. I don't go for walks on the beach. That's not me. And we talked about music.

Dan Howarth 35:21
You just fall over? This is like a scene from unfriended or

Paul Tremblay 35:24
something, sorry.

Dan Howarth 35:27
Oh, my God, they got Paul shit,

Paul Tremblay 35:30
spectral presence. You'll never believe it. Brett savory, just like came crashing into the house and slapped the phone out of my head,

Dan Howarth 35:38
I have to say, Can next time the spirits or monsters or whatever, take out somebody you know who's not the most famous person on the show, maybe me or Michael.

Paul Tremblay 35:51
Yeah, there we go. That made you guys happy, so that makes me happy

Michael David Wilson 35:57
too. I can't remember what the hell you were saying.

Bob Pastorella 36:03
He was talking about being happy, yeah, then he happily got attacked,

Paul Tremblay 36:09
yeah, see if you talk about happiness too much, that's when the poltergeist comes out and just starts throwing stuff around. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 36:20
well, considering there was that traffic noise that no one wanted to kind of claim, right, I think at the as we get to the end of the conversation, we're just going to find like, oh, Brett saver is also part of the cool because, you know, we've now said his name far more than three times, and he appears

Bob Pastorella 36:40
That's right, Candy Man, yeah.

Michael David Wilson 36:44
So before we wrap up, Bob or Dan, do you have any other questions you want to throw down?

Bob Pastorella 36:51
I think, I think everything that I wanted to to ask has been covered. Yes,

Dan Howarth 36:55
same air. I mean, we've, we've kind of ticked off the the white whales question, which I normally ask as well. Keep that one back for the end. But, yeah, that's been and gone too.

Michael David Wilson 37:04
Yeah,

Paul Tremblay 37:05
what's the white whale question?

Dan Howarth 37:08
Essentially, you know, what? What are you, you know, what are the white whales in your career so far? What else would you kind of like to achieve? But right? You know, we've, we've kind of ticked those off, sure, you know, through the course of other questions. God damn it,

Michael David Wilson 37:22
unless you want to ask a new white whale question, which is about a literal white whale, you know, what would you do if you were confronted with a white whale, you know, on a little raft boat?

Paul Tremblay 37:35
Yeah, I don't see myself ever being in a little rafter boat. No, at least not that far out. Yeah, it's

Michael David Wilson 37:41
a highly specific hypothetical. Well, what are two items that you can't live without?

Paul Tremblay 37:51
Obviously, besides my family, etc, we'll talk about like, non essential. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 37:56
I'm not sure that you should see your family as an item.

Paul Tremblay 38:01
Really. Sure. Sure, right? Yeah, you know, like water. You kind of need water just fine. But, I mean, for me, it's music and reading, you know, not necessarily. That order, I have to be reading something, you know, otherwise, I feel like my writing suffers. I feel like I get I get dumber or dumber if I'm not reading, yeah, and I just get so much inspiration for music. So many of my my own titles have come from, you know, lyrics or whatnot. So writing and writing and reading, or, excuse me, reading and music. Do you listen to music when you write? I prefer silence, but if there's stuff going on, I'll put on headphones. And if I listen to music, it has to be instrumental. I can't have lyrics, because the lyrics will distract me, because I'm a fan of lyrics, and I would focus in on those. So with the head full of ghosts, actually I wrote, I almost always started with the soundtrack to the movie. Ravenous. I don't know if you've seen that movie. It was came out in the late 90s. It's a great love that movie. Love it, yeah, and it's such a quirky soundtrack, too. So I've listened that so many times. It's, you know, it's, it's total background music for me. So it's, it's good to listen to. I've also bought some other I've started using the witch, the soundtrack to the witch, which is really cool, in the soundtrack to it follows as well.

Bob Pastorella 39:19
And follow the soundtrack get gets to me. I can't, yeah, there's only certain cuts off of it I can listen to.

Michael David Wilson 39:25
Yeah, I think we were discussing that in the in the Patreon episode, weren't we, when we were talking about music that we write to.

Bob Pastorella 39:35
But the wit the witch soundtrack is, is rather creepy too. Yeah, no, they

Paul Tremblay 39:40
definitely are. So

Bob Pastorella 39:42
I use that for inspiration, but when I'm riding, especially at night and so

Paul Tremblay 39:48
turn on the lights. Yeah, if I was by myself in the house, I would not be listening to those two soundtracks.

Michael David Wilson 39:57
But you said that you can properly come some. Right, if you've got lyrics, but I mean, if you're writing and it is in a busy environment and there's a lot of people chatting, do you find that you have to put the headphones on then? Or can you just zone out other people? You can do

Paul Tremblay 40:15
a little zone out. But if it is like, going to be chatty like that, I'll, I'll definitely, that's when I go to the headphones

Michael David Wilson 40:19
All right. And where can our listeners connect with you? Well,

Paul Tremblay 40:25
so my, I guess my website is Paul trembley.net I'm on Twitter at Paul G Tremblay, you know, I'm on Facebook as well. Yeah, I'm pretty much just out there in the internet ether, staring back at you.

Michael David Wilson 40:41
And before we go, do you have any final thoughts that you'd like to leave our listeners with?

Paul Tremblay 40:48
Uh, geez, I would, since I mentioned my friends John and Laird, I would say, do keep an eye out for their new books coming out. Uh, John langen novel The fisherman is fantastic. It comes out in a few weeks from Ward horde press and word Horde is just doing such amazing he's putting out such amazing books. You know, Libya llewellyns collection furnace from earlier this year was awesome as well. I'm looking forward to ward hoards collection from Mike Griffin as well, which I have, I just have to carve some time out to read it. And Laird has a collection coming out in the fall, I believe, called swift to chase, and I had the honor of writing the intro to it, and I'm really excited, yeah, I'm really excited for people to read this collection, because it definitely reads like, you know, it's recognizably layered. But at the same time, he's going in a little different direction. It would be easy for him to just to sort of try to repeat all the cosmic, Lovecraftian horror stuff that he did in sort of his first couple collections. And in this collection, I feel like he really, sort of stretches and expands and man, it's great. It's just really great. I think it's his best collection.

Michael David Wilson 41:50
Yeah. Well, word hood picked up publisher of the Year from address this horror awards last year. That's right, yeah. So and I also got anthology of the year. So, I mean, our listeners and readers are certainly giving them the Seal of Approval too.

Paul Tremblay 42:07
Yeah. Thank you to you guys and your listeners and readers. For, you know, the award for a head full of ghosts, I was very excited and touched by that.

Michael David Wilson 42:15
Oh yeah. I mean, well, for me, personally, it was one of my favorites of the year. But, you know, it's the listeners and the readers ultimately that got to accuse it. So yeah, well deserved, as far as I'm concerned,

Paul Tremblay 42:35
yeah, yeah. And I would say, actually, the only other thing I mentioned would be a tiny little bit of a plug. But, uh, my that these two books will actually finally be available in the UK, as Titan books is publishing disappearance of Devil's rock on July 1 and a head full of ghosts on September 27 I believe. So I'm very I'm very excited, happy that the books will be available in England and Ireland and Australia now, yeah, and Titan has been a lot of fun. They sent me. They sent me a bunch of free stuff, including, uh, some awesome Hannibal TV show, Hannibal a book, and they sent me four little figurines. So I was totally geeking out because Hannibal's my favorite TV show of the last. You know, last few years,

Bob Pastorella 43:15
there's one thing I noticed about Titan, whenever I was writing for uh, manarchy, is we did a lot of reviews for that. They they love to send out stuff. It's amazing. Yeah, you ask for one thing, you get a box, and you're just like, what's up this? Oh

Paul Tremblay 43:30
my god,

Bob Pastorella 43:32
I wanted something about dead space. They sent me everything you know. So yeah, just I'd keep a good relationship with them.

Paul Tremblay 43:40
Oh, yeah, no, I've been very happy. I know I they asked me if I'm getting over to England anytime soon, and I don't know, maybe next summer. Well, I'll

Dan Howarth 43:49
try to shoot for that sounds awesome. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 43:52
that's a little spoiler. Then perhaps for the future in the UK. There you go. Yeah, it's, it's interesting how there are still quite a number of deals where the publication is exclusive to the US, so that you then have this unusual situation where people have their book in the US published by one publisher, and then in the UK by another. And I you'd kind of think, particularly as things are getting more digital and it's easier to distribute things globally anyway, that soon there'll be a complete stop to that.

Paul Tremblay 44:32
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, for the writer, if, especially if you have an agent or an agency that will actively help to sell the global rights of your book. Financially, you're better off only selling, at least in the United States, North American rights, because then, you know, every time my book sells to another country, you know, I get those advances, as opposed to, you know, William Morrow, if we had given William Morrow world rights so but the other side of it. To take a while to sell the book in in the UK. So the downside was, these books have been out, or at least a head full of ghost was out for a while. I was getting tons of messages from people in England. When am I going to get the book? I'm like, Ah, I don't know. Please don't torrent it. Yeah. Cons to it differently, yeah. But no. Very excited. Now. I think we're up to, like, 13 countries with a head full of ghosts, which is really

Michael David Wilson 45:23
cool, definitely. Yeah, that is phenomenal. And on that note, thank you very much for spending a couple of hours of your morning speaking with us. It's been a great deal of fun and really informative too.

Paul Tremblay 45:39
Well. Thank you guys. I really appreciate it. I love your website, love the podcast, and the support that this is horror has given me in the past year and a half is really means a lot to me. I could not I will not be able to repay you enough. Yeah.

Michael David Wilson 45:53
Well, it's been an absolute pleasure, and I wish you the best of luck for the release of disappearance at Devil's rock.

Paul Tremblay 46:02
Thank you. Yes, everyone go by it at some point when it's available.

Michael David Wilson 46:09
There you go.

Thank you for listening to Episode 99 of the this is our podcast with Paul Tremblay. Next time, we will be recording a live podcast with David moody for Episode 100 we're hoping to do that on Sunday, but keep a look out on the this is our website for further announcements on that. Of course, you'll always get early access to our news via our Patreon, and if you support us on Patreon, you can help keep the show alive. So head on over to www.patreon.com forward, slash, this is horror. Pledge this $1 get early bird access to all of the podcast, get access to the interviews in their entirety, so we don't have to mess about with any of this. Part one, part two stuff. No, you can you get it all. So we're gonna do it on the Patreon at the $4 level and above. There are also rewards, including three ebooks. This is horror T shirts, discounts of purchases from the this is horror shop, even early bird access to Scott Nicholas, the outer dark, which, of course, if you didn't hear the news, it has returned. It is back, and it's on. This is horror. This horror.co.uk place to be for your horror news. Another way that you can support this is horror is to head on over to RedBubble, redbubble.com and purchase and this is horror t shirt, amazing designs by the wonderful talent that is Piper as a raven as a skull. There's even some bizarre, weird Octo terror design for those fans of weird fiction, very cool. Before we go, a quick word from our sponsor, gray matter press,

Bob Pastorella 48:19
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Michael David Wilson 48:52
There it is. So if you haven't already, do consider, check it out. Peel back the skin. Great anthology. And of course, another publisher that's great is perpetual motion machine publishing an awful lot. I'm looking forward to reading train derails in Boston. So let's have a quick word from our sponsor,

Bob Pastorella 49:15
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Michael David Wilson 49:46
that's all for this week. Remember to check back with us for Episode 100 if you can join us live, that'd be fantastic. Please do would love it be a part of it. It's going to be interactive. It's going to be. Fun. Dave moody on the this is horror podcast, so be good to one another. Read horror. Have a great, great day.

You okay, good. Dan, go and paint your house.

Dan Howarth 50:26
Will do mate

Bob Pastorella 50:28
some some dust at the base. Is that what you hear when I do that could

Michael David Wilson 50:33
be, see, you know, you can't move dust on this podcast.

Bob Pastorella 50:40
All right, I'll quit touching

Paul Tremblay 50:42
it. That's good advice for life. Quit touching it. Yeah.

Dan Howarth 50:45
Have we got that on the outtakes Mike? Yeah, that's going in.

Paul Tremblay 50:51
They can expect three podcasters for a British podcast, touching the microphone too often. I yeah, sorry, inside joke. I don't know if the microphone itself will make the cut, but anyway, from the top, oh no, okay, sure,

Dan Howarth 51:11
it's a harsh taskmaster. Is Michael well,

Paul Tremblay 51:16
so when I, when I go on Brett Avery's podcast, I'm totally attracted,

Unknown Speaker 51:19
yeah,

Michael David Wilson 51:20
I like that. You know, in the space of an hour, we've evolved from bread savory doesn't have a fucking clue about modern technology to creating an actual podcast for him.

Paul Tremblay 51:33
Yeah? You know somebody, once he hears his podcast, he'll learn about it. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 51:36
that makes a great deal of sense. There you go.