TIH 160: John Langan on House of Windows, Best Places to Submit Horror Fiction, and Red Line Technique

Michael David Wilson [00:00:10]:
Welcome to the This Is Horror podcast. I'm your host, Michael David Wilson, and today we are going to be rejoining John Langan for our second and final part of the interview. If you'd like to listen to part one, head back just one episode where John talks about the fisherman, he talks about training your mind for good ideas, and he talks about creative writing. Honestly, I think this is one of the best episodes we've put out on the this is horror podcast. So many takeaways, so much writing advice applicable to all writers at whatever stage you're at. Not only is John a fantastic writer, but he's been fantastically generous with his time, with his knowledge. And I'm really looking forward to getting your feedback. So do tweet us at this is horror.

Michael David Wilson [00:01:14]:
Now, as always, before we get into the interview, lets have a quick word from our sponsors. First up is perpetual motion machine publishing.

Bob Pastorella [00:01:26]:
Anarchists, assassins, and assholes make up the three types of people youll find in Andrew Hilbert's new novel, invasion of the weirdos, out now from perpetual motion machine Publishing. Theres also a robot vending machine that hugs children. Yeah, things get a little weird in this psychedelic journey set in the heart of Austin, Texas, obviously. Where else? Portland.

John Langan [00:01:47]:
Ha.

Bob Pastorella [00:01:47]:
Invasion of the weirdos by Andrew Hilbert is available right freaking now.

Michael David Wilson [00:01:53]:
Okay. And our second sponsor is audible. Now all you need to do to get a free 30 day trial is head on over to www.audibletrial.com listless horror. With the 30 day free trial you can pick up an audiobook, try it out. If you don't like it and you cancel, you still get to keep the audiobook. So really it's a no loss situation. Personally, I've been an audible subscriber for a number of years now and long. Will it continue? It's a great way to really utilize the time that I spend commuting or if I go for a walk.

Michael David Wilson [00:02:40]:
So certainly recommended. And the book that I recommend today is the Dark Net by Benjamin Percy, narrated by David Yandler. And speaking of Benjamin Percy, at the time of recording, myself and Bob are going to be chatting with him tomorrow, so keep an eye out for that one. Next week we've got the conversation with Victor LaValle. The week after that, fingers crossed it will be Benjamin Percy. And now, without further ado, let's jump in to the second part of the conversation with Mister John Langan. So we've got a number of questions from our Patreon. And the first is from Jake Marley.

Michael David Wilson [00:03:40]:
He says that he wants to ask about a rather inspiring video that you shared a while back about submitting stories. He took it to heart and would love it if you could share how it affected your writing goals and pursuits. So this is the idea which we spoke about earlier, of starting at the top and working your way down.

John Langan [00:04:10]:
Sure. Yeah. Hi, Jake. Thanks for the question. It was completely, for me, it was completely counterintuitive. I think we all have this idea that in anything I mentioned before, I do karate. You don't start as a black belt. You start as a white belt.

John Langan [00:04:34]:
And actually, you don't even have your white belt. You get your white belt once you decide to join the studio. And then you work your way up and then hopefully you make it to black belt. And I think that a lot of us, we have that idea that you start at the bottom and you kind of earn your stripes and then eventually you get to the top. I suppose it's a false comparison that writing works differently than martial arts, say, or sports or whatever. So, yes, as I said, because my wife had said to me, no, this is what you do. You start at the top. And I suppose what gave her words maybe a little bit more weight was that the story I had written was my first published horror story On Skua island was something like 12,000 words long.

John Langan [00:05:31]:
And so when I looked at markets that accepted things that were 12,000 that were that length, there weren't a lot of them. And had I written something that was 6000 words long, I might very well have just gone for some smaller zine or something like that, that would publish a story that length. But because of the length of the story I'd written, the options I had were really limited. And the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction said, yeah, we do everything up to novellas. So when I talked to my wife about it, she was the one who said, no, that's exactly right. That's what you should be doing. Start at the top. Maybe a month after I submitted the story, I got a check in the mail.

John Langan [00:06:14]:
No letter, no nothing. Just I opened the mailbox. Here was this envelope for the magazine of fantasy and science fiction. And I kind of knew because this was in the days when you would send in your story and you would send it in along with an envelope with return postage if you wanted the story sent back to you. So I didn't get the story back. So I kind of knew something was up. But I didn't dream, really that it could be an acceptance. And instead, here was this check.

John Langan [00:06:47]:
I can still remember being at the end of the driveway and my whatever it was, slippers and bathrobe or something like that, and just being utterly stupefied at my good fortune. And one thing I will say is that when I went to my first convention, this was Readercon in 2003, one of my favorite conventions. I had published two stories in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction On Sku Island and Mister Gaunt. I had a third one that was due out maybe like that August, I think it was, after the convention. But those two stories just appearing in FNSF had done me a world of good. Ellen Datlow came up to me and said, oh, I know you. When are you going to write me a story? I mean, what better introduction, could you get? And so it was a little overwhelming in some ways because I had always thought, oh, well, I'll get there someday. And instead it was like, no, you got there a little ahead of your own schedule.

John Langan [00:07:58]:
But that was terrific. So it's the reason that I recommend this to every young writer, every aspiring writer, beginning writer that I meet. Even when I'm talking to my students about their eventual publication plans, I always say, start at the top and work your way down. And it got me further ahead, than I would have been otherwise. So I know it can be hard to have that faith in yourself. Writers are forever prone to self-doubt, I think. And it can be hard to say, well, no, I'm going to shoot for the top, whether it's FNSF or it's Black Static or Cemetery Dance.

John Langan [00:08:48]:
But do it. Do it. That's the benefits to me, far outweigh the risks.

Michael David Wilson [00:08:56]:
Yeah. And where do you think are the top places to submit horror fiction these days?

John Langan [00:09:05]:
I would still go with FNSF. I would go Asimov’s every now and again does a horror story. They're worth a try, I think Dale Bailey has published a couple of horror stories with them in the past year or two and even analog once in a blue moon. You can write like a hard science horror story. Go for it. But I think weird tales for a little while when Ann Vandermeer was running it and even when Darrell Schweitzer had it, that was certainly a solid market to be part of. But it's just kind of gone missing in action. So I hope it returns.

John Langan [00:09:42]:
Black Static, obviously, is the, I think of all the magazines that may be the one that has the, I don't know, the best production values or something like that. It certainly is a lovely magazine to look at, and a lot of people are publishing in it now. I think whenever Tor.com is open to submissions, that's absolutely a place that you want to send your stuff. Very competitive, but also high, high visibility for your work. John Joseph Adams Nightmare magazine is worth submitting to as well. The only problem I have with him is you really have to fight to get anything over about 8000 words into his magazine. He's really strict about that. And you know, I would disagree with that.

John Langan [00:10:31]:
I think Uncanny and The Dark are also worth a try. I think there are a couple of smaller magazines. Strange Aeons right now has some really good stuff that's coming out, so I would give them a try. They're not going to do a heck of a lot for your pocketbook, but it's the kind of thing where it might be very good for your visibility right now. That's just, you know, that's off the top of my head there. I'm sure that there were others that I'm forgetting, for which I apologize. There are things like the Lovecraft eZine was doing a magazine and they're trying to turn that into an annual, some kind of annual or semi annual anthology. So I would check into that as well.

John Langan [00:11:21]:
I would query Mike Davis and see what's happening on that end of things. But that's at least to start with, that's a goodly number of places that you can just submit whatever it is you're working on. One of the advantages of publishing in these higher-visibility magazines is that someone like Ellen Datlow is or Paula Guran is going to contact you if they like your stuff, that you may get in the year's best. Also, after a couple of stories they may contact you and say, hey, you're doing some good, consistent work, and I've got an anthology coming up and do you think you could write me something for that? And obviously there are plenty of other people that edit anthologies as well. So Michael Rowe, his Shadows and Tall Trees or I feel like Justin Steele and Sam Cowan have an anthology coming out called Looming Low, which I just got an advanced copy of, but it looks really good. I haven't read it. I'm going to, you know, predict that it's going to be good. So the point is that you can find yourself invited to those kinds of things next.

Michael David Wilson [00:12:31]:
Yeah. And I think what's great about the list that you've just given is we have some established magazines that have been around for decades. But then you mention places like Uncanny and The Dark, and they're relatively new outfits. So I think. And indeed, what Sam Cowan is doing with the dim shores is relatively new. So I think this is an exciting time to be a reader and a writer of weird and horror and genre fiction. There's a lot of new things coming out.

John Langan [00:13:08]:
Oh, yeah. I really. I mean, it always sounds a little boastful to say we're living in a golden age of weird or horror fiction, but it really does look like that. And yeah, you're absolutely right to mention Dim Shores and Dynatox Press, Jordan Crowell's press. These are places that once you have a little bit of a reputation, once you can say, hey, I published some stories and I have a novella, especially if it's something, if you have a novella that you think, I don't know if this is going to be the right fit for these magazines. It's sort of offbeat. Dim Shores has put out some really kind of weird and quirky titles, and it's really nice to see those things having a venue, having a place where they can have a chance of reaching an audience.

Michael David Wilson [00:13:56]:
I think what's particularly cool about a lot of independent presses, and again, Dim Shores springs to mind, is that they can take more of a chance or go for a more experimental cover as well. In terms of the artwork. I think the bigger the publishing house, the more they're thinking about, okay, how will this fit on a commercial bookstore shelf to attract the maximum number of readers? And obviously, you do want a lot of readers. You want to sell as many copies as you can. But there's something exciting about an experimental cover. I mean, if you take the band Tool or the band Mastodon, I don't think, they think, how can we make this fit in the. They think, how can we make this stand out and be completely different? And that's what you're seeing with Dim Shores.

John Langan [00:14:57]:
Yeah, no, I agree. I think that there's definitely a drive, from what I can tell in the big press is the big five, to come out with things that look as much like each other as possible. And I think it. I understand that there are marketing decisions for that and what have you. But I also think that there is the danger when everything looks the same, there's a danger of getting lost in the crowd. And I think that sometimes that really distinctive cover really helps your book to stand out. We all say, don't judge a book by its cover, but we can't deny that the cover of a book is one of the things that can catch our eye and make us pick it up and say, huh, this looks interesting. So, yeah, I think that's, it's something that the smaller presses really can take advantage of.

Michael David Wilson [00:15:48]:
Yeah. And it is an initial cooling card, so you're not going to solely judge a book by its cover. But like you say, it could be the entry point.

John Langan [00:16:01]:
Yeah. You know, when, when, it's funny, when I talk to my students about submitting their work, one of the things I say to them, you know, is, is that your work has to be in proper format. Look and see what the editor or the magazine is asking for and make sure that that's what you give them. And when you write a query letter, it should be a short query letter that basically says, you know, I'm attaching, I guess it would be these days, my story, blah, blah, blah, for consideration for publication in your magazine. Thank you for your attention. And that's it. You don't need a big, long. You know, it's been my lifelong dream to be a writer.

John Langan [00:16:36]:
And my goodness, I've, you know, written in the backs of, I don't know, what, pickup trucks, and here I am. And I. You certainly don't want to say, I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing. And look, I get it. I get that it's nervousness. But here's the thing. The story has to stand on its own. If the story needs your long letter to introduce it and let it, you know, it's not going to be any.

John Langan [00:17:09]:
It's not going to work. There's something wrong with the story. It's not working as a sort of independent piece of creative fiction, which is redundant anyway. If you think about it, the reader is not going to get the benefit, the person. If it gets published in a magazine, it's not going to be published with your letter. It's going to be published on its own. One of my favorite stories in this regard concerns the late Damon Knight, who was one of the first, if not the first, Clarion workshop that he taught, his students turned in their stories to him, and the next day he gave them their stories back, and they were almost all shocked to see that there were red lines.

John Langan [00:17:59]:
Each student, pretty much every student, maybe one or two exceptions, had a red line drawn across one of the pages of their story. For some students, it was under the title. For some it was after the first couple of lines. For some it was maybe after the first couple of pages and a few made it pretty far in. So, of course, they all went tonight, and they said, what is this? And he said, that's where I stopped reading. He said, I'm the editor. I'm treating you as professionals. I'm not your teacher.

John Langan [00:18:30]:
I don't have to read this to the end. When you submit a story to a magazine or an anthology or what have you, the editor does not have to read your story to the end. That's not what it's about. You're trying to win over the editor. And so I think there were one or two people who made it close to the end or all the way to the end without a red line. They were pretty pleased with themselves. I think everybody else who was like, oh my God, I got two pages in. And, you know, some of them said, but the story gets really good on page three.

John Langan [00:19:00]:
And Knight said, then why didn't you start it on page three?

Michael David Wilson [00:19:03]:
Yeah.

John Langan [00:19:04]:
Those are things that are really important to think about with submitting your work and appearing professional. Basically, I give my students the example if you have a big interview and you show up to that interview in your jeans and a t-shirt, maybe you'll get the job, but it's quite likely that whoever is sitting on the other side of that desk is going to have just written you off right away as not serious. Not serious enough to take the trouble to dress well. And the same thing is true with submitting your stories. I think people are always amazed to find out that slush readers, say, are getting huge numbers of submissions every day. And I wouldn't say that they're looking for an excuse to reject your work, but they're not.

John Langan [00:19:52]:
I mean, imagine yourself if you had to read 100, 150 submissions a day. You're not going to go out of your way to give a piece of writing any more than you have to, and especially if it's presented in some kind of slapdash or lackadaisical way, you're just going to be like, okay, that's fine. You didn't take your time in preparing this for me. I'm not going to take my time in reading it.

Michael David Wilson [00:20:19]:
Yeah. And have you tried that red line technique with any of your students?

John Langan [00:20:26]:
I have, although I usually do it in a gentle way, and I'm just like, well, okay, because this is the thing, right? It's a class, so they have no choice but to take the class and give me the assignments, and I have no choice but to read them, right? I mean, that's what they're supposed to get. But so sometimes I'll read their stories and give them feedback, but I'll also include the red line. And I'll say, well, you know, this is where I stop. This is where I would have stopped if I were not a teacher, if I were an editor.

Michael David Wilson [00:20:55]:
That seems like a really good compromise. So they get the full feedback, but they also get the brutality of Damon Knight's red line technique.

John Langan [00:21:06]:
Well, you know, what it is, is that there are things that you can tell your students. Sometimes you have to approach them as students, and sometimes you have to approach them as writers. So I've had students who will say to me, I'll give them an assignment, and they'll say, I remember having one student, and whatever the assignment was, she had edged around some sort of painful material, and I said to her, oh, well, I think you need to go a little bit further. And she said, I can't. It's too painful. And I said, as your teacher, I completely understand. That's utterly fine. I will never make you do anything you don't want to do.

John Langan [00:21:49]:
But she was a smart student, and she said, all right, wait a minute. As a teacher, what about as a writer? And I said, well, whenever you're ready, I think that's probably the place you need to go. And so I try to give them that kind of advice sometimes to say, it's not my purpose in this classroom to cause you pain. The notion of the teacher who is the brutal taskmaster I find obnoxious. I don't like it. I don't like it any place in my life. I don't like it. I never liked it when I was a student.

John Langan [00:22:24]:
When I'm writing, I don't like it in martial arts or sports or whatever. I have no use for that kind of stuff. I think you can be firm, you can be disciplined, but you can also be kind. And I think that's really, really important for students no matter what you're doing. So I don't see any use in hammering into them some notion of you're not worthy. Come on. Because that seems to me that that's all about the teacher. Maybe they went through it themselves and they're like, well, I suffered, so you have to suffer.

John Langan [00:23:00]:
And that's bankrupt logic. If I suffered, I don't want you to suffer. I want you to get the benefits of my experience, but without the suffering. I want you to learn a little bit more than I learned. The goal of every teacher is for your student to surpass you and beating on them doesn't really seem to me an effective way or ethical way to achieve that.

Michael David Wilson [00:23:25]:
I absolutely agree.

Bob Pastorella [00:23:28]:
One thing that keeps coming up is that your fiction's longer. And I think a lot of writers, myself included, when you start looking at the market and you see the word count, you know that, hey, you know, under 5000 words, I didn't realize it at the time, but going back through some of my previously published stories and reading them and realizing that, man, this is not even a story. There's an inkling of story here. And nine times out of ten I felt like I could expand it and make it better. But yet it was a published work. And so I feel that horror, especially in short stories, that there's, there's a sweet spot between ten and 25,000 words where it is probably it's most effective. So do you feel, you know what you were talking about earlier, it's just like you think your shortest stories, maybe 6000 words, maybe you have one that's shorter than that, but you have the sweet spot. And I feel that, when you're just starting off that you're gonna see these word counts.

Bob Pastorella [00:24:58]:
And I think it may be stifling creativity. I think it may be narrowing a writer's thoughts. So what are your thoughts on that? Because you tend to write longer stuff. I feel like my stuff could be longer. I know going back and reading some of the greats like, you know, Aikman, you know, his stories were, they were short stories, but then basically they were novelettes and just massive. And so good, again, the market, there's very few places that are going to take anything over 10,000 words.

John Langan [00:25:35]:
Yeah, my initial impulse is to say, look, especially if you're looking at a deadline of some kind, if there's an anthology you want to submit to, give yourself a lot of time and write the story the way you feel it needs to be written and look at what you have. It may be that you've written a story that's 7500 words long and a lot of places will say 5000 query for longer or 6000 query for longer. And in that case, you probably could query the editor and say, look, I've got a story. It's 7500 words long. Would you be willing to take a look at it. And I would say the odds are decent that they'll say, oh, yeah, send it along, because those things tend to be a little bit more flexible, I think. And here's the thing. You write a 7500 word story, you might be able to cut it down to 7000.

John Langan [00:26:32]:
Maybe not maybe, but going through the entire story, you might be able to line out some things, compress some things and. Okay, great. I've got a tighter 7000 word story. I think if you write and you write and you write and you've got a 20,000 word story. Yeah, it's really hard to carve 5000 words out of that. And I think in that case, you have to look at the story and say, okay, does this work as 20,000 words? And you know what? If it does, it does. Then that's when you look at, like, FNSF or you go to Tor.com or something, or you go to dim shores and you say, okay, I've got this long, you know, written this long story. What do you think? So you maybe let FNSF have a look at it.

John Langan [00:27:15]:
I haven't kept up with their response times recently. They used to be famous, Gordon and John Joseph Adams, when he was working for him. They used to be quite famous for getting things back to people pretty quickly. If your story wasn't going to work for them, you would usually hear within a couple of weeks. It was only if they were accepting a story that it could take them months to get back to you. It was a sort of frustrated, like, paradoxical thing. You know, where you're waiting, you're like, well, I'm waiting a long time. So I think my story has been accepted, but I haven't heard anything.

John Langan [00:27:44]:
So I would, I would try that. I would definitely. I would definitely try to let the stories be what they need to be, be the length that they, they need to be. I can't remember if it was Roger Zelazny. I think I could be wrong about that, but I think it wasn't. Who said that when he was trying to write a short story, he would think about it as the climactic chapter in a novel, and he would try to write that and then that scene, basically a couple of scenes, and then ask himself, okay, what else do I need to put in here so the reader understands what's going on? So that's another way to think about it, is just take the climax of whatever the longer story is and write that and make that the story. Then I don't know if it works all the time, because Zelazny also wrote some pretty long stories. So there may have been limitations to it, but I am fascinated, as I said before, I'm fascinated by trying to write a short, short story and trying to figure out how it is you do that.

John Langan [00:28:49]:
And as I say, once in a while, one just kind of plops into my lap. But it always seems kind of mysterious to me. How are you able to do it then and not, you know, this time, this time, and this time?

Bob Pastorella [00:29:01]:
Yeah, just, it just seems. And of course, now the, the market's better. When I first started, I was kind of like you. I was, you know, in late eighties, you know, back when we had, you know, mail things in envelopes and wait for long time, you know. And then, yeah, I don't want to get into, you know, though you. When I started, we had to walk 4 miles into snow barefoot, you know, but it was pretty much like that.

John Langan [00:29:28]:
Right.

Bob Pastorella [00:29:30]:
And so the market has definitely changed. And I think for the better. It's just, I wish, I wish I would have started now. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. And I think a lot of people are starting out for starting off at a kind of a really good advantage. But I agree with you 100%. The story needs to be what the story is.

Bob Pastorella [00:29:59]:
It's important that you don't try to cram a 20,000 word story into 3000 words, because anybody, anybody can do that. And you might get lucky, but I think you'd have a better shot of having something that's going to be memorable and something that, that people are going to really appreciate if you give us the whole thing.

John Langan [00:30:20]:
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think you have to. It can be hard at the beginning, right? But you have to learn to trust yourself as a writer, and you have to learn to trust that little dog, that creative unconscious that's bringing stuff to you. Well, it's taking you into the story, or you're going to the story with it, however you want to look at it. You have to trust that developing relationship and let it go where it will. I think there are plenty of writers who reinvent themselves. You know who I was thinking about? Honoré de Balzac, the great early French novelist. And I can never remember how old he was, but he came to a certain point in his career where he just decided he'd written, like, a lot of potboilers, basically, and he just decided this is all garbage.

John Langan [00:31:11]:
This is not what I want to be remembered for. And he basically, you know, sort of did an about face, I guess, or a pivot or a turn or something. Anyway, he went on to write the comedy humaine. I mean, he just, over whatever it was, another 20 years or something like that, he just created this astonishing fictional universe. So I think it's never too late, I think, to just decide, no, I'm doing something different. Sometimes it doesn't. I mean, I think about Robert McCammon a few years ago when.

John Langan [00:31:47]:
When he decided, I want to try something different. And the story goes, his publisher was like, no, you don't. And he was like, fine, I'm not going to publish for a while. But he came, he's publishing again, and he's published, from what I can tell, a lot of the stuff he wanted to publish then. So there can be obviously not just bumps on the road, but sometimes the road, you have to wait for it to get paved. But I think it's always okay. We mentioned Laird Barron before, and Laird has just sold a couple of crime novels to some big publisher whose name just went right out of my head. Random House, Penguin, one of those guys.

John Langan [00:32:25]:
Anyway, it's not completely unrelated to the stuff that he's written before because a lot of his horror fiction has a kind of a noir kind of edge to it, but it's its own thing. And I've read the first one and it's really, really good. So I think sometimes you can, you can do that or just say or keep writing like what Peter Straub did. Straub has. He writes the early books, what I think of as the early books, which is almost a kind of loose trilogy of Ghost Story, Shadowland and Floating Dragon. And then after Floating Dragon, he reinvents himself. And he does Coco and mystery and The Throat and the stories and the two collections. And then he reinvents himself again.

John Langan [00:33:12]:
I mean, he goes back, he messes around with a thriller and the Hellfire Club and a sort of supernatural novel in Mister X. And then later on he writes these experimental novels. What is it? Lost boy, lost girl, and in the Night room and continued to do that. I mean, even going so far as to release his preferred version of the Skylark of the book that became a dark matter. So I think I look at a guy like that man, and he's made his entire career out of just being restless, of just, he does something for a little while, and there were continuities, you can see continuity. He's running through certain concerns, running through all of his works. But, you know, he's at a point where he doesn't have anything left to prove to anybody. You know, he can just sort of sit back if he wants and just write the same novel over and over again.

John Langan [00:33:58]:
And he's still mixing it up. He's still trying to keep things really fresh. And I admire the heck out of that. I feel like every interview I give, I wind up coming back to this point, you know, how much I admire and aspire to the kind of stuff that Straub continues to do. And I just, he just seems to me this, this really kind of heroic figure just not resting on his laurels, just relentlessly moving forward.

Bob Pastorella [00:34:26]:
Oh, I agree. I think that he, you know, I've noticed that, too. It's, it's at first, you know, because reading him growing up, I remember when the talisman came out and I remember reading an interview with Straub and he said, never, ever take a year off from writing, which he did, but that resulted in Coco. And from, you know, from what I understand, he went and stayed with Stephen King and, you know, because he had had some, some writing issues and they worked through that. And, you know, and it always stuck with me. Never take a year off. Because I think in the interview he said, well, never take a year off. But he, but at the time, I didn't realize what he was doing, but he was, he's, it's like, it's constant.

Bob Pastorella [00:35:14]:
He's constantly challenging himself to try something different. And he is probably, without a doubt, one of my, probably my favorite writer, a man, as a matter of fact, I've never read a dark matter because I, because if he never writes another thing again, I want to have that one book that I haven't had read by him yet.

John Langan [00:35:39]:
Have you read, have you read The Skylark? That's the, that's the novel. But dark matter was cut out of.

Bob Pastorella [00:35:45]:
Yes, I did. I did read that.

John Langan [00:35:48]:
Ok. And he has a new novella out, too. I can't remember what it's called. The process is a process of its own or something like that. So.

Bob Pastorella [00:35:57]:
Right. You know, son, now it's like, now I know I need to read a dark matter because he has something else out. So. Right. And I just. Now you just need to find a time, you know, soon. Time is a man made concept.

Michael David Wilson [00:36:18]:
Okay. Well, should we take another Patreon question?

John Langan [00:36:24]:
Absolutely. Sure.

Michael David Wilson [00:36:26]:
So this is from Peter Bowditch. He says, I was introduced to Langen via the fisherman, excuse the pun, but I was instantly hooked. Think I pretty much thank you, Peter.

John Langan [00:36:41]:
No one has ever made that one.

Michael David Wilson [00:36:42]:
Yeah. Think I pretty much devoured both his anthologies and house of Windows in the following months. As much as I love his short stories, I think his novels, literary horror, so to speak, are incredible. Does he have another novel in the works, and if so, when might we expect it?

John Langan [00:37:08]:
Well, thank you, Peter. That's a lovely compliment. And yeah, I do have a third novel that I'm slowly making my way through. It's probably going to take me a year to a year and a half to finish. And honestly, it's not that the novel is, and it has its complexities, but it's mostly that I have committed to a lot of other projects in the meantime. And as a writer, as an aspiring writer, as a beginning writer, I always wanted to get to the point where I would be getting invitations to do things. I would read about people getting invited to different anthologies, and I would think, why am I not being invited? Well, you get to the point that you are being invited to those anthologies. And I tend to say, yes, probably, certainly more than my agent thinks I should. She offered at one point, my agent, she was like, just tell them to send all their queries to me.

John Langan [00:38:18]:
And I thought, yeah, that would basically mean, you know, no to everybody because she wants me to write novels as well. And so, yeah, I'd like to try to wrap up the obligations that I have, but those are going to take me on and off several more months at least. But I do recognize that there's more things to be done with the novel, with the novel form. It's a kind of a cliche in a lot of horror circles that really you can't write horror novels, that horror novels are basically just mystery or crime novels with a monster, and that you can only really write true horrors like short stories, or maybe you can push it to a novella length, but the horror novel is not really a thing. And I disagree with that quite strenuously. And I think we mentioned Straub, King. I think there have been plenty of examples of successful horror novels. Clive Barker's The Damnation Game comes to mind.

John Langan [00:39:25]:
And so I would really like to do more in the novel form. And so the emphasis for me is on wrapping up these projects that I have and then trying to get to the hard at work on the novels sometime. It'd be great if early 2018, I was pounding away at the novel, at the keys on my computer. That would make me really happy.

Bob Pastorella [00:39:54]:
Well, I was going to say it would make a lot of other people happy, too.

Michael David Wilson [00:39:57]:
Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

John Langan [00:40:00]:
Well, that's kind of you to say.

Michael David Wilson [00:40:03]:
Well, next question is from Michael Griffin.

John Langan [00:40:11]:
He's as bad as Paul Tremblay. I mean, really, what, how desperate are you guys to take a question from Mike Griffin?

Michael David Wilson [00:40:25]:
I cannot comment or he'll stop supporting us on Patreon.

John Langan [00:40:31]:
But, you know, you know.

Michael David Wilson [00:40:36]:
Well, nonetheless, he would like to know. So John has mentioned having started The Fisherman long ago and left it in limbo for years before returning to finish it. Does he have any other major semi-finished projects to which he hopes to return in the future?

John Langan [00:41:01]:
Yes. Obviously, I'm trying to get done on the, get done the novella for the new collection, but that will be, you know, that will be done in next few weeks to a month. I have a number of novellas. I have part of something that I thought was going to be a kind of companion volume to The Fisherman. Not exactly a sequel, so much as something that's kind of happening at more or less the same time. It's called The Tunnel. And I realized at a certain point, this isn't a novel. This is probably a long novella. So that's one of those things that I would really like to get done before I start work on the next full length novel.

John Langan [00:41:53]:
I don't know if it'll happen or not, but fingers crossed. I also have the beginning to what I think will probably be a pretty long vampire novel, but that's definitely on the back burner. The novel that I'm planning on writing is the first of two and possibly three if things work out. And then I'll probably get to the vampire novel. So that's a few years off, I think, at least. And I've obviously stories, plenty of stories that I've started at various times and just had to put aside for a variety of reasons. Sometimes you're writing a story, you go along and you just stop and you just think, all right, well, got something else to do in the meantime. And then later you come back to it and you think, oh, wait, I completely see how I need to wrap this up.

John Langan [00:42:53]:
And that's what you do. So I have a few of those as well. I'm supposed to be, what am I supposed to be doing? I'm supposed to be writing a critical study for Neil Snowdon. He's doing a series of, with P's publishing a series of basically monographs on famous horror films or. Yeah, famous and infamous, I suppose. And so I'm supposed to do one of those for him about fright night, the original Fright Night with Chris Sarandon and Roddy McDowell. And that's not due till 2019 or 2020, I think. But that's kind of how far out, I guess I'm thinking at the moment.

John Langan [00:43:41]:
And I have a couple of other longish stories or novellas that will slot in. I've got, at this point about enough material for another two collections, maybe two and a half collections after this one that's supposed to be out soon. So I'll get to that as well. There's plenty of stuff and, you know, other things that just sort of lurk around in the back of my mind. And I think, oh, I would like to get to this. I would like to get to that. So, yeah, I hope to, you know, I have plans to be busy for the foreseeable future.

Michael David Wilson [00:44:21]:
Yeah, that's exciting news. A lot of things to look forward to.

John Langan [00:44:26]:
Well, thank you. Yeah. If I can finish them, you know.

Michael David Wilson [00:44:29]:
Right. Well, Tony McMillan would like to know. He says, greetings, fellow word hoardian. I hear you're re releasing your first novel, House of Windows. To what degree are you going to George Lucas it, or are you just going to leave it be and slap a new cover on it? He also said, my question is, the classic art is never really finished, so do you resist the temptation to fiddle with your work after it's entered the public consciousness?

John Langan [00:45:07]:
No, that's actually a good question. There were writers like Louise Erdich, and it seems every novel she's written, she's constantly revising and constantly bringing out, I'm not sure how. I think there were at least three versions of Love Medicine, her first novel now. So you see that happening right now. And when I was, it's funny, when I was taking graduate classes in English, one of the subjects that one of the classes dealt with was the question of what's the preferred edition of the book for the scholar? Do you go with the first edition? Because the idea is that that's the edition that represents the artist's original inspiration. Or do you go with a revised edition? You know, Mary Shelley's what is it, 1832, I think it is kind of reworking of Frankenstein or for Henry James, the New York edition of his novels, where he extensively revises them. Do you go with that as the expression of a kind of mature artistic sensibility? And at the moment, I guess the sort of critical consensus is, or we go with the earlier work. I'm not entirely convinced.

John Langan [00:46:23]:
tend not to revise my stuff once it's been published. And I guess it's because I want to move ahead to the next project. And I'm aware that, yeah, whoever it was that said, no novel is ever finished, it's only abandoned. That there is a little bit of truth to that that you admit sometimes a lot, I guess, that you could just linger over a particular novel. It was Harold Brodkey who spent, like, 40 years writing the runaway soul. And you could do that. You could spend your entire life just working away on one novel. And there's a sort of a mad part of me that admires that and thinks, oh, that would be awesome.

John Langan [00:47:06]:
But there's also a part of me that wants to get done with things and wants to go on to the next project. So to answer the question, diversion Brook. Diversion books, excuse me. Is bringing out House of Windows, the reissuing House of Windows. And I haven't tinkered with it. There may have been, like, in their process of copy editing, it's entirely possible they caught grammatical errors. But in terms of anything else, I've left the novel as it is and what I've added for it. Adam Nevill very graciously agreed to write an introduction to the novel.

John Langan [00:47:45]:
And then I wrote an afterword explaining that or talking about the composition of the novel, and came up with a reading guide for it and a couple of suggestions for further reading. I had hoped that I would include an original story with it. And my thought was to write a story that was set in the same house, the titular house, but would involve different characters. And I actually did start work on that story. And this connects to everything we've been talking about, I suppose. And it just grew. It just exploded into what will probably be a novella whose working title is the Banshee. And I guess the folks at diversion still want to do something with that.

John Langan [00:48:31]:
But I'm not clear. Until that story is done. And as I said, I imagine it's going to be a novella. Until that is done, I don't know what we're going to do with this. So I think it's more interesting in some ways for me as a writer to sometimes pick up characters or places from earlier novels or stories and sometimes bring them forward or take a minor character, say, and make them a major character. What is this person's story? Or reveal some kind of connection between two characters, or use a place in a new way. Not all of my stories, but there have been a few stories where I've thought, oh, you could probably write a sequel to that one. That's a kind of interesting place that you ended, and there's probably a little bit more that you could do there.

John Langan [00:49:25]:
So I certainly reserve the right to do that, so to speak. I just, I don't think it's the best use of my time right now to endlessly tinker with old stories when I have new ones to write.

Michael David Wilson [00:49:41]:
And how did the introduction from Adam Nevill come about?

John Langan [00:49:46]:
Oh, Adam's a fantastic guy, and I had actually discovered his fiction before we had all our dogs. And I used to go with my wife and son to Scotland. I think I had discovered in Waterstone's, maybe in Edinburgh, I want to say a couple of Adams books. I think Apartment 16 had maybe just come out, and that looked really interesting to me. And so I picked that up, and then I think it was probably one of those buy one, get one free or get one half price deals. And so I picked up Banquet For The Damned, and apartment in 16 in particular just blew me away. I just thought it was such an unrelentingly creepy book and just so, so wonderfully done and so kind of in keeping with a lot of my own ideas about what you could do as a horror writer. And so every time we would go back to Scotland, and then when my wife and son went back without me, that's what they would bring.

John Langan [00:50:46]:
I would bring back, or they would bring me back, was the new Adam, new Adam Nevill in its british edition. So I would read things like the ritual or House of small shadows. And I just thought, wow, this guy is just, he's just doing these amazing things in the novel. And what I loved about his novel writing in particular was that he wasn't doing the same thing with each novel. It's every novel, it's like he sets himself a different challenge. I'm going to write The Ritual, I'm going to write the horror story about a bunch of people off in the woods, and then it turns into a kind of captivity narrative. And he's written cult novels and he's written evil artist novels and such. And so I really admire that.

John Langan [00:51:30]:
And then, much to my surprise, on his blog a couple of years ago, he, he was going through different writers and different contemporary writers and saying, hey, if you guys haven't read this person or that person, you should really take a look at them. And he did a write up of my stuff, and it was very insightful and, and very large minded and of generous spirit. And you know, I wrote to him and I thanked him and he said, hey, you know, when I was working at Virgin books, the, you know, House of Windows, that's the kind of novel I would have tried to buy. So when we were going to do the reissue of the book, my publisher was like, do you know anybody who would maybe do an introduction? And I thought, you know, almost like he deserves the right to say no, you know, and he didn't say no, he said, yeah, sure. So he sent it over very quickly. And yeah, I'm very grateful to have his name on the front of my book.

Michael David Wilson [00:52:31]:
Yeah, definitely. He's doing some interesting things with Ritual Limited now as well. It's interesting to see how he's branched off and is experimenting with both traditional and self-publishing models.

John Langan [00:52:48]:
Yeah, he's, to me, he's this really fascinating guy. He seems to me in ways that I'm not completely sure I could articulate, but he feels like a kind of bridge between some of the british traditions of horror that you've seen in someone like Ramsey Campbell and then some of the american traditions that you see in King and Straub. He seems to me to draw on both of them in really interesting kinds of ways.

Michael David Wilson [00:53:16]:
Yeah, I think I'd go along with that and I think and hope that Adam would as well.

John Langan [00:53:23]:
I know, right. He'll find out and he'll be like, what are you talking about?

Michael David Wilson [00:53:25]:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, our next question is from Sam Cowan and he says others are asking Mister Langan about his writing. So I'll take this opportunity to ask him about something else that has been weighing heavy on my mind. John, you will be missed at Necronomicon this year and will undoubtedly be the subject of at least a few toasts. What would you prefer we drink to honour you? I mean, Scotch obviously, but any recommendations?

John Langan [00:54:06]:
Sam, that is the best question anyone has asked all night. I would go, I really like Talisker. Yeah, I prefer single malt. I was going to say it was the drink of my childhood, but that doesn't sound quite right.

Michael David Wilson [00:54:28]:
Yeah, amazing.

John Langan [00:54:34]:
My parents are Scottish and they came from Greenock and Guruk on the west coast of Scotland. And when we had big family events, that was one of the drinks that was served. And it was usually Johnny Walker. It was usually some kind of a higher-end, kind of a blend. But that distinctive smell, that really, it's like a Proustian sort of a thing. It carries with it all these associations, all these good associations of my childhood. And my father would be preparing the drinks and I would be like the waiter running back and forth to people, what would you like? What would you like? And every now and again my dad would give me a glass of something and say, make sure that Mister Rafter gets this. And I would bring it over to, oh, Mister Rafter, dad says, this is just for you.

John Langan [00:55:25]:
And so, yes, scotch has for me these sort of deep rooted sort of family connections. And it also makes me think of my father in law, now sadly deceased. But when my wife took me to meet the parents, the guy who would be keeping their daughter in the states and not letting her come back to Scotland, he was a scotch aficionado and he had this big cabinet. It was never overstocked with scotch, but he always had a few interesting bottles in there. And unfailingly every night he would stand up and he would look at my wife and I and he would say, would anyone care to join me in a small sensation? And we would say yes, because it would be rude to say no. And he would return with these glasses, cut crystal glasses, I suppose, with a good two or three fingers worth of something in it. He was very generous with, with what was an expensive drink. And that was kind of my introduction into more serious scotch drinking, I suppose.

John Langan [00:56:44]:
And so Talisker is really the one that I've come to prefer. There's a lot of good choices. My wife is more fond of Lagavulin and I like Lagavulin fine. I've got no problems drinking it or any of that style of scotch. But I like Talisker as a kind of a balanced sort of, to me, a sort of a balanced scotch Talisker. Storm isn't bad, but I'm sort of a purist. I'd rather go with the original Talisker. But honestly, you know, I love the craft that goes into making scotch.

John Langan [00:57:17]:
I love the differences in each different single mall. So I think whatever people feel like, feel like drinking, go ahead. Go ahead and enjoy yourselves. But I guess that means that Sam will be hosting all the room parties this time around. So.

Michael David Wilson [00:57:33]:
Yeah. All right. And our final Patreon question is from Brian Asmund. So this is a late bid for the best question after Sam has just won it thus far.

John Langan [00:57:51]:
I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Michael David Wilson [00:57:54]:
He says, what's the most horrific thing you can imagine reeling in at the end of a fishing pole not described in The Fisherman.

John Langan [00:58:06]:
Oh, my goodness. Well, you know, there are a lot of really awful fish out there. You know, I'm not a huge. I'm not really a fisherman at all. The reason that I. It's funny, the reason I settled on fishing was because of the Moby Dick reference or the game I was playing with Moby Dick. And I thought, I don't want to write about whaling. I find that abhorrent.

John Langan [00:58:30]:
But I thought, I can write about fishing. And then, as it turned out, my younger son has become this astonishing, basically self taught fisherman over the last five years, I guess, now. So he actually gave me, like, when I was done with the book, he gave it a kind of an editorial pass, or at least certain sections. I was like, okay, what about this? What about that? And so it actually has a few less errors in it than it did during the first draft. And there are all kinds of crazy things that you can pull up out of just lakes. There are all kinds of strange fish, catfish and walleye and what have you. I think once you go out into the deep water, once you go out into the ocean, I mean, there's, you know, there's still, I think, plenty of fish that we have yet to discover. And of the ones that we have discovered, I might have to go with old reliable.

John Langan [00:59:29]:
A shark would be kind of frightening, I think, to have accidentally hooked a great white or a tiger shark or something like that. They don't have to be 30ft long to get their teeth into you. And so that would seem to me a really stressful kind of situation. So I'm going to go with shark, then.

Michael David Wilson [00:59:50]:
All right, now we know. Thank you, Brian.

John Langan [00:59:55]:
I know. I feel I've just exposed some terrible weakness. You know, it's like Superman telling you, oh, kryptonite. That's not my thing.

Michael David Wilson [01:00:02]:
Well, what's interesting is Brian's question for Andy Davidson was, what fictional monster would you de fictionalize and bring into the real world? And Andy actually went with Jaws, so there's quite a connection between your ancestors.

John Langan [01:00:23]:
Yeah. We were all traumatized at the same time by that movie.

Michael David Wilson [01:00:27]:
Right, right. Well, what is something that you believe that many other people do not, huh?

John Langan [01:00:42]:
Well, I'm a big fan of the band The Screaming Trees, and most of my friends look down upon me for. For liking them. I'm friends with a lot of terrible snobs. I'm looking at Laird Barron and Paul Tremblay in particular. And they always say, we're not snobs, we just have good taste. Which is, of course, what a snob would say. You know, I feel kind of like my. Most of my beliefs are very mundane, but they're not always maybe put in practice.

John Langan [01:01:21]:
I don't know. That sounds awfully judgmental, and I don't mean it to be. I just think that, look, I have gotten to where I've gotten to as a writer to the extent that I've had any very, very tiny modicum of success by just doing the work for a long time. And that's not especially glamorous or sexy or whatever. And it's meant that I've had to learn patience. And it's something that I feel like as I get older. It's the thing I kind of realize is maybe crucially important to parts of life that I've seen newer writers saying, well, my God, I've been publishing for three or five or seven years.

John Langan [01:02:14]:
Why am I not famous? It's usually not put quite that blatantly. It's usually put in a more coded kind of a way. And I get it. You know, you put your stuff out there, and you're like, okay, world, here I am. And I think to myself, man, you know, I sold my first story in the year 2000, and it was published in 2001. And I certainly have been noticed along the way. I would never claim that I haven't been, but I would also say, here we are.

John Langan [01:02:50]:
We're sliding into the second half of 2017, and I feel like I've still got a ways to go. So patience. And it was the thing, I guess, that was brought back to me the last several years when I was working towards my black belt and thinking, man, just when you think you've got something down, you discover. No, I don't. Or you discover there's a new challenge to a new physical challenge, a new move to make or form to learn or technique or whatever. And so, again, it comes down to patience. And I think in terms of thinking about marriage, thinking about fatherhood, again, patience, being able to slow things down and say, okay, okay, it's all right. It's all right.

John Langan [01:03:44]:
Just relax. Just let's, you know, things will be okay. Let's let this. Let's try and work on things and make things better. I feel like, yeah, patience is maybe something that's paid lip service to a lot, but I'm not sure that people always understand that it's hard work. It's really, really hard work. But I also think it's really necessary if you want to be in anything for the long haul. I think if you want to be in writing for the short haul because it's going to make you rich.

John Langan [01:04:16]:
Well, we already talked about, that's not really going to happen, or even it's not going to make me rich, but it's going to make me kind of famous or notorious or whatever. Keep in mind Poe. I mean, think about Poe, who is sort of notorious during his lifetime, but dies in extremely disreputable circumstances and chooses, as his biographer and literary executor, a guy who hates him. I mean, sort of worst career move ever. Or think about Melville when he dies. I think maybe one of his books was in print, but I'm not even sure about that. And in Melville's case, say it's going to take 30, well, 29 years. He dies in 1891, and it's 1920 that they sort of mark the beginning of the Melville revival.

John Langan [01:05:04]:
So now, of course, we look at Moby Dick, and here I am riffing off it and other people are doing their thing. We now think it's this great american novel, but it took, obviously an awfully long time. And same thing with Poe, it seems to me it really took Baudelaire translating Poe into French and all the French going, oh, this guy's a genius. And then the Americans were like, oh, well, maybe we should take another look at him. So those are extreme circumstances, and obviously all of us hope that we'll achieve a little of that during our lifetime, which is certainly not unreasonable. But I think it is useful to reflect on that every now and again. And it is a sobering thought. But I think that sobriety is useful to us, and it helps us to remember, I guess, as writers, I hope, anyway, why we're doing this.

John Langan [01:06:02]:
It's absolutely terrific to win awards. Don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise. And it's wonderful to get great reviews. That is also awesome. It's even better to get paid. That's nice, too. But if that's why you're doing it, if you're one of those writers who's like, that's my goal, you may be setting yourself up for a fall. I think your goal has to be, first and foremost to write whatever it is you have to write, you know, whatever it is in you to write.

John Langan [01:06:38]:
And, you know, the other thing I hope for is I hope that a reader somewhere will enjoy what I've written. I hope that it will make someone's day better. I hope it will give them some kind of pleasure. I am absolutely thrilled whenever somebody says to me, you know, my friend and I were talking about your book last night and blah, blah, blah, whatever comes after that. We both hated it. That's fine. But to think that people were actually talking about what I wrote without me being present to enforce it or whatever, that's terrific. That's just great.

John Langan [01:07:14]:
So, yeah, I guess I would come back to some notion that patience and dedication, perseverance, that those are worthy things and that those are the things that they're necessary things. I think for any artist, especially if you hope that you're going to be at your art for a long time, maybe for the rest of your life.

Michael David Wilson [01:07:39]:
You know, there's so many other questions and topics that we could talk about. We could talk for another hour and another hour after that, I'm sure. But that was so insightful and so fantastic that I think I. It's a great note to end the episode on and to leave our listeners with.

John Langan [01:08:03]:
Okay, that's great. I'm glad it worked for you. This has been such a delight. I cannot tell you how much I've enjoyed talking to you guys.

Michael David Wilson [01:08:10]:
Yeah, hopefully Bob agrees as well and isn't like, no, I had a question. I was just about to ask. What the fuck are you doing?

John Langan [01:08:20]:
Bob's like, this sucks. Why did we have this guy on?

Bob Pastorella [01:08:23]:
No, this was. This was great. I'm inspired. I'm freaking inspired. I have to get up early in the morning and I want to write now.

John Langan [01:08:33]:
Do it, Bob. You don't need that job.

Bob Pastorella [01:08:37]:
Yeah, unfortunately. It's got good benefits.

John Langan [01:08:42]:
Yeah, well, okay. Don't worry. Those will be gone soon.

Michael David Wilson [01:08:49]:
John, where can our listeners connect with you?

John Langan [01:08:54]:
As I'm fond of saying, I spend way too much time on Facebook. I have the little pangolin picture for if you're trying to figure out which, there are a couple of other John Langens. One of them writes college textbooks and another one writes high school romances or something like that. One of them is a Jesuit. I'm the one with the pangolin. And I'm on Twitter as Mr. Gaunt. And if you google my blog, I have a WordPress blog, Mister Gaunt.

John Langan [01:09:28]:
But it's just if you google John Langen, horror writer, it'll pop up. And I use the blog as a kind of a clearinghouse to like, I'll link to this review or this interview. Excuse me. I'll link to this after it goes live and such. So. Yeah, that's a good place as well.

Michael David Wilson [01:09:45]:
Well, thank you for being so generous with your time and with your advice and you know, I've left some questions out for a reason, so we can reconnect and do this again sometime.

John Langan [01:09:59]:
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I would absolutely love to do it. Anytime.

Michael David Wilson [01:10:03]:
Okay. Do you have any final thoughts or quotes or inspiration you'd like to leave our listeners with?

John Langan [01:10:12]:
Yeah. It's hard as a writer to get to talk to all the people who bought your book and who've reviewed it on Amazon or Goodreads or who've passed a copy on to a friend or who voted for it for an award. And I will note, reach all of them here and now. But to anybody who's listening, thank you. You know, when I was a kid reading Christine and thinking to myself, this is what I have to do. This is what I want to do. Obviously, this was where I wanted to be. This was, you know, at least a step along the journey to where I wanted to be.

John Langan [01:11:03]:
And if you had told me when, when I started, when I was in college and I was trying to write at high school, when I was trying to write horror stories, or when I came back to writing horror stories in my late twenties, that I would get to this point, I would just. I don't know. I don't think I would have believed it. I don't think I would have dared to believe it. I would have thought, no, that's too much. Don't hope for that much. Because if you hope for that much, you'll jinx it. You'll set yourself up for a fall.

John Langan [01:11:33]:
And I feel intensely grateful to what Stephen King calls the constant reader. I feel intensely grateful to everybody who has supported me along the way. And that really means a lot to me. It means more to me than I really feel. I know how to articulate particularly well. So thank you. And thank you for continuing to support writers like me. I mean, for all my kidding.

John Langan [01:12:07]:
Paul Tremblay, Mike Griffin, Laird Barron, Gemma Files, Nadia Balkan, Carrie Laban, and more than I can name. I've already left out a ton of people. I'm already thinking, oh my God, what about Glenn Hirschberg? What about Nathan Ballengride? So thank you for supporting me and for making it possible for me to do this. I would do it anyway, but it's nice to think that someone's out there reading it.

Michael David Wilson [01:12:36]:
And thank you, John. Thank you for your stories. Long may they continue.

John Langan [01:12:42]:
Thank you so much, guys.

Michael David Wilson [01:12:47]:
Thank you for listening to the this is horror podcast. We'll be back next week when we chat with Victor LaValle. But if you want to get that conversation ahead of the crowd, then please support us on Patreon, it only costs a dollar to get early bird access to every episode. It helps keep the show alive and means that we can bring you more and more great conversations. Like the one we've had today with John Langan, like the one we're putting out next week with Victor LaValle, and like the one we're having with Benjamin Percy. The week after that, we've got a load of other people lined up to come on the show. Gemma Files, Nicole Cushing, Livia Llewellyn and if you like what we're doing, if you think it's a value, it's worth $1, then please head our way. Www.patreon.com forward slash this is horror.

Michael David Wilson [01:13:48]:
And don't be put off because you can only afford $1 and ideally you'd like to pay more. Honestly, if everyone put a dollar in, we would have a huge Patreon following. Speaking of which, we're trying to get up to 100. We're ever so close, so please do join us and let's make it happen sooner rather than later. Www.patreon.com this is horror. Alright, before I wrap up, let's have a quick word from our sponsors. First up, it's audible. Go to www.audibletrial.com forward slash thisish a title I recommend the darknet by Benjamin Percy and then enjoy it for 30 days if you want to cancel the trial after cool, you still get to keep the book.

Michael David Wilson [01:14:48]:
Www.audibletrial.com thisishorror it's a win win situation. Next up, perpetual motion machine Publishing.

Bob Pastorella [01:14:59]:
Anarchists, assassins, and assholes make up the three types of people you'll find in Andrew Hilbert's new novel, invasion of the weirdos, out now from perpetual motion machine publishing. There's also a robot vending machine that hugs children. Yeah, things get a little weird in this psychedelic journey set in the heart of Austin, Texas, obviously. Where else? Portland, ha. Invasion of the Weirdos by Andrew Hilbert is available right freaking now.

Michael David Wilson [01:15:26]:
Okay, to wrap up, I'd like to conclude with a quote from Alice Munroe. A story is not like a road to follow. It's more like a house. You can go back again and again. And the house. The story always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself, of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you. And that was Alice Munro.

Michael David Wilson [01:16:09]:
Join us next time on the this is horror podcast for our conversation with Victor LaValle. Until then, look after yourself. Be good to one another, read horror, and have a great, great day.

John Langan [01:16:36]:
I love this, man. When I was a kid, you know, when I was. I was reading King and Straub and that, you know, I would look out for interviews with them, and they were so hard to find, you know, the Twilight Zone magazine or something like that. Or later on cemetery dance. It is. For all its other problems, it is. One of the great things about the Internet is being able to have this tremendous archive of interviews with people. If I want to find interviews with Stephen King, whether audio or video, I can go do that.

John Langan [01:17:05]:
That's wild. It's great. There were writers where I'm like, I'm interested in that person, and I see they've done a podcast, and I'm like, oh, let me go check out what they have to say. That's such a wonderful thing to have access to.

Michael David Wilson [01:17:21]:
I'm good. We got off the cool with John Langan, so we've got another two part conversation or a one part conversation if you're a patron.

Bob Pastorella [01:17:33]:
Yeah, definitely. We get this episode.

Michael David Wilson [01:17:38]:
I'll cut that bit out. I can't plug Patreon in 10 seconds. Let's just fucking start again. I've decided that was too cheap.

Bob Pastorella [01:17:51]:
Aight.

Michael David Wilson [01:17:56]:
Welcome to the this is horror podcast. I'm your host, Michael David Wilson, and I'm joined, as always, by my co host, Bob Pastorella. How are you today, Bob?

Bob Pastorella [01:18:20]:
Good thing you cut that part out. Good. You nailed your first part.

Michael David Wilson [01:18:26]:
You don't realize how much I was trying not to laugh.

Bob Pastorella [01:18:30]:
I was biting my tongue, and as soon as I opened my mouth, it just started laughing. All right, I'm doing.

Michael David Wilson [01:18:38]:
I really like, I somehow managed not to laugh, but if. If there'd have been a video, you would have seen that I was grinning throughout it. Okay, so I've just asked you, how are you today, Bob?

Bob Pastorella [01:18:52]:
I'm fine, Michael. How are you doing?

Michael David Wilson [01:19:01]:
Shit. Why did I have to plug Patreon?

Bob Pastorella [01:19:05]:
No Mandez this outtake.

Michael David Wilson [01:19:11]:
Yeah, I'm good. Oh, dear, oh, dear. Good. Thank you. No.