TIH 182: Kathe Koja on The Cipher, Christopher Marlowe, and Strangest Story Ever Written

Michael David Wilson 0:10
Welcome to the this is horror podcast. I'm your host. Michael David Wilson, and joining me today is Bob pastorella, how are you today, Bob, I

Bob Pastorella 0:21
am doing great. Michael, how are you doing?

Michael David Wilson 0:23
I'm great. We just got off the call with Kathy koja. Fantastic conversation spanning a lot of different topics. We spoke about her classic horror novel, the cipher. We spoke about her latest novel, which is about Christopher Marlowe, and it is titled Christopher wild. We spoke a little bit about politics. We spoke about the craft of writing. We spoke about early childhood lessons. So jam packed with information, I think you're going to get a lot out of it. Oh, definitely,

Bob Pastorella 1:01
definitely. If someone would have told me 25 years ago that I would be on a podcast talking to Kathy koja right after I've written, right after I read the cipher, I'd tell them that they were fucking idiots. And so today, this conversation we had was just, it was awesome. It was so awesome. And we cover a lot of ground. We hit on, you know, it's really a little bit of everything. It's so cool. She was such a, such a great guest to have on,

Michael David Wilson 1:31
I think, as well. If someone had told you that you were going to be doing a podcast with Kathy koja 25 years ago, you might have said, What is a podcast?

Bob Pastorella 1:43
Probably right. What? What is a podcast,

Michael David Wilson 1:47
right? And on that note, we're gonna have a word from our sponsors.

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Michael David Wilson 3:11
All right, and we're back. And I believe Bob that you have Cathy's bio. Yes,

Bob Pastorella 3:18
I do. Kathy koja is a Detroit native, and she is a novelist, playwright, performer, Director, independent producer. She is the author of the cipher which launched the Dell abyss line of horror. She is also the author of bad brain skin, Buddha boy headlong under the poppy and the recently released Christopher wild. And you can find Kathy at Kathy koja.com

Michael David Wilson 3:45
All right. With that said, let's do it. Let's get Kathy koja on that. This is horror podcast.

Bob Pastorella 3:53
Let's do it.

Michael David Wilson 4:02
Kathy. Welcome to the this is horror podcast.

Kathe Koja 4:06
Thank you for having me.

Michael David Wilson 4:08
I don't to begin with, if we could talk about some of the important life lessons that you learned growing up.

Kathe Koja 4:17
Here's my favorite life lesson. Once upon a time, I was eight years old, and my sister took me and a bunch of my older cousins to go see George Romero's Night of the Living Dead at a drive in theater, and she scolded us all beforehand and said, any one of you gets out of hand or starts screaming, you're I'm going to put you out of the car, and by the end of the movie, we were all crushed in the front seat. I think there were five of us petrified, hanging on to each other, completely petrified watching this movie, and I remember as clearly as anything here is this hero has overcome everything. This guy has overcome and what happens to him at the end? Right, shot in the head. Spoiler alert, shot in the fucking head. And I thought, Okay, this proves to me that authority is not to be trusted. And I think that was a great life lesson. It is. It's a lesson that I have taken with me through life, and I still believe it. So I don't think that you could have a better example of horror reaching out and molding a young mind.

Michael David Wilson 5:28
Yeah, definitely. And it's such as you say, such a powerful image and a powerful conclusion, and I mean as a viewer, you feel like you've taken that shot to have watched him endure everything, and for that to be the note that you end the film on,

Kathe Koja 5:48
and the shock of it, I mean, this guy has literally gone through hell, and you're thinking, Oh my God, finally it's Oh, the police are here. He's going to be okay. And the racial nature of the the murderer went over my head. I was eight years old. I didn't that. I didn't get that, but the injustice of it and the shock of it, I still remember. And then I when I watched it again as an adult, it was like, Oh, Jesus. Okay, oh, now I get it, okay, but yeah, just that, the grotesque shock of this guy who had done everything right and is, you know, I'm murdered for nothing, said, okay, don't wait for the authorities to come and help you, because it's not going to help you invest.

Bob Pastorella 6:44
And what's amazing about that too, is the fact that, you know, you got a micro budget film that you know today is considered groundbreaking at the time, though. I mean, it took a little while for it to actually kind of generate some steam, and it has a bigger message than any of the major blockbuster motion pictures that have ever come out. So you don't need budget, you don't need talent, you just need the desire to tell a story

Kathe Koja 7:17
and send it home you want to have whatever is appropriate to tell your story, whatever tools are most appropriate, but no more. And that's why sometimes you see really gorgeous films or films that you know the imagery is so striking and the budget is so big, and you really would like to like it, but yeah, there's no story there. There's no story, there is no message, there's no there isn't anything, and you can't You're left feeling very cold, you know, you're uninvolved, because there is no story, mental

Bob Pastorella 7:50
flash and no substance, yeah, and especially in

Kathe Koja 7:54
in the in the horror genre, especially you want The story to be able to communicate to people, because it's so easy to do otherwise, it's so easy to be to use the, you know, what, the tools in our store, the weapons at our disposal, to make people scared, to make people jump, to make people, yeah, you Know, whatever, to disturb them, but to really communicate with them, you want to use those tools just as much as you need, but no more, because then the viewer becomes you lose them, you lose the viewer. You the same way. You lose the reader, right? It's supposed to be an act of communication. Well, that would make

Bob Pastorella 8:39
sense. You want to keep your tool sharp, you know, you use. You keep using the same tool over and over again. It just loses its edge. So absolutely,

Kathe Koja 8:47
and you don't, you don't need more, you know, you don't need a hammer and a screwdriver and pliers and a wrench and whatever to pound a nail. You just need the hammer. You want the tools that are appropriate to getting your job done, whatever, you know, whatever your job may be, whatever you're trying to make, if it's a, you know, if it's a short story, don't turn it into a novel. Maybe, if it doesn't want to turn into a novel, don't try to force it right. Don't try to make it be something other than than it needs to be, because that's, that's the most appropriate way to get that what to get, to get your message across, to get your feeling across, to get whatever you're trying to say, don't, don't exceed its length. I mean, how many examples can you think of where you finish a novel and think, Christ, they could have caught, you know, a third of that, or you could have thrown a quarter of that away.

Bob Pastorella 9:41
It happens quite a bit. You know, there's some novels out there that are like, I guess people would consider, like to be, like, the top classic, you know, novels out there, and though the writing and some of the scenes are is gorgeous. It's beautiful. It's like, it was completely unnecessary. Uh. And it's, you know, you wish you could, just like, rip pages out of it and kind of form your own little book and go, This is what they should have published. But, you know,

Kathe Koja 10:10
and yeah, and you weren't. I'm, I'm always a happy reviser. I always like cutting because I think where you could, I mean, some things. And I used to laugh at people who wrote trilogies, until I wrote one my under the poppy trilogy ended up being three books. But as God is my witness, I didn't know that when I started. It's I just it just there was more. There kept being more. And I thought, Oh, wow, this book is this book's really long. I mean, it could have been one super long book, but that's that's an awful lot to ask of a reader. That was an anomaly for me, just because I had never thought of or conceived I would have been afraid of it. I would think to say now I'm going to sit down and write this, this book that is actually three books, and I'm going to have so many post it notes, and I'm going to have so much stuff to keep track of. I mean, by the end, I felt like I was landing a c1 30. It's like, all the baggage of these books. I didn't know how someone like, like, you know, George Martin does it. I don't know how in the world you keep the energy and keep track of all these multiple plot lines. I found three books to be quite enough exhausting. I'm glad I did it, but it was really

Michael David Wilson 11:33
hard when you say that you don't want to force something to be something it isn't so expanding a novella into a novel, have you had much conflict with editors, or perhaps even internal conflict, where you've tried to force a story to be something a little bit different and just found out that this doesn't fit and had to revert back to the original,

Kathe Koja 12:01
absolutely. I wrote a story for an anthology Nancy holder and Nancy Kilpatrick put together called outsiders, and it was about a girl who she wanted to be a filmmaker, and she kept going to a movie that had, like a, like a Rocky Horror community around it, you know, people who would come in costume and would say the words and stuff and act stuff out. And I really liked that. I liked that idea. I felt that there was more that I could do with it. So I didn't expand that story, but I kept that idea of the girl who wanted to be a filmmaker, and she had a parent who was very ill, was dying, and I wrote an entire novel, and it's no good it's not a good book. It was, it was a struggle to create, and when I got done, I realized it was just not a good book, and so I put it in the hall closet where I believe it remains this day. But yeah, it it was already everything it needed to be in that short story. And trying to make more of it just killed it. Good lesson, though. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 13:20
definitely. And was there a point? Or is there anything for those who, I guess, are starting out, who have difficulty identifying whether a story is good or isn't good that you could point them towards. I mean, I think generally, it can be difficult to decide, you know, what worth your stories have, and in many ways, it's up to the readers and the critics to decide that anyway. But I think if you have a bad story, perhaps you know that. And

Kathe Koja 13:57
if I think it comes down to how, what were you trying to do, and how close did you get to it? And, you know, never expecting to get to 100% because I don't, I don't think that's possible. I mean, and it would be kind of sad if it was because, you know, then you, then you'd already be operating at the the top of your powers, and you certainly don't ever want that to happen. You always want to start. You know, you want to start and end in a better place as a better writer in whatever project you're trying to complete. I've always, I have very few first readers for my my novels, primarily. But every once in a while, if I'm unsure about a piece of short fiction, and these are people that I have known for you know 20 years, 30 years, who've been reading my stuff. And I think a really discerning first reader can be an enormous help to you, and especially if it's you. If it's someone that you can also read for, that's kind of magical, because then you, you're, you're both really on each other's wavelength. But even if it's and it probably shouldn't be your nearest and dearest, because that's, that's an awful burden to put on someone, even though my husband, Rick Peter, is one of my first readers, but it is. It's a huge burden to put on on a loved one, so but having a really discerning, very honest, you know, you don't need someone to tell you that you're super awesome. You need somebody to tell you what doesn't work. And I don't think that can be overstated, where, however you are able to find that person, or however you know, if it's someone you know in real life, it's if it's someone you know online, whatever, having that other pair of eyes and that other mind to go through what you've written and tell you what They're seeing what they got out of it, what? And this is a, this is kind of a sidebar, but in another interview that I'm doing, we're talking about the fun hole and the meaning of the cipher. And you know what, what was behind that? Or what, what is my interpretation of what's going on there. And as you said, it's, you know, it's on the reader. It's on the reviewers. It's on anyone who reads it to have their own experience of the book. But one reason that I never I learned not to express my own opinion of what my books were about two readers was way back in the cipher days, and I was doing an event, and a woman came up to me, all excited and said that she had read the cipher and she had found these resonances in it to particular mythology, and she was certain that I had written it that way, because there was this, this, this and This, and this, and it was a mythology that she was very knowledgeable about. And I said, because I was so ignorant, I said, No, no, I don't know anything about that. It doesn't mean any do with that. And her whole face just changed. And I thought, you're stupid, Kathy, this person is giving you something so immensely valuable to you as a writer, she's telling you what she brought to your book and what she then got out of it, and you just shut her down. And so I thought, I will never do that again. I mean, not only is it, is it rude, it for a writer, she was giving me the best gift ever. So that's why I don't. I don't rely too heavily on my own interpretations of what any piece of my fiction is supposed to be about. And I want only to know what did it mean to you, what to you know? And sometimes it comes across as being coy, like, well, what is this about? Well, you know, I can't speak to that, but I can't, I can't, I won't speak to it, because I want to know what you got out of it. There is no right answer. Every reader, you know, creates the the book or the story along with you. While they reading it, they bringing all their associations to it. They bringing themselves to it. And I wouldn't damage that for the world.

Bob Pastorella 18:24
See, that's interesting, because right before we got you on the call, me and Michael were kind of talking about that similar thing. I think that a lot of writers, they write as far as it's like a discovery, and a lot of times, even when they're done with with the piece, whether it's short story novel, they still don't know the answers. And I don't think it's the answers that matter. It's a journey that matters. And for you, you know, for that lady to that came up to you and talk to you, you know about the cipher everybody's gonna have some type of different interpretation. And I love what you say. There is no right or wrong answer, you know. Because, I mean, if, if I try to tell someone a story and I say, No, no, no, no, no, supposed to be that way, I'm like, Look, man, it's ambiguous. Anyway, it really doesn't matter. Have you experienced it, you know,

Kathe Koja 19:19
right? Did it speak to you and there. And I mean even books that are because it is, it's a very mysterious conversation. You can have your friends say, oh, you should read such and such, or you should read this person, you'll love them. And then you sit down and go, Oh, this is like a blind date that didn't work out. I don't, you know, I don't like this person's work at all, or I can't get into this, or even things that you're excited to read, and then you sit down and go, Hmm, this isn't working for me. I don't know why, and it's very mysterious. I don't, I don't think we can, can understand the conversation, that kind of distance conversation, but it's very much, you know, two minds in communion over the page and. It's very mysterious, and there is no right answer. And I don't i There are plenty of things that of mine that people have pointed stuff out to me, and I had another one of those experiences, but I by this time, I was wise enough to keep my mouth shut. I was doing a school visit for the book at the time was the blue mirror, one of my young adult novels. And in, sometimes in school visits, they will have you come out to speak to all the schools in the district, like all the high schools, or all the middle schools, whatever. And often there will be a quote, unquote alternative school in the mix. And often they'll say, oh, you know, could you stop in and talk at, you know, such and such alternative school as, you know, as part of your you could, you could do it at the end of the day. Not all districts do this, but this has happened to me more than once. Like the, you know, the alternative school is not, not the best, not the not the first on the list, okay, so, and those are always the places I like to go best. I love the kids. I you know, it's always like the oldest school, and it has like, boiler heat, it's really hot, or it's really cold, whatever. And the kids are, invariably, I always have a great time with them. So I was coming in to talk to these kids about the blue mirror, and their teacher said, Well, you know, they've tried really hard to prepare for you. And here's a list of questions. And I thought, you know, I mean, there, who knows how they engage with this book. The book is about a young woman who is, she's an artist, and she pays going to school, and so she cuts school all the time, and goes in this cafe called the Blue mirror and draws stuff that she sees. And there she meets this, this boy who seems like super cool. He's like a street kid, and he's really charismatic. And she's baffled that even even as they're starting to she has a crush on him, and he seems to return her feelings. She can't draw him. She can draw anything, but she all her sketches of him are not working out. And you know, it's her subconscious saying you're not seeing what's really going on, literally. And these kids had this list of maybe 30 questions. These were, like weapons grade questions. These kids were so sharp and so smart, and so many of them were finding illusions in the text and asking, Did you make Maggie like this because this or they were so smart and they were so good. And I had to laugh and shake my head and say, You guys went so deep into this, I'm learning from your question. So my answer to a lot of these is going to be, I don't know. I don't know. And they were, we had such a great discussion because there wasn't an answer, right? And then they they would argue back and forth with each other and say, No, I think this happened because this and that's what writing is supposed to be, it's a conversation,

Bob Pastorella 22:59
right? I feel the same way. I mean, it's, I tend I lean to ambiguous fiction. I love it because it if it's if it's well written, the questions linger, the imagery lingers, and it's something you can take with you. I mean, it's an experience. And then when you read it again, sometime later, you're always finding something that you missed. You may have hit every single word the first time that you read it, but your mind didn't catch them all. So a second read through, you're always going to catch something. So it's like a book or story like that. It just keeps giving. And it's like, to me, it's almost infinite. It's like, every time you read. It's like, how many times can you read make lunch? I don't know. It's a different book every time, every time.

Kathe Koja 23:50
And because you've changed as a reader too, and you're bringing a different skill set to the table, and it meets you there, and it meets you there, and it meets you there. Yeah, they're a book like Ridley Walker, which is one of my favorite books in the world. I go back to every few years. I don't want to, you know, I have to build back up again to read it again. But, yeah, that's an infinite book. There will be, there was always going to be more there when I, when I go back to it,

Bob Pastorella 24:19
oh, yeah. And it's a joy to find that. And it's, you know, and it's like prime example. I've read the cipher. I've read it twice. I make sure that there's a long gap in between each time. I'm going to read it again this year. So this will be my third time to read it. So it's and it's time, it's time for me to read it, because I think that as a writer and as a person, I've grown, and I think I'm going to see some changes in there. So, you know, I'm pretty excited about that. But I love revisiting books, because you always find something new.

Kathe Koja 24:56
And when I had to reread the cipher, which I had. Not read again since, you know, since it was done, I had to read it again for the when the ebook came out, and, you know, proof it and read it again. And I had a lot of my reactions were very different, that seeing those people again, who, you know, I haven't, hadn't seen or spent time with in such a long time, and it surprised me. My own reaction surprised me to the characters, not so much to the to what happened, but to the people to whom it happened. I felt very differently about some of them. And I mean, that sounds really coy, but again, I don't want to, you know, impose my own what what happened to me, but it was, it was interesting to see how time had changed me, and then that changed my perception and reception of those same characters that had, you know, passed through me, or whatever it is they do when We're when we're writing stuff down, and when

Michael David Wilson 26:02
you were talking about recommendations, and sometimes somebody recommends a book, and it just doesn't work for you, I think. And we touched on this a little bit with our conversation with Jasper Bach, that you might need a book at a different time. So it might be that it was just recommended a bad time in your life, at a time that wasn't really compatible with that book speaking to you, that's

Kathe Koja 26:32
a good point, yeah, that you could then go back to it in in five years or whatever, or in five months, and say, oh, okay, because he did, especially when it's someone who has who you think you're, you know, compatible with, and they recommend something, and you think, wow, what is it? Why would you think I would like this, or what? And it isn't only because, oh, this is, like, the new book, or this is super popular, or whatever it you think that they're seeing something in you that would make them think this is, you know, you're going to make a connection with this book, and, yeah, and sometimes you're just not in the right place for it, or or it might never be for you. It might just never be for you. I mean, that works with films too. When people say, oh, you should, you're going to love this, and you say, Oh no, I don't love it. And you films are harder, though, because films are so immediate that engagement still takes place, but it takes place so much more quickly because you're seeing it and and it's enforcing the pace more than than you are.

Michael David Wilson 27:39
Yeah. I mean, right now I'm reading a lot of Elbe Camus, but I think if I'd have been recommended Camus 10 years ago, it wouldn't have been compatible with where I was, but now it's really hitting the right spot. Now

Kathe Koja 27:57
is a great time to read Camus globally. You're really in a sweet spot. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 28:04
yeah, definitely. No, I want to. I want to segue into Christopher wild and Christopher Marlowe. I'm just like, trying to think, How can we, how can we do this? Well,

Advertisement 28:18
I'm just just gonna do I'm just

Kathe Koja 28:20
gonna do it. Just do it. It's what Marlowe would do.

Michael David Wilson 28:24
Yeah, I want to know what was your first experience reading Christopher Marlowe, where were you and how did it make you feel

Kathe Koja 28:36
when I came to Marlowe, very much, through the through the side door, and I don't remember how I knew that the plays were out there. I knew that he existed, and I I had some idea of, you know, the missiles around him, the, you know, the here's this guy, and he's a genius playwright, and then he dies under weird circumstances. But I did not know the place. I did not know the poems at all, and some kindly hand of Providence, or whatever, put Anthony Burgess's Marlowe novel, dead man in Deptford in front of me, and I read it, and it just fucking blew me away. I thought, wow. Not only I mean, Burgess. This was Burgess's last novel, too, and his his powers were at their absolute height. It's a fantastic, fantastic book in its own right. But then it opened the door to me to go read Marlowe, and I the first of his plays that I read was Faustus, and it's just incomparable. It is so powerful and so funny and so dark, really dark. And they, I mean, that's another one of those infinite pieces of literature that you can go back to again and again and again, and I've done. As, excuse me, as a production. Twice I did with the theater ensemble that I work with called nerve. We did Faustus once in a historic church in the sanctuary, and that was pretty great. And then last year, we did another version of it with different ensemble members called night school. And we did that, in fact, the night after the inauguration of Trump, I had had booked the venue without realizing that that was, you know, the inauguration weekend. But I thought nothing of it, and said, Oh, that's well, that's cool. Everybody will be in, like, a great mood and have a really good time. And it was, you know, a nightmarish mood, but we still had a really good time. And in fact, Marlowe spoke to that condition even more strongly. I think that, I mean, I think having being able to engage with his work, with with performers and with the audience brought everybody a sense of what we felt that we were with a voice who understood what we were going through and was not afraid and was not, you know, was there with us while this while, the nightmare was beginning, and he, he's completely unafraid that I value him as a writer so much for that, because he's just not afraid of anything. He's not afraid of asking hard questions. He's not afraid of asking the same question in two different ways as he does in Faustus. He's not afraid of horrible comedy. There are some things in his first play tamberlin That you laugh at, but they're awful, they're so cruel, and yet you still laugh because they're funny. The same with Jew of Malta. There are some super over the top things happening in Jew of Malta, and you laugh, but they're horrible, and the he's not afraid, and his language is so beautiful, and that combination, it's just world beating. I don't think that that it has been bettered. So once I had all this, this Marlowe floating around me and encompassing me, I thought, well, I've got to do something with this. I've got to write about him. But I don't want, I don't want to write a straight biographic novel number one, because Burgess has already just done it. No one is ever going to do it better than he did so and I didn't. I didn't want to do that for another reason. I I really find that Marlowe is one of those writers who is always going to be contemporary, no matter what, what age we're in and the things, not only is his voice and his sensibility, it's a historical in the best sense. I mean, he was, you know, he was a person of the of his age, and but he had what all the greatest artists have, and it is that ability to be outside of time, and it will never not be relevant in his own experiences as a human being were so, so germane to, I mean, talk about someone who is, you know, against authority, and who mistrusts authority and is not, you know, afraid to speak up against it. And I saw a lot of these, these same intersections with what is happening, not only now, but what has happened, really, throughout history. You know, there's always attempts to control people. There's always attempts to clamp down on communication. There's always it's the same story told over and over again, and especially when there is a really, seriously questing mind that is refusing to knuckle under, it almost always comes to the same end, but it comes back. It always comes back. So I when I wrote about Murrow and Christopher wild, I put him in three different times, which were really, really kind of had a lot of resonance with each other. His phone, Elizabethan era, 1950s ish, mid century United States, like in the McCarthy years, and the communist scare, the Red Scare, and then in a future, a not too distant future, which is getting closer all the time, I guess, where those same ideas of control. Know, and repression and fear were in suspicion and everybody looking at everybody else, you know, nobody. There's no There's no trust, there's no it's very difficult to make connection. And all those ideas were all the same. They were the same milieu over and over again. And he was very much at home in in all those three places. So I tried my best to do him all the justice that I could. And if people would read Christopher wild and then have the experience that I had with Burgess and say, oh my god, I have to run out and read all his plays and his poetry, I would be so gratified, because I'm I'm hoping this will be a gateway drug for people. Yeah. Are you a Marlowe person too? Are you like a Marlowe fan?

Michael David Wilson 35:51
Yeah, like I first read Marlo when I say University, and Dr Faustus was on a module that was William Shakespeare and other selected texts, and this was the first of the other selected texts. And Wow. What a reaction everyone in the lecture and in the seminars had to Marlowe. I mean, like, in a way, Shakespeare is a gateway drug to Marlowe. It's like shit. If you enjoyed Shakespeare, take, take a bit. Yeah, take a bit of Christopher Marlowe,

Kathe Koja 36:30
absolutely. Oh no. And I'm so glad to hear you say that too, because I get so tired of hearing, you know, the other it's always the other way. Well, you know, Marlo, really pan, he was a precursor. He was nobody's precursor. Okay, Shakespeare was smart enough to be able to read and say, check this guy. Wow. This guy is doing things that I would like to do, and I think, as a matter of fact, I'm going to do some of the things that he did. But with Shakespeare, everything is always about the the collective or the or the group, or returning equilibrium to whatever bad has happened in Macbeth. Oh no, everybody's, you know, kind of dead, but we've restored the throne to Scotland. And you know, Oh, Romeo and Juliet, that's so sad that the families are reconciled and outlets don't have gang warfare, and Marlo is always about the individual, and nothing is ever fixed. In his plays, you never get to the end. Maybe Edward the second probably is where you get to the end and go, Oh, okay, all these horrible things, if he happened in the king has been killed in a really terrifying way, and and then the Son is the king in it. But it ends at his funeral. He's like, everything's horrible, and you killed my dad here. Stick your traitorous head on this fucking catafalque, and let's go to the funeral. Nothing. There is no equilibrium restored. Terrible things happen, and you have to deal with it. And his honesty is, is bracing, I think. And again, the language is just so beautiful. It's just so beautiful.

Bob Pastorella 38:07
So your experience, Michael was a lot better than mine. When I was in university, we went to British literature. Marlowe was nothing more than a fucking footnote. So because my teacher wanted to be she wanted to, professor wanted to talk more about Shakespeare, and we were very we were very fucking fortunate that we only had about a week to deal with that, because we had a lot of ground to cover. So I basically slept through her lectures because I'd already experienced all this stuff in high school. So it's, it's fascinating at the time, this is probably 1986 87 and they were still playing it safe in university. So because, I mean, you know, a lot of us would raise our hands and say, what about this? And what about this? What about these? Authors never do. No, no, no, no, you don't, don't, don't go there, don't go there. And it's like, and it's professor was this old lady. She was just and she hated chewing gum. It was just a bad she made people spit out gum in class. Like we're really, are we in high school again? What's the

Kathe Koja 39:11
deal? That's bizarre. That's so bizarre. But look at that. That's all about control too, right? No, we're not going to talk about that literature. No, you can't chew gum in my class. I mean, come on, yeah, these are adults.

Bob Pastorella 39:24
The only way she'd make Let me tie in Stephen King into my essay that I had to do was I had to cover, you know? And I said, Hey, can I cover Stephen King? And she says, No, but I'll let you do it only on one condition. She goes, You brought you preface it off of Stoker. She goes, in other words, contrast and compare Dracula to Salem's Lot,

Kathe Koja 39:49
right? We can do that. I'm like,

Bob Pastorella 39:50
I can do it. And she goes, You better do it, because I've read both. And I'm like, okay, so I read, I'd read Sam's lot a couple times. I'd never read Dracula. I. In a when Dracula was a little bit more challenging than I thought it was going to be, but, but, yeah, Dracula is

Kathe Koja 40:06
weird. We did my my ensemble. We did Dracula a couple years ago, and the idea was that you were coming to a dinner with him. You were Jonathan Harker was was having this like interview dinner with Dracula. And present at the dinner was Lucy and Renfield as kind of saying, Why didn't you join our crew, our merry band? Look at what a great life we have. And you know, come join us. And Jonathan Harker throughout the performance gets more and more unhinged because he he can't. He keeps trying to use reason in a place where hunger only applies. So to adapt this for the performance, I went back and, you know, I've read the text a million times, and I went back and read it again, and I was struck number one by how much I hated Van Helsing. I hated him so much. I hated him even more than I hated him before. So it's like there will be no Van Helsing in my show that's gone. But the power in Stoker is even though there are parts of it, I mean, the book is really repetitive, if you look at it in that way, where I was trying to take a step back and go, Okay, how will this play as an experience for people? How, you know, we can't, we can't we have to keep a momentum going to keep people, you know, going through this performance. How do we where's the energy here? And if you take out all the Van Helsing stuff, it has its own natural buoyancy that keeps you riveted to what's happening, because van housing, basically they stop, and then they have all the detectivey stuff, and go, well, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then we're going to do this, and by the grace of God and blah blah. And then they something else happens. And then he stops and says it again. And but if you take all that stuff out, it's really, it's, it's extremely energetic. I think it's, I mean, it just moves. It just clips right along. And if you, I mean, if you remove the ending to where it's at the beach, and then the stabbing and all whatever, if you recast it as as we did, in kind of a the Jonathan Harker character finally sees, you know, here's what Dracula is about, and he has To decide. Is this something I really want to do? Do I want to throw in my lot with this guy? Do I want to, you know, have my intellectual abilities expanded? Because, you know, he's a clever guy. In the book, he's a very clever guy. And so that's how Dracula is. Is luring him, or is inviting him by saying, you know, you think you're you think you're smart. Now, what if you lived another 400 years? Think how smart you'd be then, boy, you could really write some stuff. Then, you know, with 400 years of experience behind you, and he has to choose which, which way does he want to go? And in fact, every night of the performance, it was up to the actor, playing Jonathan Harker, which way he was going to go, and none of the other actors would know it until a certain point in the performance. So every night, nobody knew what was going to happen, which was was fun for us, but that's the whole point of Dracula, right? Is that there is this attraction, or we wouldn't still care about vampires, or there wouldn't have been, you know, a Salem's Lot there. He that, even though the Barlow character and Salem's Lot is atrocious, there is no, there's nothing there that would would lure you. It's still, there's still a fascination, and we still wonder, you know, would that work on me? I mean, look at all the people in Salem's Lot. By the end, everybody was vampires. Pretty much they were getting got, but they were letting them in too

Bob Pastorella 44:14
well. It's a temptation of having something that, you know, in in the end is, is not worth it. You know, I want to live forever. You really don't want to live forever. You just want to live longer than you're going to, then you're going to

Kathe Koja 44:32
mean, it's like, oh, that you're no, that's absolutely right, right? Because you don't, and all in the end, all vampires would go crazy because you can't I don't think consciousness and individual consciousness can handle right eternity. Gene Wolfe has a great line in one of his stories. I think it might even be called bed and breakfast. I don't remember the title, but it's about a b and b that's situated on. On the road from literal hell, and sometimes demons come there, and sometimes people show up there that might be runaways from hell. And our protagonist in the story meets one of those runaways. He thinks she's a runaway, but he's not 100% sure, and he thinks that the demon is there to take her back to hell. And begs him and says, Let me, you know, let us just stay together tonight. And then you know, whatever has to happen tomorrow, let it happen. And the demon says, oh, you know, you think that I'm here to destroy your love affair, pull you guys apart. I'm not going to touch anything that you two are going to do together. And by the way, you think you know what eternity means, but you don't. It's like whoa. We don't. We can't. We don't have the apparat right to to comprehend what it would mean to be with someone forever, to be alive forever. That's a tall order. Man,

Bob Pastorella 45:59
yeah, it's such a tall order that the the main vampire in the hunger couldn't even deliver the promise. So, right? You know it's, it is a massively tall order. And yes, we did go from Christopher Marlowe to Dracula in 3.5

Michael David Wilson 46:18
seconds. My

Kathe Koja 46:21
favorite vampire probably is, is Claudia in the Interview with a Vampire, I thought that was really brilliant to be this horrible. You are so sorry for her, but she's so terrifying because to be trapped in a physically limited form for eternity and have this, you know, enormous intellect and this enormous appetite, and to have to enact those desires in this body of a child is grotesque and terrifying. And I, I that blew me away, too, when I read it the first time, it's like, what a great, tragic, sad idea to have this child, vampire who isn't is an adult in every other way, except physically and so creepy too.

Bob Pastorella 47:20
Yeah, definitely,

Michael David Wilson 47:21
Is there anywhere that we can see some of your performances, like maybe online? Because, obviously, being in Japan, it would be quite difficult to get over, and

Kathe Koja 47:34
it would be, it would be a little difficult, yeah, well, I've really, I've really resisted video on any of the work that I do, because these performances are, I don't like to use the immersive word, because everything is immersive now your coffee can now be, you know, your latte can be an immersive experience for all the senses, but they really are experiential shows, and We're right now, I'm working on a show called glitter King that is Marlo again. It's based on Marlowe's Edward the second and we're in a gallery setting that my environmental designer is turning into a punk club, like, like, think of a Berlin punk club like in the 80s and and just as grimy and as you know, dirty in every sense of the word, and as seductive and and in your face as that. And we're asking the patrons to come. We have a suggested dress code of dress like glitter punk or gutter punk or formal wear couture, because that's the dichotomy that we're setting up and working with a scent, a perfume creator who is making sense for the cast, for the court and for the punks. So we'll have a scent dimension. And the whole point of it is that you, you come into this club, and the DJ is playing, it's really loud, and it's hot, and you're selling the smells, and you're bumping up against people. And is so it's not only that, it's difficult to capture that in a video. It it kind of negates the experience. It would not be the same, because you would have to the whole point of it is you're free to look at whatever you want to look at, right? You're free to go stand against the wall, or to dance, sort of interact with the characters, or whatever. And if it was filmed, it, I couldn't give that to you. There's no way to give that experience in a video, and so kind of flattens it out, and that's why I've never done it. We have had some of the commissioned work that I've done has been filmed, but when we do film it, it's a three video. I. Team, and three camera team videographers, and we do it at dress rehearsal so it doesn't disturb the, you know, the patrons experience of it. And we try really hard to keep because it, I mean, it is intrusive, you know, to have someone filming while you're trying to be it just takes people out of the story, and it's still not the same. I mean, it's still not the same because the perspective is not the same. So the answer is no,

Michael David Wilson 50:33
yeah, no, I don't ever think the film is a substitute for the theater. But what is quite exciting at the moment is the emergence of 4d film where they're throwing in effects such as weather and even temperature changes, lighting and smells. So whilst I would still concede that a ve version of this wouldn't be as good or as real as seeing the Performance Ensemble alive. I think we're getting closer, and I think that's exciting in terms of possibilities. I mean, of course, it really depends on how the filmmaker utilizes these technologies. If they just use it as a gimmick, then it's wasted. But if they use it thoughtfully, then we could be seeing some things that are pretty special.

Bob Pastorella 51:30
You mean, like a gimmick, like William castles, the Tingler. And then what they do, they put, like electronic vibrating devices underneath the chairs that would jolt the chair during certain times of the movie.

Kathe Koja 51:47
Yeah, water is used smell in some of his films, or in, you know, in theaters. And I don't remember what film it was for, I think there's you are trying to get that full experience. You're trying to offer as much of an especially smell too, because smell is so visceral and so it just bypasses all thought processes and gets right in where you know, where your past brain function, almost it's an animal thing, and being able to appeal to people on all those different levels. Shirley Jackson wrote really brilliantly in it's in come along with me, and it's the essay is called notes for a young writer. And I think it's like 20 paragraphs of 19 paragraphs of it's just a master class in fiction writing, and she talks about things words that convey smell or texture, and you know, be very sparing with those because they are so powerful. You know something's greasy, if something's gritty, if something you know smells bad, be careful how you use those because they are supposed to, you know, pack a punch, and they do if you do it right. She's my hero. I think she was such a badass. She was such a great writer. And talk about books that you can I mean, Haunting of Hill House can still scare the shit out of me after I've read it, I don't know how many times.

Michael David Wilson 53:24
And the lottery for such a short story, there's so much within it.

Kathe Koja 53:30
Oh, yeah. And it's it gets more disturbing the more you even that, because she says she was another great one for not putting in anything that you didn't need, and she was the one who taught me not to that you didn't have to have characters if you wanted to get them from one place to the next. You didn't have to do it by having them, you know, get dressed and get into whatever conveyance they use and take the train. And there were ways to tie things together and to move people through the narrative without having to tell them every single thing that happens, because they generally have a pretty good working knowledge of reality. And they can kind of figure out, if you give them, you know, enough of a bridge we can get there. We we can assume that the the example she uses is of character going to the store and having her say, you know, in the kitchen, Oh, I hate asparagus. And she found herself saying it 10 minutes later to sell to the store, saying, Oh, I hate asparagus. So we got her out of the house and to the store, where something has to happen, you know, in like half a sentence, and and the reader, we can supply those things for ourselves. We we have to. That's, that's part of what we're doing when we're reading, right? Is, is creating the story, and that's how we're doing it, yeah? But she the master. Oh,

Michael David Wilson 54:57
yeah. I agree with that. Yeah. And I mean talking about reading stories at different times in your life. And again, this does overlap a little bit with the previous podcast we recorded. I think experiencing via a different medium can bring something different to the table. So I've listened to the audio versions of both the lottery and The Haunting of Hill House, as well as reading it on the page, and it is a different experience, especially if you get a good narrator in. Yes,

Kathe Koja 55:37
yes, absolutely, because it's coming to you in a different way. And audiobooks are whole. They're more in some ways. They're more they're the most passive, because it's but it's a hybrid experience too, because you're still having to create the images in your mind's eye. But there's that little bit of and it does. It has to be a genius narrator. I'm trying to think of the last thing that I heard that I thought was really great. And even, I mean, even being read to, when you have, if you go to someone's reading and they do a brilliant job, it makes it gives you the book in a totally different way. Well,

Michael David Wilson 56:19
two of your young adult novels, Buddha boy and kissing the bee, both of those available as audiobooks, but they're a little bit different in the sense that they're a full cast audio. So that gives you an experience that I guess is more akin to a radio playing, and I think both stories work fantastically within that medium.

Kathe Koja 56:47
Oh, and they did that was, yeah, that was full cast audio Bruce Koval, and they did a genius job with both of those books. The Blue mirror was also an audio book, but that was a single narrator, and I think the the full cast mode works so well, especially for for those books which are so much about, you know, a community experience and about what is happening to this character, but what is also happening In this larger school setting with friends, it is about the community. And yeah, they did. They did such a good job. I was so happy with both of those. And I think it's a great way for people to meet those stories. But I will, I will say that. I have to say that in depending on to whom I'm talking or or, you know, sometimes in interviews, when people only know us, you know, one genre that I worked in, and they're always like, really surprised that there were people who were really surprised to find out as that I that I wrote horror novels because they only knew my y A's, or People who read under the poppy were like, Oh, I see that you've written all these other books and all these other in all these other genres, and you know what's that all about? And they're always surprises me, and I probably should not be surprised. But it I guess, because I read for voice, and I will follow a voice that, I mean, if Marlo wrote a cookbook, I would read that fucking cookbook. Yeah, like now I would throw the phone down and read it immediately. You know what? I mean, it's the it's the voice. And I mean that sometimes that's the, what the conundrum of genre, it's so great to write in in in any genre, because there are readers there who will welcome you, even though they don't know you from, you know, a hole in the ground, because they like that genre, and they're willing to give anything in it a try. But then there are ones who won't read outside of it, and I find that so frustrating. Do you think that's true? I mean, is that true in your experience? You know people who just won't read. They won't read outside of horror, they won't read outside of mystery, or they won't or they won't read any genre work. They think that literary fiction is a genre and they only read that.

Michael David Wilson 59:16
Yeah. Well, I I certainly know people who are put off reading horror, and would prefer to just read literary fiction, and feel that horror is a dirty word, almost. But I think, certainly in my own experience within horror, and talking to other people who write what can broadly be defined as horror that most readers and most writers that I've interacted with, we read a wide variety of things, both within genre and outside of genre. But I think perhaps why people stick with a single genre or a. Finite amount of genres is that they find a comfort zone and they're reluctant to step outside. They're reluctant to see what other options are available. And of course, you know now we can take that to be speaking much more wider about one's than one's reading habits. I mean, I think there's often a great fear of the unknown and a reluctance to do something out of the ordinary, because it takes bravery and it takes courage, and you know you might fail, or you might not like what you find, or you might decide that you don't like the previous self you were. And I know in saying this, I've now taken that further than the scope of reading habits, but I think it all fits. I think it's all related. No,

Kathe Koja 1:00:52
I agree. I do, and it it because we're reading, you know, for pleasure too. There's a part of you that says, Well, I know that I like this, so why do I want to read something else when this is what I like and I know that I'm going to have I'm just sit down and read and it's going to be enjoyable, and that's, that's what I'm reading for, and that that reminds me of what we like when you're a kid and You have favorite foods, but you won't ever go beyond them, because it's like, oh, I don't want to try that. Oh, I don't want to try that. It's like, but, you know, at one time, peanut butter was was unknown to you, right? And now it's your life, so you don't know what the next. I mean, think of all the books that you've read that mean something to you that you can't imagine your life without them, but they were new to you. You know you didn't know those books. You had to come to them, and you had to have that experience and open yourself up. And it does take bravery. It takes bravery to do anything new or a little bit or even a lot out of your comfort zone, and just yeah, you might fail. You might hate it. You might try something and it's awful. You might try something, do something new and completely fail. So I mean, so what? Then, what? At least you you tried and you learned something. But fear is a powerful motivator.

Michael David Wilson 1:02:20
Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Bob Pastorella 1:02:23
I think that there are people who will not read outside of sub genres, within horror fiction, within science fiction, within any type of fiction, it's like their their concept of there are people out there that will not read like if they like extreme horror fiction, they won't read quiet fiction because they don't think it'll do anything for them. And what I mean by quiet, I mean the opposite of extreme. You know, to me, I have a more open definition of it. There's non horror fiction that you can pick up on account on, you know, from a bookstore that has horrific scenes in it, but nowhere Will you ever find that that book is labeled horror fiction. So to me, it's all, it's all perspective. You know, my this in 2018 what I'm what I'm trying to TO FIND, DISCOVER on my own, is going back through science fiction to find horror. And of course, my thinking is, is that I like David Cronenberg films, The fly is horror in science fiction. There has to be fiction out there like that, right?

Kathe Koja 1:03:41
And your own definition, and your own where you where you draw the boundaries, or where you want to include stuff. There's going to be a lot of things that you'll say, and that's and it's funny. It's funny and sad too. When it is, like people dancing on the head of the pen, right? It's saying, well, this isn't this, and I don't like and because I like this, but you by, by putting up those barriers, you're fencing yourself off from things that you might go crazy for. You might love because it doesn't have, you know, the correct label on it. And don't believe the it's like, it's like candy wrappers, right? Don't believe the candy wrapper. Just eat the candy. Throw the wrapper away and just eat. You're not gonna eat the wrapper, right? Exactly. You're not gonna eat the rib. You're not gonna eat the idea of the book. You're gonna read the book if you like it or you don't. Someone like Cormac McCarthy, his book, outer dark is one of the greatest horror novels ever, and it will never be categorized as that, but it's the dread and tension in that book is just off the fucking charts. It's a beautiful book, but it's terrifying and that that's a straight up horror novel, as far as I'm concerned.

Bob Pastorella 1:04:56
Oh, I know it's like one of my one of my. Managers at work. We were talking about horror in a she's she's new to the store, so she doesn't really we're getting to know one another. And she told me, she goes, now she goes, I'ma tell you about this book. It's not horror, though, but it's horror. And I'm like, what is it? And she goes, it's by this man named karmic of the road, you've got I'm like, I have it. I've read it on the movie. I've read the book twice. And I said, and you're right, it is horror fiction. And she's like, Yeah, they should put it on the label, but they don't. And it's so funny. She she gets so excited about it. She goes, I'm glad you like that book. She goes, that's one of my favorite books. I'm like, it's beautiful, but it's horror. Oh,

Kathe Koja 1:05:45
absolutely, it's so and and blood meridian. His blood meridian is the character of the judge. Don't tell me that is not he is a walking horror novel all by himself. The judge is unbelievably and that that character is so dense and so terrifying, but so, I mean that comes back to the the attraction of the darkness too, because he is horrible in every sense of the word. But every time he shows up in that book, you're riveted. You just want and that, I think that's something that we can do with horror fiction in a really sure handed way, that or that horror fiction can do is go to those places where things are unbelievably awful, and keep your eyes open and and acknowledge that there is that attraction sometimes to things that are awful, and not run away from that or turn away from that, and say, Well, why are we like this? Right? What is it? What's that little, you know, chip in each of us, that little what opening or fun hole, if you will. What is that in us that is attracted to that, or that is intrigued by it, or whatever? Because judge Holden is the most compelling character in that book. But I don't want to be alone in a room with him. I don't want to be alone in a world with him. He's horrifying, but I want to know what he's going to do, and I want to watch him, and what is that, right? Where did that come from?

Bob Pastorella 1:07:30
He's a, he's a compelling character. And then you can't, you can't stop reading about him. And you're right. It's, it's like when I tell people all the time, you know, they say, What is, what is a you know, what makes a likable character? It has nothing to do with you liking that person. It has to do with the character being relatable. It has to do with them being compelling. Prime example, you know, the judge, another great example, Hannibal Lecter. We want to know what Lecter is doing, but we we're not going to sit at the dinner table with them, because we're probably a little unsure of what we're about to eat. So, you know, we had to kind of question him. Hey, have you hunted recently? And what did you kill? You know, is this, what is this food I'm about to eat here? And the only thing I think it would be acceptable would be, you know, well, it's completely vegan meal, so don't you nothing to worry about. Enjoy it. Okay, great, right? You know. And I'll

Kathe Koja 1:08:27
just bring my own, you know, I'll stop and grab something on the way. You go ahead,

Bob Pastorella 1:08:32
but do you really want to stop at Whataburger and sit there and eat dinner with tan of elector while he chastise you for eating what he would consider to be crap?

Kathe Koja 1:08:42
Well, and I'm not a meat eater anyway, so yeah, he could chastise me for my salad, I guess. But no, it's true, there is, and those characters are are compelling to us in the but the danger there too is that real. I think that gives actual evil, or real evil, real day to day evil that exists in the world, it really dresses it up in in ways that actual evil cannot sustain. I think real acts of evil are never creative. They're never, you know, they're never interesting, they're never they're always destructive, and they're always, there's a grain of, you know, the dull or the, I don't even know the word that I want for, I mean, you know, the banality of evil, right? It's like there isn't a lot there. There's not happening there. All it can actually do is destroy things. And, you know, it basically has the, what's the ethos of the cancer cell, right? Just, just destroy things. Just eat everything up. It isn't. It isn't, you know, like Milton's devil. It's not. It, not even in that way, like. Um, like Marlowe's Mephistopheles, who is by far, he lights up the room right with dark light whenever, whenever he comes into the text, he lights things up. And their relationship, Faustus and Mephistopheles is riveting because there is that power imbalance. But because one of them, I mean, mephystephere says this great line when Faustus says, Come I think hell's a fable. And mephoscephaly says, Think so still, till experience change thy mind. I mean, and then one level, you're saying, Faustus, you're talking to a goddamn devil. How can you think that hell is a fable, but metacephaly is now, like, I'm not, you know, insisting. I mean, think what you want experience change thy mind. It's we're interested in him. We want to know what he's going to do next. But actual evil is not interesting. It's just, it just isn't there's nothing there. There's literally nothing there, which is terrifying in its own way, but not in a not in a cool way, right?

Michael David Wilson 1:11:11
What do you think Marlo would be most angry about right now? Oh,

Kathe Koja 1:11:16
boy. Pull up a chair. Wow. The militant ignorance, would be my guess, the militant ignorance that we're seeing man, the willful and militant ignorance that we're seeing manifesting really all over the globe right now and certainly in the states we there are so many examples every day of what happens when militant ignorance is is driving the bus right that things are he would be appalled, I think. But he would not be surprised at all. He would completely not be surprised to watch borders shrink and to watch people, I mean, that is that's preying on fear, that's using fear as a weapon, right? It's the fear of the other and the fear of I. We have to build a wall, and we have to, you know, reject the European Union, and we, we have to save ourselves. We have to and it always comes down to this fear of others, because the other is not me, and it's that very weird tribal, you know, group think this, the small, shrinking mentality we all we have to, like, cluster around in our fear. And mer was very much the opposite. He was very much an example of what of the outward. A mind turned outward. A curious mind, an open mind, what else is out there? I want to learn. I want to know. I mean, that's the downfall of spouses, where he's like, Well, I've done all this stuff. I've been a doctor. I've been, you know, I don't want to do law, I don't want to do divinity studies, all this stuff. None of these things are going to are enough for my curiosity. I have this ravenous curiosity about the world and knowledge and how does stuff work. And, you know, he starts asking Mephistopheles, I want knowledge about trees and about planets, and he wants to know everything. He's very outer directed. So I think he would be Marlo. Would be disgusted by this, this insular fear, this nervousness, this miny, small, incurious way of engaging with the world, he would be disgusted. And there's a long line of disgusted people with him, and I'm in it too. We were talking a little bit beforehand about politics being part of the daily conversation, and how there are some people who are who don't want to have that conversation. They say, Oh, you know, I can't. I don't want to talk about politics. Why is everything political now? I don't think it could, can fail to be. Yeah, now, the days that we're in are so extraordinarily awful. How can you not?

Bob Pastorella 1:14:16
I agree with you 100% I have these conversations at work where, you know we're talking about, you know, things going on in politics. And you know, I have a co worker who always says, Oh, well, I don't want to talk about the politics. And I'm like, well, the politics is talking about you. So why? Why the fuck would you not want to talk about this? And she's like, well, and I said, I know why, because you don't understand it and you don't care. So I said, that's all right. You don't have to be part of the conversation, you know, because at this point, we're only going to deal with people who, you know, kind of know what the fuck they're talking about anyway. That's not really the way to be. What's that? I'm sorry.

Kathe Koja 1:15:01
As a citizen, though it's your responsibility, you have to. I mean, I know, I know people like that too, or like, Oh, my Facebook is just so filled with negativity. Now, you know why? Because we're like up to our apple. It's in shit right now, that would be why. But they want to feel they're they're like that person at the party that's running around going, it's funny because one of the, one of the characters in in good or king, is going to be a character like that who is like, as the situation goes from bad to worse, this person is going to keep running around going, No, everything's okay, and let's have a good time. And let's, you know, completely denying what's going on in to the point of this toxic, hysterical denial that that everything's okay, everything's okay, and let's still talk about it. Let's just talk about nice things. And, no, that doesn't help you or anyone. It's a denying that you have a tumor, it's going to kill you. You can pretend it's not there, but it's still gonna kill you

Bob Pastorella 1:16:05
well. And I agree with that. I think that, for me, talking about it on social media, I've kind of like kicked everyone out on social media that doesn't kind of follow along with, with what I think, you know, I'm definitely progressive, liberal, so I don't really have that much on my feed. So if I get mad about something, I feel like I'm just preaching to the choir. So that's why I don't, you know, it's like, God damn. You know, everybody is agreeing with me. I make a statement. I get, you know, I get 50 likes on it. So wait a second. No one's arguing with me. Oh, I know why. Because all these people hear this stuff all day long. Well, I probably best not even say anything else. And something don't care is because we're all in agreeance. We're all thinking the same thing. We're all thinking like a hive mind in, you know? And to me, I feel like I can contribute, especially on social media, I can contribute in a different way. So I tend to use, like, sarcasm, stuff like that, you know.

Kathe Koja 1:17:12
And you do get, I mean, you don't want to feel like, and we've, we've sat around long enough going, Isn't it awful? This is awful, you know, yeah, it's awful, you know, this, guy's unhinged. I think even a cursory examination of his Twitter feed would lead you to believe that. And then the question becomes, okay, how long do we want to sit around and wring our hands and go, this is just terrible. This is terrible. No, you have to do things. You do have to call your legislature. You do have to sign petitions. You do have to do whatever you think is going to be helpful as a citizen, to try to make the stop, not to just say, this is just terrible. Oh well, the my favorite ones are the people. Well, you know, all politicians are the same. Wow. No, wow. I You can't even have that conversation if, if you think you're coming at it in this very, you know, I'm super cynical about politics, if you can look at the situation that our our world is now, not only the states, but, you know, there's a big right wing march In Poland, the rise of this kind of insular thinking is happening all over the globe. And it's like watching, you know, a movie set in the in World War Two, and going, Gosh, those people were so brave. And they, you know, they Well, you know, they probably didn't sit around saying, Gosh, those Nazis are awful. They probably tried to do something, right? They probably tried to help in whatever capacity they had, whether you know, whether you got kid driving an ambulance or whatever you're trying to do what you can, you're not going to solve the problem on your own. And sometimes, you know, as as as writers and as readers and communicators with each other, we get lulled into thinking because we're talking about it, we're doing something. But you know, like you say, Bob just just pitching to each other on social media, while immensely satisfying, and goodness knows, I do it multiple times a day, isn't really doing anything to move the needle, and we have to move the needle

Bob Pastorella 1:19:21
right, especially considering the fact that, you know, you talk about how everything comes in cycles. So we're experiencing a lot of things that we saw like in 1930s and 1940s and it's starting to happen again, except for this time, it's kind of like art has become reality. It's like Captain America was really kind of hanging out with Red Skull all along. And that's how I feel like right now. It's like our Captain America has been, you know, he's, but he, he's a Nazi. And come on, man, we can do better than this. Seriously. I mean, we can do better than this. And that's to me. It's not I've gone from being disappointed, I mean, going from being angry about it to just like, pretty much disappointed every single day. I'm tired of being disappointed,

Kathe Koja 1:20:10
I know, and you just discussed it. It's like, this is not and I was talking to I met a young woman who had recently moved to Detroit, where I live, from London, and she was talking about the the feelings in the city because of Brexit, and saying so many people are frustrated and miserable and angry and and because I said for you having any culture shock being here, she's like, Oh no, everyone's miserable where I'm from, too. So it's like, yeah, no, I know where you're coming from, but it is a it is a global thing, and we have the ability now to communicate with each other, you know, in unprecedented ways, at unprecedented speed. Surely that's got to be good for something. Surely it it's supposed to help us, right? And that not be some, not be another tool used to divide us. I mean, that's not to get completely off horror topics, but that the whole net neutrality thing is very much about shuttering content, about not only destroying the ability for me to access all the content I might want to see, but my ability to communicate, you know, with even though we had problems with Skype today, if Skype goes away, that's a way that we used to communicate with each other. I mean, it's kind of extraordinary that the three of us can even be talking right now, since we're so geographically separated, but we are,

Michael David Wilson 1:21:49
yeah, yeah, we have the recorded conversation to prove it right. Well, say with what Bob said about social media and kicking everyone out that doesn't agree with his opinion. Obviously, like taken quite broadly, that's not something that I personally agree with, but Bob and whoever else can do what the hell they want with their social media. That's their decision. But for me, I I'm kind of a little bit wary of creating an echo chamber. And I think in this time when we're so divided, when opinions are so polar opposite, what I want to see more of is conversations and chatting and trying to understand other people's opinions and where it is that they're coming from, trying to look for what are the commonalities, and then, then, when you understand where they're coming from, and you still find it objectionable because you're armed with you know, their knowledge and their background, then you can completely pull it apart and explain why you think this other way is a better way of doing things. But I don't know. I know that a lot of arguments against that are like, Well, some people take it so far that they're beyond a conversation. And, you know, I can concede that there are some people that will be beyond conversation, but I think it can get to a point where you can start isolating people that actually, if you spoke with them, not only might you understand them, you might change their mind. So I think we've got to be careful.

Bob Pastorella 1:23:53
I agree with y'all,

Kathe Koja 1:23:56
well, I do and I don't. I have a good friend, and we've had this conversation, although not recently, but we had it a lot. And she very much believes that you can reach a certain amount of that. There's a Venn diagram spot where you can have some kind of commonality with and have it through discussion, and have it through listening. I don't find that. I find that we're so polarized now that the only way that I can meet people, I do some volunteering for animal groups, for Animal Shelter groups, and there are our cars in the parking lot with bumper stickers that appall me, but we're and I'm sure mine appalled them, but we're both at the same place, at the same time, doing something that we both believe in, that we want to help animals, and we are here at this charity event, and we're all working together. Those are the only spaces of commonality that. Am seeing in just in my own life right now, because things are so bitterly polarized now, it's funny, I went to a business a business event, and the host said very openly to all of us, there will be no political discussion tonight at all, none. But it was always then it was there, then there, all the more, right? Because you can't say anything. And he was, he was trying to, you know, enforce some collegiality and some some Amity among the diners. But it really was the elephant in the room, because then you're looking at everyone and going, okay, whose side are you on? Right? It's, it's hard to find any space, any place to meet right now. You know, it's part of of, just of the fabric that we're living through. But I Bob, I feel you too. I don't have, there are not a lot of Trump voters in my feed, I don't think. But who says, Oh, someone's I'm and I won't say who was another writer I know said, you know, you post a lot about politics and stuff, and aren't you afraid that people won't read your books because of that? And, you know, and of course, I'm not. Why would I be? I mean, they won't. If they don't like me on Facebook, they're probably not going to like my books very much because, you know, they're my books, and I pretty much hold a lot of the same views. And if, if, if I'm suppressing things that I really think or believe are true to like, sell a couple books, I'm kind of a dick, right? Really? I really so. And this person that, well, they, they were trying to, you know, head off. What they felt was a bad situation for me, but come on,

Michael David Wilson 1:26:54
yeah, and you're certainly not the first writer that has said something along those lines. You know people saying like, Oh, aren't you afraid that you might lose a book sale? Right? It's like, well, no, because I am a writer, but you know what, I'm also a human being with opinions, and I'm not going to suppress that for the sake of a few sales, or even a few 100, or probably even a few 1000 because if you're, if you're, I guess, dishonest to yourself, and dishonest about who you are and self censoring yourself, then, quite frankly, what's the fucking point of any of this anyway,

Kathe Koja 1:27:35
right? And why would I want to read your books? If you're right, you're you're intellectually dishonest. So why would I even want to read anything you have to say? Right?

Bob Pastorella 1:27:45
Yeah, especially considering that there's 90 million other reasons other than your book being crap, that someone else wouldn't want to write your book, that you could screw up on your own, then your politics should have really nothing to do with that. You know, I don't think that any writer should be afraid to to have an opinion or anything like that. It's just, it's where there's too much fear as it is. Yeah,

Kathe Koja 1:28:11
and fear is, is really corrosive. And that's, it's interesting when you're reading horror novels, and even when you're you're swamped with with dread, or your swamps of fear. It still gives you a way to deal with fear and an experience of it that you come out the other end having felt those feelings. But it, it doesn't do you harm, right? It makes you. I don't want to say it empowers you. I don't know if that's the word I want, but it gives you that experience has given you something and enlarged your own what your skill set in dealing with terrible things. That was the, CF Lewis argument against having taking, you know, the monsters out of the fairy tales. It's like, no. It's because life is cruel and scary that we need to have cruel and scary stories to teach kids how to fucking deal with it. That's what our stories are for, right? Exactly. I mean, they're fun too, but they're they're meant to enlarge your experience of life and of being alive, right? And how to be a person?

Michael David Wilson 1:29:22
Well, I'm not afraid to have an opinion, and I'm also not afraid to change my mind and admit when I'm wrong, which seems to happen frequently. It's like the older I get, the more experiences I have. I find out, you know, what that opinion that I held, I've changed my mind on it. So, you know, maybe check back, and in a year, I'll just be renouncing some things I've even said in this podcast. Well,

Kathe Koja 1:29:52
that's it, and it's a rare ability to be able to examine yourself that way, too. There are people who will never change their minds about any. Thing, even if you know you can, and no matter what, to be able to look at your own assumptions and your own beliefs honestly. I mean, that's another one of the great gifts of reading Marlowe too. He was not afraid to ask questions and not afraid to look at both sides of or a million sides of an issue or of a behavior, or of, you know, whatever. And while you're looking at this character and and identifying with him this certain way, it's still causing you, it's forcing you to look at your own perception of what this person is. You know, what's happening in this guy? And I say this guy, because almost except for Dido, they're all dudes, so but that person's experience becomes your own while you're while you're reading it, or while you're watching one of the plays performed. I mean, the same way we're living in the books they were reading, right? Yeah. Well, this is really, this is such a good conversation, though. We're not. We're really deep and we're not. There aren't any objectionable questions. I was all primed for, like, objectionable questions and ask me anything, and we're really deep and serious and quite thoughtful. So so much for that. Yeah.

Bob Pastorella 1:31:19
Well, we haven't got to the Patreon questions yet, though. Thanks. Oh, okay,

Kathe Koja 1:31:23
all right. Well, bring them.

Michael David Wilson 1:31:26
I know that we're coming up on our time that we have for this conversation. We're getting dangerously close to the 90 minute mark, but there are a couple of Patreon questions. And yeah, Bob, sorry to disappoint, but they seem completely reasonable. I couldn't make one up. I can just start Googling objectionable questions and be like, oh yeah. A patron as to this as well?

Kathe Koja 1:31:53
Well, let's see what the Patreon questions are.

Michael David Wilson 1:31:56
Well, Ross Baez says, What do you think is the strangest story you've ever written, and if it's been published, where can we read it?

Kathe Koja 1:32:07
Oh, wow. What a great question. I'll tell you what there is a story that I was trying very as hard as I could to create for the reader the same experience that the main character is having. And every single editor I showed it to turned it down. And it's it's about this. It's ostensibly about this woman who is living in a in the desert area. She has come to take care of her her dying mother. Now that her mother is gone, she's like closing up the house and preparing to move on, but before she does this, she she's spending a lot of time there, and she decides she's going to get a puppy and get a dog, and she meets a girl who works for a kennel, and the girl takes her to the kennel to pick out a puppy. And that's really all that happens in the story. But what this is, is a is a trickster encounter, and this woman is, is in in relation with a true trickster figure. And the the complaint about the story is that I was confused. I didn't know what was going on. I didn't understand what was happening. I I understood the actions or the things that were happening, but I didn't know why they were happening. And I was trying to create that feeling of being completely baffled, like, what are you doing to me? Why are you doing this to me? And a lot of the Trickster legends are about they're not so much about you're being tricked for gain, or you're being tricked for this reason or that reason. The Trickster just likes to fuck with you. And things happen to this woman throughout the story. She's just being fucked with left and right, and at the end, nothing terrible happens to her. I mean, spoiler alert, she never she gets the puppy. The puppy disappears. There's a completely different scenario happening. She can't understand what's going on. She's being tricked every step of the way. And I if I have another fiction collection, I am definitely including that story because I want people to encounter this feeling and see what they make of it. So if I could remember the name of the story, I would tell you, but I'm super blocking on it now, so I'll post it later. I'll dig it up and see but it was that of the story that has been universally rejected. So that would be it, that would be the strangest in that sense.

Michael David Wilson 1:34:47
Well, when you remember the title, I mean, feel free to drop me a message, and I can include that in the show notes. And please do let me know when it is available. You know as and when. No,

Kathe Koja 1:35:00
I totally will, and because it did, the working title is Coyote, but that's not that's the only Title I can remember right now. And I know it has a real title, and I think I wrote it originally on a invitation from Ellen Datlow to one of her anthologies, and she didn't like it, somebody else didn't like it. I think I showed it to Anne Vandermeer for tour, and she didn't like it, and somebody else looked at me and like it even, but, and the reason was always the same, so, but I think, I think that makes it a successful story, because it did exactly what I wanted it to do, or what it was made to do, not what I wanted to but what I hoped to make it do was befuddle you. And I have loved working with Ellen through the years. I've written so many pieces of short fiction that I would never have done without invitations from her in, you know, for various anthologies, and it gave me a chance to play with those ideas. And the, I don't know if I would call it the strangest one of the stories that people a recent story that people either really like or really don't like, is in Ellen and Terry's, what's it called, Queen Victoria's book of spouse. It's, it's gaslight fantasy, or whatever that's called. And it's about this boy who, this young man who is just really an awful person, but I like him very much, and I can't remember title eight or Good lord, he's really horrible. He's a street hustler. He's a prostitute. And he's in a he's, he's trying to survive, but he's, he's not a good kid. And the new you he's in is pretty bad too. But he chooses ways out of it that are are quite objectionable, and he really doesn't care. And someone wrote in a review, a reader wrote in a review. I liked this collection very much, but I'm marking it down a star because of that story. This story ruined this book for me. It was so awful and disturbing that it kind of ruined the book for me, so I feel pretty proud of that. I really like that it. I don't want readers to walk away feeling nothing from something that I've done. I would prefer that they love it, but I will accept if they hate it. I just hope that they feel something serious, something strong. I I would like them to have a strong reaction to whatever I'm doing. And so there was that was kind of great. I like that reaction quite a bit. That's

Michael David Wilson 1:37:59
something I've said before, you don't want to get a lukewarm reaction to your story. No one wants to hear like, oh, it was okay, great, right?

Kathe Koja 1:38:09
Oh, that was nice. Or oh, yeah, that was kind of cool. Yeah, you would like people, yeah, they have a super strong reaction. Good or bad, yeah? But preferably good. You would like to please people, if you can

Michael David Wilson 1:38:24
well, Max booth, fire Patreon says, What was your state of mind and living during the writing of the cipher? Do you remember much about the process you went through during its creation? It's affected me in a bizarre way, both physically and mentally. And I'm not the only person to claim this, so that is certainly not a lukewarm reaction from Max. No,

Kathe Koja 1:38:52
that's awesome. Um, when I was writing the cipher, my son was very young, and I had he was in preschool, and little kids do like to get up early also, and so I had very little time to that I could actually be sitting at the desk and engaging with the story. So I became a much more disciplined writer during the writing of that novel, because I didn't have that much time every day. You know, I have a small child. I'm taking care of my child. So the time that I had at the desk, and for what it's worth, I did not have a desk at that time, I was writing on a converted sewing machine. So make up that what you will. And I don't, I can't say that. I remember a ton about the process it had started. That character had started in a different set of circumstances, and that wasn't right. I produced, I don't know, maybe 100 pages or something. Of that kind of proto cipher, and it was Nicholas, but it wasn't right. And I knew something was wrong with it, but I didn't know what. And then when the front hole it came that changed everything. It's like, oh, okay, the key went into the lock, you know, the door open, and then it was went very quickly from there, I remember finishing it the knowing that it was done happened at the end of 1989 and I remember sitting in the living room of the house that my husband, Rick leader, was sharing with he and Craig Newmark were sharing a house for a while, and it was in the living room of that house, and I remember seeing light coming in. It was like afternoon, and light is coming in through the windows, and just knowing that I was done, that I had done everything, that I that the story needed, that that the book needed for me, it was all done. Everything was done. The revisions were done. And just being really glad and to know that okay, this thing is, is everything that I could make it be, and now it's time to let it go into the world. So my my state of mind was happy and productive, and I had an adorable child that I was was taking to the park and, you know, playing Fisher Price toys with so, so that was me while it was happening. I'm delighted to hear that that Max has had a different he is has been physically haunted. I would really like to know more about that, yeah,

Michael David Wilson 1:41:42
so get in touch Max and let us know. Yeah,

Kathe Koja 1:41:45
I will. I will have to know more, because that, and that's a book, I'm really gratified that as new readers come to me, a lot of them come through the cipher, and I'm so glad that that book is still able to speak to people, and they're still having a conversation with it, a dialog with it. I hope that there's something about the fun hole that just speaks to people for good or bad, and I'm very proud of that.

Michael David Wilson 1:42:16
Yeah, I think from speaking with Max previously, it was off the back of a recommendation from Josh malam. And so there's a lot of people discovering your work for the first time right now and discovering via the cipher. I'm

Kathe Koja 1:42:35
a I'm a friend and pal of Josh's, and I just saw him yesterday and Saturday, we went to a new bookstore that's just opened in Detroit. I think other writers make the most passionate fans of books and of plays. I think the evangelical fans right where you might know really you have to, you have to read this. I remember being Anna reading my husband Rick does, collaborates with a poet, Helen frost on some photography and poetry picture books. And they're very beautiful and amazing. Helen is a, is a very sparse and and gentle poet. I like her work a lot. And being at a reading that she was giving, and I was sitting with Sarah Miller, who is a historical novelist, and we both started laughing at something that Helen had written. And people were looking at us like, why are you? What is even with you? Why are you laughing? But afterwards, we explained, and said we were laughing because it was so well done, and we could see what she had done. You know, you could see the process. You could see what she was doing. We were laughing with admiration, like, Oh, wow. You know, you shake your head and say, You really pulled that off. It was, it was so beautiful to us that we had to laugh. So we had to tell people, that's why we were laughing, and that everybody should go out and read Helen's poems, because she's really good. But yeah, and Josh is having a an exciting string of of work come out, and is, I think, just really started to to hit his stride. So it's going to be a lot of fun to see what he can do in the years. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 1:44:29
I think so. Well, thank you for spending such a lot of your evenings chatting with us. It's been a great deal of fun. It's been super informative. And I think we've, you know, spoken about some deep topics. So I've been,

Kathe Koja 1:44:45
yeah, we did good,

Michael David Wilson 1:44:51
yeah. Where can our listeners connect with you? Um,

Kathe Koja 1:44:57
they can go to Kathy koja.com And see books there, and see my blog there, and see what shows I'm doing and all that stuff. And they can find me on Twitter and on Facebook, where I am probably too much of the time.

Michael David Wilson 1:45:16
All right. Well, thank you again for chatting with us, and no doubt I'll speak with you soon.

Kathe Koja 1:45:24
Thank you much for the opportunity, and I will, I'll find those two stories names tonight, and I will message them to you.

Michael David Wilson 1:45:36
Alright. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast with Kadia. Join us again next week, when we will be talking with Jasper bark. And if you'd like to get access to that episode, as well as every other this is horror podcast episode, then please do consider supporting us over on Patreon. Www.patreon.com, forward slash. This is horror. Now, originally, I'd actually recorded a slightly different version of this outro because Patreon recently announced a proposed change to their fee structure, and rightly so, myself and pretty much every creator I spoke with was outraged and pissed off about it, because it was a system that was going to charge patrons a processing fee, and it was going to affect those pledging at the lower levels the most. Well today, absolutely delighted to say that after so many people have stood up, have come forward, have raised their grievances with Patreon. Jack con, the CEO at Patreon and Patreon themselves have said, You know what, we fucked up. We made a bad decision, and we're going to reverse that. So thank goodness. If you pledge your dollar, that is all you're charged, no processing fee. Pledge your dollar, $1 comes out your account. Pledge $10 $10 comes out your account. Common Sense, really, isn't it? And wow, what a great time for you to become a patron, because this month, you're getting six this is horror podcast episodes. You're getting two story unboxed episodes, one of which we recorded this morning. We unboxed raw the 2017 French film. French title is grave. If you haven't seen it, I suggest you do. Crept into my top three of the year, I would say, in terms of films just behind the likes of get out and split. So well worth your time. What else do you get if you're a patron? Well, you get to submit a question each and every week for our guests. We've got Laird Baron coming up. We've got Orin gray coming up. So a lot of reasons to support us. So@www.patreon.com forward slash, this is horror. I'd love your support. Thank you. And now for a word from our sponsors. With over

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Michael David Wilson 1:49:32
All right. And to finish off, one of my favorite quotes from Ray Bradbury that I just think really underlines the importance of perseverance and hard work and just getting stuff done. Just write every day of your life. Read intensely, then see what happens. Most of my friends who were put on that diet have very pleasant careers. I. And that's Ray Bradbury. I'll see you in the next episode. Until then, take care of yourself. Be good to one another. Read horror and have a great, great day.