Michael David Wilson 0:10
Welcome to This is horror, a podcast for readers, writers and creators. I'm your host. Michael David Wilson, and today, alongside my co host, Bob pastorella, we are going to be chatting with Paul Tremblay. And long term listeners will be very familiar with Paul Tremblay, because this is, in fact, the fourth appearance under this is horror podcast. We had him on in 2015 to talk about a head full of ghosts. In 2016 to talk about disappearance at Devil's rock, and last year, to talk about the cabin at the end of the world. And Well, this year, a new book means a new appearance on The this is horror podcast, so we're going to be chatting with Paul Tremblay about his new collection growing things. But that's not all we're talking about. We talk about the highest and lowest points of the last year. We talk about a new novella that you'll get to read very soon. And perhaps most importantly of all, I asked Paul, which of his children would he sacrifice to prevent the world ending? So if you've ever wanted to know that, this is the episode for you. But before we get into all of that good stuff, let us have a quick word from our sponsors,

David Irons 1:42
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C.V. Hunt 2:16
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Michael David Wilson 2:49
All right. Well, with that said, let's not delay. It is time to welcome back Paul Tremblay to this is horror, and

Unknown Speaker 3:00
now for horror.

Unknown Speaker 3:02
Eat. Horror. Paul, welcome

Michael David Wilson 3:07
back to this is horror.

Paul Tremblay 3:10
Thank you, Michael and Bob, I'm happy to be back. What number is this? Do you know Is it four?

Michael David Wilson 3:15
Believe this is the fourth appearance. Yeah. So excellent. In fact, that means that we've spoken with you to coincide with the release of every major book title. Yes, William Morrow, so we kicked off with a head full of ghosts. Then

Paul Tremblay 3:33
Titan books, let's not leave them out. Yeah, actually in the UK, yeah. Sorry, yeah.

Michael David Wilson 3:38
Shout out to my London friends at Titan

Bob Pastorella 3:44
is, is Paul the only person who's had four appearances?

Michael David Wilson 3:48
Um, well, I don't have that statistic to hand, but it's possible. Well, Richard Thomas has had three appearances, and I think Stephen Graham Jones has had two or three, John FD TAF. I think John FD TAF might have only had two, but because each one is about three hours long, it feels like he's on every week.

Paul Tremblay 4:15
I vaguely remember being behind Stephen the last time I was on. So I don't know. I'll try to be extra interesting, and even if I have to make stuff up, yeah, we'll do it this time. Yeah?

Michael David Wilson 4:27
I mean, some might think, with your job, that you'd be pretty good at making stuff up. And I should probably clarify, I mean, as an author, not as a math teacher, yeah, like, math teachers aren't known for, like, lying and coming up with these sums, and it's like, that's not how numbers work.

Paul Tremblay 4:43
I totally assumed you were referring to the math part of things. Yeah.

Michael David Wilson 4:48
Well, anyway, I wonder, and maybe this will be linked to making things up what have been the highest and lowest points of the last year. So since we last spoke with. View, oh,

Paul Tremblay 5:01
boy, the highest points. Well, geez. I mean, I've, sort of, I've had one high point recently, but I can't really talk about it yet, because it has to do with, excuse me, some behind the scenes potential for Hollywood stuff. So, yeah, hopefully, you know, later in the year that, you know, there'll be able to be some announcements. I don't know it's, it's funny, as I'm getting older, late 40s now, you know, the years just go by so much quickly, you know, which makes sense. Obviously, as time accumulates, it feels like it's going faster, because you've lived through more time, you know. I hope everybody out there gets to experience this. It's my hope for you all. I know this year's, honestly, it's been a blur. It's been busy just between school and, you know, my oldest, my son, is graduating, just graduated high school, so that's that's been a highlight, certainly, actually one of the highlights, I will say it was sort of a fun one, that my son went to my school or goes to my school that I teach at, or went to my school he just graduated, and part of their they have a senior speaking program where the seniors all at some point during the year have to get up in front of the school and give like a five to 10 minute speech. So my son, Cole, gave a speech, and his speech was essentially a roast of me, but it was very funny and very sweet. Yeah, not very many people get that, you know, as a parent, you know, I don't think a lot of parents get to very often see their son to get up in front of a whole school and give a funny speech about you. Yeah? That included the line that Paul just might be the best dad I've ever had. Yeah, so that was definitely a highlight. I don't know it's funny. I'm just thinking of little things like, you know, seeing my daughter do really well in soccer. You know, writing wise, it's easier for me to remember some of the struggles. If that sounds kind of lame like this, this novel I'm working on has been sort of kicking my butt a little bit, but I'm approaching sort of the last, God, I hope it's the last third or even last quarter of the book. Now, as you speak, because it's due in August, I don't know. So I just remember a lot of stress, of of not, of that, going that sort of going hard for me, being a difficult process, but also being behind, because I took a couple months off to write a novelette for for Amazon. I'll playfully call them the evil empire, right? I won't call them too much evil, since they, you know, have their it's gonna be a part of this Amazon shorts collection of like, six or seven authors. It's essentially an ebook anthology edited and put together by Blake Crouch. I don't know if you know Blake Crouch, yeah, thriller writer. No, it's actually really cool. It was a, it had to be a science fiction theme of discovery. And his idea was that, you know, he got a few science fiction writers like himself, and in Andrew Weir, who did the Martian, but the other writers are all people who are associated with science fiction. So myself, Amar tolls, who's a historical fiction writer, nk, Jemisin, and I'm blanking on the last author's name like she wrote The Divergent Series. So yeah, that was a challenge for me to write like a science fictional story, and that's going to come out. It's going to be available in September. So I mean, that was sort of fun to write, but it did sort of take me away from the novel, because I I can't work on two things at once. It just doesn't work for me. You guys have to say I went to a short story while I'm working on a novel. That just means, if I'm doing a short story while I'm working on the novel, I'm not actually working on the novel, I'm doing the short story. So anyway, that was a long winded, ranty answer to a very simple question, what was the highlight? What was the low light? The rest of the podcast is going to get better, I promise.

Michael David Wilson 9:01
But you know, I mean, it's good to give a lung cancer, because then you give us lots of jumping off points. And I mean, so with this collection of novelettes that Blake Crouch is putting together. So are they being released as standalone? So are they all being collected together? Because, I mean, you said it's an ebook, but you also said it's an anthology. So I'm just wondering, sure, you know, how can we go about purchasing it?

Paul Tremblay 9:30
It'll be both. Yeah, I think you can get them all. You would be able to get them all for like, a, you know, a discounted price, as opposed to buying them all individually for 299, which, which they will be available. And I think, don't. I think I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that if you're already an Amazon Prime member, you get these for free. But don't quote me on that, or maybe quote me on that and just say, Hey, you were wrong.

Bob Pastorella 9:58
Somebody like, I keep it unlimited. Yeah. Is

Michael David Wilson 10:00
probably the kinder,

Paul Tremblay 10:02
right, yeah, but all the stories, like individual covers and stuff like that, now they're, you know, they're putting a big push behind it, you know, because they're Amazon, they can throw money around, right? Yeah, yeah. So actually, there's going to be, like, promotional videos and stuff coming out. When I was in New York City a couple weeks ago for book con, you know, they had there were four of us, of the four of the authors who were in the collection were there, so they had to shoot some brief like promo videos. And actually, one of them was a lot of fun. It was a group discussion with Blake, myself, a more and K Jemisin, which I thought was a really fun, cool discussion.

Michael David Wilson 10:42
Yeah, Are we, are we going to be able to see that? Is that online? Is that I get, I guess we're going to be able to see it somewhere, because it would be a pretty weird promotional

Paul Tremblay 10:56
video empire. Yeah, right now they're just, they're just gonna, like, Amazon will send it to, you know, random people's phones. The video just pop up randomly. Yeah, that's a good Yeah. It'll be on YouTube and stuff. It's show

Bob Pastorella 11:10
up in your TV at your house, random, right? Yeah, you need to watch this.

Paul Tremblay 11:15
Yeah? Well, I just started watching the second season of Candle Cove, the no end house. I know, if you guys have watched that it's good, but one of the things, like this weird house just shows up randomly, and people find out about its whereabouts, because, like, they start getting random video messages about this place and its address. So

Bob Pastorella 11:36
I watched the first episode of that, and I liked it. I need to get back on it. Yeah, and believe it's on shutter. It is, yes, probably the only place you can get it now, which is, I mean, that's, that's one of the reasons you should have shutter.

Paul Tremblay 11:52
Oh, yeah, no, I paid for a year of shutter this year, and I've been loving it. Yeah, I bought it for horror noir, but also a couple of my favorite movies that I got to see in a in a in a festival, actually, that was one of the highlights of this past year. Am I saying to backtrack? I got to go to the horror show, which is a film festival in Telluride, Colorado in late October, as a guest. And I was there with Jeremy, Jeremy Robert Johnson, who is a lovely guy. It was a lot of fun, even though I had to watch him consume a a pig eyeball, which

Michael David Wilson 12:28
was interesting. Yeah, they do it.

Paul Tremblay 12:32
They do a big pig roast on one of the nights, a bunch of pigs. And I guess one of the things that some people do is like, as a dare, they'll put, like a pig, one of the pigs eyes into shot glasses, and all these knuckleheads do the shot glass with the pig eye. I wisely abstained. I did take a few pictures. Yeah, so the pig I wasn't necessarily the highlight, but the festival was definitely, you know, this is my first. I've never been to a film festival before, so it's really, it was really was really neat to be able to see movies before they were out. So I got to see Anna in the Apocalypse, which is a ton of fun, you know, in a big theater of like 600 people. So it was a really good experience. And then the two movies that I thought were amazing and super scary were, one was terror, terrified, or atirado in Spanish, it's an Argentinian movie, not not terrifier, that's like a serial killing women, killing clown. Terrified is a Argentinian sort of I'd call like an Argentinian conjuring, if the conjuring was good, sorry, sorry, conjuring fans. I mean, besmirch your your taste or your movie, and the other, the other movie was called which is which? I, to me, is one of my favorite movies of 2018 was is called the witch in the window. Yeah, yeah. By Andy Minton, you may have seen his first movie. His first movie was called Yellow Brick Road. But either way, I highly recommend watching the witch in the window and terrified, and both are on shutter.

Michael David Wilson 14:03
Yeah, now I've seen both of them. The witch in the window was kind of joint first for my favorite film, my favorite horror film The last year. I mean, it was the witch in the window and hereditary and yeah. I mean, they're so different. And obviously, in terms of budget, they're completely different, so it doesn't really seem fair to choose one over the other. Terrified didn't really work for me. It kind of felt like a mash up of like a massive horror fan's favorite bits from different movies, and he just kind of cobbled them all together at the expense of real narrative or coherence. But, oh sure. I mean, yeah,

Paul Tremblay 14:48
I totally agree. Like as a movie, it doesn't hold together. But seeing it at midnight in a Yeah, theater was really loud, just scared the living shit out of me, oh yeah, to the point where I was walking back. My hotel, like, after midnight, just totally freaked out. And in my hotel room, it wasn't like a hotel style bed, it was like a regular bed, so there was a lot of space underneath the bed. I was like, Ah, god damn it, getting up at like, four in the morning to go the bathroom, and then like, leaping back into the bed because I didn't want anything, anything from the movie, reaching out and grabbing my

Michael David Wilson 15:17
legs. Yeah, and that's understandable, and I think as well, it would have probably benefited my experience had I watched it in a movie theater late at night, rather than just in my living room, relatively late at night, but I didn't need to leave the house after Well,

Paul Tremblay 15:35
next time you watch it, let me know I'll come over and hide under the bed for you. Okay, so fantastic.

Bob Pastorella 15:42
After find it. I always find I haven't seen terrified, terrify her yet, or terrified, whatever terrified Argentine version of it. I haven't seen it yet. But I find it fascinating that we watch a horror movie, because I'm the same way if I watch a horror movie, especially in the theater, when I come home and my house is dark. I'm fucking scared to death. And it doesn't even matter if the story that I just watched has anything to do with anything underneath the bed or hiding in the closet or anything like that. I'm scared. I have to turn on lights.

Unknown Speaker 16:16
Yeah,

Bob Pastorella 16:19
I don't know. I know that me and you aren't the only ones. I don't know what it is. It's got to be. It's some psychological thing. I don't know too many people just come home and it's like, totally dark, going, well, everything's fine. Me. I'm like, there's someone in there. Get out of my house.

Paul Tremblay 16:38
Right, right? Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 16:40
I think one of the weirdest experiences was after me and my wife had watched a remake of maniac, we then needed to take a night bus back home in London and so, like, we were just very on edge and pretty depressed. I mean, maniac is not a feel good film, as you know, I think it probably traumatized my wife more than it did me, because, I mean, she hadn't seen the original. And I guess doesn't watch quite as many horror films as I do. Well, we, well, we, well, okay, first of all, yeah. Second Secondly, we were at, we were at Fright Fest, the horror film festival. So, I mean, she, she is a horror fan, but, you know, just not quite the same level that I am. I mean, she's not got her own podcast yet. So there we go. Fair enough. Yes,

Bob Pastorella 17:41
this was, this wasn't first date material, and showing hereditary at theater. I think you like it.

Michael David Wilson 17:50
What is it about?

Bob Pastorella 17:52
Oh, you'll love it.

Michael David Wilson 17:53
Yeah. Let's go, yeah. Let's say a good way to make it your first and your last date. Were you a fan of hereditary pool? Yes,

Paul Tremblay 18:04
yeah. I definitely liked it quite a bit. I need to watch it again. I did see it in the theater opening weekend with my brother, my younger brother, who's a huge horror fan. So you know, when we can we try to see like, if it's in the theater, we'll try to go together to see horror movies. Yeah, I sort of stupidly assumed that now, hereditary, it's 824, it won't be like, you know, like going to see it or something, you know, where it's just a theater packs full of kids. Here, I'm sounding like an old man, but that's exactly what happened. So it, really, honestly, it ruined, like, the first hour the movie. Because, you know, most of the teenagers there, you know, I don't think just could handle that. Was a movie about grief for the first hour of the film, yeah, yeah. And just like talking and making noises, and like, the dude sitting next to us was like, just holding his like, big slushy cup of soda, and like swirling the ice. I was ready to start throwing fists at people. Luckily, my brother was the buffer. So I would say stuff. I would say obnoxious stuff, to be quiet, across my brother, across my brother. So if the other person wanted to do something about it, he had to go for my brother first. Yeah, that's what your little that's what your little brother was there for. Honestly, come on,

Michael David Wilson 19:18
yeah. Strategy, yeah,

Paul Tremblay 19:21
no, I but I definitely did enjoy the movie. I mean, my my mouth was sort of hanging open for the last like 20 minutes of the film, sort of in disbelief of what I was seeing, yeah, in a good way, in a good way,

Michael David Wilson 19:34
yeah. And I think with the cinema, I mean, I've probably said this before, but for the very reason that I don't want people talking over it, or I don't want kind of just people who are going there more casually, I kind of try and time the cinema to the kind of time where either it's going to be hardcore fans or, you know, even better, no one apart from me is right. Really gonna be there. And so typically, I'll go either quite early on a Sunday morning, because who the hell goes to the cinema? You know, early on a Sunday Well, me, and then yeah, the other time is if you just go quite late on a Friday, but you know, really late, like the midnight showing or something, because then anyone who, who's kind of more like teenage and into drinking is going to be long gone drinking into the night at that point.

Paul Tremblay 20:33
Yeah, no, we'll definitely for, probably for mid summer. I'll probably have to do that and not go during, like a prime viewing, right?

Michael David Wilson 20:41
I know that that's out in about a month here in the UK. Is it already out for you now? No,

Paul Tremblay 20:48
they've been doing some screenings. I think it officially comes out. What July 3, maybe?

Bob Pastorella 20:52
Yeah, right before the holiday, just in time for the holiday. I mean, it's like they planned it perfectly, um, that I might actually catch that in a theater, if I can find it playing during the day. I've already seen some times and it looks like it's it's like in the evening. Yeah, I'm hoping that that they'll expand that schedule I'm looking to see, because I'd really like to catch it like during the day in a theater, at a time that I know there won't be any kids there. You know, of course, you know my best laid plans. You know I'll be like, I'll go at one. Don't be no one there. Be like, I'm standing in line to watch this fucking movie.

Paul Tremblay 21:38
I'm gonna miss it the first weekend because I apparently don't learn my own lessons from my own fiction for like, the four or five days of, you know, the US, July 4 weekend, we rented a cabin up in the woods in New Hampshire with no Wi Fi or television.

Bob Pastorella 21:54
Oh, wow, that's interesting. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 21:57
yeah. Well, good luck with that. I mean, it's been nice having you on the podcast,

Paul Tremblay 22:04
the fourth and final interview.

Michael David Wilson 22:08
Yeah, so, I mean, which member of your family are you planning to sacrifice? So that does not end.

Paul Tremblay 22:17
Sorry, everyone's gonna end. I mean, everyone, we're not gonna make it the sacrifice. So sorry, I guess everybody's gonna be gone, yeah,

Michael David Wilson 22:27
well, I mean, let's talk a little bit about your forthcoming collection. So this is your third collection, I think. And is that right? Good? Okay, and who is it primarily for, and what distinguishes it from your previous two collections?

Paul Tremblay 22:48
Um, in some ways, I kind of feel like, I mean, because it's the first collection that I've done in almost, like 10 years, I guess nine years. So no, I mean to me, it's, it's, I guess maybe at first glance, it seems like there's less of a theme than maybe the previous one, for sure, because the previous collection, in the meantime, almost, you know, I'd say like 75% of those stories were dealing with either the approach of an apocalypse or as the Apocalypse was happening, kind of thing. So in some ways, I mean, this collection almost seems like a, hopefully, like a snapshot of what I've been sort of up to for the past 910, years. But I don't know, a theme definitely emerged like with, I mean, there's 19 stories, so there's quite a few, but you know, still so many of them, like my novels deal with, you know, kids or being a parent, you know, and you know, messing around with the point of view from, you know, either from age or from perspective. So I don't even the title itself, growing things. I think hopefully, you know, is like sort of a reference, of a reference to what it means to grow like, obviously, as a child, but even as like an adult, like, how do you deal with certain transitions in your adulthood as well? You know, there's a more obvious connection growing things is a reference to the growing things story that was told in the novel, a head full of ghosts. You know, that story did, obviously did for those who read it, appearing in the meantime, but it appears, as you know, a slightly different form in this collection. I also did write a couple other stories that have connections to a head full of ghosts and disappearance of Devil's rock. One of the two originals in the collection is called the 13th temple, and that story does take place in the world of a head full of ghosts. After the book on, you know, Mary's life has come out. You know, Mary's a character in that story. And, yeah, hopefully this book is for everybody. Everyone wants to read.

Michael David Wilson 24:55
Yeah, and you've also got notes from the dog walkers, which he also has. Is a connection.

Paul Tremblay 25:01
Yeah, so notes from the dog walker is, it's either, you know, if you're going to be picky, I guess it's a novelette. I mean, it's right, the word count line that some people use is, you know how you designate a novella from novelette? But anyway, it's the longest story by far in the collection, and it is an original. And you mentioned the title. Notes from the dog walker, dog walkers. And the story is told through notes left by, you know, three or four people who walk the dog of a of an author who may or may not be me, or pretty much is me, yeah, or, if not the full me, at least, sort of, I don't know my standard my ID, but yeah, that that story definitely has connections to disappearance of Devil's rock and maybe as a connection to a head full of ghost as well.

Michael David Wilson 25:48
All right, yeah. And did you? Did you always know that you would title the collection growing things and then start out with that story? And was the fact that it is so strongly connected to a head full of ghosts. I mean, it's referenced. It's in the same universe. It has the same characters. Was that kind of the impetus for leading with that one? Yeah,

Paul Tremblay 26:14
definitely. You know, I know. So this was a few years ago, like 2015 I think it was, or no, 2016 I mean, I knew that, you know, with larger publishers, particularly, you know, short story collections are a hard sell. So I just finished my two books with Morrow. Not just finished. Had been some months, you know, a head full of ghosts and disappearance. Devil's rock was my initial two book deal with William Morrow. And I wanted to pitch them a novel on a collection, because I had, you know, more than enough stories for a collection. I figured the collection would be like, the harder of the two cells, and to try to, like, sweeten the sweeten the pitch. I guess, you know, I came up with the idea of, okay, well, I'll include growing things. And, you know, I told them I would write a story that connects to a head full of ghosts and a story that connects with disappearance of Devil's rock. It'll be maybe a fun added, you know, bonus, or added sort of reason for people who have read the novels to get the collection. And I, at the same time, I pitched, I think I told the story, so I won't tell the whole thing during our third podcast together. But when I pitched this other novel idea with a collection, my editor rejected the novel idea, but said, Oh yeah, we'll take the collection, but we need a different novel. I was like, Oh, okay. And that eventually became camp at the end of the world. So I wasn't it's fine notes from the dog walker. I wasn't sure if that was going to be in the collection. Like I'd had that idea for a little while, and for part of it, it just seemed like that was just gonna be, like a goofy, fun thing I wanted to do at the 13th temple, the head full of ghost story I had in my head, and I let it sit there for like, two or three years before I actually wrote it, because I wanted to make sure the rest of the collection was done before I wrote it. But dog walkers sort of became much different than it became much different when I wrote it, than what it that what it was when I initially envisioned it, because my initial vision of it was just really kind of goofy thing. So I'm actually, it's one of the few cases where I'm much happier with what that story became compared to what I initially envisioned it as, if that makes sense. So yeah, dog walkers, I would say buried. It's, I mean, it's like 40 pages long, so there's a bunch of stuff going on in it, but there definitely is, sort of, like, there's a small chunk of it that works, is like a prequel to disappearance of Devil's rock. And not that you ever have to, you know, have to have read Disappearance of Devil's rock, certainly, to to read notes from the dog walker, because there's all sorts of stuff going on, including, like, I don't know, like, almost like a mini essay about genre versus literary, and even a mini essay about, you know, the horror fiction community and stuff like that. Hopefully it's fine. So far, the response to that novella has been pretty good,

Michael David Wilson 29:10
yeah. And, I mean, I think, like a lot of your work, it starts off fairly innocuous and quiet, and then really ramps up. And, you know, it doesn't take long to realize that there's something very dark at play. And in that sense, I thought it had quite a bit in common with the teacher, which was another story that I really enjoyed in this collection.

Paul Tremblay 29:35
Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. I mean, I think in the case of, you know, dog walkers again. I mean, it starts off humorous, I hope, yeah, yeah. I mean, and I don't know, I think horror and humor are obviously so closely related. I mean, because you can have basically one or two responses to, you know, the absurdities that you know, of life. Is either to laugh at it or, you know, react in horror to it. But it's the same absurdities, you know. It's just depending on your reaction. So, you know, I took sort of this absurd premise of a story being told by notes left by dog walkers, you know. And it starts off humorous, and then definitely, you know, not a spoiler, it goes into Dark Territory, as you said, yeah, the teacher, that's one of the older stories that's in the collection. You know, it's one of my favorites of mine. I, you know. So I wanted there are three stories of the 19 that were in in the meantime that I put in this collection too, because I figured, you know, you know, this collection is going to have a wider reach than in the meantime, just because of the publisher behind it, you know. So I included, you know, growing things was, in the meantime, the teacher. And also my oldest story that's in the collection. It's against a lot of feed the ducks, you know. I thought, if the collection was going to sort of represents, I don't know, sort of represent part of you know, like a snapshot of sort of who I am as a writer. I want to include those three stories because I thought those three stories were the best representations of what I was doing from 2000 to 2010

Michael David Wilson 31:14
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I mean, I guess with Willie and Morrow and with those connections to the other novels, like you would hope fingers crossed that the level of sales is gonna be so much more than anything previously in terms of short story collection,

Paul Tremblay 31:34
right? That's the hope. We'll see. Time will tell.

Michael David Wilson 31:39
So if you're listening, you have to buy it. And helpful, really,

Paul Tremblay 31:47
my kids graduate from high school, go to college, yeah, buy

Michael David Wilson 31:49
the book, please. Yeah. Well, I

Bob Pastorella 31:52
think also, I mean, that would be the main, you know, the main thing. But I find it very heartening to hear that a publisher, a big publisher, was, you know, is interested in a collection. Because, you know, those of us that have been doing this for a while, know, big publishers typically like, Well, I do have a collection. They're like, No, I want to do them. Yeah, you've had, you had, you know, the previous no successes with them. So that definitely opened the door for that, sure. But, you know, it's, it's very, it's very, it warrants my heart to hear that. Yeah, publishers, you know, the big publishers, I mean, it's a risk, but you know, if they feel like that, they can, you know that you got a leg to stand on it, they're going to extend it down to, yeah,

Paul Tremblay 32:47
no, I mean, and I will say, I mean, yeah, I'm not gonna say exact numbers, but like, the the advance for the collection is much, much, much, much smaller than the advance For the novels, you know, which was, which is fine. I totally get it. Short story collections don't sell as well as novels do. They just, they do not with, you know, with certain exceptions, you know, but those exceptions you can sort of count, like on your hands, like, you know, Kelly link, you know who, who's only done short story collections, or maybe, you know, Karen Russell's short story collections, I'm sure, sell quite well. So I mean, and I was totally fine with the idea of not getting an advance, that's, you know, equivalent to the novel, because I get it, they're not going to sell as many books as a short story collection. I was just happy that they were going to do it. And also, I mean, if it's if I'm not getting a very big advance for the collection, that means hopefully not go would it'll be easier for me to to actually earn the advance on the collection? Yeah? So, no, I mean, you know, they're definitely taking a risk, buddy. I mean, just even that they're putting it in hardcover is great. Yeah. So, I mean, it'll be, I'm gonna call it an experiment, but it'll be interesting to see how it does, you know, I hope it does well. It was nice to see that, you know, a bigger publisher put out Nathan balangroods collection, wounds, you know, to help that he had, obviously, the movie attached to, geez, some novella, visible filth, or something that was originally put out by something, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 34:25
something, something.

Paul Tremblay 34:28
You should have demanded that you had a cameo in the film, unless you did demand it. I haven't had a chance to see it yet,

Michael David Wilson 34:34
yeah? Well, I mean, you'll have to work and find out, like, okay, maybe I'm off camera, but you might be able to sense that just from the scene, like maybe you can hear me shout something, or maybe I'm in the shadows. So everyone watch that very carefully and also buy the book, even though I've got no stake in that. But Nathan Ballard rude is a fantastic writer. Around, oh yeah, he's getting a lot of praise, and a lot of praise, not only from people within the genre, but from people within literature as a whole. And rightly so, absolutely, absolutely, well, talking about short story writing, I wonder, for those who want to master short story writing, what are two stories that you'd recommend they study, and why do you think they work so well,

Paul Tremblay 35:30
oh, boy. I mean, I don't know if you, I mean, it's semantics. I don't know if you could ever master short story writing. Oh, to me that, you know, I don't want to be, I don't be a jerk, like, push back against the premise, but like, to me, I think the secret to becoming a good writer is reading as widely as possible. So I don't think you could become, you know, proficient at writing a short story from just looking at two. But anyway, yeah,

Michael David Wilson 35:56
I mean, they're not going to only look at two for the rest of their life. It's

Bob Pastorella 36:00
just these two

Paul Tremblay 36:04
that that said, Joyce Carol OTS is, where are you going? Where, where have you been? You know, I think is one of the best short stories written of the 20th century. It taught me a lot. She almost writes the story. I don't know if you've got, if either of you had a chance to read it. Have you by any chance?

Michael David Wilson 36:26
I haven't. It's been a, it's been a long, long, yeah,

Paul Tremblay 36:30
well, yeah, I know it is free. It's it is available online, if you're just a search, you know, Joyce, Carol, where are you going? Where have you been? I one of the lessons that sort of stick with me, you know, and that, because when I first read that as a college, as a college student, it was really a story that opened my eyes and made me want to, like, become a reader like, you know, I was a math major at the time, when I read the story for, like, an English class that I happen to randomly be taking, you know, just blew me away. Like I didn't realize people wrote stuff like this. So anyway, I think one of the really cool things that I think you can see her doing, you know, there is a very much an ambiguous element to the story, whether or not this, there's an older man trying to sweet talk like a 16 or 17 year old, maybe she's not 17. She's probably 15 or 16 girl into going out into his car with him. That's sort of the main part of the story, because she sort of saw him, like out, like at a, like a sonic I mean, but this was like 1970 something, so there was no Sonics, but like that, sort of like, drive in, drive up, eating place kind of thing. Also, I'm getting that part of it wrong, but the main part of the story is like he shows up at her house, and she's home alone, and he's trying to talk her into going out with him, or, like, leaving the house and going into his car. And there's obviously an undercurrent of threatened menace there, like he's obviously up to no good. It's such a simple premise, but the way she writes it, and the way she presents these possible ambiguities. His name is Arnold friend, which you know could be sort of a stand in for an old fiend. So, you know, he might be the devil the way she describes his feet as being too small for being in for the cowboy boots that he's wearing. And there's almost a hint of, you know, is there like a hoof in there or something? I'm not doing justice describing the story. But she almost to me, I like, I almost imagine her sitting down writing that story, almost like in binary code, like all these zeros and ones, and the zeros and ones come from the choices that she presents to her characters, but also the choices she presents to her, to the reader as well, in terms of what you're going to interpret, And if you take like, enough of these simple choices, all the possible paths that you can go into become infinite, even though you're only starting with, is it this or this? Is it this or this? If you present enough of that, you know, it expands into all these, like I said, almost infinite possibilities. So that appeals to the math person in me, but also as a writer, to me, that was just like a fundamental lesson in fiction, like you know, the story comes from the choices that you present to both the characters but also the reader. So that would be number one story for me. Shoot a second story. I'm gonna forget the name of the story. It's terrible, a show education story, not the lottery. It's the intoxicated. And it's a really short story, only, like, 2000 words. Again, I think it's another, you know, perfect lesson in taking a, you know, especially if you're gonna be writing horror, a great lesson in taking, like, a really sort of mundane, realistic scenario, it's a party that adults are throwing, and again, it's another conversation between a younger, you know, teenage girl, although she's not as young, and a drunk older man at the party. And it becomes like, almost like, this weird thing where she's may or may not be like pre se. Changing the end of the world, and this guy's getting really upset, and there's not a lot of action the story. But again, the idea of all these things underneath that could be happening that the characters slowly understand. And the best part is that you, the reader, sort of slowly understand all the implications, sort of at the same time the characters are so you could do, you could do worse than, than reading those two stories as sort of like a base for, you know, writing a good short story,

Michael David Wilson 40:30
yeah. And to be honest, I mean, they seem to have quite a lot in common, so I guess in a way, they could be companion pieces. And I'm actually thinking, if Bob is up for it, we should unbox both of these on our other podcast story unbox, where we analyze short stories. And given that the Shirley Jackson one is so short, I think we could combine them in one episode. So Bob, do you accept my offer to unbox these stories. Are you just gonna make it good? You're not gonna make it awkward.

Bob Pastorella 41:09
I gotta make it awkward. I just, and you know that you mentioned reading, you know those stories in college? That's probably where I experienced the Joyce Carol story too, in college, and there was something about because it's like, you know, you came to reading later, yeah, around that time. And I had been reading before that, you know, since I was probably, you know, old enough to read weird deal about five, you know. And, you know, by the time I got to college, I was, you know, reading a lot of Stephen King, Peter Straub, Ramsay, Campbell, those were the, you know, the writers that were, you know, had books out at the library that I could get, you know, we were just starting to see, you know, in, in the general population, you know, you John skip and Craig Specter, Kathy koja books and all that, you know. And then so you get this, you know, this American literature class, and you're like, I gotta read a bunch of foreign crap, no. And there was, there was quite a few stories that would be considered literature. But also, this is probably the wrong word to use. But also, they were sinister. Yeah, you know achievers, the swimmer, I think that. I think that's who wrote that. You know about the guy who's, he's swimming from pool to pool, you know. And it's these. These are all like in those, I guess, what they call the Norton anthologies, these big books you know, that you that you now use as a door stopper somewhere, you know. But, and those stories were in there, and there were quite a few of them that were, that were that had definitely had a sinister bent to it, and it was like, it was like, I could have been reading this stuff, you know, when I'm glad I went the path I did. But also it opened up a whole other side that I that I didn't realize was there, and I kind of felt like I was cheated. So I spent, like, a lot of time, you know, going through a lot of these stories, and not every story you know, just because you read one and you have the sinister feel to it that you that everything is going to be like that. I spent some time reading Faulkner, going, okay, maybe that's just the one story that was creepy, because the rest of stuff, it's good, but it's not, you know, it's not, not even close to being creepy. So I don't know how if you if your experience was the same or not, um,

Paul Tremblay 43:59
I mean a little bit different only because, like I said, I wasn't an English major. I happened to take the last class I took as a senior was like an English 101, essentially to fulfill. I ended up a math and humanities double major through a series of missteps on my part, but most of my humanities ended up being like a history of philosophy, stuff like that. So the sort of, like the academic approach to fiction was, you know, aside from what we did in high school, was totally new to me, and I was lucky that the professor that I had was a really cool guy. He was a big punk music fan. So was I. So I really connected with him. There. No, you know, he had us read, you know it because it was a one on one classic. He had more freedom, like, it wasn't like, it was an American literature, you know, early 20th century American literature. It was he could basically present what he wanted. So it was like the Joyce Carol Oates story. Also, we read TC Boyle's grew. See Lake, which was, you know, very dark, you know, walk the line of, like, prime horror story. I mean, so that, I mean, those stories helped Ignite, like, you know, the reading sort of passion for me, because it was like this thing of discovery. And I think that's why so many of us who are readers, continue to read, because we keep chasing that, that initial moment of discovery that we all remember, like, from, like, an early favorite story and early favorite book, right? I think whatever your favorite, whatever your favorite is, like, you remember, really, like, oh my god, what is this? This is amazing. I mean, that's it's a discovery. And I know as a reader, that's sort of the moment that I still crave and still chase, and I still get all the time. It's great. So you know, I went off to grad school coinciding with that sort of English class discovery. My wife bought me the stand, but she wasn't married. Then she was my girlfriend at the time. You know, I read the stand. I just, you know, inhaled that, and for the next few years, I just read all the king. And then, because of Stephen and Oates like I, you know, I use dance mcabre, essentially, as a way to, you know, to find other writers, you know. So I read Peter Straub, because he co wrote books with King. I read all the Strahm and etc. So I feel like it's been almost backwards for me. So now that I've sort of, you know, when I read those writers like I started to try to branch out into, you know, quote, unquote, literary fiction, but, you know, with an eye towards what was darker, you know, even if it wasn't horror, necessarily, but like, had, like, a dark tone or feel to it. So, yeah, so I never, like, came away feeling like, like you did, like, oh, man, they've been hiding the good stuff for me. For me, it's always been like, Oh, here's this discovery. It was more the opposite, almost like once I found all this other stuff, like it became, it wasn't, it wasn't pissed, but I was disappointed to find, eventually, in my early readings, that there was a, you know, that there is this stigma attached, attached to genre, when there's clearly so many of These, you know, works, you know, marketed or studied, as you know, literature that are definitely horror stories and that I don't know why. You know, intelligent people can't see that there is, you know, very you know that there is nothing inherent within genre that prevents something from being read seriously. There's nothing inherent within, you know, horror in particular, that prevents it from being well written and having theme and character, etc, right?

Bob Pastorella 47:29
I think that, you know, as I get older, it's, there's some kind of the difference between the two is, is it's separated by the word fun. Is it fun to read, but yet, is it serious, you know, and it's, it's, if it's fun, it can't be literature. And I'm kind of like, no, that's, that's dumb, but, man, I love that you mentioned dance macabre, because that was my I remember checking that book out the library, and I'd already read a couple by King, and I read it, and I was, first of all, I was, I was pissed because it was a non fiction book, and I didn't realize that, oh yeah. And I was like, man, where's the story? You know, I don't care about all the stuff. And then, as I've kept continued to read, looking for the story, I realized that that was the story. And so, you know, he it took a while for the hook to actually sink into my jaw, but once it did, he just reeled me in. And I remember being in my room at my desk and almost copying. I was writing down the the appendix at the back, word for word, you know, because it was a library book, and I didn't have, we know, I didn't have access to to a copier. And this is back when, you know, the concept of having a camera on your phone would have been science fiction. You know, it's like, really the phone is going to be a camera. How they do that? I'm gonna be taking this thing with me. That's gonna be a long course.

Unknown Speaker 49:02
But anyway,

Bob Pastorella 49:05
it's just that was kind of like, my, my education, you know, via Stephen King, is like, you know. So it's like, you get young, younger people now, it's like, what should I read of the older stuff? I'm like, dance macabre. There's an appendage at the end, right? You might not like everything in there, but you need to be familiar with it. And that's, that's the tip of the iceberg.

Paul Tremblay 49:28
Yeah, I've always, I was, always been hoping that he would write, like, not a sequel, necessarily, but maybe, you know, a companion that picks up sort of after the year that was published. Yeah?

Bob Pastorella 49:38
Dancer McCall, yeah, it's macabre.

Paul Tremblay 49:40
Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 49:45
yeah. I think as well, a lot of people used Dan's macabre as like a reading list and a gateway into more and more horror. I mean, it's one of the most important non fiction works that we have. Oh. Yes, absolutely. But, I mean, one of the stories that you highlighted for our patrons to read is swim wants to know if it's as bad as swim thinks so. I wonder why did you choose that one? Uh,

Paul Tremblay 50:17
well, I mean, some of it was just utilitarian. I think that might have been one of the few stories that are available for free online.

Michael David Wilson 50:25
I did one, but,

Paul Tremblay 50:30
I mean, I put that story second in the collection. So, I mean, that's sort of like an important spot, right? It's, I mean, maybe that's another side topic we can talk about, like, how do you put the stories in the order that they go. But to me, like, you know, the story that goes in the second spot has to be, you have to feel pretty good about it. Not that I don't feel good about the rest of them. But anyway, you know that story has a real soft smart for me, just because it has giant monsters in it, maybe, and giant monsters were my gateway to horror. We already talked about my coming to reading late. So for me, my first experience with horror was watching, you know, Saturday afternoon movies. Creature double feature was a program in Massachusetts. You know, in the first movies were always they would show two horror movies. The first one was always like Godzilla or Dan, and those are my favorite, somewhere, sometime, you know, I have to figure out how I just happened. I would love to write a novel, either about or using a giant monster at some point, so, but I, you know, I got to do it with, with the short story, yeah, I mean, other than that, I mean, you know, it's a, it's a pretty damn dark story, and the house, like, at some point, a character sort of holds up or hides in a house that's being constructed. You know, she doesn't live there. She's just sort of not squatting, but more hiding in this house that's being built. And just for fun facts, that that house is my house, like that, the house I live in now was actually a neighbor was building a new house down the street, and we ended up moving into it. So, like, like, most things in my life, I turned it into a horror, yeah, but, you know, yeah, sort of, yeah. I mean, the write what you know thing is so loaded, and, you know, it can mean sort of, like bad things, like, you know, I definitely think writers should write to know, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't take what you have to use to your advantage. I don't know, Michael, you're trying to get me to get me to bet that I'm a secret math user,

Michael David Wilson 52:45
like we would like an exclusive you're prepared to offer?

Paul Tremblay 52:51
Yeah, no, no mess,

Michael David Wilson 52:52
no meth. You heard it first. I can just put that on Twitter now I've been putting these, like, kind of 62nd clips from different interviews. So that'll be a good one. I'm sure people will take away a lot from that, absolutely, yeah, but you mentioned that you've got a deadline for the next novel. I think you said that was coming up in August. So I mean, what if anything? Can you tell us about it? Well,

Paul Tremblay 53:22
its title is survivor song. You know, I have had a book or two change titles like, you know, change from working title to what the title eventually became. Like the cab at the end of the world was the four when I was writing it, and then, you know, with the publisher, we changed it. But survivor song, I do not foresee that changing, because I've made it sort of integral to the story. Like there's a big reason why it's called survivor song, I mean, which isn't all that interesting in terms of the plot, but just for me. But anyway, it's, without saying too much about it, it's sort of a, I guess, a slight riff on a zombie novel, I would say, although it's more, they're not zombies, they're, you know, infected, or the victims are infected with a with a super rabies. So there's no like, you know, people raising from the dead. It's, it's essentially, I try to play it realistically as I possibly can with rabies. It's just that the timeline for infection is greatly increased. Yeah, normally, if you're bitten by a rabid animal, you you know it can take weeks and even months for the virus to travel into your brain. But in this novel, like, the virus maybe infects you within like an hour, depending on where you're bitten,

Bob Pastorella 54:38
so kind of 28 days later, yeah,

Paul Tremblay 54:41
sort of, but

Bob Pastorella 54:44
the different type of virus, yeah, the same esthetic,

Paul Tremblay 54:48
sure, right? Although, I mean, those people there are infected, like within seconds here it takes, it still takes a little bit of time, and the novel really only takes. Place. I mean, there, there are some like asides, but essentially, the main part of the novel takes place over, like, basically four to six hours, you know, in and around Boston during an outbreak of the super rabies. And the story really focuses only on two characters. I mean, yeah, there are more side characters, but there are two main characters, Dr ramola Sherman, who's who's British, but she's living in America. Shout out to all people listening in England. Yeah, and her, her best friend, Natalie, is like 3738 weeks pregnant. So it's the two best friends trying to navigate these four to six hours during the outbreak. And as you can imagine, there's, you know, there are references to zombie things, but there's also, hopefully, some heartbreaking stuff that happens. So we'll see. We'll see.

Bob Pastorella 55:58
Yeah, and I got, I mean, I have to ask because, just because the title, yeah, and crossing my fingers here, but I'm probably way wrong. But survivor song, the first thing that come to my mind was, Tiger. Am I? Am I in the right zone here? Completely not related, so

Paul Tremblay 56:21
I can't even ingest because I'm such a music snob, I would love to join you. But no, not, no survivor, although, okay, maybe my publisher will try to do that as a as a marketing ploy.

Michael David Wilson 56:36
Yeah, I guess if they do, we can retrospectively, in a year's time edit your answer. That's

Paul Tremblay 56:42
right, yeah. Paul Trembley, math and fan of the band, survivor,

Michael David Wilson 56:47
yeah. I mean, you didn't have to add meth into it, but I mean maybe, maybe that's kind of a fair thing. You're like, Look, if you do a good thing for me, I then have to make some sort of sacrifice, some sort of horror logic to it as well. Yes, well, we've got a number of Patreon questions, and the first, or I should say, the first several, from Ryan Whitley. So this is the Ryan Whitley portion of the show, and to begin with, he says, Hey, Paul, as someone who has written successfully in a horror genre in both short story and novel form, what can you tell us about how horror works differently in these different formats, and what are the gifts and challenges of each from your perspective.

Paul Tremblay 57:44
Wow, hard questions. Ryan, so geez, the short stories, obviously the novel, you've got a lot more space that you have to fill. It's not like that you're filling space necessarily. But obviously it's a it's a wider universe that you're dealing with, I don't know. I try to think about a horror, whether it's a novel or a short story, try to think of it as you know, at some point there's going to be a reveal of some terrible truth. You know, most stories or or books or short stories, you know, in literature, it's about like some sort of reveal, like there's a reveal of of a truth and a horror story, it's a terrible truth, right? So I'm always interested in the novel form, especially is having that reveal happen somewhere either earlier in the middle, and then sort of let the aftermath of that reveal lead the way in a short story, sometimes, not every time. I think I tend to have that sort of reveal, like closer toward the end, you know, to have that sort of build up for the short story. I don't know if that makes sense or not. I think one of the fun parts, or the you know, you said, the joys or the gift of short stories, is I feel a lot more freer to experiment with narrative style and point of view and form. Not that I don't in novels. I mean, I think I do a little bit, you know, I'd like to do more. I mean, one of my favorite novels is a House of Leaves by Mark Danielle ski and no matter what Brack McLeod says, that's also his favorite novel, too. So, I mean, I would, you know, someday I would love to do that. You know, the problem is, if you're going to have all those sort of narrative tricks, there has to be a reason for it to be there. Just can't it. Just can't be there for the sake of being there, which I think, unfortunately, some of the issues with Danielle skis later works like I don't think they work as well, because I feel like his postmodern or narrative tricks aren't interwoven into the, actually, the theme of the story. But anyway, it's probably a little bit easier to do in short stories, to have like some sort of trick serve the purpose, or actually be the story. You know, it's. Order to pull off an in novel form. So as when I write short stories, I tend to go looking for, you know, different ways to present the story, which I think is comes across, certainly in my new collection. You know, there's a story that's basically a found diary, but it's got all sorts of like, endnotes and footnotes to it. You know, there's a, obviously, the dog walker story we've talked about a little bit that, you know, they're all notes from dog walkers. So to me again, writing short stories, that's what I like to take advantage of. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 1:00:31
and is there a particular format that you've yet to experiment with that you're hoping to in the future,

Paul Tremblay 1:00:43
man, I don't even know if I should say this, but I'm half toying around with an actual it would be a novel, but written sort of like in a long like prose poem form. But I'm not a poem. I'm not a poet, so that's a problem, yeah? But so I don't know, we'll, we'll see, but something like Beowulf or or, more recently, there was a wonderful novel that came out maybe 10 or so years ago called sharp teeth, by Toby Barlow. I highly recommend it. You know, it's basically told like there's an epic column about werewolves in Los Angeles. It's fabulous. You know? Otherwise, I don't know. I mean, I feel like if I if I had envisioned, like, if I already had in mind, like, the school narrative thing that I would want to do, I would probably already do it, because those are the things that I totally fall in love with instantly and obsess over.

Michael David Wilson 1:01:41
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Do you find other than when you're actually writing a short story collection that's being commissioned? Do you have much time to play around with the shorter form these days?

Paul Tremblay 1:01:57
No, you know, it's hard to, you know, I still teach a full time job, but you know, I don't want to be, you know, I have a family. You don't want to ignore them that much. My wife just turned looked at me and gave me a look. She's hovering, yeah, so no, essentially, I'm only writing short stories now, like if I have an invite, you know, for an anthology or something like that. You know, I wish, you know, I may well, because I've been on book deal for so long. My actually, my book deal runs out this August. So, you know, who knows? I don't know if I'll jump right in to try to start a new novel. Or, you know, maybe I do have a short story or two, I wouldn't mind writing. But for the for the past, you know, hard. You know, since headphone ghosts, essentially the only short stories I've written have been sort of asked for,

Michael David Wilson 1:02:44
yeah, and you said that you can't work on more than one story at once. So when it came to the Amazon short story, you kind of put the novel on hiatus. And I wonder, in terms of picking that back up. I mean, how did that go? Did you have to reread everything you'd written up until that point? Or, I mean, could you just jump back into it? How was it for you?

Paul Tremblay 1:03:15
Oh, definitely, I definitely went back and reread everything I'd written to that point. You know, in some ways, I mean, it's not the worst thing in the world, and I have done that with other novels, maybe not, maybe not taken off as much time as I had for the Amazon story, because ended up being a longer short story. But I'd say it's most novels I probably end up taking, like, a week or two to do a short story. And it is almost as nice sometimes to have in, you know, built in a little chunk away from the novel. Because when you go back, when you go back, like, maybe you're able to take, like, a little bit of a longer view, because you're not so mired in the, you know, in that section of the book that you're at least the way I work, I try to go in the order that I think the book is happening in. So I get so mired in the day to day of like this one scene, and I move, like, very slowly, you know, forward. So when you take a time off like that, when you come back, it does force you to sort of look at everything. You know, is it holding together? See if it works? You know, when you reread it, does it? Does it change? Like, the path forward and stuff like that. So, I mean, it was

Bob Pastorella 1:04:21
a little almost like looking at it with fresh eyes. Yeah. No, it definitely, it

Paul Tremblay 1:04:25
definitely is, you know. So, I mean, it certainly was hard to go back to the hard to get sort of that ball rolling again. But, you know, I think, as a writer, you know, try to take when you can try to be positive, because most of the time we're being negative, you know, I tried to, you know, use that time off as a positive thing to give, you know, as Bob just said, give myself like a fresh perspective, fresh pair of eyes.

Michael David Wilson 1:04:49
Yeah, I think as a general rule, it's just a good idea to try to be positive anyway. So it's something, yeah,

Paul Tremblay 1:04:57
sure you.

Michael David Wilson 1:05:03
Thank you so much for listening to this is horror. Paul Tremblay. We'll be back again next time for the second and final part of the conversation. But of course, if you want to get it ahead of the crowd, if you want to get every episode ahead of the crowd, then become our Patreon over@www.patreon.com forward slash, this is horror. And thank you to our newest patrons. Thank you to Alice Phelan, Kevin Helen and Sean Hossain Mansouri, so glad that you have decided to support the podcast, and we welcome you to the family. We welcome you to the community. And if you haven't done so already, do consider joining the writers forum on Discord. It's one of the best perks that we have over on Patreon. It is a place where you can talk with other fans of the podcast, and you can share your writing. You can have your stories critiqued by other patrons, and, of course, you can find out about current markets as well. So not only do you get to have beta readers critiquing your work, but then you can find somewhere to actually sell the stories afterwards. So it's a big part of Patreon. And for other people who aren't quite convinced by the writers forum, don't you worry, we've got other bonuses. You get to submit questions to each and every interviewee. We've got Brian Keene coming up very shortly. We've also got Joseph De lacy returning to the show for the first time in probably five years. I believe it's been a long, long time. But I cannot wait to chat with Joseph in Well, I think it's about 10 days from the time of recording, so that one is coming up very soon indeed. We're also going to be chatting with Nicole Cushing, Nick Corp on Matthew M Bartlett and many more people on the podcast, so many people to submit your questions for, and it's only $1 so check us out. Www.patreon.com forward slash. This is horror. Okay, before I wrap up a quick word from our sponsors,

C.V. Hunt 1:07:47
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David Irons 1:08:21
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Michael David Wilson 1:08:52
seeing as this episode was with Paul Tremblay, I'm going to end with a Paul Tremblay quote, and this is from a head full of ghosts, being asked to read another writer's rough draft is the literary equivalent of being asked to help a friend move a couch to a new place. I'll see you in the next episode for part two of Paul Tremblay, but until then, take care of yourselves. Be good to one another. Read horror, keep on writing and have a great, great day.