TIH 409: Hailey Piper on The Possession of Natalie Glasgow, Benny Rose, the Cannibal King, and Making Horror Gay AF

Michael David Wilson 0:28
Welcome to This is horror, a podcast for readers, writers and creators. I'm Michael David Wilson and every episode alongside my co host, Bob pastorella, WeChat with masters of horror about writing, life lessons, creativity and much more. Now today's guest is Hayley Piper, and I believe Bob that you have her bio.

Bob Pastorella 1:01
Yes, I do. Haley Piper writes horror and dark fantasy. She is the author of the recently released queen of teeth, the worm and his kings, Benny rose, the cannibal King and the unfortunate elements of my anatomy, which is a short story collection. Her short fiction has appeared in the year's best hardcore horror flash fiction online tells the terrify and many more. She lives with her wife in Maryland, where she haunts their apartment making spooky noises. And that is Haley Piper,

Michael David Wilson 1:36
ooh. All right. Well, we got into so much in this conversation, as with a lot of these. This is the first of a two parter. So in this episode, we talk about Haley's early life, and we talk about some of those early books, like the possession of Natalie Glasgow and Benny rose the cannon booking also talk about making horror gay as fuck. So a lot of interesting things in this conversation. Yeah,

Bob Pastorella 2:12
it was, it was a great conversation with her. I think that everyone's really going to enjoy it. We get into like her process and what, what she, you know, goes through working on her stories, what each one means to her. And it's just a fascinating conversation, and everyone's really gonna love it,

Michael David Wilson 2:35
all right? Well, before we get to it, a little bit of an advert break

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Michael David Wilson 3:41
Well, a small note before we get to the conversation, and that is just for the first five minutes, my audio quality is not quite as good as it usually is, because there was a bit of a malfunction with my cool recorder, but I was quick to sort it, and yes, five minutes later, you can get the quality of the Michael David Wilson voice that you deserve and expect. So. With that said, Here it is. It is Haley Piper on. This is horror. Hey. Haley, welcome to this is horror. Hi. Thank

Hailey Piper 4:26
you for having me.

Michael David Wilson 4:27
It's a pleasure. So I was looking through your bio, and it says you're originally from the haunted woods in New York. Were they actually haunted. Let's talk about that.

Hailey Piper 4:43
Well, there are ghost stories. I don't know if they're actually haunted, but there is a there's a house in, there's a house out, like, probably 15 minutes from where I grew up. It's like the last house that was part of an of a village that used to be in the woods. There, and people will, kind of like, will go there, out there at night to do like, ghost sightings and stuff. And supposedly, if you stay there through the night, you can hear like babies crying in the woods or something.

Michael David Wilson 5:13
Damn, did you? Did you go out to that house? I mean, you didn't. I didn't

Hailey Piper 5:25
even want to know where it was exactly. I just knew my, um, my uh, stepdads cousin was like, inviting us all over to go there, to go out there, and it's like, you know, I don't know if that's real, but I don't really want to mess with it.

Michael David Wilson 5:41
Yeah, so it sounds like you'd prefer, ideally, then, to keep the kind of horror and the hauntings on the page and on the screen, rather than, I

Hailey Piper 5:50
mean, that's the nice thing about horror fiction, is you, you have some control, like you're choosing to you're choosing to experience it. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 6:00
yeah,

baby's crying if you stay over, not really. You know what I'd be looking for, to be honest,

Hailey Piper 6:13
right? It's not that's not a fun, scary, it's that's more of a like, you know, am I still going to hear them when I go home later, yeah, kind of scary,

Michael David Wilson 6:22
yeah. And I mean, as someone who's experienced babies crying in the night, not not from a haunting, there was an actual baby. I mean, if you hear it enough, then sometimes in the day when the baby's not crying, it kind of place tricks on your mind. It's like, can I still hear a baby crying? No, I think that's just imagined. It could also be to do with sleep deprivation. I suppose

Hailey Piper 6:52
that's true.

Michael David Wilson 6:55
So apart from absolutely not going to that house. Wonder, what other early life lessons did you learn growing up?

Hailey Piper 7:07
Um, honestly, I think the woods are kind of scary on their own because the it's, I mean, I don't know how it is now I'm I haven't really been there much over the past, like 18 years, but when I was a kid like, you know, you have the port, the back porch light, and then the yard, and then you've got the first trees at the edge of the yard, and then just absolute, like, black curtain behind that, and the woods just go on and on behind it. And it's just, I don't know, it always just feels, you know, like there's something there. And, you know, it's probably just like a skunk or or, you know, a deer or whatever, but it's just like you don't want to wander too far. Like, even when I was with other people, like, like friends would come over, whatever it was, just kind of like, yeah, don't go as far as, like, the two giant boulders that are back there, because things like to live under them, and you don't want to get bit or anything. It's just, it's just spooky, just generally spooky. So you kind of learn to respect it a bit. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 8:11
yeah.

I've got this very precise image nowadays foreboding boulders. And yeah, I don't want to look under the MIFARE

Bob Pastorella 8:24
that reminds me of where I'm living now. I live in an apartment complex, and there's a two block area, and it's completely undeveloped, which is basically my backyard, and there's no all the all the lights for the parking are down. So I have my neighbors, my neighbor has a spotlight, and they finally fixed my porch light. And when I'm coming home from work, if I'm working late, it's hilarious, because I'm like, getting out of my vehicle and walking as fast as I can to my house because I'm parked right up against the woods, and I'm like, laughing to myself, going to fucking write horror really, you know. But I'm like, going, I gotta get inside, because

Hailey Piper 9:07
that's, that's the great part. Because, because we, I think if you're a horror writer, you you get scared more easily. I think, I think the, I think the horror writers who don't get scared or missing out.

Bob Pastorella 9:22
You're right that if I think the the people who write the best are people who are the ones who can actually get scared of shit, yeah, you know, and not, not that other people couldn't. But sometimes it almost feels clinical, so, and I like it to be more organic, because there's a lot more emotion tied to it, yeah, and I get scared shitless in the dark, you know? And I'm just like, I'm trying to get from here. And I'm just, I thought I was thinking about it the other night because I had to work like I pull in as soon as I turn out my headline. It's, I'm like, fuck, it's dark, damn. It's dark. And I'm like, Okay, let me get let me get out, grab all my gear and everything, and start walking to the apartment. And I noticed my pace is, like, really brisk. And I'm like, going, I'm a fucking horror writer, and I'm scared of this shit. But like you said, that's probably a good thing.

Hailey Piper 10:20
Yeah, yeah. I think, I mean, some of it, some of it is just kind of, and this may be, this may be reaching a little bit, but it like some of it, I feel, is like it's just genetic memory, you know, the it being dark was always more dangerous for our species. And some of it is just you know, some who's learned just you know, depending on who you are, you're in more danger or not, depending on you know your your where society sees you. And in other cases, I think some people actively resist it. And I don't know if that's for the best, because sometimes that, that kind of, you know, little bit of what might seem like silly paranoia could, yeah, it could help your writing. It could also save your life one day.

Bob Pastorella 11:16
That's true too.

Michael David Wilson 11:18
Yeah. Well, talking about things that would be dangerous for our species. And this is one of my ridiculous tangential segues, but I understand one of the first books that you read was Jurassic Park. And yes, actually it was that that kind of spurred on your writing. So, I mean, talk us through that a little bit, and I understand too, you were seven or eight years old when you first read Jurassic Park. So that's, that's a fairly complicated text for a seven year old.

Hailey Piper 12:00
Well, I can't say that I actually understood a lot of the science. You know, I was reading it for the, you know, the the dialog and the dinosaurs. I mean, did read the whole thing? Like, I don't want to be like, I skipped over parts because I couldn't understand. I read the words I just didn't know what they meant. But, yeah, I mean, it had dinosaurs in it. So that was like, motivation for me to try to understand things and and, like, I got enough about, like, the issues with the dinosaur populations changing and stuff, but it's been, I've not touched that book since then. So that's, it's been almost 30 years at this point. But I was, I was, I'd never read a book that big or complex before with, like, multiple, multiple points of view and like, these interesting, like, you know, you know, situations and such. So it was like, oh, I want to do this. And it wasn't like a big like, ox when I'm going to be when I grew up, like, I back then I wanted to be a movie director still, but I was like, this is neat. So I wrote my own little rip off story called Cretaceous Park. And it was probably, it's probably 1010, or 12 pages of just dinosaur mayhem. But um, yeah, so that was, that was the start of it,

Michael David Wilson 13:24
yeah. And did anyone else get to experience the 10 or 12 pages of dinosaur mayhem? Did you? Did you read it to friends or family? What became of it?

Hailey Piper 13:38
My I think my mom read it, and I think my grandfather read it, and I think that was it. There may have been others. It was so long ago. I mean, I tried, I didn't, it's funny, because I went in spurts, because, like, I wrote that, and then I didn't really touch, I didn't write anything else, until I was like, 11, maybe 10, and I was trying to write a werewolf story by no we there was the one about the UFOs and the chickens. Oh, I forgot about that until now. There was one I try. I was always trying to write these by hand, because our computer barely worked like this is the DOS days for us, just because we had, we couldn't afford a, like, a more up to date computer. So it was all, like older stuff, but, um, it was just easier to write it on notepads. But I had one where, because I used to love, like, watching, like, 50s B movies back then, um, so I had one that was kind of like a mix of a few of those. And it was like UFOs trying to turn all the chickens into giant chicken monsters, as that was their that was going to be how they tried to take over the world. And I remember that was when I first wrote curse words in. To it. Because I was like, Well, that's what you do in an adult book and and so you have to, you have to, you have to have characters cursing. Because that's what Michael Crichton really taught me with classic Park, was to have characters cursing.

Michael David Wilson 15:15
Yeah, I mean, and it makes sense as well. I mean, if they're a giant chicken monsters running about you're probably not just gonna say, Oh, damn, that's really annoying. So you got afraid the cast is in, and what an interesting way to take over the world too. Yeah, I don't

Hailey Piper 15:38
think that would be super effective. But again, I was, I was still be, like, I didn't have an a lot of, I wasn't watching a lot of modern movies, so as far as I knew, like there's probably some of the giant claw in there, and Earth versus the flying saucers. So like, as far as I was concerned, neither, neither earth nor the aliens had very sophisticated technology.

Michael David Wilson 16:00
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I suppose as well, it depends upon the intelligence of that particular alien species. I mean, if they weren't so bright, then maybe it's like, well, we got a kick in. We have the technology to turn it into a bigger kick in. Let's see if that one will work. Well, I wonder too, what were the kind of movies and TV shows you were watching that new of course, said that you were watching some 50s B movies. Did that kind of form the majority of your your watching diet, as it were,

Hailey Piper 16:42
I tried to make it so, like my my family, could want me to watch, like Disney movies and comedies. And eventually they did win me over into to doing that too. But I was always more engaged if there was, like a monster, an alien or something weird. But so, like a lot of times, it was just re watching the blob or the beast from 20,000 fathoms, or them, or, you know, all those kinds of things, the thing from another world. I wasn't the original fly. I wasn't ready for the 80s remakes of those movies, like I came upon them by accident, like I was nine, and I turned like I went to the Sci Fi Channel, and it was like the fly. And I was like, This doesn't look like the fly. There's no Vincent Price here. And instead, I just watched this thing. I was this movie I'm completely unprepared for where, like, baboon is getting turned inside out, and like, Jeff Goldblum is like, like, just getting angrier, and there's sex in it and stuff. And I was just like, I turned it off before I got to the end. And I'm kind of glad I did once, like I was older and actually watched the rest of the movie, because I would not have been like, I watched the freaking dream sequence where she gives birth to the giant, like, maggot thing and, and I'm just like, oh, well, you know, I guess, I guess I made it okay out okay despite that. But you know, you get to the end and he's fully turned into the freaking fly, and it's just like, No, I'm probably good that I didn't see that, along with carnosaur and the 70s, the Donald Sutherland Invasion of the Body Snatchers and all the other shit, my parents did not stop me from watching.

Michael David Wilson 18:25
Yeah. Were your parents big genre fans themselves? So, yeah,

Hailey Piper 18:30
nope. They just, um, they felt I had a good understanding of the difference between fiction and reality. Um, so they just, they weren't worried too much. They probably should have been a little more worried than they were, um, but, I mean, it was okay. I mean, you know, nothing bad happened or anything. I didn't get attacked by, you know, the fly or Jeff Goldblum or anything.

Michael David Wilson 18:58
Yeah, yeah,

yeah. It's a shame when we talk to writers that got attacked by Jeff Goldblum in their childhood, just one of those monsters, one of those things you have to be prepared for.

Well, I understand that it was reading it by Stephen King, where you took your writing to the next level, and you decided this was something you wanted to do, kind of very seriously, and it became a passion for you. So I mean, talk us through the impact of it? Well,

Hailey Piper 19:43
I don't think it's so uncommon for that to be like a springboard book for a lot of writers in, at least in the horror genre, like I feel like there's a lot of people like this was, you know, reading Stephen King's. It was a moment for them, yeah. But. But yeah, I had, like, I kind of had, like, faded out from wanting to be a movie director and didn't really know what I wanted to do, and then, like, I read it, I was probably a little young for it, but whatever. Yeah, and after I, like, I had that's such an impact on me, because it was for me that was such a complex narrative, the jumping back and forth between the when they were children and when they're adults, the impact that that has the way, the way that certain sequences flow into each other, especially the climax when they're below the city. And I must, I probably read the last 300 pages in one sitting, like it was two in the morning when I finished. And like, I'd never read a book that went where it went with, like, the the final showdown and such. Like, I like, that was, like video game level, like, like, confrontation. I know that sounds weird because, but like, I used to, I was playing a lot of JRPGs and stuff. So it's like, always, like, world ending shit. And it was just like, I don't know. Like, I was just like, I didn't know books could do this. Um, was kind of how I was looking at it. Um, and after that, I was like, Yeah, this is what I want to do. I want to make people feel the way this made me feel so of course, then after that, and the next thing I start to do is this, like, serial killer thing with like, where he's like, kind of invisible, but kind of in people's heads. And it was such it was so terrible. It was so so terrible. And then after that, I tried to do like my own Lord of the Rings thing, and that was terrible. But, I mean, that's a natural thing, like you have to write not so good for a long time before you can get better. So I

Michael David Wilson 21:53
mean, I think as well, it's very natural that you want to imitate all your kind of favorite stories and movies and video games, so you almost have to exercise them so that you can get to the good stuff and you can get to the original things. Yeah,

Hailey Piper 22:12
it's, I think it's good practice. Like, I know a lot of people like, kind of look down on fanfic, but I really don't think it's such a bad thing to kind of like, like, when, when somebody is younger and they're like, working out stuff with their imagination, with with toys based on a franchise they like, you don't say to them, it's like, why don't you build your own toys? You know? So it's just like, I don't think it's such a bad thing to kind of play with somebody else's tools a little bit as you're learning before you start doing your own things,

Bob Pastorella 22:46
right? It's, it's like every beginning writer starts with fanfic. I mean, to me, that's just, that's probably the natural progression of it,

Hailey Piper 22:57
yeah. I mean, even if you name them your own character. You know, you put your own characters as your own world. And if a lot of times it's still imitating, it's basically, I mean, it's even if it's a copy paste, it's the same function, exactly,

Michael David Wilson 23:12
yeah, yeah, I think you're absolutely right. Then there are so many people who are starting off writing fanfic, but they're just not naming it that. And even when you look back years later, it's like, yeah, I was clearly imitating, you know, this or that.

Hailey Piper 23:33
And I think interestingly, you see, you see books nowadays that, um, they're now, they're kind of, they're kind of flipping it around now that they're experienced writers, where they're taking, you know, public domain properties and not just imitating, but doing their own new things with those. There's, I have a few, like, I know I have, like, what big teeth is, like a Red Riding Hood set up. And that's like, the that's like, the simplest thing you can, like, that's the easiest example is just fairy tales, because they are so baked into a lot of our cultural stuff. But um, Wendy Darling by AC wise just came out, um, I think last month or the month before, and it's like, it's kind of its own, like, sequel to Peter Pan in kind of like a dark fantasy ish horror thing where Peter Pan essentially kidnaps Wendy's daughter. Yeah. And also, with Peter Pan, there's a John langen story that, now I can't remember the name of, but it's like, kind of like it's kind of a pastiche of both Peter Pan and the great god Pan. Oh, wow, yeah, I wish I could remember the title

Bob Pastorella 24:49
that sounds coming from John. That sounds really crazy. It's,

Hailey Piper 24:54
it was, I didn't realize what he was doing at first, because, you know, he, he hides it in layers. Oh, yeah. But then, like, as it kind of like, dawned on me, I had to, I was listening on audiobook, and I had to pause, and it's like, Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me, John, you really doing this? And then, of course, I played the rest and loved it.

Bob Pastorella 25:15
Well, you know, I can see how, some how, some people would kind of frown upon, you know, using stuff that's in public domain. It's like, well, why can't you come up with your own stuff? But you know, it's in public domain, it's available. If you can bring something new to the table, then fucking go for it.

Hailey Piper 25:38
I mean, those the same people saying that it's like, don't pick on authors who are trying something interesting. Go pick on the big studios who are making, like, their 10th Robin Hood and King Arthur movies that aren't going to make any money this year.

Michael David Wilson 25:55
And I mean, anyone who's saying, why don't you do your own thing? It's like, well, you've kind of missed the point. They are doing their own thing. You know that they're taking it and then they're twisting it into something unique and original. And, I mean, if you were to say, okay, they can't, you know, use that as inspiration, it's like, well, then you probably can't use anything, because inspiration, if you want to be that hard line, then there is no original idea. No one can write anything,

Hailey Piper 26:28
right? I mean, you're always, even if you come up with something like super unique, it's the ingredients like you know you're you can make your own recipe, you can make your own um dish, but the ingredients are still coming from somewhere,

Michael David Wilson 26:44
yeah, yeah, that's how I look at it. Yeah, yeah. I think it's a good way to look at it. Well, what was the first story that you submitted for publication?

Hailey Piper 26:57
Oh, let's see. Um, that was recent, because I've only been active with this since 2018 I had a long stint with depression where I just wasn't I just wasn't writing anymore. But shoot, it was the house of shapes. I wrote a terrible version of that back in spring 2018 and I started submitting it to places, and it did not find a home for the longest time, and I revised it and revised and it pretty much became a completely new story over time. Ended up being my 50th story sale in the end, you know, not, obviously, not like, not like, not like, it was both the first and the 50th, but it was the first one that I was sending to places. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 27:51
yeah. And, I mean, so you said that you had a lung stint with depression, and then it was in 2018 you started submitting. So, I mean, I wonder, what was it that gave you the impetus, you know, in spite of the Depression, to submit a story.

Hailey Piper 28:18
Well, getting out of the depression was, what did it honestly, therapy and medication. Once I wasn't feeling that way anymore. I I was like, I kind of sat down. I just like, I felt like writing again, so I so I did. And then I was just like, I'm going to try it. I haven't done it before, so I'm just going to try it. And then I shortly after that, I read this. I think it was a tweet of somebody talking about how she had a rejection quota. She had an annual rejection quota where she had to get a certain number, like, she had to get 100 rejections a year, and that would keep her submitting, regardless of rejections, because if you get an acceptance, then awesome, but if you get a rejection, well, you've added to your rejection quota. You're doing a good job. You're still you're trying. So I just kept going. And I mean, eventually you keep going enough, you keep trying to improve what you're submitting. You know, something gets through. And I think for four or five months later, I sold my first story. It was a different story, but I sold one because I kept writing anyway, as I was submitting, but so I sold a story to to Planet scum, and then this year, I ended up guest editing an issue for them, with with their editor, with one of their editors.

Michael David Wilson 29:55
Yeah, that's remarkable. And you know what a journey. In only three years to go from selling your first story to guest editing?

Hailey Piper 30:09
Yeah. I mean, the thing is, and I know, I know somebody had just posted this recently, but like, you know, publishing and writing, it's, it's an iceberg, like, you know, that stuff that everybody's seen for these past three years. It doesn't take into account that, like, you know, I was, what, 32 then, so like, there was, like, going from eight to 32 and obviously there, you know, there were a couple years in there where I wasn't writing, but like, let's just wind back enough that I was, and it's like, that's still 20 years of working on this stuff within that time. Oh yeah, I just wasn't sending it anywhere, but I was showing people, and they were telling me, this is terrible, and then telling me ways I could make it better. And little by little, I did. But that's like, that's the thing. Like, P I, you know, you hear about like, a breakout hit, and it's like, but you're not seeing all the work that they put into it. Nobody just, like snaps their fingers and they're an amazing writer. It takes so much work.

Michael David Wilson 31:04
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we've said this before that it's remarkable just how hard you have to work and for how long to be a overnight success in inverted commas,

Hailey Piper 31:15
exactly. That's exactly it. Yeah,

Bob Pastorella 31:22
yeah. Last month I had somebody, we were talking about books, one of my customers and and reading, and they like horror, and they're like, he heard of this new guy, Paul Tremblay. And I'm like, Yeah, well, it's not new.

Bob Pastorella 31:37
But I said, Yeah, but he, I mean, he, he's, he's come a long way, and he's doing great. But you like going, what do? What the fuck are you talking about?

Michael David Wilson 31:49
Yeah, yeah.

Hailey Piper 31:52
I some. I think somebody puts it. Did that with Sylvia, Moreno, Garcia and Stephen Graham Jones as well. And I'm just like, I think they've been writing. I think they've been publishing for a couple decades.

Michael David Wilson 32:08
Yeah, yeah. What was there someone recently then who said both Sylvia Moreno, Garcia and Stephen Graham Jones were New Kids on the Block.

Hailey Piper 32:20
Yeah? Yeah. Last Last summer, when each of them had books on the New York Times bestseller list, like, Oh, I love just, I love discovering new talent. And it's just like,

Michael David Wilson 32:35
yeah. It's like, it's like, Well, I agree with a statement, I like discovering new talent as well, but it seems an odd comment to put in this article about Stephen Graham Jones, so that that was a random interjection. Let's get back to what we're talking about. Yeah. I mean, a similar thing happened with Josh maliman and the success of bird box, because with it being his first published novel, you know, for a lot of people, it was like, wow, look at this new writer, this new overnight success, and it's like, yeah, well, what about the other 20 novels on his hard drive

Hailey Piper 33:23
exactly.

Michael David Wilson 33:23
I mean, let's talk about the possession of Natalie Glasgow. Because, I mean, I think this was probably the novella that kind of put you on the radar of a lot of people within the horror community. So how did this story come

Hailey Piper 33:43
about? Let's see. Well, I wanted to, I mean, you know, I had the idea and I wanted to tell it, and I thought it was going to be a short story, and it kind of just kept getting it as I was getting getting into it and getting involved in it. It just wasn't behaving that way. And I honestly had to start it over about like, four times, because I kept trying to start the story from the beginning when Natalie first starts showing symptoms. And I just kept getting I kept losing interest. Because I was like, this is just the exorcist. Like, it's just the exorcist again. And finally, I was just like, why don't I just start it from where it gets interesting then? And so that's what I did, and it seemed to work out pretty well. And I wrote it, not I think it was the next thing I wrote after the house of shapes, but because it was so long, I didn't have anywhere I could submit it, so I just kind of let it sit for a bit. Um, I probably let it sit for like three months, maybe, yeah, about three months. And then finally I was just like, I'm just gonna put it out there. Um, I don't know what else to do with it. So it ended up. It ended up, pop. Publishing the same day as the first short story that got published in tricksters treats volume two. The was the eater of rainbows, I think so that was the Yeah. So the the novella and the in the first short story end up going out at the same time that October 2, 2018 and I didn't really know much with the horror community at the time, I just kind of started checking around and seeing if anybody would be interested in reading it. And thankfully, like, you know, Lillian and Tracy, like sci fi and scary and ladies of horror fiction and a few other places like, yeah, they were, they were interested in, they were picking up. And they, they were, you know, some of the reviews were a bit weirded out by it. And it was, it was kind of, but it was, it was neat. And as it got into 2019, and I was talking to more people, I was like, encouraged, hey, you should put out a paperback. And I think Steve, Steve stred was, like, talking about maybe changing the title, because it didn't used to be the possession like Glasgow. It used to be the haunting of Natalie, Glasgow, but, um, it just, yeah, we just ended up, I ended up changing. I was like, Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. And I learned a lot. I learned a lot from people who were already in the community. It was extremely helpful. And nowadays it's, it's funny to me, people still keep finding it. And I think it's, it's just, it's an easy it's a quick read. It's definitely my shortest book, and it's just something people can pick up and kind of eat through in a sitting or two. And, they seem to like it.

Michael David Wilson 36:43
Yeah, what were some of the other lessons then that you learned in terms of putting that out, perhaps things that you would and wouldn't do differently if you were to do it again?

Hailey Piper 36:57
Well, I'm I kind of stay away from self publishing now. I think there are people who know how to do that better than I do. And, yeah, it's just that's just not for me as much. But yeah, I mean, a lot of stuff I learned was as far as like, once, once, like Gwendolyn KAIST was one of the people who encouraged me to put out a paperback. Eddie generous. Of unnerving offer to offer to cover for me. Um, and so I, but I put it out, and I didn't really understand was doing the formatting and stuff so, like, it went through a bunch of changes post paperback publication, that it's that kind of stuff I definitely would look into beforehand nowadays. But as far as, like, Yeah, I mean, honestly, I'm, I'm no, I don't mind how it went. I, I like that. I started the way I did. I, you know, I'm still proud of it after these, like, almost three years.

Michael David Wilson 38:00
And so that that was the start, then of your professional relationship with Eddie, generous and unnerving.

Hailey Piper 38:08
I mean, see, I'm not sure the timeline there, no, I think, no, technically, it was submitting, submitting this terrible story to the Stephen King issue of unnerving and that being rejected. So that was my first, that was my first professional interaction with Eddie, but, and he totally made the right call. That story was, was dreadful, but, um, I think that by the time he had offered that cover, I believe I had already pitched Benny rose to him, because I it had, it had in october 2018 it had a different cover that I had put together myself. So this was once in in july 2019 I think is when I put out the paperback. And he, at that point, he had offered a cover for it. I think I might be wrong. He might have done that earlier, but it was around then. It was around when I pitched Benny rose for the rewind or die call. So, like, those things all happened very close together, like in the spring of 2019

Michael David Wilson 39:20
Yeah, and the rewind or die series is such a fun series. And so yeah,

Bob Pastorella 39:30
definitely, yeah.

Michael David Wilson 39:31
And so many great authors have kind of been discovered as a result. And of course, both ladies at the fright, Mackenzie Kira and Lisa Quigley and Jessica. Guess it's, it's, it's so fun. And there's not a lot of series like that, these kind of throwbacks to the 70s and 80s, that kind of slasher era. I.

Hailey Piper 40:00
Yeah, it's, and they're, they're fun books. You can usually read them in a sitting or two, like I've read a few of them in one sitting before, like a food fright by Nico Bell and transmuted by Eve harms. I think that just came out the other month. Yeah, and yeah, and Lisa's and Mackenzie's, Lee Castro's, I mean, there's just, there's, there's a lot of interesting things. And it's, it's very experimental too. Like, despite, like, the fact that it is a throwback thing, it's bringing a lot of different approaches to ideas or, or at least things you don't get to see very much. Like, you know, like Eve harms book, like, there's this, there's this, not early 90s movie called freaked and like, I you would not see a book like that. That's like, that kind of vibe typically in like, like, from a big four publisher. Like, this is a lot of, this is all stuff you can you're only going to get from, like, you know, indie and, like, rewind or die, just this kind of, like, I don't know, it's very visceral. It's very like, no, it's just a fun series. And I'm happy that I got to be a part of it. Um, especially so, so early, and it's thing because I, I pitched Benny rose with, with the rewind or die thing. And like, right when he was announcing it, and like, a bunch of, like, a bunch of guys were giving him a hard time because he only wanted to hear pitches from women first. And so I was one of them. Just sent that out once he like, once he said he was good with it. I wrote up the book in a few weeks and and sent it off. So I'm glad I got to be part of that with Benny rose the cannibal King. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 41:52
yeah. Well, on the topic of Benny rose the cannibal King, I mean, is there an actual legend that inspired this? Not

Hailey Piper 42:07
really, I made him up. I made him up from nothing like I honestly, his legend came about because for a time I couldn't actually decide what his deal was going to be like that. He didn't originate necessarily, with the pitch itself. I had been trying to make a book work about this town that had this like, you know, urban legend. And I was struggling because I had these different ideas for how the monster would be, what, what exactly was going on with the backstory. Like I had my main characters, like I had Desiree and Gabrielle and Sierra and Jesse all situated, but I the monster was what I was having the hardest time with. And so when the pitch came, it actually ended up solving my problems, because I, like, it was like a forehead smack moment. It was like, ah, said it in the 80s, and that, obviously that alone wouldn't solve all the narrative problems I was having, but it, it cleared the path, like it whatever damn was messing things up, it broke that and I was able to figure out the rest of the problems. So I was at that point, I was like, he's all of these things. He's all the ideas I've come up with, like with this that I couldn't decide on, because every kid in Blackwood has their own idea. Has their own little story they've come up with for Benny rose, and they just pass the stories around, and the best ones get retold, and the other ones get forgotten, and people make up new ones. It's just so his, his, I guess you could say his Legends comes from just being indecisive. But eventually it all worked out, and I figured out which was the real Benny versus the stories that the kids tell. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 43:53
yeah. I mean, the fun thing about that is you almost then invite the readers to come up with their own narrative and their own legend. And, yeah, I kind of, Oh, totally, love that stuff within fiction. And you know, the the types of books where they're almost, they almost continue. It's like the writing continues through the reading. Yeah,

Hailey Piper 44:18
I mean, that's and that's kind of the message of the book a little bit, is you don't need to get like because the it's funny for a series that's kind of like aimed with nostalgia. The themes of the themes of Benny rose the cannibal King, is how nostalgia can be dangerous, how being stuck in the past can be dangerous, and that is important too. It's okay to love that stuff, but it's also important to make sure you look ahead and are looking to new stories and new possibilities.

Michael David Wilson 44:52
Yeah, yeah.

Were there many urban legends that you had growing up as a kid? I mean, there's a lot of urban legends and and folklore throughout your fiction, um,

Hailey Piper 45:06
I mean, aside from the the house in the woods that I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, not, not really, like, interesting, different ones, like, I heard the standard ones with, like, you know, the the guy with the hook, with the, you know, the car and, like, you know, the Pop Rocks and soda and that stuff. And like, you know, an urban legend came out the the movie when I was, like a teenager. So we all saw that, so that, like any, any that I was missing, that made sure to fill in the gaps, the one like the or the, you know, babysitters getting a call from inside the house, that kind of stuff like, so, you know, it's a lot of the standard ones that you expect. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 45:50
yeah, yeah. I'm trying to think the the Avan legend with the hook and the car. I don't know if being British, I just missed that one is that one, it's,

Hailey Piper 46:07
I mean, there's different versions and like, you can, like, it's, it varies the details of it, but just like that, like a couple is at, like, you know, Lovers Lane, or somewhere they can make out, or whatever. And the the rate the music on the radio gets interrupted by a broadcast that some like, you know, murder has escaped from an asylum hook for a hand, and they hear a scraping on the roof that might be him. And the girlfriend has the boyfriend go check it out, and he he goes out, and she's like, wondering where he is, and she is scraping. He's scraping. And then it what happens changes, obviously, but it's like, you know, it's his. It ends up being that his feet are dragging on the roof of the car because he's the murderer is hanged in from the tree over it. There's different but again, there's different versions, like, um and uh, what's it called the husband stitch by Carmen Maria Machado goes through a lot of different, different versions of stuff and like, that ends up being a wraparound bit for some of that. Like, just going back to that kind of story,

Michael David Wilson 47:22
yeah. It sounds like the start of many slasher movies as well, the old lovers making out, and there's a noise better go and check on it. It's like, well better not if you want to live. I've watched this film before. I know how

Hailey Piper 47:40
here's another noise, and you just start the ignition and drive away. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 47:44
yeah, happy. There

Bob Pastorella 47:47
would be no story. They just roll the credits.

Hailey Piper 47:48
Yeah, exactly. And that's and that's what, and that's why that's boring. Like, a lot of people are just like, why don't they just do the obvious things? Then there's no story. Yeah? Like, let's have a story. Yeah,

Bob Pastorella 48:00
no, we say horror has to happen when someone makes some really dumb decision.

Hailey Piper 48:06
Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of us, I mean, you know, you have to look at the you from a clinical standpoint, that ends up being what it is. And I think a lot of people end up simplifying it to that point. It's just like, but like, Okay, but why did they really do that? It's like, because they didn't want to leave. Like, that's the real reason. Like is because, you know, you're making out and stuff. And probably one, you know, I don't know, we all have, we're all human, and we all have like, desires, and we make dumb choices and stuff. And, you know, I, I mean, I think, I think a natural thing is that a lot of people just assume that the bad thing isn't going to happen to them.

Bob Pastorella 48:50
Yeah, right. It's almost like facing their fears,

Hailey Piper 48:53
right? I mean, they don't know they're in a horror story.

Bob Pastorella 48:57
Yeah, that's true too. There's no, there's no big sign down at the bottom of the thing that they're looking at going, wait, what does that word say? We're in a horror movie? How funny. Yeah, right. You know you're scraping. And

Michael David Wilson 49:16
I know before that you've said that horror is healing. So I wonder, how has it healed you, both as a consumer of horror and a creator,

Hailey Piper 49:30
I um, I think on one, there's different levels to that. On one is just, I think that you can process trauma by getting to choose to experience fear and anxiety and stuff, by watching a horror movie or reading a horror book or like listening to someone tell a horror a scary story, I think that lets you feel like you have some decision in the process, because you can always turn. It off. If it's too much, you can always stop reading it's it's for with you've been in a situation where you haven't had control of what's messing you up, then that can be extremely freeing to be deciding that you want to watch stuff like that. And on another level, I think that horror can show us people who are also in terrible situations, not just experiencing them, and we get to decide if we want to continue doing that or not, and we do, and, you know, and then it was like, Well, that was horrible, and it wasn't me. So that's another way, but another, yet another way is sometimes you'll watch something like one of my favorite horror movies, A Nightmare on Elm Street, three Dream Warriors, where it is empowering, like you, you, you get to see some people rise up against the terrible thing and maybe even conquer it and get away and maybe have a better life than they did. And it's especially it's, it's, it's especially good if you don't, if you're not sure you're gonna, you're gonna get to do that. Um, you know when, when you're especially when you're younger, and you are so powerless, I think that's why coming of age hard strikes a chord so much with older people, like, not old, like old, old. But, I mean, like anyone who's not in their adolescence anymore, because we've all had at least one time, I'm sure that we felt powerless and like that things weren't right, and it just, it's, I mean, it is kind of like a horror fantasy to be able to think like, if this happened to us, if there was some monster killing kids, then we could have been the ones to stop it. Or like, you know, and it's just a way to process, like, the other stuff that has actually happened, the more mundane horrors that we experience with just like problems with family problems with school problems with other kids. And it can be stuff in adult life too, like this, the sense of just being lost in things of just general existential stuff, or, you know, the general problems of society and things like, you know, horror just gives you, gives you so much to work with gives you so much emotion to work with. So yeah, I feel like experiencing it is healing. And I try to write. As far as the writing side, I try to write hard that I hope will sometimes provide that I know when I've written a really bleak story, like unkindly girls or the one that just came out in the the bad book that John Taff edited for bleeding edge books, wife, Beast of Eden, like those are grim stories of mine. And I know when I'm emphasizing that other side of it, but I know that I've also got all this other stuff that is more about, like trying to look at things from a different way, or, yeah, trying to find some, some sense of possible closure, even if everything doesn't turn out okay, that at least there is some, there is something there that you can hold on to.

Michael David Wilson 53:15
Yeah, and I mean, I think this idea of almost getting control back. You know, you were powerless. Now you have the power in deciding, you know, to watch it and to experience it, and sometimes to even write it is, yeah, a very powerful one, you know, for us,

Hailey Piper 53:37
yeah, I mean, it's, it's, as far as I'm concerned, that's besides make horror gay as fuck. That's like horror is healing. Is like core to to my to how, how I want to approach with writing. It doesn't always end that way, but it, I think it is a good guiding light for me. Yeah.

Michael David Wilson 53:58
Let's talk about making horror gay as fuck.

Hailey Piper 54:05
Well, um, yeah, I try to with the short stories. I um, a lot of times it's a matter of discovering, like, sometimes the character is, you know, gay or trans or bi or anything else, some form of queer. Sometimes they're not, sometimes they are. And I just don't mention it in the story. There was, there was a time where I was having a little trouble getting some of those things accepted after the helicopter thing with Clark's world. There's a little bit of hesitancy with that stuff, but, um, but otherwise, you know, I think horror is pretty generally accepting of a lot of stuff, at least that's been my experience and but I also sometimes worry that some of that is because. Because it is considered weird by some people, but it's just like, You know what? I'm happy to be weird then, like, whatever. Like, I mean, my other thing with horror is healing. But also, I think horror is the most honest genre. And if we if queer people can't be ourselves in this genre, where else can we be? But, um, so yeah, I mean, on Yeah, on a protagonist basis, like all of all the books, protagonists are, are, you know, queer and some form they're, they're gay, or in an upcoming book, no angels pass sundown. The protagonist is by, but, um, but, yeah, um, so that's on, yeah, that's on one layer. On another layer is thematic stuff. I think there has to be a level of understanding what being in the closet does to someone like Desiree in Benny Rose is, you know, a lesbian, but she's not really talking about about it to people, it's the 80s. They're talking about it to her like they they poke at her about it a little bit, but she's not really there. I think being able to accept yourself is, is hugely empowering. It is, it is a tremendous experience and and it is, it is core to a lot of what I'm working with. I mean, I try, I just try to approach it in the sense of how I would see things. I try not to like when I'm writing, like the outside world is not like something I'm thinking about, so I'm just doing my own thing, so which is very freeing to be able to write that kind of stuff, to not worry about, like, if somebody's gonna find it weird, how in the warminous kings, like three of the four major speaking roles in that are, like, queer women, Some people probably went through not even noticing that Corin is has, like, pretty much told Monique that she's lesbian at one point. But and then the Met, thematically, it's, it's very trans novella, I think, Queen of teeth. Even though the character is not, the main character is not trans. She's, you know, cisgender lesbian. I think that book is themes are even more, you know, trans, than than even the worminist kings. But, um, yeah, I know. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but yeah, I try to work it in on every angle, in the sense that, like, I don't know who my characters are, when I start, I discover how they are. And I think just the fact that I see the world a certain way just ends up with them leaning towards being like, you know, some some form of queer character. And the themes work that way because I just, I try to be open minded about stuff, which is, I think, why Monique in the warminous kings, for example, just is kind of like when the cult is talking about all their, like, wild beliefs and stuff, she's like, Yeah, I mean, they're just being people. Because that's kind of just how I try to look at things. Like a lot of us are just being people, whether we're being terrible people or, or, you know, decent people or, or, you know, some mix of the two, which is most of us, we're all just trying to do what makes sense to us.

Michael David Wilson 58:31
Thank you so much for listening to part one of the conversation with Haley Piper on this is horror. Join us again for the second and final part. But if you want to get that ahead of the crowd, if you want to get every episode ahead of the crowd, then become a patron, patreon.com, forward slash. This is horror. And if you become a patron, what do you get? Bob,

Bob Pastorella 58:59
well, all of our patrons have the ability to ask our guests questions prior to recording the story on box where me and Michael takes you know, a story or film, and we break it down into the barest elements and get you know into the nitty gritty of what makes it tick. We do at certain levels. You get the you know, the the on camera, off records, uh, video cast with me and Michael. And of course, patrons have the ability to ask me and Michael are questions of their own, to where we can talk to you, and, you know, as as patrons, and tell you what's going on, you know, with ourselves and in the world of horror fiction,

Michael David Wilson 59:38
patreon.com, forward slash, this is horror. Check it out and see if it's a good fit for you. Before we wrap up a little bit of an advert break from

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Michael David Wilson 1:00:49
Bob, it is almost time to end another episode. Do you have any final thoughts?

Bob Pastorella 1:00:56
I just think that this episode that we have with Haley, these two episodes coming up were really, really excellent episodes. Had a great time talking with her. And I just want to, you know, kind of reiterate what we talked about. You know, when we say making horror gay as fuck, it is an invitation to everyone to come and join us at the table. We just want to make, you know, horror fiction as is open and inclusive. It's like we said, It's an invitation to the party and, uh, make horror gay as fuck

Michael David Wilson 1:01:30
yeah. And send us your horror recommendations. You know, tweet us at this is horror. Reach out via Patreon. Even send us an email. Bob at this is horror.co.uk. You can get one of those, Bob and let us know what you recommend we read. And you know we can share some of those in the next outro,

Bob Pastorella 1:01:56
yes, definitely send us. Send us your recommendations. We're looking forward to hearing what you have to say.

Michael David Wilson 1:02:02
All right. Well, that does it for another episode. So until next time, take care of yourselves. Be good to one another. Read horror, keep on writing and have a Great, great day.