0:00:28 - Michael David Wilson
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, we chat with the world's best writers about writing, life lessons, creativity and much more. Today, we are talking to Todd Kiesling for the second part of our conversation. Now, todd is a writer and designer of the horrific and strange. His books include the Final Reconciliation, devil's Creek, the Monochrome Trilogy and the short story collection Cold, black and Infinite.

Now, in the previous conversation, which was episode 574, just one episode back, we spoke about Todd's brand new literary agent, becky. We spoke about how he uses spite as a motivator and we started to talk about the new collection, cold, black and Infinite. Now in this episode, we get a little bit deeper into Cold, black and Infinite and then, in the episode that will follow this one, we're going to dive even deeper into stories in the second half. So if you want to hear about Todd's writing process, if you want to specifically find out about his short stories and that collection called Black and Infinite, these series of episodes are the ones for you. But before we get into this, a quick advert break.

0:02:23 - Renee S. DeCamillis
There's a new drug on the streets. Some call it dark heaven, or red sugar or simply dust. Have you tapped into your bones? Dory, a mental patient out on safety release, finds herself on the run from a cult of drug addicts who wants to chisel her bones into dust to satiate their addictions and keep her from bringing their secrets to light. Chisel the Bone by Renee S DeCamillis is now available through Encyclopocalypse Publications and everywhere books are sold.

0:02:55 - RJ Bayley
It was as if the video had unzipped my skin, slunk inside my tapered flesh and become one with me.

0:03:04 - Bob Pastorella
From the creator of this Is Horror comes a new nightmare for the digital age the Girl in the Video by Michael David Wilson. After a teacher receives a weirdly arousing video, his life descends into paranoia and obsession. More videos follow, each containing information no stranger could possibly know. But who's sending them and what do they want? The answers may destroy everything and everyone he loves. The girl in the video is the ring meets fatal attraction for the iphone generation available now in paperback, ebook and audio.

0:03:45 - Michael David Wilson
New Xebico and I know this is a sequel to the other land express and for me it was perhaps your most clive barker story and also quite possibly your most liminal spaces story, which is a theme that reoccurs in your work, so how did this one come about?

0:04:13 - Todd Keisling
I'm trying to remember. I know I wrote about it in the story notes, but I hope I don't contradict myself. I'm pretty sure it's the one that I wrote. I happened to look out my window one night and see someone standing on a sidewalk and it looked like they were waiting for a bus. But it's not a bus stop and that got me on the bus kick. You know, thinking about buses and stations and transit terminals and those are liminal spaces by nature and you know I, I I use the bus theme in other land express as well, and it just kind of came together like that, like the.

It wasn't a conscious decision to to um, you know, go very Barker with that story, but it happened that way. Uh, just the idea of being in this space in this time, that's, in between other times, and in that space you can do things you normally wouldn't be able to do, like take your skin off and share it with somebody else and trade skins and become somebody else. That's one of my stories that I wish more people had read. The Otherland Express specifically. Um got a email from a reader many years ago this was after the first collection came out and to tell me that the other land express resonated with them because it was very much like they were they're a trans, trans person and it resonated with them because of what the protagonist is going through, why they felt the need to run away and become some someone else, essentially, and, uh, it, it struck them that way and that's something I totally had did not have in mind, but I think is awesome. So, having that, you know, that knowledge that some readers perceive it that way, you know, I wanted to lean into it a little bit more. Well, you know, I've got this idea that it exists in the same universe as, uh, the night wire and hfr, which I, to me, is one of my all-time favorite short, weird stories ever written. Um, big influence on me and it's not one that many people know about.

Um, so, zebaco, something happens to Zebaco in that story, the night wire, so let's say there's a new Zebaco and the other lands. It's this liminal, a liminal state and a liminal country and a liminal space, and people can go there and they can, you know, shed their identities and take on other identities. And here you have this, this guy who actually works in a bus terminal encountering someone who was, you know, transiting from one you, you know one reality to another and you know I I don't even remember where I came up with the whole uh, the um, daylight savings time, you know mechanic, but it might have been something. It it might've been a Twilight Zone episode, not not the old Twilight Zone, but the new Twilight Zone. I say new in quotations that it was like in the early nineties, the new Twilight Zone. There was like a Twilight Zone episode where somebody had like all the time had been saved up in this watch and they could use this time however they wanted, like a, you know, like a resource um kind of came from that very strange story.

Uh it, I wrote that for one of nightscape presses, anthologies um which you know.

0:08:43 - Michael David Wilson
I mean we didn't plan it this way, but it's interesting how, in you talking about your story, you know 245 to new zebaco. It also fits into your philosophy in terms of what might happen after death.

0:09:01 - Todd Keisling
Like they're perfectly yeah linked there and yeah, serendipitous timing yeah, the the concept of liminality is something that has definitely shaped my adulthood and the way I look at things in the world yeah, yeah, you know I can.

0:09:21 - Michael David Wilson
I can see it looking at us. I want to jump into Happy Town, yuletide Massacre. I really do. I want to go there, and for me it was kind of like a rom-mark holiday story for a.

0:09:48 - Bob Pastorella
Gimeno.

0:09:49 - Michael David Wilson
Iglesias call.

0:09:50 - Todd Keisling
And I thought, well, yeah, it was, I wrote it. I scrambled to write that story in the last week before deadline. I sent it to him like an hour before it was due and he never fucking got it. He never got it, which is fine, I figured, you know. Okay, I'll keep this, you know, on hand and if another open call comes up that it fits, then great. If not, I'll put it in my next collection, whenever that is. And here we are.

Um, it's one of my, one of my favorite stories of the bunch, just because it it's fun to read aloud. Uh, when I was touring last year for the book, um, that's the story that I read. Uh, and you know it, I would read up to the part where, uh, she encounters the boyfriend, the ex-boyfriend, in the bakery and there's that line where he screams at her. You know, I didn't kill all these people just to end up a bachelor, angie. That's where I would stop and I would just like belt out as loud as possible. And it's really fun to do that in a Barnes and Noble when other people are just shopping. It's great fun to do that in a Barnes and Noble when other people are just shopping. Uh, it's great. Um, yeah, there's just a.

It was written quickly and I, you know, I wanted to do a, a Legadian kind of spin on the, the Hallmark Christmas film, and the Christmas films always have the same plot when you boil them down. It's about a girl coming home, small town, falling in love with some dude who wears flannel, and they live happily ever after. Well, what if it's the same thing repeating over and over again? And eventually they start to get wise and catch on like, oh, who's she going to fall in love with this year? What's going to be me, motherfucker, I'll kill the rest of you to make sure it's me. And that's how Happy Town came to be.

The Happy Town name was a you know, that's a Lagadian thing, kind of like. I was really into his story, the Town Manager at the time, and there's a reference where the town manager changes the name of this one place to Baby Town and everybody's got to dress up like a baby Happy Town. I needed a generic, fun name and that's where that came to be. And yeah, I was surprised that people liked that one so much because of the way it ends. It's such an odd out-of-left-field ending when you realize what's really going on, but yeah, it's just a fun story, man.

0:12:47 - Michael David Wilson
I had a lot of fun writing it and I love reading its people yeah, I think it's probably it's so kind of effective because, as you say, it's, it's very fun, it's very light in places, though if you dig a bit deeper it's not so light. But I, I think as well because, as you said, it comes out of left field. You're not expecting that after new zebaco, after midnight in the southland, um, and then, and then y2k comes, which is totally bloody different. So, yeah, I think it was a real standout, but then it's not out of place. I mean, there's that playfulness in Black Friday, there's the playfulness in Tommy the Destructo Bot. There are definite commonalities with the smile factory as well, which in turn has thematic similarities to happy pills.

But yeah there's something about happy town, yuletide massacre that title as oh my God, I had the title before anything else. Yeah.

0:14:09 - Todd Keisling
I try to have a title before I start working on it, and that was just my placeholder title. I didn't think that was going to be final, but it was kind of my guidepost with the story. I'm like okay, how far do you want to go, todd? Well, let's see where the story wants to go yeah, yeah, and I mean it in a way.

0:14:36 - Michael David Wilson
It's a crying shame that gabino didn't get it, because I mean, I'm not familiar with this dark hallmark holiday Stories anthology, but I can't think of a more perfect story. But then I suppose the magic is that this now makes it one of the original stories in your collection. Yeah yeah said you know how far did you want to go. I'm gonna just jump to another story rather than doing them sequentially. Okay, the gods of our fathers did you ever feel that you might have gone too far while writing this uh?

0:15:21 - Todd Keisling
no, I walked right up to that line.

0:15:25 - Michael David Wilson
Yeah.

0:15:26 - Todd Keisling
And that was a story that where, like, I was in the middle of writing Devil's Creek when I wrote that and that's why a lot of the language and themes and imagery are similar and it does exist in that, in that universe. I should mention that there's actually a pseudo-sequel story to it that called the Puppeteer of Samhain. That was released in October, screams Anthology last year. So that'll end up in a collection somewhere down the road. But I was in the midst of writing devil's Creek and I got invited to write a story for an anthology that Joe at Crystal Lake was putting together and what ended up happening like something he I don't know if he messed up his schedule or overcommitted or what, but the anthology just never ended up happening and I I submitted it to silver shamrocks uh, you know anthology midnight in the pentagram. And that's one of those stories where I I realized I was dealing with some really dark subject matter and it was something that I didn't feel comfortable in exploring like full frontal, you know, if we're talking like in movie terms, I didn't want to take the camera and shove, you know, shove it right into the stuff that's happening. So the working title for that story was God Looked Away and in some ways I, you know, kind of played around with that, with with the narrative. You know we don't actually see what happens. Um, you know, I didn't want to go and be very clinical and, you know, go there specifically, but for me it was a me kind of realizing okay, I don't feel comfortable with this if we go beyond this point. You know I didn't want to.

I try to be tasteful when it comes to, you know themes like that and you know images like that. I tried to be that way in Devil's Creek. You know I always try to. You know you be mindful that not everybody can handle that. Even where I took it, people can't handle that. So that hesitation to walk up to the line and not cross it is probably one of the reasons why I, you know, I don't consider myself an extreme horror author. I, you know, I don't consider myself an extreme horror author or, you know, splatter punk author, cause, like to me, like extreme, an extreme writer would go that extra step and I don't feel comfortable doing that.

So it was also one of those narrative challenges where I had to, I knew where I wanted to end up, but that has to be earned with the reader. So what's going to happen to these other people, these, you know, these villain characters has to be justified, so the reader needs to hate them. Characters has to be justified, so the reader needs to hate them, and that's one of those situations where, okay, so how do I make them hate them? That makes sense contextually within the scope of this story and, yeah, uh, unfortunately, that involved that involved little Mary sacrificing oats the goat, and it also involved her brother, you know, essentially raping her. You know that's not a comfortable thing. You know I didn't take pleasure in writing it it was but it's something that it was the only way I saw forward as a storyteller to justify what happens to the brother at the end of that story.

0:19:35 - Michael David Wilson
And in terms of knowing you know the lines that you will and won't cross. I mean, are there any hard lines that you apply to all of your writing, or is it purely a case by case, because you've got to look at what that story demands?

0:19:47 - Todd Keisling
yeah, it's a it's certainly a case by case, but I I also I'm comfortable in saying that you know there are certain things I don't like writing about and you know I don't want to describe sexual assault, if I can help it.

You know I don't want to give you the clinical details of what's clinical play-by-play, of how that's happening. That's not necessary. But with Devil's Creek and the Cemetery Dance edition, I wrote an author's note that lists out the trigger warnings and there's pedophilia in that book. But it's not. It's off screen. You know it's not happening right in the narrative. You're not walking through the guy's mind while he's doing it to. You know, to them it's just something that you find out has happened or is happening elsewhere. Um, for me that's, that's the line. You know I don't need to show you the character in the act of doing this horrible thing to someone to get the point across that it's something that they do, you know. Uh, so yeah, like sexual assault, I don't really want to describe that. Um, I, you know, don't want to anything that feels mean spirited, really Like if I'm just doing that to piss off the reader, like I don't want to do that.

You know, there, I like there to be a narrative reason for something to be in the story, even if it's blood and guts. You know, if it's the nature of a monster to tear people apart and what have you then? Okay, cool, but if this monster is human and it preys on other humans, then I have to be delicate with it Because, again, we all have our triggers. I have mine. It's like the same with people don't like to see a movie or read a book where the dog dies.

You know, I have, I've found, especially since being a diehard cat owner. I don't like seeing violence toward cats, and I say this as someone whose first novel involves a cat being killed and I got hate mail for that for years, rightfully so. Uh. So you know I don't want to. I don't want to harm animals, um, in my books. I don't want to do that. But I also don't want to, you know, give listeners the idea that I'm going to shy away from bad, you know, tough topics either. I just think there's a, there's a tasteful way of handling them and I try to do that.

0:22:51 - Michael David Wilson
Yeah, oh yeah, and I think I think you do it successfully. And I mean, you mentioned the trigger warnings in the book and we don't need to really get into a debate on trigger warnings, but I mean, it seems to be that the main good intention. I suppose opposition to trigger warnings is fear of spoilers. I suppose opposition to trigger warnings is fear of spoilers. But the way that you handle it is, you know, there's a section at the end. You can turn to it if you want, and then it's there for people who want trigger warnings. If you don't want them, then you never have to turn to that page, and so that seems like the kind of perfect solution.

Really A criticism.

0:23:38 - Todd Keisling
I've received, for that hasn't been because I included it, but because I didn't go into enough detail with the trigger warnings, which you know. If, that's fine. If you know somebody felt that I missed something, that's on me, I'll own it. You know it's. I can't account for every little thing that somebody's going to be triggered by, especially if it's outside my own experience. I mean, I try to be knowledgeable, but you know I'm also a human being. I'm going to fuck up or miss something. That's just the nature of it. Yeah, I think the trigger warning debate is silly. I think I mean it.

It's you know it's a rating system. It's it's a rating system for books, just like movies, and the thing is is that it's entirely optional. The author can choose not to do it. I personally choose to do it for everything going forward because it's you know there's no harm in including it. There's no harm, you know, in a reader being prepared.

I wouldn't want to read something. You know, like I, prepared, I wouldn't want to read something. You know like I, for perfect example, I watched a movie, uh, a few nights ago, that I went into it thinking it was one thing and ended up it being this whole discussion about mental health in impoverished areas and it really triggered me, you know, in unexpected ways, and I wasn't okay with it because, you know, it's not like the. The description of the film was misleading. It had nothing to do with any of that, um, so it's, there's nothing. There's no harm in in being informed and there's no harm in in being informed and there's no harm in putting the information out there for people if they choose to be informed.

And I just, you know, at the end of the day, I write to entertain people. You know I don't want to. I don't want to hurt my readers. You know I don't want them to, you know, be hurt by something I've written. It's a story, it's a piece of fiction. You're reading it to enjoy it. If you're not enjoying it, then I failed in my job. So I'm pro-trigger warnings and folks who don't like trigger warnings don't fucking read my books, I don't know.

0:26:16 - Michael David Wilson
Yeah, well, you don't even have to not read the book. You just literally don't have to read that one very specific section, which is why the debate is so silly yeah and why we'll move on to y2k. And I mean you said that you had in the story notes some difficulty initially writing this one, but it was Bjorn Langen, of all people, who reignited your creative flame, right.

0:26:49 - Todd Keisling
Can you believe that Langen of all people, um yeah, uh it. I was writing that story at a time when that was, uh, when my last corporate job came to an end and my life was suddenly, you know, in upheaval because now I have no income, how do I make this work? What the hell am I going to do that sort of thing. It was that, that panic period of oh my God, I don't have a job, how am I going to survive? And you know, before it really hit me, hey, this is an opportunity. This isn't a bad thing, this is a good thing. Um, so, this is an opportunity. This isn't a bad thing, this is a good thing. So I was in that ensuing pit of poor mental health and I was struggling to just get words down and the story in my mind was much more grandiose and it had a bigger scope and it was going to be third person and it wasn't working. So I finally just just started writing dialogue, because dialogue has always come easier for me than narratives. And you know, I just started writing some dialogue and figured, okay, I'll fill in the narrative later. It's two people having a conversation. And then one night I was trying to get myself in the right headspace to work on it and I pulled out John's collection, the Wide Carnivorous Sky, and he's got that story in there Technicolor, which, if you haven't read Technicolor or listened to it, like Pseudopod did a fantastic recording of it a year or two ago. Technicolor is basically a professor's lecture about Edgar Allan Poe's the Mask of the Red Death, but there's a story that's unfolding during the lecture and the way he approached the story, obviously it looked so easy. He made it look so easy. You know he made it look so easy. Like well, I'm not sure if I'm going to go all in on it just being an entirely one big piece of dialogue, but you know I can. Definitely that gave me the confidence to tell the story only in dialogue, and that's really how Y2K happened.

Like I, I was writing that story for a Jim Chambers anthology Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign and Jim had approached me about writing for it. The concept was you know, in the story of the repairer of reputations there's a glimpse of an America that is vastly different to what we know now, and so I approached it in a modern setting semi-modern because it takes place on New Year's Eve, 1999. Y2k crisis. You know what if that version of America but in modern day, what would that look like? And what if the Yellow King, the King in Yellow excuse me, the play is still banned. And what if there was some truth to what happens to their paravergutations? And then you've got the decommissioned suicide bays, they have Times Square and stuff. It was just this mishmash of ideas that all kind of came together and I couldn't tell that story any other way but by it being a transcript of audio.

0:30:51 - Michael David Wilson
If I had stuck with my original plan it would have never been written and I know that you said that even after completing writing it, you didn't feel great towards it. So I'm wondering you know, now, with the passage of time and with the favorable response, has your own reaction or your own feelings towards your story changed?

0:31:16 - Todd Keisling
I like the ideas in it. I like the picture that's painted of that alternate reality, you know, alternate United States. It's not one of my strongest stories writing-wise. I know I'm doing a great job of selling the collection right now, but, like I'm also my own worst critic, I expect everybody to hate everything I write. Jim loved it. Like I'm also my own worst critic, I expect everybody to hate everything I write.

Uh, Jim loved it, and you know, Jim bless you man, you know I, I I really did email him and say, uh, I'm submitting this, you know, and I apologize in advance. And uh, but he loved it, it worked, and he invited me back for another anthology that just got announced through Hippocampus. This one is about House on the Borderland, William Hope Hodgson, and so he asked me to write something for that, and again I apologized to him when I sent it in that story. I don't know when that book's getting released, but my story will be in there. It's called Little House on the Borderland and it's fucking weird as hell and I had a lot of fun writing it though you often when you submit stories.

Apologize in advance or is this just treatment that Jim specifically gets? And he had minimal notes on it and you know, I I was afraid that he had this expectation he was going to get this. And here I am coming in with this uh critic of myself and um, and I, you know, can't guess who's going to like what. Really I'm a bad judge of that. So I mean I again like I've warmed to it, especially since readers have enjoyed it, have said they've enjoyed it, uh, but at the time, yeah, I thought, uh, since readers have enjoyed it, have said they've enjoyed it, uh, but at the time, yeah, I thought, uh, career was done this is it?

0:33:43 - Michael David Wilson
this is where I stopped right, right. Yeah, I think a lot of us deal with similar thoughts from time to time, and in fact, this does lend itself rather nicely to a question that we've got from Tracy Kenworth via Patreon, and she wants to know how do you deal with imposter syndrome? And as a kind of addition to that, I mean, if it's not that you deal with it as such, suppose, how do you navigate it or how do you continue in spite of it?

0:34:22 - Todd Keisling
my relationship with imposter syndrome has changed over the years. I still have it don't get me wrong. Every, every story, no matter how long or short, I still have that point where I'm like they're gonna figure out that I'm not who you. You know I've presented myself to be and I don't belong here and I'm just going to fade away and nobody's going to remember my name or something like that. You know, I go through that with everything and honestly, I've I've come to accept that it is a part of the process. I feel like that. You know we treat it like something that shouldn't be there, but the thing is is that in my experience it's it's always there and for me it is part of the process. It's something where I kind of recognize it. You know, I've been doing this long enough that I know what it is when it happens and I'm like you know the end of the day, it's like I'll give myself a day to kind of shake it off, consume other media, do something else other than right, and and the next day I get up and I keep going, uh, so, and that's really what it. Uh, so, and that's really what it boils down to and the essence of the matter. It's like, well, yeah, you're always gonna.

It's in our nature to put ourselves in comparison to others. That's just what we as humans do, for better or worse. You know, like I'm, I was on a stage with Paul Tremblay a few weeks ago, for fuck's sake, dropping the most unexpected and effective dis of 2024. But that's not what this conversation is about. You know it's every time I'm on a panel. You know it's every time I'm on a panel with people, it's always people that I hold to. You know, in my mind they're, they're so much higher up the chain than I am, and there's always this need to put people in a hierarchy. But at the end of the fucking day, we're we're coworkers. Essentially, we work in the same industry. They're dealing with imposter syndrome just as much as you are.

And you know I don't have a bulletproof solution for how you get around it. It's more just, it goes back to that element of spite. You're going to keep going, even if you know, oh, nobody's going to care what you're writing. Well, actually, that's actually a good thing. You know, now you're free to tell your story however you want. It doesn't matter what people think, um, cause no one's going to read it. But then you know, you tell yourself that and that. Again, that's freeing to me. I find that freeing and I always try to to change perspective on things like that. So yeah, on one hand, what the fuck am I doing on at a lectern with Paul Tremblay? But at the same time, you know, we both write horror and a field, we're both professionals. You know why aren't we?

up on the same lectern at the same lectern together Uh.

Why aren't we up on the same lectern, at the same lectern together? Uh, and I always think about, you know, this interview that Trent Reznor did with uh MTV back in the day, talking about touring with David Bowie. And he's talking, he. I don't remember word for word, but the essence was, you know, there was that imposter syndrome because David Bowie was one of his heroes growing up and suddenly he's sharing a stage with them and it's just that epiphany of like, oh my God, I'm on stage with David Bowie. You know, and those who know me and those you know, listeners of the last time I was on the show know, you know, nine Inch Nails is a huge influence to me.

So if Trent fucking Reznor has imposter syndrome, I mean, come on, if he has it and still does his thing, then why can't I, why can't you? That's a very rambling answer to a very simple question, but at the end of the day, imposter syndrome is something that I think we should embrace as part of the process and accept it. It's something that's going to happen. Deal with it. However, you need to deal with it in your own way and then keep going it. You know, I don't really have a better answer than that, I think.

0:38:59 - Michael David Wilson
It's a very good answer. I find it liberating when I hear about people like Trent Reznor having imposter syndrome. I remember one of the first times we spoke to Paul Tremblay, him talking about sometimes having self-doubt and things you know in that region. So it it feels like I mean goodness, even dean coons has said similar things. So like it, it it's freeing to know that you know it will almost always be there. For some people it will be depressing, but for me it's freeing.

0:39:42 - Todd Keisling
Yeah, it comes down to, you know, how do you figuring out your own process and how do you approach things and how do you, you know, handle things. It's very personal. You know, we're all different. Every writer has a different process. But I uh one one thing comes to mind now that I think about it.

Uh, this was years ago, facebook, I had just come back from nikon and I had, uh, jemma files book, experimental film, and I had posted something about it and peter straub commented because I had tagged jemma in the post. He commented just something really short, like now we're talking, or something like that. Never met Peter, never got the chance to meet him before he passed on, unfortunately. But I was like texting my, my editor, amelia, and I'm like freaking out Like Peter fucking strapped, it's like responding to my post about Gemma files and she's like she just said it so simply like he's just a guy and she's right. You know, we're just people like these.

We idealize people that are doing things we love so much that we forget they're human beings and they, you know, they burp and fart just like we do. You know, like there's of all the things I would ask Stephen King. I think it would be just like. You know, when do you sleep? Like, how often do you sleep? Like, how many hours do you sleep? Like I would love to ask Stephen King that that, because he's a machine, there's so many practical questions to ask somebody, rather than why do you write horror, or what got you in the industry, or anything like that. I would just be like so how do you manage this? How did you learn? What advice would you have for how to manage this or this or this and you know, I'm sure stephen king has imposter syndrome too like I don't know if it's it's ingrained in us to think that we aren't deserving of where we are because there's this mentality of that.

0:41:59 - Michael David Wilson
We've been taught and raised to always be striving for something better and yeah, you mentioned king and imposter syndrome and I think we know for a fact that he at least did have it because, as I recall, didn't he throw carrie in the trash, and it was his wife tabitha who yeah?

0:42:23 - Todd Keisling
you know, saved it that's a famous story. He didn't think he was the right person to tell that story. He didn't think he had the right perspective because he wasn't a teenage girl. So, yeah, everybody that you think is above this has the same issues that you do.

0:42:51 - Bob Pastorella
So, yeah, just I would say, come to understand that and, you know, take hold of it and don't let it go like everybody else is also afraid of failing I do feel that we need to to learn how to embrace things that scare us when it comes to the actual mechanics of writing, and sometimes those things are hard to embrace. Imposter syndrome has caused me to abandon projects because you figure, oh well, this is like the dumbest idea I've ever come up with and it's too similar to this. They did it better. And, you know, I feel like there's a couple of projects that I've abandoned that maybe I regret abandoning them, projects that I've abandoned that maybe I regret abandoning them. Maybe I can bring them back from the dead because they are a part of me and I'm the only one who can tell that story. And so you know, I've dealt with it, and that's usually how I deal with it. I'm getting better at it, and that's usually how I deal with it. I'm getting better at it.

I don't like abandoning projects because I don't feel that I'm worthy of the task. It's like why the fuck write to begin with at that point? And I'm compelled to write because I want to create. I love telling stories yeah, stories. If I put it out there, I'm going to have the same feelings I have every time, which is, I think it's a common threat Everybody's going to hate it. As I've gotten older, I've learned that if somebody hates something, I'm probably going to like it. I love polarizing stuff. So if you've had enough of a project where, if you've read a book or seen a movie and you hate it so much do you actually have to tell people how much you hate it, I'm going to like it.

0:45:01 - Todd Keisling
I'm probably going to like it a lot. It's always good. I mean, if they hate it, then you made them feel something, then you didn't fail. You know it's not the positive response you're hoping for, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter, because their response is their problem. You know it doesn't affect you. It doesn't affect you know what you write, how you write, yeah, yeah.

So, on the topic of even writing stories that are too similar to something else that somebody else more successful wrote, or something, yeah, I thought of that when I was writing Devil's Creek, too similar to something else that somebody else more successful wrote, or something like, yeah, like I, I thought of that when I was writing devil's Creek. Like, we're writing a small town horror story, wow, that's never been fucking done before. Uh, I'm heavily influenced by Stephen King. Well, stephen King's written like 10 of those, um, but Stephen King hasn't written that story, that and no one else could tell that story to me, you know. And so, like you mentioned black Friday, my story of black Friday in the collection, that was one of those where, you know, it's a zombie story in a retail setting. That's never been done before, right, you know, huge fan of george romero and you know his original dead trilogy, and I feel like I I try not to write in, I try not to write certain tropes that have been done to death. That's why I've never done a vampire story. I'm not saying I never will, I just all the ideas I have for those sorts of things have been done and I have I like to at least come up with an angle that is unique, um, to me at least.

And black Friday was one of those situations where, you know, I had a lot of friends that I worked, uh, that I worked with at my job at Staples, which is an office supply store here in the States, and that was my first job out of college, my first job when I moved to Pennsylvania, and we had a lot of, you know, interesting customers and working Black Friday that year. You know it's hard not to imagine shoppers as a horde of mindless, you know cannibals and of course it's been done. But has it been done in an office supply store before? It been done in an office supply store before? Has it been done with uh, you know it's starting with a you know an affected Santa Claus at a retail office supply store?

It's kind of like one of those things it's like well, it doesn't matter if it's too similar to something else, you know it's. The one thing that's different is you and your perspective, and that's what no one else has is your perspective. So so what if you know somebody more successful or popular is writing the same kind of story? They're not writing your story. Yeah, that's a standout story for me Really.

0:48:23 - Bob Pastorella
Oh yeah, I completely related. I completely related to Black Friday. I have worked. I've been in retail for goddamn 30 years of my life. I have worked every fucking Black Friday ever. So I know, and I have worked with managers. We had a vehicle drive into our store and the district manager would not close the store. He says, nope, clean up the mess lower the gate. We'll have someone come by and fix the window tonight and two of y'all are gonna have to stay. Wow, so we stay till midnight, so some old guy could drive up in a truck and put a piece of fucking plywood.

0:49:16 - Todd Keisling
Oh my up man late stage capitalism, am I right?

0:49:21 - Bob Pastorella
oh yeah, and so I, I I relate to that story so much. You know, um, just just you know now, and now I've got, now, I've got these images in my head. On black friday, whenever people start to like really, really clamor into the store and I'm gonna go, man, one of these people were zombies. And I'm going to go man, one of these people were zombies. What would I do? I'd start killing.

0:49:52 - Todd Keisling
Well, I mean, you know they'd have to be zombies, but yeah, infection NSA infection.

0:49:59 - Bob Pastorella
It's just, you know, just dealing with people. It's like no matter what, no matter what they want to come in, it's like you don't even need this shit. And really and truly, if you think about it on Black Friday I mean, this is my last little bit on that you really want to deal. Wait till February, when they put the shit on clearance.

0:50:18 - Todd Keisling
Yeah.

0:50:21 - Michael David Wilson
Yeah, yeah. When I read Black Friday I thought this has got to come from years of pent-up frustration working in retail. And then when I read the story notes and it's like one month of staples did this to you. It's like man, yeah.

0:50:43 - Todd Keisling
It was also written. I included a lot of personalities that I worked with and, yeah, it's an old story too. That's 2007, 2008, when I originally wrote that, and I just it sat in a folder for years because it was too long, uh, and so there was this. I forget the name of the press. I want to see Grinning Skull. They do a charity anthology every year the Deathlehem series and I saw the call for that. I'm like you know what. It's been sitting dormant for years. Fuck it, I'll send it in for charity. And they accepted it, and that was the first time it got printed, like you know, almost 10 years after I wrote it yeah, it's weird how, sometimes that is just the way that it plays out.

0:51:37 - Michael David Wilson
But I mean, I I wonder, if there's a call for an anthology and then you know that you have a story on your hard drive that's, let's say, a decade old, before you submit it, do you reread it? Do you, of course, reproof it?

or because like I mean, that's what I do, like I will reread it and make sure that you know I'm comfortable with it. But I can see the danger is that, as we said, you can't write the same story twice. So if you're not careful, you're going to want to tinker with it and change it completely, and then you might lose some of the essence.

0:52:21 - Todd Keisling
The uh the thing that I changed most about the draft before I sent it in. Uh, it used to jump around a lot between perspectives and it was very non-linear. It's kind of like the the guy's remembering it, but as you know, he's under a lot of stress, obviously, and you know he's just kind of writing things down as he remembers them and they're all out of sequence. Well, I, I, I basically did away with that and made it a linear story rather than have it jump around. That's really the main thing I I changed about it, like I didn't really, of course, I cleaned it up, I tightened up some of the language, but I didn't, you know, alter the story in any way other than that. Uh, so, yeah, I could. They accepted it.

0:53:17 - Michael David Wilson
So there you go Always a good feeling. Yeah yeah, and I mean Always a good feeling. Yeah, yeah, and I mean Tommy the Destructo-Bot, which follows Black Friday. I mean this is a similarly fun story. I think this is up there with just these like kind of fantastical imaginings. I mean, essentially, imagine if you could get your revenge upon all of those bullies and live out your dream of becoming a robot.

0:53:53 - Todd Keisling
Yeah, that's probably one of the weirdest stories I've ever written. I wrote it for my friend, mercedes Jardley, because we had this agreement early on in our friendship that we would write the other into a story and you know, in some form or fashion, uh, she wrote a story I forget the title of it, um, but she wrote a story in which I was dead from the start, like I was just a body, um, and I started my story. So I really wanted to capture the kind of the whimsical essence of her fiction and you know her stories. So I kind of wanted to do that in the nature of the story. But then it became this whole other thing and I didn't finish it.

I I let, I put that one away, thinking okay, this is too weird for me, I wasn't ready to write it at the time. I put it away for several years and finally, after I finish a story, I kind of go back and look at my files and see, okay, what do I have? Do I have anything? It's kind of like half finished. Look at my files and see, okay, what do I have? Do I have anything? It's kind of like half finished. So I don't have to like start from scratch on something, cause I'm lazy, that's, you know, I had a chunk of the story written and it, you know, it picked it up from there, you know, tightened up the language again and finished the rest of the story and it became this weird, whimsically violent tale of comic book.

You know fantasy, and yeah, that was also it. It was a combination of being fun to write but also difficult to write, just because the nature of it like I wanted it to have. I wanted to catch the reader off guard with some of the violence I wanted to kind of just comes out of nowhere. So I was, you know, just experimenting, and really I should say all these stories were experiments. They, you know, it's me having an idea and also thinking, okay, well, how can I tell this that I haven't done before? Or, you know, is this a topic I haven't written about before? You know, those are things that I consider when I'm choosing projects to work on things that I consider when I'm choosing projects to work on.

0:56:27 - Michael David Wilson
Yeah, and I imagine that this must have been one of the longest short stories to write in terms of you know how long it took you, because you said that you know, from initial idea to getting it out, there was about six years.

0:56:42 - Todd Keisling
Yeah, I tend to stew on my stories a lot. You know I work. Even though I wrote Devil's Creek's first draft in like 18 months. I was kicking around that idea for the better part of 12 years and you know it had two false starts. You know, in that time and it's really just a matter of you know, figuring out what you're ready to write or not you know, maybe you can just you're writing and it doesn't feel right and you like the idea but it's not there yet, it needs more time to percolate, or maybe you're not in the right headspace. To be writing that story at that point in time doesn't mean it's bad, you know, doesn't mean what you've written, this bad just means that it's not ready yet.

So you know, in my experience, like a lot of, a lot of my short stories are stories that I've started years ago and, you know, had picked up later on. Um, same goes for novels. The, the novel that just sold the Sundowners dance, began as a short story, something I coauthored with Chad Lutzky. But you know, we, I just can't work. I can't work in, you know, alongside somebody else. I'm too much of a control freak, I guess.

So we shelved that and then I picked up my original work before he came and you know came on board and started writing a little bit more, realized it was going to be something long form and stopped because I didn't want to write long form stuff. Cause, again, this was after devil's creak and, uh, you know, I got invited to an anthology a couple of years ago and you know if I I I looked at that story that was unfinished and thought, okay, if I can slim this down, then it'll work. But my attempts at making it shorter failed tremendously, and so I just kept going with it and it eventually became the novel that you know we just sold. We just sold. So you know, all told. That story has, you know, been alive in my head since like 2018. So that's just part of my process. You know, I'm envious of people who can just crank things out constantly. I wish I could do that, but I'm not that kind of writer out constantly.

0:59:26 - Michael David Wilson
I wish I could do that, but I'm not that kind of writer. There you go, Josh Malamon and Stephen Graham Jones. That is a personal comment.

0:59:35 - Todd Keisling
I envy their work ethic and their energy.

0:59:37 - Michael David Wilson
God, I envy their energy. Yeah, I mean Josh Malamon. His literal energy is probably only equaled by Clay McLeod Chapman. Right, you mentioned before Clay McLeod Chapman man. That is what the kids would call a vibe. That man is a vibe.

0:59:53 - Todd Keisling
He is a force of nature, mm-hmm, like being in the same room at a con with him and when he does his like his TikTok thing, where he just runs around screaming like everything stops for that, like everybody stops doing what they're doing and cheers him on Like he ran a full lap around the ballroom at author con this year. That was nuts, uh. And yet when you talk to him one-on-one he's a very soft spoken guy, he's very calm and you know I love clay to death. He's a sweet, sweet soul and I just wish I could like eat his brain and consume all that energy and knowledge. I don't mean that literally, I wouldn't actually his brain. You can get a disease from that.

1:00:45 - Michael David Wilson
But then there could be a future short story in that.

1:00:50 - Todd Keisling
Oh yeah, totally I ate Clay McLeod Chapman's brain.

1:00:54 - Michael David Wilson
I mean it's a good story type A love story. A love story, a love story yeah.

1:01:01 - Bob Pastorella
A horror-mance.

1:01:03 - Michael David Wilson
Oh yeah. Well, we're coming up to the time that we have together today, but I mean I do hope that this has really peaked our listeners and viewers' interest in terms of your collection and it also shows just the breadth of stories that you've written. But I mean we haven't even really touched on I mean there's a lot of more Legotian things towards the kind of second half of this collection particularly, we've all gone to Crooked Town and then we've all gone to the Magic Show which is connected.

1:01:46 - Todd Keisling
Yeah, there's a little bit of everything in there for everyone. Whatever your flavor of horror is, you're going to find something that you'll like, or at least I hope you do.

1:01:58 - Michael David Wilson
Yeah, yeah, and I mean the Smile Factory as well. I mean the smile factory as well. If people enjoyed your critique on you know, retail and commercialism in Black Friday, then boy, oh boy, do you have something to say about corporate life and office culture in that one.

1:02:19 - Todd Keisling
Uh, you know the that I originally just released that on my own as a novelette and it's just like a short little chapbook and I had a Just a, an epigraph at the beginning that says hell is a prison of metaphors. This one is mine. I was working in corporate, had been working in corporate for better part of a decade when I wrote that and it the way I pitched it to people at at events in the past. They kind of pick it up cause it had a really weird, you know, eye catching cover and they pick it up and look at it. I just tell them, you know, have you ever worked at a job you hate? Like then you might, you know, connect with that story and I, you know that still applies like that. That story is my treatise on corporate America yeah it's very valid thank you.

1:03:20 - Michael David Wilson
I envy the person who you know. You say to them have you ever worked a job that you hate?

1:03:25 - Todd Keisling
and they're like no, I can't possibly relate to that it's like like you I don't think anyone has ever said no, I don't know what you're talking about yeah, yeah.

1:03:38 - Michael David Wilson
And and the audacity of your boss at the time, asking you to smile more it's like come on, give me something to smile about yeah, maybe you'll get a smile like just the the audacity of asking that question, and like you're making people uncomfortable because you don't smile enough.

1:04:01 - Todd Keisling
Fuck you. Fuck all the way off.

1:04:05 - Michael David Wilson
Continue fucking off when you get there, all the way into the sun, just fuck off forever you know, it was very tempting to cut the episode there, because then we'd have part one and part two and we're telling people to fuck off. But you know I I would be remiss if I didn't ask where our listeners and viewers can connect with you sure?

1:04:29 - Todd Keisling
uh, I have my website, toddkeeslingcom. Uh, I am back on twitter. For the time being, I refuse to call it by its other name. Uh, at Todd underscore Kiesling. Um, I'm on blue sky at Todd Kiesling. Instagram. At Todd Kiesling, you might see a theme here. Uh, yeah, like I'm pretty much on most social network platforms, I'm on tech talk, even though I don't use it that much. Um, not comfortable really with the idea of making constant videos on most social network platforms. I'm on TikTok, even though I don't use it that much.

I'm not comfortable, really, with the idea of making constant videos of myself doing stupid things or talking about things, because I'm not that interesting. I'm just a guy who sits in the dark.

1:05:14 - Michael David Wilson
Thank you so much for listening to this Is Horror podcast with Todd Kiesling. It is always a pleasure to have these conversations. It is always an honor that you join us on. The next episode will be the third part with Todd Kiesling. So we're going to dive deeper in to the latter half of cold, black and infinite and actually the two episodes that you've just heard this one and 574,. We recorded them a number of weeks ago, whereas episode three and, dare I say, possibly episode four we are recording them in a few days. So actually, if you become a patron, not only will you get to hear the latest episode ahead of the crowd, but you can submit a question for Todd, and it's not just the episode with Todd. You can submit questions to all of our interviewees and you can help support the show and keep what we do alive.

We've been going for nearly 600 episodes and over 11 years now, but, my goodness, do we appreciate the support. It's just an endorsement. It shows that you love what we're doing. And if you're not in a financial position to support us and goodness, I understand that times are very hard then something you can do is you can leave us a review on Apple Podcast. We haven't had any for a while, but I do always appreciate it when they come in. You know, drop us a star that you think is reflective of the quality of the podcast. I prefer five, but you do what you gotta do. You know, if it's four, if it's three, if it's one or two, I'm surprised that you're listening this far, but you know it's your opinion. So do rate the podcast and do support us on Patreon, which is wwwpatreoncom.

Forward. Slash thisishorror. We'll be talking to Josh Malerman again soon. We just wrapped up, a few days ago, a conversation with Joshua Millican, so you've got that to look forward to. That will be, I suspect, the episode that will follow the Todd Kiesling series of episodes, and then we've also got a conversation with Jason Parkin coming up. We've got a number of future guests that we've got lined up, too A few that I'm going to keep close to my chest at this time, but I think you're really going to like what we've got planned. Now, before I wrap up, a quick advert break.

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1:09:16 - Michael David Wilson
Now, I often wrap up with a quote or something a little bit inspirational, but I'm very aware that there are a lot of listeners who have not been with us for the full 11 years and 600 episodes Understandable, really. So I wanted to highlight a conversation from the archives, one of my favorites. In fact, those are two episodes episodes 159 and 160, with John Langan, and they're so inspirational. Not only do we talk about the beginnings of John Langan's writing career the beginnings of John Langdon's writing career, the fact that he was into comic books before he thought he was going to be an artist, until he discovered Christine by Stephen King but there are also so many great tips and things that could be game changers for writers of fiction, whether it be horror or indeed any genre. He introduces us to the red line technique. He talks about why it is a good idea to submit fiction to the top market first and work your way down. So really good stuff.

So if you haven't already, do listen to episodes 159 and 160 with john langan, and if you haven't listened to them since they were released seven years ago, in august 2017, then I would strongly recommend revisiting them, because I revisited them recently. You know I have these conversations because they're useful for me. They help fuel me when I want a little bit of writing, motivation and a pick me up. And John Langan, he delivers the goods. So do check that out, and do also check out the next episode which I will see you in with Todd Kiesling. So until then, take care of yourselves, be good to one another, read horror, keep on writing and have a great, great day.