TIH 594: Danger Slater on Starlet, Writing During the Pandemic, and the Dark Side of Celebrity

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, we chat with the world's best writers about writing, life lessons, creativity and much more. Today we are chatting to Danger Slater, a terrific writer, underrated, in my opinion, he is the Wonderland award winning writer of I will rot without you Moon fellows. He digs a hole puppet skin and a slew of other books, including the recently released starlet and I always have such a fun time when I'm chatting to danger Slater, his bizarro brand of work seamlessly combines the likes of body horror, humor and bizarro. He's incredible when it comes to dialog, and he writes stories with so many WTF moments that you will not see coming, but you will love it at least. I love it, and I want to spread the word about danger. Really. I think he is terrifically underrated. I don't think enough people are reading him, and I'm hoping that conversations like the one that we're having today are going to put him on more people's radar. So with that said, let's have a quick advert break, and then we'll jump into the conversation

Andrew Love 2:15
in 1867 the young Samantha gray marries the infamous Captain Jakes unleashing a series of brutal horrors in this epic splatter Western from Death's Head press mayhem Sam by J, D, grays is a rip roaring tall tale of revenge. Drags a coffin full of gold across the hellscape of reconstruction Texas and explodes at the top of a mountain, you better read this one with lats on.

Cosmic Horror Monthly 2:44
Are you a reader with an insatiable appetite for creeping dread? Do you hunger for fiction of an eldritch nature? Try cosmic horror monthly, a magazine dedicated to publishing the very best in cosmic horror and weird fiction. Ch M offers tomes in digital and print, and when you subscribe today, your first print copy is free. Hurry before the stars finally align.

Michael David Wilson 3:16
All right. Here it is. It is danger slater on This Is Horror. Thank you. Welcome back to This Is Horror. Yeah,

Danger Slater 3:30
great to be here once again, the triumphant return. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 3:34
and I was looking at how long it had been, and I can't believe it, but it has been five years now since we last spoke to you.

Danger Slater 3:45
So pandemic, I

Michael David Wilson 3:48
know I mean, usually I ask, what have been the biggest changes, personally and professionally? So aside from the pandemic, what's been going on these last five years, for you not, not reviewing the entire world,

Danger Slater 4:05
you don't want to hear my thoughts on the Middle East right now is that.

Michael David Wilson 4:12
I don't think that's why people tune in. But fair enough.

Danger Slater 4:19
No, I, you know, I've just been, I've I actually had the pandemic was actually kind of the, you know, the world slowed down. So I actually got a lot of writing done during that time. I know it was pretty chaotic for a lot of people, myself included, but I thrive in chaos, apparently, because I wrote like, two or three books in that first, like, year and a half. So I was, I was kind of and they're all just coming out now, like starlet, which was my last book, is the last one of those pandemic books that I wrote to come out.

Michael David Wilson 4:51
Yeah, yeah. I mean, a lot of writers, they seem to give quite a similar response. I mean, they're, they're reticent to say. It was a good pandemic for them. Quite the terminology to to use. But you know, when you saw

Danger Slater 5:08
me pull it back a little bit too, I was like, I was like, yeah, it was great. I mean, not, you know, great, but no, I personally had a was okay. So it was an okay time in a very creative time. So luckily, we get to come out of that with something,

Michael David Wilson 5:27
yeah, yeah. And you know, you said starlet was the last book that you wrote during the pandemic. So in terms of the other two, are either of them out now? Or are they forthcoming?

Danger Slater 5:41
No, well, starts the last one to be released, so the other ones have all come out already. So there was house of rot, which came out last year from tenebus Press, that I wrote during the pandemic as well. I basically wrote these two books back to back, like, in a six month span. So before I was like, oh shit, I got to go back to work in those few months where I was just sitting around the house.

Michael David Wilson 6:06
Yeah, and, I mean, House of rot in particular, I can see how that could be a kind of pandemic book. I mean, you've got this new these people that this couple, Elena and miles, and they've got this new house. But, you know, the drawback is that there is pink mold growing on everything. Can we really, do mean everything, and because it's such a self contained book, I mean, it does have that claustrophobic element that, you know, we were enduring gearing the pandemic. Yeah.

Danger Slater 6:46
I mean, it's like, I know that book is a little gross, like, with all the body rotting stuff and kind of surreal, but I'm gonna say it's about 70% like, based off of what was going on in my life at the time, we actually had a mold problem while we were trapped inside. So this was, like something that was we were going through.

Michael David Wilson 7:08
Yeah, yeah. So was, was the genesis of that book, House of Rock, essentially your own mold problem. Or what were the ingredients that meant that this came together? Uh,

Danger Slater 7:22
yeah, it was 100% like, my, my, I don't even know what happened. Like, one day I get out of bed, I'm like, Oh, it's a little humid in here, in the apartment I live in the Pacific Northwest in America, so it is very it's it's kind of a temperate rain forest. They say it's very wet six months of the year, very humid, like 100% humidity. It's raining all the time, so it is kind of ripe for things to turn green and just keep growing. You look outside, and houses are just covered in moss and mold and stuff, because it is just wet all the time, and it's very beautiful everything, like the city itself, is very much nature oriented in allowing this kind of greenness to happen. The thing is, you don't want it inside your house growing all over your couch and you're in your cabinets and on your cat tree and on your bed and pretty much everywhere. And that's kind of what happened one day, I guess, we hit a critical mass when it came to humidity in the apartment, and it just kind of, we didn't have a dehumidifier, which we've since gotten, but it just sprung up on everything, including on my back. Yeah, I had mold on my back. Well, not necessarily mold, but I went to the I got these splotches on my back, and I was like, what is that? You know, I said to my girlfriend, I was like, I still noticed this. When I was going in the shower. There's these dark, kind of brown splotches. So she took a Sharpie and outlined it. She'd be like, cool. Let's see, like, if it's changing shape, or what it's doing. So over the next, like, couple weeks, it's like getting bigger. And I'm like, What the fuck? So I eventually go to the doctor. I'm like, do I have cancer? Like, what is happening? Like, you know, like, that's obviously what everyone jumps to. Like, something is wrong with my skin right now, and she said to me, it is a, it was a she said surfers tend to get it. It was a kind of because they're wet. All the surfers get it because they're wet all the time. She said it was a kind of Sun surf, skin fungus growing on me. It wasn't like mushrooms or nothing, but you don't want to hear that you have a fungus or something on your back.

Michael David Wilson 9:46
No, no, that is not what you want to hear. Is in any situation. I can't think of a single scenario where that is an advantageous thing to be told

Bob Pastorella 9:57
you didn't like run into. Like a meteor or anything.

Danger Slater 10:05
Did you know it was a pretty loud neighborhood, so I might not have even noticed,

Bob Pastorella 10:10
and you might have touched some of that Meteor shit. But anyway,

Danger Slater 10:15
yeah, it like turned out we had so this building we lived in was this old building. It was from built in, not old, old, but it was built in the 60s. It was a bit of like a cheap building from the 60s, right, like, so it wasn't built to last Hap whatever this is 60 years down the line. So it is. It was like sinking into this because it's very, you know, wet also, and it was on this hill, and it was sinking into the hill, so it was uneven. So when it would rain, all the water would run and then leak from our window into our apartment. So our apartment would fill up with water, and it would log, it would get into the carpet in the bedroom, and it turned into this standing water that was apparently under the building itself that was just this, like disgusting, cess filled swamp that probably never dried for years. And that is where all this stuff was coming from, like it was coming up from underneath the apartment. And when our apartment inside got too humid, it just sprouted on everything spontaneously, one day I'm talking about this. But like, if you've read house of rod, this is, like, what happens in the book, it's like, exactly that. Like, this is with our our ridiculous place we used to live.

Michael David Wilson 11:36
Yeah, so at what point did you move out of this place? I mean, I mean for me, at the point where mold is growing on me that, I mean, that feels like it should be many steps ahead. It shouldn't get to that point. But you know, when did you move out? And logistically, you know, how easy was that? Because obviously there are financial considerations. There are agreements in place. I mean, one would hope that the agreements does have a caveat that when, when there is more mold than there is living space, you can

Danger Slater 12:15
they did not care. They didn't care about the fact that there's this water under the building that the foundations were cracking. They we had a friend that also lived in the building with us, and she reported them to the city, who came and inspected it and said, Oh, your Foundation's cracking, your building sinking, and you need to fix it, or we're gonna find you. And they said, fine us, because it's cheaper than fixing the building. So that's when we were like, they're never gonna they don't give a shit about what us in our situation and what's going on here. So we moved as soon as we could, which was a few months later, about three blocks away, because we like the neighborhood, so we literally were like, carrying our stuff to a new apartment down the street.

Michael David Wilson 13:04
Yeah, yeah, no, I've had a number of mold problems when living in places in the UK, although, oddly enough, in Japan, which is a much more humid country, I haven't had the level of mold problems that I have in the UK, and I think probably it's because it's so humid in Japan that they just have to make things that are kind of built to withstand that and to not descend into absolute fungal chaos. And I guess the the negative of the properties in Japan is it means that they're not very good at retaining heat in the winter. So, you know, that is like a negative. But the positive is there isn't mold everywhere. And with each property that I've had a mold problem, I've learned a little bit more as to how to manage it. So then I've kind of, you know that the first one of obviously getting the dehumidifier. But then, you know, I had a small dehumidifier to begin with, just one of those mini ones, because, you know that they're far cheaper. But it was filling up so quickly that we then got an industrial one, and it's like, God, we're kind of going through that every day. How much moisture is in this apartment like in it never grew on me, thank goodness. But yeah, there was one place that I lived in, in Coventry, which isn't a great place to live to begin with, so adding mold to the mix is is even worse. But yeah, just like it, it was going through my clothes like, you know, I had, like, some decent leather jackets and blazers, and then they're just, you. Yeah, they're just turning into a coat of mold. And rather than proudly embracing it, I did throw them out and move properly. But yeah, what we

Danger Slater 15:09
lost? We lost a lot of stuff from the exact thing, including, and this is going to be of interest to nobody but you possibly Michael, but including all my Guinness Book of Records, and you got over by the mold, and I had to toss them all because they got they got eaten apart. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 15:35
so for people who haven't listened to the first episode, we did discuss the fact that every year your mother would buy you a copy of the Guinness Book of Records for Christmas. And is that still an ongoing concern? Is she's still buying you them. Did she hear about the mold problem? And now you get like, every year, one new book and one classic from the past to kind of get the collection back. To be perfectly

Danger Slater 16:04
honest, I did she send me one last I don't think she sent me one last year. Oh no, I don't know. I know it's over. I told her what happened. I'm like, I had to toss them all. And I think she was just like, it just, I think it demoralized her more than it demoralized me. She was just like, oh, couldn't you clean them? I'm like, Mom, they're making paper. Like, there's nothing you could do, like, the mushrooms of one,

Bob Pastorella 16:34
yeah, yeah, it's mode is, I mean, and where you're at is, probably because it's green, it's, it's, it seems like it's just part of the thing I know. You know, years ago, we had in Texas, like a black mold, you know, epidemic, and that stuff's toxic. But, and I was actually working for insurance agent at the time, not to drag this out, but people were filing claims on that to get 1000s, hundreds of 1000s, millions of dollars, and just making bank and getting their houses like having to being able to move and get an entire house rebuilt or build a brand new house. It's so much so that they no longer really cover mold anymore, because so many people were like, you know, oh, I've got black mold. And all you had to have was just, like, one little section and it's, yep, yep, it's toxic. And there you go. And then you have a claim. And so now you have to get, like, specific writers and stuff like that, but mold, especially in extremely wet situations, I've had to throw away books jackets. I had a jacket looked like had feathers on it when I finally got to it, yeah, it's just, you know, and this was black mold, so it's like, you, you know, you didn't even want to touch it, yeah, it was just rancid, leaking black sludge. Is just the nasty shit.

Danger Slater 18:01
I mean, this is, it's, it's shocking to me, and this is why I wrote this book, too, why this is, this is like a horror thing for me, obviously, just watching my possessions get taken over with, like, mold is horrifying. But like, how quickly it happens and how unstoppable nature is when it decides to turn on you is like, there's nothing we could it's we could do to have stopped it right, like, and the thing the fact that we have the dehumidifier going and it's like not flourishing, it's it is just sitting there waiting for the the humidity in the apartment to Rise so it could come back like it is not it's still there, even though we've gotten rid of it, even though we've moved like it's still everywhere, like it can come back at any time. If we're like, not vigilant and like, nature will like, win eventually, too. If the power went out, we couldn't run a dehumidifier like it would, it would be over.

Bob Pastorella 19:07
It's just waiting for a warm house to live.

Danger Slater 19:11
It's already in now the call inside the house, yeah.

Michael David Wilson 19:21
When I had the mold problem, I wrote a short story based on it. I didn't go as far as to write an entire book. I wrote this kind of cosmic horror short story in which the protagonist just gets slowly consumed and obsessed by this spiraling patch of mold that gets out of control, but to to go for the whole book, that that's a commitment, but it's also, you know, I wouldn't expect anything less from you, danger to to go that route. It's

Danger Slater 19:51
like a that it is nature taking over, and it's this kind of unstoppable thing, but it's also a failure of capitalism. Is the reason that this. Is happening is because this building is needs to be remediated and taken care of, and they're not doing it. And because we didn't have money, we moved to this building that we thought was a good value, but it was a good value because it's a piece of shit, and they're taking advantage of us, and the fact that we didn't have the means to get out immediately or sue them or do anything. And it is like, it is these companies. You know, it's, it was an apartment building owned by a property management company that owns 60 properties. So it owns 1000s and 1000s of apartments, like single unit apartments, there's 1000s and 1000s of people giving them 1000s of dollars every single month. Like, where is all that money going? Because it ain't to upkeeping our living space. Like, you know, it's not treating us like people. It's treating us like the commodity to give them money. And it is, I mean, this is all kind of baked into the book. It's not what the book is necessarily about, but it's about, you know, a couple that wants to believe in this American dream, or whatever it is, when you know, when you if you work hard, you get to go ahead and you could start your life and buy a house and buy all these things that they promised you, and it's just like they can't even get out of their own apartment.

Michael David Wilson 21:26
Yeah, and unfortunately, I mean, whenever we see what looks to be too good to be true, or we see like a property and we think, what's the catch? Even if we can't see the catch initially, 99.9 99.9% there is a catch, and it's like, well, we can either ignore it, or we can move in, and we will eventually find out what the catch is. But

Danger Slater 21:55
when we got our new place, we've specifically looked for one that wasn't a part of a giant corporation like that, like the, I mean, there's, there's, like, maybe, I don't know, 100 units in this building that I currently live in, but it's only owned by one family. This is their property that they run. And so they are, they are spending anything, anything that they need to spend money on is going to be specifically here. You know, it's not like, you know, we have 1000 places. So it doesn't matter if one place sucks, like, let's not worry about it. Like, so it is a little bit better. But we also do pay about $400 more a month than we used to.

Michael David Wilson 22:41
Yeah, yeah. And I mean in terms of your writing, you said that you wrote, you know, free books during the pandemic, now that you're back to your original or your more kind of normal routine, what is that looking like? And how many books do you have now that are ready to go, that are waiting for publishers or waiting for publication?

Danger Slater 23:13
Well, it certainly slowed down. I you know now that I have, like I just said, we spend 400 more dollars a month. Found this apartment. My car broke at the kind of coming out of COVID too. So I had to buy a new car, not a new car, but a new used car that I'm paying off right now. And so my bills pretty much doubled than what they were like three or four years ago. So I actually have to spend a lot more time doing an actual job. Not that writing isn't an actual job, but it is the most inconsistent way to make money you could possibly have, like you might have or I might have a good month here and there. You might do a convention and make a lot of money. You might get your first royalty on a book that comes out, and it did okay, but like, then there'll be months of nothing. So I've had to kind of shift my focus into side hustling to kind of make up the difference. So I've been doing a lot of animal care, doing cat like, Baby babysit, I dog sit and cat sit and dog walk. So it works well with the writing schedule, because I can make my own schedule, but I do spend like, five hours a day with random pets walking around town and, yeah,

Michael David Wilson 24:39
yeah. And in terms of the writing, I mean, but both you and I, and neither of us, are unknown for writing these commercial money selling ideas that the New York Times are gonna lap up, or Bollywood will be like, Yeah, that's the next superhero franchise. I mean, I wish they would. It would be amazing if they did that with with starlet, for example. But I mean, when you're looking to publish a book, I mean, what considerations do you have in terms of which press to go to or how to give it its best opportunity?

Danger Slater 25:19
I Well, I've been lucky with starlet and a book called Moon fellows that came out before it that was kind of in 2021 I think, or 2022 but to have connected with Max booth at ghoulish, which I know you've both worked with also, but they are a great person to just kind of, I'm lucky, because I consider Max a friend. So if I finish something, I could go to them personally and say, Are you into this idea? I think, I think that it this point. I've been writing for a long time. I've been writing for publishing and writing for about 15 years. I've been writing for longer, obviously, but in dealing with publishing and indie publishing and all these in these companies and that have come and gone and stuff, so it's it's nice to kind of rely sometimes on these past relationships I've built to kind of just have a starting point of where to jump off from. I could talk to max, and now I'm good with tenebrous press too, who put out house of rot. And I could kind of come to them when I have an idea or I'm finishing something, and say, Is this something that you would be interested in? What does your publishing schedule look like, which is good, because beyond that, I'm at a loss like everybody else.

Michael David Wilson 26:49
Yeah, would you ever consider putting things out independently? Or is that kind of unviable because of the financial considerations that you have to put in initially, or perhaps just, you know, because if you're with a small press, you've at least got a marketing team, and not always, but with some small presses, with Max, certainly Max and Larry put a lot of effort and now Mindy As well into making sure that that that book is promoted and, you know, will do as as well as possible.

Danger Slater 27:27
I'm I'm definitely not against the idea. I just haven't wanted to learn how to do that because I'm very not interested in that side of the writing thing, I don't really want to even know as much about publishing as I already know. I would love to just make books and not think about anything else in the entire thing. I would love to not even have to be on Twitter and talk about it. Would be great to be famous enough and have a readership enough that I don't even have to scream my own name over and over again to get people to pay attention to me. It's not exactly where, where I'm at, or most people are at, but it is not something that I've had to do yet. So it's not an avenue I've really looked at if I got to a point where I needed to the books are still coming. They're still coming out of me, and there is going to come a point where I am going to have more books than I will know people who could help me get them published, and something's going to have to break. So it's either they're never going to see the light a day, or I will need to figure out how to some other way of getting them out into the world.

Michael David Wilson 28:47
Yeah, and you mentioned working with tenebrous press on House of rocks. So how did it come about that you connected with the people at tenebras and then logistically, what did that look like working with them both in terms of the editorial and then the marketing of the book?

Danger Slater 29:10
Yeah. Well, they were, they were new. They kind of came out of the pandemic too. They were kind of a new press back then, and I didn't, I normally wouldn't even like I normally be a little more wary of a brand new press, not that there's not a lot of great presses that are new, but it's hard to as an artist, go here, take something that I spent a lot of time and put a lot of myself into completely unproven, untested entity who could completely Fuck up this release. You know, you guys could shutter in a two, two months from now and then, my book is orphaned, and I don't know what the hell to do like. So there's a lot of kind of trust that you need to put into who you work with. And even though 10. Bruce was new. I kind of liked what they were doing, and the fact that this is just a lucky happenstance, but the fact that Matt, one of the two people that own it, it lives in Portland, also that we got to meet up and actually connect in person, and it makes a huge world of difference in the amount of not that someone really in person can't be a fuck up, but it makes a huge difference in the amount of trust that you can put in somebody when they are more than just an avatar on your computer screen when they are an actual in the flesh, human being that you've interacted with and said things to, and I've really liked what they had done, and I think, I mean, I was right, because they're doing Great, and their books continue to be great and be really kind of interesting. And the fact that they wanted to publish something by me, I, you know, I'm not what you would call traditional horror, so it's sometimes a little difficult to find my people. But there's, there's like the weirdos out there, like people like Max people like tenebrous that are kind of actively encouraging this kind of horror.

Michael David Wilson 31:29
Yeah, yeah. I certainly relate to what you're saying in terms of, like, just trying to find where to even place my own work, because it doesn't neatly fit into a genre. It doesn't even really neatly fit into a sub genre. So I kind of feel almost in the Joe our Lansdale vein, you just have to keep writing enough, and then she'll look that the brand or the genre is me, so you need to kind of quirky thing, and either you're gonna get on with it or you're not. But you know, it's about finding the people who do get on with it and then slowly building your audience or your tribe, as it were. But there's no path for people who are writing about jellyfish DNA, and it's like, that's the magic bullet to get the audience.

Danger Slater 32:26
I feel myself hitting glass walls in every direction I turn, and I'm just like, it's like walking through like a like, one of those Hall of Mirrors, right? You keep thinking, this is the way, and then it's not. And then you go, let me pivot and try this way, and then it's not, and there is a way through, but it involves smashing your face into that glass over and over and over again, which is where I am in my career. I'm in the bloody broken nose part of my career, I guess.

Bob Pastorella 32:56
But you're, but you're in, you're in the best place, because if you're gonna, you know, the only way you're gonna be able to stand out is to literally stand out. I mean, every, every one of the iconic writers that, if you look through history, you know, even, even looking at Shirley Jackson with, you know, haunting the Hill House, there was nothing like that when that book came out, nothing. It stood out like a sore thumb, and look where it's at now, you know, same thing with Clyde Barker. There was nothing like Clyde Barker out when it happened. You know, when books of blood came out. And so that's the only way that anybody's going to be able to get any kind of traction, is to make sure that what you're doing is it stands out. It's fearless, it's, it's, it's, rubs against the grain. And to me, that's, that's just exciting. I just love reading it. I love the thrill of actually being able to to create it. And when it hits, it hits. And when it doesn't, it doesn't. You just keep going, you just keep trying until you get it right.

Danger Slater 34:04
Yeah, one of the, one of the things that I look for in art, and be it movies or or books or anything, is that element of like, it delivering, not, not surprised, necessarily, but it delivering something unexpected to me, like, and that could, that could just come because it's just, it's doing what it's doing really good. I It's unexpectedly better. It's an unexpectedly great horror book or whatever. You know, instead of just being a regular horror book or an average horror book, or you read a horror book, and then it starts making left turns or something, and you're like, Oh, I had no idea where this was gonna go. And it's like a fun roller coaster now, where I'm on for the ride. And that is, like, it's hard to say exactly what that thing is, because it's gonna be different for every thing. But that element of just like, I don't, I don't know. I. I don't know what is gonna happen. Makes art exciting, and that's kind of where I'm trying to do in my own way, you know, to to some degrees of success in in some lesser degrees of success, like, but when I sit down to write, I'm very much like, what is something? What is the story that only I could tell in the only the way I could tell it, whether people are going to get on board with that or not, I don't have any control over all I could do is try to do it as good as I can and then do my best to put it in front of as many people as I can, which

Michael David Wilson 35:38
I think lends itself nicely to discussing your latest book, Star lit. So I mean to begin with, can you give our audience the elevator pitch?

Danger Slater 35:53
Yeah, it's about a a young lady who recently moved to Hollywood who wants to be a movie star who bumps into a kind of fading, a list star, a army hammer type, let's say, and who takes a shine to her and invites her back to his mansion. And things get very weird from there,

Michael David Wilson 36:19
right when I was trying to explain it to someone. I said, it's kind of the Neon Demon meets a night out with Armie Hammer. I mean, that seemed to be the, the best kind of concise way of putting it. And I mean, of course, there's an awful there's an awful lot of humor and violence and shock value to it. But when you dig deeper, it really is a critique on Celebrity and Hollywood and both the desperation and exploitation within the film industry. Yeah, or,

Danger Slater 36:56
or, or, I mean, any artist too that happens in books and writing as well. But yeah, it doesn't with books and stuff. It doesn't have that kind of gloss of like you have to actually also look good, like you could, you know, writers could look like whatever, like we're behind a page, like so, but like, when it comes to the movies and stuff. It's also that like shine of like, you need to look like a specific thing in order for it to even start to work.

Michael David Wilson 37:30
Yeah, yeah. And was Armie Hammer a direct influence on this. I mean, when you read about, you know, the stories of army, which, I mean, for people who aren't aware, you could give them a quick introduction as to what was suggested about Mr. Hammer. Yeah,

Danger Slater 37:50
I mean, that was the jump off. That was the, you know, that was, that was kind of happening when I, you know, it's old news at this point, but it was happening like, three or four years ago when I was actually writing the book, but essentially army. If you don't know who Armie Hammer is, he was kind of this, I don't want to say bland, but he is just like, so prototypical movie star looking that he doesn't even physically stand out. In anybody's mind. It's so he's got one of those, like, just like blank guy faces, just like handsome, but blank. And so he he's kind of, like, had this weird career where they've been trying to, like, make him a star, but it's never quite popped off for him. And then, come to find out, while all this was going on, he's been kind of indulging in really weird psychosexual, cannibalistic fetish videos, or not, videos, chats with some of his fans through Instagram and a whole bunch of other weird Shit with his family. And they're just like freaks, essentially the weirdos and creeps. And I was like, just looking at this guy, like, I'm just like, he's been given all these chances, and he's never quite popped, and he's got all the looks, and he's still a fucking creep, right? Like he should be happy that he won the lottery of life. Essentially, he was born with every advantage you could possibly have, and then ends up being like the worst person. And maybe, maybe that is feeding that fire to a degree, you know, maybe because you have everything you're like, what else is there? And that is kind of what it is this, this, this young actress who doesn't understand the Hollywood machine. She goes up to this guy's house, where he invites over a couple of his other friends, his other Hollywood elite friends, and they all are kind of weirdos. And they all are gonna they need to exploit and use her. I don't want to give too much away, but they need to use her to kind of keep themselves going.

Michael David Wilson 40:11
Yeah, and even pre the meeting. I mean, they when they notice each other, the protagonist, deja, is quite enamored by Brandon Bowers, who is the the army hammer standing and such a movie star name as well. Brandon Bowers, yeah, but I mean, early on, you know, it starts off with the exchange of some photographs, but pretty soon into it, you know, she finds out that he enjoys indulging in sexual practices with bits of meat, including, you know, that there's a picture that she shows, I believe, to one of her friends, to almost be like, you know, is this normal? It's like him, like inserting himself in a filet mignon, which, around here, is not normal. I don't know how important maybe, maybe it is.

Danger Slater 41:16
We use Beyond Meat here, that's who beat that's what

Michael David Wilson 41:21
ethically source then, yeah, yeah, yeah. Reminds me of of a line at some point in the book, which I'll give no context to, so that it doesn't explain it, but somebody indulges in a little bit of cannibalism, adjacent behavior, and then someone else is like, wait, I know you were vegetarian. And she's like, Yeah, yeah, but you know this human flesh, it was organically, so apparently that's the Get out,

Danger Slater 41:58
yeah, you know, like I, I've been so this main character, deja, her name is, like, she's, she's being confronted very early on, like you said, these weird text messages, these are red flags that any normal person would say, there's something wrong here, and I need to turn around and get the hell out of here, because nothing good will come of this. But she's very much purposefully ignoring these things because she wants what they have. This drive in her to succeed is more important than not her own self preservation. But she's able to kind of rationalize what's happening? Oh, he's a rich guy. He's got weird fetish. Is, like, I could be game for this. I'll play along. Like, why not? Like, you know, as long as I'm consenting, there's nothing wrong happening with the two of us here, which that we, you know, as things go on, you know, her consent is not enough to to to save her. Essentially, it's, it's, it's more than just being able to say yes. At the early parts here, it's when she wants to say no. It's already the trains on the track and she can't kind of get out.

Michael David Wilson 43:18
Yeah, yeah. There is a ramping up and an escalation of you know the behavior, and you know that there's also, of course, commentary into the paparazzi, and you know wanting to to take photographs at all costs, and that that comes into play with a certain character in in this book, too, and even when things can't get any worse. You know, we see the manipulation and the negotiation between said army hammer character and a paparazzi and money talks, opportunity talks.

Danger Slater 44:01
It's like this whole ecosystem is happening that she is like not a part of until she steps into it and realizes that she actually has always been a part of it. She's just the bottom rung of this food chain, essentially. And so it's basically her trial by fire, initiated into what it means to be a celebrity, yeah,

Bob Pastorella 44:28
yeah, that's pretty AP, because, I mean it, she does go through a trial by fire. It's that same drive that wants her to get into that world. I see that that that is that same drive that that helps her try to escape that world once she realizes that she's on this train and it's, it's, it's, it's going down the tracks, it's headed to destination, and only thing she can do is try to derail it. And you know, it was just. It was fascinating to see her mindset shift. You know, the fight and, you know, taking it out of the boat. You know, the fight or flight. You know, it's, it's, it's, uh, you know, she, she knew that she had to get out of there. But getting there was golly, the things people would do for fame.

Danger Slater 45:23
And there's like, there's like, I this jump off point with these two characters. So it's kind of these two I care, like someone who wants it and that doesn't have it, and someone who has it and wants to keep it right. So they both want the same thing. They want to be loved. They want to be famous. They want to everyone to know who they are and to care about them. There, there was this part of me that is kind of the in for both these characters. I could see, I'm not gonna say I could see myself in this main character, but there is a part of me that goes I've been around for a while. I've been doing this for over a decade, almost 15 years like there's I've seen some successes, and I'm like, How do I hold on to the success that I've had? How far would I go to hold on to this? And then there's another part of me that goes I'm not even close to what I want. I'm still this hungry person who will do what I need to do and ignore the red flags before me, because it'll someone's promising me something, and I will take it because I want the thing that they're promising so there was this very much like push and pull of these two sides of myself that I was trying to kind of split into two and put into these two characters to kind of give them the kind of motivations that would feel real in a lot of ways, even though the book is completely surreal and they're, you know, the the bad guy is a monster, essentially. And the main girl is she's not a monster, but she is. She does want things too that would put her in a position like they're in eventually. So there are these like, pieces of myself that I've kind of split and put into these characters to kind of, like, really make the story feel alive, at least for me. You know, your mind would be very reading the thing, yeah,

Michael David Wilson 47:20
and I think, you know, if you're asking yourself, How far would you go for fame or success or whatever it is you want most? I think if people are honest with themselves, they'd go a lot further than they probably want to admit publicly. You know, if Harper Collins comes to you and they say, we're going to give you a six figure book deal, is need to make love to this beef brisket. It doesn't feel like it. You know that. You know just the beef brisket maybe, yeah, there's no, no video or anything for a lot of people, I imagine, and some people may correct and be like, Wilson, you sick. I feel that, you know you could do that, but you know, it's the escalation. It's like, okay, well, now maybe we are gonna make the video? No, don't. Don't make the video of it. Maybe an audience of three. At what point do you say, No, I'm out. And we, you know, we're talking about the thing that you want the most. And you know, to begin with, she does. Deja has clarified, this is consensual, you know, so nothing grung is happening. But then you know that, like in her mind, I'm not saying nothing wrong is happening. That's what she's saying. That's her justification, which obviously, you know that brings a whole discussion of consent, of exploitation, of power dynamics, which Brandon Bowers clearly has,

Danger Slater 49:08
yeah, I mean, you think like the spot or the the line is victimizing people, right? That's where we would that's where I, you know, I would say, I would stop. I, you don't. I would do anything to get ahead, but he can't victimize people, right? Just like you would allow other people to manipulate you, as long as you are not their victim, right? So she's kind of rationalizing her own victimhood, or rationalizing herself out of her own victimhood, as she's letting herself be led down this path of destruction, essentially, yeah, I don't know. I'm not trying to give like easy answers to like these kinds of things. These are like big things to think about, but the book is very much like the push and pull of these ideas of victims and. Victimhood and and where we allow ourselves to be taken advantage of because we think it will benefit us in the end, and where we will are ready to take advantage of others because, for the same reason, it would benefit us in the end. You know, how would we compromise ourselves in order to get the things we want. I'm making it sound it's this bummer book. There's so many jokes in the book too. It's very funny. It

Bob Pastorella 50:27
is. I was about to say it's one of the funniest books I've read in quite a while. And I don't want to spoil anything, but there's, there's the, what I thought was the funniest part were the parts dealing with with bodily fluids, and how, in the throes of bodily fluids, how people react, and not only the person who's in the throes, but also the people who are having to be subjected to it and it, I Just found that very, very funny. It's a very, let's just say, without being too spoiler, it's very spooky book, and I did not expect that, though i i love i loved it. You've taken a story that underneath all the laughter and the scares and the gross outs and all that, you have a very, very serious story they're dealing with, with very serious things, and you allow us to look at that in a very entertaining manner. And that, I like that when you can when you can talk, hey, underneath all this, the subtext is, this is serious shit, but I'm gonna make you crack up and gross out at the same time. Yeah, that's you get that balance just right?

Michael David Wilson 51:50
Let me just add that's the other thing that I would compare it to, is the greasy strangler. Yes, there's like so much kind of look, look, let's just be more explicit than Bob was. There's a lot of come in this book. There is more calm than any other dangerous later book that I have

Bob Pastorella 52:10
read. There's more common any other book I've ever read, yes,

Michael David Wilson 52:16
and so you've got that kind of body humor and that cartoonish over the top ness to it, but like Bob says, there's a seriousness underneath it. So for that, it did remind me of the greasy strangler, because you can take it as it is, or you can go a little bit deeper and see what it's really about and what it's thematically about.

Danger Slater 52:42
I appreciate both of you saying all that so much, because that is kind of exactly what I'm going for. And it's nice to hear people get it, because there is like, a surface reading of a book. People do it all the time, and there's just a certain like, you just read it, and you enjoy the story, and that's fine. And then there's, like, the the layer where you can read it, maybe dig into, like, the themes and stuff and see what's kind of the story underneath the story, which I am trying to express, that's the real story I'm trying to express. Of course, I want to write about the fucking goofy come shots and the fucking the meat and all that other weird stuff, and the in the bodies, mutations and everything else that happens in the book like that is, that is the fun stuff. But like, underneath, like, there's a very like, definite direction and story that I'm trying to tell. I'm trying to express something, and which is, again, why it sounds like I was being so serious before, when the book is very funny, because, because it is a serious thing that I'm trying to express, I just love the window dressing of over the top violence and silly jokes and all the other things that make books entertaining to me, you know, like, and maybe that's it too, like the one thing that I think that is most important, beyond the message of your book, beyond anything, it's like entertain your audience. Like give them a show, give them something interesting to do, like to be a part of, and I am always cognizant of that fact. Going, what is the next most interesting thing that could happen? And then I go, how do I make that actually tie back to the themes of the book? So it's like that that's kind of and so it's always a constant escalation of just like getting weirder and weirder as she gets deeper into this house, it just gets weirder.

Bob Pastorella 54:46
Yeah, and that kind of begs the question, when, when you conceived of the book. Was it the theme come first? Was the story? Was it an organic Oh, wow. Like, Eureka moment. Like, hey, this. This all fits. You know, sometimes when you're writing, you come up with an idea that the theme is inherently there. It's rare and, you know, and you shouldn't go, Hey, I'm gonna write about this. And then you try to reverse engineer your story around a theme. You're you're gonna get preachy and all that kind of stuff. So how did that happen?

Danger Slater 55:22
Oh, man, I wish I had, like, a nice, concise answer to that question. It's just like these things just kind of come together sometimes, like I did. I did hear that Armie Hammer story, and I was like, what is the type of person that would go along with this guy's weird cannibal fetish stuff, like, what like? Why are they like? Okay, so maybe they also have a cannibal fetish. I guess so. Two cannibal fetish people happen to meet each other. That That sounds like a beautiful love story. Could happen any all the time, sure, but more than likely it's someone who's attracted to this guy's fame and attracted to the things that they think they could get out of knowing him, so they're just kind of going along with it, instead of being necessarily an active and happy participant. So I was like, what would be the kind of person that would want something from a person like that, and what could they want that they would go along with it to the fucking most extreme version of what that is. And once I kind of had those, that idea of like, that kind of character, everything else really, kind of just happened like it very much happened. The whole back half of the book plays out like a slasher, except that there's five slashers in the house, essentially in one final girl, and she's got to get through all of them.

Michael David Wilson 56:56
Well, yeah, I was going to mention that this seems to be experimenting with the final girl trope, but in terms of putting it together, and you know, you're talking about the different pieces, did you plan it out before you had like, a kind of single word written of the story, or was it more that you wrote, a bit planned, a bit wrote, or, you know, what did the Method look like in terms of that first draft? Oh, sure.

Danger Slater 57:29
And this is, this is true of all of my books, actually, but I will plan out everything before I start writing anything. Before I even start working on a first draft, I will spend a few weeks using physical note cards, writing down every idea I have for the book, including character, scenes, bits of dialog, literally anything I could think of. Just until I'm done, I'll have a stack of like, hundreds of cards, and then I will spend a day or two spreading them all out on the floor and organizing them into a coherent story where it's, you know, getting rid of ones that don't make sense, obviously, and kind of building something that looks and follows an actual logical point A to point B, so that when I sit down to write that first draft, I can get the first draft done in like, a few weeks, like two or three weeks, I'll get a first draft out, like, and we're talking novella, so like 30,000 40,000 words in that first two or three weeks, because I planned every bit of the actual plot, so I don't need to spend a lot of time going, Well, what happens next? I'm just following the cards and making sure that all my dots actually connected, you know? And, um, the second draft is where the story really gets filled in, like, where I'm actually kind of filling out the scenes and stuff. But that first draft I'll, I'll just like, go as fast as I'll spend two or three weeks planning it, then write the draft itself as fast as possible, and then spend a few months working on that second draft, which is the actual like, filling everything in, filling out all the character stuff, Making the dialog actual dialog, making the scenes feel alive, and explaining what things look like and stuff like that.

Michael David Wilson 59:27
So in terms of comedy and the humor in your books, I'm wondering, is that something that also happens in the first draft stage? Does it happen organically? Is it something that is planned into the draft?

Danger Slater 59:47
Yeah, I think a lot of it is just kind of organically happening. I'm not, I don't sit there and have, like, a pocket full of jokes that I'm like, How do I jam these into the story? It's. Usually there's there's two types of things, like two types of humor that would happen in something there's the situational stuff, which might be kind of plotted out beforehand, and then there's kind of the character dialog stuff, which kind of arises as you're writing. So a lot of just the back and forth dialog jokes are just happening, pretty much, not necessarily even the not in the planning stage, not in the first draft stage, but in the second draft, when I really start getting into the scene, I'm just like, well, what would this character say? What is it? You know, if this character was like this personality, what would they say? I mean, that's, I guess, how anyone would write anything. But I have my characters usually be funny to a degree. And there's also the the humor of just having, like, the juxtaposition of the unexpected. So like, not necessarily, like, implicitly, like, this is funny, but like, it's funny because I wasn't expecting this left turn to happen. Yeah, these things just kind of pop up. Like, did that answer your question? I don't

Michael David Wilson 1:01:14
It did, yeah, yeah. You don't have a book of jokes. It just it happens. It's organic. And I mean, another aspect of starlet is, I mean, you've got between some of the regular chapters these movie reviews of Brandon Bauer's movies. And, of course, it can always be difficult when you want to give backstory on a character, but you obviously don't want an info dump. So I thought this was a great way that fit this particular story to get around that problem and to give us some insight into, you know, the frustrations and how Brandon might have become the man that he is.

Danger Slater 1:02:03
I even so, yeah, I think there's like 10 chapters or something in the book. So each chapter starts with it basically covers 20 years in the in his career with just a review of one of his movies, a movie I made up. Obviously they're not real movies, but these are, but they're like archetypes of movies. So the what I did there was, I planned, I thought of, like, how a trajectory of a career of kind of a stalled leading man would go. So it's kind of starts out with, like getting attention in, like the indie art house sphere, and then they're kind of like, oh, you're handsome. Let's start putting them in these blockbusters and see what we could do. What kind of, you know, if you could, if you could head up a franchise or something. Sometimes that works even, and then sometimes it doesn't. And in Brandon case, it doesn't work. So he kind of tries to go into this, like, more like, in like, Art House fair, he's like, Well, let me be a prestige actor and win the awards and be like, one of those kind of actors instead, which fails even worse than his kind of blockbuster run. And then by the end, he's doing, like, direct to streaming movies, where he's only in them because he's gets to have his name Big on the poster still. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 1:03:23
and I wonder, I mean, it's like it was so authentic throughout. Have you had any experience with Hollywood or with people within those circles?

Danger Slater 1:03:39
Um, not, not necessarily. I watch a lot of movies, I I'm, to a degree, but not in that kind of way, like where you're, like, really in the machine. I'm just kind of like, you know, being an author, you're kind of on the outside of that, but like, adjacent to it, in a lot of ways to you know your storytelling, and that's what movies are. We all want fucking movie deals for our books, like that's where the real money's happening. So it's a lot of just kind of what I've absorbed over the years, just kind of from the outside looking in and and just being a fan of movies and kind of movie culture itself. I'm a, I would say, if I had a hobby, it would be watching and discussing movies. So it is, like something I'm just interested in. So I have, I do read a lot of reviews and, like, kind of critical analysis is and YouTube essays on movies and stuff. So it's kind of like right where I'm at.

Michael David Wilson 1:04:48
Thank you so much for listening to This Is Horror with Danger Slater. Do join us again next time for the second and final part of the conversation. But if you want. Get it ahead of the crowd. If you would like to get every episode ahead of the crowd, become our Patreon, a patreon.com, forward slash. This Is Horror. Not only do you get early bird access to each and every episode, but you get to submit questions to every guest. You get to become part of the This Is Horror discord community, including exclusive channels that only patrons are a part of. You get some bonus podcasts as well, including story unbox, the horror podcast on the Crafter writing. And you get to feel good about yourself because you're supporting This Is Horror and everything that Bob and I are doing. So head over to patreon.com, forward slash, This Is Horror. Have a little look at what we offer, and if it is a good fit for you, I would love to see you there. Okay, before I wrap up a quick advert break.

Cosmic Horror Monthly 1:06:04
Are you a reader with an insatiable appetite for creeping dread? Do you hunger for fiction of an eldritch nature? Try cosmic horror monthly, a magazine dedicated to publishing the very best in cosmic horror and weird fiction. Ch M offers tomes in digital and print, and when you subscribe today, your first print copy is free. Hurry before the stars finally align

Andrew Love 1:06:36
in 1867 the young Samantha gray marries the infamous Captain Jakes, unleashing a series of brutal horrors in this epic splatter Western from Death's Head press mayhem Sam by J D, grays is a rip roaring tall tale of revenge. Drags a coffin full of gold across the hellscape of reconstruction Texas and explodes at the top of a mountain. You better read this one with lights on. Another

Michael David Wilson 1:07:06
way to support the podcast is to leave us a review on the Apple podcast website. Another way to support me is to leave reviews for my books on Goodreads and Amazon and indeed, anywhere and if you would like to read one of my books, but you don't have the financial means to do so, reach out to me. Michael at this is horror.co.uk and I will be able to hook you up with one of my books. Let me know which one you fancy, be it The Girl in the Video house of bad memories, or They're Watching which I co wrote with Bob Pastorella. And let me know if you would prefer the ebook or the audiobook format, because really, in this game, as right as the most important thing is to get more readers. So if you want to join me on that journey, I'd be honored. Well, that about does it for another episode of This Is Horror, but until next time for the second and final part of the wonderful, Danger Slater, take care of yourselves. Be good to one another. Read horror. Keep on writing and have a great, great day.