TIH 596: David Moody on Shadowlocked, Beta Reader Feedback, and Character Dynamics

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. Happy New Year. This is the 13th year of This Is Horror Podcast, and we are just a few episodes away from episode 600 I am hoping that this is going to be a lucky 13 for us, but we will find out in due course. But whilst many things have changed over the last 13 years, for This Is Horror Podcast, one thing has not changed, and that is that we love talking to David Moody. He first joined us for episode two of the podcast, and in fact, he spoke to me prior to that for scream magazine. I think that was in about 2011 so today we are back with David Moody to talk about his fantastic book, Shadow locked, one of the best releases of 2024 it's a great conversation, as it always is, with David. But before we jump into it, a quick advert break in 1867

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Michael David Wilson 3:05
without said, Here it is. It is David Moody on This Is Horror. David, welcome back to This Is Horror. Well,

David Moody 3:18
thank you for having me again. It's very cool to be back.

Michael David Wilson 3:23
Yes, been around a year since I last spoke to you, and that was, of course, for the house of bad memories launch my novel that you were kind enough to blurb. And so I'm wondering, as I always do, what have been the biggest changes for you, both personally and professionally, in that time? Oh,

David Moody 3:47
do you know, I wish there had been some changes, really, because I'm kind of stuck a little bit. That doesn't sound very enticing or exciting for people to listen to, but it's just, I'm just being honest here. I think when we spoke last time, I was telling you about the stuff going on with hater film wise, that I'm not allowed to say anything about. And, you know, we've spoken by email about this, it's it's still stuck, and I don't know if it's going to happen or if it's not going to happen. I really don't know, and I can't call it, but you know, this has been happening for about 15 years, so it's no it's no, nothing new for me. But the difficulty this time is I feel that I'm in a position where I've got to make a decision and say, right now, do I just keep holding out for this, or do I just say, Screw it and it's gonna get everything back and go the full independent route again, but until I know one way or another what's happening, I can't do that. When we spoke last year, I think it was the either the beginning or the middle of the writers strike. So that's held everything up a little bit. Had some encouraging news on it earlier in a year, but now it's kind of. On quiet again. So, so, yeah, I'm, I'm, I've got that going in the background which is kind of affecting everything. So in the meantime, I'm just trying to write new stuff, go in different directions and put different books out, just to, just to keep some visibility. Yeah, and

Michael David Wilson 5:18
talking of those books. I mean, let's just jump into the book that we particularly want to talk about today, which is your most recent release, and that is, of course, Shadow locked. So to begin with, what is the elevator pitch for that story?

David Moody 5:39
Elevator Pitch? I am so bad at these things, so this is what I normally tell people, and I think expressly do this really quick and concise, but I can't. So here comes the whole thing. Married couple on their way home from a party late at night, there's an incident on the road. They come off the side of a bridge, end up in a river. The wife dies, the husband escapes. When he wakes up, he tells the police that they were rammed, that they were that somebody forced them off the road. The police say, Hang on a second mate. Are you sure you're not still concussed because there were no other vehicles around. So he's trying to work out what happened and why his wife lost control because she was driving, and why they ended up in that situation. And then she reappears in a kind of Is she a ghost? Is she not a ghost? Is it something wrong with his brain? Is it? Is this something to do with the occult? But she comes back, and they realize together that until they've sorted out exactly what happened. Neither am I going to move on. There you go.

Michael David Wilson 6:46
Yeah, and there's so much that I want to talk about pertaining to shadow locked but I think it would be quite helpful to know what was the genesis for the story, what was the reason that you decided to write it in the first place.

David Moody 7:05
It's a story actually, that's been hanging around for, believe it or not, about 30 years, which just shows how old I am now. When I wrote my first book in 1994 I had it released a couple years later that was straight to you, and managed to sign a publishing deal with a very ropey publishing house, but it felt like the real deal at the time, and as that was happening in the background, because the process took about a year, I had this burst of creativity, and I wrote a book that turned into the first Autumn novel. Eventually, I wrote a novel called trust, and then I wrote this book, and I didn't really have a title, but it was about a guy who was involved in a car crash, and he was sent away to recuperate, and started seeing this ghostly girl who the more that he was around, the more real she became to him. And the crux of that story was that he'd got to it was kind of having a relationship with a ghost. And his family was saying, You're out of your bloody tree. And he was saying, but no, no, she's really here. And, you know, they have him committed. They're going to have an he's going to be operated on. And he's thinking, shit, if I go through this, then I'm going to lose her forever, even though she might not really be there. And he breaks free from hospital, etc, etc. So, so it's a very different kind of story. And it was, like, it was very, it was quite boy zone, not boy zone, the pop band, boys own, as in, that's it, Bob. That was a, like a kind of a comic for boys, back in the back in the day before my time, when it was very gun CO and I'm a soldier, you're a soldier. Let's have a scrap, lads, that kind of thing. It was very much, very basic, um, it had absolutely no depth to it whatsoever. That my first version of this book because, because I didn't have any depth to me, because it was before I got married, before I had kids, and I was just just some random 20 something bloke with no life experience. So it was entertaining enough, but it never went anywhere. Then this kind of before we came, before we started recording, we were having quite an in depth conversation about kids and ex partners and so on and so on. But just to tie back to that, even though nobody is watching this now, heard it another element that happened in those, those years, those intervening years between me having a first stab at this story and now was my wife and I got together, and Steve went through a very difficult divorce. And there were, we've got step I've got step kids. So there were lots of custody battles. And basically the crux of it was the guy I knew her ex husband, and the guy that I thought he. Was the perfect life that he presented to everybody else was an absolute crock, and the reality was that it was an absolutely awful person to be around who was causing a lot of harm to the people closest to him. And it always fascinated me. It was hard going through at the time, particularly for my wife and step kids, but it always fascinated me, looking back at how successfully this guy presented a version of himself to the rest of the world. You know, you think you know somebody, but once that front door is closed, so who knows what could be going on back then? So, so that really was the the missing element to the book, it was this relationship that's interrupted. And the more you look into it, the more you see that maybe things weren't as you thought they were. I'm trying here. I know I'm saying a lot. I'm probably saying very little with all these words, but I'm trying to skirt around the crux of the book, because I don't really want to give too much away.

Michael David Wilson 11:00
Yeah, yeah. And I think this is a theme that we're going to have throughout this conversation, because in many ways, this book is really a book of two parts. I mean, to begin with, it feels like a poignant study of grief and of loss and of mourning, and what on earth you know you do when your whole world has been taken away from you, something that you previously hadn't imagined, and certainly hadn't imagined at such a young age. But then you know in in the kind of second half, which you've certainly alluded to. So I don't think it's it's more of a spoiler than anything we've said. There's this unraveling, or things are not as they seem, and there's almost something a little bit Jack Torrance about it. Hang on. Do I mean Jack Torrance? Is that the shining? Have I said, right, yeah,

David Moody 12:08
work and no play,

Michael David Wilson 12:10
yeah, yeah, exactly it. It's early here, as I've said, Our fair, but apparently we're referencing things are fair in this conversation too. Just to make this is interesting for the listeners and the viewers, but, but, yeah, they it. There's, there's almost a mystery element, a breakdown element, is, is this the second half is, anything goes. The first half, you think maybe you've got it figured out to a point, and the more that this book progresses, the more you realize you haven't figured anything out.

David Moody 12:46
You know, it's so cool to hear you say that, and I really appreciate it, because it was such a change of direction for me this book, and I'll be honest at the moment, the sales haven't been great because I don't know how to push it. I don't know how to, how to promote it, because I'm, I'm Mr. Zombie's end of the world kind of guy, and I've suddenly got this book, and I'm thinking, Where does this go? But it's really gratifying to hear you talk about it like that.

Bob Pastorella 13:13
It almost feels like an end of the world singular type thing. It's an it's an apocalypse of one person, and I'm trying to avoid spoilers and things like that. But like what Michael is saying, the the cracks in the seams are not as apparent until you start going into it. And like what Michael said, the halfway point is, is is game changer. So you're, you're, you're, you set the hook, and you real us in, but then you're like, Oh, I've got an auto reeler and, you know, and it's like, whoa, shit. Things are crazy in, in a good way, in a way you can't you. I couldn't stop turning the pages way. It was great. Oh,

David Moody 14:04
that's so cool. Thank you. So I'm just going to green through the rest of this now, because I've had such little chance to talk about this book with people. So it's brilliant to have the opportunity to big it

Michael David Wilson 14:15
up a little bit. It's really interesting that Bob says it's an apocalypse of one book, because I was thinking, you know, it's almost the inverse of hater and the zombie things you've been doing with autumn. Because in that situation, you know, the whole world is fucked, and you as the survivor are the one trying to keep it together and to still live. But in shadow locked, the whole world is going on as normal, but you're the one that's fucked. You're the one that has been utterly destroyed. So there's just like a perfect symmetry in in, you know, you being the one to put out this book. Yeah,

David Moody 14:56
that's a really interesting way of looking at it, and I must. Bit that as I was writing it, I did think it is kind of a solo Apocalypse kind of thing, because there's, there's a very definite end to the book, you know, you know, things aren't gonna, aren't gonna go well. Well, if it starts with somebody dying in at the bottom of a roof, that things are never gonna go well, are they? But yeah, yeah, no, that's a, it's a, that's an interesting perspective.

Michael David Wilson 15:23
Yeah, with the river death at the start, I didn't think it was going to be a feel good. I didn't think this was a nice little cozy or one that will be directed, not directed, but adapted by Hallmark. So yeah, but I you know, for for horror fans and for those who like dark fiction, it meant that I was in safe territory. I think there's, there's almost something comfortable about being uncomfortable. Oh

David Moody 15:51
yeah, no, I definitely agree with that. Yeah. And I think just because, and I'm not saying, I'm not, no spoilers here again, not because everybody dies at the end, or because something horrific happens to the main character at the main character at the end, it doesn't necessarily mean it's a sad ending. I've written books in the past where the entire world dies at the end, and stories where everything goes to hell, everything's destroyed, but the story itself still has a happy ending, because your characters maybe get the the validation or the justification that they've been looking through for the story, looking for through the story rather,

Michael David Wilson 16:25
yeah, and I particularly like with this one as well, which we've alluded to, that at different points in the narrative, you're rooting for different people, and because everything becomes so confusing, but in a good way, as with any mystery. Yeah, you're not sure, should I be on this person's side? Should I be on that person's side? And then I think it's a a great commentary on how as human beings, we're all flawed. We're all painted in these different colors. There is no black and white. I mean, it should be obvious that there are some characters that you're probably gonna like less by the end of it, but everyone is messed up. Everyone has done things that you know weren't necessarily ideal, and that is a reflection of the reality that we're living in?

David Moody 17:21
I think, yeah, absolutely. I think it's a great narrative device to use. And I think I stumbled on it by accident when I was writing hater first time around. When you get to a point and you're assuming it's going to go one way, and then it goes in a completely different direction. And I think it's really, it's interesting to kind of wrong foot people get people rooting for the wrong person, or rooting in the wrong way for somebody. You know? I mean, I've, I've been toying with the idea of writing a book that starts off as three completely separate stories with three main characters that you all root for, and then we get to the midpoint, and only one of them can be successful. So two of them are gonna have a really shitty end in because I just think it's really interesting. Life isn't great all the time. You know when for every odds that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction? And it's true, the laws of physics apply to the laws of life. I think that if you if you get something, somebody else has lost something, if you achieve something, somebody else didn't achieve that. And it's a really, it's a difficult thing that I don't think we talk about enough, but I don't want to get on to politics or anything, particularly not for you Bob, because it's a difficult week, I know, but it's the same thing with politics. With politics, every decision a politician makes will negatively affect some people, but we don't talk about that. We never mention that. We're never honest about that. And I just think that in when you're writing, when you when you're writing a story, you can show that, and you can look at that, and it's, it's something we don't, we don't think about enough, I think, yeah, rambling. There no,

Bob Pastorella 19:04
no. And it makes sense, because we, you know, as writers, we tend to, we want to spin SPI in our characters in a certain direction. And so I, which I call, I mean, I just generally called to skillful misdirection. And it's when you actually more that character, when you when you when you center them on their actual you know where they're at trajectory. That's when suspense happens, because the reader doesn't know they're like, oh shit. They, they, they, they were on a course, and they, they haven't changed course. They they're determined their direction. They know that now they're heading south, you know, or whatever they're gonna they're gonna do the thing, the thing that they weren't even thinking of. Oh my God. Now they're gonna do it. Yeah, and so we tend to spin that. And it's like what you said, you know, in politics, no politician is going to go up there and go, you know, because we're doing this, we're actually going to cause a lot of people to lose their jobs. And so, you know, no one, so it's is writers. We tend to, we want to be able to make a skillful misdirection, we want to be able to spin positive or negatively to where we get our end result is often the opposite of that, but we have to. We have to set the course. And when you do it right, it's, it's, it's like, it's just like Reese's Pieces, man, it's so good, you know, but if you screw it up, then it just sounds, you know, it reads like it's inorganic. And I think those things have to be organic in the story.

David Moody 20:52
Yeah, no, absolutely agree with you, yeah. And it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's trying to wrong foot the reader, without making it too obvious that you're doing that without telegraphing it, isn't it? It's a difficult trick I find, but I found with hate. I've probably talked about this before, but the big the twist in hater, which I'm avoiding saying exactly what it is, if there is anybody who hasn't read it yet, or if they ever make that bloody film that I didn't know about that until I wrote it. I'd written, I'd written, I'd planned this book as a very down the line, almost zombie kind of thing. But then I got to a point on writing that scene, and I thought, yeah, I can go that way, but, but what if? So that kind of It caught me out then. And at the risk of sounding pretentious, it's, it's, I think as you're writing, you get to know your characters a bit more. You know, as you go through each draft, you get to think, well, I've created this person, and now I've got to know them. They really wouldn't behave like that. They'd behave like this. So I think there's an element of you being caught out by your own characters that sounds really wrong, doesn't it? That sounds really that sounds like I've got a problem. Voice is in my head, kind of thing. I

Michael David Wilson 22:04
think it's something that happens with a lot of us. You know, particularly, even though I know both me and you, David, we are planners with our stories. But even though it's planned, it's still anything can go if the character, yeah, I see what you mean about it sounding like we have a problem, but if the character decides to go in a different direction, then you almost have to remap everything. I suppose to make a really weird analogy, it's like if you put the route into your sat nav, into your GPS, but then there's traffic, so it reroutes you, so you're still gonna, yeah, that destination, but you might have to take this bizarre, circuitous route. And I think we have to trust the characters too, because if we, if we then try and force them into sticking rigidly to the plan. Well, it just becomes inauthentic.

David Moody 23:03
Yeah, no, I agree. And it's interesting that you talk about us both being planners, and I agree with that. But I really think just taking this a bit further, that there's no difference between somebody who plans and what's the opposite? Was it Panther or something like that? So, seat of your pants, writer,

Michael David Wilson 23:19
some people say pan so, yeah, I don't think

David Moody 23:22
there's any difference. Because everybody goes from having an idea thinking, Oh, I'll write this book to hopefully eventually getting the book written and having people read it. So there's, I believe there's exactly the same amount of work involved in crafting that story. It's just you do it in different ways. I like to do what you're talking about, Mike. I'm just I break it down. Well, these are the main beats. These are the chapters, so on and so on. But ultimately, no matter how much planning I do, I if I ever look back to those original notes, I think, Well, that didn't happen. That didn't happen. And I normally get to a point when I'm halfway through a novel and I'm thinking, I've stopped looking at my reference notes now, and I'm just making it up as we go along. So I think it's just, it's a more organic process than we plotters believe it is. I think,

Michael David Wilson 24:16
well, this is when, why? When I was talking to Josh Malerman, I said, I suppose I might even call my method the hybrid, because there is a plan, but then I'm allowed to deviate from the plan. So is that really a planner? Because there are some people, particularly if they follow some of these rigid screenwriting books, which I probably don't recommend doing. You know, you could look at them to get a template and to get an idea as the story, but then you need to, well, deviate from the path. So because we're not doing that, I suppose it's a hybrid between planning and pan sing. But I mean, none of us like even if we're a planner. It's not like we open our email and it's like, here's the plan sent from your brain. Like it we all have to pants it to a degree. So maybe the distinction is that we're just coming up with the story at different stages in the process.

David Moody 25:15
Yeah, and that's exactly my point, the fact we have this germ of an idea. And maybe I don't know what you're like, but I I've, I usually think of the end first and work my way back, and then we have the end result. And we all go through the same amount of planning and rewriting and drafting and redrafting and spell checking and whatever to get to the end. We just call it different things.

Michael David Wilson 25:41
I believe, yeah, yeah, and, and related to that, at the moment, me and John crinnen are collaborating on a novel, and it's really interesting because we're both meticulous planners, and so we both know the beginning and the end. But then my typical method to get there is to plan from the front to go to the end, but his method is to go from the end and to work backwards. So in planning, we're almost both crafting this different plan and then comparing and being like, right? How much does this actually resemble, you know, what we discussed now, we we did to make it easier. I've kind of approached it a little bit like a play. We were like, right? There are five acts. This is roughly what we want to have happen in each act. And we did that mostly just through phone calls and conversations, but yeah, now that we're really just jumping into the detail, it's so interesting to see him start from the end, and me start from the well, the beginning, which to me, feels more logical, but you know, yeah, It's

David Moody 26:58
it. Collaborations are really difficult from that perspective, aren't they, if you have a different approach to the planning and plotting process, then then it can be hard. I wrote a series of books with Mark Tufo and Chris Phil Philbrook called the bleed series, and it was their baby, and they were very kind to invite me to contribute. I was. It's not that I was at odds with the other two. It's just that I did things very differently to the other two, and I naively expected that we'd all work in the same way. So the first book I we wrote a third each, because we were all introducing a set of characters that would all meet up in later books. So that was fine. And then I wrote the start of the second book and said, there you go, gents. And then it went just all over the place and barely managed to get it back. And then we were getting to the end of the third one and thinking, this is a trilogy. We need to tie up this story and to get getting them to the way we thought about things made it very difficult to get to the end my OCD brain. The only thing I could say was, well, I'll write the last third of the final book so I can wrap it up the way I want to wrap it up. But it was, it's really difficult. And it's, yeah, I find it hard collaborating. For that reason. I have such a set way of doing things that it's it kind of it can derail the creative process a bit. Can't it? When you when you're having to adapt to the way that somebody else wants to to grow something.

Michael David Wilson 28:31
And did they allow you to write the final third? Did you get to end it how you wanted? Or were they like, hold on a minute. We've got over ideas.

David Moody 28:41
No, they weren't precious about it at all. It was, it was great. It was Sid. The upside of it was that, as as a as something to kind of stretch your writing muscles. It was absolutely brilliant, because Chris and Mark have both got such very different styles. Mark is almost stream of consciousness stuff. And you, you, I struggle sometimes to keep up with it, because it's who's this and what's that, and where are we going? And now we're on the moon, and now somebody's dead, and now they're alive again. And it's, it took a lot of time to untangle that all. But then when we got to the end, as I say, we wrote the first book in thirds, but by the second and third books we collaborated on. So we were all using each other's characters. The characters all get mixed up in time swaps and things like that. So so the last book, to finish it off, I knew how I wanted to finish the story, but to finish the story, I had to write in the style of Mark and Chris and it was, it was a real challenge, but when I look back on it, that was probably my favorite part of the whole process.

Michael David Wilson 29:45
Yeah, do you think off the back of this, would you consider collaborating again? Or do you think your collaboration days are behind you? I know you said that you, you know you found it quite difficult, but I. Know if, if you're just like, so low from here on out,

David Moody 30:04
this is the point when I'm supposed to say, as an artist, I would love to collaborate with more people and but as a real human being and a big introvert, here I'm saying, everybody else, back off. Just let me get on with it, please. Yeah, yeah. Really, there's, I think there's nothing in terms of writing working. There's nothing I like more than sitting here in my office with nobody disturbing me music on just writing a book and just being able to get on with it. But the downside of this, I heard a great quote the other week, and I wish I could remember who said it or what exactly it was. I need to look it up. But they said, basically, writing a novel is like writing a joke and waiting two years to see if it's funny.

And I've made, I've made mistakes in the I'm sure we've all got to say skeletons in the closet, but manuscripts on the shelves behind that. You think nobody's ever going to see that, or maybe I'll dust it off in about 20 years time, or whatever. But it's so easy to go down a path and think, this is the one. This is great. This is brilliant story. And then you hand it over to somebody to read, and they say, yeah, it's not all that. I guess that's where beta readers and advanced copies and, and I don't know, sending a proposal to your agent before you start work, all sensible things like that. Come in, yeah,

Michael David Wilson 31:35
yeah. I don't. I was gonna take this in one direction, but then your comment about BETA readers that at the end. And so now I want to know, I mean, how often have you been in a situation where you've got different BETA readers saying a completely different thing, and they're both as Adam and strung about it, and then how do you decide what you're going to do with the story? And equally related to that, I mean, how much consideration do you give the beta reader feedback anyway? Because sometimes you'll get a comment and you'll think, well, that that's totally not what I'm trying to do here, so I see what you're saying, but if I implement that, it's a different story. Yeah,

David Moody 32:26
but then I guess you have to take a step back, don't you, and say, Okay, you haven't got what I'm trying to get you to get from this book. So why is that? Have I not laid the breadcrumbs in the right way? Have I not given you the clues? So I take the same with with bad reviews, and I've had plenty of those in my time. You take them all on board. I think you've got to read them all, not react to them. But, but think, well, why are you saying that? What? What is it about the story that's made you say that? Fortunately, I've not had much in a way of conflict between one group of beta readers saying one thing and one group saying something else. Fortunately, in my experience, a lot of them say the same thing, and it was quite a lot. Came through with Richard, a lot some of the the subsidiary characters. Well, why did he do that with her? And why did they do that with him, because it just, you know, they're highlighting things that kind of that were jarring and maybe stuck out for them a little bit. So that was, that was great. And I've had, I've just just had comments back on my, hopefully, my next book, which will maybe out next year. And there were a few people that said, Okay, well, his misses is a bit hard in him at the start, and then he makes a sudden change with the misses at the end. And it's just little things like that about relationships, not not necessarily the nuts and bolts of the novel, but just the the little details that combine to make to drive the story forward, is what I found people often pick up on. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 34:00
I know that we both share Dan. Howarth as a beta reader saying we share him, it sounds like some sort of custodial agreement.

Bob Pastorella 34:12
I had signed up for Dan, but you beat me to him. David,

Michael David Wilson 34:17
so much. Howarth, you can share, yeah, but he, he, he is so good at picking up on, like relationships and like the dynamic, you know, specifically between couples. So if, like, if I've ever got any balance rung, he will make his comments. So when you were saying, oh, you know, there's been some comments about the couple, I was like, Well,

David Moody 34:43
no word of a lie. It was Dan. I knew it genuinely.

Michael David Wilson 34:49
It was such a Dan,

David Moody 34:52
yeah, but it, but it was so, so useful, because in the next book, the relationship that the guy has. Is it the place that he's at in his life, and the effect that that's had on his relationship is key to him doing the things that he does? And so if that wasn't right, if a reader wasn't buying into that, then the whole book would unravel, because you wouldn't be able to believe in the character that you're following every single second of the way, literally in this book. So it was, it was crucial. And I'm, I'm very grateful to Dan for pointing that out. He wasn't alone, but it was specifically Dan I was thinking about on that occasion, yeah,

Michael David Wilson 35:34
who, by the way, recently put out last night of freedom, which I'm reading at the moment, and is absolutely fantastic. It's one of it is one of the best books that I've read this year, right? I almost can't believe how good it is. So there's a little plug for last night of freedom by Dan Howarth in the middle of our podcast review.

David Moody 35:58
And I would definitely second that, because I loved it. It's an absolutely cracking book. Really enjoyed it. It's, I don't know how to describe it, yeah, I won't say too much other than read it, yeah.

Michael David Wilson 36:13
I mean, the ritual meets the hangover in backwards Britain. How's that? Yeah,

David Moody 36:22
no, that'll do it. Yeah, I was thinking a bit of deliverance as well.

Michael David Wilson 36:26
Yeah, yeah, always good to have a splash of deliverance in any story that will do there's

David Moody 36:32
no jewel in banjos, but yeah, there's a lot of deliverance in there. Yeah,

Bob Pastorella 36:36
I got it on my TBR, and now it's just moved up. So yeah, the the deliverance thing is, yeah, that's, uh, that's such a classic,

Michael David Wilson 36:47
it'll move up even quicker when I tell you that he's coming on the podcast quite soon.

Bob Pastorella 36:54
Go ahead and read it, then you put him on the schedule. But going back to the beta readers, I would feel that when you have a, you know, comment from readers about characters and character motivation, that that's probably a lot more difficult to to implement than if you're going to have, you know, something developmental, in other words, like plot wise, I think that, hey, I've got a problem with the plot. And if multiple people to have read agreed, and yeah, that that's, that's, you know, you take your big tools out and you go and you fix it. But if you got a problem with the character motivate, motivation, or something like that, or a relationship dynamic that isn't working to me. I feel like that. That is, I wouldn't, I'm not saying it's a crushing blow, but it would be, it would be, Ah, shit. I gotta rework so much, you know, because so much relies on character and character motivation and dynamics, and you have to, you can't, you can't force that shit. It has to be organic. And so that's, I don't know. I'm just making a comment. I think that would be just, you know, the the it would you'd have to pull your britches up and get to work type stuff. You know,

David Moody 38:23
I do agree with you, to an extent, but also I think that that the characters and their interactions is just another one of your nuts and bolts. So I think it's, I don't think it's any harder or easier to deal with than a plot issue. I think for me with with this book in particular, I mean everything that the beta readers got about the relationship between these two characters, they got from what I told them, and the way that I told it, and so looking at it, there wasn't anything really in the relationship itself that that I needed to change. But it was the the interactions. It was kind of softening of the dialog. It was perhaps the point where the guy's partner jumps down his throat because he's she realizes he's done something ridiculously stupid. It was maybe moving that a little bit. So I didn't, I didn't find it was, on this occasion, particularly onerous, but it was hugely important. Because, as I say, you've got to believe that this guy is doing what he's doing with the best of intentions, and the way that I'd originally written it, I think he would have been quite justified to say, Oh, if you're going to talk to me like that, sorry, I'm not going to bother and just end the book halfway through with him saying, forget it. I'm going home, or not going home, because that's where she is, right.

Michael David Wilson 39:54
I mean, you make some bold moves with your fiction, but that would be one hell of a bold move. Move if you're like, right? It seems like the kind of thing Chuck Palahniuk would do, because he doesn't give a damn about convention or rules. I

David Moody 40:14
think there's a lot, yeah, it wouldn't work in terms of a of a novel, but I think it's really interesting. I think major character deaths are about as close as you can get. And I love to to to build up with somebody and really invest in somebody, and then just casually kill them. I think I did that back with one of the early autumn books, I think was purification. And I'd got this guy. He was a university lecturer, and he was kind of like father to a group of survivors and and they were all relying on him, and he just gets caught in some crossfire. Oh, where's Bernard? He's dead. And really the the impact of that, so the remaining characters was huge, and I think that he that in dying like that, he probably cemented his place in the story more than he would have done had he just carried on as a normal survivor and made it through to the end.

Michael David Wilson 41:09
Yeah, I feel that surprisingly, in horror, we don't in horror fiction, I should say we don't always see or often see main characters dying halfway through, like most of them do get to the end, or, you know, they die in the final act.

David Moody 41:31
Yeah, you're right. My theory is that a story, a good story, is just following somebody and it's succession of things going wrong for them, but to kill them off is the ultimate thing going wrong, isn't it? So that would kill the story. So we have to, we have to keep them going to an extent, but then you could kill them off and have another main character, can't you? You know, kind of, if you've built it up properly,

Michael David Wilson 41:58
yeah, I just I just

David Moody 42:00
think it's an interesting thing to do to get you, your readers, to invest 100% into this person. Because people just make the assumption, well, this is our main character. This is our square jawed hero. He's going to make it to the end. He's going to be the one that saves the day. Oh shit, he's dead. You know it's, it's, don't remember the book, I'm sure

Bob Pastorella 42:21
it's just that reminds me. I don't know if you ever seen Beer Fest, but the, I can't remember the group who does it the same got to did Super Troopers, one of the characters, landfill, he dies mid movie, the evil beer drinking brothers killing and it's a sad moment, because his character was crucial to them actually going to tournament and winning. But lo and behold, landfill had a cousin who looks and sounds exactly like landfill, because he is the same actor, and and even says, Hey, y'all can just call me landfill too, as a tribute. And so it's like, okay, so you brought us down, and then you lifted us back up even higher, because it's not the same character, but it's the same actor, you know, and it's just like, I'd love to see something like that in a horror movie, and that to be or a horror book, and, you know, a story, but it had to, there had to be, like, some type of element, like people could come back type thing, you know what I mean. And so that, to me, that would be like, the only way you killed it. You killed you get this guy and, you know, you get him invested. You're in there for about four or five chapters, kill him, and then two chapters later, he's back. But it's not actually him. It's just some guy looks just like we should do that,

David Moody 43:55
or just have the wife die at the bottom of the river and then come back to to work out with her husband why she's died. Yeah,

Bob Pastorella 44:05
exactly. That's

David Moody 44:07
not me crowbar in us. Back to shadow life.

Michael David Wilson 44:11
There was no crowbar there. It worked perfect. I was gonna segue us back in a minute, but I will say we've been fast to somehow bring us away from Shadow locked as quick as we got there. That is one of the dumbest sounded things I have ever heard in a movie, and I now completely want to watch it that sounds like, you know, the kind of thing that would inspire my more comedic moments like in daddy boy. So now we're referencing books that I've written, officially announced yet, but that is, that's the kind of podcast it apparently is today. Yeah. Anyway, careful. Asked, no, no, not, not, we getting away from that. Now

David Moody 45:06
daddy's other boy, or uncle's boy, is that the next one uncle's boy?

Michael David Wilson 45:11
Oh, my goodness, sorry, yeah. Back to shadowlocked. So because you said at the start of the conversation that this is an idea that you had had for 30 years, which is really interesting, because in many ways, this feels so kind of timely and like the kind of story that you couldn't have written at any point, any other point in your life, and I mean, particularly at the start, when the protagonist Adam, is ruminating on loss and grief and death. I mean, I know because we spoke about it last time you had had a heart attack, which had obviously brought, you know, the idea of mortality closer to home for you. So I wondered, was, in fact, the heart attack something that, I don't want to use the word inspired, but you know, was this an impetus for you to write this book and to explore mortality and losing a loved one.

David Moody 46:27
I think it was, yeah, and I think it's something that comes up a lot in the the fiction that I've been writing. It's, you know, it was next April. It'll be five years, believe it or not since it happened, and it it's increasingly plain Hap it with my mind. I find it really hard to to deal with sometimes how close I got to to dying when it first happened, it was the biggest impact. I thought I got away with it really, really lightly. In the end, there was only a very small amount of damage to my heart. I was able to carry on doing everything that I had been doing. I used to run races, but I've been banned from that now, but I do still run a few times a week. So to all intents and purposes, I thought that was a close shave. I got away with it there, but it's only afterwards, when I when I researched it a bit more and and when I've heard other stories, you you realize, oh shit, that that really was close. And I am fit. I was fit. There was absolutely no indication that it was going to happen. And I still to this day, find that absolutely terrifying. So the point where, recently, I'll be honest, it's it's affecting me quite substantially. It's affected my mental health quite a bit. Because if anything happens now, and I'm thinking it was caused I went back to work, stepped away from writing for a bit, and it was caused, I believe, by an issue that I was trying to resolve that I was getting I had a member of staff who was assaulted by another member of staff. And when you in the corporate world, I think the one thing that's easy to forget, but you need to remember, is that the HR department works for the company, not for the staff. So I'm trying to sort this out. And it was, there were loads of people trying to get involved as well. And basically the senior management screwed up dealing with it all, and it went shit shaped and kind of to to dig themselves out of a hole the company decided, oh, let's blame him. So it was something that I'd done, apparently. And I had a phone call with HR first thing in the morning, and they were saying, Well, you've done this, and you said that. And I knew I hadn't, because I'd recorded the conversation, and I could go back and think, but there were two of them, and there was only one of me. And I thought, I know where this is going. So I went on a running machine, ran and then had a heart attack, came off and had a heart attack, and it absolutely terrifies me now to think that if something else stressful like that happened, what would the response be? There's no reason to think I've been checked out. I was checked out this summer a couple of times, and there's nothing wrong with my heart. It's it. I'm fit and healthy, but it happened before, and once you've had that chink in your armor, you're thinking, Did that happen again? And it's quite it's quite difficult. And I will admit that I do use that a lot in writing now, and I find that, yeah, obviously, the more you experience in life, the more you can put into your books. And that one has had a profound impact on me. It's, yeah, I think it's changed everything for me. Now, it's gone really dark, hasn't it? Suddenly, it said we talk about Beer Fest again or something.

Michael David Wilson 49:56
Well, I was gonna continue along, along the lines of. Of what you were just talking about. And I mean, what kind of things have you had to implement in terms of your lifestyle? And I mean, I'm also wondering, you know, how this has affected the writing as a whole, because when, when we have things you know, happen that bring us closer to death or to reveal our mortality, it can make us put things in different perspectives. So I could imagine, for some people, it could make the writing more important, because they got so many stories, and, you know, it really highlights the the finite time we have. But then for others, it could go the other way, because it's like, well, yeah, I love the writing and I love the storytelling, but they're all sorts of other more important things in my life, such as my family and my loved ones and, yeah, so, I mean, what did that do to your mindset?

David Moody 51:06
I think it's, it's a little bit of all of those things. I think definitely the family thing. Now we've it happened at the beginning of the pandemic, and since we've come out of that, Lisa and I have traveled a lot, and I just want to keep traveling, the more of the world I can see, the better that whenever you go anywhere, completely different. And it was actually it was a year ago today that we went to that we flew to Japan for a couple of weeks there. And it's just the most incredible experience. And it just makes me want to do that a lot more so, yeah, being with my family is more precious than it ever was, because I felt incredibly guilty after it just happened, because of the impact it had on my wife and the two youngest daughters, to be honest, because they were in the house at the time and their last they what they thought might be their last memory of of me was watching my feet disappear into the back of an ambulance. And they were thinking, Oh, we don't want that to be the last thing we saw of dad. But yeah, it had a huge impact on them, far greater impact on them initially, than it did on me. So, so yeah, that's the most important change, I think. But in terms of writing, you touched on something there about wanting to get more stuff out. And I actually did that last year, early last year, I've got this ideas document, and I have it on my computer, have it on my iPad, have it on my phone, and I can access it at any time. And when inspiration strikes, because it never strikes when you sat at your desk, when you're supposed to be doing something, it's always when you're in the shops or working or in the pub or whatever. But I have this this thing there, so I can just write it down. Somebody says something interesting, somebody triggers an idea. I just pop it down. So I looked at this and I thought, Well, okay, so if I if it takes me, at best, maybe three to six months to read a book, to write a book, let's say six months. So how many ideas have I got here? And I worked out that I got two centuries worth of ideas, and you think I'm never gonna be able to do anything with that. So I went through a phase last year where every month, I just grab a random one of those ideas and just bang out a short story and put it on my website. And that was absolutely brilliant. That was so invigorating in terms of writing, because you're not focused on this one big project all year, I was still focused on a big project all year, but also I could just dip in and out and write in these different voices and different situations. And it's, I think it's really, it's really healthy to have a good mix of things going on when you're a writer. So I think, did I answer your question, and I seem to be rambling a lot this evening, this morning, yeah,

Michael David Wilson 53:59
you certainly answered the part about, you know, the mindset to writing, and then, because, for some reason, as I want to do, I combine two completely different questions. The The other was, I mean, in terms of of the heart attack, yeah, you said it happened after you had the thing with HR, and you had the phone call, and then you went on the running machine. And you know now you've gone from obviously running in competitions to now just running, presumably shorter distances a couple of times a week. So when, when you initially had the examination, I mean, was there something that all the kind of long distance running had? Was there a problem with the heart's condition? You said your heart is healthy now, I mean, the idea that you just got. Stressed, jumped on a running machine and then that triggered. It is terrifying. I mean, sometimes it's as simple as that, but I wonder, what was there a kind of health issue that was underlying and then, you know, you've made these changes to make sure that doesn't happen again. Or, you know what? Yeah,

David Moody 55:20
there was some clogging in one of my arteries, because that's what it is, isn't it? It's an artery getting blocked that that's a heart attack. And yeah, since there has been a change of diet and a change of various other things and medication that ensures that, hopefully, that won't happen again. But both my parents died of heart disease, so it's also something that I've inherited a propensity for from them. But still, at the age of, I think it was 49 at a time, it's, I wouldn't if, if I'd had to bet on what was going to finish me off, I wouldn't have put a heart attack at the age of 49 you know, it's just it did come out the blue, and that's what I struggle with more and more now, I think the more time passes since it happened, whenever there's anything difficult to deal with at home, if we have any, if there are any issues, if I'm concerned about something, my brain goes into override and starts thinking, Oh, shit. Is this going to cause a heart attack? Is it going to happen again? It's, yeah, it's, it's the the the unexpected side effects that have really like that, that have really caught me

Michael David Wilson 56:32
out. And then do you go, do you go for checkups to kind of monitor, you know, kind of regular, or as regular as the NHS will allow these days.

David Moody 56:45
Well, that's the thing, and that's, I think that's what, what particularly played on my mind this year, because it was coming up to a five year anniversary, and I've never, I'd never seen a doctor about my heart. It was all done on the telephone, initially, through the pandemic, once I was discharged from hospital, all the follow up appointments were done on the phone, and I never sat down. So I just went to the GP and said, Please here just give me some reassurance and just check everything out. And they did, and I went to hospital and got checked out and that they Yeah, given a clean bill of health. But I think it's the it's the chink in the armor. That's what I'm getting at. Because until that point, I was, yeah, that's the guy that, yeah, that guy, they runs half marathons, and he does this, and he does that, and I felt, you know, not invincible, but pretty good.

and it and it, it really, it's a massive blow when you realize you're not and I'm like, mid 50s now and and it's always there that the thought that you're getting older and that any day could be a lesson. I know I've been writing apocalyptic shit for years, but it's still, you know, it weighs on your mind to the point where earlier on in this conversation, I said something about, oh, in 20 years time. And whenever I say 20 years time, now I'm thinking, shit, I'll be 73 that's ridiculous, you know, but 20 years ago feels like five minutes ago. I think this is going to sound really pretentious and wonky. I'm sorry, but it's, it's, I think I'm fortunate that I write, because you can take this stuff and channel it a little bit and put it into your books. So going back to your earlier question, Michael, yeah, there's definitely, I'm not saying that every book is going to have somebody who has a heart attack, but definitely the feelings that I had, the emotions I had are informing the things that I do. And I think a good case in point are that the hospital scenes at the beginning of shadow locked. So yeah, of course, is a grim conversation, isn't it?

Michael David Wilson 58:53
Well, I mean, it's a conversation consistent with the conversation usual conversations, yeah, over the past decade, which, which is also ridiculous, thinking about, you know, how quickly time passes, to continue that theme that, yeah, for well over a decade now, you can't even just say a decade is no

David Moody 59:17
it's got a bit it's close to 15 years, isn't it? Since that that first night when we met in that pub in Coventry and talked about hater,

Michael David Wilson 59:24
yeah, we should have known that everything would be pretty grim. You know, meeting up at a pub in Coventry is not the start of like a wonderful, positive chapter in your life. I mean, it is. It's got pretty bad if you've even stepped into Coventry to begin with, when something has gone wrong there.

David Moody 59:46
Well, yeah, I don't mind that Coventry is all right. It's no kidding, is it? Oh,

Michael David Wilson 59:52
my goodness, no kidding. Which I'm, I'm, I'm trying with my with my fix. And to slowly get Kidderminster on the map. I'm not sure if the mayor of Kidderminster would be terrifically happy with my promotional efforts. I don't often say a lot positive about it, but, you know, getting it into some stories, yeah,

David Moody 1:00:16
kidderminster's about 20 minutes from here, and my car gets came from a garage in kid administer. So I take it there once a year, and usually wait for it. I can't be bothered to come to to come home and go back again. And like last couple of years, I've been walking around Kidderminster for half a day and and there's some canals and there and restaurants and everything. I'm thinking, But why has he got such a downer on kid administer? It's all right,

Michael David Wilson 1:00:43
yeah, just, just, just my childhood, in some unfortunate events, but on honestly, I didn't, I didn't think you were gonna conclude that it was all right. I mean, last time I was in kid admin. So this is now turned into the, this is kiddominster podcast I was walking through the town center, and in fact, this does come into to daddy's boy, again, not released, not announced yet. So great reference, but it just does feel like the high street of Broken Dreams. I used a very similar phrase because you've got so many shops that are just boarded up, you know, you used to be a retail paradise with dandy and Woolworths and index, and it's all all gone to shit now. But it is not just Kidderminster, you know, this is, yeah, I guess, like the the kind of Midlands and northern landscape where there's less money being put into these smaller towns, and, you know, there's a lot more kind of internet shopping now. So you just have these areas that used to be burgeoning areas of commerce and retail, and they're just nothing.

David Moody 1:02:00
Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right. It's not it's not kidding, Mr. Specific, it is something that's happened to the UK over the last decade, and a bit 14 years, perhaps, is that is the measure that we often talk about, because that's when the Tories came in. And yeah, it is sad everywhere has lost their Tandy and their Woolworths and their British Home Stores and their Wilco and Bob's thinking, What the hell are they talking about?

Bob Pastorella 1:02:27
No, I'm not, because I see it in in my in I see a direct reflection of that right across the street from where I work. We have a mall that was, you know, 2015, years ago, as late as 15 years ago, was thriving, and now, you know, ever since something happened, and you know, it's someone who works there. They work in security, to one of my customers, they said, hey, they're gonna, they're gonna redo the air conditioning at the mall. They're gonna have to, because they're gonna have, you know, helicopters bringing in, you know, stuff to get all the air conditioning is on the ceiling, on the roof. They're gonna be bringing in equipment, stuff like that. And they're gonna have to close the mall. And I'm like, what? That ain't a big loss, selling out, like, three stores in there anyway. This mall will hold 100 stores. So there are only, like, maybe three big stores there. Now there's maybe a handful of other stores. And for me to even say, well, that ain't no big deal, it's almost like saying, you know, kind of kicking it to the side. It's abandoned. But, yeah, it's like something's it what you're talking about 15 years ago. It's like, we're, we're, it's, it's worldwide, yeah, you know is, I think it all goes back to greed, but that's just me. You know, someone's making money off someone, you know,

David Moody 1:03:59
yeah, it does always get down to greed. Yeah, I think first thing we need to do is outlaw billion is but that's a whole different story.

Bob Pastorella 1:04:10
Yes, we should.

Michael David Wilson 1:04:17
Thank you so much for listening to David Moody on This Is Horror Podcast. Join us again next time for the second and final part of the conversation. But if you would like that ahead of the crowd, if you would like every episode ahead of the crowd, then become our patreon@patreon.com. Forward slash. This Is Horror. Not only do you get early bird access to each and every episode, but you can submit questions to the interviewee. And the first two people that we will be talking to this year are Eric la rocker, who is going to be in. Permanently releasing a new novella, and Richard chismar, who at the end of last year, released the book memorials, we are talking to them both this coming weekend. So if you're listening to this at the time of release, then there is time to get those questions in, but do be quick about it. And I am hoping that this year we can get to 150 patrons. But I need your help to do that. You know that is a goal that is not just contingent on me, but on you. So if you have the financial means and you can help us get to that milestone, please do consider going to patreon.com. Forward slash, This Is Horror. I'm pledging your support today. If it looks like a good fit for you, I would love for you to join us. Okay, before I wrap up, a quick advert break coming

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Michael David Wilson 1:07:06
another thing that I am doing this year is looking for my 1000 true fans, and that is pertaining to my fiction. So I know some of you just know me from the podcast, but I am also an author. I have got a number of books out. The Girl in the Video They're Watching, co written with Bob Pastorella, House of bad memories, and coming later this year, daddy's boy and goodness, I can't wait to unveil the cover art for daddy's boy. I'm working with Vinny young again, and he has done such a remarkable job that will be coming up very shortly on the This Is Horror website. But in terms of my pursuit for my true fans, I'm looking for the people that always want to read a Michael David Wilson title, because I'm absolutely convinced that there are 1000 of you out there. The trick is, of course, finding you. So if you think you are a true fan of my work, send me an email. MDW, true fan email me. Michael at this is horror.co.uk, and let me know. And I will be compiling a mailing list specifically for those 1000 true fans. There will be special offers. There will be exclusive news. I just want to find a place to be able to connect with everyone about my fiction. So again, much like Patreon, I thank you in advance for getting in contact and supporting me. Now to end the episode, I would like to leave you with a koan to ponder, just as the strongest man cannot lift his own legs, the sharpest mind cannot extinguish its own thoughts. I'll see you in the next episode for the second and final part at a conversation with David Moody. But until then, take care of yourselves. Be good to one another. Read horror. Keep on writing and have a great, great day.