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 talking to LP Hernandez, who is the author of a number of books and short stories, including two titles that we wanted to talk to LP about today in the valley of the headless men, and his short story collection, no gods, only chaos. And this was the first time that we spoke to LP, but we hope that it won't be the last, because it really was a fascinating and fun conversation, and we will bring it to you very shortly indeed, but before then, a quick advert break

Bob Pastorella 1:37
Daddy's Girl by Lydia graves in a quiet Shropshire town, an ancient YouTube guards dark secrets. When Lenny crashes his car and dies, leaving behind a daughter he never knew, a chilling mystery unfolds as social worker Annie takes in young Rosie, she discovers the child is far more than she seems with supernatural forces at work, no one is safe from the shadows of the past. Daddy's girl a gothic tale of family loss and ancient evil that will keep you up at night.

Andrew Love 2:11
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 Nahan 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 the lights on.

Michael David Wilson 2:39
Okay, with that said, Here it is. It is LP Hernandez on, This Is Horror. Let's welcome to This Is Horror Podcast.

L. P. Hernandez 2:55
Thank you so much for having me. I'm a long time listener, so this is really an honor to be on with both of you.

Michael David Wilson 3:02
Well, we are so glad that you have joined us today, and as you might anticipate to begin with, I want to talk about your early life, and specifically, I want to know what some of the early life lessons were that you learned growing up,

L. P. Hernandez 3:23
is this gonna pertain to a writing or just in general,

Michael David Wilson 3:26
it can pertain to anything you would like it to. So I mean, how about a writing lesson and general life lessons? I'm

L. P. Hernandez 3:36
a military brat, so I kind of grew up all over the world. I was actually born in Japan. I'm not sure how far it is distant from you, but I was born in Okinawa. I have almost no memories of it. I believe there was a typhoon at one point, and I have a very vague memory of the window shaking, and that's about it. After that, we moved to Texas, and I kind of bounced around here. I consider it my home. And then from there England, I guess you and I kind of sneak up in a few ways. I was stationed in England as a as a dependent for a while before I joined the Air Force myself. And since then, I've lived kind of all over the United States and Guam as well. And I'm currently back in Texas. So as far as a lesson in that get to the airport early,

Michael David Wilson 4:26
that's a good lesson. Yeah, I'm a people

L. P. Hernandez 4:29
watcher, so I enjoy getting to the airport early, getting my airport beer, and just watching people go, yeah,

Michael David Wilson 4:35
yeah. So if you don't have many memories of living in Okinawa was that, like the first 234, years of your life,

L. P. Hernandez 4:46
I believe I was in the womb on the way over there, and so we would have left right, probably before I turned three. So, I mean, I have, I have pictures that show me there. We had a, like a live in. Me for a bit, just because my parents are both military, named a Bucha, and I have lots of pictures of us together. She fed me a lot of rice. I was a very heavy baby. And yeah, I know I was there. Just don't really have any memory other than that kind of vague recollection of the windows shaking,

Michael David Wilson 5:17
yeah, yeah. It is a very typhoon prone area. I mean, of course, Japan in general is pretty prone to both typhoons and earthquakes, but yeah, in particular, Okinawa does suffer from that. But to move towards England, because you mentioned that as well, I'm wondering where specifically you were in England, and perhaps being older, you have more memories of that time.

L. P. Hernandez 5:48
I definitely do. I think the the town, like the nearest town that English people kind of know, when I would I would mention it is Cambridge, but we were stationed at RAF Lake and Heath. I believe that's in, I don't remember that is Sussex or Essex. I forget it's, it's one of the two. So I moved there when I was 16. Left when I was kind of late 18, close to 19. So I learned, kind of learned how to drive there, and, you know, got to tour the mainland quite a bit. Have a lot of memories of of England and it being gray a lot overall. Really enjoyed our time there, and can't wait to get back at some point when it's in the cards for us.

Michael David Wilson 6:39
Yeah, well, being gray most of the time is certainly par for the course in England, particularly the further up north you go, I have noticed. But in terms of learning to drive there, I mean, great skill to have, but then when you came back to America, you probably had to relearn a number of things just on the basis of you then driving on the right rather than the left side of the road.

L. P. Hernandez 7:09
So we had an American car in England, and so that was a fun experience, and it took up like the whole road, like for here, a Nissan Maxima is like a it's a decent size sedan. But Bob and I both live in Texas, so we've, you know, we've got pickup trucks that are like tanks. So a Nissan Maxima for us is, you know, towards the smaller end. But in England, it felt like I was in a tank, like it was bigger than any car around me. And I would say the one advantage I had coming back was understanding how roundabouts work, because in the States, people, you can see it when it's their first time, like coming up to a roundabout, and there's just some sense of panic, or like the Mr. Bean skit, where they're just kind of going in circles, not sure kind of when to get off. But I was, I was a very well seasoned roundabout driver by the time I got back to the states,

Michael David Wilson 8:01
seeing the thing you're saying about the size of the roads and the different cars, this is why a number of my colleagues, if they're from America, they kind of freak out about driving on Japanese roads, because Japanese roads and the typical Japanese car. I mean, there's a whole class of K cars, light vehicles, they're even smaller. So for me, going from the UK to Japan, it's like, okay, the roads, or some of the roads in the rural areas, they are smaller, but, but it doesn't feel so drastic. But, yeah, if you go America to Japan. It's like, well, you've cut out the middle man of the UK. And I mean it, it's kind of funny, because you've got this K Car class of light vehicles me driving around in my not very big at all for Western standards, Mazda two is like a giant compared to 50% of the vehicles. I feel powerful,

L. P. Hernandez 9:07
yeah, our, my sister had a mini for her first car, so there was a nice just juxtaposition there, feeling like I was in a go kart and then getting in the maximum, which felt like I was, you know, like in a an SUV, pretty much, yeah,

Michael David Wilson 9:21
yeah. But as this is, This Is Horror, and not the this is automobile podcast, we are going to jump to those early life lessons, those formative experiences with story. And I believe that some of the books that you were reading from an early age were goose bumps and fear street. So let's talk a little bit about that.

L. P. Hernandez 9:50
So I'm definitely a Scholastic Book Fair boy. I was one of the the two or three kids that kind of kept that thing going, um. In school, I remember we get the flyer, and sometimes it was me and one other person that would come back with our orders. I very much remember the smell of a brand new goose bumps book, like it's probably chemical and not good for you, but I remember, like, just inhaling that and and I the texture, because it used to have those little bumps in the goose bumps. And then kind of dipped a little bit into fear street. There were some, like girls on the cover when I was starting to, you know, have some curiosity there. But at the same time, I was reading Stephen King, so I don't know how I balanced that, because I was reading Carrie, and then I would go read why I'm afraid of bees. And still kind of get the same enjoyment level out of both of them. One of them definitely felt a little more taboo, and I would read that one, you know, with the little night light in bed with the blankets over me, versus the one I could read at the dinner table, which was appropriate for my age, but like reading now, as a father, goose bumps to my my son. I don't understand why I was so entertained by it, other than the age. But even even he feels a little bit like, like we can move on from this, like we're ready for the next thing.

Michael David Wilson 11:16
So how old is your son? He's eight, but

L. P. Hernandez 11:20
he's shown an interest in horror since probably three or four. So I remember watching killer clowns was a coming like a big moment for me, and for him, it's already like a little bit old news. So his, I don't know. Maybe it's because me, being his parent, I'm constantly exposing him to this stuff. My mom wasn't really a horror person, so I think he's, he's been exposed to a lot more, a lot sooner than I was. And so I don't know if we're ready for Stephen King quite yet, but maybe, maybe something like Cujo that could hold his interest.

Michael David Wilson 12:02
Yeah, yeah. No, I'm taking mental notes here because my daughter is six years old, and so at the moment, we're reading Roald Dahl stories. So it's not quite horror, but there's something a little bit weird and disconnected and almost bizarro about it. But yeah, if he's eight and goosebumps is looking Oh, a little bit, he can move on. I need to read goosebumps to my daughter immediately. He's like, this is the time. This is the takeaway that I've got already from this.

L. P. Hernandez 12:39
He's been a little reluctant with scary stories to tell in the dark because of the illustrations. And we did watch a little bit of the movie. He tapped out at a certain point, but I think that might be our transition into more of the adult fare. Yeah,

Bob Pastorella 12:54
yeah. I'm envious, because I didn't grow up with with goosebumps, uh, I mean, and I barely, I can appreciate, you know, scary, scary stories now, but I barely even got into that when I was a kid, we just didn't have anything like that. Probably the closest thing that we had was some of those Alfred Hitchcock anthologies that he would put out monster Museum is one some great stories there that were more of the fantastic than horror. But, you know, there's, you know, Ray Bradbury's homecoming is in there. So that's quite, quite a chilling story there. So, but I never, I wish. I wish we would have had that. It just, it bugs me that it it wasn't until I was too old to to get into it, you know, and there's a whole generation that grew up with it, but I'm just, I didn't get it.

L. P. Hernandez 13:57
It seems to be something that I have in common with writers about my age, like, between mid 30s to mid 40s, we all kind of have this uniting experience of goosebumps and Scholastic book fairs. Like, there's my son brought home a flyer. So we have a book fair. There's no goose bumps in it. Like, I'm not sure what, what the what representation there is for kind of his age, horror for kids. So I guess I'll just have to keep testing his limits with my stuff.

Michael David Wilson 14:25
Yeah, yeah. It's always difficult, you know, trying to get that balance, because you want to be encouraging of horror. You know, assuming that your kid responds appropriately. If they don't, don't push it on them, let them find what they're interested in, but then at the same time, you don't want to inadvertently kind of mess them up, because it's like, oh no. We went. We went too hard. We put martyrs on. Never put martyrs on in front of a child. There's there's my parenting advice, don't put my. At the sun with a kid,

L. P. Hernandez 15:01
that's one you really only need to see one time. Yeah, even as an adult, like, it's been a while, but, like, I can still remember how it made me feel at the end. So, yeah, maybe, like, for his 18th birthday, we'll have a beer and watch martyrs.

Michael David Wilson 15:18
Yeah, yeah. Certainly one way to bring in adulthood.

L. P. Hernandez 15:23
I mean, 21st birthday for anybody listening, not 18.

Michael David Wilson 15:26
See in in the UK, 18 is fine. 21 I think, I think 21 in Japan. But, you know, I'm British, so play by UK rules. But I guess that that wouldn't work if I was picked up for any crime by the police here. And I'm like, I'm playing by UK rules. It's like, No, you can't do that here. But anyway, you said that your parents weren't so into horror. So I'm wondering, I mean, when they saw that horror was your passion, you're reading the books, you're watching things like killer clowns and The Exorcist, were they encouraging? Were they trying to deter you from it? I mean, what was their reaction?

L. P. Hernandez 16:20
I think they were even though it was something that didn't interest them, they were open to the fact that it interested me. So, like I mentioned, reading Stephen King at the same time, I was reading goosebumps, the very first book of his I ever read was Carrie, and it was the movie version of the cover. And I think I was somewhere around nine or 10, and it was at the half price bookstore, and my mom just never said no. So she didn't say no to that one. And I guess I could thank her for that, because I was, I was advanced enough in my understanding of it like to understand what was going on. And as as that started to transition into my attempts at writing, I don't think I ever tried to write anything that wasn't scary. And so she would always say, I don't seek this, but I love your writing. She was very encouraging from a very early age. Have a lot of guilt for the amount of terrible stories I placed in her hands and forced her to read and so I could get that reaction like right away, but without all those kind of formative, you know, without Carrie, without those awful stories I wrote to begin with, then, you know, I might not have kind of persisted and be here talking to you too.

Michael David Wilson 17:38
And in terms of those early stories, do you remember the first time that you wrote a story, or the first time that you were particularly enamored with your own work and what you'd done the very

L. P. Hernandez 17:54
first I think story I can remember writing that would fall in the Sci Fi horror genre was just kind of a retelling of an actual UFO encounter that my mom had as a teenager. Is a story that we heard a lot growing up, so I was pretty familiar with it. So I think I took all the beginning elements of it, of her with her, her cousin, kind of doing some night fishing out in Michigan, as light getting closer and brighter, initially, they thought it was a motorcycle, and then it got so bright that it was like daytime. They said this would have been in the 70s, and they had a Doberman Pinscher with them that was cowering under a tree, and the light just, it just kind of flooded the whole forest, so that, like I said, it was like daytime. So I took that kind of opening, it goes, there's a little bit after that, but that was the, I guess, the introduction to what became my story. And then I attempted to write a novel at the age of 13 in a spiral bound notebook, and I tried to write it in such a way that I could also play the main character in the movie, because I was sure it was going to be was going to be a hit. And at some point I did convert that handwritten into a Word document, or whatever passed for a word in late 1995 and she still bugs me about that. She still wants to know the ending of it so and she always listens to these podcasts, Mom, I've given up on that one. I hope you do too.

Michael David Wilson 19:24
Oh no, that is not what she wanted to hear, disaster. But I mean, goodness that UFO encounter. Have you had anything like that happen to yourself?

L. P. Hernandez 19:42
Not UFO, I would say paranormal wise. We did have a couple of things happen to us in Guam and I've kind of gone back and forth on, you know, from sincere belief into the supernatural to, you know, 20 years past and nothing has ever happened to you. Kind of start to doubt that it's. Even real or but we had a house that was right on the edge of the jungle, and Guam has a pretty rough history. When the Japanese occupied the island, they, you know, they conquered it, they decimated the population. And so there are some pretty gruesome deaths, beheadings, a lot of stuff like that. So we've been told by our neighbors, who are all local, we were the only military on the street, that our house is kind of not a gateway, but it's a passageway. And so they talk about that their ancestors walk through our property into kind of looked like sugar cane off to would have been the right side of the house. There was a big mango tree. Then there was this field. So we were, it was a very interesting story, and we love to hear about their own, their lore. So my wife and I were in bed one night, and we were, I think I was just waiting to fall asleep, and all of a sudden, from about three or four feet above us, we hear about four seconds of a hummed note, like someone's humming in the room with us. And I think we both kind of went rigid, and we're both like, was that you? No, I thought that was you. And so it was neither one of us. No explanation for it. We didn't have kids at the time, and it was just kind of like, I don't know, just like a person in the room with you humming a song, we had dog toys squeak in an adjoining rooms when the dogs were in the room with us. So and then the very the most vivid one I can remember. I was sitting at the dinner table, and we have one of those trash cans where, like, the lid kind of flips. So, like, if you drop, you know, your your trash, it would and I was just sitting there, I might have been doing homework, I forget, and it looked like someone had dropped a brick in the trash can. And there was nobody lied. It is when, you know, went, like, eight or nine times on its own. And like, I don't know, no explanation for it. It didn't feel threatening, but it was definitely I went super natural, because, you know, to get it to flip that many times would have been some amount of force. And there just I was the closest person to it, and I was probably still, like, six or seven feet away, and so

Michael David Wilson 22:19
did a majority of your experiences surround that house that you were living in? Guam? Have you had other things in other locations?

L. P. Hernandez 22:32
No, I guess the the only other thing, and this one might not be supernatural, was when I was I was younger, staying with my dad in Washington, DC, and I was unsupervised for the most part, which meant I was staying up as late as possible. And it wasn't, you know, DCS can be a rough town, and I think we were kind of on the border between rough and, okay, there was a sound outside. I thought it was gunshots. Could have been a car backfiring, wasn't sure. And so I went to the window, and I saw a man in the parking lot probably 40 feet from me, running like he was being chased. And so just following him with my eyes, and then about eight inches from me, is another face looking back at me, of someone that was either peering in my window. This was an apartment. It wasn't a so first floor, nothing supernatural about that. And in my mind, like I dropped to the ground and then I low, crawled out of the room. Took me like 30 minutes to get out, because I was just like inch by inch. In my mind, I kind of, I can't see him clearly, so there's kind of like a mask in place of him. But if that was unrelated to the potential crime that that person had been watching me through the little kind of gaps in the the blinds for, I don't know how long, but that's probably the most scared I've ever been, like at a like, a single moment. Like, probably not supernatural, but definitely terrifying. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 24:04
that's like a real life jump scare. Oh, yeah, absolutely terrifying. They're Watching this,

L. P. Hernandez 24:14
yeah, he was watching a 10 year old boy watch David Letterman. I'm not sure what the interest was there, but

Michael David Wilson 24:18
yeah, you don't want to know

L. P. Hernandez 24:23
that's another writer's work. I don't do that stuff. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 24:26
yeah. But I mean, you said in terms of your own beliefs pertaining to the supernatural, they obviously kind of vary. I suppose you know, when you're in that moment and you're in the house in Guam, you're going to be a believer, to some extent. But then when a couple of decades have passed, it, it's funny how the passage of time, it can almost make things unreal, or like that part of our life was a lifetime ago, or was a mood. V but I mean, I wonder now, if you were to try and distill what your beliefs are in terms of the supernatural, in terms of the afterlife, in terms of anything pertaining to the areas of religion or lack thereof, what would you say?

L. P. Hernandez 25:19
I'm hopeful, like I'm always holding out hope that I'm gonna have that kind of confirming experience. And maybe that was it for me. Maybe, you know, I have to kind of rely on the stuff that happened a while ago, but I do spend a lot of time looking at this guy, just willing for things to appear. And so far, no luck with it. But I don't know, UAPs are all over the place now, it seems like I'm surprised to have it. I didn't see one on the drive home. So I guess I'm a, I wouldn't say I'm a skeptic, agnostic, like I believe they could be there. I just It's been a while since I had something I couldn't explain happened to me. So you start to kind of make excuses for it. I think, yeah,

Michael David Wilson 26:02
yeah, I find it difficult to be anything other than an agnostic, just on the basis that there isn't a definitive answer either way. So it almost feels arrogant for me to say either way. Like, yes, this is true. No, this is absolutely not true. Because normally, whatever the experience, you could have a scientific explanation, even if it's really far fetched. I don't know what that is for some of the things that happened in the house in Guam but somebody would come up with it.

L. P. Hernandez 26:44
So we had, I guess, enough, real life, non supernatural, specifically snakes. I had so many encounters with snakes that are so much more vivid to me than those couple of weird things that happen. I had a snake fall on my head while I was I was taking so we had storm shutters, you know, because of the typhoons, and there had been a snake in the storm shutter between the sliding glass door, and we'd seen its head poking out for like, two or three days, and then one day it was gone. So we just hadn't been using that door for a while. And so I was taking some trash out, like a big box to go out and break break down outside. And I bumped the storm shutter, and it was still up there, but it had moved up, so it fell out of the storm shutter onto my head, and I just threw everything and screamed, I've owned snakes before, so snakes don't scare me, but when you're not expecting to have one land on you. Yeah. And then I was in the the shed looking for something. I leaned on our our grill, and there was a hose there, and so I didn't it wasn't startling when I put my arm on something cold that felt kind of too tube shaped, but then it moved, and I realized I had just put my full weight on top of another snake. There was one in the mailbox. Actually have a picture of that I can send you guys. So I guess it was balanced with enough actual horrifying things that, you know, having something hum in your room was like, Oh yeah, I can tolerate that, as long as it's not a snake falling on my head.

Michael David Wilson 28:20
So big takeaway I'm getting here is, in Guam there are a hell of a lot of spirits, and there are a lot of snakes. You've got the double S treatment right there,

L. P. Hernandez 28:31
specifically brown tree snakes. Yes, they're everywhere. They're invasive, so you're supposed to kill them if you find them. But they're just they're everywhere, yeah,

Michael David Wilson 28:40
but you said that you'd had pet snakes prior to that. Was that also in Guam or was that back in the US

L. P. Hernandez 28:49
I was in the States, I had a couple of boa constrictors. But like I said, they're they're used to people and used to being handled. So it's more the surprise, I can actually show something to the camera real quick, if that'll that's a snake inside my mailbox. Oh,

Michael David Wilson 29:10
so this is the benefit for people checking out the video. The benefit or the added already, depending on your perspective? Yeah, I don't want to find that in my mailbox. No, I just

L. P. Hernandez 29:27
closed it. I closed it and walked away, came back the next day and it was gone. So

Bob Pastorella 29:31
are they, are they poisonous? Are they just being invasive? And didn't sound like that, they are. But

L. P. Hernandez 29:38
so they have some sort of, I don't know if it's Venom precisely, but their mouth, like their teeth, are so far back, and their mouths are kind of, they don't really open wide enough to be a threat to humans. But I remember taking our dogs to the vet. There was a picture there of, I think it was a German shepherd's leg that got bit, and it kind of creates. That I think it's the like the necrotizing fasciitis, the skin eating so yes, in theory, they are dangerous, but they're not. They're not all that threatening.

Bob Pastorella 30:17
Yeah, the only experience that I've ever had with the snake. Is some guy that we used to hang out with years ago, had a had a pet boa, and I decided I wanted to hold it. And he said, That's That's fine, you can. And the snake didn't like me and wrapped around my arm. And it took him quiet, you know, took my friend quite a bit of effort to get the snake to get off my arm. It wasn't painful, but he says, If you panic, he's gonna squeeze the hell out of your arm and it's going to hurt. So I had to sit there real calm, going, hey, just get off my arm, man. Just uncoil yourself. So, yeah, it was pretty rough.

L. P. Hernandez 31:02
It's pretty cool to feel all the muscles kind of, yeah, yeah.

Bob Pastorella 31:07
They're, they're fascinating creatures. Fascinating

Michael David Wilson 31:10
is that a kind of no more thing for a snake to decide that it does or doesn't like a person instantaneously like that? I don't

L. P. Hernandez 31:20
know. I was gonna say, I'm gonna kick that one over to Bob. Mine was fine. Okay,

Bob Pastorella 31:25
yeah, I mean this. He told me that that snake had never done that to anyone before. And he said that that if you, if it's even if it senses that you're scared of it. It could have an adverse effect on its own behavior, kind of like handling a tarantula. I won't, I won't handle a tarantula because I heard their bites are really painful, and so that scares me, and tarantulas are even more sensitive to that. And so I was about to pick one up. My hand was shaking. A friend of mine had another friend had a Tarantino, and he was like, Don't even touch it. He's gonna bite you. And I was like, really? He said, Yeah. I said, Was it like poison? Is he goes, and you could get sick, but yeah, it's, you know, I don't think he won't kill you. He goes, it'll hurt like hell. He goes, but you're You're too nervous, and it's gonna sense it, and that's when it attacks. And I was like, Oh, well, I'll just leave it and fuck alone. Nice little spider. You stay there. But, yeah, but snakes, he had never seen that behavior before, and it wasn't like being aggressive, it was just, but it wasn't very comfortable.

Michael David Wilson 32:43
Yeah, I've handled both boa constrictors and tarantillers Because when I was kind of school age, occasionally you'd have like the reptile man come in. So that was kind of the exposure to them. But I I didn't know about them both being so sensitive to fear, but it, it makes total sense. And yeah, I'm glad you didn't pick up that. Tarantino Bob

Bob Pastorella 33:13
me too. Yeah, I've never seen anybody ever get bit by one or anything like that. But other than my friend, he said, Yeah, when he first got him, it bitty. And he says, it's not, it's not a pleasant experience. It sees it was quite painful and, and I just didn't even want to imagine that I've been stung by, you know, I've been stung by bees. I've been stung by Wasp, and I don't like that. That's, you know, and it's not something I'm just, Hey, I can't wait for it to happen again. It's not a very pleasant experience at all.

Michael David Wilson 33:54
Yeah, yeah. So you mentioned being from a military background, and I believe you served in the Air Force for around 18 years now. So I'm wondering how that began, and if your parents being from that background meant that it was always something that you wanted to do, or if you had of aspirations earlier on,

L. P. Hernandez 34:24
I think military brats kind of grow up one or two ways, like they can't wait to follow in their parents footsteps. Or, like, for me, it was, you know, I want to do anything but be in the Air Force and follow my parents footsteps. So I kind of, I tried to make it on my own for a little bit after we left England, I moved back to Texas, and, you know, just kind of did all the menial labor. I was used to clean up a butcher shop. So I was, you know, cleaning up the blood afterwards. I was a donut fryer. I tested cotton overnight and did all the things. I had an apartment with a mattress, a TV a TV tray and like, one of every utensil, one fork, once you know, like, and I realized it wasn't getting anywhere. So kind of went back home with my tail between my legs and decided to try out the Air Force. You know that there's, you could do your four years and still get all the educational benefits, or six years and get a little bit more money. So I didn't go in thinking that it was necessarily going to be a lifelong commitment, or, you know, 20 year commitment, which is, is kind of the next milestone for me that'll be retirement. But, you know, kind of kept, just kept on resetting my goals so to get in and to get the job that I got, which you'd have to score pretty well to get it. So after that, it was working on my education, to get my degree, to get commissioned and and so I was successful at that. At that point, you're well over 10 years, and you're like, I might as well just stay

Michael David Wilson 36:10
in Yeah. And in terms of the writing, were you always writing throughout your life? So every period that we're talking about, were you working on your craft, or was that something that you put on hold and then return to?

L. P. Hernandez 36:30
I've always considered myself a writer. I think I, you know my childhood that that was, that was always the goal, and so that might have been part of it with being joining the military was kind of like admitting defeat in a way that I can't I'm not successful at this. And then so whether or not I wrote that kind of depended on if I even had access to a word processor. When I was living alone, I didn't have a computer, so I probably didn't even have a notebook at the time. Once I got in the Air Force, you know that first part of your career is pretty front loaded with a lot of training, and then you take on some college on your own. And so it felt like it took me a good eight years or so before I felt settled and was able to, you know, now I have a house, I can afford some things, and have, I guess, enough stability and peace of mind that I can try in earnest. So I think I putter. I checked out some writing communities on, I don't know if this is even a thing anymore, but blog spot, I seem to I had a page on blog spot, and they were like, you know you writers would support each other and send each other work and stuff like that. But I was always reluctant to expose myself to critiques. I think I was around 2029, 30 ish, when I sent my first story to someone that wasn't like, like to be judged, basically, and that was to a the Writer's Digest short story competition, and I sent a horror story under the genre competition, and I got an honorable mention. So in retrospect, I don't know if I deserved it. It's it feels I'm not, not super proud of it, but that gave me some confidence to try again. And I, you know, around that time, probably 2000 mid, 2015 16 ish podcasts kind of came onto my radar. So I started listening to the no sleep podcast as a fan for several seasons before I ever thought, well, I've written a ton of stories. Now, let me see if you know, maybe one of those could are good enough for the podcast. And so the first one I did, I submitted, got on, and I kind of like it was incremental, every little success mixed with some rejections as well. And those were always hard because I hadn't developed thick enough skin. But the successes were kind of, they weren't too far apart that I lost hope. So I was writing in between every success and every failure, and eventually, kind of got to become almost a regular on no sleep and had enough to put together a collection. And the whole like everything after that is a little bit of I'm sure there's some talent mixed in there, but there's some luck as well. As far as the novellas I've written in and other stuff that's been successful,

Michael David Wilson 39:35
yeah, and I think no sleep podcast is probably my favorite fiction podcast, and I've been fortunate enough to have a couple of stories on there, and it it's so rewarding as a writer like you know, forget about anything to do with the pay, but the production, the audio quality, the. Actors. So it must have been such an amazing moment for you when you got that first acceptance and then you heard your story. Because it, I mean, it's an adaptation. It, you know, it's the audio equivalent of having your story made into a movie.

L. P. Hernandez 40:21
At that point, I had been like a fan in the on the Facebook page and interacting with the other writers and the voice actors and all that. And so when my first one, I remember when I got accepted my wife, I was at station in Alabama at the time, and my wife and I were dancing in the kitchen. It's also a very vivid memory, and I was sure, because I had seen it happen with other writers that, oh, I'm going to be doing like, Q and A's, and people are going to be, you know, this is going to change my life. I was sure that was going to happen. And then my story dropped and it was on the pay side, so that cuts your audience by probably 90% and no one said anything about it. It it wasn't a bad story, it just and so it's kind of like a deflating feeling, and then eventually, at the end of that, you just want to try harder. Like, okay, that was good enough story to be accepted. It caused, you know, maybe a little ripple of attention. But now I want to try harder. I want to I want to be, you know the stories they always talk about, baraska, pancake, family, like those heavy hitters, that when people say, What's your favorite story, or what's the most disturbing story, I want it to be on some What's your most blank lists for no sleep? Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 41:35
yeah. And you said in previous interviews that your military experience has given you the confidence to be a writer, and I'd love to unpack that a little bit more in terms of the specifics there

L. P. Hernandez 41:58
well, the military at various points in your career will break you down so that they can build you up. Definitely the first, you know, your introduction at basic training, it's a lot of yelling, a lot of push ups, it's all the stereot this stuff, you would kind of, you know, what do you would expect after watching something like platoon? That wasn't my experience. I'm Air Force, not army. So little bit different. We still got yelled at. Things had changed a little bit. So we weren't physically being touched, but it was real close, and we used to, I remember we had to, and for some of my fellow vets that went through maybe 20 years or so ago, had to do push ups until the wall sweated. And I didn't know that was possible, but it is. You can get enough sweaty guys in a room and the walls will start to glisten. And then as an airman, as a young airman, you're going through various kind of like upgrades to get to the next level. With every upgrade, you're at the bottom of that tier. So you finish basic training and now you're an airman, but you go to technical training and you're the newest, lowest airman. So it's kind of like a consistent, continual reset, of like, your self confidence gets built up, and then no reset. I became a staff sergeant in the Air Force, so a non commissioned officer, and then when I commissioned, I was a lieutenant, so I was back at the bottom again. So it's just that kind of you develop thick skin, I think, and part of that is by design, like you never get really too comfortable being in any any position of authority, because there's, there's always the next job or the next Echelon that's going to put you right back at the bottom.

Michael David Wilson 43:52
Yeah, I see the very literal comparison to the writing journey there. And I mean in terms of the writing specifically, I'm wondering now what does your writing routine look like, and how does your current job fit in with that?

L. P. Hernandez 44:16
So right now, I take it when I can get it. My buddy Elsie Marino and I have opened our own press, and so I've done way more reading than I have writing and also editing over the past, since about August or so. But when I do write, I actually how it marries with my my job is I do it at work on my lunch breaks out, I'll plow through lunch as quick as I can, you know, eat in five minutes, which also I can thank the military for teaching me how to eat a full meal in under five minutes. And then the next 30 minutes or so out, I'll knock out a couple 100 words, and it's not much, maybe 500 but it starts to add up. So if. It's not possible because of kids or other obligations. I'll at least do it during my lunch breaks. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 45:06
and speaking of forming your press, I mean, I know a little bit from what you said online about it, but I'd love to know the genesis of this, and then what you're doing with your press, what you're kind of looking for, what avenues it's serving at the moment.

L. P. Hernandez 45:29
So I'm a victim of the indie press horror stories trying to I think it's pretty well known that my that no gods was originally picked up by cemetery dance, and it was also released by cemetery dance in January of this year. So that notification came while I was out the field, and so that was a nice kind of gut punch. I was kind of disconnected from the world for the most part. I could kind of access Twitter a little bit on my phone, but, you know, I was out training, and then got the email that, basically, there's a handful of books we're not moving forward with, and one of them is yours. So then I moved to dark lit, which, yeah, saw the reaction there. Ah. Wow, I could say a lot here, just that I try to do my homework, but when the person, kind of on the other end is telling you exactly what you want to hear, then I guess I was I felt courted in a way, like I felt special, like it was a, what do you call it? Love bombed, and all the promises that were made about what would happen with my book. So that was an unpleasant couple of months. I had basically this entire book I put together myself, from the cover art to the interior formatting, everything was me. All darkly had to do was slap their label on it and then fulfill their other obligations. And it was at a certain point almost impossible just to even have an email exchange. So as other authors began to jump ship in June or so, I realized that, you know, my book just wasn't going to have a fair shot because people didn't want to support the brand anymore, like they didn't want to buy a dark, lit book. Regardless of whether or not they wanted to buy my book, they just weren't going to support the brand. But brand. So I had met Elsie Marino at author con, and then again at Stoker con. He's also a military vet, and he is the yin to my Yang, where I am stoic and I don't approach people. He is a very much. Will go up, shake your hand, talk to you, like, do all the things where I'll just sit behind the table and hope that someone will look at me. So he definitely is the extrovert between the two of us, but he also has a significant business background, so I have an MBA. I haven't really got to practice much, because it's I've been stuck in the military, and our money is pretend. But he's kind of, after he got out of the military, he's built, built companies, built a lot of infrastructure for for various platforms, very knowledgeable person, also a really good human being. So initially it was, the idea was, could we harvest anything from dark lit, like take some of what was left over and rebrand it, or even move forward with the dark lit name, but kind of announce ourselves as a new owners and just in discussions with the next owner of dark clay. I didn't want to say owner, because that whole thing was was just it wasn't good. There just wasn't a whole lot left. And the brand had been so tarnished that eventually, I think we just said, why don't we open our own and starting with kind of all the lessons that we learned. Himself publishing, he self published several, and then myself kind of going through the ringer with a couple of indie presses. Like we know exactly what not to do, and we have enough business savvy, a business sense, to to be a place that people want to affiliate themselves with. So I haven't said the name yet. It's Sobelo Books, and so we've done a couple of re releases. We have a couple announced originals, Catherine McCarthy, we're going to re release one of Robert tones, Alan Baxter's, where we're releasing a couple of his and then there's some other ones, Chris delio and some not announced. Yet that we're still hopeful for. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 50:03
and to go back to the beginning with cemetery dance. So I and like, we don't need to get into the depths of it, if you'd prefer not to. But so what, what you're saying is so that the copy that you, you showed us, that was released, that was out, that was available for people to buy, is that right,

L. P. Hernandez 50:30
not through cemetery dance. So I was supposed to come out with cemetery dance. I was an October release, okay, but I'd been under contract with them for about nine months at that point. So, and if anybody wants to, like, this was a gamble, what I did, I did this whole thing on my own, and then I just put it in publishers hands and said, this book is done, like, there's a handful of that. Still I hadn't, I didn't have the rights back to them yet, but by the time this would have been published with the press, I would have had the rights back. So I got the formatting, I got the cover art, everything kind of put together. And said this, if you want to get behind it, this thing's done. And cemetery dance was the first one to write back. And said, Yes, but then, you know, some turnover and personnel there, and I'm sure some it was a business decision. Wasn't long after me that other people kind of experienced some issues with them, with their releases, like, I think Jonathan Janz had had some issues there with, like, pre orders not being delivered. I saw, like, a handful of the next release is kind of there. There is some stuff, I think, going on behind the scenes. So maybe it was a blessing in disguise that I didn't end up there. But yeah, I was one of, I think, three authors whose books were cut. I know CS humble, His books were also cut. The third author, I'm just forgetting the name there.

Michael David Wilson 52:00
Yeah, yeah, goodness. I mean to say it's an it's been an unfortunate situation, is to wildly understate it. And I mean, having recently read the collection no gods only chaos is absolutely fantastic. So I'm really hoping that you know this, this re release, I mean it, it's almost bizarre. Do we call it a re release or an original release? Because none of the original releases happened much, but I do hope that a lot of attention is brought to it because, I mean, it really within the collection. It shows such a wide range and showcases, honestly, all of the facets of horror. Yeah.

L. P. Hernandez 52:58
I mean, I hope if anyone has a takeaway, like, if they don't know me, that by the time they're done reading it, that that's their takeaway, like, I can write anything, and that part of this is because you're seeing the result of, you know me, submitting to various calls so naturally that you know that dictates that you're going to write different kind of story because I was trying to land in like the human monsters anthology versus the picnic in the graveyard anthology. So handful. Those are, you know, stories that I landed in anthologies, and I'm always trying to be different when I landed in anthology. I want my story to be like nothing they've ever read, because there tends to be a lot of overlap, especially when it's themed, that you're going to get a lot of very similar stories. So I try to do, you know, come at it from a different perspective, or just do something unexpected, so that even if the even if it's not their favorite story, it's original. I

Bob Pastorella 54:00
was gonna say, when I was reading it, I had sensed shades of Madison and and, you know, William Nolan and Charles Beaumont, and they had a lot of these stories had this kind of Twilight Zone edge to them. But the to me, it's the characters. And you use setting as characters so well that actually kind of made those stories. I mean, they're all, they're your own. They they could only have come from you. So, yeah, there's, they're tinged with, you know, the inspirations, and at least what I felt, and I was, I was like, Man, this just reading it. And remember seeing it on social media and things like that. And it's like, well, you know, it's my TBR is pretty big. And I'm like, I better get on this one. And I'm like, Why didn't I read this when I first saw it? Oh, my God, it's so good. Good, and I've thoroughly enjoyed it and read some stories again. So, yeah, it's, it's a great collection. It's, if anyone's listening, you need to get it now,

L. P. Hernandez 55:12
and you can buy it from my press. Sobelo books, I'll autograph one and kiss it and send it to you.

Michael David Wilson 55:18
Yeah, I mean, that's a way to ensure that it's not going to go under, or you're not going to, you know, be messed about by the publisher. It's like you become the publisher, exactly. And I mean in terms of originality being important to you, I'm wondering when you see a call for a story under a certain theme, what are the initial steps in terms of when you're looking at what you write? I mean, I know, for example, that Stephen Graham Jones one of the things that he does is he'll write a list of all the things he doesn't want to do, and then see what's left.

L. P. Hernandez 56:03
I think where this first clicked for me was the story from the red dirt, which was in sinister smile press release. And they're, you know, they're a bit smaller, so they don't at the time. I'm not sure if they do now, but they didn't pay professional rates, but it was more than the contributors copies that I was getting. And so this was a zombie call and understanding. And I had talked to to Bob as well, another Bob, just like curious, how many submissions do you get for something like this. And he said about 300 so 300 zombie stories. You know, a lot of them are going to hit very similar beats, but I bet none of them were set in the Dust Bowl. So if I can do something from, you know, out the gate to make myself different, because it may come down to, you know, as they're reading, they're accepting because there's a potential that these people are submitting multiple places. So there's only so much time they have to say yes to a story and kind of lock it in. So they're accepting stories. If they have two that, you know, you're down to your last two, they're very similar, one set in the Dust Bowl and the other set in modern times? Well, we don't have a dust bowl story, so I kind of used that logic. And then I took it forward with my picnic in the graveyard, which was cemetery Joe. I wanted to do something that was outlandish but also funny. And the very next one after that I landed, was human monsters, and my goal there was to make you kind of root for the bad guy. So whatever the call is, what can I do that the editors or, you know, whoever's leading the call probably hasn't seen yet?

Michael David Wilson 57:54
Yeah, and I mean, in terms of cemetery, Joe, I mean, that is a hell of an opening story. It's very bold, it's very playful. There's a hell of a lot of comedy to it, at least for my fucked up sense of humor. So, I mean, I'm wondering, Did you always know that you were going to open with this one?

L. P. Hernandez 58:26
I felt like it was kind of, if you could make it past this story, then you can, you can make it through the rest of it. It has enough. I think it shows a range, like some of it almost gets a little, I wouldn't say cosmic, but there's, there's some little there's definitely a supernatural element that's beyond the fact that this person is reanimating dead bodies, and actually, I think leading to some real questions about the nature of life. But for that one, I think that was the first time that I wrote, and I kind of removed my own shackles. So not to say that I I would say for from the red dirt, which was before that. That's the Zombie Dust Bowl one. I didn't need to take the shackles off for that one, but, but this one, there are many times where I've written a story with an idea, and I get to that scene, and I pull back from it, and so I'm doing a little bit of self censoring, kind of limiting before I even submit it, because it's too extreme or distasteful. So, and I've told this story before, but the original title of this was corpse fucker, Joe. I think I've heard you both swear,

Michael David Wilson 59:41
so that's okay, right? Yes, it is okay.

L. P. Hernandez 59:44
So this was corpse fucker, Joe, and that's what I sent in, like the body of the or like the the subject line of the email. And then I was like, as soon as I hit send, I was like, That was a mistake. Not only is he not going to accept it, he's not going to read it, and then I'm going to be on his banned list. So. So I wrote another story, which is in this collection as well, and I submitted it and said, hey, just kidding about that other one. But by then, he'd already read it and accepted it and tweeted about it, which caught Sadie Hartman's eye, so she was on the lookout, or at least knew my name, when the human monsters anthology call came down. And I submitted the bystander for that one. So it was kind of a fortunate turn of events to submit it with that provocative title, to write a bonkers story, and for Joe from cemetery gates to tweet about it, which happened to land on Sadie's page, and so she knew my name when I when I submitted, like, two weeks later.

Michael David Wilson 1:00:40
Is there any part of you that wishes that you had stuck with the original title? Or is there any chance that, if we have, I don't know, a compendium of your fiction in the future, or a re release, that you may revert to corpse fucker Joe? I'm

L. P. Hernandez 1:01:00
good with it. I think after family Annihilator, if people are fans of mine, then they can deal with corpse fucker, Joe,

Michael David Wilson 1:01:07
yeah, yeah, wonderful. Thank you so much for listening to LP Hernandez on. This Is Horror. Join us again next time for the second and final part of the conversation. But if you would like to get it and every other conversation ahead of the crowd, 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 you can be a part of the writers forum on Discord. It is the best way to support This Is Horror Podcast, and it is a vote of confidence for us to show that you like what we're doing and you want us to continue and continue we have been doing, because in A matter of weeks, we will be celebrating the 600th episode and 13 years of This Is Horror Podcast. So thank you for joining us on that journey. Please do help keep the show alive and support us@patreon.com forward slash. This Is Horror. Okay, before I wrap up, a quick advert break in 1867

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Michael David Wilson 1:03:47
that about does it for another episode of This Is Horror, and I thank you once again for joining us. I Thank you always for engaging, for rating the show, for letting us know who you want to hear us talk to, because without all of you, dear listener, we are nothing. Now, as I often do, I would like to end the episode with a quote, and here is a quote from one of the stoics from Marcus Aurelius, each of us lives only now, this brief instant the rest has been lived already or is impossible to see. So something to ponder. Make sure that you are living in the now, but the now for us, the now for me, the now for you, is ending this episode, so I will see you in the next one for part two of LP Hernandez, but until. Then, as always, take care of yourselves. Be good to one another. Read horror, keep on writing and have a great, Great day.