TIH 599: L. P. Hernandez on In the Valley of the Headless Men, Expanding The Last of Our Kind, and Story Planning

Michael David Wilson 0:27
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 is the second part of our conversation with LP Hernandez. He is the author of a number of books, including his novella Star Gazers, which was part of the my dark library series curated by Sadie Hartman. And his latest story collection, no gods, only chaos is a brilliant collection that really gets into such a multitude of topics in terms of the horror genre, he really does showcase just such a range of themes and styles, from pitch black humor to really unsettling cosmic Horror. So if you needed a starting place for LP, that would be the one that I would personally recommend. But you're going to hear a lot about LPS life and his writing in this conversation, particularly over the course of the two parter. So this episode and the previous one, 598 but before we get into the conversation, a quick advert break in 1867

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Bob Pastorella 2:36
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Michael David Wilson 3:19
Okay, without saying, Here it is. It is LP Hernandez on, This Is Horror. So you mentioned from the red dirt before, and I think what's so interesting about this one is that originality. Because I mean, not only, as you said, Have you set it during America's Dust Bowl era, and it is indeed a take on the zombie tale, but it's also kind of a home invasion story. So you've got so many different aspects, and I don't think anybody would have done that with a zombie tail, and, you know, even to the point where some people might not know it's a zombie tail until quite late in the game.

L. P. Hernandez 4:18
Yeah, I'm, I'm confident in my writing, but I guess I can fall back on at least if I throw enough elements in there that are unique compared to what I assume is being submitted and then now having my own press, not that we've done a themed call, but you do get kind of a sense of, I don't want To call it competition. I'm not competing with them. I would have called them competition before, but you do get a sense of the quality of the writing that's being submitted to these small presses. So I guess for that one, I did need to check the box with the zombie, but I also wanted. To do more of an emotional story. And the grandpa could very well have not been a zombie, and I told a very similar story, so that was almost, you know, an afterthought. It does kind of play into the end when it gets a little gross and he shoves his guts down the, you know, you can buy it and read it and find out, but the story makes sense without him needing to be a zombie. So I figured, and I guess, I guessed right, that that would be unique among the submissions for a zombie call,

Michael David Wilson 5:34
yeah. And what kind of reaction did you get from the editor?

L. P. Hernandez 5:41
He was thrilled. I think there was some tweak to the end. I don't remember what, what was requested. And at 40 bucks, that was the most I had been paid for a story which, you know, it's, it's not professional rates, but I was getting $10 or a contributor's copy before. So for me, it was like I mentioned about this journey being iterative. Your first acceptance to a non paying anthology, that's a win, because you are competing against people Dan a $10 anthology that's, you know, that's something. And then for this 140 and then professional rates, and that was actually made into a no sleep episode as well. And I've gotten some feedback on that that was really well received. And I feel like although cemetery Joe is when I took the self imposed shackles off from the Red Dirt is when I really trusted my own voice as a writer.

Michael David Wilson 6:39
Yeah, and I think that from the red dirt might also appeal to fans of the movie bone tomahawk. I mean, obviously bone Tomahawk was set about 40 or 50 years prior, but that there's something in it, and the originality of both tales and the the kind of combining of sub genres.

L. P. Hernandez 7:03
Yeah, I think, you know, the setting can do a lot of work for you. So that's its own. Like, if you I mean, it just raises the stakes. Because not only are you competing against, like you mentioned, the home invasion aspect and dealing with the resurrected grandfather, there is this ever present threat to their livelihood that could kind of strike at any moment. So as far as, like a writing tool, just changing, like upping the stakes, and if you can do that with the environment, if you can do that with the people that are in the room with your characters, then, you know, that's an easy, you know, kind of tool, I guess, to to fall back on, like, hey, this seems a bit slow. Let's throw a dust storm in there. Or, you know, if it's character based, then let's, let's have the character look a little bit too long, or reach in his pocket, or, you know, just one of those things that add some intrigue, because you can't necessarily maintain that momentum through the entire story, but it's enough to, I guess, at least keep tension in the background of the reader's mind, even if it's not active on the page,

Michael David Wilson 8:20
and in terms of planning these things in I mean, particularly, I suppose, with the longer works, and I know that later we'll talk about in the valley of the headless men. But we're also prone to jump from topic to topic. So if, if applicable, we can go there now. But in, terms of planning things like the dust storm or adding some drama and some tension, is that something that comes into the planning phase is that something that is more organic in the writing itself? How do you approach planning before the writing

L. P. Hernandez 9:02
for my longer works, I am a very loose planner, and that my typical process would be, and this is what I've done for my my last two novellas and for the novel that I've recently completed. Is that when that moment of inspiration hits, I try to capture it like I will sit down and write chapter one, write two or three sentences chapter two, till I get to the end. And it's very possible and it's inevitable that you're going to go back and either move some things around or eliminate things entirely as the story evolves and you start to in, I hate it when people say, Oh, my character made a different choice. Like, no, I made the choice. I'm the writer. I did it. But I can understand how like when you start to add some flavor, because right now, it's just a name, their names on a paper and. So you haven't really forced them to interact, and you haven't had the opportunity to make those choices. So once you start making those choices, and these are little pivot points in the story, that it's almost like a choose your own adventure. I could take it this way, the way I've written, or I can take it this way, that raises the stakes. So for short fiction, I might just write half a page paragraph, like if you were going to, you know, try to encapsulate this almost like a summary of the story. So, you know, for a 4000 word short story, you don't need to break it down to that granular of a detail, but just hit the high points, and then, as you're writing it, look for those moments where, if I'm a if I'm the writer, and I'm losing interest, for sure, my readers losing interest. So whatever element it is, if it's the environment, if it's the tension between the characters, if it's kind of doing the unexpected or humor, like with cemetery Joe, that your your readers should not feel unless it's your intent. Your readers should not feel comfortable when they're reading your

Michael David Wilson 11:10
story. Yeah, and seeing as you've mentioned humor, and I guess that contrast with the purer horror or more brutality. It's interesting that with the bystander, which is the third in the collection, I felt that it combined the pure horror of hesitation cuts the second story with the humor of cemetery Joe and even calling a character Gary two in itself is hilarious. Yeah, I

L. P. Hernandez 11:47
don't know. I don't know. I think I am a very funny person on paper, like I could if, if humor sold at all, I would probably be like a humor writer. But it's another kind of, I guess, a way to distinguish yourself from other writers I didn't imagine, and I have a little peek behind the scenes, which I've told to other people. Because I asked Sadie, who ran that call, how many submissions she got, and for the human monsters, it was over 1000 submissions. I think they had 10 invited authors, so that left 25 for the rest of us. So that's under 2.5% acceptance rate. And so you have to imagine it's human monster is going to be a lot of serial killers, so there probably aren't going to be a lot of serial killers who are concerned about their pizza getting cold, or whether or not the people they're killing care about the food that they made them, or would nickname their their victims and and get to the o's and think Oprah for someone Just because they couldn't think of another name. So you take the humor out of the story, and it may not be as successful, then it's kind of, you know, it's like, I saw a very interesting review on terrifier Three about how it's it's kind of forcing us to to grapple with some things that are they're in our reality right now. And it balances that, I think, really well with the fact that while you're squirming like you're I don't know, you're almost in on the joke with with art, that this isn't real, that all of this is a facade. So giving your your reader, a little freedom to laugh in the midst of really disgusting things happening. I think it makes you stand out as a storyteller. And then it's also, you know, it's, it just doesn't hit the same beats. It's like, you know, steady drum, and then you're going up here for the symbol every now and then, just to get a different reaction. Different reaction.

Michael David Wilson 14:03
Yeah. And, I mean, I think the fact that you have some stories that have very little humor, and then others, which could, you know, broadly, be defined as a dark comedy, this is what I was talking about before by saying that such a varied collection, I'm wondering, did you release such a varied collection early on to kind of enable people to not shoe, kind of shoe you into A sub genre? Because we do see that happen with a number of authors. It's like right now you're the werewolf guy, or you're the slasher guy, or you're Stephen Graham Jones, which means you're both simultaneously, and some of these are paradox, but is that something that you're conscious of avoiding being? Typecast.

L. P. Hernandez 15:02
I think it's why a lot of themed anthology struggle. And I've talked to Joe from cemetery gates about this, and you know this, it's more like when we discussed it, and I've heard him discuss another podcast. I think yours actually maybe about, you know the success of themed anthologies, you're depending on big names, usually as the draw, and that they might stick around for the unknowns, which, which, I've been several times, but I've been in so many that, you know, I can't read 10 takes on whatever it is. It's like as much as I have a bowl of guacamole, I can't eat it every day. I got to diversify at some point. So I want the reader to have that same experience. And I'm curious, as the writer, what's the through line that they're gonna find that I'm not aware of. I see some connective tissue between the bystander and family Annihilator. I was kind of in a similar head space when I wrote those. But like these were from different calls, they kind of represent about two to three years worth of writing. What's uniting about these that me as the author, I don't understand,

Michael David Wilson 16:21
and so I mean in terms of the sequencing of the collection, is that a reason why, you know the bystander is one that's up front and then the family, family annihilator is, in fact, the penultimate Story. Are you deliberately giving it that separation. I

L. P. Hernandez 16:42
felt like there, there definitely needed to be separation between two. I mean, they're completely different stories, but they could almost be interchangeable characters. So I was almost on the fence about even including family Annihilator, because I thought, Oh, it's another funny serial killer kind of story. But, you know, I felt like I didn't have another story ready at the same quality that I would want to round out the book. So it was kind of either save it for the next one, or, I don't know, potentially expose myself to some legitimate criticism of, Oh, you did the same story twice. I don't feel like I did, necessarily, but I could, I could see how people like, hey, that kind of reminds me of the other one. Well,

Michael David Wilson 17:33
for me, there is always room for one more funny serial killer story. I don't know, though, if that is you know, something that people widely feel, and if people know my taste in fiction or have read my stories, then it's certainly an acquired taste anyway. But I mean, of course, we've kind of inadvertently skipped hesitation curves. And I'm this is a nasty little story. This is about obsession. This has a frenetic nightmare quality to it. It also, to my mind, wouldn't be out of place in an Eric La Rocca collection. So, goodness, where did this little fucked up piece of goodness come from?

L. P. Hernandez 18:26
So I've heard that comparison too. So, but yes, I agree, and others have picked up on that as well. So that was for a call as well. And I initially signed up like signed on for the call without a story. And then kind of sitting with a theme for a little bit, I was like, there's some ways this could really go wrong, specifically how it presents mental health. So I was, my intent was not to still get nasty with it, but not to necessarily be disrespectful with someone's journey. So for our main character, it's completely out of his hands, and I hope that's something that the reader will empathize with, that you know, this wasn't the person he was. This is what his ailment led him to be. And it was actually his wife hanging on just a little bit too long to who she was that resulted in in kind of her own, her own end. So it started with the visual. I didn't have necessarily an elderly person in mind. It was the the image to me of this couple in bed, and I don't know, maybe, like An Invasion of the Body Snatchers, just someone is certain that the person next to them is not real, but that, if they just get through a layer two, that that their real person is somewhere in there. So kind of mixing in some senility and access to razors, and we just kind of took it to the extreme.

Michael David Wilson 20:08
Yeah, and you said that you had some concerns initially about tackling the subject matter and dealing sensitively with mental health issues. So I'm wondering, what kind of things did you do to, I guess, mitigate or to address those concerns?

L. P. Hernandez 20:34
So we have some mental health issues in my family. My uncle is a paranoid schizophrenic. He's been in. You know, he's been cared for is since he's about 18. So I've always been aware of how he's been perceived in the public, especially with the medication that he has to take. He stands out wherever he goes. You know, he's going to attract the tension. So I didn't want to play on any of those tropes, any of like the, you know, like just something very Hollywood, like split, where I could just shake my head and all of a sudden I'm a different person. Or, because the theme was institutionalized, and I wanted to make sure that the oh, that that mental health and an actual affliction, which is out of your control, were two distinct things, and that we didn't have a whole lot of overlap there. So it wasn't, you know that this, this person was, you know, a monster and kind of dealing with the echoes of this horrible life that he led, or he was in depression like that. His depression was misunderstood. There was nothing to misunderstand about him. He was a victim as well, who also did something awful, which I think you can do both you can be a victim of something, and then you can still do something awful. Oh,

Michael David Wilson 22:06
yeah, definitely. And, I mean, we've said before that people are rarely in the kind of binary or the black and white in which people like to easily paint them. There are often good and bad qualities about everyone. I wonder, in terms of things with your uncle, I mean, how? How do you navigate that as a family, to do your best for him? He's

L. P. Hernandez 22:38
getting the best care that he can now. I think it's, you know, with my mom being his sister, it's just coming to accept that his life will only be of a certain quality, never going to have a family, never going to have a career. And now he's in his 60s, so all that's kind of behind him. Those possibilities are well behind him now. But then beyond that, I think as you age, you start to ask the bigger questions, and what was the purpose of this life to begin with? Because, you know, like for a lot of diseases, diseases that don't present right away, you get 18 years of a relatively normal life. Not to say it was, it was peaceful all the time, like almost as a tease for what the rest of your life ends up being, where in order to function, you have to be so heavily medicated that you're, you know, the you're, you're basically in a haze with these brief moments of lucidity. So it's, it's painful. I think it, like I said for my mom as she's gotten older. For myself, it just kind of makes you a little self reflective and then ask those bigger questions of the universe, which is what I tend to do with my writing, is what is the purpose of this life, and then for him, specifically, what is the purpose of that life? Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 24:08
and I mean talking about purpose and these wider questions, that does bring us to the title of the collection, no God's only chaos, which then comes from the story offerings to an old god. So, I mean, was that another one that was for a themed anthology? And I mean, with that being so, what was the process for that one.

L. P. Hernandez 24:42
So that was for Monster layers, which was also dark matter. Who did human monsters? There was, I think they did three that had monster the title. And just to, you know, for any writers that are listening, I paid a lot of attention to what the editor was looking for. So when it was announced. List. She kind of had her wish list, or, you know, what she enjoys, and I didn't do like a, you know, check the box. I included that, I included that, but I went into the story with kind of a general sense of some elements I wanted to include, because I was very cognizant of the person who was going to be reading it. So for that one, I guess the way I try to stand out with that, I did try to add a little a little twist at the end, but also, I think I I prepared people for a certain kind of story, and then at that point, my my goal was to make the reveal something that was completely unexpected.

Michael David Wilson 25:48
Oh, yeah, and you certainly achieved that. And I think if, if the previous story we were talking about had a little rock of vibe, then this one Bob will probably anticipate this. Almost had a Todd Keith link vibe, and he's always bloody sacrificing and offering things to old god, hopefully just in his fiction. But never know with Todd, no, I wouldn't

L. P. Hernandez 26:13
trust him. I wouldn't trust him with a pen, that's for sure. Yeah, there you go.

Michael David Wilson 26:20
You heard it here. And I mean, goodness, though, when you were saying before about, you know, reflecting on so what you said with your uncle, and then as a kind of wider commentary, looking at what is the purpose of one's life, how do you begin to answer that in terms of the purpose for your own life? And then how does that kind of affect actions that you might take going forward?

L. P. Hernandez 26:54
Sometimes I'm just putting the question out there and seeing what comes back to me, because I don't think I'm alone. I just don't think that everybody wraps these questions in fiction. So part of it is like either conditioning or preparing myself for the worst, and that would be something like the bystander, where I've already put myself in this head space. So on the off chance ever find myself in that environment. I've kind of thought through it, and I know, you know, the the worst it could be I've already written down. And also, I'm going to check the spaghetti for glass first, and then as we get a little more kind of, you know, cosmic, a little esoteric and existential that's kind of to me, that touches like an ultimate fear. So I feel like I'm almost spoilery, but the idea of living forever but trapped, so that's part of what the monster in the end, when it reveals itself, reveals how it consumes and what it does with the things that are offered to it and that they don't die. So you don't get the chance to come back as a butterfly. You get to exist with this thing that spends the vast majority of its life hibernating, and so you're just stuck. So I guess I've already thought of two pretty awful possibilities. Most of what I'm doing is putting the worst direction my life could possibly go on paper and hoping that it doesn't happen to me. Yeah.

Michael David Wilson 28:40
I mean, sometimes people say, prepare for the worst, hope for the best, but in terms of preparing for that worse, there is no preparation. Is just you will experience the worst, and that's it. You can't prepare for it,

L. P. Hernandez 28:58
yeah? The best I can do is write stories. Yeah, yeah.

Michael David Wilson 29:04
Well, I mean talking about writing stories, the last of our kind, you said in the story notes that there was a novel is worth of a story to tell. And I know from talking golf air that you have some plans in terms of how you're going to tell it, so please tell our listeners.

L. P. Hernandez 29:29
So some of the feedback for no gods has been largely positive, but a couple of the reviews I have read or that were shared directly with me, said, You know, when they get down to like each story, they would say this, this felt unfinished, or it felt rushed. And I agree, even though it's like 5000 words long, which is long for a short story, it's still it's not enough to kind of capture a summer of. Four girls dealing with one of their friends being made into a vampire. So I did have a novella length or worth of story to tell at the time I wrote that, and that wasn't enough as well. So as of now, same title, same characters, but the journey is definitely expanded upon, and the ending is completely different because we flash forward in time. I did write the last of our kind as a novel, so it's at first draft stage, early beta reader. BETA readers are positive, so I'm hopeful that I won't resort to having to publish this under my own company, and that someone else will want to pay me for it. Well,

Michael David Wilson 30:49
I was going to ask you about the process for this one in particular, going from short story to novella to novel, but what you just said about you. You hope that you'll be able to get somebody else to publish it now that you have your own publishing house, I would imagine, in terms of what you look like, what you look for in a publisher, has risen. You know, you've upped the ante because you don't really want to land it with a publisher where you could do the same thing. It just doesn't make any sense. So what is it that you're looking for now in terms of when you're deciding, do I independently put this out, or do I go with another press?

L. P. Hernandez 31:39
So for this, I guess, for all, but specifically for the last of our kind. You know, I grew up reading boys life, and it like boys life is one of my treasured I've met Robert McCammon. That's a highlight of, you know, my life. I would say it's one of the few books I've read more than three times, I have multiple versions of it and it, I probably read that a couple, a couple times. I don't, I don't want to get the came in and King folks fighting in the in the comments, but I definitely have a preference between the two. And you know, there's, there's some recent stuff out, like Paper Girls, which is more focused shining the light on girls and a diverse cast as well. But I don't like to me, I haven't seen anything that's captured that era, which is that pivot from analog to digital, like that, mid 90s feels like such a kind of a jumping off point like so I really have the goal of making a book feel like it was rooted in the 90s, from the songs to the pop culture references to language that they used. And so I want a publisher that's going to be as excited about investing in a story about four brown girls that riding bikes. Again, I did something different. I said it in the desert. I know there's, there's some desert vampire stories out there, but that's not the traditional setting. And yeah, that's that's going to be, I guess, see the larger possibility there of an audience of people who have never been represented in this genre finding their way to it. So if a publisher is on because, yeah, we like the story, or, you know, we could make some cool cover art out of this. It's a little less enticing than I can't wait to get this in the hands of a 12 year old girl in San Antonio or El Paso who's gonna see herself in a book and she's never, ever seen herself in a book before. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 33:51
yeah, makes total sense. And I mean in terms of who you're submitting it to, or how you're going about that. I mean, what is that particular part of the process looking like?

L. P. Hernandez 34:08
So this is the first original completed work I've been able to hand my agent, so she's on her first pass through, and we may come out the other side with recommendations. As far as the people who have read it, only one of them is not related to me by blood. So I'm trying to take all the the praise from those I do share blood with with a grain of salt, but they do say there's still more story to tell, and I agree there's a lot in the middle, like, what I love about boys life, and what I loved about it is when you just get lost in that middle 60% I could care less about the, you know, the spider at the end. But it's the kind of the whimsy of like boys life, old. Moses and, you know, the the preacher talking about, what is it? The devil is my strawberry. He's He's mis hearing lyrics from a Beatles song or something like that. All that, that fun and games, if we're going by save the cat rules, the fun and games part. I could definitely beef that up a little bit, and I would love to just waiting on her response if it's necessary, because of the fallout getting dropped from cemetery dance, I do have a couple of avenues that are open to me once it's ready to go to that level, like once it's polished enough

Michael David Wilson 35:38
so then returning from it being a short story and then a novella and then a novel. Did you actually write a completed novella and then you revised that to novel? Or was it more in the from the short story to novella? Planning stage, you realize, actually, I'm planning a novel. Here

L. P. Hernandez 35:57
it was about two chapters in. I think my first chapter ended up being close to 4000 words, which was just 1000 words shy of the completed short story that said, No, God's only chaos. And I was like, you know, if we have 16 or 17 more of these, we're well out of novella range. And then, as I, I guess I It wasn't my initial plan to bring this into the future, but it became necessary at a point, because the way the story evolved, how it ended, would have been very unsatisfying for the reader. So they needed it to come forward into the future. And that chapter alone is, is a relatively long chapter, that one's about 6000 words as well, where we kind of flash forward with some characters. So once those ideas kind of cemented, I understood we were well out of novella range.

Bob Pastorella 36:54
I love that you're more it sounds like you're more interested in the journey of the characters than the actual resolution. And I mean, I don't mean to make it sound like it doesn't matter how it ends or how it begins or anything like that, but I feel that if you, if you can invest in a character's journey, then you can bring it on home when you when you hit the ending, you land the ending better. When I'm not invested in in a character, I don't care how it ends, it can it can end flat. But if I'm invested in a character and you and you still don't stick the ending, I'm still probably gonna love your fucking book, you know? I mean, it's because I've, I've become invested in this character journey, and that's why I read. I think that's

L. P. Hernandez 37:51
the biggest lesson I've learned as a writer, is that character comes almost before story. I know we're gonna talk about in the valid the headless men, but just to let y'all know if you didn't do your research and find this out, this is like the fourth version of this story. And there are versions of this story that exist and are published where the characters are completely different, and I find those stories unsuccessful, those versions of that story because I didn't care what happened to those characters. So why would a reader who doesn't have my my insight? Why would they care about it so that I would say it's only been in the past three or four years that I've really understood that what stands out, you know, like you mentioned as a Lord of the Rings fan. It's everything in the middle, like that whole journey. I don't care if Tolkien spends two days or two pages describing do on a leaf like I'm still entranced and still so invested in these characters that you know the ending with the Shire being on fire. It's not my favorite ending, and it's kind of like the third ending of the book. But like you said, Bob, everything else leading up to that, I you know that's, that's why I stick around.

Michael David Wilson 39:06
Well, as you've brought it up again, and we've hinted at it many times, let's just jump into in the valley of the headless men. Let's do it. What was the origin story for this one? And then how did it come to be in its final published form?

L. P. Hernandez 39:28
I mean, origin story is my brother and I have two different dads and different strained relationships with both for different reasons. But then I am someone who, in addition to supernatural, I'm interested in unusual, so out of place artifacts. I don't know if that's a term that's familiar to either one of you. So this is like, Oh, I found. A Roman coin 50 feet down, like, in the soil, you know, in Minnesota. Like, how did that guy, yeah, yeah. So I spent a lot of time, like, reading about and I have multiple books about it, just like that. It's kind of become a bit of a more accepted in culture now with, I'm forgetting his name, I have a couple Graham Hancock with some of his his programs on Netflix. So I've always been interested in those, like forbidden mysteries, Hidden History, stuff like that. And so at some point, I found my way to the Nahanni Valley, which is a real place, and it has this real history behind it, of on the non supernatural side, like the very much terrestrial and human side, that There were several instances through the 1900s of explorers, trappers, people hoping to find gold going to this extremely remote like, if you haven't looked it on the map, it is up there. It is far away from anything going to this extremely remote place and not coming back months whatever later they are found with their heads missing the torso, the body's there, but the head is gone. And understanding, yes, there are predators up there, but what predator would be head a human and leave the good meat like I would assume it's something that would want the head as a prize. And so there's this, the native culture, or the native people who previously inhabited the region. They're called the Dan a have stories in their history about giants, and they said they were chased away by giants. And you throw in like, oh, there's, there's an out of place vegetation. There's things that grow here that shouldn't to legends of this is the entrance to the Inner Earth to there are still rogue mammoth herds, like all of that. It's just like, like, I love it, because it feels like so much of the world is is accounted for. To have this one place where there's still the possibility of magic, of the unknown, to exist. It felt like the biggest playground for a writer that there is another book by the exact same title. But, you know, it's not a horror book for a horror writer. It's like, why hasn't anybody done this before? So I took the environment, there's been several iterations of this story once I made it about myself and my brother, that's kind of what I think made it meaningful for me as the writer.

Michael David Wilson 42:52
So where are the other iterations of the story? Are they available? Can people still read them.

L. P. Hernandez 43:02
There is a version on the pay side of no sleep that one came out of about us, 8000 word short story that is also in my collection called the Rat King, which is a fully illustrated collection. A lot of my no sleep stories are in there, but in that iteration, their college kids on a reverse spring break. So instead of going somewhere tropical, they're going somewhere, you know, the exact opposite. So I did, I wrote that with no research whatsoever. I just this place sounds really cool. I'm going to put a bunch of college kids in there and do awful stuff to them. And I realized, like, I think hearing it in audio, it pointed out every flaw to me. So the idea has stuck with me. I felt like, and Bob, like you're talking about sticking the landing. I felt like, this is one where, you know, as a plane, I just, I never stuck the landing on it. There is a 60,000 word version of the story that, and Bob, you also mentioned pit dark that I got a bite on pit dark, and I sent to an agent, and they never responded to me. So I guess it's home, and it's, it's, it's rightful length is novella, and it's with this story that I've written. Yeah, it's

Bob Pastorella 44:16
a, it's a very cosmic story, and I it's a lot of people, or some people out there, they, when you hear cosmic, they immediately think space, and Earth is a planet in the middle of outer space. And so there is cosmic in the earth. It's, it's, it's here, if you if you really want to find it, or if you don't want to find it, it would find you. And so there, and there's some writers that you know. Obviously, Larry Barron comes to mind. Michael Griffin comes to mind. This is definitely something that maybe also Phil Scott, Nicola. Uh, it was very, it's, it's, it's very outer dark type story. And I had never heard of this place, never, and to find out it's real, like, I'm like, Whoa, wait a second. I can actually go here. I don't want to. I've seen the Blair Witch Project. I don't I'm not good with camping, but I can actually go here that that's in. There's a history behind it. I'm like, Man, this is so incredible, so incredible, very, very cosmic. I was, I was blown away by it.

L. P. Hernandez 45:42
Oh, thank you. Yeah, I think that the greatest appeal to that is it is accessible. It's not it's a tough journey to get there. But this stuff isn't from, I mean, this is from the last century when all of us here were born in the 1900s This isn't in the distant past like I think these beheadings stopped like in the 60s or 70s. So

Michael David Wilson 46:07
have you visited the Nahanni National Park? I've

L. P. Hernandez 46:12
been to British Columbia. That's the closest I've been, and that was for a baby moon with my wife. So even that probably within 3000 miles of it. I mean, it's and it's not like the the tourist season, which is what I learned when I properly researched this for this book. It's a very narrow window for the tourist season. So I think it's, uh, actually got in touch with a person up there who does river tours, and so she helped answer several of my questions, Dana, and originally, like I said, the first iteration, this was Spring Break, she's like, no one would be here in spring break. Like, June is the earliest someone would come here because of how cold the snow melt it is. You know, it is basically in the Arctic Circle, but it does have some hot springs that do keep some areas more temperate than you would expect for a place that's that far north, and that helps to feed into some of the lore. Like you would potentially see a plant there that looks like it would be at home in Florida, like a fern that looks more tropical than it does, you know, Arctic. So haven't been there. Don't know, actually, at this point if I would go. But yeah, I think British Columbia, beautiful. I'm perfectly fine stay in there.

Michael David Wilson 47:39
Yeah, yeah. Yes, a difficult one, where I can see the appeal, particularly as the author of in the valley of the headless men, but I can also see exactly why you're like, I'm not chancing anything. I could

L. P. Hernandez 47:54
just see the headline, yeah. Writer in the valley the headless man lose his head.

Michael David Wilson 47:59
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he becomes headless. Man, oh, dear, yeah. We don't want that to happen. Don't lose your head. Yeah, yeah. That is, that is a good, a good strategy. And in terms of when you were getting that help from Dana and you were asking her various questions, did she also provide like, location photographs, or kind of give very specifics in terms of that? Or were you, were you kind of looking on Google Maps as well, and like, Well, I wonder if I walk that tray, or what would happen

L. P. Hernandez 48:41
I did, I did look on Google Maps, and she basically answered every question I had, and that was the stuff that I had been guessing at prior So, like I mentioned that in the previous iterations, that was based off of what I read about these legends, but it wasn't kind of rooted in the experience of someone who travels there or works there. So as far as the seasons go, she helped me figure that out. Some other research I did independently about like, when would the sun would come up, versus, you know, because it's so far north, it's not like that full day of like, 24 hours of sunlight. It's not quite that far. But she talked about, I think something I had gotten wrong is, you just guess a place that far removed from people that the water is going to be crystal clear and drinkable and, you know, so that was a previous story element, and that was an observation that she had, was that with all the snow melt, with as as much churn through the river systems, that it's actually gonna be very cloudy. So it's not going to be this, you know, very distinct blue, like. Like you would imagine kind of a an Alpine setting would be. It'd be very fast moving water, very cloudy. So there were a lot of kind of gaps that she filled in. But we didn't go into kind of any the weirdness of it. It was more like the actual environment as she's experienced it.

Michael David Wilson 50:20
And so in terms of when you reached out to her, was that via email? Did you Yeah? Email? Was you receptive? Straight away,

L. P. Hernandez 50:32
yeah. I mean, I think she was surprised I was writing a horror story, which is how I framed it. But I mean, it, of course, working there, they they know the it has another name to it, not ever you know other than Nahanni so. But she was very enthusiastic to answer. She said that she does get contacted by not fiction writers, but like researchers regularly. So it wasn't out of the norm for her to be contacted for information, but out of the norm for her to be contacted for information pertaining to a cosmic horror survival novella.

Michael David Wilson 51:09
And so now that you've tackled this one, are there any other real life locations that you want to, you know, tackle in one of your horror stories.

L. P. Hernandez 51:23
So I feel like I kind of did with the last of our kind in that there is something about West Texas that I feel I don't say called to, but I don't know a better term for it. I was fortunate to write a season finale of the no sleep podcast, and that was partially set in and around Marfa, Texas, which has its own legends about these strange lights. I'm sure Bob, being in Texans probably heard of the Marfa Lights. So I took a trip out there, actually, while my mom was visiting, and we went to the Marfa Lights viewing area. We spent time in the town, and subsequently, I've been back to the Big Bend National Park area, which is huge national park in the Chihuahua desert. And it's, I don't know there's something so like, you can drive for 40 minutes without seeing another person. So there is something very stark, isolating, and once again, coming back to the theme of different which is why I chose that kind of region as the setting for my vampire story. Because obviously a vampire wouldn't live in a sunny place. So that's exactly where I put them. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 52:42
yeah. I love the originality and subverting expectations has become part of your MO and you know, why not? Because, if you're writing the same story that has already been written, well, is there a point

L. P. Hernandez 52:59
as long as I don't start setting things in space, like every movie series that gets past, like the fifth iteration and ends up going to space, I think, I think I'll keep doing it.

Michael David Wilson 53:10
Yeah, yeah. I'm not so interested in in those stories. But that can be for the this is space podcast which anyone else can start but me. Well, we are coming up to the time that we have together today, so I wanted to ask a few questions that I often do to first time interviewees. And so to begin with, I wonder, what advice would you give to your 18 year old self?

L. P. Hernandez 53:48
Join the Air Force because I'd be retired by now. Don't wait an extra five years. You're gonna do it anyway. Just get it out of the way.

Michael David Wilson 53:57
Does that mean you've got five years until retirement? Got

L. P. Hernandez 54:00
a year and a half. So if I had joined at 18, I could have been retired by 38 I joined at 23 so I'll be retired at 43 okay,

Michael David Wilson 54:11
so then when, when you retire, will you from the Air Force? Will you be looking at taking on another day job. Will you be hoping that writing has done its magic and you are now a full time writer, plus retirement Jack? What are the plans for the future there?

L. P. Hernandez 54:35
I guess the hope and the dream would be the latter, that I can be successful enough at this, that, and with, with the, with so below books, that maybe at some point we'll start making money off of it. Right now, we're not we're losing a lot, but that's okay. We got to get started. So, yeah, I mean, realistically, my income will be cut in half, so gonna have to account for that somehow. Now what I haven't ever had is the freedom and the time to write so Star Gazers my first novella, which we didn't talk about that, but I wrote that on my lunch breaks as well at work. So for an hour a day, I would chip away at that story I've never had really, you know, unobstructed seven or eight hours should just sit down and write, not to say I had the stamina for that, but if I can be as as you know, produce the work that I have really less than part time, maybe it's possible I could do it full time and be successful at it. I

Michael David Wilson 55:38
think you've got a really big chance of making that a reality, and hopefully to coincide with the retirement from, you know, the current Air Force job. But, I mean, there's so many things that you've got going on, some that we've mentioned on the podcast, some that we haven't, and I think, I think you've got, yeah, just such, such a good chance of that. And, you know, keep doing what you're doing, keep working hard, which I can't imagine, you would never not work hard. And, yeah, I think the dream will become a reality. I'm excited for it. Just wait. Yeah, well, what is the best and what is the worst writing advice that you have ever been given?

L. P. Hernandez 56:30
So I don't know if this is the best, but a lot of the writing advice kind of flowed off me. I read several of the books. Of course, everyone's read on writing. But I was in Richard Thomas, the author, has had, I don't think still does, but he did writing through, I think it's lit reactor, which I don't think is a thing anymore. I think it's gone under. But he held a competition where sent him a short story, and he picked the best one. He would give access to all of the short story writing mechanics, materials which would normally be a paid for course. And he picked my story, which is actually in the Rat King two collections ago, called Comanche Rhea, and he gave me access to all this material. The very beginning of it is actually about beginnings. It's about the opening line, and subsequent to that, the opening paragraph and then the opening page, but really starting with the opening line, and now being on the receiving end of a lot of a lot of material to read for for so below books, I understand how important that is. I put myself in the shoes of someone in a bookstore or library picking up books. You know, course, they have to be attracted to the cover. There has to be something appealing about the cover or interesting about it. That's step one. But they're going to read that first line and that first paragraph, and if that first line, first paragraph, is a dream sequence, or if it's world building, because you feel, as a writer, you have to shove all this for the rest of it to make sense. They have to be prepared for it. So you got to give them all this exposition first. It's not terribly interesting. And if I'm in competition with so many other authors who knock it out of the park with that first line and that first paragraph, then, you know, that's a it's a losing battle, a battle, and I don't think you sacrifice any of your art to do the put your best work on the first page. Not to say that you're gonna put bad work later, but really concentrate on that first page, because it's like, you know, shopping for a car, like, if you're walking around a lot, you know, kicking tires, or whatever you're doing, there has to be something compelling about it to get you invested, to get you to turn the page, to get you to say, I gotta, I gotta finish this. I can't finish in the store. Gotta take it home. Or even in the digital age, if you're reading an Amazon Kindle preview, you've got, you know, several pages. You got to hook your reader. You don't have to sacrifice artistry to to still write a compelling story where you're not saving your best for the middle oh and worst, okay, that was the best. Worst. Just that, I know there are opinions on things like adverbs, and I would say, if it's done well. It makes sense that there really are no rules to writing. And I think it is Stephen King in on writing who talks about adverbs and how to make something active versus adding an ly to it. I think that in general, is good practice, but sometimes the best word you have to reach for is an adverb, and to do something outside of that because you're adhering to a rule is inauthentic. So as far as rules go, I would say there are no rules, but they're definitely a reader is going to know what they like and what they don't like, and that's really why, I guess, going back to that original good advice, you really have to knock it out on the first page and and I guess, be truthful to the rest of the journey that the reader is going to take with your book. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 1:01:01
I think these are excellent words of wisdom for the writers listening, and an excellent place really, for us to finish this conversation with such you know, valuable advice. So thank you so much for joining us, and please let our listeners know. Where can they connect with you?

L. P. Hernandez 1:01:28
I have a Twitter still active because I'm hoping Elon Musk goes to prison and that gets like, return to I don't know the government. I don't know who's going to take it over, but I'm just holding the space of my name, but I have mostly migrated over to blue sky, so you can find me there just under my name. And so below books.com that's where we're announcing all of our upcoming releases. So I'm around the socials. I have a tick tock. I kind of put stuff out there every now and then. So most places I'm going to be LP Hernandez or author LP Hernandez.

Michael David Wilson 1:02:05
All right. Do you have any final thoughts to leave our listeners with?

L. P. Hernandez 1:02:15
Be a good person. Read indie horror and support This Is Horror, fantastic.

Michael David Wilson 1:02:22
Thank you for joining us. Thank you.

Thank you so much for joining us for the second and final part of the conversation with LP Hernandez on This Is Horror. Join us again next time when we will be chatting to Chuck Palahniuk for episode 600 of This Is Horror Podcast, and it is a very special episode, because we dive deep into the seminar, into the infamous guts, the short story that caused a lot of controversy, and we are discussing and analyzing it as we simultaneously celebrate 600 episodes of This Is Horror Podcast, if you want to listen to that ahead of the crowd, and if you want to watch the video version of that ahead of the crowd. Both are up now on patreon.com, forward slash. This Is Horror. They are a great way to support the podcast, to keep it going, to keep it alive. So have a little look. And if it's a good fit for you, I would love for you to join us. Okay, before I wrap up, a quick advert break,

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Michael David Wilson 1:05:04
I mentioned the, This Is Horror Patreon, but as of last week, I have set up the Michael David Wilson Patreon, which is@patreon.com forward slash, Michael David Wilson, and I would love you all to join that. And this is not a sales pitch, because whilst there are paid membership perks, there are also a number of perks for free members, so you can join it, whether you pay or not. Now, some of the premium perks include unplugged garage recordings every week, where I narrate my books chapter by chapter, you'll also get an unedited video of each kiddos recordings at the time of recording, I have put up chapter one of how so bad memories. And I've also put up the short story tech, a tech attacker. Now I also give you some on the go, audio and video check ins live from Japan, and you can submit questions to me at any time, and however you are a free or a paid patron, I will answer your question. I will make sure that it is not behind a pay wall. So if you're pledging at $3 then you will definitely see that if you're pledging at five, you will see that if you're a free patron, then you will see that too. I'll make sure that the person whose question has been submitted is behind the appropriate pay wall. Now you'll also be the first to hear Michael, David friction news and announcements. I wanted to have something separate from This Is Horror, just to really be able to discuss my writing, because all of my social media platforms, they are. This Is Horror and Michael David Wilson combined. This is the only place right now there is specific to the MDW fiction and the books that I am putting out. So patreon.com, forward slash Michael David Wilson, and if you like the sound of that, I will be delighted to have you on board. As always, I would like to end with a quote. And this is from David Lynch, somebody who is missed so very much by the entire horror community, the entire film community, the entire world. We all miss him so much. And he inspired us. He continues to inspire us. And this is from his amazing book, catching the big fish, meditation, consciousness and creativity. It's a book that I own, is a book that I think will spark joy and will spark creativity for all of you. So here is that quote. Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. If you want to catch the big fish, you've got to go deeper, down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They're huge and abstract, and they're very beautiful. I'll see you in the next episode for episode 600 with Chuck Palahniuk. But until then, take care of yourself. Be good to one another. Read horror, keep on writing and have a Great, great day.