In this podcast, Max Booth III talks about their latest book, I Believe in Mister Bones, Ghoulish, and much more.
About Max Booth III
Max Booth III is an author, screenwriter, and publisher best known for their work in the horror field. Their books include I Believe in Mister Bones, We Need to Do Something, Abnormal Statistics, and The Last Haunt.
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Mayhem Sam by J.D. Graves
Mayhem Sam is a rip-roaring tall-tale of revenge that drags a coffin of stolen confederate gold across the hellscape of Reconstruction Texas, the red dirt plains of Oklahoma, and explodes at the top of a Colorado mountain. Mayhem Sam is the true story of Texas’s tallest tale and its deepest, darkest legend.
The Girl in the Video by Michael David Wilson, narrated by RJ Bayley
Listen to The Girl in the Video on Audible in the US here and in the UK here.
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 max booth the third about their recently released book, I believe in Mr. Bones. Now Max booth has been a guest on This Is Horror a number of times. They are the publisher of ghoulish books. They also run the ghoulish Book Festival, which happened very recently, and they even have in Texas, the ghoulish books store, so a lot of ghoulish things going on for Max booth. Max is the author of a number of books, as well as Mr. Bones, including the fantastic short story collection abnormal statistics, we need to do something the brilliant 2020, novella that was made into a film they've written, maggots, screaming the nightly disease, touch the night, how to successfully kidnap strangers, which was the first book that I read by Max booth and a bunch of other books, including carnivorous lunar activities, which I want to see made into a film bloody brilliant. So lots of things that Max has done, but before we get max on the show, a quick advert break.
RJ Bayley 2:21
It was as if the video had unzipped my skin, slunk inside my tapered flesh and become one with me.
Bob Pastorella 2:30
From the creator of This Is Horror comes a new nightmare for the digital age. The Girl in the Video by Michael David Wilson, after a teacher receives a weirdly arousing video, his life descends in a paranoia and obsession. More videos follow, each containing information no stranger could possibly know, but who's sending them and what do they want? The answers may destroy everything and everyone he loves. The Girl in the Video is the ring meets fatal attraction for the iPhone generation, available now in paperback, ebook and audio
Andrew Love 3:00
in 1867 the young Samantha gray marries the infamous Captain Jakes, unleashing a series of brutal horrors in this epic splatter Western from Death's Head press mayhem. Sam by J D grays is a rip roaring tall tale of revenge. Drags a coffin full of gold across the hellscape of reconstruction Texas and explodes at the top of a mountain. You better read this one with lights on.
Michael David Wilson 3:29
Okay? Without saying, Here it is. It's Max booth on. This Is Horror. Max. Welcome back to This Is Horror. Do
Max Booth III 3:42
you need to give like a more detailed, uh, intro of who I am?
Michael David Wilson 3:49
No, we'd have done that in the introduction part with the adverts. Oh, I didn't get to that yet. No, I record that after so with Max booth today. He is the author of a number of books, that's right.
Max Booth III 4:07
My newest one is, I believe in Mr. Bones. Yeah, you guys read it. It's out now. Yeah. What's the next question?
Michael David Wilson 4:17
That wasn't the first question to begin with.
Max Booth III 4:20
I saw the question like in the way you were looking at me
Michael David Wilson 4:24
anyway, the last time that we spoke, it was over a year ago, for the last haunt book that was definitely fictitious in every regard, and you couldn't get sued by McKamey, who I think, I think something's gone on with him since we we were left speaking.
Max Booth III 4:46
I think he got arrested, potentially, like a homicide case. I don't know. I haven't kept up to date with him, but I think he's involved in some type of missing person or. Uh, homicide, I don't know. I wish I had kept up the date with him. I I'm friends with him on Facebook. He often is like, posting Long live streams, and I just don't have the patience to watch him talk. He's just has an extremely punchable face, I think. And just the way he talks is really much like, I don't know if you encounter this much Michael being in Japan, but Bob will know what I'm talking about. He has, like, classic, condescending Maga tone the way he talks. I just, I can't do it,
Michael David Wilson 5:40
so hang on you. You are friends with him on Facebook, or you're following his Facebook page.
Max Booth III 5:46
I don't know. I mean, it's still a difference, yes, but yeah, just because I'm Facebook friends with somebody doesn't mean I'm friends with them. You know, it's just like, sent them a request and they accepted. It doesn't mean that we tackle anything. I'm not on his podcast. I'm on your podcast. Michael on we don't even Facebook friends. So, I mean, because
Michael David Wilson 6:09
I don't have Facebook anymore, the mystery with that particular one, we were Facebook friends, but
Max Booth III 6:17
then you deleted me? No, I deleted Facebook as consequence you deleted me.
Michael David Wilson 6:25
Oh, dear. Well, no, the reason that I wondered if you were friends with him on Facebook, which, as you've pointed out in the disclaimer, doesn't mean real life friends, was because I wondered if that meant that he'd then seen you posting about the last haunt, and if anything had come as a result of that. No,
Max Booth III 6:50
it must be a case of me having followed his page then, but I do think he knows about the book only because I was in one of those anti McKamey Facebook page groups and someone I find a few people will posting about the book when it came out, they found out about it, and I know he had, like, secret agents in that group that revealed stuff back to him, so he definitely knew about it. But hey, you know, I don't want to get political or anything, so it's okay, okay.
Michael David Wilson 7:26
Well, I can respect that decision. And I know from your social media profile and just interactions over the years that being political is the last thing you would want to do in any regard.
Max Booth III 7:41
You know, I just, I know both, both political trail leads. They read my books, and I wouldn't want to say anything to a fan. I love them, so they would not read my material. I mean, if you look at many social, many people on the in the WHO seen over the yields, they've said many similar things of how, you know, it's no reason to get political, bring politics into the industry, and why can't we just get along? So, I mean, I'm with that. So if we could not get political tonight, that would be great. Thank you. So
Michael David Wilson 8:17
since we last spoke in October of 2023, what have been some of the biggest changes for you, personally and professionally? Now you mainly, I would ask the free piece, which would be personally, professionally and politically, but out of respect for your previous statement,
Max Booth III 8:36
yeah, if we can, if we can omit the last PE completely, that would be great. Now I don't want to get political, as I said, so I am going to just quickly brush past the path the fact that I am non binary, so I came out as non bi annually. But again, I don't want to get political, so we don't need to talk about general whatsoever. No offense any one listening, but I already opened a book shop last time we talked. So that's the same the book shop is still going on. We'll still doing the annual Google fest, the new one. When is this episode going live? Do you think any idea
Michael David Wilson 9:21
it'll probably be going live within the next month? So shall we say, the end of February?
Max Booth III 9:30
That's perfect. Michael, I'm sorry if I ask you questions, and I don't know if you're used to that as the one who does the questions, I
Michael David Wilson 9:38
have been Jans before, if that's what you're talking about, I don't know anything about that,
Max Booth III 9:43
but yeah, so Milch, Phil teens and 15th, the Friday and the sandal day spring break, if you'll in San Antonio, that is when we're doing the latest ghoulish book fest. Pretty excited about that, maybe the last one for a while for. Reasons. I don't want to get into, you know, but Texas is pretty scary place right now. I don't want to get into the reasons why. But, yeah, I'm excited for the fest. I Bob, you'll come in. You love I've seen you every one of these fests. I assume you like it. I assume you're a fan. What do you have to say about it? I
Bob Pastorella 10:23
live in Herman and sons. That's where I live. That's my house. And so, you know, I'm always gonna be there. So
Max Booth III 10:31
for anyone listening, Hilman sons is the name of the location we do the book Fest at. It's a, like an old, I don't know Lodge, I guess in downtown San Antonio, it's really odd building, and it's like, um, like an old organization, not quite like Freemasons. And say it was probably Freemasons, but yeah, similar to it, this one room in the
Bob Pastorella 11:00
pay masons,
Max Booth III 11:01
the premium masons, premium premium Masons. Yes, there's one room in the building, will we do the live readings, and it's completely occupied, wall to wall with old photographs that kind of remind you of the shining but the photographs old, like, separated by General. I don't mean to get into politics, but one wall is all male, one wall is all female, and those are the only two generals, I assume. So I don't know why they would have any photos, but it's really, yeah, like, why is that still a thing? Why have they still keeping that, like, tradition? And so it's a lot of odd like Viking imagery, like on Windows. But I'm pretty sure if I looked too heavily into like, what all the Hillman sins, I would be having to get a new venue, so I just don't look into it. And that's the easiest way to go with life, I think, is just to not look into anything, just in case it might be, you know, bad. So, yeah, it's a really cool building, though. Those an abandoned bowling alley in it that have never,
Bob Pastorella 12:19
ever been in the bowling alley. Did you not speak
Max Booth III 12:21
into it with us. Will you be in like, so you don't go
Bob Pastorella 12:24
to jail? We found out later that there was cameras there. Yeah, we're at the bar going, there's cameras in the bowling alley room. You knew that we were in there.
Max Booth III 12:38
I mean, if you looked,
Bob Pastorella 12:40
yeah, yeah, if they, if they managed it, to actually look and see, but then, you know, no one. I mean, it's like, what's the guy's name? The bartender? He never said anything. Yeah, I don't go in there, you know, I'm not gonna say shit, fuck. I live there. Man, they'll kick me out. Yeah,
Max Booth III 13:00
probably. So then what? Then deal would you live?
Bob Pastorella 13:04
I would still stay there. I would just become more of the ghost. Oh, you
Max Booth III 13:09
squat, those rights. Got it. So the building is really cool. Michael, you would, you would find it fascinating. I think not joking about the bowling alley. I think it was two yields ago. They left it unlocked, and so a bunch of us, like just kids, let's go, and we just ran in and all the bowling pins and the bowling balls were still in place. It was really like retro. I don't know what the deal is. Why it's not in use any mill, definitely.
Bob Pastorella 13:40
Yeah, people up there bowling and shit. They'd been up there forever.
Max Booth III 13:44
That's not true, though, but
So yeah, that's coming up next month. Badge is on sale now. I'm pretty excited about about that. Beyond that, I don't know. I'm trying to think of anything new that has happened. I just got a new dog who is extremely old and mostly blind and deaf, and it has become a nightmare in my life. So that's cool. The dog is pretty cool. But one of my evil dogs, the younger lab we have who was named Connie lebryan. He is nothing but an anxiety basket case. He is not a fan of this old man that we've just brought into the house, so it's been a pain in the ass keeping them separated, because he will kill this old man if we if we let him. So I'm pretty it's been pretty stressful with that, but not really has anything to do with, you know, my professional life.
Michael David Wilson 14:49
What was the impetus for getting this dog that Conan O'Brien the dog, not the man, but possibly also seems to not get along? Very well,
Max Booth III 15:01
oh, just, you know, well, you want a Facebook any mill, so you wouldn't know about this. But those you know, Facebook groups of local community, communities, and this woman who's like a fast drill, who takes in dogs from the fish out on gives them a temple, really, home was just posting a feather of them. And I'm feeling much a softy. I just, I saw the photo in the post about the dog. He was like, 15, and his family gave him up for reasons I don't know. It seems extremely odd. They had him all his life, and then they just gave him up. And we will, like, well, we don't have Brimfield dog. We should not do that. And then, like, a week and a half passed, and she was still posting, trying to find someone to take him. So we took him. That's that. Then, what were you expecting? I don't know. I can make up something real exciting if you want. Well,
Michael David Wilson 15:57
I mean, we can save that for your next book, because there's a lot of, you know, exaggerated autobiography.
Max Booth III 16:06
It did give me an idea, though, like, when we will go into the fast jewels house, like such a good premise for like, a book, right? You go through and it's not even the dog that she had had photographs. It's just like some man, some slimy man who thinks he's a dog. Yeah, we'll see. It's a movie the baby. It's like from the 80s. I think it's about this family, and they have the baby who's just like this mentally challenged, grown man who they keep in the crib and breastfeed still. And they, they hire like a nanny, they can take care of him. It's extremely, almost like Ranchi, but that's not the right world. It's just strange, great movie. Oh, my
Michael David Wilson 16:54
goodness no, I'm not familiar with that, but I kind of love the idea of just cat fishing with animals, which is effectively what this would be,
Max Booth III 17:05
yeah. But with that, a cat or a fish? Well, no, it would be a dog and a man,
Michael David Wilson 17:10
yeah, yeah. So the cat dogging, if you want, yeah, yeah. Why not throw in a dogging scene? I mean,
Max Booth III 17:20
what is the like religion of catfish? Like the world itself? I don't quite know. Do you know? I don't know Bob.
Bob Pastorella 17:28
I thought it had to do with like, someone like, I don't know why they use the word. It don't make any sense, but it's
Max Booth III 17:36
something like in fishing. Like, you think you might be catching a catfish, but then it's like a a cod,
Bob Pastorella 17:44
I don't know, I know that, like catfish are not, uh, easy. They're not easy to handle. What you catch them, okay? Because, because of the barbs, yeah, and they'll, they'll, they'll slow, you know? They'll, they'll, they'll sting you, pretty good. I caught a
Max Booth III 18:02
cat fish. I think I've told this truly on the podcast. Beautiful. When I was a kid, I went to this bridge my my breath when we went fishing. I caught a catfish, and we put it in a bag and took it home and just put the bag in the freeze wheel and label. That day, my parents came home, my mom opened the freezer and opened the bag. She was like, What is this? And then it began moving, and she panicked, and just threw it against the wall and it died. That's something that happened. I don't know what that has to do with cat fishing as a hoax, though, yeah,
Bob Pastorella 18:40
but I don't know why they use that name. It's basically, it's people who are, you know, saying that there's something that they're not online. That's, that's the impression that I got. Yeah,
Michael David Wilson 18:51
I mean, maybe originally, a cat posed as a fish. I don't think that's right, probably not.
Max Booth III 19:00
Have you guys ever catfished anyone? That's a good question,
Michael David Wilson 19:04
is not a good question.
Max Booth III 19:08
Is that the reason why it's only good question,
Michael David Wilson 19:11
I have never catfished anybody. Not yet. Never say never. But it's not happened. Okay? Are you cat fishing now?
Max Booth III 19:25
I got somebody no why it's called catfish. It reveals to the practice of placing a catfish in a tank of cod. Wow. I just named that fish for no reason, for the purposes of shipping the impostual Well, the catfish is said to prevent the cod from becoming PAL and lethargic and shrilling the delivery of a high quality product. I could have named any fish, and I named the fish that was in this Wikipedia page. What the hell? Pretty good sign. And this is going to be a great podcast, right? Love the catfish, someone with you guys just saying, I think it'd be great. Well, he's a healer. I have a different question. Have any
Michael David Wilson 20:12
activity then? Yeah, you could. You could tag team?
Max Booth III 20:15
Someone, yeah, three people. One, um, bait. So the catfish is the someone is the Pilsen doing the the trick? Who is the one being tricked? The cod? Who's the cod? I don't know. Do you pick at random? Will do you like pick someone? You know, I would
Bob Pastorella 20:37
say that'd be like the victim of the whole I want to get
Max Booth III 20:41
political. I don't think we should use that world
Bob Pastorella 20:44
the target. Yes, I'm good with that. Yeah, the target of the cat fishing. I
Max Booth III 20:51
love doing this podcast, especially the video, because I can just see the look in Michael's eyes and like, just him calculating what he's gonna have to cut as we talk. It's great.
Michael David Wilson 21:01
Yeah, I guess as well, speaking with you sometimes a follow up question more difficult than with other you know interviewees, particularly if you're playing the heel
Max Booth III 21:17
Bob, that's all Bob this time he's he's mean Bob today.
Michael David Wilson 21:21
Yeah? People won't know the origin story saying, because that was our fair, but that, I mean, that has never stopped us before from referencing what we spoke about our fairness. Well,
Max Booth III 21:34
I don't even like Eldridge that much to be honest. I mean, how many times do we have to see that guy get bit by a spiral. I mean, we get it
Michael David Wilson 21:44
fair enough. Sorry, to
Max Booth III 21:46
get political. You can ask to follow up, if you'd like,
Michael David Wilson 21:50
Well, I mean, before you were saying that this is the, well, not, not necessarily the final year that you'll be doing the ghoulish Book Festival, but you won't be doing it next year. So I'm wondering, I mean, what, what does kind of your routine look like at the moment, with the festival and with writing, with publishing, with the bookstore, how are you dividing your time, and which is the most profitable or which is kind of your leading business. So
Max Booth III 22:25
I think I should do a disclaimer and say, every since we began doing this fest around this time, I've just, I usually just begin saying constantly, this is the last festival doing and then usually by the end of the weekend on the fest, I'm like, Okay, we'll do it again. That has happened every paletteville this time. My reasons will not so much. The whole like, This is exhausting, and I can't do it any meal. It definitely has to do a meal with like. I don't ethically think I can encourage anyone to travel to Texas right now, and I feel guilty about it, which is a different reason. Again, apologies for bringing that into the conversation, but be the answer legal question. I don't know how to answer it. I have a lot of things going on, and I think if listeners go back and listen to like any of the previous episodes we've done, I will at one point say, you know, then I'm gonna begin trying to improve my organization skills. It does not happen. So it has, still hasn't happened. I don't write much at the moment. I I need to, but I don't the book shop. I mean, my schedule is this is the book shop is open. To say, the saddle day. I come in around 10:11am, I spend the whole day. If I have any book shop stuff to do, I do that, like stocking taking some promo photos, helping custom builds. I'm not in a place with a lot of foot traffic, so I don't get a lot of people coming in. Usually, I get a lot of people on Saturdays, mostly. So today was pretty busy, but weekday is maybe one or two people throughout the day at most. It's not really a high effort job. I mean, once in a while I'll get someone in who wants to talk, someone who comes in and they want, like, some recommendations, which I find really fun to do. I love when someone comes in, it's like, Hey, I don't know what I want. This is what I like. What do you want? What should I buy? Those will always fun conversations. So when I'm at the book shop, I'm usually just doing them, publishing stuff, mostly editing. We recently, within the last year and a half, we hired somebody to help with like publicity, mostly like the social medias, which is backfilled, and the fact that, you know, most of the social media is all just useless now. And I. I'm owned by fascist boot liquids. Apologies. So social media isn't that great at the moment, blue sky is okay, though I think we get some pretty good traction in blue sky, but no real house. It seems I do a lot of editing. I recently began freelance editing again, absolutely, some time away, and so I thankfully have finally gotten some clients with that. So I'm just I spent a lot of time editing. I do podcasting infrequently. I write a little bit, not as much. I owe a stage play by the end of the month. Contracted the right a stage play adaptation of my book slash movie. We need to do something, so I'm in the process of doing that. I signed, oh, this is something new, I think, since the last time we talked, I signed with the book agent, so she is in the process of shopping my out of print novel COVID was legal activities around, and she is waiting for me to finish a new book that she can shop around, because when she signed with me, I was already contracted to write I believe in mystical Bones, so that wasn't really anything she could help with, since it already had a home. So she's been feeling patiently waiting for me to finish a new book, and that is what I've been working on. When I do write anything, did I answer the question, what is profitable? I don't know. I guess the editing at this point, just because that money goes directly to me. I don't take a paycheck for the publishing company or the book shop. I just any money we make besides royalties, it just goes back into the company. Even, like the books I've self published through Google, I don't take money for those any royalties I get from those cells. We just go push it back into the company to keep it alive. So
Michael David Wilson 27:05
in terms of your day to day money that is pretty much exclusively coming from editing then, yes,
Max Booth III 27:13
and royalties from like the books being published by Edel presses, because I not having them pay the ghoulish they go straight to my own bank account. Unlike the press and I believe in my bones, we do have separate bank accounts. So yeah, I get paid for, like, the apocalypse books on the one day I assume the SAM Matilda gates book, fingers crossed. All right, go buy it the last time. Let's get that advance paid off, folks. And
Michael David Wilson 27:47
I mean in terms of, like, both the publishing and the book, still, we spoke a little bit about this before, but obviously, you kind of are competing with Amazon in the sense that Amazon is a place where a lot of people buy books, is where a lot of books are getting published. What kind of things are you doing, or how the hell do you even deal with that? You know? Because, I mean, do you price match? Do you kind of have to take a cut and just do free shipping, because Amazon have this machine where, you know, it's very difficult for independents to compete. Yeah,
Max Booth III 28:31
we don't press match and we don't do free shipping. One thing we have that Amazon one thing we don't have that Amazon has is every book at evil published, and it sounds like that. Sounds like that's a good thing, but it's not because they Amazon is flooded, basically by infinite options. But when you go to a to a book shop. And in the book shop, it's fairly niche and curated by the people who run the shop. So you come in and the selection is quality, because an actual human has, like, selected what the stock and how to display it, and they know about the books, and they can talk about it face to face. And that is a huge difference between, like, what Amazon is, which is just fucking slop. It's just like someone took a bucket of slap and just spilled it over a little colony of ants. You know, I mean, what I just said makes no sense, but it sounded cool in my head before I said it. Sorry to get political.
Michael David Wilson 29:39
You said. It makes no sense, but I was nodding along, like, yeah, yeah, I kind of get that.
Max Booth III 29:47
I don't know the ants came into play, to be honest, I kind of lost my train of thought with that,
Bob Pastorella 29:54
but it helped make your point. Yeah,
Max Booth III 29:56
exactly. So, not so like. We, we mean, when you buy something from us, it's two people packaging. It the same two people. We, we put all these bonuses in every book we ship out, stick golds, book, milks. Philly has little cool, spooky things that doesn't really cost too much with the added shipping. Yeah. I mean, and also, like, for those not shipping and those who just come into the shop, it's a place of community, you know, it's a place for people who like the same strange stuff. You come hang out and like, you come into a book shop like this, you find something by like Christopher Triana, little juice on it. You don't find that Ellen to No. Bill,
Michael David Wilson 30:44
yeah. Do you find that you're getting a number of regulars? And do you also have events on at the bookstore to encourage people to come in?
Max Booth III 30:54
Oh, yeah, we get this. We get quite a few people who reach real and then come in. Plus this one guy, he's great. He writes a modal cycle. He's, I don't know, 70. Maybe he loves shields, really is he loves, like, Ellen doubtless stuff. He's been reading this stuff since before Michael and I will even alive. Probably. He comes in, like, once a week and just wants to talk about, like, shield series we've read, we have a lot of people like that, but we do events too. We do a free monthly movie screening, so we move all the tables out, and we project a movie on the wall. We do that free, but we also keep the movie title a secret so we don't get sued because we don't pay for, like, the movie rights, the screen anything, and I'm pretty sure if we don't take payment full ticket, and we don't advertise what movie it is online, we legally all kind of okay, so we do that every month.
Michael David Wilson 31:56
Are you sure you want this in the podcast? Just legally not okay.
Max Booth III 32:03
I mean, I don't want to get political. I'm sure it's fine. We advertise the event all the time online, so, yeah, it's fine. I'm pretty upfront with why we do it as a secret screen. But also my my buddy Miguel, who hosts a podcast called my whole confessional, he he comes down and he helps program each month. He even puts together a half hour pre show, which is like clips from YouTube, somehow related to the movie, and that play as we feel the movie and like we let people kind of guess what the movie is going to end up being fairly similar to what like the Alamo Drafthouse does,
Michael David Wilson 32:43
man, sounds like a great movie. Night
Max Booth III 32:47
depends on the movie. Yeah. Well, I wish I could tell you. Well, I guess I was about to tell you the movie, because by the time this comes out, the movie will pass. But no, I'm not gonna say the movie on public thing because I don't want to get sued. Yeah,
Michael David Wilson 33:04
well, that sounds like a very sensible way of proceeding. I thought
Max Booth III 33:10
you were gonna say sexual.
Michael David Wilson 33:13
I mean, either or, I mean, it could be sexual for some people. We don't kink shame here, so,
Max Booth III 33:21
yeah, but it's not my it's not my podcast, though, so I'll respect the policy you guys have. Okay,
Michael David Wilson 33:29
well, moving on to your latest book. I believe in Mr. Bones. What is the origin story for this? I know you've maybe said, you hate origin stories.
Max Booth III 33:45
Great question. Um, yeah. So, wow. Okay, this I had the title before I had this book, I had a different book in mine, the original book I was going to write with this title. It was gonna be about this Dad and son who, like, I'm shopping at the grocery store one day, and it's how it's Halloween time, and they see all the spooky cereal mascots, like count, Chuck Elaine, all that. And it gets to him talking how, you know, when I was a kid, we had this awesome one called Mystile bones. It was like this male cereal, but then they discontinued it, and it gets him like thinking, like, man, what happened that cereal? And he goes to look it up online. He can't find anything about the cereal whatsoever. And it becomes almost like a, what was that creepy pasta that became a show on Channel Zero? Candle Cove. Candle Cove. Yeah, so it was gonna, it was gonna kind of be something similar to that, and also I saw the TV glow. So I'm glad I didn't write it, because I saw the TV glow. It's really similar. But also what made me not write it was, it's also a book by. Called Malek, and I can't remember the name of the book, but it's pretty much the same premise, down to like someone trying to track down a forgotten serial brand. So I just said, Okay, well, I'm not gonna write this night, but I love the title, and I love the idea of like something with this Mistral bones, because the same premise of Mistral bones like stealing bones from you and replacing it with something that was that existed in the previous idea, but and that felt pretty fresh and original. So I wanted to do something with that. And when the idea to use it like with a publishing company, I'm not even, I'm not positive. Feel that came from at this point. I don't, I don't remember. I just remember like thinking, like getting, really getting serious about writing it. Shortly after, I was on talking skill that podcast, because we were talking about my novella, Indiana death song, and the host, she was asking me something like, why teeth? And I, just off the top of my head said, Oh, why wild teeth creepy, because it's the only pill of the skeleton you can see. And just that response just kind of lingled in my head for a while, and they got my juices flowing. What a disgusting thing to say, my juices will flowing. And yeah, it just led to getting obsessed with this idea that became the book, because skeleton is fucking creepy. They'll say Ray Brad Billy street that I love to death. But this is so so this real being called the skeleton, and it's about this guy. He just, like, suddenly becomes, like, really conscious of the fact that he has a fucking skeleton in his body at all times it wants out. I think that's just really distilling to think about, like to just sit everyone listening to this podcast, just if you're not driving close your eyes, and just really think about the fact that underneath all this disgusting flesh, you have a skeleton inside you, something that you will never really going to see, because it doesn't come out until you die, and it's just inside you always you can't do anything with it. It's really fucking creepy to think about, I think. But now think about, what if something came along and then replace, just like, a little bit of that skeleton inside of you. Like, just say, one bone. What if it no longer was a bone, but if it was something different? Do you would you know that? Like, how do you trust what inside of you is a bone? I don't know. I
Michael David Wilson 37:57
don't know. Well, I mean, a number of people have, you know, replacements, like hip surgery. So it's like, at some point, if you replaced enough bones, then, yeah, it's an artificial skeleton. Not
Max Booth III 38:12
talking about that stuff, though. No, it sounds like it's different.
Bob Pastorella 38:19
Have you ever seen those shows, like with UFO abductions and stuff like that, how people have claimed that things have been inserted into their bodies, yeah, and so, I mean, I'm fascinated with that shit, right? I guarantee there's probably some somebody out there who feels like they're they've had a bone replaced by something not normal, you know, not natural. There has to be. And then just that thought that that could, that right there, could make it into our novel, just someone going through that whole thing without having a Mr. Bones or anything like that. And so to take that idea and tie it to a mythology that's I love that shit. Oh,
Max Booth III 39:05
well, thank you, man. I think it's a pretty good book. I had a lot of fun writing it. Maybe the most fun I've had writing something I don't know it was. It really took off once it finally did. I'm feeling grateful to Ben apocalypse, who contracted me to write it, because at one point, I real emailing about something, and I just mentioned the idea I had filled this book. And then several months later, he emailed me like, Hey, you gonna write that book? Because I would love to publish it. And he just contracted me to do it, if you feel I'd even begun doing it. And then I was like, yes, let's do it. I gave me a deadline. I said, No problem. I'll get that done. No time. No time at all. The deadline passed. Had begun. So then I wrote the whole book and like, down at like, month and a half, really the best thing that seems to be high right now. Well, I I write until I absolutely I wait until I absolutely cannot wait any longer, and then I just kind of go crazy and, like, lose my sense with reality, and just write non stop and this frenzy the pace I did that my last few books. I don't know why. That seems to be what milks fuel me. I also keep writing books that require, like, a stressful, frantic pacing, and I like, I've convinced myself to get that pacing I also have to be experiencing like that stress and that like frantic train of thought. I don't know, maybe I just need anxiety medication. I don't know. Well,
Michael David Wilson 40:44
I mean, speaking of which, I believe that you said that you quite literally had a panic attack while writing the book.
Max Booth III 40:54
I think that did i i believe it. You did. I was probably refilling to just like but I was just talking about how I just kind of went crazy and read it super fast.
Michael David Wilson 41:07
And I mean, in terms of the reaction to the book, I mean, how did Ben receive it? Because, I mean, tonally, it's pretty different to abnormal statistics. And I mean, I would say that is amongst your bleakest of books. And I tend to find that you've either got the kind of comedic mode or you've just got this very, very dark, bleak horror with very few laughs. But this is the one book that really simultaneously does both.
Max Booth III 41:42
I think it's the type of book I've been looking up to being able to write, like, my whole career, because, yeah, like, I have something like maggot screaming, which is sad at times, but mostly funny. Well, the nightly disease, which is mostly just funny, same with colonial selenial activities. But then I have stuff that's really deadly serious and bleak and sad, but to get both of those feelings in light in almost like a whiplash motion throughout a book, that's like the dream. And I do think that is what mystical bones is, and that's the type of book I'm most interested in writing, because it's the two most like a stream senses comedy and drama. I mean, they made masks of them. That's a shout out to the masks. I don't know what full cod the drama. Well, what am I talking about? The you know, the
Bob Pastorella 42:43
tragedy in comedy, yeah, those things,
Max Booth III 42:47
Shakespeare thing I know nothing about him.
Michael David Wilson 42:49
Yeah, yeah,
Max Booth III 42:53
sorry to get Shakespeare. Yeah. What was the question?
Michael David Wilson 43:01
Well, I was asking about the response from Ben. Ben
Max Booth III 43:06
liked a lot. He had a few notes, mostly. So what's the thing with this book that I guess we should address for fans of like the Kendrick Lam, just like a song, like 10% of this novel is a distress, a diss track, I guess, because the book is about a small press in the in the hurdle scene, which I have a lot of experience with. And there's a lot of things that happen in the book, and things they talk about that could be maybe people stretching it viewed as like jokes about real people. So there's a few times in the book, well, Ben was like, hey, maybe, maybe you could disguise this a bit, mil, so I don't get, we don't get sued on anything. So that's mostly, that was mostly all the other thing I did absolutely read. It was just disguise a few things a bit real, even though I didn't need to, because it was completely fictional. Anyway, it wasn't based on anyone. But you know people. You know people these days. Are all they? They get offended by anything, right? Guys,
Michael David Wilson 44:17
yeah. I mean so you you satirize parts of the horror genre and publishing industry. And, I mean, we haven't really seen this from you since how to successfully kidnap strangers, at least to this degree. So yeah. I mean, I'm wondering perhaps this is going to be a once every decade thing, where you, you know you satirize in a completely fictitious way, not actually based on a real person, as you say, different facets.
Max Booth III 44:50
I do think how to kidnap strange rules in this book have some things in common. Absolutely, it's really funny to think about writing a new publishing. Like, every like decade, maybe I will, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it's what I know. I mean, it's, I've always written books about, like, my own life, in some ways, the nightly disease. It's a novel about a guy who looks night shift at a hotel. I wrote that while we're looking to night shift at a hotel, the way I tend to write is I take things from my own life and I bend in a stretch it, and I reshape it into something that I view as somehow entertaining or meaningful on the page. I'm I don't think that's like a unique way of writing. I think most people, people do that, I tend sometimes to be not as subtle about it, mostly because I find it to be I find that's funny sometimes, like in the case of Mistral bones, the press is in Texas, in San Antonio, like I am. It's operated by a husband and wife, like my press is. My press is called ghoulish books in this book. In this book, The press is fiendish books that's just, it's just funny to me that have it like that so on the nose and then immediately make the audience read maybe the most extreme sex scene I've ever written in my life, just because I think it's really funny that we're going to be reading it with that mindset and then immediately get this scene. I don't know. It just seems amusing to me. I don't really, I haven't analyzed too much, like the whole meta aspect of it all, just I keep going back to it like, even with maggots screaming, I named the entire cast. I asked for myself and other people I know, same with the last hot it's not like something I think, like, oh, I should do that. It's just that's what feels like the best way to go about it, for some reason, and I don't know why,
Michael David Wilson 47:01
right? And in this one, not only did you have fictitious people within the genre, but you had some that were just like, This is Jessica McHugh. I think Betty rods said he may have turned up at some point too. So we
Max Booth III 47:16
talk about Betty in the book. By the way, we'll be building this on February 8, a sandal day is Betty's Bill day today. Shout out to Betty Rock City, happy birthday on the podcast,
Michael David Wilson 47:32
saying happy birthday and ad,
Max Booth III 47:35
she's open full commissions. She's great. Go hide a little to draw some cool stuff. But yeah, she's in it. Jessica McKees in it. I did ask permission before just bringing Jessica into the book, because she does. She is kind of outrageous. She calls a lot of people cunt, I think, in the book, which is not dissimilar to how she is in real life.
Bob Pastorella 48:01
Johnny Compton's in it. Did you ever finish editing his stuff? No.
Max Booth III 48:11
Yeah. Johnny Compton said, I asked him if that was okay. He said, Yeah. So those are we gonna get to a point in the in the podcast, Bill, it's okay if we spoil stuff.
Michael David Wilson 48:25
I don't know. I think just if we did give a disclaimer that we are about to spoil, you know, aspects of the book and maybe, maybe also in that disclaimer, how far are we going to spoil? You know, is this just a mild plot point, or is it like you're getting the ending at this point? Okay,
Max Booth III 48:47
I'm gonna be spoiling the halfway point of the book, so skip ahead for like five minutes. Maybe most of the book is leading to them doing the debut fiendish book fest. And, you know, we do the Google Book fest. So I definitely wanted to write about, like, the anxieties involved in running a book fast, especially that feels fast where you have no idea what to expect. Well it's going to be like, and I had all these plans in my head of like, the book detailing, like day one of the fest, it was gonna go deep into it, and like, Johnny was gonna be mill of a kill, and Jessica McHugh was gonna be mill of a kill, and all these people I came up with, all these fake presses, which I named in the book, but they don't really get screen time, page time in The book I had planned and all this stuff happening. But then against massive spoil, the man killed chill in the book decides to commit suicide, the night be filled the fest I had planned on that happening on night one of the fast he was gonna like. Fall asleep from stress in the bathroom at the fest and have an awful dream and just freak out and run home and just off himself as Eileen, his wife, was trying to run the fast by itself. But then I got to the scene with table well, they will like packaging, the books, the the goody bags and so filth and it just like appealed to me, how much fun, you know, it would be if I just embraced the the out of being anti climatic, and just after all this like promo and like excitement about this fest, we never see the fast he just offs himself be filled the fest happens. I think that was definitely the right move, although I do regret not being able to write like scenes involving some of the small presses I had planned, because I think that would have been fun, but to be anti climatic, in a way, it's just so much more exciting and just funny to me, rather than giving the real what they expected to happen. And
Michael David Wilson 51:11
I love too, that you know, after the suicide, you then had the opportunity to satirize how people would react to it on social media,
Bob Pastorella 51:23
not say that, yeah, you nailed you nailed that stuff. Sadly, sadly. That's exactly how people would act. But it was very funny in this, in the context of the story, I
Max Booth III 51:34
mostly just kind of Tom soiled myself with that interlude, just kind of thinking how people would react if I did die before a book fest that I was hosting, and that's how I imagined it would mostly go. What do you think I miss? What would you guys have tweeted? Oh,
Bob Pastorella 51:55
I don't know
Michael David Wilson 51:58
if you if you off to yourself. Well, we do a whole episode, not just the tweets.
Max Booth III 52:07
He'll become. He's a compilation of every Max booth episode. Please subscribe to old Patreon. If you would like to listen to peace Max, you will get friends.
Bob Pastorella 52:20
We are two subscribers away from hitting 1000
Max Booth III 52:24
Patreons can ask a question, but Max will not be answering this time.
Michael David Wilson 52:33
Do a live say on certain podcast. Be pretty cool. Yeah, if people want to participate, it's patreon.com/this
Max Booth III 52:42
is all right. Yeah. Should I fake my death? So we can do that.
Michael David Wilson 52:46
I mean, I don't know. The thing is, because you faked your death once before, like, I don't know if you faked it. If you know too many people might think now it's fake, but now you've created the situation where, if you die, people are gonna be like, Max isn't dead.
Max Booth III 53:10
Oh, my God, come up with a new bit,
Bob Pastorella 53:16
yeah, just like a reverse. Andy Kaufman, yeah,
Max Booth III 53:20
that's my favorite sex move. Yeah,
Bob Pastorella 53:27
the reverse Andy Kaufman,
Max Booth III 53:30
that's right, I don't, I don't do a fooled Andy Kaufman. That's fucking disgusting. Yeah,
Michael David Wilson 53:36
very advanced technique. Well, my goodness, I think I had many follow up questions until we went to reverse Andy Kaufman and how my brain is just every kind of thought has now disappeared. I mean, that's the power of Kauffman, I suppose. Rest in peace. Rest in peace. Reasonable
Max Booth III 54:05
silence on the podcast while any Coffman,
Michael David Wilson 54:09
there you go. That's a moment we're having a full minute. I'd say
Max Booth III 54:20
podcast will give me moments of silence? Wendy Kauffman, that's the beauty of having man as a guest. You know, I think about things no one else does. I bring honesty to the show. Do you know
Michael David Wilson 54:37
sure about that statement? But yeah, I mean, of course, this involved breaking bones. You know, for the Mr. Bones, my thoughts to become reality. So I wondered, did you break any bones whilst writing this book? Whether to live? Lee or accidentally,
Max Booth III 55:01
I've never broken a bone. Now, I wish I could say I have, but haven't. I will admit something that I find kind of funny. In retrospect, I was doing some event out of town and I was driving back home. Now this was when, this was in the two month insane time of my life when I was writing the book, and I convinced myself for like a good five hour period while driving that that night, I was going to break my pinky intentionally so I would just know what the pain felt like, but also because I thought it would be amusing stuff to talk about on podcasts while promoting the book, I was just completely convinced that's what I'm gonna do. And then I got home and kind of slapped and woke up and I was like, fucking crazy. Why would I do that? But, um, it's kind of, it's kind of tilt fine to, like, be convinced of something so insane, and like not see the flaw in that logic whatsoever. I'm glad I didn't do it, but also I'm kind of sad I didn't, because how much fun you'll this episode be if I had well,
Michael David Wilson 56:15
so why is the sequel breaking the single but
Max Booth III 56:21
it's broken any bones.
Michael David Wilson 56:23
Not while reading Mr. Bones. No, I think I've broken a bone. I've dislocated my shoulder. But that is not Mr. Dislocation, is it? Which is not, what were you saying, Bob, you've I broken. I broke my
Bob Pastorella 56:43
collarbone when I was younger, and I didn't I didn't realize that it had broken. I knew that I injured myself pretty good, but it was when I raised my arm up and it popped back in place very loudly. And then I felt real pain. Oh, man, yeah, and that, that was excruciating, yikes. How'd you do that? I was pushed off something on on a playground. Okay, yeah. And I want, in fact, remember correctly. It was, I was on the merry go round, and some kids were playing, and they were pushing every, you know, every, pretty much, every kid off. And I got one, I got pushed off, and I didn't land properly on my shoulder. And I was like, man, it doesn't feel good. And it was later on, and probably about an hour or two later, you know, that I had moved my arm, I guess, in a position, and it popped and and then, you know, I guess people have said, Who's that girl screaming? That was me.
Bob Pastorella 58:04
Oh, man. I mean it, it freaking hurt bad, I imagine. And and so the the good news was I didn't have to have it reset, because that's basically what I had done, is I had set it, yeah. In other words, like, from what the doctor told me, the bones were like this. And so when I moved my arm up, it twisted it, popped it back in place. So, but all that, all that muscle and everything on my shoulder, and was very, very sore, and I had to wear, I had to wear a back brace to keep it from from separating. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So, yeah, I walked around like this. You know, of course, the people who are just listening to the show could not see what I was doing, and that's your fault. But anyway,
Max Booth III 58:51
I'm the patron. Yeah,
Bob Pastorella 58:53
exactly. But
Michael David Wilson 58:55
just
Max Booth III 58:58
guess what he was doing, you would think that he was just straightening his back out. He had his complete penis out.
Michael David Wilson 59:08
You kind of see that on YouTube.
Bob Pastorella 59:12
Well, I have there's something totally different. Never mind. But yeah, it I don't recommend breaking a bone. I don't think they don't think it feels very good.
Max Booth III 59:26
So something that's gone out, that I've noticed with my book since it's come out, is has gotten a strange reaction to people reading it. Multiple people have told me they've had bad dreams about breaking little bones as they read the book, which is really cool to me. Someone told me they woke up like they fell asleep reading it, and woke up, and when they got up, they were so dizzy, they just fell back down. And someone else told me they fell down like steps and like sprained the ankle, and. While, like, not, I don't think they were reading it while walking down the steps. That would be really stupid, but they will, like, in between sessions of reading it, and I'm just waiting. I'm so, so impatient. I I'm just waiting for somebody to finally break a bone while reading this book. That would be, like, the best thing for me personally, I think it would really help book sales, if that would happen. So if any like fan of mine, like die held fan listening to this episode, if they want to help me out,
Michael David Wilson 1:00:35
you know what to do? I mean, this is the kind of thing where, I mean, it could just take something like that happening for it to go completely viral. Or I want to see, you know, people embrace it as a real thing. It's got that potential. And you know, the Tick Tock challenge, it's like, can you read Mr. Bones without breaking a bone?
Max Booth III 1:00:59
That sounds really easy.
Michael David Wilson 1:01:03
That's what people have been doing so far. But you've got to convince the people that you can't challenge
Max Booth III 1:01:10
to be can you break a bone while holding my book up on video? That's what I want to see.
Michael David Wilson 1:01:19
I mean that that is the level of a tick tock challenge. Didn't people just start eating Tide detergent for no real reason? I
Max Booth III 1:01:28
don't know. I recently deleted my tick tock, but I don't want to get political and explain why. So okay, I'm not on it now. What about you guys?
Bob Pastorella 1:01:39
What's tick tock.
Max Booth III 1:01:41
Oh, it's an app you can, like, do small videos basically. Oh,
Bob Pastorella 1:01:47
yeah, yeah,
Michael David Wilson 1:01:49
I have a tick tock, but I have not posted on it, you know, in a long time.
Max Booth III 1:01:54
So I do have one. I am I just deleted the app for my phone. I'm pretty grumpy about it, because I thought Phil Schuler was just going away. So I made what is, like, a great last video, which was basically me, like, going, like, Okay, guys, I know I've been pretty lacklust jewel with the tick tock, but things will change you now. I'm probably, I'm finally gonna take this seriously. I just spent like 2000 bucks built of equipment, and you're gonna be seeing some high quality tick tocks. And that was the like, posted two days we feel is supposed to shut down. So I thought brilliant way to end it. And then, like, immediately it came back. So I'm just like, Ah, I'm deleting this app. I'm done with it. My joke is ruined.
Michael David Wilson 1:02:40
Incredible. Yeah. Thank you for listening to This Is Horror Podcast. If you enjoy the show and want to support us, then please consider becoming a patron, a patreon.com, forward slash, This Is Horror. You'll get early bird access to each and every episode, and you can submit questions to the interviewee. You'll also automatically become a member of the This Is Horror discord, and every year there are bonus episodes for patrons only, such as story unboxed, the horror podcast on the craft of writing, in which Bob and I, and sometimes a special guest, will dissect a short story or film and let you know writing lessons and takeaways to improve your own writing. Another great way to support us is to leave us a review on the Apple podcast app or website, and if you want to watch the video version of the This Is Horror Podcast. Join us on YouTube, youtube.com, forward slash at This Is Horror Podcast. You can subscribe there and get notified every time there is a new video. And however you support us, I thank you in advance. Okay, before I wrap up a quick advert break in 1867
Andrew Love 1:04:07
the young Samantha gray marries the infamous Captain Jakes, unleashing a series of brutal horror in this epic splatter Western from Death's Head press man Sam by J, D, grays is a rip roaring tall tale of revenge. Drags a coffin full of gold across the hellscape of reconstruction Texas and explodes at the top of a mountain. You better read this one with lights on. It
RJ Bayley 1:04:34
was as if the video had unzipped my skin, slunk inside my tapered flesh and become one with me.
Bob Pastorella 1:04:43
From the creator of This Is Horror comes a new nightmare for the digital age. The Girl in the Video by Michael David Wilson, after a teacher receives a weirdly arousing video, his life descends in a paranoia and obsession. More videos follow, each containing information no stranger could possibly know, but who's sending? Him and what do they want? The answers may destroy everything and everyone he loves. The Girl in the Video is the ring meets fatal attraction for the iPhone generation, available now in paperback, ebook and audio.
Michael David Wilson 1:05:12
Before I wrap up, I have a final ask, and that is for you to please leave a review for The This Is Horror Podcast on the Apple podcast website. Now, we recently got a review from Corecore451, and they entitled The review love it gave us five stars. Thank you very much. And said, as a horror writer, I'm always excited when a new episode of This Is Horror lands on my phone. Well, bloody brilliant. Thank you for listening. Corecore451, if you also enjoy This Is Horror. As I said, do please leave us a review on the Apple podcast site. But whether you do or don't leave us a review. We're gonna be back next time for part two with Max booster third. So until then, take care of yourselves. Be good to one another. Read horror. Keep on writing and have a great, Great Day.
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 max booth the third about their recently released book, I believe in Mr. Bones. Now Max booth has been a guest on This Is Horror a number of times. They are the publisher of ghoulish books. They also run the ghoulish Book Festival, which happened very recently, and they even have in Texas, the ghoulish books store, so a lot of ghoulish things going on for Max booth. Max is the author of a number of books, as well as Mr. Bones, including the fantastic short story collection abnormal statistics, we need to do something the brilliant 2020, novella that was made into a film they've written, maggots, screaming the nightly disease, touch the night, how to successfully kidnap strangers, which was the first book that I read by Max booth and a bunch of other books, including carnivorous lunar activities, which I want to see made into a film bloody brilliant. So lots of things that Max has done, but before we get max on the show, a quick advert break.
RJ Bayley 2:21
It was as if the video had unzipped my skin, slunk inside my tapered flesh and become one with me.
Bob Pastorella 2:30
From the creator of This Is Horror comes a new nightmare for the digital age. The Girl in the Video by Michael David Wilson, after a teacher receives a weirdly arousing video, his life descends in a paranoia and obsession. More videos follow, each containing information no stranger could possibly know, but who's sending them and what do they want? The answers may destroy everything and everyone he loves. The Girl in the Video is the ring meets fatal attraction for the iPhone generation, available now in paperback, ebook and audio
Andrew Love 3:00
in 1867 the young Samantha gray marries the infamous Captain Jakes, unleashing a series of brutal horrors in this epic splatter Western from Death's Head press mayhem. Sam by J D grays is a rip roaring tall tale of revenge. Drags a coffin full of gold across the hellscape of reconstruction Texas and explodes at the top of a mountain. You better read this one with lights on.
Michael David Wilson 3:29
Okay? Without saying, Here it is. It's Max booth on. This Is Horror. Max. Welcome back to This Is Horror. Do
Max Booth III 3:42
you need to give like a more detailed, uh, intro of who I am?
Michael David Wilson 3:49
No, we'd have done that in the introduction part with the adverts. Oh, I didn't get to that yet. No, I record that after so with Max booth today. He is the author of a number of books, that's right.
Max Booth III 4:07
My newest one is, I believe in Mr. Bones. Yeah, you guys read it. It's out now. Yeah. What's the next question?
Michael David Wilson 4:17
That wasn't the first question to begin with.
Max Booth III 4:20
I saw the question like in the way you were looking at me
Michael David Wilson 4:24
anyway, the last time that we spoke, it was over a year ago, for the last haunt book that was definitely fictitious in every regard, and you couldn't get sued by McKamey, who I think, I think something's gone on with him since we we were left speaking.
Max Booth III 4:46
I think he got arrested, potentially, like a homicide case. I don't know. I haven't kept up to date with him, but I think he's involved in some type of missing person or. Uh, homicide, I don't know. I wish I had kept up the date with him. I I'm friends with him on Facebook. He often is like, posting Long live streams, and I just don't have the patience to watch him talk. He's just has an extremely punchable face, I think. And just the way he talks is really much like, I don't know if you encounter this much Michael being in Japan, but Bob will know what I'm talking about. He has, like, classic, condescending Maga tone the way he talks. I just, I can't do it,
Michael David Wilson 5:40
so hang on you. You are friends with him on Facebook, or you're following his Facebook page.
Max Booth III 5:46
I don't know. I mean, it's still a difference, yes, but yeah, just because I'm Facebook friends with somebody doesn't mean I'm friends with them. You know, it's just like, sent them a request and they accepted. It doesn't mean that we tackle anything. I'm not on his podcast. I'm on your podcast. Michael on we don't even Facebook friends. So, I mean, because
Michael David Wilson 6:09
I don't have Facebook anymore, the mystery with that particular one, we were Facebook friends, but
Max Booth III 6:17
then you deleted me? No, I deleted Facebook as consequence you deleted me.
Michael David Wilson 6:25
Oh, dear. Well, no, the reason that I wondered if you were friends with him on Facebook, which, as you've pointed out in the disclaimer, doesn't mean real life friends, was because I wondered if that meant that he'd then seen you posting about the last haunt, and if anything had come as a result of that. No,
Max Booth III 6:50
it must be a case of me having followed his page then, but I do think he knows about the book only because I was in one of those anti McKamey Facebook page groups and someone I find a few people will posting about the book when it came out, they found out about it, and I know he had, like, secret agents in that group that revealed stuff back to him, so he definitely knew about it. But hey, you know, I don't want to get political or anything, so it's okay, okay.
Michael David Wilson 7:26
Well, I can respect that decision. And I know from your social media profile and just interactions over the years that being political is the last thing you would want to do in any regard.
Max Booth III 7:41
You know, I just, I know both, both political trail leads. They read my books, and I wouldn't want to say anything to a fan. I love them, so they would not read my material. I mean, if you look at many social, many people on the in the WHO seen over the yields, they've said many similar things of how, you know, it's no reason to get political, bring politics into the industry, and why can't we just get along? So, I mean, I'm with that. So if we could not get political tonight, that would be great. Thank you. So
Michael David Wilson 8:17
since we last spoke in October of 2023, what have been some of the biggest changes for you, personally and professionally? Now you mainly, I would ask the free piece, which would be personally, professionally and politically, but out of respect for your previous statement,
Max Booth III 8:36
yeah, if we can, if we can omit the last PE completely, that would be great. Now I don't want to get political, as I said, so I am going to just quickly brush past the path the fact that I am non binary, so I came out as non bi annually. But again, I don't want to get political, so we don't need to talk about general whatsoever. No offense any one listening, but I already opened a book shop last time we talked. So that's the same the book shop is still going on. We'll still doing the annual Google fest, the new one. When is this episode going live? Do you think any idea
Michael David Wilson 9:21
it'll probably be going live within the next month? So shall we say, the end of February?
Max Booth III 9:30
That's perfect. Michael, I'm sorry if I ask you questions, and I don't know if you're used to that as the one who does the questions, I
Michael David Wilson 9:38
have been Jans before, if that's what you're talking about, I don't know anything about that,
Max Booth III 9:43
but yeah, so Milch, Phil teens and 15th, the Friday and the sandal day spring break, if you'll in San Antonio, that is when we're doing the latest ghoulish book fest. Pretty excited about that, maybe the last one for a while for. Reasons. I don't want to get into, you know, but Texas is pretty scary place right now. I don't want to get into the reasons why. But, yeah, I'm excited for the fest. I Bob, you'll come in. You love I've seen you every one of these fests. I assume you like it. I assume you're a fan. What do you have to say about it? I
Bob Pastorella 10:23
live in Herman and sons. That's where I live. That's my house. And so, you know, I'm always gonna be there. So
Max Booth III 10:31
for anyone listening, Hilman sons is the name of the location we do the book Fest at. It's a, like an old, I don't know Lodge, I guess in downtown San Antonio, it's really odd building, and it's like, um, like an old organization, not quite like Freemasons. And say it was probably Freemasons, but yeah, similar to it, this one room in the
Bob Pastorella 11:00
pay masons,
Max Booth III 11:01
the premium masons, premium premium Masons. Yes, there's one room in the building, will we do the live readings, and it's completely occupied, wall to wall with old photographs that kind of remind you of the shining but the photographs old, like, separated by General. I don't mean to get into politics, but one wall is all male, one wall is all female, and those are the only two generals, I assume. So I don't know why they would have any photos, but it's really, yeah, like, why is that still a thing? Why have they still keeping that, like, tradition? And so it's a lot of odd like Viking imagery, like on Windows. But I'm pretty sure if I looked too heavily into like, what all the Hillman sins, I would be having to get a new venue, so I just don't look into it. And that's the easiest way to go with life, I think, is just to not look into anything, just in case it might be, you know, bad. So, yeah, it's a really cool building, though. Those an abandoned bowling alley in it that have never,
Bob Pastorella 12:19
ever been in the bowling alley. Did you not speak
Max Booth III 12:21
into it with us. Will you be in like, so you don't go
Bob Pastorella 12:24
to jail? We found out later that there was cameras there. Yeah, we're at the bar going, there's cameras in the bowling alley room. You knew that we were in there.
Max Booth III 12:38
I mean, if you looked,
Bob Pastorella 12:40
yeah, yeah, if they, if they managed it, to actually look and see, but then, you know, no one. I mean, it's like, what's the guy's name? The bartender? He never said anything. Yeah, I don't go in there, you know, I'm not gonna say shit, fuck. I live there. Man, they'll kick me out. Yeah,
Max Booth III 13:00
probably. So then what? Then deal would you live?
Bob Pastorella 13:04
I would still stay there. I would just become more of the ghost. Oh, you
Max Booth III 13:09
squat, those rights. Got it. So the building is really cool. Michael, you would, you would find it fascinating. I think not joking about the bowling alley. I think it was two yields ago. They left it unlocked, and so a bunch of us, like just kids, let's go, and we just ran in and all the bowling pins and the bowling balls were still in place. It was really like retro. I don't know what the deal is. Why it's not in use any mill, definitely.
Bob Pastorella 13:40
Yeah, people up there bowling and shit. They'd been up there forever.
Max Booth III 13:44
That's not true, though, but
So yeah, that's coming up next month. Badge is on sale now. I'm pretty excited about about that. Beyond that, I don't know. I'm trying to think of anything new that has happened. I just got a new dog who is extremely old and mostly blind and deaf, and it has become a nightmare in my life. So that's cool. The dog is pretty cool. But one of my evil dogs, the younger lab we have who was named Connie lebryan. He is nothing but an anxiety basket case. He is not a fan of this old man that we've just brought into the house, so it's been a pain in the ass keeping them separated, because he will kill this old man if we if we let him. So I'm pretty it's been pretty stressful with that, but not really has anything to do with, you know, my professional life.
Michael David Wilson 14:49
What was the impetus for getting this dog that Conan O'Brien the dog, not the man, but possibly also seems to not get along? Very well,
Max Booth III 15:01
oh, just, you know, well, you want a Facebook any mill, so you wouldn't know about this. But those you know, Facebook groups of local community, communities, and this woman who's like a fast drill, who takes in dogs from the fish out on gives them a temple, really, home was just posting a feather of them. And I'm feeling much a softy. I just, I saw the photo in the post about the dog. He was like, 15, and his family gave him up for reasons I don't know. It seems extremely odd. They had him all his life, and then they just gave him up. And we will, like, well, we don't have Brimfield dog. We should not do that. And then, like, a week and a half passed, and she was still posting, trying to find someone to take him. So we took him. That's that. Then, what were you expecting? I don't know. I can make up something real exciting if you want. Well,
Michael David Wilson 15:57
I mean, we can save that for your next book, because there's a lot of, you know, exaggerated autobiography.
Max Booth III 16:06
It did give me an idea, though, like, when we will go into the fast jewels house, like such a good premise for like, a book, right? You go through and it's not even the dog that she had had photographs. It's just like some man, some slimy man who thinks he's a dog. Yeah, we'll see. It's a movie the baby. It's like from the 80s. I think it's about this family, and they have the baby who's just like this mentally challenged, grown man who they keep in the crib and breastfeed still. And they, they hire like a nanny, they can take care of him. It's extremely, almost like Ranchi, but that's not the right world. It's just strange, great movie. Oh, my
Michael David Wilson 16:54
goodness no, I'm not familiar with that, but I kind of love the idea of just cat fishing with animals, which is effectively what this would be,
Max Booth III 17:05
yeah. But with that, a cat or a fish? Well, no, it would be a dog and a man,
Michael David Wilson 17:10
yeah, yeah. So the cat dogging, if you want, yeah, yeah. Why not throw in a dogging scene? I mean,
Max Booth III 17:20
what is the like religion of catfish? Like the world itself? I don't quite know. Do you know? I don't know Bob.
Bob Pastorella 17:28
I thought it had to do with like, someone like, I don't know why they use the word. It don't make any sense, but it's
Max Booth III 17:36
something like in fishing. Like, you think you might be catching a catfish, but then it's like a a cod,
Bob Pastorella 17:44
I don't know, I know that, like catfish are not, uh, easy. They're not easy to handle. What you catch them, okay? Because, because of the barbs, yeah, and they'll, they'll, they'll slow, you know? They'll, they'll, they'll sting you, pretty good. I caught a
Max Booth III 18:02
cat fish. I think I've told this truly on the podcast. Beautiful. When I was a kid, I went to this bridge my my breath when we went fishing. I caught a catfish, and we put it in a bag and took it home and just put the bag in the freeze wheel and label. That day, my parents came home, my mom opened the freezer and opened the bag. She was like, What is this? And then it began moving, and she panicked, and just threw it against the wall and it died. That's something that happened. I don't know what that has to do with cat fishing as a hoax, though, yeah,
Bob Pastorella 18:40
but I don't know why they use that name. It's basically, it's people who are, you know, saying that there's something that they're not online. That's, that's the impression that I got. Yeah,
Michael David Wilson 18:51
I mean, maybe originally, a cat posed as a fish. I don't think that's right, probably not.
Max Booth III 19:00
Have you guys ever catfished anyone? That's a good question,
Michael David Wilson 19:04
is not a good question.
Max Booth III 19:08
Is that the reason why it's only good question,
Michael David Wilson 19:11
I have never catfished anybody. Not yet. Never say never. But it's not happened. Okay? Are you cat fishing now?
Max Booth III 19:25
I got somebody no why it's called catfish. It reveals to the practice of placing a catfish in a tank of cod. Wow. I just named that fish for no reason, for the purposes of shipping the impostual Well, the catfish is said to prevent the cod from becoming PAL and lethargic and shrilling the delivery of a high quality product. I could have named any fish, and I named the fish that was in this Wikipedia page. What the hell? Pretty good sign. And this is going to be a great podcast, right? Love the catfish, someone with you guys just saying, I think it'd be great. Well, he's a healer. I have a different question. Have any
Michael David Wilson 20:12
activity then? Yeah, you could. You could tag team?
Max Booth III 20:15
Someone, yeah, three people. One, um, bait. So the catfish is the someone is the Pilsen doing the the trick? Who is the one being tricked? The cod? Who's the cod? I don't know. Do you pick at random? Will do you like pick someone? You know, I would
Bob Pastorella 20:37
say that'd be like the victim of the whole I want to get
Max Booth III 20:41
political. I don't think we should use that world
Bob Pastorella 20:44
the target. Yes, I'm good with that. Yeah, the target of the cat fishing. I
Max Booth III 20:51
love doing this podcast, especially the video, because I can just see the look in Michael's eyes and like, just him calculating what he's gonna have to cut as we talk. It's great.
Michael David Wilson 21:01
Yeah, I guess as well, speaking with you sometimes a follow up question more difficult than with other you know interviewees, particularly if you're playing the heel
Max Booth III 21:17
Bob, that's all Bob this time he's he's mean Bob today.
Michael David Wilson 21:21
Yeah? People won't know the origin story saying, because that was our fair, but that, I mean, that has never stopped us before from referencing what we spoke about our fairness. Well,
Max Booth III 21:34
I don't even like Eldridge that much to be honest. I mean, how many times do we have to see that guy get bit by a spiral. I mean, we get it
Michael David Wilson 21:44
fair enough. Sorry, to
Max Booth III 21:46
get political. You can ask to follow up, if you'd like,
Michael David Wilson 21:50
Well, I mean, before you were saying that this is the, well, not, not necessarily the final year that you'll be doing the ghoulish Book Festival, but you won't be doing it next year. So I'm wondering, I mean, what, what does kind of your routine look like at the moment, with the festival and with writing, with publishing, with the bookstore, how are you dividing your time, and which is the most profitable or which is kind of your leading business. So
Max Booth III 22:25
I think I should do a disclaimer and say, every since we began doing this fest around this time, I've just, I usually just begin saying constantly, this is the last festival doing and then usually by the end of the weekend on the fest, I'm like, Okay, we'll do it again. That has happened every paletteville this time. My reasons will not so much. The whole like, This is exhausting, and I can't do it any meal. It definitely has to do a meal with like. I don't ethically think I can encourage anyone to travel to Texas right now, and I feel guilty about it, which is a different reason. Again, apologies for bringing that into the conversation, but be the answer legal question. I don't know how to answer it. I have a lot of things going on, and I think if listeners go back and listen to like any of the previous episodes we've done, I will at one point say, you know, then I'm gonna begin trying to improve my organization skills. It does not happen. So it has, still hasn't happened. I don't write much at the moment. I I need to, but I don't the book shop. I mean, my schedule is this is the book shop is open. To say, the saddle day. I come in around 10:11am, I spend the whole day. If I have any book shop stuff to do, I do that, like stocking taking some promo photos, helping custom builds. I'm not in a place with a lot of foot traffic, so I don't get a lot of people coming in. Usually, I get a lot of people on Saturdays, mostly. So today was pretty busy, but weekday is maybe one or two people throughout the day at most. It's not really a high effort job. I mean, once in a while I'll get someone in who wants to talk, someone who comes in and they want, like, some recommendations, which I find really fun to do. I love when someone comes in, it's like, Hey, I don't know what I want. This is what I like. What do you want? What should I buy? Those will always fun conversations. So when I'm at the book shop, I'm usually just doing them, publishing stuff, mostly editing. We recently, within the last year and a half, we hired somebody to help with like publicity, mostly like the social medias, which is backfilled, and the fact that, you know, most of the social media is all just useless now. And I. I'm owned by fascist boot liquids. Apologies. So social media isn't that great at the moment, blue sky is okay, though I think we get some pretty good traction in blue sky, but no real house. It seems I do a lot of editing. I recently began freelance editing again, absolutely, some time away, and so I thankfully have finally gotten some clients with that. So I'm just I spent a lot of time editing. I do podcasting infrequently. I write a little bit, not as much. I owe a stage play by the end of the month. Contracted the right a stage play adaptation of my book slash movie. We need to do something, so I'm in the process of doing that. I signed, oh, this is something new, I think, since the last time we talked, I signed with the book agent, so she is in the process of shopping my out of print novel COVID was legal activities around, and she is waiting for me to finish a new book that she can shop around, because when she signed with me, I was already contracted to write I believe in mystical Bones, so that wasn't really anything she could help with, since it already had a home. So she's been feeling patiently waiting for me to finish a new book, and that is what I've been working on. When I do write anything, did I answer the question, what is profitable? I don't know. I guess the editing at this point, just because that money goes directly to me. I don't take a paycheck for the publishing company or the book shop. I just any money we make besides royalties, it just goes back into the company. Even, like the books I've self published through Google, I don't take money for those any royalties I get from those cells. We just go push it back into the company to keep it alive. So
Michael David Wilson 27:05
in terms of your day to day money that is pretty much exclusively coming from editing then, yes,
Max Booth III 27:13
and royalties from like the books being published by Edel presses, because I not having them pay the ghoulish they go straight to my own bank account. Unlike the press and I believe in my bones, we do have separate bank accounts. So yeah, I get paid for, like, the apocalypse books on the one day I assume the SAM Matilda gates book, fingers crossed. All right, go buy it the last time. Let's get that advance paid off, folks. And
Michael David Wilson 27:47
I mean in terms of, like, both the publishing and the book, still, we spoke a little bit about this before, but obviously, you kind of are competing with Amazon in the sense that Amazon is a place where a lot of people buy books, is where a lot of books are getting published. What kind of things are you doing, or how the hell do you even deal with that? You know? Because, I mean, do you price match? Do you kind of have to take a cut and just do free shipping, because Amazon have this machine where, you know, it's very difficult for independents to compete. Yeah,
Max Booth III 28:31
we don't press match and we don't do free shipping. One thing we have that Amazon one thing we don't have that Amazon has is every book at evil published, and it sounds like that. Sounds like that's a good thing, but it's not because they Amazon is flooded, basically by infinite options. But when you go to a to a book shop. And in the book shop, it's fairly niche and curated by the people who run the shop. So you come in and the selection is quality, because an actual human has, like, selected what the stock and how to display it, and they know about the books, and they can talk about it face to face. And that is a huge difference between, like, what Amazon is, which is just fucking slop. It's just like someone took a bucket of slap and just spilled it over a little colony of ants. You know, I mean, what I just said makes no sense, but it sounded cool in my head before I said it. Sorry to get political.
Michael David Wilson 29:39
You said. It makes no sense, but I was nodding along, like, yeah, yeah, I kind of get that.
Max Booth III 29:47
I don't know the ants came into play, to be honest, I kind of lost my train of thought with that,
Bob Pastorella 29:54
but it helped make your point. Yeah,
Max Booth III 29:56
exactly. So, not so like. We, we mean, when you buy something from us, it's two people packaging. It the same two people. We, we put all these bonuses in every book we ship out, stick golds, book, milks. Philly has little cool, spooky things that doesn't really cost too much with the added shipping. Yeah. I mean, and also, like, for those not shipping and those who just come into the shop, it's a place of community, you know, it's a place for people who like the same strange stuff. You come hang out and like, you come into a book shop like this, you find something by like Christopher Triana, little juice on it. You don't find that Ellen to No. Bill,
Michael David Wilson 30:44
yeah. Do you find that you're getting a number of regulars? And do you also have events on at the bookstore to encourage people to come in?
Max Booth III 30:54
Oh, yeah, we get this. We get quite a few people who reach real and then come in. Plus this one guy, he's great. He writes a modal cycle. He's, I don't know, 70. Maybe he loves shields, really is he loves, like, Ellen doubtless stuff. He's been reading this stuff since before Michael and I will even alive. Probably. He comes in, like, once a week and just wants to talk about, like, shield series we've read, we have a lot of people like that, but we do events too. We do a free monthly movie screening, so we move all the tables out, and we project a movie on the wall. We do that free, but we also keep the movie title a secret so we don't get sued because we don't pay for, like, the movie rights, the screen anything, and I'm pretty sure if we don't take payment full ticket, and we don't advertise what movie it is online, we legally all kind of okay, so we do that every month.
Michael David Wilson 31:56
Are you sure you want this in the podcast? Just legally not okay.
Max Booth III 32:03
I mean, I don't want to get political. I'm sure it's fine. We advertise the event all the time online, so, yeah, it's fine. I'm pretty upfront with why we do it as a secret screen. But also my my buddy Miguel, who hosts a podcast called my whole confessional, he he comes down and he helps program each month. He even puts together a half hour pre show, which is like clips from YouTube, somehow related to the movie, and that play as we feel the movie and like we let people kind of guess what the movie is going to end up being fairly similar to what like the Alamo Drafthouse does,
Michael David Wilson 32:43
man, sounds like a great movie. Night
Max Booth III 32:47
depends on the movie. Yeah. Well, I wish I could tell you. Well, I guess I was about to tell you the movie, because by the time this comes out, the movie will pass. But no, I'm not gonna say the movie on public thing because I don't want to get sued. Yeah,
Michael David Wilson 33:04
well, that sounds like a very sensible way of proceeding. I thought
Max Booth III 33:10
you were gonna say sexual.
Michael David Wilson 33:13
I mean, either or, I mean, it could be sexual for some people. We don't kink shame here, so,
Max Booth III 33:21
yeah, but it's not my it's not my podcast, though, so I'll respect the policy you guys have. Okay,
Michael David Wilson 33:29
well, moving on to your latest book. I believe in Mr. Bones. What is the origin story for this? I know you've maybe said, you hate origin stories.
Max Booth III 33:45
Great question. Um, yeah. So, wow. Okay, this I had the title before I had this book, I had a different book in mine, the original book I was going to write with this title. It was gonna be about this Dad and son who, like, I'm shopping at the grocery store one day, and it's how it's Halloween time, and they see all the spooky cereal mascots, like count, Chuck Elaine, all that. And it gets to him talking how, you know, when I was a kid, we had this awesome one called Mystile bones. It was like this male cereal, but then they discontinued it, and it gets him like thinking, like, man, what happened that cereal? And he goes to look it up online. He can't find anything about the cereal whatsoever. And it becomes almost like a, what was that creepy pasta that became a show on Channel Zero? Candle Cove. Candle Cove. Yeah, so it was gonna, it was gonna kind of be something similar to that, and also I saw the TV glow. So I'm glad I didn't write it, because I saw the TV glow. It's really similar. But also what made me not write it was, it's also a book by. Called Malek, and I can't remember the name of the book, but it's pretty much the same premise, down to like someone trying to track down a forgotten serial brand. So I just said, Okay, well, I'm not gonna write this night, but I love the title, and I love the idea of like something with this Mistral bones, because the same premise of Mistral bones like stealing bones from you and replacing it with something that was that existed in the previous idea, but and that felt pretty fresh and original. So I wanted to do something with that. And when the idea to use it like with a publishing company, I'm not even, I'm not positive. Feel that came from at this point. I don't, I don't remember. I just remember like thinking, like getting, really getting serious about writing it. Shortly after, I was on talking skill that podcast, because we were talking about my novella, Indiana death song, and the host, she was asking me something like, why teeth? And I, just off the top of my head said, Oh, why wild teeth creepy, because it's the only pill of the skeleton you can see. And just that response just kind of lingled in my head for a while, and they got my juices flowing. What a disgusting thing to say, my juices will flowing. And yeah, it just led to getting obsessed with this idea that became the book, because skeleton is fucking creepy. They'll say Ray Brad Billy street that I love to death. But this is so so this real being called the skeleton, and it's about this guy. He just, like, suddenly becomes, like, really conscious of the fact that he has a fucking skeleton in his body at all times it wants out. I think that's just really distilling to think about, like to just sit everyone listening to this podcast, just if you're not driving close your eyes, and just really think about the fact that underneath all this disgusting flesh, you have a skeleton inside you, something that you will never really going to see, because it doesn't come out until you die, and it's just inside you always you can't do anything with it. It's really fucking creepy to think about, I think. But now think about, what if something came along and then replace, just like, a little bit of that skeleton inside of you. Like, just say, one bone. What if it no longer was a bone, but if it was something different? Do you would you know that? Like, how do you trust what inside of you is a bone? I don't know. I
Michael David Wilson 37:57
don't know. Well, I mean, a number of people have, you know, replacements, like hip surgery. So it's like, at some point, if you replaced enough bones, then, yeah, it's an artificial skeleton. Not
Max Booth III 38:12
talking about that stuff, though. No, it sounds like it's different.
Bob Pastorella 38:19
Have you ever seen those shows, like with UFO abductions and stuff like that, how people have claimed that things have been inserted into their bodies, yeah, and so, I mean, I'm fascinated with that shit, right? I guarantee there's probably some somebody out there who feels like they're they've had a bone replaced by something not normal, you know, not natural. There has to be. And then just that thought that that could, that right there, could make it into our novel, just someone going through that whole thing without having a Mr. Bones or anything like that. And so to take that idea and tie it to a mythology that's I love that shit. Oh,
Max Booth III 39:05
well, thank you, man. I think it's a pretty good book. I had a lot of fun writing it. Maybe the most fun I've had writing something I don't know it was. It really took off once it finally did. I'm feeling grateful to Ben apocalypse, who contracted me to write it, because at one point, I real emailing about something, and I just mentioned the idea I had filled this book. And then several months later, he emailed me like, Hey, you gonna write that book? Because I would love to publish it. And he just contracted me to do it, if you feel I'd even begun doing it. And then I was like, yes, let's do it. I gave me a deadline. I said, No problem. I'll get that done. No time. No time at all. The deadline passed. Had begun. So then I wrote the whole book and like, down at like, month and a half, really the best thing that seems to be high right now. Well, I I write until I absolutely I wait until I absolutely cannot wait any longer, and then I just kind of go crazy and, like, lose my sense with reality, and just write non stop and this frenzy the pace I did that my last few books. I don't know why. That seems to be what milks fuel me. I also keep writing books that require, like, a stressful, frantic pacing, and I like, I've convinced myself to get that pacing I also have to be experiencing like that stress and that like frantic train of thought. I don't know, maybe I just need anxiety medication. I don't know. Well,
Michael David Wilson 40:44
I mean, speaking of which, I believe that you said that you quite literally had a panic attack while writing the book.
Max Booth III 40:54
I think that did i i believe it. You did. I was probably refilling to just like but I was just talking about how I just kind of went crazy and read it super fast.
Michael David Wilson 41:07
And I mean, in terms of the reaction to the book, I mean, how did Ben receive it? Because, I mean, tonally, it's pretty different to abnormal statistics. And I mean, I would say that is amongst your bleakest of books. And I tend to find that you've either got the kind of comedic mode or you've just got this very, very dark, bleak horror with very few laughs. But this is the one book that really simultaneously does both.
Max Booth III 41:42
I think it's the type of book I've been looking up to being able to write, like, my whole career, because, yeah, like, I have something like maggot screaming, which is sad at times, but mostly funny. Well, the nightly disease, which is mostly just funny, same with colonial selenial activities. But then I have stuff that's really deadly serious and bleak and sad, but to get both of those feelings in light in almost like a whiplash motion throughout a book, that's like the dream. And I do think that is what mystical bones is, and that's the type of book I'm most interested in writing, because it's the two most like a stream senses comedy and drama. I mean, they made masks of them. That's a shout out to the masks. I don't know what full cod the drama. Well, what am I talking about? The you know, the
Bob Pastorella 42:43
tragedy in comedy, yeah, those things,
Max Booth III 42:47
Shakespeare thing I know nothing about him.
Michael David Wilson 42:49
Yeah, yeah,
Max Booth III 42:53
sorry to get Shakespeare. Yeah. What was the question?
Michael David Wilson 43:01
Well, I was asking about the response from Ben. Ben
Max Booth III 43:06
liked a lot. He had a few notes, mostly. So what's the thing with this book that I guess we should address for fans of like the Kendrick Lam, just like a song, like 10% of this novel is a distress, a diss track, I guess, because the book is about a small press in the in the hurdle scene, which I have a lot of experience with. And there's a lot of things that happen in the book, and things they talk about that could be maybe people stretching it viewed as like jokes about real people. So there's a few times in the book, well, Ben was like, hey, maybe, maybe you could disguise this a bit, mil, so I don't get, we don't get sued on anything. So that's mostly, that was mostly all the other thing I did absolutely read. It was just disguise a few things a bit real, even though I didn't need to, because it was completely fictional. Anyway, it wasn't based on anyone. But you know people. You know people these days. Are all they? They get offended by anything, right? Guys,
Michael David Wilson 44:17
yeah. I mean so you you satirize parts of the horror genre and publishing industry. And, I mean, we haven't really seen this from you since how to successfully kidnap strangers, at least to this degree. So yeah. I mean, I'm wondering perhaps this is going to be a once every decade thing, where you, you know you satirize in a completely fictitious way, not actually based on a real person, as you say, different facets.
Max Booth III 44:50
I do think how to kidnap strange rules in this book have some things in common. Absolutely, it's really funny to think about writing a new publishing. Like, every like decade, maybe I will, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it's what I know. I mean, it's, I've always written books about, like, my own life, in some ways, the nightly disease. It's a novel about a guy who looks night shift at a hotel. I wrote that while we're looking to night shift at a hotel, the way I tend to write is I take things from my own life and I bend in a stretch it, and I reshape it into something that I view as somehow entertaining or meaningful on the page. I'm I don't think that's like a unique way of writing. I think most people, people do that, I tend sometimes to be not as subtle about it, mostly because I find it to be I find that's funny sometimes, like in the case of Mistral bones, the press is in Texas, in San Antonio, like I am. It's operated by a husband and wife, like my press is. My press is called ghoulish books in this book. In this book, The press is fiendish books that's just, it's just funny to me that have it like that so on the nose and then immediately make the audience read maybe the most extreme sex scene I've ever written in my life, just because I think it's really funny that we're going to be reading it with that mindset and then immediately get this scene. I don't know. It just seems amusing to me. I don't really, I haven't analyzed too much, like the whole meta aspect of it all, just I keep going back to it like, even with maggots screaming, I named the entire cast. I asked for myself and other people I know, same with the last hot it's not like something I think, like, oh, I should do that. It's just that's what feels like the best way to go about it, for some reason, and I don't know why,
Michael David Wilson 47:01
right? And in this one, not only did you have fictitious people within the genre, but you had some that were just like, This is Jessica McHugh. I think Betty rods said he may have turned up at some point too. So we
Max Booth III 47:16
talk about Betty in the book. By the way, we'll be building this on February 8, a sandal day is Betty's Bill day today. Shout out to Betty Rock City, happy birthday on the podcast,
Michael David Wilson 47:32
saying happy birthday and ad,
Max Booth III 47:35
she's open full commissions. She's great. Go hide a little to draw some cool stuff. But yeah, she's in it. Jessica McKees in it. I did ask permission before just bringing Jessica into the book, because she does. She is kind of outrageous. She calls a lot of people cunt, I think, in the book, which is not dissimilar to how she is in real life.
Bob Pastorella 48:01
Johnny Compton's in it. Did you ever finish editing his stuff? No.
Max Booth III 48:11
Yeah. Johnny Compton said, I asked him if that was okay. He said, Yeah. So those are we gonna get to a point in the in the podcast, Bill, it's okay if we spoil stuff.
Michael David Wilson 48:25
I don't know. I think just if we did give a disclaimer that we are about to spoil, you know, aspects of the book and maybe, maybe also in that disclaimer, how far are we going to spoil? You know, is this just a mild plot point, or is it like you're getting the ending at this point? Okay,
Max Booth III 48:47
I'm gonna be spoiling the halfway point of the book, so skip ahead for like five minutes. Maybe most of the book is leading to them doing the debut fiendish book fest. And, you know, we do the Google Book fest. So I definitely wanted to write about, like, the anxieties involved in running a book fast, especially that feels fast where you have no idea what to expect. Well it's going to be like, and I had all these plans in my head of like, the book detailing, like day one of the fest, it was gonna go deep into it, and like, Johnny was gonna be mill of a kill, and Jessica McHugh was gonna be mill of a kill, and all these people I came up with, all these fake presses, which I named in the book, but they don't really get screen time, page time in The book I had planned and all this stuff happening. But then against massive spoil, the man killed chill in the book decides to commit suicide, the night be filled the fest I had planned on that happening on night one of the fast he was gonna like. Fall asleep from stress in the bathroom at the fest and have an awful dream and just freak out and run home and just off himself as Eileen, his wife, was trying to run the fast by itself. But then I got to the scene with table well, they will like packaging, the books, the the goody bags and so filth and it just like appealed to me, how much fun, you know, it would be if I just embraced the the out of being anti climatic, and just after all this like promo and like excitement about this fest, we never see the fast he just offs himself be filled the fest happens. I think that was definitely the right move, although I do regret not being able to write like scenes involving some of the small presses I had planned, because I think that would have been fun, but to be anti climatic, in a way, it's just so much more exciting and just funny to me, rather than giving the real what they expected to happen. And
Michael David Wilson 51:11
I love too, that you know, after the suicide, you then had the opportunity to satirize how people would react to it on social media,
Bob Pastorella 51:23
not say that, yeah, you nailed you nailed that stuff. Sadly, sadly. That's exactly how people would act. But it was very funny in this, in the context of the story, I
Max Booth III 51:34
mostly just kind of Tom soiled myself with that interlude, just kind of thinking how people would react if I did die before a book fest that I was hosting, and that's how I imagined it would mostly go. What do you think I miss? What would you guys have tweeted? Oh,
Bob Pastorella 51:55
I don't know
Michael David Wilson 51:58
if you if you off to yourself. Well, we do a whole episode, not just the tweets.
Max Booth III 52:07
He'll become. He's a compilation of every Max booth episode. Please subscribe to old Patreon. If you would like to listen to peace Max, you will get friends.
Bob Pastorella 52:20
We are two subscribers away from hitting 1000
Max Booth III 52:24
Patreons can ask a question, but Max will not be answering this time.
Michael David Wilson 52:33
Do a live say on certain podcast. Be pretty cool. Yeah, if people want to participate, it's patreon.com/this
Max Booth III 52:42
is all right. Yeah. Should I fake my death? So we can do that.
Michael David Wilson 52:46
I mean, I don't know. The thing is, because you faked your death once before, like, I don't know if you faked it. If you know too many people might think now it's fake, but now you've created the situation where, if you die, people are gonna be like, Max isn't dead.
Max Booth III 53:10
Oh, my God, come up with a new bit,
Bob Pastorella 53:16
yeah, just like a reverse. Andy Kaufman, yeah,
Max Booth III 53:20
that's my favorite sex move. Yeah,
Bob Pastorella 53:27
the reverse Andy Kaufman,
Max Booth III 53:30
that's right, I don't, I don't do a fooled Andy Kaufman. That's fucking disgusting. Yeah,
Michael David Wilson 53:36
very advanced technique. Well, my goodness, I think I had many follow up questions until we went to reverse Andy Kaufman and how my brain is just every kind of thought has now disappeared. I mean, that's the power of Kauffman, I suppose. Rest in peace. Rest in peace. Reasonable
Max Booth III 54:05
silence on the podcast while any Coffman,
Michael David Wilson 54:09
there you go. That's a moment we're having a full minute. I'd say
Max Booth III 54:20
podcast will give me moments of silence? Wendy Kauffman, that's the beauty of having man as a guest. You know, I think about things no one else does. I bring honesty to the show. Do you know
Michael David Wilson 54:37
sure about that statement? But yeah, I mean, of course, this involved breaking bones. You know, for the Mr. Bones, my thoughts to become reality. So I wondered, did you break any bones whilst writing this book? Whether to live? Lee or accidentally,
Max Booth III 55:01
I've never broken a bone. Now, I wish I could say I have, but haven't. I will admit something that I find kind of funny. In retrospect, I was doing some event out of town and I was driving back home. Now this was when, this was in the two month insane time of my life when I was writing the book, and I convinced myself for like a good five hour period while driving that that night, I was going to break my pinky intentionally so I would just know what the pain felt like, but also because I thought it would be amusing stuff to talk about on podcasts while promoting the book, I was just completely convinced that's what I'm gonna do. And then I got home and kind of slapped and woke up and I was like, fucking crazy. Why would I do that? But, um, it's kind of, it's kind of tilt fine to, like, be convinced of something so insane, and like not see the flaw in that logic whatsoever. I'm glad I didn't do it, but also I'm kind of sad I didn't, because how much fun you'll this episode be if I had well,
Michael David Wilson 56:15
so why is the sequel breaking the single but
Max Booth III 56:21
it's broken any bones.
Michael David Wilson 56:23
Not while reading Mr. Bones. No, I think I've broken a bone. I've dislocated my shoulder. But that is not Mr. Dislocation, is it? Which is not, what were you saying, Bob, you've I broken. I broke my
Bob Pastorella 56:43
collarbone when I was younger, and I didn't I didn't realize that it had broken. I knew that I injured myself pretty good, but it was when I raised my arm up and it popped back in place very loudly. And then I felt real pain. Oh, man, yeah, and that, that was excruciating, yikes. How'd you do that? I was pushed off something on on a playground. Okay, yeah. And I want, in fact, remember correctly. It was, I was on the merry go round, and some kids were playing, and they were pushing every, you know, every, pretty much, every kid off. And I got one, I got pushed off, and I didn't land properly on my shoulder. And I was like, man, it doesn't feel good. And it was later on, and probably about an hour or two later, you know, that I had moved my arm, I guess, in a position, and it popped and and then, you know, I guess people have said, Who's that girl screaming? That was me.
Bob Pastorella 58:04
Oh, man. I mean it, it freaking hurt bad, I imagine. And and so the the good news was I didn't have to have it reset, because that's basically what I had done, is I had set it, yeah. In other words, like, from what the doctor told me, the bones were like this. And so when I moved my arm up, it twisted it, popped it back in place. So, but all that, all that muscle and everything on my shoulder, and was very, very sore, and I had to wear, I had to wear a back brace to keep it from from separating. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So, yeah, I walked around like this. You know, of course, the people who are just listening to the show could not see what I was doing, and that's your fault. But anyway,
Max Booth III 58:51
I'm the patron. Yeah,
Bob Pastorella 58:53
exactly. But
Michael David Wilson 58:55
just
Max Booth III 58:58
guess what he was doing, you would think that he was just straightening his back out. He had his complete penis out.
Michael David Wilson 59:08
You kind of see that on YouTube.
Bob Pastorella 59:12
Well, I have there's something totally different. Never mind. But yeah, it I don't recommend breaking a bone. I don't think they don't think it feels very good.
Max Booth III 59:26
So something that's gone out, that I've noticed with my book since it's come out, is has gotten a strange reaction to people reading it. Multiple people have told me they've had bad dreams about breaking little bones as they read the book, which is really cool to me. Someone told me they woke up like they fell asleep reading it, and woke up, and when they got up, they were so dizzy, they just fell back down. And someone else told me they fell down like steps and like sprained the ankle, and. While, like, not, I don't think they were reading it while walking down the steps. That would be really stupid, but they will, like, in between sessions of reading it, and I'm just waiting. I'm so, so impatient. I I'm just waiting for somebody to finally break a bone while reading this book. That would be, like, the best thing for me personally, I think it would really help book sales, if that would happen. So if any like fan of mine, like die held fan listening to this episode, if they want to help me out,
Michael David Wilson 1:00:35
you know what to do? I mean, this is the kind of thing where, I mean, it could just take something like that happening for it to go completely viral. Or I want to see, you know, people embrace it as a real thing. It's got that potential. And you know, the Tick Tock challenge, it's like, can you read Mr. Bones without breaking a bone?
Max Booth III 1:00:59
That sounds really easy.
Michael David Wilson 1:01:03
That's what people have been doing so far. But you've got to convince the people that you can't challenge
Max Booth III 1:01:10
to be can you break a bone while holding my book up on video? That's what I want to see.
Michael David Wilson 1:01:19
I mean that that is the level of a tick tock challenge. Didn't people just start eating Tide detergent for no real reason? I
Max Booth III 1:01:28
don't know. I recently deleted my tick tock, but I don't want to get political and explain why. So okay, I'm not on it now. What about you guys?
Bob Pastorella 1:01:39
What's tick tock.
Max Booth III 1:01:41
Oh, it's an app you can, like, do small videos basically. Oh,
Bob Pastorella 1:01:47
yeah, yeah,
Michael David Wilson 1:01:49
I have a tick tock, but I have not posted on it, you know, in a long time.
Max Booth III 1:01:54
So I do have one. I am I just deleted the app for my phone. I'm pretty grumpy about it, because I thought Phil Schuler was just going away. So I made what is, like, a great last video, which was basically me, like, going, like, Okay, guys, I know I've been pretty lacklust jewel with the tick tock, but things will change you now. I'm probably, I'm finally gonna take this seriously. I just spent like 2000 bucks built of equipment, and you're gonna be seeing some high quality tick tocks. And that was the like, posted two days we feel is supposed to shut down. So I thought brilliant way to end it. And then, like, immediately it came back. So I'm just like, Ah, I'm deleting this app. I'm done with it. My joke is ruined.
Michael David Wilson 1:02:40
Incredible. Yeah. Thank you for listening to This Is Horror Podcast. If you enjoy the show and want to support us, then please consider becoming a patron, a patreon.com, forward slash, This Is Horror. You'll get early bird access to each and every episode, and you can submit questions to the interviewee. You'll also automatically become a member of the This Is Horror discord, and every year there are bonus episodes for patrons only, such as story unboxed, the horror podcast on the craft of writing, in which Bob and I, and sometimes a special guest, will dissect a short story or film and let you know writing lessons and takeaways to improve your own writing. Another great way to support us is to leave us a review on the Apple podcast app or website, and if you want to watch the video version of the This Is Horror Podcast. Join us on YouTube, youtube.com, forward slash at This Is Horror Podcast. You can subscribe there and get notified every time there is a new video. And however you support us, I thank you in advance. Okay, before I wrap up a quick advert break in 1867
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Bob Pastorella 1:04:43
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Michael David Wilson 1:05:12
Before I wrap up, I have a final ask, and that is for you to please leave a review for The This Is Horror Podcast on the Apple podcast website. Now, we recently got a review from Corecore451, and they entitled The review love it gave us five stars. Thank you very much. And said, as a horror writer, I'm always excited when a new episode of This Is Horror lands on my phone. Well, bloody brilliant. Thank you for listening. Corecore451, if you also enjoy This Is Horror. As I said, do please leave us a review on the Apple podcast site. But whether you do or don't leave us a review. We're gonna be back next time for part two with Max booster third. So until then, take care of yourselves. Be good to one another. Read horror. Keep on writing and have a great, Great Day.
