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Guest: Author and Publisher J.C. Macek III
37 Plays2 months ago
Author, reviewer, publisher, and entertaining cat J.C. Macek III discusses the line between professionalism and self-preservation, drawing lines in the industry, and why AI is an affront to the concept of the humanities. We also talk 70's horror, true crime as portrayed in his novel The Black Dahlia, Hitchcock, anthologies, and I explain my video series on DIY Fleshlights.
J.C. Maçek III is the editor and curator of Symptom of the Universe: A Horror Tribute to Black Sabbath, the author of the hit true crime novel The Black Dahlia(2024) and the producer of the 2018 film [CARGO], starring Ron Thompson of American Pop fame, as well as the author of the film’s tie-in novel.
His other novels include The Antagonist and Seven Days to Die. More recently, the author has found success in shorter stories and novellas, though novels are still his primary focus. An experienced and prolific entertainment journalist and celebrity interviewer, he has written thousands of articles, reviews, and interviews. In addition to his work in Symptom of the Universe: A Horror Tribute to Black Sabbath, he also appears in the anthologies Confessions from the Think Tank, Weird Fiction Quarterly, Flapping Doodles, Nature Triumphs, and many new upcoming anthologies.
He resides in Southern California with his wife, family and a veritable ZOO of pets.
A transcript of this episode can be found here.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:02
Speaker
You are listening to The Mentally Oddcast, where we talk with creatives about neurodivergence, trauma, addiction, and all the other things that impact and inform our art.
Purpose and Reassurance
00:00:14
Speaker
Our goal is to show everyone that no matter what you're going through, you are not alone and you can make art about it.
Host and Guest Introduction
00:00:35
Speaker
Hi, friends. You are listening to The Mentally Oddcast. My name is Wednesday Leap Friday. This week, we have J.C. Masik III, and he is the editor and curator of Symptom of the Universe, a horror tribute to Black Sabbath. He is the author of the hit true crime novel, The Black Dahlia, and is the producer of the 2018 film, Cargo, as well as, oh, and and also the tie-in novel,
00:01:03
Speaker
Hey, JC, thanks so much for being here.
Guest's Formative Experience with Film
00:01:06
Speaker
hey Thanks for having me Wednesday. It's great to be here. Our pleasure. um Usually my intros are way, way better than that one. um You know, we we actually like to start ah by hearing the story of the first horror movie that you remember seeing. So let's hear it.
00:01:24
Speaker
I love telling the story, actually, because it is very much formative for my personality and everything. That movie was 1979's Alien. um Nice. so Yeah, it's a fantastic film. Obviously, it still stands up to the test of time. ah My parents were ah really all about quality as far as things went, and they they really were impressed by Alien when they saw it in a theater. And there were a few different things that were kind of formative for me when it came to that. The first one was that my parents were very strict about letting us watch R rated movies, but Alien was an exception. So they kind of put that in the same field as 2001 A Space Odyssey or Star Wars, that sort of thing.
00:02:14
Speaker
Okay. the And so it it was very much an experience for me to see something that would ordinarily be verboten, but was very much accepted in my family, ah which is kind of a surprise when you consider the other side of that coin, was that the movie was so viscerally frightening that my mother seeing it in the theater, she couldn't even stay in the theater. She had to go in the bathroom and and just kind of decompress.
Influence of 'Alien' on Storytelling
00:02:43
Speaker
Yeah it was it was so ah and it wasn't just like because you know it wasn't jump scares or anything like that it was the it was the suspense you know just really got to her and um as you probably know I've been a ah ah critic I've done a ah lot of of articles and you know interviews and things like that but a ton of of of literary criticism movie criticism
00:03:08
Speaker
And I believe that a big part of that was alien. And the reason is my mother, um you know, my parents are are very well educated people. My mother, from that experience, felt the need to completely demystify alien simply because it scared the hell out of her. She read every article. She read the novelization. She read every article she could get her hands on. She watched every documentary she could see. We're talking about way back in 1979 when we had to wait. There was no no right instant gratification. You had to wait for something to be available.
00:03:46
Speaker
And she would tell me as just you know the little kid that I was, oh, this is how they did that. They had John hurt. His head was sticking out of the table. The body was fake. you know And then she said, oh, this over here was made out of sugar and water and crystallized. And so it it looked very scary, but it was very innocent. And she just demystified the entire movie to where it wasn't scary for her anymore. ah Whereas my dad was simply looking at it as, well, this is a fine piece of art.
00:04:14
Speaker
And so these two, not really conflicting, but very different viewpoints of Alien ah were drilled into me at a very young age. and i was My parents were early adopters of VCR technology, and so we had yeah the first thing that we ever that they ever bought was Alien on Beta.
00:04:34
Speaker
Not even VHS. but but And we just watched the hell out of it. And they those two very conflicting viewpoints from when I was just very young. And again, I shouldn't say conflicting, but but very different sides of the coin. They really informed the way I looked at movies.
Impact on Career and Criticism
00:04:52
Speaker
And it was to the point that it It didn't take the enjoyment out of it it. Demystifying did not take the enjoyment out of it. It gave me a new level of enjoyment to where I could look at the special effects and know, OK, yeah, this is a movie. Yes, that is a guy in a suit, but this is why it works. And, you know, I could appreciate the story from my dad's point of view and I could appreciate the special effects and I could appreciate the demystification from my mom's point of view. And those things put together.
00:05:25
Speaker
really informed me as an, and as an adult to become, you know, an English major and, you know, critic and all these different things where you kind of dissect these things. And I am in the debt of really Scott and alien for the rest of my life, for those reasons. I hear that. I hear that.
00:05:45
Speaker
what What I remember about ah Alien because I saw Alien at the drive-in and and nice ah yeah the second film actually was Fulchi Zombie and I would have been that was 78 so I would have been about seven that summer that it came out and my mom was also pretty laissez-faire about what we were
Personal Media Influence
00:06:05
Speaker
allowed to watch. We could watch pretty much anything that wasn't, I think the the horror movie Mother's Day was the first one that she said, yeah, you guys probably shouldn't watch this. which If you've seen it, my God, i I'm still not old enough to watch that movie. I agree. but i was i'm ah I'm a little surprised your mother would let you watch Full T Zombie though.
00:06:24
Speaker
Well and the thing is my favorite favorite things in the world in terms of horror at that time were sharks and zombies So yeah but as you know, they they come together in such a wonderful way in that film But you also you mentioned those novelizations and man. I love them. What was that guy Alan Dean Foster? I think oh yeah and and I remember the the sequel because he he wrote the the novelizations for at least the first two. I don't know if he did them after that, but I remember years, years later when I met my husband, he had also read them as a teenager and we were picking out like specific lines in the book that we remember, which is so unusual.
00:07:09
Speaker
for That's a beautiful guy. That's kind of how I knew he was the right guy for me because we would remember stuff from childhood and remember it the same way, just weird media things, episodes of Tales from the Dark Side
70s and 80s Filmmaking Insights
00:07:23
Speaker
and stuff. nice but But Alien though, that that's a great first horror movie to remember for sure.
00:07:30
Speaker
um and And it sounds like it certainly sets you on a path not just to watching horror, but to understand like how the sausage is made. Which I think it's 70s and 80s are kind of when those kinds of documentaries ah started out because, you know, Savini was like talking about what he does and once Dawn of the Dead came out, everybody wanted to know how those effects happened.
00:07:55
Speaker
Exactly. And and that was there was a big trend at that time. you know Of course, we didn't have internet or anything like that. But there was a big trend at that time ah to explore a little bit more. Because it was the 70s were when that original a big group of of you know studios owned by moguls started to phase out. And we we had ah you know Coppola and Lucas and all these, you know and and ah most assuredly,
00:08:25
Speaker
You had fellows like like ah Ridley Scott and so many of these guys were kind of taking the forefront and they were they were the new auteurs and they wanted to say, yeah, this is how we did this.
Filmmakers' Transparency
00:08:40
Speaker
We did some amazing things by trying this out and this out. And so you had, for example,
00:08:45
Speaker
a documentary called Bald about THX 1138. It was sanctioned by Francis Ford Coppola who produced it for Lucas. Before documentaries like that, the whole point was to keep viewers in the dark. It just wasn't something many people talked about.
00:09:08
Speaker
yeah well I know Hitchcock felt that way. He wanted to talk about like the the thematic elements of what he was trying to do, but he did not want to talk about the special effects themselves or what was actually going down the drain in the in the shower scene or you know how he got the birds to do that. like he didn't He didn't want to give up those secrets.
00:09:30
Speaker
wait Exactly. and it's it's ah It's interesting because I wouldn't say that i I disagree with that necessarily because you pointed out that it can be a valuable coping mechanism. like If you find the film so scary that you need to get up and leave the room, that yeah, it's it's a good idea to to parse exactly how that happened and and how it's scaring you.
00:09:54
Speaker
Definitely. and um his comfort call oh go ahead I was just going to say Hitchcock was a character himself. Oh, right. You know, and so he did so many things that were, uh, intended simply to be entertaining that that he would talk about, you know, for example, with rope.
00:10:13
Speaker
there's actually a prequel to Rope, which is the preview that the actual trailer to Rope is not in the movie at all. it's None of that is in the movie. It's actually what happened right before the strangulation. And you know all of these things that he wanted to do were different for for his age. And you're right, he did not want to to reveal how he did anything because his whole point was to mystify.
00:10:40
Speaker
Well, and as much as I want to respect that as an artist, now that we know more about Hitchcock behind the scenes, like if Hitchcock was alive today, even if those innovations hadn't happened, he probably would have been what the conservatives call canceled.
Handling Slander in Writing Industry
00:10:55
Speaker
Because, it well, if people like, you know, Tippi Hedren and Janet Lee actually went public with how they were treated by him,
00:11:03
Speaker
he would not have been working anymore. People would not have funded him. You you can be ah a brilliant artist and still be a fucking asshole, I guess, which um actually takes me to my next point. You and I actually arranged this interview.
00:11:17
Speaker
and Because I had an issue with someone in the community, I was slandered um by someone that I had been in a business relationship with. And it was very upsetting, you know, because the person in question, we're not going to say their name, but it's someone who's been in the industry for at least 20 years longer than I have.
00:11:37
Speaker
you know And I am by no means a well-known writer. people the only The main reason people know me is because of my day job, which is sex writing. And because people remember my name because it's weird. So when I had this experience, I was really concerned that this person would be believed over me. um Because what they said was absolute slander. It was a ah gross misrepresentation of a communication between the two of us.
00:12:06
Speaker
and It turned out that like over a dozen people reached out to me just the first day to say, are you talking about so-and-so? So-and-so is well known for that. so like What was your experience with ah with this person? um Well, it's interesting because we I think we you and I have a few of the same phrases that we use a few times is that, yeah I wish I had been warned yeah and also it's interesting that that we all seem to have a very similar story with this this version is that they they started out very interesting and ah friendly and easy to get along with and you know any of the the red flags that we may have heard or seen ah were relatively easy to ignore and then on a very rapid scale things started to change and
00:13:03
Speaker
One of the things that had happened for me is that I was collaborating with this person. um And I think that to an extent, that's by design. It was a situation where he would think, oh, well, this guy's in so deep now. There's no way that this is going to go south, and I can act however I want to act. And me, on the other hand, was thinking, man, this is getting a little weird. I got to not say anything.
00:13:34
Speaker
personal about myself. And it got to the point where I realized at some point, this person is going to turn on me. ah And I just want to get our collaborations done and before that happens.
Industry Dynamics and Reputation
00:13:49
Speaker
Well, I did not get those collaborations done before it happened. It was ah one day, a complete surprise, complete about face.
00:13:58
Speaker
And suddenly I was ah an arch villain who was ah part of a massive conspiracy to ruin his life um that, you know, I was working with his enemies and all kinds of yes paranoid things. And it was, it's such a, it was such a strange thing that I finally just said, look, ah you know what?
00:14:25
Speaker
You go do your thing. I'll go do my thing. I'm going to obviously I can't publish anything that that we wrote together, but I'm, you know, anything that that is a work in progress that we did not overlap on. You know, you take your stuff. I'll take my stuff and let's sever ties because i don't I don't appreciate the controlling nature of some people. I don't think anybody should get to tell Wednesday who she can be friends with. Nobody should get to tell me who they can work with, who I can work with. And some people simply thrive on drama and sympathy. And it's a very strange, you know, combination there.
00:15:13
Speaker
But you get people who they they want drama, they want strife, and then they want to use that to show other people, hey, everybody's mean to me. Take care of me. Yeah. But the the I think that that you were going to allude to this, or are already maybe have, but other people see what people like that are about.
00:15:40
Speaker
And no amount of actual slander or, you know, libel or just talking, you know, childlessly talking behind people's back will convince them because they consider the source. Smart people consider the source. And when you've got one person who has a problem with everybody, then you got to start thinking maybe that person's the problem. Yep. And that was actually something that that I had said because if If someone makes a request from me you know in in a business context, whenever possible, I want to be Sally get along. you know I want to just do the thing and have it work out. um And in this situation, I woke up on a Sunday morning to two emails that were purportedly from legal representation. I don't know how many how many lawyers you know, but Sunday morning is not their busy time.
00:16:39
Speaker
um And, and like making demands, like actual, like, this is what you're going to do. And i and that really just. brings up like you know childhood wetness that that was bullied and but and pushed around and and just saying, no, no, you're not gonna tell me what to do. I'm sorry, we're not buddies anymore, but you don't get to like bark orders at me and expect me to do it. And I have never in my life told someone, come back with a court order, but I did in this case. like Really? You think you're gonna make me do something, sir? That's not, no.
00:17:14
Speaker
um It's not your personality. it's not you're You're not somebody who's gonna lie down and take that. And I think that that was really why I reached out. I mean, we you and I already knew each other. We'd had some some ah interaction. This was not how we met. But I reached out at that point and i said I said, look, so many of us have this same story. You are correct when you believe that this is this is him.
00:17:38
Speaker
writing as if you know trying to sound like a lawyer to intimidate you. It's not a lawyer. This is just ah an act and it's part of the whole bullying slash sympathy thing. And that's how you and I got on that subject, even though we already knew each other that that was something I wanted to make sure that, you know, yeah, remain defiant because you're not being bullied here by the law. You're being bullied here by a bully.
00:18:07
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and you know, my favorite Avenger is Captain America because i I don't like bullies and I cry every time he jumps on the dummy grenade every time because selfless acts of bravery, man, that's
Art vs. Artist Debate
00:18:22
Speaker
my kryptonite. I just, I can't, but, um, the thing is that like writers tend to be like,
00:18:30
Speaker
moody and and difficult and and you know you know tough just tough to get along with sometimes. we're like you know People use the word eccentric. um But the thing is that like I thought that by looking at someone's work you know as a submission for for the magazine, and that the professional thing to do is to disregard any personal feelings that I might have for the author and focus just on the work.
00:19:00
Speaker
And in hindsight, I wonder if that's not a mistake because in real life, when I find out that someone whose work I love turns out to be not a great person, you know, I mean, how many people through their copies of Ender's game and the fucking trash after finding out, you know, what kind of person or some Scott card is, or, you know, all this, this business with Neil Gaiman, like, Oh, damn, it really, even Dave Grohl.
00:19:28
Speaker
It's like, yeah, okay, you're ah you're a rock and roll guy and everything, but you're also an old man. Grow the fuck up. and and you know yeah but So what is your your philosophy on finding that line? Well, ah first of all, I love that question. As soon as I read that from you, yeah I thought that this is a step beyond the usual questions we have on that sort of thing. And it does kind of go back to what we talked about with Hitchcock.
00:19:57
Speaker
ah So if we were in a situation where Hitchcock was current, which, okay, Hitchcock is timeless, but you know what I mean? If it was happening right now and there was the threat of cancellation or something, what would we do? Well, I probably would not put any money into hitchbook Hitchcock's pocket. I probably wouldn't do anything that would be encouraging. So on the subject of that, I you know i say to myself, first of all, do I want my name attached to that person's name in any way? And the answer is no, because i I see the toxicity that comes with that. And I don't mean toxicity in the usual kind of you know pop culture way, oh, you're being so toxic right now. I mean, no, there is a certain amount of career and personality toxicity in a very real way that comes from um attitudes like that.
00:20:50
Speaker
So no, I would not want to have my name ah right next to that person's name on, say, a book cover. The other thing is that, you know, I can look at that and say, at some point, this translates into money.
Reputation's Influence on Editorial Decisions
00:21:06
Speaker
you know, be it a lot or a little bit. Yeah, we do a lot in this industry for charity. That's ah the wonderful thing. But, ah you know, name recognition and clout, that all comes back to influence and that comes back to money in some way. Do I want to assist in in name recognition? Do I want to assist in clout, power, money for this person? The answer is no, I really don't.
00:21:34
Speaker
And so, and I think that there's there's another side of that, which is is maybe not exactly what you're going for is that, you know, how do we separate the artist from the work, even if they're really good, you know, should I give someone like if if so I'm in a collection recently that the great Ramsey Campbell is also in.
00:21:57
Speaker
You know, yeah do I think that somebody is going to say, Oh, JC, uh, over here is, I've got to read him first because I'm going to be, you know, definitely looking at his before Ramsey Campbell. Well, no, JC is okay. But Ramsey Campbell has been doing this for well over 50 years and he's a legend. Um, you know, so ideally, yes, we would treat everybody exactly the same.
00:22:23
Speaker
But, you know, if if I were to get a submission from Ramsey Campbell, ah I would love to say I would just put him in the pile under, you know, John Bryan over here, whoever, you know, the just starting out person may be. But let's face it, I know the name Ramsey Campbell, I'm probably going to pick that up and give that a little more consideration. And it's just like the same kind of clout we were talking about.
00:22:51
Speaker
if somebody recognizes my name because we've worked together before, ah they're more likely going to read past the first four paragraphs and just see, okay, where is the story going? Whereas someone who's completely not recognized, they might stick with the rule and say, okay, I'm four paragraphs into a short story. This is not grabbing me. I got to put this down.
00:23:12
Speaker
So it's just a fact of of the way it is. And so I think for for the there's a good side of that is that, yeah, you you can get a little bit more consideration. That doesn't mean you're in. I can still get rejections any time, even though, ah you know, there are a lot of editors who know me now. And that's good because that means I've got to keep pushing myself. On the other side of things, I can't give someone special consideration because I know they're going to be a jerk.
00:23:41
Speaker
When I know somebody out there is is problematic, um am I gonna let that influence my acceptance of them? Well, yeah, I'm not gonna give them extra consideration. ah And at the same time, do I want my name associated with them at all? And I think the answer is, you know just from a safety standpoint, we've got to watch who we put our names next to.
Navigating Online Interactions
00:24:11
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, for better or worse, certainly. Um, it's interesting that you mentioned Ramsey Campbell, cause I have a Ramsey Campbell story and I have to tell it because, and it's just, it's just a Facebook thing. You know, when I saw that Ramsey Campbell had a Facebook, I was super stoked. Right. So I added him and, uh, you know, I don't think he, he hadn't added me back and some time went by and I didn't really think about it. And then one day.
00:24:36
Speaker
I get a ah Facebook messenger message from someone claiming to be ram Ramsey Campbell. and I'm like, well, I'm nowhere near important enough to be actually hearing from Ramsey Campbell. so I was like, look, asshole, it's not cool of you to pretend to be Ramsey Campbell and try to scam people.
00:24:53
Speaker
Well, it turns out Ramsay Campbell actually vets everyone before he adds them. And so he was like, Oh, um well, yeah, you you sent me a ah friend request. So I was just checking to see if you're real, which like, you know, my name is weird. So sometimes people do like to verify that I'm a person who exists. So yeah, so the first conversation I ever had with Ramsay Campbell is me calling him an asshole for impersonating himself.
00:25:19
Speaker
Whoops. But the good news is we're Facebook friends now. yeah And it was the same with me. I didn't have that exact same story, but I you know had to explain myself before he got to me is that I'd sent him a friend request, and then we just happened to be both commenting on the same thing. And I said, oh, hey, Ramsey, I sent your request. We're in this book together. ah you know I'd love it if you accepted me. And he responded, absolutely. And then he sent me a welcome message. Uh, but if it had been the other way around, I might've said the exact same thing. It's like, Oh yeah, right. Yeah. Who's going to message me next? Stephen King. Right. Oh, I can't talk right now. Prennieston Ellis needs my opinion on something. Well, that's, yeah, it's funny. Cause, uh, I was actually in an anthology with Jack Ketchum.
00:26:14
Speaker
and was thinking, oh my gosh, I'm going to reach out to him. because that's you know we we have ah He had stuff at Crossroads Press and I have stuff at Crossroads Press. so i Long story short, I was too cowardly to ever really reach out to Jack Ketchum on my own. and Obviously, I've missed my chance now because he's no longer with us.
00:26:35
Speaker
Yeah. um Let that be a lesson to everyone. If you're ever tempted to reach out to an author for reasons that the author will probably like, do it. Don't hesitate because i I've never heard of an author being irritated because someone reached out to talk about their work. I agree. I agree.
00:26:57
Speaker
Maybe if if you are at at Stephen King level, it gets a little tired to hear like, oh my god, I wanted to be a writer because of you. yeah It could be. I will say and this is a personal experience of mine. When I met Dean Kuntz, Stephen King was probably my first real horror, you know, title when it came to novels. ah And this is very much still on your same point. I'm not changing the subject here. But when I met, I knew that I was going to meet Dean coops and i knew that this this was gonna be the book signing and he was gonna have a million people you know what i think there were at least a few hundred people there. I knew i couldn't talk his ear off and so i wrote him a handwritten letter and i said mr coops you know you you are.
00:27:46
Speaker
You really opened my eyes to other authors. Stephen King was my the only one I wanted to read until you came along. And that's all I said. I said, I wrote you a letter. Here you go. And he he took it and he said to me, thank you. If it's OK with you, ill I'm going to need to read this later. Very polite. Yeah, definitely. You've got a ton of people here. And guess what? Not only did he read it, he wrote me back.
00:28:10
Speaker
ah by a post, and and he said he said wonderful things, and it was so good to to have that experience. So the writers out there, when youre when you want to talk to one of these greats, maybe just write some of these things down, hand it to them, and they might appreciate that so much more because you're not wasting their time. You're giving them something for when they do have time.
Celebrity Behavior and Public Perception
00:28:37
Speaker
When I was a kid in the seventies, that used to be kind of popular. You would go to the library and get addresses because they were just there. Like librarians would have a list. So I have at my parents' house, I have a letter like, and they were kind of stock form letters, but I have one from Charles Schultz. I have one from Judy Bloom and one from ah Ted Geisel and then one from, uh, the, uh,
00:29:05
Speaker
Oh, the Donald J. Sobel, the guy who wrote Encyclopedia Brown. Oh, sweet. Because man, I loved Encyclopedia Brown. They made me feel so smart when I was a kid. oh Those are fun and because I had like this weird combination of low self-esteem and high intellectual vanity. So I needed to like feel smart all the time. And that's.
00:29:27
Speaker
And that's something that I think we kind of lose that with social media because now we have easy access to someone. Like it was a big deal to get someone's address and take it home with you and sit down and think about what you're going to write in a letter, you know, and now some of the best art artists in the world, like Margaret Atwood has a Twitter and people are just calling her a bitch on it because if they don't like the show. that was made And that's, to me, that's just so like foreign, like that concept. Like ill I'll reveal, I have always had terrible taste in men and terrible taste in celebrities. So when I was a little kid, I had a crush on Scott Baio. Oh my gosh. Right? Right? um Well, please, that's even before we get into all this Don Jr. bullshit. But yeah, we didn't but we didn't know what we know now. Well, right. Exactly. and
00:30:20
Speaker
it did Well, yeah, in hindsight, I'm very lucky that I did not have occasion to be around, you know, anyway. But but that's the thing that it was such a a big deal to like the idea that someone would get your letter and that maybe they would sit there and read it and and like take in your your words. Like that's so huge. And because celebrities were so much more mystified you know, or mystified, like we we just didn't have the access that we do now. And now if a celebrity makes me angry, like I just told Russell, where I had to go fuck himself yesterday. And yeah I don't know that he he took my advice to to heart, but I hope so, because actually he that he is such a quintessential example of like, oh, I got caught being a monster. So I'm going to pretend I love Jesus now.
00:31:13
Speaker
And like like Trump's, it's like, I'm mad that that's happening, but I can't fucking stand it that people are falling for it. thats that's unbelievable It's That's the part that makes me super angry. you know It's like, okay, I expect that every once in a while society is going to give us a Hannibal Lecter or a Jason Voorhees, and I don't expect people to necessarily be their fan club in real life when someone says, hey, if I get into office, I'm going to do a whole bunch of damage and hurt a whole bunch of people.
00:31:46
Speaker
And so when people say, hey, I don't like those people you want to hurt, I'm going to vote for you, even to my own detriment.
Anthology Project and Creative Process
00:31:54
Speaker
But I certainly don't want to get off on a political rant here because that'll just suck. And I can't imagine anybody listening to this show doesn't already know how I feel about the issues.
00:32:04
Speaker
I agree. And the thing is I, you and I are politically aligned. And so I will simply leave it at that is that, yes, I do agree with you that everything you said is 100% my feeling too. And it's like, you want this again, but okay. So, uh, horror tribute to black Sabbath. Now black Sabbath seems like a particularly good band to do a horror tribute to. I know there've been a couple of, of band tribute.
00:32:33
Speaker
horror anthologies recently. I wasn't able to submit to them. I think the Alice Cooper one was happening just as I was getting sick. And then there was a Jethro Tull one that I just wasn't wasn't caught up enough with my own stuff to submit to. Black Sabbath, very intriguing. There's a ah there's an arc, right? Yeah, yeah. So I got to say, I'm extremely proud of this. It came out of months of of success. And the fact that it's out now just feels wonderful.
00:33:04
Speaker
I'm a huge Black Sabbath fan. There are, you know, I'm a music fan in general. I hesitate to say, oh, I'm a heavy metal guy necessarily. It's just that I love music in general and and rock and roll very much. And there are a few bands that I completely have grown out of. And there's a couple of them that it's interesting is that As an adult, I'm more into Black Sabbath and Judas Priest than I was when I was a teenager. My my appreciation for them has only grown as I've aged and I think that's a testament to their artistry.
00:33:39
Speaker
And so this kind of project just appealed to me so much. And ah you know i've I'm pretty experienced as ah as a writer and an editor. And so putting this together has been really good. And and it's it's been beneficial for me just to challenge myself to edit some of these wonderful writers. And as far as what we've gotten, what's what's actually in the anthology, there's such a good cross-section there of different influences. So we'll have some things that are just straight up psychological. ah We'll have some things that are science fiction horror. We have some things that are just very much body horror, some bloody horror there. ah We've got some monster stuff. The rule that I put forth very early on, a couple of things is number one, I wanted everything to be covered from the first album to the most recent album, as long as it had new material.
00:34:37
Speaker
So if we have a live album like Reunion that had a couple of new tracks on it, we got to cover at least one of those tracks. If we have a compilation album like the Dio Years, we've got to cover at least one of those tracks that that is new. the other one is that i The other rule is that I did not want to have adaptations of songs.
00:35:01
Speaker
Anyone can listen to the story of Iron Man and say, you know what? ah This is about a time traveler. He gets turned into metal and eventually he he fights back against the people who rejected him that he saved before. We've heard that song. We know that story. It's why we love it. We don't need someone to just transcribe the lyrics. What we want here is something very much inspired by. how does this these lyrics How do the music and the lyrics make you feel?
00:35:32
Speaker
And that's what I got. So when I come along and I get something um like a hard road ah is ah something from ah one of their one of the last Aussie albums. And this song is about a traveling DJ radio station going across a desolate censorship covered ah you know, future desolate, you know, dystopia where free media is outlawed. And the only way to get these things across is by old style radio DJing from a camper, you know, wow sort of, yeah, sort of a podcast style. You're not going to find that in the song, a hard road, but a hard road is very much what led to this beautiful interpretation thereof.
Music's Influence on Art Forms
00:36:27
Speaker
ah when you get a song like The Wizard from the first Sabbath album we have David Tamarin wrote a sort of a Pied Piper story about killer rats in an orphanage you know in a correctional facility that go after you know bad people and it's one of these things that is just very surprising because It's not so much that the song covers that, it's that that's the way it made him feel. And I tried to do the same thing with the contributions I did, is to say, okay, what is it about this song, Ear in the Wall, but you know, from the Dio years? It's a relatively obscure song. How do I tell this story and make it make sense? ah And not just say, okay, here are the lyrics. It's like, so I wrote a sort of a virtual reality story
00:37:23
Speaker
And I think I just gave a major spoiler there, so sorry. But if you buy the book, you'll see what I mean. it's It's very much these songs. You could see them in the lyrics. You can see them in some of these things. Like, for example, A Symptom of the Universe ah by by Jason Fry. Jason Fry created this wonderful story inspired by Symptom of the Universe that begins in ancient Egypt and has to do with the origin of vampirism.
00:37:53
Speaker
Wow. And it goes right up to the modern day. And it's like, you listen to the to lyrics of symptom of the universe and you don't find that. But once you read that story and you go back and you listen to the lyrics of symptom of the universe, you can look and say, oh my God, Jason Fry, you're in my head. This fits perfectly. you know So there's so many stories in there. There are 44 whole stories in there. Every one of them is something to be proud of. Not a single one of them is just okay I took the lyrics and I shoved them in or I took this song and I said okay let's do a literal adaptation of it we have none of that we have inspiration yeah stories inspired by these great songs that you can still feel the music coming right through them it's a beautiful thing
00:38:42
Speaker
Well, it's such a cool concept because in in particular, like the thing about music is that there's so much crossover between like music influences so many art forms because people listen to music while they read. We listen to music while we write. Visual artists listen to music. When you're making movies, you're always thinking about the music and how it carries things through.
00:39:06
Speaker
so And it's an interesting thing for me because I experience music fairly viscerally because it's the only art form that I have put no real effort into trying to conquer. You know, I've dabbled in everything else, but I'm not mathy. But it's an well, and the thing about music is that it's not just music because anything with lyrics. So that also involves like poetry.
00:39:29
Speaker
So i I love the idea of of just like deconstructing that and saying, you know, this song is how this makes me feel, or this is what the image that it it conjures for me. And yeah, sometimes that's really going to resonate with a lot of readers. And sometimes it's just going to take people in a different direction. Like, my God, it that never occurred to me. But it makes so much sense. And I want to point out on the same subject that you just said there about the poetry that comes in lyrics,
00:39:59
Speaker
One of my submissions surprised the hell out of me. Black Sabbath has always, ah at least especially toward the beginning, but I think going most of the way through their career, they've had the occasional instrumental song.
00:40:14
Speaker
And one of the early oh stories that was submitted was from the great Reese Hughes, ah who is an excellent writer in the UK. He travels around quite a bit. He's a wonderful writer and he's done so many good things. ah He actually wrote a story inspired by Laguna Sunrise, which is a completely instrumental Black Sabbath track. And you think,
00:40:39
Speaker
How can that be possible? How are you writing a story inspired by that? But it's exactly what you said. It's the feel of that music. It's the the inspiration that comes. How does this make me feel? And he was able to he actually wrote two stories for us. One of them is inspired by a song with lyrics, but to have something from Laguna Sunrise, it's just striking.
00:41:04
Speaker
And he created a wonderful story and you can feel it when you go back and you listen to Laguna sunrise after having read that story you feel that's where that came from. I get it. I'm right there with Reese. He's a genius.
00:41:19
Speaker
Wow. Now you know what needs to happen, right? What needs to happen is there needs to be an audio release that compiles the songs from the anthology and and presents them in the order that they appear.
Collaborative Creativity and NaNoWriMo
00:41:32
Speaker
so that That's a great idea. right oh I went to a liberal arts college.
00:41:41
Speaker
And one of the things that they focus on, obviously, are the humanities. But part of it is that that like translate things into different mediums. Paint a picture and tell me what Beethoven's Fifth Symphony looks like to you, that sort of thing. So I hope that some... Well, remember... ah Well, remember, but Fantasia, Disney's Fantasia?
00:42:06
Speaker
Absolutely, yes. they They talk in the beginning how what they were hoping to do was to start a trend of all the big animators. And I think Looney Tunes stepped up and tried to match them a little bit, but it didn't really catch on. And that's one of those things, you know these these musical collections that are tribute collections.
00:42:29
Speaker
Those need to catch on. We need to do more of those. We need to do so many of them that people have to form new bands so that we have reasons to do them. OK. Amen. I i just i've I was so bummed because I had great ideas for like some of those anthologies. I had a whole ballot of Dwight Fry thing that I was working on. Right. And because I figured nobody would pick that one. And it's one of the craziest ones.
00:42:54
Speaker
And then i has it's got that horror movie connection right there. You got to yeah love your yeah movie connection to Dwight Fry. Go ahead. Totally, totally. And then ah there was another one that was ah what was it? It was oh, it was for the Jethro Tull one, because I had this thing about a bard that a bard named Anders, who was like making all this music, but a witch wanted his music. So she kidnapped him. And it was a whole thing. And basically how it ended up was that Anders ah left his music to his children and so there was a guy named named Anderson anderson right exactly who just like you know went around with his flute playing tunes. I definitely have got to read that now and and I want to tell you
00:43:40
Speaker
On that subject, and and I really want to stick with this for just a minute. I know we have other subjects to cover, but ah what you're saying is I so much agree with you about doing more of these. And one of the things that I promised the writers in my, in this group, you know, in in the Black Sabbath book, this is going to be a no drama group. This is our book. This is not my book. This is not an ego trip. Okay. This is all of us together.
00:44:07
Speaker
And so i said I said to these guys recently, I said, look, we're all inspired here. There are going to be more of these coming. And I'm going to do some of them. But I don't have to drive the bus on every one of these. If you guys are going to edit, curate your own thing,
00:44:27
Speaker
Please do because I'm going to submit to you. My ego is not so big that I think I have to be the one to do this. I don't. I want to be a part of what's happening. I don't need to be the pilot in every case. And so we have, ah you know, Bert Edens who did that Black Sabbath. I'm sorry, that Alice Cooper book that you mentioned. He's doing an upcoming ah Blue Oyster Cult.
00:44:50
Speaker
What? Yes, yes. And I highly recommend that you submit to that. but And submission's open on November 1st of 2024. So feel free to keep that in mind. It's gonna be great. I've already got a story written, but obviously not submitted yet. And then we've got ah Tom Herb, who is another writer for the Black Savage book. He is gonna be doing a an 80s medal compilation.
00:45:18
Speaker
of different stories inspired by 80s metal, and that it it's not limited to one band. And so some of these things, they're kind of expanding from from these you know band-specific ones to where ideas like yours, this Jethro Tull idea, which you know just hearing what you you presented there sounds excellent. I'd love to read that.
00:45:42
Speaker
um they can be incorporated. The Dwight Fry can be incorporated into these, you know, less banned specific ones. And then, of course, you know, the the Blue Easter Cult one is going to be incredible. And so that's what I think is very important about this is let's keep this going. And nobody owns this concept.
00:46:03
Speaker
Nobody owns the concept of doing tributes to rock bands through stories. Let's keep this going. I don't need to be the only one to do it. You know, Burt Edens doesn't have to be the only one to do it. I can submit to Burt. Burt can submit to me. We can both submit to Tom Herb. We can both submit to Wednesday and Lee Friday. You know, it's right let's just do it. Exactly what you said. Let's keep it going.
00:46:28
Speaker
Well, and it's an interesting thing that you bring up because you know, I have the magazine, we do sometimes hilarious horror and it's a quarterly, we come out four times a year. And my assumption because I am Jack Spratt, nobody is that I was going to get work from people that I would be publishing for the first or second time, like people that are very, very new in the industry.
00:46:50
Speaker
And it turns out that's not really what happens because I'm a, I'm a paying market and I have a robust, uh, Facebook, uh, friend, you know, list or whatever. I'm getting stuff from people that are like, wait, wait a minute. I've read your books, like your actual books. And now you're sending me a story. Like it's so fun. Um, but, uh, yeah, I lost my trade of thought on that, but.
00:47:19
Speaker
Well, it's about like who all can join of these great ideas. like Exactly. And then the community itself isn't like I had always envisioned the community the like the writing community as a hierarchy. And there are people that have been here for a long time. And then there's new people that are kind of working their way up. But the thing is, no one has said to me like no big writer that I've ever contacted has said, I don't know who the hell you are.
00:47:45
Speaker
Everybody is just like, Hey, how are you doing? Oh, you write books. That's great. yeah And like, overwhelmingly, people are encouraging people understand where you you come from, like where you've been, and you know, this thing with a nano rhymo is making people really reach out to each other and connect about like, I'll tell you, the, the anniversary of my first nano rhymo is this year. My my first nano rhymo was was 2004.
00:48:15
Speaker
I had been working in an independent film theater and it shut down suddenly with no notice, okay? And so we had no jobs and I was like, all right, you know what? I've always meant to sit down and write a novel. I never did it. I was one of those people. Like I started stuff and I didn't finish it. Turns out I have ADD. um So I heard about the Nano and I sat down and did it and I finished it. Like my first time out, I made the 50K or whatever. I spent another year and a half editing it.
00:48:44
Speaker
and Then I started submitting to houses and then I got it published. so It was a very big deal and I owe a lot to NaNoWriMo. So finding out that they basically sold out their vision so that they could take money from AI companies, um gross.
AI's Impact on Writing and Art
00:49:01
Speaker
yes It's so disappointing. and It was a heartening, I think, to see the literary community pretty much rise as one to say, no, F that. No, no we're not doing that. It's disgusting.
00:49:14
Speaker
It's completely disgusting. I agree with you 100% about AI and at the same time on the positive note of what you said some of these things like NaNoWriMo and just really just just taking up ah some some ah offers to submit. Maybe in a ah field you didn't expect they can It can lead to so much. It can lead to challenging yourself as a writer because you're never done learning. no Anybody who thinks they're done learning is probably hasn't really started learning. you know So when somebody says, hey, can you think you can do this in 500 words? It's like, well, no, I can't do this in 500 words, but maybe I can try.
00:49:59
Speaker
ah Maybe that's one of those things that that I can give this a shot because I got to challenge myself as a writer. And AI is never going to do that. So when you put these things out.
00:50:12
Speaker
yeah The thing is, it's i mean the arts are called the humanities. They come from humans. It's a way of describing the human experience. like That's the whole purpose of you know not just writing, but like your visual arts, your music, you know filmmaking, like those are all things that we use to express how it feels to be human. and Yeah, it's it's neat that machines can you know impersonate that to some degree, that it's like Sudoku with words or whatever. but
00:50:43
Speaker
Like I, I just lost my main day job, like my steady source of income. Um, they, they let the entire staff go because they've decided that porn and, and whatever content they need can be AI. And that's what they're doing now. Like what, what I did was, you know, like part of like a prestige product project where yeah you write about sex and you know, we review lots of toys and stuff like that, but, but yeah, long story short, I lost my job to AI.
00:51:12
Speaker
And now when I look for a job, a good 30% of the jobs that are available for writers are training AI. and And that's, it's horrible. and And if I could just say, and I don't want to pigeonhole this because the whole thing is troublesome. The whole thing is troublesome. But what you're describing there ah is is emotion and physical feeling.
00:51:39
Speaker
and, uh, thrill. And, you know, and I realized thrill, okay, that can be considered to be emotion, but you're talking about erotica in a way that is, uh, something that, that a machine is never going to relate to. So of anything,
00:51:58
Speaker
We should not be having computers right for us. It's not humanities. Exactly what you said. It's not that at all. It's horrible to even think about that. But when you're talking about emotion and romance and, and you know, erotica, how in the world could anybody think that an AI is going to ever be able to do that as well as a thinking, feeling, emotional, romantic person?
00:52:24
Speaker
Right. I mean, like I don't write erotico per se, like my sex writing is more like a a journalistic bent, but it's funny and it's personal. You know, like the thing about an AI algorithm is that it's never loved anyone. It's never been frightened. You know, nothing has ever made it afraid.
00:52:43
Speaker
that they they don't, you know, they don't get angry. Like they don't have ah religious experiences. Like the main things that inspire historically they that inspire the best art. Like I'm not a God person. I don't really do that. But you cannot deny from the Renaissance that beautiful, majestic things have inspired, you know, have been inspired by religion.
00:53:11
Speaker
or or love or you know whatever. So it seems like farming that out to someone who hasn't done it before is going to be about as effective as having insurance executives making medical decisions. It's not effective. The people that it helps are not the people who need the thing. It's a perfect analogy because it's really just it's missing the entire point. And I've never heard it. and And what you said I think could very well have been said a million times and maybe I've heard it and it just didn't register. But I will, I want to give you credit because I don't think I've ever heard it quite put as beautifully as you did saying, arts are the humanities. This is about being human. And you saying it like that, it just really hits home for me. And I could not agree with you more.
00:54:02
Speaker
Well, it can be difficult to quantify why exactly AI content doesn't work because visually it's like, okay, well, Trump would never go to a church and he doesn't have six fingers. So, you know, clearly AI, but with literature, it can be more difficult because if you ask AI to write a story, it can give you something that like you might want to actually read.
00:54:28
Speaker
You know, it's it's grammatically competent. It has a character. There's an arc and a theme, but there's not. It's not saying anything. It's not. it It isn't like I can't read anything without thinking about what the author is trying to tell me. That's why I don't like video games with stories, because the way that it ends up is supposed to be based on what the artist is trying to convey.
00:54:53
Speaker
And if the way it ends up happens on whether or not I can use this remote to get that guy to climb a ladder before the helicopter leaves, then that's not... you know i I don't appreciate any sort of thematic element to that.
00:55:08
Speaker
Exactly. and And I think that if you go back to Star Trek The Next Generation, ah you know, I don't want to completely nerd out here. But I think that that show handled that in a very interesting way is that everybody tends to like Data. Okay, Data is a great character. He's very interesting. There is an episode where he starts to read his own poetry. And it's you don't hear it and just immediately cringe. It's not you know done for laughs but he says he he asked you know his friend Jordy after he's read is it did it provoke an emotional response and the answer is no it's like you can competently write rhyme and meter but that emotional response that he was looking for could not come from a machine and it doesn't come from a machine in our real life either and that's no offense to data i think they told the story great but uh
00:56:08
Speaker
I really think that before we even really knew AI as a real thing. It was all science fiction, which of course is a science fiction show, but ah they were already looking at the difference, saying, no, this is not poetry. This is constructed Ryman meter and there is a difference. Which is interesting because later there is an episode where someone wants to take possession of of data for study and Picard has to make the point that like no this is a member of my crew this is a sentient human being and they have to go through the whole thing because there's also the episode where data like a woman falls in love with data
00:56:49
Speaker
yes And he's he's into it. He's like, sure, we can we can date, we can hang out and have a relationship. And where it eventually falters is that she needs him to feel something and he can't.
00:57:02
Speaker
Right. right and it's It really just just brings home the whole like, it's unspoken because if you ask someone, what are you looking for in a partner, you might describe someone very much like Data. He doesn't get mad. He's pleasant and friendly. He's fun to be with. He can converse on a kajillion different topics. You know, like all the pieces are there.
00:57:27
Speaker
But you you have to feel it. like That's what a romantic relationship is. And if you don't feel it, if it's not there, you know and and it's the same thing with art. like You could recognize, yes, this is a technically proficient story. It's told well. The use of language is competent. But if you don't feel anything, it might as well be a textbook. like Why am I spending my time on this if it doesn't make me feel stuff? Right. And I think that that they also, I think that it 100% what you're saying. At the same time, I think the thing with data, you're right, measure of a man episode, they do talk about, yes, this is, he is a thinking thinking creature, he makes his own decisions, he needs to be considered ah to be
00:58:10
Speaker
a living being and I 100% support that and the difference is we're not talking about art in those cases, we're not talking about relationship in those cases, we're saying okay this is a chance for you to grow and you could continue to grow and who knows maybe you'll get there and eventually he does in you know the the movies but ah it It is exactly what you said, is that yeah, these things from different perspectives can tell us different things, teach us different things, but at the same time, it still has to be the humanities.
Exploring Human Emotions through Storytelling
00:58:45
Speaker
Now, the interesting thing about that is that Battlestar Galactica, the more recent one, takes a very different tack on that. And one of the things that they explore that I find really interesting is that, um you know, all the different, what is it, the six, you know, the blonde chick? Because there's that time where there's the blonde Cylon on the Pegasus, and when they find out that she's a Cylon,
00:59:11
Speaker
they don't treat her very well. It's basically the the kinds of things that you would be charged you know war for war crimes if you if you did them, like different kinds of... they worse the assaults And And the thing is that the other side of the issue, which it doesn't pertain to art necessarily, but just in terms of basic humanity, is that they had justified, well, that's not a person, so it doesn't matter how we treat it.
00:59:37
Speaker
Right. but But as humans, the way that we treat other things, I mean, saying it's just a Cylon is often like it it comes across the same way as when people say, well, it's just a dog. It's just a horse. It's just you know whatever. It's not a person. So it doesn't matter. Well, guess what? The way that we treat things says so something about us as well as, you know, however we're we're treating in a way.
01:00:06
Speaker
So, and I think that in a different direction, you're actually have and um I know you know this, but you've definitely hit on something that I think is ah the core of this is that yes, when we look at.
01:00:19
Speaker
ah the different ways you can look at data in Star Trek, the different way you can look at the silons in Battlestar Galactica, and the fact that the same show or shows can do it these different ways, can make these completely different points, and they're all salient, they all hit us hard. We can see this, we can see, yes, okay, Data, he does reach the measure of a man. Okay, yes, he would not be an ideal husband.
01:00:45
Speaker
Okay, yes, you know, he could even be good in bed, right? ah Tasha Yar, you know, ah they have their relationship, but it he doesn't pass that emotional test. And the same thing, the silons, it's going to be almost the exact opposite, but make similar points. Is that what we're describing here, what you're describing here,
01:01:08
Speaker
is a story created by thinking, feeling humans who want to analyze all these conflicting different feelings and emotions that we all have. And that's why these stories work so well because of the humanities. We're exploring these possibilities as writers. And I don't think that's something AI is ever going to get to the point of doing because I think you're totally right there. And and I think I have read a fair bit of AI content that's meant to be entertaining content. And I'll tell you what, I have never laughed out loud while doing so, and it has never made me cry. And I am kind of a lightweight when it comes to like weeping at media.
01:01:52
Speaker
um So that I think is, is more indicative than anything that AI is just, it's not going to reach us where we live. You know, because like Alexa or Siri can tell you a joke because they've heard jokes and jokes can be repeated, but they're not witty. They can't find the humor in a situation and then relay it in an entertaining way so that it resonates. And that's the thing about AI content is it, it does not resonate.
01:02:25
Speaker
perfectly stated, I agree, 100% no notes.
The Black Dahlia Novel
01:02:30
Speaker
So I want to get into your more recent novel, ah The Black Dahlia, and that is your most recent long form novel, right? Correct. So tell us about it. Now, this is is this the Black Dahlia that we all know? Yeah, this is about Elizabeth Short, and it is a very meticulously researched document about everything that had to do with the last couple of weeks of her life and figuring out who killed her and why and what was really going on with her that could have led to some of these things. ah Why was it that someone think could think that someone like her could have deserved ah to be hurt in such a way because she didn't. um No one could possibly deserve that obviously but ah the what it did is it kind of
01:03:22
Speaker
harken back to my first novel, which is called Seven Days to Die. And for that, I created a character named Jake Slater, who is a private detective in San Diego, takes place in 1946. My next couple of novels had to do with him as well. One day I was researching the Black Dahlia case, and i and I said, man, this this happens to be you know the same time period as the Jake Slater stories. It's kind of too bad I can't do this. why You know, i'm I'm writing about a San Diego private detective. So I'm doing a little more research on the Black Dahlia. And I found out that the week before she died, where was she? She was in San Diego. Like, really? um ah It's like, it's just perfectly aligned as if the universe was saying, you need to write about her, Jay-Z. And she was right there in San Diego where all my, you know, my stories had taken place.
01:04:19
Speaker
And really, throughout all of this, the only fictional character is Jake Slater. Every other character in this entire book is a real person. And so I researched this so deeply to where I could say, OK, yes, this person was at this place at this time. This person was in this place at this time. These things had to happen around the same time. I researched it. I made sure everything fit perfectly. I made sure the addresses were right. I made sure everything was there.
01:04:49
Speaker
And one of the things I keep hearing is that not only is it not too bogged down by the fact that I had to make sure everything fit with reality, but also the fact that so many people weren't expecting the ending to be satisfactory. They were thinking, OK, he's taking me on this ride and now it's going to derail and because it's got to get to a realistic ending.
01:05:12
Speaker
But what I had to do, because I knew I would be cheating the audience otherwise, is I needed to give a satisfactory ending where the mystery is solved. But I also have to have a reasonable explanation for why the mystery is still unsolved to the public. Why would this be hidden? Why would it still not be known to everyone? And I don't want to give that away because I think that's one of the biggest reasons to read this book. I sent you a copy so you can read it whenever you want. Yeah. yeah It's I made absolutely sure that the ending is satisfactory the mystery is solved, but there's also a satisfactory answer to the question of why ah the public doesn't know why was it hidden. And that's, I think, what makes the ending so satisfactory to everyone who reads it because there's no cop out in this case.
01:06:00
Speaker
See, that fascinates me because I grew up within the shadow of a certain, ah well, there we had an active serial killer in in our area where I grew up. Yeah. um The press called him the Oakland County Child Killer because they were not very good at at naming things. But there's a set of, remember those serial killer murder cards that came out, the trading cards in the 90s?
01:06:24
Speaker
i Those called him the babysitter and that person was never caught and they think that it was some that it was like a Vietnam vet who didn't come back and, you know, well, mentally.
01:06:37
Speaker
Um, but yeah, he kidnapped children generally a little bit older than me, but not much. And, uh, you know, and he was a serial killer and they never caught who it was. And it was one of those things that was kind of like the zodiac in that there was a fairly prominent suspect who died before they could really nail down what had happened.
01:06:59
Speaker
But I'd often thought about doing something with that particular story, because it did have a big impact on me. Like I was, you know, eight or nine, and I was thinking about serial killers. So probably not an ideal situation to grow up in when you're already steeped in horror movies. We had a guy, Sir Graves Gasly was our ah our Saturday afternoon horror movie host guy, this this hilarious vampire dude. So It was a weird like confluence of like, I love horror and it's so interesting. Oh wait, this is real life. That's not as interesting. like Yeah. and it's It's scary because because when you think about this ghastly TV show host ah in the, it's kind of in the vampire vein, you know, from the fifties, that is scary fun.
01:07:51
Speaker
Right serial killers are scary and not fun at all. Right, right. Exactly. Like, okay, I wanna, I don't know if you remember, um you know who Norman Bridwell is the author of the the kid book author, he did like all the Clifford books.
01:08:08
Speaker
But he also did a book called How to Care for Your Monster. And I think it was like late 60s, early 70s. I got my hands on it in the 70s. And it was a revelation for me because it was... Taking standard horror tropes like basically it was a book that was like a pet care book like how to you know Train your dog or whatever, but it was about the universal monster So it was like how to raise your Frankenstein's monster how to raise a werewolf You know how to take care of your vampire so you don't lose them in the sunlight stuff like that and it it to me is
01:08:44
Speaker
the the blending of like horror tropes with comedy, because I was pretty young, so I didn't know and even that Abbott and Costello had met the Wolfman. I didn't know about any of that shit yet. and It was such a such an interesting um way to to like blend the genres together that it kind of put me on a path because you know now I do sometimes hilarious horror and that um and just the the blending of like, those two sort of involuntary emotions, you know, fear and and laughter, and how there's crossover there, because there's a such a thing as nervous laughter. Now, how much are you thinking about, like,
01:09:27
Speaker
when when you're writing like the horror that you encounter in real life because obviously if you take a real life story about this that happened like before your day really and turn it into a whole novel like what is the impetus that that like made you say this should be a novel and this is why it's important that this be a novel Well, I think that that goes really back to that first one, the the first Jake Slater novel that I mentioned called Seven Days to Die.
Historical Horror Fiction Inspiration
01:09:59
Speaker
it was ah It actually came from a very modern perspective. And I'm going to use the word modern in a couple of different ways here. But with Seven Days to Die, some friends of mine and I had been planning already to do some black and white internet shorts. They never actually came to fruition. But I was i created this character, Jake Slater.
01:10:20
Speaker
ah for myself to play in some of these you know scary shorts about about San Diego in the 40s. And ah having read some of the stories that were coming to life around that time, just just in the newspaper, I was fascinated because there were certain things that were completely and totally shocking from a ah a just an objective point of view here that really, it's not that shocking when you put it into the case of our current technology, because we can figure these things out immediately. And I'll tell you two of the things that but there were. Thomas Jefferson University was digging in the 2010s, was digging to build their new university, and you got to dig down deep to put the foundation in. And
01:11:19
Speaker
Construction was stopped twice. The first time because they discovered a mammoth fossil. Wow. And that is amazing. And the second time they dug even deeper and they discovered a whale fossil, a completely extinct cousin of the blue whale. Holy shit. And they had to completely, yeah, and they had to completely stop.
01:11:46
Speaker
And I thought, man, that would make a cool story. But then I stopped and I sat back and I'm like, but it's it's a funny story. Because the newspaper articles, they basically they basically said, OK, it's a way on this time. Ha, ha, ha. We got to stop again. We're going to miss our deadline. Ha, ha, ha. Then I thought, what if we were still in a modern age, but without all this wonderful internet technology? you know What if we couldn't just Google Darth Vader is Luke's father. you know What if we had all these surprises again? And I thought, wait a minute. We created Jake Slater not too long ago, or I created him for this this web series. ah What if we took this idea and we set it in 1946, where, yes, we had educated people. Yes, we knew what whales
01:12:39
Speaker
skeletons were yes we knew what a mammoth skeleton was we know all these things but would a construction worker in 1946 immediately look at a funny rock like that and say oh that's a mammoth right well no he doesn't have google in his back pocket and so i started to think what would a modern person without modern you know relatively modern person without modern conveniences what would they think when they found these things and that was the impetus of seven days to die And if you look at, for example, a mammoth skeleton, look at the skull. It doesn't look anything like an elephant. It looks like a cyclops with horns. I mean, yeah seriously, it you that there's no bone in the trunk. It's all cartilage. ah there's there's All you get are these huge horns and a big hole in the middle. And when you look at a whale skeleton, especially this prehistoric whale, it looks like a dead dragon.
01:13:38
Speaker
you know, what would somebody think of that? Now, hundreds and thousands of years ago, people literally did think, okay, this is a dragon, they would come across whale bones, dinosaur bones, and they thought, ah, dragon died here, he must have been destroyed by the great king many centuries ago, you know, well, okay, that's fine. But when you come across these in a relatively more modern time, what happens? And especially at an age in 1946, where some of these things were so different. They were so surprising. There were so many different things that we we kind of were still clinging a little bit to some supernatural assumptions. But we're also trying to find the science in things. And there was very little mass media. We didn't even have television.
01:14:24
Speaker
in San Diego until 1949. Well, no, I mean, the thing is that for the longest time, so many monster stories in history came from shark teeth being the most prominent fossil on earth. So people would dig in the ground and find shark teeth and be like, Oh, no, this is where the monsters lived. And I can recall my buddy becoming a teacher in the 90s. And he taught way up in northern Michigan, which is I'm trying to to think of the right words, more more rural, um more religious in a way that it is presented as pious to not look up further information, to just accept what you're told and and not go forth with it. And it was the first time I had ever heard this, but he taught people who thought
01:15:19
Speaker
that people but scientists created dinosaur bones, like from plaster of Paris or whatever, and buried them specifically to trick people into not believing in God. Yeah.
01:15:33
Speaker
Like that was a ah thing that these people had been taught and just accepted it and believed it their whole lives, that dinosaurs weren't real. And at a certain point that like Steven Spielberg was in on it and that it had just become this whole runaway thing where like they wanted to keep people from believing in God.
Faith, Science, and Storytelling
01:15:50
Speaker
Now you actually practice Christianity, right?
01:15:54
Speaker
I am actually, yes, I am a Catholic. And I am not, and I want to stress this, I'm not an evangelist. I'm not one of those people who says my beliefs are better than yours. And again, like I was telling you about my parents earlier, and the way they looked at things, they're both scientists, you know, yeah, we were a Catholic family, but we looked at everything from a scientific standpoint.
01:16:16
Speaker
And so there was never this, this conflict in my heart about science versus belief. They were very different categories, very different baskets, you know, and so yeah, we had, we believed 100% in science and faith is something separate.
01:16:35
Speaker
Now I would think, now my husband is a Christian, he's not super out loud and proud about it, he doesn't really discuss it much, but I would think that this would be a particularly difficult time in history to be an out loud and proud Christian because Well, ah kind of like you just said, you said, yeah, I'm a Christian, but I want to be clear in saying I'm not an evangelical. Because right now, the loudest Christians are definitely the most obnoxious. um I'm not sure that it's even fair to call an evangelical a Christian, because Christian, like Christian, means that you are a follower of Christ. And I'm not seeing a whole lot of Christ in what the evangelicals are doing.
01:17:18
Speaker
You know, if, if God didn't like gay people and was mad about abortion, you'd think he might've brought it up. I think so. But, but yeah, but, but that's a whole thing. Does, would you say that your, uh, your faith has an impact on your work? I would definitely say so. Uh, you know, when, when I wrote seven days to die, I had a ah close friend of mine said, you know, Hey, do you consider this a ah religious novel? And my answer is it's kind of an anti-religion novel.
01:17:46
Speaker
And he was stunned. He's like, but you're a Catholic. How can you say that? And and he he's an atheist. So he was I don't mean he was preaching to me. I mean, he was saying, that surprises me that you would say that. And um in a way, anti-religion maybe is not the best word for it. But it's more of, OK, let's look at these things objectively without you know believing just what someone can tell us without ah without proof, without basis.
01:18:15
Speaker
you know and When you you go back, you're talking about this being a time for that. I think the time for that has started so long ago. When you look at someone like Galileo, you know you had the Copernican understanding of the cosmos up until Galileo. Galileo was a devoutly religious guy, and he determined, hey man, the earth revolves around the sun.
01:18:43
Speaker
These other planets, they're all revolving around the sun. We're not the center of the universe. We're a piece of it. And that made him a pariah. to this fellow religious people. If you've ever met a narcissist and you have, you know that they don't take it very well when they find out that they're not the center of the universe. you know Exactly. They don't all start beheading people, but yes, that's that can be a tough pill to swallow if you're used to being the center of everything, which which is interesting because you know that that could take us to a whole white Jesus discussion.
01:19:20
Speaker
Well, and I'm with you on that, because when you had the when you have the Italian romantic interpretation of what a Palestinian tribesman looked like in, you know, the year one, well, that's year 30, whichever you want to, you know, part of his life you want to determine. I mean, if you look at you look at all that, it just doesn't make any sense. And that is why we have to temper our our faith in and non-faith. I mean, I'm not saying anybody has to believe, but I'm saying we have to temper our beliefs with facts.
01:19:58
Speaker
And one of the most valuable things I learned in religion class, and again, I'm not preaching here, but the difference between truth and fact. You know, fact is something that is provable or disprovable.
Morality and Religious Texts
01:20:09
Speaker
Truth doesn't mean truth versus lie. It means something that's truly in the heart. And so, hey, is it a truth that Adam and Eve were a couple? They were an all mankind dissonant from them? Well, sure, but is it factual? No, because we have evolution.
01:20:27
Speaker
My parents taught me to believe in evolution. My science classes taught me to believe in evolution. I firmly believe in evolution. That's why if you're going to be a Christian, if you still feel like you're you're a religious person and you believe in science, you got to understand a lot of these things are parables. They're not intended to be literal. These were told at a time in a clever way to get people to feel this morality.
01:20:56
Speaker
You know, the the Good Samaritan. Was there really a Good Samaritan? There were probably a lot of them. You know, did this specific story happen that way? Probably not. Now, Stephen King says that ah fiction is the truth inside the lie. Like, that's what makes it valuable. And log if you apply that, yeah, that's if I ever get another tattoo, that's exactly what it will be. um be If you apply that to the Bible, you know the Bible isn't deceitful because it's not it's not literally trying to get you to think that there was a talking snake that told the lady to eat an apple and that made God mad. But by that same token, like Stephen King's not a liar because the Stanley burned to the ground. you know Exactly.
01:21:47
Speaker
just Just because I don't... but The thing is that a lot of people that are were not raised with religion think that Christianity equates to biblical literalism. And it just doesn't. like That would be silly. I agree completely. And at the same time, I i try not to push on that too hard because it's going to sound like I'm you know trying to convert people. I'm not. I don't... but I respect...
01:22:17
Speaker
Other belief? Period. Go ahead. Well, I have a close friend who is a minister that I went to undergrad with, and I consider him my spiritual advisor because even though we don't share the same faith, if I am having an issue with religion or with a religious person and i'm I need to see something from their perspective, he will help me talk that through.
01:22:38
Speaker
And one of the things that he and I have discussed and and I maintain that if you looked at the totality of human literature and you were going to pick out say 50 to 100 books that everyone should read in order to like form a ah basis for morality and the purpose of life, I don't know that the Christian Bible would be one of those books.
01:23:02
Speaker
I don't know that the writing that's in the Bible in its entirety, saying Old and New Testament together, selections from the Apocrypha, whatever. but that that probably isn't the kind of book that that people would pick because there is so much like just crazy shit in there. you know like a A guy tells bears to eat some kids because they made fun of him and you know there's there's a lot of slavery in it and and sexual assaults and things that
01:23:35
Speaker
You would not normally put in a morality book. and yeah Honestly, I hate to to bring this guy up, but Daniel Quinn, I think those Ishmael books have more to say than a lot of religious texts. If I were going to choose between the Bhagavad Gita and my Ishmael, I'd i'd pick the second one as as everyone should read.
01:23:56
Speaker
Well, and I think that that people equate ah morality ah with religion in the wrong way, because I think that so many, as you said, quote unquote Christians, they they feel like they can get away with anything because, oh, I believe in Jesus. It's like, well, no, because Jesus wouldn't advocate for that. You know, when you've got, let's say let's say you've got a scorpion that's coming next to your baby and you squish it.
01:24:23
Speaker
There's nothing immoral about that. You're saving your kid's life. If you arbitrarily crush a snail to death just because you stepped out of your way to do it, I would say that is definitely a moral failure because you did something that is, there's no reason, there's no danger. There's no reason to have done that.
01:24:42
Speaker
But there's also there's also a proactivity argument there. you know You squash the scorpion instead of standing there and saying, God, there's a scorpion. Can you help me out with this, please? Please? Right. please And God is not a magic trick. Whether you believe in God or not, Christians or or believers of any kind should not be like, oh, God is going to, you know, God's not a magic trick. He's not your servant.
01:25:04
Speaker
would Even if whether he exists or not, it's silly to just say, Oh, you know, I can jump off this bridge right now and God's going to carry me to safety. It's like, me no, because why would you do that? That's Spiderman, not God. Exactly.
01:25:21
Speaker
so it just right we're We don't have to believe the same things, but I think that we should absolutely look at some objective morality, which is about doing the right thing. And I think that there are so many more atheists who do the right thing because it's the right thing, whereas Some people who are believers they do it because they think it's gonna get into heaven. Well, that's not really moral No, no and especially if you're using that book that tells you that like yeah, we're gonna have slavery you hear some rules about slavery but also if Somebody's wearing glasses you can't invite them into your church because everybody here needs to have good eyesight and if you eat shellfish You're going to hell and like things that just don't really matter 100%
01:26:07
Speaker
But I want to kind of jump ahead here um because I really don't want to not have time
Reading Order and Literary Works
01:26:13
Speaker
for this. If someone is unfamiliar with your work and they want to get to know like your whole deal, should they read your books in like the order in which they were released or is there another thing that they should read first?
01:26:25
Speaker
One of the biggest compliments I've gotten about the Jake Slater novels is that people say that there are a lot like James Bond movies, is that you can jump in anywhere you want. And and I agree, you know, these are a lot more horror oriented than James Bond, but um I specifically have, especially with the Black Dahlia, because I wanted the Black Dahlia to be a jumping on point for people. ah He introduces some of the things that are in the other novels that were not necessarily pertinent to this novel, but just saying, hey, okay, you may have read this novel, you already know who Sue is, but let's not gloss over who Sue is. Let's explain, yes, she's Jake's secretary. And let's let's go ahead and give this a good opportunity for new readers to get in there and say, yeah, okay, I understand this guy completely. And now I want to read more Jake Slater stories. That's the way I approached that one.
01:27:21
Speaker
If you're interested in more shorter things, then yeah, i've got I've had a ton of short stories accepted lately. One of them is Swarm of the Immune, which is in the Nature Triumphs collection, which is on Amazon right now and wherever fine books are sold. And of course, Symptom of the Universe, a horror tribute to Black Sabbath, has seven of my stories out of 44, so I'm not dominating at all.
01:27:49
Speaker
it's ah it's It's something that I think that if anybody wants a good introduction to me, ah those those would be some good places to start. But The Black Dahlia, I think, is is the most completely JC Masoch III book ah without requiring anything else in your background. You, um like me, were ah were focused on being a novelist for a long time. um You're writing more short stories now. I actually found out recently that, well, it was it was confirmed that I have ADD, which makes a lot of sense. And I've actually become a lot more productive making the switch to short stories. um what What led to you to transition to, I mean, I know you are still novelling from time to time, but
01:28:32
Speaker
You do have a greater ah focus on short stories. What led to that? It's it's such an interesting question. um In college, I was very much a short story guy. And as i I got to a different place in my life, you know, I really realized I wasn't finishing novels that I was starting to write. And it wasn't till my 40s that I finished my first ah writing my first novel. And I was incredibly proud of that.
01:28:58
Speaker
And I thought, OK, this is it. You know, I can write the occasional article here and there, but I'm focusing on novels. And it wasn't until two thousand twenty four that really I kind of started getting this bug to to get back into short story writing, which I hadn't done in a while. You had asked me um before the interview, you know, what does that have to and you kind of alluded to it just then. What does that have to do with attention deficit disorder? And my ADHD I feel like probably in an indirect way has to do with that. I think that ah it also probably prevented me from completing some of those earlier novels because I was so ah I had to start at something else. I had to start a new one. I had to start this other thing. Oh, I'm going to get back to this. and you know
01:29:48
Speaker
And so, really, I felt like, okay, I've really accomplished this. I'm really trying to. I've written five full published novels now. I can really get back into looking at some of these short stories. And I found, man, you know what, JC? This is a really good place for you to be because you can still start something else on the on the other side. But if you're doing 40,000 words, 5,000 words, 10,000 words, 500 words. You have not only written a really cool story and you can get back to one of these other ones.
01:30:26
Speaker
But if you choose to expand it later, you can. So who knows? I mean, this could be a novel at some other point. So I feel like I'm so incredibly proud of my novels, but I am exploring different genres now. I'm explore i'm i'm doing poetry again. I'm doing science fiction. I'm doing some horror, a lot of horror. And i'm I'm doing more psychological things and I'm exploring little pieces of myself that have been neglected.
01:30:53
Speaker
Well, because when short yeah, you can just take one little idea and turn it into a thing. it It doesn't you don't have to have like six different people with a bunch of arcs and stuff. It's it's so much more straightforward to say here's an idea. Boom. There's a story. Yeah, exactly. And I and I really enjoy and I really still consider myself a novelist.
01:31:15
Speaker
But also, and and this is not, I don't really mean this from a selfish standpoint, and I think that you know this just as well as I do, but sometimes the short stories are a really excellent way to get more exposure because this person over here may or may not want to pick up a 600 page Black Dahlia book. Especially when they're already not familiar with the artist. That's a bit of an investment.
01:31:39
Speaker
it is. But then let's say you've got somebody who's a big Ramsey Campbell fan, and they say, oh man, Ramsey Campbell is in this Nature Triumphs book. I've got to get Nature Triumphs now. And then you come to the third or fourth story. You say, J.C. Masik III. I don't know who this is, but man, I really enjoyed this this story here called Swarm of the Immune. What else has he done? And that's really, I think, where where you can get some crossover. Because, as you said, there's less investment. And if you care about what you're writing, and I know you do, um you none of what you write, meaning Wednesday yourself, none of what you write is just to be thrown out thrown out there, just like, okay, if you know I'm done, okay, I'm gonna half-ass this. You don't do that. and And if you do, it doesn't show. yeah But let me just say, it's like when it comes to that sort of thing, when you put your your soul into these stories,
01:32:35
Speaker
and you know they're good and you've got a good editor to catch these things because we all do need editors. Oh yeah. You you can really hook someone because you're not going to be accepted into a tome with Ramsey Campbell if you're if you're bad at writing. It just doesn't happen.
01:32:52
Speaker
Yeah, and you know, you you hit on something that like haunts me, which is that because I do a lot of different things, I'm always concerned that any little thing I do could be the thing that busts out and the thing that I'm ah suddenly become known for. Well, last summer,
01:33:12
Speaker
For work, I did a series of videos that are where it's for, you know, it's my sex writing work. So it was a series of videos on how to DIY fleshlights from things that you would have around your house. So like socks and sponges and Pringles cans and, you know, all these different things. And before I released it, like I was really proud of it. And then they had a video editor go through and and put it all together in a way that made me seem so smart and funny. And It just, it's, I had this big like crisis of faith right before it went live. Cause I'm like, first of all, I'm a fat chick writing about sex toys. So that already opens me up to unpleasant commentary from unpleasant people. But that like, what if I'm suddenly known as the, the flashlight girl and people laugh, but like that, that hunk to a girl, man, that shit took off like wildfire fire.
01:34:05
Speaker
And yeah you know i don't I don't want to be that person, which is why when that thing happened with our our mutual acquaintance, I was like, my God, what if I'm the person that gets known for this? you know Somebody calls you, it accuses you of like orchestrating a campaign of terror. like That sticks out. People remember things like orchestrated campaign of terror.
01:34:28
Speaker
So, definitely and, and that's the thing. And that's, that is why I don't have fast things that go out with my name on it, but it is also why I try to be so cognizant of like every project and how like, and and there's work that I turned down because of that. Like I was asked to write a work article covering a series of dildos that are modeled after animal genitalia. And I'm like, first of all, I don't want to try those out. Um, no, no, no. But also, I don't want to be the person who like ah told you whether or not to buy something shaped like a donkey dick. That's not the kind of writer I want to be. um Exactly. And I had something. things um Go ahead. I'll tell you that in a minute. But if a story like that gets out and I get known as that person you know who who writes about animal-shaped dildos, nobody's going to say, hey, did you know they're also a horror writer? They have a magazine. and You should check it out. yeah like thats That's not the kind of like ah notice that I want to receive.
Media and Personal Recognition
01:35:32
Speaker
I hear you 100%. And as a critic, you know I had some similar experiences. you know i'm ah To my knowledge, I'm probably the only critic who has reviewed 100% of the video nasties, the you know movies that have been banned in England for being quote unquote obscene.
01:35:49
Speaker
And so I would write, I spent a lot of time and a lot of money tracking these down because not all of them are available on video and I had to find some way to get them and streaming video. Oh, you got to Adam Millard, man. He was on the show. He's got a fuck ton of those.
01:36:05
Speaker
Yeah, that would be great. But then, you know, all these things kind of came came together and I realized after a little bit that I, and this is, I think, back in 2008, so it's it's well over 10 years ago, I realized I've reviewed like five or six Nazisploitation movies in a row whoops and I'm like okay you know me I am absolutely anti-racist you know that I there's just not a bit of me in that and and the entire article you know it's like I'm making fun of a bad movie and at the same time I'm you know decrying Nazism and saying how disgusting this is but what if I somehow became known as
01:36:46
Speaker
the Nazi movie guy. And I was like, Oh, okay, got no, no, no, let me make some other things in here. I'm gonna, you know, set these other ones aside sometime. I do not want to somehow even though I'm making fun of it, even though I'm insulting Nazis, I don't want that word next to my name anywhere. So I hear you. Yeah, you don't want that. And so you you got to be very careful about, ah you know, what catches on.
01:37:14
Speaker
yeah definitely um and again it's like the more unusual your name is the more people tend to remember it because like yeah well your last name is masek which it's not actually how i pronounced how i would have pronounced it i'm glad that you you told me the right pronunciation because i was definitely going to say magic i was a lot of people Well, my my birth last name is is Polish. um So so that was definitely how I read that. But um is there before we we get to like the the wrap up stuff, was there anything that you wanted to talk about that we did not get to?
01:37:54
Speaker
Oh, I would say we just kind of touched on it just a little bit there is that you know my I still have my website world's greatest critic calm, and that is not the only place I've written reviews for I've been in Sacramento be I've been published on the hill calm.
01:38:10
Speaker
I've been with spectrum Spectrum Culture, I've been in Pop Matters, I've got hundreds of reviews and celebrity interviews with Pop Matters. It will have lots and lots of links in the descriptions for everybody. Definitely, definitely. If anybody wants to read just a ah ton of funny and crazy reviews of a lot of obscure movies, a lot of mainstream movies, but check out worldscreatistcritic.com. I have not been writing nearly as much for that lately because I've been you know in novels and short stories, but you know the the there's a lot of great research there.
01:38:47
Speaker
So there's that. And, you know, I think, you know, Check Out Cargo, which is a film that I produced several years ago. It was directed by James Dillon. You can find it on most streaming services. Sometimes it's on YouTube, but um it's almost always on 2B TV. Oh, nice. Okay. Yeah. And the novelization, which I wrote, which is a big expansion of the screenplay. James Dillon and I,
01:39:13
Speaker
our close friends and we came up with a lot of these ideas for cargo together. Some of the names I came up with he wrote the screenplay he directed the film. I took that screenplay that he wrote with a lot of our ideas together and expanded that into a full novel length and I'm extremely proud of that book. It's my third novel and it's it's out there still doing well. And the soundtrack to Cargo was done by Thorsten Kwasning, who is a German musician with Picture Palace Music. Picture Palace Music is this his side project. His main gig is a little band some people may have heard of called Tangerine Dream. Right, right. Yes, our our soundtrack was written by the frontman
01:40:01
Speaker
from Tangerine Dreams. So if if you guys want to check out ah the soundtrack to Cargo, it's got a very similar cover as the cover of the book and the ah movie poster. it's ah It's available on Amazon and wherever you can buy vinyl and CDs. And I'm sure it's available for download. It's 2024, but um it's really great. And I want to give a shout out to Thorsten because he is fantastic. Cool. Right on.
01:40:31
Speaker
Wow. Okay. So, um, trying to think. Oh, right. I, it's the part where I ask if you have any questions for me. I think I was going to say, I think I just opened myself up to it because we had actually talked about something that you thought I should bring up on the show. And, uh, is it that?
01:40:52
Speaker
well Why don't you go ahead then? Yes, let let's hear from let's let's hear that. Well, I was just telling a story on the internet. i've been I got sick in 2022, and I won't tell that story again. but It ended up with H having to call my husband, Colin, ah the paramedics to come in and help me and take me to the hospital and all that. So it was the beginning of a whole big medical thing. And once I got better, ah we started to get into some like ethical non-monogamy and cyber dating. And I was on Ashley Madison for a while, because ah for work, actually, I joined for work.
01:41:28
Speaker
um And he wrote an article about it. but So anyway, so I meet i meet like new friends you know from dating apps or whatever. And ah I talked to a guy and you know we got to the, oh, what do you do for a living? And he was a paramedic. And I said, oh my God, that's so amazing. Paramedics like saved my life a couple of years ago. And he said, oh, I thought you looked familiar. you know like That's the thing people say, right? And then he said, wait.
01:41:54
Speaker
Are you the lady that woke up and immediately started apologizing for having sex toys everywhere? And I'm like, oh shit, I i am. That is me. That totally happened. Who was you? So he's like, yeah, that's I tell that story all the time. And I'm like, well, now I'm telling it because, ah. like that's And that's just the kind of thing we were talking about. Like now I'm known as the lady with a bunch of sex toys.
01:42:23
Speaker
But only among paramedics, apparently. Well, and and everyone I just told. um Wednesday is really known well in paramedic circles. yes Well, and the thing is, I do have like an insane amount of sex sex toys around here because part of my job was people would send them to me and I'd review them.
01:42:40
Speaker
Sure. And some, you know, some of them you try out in the typical way that one would test these things. But a lot of times, I just, you know, I test the battery life and water fastness and stuff like that. But, but yeah, I mean, I have like, it's a good thing I don't have kids or live in Texas, because they're just too, too many. say Did you know it's like a crime to have more than six phallic sex toys if you live in Texas?
01:43:05
Speaker
I had no idea. Yeah. Well, you can have any kind of fucking gun you want, but you can't have more than six sex toys because that is considered objectionable. Yeah. There was a student protest where all these college kids were like open carrying their dildos.
01:43:19
Speaker
yeah You know, and and it's like, God forbid there should be something that that is linked to procreation and pleasure and happiness because we've got to open carry all these horrible methods of murder and destruction and and shooting kids in in school because that' that's so much preferable more preferable to having, you know, fucking sex toys and dildos. Right. Exactly. Well, you know, the next time a sex toy slips out of my hand and kills five people, then I will hear arguments about why it should be restricted.
01:43:50
Speaker
um And until then, let's chill. Well, this pursuit of happiness should cover that, right? I would say. I would say so. what And it hurts nobody. I just got to say, it's like when you think about it, who does it hurt besides maybe some weird conservatives' sensibilities? And they probably have four or five of them in their closet too? I don't know.
01:44:12
Speaker
Well, you know, the people that, I mean, there are demographic surveys on this and the people that get the most like weirded out by like, you know, all those anti-porn types and whatever, their porn searches are stuff that would give me nightmares. Seriously. Yes. I know what you mean. And that's, that's, you don't want them, you don't want them to be next to them when they explode.
01:44:33
Speaker
No. and Well, and you know that's another Project 2025 thing is they want to ah they want to make porn illegal, which you know i mean I'm sure that's going to be extremely selectively applied because I'm in Michigan and oral sex was illegal here until 1997.
01:44:52
Speaker
Good Lord. Oh, yeah, sodomy laws, which and I did not know that. Right. So I went all through undergrad having no idea that oral sex was illegal. um Whoops. yeah Not that it would have stopped anybody, but right. Right.
01:45:07
Speaker
It's like, look, man, I'm a bottle of Boone's farm and and that guy's hot as hell. But anyway, maybe I've said too much.
Fun and Closing Remarks
01:45:16
Speaker
All right. So um I got your mad lib handy here. So it is that time for the mad lib and I need a whole bunch of adjectives. So let's start there. Looks like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight adjectives. OK, eight. So let's go with Harry.
01:45:37
Speaker
Beautiful, strong, unbelievable,
01:45:46
Speaker
sensuous, pleasurable, exciting, and cottony. Great, great. All right. ah One, two, three plural nouns.
01:46:07
Speaker
Towels. I'm going to go with dildos since we're just talking about them. Yeah, sure. That's why. Okay. Oh yeah, that's the only reason. I'm a total prude. I'm a total prude. Okay. Uh, televisions, cameras, and cowboy hats.
01:46:27
Speaker
Okay. I think we exhausted the plural nouns. So I actually put some of those as nouns. Um, all right. so I need another two nouns. Uh, combat boot and cage.
01:46:48
Speaker
Cage. I need a verb ending in ing. Fucking. Sorry, it's the first name that came to mind. ah Part of the body. I'm going to go with tongue. Another part of the body, plural. Arms. One more part of the body, plural. Thumbs. And a color. Olive green. All right, excellent.
01:47:21
Speaker
um So this is called pranks for nothing. Oh, it's a pun. I get it. um All right. So whenever my hairy sister and her beautiful combat boots have a sleepover party, I love to play strong pranks on them. Once I put gummy towels in everyone's sleeping dildos.
01:47:47
Speaker
ze They thought they were unbelievable bugs and they went out of their fucking bags in record time. Another time, I hid all the rolls of cowboy hats in the trunk of dad's cage, not knowing that dad had a sensuous doctor on duty at the camera last night. Oh my goodness. ah But the most pleasurable prank of all time was when I replaced all of the tongue paste with exciting icing.
01:48:20
Speaker
When my sister's televisions brushed their arms with it, the cottony looks on their thumbs were priceless. But the olive green icing all over their teeth was even better. Okay, I think we've got poetry here. This is the best Mad Libs I've ever heard. Right?
01:48:41
Speaker
Right? yeah Well, you know, writers do the best Mad Libs. That's just ah that ah that's science. It's just science. and You got to you got to believe the science. That's what I keep saying. You got to believe the science. Jay-Z, man, I'm so glad you could be here for this. This was such fun.
01:48:56
Speaker
I had a great time. I really you're a hell of a podcaster and I enjoyed every second. ah That's so nice. um Cool. So as per usual, we will be back next week. Not not this guy, but me. um And ah we will again have links in the description if you want to check out JC's work, which you totally should.
01:49:18
Speaker
um In the meantime, do find us on Ko-Fi, where we are sometimes hilarious horror. um We give the podcast away for free, but our magazine, you got to pay for that. And boy, is it good. um So that'll be all. See everybody next week. Thank you. I'll be listening.