SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello, my fellow Dreadites. Today I am joined by CJ Leed, and I'm super excited for this episode. CJ is the Octavia E. Butler award-winning and Brahm Stoker Award-nominated author of Mayfly and American Rapture, which just came out in paperback on September 16th. And in my opinion, CJ is one of the most exciting authors working in the horror space at the moment. CJ, thank you so much for being here today.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Thank you, and thank you for your kind words. It's um it really is, it's like a cool thing to have a paperback coming out because you get this like total resurgence of uh of like love on the book, and it's like a year later.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Right. And it's been at the top of my TBR list, but with other commitments that we made, I hadn't gotten around to it. So this is the perfect timing for us. In fact, I was at Half Price Books with my toddler yesterday shopping for Nightmare Before Christmas merch, and we saw your book out on display, and my wife was like, Oh my god, synchronicity.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

That's awesome. Oh, tis the season, too.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Finally.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

The perfect time to be a horror author or a horror content creator. This is where we shine. So uh tell me a little bit about American Rapture. It was released in paperback this week. What's the book about at a high level, just for people who haven't read it yet?

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Yeah, so um all my books are really about place. So this one is my Midwest novel. Um uh it follows a very, very sheltered 16-year-old Catholic girl in the Midwest uh who uh starts to come into the beginnings of like a sexual awakening. And at the same time, America explodes with this violent, sexually propagating uh viral epidemic. And she has to cross the state of Wisconsin where she lives to reach her family and like hopefully stay alive and also grapple with all these feelings of sin, shame, guilt, and burgeoning sexuality in this like really insane unfolding hellscape of America.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Yeah, and you know, just a normal Wednesday. Uh I went right. I went to Catholic school and you captured that vibe of repression and guilt so perfectly. Uh, and I'm gonna ask you more about this later, but I just had to say it right now because it's such a big part of the book. It was just pitch perfect with all of the guilt and all of the repression and all of the uh anxieties surrounding puberty in a religious environment. Thank you. Oh, yeah, for sure. I'm curious though, tell me a little bit about yourself as a writer. How did you get started writing and how did you find yourself here today with a paperback release of your uh of your novel?

SPEAKER_01 2:50

Yeah, it's this is kind of like a weird story that I always try to make as short as possible. But uh when I I thought I was gonna be a career academic, I wanted to be a medievalist. Um, and when I was in my last semester of undergrad, I took a writing elective and then I graduated, and um what I had written in that class ended up getting forwarded to um like a few people in the industry who then requested full manuscripts from me. And I was like, what does that even mean? Um so I very quickly wrote a draft of what you know later turned into like a decade later, American Rapture. Um, it was terrible. It was like the worst book ever, really bad. I had no idea what I was doing. Uh I I ended up getting a revision request, but I didn't follow up with it. I just I had other plans. I was gonna take some time off, hike, go back to school. And um in my time off, I kept thinking back to that time writing and I thought, man, like I really liked that. I really there was something about sitting down and like interacting with this world I was creating in that way that like really stuck with me. And so when I was going back to school, I thought, well, what if I just applied to writing school instead and see what happens? Um and I always say, like, you don't need to obviously you don't need to go to grad school to be a writer. You don't need to go to any school to be a writer at all. Like it's just humans telling human stories. Uh, but that's what I ended up doing. And uh it was for me like the best decision of my life. I found my people, my partner, and um I rewrote what is now American Rapture, probably like I don't know, 12 to 16 times from a blank draft over like a 10-year period. And it just took it took a long time to get it right.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

That's wild. I can't imagine sitting with a project for that long and it has to be so gratifying now.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Yeah. Well, the cool thing, and what I think was meant to be about it, is that in the book, like we have this 16-year-old protagonist. And to be honest, like I don't think, I don't know that I could access a lot of those same feelings now in my 30s that I could when I was like 21, which is when I first wrote the page early pages of this. Um, and by the way, at that time I thought it was like dystopian YA that I was writing, because that's all I was reading, like YA fantasy. Um and then, you know, I had to kind of finish it, I think, in my 30s to do those adult voices and kind of like give their perspectives um any kind of like uh real feeling. So it was actually a very cool thing. And um, in case that inspires anybody, you know, whose book is taking a lot longer than you want it to, like maybe that's just ultimately in favor of the book. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Honestly, though, I think that you do require perspective. Uh, it takes time. Uh I my background is in performance and theater, and I love that you said you don't have to go to school because you don't need to go to school for these. It helps in some ways, but yeah. Uh, we always say that it, you know, a revival of a project, you you need to be like 20 years out from rent to do a good rent revival to understand the context of the 90s appropriately. I think you'd hit the nail on the head with that so hard. Uh, what draws you to horror as a genre? It's a broad genre, and you lean more towards the extreme side of horror. And I love that. That is one of my favorite places to find myself as a reader. What brings you into that?

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Um, originally, so when I was in grad school, I was in a literary fiction program, and I thought maybe I wanted to write sci-fi fantasy. And um, or or as they were saying at the time, because genre was so like, you know, like the scary, dirty word, uh, magical realism. That was that was okay. So I was looking into doing magical realism, and a professor was like, hey, every story you've handed in is horror. And I said, There's no way, like, I've never even read horror, I don't watch horror. And and my professor was like, No, you're I think you're a horror writer. So um, I read my first Stephen King book in my like mid-20s, and uh it was amazing. My first one was Misery and then Doctor's Sleep, and then I read The Shining After Doctor's Sleep, and um, which by the way is kind of a great way to do it. And I feel like probably very few people do it that way, but I kind of read it. It was really cool. Um yeah, and then I read it and I was like, okay, this is it, this is all I want to be doing. And I think ultimately it just comes down to like I'm afraid of a lot. Uh so it um makes sense to me to write down the scary stuff. And at the same time, like I think I'm a pretty literal thinker, and in my mind, it's like, okay, well, story is conflict, and conflict is like what's the worst thing that can happen to these characters right now. And I, you know, like horror is just logical extremes.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Yeah, I love that. I think that's really well said. Uh, you also mentioned that horror in your end notes, and and I I did read your end notes, but for folks who haven't had a chance yet, uh, that horror is looking at the darkness. And I I wonder, you know, is there another function that you think horror might provide to readers outside of logical extremes and heightened stakes and heightened urgency? But is there another function that horror fulfills for you or uh that you would hope it would fulfill for readers?

SPEAKER_01 8:36

I think completely. I horror is such a broad umbrella, right? Like I think people have this preconceived notion that it's all uh the terrifier or whatever. And and a lot of it's the terrifier, as it should be. Love it. Uh, but also a lot of it is like really kind of solemn grief, horror, or whatever. Like there's so many types. And um I think in the same way that romance looks at, you know, one type of relationship or one aspect of life or any other genre, it's like horror just looks at the fact that we live with mortality all the time. Like we live with death, it's a huge part of life, and I totally understand not wanting to engage with that, but I think there's a real freedom in engaging with it and a catharsis and sort of it's such a safe arena reading a book that you know you're gonna close at the end and walk away from. And it's a beautiful thing to kind of have a book hopefully kind of hold your hand through looking at the darkest, scariest aspects of being a human being on earth and not knowing what comes after and all of that. So I love it. I think it's very comforting ultimately.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

Yeah, this is like a special interest topic of mine. We we do editorials where we talk a lot about catharsis, and a lot of the viewers that we engage with talk about how maybe they have anxiety, and maybe approaching horror in a controlled manner or approaching anxiety in a controlled manner helps them deal with it in the field when it pops up in real life. Yeah, it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful genre if you can uh get past the gnarliness.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Or embrace it.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

Yeah, yeah, embrace the embrace the gnarliness. It's gonna be the new tagline for the show now.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Um, so uh just looking at the the landscape of this novel, it is post-apocalyptic, and the timing on it probably couldn't have been better a few years out from our own sort of virus and uh things like that. Uh and when I picked up the novel, I was like, hmm, I wonder if this had it played into the genesis of it. But when I found out that it took you a decade, I was like, oh, maybe not. So I have to ask, what inspired you to write a post-apocalyptic novel?

SPEAKER_01 10:51

I mean, really, I think it was that sort of like dystopian YA, like sort of like, um also I actually I don't think I've said this in any interviews. I don't really think about it too much, but when I was when I was a teen, um, I got like really bad Lyme disease and it was undiagnosed for like 10 years. And it at one point I had to leave school. It was like a whole thing I couldn't walk for a like a year. And um, so I think like illness has always kind of been just like uh, I mean, obviously it's just it's a fear, and it's something that um like being incapacitated by illness is something that makes a lot of sense to me to look at. But when I was first writing this, it wasn't what gave me the idea. It was actually right after I started working on it was that Ebola outbreak back in whatever 20 I don't know what that would have been, 2014, 2015.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

That was kind of wild. And I remember reading The Hot Zone and it scared the shit out of me. That's the scariest book ever, by the way. If you ever want to be just like so terrified.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

The hot zone?

SPEAKER_01 11:57

Yeah, it's really not read it. Really gnarly about and it's yeah, yeah, definitely recommend if you want to be like scared. Uh like real life scared a little bit. Uh yeah, and then COVID happened, and what I got wrong or didn't anticipate was the internet of it all. Like the internet really wasn't the same in 2013, 2014, you know, as it was in 2020. Um, and also like forums and and also the ways in which like people kind of turned on each other online. Like that was something I wasn't anticipating. Um but the vaccine pushback, all that, that was always in the book.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

Yeah, it it was it was strangely accurate in a lot of ways. And until I got to the end notes, I had assumed that this was a response to it. But um, a little bit of a precognition there out of you, I think.

SPEAKER_01 12:52

I know. I'm like, should I start writing like happier books?

SPEAKER_00 12:57

No, I I I will request that you not because I've loved everything you've written so far. And uh I don't I don't know that either one of them is happy, hope hopeful in some ways. And although I always say with Mayfly, and no spoilers here, I was like, that's the best possible ending. If it had ended any other way, uh that would be so bad for everyone involved if it had ended any other way. Um I agree.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Also, uh I do a thing where in all three of my books, even my third one coming up, I kind of like say exactly what's gonna happen, or like in the first like one to ten pages of the book, you know, hopefully in a way that you know still keeps you guessing, but like it's always there.

unknown 13:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

I just think, you know, it it almost doesn't matter. Like, I I think there are kind of no spoilers in life. It's like we it's all going to the same end, it's just kind of about how we get there, kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

I was just gonna say this is American Rapture specifically is all about the journey, a hundred percent. And it's all about the relationships along the way, too. I think found family is something that's a huge part of this book. And I wonder if you have any any additional context or any sort of like broadly speaking about these relationships, because they are very complex, and there's a lot of uh there's a lot of conflicting alliances uh or conflicting desires in these relationships. I don't know if you could speak broadly to those.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

Yeah, no, I'm so glad. I I think like complex shifting relationships are like what it's all about. And I personally love reading books where the secondary characters are like really interesting um and each have their own sort of like wants and wounds, and those might be conflicting. Hopefully they are conflicting, right? For like story. Um and I I think like at the end of the day, like I love people and I uh see, I mean, we're in very divisive times that I probably I'm not gonna talk about. Uh, but but what I will say is like overall, I try to always see everyone's perspective as much as I am able to. And um, that can be difficult in life, but in a book, it's it's easy to do because you can really kind of sit down with each character and see the world through their eyes and um say, well, what would make you think this way and what would make you act this way? And um ultimately uh through that lens, like you can feel a lot of compassion for characters who might be antagonistic to uh your protagonist and also to like what the reader would want to have happen. So um I think I don't know, I think as writers, like we're just trying to understand this sort of human experience and kind of work through it together. So does that answer to that kind of a hundred percent?

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Yeah, no, I I think that was spot on. And I think that horror, and I I talk about this a lot, this is my other special interest in horror, is that horror requires of us more or different empathy than other genres. Um, and I I I my listeners are probably sick of hearing this, but it requires cross-gender identification. It requires you to put yourself in a circumstance that you're probably never going to find yourself in to go along on that ride. And what I think this book, American Rapture, does ex extremely well is every single character that we come across, and and we start small and we expand out to a larger band of folks traveling with us, uh, it made every loss hurt. I cared about every single character and uh a human or inhuman, uh non-human uh animal, I I just everything in the book, every character was relatable and every loss was just devastating. So kudos to you on that. Everyone was fully developed.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

Thank you. Thank you. I yeah, it's like by the time you finish writing one, especially that book took me the longest by far. It's like you're like, ah, I what am I gonna do without these people in my brain?

SPEAKER_00 16:57

But for sure.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Maybe they'll come back.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

I hope so. I would I would, yeah, I would love to see it, honestly. I there's there's so many you this is a complete story, but there are some open questions and uh it leaves us with a sense of hope for sure. And we'll talk about themes a little bit later on. I don't want to dive too much into that right this second. Um I have to ask, this is a larger canvas, we're painting in a larger world essentially than Maefly. Was your writing process, and the answer is obvious after our conversation now, but was your writing process different, like fundamentally speaking, than with Mayfly?

SPEAKER_01 17:35

Yeah, Maeve, I think I wrote the whole book. I I can't I want to say I wrote the first draft in less than three months, and then with like an edit round with my manager and agent, I think in total it was five months before we sent it out. Something like crazy, uh, which obviously versus 10 years is a big difference.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

Um part of that was I had written there's another book I wrote that I that's in the drawer, uh, which is like my vampire trucker novel, uh, which may or may not make an an appearance one day. But so MAVE was my third book. And at that time I was just like, screw it, I'm never getting anything published. And so MAVE was really like, I was feeling very like out of power in my life. I'd lost people. Uh, the world was, it was like 2020 October when there was a big election coming up. I had just driven from um California to New York to see family. It was still kind of mask time, and also uh at the time we were driving, we now have a more appropriate road trip vehicle, but we were driving kind of a flashy red car with a California plate, and like the response we were getting in some of these places that I had driven through a million times and stayed in a million times, like um, I could just feel a volatility brewing that was felt new. And um, so I felt very out of power. So that was MAVE. It was just kind of like a bit of a scream into the night, and then by the time I rewrote American Rapture, it was like, okay, we are living with some of these uh really difficult realities around us, and um, that's part of our landscape right now in this extremely divided uh nation, and also one that uh keeps um bringing religion back to the forefront. Uh and so it just it was all kind of there and um it definitely influenced everything. But at the end of the day, I just wanted it to be like Sophie's story and really the story of this one issue, which is like it took me until I was in my 30s, and it took me 10 years of writing a book to be able to not carry around what I view as some pretty like useless and hindering emotions, uh, which are those sort of like sin, shame, guilt. And yeah, life is just so hard already, and I just think it's so unnecessary, and also is really um, I mean, it's just a way to subdue people to keep them in that space. And I think we don't need it.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

I completely agree with you on that, and I think that is a a really strong element in the book, and you know, there's a lot of loss of innocence and and frankly loss of virginity, and I am probably not the right reviewer to unpack all of those themes as a 42-year-old man. Uh but I will say that humans, you know. Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. Um, but Sophie feels vastly different from Maeve, and that's to your credit as a writer. And I I gotta bracket this. If you're a Disney adult, you need to read Mae Fly. Like, if you haven't read it yet, you will have a blast with the the pieces on the book on the chessboard in that in that book. Um, but in American Rapture, it feels like we're we're looking at the dichotomy the dichotomy of America, how we can have the rise of fundamentalism with the hypersexualization of pop culture at the same time. Is there something more than what you've just said uh that you would like the audience to maybe leave with when they close that book?

SPEAKER_01 21:23

Yeah, I mean it's uh it I don't think it's really like a spoiler. Um it's a spoiler to Sophie, who doesn't get it until the very end. And I guess I spoiled that for you, but um I think I just think the concept of sin, uh we are just humans living in human bodies and doing our best. And if you love other humans and if everything's consensual and kind and loving and doesn't hurt anyone. And you're just putting more love into the world than it can look any way you want it to. And uh I can't believe we still have to have that conversation in 2025, but here we are.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

Right? Yeah, no, I I totally agree with you on that. And I love how sensitively, delicately, and non-judgmentally and non-performatively you handle the the queer themes in the book. Like one character was like, Yeah, I had a couple of girlfriends and a boyfriend, and like just like that's what it was. And it was just so honest and so truthful. And personally, I left with a message of hope and freedom and empowerment, and maybe um maybe I was advised to have a healthy dose of moderation. Uh yeah, and so I think you know, unpacking that baggage is so important. And again, coming from a background of having done 12 years of Catholic school and not being Catholic myself, so thrust into that and having it put upon me, really, really honest and accurate look at all of those sorts of um all of those sorts of themes. I found absolutely, absolutely. I found something fun when I was researching your Instagram, and that is that you have playlists for both Mayfly and uh American Rapture. And I'll be honest with you, we have a spooky car rides list uh that our toddler loves and that I also love, and a lot of that list comes from Maevefly, uh, outside of some like Midnight Syndicate haunted house music and some of the band Ghost. I'm wondering, and then thank you for that, by the way. Uh, but I'm wondering how much music plays a part in your writing process.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Oh my gosh, so much. Uh well, first of all, I love to hear that. That makes me so happy that you're listening uh to any of these songs. But um, I grew up, my mom and stepdad are one of them's still a musician, but they both were when I was growing up. And all of their friends were musicians. And I grew up in Austin, Texas, back when like uh you could be like a musician full time, and that was like a really comfortable, awesome life. And so um that was kind of the world I grew up in, and uh my parents took me to shows like every other day, and uh so yeah, it's been a huge part of my life. I love music trivia, I love um kind of shaping each book around the playlist, and vice versa. I usually will find kind of like some big um like scaffolding scenes for the book, you know, the scenes that I know are gonna be like the really big ones, and usually I'll like kind of find a song that makes sense with those scenes, and then um I run a lot, so I'll just play the playlist on repeat for like months, years while I'm working on this stuff and just kind of like let the songs play and build the scenes and the moments and the dialogue in my head as I listen over time. So it's very cool to share it ultimately and eventually. I share like a pared-down one with readers.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

I'm so grateful. I can't wait to dig into them and see uh how many I missed from Mayfly for sure. I also think music has a very similar function to horror in allowing us to confront complex emotions in a safe way. So it's it's just interesting to me. I had to ask the question.

SPEAKER_01 25:17

Yeah, and in the case of uh in particular American Rapture, like when I was growing up, my big idols were like uh Alanis Morissette, Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Sinead O'Connor, like there were these women who were out there saying things that like I couldn't believe they were brave enough to say. I mean, they were very outspoken about a lot of these themes, like whatever, 20 years ago, 30, I don't I don't even know uh what decade we're in. But um in the 90s, it was a big deal, and uh it I think made me realize a lot of possibility. And so I kind of hoped with this book to give that feeling of like what it felt like to be like a kid listening to like Sinead O'Connor, like kind of speaking out against certain things or grappling with certain things, you know, or any of them.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

I absolutely love that. And Fiona Apple's like quarantine album was like, oh, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:14

Yeah, you have some never put out as perfect.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

100%. You have some good taste, that's for sure. Um I I know you said you grew up in Texas, and uh, you know, Texas is known for not Austin specifically, but broadly speaking, being fairly conservative, and that's cool. Uh, but I wonder what your experience with religion growing up was like.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

So if you're cool with talking about it.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I grew up in uh so I grew up a lot less sheltered than Sophie. I was not like a sheltered kid, I should say. Uh Sophie's extremely sheltered, so that's one huge difference. And that was also part of why I wasn't ready to write a Texas book yet. Um, and I wanted it to be somewhere in the middle of the country, but that had its really own distinct identity. So that's I ended up spending a lot of time in Wisconsin and thought this was perfect. So sidebar on that. But um I went to church every week and what did I do? Sunday school, choir, youth group for a while. Um, you know, those all those things. Uh, but not Catholic school. I went to public school, uh, which I loved. And um I think again, being kind of a literal thinker, um, and uh probably leaning a certain way on certain scales of thinking types, I listened to everything I was taught in church and Sunday school, and I paid a lot of attention and I took it um literally because I was a kid and because they were saying, you know, the demons hear your every thought. Little girls are born into more sin than little boys, you know, all of these, and they become the sort of building blocks of your life, they become very important. Um so I really was so scared all the time of any kind of thought that I had or question that I had surface in my in the quiet of my mind, um, actually having like really uh eternal repercussions and also like repercussions that could affect people around me. I mean, it's just such like a sort of like complicated web of guilt and shame. And um to me, I know so many people find solace and comfort in religion. Uh, but for me, for whatever reason, it was it just I only ever felt fear in church. And um yeah, it scared the shit out of me. I also had this painting across from my bed where I left. And again, I think like my parents thought, or my one of my parents thought it's like this is like comforting and nice. And uh, but it was this like painting of Christ on the cross and he's emaciated and he's bleeding, and it's like a black background, it was very dark, and the thorns, and I everything about it just terrified me.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

So yeah, yeah, I can absolutely relate to that. Uh there are ways that religion can be extremely beautiful, and there are ways that it can be very um uh burdensome or repressive. And uh I had to ask that question because the the Sophie's thought process was so authentic to thought processes that I'd seen in action growing up and that I had had myself. It's really good stuff.

SPEAKER_01 29:41

That's frankly, has been the coolest part of this like putting this book out is like realizing how many folks and not just Catholic, like um I'll have readers reach out to me and be like, I grew up evangelical, I grew up Baptist, I grew up whatever, Pentecostal, and like uh to hear or Presbyterian anything and to hear people say, like, I had a similar experience. Um, I don't know, at the end of the day, like we have to remember, and I'm telling myself this in kind of a difficult time in America, uh, but we have to remember there are always other people, you know, sharing some kind of experience with us in this life. And um, I love found family stories because I think you can find each other. And when you do find each other, just hold on to each other and uh support each other. And maybe that's how we all get through everything, you know.

SPEAKER_00 30:37

That's beautiful. I absolutely love that. Yeah, I agree 100%. I will say there's one sequence in this book that weirded me out in a way that I think was probably intentional, but maybe not intentional. And it's the House on the Rock sequence. And I that's probably not the one. I I feel like I have like megalophobia or something. That place gives me the willies. It has always given me the willies. And I was like, is this when when you first get there? I was like, is this a place, is this a place with the whale? And I like googled it and I was like, oh god, man.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

Have you been, or is it what hairs you like in the ether that it exists?

SPEAKER_00 31:12

That it exists, any images that I see. I just I don't think I could walk into the uh carousel room, the angel room. I don't think I could deal with the sea monster room. Like I just like Pirates of the Caribbean, because you can't see the ceiling, I ride it like this. Like I just I can't handle large just can't do it. Uh, probably some trauma from going to a haunted house when I was too young. Uh but yeah, that so it just freaks me out. Um, what made you set it there, other than it is a vastly cool location in Wisconsin?

SPEAKER_01 31:43

It is so cool. So I'm really into roadside Americana, and it's gonna may have started like in a city, you know. I did my LA book, but really like every book kind of moving forward is more um like there's a lot of roadside America because that's also like that's what I'm really into. And it's also kind of the life that I live for the most part, um, is just kind of being on and off the road. But I love Wisconsin in particular. I spent a lot of time there in my early 20s, and then um I kept going back. My boyfriend, partner, and I, both of our exes uh were from or lived in Wisconsin. So we had both spent time there like before we met each other, and then we were like, we both love it there. So we kept going back together. Um, House on the Rock, I've been to, I don't know, like three to five times. At this, I don't know how many times. It's amazing. It's my favorite place in America. I think it's like it's way up there. Um it's so weird, it's so American, it's so strange and powerful. And um, I love it, but it made sense to me that Sophie would just be fucking terrified. So that was so if anybody's like on the fence, just go to House on the Rock, it's worth it. But it does sound like it would totally overstimulate you and be like overwhelming. It is overwhelming, it's crazy. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 33:04

I I I feel like I have to do it just to just to do it, but I will spend the whole time like hunched over. I will say there is a sequence where there is spotty power. And I my I was white knuckling that sequence. I was like, I could not do that place in the dark. Uh, I wouldn't know. Uh it would be too much for me.

SPEAKER_01 33:23

It would be actually quite frightening. Like it because it does feel it, it's not subterranean, but it feels subterranean. Like there are no windows in most of it, and you're sort of it's on this hillside. So you are sort of going down at times, and the feeling is very strange. Um, yeah, I kind of want to put out at one point like road trip guides for each of my books, you know. Like if you want to sort of experience and stay where even where I stayed, like when I was writing scenes or whatever, like maybe I'll throw something together.

SPEAKER_00 33:55

I would love that. I would pay, I would pay for a digital download of that. I would pay for it in hard. Yeah, you you would have at least one person who buys that because that sounds fantastic. That's awesome. So um we have uh a few questions we ask to everyone who comes on the show. Some of them are tailored for you, and there's one that's just general. Um, so what is your favorite zombie or post-apocalyptic story, book, movie, whichever, whichever piece of creative outlet you'd like? And you can list more than one if you like.

SPEAKER_01 34:27

Um my favorite post-apocalyptic series, it's terrifying, is the Mad Adam uh trilogy, Margaret Atwood. So the first one is Oryx and Crake. It's so fucking scary. It's so scary.

SPEAKER_00 34:40

These are these are selfish questions because I oftentimes add to my TBR or like my watch list. I have not read this.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

Very, very, very dark. Oryx and Crake is the first book, but it's the Mad Adam trilogy. It's made, it's one of the most like bleak, uh, disturbing uh apocalyptic novels I've ever read.

SPEAKER_00 35:01

You're speaking my language with that for sure. Um the next question might get more challenging, uh especially if you like films, um, or maybe if you don't like films, but what is your favorite horror movie? And you can pick a few. Uh, I know that's a very limiting question. You don't have to pick just one.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

Um, I do watch probably like a worrying amount. Uh, The Shining. I watch The Shining all the time. Like every other week, kind of. It's like a it's like a calming movie to me. So The Shining probably has to be my answer. But I'm also really into movies like Crawl and recently dangerous animals. I love like big, baddie, aquatic uh creature kind of situations.

SPEAKER_00 35:48

I I haven't seen dangerous animals yet, although it's it's one I need to get to. But uh, I almost wore my Overlook Hotel shirt today, and I wore it for like a recent episode, and I was like, I gotta throw on Sutter Kane this close. I'm sad I didn't do it. And I'm sure that you loved that giant, like sea monster room in House on the Rock then.

SPEAKER_01 36:06

Yeah, oh yeah. I do. I really I want to write aquatic horror one day, but I like creature. Creature features are like to me so fun and kind of um I think crawl, by the way, is a perfect movie. Nobody talks about that movie enough. Yeah, it's amazing. It's like everything that could be going wrong is going wrong in this pressure cooker, and it's crazy. And there's a there's a emotional growth.

SPEAKER_00 36:30

What you can't ask for more in a story than uh than nonsense and uh emotional growth at the same time. That's that's good stuff.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

It's and it's Florida, so like what more needs to be said, you know, hurricane, crawl space, alligators, uh fraught parent-child relationship.

SPEAKER_00 36:49

Yes, yes. I need that that one is at the top of my watch list. I've not seen it. It hit streaming in July or August. It was one of one of the streaming platforms that I subscribed to, and we did a video listing it out, and everybody in the video was like, You have to, how have you not seen this film? And I was like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

It's like a perfect movie, truly. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 37:07

I on your recommendation, I will add after Fantastic Fest raps next week. I will be watching that. Awesome. So uh I know you have another book coming out. Uh, do you want to give a plug to that if you can talk about it?

SPEAKER_01 37:18

Yeah, so speaking of The Shining, um it's called Headlights. It takes place in Colorado. It is inspired uh to a good degree by that uh book and movie. Um, but basically, uh forgive me, I'm like just learning how to pitch this book and trying not to, there's like big spoilers in this one. Um, but people keep coming to consciousness on the side of the highway, naked, barefoot, and wearing the skin of a person they've never met before with no memory of how they got there. And um the detective in charge of this serial case uh has to come back to Colorado to uh hopefully solve it once and for all. And uh things get crazy, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 38:14

I'm sold. That sounds awesome. And and that comes out next year, right?

SPEAKER_01 38:18

In June, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:20

Well, a perfect gift for my birthday. I know you planned it that way.

SPEAKER_01 38:23

Happy birthday, of course.

SPEAKER_00 38:25

Yeah, that's awesome. I can't wait to read it. That's fantastic. Um, so where can people find you if they want to stay up to date on the paperback release or uh or on headlights?

SPEAKER_01 38:34

I think the best is my Instagram, which is Siege the Moment. Um, I'm not as good on Blue Sky and I'm not very good about keeping my website updated, but I'll get better about that soon. Um, but yeah, check my Instagram. I have like nine um paperback tour stops coming up and um am throwing a Halloween party in Brooklyn with a bunch, like 12 horror authors are doing it with me. So um yeah, come out to everything.

SPEAKER_00 39:02

That sounds fantastic. Um, yeah, we'll put all that information in the show notes. And uh I just can't I really I really enjoyed our conversation today. I can't thank you enough for joining me.

SPEAKER_01 39:12

Thank you, me too. I feel like I was like so chatty Kathy over here. So uh hopefully I didn't go off on too many tangents.

SPEAKER_00 39:20

No, this was fantastic. I really appreciate it. And as always, stay spooky, my friends.