Behind the Spooky #03 — Author Rob Fields on Building Strickfield

Conversation transcript, edited from an automatic transcription. Minor transcription errors may remain; not checked word for word against the audio. Advertising and separate introductory promotional material omitted. Speaker changes are not individually labeled.

Behind the Spooky Hello my friends. So good to see you for another episode of Behind the Spooky, the exclusive podcast for those of you who support Weekly Spooky on Patreon or through a reoccurring tip payment. This week's episode is very special to me because I'm not only interviewing one of our most prolific authors on the show, but I'm interviewing one of my oldest and dearest friends, a real pal of mine for a very long time.

And we get into that in the interview. But Rob Fields is kind of one of the weekly spooky MVPs. He came in not at the beginning of the show, but right as the show started to ramp up. And you started building a world, the world that I'm sure many of you know, as Strickfield. Strickfield is the fictional Ohio town for which all of Rob's madness takes place. And it's the only element of Weekly Spooky that, if you follow along every single week, you get a little bonus from.

You get to learn more about these characters. You get to learn more about the lore of this small town. And that world building adds an extra layer to Weekly Spooky that I am very, very proud of. So this week, I sat down with Rob, and we just chatted for a little while about writing, about friendship, and about just creating en masse. Because Rob is so prolific, it's scary. so rob how you doing today i'm doing just peachy how about yourself not too bad not too bad for a sunday this is through total coincidence the third behind the spooky and the third one to be recorded on a sunday so for some reason sundays just seem to be the day to sit down with authors and talk But I was excited to do this one with you, Rob, because you are without a doubt the most prolific author involved in Weekly Spooky by a decent margin.

You have, I want to say, I'd have to look at the exact list, but I think I have eight stories, maybe even nine stories from you that we haven't even aired yet. I mean, we have some guys who are super duper prolific, like David O'Hanlon's very prolific. I have like three stories from him that I haven't aired. but you, you just take the cake. You're just such an overachiever. Um, I'm not trying to be an overachiever here.

It's just, you know, I just have an imagination that just doesn't shut off. Well, there's nothing wrong with that. And speaking of your imagination, uh, not being willing to shut off. You also are the only creator who is doing world building on the show, uh, with your, uh, Strickfield universe. I just, uh, wrote a few stories and just based on originally the idea for Strickfield was to just use that for all of my urban legend reimaginings.

But then later on, I guess where it really took off was when you had mentioned at the end of one of the weekly spooky programs, how I was building a universe here. So it's like, well, any kind of, any kind of lit the fire. So I might as well run with it. Well, and cause that was actually kind of the impetus with weekly spooky was initially you were, your entire stance was like, just shoot me a kind of a basic concept because i had mentioned like retelling urban legends is always a good time and you would run with them that's where we we did a lot of like the the kind of humans can lick two aids mary stuff like that was at the beginning of you writing for weekly spooky right and then then it makes sense though you know having a little uh a little berg of your own where all of this terrifying stuff happens so what first of all um so where'd you come up with the name Strickfield?

Just made it up. I didn't really have any. I just like, okay, gotta make it. I'll just make up the name of some town here for just to, just to work with these legends. And that's like, okay, Strickfield. So my sense, and please tell me if I'm completely inaccurate or incorrect. But my sense was that there's a bit of like a, like a fear street influence with Strickfield. If I have to think about that one carefully, you might kind of be in the ballpark on that one.

I used to read a lot of Fear Street and stuff back in the 90s and everything. I mean, I probably read every one that R.L. Stine's put out. Yeah, me too. Me too. Especially when they were coming out. I was reading Fear Street and then, of course, Goosebumps. But I was more attracted to Fear Street. And don't get me wrong, Strickfield is very, very different from the Fear Street universe in many, many, many ways, but it just has that little flavor.

It is that little flavor that kind of reminds me personally of Fear Street with the whole, you know, town and the folklore kind of building up, but the town never being the star, but always being, you know, but always being there. You know what I mean? It's always there that Strickfield has its lore that is being built upon. Well, when it comes to Strickfield itself, I mean, there are plenty of stories I could tell about it, but well, I haven't really thought of what they are yet to be asked.

Well, I mean, it's not like you've had any drought of ideas for adventures that take place in Strickfield. True. I mean, I think, I think you've written over 20 stories. I have, I'd have to open my file here and give you an exact count, but. Because at least on my end, let me see. According to my thing, I have at least 21 stories from you, including the one you sent me the other day.

And of those, you know, about eight or maybe it's a little less than eight have not aired yet. So, I mean, I've got a nice big Strict Field backlog ready to go. I am. And well, I don't know if you've read the latest one I sent you, but I've kind of I mean, it's still in the Strict Field universe, but it's in it kind of sort of takes place in a different area.

But I'm kind of trying to kind of enlighten some of the other areas around Strict Field more to build stories around them over time, too. Well, sure. And that's been the, one of the biggest, you know, uh, storytelling struggles is weekly spooky has a dedicated audience, but they also have a lot of casual listeners that come and go and come and go. It's, it's, it's gotta be very challenging to write stories that continue a theme and continue a, uh, a narrative, but also people can just jump in, you know, whenever and join in.

You did talk to me about this a while back too and everything. So it's like, okay, I mean, it's okay to put bits and pieces in to keep us to keep a continuum going, but each story has to stand alone in its own way. But that's not too, that wasn't too hard to do that once I started working it in. I mean, mainly with the angel of death stories and stuff. Well, and that's one thing.

One of my favorite things about the Strict Field universe is that angel of death just chilling, existing there. So when you hear another horrifying tale or tale that you've sent in, maybe not every time, but maybe whoever is a bad guy is going to get caught by the angel of death. You don't know because, you know, the angel of death isn't everywhere, but in a way she kind of is everywhere. You know, you never know if they're going to fall victim to her or if something else is going to happen.

Yeah, I just write my stuff based on inspiration here. I mean, I get an idea or maybe I'll ask you for an idea and I'll run with it. So and you've been writing for a long time now, right? I'm off and on. How long have you been off and on writing? I'd say probably since I'd say I first actually kind of got the bug in writing when I was back in high school.

I would just be sitting in study hall, bored off my mind and everything. And then I would just one day I just went to the principal's office, got a tech, got a notebook and just started writing stories. I mean, obviously, I'd have a lot to learn when it comes to when it came to punctuation and all that stuff. But that's where it began, actually. And what were you writing? Were you writing horror shorts or what were you mostly penning?

I think it may have started off being short stories at first, but then I actually got another notebook and decided to try penning the closest thing to a novel that I could. Yeah, just filling up all the pages. Yeah, just trying to write one from cover to cover, but I never really made it all the way to the end. So I'd have to put a little filler in there just to fill the entire notebook up.

So I'm assuming, I mean, I've known you for a long time and we'll get into that, how we met and everything in a minute. But I'm guessing a lot of your inspiration is also horror movies, right? I mean, you're a big, big movie buff. I'd have to say, I'd have to give you a yeah on that one. Yeah, I do like to watch a lot of horror movies and everything like that.

I mean, I won't say I'm the biggest horror movie buff out there. I mean, there's certainly plenty of people I know who make me look pretty small when it comes to that. But yeah, you'd be in the ballpark. So that was kind of like between, you know, reading your R.L. Stein books, your Fear Street books as a kid, as a teen, what have you, and watching lots of horror movies, probably, I'm guessing, mostly rentals.

Yeah, you'd be right. As soon as I was 16 years old, I was actually able to start renting movies and everything. And I guess some of the video stores knew that I wasn't actually old enough to be renting them movies, but they knew me well enough to, they said, whatever you want, just not the Playboys. they let it go uh well you know that's that's the uh that's the but the benefit of making friends at your uh at your local rental stores you can get away with that kind of thing now of course you can just tick a box on uh on a uh app and be like oh yeah i'm totally over 18 gimme gimme gimme that's true that's true you'd be right uh we met i it might have been 20 years maybe just maybe just shy of 20 years ago at Cinema Wasteland.

Yeah, it was what, 2004? Fall show of 2004, maybe? I think so. Yeah, I think so. Because I was 16 or 17 years old, for sure. And I'm 34 now. So that's why the math's pretty easy for me. So I'm like, almost 20 years. But I remember, you know, you were super supportive, awesome dude. And I can't tell you, just so you know, and I want to I want to lay this praise on you sincerely being a teenage filmmaker, literally making movies in your own backyard and editing them in your mother's office in the house and, you know, shooting them in front of your own garage, you know, they're, they're, you know, very rough around the edges and having somebody care enough to not only buy all of them, which you did, you would like walk up and just clean the table.

But then to also have positive feedback and we would email about the movies and stuff like that. That's the kind of stuff that really allowed somebody like me. It gave me a lot more self-esteem and confidence than you might realize to help me keep going and keep building my career. And I mean that sincerely. Every single person who was kind enough to take that little bit of time out of their life to give me support back then made a massive difference in my life.

Well, I appreciate the praise and the compliments and everything. It does humble me. I won't, I won't lie. Well, it humbles me too. I want to thank you now though. I didn't just bring that up for sentimentality, although I am a very sentimental gentleman. But I brought that up because I don't remember exactly when, but in one of the times that we met in Cleveland, you gave me a copy of a book called the April fool.

And that was a book you wrote. Yeah. Now, yep. I did write it. That was a self-published novel right there. So yeah, I think I ended up publishing that through author house. Okay. Well, that's why I wanted to dig into that just a little bit, because for a lot of people listening to this, they may not be as aware of what things were like back then in particular. You know, we're talking 2003, 2004, 2005.

I mean, this is YouTube was barely existing back this, you know, just to give you a concept of the way like smartphones weren't a thing yet. Like we were, we were on the cusp of so many major things that were going to affect our day to day life. So it was a very different world then. And I remember being so excited when you handed me that book because I wanted to read it and you would become a friend of mine.

So I was very excited and I enjoyed the book. And I, I mean, I have to admit, I haven't read it again since I was a teenager. I'm not exactly even sure where my copy wound up because I've moved across state a couple of times, but I know I would have never thrown it away. So it's buried somewhere in my many pack rat boxes. But, uh, so tell us a little bit about, uh, about the April fool.

I would love to just kind of get an idea was this your first novel um i don't think it was my first first novel per se um i just wanted to write something in the spirit of fear street and everything i mean i probably i'm just an actual whodunit and everything and um i didn't i wondered you know what could i write what what could i write about but then um okay and then you know i tried to think of holidays Now, Kevin, okay, I didn't know about April Fool's Day or Slaughter High or anything like that.

I mean, that'd be a while before I'd learn about them. But, okay, why not write an Arnold Steinish-type thriller based on April 1st, you know? Yeah, and I got those vibes the moment I read the book, as being a big fan of those books myself. So it hit that sweet spot, that young adult sweet spot, very much for me. So did you publish any other books? No, only thing that I only other things I got published is whatever I've contributed to either your anthology.

And then there was one that David O'Hanlon asked, you know, is going to be putting out that I contribute. Yeah, yeah. I love that you guys use guys, you authors who have all kind of come together to help Weekly Spooky, you know, have have its lifeblood. I love that you guys are all kind of communicating and collaborating and supporting each other. It's really, really cool to see happen. Yeah, that kind of surprised me myself, especially when you brought it up on our feed.

I love it. I mean, and David O'Hanlon is a guy much like myself. He, um, you know, he has a lot of vision. He has a lot of ideas and just needs a little support to get him moving. And I'm excited to see what he comes up with next. He's, uh, pounding through the, uh, the third book in the babysitter massacre series right now. And, uh, he's always sending me messages with, um, like a photograph of, uh, of an excerpt of the book.

That's, you know, really, uh, either really raunchy or really funny or really gory and just going like thumbs up. And I'm like, yeah. But I'm glad to hear you guys got to do a little work together. This is something that's happened, whether it's on the podcast or whether it's on making movies. I'm always pleasantly surprised when people reveal to me that they've made, you know, friends and collaborators from things I did.

Makes me very happy. Well, we do what we can, I suppose. I mean, we're still pumping stories out. I mean, Weekly Spooky's still going. We're coming up to number 100, like you keep saying. I know, man. It's wild. and speaking of which you mr fields were not even on the ground floor you came in i want to say i don't remember exactly what number your first episode was but it wasn't in the first i don't think it was in the first 10 i i don't believe it was it wasn't until february of last year i believe when i first came on board and well and that's the thing that is the most mind-blowing though is you're one of the most prolific authors on weekly spooky and you weren't even there at the beginning, you came on just a little later on.

Wow. Some I'm looking back at these stories. Like I had my Mothman's baby. Oh, here it is. Rude Awakening episode 19. You were your first episode was episode 19. I believe Rude Awakening was your first one. That's even wilder to me. And I hope, and this is just a credit to you, my friend, for being so very, very prolific. You came on at episode 19 and you've had more stories submitted than almost any one author. and you weren't even there at the start.

You know, you were there almost 20 episodes in. So I just thank you so much, you know, and, and, and the authors help the show out of the goodness of their heart. I pay for the, uh, the, the equipment to do the podcast. I pay for the web hosting, do the podcast. And then we just do the podcast and we were looking for the audience that is going to enjoy it. Uh, but you guys, you know, you contribute your, um, your time, your effort, your enthusiasm, and your creativity because you guys love it.

And I am proud to give you guys all a, you know, a conduit, a way to reach an audience. I'm very proud of that. How did I because I don't completely remember. How did you get involved with Weekly Spooky directly? Because, I mean, you were a listener from the beginning, if I remember correctly. Yeah, I guess I caught when that you were doing a new podcast, a new horror podcast and stuff like that.

I think you had a couple of episode zeros in which you did some of your older stories that you had that you had put out on a seat on audio books, you know, it's like, okay, I mean, if it, if this is just a sample of what he's doing, I'm, you know, I'm kind of eager to see what he's going to put out here. So, but yeah, I, as far as my getting involved in it, I mean, I know, I want to say at one point, you said something to the extent of that author that, you know, we could submit stories to Weekly Spooky for consideration and everything.

And I guess I kind of thought about it and pondered it for a while. And, and I do admit I might, I kind of had doubts about it in the beginning, but it's like, okay, you know what? Worst thing you can do is tell me no. So small sidetrack before we continue on that point. Uh, Rob is so OG in my life. Uh, you used to listen to my first podcast, if I'm remembering correctly.

Um, probably not every single bitty episode, but a majority of them. Sure. Sure. But you were a listener. You were around during that time period. The free forum. Yeah. I remember being really excited when you got in touch and said you were thinking of, you were tossing around the idea of, of jotting something down. So how long had it been since you pounded out a piece prior to that? Short stories. It was quite a few years.

I had been mainly working on novelizations and stuff. Cool. Yeah. I'm always impressed by when you're like, yeah, I wrote this thing and he sent it to me and I'm like, it's going to take me a while to read that. Oh my goodness. You really knocked out a book, a frigging book. And, uh, I want to mention this. I think I'm almost certain I've mentioned this to you before. If weekly spooky gains enough traction, if it gets enough of an audience, if it gets enough enthusiastic people, one of the first thoughts I've had about expanding the show is, is legit.

I I've thought about, uh, doing a Strickfield spinoff show, letting it, letting Strickfield be an ongoing story of its own. Uh, I don't know if we'll ever get to that point, but it is something I'm very interested in doing. You have, you have mentioned that to me. Yes. Um, uh, which surprised me. I will be honest. You've got two things. You've got number one, you already have a bunch of stories that inner, you know, interconnect.

And number two, you have the ability and willingness to be very, very prolific, which means that, you know, you could be relied on to do a weekly show like, especially because if we ever do do that for the record, then the first 20 episodes would probably would be the back catalog or 30 episodes or whatever would be the ones you've already written. So you would have months to prepare, you know, further pieces.

It's still just a pipe dream. I'm always like fantasizing about the next thing we can do with the show. And then I have to remind myself of the reality of the situation, which is that while I'm very proud of the show and while we have some very, very excited and interesting fans, it's still a medium to small size podcast. We have a decent sized audience, but if we ever, if we ever go to the moon, I have plenty of thoughts about how I want to, you know, further grow not only the weekly spooky universe, but, you know, grow the author's involvement, everybody's involvement to be more creative and create more.

That's something I've been thinking about a lot. Well, you never know. I mean, you just, one just never knows. I mean, maybe it'll happen. You just never know. Right. I mean, we're coming up to, we're coming up to episode 100 and that's a milestone in itself right there. Absolutely. And you know, the secret, the way I've always done everything is I do things that I enjoy that are fun to me. That way I'm not counting the hours, you know, I'm not, I'm not looking at the clock and wondering, you know, when will I be done with this? because it makes it easier to kind of put your head down and do the work and have fun.

And then hopefully, you know, it'll grow to where you want or it'll end up where you want it to be. That's the way I did my filmmaking career, too. I just kept working. I didn't care about if I was losing money or making money. I only cared about continuing on the path forward. And that's the way I'm treating Weekly Spooky. So and I'm so glad that you that you decided to take a shot and write some short fiction and get involved, because sincerely, Rob, and I really, really, really mean this.

I couldn't imagine having the show without you a part of it. Once again, you humble me, my friend, but I can't, I can't overstate that. You know, it's, it's funny. Cause the reason I even brought up that you, you know how I was like, wait, you weren't there right at the start. You were there toward the, because the, uh, the original three that had the show going were Dan Wilder, Shane Migliavaca and Joe Salmo.

Those were the original authors who just, they already had a glut of short stories and short fiction and they allowed me to use it. And of course, Dan, you know, is the producer of the show. So he also helps me find more stories, but it's, so it's so funny, you know, to think, you know, those guys are the originals, but you were right on the cusp of, of being a part of that, that initial three.

And I really couldn't imagine the show without the four of you. If the four of you weren't contributing to the show regularly, it would feel weird. It would feel odd. If I didn't get texts from you every now and then with some story concept, you're excited about that you want my opinion about. I just wouldn't feel like I was having a normal week. I mean, that's kind of how I figure that's kind of how it works.

I mean, it's your podcast and, you know, we, you know, I, I mean, so far you've never turned down any of my ideas, but you know, I, so I must've come up with some good stuff, but you know, um, I mean, that's, you know, it's gotta, it's gotta, gotta be a collaboration or it's, or for the most part, it's not going to work. That's the way I figure it. Well, it's fun.

It doesn't hurt that we're friends. That definitely doesn't hurt at all. We can, we'll be playing PlayStation together, you know, over the internet. And, and you'll mention like, oh, I'm going to send you a story in the next couple of days. And I'm like, yeah. And then we shoot some Zeds on killing floor too. As we wrap this up, Rob, this is your chance, you know, to speak to the audience directly, but not through story form.

Is there anything you'd like to say to the fine folks who, because the best part about this podcast is it's nothing, you know, when, when things are free, we take them for granted, but this podcast is only for people like yourself. You know, Rob is Rob is a very generous guy. He's not only one of our most prolific contributors. He's also a podcast booster right here on the Patreon. But this is a, this is a, you know, a direct communication with people who love the show enough that they're willing to spend some of their hard earned money.

Is there anything you'd like to say to them? Those folks who have listened to, you know, a dozen of your stories. Well, I know, and that you've told me that, you know, I've had fans who really like my stories and the Strickfield universe and everything. So to all of you, I will say, thank you very much for your kind comments on Facebook. Those of you who I've become friends with and, and the comments that you give to Henrique and everything, and that he tells me, I, I, I'm very humbled by your comments.

And as long as you keep listening in for it to my stories, I'll try to keep putting out stories that are going to be that hopefully will make it worth your while to listen to. And, you know, I'll try not to let I'll try not to let you guys down. I have no doubt you will not let any of us down, Rob. And thank you for sitting down with me for a little bit on your Sunday.

That's no problem. I mean, what are we doing on Sunday anyway? Right. We sure ain't at church. Church. What's that?