Horror 421 | Jeff Strand on Horror Writing with Guest Co-Host Henrique Couto

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.

Hey, my spookies. I have a special treat for you on this Friday. This is the Horror 421 podcast hosted by author Charles Campbell. You may know him from many great stories on the show, but this week I helped him interview horror author Jeff Strand. So kick back, relax, enjoy the show. And if you have fun with it, make sure you subscribe to Horror 421 on your favorite podcasting app. Now, enjoy the show.

Hello, lovelies. Welcome to Horror 421, the podcast with your hosts, special effects makeup artist Supreme, Elena Morales, and your friendly small-town horror author, Charles Campbell. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the frights in this week's episode. This episode of Horror 421 The Podcast is brought to you by Terror Tour. Music is a killer. Virginia Morgan is the lead singer of a band called The Valley Rats. They have embarked on a regional tour.

There is excitement in the air, but there is also something else. One by one, members of the band receive ominous letters at each stop. At first, they think it is a harmless prank staged by a fan. Soon, they learn it is something much more sinister. The band will have to come together to play the show of their lives if there is any hope that they can survive. The Terror Tour. Terror Tour can be found at ValleyBoyPublications.com by clicking on the Shop tab.

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Horror 421, the podcast. I'm your host, small town horror author Charles Campbell. And with me today, I have a special co-host. He's a good friend of mine. He's a movie director, a producer. He produces television series. He does a lot of things. And his name is Henrique Couto. Say hello to the audience, Henrik. Hey, hey, my friends. How are you? How are you guys doing today?

We're doing awesome. I know the audiences. And today we have a guy that I've wanted to get on the show last year, but because of my circumstances, I couldn't get him on. It wasn't on his end. It was on my end. But he is a fellow author. His name is Jeff Strand. And, you know, I went through his library a few minutes ago. And the best way I can describe it is he's written a shit ton of books.

So that's what I told him. So, Jeff, we're really excited to have you on the show today. Glad to be here. Awesome. Well, I want to kick it off with this. I did notice something and it kind of caught my attention. I thought of Susan Lucci on the daytime soaps, and she would always not win the what was an Emmy Award. Is that what she was always up for a daytime Emmy?

And I noticed that you had submitted on four occasions titles to the Bram Stoker Award. And you were the Susan Lucci of the Bram Stoker Award until until you hit you finally got an award. And it was with the name of the book, 20th Anniversary Screening. So congratulations. I wanted to start off by saying that. That broke my streak. I was not actually, you know, I didn't, wasn't in the lead. The winner so far is Scott Edelman, who has eight nominations without a win.

So he created little punch cards. Anyone who has been nominated for Stoker without winning gets a little punch card. But then I had to write void. Nice, nice. Well, like I said, you have a humongous library of books, and I've had the privilege of reading three of them. I say reading. I actually read one, and I listened to two. And your narrators are awesome, by the way, that you get for Audible.

So I listened to Pressure, and I listened to Deathless. And I will get into those a little more during the podcast, but I love both of those books. And when I listened to Pressure, to me, it was written as a standalone story. It seemed like you had a beginning, a middle and an end and didn't know how you're going to pump up a sequel for that. So I was interested in seeing how you brought that back.

So I guess a good question to start with is with that, I've done one sequel in my writing career so far and it turned into a trilogy of books. And it was an it was an unintended trilogy. How do you get your mindset to go back into that world? And I'll give them a brief overview of what Pressure and Deathless is about in just a bit. But I just kind of want to get your take on how you can go back to something once you've finished a story.

Well, Pressure and Deathless are the only ones I've done that weren't intended to be a series. The Wolf Hunt books, while I was writing the Wolf Hunt books, I'm like, oh, I like these guys. I need to do more. So I did Wolf Hunt 2, Wolf Hunt 3. And then the Andrew Mayhem series, which was five books, was always intended to be a series. With Pressure, Pressure was indeed just meant to be a standalone book.

But everyone doesn't die at the end. There was room for the story to continue. And Pressure takes place over about 20 years. So it kind of made sense to hold off for a while. And then I started thinking, you know what? It's been about 15 years since Pressure came out. Maybe this is a good time to revisit it and follow the same format, which Pressure is done in four segments, each one covered a fairly large gap of time between.

So I thought, well, this is a good opportunity to do the same thing, just follow that same character through four more major segments of his life. So it felt like the right time. And I thought, you know, pressure has continued to be popular since it came out. So this is a good time to revisit that one. But it wasn't ever the intention. The intention was pressure is the end. But it was not a definitive, no more can possibly happen ending.

It was a reasonably open-ended ending. So yeah, let's do it. Yeah. And pressure was amazing. I loved it because it started, you know, basically, during a young man's life, his name was Alex, if I remember correctly. And it started with him being pressured into doing something that he really didn't want to do. So I won't give any spoilers here, but it's kind of something that followed him through the rest of his life, really.

And he was pressured to do something and it gave his parents an excuse to send him away for all intents and purposes. And during that time he was sent away, he met this character that kind of haunts him throughout his adulthood. And that's pretty much all I'll say about it, because I really don't want to give the story away. It's a great story. And definitely Jeff should be proud of it. It had me engrossed.

And your narrator on that, he was pretty sweet. Yeah, Scott Thomas. He's done... He's also narrated the Wolf Hunt trilogy in my book, Ferocious. Okay, awesome. Awesome. Well, speaking of narrators, we've got a pretty good narrator here. His name is Henrique Couto, and he narrates a series called Weekly Spooky every week. So he does a bunch of short stories. And I don't want to hog the spotlight here asking you questions. I want to see if Henrik wants to jump in, if he has any questions for you, or if he wants to discuss anything.

But I have a I have a list here to go by. My obsessions are always nuts and bolts related. So my question would be, so, and I apologize. I don't know. I'm not nearly as familiar as Charles is with you, but that's mainly because I am a very weak reader. I just take forever to read anything. And I produce movies. I take forever to read the scripts, which are literally what pay the bills.

So, but I would love to know. So how many books have you published? A little over 50 at this point. That's incredible. People often tease me. I've directed 17 features. And whenever people say like, you know, that's a lot of movies, they go, hey, when you can't be good, be prolific. That's always my joke. But if you've never used that, you're welcome to it. But so when you write a book, are you a big outliner?

Or are you more of just like a like you just run into it emotionally and just hit that empty page with your fists? It really depends on the book. I changed, you know, I'm not, oh, I'm, you know, fully an outline or I'm fully make it up as I go along. It depends, you know, it's book by book. So, for example, with Pressure and Deathless, I knew where each of the four segments began and ended.

So it's like, all right, I know where I'm going to take the characters at each segment of the book. But kind of what happened in between there was sort of made up as I went along. There's a book that I'm going to start writing fairly soon. called, actually, the working title is The Backyard. That will not be the title of the book. So don't look for The Backyard on the shelves of your local bookstore.

They're going to change it. But that one, because it takes place over a really compressed time frame in a real small location, I really kind of needed to know what was going to happen to that. I don't just hit the halfway point and say, hey, I'm out of ideas. I needed to prove to myself that I could get a full book out of this premise. So that one is fully outlined from beginning to end, everything that's going to happen just because it, you know, it takes place entirely in a backyard over one night.

And I needed to know that there was enough story there and there is thankful. That sounds like a really fun challenge. I would imagine that after 50 books, that's kind of one of the appeals of telling any story is like, that sounds hard. Gimme, gimme gimme gimme well my one of my favorites of my own books is called cutter and is about a horrible horrible serial killer who finds a boston terrier and takes it home and basically becomes a better person in the process because he bonds with this dog and that was specifically a writing challenge it was i'm going to make this the most reprehensible pathetic guy you can imagine so he's not hannibal lecter he's not clever he's not witty i'm going to say i'm going to give you nothing to latch on to as a reader.

And then by the end, you know, you're not rooting for the horrible serial killer, but you think, oh, maybe, maybe things work out a little bit. Okay. Cause you're rooting for the human, right? So, um, you know, that was a specifically a writing challenge. I'm going to make this the worst human being you can imagine, give you nothing to enjoy about him. And then by the end, make you kind of rooting for him.

I love that. I love hearing that because you're my kind of creative because that's what I thrive on too. I love the idea of doing something you haven't done or doing something you have done, but in a completely different way. And your goal, of course, is to do it well. That's always the goal. And I meet so many creative people who limit themselves and it makes me sad. you know I don't look at somebody who says like oh I can't do this and think like oh you aren't good enough my first thought is like why are you saying that about yourself you totally can do something if you want to because if you're if you're insanely creative you're going to do it and you'll do it with panache so I love hearing that I really do that's awesome and congratulations on all of your work that's it's so amazing I am I've written some stuff I am also not a disciplined writer.

That's why I'm a producer director. So my hat's off to you for working so hard and being brave with it, because that's the most important thing. Yeah, I try to take chances. One nice thing about being a horror writer is that the genre allows you a really wide range of stuff you can do. So my latest book is Demonic, which is pretty much nonstop action from beginning to end. And the book I'm working on now is more of a psychological thriller.

So it is, yep, there's demonic right there. And now it's lots of characters talking, hopefully in a very interesting, suspenseful way. So I try to mix up so I don't get sick. I'm not ever trying to just write the same book over and over and over. And for those who are listening only on audio, the cover art, I love it because it's got that retro devil mask right in the middle, that kind of retro plastic mask that kids would wear in like the 19, maybe 40s, 50s, 60s, somewhere in there.

I love that style. Well, this year at Halloween, at Spirit Halloween, they had those style of masks. We're like back. They had mummies and Frankenstein and stuff like that. Love that. That's a great piece of art. And I got the book. I haven't read it yet because I'm hosting podcasts and writing my own stuff. But the things I have read, Jeff, they've been outstanding. Now, one thing I did read in your bio a little bit is, you know, you are a horror author for sure.

But there are other titles that you've written that aren't necessarily horror. and this is a horror podcast, but I want you to talk about those a little bit. You've written some young adult books as well. Is that right? My young adult books, the first one is basically a horror comedy, very heavily weighted toward the comedy. It's just I tried to make it the funniest book I could write. And then I ended up doing five young adult books.

Three of them have no horror at all. And then I have one called The Greatest Zombie Movie Ever, which is about high school kids deciding that they are going to direct, write and direct the greatest zombie movie epic imaginable. And that's just a pure comedy. So those books are a couple of them are horror adjacent, but they're just comedies. They tried to make them as funny as I possibly could. And I did a romantic comedy called Kumquat, which a lot of my horror readers, if they're willing to read it, they love it.

Most of them aren't willing to read it. I'm as proud of Kumquat as I am of anything else I've written. And I think it's a fun, you know, kind of a touching little road trip love story. And then I did Bang Up, which is my smut comedy. Again, there's some suspense in it. It's mostly, but I just wanted it to be, you know, the funniest book I could possibly write. So, yeah, I pointed at Henrik there because, you know, sometimes he may be pigeonholed as a horror movie director, producer, but I don't think of it that way.

He has more than that. He has comedy as well. And he has a couple of tearjerkers. All kinds of stuff. Yeah. And that's another thing that is part of that challenge. You know, if you're going to write 50 books, if you're going to direct 20 movies, produce whatever, you need to keep yourself interested or else you're just going to become a cynical hack. And I don't think anyone's goal is to be that.

I spend a long time between installments of my series, which is not the right way to do it. I should have done, you know, Wolf Hunt, Wolf Hunt 2, Wolf Hunt 3, back to back. Then they would have, you know, probably sold a lot better. Instead, I do Wolf Hunt 1 in 2010, Wolf Hunt 2 in 2014, and then 2019 for Wolf Hunt 3. So it's like, it's not the correct way to do a series.

Right. There's five installments in the Andrew Mayhem series and 20 years between book one and book five. So generally, I try to do something I haven't done before. And I'm always more interested in the original ideas. And then I eventually get dragged back into the series. Now, from a creative perspective, coming up as a kid, a teenager, what were some of your influences around horror? You know, be it movies, books, television. what were you brought up on what what drew you to the horror genre and thus turned you into a horror novelist well i was a late comer to the horror genre because i was really squeamish so i liked you know king kong the original mighty joe young that kind of stuff but i couldn't handle any gore so i wasn't really a horror fan i was a comedy fan so it was stuff you know i would read you know they didn't really generally have laugh out loud funny books for kids but i liked you know the Beverly Cleary stuff and the Encyclopedia Brown series and stuff that was sort of lighthearted and fun, not necessarily laugh out loud funny.

And then later I discovered, you know, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books. So that kind of stuff. I didn't become a horror fan really until high school when it was, um, I fell in with a bad crowd. It was kids who, you know, we would get pizza and watch horror movies on weekends. You should have been a good kid without doing drugs and getting in fights. Yeah, we were the nerds who, let's rent five movies and get some Domino's pizza, and that's how we're going to spend our weekend.

So that's how I sort of got into where it was like, well, that's what my friends are doing. And then I became kind of an obsessed horror fan. My horror reading was the most generic route you can imagine. It was, you know, Stephen King, I keep hearing about him. Let's see if his stuff's good. My God, it is. And I read every Stephen King book that had been published to that point.

I was like, all right, well, what next? Oh, that Dean Kuntz looks interesting. And then I read every Dean Kuntz and then Robin McKinney. So I started with the big ones. And then I got into the more obscure stuff, kind of the Richard Layman's and then a lot of the more indie ones. But my entry into horror fiction was the same as almost everyone else's. Same as mine. Awesome. Awesome. Were there any horror movies that kind of stuck out when you watch those movies?

The Evil Dead series. The first one was just gore intensity. Watching it now, it's kind of cheesy. Watching it when it first came out, it didn't feel cheesy at all. It was scary as hell. But then Evil Dead 2 changes everything. Evil Dead 2 suddenly becomes this slapstick gore comedy. So it kind of, I'm not sure how influential it was, but it certainly spoke to me. It's certainly kind of in the tone of some of the stuff I write.

So, you know, any kind of horror comedies, you know, Shaun of the Dead is my favorite movie of all time. I love Return of the Living Dead, you know, all that kind of stuff. You know, Texas, the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, not a horror comedy, but it has some of the best dark humor I've ever seen in a horror movie. So that kind of stuff really works for me. Did you know with Texas Chainsaw Massacre, interesting point.

Have you seen part two as well? That one's just out and out, ridiculous, funny, and gross. Do you know why that movie is so outrageous? It's because Toby Hooper, the director of both of those, said that when he made the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre, from his opinion, it was a comedy. It was a horror comedy. And he thought it was laugh out loud funny. and no one else did on the planet so toby hooper i will he was a breed of his own he was a very that man he was odd he liked to smoke cigars and drink spicy tomato juice all day and uh but yeah so when he made part two he was like all right i don't want anybody to not laugh at my movie that i want to make them laugh so he just said like no more subtlety apparently i'm too good at subtlety.

Well, the original has the funniest line of any movie which is just, look what your brother did to the door! It's a completely ridiculous idea and then suddenly grounds it in reality with no warning. You're not given, you know, of course you wouldn't want someone chainsawing up your door, but you're not led to believe that these people care about their own home and then when you suddenly add logic with no warning it's like it's absolutely hilarious yeah and and also and it rides that line too it's hilarious and also terrifying because it also makes these bloodthirsty people real right because it's like oh yeah we have chicken feathers all over the floor and and uh bone chairs and stuff that's just our life but like the door can't have a hole in it it's gonna get drafty we're in texas but we don't want we don't want to freeze while we sleep are you stupid Now get back to eating those teenagers.

It's like, okay. That is hilarious. Don't go away. Weekly spooky. We'll be right back. So, Jeff, now we got your background a little bit on the horror movies and things of that sort. When did you release your first book and what fire lit you to start writing and publishing books? I've always wanted to be a writer and so I would kind of change what my focus was for a long time I wanted to be a cartoonist and then I started to want to write comic books and this is all early I'm thinking of Blister when you said that but go ahead Blister was like a fantasy fulfillment like that would be my dream job to be a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist in the 80s so I got to write a character that was a great book by the way Henry you can check it out.

Blister's my favorite so far out of the three that I've read. I'm opening up my Amazon wishlist right now. And I am putting, I've been, I've been paying attention. So. Yeah. Blister's amazing. But anyway, continue. Yeah. So through high school and college, I was, I was still writing fiction, but I was mostly focused on screenplays, which I put aside for a long time once the books took off and now I'm back into it.

But basically, I switched to writing novels and this was pre-self-publishing. Self-publishing existed, but you needed thousands of dollars and no one did it. So I had to do the traditional route. You write a book sent to an agent, they'd reject it, sent to another agent, they'd reject it, sent to another editor, they'd reject it. And I wasn't writing publishable work then. So I did the old-fashioned way was you would have your trunk novels.

You would write a book. Finally, you'd say, okay, this book isn't good enough and throw it in the trunk. And so I've got, you know, thousands of pages of stuff that I was just practicing learning to write. And they'll never be published because they're not good enough. So my first book to be published was in 2000. And it was an e-book, which now you think, sure, it was an e-book. That's fine.

But in 2000, that was a brand new, scary kind of thing. And it was as small as you could get. So it was almost worse than not being published to a lot of people. It's like, oh, he's given up on a real career. He's just. So I started out with e-books. I had my first print book around 2002 or 2003. My first big publisher mass distribution book wasn't until 2009. And that was the mass market edition of Pressure.

So I had a really, really slow build in how long it took to have a quote unquote real book out. And then I got a couple books out of Leisure, who was the publisher. And then they went out of business. And so I sort of switched over to self-publishing, which I love. So I've been doing that for my adult horror fiction. And my young adult stuff is still traditionally published. And my middle grade book, The Backyard, that's why I'm saying they're going to change the title because that'll go through the marketing department.

They'll say, yeah, we're not calling it The Backyard. My stuff for the younger audience is still traditionally published bookstore distribution type stuff. but for my adult stuff i love self-publishing so that's how i do most of that yeah i love self-publishing too it's it's pretty cool it's incredible how how that market has has shifted and it makes sense when you when you look at it now it makes sense it didn't make sense back in the day it was like how can you possibly self-publish now it's like well you know putting ink on paper has never been that difficult in this century right so it all makes sense but yeah no i'm so happy to see so many authors like the two of you be able to make content get it out get it to people who are excited about it love it i love it and not have anybody sticking their finger in it all day long believe because i mean in film it's really bad you either it's either all your money or you're just going to be annoyed by every email you get while you're making the movie And I was trying to pull up the cover of blister on my Kindle.

I did this one. I actually read. Well, I just bought the audible audio book. So, okay. Awesome. I had an extra credit for this month. So I was like, yoink. I'm very good at listening to audio books. So that that's a big help. So, but yeah, it's got this awesome. I mean, at least the audio book cover is got this awesome. No, that's a great cover. That's why I was trying to pull it up. head.

It's very visceral. It really grabbed me. Yeah, I read that at the beach several years ago. And I was like, that's my first book that I read by Jeff Strand. I was like, who is this Jeff Strand guy? I love this book. So there you go. Cover by Lynn Hanson. Yep. Yep. Beautiful. Love it. Love it. And the story's great. And it goes places where I didn't think it would go. So I love that.

That was a fun one to just, you know, that book is pretty much all about messing with your expectations. Well, without giving many spoilers, you want to talk about that book a little bit? What inspired it? Because that is right now, and I haven't read it more than three, but right now that's my favorite so far. Yeah, it takes place in the 80s, mostly because the main character, I wanted to write a cartoonist, a successful cartoonist.

And that would have been in the 80s when you could be, you know, newspapers all across country and be kind of a local celebrity because you do a comic strip. And he is he has a instant. I won't give it away. It's played for laughs. Right. And his agent says, you know what you need? Maybe you have some anger management issues. Why don't you go off to my cabin in this small town and just chill for a little bit?

So he does that. but he gets restless, goes to the local bar and ends up hanging out with these hooligans. Like, Hey, have you heard of blister? Like what is the, Oh, she's the town freak. She lives out of shit. It's like, yeah, let's go. And so they go, they peek through the window. This deformed face looks back then. They freak out. They run off. They start laughing. Oh yeah, that was great.

That was great. And then the next morning sleeping off, he has remorse. Like that was a human being. And I just gaped at them. And so he goes back to apologize. And that's where the story. No, the worst thing you can have is a conscience in one of those books. So that is the jumping off point for blister, which yeah. Henrik, it goes in a direction I didn't see coming at all.

And that's the kudos to you because I like to try to figure things out as I'm reading. I shouldn't do that, but I like to try to do not to once, once you've written a few, a few stories all the way through, it's impossible. That part of your brain will never shut off. Yeah. But surprisingly, in a great way, he kept it fresh and it took a turn that I didn't expect.

Sometimes I like to do books that just defy expectations at every turn. And then sometimes Demonic is, hey, you want a fast paced chase thriller with lots of gore and action. That's what you get. It's not about huge left turns and, oh, that's not at all where I thought this was going. It's just it's a pretty straightforward, but I tried to make it as fun. Well, let's talk about that a little bit since that's your latest release.

If you want to give the audience a synopsis without spoiling. Yeah. Tell us about Demonic and what can we what can we expect from it? It is a guy who is falling in love with his married co-worker, but he knows, you know, hands off. I'm not going to mess with that. But every once in a while, she'll just have really bad days. And finally, he talks to her and she, in a moment of weakness, she admits that her husband is actually a serial killer.

And so he thinks, I could solve her problems. I'll take this guy out. And so he takes the day off work, shows up at their house with a gun in his pocket. And then things go horribly, horribly awry. And it's not really a spoiler. The book's called Demonic. There's a devil mask on it. So it's not ruining anything to say that there may be some sort of supernatural element at play. But things go very, very bad.

And it's kind of a everything that can go wrong does go wrong type book. But once it kicks in, it is essentially a 250 page action sequence. cool cool um well tell me i'm switching gears a little bit i'm gonna go back to the bram stoker award tell me how that felt winning that award i'd love to win something like that that that sounds amazing to me so uh what was your reaction when you found out my reaction was pure shock and surprise because i'm very technical and analytical about these so i've been nominated four times three of the times I don't have a chance in hell.

Like, I'm not going to win this one. You know, there's the year I was up against Joe Hill and Peter Straub. It's like, I'm not, Dwellers is not going to win. Then the year I was up for Best Young Adult, I was like, you know what? I think I have as good a chance as they and the other four books in this category. I've got it. That gives me a 20% shot.

So that's what I'm going to give myself. for this one um for 20th anniversary screening was like i i'm 95 sure who's going to win this and it's not me so i was pretty confident that i was not going to win and so i you know basically had you know prepared myself to not win i wasn't gonna you know cry be heartbroken like yeah that's another stamp for my punch card. And who knows to the guy who I'm sure is going to win.

So I won. It was just kind of like, whoa, whoa, wish I'd planned a speech. What just happened? You know, because you think about, you know, someday when I win a Stoker, I'm going to give you a legendary speech. And I hadn't really prepared anything. I had made a list of, I thought, you know what, there's that 5% chance that I went, I'm going to make a list of names just so I don't screw that up.

I was kind of like at this quickly scribbled down list just so I didn't go completely blank. But I didn't have a speech planned otherwise. And so I went up and babbled my way through this inept speech. And I'm told I got a standing ovation, but have no memory of it at all. And then I- Was it captured on video anywhere? It was captured, yes. The bad speech is captured on video.

I don't think they spun the camera around to see the people, but- So we can find that on YouTube maybe? They always live stream it. So I think I don't even remember what I said. It wasn't anything great. And then I sat back down and didn't see that coming. Let's talk about the winner, the 20th anniversary screening a little bit, because that's right up Henrik's alley. And I did read the small synopsis on it, but you can give us a more thorough overview without spoiling. but it was around the book centered around a movie called a slasher film called The Roofer.

Is that right? Right. It's a fake nonfiction piece. So it's basically, it reads like an in-depth blog entry. So the concept is that it's a blog where they do deep dives into horror movies. And so this time we're going to talk about The Roofer, which is a early 90s slasher film, completely made up, but I tried to make it so that the article does not try to pretend that it's real, so I'm not trying to fool anyone, but I tried to make it as credible as possible so that if you didn't know the context, you might hopefully think you were reading a real article about a slasher film.

This is at the end of the slasher film. It's set very specifically when Friday the 13th was basically over, Nightmare on Elm Street All the slashers were over and the genre hadn't been revitalized with Scream yet. So this is early 90s, pre-Scream, that time when slash films were basically dead. So that's when this movie came out. And it's a completely unremarkable, not very good movie. But what happened was one guy, for reasons unknown, got fixated on it.

And he just kept going back and back and seeing it. And then he came up with the idea that he would recreate the murders on the screen as they were happening. and he completely screws it up but it's not a death-free attempt and so that's where all the notoriety of the movie comes from is this wackadoodle fan killed someone during a screen of the roofer that's the movie's pure legacy is what happened and then 20 years later the same theater where that happened decide they're going to do the 20th anniversary screening of the roofer and then it's essentially a fake nonfiction piece about what happened then so it's essentially a you know pitch black comedy piece about slasher films so and you know people will say you know what research did you have to do what research do you do for your books sometimes a lot of research but when it's a non fake nonfiction piece about slasher movies i've got that covered you know I maybe had to Google a couple of dates, but there's not a lot of research I have to do to write something that sounds like a real article about a fake slasher film because I'm covered.

I've done the research over the past 40 years. Yeah, that's kind of the same with me. I label myself a small town horror author. And so the things I write about are things I'm familiar with, the places I'm familiar with, the locations, the people. but uh you know i did have to stretch my you know uh broaden my horizons a little bit because i did write one book that the back half was set in scotland so i actually had to do research man come on but uh that was fun but uh yeah and this you you've had an amazing amazing run so far hopefully i'm just getting started you know 50 books in you probably got another 150 in you Yeah.

You know, I would like to be one of those authors who does, you know, a book a year, but I'm a full-time writer and my, I not able to be a full-time writer if I just did one book a year. So I have to be as prolific as I can be while keeping, you know, the quality up. I have to bring my A game every time, but I also, you know, type the end and then start the next book because that's what it takes to pay all my bills through entirely through writing. gotcha oh yeah no that i i get that that's i pay my bills in film and yeah you yeah one movie a year would not cut it even a little bit oh well um i do have a few more questions for you as far as the narration goes uh through audible where do you find your narrators uh henrik has been you know he hosts a spot every week called Weekly Spooky.

He's narrated several of my short stories and he blows me away. I just released my first Audible book where I narrated it. I listened to it and I cringe because I can hear my Southern twang through the whole thing. You have a Southern twang? Yeah. People so far have said it's okay. I want to know how you got started with audiobooks and how you found your narrators? Really, part of it was just luck.

Scott Thomas, I have like three major narrators that I work with. Actually, four at this point, because I've added another one. So Scott Thomas had done a friend's book and done a really good job, so I basically just went through ACX, which is the, um, it feeds from Amazon into audible and ends up just being a royalty split. So I'm not actually hiring someone. It's kind of like a shared agreement where they narrate it.

And then it basically, you split the proceeds. So I use Scott Thomas for, uh, pressure, uh, deathless. I think he also did dweller. He's done a few of my books. And then, uh, Joe Hempel, who's like a legend in the horror audiobook narrating field has done a bunch of mine. So he's sort of like the default choice for a lot of those. He's actually going to be narrating my novelization of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes that is coming up.

That's awesome. And then Cassandra Arnold has started to do some of my new ones. She actually did Bang Up, my smut comedy, and then she's done mandibles and some other stuff so i've got like those are kind of like my three default narrators i've been lucky that it's been a while since i've had to do auditions which is where you just you put up a sample of the book uh you know narrators go through acx they say okay here are the projects that are available they record the sample send it to you when you find someone you like you, you know, accept it and then you start the contract process.

So really, it came just through ACX mostly. But now that I've got the people I like to work with, I don't have to do the auditions really anymore. Nice. Cool. I kind of, you know, I'm a very hands off narrator. I'm good at live readings. But I don't wouldn't necessarily want to do my own audiobooks. I'm not good at alternate voices or any of that kind of stuff. If I do a live reading, you can mess up.

You can do all that and no one cares because it's just a moment. Whereas with an audiobook, you have to be a lot more precise. I think I would just be screwing up over and over and over. I did on my first one. I did. The rewind button. Exactly. Rewind, delete, delete, cut chunks out, replace. I leave that to the professional. All right, Joe Hample, do your best and I'll trust you.

So. That's, that's actually, as a, as a narrator, that's one of the reasons I have not done a ton of books that are not books. I myself are publishing because some people are so micromanaging and it's really hard when it's like, look, my friend, I'm already reading a six hour or 10 hour book out loud for you and fitting that into my life and doing all this stuff on top of everything else I do.

And then you tell me like, you just aren't sure why, but you don't like an entire chapter. I, so I pretty much narrate the things that I'm the boss on exclusively because it's has some protection there where you're only allowed to ask for two rounds of changes. So you can't just keep micromanaging over and over and over. But yeah, I can see why that would be pretty frustrating. I'm pretty much just like, good job.

That's how I would be. If I was, if I was hiring other narrators, that's how I would be. I would be like, just do the best you can. Cause I clearly you're good at it. Cause that's why I'm, I'm bringing you on. Yeah. Henrik is amazing by the way. If you ever want to give him a try out, he can, he just, he just said he's, he's his own boss. So he probably doesn't want to, but anyway, he does the voices.

He does everything. So go listen to weekly spooky. You'll see what I'm talking about. But yeah, he's, he's fantastic. Now, another thing that caught my interest, speaking of film, is I think I read somewhere you may have some of these books being adapted for film. Is that correct? Yeah, there's lots of stuff. And it's a slow, maddening process where it just, you know, it can drag out for years and years. And so I've got stuff.

Some of it's kind of spinning its wheels. Some of it seems like it could be really cool. one that I was working on, you know, it got me my Writers Guild of America membership. It was a full, you know, big studio thing where I wrote the screenplay for the feature film. And then it ended up having issues where they couldn't work out the budget. And now it has changed into a TV show, which I'll also be writing if that ends up going forward.

So it was a very much worth doing, but as of yet, no cameras have turned on. But then I've got lots of other stuff where I'm not actually involved. I just kind of every few months, hey, what's going on? Can I have like a little nugget of information? And it's just, it's, you know, that's one of the nice things about books, especially self-published books is I write the book when the book is, when I'm happy with the book, when the book is done, I publish it as opposed to the movie stuff, which is just, you know, one out of my control and two moves more slowly than you can imagine.

And so I had heard, you know, when you see a bad movie, don't say, how did this get made? You should praise the miracle that it got made at all. And then I realized, you know, from my own experience, that is absolutely true. It is just unreal how hard it is to get a movie made. Don't go away. Weekly Spooky will be right back. Yeah, you got Henry shaking his head. Oh, no, I'm nodding.

I'm like, oh. Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, up and down, in agreement. Well, you know, a great poet once said, Mo money, mo problems. And that is how the film business works. The more money at stake, the more problems will arise. So, yeah, the best projects I've worked on as far as just getting them done and not being frustrated were just as cheap as humanly possible. And ideally, and not a lot of filmmakers would say this, ideally the money's all coming out of my own pocket.

As unfun as that can be, for many reasons, when the money comes out of my own pocket, I'm the only person who has to make a decision at the end of the day. And that's nice because then there actually will be a movie and not just forever meetings and forever emails, which I got pretty sick of that after about six or seven years of this. yeah there was a feature film made out of one of my books called mindy has to die but they essentially filmed most of it and then had to stop production and then they lost their lead actor so the movie is they sort of edited around it but um the movie is sort of complete it played in a couple film festivals i don't know it's ever going to get released because it just it just kind of ends.

It's one of the things that people, I loved it. I was, you know, for the first half I was like, oh, I am so happy with this. And then it starts to fall apart because of the production difficulties. I don't know that it's ever going to get released. And if it does get released you know, there'll be lots of one star. You know, what the hell kind of ending was that? Because it kind of, they did the best they could but it was supposed to have another like 20 minutes to it.

So I don't know that you will ever be able to see it. Well, if those people ever decide they're not going to do anything with it, you should give me an email. And maybe we can salvage it. That's something I've done many times is salvage movies that were insalvageable. I don't know how I would do it because I've not seen the movie or anything. But I'm just going to throw that out there because I turned around a kid's movie that was only 63 minutes.

And we were able to get it to feature length and released by Vision Films. And Vision Films had told us when they saw the 63-minute version that we were screwed. And then I showed them the 76 minute version and they were like, we'll take it. And I was like, man, that's funny how quickly it turned. So I'm just gonna throw that out there. If you're, if you're filmmaker friends that made it, the folks who are behind it are going to take a loss on it.

Uh, maybe I can buy the junker from you. yeah what happened well the first draft of it actually ended with like halfway through the movie it switches to the lead actor reading my book so that you know what happened because they need they had already got it into a film festival and needed a completed project so the lead actor sits down with a copy of the book and reads for the next half of the movie what happened.

It's like, is that really what you're going to release? No, no, we just needed that version. Got some extra footage, but not enough. And so it's kind of just it has an ending, but an extremely unsatisfying ending. So it's frustrating for the audience because it's great for the first half, and then you see it start to fall apart a little bit, and then it just falls off the cliff. What will happen is it cuts to black.

The credits start drawing. Whoa, what? You'll hear this loud. I haven't been in an audience where it played, but I'm assuming cut to black, loud, annoyed, groan, and then people muttering angrily as they walk out. So it's basically a, you know, I'm really happy with what is on the screen, but it's an incomplete film. So I got you. What the plans are, but I will follow up. Well, I mean, just to see.

Go ahead. Oh, no, I was just a thought because, yeah, whatever I – there's nothing that makes me sadder than the idea that a movie might be orphaned because I think there's always potential in every project. Yep. I was going to say I'd love to see Blister on screen. That would make a good screen adaptation, I would think. I would think so, too. That's weirdly – a lot of my books have had movie interest.

Blister really hasn't. Wow, really? And I think it's just – It's unique. I mean it's not like anything that's out there. I haven't seen a movie like that. I would have thought like, I would have thought ferocious would have lots of people. And it really hasn't. Whereas, you know, my kid's book, I have a bad feeling about this. I get stuff like all the time asking about the movie rights to that.

And, you know, Wolf Hunt, lots Wolf Hunt has been in development with a major studio for like five years. And I get requests for that on a semi-regular basis. So it kind of just, I'm not sure what causes certain projects to have lots of queries and some to have none, but. Yeah, your guess is as good as mine. Yeah, I was going to say, I'm not an expert in that field. I'd have to defer to Henrik, but he just said the same thing.

Your guess is as good as it is. I mean, show business is like all other businesses where you put stories out to people to purchase, which is there's somebody who thinks they know, and they might not know. But they think they know what will work, but they may not actually know. So that's kind of how it goes. Well, you've mentioned Wolf Hunt several times. I don't want to jump around too much on the podcast, but now you piqued my interest with that. what is that series about um so the audience knows in case they want to now it seems like it's all out there right you're not releasing any more of those so right kind of give us the synopsis on that yeah it's basically it is two thugs for hire george and lou who are hired to transport this guy in a cage and the gangsters who deliver the guy to them say you you're take him across florida do not let him out of the cage he's a werewolf he's gonna try to trick you you i don't care if you believe us or not it doesn't matter if you believe us don't let him out of the cage and he gets out of the cage and he becomes and he is in fact a werewolf and the twist is that he can um change at will and he can change instantly and he can change parts of himself so he gets out of the cage basically by luring them close enough to the cage they're out of arm's reach of a human arm but they're not out of arm's reach of a wolf arm so he changes which gets him those extra few inches to grab the guy's throat and get the cage open so it's basically just it's pretty much non-stop action and it's a chase trying to get the werewolf back over a series of books no it's this it's a complete adventure in the first one and then it leads into okay well you took care of this werewolf problem this time it's i got you can't control herself we need you to do this and then the third one is more the revenge thing and by the third book i feel like i might do another george and lou adventure because people really love those characters.

I don't know that I'd do another werewolf book. I don't think I'll do Wolf Hunt 4, but I may do another Georgian movie. Centering around those two. Gotcha. The second one, it doesn't land on a huge cliffhanger, but it ends unresolved, and then it continues directly into Wolf Hunt 3, which has a fairly not a definitive ending, but it's a satisfying. Like, if there's never a Wolf Hunt 4, that's a perfectly good place for the series to end.

Cool. Cool. All right. Well, I noticed one other thing that's similar between us is you have a wife and a huge cat. I have a wife and a huge cat. Yes. The cat is gigantic. He is a very photogenic, but he's a great big lazy blob. So he's. Well, my cat is 20 pounds. Higher or lower? A hire. Chaos. I don't know anyone who has a cat two ways as much as Chaos.

I don't know what his deal is. You don't have a Maine Coon on your hands. He doesn't gorge himself with unlimited food. He's on food portion control, but he keeps blobbing out. I was saying you don't have a Maine Coon, do you? No, people say, obviously he's a Maine Coon. He's not a Maine Coon. He's a regular tatty cat who is just enormous. If he was in the office, I would spin the camera and let you see him.

Oh, yeah. Well, mine's in my wife's office right now. I have the beagle back here. He's asleep in the chair. That's so cute. I have a 70-pound dog on my foot right now. 70 or 17? 70. Oh, wow. I have a big old girl. She has been snoring this whole time. Lay it on my foot. I want to ask you a quick question. You said you were doing the novelization of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

Right. That is so awesome. Novelizations seem to be really kind of snapping back lately. Yeah. There was actually an article that went out a couple of days ago about the rise and the rise, fall, and return of novelizations. And this one came... If you order directly from Encyclopocalypse books, they've already shipped them. I've got a big stack of them out of camera range. But then I basically, the book comes out April 14th and I had basically done a tweet saying, I've got a copy.

It comes in the regular trade paperback, but also a vintage looking. Oh, I like that. I love that vintage look. Yeah. I do too. It's got, you know, the old fashioned, stills from the movie. Nice. I've got to get that. It looked like a book you would have got in 1978. I had noticed that I did a tweet sort of just joking around saying, how is it possible that I've not been hired to write an Attack of the Killer Tomatoes novelization?

I wasn't really intending to have someone reach out to me. I just was trying to be amusing and have people say, yeah, that'd be great. But Encyclopocalypse Books reached out and said, if you're serious, we'll see what we can do. And I said, yeah. And then they reached out to the filmmakers. And a few weeks later, I was in a Zoom meeting, basically giving my pitch. And of course, they're not getting an onslaught of, can we write a novelization for your 1978 movie?

But I basically said, I'm going to treat it like you had a Marvel movies budget. and so my i wasn't interested in just recycling jokes because if you've seen the movie you've seen the jokes so i kind of it follows it follows the movie scene by scene until it doesn't but it follows me see by scene through most of the movie and then just all new jokes and a lot of you know it um i you know expanded stuff took stuff further you know kept it you know attack of the killer tomatoes it's it's not a serious dramatic work it is you know a really really goofy attack you know if you like the movie i tried to keep that tone of you know just pure shameless silliness but um i only use their jokes if i catapulted on to something else so you know the legendary you know please pass the ketchup joke that's in there but it leads to something that goes longer and darker.

Yeah. I'm intrigued now. Yeah. I definitely want to pick that up for sure. Yeah. It was a lot of fun to write, you know, cause the movie is really meta. So the book is mega meta and it just, it was fun to just pretty much just go berserk and have as much fun and be as silly as I possibly could and be respectful of the movies, but also have fun with the idea that a lot of the movies, not a lot but parts of the movies haven't aged particularly well so i kind of lean into those elements and have fun with that so it was i love that yeah i love that that's so cool yeah that comes i'm not sure when this podcast goes live or when people are watching it but if you're watching this on or after april 15th or 14th 2023 the book is available from the retailer of your choice.

Well, this podcast is actually going to go live this Monday, the 13th. If you're watching it, if you're a loyal fan watching it, as soon as it goes up, you have to wait a little bit. But if you're a slacker, maybe a bit. Good things come to those who wait. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I really only have one other question for you and it may turn into a lengthy question. I don't know.

Or a lengthy answer. Not sure, but I go to a few conventions a year. One staple I have is Days of the Dead in Atlanta, and I get a lot of new readers there, sell a lot of books there. I want to know what your convention experiences are like. Do you get a lot of readers from those? Do you get to talk to a lot of people? I just like to know your take on that.

I've probably crossed paths at Days of the Dead atlanta so i've been to that one a couple of times um i i have a lot of conventions that have become regulars once i when i lived in florida i wasn't going to as many now that i live in uh now i live in chattanooga tennessee so i can drive to a lot of these so i've added a bunch more conventions so the ones that i never miss are stoker con i go to that every year i go to killer con which is in austin i go to um scares the care which is in virginia and i go to nikon which is in uh was in rhode island i think now it's in massachusetts and so those are generally core literature focused i tend to focus more on the ones that are really book focused yeah those are the four that i would never miss this year i'm also going to mo con which is maurice brought us his personal convention I'm going to go to Con Carolina's which is Is that the one in May?

Yes. Yeah, I'll be there I'm not there as a vendor but I'll be there because I want to talk to Barbara Crampton I'm trying to get her on this show Yeah, I'm going to go guest at that one and then I'm going to do Horror on Maine which is up in Maryland and that's sort of a book focused book and movie focused one and then probably more stuff as the year goes on.

But yeah, I love conventions and I, you know, the year that COVID made me not go to conventions was just a long and miserable year. So, you know, I'm making up for that lost year by going to as many as I can. Right. No, I agree with you. Yeah. The COVID, when it hit, I'd gone to the Days of the Dead convention in February in Atlanta and after that, everything shut down. yeah so they got that one in and then it was done but uh yeah so i you know do as many conventions as i can and of course they're not free but right so there's you know a limit to the number that you can attend but i love going to them sometimes i have a like it scares the care i'll be there selling you know copies of attack of the killer tomatoes but a lot of times i just like to you do readings or panels and stuff but i'm not as big of a fan of sitting behind the table and selling books but it varies from convention fiction but yes i go to a lot of them i highly recommend them if you're a writer who's trying to you know get your name out there they're a good way not necessarily from the number of books you'll sell but from the people you'll meet exactly just having you know making new friends making connections they're they are very very valuable.

So I'm a hardcore believer in going to horror conventions. Agreed. Well, Henry, do you have any follow-up or last questions for Jeff? Honestly, I just want to say sincere congratulations because I know how hard it is when you're doing the work all the time. You never really get to take a second and do a little pat on yourself. Seriously, congratulations on an incredible output of really interesting work and more importantly work that you have remained interested in because that is the most important part so i want to say congratulations i was not lying i loaded uh blister into my audible app it is it's in there i will be listening to it and uh if the worst case i'll be listening to it on my way to cleveland to a convention at the end of this month so you will enjoy it henry i'm really looking forward to it.

I'll drop you an email and let you know how I enjoyed it. Excellent. Thank you. And Jeff, I want to take this time for you to promote anything you want to promote. And I'm going to put all the links in the below so everyone will be able to click and find you. But anything you want to promote, tell the folks what you have, where they can find you. This is your time.

Take as much time as you need. It's pretty easy to find. If you plug in Jeff Strand on Amazon. It'll pop up pretty much everything. I'm jeffstrand.com is my website. I'm on Twitter as at Jeff Strand. So those are the three main places you can find me. Awesome. And Henrik, I want to afford you the same luxury. Tell our folks where we can find you and your incredible work. Well, definitely check out my official website, which I laugh because it always this is always a big one incredibly handsome.com is where all the information is about my films television and podcasts and of course you can listen to weekly spooky it's a podcast where there's a new narrated short story every single wednesday and in july we'll be hitting our 200th episode so we're getting ready for a big one amazing and henrik has narrated well, I don't know, eight or nine of my short stories now, Weekly Spooky.

He is amazing. So we appreciate Henrik. And I am Charles Campbell. I'm your small town horror author. You can find me at Valleyboypublications.com. It has links to all my social media stuff. So you can find me on Instagram. And we do have a Horror 421, the podcast Facebook page. So you can find us there. If anyone, any creative folks are listening to us in the horror world, Just shoot me an email or an instant message on Facebook.

If you want to be on the show, we'll definitely line you up and get you on as a guest. I want to thank Henrik again for co-hosting with me today. So I appreciate it. And I want to thank you again, Jeff. You're amazing. And I'm so happy that you were able to be on the podcast today. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. All right. Well, guys, we appreciate it. And thank you for listening to Horror 421, the podcast.

See you next time. We hope you had a horrific time, lovelies. Thank you for tuning in to Horror 421, the podcast. Be sure to like us on YouTube and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.