Welcome to David Behavior, the Horror Book Review Podcast. I'm Beth. And I'm Marie. And this month we have a very special bonus episode where the David Behavior is being on an entirely different podcast. Yes, without me. So, yeah, this month I visited the labs of the RPG Reanimators to talk to Todd Keesling, the horror author, about writing horror and TRPGs. So if that sounds interesting to you, stick around. Otherwise, we'll see you next month where we talk about Thorn Hedge by T. Kingfisher. Yeah, I'm looking forward to hearing your interview at Todd Geiseling with our good friends over at RPG Reanimators while I am on the road moving states. And I'm also excited for everyone to hear our episode on thornhedge. So stick around. Yes, have fun and don't forget to commit some David Behavior. See you next month.

Bye. Welcome to RPG Reanimators, a podcast for GMs where we dissect horror scenarios and offer our experiences and advice to reanimate them at the table. I'm Lex.

I'm Alex.

I'm Beth.

I am Todd Keisling.

And so now we already know who's in the waiting room. This is something of a special episode involving a little cross contamination with Beth from the David Behavior Horror Book Review podcast, as well as a consultation with one of my favorite horror authors, Todd Kiesling, to try and learn what goes into creating cosmic horrors for novels and short stories. And then see if there are any lessons that we can apply to creating and running our own horrors for players to experience in tabletop RPGs. Todd is known for works like Scanlines, Devil's Creek, and the recent collection Cold, Black and Infinite, which we'll be discussing a lot of today. I'm also eagerly awaiting my Pre Order of the Sundowners Dance, which is slated to come out this April. So thanks for coming on the podcast, Todd.

Thanks for having me.

And before we get started, for those at home, I'd like to give a warning that we're going to be getting into spoilers for many of the stories in Cold, Black and Infinite, I'll try and avoid spoilers for the other works like Scan Lines and Devil's Creek, so you can read those for yourselves. But if you're interested in reading through Cold, Black and Infinite, first go ahead and pause here, then come back after witnessing the unblinking void. Now, with all that, let's get into our consultation. So, Todd, for folks at home, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your general experiences with horror movies Games, things like that.

Oh, man. How much time do we have? I'm a horror author. I have been doing this professionally for, I think this is year number 20. And I've written several books. Horror has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. Unlike most children, my heroes were Ash Williams and Emilio Estevez's character in Maximum Overdrive. Those were my childhood films. Long story there, but basically my mom would rent her movies and I would rent my, my movies. And when I watched my movies, I would watch mom's movies when she was at work. Honestly, it's been in my blood for as long as I can remember. I saw a lot of horror films at a very young age. It, you know, I turned out totally fine, obviously. And my mom was also a voracious reader. And so there was always a Stephen King novel or Dean Koontz novel on the nightstand in her bedroom. And when I started reading at a young age, John Bellair's R L Stein, that kind of transitioned to Stephen King and Dean Koontz when I was older. And the influences have been. Been there for as long as I can remember.

Nice. I can definitely empathize with that. I have very fond memories of watching Tales from the Crypt episodes with my dad at a way too young age, but it was a blast nonetheless. And so I understand that you're not that much of a tabletop RPG guy, but do you tend to play other video games and things? Just getting a barometer reading here before we dive into it.

Yeah. So regarding the tabletop thing, I have played tabletop RPGs, but I was a relatively newcomer to it. There is a funny little anecdote here regarding my mother and high school freshman year I got invited to this kid's house. I didn't make friends very easily back then, so I got invited to play D and D. This is back in the late 90s and my mom found out about it. And because I grew up in southeastern Kentucky, the satanic panic was still very much alive and well. And she called my friend's mom and next thing I know, nobody's going to play D and D at this guy's house. And yeah, I didn't make any friends that day, but I spent the day playing Doom on my computer because that was okay.

Yeah, that's not satanic at all. Yeah, not a threat.

So, yeah, that kind of segues into the games I grew up playing. I grew up playing first person shooters, Doom Quake, Quake two, Half Life, those were my mainstays all through, you know, through High school. And you know, to this day I still play video games. They're a huge inspiration to me. I'm a huge nerd for the, the FromSoft games, Dark Souls, Bloodborne Hell, yeah, Elden Ring, those style of games I'm really into. I still play shooters from time to time, but not nearly as much. Every week I do a game night on my Patreon Discord where I stream a horror game of some kind. And you know, patrons tune in, watch it, you know, we banter about how good or how awful the game is. And yeah, like I, you know, I'm going to be 42 this year and I'm still unabashedly a video game player.

Just to comment a little bit about the maybe video game to tabletop RPG pipeline. Sure, the way I want to. I think I find myself best describing it for people who aren't really into tabletop RPG games, but who are into video games. Is that video games, while you have this choice and you have all these options here, you're limited by the video game engine and then the code. Right. But when you're playing a tabletop RPG game as a player under a game master, that game master takes the stance, the role of the video game code. So like they determine your. They can adjudicate everything. They are able to basically take your inputs, which could be anything you can think of and as a result turn it into anything that they can think of which is not limited by code or ones and zeros.

Right.

Which I always find an appreciation for.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's definitely a different way of thinking about gaming for sure. I mentioned I was a late bloomer with tabletop. I only played my first DND game like two years ago and I have my own, you know, mental issues. So like, if things don't move at my pace, I get bored. And so I kind of, I played for about a year with some friends and then I kind of just went to the dm like, hey, I'm kind of over this. But yeah, after I first played it, I called my mom up and I was like, yeah, I remember that time you stopped me from playing DND at that guy's house. You were so wrong. There's nothing satanic about this. It's like doing taxes with dice.

I am curious though. What kind of game did you play? Was it primarily a fantasy game or did it have a horror element as the main focus?

It was, we were playing 5e, right. And it was tailored to folks who were new to the game. It wasn't the DM at all. It was more just, okay, this isn't really what my. You know, I wasn't really invested in the story all that much that was happening. And I was also, you know, trying to write a book at the time. So, you know, I only have so much room up here for that sort of thing. So if anything, it was just an opportunity to hang out with friends I don't get to see very often.

Yeah. And sometimes that's all what games are for people.

Yeah.

That is very interesting though, because there is definitely a difference between RPG writing and like, writing writing for the sake of publication. And I've seen cases where like, people take their RPG stories and they try to basically turn it into something that's going to be published and it does not work usually. It can be very forced.

That's interesting. That's really interesting to me because with a tabletop rpg, it's a little bit guided in the sense that you have the DM dictating the rules and everything and, you know, dictating consequences for actions. But sure, I mean, with the writing, it's still your imagination. Like, it's more pick a path and follow it. It's not. You're not wide open with multiple choices like in an actual tabletop game.

Yeah. But I. I do want to bring this back to writing because I know in your forward, in your most recent collection, John Langdon stated that you've got influences from like, King, Ligotti, Barker, Camus. So what's the process of finding these wonderful authors? Do you do your own, like, research? Do you read reviews?

I typically read what interests me. I haven't read Camus or anything of a philosophical nature like that since college. But for me, there was a period of years when I was younger, like high school into college, that I. I really read works that I wouldn't normally read.

Okay.

And I found inspiration, and not necessarily in the stories of what they were about, but just how the story is being told. You know, I read the Stranger and I read Fight Club by Polahniuk very close together. And those are, you know, one was from school and one was not. This was around the time that the movie Fight Club came out. And until that point I had been reading traditional third person narrative, you know, Stephen King in a lot of cases. But then I read Polahniuk and I read Camus and it kind of broadened my horizons a bit in terms of how a story can be told, how it can be written, and make your mind work in different ways to perceive the story. So for the most part, yeah. I mean, I look for work and stories that sound intriguing to me. If I can get excited by just reading the synopsis on the back of a book and you can hook me there, great. You know, if I. If I read it and I love it, then I'm going to read the next thing this author has put out. That's how I discovered Bentley Little. That's how I discovered Clyde Barker. I read one thing that was so amazing to me that, you know, I had to read other work by them. And that's really. I guess that would be the path for most readers, I guess, you know, they take a chance on an author. They love what the author's doing, and then they devour everything else they have.

When you devour these works, do you find yourself taking elements from every author you've read?

This is topical because I've been working on an omnibus. My. My first. My trilogy of books. One of the main characters in that was directly inspired by Pinhead from Hellraiser, the Cenobite. You know, he's a monk. He has part of this order, but he's. No, he's not evil per se. So, like, you can kind of see when you're reading something that you find influential. You can kind of see like, okay, so they did this. So they set this up this way. It's not entirely character. It's how they reveal the plot, how they use the characters to reveal the plot. Lot different mechanics in the structure of the story. Any little thing I find that, you know, I think is really cool. Then I try to find a way that I can utilize that in my own work, but differently, if that makes sense. It's kind of hard to articulate at times because a lot of this is just happening up here in the soup.

The soup?

Yes.

You're really just making it your own.

I think going back to that sort of paradigm shift that you mentioned whenever you were reading Fight Club and breaking away from that traditional third person camera, over the shoulder narrative style. I'm curious, is this about the time whenever you were considering things like character motivations not necessarily being fixed? I noticed in your story Notes section of Cole Black and Infinite that you tended to describe, like, the plots and characters as dynamically evolving as you were writing. And in some stories like the Gods of Our Fathers, you didn't know that there were certain characters in there until they came up. And it felt very organic. And it reminded me a lot of the sort of storytelling that we do in tabletop RPGs except you're just kind of molding the entire world around these characters.

Yeah. Again, I'm going to be talking in very, like, metaphorical, vague terms, but when I write, I. I start a story, I have a character in mind, and I kind of know where I want that character to end up. By the end, I basically drop them into a sandbox, and now I want to see how they react to it. So, like with Gods of Our Fathers, I knew there was a little girl. I knew she was being abused by her father. The brother popped up, you know, early on, like, okay, so he's part of it. And I knew that she was very unhappy. I didn't know to what extent she was unhappy. I knew that her. Her mother side of the family were more into this esoteric belief system than the father. That create tension, puts her at odds with her father. And, you know, it just kind of. It's a. It is a very organic thing. Once you kind of get into the flow of the story, there's always a point, and I don't know any writer who has never experienced this. There's always a point where the character starts moving and talking on their own. You just become a recorder. You're not actually dictating it because you didn't plan for that. That has happened to me so many times in my career where I've resisted where the character wanted to go. And because of that, the story did not end up as good as it could have been because I had a fixed idea in my mind on rails, so to speak, of where this needed to go. But the character's actions were not in line with that vision. So the challenge then becomes knowing when to let go and let the character do that. And that's usually where the best writing is done. It's a bit like you're taking a strawman figure and you're doing a little, you know, magic ritual that brings it to life. And once that happens, you have no control over where that little strawman figure is going to go next or what he's going to do. It's very much a. It's almost like a magical sort of thing, the act of writing and creation, because you tap into your subconscious in a lot of ways. Like, you tap into, okay, well, I have this archetype figure, okay, well, now I need to give it some life. I need to give it details. What's its background? Is it, you know, what's. Is there trauma? Is there, you know, some kind of emotion that propels them to this goal or this fate that you're driving into work. Then once those things start to fill out, it's like you start to see beyond just their limited scope. You start to see in the world you are creating the possibilities for this character where they can fit and where there's going to be a schism of some kind. Obviously. Usually want to drive your story toward the schism of some kind, because without conflict, you have no story. And from there, it becomes this very strange thing you are creating. It's like, you know, where you want it to go, but it may not necessarily get there because it has its own, you know, thoughts and feelings and ideas where it wants to be. So in a lot of ways, you're kind of juggling these two impulses just to let it do its thing or to direct it back on the rails. I typically run into this a lot with novels where I have a lot more, you know, space to let these things develop and see where they go. Short stories are harder because you're limited. You know, you're looking at, like, you know, sometimes as little as 2,000 words, and that's nothing. So I feel like I'm talking circles around myself. So did that answer your question?

Yes and no, because it kind of addressed it. But then it raised a few more. Thinking of some of the notes that you mentioned, like driving him towards a schism, I'm somewhat surprised to hear that you tend to more start at the end or where you want them to be, or, like, what you're envisioning sort of as a finale, and then working your way backwards.

As I don't necessarily work backwards. When I start something, I like to have an idea of where it's going to start. What is the setup? What is the premise? Why is this character there? I like to know. Kind of an idea of where I want it to end. You know, what needs to happen in between is where the magic happens. And I typically also try to have a title of some kind. It doesn't have to be permanent. It can change throughout the course of the writing, but it gives kind of like a thematic umbrella over the plot. And you write your setup, you introduce your character, you introduce the, you know, the immediate issue or whatever it is that's propelling them. And from there, it's really just a matter of, well, let's see what happens. You know, that's where the organic aspect of it comes in.

Yeah. And a lot of that, what happens in the middle, at least something that I've noticed in several of the stories for Cold, Black and Infinite, that I believe also John Langen mentioned in the foreword to is this focus on transformation that I think made a lot of the stories very empathetic, or at least they resonated some with me that these characters are beginning in something of like a mundane bad straight. And through these events in the middle, they are faced with the prospect of becoming something else, whether it's good or bad, voluntary or involuntary, that could change their lives. What are some concepts or things that you tend to try and look for to line these things up? Or are these all things that just tend to happen by the seat of your pants?

A lot of these things tend to happen. There are times where, okay, I want to write about this character going through this change of some kind, but in some ways it just happens that way. I wish I could articulate it better than that, but I mean it. This, what writers do is literal magic. They said something to the same effect. It's. There is a magic in what we do and not all of it is pre planned. There are many happy accidents in any kind of art form. And as the artist, you sometimes find yourself wondering, did my subconscious do that or was I just lucky?

That was what I was going to say is it is part of it working through something in your subconscious, kind of like a therapeutic or catharsis, like a dream, like trying to work that through through the character. Because sometimes I find that it's. A lot of the characters are very empathetic in the stories and it's very relatable and it's kind of nice to. In a lot of stories, not just yours, but stories in general, working through something that you might be going through and then seeing that reflected in the character in their journey.

Yeah. So I mean, there's always going to be personal things that pop up, whether you intend them or not. You know, my novella scan lines that I wrote a few years back was very much a means of therapy for me for processing past trauma. A lot of my more recent work I found is me working through past trauma that I'm only just now starting to face in middle age. There's always going to be conflicts or elements that create a conflict that are pulled purely from my experience. You know, I mention this publicly, I make no secret. You know, I'm. I'm on the spectrum. I've got adhd, I have anxiety very badly. And you know, I take medication for all of that. But anybody who's ever had to take medication for their mental health knows that there's always, you know, sometimes it's trial and error, finding the right Medication. So that's where my story, Happy Pills, Happy Pills came from.

I love that one. That was very fucked up and gory. That was fun.

Thank you. Thank you. Like, there's a transformation that happens there. It's, you know, it's sometimes metaphorical, sometimes, you know, physical. Driven to the, you know, nth degree because it's a horror story, you know. But I like to write about transformation and transformative things because for the longest time, it was something that I wanted to see in myself. Like, okay, I want to. I'm not where I am as a person, so now, you know, what can I do to get there? So there for a while, a lot of my. A lot of my story protagonists were trying to find where they fit, you know, in society, in their own lives. And writing about transformation of some kind is, you know, it's a good way to explore that within yourself. It's a good way to explore that in a story because there's always going to be conflict there. There's always going to be someone who doesn't want this person to transform or change or become a better person or stop doing what they're doing that, you know, is hurting themselves or something to that effect. There's very much a lot of personal, subconscious things that pop up. Like if you take my story in Midnight in the Southland that was written for an anthology called Liminal Spaces, other than the fact that it was about a liminal space, I had nothing to go on. So I started thinking about points of your life that can be liminal spaces because anything can be liminal, really. And with the story, you know, okay, so let's say there's this guy, he's going on these night drives. Well, why is he going on the night drives? Well, he, you know, just got out of a bad relationship. Well, I had experience coming out of a bad relationship and, you know, going on night drives when I was in college. And, you know, I kind of tapped into a lot of that loneliness, a lot of the sadness, how much your. Your life is changing because, you know, someone was important to you, is no longer there in whatever regard. And the challenge then becomes, okay, well, how can I take this and how can I actually turn this around so that it's a physical thing in the story that reinforces the overall theme? And so, you know, how is this guy becoming a different person? He's become. It's growth, essentially, but his character is also ending up, you know, in this other state of being. And a lot of, like, what I felt at that point in my Life became the driving force in the character. And that's why there's a part of me in every thing I write because that's just how I learned to write. That's how you know, you have to create characters that are empathetic. If the reader doesn't care about the character, then, you know, you're, you basically need to start over.

Yeah, and I think there's something to be said for character driven versus world driven worries. And I think that, yeah, yeah, there's.

There'S got to be that emotional connection somewhere. And that's what I tend to focus on. I like to get into the pathology of, you know, or psychosis of the character. I like to get in their heads. I like to see what makes them tick. And if the reader understands what makes them tick and the why of it, then you have more engagement on the reader's part and more connection.

This is getting my wheels turning and thinking about creating NPCs or non player characters in these games. And Beth, I think you hit the nail on the head there in terms of giving them more character driven motivations and traits that can be empathized with by players and by their characters potentially. As opposed to like I'm the sheriff here to cover up the local town conspiracy. That's my motivation. Go. Because like in reading through Tales from the Southland, it felt very nostalgic and lonely and relatable for me to a different time in my life. Whenever I, I vividly remember loving to get in the car and just drive around empty Austin streets at like 3, 4am in the morning when it felt like the world was asleep. And I wonder if there is a trick or something to try and identify those personal tics that create that resonance that you can try and crystallize as some sort of empathetic element for different characters that should, I think, make them more memorable. I know whenever Alex ran Our Ladies of Sorrow, you had a character who was kind of an asshole but didn't know that his friend had died, that we just watched him die in a car crash. And so we're just there talking amongst ourselves at dinner. And Alex, I'll never forget that you just had a. Wait, what moment? Whenever we let that slip and it was all of that guilt came crashing down. I don't know, I'm just talking. I don't have a real point to say here.

Yeah, some thoughts on that. When I'm portraying NPCs or writing up information about PCs instead of like saying, oh, this is the sheriff and he wants X Y and Z. Like, you gotta think about why they want X, Y and Z. Are they doing it because they're afraid? Are they doing it because they're being manipulated or there's some kind of misunderstanding? I. I even have like a. I sort everything into notes here.

So give them their musical. I want song.

Right. So to make someone like an NPC compelling, you have to kind of be a method actor.

Yeah.

So for example, right, if I want to portray like, let's say a depressed clown as a PC that I have. Right. That's definitely going to be different than your portrayal of a depressed clown PC, because I'm drawing from my own memories and experiences of what a clown is and what depression is. While you, Lex, you might have something completely different.

I just am a depressed clown.

Yeah, exactly. Right. You might just be playing yourself.

Same, same, same.

Right. But that's part of the beauty of it. Because my depressed clown's different than your depressed clown. And to draw this back to tabletop RPGs, it's all collaborative. But going back to compelling NPCs, how does that character view the world? I was having a conversation with another tabletop RPG player, Morgan Llewellyn, and he was talking to me about NPCs. He's creating this businessman NPC. Right. And these characters have motivations. How does he view the world? He views the world ruthlessly. He views it through a lens of utilization, the body. It is to be used, it is to be profited off of. So if you have this person who values and puts on a pedestal, like power, money, utilization, then also warp it so that they think that they're like, doing a good thing because they're always going to be the protagonist in their own story. That's a good way to get into the mind of an npc. And yeah, same thing with like, let's say a security guard or a bouncer, right? They're going to be driven by masculinity, dominance, power. Yeah.

That's reminding me a lot of the very punny titled Human Resources from what was at the Smile Factory. Because I got a big laugh out of me whenever I realized what you were going there, that, yeah, humans are the resource. Yeah, yeah. I think there are some notions that I want to try and keep in mind in terms of those empathetic traits that in addition to giving them their reason to terre to, I'm sure I just butchered that I don't care raison d' etre gesunde for their reason for being and acting within the show. Of the tabletop rpg. I think that it can be helpful, especially if you want to have an empathetic NPC to appeal to the players as to have something from these sort of core memories, like we're talking about, with that they do night drives, or that they do just some kind of trait that you've observed, either from yourself or others, that maybe brought you a bit of peace, that could be a way to quickly personify them a lot more for the players.

One other point about Todd's like, creating characters. I specifically remember when you're saying, like, you make a straw man, right, and they just take on a life of their own, they start speaking to you.

Yeah.

And I think Alan Morrison said something like that. One of his master classes I remember taking. But, yeah, you can relate that very much to the PCs who play your game, because if you try to shove them into, like a square hole and that they're not going to fit into, they're not going to have fun. Right, Right. Just let them do what they want. Don't try to force a plot point, don't try to railroad them, because it's going to be detrimental to running a.

Good game, for sure. To give you another example of the strawman analogy and kind of letting them do their own thing, the novel I have coming out, Sundowner's Dance, I had a harder time with that book than anything else I've ever written. And that's because I kept in my mind, I thought it was going to be this kind of story, and the characters kept changing that. So the book went from being a novelette, which is like 10 to 15,000 words, it went beyond that. And I thought, okay, maybe it's going to be a novella. And it was going to be. It would have been if a character hadn't shown up at protagonist's door when they did to have a conversation. I didn't plan that. And that completely altered the trajectory of the story. And now it introduced this whole new dynamic to it. And it took writing in full novel to resolve it. And it's an example, you know, for me as a creator to get out of my own way, because when I try to create, you know, in a lot of ways, sometimes when it comes to character development, if I try to create and stick to a rigid vision for that character, it's going to go poorly. You have to kind of step back and let them develop on their own. And, you know, you have to see where the strawman goes, essentially.

Right.

See what they do.

Just thinking back on it, right in tabletop RPGs. When you're writing a game as a game master, there is a certain degree of improv that you have to do. I'm wondering how improv translates to writing, though.

I'm kind of seeing that it's like a microcosm of this GM improvisation. You've set up these characters and you're kind of letting it go. I'm going to use this as my excuse for why my games always take three times longer than I ballpark. Because it's the players. They just keep doing things I didn't anticipate.

Exactly. I mean, there's definitely strong similarities there. You know, I knew Devil's Creek was going to be a long book. I didn't know it was going to be that long. And it's primarily because more characters kept speaking and doing things. And, you know, when you have a large number of characters, you have to consider, okay, well, this character does this. How does it impact all of the other characters? And when you're that zoomed in on their emotions and their motivations and what have you, you really have to kind of take all that into account. It's very much like setting up dominoes. And, you know, if I. If I turn this one this way, or if this one turns on its own, is it going to strike the other one and they're all going to fall down? You should probably name this episode like, you know, how many different metaphors can Kiesling use to describe the writing process?

It's charming.

Oh, thanks. That's the first time anybody's ever said that to me. So bless you.

Today's the day.

So we're talking about, you know, setting up these microcosms of the world and seeing how these different characters will, you know, talk to one another or show up and changing things that may extend or prolong or cause new events to happen. I think especially whenever we have a overall trajectory in mind for a scenario, there are ways that you can guide characters into doing things, like having to confront hard decisions or maybe having to transform some element of themselves. In addition to the notion of transformation that we touched on for some of these stories, there's another staple of the cosmic horror genre, where someone enters a bargain or some kind of entreaty with something else for unknown ends. This is making me think of, like, afterbirth, where you have the desperate woman who is trying to just make a child for herself by following this occult tome like one does. And so I'm just curious if the process is any different for you. Setting up Someone who would then take one of these bargains and how we can try and put this in for players without it feeling just completely railroaded that, you know, this option is there, but are they going to take it?

I got to think about this for a second. Like, I think it's important that they have choice, and it needs to be clear to the audience. Right. You know, what are the ramifications for doing this? And maybe, like, in the case of afterbirth, I. I left that out, you know, I didn't want to just, you know, tell everybody, here's what's going to happen, you know, otherwise, the story's not going to be any good. It's going to suck, you know, so by turning the tables and allowing this entity to be the one telling the story was a way for me to hide, essentially, the outcome, you know, the final step of this ritual she's performing.

I think just pulling from my own experiences, I've watched some YouTube videos on, like, good writing, and I think one of them was very apt at what's good writing? When it's saying, like, don't ask the question, expecting a certain answer that's already going to be set up because it's going to be, like, it's not going to be genuine.

Yeah.

Like, there'd be no reason for a certain character to ask this question without the other character answering, just to advance the plot.

That's a great point. You know, I think I have such a hard time articulating some of this because it's so. So much of my process is driven by feeling and, you know, my gut. And you know what I think. What do I think this character would actually do in this situation? But for stuff like making a bargain like this pose, setting it up so that the character has to make this choice, I think it's not necessarily important that the character know, like, what all of the consequences of this will be. You know, I don't think they need to know that because, you know, you have to leave some mystery for the reader. That's what propels them forward. But the character needs to. At least it needs to be communicated, what the stakes are. You know, to some degree, I feel like I'm not answering this question very well.

If the writer doesn't know, the reader doesn't know either.

Right. Like, you know, something that my. My longtime editor told me when we first started working together, way back when I was a very young writer, very inexperienced, and I would write about things, but my editor would ask me, you know, well, how does this work? Well, I don't. I don't know how it works. Like. Well, you need to figure this out, because even though you may not be explaining how it works in the narrative, you as the author need to understand how it works because you. Gives you more authority to write about it. You know, it. You can write more directly. Your language changes when you understand the mechanics of something, and I can understand that. Yeah.

It also sounds like it's a way to avoid, like, plot holes or feeling like you pulled a rabbit out of a hat. Like this happened because it needed to. Don't look at it.

Yeah, yeah. So, like, I know some folks, you know, don't like cosmic horror because a lot of the, oh, you made like a Faustian bargain with this cosmic entity, blah, blah, blah. Everybody's seen that it's a trope. Well, yeah, it's a trope, but everything is a trope these days. And it's more about how you approach the trope, what you do with it. Because tropes are in everything.

As the writer, you are the cosmic entity. You need to know why you're giving the bargain and also why they would.

I'm actually like a bunch of cephalopods in a trench coat, so.

Exactly. Yeah.

I also feel seen now.

Yeah. But speaking of these bargains and these conflicts that you can introduce in your stories, that's very much like RPGs again, where when I'm setting up a scenario or a game and I'm writing something up or even reviewing an existing material, I think of things that I can throw at the player characters just like on a whim. And I believe, like, some people call them bangs. I call them just like events like, this is what happens. How do you react to it? And I leave that open ended.

Yeah. Like, I know I've heard some people call those in plotting, like, they call that the pinch. Okay, so, you know, here's what the character is going to do next. But then.

That's. Right.

But then here's the pinch. Here's something that complicates that, and then it becomes, you know, less about the goal they're trying to reach and more about how they're handling the complication.

Exactly. Because your PC or an npc, they want to do X and they're willing to do Y and Z. So just getting in the mind of that character, like, what are they capable of? How far were they willing to go?

And that's where a lot of the fun comes in.

Exactly. And I try to embody that every single time I portray someone Something.

Yeah, I think that that's really imperative for giving player character elements in terms of showing them the stakes and letting them make their own decisions while they are there as a way to really enhance the roleplay. One of the scenarios that we recently covered is a Call of Cthulhu scenario called the Burning Stars. And I think that it sets up a really good set of narrative stakes that as characters, we know this is a bad idea. We know we're about to die and it's fucked up, but there's not really any other option. And I couldn't live with myself if I just tucked tail and ran. So I felt like it set all of those things up really well. And it was a lot of fun as a player to explore these. Like, am I just going to let myself turn into something in order to accomplish this? So, like, it was an interesting idea where you're talking about setting up the stakes to do this bargain and thinking of it from the other end of the spectrum where we have ways that we can try and motivate player characters or potentially sympathetic NPCs. Are there any good pressures or motivations that we might be able to use for antagonists and what led them to their decisions? There's few things I love more than a sympathetic, or at least a reasonable villain. And we can get into extremely hateable villains like Jacob Masters in a bit. But I was just wondering, whenever you're setting up the more opposing, quote, unquote, evil, culty, like people, are there any sort of motivations that you may find work better than others? Like, I was thinking of holes in the fabric from Cold, Black and Infinite. We're wondering, are the cult members villains or just victims that went way into the deep end drinking the cosmic Kool aid?

Well, in that respect, they're absolutely victims. You know, I would say anybody falls in with a cult is ultimately a victim. I always go back to, you know, this tried and true thing, you know, the axiom, which is the villain is the good guy in their story. So they think that what they're doing is for the best, for either themselves, the world, for, you know, their region, whatever, whatever's happening. They think that they're doing the right thing. And that's where it becomes interesting, you know, to the reader. It gives more. It gives you another dimension to the villain. So, like, yeah, you could argue that the members of the, you know, Lord's Church of Holy Voices were villains themselves because they were perpetrating, you know, they were going to sacrifice these children, essentially. And that's not really a spoiler that happens in the first 50 pages, folks. But at the same time, there's another force driving them that is wholly intelligent and knows what it's doing to its own end. So in that case, you have people who. They don't realize that they are being manipulated. And so, you know, it comes down to, like, what. How much of that do you want to show the audience? Like, okay, I like to provide some kind of, you know, table turning element of a, you know, antagonistic character. You know, I hesitate to even call them villains sometimes because they're just the diametrically opposed force against the protagonist. It just so happens that their goals are at odds against each other. And then, you know, there's always going to be emotions that come, come, you know, from that opposition. So, you know, you mentioned Jacob Masters. Well, there's a moment in Devil's Creek toward the end where we get to see another side of him and you kind of understand, I at least show you the circumstances that led to him becoming who he is. And I like to think of it as it, you know, it kind of turns the table a little bit on the people of town. And now you kind of understand why this is happening to a degree. I like to play around with that stuff a lot. The book I just finished, which is a follow up to Devil's Creek two Devils, two Creek. No, it's called Revelation Road. Still very early days on that. But the villains in that story, you have a protagonist who is from the city. The villains are people from the backwoods of eastern Kentucky. So you have these two different viewpoints colliding, and both of them think they're doing the right thing. And that created a lot of interesting conversation. It created a lot of interesting buildup between these two forces. Again, I feel like I'm talking in circles about this stuff because it's all like. I don't know what it's like. I'm just.

I'm just talking. If we could distill writing down to just basic clipped information, it would be more science than art.

Yeah, for sure.

I think that this all makes perfect sense.

Same here, to be honest.

But sort of continuing with this vein of the. The entity in Devil's Creek that sort of led Jacob Masters to make some of the decisions that he did and helping the rest of the cult drink the cosmic Kool Aid. I really liked how this entity seemed hungrily indifferent to any character's motivations and was honestly just luring them to, I think, if I remember right, baptize themselves in its midnight womb in exchange for whatever was most appealing to them. If it was peace or salvation or power. And it just happened to want to sacrifice young flesh because. Yeah, it's nice. Feels good. Whatever. It didn't actually need anything. It just seemed hungry because it was. And I'm curious about the process of creating these kinds of cosmic horror. Entities that may have motivations or goals and what that may look like and how much that can be known to some of the player characters or the other NPCs and things in the game if they're only seeing a glimmer. You know, you're also talking about your editor's recommendation to you as the author. Need to know everything behind the curtain.

Right.

But just. Yeah. How do you handle this creature creation element?

Well, I mean, one of the aspects of cosmic horror is that you can't know. Or when you do know, it's so beyond your ability to understand, it drives you insane.

And that's such a rock and a hard place bit for me, because I always find that the. Oh, it's an unknowable, unobservable thing. If you observe it, you go and say you can't even communicate it. You're done. Because it feels like it's. Whenever you describe that there are infinite possibilities, you're kind of showing that there are no possibilities because there's nothing that you can really show from that. There's. So, yeah, how do you handle that?

So when I created the void in Devil's Creek, I know what it is. I know its purpose, I know why it's here. I know what its motivation is. I know what it comes from. And obviously I'm not going to tell you that because that's all part of a bigger story that I'm telling in pieces, but it was very much influenced by the cosmic entity that is it and Stephen King's it. I mean, it is a force. It is a force of nature. It is foreign to our planet, to our reality. But, you know, you kind of figure out that it has some rules in terms of what it wants. You hit the nail on the head. It's hungry. It wants to devour. But I tried to reveal that through the people it was affecting. And you never actually got something from its viewpoint because, again, that's unknowable. And it was driven more by, you know, I wanted to show the impact of this thing. And for. For a long time while writing it, the entity I treated as blind faith. Because the book is very much about how fanaticism and, you know, faith can drive someone insane, can corrupt them, corrupt their heart, and cause them to do harm to others. And that's, you know, that's why there's a cult. You know, that's why one of the main characters is a pastor, because I wanted to exemplify this.

Faith is sunk, cost, fallacy.

I agree that I grew up in a very strict Southern Baptist household. I grew up in that region of the United States where you just did this for God, you know, even if it's to your detriment, you're going to do it for God.

Or high school football.

Yeah, or high school football. That too. Sometimes they were interchangeable. And I wanted to create a force that would mimic that and would use that, knowing that we as. As a species, a desire to create something bigger than ourselves so that we would feel less alone. Something that understands that and then uses that and exploits it to enact its will upon, you know, in a reality it can't reach. So that's kind of where my mind was when it came to creating that in Devil's Creek.

It's very human to want to believe that something knows better than you about your own life.

Yes.

That you. That it knows something that you don't know so you can follow it to whatever end so that it can show you the best outcome, that you can get the best ending.

Yeah. I think it's inherent human nature to want that, to have something bigger than ourselves, that we can ascribe, you know, our actions to. To, in a way, absolve ourselves of our actions. So I think it's very much human nature to look for God or gods in everything. But the truth is, as I see it, that is a negative part of our existence.

Because it's comforting.

It's comforting, but it's also allowing others to manipulate large groups of people. And that's why I say that the entity itself, for me, in a lot of ways, was just blind faith. It was fanaticism. And it also stemmed from wanting to create my own pantheon of gods that were adjacent to Lovecrafts is. You know, growing up, everything I read by Lovecraft, it was all set in New England. Well, I'd never been to New England. I wanted to create something that was landlocked and just as ancient and a bit more, for lack of a better. A bit more approachable than what Lovecraft created. So, yeah, that's the void. That's the entity. Will it always drive people insane? Probably not, but it will get in their head and mess them up.

It's interesting from the way that you've described these things for me to try to take a step back and dissect this a bit for creating what our perceived to be very ambiguous and complex entities. You have this entity that is sort of based around some core element. In this case, I think it's very interesting that like its sole sort of mechanism is preying on this faith. Because humans are easy to read. A person walks by, it can read them in an instant and then see what they want. And so then playing on that person's deep drives, desires, or what have you, it can make promises and it can say, if you do this with this faith, I can provide this. So from the void side, it's pretty straightforward that it uses the same approach a lot of the time with different people. But the trick is having the viewpoint be from that person's perspective each time, where you have this limited scope of only seeing that. I climbed down a ladder into this cave to retrieve this artifact for an old lady. Stop me if you've heard this one before and there was a door there that wasn't there a second ago.

You mean this artifact?

Yeah. That little guy. Isn't he happy? But now something strange has happened. And now I'm hearing whispering, I'm hearing a voice in my head, and I'm feeling myself getting drawn forwards. So for each person, whenever they ever brush up against this void, it is. It's terrifying. It shakes them to their bones and they get just a taste of the effects of what it does and then will either succumb or split pretty quickly. And so just trying to think of how we can set these things up for designing our own creatures in games. Alex, I see you're raring to go here.

Easy. And I know you said that you want to focus on how it affects the players, but like if I'm running something, I want a stat block. I want to. It doesn't necessarily need to have health because it's a God or deity or what, whatever, but I want to know how it can affect the world, how it can affect other people. If there's even a chance for other people to resist, then that's some kind of oppose role with power. What can it do that's beyond just punching and kicking? Does it have some kind of telekinetic powers? Can it get in your head? Can it tempt you? Right. Can it generate illusions? Right. All of this stuff goes into a stat block. And a stat block is probably the most efficient way that I can get that information from my notes to the game. I don't know if that made it too simple, but I'm very pragmatic about it.

I mean, I've never thought about it in terms of stats.

Yeah, I'm an engineer, so that's fine.

Yeah. I'm just thinking it's something that I really liked about Devil's Creek. You mentioned that this is very sort of Lovecraft mythos. Adjacent is I really liked that you had a very compelling cosmic horror entity that did not feel entrenched in that mythos at all. Because I think that, I mean, especially we mostly play a game called Call of Cthulhu that like, it's. It's on the tin, but I feel like it really is something to come up with an entity that does not seem to have the regular trappings of eldritch tentacles and gambrel roofs and non Euclidean geometry associated with it.

Let's start up the Void. We'll include that in the bonus in the show notes. And now I have to do this. Okay, that'd be funny.

Okay. Well, we talked about the Void as kind of a big bad, but how do you go about creating entities for more of your short stories? Like in Cold like an Infinite. Like we talked about sort of the root inspirations for the characters, how they're going to lead from one place to the next and maybe interact with one thing or another. But how do you make those things?

Well, I have nightmares. I was asked this question a long time ago and I'm going to use something as an example that a lot of people aren't familiar with. So my first novel, Life Transparent, was the first part of a trilogy. And I introduced these creatures that I call the Yawning. And they are basically 7 to 8 foot tall, gaunt creatures that can swallow a man whole by unhinging its jaw. And there are quite literally a manifestation of mediocrity in this universe. Mediocrity is a substance and, you know, we produce it inherently.

Oh, I'm.

Yeah, same. And so these creatures are made quite literally out of our failings. Like we created these monsters to hurt ourselves unconsciously.

In the remake, they'll be midi chlorians.

I bring this up because I needed something that would exemplify the concept. And so it's a story full of a lot of different metaphorical angles. There's a lot of philosophy in it and it's why it's probably my least popular title. But that was my first time creating a villain, or at least a creature that was a concept made manifest, if that makes sense. So I tried to think of Something, okay, it's made of human mediocrity, so it's human like. But because mediocrity consumes us all, it can swallow a manhole, it has teeth, it's very vicious. It's a slow moving but dangerous creature. Think about the regenerators from Resident Evil. Four spikes. It's a bit like that. And it just keeps coming. So with that as an example, when it comes to creating creatures, I look for things that exemplify an aspect of the story in terms of, like, what's happening. But, you know, in a lot of ways at the same time, it's very much just off the cuff. It's. It's not planned. It's, you know, like the. The creature in afterbirth that's telling the story. The story's origins were very political in nature and not to get into politics, but it's a story about pro lifers, essentially. You know, I'm sure we've all seen the protesters, you know, who have photos of dead fetuses and whatnot, and it's pretty gross. But it's always about saving the embryo and not about taking care of the child after it's born. So I took that idea and I came up with the concept of, okay, what if a woman turns to necromancy to grow a child rather than have one because she can't? And then to set the story through the eyes of this thing that she's, you know, unknowingly called down from another dimension, this evil entity that's inhabiting the biological waste she's stealing from this abortion clinic. This creature becomes your point of commentary in telling the story to you, the reader, through its many eons of wisdom.

And what have you, apparently many eons of sassiness, because it's a very entertaining narrator. Thank you, Karen. You're losing touch.

I have a blast reading that story out loud to unexpecting crowds. It's very fun. The entity exemplifies the theme of what I'm going for. It is this thing like she's all about having the kid, but she hasn't thought about the repercussions and the consequences and what's going to happen after it is born. Like, I'm trying to take something that reinforces the theme or the message and give it flesh. Essentially.

Literally.

A. Yeah, literally. In this. In this case, that is a very chopped up explanation of how I create creatures. I look for ways to have something that reinforces whatever it is I'm trying to say. And I make that the element of Danger in that story.

And as you're creating these creatures and as you mentioned, you know, since this is horror, we're dialing it up to 11.

Right.

To what extent do you find the old adage to write what scares you? What elements do you try and exemplify in these things, to dial in that horror aspect? Like, in the scenarios that I write, I tend to include a lot of bugs and insects getting under the skin because I absolutely fucking hate the image of that. Yeah, I've noticed that terms like worms and rancid earth tend to show up in your works as well. So, yeah, I'm just curious, like, what elements those may be for you. What scares you?

Well, I mean, a lot of my fears are abstracts.

Capitalism.

Yeah, capitalism. Capitalism scares me. The Sundowners Dance comes to mind because the story deals heavily with the effects of dementia. Dementia fucking terrifies me. It runs in my family. It's gonna happen to me sooner or later, and that scares me. Having the presence of mind enough to know that your actions, you don't really have control over them, losing control of yourself and being trapped inside your own body, that fucking terrifies me. Not so much the aging, but the effects that come with aging. When everything starts to break down, entropy has taken hold, and you're not long for this planet. It's Alzheimer's, it's dementia, it's cancer. It's all of these different things. That's what scares me. But my job is to take that and create something horrific with it that is more digestible because the truth is far scarier. You know, I can't really like, oh, this thing is cancer. Ooh, scary. Yeah, we know what cancer is. But if I, you know, give it some limbs and some eyes and I give it a sense of purpose, and I set it in opposition of this character that the reader is rooting for, that's when it becomes scary. That's when it becomes something really scary. Because at the end of the day, you know, it's escapism. You know, we're reading to get out of our own heads for a while. And to me, that's. That's always been my tried and true method is to find something, take what I'm afraid of. How can I depict it in a way that isn't obvious, but also is genuinely horrific? Look at the Smile Factory. I hated my job for 13 long years. I despise human resources. I despise the bureaucracy of a corporate environment. And the Smile Factory was the personification of that. I had a boss call me into his office and give me a warning because I don't smile enough. Like, this is just my fucking face, dude. You know, that's where that came from. Does that answer your question? Like, it's. It's very much a. An abstract thing, but I take the things that scare me, for sure, but I try to introduce them in different ways that people haven't seen before or, you know, people haven't thought about in a certain way before. That makes sense.

It's like a metaphor.

It's all metaphors.

It's another one of those metaphors. I mean, that also answers another question that we had about taking the same creature or monster and using in different stories. Because the same creature, like a zombie, can be used to represent many different things. Like corporate workers can be zombies, like the Black Friday shoppers can be zombies. Zombies can be a lot of different things. And you can keep it fresh by having them represent different concepts or fears.

Exactly.

I find it very relatable what you just said about taking these abstract thoughts and really seeing what they would look like in different mediums, different methods. And you're right about the escapism part. We're reading to experience things that we can experience, like, or wouldn't want to experience.

Yeah, Like, I read horror so the rest of the world doesn't feel so bad by comparison. So, like, yeah, keep going that much longer.

Reading horror is very much an act of catharsis. I find you read horror because at least this is under control. You know, there's going to be an ending. It will eventually stop. So, you know, I turn to reading because I want to silence the rest of the world.

And I feel like there's a lot there to dive into with what you just said in terms of writing about what scares you in terms of these deeply seated, rooted fears. Like, I also have a similar petrifying fear of dementia and Alzheimer's. And I think that instead of saying, if I'm making a scenario, ah, we're fighting Alzheimer's, it's that twitchy thing over in the corner. It's not personifying it that directly, but rather identifying what these things that we have very real fears of.

And then you're going to become the twitchy thing.

Well, also, yes. But then really trying to lay out what those fears are, what those feelings are that are associated with those things, and then finding ways to crystallize them within a story. Are these elements that are going to happen to the characters or to the players so that they may experience like they are missing time, They're Showing up in places and not realizing what they're doing. They are feeling that loss of control that is frightening. Or is it some sort of just uncontrolled growth? Getting into themes of cancer, it makes me always think of the movie Annihilation. That. That mutation, that constant growth and changing is the source of the horror there. That it's not necessarily we're fighting cancer. That's the scary thing. It's what is scary about it that can help to focus on, to create these great themes of horror that we can deliver for these scenarios or these books and things.

Definitely that's a therapy tactic as well. I just want to point that out to take the thing that you're afraid of and break it into smaller pieces and identify the things that you're afraid of, parts of the things that you're afraid of, and make them into something more digestible. I know it's not on topic, but.

Oh, so horror is therapy too. It's really great.

I mean, honestly.

I mean. Yeah, it's therapy for me.

Yeah.

I mean it. To go back to scan lines for a second. I mean, if you've read the afterword of that book, I pretty much lay out how that story came to be. And the thing is, is that with how the ghost of Congressman Hardy keeps popping up and keeps perpetuating. I didn't understand it when I was writing it, but that's trauma. He is quite literally trauma. And it wasn't until, you know, I had people read it and tell me. And it makes perfect sense because I was trying to process trauma while I was writing it.

Some people journal, and some people's journals are a lot more interesting to read.

Yes.

I think this is getting into core elements that we can keep in mind when creating these stories in general. Like, we talked about character motivations, we talked about creature development and motivations in there. And I think we've discussed a lot of your organic creation of these stories. If you are feeling some fear or you are feeling some trauma and needing to kind of express that in some way, shape or form on the page. I'm curious if the process may differ between using this more organic inspiration for a prompt versus writing for a prompt.

So usually the prompts come up, come about when there is an anthology either you want to submit for or you get invited to write for an anthology. If you're lucky, you get enough lead time that you can kind of work this out. Like Midnight in the Southland, for example. The prompt was, it's got to be about liminal spaces. So I had Already had a concept rolling around in my head before that, I wanted to write about something that would involve talking about Art Bell and Coast to coast am, the old radio show. And, you know, Kevin Lucia, the editor, reached out to me, invited me to write something, and this confluence of things came together and that story's the result. It's not always that simple or easy. Sometimes, you know, I've been invited to things that I just could not come up with a concept that fit or like I typically have at all times. You know, I have no shortage of ideas. Ideas are cheap. You know, they're a dime a dozen. And, you know, it's a matter of trying to cycle through those different concepts and like, okay, would. Could I do something with this theme, with this concept or premise? And, you know, sometimes I not offer time. I can't. You know, it's. It's. It's very much almost by feel and timing. It's like, if I'm in the mood to write this kind of story right now and I have enough time to do it, and, you know, I think I can control it, keep it under this word count, and sure, I'll take a stab at it, but that's not always the case. And, you know, it really comes down to, well, you know, I. Maybe I'm just having an off week or I don't have an idea that fits that. But the way I combat situations like that is I take whatever the theme is and I just think about it a lot. You know, I'll think about, you know, well, you know, what does this theme mean to me? Especially if it's an abstract idea. I try to think something concrete that, you know, relates to it. And, you know, once I have that, then I try to, okay, well, will that fit into any of these ideas I already have? Well, if that doesn't fit, then, okay, well, then I try to come up with a scenario that involves this concrete representation of the theme and go from there. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Matter of fact, tomorrow I'm starting in a story or an anthology invite that has to be about growth and rebirth. And I already had this concept. It has to do with children living in walls of a house. And, well, okay, those can kind of go together. So, you know, I've been thinking about this for weeks before I ever start actually writing it, because I like to have a firm grasp where I'm beginning, where I'm ending. And I'm going to take a stab at it. Will it work out? I don't know what I do know is that it's a sequel to Afterbirth.

I think I have two questions. Kind of derived from that is you're mentioning what feel like a couple of different premises. If it's the theme or it's these elements that you are keeping in mind. How do you keep these organized? Do you have a series of notebooks around the house?

Sorry, no. I do have some organization, but like I kind of go back to the, you know, Mitch Hedberg philosophy of, you know, writing jokes. You know, sometimes you write jokes that, you know while you're trying to go to sleep. Well, if they're important enough, you'll remember them. And if not, then, you know, it wasn't that funny to begin with. So, you know, a lot of ideas that I have are the one, you know, that end up becoming stories of the ones that never go away. So that's kind of my, my personal philosophy there is when it comes to ideas like the ones that stick around are the ones that get written. So once they get to that point where they're not, you know, I keep thinking about them on a regular basis. I'll create a folder for, you know, that story or concept and that'll be the working folder for that story. I'll create a document, format it. I come up with a title, put that in there. And sometimes I write a little bit. Sometimes it's literally just the title. And I have stories that have been sitting there for years that I haven't really. Maybe it's not the right time. Maybe I'm not in the right mood. Maybe it's very much a, you know, like you said, organic process for me when it comes to that.

Yeah, it sounds very state dependent, like I would want to wager. Do you think you could write Scan Lines right now given your current emotional state or it sounds like you really needed to be going through that because it was cathartic for that moment.

I was in a pretty bad spot when I wrote Scan Lines and I was in therapy. I was, you know, on leave from my job at the time and, you know, a lot of things were uncertain. It was a scary time for me. I could write Scan lines now, but it probably wouldn't be as good or as authentic. And I think one of the reasons that story has been so successful is because of its authenticity. The next book I plan to start is going to be a reimagining of the first novel I ever wrote when I was 17. And could I write that novel today? Absolutely not. I'm not a 17 year old. Angsty teenager anymore. I'm still angsty and angry, but not a teenager anymore. And the dynamics of being a teenager have changed so much since I was a teenager. But if I frame the story differently and write it from the, you know, in the style of an oral history where people are my age talking about an event that happened when they were young, that's totally different. I feel like I trailed off there. I'm sorry, I lost my.

No, no worries. I've been asking a lot of these questions. So, Alex, Beth, do you have any thoughts?

This makes sense to me. It's just that in the regard of like, you just find your method and you stick with it. Right. Because your method's not going to be someone else's method. Because David lynch, rest in peace.

Yes.

He's like, if you forget an idea, you're going to want to commit suicide. So write everything down. But then Stephen King, he's like, don't write down ideas. It's bad for you because you're gonna write down garbage ideas. So honestly, just do what works for you.

Yeah, I mean, pretty much. It's very much a personal thing.

Writing is personal. It is so personal.

Every artist has to find their own process. And it can be totally different. It can be similar. I mean, yeah, I don't write down my ideas, but if I hear a turn of phrase or if my wife says something hilarious or unexpected, sometimes I'll write it down. Like I've got a post it note about a radio station making people like take their skin off. Like, okay, I have no idea what the context is for that, but I keep it because one, it was funny at the time. And, you know, like the Sundowners dance started literally with a single line out written on a post it note. It was the worms in my brain Dance at Nightfall. I wrote that at like 8:30 in the morning at my office job after I got coffee. Where did it come from? I don't fucking know. But it was intriguing enough that I wanted to like, develop that or see where that would go. And, you know, three years and 90,000 words later, here we are.

So there's no catch all.

I don't think so. Yeah.

And that's okay.

Yeah. I'm just more trying to pick your brain apart to see if there are any recommendations or lessons that we can try and learn. And in that same vein, between your collection and your other novels, you've tended to write for a lot of different settings and vibes. So I will often reference Devil's Creek as a prime example. Of folk horror or rural small town horror, which is such a good vibe.

Thank you.

Scan lines I also use as my main recommendation. If you want some analog or found footage, horror in book format, then that is a great example. How do you feel about doing a little lightning round to see if there are any notions that you have found more or less less effective or helpful for you to keep in mind whenever you were trying to write for these different kinds of settings?

Sure. Okay.

All right. Folk horror hit me.

Small town, backwoods where I grew up. Essentially people in an isolated area. Not around large people, but a, you know, sizable group of people. People in a community that is cut off from, you know, other places. There's an element of old ways, essentially, like old, old style of doing things. It's very much like the traditions. Yeah, tradition wrapped up in traditions or religious belief and just cut off from what you would consider modern society some degree.

And so being able to dial in that isolation sounds like is a big concern there. And also the tie in with the surrounding wilderness, whether that would be sort of forest or you could do like, I'm from barren plains of West Texas, so something like desert, that, sure, you can try and leave by walking away, and you're probably going to die of thirst before you get to the next town if you don't have a car. So finding that sort of intersection, you.

Know, I should preface all of this by saying I'm not a scholar at all. So, like, I'm sure there is some scholar of folk horror out there saying, man, this guy's totally fucking off base.

Then they can come bust into this podcast. You're the resident expert right here, right now.

There's usually like an element that ties in with nature. Kind of like the. The town and the wilderness have some kind of harmony, or maybe there isn't harmony and that's the source of the horror. There's a natural earthen element to it.

To me, I find it says Mononoke folk horror.

Oh, interesting.

Actually never seen that. Sorry.

Oh, it's my favorite Ghibli movie.

My wife is the Ghibli expert around here.

You can pitch that to her then.

Okay.

Yeah, Beth, I agree. I can see where you're coming from with that there. I also think in terms of really key elements that maintain that flavor. I don't know why, but every time that you had the radio station and Devil's Creek, I feel like that that FM or AM radio, or is that part of the isolation or communication? It feels very fitting for that vibe. But maybe I'm just off base.

I mean, it's not intentional on my part. It's just the whole radio station angle came up as a means of, you know, providing a external narrator that is, you know, within the story. The Midnight in the Southland radio show, because I couldn't use coast to coast am. I couldn't use actual Art Bell quotes and stuff. I made it all up to fit this at Mechanic. But, you know, I can say that in the book I've just finished, the radio station comes into play. Midnight in the Southland comes into play. One of the survivors from Devil's Creek is a secondary character in this book. You know, if you've read it, we're talking about radio stations. You can probably figure out who I'm talking about. But I wouldn't consider the radio station part of, you know, the aspect of what makes it folk horror, per se.

So then it sounds like if it's not folk horror, it's going to have to be analog horror. Because that makes me think of the game Killer Frequency.

That is a really fun game. I like that game. Yeah.

So what elements have you found for analog horror?

So I'm going to recommend a book here. Best analog horror story I've ever read. It was an influence on scanlines. It's actually called the Analog. The story itself, the analogy. The book itself is called the Analog and Other and Other Stories or something like that. It's written by Michael Gray Bond. You can actually listen to the story on Pseudopod. That's where I first heard it. This story is, to me, the encapsulation of what you would call analog horror. It is, you know, analog. It's not digital. You're looking at media. It's how the media has to figure into it some way. But old media, VHS cassettes, low resolution, in terms of, like. There's an element of nostalgia to it because of that reliance on old media. And it has to do with our relationship with electronics. You know, how much of our lives have been shaped by just having an old radio and listening to music on the radio. That was probably your first. Well, it was my first exposure to so much music that I listened to today, actually. A lot of us saw movies on VHS for the first time. It wasn't in a theater. It was in our homes on a little cassette, magnetic tape. And there's a charm to it. And there's also a mystery to it because there's. It's. I keep coming back to the resolution. The resolution is so low. And if you really wanted to look at something or like zoom in on a. On a screen. For example, on an old CRT screen with a VHS cassette. You can't really tell what the hell you're looking at because it's so blurry.

It makes me think of Fall of the House of Usher when they have the security camera footage enhance. It doesn't really work like that.

Yeah, exactly. If you look at the Ring and Pulse, which, you know, people who hated scan lines argue that I was just ripping off the ring. That's not true. I was ripping off Pulse. Pulse is probably my favorite J horror film. And that's set in the early 2000s, late 90s, when the Internet was proliferating through society. And you could argue that it's digital, but it's also analog in a way that they're still using dial up modems to connect to the Internet. And there's that whole mystery to it because, you know, the Internet was still a new thing. It was very much the Wild West. So you never knew what was on the other side of that connection. That makes sense. Analog horror to me is that our connection with old media and with that there is nostalgia inherently baked into that. There's a movie called Broadcast Signal Intrusion. So I don't know if you. Anybody seen that?

I don't think so.

It's on Shutter. It used to be on Shutter. I don't know if it still is. But it is in itself a amalgamation of some urban legends like the Max Headroom incident. Are you all familiar with that? Okay, so it takes that, right? It takes that incident, somebody breaking into, you know, a broadcast signal. But then it also has elements of I Feel Fantastic. Are you familiar with that? Okay, it's creepy as shit. When the show's over, go on YouTube and look up I Feel Fantastic. It is a video of an animatronic doll singing a song called I Feel Fantastic. And it's sounding familiar interlaced with these random video clips of like the woods and stuff. And there's like a whole story, creepypasta story behind this thing. The video itself is scary as hell. Just. Well, it's not really scary. I would consider it unnerving because the whole. The whole uncanny valley aspect to it. Yeah, like, so it takes that. It takes the Max Headroom incident and it kind of creates its own story, but it's all based on video cassettes. And this guy has to go review all these cassettes and he's digitizing them essentially, and he comes across this incident and it leads him down a rabbit hole of this mystery. And it it's pretty wild. I realize I'm giving you more examples of what I consider analog horror than explaining what it is, but again, this is a very. I don't know, it's more like a feeling than a strict definition. Yeah.

It is a vibe.

Yeah.

I think in talking about more things that we have a difficult time describing them. Are there any elements that you have found can really dial in for things like a dreamlike surrealism? Like Alex mentioned David lynch earlier. If we get into things like that or any other inspirations for capturing a very surreal horror element in a story or in a game?

I think for the surreal, you have to base it in reality to a degree because what makes something surreal in my mind is the familiarity and then slowly stripping that familiarity away. So, like, there's that story about the guy who woke up from a coma and he had lived, like he gotten married, had children, had lived his whole life in his head in a dream while he was, you know, in a coma. He looked at the lamp and the lamp look wrong. He couldn't remember buying that lamp. Where did this lamp come from? It's very much, when it comes to the surreal, I think about a scenario where you come home from work, your house is empty. The lights, know the lights are. Everything is the way it's supposed to be. But instead of there being something missing, something is there that shouldn't be and you can't quite put your finger on it, like something is wrong. You just can't understand what or how or why yet, but you just feel it, you know, it's almost a very visceral reaction. Like something feels off. I don't understand why. And then slowly you start to peel back that sense of familiarity and, oh, you know, you walk into your kitchen and now there's a garden gnome sitting on the stove. Pascal, how did it get there? Who knows? Why is it there? Well, that's your job to figure out now, isn't it?

Or not.

Yeah. You basically up the weirdness as the normalcy starts to drop.

I think there's quite a bit of power in having that contrast of normality and then having the strange.

Right.

One enhances the other. You can't have strange all the time. Then it just becomes normal.

Right, right.

That's why it's so great that you introduced it by saying. Yeah, you base it in reality to give the strangest effect.

Yeah. Like on the topic of Lynch, I mean, if you look at. Take the scene in Blue Velvet where Kyle McLaughlin goes on a drive with Frank Booth and the Singer Isabella Rossellini's character. And they go to that house. And so the actress can see her child that's being kept in another room that you never see. And, you know, there are all these people there. They're kind of grody. They're, you know, just odd.

They're singing.

They're singing like, you know, Dean Stockwell's character starts, you know, miming the song in Dreams by Roy Orbison. And Frank Booth is singing along, but then he freaks out, and it's like, is any of this really happening? Because just saw, you know, Frank Booth take a pill, and it's just so odd. You know, there's people dancing to this song that's not really a song you would dance to. And then it just stops and Frank freaks out and everybody leaves. And then we're on a drive. And it. It's so random. It's the randomness of it, I think, that feeds into the, you know, the surreality of it. So, yeah, it's familiar in that it's in a house. There are people. You know, there's nothing in this scene that is supernatural, but it's the way they're behaving that's weird.

A lot of things that don't belong together, they may ostensibly be normal in isolation, but they don't occur in this combination.

Yes, that's exactly it.

Is there anything that we didn't touch upon that you'd love to talk about.

Todd, in terms of creating characters or anything, or just.

Or just creating, or writing or.

Writing is hard. Yeah, it's hard.

That's true.

It's the hardest job I've ever had.

Sometimes just the motivation to just start writing.

It definitely takes an element of discipline to stay with it. I'm not one of these writers that preaches that you should write every day, because a writer is going to be writing up here whether they're physically doing it or not. But, you know, it's. It's. You never stop thinking about your story. Whatever you, you know, you're working on artistically.

I think it's a final question and definitely not one that I'm personally struggling with at the moment. But whenever you aren't feeling it, whenever you are struggling with that motivation to write and you keep thinking about these things, and it's like the mechanics aren't there. How do you handle that? How do you work with it? How do you try to overcome that?

I step away from it. I try to focus on other things, whether it's, you know, projects around my house, you Know, or catching up writing emails, catching up on email, following up on things that I need to follow up on design work, because I, you know, I do that for a living. You know, stuff like that. If I need to get away from my computer, I will go play a game, I will go watch a movie, I will go read. Sometimes I'll just go for a walk to try and get out of my space for a while. There's any number of things I do to, you know, if I'm stuck, I will take a break. You absolutely must take a break. Because I don't really believe in writer's block. It's more just a, you know, you're mentally exhausted, you're frustrated, exhausted, and you need to give yourself, you know, space and time to work through whatever the issue is that you're having in your story. Yeah, take mental health breaks, take video game breaks, take movie breaks. And oftentimes, oddly enough, I will say go take a shower. Because oddly enough, most of the plot issues I've ever had in my books I have resolved while taking a shower.

I think there's something to be said for not looking at something directly anymore.

Yes.

Don't look at it directly. Look at it from the corner of your eye because it's a different perspective and you can.

Yeah.

Think about it more clearly.

To add on to that, there's a graphic designer that I follow named Chip Kid. I attended one of his presentations many years ago and something he said, whenever he feels stuck on a design, he turns the image upside down because it forces your brain to look at it in a different way. Suddenly, a picture of a cat is no longer a picture of a cat. It's something else entirely. And that forces your brain to recalibrate, essentially. So if I'm stuck on a scene or something, or it's just not coming together, the flow's not there. I'll take a step back, do something else, but also think about, okay, what if I approach this scene from a completely different direction? Maybe that's the hang up. And then I'll try that. If that doesn't work, I'll repeat and come up with something else. But at the core of this is you absolutely have to give your brain a break. Because I spent most of last year writing one thing. There were many, many, many breaks. Just because if you don't want to burn yourself out on it, you want to keep yourself excited about it. So, like some writers, I'm one of them. Recommend, like, if you're reaching to a stopping point in your project, don't end on a full sentence, or don't end on the end of a scene, end in the middle of it, end the sentence like mid sentence, and then come back to it next time. And rather than being faced with a blank line or a blank page, you are immediately having to jump back into your frame of thought that you were at when you stopped before. That, I found, is very helpful.

We hope these insidious whispers can help inspire you to create future horrors at your table. Be sure to check out the show notes for links to Todd's website and books, a link to our Conspirator podcast David Behavior, as well as other things that we discussed in this episode, like some of the movies and books that Todd recommended, as well as an invite to our Lab's Discord server to discuss more reanimations and consultations. We also post these episodes and resources to our Patreon that's free to follow. Or, if you like, you can make a charitable donation to help us keep the ominously flickering lights on at the H. West Memorial Mortuary and Laboratories. Todd, is there anything else you'd like to bring up here before we unleash you once again upon the unsuspecting world?

Yes, I've mentioned it several times during the show, but I have a new novel coming out called Sundowners dance. It releases April 22nd from Shortwave Publishing. It is the story of an elderly widower who moves into a retirement community for folks over 55 and discovers that his new neighbors are worshiping a meteorite. Other than that, you can find me on Socials Oddkeesling, Very active on Bluesky, and I also am active on my own Patreon Oddkeesling. So thanks for having me, guys. This was a great conversation.

Yeah, thanks for coming on. We really appreciate it.

Thank you.

And for those at home, until next time, thanks for listening to RPG Reanimators and David Behavior where your games can.

Die or live on the table.

My body is a machine that turns Steam sales into unfinished games in my library.

Oh, I feel seen.