151 - David Demchuk Returns

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I'm justin i forgot my new job title and my pronouns are he and they i'm sadie
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i work it in a public library library i have covid right now and my pronouns are they them i'm.
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Jay i'm a cataloging librarian and my pronouns are he him and we have a guest would.
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You like to introduce yourself sure my name is david demchuk i am a canadian
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writer of dark fiction and my pronouns are he and him.
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Crowd goes wild. Welcome back. Well, I'm happy to be back.
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Yeah, I know. We've been talking about having you back ever since you announced this book, really.
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Well, that's very nice to hear. So we've been, I've been waiting for it to come out and I'm really.
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I'm not the Sweeney Todd head in my relationship. That goes to Jay.
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Hi. But I have watched, I have watched a lot of Sweeney Todd with him.
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Yeah we did a sweeney todd episode on a tender subject and it was really fun.
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Oh cool i'll have to go hunting for it.
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Yes and we have we'll need to have you on for this book obviously.
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Yeah i know jay's been too busy to read it but i have gotten through it and.
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Daughter the hitherto untold story of mrs lovett a novel this is true And it's
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co-written by me and a debut author named Kareen Lee Clark, both Canadians.
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Originally, when we started the project, we were both in Ontario.
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Kareen remains there. I have since moved to St. John's, Newfoundland.
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So a good chunk of the book and certainly the whole editing process had to happen
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while we were provinces apart.
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Thousands and thousands of kilometers apart. Yeah, you're really out there on the edge.
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Yes, it is the absolute edge of the continent. Like, you know,
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I look out my kitchen window and I can look into the harbor,
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into the narrows and out into the open ocean. So, yes. Yeah.
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It's, it's, it's, you can, you can keep your eye on what they're doing over in the UK for us.
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Just keep, uh, just sit there with your binoculars just in case they try anything.
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I'll look past the icebergs and the whales.
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Yeah. Like Sarah Palin looking at Russia. I get the other end.
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No, you got it. That's exactly what I was going for. Perfect.
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So there's an interesting development. So I'm going to do a quick segment, which is.
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I can't believe you wanted to come back on. I wanted to come back on for the
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music cues, I have to tell you.
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So, last time you were on, we had found this guy who sent,
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Sadie's workplace saying that he owned Shakespeare's works and that the library
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was infringing on his copyright. right? Apparently he keeps.
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Eventually came up against public citizen which is the ones who finally started going into the,
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translations and had been granted a copyright by the copyright office which
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was very strange so anyway he's still up to it I.
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To happen but i remember when we were looking into him he had something like
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40 000 registered works in goodreads
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so whatever con this guy is running i really really want to know how,
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And, of course, we found out he was a Canadian, which is why he comes up in
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our Canada segment. Yeah, Canadians, you know, you can't trust them.
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They're polite and all until, you know, until they snap.
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And who knows? And, I mean, you know, scammers can be found the world over.
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And clearly, you know, he's well on his way. But what a bizarre story.
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It was bizarre when Sadie first raised it. And it's even more bizarre now that
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it just continues on and on.
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Yeah, I really can't believe that he hasn't just like shriveled up and died.
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It's so strange. It's so weird.
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That it took like threats of like a nonprofit for,
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the the fact that he owns a copyright on shakespeare which the copyright office
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did give him i mean okay i'm i'm reading the one on public citizen and he has
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a website going where he sells playwright licenses so that's my god yeah does.
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He have a course does he have like that's like.
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The grifter thing.
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You get you do a course.
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I'm just i'm just thinking about like how many
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of these tiny organizations putting on shakespeare's plays have probably like
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freaked out and fallen for this just because like they don't know any like they
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don't know any better like the libraries that got this just straight up ignored
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it because we know enough about copyright to know that it's bullshit yeah,
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usually i mean i'm sure some did the double take,
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but.
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Yeah take a copyright class in grad school yeah become a copyright guy oh i
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found this really cute thing on tumblr i,
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i had messaged jay about seven years before we started dating when he said he
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was becoming a copyright guy.
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And I was like, and I said, yes, absolutely. You should do that.
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I sent him a little meme. So basically our relationship has been unchanged,
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which is he says something about himself when I respond with a meme.
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Yeah, it was in 2016. Yeah. So very funny.
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Yeah, that's why I took my copyright class.
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Yeah, you should do that. Learn copyright. It's confusing and it's strange and that's all,
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your read on as an author and as a queer author, queer icon, if I may say.
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Well, keep talking. Yeah.
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Of puritanical approach to book banning.
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But I wanted to get your read on this. Sure. Well, certainly with libraries,
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a lot of the money that is behind these movements in the U.S.
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Is the same money in Canada. It's American money that is coming up here and
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that is fueling these efforts,
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which is not to say that there aren't Canadians who would happily ban books
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and who would happily challenge them in libraries and in schools,
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but there's not the same kind of big.
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Money charge that there is from movements in the US.
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And so that's a factor.
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The other thing is you don't see it a lot in the biggest city libraries.
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A lot of big cities like Vancouver or Montreal or Toronto are,
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have either advisory committees or groups within the library system,
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or they have them within the city system, and they avail themselves to the various
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departments that the city manages.
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So in that case, if you have a 2SLGBTQ plus group,
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they may not work for or with the library specifically, but they will provide
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information and support to the city, and the city in turn will pass it on to whatever departments.
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Often, these groups have city councillors on them.
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Often, these groups have representatives from within the queer community.
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Queer and trans communities within various parts of these communities,
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and that helps sort of legitimize the positions that these advisory groups take.
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I don't know if it's very similar in larger states or in states with larger
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cities, or if it's very different, but that's one of the things that helps mitigate it in Canada.
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If you're in a smaller city or a small town, it's an entirely different story.
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And that's where there's a lot of vulnerability.
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And one of the other things that is a continuing problem, and I think this is
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true in the US as well, is just that libraries in general are having funding
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cut, branches are closing.
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Branches are consolidating, and all libraries are expected to do more.
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Do more with less and do more for more people in ways that extend beyond just
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lending books, obviously.
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There was a period where we saw a real desire to broaden library services so that They,
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you know, you had maker areas and you had like, you know, readings and book
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clubs and you had a variety of things going on that welcomed people in.
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But in order to do that and have it be sustainable, you have to resource it.
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And that's where a lot of challenges have happened as well.
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So i think that that libraries
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are struggling on a number of fronts and people who
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are you know more conservative and
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who are more right wing see that there are vulnerabilities and that there are
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cracks and then they just squeeze their way in and then they wiggle wiggle wiggle
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until they can make a place for themselves and and be heard and be taken seriously
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because of course you're supposed to listen to all sides and you're supposed to, you know,
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so that's, that has been a significant problem. It also has to be said
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I started in the library system. I was a page part-time in a library.
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It was my very first job. I wasn't particularly good at it.
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I was a devoted reader, but I wasn't necessarily a devoted worker.
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But one of the things that I detected was there are some, you know,
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quite rightly, there are some librarians
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and some library workers who see themselves as freedom fighters.
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And then there are others who really are either subtly or blatantly interested
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in bringing their values into the library system, into the branch, onto their shelves.
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And there is a real tension there.
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There are some conservative librarians in Canada. There's no question.
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Even in the largest cities, there are some conservative librarians who want
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to see these changes, who want to see queer material being pulled off shelves,
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at the very least being pulled off of children and young adult shelves and being
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either put behind the counter or sequestered permanently into the adult section.
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So, those kinds of things, you know, those people are just waiting for these
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movements to catch fire.
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And they'll be happy to act on that. And it's really depressing.
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And for the image that a lot of people have of Canada as being a bastion of
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progressivism, and there's a certain amount of that, absolutely.
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There are still a lot of very uptight people, a lot of people who are freaked
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out by queer people, freaked out by trans people, freaked out by people of color.
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And the most you can hope from them is passive aggression, which Canadians are quite good at.
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And so these things have been in the works for quite a while.
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And if there is a way for them to gain a significant perch here, they will.
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It's just, you know, and so as a result, it's up to authors and publishers and
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readers, obviously, and librarians and teachers to fight back.
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One of the organizations that I think is doing quite good work in this way is
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the Writers' Union of Canada, which is not really a union, but it is sort of
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an association for writers that a guild, I would say.
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We have a Writers' Guild that's really a union, and we have a Writers' Union
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that's really a guild. And, but the writers union represents fiction and nonfiction writers.
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And, and I guess to a certain extent, writers working in sort of adjacent areas
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and, and they have put forward a strong front when it comes to censorship,
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when it comes to book banning, when it comes to actions against libraries.
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And so, they, I think, are at the forefront for us.
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But a lot of it is left up to individual libraries, individual groups of readers
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and authors to fight back on their own. And it's tough.
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It's very tough. Yeah. I wonder if there's that structure you were talking about of advisory.
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Amount of success they've had at schools because there's this compulsory thing.
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And of course, a lot of this momentum was gained in school libraries were much.
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With public library you don't really have that argument it's sort
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of like well if you don't like it don't read it like no one's making
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you go to the library and yeah now people are like
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well public libraries equals just for kids uh
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and so that's why yeah i mean
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i i know the book is a little older now and outdated but
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like dr emily knox's book on book
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challenges like so many of those happened
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in school libraries and that's been happening for like decades
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like but rarely was it bans it
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was just a lot of challenges right so like this isn't
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necessarily a recent thing it just hasn't necessarily
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like there's always like there's been banned books week for like also
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years and years and years right and it
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just usually focused on these like challenges to a lot of like
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teen and children's literature in the united states at
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least never focusing on like the fact that like prison libraries.
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Like are heavily censored like what prisoners are allowed
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to read for example but yeah like in
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i recently as had as being part
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of the collections department had to be part of like an intellectual freedom
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training at my at my at my workplace and
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like because i where i live and work like most
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of our the very few challenges we get are
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they're all for conservative and
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right-wing literature so it's like not really a
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problem we have here at the
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library but like in libraries around us for sure i
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mean i i think a larger threat is for
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i mean not a larger threat but like what's also
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happening now is like the ebook packages that libraries
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subscribe to often you can't curate them especially things
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like hoopla and like the difference
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between challenging stuff that's in hoopla because it's like
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awful and like people still have the right to read whatever they want has been
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really tricky and it's like well if we can't actually curate this collection
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like is it worth having so we're seeing a lot of that just like not being able
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to curate stuff as people move more and more to these like ebook,
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packages and stuff yeah it's just like a mess yeah.
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I just am amazed I mean Judy Bloom's forever came out when I was a teenager.
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So.
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I want you to throw your mind back decades. The fact that this book is continuing
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to be challenged, even now, is just beyond imagining to me.
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And, you know, it's like any number of these books are perennially,
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you know, and probably permanently under consideration for being banned in one
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part of, you know, North America or another. And it's ridiculous.
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But they are looking for a fight they can win.
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And, and then what they will do if they win one fight is they will use it.
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They will climb up on its shoulders and they will fight for three more things.
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And if they win those, then they
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will climb up on top of those and just gradually make their way through.
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And, and it's, it's dispiriting, but, but up until this point,
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they haven't had a lot of successes and the best thing that people can be is prepared.
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And ready to fight to.
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Deny them any other successes.
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Because it's you know it's.
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Just a ridiculous way to try to shape the way kids think about the world and
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and adults too for that matter.
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Yeah like i i don't i'm not necessarily with how
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collection development and like how this
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interacts with like because like so many collection development policies in
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the united states libraries are like based around like first amendment rights
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and stuff you know like we you can read whatever you want etc etc So I'm not
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sure how collection development and ethics relates to more legal concepts and
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precedents in Canadian libraries.
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But if you're a librarian in Canada, look at your collection development policies
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and look explicitly at...
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Because you should have something in there for if people want to challenge or
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suggest a removal or whatever, whatever, suggest that something be moved to
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a different section, whatever.
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Sometimes there are legitimate cases where a librarian didn't know what a book
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was, put it in the kids' section when maybe it shouldn't have been.
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That happens sometimes.
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But look at your policies.
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Think like you're a Moms for Liberty person. If you were going to try to get
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something banned, what would you try to do to every library in this country?
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And then write your collection development policy to protect against that.
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Yeah. I'm just going on little soapboxes today.
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I'm like, and another thing!
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Yeah, I mean, I'm interested.
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Or just, you know, is this trickling into your world, your own personal world?
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I've been very lucky in that most of the people who I encounter and certainly
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all of my editors and all of my publishers have been attracted to my writing
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is writing that comes from me.
00:22:46.872 --> 00:22:51.892
They are not looking for me to change and they are not looking for the content of my work to change.
00:22:52.312 --> 00:22:58.392
So they know what they're getting more or less when they decide to sign on with me at all.
00:22:58.732 --> 00:23:02.112
And so that's, first of all, very helpful.
00:23:02.332 --> 00:23:07.292
The second thing is that both, I mean, I'll say specifically about Red X and
00:23:07.292 --> 00:23:10.692
also about The Butcher's Daughter, both editors, both publishers,
00:23:11.032 --> 00:23:15.112
in fact, wanted me to go further, do more,
00:23:15.692 --> 00:23:17.692
write more, lean in.
00:23:18.152 --> 00:23:25.212
And I know how luxurious it is as a writer to be told that, to have people say,
00:23:25.332 --> 00:23:30.732
you know, oh, you know, if you want to queer it up, you can make it as queer as you want.
00:23:32.112 --> 00:23:36.592
We're going to market this as a horror book, so lean in on the horror, things like that.
00:23:36.592 --> 00:23:40.792
There are absolutely people, peers of mine, people who are working, you know,
00:23:40.972 --> 00:23:46.272
more actively in the big five who get subtle or less subtle messages either
00:23:46.272 --> 00:23:50.732
from an editor or from an agent to make different adjustments.
00:23:50.732 --> 00:23:52.392
And some of that is about the market.
00:23:52.712 --> 00:23:56.652
In fact, you know, a lot of it is about the market. But some of it is also the
00:23:56.652 --> 00:24:02.232
fact that you are part of a larger publishing house and a larger publishing
00:24:02.232 --> 00:24:06.672
house has sort of many competing expectations within it. Thank you.
00:24:08.070 --> 00:24:12.770
No one is going to say necessarily if you're being published somewhere that
00:24:12.770 --> 00:24:21.370
publishes Dick Cheney and George Bush and Jordan Peterson or whoever,
00:24:21.670 --> 00:24:23.910
oh, you can't embarrass those people.
00:24:23.930 --> 00:24:28.590
But you are sort of aware of the fact that those people get published by the
00:24:28.590 --> 00:24:33.190
very same companies that publish our books. It's good to have a balance.
00:24:33.190 --> 00:24:38.690
It is good to try to figure out how to balance off, you know, situations like that.
00:24:38.810 --> 00:24:45.350
But there is a desire for people, particularly people who pay you a fair amount
00:24:45.350 --> 00:24:48.130
of money, to have something that is marketable and sellable.
00:24:48.130 --> 00:24:54.850
I have, the only thing I can say that I've experienced is on certain online
00:24:54.850 --> 00:25:02.330
review sites there, you get a sense that titles will be mobbed, at least briefly,
00:25:02.650 --> 00:25:05.350
by groups of more conservative people.
00:25:05.350 --> 00:25:10.490
And if they detect that a book is queer, I mean, I've certainly had friends
00:25:10.490 --> 00:25:12.570
suffer this far more than I ever have.
00:25:12.690 --> 00:25:15.010
I've seen what goes on.
00:25:15.250 --> 00:25:22.470
They storm the site, they give it one star, so you have a slew of 40 people
00:25:22.470 --> 00:25:23.530
who are giving one stars.
00:25:23.770 --> 00:25:27.550
And even if they don't say it, it's obvious. It's because of queer content,
00:25:27.710 --> 00:25:32.930
it's because of trans content, it's because of sexuality that they don't approve of.
00:25:33.390 --> 00:25:40.250
You get a lot of that. It's particularly hard on, I would say, non-horror genres.
00:25:40.370 --> 00:25:43.410
I think it's bad for fantasy. I think it's bad in science fiction.
00:25:43.650 --> 00:25:47.570
I think it's bad in romance. You get a lot of that kind of pushback.
00:25:47.830 --> 00:25:52.630
And it can become really demoralizing because for a period of time,
00:25:52.850 --> 00:25:56.670
when your book is out, this is the only feedback you're getting is from these sites.
00:25:56.670 --> 00:26:01.770
It takes quite a while sometimes to get reviews in magazines and newspapers
00:26:01.770 --> 00:26:04.690
for those few that still do that. And...
00:26:05.128 --> 00:26:09.968
And so you end up in this sort of like weird distortion field where the only
00:26:09.968 --> 00:26:14.008
feedback you're getting is from people who are hating on your book because they
00:26:14.008 --> 00:26:15.128
don't like what it represents.
00:26:15.348 --> 00:26:21.348
So that's, I think, probably one of the tougher things to try to navigate.
00:26:21.348 --> 00:26:28.128
But personally, I mean, the people who have published me, the people who support me,
00:26:28.268 --> 00:26:38.108
they don't want me to alter my work, to try to either dumb it down or to desexualize
00:26:38.108 --> 00:26:41.788
it or to make it less violent or less horrific.
00:26:41.808 --> 00:26:50.948
They want it to be the work that it is. And when editors and copy editors apply themselves to it,
00:26:51.248 --> 00:26:58.248
it's fully understanding the kind of work that is expected of me and that I want to explore.
00:26:58.488 --> 00:27:01.928
So I've been very lucky that way. But yes, for other writers,
00:27:01.928 --> 00:27:07.388
I know it has been really, really unpleasant. So, I think we've bugged you with
00:27:07.388 --> 00:27:10.788
enough library questions that we have an excuse to just talk about the book now.
00:27:11.708 --> 00:27:16.828
Why don't you give people, like, how do you describe the book when someone's
00:27:16.828 --> 00:27:19.388
like, tell me about it? Like, where do you go with?
00:27:19.508 --> 00:27:24.788
Well, I generally say, well, first thing that I do is I establish whether or
00:27:24.788 --> 00:27:27.448
not somebody knows who Sweeney Todd even is.
00:27:27.867 --> 00:27:32.647
Sweeney Todd is a well-known urban legend. It's originally a penny dreadful.
00:27:32.827 --> 00:27:36.007
It dates back, I think, to the late 1700s.
00:27:36.207 --> 00:27:42.667
But the Sweeney Todd we know sort of came into sort of popular fiction and popular
00:27:42.667 --> 00:27:47.867
culture in the 1800s and has been basically adapted, you know,
00:27:48.067 --> 00:27:52.427
numerous times in numerous ways from that point to today.
00:27:52.427 --> 00:27:57.947
People know it most, I would say, is the Stephen Sondheim musical with the book
00:27:57.947 --> 00:28:04.427
by Hugh Wheeler, which was adapted from Christopher Hampton's play from the 1970s.
00:28:05.067 --> 00:28:07.747
That sounds right, yeah. Yeah, it sounds about right.
00:28:08.527 --> 00:28:12.287
But there are other movie versions, there are other television versions,
00:28:12.647 --> 00:28:19.267
there is a Canadian radio play version from the 40s that I listened to as part
00:28:19.267 --> 00:28:21.387
of the preparation for working on the book.
00:28:21.387 --> 00:28:26.507
The original Penny Dreadful is 800 pages long and also a mess.
00:28:27.047 --> 00:28:34.347
So when I proposed this and when Corrine agreed to join me on this,
00:28:34.547 --> 00:28:39.687
one of the things we did was we revisited the Penny Dreadful and had a little
00:28:39.687 --> 00:28:41.627
meeting where we basically said, well, it stinks.
00:28:41.887 --> 00:28:51.007
And what have we done? And so we knew that we couldn't replicate or duplicate the original story.
00:28:51.387 --> 00:28:55.667
Or what we perceived to be the original story, nor could we duplicate or replicate
00:28:55.667 --> 00:28:59.947
the Sondheim version because of copyright, among other things.
00:29:00.147 --> 00:29:04.267
So what we decided to do, and what the book is, is an origin story.
00:29:04.447 --> 00:29:11.167
It is the origin story of Sweeney Todd's, not too terribly well-developed traditionally
00:29:11.167 --> 00:29:13.687
as a character, helpmate named Mrs.
00:29:13.827 --> 00:29:18.847
Lovett. Mrs. Lovett is a fascinating and enjoyable comic character in the musical.
00:29:19.607 --> 00:29:26.107
She more or less is in most of the other versions, but you don't learn very much about her.
00:29:26.347 --> 00:29:29.707
You don't really learn the thing that we most wanted to know,
00:29:29.827 --> 00:29:34.427
which is what would drive a woman like her in the 19th century,
00:29:34.427 --> 00:29:35.787
if we were going to set it there,
00:29:35.947 --> 00:29:42.687
to assist someone like Sweeney Todd and to carve up people's bodies and bake them into pies.
00:29:43.155 --> 00:29:49.815
Even as a fanciful, sort of ghoulish conceit, it seemed like a lot.
00:29:50.035 --> 00:29:54.735
People were obviously really willing to accept it because they really enjoy
00:29:54.735 --> 00:29:58.095
her as a character, but we wanted to know more.
00:29:58.155 --> 00:30:03.615
And we wanted to explore who she could have been in the years from her childhood
00:30:03.615 --> 00:30:06.055
up until she became the so-called Mrs.
00:30:06.195 --> 00:30:12.575
Lovett to try to find out what was going on with her. And so that's basically what the book is about.
00:30:12.755 --> 00:30:18.855
We start, as you can tell from the title, we start in a butcher shop owned by her father and mother.
00:30:19.135 --> 00:30:23.995
And then through various circumstances, she ends up out of the butcher shop
00:30:23.995 --> 00:30:30.655
and working as a maid in a physician's house. And then later on as a lady's
00:30:30.655 --> 00:30:33.715
maid in a mansion on Mayfair.
00:30:34.535 --> 00:30:40.015
And then finally, she ends up through various means with the pie shop on Fleet
00:30:40.015 --> 00:30:42.935
Street, where she becomes acquainted with Sweeney Todd.
00:30:42.935 --> 00:30:50.135
And through these various stages, we see how she develops as a person and how
00:30:50.135 --> 00:30:55.435
she yearns for agency as a woman in a time where that is just not allowed,
00:30:55.435 --> 00:31:01.895
and how she kind of has to create a space for herself, given the kind of person she is.
00:31:02.215 --> 00:31:08.335
Yeah, and of course, you left out the last sort of phase of her life where she
00:31:08.335 --> 00:31:10.515
ends up in a convent. There is that.
00:31:12.215 --> 00:31:15.115
Where she's writing a series of
00:31:15.115 --> 00:31:21.035
letters to an investigator so this is an epistolary novel it is hell yeah yeah
00:31:21.035 --> 00:31:25.915
it's an epistolary novel if you if you like document thrillers this is a hell
00:31:25.915 --> 00:31:34.715
yeah i do so yeah so how so the framing device i mean first of all there are three framing devices.
00:31:35.075 --> 00:31:42.815
There's all sorts of shit going on. But the basic framing device is that there
00:31:42.815 --> 00:31:45.975
is a young female journalist who has disappeared.
00:31:46.395 --> 00:31:53.495
And an investigator has found this dossier of documents in her apartments. And she's
00:31:53.636 --> 00:32:00.576
And so we read them as if we were the female investigator who had gathered.
00:32:00.736 --> 00:32:05.316
And we basically go more or less chronologically through them.
00:32:05.416 --> 00:32:12.336
And what it is, is largely a correspondence with this woman who is apparently confined in a priory.
00:32:12.556 --> 00:32:14.576
Her name is Margaret Evans.
00:32:14.856 --> 00:32:20.456
And the journalist has reason to believe. We never really know why,
00:32:20.536 --> 00:32:24.136
but the journalist has reason to believe that Margaret Evans is,
00:32:24.256 --> 00:32:27.516
in fact, the notorious Mrs. Lovett of 50 years prior.
00:32:27.876 --> 00:32:34.696
And so, at first, Margaret denies it, but Margaret insists that her own story
00:32:34.696 --> 00:32:37.376
is quite fascinating and proceeds to tell it.
00:32:37.376 --> 00:32:42.536
Meanwhile, the journalist writes to a number of other people to try to verify
00:32:42.536 --> 00:32:46.596
parts of Margaret's story, but also to try to find holes in Margaret's story
00:32:46.596 --> 00:32:51.256
that might prove in some way that Margaret is really Marjorie Lovett.
00:32:51.556 --> 00:32:57.056
And, I mean, obviously, we would not have written the book, published the book,
00:32:57.256 --> 00:33:00.856
put the book in stores if it was going to turn out that she wasn't.
00:33:03.916 --> 00:33:07.476
Not exactly a spoiler. Yeah, not exactly a spoiler.
00:33:08.316 --> 00:33:15.556
There is some lingering doubt at the end, but by and large, we can assume that
00:33:15.556 --> 00:33:17.816
Margaret Evans is in fact Marjorie Lovett.
00:33:17.876 --> 00:33:20.536
She certainly tells a great Marjorie Lovett story.
00:33:20.996 --> 00:33:23.856
And the letters give us...
00:33:24.199 --> 00:33:30.299
An unusual amount of access into her life experience, her thought processes,
00:33:30.299 --> 00:33:33.759
and the conflicts that she has come up against,
00:33:33.999 --> 00:33:39.719
including with Sweeney Todd, as she has just tried to sort of live her own life and be her own woman.
00:33:40.039 --> 00:33:45.239
And yeah, the epistolary novel was very popular at the time.
00:33:45.459 --> 00:33:50.139
Some of the best-known gothic genre novels in that period were epistolary,
00:33:50.239 --> 00:33:51.799
primarily Frankenstein and Dracula.
00:33:52.359 --> 00:33:57.399
And so it was a form that was familiar and had a documentary kind of feel.
00:33:57.619 --> 00:34:02.179
It's kind of the found footage, you know, horror of its period.
00:34:02.579 --> 00:34:08.659
And so we wanted to make use of that if we could, because one of the things
00:34:08.659 --> 00:34:14.279
that's always attracted me in writing any long fiction has been not just looking
00:34:14.279 --> 00:34:15.439
at a particular character,
00:34:15.599 --> 00:34:18.439
but also at a community around that character.
00:34:18.739 --> 00:34:24.499
I like to have a multiplicity of voices, and I like to have some disparity around
00:34:24.499 --> 00:34:28.839
what the supposed facts are as perceived by those various characters.
00:34:29.119 --> 00:34:35.519
And I really love one character having one perspective and seeing one thing
00:34:35.519 --> 00:34:39.199
and then later on finding out that another character saw something entirely
00:34:39.199 --> 00:34:42.819
different or had more to add to the story that shed more light on it.
00:34:42.879 --> 00:34:48.399
That kind of thing always really intrigues me as a reader. and even more so as a writer.
00:34:48.579 --> 00:34:52.079
Also, I have, it has to be said, a relatively short attention span.
00:34:52.239 --> 00:34:59.679
And so, I like a book that's made of little bits because I can write little bits.
00:34:59.979 --> 00:35:03.199
You know, it's like, oh, today I'm going to write a letter from so-and-so.
00:35:03.379 --> 00:35:06.959
And today, you know, tomorrow I'm going to write one from this person.
00:35:06.959 --> 00:35:10.719
And, oh, we really need, you know, a different kind of document here.
00:35:10.839 --> 00:35:16.199
We need a telegram here. We need, you know, a, you know, what other things do
00:35:16.199 --> 00:35:18.319
we have, a police report over here, a newspaper report.
00:35:19.038 --> 00:35:22.058
Obituary over here and accruing those
00:35:22.058 --> 00:35:24.878
kinds of things and using that to build out a story i
00:35:24.878 --> 00:35:27.918
personally find really enjoyable and it's
00:35:27.918 --> 00:35:33.098
always been a thing oh and justin's holding up examples from the pages yeah
00:35:33.098 --> 00:35:39.218
and uh and what was great was i mean corinne and i once we established that
00:35:39.218 --> 00:35:44.478
this was how we were going to write it we did our best as one can do in microsoft
00:35:44.478 --> 00:35:46.578
word to simulate some of this stuff.
00:35:46.878 --> 00:35:51.798
And then we went to the publisher once the book was picked up and said,
00:35:51.898 --> 00:35:54.458
well, we were kind of hoping it could be done this way.
00:35:54.578 --> 00:35:59.258
And the editors sort of like went away, had the discussions they needed to have,
00:35:59.398 --> 00:36:04.258
came back and said, all right, let's set out what things are supposed to look
00:36:04.258 --> 00:36:08.558
like and what things are similar to each other and what things are different from each other.
00:36:08.618 --> 00:36:13.318
And let's make a plan about how we can design this book. And it was fantastic.
00:36:13.638 --> 00:36:18.698
They went away and came back with just, I think, a spectacular looking book
00:36:18.698 --> 00:36:20.958
that really represents a lot
00:36:20.958 --> 00:36:25.358
of the materials from that period in a way that I find quite immersive.
00:36:25.718 --> 00:36:28.338
And so, you know, that's a success for me.
00:36:28.338 --> 00:36:34.518
Yeah, when I was in college, I took a course on supernatural 19th century British
00:36:34.518 --> 00:36:39.178
prose and poetry, where we read Dracula and everything, and it changed my fucking life.
00:36:39.278 --> 00:36:42.218
I love Dracula. and one of the things we talked about like around the
00:36:42.218 --> 00:36:45.038
epistolary nature of dracula and
00:36:45.038 --> 00:36:47.978
like a lot of the early like gothic fiction in general
00:36:47.978 --> 00:36:55.218
was like the way that the time because of industrialization and the change of
00:36:55.218 --> 00:37:00.778
technology of how people mass communicate that like a lot of the especially
00:37:00.778 --> 00:37:05.078
in dracula like the epistolary nature is also exploring like
00:37:05.435 --> 00:37:08.475
what ways of sharing information or are
00:37:08.475 --> 00:37:11.235
more true like what is more reliable something that
00:37:11.235 --> 00:37:14.135
is handwritten or something that's mass printed in
00:37:14.135 --> 00:37:17.335
a newspaper right like these are questions that
00:37:17.335 --> 00:37:20.175
dracula is kind of grappling with because it's not just letters
00:37:20.175 --> 00:37:23.455
in dracula right like there's like transcripts of like phonograph
00:37:23.455 --> 00:37:26.695
records and like all sorts of like neat interesting things
00:37:26.695 --> 00:37:29.735
and so like i i think it's so cool when like
00:37:29.735 --> 00:37:34.435
if you're trying to explore a character that in all of these other versions
00:37:34.435 --> 00:37:41.015
we don't really get to know about and you're using a method which is like inherently
00:37:41.015 --> 00:37:47.075
about questioning how information presents itself and how we react to it i just
00:37:47.075 --> 00:37:48.415
i just find that so cool well.
00:37:48.415 --> 00:37:51.415
And particularly there's like public information as you say.
00:37:51.415 --> 00:37:52.115
Like you.
00:37:52.115 --> 00:37:55.975
Know stuff that's in newspapers stuff that's in police documents things like
00:37:55.975 --> 00:38:00.855
that and there's also the private aspect of handwritten letters that are coming
00:38:00.855 --> 00:38:04.875
to this journalist, the intimacy that's involved.
00:38:05.095 --> 00:38:11.075
And I mean, of course, naturally, when we started on the project,
00:38:11.315 --> 00:38:14.715
the first thing we had to realize was that Mrs.
00:38:14.875 --> 00:38:19.555
Leavitt, Marjorie Leavitt, as we know her, was from the east end of London.
00:38:19.715 --> 00:38:21.555
She would have been Cockney.
00:38:21.795 --> 00:38:28.515
She would probably have been barely literate. And so I thought,
00:38:28.815 --> 00:38:31.615
I mean, and Corrine too, it was like, what are we going to do?
00:38:31.935 --> 00:38:35.015
We can't write a book from the point of view of somebody who can't actually
00:38:35.015 --> 00:38:38.215
write because it would just be brutal.
00:38:38.415 --> 00:38:42.295
Like, what are you supposed to do? So, the first thing we did was,
00:38:42.455 --> 00:38:46.175
you know, when we placed her in the convent towards the end of her life,
00:38:46.355 --> 00:38:48.635
you know, she's around, she's a little older than me, I suppose,
00:38:48.755 --> 00:38:51.135
she's close to 70 when she's in the convent.
00:38:51.295 --> 00:38:54.555
First thing we did was we gave her somebody who actually just transcribed what
00:38:54.555 --> 00:38:58.435
she said. So, there's a sister named Sister Catherine who is sitting with her.
00:38:58.735 --> 00:39:04.815
She's on one hand kind of monitoring what it is that Margaret is saying to this
00:39:04.815 --> 00:39:09.395
journalist, but on the other hand, she's facilitating. And so for the first two-thirds of the book,
00:39:09.715 --> 00:39:14.435
We have, you know, Margaret's writings, beautifully written.
00:39:14.935 --> 00:39:16.815
Very clear, very understandable.
00:39:17.135 --> 00:39:21.075
And then later on in the book, there's a change where we get what I would describe
00:39:21.075 --> 00:39:23.175
as the true voice of Mrs. Lovett.
00:39:23.315 --> 00:39:25.615
And it's a very sharp change.
00:39:25.855 --> 00:39:32.275
And where it's even more beautifully realized is in the audiobook version from recorded books.
00:39:32.415 --> 00:39:36.635
They do a wonderful transition from one to the other.
00:39:36.635 --> 00:39:44.075
And so that, I think, took the whole story into another realm because not only
00:39:44.075 --> 00:39:51.515
is there the question of what do you trust in an intimate communication in a
00:39:51.515 --> 00:39:53.095
handwritten letter from somebody,
00:39:53.195 --> 00:39:58.255
but what do you trust if someone has been mediating that all along and somehow
00:39:58.255 --> 00:40:03.535
shaping it in a way that may be different from what the original voice is?
00:40:03.535 --> 00:40:06.395
There are a lot of those kinds of layers all the way through the book,
00:40:06.515 --> 00:40:10.355
which I just found, if you're going to do this kind of sort of mystery thriller,
00:40:10.735 --> 00:40:13.295
I just found just a lot of fun to play with.
00:40:13.495 --> 00:40:18.255
Yeah, I really, when you sent me some of the illustrations from the book.
00:40:23.575 --> 00:40:31.395
The different parts. I was half expecting you to show up at the end to read your own session.
00:40:31.395 --> 00:40:35.795
Because there are so many different voice actors. you can't do.
00:40:35.795 --> 00:40:36.515
The gimmick twice.
00:40:36.515 --> 00:40:43.075
Can you imagine that would be so.
00:40:43.075 --> 00:40:46.895
Gay of you though like honestly just like every single audiobook you just have
00:40:46.895 --> 00:40:47.995
to cut and show up and be like.
00:40:47.995 --> 00:40:52.955
Okay now i'm in this i'll be like alfred hitchcock one of the things that is
00:40:52.955 --> 00:40:58.815
really great as well is the book has recipes at the end hell yeah let's go,
00:41:00.495 --> 00:41:03.675
so for people who like you know that extra touch
00:41:03.675 --> 00:41:06.895
we we went all the way with that as well but but
00:41:06.895 --> 00:41:09.535
yeah i mean the look and feel of the
00:41:09.535 --> 00:41:15.475
book i think is really remarkable titan books in uk has done their own internal
00:41:15.475 --> 00:41:21.435
design and i've seen parts of it and it's different again but it's also really
00:41:21.435 --> 00:41:25.635
terrific and of course because of where they are they have access to a lot of
00:41:25.635 --> 00:41:27.755
stuff that stuff that we never even saw.
00:41:29.015 --> 00:41:34.675
So the things that they have incorporated into the book have a really neat feeling of realism.
00:41:34.855 --> 00:41:37.235
Yeah, there's an example, that's the telegram, isn't it?
00:41:37.550 --> 00:41:44.370
Yeah, that's, I mean, the early part of the book is, well, I mean,
00:41:44.510 --> 00:41:49.870
really most of the book is taking place really before the invention of the typewriter.
00:41:50.070 --> 00:41:55.270
There are a very small number of typewriters in the UK at the time that,
00:41:55.490 --> 00:42:00.870
well, it's not really the UK, in Britain, at the time that the story is being told.
00:42:00.870 --> 00:42:05.550
And so the vast majority of the stuff that you're reading in the book would
00:42:05.550 --> 00:42:06.990
have been handwritten at the time.
00:42:07.190 --> 00:42:11.190
And I mean, we pushed the limit of believability, I think, about as far as we
00:42:11.190 --> 00:42:12.310
could go with some of that.
00:42:12.390 --> 00:42:16.830
But I think a reader is game for that kind of stuff.
00:42:16.830 --> 00:42:22.470
But we did want to give in some of the elements that feeling of things being
00:42:22.470 --> 00:42:26.270
handwritten, that feeling of forms being sort of, you know.
00:42:26.830 --> 00:42:31.770
Types, literally typeset, things like that, that, that give that sort of antique
00:42:31.770 --> 00:42:33.930
feeling to the whole enterprise. Yeah.
00:42:34.130 --> 00:42:38.850
And when one thing I noticed when I picked up the the the print book was because
00:42:38.850 --> 00:42:42.110
I was only about halfway through when I got it. I was halfway through the audio book.
00:42:42.330 --> 00:42:47.610
And I noticed at about halfway through when the voice changes of Mrs.
00:42:47.750 --> 00:42:49.570
Lovett, the font changes.
00:42:49.850 --> 00:42:52.690
And so suddenly you have these big chunks that are all written in a different
00:42:52.690 --> 00:42:57.390
font and that they're bold, essentially in a bold font.
00:42:57.390 --> 00:43:00.830
And so I go, oh, I can't read that because that's clearly something that I haven't
00:43:00.830 --> 00:43:05.170
heard about yet because someone else must be writing who hasn't been writing
00:43:05.170 --> 00:43:07.810
so far. So I didn't want to peek around,
00:43:14.190 --> 00:43:19.190
1890s, which I've read a million of. I don't think the title was nearly long enough.
00:43:19.910 --> 00:43:22.970
Usually those titles are about a paragraph long. Very true.
00:43:23.530 --> 00:43:29.570
Pull some em forster like room with a view chapter titles bullshit like you
00:43:29.570 --> 00:43:33.970
know what i mean like italians drive them and it's yeah yeah.
00:43:33.970 --> 00:43:34.650
I love that stuff.
00:43:36.139 --> 00:43:39.359
When you're writing with all of these different types of documents,
00:43:39.619 --> 00:43:42.919
was there anything, and also doing like the historical research,
00:43:43.079 --> 00:43:45.399
there's a lot of like language that I thought was really interesting.
00:43:53.059 --> 00:43:56.059
Writing and then something like didn't come together and you were like,
00:43:56.139 --> 00:43:57.559
oh, we got to change how we're doing this.
00:43:59.919 --> 00:44:07.819
Well, yes, as a matter of fact. So, Corinne and I met through my agent, well, our mutual agent.
00:44:08.039 --> 00:44:13.659
We both had her as our agent. And the reason that I involved Corinne in the
00:44:13.659 --> 00:44:17.419
project was because she had lived in London.
00:44:17.639 --> 00:44:21.759
She had done tremendous amount of research in Gothic literature.
00:44:21.979 --> 00:44:26.379
She knew the Victorian era tremendously well. She had a lot of research materials
00:44:26.379 --> 00:44:27.439
that we would be able to use.
00:44:27.559 --> 00:44:33.219
It really was her milieu. I knew if I wrote this myself, it would have taken
00:44:33.219 --> 00:44:36.919
eight years for me to write because I would have had to research everything from scratch.
00:44:37.139 --> 00:44:41.739
And what was great working with her was that she had just this tremendous body
00:44:41.739 --> 00:44:43.099
of knowledge right out of the gate.
00:44:43.099 --> 00:44:46.599
And there were a few things you
00:44:46.599 --> 00:44:49.699
know i i said right close to the beginning i said what
00:44:49.699 --> 00:44:52.459
are some things that we will that we could use in this
00:44:52.459 --> 00:44:55.899
book that we never normally read in historical
00:44:55.899 --> 00:45:00.719
fiction like this and she rhymed off almost immediately several things that
00:45:00.719 --> 00:45:06.499
we acted on right away one was that there should be an anatomical venus if we
00:45:06.499 --> 00:45:09.819
were going to have a physician's house there should be an anatomical venus which
00:45:09.819 --> 00:45:13.919
if you don't know is sort of like a wax figure of a woman,
00:45:14.119 --> 00:45:21.139
usually nude, and you take part of it off so that you can see the inner workings of her human body.
00:45:21.399 --> 00:45:26.039
And some of them are partially animated through squeeze bulbs and fluid and
00:45:26.039 --> 00:45:30.119
things like this so that you can see how circulation works or how digestion
00:45:30.119 --> 00:45:31.199
works, things like that.
00:45:31.359 --> 00:45:33.579
So that was a thing that we incorporated.
00:45:33.779 --> 00:45:38.619
She was really interested in us coming up with a foundling hospital,
00:45:38.839 --> 00:45:42.819
which is a kind of an orphanage where poor women would leave their children,
00:45:42.819 --> 00:45:47.739
ideally to be adopted by wealthier families or to be raised at the orphanage.
00:45:47.839 --> 00:45:53.459
And they would leave an object with the child and keep a matching object,
00:45:53.619 --> 00:45:57.339
like for example, two earrings so that later on they could claim the child.
00:45:57.439 --> 00:46:01.379
Of course, there were very few times where that actually successfully occurred,
00:46:01.379 --> 00:46:04.579
but the foundling hospital was really fascinating.
00:46:04.779 --> 00:46:09.799
And then I started asking about what different environments we could be in.
00:46:09.919 --> 00:46:12.399
And one of the environments that came up was the Priory.
00:46:12.873 --> 00:46:17.613
And so we, particularly me, I took a lot of the Priory work.
00:46:18.973 --> 00:46:22.413
You know, started writing away about the Priory, started writing about the rituals
00:46:22.413 --> 00:46:24.773
the nuns went through, you know, over the course of the day,
00:46:24.873 --> 00:46:26.793
how they interacted with each other and stuff like that.
00:46:26.793 --> 00:46:30.053
We had the submission draft. We sent it in.
00:46:30.173 --> 00:46:33.313
It was accepted by both Soho and Titan.
00:46:33.333 --> 00:46:37.533
And then the British editor, Rufus, came back to us and said,
00:46:37.673 --> 00:46:43.433
so one of the things that is a problem is that your priory appears to be Catholic.
00:46:43.713 --> 00:46:45.513
And it wouldn't have been.
00:46:46.213 --> 00:46:52.233
It would have been Church of England. There were Catholic priories,
00:46:52.413 --> 00:46:57.313
but Catholics were treated very differently during that period in England,
00:46:57.313 --> 00:46:59.433
and we would have had to address it somehow.
00:46:59.873 --> 00:47:06.033
And so I, like all of these things, and like a lot of that stuff was stuff that
00:47:06.033 --> 00:47:10.793
was researched, of course, and so we had to dismantle all of that stuff.
00:47:10.793 --> 00:47:16.073
And then we had to like names of churches and locations of churches and names
00:47:16.073 --> 00:47:19.493
of people at the churches and who was visiting and who was like,
00:47:19.633 --> 00:47:21.433
all of that stuff had to change.
00:47:21.633 --> 00:47:28.393
And even to, I would say like the second last draft, I would say we were like
00:47:28.393 --> 00:47:29.993
in the editing process, we were
00:47:29.993 --> 00:47:33.733
still finding things and having to change them. And it was just brutal.
00:47:34.833 --> 00:47:38.013
So that one was a particular test.
00:47:38.333 --> 00:47:45.093
And then, of course, and in its own way, it did rearrange elements of the narrative
00:47:45.093 --> 00:47:49.133
because some things that would have been possible under – and it's not like
00:47:49.133 --> 00:47:50.893
I know a lot about Catholicism either.
00:47:51.013 --> 00:47:54.893
I pick it all up from popular culture. But a lot of things that were routine
00:47:54.893 --> 00:47:59.413
or that were possible under Catholicism would not have been possible under Church of England.
00:47:59.573 --> 00:48:04.353
So we had to make that adjustment as well. The other thing that was hilarious was Rufus was great.
00:48:04.493 --> 00:48:10.393
Rufus also came back and said, so the king before Victoria, you have given him
00:48:10.393 --> 00:48:13.233
three different names over the course of that book.
00:48:15.813 --> 00:48:19.533
Just showing how terrible we are at other kinds of history.
00:48:20.813 --> 00:48:24.193
So it was like oh god so we
00:48:24.193 --> 00:48:27.073
you know had to so that was a cue for
00:48:27.073 --> 00:48:30.033
us to go through and correct a bunch of those little
00:48:30.033 --> 00:48:33.693
things as well because you take for granted that you know particularly as a
00:48:33.693 --> 00:48:37.913
canadian certain things about british history and british culture and you know
00:48:37.913 --> 00:48:42.613
that's the wrong person that wasn't invented yet that hadn't happened yet that
00:48:42.613 --> 00:48:46.473
doesn't happen for another 10 years like it's those kinds of things that you
00:48:46.473 --> 00:48:49.813
have to continually monitor when you're going through a book like this,
00:48:50.153 --> 00:48:56.353
the one thing that got through that, I mean, and I think.
00:48:57.333 --> 00:49:00.813
It's just a thing you live with, there is a reference.
00:49:01.113 --> 00:49:05.593
The first part of the book is in the 1830s, 1837 or so.
00:49:05.868 --> 00:49:09.468
There's a reference to delivering to the woman of the house,
00:49:09.648 --> 00:49:12.108
the lady of the house, her toast and tea.
00:49:12.408 --> 00:49:15.308
Toast is not actually invented for another 20 years.
00:49:16.288 --> 00:49:21.668
Toast. And when it's invented, it's because they have invented the toasting fork.
00:49:21.828 --> 00:49:28.348
Because, of course, there are no stoves with griddles or things like that, surfaces.
00:49:28.668 --> 00:49:35.308
It's a fire. And so what you did was you speared the bread on the fork and you held it in the fire.
00:49:35.868 --> 00:49:40.788
Which, I mean, I can't see a very high success rate for toast in this situation.
00:49:40.968 --> 00:49:45.528
However, that's what there was. For there to be a toaster or even a different
00:49:45.528 --> 00:49:49.168
kind of toasting implement, you have to wait even more decades.
00:49:49.428 --> 00:49:51.888
And so, you know, so we have toast.
00:49:52.188 --> 00:49:56.468
It's like, well, we have toast. So if anyone, you know, comes at us and says,
00:49:56.608 --> 00:50:00.148
you know, your book's not very accurate, we know they're talking about the toast.
00:50:00.148 --> 00:50:02.988
So so yeah but we got and also there
00:50:02.988 --> 00:50:05.968
was a point where we had a photograph on the
00:50:05.968 --> 00:50:09.208
wall of the bakery and of course photographs hadn't
00:50:09.208 --> 00:50:12.168
been invented yet so so we had to pull a
00:50:12.168 --> 00:50:15.088
photograph off the wall of the bakery and swap
00:50:15.088 --> 00:50:20.108
it with you know a drawing or an engraving and you know it's those it's those
00:50:20.108 --> 00:50:25.108
kinds of things but it's a it's a when you're doing this kind of writing you're
00:50:25.108 --> 00:50:29.008
doing your own fact checking no one else is doing that for you people are checking
00:50:29.008 --> 00:50:32.528
your language And we had a lot of lively discussion about language,
00:50:32.848 --> 00:50:38.288
particularly an American publisher publishing a book that is entirely in British English.
00:50:38.508 --> 00:50:44.388
But no one is really paying, nor should they be, paying close attention to what
00:50:44.388 --> 00:50:46.028
you are asserting as being factual.
00:50:46.028 --> 00:50:50.568
So we had to do a lot of sort of, you know, finding stuff out,
00:50:50.868 --> 00:50:55.928
even finding, you know, like particular idioms, particular phrases that you
00:50:55.928 --> 00:50:58.248
would think would have been right in that period.
00:50:58.248 --> 00:51:02.608
But in fact, we're not to like, you know, 1905 or something like that.
00:51:02.788 --> 00:51:04.728
So it was a bit maddening that way.
00:51:04.728 --> 00:51:09.628
It is legitimately kind of bonkers when you think about how different the beginning
00:51:09.628 --> 00:51:12.188
of the Victorian era was to the end of it.
00:51:12.308 --> 00:51:18.588
We just say, oh, the Victorian era, as if that's one coherent thing, but it is really not. No.
00:51:18.968 --> 00:51:20.988
Victoria lived forever, didn't she?
00:51:21.008 --> 00:51:22.688
She was so fucking old, dude.
00:51:23.428 --> 00:51:28.668
Well, and the other thing, too, is the Industrial Revolution happened all around that period.
00:51:28.668 --> 00:51:29.368
Yes, yeah.
00:51:29.368 --> 00:51:35.888
There is massive technological change that occurs, and it's extraordinary to
00:51:35.888 --> 00:51:40.488
think about it in being in somebody's, you know, one lifetime,
00:51:40.808 --> 00:51:41.988
and particularly a monarch.
00:51:42.328 --> 00:51:48.188
So that was a thing that was really important for us to capture as much as we
00:51:48.188 --> 00:51:49.948
could, and particularly to remind
00:51:49.948 --> 00:51:54.208
people that in the early part of the Victorian era, they had nothing.
00:51:54.381 --> 00:51:58.661
They had no sewers. They had no antiseptic.
00:51:58.741 --> 00:52:02.701
They had doctors who like sawed your limbs off.
00:52:02.861 --> 00:52:05.881
They had no anesthetic, no nothing.
00:52:06.061 --> 00:52:09.541
They had like, there was a lot of stuff that they just did not have.
00:52:09.681 --> 00:52:12.201
And so life was horrible and squalid.
00:52:12.621 --> 00:52:17.041
Even if you were relatively well off, you know, it literally stank.
00:52:17.041 --> 00:52:23.481
And, and a lot of what, you know, what we have received in the way of depictions
00:52:23.481 --> 00:52:28.281
of Victorian life are necessarily sanitized because to see what it really would
00:52:28.281 --> 00:52:31.981
have looked like would be disgusting. And you would be so distracted by that.
00:52:32.141 --> 00:52:35.101
You wouldn't be able to pay attention to anything else. So, you know,
00:52:35.301 --> 00:52:39.701
so I mean, a lot of a lot of my, you know, obviously, I've read a great deal.
00:52:39.841 --> 00:52:44.941
But at the same time, a lot of the imagery that I have in my mind from Victorian
00:52:44.941 --> 00:52:48.281
life is like hammer horror movies, you know, it all looks like that.
00:52:48.441 --> 00:52:52.341
It doesn't look like what Victorian life really looked like.
00:52:52.601 --> 00:52:57.181
And and so we had to play a bit of a delicate game with the reader as well,
00:52:57.261 --> 00:53:01.261
because we needed to remind them, yeah, you know, it was terrible.
00:53:01.261 --> 00:53:07.281
But at the same time, we couldn't let them dwell on that or we would never get into the story.
00:53:07.781 --> 00:53:14.061
So yeah, that was a big factor as well. Yeah, there was just something that
00:53:14.061 --> 00:53:18.621
I saw as like a pure historical anecdote, was when Mrs.
00:53:18.761 --> 00:53:24.661
Lovett is describing the difference in the fog from her childhood to when she
00:53:24.661 --> 00:53:27.861
was writing, saying like, the fog stung your eyes.
00:53:30.221 --> 00:53:34.441
House, and we would pray all day that a wind would come and blow the other direction.
00:53:34.441 --> 00:53:37.781
Yeah, a lot of that was Corrine.
00:53:37.981 --> 00:53:43.521
Corrine really brought those aspects of the story to life.
00:53:43.741 --> 00:53:51.581
We really wanted people to be fully aware of how much a character like Marjorie
00:53:51.581 --> 00:53:53.461
would want to escape those surroundings.
00:53:54.241 --> 00:53:57.941
And, you know, what it would mean to be able to leave, you know,
00:53:58.021 --> 00:54:01.021
the core of the city and go be a maid in Highgate.
00:54:01.261 --> 00:54:03.921
Like, that was a tremendous move for her.
00:54:04.221 --> 00:54:09.181
And we tried to find a way to make that as realistic as possible,
00:54:09.381 --> 00:54:14.341
given the kind of book that it is, where, you know, we leaned in a lot on...
00:54:14.687 --> 00:54:18.347
On the penny dreadful aspect so there are outrageous coincidences
00:54:18.347 --> 00:54:21.207
and and you know incredible twists and
00:54:21.207 --> 00:54:26.107
turns and reveals and you know rugs being pulled out from under the reader and
00:54:26.107 --> 00:54:31.467
and just you know insofar as all that stuff is fantastical still grounding it
00:54:31.467 --> 00:54:37.767
in things that that people could see and smell and feel and hear that was that
00:54:37.767 --> 00:54:39.847
was really critical to the success of the book.
00:54:40.247 --> 00:54:44.867
I, something I don't want to forget to mention, thought of it twice now and I was.
00:54:51.107 --> 00:54:54.227
Are going to start to incorporate some of this backstory? Like,
00:54:54.307 --> 00:54:55.907
do you, do you imagine it'll happen?
00:54:56.087 --> 00:54:59.367
I don't, I don't, I'm not really worried or intrigued
00:54:59.367 --> 00:55:02.407
by that specific thing as much
00:55:02.407 --> 00:55:05.407
as i hope that it opens the doors
00:55:05.407 --> 00:55:08.307
to a lot of interpretations because there
00:55:08.307 --> 00:55:11.507
are a lot of ways to take the story there for
00:55:11.507 --> 00:55:17.207
example there is no reason for mrs lovett to be a white woman like yeah like
00:55:17.207 --> 00:55:20.827
you know in the same way that it wasn't there was no reason for her to be you
00:55:20.827 --> 00:55:25.867
know you know you know fixedly heterosexual there was there's no reason for
00:55:25.867 --> 00:55:28.767
her to be a white woman The Mrs.
00:55:28.927 --> 00:55:32.727
Lovett's that we routinely see are women who are middle-aged or older.
00:55:32.967 --> 00:55:36.967
We did one who is quite young. She's not even 20.
00:55:37.447 --> 00:55:41.347
I think she's just 20, 20 or 21, when she arrives at the pie shop.
00:55:41.527 --> 00:55:44.227
And it creates an entirely different dynamic.
00:55:44.447 --> 00:55:48.767
There's no reason why people can go in a number of different directions as far
00:55:48.767 --> 00:55:56.627
as age, as far as gender, as far as sexuality, as far as racial background, racial history. uh,
00:55:56.955 --> 00:56:02.355
London is a very complex and rich place at that time period,
00:56:02.355 --> 00:56:07.835
and it is very often flattened out in its depictions.
00:56:08.195 --> 00:56:11.495
You know, it's white-ified for a white audience, and of course,
00:56:11.635 --> 00:56:13.395
it's straight-ified for a straight audience.
00:56:13.655 --> 00:56:18.135
So that's a thing that I think is well worth exploring.
00:56:18.315 --> 00:56:23.455
And I also hope that it inspires people to look at other stories from that period
00:56:23.455 --> 00:56:25.735
and shake them up as well.
00:56:25.735 --> 00:56:33.375
Because, you know, the material's in the public domain, and it's there for re-exploring,
00:56:33.475 --> 00:56:37.355
and it's there, you know, to be made relevant to today.
00:56:37.655 --> 00:56:42.035
And one of the things when Corrine and I were, you know, would be working,
00:56:42.075 --> 00:56:45.595
you know, individually and together on it, you know, mostly through Zoom calls,
00:56:45.635 --> 00:56:48.515
we've only been in the same room three times in this whole time.
00:56:48.515 --> 00:56:51.655
The only you know like we continually reminded
00:56:51.655 --> 00:56:55.075
ourselves that while this was a a period piece it's
00:56:55.075 --> 00:56:58.055
a story about today and how does why
00:56:58.055 --> 00:57:01.135
does this story matter today why does this character matter today
00:57:01.135 --> 00:57:05.875
what is it about her that engages people today if it's not if it's not that
00:57:05.875 --> 00:57:09.875
then it's just like walking through a museum and it's not especially engaging
00:57:09.875 --> 00:57:15.455
how how could we make it engaging for people in the present and that's so that
00:57:15.455 --> 00:57:20.935
was that was important to us as well i I have to ask because when I,
00:57:20.995 --> 00:57:26.915
when I was, I'm trying to find the exact portion because I was listening to
00:57:26.915 --> 00:57:31.035
the audio book and I just thought, David, what have you done?
00:57:31.795 --> 00:57:35.075
The character of Fab. Oh, I love Fab.
00:57:37.115 --> 00:57:40.435
I love Fab. All babies don't live.
00:57:42.615 --> 00:57:43.875
I love Fab.
00:57:45.510 --> 00:57:49.270
Fab's garment was the most startling. Instead of the long white linen tunic.
00:57:52.930 --> 00:57:57.590
Hips, presenting his generously proportioned sex to anyone who glanced his way.
00:57:57.850 --> 00:58:02.170
Girl. I had never seen a man's most intimate parts. My mortification was so
00:58:02.170 --> 00:58:05.410
profound that I was speechless. I bet, honey.
00:58:07.370 --> 00:58:12.430
So, Fab works in a...
00:58:13.190 --> 00:58:17.490
Art house. Yeah, in a whorehouse. I guess we'll just say it.
00:58:17.490 --> 00:58:18.090
Like a Molly house?
00:58:18.650 --> 00:58:25.470
Well, he is the one Molly in the house.
00:58:25.830 --> 00:58:26.270
Gotcha.
00:58:26.730 --> 00:58:31.950
Yeah, the other whores are all women. But he is the most popular,
00:58:31.950 --> 00:58:34.470
and he makes the most money for the house.
00:58:34.770 --> 00:58:41.390
And it's said that if a man can't get the woman he wants, then he will happily
00:58:41.390 --> 00:58:46.690
take up with Fab. And there are mock weddings, and there are sort of these sort
00:58:46.690 --> 00:58:47.690
of like – The mock weddings.
00:58:47.810 --> 00:58:51.590
Yeah, and the tableau vivant and all sorts of stuff going on.
00:58:51.650 --> 00:58:53.150
It's not your normal whorehouse.
00:58:53.610 --> 00:58:59.950
It's not a normal house of any kind. But Fab was a really – it was really great
00:58:59.950 --> 00:59:04.670
to be able to investigate Marjorie's attractions to women.
00:59:04.670 --> 00:59:11.050
And it was really great to be able to have such a straightforward, outlandish,
00:59:11.150 --> 00:59:18.550
queer character in Fab who really just sort of like set the bar for what we
00:59:18.550 --> 00:59:19.830
could achieve, you know,
00:59:19.970 --> 00:59:22.990
in sort of, you know, raunchifying this story.
00:59:24.110 --> 00:59:30.650
Yeah, he's just a delight. He's probably, I mean, he's certainly one of my three
00:59:30.650 --> 00:59:34.250
favorite characters in the whole book and was just a treat to write.
00:59:34.250 --> 00:59:42.970
Yeah, you had to have the the catty gay man with the beautiful hair and it was
00:59:42.970 --> 00:59:49.110
really interesting you talking about like how he would sort of get more feminine
00:59:49.110 --> 00:59:53.570
for some of the men who were uncomfortable with their attraction to him.
00:59:54.481 --> 00:59:58.361
And then, of course, like, you know, the brothel is like a mixture of like a
00:59:58.361 --> 01:00:01.621
liberal arts college and a brothel.
01:00:03.521 --> 01:00:06.741
Because, you know, you kind of, when you introduce the characters,
01:00:06.741 --> 01:00:09.761
you kind of think they are artists.
01:00:10.141 --> 01:00:15.501
Yes, we're seeing them through Marjorie's eyes, and Marjorie does not recognize what's going on.
01:00:15.681 --> 01:00:20.401
She has been rescued off the street by one of these women who is really lovely
01:00:20.401 --> 01:00:25.521
to her. And Marjorie would never have, the only experience Marjorie has with
01:00:25.521 --> 01:00:28.641
whores is streetwalkers, basically.
01:00:28.941 --> 01:00:32.221
And so she doesn't, when she walks into this mansion in Mayfair,
01:00:32.301 --> 01:00:34.921
she doesn't really understand what it is she's seeing.
01:00:34.921 --> 01:00:38.441
And the madam of the house,
01:00:39.061 --> 01:00:43.601
Madame Quince, is presenting it as a kind of finishing school for girls,
01:00:43.901 --> 01:00:47.441
and partly as a way of avoiding detection,
01:00:47.681 --> 01:00:52.621
but also as a way, I'm sure she thinks in her mind, of genuinely improving these
01:00:52.621 --> 01:00:59.001
women, perhaps for the possibility that they will be able to be permanent mistresses to some of these men.
01:00:59.001 --> 01:01:04.501
And these men are themselves, you know, intellectuals, educated, moneyed, obviously.
01:01:04.761 --> 01:01:10.241
And so they want, you know, a woman who, you know, or a man who is more sophisticated
01:01:10.241 --> 01:01:16.661
and more knowledgeable and worldly. And so when Marjorie walks into the situation,
01:01:16.841 --> 01:01:18.681
she does not understand what it is she's seeing.
01:01:18.801 --> 01:01:23.101
And then, of course, finally, one of the young women turns to her and goes,
01:01:23.361 --> 01:01:24.181
Marjorie, we're whores.
01:01:27.581 --> 01:01:32.501
And then everything changes because, of course, if you're a maid working in
01:01:32.501 --> 01:01:37.381
a brothel, you are not very different and treated by the rest of the world as
01:01:37.381 --> 01:01:39.461
not very different from the women who work there.
01:01:39.461 --> 01:01:45.401
So she has tainted herself by coming and allowing herself to be in this situation.
01:01:45.401 --> 01:01:49.761
And that creates a lot of tensions within herself as well.
01:01:49.964 --> 01:01:53.644
But it's, I mean, it's the most beautiful place she's ever been in,
01:01:53.684 --> 01:01:57.704
and it's the most free place in its way that she's ever been in,
01:01:57.784 --> 01:01:59.484
but it too has its sinister side.
01:01:59.884 --> 01:02:04.124
Yeah. Although from all the places she lives, it really seems like one of the
01:02:04.124 --> 01:02:05.544
happier times of her life.
01:02:05.684 --> 01:02:08.004
Oh, yeah. I mean, and that was deliberate.
01:02:08.244 --> 01:02:11.784
We had, you know, she went through a lot at the butcher shop,
01:02:11.844 --> 01:02:14.584
and she certainly goes through a lot, which we won't talk about,
01:02:14.624 --> 01:02:15.704
at the physician's house.
01:02:15.704 --> 01:02:19.504
When she gets out of the physician's house and finds herself in the mansion
01:02:19.504 --> 01:02:23.984
in Mayfair, both Corinne and I, when we were talking, I said,
01:02:24.124 --> 01:02:25.424
I want to give her a break.
01:02:27.124 --> 01:02:32.284
It is unfair to just keep putting her in these awful, awful, awful situations.
01:02:32.524 --> 01:02:39.004
I think she needs a rest and to regroup. It doesn't mean that she's not still in peril.
01:02:39.244 --> 01:02:43.624
There are still, you know, men lurking around the outside.
01:02:43.624 --> 01:02:47.484
There are, you know, threatening messages that are being sent inside.
01:02:47.484 --> 01:02:52.104
There are, you know, there are things going on. But you don't think that she's
01:02:52.104 --> 01:02:56.584
going to be subjected to any kind of violence inside that house.
01:02:56.824 --> 01:03:02.024
And it's only when she leaves that house and she ends up, you know,
01:03:02.184 --> 01:03:06.624
in the pie shop that everything just sort of gathers back up again with even,
01:03:06.864 --> 01:03:13.064
you know, more steam and more momentum and more viscerality that,
01:03:13.364 --> 01:03:16.884
you know, and it charges its way towards the end.
01:03:17.004 --> 01:03:19.164
So I think that worked out quite well.
01:03:19.824 --> 01:03:22.844
And this is just because I don't know that much about Sweeney Todd adaptations,
01:03:23.064 --> 01:03:24.484
although I've seen a few with.
01:03:30.848 --> 01:03:36.608
I mean, he does come off as just a monster that everyone is kind of afraid of. He's a big brute.
01:03:37.008 --> 01:03:41.068
Yes, he's a big brute. Yeah, very, because in my head, it's just the Johnny
01:03:41.068 --> 01:03:43.448
Depp movie playing whenever we're walking around.
01:03:43.528 --> 01:03:46.768
Well, this is the one I've seen the most. This is the problem.
01:03:47.068 --> 01:03:51.688
It's not a problem. This is the challenge with characters who you know best
01:03:51.688 --> 01:03:57.088
from musicals. It is intrinsic to a musical, a good musical anyway,
01:03:57.328 --> 01:03:59.388
and Stephen Sondheim musicals were good musicals.
01:03:59.448 --> 01:04:06.688
It is intrinsic to a good musical that characters are using tools of language
01:04:06.688 --> 01:04:12.168
that suggest that they are erudite, that they are educated, that they are sophisticated.
01:04:12.168 --> 01:04:15.208
There's internal rhyming there's rhyming first
01:04:15.208 --> 01:04:18.228
of all period there's internal rhyming there's clever use of
01:04:18.228 --> 01:04:21.348
of particular words in order to achieve particular
01:04:21.348 --> 01:04:24.108
effects and and so i mean the one
01:04:24.108 --> 01:04:27.788
you can say you can say that the characters in sweeney todd are foolish but
01:04:27.788 --> 01:04:32.028
you can't say they're stupid because someone incredibly intelligent wrote them
01:04:32.028 --> 01:04:38.288
and that comes through in a big way in the original penny dreadful yes he's
01:04:38.288 --> 01:04:41.828
a thug and a brute and a monster He is killing,
01:04:42.148 --> 01:04:44.208
he doesn't really kill women.
01:04:44.408 --> 01:04:49.888
He does still focus on men. He's primarily killing men who are itinerant and
01:04:49.888 --> 01:04:53.828
who won't be missed, and he is taking their jewels and their valuables.
01:04:53.988 --> 01:04:58.948
That is the main reason for him to do that. He is, in a lot of ways.
01:04:59.428 --> 01:05:05.768
Someone who is driven mad by London and driven mad by the Industrial Revolution,
01:05:05.768 --> 01:05:07.828
which is emerging all around him.
01:05:07.988 --> 01:05:14.448
And he is sort of like, I don't know, I wouldn't go so far as to say he's an
01:05:14.448 --> 01:05:17.408
evil force, but he's an amoral force.
01:05:17.408 --> 01:05:20.548
And and so when we when we wrote
01:05:20.548 --> 01:05:23.528
him we knew we were going back to that
01:05:23.528 --> 01:05:26.628
you know i mean johnny depp you know lots of
01:05:26.628 --> 01:05:30.508
things to say about him but one of the things we can say is he's not very much
01:05:30.508 --> 01:05:38.728
bigger than me and he's not going to overpower anybody and and so so this is
01:05:38.728 --> 01:05:41.908
a man who if he got you in the barber chair you were not getting out of that
01:05:41.908 --> 01:05:45.168
barber chair alive that was it it was as simple as that.
01:05:45.528 --> 01:05:49.968
And the entire time, I mean, she handles it well, but the entire time that Mrs.
01:05:50.128 --> 01:05:55.628
Lovett is in the pie shop below the barbershop, she's fearing for her life.
01:05:55.728 --> 01:05:58.548
And she's trying very hard to make sure she's not next.
01:05:58.808 --> 01:06:05.188
And that was an important thing for us to move to the front of the story as well.
01:06:05.288 --> 01:06:10.588
Once we got there, he is very different from really from any of the musical
01:06:10.588 --> 01:06:13.728
or theatrical depictions of recent times.
01:06:14.048 --> 01:06:18.568
Yeah, because I wasn't sure if... Because there's basically no real relationship
01:06:18.568 --> 01:06:21.348
between them, and I know in the musical there is...
01:06:22.421 --> 01:06:27.001
Yeah, I never bought it. And I never bought it. The whole time,
01:06:27.161 --> 01:06:29.381
it's like, why is this woman with this man?
01:06:31.561 --> 01:06:35.641
Why is this woman, like, and not just with him, but just like,
01:06:35.741 --> 01:06:39.621
you know, completely besought, you know, she is like, you know,
01:06:39.761 --> 01:06:41.881
and it's like, there's nothing to have a crush on.
01:06:41.881 --> 01:06:46.101
And one of the arguments you can say about the musical is because the character
01:06:46.101 --> 01:06:52.741
is a little more sophisticated and a little more devilish, you can see someone falling for that.
01:06:52.881 --> 01:06:57.481
But she's made to be foolish for being an old woman,
01:06:58.181 --> 01:07:07.061
an old widow, who is infatuated with this younger, he may be brutish and violent,
01:07:07.201 --> 01:07:08.801
but he's charismatic guy.
01:07:08.801 --> 01:07:12.441
And we were like, yeah, that's just, no, we're not doing that.
01:07:12.581 --> 01:07:15.701
We're not doing that at all. And so we didn't. Yeah, and I think it works really
01:07:15.701 --> 01:07:20.221
well, especially because you sort of wrote her as queer as well.
01:07:20.501 --> 01:07:26.801
The only relationship we see her in is with another woman who she convinces,
01:07:30.161 --> 01:07:34.321
you were having with gender there. Her imagining, what would it be like if you
01:07:34.321 --> 01:07:36.381
were a man who could live with me, huh?
01:07:37.501 --> 01:07:38.781
Honey. How would that work?
01:07:41.141 --> 01:07:43.521
Well, I've also read Tipping the Velvet.
01:07:43.921 --> 01:07:48.261
Yeah. Absolutely, as did we. And it's so good.
01:07:48.981 --> 01:07:53.601
And we, yeah, there's a lot of Sarah Waters that sort of threaded through all of this as well.
01:07:53.781 --> 01:07:57.721
And we also wanted to, I mean, for the people who only knew the story through
01:07:57.721 --> 01:08:01.281
the musical, we wanted to make sure there were some Easter eggs and some callbacks
01:08:01.281 --> 01:08:03.541
for them that didn't like, you know,
01:08:03.861 --> 01:08:09.161
that didn't copy the musical, but that hinted at the fact that,
01:08:09.281 --> 01:08:12.361
you know, the musical, like our story originated somewhere.
01:08:12.361 --> 01:08:17.641
And so, and so when she gets, you know, her girlfriend to dress as a boy and
01:08:17.641 --> 01:08:23.921
she calls him Toby, people will immediately go, Oh, I know that name.
01:08:25.001 --> 01:08:29.661
Which is what I did. I'm just, I am just your median voter when it comes to
01:08:29.661 --> 01:08:31.601
Sweeney Todd. I'm just like, Oh yeah.
01:08:31.881 --> 01:08:34.421
Yeah. From the, from the screen that I look at all day.
01:08:35.011 --> 01:08:37.891
Exactly yeah it's it was really
01:08:37.891 --> 01:08:40.791
fun i wonder you know in the future if i watch when you
01:08:40.791 --> 01:08:43.571
taught stuff well i'll go well of course she's doing that i
01:08:43.571 --> 01:08:48.451
mean that's because she wrote about this when she was in the priory i'm just
01:08:48.451 --> 01:08:51.631
gonna be doing that in my head because that's kind of what i you know it makes
01:08:51.631 --> 01:08:55.631
sense to do that you've added to the character in my head which is yeah i just
01:08:55.631 --> 01:08:59.411
think makes the book a lot of fun good the only thing i could hope for more
01:08:59.411 --> 01:09:02.331
out of an art book is, you know, when I.
01:09:06.111 --> 01:09:09.951
Where they have things that are folded into it, so you usually get like a very
01:09:09.951 --> 01:09:11.091
nice letter or something.
01:09:11.871 --> 01:09:16.611
But one of my favorite things I have is a replication of the morals of Jesus,
01:09:16.831 --> 01:09:18.051
which is the Jefferson Bible.
01:09:18.251 --> 01:09:23.271
Oh, yes. And when they replicated it, there's a little thing where he fixed an error.
01:09:23.311 --> 01:09:29.031
And it's a tiny little flap of paper that is sort of folded into the edge and
01:09:29.031 --> 01:09:30.751
they replicated it in the book.
01:09:30.931 --> 01:09:34.971
So you can see the little fold of paper where he would have fixed the error
01:09:34.971 --> 01:09:37.651
on the book. I love stuff like that.
01:09:38.131 --> 01:09:41.191
It's expensive. It is expensive, obviously.
01:09:41.651 --> 01:09:47.231
That you become aware of, and particularly now, special printer things are very
01:09:47.231 --> 01:09:48.991
expensive, more than they've ever been.
01:09:49.291 --> 01:09:54.011
And so, it's a real commitment. You might get stuff like that now in special
01:09:54.011 --> 01:09:57.371
editions and things, rather than in a regular printing.
01:09:57.531 --> 01:10:01.791
But it's It is harder and harder to do some of that stuff unless you're going,
01:10:01.791 --> 01:10:07.811
you know, to a boutique sort of publisher who's only going to do sort of like a limited run of stuff.
01:10:08.011 --> 01:10:10.911
I have some, I guess they're called Ergotics.
01:10:11.126 --> 01:10:11.446
Books.
01:10:12.226 --> 01:10:13.506
Yes, erotic literature is my favorite.
01:10:13.826 --> 01:10:17.886
Yes, exactly. And this is sort of adjacent to that. But I have some,
01:10:18.106 --> 01:10:21.986
you know, it's like, here's a box that has a bunch of, you know,
01:10:22.266 --> 01:10:24.906
sort of like zine-like, you know, documents in it.
01:10:25.066 --> 01:10:29.246
Or here's, you know, another thing that is, you know, filled with postcards.
01:10:29.446 --> 01:10:33.626
And here's another thing that is like, and so that stuff, I just, I love that stuff.
01:10:33.766 --> 01:10:38.506
But it is now just like, it is a true art project to make those things.
01:10:38.706 --> 01:10:41.706
And it's really expensive to produce them so
01:10:41.706 --> 01:10:45.246
and i already i mean in canada in canada
01:10:45.246 --> 01:10:48.486
the butcher's daughter is like 36.95 and
01:10:48.486 --> 01:10:53.046
it's like holy shit that is
01:10:53.046 --> 01:10:58.086
a whopping amount of money for a book and the the paperback will be out next
01:10:58.086 --> 01:11:03.746
year which is great but but one but i but i love the fact that it's a hardcover
01:11:03.746 --> 01:11:09.226
and i love the fact that it has this look and feel about it and this sort of weight and heft to it,
01:11:09.926 --> 01:11:15.526
and also like spot lacquer on the cover and things like that it's really it's lovely to have.
01:11:15.526 --> 01:11:20.566
Like I'm not a print purist but I do love when a piece of media,
01:11:21.946 --> 01:11:28.126
engages like where the medium itself is like part of how you experience it like
01:11:28.126 --> 01:11:31.706
House of Leaves is my favorite book and I could not imagine House of Leaves
01:11:31.706 --> 01:11:36.446
in any other format than the way that it is printed right so I really like
01:11:36.653 --> 01:11:44.533
books that do incorporate the nature of being a book into how you experience it.
01:11:44.633 --> 01:11:48.033
It's just such a pleasant reading experience when that happens.
01:11:48.273 --> 01:11:53.433
Well, with each of the books that I've written, I have tried very hard to look
01:11:53.433 --> 01:12:01.633
at them as objects and to try to find ways to expand the conventional reading experience.
01:12:01.853 --> 01:12:05.513
I mean, with The Bone Mother, it was through the use of archival photographs
01:12:05.513 --> 01:12:10.933
with Red X, you know, it was, you know, there were a variety of things that were going on there.
01:12:11.093 --> 01:12:14.193
There were particular pages, things were happening to them.
01:12:14.333 --> 01:12:18.353
There were particular images, things like that. And with Strange Light,
01:12:18.573 --> 01:12:22.233
you know, printing with the French flaps and the untrimmed edges,
01:12:22.513 --> 01:12:27.573
it was that also gave a particular look and feel to the book that I really appreciated.
01:12:27.793 --> 01:12:33.273
And with this one, again, it was just like, you know, how can we make this reading
01:12:33.273 --> 01:12:38.373
experience unique and special, because I think it's one of the things that a
01:12:38.373 --> 01:12:41.693
lot of readers crave, particularly horror readers.
01:12:42.113 --> 01:12:42.573
Yeah.
01:12:42.753 --> 01:12:47.793
Know that you're going to be getting, you know, variations on stories,
01:12:47.853 --> 01:12:50.253
you know, very often that you already read before.
01:12:50.453 --> 01:12:53.753
And there's a comfort that you can get out of that. But what can you bring to
01:12:53.753 --> 01:12:58.673
the experience that's new or unusual or fresh and disarming in certain ways,
01:12:58.833 --> 01:13:01.773
you know, to give people a bit of a, you know,
01:13:02.093 --> 01:13:06.173
sometimes a little bit of a jump scare or to, you know, further immerse them
01:13:06.173 --> 01:13:07.413
into the reality of the book.
01:13:07.613 --> 01:13:11.673
Yeah. As horror vanguard is always saying, horror wants to do things to your
01:13:11.673 --> 01:13:15.353
body. And I think that includes like the physical experience of reading something.
01:13:15.853 --> 01:13:20.573
Absolutely. And I think with, you know, a big fat, I mean, of course,
01:13:20.573 --> 01:13:24.433
this was the other thing that was a constant, you know, sort of concern of ours.
01:13:24.553 --> 01:13:30.753
The ideal historical book is probably about this size, a little over 400 pages,
01:13:31.033 --> 01:13:32.453
a little over 100,000 words.
01:13:32.633 --> 01:13:36.993
The ideal horror novel is closer to 75,000.
01:13:37.273 --> 01:13:41.453
And so, you know, the conventional horror reader, I mean, Gothic readers,
01:13:41.773 --> 01:13:46.573
you know, I think have a different sensibility and they're looking for a slightly different thing.
01:13:46.633 --> 01:13:51.493
But at the same time, you're trying to please all of these people without pissing anybody off.
01:13:51.953 --> 01:13:56.313
And if you're giving someone, I mean, I'm not Stephen King.
01:13:56.533 --> 01:14:01.913
I know what, you I know the story. So if I'm going to give somebody a book this
01:14:01.913 --> 01:14:06.073
big and say this is a horror novel, there had better be some horror in it,
01:14:06.093 --> 01:14:08.653
and it had better go at a particular pace.
01:14:08.833 --> 01:14:11.453
There better be, you know, there's a slow burn at the beginning,
01:14:11.593 --> 01:14:13.893
but once it gets going, it should really get going.
01:14:14.273 --> 01:14:19.253
And if there's any doubt that it's horror, you should introduce elements into
01:14:19.253 --> 01:14:24.613
it that remind people, oh, yes, you know, here, you know, a kid's leg gets sawed
01:14:24.613 --> 01:14:27.533
off. Here, there's, you know, a tumor the size of someone's head.
01:14:27.693 --> 01:14:31.973
Here, there's all of these things that just sort of, you know.
01:14:32.484 --> 01:14:35.584
Keep you reminded oh yeah horror novel oh yeah horror
01:14:35.584 --> 01:14:39.244
no oh yeah oh horror horror horror like
01:14:39.244 --> 01:14:42.164
it's there so so you know you come
01:14:42.164 --> 01:14:44.984
to realize that while no one is
01:14:44.984 --> 01:14:50.344
necessarily pushing you as far as the the extremity of the content is concerned
01:14:50.344 --> 01:14:57.104
there is an awareness that a reader has expectations and insofar as you can
01:14:57.104 --> 01:15:02.924
fulfill them even as you subvert them so much the better Because then they can come away from it.
01:15:03.004 --> 01:15:05.924
They may come away from it annoyed with some of the choices you made,
01:15:06.044 --> 01:15:12.284
but they can't say that they didn't get an interesting experience out of it. Yeah, absolutely.
01:15:12.624 --> 01:15:16.564
I mean, I think more so than the moments where you're.
01:15:47.424 --> 01:15:50.964
Doctor's house is probably, for me, probably the most horrific part,
01:15:51.144 --> 01:15:56.884
viscerally. Yeah, everything that goes on the doctor's house is just horrendous.
01:15:57.124 --> 01:16:03.364
And at the same time, there are certain modern concessions,
01:16:03.504 --> 01:16:09.104
but by and large, that stuff is not wildly different from what you would have
01:16:09.104 --> 01:16:12.504
found in Penny Dreadfuls or Sensation novels of the period.
01:16:12.504 --> 01:16:16.724
We just compressed a lot of stuff into a very short period of time.
01:16:16.724 --> 01:16:20.844
But there is a lot of brutality.
01:16:21.444 --> 01:16:27.864
There is... With Red X, we had quite a number of content warnings.
01:16:28.144 --> 01:16:30.084
With this book, I knew...
01:16:30.828 --> 01:16:34.688
That the early readers were going to do my work for me. And they have.
01:16:35.388 --> 01:16:40.668
If you go on NetGalley or Goodreads or any number of the other places,
01:16:40.908 --> 01:16:45.648
there are people who very helpfully have gone like this with the list of things
01:16:45.648 --> 01:16:48.588
that go on in the book. And it's like, thank you.
01:16:48.888 --> 01:16:53.768
Thank you. Very grateful for that. At the same time, we also tried to be cognizant
01:16:53.768 --> 01:16:58.528
that people have limits to what they can endure in a book and we didn't want
01:16:58.528 --> 01:17:04.508
to push it wildly far but yeah it's not it's not light it's not cozy horror
01:17:04.508 --> 01:17:08.828
if it is cozy horror for somebody i'm not sure who that person is.
01:17:10.608 --> 01:17:17.088
I you are not on my favorite review website which is does the dog die oh well
01:17:17.088 --> 01:17:22.728
we although i mean one of the things we i i felt really bad about both bone
01:17:22.728 --> 01:17:27.608
brother and red x and so i tried really hard even though obviously the first
01:17:27.608 --> 01:17:29.128
section is in a butcher shop.
01:17:29.408 --> 01:17:32.368
I tried really hard not to kill off any animals this time.
01:17:32.728 --> 01:17:38.088
So the dog does not die. There is a dog that goes missing, but it does not die.
01:17:38.468 --> 01:17:44.248
And in fact, as far as I can recall, while it's understood that animals die
01:17:44.248 --> 01:17:48.108
in a butcher shop, there is not a lot of gruesome animal death.
01:17:48.308 --> 01:17:49.888
In fact, I don't think there's really any.
01:17:50.308 --> 01:17:54.268
And however, the rest of the list is completely covered.
01:17:54.268 --> 01:17:57.188
Well that's what i love about does the dog die because
01:17:57.188 --> 01:18:00.248
that was how it started but then of course the
01:18:00.248 --> 01:18:03.988
the amount of triggers that they added are absolutely massive
01:18:03.988 --> 01:18:10.068
so like i i love the does the dog die for like why am i conclave it's like does
01:18:10.068 --> 01:18:15.628
the main character die yes the pope is religion mentioned you know just like
01:18:15.628 --> 01:18:20.748
the kind of triggers that you don't really need i mean different people absolutely have,
01:18:20.748 --> 01:18:22.968
you know, different sensitivities.
01:18:23.348 --> 01:18:30.988
And in horror, it's really hard because a lot of the things that you have personal
01:18:30.988 --> 01:18:36.688
anxieties about, sometimes you want to stick your finger in the wound and sometimes you don't.
01:18:36.788 --> 01:18:40.908
I mean, the thing that I have, I have like a long list of fears.
01:18:41.148 --> 01:18:46.288
I write horror because I live horror. I have a long list of fears. But I
01:18:46.398 --> 01:18:51.978
One thing that I find really, really incredibly intensely uncomfortable is home invasion.
01:18:52.318 --> 01:18:58.058
And so, like, I have never seen The Strangers because I know, right?
01:18:58.158 --> 01:18:58.418
Yeah.
01:18:58.638 --> 01:19:02.978
I've seen clips. I've seen images. I know what it's going to be like, right?
01:19:03.158 --> 01:19:09.818
I watched funny games once, exactly once, and that whole time, I was just writhing.
01:19:09.918 --> 01:19:12.218
I was just writhing through that whole thing.
01:19:12.358 --> 01:19:15.958
There are a number of those that I just find, I just find them really difficult.
01:19:16.698 --> 01:19:20.578
And, and so for someone else, it's going to be an entirely different thing.
01:19:20.698 --> 01:19:26.558
You know, there, I have, I have a friend who she's, she has a sort of a religious
01:19:26.558 --> 01:19:31.918
background and, and we can watch a lot of horror together, but horror that has
01:19:31.918 --> 01:19:35.538
to do with Satanism or with possession or,
01:19:35.818 --> 01:19:38.578
or anything like that is just, it's a hot button.
01:19:38.638 --> 01:19:41.438
And it's like, okay, well then no, we're just not going to do that.
01:19:41.578 --> 01:19:44.698
I may think it's silly, but that has nothing to do with me, you know?
01:19:44.698 --> 01:19:47.898
So, these are the things that you kind of have to negotiate.
01:19:48.298 --> 01:19:52.098
Yeah, we covered a lot of ground in this book. And if somebody were to put it
01:19:52.098 --> 01:19:57.138
up on, you know, does the dog die, there would be like 30, 40, 50 things.
01:19:57.938 --> 01:20:00.318
Red X is on there. Of course.
01:20:01.538 --> 01:20:05.358
The only trigger is does the dog die, and there's one yes.
01:20:06.498 --> 01:20:09.518
The dog sure is something. I'll give it that.
01:20:09.898 --> 01:20:14.658
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, and there are lots of people,
01:20:14.878 --> 01:20:20.678
lots of people who can read anything in horror, they cannot read animals being injured or killed.
01:20:20.978 --> 01:20:25.618
And, and I, you know, I'm really, I'm basically three for three now.
01:20:25.838 --> 01:20:29.238
So, so the next book, since I know this is going to be a question,
01:20:29.438 --> 01:20:32.958
the next book is a haunted house book, and I don't think there are going to
01:20:32.958 --> 01:20:34.498
be any animals involved.
01:20:36.618 --> 01:20:44.138
So at least that's the plan right now so so yeah so that's that's the next thing on the list yeah.
01:20:44.138 --> 01:20:45.638
I mean is that,
01:20:46.195 --> 01:20:49.955
Oh, I was just gonna say our like mutual podcast friend,
01:20:50.195 --> 01:20:53.415
John Greenway of Horror Vanguard has done a lot of interesting writing around
01:20:53.415 --> 01:20:59.115
like the haunted house genre from like a Marxist lens and like looking at like
01:20:59.115 --> 01:21:02.155
the owning of property and land itself,
01:21:02.755 --> 01:21:07.295
like within capitalism as like inherently like horrific and everything.
01:21:07.295 --> 01:21:11.875
So I'm like really excited to see how you approach the haunted house story.
01:21:11.995 --> 01:21:15.855
And like, obviously you two should, should meet and talk. It would be really, it'd be really cool.
01:21:15.855 --> 01:21:20.735
That would be wonderful. There's also a really interesting thread of conversation
01:21:20.735 --> 01:21:23.435
going on now around haunted houses and colonialism.
01:21:23.875 --> 01:21:33.515
And I think that's also a really fascinating… My haunted house is,
01:21:33.935 --> 01:21:40.735
well, first of all, in the world of the book, is the first scientifically documented
01:21:40.735 --> 01:21:45.175
haunted house and is established scientifically documented.
01:21:45.855 --> 01:21:49.495
As being haunted from like the early 1970s.
01:21:49.635 --> 01:21:54.935
So, in the present day, this is just understood to be a factual phenomenon.
01:21:55.295 --> 01:21:59.915
There have been studies about what the nature of the haunting is.
01:21:59.975 --> 01:22:03.035
It turns out it's biological, and I'm not going to go any further with that.
01:22:03.115 --> 01:22:09.495
But I worked very hard to come up with a way of making a haunting work in as
01:22:09.495 --> 01:22:12.375
real a world as I could make it.
01:22:12.375 --> 01:22:19.615
And so it's basically about a woman in her late 50s, early 60s,
01:22:19.675 --> 01:22:26.155
who's recently lost her husband, and now her adopted gay son has run away.
01:22:26.295 --> 01:22:31.055
And she believes that he has run to this house, which is her ancestral summer
01:22:31.055 --> 01:22:37.775
house, which is an entity in popular culture, the way that the Amityville house is, except real.
01:22:37.775 --> 01:22:43.155
And of course, it is a place where...
01:22:43.949 --> 01:22:51.129
People have died and have become ghosts and are on the property and on the premises.
01:22:51.409 --> 01:22:57.749
And some people have deliberately gone there to die in order to become ghosts
01:22:57.749 --> 01:23:03.189
in that space. And she fears that her son is aiming to do just that.
01:23:03.269 --> 01:23:06.409
And so, she has to try to find him and stop him.
01:23:06.549 --> 01:23:13.469
There is also, at the same time, a cult that has sequestered themselves nearby.
01:23:13.469 --> 01:23:18.069
They're the no-hopers, and they are a bunch of young people who have basically
01:23:18.069 --> 01:23:22.049
given up on the direction that the world is going in,
01:23:22.149 --> 01:23:27.829
and they are also devising a way in which they will be able to die and live
01:23:27.829 --> 01:23:29.349
on as ghosts on these properties.
01:23:29.709 --> 01:23:35.969
So, there's a lot going on. It's sort of a combination of Hill House and Annihilation.
01:23:37.209 --> 01:23:37.689
Interesting.
01:23:38.649 --> 01:23:39.129
Okay.
01:23:39.549 --> 01:23:41.049
I like both those things.
01:23:41.049 --> 01:23:45.949
I'm not a horror person, but that's got me. I enjoyed both of those things.
01:23:48.349 --> 01:23:55.249
Yeah, so it's not at all, at least as I currently see it, it's not at all gory,
01:23:55.249 --> 01:23:59.729
but it is sort of psychologically unsettling.
01:23:59.869 --> 01:24:03.429
And I would say also perhaps scientifically unsettling.
01:24:03.429 --> 01:24:10.249
And the idea behind at least a segment of the book is that we get to see examples
01:24:10.249 --> 01:24:15.829
of how this house and how her family were treated in pop culture.
01:24:15.989 --> 01:24:21.949
So, for example, we see early on in the book a review from TV Guide of the TV
01:24:21.949 --> 01:24:24.369
movie that was made about the house.
01:24:24.787 --> 01:24:28.387
And about, you know, and mentions the character who was played by,
01:24:28.647 --> 01:24:31.487
you know, that is meant to be her, who was played by, you know,
01:24:31.587 --> 01:24:34.947
a young Jodie Foster and sort of those kinds of things.
01:24:34.947 --> 01:24:39.827
And then seeing pages from books and magazines, you know, talking about the
01:24:39.827 --> 01:24:43.807
nature of the house and, you know, lyrics from songs that were written about
01:24:43.807 --> 01:24:47.187
the house and, you know, those kinds of things.
01:24:47.347 --> 01:24:50.087
And that kind of ephemera finds
01:24:50.087 --> 01:24:54.247
its way, you know, into the document that we're reading. Great. Yeah.
01:24:55.307 --> 01:24:58.467
No i'm excited and obviously i am going
01:24:58.467 --> 01:25:01.747
to point people towards it once you have more information on
01:25:01.747 --> 01:25:04.707
when it will be out yeah i mean it's gonna be a while
01:25:04.707 --> 01:25:07.527
it takes me about four years to write anything oh well
01:25:07.527 --> 01:25:10.327
that's not fair it takes about two years for me to write anything
01:25:10.327 --> 01:25:13.107
and then it takes another two years for the book to come out so it's
01:25:13.107 --> 01:25:16.047
about four years from now we'll say and it's called currently
01:25:16.047 --> 01:25:18.727
it's called the stone garden i'm sure somebody's going to talk me out
01:25:18.727 --> 01:25:21.947
of that but but yeah it's it's it's a it's
01:25:21.947 --> 01:25:24.707
an it too is going to have sort of
01:25:24.707 --> 01:25:27.787
the element of being an artifact as well as
01:25:27.787 --> 01:25:32.527
being a narrative so so i'm looking forward to that yeah i like this book art
01:25:32.527 --> 01:25:38.427
approach you're taking to yeah i mean as long as yeah as long as publishers
01:25:38.427 --> 01:25:43.267
will let me do it you know i am i am happy to go down this road the other two
01:25:43.267 --> 01:25:45.567
things that are coming up for me are,
01:25:45.987 --> 01:25:50.967
I have a short story called The Start of Something that is going to be in the
01:25:50.967 --> 01:25:56.107
next issue of Weird Horror, which is published by Undertow Publications.
01:25:56.207 --> 01:25:58.727
That is going to be out, I think, later this summer.
01:25:58.907 --> 01:26:03.527
And then there is a book that is edited by Becky Spratford, librarian,
01:26:03.887 --> 01:26:07.307
called Why I Love Horror. I have an essay in that.
01:26:07.487 --> 01:26:09.007
In fact, I have the second last
01:26:09.007 --> 01:26:14.167
essay in that, which called of men and monsters and that will be out i
01:26:14.482 --> 01:26:18.262
at the end of September. So, yeah, so it's nice to have those as well.
01:26:18.882 --> 01:26:21.782
Great. And I'm going to point people to all that when they come out.
01:26:21.942 --> 01:26:25.662
And as, of course, now the the book will be in there.
01:26:25.822 --> 01:26:30.782
Do you want me to add maybe one or two of the images? Oh, sure. To tease people?
01:26:31.542 --> 01:26:34.982
Oh, sure. Because that's what made me go, okay, I have to have the physical
01:26:34.982 --> 01:26:37.682
book. Yeah. Because you just got to see it.
01:26:38.102 --> 01:26:40.982
Great. Is there anything else you want the people to know about?
01:26:40.982 --> 01:26:44.262
I can obviously put any social media in the description.
01:26:44.482 --> 01:26:47.882
Yeah, I mean, that's most of it.
01:26:48.042 --> 01:26:53.762
As I say, the UK version is going to come out next week, in fact.
01:26:53.762 --> 01:26:58.982
I believe it's June 23rd or 24th, so that will be different again.
01:26:59.542 --> 01:27:04.182
Eventually, a paperback is going to come out sometime next year from Soho.
01:27:04.182 --> 01:27:11.562
I have heard a rumor that there may be a special edition of Red X for its fifth
01:27:11.562 --> 01:27:14.902
anniversary, but I can't swear to it.
01:27:16.342 --> 01:27:20.622
Red X is literally one of my favorite books, David. I love it so much.
01:27:20.622 --> 01:27:22.702
I will be the first person to buy that.
01:27:22.942 --> 01:27:25.562
Red X is so good. It changed my life.
01:27:25.562 --> 01:27:33.602
Yeah, well, if it turns out to be the way that I would like it to be,
01:27:33.822 --> 01:27:36.542
then I think you will be a very happy person.
01:27:36.902 --> 01:27:42.722
Yes, good. Oh, my cat's going to come say hi. Maybe I can get the camera on so we can see him.
01:27:43.042 --> 01:27:45.802
Come on, Arthur. Yeah, here we go.
01:27:46.122 --> 01:27:47.402
Yes, hello, Arthur.
01:27:47.742 --> 01:27:48.102
Yes.
01:27:48.522 --> 01:27:48.942
Lovely.
01:27:49.302 --> 01:27:49.862
Best boy.
01:27:50.142 --> 01:27:50.522
Yes.
01:27:50.622 --> 01:27:51.642
He is the best.
01:27:51.862 --> 01:27:55.182
He seems big. Or is it just because he's close to the camera?
01:27:55.182 --> 01:27:58.342
He got to go through cat puberty because he was a street cat.
01:27:58.342 --> 01:28:02.222
So he's got those big tomcat cheeks and everything before he got fixed.
01:28:02.402 --> 01:28:05.882
So he's like 12 pounds. He's a big boy.
01:28:06.122 --> 01:28:06.322
Yeah.
01:28:06.902 --> 01:28:07.982
Aren't you, buddy? Yeah.
01:28:08.202 --> 01:28:09.182
But a beautiful boy.
01:28:09.402 --> 01:28:16.122
He's so handsome. He's very aware of his size. He's very cautious and just feels his way around.
01:28:16.382 --> 01:28:20.622
He's like, oh, hang on. Unlike dogs that stay puppies forever,
01:28:20.622 --> 01:28:22.622
even if they're like 300 pounds.
01:28:24.102 --> 01:28:31.102
Are there stop eating cables you have food he's picked up some very interesting habits from his.
01:28:31.102 --> 01:28:32.542
Cat roommate oh.
01:28:32.542 --> 01:28:34.362
Yeah oh.
01:28:34.362 --> 01:28:41.282
Like how to how to paw his food down and attack cables and poke jay when he
01:28:41.282 --> 01:28:43.162
wants food oh that's nice.
01:28:43.162 --> 01:28:48.982
I was like healing from no surgery like actively just bleeding and then justin
01:28:48.982 --> 01:28:53.642
like got pictures of arthur just like peeking up over me like about to tap me for food. Exactly.
01:28:54.082 --> 01:28:55.962
I don't care if you're convalescing.
01:28:57.122 --> 01:28:59.042
I want food. I want to poke you.
01:28:59.282 --> 01:29:01.962
Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Good night.