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[SPEAKER_02]: All right, Ins.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back to another episode of Horror Joy Meet Your Maker.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You are only with me today.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Jeff Bryan is out on assignment, rescuing Nicole Kidman from the auditorium in which he has been trapped for all of these years.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Today, I'm thrilled to be joined by author Craig Wallwork.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Craig is British author of the Tom Nolan horror thriller series as well as human tenderloin, the skin we feel most comfortable in, and what we'll talk about a little bit today, spoiler free, the instruction manual to being a vampire, just published in 2026 through Trueborn Press.
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[SPEAKER_02]: also noted he's a horror and movie geek so we'll be getting into that I hope to.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So Craig, welcome to the podcast.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for joining us.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm gonna begin with the customary horror joy question which is this link between horror and joy as an author of horror as a consumer of horror.
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[SPEAKER_02]: What do you see this relationship is?
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[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm the kind of child of the 70s and 80s, horror came on my radar quite early on.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So it was about the sort of 82, 83 when it sort of more aware of it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That was because the video nasty period has started in in-brand.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Are you aware of that particular movement?
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[SPEAKER_00]: No, not at all.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so to break it down really quickly, what essentially happened was the BBFC, which is the British board of film censorship, I think they've changed that now to something else certification but essentially what happened was they would watch every film that was put on cinema.
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[SPEAKER_00]: and they would grade it and say this is an 18, this is a 15, whatever it is.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But then VHS was taken off and they hadn't any sort of policies and procedure around VHS.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So what was happening was all these distributors were kind of farming out all their work and films straight to the video shops without any certificate.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So every house kind of had all these big titles like I spit on your grave, evil, dead, all this kind of stuff that was happening and it wasn't governed.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The tabloids got on top of it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: People like Ali Mail in Britain, which is a big tabloid.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They were saying these movies, VHS, is raping the minds of the children of Britain.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And they would compare it like to the third Reich and stuff like that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And we've got to get on top of it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So essentially what he did was through the Obsene Publications Act,
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[SPEAKER_00]: were like video nasty.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And the way they kind of measured that was, if any title had cannibal in it, it was gone.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So cannibal holocaust, anything like that, it was done with.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I spit on your grave evil dead.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If the covers were bloody in any way, then they were gone.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And they were taken, they were seized.
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[SPEAKER_00]: the retailers got a fine things like that, and there were 72 titles in the list, but it got so bad that even titles that weren't horror were getting confiscated.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think there was something that happened with the police in SLOW, which is Southern England.
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[SPEAKER_00]: where they went to a video shop and confiscated a little horousing text of the dolly part and movie and Sam follows the big red one because they thought they were porn hotels so he got to that sort of level it was crazy so anyway they all went but my father frequented lots of pups there was lots of pirate copies going around so what he would do is
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[SPEAKER_00]: he would bring these titles back into our house and my mom didn't really like horror so he would watch them at now he would watch them out for obviously people who are not familiar with VCRs.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The VCRs would have like a counter which was just a series of like three dials and that was sort of measure the revolution of the spool.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, when the spool went round, I was like, count to one, too.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What he would allow you to do is mark a point in a film.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, he would find all these gory scenes in movies, and then he would wake me up in the morning, drag me into the living room, cue them up, and say, right, we're gonna watch.
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[SPEAKER_00]: zombie fleshiers with the spike going in the eye.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like 10, something like that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And he would sit me down, no, to desensitize me to the gratuitous scene, the bloody scene, the gory scene.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He would walk me through it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You would say what we're going to do is we're going to see the spike going to an eye, but the eye is like a prosthetic.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's made out of this and there's blood coming out and stuff like, you know, as I'll fake blood.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So when you watch it, see it from that point of view.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a bit like sitting next to a magician and the magician's telling you the trick.
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[SPEAKER_00]: As you go through it, so you're not looking at it as an audience member looking at this scene where woman gets a spike in a eye or
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[SPEAKER_00]: He's head decapitated with a pain of glass in the oven.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You're looking at a mannequin.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He's telling me that Tom Savino's under the bed, and that's like a false body on Kevin Bacon's thing that he's going through, isn't it?
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[SPEAKER_00]: So it totally broke it down for me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But the joy I got from that was seeing him.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He would get so enthusiastic, he would get so passionate about it, he would say, and I'd just see him light up.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And like we're most, you know, kids and the fathers, it's, it's certainly sons, it's, it's a difficult relationship.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We weren't always talking about things we loved.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't always around.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He would be out drinking a lot.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He would be out with his friends a lot.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was a part-time dad, but in those moments, we were united.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We were tethered by cellulite to these moments.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was Moses, you know, that joy bled into me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So that's, I think, the genesis of my look for horror.
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[SPEAKER_02]: That's an amazing answer.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I love the idea of being linked through study Lloyd.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And there is something really a femoral about
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[SPEAKER_02]: like the physical film.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I worked for years at a movie theater back when we still had film.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like the last licensed projectionist to work at that theater because they moved the digital soon thereafter.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And when you have to splice film together, there was like that tactile thing about it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So when you're talking about the dials and marking the spot, some thinking about the cigarette burn marks and the tops.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So, like that, that's a really awesome story and I'm going to just then transition into my follow-up question with this is always what's your origin story then as a horror writer?
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[SPEAKER_02]: So, how did you go from a love of horror as a child with film and such to the becoming a horror writer yourself?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't instantly gravitate to Ryan Horror.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I fell into Ryan by accident and I was, when I did and I started to write and get published, I was writing a lot of transgressive fiction a lot of Neil Noast of because my heroes at the time were like Chip Pollanick, I created Clevven, Joe Wilchrist of a Bear, people like that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I also liked literary fiction, some of the classics and harpies to kill a mock-and-bow was a big influence.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Owen, Edgar Carrick, and Israeli writer, he did magical realism.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of my work was in that sort of vein and cross those genres.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then I know when it happened, it was 17 years ago.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I wrote my first horror story.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason that's
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[SPEAKER_00]: Seared into my brain is because that's when my daughter was born and one of the things that I do is overthink which is an awful trait to have in real life or a great, there's a great trait to have if you're a writer but so I do realize that horror allows me to say the things I don't want to talk about.
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[SPEAKER_00]: it's a vehicle to talk about my fears, it's a vehicle to talk about politics, anything that I'm scared of, I'm able to sort of channel it through horror.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So when I had my daughter, I was worrying about, I'm going to lose her, I'm going to lose her somehow.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, she's, if it's not illness, it'll be a reduction, if it's not something else, and I started to overthink.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I had some counseling years ago and they told me this technique whereby if you if you hold in something in, if you've got anger or you feel frustrated with somebody, whatever it is, write them a letter, write them a letter, and explain everything.
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[SPEAKER_00]: you call them out on it, you use bad language, do whatever you do, just purge it from your body, just write it out, never send it, just burn it straight away.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So through that, I realized that maybe if I wrote these fears down, somehow it will make me lighter, I won't think about it as much.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I remember that I had this idea a sleeping pandemic, and essentially the story is that
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[SPEAKER_00]: there's been reports where people who fall asleep never wake up.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that trend starts to happen and ripple throughout the world till it becomes a pandemic and people are dying.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I didn't reach the church and it was like you've got about 11 out, sorry, days before you die because of a lack of sleep.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I had this idea that
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, as a father, how do I keep my child alive during a sleeping pandemic?
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[SPEAKER_00]: So you've got this big story where everything's happening in the world where people are looting, pharmacists, they're taking cocaine and caffeine, you know, just to stay awake.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And you've got this father who steals this sazener aircraft.
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[SPEAKER_00]: puts his daughter in the passenger seat and essentially chases the sun around the globe so it's never nighttime so it's always daylight so she always feels like it's daylight to try and stop her from sleeping and he has other techniques as well and it's this obviously this big story but to through the lens of a father who's really kind of worried that he's going to lose his child and when I wrote that it did it kind of lifted me a little bit it kind of went okay
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[SPEAKER_00]: I feel a little bit better.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't gonna happen.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This is great.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She survived.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it's that whole thing about horror and survival, isn't it?
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[SPEAKER_00]: You've taught to buy in the past and the podcast.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's this roller coaster thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We get through it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody else dies, but we feel safe.
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[SPEAKER_00]: we feel safe because we're on the other side of the screen and that's what it is.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's an open-in release.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and it was that kind of principle that helped me become a horror writer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was right in the things down that I did want to say and that we just churn it around in my head.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's awesome.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that actually, we hear that from a lot of writers.
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[SPEAKER_02]: They use horror when they're writing as a way to play out things that they're concerned about, like an anxiety, then therefore, like when we've made it into a fiction, even if it's based on a reality of some sort, that puts it at that remove that horror does that we talk about a lot, so yeah, that's really neat.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So I want to transition
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[SPEAKER_02]: if we may into the instruction manual to being a vampire, but first I want to talk just broadly about vampire horror.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's, it never really falls out of fashion, but of course like it comes in waves, and as we were talking about before, I hit record.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think we're kind of trending upward right now, while we're seeing a lot of vampire.
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[SPEAKER_02]: horror, whether in TV, or movies, books, like we had Stephen Graham Jones on, for the Buffalo Hunter Hunter, just won the Sturkraut World, so why are we so fascinated with vampires?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, is a truth, because I was never interested in writing a vampire story.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I've done stories about zombies, I've done a haunting story, wearable stories, I've done lots but I never chose vampire stories.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I felt to me it was a genre which I don't think I could have done much in and before coming on this podcast I kind of reflected on how many vampire books I'd read and how many vampire movies I'd seen.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And to see if that would trigger something why I fell into the vampire story.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So this is indicative of me, but I've only ever read six vampire books.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, which was Salem's lot, Dracula, interview a vampire.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I am legend and Noss for A2, or whatever, of what it pronounced at the Joe Hill thing.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I've watched probably around 70 vampire movies.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and I listed them because I need, I went on my letterbox account and I went through them all and I went, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, I went through all the European vampire movies of the 70s and all that kind of stuff and the hammer stuff which I grew up on and it was weird and every single one was
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[SPEAKER_00]: pretty much the same story but just in a different setting.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was just either back in the 1817, or it was in contemporary England or America or wherever.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Not many did anything different.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So when I came up with the idea to do it, it was based on the title.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So just bear with me, I essentially had the title first.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that never happens to me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I always struggle with titles.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm always like that this is a last thing to happen.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I hate trying to find a title.
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[SPEAKER_00]: All I had was the instruction manual to being a and I thought, that's a cool title, but what though?
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[SPEAKER_00]: What can it be?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I explored it, I went, you know, zombie.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The instruction manual being a zombie.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't think it's got enough legs.
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[SPEAKER_00]: where will maybe, but again, it's just going to fall into the same tropes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then I hit upon the instruction manual to be in a serial killer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, oh, okay, that's got something.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, well, how could it work that then?
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's probably going to steal this idea now.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But essentially, I had the idea that it was going to be a support group for serial killers that come together and make sure that nobody's following their MO,
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[SPEAKER_00]: that nobody's treading on their particular tour and they're there for each other because they're quite lonely creatures when they have a coffee and they talk about it and say to you know who to do kill last week and it was going to be a dark comedy and then this new serial killer arrives and then all the serial still is serial killer start dying and it's like oh right there's a serial killer killer okay
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I explored it because the way I work is it's a bit like a movie in my head, and I'm kind of going, I've got a few scenes, okay, yeah, okay, but this isn't quite working.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But it did like the idea of this killer, the serial killer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I thought, well, how can I explore a serial killer in a different way?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, vampires are just serial killers, but they're just going around killing people.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought, okay, well, let's throw all the tropes out of the window.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Let's...
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[SPEAKER_00]: remove the garlic, the steak in the heart, the mirrors, so I'm not going out during the day, let's get rid of all that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now let's make a vampire from scratch.
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[SPEAKER_00]: How can you make a vampire from scratch?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I always kind of go back to the exercise in that you have to start with reality before you start to build towards something more supernatural, something a bit more different.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a condition called phallosemia where people need it, so I want some month.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I thought, okay, let's wrap that up on the on the scale to 11.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What if the person needs regular transfusions every day?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And they're not getting them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What would they do then?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they go out and get their own blood.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Right, you've got your vampire.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And not there doing is they're going around and they're harvesting blood.
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[SPEAKER_00]: or they're not doing it from good people, they're doing it from bad people.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So now you've got a vampire that's seated in reality.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually you're rooting for and we've got, okay, now that works.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The instruction manual to be in a vampire.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Boom, let's do it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I just sat there and blasted out.
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[SPEAKER_02]: That's amazing.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And you actually got into one of the things about the novel that I really liked, which is that you do undo all of the preconceptions that we have about vampires, like you said, like they can go out and sunlight, are unnamed protagonists in the book.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And a more like,
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[SPEAKER_02]: kind of snarky rant talks about exactly what you just did in the book and it's really well well put in the book too because like she's learning to I appreciate how you've crafted this novel where we are learning along with the protagonist about like what it means to be a vampire how the vampires exist and a real world of this novel one of the characters her mentor if you will
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[SPEAKER_02]: is this character who is supposedly a Catholic priest and wants to spoil anything, but will just work from that assumption that he's a Catholic priest.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And he's the guy, the vampire, really, who is explaining all these things to our protagonist.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I wonder to that end, you were talking about the exorcist, so of course when someone says the exorcist, I think about the old priest and the young priest and the exorcist, but then here again, we have this
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[SPEAKER_02]: I wonder if you might be willing to share with us what was your thought process behind making the vampire who is not quite patient zero, but at least as far as we're concerned in this novel, the the error of vampire for our protagonist here.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I killed a priest, yes, I suppose, subconsciously, because the death is one of my favorite movies.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think you might be able to see the post of betherin me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, maybe Karis and a kind of led into it, but I needed somebody that people could trust.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I needed somebody in the community where they could go to and offload
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[SPEAKER_00]: their problems, their sins, anything, so that the person then can establish who is good and who is bad because the instruction manual, even though it's not an actual manual, it's just word about.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's foundations are based on the fact that you can't drain from the good.
18:36.520 --> 18:43.348
[SPEAKER_00]: So you need to know who good people are and you need to sort of siphon off those that are bad.
18:43.528 --> 18:51.618
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought the only you could do through maybe a doctor, a Samaritan, but priests kind of look cool in their guitar.
18:52.158 --> 18:56.023
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I was watching Jeff Bridges in that
18:56.543 --> 18:58.443
[SPEAKER_00]: L. Royale, can I remember what it's called?
18:58.864 --> 19:04.045
[SPEAKER_00]: I was watching him in that and I thought, look at you, I've produced, he looks cool as a priest and he's not a priest though.
19:04.485 --> 19:05.025
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the thing.
19:05.045 --> 19:07.245
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not a priest, but he's playing it well.
19:07.705 --> 19:10.046
[SPEAKER_00]: So that just kind of ticked in my head.
19:10.066 --> 19:12.106
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, okay, what if he is a priest?
19:12.226 --> 19:15.387
[SPEAKER_00]: And what if he's then he's setting bars of whatever it is?
19:15.447 --> 19:22.629
[SPEAKER_00]: And people are just coming up to him saying, there I've got this problem, I've done this, and he's going right, okay, that's not a bad thing.
19:23.049 --> 19:24.349
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll let that one slide.
19:24.969 --> 19:28.872
[SPEAKER_00]: but then somebody comes in and says, yeah, rape somebody or whatever, right, you're done for.
19:29.133 --> 19:31.314
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's why I built him as a priest.
19:31.635 --> 19:36.239
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not trying to Jesus smuggle anything into the narrative.
19:36.599 --> 19:39.381
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it wasn't about any of my religious beliefs.
19:39.802 --> 19:49.390
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just somebody in society that people would look at and trust to a point, you know, and then offer their darkest secrets.
19:49.570 --> 20:05.286
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because that's the way in the interactions we we see through the protagonist size anyway that's the most of the other characters in the novel interact with her wake they seem to have that latent sense of trust that you're talking about.
20:05.566 --> 20:09.128
[SPEAKER_02]: not dissimilar from the way in which were the protagonist is used, right?
20:09.328 --> 20:21.874
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, well, I mean, I'm not going to offer spoilers about the exact scenes, but she, as a young woman in her weeks, says this a few times, would more often be prey than hunter or, like, would be the victim rather than the person committing the crime.
20:21.934 --> 20:29.438
[SPEAKER_02]: And so this kind of makes her the perfect sidekick for him in lowering in some of these bad guys, right?
20:29.458 --> 20:30.498
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you're absolutely right.
20:30.518 --> 20:31.239
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, as I'm reading
20:32.279 --> 20:34.480
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm rooting for her wig Roth.
20:34.520 --> 20:52.604
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, let us, let's go and just read justice upon some of these terrible people, because you bring in really quite well, some very palpable villains, like people who, if you've lived in a city, that's just a couple that you like, I recognize these people absolutely.
20:53.084 --> 21:00.786
[SPEAKER_02]: People as just someone living in 2026, the people who are destroying the world around us, they get represented with one of these guys that ends up getting,
21:02.566 --> 21:21.708
[SPEAKER_02]: rain right yeah let's say there's yeah there's well anyway I won't spoil it because that's that's a scene that's really horrific the rolling pin scene he's on yeah exactly the rolling pin yes I was going to make some weird joke about pastry but I'll just stop and then there's like there's I mean I don't know if it's intentionally a nod to eyes wide shut
21:21.808 --> 21:24.969
[SPEAKER_02]: But towards the end there, I was like, oh, this feels very much like as wide shut.
21:25.169 --> 21:40.394
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, this is that, this is the upstream class that suddenly is perhaps getting its come up and it's because, I mean, I guess in the UK, there's been slightly more consequences there for folks involved with this, this upstream list than we've seen here in the United States.
21:40.534 --> 21:47.317
[SPEAKER_02]: But I mean, I guess when you're president is probably the number one figure on the list, it's not gonna happen at least these years.
21:47.837 --> 21:48.037
[SPEAKER_02]: But,
21:48.457 --> 22:05.525
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I mean, if there's a sequel, maybe I'm just kidding, we can have that have our protagonist come across to the United States and and and recap some justice here too, a lot of that stuff, the lot of the newspaper articles with Epstein with Trump with Harvey Weinstein.
22:06.205 --> 22:12.292
[SPEAKER_00]: the me to movement, it hit hard because I have a daughter and they are predators.
22:13.072 --> 22:16.276
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just want to call them all.
22:16.596 --> 22:22.483
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to ensnare them, hang them, do whatever I need to do because they shouldn't be in the world.
22:22.963 --> 22:25.446
[SPEAKER_00]: they are just a praying on innocent people.
22:25.926 --> 22:35.758
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, it's that thing if I go back to my original point is that you have these thoughts, how can you exercise them in a way which isn't gonna get you in prison?
22:36.218 --> 22:37.920
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, well I'll write about it then.
22:38.441 --> 22:43.244
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what I would like to happen, but I know it's never going to happen, because the law always went out.
22:43.624 --> 22:52.909
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen, just this will never really be served properly to these people, because they'll leave a pass away, and then it'll be posturimously, oh yes, you know, there were a bad person.
22:53.109 --> 22:54.490
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we knew that back in the day.
22:54.730 --> 22:56.331
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like Jimmy Savel over here.
22:56.771 --> 22:58.472
[SPEAKER_00]: Jimmy Savel was as kids entertainer.
22:58.793 --> 23:03.575
[SPEAKER_00]: It came out that he was raping children, whatever he was doing with these children behind the scenes.
23:03.635 --> 23:06.197
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, we all kind of knew he was weird.
23:06.797 --> 23:14.844
[SPEAKER_00]: we all kind of knew in documentaries we saw that he wasn't quite right, but it never got what he deserved in life because he passed away.
23:15.304 --> 23:18.247
[SPEAKER_00]: So you kind of just play on these things and you write about them.
23:18.667 --> 23:25.773
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's kind of the scramble, but I think your reference in the eyes why the scramble was an actual thing that happened in the 1800s.
23:27.194 --> 23:43.722
[SPEAKER_00]: But it wasn't, you know, for the reasons that I outlined, but it was definitely women we involved, women were put into a room and then we'd just rush into the room and grab a woman and then take them as a slave, a servant or whatever, they would just grab them.
23:44.222 --> 23:45.143
[SPEAKER_00]: And then that was it.
23:45.163 --> 23:50.545
[SPEAKER_00]: There were, there were bought into a life of servitude and then obviously raped or whatever it was.
23:51.005 --> 23:54.167
[SPEAKER_00]: So it hits hard for me as it most,
23:54.787 --> 23:55.868
[SPEAKER_00]: probably does for most people.
23:56.308 --> 24:01.991
[SPEAKER_00]: I just needed to sort of go, okay, I'm going to try and address it in some way, and this is the way I'm going to do it.
24:02.131 --> 24:03.992
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it resonates a little bit.
24:04.392 --> 24:18.079
[SPEAKER_00]: The feedback I'm getting, especially from women is that it's got a strong feminist viewpoint, just lifts my heels because that was the intention, but it was just a sort of say, look, this isn't right.
24:18.559 --> 24:19.920
[SPEAKER_00]: We need, we shouldn't be doing this.
24:20.620 --> 24:22.821
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I would, I would 110% agree.
24:23.101 --> 24:25.062
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it does that achieve that really well.
24:25.562 --> 24:38.367
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a really excellent twist at the end that I will not spoil, but listeners like make sure that you find a copy of the instruction manual being a vampire because the twist at the end is delicious, like it's just in case.
24:38.727 --> 24:40.868
[SPEAKER_02]: You send us on a bit of a red herring at one point.
24:41.128 --> 24:57.424
[SPEAKER_02]: like and and we're we're following this and that was really well done too, but you kind of like you're getting the sense that something here is not quite right and then there's that twist that's glorious so listeners make sure that you find a copy of the instruction manual to being a vampire.
24:58.125 --> 25:00.306
[SPEAKER_02]: you can order it from true-born presses website.
25:00.726 --> 25:10.088
[SPEAKER_02]: You can go to your local library request that they buy it, so then, therefore, others may too read it, where a big fan of that here on horror joy, bookshop.org has it available as well.
25:10.588 --> 25:16.650
[SPEAKER_02]: If you must, I guess you can order on Amazon, but please don't support other people and bookshops.
25:17.150 --> 25:20.631
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to start wrapping up here, Craig, but I'm going to ask, what's next?
25:20.751 --> 25:21.431
[SPEAKER_02]: What is next for you?
25:21.451 --> 25:24.772
[SPEAKER_02]: What any planned books or forthcoming volumes we can look forward to?
25:25.240 --> 25:28.841
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I have about four novels I think already run.
25:29.341 --> 25:31.041
[SPEAKER_00]: I just need to try and find a home for them.
25:31.461 --> 25:37.463
[SPEAKER_00]: So the one that I'm probably going to pitch next is there's something in the fucking basement.
25:37.643 --> 25:41.144
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know whether to keep these exploitative in or take it out.
25:41.424 --> 25:42.344
[SPEAKER_00]: But I kind of like it in.
25:42.624 --> 25:44.945
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's my first possession book.
25:45.245 --> 25:47.065
[SPEAKER_00]: So I've never done a book about possession.
25:47.645 --> 25:50.486
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is a surreal absurdist.
25:51.206 --> 25:57.110
[SPEAKER_00]: very funny story about a woman who gives birth to a seven-foot demon.
25:57.570 --> 26:00.712
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and it's got a vampire in it as well.
26:01.152 --> 26:11.479
[SPEAKER_00]: It's got all these crazy characters in it, and it kind of blvetails perfectly into the instruction manual to be in a vampire because it's got this very sort of similar in style.
26:11.939 --> 26:15.602
[SPEAKER_00]: So people like that, I'm sure they'll like this, but I need to find a home for it again.
26:16.122 --> 26:17.383
[SPEAKER_00]: So hopefully that'll come out soon.
26:17.783 --> 26:23.408
[SPEAKER_00]: Other than that, yeah, just I've got it obviously other some other books that I just need to polish and try and get out there.
26:23.608 --> 26:24.248
[SPEAKER_02]: That's fantastic.
26:24.388 --> 26:25.129
[SPEAKER_02]: I look forward to that.
26:25.189 --> 26:33.256
[SPEAKER_02]: I hope you keep the fucking that's let's say it kind of gives me a little bit of RL Stein vibes for the stay out of the basement from growing up as a scholastic book fair kid.
26:33.656 --> 26:36.218
[SPEAKER_02]: That was I think about that a lot as someone as a as a
26:36.338 --> 26:38.639
[SPEAKER_02]: homeowner, fortunately, unfortunately.
26:38.719 --> 26:40.819
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know what we do with home ownership in this day and age.
26:41.379 --> 26:42.940
[SPEAKER_02]: I try not to go down into my basement.
26:43.160 --> 26:47.101
[SPEAKER_02]: I generally have nothing good happens when you go into the basement or the attic of a house.
26:47.201 --> 26:48.361
[SPEAKER_02]: Usually you find something wrong.
26:48.961 --> 26:51.602
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm here for staying out of the fucking basement.
26:52.322 --> 26:54.802
[SPEAKER_02]: I look forward to that and I'll quote you on the other book.
26:55.043 --> 26:56.123
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm blurb it.
26:56.263 --> 26:56.783
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
26:56.983 --> 27:03.431
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, so I am going to close with our traditional question, which is, then, is there anything in horror?
27:03.531 --> 27:13.483
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you talked about being a giant horror movie geek, but maybe in addition to horror movies, any books, TV series games that have brought you joy recently?
27:14.004 --> 27:14.544
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean,
27:15.125 --> 27:16.785
[SPEAKER_00]: I am a huge movie fan.
27:16.846 --> 27:25.548
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm loving at the moment what's happening with obsession, came Parsons, Creep, Curry, Barker with back rooms as well.
27:25.868 --> 27:32.750
[SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of rejoined this resurrection, even though it's always been there, but more a resurrection in this sort of main stream.
27:33.250 --> 27:34.832
[SPEAKER_00]: so with sinners, things like that.
27:34.872 --> 27:36.174
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're actually getting horror.
27:36.415 --> 27:39.820
[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually becoming a genre which is respected.
27:40.220 --> 27:48.833
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though it has been from the community from day one, I find that people outside of the community look down upon it, but now it's not.
27:49.213 --> 27:52.918
[SPEAKER_00]: It's become mainstream, which is brilliant, and obviously we've seen that at Academy Awards.
27:53.258 --> 28:02.590
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm also looking forward to how women are changing horror, so people like Khafaja with substance and Jewish mispronounced a name.
28:02.630 --> 28:05.974
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's Julia Zhukanu who did Raw.
28:06.935 --> 28:09.957
[SPEAKER_00]: And to tamed, you know, these are interesting people as well.
28:10.097 --> 28:13.459
[SPEAKER_00]: In fiction, we've got some great women horror writers.
28:13.839 --> 28:18.341
[SPEAKER_00]: Tough on my list is always like Laurel Hytower Sarah Reed, Beverly Lee.
28:18.801 --> 28:21.703
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a new writer of just, I don't think she's new.
28:21.863 --> 28:27.446
[SPEAKER_00]: I think she's been around, but I'm just sort of finding it which is, I hope again I don't put you a surname.
28:27.606 --> 28:29.107
[SPEAKER_00]: AC Nesson Hauer.
28:29.687 --> 28:31.868
[SPEAKER_00]: So she's just done something with symmetry press.
28:32.188 --> 28:35.350
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's really it's a great time on a more personal level.
28:35.370 --> 28:42.374
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm getting joy from the fact that I have a son who is 12 and he's really into horror.
28:43.054 --> 28:54.360
[SPEAKER_00]: So at the age of seven, he watched yours and loved it and we've been building up and building up and we're having these movie nights where we go through horror and I'm just a
28:55.060 --> 28:56.021
[SPEAKER_00]: go full circle.
28:56.542 --> 29:04.371
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing the thing that my father did to me, which is to sit there and talk in through scenes and show him these great movies.
29:04.851 --> 29:13.582
[SPEAKER_00]: So we've been through all the screen franchise, we're doing the Elm Streets, we've used on fear streets, he's done all those kind of things and we're just walking him through it.
29:14.082 --> 29:25.205
[SPEAKER_00]: so he doesn't freak out and I'm telling him all these little bits, you know, like in Poltergeist, that's Stephen Spielberg's hands pulling away the face of that guy, you know, it's all prosthetic and he's like, oh, cool.
29:25.666 --> 29:32.247
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm getting joy watching him all through those movies for the first time and it's kind of nice.
29:32.388 --> 29:35.028
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like that circles just come back round again.
29:35.629 --> 29:37.289
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's where I'm getting joy from the moment.
29:37.535 --> 29:38.315
[SPEAKER_02]: that's amazing.
29:38.335 --> 29:39.596
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that story.
29:39.796 --> 29:47.361
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's great, especially getting to be your father in that way where like stopping for those scenes and stuff, it's interesting.
29:47.441 --> 29:50.402
[SPEAKER_02]: It makes me think about a lot of the ways that my dad introduced me to horror too.
29:50.422 --> 29:51.923
[SPEAKER_02]: So thanks for sharing those stories.
29:52.023 --> 29:54.385
[SPEAKER_02]: That's really cool and powerful in that way.
29:54.645 --> 29:54.765
[SPEAKER_02]: And
29:55.285 --> 29:59.749
[SPEAKER_02]: Just Craig, I want to thank you again for taking the time today to join me here on Horror Joy.
29:59.769 --> 30:02.591
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of joy was had in this episode listeners.
30:03.031 --> 30:07.915
[SPEAKER_02]: I do hope that you go out and you find a copy of the instruction manuals of being a vampire.
30:08.256 --> 30:08.976
[SPEAKER_02]: You won't regret it.
30:09.256 --> 30:10.157
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a great read.
30:10.577 --> 30:11.358
[SPEAKER_02]: It's well-paced.
30:11.878 --> 30:12.419
[SPEAKER_02]: It's witty.
30:12.859 --> 30:13.420
[SPEAKER_02]: It's fun.
30:13.940 --> 30:19.685
[SPEAKER_02]: So go out and read that and remember to seek joy, even in horror.
30:20.265 --> 30:24.206
[SPEAKER_01]: This has been an episode of Horror Joy, produced in conjunction with Axis Mundi Media.
30:24.427 --> 30:25.827
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for joining us, we want to hear from you.
30:26.047 --> 30:30.689
[SPEAKER_01]: You can find us at Horror JoyPod on Instagram or at horrorjoypod on YouTube.
30:31.129 --> 30:37.531
[SPEAKER_01]: You can also email us at horrorjoypod at gmail.com all one word and you can of course find us wherever you get your podcasts.
30:38.312 --> 30:40.332
[SPEAKER_01]: Give us a like, subscribe, leave a review.
30:41.233 --> 30:44.434
[SPEAKER_01]: Until next time, remember, see you guys next time, see you guys next time.
00:14.232 --> 00:14.793
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, Ins.
00:15.193 --> 00:19.237
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back to another episode of Horror Joy Meet Your Maker.
00:19.417 --> 00:21.719
[SPEAKER_02]: You are only with me today.
00:21.859 --> 00:28.245
[SPEAKER_02]: Jeff Bryan is out on assignment, rescuing Nicole Kidman from the auditorium in which he has been trapped for all of these years.
00:28.605 --> 00:32.729
[SPEAKER_02]: Today, I'm thrilled to be joined by author Craig Wallwork.
00:33.189 --> 00:48.223
[SPEAKER_02]: Craig is British author of the Tom Nolan horror thriller series as well as human tenderloin, the skin we feel most comfortable in, and what we'll talk about a little bit today, spoiler free, the instruction manual to being a vampire, just published in 2026 through Trueborn Press.
00:48.863 --> 00:52.985
[SPEAKER_02]: also noted he's a horror and movie geek so we'll be getting into that I hope to.
00:53.065 --> 00:55.065
[SPEAKER_02]: So Craig, welcome to the podcast.
00:55.345 --> 00:56.286
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for joining us.
00:56.506 --> 01:06.549
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm gonna begin with the customary horror joy question which is this link between horror and joy as an author of horror as a consumer of horror.
01:06.689 --> 01:08.050
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you see this relationship is?
01:08.390 --> 01:12.995
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm the kind of child of the 70s and 80s, horror came on my radar quite early on.
01:13.515 --> 01:20.122
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was about the sort of 82, 83 when it sort of more aware of it.
01:20.142 --> 01:24.147
[SPEAKER_00]: That was because the video nasty period has started in in-brand.
01:24.327 --> 01:27.150
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you aware of that particular movement?
01:27.590 --> 01:28.390
[SPEAKER_00]: No, not at all.
01:28.630 --> 01:47.298
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so to break it down really quickly, what essentially happened was the BBFC, which is the British board of film censorship, I think they've changed that now to something else certification but essentially what happened was they would watch every film that was put on cinema.
01:47.858 --> 01:52.060
[SPEAKER_00]: and they would grade it and say this is an 18, this is a 15, whatever it is.
01:52.280 --> 01:57.683
[SPEAKER_00]: But then VHS was taken off and they hadn't any sort of policies and procedure around VHS.
01:58.163 --> 02:07.308
[SPEAKER_00]: So what was happening was all these distributors were kind of farming out all their work and films straight to the video shops without any certificate.
02:07.708 --> 02:15.893
[SPEAKER_00]: So every house kind of had all these big titles like I spit on your grave, evil, dead, all this kind of stuff that was happening and it wasn't governed.
02:16.453 --> 02:18.174
[SPEAKER_00]: The tabloids got on top of it.
02:18.494 --> 02:21.636
[SPEAKER_00]: People like Ali Mail in Britain, which is a big tabloid.
02:21.976 --> 02:27.279
[SPEAKER_00]: They were saying these movies, VHS, is raping the minds of the children of Britain.
02:27.759 --> 02:31.361
[SPEAKER_00]: And they would compare it like to the third Reich and stuff like that.
02:31.381 --> 02:33.022
[SPEAKER_00]: And we've got to get on top of it.
02:33.442 --> 02:37.644
[SPEAKER_00]: So essentially what he did was through the Obsene Publications Act,
02:42.647 --> 02:44.828
[SPEAKER_00]: were like video nasty.
02:45.128 --> 02:51.350
[SPEAKER_00]: And the way they kind of measured that was, if any title had cannibal in it, it was gone.
02:51.670 --> 02:54.691
[SPEAKER_00]: So cannibal holocaust, anything like that, it was done with.
02:55.091 --> 02:56.511
[SPEAKER_00]: I spit on your grave evil dead.
02:56.611 --> 02:59.592
[SPEAKER_00]: If the covers were bloody in any way, then they were gone.
02:59.972 --> 03:01.833
[SPEAKER_00]: And they were taken, they were seized.
03:02.493 --> 03:15.000
[SPEAKER_00]: the retailers got a fine things like that, and there were 72 titles in the list, but it got so bad that even titles that weren't horror were getting confiscated.
03:15.460 --> 03:20.943
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there was something that happened with the police in SLOW, which is Southern England.
03:21.423 --> 03:46.201
[SPEAKER_00]: where they went to a video shop and confiscated a little horousing text of the dolly part and movie and Sam follows the big red one because they thought they were porn hotels so he got to that sort of level it was crazy so anyway they all went but my father frequented lots of pups there was lots of pirate copies going around so what he would do is
03:46.982 --> 04:00.091
[SPEAKER_00]: he would bring these titles back into our house and my mom didn't really like horror so he would watch them at now he would watch them out for obviously people who are not familiar with VCRs.
04:00.412 --> 04:07.557
[SPEAKER_00]: The VCRs would have like a counter which was just a series of like three dials and that was sort of measure the revolution of the spool.
04:08.197 --> 04:11.061
[SPEAKER_00]: So, when the spool went round, I was like, count to one, too.
04:11.161 --> 04:14.785
[SPEAKER_00]: What he would allow you to do is mark a point in a film.
04:15.246 --> 04:26.199
[SPEAKER_00]: So, he would find all these gory scenes in movies, and then he would wake me up in the morning, drag me into the living room, cue them up, and say, right, we're gonna watch.
04:26.960 --> 04:30.082
[SPEAKER_00]: zombie fleshiers with the spike going in the eye.
04:30.482 --> 04:32.524
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like 10, something like that.
04:32.924 --> 04:39.829
[SPEAKER_00]: And he would sit me down, no, to desensitize me to the gratuitous scene, the bloody scene, the gory scene.
04:40.189 --> 04:41.370
[SPEAKER_00]: He would walk me through it.
04:41.850 --> 04:46.752
[SPEAKER_00]: You would say what we're going to do is we're going to see the spike going to an eye, but the eye is like a prosthetic.
04:46.812 --> 04:51.874
[SPEAKER_00]: It's made out of this and there's blood coming out and stuff like, you know, as I'll fake blood.
04:51.894 --> 04:54.495
[SPEAKER_00]: So when you watch it, see it from that point of view.
04:54.515 --> 04:58.257
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a bit like sitting next to a magician and the magician's telling you the trick.
04:58.637 --> 05:05.520
[SPEAKER_00]: As you go through it, so you're not looking at it as an audience member looking at this scene where woman gets a spike in a eye or
05:11.762 --> 05:14.504
[SPEAKER_00]: He's head decapitated with a pain of glass in the oven.
05:14.885 --> 05:16.026
[SPEAKER_00]: You're looking at a mannequin.
05:16.406 --> 05:23.532
[SPEAKER_00]: He's telling me that Tom Savino's under the bed, and that's like a false body on Kevin Bacon's thing that he's going through, isn't it?
05:23.992 --> 05:25.714
[SPEAKER_00]: So it totally broke it down for me.
05:26.134 --> 05:28.436
[SPEAKER_00]: But the joy I got from that was seeing him.
05:28.957 --> 05:34.942
[SPEAKER_00]: He would get so enthusiastic, he would get so passionate about it, he would say, and I'd just see him light up.
05:35.562 --> 05:41.687
[SPEAKER_00]: And like we're most, you know, kids and the fathers, it's, it's certainly sons, it's, it's a difficult relationship.
05:42.268 --> 05:44.990
[SPEAKER_00]: We weren't always talking about things we loved.
05:45.471 --> 05:46.692
[SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't always around.
05:46.992 --> 05:48.994
[SPEAKER_00]: He would be out drinking a lot.
05:49.014 --> 05:51.056
[SPEAKER_00]: He would be out with his friends a lot.
05:51.336 --> 05:55.179
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a part-time dad, but in those moments, we were united.
05:55.219 --> 05:58.442
[SPEAKER_00]: We were tethered by cellulite to these moments.
05:59.023 --> 05:59.083
[SPEAKER_00]: And
06:01.865 --> 06:04.989
[SPEAKER_00]: I was Moses, you know, that joy bled into me.
06:05.089 --> 06:09.193
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's, I think, the genesis of my look for horror.
06:09.514 --> 06:10.595
[SPEAKER_02]: That's an amazing answer.
06:10.735 --> 06:14.099
[SPEAKER_02]: I love the idea of being linked through study Lloyd.
06:14.139 --> 06:17.102
[SPEAKER_02]: And there is something really a femoral about
06:17.703 --> 06:19.304
[SPEAKER_02]: like the physical film.
06:19.664 --> 06:23.406
[SPEAKER_02]: I worked for years at a movie theater back when we still had film.
06:24.126 --> 06:31.370
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like the last licensed projectionist to work at that theater because they moved the digital soon thereafter.
06:31.890 --> 06:35.191
[SPEAKER_02]: And when you have to splice film together, there was like that tactile thing about it.
06:35.211 --> 06:41.414
[SPEAKER_02]: So when you're talking about the dials and marking the spot, some thinking about the cigarette burn marks and the tops.
06:41.614 --> 06:42.395
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
06:43.095 --> 06:54.202
[SPEAKER_02]: So, like that, that's a really awesome story and I'm going to just then transition into my follow-up question with this is always what's your origin story then as a horror writer?
06:54.242 --> 06:59.465
[SPEAKER_02]: So, how did you go from a love of horror as a child with film and such to the becoming a horror writer yourself?
06:59.966 --> 07:02.988
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't instantly gravitate to Ryan Horror.
07:03.548 --> 07:20.031
[SPEAKER_00]: I fell into Ryan by accident and I was, when I did and I started to write and get published, I was writing a lot of transgressive fiction a lot of Neil Noast of because my heroes at the time were like Chip Pollanick, I created Clevven, Joe Wilchrist of a Bear, people like that.
07:20.632 --> 07:27.213
[SPEAKER_00]: I also liked literary fiction, some of the classics and harpies to kill a mock-and-bow was a big influence.
07:27.493 --> 07:31.676
[SPEAKER_00]: Owen, Edgar Carrick, and Israeli writer, he did magical realism.
07:31.876 --> 07:37.280
[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of my work was in that sort of vein and cross those genres.
07:37.740 --> 07:42.763
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I know when it happened, it was 17 years ago.
07:43.264 --> 07:44.925
[SPEAKER_00]: I wrote my first horror story.
07:45.485 --> 07:47.467
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason that's
07:48.167 --> 08:07.500
[SPEAKER_00]: Seared into my brain is because that's when my daughter was born and one of the things that I do is overthink which is an awful trait to have in real life or a great, there's a great trait to have if you're a writer but so I do realize that horror allows me to say the things I don't want to talk about.
08:08.020 --> 08:17.428
[SPEAKER_00]: it's a vehicle to talk about my fears, it's a vehicle to talk about politics, anything that I'm scared of, I'm able to sort of channel it through horror.
08:17.868 --> 08:23.433
[SPEAKER_00]: So when I had my daughter, I was worrying about, I'm going to lose her, I'm going to lose her somehow.
08:23.593 --> 08:28.497
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, she's, if it's not illness, it'll be a reduction, if it's not something else, and I started to overthink.
08:29.157 --> 08:45.145
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had some counseling years ago and they told me this technique whereby if you if you hold in something in, if you've got anger or you feel frustrated with somebody, whatever it is, write them a letter, write them a letter, and explain everything.
08:46.125 --> 08:55.071
[SPEAKER_00]: you call them out on it, you use bad language, do whatever you do, just purge it from your body, just write it out, never send it, just burn it straight away.
08:55.491 --> 09:05.338
[SPEAKER_00]: So through that, I realized that maybe if I wrote these fears down, somehow it will make me lighter, I won't think about it as much.
09:05.878 --> 09:12.303
[SPEAKER_00]: So I remember that I had this idea a sleeping pandemic, and essentially the story is that
09:12.963 --> 09:17.144
[SPEAKER_00]: there's been reports where people who fall asleep never wake up.
09:17.485 --> 09:23.307
[SPEAKER_00]: And that trend starts to happen and ripple throughout the world till it becomes a pandemic and people are dying.
09:23.367 --> 09:31.069
[SPEAKER_00]: So I didn't reach the church and it was like you've got about 11 out, sorry, days before you die because of a lack of sleep.
09:31.509 --> 09:32.870
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had this idea that
09:33.530 --> 09:39.471
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, as a father, how do I keep my child alive during a sleeping pandemic?
09:39.952 --> 09:52.255
[SPEAKER_00]: So you've got this big story where everything's happening in the world where people are looting, pharmacists, they're taking cocaine and caffeine, you know, just to stay awake.
09:52.755 --> 09:57.756
[SPEAKER_00]: And you've got this father who steals this sazener aircraft.
09:58.296 --> 10:26.828
[SPEAKER_00]: puts his daughter in the passenger seat and essentially chases the sun around the globe so it's never nighttime so it's always daylight so she always feels like it's daylight to try and stop her from sleeping and he has other techniques as well and it's this obviously this big story but to through the lens of a father who's really kind of worried that he's going to lose his child and when I wrote that it did it kind of lifted me a little bit it kind of went okay
10:27.428 --> 10:28.529
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel a little bit better.
10:28.649 --> 10:29.731
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't gonna happen.
10:30.171 --> 10:30.952
[SPEAKER_00]: This is great.
10:30.992 --> 10:31.773
[SPEAKER_00]: She survived.
10:32.093 --> 10:34.376
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's that whole thing about horror and survival, isn't it?
10:34.716 --> 10:37.499
[SPEAKER_00]: You've taught to buy in the past and the podcast.
10:37.539 --> 10:38.800
[SPEAKER_00]: It's this roller coaster thing.
10:38.880 --> 10:39.661
[SPEAKER_00]: We get through it.
10:39.961 --> 10:41.803
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody else dies, but we feel safe.
10:42.444 --> 10:45.866
[SPEAKER_00]: we feel safe because we're on the other side of the screen and that's what it is.
10:45.906 --> 10:47.868
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an open-in release.
10:48.408 --> 10:53.751
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and it was that kind of principle that helped me become a horror writer.
10:54.031 --> 10:59.475
[SPEAKER_00]: It was right in the things down that I did want to say and that we just churn it around in my head.
10:59.847 --> 11:01.268
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's awesome.
11:01.308 --> 11:04.870
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that actually, we hear that from a lot of writers.
11:04.990 --> 11:21.478
[SPEAKER_02]: They use horror when they're writing as a way to play out things that they're concerned about, like an anxiety, then therefore, like when we've made it into a fiction, even if it's based on a reality of some sort, that puts it at that remove that horror does that we talk about a lot, so yeah, that's really neat.
11:21.599 --> 11:23.820
[SPEAKER_02]: So I want to transition
11:24.460 --> 11:32.749
[SPEAKER_02]: if we may into the instruction manual to being a vampire, but first I want to talk just broadly about vampire horror.
11:32.990 --> 11:39.497
[SPEAKER_02]: It's, it never really falls out of fashion, but of course like it comes in waves, and as we were talking about before, I hit record.
11:39.857 --> 11:44.322
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we're kind of trending upward right now, while we're seeing a lot of vampire.
11:44.983 --> 11:57.334
[SPEAKER_02]: horror, whether in TV, or movies, books, like we had Stephen Graham Jones on, for the Buffalo Hunter Hunter, just won the Sturkraut World, so why are we so fascinated with vampires?
11:57.835 --> 12:03.300
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, is a truth, because I was never interested in writing a vampire story.
12:04.000 --> 12:13.546
[SPEAKER_00]: I've done stories about zombies, I've done a haunting story, wearable stories, I've done lots but I never chose vampire stories.
12:13.746 --> 12:28.735
[SPEAKER_00]: I felt to me it was a genre which I don't think I could have done much in and before coming on this podcast I kind of reflected on how many vampire books I'd read and how many vampire movies I'd seen.
12:29.215 --> 12:34.580
[SPEAKER_00]: And to see if that would trigger something why I fell into the vampire story.
12:35.040 --> 12:41.586
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is indicative of me, but I've only ever read six vampire books.
12:42.086 --> 12:46.290
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, which was Salem's lot, Dracula, interview a vampire.
12:46.750 --> 12:51.174
[SPEAKER_00]: I am legend and Noss for A2, or whatever, of what it pronounced at the Joe Hill thing.
12:51.594 --> 12:51.875
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
12:52.515 --> 12:56.998
[SPEAKER_00]: I've watched probably around 70 vampire movies.
12:57.498 --> 13:13.409
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and I listed them because I need, I went on my letterbox account and I went through them all and I went, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, I went through all the European vampire movies of the 70s and all that kind of stuff and the hammer stuff which I grew up on and it was weird and every single one was
13:13.989 --> 13:17.931
[SPEAKER_00]: pretty much the same story but just in a different setting.
13:18.331 --> 13:24.715
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just either back in the 1817, or it was in contemporary England or America or wherever.
13:25.155 --> 13:26.936
[SPEAKER_00]: Not many did anything different.
13:27.356 --> 13:34.020
[SPEAKER_00]: So when I came up with the idea to do it, it was based on the title.
13:34.500 --> 13:38.242
[SPEAKER_00]: So just bear with me, I essentially had the title first.
13:38.782 --> 13:40.623
[SPEAKER_00]: And that never happens to me.
13:40.863 --> 13:42.203
[SPEAKER_00]: I always struggle with titles.
13:42.223 --> 13:44.524
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm always like that this is a last thing to happen.
13:45.124 --> 13:46.625
[SPEAKER_00]: And I hate trying to find a title.
13:46.985 --> 13:52.927
[SPEAKER_00]: All I had was the instruction manual to being a and I thought, that's a cool title, but what though?
13:54.128 --> 13:54.768
[SPEAKER_00]: What can it be?
13:55.068 --> 13:56.949
[SPEAKER_00]: And I explored it, I went, you know, zombie.
13:57.109 --> 13:58.449
[SPEAKER_00]: The instruction manual being a zombie.
13:58.949 --> 14:00.450
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't think it's got enough legs.
14:01.190 --> 14:04.713
[SPEAKER_00]: where will maybe, but again, it's just going to fall into the same tropes.
14:05.213 --> 14:09.096
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I hit upon the instruction manual to be in a serial killer.
14:09.436 --> 14:11.718
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, oh, okay, that's got something.
14:11.978 --> 14:13.479
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, well, how could it work that then?
14:13.959 --> 14:15.500
[SPEAKER_00]: It's probably going to steal this idea now.
14:15.580 --> 14:27.349
[SPEAKER_00]: But essentially, I had the idea that it was going to be a support group for serial killers that come together and make sure that nobody's following their MO,
14:27.989 --> 14:49.523
[SPEAKER_00]: that nobody's treading on their particular tour and they're there for each other because they're quite lonely creatures when they have a coffee and they talk about it and say to you know who to do kill last week and it was going to be a dark comedy and then this new serial killer arrives and then all the serial still is serial killer start dying and it's like oh right there's a serial killer killer okay
14:50.003 --> 14:57.125
[SPEAKER_00]: And I explored it because the way I work is it's a bit like a movie in my head, and I'm kind of going, I've got a few scenes, okay, yeah, okay, but this isn't quite working.
14:57.505 --> 15:01.906
[SPEAKER_00]: But it did like the idea of this killer, the serial killer.
15:02.326 --> 15:06.147
[SPEAKER_00]: So I thought, well, how can I explore a serial killer in a different way?
15:06.227 --> 15:11.369
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, vampires are just serial killers, but they're just going around killing people.
15:11.909 --> 15:15.790
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought, okay, well, let's throw all the tropes out of the window.
15:16.290 --> 15:16.630
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's...
15:17.330 --> 15:24.915
[SPEAKER_00]: remove the garlic, the steak in the heart, the mirrors, so I'm not going out during the day, let's get rid of all that.
15:25.315 --> 15:27.696
[SPEAKER_00]: Now let's make a vampire from scratch.
15:28.117 --> 15:30.298
[SPEAKER_00]: How can you make a vampire from scratch?
15:30.558 --> 15:42.686
[SPEAKER_00]: And I always kind of go back to the exercise in that you have to start with reality before you start to build towards something more supernatural, something a bit more different.
15:46.768 --> 15:50.951
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a condition called phallosemia where people need it, so I want some month.
15:51.492 --> 15:55.234
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought, okay, let's wrap that up on the on the scale to 11.
15:55.515 --> 15:58.257
[SPEAKER_00]: What if the person needs regular transfusions every day?
15:58.597 --> 15:59.538
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're not getting them.
15:59.978 --> 16:00.859
[SPEAKER_00]: What would they do then?
16:01.219 --> 16:02.540
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they go out and get their own blood.
16:03.000 --> 16:04.301
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, you've got your vampire.
16:04.541 --> 16:08.925
[SPEAKER_00]: And not there doing is they're going around and they're harvesting blood.
16:09.405 --> 16:12.808
[SPEAKER_00]: or they're not doing it from good people, they're doing it from bad people.
16:13.068 --> 16:16.691
[SPEAKER_00]: So now you've got a vampire that's seated in reality.
16:17.091 --> 16:20.614
[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually you're rooting for and we've got, okay, now that works.
16:20.974 --> 16:22.996
[SPEAKER_00]: The instruction manual to be in a vampire.
16:23.236 --> 16:24.477
[SPEAKER_00]: Boom, let's do it.
16:24.917 --> 16:26.659
[SPEAKER_00]: I just sat there and blasted out.
16:27.079 --> 16:27.619
[SPEAKER_02]: That's amazing.
16:27.659 --> 16:40.447
[SPEAKER_02]: And you actually got into one of the things about the novel that I really liked, which is that you do undo all of the preconceptions that we have about vampires, like you said, like they can go out and sunlight, are unnamed protagonists in the book.
16:40.527 --> 16:41.508
[SPEAKER_02]: And a more like,
16:42.088 --> 17:07.043
[SPEAKER_02]: kind of snarky rant talks about exactly what you just did in the book and it's really well well put in the book too because like she's learning to I appreciate how you've crafted this novel where we are learning along with the protagonist about like what it means to be a vampire how the vampires exist and a real world of this novel one of the characters her mentor if you will
17:10.385 --> 17:18.347
[SPEAKER_02]: is this character who is supposedly a Catholic priest and wants to spoil anything, but will just work from that assumption that he's a Catholic priest.
17:18.948 --> 17:24.969
[SPEAKER_02]: And he's the guy, the vampire, really, who is explaining all these things to our protagonist.
17:25.309 --> 17:35.692
[SPEAKER_02]: And I wonder to that end, you were talking about the exorcist, so of course when someone says the exorcist, I think about the old priest and the young priest and the exorcist, but then here again, we have this
17:37.673 --> 17:54.418
[SPEAKER_02]: I wonder if you might be willing to share with us what was your thought process behind making the vampire who is not quite patient zero, but at least as far as we're concerned in this novel, the the error of vampire for our protagonist here.
17:54.858 --> 18:01.445
[SPEAKER_00]: I killed a priest, yes, I suppose, subconsciously, because the death is one of my favorite movies.
18:01.905 --> 18:04.968
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you might be able to see the post of betherin me.
18:05.409 --> 18:11.695
[SPEAKER_00]: So, maybe Karis and a kind of led into it, but I needed somebody that people could trust.
18:12.215 --> 18:17.721
[SPEAKER_00]: I needed somebody in the community where they could go to and offload
18:18.241 --> 18:31.195
[SPEAKER_00]: their problems, their sins, anything, so that the person then can establish who is good and who is bad because the instruction manual, even though it's not an actual manual, it's just word about.
18:31.795 --> 18:35.980
[SPEAKER_00]: It's foundations are based on the fact that you can't drain from the good.
18:36.520 --> 18:43.348
[SPEAKER_00]: So you need to know who good people are and you need to sort of siphon off those that are bad.
18:43.528 --> 18:51.618
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought the only you could do through maybe a doctor, a Samaritan, but priests kind of look cool in their guitar.
18:52.158 --> 18:56.023
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I was watching Jeff Bridges in that
18:56.543 --> 18:58.443
[SPEAKER_00]: L. Royale, can I remember what it's called?
18:58.864 --> 19:04.045
[SPEAKER_00]: I was watching him in that and I thought, look at you, I've produced, he looks cool as a priest and he's not a priest though.
19:04.485 --> 19:05.025
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the thing.
19:05.045 --> 19:07.245
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not a priest, but he's playing it well.
19:07.705 --> 19:10.046
[SPEAKER_00]: So that just kind of ticked in my head.
19:10.066 --> 19:12.106
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, okay, what if he is a priest?
19:12.226 --> 19:15.387
[SPEAKER_00]: And what if he's then he's setting bars of whatever it is?
19:15.447 --> 19:22.629
[SPEAKER_00]: And people are just coming up to him saying, there I've got this problem, I've done this, and he's going right, okay, that's not a bad thing.
19:23.049 --> 19:24.349
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll let that one slide.
19:24.969 --> 19:28.872
[SPEAKER_00]: but then somebody comes in and says, yeah, rape somebody or whatever, right, you're done for.
19:29.133 --> 19:31.314
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's why I built him as a priest.
19:31.635 --> 19:36.239
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not trying to Jesus smuggle anything into the narrative.
19:36.599 --> 19:39.381
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it wasn't about any of my religious beliefs.
19:39.802 --> 19:49.390
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just somebody in society that people would look at and trust to a point, you know, and then offer their darkest secrets.
19:49.570 --> 20:05.286
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because that's the way in the interactions we we see through the protagonist size anyway that's the most of the other characters in the novel interact with her wake they seem to have that latent sense of trust that you're talking about.
20:05.566 --> 20:09.128
[SPEAKER_02]: not dissimilar from the way in which were the protagonist is used, right?
20:09.328 --> 20:21.874
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, well, I mean, I'm not going to offer spoilers about the exact scenes, but she, as a young woman in her weeks, says this a few times, would more often be prey than hunter or, like, would be the victim rather than the person committing the crime.
20:21.934 --> 20:29.438
[SPEAKER_02]: And so this kind of makes her the perfect sidekick for him in lowering in some of these bad guys, right?
20:29.458 --> 20:30.498
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you're absolutely right.
20:30.518 --> 20:31.239
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, as I'm reading
20:32.279 --> 20:34.480
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm rooting for her wig Roth.
20:34.520 --> 20:52.604
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, let us, let's go and just read justice upon some of these terrible people, because you bring in really quite well, some very palpable villains, like people who, if you've lived in a city, that's just a couple that you like, I recognize these people absolutely.
20:53.084 --> 21:00.786
[SPEAKER_02]: People as just someone living in 2026, the people who are destroying the world around us, they get represented with one of these guys that ends up getting,
21:02.566 --> 21:21.708
[SPEAKER_02]: rain right yeah let's say there's yeah there's well anyway I won't spoil it because that's that's a scene that's really horrific the rolling pin scene he's on yeah exactly the rolling pin yes I was going to make some weird joke about pastry but I'll just stop and then there's like there's I mean I don't know if it's intentionally a nod to eyes wide shut
21:21.808 --> 21:24.969
[SPEAKER_02]: But towards the end there, I was like, oh, this feels very much like as wide shut.
21:25.169 --> 21:40.394
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, this is that, this is the upstream class that suddenly is perhaps getting its come up and it's because, I mean, I guess in the UK, there's been slightly more consequences there for folks involved with this, this upstream list than we've seen here in the United States.
21:40.534 --> 21:47.317
[SPEAKER_02]: But I mean, I guess when you're president is probably the number one figure on the list, it's not gonna happen at least these years.
21:47.837 --> 21:48.037
[SPEAKER_02]: But,
21:48.457 --> 22:05.525
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I mean, if there's a sequel, maybe I'm just kidding, we can have that have our protagonist come across to the United States and and and recap some justice here too, a lot of that stuff, the lot of the newspaper articles with Epstein with Trump with Harvey Weinstein.
22:06.205 --> 22:12.292
[SPEAKER_00]: the me to movement, it hit hard because I have a daughter and they are predators.
22:13.072 --> 22:16.276
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just want to call them all.
22:16.596 --> 22:22.483
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to ensnare them, hang them, do whatever I need to do because they shouldn't be in the world.
22:22.963 --> 22:25.446
[SPEAKER_00]: they are just a praying on innocent people.
22:25.926 --> 22:35.758
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, it's that thing if I go back to my original point is that you have these thoughts, how can you exercise them in a way which isn't gonna get you in prison?
22:36.218 --> 22:37.920
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, well I'll write about it then.
22:38.441 --> 22:43.244
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what I would like to happen, but I know it's never going to happen, because the law always went out.
22:43.624 --> 22:52.909
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen, just this will never really be served properly to these people, because they'll leave a pass away, and then it'll be posturimously, oh yes, you know, there were a bad person.
22:53.109 --> 22:54.490
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we knew that back in the day.
22:54.730 --> 22:56.331
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like Jimmy Savel over here.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Jimmy Savel was as kids entertainer.
22:58.793 --> 23:03.575
[SPEAKER_00]: It came out that he was raping children, whatever he was doing with these children behind the scenes.
23:03.635 --> 23:06.197
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, we all kind of knew he was weird.
23:06.797 --> 23:14.844
[SPEAKER_00]: we all kind of knew in documentaries we saw that he wasn't quite right, but it never got what he deserved in life because he passed away.
23:15.304 --> 23:18.247
[SPEAKER_00]: So you kind of just play on these things and you write about them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's kind of the scramble, but I think your reference in the eyes why the scramble was an actual thing that happened in the 1800s.
23:27.194 --> 23:43.722
[SPEAKER_00]: But it wasn't, you know, for the reasons that I outlined, but it was definitely women we involved, women were put into a room and then we'd just rush into the room and grab a woman and then take them as a slave, a servant or whatever, they would just grab them.
23:44.222 --> 23:45.143
[SPEAKER_00]: And then that was it.
23:45.163 --> 23:50.545
[SPEAKER_00]: There were, there were bought into a life of servitude and then obviously raped or whatever it was.
23:51.005 --> 23:54.167
[SPEAKER_00]: So it hits hard for me as it most,
23:54.787 --> 23:55.868
[SPEAKER_00]: probably does for most people.
23:56.308 --> 24:01.991
[SPEAKER_00]: I just needed to sort of go, okay, I'm going to try and address it in some way, and this is the way I'm going to do it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think it resonates a little bit.
24:04.392 --> 24:18.079
[SPEAKER_00]: The feedback I'm getting, especially from women is that it's got a strong feminist viewpoint, just lifts my heels because that was the intention, but it was just a sort of say, look, this isn't right.
24:18.559 --> 24:19.920
[SPEAKER_00]: We need, we shouldn't be doing this.
24:20.620 --> 24:22.821
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I would, I would 110% agree.
24:23.101 --> 24:25.062
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it does that achieve that really well.
24:25.562 --> 24:38.367
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a really excellent twist at the end that I will not spoil, but listeners like make sure that you find a copy of the instruction manual being a vampire because the twist at the end is delicious, like it's just in case.
24:38.727 --> 24:40.868
[SPEAKER_02]: You send us on a bit of a red herring at one point.
24:41.128 --> 24:57.424
[SPEAKER_02]: like and and we're we're following this and that was really well done too, but you kind of like you're getting the sense that something here is not quite right and then there's that twist that's glorious so listeners make sure that you find a copy of the instruction manual to being a vampire.
24:58.125 --> 25:00.306
[SPEAKER_02]: you can order it from true-born presses website.
25:00.726 --> 25:10.088
[SPEAKER_02]: You can go to your local library request that they buy it, so then, therefore, others may too read it, where a big fan of that here on horror joy, bookshop.org has it available as well.
25:10.588 --> 25:16.650
[SPEAKER_02]: If you must, I guess you can order on Amazon, but please don't support other people and bookshops.
25:17.150 --> 25:20.631
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to start wrapping up here, Craig, but I'm going to ask, what's next?
25:20.751 --> 25:21.431
[SPEAKER_02]: What is next for you?
25:21.451 --> 25:24.772
[SPEAKER_02]: What any planned books or forthcoming volumes we can look forward to?
25:25.240 --> 25:28.841
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I have about four novels I think already run.
25:29.341 --> 25:31.041
[SPEAKER_00]: I just need to try and find a home for them.
25:31.461 --> 25:37.463
[SPEAKER_00]: So the one that I'm probably going to pitch next is there's something in the fucking basement.
25:37.643 --> 25:41.144
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know whether to keep these exploitative in or take it out.
25:41.424 --> 25:42.344
[SPEAKER_00]: But I kind of like it in.
25:42.624 --> 25:44.945
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's my first possession book.
25:45.245 --> 25:47.065
[SPEAKER_00]: So I've never done a book about possession.
25:47.645 --> 25:50.486
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is a surreal absurdist.
25:51.206 --> 25:57.110
[SPEAKER_00]: very funny story about a woman who gives birth to a seven-foot demon.
25:57.570 --> 26:00.712
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and it's got a vampire in it as well.
26:01.152 --> 26:11.479
[SPEAKER_00]: It's got all these crazy characters in it, and it kind of blvetails perfectly into the instruction manual to be in a vampire because it's got this very sort of similar in style.
26:11.939 --> 26:15.602
[SPEAKER_00]: So people like that, I'm sure they'll like this, but I need to find a home for it again.
26:16.122 --> 26:17.383
[SPEAKER_00]: So hopefully that'll come out soon.
26:17.783 --> 26:23.408
[SPEAKER_00]: Other than that, yeah, just I've got it obviously other some other books that I just need to polish and try and get out there.
26:23.608 --> 26:24.248
[SPEAKER_02]: That's fantastic.
26:24.388 --> 26:25.129
[SPEAKER_02]: I look forward to that.
26:25.189 --> 26:33.256
[SPEAKER_02]: I hope you keep the fucking that's let's say it kind of gives me a little bit of RL Stein vibes for the stay out of the basement from growing up as a scholastic book fair kid.
26:33.656 --> 26:36.218
[SPEAKER_02]: That was I think about that a lot as someone as a as a
26:36.338 --> 26:38.639
[SPEAKER_02]: homeowner, fortunately, unfortunately.
26:38.719 --> 26:40.819
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know what we do with home ownership in this day and age.
26:41.379 --> 26:42.940
[SPEAKER_02]: I try not to go down into my basement.
26:43.160 --> 26:47.101
[SPEAKER_02]: I generally have nothing good happens when you go into the basement or the attic of a house.
26:47.201 --> 26:48.361
[SPEAKER_02]: Usually you find something wrong.
26:48.961 --> 26:51.602
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm here for staying out of the fucking basement.
26:52.322 --> 26:54.802
[SPEAKER_02]: I look forward to that and I'll quote you on the other book.
26:55.043 --> 26:56.123
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm blurb it.
26:56.263 --> 26:56.783
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
26:56.983 --> 27:03.431
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, so I am going to close with our traditional question, which is, then, is there anything in horror?
27:03.531 --> 27:13.483
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you talked about being a giant horror movie geek, but maybe in addition to horror movies, any books, TV series games that have brought you joy recently?
27:14.004 --> 27:14.544
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean,
27:15.125 --> 27:16.785
[SPEAKER_00]: I am a huge movie fan.
27:16.846 --> 27:25.548
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm loving at the moment what's happening with obsession, came Parsons, Creep, Curry, Barker with back rooms as well.
27:25.868 --> 27:32.750
[SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of rejoined this resurrection, even though it's always been there, but more a resurrection in this sort of main stream.
27:33.250 --> 27:34.832
[SPEAKER_00]: so with sinners, things like that.
27:34.872 --> 27:36.174
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're actually getting horror.
27:36.415 --> 27:39.820
[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually becoming a genre which is respected.
27:40.220 --> 27:48.833
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though it has been from the community from day one, I find that people outside of the community look down upon it, but now it's not.
27:49.213 --> 27:52.918
[SPEAKER_00]: It's become mainstream, which is brilliant, and obviously we've seen that at Academy Awards.
27:53.258 --> 28:02.590
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm also looking forward to how women are changing horror, so people like Khafaja with substance and Jewish mispronounced a name.
28:02.630 --> 28:05.974
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's Julia Zhukanu who did Raw.
28:06.935 --> 28:09.957
[SPEAKER_00]: And to tamed, you know, these are interesting people as well.
28:10.097 --> 28:13.459
[SPEAKER_00]: In fiction, we've got some great women horror writers.
28:13.839 --> 28:18.341
[SPEAKER_00]: Tough on my list is always like Laurel Hytower Sarah Reed, Beverly Lee.
28:18.801 --> 28:21.703
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a new writer of just, I don't think she's new.
28:21.863 --> 28:27.446
[SPEAKER_00]: I think she's been around, but I'm just sort of finding it which is, I hope again I don't put you a surname.
28:27.606 --> 28:29.107
[SPEAKER_00]: AC Nesson Hauer.
28:29.687 --> 28:31.868
[SPEAKER_00]: So she's just done something with symmetry press.
28:32.188 --> 28:35.350
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's really it's a great time on a more personal level.
28:35.370 --> 28:42.374
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm getting joy from the fact that I have a son who is 12 and he's really into horror.
28:43.054 --> 28:54.360
[SPEAKER_00]: So at the age of seven, he watched yours and loved it and we've been building up and building up and we're having these movie nights where we go through horror and I'm just a
28:55.060 --> 28:56.021
[SPEAKER_00]: go full circle.
28:56.542 --> 29:04.371
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing the thing that my father did to me, which is to sit there and talk in through scenes and show him these great movies.
29:04.851 --> 29:13.582
[SPEAKER_00]: So we've been through all the screen franchise, we're doing the Elm Streets, we've used on fear streets, he's done all those kind of things and we're just walking him through it.
29:14.082 --> 29:25.205
[SPEAKER_00]: so he doesn't freak out and I'm telling him all these little bits, you know, like in Poltergeist, that's Stephen Spielberg's hands pulling away the face of that guy, you know, it's all prosthetic and he's like, oh, cool.
29:25.666 --> 29:32.247
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm getting joy watching him all through those movies for the first time and it's kind of nice.
29:32.388 --> 29:35.028
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like that circles just come back round again.
29:35.629 --> 29:37.289
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's where I'm getting joy from the moment.
29:37.535 --> 29:38.315
[SPEAKER_02]: that's amazing.
29:38.335 --> 29:39.596
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that story.
29:39.796 --> 29:47.361
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's great, especially getting to be your father in that way where like stopping for those scenes and stuff, it's interesting.
29:47.441 --> 29:50.402
[SPEAKER_02]: It makes me think about a lot of the ways that my dad introduced me to horror too.
29:50.422 --> 29:51.923
[SPEAKER_02]: So thanks for sharing those stories.
29:52.023 --> 29:54.385
[SPEAKER_02]: That's really cool and powerful in that way.
29:54.645 --> 29:54.765
[SPEAKER_02]: And
29:55.285 --> 29:59.749
[SPEAKER_02]: Just Craig, I want to thank you again for taking the time today to join me here on Horror Joy.
29:59.769 --> 30:02.591
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of joy was had in this episode listeners.
30:03.031 --> 30:07.915
[SPEAKER_02]: I do hope that you go out and you find a copy of the instruction manuals of being a vampire.
30:08.256 --> 30:08.976
[SPEAKER_02]: You won't regret it.
30:09.256 --> 30:10.157
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a great read.
30:10.577 --> 30:11.358
[SPEAKER_02]: It's well-paced.
30:11.878 --> 30:12.419
[SPEAKER_02]: It's witty.
30:12.859 --> 30:13.420
[SPEAKER_02]: It's fun.
30:13.940 --> 30:19.685
[SPEAKER_02]: So go out and read that and remember to seek joy, even in horror.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This has been an episode of Horror Joy, produced in conjunction with Axis Mundi Media.
30:24.427 --> 30:25.827
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for joining us, we want to hear from you.
30:26.047 --> 30:30.689
[SPEAKER_01]: You can find us at Horror JoyPod on Instagram or at horrorjoypod on YouTube.
30:31.129 --> 30:37.531
[SPEAKER_01]: You can also email us at horrorjoypod at gmail.com all one word and you can of course find us wherever you get your podcasts.
30:38.312 --> 30:40.332
[SPEAKER_01]: Give us a like, subscribe, leave a review.
30:41.233 --> 30:44.434
[SPEAKER_01]: Until next time, remember, see you guys next time, see you guys next time.
