Michael David Wilson 0:10
Welcome to the this is horror podcast episode 100 I'm your host, Michael David Wilson and joining me for this very special live podcast. As always, it's my co host, Bob pastorella, hello.

Bob Pastorella 0:27
How you doing?

Michael David Wilson 0:28
Oh, good. Oh, good, Bob, and he's back. Dan. Howarth,

Dan Howarth 0:34
evening all. How's it going?

Michael David Wilson 0:36
Always? Evening with you. Dan,

Dan Howarth 0:38
it's five o'clock. That's the evening, or should I say, late afternoon. Guys, how's it going?

Michael David Wilson 0:44
Well, let's find out. Leave your comments. You know, is it? Is it the evening? Is it the afternoon? Great British horror is saying afternoon also already got some contention.

Dan Howarth 0:56
Bring it. Bring in the banter. Early doors, Michael, noon, evening chatter. Yeah, gotta

Michael David Wilson 1:01
bring the live chat. That's what it's all about. Dan for joining us today, because it's not about us, it's about David moody, welcome to the show.

David Moody 1:13
Thank you. Good morning, evening, afternoon.

Michael David Wilson 1:17
So covered. David is an equal opportunity. Horror Master,

David Moody 1:25
I don't care where you are, I'm just happy to talk to you.

Michael David Wilson 1:31
And this is, this is your third interview appearance on this is horror. We interviewed you way back in episode two. That was in 2013 Yep. And most recently in september 2014 so not really that recent. I can't believe it's been that long. In fact, I was just

David Moody 1:53
going to say it feels like just a couple of weeks ago, doesn't it? It's really weird. And I can't believe that you're at episode 100 so before we go any further, congratulations.

Michael David Wilson 2:02
Well, thank you very much. Cheers, Dave, there you go. So before we get into things, I believe, Bob, that you have a couple of adverts from our sponsors for today's episode.

Bob Pastorella 2:18
Yes, I do. Yes. To first up is greater press and what is beautiful, horror, awe, Meeks, ache, terror becomes transcendence, regret gives way to rebirth. This is gutted beautiful horror stories, an anthology of dark fiction that explores the beauty at the very heart of darkness, featuring horror's most celebrated voices, including the likes of Clyde Barker, Neil Gaiman, Ramsey, Campbell, Paul Tremblay, Damian, Angelica, Walters and many more, with a forward from cemetery dance magazine founder, Richard chismar, proudly brought to you by Crystal Lake publishing

Michael David Wilson 2:59
Fantastic.

Bob Pastorella 3:02
Thank you. Then we have one from gray matter press. They're among us. They live down the street, in the apartment next door and in our own homes, where they stare back at us from our bathroom mirrors peel back to skin. Is a volume of horror that rips the mask off the real monsters of our time, mankind, featuring a star studded cast of award winning authors, Jonathan Mayberry, Tim Lebon, Ray Gordon, Graham Masterson and many more, peel back to skin is the powerhouse new release from gray matter. Press get more info at peel back to skin.com.

Michael David Wilson 3:40
All right. There it is. The voice of horror advertising, Mr. Bob pastorella, waiting for a round of applause. Obviously, Dan's not gonna join it. There you go. The

David Moody 3:56
internet works. Michael

Dan Howarth 3:58
started, well, I had one, queue. Missed it.

Michael David Wilson 4:03
Well, you know, I'm used to it by now. Dan, yeah,

Dan Howarth 4:07
you have been working with this Deadwood for 100 episodes now. So you know, you can only do what you can do.

Michael David Wilson 4:13
Yeah. Okay. David Powell is confused. We've just had some question marks. So the way that the format is going to work is, I mean, as always, we'll run the interview as we would, but just jump in, you know, with your questions as and when you have them, let's keep it interactive. Yeah, we can keep the banter going. I see someone is just commented, Jesus Stan, what are you for? Wholeheartedly agree, great British horror. Anyway, so David, I mean, to begin with, we'd usually have a bio read out. But seems. A little bizarre to do that when you're here with us. So in your own words, who are you? What have you been doing in terms of your career?

David Moody 5:09
Can we just pause and everybody go back and listen to episode two?

Michael David Wilson 5:15
Well, I think now, now, David, it's you who's not seeing how the internet works.

David Moody 5:21
Fair point. Okay, right? So Dave moody, I've been writing for scares me to death when I say this. But 20 years, it's 20 years this September that my first novel came out and promptly stiffed, which I'll go on to in a second. I guess I'm best known for the autumn and the hater horror books. I started off self publishing after I had a book traditionally published back in 1996 the one that was 20 years ago, which really hurts, and it didn't do particularly well. So I thought when I written my next novel, I needed to find a better way of publishing, a better way of connecting with an audience. Is when I first went online. So I started giving my book autumn away, back in the days when nobody was giving stuff away for free like that on the internet, it was once upon a time, it was actually a radical thing to give a book away for nothing, and it did really well. Wrote a load of sequels, had a very dodgy film made out of it with Dexter Fletcher and David Carradine, and it is a very, very dodgy film. And then just kept writing and publishing stuff under my infected books banner. Wrote a book called hater, which somehow ended up on the desk of some pretty important people, influential people in Los Angeles, and was optioned for film by Guillermo del Toro and Mark Johnson, the producer of Breaking Bad, all very exciting stuff, and it got me a really good publishing deal, but Phil never got made disappointingly, but I'll come back onto that later. Since then, I've just been churning out more books, publishing them independently, with a new version of my infected books press, and also working on more hater novels at the moment, which is cool and that's it. Is that enough?

Michael David Wilson 6:59
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And, I mean, you've been doing so much. I mean, I don't even notice where to start, but I suppose I should find a place where it's not going to make for very good listening, is it? And I mean, you spoke about infected books. Now you started that, I think it was in 2005

David Moody 7:25
Am I right there actually, that the earliest incarnation of infected books came about in 2001 and the reason, the reason for doing it was, it was when I'd made the decision that I wasn't going to look for a traditional publisher for autumn, and I was going to try and get the book out myself. It was, how do I do this? What's the best way of doing this? And the one thing I knew was that back back in the day, back then, self publishing, which I hate that expression anyway, I call it independent publishing, but self publishing was really sneered at by the the publishing establishment, and I knew that I wouldn't be taken seriously if somebody found this book in a bookshop, if it ever got into a bookshop which said autumn by David moody, published by David moody, I know it would just get thrown away, straight away. So what I thought was I'd create this. It was a fictitious publishing house to start with, just a brand, just to try and hide behind and to put a kind of a wall between myself as an author and the public, if that makes sense, that's really where it came from. And it kind of snowballed, because, as I was doing that new technologies came in, ebooks really took off back in the very early days it was, it was so antiquated that I have my very basic website up there, which probably took me ages to do by hand, and then people say, Oh, I quite like the sound of that book. And I was literally emailing Word documents out to them. But before long, you know, we got PDFs, and then we got, I think Microsoft had an ebook format called lit, and then EP, and then there was Moby pocket, and Amazon event ended up buying that and turning it into Kindle. And then print on demand. Technology came in as well so we could get paperbacks and they would. They weren't just normal, crappy, self published paperbacks, that these were proper, professional looking paperbacks. And I just found very quickly that that the the technology was there and the means was there with the internet to enable me to turn this, this fictitious foot publishing houses are called it infected books into something that could stand side by side with books in a normal bookstore, and people wouldn't really know the difference. They wouldn't know that that was just me, my spare room at home, knocking this one out, as opposed to something published by a, you know, a massive publisher in New York. So it's really that that's where it came

Michael David Wilson 9:36
from, and in 2014 when you took on Wayne Simmonds as your PR and marketing chief and started releasing the fiction of other authors, it then took on a completely new dimension. So I wondered if you could talk us through that, how it's now evolved, how you're continuing to evolve.

David Moody 10:00
Off, yeah, the thing about infected books, as I've kind of alluded to, I came to realize that whatever a major publisher could do, and having worked with a number of major publishers in the interim, I could see the way that they worked and the different opportunities that came from working with a large publisher like that, I saw that you could actually do a lot of that yourself. So we've been working with voodoo press in Germany, for example, on translation rights and foreign deals. We're also looking at comic book deals and things like that. You can as an individual, as an independent publisher, I think now you can get to many of the apart from getting into bookstores, you can do pretty much anything that a major publisher can do. Getting into bookstores is still the one hurdle I'm working on. It was kind of a natural thing for me to work with Wayne, because we've been close friends for many years. We've bonded through writing. I think, god knows how long ago, 1015, years ago, perhaps, and well, you've seen the two of us together. It's become a kind of double act somebody calls the Anton deck of horror work. Deck of horror once, which is, it's not, it's not great, but yeah, Wayne's got very definite talents. He's He's very gregarious. He's a great publicist. So it just made sense for me to do the behind the doors, add mini kind of stuff that, that I always did, and to have Wayne there, kind of flying the flag for effective books, and it was logical then to think about putting out some other people's work, but we've been selective about it. It's not, it's not the main focus of effective books. It would never be opened up for general submissions. It's just a way to to let other people, people that I know are people that I've worked closely with, to let them get their work to market. So, so that's really where, where the other authors has come from, and that's what led to Euro the zombie, which I guess we'll come on to later.

Michael David Wilson 11:50
Well, let's come on to that now. I mean, first of all, what is the year of the zombie series, and what was the impetus behind forming that idea, and what was the criteria in terms of the authors and the stories that you selected?

David Moody 12:10
Well, the idea behind it was that, I think a lot a lot of publishers put out anthologies, and they do work. They work well. But what I've also seen with the independent publishing is that, particularly with eBooks, it used to be that a novella wouldn't sell. You've got a short story that will go in an anthology, or you've got a novel that you will put out on its own, but all the stuff that was in, in between the two, you know, was sort of anything from 15,000 words to 35,000 words kind of got lost. There wasn't really a good market for it until ebooks came around. I put out a couple of novellas a couple of years back, the cost of living was one of them, and isolation, and I did really well. So I knew there was definitely a market there. Also put out a book of Wayne's called girl in the basement, and that did equally well. So we thought, rather than just put an anthology out, it would be interesting to see if we could put out a novella every month for a year. And as it was, it was 15 years since the first infected books released my original version of autumn. So we thought it's got to be zombies. So 2016 became Euro the zombie. We really went down the list of people that we'd worked with, not everybody, obviously, but just pick people, a kind of range of people. So you got a couple of established writers in there, some real stars of self publishing, and just some kind of curveball entries that we took on, if you look at who we've had so far. And we started off with Adam Baker of outpost. And I'm just stopping myself here because I know somebody called Adam Barker, and I never know whether Adam Baker, yeah, who came up with a cracking little war story, very much in the style of outpost. And then we went straight on to rich Hawkins, who's another close friend who's been a supporter of my work for a long time, who's really come into his own with the books that have come out from crowded quarantine with Adam Millard, last soldier, last outpost, last play. So he brought out a book, and then we went for Ian Rob Wright, who's a real star of self publishing at the moment, and he's selling a huge number of novels, and also mark Tufo from the zombie Fallout series. But then, after those guys, we moved on to Gary slaymaker, who's a stand up comedian from Wales, who nobody probably would have heard of in zombie circles. And then James plum, who was a film director who hadn't had anything published before, and it was, it's just been a great opportunity to get different folks from different areas all with their own individual takes on the zombie genre. It's one of the things I love about zombies, and I always have to stop myself when I say that sentence, because it sounds so wrong. But one of the things that I really do love about zombies is they're so adaptable. You can put them in anything, and I know they've become a little. Bit cliche, a little bit passe now, but really, they're just the most adaptable of horror monsters. I think because you can put them in any scenario, you can make them funny scary. They can tell political allegories. They can be a symbolic of a failed romance. Anything you can just take you can do anything at all with them. So we've gone for stories which are completely different. And I think if you read through the entries we've had so far, you see that every month we get one that is nothing like the ones that have come before. Yeah,

Dan Howarth 15:29
that is true. Is Andrew dooz, he brought out the most recent one. Yes, yes, yeah. That's, that's the only one I haven't read. But yeah, you're right. I mean, you know, a lot zombie fiction is kind of derided a little bit, to some extent, because a lot of you know, it has kind of tropes, and a lot of situations and scenarios have been kind of done before, and you know, there's, there's quite a bit of repetition, but I think the variety of of the books that you've brought out so far in the year of the zombie just proved that when zombie fiction is done well, and as you say, If it's trying to tell a political point or whatnot, when it's done well, it is, you know, as strong as horro gets, really, in my opinion, I

David Moody 16:08
think you're absolutely right. I mean, I just look at the last three that we've had. For example, Gary slaymakers was, was kind of Shaun of the Dead set in Wales, with zombie sheep. Very funny, very good. And then we went on to James plum with little monster, which was a story about a married couple whose daughter is bitten, but they obviously don't want to give her up, and so the obvious thing to do for them is to find bodies to feed her. And it's very dark, very unsettling. Written. It could only have been written by a parent. And again, it kind of freaked me out. And then Andre's book, which is absolutely brilliant. We released on the first of this month, ride the serpentine is kind of written almost as a film script. It's an aging rock band who were making happen to be making a video of their combat tour when the zombie apocalypse kicked off. And it's just, it's just a great read. And it's not just the situations that the authors write about. It's the different voices as well. At the risk of sounding pretentious, because we've got, as I say, a Gary slaymaker, who's a Welsh TV presenter and stand up comedy has just a vastly different voice from Andre du, if you've ever met him or heard him, is just incredibly cool guy from from America, and it's just so different. And I've just loved having those contrasts there. When we're done with the 12 books, what we're going to do is hopefully next year, put them into at least one print edition, I think possibly two print editions, because it will be so big, and I think people will really appreciate them when they can read them side by side. Just what a wide range of zombie fiction we've got in there. It's really exciting. Actually, I thought I was done with zombies until you're at a zombie kicked off. Well, I

Michael David Wilson 17:45
think ever since I've known you, you've just thought, Okay, I reckon I'm coming to the end of the zombie cycle. And then just when you think you're out, David, they pull you back in again.

David Moody 18:01
I'm having a turn, obviously, with with one of the novellas coming up very soon, and it's just been an absolute blast to get in there and write a zombie story again. I think I've realized now that I wasn't tired of zombie stories. I was tired of zombie sagas. I'd got to a point with autumn when I thought that's it. I don't want any more. But then coming at it from a completely different angle, a fresh perspective. It's been really interesting. It's been kind of invigorating. I should mention as well. This is a good, a good place to mention and promote that we've deliberately left a hole in our schedule for October, for the the the Halloween edition of Euro the zombie. And that's because we want somebody completely new, completely fresh. So over on the infected books website and infected books Facebook page, there's a pitch and page competition. It runs for another month. And basically you go to the dedicated Facebook thread and just leave a pitch and the first page of your book. And then after the this, I think it's the sixth of August, a few judges are going to look at these. It's myself, Michael Pressel from voodoo press, and Gina. I can't remember her surname, sorry, I should have it on it in my tongue, but Gina is a literary agent, and between the three of us, we're going to decide the best entry, and that will be the the october YEAR OF THE zombie issue.

Bob Pastorella 19:26
That's very cool. Oh

Michael David Wilson 19:28
yeah, definitely, definitely. So we'll include a link in the show notes for those who are listening to the well, it won't be now, seems silly to say it, but those listen to their version that isn't live, there will be a link if you're listening live, which of course you are, then, you know, keep an eye out for that.

Bob Pastorella 19:53
For this episode, that would be the undead version.

Michael David Wilson 19:55
There you go.

David Moody 19:56
Nice one.

Michael David Wilson 19:59
Fair. Very good.

Dan Howarth 20:00
Thanks for coming, Bob. It

David Moody 20:04
was worth it, just for that, wasn't it?

Bob Pastorella 20:06
Yes, I'm just going to sit back now and just listen to the crowds just masking

David Moody 20:10
the glory of that joke.

Dan Howarth 20:11
Was this one of the three jokes that Dave had written down pre show.

Bob Pastorella 20:15
He just emailed me there. Yeah,

David Moody 20:17
I'm down to two now.

Michael David Wilson 20:21
Thomas Joyce has just said he had an idea for the year of the zombie pitch, and then he heard about the Gary slaymaker plot.

David Moody 20:30
Thomas, I think that if you can do zombies in different ways, I'm sure you can do zombie sheep in different ways. So don't let that put you off.

Michael David Wilson 20:37
There you go. You heard it here first.

Dan Howarth 20:39
So just to, just to jump in and carry on asking about the competition. Dave, yeah, is there anything you know? So say people out there. So say Thomas, for example, is coming up with this idea, you know what? What kind of floats your boat in terms of zombies? What kind of fiction are you looking for when you, when you're going to go through these entries? Personally,

David Moody 20:57
I'm, I'm just looking for something that when I finish it, it makes me go, Well, that was new. I hadn't I hadn't seen that before. I hadn't thought of that before. So I guess it's easier to say what I personally wouldn't want, and that would just be a rehash of Dawn of the Dead, or, you know, just just something that's been done before. The key thing for me in all good zombie fiction and all good horror fiction, and I think it's definitely true in the entries we've had so far. It's about people. It's about characters. And I find that the very best zombie fiction, unless you're kind of personifying one of the zombies or some of the zombies, the best zombie fiction always focuses on the people that are left behind. Wholeheartedly agree with that.

Bob Pastorella 21:37
Oh, definitely.

Michael David Wilson 21:39
You said that you were looking for someone completely fresh and someone new. So are there any restrictions in terms of who can enter?

David Moody 21:50
There are, and I really should have been prepared for this. But if that handy link, which you're going to leave on the notes, yeah, will explain. Will explain everything. I'm sure No, it does. I think there are some restrictions in terms of if you've been published before, but it's all explained on the Facebook feed. So rather than say anything to over complicate it and get it wrong, now I'll just respectfully point everybody in that direction, if that's okay,

Michael David Wilson 22:13
yeah, because I can see a few people in the comments getting excited about it, if someone has an idea and they find out that for whatever reason they don't meet the parameters, would you be susceptible to a quick email with a pitch? Would it be something to consider perhaps publishing later in the infected book series?

David Moody 22:41
To be honest, at the moment, I'd have to say probably not, because personally, from from my point of view, and I know that Wayne's in a similar position, time is extremely limited, and that's why I said when I was talking about infected books earlier, it's not a press that's ever going to be open for submissions. I think when, when I'm when I'm putting a book out, whether it's mine, Wayne, somebody else's. And the key thing to me is it absolutely has to be as good as it can be. And right now, I know that I've got enough projects and enough of the commitments to not be able to give that to anything, anything else. You know, I wouldn't be able to put something out of the best quality. And I'd rather be upfront with people, and rather than leave them hanging on and thinking maybe you'll get back to me in a month, two months, whatever, because just right now, it wouldn't work for me. And infected books, I have to say,

Michael David Wilson 23:30
Yeah, I think transparency is absolutely key. And we were on a call yesterday with Aaron Stearns, the director of Wolf Creek and the writer of Wolf Creek. And in fact, in fact, he was just a writer. There you go. We're live. I've got a self correct as we go. But he was saying the problem with Hollywood is you pitch an idea, or you come up with something can if they don't like it, they won't tell you that they don't like it. They'll just ignore it. They won't say anything because they don't want to burn bridges. But of course, the irony in doing that is that you completely put people off and make them resent you for not responding anyway. So yeah, I think just being upfront has to be the key. And, you know, not just for the industry, but for life in general. So there you go.

David Moody 24:29
We'd respond, and we do respond, and people do often contact and say, and would you look at this and would you consider publishing this? And we'll just be upfront and say, sorry, not the moment. And I think that's the that's the right thing to do. It's interesting what you say about Hollywood kind of deviating a little bit here. It's not just the case that they won't listen to your ideas. They won't show any interest. Quite often, they do listen to your ideas and then they disappear, and then they use them on their own without getting you involved at all. I. I there's an article on my website about straight to you one of my books, which was almost almost optioned by a big company in America and but they pulled out the last minute, and in a few years later, you'll see if you search for it, I'm being very careful about what I'm saying here, because I don't want to get myself into trouble. But if you look at my website, you'll find this article, because they went ahead and made the film pretty much anyway, but without any credit to myself. And I was speaking to another author far, far better known than me, far bigger seller than me, and he had exactly the same thing happened from the same company. So always be cautious when you're talking to Hollywood executives, because, you know, it happens every 10 minutes, doesn't it? But just always be cautious. And yeah, watch out. Well

Michael David Wilson 25:49
as long time listeners that are this is horror podcasts, know, I will try and segue from one thing to something pretty unrelated. So here we go again. Speaking of movies,

David Moody 26:03
Yep,

Michael David Wilson 26:04
let's get on to the developments. In terms of the hater movie, what are the latest plans? This

David Moody 26:11
is why I have to be really, really awkward and not give, not give a lot away, but just just to set the scene for people don't know. I mentioned earlier, that hater was optioned by Guillermo del Toro and Mark Johnson, the producer of Breaking Bad, amongst other things. And it got very exciting very quickly, and it almost got in front of the cameras. The film was going to be directed by ja Bayona, the guy that made the orphanage and then went on to make the impossible, I think he's about to start. It's either World War z2 or Jurassic World Two, one of those he's lined up for at the moment, Jurassic World Two. I think it is. I think that's right, yeah, I think he pulled out of the other one, and rightly so, because really, World War z1 was bad enough. Probably shouldn't say that this is live, isn't it? I keep forgetting this.

Michael David Wilson 27:02
Yeah. See normally, David, we can cut it out. Well, we can cut it out of the free of the recorded version, but everyone listening, they got the benefit of that. David moody, hates World War Z, it's on the it's on the sun. Now I

Bob Pastorella 27:18
agree with you, David, that's fine.

David Moody 27:20
Thank you, Bob, we'll go down fighting together.

Bob Pastorella 27:25
They didn't make the book into a movie.

David Moody 27:27
Yeah, absolutely. They took the goodwill and they took the name, and they turned it into something completely different. And I think Max Brooks, the author, he acknowledges that really, I've seen a lot of interesting interviews with him where he had interesting. He had the same approach as I did to hater. I knew, after a couple of conversations with people in America, that hater wasn't going to be what I'd originally written. And I my editor at the time, who was also he was based in New York, and he was the connection, really, that got the book to Del Toro. He made it pretty clear that it wasn't really going to resemble my book in any way, shape or form or apart from the concept, and I should be ready for that. But take the paycheck, and it was quite a big paycheck. In fact, it was a very big paycheck. I can talk about it now because it didn't happen, but that was difficult. And so the rights that the film almost got made, the script kind of derailed it a little bit, because the execs weren't happy with the script that was turned in. I wasn't able to get involved in that at all. So the film didn't happen. It dropped into development hell, as happens quite a lot. The option was renewed a couple of times, and I kept getting approaching some other people, saying I'm really interested in this, and I'd say that they're already taken and and really, I just kept trying to weigh it up in my head. I'm thinking Guillermo del Toro on one hand, and then somebody completely different on the other hand. It just seemed too good to let it go. But after about six years, yeah, I thought I need to do something about this. I'd rather have my film made on a smaller scale than the promise of a film being made by Hollywood. So the rights were up for renewal again, and I got speaking to a chap called Ed Barrett, who's based in Newcastle, here in the UK. And we met in a pub, and Ed told me what he thought about the book, and he talked about how he'd approach it for a film production. And I checked Ed out, and Ed checked me out in terms of careers and approaches and projects that we've been working on before. And I thought, this is the guy to take hater forward. So I sold the rights to him, which, again, on the face of it, when you look at who had the rights before. It seemed like career suicide, but to me, I think there's more of a chance of Ed making the film and making a film that's truer to my vision than there would have been if I'd left it with Hollywood for another 50 years. So yeah, we started working very closely on it. I wrote the first draft of a script. Which went down really well, and it's kind of, it's progressing from there, and I have to be careful now, because negotiations are in place. At the moment, we're discussing it with a couple of interesting parties, interested parties, rather, and there's the promise of something very special happening on the horizon. And unfortunately, that's, that's where I'd have to leave that answer. But on the plus side, I'll do some segue in there. Michael, on

Michael David Wilson 30:24
the plus side, perfect.

David Moody 30:26
We were talking Ed and I were talking about adaptations. And if you've read the hater trilogy, you'll know that it's not, it's not a traditional trilogy. I find a third book with them or Ross, it doesn't continue to ramp up the action, as you'd expect. The third book is quite introverted. It's quite it's much quieter than the second book. So in terms of making it something longer form out of it, I was Ed and I were talking about different ways of approaching it, and we got talking about TV adaptations, and that just sent my mind racing. And so I started to fill in the blanks between the original three books, and I tried thinking about what the other side were doing. The book is written from the perspective of the haters. For those of you don't know, in hater the world, the population of the of the planet is split into two haters and unchanged, and it's impossible for them to coexist. So it's, it's basically a goddamn scrap until one side's left and the other side's gone. So I started looking at what the position for the other side would have been for the unchanged. And then I started looking at the the the gaps between the novels, because you often start a novel and it's like three months later and it's all six months later, or that you'll refer to something that happened, that's that happens off page, and you haven't written it, and I found it. There was this whole other story happening around the original trilogy, and that's where the idea for the second hater trilogy has come from. I've just turned in the first book, and I'm just about to start on Book Two, but I'm really, really, really fired up with it. It's for me, it's really exciting. It's just going back and adding a whole new dimension to the world that I'd created anyway. That doesn't sound too pretentious. No,

Bob Pastorella 32:03
it doesn't sound pretentious at all. It sounds great.

Michael David Wilson 32:08
Do you have a release date for those new hater books?

David Moody 32:12
Unfortunately, not. So just, just literally, about a month ago, finished the first one, which is called, it's got a weird title. It's called, one of us will be dead by morning.

Michael David Wilson 32:24
Now. It's a great title.

David Moody 32:27
It will make sense when you read it, that that is a very different kind of hater book, because whereas hater is initially, it's the story of Danny McCoy, who's just one guy stuck in the middle of of hell, pretty much the world is is falling apart around him, and he's trying to carry on with his life and look after his family as much as he can, for as long as he can, with all hell breaking out all around him. I thought it would be interesting to look at a completely different perspective. So one of us will be dead by morning. Starts with a group of about 50, between 15 and 20 people stuck on an island on a kind of, you know, these horrible corporate team building activity weekends. So you've kind of got this group of people who they're only together because they all happen to work in the same office, and they're there. The rest of the world is starting to fall apart. They're getting little bits of it on the radio and through other means of getting messages, but they can't get off the island, and so this as they start to learn more about what's happening on the mainland with the the hater epidemic, if you want to call it that, and they're stuck in this small, enclosed, trapped environment thinking, Well, you might be about to kill me Next, or you might be about to kill me next, or did Barry just kill Keith? You know, that kind of thing. I'm being flippant here, and there is no Barry and there is no Keith, but you get where I'm coming from.

Michael David Wilson 33:50
Yeah, someone killed him already? Yeah,

David Moody 33:56
yeah. So kind of that. It starts off in a very different place, but then by the end of the novel, you straight back into real hater territory again. The second book, which I'm about to start, is called the other half, and that title will become clear. It's not just about the other half of the story. There are various relationship issues in there as well, and that's kind of a concurrent sequel to dog blood. So that will happen parallel with dog blood, and again, put a different perspective on what happened in that book. And the third book is the last British summer or the last summer, I'm not sure yet, but that's a Yeah, that's going to be, I think this one is going to follow more the traditional trilogy's route, and it will end up with a goddamn huge scrap.

Bob Pastorella 34:38
Very cool.

Michael David Wilson 34:39
Yeah. It all sounds fantastic. We've got some comments saying they love the title, the new hater sounds great. So,

David Moody 34:49
yeah, I'm really pleased with it. I think it will take a lot of people by surprise when you when you're when you're writing, and you're about to put that out to the public, though you're always unsure. As to how people are going to take it. The feed, the feedback to the pitch was really good, so I'm just waiting with waiting on 10 talks now to find out what people think of it. It will probably it's going to come out from Thomas dunbooks of New York again, which is great, because they were that they were hugely behind the success of hater, which ended up being published, I think, in about 14 different countries, and it was all down to the team at Thomas Bunn Thomas Dunn, so it's great to be working with them again. And I would guess it will be sometime next year, the book could be out.

Michael David Wilson 35:30
So will it be Thomas done in the UK as well? Or is that US only for the moment?

David Moody 35:36
At the moment, us only. I'm in a very different position. When, when I first sold the the original hater series, I was, I didn't have an agent, I had no experience. And you know when, when you're sitting on your own at home, and you're independently publishing your stuff, and somebody like Guillermo del Toro comes up and says, I want to buy the rights to your book. Then you just say, yeah. You say, Yeah, fine, if he'd said he'd pay me a stamp for it.

Michael David Wilson 36:02
Oh, something's kicking off in the background.

Bob Pastorella 36:07
That's a train.

Michael David Wilson 36:09
Bob, you know your microphone has a mute button, right? When the train you're in a live podcast. You might want to I'm

Bob Pastorella 36:22
reading it right now.

David Moody 36:25
I enjoyed that. That was the most American, American train I've ever heard. What was it saying? Oh, yeah. I said, when Guillermo del Toro, somebody like that, comes up and says, I'm interested in your stuff, then you, you will take anything, trust me, no matter how smart, how savvy you think you are, you will just say yes, and that's what I did. But now, yeah, the same thing happened with the books. I had a publisher that said, Yeah, I want to pay this for it. And instead of being all smart and clever and savvy and saying, Yeah, well, I'll negotiate with that, and you pay me a bit more money and you know, maybe I'll hold on to these rights and you can have those rights. I just said, yeah, there you go, which wasn't a bad decision, but when I came to make that decision this time, I got an agent, and he said, Well, hang on a minute. Let's look at it differently. So rather than sell all the all the publication rights to Thomas Dunn books, who just sold the US rights. So hopefully, before the book is released in America, I'll have a UK publisher in place as well, and other markets. Yeah, the

Michael David Wilson 37:28
advice that a lot of people are told is to hold on to as many rights as you can, and particularly when you've got infected books, when you've got that connection over in Germany with voodoo press, it just makes eminent sense,

David Moody 37:45
yeah, ultimately, if no UK publisher wanted it, then I'd be quite happy to do it myself. You know, it's a very different game. Now, it was, I think, seven, eight years ago that I originally sold the hater series. And I think, yeah, it's a completely different publishing landscape. Now.

Bob Pastorella 38:05
It's ever changing,

Michael David Wilson 38:07
yeah, yeah, definitely.

David Moody 38:09
So what was that Bob ever ever changing?

Bob Pastorella 38:12
Yes, it's ever changing. It's definitely not static at all.

David Moody 38:17
No, no, there's nothing. And it's, it can be hard sometimes to keep up with it, but it's a positive thing. I think it has to be,

Bob Pastorella 38:25
I would, I would think it would be positive. I tend to think of it that way. Yeah, that it's all good. It's all good. It's getting better, but it's a then you read something in the news and just like to groan, you know,

David Moody 38:42
I just grow full stop at the news at the moment, I hope we're not going to get onto EUs and things like that here. No

Michael David Wilson 38:48
one mentioned it, Dave, until you just, I'm just

David Moody 38:54
don't mention it. Okay, we're

Bob Pastorella 38:57
not going there at all. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 38:58
this isn't the Brexit podcast, unless enough people say that's what they want in the comments to

Dan Howarth 39:05
be to be fair, Dave, I can see the parallels between the referendum and heater. Nothing else has split down the middle. Yeah,

David Moody 39:12
I will make one, one comment. I've been working on a book series for a long time called the spaces between, and I've really, really struggled with it. It hasn't quite clicked. Basically, it's a book that said set in a kind of a dystopian UK. It's a few years ahead, and London has been destroyed by a terrorist nuclear bomb and and the power has shifted from the old establishment, the Royals, and not that they have any power, but the Royals and parliament, that's all gone, and we've got a new order based kind of where I am here in Birmingham, in the Midlands. And it's a long, convoluted story about how ultimately, things are exactly the same, and it's still people looking out for their own interests at the expense of everybody else. But I've really struggled with this series. I haven't quite managed to get the world right and and suddenly it's all clicked as a result of everything that's gone on over the last few weeks in British politics. I can now see the way that I think it's going to pan out, the way that it could pan out for the spaces between. And I'm just itching to get going on it. It's it's interesting. So, yeah, it's a pain in your ass. It's not great for anybody. What's going on at the moment, but it is good. Book podder,

Bob Pastorella 40:26
it's helping you out.

David Moody 40:27
It's helping me out. Yeah, well,

Michael David Wilson 40:29
I wonder if we'd have had a higher percentage of leave vote, as if you know, one of the perks had been creatively unblocked. David Rudy, that could have been a decent percentage of the UK horror market right there.

David Moody 40:44
Yeah, I'd rather have creative constipation than be leaving the EU but let's, let's leave it there. And Michael, you shouldn't have brought it up. Yeah, damn you. Michael,

Michael David Wilson 40:53
Dan, you're normally the scapegoat. This is just ridiculous. It's all gone wrong.

Dan Howarth 41:01
You just edit it to make it look that way. This is how the podcast normally goes. Me and Bob just ripping you. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 41:08
exactly. I'm being found out now. Well, we were talking about experimentation, and I mean, that's something you've been doing throughout your career, David, and once again, here we are, because you've been serializing straight to you on Wattpad. So let's talk about the idea behind that, how you're looking to profit from it. I mean, presumably, not directly in a monetary way. But I think an important question first, what is Wattpad? Wattpad

David Moody 41:50
is, I think is a really cool it's kind of a writing community. It's something that I've been involved with for maybe five years or so. It's just a really good platform. It lets people connect, writers of all abilities, connect and find an audience, find a community. I really can't remember how I first found out about it, but it's just seems to be expanding constantly. It's really nicely presented, great features, and they're starting to develop some really strong connections. For example, just out of the blue last year, I guess you've heard of the fifth wave that YA dystopian book series that became a film. Hopefully you've heard about it anyway, but I had, op had contacted me and said, Well, we know the kind of stuff that you write. And we've had so many pictures saying we want some people to write some original content for the fifth wave. So to tie in with the film release, we want stories that are set in different countries. So can you write something for us, which I did, and that kind of exposes you to another audience that you might not have had contact with before. So so they're great, and they're becoming increasingly important. I when I relaunched infected books back in 2012 I was I started with trust, and I thought it would be great to put that out week on week and try and build some traffic and try and get people interested. And I serialized the book on Wattpad, and it just exploded, and it's had several 100,000 reads now and again. It's great comments, and people are reading it every day, and that, for me as an author, that that's what matters. It's about getting people to read your stuff, and they read and they interact and they comment. And I just thought this year it as I said, it's 20 years since I since straight to you was first published. I rewrote the book a couple of years ago, and I'm I hate the original version. I should say the original version is so badly written, I cringe every time I look at it now, but I love the story. So a couple of years ago, I rewrote and re released it, and I thought it would be great just to put that version out, because it's something I'm incredibly proud of, and it's the kind of story I think that will benefit from being serialized, because it does build to a heck of a climax. So I just thought, we'll do it. It's 20 years on the 26th of September. So I'm putting it out a couple of chapters everywhere Tuesdays and Thursdays, and just trying to, again, build awareness of me. I've been quiet for various reasons. For a couple of years, haven't released a new novel since, I think december 2014 and I thought, yeah, really good way to to get people to make people aware of me again.

Michael David Wilson 44:32
And is there a way that you can track the numbers to see what kind of impact that's having early doors?

David Moody 44:38
There is, yeah, Another positive aspect of Wattpad is that you can they you can get great analytics, so I can see how many people are reading it when they're reading it, where they're from, what the demographic is. People can vote. They can share it through social media. They can comment on it, and it's lovely. It's really good. You. It's interesting how it lets you see immediately how things are taken differently around the world. I get a number of a number of comments from America, which I find really interesting. There's so many people down on the fact that I swear a lot in my books, but I wouldn't have known that. You know, it's cool. It's a very good service.

Michael David Wilson 45:20
We've got a question that's just come in from Thomas Joyce, and he'd like to know whether beginning writers would benefit from using Wattpad. And is there much feedback?

David Moody 45:35
Yeah, I think so, Thomas, definitely you benefit, because it's community based. So you can follow other other authors. You can, you know, you'll build up a little community there. You'll build up an audience for yourself, and you do get a lot of feedback. Your people can vote on each part safe if you, if you've written a 30 chapter book, you can put each chapter on separately, track each chapter separately, so you can see how many votes you get when people think it's good. You can see individual comments you get on each chapter, and you can edit what you've already put up. So it's not it's not carved in stone. When you've put a piece of work up there, you can go back and revise it. So I think for me, if, if I was just starting out, it would have been a phenomenal thing, because you've got that interaction with your readership, I would definitely recommend checking it out.

Bob Pastorella 46:28
Do you retain the rights? You do? Yeah, okay, yeah, because I know how some publishers are, you know, if you have something that they want that's been published already online with that, you know, they usually won't buy first rights. Yeah, at that point is that considered first right still? I mean, there's a lot of ways around it. I know that, but yeah, to be

David Moody 46:50
honest, Bob, I don't know, because it's not something that I've actively considered. The stuff that I've put on Wattpad is only the stuff that I've released through infected books. So I know that I own all the writings, and I'm not likely to, you know, if a publisher came up and said, we'll do a mass market paperback deal, then I'd say absolutely, yeah. But other than that, you know, I'm quite happy with how things are for effectively, right? Exactly. So

Bob Pastorella 47:12
yeah, would be, probably the only advantage would be, you know, if a publisher said, hey, yeah, we'll give you, you know, a butt ton of money, yeah, like, oh, sure, let's investigate. But, you know, but, but

David Moody 47:24
personally, from from my point of view, purely selfish point of view, I'm quite happy with the way things are going at the moment, because I like having books published myself, because I retain that control over it, and because, generally, you make more money from those books. The different difference I have is that I sell far more traditional books through Thomaston books and the other publishers I'm published with around the world. But for me, what I'm looking to do now is to keep a mix of both, you know, so I always want to retain some of my own and have some traditionally published, because then I can the risk of sounding really cheeky, just piggyback on the put on the marketing budgets of the bigger publishers, because if they're going to put a book out and put a lot of weight behind it, then then that's great. Let them do that, and then hopefully, if readers enjoy it, they can go back and have a look at my other stuff and pick that up without me having to expend a lot of money and effort promoting it that's very selfish and very mercy. But I think it's the way to go.

Bob Pastorella 48:25
Well, that if, if, if I was in your position, I would do the exact same thing. You have to diversify. Keep a lot of irons in the fire, try different methods. You're doing it all. So there you go.

Michael David Wilson 48:35
I've got to say it's great getting these questions coming in live. You know, normally we have a few from the Patreon, but yeah, anyone listening live now at any time you want to interject, anytime you have a question, even if you want to change the subject and get involved, leave a comment. Leave a question. We had a bit of train banter earlier after your interruption, Bob,

David Moody 49:01
I still got sorry. Up, yeah,

Michael David Wilson 49:04
it's infected all of us.

Bob Pastorella 49:08
That was a definite Texas, good old Texas train.

Michael David Wilson 49:12
There you go, good old Texas. But one of the biggest changes Dave has since we last spoke was that, instead of solely being a full time writer and businessman and publisher, you've actually gone back to the day job. So I know, yeah, I'm glad you know. What was it that sparked that change, and how has it been? And how are you managing to fit everything else in? Because I guess what's crazy is you've done that. You've gone back to your day job, but if people didn't know, you're almost doing more than ever. And, yeah,

David Moody 49:59
unfortunately. Which, unfortunately, I am doing more than ever. Yeah, what happened? What happened was, I go back. It's about four, about four years ago, we moved we moved house, and I thought nothing of it. I thought that's great. Got a nice new house, bigger house. Everything is great. On the outside, everything looked absolutely rosy, brilliant. But over the course of a couple of years that followed, I found out that I couldn't write. I thought, you know, I was putting stuff out, but not with the same speed and not the quality. Was good, but I wasn't as happy doing what I was doing. And it can be quite dangerous. And I think that you that you you undersell it sometimes. I certainly did. I mean, I was writing for full time for about six and a half years, and much of that time was just me sitting in my office here on my own, thinking about really dodgy stuff. And it hurts. It got to me. It really did. I suffered very badly for a while with depression. Didn't even realize she just caught me up and bit me on the backside. And I think there's a real stigma about it, and there still is. I think if I'd broke, if I'd broken my wrists, then people would have said, Oh, I can't write at the moment. Poor side. And then they've just been very accommodating. But to all intents and purposes, I looked exactly the same. I got this nice little office. Everything seemed to be going great, but the work just wasn't flowing, and I got myself into a really bad position. So I mean, the first part of resolving that was acknowledging it, which was hard enough. I'm sure that there are lots of people listening who've been through similar things, far worse things. I sound like a poor, spoiled lad, but it just it completely hit me. And I thought, once I'd acknowledged it, I thought, What do I do? How do I get out of it? It was, fortunately, my wife, who is absolutely amazing, she was there to kick me and prod me and put me in the right direction. But key to it was the realization that was, how can I sit here all day and write about people, and ultimately, that's what all my books are about. They're people who just happen to be in really shitty circumstances. I thought, how can I sit here and write about people when I don't know any anymore? And it was literally just me on my own and the dog here all day, every day, and it just stopped working. So yeah, going back to work was a master stroke, but it had a kind of a bizarre effect on me. I didn't go back to what I did before because, well, I'm ashamed to admit it now, but I used to be a bank manager. It's all gone now. I've got it completely on my system. Yeah, thank you.

Michael David Wilson 52:36
Listeners have gone now. It just they all signed up right? Cancel the show

David Moody 52:41
so, but I knew I wasn't going to plumb those debts again, right? So I knew I was going to do something different. So I just got a job. Really weird. I worked for highways England, bizarrely enough, looking after the Dartford crossing for those in the UK. You will know how interesting that can be at times, but I found that as soon as I was back, the word started to flow again. And within a couple of months of being at work, mixing with people having that stimulation, I had written another novel, and then we'd got the hater film deal, and then a couple of months after that, I had written the film script and everything, the writing has really got itself back on track. And, you know, everything, yeah, it's coming together again. The one thing I don't have is time anymore, so I will be looking, hopefully in the next 12 months or so, to kind of redress the balance and kind of split the work, the one work and the writing work, you're making them a bit more equitable, but really, I just had no appreciation of the importance of doing something other than writing for the writing. Does that make sense? Yeah,

Bob Pastorella 53:55
makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

Michael David Wilson 53:58
I remember when you first posted about depression and mental health issues, was it around the end of 2014 is that? Yeah, yeah, that's right, yeah. And, I mean, it's great to be open about it and to open up a conversation, because, as you say, it is something that well, first of all, it can be difficult to even admit to yourself that you deal with these issues, because you know you see people with other problems, and then you start justifying why your depression or your mental health issues you know aren't as good or aren't valid as a problem, but this is exactly why we need to talk about it. Yeah, you're

David Moody 54:47
absolutely right, and I know that when I post something on my website, I know roughly how many likes and how many comments I'm going to get. I know if I put something on about film, I'll get stacks 1000s. But what. Really caught me out was putting that article on my website. It was kind of a, again, sounding very pretentious. It was kind of a therapeutic thing for me to be able to put that on there and get it out my system. And be honest, it was like, almost like, you know, the cliche of the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, when everybody sits around in a circle, Hi, my name's Phil, and I'm an alcoholic. And it was like, Hi, my name Dave, and I've been depressed, and it wasn't very nice. Thank you very much. But the response that that article got was really humbling. The number of people that got in touch to say, Me too, number of people that said, Oh, thanks. I'm glad you said that. It may meant I could say it, you know, it's, it's, it's a huge thing, and it gets undervalued, unappreciated and unspoken about far too much. I think if I'd been aware of it, then I would never have got into the situation that I got into. I don't think

Michael David Wilson 55:51
and what kind of things do you do now, if you feel you know a dark episode coming on, are there things that you've found help?

David Moody 56:00
No, fortunately, I haven't had dark episodes again, because the biggest thing was acknowledging it, that that was my my issue was I didn't see it come in, and I wasn't even aware of it until I was so far down the line that it was a real, a real problem. But now I I know what it feels like. I know I know what it feels like to be good, to be okay, and if things aren't going well, then I, you know, I, I know what I did to put it right before I know what caused it. And you, once you've been through it, I think, and accepted it. And I, I'm maybe making this sound really simplistic, because I know a lot of people have far bigger issues to deal with than me, and it takes some people a lot longer, and often people don't get through it. And I don't want to sound like I'm trivializing at all, but once you've been through it and come out, I think you know what to look for in my personal position anyway.

Michael David Wilson 56:54
No, certainly not trivializing it. And I mean, it's such a subjective thing anyway, that you know this is your this is your experience. So yeah, being transparent and honest about how it was for you,

David Moody 57:12
I was gonna say what was really interesting. Now looking back, I think I might have mentioned this in the article that I wrote at the time, but when I look back at the stuff that I wrote when I wasn't well, and there is so much of me in those books, so much of nasty way, I don't really want to look at very much again. The characters were some of the characters and the things they did were horrific. I've written some of my it's got to be evening somewhere, so I'm going to swear I've written some of my nastiest bastards in that period of time. And I look back and I say, Oh, that was me. That's what I did and all that's my behavior. You know, it's, it's really kind of pretentious level going up again here. It's very therapeutic to do it, because you kind of wrote myself out of a bit of it. Well, put a huge down on the conversation we were having fun before that started. Michael,

Michael David Wilson 58:06
I know again, what? What the hell was I thinking? Absolutely ludicrous.

David Moody 58:12
Bob, get a train on the line. Come on. Yeah.

Bob Pastorella 58:14
I was just gonna say it's, it's very hard for people to, for other people who to actually deal with people who are depressed, because depression is the most personal of disorder afflictions, whatever you want to call it condition, and it's just, you know, I have a psychology background, but also, you know, grew up, you know, pretty tough dad, you know, hey, suck it in, you know. So you, you're kind of torn, but I've, over the years, I've just become a lot more empathetic and sympathetic to people who suffer from depression, because there's no way, if I don't have it, there's no way I can know exactly where they're coming from, yeah, and the only thing you can do is just support and care and love, you know? Yeah,

David Moody 59:08
one of the, one of the coolest things, it brought me and my dad very close together, because we had, I was, he was the first person I spoke to, and he did over that course of a summer when things were pretty grim. For a while, I spent a lot of time with him, doing various things, and at one point he just said, It's all right, mate, I get it, because it happened to me at your age, you know, and just to hear that that other people have been through this as well, and it's it is going to get better, and it's not going to end it's just so important to be empathetic and to talk to talk about it, you know? So, yeah, it's cool. We do need to talk about something different. Now. Do

Michael David Wilson 59:49
you think you'd ever go back to full time writing and if you did, what kind of things would you put in place to ensure that that didn't happen again? And

David Moody 1:00:00
I think I would, and I would like to, I'm really enjoying the other job at the moment. It's, it's a bizarrely. It doesn't sound it, but it is a lot of fun work with some really lovely people, and it's great. And right now, it does. It floats my boat, you know, it gives me something, it gives me something to some kind of inspiration. It's really bizarre. I have to just tell you this. When I wrote hater back in 2006 I thought, Danny McCoy. I've got to give him the absolute worst job imaginable. I've got to put him in in in hell, in an office. And so he works for the parking fines Processing Center, which is, which is where I work. It's where I've ended up. So as life imitating aren't 10 years later. But yeah, I'd like, if I could, to gradually withdraw from the other work, hopefully with that will coincide with hater TV stuff, if that's what it turns out to be, and other books coming on. But yeah, I think I'd be better at coping with it now, because I know that I'd know not to sit on my own at home all day, every day, but to get out there. And if that meant I don't know, volunteering, doing something, then, then I'd make sure that I did that.

Dan Howarth 1:01:15
So on the back of the changes that you've made, Dave, what what does kind of a writing day for you look like now, how do you fit it in around the day job? And right? I'm thinking, from your bio, you live with about 75 females as well.

David Moody 1:01:30
Well, yeah, my household, yeah, I did. Always used to joke about my household. We have got five daughters. And the line, we lost our dog as well at the end of last year, and the line always used to be even the dog's a bitch because they it was me and women, and that was it. Unfortunately, a couple of them have grown up and moved on. Some have grown up and moved on and come back again as they do. Another one's about to go. So it's very much a very changeable household. But my normal day, my typical day. Now, my writing work has to fit in around the other work, obviously, but fortunately, they're quite flexible hours that I do and I can and it works out, I usually get up early do a bit of work before I go out, do the day's work, come back and just work all evening, which doesn't sound very interesting, but writing work isn't like other work, you know? It's because this is what. This is me. This is this is my passion. So it doesn't feel it doesn't take, it takes effort, but it's not an effort to do, if that makes sense. It's not like when I look at something in the other job and think, Oh, I've got to do that today. Writing wises, I've got to do this many 1000 words today, or this many 100 words today, whenever it's very different. But at the moment, it does just happen to have to fit around the other job. But as I said, hopefully six months or so, I'll look to reduce the hours in the proper job and go back to the real job and just gradually move it over, and then it'd be back to what I was doing before, which was just getting up as soon as the house, well, as soon as the house was empty, coming into the office, switching off the internet, doing a bunch of work, because if you leave the internet on, your screwed basically.

Michael David Wilson 1:03:16
Well, I remember last time we were speaking, you were talking about a program called self control, which, you know, is a kind of way around having the internet on if you need to research a particular point, but you can actually block certain websites such as Facebook and Twitter and whatever else you don't Want to go on. I mean, there is also something called actual, real life self control, but that's bloody difficult.

David Moody 1:03:47
I use a program called freedom now, which is great. It just runs in it's just runs in the background on my computer, and I just start a session for I usually go for 45 minutes, because I find that after 45 minutes, I'll need a break, and I'm most productive if I do it in spells like that. So I will turn the internet off for 45 minutes, work solidly through that time. Then after that, maybe look at my emails, maybe check my sales ranks, because that's what all writers spend most of their time doing. I think, yeah, and then another 15 minutes or so I'm ready to go back and do another blast. So I'd normally try and do, I don't know, four or five of those 45 minute sessions per day, and that would typically get, typically get the right word count. And whatever the word count I've set myself for, any one project would be,

Michael David Wilson 1:04:38
do you find it difficult to ensure that you have a family and social life around that. I know it seems ridiculous, almost, but I mean, the amount of things I've been juggling recently, it was kind of getting to a point where I actually had to schedule to have a social life as well as. Doing things with this Sasara as well as teaching. I mean, I'm pleased to say that as of a few days ago, I've now gone full time, self employed with this Sasara and the writing. But it can be difficult to fit that social life in, yeah.

David Moody 1:05:17
And also, I've just seen a comment from from Thomas come up on the chat board as well that talking about, how did they manage to cope when the kids were young, right, right? Really, the key for us as a family has been everybody being in it together, because it came to a point where the writing was paying the bills. And once we've reached that point, you have to treat it seriously. You know, you have to give it the importance that it deserves. Because for a long time, my writing was the only money that paid the mortgage, and it needed to happen and but it's very difficult when you're working at home, for people to get their heads around that concept. People couldn't for a long time. People couldn't get that just because I'm at home, sitting in this little room and I've got music on and I'm wearing my jeans and whatever that that's real work still. And don't interrupt me and don't come in and don't phone and don't call around. You know, it's difficult, but in terms of the other end of it, getting a social life that's equally important. I think I don't like compartmentalizing life and putting things in boxes, but I do have to ensure that everything gets the attention that it deserves. Fortunately, Thomas, you'll find is when your daughter grows up, it does get easier as the children get more self sufficient and as they're doing things for themselves and for each other. So my wife and I do get enough time to be social now, and we do it, which is, it's nice. We do actually still like being social together, which is cool. And so, yeah, it but it is, Michael, as you say, it's almost a case of having to slot it in, you know, to to, yeah, almost set yourself an appointment this we're going to go and have fun tonight. All right, we've got two hours between 8015 and 1015 it's fun tonight. All right, stick with it. Yeah, my

Dan Howarth 1:07:10
Michael actually schedules other things in. That's the problem. Yeah,

Bob Pastorella 1:07:17
I don't think I could ever imagine doing that. It just, just a concept of, because I try to have fun every time everything I do, but it just, there you

Michael David Wilson 1:07:26
go, party. Bob, what's that? I said it's like party. Bob. Bob, I have fun with everything I do. Pastorella,

Bob Pastorella 1:07:35
it's just, it's like scheduling reminds me of, what's that? Uh, vacation, when Chevy Chase says we're gonna have fun no matter what, you're gonna be Whipple and whistling Zippity do die out your ass. We're gonna have so much fun. Yeah,

David Moody 1:07:49
I was a bit flippant and taking it to the extreme here. We don't really say like 10 o'clock to 11 o'clock is fun tonight. We it's just all I'm saying

Michael David Wilson 1:08:00
two hours a minute ago, you've reduced the window by one hour. Good filming now. It's an episode of True Detective

David Moody 1:08:08
Michael. I've got writing to do. Okay? The thing, the point I was trying to make is that you just have to be aware of all the different aspects, I think. And it's all too easy, particularly if you've got a deadline or something like that looming, to put all your attention into that. And it's not healthy, as I've found out, it's not healthy to do that. You need to walk away. And for me, it benefits the writing. I have to remind myself of that, that I can sit here banging out 1000s and 1000s of words because it needs to be in by this time tomorrow, but they might be crap words if I don't take a break and go and spend some time with the other half and the kids, you know. So, yeah, I wasn't really saying that we only allowed to lie between. I realized 10 and 10.

Bob Pastorella 1:08:56
I realized that just the way it sounded. Though it was like, Yeah, schedule, fun.

Michael David Wilson 1:09:03
Well. David Powell wants to know, what do you listen to while writing, what do

David Moody 1:09:08
I listen to? Yeah, I the one thing I can't listen to is people singing, and it's really weird. But generally I have to listen to instrumental stuff. I've got a playlist which is about eight hours long, or something like that, which kind of fills the whole day with all my different sessions. You know, my 45 minutes on 15 minutes after that, all those sessions, I have about an hour and it's all, it's pretty it's pretty diverse stuff. There's a lot of mogway in that, a lot of Nine Inch Nails. Yeah, I'm just trying to find actually, why we're doing this. I've recently book track. I don't know if you've come across book track, it's a company that that creates soundtracks for ebooks. The soundtracks run at the same time as your reading. It adjusts to your reading speed, so if it says there was a huge thunderstorm, you'll hear thunder. If the door. It open, you'll hear the door Creek open. And they wrote. They prepared soundtracks for a few of my books. And as part of the publicity for that we did, I sent them my playlist. I'm just trying to find if it's still available and we can put it in the I'll put it in the chat room if I can find it.

Dan Howarth 1:10:16
Because without sounding too bizarre, I read that interview that you did, I think was it on their website, or you link to it, yes, and your playlist was up on Spotify. And I must say it's very good, because I use it, or have used it in past, and it's, yeah, great. It helps focus the mind. So recommendation, but that's

David Moody 1:10:36
exactly it, that's I found that it does allow me to focus, and that's why I say it's that I can't do things with vocals. And it's really weird. It's like I'd concentrate on the lyrics and on the performance, rather than just going with the flow of the music. I'm going to find this link talk about yourselves.

Bob Pastorella 1:10:55
You're not the first writer to say that that that we've interviewed says they can't do anything with lyrics, really, I'm I'm getting at the point where I can't listen to me. I'll listen to music, but the lyrics, they throw me off. Yeah,

David Moody 1:11:11
I know that. Brian Keene, I think Adam Neville as well. Listen to a lot of heavy metal and read that it, it just wouldn't work for me at all. I know I'd get nothing done. I'll be playing air drums and all kinds, yeah,

Michael David Wilson 1:11:21
but the only heavy metal and I can listen to while writing is the kind of stuff where the vocals are so distorted that you can't quite make out what they're saying, unless you concentrate really intensely anyway. But I know something that Bob and I have been listening to a lot recently is that John Carpenter's lost themes, and that's something that's come up quite a few times on the podcast. Actually, don't know why I'm bringing it up again now I think about it, but interesting, yeah, for you David, I definitely recommend checking out lost themes and the remixed version. And I believe there's lost themes too, as well. And it's so it's brilliant. It really is. And it's great for writing to

Dan Howarth 1:12:10
jump, just jump in here as well. I think he's actually on a UK tour very soon. I know that he's playing a gig in Liverpool, I think in October, wow, Liverpool festival. But he's actually on tour, and I believe he's playing, you know, lost themes, essentially one and two on this tour, right?

David Moody 1:12:29
I've just found that link and added it to the the chat. One they would say is, yeah, John Carpenter, well, his films are incredible, and his soundtracks always stuck with me. That was one of the major things, I think Escape from New York never lived up to the soundtrack. For me. Loved the film, but the soundtrack absolutely blew me away. Interestingly, when, when I was very young, I was lying in bed, I remember and listening to my mom and dad playing music. And they they listened to Jean Michel Jarre. But then, if you know him, French, um, groundbreaking synthesizer, kind of guy who from the albums I used to listen to were his first albums from 76 and 78 and I've just always enjoyed listening to it was the first time I can remember lying there listening to music, and then just ended up with stories in my head. So I've always kind of listened to him. He released a couple of albums over the last six months or so, Jean Michel collaborating with various other electronic artists, and one of the ones is John Carpenter, and it's really interesting collaboration, so it's worth checking out.

Bob Pastorella 1:13:34
Wow, that sounds really cool.

Michael David Wilson 1:13:35
Oh yeah, I imagine that's going to be incredible and interesting news as well, that John Carpenter's touring at the moment. I might have a look at the dates and see if I'll be in the UK for when that's taking place.

Dan Howarth 1:13:50
I'm not sure what amounts the UK you might want to look wider you know might be, might be heading over your way, or or Japan or Texas in time, or wherever you're going to end up. Michael, yeah,

Michael David Wilson 1:14:01
well, I think in Japan, then I don't think I'm going to Texas, but if everything goes wrong, I'll just, yeah, take a plane to Texas and knock at the door, Bob, and then, you know, you can promptly direct me away and I'll take a taxi to max booth and go from there.

Bob Pastorella 1:14:20
Well, just come on down. We'll show you some good old Texas barbecue. There you go. Drake Drayton saw your style. It's all in the meat.

Dan Howarth 1:14:32
Is that another advert? Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 1:14:33
we've just gained another sponsor, but Bob hasn't told any of us about it, so he's just pocketing the money. Very wise,

Dan Howarth 1:14:42
it's not money. They're just paying him in brisket.

Michael David Wilson 1:14:44
Yeah, it's so the same.

Bob Pastorella 1:14:48
I was gonna say one of my friends on Facebook. I can't remember who it is. They saw carpenter play, and he opened with Escape from New York. So,

David Moody 1:14:59
wow.

Bob Pastorella 1:14:59
There you go.

David Moody 1:15:01
Very cool with

Michael David Wilson 1:15:03
John Carpenter. At the moment, he's doing a kind of media podcast tour, because I saw that Well, I listened to the podcast with Brett Easton Ellis about two or three weeks ago, and then he's just appeared on, I think, is it mark? Is it Mark Manon, I'm not sure he's very famous podcast, Joe Dante. Say that again,

Bob Pastorella 1:15:30
it's the, I think he was on there. The other guest was Joe Dante, yeah.

Michael David Wilson 1:15:35
So, I mean, I don't, I don't think he does interviews that much, but it seems like at the moment, he's on a bit of a tour. So certainly recommend that. And in fact, in the Bret Easton Ellis podcast, they play a little bit from lost steam, so it's certainly worth checking out as a taster for that too. So there you go. Very cool. Well, I wonder if you could go back in time. What advice would you give to your 18 year old self?

David Moody 1:16:13
Can I be pretentious yet again?

Michael David Wilson 1:16:15
Go on.

David Moody 1:16:19
Just have a bit of faith in yourself, because I think it's something that a lot, a lot of writers have issues with self confidence. And I know that as I'm writing a book, I'm thinking, this is brilliant. This is fantastic. This is the greatest thing I've ever written. And get to the end of it, print it off, or email it off, and I start thinking, that was terrible. Oh god. What load of crap did I really just email that, you know? But it's, I think it's so easy to do that. And I think as a, as an 18 year old lad, I was very, very guilty of that. And I'd like to just to go back and say, Actually, mate, you know, you can do it. You can write. People will like it. People will read it. People will enjoy it and interact with you. So just get on with

Dan Howarth 1:17:03
it. Were you? Were you actually writing, you know, as a teenager, when did you, you know, I know you've been kind of published for 20 years, you know, when did the kind of writing journey start for you,

David Moody 1:17:13
really? I did try, but didn't get very far writing when I was 18, when I left school, I wanted to go, I wanted to be a filmmaker. But I think if you go back however many years, that was nearly 30 years now, the opportunities to do that were few and far between. It's a lot easier now, because, you know, we've got films that have been filmed on your phone. You've got film we've got HD camcorders, we've got editing software in our computers, and it's easy to take that for granted to an extent. And had I left school now, then maybe I'd have done something different, and maybe I would just would have tried making films. But back in 1980 whatever, 8919 90, there was just no way of doing that. I did buy a video camera just to give it a go, but the quality was so crap, and it took me forever to edit and it was there was just no way that anything reasonable, watchable was going to come out of that. So that's how I got into writing. Really, I'd got the stories that I wanted to tell on screen, but no way of getting them on screen, so I ended up writing instead. I had quite a few aborted attempts between over the age of 18 and my early 20s, and it was only when I started writing straight to you that I got serious about it. And the change for me was was one, I was stuck in a horrible dead end job that I didn't like, and I needed a way out. But two, I set myself some ground rules, and they were that I had to write a page a day, and I couldn't go back until I'd finished writing. So I couldn't go back and edit until the draft was done. So I just started doing that a page a day, started on the first of January, 1994 that date is burnt into my head, and it was actually the May of that year. So about five months later that I'd got straight to you, finished, written, done. But until that point, I'd not had the self control, I think, to be able to to apply myself to a project like that. And

Dan Howarth 1:19:11
so in order to kind of get it over the line, how did you, how did you switch off that kind of, you know, the self doubt or the lack of self control that had been kind of holding you back to that point.

David Moody 1:19:21
I think it was purely just making myself right a bit of a day because I planned it. It was the first thing that I'd properly planned out so I knew how it was going to start finish, and what was going to happen in between. So that made it easier having a plan, but it was just doing it a page a day for a few weeks, it kind of chugged along, and then I realized I've got 50 pages done here. I've got 100 pages in. I've got 150 pages, and suddenly you got the book done. So you kind of, you give yourself the your own positive pressure when you work that way, I find I still do it today. I still say, right, 50. 100 words on this today, or 10 pages of this today.

Bob Pastorella 1:20:02
Do you find that you're a lot better off still planning everything out? Or do you prefer a more organic approach to it now? Or

David Moody 1:20:11
I find that I need to plan I've spoken about this with a lot of other authors, to a great extent, I think that we all do the same amount of planning when we write, no matter what approach we take, we all do the same amount of planning. Ultimately, because we're all in the business of turning an idea that we've had into a book that somebody else can hold or look at on their screen and read. And I think we just plan at different stages. Personally, for me, I like to come up with an idea, I have a general synopsis, I have that I'll just develop in my head, and they could be knocking around in my head. In my head for anything. I've got stuff that I've been working on for years, which I've never written a page on paper, but I'm just developing them in my head. And then once I've got the general idea and I know where the story is going to go roughly, I then start writing a full treatment, and then a kind of a pitch for myself, and then more of an outline, and then I take it chapter by chapter, and then I start writing. But inevitably, when you start writing a first draft, it just goes off in a completely different direction anyway. And for me, that first draft, whether you've planned it or not planned it, that's where your book takes shape. And then once you've got to the end of that, you I think completing your first draft, you're 70 80% of the way there to having a finished novel, and then it's about going back and putting that into shape and tidying things up a little bit.

Bob Pastorella 1:21:29
But I pretty much agree with that. I mean, I still find writers that say that, you know, it's all they fly by the seat of their pants, but you know, you gotta, there's no way you get you got to have a list, something to finish it. You can

David Moody 1:21:44
I think you can fly by your seat of your pants. And I think we all do to an extent I do, but I've got the safety net of having an outline prepared. But then, as I said, my first draft might go in a completely different direction. A good example of that is hater, and I won't say exactly what it is, because I don't want to spoil it for anybody who hasn't read it, but there's something that happens about two thirds of the way through the book, which turns the whole thing on its head. And it was one of the big talking points of the book when it first came out. I didn't know that was going to happen until it happened. I'd got halfway, three quarters, sorry, two thirds of the way through writing it according to my outline. And I was sitting there, and I remember looking at the screen thinking, yeah, that's all well and good, but what if, and then the book went in a completely different direction for the last third and I think if that hadn't happened, then maybe 10 people wouldn't have read it instead of the however, many 1000s bought it in the end,

Dan Howarth 1:22:39
exactly what does your what does your plan normally look like? Dave, are we talking it's a 20,000 word document, or is it just a sheet worth of bullet points?

David Moody 1:22:49
It's it's maybe a few sheets of bullet points. I like to take it to the point where I've almost got a chapter by chapter breakdown so I know roughly what's going to happen in each chapter. But as I say quite often, I won't follow that through. And what's really interesting for me is that if I look back at those after a novel's finished, if I look back at those initial plans, I can see that quite often I'll have stuck to the first third of that, maybe the first 10 chapters or whatever, but then it will start to deviate, and it's usually the very end of the book is completely different from what I'd planned originally, because you get to know the people that you've created. You get to know the situations that you've put them in. You know, I mean, you until you you know those characters and you know those scenarios, and you get to grips with where you've set the novel. You can't possibly know where it's going to end. So I do stick to the plan to begin with, but then shoot off in random directions.

Dan Howarth 1:23:42
And what about your characters as well? I mean, you know, over the last 100 episodes, we've obviously spoken to a number of different writers and some kind of, you know, write character bios, or, you know, a short story from a particular character's point of view that might be set in the same world as the novel that they're writing. You know, how does that happen for you? For

David Moody 1:24:02
me, I've tried that because I remember hearing that advice when I first started writing, and somebody said, you should know everything about your characters. You should know their favorite color, their favorite food, where they went to school. But for me, that that level of detail was it didn't it didn't add anything. So I just started writing. For me, character development is an integral part of that first draft, because I'll be going through and I'll think, right, this character now needs to do this to the other character anything. Oh yeah, but would he do that? Oh yeah. Maybe he would, because this happened to him once, and I remember writing the new hater book. When I started off, I'd got maybe three or four really well formed characters out of the 15 or so cast that we've got stuck on this, this rocky island in the middle of nowhere. But by the time I finished the first draft, I knew all 15 of them completely, and I didn't know them all to the same extent. The main character, obviously, I know a lot about him, because I know where he's going to go through the rest of the novels. But. Some of the incidental characters. I mean, I found out one of them was gay. I didn't realize that to start with, you know, I found that one was very devout. I didn't know that to begin with. And it's just that how they interact with each other that gives you these ideas, that lets you add meats to the bones of the characters.

Dan Howarth 1:25:17
And how do you kind of put yourself in you know, you've written, you say yourself, you've written some, some nasty bastards. Yes, was, was the guy I'm trying to recall it from memory. Was it Scott in strangers,

David Moody 1:25:28
Scott, Scott Griffiths. He was a particularly nasty bastard, wasn't he? He was

Dan Howarth 1:25:32
a, he was a real piece of shit. He was, how do you, how do you kind of put yourself in, you know, in that mind frame to, you know, to plumb the depths in that sense. I mean, I know we've talked about some of the things that kind of brought our character about, but if you were to kind of go back there, how do you think you could, you know, do you have any little tricks to kind of dig under the skin of a character? Or is it just, is it simply just through hammering away at the keyboard? No,

David Moody 1:25:57
I think a lot of it is from human interaction. As I said to you earlier, I realized that I was in trouble when I was trying to write about people without knowing any and for me, it's it's surrounding yourself with people, getting to know them and looking at how they react and how they don't react. And I'm not saying that I would put everybody that I work with or that I know into novels, but just from looking at people, you can see how they how they behave, and maybe that would spark something like, well, he's done that, but imagine what would have happened if he'd done that, or How would things would have gone if she'd have slapped her? And what if he's beating up his wife? You know, just think things like that, just the questions that you ask yourself. And with Scott Griffiths, as I was writing strangers, it just it really informed the plot. I knew I got an unhappy couple relocating from the Midlands to Scotland because things hadn't gone well at home. But I didn't know as I started writing how bad things were. And it's kind of as the book developed, that the gulf between the two main characters really became apparent. I guess that's the fast one of the Fascinations for me with writing is that you can, you can talk about these what ifs, these hypothetical situations and and just take them to their extreme. I wouldn't want to write anybody nastier than Scott Griffey. I don't think because he did leave a really unpleasant taste in the mouth.

Dan Howarth 1:27:22
Yeah, yeah. It's you certainly stuck well and truly in the mind after finishing strangers, in fairness. And just one other thing as well, which you touched on before research, what you know? How far do you kind of find yourself digging into, be it you know, kind of scientific or technical detail when you're planning something, you know, or even just you know as you're writing something out, you know, what kind of level of research do you kind of tend to do?

David Moody 1:27:49
Personally, I steer away from doing a huge amount of research, and that may be just because of the books that I write, the stories that I write other people. I think if you write something that's very specifically set in a period of time or in a certain circumstance, and you're going to need to make sure you've got your details right. But generally, for me, what I do is I put people who hope are well observed from from the people that I know, from things that I've seen, and I put those real seeming people into very bizarre and very extreme situations, so the situations themselves don't require a huge amount of research. That obviously there'll be occasions where I will need to look up, if the army were brought in here, what would they use, and would they do this, and what would the he call her, and what kind of weapons would they be using? But I don't go into pedantic detail, because to me, that's not important, and I like to write from the point of view of the general public, because I think that allows people to buy into the stories better. So if I'm writing from the point of view of Joe Public, chances are they're not going to know those details either. So there's no real need to get into the exact nuts and bolts of things. Yeah.

Dan Howarth 1:28:52
I mean, you know, that's one thing that does kind of jump out is, you know, you do have that kind of quality to be able to relate the kind of everyman, you know, the guy that you would sit next to at work, you know. And that's a real strength. And I think you can always tell, a lot of the time when somebody has done an awful lot of research, it's, yeah, you know, it's just that extra detail that, you know, they'll just kind of describe a gun, and they'll talk about, you know, how it's a specific special edition from a certain year or something, and you'd think, you know, this is something you've read about, and you thought it sounded cool, so you've slipped it in there, but it's taken me out the story for five seconds or whatever.

David Moody 1:29:30
When you can do that, you can open yourself up to criticism as well. One thing that I another thing that I do is trying to steer away from all kinds of details, like, I like, sometimes I'll set a book in a specific place, but otherwise I might just be very generic with the place names. Hayden, for example, takes place in an unnamed city. The sequels later go on because I want there was a specific reason for geographically locating the book to the east coast of the UK, but, but generally, I like to steer away from from those kind of. Details, because things change. I always remember when the first Sam Raimi Spider Man film came out, the original trailer for that had the World Trade Center, had him spinning the web between the two towers of the World Trade Center. And by the time the film came out, there was no World Trade Center. You know, I think if you, if you're writing a book that you want to appeal to somebody now, then they need to be able to look at it in terms of their world now, not in terms of something that's gone or something that they'll somewhere they'll never be Yeah. Well, I

Dan Howarth 1:30:31
mean, it's interesting really, because, and this is a question that I don't think I've asked you before, but obviously I'll save it for the live podcast now, where, where only disaster can come of it. The first autumn book is set in a place called Northwich. It's not that Northwich as well. This is what I was going to ask because I grew up in a town called Northwich. Yeah, I thought I couldn't separate the two, but I had to know how you came up with the name. I just made it

David Moody 1:31:01
up because I didn't think there was a place. Was a place called North I didn't do a huge amount of research there. Just feeding back, I've just tried to, to just just come up with fictitious places the whole autumn series. I don't think there's any real place names used, but unfortunately, it does happen from time to time.

Dan Howarth 1:31:22
Yeah, I mean, I remember when I was reading it, I said to my sister, said, Oh my God, this book is set in a town called Northwich. She was like, What's it like? I was like, It's fucking shit, just like real Northwich.

David Moody 1:31:35
But you know, the other extreme? I'm sure we've talked about this before, but the third the third hater book, is set in Lowestoft. And, you know, I've just come back from there today, and I like lower stuff. It's warmed on me because I've been going my mother in law lives there, and I've been going there backwards and forwards for 1011, years, whatever. But it is the back end of nowhere. It's completely out on its own. On the East Coast, it's the most easterly point of the UK. There's nothing we drive for four hours through nothing to get to it, and there's nothing there, really. And I'm saying that from it doesn't sound it, but I'm saying that from a position of fondness. I do love the place. I really do enjoy being there. But that fitted perfectly for the final hater book of the first trilogy, and it was brilliant having having that reality to base it in, because when it came to launching the book, I was able to do a talk at the library there, which was right in the middle of hater territory. And it was great to have that connection. And it got loads of good publicity. And on the back of that, we there's an annual horror convention that goes on each November there now. So it's great to have to use both options, but there's no there's no right or wrong way. It just depends on the story as to how I how I do it. The new hater book is is on an island which doesn't exist in between England and Denmark, called skek. What a ridiculous name, but it's there in my head.

Michael David Wilson 1:33:00
We're probably gonna have someone you know write in now and say, Oh, actually, I live on sketch. I

David Moody 1:33:07
live on an island of scare. Yeah.

Bob Pastorella 1:33:12
Dave moody starts doing research for his novels. It'll

David Moody 1:33:16
never happen. Bob, it'll never happen.

Michael David Wilson 1:33:19
We've got a question come in asking if you have any news on Book Two of Screaming Eagles, the

David Moody 1:33:27
news is it is coming, and I do apologize. I was originally hoping to get it done by May or June, and it's not done as yet. I'm taking time off over the next few weeks to really try and break the back of it. For those who don't know, that's a book series that I was invited to write, co write with a couple of guys, Craig deluy And Tim W long. Tim put out the first the first volume I'm writing the second one, and Craig is doing the third. Now, this one is going to need some research, funnily enough, because it's set in World War Two, Battle of the Bulge, and it's a really fascinating idea. Apart from being World War Two with zombies, which just sounds really cool as it is, we're each of us from different country, so we're writing from a different perspective. So I'm writing that. So Tim wrote the first one. What was his scored? His was Screaming Eagles, isn't it? And mine is the Red Devils, which is the British being parachuted into the Battle of the Bulge. And it's, it's just a really interesting perspective. So the news, I'm afraid, is it's coming, but not yet, hopefully just a couple of months now, and it'll be out, if not a bit sooner.

Michael David Wilson 1:34:35
There you go. David powerless skin, is the show going to be treated like a soccer match? And if so, how much extra time do we get? Well, hopefully it

David Moody 1:34:48
hasn't been like a soccer match, because most soccer matches are incredibly dull and uneventful and involve sitting watching 22 overpaid millionaires prance around a pitch and fall. Over if somebody looks at them, but I'm just not a fan of football, sorry.

Michael David Wilson 1:35:05
Well anyway, in terms of that, we've got about 20 minutes left until we come up to the two hour mark. So I'll say this, if people have specific questions, submit them now, and we'll get through as many as we can. So

David Moody 1:35:25
I guess I will say, after two hours, I will need a we won't be able to go on and indefinitely.

Dan Howarth 1:35:33
Yeah, yeah, I must admit, Dave, I'm on the the 18 minute countdown to seven o'clock at the same as you so, yeah,

David Moody 1:35:42
I was on a train. This is completely random. I was on

Michael David Wilson 1:35:46
a train. What have you done? David,

David Moody 1:35:50
I was on a train with a colleague going to Leeds the other week, and she looked at me and she said, 7.5 and I said, What the hell you want? About 7.5 it was the we scale, apparently, and it's out of 10, and that's where she was. So I'd say at the moment I'm I'm bordering eight.

Michael David Wilson 1:36:08
Well, I'm surprised. And you brought that up because, seeing as we're live and we're divulging all our secrets, normally, you just send me a WhatsApp, and I keep the conversation going and seamlessly. It's as if you didn't ever disappear. Unfortunately, Dave, it might be a little bit more complicated when you're the person we're interviewing.

David Moody 1:36:29
That's very true. Yeah,

Bob Pastorella 1:36:30
you mean I could do that?

Michael David Wilson 1:36:34
Oh, no. Choreographed, no. Like Dan has a medical note. He's got a very weak bladder. So, yeah, that's how that comes. I am next to the toy.

Bob Pastorella 1:36:46
You just gotta go, you know. Well,

Michael David Wilson 1:36:48
anyway, anyway, let's move away from the toilet talk, even though Thomas curious the same. Everyone just go and pee. Let's talk about who are some of the writers who intimidate you? Intimidate me? Yeah, well, I normally have the caveat, though, I'm not talking about some sort of physical your life is in imminent danger. I'm talking about the writing for ours.

David Moody 1:37:22
I'll be honest. I said earlier that I think a lot of writers have a lack of self confidence when it comes to their work. And I feel that. I think pretty much, whenever I pick up a book by anybody else and start reading it, I think, Oh, I wish I could do that. I wish I could write like that? Yeah, I don't know if there is anybody who particularly intimidates me, because I like what I do in the way that I do it. When I see a review that says moody writes in a very clear way, there are no metaphors straight into the point, I'm thinking, yeah, great, because that's what I'm after. But I do wish occasionally that I could be very beautiful with my pros and write something incredibly literal, but it's not going to happen. So I'm afraid I can't really give you an answer to that one,

Michael David Wilson 1:38:12
yeah, I think particularly if you're just starting out. And I remember when I first did the creative writing course at Warwick, and was exposed to a lot of different voices. Yeah, you can see people who are great in terms of literary descriptions. Then you can see someone with a bit of a more minimalist kind of tone, very much pared down. And it can be that, if you're starting that you want to emulate a little bit of everyone, but you have to find what is it that you're actually good at? Because, you know, it would be impossible to pack all of that into a story. Yeah.

David Moody 1:38:53
But that's it. I read. We went on holiday a few weeks ago, which is when I usually catch up on my my reading. And I was sitting around the pool reading various books by various people, and every time I read one, I was thinking, yeah, that's nice. I like that, but it's just not what I do. So I think it's about being a writer. Is about finding your voice and what, what, what you feel comfortable with. Because I think if you try and force yourself to write in a different way, with a different approach, it won't work. Certainly, for me it wouldn't work. I think there are some authors who can write in very in different genres, in different styles, but I feel that I've got not just one way of doing it. I think that's devaluing what I do and how I do it, but I've got a very different, definite approach that I like to take. You know? If that makes sense,

Michael David Wilson 1:39:44
yeah, absolutely. And do you have two fiction and two non fiction recommendations for our listeners? Well,

David Moody 1:39:53
non fiction sitting on my desk here. I've got a book that I'm halfway through which is very. They're both, they're both writing books. Is that okay? Of

Michael David Wilson 1:40:03
course, yeah. I mean the thing, the thing is, when we asked the question, we had absolutely no caveats to keep things as interesting as possible.

David Moody 1:40:12
Okay, well, the one of the books that I reread on holiday and really, really enjoyed rereading, was I'm writing Stephen King that just, it was great to read that when I was starting out, as you know, some kind of guidance, some kind of some kind of push, but it was even better to read it again, because I don't know if you, if you read on writing, it's kind of, it's not just a very dry textbook. This is what you do. This is how you do it. King wraps it around with his own life, so how he got to be a writer, and then a lot about the technicalities of how he writes, and then after that, when he had his accident a few years back, and how that put him back, and how he reassessed everything. And it's just a really, really useful book on it, as somebody who was coming from a bit of a dip in my writing. It's had a huge benefit, a huge impact on me. So I'm just in the middle of putting something together for my website, just just talking about that, another writing book which I've just started reading, and this is one that Wayne Simmons gave to me, and he's he's talked about this book a lot, so I'm really looking forward to getting into it properly, and it's by Lawrence block telling lies for fun and profit. So I can't say too much about it at the moment, but it's a definite recommendation. If Simmons recommends it with it as well.

Dan Howarth 1:41:31
Yeah, we're on board with it as well.

Michael David Wilson 1:41:33
He recommended it to me, I guess, about five years ago now, and I can, you know, endorse it, say it was certainly a very good recommendation, as are pretty much all of Lawrence block's non fiction books on writing, right? So

David Moody 1:41:51
you wanted two fiction books as well? Yeah, yeah. I'm just trying to find the exact title of what is one of the most amazing books I've ever read. It's called discovering scarf oak, okay, which is the name of a fictitious place. So scar Folk is spelled s, C, A, R, F, o, l, K, and it's just the most amazing, very funny, quietly unsettling book. It's really hard to describe. Basically, it's about a town called scarf Oat, which is kind of stuck in the 70s, and it's full of these amazing illustrations of different foods that were there and different public safety things. It's really hard to describe, but if you're of a certain age and from the UK, I'm sure you really appreciate it. Is just awesome. Does he have

Dan Howarth 1:42:39
a like, a Facebook thing about that scarf Council,

David Moody 1:42:42
yes, they do, yeah, and a Twitter feed, and it is just phenomenal. It's the most hilarious book I've ever read. I can't I can't recommend it enough. Another one that's there's going to be a article on my website very soon, but it is just amazing. And now I'm struggling, because one thing that I find, one of the things that Stephen King says, In on writing, and he's absolutely right, is the to be a good writer, you need to be a good reader and you need to read a lot. But you know, as we've already covered earlier in this interview, time is kind of at a premium at the moment, and it's not always been that easy over the last few years to do a lot of reading. So I could just switch back to my default setting here, and just recommend daily trip is again, which is the right direction, really triggered everything off for me. And I can't recommend that enough, because it's just an incredible book, totally ridiculous premise, written with such conviction, it's just phenomenal. And that it was reading that book that really got me interested in doing what I'm doing, and I wouldn't. I genuinely would not be doing it if I hadn't stumbled across a copy of that in my junior school library. And why it was in my junior school library, I have no idea, but I'm very thankful that it was so sorry to be dull, because you've probably heard that many times before, because I always mention that book.

Michael David Wilson 1:43:55
Well, I've heard it, but there might be people listening to the interview with you for the first time, who haven't so, yeah, I mean, if a book's good, it's worth keep banging on about it and getting as many people reading it.

David Moody 1:44:09
It's interesting, because that another thing about that book is that it has stuck with me over the years, and when I read it now, it still has the same impact that it did, because an author that had a huge impact on me growing up was James Herbert, and recently, I've gone back and read a few of his books, and after I finished them, I've sort of been really, honestly, 56 million copies. And he wrote some incredible books, but he also wrote some that weren't quite so incredible, but when I was a teenage lad, they were all amazing. Well,

Michael David Wilson 1:44:41
this actually ties in quite nicely to a question we've just had come in from Ross Byers. So he says, speaking of beauty in prose, are there any authors that you find yourself rereading for their writing? Well,

David Moody 1:44:57
I think there's, there's one example of that which. Which has really stuck with me, and that's cool. Matt McCarthy's The Road, which I think is just a phenomenal story in its simplicity, in its directness, and just the way that it's told, but for me, the way that that book is written is astonishing. There's no punctuation, sentence structures all over the place. I think that's really just the way that he wrote, but that book and the way that it was put together really blew me away. And I will reread that again and again, just because of the beauty of how he wrote it, because it was so appropriate, I think, to the scenario that he was writing about.

Dan Howarth 1:45:37
Yeah, really is an incredible read. Yeah, just to carry on the theme of questions that we kind of ask on a regular basis. So, you know, you've achieved an awful lot within your career. Do you have any, any white whales, any goals that you have, kind of, you know, yet unfulfilled, in terms of what you want to achieve?

David Moody 1:45:59
At the moment, I'm really sometimes I have to stop and look back and think, Well, I've done that, and it's really cool. It's hard to keep it in perspective. So I think really my aims, my ambitions, they change as time progresses. Right now, my two big aims are to get this new book series up and running the spaces between, and also to get this bloody hater film, TV series, whatever it's going to be made. And, yeah, that's that's as far as I can go for now, because I find that I approach, not that I've approached my career with any great plan at all, because a lot of it is just happy coincidences and things that happen to have worked out. But I think it's a matter of going step by step. So I think that if we do get this hate to feel more TV series made, my next ambition will be well that went well, or that didn't go well. Let's see what we can do next. You know, it's all built on what's gone before.

Dan Howarth 1:47:02
Yeah, it makes perfect sense.

Michael David Wilson 1:47:03
We're getting some Cormac McCarthy love in the chat at the moment, Adrian shotbol is asking if you've read blood meridian, I

David Moody 1:47:13
haven't. Unfortunately, not. Again, I'm guilty of not reading enough, but I've got more Cormac McCarthy on my reading pile, which I really want to get into. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 1:47:22
Thomas Joyce has just chipped in, and looks like he's recommending No Country for Old Men. So more reading for you.

David Moody 1:47:31
Yep, just add them to the pile. It means I'll have to go on holiday again, which is always cool.

Bob Pastorella 1:47:37
Yeah, I would second both of those

David Moody 1:47:41
books, brilliant. Well,

Michael David Wilson 1:47:43
what is immediately next for you? I know you've mentioned some different projects that you have going on, but if you could point people towards just one thing, what would it be?

David Moody 1:47:59
I have to go for the new hater series. For me, that's that's where my real focus is going to be over the next couple of years. I think the real public focus is going to be on there over the next couple of years. Unfortunately, I don't have any any details to back that up with, other than the fact that it's Thomas dun books, and hopefully it'll be sometime next year when the first one comes out. We're contracted to write them with a pretty accelerated timescale. So, yeah, the next one is due to be delivered by the beginning of next year, and the final book to be delivered by the end of September. So I'm hopeful September 2017 so I'm hopeful that once they're in process and they are being released, that they'll be coming, you know, pretty quickly, so we won't be too long await, but I've just noticed on the chat as well great British horror. I should mention that I have contributed a story to his forthcoming anthology, which I really, really enjoyed writing. Not going to say too much about it. I thought was a great, a great basis for an anthology. It's kind of looking at Little Britain and not that awful TV series in the past. I'm looking at looking at the country, and looking at the people, and kind of peeling back the surface, because there's often a veneer of respectability, and what's underneath is is very often anything but respectable. So it was great fun to write a story for that. I think if you can add to the comments, please, Steve, because I've forgotten, is it set December that it's due out,

Dan Howarth 1:49:31
I'll buy him a bit more time by saying the lineup is superb. Yes, the lineup for that book is great. I'm

David Moody 1:49:40
looking forward to reading the other entries. I have to say, ah, September at fantasy con, they technology is so wicked these days, isn't it? Yeah, I could have just checked my emails, but no, I didn't.

Michael David Wilson 1:49:53
Yeah, and I'll put the note in the show notes so people can check that out. But. But I'm sure if you're going to fantasycon and you want to reserve a copy, you can send an email to black shack books, and I'm sure that they'll sort you out with that. I hope they will, because I've just said it now, haven't I, well, what are the things that make you most happy.

David Moody 1:50:22
Oh, in terms of writing, I think I'm good to writing. I'm

Michael David Wilson 1:50:26
just leaving that open. I mean, you know, we don't want it to take a dark turn. This isn't like some weird question for the Annie Wilkes, who like to take it that little bit further.

David Moody 1:50:40
Okay, writing wise, what makes me happy is when people get what I'm trying to do. I found a great piece from somebody's blog online the other day about hater, and it was some guy he'd written how it had taken him three years to get around to reading it, but how he loved it and how it made sense, and you know, how it affected him, and it got him out of a dip in reading, which he hadn't been able to do for a long time, and it's kind of got him back into the spirit of reading again, and that kind of thing that makes me happy when you do something and it matters to somebody. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 1:51:12
absolutely. So we're coming up to time now. If anyone does have any final questions they want to

David Moody 1:51:20
ask, can I just say 9.5 on the scale? Ah, god, that?

Michael David Wilson 1:51:24
No, we're editing that out for the recorded version. And you know, if people like rich Hawkins came to this late, then they have no idea what you're talking about.

Dan Howarth 1:51:42
Shame on you rich. Come on. You can. You can listen to this other times and doing your wash up, you know, come on. Yeah, thanks. Then,

David Moody 1:51:51
can I just read out one of the posts that Richard's just put on it? I'm sure you've seen it. Can David tell Wilson and Howarth to get their arses in gear and finish their year at a zombie submissions, and I would second that There you go. No

Dan Howarth 1:52:03
getting away from it now,

David Moody 1:52:07
and anybody else another if we could just say before we disappear yet another month before the deadline runs out for pitching page that be the the 12th author in the infected book zombie. We've got some cool stuff planned for the second half of the year, but there's a big gaping hole waiting for somebody to fill it.

Michael David Wilson 1:52:23
Don't you worry, we'll be getting our entries in and having a crack at that.

David Moody 1:52:29
Excellent.

Dan Howarth 1:52:30
It's already on my white whale list. Don't you worry?

Michael David Wilson 1:52:33
Yeah, well, we've, we've committed it toward you now. It has to, has to happen.

David Moody 1:52:38
You have

Bob Pastorella 1:52:41
There you go. Where can

Michael David Wilson 1:52:43
our listeners connect with you?

David Moody 1:52:45
Okay, I try and be all over the internet as much as possible, so you can find me on all the social networks. If you go, first of all, I guess the safest place is www. David moody.net, which is my main site. There's also www.infectedbooks.co.uk which clues in the title. It's the infected books website. And, yeah, I'm on Facebook, Twitter. Also check out Wattpad. Please do because it's a it's a great platform, which is growing in importance almost daily. I think,

Michael David Wilson 1:53:20
there you go. We've got a big question that's just come in from Adrian. This is like a gold you're in injury time. Do you think people will ever tire of zombie fiction? Or do you think it will have everlasting appeal, like vampires and werewolves?

David Moody 1:53:39
I personally, I remember when I started seriously putting out zombie fiction, and I guess 2005 2006 there weren't too many people doing it. And I was kept saying to people, the bubbles going to burst soon, you know, soon, people, they're going to be really sick of zombie fiction. And here we are, 10 years later, and people are still lapping it up, because as long as people can write good zombie fiction, again, that's not all about the zombies, about comedy, ways of dispatching a zombie, but it's actually got a decent story and decent characters that you can get behind. I don't think that it will ever lose its appeal, vampires, werewolves, exactly the same. In fact, I think that there's a massive amount, if you did a Venn diagram of monsters, if you remember your GCSE maths, then I think there's a big area where zombies, vampires and werewolves, all overlap, and that is that they're just different versions of us. And I think that's where the fascination is. They might be dead, they might be hairy, they might drink him, might like drinking blood, but ultimately, they're all versions of the same thing, because I was watching Last Man on Earth, the 1964 version of I Am Legend with Vincent Price. And that's, that's one of the, one of the biggest inspirations for Romero's Night of the Living Dead. But it's about. Vampires, you know, there is such a commonality between them. So I think I've rambled a little bit, but the real answer to the question, I think Adrian, is that people will never stop being fascinated by different versions of us, because it's all about us and them or them or us. And

Michael David Wilson 1:55:17
that's another cheeky little plug for one of your books,

David Moody 1:55:21
cheeky little plug, an extra time one, as you say, yeah, exactly.

Michael David Wilson 1:55:25
Well, before we get some final thoughts from you, David, if I just hand over to Bob for a reminder of our sponsors,

Bob Pastorella 1:55:36
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Michael David Wilson 1:56:57
All right, fantastic. Thank you very much, Bob,

Bob Pastorella 1:57:00
no problem.

Michael David Wilson 1:57:01
And thank you very much to everyone for listening in. If you like this, if you want to see more Live episodes, then let us know, and we'll see what we can do. In fact, earlier today, I was speaking with Josh maliman, who's releasing a novella with this is horror for Halloween, and if you want to see that, we'll do a live show with him to coincide, to mark the occasion.

Bob Pastorella 1:57:32
It would be awesome.

Michael David Wilson 1:57:33
Oh yeah, I hope so. Anyway, I think it would be. But we've gotta, gotta find out what others think.

Dan Howarth 1:57:40
I wonder if it would spiral into the four hour epic podcast that we recorded in that time.

Michael David Wilson 1:57:48
It's a possibility there could be considerably more extra time.

Dan Howarth 1:57:53
I imagine Dave. Dave could be on 15 out of 10 by that point. Yeah,

David Moody 1:57:57
9.8 9.8 now I have to say

Michael David Wilson 1:58:02
I Oh, dear. So David, any final thoughts, hopefully on topic, not just to do where you're rating

David Moody 1:58:12
on topic, I would just say thank you very much for having me on again. And it's great to see this is horror doing so brilliantly. I think that you, you put a piece on your website, which I copied onto my website, about Michael, about how we've gone a long way back together. And remember when we first met in a pub in Coventry, when you did the interview for scream magazine, and you were talking about read horror, which you think it was at the time? Yeah, that's right, and your plans. And then we met numerous times after that, and you've talked about the chat books and everything else that we've done, it's been absolutely great to be there and to be a part of it. So congratulations on reaching your 100 episodes. As rusty bio said he's looking forward to the next 100 episodes. I am too. Please keep it going and, yeah, all the very best. It's brilliant.

Michael David Wilson 1:59:02
Thank you very much. What an amazing endorsement. And you know, rest assured, there will certainly be another 100 episodes, and I'm sure another 100 after that. So it's been a hell of a ride. But trust me, we're just getting started. That's

David Moody 1:59:21
great to hear. I think it's really important. So yeah, congratulations and thanks again for having me on. Thanks to everybody for listening. I don't know how you guys have felt, but the fact that we've been live and that people have been interacting and responding to me, it's added a whole new dimension. I really enjoyed it. So thank you to everybody.

Dan Howarth 1:59:37
Thanks for coming on, Dave. We really appreciate your time today.

David Moody 1:59:41
Oh, you're welcome.

Bob Pastorella 1:59:42
Yes sir, thank you.

David Moody 1:59:43
No problem at all. All

Michael David Wilson 1:59:45
right. Thank you everyone for listening in see my voice is going now. That's what happens. That's why they're there for three hours. It goes after two. Thank you so much. You're all amazing. If you'd like to support us. Patreon.com, forward slash. This is horror to all of those who listened for the full two hours. Wow, that's that's incredible. Thank you so much. If you tuned in late, don't worry, we'll be putting it up tomorrow so you can listen to it in its entirety. Thank you for making this a great episode. 100 for us. We'll catch you next time. So until then, have a great day.