TIH 608: Max Booth III on I Believe in Mister Bones, Forthcoming Ghoulish Books Releases, and Fruit Pies

Michael David Wilson 0:28
Welcome to This Is Horror, a podcast for readers, writers and creators. I'm Michael David Wilson, and every episode, alongside my co host, Bob Pastorella, we chat with the world's best writers about writing, life, lessons, creativity and much more. Today on This Is Horror. We are reconvening with Max booth third for the second and final part of our conversation. Max is the author of a number of books, including the most recent book, I believe in Mr. Bones, the short story collection, abnormal statistics, the wonderful novel, carnivorous, lunar activities we need to do something the nightly disease, touch, the night, maggot screaming and many, many more books and stories. Max runs the ghoulish Books Publishing House, the ghoulish bookstore and ghoulish Book Festival, alongside their wife, Laurie, Michelle and I also understand that soon they will be bringing back the ghoulish podcast, which last time they did it, that was so low, not with Laurie Michelle, in fact, but still very good. So this is part two, with Max booth. But before we get into it, a quick advert break.

RJ Bayley 1:58
It was as if the video had unzipped my skin, slunk inside my tapered flesh and become one with me.

Bob Pastorella 2:06
From the creator of This Is Horror comes a new nightmare for the digital age. The Girl in the Video by Michael David Wilson, after a teacher receives a weirdly arousing video, his life descends into paranoia and obsession. More videos follow, each containing information no stranger could possibly know, but who's sending them and what do they want? The answers may destroy everything and everyone he loves. The Girl in the Video is the ring meets fatal attraction from iPhone generation, available now in paperback, ebook and audio from the host of this is our podcast. Comes a dark thriller of obsession, paranoia and voyeurism. After relocating to a small coastal town, Brian discovers a hole that gazes into his neighbor's bedroom every night she dances and he peeps same song, same time, same wild and mesmerizing dance. But soon Brian suspects he's not the only one watching. She's not the only one being watched. Their watching is The Wicker Man meets Body Double with a splash of Suspiria. Their watching by Michael David Wilson and Bob Pastorella is available from this is horror.co.uk, Amazon and wherever good books are sold. Okay

Michael David Wilson 3:16
with that said, Here it is. It is max booth. Third on This Is Horror. So let's talk about what you're doing in terms of promotion for both your latest book, I believe, Mr. Bones, and then what you do generally when promoting ghoulish titles.

Max Booth III 3:43
I mean, I have a lot riding on this episode, to be honest. As Phil's promotion goes for my book, this is pretty much it, man, I don't know. I suck at promoting my own books. I think I don't know what, anytime I promote my own stuff, feels like, just like this immense, guilty sensation that gnaws at my gut knowing I could be spending that time promoting ghoulish stuff. That's also why I don't seem to write as much as I want to, because any time I'm spending time writing my own fiction, I can't focus on it because I could think of is I have so many ghoulish books that need to be edited right now, and I am actively not spending that time milking on them as awful to wait on me to finish them. Instead, I am self, selfishly writing my own stuff. It's a really odd balance. And Michael, I mean, you've you've published books by evil people. I'm sure you can relate. I've talked to evil friends who in similar things. He just had on a local friend of mine, LP Hernandez, he just launched his own press. I He was at the shop. Today and we will talking about this failure thing has just like, No, it's an odd balance of like, not neglecting all these evil people waiting on you to do things.

Michael David Wilson 5:16
Do you think that you might look at kind of moving away from your role as a ghoulish publisher to concentrate more on your own fiction.

Max Booth III 5:27
Oh no, I'm too stubborn. I think I'm just gonna keep doing it just like this until I die. I mean, not even joking, I think this is just the way it's gonna be. Always.

Michael David Wilson 5:42
Yeah. That's why I stepped away from the This Is Horror publishing stuff, because I wanted to concentrate more on my own fiction. So at least if I wasn't publishing other people, there's not that kind of guilt. Yeah, I think I too as well, like, because there were presses, like ghoulish and like tenebrous, and, you know, really good in the outfits that I felt that when I started this as horror, there wasn't as much. And it's like, would it? There wasn't really a demand anymore for there to be another novella, indie publisher. It's not like, Oh, Michael, if you go, where will we send an available lot of other places.

Max Booth III 6:29
Yeah, and back then, like, back in those early days, I feel like there was a shit ton of presses, but not really good presses, and we do have a lot more high quality presses now I think which is good I do sometimes, often, I think about like, how much more prolific I could be I would be if I wasn't running a publishing company with my own writing. Because I never do feel like I'm prolific. But then I think about like, how I have usually a book out every year, if not every other year, and that's pretty prolific. But I know I could beat so much mill I could I have. It's not like I have riddles block or anything. I'm Bill sting with new book ideas. In fact, I had this one. I'm not gonna break it into it. I had a book idea a couple days ago, and it's so exciting to me. I think it could be like a really big book idea, like an epic Apocalypse type of thing. I'm so excited to begin writing. It's not gonna happen for a while, because I have to finish the one I'm doing now, because my agent is waiting on it, and this new book idea requires, I think, a lot of research in outlining. So I'm gonna keep it in my brain and noodle around with it as I do evil things, but not gonna begin writing it for a while. I don't think, but if I wasn't running the publishing company, I could definitely spend no time. I would be done with the evil thing already, and I would have meal time to focus on this. Not the case, but that's okay, because I do like I think publishing. I don't know if I do, but I do it anyway, out of some odd obligation that I've assigned myself. I like publishing. I don't like disappointing people. I will commit easily because I get really excited about ideas and about helping people, but I'm also easily dismayed when things don't go right, and I get really bummed out when things don't sell, even though, like we might do the same things we do with a book that does sell well, and then it just doesn't look out the same with every evil book. It's odd, and like so much of the shit, it's just the chill men by luck, like the luck of, oh, if this, if this box company takes on one of these books, this book will immediately make back a profit, and everyone will be thrilled with this new audience. I mean, a lot of that isn't even up to us. We can, we can send, like, the emails out to the box, subscribe the box companies and be like, hey, consider, please consider this book as one of your monthly things, but one only happens once in a while, which is understandable, because, like all these companies, I have a huge selection like you can hope and hope that someone like on tick tock features one of the books and a review, and it goes viral. You could send the books to them, they could recoil the video, and it's still just nothing but luck that the algorithm is going to be annual favorable, and it's stuff like that that really just makes you like not excited about publishing this. Whatsoever. Yeah, I think that answers the question. I have been talking a while, and I don't remember what was, what the prompt was at this point.

Michael David Wilson 10:14
Well, I mean, the initial question was about what you do in terms of promoting and marketing for both your books and for other books with ghoulish and I mean, I hear a lot about what you're saying about luck and chance coming into things because, I mean, for me, The Girl in the Video, which I put out with ghoulish books that has been by far my most successful book in terms of, like, commercially and in terms of really getting out to readers. But I don't feel that like I did drastically less for the other two books, you know, in terms of the promotion. But of course, you know, the one thing missing was, you know, it not being with ghoulish I suppose I was gonna say it wasn't with another publisher. Hang on, how so bad memories was cemetery gates media. But, yeah, you know, so it goes

Max Booth III 11:16
well so many things. I mean, it also depends on, like when it came out. I mean, anything coming out and since, not to get political, but anything that came out since Musk took over, riddle, I'm sure, has seen less cells than it would have, because once upon a time, that fucking site was so good for cells we did, like an excellent Kickstarter, little campaign, and I've been so afraid to do it another one since, because when we did it and we will successful, I think a large pill of that came from twiddle, and now I don't think we would have even close to the same activity bill than we did before. So it so little, so much against every book that comes out that is so beyond anyone's control. I mean, if a book comes out the same week as, like, I don't know, a fucking the capital is streamed. No one's buying your book. No one's talking about your book. Any promo you do, it's gonna get drowned out. I mean, still, so many things that we cannot control, and we all just try and like, just throwing these books out, hoping they get some type of audience. And it's difficult, almost impossible, to know what the hell it is. I mean, I think it would be different if we were a huge company, we had a ton of money, we don't. So, I mean, we just have to try doing things that we can do. I mean, we have we get books out. We get the ALC is out. We try doing fun graphics. We have a book shop. We do events at the book shop. We do a fucking huge book festival in San Antonio that gets a lot of traffic, and we have these books front and center to promote. I mean, that helps a lot. We have all types of like books google has published displays in the book shop. So when people come in, we they know that we'll build in just a book shop, we'll also a publishing company. And these are the books we've published like, it's like the most fucking front and sent all display you can hope fill, I think, when it comes to a book shop and evil book shop stock us we have will not just an Amazon press. We upload, we'll print on demand, but we have. We go through Ingram, we go through lightning sales. So like the books will available, fill books, shops to stock. We do a good discount. We do routine ability so people to if they don't sell, they can return to us. That's okay. I wish they wouldn't, but we allow it, because that's what makes book shops us suck us. We do podcasts. I haven't been as good with updating the podcasts, but at one point I was doing like, fucking three different podcasts, mostly for the point of promoting the books we publish. I mean, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I recall Michael with the book we did. We had that fun thing we did with revealed Phil. We really spent a night just like taking photos of really as Bookstagram accounts, like little home pages, and then printing them out into Polaroids and just mailing them to them. I don't know if that actually helped with cells at all, but I've never felt known like a creep in my life. A

Michael David Wilson 14:51
lot of people kind of commented on it being a cool little feature, yeah. Okay, so I mean, I definitely. Certainly don't think it detracted from sales, let's say that. But yeah, with The Girl in the Video, just a lot of things seem to come together at the right time, but it's interesting, and this has happened to a number of people, because I'm now in this position where my debut book has been far and away the most successful and I would, I would like another book soon to at least, you know, match that, because it's a weird feeling, yeah, like, I don't want to peak with my first book. That's not a good thing, right?

Bob Pastorella 15:37
I mean, you never know which books gonna be it though, you may, you may feel that that first book was your peak,

Michael David Wilson 15:45
but, I mean, I hope it wasn't. It is at the moment, I'm just saying, Guys,

Bob Pastorella 15:51
you may feel that now, but you know, two, three years down the road, you may have something come out and you're gonna, you're gonna go, Oh, wow. Okay, you know, I always think, look, look, look for the future, because you don't know like what we're talking about. Prime example, I got a book coming out in June. The whole fucking world could end, you know, but my book's still coming out. So

Max Booth III 16:21
I mean, not if it, not if it ends, that's

Bob Pastorella 16:24
true. Well, yeah, you exactly. But you know, if it doesn't end, then I'm just saying. I'm using that as an example. The thing that you have to do is that no matter what, no matter what the circumstances, you still have a job to do. You still have to to promote your book, you know. And you have to, kind of like with the shape the world's in right now, I'll be damned if someone's going to stop me from promoting my own book. Let's put to you like that. And that's, that's, that's the attitude that you need to have. This is, this is what I have to do, you know, and I'm not gonna apologize for it, and matter of fact, I'm being sufferable about it. So that's just me. It

Max Booth III 17:09
really is unexpected. I mean, like I thought my novel touch the night would be like my big breakthrough, and it didn't really get read that much at all. But then a book that I kind of just threw out randomly the for no reason, my novella, we need to do something, came out a few months before touch tonight, and that is my biggest selling book today. I mean, became a movie. I don't think it's my best book. I think it's okay. I'm super great. Feel that picked up an audience. Neville once expected that to happen even before the movie thing happened, it was fucking selling like crazy, and I don't know why I threw it out. I we published it on Saturday night with I never even mentioned the book existed until it was out that night, and somehow it just took off. So I don't understand how anything looks publish it. It doesn't make any sense to me. I just think the one thing they do know is, if you have a clear premise, and you could pitch it to somebody in like half a sentence, you can probably sell it pretty well.

Michael David Wilson 18:23
Yeah, yeah. I mean, the more that I've, like been considering marketing and promotion recently, the more I just think the only thing I can do, or a good use of my time, is to just write the next book. I'm just convinced just, you know, keep putting out books. Write the next book, like, obviously, I'll do a bit of promotion. I'll go on other podcasts, I'll mention it. I'll, you know, send, send stuff out to reviewers. But beyond that, just keep writing. That's all you can do. And I mean, with my next book, daddy's boy, which you've both read. I feel that like this could either absolutely tank, because people are like, What? What the fuck is this? Or it could, it could tap into something. It could tap into some weird niche market and then be my best book. And I don't know, I feel it might go one of those two ways.

Max Booth III 19:22
Yep, so options,

Michael David Wilson 19:27
it gets, like, middling sales.

Bob Pastorella 19:29
I don't think it's gonna be Midland. You want it to be polarizing? It's definitely not gonna be Midland. You know, the people are gonna have strong, strong feelings about daddy's boy, I promise you. And that sounded way bad, but yeah, you know what I meant.

Max Booth III 19:44
Yeah, it's so funny, I think, and also frustrating and depressing, like how the way we talk about these books, like how we basically on title, like emotional real estate depends on if. Can convince people just to read what the fuck we wrote. Meanwhile, you see, like huge fields, they don't have to fucking do anything. Basically, at this point, it's like, do you understand how good you have it? You don't, I don't think you do any. Bill John Grisham, you bitch came to mind.

Bob Pastorella 20:23
Dan Brown, the secret of all secrets, really, you titled your book that really, Dan, it's like, we know,

if I, if I would have pitched something like that to max, he'd have been like, Hey, dude, that titles gotta fucking go.

Max Booth III 20:45
I don't know about this book. The guy who wrote,

Bob Pastorella 20:51
yeah, his his new book is titled The secret of all secrets. What is it?

Michael David Wilson 21:01
Or for Max? That.

Bob Pastorella 21:04
I'm like, that's the most generic fucking shit I've ever read. Title wise, mentor life, the title of all titles.

Max Booth III 21:15
But like, you know, like people sometimes I think they mistakenly think, like, the dream is that bridles have it's like to be so famous, you know, there'd be, like, a recognizable name to have all these movies made and so on. Those are all like symptoms of the dream. The dream is just to have an audience, right? It's just to have people that you know are going to read the book when it comes out. And you don't have to, like, keep yourself up at night one knowing what you've done wrong, that no one read the book. That's all, that's all we want is for people to read the book. We spend all this time, I mean, so much time that anyone listening who doesn't write, they just, there's no possible way they can comprehend how much time we all just spend trying to make a book Good, and then it comes out. And, like, maybe no wonder it's it, and that's really sad.

Bob Pastorella 22:11
It's also very full of anxiety. Yeah,

Max Booth III 22:16
there's a lot of like, why am I doing this? Am I wasting my time? Should I? I mean, it's these little questions you sometimes ask, but like, it's not the the the answer is, it's not about that. It's not like you write because you like you want to you will really you write because you don't know what else to do, right? I mean, it's what you do. Is what you wake up and what you've like, like all three of us, I assume it's always what we've wanted to do. I mean, for whatever reason, something in old DNA is just was designed a specific way that the only way to get that specific chemical reaction in old brains is when we all fucking creating pros. And that's, that's still thing as little people, they, you know, they get that playing basketball, they get that, you know, slash in the throats of the homeless, any, anyone has like a thing, writing fiction,

Michael David Wilson 23:20
yeah, yeah. I mean, I nearly had a breakdown the other week because I had this kind of crisis of identity. And I was like, you know, I've basically staked so much of my life and my career on writing. It's like, you know, I've always taken jobs that would facilitate me being able to write more. That's what it's all kind of about. And I was like, are are the sales really here? Am I really fulfilling this? Have I wasted my potential? Should I have done something else? But yeah, I kind of had to take a step back and have a word with myself, really. It's like, well, you you're enjoying writing, yeah, and like, what? Why is it that, you know, my brain has got it that, that it would be a more valid book if more people had read it, or more people had bought it. It's still the same fucking book. But there's something, I guess it's the media. It's this message that we're given, that we're told, if it sells more copies, it's a better book, it's the same fucking book. I

Max Booth III 24:33
desperately wish I could tap into whatever magic stuff was happening to me when I was a teenager. Well, even younger than that, I would just write non stop all the time. I had no desire to show to anybody. I was just having fun coming up with crazy shit in a notebook. Like, how do I get that again? You know? Well, I'm not dependent on, oh man, I hope fucking I can sell this when I'm done with it, so I can feed my. Family, that would be a great thing to tap back into. And like talking about this, it also reminds me of what I was talking about previously, with a running ghoulish and like, if I enjoy it or not, one of the big reasons why I continue doing it, it's just I've been with different presses before with my own books. A lot of the times, it's been really disappointing, and for various reasons, some reasons I can't even talk about now, do the NDA subside? But, uh, there's like, something in me that insists on trying to maintain at least an if not a great press, an ethical press, one build someone's not going to feel like cheated at they might feel disappointed the book didn't do great, but hopefully they don't leave the publishing. They don't leave ghoulish thinking, wow, I got fucking scammed, and I can't trust anybody, because I think that is not as common as people may think. It's an industry of disappointment and scams I find, and I also just love I'm addicted almost to like the feeling of giving someone a home fill a book they wrote when they like that's not like an easy thing. It's like to be able to have the experience and the like, the skill and like the equipment needed to read someone's book that they wrote that they spent all this time writing, to read it, accept it and give it a home, a place they can say, Oh, my book is published, and this is the fucking thing I wrote. Because so much of the stuff we publish is not stuff mainstream publisher publishers will going to be interested in. We do a lot of fucking strange things. We have a lot of strange things coming out this year and even that next feel we have some stuff that no mainstream press would ever touch, that we haven't announced yet. And you know, it's, I think it's meaning you feel that like do that. It feels like a good syllabus to do. It makes me feel good, like, the same way I felt good, like taking in that old dog. It's not quite the same thing, but, like chemically this, it's the same thing of it's the same cauldron of, like witch soup. You know, they have similar little flavors in my brain. And if you're not living a life, will you do things that make you feel good? And you make adults feel good by doing those things. What is the point? I don't know.

Michael David Wilson 27:45
Yeah, and I'm appreciative ghoulish, because, I mean, the these days you're consistently publishing dangerous later books, and dangerous later is one of my favorite authors. But you know, like you say, if not ghoulish, then who? Who's gonna, you know, not not just publish, but publish with the enthusiasm and the excitement that you do.

Max Booth III 28:11
It's so crazy to me, is with that angel specifically, because I do view him as, like the mad on Vonnegut. Basically, it's like, yeah, we don't live in a fucking time now, though, someone like Vonnegut can just come along and become the fucking sensation he is throughout the planet. We just don't have those opportunities now, the the internet maybe, I mean, it's just like, everything branches out now, and there's all these different sub categories and sub communities and those now like big, open opportunities, feel rattled that strange and funny and just fucking Brazil and like, that's what Daniel sladel is, is like we people need to publish. Need to make these books available so people can read them and get that same fix that they got when they discovered Vonnegut for the Phil's time.

Michael David Wilson 29:05
Yeah, yeah. It's a fucking tragedy that he hasn't been published by a major, big publisher. You know, this is

Max Booth III 29:15
press is all afraid of calm, I'm telling you,

Michael David Wilson 29:19
yeah, yeah. Bob, you were gonna say something, but maybe that, I

Bob Pastorella 29:28
mean, just describing danger is the modern Vonnegut is, it's AP, but I think that, like Michael was saying that a big publisher should he, he's definitely one that would probably benefit from a big publisher, but publishers like Max said they don't, they don't like to come. So

Michael David Wilson 29:52
it is not just about to come. It's not, it was a lot of come in starlet, but if you will. Red House, a rot Well, I mean, he's probably a splash, but he's been

Bob Pastorella 30:06
building up to it a spa.

Max Booth III 30:09
Yeah, yeah. I didn't mean just come, but I mean, he writes the type of unafraid material and honest as well, from someone who grew up in like bizarre roots that you just didn't see mainstream people really give a shit about? At least in my experience, I'm sure someone listening is going to name like fucking, a dozen books that came out through mainstream presses that could be compared to what he does, in which case, good job. You read more books than I do. I'm busy fucking running a press. Congratulations. If they

Michael David Wilson 30:45
can, please write in, because, like, if they're a mainstream publisher,

Max Booth III 30:49
don't write in. I don't like being corrected. Write to me not to max out. Don't, don't CC me. Yeah. I like being right. I don't want to be proven rod, yeah,

Michael David Wilson 31:01
well, I mean, talking about the books that ghoulish you're putting out or have put out, I mean, what is, let's say a novel and novella and a short story collection you put out last year that you want more people to check out. I mean,

Max Booth III 31:17
there's a lot of books that we've published recently I'm blanking on like, if these all came out last, feel specifically. You'll do you'll be feel as well. But like recently, we did haunted heralds by Lucas Mangum. He's really prolific. He's also a close friend of mine. He lives in Austin. Phil is listening. I'm in San Antonio, so it's like a 60 minute drive. This book by Lucas is unlike anything he's written. He's usually he writes a little extreme stuff, but this one is pretty light, and it's almost like an emo book, if, like emo was the sub genre of the rule. It's a coming of age Emo, ghost novella about these three kids, three like 19 year old. So it's not let kids. But if they do like a band, they have a band. They do, and they do, they look at a DIY haunted house attraction, and it's just really moody, and the vibes will so great. And I'm a huge fan of this book. And the front capital by Betty rock steady happy bill today, buddy, she's accepting commissions. It's really great. Also, a debut novella came out last year through us called pocket knife kitty by Shannon Riley, really gross book, really great book. It's kind of like a combo of it follows meets promising young woman. It's about like a STD type of cool see, fuck somebody and then you bring the cool son to someone else. It's called pocket knife kitty, because, you know, Kitty is also a real people use film. I don't want to get political, but vaginas, that was a good one. That was my favorite of the political jokes. If I was ranking them, that would be top one. My brain is a pinball machine. You guys, this is

Michael David Wilson 33:19
gonna be very confusing for people who have started listening to part two and not part one. Do you mean political jokes?

Max Booth III 33:31
You asked like I began the filth episode by announcing, by the way, I'm gonna begin saying I don't want to be political fools. No disclaim bill, although I did think I was gonna say that like yesterday, and I thought I had the idea of doing the political thing yesterday, and I just thought, yeah, that's gonna be good. That was correct. It's going over well. But also, if you, if anyone listening, is into like westerns and like UFO shit the check out the flesh inhalants. That is a novella by an a new, awful name, purely mistrel. Apologies if I mispronounced his name. I have a speech impediment. But really great novella. He has such a great voice and Felicity. His debut book is crazy to me. It's basically, it takes place in this old west town, and something falls from the sky, and a bunch of people begin going out to see what it is. And basically, it's something mysterious that makes you your true self. So the two main kills in the book, one is a trans man, one is just a gay man, a cis man, and they don't know each other, but they meet along the way, and those great cowboys. Accident, but for going out like seek it to see if this is true, if it doesn't, make you the true self, but then those alien stuff going on, it's really great. He also has a shield, surely in the last issue of ghoulish tales. Ghoulish tales, three great shields. Really great issue. The magazine, probably the best issue so far is foolish tales three. Love putting that magazine together. That's probably enough. Just listing promo, though anyone listening to this is just going Skip, skip, skip. Well,

Michael David Wilson 35:37
it occurs to me too, you know, while you were saying that, and this isn't a new thought that I've only just realized, but that you put out a lot of debut authors. And you know, there are a number of indie presses where they'll play it a little bit safer and more conservatively, they'll just put out almost like known quantities. But for you, you're really saying we're going story first. If it's a good fucking story, you'll put it out. And I, I almost wonder, from what you've said, you know, if you you want to find debut offers. So if you, if you only had one kind of slot left, and it's this amazing debut, or it's this also very good book by the established author, if you'd want to put out the debut, because you know, you're making that dream come true.

Max Booth III 36:33
I mean, depends on the quality of the book, 100% Yeah. I mean, we even the next issue of the magazine we have coming out, ghoulish tales issue Phil which comes out in the spring sometime when we open fill submissions for that one, we specifically only open to rivals who had never been published before, because we wanted to give them that opportunity. We paid some of the best rates that you'll see in right now, which is 10 cents. We do that for every issue 10 cents. Feel grilled. We found five really good story that we accepted, and I'm really excited to you know, they get that mag, that issue out in the next couple months, probably next month, I guess, because we want it out in time for the fest. So somebody, namely Max booth, needs to get that thing finalized. But we have a little like debut books coming out this year. We have the debut in novella by Valentina roja is coming out in Milch called the Feast of putrid delights. That's actually the only debut book we have, the shield. I was just looking at a list, but we have Bob's book, but he's not a debut author, so he's not as special. But we have Bob's book coming out in June, and it's really great. It's like fucking Fright Nights meets. What? What did we say? Suicide Squad? No. Suicide

Bob Pastorella 38:00
King. Suicide Kings, a movie

Max Booth III 38:02
many people know about.

Bob Pastorella 38:05
If you've never seen Suicide Kings, you should watch it. It's a one of Christopher Walken best films.

Bob Pastorella 38:27
It's my debut solo novel? Yes, yeah, it is. I guess

Max Booth III 38:32
I should begin. We should begin talking about an, uh, promoting it that way, huh? I didn't even, it didn't even appeal to me that it was like a debut solo novel. That's a great point. I have two books contracted for 2026 both novels, both by debut authors, and both will just absolutely mind blowing. We haven't announced them yet, but, man, I'm so excited to get those out, and also everything else out. We have plans. We have a new Nadia Vulcan collection coming out this year. One of my favorite shields truly rivals. I am so pumped up that we got this book from who just absolutely thrilled. I mean, it's called issues with the thrill. The is two novellas in the novelette. The novelette was previously published before the Nevada one of the novellas was previously published as a limited edition thing through dim shields publishing. It sold out immediately. 150 copies sold out so no one else can get it. I read a copy of it. She asked me to blow a bit, and I read it. And I was like, Nadia, let me publish this once. I mean, it's so good. It's the novella, specifically, is called Red Skies in the middle name. And it's basically like, what if the curls from the ring was a thing that the government could control? It's fucking mind blowing. And. And then she just wrote a brand new in the it was gonna be a novelette, but it became a novella for the collection, and I haven't, haven't even read it yet. She just sent it to me last week, and I'm super excited to dig into it. Yeah, we also have Ryan Bradley's new novel coming out this field, called Say uncle. And you guys, I think would love it. It's fucking hell. Rachel beats Uncle Buck. It's so funny. And Ryan's a good pal in my He lives up in Austin as well. And, you know, we do events so you have little and I, I've read his evil stuff. I was, I took a look at this novel, best thing he's ever written, in my opinion, it's just it's so good, and I'm excited about all the stuff we have coming out. We have a new book by Jess Hagman coming out this year. She wrote a book called head cheese, which came out fuck it came out through a press a while back in like 2018 or something, that press went out of print. They went bankrupt, or whatever. Although press now loved head cheese, it's like the way she writes is really transgressive, and the way that, like old school Chuck Palahniuk was, it still is. I don't know why I said was, but I guess because I haven't read his I haven't read in a while, is why I was speaking like in the past tense. But she's great, also a local to Austin, a lot of Texas awful this year, but she has a new book coming out called metal eating that I'm in the process of editing, and she is really much waiting for me to finish those edits. It's a big book. It's like almost 100,000 builds long is, see, it's basically the whole thing with Marie Antoinette. I think I said we'll name one, right? And all that. You know, she was decapitated and so, so you guys know, but it's re imagined as a modern day sex cult in Austin, Texas. It's really insane and violent and graphic and just really cool. She's a great rattle, and I'm just, yeah, man. These all great books we have coming out. A few reprints we have coming out as well from pals who lost the previous presses do the various reasons that I don't need to get into just gonna be a good a good yield for being ghoulish,

Michael David Wilson 42:28
yeah, what considerations do you have in terms of when to reprint something? Because I imagine that's a kind of harder sale, because, you know, people have bought the book once the hardcore fans, yeah,

Max Booth III 42:44
so we have three reprints coming out. Wasn't planned, but they kind of just fell into my lap and I just took them on. Two of those will buy a friend of mine called Little just layson. So people taking on full book inside out, and they have a collection called Sick Tales from the goop troop. Basically, they will with a different press that had a bunch of controversy last year. And I just, you know, I just felt bad, so I just reached out now, filled to take them on, along with a different book of that they will contract to the right cosmic dyke patrol, which is a great title. It wasn't previously published. It was previously contracted and announced. But I took that one over two, so I'll be publishing that one this year as well. But that would be considered an original, since it didn't come out yet, and then the evil reprint is a book called bad dogs by Nate settled I know Nate Wilson Lee, and I think he's a really underrated author who's like, just has not been to schedule yet. He's fucking great. And bad dogs is my favorite book of his. It came out through broken reveal a long time ago, and that whole press is kind of a shit show. Now, if you guys noticed that, really impressed. Now it's just something else is what I mean by that. But bad dogs is like a like a redneck magician in Indiana, fucking, just mix up in drug stuff and all types of demons and spells is really fucking good.

Bob Pastorella 44:32
That's probably one way I think I described it to someone. Is red Nick John constant, yeah, so you've read, yeah, cool. It's, it's badass. Yeah, I'm looking forward to picking up the new edition of it, because I don't have the old edition anymore. So, all

Max Booth III 44:50
right, well, I'll let you take it.

Michael David Wilson 44:55
When you say, uncle, coming out. It

Max Booth III 44:58
comes out. Um. In May. Oh, nice,

Michael David Wilson 45:02
yeah, why? Like, nice. I'm excited for say uncle and I remember like we were saying, like, oh, you know, daddy's boy and say uncle might come out around the same time, but originally, both were gonna come out in March, and now daddy's boy is coming out in May too. I don't know, okay, I just felt like, yeah, uncle, dad is boy part years back, guys, have

Max Booth III 45:35
I sent you the book yet I forget you haven't no

Michael David Wilson 45:40
ready for it? Yeah, it's

Max Booth III 45:41
really great. We we did a lot of edits on that. Just went back and filth and Philly is names, and it's so tight right now. What a crazy thing to say. And I bought the gas. It's it's really tight. It's not loose at all. This is really good, man. I think you specifically, Michael, you're gonna love it. It's funny. It's um, it has that coming of age, like something from my past has, like, shaped me into this jail human being type of thing that I think you kind of dig. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 46:18
oh god, yeah. I want

Bob Pastorella 46:21
to read it, just because of the hell razor stuff.

Max Booth III 46:24
I'm so excited. So I came up with the Kim Wilson of Uncle Buck meets hellraisal. And then recently, when we were doing the back edville, I was like, we should come up with a tag line somehow. What would be a good tag line? And then I was like, Well, wait, what's the tagline on Uncle Buck and what's the tagline on hell Ray as well? And they milled so perfectly together. It's um, he's crude, he's crass, he's family, and he'll riff your soul. It's perfect.

Bob Pastorella 47:01
That's a shit. I love it. That's fucking great, if anyone

Max Booth III 47:04
listening. And basically the premise is, it's 2005 this, this, get this? The man killed tools like 12 or something. Is uncle comes to live with them after something goes wrong in the uncle's mileage. And the uncle is like this shitty pickup, eldest type of guy. He has lots of misogynistic opinions on women. He decides he's gonna help his nephew get a date. He begins like teaching him is his tricks. Meanwhile, the kid finds this old occult spell book and the uncle's belongings. And I won't say what happens from that, but things spiral drastically out of control at the scheduling of this book, it's really good. Is

Michael David Wilson 47:52
this a novel or novella? It's a novel. I mean, nobody's gonna read it evil way. We're gonna say,

Max Booth III 47:59
Ah, don't send it to me, then,

Michael David Wilson 48:01
no, no, I very

Bob Pastorella 48:02
much. Well, he's only reading novellas. Now,

Max Booth III 48:06
I do love a novel. I just read a great novel, a long one called wolf at the table by Adam rap. I don't know if you guys, it's like five No, it's like 600 patrons. But you just, it's you just, you can't be a long, really good novel,

Michael David Wilson 48:23
I think, yeah, I don't know that one. It's basically

Max Booth III 48:27
the way it was promoted was like Jonathan Fran if Jonathan Franson had written, we need to talk about Kevin.

Michael David Wilson 48:36
Okay, so very interesting promotion. It's

Max Booth III 48:41
this long, epic family drama that takes place over Philly is decades, but when one of the memos of the family is like a sociopath, basically

Michael David Wilson 48:54
just good stuff. Oh yeah, I'm up for that one too. Was that out recently?

Max Booth III 49:00
Yeah, it came out. I think last year I discovered it. After all, Daniel Kraus was talking it up, and him and I usually have similar little tastes in movies and books, so he was the way he was talking about it. I knew I had to pick it up, and I read it like in three days I couldn't get enough of it, and I usually don't read that much anymore, just because I'm reading ethical stuff that doesn't really count as like, oh, good reads, reading or whatever. I'm reading stuff. I'm rejecting. I'm reading stuff. I'm editing, reading my own shit. Sometimes when I want to pleasure myself.

Michael David Wilson 49:43
It's fair enough. Do you post stuff to good reads now i i tend not to really review or rate anything on Goodreads, because, you know, I don't want with having This Is Horror as a platform, and it's how. So pretentious and like, I'm a right dickhead, which maybe I am, but like, I wouldn't want to shit over someone's book that I didn't particularly enjoy. And you know, it's just fucking subjective. Like, I don't want people to take my opinion and think it has any weight to it. It's just what I thought. I

Max Booth III 50:18
don't use good reads anymore. I have an account with strily graph, but I don't. I'm not, I don't. I'm not great with keeping up to date with it. I do, like the like, I'll use it to log a book, but that's about it, just so I can keep track of what I've been reading. But yeah, I'm not really that interested in, like, the good reads aspect of everything, especially it's odd, like reviewing a book written by someone who you know is going to see that review, and then you might see them like at a convention. It's just really strange. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 50:55
this is why I moved away a lot from reviewing when I started writing more seriously, it just felt like a conflict of interest. Yeah,

Max Booth III 51:05
I thought you were gonna say that's why you moved to Japan so you wouldn't see anyone at conventions.

Michael David Wilson 51:11
That would be an extreme reason.

Max Booth III 51:16
I wouldn't believe it. I would have to say you were lying.

Michael David Wilson 51:21
Yeah, that's not why I moved to Japan anyway. Just

Max Booth III 51:25
so that just Dox. You people know, you live in Japan, right?

Michael David Wilson 51:29
Yeah. I mean, I don't say it every, every week. I'm not like, you know, I live in Japan, just in case,

Max Booth III 51:38
whether you change that website name, it's so misleading. You mean.co.uk, yeah, this is not right.

Michael David Wilson 51:45
It's not to be fair. It does confuse people quite a lot, because it's like, our biggest audience is by far in America, and I'm living in Japan, and it's

Max Booth III 51:59
so confusing. I love, I mean, we, we own.

Michael David Wilson 52:01
This is horror.com

Bob Pastorella 52:04
Yeah, so that's a funny story. Yeah, you remember how you got it? You don't remember some, some, some rando emailed me. Oh yeah, I forwarded the email to Michael, and he was like, Hey, you can, you can get this. Basically, I'll sell you this website. And so I emailed it to Michael, and Michael emailed me back. Said, you know, if you're gonna, if you're gonna hold a website ransom, you might want to fucking own the domain. And he goes, I own it now. So I was like, the guy didn't even have the domain.

Michael David Wilson 52:43
Yeah, yeah. So people find domains that are available, try to sell it to people who they didn't go and you would want that one when I started, This Is Horror. This is horror.com. Was not available. And then what was this like? Five, six years later, the email Bob, they're like, Oh, you can buy it for, I don't know, like, 1000 bucks. And I'm like, What? No, I'm not, I'm not gonna do that. That does not seem like a good investment. Let me just check some things out. Oh, holy shit, it's available now for $10

Max Booth III 53:20
mine. That reminds me. A while back, this deranged Wilson who kind of came after me on the the internet did not like me whatsoever. He began making fake profile, fake social media profiles, like saying how I should die, and like, on the the bio of his social media profile on the website, he just wrote, like, Fuck Max booth.com so I went and I bought that, and that's now my website name. So he was just like, promoting my website. I found that extremely funny, and I've kept that website name since that's the one I usually just give out,

Michael David Wilson 54:04
you've not only kept it, but I think Haven't you embraced it. Isn't that at least one of your social media profile user names now you've really gotten hard with

Max Booth III 54:15
that. It's my blue sky name, and that's really the only social media I have. Like as an author, I have an Instagram one, but, I mean, it's a ghoulish Instagram. I'm on threads, but it's also a ghoulish threads. And I'm not even really on Facebook that much. Now. I have an account, but I don't. It's not it's on friends only at this point, and it's gonna stay that way. I mostly use it because Facebook events are really like useful, especially with the book shop and like the book fests, you can really get some traction promoting the events on Facebook, but that's the only use Facebook ads, and right now, because you'll not on Facebook. Michael, the thing going on is the reason why I've had to go to friends only. I'm going to say that way. Is Facebook is being plagued by these pilcination bots that fled your comments. Well, they've made profiles mimicking your profile, and they tag everyone else who has commented on a thread with a phishing link and like you repealed it to Facebook, and instantaneously, you get a response saying, No, this looks fine. We're not going to do anything about this, and it's intentional, because Facebook wants you to cave and spend the monthly fee for vilification. That just happened with the Philips. He posted this long thing, how he had, he had no choice but to do the monthly fee because he it was just non stop and feel nation bots. Well, I'm not going to pay any fee the Facebook. So I've just locked everything down, and I've deleted most of the friends I had on it as well, if I didn't actually know them. And now it's just strictly, like, a fairly small thing, though. I just use it to see people I actually know and promote events is the only I can't promote anything publicly at this point, the moment, anything is public in Pils nation, bot floods the comments. It's pathetic. The Internet used to be so cool, I think, and now it's just this pathetic and bill saying waste of time that plagues my thoughts. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 56:29
I didn't even know that Facebook had a paid option. I guess that Mark Zuckerberg saw what Elon Musk was doing and decided he wanted to get in on that action. Because apparently neither of them had enough money. They well, we better monetize it and make a few few more bucks.

Max Booth III 56:48
I just want to remind you, I'm I'm not interested in getting political, but if you want to talk about it, you can this podcast.

Michael David Wilson 56:58
But I mean in terms of social media, yeah, it's a weird time at the moment. I mean, Twitter, technically, we have the most followers, but when I post stuff on there these days, it gets the least engagement. Yeah, blue sky, that's the place like friends, we have the least followers, and it's Fred's is really random. Sometimes a post will do really well, and then sometimes it will get no engagement, and there seems to be not much method to which will happen. We We

Max Booth III 57:36
deleted all the ghoulish and my personal X accounts, because a despite having huge followings and all the accounts just zero engagement, it just stopped. And plus, it just felt like in almost in bill saying they even have an account and email, just with everything. I don't want to get into it, but with everything going on, I just anytime I looked at it, I just felt like, Man, I shouldn't be on this. So we just deleted everything and focused on blue sky mill, and we get so much traction. It's like how little used to be. I do like that threads is baffling to me. Every time I log on to that, everybody is fighting about something that I cannot figure out, what the self the drama is like. I just do not understand what the fuck anybody is talking about and threads, and I just, I guess, don't give a shit about spending the time to find out. But there's always, like, a huge thread of like, people defending a response to something else, that some that something piss someone else off on and I don't know what the fuck anyone's talking about.

Bob Pastorella 58:50
I went through. I spent half a day on threads trying to find a the source of someone's, I guess, of the discourse that was that I was seeing, and I could not find it, and it pissed me off, so bad that I removed threads I was on my desktop. I removed it from my from my top little thing where I just click on it. Was like, fuck this shit. Yeah. And then, like, couple days later, I just nuked the account. I was like, You know what this this thing is, it's a mess. You can't you can't find anything on there.

Max Booth III 59:24
Also, every time I came on the app, on the like, fill you page, because it always does that, right? Instead of the final tab, it was nothing but the most transphobic, evil shit. It was just every time I logged on to I'm like, why are you showing me this. I don't want to see this. It's awful. So we still have the account, but basically I just have it auto posting from the ghoulish Instagram. So, like, if we post something on Instagram, it just goes to threads.

Michael David Wilson 59:53
Sounds like a very ironic for you tab is like for you. So let's find something which is literally hatred directed for you. Yeah, give it you not to get political.

Max Booth III 1:00:10
Please respect my boundaries. I'm sorry.

Michael David Wilson 1:00:14
Well, something we can talk about, and I'm not sure if we've even mentioned, I believe in Mr. Bones in this second part, but we're gonna mention it because I want to talk about fruit pies. Where did this facet of the book come from?

Max Booth III 1:00:33
I forgot this was the second episode. Yeah. Completely forgot, like in this moment, until right now that this is technically a completely different episode fruit pies. So glad you brought this up. This is my, my favorite shaft, hold the book. Probably okay. So mystical bones is a book about small press. They receive an unsolicited, unsolicited submission called, I believe in mystical bones. It's about an entity that when you summon him, he begins breaking old bone, not breaking old bones, stealing old bones, like one night at a time as you sleep, and replacing them with an unknown substance. In my novel, one of the people who received the submission. His name is Daniel. He believes he has summoned this entity, and that every night he wakes up to a new bone missing. He is convinced this is happening. That's most it's a good chunk of the book is this spiral of, Am I losing my mind, or am I actually killed by a spooky skeleton? And I knew at some point the readable would be like, why is this guy not going to see a medical professional? It would be distracting if he didn't at least try to see somebody. So I, I thought, I'm someone who doesn't have health insurance. I can't just go see a doctor without being a whole fucking thing. So obviously they don't. I wanted to mimic that same thing from my own reality. I recall a lot. A while ago, my wife needed to go see a doctor about something she had going on. I can't even recall what it was, but we found this guy in San Antonio, like way off the beaten path. He didn't. He was a licensed professional. He had his own clinic, but on Sundays, he did this pro bono thing. Well, if he came in, he got in line and put your name in, and if the littles time, he would see you. Feel free. And so filth. I also recall the whole land being like, fucking oval run by chickens. I don't know if he owned these chickens, but those chickens all over the place, because I recall when we went to leave, like, chickens trying to get into the front seat with us, like, fight them away. It was pretty cool. So I have this as the basic idea of what's going to happen in the book is they should go see a doctor like this, the fruit pie stuff. I don't even know how to explain how it goes in the book, I have this thing when I write about doctorals, you'll see this in my novel mag at screaming bill, My instinct is to make them as absolutely unhinged as possible, because that is just really funny to me, a crazy doctoral so I immediately knew this guy would be Pretty kooky. I don't know exactly how I settled on fruit pies being like the big thing with this doctor. So basically, he has this, this clinic in his house. But also his sister sells fruit makes and sells fruit pies, and is hinted at that the whole reason that doctors doing this pro bono thing in the book is to promote his sister's fruit pie business. I don't know who this came from. Other than the phrase fruit pie, it's just really funny to me. I don't know why. I think I added it as a small detail, like, oh yeah. And we also sell fruit pies if you're interested. But then it just, I just couldn't stop thinking about it. And I think what really sold it to me as a good joke was throughout this whole like inspection he's doing with Daniel is he has this clip build who he's writing on, and it just appealed to me. How funny it would be if they saw that clip build at the end. All it was was him drawing a GIANT pie and brains filming fruit ideas to put into it. It's difficult to explain, I guess, why that's so funny, but I think it is in the scene itself. I should also say this, this chapter, I kind of went crazy with. This was not meant to be a long chapter. It ended up being the longest chapter in the book. Is 8000 builds long. I spent two weeks writing this thing, and I usually when I write something, especially with this book, I'll talk about it with my friend Betty, who's Bill face. Today, she is open full commission, rocksteady.com, I usually talk about what I'm writing. I spoil everything. I just because she's a good sounding build. And it was crazy. It was funny because, like, two weeks went by and I was like, I'm still writing this fucking fruit pie chapel Betty. I don't, I don't, I don't know why I can't end it. I'm success with the scene going on and on and on, and I love how it came out. It's really deranged, and I think unexpected. It doesn't have much to do with the rest of the book. And I understand that, like, if you took out that whole chapter, nothing else, nothing would change with the Sterling what's so evil. But to me, that this is a really good, like, piece of evidence of cutting everything that doesn't benefit the plot is a bullshit piece of advice, because it's not always about the plot. It's about the vibe, the type of like, the type of vibe you want to give to the book that the readables Take away. And I want my book, my books to feel strange and unexpected and funny and sad and just unhinged, and to suddenly come across an 8000 real chapter about a doctor just fucking trying to sell fruit pies to his patients, that that's like, that's why I do anything. I think that's the reason it's like, that's what I'm trying to achieve is something like that. It reminds me almost of, this isn't quite the same, but I feel like it has the same like intensity, almost. I don't know if you guys have seen until the Silver Lake, the movie by the guy who made it follows David Mitch and David Mitchell.

Bob Pastorella 1:07:43
David man, I haven't seen it. I want to see it, but I haven't really good movie.

Max Booth III 1:07:46
I'll say briefly, if there's a scene, will someone commute talks to someone behind the piano? That's one of the best scenes I've ever seen in the movie. And it's so isolated and unexpected and strange and scary and funny, like those little types of scenes I think make something unforgettable.

Michael David Wilson 1:08:10
Yeah, this fruit pie chapter, I think, is my favorite in the entire book. And people who know my sense of humor will not be surprised by that at all, but it almost reminded me of a joke from, I think you should leave with Tim Robinson, or from the greasy strangler, where I love just the more it was repeated, the funnier it got. And it was almost like the repetition and the absurdity and I I was losing my mind every time I read a reference to fruit pies. And I did wonder, are you foreshadowing? I guess this is a mild spoiler, where's not a spoiler, because you've already said that it could be removed. But I wondered, are you foreshadowing something, or the doctor's gonna come back later, or he's the mastermind behind Mr. Bones. No, no, but I fucking loved it. If, yeah, if you'd have removed it, then, whilst the story would be intact, you would have removed just, just that love for that scene that is justification enough to keep it in. Plus,

Max Booth III 1:09:20
I do think the audio, a certain segment of the readables would have been like, why did he never go see any fun to try to get treatment? It's a it's a thing that needs to be present in some way, I think. And why not have fun with it if I'm going to add that section? I also think it feels like a huge if we, if we want to sound, smell, feel a second and pretend like I intended something which I did not. But how many times have you, like, had an opportunity to benefit yourself, like health wise, level wise, you try to take advantage of it, and it films out to just be someone trying to say. Tell you something that's kind of what's going on with this.

Bob Pastorella 1:10:03
Yeah, it kind of reminded me of Kathy coaches, Bad Brains, where they you have, I'm not, definitely not going to spoil anything, but when you get when you finally get to the doctor, that that particular scene, which happens at the end of the book. Probably didn't need to be in there, but it's so it's it's so unhinged and goes the exact opposite way that you expect it to go and but at the same time, it's like it is very unpredictable, but yet logical. And so when you and you have this iconic scene, it's it's all about vibe. It's 100% about vibe. And is like you see all these rules, and you know, none of that shit fucking matters. Man, it doesn't matter. It's like you got to come out with your story and just do what you got to do, you know, and put it out. And obviously you don't want to take a tangent that's gonna, like, derail the story, or it's like this has absolutely nothing to do. But if you got the vibe, then don't worry about it. Put it in there. Take me on a little side trip. I'm all for it, especially with

Max Booth III 1:11:30
the Phils half of the book, where there's no like, fast pace. Okay, this is what the stray is. It's kind of a series of Internets fig nets. I don't think I've ever said that build out loud vignettes, vignettes leading to a book fest. It's just scenes from a life, basically. So I think it does look pretty good with the flow of things as well that we now have Okay, and now this is the time when they go and try to get medical treatment compiled to like the second half of the book, which is a really fast pace, A to B, streely,

Michael David Wilson 1:12:06
and another bit I gotta mention, which would be a spoiler if we gave any context, fugue stakes. Where did that come from? Yeah.

Max Booth III 1:12:19
Do you guys listen to ASAP rock?

Michael David Wilson 1:12:23
I have listened to ASAP rock. He's one

Max Booth III 1:12:26
of my favorite musicians. I listen to him a lot. I forget what song it is, but in it he's like, he says something how I was in a fugue state. But ASAP rock is someone who raps about food a lot, and I miss filled him. And I thought he said fugue steak. I thought that's so funny. I love that. And then I realized I was wrong. He said fugue state. But I just couldn't get fugue steaks out of my mind. And at the time, I was desperately trying to come up with a name fill the thing that it became named off of the, you know, I'm not gonna say it, but in the in Myst bones, fill something called fugue state stakes. And it spent a lot of time trying to figure out what that name would be for that specific thing. And nothing felt right. It everything felt like fake or filth or just generic. But then that came to mind, and it felt so odd and just like lived in, almost like you could tell this meant something to somebody.

Michael David Wilson 1:13:40
It was incredible too, because then maybe I'm gonna use the term payoff generously here, but it felt like there's a payoff for this submission being from August Keith. It's the most ridiculous name that I've heard, and I I loved how indulgent you went with fugue stakes, because there was a lot, you know, towards the end of that book. Yeah,

Max Booth III 1:14:07
I Yeah. I don't know if we want to talk about it or not. I mean, we can is, I have no issues with spoiling things. But if you want to do a ruling, we can, or we can just skip over it up to you.

Michael David Wilson 1:14:19
Yeah, here's the warning. I don't even know what you're about to do. Do you want to be specific with the warning?

Max Booth III 1:14:25
I thought you wanted to say something about it. I

Michael David Wilson 1:14:29
well, I mean, I kind of did just say it. Just that you were really indulgent with, you know, the fugue steak stuff

Max Booth III 1:14:39
I love. I mean, fugue states is a Internet Message build that doesn't exist now in the setting of mutual bones, but it exists. Existed when I was on message build, specifically like the crack.com message, build, the pointless waste of time. Message, build, and I. I spent a lot of my teenage years just like Lil King those and reading threads after threads, il CAD threads of like the craziest shit you can imagine, some of the funniest people I've ever like seen post anything. Yeah, I just really wanted to recreate that so bad. And that was my attempt to do that.

Michael David Wilson 1:15:20
It was absolutely masterful. And, I mean, we said before about it kind of being your, your it's almost your purest, Max booth book, in the sense that you've got the horror and you've got the comedy right down the middle. Has the reader reception generally being positive. Have you got anyone who's been kind of angry that it wasn't horror enough or angry, it wasn't comedy enough or angry that they thought you were satirizing them, which, you know, there is a warning at the end as well, these fictitious characters.

Max Booth III 1:16:00
It's been pretty positive. People appreciate the comedy that's that seems to be. People point out that it's pretty creepy with the the concept of it. They love the halfway point incident that happens. They find it feeling unexpected, and they find that exciting, and they they find it pretty funny. So, I mean, everything I was going through, people seem to like, it's not getting, like, a ton of reviews. So, you know, if anyone listening to this wants to read it and then review it, I'm okay with that. Yeah, I haven't seen too many negative things about it yet. I'm sure it's definitely a book, book designed to be hated by a Stilton type of riddle, and that's okay. Haven't seen any backlash from this stuff that you mentioned with the the set, the satirical aspects of small press publishing. I don't think I will maybe,

Michael David Wilson 1:16:58
yeah, well, maybe you'll get the backlash next decade when you do your 10 year kind of, let's take the piss out of Yeah, Press book.

Max Booth III 1:17:08
I definitely haven't like clash with anyone. I mean, you know, I mean, I don't know if anyone's really, like, given too much of a keen eye to it all. It's like, the the final details, but like, it's been pretty smooth,

Michael David Wilson 1:17:26
all right. Well, on that note, it's about time to wrap up. So I'm wondering what is next for you.

Max Booth III 1:17:36
Writing wise, I don't know. I have abnormal statistics coming out in Spanish sometime this year. I'm writing a play that's gonna be it's gonna be produced in Austin, so that's fun. I can't say what local theater troupe is doing it, but because they haven't announced it yet, but it's gonna be pretty exciting. They I've been to shows they've done, and it's really cool. I I've always been fascinated by a live feed all and really excited to see this happen. Book wise, nothing on the nothing on the schedule, just little shopping, COVID signal, activity is still on them. My agent is waiting on me to finish some of the things.

Michael David Wilson 1:18:27
All right. Do you have any final thoughts for our listeners and viewers?

Max Booth III 1:18:33
Yes, please buy my book, read it and break a bone on video and post it. I'm encouraging all of you guys to kill yourself breaking a bone and then somehow promote my book with that content. Please do this

Michael David Wilson 1:18:54
all right. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for listening to This Is Horror Podcast. If you enjoy the show and want to support us, then please consider becoming a patron a patreon.com forward slash, This Is Horror. You'll get early bird access to each and every episode, and you can submit questions to the interviewee. You'll also automatically become a member of the This Is Horror discord. And every year there are bonus episodes for patrons only, such as story unboxed, the horror podcast on the craft of writing, in which Bob and I and sometimes a special guest, will dissect a short story or film and let you know writing lessons and takeaways to improve your own writing. Another great way to support us is to leave us a review on the Apple podcast app or website. And if you want to watch the video version of the This Is Horror Podcast, join us on YouTube. You. Dot com, forward slash at This Is Horror Podcast. You can subscribe there and get notified every time there is a new video. And however you support us, I thank you in advance. Okay, before I wrap up, a quick advert break

Bob Pastorella 1:20:19
from the host of This Is Horror Podcast comes a dark thriller of obsession, paranoia and voyeurism. After relocating to a small coastal town, Brian discovers a hole that gazes into his neighbor's bedroom every night she dances and he peeps same song, same time, same wild and mesmerizing dance. But soon Brian suspects he's not the only one watching. She's not the only one being watched. They're Watching is The Wicker Man meets Body Double with a splash of Suspiria. They're Watching by Michael David Wilson and Bob Pastorella is available from this is horror.co.uk Amazon and wherever good books are sold. It

RJ Bayley 1:20:58
was as if the video had unzipped my skin, slunk inside my tapered flesh and become one with me.

Bob Pastorella 1:21:06
From the creator of This Is Horror comes a new nightmare for the digital age. The Girl in the Video by Michael David Wilson, after a teacher receives a weirdly arousing video, his life descends into paranoia and obsession. More videos follow, each containing information no stranger could possibly know, but who's sending them and what do they want? The answers may destroy everything and everyone he loves. The Girl in the Video is the ring meets fatal attraction from iPhone generation, available now in paperback, ebook and audio.

Michael David Wilson 1:21:36
Well, thank you again for listening to This Is Horror. We always appreciate your support. Do buy the new Max booth book I believe in Mr. Bones, one of the best novels that came out in 2024 and another novel that I would like you to buy is absolutely shameless. This segue, it's my forthcoming novel, daddy's boy, which you can add to your Goodreads today. It is out on May 6, and it has received wonderful blurbs from the likes of Jason pardon Max booth, dad who just spoke to Brian Asman, dangerous later, David Moody, Eric la rocker and many others. I really want you to check it out. It's the most fun I've had writing, and I think it's safe to say it is the most comedic book that I have ever written. In fact, Max booth had this to say about it, delightfully deranged and bursting with pure British humor. Daddy's boy is an addicting sprint of twists and turns you'll never see coming contains one of the most emotionally significant dick pic scenes captured in literature, read it. So there you go. Max booth, said, read it. So why shouldn't you? Quite frankly, next time on, This Is Horror. We will be chatting to Clay McLeod Chapman, but until then, take care of yourselves. Be good to one another. Read horror, keep on writing and have a Great, great day.