TIH 616: David Moody on Hard Left Turns in Film and Fiction

Michael David Wilson 0:07
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, I am chatting to David Moody for a special daddy's boy tangental episode in which we talk about hard left turns in fiction and in movies, amongst other things. Now it is always such a joy to talk to David, and for those of you unfamiliar with him, he first self published hater in 2006 and succeeded in selling the film rights for the novel to Mark Johnson, the producer of Breaking Bad, and to Guillermo del Toro, his seminal zombie novel, Autumn was made into a movie starring Dexter Fletcher and David Carradine. And moody has an unhealthy fascination with the end of the world, and writes books about ordinary folks going through absolute hell. His latest book is Shadow locked. It's very, very good. It is one of my personal favorite books of last year, and I recommend that you will check it out. It's also a fantastic audio book version, narrated by Aubrey Parsons. So that is a little bit about David. We're going to be talking about hard left turns in fiction, as well as having a general catch up and finding what David has been doing in the last six or so months since we last spoke, but before that conversation, a very quick advert break.

Bob Pastorella 2:30
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Michael David Wilson 3:34
Okay, with that said, Here it is. It is David Moody on This Is Horror. Dave, welcome back to This Is Horror.

David Moody 3:47
Oh, thank you. It only seems like five minutes. It wasn't that long ago that we were last talking.

Michael David Wilson 3:53
Well, the last time we were talking, it wasn't five minutes, but it was five months ago. So we were talking about shadow locked but as part of this series of tangentially related to daddy's boy podcast, we thought we would get you back on the show. And of course, thank you for such an amazing blurb for daddy's boy that you gave me. Yeah,

David Moody 4:20
I enjoyed it a lot. And as I said to you this week, when we were emailing, ended up stuck in hidden minister, and it was the only thing that was going around my head, and I was supposed to be buying a new car, but all I could think about was your grubby little novel. Sorry, that's really degrading. But, you know,

Michael David Wilson 4:39
I I think that if ever there's a book where one should just own it being degraded, it would be daddy's boy. That's true. You know, I absolutely love what I've done. It was tremendously fun to write, but I'm not. Going to pretend that it's high art, even if the characters pretend that the Well, no, they don't pretend. They genuinely believe that the television show naked attraction is high art. And they say such in the text.

David Moody 5:15
They do frequently, as I recall, yeah, yeah, I have to say it's probably, I can't remember when you sent it to me. Now, has it got to me. Now, has it got to be, must be about a year ago, don't you think was it?

Michael David Wilson 5:25
I don't know. It's gonna be getting on for that. Yeah, wow. So

David Moody 5:30
it's good to see it finally getting out into the world and putting forth the good name of kidminster. The most people who read it will probably have never heard of and never visit,

Michael David Wilson 5:39
I don't know. I love the idea that this kind of series of books that I've done, because house of bad memories features kid and minster too. Yeah, I could put it on the map like Stephen King has done with Maine. And then, can you imagine thing this pilgrimage your fans going to kid and Minster. I mean, they'd be, they'd probably be quite disappointed, but if they'd read the book properly, it's like, well, I did warn you, it wasn't an endorsement for kid and Minster,

David Moody 6:15
such a strange place. And say, I bought a car from a garage there. This is very boring. Nobody wants this is a horror podcast, but nobody wants to listen to my automotive adventures. But I bought a car from there first, first time in about 2019 so every year I've gone back and serviced it and and I end up getting stuck there because we've gone down to one car haven't got a lift back. So last few times, I've got out left the garage and then found this lovely little path along the canal. So just wander along the canal, and then it looks, it starts to look a bit more built up. And I think, Oh, this must be the center of Kidman said, what a lovely day. It's a sunny day. I've walked along the canal, seen all the narrow boats. It's beautiful. What could go wrong? And then you go up the steps and you in hidden minister, and that's what could go wrong, because it's, yeah, it's okay. It's just another Midlands town in it. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 7:05
I, I'm pretty sure I know exactly the path, you know, the canal path that you walk along, and that, that is a bit that is not really featured,

David Moody 7:17
yeah, books because representative of daddy's boy? Well, it

Michael David Wilson 7:21
is admittedly one of the most scenic parts of kid and Minster, and that's something I tend to avoid exploring, you know. And a lot of my memories of kid and minster are kind of from my childhood and my teenage years, like that kind of Canal path and the more delightful areas. I mean, it sounds like a kind of paradox, an oxymoron, even delightful kid aminster, I don't think so. But yeah, they, they, they're not. They're not the heart of Kidderminster. They're not really the center is like, you know, it's almost more indicative of Bewdley, which is decidedly nicer than kid image,

David Moody 8:09
yeah, but it's what you do, isn't it? You you anchor your writing with what you know. And I've just done exactly the same. I think last time we spoke, I was, I was, I just started off serializing a novel on my kind of Members Only website, Emberton, and I've been carrying on with that, but just you talking about your early memories of kidminster, I'm writing a novel about a little kid growing up, and he grows up in in wheelie Castle, which is a part of Birmingham where I grew up. And it's not a part that I go back to unless I'm driving very fast or passing through very quickly. But it's just, I think it's easier, isn't it, to kind of give that sense of reality. And we both write things that are inherently not realistic, but it's great to kind of anchor it in the places and and the smells and the dodgy areas that we we knew growing up,

Michael David Wilson 9:03
yeah, luckily, the books did not come with smelly vision. Because I think if you opened at this point and you had the kid amongst the smell, people have put it back on there pretty quickly.

David Moody 9:15
I mean, the canal looked beautiful, but it had a whiff. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 9:20
yeah, yeah. I mean, if you go at just the right time or the wrong time, you'll probably see some discarded shopping trolleys in there too. So not mentioned in daddy's boy, but discarded shopping trolleys in kid and Mr. Canals will be mentioned in what would Wesley do, which is a forthcoming novella. So there you go. As usual, whenever we talk, I seem to promote a book that has neither been announced nor is available to buy or pre order anywhere. And sometimes I wonder why my sales aren't. Higher than they are.

David Moody 10:01
Hey, look, we're in the same boat here. Not a narrow boat, just a general boat in that it's not been that long since we last talked. So I think everything I spoke about last time coming soon we're still in that coming soon period. So I've released nothing else since we last spoke. So hey, let's, let's just promote our pipe dreams again, shall we? And you

Michael David Wilson 10:21
mentioned wheelie Castle, which is not a pipe dream for anyone. Now I'm familiar, yeah, familiar with the legend of wheelie castle. It's a name that sounds much nicer and conjures up a much nicer image than the actual reality, but because we were talking about, you know, writing about real places, but we also write, you know, the somewhat fantastical, not not as a genre, but just in terms of Where we go and almost that exaggerated, hyper realistic portrayal. So when you're writing about real places, I think we touched on it a little bit with Shadow locked. But how concerned are you with making it an accurate portrayal? How often do you put in a place that you know doesn't exist but it just kind of fits the story. So what's your balance between reality and unreality? For want of better phrasing,

David Moody 11:30
that's a really interesting question, because in search for, I think my first seven or eight books, I just completely went had fictitious locations. I would name check places that existed, obviously. And in my head, I was basing the locations that I was writing about on actual places. The second autumn book, for example, takes place in the center of Birmingham, but I never refer to it as Birmingham. Never gave it a name at all, because I always had the concern that if you go too deeply with details, it can bite you on the backside. I don't know if you remember when Sam Raimi, his first Spider Man film came out. Didn't it come out around 2001 and the final scene in the first teaser, the Spider Man, spinning the web between the two towers of the World Trade Center. And then obviously everything that happened there on September the 11th, and the whole thing had to be scrapped and redone. I may be mixing things up there, but, but you get the gist of what I'm saying if you I think if you anchor something too solidly to something that exists, and that thing doesn't exist anymore. That was my concern, that people would spend all the time reading the book thinking, Well, that can't that's not going to happen now, because that building doesn't exist. So that Street's been closed or that's been pedestrianized, which is absolute bullshit when you're writing about zombies and things like that, because it's all inherently nonsense anyway. But then a few years later, I think when I got to the third hater, book them or us, my in laws had moved to Lowestoft on the East Coast, which I think you visited once or twice, didn't

Michael David Wilson 13:16
you, and we had little convention for the autumn in the East lower soft convention. Wow, brings me back. Yeah,

David Moody 13:25
it's a really unusual place, and I quite liked it. It's the most easterly point in the UK, so it kind of juts out. And just because of the way that it's placed geographically, it's not somewhere you drive through to get to anywhere else, it's you only go to Lowestoft if you go into Lowestoft. And I was writing this third book in the hater series, where things have gone really bad for our protagonist all the way through, and he's at the end of the end of the world. And I thought, well, bingo, I know this place really well. And it was great then to put things to anchor it so securely in reality, to talk about the specific locations, because I was that the country had been nuked anyway, so I could do whatever I wanted with with the ruins, and it was great for him and it and, you know, it's also because it's where my mother in law lived, and it reminded me of the apocalypse every time I spent time with her. So but then just, just go into again, talking about a book that hasn't yet been released. Dirty day is the novel which I'm stopping to publishers at the moment. And that's, it's real time, and it's set in the center of London. And it was, the story is driven by the location, as a guy who, for various reasons, that has to get from Brent cross, so boring talking about the specific locations from Brent cross to Charing Cross. So it's only it's about a 10 mile trip, half an hour. He's got it. He's got an hour and a half to do it. But as you'd expect, things go a bit pear shaped along. Away. But that was the most involved I've ever got with a location, because it was literally looking at Google Earth and Google Maps and thinking, okay, so if it goes down there, that's going to cut five minutes off. But what would happen if there was a load of people there, or that's taking us to Euston train station? What happens if the shit is hitting the fan over there? So I think it depends, it depends on the project as to whether I do use a real location or just make it up. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 15:27
and dirty day is the one that I'm tremendously excited about. You know, ever since you've kind of mentioned the premise, and I know that Dan Howarth has read it, and you know he he keeps talking about, like, how I need to read it. It's one of the best books that you've ever written. Like, you know, I, I know, Dan, you've told me many times, but I you, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna hack into your computer. It's not out yet, Dan, I can't, I can't read it yet, but I

David Moody 16:01
can send you a copy, but unfortunately, it's been I've hit a bit of a stumbling block. I think I've mentioned to you today. You mentioned this to you by email, but my agent, who I've had for representing me for 1718, years, he was enthusing about dirty day in a way that he has never enthused about my writing before. He was 100% behind it. We worked on it together, tweaked it a little bit, and it was just in a position where it was about to be shopped out to publishers, and sadly, he passed away. So it's kind of in limbo at the moment. I don't know where it's going. I'm hopeful that my, the agency that I work with, will find me somebody else, and they'll take it up and try and promote it for me. Obviously, it's not the most important thing at the moment, because this poor guy, he was, he's actually younger than me, I found out, which is quite sobering. And so, yeah, I don't know when, how, or if it's gonna hit the shelves, but it's infuriating. And that sounds really pathetic, because, you know, it's my agent passed away, and it's that's the most important thing, that's the thing that matters. But it really stings that it's this book, because it is something I'm really proud of, even my miss is liked it, and that never happens. So, yeah, we'll see. We'll see what happens. But I'll slip a copy your way. Yeah, wow.

Michael David Wilson 17:32
Thank you very much. And it it's difficult to know what to say. Obviously, when someone says, you know someone close to them has passed away. I mean, it's never an easy conversation, but it's also, it's shocking how young people seem to be dying these days, which, as I'm speaking, it's like, how am I going to segue my way out of this one. How does this get back into to horror fiction? But I, I don't know if it's like as we become kind of older, that we become just more aware of death and mortality, but it, it does feel like recently, more people are dying younger and younger, and it certainly is pretty sobering, and it means that in a in a way, it can be not motivational, that is definitely the wrong word, but it kind of prompts us to really live in the moment and to just Get on with what we want to get on with, because we can't take anything for granted.

David Moody 18:45
I absolutely 100% agree with that, and honestly, we've spoken so many times. If I'm saying the same, if you've already heard this from me, then say, shut up and move on. But I had heart attack five years ago. It was actually five years ago and a fortnight. So I can't believe how quickly it's gone, but it was the most, I think it was one of the most important days of my life, because I went from just having a normal, well, I say normal morning. It was the start of the pandemic, so nothing was normal. I was having a pretty rancid conversation with some people in HR, the company I used to work for, needed to get some stress off, so went into the garage on the treadmill, had a half an hour run, got off and thought, oh, I don't feel great. And then, you know, two hours later I was I was in in hospital. But it's the bit in between, everything changes. You go from being from your life going in one direction to it suddenly, suddenly, all the what ifs and the maybes confronting you, because if the ambulance hadn't got there in time, I might have carted it on the floor of the of the lounge and the impact that it had on my wife. And on my kids was, was really, it was, it was, it was incredible to see afterwards how much it had affected them. Because it was the pandemic. They could, nobody could go with me. So it was just that, I remember Lisa saying to me afterwards, I don't, I didn't want my last image of you to be your man. Keep going into the back of an ambulance. You know, it really, it really affected them, and it gave me the opportunity to say, Well, don't want to keep doing what I'm doing in the way that I'm doing it. And the answer was, No, I didn't want to. So I made not a huge right turn, but I changed a lot of things on the back of that. And professionally, I think it really affected my writing as well. It gave me pretentious alert. It gave me a lot more depth and a different perspective that I hadn't had before. And it would be absolutely perverse and stupid to say I was glad that I had had a heart attack, but I think my life is better for it, if that makes sense, it's very weird, isn't it, and death, it

Michael David Wilson 21:04
does make sense. And you know, I've spoken numerous times about how a few years ago, with the custody battle and the divorce that I went through, was unquestionably the worst time of my life, but there are certain changes that I've made, things that I've done, perspectives that I now have, that I think have made me a better person and a person who is just more in tune with what does and what doesn't matter. And I certainly I don't take anything or anyone for granted after going through that now, probably like your heart attack, I wouldn't say, oh, and because I'm changed. If I could do it again, I do everything the same. No, no, I fucking wouldn't. No, I if I had a time machine, I would not go through that divorce. I would not have all of that happen. I would make changes. So I don't think, Oh, well, I'm totally better for it. That was worthwhile. But I think, you know, some, some good has has come out of that. Now, whether, whether it was because it happened or because I, you know, in spite of it happening, made the best of that situation, you can't really say, but I mean, I think whatever life throws at me, I try to make the best of it, but, of course, I wish it hadn't happened, but, but when it does, you know you can't change anything that's happened in the past. You can only affect the present and the future. So you might as well just do what you can with the cards that you you doubt, even though you'd wish that you hadn't had those cards to begin with. So, yeah, funny way of saying, I relate. Yeah,

David Moody 23:09
it's getting too depressing for the cat. Did you know,

Michael David Wilson 23:15
for the video viewers? But, but you, you have actually somehow, and I don't even know how we did it, but you seamlessly segued us because you spoke about this made you take a kind of hard left turn, or I wanted to talk about hard left turns in fiction today. So we've got on topic

David Moody 23:41
that was a pure coincidence, but yeah, that's nice. I'll take that one. So I should also say, yeah, you've got the bonus cat there for viewers. Cats. My cats are infuriating. I love them to bits. But any social media that involves a cat, I have found I put my heart and soul into social media trying to promote my books recently, and it goes okay, and some posts go a little bit higher than those. I put a bloody cat on a cat opening a box of books with me, or a cat just a photograph of a cat at the end of a post, and the thing goes crazy. So it does my head in. But anyway, that's my gift to you this this morning, this evening, is a little bit of my cat. She's just not listening. Yeah.

Michael David Wilson 24:27
The thing is that so many people, I mean, almost universally, cats and dogs are loved. And if you don't love cats, then you do love dogs, and vice versa, or maybe you like both of them. And I'm saying this half jokingly, but half seriously as well. We were talking off air about marketing and promotion and how things have kind of got harder and harder, I think. In the last five years, at least. But one thing that is a constant is, if you put up animal photos, if you put up pet photos, people go wild for that shit. It seems to be almost in any industry, in any genre. You know, cats and dogs are loved. They are beloved. You're gonna get far more engagement. So as my kind of half serious, half joking comment, I genuinely wonder. You know, I'm wondering about algorithms and Amazon ads and all of that, I should just buy a cat or a dog, get a cat, and I'm gonna get more engagement, you will. It's infuriating.

David Moody 25:51
After beautifully segue in into fiction with hard left turns, I'm just segwaying out of it now to talk about something completely different again. But it does remind me, and it is. It's one of the frustrations of writing, I think, the fact that you spend so long working on each project, and you pour your heart and soul into it. But the return. It's not about returns. It's about the art. I know that, but the financial returns are never that. They never justify very, very rarely justify the length of time that you put into something. And it's and it's infuriating that you can put your heart and soul into something, it will have no impact whatsoever. And then you put your cat next to a copy of it, and it goes, it skyrockets. I remember being at a convention, one of the last big conventions I did just before the pandemic, and been right at the back of this massive hall with a couple of other authors, and nobody was coming over. And we were trying. We weren't sitting there passive. We were calling people over. We were showing me this, and one had got the teddies covered in gore and that kind of thing. But nobody was coming over, but they were all queuing up to see somebody who looked a little bit like Negan in The Walking Dead, you know? I mean, it's, it's infuriating. So it's a, it's a crazy career choice, being at being a writer, I think. And if you had your time, would you do it again? Yes, you would Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 27:21
100% yes, yeah. I mean that that is Yeah, unequivocal. But I mean, you know, you say it's not about the money. I mean, for me, it's primarily about finding joy within the pursuit of writing. And that has become, kind of my, my catch phrase for this year, really, because, as I've been trying to interrogate, kind of, why am I doing this, and what is it all about? So it is about joy, but secondarily, there is the financial concern. So I think if we're primarily motivated by money in writing number one bad idea, many more financially lucrative careers, but secondarily, you're going to start making bad career choices, you know, or ones that are kind of inauthentic. This is if you're doing it for the love, if you're doing it for the money, then yeah, then following the money is a good career choice. But for me, it's primarily about the art, about the creativity, about almost unlocking that child like joy. That meant that I picked up a book in the first place, and that I started writing stories myself. But at the same time, we want to look at how we're going to make money. But there's been a few times where I've thought, right, I'll just write a commercial thriller. That's what I'll do. And, you know, often before I've even finished the plan, I'm absolutely bored, and it's, it's soul destroying. It's not me. And you know, when I start writing it, some, some, something is ticking along. It's going okay. Oh, my God, maybe we've got something commercial here. Oh, a calisthenics sex cult has turned up. Well, that that's not, that's not quite Hollywood. Could I remove them from the story and the stories still stay intact? Probably yes. So am I going to No, no, of course, I'm not. I mean, now I'm intrigued, now I'm invested. It's these weird things. So it is these hard left turns, as it were, that keeps me excited. And I've always thought and a number of other people, smarter people, I. Myself have said, if you can entertain yourself, then you can entertain other people, and that is kind of the philosophy that powers my writing and keeps me going.

David Moody 30:12
I totally agree. Yeah, 100% agree on that. And yeah, I think I've done exactly the same as you, and try to write things which would appeal, but if you're not feeling it, then nobody's going to read it and feel it, are they? You know? So, so, yeah, I've done exactly the same and thought, right, this is going to be a good commercial thriller. Started it off, and then, like you say, a couple of pages in, you think, Ah, I can't be doing with this. It's not me. I had a conversation with an accountant friend of ours a while back, and he was saying, well, just write something that's going to appeal to more people, and it was impossible for me to get it through to him, the fact that the only person it's really got to appeal to to start with, is me, because your enthusiasm for it, whether you're enjoying it or not is going to come through to the reader. And I have to say that just relating back to hard left turns again, it's happened in my career that the two books that I've enjoyed writing the most have been hater and dirty day. And obviously I don't want to talk about the twists in dirty day, but it's, it's, but, I mean, you can guess that it goes from point A to point 4006 in a completely different direction to how you're expecting. And hater did the same hated I was. I know we've had this conversation before, but I'm going to try and talk about it without talking about it too much. About it too much, but when you get two thirds of the way into hater, it does something that you're not expecting. And the beauty of that for me was that I wasn't expecting it either, that I was just writing the book, and I thought, okay, we're going to go down the standard lines here, and this will happen, and this will happen, and it's the apocalypse. So we know what the next step is, but what if the next step was that, instead of that, and it was just that one twist, that one decision, I think that sold that book for me. I remember the way that I felt about it and the enthusiasm that I'd got for it after making that, that hard left turn, but it's how you do it, I guess, isn't it? And I think for me, the success of that one was the fact that it was a shock to me as well. So maybe the surprise and the spontaneity of it came through to the reader. It's

Michael David Wilson 32:29
interesting too to hear about how that came about, because it kind of leads me to believe that our planning process is very similar, and I know that we've spoken about planning versus pantsing and what we both do. And I mean for me, before I start writing a book, I have effectively a chapter by chapter plan. It's pretty meticulous. I know that you have a fairly meticulous plan as well, but I often describe my planning in probably quite pretentious terms as more like a hybrid, because I've got the plan, but I've also got permission that if during the writing, something else comes up, then I will go in that direction. And there's an A book that I'm working on at the moment, I've only just started writing, and in the second chapter, a character did something unexpected that is already gonna have repercussions for the entire novel. So I think having that flexibility, it probably is the map, as it were, to success for me, because if I don't have a plan, then it all goes really nicely for 20 or 30,000 words, and then it's like, okay, well, what the hell am I doing now? Because anyone can come up with an intriguing concept or a hook, but if you can't actually resolve it, if you can't do anything with it, then you know it's an idea. It's not a story. But if I were to plan it out in a kind of story engineering by Larry Brooks, so one of those books to to a point where I was then not allowed in any way to deviate where I was sticking to rigid rules and archetypes. It'd be completely boring. It will be, it will be kind of by the numbers. So it would then get rid of that joy, of that get rid of that that spark, and I think, stifle creativity, so planning a book, but giving yourself permission to deviate from the plan and to then replan. As a result, that's kind of the way that I do it. And it sounds like that's what happened with you and hater, yeah,

David Moody 35:07
no, 100% it is, yeah. And I think that it, it can only, and I've said this before that, I think that plotters and Pantsers, we do exactly the same amount of preparation and planning. We just do it at different stages. I think a pencil will just start, well, this is what I'm going to write about, and we'll, we'll go through so from from idea to publish novel, they go through as much planning as somebody who does plan. It's just that we do it at different stages. I'm the same as you. I have a chapter by chapter breakdown at the start. But also, I've noticed over the years in in with every book I've written, it seems to me I know what the end point is going to be roughly. And I'll be following the chapter by chapter plan rigidly for a little while, but then halfway, probably earlier than that, I'll realize that that's gone out of the window. I'm not looking at that anymore, and that's because, I think when you're planning the way, when you when you plan it chapter by chapter, you you're just fleshing out the beat points there. You don't get to know the characters until you're actually writing them, and you're writing the dialog, and you're just starting to discover who they are and what they might do and how they might behave. And it was that really that with the example of hater, by the time I'd got to the 2/3 point, and I'd got because it's focused predominantly on a family, husband, wife and three kids in a very small council flat, as the world is falling apart around them, but as I'd got to that stage and got to know each one of these people, I realized that the direction that one of them was going to take was not the direction I was expecting. And then that triggered a thought as to Well, is it, is it just that one is going to go that way? Or is it two of them, or is it two of them, or is it three of them, and it just, you know, everything came from that point. So although I've got the whole story mapped out, that the hard left turn came out of the blue and just steered it into a completely different direction. But if it when it's when you're well into a novel, when you went into a book, I think you should have the confidence, then, in the characters and the premise, to be able to go with that and to steer it away. So I think another important thing in building in these these hard left turns, is is not to pre empt them, not to leave too many breadcrumbs. They work best when it's just completely out of the blue for the reader or the viewer or whatever. I think there's a an example that I often talk about here. Is it Ben Wheatley film kill list

Michael David Wilson 37:49
I love in that one as an example, yeah,

David Moody 37:52
and you know where it's going, and then it doesn't, and it's like, what the hell was that? And it's just absolutely brilliant. The left turn it makes, in some ways, is better than the film itself. If you if you know, I mean, it's just the confidence to do that and the logic to do that. It's just, it's fantastic. But if we'd had a few, if he'd been dropping breadcrumbs along the way, if he'd been leaving us clues as to what might happen, then we kind of get into Shyamalan waters. And that's not a place that's not not waters that I want to swim in, particularly, I think then you're expecting the twist. And I never want to get to the point where people are reading my books thinking, oh yeah. Well, I think it's going this way. So inevitably it means it's going to go that way. You've always got to find new ways, I think, of catching people out without trying to be too clever about it. It's it needs to feel realistic, still, the plot twist needs to feel believable and not crowbar the and I think, yeah,

Michael David Wilson 38:54
well, if you leave too many breadcrumbs, then there's an argument that it's now not a hard left turn because you've set it up

David Moody 39:04
too much. You've gone down the gears and yeah,

Michael David Wilson 39:07
yeah, I guess with me. I mean, there's numerous left turns within my fiction. I mean, definitely in House of bad memories, I would say it changes genre three times throughout the course of the novel and in daddy's boy. I mean, I can we even say it changes genre? Because did it even have a fucking genre to begin with? I'm not sure. It's almost like a genre less story, but there's definitely elements that people didn't predict. And I guess for me, like I typically, I will put some foreshadowing in so some breadcrumbs, but perhaps they are only breadcrumbs to me, and it's like that. That that is, uh, that is pushing it to suggest that that was, you know, foreshadowing. It's like, what, what you had a you had a Morrison's packet of sausages in the background, and you thought that was gonna foreshadow final act. No, Michael does not foreshadowing. But

David Moody 40:19
weirdly, I was going to say the only consistent things in daddy's boy is sausages and naked attraction. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 40:28
that's true, absolutely true. He's

David Moody 40:32
just is beautifully mad, because you're thinking, Where the hell is this going, and where you think it's going isn't where it ever goes. And that's, and that's great. That's, that's really refreshing. And I love reading it for that reason. It's just that you don't know. You have no idea. And it almost gets to the point where you think, how crazy is this gonna get, how mad is this gonna get? And it's not a spoiler to say, very mad. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 40:57
no, no. And I think you know, already I'm seeing from the early feedback and some from some early reviews that it is divisive. You know, that's not a shock to me. I didn't think when I wrote this, oh, this is a middle of the road book that most people will be like, yeah, yeah. It was okay. I knew that it would get polarizing reactions. And, yeah, I mean, as you say, it's like upping the ante. It's getting madder at certain points. I mean, most points throughout the text and and for some people, they're gonna go along for that ride. And for others, it's like, it's too much, and there's going to be a point where they have to tap out. And, you know, to those people, I obviously thank them for taking a chance on it, but it wasn't for them, and that's fine, you know,

David Moody 41:53
yeah, and I get that, I think my approach to bad reviews or people who don't like my book is, is that it's still, if you've if it's prompted you to write a bad review, then it's had an impact on you. And that's the that's the little positive that I take from them, but you're absolutely right, and you can't appeal to everybody. And I remember, again, just going back to hater, I remember one day, two Amazon reviews appear in within minutes of each other, and they just to paraphrase, they literally said, the first one said crap book, great main character. The second one said horrific main character, great book. You know, you just can't. You're never going to appeal to everybody, and nor should you try, because, as we were saying earlier, the person that you want to appeal to most of all is you,

Michael David Wilson 42:42
I guess, yeah, yeah, I think so. And, I mean, it's interesting too, because, you know, you were saying you'd never want to go the kind of M Night Shyamalan route and people anticipating, you know the twist at the end, and I'm four books in at this point, and one thing that I do seem to be seeing consistently and particularly from the last two books, is people saying they don't know where I'm gonna Go, or it went in an unexpected direction. And to a point I'm wondering, you know, this could become the thing that people expect. It's like they expect the unexpected from me. And so in a way, it's like, if I were to respond to that, then, then probably the most unexpected thing to do would weirdly be to do the expected, but that's not gonna be a very satisfying thing. But you know when what I want to do, as we said, is entertain myself primarily, but also I'm not interested in really doing something that has been done before. Of course, every story to a point has been told before, but it's the manner, it's the mode, it's those little creative flourishes along the way that kind of make make it unique, or make it that right as storytelling, their voice, their way of doing things. So often, I'll think, Well, where are the most likely places this could go? What would be perhaps the generic or the archetypal way? Right? I'm not going to do that. What is left and obviously my mind works in a way where what is left is not the answer that a lot of people would have given. They're like, Well, I didn't think six men lining up and having that contest was what was naturally next. But I. You know, it's just, let's do something different and see what happens.

David Moody 45:07
And you can do, yeah, when you do it right, it really hits home. I think a film that I talk about a lot is threads, if we talked about it before, I remember the BBC nuclear 1984

Michael David Wilson 45:25
Yes, been a long time since I've watched that. Yeah,

David Moody 45:28
it's it's an incredible film. And I think many people hold it up as the most, most frightening heroin film ever made. And I would agree with that. I think it's just astonishing. But I maintain that a lot of the reason that that hits home so hard is because of the way it was written by Barry Hines, and that was to have the first half the build up. We know what's coming. We know that well, you know from the front cover of the Radio Times that week with the traffic warden with his bandage face that it's a film about nuclear war, but it's the way that he anchors it all in normality. The first half of the film, almost is just, it's almost Coronation Street without the over the top drama. It's just very kitchen sink. It's very straightforward. And then the bomb goes off, and all these people that you've really got to know, and you really have got to know, because they they they're so familiar to you, they go through absolute hell. And that has always been something that I've tried to do with my work. And it's, there's a there's a really old Barry Hines drama some of the 70s. It was a two part. I think it was ITV. I can't remember what it was called now, but it was about a colliery, about a mine in Yorkshire. And the first episode is, so is very light and bubbly, and it's, it's in the 70s. So they're very proud of where they work. And they've had a letter to say that the Duke of Edinburgh, so Prince Philip is going to come and visit the colliery in a couple of weeks time, and so everything. So let's get this you get the bunting, you organize the cakes, you do that. You get that. And then you get to the second episode, which you assume is going to be about this lovely royal visit. And you thinking, do I really want to watch this shit? And you start the second episode, and all the people who've been getting ready for this visit are killed in visit are killed in a cave in a in a cave in and then it's the response to getting those people out. And it just goes in a completely different direction, yet a completely plausible direction. And it's, it's stunning, the impact that it has. And I was thinking about what, what we were saying about my heart attack a while back that day, to me, was just a normal day when I was going to be getting on with my work, and it suddenly went in a completely different direction. So those kind of left turns, I think, are absolutely fascinating, and I love to explore those so they're very they're plausible left turns that could happen, but you just don't expect it, and you don't see it coming. It opens up a world of possibilities, I think, for a writer,

Michael David Wilson 48:05
yeah, and you were talking as well, I mean, in terms of the impact of the heart attack on your life, in terms of, like, kind of your your future life, and what you would do going forward that, you know it sounds like to a point it's made you kind of rethink how you write. But as you you said, you know you you're including half left hard left hands, like, kind of from the start of your career with things like hater. But perhaps this is kind of infused you to go further or to to kind of care less when you're writing about, you know, norms or what people might expect or anticipate. So how, how has it informed, specifically, the stories that you're writing and the way in which you're writing them.

David Moody 49:05
Think it made me drop some of the guardrails. I think I was before the heart attack. And I don't know whether it is just because of the heart attack or because of everything that we all went through at that time with the pandemic and complete changes to our lives to think it just made me like, drop, drop the guardrails, as I said, and just think, think more obliquely, maybe I've always been envious of people like David Lynch and some real visionaries who will just write something and create something. And you think, well, Hap Why did you think to put that with that? Because I'm always, was always trying to over explain things, and I used to tie myself up in knots and abandon stories because I couldn't get them to make sense. But they don't have to make sense. And I think that's, that's what, that's what changed within me. I think I was always looking to. It to reason things out the autumn books, for example, I always I wrote because I wanted to write a serious zombie novel that with with rules that kind of made sense, which is ridiculous for something as in, as inherently unbelievable as a zombie apocalypse. But I found that I, the longer that went on, the more I tied myself up in a nuts well, that character can't do that because this happened, and you just get too prescriptive. So I think that one thing that the the heart attack did is is to kind of take the shackles off a little bit and just think, well, there's no reason why that can happen. Couldn't happen, and I don't have to explain that, or I could just make something else up to explain that. Do you know, I mean, it's just made things a lot freer and a lot easier and a lot more enjoyable as a result.

Michael David Wilson 50:45
And do you think, I mean, it's almost a paradox, but there's been a creative freedom because of, I guess, the the impermanence of of life and mortality, but then on the other end, have there been more commercial considerations when you think you know at any time you could die and you want, obviously, your family to be secure as well? Is there that battle that it's kind of infused

David Moody 51:20
kind of by I always think this sounds bad, I know it does, but I've always, I just think of artists, and often musicians who become famous after they've died, and I just kind of thinking that's going to happen. I always say to the kids, you're going to do okay, just keep an eye on the literary estate. Because the I remember, there's a character in one of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books who is dying is a career move for him, and he suddenly goes stratospheric. And I could see that happening? Yeah, I don't know. It's they're impossible questions, aren't they? Yeah, I don't know where I'm going with that. You know, it's late for me and I've lost my way.

Michael David Wilson 52:15
I mean, when you put it like that, is surprising that there haven't been more people who have faked their own death, you know, but I could imagine, and now it's like, oh, it could be quite a funny story idea. It's like, so you decide to fake your own death, and then you're the one person who's like, yeah. Nobody gave a shit. Just like, the sales plummeted. They were like, Yeah, good. Or like, you're faking your this is, this is took a dark direction, and this is just the left hand of my mind. You, you fake your own death. You expect to see some kind of Edgar Allen Poe, like the the estate, the stock is rising. And instead, what happens is some, some scandal that you know not to be true comes out, and now you're being canceled, like you're Jimmy Savile. And now you've got this, haven't you, because you're not actually dead. So what

David Moody 53:15
do you do? So there you go. There's the next novel for you. I know, yeah, I'm sure,

Michael David Wilson 53:21
yeah, she didn't have said that aloud. But don't worry. I mean, it's not an idea that someone can copy, because there's going to be a hard left turn in there. I don't know what it is yet

David Moody 53:34
exactly, but I guess the death of a character is is an ultimate hard left turn, isn't it? Yeah, I always find that interesting. I remember writing one of the early autumn books, and there were, there were a lot of characters involved, and I, I had, I could afford to lose a couple, and I remember just really dismissively killing one of the main characters from the book before it was just, Oh, he didn't make it. Oh, he got shot, you know? And it was just something really refreshing about not having to go through the climactic death scene, sorry, I've got a cap back in it, and just being able to just throw it away in the way that it happens. You know, people get hit by busses, and people have accidents and people have heart attacks. And in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, somebody who we thought was going to be a key character that could just get killed with friendly fire or something ridiculous, and and his body ignored, and just think it's it's interesting. So I guess what I'm saying is that the key, I think the key to a hard left turn is avoiding the cliches. That's what you're doing, isn't it? Steering away from from the cliches and going down an unpredictable route?

Michael David Wilson 54:48
Yeah, and it certainly makes more satisfying reading and watching as well. You know you talk about your or you spoke about David Lynn. Sense. But, I mean, part of the excitement was just not knowing what the fuck would happen in any film at any given moment, and that's before we even talk about, like, the masterful cinematography and just the way that, I mean that the guy was a genius, an absolute genius. And he, yeah, I mean, he, you could hear him as well kind of talk about anything, can you? You'd learn so much about storytelling and structure, probably from him just uh, giving the weather report, which he did often, in fact, every day.

David Moody 55:39
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, I think he's just absolutely remarkable. I remember I was late to the party with the final twin peak series, the series he made 20 years after 20, so many years after the after the originals. I watched the original slavishly. I watched every episode of that twice, I think, and then bought the box set, and re watched the whole lot again, and then went into Twin Peaks to return. And that whole thing is a hard left turn, isn't it? It bears, I don't know if you've seen it, but it bears so little relation to Twin Peaks as we knew it. Okay, some of the faces are familiar, but they're behaving in unfamiliar ways. And this, and if you, if you're going in there just expecting a continuation with all the tropes that they developed in the original series, you would have been very disappointed. But if you'd gone in there wanting to be entertained and scared and provoked, then it really it hit all the buttons. For me, it's absolutely astonishing. It was astonishing how different it was and how free it was of everything that had come before. I think,

Michael David Wilson 56:47
yeah, but I suppose as well, if we'd have wanted to do a kind of third season of twin peeps, kind of originally and in that kind of mode, then he would have done it, you know, 20 or so years ago. So, yeah, I I even forget how the project came about, like, how, how it came to be that after so many years, he was like, right? We're gonna reboot twin peeves. But I love that, that kind of bravery and that fearlessness of just being like, you know what? I'm writing a sequel

David Moody 57:24
to this, and that's it, and that, and that's what I think, that's what I used to really lack, is just the confidence, I think, to take these left turns, to go and do something that that's so out of your comfort zone, or so unexpected and but it's really, it's really rewarding when you do it and again, just going back, trying to sell a novel that I don't know when it's going to come out, but dirty day, the development of that was pretty much For me. It's the, it's my peak left turn book. There's so many left turns in it. It almost does a circle and goes back to the start. It's, it's, you know, we've, I know we've used this cliche before, but a story for me is just a succession of things going wrong, and it's in each and a left turn is just something going wrong in a very unexpected way. And yeah, I think it's great when it's done right. It's incredibly powerful. And I think not only does it add a huge amount to the story, but it also kind of cements it into the reader's mind. It gives them a hook. Oh yeah, that's the book. When that happened. Oh yeah. Do you remember that scene? You know? But I think it's really important to temper it and not crowbar it in and not making it that it's so ridiculous. I think a hard left turn still has to be believable to an extent, in as far as anything we write is believable.

Michael David Wilson 58:56
And I mean, it sounds like, from what you say about dirty day as well, that it's very much a natural follow on from Shadow locked because, I mean that that's a thriller, but a thriller that perhaps doesn't, yeah, it's not what you imagine when someone says, Here's a thriller, but it certainly fits into that genre better than any other genre. But there are left turns, there's unreliability, there's unpredictability, and it kind of sounds like you've done all the things that people loved about shadow locked and almost turned it up to the next level of dirty day. You know, I wonder too, if like, writing shadow lock then gave you the confidence, as it were, to go even further with dirty day. Yeah.

David Moody 59:49
I mean, I hope that's that's the case. Yeah, writing that book was a revelation for me. That shadow locked, it had been not. Been around in various forms for so long, for decades, excuse me, but yeah, I never felt able to write it and do it justice in the way that I did. And that was another one where I'd got a story, but it took a real turn. And again, without going into too much detail for people who haven't read it, that it's, it's the unreliability of some of the people in there. And you're taken down a path, and then you get to a point you think, Oh, hang on a minute. Is everything I've been told, right? Because perspective is a really interesting thing to play with. And that was the whole twist with hater. It's just flip into perspective a little bit. I think, yeah, you expect your main characters to behave in a certain way and to fulfill a certain function. But I guess the main character is not always the main character. If you know, I mean, it's, it's the that their their behaviors tell you more about somebody else, or, you know what I'm getting at,

Michael David Wilson 1:01:05
yeah, yeah. And the other book as well that you're writing at the moment, that you mentioned at the start is, of course, kemberton, which you're serializing. So you're kind of, you're writing it and then fairly immediately, putting it out to the people who subscribe. So I mean, first of all, at this point, how many chapters into it are we? Do you? Do? You know roughly you know what, what chapter it's going to end. And how has this approach differed in terms of the way that you you go about writing? Has it meant that you've taken more hard left turns because people are seeing it as it as it comes out? So then if you've got yourself into a hole, you can't really go back and change something in chapter three because that's available. Or have you actually taken less left turns because knowing that people are reading it? Do you feel constrained that you don't want to accidentally go in a direction that you can't get out of?

David Moody 1:02:18
Yeah, no, that's that's a really interesting one we're on. I think chapter 21 is online at the moment. There are four chapters going on next week, and it's four it's usually three chapters a month, but it's four chapters for a very specific reason. I should just say to anybody listening who wants to read it, so it's just subscribe to my mailing list, and you'll get a password to this website, which has got various exclusive things for mailing list members and kemberton been like the main event at the moment in terms of its structure. That was the book was kind of planned out. There are left turns in it, but they've been choreographed. But you won't, you won't see them come in, I can honestly say that it's not the book. It's not the book you think you're reading. Whether it's it will be fully successful or not. I'm not entirely sure I've enjoyed it. I'm getting great feedback from it. But there's just it's just so different to my normal writing process, because I've reached the stage now that I was talking about short earlier in the conversation, when we were talking about planning and pantsing, that you get to a certain chapter a third of the way through, two words, two thirds of the way through, when you realize, oh, I'm not looking at my guide notes anymore. And I think I've got to that point. I know where it's going. I know where it's going to end, but, yeah, it's going to be a bit hairy getting from where we are now to that end point. I think ultimately it's going to it will work. It'll be good. It's going to be a lot shorter than I was expecting. I think it's only going to come to about 50,000 words. And I was, I was hoping for 70 80,000 but I know that after it's after it's done, I'm going to take it away and rewrite it again. But I really like the immediacy of getting something out there and not waiting months and years and not the whole the whole point of it was, I find it really difficult to kind of sustain a presence online, and when I've got nothing to tell people, do you know what I mean? I don't want to keep going on. I will keep posting about the books I've already written. I will keep trying to get people to buy stuff that's already there and attracting new readers. But I want the long term readers to have something more regular from me, so I thought, let's give them this book in bite sized chunks and see how it goes. It's been great. I've absolutely loved it, and I've got the basis of a really good novel, I think. And I think I'll probably repeat the experiment, because it's a great way of keeping new stuff flowing, I think, without having to just disappear completely and spend six months to a year or two years or longer. Writing a book in in kind of radio silence, but yeah, it's been, it's it's been an experience. I hope people will enjoy it. This. This is the key. This is the key month now in terms of the story, this is the hard left turn coming up, and it will be left on a cliffhanger. It's usually just three chapters. There you go. I don't care what happens at the end of the third chapter, but I'm posting four chapters this week, because at the end of the fourth chapter, something happens, and then the story goes in a very different direction to what people were expecting. I think, I hope I'm

Michael David Wilson 1:05:36
not going to say any more about it. Yeah, yeah. So we didn't plan it like this, but this is actually the ideal week then to be talking about everything, and what a topic, you know, hard left terms is, yeah. I mean, this sometimes happens with writing as well. You don't plan for it, but there's just this synchronicity.

David Moody 1:05:59
I love that word, that word crops up a lot in my in my novels, because that's, that's, you know, we're talking about these hard left turns, and we're talking about stories being a succession of things going wrong, and often, synchronicity is involved, isn't it? It's that thing happening at the same time as that thing, and it's the effect of the two things together, the synchronicity of them. I think it's great, brilliant word, and

Michael David Wilson 1:06:21
is kemberton The only thing that you're writing at the moment? Or do you have simultaneous novels going on at the same time? You know specifically, because you're doing this one for a live audience,

David Moody 1:06:37
I'm I need to start a new novel. I'm really struggling. I think when we spoke last time, I was telling you about a series that I've been planning for for a decade now, the spaces between, because dirty Day is a kind of prequel to that. So I'm planning that that is going to be a five book series. I'm also trying to write another novel, which is a standalone book, but also related to spaces between series. But what I'm really itching to do is just go and write something stand alone. I just want to write something really scary, because I haven't for a long time. So I just want to write something really eerie, something that really freaks people out. I haven't found it yet, so I've kind of been sitting here just messing around on the internet and doing admin and stuff without actually writing anything, because I've just got this it's at the moment, it's just a kind of swell of ideas and different influences that I'm trying to coalesce into something that's going to be worth writing, but I do just really fancy stopping everything else and just writing a freaking terrifying book that sounds ridiculous, but you know what I'm saying. It's just yes that that really you were talking about being, being, having written shadow locked, and the impact that's having on other stuff. Think I've really got into the habit of enjoying writing good standalone thrillers. I say good. I don't know if they are good. I think they're good, but yeah. So I really want to write something with more of a more of a horror tinge to it than I have been doing for the last few books. I

Michael David Wilson 1:08:25
think they're good too. And Dan Howarth, so there's three people right there. That's a good start, isn't it? If you

David Moody 1:08:31
two like him, I'm happy, yeah.

Michael David Wilson 1:08:35
But no, I know what you mean about just wanting to write something just really scary and terrifying. And I'm sure at some point I'm gonna do that, and then that that'll almost be, like the career left turn, because, you know, it seems like I've unintentionally been going more and more in this kind of comedic direction, and one day I just have to write something it. It's eluded me so far where it's like, no, this is just pure terror. There's no jokes in it, and this is just messed up. And I'm not in that headspace yet. I yeah, I think it occupies a different headspace as well. I think it's maybe it's maybe harder, because if you're writing something terrifying, it almost drains you. So ironically, I need to be in a really happy and healthy place to write something really depressing and bleak. Because if my life is depressing and bleak, and I'm writing something depressing and bleak, that's too much. There's too much for a human to endure. So

David Moody 1:09:48
yeah, I agree with that, but I think there's another side to it as well. And over the years, a lot of people have said to me, what's wrong with you? Why do you write this stuff? It's disgusting. It's really. It's, it's, so a lot of my stuff, the dystopian stuff in particular, it's, there's no hope in it. There's no there's, it's, it's, it's grim, it's, it's relentless. Why do you do it? And I think the answer for me is I'm getting it out of my system a lot of the time, and I find it therapeutic to write about worst case scenarios, because then you step away from the computer, no matter how shitty things are at home, you look around you think, well, at least I'm not there, you know, at least it's not the zombie apocalypse. Or at least we're not I was gonna say at least people aren't ripping themselves apart for no real reason other than ideological beliefs. But kind of they are constantly,

Michael David Wilson 1:10:41
yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I mean, I, I've said before too that. I mean, the kind of flip side to what I said is that if I am in a really dark place, and then I'm writing about really dark stuff, then I can almost channel some of that raw emotion. And so then it becomes more authentic. So it can be a good place for for good art, but it can just take its toll on on me, like physically and mentally. And, yeah. I mean, while I was writing daddy boy, I was also writing this, this, yeah, this really dark thriller that that was, like, a little bit hopeless and about fractured relationships, but in in the end, kind of daddy's boy took over, and that was the one that I wrote. And actually that was completely the correct decision for me at that time. It was so cathartic, too, because I'm going through this difficult time. But then every day, I'm getting to the computer and I'm I'm like making myself laugh. I'm like making jokes about Andy Peters and des liner. Man, ha, how is that not fun? Definitely a good time for me. So hopefully, the reason that so many people are finding joy and absurdity from daddy's boy is because that's what I was feeling, too. It's almost like this kind of telepathy, where I'm giving to you what I was feeling during the writing 2% which

David Moody 1:12:21
takes us back nicely to the start the conversation, doesn't it? Because that's what we were talking about in writing something. You've got to write it for you first and foremost, and you've got to want to read it, and you've got to want pleasure from it. I know that I recently re released an old book strangers, and I went back and we edited it and added some added a short story and various other things, and I wrote that when I was depressed, and it was a hard slug to read it again, you know, because it reflected my state of mind at the time, which just wasn't, wasn't good. But yeah, I think, I think we can still write grim things when we're happy, can't we?

Michael David Wilson 1:13:05
Oh, yeah, yeah, it's interesting like that. This is another reason why sometimes I want to try to write a book quickly, because actually, this, this thriller that I mentioned, it has sat on the back burner for a while, and occasionally I start revisiting it. But because I'm not in that frame of mind, it's a little bit harder for me to, I suppose, recapture some of it honestly, and also it just makes me more aware of, like, some of the some of the flaws of like, the the main character and the writing. And it's almost like, God that there may be a little bit too hateful. I know that it's an honest depiction, but this is a lot to get someone to read that. But it then, particularly for me, it's like, well, what's the balance? Because I can't, I can't be like, Okay, well, right, in daddy's boy mode. Well, no, then that would be completely farcical for the tone required. So it's just finding, okay, what is the voice? What is, what is the entry point? And I think that people enjoy reading about kind of flawed characters and reading about, you know, reprehensible characters, but that there does need to be some sort of Spark or some sort of hook or maybe some charisma or some incompetence, because if you're just, if you're just reading something so bleak that it's the literary equivalent of a large von Trier film, yeah, for some people, it's gonna work, but it it's asking a lot. It is in an awful. Like that,

David Moody 1:15:00
you're absolutely right. And again, that's I think that's why I think it's so important to get to know the characters, because you've got to make them. Danny McCoy in the hater books, does some pretty horrific things during the course fit, but because your relationship with him has already been established as this frustrated family man with a crappy job working for the council. Very familiar. I think you can, you can go with him to an extent, but yeah, I'd find it difficult to write somebody who was outwardly vile from page one to page, whatever you get up to,

Michael David Wilson 1:15:38
yeah, yeah. You want to have that kind of transformation. It's like, well, you've already, you've already followed in this far. You might as well see what happens next. And I mean, back to to kemberton, so you know you said it's probably going to come out at 50,000 words, then you'll rewrite it. I know that obviously the kind of state of things for you in flux, with your agent passing away, yeah, to stay mildly in flux, it's like, it's fucking dead. It's a bit more than

David Moody 1:16:23
fuck for him, certainly. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 1:16:24
yeah. But I mean, what, what do you think will be the steps after? Do you think that will there be reluctance, I suppose, from agents and publishers to put out a book that has already been out in some form. I mean it, it worked okay for Chuck Paul and Nick and it's worked okay for Haruki Murakami, at least with early chapters of the wind up bird Chronicle. But I'm, I'm not sure kind of what agents are thinking and what the state is at the moment,

David Moody 1:17:03
it's difficult to answer that question, because I think my but hater and the hater and Autumn books had been independently published before they came out, so before they were released by Thomas Dunn books, St Martin's Press in America. So, so I've kind of, I've been through that the reason, one of the reasons that I like to publish independently, is because I enjoy it, because I like the freedom of it. I like being in control of it, and I like the immediacy of it, which is, you know, I'm really it's understandable what's happening with dirty day. But even if I get another agent within the agency and who then shops it around and sells it, it's going to be like 12 months, 18 months, two years before it, before it hits the shelves, if it hits the shelves in that way. And I find that really, really hard to deal with, the fact that I've got this book that I love, that people have really enjoyed, and it's not out there. It's different. If somebody says, yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll publish that, and here's your advance money, because that makes it a lot easier. But, you know, I don't, I don't know if that's going to happen, so I think I with kemberton, I may just, depending on how things work out, may just release it independently, just to keep things going. I'm also very wary about disappearing for a long period of time, which is, you know, as I said, that's the reason why I've been releasing kemberton in the way that I have done, the fact that I just, I want to stay visible. And I think when this book's done and I take it away to do whatever I end up doing with it, I'll start again. I've got an idea for another book that I want to serialize in the same way and just see where it goes. And it might be something that that I always do. I quite like having more than one project on the go, because there are some days, I think, when you you're just not in the headspace for a particular book, and it's it's frustrating trying to force yourself to write. And sometimes it works, but not always. And I find it refreshing and beneficial to be able to say, Okay, well, I'm not going to do that one today. I'm going back to this one. It's good. It keeps you it keeps you on your toes, it keeps you flexible. So, yeah, I don't know where it's all going to go. Obviously, this could all change again next week, and I'm in contact with the editors that I've worked with previously, so there's a chance that, you know, even if I don't end up with another agent, that I might be able to approach them, and they might be interested in taking something on. But I really, honestly, it's so, as you said, in a state of flux, I don't know where it's going to go. I think I'm just gonna keep all my options open and see what happens. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 1:19:45
and I certainly like as well the idea of at least putting out, you know, one book per year, as you say, just to keep people kind of interested, to keep pro. Providing something to the readers. And yeah, it does. It does create particularly when independently publishing has never been as easy as it is right now. It does create this dilemma, because it's like, well, you could wait for that deal, but then your book is out in two years. And even, in fact, the small presses, I find they're having longer and longer wait times. Yeah, you do, if you get signed by a small press, then it's probably going to be about a year, which seems to be, certainly longer than it used to be. I know some that, you know what they're commissioning now, they wouldn't be out till 2027 which for me, then, then there's no point, you know, because I got to balance the different things, like the immediacy, the money, the marketing, that all sorts of bullshit. That has to be

David Moody 1:20:58
Yeah. No, you're absolutely right, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah. So I feel a little more fortunate now that I've been I've been doing this for nearly 30 years, and I've got a decent back catalog behind me, so I know that I can have, I have a promotional spreadsheet that I look at every day, and I do try and every few days, just put a tweet or whatever they're supposed to be called now or use, just put some on Facebook or Instagram just to promote an old book. So it's it's possible to keep things going like that. But I also feel guilty just pushing the same old shit again and again and again. I want new stuff for people to read. That's, that's why I do this. It's, I don't want to be like a used car salesman. I want to be selling new cast planes, spaceships, whatever. You know.

Michael David Wilson 1:21:54
Yeah, yeah. No. It makes sense. And, you know, so it. I feel less anxious, I suppose, when I've just released a book, which is the case, you know, right now, of course, with daddy's boy, because it's then like, right? Well, we've got a year or so until I feel like, oh, there absolutely needs to be another one. But, you know, I've got this novella I mentioned, what would Wesley do that's ready to go, that's with a publisher at the moment. So if they decide to take it on, and they make the right offer, then, you know, great. And it doesn't, it doesn't really matter at this point. If they say, Oh, it'll be two years, because I know that, well, I've just released this one, and I've got another two to three projects that I'm I'm working on, so that there's definitely time in that regard. But if they don't take it on, then there's almost a temptation to just put it out at the maybe even at the end of this year, because it's like, well, I've got this book. Is there any point waiting? I know, like, of course. Like, I think, I think if you were doing like, four or five books a year, then it would be like, well, maybe there is point waiting because you don't want to over saturate it. But I think one to two books is, like perfectly kind of manageable for readers. And for that schedule,

David Moody 1:23:26
I think that's ideal. I think independently published books that I've released, they seem to have a six month take, if you know I mean that, so that, so you get your pre orders and everything you put the book out, and then for me that they seem to trail off after that initial push. Seems to trail off after six months. So I would love to be in a position where, as I'm approaching that six months, here's the next one, you know, and just keep, keep it going like that. So, yeah, we'll see. You know, if I go the other route and dirty day ends up with a with a traditional publisher, then I think I'll just try and knuckle down and just get new books in the bag so that hopefully they'll take those on. And then we'll be back to a book a year, which is which is okay. I'm fortunate to be but in the position that I'm in where I don't have to, you know, the kids have left home and the mortgage is paid, so it's not the pressure that it used to be my very first editor, he said at St Martin's Press, he gave me two nuggets of financial advice, which always stuck with me. First one was, don't anticipate the next advanced check because, you know, it might not turn up, and it's all too easy to do when you've been going for one people have been throwing bit of cash at you. You think, oh, well, they'll buy the next one. And they might not necessarily. But the key thing for me was, you can you. Can pay bills with money that you've made from a book, but it's really hard to write a book to pay bills. See what I'm saying. It's totally different. Yeah, you can get your cash from Amazon or your publisher or whatever at the end of the month and do whatever you need to do with it, but you can't think, I can't think, oh, I need a new car or whatever. I'll write a book, it doesn't work like that. If

Michael David Wilson 1:25:23
only it was so easy, only

David Moody 1:25:25
it was so easy, it is so easy for some people, just not, not most of us.

Michael David Wilson 1:25:31
But I mean, you know, to be clear as well. I mean for me, particularly at this, like, early start in my writing career, like, you know, I do want to land a big publisher like that would be the dream at this point, because I know it would give me the reach it would give me, yeah, you know, certainly more financially, though, for people listening, it might not be as much as you imagine. You know, some some of these advances, particularly for a starting offer, that they're fairly modest. You know, don't quit your day job just yet. But, yeah, I because I find like the reach is the kind of most difficult thing right now, I think I've said numerous times before, I'm sure that there's a demand for the type of fiction that I'm writing, but the trick is finding the readers, you know, finding where they are, because they're all situated in these little bubbles around the world, just these group of people they want to read. Dark comedy is about naked attraction and sausages, but, yeah, there's not a naked attraction and sausage section in Waterstones yet. For some reason, there's barely

David Moody 1:26:46
a fiction section in some Waterstones,

Michael David Wilson 1:26:50
yeah? But I Yeah, yeah. I'd love to do kind of that model where you've, you've got the big publish in the USA, yeah, you have to wait the two or so years, but then maybe you're putting out a novella every year as well on your own independent press. And yeah, it seems to be a good way to do it, but at least for me, whatever happens, I'm doing this podcast, so I'm not people know that haven't disappeared. If there's not been a book for a while, I'm still here, at least. Yeah,

David Moody 1:27:27
I was thinking that earlier. What a great thing it is for you, the fact that you always talking about talking to authors, the number of emails I get from This Is Horror saying we're taking questions for so and so, and we're doing this with whatever. And I think, yeah, the number of opportunities you have to get your mug and your voice in front of loads of people is great. It's fantastic. Yeah, it's something that I'd love to do, but I just it's, you're very good at it. I'd be very bad at it. So I'm not. There's going to be no competition for from my perspective, for a podcast, well,

Michael David Wilson 1:28:05
I suppose I'm relieved to hear it, then I'll continue to to not feel threatened a David Moody podcast might be coming around the corner. It was, was always a fear. But thank you for confirming that you've, you've signed some sort of no compete clause so good, it would

David Moody 1:28:25
just, it would just be terrible. Honestly, I don't even want to

Michael David Wilson 1:28:30
go there, yeah, but I, I've said before, you know, one of the reasons why I started the Michael David Wilson Patreon was to get some separation between This Is Horror and my author presence, because, I mean, it is great obviously, doing this week in, week out. But you know that there's not always crossover. And I think as well, particularly as I'm writing more comedic stuff, I don't want to be inadvertently dishonest to people, because I think people do assume if they're not looking like, you know, the blurb, or whatever that will I'm writing horror. And,

David Moody 1:29:12
yeah, that's it. Okay,

Michael David Wilson 1:29:15
yeah, 75,000 words of dick jokes. And Jeremy Corbyn, yeah, I

David Moody 1:29:21
know it would be weird, wouldn't it, if you were having an in depth conversation with somebody who writes particularly bleak stuff and then you just segue into sausages and naked attraction again. It's just, you know, it's not, there's only going to be so much of a market for that,

Michael David Wilson 1:29:35
yeah, but for some reason, that was the direction that I decided to take. That was the hard left turn. That was that was not planned. But this is, this is about following the Muse and being authentic. Absolutely. That's authentically me. That's authentic you, yeah, I mean you, you've known me for an. Number of years now. So in you know, for some people, they you know that maybe they know me from interviewing people like Ramsey Campbell and Adam Neville and writing daddy's boy could seem like a departure. But I think people who know my humor and my personality, I think it kind of fits.