TIH 620: Jon Bassoff on The Memory Ward, The Drive-Thru Crematorium, and Becoming a Writer

Michael David Wilson 0:20
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're talking to John bassoff. He is the author of 10 novels, and his mounting gothic novel, corrosion has been translated into French and German and was nominated for France's biggest crime fiction award. His Psycho noir novel The disassembled man has been adapted for the big screen. He also wrote the screenplay for bizarre love triangle, which was named semi finalist at the New York cinematography awards, and was a finalist at the Seattle Film Festival for Best Short Film. His latest book is The Memory Ward, and it is fantastic, and it is primarily the reason that we're here to talk with John today. So with that said, a quick advert break.

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Bob Pastorella 2:40
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Michael David Wilson 3:10
Here it is. It is John bassoff on This Is Horror. John, welcome to This Is

Jon Bassoff 3:20
Horror. Well, I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 3:24
we're glad to have you here. And usually I like to talk about early life lessons. But before that, I want to know what was your first memory?

Jon Bassoff 3:36
My first memory, oh, man, you know my first memory was actually a word, like I remember creating a word, and I was, I must have been just learning how to speak. I remember having my little bottle, and I knew that it was different than, like the beer bottle that my dad was constantly drinking. And so I remember saying, This isn't what I'm drinking. Is not a bottle. It's, I'm going to call it a going to call it a Bob, and I remember that vividly as just a tiny little kid. But, yeah, I would love to tell you that I've got some super dark first memory, but they're mainly fond. I would say,

Michael David Wilson 4:17
yeah, so you were creating words, and, in a sense, creating stories, ever since you could even open your mouth.

Jon Bassoff 4:25
I did. I was kind of, my parents said I was sort of a late talker, and so they, they were wary. They took me to the doctor. The doctor said, Yeah, this guy's this guy's really late developing. And then all of a sudden I started, like, just speaking in full sentences, so never turned back after that.

Michael David Wilson 4:44
And I mean, so what were some of those early life lessons that you learned growing up?

Jon Bassoff 4:51
Well, you know, I came from a family my my mom was a psychologist, and my dad is an English professor. So kind of had, you know, I. Perfect upbringing for the kind of stuff that I write. My dad was always pushing the movies and literature on me, and my mom was more of the psychological side when I was young. My dad used to, I mean, this was probably when I was in, you know, fourth grade, fifth grade, he would show me all the old film noirs, you know, Maltese Falcon and and a bunch of those. And so real early on, I became a fan of, like, the detective movies, detective novels. But I was always most fascinated with the bad guys, you know, like I related to, I thought they were more interesting. And and as I got older and started to become more of a reader, I became sort of fascinated with those kind of off center protagonists, the ones that were psychotic, or at least had no idea what was going on in the world. And that's kind of, you know, mostly what I've written for for my adult life,

Michael David Wilson 6:02
yeah. I mean, certainly the characters that you write their shades of gray, you're not gonna get any kind of shiny. This is the moral, upstanding citizen, and we wouldn't want it any way, any other way, really. I mean, these are the interesting characters. These are the true to life characters. We want scars. We want flaws. Yeah, I

Jon Bassoff 6:27
I mean, it's, I teach high school English and and Creative Writing, and I was my students always kind of assume when you're talking about the protagonist, the protagonist is the good guy. And I told him, No, the protagonist is your main character. Protagonist doesn't have to be good. You know, you can have your antagonist as the good guy, if you want. And you know, generally speaking, like you look at Batman, for example, like most interesting about Batman are the criminals, are the Joker and all those guys. And I sort of feel the same way in my writing. And so if you can have the focus on some of those bad guys, and not all of my care, not all of my protagonists are necessarily bad or evil, but, you know, they're all They're all troubled, they're all trying to figure something out.

Michael David Wilson 7:09
And so what point did you know that you wanted to become a writer and that you were creatively inclined?

Jon Bassoff 7:17
You know, I wrote a lot of short stories when I was a kid in elementary school, kind of focusing on those like detective type stories. And then when I got into junior high and high school, my interest shifted completely to sports and girls and friends and all that, and wasn't really interested in reading at all, which Much to the chagrin of my English professor father. And it actually wasn't until, you know, I did in college, took some English classes, but it wasn't until after, after college, I read this book called The Killer Inside Me, by Jim Thompson. And, yeah, that was, like, you know, as a 1950s pulp type novel. And at the time, there was all those pulp novels coming out, and most of them, they were kind of like comfort food for a lot of people, you kind of knew what you were getting with most of them. But this Jim Thompson one, you know, I started reading it, and it's from the point of view of a sheriff, and it takes a few pages until you start realizing, Wait a second, this guy is a total psychopath. And I didn't at that point. I didn't know you could do that. I didn't know you could make your protagonist like that. And I said, All right, that's what I want to do. And so I, immediately after that, wrote my first novel, and it was just a complete rip off of the Killer Inside Me. It was, like, totally derivative. It wasn't very good. But, you know, it got me into that mode of realizing that I could write something, that I could I could create something. And I wrote several, several novels after that, which I kind of never saw the light of day. I never felt comfortable enough showing anybody. And then eventually, I wrote a book called The disassembled man, which I felt good enough to start pitching around a little bit.

Bob Pastorella 9:05
Yeah, when you, when you felt that, you, when you realized that you could do that and write from that angle, and that, when I discovered it, I felt liberated. It's, it's, it's after years of trying to, you know, conform to what you're supposed to do, and then you read, it's like, and so and I hit Jim Thompson around the same time. I hit Chuck Palahniuk, yeah, and will Christopher bear and Craig Clevenger. That all kind of happened for me at one time. And is, and I really kind of gravitated to the Thompson stuff I felt. I'm sure you felt the same way you had.

Jon Bassoff 9:49
I still remember going I was I went to school in New York at that point, when I discovered Jim Thompson. And I remember going to the library and just finding every Thompson book I could find. Right? And I probably, you know, over the course of of a year, you know, read eight Jim Thompson novels. I was just like, I was smitten, and he was like, he was writing everything that I didn't know I had wanted to write. And, you know, so it wasn't just the Killer Inside Me. It was, you know, savage night and what population? I always forget the number on the population book, 1090 I think 1080 I forget. But every single book was, was it was so unapologetic, unapologetically brutal, and wasn't dancing around all the all the tough stuff that is that's going on, and most of them took place in small towns where you kind of have these veneer of of respectability, and then he would present all that stuff that's underneath that.

Bob Pastorella 10:51
Yeah, he, he had this ability. It's like, you know, and people don't realize he wrote the getaway, you know, the Grifters. His his books have been made other than, you know, the Killer Inside Me, his books have been made into films because they, even though you're following, you know, a morally corrupt character, usually, or somebody who's morally bankrupt, what you what you find is that it's just still A classic structure. And so, yeah, you can learn a lot just by, just by reading some choice Jim Thompson. That's like an education in a book, right there? Yeah. I mean,

Jon Bassoff 11:32
he was definitely my first education. And then I kind of shifted. And, you know, it's funny when I look at some of the earlier stuff that I, that I wrote it was, I could tell what I was reading at that time, too, you know. So I read right around that same time something to I read Camus the stranger, which is completely different, but Ha, you know, has a murder kind of at the at the center of it. And that struck me a lot. And then I started getting some of those Southern Gothic writers, especially Flannery O'Connor and and I think as a writer, once you start, you know, early on, I was since I was just imitating Jim Thompson and not doing a very good job of it, I really hadn't found my voice. But I think once you start finding several influences, and you're sort of imitating all of them, and you're not doing it very well, you can kind of get your own voice that way. And so I think in some ways, those combination of voices that I was imitating not well, turned into my own voice.

Michael David Wilson 12:35
Yeah. And so you said that the disassembled man was the first novel that you wrote, but if my understanding is correct, corrosion is the first one that was published. So, yeah, what? What did that journey look like? Yeah, I had

Jon Bassoff 12:53
so interestingly, I had written the disassembled man, and I had struggled to I didn't know anything about the industry. I didn't know anybody in the industry, and so I was just going online and like, searching for small presses and sending it out, and just not really having any success. And then I just, I made the impetuous decision to start my own press. And I was thinking, all right, well, maybe if I got a few friends who have written some things that were pretty good, maybe if I start my own press, I can do this under a pen name, and it won't look like I'm self publishing. It'll it'll be like, I'll trick people. People will never know. And so I started this little press. It was called New Pulp Press. And and then, of course, people started submitting. A lot of people started submitting, and, like, some really good, crazy stuff. And so I started publishing a bunch of really cool books. You know, Jake hingson, hell on Church Street was book that we published and, and, but I put the disassembled man out there as well under a pen name of Nate flexor. And when it was out there, a screenwriter had somehow found it and read it and contacted me and said he wanted to adapt it. He wanted to option and adapt it. And so I said, Sure, but again, I knew nothing about it. I knew one agent who was also a writer, a crime writer, named Alan Guthrie, and he was a Scottish writer, but also an agent. And so I contacted him and said, Hey, so this guy just wanted to option the distiller. Man, do you have any advice? And he said, Yeah, my advice is you take me on as your agent. And so he became my agent. And then I wrote corrosion, and it was published with a with a small horror press called Dark fuse, which no longer exists anymore. And then after that one came out and did pretty well with dark fuse, they asked to publish the disowned man under my own name. So corrosion was first, but then the disowned man was actually written first,

Michael David Wilson 14:54
and in terms of getting contacted about making the disassembled man. Into a film. So was that Ivan Kavanagh, or did that come later? Because I know that in this business, like the person who initially contacts us might not be the one who ultimately makes the film.

Jon Bassoff 15:13
No, you know, the disassembled man has had a long and torturous film career, so the first guy who optioned it was someone named Ethan Goldman and he wrote, he actually wrote a screenplay which I thought was really good, but nothing really came of it. And then somehow, years later, when corrosion came out, I was contacted by a different screenwriter who wanted to adapt corrosion. And one of the directors that we went out to was Ivan Kavanaugh, and he ended up not the my producers ended up picking somebody else to direct corrosion. But Ivan and I kind of became friends, because we really connected with a lot of the same stuff. And then he read the disassembled man and decided he wanted to direct that, and it was with him for a long for several years, but again, just never, never happened. And then got picked up by another agency, and we've had several lead actors attached, and different, different directors, and it just hasn't, hasn't happened. You know, there's the drive through crematorium. Is the one that's kind of better poised right now to possibly become something, possibly become a film. But, you know, these things are so complicated. And someone, I forget who it was, but someone said in publishing, it's all about No, no, no until it's yes. And in film, it's always yes, yes, yes, yes till it's no. And so I've had a lot of experience with that in film, of being told it's going to happen, it's going to happen, it's going to happen, and hasn't happened

Michael David Wilson 16:45
yet. I found in film, too, that there's the Hollywood No, which is essentially like, we're not going to definitively say no, we're just going to see soul contact now, which is not ideal, like, I'd prefer publishing where it's like the no is a literal No. But I guess I prefer the money of Hollywood, though. So

Jon Bassoff 17:06
it's a tricky one that is true, yeah. Well, there's people I know who have, you know, had their projects optioned by, you know, big, big corporations, and they kind of get upset when it get gets made, because then they lose that yearly option money. You know, some people just live off all right, these companies are going to keep giving me that money every year and not make it. I'm totally happy with that. I'm kind of, I'm narcissistic enough that I really want it to be made more so than than just get the option money. So,

Michael David Wilson 17:35
yeah, see, I don't you were going to go in a different direction there and say, when it is made, it then doesn't resemble the book, which is the other problem, you know, like it can get twisted so much that really the only thing that it has in common is the title. But, yeah, the film industry is a complicated beast, but we all want a piece of it. Nonetheless, we

Jon Bassoff 17:59
do. I mean, it's, it's, I mean, when you're writing your novel, you're, you're the you're the lead actor, you're the director, you're all the parts, and you have complete control over it. I mean, I know there's editorial stuff that comes later, with the publisher and so forth, but really, you're the one doing all the creating. And then with film, it's just, there's so many pieces that are going into place. You know, you obviously have all the financial interests and so much money, especially when you're talking about Hollywood, and then you have all the all the names and the directors and the egos and everything. And, like, I always want, like, how is it possible that anything ever gets made? I sometimes wonder, but obviously it does. But I think, like, for me, it would be thrilling, just because I think it'd be cool to have a bunch of creative people kind of interpreting your work, and even if it ended up being something different, you know, hopefully it would be something good, but I think that it would be exciting.

Michael David Wilson 18:55
And it's such a shame that the disassembled man with Ivan Kavanaugh attached has fallen through because Ivan Kavanaugh is such a good director, and I find that his movie, the canal, is so underrated, it's so virtually unknown. But it really affected me. It's like, holy shit, this has some of that Jim Thompson brutality in that matter of fact about it. So I, I feel the two of you would work really well together. So I agree

Jon Bassoff 19:29
I would love, love, love to get one of these made. And actually, he had been on board with the drive through crematorium as well. We had, we had written a screenplay together, like we really connected. We really, really want to get something together. It's just, you know, it's always the finance. It's always the financing and getting the getting the right names attached and so forth. And, you know, the kind of stuff that I write is a little bit different. So it's, it's not always an easy sell. But, yeah, Ivan's great. Eight, and his his movie, son is, is fantastic. He did a Western with, with John Cusack, which and Emile Hirsch, which was really good. Emil Hirsch was actually attached to be to star in the disassembled man. He was really excited about it too. So I was, I figured, man, we have a really great director. We got a great lead actor. I thought it was gonna happen, but not yet. But you never know. You never know.

Michael David Wilson 20:27
Yeah, I've had that happen with one of my books multiple times now. And you know, I often say you can't celebrate any further than the stage that you're at. You know, it's tempting to imagine it on the screen, but until you're sitting down in that cinema and you're watching it, you don't know, yeah, I

Jon Bassoff 20:49
just had, I can't get into details, but I just had a conversation with with a company about one of the books. And, you know, it's very exciting and, and, but my person representing me said, All right, so you got this 18 months now. Don't think about it for 18 months, because it's just going to drive you crazy, and just assume it's not going to happen if it does great but, but otherwise, just let them do their thing, and, and, and we'll see what happens.

Michael David Wilson 21:17
Yeah, this is almost a paradox of the industry, as you said, like, there's a lot of Yes, yes, yes. But then when you talk to your film agent or your film manager, it's like, so how excited should I be at this point? And you know, my manager's like, well, assume it won't happen. Yeah, no, but, but we just kept saying yes, yeah, but it's the industry. It's probably not gonna happen. So assume that then, you know, you're mentally better equipped well in either way, because then if it does happen, you can be euphoric, and if it doesn't, well, what did I tell you? I told you it wouldn't.

Jon Bassoff 21:57
Yeah, I've got it. I've got a weird combination of of being kind of fatalist like that, but also being eternally optimistic that something eventually will. You know that, if I keep at it, that eventually something will happen. And I think you can, you can kind of live with that, with that contradiction, somewhat of of, yeah, I live life, expecting the worst, but kind of hoping for the best.

Michael David Wilson 22:22
This is exactly my philosophy. And, you know, I think there is something inherently optimistic in the act of writing, in the act of continuing to write, continuing to put these books out. And you know, it has to happen to someone. So there's the optimistic part that's like, why not me? And I feel every time I write a book, every time I put something out into the world, that is a ticket, that is an opportunity to maybe win, as it were,

Jon Bassoff 22:53
yeah. But I also think there's, you know, when you start to get into that of always needing the next thing and never sort of being satisfied of what you have accomplished. That that can get ugly too. And I think, I think it's good sometimes to, like, when I first started, I remember I was just thinking, if I could, just, if I can get this published anywhere and sell 50 copies, I will be so happy, like, that'll be all that I ever need. And then, of course, you get published, and you start to feel a little success, and you're like, Yeah, but if I could get it with this publisher and sell this many, and at some point, you know, just being able to say, All right, this is, you know, like, I've, I've published 10 books. I've had a couple of them in in French and German. And like, I feel like I've, made connections with a lot of people, and even though they haven't been made into movies and they haven't hit the New York Times bestseller, it's still, you know, sometimes it's good to kind of take a take a look at what you have done and and I don't, know, feel satisfied.

Michael David Wilson 23:57
Yeah, I totally hear what you're saying, and it's something that I strive for, but it doesn't always happen, because every time we achieve a goal, there's this horrible tendency to then move the goal post so that there is no satisfaction. And I know if my 18 year old self were to look at what I'm doing, he would be really happy. But you know myself now in the present, in 2025, you know, if you sell 50 copies, then you want 500 if you sell 500 you want 5000 it keeps going up.

Jon Bassoff 24:33
It's true. Yeah, it's true. I mean, that's, that's humanity, I guess, right, that's, that's evolution, so, but

Michael David Wilson 24:40
you said that the drive through crematorium, that's the one that you've kind of got the furthest along, and that is, as I said, off air. It's almost the nearest to a companion piece to the memory ward in terms of thematic concerns. And there's something kind of Franz Kafka. Meets David Lynch about it. And, yeah, I wonder, yeah,

Jon Bassoff 25:05
yeah, no, I think that's a good, you know, for drive through crematorium. Those are, those are probably the two influences, Kafka and Lynch and sort of meet somewhere half halfway. Yeah, it was, it's, it's when I write books, you know, I've always considered myself a genre writer, but I've never totally fit into one particular genre. I've never written anything supernatural. But books like the memory Ward and drive through crematorium, they're just kind of, there's unsettling. The horror in them is unsettling. The horror is is psychological. And, you know, both, both of them take place. And, you know, in kind of either suburbia or small town America, where we're on the surface, things seem seem pristine. The veneer seems pristine. But then I always think of that, you know, David Lynch movie Blue Velvet, where at the in the opening scene, you see all the you see the white picket fences and the and the green lawns and people trimming the bushes and everything looks perfect. But then you start looking underneath the grass, and there's all the all the worms and and centipedes trying to crawl their way up. And I always love that image, and that's kind of what I tried to do in both of those books,

Michael David Wilson 26:24
right? But instead of it being the grass of the drive through crematorium, you got to look underneath the skin. And with the memory board, you've got to look underneath the wallpaper. So there you go. Yeah,

Jon Bassoff 26:36
I didn't think about that, but it is. It's always pulling pulling something back. And, yeah, it was funny. The for the memory Ward, that was the image before I even had the story. That was the image that popped in first is somebody peeling back wallpaper and getting a story behind the wallpaper. And then once I had that image, I'm like, All right, I gotta, I gotta figure out how to what this is, what is behind that wallpaper?

Michael David Wilson 27:03
Yeah, there's something instantly recognizable about this kind of setting where you're in a small town, but you know that there's something deeply wrong and disquieting, and you can't quite put your finger on it. And I think you know, the obvious comparison that a number of people have made is to the Stanford wives, but it also has something a little bit Twin Peaks, a little bit Wayward Pines. There's almost something Silent Hill. It's just it's too good to be true when you know that, when you uncover the truth, you're gonna wish that you hadn't. It's kind of this philosophical quandary about, would would you rather know the truth, or would you rather just live in innocence, in in bliss?

Jon Bassoff 27:57
Yeah, that is, that is kind of the ultimate question of the book. And I've always, you know, I've always been fascinated with with memory and with faulty memory. And, you know, they talk about how, like, even when we when we remember something, our memory changes each time you remember it. And so it's never like, it's never the complete story. And then, and then, also with the memory war, just just identity of what makes us a human is, is our humanity based on our memories and our past narratives? Or is there, or is there something else? Is there a soul of some sort? So that's kind of a central question as well. But yeah, there is, sort of, you know, as you move forward in that book, that that moral dilemma, is it, is it better to know, or is it better to remain in that, in that childlike innocence, that childlike bliss, because that that's kind of fun, too. You know, waiting for Santa Claus to deliver your presence and on Christmas morning is a nice feeling. And can we just keep lying? And that's why we, we lie to our kids as long as we can about that.

Bob Pastorella 29:05
It had a very Twilight Zone feel like the stuff that that Serling would have written himself, where you have like what you're talking about, when you, you know, to me, it felt that way because of the, I guess, the setting, you know, it was this, this kind of, you know, where everybody's all Good morning, you know, and all of that. And it's like I immediately felt when I, when I see those kind of scenes, I'm, I'm trained to go, Okay, this isn't right. Anyway, there's no, nobody's just fucking happy. Delivering mail. So what the fuck is going on here? You know? So I was already on edge, you know, and I'm just looking for the, you know, where, where's the where's the world gonna peel back, I didn't know it was gonna be like, literally, but, yeah, peel back the wallpaper. But it was like. Like, this is so Twilight Zone, and it was just, it was fucking cool, man, really was. And I could see the stepper wipes, but I don't know it's, it's, it didn't really look Ira put it like he basically, it was very tongue in cheek, yeah. And I didn't really if I was supposed to feel that reading the memory Ward, then, you know, I felt more disturbed, unsettled than tongue in cheek. Yeah, I

Jon Bassoff 30:28
think the Twilight Zone is a great one. And I It's funny, when I was writing it, I wasn't thinking of The Twilight Zone. But then once I was done, I was like, yeah, it's got that vibe. Because I think I purposefully, even though it takes place in in contemporary time, it has that 1950s feel. And I've always been, just like, totally fascinated by the 1950s because it was such a time of transition in our country after World War Two and and the move to to, you know, mass production, and to the suburbs and those kind of neighborhoods and and then you you had, like, with an advertising and so you had this, you began to have this kind of ideal structure of what the family was and what the town was, and but, you know, the 1950s is also the time of the atomic bomb and the Cold War, and so there's all this paranoia. And so I really, really wanted the book to kind of have that, that sense of paranoia, and you watch those little Twilight Zone episodes, and obviously some are better than others, but all of them have, like that underlying sense of dread and underlying sense that you're being watched, and this isn't and something is different than what we're seeing here. So that was, that was what I was going for. And I was, yeah, I was, I was aware of Stepford Wives, but that I do like that Twilight Zone comp a lot.

Michael David Wilson 31:52
Yeah, I think the fact that you put the town Bethlem, you know, on an old nuclear test site that, of course, is going to conjure up the 1950s so there were almost moments where I had to remember, I had to realize this is happening in the present. But then that disconnect, that difficulty is, of course, so appropriate when you realize what is actually going on here, what is happening, although what is happening is a little bit ambiguous. Anyway, I'd say there are at least three interpretations that you could walk away with,

Jon Bassoff 32:36
yeah, yeah, there's, there's a sense of disorientation. I think you know, you're the protagonists are all disoriented because they're not exactly sure what's happening and, and I think I wanted the reader to feel some of that disorientation. And so I think one way to do that is kind of, it's, it sort of is unclear of the time of when it is, you know, or, or, and the protagonists aren't completely where he's one of the narrator's father is stuck in the past. And he's, you know, he's always reading this, this old Life magazine, this particular issue from, I think it's from the 1960s you know. So, so he's stuck there and, and, plus, I think, you know, like, when you, when you start writing books where it's completely in modern time, you get the cell phones and the internet and all that stuff, and that can take away from some of the writerly devices that I wanted to use here,

Bob Pastorella 33:35
the like, the setting becomes a character. It's like you, I noticed that is that, because you had to really think this is actually taking place right now, but this, the actual setting itself, has become a character. Reminded me a little bit of it follows, because you have, you know, gentrified Detroit. You've got 1970 early 80s cars. One of the character has a clamshell e reader. So it's like, what, what time am I? Am I in? And so that's, that's very unsettling. So, yeah, that's you did you did good with that. That's meant to take notes on that, because that was actually quite brilliant,

Jon Bassoff 34:15
yeah. I mean, the setting for me is, is, it's always like a main character, you know, because it does it, it's it does deal so much with the mood that you're going to connect within. It's the place that your protagonists live, and it's the it's the place that they're reacting to. So, you know that my books have have gone all over the place, but, but everyone has a setting that that's unsettling in different ways. You know, corrosion takes place in a really, really creepy mountain town with mountain shacks and all that stuff, which is more sort of traditional horror and isolation. And the drive through crematorium takes place in the weird old amusement park town and and then, you know, I. A book called factory town, which which takes place in in sort of this industrial wasteland. So there's so many different settings that like that. I've always been excited to to jump into and and then. But the one setting that I always had a really, really hard time making scary was, like the place that I lived in, which is, you know, I live in kind of a medium sized town, and there's a suburban feel to it, and I always felt like just too boring to write about. But then you start realizing, yeah, but there's strange people living in these boring towns and, and so I think, and we've, I think we've seen some of the rise of that suburbian horror and, and I've really enjoyed kind of adding that as as one of those settings,

Michael David Wilson 35:47
yeah, and in terms of place, I mean, I feel it can't be a coincidence that you've named the town Bethlem, yeah, and it's so Close to Bethlehem.

Jon Bassoff 35:59
Jesus, yeah, you've got the birthplace of Jesus. You've also got the insane asylum, which has a similar name to it. And it's, it's, it's one of those names that everybody is like, I think that's a real place, but it's not really. It's just close to a lot of you know place names, but Bethlehem was the kind of the starting point with me, as as the people who had, who had named this town, wanted it to, wanted it to seem like the land of promise, the land of hope, in the land of salvation. And that's always, you know, that's always when we start to believe that we've created something that's going to lead to lead to our salvation, that's that's probably the surest way, straight, straight down to our damnation. So

Michael David Wilson 36:46
I do not disagree with you there. Yeah, I think that's a fairly accurate statement. And I mean, with this, and with probably the vast majority, if not all, of your books you know this obsession with memory and how much we can trust it seems to be a career concern of yours. So I'm wondering, how much can you personally trust your own memory, and do you have any things in place to help you trust it more?

Jon Bassoff 37:21
Man, I mean, you, it's really interesting. I just I was in Seattle this past weekend for a book event, and met up with a bunch of people from high school and and from my past who lived out there. And in particular, I was conversation with this woman, and we had shared experiences, and our memories of those experiences which I am completely sure my memory is correct on, she is completely sure that her memory is is correct on. And it's not like minor, like trivial details. It's like, you know, major pieces of the narrative. And I think that happens all the time, and it's why, you know, eyewitnesses are so unreliable our brains. In our brains, a clever thing in it, and it convinces us that that what we are remembering is the truth. And sometimes it is, and I think, I think a whole lot of times it's not, I think we were really just always kind of trying to create that narrative that gives us some kind of a comfort. And so we we put our and we choose which memories are we're going to use to fit that comfort. And then sometimes, when you're more self destructive, it's, it's the other way around. You're, you're picking those memories that are going to to cause more pain, and focusing on those, on those memories to cause more pain, even if you've kind of created those memories as well. So, yeah, it would be nice if we could have just like, if I could just watch a movie of my life and say, okay, okay, here's what actually happened. But instead, we're just relying on these little bits and pieces of whatever our brain decides on.

Michael David Wilson 39:05
Yeah, though, ironically, even the movie would be unreliable, because what's off camera, what aren't we seeing here? So you're never gonna I mean, it is there ever such a thing as objective truth. I mean, that's a big question that we probably can't Well, you've said no, so we have answered it.

Jon Bassoff 39:30
Yeah, I don't, I don't think so. I mean, there was, I'm not gonna remember the author's name, but there was an author and, like, start doing some of that, the new wave stuff from, from France, gray a, I think is his name, and he wrote a novel like where he was trying to be completely objective. So there was throughout, it was just everything. Was just describing what it was that was being seen. And there was you never got into. Anybody's head there was, it was just completely objective. But of course, we know he's the one who's writing it, you know? So somewhere off, off screen, off camera, is a narrator, and behind the narrator is an author. So and everybody has their bias, and everybody is picking, you know, what it is that what is it they're going to write, what is it is they're going to leave out. So, yeah, I'm on the side of no real, objective truth.

Michael David Wilson 40:27
And I mean talking about things that can't easily be discerned. As you said, you write kind of in the cracks between genres. You can't really say, Oh, John is a crime writer or a horror writer, or even a bizarro writer or a thriller like there's elements of all of these. And it, of course, varies a little bit from book to book. So I'm wondering how, from a practical point of view, does that inform how you go about pitching or publishing or even approaching, I suppose the more logistical elements of selling and marketing a story certainly

Jon Bassoff 41:13
hasn't helped. I'll tell you that, but yeah, I mean, genre is a is a way of of organizing for readers and for publishers, of like, putting things in of having certain expectations of what it is that you're getting, like, if you, if you're a mystery fan, you have and you get a mystery book, you have a certain expectation of what it is that you're getting there. And the kind of writing that I've done as you, as you mentioned, like, I think I started out as kind of leaning more in the crime fiction area, and I think the longer I've written, the more stuff that I read and write is kind of gone off towards horror a little bit. But yeah, like, there's, it doesn't match completely, and so it becomes a little challenging for the publishers to figure out what it is and like so, for example, beneath crew waters, my last novel is really kind of a dark psychological it's almost like a family drama in a way. But there's, you know, crime and mystery and intrigue, but it was marketed as a psychological thriller. And I'm like, it's definitely, it's not a thriller like when I hear thriller, I'm thinking chases and all that, and there's definitely none of that there. So I've always, you know, for better or for worse, I've just always written what I want to write at that particular moment, what I think, what I want to read, and then you kind of hope that other people want to read it as well. I think it's, I don't know if it's a mistake, but it's been a mistake for me to try to chase a particular market to say, All right, I see that this kind of book is selling well, so let me write this kind of book. And I have, definitely, I've had, you know, I've had agents tell me, hey, you know, maybe you can, you can keep some of your darkness here, but maybe try to do it like this one, and give me a book and and it just hasn't worked for me, you know, I just kind of have my own way of going about doing it, and for better or for worse, and then you just, you just kind of hope that, well, eventually the audience will find Me.

Michael David Wilson 43:19
And in terms of you know that that kind of classification, How has working with Blackstone been have have they been receptive to that? Have they tried to get you to push in one direction more than the others? Do you think that you'll be continuing to work with them beyond the memory ward.

Jon Bassoff 43:42
I hope so. I've loved working with Blackstone, so I've done my last two novels with them, the memory Ward and beneath crew waters. But they also took my back list and put it all on on Audible, and they're just, yeah, I mean, they're tremendous, because they're not really, they're a publisher that publishes all different types of books, you know, from celebrity books to thrillers to sci fi. So they're less concerned with a particular genre and more concerned with just getting books that they like out there. Great editorial staff, great design staff, just like super responsive. So I hope I work with them again. You know, I've got a couple of books that are, are finished, and they're, they're on submission. But obviously, you know, things are, things are complicated in publishing, because you have, you know, you have the editorial people who might want one thing, and then you have the finance people are like, hey, but wait, wait a second. You know, we need to, we want to get somebody who's selling 100,000 copies, and so just have to kind of wait and see. But I've got nothing like great things say about blacks dying. They're I think they're a really good publisher,

Michael David Wilson 44:47
and I should ask too, how did you begin working with them? Was it a case of you pitching them or your agent, or did they come to you? How did this relationship start? I. Yeah,

Jon Bassoff 45:00
you know, they, I think the first time I ever connected with Blackstone is when I had my own publishing company. And I feel like they contacted me about doing the I was about doing a blurb for somebody, and then after I had done the blurb for them, they had, I guess the person I blurbed had mentioned a couple of my books, and then they contacted me about getting a couple of my books for audio. And then you start to make connections within the within the publishing company, and yeah, and then, like, you know, the woman Haley, who who first signed me to Blackstone is no longer there, but Addie Wright is the editor that took over, and so I've kind of worked closely with her for the for the last couple of books.

Michael David Wilson 45:53
Yeah, I've noticed Blackstone picking up some of these interesting authors that you know don't neatly fit into genre boxes. I mean, Eric Larocca is another one. And I think, like you said, because they're not kind of stamping their flag to sci fi or horror or crime, I think it's enabling them to perhaps take chances that other big presses usually wouldn't. So I think it's an exciting time. I hope there are going to be more big presses and small presses, all presses taking these chances.

Jon Bassoff 46:29
Yeah, I do too. I mean, it's, it's, you know, I get it that we have to have some of the to pay the bills. These publishers have to sign some authors that are kind of more sure things and and our brand names and so forth. But you got to hope, like, I know, it used to be that these publishers would have their, you know, the those handful of of authors that would kind of carry the press, and then they just, it was almost like a public service. All right, we're going to then sign some other authors that might not sell a lot, but are really, really interesting. And I think unfortunately, it's kind of shifted away from that where they really, every single author they sign, they're hoping for the best seller, and so if you don't, whereas in the past, it was like, All right, your first book didn't sell, your second book didn't sell. But we love your stuff, so we're going to keep you on, and maybe you can build an audience and keep working with you. Now, I think a lot of times in the industry, it's all right, let's find an unknown who's got a good book and just hope somehow that it hits it big, and if it doesn't, we'll find another author and hope that she hits it big and keep going that way. And you know, from a business standpoint, I guess it makes sense. But I think from artistic, creative, from the writer's standpoint and a reader standpoint, I wish there was more like, All right, let's, let's kind of nurture some of these careers of interesting writers,

Michael David Wilson 47:54
right? Because it can take a number of books, too for an author to really kind of capture the public's imagination, and for then the sales to take off. And if we think about a lot of the writers you know historically that have been doing interesting things. I mean, if you think of Kurt Vonnegut, for example, you can't put Vonnegut in a genre box. And in fact, his book, breakfast of champions, thematically, it, it kind of, you know, the memory Ward had something about that, just this perception as to what's real what isn't real. Am I the only person who actually exists? And yeah, I think putting these absurd and these interesting authors, putting the spotlight on them, that's what's going to ultimately be better for, I guess, for art ultimately.

Jon Bassoff 48:53
Yeah, YouTube. I mean, you know, we're all realistic enough to know that we live in a capitalistic society, and that's always going to be what, at least with the with the big corporations is, is going to be the bottom line. But, you know, and I definitely think that's where the small presses need to kind of continue pushing and making sure that, all right, we can't compete with these big presses, monetarily, we can't compete with them and in maybe our marketing budgets and all of that, but we can compete with them by putting out really interesting, fucked up stuff. And there's definitely some small presses who are doing that. And I just, you know, I hope they keep doing that.

Michael David Wilson 49:36
And with the ending to the memory Ward, as I said before, it's ambiguous. There are multiple interpretations. I found out through watching one of your previous interviews that actually you and your editor disagreed as to how it ultimately ended. So I wondered what did that conversation even look like, and did. Did it alter anything creatively, or was this just a kind of philosophical discussion between the two of you?

Jon Bassoff 50:07
Yeah, it was more like she she read it, and she said, All right, I see that there's, you know, kind of a couple different interpretations here. I thought it was this way. Am I right? And I said, No, you're wrong. You know, that's, that's not the way, that's, that wasn't the way i i saw it ending. And and then she said, Well, I'm glad, she said, Because I prefer your vision to the to the one that I had. And like I, you know, obviously I don't want to do any spoilers here, but I feel like there's enough clues in there. There's enough. I mean, anytime you're dealing with with narrator, unreliable narrator's, you have to pick and choose other little clues that come from other characters and other things. And I feel like there's enough there that you that you should hopefully come to my interpretation, but, but I know not everybody does, and I think some people have been disappointed when they like with the ending. Some people have have thought it was one way, and they they felt that was a let down. And I'm like, no, no, no, but that's, that's, that's not really the ending. That's not, that's not what happened so. But I do think there's a difference between an ambiguous ending and then, just like, ending on a cliffhanger. It pisses me off when you're, you know, watching a TV series or something, and it's like it ends at a cliffhanger, because, well, we got to get to Season Two and make you watch season two. And I didn't think I was cheating people on this. I just thought it was up for interpretation.

Michael David Wilson 51:43
Yeah, I certainly didn't think you did the classic TV ending where there are no questions answered. But the more infuriating thing of the TV series is when they leave it on such a wildly ambiguous note, and then it's not renewed for the next season. And it's like, well, great, we've, we've had no resolution now. And I

Jon Bassoff 52:07
and you also wonder, so, I mean, I wonder, I would think it'd be interesting to be in some of those writing rooms, like, sometimes there's these shows that have all these super intriguing questions that come up, and they never do get answered. And you wonder, Well, do you have an answer? Like, are you just kind of, because as a writer, I can put out all sorts of, like, intriguing, like, weird stuff. If I don't have to, like, give you any any answers to it, I can, I can do that all night long. And I do sometimes wonder if they're just kind of doing it by the seat of their pants and saying, hopefully they'll just keep renewing us, and we'll just keep dropping these questions in and never actually answering them.

Michael David Wilson 52:46
Yeah, when we were talking on a previous podcast, it might have been Bob who brought this up, but this idea of when something has not been renewed, what would be fair, or what we would like, as if the studio is like, Okay, we're going to give you one episode to now wrap it up and to have some sort of ending to it and linked to the other things you said about you know, you can come up with these weird things all night long. I believe it was an interview I was reading with some of the people involved in the television show Lost, which kind of famously has an ending that a lot of people weren't that satisfied with, to put it lightly. And you know, they were saying that nobody knew how it was going to end. You know, the actors certainly didn't know. I'm not sure that the creators or the writers knew. So then they just had to come up with what was pretty bizarre and not that satisfying, at least for me personally, it felt like it came a bit out of left field, whereas the really satisfying endings, as Bob definitely says they're logical but unpredictable.

Jon Bassoff 54:06
Yeah, well, I mean, there's something to be said. Like, I've always in the books that I've written, I've always had a plan before I write it, you know, like, I've I certainly know what's happening the beginning. I just really know what's going to happen at the end, and then I have a general idea of how I'm going to get there. I guess with like, a TV series, you probably are starting with like, all right, I know how it's starting and how it's ending for at least a season, but I imagine most of these people aren't, like, able to think so far ahead of season three, season four, season five. So my guess is, yeah, I think I saw something on Breaking Bad too, where it was a lot of, like, all right, we're just, we're just figuring this out in in this room now, because we don't know where it's going. And sometimes it can work out, you know, sometimes, like, it's like taking a road trip somewhere where you just, like, hop in your car and say, I don't know we're going, let's just see where we end up. And sometimes you end up somewhere really cool, but most of the time. Ends up not so good. You end up lost and in a ditch with all your clothes gone. So

Bob Pastorella 55:06
it's too extreme. So Breaking Bad. I believe that they, they had some Inklings, but they got lucky, been able to to keep throwing monkey wrenches into the whole thing. And then you have Stranger Things, which I believe actually went in. They went in with, Hey, we have a three year, a four year and a five year, yeah, and they end up getting a five year, which is now spread out to 10, but, you know, five seasons so, but that's your two extremes. Everything else falls in the middle with you have shows like archive 81 that could have definitely used another season was the ending to the original one. Satisfying. But now there's more questions, you know, yeah, I think when you're writing it's, it's like what Brian Everson says. I write these weird indies because I don't know, and I'm trying to figure it out. So I was like, Yeah, I love that. Yeah, yeah,

Jon Bassoff 56:08
yeah. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the creators of severance have a real plan for where everything's going. And I've loved the first two seasons, but you know, you're always hoping, all right, do you guys? Do you have a real plan? Can we trust you and that? And that's part of the thing. When you're when you're reading a book, it's that, it's the trust, like you're trusting the author that these taking you on, on all these little detours and so forth, and dropping these things in there. You're trusting that, that he or she knows where it's going. And I've read a lot of books where I'm like, yeah, that she knew exactly where it was going. And there's other times you're like, Man, this this was they had no idea. And it didn't, it didn't work there. At the end, I read this book recently. It was by a Hungarian author, and I'm not going to be able to pronounce his last name. His first name is Laszlo. He's a really interesting author. His each he's not, not really crime fiction. He's just, but He's weird. Like, each page, each chapter is one sentence, and each chapter is like five pages. So you have like a five page sentence, it's, it's kind of bizarre. But at the very end of this like 550 page novel, there's like, this Epilog, and it starts to, it writes down all of the little strands that he said he just kind of forgot about. And then there's this list of all these characters and all these, like plot elements that just never got solved. And it was, you know, it was kind of funny to see it. But then you're also like, Dude, come on, man, you got to have, you got to have some sort of a plan for this?

Michael David Wilson 57:41
Yeah, I feel that if you have awareness enough to write down all the things that you forgot about. To me, it's like, well, this isn't a publishable manuscript. This is like a draft along the way, if you forgot, and you have the awareness go back and bloody fix it. I mean, Laszlo has not made things easy for himself, because, you know, every chapter is a five page sentence. So that is true, yeah, yeah. It's

Jon Bassoff 58:14
what we would call post modern so I think he can, he'll say, this is all part of my post modern writing. So, oh

Michael David Wilson 58:21
my goodness. Well, I want to know what does your writing routine look like, and how does that fit in with you teaching high school English.

Jon Bassoff 58:34
I do not have a routine because I teach high school English. I am very disciplined, though, so, you know, I've, and I've had, you know, have a family, it's, it's gotten easier because my kids are older now, so my son's, we're about to be empty nesters soon. My daughter's in college. My son's a senior in high school. But especially when I when the kids were younger, it's just, there's, you know, when you're home, there's no time when you're at work, there's no time. But you somehow, you start to realize that we do have more time than we think we do, and it's just a matter of being disciplined to use those those times. So I've never been someone who's like, all right, each day, from seven to nine o'clock, I'm going to be writing and and, or each Saturday from 12 to four I'm in writing. I've just never been able to do that, but I've, you know, when I'm teaching, if I'm if I'm all done with my planning and grading, and I have a half an hour here, half an hour there, I might do some writing on weekends, and the family's off doing something, I have a little bit of time do some writing there. And then, as a teacher, you know, having the summers helps a lot where I have, where I have those two, two and a half months to kind of on my own, that's probably where I get the majority of my stuff done. But like, I still feel like I waste a ton of time, and I spend too much time scrolling on Instagram and too much time procrastinating and and I'm still able to. You know, write a novel a year. So I think we do have those, those hours, if we're willing to to to use them.

Michael David Wilson 1:00:07
And are you always working on one project at a time, so the novel for each year? Or do you have multiple on the go? I'm all, I'm

Jon Bassoff 1:00:17
linear, I'm always one at a time. It's one of those things where, you know, when I'm writing a book, I don't have any other ideas, really, and I'm like, there's always a little panic in me, like, what if? What if this is the last one? What if I can't think of anything else? And then it's almost magically, like, as I start finishing that book, and I start getting to the last 30 pages, or whatever, then kind of organically, some other ideas will start popping in for the next one. It's like, your your brain kind of preparing for the end of one and the next one. Yeah, but, but generally speaking, it's been like, I mean, it takes me about a, you know, nine months to a year to write a book and and then I'm on to the next one. I usually take a few weeks off to do nothing. Once, once, I'm totally done, but, but it is one at a time. But, you know, the way publishing works, like the memory Ward, I probably finished this book like, you know, at least four years ago. It just takes a while for it to go through the publishing and to have all that editorial work done and and so you're already, like, I've already, I have two novels done that haven't seen the light of day yet. So it's always funny, when you're talking about one book, it's like, in a way, it seems like an old book to you, even though it's new to everybody else.

Michael David Wilson 1:01:32
So are you currently shopping those over two novels around?

Jon Bassoff 1:01:38
Yeah, they're with my we're with my agent. We're just kind of starting that process. You know, obviously Blackstone is going to kind of get first, first look at them, but, yeah, well, we'll kind of see what happens with them. You know, you never know, like, I'm not, it's, it's always a one book at a time process for me. So I just, and it's definitely not my favorite part of the part of the deal is, is that is the submitting part, and having people tell you no, I'm not a big fan of people saying no, so, so we'll hope that, hopefully we'll hear a yes.

Michael David Wilson 1:02:15
And you mentioned how you got your first agent. Have you had the same agent throughout your career?

Jon Bassoff 1:02:22
I haven't. I've had four different agents. The one I'm working with now is Becky Lejeune. She's, I live in Colorado. She's a Colorado agent. She really specializes in kind of dark horror stuff. She's wonderful. She's, you know, super. Responsive. She knows her stuff, so I feel really thankful. I mean, I've enjoyed all my agents, but I feel really thankful to be working with

Michael David Wilson 1:02:52
her. Yeah, I know who Becky is, and she, seemingly, in the last few years, has almost picked up like a who's who of horror, just these amazing cutting edge your first and people like Max booth and Laurel Hightower and Alan Baxter, and I'm not going to keep naming them, otherwise it's going to be a very uninteresting getting to the podcast. But yeah, she she really knows her stuff. And yeah, I didn't know that you were with Becky, but it totally makes sense, because she represents a lot of authors who are doing things that are in a multitude of genres that are harder to classify in the best possible way.

Jon Bassoff 1:03:35
Well. And what's cool is that she really loves those kind of books, you know? So she's, she's a reader, first and foremost, and she loves horror and dark stuff and so, like, so she's excited. Like, she this. It's not like, well, I, you know, I do romance, but I kind of all do mystery. It's like, No, this is, this is what I this is what I love. I love horror and and so she's been, yeah, I've loved working with her, and it's cool. I've, you know, I've never had an agent live close to me. I've always had, you know, them live in New York, or my first agent lived in Scotland. But since she's close to me, we, you know, we have lunch and talk shop and talk movies. So it's, it's been, it's been

Michael David Wilson 1:04:13
good. And so for anyone who's listening, who's kind of on the edge about reading the memory ward. I mean, first of all, I'd say you fucking shouldn't be. It's an amazing book. You should read the memory ward. But do you have a kind of final pitch, or perhaps a takeaway, in terms of the type of readers that this one is for?

Jon Bassoff 1:04:42
Well, I'll give you the elevator pitch. I actually was at a little conference where I went table a table, and I had to give the same pitch to like, 50 different tables. So it was like, and you start thinking, Wait a second, did I just say this to you? Or did I say this three minutes ago? I don't know, but I do remember this pitch. Basically at the beginning of the novel, we have. This, this postal worker who lives this seemingly kind of idyllic life. But then he begins noticing that things are there's there's some there's some problems, things that aren't quite right. He notices a young boy pointing at him accusingly. He He notices people behind the windows, like with with rats and whatnot and so forth and and then one night, when he's at his had his own home, he hears a wrapping on the window, and there's a woman there, and he opens the window, and she says, basically, don't trust anybody in the town, including your wife. And she says, The truth is behind the wallpaper. And couple days later, he notices the wallpaper in his room is beginning to peel, and he goes up there, and he begins peeling back the wallpaper. And then you got to buy the book and read it to find out what's behind. So that's, that's the pitch,

Michael David Wilson 1:06:01
yeah. Yeah, an absolutely incredible book, and as I said to you, are fair after reading it, I've now been systematically devouring your entire back catalog. So I think people are really in for a treat with this one, and a strong recommendation from me. I know it's a strong recommendation from Bob too.

Jon Bassoff 1:06:27
I appreciate that coming from you guys, that that means a lot. So thank you.

Michael David Wilson 1:06:33
Well, where can our listeners connect with you?

Jon Bassoff 1:06:38
You know, I'm on social media, the usual places, Facebook, Instagram, blue sky, it's always my name, you know, at John bassoff. So I'm pretty easy to find, or you can check out my website, which, again, is not very creatively titled, www.johnbasoff.com and I love interacting. And if you read the book and want to ask me any questions. I'm I'm always down for that.

Michael David Wilson 1:07:02
All right, do you have any final thoughts to leave our listeners with?

Jon Bassoff 1:07:09
I would just say, keep challenging yourself, keep you know, go out of your comfort zone, read things that that maybe you normally wouldn't read. And I think that's how you grow as a reader and how you how you grow as a person, and that's really what I try to do as a reader.

Michael David Wilson 1:07:25
All right, thank you again for joining us.

Jon Bassoff 1:07:28
Thanks so much for having me.

Michael David Wilson 1:07:32
Well, thank you to John bassoff for spending the time chatting with us. I can't wait to get him back on the show and to talk more about his books, I am now an absolute fan of his work, and we really did just scratch the surface in that one. So do expect there to be many more conversations in the future. Now you probably know that I'm always thinking about how I can do a little bit more for This Is Horror and the horror fiction community. And recently, I have added an upcoming Books page to the This Is Horror website. It is a page that is very much in its infancy, but I'll be adding to it most days. So slowly but surely, I hope it will be a resource that people will go to to see what cool books are coming out that may pique their interest, and it's also a good way for me to see what's coming up for This Is Horror coverage, shout outs on the podcast and potential guests. And with that in mind, one day after recording this on the 20th of June, JD Buffington is releasing his new book fruitless bodies from standing eight count publications, and at the start of July, Mulholland books will re release the groundbreaking coyote songs by Gabino Iglesias. Now if you would like your book listed on the upcoming Books page of the This Is Horror website. Drop me a line. Michael at this is horror.co.uk please simply write your book and the publication information in the exact format that is laid out on the website, because that will really help me easily put your listing on the website. Okay, before I wrap up a quick advert break, it

RJ Bayley 1:09:28
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Bob Pastorella 1:09:36
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. Means fatal attraction from iPhone generation, available now in paperback, e book and audio. What if the end of the world didn't come with a bang, but with a breach in the infernal age? Demon gate, a failed experiment, destroys all technology, killing millions, and opens a gateway to something far worse. Demons now roam to Earth, and humanity's only hope lies in adapting to the ashes of a broken world. If you love the creeping dread of the mist, the pointed grit of the road and the dark humor of the cabin in the woods, you'll feel right at home in this post apocalyptic blend of horror and sci fi the infernal age. Demon gate is available now on Amazon, audible and bookshop.org, step to the gate if you dare.

Michael David Wilson 1:10:42
Now, I am planning to take This Is Horror and the podcast to the next level, and if the demand is there, I want to make this as horror my full time job. That will mean more interviews, more first time guests on the show, and more sections on the website that will support the community, like the aforementioned upcoming Books page, there are always far more guests and authors that I'd like to have on the show than there is time in the day to read, to have those conversations and to prep. So right now, I'm looking into ways that I can do this full time. But This Is Horror has always been a for the people operation, and so the best way you can support and increase the chances that it's happening is to head on over to Patreon and support the podcast at patreon.com forward slash. This Is Horror, and if you're a member at the free tier, do consider becoming a paid member. And if you want to advertise on the show, the best way is to email me. Michael at this is horror.co.uk and really you can reach out for anything. You can give me suggestions in terms of what you want to see from the Sahara, potential guests, you want to hear on the show, whatever's on your mind that you think might be relevant to this Sara and what we do in here, well, that's about it for another episode of This Is Horror. Do remember that my new dark comedy novel, daddy's boy is out now, so I'd love for you to check it out and know what you think. And speaking of which, next time I will be chatting with the audio book narrator of daddy's boy, Josh Curran. So until then, take care of yourselves. Be good to one another. Read horror. Keep on writing and have a great, Great Day.