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 is the second in our two part conversation with Ryan C Bradley. Ryan is a musician, podcaster and the author of the novella saints, blood, bad connections, horror stories and a brand new novel, say uncle from ghoulish books, his short fiction has appeared in no sleep tales to terrify and dark moon digest among other venues. So before we get Ryan on the show, a quick advert break

Bob Pastorella 1:34
from the host of this is horror podcast comes a dark thriller of obsession, paranoia and voyeurism, after relocating to a small coastal town, Brian discovers a hole that gazes into his neighbor's bedroom every night she dances and he peeps same song, same time, same wild and mesmerizing dance. But soon, Brian suspects he's not the only one watching and she's not the only one being watched. They're watching is The Wicker Man meets body double with a splash of Suspiria. They're watching by Michael David Wilson and Bob Pastorella is available from this is horror.co.uk, Amazon, and wherever good books are sold.

RJ Bayley 2:13
It was as if the video had unzipped my skin, slunk inside my tapered flesh, and become one with me,

Bob Pastorella 2:21
from the creator of this is horror, comes a new nightmare for the digital age. The girl in the video, by Michael David Wilson, after a teacher receives a weirdly arousing video, his life descends into paranoia and obsession. More videos follow, each containing information no stranger could possibly know, but who's sending them and what do they want? The answers may destroy everything and everyone he loves. The girl in the video is the ring meets fatal attraction for the iPhone generation, available now in paperback, ebook and audio.

Michael David Wilson 2:51
Okay, without said, Here it is. It is Ryan C Bradley on this is horror. So in terms of perhaps the inciting incident in say, uncle and the moment that Braden realizes that there are certainly more levels to Uncle Paulie than he envisaged, is when he is looking to get his porno mag. And instead of finding his porno mag, he discovers a book that is bound in human flesh. Yes, very difficult to wank to. In fact, how did that come about, that you decided not only was there going to be an occult book, but it was going to be bound in human flesh.

Ryan C. Bradley 3:50
Well, the decision to have the book bound in human flesh came because there was a when I was living in Boston in like 2014 or 15, then article came out, where they had a book that was bound in human flesh in the Harvard Library. And I read about that. I don't think I started say uncle for another, like, five or 10 years, but I just put that, I read about it, and I was like, That is a detail I have to put into something at some point, because that's too good not to and I was reading more about it recently, and I wish I had read this before, but one of the initiations they do, if you got a job with this library, they would send you to get the book. They'd give you, like, the call number, like, Hey, can you go grab this? And when you got there, like, that's human skin, which is super fucked up. And apparently you could see pores in this book. Like, if you look at this book closely, you could see Porsche, but it's highly unethical, because the woman whose skin it was did not consent to be turned into a book. It was her psychiatrist book, and after she died, he just used her flesh. But I read that, and I was like, this needs to. Be in my book.

Michael David Wilson 5:01
So this actual book? Was it a book on psychiatry, or was it was the psychiatrist also just a fiction author? It's like, no, no, it's the railway children, Enid Blanton's enchanted forest.

Ryan C. Bradley 5:20
I reread more about it when I did the ghoulish episode with Max. I'll talk about a bunch on there if I'm remembering right, because that was like six three months ago, two months ago. It was a book about souls. So it's like a philosophical text by a psychiatrist on the nature of souls and what happens after you die. And he wanted to bind it in human flesh, because he thought, like the human flesh would be a good it was a fitting binding for a book about souls.

Bob Pastorella 5:51
So there wasn't any type of a cult connotation with that, or anything like that. It was just basically someone talking about what happens, I guess, to our souls. And because I think that if I'm from correct me, if I'm wrong, but haven't there been grimoires that have been bound in human flesh? Yeah, am I thinking that, or is that something that people made? I'm pretty sure there's, like, a couple of grimoires that are out there that, supposedly, these things have been bound in human flesh.

Ryan C. Bradley 6:21
I think that's success. When I was reading about it, they said there's, like, a number of books haven't bound in human flesh. This was just the one that happened to be like in the Harvard Library from like, the 1920s to they removed it recently. That's what the more recent articles are about. They took it out, and this made it like a digital only thing for now. Oh, wow.

Bob Pastorella 6:39
Okay, yeah, that's worse.

Michael David Wilson 6:44
Lee, and how recently are we talking? Are we literally talking within the last five years that they decided right, this woman from the 1920s who didn't consent, we've, we've done this against her consent for 100 years, and that's enough. Was that the level of their morality?

Ryan C. Bradley 7:06
I think there was like 80 years where they had a book that they did not realize is bound in human flesh. So it was like 80 years, and they rediscovered it in like 2014 or 2015 when I first heard about it. And I think it was like 2023 they took it out because they it got a lot of attention, because, I think they're, what was it? They're reevaluating all of their collection items of human remains, because they also had a lot of stuff about indigenous Americans, and so they, like, realized they should give that back to the tribes. And I think someone said, like, what about that book bound in human flesh? You want to think about that too kind of conversation? Oh, my

Michael David Wilson 7:48
God. I mean, there's a lot of things that I would do to bring more attention to my books and for the marketing efforts, but I do think that bounding the book in human flesh might be a step too far, and if it was, then I would definitely get consent.

Ryan C. Bradley 8:11
Yeah. I mean, the consent is very, very important. If I'm gonna have a book mount in flesh, I want someone to give it's not gonna be my flesh. I don't have great skin. I'm very pale. I burn very easy. I don't know if that continues. If you get turned into a book. In the book, get sunburned. I mean, with my skin tone, probably

Bob Pastorella 8:31
I wouldn't even think as soon as you said that I was like and poor, poor Ryan, bless his soul. This, this final book has been bound in his foreskin, and you can actually see the scar where the bee stung him, right here. Just that's where my mind went with this. I'm sorry, but it did. It's fucking great. You should do that. It should be

Michael David Wilson 8:58
eating this flesh, really. Fucking big foreskin.

Bob Pastorella 9:13
Too much. It's too much. It's a poor skin. Yeah, that's just I was like, as soon as you said that, I was like, oh shit, there we go. Off the deep end.

Michael David Wilson 9:34
Would you ever consider a special edition of your book bound in human flesh, not found in that flesh, human flesh.

Ryan C. Bradley 9:45
If someone were to consent to I wouldn't want to be my flesh. And I don't imagine a lot of people who'd be like, lining up, like, there's an indie horror author who wants your skin for his book. I don't think a lot of people would really. Be volunteering for that without, like, unless I had, like, a hefty monetary settlement to give them, and I do not have that, and if I did, I would go on vacation.

Michael David Wilson 10:11
Thunderstorm books, if you're listening, you've created some very special, limited edition books. Are you prepared to go from hardback to human flesh if you are this is the book for you, say uncle, by Ryan C Bradley.

Bob Pastorella 10:33
It's a special limited edition book, singular.

Michael David Wilson 10:41
Oh, my goodness,

Bob Pastorella 10:43
you know, unless I don't know, man, it's like, how could you, like, stretch the skin, you know?

Ryan C. Bradley 10:50
I think there's a whole process probably, yeah,

Bob Pastorella 10:53
I don't know. That's just that sounds like Ed Gein territory there,

Michael David Wilson 10:58
yeah, yeah. So, I mean, at the point where he discovers the book, there's this whole kind of game of like chicken and who's bullshitting who, because they kind of the uncle and Braden both know what he's found, but they don't want to admit it. So how did you kind of shred that dance, and how did you kind of ensure that there was dramatic tension throughout,

Ryan C. Bradley 11:33
I mean, so that that's the scene I've been reading during all of my readings. I love that scene, so I think it communicates a lot of what the book has to offer, but I think I was really just channeling Hitchcock as much as I could. I think the first 50 pages or so of the book, it's just as much Hitchcock as I could put into it, but a lot of it's just like, neither one wants to admit because neither is sure. They both think, but they don't know for sure. Instead of kind of like you, like you said, it's a cat and mouse game. I don't know if I particularly thought about it while I was straddling it, I kind of just click clacked away. And it happened, I'm never great at answering process questions, because just kind of like I was typing and the scene came out.

Michael David Wilson 12:21
And, I mean, what genre would you put this book into? And if you had to kind of say the genre that you write, what would you put that into, kind of as a whole? Because, I mean, for me, it, it's a dark comedy, but there's also, of course, elements of horror. I mean, God damn it, you've got a book that's bound in human flesh, and then probably at about the goodness, I guess, 70% mark, then it really jumps into cosmic horror, like it. There's almost a genre shift, but it's something that's been foreshadowed, but then I guess, for like, the first, even 30% of the book. I mean, you could just say it is a dark comedy of a dysfunctional family.

Ryan C. Bradley 13:16
Yeah, I don't know how to market my books. I think I was listening to you in danger Slater talked about this a couple of weeks ago. I don't know what genre normally what I'll say is, when people ask me what genre I say, write horror comedy, and comedy about horror. And I phrase it that way because I think horror comedy is very approachable. And when I'm this is a business guy question, when I'm in business brain. I want to sell books to people who don't read horror, because I think there's that audience. I want to sell to the horror audience too, but I'm not. When I'm pitching stuff, I'm not targeting that audience. I think that audience is going to find me, and I don't need to, but I'm trying to reach out to people who are not part of the audience already, because I think a lot of people lot of people who say they don't like horror, I know you guys talked about this recently too. People say they don't like horror, but they do, and I think my books are things that they would love. So I say horror comedy, but I recognize that it's not like a complete genre title, because I think what I'm writing is like, like, when I try to come up with comps, I had no ideas because, like, Hellraiser versus Uncle Buck, they're technically comps. Neither one of them is anything like the final story you get. So, yeah, I share you in dangerous later struggle where I'm just like, Please read my book. I think you will like it. I think it's a good book, or I wouldn't have published it or tried to get it published. Yeah, I really struggle with the genre name.

Bob Pastorella 14:55
Yeah, you can't call it like esoteric comedy, because that doesn't really. Do anything. And that's just a fancy word for anything has to do with the occult. Yeah, to a degree, to a degree, occult comedy is too niche, so you're not gonna, you're only gonna get those all. It's a cult. Oh, wow, I didn't know then they were still doing those. Yeah, it's like, but it's, I don't know, I mean, horror comedy, I would go with that, yeah, for like, this particular book, 100% definitely horror comedy.

Ryan C. Bradley 15:32
Yeah. I think like absurdus or bizarro would fit, probably. But I think when you're talking to people who aren't, like, steeped in the genre the way we are, those are like, bizarro, like the guy who fights Superman is like, what people are going to say they're that's what they're going to think of first, not like a literary genre.

Bob Pastorella 15:50
Yeah, exactly. They're going to be kind of lost with within the terminology. And so you don't want to bog them down on something, especially something like this, that is, you know, it does have a light heartedness to it, to some degree. There's some grisly shit in here, but, you know, it's, yeah, I would still go with com, with horror comedy. I still would it had a very John Dies at the End, Evil Dead Uncle Buck meets Hellraiser. Feel to it.

Michael David Wilson 16:26
Thank you. Yeah, I kind of want to bring dark comedy more into the parlance for fiction books, because I think when you put dark comedy instead of horror comedy, it becomes even more all encompassing. And you know, I'd certainly think for when Max writes something comedic, then their work would fit into dark comedy. Yeah, Max is very interesting because they almost have two modes where they have really bleak, Pitch Black horror. And then they have just the absolute laugh out loud humor aside. And then, you know, I'd put danger Slater's work in dark comedy too. I'd put say, uncle there. I'd put my latest one daddy's boy, if I could be so bold to put my own work in that category, and I'd even put what Jasper bark is doing in dark comedy too. But like we said before it I mean dark comedy is probably the best label we're gonna get, but it doesn't capture it fully. Because, you know, you've got Absurdism, you've got bizarro you've got esotericism. Do we is that how we say esoteric So, yeah, I mean, you might as well just throw it all in to dark comedy. It's like, do you like fucked up things. Yes, do you like to have a laugh? Yes, right? Well, fucking read these books then.

Ryan C. Bradley 18:08
Yeah, it's very hard to market. But I think the artist side of me is just like, I'm gonna keep making the shit that makes me excited.

Michael David Wilson 18:18
So we can do, you know, so we can do if we want to be happy, if we want to be doing this for the reason, for the pure joy that we started writing in the first place. And, you know, talking about kind of early inspirations and goals, I know that ghoulish books who were perpetual motion machine publishing at the time, that your goal was to get a book with them. And here it is. It's happened. So how did that come about?

Ryan C. Bradley 18:57
Well, Max and I both had stories in the Gothic Blue Book five the cursed edition. And so I kind of found out by perpetual motion machine publishing. That was my first published horror story, and I submitted to them, and they took one of my stories, and then I started reading their stuff. And their stuff was incredible, as you know, and as you mentioned, I was like, this is someone who's writing like, we're not writing exactly the same thing. We're writing in similar modes. And I wanted to work with them. And I started reading ghoulish I got another story in perpetual motion machine or in Dark Moon digest. And then we were living in Tulsa, and we had to choose between. My in laws moved to Dallas. I did not want to live in Dallas. We were choosing between Houston and Austin. At that time, Max and Andrew were running the ghoulish show and in Austin. So it's like, if I go there, I could, like, perform with those guys. That would be awesome. And so we chose that over Houston. It's also the traffic in Houston is, yeah. Brutal. So it wasn't like the only factor. I don't want to sound like a stalker here, but yeah, I think that's mainly how it came up, because I think I pitched the book to max. I probably had too much to drink after one of the shows, and we were talking, and they weren't open to submissions at the time, and I was telling them how I just gotten a rejection from one publisher. I shouldn't mention publishers names, like, the next publisher is gonna try. And Max said, like, why don't you try me with the book next? And six months later, we had a contract signed.

Michael David Wilson 20:30
That's perfect. Yeah, it was,

Ryan C. Bradley 20:33
it was incredible. I wasn't sure if I would ever like, you set a goal, like, publish with Google, who I think are one of the best publishers. You don't know if you're ever going to get

Michael David Wilson 20:42
there, though, no. And I mean, what's great about ghoulish is they just put the quality of the story absolutely at the front and center in terms of what they will put out. You know, it's just, did we enjoy the story? Is it doing something interesting? And I think their back catalog really shows that absolutely catalog. And in the center, anywhere in the Google catalog, yeah,

Bob Pastorella 21:13
yeah, there's an esthetic that they have which is like which which your book is, is a perfect example of what they do. This is, this is the book, my book, the small hours, I felt that there was no other publisher that would take it on. It probably was, but the best publisher would have been ghoulish and that that's, that's who it's going through. And so, you know, if, if the tone of the book might have been a little bit different, I would have probably scattered it out a little bit more, but it was a total focus there, because I felt like the fit was so good. And, you know, you probably once, once you send it to them, you probably felt the same way.

Ryan C. Bradley 22:01
Oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah. And I'm also honored, like that, almost like a kiss ass, to be publishing with like you guys, because you did the the girl in the videos was ghoulish, wasn't it? That's right, yeah. And Mojo rising, yes. It's like, I'm honored to be publishing next to you guys. You guys are awesome. Betty, rock steady, dangerous Slater, his writers, I love Jessica Leonard, yeah,

Bob Pastorella 22:27
they, they have a roster,

Michael David Wilson 22:30
yeah and say, uncle is absolutely up there with, with the best that girl is you've put out. I mean, you know, just beyond everything else, it was so much fun. I was like, laughing so much and, you know, just really enjoying it, the pace, the dialog, you know, that perfect balance of kind of the Yeah, the horror and the comedy. So it really worked for me, and I'll definitely be checking out whatever you put out next.

Ryan C. Bradley 23:06
Thank you. Yeah, the pacing was heavily influenced by uncanny X Men, specifically like Chris claremont's run. I just like, loved the way he paced those comics, and I tried to, like, take the way, because every one of those comics, whenever an arc ends the very last panel was like, the X Men don't get to go home. Oh shit. They have a new thing they have to do. And that was exactly how I tried to pay say,

Michael David Wilson 23:30
uncle, would you be interested in going into comics at some point?

Ryan C. Bradley 23:36
Yeah, I'm working on an eight page comic with a friend. Now. We don't have a home for you guys, so I can't say too much about it, but I've been, like, obsessed with old dentistry lately. And the way, like in France, in like the time of Louis, the great they would if you lost a tooth, and you were a noble person, you could buy a tooth from a peasant, and they would take it out with a little bit of gum, and they'd put it back into your mouth, or into the note or something. They'd sew it back in, if the blood types matched, the tooth would would stick. So a little comic about that that I'm writing, and a friend's gonna draw, and so hopefully that'll

Bob Pastorella 24:15
find a home that made my whole mouth hurt.

Ryan C. Bradley 24:19
Yeah, the stories are. So I would just, I was reading a book about transplants, for a book that I wrote that, just like, it was terrible, it's never going to get published, but they talked about, like, the history of dentistry, and it's just such fascinating stuff. I was like, I got to put this into something, because it's, it's all so gross.

Bob Pastorella 24:38
Yeah, that's just the whole idea of, so they take the tooth with part of the gum, yeah, okay, so and then I, kind of, I kind of, I kind of, I kind of see why they want to do that. But at the same time they could have just took the tooth and just shoved it up in there.

Ryan C. Bradley 24:55
Well, I think the gum is essential for like, the tooth to have, like, right, the art. Arteries and the veins Connect. I don't, not arteries, but the the vein so the blood can get into the tooth. I don't know it, just

Bob Pastorella 25:06
in my mind, it would be like, Hey, let's just shove the tooth up in there. But it probably wouldn't take. It probably wouldn't stay. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay, okay, so that's, that's probably not

Ryan C. Bradley 25:16
it, yeah. Just imagine, like, the economic inequality that someone could just buy your tooth if they lost theirs.

Bob Pastorella 25:23
No, wow. But you need and you did research for that, that kind of I wanted to ask about on the new book. Did you? Did you have to do a lot of occult research? Did you wing it? What? What did you? What did? How deep did you go?

Ryan C. Bradley 25:39
So I just not gonna be a popular answer. I went 0% deep. I winged it completely. Because for me, the concern was the occult in the book is a symbol, and everything about it is symbolic for toxic masculinity, like we've been talking about misogyny. And so when I was working with it, I mostly thought about like, how do I make the symbol work? How do I make the symbolism work? More than like, how do I get the occult right? So I'm sure there's going to be people who are occult and wicker specialists who are going to read my book and hate it, and I'm sorry to those people, but I can't write a book for everybody.

Bob Pastorella 26:20
No, they, I mean, and they, they might, there might be some people who do that, but, I mean, it's in the comp Hellraiser Clyde Barker has famously been known to say, hey, if it doesn't work, make it up. That's what I did. Yeah, find any reference of the order of the gash anywhere except for in hell bound heart.

Michael David Wilson 26:38
Sorry, yeah. And you mentioned before you have a three year old child, you have a three year old daughter, so yeah, I'm guessing then, in terms of the timeline, probably she was one years old, or perhaps a little bit under, when you were writing, say, uncle. So I'm wondering how that played into the writing.

Ryan C. Bradley 27:03
I'm actually, I'm a pretty slow writer. So say uncle was mostly done by the time she was born, and it took me a while to do the revisions, but I was mostly working on like the the AOL instant messengers were a very late addition, so that was probably most of what I wrote while she was alive, and I've thought about it since, and the book is not sympathetic toward the parents. And I think if I had written this book after I'd had a kid myself and seen how fucking hard being a parent is, the book would have been much nicer to the parents of everybody, because it's, it's real hard raising a kid.

Michael David Wilson 27:44
Oh yeah, I know firsthand about all of that. And yeah, I mean, so since becoming a parent, has that affected what you're working on now, do you think, you know, raising a kid, fatherhood, parenthood? Do you think that could become a thematic concern for future projects? Is it already

Ryan C. Bradley 28:12
a great question it has, I think there's a short story or two in bad connections, which is my collection that's out that have parent themes written after I had a kid, but it also has some stories that have parent themes in them that were pre kid. I'm curious if listeners would read it and tell the difference. I don't know. I've not written about having a kid since I wrote one because I was a I'm still mostly as, like, a stay at home dad, and that can get pretty brutal at times, and so like, I've written about, like, some of the pain that comes with that, because it's mostly a good experience. I shouldn't complain, because, like, a lot of people would love to have the privilege to be a stay at home dad, as difficult as it can be, and the story I wrote about that I reread it, like, three months later, it was the worst thing I've ever written. Like, it's just not good at all. And like, you can see that there's a lot of pain and it's very raw, and there's no story and there's no there's no way anyone who's reading it would feel the character's pain. It's just like I was so deep in it when I wrote that that I just didn't communicate it. Well, there's a huge adjustment when you, like, go from like, having no kid to having a kid, your brain has to completely rewire. And that was not an easy process, especially when my partner went back to work and her mom went back to her house, it was just like me and a kid alone 12 hours a day.

Michael David Wilson 29:50
Yeah, yeah, I get that the first 18 months of my daughter's life, I was essentially the the stay at home, dad and you. You know, like, a lot of the time I was, I had her in this kind of wearable, so I'm typing, and she's there, and I'm trying to be as productive as ever. Like, I am a bit of a workaholic. Some might modify a bit of me, like, No, you are a workaholic, but trying to do that. And, you know, trying to be the best dad possible. I mean it, it is kind of an impossibility. You can never be the perfect parent. You just have to do the best that you can time and but the the isolation is maybe the the worst thing about it, and like you say, it's, it's one of those things that's a little bit difficult to talk about, because you understand, you know, it is a privilege to be able to get all that time, yeah, with your child, but at the same time, some of the like pain And and the isolation and depression or depression adjacent feelings, they are real. So it's navigating the way to talk about it. And something you said which definitely resonated was you wrote the story, but because you were so in the moment, it ended up being terrible, and you weren't kind of articulating it in the way that one would for a publishable story. And I've had that happen before and when, when we're writing about either trauma or we're writing about difficulties, I think it can be good to to write things when they're fairly fresh, but if, if you're literally still in it, there's no objectivity. So I don't know, sometimes you have to write it anyway to get it out. But it's like, right? Well, you've written it. Don't send it anywhere yet look at it and edit it or repurpose bits of it when you're in a better kind of mind space.

Ryan C. Bradley 32:08
Yeah, I think that's what I'm gonna have to do. I wrote a lot while she was an infant, especially while she was napping. And I don't think any of it's any good. I think it was admirable that I tried, but most of the work I did then was just trash. I think I had this feeling that, like, if I didn't keep writing, I think I still, to some extent, have this feeling where like, like, I didn't I think I took off three weeks from teaching when she was born. I should have taken off more. I didn't take off about I think I was writing like the day after she was born. But, I mean, that's not that bad, because, like, with a one day old infant, she's gonna eat and sleep. That's it. I can't contribute to the eating at that point. I can be with my partner, but then she sleeps for four the baby sleeps for four hours, three hours after that. So I was writing then, but I had this idea that, like, if I didn't keep going, whatever I let go of in that first six month period, I would never get back. Because I've talked to a lot of people who said that, like, I decided just not to do this for a week, and it never came back. And I thought that that would happen to me, which is probably more of an anxiety thing than a real thing.

Michael David Wilson 33:26
Yeah, I tend to find that in these moments of, I guess, kind of complete stress or life upheaval, that I'm much better at editing and revisiting and rewriting than I am creating something fresh. So, you know, I've mentioned on some podcasts before, like me and my wife were expecting a child in December, so right now I'm kind of chaotically creating, like, all these first drafts so that it's like, right? I'm not gonna be in a good space for actually creating new things, but I am gonna have something that I can work on. Congratulations. Well, thank thank you. Yeah. I think maybe though we've even saying that, you know, I've got these things I can work on. Does, again, speak to my issue of working too much is like just fucking enjoy your time with your newborn, and you, your wife, your psycho who put the pen down

Bob Pastorella 34:38
There's gonna be a lot of podcasts in November,

Michael David Wilson 34:42
recording, I don't know if you're half joking, but probably not joking,

Bob Pastorella 34:50
just because I know as many as like, when after the baby's born, you're gonna you have responsibilities, and you have duties that you need to. To to fulfill and so, yeah, I would expect that October, November, are probably gonna be busy. They're busy anyway. But, I mean, you know, we can probably get a lot done, get get some stuff in the in the pipeline, to where you can actually take an actual break, yeah, and do the right things,

Michael David Wilson 35:20
yeah, I don't want to sabotage you know, this podcast with you, Ryan, by talking about me too much. But this might be the first episode where I've, like, explicitly mentioned, okay, we're expecting a child, and it is a big moment, because, I mean, on top of everything else, like people who have followed along, they'll know that, yeah, I had, like, a massive kind of custody battle and divorce. I was I didn't see my daughter for a number of years, so to now be in the situation where me and my wife are going to be having our family and I can it's It's remarkable, but this is your fucking interview. This isn't the MDW show.

Ryan C. Bradley 36:11
Well, I mean, please talk about your baby. I'm not trying. Your baby is more important than my book. I'm not a what's the word? Of course, your baby is more important.

Michael David Wilson 36:23
It might, might be so. And if I, if I said, No, your book is more important than my wife, listen, what the fuck

Ryan C. Bradley 36:32
I would also say, What the fuck

Michael David Wilson 36:36
that'd be right? Or there's your second divorce, right? One step closer to being uncle poorly. So I mean, I want to know, what is your writing routine at the moment? How are you navigating all of this? Being a stay at home dad teaching guitar lessons and writing fiction.

Ryan C. Bradley 37:05
It's so my kid is in daycare from seven to 12. So seven to 12, I run and I write, and that's pretty much it. I mean, I'll lift too, like basically work out, right? And that's what I do during that time. Get her from school on a good day, she'll nap and I'll read, I guess I'll read a little bit during the mornings too. I'll read and I'll nap too. And then my partner gets home like 530 I cook dinner. I'm teaching by 630 most nights. Nights I'm not teaching, I'll play an open mic, or Michael Lewis Dixon lives nearby, and we'll watch a horror movie on a lot of Tuesdays. So it's like it's pretty busy, but I want to teach, I want to play music, I want to write, and I want to make sure on the nights that I'm not doing those things, I'm spending enough time with my partner, she doesn't feel neglected and maintain our relationship. So it's busy, there's not a lot of downtime. But these are the things I want out of life. So these are the things I'm doing.

Michael David Wilson 38:09
And is the right, not the writing, is the running and lifting a set time, or is that kind of determined on how deep you are into a story?

Ryan C. Bradley 38:20
So it depends what I'm training for. It's like, right now I'm training for, well, I'll start training for a half marathon the Monday after killer con, which is this weekend from when we're recording. I'm not sure when this will be released, so it might be by then. It's like, when you're doing like, a training plan like that, you start out doing like, right now it's 30 minutes on Monday of cross training, three miles. Tuesday, four miles, Wednesday, three miles, Thursday, and I lift after the three miles, then there's more miles on the weekend, but you do all that one week, and the next week, it goes up a little bit, and it goes up a little bit and it goes up a little bit until you run the race. Then after the race, you have this, like, you take like, a week or two off. So basically, the running time is determined by where I am, the training plan, what I'm training for. But I really enjoy it. I like the challenge of it. It does at some points, like, when, like, you're doing a marathon, there's like, you'll have, there's one Saturday for marathon training. You run 20 miles, I promise you, I did not write after that. Did not do anything that took, like four or five hours. It's brutal.

Michael David Wilson 39:30
And when you're lifting, are you doing lifts that will deliberately support the running? Or is it more like do you suggest the lifts for fun, the lifts that you enjoy, the lifts that make you feel good.

Ryan C. Bradley 39:44
I mean, so one day of lifting his legs, which is like specifically, so I don't blow my knees out running, and I'll work my upper body too, because I want to look good. I never look as good as I want to look but that's mainly because I eat like shit.

Michael David Wilson 39:59
I get like. Kind of never looking as good as you want to look. That is something that I kind of battle with. And then to add, like, some complication to to it all, then my brother is a professional power lifter and bodybuilder who owns his own gym. So sometimes, like, I look at my younger brother and I'm like, God damn it, he's like, so much more ripped. But then at the same time, it's like, Yeah, but he's literally the kind of pro athlete and you're the writer. He might be able to do a better squat, but if you give him a pen. He won't write. Write a funny a sentence. So, you know, swings around about

Ryan C. Bradley 40:46
my brother is also a big weightlifter, and I feel exactly what you feel.

Bob Pastorella 40:51
Yeah, we have these guys that worked at a couple of guys to do food preps, and one of them is he's diligent and very vigilant in his food preps, like, to the point to where, you know, it's like, Hey, that looks like some stuff that was growing out of my front yard you're about to eat. And it's like, no, this is called kale. It's really good for you. And I'm like, okay, just looks like trees. Now, yeah, but you know, and then so I'll go to lunch, and it's like, and, but it never fails me. And this guy would be at lunch at the same time, at least one time a week, and he he'll have, like, the turkey meat and all that, and I've got, like, a water burger. And it's like, and he's like, you know, you did pretty good on your on you. You lost a lot of weight, but you still eat the Whataburger. And I'm like, Yeah, well, one, I don't have two patties on here. It's only one patty. And two, I don't have Mayo anymore. It's all mustard. And three, it doesn't even have cheese on it. I got this because I could pick it up real quick. Yeah, and I'm not even gonna eat all of it, but I'm still living better than you are. Mr.

Michael David Wilson 42:03
Kale, I know you were gonna add four. I want to enjoy life. I was waiting for that

Bob Pastorella 42:11
because it's like, how can you how can you live? You eat turkey every day. There's other meats, there's other, there's other, there's other vegetables other than kale.

Michael David Wilson 42:23
Yeah, you got broccoli and spinach?

Bob Pastorella 42:26
Yes, yes, those. I hate it when he eats broccoli, it stinks up the whole back room. And he used to eat six boiled eggs, and he would peel them. Oh, you have to draw the line somewhere.

Michael David Wilson 42:43
If you peel the egg before then it won't stink out the staff room as much. Yeah, that's the key, and you feel them. Eggs, frozen broccoli, not fresh, then it won't smell as much. So there's your tips from someone who tries to eat healthily but also wants, you know, the vast majority of his colleagues not to fucking kill him,

Bob Pastorella 43:09
just the vast majority, yeah, but yeah, it's funny, though, and it's just the whole concept of, you're vigilant. And here's thing, he looks good, you know? I mean, he because he works out and all that I don't know, and she ain't living you.

Michael David Wilson 43:28
You got to do what you got to do. I mean, I'm, yeah, I'm quite disciplined with the food that I eat. I vary it up more. You know, with my wife, if I, if I lived alone, then it probably would be chicken and broccoli most days. Like, I can eat like that. It it's fine, like, it doesn't bother me. As Food is fuel. Food is having a purpose. But yeah, as the main Cook, if I did that with my wife, is like, come on. So yeah, I'm, you know, we cook a I cook a variety of different dishes, and it's a happier relationship for

Bob Pastorella 44:11
it. Y'all stay in the regular food groups and see like my food groups is, like, pizza is a food group, seafood is a food group. You know, steaks, a food group.

Michael David Wilson 44:24
Oh, my goodness. So what is it that you're working on fiction wise, right now,

Ryan C. Bradley 44:32
I have a Patreon called, I call it drop dead fiction. So I'm working on those constantly. Those are like, little I describe them as, like, if the Twilight Zone was performed by Tim Robinson from, I think you should leave with Tim Robinson. It's like that kind of stuff. I do that. And that's like straight horror comedy where I think, like, say, uncle has all these other elements. That's just horror comedy that I'm doing there. So I'm working on that always. I. Working on another longer work called call waiting, and it's about this young woman who she's on the phone with an airline. She's trying to convince him to refund the airline ticket she bought with her mother bought for her to her credit card instead of her mother's. And when they put her on hold, she gets sent into a labyrinth with a Minotaur, and she's stuck with all of these other people who are on call waiting. So I have a first draft of that done, and there's a really stupid part of my brain that's like, what if it was an epic poem? So I'm thinking about that. I'm trying to convince myself an epic poem is a really stupid fucking idea. Business. Ryan is screaming. He's throwing rocks at Creative Ryan, but creative Ryan is like you should just do the first chapter. See if you like it, put it in meter. What if you do iambic pentameter for 40,000 words? And I hate that person, but I also am that person, so I'm thinking about that a lot. I haven't started the second draft yet, but I think that's gonna be my next big project. I have another couple big things that I've written. I just don't know if I'm ever gonna revise them. I don't know if they're good enough to to be worth revising. And I'm always working on shorts. I just love writing short stories. You can't make any money on them, but I just, I keep doing it. There's a writer I really like, Jim shepherd, and he's always writing short stories. When his wife asks him, like, Why, he just says, Be quiet, or I'll start writing haikus.

Michael David Wilson 46:34
Oh my goodness. And I totally relate to you know, your brain essentially telling you, like, here's an idea that will make your novel, will make your fiction less commercial and harder to sell. But God damn, you want to do it, don't you? You know, the the amount of times I've just added a almost bizarro element to a book that could have had commercial potential, and probably it didn't even need that element for the story to still stand up, but I wanted to do it. Well, yeah, they, I don't know, it reminds me of that bit in, I believe, in Mr. Bones with the doctor, and they've got the side hustle selling, what is it like? Fruit pies, and you don't need it at all. It probably makes it absolutely less commercial, but it's just hugely enjoyable. It's just such a fun little deviation. Yeah, and

Bob Pastorella 47:49
something reminds me of something Max said recently on on social media, that about not not killing your darlings, letting your darlings live. Sometimes you get that weird, crazy concept, and it's the thing, you know, and it's like, well, no, I should squash that. No, don't wholeheartedly think that you should 100% do an epic poem about call waiting. I really do. And here's, here's, here's why you have a draft written. Yeah, you've got absolutely nothing to lose by trying it. Yeah, the only thing that you have to lose is that you never tried.

Ryan C. Bradley 48:37
Yeah, I think I'm at least going to do a chapter and meter and see what it's like, because I've never written in that form before. And the thing that I really worry about, on a creative level, is that you one I think, like a lot of modern words, aren't going to fit like because you need the rhythm to really fit the meter, and you can't, I guess, toaster oven. Toaster oven fits shit, an example, x lax fits lactate fits McDonald's. McDonald's, McDonald's doesn't fit. So if you want like McDonald's reference, you won't be able to say, or maybe you will. You just break the meter. I think it's harder to hop around points of view, and it's harder whenever you read an epic poem. Like, you're never deep in Odysseus his head, you never follow like Odysseus is fighting the Cyclops, but he's also thinking about like some rabbits he had when he was a kid or something,

Bob Pastorella 49:46
right? You don't see the surface. You fly on the wall.

Ryan C. Bradley 49:50
Yeah, exactly. So I don't know if that will work, but I mean, that's why I have to try it, because I do think at the end of the day, if I don't try it, I'll be disappointed, and. I make, like, what's the word? Like a compromise for business reasons, I'm not guaranteed to make any fucking money off that. In fact, I think, like when you talk to artists who are making it, like with sinners, Ryan Coogler did not make any compromises. I don't think he made a lot of compromises in his other movies to get to making that like great artists don't make these kinds of commercial compromises.

Bob Pastorella 50:28
I don't know it's like the way you got to think of it's like this. Clive Barker didn't know how to make Hellraiser. He had to read books about how to direct movies. James Elroy did not know how to write in staccato. His editor had to show him how to do it, and he rewrote American tabloid, actually the book before that, to get it closer to that, while it was in the process of being edited, they sat down together and chopped the book up, and he taught himself how to write that way, as he did that. So now that's how he writes. But if you go from Black Dahlia, if you go from that book, and then start reading everything after that that Elroy wrote, it's like there's a shift change. He taught himself how to do that. It's not, it didn't come naturally. So when you have these instances that you got to have some type of change. You have to look at the success stories of people who attempted the same thing, you know. And so, yeah, definitely try do, do a first chapter. But I would embrace it. Don't say, well, let's see if it works. Embrace it. Go for it 100% because you have a first draft already, yeah? So, yeah, you know what? I mean, you can always go back to that draft, but I would go in, hey, I'm 100% gonna make this an epic poem and then see what happens.

Ryan C. Bradley 51:54
Okay, yeah, I'm gonna try to embody that spirit. I don't know if I will, but I'm gonna try to embody it.

Michael David Wilson 52:02
I mean, there's no reason apart from time, why you couldn't have both. You could have, like a double sider. It's like, here's the more standard version, here's the iambic pentameter poetry version. Or, you know you could release them as two separate books. You could have the poem as the version that's exclusive to your Patreon, because that's your more kind of hardcore readers. So there's ways of doing both. Rather than choosing a or b, you can have a and b.

Ryan C. Bradley 52:40
That's true too. Yeah, I hadn't even thought of that. I could do it both ways.

Michael David Wilson 52:46
How long is the initial draft?

Ryan C. Bradley 52:49
It's like, it's like, all my work kind of hovers in this line, like, say, my first book, say, saints blood was like 38k say, uncle is probably like 4142 Call Waiting is like 35 to 38 but I do tend to like I write to a point where I know what the ending is, and I put it down and say the first draft is done without having written the ending, because I know where it's going. And I'm at that point, I get kind of bored because I know where it's going. Then when I revise it, I actually write the ending and I'll change the beginning to better match where I know the ending is going

Michael David Wilson 53:24
on that basis. Does that mean that you don't plan a lot? Are you more a pan sir, to use? Yeah. I mean modern technology,

Ryan C. Bradley 53:34
vague ideas, but I would say like, when with say uncle, when Braden goes into the upstairs room, I didn't know there's gonna be a book at that point. I didn't know Uncle Paul is gonna have a book. I didn't know they're gonna come back to that room, I kind of just I write, and then I go back to what I write, and I see what I set up, and I try to honor the setups that I put in there. Or I'll go back and I'll add a setup for what I want.

Michael David Wilson 54:01
So on that basis, then say uncle could have been a completely different book if he'd have found something else in the room.

Ryan C. Bradley 54:10
I yeah, I theoretically, I do think there's like, this is like, super woo, woo. But I think, like as writers, we're dipping into our subconscious. And our subconscious knows what's happening, even though our conscious mind doesn't. And so, like, I don't think it could have been a different book. I think my subconscious always knew. I just didn't know. My conscious self didn't know. And I think I'm like, like, just like an archeological dig into what my brain already made while I was sleeping or something. It's not I'm creating, but like, the part of me that's creating isn't the part that's that's writing. That part's unearthing what happened to some other weird time.

Michael David Wilson 54:57
It's a interesting way of Luke. At it. And I mean, you say that it's woo, woo. But I'm relating to this quite a lot, specifically with the current project that I've got. It's a collaborative novel with my friend John crin. And then quite often, we're looking for like, a solution to a certain story problem. And then we look deeper, and we're like, the solution has already been set up. We set this up 20,000 words ago. But then maybe it's even more remarkable, because this is two people doing it. Like, do we have the same creative subconscious for this one project, but so many times we we're not sure what the solution is, and we already had it, we just hadn't dug deep enough yet. Yeah, yeah.

Ryan C. Bradley 55:53
Carl Jung said that there was like and Bob problems most of tonight, because he studied psychology, but he said there was like, and maybe you already know this like a giant subconscious that we're all connected to and all feeding into, like archetypal images,

Bob Pastorella 56:08
collective unconscious. Yes, thank you. Thank you. It's a it's a fascinating concept, and it deals with archetypes and stuff like that. The man and that makes me want to read, start reading some Carl union again, because that's some, that's some interesting stuff. We got, I got into that kind of deep but that, I mean, and I'm grateful that I did, because it got me into burrows, and got me into, you know, reading Ginsburg and Kerouac and all that. It got me into, you know, because all that and got me into the doors. So it's all kind of comes together. I think that if, if he wouldn't, if, if Braden wouldn't have found a book, he would have probably found something else that would have been a cult related, I think you were already kind of digging in that area. And so he could have found, he could have found a box that had, like, Fuck, I don't know, a preserved tongue in it, or something like that. You know, something just, I mean, it wouldn't have necessarily be a book. The book, in this case, is, it's like a MacGuffin, yeah, it's, it's catalyst to get you into the story. And I like that in most of the time, these, these things are, they're totems, they're they're macguffins that they're important, they're crucial to the story. But at the end of the day, they don't really mean anything. What? What? It's the fun you had along the way?

Michael David Wilson 57:40
Yeah, we've got a question from Tracy via Patreon, and at this stage, you're a number of books into your creative journey as a writer, and Tracy is wondering how you are going about building your brand and and what you might recommend for others looking to do that and then kind of related to that, if you're looking to kind of go more in the independent or the traditional direction, and if the paths that you would take would then differ in terms of the brand building.

Ryan C. Bradley 58:24
Good question. I don't think in terms of brand, but I do say like, because I've mentioned before, like, I think you have to be a creator and you have to be a business person. I think, like, as a business person, yeah, I have a brand, but it's mostly like, I don't want my socials, which I hate, being on social media. If it was up to me and I didn't need to be on it for marketing, I would be off social media. And of course, I say that, but I'm also hopelessly addicted to social media, so six and one half a dozen of the other but like my brand, I guess would be I post photos of me after races, and I've been learning to smoke meat, and I post photos of that. And I do those two things for fun, and I enjoy them, but I post the photo so people don't just think all this guy does is say, Buy my book, which is really all I do. I also set up events a lot, and I set up events. One, because I enjoy doing them. I love performing. But two, I can go on socials and say, come see me in Tulsa, reading from say uncle. And I'm promoting say uncle, but I'm also, it doesn't sound like I'm just saying, buy my book for the 100th time, I'm saying, come to this event. But as like a creative person, I almost never think about my brand. The things I think about as a creator are, how do I not just retread the same story again and again? How do I not but then I also, I mean, I used to think like that, but I also look at like I'm a huge Stephen King fan. I know I mentioned. Fire started before, and he's not telling the same story again and again, but he's not changing voices between books. And so I've been trying to change voices between books, and I don't know if I should even be doing that, because, I mean, a lot of great writers, when you pick up a Stephen King book, you know exactly who's writing. You could pick up you go to page 50 of any of his books, and you'd know it was him, yeah. And then the other part of the question was traditional or independent publishing? I think for an epic poem, if it ends up being an epic poem, it'll absolutely have to be either independently public or an indie or a self published book. I don't think there's a big five press out there's like, this guy's had three indie books. Let's give him a contract, a big money contract, for an epic poem. But I've never published with a big, traditional publishing house. I would like to one day, I don't know if it would be my preferred thing. So now I've self published, and I've published with independent presses, and I've are small presses, and I've enjoyed both things. There's strengths and weaknesses to both of them, obviously. So I would like to try traditional publishing just to have, like, a full scope, and then make a decision from there. But I also recognize I'm like, it's almost like saying I always want to try the NFL just for a couple snaps and see if I like it. It's not really how it works. So they're just like, we want you to try this big traditional publishing. But I'm gonna, I would like to, I would like to put my kid through college with book sales, you know. But such is life. And the other question, part of the question was, would I change my approach depending which one I wanted? No, I wouldn't. Most we were talking about maybe 20 minutes ago. Even if you change your approach, there's no guarantee they're going to like that, and now you've compromised before they've even asked you to compromise. And I don't think that's a recipe for you to be happy and fulfilled in what you're doing. And I imagine that if you're like Simon Schuster, you're not looking for people who are bending over backwards to please them. You're looking for new, original voices, at least that's what I hope, what they're looking for.

Michael David Wilson 1:02:23
I hope they're looking for a novel length, epic poem. I hope that you do get offered a traditional contract for that.

Ryan C. Bradley 1:02:32
That would be great. I have no optimism towards that,

Michael David Wilson 1:02:39
but it could happen. We dare you, absolutely dare you. Let's, let's channel some toxic masculinity to peer pressure them into publishing an epic.

Bob Pastorella 1:02:53
You ain't got a spine unless you published a separate song. You spineless worm.

Michael David Wilson 1:03:05
St Martin's Press would do it, saying, yeah, why don't you do it? St Martin's prove that you're harder than Simon and Schuster just trying to facilitate some kind of gang wars between the big presses. Del Rey. You want in on the action? You make an offer. There we go. We've laid the gauntlet for the the epic poem. Wait for the money to come in. I love the

Ryan C. Bradley 1:03:39
idea that we can just peer pressure these fortune 500 companies, yeah, and epic puppetry.

Bob Pastorella 1:03:47
It's like, it's like that scene in Goodfellas, and then when you get out of your coma, I'm gonna come and bash your fucking skull in again, because I'm stupid like that. You gotta publish my book, or what?

Michael David Wilson 1:04:00
Well, what advice would you give to your 18 year old self,

Ryan C. Bradley 1:04:08
my 18 year old self, so this is the Ryan who just failed out or just got rejected from every music school. Yeah. The thing that I really want him to know is that it doesn't matter what the gatekeepers at music school thought you can just keep playing guitar. In fact, if you were to go back 18 year old Ryan and look at your favorite guitarists, most of them didn't go to music school. I mean, that's the advice I'd give myself. If I were to give another 18 year old, it would be just keep pushing. Be persistent, because everything in life comes with comes through persistence, and stuff's not going to go right the first time. You got to do it again and again until you get it. I mean some semblance of right, and some stuff will never work out, and you just gotta accept that at a certain point.

Michael David Wilson 1:04:57
All right. Where can I listen? This, connect with you.

Ryan C. Bradley 1:05:02
I am at Ryan b4 890, on a blue sky Instagram. I'm still technically on Twitter, but I don't check it anymore. I don't open it anymore, and you can just friend me on Facebook. I'm Ryan Bradley.

Michael David Wilson 1:05:18
Why 4890, is that your PIN code?

Ryan C. Bradley 1:05:23
It's not my PIN code. Is this my birthday though, April 8, 1990

Michael David Wilson 1:05:27
Okay, that's that mystery solved. Then, yeah, okay. Well, thank you so much for spending the vast majority your evening chatting with us. Thank you also for writing such a fantastic book in say uncle, and I hope we can do this again sometime.

Ryan C. Bradley 1:05:52
Yes, thank you so much for having me and thank you for hosting such a great podcast.

Michael David Wilson 1:05:58
Do you have any final thoughts to leave our listeners and viewers with,

Ryan C. Bradley 1:06:04
oh, sure, I don't read sick by Michael Lewis Dixon,

Michael David Wilson 1:06:09
all right, thank you again. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to Ryan C Bradley on this is horror, join us again next time when I will be chatting with Josh Malerman about his brand new book, watching The Evil Dead. But if you want that and every other episode ahead of the crowd, become our patron@patreon.com forward slash, this is horror. Not only do you get early access to each and every episode, but you also get exclusive patrons only podcasts such as story unbox, the horror podcast on the craft of writing and writing and life lessons with me, Michael David Wilson and Bob Pastorella, both Patreon podcasts are designed to help you improve your own writing and have actionable takeaways that not only deepen your understanding of storytelling, but help you take your own stories to the next level. Becoming a Patreon is also the best way to support the podcast and to keep us going, and I am hopeful to be doing this full time from next year. I've been doing it for 13 years, and I really, really want to take it to the next level. But for that to become a reality, I need your support. Why? Every week I mentioned the Patreon, that's it. In this creative game, there's no shortcuts. There's no get big or get rich quick. Oh, this is about one to one connection. So when I say every Patreon does matter, that is coming from the heart. And so if you want to be a patron, if you want to help make my dream a reality, head to patreon.com forward slash This is horror. And if you do have to finance your means, please pledge today. Okay, before I wrap up, a quick advert break, it

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Michael David Wilson 1:09:52
Well, that about does it for another episode of This is horror. Do stay tuned. Post Music. Because Ryan C Bradley answers one more question that was submitted by a Patreon. So get ready for that, and I will see you in the next episode with Josh Malerman. But until then, take care of yourselves. Be good to one another. Read horror, keep on writing and have a Great, great day.

Ryan C. Bradley 1:11:24
so little. Zach Ashford, tiny, tiny, tiny, teeny, tiny. Zach Ashford, from Australia, wrote and said, I know from panels and other interviews that you trained as a wrestler. Does the staging and blocking, if that's the right word for it, help you construct your fight scene slash action sequences. Also, were you a heel or no? Well, Zach, love you buddy. First of all, and sorry about calling you tiny, but I would do it again in a second. The short answer is kind of so I would say the staging, or blocking, as you call it, was not a huge help. But other parts of professional wrestling have absolutely translated. Like one of the things I learned about was selling, which, in professional wrestling terms, it's how to make it look like you're hurt when you're not, and the selling has to continue. So if a guy hurts his leg, he needs to fake a limp for the rest of the match to continue to sell the idea that his leg is hurt. And that goes into other aspects of wrestling, starting, you see it in wrestling matches all the time, where someone will try to, like, they'll hurt their leg, then they'll have to pick somebody up for their move, and they won't be able to do it because of the pain in their leg. And it's like a great storytelling technique. So I think one of the things that I take into my fiction from wrestling is that if a character gets hurt in some way, it comes back, if not, in a way that makes them fail at something, in a way that just reminds readers that when you fall down, it hurts. When you punch a wall, you bruise your knuckles, they bleed if you're punching correctly. So I always try to bring that in and the other part of your question, well, I guess the other thing I really learned from professional wrestling, more than that, was just, it's called a hope spot. And like the early drafts of saints blood, my first book did not have hope spot, so it's just Richie getting tortured until he escaped. When I learned about hope spot in professional wrestling, it's when the heel is putting the beat down on the baby face. So the baby is putting the beat down on the heel. There needs to be what's called a hope spot, where you get a moment where you believe that the comeback is starting, or you believe but something that reminds you that the person who's getting beat down can still win. So that was huge in writing saints, but I have a lot of what I would call HOPE spots, and once I learned about what that was I started using it. The other thing that wrestling taught me, and this is a weirder one, I mean, more existential, and less about writing, before I trained to be a wrestler, or something I never thought I would do. And then there was a school where I was living in Tulsa, and I just run a 5k and I thought, I guess I could do anything, which is very silly now that like a 5k is not a big deal, but train to be professional wrestlers huge. I learned that I could do anything I wanted in life, and I didn't need to wait for someone else to give me permission or to to invite me. I could just go out there and go to wrestling school, which is very exciting. And really I don't know if I'd have published any books at this point if I had not had that experience. It really kind of like freed me from the idea that I had to have permission or wait for anyone. I just did this. Thing I always wanted to do, and it was a blast. And was I a heel, so I never got to the point where I was actually working matches. So I should say that first, because the thing is, I'm five foot six, and for anyone listening at home, when I called Zach, tiny, Zach is large, but but I never got to the point of working matches. I'm not a large man, and I'm not incredibly coordinated, so like, if you're five foot six in wrestling, you better be able to do flips. And I was not. I had a blast doing it, though my plan was to be a heel. I was a college professor at the time. I was doing this, and my basic plan was I would go out with a microphone. I would talk about how stupid the people I was living in Oklahoma at the time, so how stupid the people living in Oklahoma or Texas or Arkansas, one of the neighboring states, Kansas, were and then a baby face would come and kick my ass, and it would be just like this self contained, like little story where I got the crowd to want to see me get punched in the face, and then I got punched in the face.