Literary Fear - Interview with Author Paul Tremblay featuring Mark O. Estes

[Laughter] hello boyss and girls it's your old pal John cir the voice of the [ __ ] keeper and guess what kitties you are now tuned in to pbd horror podcast Pleasant screams [Music] ah hey what's going on you're now tuned in to the PVD hard podcast I'm Brandon and I'm joined by my co-host Dave and our good friend Mark of the midnight Social Distortion podcast today we have a special guest he is an award-winning author of horror Dark Fantasy and science fiction joining us today is Paul trbl Paul thanks for coming on the show man hey thanks my pleasure glad to be here uh hopefully I'm not too D because today was like my first day back in school so I'm kind of like depressed but it'll be all right like after the first week it's like oh yeah so now Paul our friend Mark is a really big fan of your work he actually nice to hear yeah he recommended one of your books to me once once I was locked in I noticed a lot of Hometown references I then had to look you up and realized that you were from Mass and that you're very often in Providence Rhode Island so uh that was that was a a great connection for me so can you share some of your experiences like you know being in Providence at times yeah yeah so I ended up going to Providence College uh for college and I laugh because you know I teach now and you know I tell the students you know applying to school when I was like way back in 1989 is so different than now like I chose Province because I like their basketball team I think they had made the final they had made the final four in 1987 so I'm like oh yeah we have a good basketball team and that was the best school I got into so I end up in Providence um but you know I had a great time was really the place like I didn't have a good time in high school where I sort of discovered myself or felt more comfortable being myself you know and I did stuff like the the radio station and you know and things like played a lot of inal basketball uh so I know Province always has like a special you know place in my heart and you know I live in Massachusetts but almost perfectly in between Boston and Providence so you know I find that I go to Providence frequently and you know uh you know province has become like uh a fun sort of hub for for artistic stuff too there's a lot of writer events and you know Necronomicon was just there yeah uh and that's you know that's like one of the bigger conventions that I go to now and it's you know every couple years so yeah I know Providence um was definitely like a very formative as an like a new a brand new adult or becoming an adult something close to an adult was was very much like part of that experience for me very cool um so speaking of conventions um I heard that you were often at Rock and Shop um you actually had like table setting up um selling books and stuff like that um I I I think a few times like people gave me some space but I wasn't like standing behind a table I never rented a table on my own it was more my friend Jack heringa who's a writer critic who who lives and teaches in Worcester uh I had an in and he would sort of get me in but yeah that's where I met like Adam Adam Caesar uh you know and other folks where I got a picture with Ry Ry Piper so yeah Rock and shock certainly you that was sort of like near the the start of my writing career I'm trying to remember what year that was that Rody Rod Piper was there and who like was some of the the headliners was that wasn't the George Romero year was it or the Robert England one uh I really don't remember that's it's F remember like the the musician Headliners like gu was there one year uh but I mean for me Piper was a headliner so I my brother my younger brother and I got a picture with Ry that it was very excited to you know I still share every once in a while so um silver screams is going to be heading to Worcester and you know kind of hopefully kind of taking on or taking over what rock and shock had kind of established as you know being like that big convention for there um are you gonna be checking that out any chance um I have to confess I don't know I'm not familiar with silver screams uh okay that sounds fun so I I assume it's like a a big movie convention or is it there's there crossover yeah it's actually very similar it's it's music in movies um ice 9 kills is the uh person putting the convention together okay last year they were in Danvers and they had you know a really good turnout and names this year is no different they got like David Arquette going um David how Thorn a bunch of uh big names yeah and he's gonna be performing too I believe so it should be a good nice sounds very cool I I'll definitely keep an eye out yeah Okay cool so I love to hear how our guests were first introduced into the horror genre can you share your experience with us yeah so um somewhat aging myself you know as like a seven eight-year-old like pre cable TV in the Massachusetts area and I'm sure you could could got could have gotten it in in Ryland too but like the Boston UHF channels oh my gosh I don't even know if anyone here's old enough for that but uh on the weekends Channel 56 in Boston would show they had a program called creature double feature uh so the first movie was always Godzilla game you know a Kaiju movie and then the second movie was more uh you know some sort of 50s or 60s horror movie um you know and as a kid I love dinosaurs so like I was instantly drawn to Godzilla but you know when I watch the second movie that movie would give me horrible nightmares even silly stuff like Attack of the Killer shw I still remember having an attack at the killer shrew nightmare so I mean I from a very young age I was very much attracted to horror but also just terrified of it like slept with stuffed animals around my head I shared a bedroom with my younger brother so he was like the canary in the co mine for me I would send him upstairs first if it was time for bed and you know if the monster in the closet didn't get him I guess it was okay for me to go upstairs too so yeah so film for me was the start um soon after that like I felt like my town for whatever reason was an early adopter of cable TV and you know back in the early and mid 80s like HBO just showed like the same movies over and over again so um you know it was just like catching horror movies that way my younger brother actually way outpaced me even though he's 5 years younger uh he was a total gorehound like he saw Texas Chainsaw Mas her when he was 10 I think I sawed for the first time like 10 or 15 years ago because I was too afraid to watch it but now I love it it's such a great movie um yeah I know so it's like it's hard to remember it was just always there like even you know my dad was more a Sci-Fi guy but he you know he had like a subscription I remember to Omni magazine and he had like fro to live stuff around the house and used to smoke a pipe in the house little did I know then that it was full of uh let's call it pipe weed as opposed to you know he was just smoking a pipe things you find out about your parents later so yeah so I mean genre stuff was just always like a thing in my house uh it was always there which was which was really cool um I'mma piggy back off what Brandon um said um is there like a a specific novel horror novel or movie or like a real life event that still has you shaking to the core to this day that still kind of like ah makes you go like that oh yeah so many but I mean uh I mean I mean I guess the movie Jaws is probably the one that that still has a tangible thing uh I first start when I was 10 years old um so this is what like 1981 I guess and for whatever reason like my local high school was playing it in the auditorium but on a big screen you know my father pitched the movie to me he like oh this movie Jaws it's great there's this scene that totally captures what it feels like uh to catch a fish on a line because at the time like we would just go in a rad booat and like go FL fishing or something yeah know so stupid kid me was like oh okay let's go so he was right you know the scene where Quint you know was eyeing the real that was a very cool fishing moment but he didn't prepare me for the rest of the movie you know when I saw when I saw Quint spoiler alert for a 50-year-old movie sorry but when I saw Quint you know get bitten in half and split you know spitting blood into the camera that broke my brain um I I had at least like five to seven maybe longer years of shark nightmares like not exaggerating like every every not every dream was a nightmare but every nightmare I would end up in the water it would end up with like a shark coming after me so I mean Jaws is one of my favorite movies I've probably seen it you know more than 50 times and actually I just have a I have a newi is I can't get a good angle on this but that's uh have getting there I have to stand up for that's one of the barel one of the bar bar barrels she I can't talk and I just had like one of the marks look like a shark yeah it's just healed now but so anyway I love Jaws but even though I when I rewatch it I still can't watch the scene where Quint gets bit in half I cover my face with a pillow even when I've watched with my kids I ceremoniously cover because I'm just afraid that if I see that se even though I've seen way more gorier things I'm just afraid if I see that again my brain will return to where it was when I was 10 years old yeah yeah so understand yeah so that I what you would ask Mark is that's the perfect fit for me is that that movie because it still has a left its mark on me now literally with the barrel perf yeah on top of that it wasn't filmed too far away from us too you know so it definitely hits a different way being at the at the beach and everything I know I know with with Cap Cod just inundated with white sharks too like it's nuts yeah yeah uh Paul you've been doing uh book tours and stuff um and you and um Adam are uh just recently we're at Brookline uh booksmith that's where uh Brandon was able to get in touch with you and what has been like the book tour scene like you know what is it like to you know draw in this audience of people you know similar uh to us that you know just fans of the work and just you know yearning for more and more horror novels oh I mean it's a lot of fun I mean this this summer was the first summer my publisher actually sent me like Nationwide which is really cool usually it's been all New England just things that I can drive to you know New York City maybe in Pennsylvania if I drive a little further out but uh yeah the summer like I think I flew on eight planes in 11 days at one point it was after Boston went to Chicago St Louis San Francisco Portland Denver Seattle which was the wrong order but that's how it ended up being so I mean I got to see I'd never seen any of those cities before so I mean that was just I didn't get to spend a ton of time in many of the Cities which was a little bit of a bummer but just even to see like downtown Chicago I've never been or you know see the hills in San Francisco no one told me Seattle had Hills too uh until I started walking around yeah so I mean the combination of that and just having um you know so many enthusiastic readers come out it was amazing it was a lot of fun um I'm G to try to hold on to those feelings as I muddle through these opening weeks of school no yeah it was definitely cool you know to meet you at the um the bookstore and just having that experience you know that was actually my first time going to an event like that so oh nice so it was yeah it was really cool so um yeah that's that's fine the first event I ever went to was at the same bookstore the brook line booksmith okay and it was for author named steuart Oran who since become sort of like a mentor and when he was first when he was publishing in the late 90s he had a few horror novels but now he kind of just not just writes but he writes more like mainstream literary stuff but no it was like the book The the booksmith is a special place for me I think Adam said the same thing like so many of us Boston people that's you know the first place that we've been to a book event because it's such a you know big indelible store yeah now um with your novel horror movie focusing on like a reboot what is your favorite reboot of all time oh oh I was gonna say that's hard but no that's that's goton to be an easy one it's uh Carpenter is the thing not the whatever the 2011 thing was okay I haven't watched that I mean because it does count as a reboot because it a remake of 19 I think it's 56 is the thing from another world yeah um yeah it's a really short list I can't I don't know of any I was gonna say but if you were gonna say another one what would it be because that one that's so funny like I don't even usually think of that one as a I know you're right yeah technically does like if you haven't seen the 1956 one it's you know it's actually it's good it's a good movie it's it's much different um I was just reading I just finished the audio book of oh my God let me find my phone um I'll keep talking audio book it came out the summer was about the summer of 1982 uh where all these like famous sci-fi horror movies came out in the same year it was the thing Blade Runner ET uh Wrath of Star Trek 2 Wrath of con con and the Barbarian Road Warriors like all these movies came out in the same summer so that's why I was able to because usually I'm terrible with dates I was able just to Rattle off yeah yeah all those movies anyway uh the future was now uh was the name of that that book which was a lot ofun fun okay if you want to dig into those movies yeah otherwise uh reboots like I don't know like throw out some suggestions because I tend to be sort of like anti- reboot guy like I don't Halloween ones I don't love Brandon and I usually will say Evil Dead as like one of our one of our top ones mine too yeah Okay I uh I I love Evil Dead 2 so much it's like one of my favorite movies I just haven't I I did watch Ash versus evil dead so I guess I did watch some of it but I didn't go back and watch any of the reboots and I've heard you know fi Alvarez did a good job so I I can I can accept those but I'm still kind of a Gore wimp I heard that the new evil evil the first Evil Dead reboot was super gory so like I have to build up to that yeah yeah yeah um Paul you know it's kind of interesting uh you're a high school mathematics teacher yeah and a and a JV basketball coach um for my understanding so you know I guess as someone would assume an author would be like an English teacher right um so um can you can you explain that a little bit and also like what do your students think about this like other life that you have yeah it's a little hard to explain some ways because I didn't start messing around with writing until I started teaching um so I mean the short version is after graduating Providence College uh with like a a sort of double major not really but it was math and Humanities and the very last one of the very last classes I took at Providence was basically English 101 to fulfill a requirement so it was me a senior second semester senior and with a bunch of freshmen but I totally hit it off with the professor it was almost like one of those stereotypical like Dead Poet Society things uh part of is like we connected over music he was big in the punk and so was I so he let me like write papers comparing you know some of the stories that we read to songs and things like that you know in that class I read some stories I like wow I didn't know people wrote things like that and shortly after that when I graduated my girlfriend who's my wife now bought me Stephen Kings a stand right before I went off to grad school for two years because I went to the University of Vermont for grad school uh you know and Lisa was in Boston so we did the longdistance relationship thing and you know grad school is much different than than undergrad so there wasn't like a lot of partying per se so I had time to read and I just fell in love with Rick you know I read all the Stephen King and through King you know I found like Peter straw F Parker and you know shy Jackson so many others so like at I I definitely had like this creative want like because I was trying to teach myself how to play guitar too at the same time so the second half of the 90s I was very much a hobbyist writer and a hobbyist guitar player but unfortunately I figured out I was a better guitarist I mean a better writer than guitar player uh so I sort of I started selling some short stories in the early 2000s so I just sort of stuck with it yeah um but yeah otherwise it's I don't know where the math comes in if it does it all yeah yeah I think in some ways uh I think maybe it's I'll say this I feel like you know when I'm teaching you know I'm tired when I come home but I don't feel like I'm using the same like writerly muscles like sure right if I read if i' been reading like essays or short stories all day or something like that it doesn't completely deplete you of that of that skill are are you a basketball player too uh yes although like my knees are are are Traders so yeah I I've stopped playing for a couple years now unfortunately I mean I still I I'm very obnoxious about my shooting ability I I can shoot the three when I was in high school I was very short and skinny even though I'm like 6'4 now uh because I had a curve spine which didn't help the height thing but right after I high school I had back surgery that actually straightened me out three inches I had like a metal rod so I went from like this short skinny outside shooting guard to like a 64 person who could shoot over people so I was very much a late bloomer in in the basketball realm um no I I I mean I definitely enjoyed basketball it's fun I sort of Miss playing but just physically let's get a game going man H basketball fans like that's yeah I'm ready stepen yeah uh he and I he and I have shot around together once his game's much different than I am yeah he he's gonna bully you down on the post I'm much more finesse I'm just going to stick out by the three-point line there you go so now with you being a coach what's your team record like did you won a championship yet what that you so for JV Hoops like I teach at a private school so I mean there's no like playoffs or anything like that but we had good records I felt like I I did a pretty good job you know uh I was maybe maybe some people would be surpris surprisingly old school for a while as a coach uh especially when I was younger like in my you know 20s early 30s you know I taught at a boy school too so was sure lot of lot of yelling a lot of being hard on people are you a Celtics fan yeah yeah I mean I have to be you know raised here yeah good man good man so I I've left the coaching of basketball because it does take too much time so I've left okay I think my last year was 22 but like our our record the last few years was like one loss and two loss we ended well which was good yeah it's funny because I'm a Lakers fan and Dave's a Celtics fan so we have that we my my younger brother because he's a younger brother you know decided he was a Lakers fan in the 80s too yeah yeah I have no dogs in that fight let me take the line back I'm a Grizzlies fan because I'm from the Memphis tenness area and I feel like a lot of people crap on the Grizzlies because they're from Memphis Yeah so but that's my te but apologies first and foremost because I was the most horrible math student like I had severe anxiety attacks before test and everything but I managed through it but I was the student that would come to class every day with a stack of books from Star Trek to horror anything and everybody was like why don't you put them in your backpack and I like to show off my books so my question right now is has a student of yours ever showed up to class reading one of your books and have they like you know try to get you to autograph him or anything like that you know I haven't uh wow yeah well so typically I think part of the reason why is typically I teach freshman geometry uh and so maybe they're too young for the books although I'll see those freshman kids have like a George R Martin or something that's more like high fantasy less horror yeah so hasn't been a lot of horror fans uh in the seniors but I know some kids have read them me even like there's been a few times where uh one of the teachers there is a signed like a headful of ghosts to his creative writing class actually my son was in that class he forced my son to read a headful of ghosts which was great because otherwise my son wasn't gonna read it so I'm very thankful yeah we had a great conversation uh because my son Cole is much more he's a much more he he's artistic as well but he's a musician He makes music he was a music production major in college a recent graduate he puts out music under the name cole Calico he's a very talented guy nice so it was kind of nice that you know that you know this the teacher who made him read my book uh it was it was just a fun conversation we got to have over creativity but I get it like you know I'm his dad like I don't want like if he wants to go read more books later that's great but I don't want to feel like you must read this you know yeah yeah because that was funny too because I was going to ask you with you being a dad what point in your career did your kids start to think you were cool and respect your craft that I can have to ask them uh for the longest so I have two kids my daughter is now a sophomore at more and she's a studio art major so either fortunately or unfortunately both my kids are very artistic I think it's fortunate um yeah my I remember my daughter used to be so embarrassed like if I brought up the book thing or something you know when she was like a teen or a tween yeah like why do you even say that like you know it's like well someone mentioned Stephen King I'll be well you know yeah right horror to or something and I I would do it just to make her cringe but no they they're both definitely proud of of stuff that's gone on and um and it was an amazing thrill when knock at the cabin premiered you know my kids and my wife got to go and you know that was a lot of fun my kids actually so they read mostly read cabin at the end of the world on the train from Boston to New York City they were cramming like they were studying for a test you just to finish the book before they saw the movie my daughter listened to it on audio at like two times the speed okay oh wow that's a thing I hear people saying they listen to it faster I guess it Mak sense because it's a little intimidating when you see the length I can get up to one and a half times and that's pushing it two is like crazy yeah yeah um so you kind of explained why you got into horror uh in particular but I'm curious because like I know for me horror wasn't like the first thing that I ever uh gravitated to when it came to books actually like um brdy stellis Chuck uh pic they were huge influences of what got me into reading yeah but and ironically they've actually kind of drifted into horror more recently yeah I was going to say even they're they're not to interrupt but they're pretty horror adjacent even they're reading horror yeah um but yeah like before that is also like Victorian like all over the place like very distant from horror um but I was curious do you have any um books or Inspirations that you would consider non horror that kind of even influence what you write now yeah absolutely um think like reading Kurt vonet was like a huge deal for me um I mean also Chuck po as well but I used to once I sort of discovered for myself vonet I used to reread um slaughterhouse 5 at the end of every school year I don't know why it just became like this yeah little tradition to lead me into a a fun summer it's not a you know it's not a fun book in that way um but no I mean part of that was like a good lesson like something like that happened to me like fairly early on in the writing process like in the early 2000s when I first started getting serious about the writing thing I had sold a short story and it appeared online and a writer that I respected said hey this is a really good story it would have been great even without the horror element and that sort of maybe stand back or you know steep back for a second I was like oh it's like maybe I don't have to force every story to be a Horror Story my interests are going to go there anyway yeah um I'll just write whatever I think the story I think it should be um I that was like a really important lesson for me as a writer just like everything has to serve the story just to have that mindset you know and if I hadn't done that you know maybe it took well my my career for whatever it is has been pretty long I'm windy like the the first no in the 2000s the first decade anytime I tried writing a novel it wasn't horror it was sort of Darkly humorous but all the short fiction was horror I mean it sort of makes sense because you know humor and horror are so closely related yeah it's like you know our reactions to the the the craziness of everyday life um but I never would have like thought to even try writing other stuff like my first novels that were published were these weird detective novels in South Boston um even though you know they did so well but uh at least I got my first go around with the big Publishers out of the way uh and then I got to reboot my myself you know with a headful of ghost later um so yeah I I try to read as wide as you know as poss as I possibly can I feel like if those um the detective stories ever got uh adapted into film it would be starring Donnie wallberg as DET uh I I I kind of nothing nothing against Donnie but no we we don't we don't need more Donny somebody else it's always him the head sou the uh well part of the fun of those detective novels was so my wife's family is from South Boston you know most people just you know I you know rightly so I guess but you know just assume everyone's Irish Catholic yeah you know white in South Boston where it's like you know Lisa's family still white but Lithuanian there's a big Lithuanian okay actually community in South Boston like I've been to the Lithuanian Club and you know there's you know Lithuanian churches so I try to like sort of flip most of the conventions or expectations of a crime novel by having a Lithuanian narcoleptic detective in sth blon yes speaking of your writing um what's your writing process like I'm pretty sure you get this all the time but is that something that you keep close to your chest or you willing to just you know lay it out for oh yeah um yeah I wish I could I wish I was more organized but typically maybe it's maybe this is the math part coming in especially if I'm if I'm working on a novel like I'll set like a a word count goal of like 500 Words a day but knowing that I'm not going to make that word count every day so then I break it also like there's days and then for the week I'm like man if I can get between 2, 2500 words for a week that's great and then I think about the month if I can get between like nine and 12,000 for the month that's really good and I tend to more often hit the monthly goal consistently as opposed to the other ones um you know because I try to be realistic especially if it's during the school year you know when things are busy I don't I'm already going to be beating myself up as I'm writing anyway is like one of the my one of the great disappointments in my life is discovering that oh I figured that once I sold a few things or if I had sold a few things or things got published the self-doubts would sort of get easier to go away and like they don't if anything they get worse uh so like having like makeable word counts uh helps me you know just makes me feel good if I hit that 500 um also knowing that you know typically at the start of a novel maybe it's only 300 or 350 words or something and the word count tends to to go up a little bit as I get closer to the end um yeah and I if it's a and again if we're talking a novel I've often spent like a few weeks or or more before I even start writing just to try to write an outline like a plot outline of what I think is going to happen um I haven't done it for every novel uh but I always felt like I still feel least confident about plot so I like to have just sort of like those Bare Bones there sort of to help me gu to help me along you know things will change and that's sort of the fun part is when you know something happens like oh and then like you know give yourself permission obviously to change um the outline and sometimes I've been professionally forced to do it like if you know I usually get like a two or three book deal and when the deal's over my publisher is like oh we want to keep working with you m you know we need to see 50 pages in the summary of the next book and we can offer you another deal so sometimes you know the summary happens that way but I have noticed actually the last three novels I haven't really outlined I don't know if that means I'm getting lazier I don't think it means I'm getting better but I kind of outline as I go like I keep notebooks and always try to you know whatever I'm working on I'll try to look like at least a few steps ahead to see what might be coming next okay I think it can get better just because I mean horror movie I told Brandon and everybody I said U Paul didn't have to snap like that because that bookhead me up all night like I was I was invested so hey oh thank you hearing that you didn't outline it oh my God just oh thank you uh I did have more time for that book because I I I did take one year sabatical leave from school that that coincided with knock at the C being made so I wrote I mean I started the horror movie probably like the spring of 22 and finish it January of 23 so I mean that's pretty quick for me usually it takes like a full year so I wrote most of that book when I was off from school so I think you know if it's good that helped it being good um but thank you no I appreciate that uh yeah I like that book it's a little weird yeah it was funny because like I said when I started to read that book you know a lot of the hometown references it to hit a little bit closer and then it kind of like took me back to like when I was younger I was like probably a third grade uh in school we had read AI something upstairs you know what I mean and so with that being like based in Providence and kind of going back and forth and then being able to go like on a school field trip and actually see like the building and everything that they reference and everything it's just like you know it's good to kind of keep like readers locked in because it's like it's it surrounds you at times you know so I think that you do a great job with that because like with The Rock and shock and everything having you know you know you know hot club and all that other stuff put into it you know it's it's pretty cool you know so well sometimes I just hate research so it's easier just to go with what I remember yeah I think that's cool yeah yeah and you also stated that your novels are about you wrestling with your own beliefs can you talk a little bit about that um yeah uh that's a really good question it gets hard to like put into words necessarily but like I don't know it's fun and weird to be in a place where you know I've written a whole bunch of novels now so I can like sort of like look at them as like these are these chunks of years you know like for Med a headful of ghost is 2013 that's when I wrote that thing and you know like and if I do go back and look at it which isn't very often or at all but you know sometimes you know you can ask questions specifically about a book and I have to go back and look at it to remember because I forget character names and stuff like that um but yeah I'm always interested in like making the characters have like these incredibly difficult choices ultimately right usually for for many not all my books for most of my books uh there's almost always like a a build up to like this big event at like the two-thirds point you know that's probably true for most like stories their structure um but you know I'm thinking of like a head full of ghost there's the attempted exorcism um you know the cabin the in the world this terrible thing that happens twoth thirds of the way through to one of the characters um you know I think horror movie really builds up to like those last 100 Pages where so everything just sort of like starts going to hell sort of speak um so for me it's like I love maybe it I love setting up almost like a rude Goldberg machine because I want to see what the characters are going to do or you know what kind of decisions they make um because sometimes I'm not 100% sure uh and all those characters are some little part me like this is really me sort of just like experimenting or or setting up little terrarium experiments is like oh what would these versions of Paul do if this happened uh kind of in a way I don't know if I answered that very well at all but it's a question you're on point with it uh Paul can you talk a little bit about um Cur films curse films yeah um yeah I mean it's funny so many like when I had the idea for this book I had no idea that there were going to be like seven others other like film books come out like within like two or three years it's it's amazing it's kind of fun that there's something clearly in the zeis where people are plugging into him actually I'm just started reading an arc now of a of a first-time novelist uh Michael we hunt who's an excellent short story writer but he has a novel coming out next year called the uh October film haunt so you know it's another sort of like Cur film sort of thing okay um yeah like I have to I have an answer but I think part of it is me trying to like retrofit an answer um as as to maybe why either Chris film or I don't know like speaking as a fan I don't know if if you guys feel the same way but like you know for something that you love like a book or a movie like there's this weird like you like want to read as much as you can about it so I'll go back to Jaws like periodically I'll just go down Jaws wormholes and like watch YouTube videos or watch like the DVD extras I even when I found out that Bert Shaw wrote like he wrote plays and stuff like I went and found like a a copy on eBay of a play that he wrote written called the M the man in the glass booth just because there's that weird like this piece of art means so much to you like you want to be a part of it and sometimes it manifests into like wouldn't that be cool if it just bled into real life a little bit but it's so weird as a horror fan because actually no that was pretty horrific stuff that's happening in that book we don't want that to be real but I I I just think that's just like a natural human reaction to loving a piece of art so much and so now you know in the 20 where are we the 21st century almost a quarter of way through the 21st century art in a specific like horror and you know and other genre stuff like there's so much pressure on it and there's so many eyeballs on it um and there's so many people who uh say stuff and interact with it like if you go back to 1800s you write a book like how many reviews do you see how many people do you hear from probably not very many like uh but now it's like there's you know obviously good reads any social media platform like we're just bombarded and then the conventions that we like to go to we talking about rock and shock Etc so I don't know I think I just wanted to play around with the idea of like H how that lore can build because all it takes is like one or two little Sparks and then just like this weird monster of Pop Culture just sort of like blows it into blows it up into like this big configration now yeah um yeah as far far as like having seen any curs films I don't think I have as far as I know yeah pretty sure um going back to you mentioned how a lot of your characters are pieces of you I feel that way too when I write sometimes but um and I mentioned I remember you saying that Valentina from horror movie you posted on Instagram like this is the inspiration of Valentina yeah and I was wondering how many characters in your novels are based on actual people because the two main characters Survivor song I was like I don't know how you got to their heads but I feel like I knew them so thank you yeah so were they based on anybody or um it's funny like of all my books I feel like the characters like so Natalie and um Rola are I want say the're they're not anybody else they they're I felt like I felt like was actually a professional author for once like I actually made up characters I mean I'm still putting myself into them but uh but as you as you as you noted from with Valentina like a lot of times I'll take people that I know and not their not their personalities because I think that would be weird but they're physical I mean that's probably weird too but I tell them I'm I'm borrowing your body or your face or your and for me it's like just to have that little bit of like a step stool but uh as soon as I have them say something or do something on the page they become somebody else so yeah like Valentina uh and Cleo are physically based off of two of my my daughter's friends and I told them and they know and it's been a weird experience for them reading the book um but I don't know like as a writer I think we're all mag pies like we we we try to like build our nests by taking like bits of plastic straw candy wrapper whatever you know there was a line uh I'm I am very interested in the line of like where you go too far like I like when writers write about that part of it um shoot I was going to say something else but now it's gone oh um I was only going to mention that when I first met Stephen Graham Jones uh in the first decade of the 2000s he happened to be in Providence we're gonna bring him back to proms he was he was doing something at Brown University and we we had been talking online so I met him we had dinner it was super cool and he signed his book for me or a bunch of books and for like the first five years that I knew him every book that he signed he would write this one's pure autobiography I be like Stephen there's a time traveling camo PED in this one but uh but you know then later when I was writing more novels you know in the last decade I I sort of more understood what he was talking about when he said that okay cool I was want to throw out there right quick that while I was reading horror movie that I imagine you as the narrator because you're tall because you're tall like can't think nobody else doing it but but you but yeah thanks no for sure like I feel like if I'm gonna do horrible stuff to characters that look like them I I have to I have to do worse to characters that look like me so it was funny because I had uh recommended that book to my wife because just like the whole beginning of the setup of the film I mean of the book when they're kind of going into it having the meetings it reminded me because my wife used to work on film she's a hairdresser and stuff so it seemed like that little friend group there like she she hangs out with them still so I was like this seems like you markk and it seems like Jimmy you know like when you guys are together like talking about a old film that you guys worked on or something like that so you definitely hit it right on the nail with that so yeah but also I just I want to know you know what was your big moment for you when you were recognized by someone that you idolized like you know what I mean like that you just had to like talk about like you couldn't let it go you have to let everybody in the world know you know because those things are really big you know oh yeah uh and this is an easy one to talk about because it was April 19th 2015 when uh Stephen King tweeted about a headful of ghosts okay um yeah no that remains like a top three sort of professional moment in my life like because I didn't know it was coming like the headful of ghost had come out in early June I think it was of of 2015 you know I tried to get a book through his his uh personal assistant but she was like Hey you know I'll put this in this room but it's like a room with thousands of books and he just walks in like PL like you know you know you know I can't guarantee he's going to read it then I heard from like I think it was B Vincent might have mentioned to me who who's you know friends with Stephen has written books about Stephen said oh you know I recommended your book to him too so I was like yeah now it's like August school is looming and I'm bummed out like I am now um so I like ah you know he just didn't get to it or didn't read it or didn't like it or whatever so yeah when he tweeted I was home I was actually moving furniture around the house because we just bought like a new table so it was like sweaty and grumpy and then you know does the kid say or used to say my phone was blowing up and I got teed when I saw the Tweet like I became a reader because they have never mind a rider so I stopped moving furniture just opened my laptop and grabbed some beer out of the fridge and just sat and had a one man party for the rest of the night yeah exactly yeah and that's cool because you know and then on your one of your latest books Joe Hill his son labeled you as the most terrifying author of your generation so I think it's cool to see authors support each other and give positive feedback um who are some upand cominging authors that impressed you so far yeah so geez we'll go with another local person Eric laka uh who lives in East Boston actually Chelsea right now yeah so Eric man he's so prolific it's it's he's almost like outriding being called a new writer because I mean he's really only been publishing for a few years but he's already got like what 10 11 books out something yes insane um Eric is a it's funny like sometimes you read these authors and they and they almost feel like these like fully formed totally unique Visions onto themselves like how did they do that already and that's definitely Eric I mean you can see sort of Clyde marker um influence on him but Eric writes you really grotesque but beautifully grotesk Grim difficult stuff uh so Eric is definitely a favorite uh new writer I'm so bad I I start thinking of all some I I just read so let me give you something totally new his first book hasn't even come out yet Al Alex Gonzalez uh he has a novel coming out I think in February or January called wrecked RT um I would say if you like Eric laka sort of extreme horror like you're gonna like wct uh it's man that novel it's a gut punch and it starts off and involves like the worst videos you could possibly see on the internet just as a starting point but it blows up into this really interesting um difficult you know well-written story with with an amazing ending so yeah I can't wait for people to read uh wrecked um yeah I know otherwise like I mean there I don't want to like say someone who's is would you know Rachel Harrison be considered new I mean she's up to like novel four or five now I don't know um there's a Spanish writer Virginia feto fit her first novel was sort of like quiet hor mostly mystery but her second novel coming out again early 25 is called Victorian psycho I think the title tells you everything that the book is going to be and all you like anything you would want it to be That's it man that book was so much fun I can't wait for people to read that one too awesome um it's interesting uh two weeks ago I got to do an interview uh with Mikel hollstrom who adapted Stephen King's 1408 and and he described uh what it was like adapting such a you know well-renowned horror author's film and like kind of like the feeling he got when Stephen King viewed it and shared his um his thoughts about it and it was mostly positive um you had uh the cabin at the end of the world which was adapted by in you know 2023 by um ight shamalan who was like obviously a very well-known filmmaker who did knock at the cabin so um I'm kind of interested in hearing the reverse what it's like seeing somebody like a well-known you know filmmaker adapt your work what it's like to view it um you don't have to tell us you know if you liked it or didn't like I'm not trying to put you on spot like that but um yeah I just I'm so curious to feel like to know what that's like to see someone else take your work and kind of make it their own but also you know still yours your storyline yeah no I mean it's a head trip like in all the the best and weirdest ways yeah um you so the movie itself you know I like the movie a lot I you know I really don't like the ending but I kind of like thinking about the differences between the two sure um excuse me my my first time seeing it like I didn't know what to expect like seeing it for the first time because I wasn't sent a screen or anything like I saw it for the first time at the premiere you know with them night and the actors and everybody in New York City on the big screen you know so like I visited the set so I saw a couple of daily but that was about it so yeah like there were points like when the movie started like like te eyy because you know some of those lines were just right from the book and but then there were like Parts where I was like oh I don't know if I can ever watch this again you know just like this whole range of like emotions like I there was one point like it wasn't necessarily something bad was on the screen it was just so overwhelming like at one point I I briefly like visualized like getting up and just sprinting out of the theater and sprinting down the streets I'm like what would people do if I did that um and by the time the movie ended I was just like sweating like I had run like 10 miles not that I jogged so um I mean it was exhilarating you know really cool wonderful experience you know just you know point blankly you know it afforded us some Financial things like I got to leave teaching for a year you know it's going to help pay for you know some of my daughter's tuition not all uh College's expensive God damn it uh how how were you approached um you know informed that like that we want to adapt this and when did you find out who was attached so it was sort of like a stereotypically long like Hollywood process like you know it takes especially when a major Studio gets involved like if it ever happens it might take five plus years that was sort of the case here it was first optioned like January of 2018 like six months before the novel even came out you know it was so was with a producer and then you know for a year and a half there wasn't much of anything uh other than they had had two screenwriters working on a screenplay so they they showed me the screenplay in the spring of 20 no the spring of 19 um there was briefly two other directors attached uh but they had a really small window to get it made um and I really like those two directors um I had no contractual say in anything but they were really interested in my opinion and I was so you know the three of us had sort of agreed we should put more of the book into the screenplay than there was at the that point in time but it all sort of fell apart um but sort of at the end there was like some grumbling said oh I'm night Shaman read the screenplay and is maybe interested in producing it um and then I felt like I heard nothing for a while then like 2020 sort of happened but then start's like no like I'm not actually he wants to make it he has a deal in hand but he's got to finish his movie Old first so I was like okay that felt like a little bit more like Oh weird am I shamalan I never would have imagined you know uh yeah so that it became waiting it's like okay now it's like the summer of gez 21 Old comes out and then he started posting like a I'm working on my next thing uh actually I talked to him on the phone in November of 2011 at that point he had already uh 2011 2021 he had already cast at Dave Batista so that I mean yeah once he started working on it just then it went quickly but it was you know that was like after like four and a half years of a whole lot of nothing happening yeah um so I mean to me it just seems like a minor miracle anything get made even though there's so much stuff out there but because it feels like it takes someone like M Knight to to break the paralysis of all these people who are too afraid to say yes because if you say yes and it doesn't work then you know you're the one on the line as a producer or as a studio head or whatever this man can get a film made just to Spotlight his daughter's singing career so I guess he can pretty much do anything period of time yeah and he finances a lot of the stuff himself too I think that's kind of how he after like uh those two movies that totally like tanked um the Avatar Airbender movie and after Earth when he sort of restarted with what was it the visit you know he sort of bet on himself which I really admire and like you know put his own money up for that movie so I think he still does some of that but yeah yeah that's cool now when you were on the phone with him and talking was there like you know as as a writer you know when you're going into it and your um your book's getting turned into a film was there like a key piece in in the book that you said like this is what this has to stay you know I mean because sometimes something's a cut out like what was it for you well I mean I mean I would have liked there was something that H I would have liked what happens with when to have stayed but you know that I appreciated that M night was upfront on that first phone call like hey these are the changes I'm making um you know including the title including the grammatically incorrect title um yeah so I don't know I mean listen on one hand I feel like I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't say because it's well I am interested in other people taking stories and making their own thing out of it I mean I do that as a writer like I've yeah had full of ghost it's just like all these horror movies spiced together like I mean that's so many of the things that I write are are start start with Sparks of other things but you know I'd be lying to you if I wasn't eess about it like you know there are parts of the movie I really didn't like like I said the ending um but I mean I guess that's you know that's the trade-off you know if if something else was ever to get made again you know I hope it does you know I would like to try to get a little bit maybe controls the wrong word have a little bit more say yeah you know depending on what it is and depending on the time like you know if I do go into writing full-time then I feel like I might have more time to mess around with screenplays more than I have um and I've done a little like I've actually worked with a filmmaker trying to expand one of my short stories and we both like he wrote most of the script and I rewrote it so I mean he did most the hard work but so yeah I have been messing around a little bit more on the excuse me on the Hollywood side of things but you can't really Bank on it at least I can't Bank on it I don't think I remember when the trailer came out because all I heard was like M night's new trailer for his new movie came out because I didn't know anything behind it and then the trailer started and I was like this story looks familiar yeah and then they kept saying from them I'm like wait a no this is this is a cabinet end of the world I'm like yeah please G say a novel based on the novel by Paul triblade they didn't say nothing and I was like I I'm I was mad and so I I went on Twitter was like yo everybody the new M Night movie is by Paul triblade go read the book because I was a little I was a little upset but I'm like like you said you probably have any um hand in the promotional material anything like that oh he definitely has a hand heral I don't like no no I knew you didn't like like somebody saying something yeah oh no we my my literary agent was certainly saying something no so I mean that yeah listen like you know so you guys have read har movie you know there's a at one point there's a character not the thin kid but I think it's what the nightmare scribe who said his Hollywood agent says I'm going to pit you as a Creator because no one respects writers out here uh you know that was something in my Hollywood said to me that I thought he was joking at the time but he was not so I don't know it's weird I would say the and yes like for me like that the movie was different than the book that's like small potatoes compared to the frustration that I had with what you were talking about I was very frustrated with the six months leading up to the release of the movie that they were actively trying to hide uh that it was an adaptation of the book but I don't know it Hollywood just operates so differently like you would think hey maybe having the people who read the book you know that might offer a little bit of momentum a little bit of like people saying yay as opposed to people being like huh right so but but I don't I don't run a studi so I don't know uh yeah speaking of studios and everything I wanted to know if you had the opportunity you know with the stuff going on with the Jason franchise and West Cravings of stay getting the rights back to night Street and stuff like that if you had the opportunity to dive into any existing franchise or maybe pick up somebody else's novels once they maybe leave this earth who would it be yeah oh um I'm such an xfiles fan like I would love to do like a xfiles monster of the week not not the big sort of conspiracy stuff but I always liked the you know the the episodes that were like contained one story this one like do an X Files movie like that or I don't know I would I mean one of my favorite writers working now is Mariana Enriquez I would love to try to adapt to be in on the adaptation of something of hers um yeah um yeah those are the only ones that come to mind like I'm not much of a of a slasher guy so I wouldn't be the right guy I mean I watch it partly is that because of my ongoing competitiv my brother my brother is a big slasher guy yeah and Stephen Graham Jones has got the slasher thing if anyone's gonna you know be if anyone's goingon to be allowed to like you know go back to the to those franchises it should be him so I think I'd have to find something else uh I know it's like I love Creature from the Black Lagoon but it already sounds like James Juan is doing that yeah but you know honestly most of me is like H like what what came before is too perfect although you know I take that back maybe the movie them the giant ant movie 1950 before it's such a great movie like I just watch rewatched it with my daughter her seeing it for the first time and she really loved it um yeah I'd be in on a some sort of and you mentioned didn't you mention like killer shrews the beginning like yeah that's such like a silly that but that's bad like I don't think I could I don't think anybody could make killer shrew I mean they can make it like a comedy like a purposeful horror comedy but yeah yeah I just want to add in you know towards the end well at the end of horror movie you had on you know bringing the thin kid back to be in the reboot and you know like going through how they were going to use him and it just it it definitely hit to me like kind of like for the remake of Candyman when uh they were bringing Tony Tod and and you know a lot of people had negative reviews on like how they used him it wasn't enough but I to me I I thought it was just enough because they didn't just go over and just do too much with him so it was kind of just like like you know with the thin kid it left it open-ended like what they were going to do with him and everything like that but I think that was cool and like you did you see the remake of Candyman I have to admit I haven't well you you hit right on the head because I felt like it was right there and then because it was just like you know like everything that was Tony was going through with that just the the ending how they how they used them so it kind of just it it made me think of that when um while reading it so that was cool so could we see another book to a horror movie novel because it it kind of just left the door open yeah I don't know like I I mean my knee-jerk reaction would be to say no but like I guess you never know like it would have to be a story that like is really compelling yeah um just like as a reader and a viewer like as a reader I don't really read series like you know I've read Stephen Graham Joneses because he's Stephen Graham Jones but like I was never somebody who was like oh I want another book of this like I like single contained things even if it hints to like another story down the road sometimes I like leaving it open like that so yeah I don't know that said though like uh I do like having I imagine little Connections in between my books like the Paul Bears Club you know the main character art Barbara is very much physically described as me takes place in Providence and I kind of feel like you know the thin kid is maybe Arts like dark side or darker side in some ways uh and there's like this doesn't mean it's him but there's a point in the screenplay if you go back to it where one of the characters almost says the thin kid's name and then this in the screenplay it says a dash dash okay maybe it's art or maybe it's I don't know Arnold or some other a name um yeah and so the the novel I just started now actually has another role for uh a tall old lanky person with even less lines than this book so we'll see all right yeah um well Paul thank you for joining us today this was an absolute honor you my pleasure we appreciated this conversation um can you tell everybody um where to find you on social media if you have any upcoming events anything like that sure uh so I'm I'm most the most active on Instagram these days at Paul tremble uh Twitter X whatever we call is Paul Trembley as well um what do I have coming so a couple of local events I'm actually GNA be with Eric laka Christopher golden and some other writers I'm sorry I'm forgetting their names in bookstore Winchester on September 17th um there's gonna be a Bostic Public Library event later in October um I'll be at the Saratoga Book Festival in Saratoga Springs it's a nice cheat for me cuz my daughter Goes to School in that town so it's an excuse to go see her uh oh I I was almost going to say one thing but they haven't announced that I was going to be there so I shouldn't say anything about that one oh the most fun one especially for New England guys sorry Marcus uh but you should come out to New England uh is the the the marac valley Halloween sort of uh Festival they call it it takes place in hail uh and they they get like more than 50 horror writers there just in the hail libraries horror standing next to table selling books and it's a lot of fun usually you know so I'll be there this year um but they always on Halloween or or around no uh let me look at the calendar on my phone definitely have to go down and check that out yeah yeah so that's hail is like almost on the New Hampshire border you know so it's Northern Mass y I think it's is it the 26th is it the 19th it's the 19th okay October 19th yeah October 19th cool that sounds fun yeah yeah all right well everybody make sure you catch Paul out at some of these events uh follow him on social media so you can track him down and uh tell them everything you want to tell him yeah please do or challenge him to a game of basketball because I know that's what I'm gonna do yeah it'll have to be horse now unfortunately yeah exactly yeah I'm with you all right um but yeah thanks again Paul it was a pleasure having you everybody make sure you check out horror movie um and let us know what you think and we will see you next week everyone have a great night [Music] thanks game over you lose