[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back y'all.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are here with another episode of Meet Your Maker, a series by horror, joy celebrating, horror creators, authors, filmmakers, everything that you can imagine.

[SPEAKER_01]: Anybody who makes a world, that's who we want to celebrate in today.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have a very special guest.

[SPEAKER_01]: Somebody I am very, very excited to talk with.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have followed you on social media for a long time.

[SPEAKER_01]: You've been incredibly influential in the horror genre on social media with two books, one hundred one horror books to read before you're murdered.

[SPEAKER_01]: And now we are coming out with a second book called Farrell and Historical.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is a really good book.

[SPEAKER_01]: You allowed us to read it and see it before it came out and this is really incredible.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you haven't guessed everybody, we are here with Sadie Hartman, also known as Mother Horror.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sadie, thank you for joining us today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for having me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm excited to talk to you guys.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're really excited to talk to you.

[SPEAKER_01]: One question that we have, and it's kind of the guiding principle of the podcast, is about the relationship between joy and horror.

[SPEAKER_01]: For a lot of people this makes sense.

[SPEAKER_01]: For others, it doesn't.

[SPEAKER_01]: Curious what you have to say.

[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think that this relationship between joy and horror makes sense?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I think I discovered this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think I discovered it and didn't know what I was doing with it intentionally, you know, a long time ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I've always been reading horror and didn't know that I was using it as, you know, an escape or getting any kind of comfort or joy out of it apart from just, you know, the basics of just reading.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I didn't know the relationship between joy and horror [SPEAKER_00]: Until I think COVID, when COVID first hit, and we were all in lockdown, and there was a lot of anxiety that I was experiencing.

[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of just went headlong into horror.

[SPEAKER_00]: I read a book, I will I read Hellhouse by Richard Mathison in one day, and it was like the day that we were told that we would be, you know, social distancing and being like in our homes indefinitely.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I just turned off the news and I stopped doing scrolling and I jumped into a hellhouse.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I actually broke my eyeballs.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what I did.

[SPEAKER_00]: But ended up having to get a prescription for eyeglasses after I did that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't stop reading the entire day.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I just read like two hundred and fifty some odd books that year and realized that I was getting joy and comfort from [SPEAKER_00]: reading about people who are going through worse situations than we were.

[SPEAKER_00]: That was where the joy was coming in.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, absolutely.

[SPEAKER_02]: And one of the things that we know that you also have an interest in, well, interest in my Patreon work, because we're kind of all living through the horrors of the political landscape of the United States right now.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think in some ways, like, people view horror as not in escape, but I like how you're talking about it out.

[SPEAKER_02]: It is a way we can escape some of the actual real horrors around us and to retreat into these sort of created horrors that seem to have some sort of sense of control about them.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, maybe just to jump right into it, how do we do that?

[SPEAKER_02]: Right now, given the state of affairs, given that we wake up of the morning in the headlines you're reading, seem like something you would see in a disaster novel, or a disaster film, or some of the legislation we see being passed is something you might see like on the hunger games.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, like, how do we, how do we maintain our love for horror while still existing in a world, is becoming more and more horrific?

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a really good question.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I will sideline and just say like, you know, every time I ever talk about horror on social media, especially like blue sky or threads where people are like gathering around the water cooler to talk.

[SPEAKER_00]: Every time I put publisher review or put out book recommendations, I met with people who are like, why are you reading this?

[SPEAKER_00]: This is so dark, like, you know, isn't there enough horror in the world?

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, right now to satisfy you, like this is so bleak and [SPEAKER_00]: And I just kind of thought like, well, we should be judging each other's, you know, comfort in this time and be like, no, I feel like everything that I'm feeling and all the anxiety and all the fear and all the frustration and anger that I'm feeling is mirrored back to me in these books.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm seeing protagonists and heroes going through what I'm going through and what we're all going through and having hope [SPEAKER_00]: and determination and fortitude, like I'm seeing it in my literature, like how people are going forward and just with all the hope and I can kind of get that kind of solace of comfort and see people going through these crazy things that we never would have imagined.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, in some ways, yes, we have a match in it, but to actually live it, it feels way different.

[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, that's why.

[SPEAKER_00]: For me personally, I don't want to read like literary or, you know, [SPEAKER_00]: Could contemporary literary books or fantasy were romance or whatever.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like for me, that feels more of a distraction than reading something that's actually as horrific as what we're going through.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think something that we talked a little bit about just on social media is this idea that politics and horror are not like you can't really pull them apart in a very clean way.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so I am curious.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I've landed on this idea that horror is always political.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we can have maybe conservative horror, and we can talk about what was going on, maybe in the seventies, sixties, even then, though, I think there's a transgressive vein of horror.

[SPEAKER_01]: Even now, or maybe especially now, it seems as though horror has become pretty transgressive politically.

[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, there are people that want to push that away.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I think in many ways, I want to embrace that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you had thoughts about how we might think of horror as participating in our political discourse, which is very fraught right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so my favorite book that I read last year was called The Reformatory by a Tenantory of Deal.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a historical fiction about a young man who fights back against an aggressor, and it was racially charged.

[SPEAKER_00]: He uses a young black boy, a teenager, and his sister was being accosted by a much larger white [SPEAKER_00]: person of importance in the community and he fights back and finds himself in a reform school that is notorious for you know harming these children who end up there and also you know killing them and it was terrifying and it was heartbreaking and there were times where I like didn't want to turn the pages because I it's real like the story isn't it's fictionalized but it's based on a true story [SPEAKER_00]: It's based on Tenantari Du's uncle whom they found buried in an unmarked grave behind a reform school.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, very real, it terrors that happens.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I also read a book this year.

[SPEAKER_00]: My favorite book so far this year is called The Bat Eater and Other Names for Quarzing, which is also highly politically charged in the sense that it happened during COVID and it was during Asian hate.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it really opens my eyes to hearing a perspective from someone who went through it and a people group that has a voice and has an opinion and has something they need to say.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't necessarily grab nonfiction books.

[SPEAKER_00]: So getting it from my fiction really, really lands like it really penetrates.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I will remember that story more than if I would like read an article about it.

[SPEAKER_02]: That makes a lot of sense.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think kind of what you're talking about here with using fiction as a way of learning something about like a non-fiction to that, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: And then we did an episode on Tenetta Reduced Reformatory with Centers not long ago.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it is phenomenal.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a great book.

[SPEAKER_02]: I listen to the audiobook version, which I really enjoyed.

[SPEAKER_02]: And again, I'm going to forget the name of the narrator, but that was really phenomenal.

[SPEAKER_02]: But that's making me think about the way you're discussing vibes in Farrell and hysterical.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love this idea of reclaiming vibes as something that is not like the Joe Rogan podcast where it's just like we're going to use vibes because it feels good and that's what we're going to do in my stupid silly wrinkled meat head is going to have ideas that spew out of my face hole that make no sense.

[SPEAKER_02]: but like here in your book you're using vibes as this organizational structure for us to navigate all these really awesome books that are out there and I thought that was fantastic so like I and I like that definition you offer in the introduction where moves in turn and internal temporary emotional state of mind whereas vibes are a distinctive external vibration capable of being sensed [SPEAKER_02]: which it gives the objects themselves, some agency, which I love, I really do.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, like, can you talk about what led you to this structure?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I think that's really neat.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'd like to hear a little bit about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so visually, I see it almost like movies and books too are like having a conversation with each other.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like, you'll feel it when, like, for instance, when you're watching like Andor, I don't know if you guys have watched Andor.

[SPEAKER_00]: on Disney Plus, but it's very, like it's a conversation between the characters who are having in our real world right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's basically a dictatorship taking over and the people rising up against that dictatorship.

[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of the conversations that the people are having are conversations that we're having at home and then their conversations that books are having that I'm reading.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I kind of see it as these vibrations that are coming from our neck, from our throat, [SPEAKER_00]: of these conversations that are having as the same as the director having these the same vibration having the vibration with the book and then when you sync them all together you're like having this experience among media like even when you're listening to music in the car that's also speaking the same language as linked away that we're telling stories to one another that's in sync and so I feel like when I'm curating reading lists for people like this book is full of the reading lists [SPEAKER_00]: There are books that are in conversation, so you'll be reading something and you'll go, oh my god, I just read that.

[SPEAKER_00]: In this other book over here, but this author lives in Argentina, and this author lives in Haiti, and these books are talking to each other and it really excites me.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've been thinking a lot about this idea of like a horror playlist.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we've had conversations with Kat Silva and she talked about the kind of music that she would listen to and putting together a playlist that was something that helped when she wrote in, you know, [SPEAKER_01]: Feral and hysterical, you are offering a kind of horror playlist of reading, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's a reading list, but it's also a playlist.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I love the way that you're describing what you're saying here because it feels very musical in the sense that sometimes things resonate and sometimes they don't, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: The vibrations can come together.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we can get harmonious sounds, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Or we can get dissonance sounds if they just don't go together.

[SPEAKER_01]: And something that I really like is, is there a times I know what I'm listening in my mood?

[SPEAKER_01]: I hear a song or an album that I love and I just hate it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I hate it so much because of my mood, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think there's something about reading this vibes reading that I think really hits and it's really kind of a special thing that you are articulating.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's this part in the introduction where you really describe your project as highlighting the, in many ways, the oppressive nature.

[SPEAKER_01]: of the authorial seat in some ways that women were really allowed to express themselves.

[SPEAKER_01]: And in some way, what you're doing is pushing back.

[SPEAKER_01]: I wondered if you could just help us understand that project a little bit more here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so, I mean, just being somebody who fell in love with horror at an early age, all of the horror books that I was reading when I was younger were from a male gaze and a male perspective.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I was reading Peter Straub and I was reading Stephen King and Clive Barker and like, you know, these like pillars of the horror genre.

[SPEAKER_00]: writing women from their perception.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as good as they are at it sometimes, like Stephen King's debut novel Carey is definitely from a perspective of a young teenage girl, and it kind of blows your mind that he was able to crawl in there and pull some authenticity out of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: The fact still remains that, when Greedy Hendrix is writing, my best friend's exorcism, and he's writing Carey, [SPEAKER_00]: You know, you have these female protagonists from a male gaze.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's still from a man.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so the importance, I think, is that women have been suppressed and our voices have been pushed back into our throats.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, sometimes strangled out of our throats.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we've been locked up.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've been told that we can't have an opinion.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've been told that we can't have our own agency.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've been pushed back into the kitchen.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've been told we couldn't vote.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of ways in which our opinions and our voices don't matter.

[SPEAKER_00]: You'll get this current age right now and you have the Epstein files.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, everyone's clamoring for the Epstein files, but there are so many women who have already gone on record to tell you what has happened.

[SPEAKER_00]: They've already said their story.

[SPEAKER_00]: They've already told us what happened, but we need the upstream files.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and then you have a woman fighting right alongside the patriarchy, telling whatever kind of lie she wants to tell, and they want her to tell, you know, gaslighting the American people.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's just frustrating to see that kind of sliding backward into where we've already been and where we always are.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's why I feel like Farrell and hysterical a chance and a moment where I got to just kind of push this forward and say, there's over two hundred and fifty different books in here from an woman's perspective about the horrors that we live every day from our [SPEAKER_00]: side.

[SPEAKER_00]: And a man isn't telling the story and it's not from a male gaze where we're talking about real situations that we go through and have been through and we'll always go through.

[SPEAKER_00]: These are our challenges, like let us tell our stories.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's really powerful.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think this is one of the opportunities that horror gives folks like to share their voice to share their story.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're living in a great moment as far as horror novels go and horror fiction, horror creation goes because there is so much great horror being written right now, especially by women.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, as you were talking, I'm thinking about Virginia, Fato's, Victorian Psycho, and how that is doing everything you're saying, where it's like it's taking this [SPEAKER_02]: Even this Victorian type novel that may have been written from a woman's perspective, someone like Jane Austen, someone like one of the brantais, but it's making it completely just batch it.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's a quick read, it's a great read.

[SPEAKER_02]: It definitely leaves its mark, but I think it's showing us that women have these experiences, but I don't think we should need to be shown that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think, but like, many men are like, oh, mm, women too think and feel this way.

[SPEAKER_02]: I, I didn't know that.

[SPEAKER_02]: This isn't something Tucker Carl's never prepared me for.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's like so frustrating to me because you'll still see reviews for Victorians, I go aware people are just like saying how unrealistic it is or you know like she I support you know women but like this was just you know psychotic [SPEAKER_00]: slide into madness or whatever and like I can't believe she did this or that to the children like think of the children and I'm just like I'm joking like we still say like American psycho is one of the greatest like horror novels of all time we've made a movie of it like people quote it like you know give me a break like if men can be horrible and rotten villains like soak in women [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's so funny to me that like, yeah, what's his name?

[SPEAKER_01]: Patrick Bateman.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is that the guy from the American Psycho?

[SPEAKER_01]: That's the character?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like in some way, he becomes a hero to people.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I don't know why that people, well, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna let you know now.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have watched that once and I hated it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So so I'm not sure if I'm the the audience here, but I think all of what you're saying is is really important and I think you were just talking and I was like I don't know what how can I possibly add to that I just want to like snap my fingers and like I don't know yep say do you just so we could do that yes yes you going yeah [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I think the kind of way that you've organized the book and even the highlighting of this etymology of hysteria, I think you tied it to uterus, is that right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it is so perfect because in many ways the way that world's emerge as like this birthing of these narratives and stories, [SPEAKER_01]: It feels as though we should be saying, women are, in fact, the most qualified to tell these stories.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's part of what you're saying already, the experiences that women have had, they have not been highlighted, not been listened to, are what equipped them, or should make us, everybody in the audience, they are the most qualified to tell these horror stories.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're the ones that we should be listening to.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think this book is doing something really important.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if y'all have not had it on your radar yet, I get it on your radar.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is one, it tell us when it comes out.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I just got my copy yesterday.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the final edition.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's artwork in here by a really talented artist in Argentina.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like all women produced, my editors, a woman, my publicity team, or women, my daughter illustrated some things in here.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it comes out on August nineteenth from page three, choir.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's pretty much available wherever books are sold.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can get it from the bookshop.org is highly recommended because you can support indie bookstores.

[SPEAKER_00]: That way, they give like a percentage of their money to indie bookstores, which is cool.

[SPEAKER_00]: I did want to say really quick, I know that we, you know, a lot of a certain amount of time, but it reminded me when we were talking about like hysterical and feral and all of this stuff and like not being heard, it reminds me of how we got to this play.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, because Hillary Clinton told us exactly what was going to happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: She has verbatim told us exactly what was going to happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then Kamal, it's all the same thing, but it's just kind of like, is this [SPEAKER_00]: place ever going to be ready for a woman leader.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think so.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would hope so, but we have had a succession of white men making our decisions for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's very frustrating, especially when we've heard what Kamala said.

[SPEAKER_00]: We heard what Hillary said.

[SPEAKER_00]: We get to watch a woman president in Mexico be radical with changing her country and even helping us.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the gas lighting is is other level.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's [SPEAKER_00]: It's really hard.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's really hard right now.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, yeah, I'm thinking about like, this is, I don't know if I was listening to this on the majority report or secular talk with Kalkalinsky or might have been the mightest touch network.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_02]: What of the hate listening experiences?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I love the podcast, but like, just I hate the world.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so like, you know, what I'm trying to make my day somehow feel worse or my blood pressure spike.

[SPEAKER_02]: But they were talking about how like people thought that Hillary would be too hysterical or Kamala would be too hysterical or women are too emotional to to govern.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, have you seen this orange baboon masquerading as like a leader like he's like a child?

[SPEAKER_02]: He's a petulant toddler and it's worse this time around because his brain is just filled with cooked mashed potatoes at this point.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like nothing is fire.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it's not just him.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's the entire administration.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's Pete Hegseth, who, you know, is always about two drinks deep and emotional as a result or just emotional all the time.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's Tom Helman, the ice guy.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's J.D.

[SPEAKER_02]: Vance and his bad mascara and his restraining order from couches.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's, you know, like it's all of these men are [SPEAKER_02]: hyper-emotional and they get like just they go off into these fits of rage when people even dare question them.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like just this fascistic authoritarianism and you're right.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I'm not a woman so it's I can't like feel the exactly what you're talking about.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it's pretty clear as an objective observer that you've been gas lit.

[SPEAKER_02]: You've been gas lit your entire life and every time you're like, yeah, it's going to get better.

[SPEAKER_02]: Surely.

[SPEAKER_02]: As a teacher, I look into my classroom a lot and I see a lot of young women, young men, young non-binary folks, like a bunch of young people in general, but it's especially young women, because colleges are made up more and more of women at this point.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, you are going to be the future leaders if we live in a world that will take you seriously.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, and we shouldn't have to be having this conversation in twenty twenty five.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, it's just wild.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, to get back to like, to horror for a second, it reminds me a lot of Mary Shelley with Frankenstein, how we know that Percy Shelley went in and re-edited the whole damn thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like the version that we all had come to know was actually the one that Percy had gone through and just edited all of the [SPEAKER_02]: the kind of more radical feminist thought out of.

[SPEAKER_02]: And thankfully, some academics and scholars have helped us put back together what we think was the original.

[SPEAKER_02]: But again, the silencing of women, the gaslighting of women, the general's second class citizening.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's a long one.

[SPEAKER_02]: But of women.

[SPEAKER_00]: it's painful.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is a painful process to go through and just be told that our opinions don't matter and that we are, you know, being hysterical or blaming it on us having periods.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, women go through menopause.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've already been there done that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had a hysterectomy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like in your forties, you don't give a fuck.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I feel like women have so much more wisdom and like maturity, emotional maturity.

[SPEAKER_00]: the older we get.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you can't even tell us that we're on our periods and being irrational or pass that at this point, you know, some of us.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so why are you not listening to us now?

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like, what's the excuse now?

[SPEAKER_00]: And it is just gaslighting because they know it's true.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like we've said before, every accusation is a confession.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like every time they accuse, it is something that they are indeed doing.

[SPEAKER_00]: So when they tell women like you're too emotional to lead this country, you are too emotional to lead this country.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're lying, you're cheating, you're sleeping weight, you're weight of the top.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, you are lying and cheating and sleeping your weight of the top.

[SPEAKER_00]: You are having sex with whoever you want to with zero consequences and your boys back you up.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like it is beyond the pale.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like at this point, like I don't understand why women don't just walk out in the street like they did in [SPEAKER_00]: Iceland and say, we don't have any rights.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: We'll fuck everybody.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're not going to make your food.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're not going to do wash your clothes.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're not going to show up to work.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're not going to do all the heavy lifting of the emotional labor that we do in our jobs for everyone.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're just going to walk out and not do anything until we grind the shit to a halt.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I think we should do.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, you make this point too.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think in the book where you say, like, there's this double standard where the emotion that men show shows up as strength, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: So hexeth just says he's a warrior and that accounts for or allows for his emotional outbursts.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I'm being a warrior, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what it is.

[SPEAKER_01]: Whereas women are seen as historical, which is, which is, it's gross.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's really gross.

[SPEAKER_01]: I do want to, if we can, steer back towards some joy.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I want to ask you, you have done so much work.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think, you know, just following me online, there's a joy there.

[SPEAKER_01]: I do, of course, want to plug your book subscription service, nightworms.

[SPEAKER_01]: Also, you package up joy and send it to them.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm curious, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Having read so much horror, you're just in it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is there something exciting that you have read or watched or played that has generated a sense of joy in connection with horror recently?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, the movie centers unlocked a new layer.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have exceeded some kind of level in the game that we're playing for horror movies, that one just leveled us up.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think people are going to be talking about that movie and that's going to become the gold standard from now on.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a movie can't reach those levels of brilliance.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then I just think that's the conversation we're going to be having.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the measuring stick now.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that just generated a lot of excitement for that kind of historical fiction that is layered with a lot of resistance, with a lot of racial, sociopolitical stuff going on under the surface.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it was really fun on [SPEAKER_00]: books to Graham, which is Instagram, centered around books.

[SPEAKER_00]: Talking about books that repeat that vision, we talked about digitally Clark's book, Ring Shout, which is also fantasy, historical fighting back against the KKK.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've had so many conversations now about what we're seeing as big thrusts of horror in movies that pushes, we float when we [SPEAKER_00]: had a big rise like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think sinners did that for horror.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then people like Stephen Graham Jones is definitely blowing the lid and bringing hot a seat links in horror.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure it says I'd rather be reading Stephen Graham Jones.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, what he is doing, putting out novels like every single year that is just a banger after a banger.

[SPEAKER_00]: You had, you know, I was a teenage slasher, which was amazing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then you have [SPEAKER_00]: Buffalo Hunter Hunter, which is also historical fiction, which is also talking about racial oppression.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there is exciting things happening in horror, and we're saying the quiet parts out loud in our fiction.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I think those conversations are really, really exciting.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that gives me joy to see that, to see art going places that we physical people can't do, or, you know, we get to sneak those under the radar somehow.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, say that's I think that's powerful.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Stephen Graham Jones his work is incredible.

[SPEAKER_01]: All of the things that you've talked about sinners, the reformatory.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, all of these books, I think are hitting at such a strong stride.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we didn't mention a ton of books that I think are doing this work of bringing horror and politics together, but you, I think, have hit [SPEAKER_01]: a clear current right I want to thank you for being here with us for talking through with us for I don't know kind of working through our our anger at the state of the world politically especially in the United States but also helping us to bring that back [SPEAKER_01]: with some joy in horror.

[SPEAKER_01]: Your work online, your work with these books, Farrell and historical out August, nineteenth.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's amazing.

[SPEAKER_01]: So thank you for your words.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for all of the things that you've done for the horror community and for being here with us.

[SPEAKER_01]: Appreciate it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, thank you for all the kind words and the conversation and for following and supporting and inviting me here.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just want to share with your listeners that I am on Instagram, Threads, and Blue Sky pretty much just share book recommendations every day.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like I favorite thing to do, self.

[SPEAKER_01]: But in such a cool way, at a twenty twenty covid hitting the aesthetic of of that covid books to Graham that it was something that brought me a lot of comfort and I think a lot of people to so thank you again and that is it for today as always folks find joy even in horror.

[SPEAKER_01]: This has been an episode of Warjoy.

[SPEAKER_01]: Produced in conjunction with Axis Mundi Media.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for joining us.

[SPEAKER_01]: We want to hear from you.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Until next time, remember, see you next time.