[SPEAKER_02]: Alright, ends.

[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back to another episode of Horror Join Meet Your Maker.

[SPEAKER_02]: Today, Brian and I are joined by multiple-time brand-stoker winning author, Gwendolyn Keist.

[SPEAKER_02]: Recently, having won the Bram Stoker Award for Fiction for the Hunting of Belkwood, which is fantastic novel.

[SPEAKER_02]: We'll talk about that a little bit today.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure.

[SPEAKER_02]: But Gwendolyn, welcome.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're so glad to have you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I'm so happy to be here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for inviting me.

[SPEAKER_02]: And Brian and I always start with the same questions, so the theme of the podcast is horror and joy.

[SPEAKER_02]: As an author, as a creator of horror, we're going to assume that you take some joy and horror, so we'd like to know where you see this relationship between horror and joy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I love this connection because I think for people outside of horror, they always think that it's like all darkness and it's all terrible.

[SPEAKER_00]: But for me, I think the main thing is catharsis.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the word I sort of always come back to and how horror can so much be about catharsis and about letting go of things.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that can be so joyful.

[SPEAKER_00]: That growth that you can experience through both being a horror viewer and like kind of surviving [SPEAKER_00]: but it also was a horror storyteller being able to tell those stories and you know have that catharsis as the creator and be able to sort of move forward and there's so much joy for me there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Plus I think a lot of wars just fun.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think about like hammer horror.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just think it's a good time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I love horror that's kind of also almost like an adventure.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like the way hammer was and even the story of Dracula and some of these like there's an adventure element and so that's [SPEAKER_01]: I really appreciate the catharsis angle of thinking about horror and joy together and I think I'm curious about you mentioned as a horror author as a horror creator there is a kind of catharsis right of of writing these stories and we'll get into this with with the hunting of Elquid because it's so rich and in like it's it's storytelling and how it [SPEAKER_01]: portrays like the whole neighborhood really as a kind of haunting.

[SPEAKER_01]: I want to talk about that, but could you, could you like speak a little bit more to the way that writing itself is cathartic?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because I feel like for me that is one of the main things.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, there's a cat in the background.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so excited to see the cat.

[SPEAKER_00]: My cat is upstairs because she would yell very loudly.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, so, you know, I can see writing a such an act of self-discovery.

[SPEAKER_00]: I often kind of make the joke.

[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of times, other writers very much are like, yeah, and understand it that sometimes I don't even know exactly what it is I'm writing about.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll start a story.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll know the place.

[SPEAKER_00]: of the story but then I'll be halfway through writing a short story or even writing a book and then I'll realize of these are the aspects of myself that I'm putting into this or these are the aspects of myself that I'm exploring and that can be very jarring at times because it's almost like your subconscious knows you better than you even consciously know yourself and there's something almost spooky about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there is also some very joyful in this idea of creating art and allowing who you are to really come through in that art in a way that not only are you expressing yourself to other people, but you're expressing yourself to yourself and I think that that's such a fantastic thing and like I said, it's it's it's almost feels supernatural and to itself, but almost fuels magical in some way that this can happen, but this is the way our subconscious works.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's a really fantastic answer.

[SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate the, like you said about, like you're expressing yourself to yourself.

[SPEAKER_02]: I teach literature a lot at the college that Brian and I both worked at, and in students, and I think readers in general sometimes think like in this very capitalist system where authors are writing books to entertain me, [SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, yes, that might be true, but also they're writing for themselves, like authors aren't writing because they're like, hmm, I wonder what Jeff's doing off.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'll think about this book and we'll eat by it.

[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, maybe to that point, how do you get your start as a writer?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, when did you start writing?

[SPEAKER_02]: When did you discover this talent?

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I was writing in the time I was really little.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I always liked books, I always loved movies, so I always wanted to be some kind of storyteller.

[SPEAKER_00]: I did write fiction when I was young and then write like late teens early twenties, I switched to writing.

[SPEAKER_00]: screenplays that I did some independent film making, and then I ended up back at fiction again because I actually joke a lot, but I was not the nicest of directors, you know, I was I was young and I was very, you know, like I used to make a joke, I was like Ridley Scott without as much vision as Ridley Scott had, because you always have this reputation for being very mean.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think he got any more.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think he's like mellow.

[SPEAKER_00]: So there used to be always that joke, but he of his sets were very scary.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like, as I've gotten older, I think I could be a much better filmmaker now, because I've mellowed a lot with age.

[SPEAKER_00]: But when I was young, I'm like, I really need to get away from doing this.

[SPEAKER_00]: I need to just do something that's solitary.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, my actors will thank me for not being like, you know, not [SPEAKER_00]: because in my life it was my inability to express myself, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like you're young and you don't know how to properly express what you need.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I would get upset with other people and it's like that's not cool.

[SPEAKER_00]: So again, I think I'm not really as much like that now, but that was how I ended up back at fiction.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it helped me to learn how to express myself, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: This was like what I've been talking about.

[SPEAKER_00]: Of like the during-out, what it is you're feeling, what it is you're experiencing.

[SPEAKER_00]: So [SPEAKER_00]: It's like this interesting full circle from me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've always been writing but I've sort of found different avenues for it.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you're willing, maybe we can jump into the haunting of Velquid.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is one that I've now read a couple of times.

[SPEAKER_01]: Honestly, I loved it the second time so much more.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think I was just more patient as a reader and I think [SPEAKER_01]: So for you all out there listening to this, if you have not read or heard of the haunting of elk wood, which hard to do, I think if you're in the horror, if you like horror, I mean this has been I think out there for a long time, it's been on my radar for a long time, it's gotten such good reviews and I would love to add my voice to that and just give the argument that like [SPEAKER_01]: This requires some patience, but it pays off, I think, so much.

[SPEAKER_01]: But the thing that I, I don't know that I loved so much, especially in my second reading of the book was that the whole neighborhood is haunting the characters, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: And there are these two main characters that kind of re-unite after a long time, but that [SPEAKER_01]: The neighborhood is haunting them, and I think that when we think about this cathartic question and the joy question about how horror helps us to kind of think through our childhoods, our past lives, as directors, whatever it might be, the community as a whole can hunt us.

[SPEAKER_01]: I am living in Central Pennsylvania now for this, you know, this is my seventh year here, but there's something that I think, one, I'm haunted by my own childhood, far away in Southern California, but I imagine this place as, as haunting other people.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's really, really insightful, and I'm just curious, if, yeah, I don't know if this is an autobiographical question, but really like, let's spark this idea that what we're going to do is we're going to take the whole neighborhood and that's going to be the thing that haunts.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there's specific characters, of course, but the neighborhood is really the experience of childhood of growing up and then leaving.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is, I don't know, it was really [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely, you know, I think it's as you've said, I feel a lot of us feel haunted by our past and a buy our childhood in general.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's especially true for people who are attracted to horror.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's something about that about the people who are very into horror often know what it feels like to be haunted or what it feels like to have something there that's that's following you.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why, you know, war is so great because it makes that literal.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can actually see the monster or the ghost.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that way, it's no longer as metaphorical as it is for all of us in real life.

[SPEAKER_00]: But absolutely, there's a lot of things from my past.

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like some of the people follow me on social media, especially on Facebook, I have to hear some of the, [SPEAKER_00]: Some of the things of like, okay, this is happening with this, you know, this thing, you know, and everything, but one of the things most of us want to be able to do is if not escape the past, because I'm not sure you ever fully escape it, but learn how to integrate it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I like that word a lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, it's kind of a therapy word.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've heard it used in those types of terms, but [SPEAKER_00]: You know, that kind of integration of those past experiences to stop running and to say, this is just part of who I am.

[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't have to control my daily life, but you know, I'm a different person because of that and what does that mean and how can I move forward in a joyful positive way.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that was a lot of the questions I was sort of contemplating when I was writing that book.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'll just echo Brian, is someone who grew up in Central PA, moved away, and came back.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's a great familiarity about the steps, the beats of this novel, if you will, for characters like Talitha and Brett and especially like I grew up as a closeted gay kid, didn't come out until a graduate school.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, the queer horror of this book.

[SPEAKER_02]: was healing in a strange way.

[SPEAKER_02]: And again, as the kids would say, not to yuck somebody else's young, but in a way that I find a heart stopper, not at all, to be like, I read the heart stopper webcomic, I watch it on Netflix.

[SPEAKER_02]: It sent me into a bit of a spiral, because I was thinking like, high school was not like this for gay kids when I was growing up in the 2000s and just in a regular high school, not people would not be accepting like this [SPEAKER_02]: So like reading this and like you know where the campus that I work at is close.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's very close to like the house I grew up in.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I passed that house frequently.

[SPEAKER_02]: My parents no longer live there.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm going to say that neighborhood.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's not haunted in the same way that Valkwood's haunted.

[SPEAKER_02]: But for me like it is like this this weird moments where like you.

[SPEAKER_02]: the past is not just a time but a space and I really appreciate it in this book how you navigate that with these characters.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, Talethon, but neither one are particularly excited to go back, but then you have Grace and Grace had already done it.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then it's like, nope, I am going to hide in the shack, which in 2025 seems kind of like a good idea [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I mean, I don't really have a question there.

[SPEAKER_02]: I just wanted to echo what Brian was saying.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's this is really well done in that way.

[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe maybe the question could be like the idea of exploring exploring.

[SPEAKER_02]: There we go exploring queerness in horror.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of authors who are doing that now.

[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, you know, like Eric Lerocca, we've talked to what?

[SPEAKER_02]: How is that some is the experience of being queer?

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't I don't know if you identify is queer or not, but is there something about being queer?

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so is there something about being queer that also works before?

[SPEAKER_02]: Because we're seeing a lot of, I mean, I'm seeing more and more queer people who are turning to horror as ways of navigating past traumas.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm bisexual and I didn't even come out publicly until a few years ago because it still felt like with people from my past that it was just not safe.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even as an adult, I mean, I was in my 30s when I finally came out publicly and it still seems like something.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I can't believe I waited that long, but at the same time looking back in the fact that it just was not a safe situation.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't feel comfortable.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't even feel safe.

[SPEAKER_00]: in a very basic sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I do think horror gives us this natural outlet because I very much understand what you're saying.

[SPEAKER_00]: I always think it's weird when people have these stories about high school.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, I don't know what high school's like now.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it is a lot more welcoming.

[SPEAKER_00]: But like, wow, like, sometimes when I see these stories and it's like, are all even read things from people, and they'll be like, [SPEAKER_00]: and everybody was so accepting when this character came out.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope it's like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the world I want.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I, oh my gosh, that is not the world I came from.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was no support whatsoever.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was terrifying.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, I stayed very positive for a long time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And one of these things that I think, I [SPEAKER_00]: I'm actually glad I've talked about this to people over the last few years in the horror community because a lot of people who are in horror and who are even out to themselves in some cases.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was like a denial and that was really, you know, I tried to come out.

[SPEAKER_00]: I did come out when I was 12 to my family, it went so badly and you know, one of my family members from you are too young to know, I know you're not.

[SPEAKER_00]: I basically was like, okay, [SPEAKER_00]: And being bisexual is a weird thing because it's like, you know, there's not a lot of acceptance of it, even now there's still it's getting better.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually getting a lot better even over the last five or 10 years.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've noticed a lot more acceptance even in the queer community, but then if you're by, you know, you're attracted to more than one gender.

[SPEAKER_00]: So there were guys I was attracted to some like, okay, maybe maybe this family member was right, but it's like then I was compartmentalizing this other section of my entire life and so.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for horn, ironically, and I talked about this elsewhere, and this always kind of makes me laugh.

[SPEAKER_00]: The reason I finally came out was because it just seemed like I was writing all these stories and all the women kept ending up together.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I would not even set out of like, oh, this is going to be a static story.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was just like, I'm like, oh, look at that.

[SPEAKER_00]: These two female characters like fell in love.

[SPEAKER_00]: Look at that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I was like, I did it again, and I'm like, finally I was like, maybe this has to do with the fact that you came out when you were 12.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you know, that's the thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I actually remember, I think the story that finally hadn't me start talking about it, at least to people really close to me was a story that was in my first collection called skin like hunting and lace.

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, it was the same thing that I was like writing about this body, who are in these women were like, [SPEAKER_00]: These kind of monsters that we're like taking skin from other people and putting it on their bodies and they just kept ending up together.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, I've got to deal with this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, it was my subconscious being like, you know, that thing that you just refused to talk about, even though it's still there.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I think because horror can make so many things literal that are within us.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know fantasy can do this in sci-fi can do this, but I think that horror is so much more visceral and so much more just base level emotions in many ways that it can get to those parts of us that are harder to explore or don't feel safe.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like horror can be a place where you could talk about unsafe things and so it just felt like this natural progression of where I ended up where I am.

[SPEAKER_00]: And ironically, it was actually the haunting of Veltwood.

[SPEAKER_00]: And once I wrote it, I knew I have to come out publicly because it's such a queer book.

[SPEAKER_00]: Up until that point, it was like, oh, the characters end up together, but that's not necessarily such a crux of the story, but without it really is.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's that romance between Greta and Tletha is the centerpiece of the entire story, really.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like if I don't come out, people are going to be like, why are you doing this?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because when I was scared, I'd be like accused of like, [SPEAKER_00]: What is a queer-baiting is not what they call it when you're just doing it for and I'm like, because I was already had that identity denied when I was younger and it was so traumatic.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I can't put myself in a position to have that happen again.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I always say to people, don't even use it someone might be queer-baiting.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't ever say that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't ever say that publicly because they're dealing with something.

[SPEAKER_00]: you could just kind of compound their trauma.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like, even if you think somebody's doing that, like, if you want to say to your best friend, like, in a DM, like, I think this author's for your baby, but don't know, likely with that, you don't know what's going on with somebody.

[SPEAKER_00]: But for me, it was important to actually come out and do that anyway.

[SPEAKER_00]: So ultimately, it was a good experience, not necessarily for the best reasons, but yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was a long answer.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was great.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like I, I think one, I want to say I'm sorry that like right that that journey had to take so many bumps in the road for you, but the story you just tell told us it's like incredibly beautiful the way that we write ourselves.

[SPEAKER_01]: right or we're we're just writing ourselves all the time and there's a there's a theory in her minutics which is a philosophy thing so we'll we'll try to skip this part as quickly as again but that we're always both the the author and the character of our story and we're in this her minutic circle of generating the story together and you're literally writing your story in many ways [SPEAKER_01]: But the journey, like Jeff was saying, I think is impactful for so many people to read this and to experience it together right now as this kind of journey of figuring it out.

[SPEAKER_01]: I will say from the first hand accounts that I have in my house of junior high and high school, things are not.

[SPEAKER_01]: great here in central Pennsylvania although of course there are pockets and communities and people that are you know helpful and that kind of thing so all that to say I just I don't know I just want to say thank you for that story that was incredible I appreciate that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think I I don't know there's so much that I want to ask about but here's here's where I'm going to go and we can circle back to the hunting of El-Valquid because [SPEAKER_01]: there's so much there but I was at the Botanical Gardens here at Penn State yesterday with my son and we're walking around and listening to cicadas and I was thinking like this is such a cool thing that's happening with these bugs but if I had never heard of them before then I would think that something something very bad was happening but aliens were [SPEAKER_01]: invading.

[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, I moved to Pittsburgh in 2009 and never heard cicadas before and had that experience.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, where I'm going though, as you have this beautiful story, in that was published recently in the Rack with Tom Dady.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we talked about the Rack.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm just curious, your own experiences with cicadas.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, there's beautiful story about cicadas, and they're so weird and so wonderful that I just, I, well, I needed to take the opportunity as we're sitting here to ask you about cicadas, so I don't know, that's not a good question, but it's like cicadas.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is a great question.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will talk about cicadas all day long because like I didn't know you were circling around in my story because I almost interjected with I wrote a story about cicadas because I love them and I have a friend who's been working on a cicada novel and I'm always like kind of poking or about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, are you still working on that?

[SPEAKER_00]: If I totally want to read, I love cicadas like [SPEAKER_00]: I think that again, there's, they do some mystical to me and this idea, like, it depends on like what cicadas, but are our brewed down here where I live, which is south of Pittsburgh, so we have a different brewed of cicadas than Pittsburgh does, but ours came out in 2017, I believe, or 2016.

[SPEAKER_00]: I might have been 2016.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like, I just, I think they're magical.

[SPEAKER_00]: I remember them showing up when I was like, maybe.

[SPEAKER_00]: 14 when I was in growing up in Ohio and just listening to them and like you said it's so spooky if you didn't know what those were like, that's that's wild.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they're, they're so tragic in a way, too, because they like live for like one year and then they like, guys, it's just like one summer and it's interesting to watch them like emerge and we would see a lot of them like emerging here, like I because I live on like a 30 acre former horse farms.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've got lots of land and there was lots of cicadas.

[SPEAKER_00]: and just watching them and they emerge and then they just live for like a few weeks.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then it's like they basically just exist because there's so many of them, but they all get pretty much eaten or diced and like horrible.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's, it's like really try the same time.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's really kind of oddly beautiful.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we went to this, my husband, I went to this thing at because we're pretty close to West Virginia University and Morgan Town.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they actually did a whole cicada conference and they were like doing some studies with cicadas and we don't know a lot about them because they only come out every 17 years.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's still a lot of magic about them and they were saying though that they believed that beneath the ground in those 17 years as they're just stating, they might be able to communicate with each other.

[SPEAKER_00]: So even though they're under the ground and they're all separate from each other, they still like they would almost like whisper to each other.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I just think that that's so beautiful.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's so much about cicadas that's like beautiful and they're kind of weird looking, but I think they're pretty.

[SPEAKER_00]: So there's this kind of almost protest beauty in them.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then the thought of them like beneath the ground wherever you are, there might be cicadas whispering to each other.

[SPEAKER_00]: That just seems like such a great horror image.

[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I could talk about cicadas all day.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love that so much.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I don't have a lot to add about cicadas other than I remember reading back the internet telling me 2020 or so this article came out talking about how they could be infected with parasitic fungus and then they'd become like zombie cicadas and [SPEAKER_02]: And like, I don't know, like the fungus communicating underneath the grounds.

[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe that's what triggered it in my mind.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like that freaks me out enough.

[SPEAKER_02]: We have, we seem to have like a fungus turn in the horror.

[SPEAKER_02]: We were talking to Paul Tremblay with his new middle grade novel another.

[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, so like, I don't know, like, fungus is scary to me in general.

[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like we have two options of the future.

[SPEAKER_02]: Either the fungus takes over or AI takes over.

[SPEAKER_02]: I try to be kind to fungus because I want my fungal overlords to remember that I did not like stamp them out.

[SPEAKER_02]: AI, if AI takes over, I'm really big and get rid of it right away.

[SPEAKER_02]: Make me like a diesel battery, like the matrix, I'm good.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, let's see.

[SPEAKER_02]: Can I turn this back into a question about haunting a Valkwood?

[SPEAKER_02]: I can do this, I think.

[SPEAKER_02]: So like the stasis that cicadas experience living underground for 20 years, whatever it is, that's kind of the stasis that we see with Sophie, and maybe not in it as much, but because she seems to be aware of time passing, but Sophie and some of the folks there like [SPEAKER_02]: Just to read about like for them and I can understand why it's a lethal like once to save Sophie from that because that that's no way to live What like what gave you that idea like to have like this sort of just like this static because like you know Like there's things happening, right, but like the horror Technically seems to be like that nothing is actually changing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah [SPEAKER_00]: It is interesting bringing that together with the cicadas.

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like their stasis is less tragic because it's just the natural part of their life cycle as opposed to when people are in stasis.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't feel like that's a natural part of our life cycle.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't feel like human beings should ever be in stasis for very long.

[SPEAKER_00]: obviously all of us sometimes might have like almost like a holding counter time in our life for whatever reason, but in general I think people tend to be the happiest when they learn and they grow and they do new things whatever that is doing a new puzzle, you know it doesn't have to be getting a new job or you know [SPEAKER_00]: getting remarried or whatever, to be something small, going to be learning a small skill, but whatever it is, I think we do better as human beings when we continue to grow.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I pick a lot of it, you know, my biggest fear is to go into stasis and to not change and to get stuck, that kind of stuck.

[SPEAKER_00]: sense, and I just know in a lot of people, again, growing up, people who would just get stopped people who, even if you didn't see them for 10 or 15 years, you'd go back and they were having exactly the same problems.

[SPEAKER_00]: The same types of things, the 10 or 15 years ago, you know, from the outside, it's like, you know, there are solutions to these things, but it's the exact same and nothing changes and that, you know, a small town I grew up in.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure there's people on that small town that are not in the places, but the people that I knew from that town were very much stuck in these places that nothing changes.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you could show up after 10 or 15 years.

[SPEAKER_00]: They act like they still know you because they knew you when you were like 16.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, you know, a little bit about me, but you're definitely not an authority.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not an authority on you.

[SPEAKER_00]: We haven't seen each other in 10 or 15 years.

[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe they're not in stasis.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that's my perception, but to me as a horror writer, I'm always asking myself, what scares me?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not what scares other people.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, what scares me?

[SPEAKER_00]: And to me, my biggest fear is getting stuck and not having any kind of growth and not learning anything and not figuring anything out.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's sort of how that all kind of came to be with Valk.

[SPEAKER_00]: What if what if this whole neighborhood, this whole group of people who are not all the nicest people?

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, he and it and so for your kind of accepted from that.

[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of the people there, they didn't get a lot of bad things were going on.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're like, not my business.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so they got trapped for that reason.

[SPEAKER_00]: But then they don't even know that they're trapped because it's almost like they were kind of trapped before that in a way.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that sort of continuation and to me, that's so scary to be trapped and to not even be aware that you're trapped and that there is something better, but you won't embrace that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Again, I think that's an incredible answer.

[SPEAKER_01]: What happens, at least for me, it's not only Sophie that seems like she's emerging right out of this stasis, but to Leitha too, right is now emerging out of this like, she's buried so much of herself and Brett had to bury so much of herself.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like there's just like the argument for this book in some ways is just like, hey, you're not a cicada.

[SPEAKER_01]: Come out sooner, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, just come on, come out sooner.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.

[SPEAKER_00]: That needs to be the tagline for this episode.

[SPEAKER_00]: You are not a cicada.

[SPEAKER_00]: Come out sooner.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But like emotionally embrace yourself, but then come out as a queer person.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love that so much.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am going to carry that from this interview.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yes, I am great.

[SPEAKER_00]: Very much.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that was something that when I was writing it, I really thought of like how Toletha is stuck to.

[SPEAKER_00]: She didn't want to get stuck in that neighborhood, but then she basically trapped herself anyways.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because once they were gone, she and Brett could have moved on, break basically, did move on.

[SPEAKER_00]: The only thing that's kind of keeping Brett in the past is Toletha.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I normally don't like bringing up negative reviews, but I do think at least one or two reviews or like, Brett needs to get away from Toletha.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I mean, you know, I did in Darley argue.

[SPEAKER_00]: They end up figuring it out, but there's a part in these, yeah, I get that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was a real world.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was friends with Brett, I'd be like, Brett, you look like there's so better than that childhood friend of yours.

[SPEAKER_00]: She is so toxic that it away from her.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I love to leave, I do because we had a work ball in her and her journey.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the reason she's our man here to not forget because Brett has a character, but less so, Brett has much more pulled together than to leave it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she's figured out like, what happened to us was terrible.

[SPEAKER_00]: This was not our fault we need to move forward.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, but to leave the house to get there and has to realize, you know, I can't stay stuck just because of what happened.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there is that parallel between the neighborhood being stuck and [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, absolutely, there's a, the, oh, yeah, oh, my breath.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're going, you are insist.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, okay, yeah, all right, here's, this is an even a question, so I'll just throw this in there because I'm, I'm sorry for the dumpful loss of you here.

[SPEAKER_01]: Donna Haraway says that we are, we should think of ourselves more like compost.

[SPEAKER_01]: rather than like I don't know what other kinds of stuff and her claim here is that we should make kin with the natural world.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now sometimes compost is just shit, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: And you should leave that behind.

[SPEAKER_01]: But sometimes compost helps us to grow right out of this stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so there's this sense in which right the compost of our past.

[SPEAKER_01]: is both shitty at the same time that it helps us grow, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's something really rich here in the haunting of Elkwood.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jeff, sorry.

[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't mean to jump in with their question.

[SPEAKER_01]: I just, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: Heroways stuck in my head for some reason, good or bad and had to get it out.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I like not a lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think, but that's really an interesting idea also and you know, I always think that there's a fine line between saying, okay, I grew from this and this was okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can kind of say both like this terrible thing happened.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's definitely not okay that it happened.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not kind of excusing it having happened, but it's being able to grow from it anyways.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that there's this balance.

[SPEAKER_00]: you know there's kind of these hot takes on the internet in which like if you ever say well I grew from that bad experience and it's like oh well you're absolving those people who did it not necessarily you can say somebody had no right to treat you that way but it happened I can't change the past and I can grow from it so I like you know thinking of that kind of balance and I think the idea of compost is a great way of thinking it could be a literal shit but you can actually [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, in many ways, maybe Brian, but what we're the parallel we're making here is we are compost.

[SPEAKER_02]: The horror joy is compost, and hopefully you don't think we're shit.

[SPEAKER_02]: Or you've learned from it, if so.

[SPEAKER_02]: I guess so since we're talking about stasis, moving us out of stasis and not sticking in stasis for a second, what's next, Gwendlin?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like what is on the horizon?

[SPEAKER_02]: What can you maybe tease for us?

[SPEAKER_00]: So my second collection is coming out next April, and we're like working on all of that behind the scenes, and then I have a novella coming out through a short wave, and the collection is coming out through Rodock's screening press.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I have a novella coming out from [SPEAKER_00]: from shortwave in like two years.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there's some other stuff I'm working on that I can't talk about yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: I always hate that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I got to D.I.

[SPEAKER_00]: always feel like we sound like we're like secret agents.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're not secret agents.

[SPEAKER_00]: But like, you know, it's not a physical and gives a drive.

[SPEAKER_00]: But like some other things are coming up and that's really exciting.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm also working on a lot of short fiction and short non-fiction.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I write a column at the lineup, which is really fun.

[SPEAKER_00]: I get to talk about movies and books and like, that's awesome.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's always fun.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, all of that sounds incredible.

[SPEAKER_01]: I hope we can have you back on when all that stuff comes out.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you're willing, if I must, unless you've learned from your time at Jorge, it's a not-come-on Jorge.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe that's a, that's a, you know.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am Phil, you want me being on Jorge.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a lot of fun, so I would love to come back.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so, yeah, that's it.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's good to hear.

[SPEAKER_01]: I do want to ask, of course, if you've found joy recently in horror, there's a book or game or a tabletop game video game or movie that has really generated joy for you and kind of relationship between joy and horror.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I'm going to do like a few different things here.

[SPEAKER_00]: So one is there's this I think I put it on social media.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm almost positive I did, but I did this puzzle with my husband that it's all these different [SPEAKER_00]: from, you know, the typical Halloween Friday the 13th to like a lot of David Lynch.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was so excited to see a racer head in Twin Peaks on there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because some people are like, that's not horror.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, it's horror.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this puzzle agrees with me.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that was just like a fun thing, hanging out with my husband doing like this puzzle that's got like all horror.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was great.

[SPEAKER_00]: My husband and I also play this horror game called Four of Five.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's all these like universal monsters.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like you have to like collect different things.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's like this like little board game type of thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I'm going to do one that I just finally saw the substance all the way through.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd seen bits and pieces of it enough that I actually had basically seen it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But like, it's very intense body horror and so I was like, I love body horror, but I knew I needed to be in the right mindset.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I just saw it and you know, it's odd because it's more the catharsis.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's not a joyful or whimsical film at all, but the catharsis have seen that and [SPEAKER_00]: feeling seen and understood of the way image plays in for so many people, especially women, but for everyone to a certain degree, and that there was a catharsis with that.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's definitely a lot of catharsis on that in that film, so I said it was funny.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd seen so many bits and pieces of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd seen pretty much the whole movie, so like I talked about it, you think even in interviews, because I'd seen enough of it, but I'm like, I need to sit down and watch this straight through, because like I'm a big, like dipping in and out of things, and so I finally [SPEAKER_00]: there was definitely catharsis there.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's fantastic.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm looking right now at the horror story's Jake's cell puzzle and that looks so awesome.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's out of stock currently.

[SPEAKER_02]: That seems like a lot of fun.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I haven't done a Jigsaw Fuzzle in years, but I tried to play horrified, I will say.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think I was too tired and read the instructions, and I couldn't figure it through now, but so it's been on my show for too long, so maybe you can teach me how to play, please.

[SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, the first time my husband and I played, we, I think we played it wrong, but we're like, whatever, it's fine.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know the first time, like, I'm never gonna get this, but that, [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like what you played a couple times he messed it up a couple of times, but then you're like, okay, I get this now.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was complicated.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was way more complicated than a typical board game.

[SPEAKER_00]: And at first I'm like, are we just going to end up donating this?

[SPEAKER_00]: Just be donated a lot of stuff to charity.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like if we, we don't want it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, go for a good well.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm not going to throw it out.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll give it to somebody else when it's always like, you don't like something.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're like, are you just making somebody else somewhere else from this horrible with us?

[SPEAKER_00]: But we packed it.

[SPEAKER_00]: We, we, we stayed the course.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was a lot of fun.

[SPEAKER_00]: But that is funny because we had the [SPEAKER_01]: Well, Gwendolyn, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us, to find joy with us, to talk to Cate as with us, and to talk to the hunting of other people's board games with us.

[SPEAKER_01]: This was incredible.

[SPEAKER_01]: We hope to be able to see you again.

[SPEAKER_01]: I had questions about Pittsburgh.

[SPEAKER_01]: We'll leave those for next time.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love Pittsburgh, and want to know your experience there.

[SPEAKER_01]: We'll leave it there.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you as always for joining us and thank you going to lend for taking the time.

[SPEAKER_01]: All right y'all.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's Jeff's bit with the Yens.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'll stick to y'all.

[SPEAKER_01]: Remember, find joy.

[SPEAKER_01]: Even in horror.

[SPEAKER_01]: This has been an episode of War Joy.

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

[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for joining us and we want to hear from you.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can find us at warjoypod on Instagram or at horrorjoypod on YouTube.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can also email us at horrorjoypod at gmail.com all one word and you can of course find us wherever you get your podcasts.

[SPEAKER_01]: Give us a like, subscribe, leave a review.

[SPEAKER_01]: Until next time, remember,