Master Of Plot Twists: William Sterling

Welcome to the new Master of Plot Twists segment on Plot Twist: Still Alive...where we trauma bond with people who have  stopped talking and started doing the terrifying, glorious things on their bucket/fuck-it lists…and absolutely fucking kill it. This episode dives into the tenacious and punk rock story of how William Sterling became an AUTHOR.

Equal parts horror‑camp and confessional, William rips open the guts of his journey from writing eerie stories as a kid to becoming a full‑blown author. He spills what inspired him, confesses to writing gruesome garbage for round after round, and details the exact moment the craft finally clicked. Expect creepy campy movie vibes, savage laughs, dark humor, and some stomach‑turning tales of failure turned feral success. So if you've ever wondered what it takes to write a book....he will give you every weapon to survive the process! 

With multiple books under his belt, William Sterlings newest project is  being the editor of Punk Goes Horror II — a blood‑soaked anthology featuring 19 fierce horror authors. (Purchase on amazon or  through Crystal Lake Publishing)

Warning: 18+ : adult language, dark humor, graphic gore, explicit themes. Tune in if you dare.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Still alive. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to Plat Twist Still Alive. I am your hostess with the most as three-time cancer survivor and chaos coordinator, Crystal with a K. Welcome back, guys. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for coming back. We are officially on episode 22. Woo! We're gonna roll out the master of plot twists tonight. And you know, we talk about heavy shit all the time and we talk about fuck it lists, but I wanted to make room for people that do the things that are on our fucking list, try the things that people are scared to try. And so tonight I decided to invite a guest on that not only loves horror, but also does something that I've always wanted to do, and I think most people I know have, and that's write a book. He is an author. He's creepy and he's kooky, he's all a little spooky. He even wrote a bookie. His name's William Sterling. I don't know if that's like copyrighted or if I'm allowed to do that, but fuck it.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Oh, I'm sure it is, but we're doing it. Fuck it.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

Is that right? It's okay. Um, you would know more than me, Mr. Author. I appreciate you coming onto the show. And another thing that we're doing, plot twist, bitches. This is the first time ever we actually have videos. So, those of you that are listening at home on my Buzz Sprout, Spotify, Apple, there is actually a video. Now, will it ever be put out there? God knows what Sterling or William. I keep wanting to call you spooky Sterling because of your handle. It works.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

I answered anything.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Don't say that. But we're gonna see how this goes. And if it's great, you know, I have a lot of face right now happening. It's interesting. Usually I'm like in sweatpants and shit and boogers in my nose, doesn't matter. But now I had to do this. So I have my bag of lies on. Let's go. So, William Sterling. First, I just want you to tell me a little bit about miniature William Sterling. Like when you were a wee lad, what inspired you to decide to be a writer? Was that like when I grow up, I want to be this, or was there like other options first and then you settled on it? Or how'd that work?

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Yeah. Uh baby Sterling went kind of on a journey to get here, did the college route where I had no fucking clue what I wanted to do with my life. So I ping-ponged between majors a lot, really enjoyed all of my lit classes, but there was a lot of there's no careers in that involved. It like as like the first lesson in every single one of those classes, like all the brands.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

You're not gonna eat right off the bat.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Yeah, immediately. So wow. Somehow I ended up in law school. Oops. Really? I made it two months in law school and then hit the eject button because again, just people constantly being really down on anything you were trying to do and being like, yeah, you're gonna hate this profession. You're never actually gonna make any money unless you get really lucky. I hope you don't love your wife because you're gonna lose them like through this profession. It's like, what the fuck? Why is this the third professor in a row telling me this shit? I maybe they were just trying to scare people out to thin the numbers or something. I don't know, but it worked for me. So mission accomplished, motherfuckers. Right? So bailed on that, hanging out with the roommates, and one of them stumbled across something called Nanoremo. If you're unfamiliar with this, it's an abbreviation for National Novel Writing Month. It's been corporatized to hell at this point and all sorts of other stuff. But in its infancy, it was this cool experiment where you would sign up, you would commit yourself to writing X many words every single day for the month of November, and at the end of it, you will have written a novel. So all of my roommates and I, super drunk November 1st, were sitting around, like, screw it, let's try it. There were five of us, two of us made it more than a single day. My friend Henry and I made it all the way to the end of the month, and what we wrote was absolute garbage because we had no clue what we were doing, and we were just getting words on page. But I think it kind of inspired something in me. There was something in that creation process and being at the end of it, and it's like, this is ugly and terrible and malformed, but it's mine, and I I made this. Um, and especially being in such a point of my life that it was like everything else felt like it was kind of dead ending, just having that little plant that I could nurture into something was cool.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

Okay, so prior to that though, in elementary school and middle school, they make you like write haikus and shit and poetry, and you know, I was reading goosebumps and like all of that. Is there any of that here sprinkled throughout? Or was it just like, hey, I was an adult before I really found like my love for it?

SPEAKER_00 4:54

No, there was there were little seeds sprinkled all over the place growing up. I was the weird kid that had silence of the lambs in middle school, and like the teachers are writing home to my parents. Like, are you sure it's okay that he's reading this? I was the kid that would get a like five-page creative assignment. Like, yeah, just write a short story. I don't know, we're bored on a Friday and there's nothing else for the English class to do. So just write a five-page short story. And I'd come back at the end of the weekend with a 30-page short story for them. Like, here's all of my friends dying in a haunted house. Enjoy. And my teachers would like again call the therapists on me and whatever.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

Okay, so this was actually this was like this, you were doing this as a kid.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Yeah, but it was never, it was never intentional. It was never I could really like seat myself in this and do this long term. That just never came across my brain as a possibility. Um it was just a fun outlet to just get creative and go off and do do ridiculous shit. And you don't get in trouble. You do shit and then you kind of like it put the shit. That's a whole thing.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

It's a whole thing. I know. I assume then, based on the fact that you said you were reading Silence of the Lambs, you were also into horror as a kid for sure. And were your parents cool with this, or was this something that you were sneaking around to do?

SPEAKER_00 6:10

No. So I think that's where my love of horror lit came from. Parents are the most like conservative, shape-laced, like never do anything like even slightly against the grain sort of people. Grew up in the 90s, your access to woo millennials. Uh, we run this shit. Suck and rock at the same time. Um, but just like in the 90s, if your parents didn't have it in the house, you didn't really have access to it. They didn't have any horror movies in the house. So I didn't get to experience my first horror movie until M. Night Shyamalan's signs out of sleepover in middle school. Right.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

I was about to say, we were in middle school. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

It was so late. But libraries are magic. I had open access to whatever I could find in the library. And our our librarians either did the worst job in the world of curating what they were putting in our like middle school libraries, or they did the best jobs. And I want to side on the second half of that where they knew exactly what the fuck they were doing and just kind of left those, those scattered around little nuggets of even when libraries were a thing before you really had the internet.

SPEAKER_02 7:19

I would go to the library if I was gonna go on a long road trip. So this was I God fuck, I'm 40 now. Jeez, said that out loud. I was in my early 20s and I'd go on a road trip and I would go rent from the library or check out an audiobook. And they had like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, they had like a lot of horror shit in there. I was I was surprised about it. So I was the opposite. Whenever I was a kid, my love of horror came because when I was, I'm not even exaggerating, I was about two and a half, almost three. I don't know if this speaks on my parents, my parents' parenting skills, but um I digress. So we went, the first movie I got to saw see in theaters was Night of the Living Dead. And they had the curtains that like came across, you know, when they old school when they'd open. I thought, because I was a terrified of the fucking animatronics at Chuck E. Cheese, I thought there were monkeys and bears back there playing like instruments and shit. So we were sitting there and I'm freaking out. My dad would like, he liked to like fuck with me. So he was like, you know what's behind there? It's monkeys and bears. And I've like, why? Not the monkeys and bears. So I freaked out. And then the fucking horror movie starts, and I'm chilling, having a great time. So I grew up on like Freddie, Krueger, Jason, like Friday the 13th, Mike Myers, all the all the OG ones. And even to the point where, yes, people would look at us weird when we would go, because I was the oldest and we had I had two sisters. My youngest sister was probably six or seven, and we went and saw like Event Horizon. I don't know if you remember that movie or not, but it's really fucking violent and gory, fucked up. And this woman was like, my God, how could you bring your kid to this? And my dad's like, How the hell am I supposed to raise serial killer? So I think we grew up completely different, but ended up with similar loves of horror for whatever reason. So I just thought that was funny.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Yeah. No, it's there's so many roads. There's so many roads.

SPEAKER_02 9:02

So back to adult Sterling that or young adult sterling that decided after doing a random basically experiment to see who in your uh group of friends would bow up first, but you fell in love with the writing a book. Is that right?

SPEAKER_00 9:19

Yeah, that's exactly it. Just the process is there's something addictive about it, intoxicating. I don't know. All of the ings rolled into one.

SPEAKER_02 9:27

And so what what was like the next thing that helped you continue down that path?

SPEAKER_00 9:32

I think I realized that the first book was utter fucking garbage. So I kind of shelved it and was like, this is gonna be my masterpiece. I'm gonna come back to this in 10 years and write it the right way. But uh there was also just kind of this idea of like getting the bad ones out of the way. That's something that you'll hear a lot if you start like diving into the writing community. First thing, the writing community. That that's the short answer to this question. How did from point A to point B, the writing community and the horror writing community, especially, got their teeth into me and just like would not let me stop. There are so many friends and like champions of me as a person, me as a writer that just lifted me up throughout. I wrote book two and I wrote book three, and I was putting them out, and they were, they were also slop. They're they're they're also very bad. But I put them out there. A couple of other actual horror authors were kind enough to talk to me, and they took the book in and they were gonna blurb it, and they read through it for me, and they didn't necessarily do that, but they came back to me with so much advice. Hey, here's the things that I see in this book that you could work on. Here's some of the things that I see you doing repetitively that if you trimmed that out, the book would be so much stronger. Here's the thing about your your your plot twist that didn't quite work. What about thinking about it from this angle? And it's just getting that feedback and having those conversations with people just helped me grow and grow and grow until I think it was like book five or six. This is actually decent. Like everything that everybody's helped been helping me out with, like this, this little little blossom of a thing has grown into like, holy crap, this has got some legs now.

SPEAKER_02 11:15

Yeah. So when you say five and six, so you wrote six books. When you say put them out, are you talking about like you straight up went like fuck it? We're gonna sell this book and see what happens, like publish it in all of that or what?

SPEAKER_00 11:28

Yeah, okay, so publishing crash course, publishing 101. Um, there are three ways to publish a book. Way number one is self-publishing. Amazon and a place called Ingram Spark have a kind of platform where if you've got a Word document with words on it, you can upload it to there, you can upload a potential cover for the book, and you can make it live. And anybody that wants to can go buy it. Yeah. So that's what I'm doing with the first three, four books.

SPEAKER_02 11:57

And what around what year was this, if you don't mind me asking?

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Wee numbers. 2015, Mark. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

16 maybe. So like almost 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Yeah. But that's that's kind of route one. So the second route you can go through is through indie or mid-sized presses. Um, there are a lot of genre-specific presses run by really cool people that they will have these open call windows for a month each year. Everybody that wants to publish a story through them, send your stories on through. They'll read through them, they'll pick five or six that they want to publish, and then they'll work with you for the next year getting that published under their name. It's a little bit more professional, it's a little bit more established.

SPEAKER_02 12:39

And do you pay them to do this? Or do they get paid off of like selling your book?

SPEAKER_00 12:43

Depends on who you're talking about. Most of the quote unquote good ones are going to publish and they'll just take a cut of the royalties on the backside. So that's kind of a dicey thing. If any publisher is ever asking you to pay them money, that is a big red flag. And it's not always a bad thing, but 99% of the time it's a bad thing.

SPEAKER_02 13:07

So um Well, I'm glad I'm glad you are saying that because I d I didn't know that at all. Like I assumed you had to pay to get a book published. Like I thought that was just par for the course. So I'm glad you said that. So that's actually a scam. Perfect.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 13:22

You learn something new every day.

SPEAKER_00 13:24

Rule of thumb, money goes to the author. It's helpful, especially when you are the fucking authors. Right. Love that, love that flow of cash.

SPEAKER_02 13:31

And then, so is there a third option?

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Yeah. So then the third option is like publishing through, they're called the big five. So we're thinking penguin, we're talking random house, we're talking the ones that you see every time you walk into any bookstore. If you're wanting to publish through them, you have to get an agent. The agent then has to bring your book to them, then they have to shop with agent. It's this whole long, drawn-out process. Really cool on the back end if you manage to get through it. But there are years and years where you're just kind of sitting here waiting for the next stuff to maybe happen.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

Did you use one of these routes or all of these routes at one point or a mixture?

SPEAKER_00 14:09

Yeah. So I started out with the self-publishing, and that's kind of why I was able to put those garbage first books out into the world that have since been removed from the world. The covers are still floating around, and I can't delete all of them, but they have been removed from purchase.

SPEAKER_02 14:25

And why it's did you do that? Was that yes?

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Yes. Yes. I went back at some point and was like, that is not, I do not want that to reflect my name anymore. That should, that should go bye-bye now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:38

I mean, it's not like it's your child or anything, it's just a book that you spent years writing.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a lot of hours of blood, sweat, and tears, but it's bad. So I can I can exercise that demon.

SPEAKER_02 14:51

I do have to give you a fuck ton of credit though, because most people would be afraid because it's not perfect, not to like not do it. I already hear just from your process of what you're saying, don't fucking live afraid, do it. And I I mean I talk about that all the time on this podcast in general, but I think it applies to almost everything in life. You'll be waiting forever for it to be perfect. Nothing's gonna be perfect. And what's the worst thing that happens? You put out a book, you don't spend any money because you do it the Amazon route, the the self-publishing route, and then people don't like it, boo hoo. Then you can always remove it like you did and make it non-existent after you write a decent one. Mostly non-existent.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

There's always gonna be a little bit of a digital trail and it's gonna kill you, but it's it's not the fucking internet, man. The fucking internet.

SPEAKER_02 15:36

Get you every time. Okay. Book five or six, or six, you said, was like, and is there a title to book six?

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Okay, the first one that I put out that I can still look back on today and be like, hell yeah, that's that's what I meant to put into the world, is called Killer Be Killed. It is, I call it a reverse camp slasher novel. So all the other camp slashers we can think of, you're kind of supposed to be rooting against the thing in the woods that's coming to kill all the counselors. My spin on that was, no, we're all cheering for the thing in the woods. So let's just make the thing in the woods the good guy. Let's make these camp counselors fucking horrible. And let's just openly embrace the fact that we're cheering for these deaths to happen.

SPEAKER_02 16:19

So that's I mean, in the movies, I do have to like scroll for a second. I do feel like you still kind of do, though, right? You're just like, but when you're writing, like you don't realize you're doing it, but as you're watching them like have sex and then a kid drowns, you're like, fuck those people, or they're getting stoned and then they're like not doing their job. And you're like, this is the most unsafe fucking camp on the planet. How are you sending your eight-year-olds here? Then you're like kind of okay with the murder or killing them all. But I love the idea that you actually like wrote a book about it. And so uh when you wrote that book, and I'm sure it changes. I mean, maybe I'm wrong, you can tell me, but like, do you write it in third person, first person? Do you change characters, or do you what do you prefer to do? Or do you have you tried all of them? I'd imagine you have.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

Yeah, it it depends on the story. Most of the time I'm writing, I write in third person, past tense, and I jump around between two or three different narrators. I like to have multiple kind of things happening at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 17:19

So I love books like that. I love it. One of my favorite books is actually called Intensity. I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but it's a Dean Koons book. I'm a very big Dean Koons fan. And it goes back and forth between the main character and the murderer. And it's just shifting between like this woman that was a victim in her early life, and like as the story progresses, she gets more and more powerful. And he's psychotic. And so you're delving into that, and it just every other chapter you're going back and forth. And so it's really interesting to just like flip back and forth because you're one minute, you're like this horrific psychopath, and then the next minute you're like this woman finding her strength. I don't know. I thought it was pretty badass. And I I think it was like 15 or 16 when I read that. So I love that you you do that because I think that's I don't know. Those are some of the most interesting books for me as a reader. Those are the ones I'm big fans of.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

The diversity of the point of views can really drive the horror home when something's not really affecting one character and then you go to a different character and they're freaking the fuck out like appropriately. Just kind of playing around with perspective is fun. But yeah, I've started doing a little bit more in first person and second person. I don't think I've quite got a handle on that yet, but I'm experimenting as I do. It's fun.

SPEAKER_02 18:32

So, what makes that challenging for you? Is my question. I I I've never written. So, like writing for dummies, what's difficult about first person if it's not you having to like be someone else completely and think like them and move like them? Is that is that the hard part or?

SPEAKER_00 18:46

So the hard part for me with first person, kind of as an example. I just got done last year working on a script for a sci-fi horror movie where a girl is in a observatory and like spooky-ookie shit's happening all around her. The girl in the movie is really, really, really in tune with all of the buttons and knobs and things that happen in an observatory. I know absolutely nothing about astronomy observatories. The first draft of the screenplay, I called it astronomy half the time because I just like totally whiffed on which of the Astros I was talking about.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

I use words wrong all the time. That makes me feel so seen. Thank you. And you're a fucking author. Thank God. It's not just us peasants that don't write books.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

I had a great producer that called me out on it and didn't fire me. Yeah. But in a screenplay or in third person, you can kind of get away with those things because you're not in the person's head. Uh, you can kind of couch what you know and what you don't know in some like fun little verbiage. But he had me kind of do an experiment of trying to write it out as a potential novel tie-in. Like, hey, you wrote the screenplay. Why don't you write the novel tie-in? I got a single chapter into that and had to bail on it because that first person perspective, I know nothing about this. I cannot get into this expert in astronomy, astrology. I cannot get into this expert in astros.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

Boom.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

Well, yeah, that, that guy. I could see that being a huge issue. I guess I wonder like, are the writers, because I do question that, even with movies. So I a little background. Like I was a nurse before I decided to run a breast cancer nonprofit. And before I've had a million jobs, but we'll talk about that another time. But whenever I was a nurse, it would annoy me when I would watch shows. They're fucking shocking somebody with AEDs. They don't have a heartbeat, you know. My favorite shows were ones that had people who had medical knowledge. Like Scrubs was actually one that had a lot of medical knowledge because I believe the writer went to medical school or something. And so it showed in their writing, and even though it was funny, everything they were doing medically made fucking sense to me. And I was like, oh my God, this is great. So it takes you out of the story if you're watching or reading something and you actually have a little bit of knowledge on it, and you're like, this fuck, what is this person even doing? But I wonder for like authors, do are there just some people that just go and go, you know what? I'm gonna go do this training for six months so I can learn this, or I'll I'm gonna study the stars for a year so I can like I wonder if that's the process. I mean, and you know a lot more authors than I do. Do you have some friends that just like that's part of the process is like learning all this shit so then you can write from that perspective?

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Absolutely. So so many follow up comments. One, the Scrubs reboot right now is so good. Number two, I I know people that kind of approach it two different ways. So Daniel Krause is one of the greatest authors going right now. If he's not on your radar, he needs to be. He wrote Whalefall, which is coming out, I thought this summer, but we still haven't seen it. Trailer yet. Um, but it's got Josh Brolin. It's about a guy that gets swallowed by a whale and is like survival horror from inside the belly of the whale. We have listened to a bunch of podcasts that he did talking about the process for writing that, and he did exactly what you were talking about like months and months and months of research digging into the anatomy of the whale. He was at SeaWorld every fucking day. Every fucking day. But he went that route. And I also know like a lot of authors that do it the other way, they're just kind of like, fuck it, we're doing it for the plot. And then at the end, once they've got a plot that makes sense, and once they've got everything that they need to happen for the story, they'll reach out to a word for them. I'm sort of using this out of context, but sensitivity readers. Okay. But you can find a lot of experts in various fields that like just want to help these things be accurate. So you can send the story to them and they'll be like, yeah, no, they don't have a heartbeat here. EMP is not gonna, I think I just used the wrong acronym. Um, but the the defibulator is not gonna do anything when the heart's down. So then they can rework that scene a little bit and make it more you couldn't have worked on Scrubs, but that's okay.

SPEAKER_02 23:07

That's such a cool thing that that even exists with these people. Is it the same as when we're talking about like the indie publishers? Are these people just doing it because they want it to be accurate, or do you have to pay a fee? Do you like Google them? Or is there like a directory where you're like, I need a Marine. There's 15 of them.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

I I don't think there's a directory, but for my purposes, my sister's a nurse. So anytime I've got the medical questions, I reach out to her and she's great for that. And just like everybody's kind of got these stable of people. Like it takes a village to do basically anything in life nowadays, but just kind of knowing your network and knowing who you can reach out to. Like everybody has a point of contact that has a point of contact for them. You just gotta find, find those threads, find those connections.

SPEAKER_02 23:49

Okay. Good to know. Good to know. Don't ask me nurse questions. You can ask me breast cancer questions. I can fucking answer those all of the time.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

No, we don't want to get on that road. Bye.

SPEAKER_02 23:57

That could be a horror. I mean, Frank and Titties, you could help me write a book about it. I'm just saying, that's like your genre.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

Yeah. I'm gonna, I'm gonna step out of like my story for a second and heap some praise on you. I don't think I've told you this yet. My family has a big history of breast cancer experiences of all the flavors. My aunt died from it. My mom has been battling it for I think two years now, three years now. Uh she's past it. She's in remission. Yay! Um, but still, all the after effects of like going through everything. So being able to listen to your podcast, being able to hear your story, being able to hear you talk so openly, and you have such a good positive attitude about everything, and you address it in such a brave, this isn't gonna fucking take me down sort of a way. It's very uplifting. Uh so thank you.

SPEAKER_02 24:47

It's all fake. It's all pretend. I'm pretending. No, I'm just kidding. Ha ha ha for two bitch. Just kidding. No, I mean, I think, yes, I'm positive, but it's because I make room for the dark too. Like you can put on a brave face. Most people, especially women and moms, especially, we we do that. But making room for the dark to allow yourself to, I've just learned that. Like, if you're gonna make room and go to the shittiest place, like I'm gonna die, or this is gonna be, I'm gonna lose my hair, everything, you know, I'm gonna leave my kids, all of these horrible things, you have you owe it to yourself to like go to the light too. And especially because of the amount of times I've done this cancer shit now, because God has favorites, I am to the point where I'm just like, I have to keep living my life. It is not promised, and I'm gonna, I can choose to live it sad and angry, or I can make the fucking most of it and just live it to the fullest full throttle. So I find a happy medium because I am a mom, because I have kids, but every chance I get to go do something that scares me or try to do the thing that everyone else is scared of, and even like writing a book, I really want to do that. I want to mark it off the list. So even having this discussion, believe it or not, like you are the reason. There's a bunch of people that randomly message me and they're like, hey, can I be on your podcast? And I'm like, I reached out to you because you're doing something that I really, really want to do. And I honestly have thought about writing like something more about my struggle. But there, because I love horror, I also, again, don't want to fit into a genre. I'd like to write something else too. Because when I was a kid, I was writing shit about horror. I loved Goosebumps books, I loved the fucking scary stories books. I I love the genre. So like talking to you is just like I'm gathering all this info so that I can do it. And the fact that you put out shit books over and over just gives me the confidence. So I really but genuinely I appreciate it. Fuck cancer. That goes out for you know your mom and your family as well. But I'm glad to hear that she's doing well. And if she ever needs, you know, talk to Frank and Titties, you can send her my info. I'll give her, I'll talk to her. We'll go back to you now, though, okay? This isn't all about me. Jeez. Okay. So we scrolled because I had so many questions because I'm fangirling about fucking writing. So once you did your sixth book and it kill or be killed, that was like boom, bam. Thank you, ma'am. I think this is we've got something. Eureka, bitch. So then where did you go from there as far as writing? And at this point, are you working other jobs, side jobs? Are you doing writing on the side? What's going on for you?

SPEAKER_00 27:12

At this point, day life-wise, I am married, have a kid, and I am teaching full time. Realizing I don't love teaching full-time, but doing it and paying the paying the damn bills.

SPEAKER_02 27:26

Wait, so you ended up doing teaching? That's where you went? Like you did no law school and all of that. You ended up as a teacher. Okay. All right.

SPEAKER_00 27:34

I ended up as a as a teacher and a running coach. So yay trap.

SPEAKER_02 27:38

Okay. Are you good at running?

SPEAKER_00 27:40

I used to be.

SPEAKER_02 27:42

You're ready for a horror movie in real life. You're like, I can run for shit. I'll be fine.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

No, any any of those you're talking about them being inaccurate with the like nursing scenes. Anytime somebody's sprinting through the woods and running out of breath, I'm like, you fucker, you're fucking faking it right now. And I can tell because your shoulders are still up and you're You've got shit posture, man. It's not no, but doing that, so I self-published Killer Be Killed, and that was kind of my signal flare that I am not a good self-publisher. It is the right, great avenue for so many people in so many situations. They can market the hell out of their own books. They can build their own readership. They can do all of these other things. Am not good at marketing. I'm objectively very bad at it. So I had this book that I was actually proud of finally. It was finding no audience, like two reviews over a couple of months, whatever. So started pivoting into kind of that second lane that I was talking about with the small presses, the medium, mid-sized presses. I knew enough people in the horror community at that point to kind of guide me to a couple of presses that we thought were great, pitched to them in their open submission calls, ended up working with some really cool publishers, ended up working with some really shit publishers. Um, and yeah, that's kind of been my lane for the last seven or eight years.

SPEAKER_02 29:01

Just kind of So that's like where you found like where you needed to be.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

Yeah. But that's also I feel like I'm in the right place now.

SPEAKER_02 29:07

I think it's uh marketing yourself's difficult. It's extremely difficult. I mean, even if you believe in yourself, it feels weird to push something, especially when you're spent, like you said, like blood, sweat, and tears in it. It's not even that people hate it. It's like, fuck, I have to like talk you into even giving it a chance. Like that's a lot of effort, a lot of energy. I had jobs throughout that kind of helped me figure out how to market myself and working for a breast cancer nonprofit for four years. Like I learned a lot. The funny thing is now, like my marketing for this, my former partner from the nonprofits always like hitting me up. She's like, Did you fucking know how to do this the whole time? I'm like, no, bitch, I did not. I self-taught because she would that was her side. I mean, it was a very small nonprofit. I did like more of the forward-facing support for warriors and things like that. But like, I'm the person that'll do like all caps in the fucking Facebook, Instagram, and like 18 exclamation points. Like it would drive her fucking crazy. I still to this day don't know how to like tag somebody without like fucking up. So it's just, it's you, but you learn it. And because of that, I already kind of had people supporting me and knowing my story. So that's why I started with my story. But then having the opportunity to like hear everyone else's, that like like what you're saying, that's what really helps me push it. Because my first one was mine. It was an easy sell. Everyone knew my story. So they're like, oh, well, listen to Crystal's podcast once about her breast cancer. We've heard her talk about it fucking all the time. But then when I actually have other survivors from different things, other people dealing with shit, it's so much easier for me to push it. And I, it's just made me want to market it good for them. I want to make sure that their story is told the way they want. So bring it back into you. I I completely relate to you feeling more comfortable and confident doing that or having someone else do that for you. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 30:54

Yeah, a hundred percent. And I'm I'm in the kind of privileged position now where I'm putting out books in two different styles at this point. So I've got books that I am the author of. I wrote this thing. Woo-hoo, yay! Stories. And I'm also please read them. But I'm also the editor of uh ongoing anthology series called Punk Goes Horror. Where's this? It's that one! Oh my gosh, look at that cover.

SPEAKER_02 31:21

Look at it. Would you just look at that? This one's two, okay? So you need to get the first one and then the second one because there's two. Woo! So, but this is like your this one is your most recent book, correct?

SPEAKER_00 31:32

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 31:33

The one I have?

SPEAKER_00 31:33

So I am the editor for that anthology. So I got to reach out to a bunch of my friends, and they wrote stories for me, and I just made sure that all the screws were as tightened as possible before it went out into the world. And that is so much easier to cheerlead in my mind because it's not me saying, I'm the greatest author in the world. Look at my look at my words in this order. It's I can point at Abby Vale's story in the beginning of that book and be like, Abby's fucking awesome. Everybody should read the story. And I can say that with absolutely no like modesty necessary.

SPEAKER_02 32:08

Was that the which one was that?

SPEAKER_00 32:10

She is the story in the beginning where the female lead singer of a band is being objectified by the press and her friend friends.

SPEAKER_02 32:19

Yes. Right. Spirit Box.

SPEAKER_00 32:21

Yeah, Spirit Box inspired one.

SPEAKER_02 32:23

So I did read, I but I didn't haven't had time to read all of it because when I did this, I also had to teach myself how to how to fucking vodcast, which evidently that's just regular podcasting now, and I'm dumb. But it's fine. We learn things. But no, I actually really liked that story specifically. I mean, I'm always look, I'm a girl's girl. I'm always gonna like if a woman is, and it was like the best of both because it was a female singer for a band, and then it's also a female author. And I was like, yes, bitch, snaps and claps all day. Like if you have a vagina, I'm behind you, you know? You probably do know. Um, so anyway, 13-year-old boy. Anyhow, so I read that one. I thought it was great. And it's funny because I I was reading this book, and I love how like any art form or whatever, you know, reading, I'm reading it and I'm seeing all these bands that I'm like, I don't know this band. So then I have to fucking take a break from reading before I even read the story because I'm like, no, I need to know what's going on. And I'm one of those people, you and I had had a chat before about like genres just being like a construct of people and whatever. But same with uh, you know, music and and reading and movies. Like I like all types of shit. So when I'm going through here, it's mostly like punk or metal or you know, that type of thing. I knew a couple, I think I knew like, what is it, shipping up to Boston? I think that's like the only song I for sure knew. But I looked into Spirit Box and I was like, I know them. They were with Megan thee Stallion because I'm a hip hop bitch. But no, the story was great. And I love that the book made me want to like go and listen to other types of music as well. Cause that's that's another whole thing for me. Like, I don't even have to love that genre, but if someone else just is obsessed with it, I love going to like shows, metal shows, EDM shows just to watch all of the fans because it's like visceral, you can feel it. And I feel like this book kind of opened my eyes up to different types of. I've I've like some metal, I have some metal friends, but like this is definitely educated me a little bit on that. And then you have like a fucking basically like a fan fiction story about this this badass fucking lead singer or lead bass slash singer player. So I don't know. I thought it was cool as shit. Great job. Her name's Abby, right?

SPEAKER_00 34:30

Thank you. Yeah, Abby Vale.

SPEAKER_02 34:32

Great job to Abby.

SPEAKER_00 34:33

She is killing it right now. Yeah. Um, so context for the anthology, it's 19 stor 19 horror stories inspired by 19 punk or punk adjacent songs. Abby chose to write a story based on Spirit Box, like you said. Abby is the bassist for a band called Safe Sermon that's putting out some awesome stuff right now. Abby has at least three books in various stages of publication right now. And I think I've read two of the three, and like every single time she makes you hurt. She is a she is a violent author in the best way. But yeah, it if if you like female rage violence, Abby might be up your alley.

SPEAKER_02 35:16

I loved it. I thought her story was great. And it's also, again, you're going, you read a few pages, you can literally read like a chapter, quote unquote, and then it's a different story for each one. If people don't know what anthologies are, I mean, kind of, I was like, oh, an anthology. Yeah, I know what that is. And I'm like nodding my head. And then when I got the book, I was like, this is 19 different fucking stories. That's what he meant when he said anthologies. If you don't know now, you know. So the this is the second one. With the first one, was that the first time you had done an anthology? So punk goes horror, just the original one. Is that the first time?

SPEAKER_00 35:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 35:48

What like made you decide you wanted to do that? And how how did you go about picking or asking the authors to be part of it?

SPEAKER_00 35:55

This was chaotic. It started with the threads post, the old like punk goes pop album. I made some off-handed post about how somebody should do horror stories based on music, and it got enough traction and kind of the brain bug worked its way into my own mind and wouldn't let go of trying to pursue that. So Brewborn Press is one of the cool presses. There were some great ones and some awful ones. Fantastic. Stina Osborne runs it, and she is one of the most magical human beings. Um, but I approached her with it. Their whole slant is that they want to do weird horror. I was like, this is kind of weird, isn't it? And she was like, Yes, it is. So she kind of gave me just a just a blank check like, hey, go out, find some authors that would be into this thing. And I started shooting my shot with a lot of authors that are like big, big, big horror author names in the scene right now. And kind of looping back to what I was saying way earlier in the podcast about the horror writer community is so fucking cool. Like front to back, there's some weirdos in there, but like 80 to 90% of the horror writing community are amazing people that just want to make cool shit. And so I'm reaching out to people like Rachel Harrison, who's a USA Today bestseller, and like, hey, Rachel, you don't know me, but I have this concept, anything? And she's like, Yes, I will do an alkaline trio song, sign me up.

SPEAKER_02 37:22

I'm like, perfect. Just like that. And I want to take this moment to tell people, and no matter what job you have or anything, the worst somebody can say to you is fucking no. Like it really is that simple. And once you wrap your head around it, your heart's not gonna fucking stop. You're not gonna drop dead. Like you just ask. And if they say no, that's okay. It's not gonna hurt you. And why not? Why the fuck not? Because a lot of times nobody asks because they're scared. And then you come along and you're like, hey, would you like to do this one little thing with me? And they're like, sure, I want to do this. And it's just fucking, and I'm sure you were jaw on the ground, like holy shit, jumping up and down, screaming like a little girl. But like, yes, that's maybe not. Maybe I don't know. I could see it.

SPEAKER_00 38:02

No, that's in exactly the right picture.

SPEAKER_02 38:04

It's perfect. Yuppie!

SPEAKER_00 38:06

But freeze frame as I'm up in the air with my heels kicked up.

SPEAKER_02 38:09

That's right. Like the feet kicked up in the back because I did, I did track. But I love that you like just went out on a limb and you were like, fuck it, why not? At the end of the day, they're all authors, you guys are all people. It's just awesome because those people that may be a little more well known may help bring light on other authors that aren't as well known in this anthology series, which is super fucking badass too. Like to have your story next to somebody like that. So you find, and how many stories were in the first one?

SPEAKER_00 38:36

Uh the first one was 15 stories. Five of those were invited authors. And then we did an open call where Christina and Trueborn Press said, Hey, everybody that wants to write something to this theme, like, you've got a month. Send us what you got. We got another cool schmorgis board of people. There was there was Eric J. Gignard who slid into our DMs with a story. He's a World Fantasy Award-winning author submitting to an open call, which is like, what the fuck is happening here? And then we've got other authors that had never published anything before, but they sent the story in, and the story was just so good that it was like, yup, you go right next to Rachel and Eric, because like quality and I kind of love that about anthologies.

SPEAKER_02 39:22

I was gonna say, I think that you, like you guys coming up with a concept that is weird and different, just because somebody is a super well-known author, it might have been something where they're like, this will be fun, or this will be a challenge, or this will be something that I've always wanted to do, and I get to do it now. So again, you're helping someone else maybe check off their bucket list or do something that they've wanted to do and just haven't, or just to have fucking like sometimes doing it for a living and being this person that wins all these awards and everything, you lose the fun in it occasionally. And so you probably gave them an opportunity to do something that they really, really enjoyed just by writing that story.

SPEAKER_00 39:55

Yeah. One yes. Nothing to add. No notes. No notes.

SPEAKER_02 40:00

I'm assuming, I'm assuming that Punko's Horror One. I I'm assuming you didn't name it one because we didn't know at that point if there was going to be a two, correct? The OG, right. The OG Punk O's horror. I'm assuming it went well because you ended up writing a second one. So how was that like overall? And again, you know, I was talking to you a little bit about like podcasts and what looks successful and whatnot, because there's such a slew of like in movies and in box, you know, box offices, and then with social media posts versus podcasts versus books, was it quote unquote a success? And how do you how what does success look like for authors or for a book that's put out?

SPEAKER_00 40:39

I think that's gonna vary person to person, but I think for me personally, you nailed it on the head a second ago with just trying to have some fucking fun. We put the book out. Trueborn did a great job marketing it because I wasn't in charge of the marketing. Um, and Christina's great at things like that. No, I'm selling myself short. I did a little bit of marketing. I helped. I pushed the card a little bit, but it made enough of its money back, and it was just such a fun moment in my, I'm gonna call it a career, and that's a little bit overinflated, but whatever, I'm gonna call it that. It was such a fun moment in my career, and I think it was such a fun moment for Trueborn Press to have some of those bigger named authors in their stable as a young indie press. And then I went to StokerCon last year, which was in Stamford, Connecticut. What is this? Never go to Stamford, Connecticut. Don't do it. StokerCon is the big horror authors award ceremony, get together each year. It's like it's the one that everybody descends on. Um, and they give out the big award for horror author of the year and things like that. But running around that hotel convention center and running into these people that I had worked with and admire so much, and being able just like, hey, I'm Will, punk goes horror. Like we just worked on that. And like having a kinship with them and like flicking off the camera, like, yeah, punk it. Just like that sort of a vibe was such a cool, wholesome moment for me that it was like as soon as we earned out on punk goes horror one, there was a quick DM to Christina, like, can we please do this again? And she said yes, and we did it again. And here we are now with with round two out in the world.

SPEAKER_02 42:18

Literally with bells on, ching jing jingle jingle.

SPEAKER_00 42:20

Yeah, right, hitting things off on the side here.

SPEAKER_02 42:22

That's fucking awesome, man. And I didn't even think about it. Like, you're writing separately. You guys don't even have to meet, technically. Yeah. So to be able to actually like person to person be like, holy shit, I loved your story, or thank you so much for doing this, and being able to connect. And again, you're all authors, so like that's really, really cool. I thought you said don't go to Stoker Fest.

SPEAKER_00 42:42

Did you still go to Stanford? Stanford, Connecticut is the weirdest, like most backrooms fucking place. Like, I don't get I I don't get how it exists. Stoker Con is amazing. They're hosting it in Pittsburgh.

SPEAKER_02 42:54

Are you a southern person? Are you a southern person? Were you born in the South for the most part? You're in Atlanta now, currently, yes. Yep. Yeah. So I'm a Texas girl, but I moved around a lot. I don't know. I guess watching Pet Cemetery and stuff, it's just the accents up there. It's like, no better, no worse. Sometimes Louis, dead is better. Like, I don't get it. Where did that go? That's the main reason I stay away from Connecticut because I don't know what the fuck they're talking about. Um, I'm just kidding. All you Connecticutes, Connecticut, Connecticut Connecticut.

SPEAKER_00 43:24

We're gonna get so much shit for this part of the episode.

SPEAKER_02 43:26

We are so good at words, both of us. I read a podcast and you're a fucking author team. No, so I we're having a great time, actually. I'm very happy. Uh you are genuinely the first person that I have done a like not in the same room podcast with. So that's really cool. I got to check that off the list. No, and it's going great. Like, you know, there's always a little nerves when you're talking to a stranger, but then and then I got the armpit sweat. That's why I wear black, but you know, and deodorant. But it's fine. Now we're good. So this has been out for how long? Punk.

SPEAKER_00 44:00

Goes forward to as of recording a little less than a month, maybe two or three weeks.

SPEAKER_02 44:04

Okay. Okay. Okay. And I saw somewhere posted that you were like a niche, but you're like up there in the niche category for what does it fall under? Just out of curiosity.

SPEAKER_00 44:15

Amazon, Amazon has subcategories within subcategories within subcategories within subcategories that you can position your book in when you publish it through them. Apparently, Christina put this in absurdist horror fiction. Sure, why not? Works for me. Um yeah, it became a number one bestseller in absurdist horror fiction on Kindle, which is just like this very tiny target. But damn it, we hit a target.

SPEAKER_02 44:47

Yeah, that's fucking awesome. Congratulations to you and the 19 folks that are in here in this book. You should buy it. It's actually really, again, have not, I'm actually ashamed to say this because I am such a like I love books. I'm more an audio person just because I'm in the car more often, but I enjoy, I can't do a Kindle. I don't want to read it on a computer. I really enjoy like the paper and the like touching it and smelling it and being a fucking weirdo about it. Okay, good. So like your book is the first book that I've read probably in a few years. And it's just been really cool. So thank you for again doing this because I was like, I can't look. I know some people, they'll go and they'll like interview somebody and they won't even like crack open the book and they'll just ask questions like, okay, buy it on Amazon today. I don't feel like that's genuine. I really want to, I wish I could have read more. Again, I was teaching myself this shit, so one thing at a time. I fully intend to read the entire thing. I'm very excited about it. And I love that I can like read one story and then put it down for a bit and go and come back and I don't even have to like remember what happened or any of that shit. It's perfect, especially because I'm old now.

SPEAKER_00 45:51

Yeah, if I can if I can plug for one last second, yeah, I think that's the magic. I think that's the magic of anthologies. If you are not typically a reader, but you're read curious, um grabbing anything.

SPEAKER_01 46:04

Curious adjacent. Curious adjacent.

SPEAKER_00 46:07

If you grab an anthology, these stories are super quick hits, 10 to 15 pages usually. And the emphasis with this anthology is really being a mixtape anthology. All the different horror sub genres mix it up as you go from one to the next.

SPEAKER_02 46:21

It's it's super cute because you guys like the way that you do it, it's like, I don't know if it can like show it, but like you have side A over here, and then like in later, I was like, this is so up my alley. Because again, 90s, right? Like the 90s kid, and I had a fucking boom box and I had to like push two buttons to record and play at the same time. And God forbid you like started at the wrong place and then you recorded over the other song because then we wouldn't get all of shipping out to Boston, we would only get part of it leading in.

SPEAKER_00 46:51

I know it would be layered over Savage Garden or some shit. It was like, how is this on the tape? Why and why does this work so well?

SPEAKER_02 46:58

Because it's a chick a cherry cola, that's why. I don't even know what the fuck that is, but that's what it is. Can someone tell me what that is? Please write in. So how can people purchase your books? And are there any other books? Obviously, this is your most recent, but are there any other books of yours that you like are your favorites? I know you don't love marketing yourself, but uh let me help you market. What books do you are you very, very proud of that you'd like to put out there, like right now, on the spot for my 30 listeners?

SPEAKER_00 47:28

Typically, like if you're trying to find stuff about me, I'm at spooky underscore sterling on all the social medias that I'm on. I'm off to Twitter now, not doing that shit. No more tweety. Okay. No more tweety. So I'm on Instagram, I'm on threads. My books are available on Amazon if you want to go that route. But I really, really, really like to encourage people to go to the press's websites and to buy directly from them. The presses get a larger cut of the profit that way. I don't necessarily, but Christine is awesome. Uh, Crystal Lake is awesome. Like the others, like all the little presses, Mad Act Media, Joey Powell, amazing. Love them to death. So the more traction I can send their way, the better. And little bonus things, if you order Punk Goes Horror from the TrueBorn website, then that side A, side B thing that you had, it's actually a flippable book at that point. And side B is upside down, like you just flipped the vinyl. I guess she couldn't figure out how to do that on Amazon, but damn it. If you order it from Trueborn, then she gets she gets more love.

SPEAKER_02 48:36

You get a I fucking told on myself that I got it from Amazon, but I did need it very quickly. I don't know how quickly they send it from the press.

SPEAKER_00 48:43

Not fast. Um so that yeah. Not fast.

SPEAKER_02 48:46

I imagine I'm addicted to Amazon. This is a problem. Send me those, like if you can send me the links for those, and then if you're cool with it, I can put it on my social media as well. And then um, I usually do a blog too, so I can do and get you to send me a little blurby blurb about yourself. That way people can look at you and your your handsome nerd face and be like, hey, here, here I am. I'm an author. Check me out. Um, you're now officially an author. You've made it. Are you still a teacher and a track person? Uh you said something about writing a script, so it seems like you've gone beyond just books and you you're doing other things, have other avenues. So, what what is William Sterling look like now?

SPEAKER_00 49:26

I am Captain Sidequest at this point. Um, I am an author, I'm an editor, I'm a screenwriter, sometimes I'm an actor, and my main gig, I work for a large retail store at this point, and I'm the video personality for them doing a lot of their social media stuff. So kind of in line with all the rest of it.

SPEAKER_02 49:50

I did look your name up or William Sterling, and there is another guy that's an actor. I think it's another guy, unless you just like go from or is that you at a different time when that was kind of more burly? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 50:02

No, that wasn't me. I've always been Twig man. No, it's I am slender man.

SPEAKER_02 50:07

You're not that now that we have video, I know that people who are listening on audio can't see you. You're not that skinny. You're killing now. This is a child's watch. It's a schmedium. So um, so I guess my again, that's awesome. We will definitely put all of your info for your books out. Again, I'm very excited to finish this book. I will give you updates once I'm done. My last thing I always ask all of my guests, you know, I'm definitely down to write a book. You've educated me on a few things, but if you can give a little bit of advice to anybody, and if they're writing just any book, it doesn't necessarily even have to be horror, though I think that's fucking awesome. If it's anything, what what are the biggest tips that you would give aside from ones that you've given throughout this podcast so far?

SPEAKER_00 50:49

I'm just gonna really punch home, like, just do the damn thing. So many people like give you that line at barbecues or whatever, like, oh, I've got a book idea. I'd I'm gonna write it one of these days. And they just never do. They sit on it, and they sit on it, and they keep bringing it up every single time you talk to them. But they they never put pen to paper, and that's like the biggest advice, like writing specific, getting your story out there specific, but just life in general, like ass in chair, pen on paper, do the thing. Give it permission to suck for a little while because you've got to get the suck drafts out of the way before you can get to the good draft. But you're never gonna get anywhere with it if it just lives in your head, if it just sits there and you just stew on it forever.

SPEAKER_02 51:33

And life is too fucking short. So just do the damn thing. Do but no swoop. Just do it.

SPEAKER_00 51:37

Right, don't add the swoops.

SPEAKER_02 51:38

Do it in, do it in a different way, not an athletic way in a writing way.

SPEAKER_00 51:42

Yes, there.

SPEAKER_02 51:42

Okay. Well, I appreciate you so much for being here. If you guys have any questions or any follow-up questions, or you just didn't look at my blog and you don't know what's happening and you want to message me, uh, reach out to plot twistolive at gmail.com, Instagram and on Facebook, and I also embarrass myself on TikTok. If you want to cringe at a 40-year-old, go ahead. I don't care. Life's too short. I just did it. Okay. So please reach out. And also please give us reviews on Spotify and on Apple and all of the things because I need it. And you know you want to give me a five-star bitch because it's amazing. So thank you so much for being our very first master of plot twists. I don't know if this is the first time you've ever been called a master, but thank you, Master William Sterling. And this is a new one. Yeah, hopefully it's not the last if you're into that sort of thing. So we're gonna end this the right way. All right, we're gonna do a high five. Still alive and do your evil laugh.

SPEAKER_01 52:41

That was pretty good.