Horror Legends with Inigo Mort
The life and times of horror’s greatest living fiction writers. Weekly interviews with Inigo Mort and your favourite spooky scribes!
Horror Legends with Inigo Mort
Sarah Gailey
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Welcome to series 2 of Horror Legends with me, Inigo Mort. An interview podcast dedicated to exploring the life and times of horror’s greatest living fiction writers. This week I am chatting to the wonderful Sarah Gailey, author of Just Like Home, The Echo Wife, Spread Me and many more! We talk about queerness, eroticism, protest and the queen being saved by a toxic green tidal wave!
Welcome to series two of Horror Legends with me, Inigo Mort, an interview podcast dedicated to exploring the life and times of horror's greatest living fiction writers. Thank you very much for joining me. I've had a very refreshing break. I released my first novel, Angels of London, which is a gothic historical horror fiction novel about a young man trying to find his sister in 1700s London whilst being hunted by a demonic figure. It's a book about queerness, identity, and oppression, and it's 100% a labour of love. This is quite a niche period of history and a niche topic, but one I find absolutely fascinating. My previous books are both short novellas, intentionally so, because as an indie author, the competition is incredibly fierce. So writing short books is my way of creating the best chance of someone kind of slipping my little book between the Grady Hendrix's and Stephen King's traditionally published writers that I cannot compete with. So writing Angels of London, which is a much longer book, is a risk upon a risk of a time very zen about it. It will find its audience in time. Thank you to everyone who read it and for your continued support. Besides that, I have been very busy working behind the scenes on some exciting stuff that I hope to be able to share with you very soon. But to my first guest of this new series, Sarah Gailey, author of Just Like Home, The Echo Wife, Spread Me, and so many more. Sarah's work sits on the boundary between sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and mystery. You'll hear from our conversation that Sarah is incredibly articulate and passionate about writing as a political action, not in terms of political protest or even political in the bureaucratic sense, but the politics of the self, how we experience the world as unique individuals, and how reading and sitting in a place of fascination and discomfort and curiosity can help us shape our world. We talk about the Queen being saved from a toxic green tidal wave, eroticism, sci-fi, and the state of the USA. Typical gailey, I would say. So sit back, relax, give your dog a scratch behind the ear, and enjoy my chat with Sarah Gailey. Okay, well, I would love to know where you grew up.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's a great place to start. Um I grew up in California in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is where I live now. Um I grew up in this town called Fremont that is like or at the time was pretty large in terms of population, but has the feel of a small town because it really existed as a place for people from nearby cities of industry to like sleep. So what we call a bedroom community here. And so I grew up there. Um, I grew up very much in my local public library. My my mom was a volunteer there, and so I would go with her and just roam around feral in the library. And then she also worked for an independent children's bookstore. And so I sort of split my childhood between roaming around the library and being in the back room of that children's bookstore, you know, just inhabiting the boxes of galleys and stuff.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's amazing. So a very were you a did you kind of read whatever you wanted? Was that was that part of it? Like when your library said being feral, like you just any book that you took your fancy, yes, just read. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, and my my family are all huge readers. I have two older siblings, and so I would sort of grab whatever books were around. There was never a sense of um, you can't read that, it's too old for you. And the this is a huge battle I know we're fighting here in the US right now is um, you know, there are people who want to control what literature children have access to. And they claim it's for the protection of the children. Obviously, it's for you know the control of what ideas kids are exposed to. Um, but one of their arguments is like, what happens if a kid picks up a book? You know, if if your third grader picks up a book that has sex in it, what's gonna happen to them? And I can answer that question. What's gonna happen to them is they're gonna go, this is boring and weird, and put it down and go read something else.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. No, that that's so true. Yeah, there's this idea of like, yeah, it's it's brainwashing children with this kind of, I guess, like woke propaganda, isn't it? That's what they call it. Which is, you know, I say I'm all for it, to be honest, you know. Um, so tell me about like the the the kind of the atmosphere in is San Francisco is a fairly well, it's a very kind of liberal place, am I right? You know what I mean by liberal, like you know, that it's yeah, I guess if we were I was using the word woke, like was there was there a sense of being open to lots of ideas when you were growing up as well, was reading whatever book you I would say so.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I I didn't have anything to compare it to as a kid. You know, I hadn't been around the world and I certainly hadn't traveled in the US and discovered how um incredible the diversity and openness of the place where I grew up is. Um, you know, I was very much in the suburbs, uh, so there was less artistic freedom, you know, less experimental art in the place that I grew up, but there was still art everywhere all the time, you know. The the library had like photography and drawing contests, and my elementary school, which was a California public school, um, so you know, all kinds of people had all these efforts to sort of incubate creativity in students, which was amazing and would would get so much backlash today, I think.
SPEAKER_00Just that that encouragement of expression. Absolutely, I would agree. And did you do you remember receiving like positive affirmation from your school when you were being creative? Was it was it the kind of place that would champion you if you did something that was good?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Um, I mean, there there was this one specific thing, the the young authors contest where they would say, Okay, you're going to write a book. And you know, of course, what we were writing was like teeny tiny short stories, but um, you could write whatever you wanted, you'd write a story, you would draw and you know, illustrations for it. The teacher would take it to, you know, the copy shop and bind it with those little plastic spiral bindings. And really, no matter what you did, they would say, Wow, look what you did. This is amazing. You made a book. Um and there was there was all kinds of encouragement like that. I was extremely fortunate in my early education to have a lot of really wonderful teachers who went out of their way to nurture um creativity and and just creative thinking in students.
SPEAKER_00That's so important. I remember when I I one of my formative memories is being told, be having written something and in English or whatever when I was young and gave gave into the teaching, all they cared about was my spelling, and I was a terrible speller, and it really put me off, like just because and it because it was consistently happened. I you know, I've never been diagnosed as dyslexic or anything, but you know, I was spelling words in fantastically creative ways, you know. Like I was like, but I think it's so important having those kind of positive experiences and people encouraging you, in spite of the shortcomings, you're a child. I mean, come on, like you know, but that's that did do you feel that that was quite an important part of you kind of ending up going down a writing path was having those kind of positive experiences earlier on.
SPEAKER_01You know, I would never say no. Um, I think that everything that makes us who we are is important, and certainly those experiences gave me a sense that creativity is important and worth pursuing. Um, I didn't I didn't have a particularly um strong sense as a child that I wanted to be something creative as an adult. I wasn't, you know, sitting there writing these stories in class going, someday I'm gonna do this for a living.
SPEAKER_02No, no.
SPEAKER_01Couldn't be further from my mind. Um, but really, and this is I I think other people who grew up in similar environments will understand what I mean. The the freedom to be bored is really, I think, what led me on the path that I went down because I would have these, you know, long afternoons or or weekends or summers where it was up to me to entertain myself and you know, going to the library with my mom, right? She she didn't set me up with an activity, she would just say, go find something. And that I think is what makes storytellers ultimately is the ability to pursue ideas on your own. And being bored as a kid gave me so much access to that.
SPEAKER_00So if you if you were told to go and do go go off and do something, was there any part of you that was like, I'm gonna watch TV all day? Well, like, as in like did when you because you know, there are people who would do that, you know. I as a child, I probably would have done that, you know. And I guess did did does that mean that you maybe had a kind of if if that wasn't the case, that you had something pulling you towards curiosity in a way that wasn't just oh, I I'm gonna pacify, because boredom can be something that pacifies you, or it can be quite creative, as you're saying.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Um, I I was never an I'm gonna watch TV all day, kid. Um, I occasionally I would do like a movie marathon with my siblings, but really um I think I had an immense gift given to me because I was in my like early, early, early teens during the kind of what I think of as the golden age of early internet. Yeah. Um you know, forums that people were really active on, but they weren't evil toxic cesspits. Um, you know, like free exploration areas, neopets. Oh my god, I was so into that. And and places where you could really connect with other people and explore from a similar posture as the TV all day, but without the passivity. Yeah. So, you know, rather than I'm gonna watch TV all day, I might have an I'm gonna be online all day, which freaked my parents out. They, you know, this was back when like uh 2020 was doing all these specials about like internet addiction, and my parents were, oh my god, are you addicted to the internet? And really I was what I was addicted to was socialization and learning.
SPEAKER_00Totally, totally. Yeah, you were you were it wasn't passive, it's it's personality shaping, you know, all of that stuff is you were exposed to things that you genuinely would never be really exposed to if you didn't have access to it. And I think it's you know that I feel like the obviously the internet has been massively corrupted, but that you know, the I I like to think that there is that spirit in there as well. Like I I guess because I'm like I'm early 30s, so like I do also remember the early internet, but I was probably a bit young for like fully or actually to be honest, my parents didn't let me use the internet for so long. I wasn't allowed a mobile phone, I was I was like super weird, uh the weird kid in that way. So I I guess I didn't have but since then I've actually probably even as an adult have come to the internet uh in a completely different way as a bit of an introvert as well, just socializing online and exploring is fantastic. Um so did what at what point did you kind of marry this kind of sense of curiosity and then also learning a lot, you know, learning about the world online um as part of that and and then also kind of channeling it all into some kind of creative pursuit. Was it writing first?
SPEAKER_01No, no. I mean, I I was uh a dancer for quite a long time.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, I worked in theater, I managed a music in theater school for a little while, and discovered that I have no talent for musical instruments. I can sing fine, but I completely lack the patience and the ability to be bad at something over and over again until you're good at it.
SPEAKER_00Um but hold on, you must be quite good at that because you're a writer. I mean, isn't that quite uh it's quite a repetitive thing, isn't it, in a way, writing?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but it's it's like never been something that I struggle to feel like I'm hitting the note I want to hit. Yeah. I mean, acutely sure. I'll be working on a chapter and I'll be like, this chapter's not working, but it's not quite the same as sitting there in front of a piano and going, I'm gonna screw this out so many times.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_01So before it sounds right.
SPEAKER_00I totally understand. Yeah, well, and of course, it's probably as well that you know you're gifted in writing in a way that maybe musically because you know it's that thing for me of like repeating something to get better at it. There has to be some kind of like, there has to be a spark and a passion that's just natural, you know what I mean? It's not I remember learning the piano when I was younger and just I hated learning scales. But now that I but now that I'm older, I have a piano and I just play it uh just badly, and I like it because no one's telling me to I have to practice and that I have to get a good butt so maybe that's another thing. But tell me about the so the the singing and the dancing, how long did you do that for?
SPEAKER_01Oh gosh. Um I started when I was like 12 and then I I really stopped dancing sometime in my mid-20s. Um and I I mean I still sing, I get a lot more nervous about it now because I'm out of practice. Um, but it is like something that you know my partner will like be out of the house and then and I'll be cooking in the kitchen and singing my little heart out, and then I'll look up and they're peeking around the corner.
SPEAKER_00And you scream in fright and and embarrassment, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And then, you know, I also I I painted for a long time. I I did a lot of sewing creatively. Um, I used to hand sew period accurate mid-Victorian costume, and useful that one is just so much fun. Oh my gosh. Yeah, um, and then when I started writing that sort of has become a sponge that has absorbed most of my creative energy because it's my job and it's something I'm very passionate about. And so I periodically will be like, right, I have to do something else creative other than that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, of course. Yeah, you you I completely understand that. Uh, and is any part of this, you know, what well, did any of these other kind of creative pursuits did they bring you like as much success as as your writing has? Certainly not. No, so so it must be so that must be a very kind of oh you like you said it kind of your it's writing has sucked up a lot of like I guess the energy, but that must have something to do with the the fact that you kind of get a positive feedback because I think obviously we create because just you create and that's what you do, and it's playful and all of that. But there is a part of it as well where you're you're trying to communicate, you're trying to kind of give something beautiful to the world, and you want people to receive it. So, what was it like kind of getting those kind of that positive reinforcement when you know writing started working for you?
SPEAKER_01Oh, completely wild, really, really wild experience. I had been giving editorial feedback to a friend of mine who was writing, and I realized that all of my feedback was getting taken and was very successful, and I decided to try writing a short story of my own. And I wrote it, and that friend who is no longer a friend, um, gave me extremely dismissive negative feedback. Really? Um, you know, from from the place where I'm sitting now, I've revisited the short story that I wrote, and like it's fine, it's not groundbreaking, but it's not shit. Yeah, yeah, it's fine, and it's got some like good terms of phrase, and really it just would need a couple little tweaks to make it successful. Yeah, but this person said, you know, I think some people should stick to what they're good at.
SPEAKER_00Um jealousy, that's all that is, or competitiveness or whatever it is, you know.
SPEAKER_01Very much so.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because then you you know, just you should always lift up even, you know, it's like I was saying in the beginning about children, if they get it wrong, you know, it doesn't matter. You should just encourage someone to do something, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I've read some real garbage in my time for feedback where people are like, give me feedback on this. There's always a way. There's always a way to say, here's what's working, here's where you can push it further to be stronger. You there's no the only reason he did that, and this, you know, I found out some other things later that contextualized it, yeah, was exactly as you're saying, you know, this sort of territorialness that some people have about creative work that says there's only enough to go around, and so I have to push other people out. Um but I stopped writing for months and I gave up for a minute, and then I had an idea and I couldn't let it go, and so I wrote it in secret. And it was a short story, and I immediately sold it and it got published, and things just took off from there, and every really every day I have at least a moment where I go, what the hell? This is wild.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So what did what was the what was that short story? Um, what was the vibe of the short story that you wrote, which you sold first?
SPEAKER_01It was uh pregnancy and childbirth horror.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um it was it was one that I don't think I'd write the same way again today. Yeah um, but it was uh about a woman who gives birth and her baby is born with um their eyelids fused shut, which is not a condition that happens to children in real life. As I was researching it, I was like, let me make sure I'm getting this medically accurate. And then I remember finding out, you know, they can have a little a little piece of skin that goes across, but the whole thing fused. No, so I went, all right, I get to do whatever I want then.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And perfect.
SPEAKER_01And the the doctors, you know, go perform a small procedure to open the eyes and find them full of moths.
SPEAKER_00Oh god. Um that's wonderful.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I I mean, I really liked it. I still really like it when I go back and look at it. Yeah, there's again a couple of places where I'm like, oh, this isn't how I would write this now, but that's it's much less painful to me to revisit that kind of early creative work than it is to look at other creative endeavors of mine that I'm I'm not as proud of, you know. And instead, I look back with great affection on that little brand new writer who was so excited.
SPEAKER_00The seed, the seed that germinated into something great. I mean, it's so let's talk about horror then. Like, are you have you always had always been a kind of current through your life, a kind of attraction to uh kind of more macabre kind of stuff?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, and it's so funny, until like seven years ago or so, I wouldn't have said yes, I'm a horror person because I wasn't very um involved in the conversations of the genre. Yes, I just liked what I liked. But like that that um young authors contest at my elementary school that I told you about, the book that I wrote for it was about um I was very into like I was at a developmental stage a lot of kids are into where they get really into royalty. They were like the idea of like kings and queens because they want to be in charge of everything.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So too.
SPEAKER_01I wrote about the queen coming to visit town, and her limo driver has to save her from a big wave of acid. And there's this big bright green Batman wave of acid, and he blocks the queen and saves her, and then the acid dissolves him into a skeleton, and then his glowing skeleton haunts like a bathroom. And like looking back at this, I think I was in first or second grade.
SPEAKER_00How old is that?
SPEAKER_01That's um I would have been probably seven or eight.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's pretty far out for a seven or eight-year-old. That's cool.
SPEAKER_01But I was so into it. You know, I loved I loved the X-Files, I still do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um my mom and sisters would watch it, and I wasn't allowed to watch it because I'm much younger than my sisters. Yeah, and they're like, You're too little, it's too scary. And I did that very classic thing of no, I won't be scared, I can watch it. And finally my mom got frustrated and sat me down, showed me the scariest episode of the X-Files, which is called Tombs, and it's about a man who can come up through your drain or through your events, and then he kills you and eats your liver. And I was like petrified. But I also went, okay, I can handle it. I can handle it, I can handle it. Started stealing the X Files novelizations off my sister's bookshelves, you know. Um, always, always have loved this and have only in the last decade of my life learned to articulate.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well I I'm I'm very similar. Um and I also found that politically horror, and I mean politically not in terms of voting, but in terms of you know just perspective on life and and people, I think it it really suits my worldview. And it's not nothing to do really with the with the horror, you know. I I think it's much more to do with like the emotion that is brought out in it of fear and the light and the sh and the shade, you know, like of human and the extremes. Do you think that had something to do with it for you? Like obviously it's very hard to kind of psychoanalyze yourself as a child, but was there any other area of your life that you were attracted to, maybe extremes of things, um, stuff that provoked you, you know, in that way?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think you know, the the way that I grew up, um, and the way that I think a lot of people grow up these days, and you know, maybe for the last century or so, is with a lot of encouragement to be separate from the body, to live in the mind and control and be the master of the body. And that's not possible. No, especially for a you know, a little kid. I was I was pretty emotional kid. I wouldn't say outside the norm, but certainly outside of that standard of like be be a brain, and then everything else is the brain's job to manage.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And horror, the same as romance and erotic fiction, invites the reader into their body. Yeah, it it says go in there, feel things in there. And I I've always loved that. Um I find it very powerful. And what you're saying about the way horror, like the politic of horror as a genre is very appealing, I think, is because it it invites the mind and body to be in the same space at the same time, and to say the the things you experience in the world in your body matter. They aren't they aren't even possible to ignore, and they affect everything else. If something bad happens to my body, that matters. And politically, you know, generally and acutely, there is a very conservative idea that if something bad happens to your body, that doesn't matter. And horror refutes that. It says, no, that's that's the first thing that matters.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, totally. Yeah, it's well, yes, it's a it's like a pleasurable triggering of fight and flight kind of thing going on. And it's and especially, I mean, for me, it was it helps, and I don't mean as in I medicate myself with it, but it I definitely think it helps process anxiety and all of these things. It's like a great space to, you know, I have therapy, I absolutely love therapy, but I also think that on your own, just like you said, feeling in your body, uh in your head and your head, your mind as a as a as part of your body as well. But like just as just a just a space of exploration. Like you said, I feel like the control of the way that we have to kind of manage ourselves, it's it's also very nice to just be like, yeah, I'm gonna, I want to live in a world in my head and in my body where like, you know, I'm you know, the the acid wave and I'm gonna and the skeleton and the haunting of the bathroom, like it's so playful, but it's also it just does feel like it's serving kind of a deeper function as well, you know. It's not just yeah scary and depressing or something like that, you know.
SPEAKER_01It's a very pleasurable dysregulation.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, correct. I agree. Um, and so you've always so you naturally, when you started writing, obviously you said when you're seven or eight, it's already, you know, kind of like sci-fi, weird, horror y stuff. And I guess that's kind of like stay true to kind of what you generally write, you know, there it's not it's horror that takes influence from a lot of different places, not in a disparate way, like it works, but it's like you have a lot of inf influences. And I mean, is that true? Is I mean that's my take on it. Do you feel that like that you you like creating original kind of worlds?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. I I generally write just about every book in a different genre, and I don't write the same genre two books in a row. Yeah, so you know, like maybe I'll return to the world of the Pulp Western, but after some time spent really dialed into science fiction or contemporary fantasy. That said, everything that I write has elements of horror. Like there's there's no getting away from that, and it's something I can see as a developing through line of intention through my work over time, where you know, I have these horror instincts, and so horror was showing up in my work early on. And then the more I've written, the more I've gone, okay, wait, I want to do this on purpose instead of it just being a natural sort of extrusion of my brain.
SPEAKER_00Totally. Totally. And actually, that's such a wonderful and liberating thing because it's like a great vessel. And like you're right, there's an instinct for it. But then there's also realizing that horror is incredibly like plastic as a genre. Like it's very, there's so many facets to it. Like it's it's it's probably the most developed kind of set of subtropes of any genre there is. Like it's and it and it and it perfectly maps onto things like sci-fi and fantasy, like the overlap and the Venn diagram of it all. And I love romance as well. And like your books do contain like affairs of the heart and and of and of the body. I would like to ask you about like um sexuality in your books, like, and kind of you. I guess that is a part of your books, and I I'm presuming that's intentional in the same way as it's not just an instinct, it's that's something you want to write about.
SPEAKER_01Very much so. I would say it's it's really the opposite of an instinct. Um, my early writing really doesn't have a ton of on the page sexuality. There's a lot of fading to black. Yes. Um, and that that wasn't an accident. I knew that I didn't have the craft ability to write sex well. Um, it is extraordinarily challenging because you're again, you're inviting your reader into their body in an experience of anticipation of pleasure. And pleasure is distinct and different for every person. What causes uh an idea of pleasure is unique across different bodies and across different brains. And so I was very intimidated by it for a long time. And then, you know, I did a little more on the page eroticism, um, in just like home. Not sex, but uh just a sense of erotic intimacy.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, and after I wrote that, I was thinking about wanting, you know, my next project, and I realized that it it would be erotic horror. When I was conceiving of Spread Me, I was like, well, this has to be fully erotic. It has to be on the page. Um and it was a big craft push for me. It was it was me pushing myself to the limitations of what I could express on the page. Um, and it's been a huge honor to have readers respond to that, some of them with very reluctant arousal. I get a lot of a lot of reader feedback that says, I did not want to be turned on by this. Why was I turned on by it? And I'm like, I don't know, but I must have done something right.
SPEAKER_00No, that's brilliant. It is brilliant. And also because of it's it's a it's a great title as well, because it's it's upfront, but then it's also, you know, it's like, yeah, it's erotic horror, but it's not, it's not necessarily just that kind of erotic horror. You know, it there's a there's a and obviously erotic books can have fantastic plots and and great character development, but this is you know very much like it's quite a seamless blend, I would say. Like, and and I thought it was great. I I really I thought it was great. I thought it was fun as well. Like it feels like you like there is a playfulness in there, and obviously, kind of with eroticism and stuff, it's good to have playfulness in there as well, a bit of playfulness. So, what about the story uh or like the obviously like the sci-fi element? Like, what made you feel like at that point I'm gonna do sci-fi? That's that's the that's my next, you know, adventure.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I've I've worked in science fiction spaces for my entire career. Yeah, um, you know, the Echo Wife is definitely pretty firmly rooted in the sci-fi genre. Um, with this, I mean, it's it's sci-fi erotic horror, right? I mean, yeah, obviously it's uh an homage to John Carpenter's the thing, in my mind, one of the greatest films I ever made.
SPEAKER_02So beautiful.
SPEAKER_01It's so gorgeous. It has so much space in it, it has so much, so much silence, and yet still feels so overbearing. I mean, I could just I'm I won't go off about it. No, it's um but it that felt like my entry point into erotic horror is very naturally through sci-fi horror. Um, you know, the classics of science fiction, horror, and film are very concerned with sexuality and intimacy. I mean, alien, like all of the visuals in that are just screaming sex at you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's all like glistening, you know, everything's like late, yeah, totally. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And that was also the a period in my life when I was really coming into the knowledge um in a in a non-theoretical way, and in just a very like, oh, this I feel this truth in my bones, that uh, you know, far right individuals and movements in my country were backing every me and everyone in my community into a corner slowly by saying, here's what is or isn't acceptable for you to do. It's kind of the um, you can be gay, but don't be in my face about it kind of mindset. And the truth that I was finding myself really connecting with was, oh, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all if you do everything right, if you are the most respectable, acceptable version of a queer person, it doesn't matter at all because they'll still hate you and try to kill you at the end of the day. And my response to that truth was then I'm going to be the thing they're scared of. I'm going to say, yeah, yes. I absolute confrontation. I have done a lot of work on this in myself, but my reaction to you know a heightened nervous system state is very fight. I am I am I am a fight person, and that really put me in that space of okay, then let's see what I can be, let's see what I can do, let's scare these motherfuckers. And I don't know, it was incredibly liberating.
SPEAKER_00Totally. I mean, I I spoke to I interviewed recently, Andrew Joseph White, and if you read You Weren't Meant to Be Human, which is a kind of uh it's obviously in that way, it feels like a fuck you, a really good one, you know. And I think the same with Spread Me as well. And I think it again, horror as a genre which allows for that kind of really potent like political expression, but without it being like a political book. You know, it's not a book about, you know, uh equality and politics and advocation. It's just there and it's to be explored. And actually, it's a really good way to communicate those things without feeling like your people feel like they're being preached at, you know what I mean? Like it's it's kind of like a subliminal, like bodily, again, like it's acting on you in ways that you don't really understand, make you angry, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yes. This is something that I tell readers often, um, because I will get readers with wonderful big hearts who want to be good in the world, and they'll say things to me like, what lesson am I supposed to take away from this book of yours? And the answer is always no. No, no, no, no, no. You're not, we're not, I'm not instructing you. If you want a book that's an instruction manual on morality, there's a whole industry out there for that, and it's called religion. And you can go to any religion store any day of the week and they'll let you in for free and tell you what to do. My books are not to tell you what to do or how to be, they're to let you feel stuff. And that is political. Feeling is is a political thing, it's not action. I would never call it a political action. That's very important distinction, I think, but it is political to feel.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And to have to sit with discomfort is incredibly politically instructive for people, I think.
SPEAKER_00I completely agree. And I think that as well, not everyone has necessarily the means for political action. You know what I mean? It's like it's a very, and it's actually quite a hard thing to describe what kind of political action is about, you know, protesting and you know, going above and beyond. But a lot of people, that's not something that they they have access to for whatever reason. And and so this is a very important middle ground of. I remember when when I I read like Gretchen Falcon Martin's uh book, which was cuckoo, and I just remember feeling I was just first time I'd ever identified feeling angry and feeling uh good and feeling empowered by anger as opposed to feeling like resentful and like like I guess pent up by it, you know, like and it was just such a really I was just I felt great. I I hate feeling angry to be honest, but I think I just hate it because it doesn't often have anywhere to flow because it so feels so hard to penetrate the level of bullshit that is is being kind of thrown at people like you and me. And you know, it's yeah, it's it's just a really great thing. So tell me about what it's like now, now that you really are in a kind of the the white hot heat of craziness in America. Like it it feels like it hasn't ever been this unpredictable, this kind of I don't know, out of feels out of control. Like what is it like for you? As you're very switched on as well.
SPEAKER_01So, you know, must be Yeah, certainly in my lifetime, it's never been like this. Um, you know, I I I hear a lot of people in activist circles wanting to emphasize that there have been moments similar to this one, and I think part of that comes from a desire to recognize that people have always been fighting against the kind of moment we're in. And I respect that very much. I would never um want to elide that. That said, certainly in my experience of life, this feels new. And part of why it feels new is I think the degradation of you know social norms of respectability in politics. Um you know, the as we're recording this, it's been like I think two weeks since the Epstein files were released, and they're supposedly doing some hearings like today in the US. And when you look at those files, you can see this behavior spanning decades um and being really widespread, this exploitation of children. And the thing that feels new to me now is that somehow in the United States, that's no longer a disqualifying act. Like you're still allowed to participate in daily life, you're still allowed to participate in politics, you're still allowed to be president. Like that feels new and is very frightening because I think we're quite reliant socially on the idea of consequence.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Even even coming from an anti-carceral and anti-punishment mindset, which is where I am seated, yeah, um, consequences still matter and in fact are perhaps more important. Natural consequences are more important. And those have been so eroded that there's a question of what even we're for as a society. If we're not here, you know, in the US, some of the things that we've eroded are like ideas of public health and safety, um, ideas of infrastructure, ideas of responsibility to constituents. It's very frightening to see those things erode because that leaves people in positions of power and authority without any sense that they want to do anything good with that power and authority. And it's very scary to say, oh, we've got people with laps of power, and the only thing they seem to want for us is bad. Well, no, it's totally.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I think it's always felt like leadership has always felt for me like, you know, dignity, but we all know that, you know, no one's perfect. It's not obviously everyone who's ever led, they're human, they're imperfect, they've done things that I'm sure if we're exposed would have at another time not allowed them to be elected. And that's probably stupid. But at least there was this sense of like a role model of someone who was, you know, understand the gravity of what's going on, understand how everything's connected, and just and my biggest thing as an English person looking at America is we've been so reliant on American culture for so long. And obviously, England and Britain does have a very strong kind of cult the cultural roots and creatively and all of that, but it's really it's really hard to see America who seemed like a did seem like a friendly, big, friendly older brother, basically, kind of just turn into this kind of yeah, like rampant narcissistic freak. Like it's like I think for the whole world looking at it, it's like there's loads of like crazy countries, obviously, with crazy dictators, sorry, not countries, but crazy dictators in other countries. But America is just the shift, the breakneck shift away from that dignity towards like just not giving a fuck, really, is what it is. And that must be very scary in a place that already feels and has always felt like a bit of a a the boiling pot. You know, there's a lot of tension in America. It must be it must have really feel like it's come to the surface in a big way for you.
SPEAKER_01It feels, I think, not dissimilar to um the experience of having uh an a parent who's an active addict.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, like you've you've known this person and they've been kind of in charge of your life for a while, and all of a sudden they're acting really different and scary and dangerous. And one very fortunate thing in the US is that I'm trying to think of how to how to express this best. This part isn't the fortunate part. Um communities in this country have experienced this country very different ways over the course of its entire history. And there are some people for whom life in America has always felt for them the way it feels for the majority of us right now. Um, there's been some equalization under rising fascism in the US that has been activating for people who have never experienced America as an oppressive force. And the people who have experienced America as an oppressive force for a long time have experience that they're able to meet this moment with. And so people who haven't experienced America in this way throughout their life have a really rich resource to observe and learn from in the like huge well of knowledge that belongs to communities they haven't been part of in the past. It's that feels like a very Baroque way of saying, you know, hardship is drawing a lot of people together right now in America who have previously been very artificially separated. I mean, this is like a whole other podcast worth of thing, but just the history of housing legislation in the United States was explicitly designed to segregate communities and give them experiences of a totally different country. In the city where I live, Oakland, there are communities that have never been properly served by our infrastructure, that have never been regularly serviced by fire and trash collection and like municipal services because they were intentionally segregated by housing legislation and then left to rot. And the people in those communities came up with ways to keep the communities alive and vibrant without the support of the municipal services they should have had. Where there are other neighborhoods that have like. You know, municipal services coming out their ears, that the city pours money into the schools. And those are areas that were intentionally legislated to have a certain type of person live there. Um, those communities are coming together in a way that I have never seen in my lifetime, in the interest of protecting everyone.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And that is really beautiful. I see people who, you know, two years ago would have been saying, well, I just don't see why, you know, people have to act like race is a big deal. Um, those same people I'm seeing now educating themselves on how to protect and fight for their undocumented and unhoused neighbors, and learning how to put themselves in physical danger to protect people who they who were invisible to them a couple of years ago. And so there is a really lovely way in which, as scary as things are, people are finding ways to work towards something different. And that doesn't go away, you know, 10 years from now, um God willing, we will be in a different political climate in the US. But the people who fought today are going to remember what it's like to fight, yeah, and remember what they're working for and protecting, and will remember the the feeling of standing up for something. And I think that is yeah, that is really beautiful.
SPEAKER_00It's true, it's true. And I also I have to say, I had to kind of check myself a little bit when I was getting angry about the ice, uh, the the whole ice situation because I started getting, I noticed, very angry when I was seeing white people being killed. And I'm and I I acknowledge my bias. Obviously, in America, people of color are being killed by police unlawfully and have been done for ages. And it is it's it's okay to acknowledge that it's a wake-up call to go, it's no, it's not really about that anymore. It is like you said, it's about fascism. It's we're not with the artificial separation of race and all of these things, obviously not artificial, but you know what I mean. Like just that the shared experience now, because we realize that the indiscriminate how it's this hate is indiscriminate, it seems, unless you're on their side, which is their side is so narrow. I mean, that's the thing. It's like what we I feel like they just they're narrowing down safety in their eyes. And I believe, I'm sure in 10 years, people remember, like you say, well, it feels like and win is not the right word, but when it when it when something changes and something better happens, I remember in the UK when we had uh lots of like uh you know blue-collar worker strikes, mining strikes, and there was Margaret Thatcher who was very domineering prime minister. And when she got booted out, there was such a sense of jubilation, freedom from it. And I'm sure that will happen. Obviously, it's gonna happen for you guys.
SPEAKER_01It's it's a side and you know, we're well, and you know, one of the best things about Margaret Thatcher, I think her her real um shining accomplishment is that she fucking died. And that's gonna happen for us too, you know.
SPEAKER_00I know, I know, and it is a terrible, it's not terrible at all, but it's like it's terrible in my body and my mind that I I wake up sometimes hoping to look at the news and see that headline, you know, and just go and just feel like and probably shout for joy, honestly. That that I don't want to be that person who shouts for joy when someone dies, but that's that's the way it is, you know. That's how I feel.
SPEAKER_01You know, I think people set themselves up throughout their lives to have their deaths responded to. There are people who I have known who have lived very isolated lives, who intentionally try not to make connections with other people and who've passed away, and their death has gone largely unnoticed by their community because they don't really have a community. And there are people who I know who have lived, or who I have known, who've lived incredibly generous and kind and thoughtful and engaged lives, and their deaths are grieved as a wound in their communities. And then there are people who, when I found out that they're dead, I have high-fived my friends and gone, congratulations, that person's gone. I the city that I live in has an incredibly robust culture of celebration. And I know how I'm going to find out when it happens for my country, and it's going to be the noise. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I know, I I hope so as well. I mean, I feel it's unfortunately, I fear for England that we're kind of behind the curve by four years from you. I feel like because we're we're getting like sec, well, Trump wannabes basically here. And and I think I'm I'm actually trying to work out at the moment how, you know, we're talking about action. Do you have any advice actually just for me in general about do you know anything about how you can be political, act politically active, you know, and not necessarily, you know, I don't necessarily want to like join like my party, you know, like the party I'd vote for and like campaign for them. I know that that's what I should do, but just something maybe a bit more kind of grassroots, you know.
SPEAKER_01I will say I am uh fairly uneducated about local level UK politics. So this advice may not apply. No, generally, this is what I tell people in the United States and Canada, um, which I know marginally more about. I would say the thing to do is get involved in as local as possible politics. So in the US, we say try to join the school board or just show up to school board meetings, show up to city council meetings, um, because so few people do. And that means everything you do, every action you take on that level will have a bigger impact. You know, showing up and to, you know, in the US, voting in a presidential election is impactful and important, and we should do it. And if anyone's listening to this, do it. Don't, don't not do it. Um, but there is a sense of like, well, I'm a drop in the ocean. Yeah, I'm not making a huge impact. Local, local, local politics, you will make a huge impact. You'll feel it, and you'll feel that empowerment, and that will help you go do more things. Um, my other piece of advice, and I think this works in any environment, is to find your thing and go as hard as you can at that thing. I knew someone once whose thing was Yemen. Um, there were there was a lot happening in Yemen at the time, a lot of which was either backed by the US or directly uh US action. Yeah. It's hurting Yemeni people on many different levels. And she was she was just an entirely focused on Yemen and did everything she could to be vocal about it, to you know, make politicians' lives unbearable if they supported US activity in Yemen and ended up getting connected with people on a very high political level because they said, You seem to be the person who knows the most about Yemen. So let's talk. And she was able to make some US policy shifts happen.
SPEAKER_03Wow.
SPEAKER_01I know people who have done this for um literary censorship in the United States. A very dear friend of mine has made that the focus of her activism. And first of all, you can have a lot of impact, right? You you can become the person who knows about this issue that you choose and drives that issue. You can you can make a difference in that one lane. And it also provides a direction for all that emotion and all that feeling in your body when you see ice raids and you feel that anger, you then go and say, Who am I gonna yell at today about book banning?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And you know, I'm not saying this is what she does, but you that's what you can do.
SPEAKER_00It's channeling, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Direct that that force, it gives you focus and it helps keep you from getting drowned in all the vast, huge everything that's happening all the time.
SPEAKER_00Totally, totally. The the huge, vast everything, all-encompassing, it is just it that's the problem, is it is and uh not you know, to bring it weirdly back to horror, is that for me, it's a lot of the time it is that I I feel impotent, you know, and it's like so I have this intense experience where I don't feel impotent in this space, and I get to feel things, and I can kind of feel difficult things, and because the world seems to be inflicting so many difficult feelings on me that I just feel like I can't control, and so it's like, yeah, it's just that, but then putting it into a kind of yeah, political action and activity, and and that's what I want to try and do because I feel like at this point, seeing America, I could not I could not deal with seeing the equivalent of ice on the streets. Like the problem for me is when I was watching like TikToks of the ice thing, I felt maybe a bit like you were describing this bite. I felt like if they were outside now, I don't know what I would do. And I'm not saying maybe I would have been a coward and maybe that's fine if people have got guns, but like maybe I would also have run outside and got in their face and got shot. You know, I don't I don't know. And I I don't want it to get to that. But I maybe I'm maybe I can't, you know, won't be able to affect change, but I need to try, like you're saying, and I think everyone does, you know, in the world.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Well, and I will say, uh I I'm not really one for optimism, um, but I will say authoritarianism and fascism are short-lived because, as you observed earlier, they narrow their scope of safety over and over and over again. A big part of that project is wealth consolidation, especially in the US. They're just trying to ride out as much time as they can to put as much money as they can into the hands of their allies.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But because fascism and authoritarianism are loyalty-based, they cut, they cut away pieces of themselves. And if the UK is four years behind the US, I don't think the US is going to be stably fascist for that long. It's it's just not plausible. You can already see it's spinning out. Um historically, what we've seen is that you know, some fascist authoritarian regimes have their rise and then their collapse. And other countries are looking at fascism during that time and going, This seems tasty. Do I want some of that?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And if the timing is is right, your country may see what happens to my country, which I think will not be good, and go, ooh, don't cautionary tale. Maybe we don't want to go down that road. Instead, we should oppose that and respond to it vehemently to try to eliminate it from our possible futures.
SPEAKER_00Totally.
SPEAKER_01It is it is possible. I'm not saying that I hope for it, but it but it is a possible outcome.
SPEAKER_00No, I love it. And also a good optimistic um way to end this interview. And I wanted to finish finally on asking uh, do you still enjoy reading? I'm assuming yes. And and are you reading anything that you're enjoying right now?
SPEAKER_01I do still enjoy reading. My reading capacity is much diminished. I used to read, you know, minimum 150 books a year, usually closer to 250.
SPEAKER_02Oh, you don't know.
SPEAKER_01And it's much diminished now. I just have you know, I've dealing with burnout, I'm dealing with rising fascism in my country. I'm like I just have a lot less focus.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, of course, of course, yeah. Um, but yeah, but you you are reading. You are reading around. Yeah, and that's amazing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm always reading something. Um what have I been reading recently? I've been uh re-engaging with Donna Tart, actually, who wrote, you know, some of the most famous books of our century. Um, and right now I'm in the middle of the gold finch and having just a great time with her use of language. I'm really getting immersed in that. And um I also will always read whatever latest thing has come out from Allison Rumfit. Um, I think Alison Rumfit is one of the most confrontational voices in horror today and has an unbelievable amount of skill for creating intense, dreadful discomfort that I cannot walk away from. Yeah, it's like I'm reading, whenever I'm reading an Allison Rumfit book, I'm sitting there going, I hate this experience. I will not stop, I need more. And I think that's really something else.
SPEAKER_00That's that's no, that's great. I mean, I yeah, I love Alison Rumfit. It's some of the most, yeah, definitely some of the most uh enjoyable, yeah. You've said it perfectly, enjoyably uncomfortable experiences reading the book. Um but it's been really, really very lovely to talk to you. Um Thank you.
SPEAKER_01This has been wonderful. Thank you for making time and navigating the time difference with me. This has just been such a treat.
SPEAKER_00What a fascinating conversation. It's a real privilege to chat with Sarah. Her new book, Make Me Better exclamation mark, is available for pre-order now. Expect greatness, as always, I'm sure. Join me for more adventures through the universe of horror fiction in season two, coming up shortly. Until then, thank you for joining me, and I'll see you next time for more Horror Legends.