T. J. Payne: Intercepts

Welcome, TJ Payne, author of Intercepts - a fantastically creepy story about a secret government facility that uses a special cocktail of nerve stimulants to increase the psychic abilities of its prisoners. Recently re-released by Crown Publishing (Penguin Random House) - with some beautiful new cover art!

 It's a wonderful conversation. We talk about childhood, the USA, rom-coms and of course... horror fiction!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to another episode 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. Over the summer, I will be flooding this channel with interviews from the past year, including David Sodegren, Aaron Beauregard, Lucy Rhodes, Cathy Cojer, Laurel Hightower, Clay, Chaplin McClaude, Philip Fricassie, Nick Cutterdate now back, and many, many more. Stay tuned for that. Today I'm excited to share with you my interview with TJ Payne, author of Interdept, a story about a secret government facility which uses a special cocktail of nerve stimulants to increase the psychic abilities of their prisoners. It has recently been re-released by Crown Publishing, which is of Penguin Random House. And I'm not surprised about that, considering that this book was originally self-published and has since outsold the majority of Tribe published horror novels. So very well deserved. TJ is a lovely guy. We talk childhood, state of the USA, and rom com. So sit back, relax, and enjoy my chat with Horror Legend. TJ Klain. Okay, so I would I would love to know about where you grew up.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

I grew up in Portland, Oregon, actually the suburbs outside of Portland. Had a really, a really nice, lovely, lower middle class kind of upbringing. But yeah, I grew up in a very, very gloomy sort of environment, weather-wise, always overcast up there.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

What was it? Whereabouts was it? Did you say?

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Portland, Oregon. It's in the Pacific Northwest.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what kind of landscape is around? Is it is it foresty? Is it well? I don't know that area.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Very green. Yeah, tell me. Very foresty. With easy access to mountains and the ocean.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Wow. Okay, so you've kind of got it all there. The landscape, American landscape. Yeah, that's beautiful. So did were you an outdoors person?

SPEAKER_01 2:29

I was very much an outdoors person. Uh I'm an Eagle Scout and did a lot of camping, a lot of backpacking growing up. Uh never owned an umbrella. It was just the kind of place where you just have a red coat.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Yeah, no, I love it. And did you so did you do like campfire stories and stuff like that?

SPEAKER_01 2:50

Oh, we not so much stories. It was more like singing around the campfire or just sitting there watching the fire. I was always, I was never much of an oral storyteller growing up. Uh, and I wasn't around that too much. I was a very internal kid who, for me, I would sit and just stare at the campfire or sit at the window watching the rain. Like in third grade or so, uh, one of my teachers was really worried about me because I would just walk around the playground kicking like one rock and then walk up to it and then kick it again. And I was just in my own head throughout my childhood, and they were really concerned about me. And so they made me like go up to the other boys and ask if I could follow them around and be their friends, which was horrible for me.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Uh that's terrible. That sounds terrible. That sounds like the worst nightmare of someone who's trying to get away in a lot of ways. Were you it when you were going into your own head, what were you what were you thinking about? Were you world building, or was it just you know, stream of consciousness?

SPEAKER_01 4:03

Just kind of a stream of consciousness, just internal monologue. There was a certain amount of world building and just creating scenarios, but I wasn't building stories so much as building words and how to just uh you know it's expressing myself within myself, which I know is a contradiction, but it's just how I process the world was to think about everything I was seeing and experiencing and just very uh full detail.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Yeah, okay. So so was there uh how about in terms of so in terms of when you then followed you know these other kind of kids around, did you find it was it hard to talk to them? Was that what it was? Were you kind of socially awkward? Is that as I was I mean I was when I was a child.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

I was um yeah, I was totally awkward, and uh it's just sort of like growing up, you you learn to manage it, but I've never been particularly comfortable in social situations. I've just sort of learned to roll with it. I I've always been very much an introvert, uh, conversations, people, uh especially group conversations, really drain me. One-on-one, I can I can do for a while because I find it very interesting. And but the dynamic is very draining for me.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

I literally I'm exactly the same. I find that when I'm in a in a group setting, even with people that I've known for a very long time, I lose my identity. I feel like I don't know like how to express myself. It's like, you know, when you go into a group, it's like everyone kind of has their role, and I don't know what my role is, and so I just withdraw and kind of just I guess I just go in. Yeah, like you it kind of sounds like exactly what you're describing.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

That was and that was most of my childhood was sort of lingering on the periphery, uh skulking around the edges of the hallway and not interacting, uh except for one-on-one. But in groups, I didn't know how to interact. And I think that is one of the reasons I became a writer was because you can you can plot out that conversation, you can have a little more control. And I was just in my head anyway, and just building the words that I wished I could be saying, and I think that just led me to writing, that ability to to put it on page, then to edit it and and build it out from there was just just yeah, I get that.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

No, that makes a lot of sense. So, what at what at what point did you actually start doing that? Was it pretty young?

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Always like I've always been a writer from you know in the early days when the teacher would give the class the option of you can do the art project or the essay. I was like, essay, give me the essay every time. Make me write the short story, let me sit here in a corner with my pencil, and I will express myself through words. And I always knew writing was how uh I could communicate with the world, and it would it brought me just joy from a young age, and so it was something I just always knew was it was what I wanted to be doing.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

Totally, and I mean, maybe you're doing yourself a little bit of disservice by saying that writing is just about kind of you can construct the right way to say things because I think uh my impression is of writing is that it's actually it's not really thinking, it's a kind of feeling thing, and you and you actually it just flows easier, right? It kind of like, yes, of course, you're thinking about how would someone say this and that, and you're thinking about plot, but it is also just a way to channel um those thoughts without overthinking. Is that your experience as well?

SPEAKER_01 8:11

Oh, totally, I totally agree that it is like it is an art form, like all other art forms, and all art I feel is just humans trying to express the human condition. Like, what does it mean to be us? Uh, these weird creatures that are aware of our mortality, like that is just this a weird state of existence to be in. Uh and I think humans have always been trying to figure out what that is all about, and that writing and story and is just one of the ways that we try to figure that out and express it to other people.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

When you say like an awareness of mortality, another thing which I have always been very uh well wavering between being terrified and kind of very curious about death. Like, is is was that something that you thought about when you were younger?

SPEAKER_01 9:14

I was a pretty dark kid. And I mean, horror was a very natural outlet. I've always been uh like terrified of death because of the the unknowable aspect of it. I'm very much someone who likes to figure things out, likes to know. Yeah, I don't like 50-50 choices, they make me uncomfortable. Uh and um like death is like uh I don't even know if it's 5050, like it's it's a hundred percent that we can get there, but what is it? I don't know. And like that's terrifying that we know that it's happened, it's going to happen, and that it's happened to people we love and everyone, and but we don't know what it is. This inevitability that is a mystery is yeah, it gets hard to wrap your head around.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

Yeah, so but it's interesting because a lot of people, well, not not everyone, obviously, but death is something that they don't want to think about. They'll have exactly the same thought, and then they'll go, I'm not thinking about it. But it is always interesting with people like you, people like me, the many of us who kind of are scared of it and we don't know what's gonna happen. And we also will confess that we like certainty, but then we're also still kind of drawn to it, even though we know we're never gonna solve it. So, in terms of your like route into horror, did you were you using, do you think, looking back maybe horror as a way to explore kind of big, heavier ideas that maybe you know you you weren't able to explore as a child, you know, it's hard to explore these kind of things or a young person.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

Yes, because I think what I love about horror is it does it it's a genre that can attack issues head on. And it can really get to that heart of what it means to be human, and it's a very transformative genre, which death and mortality is a very transformative thing, and it it's a it's it's a genre that the the character will come out changed on the other side, and that is always fascinating to me, that process of how we change and what that that looks like and what facilitates that. And so that's something that I've always been drawn to horror for.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

No, that's a really succinct way of kind of describing it because transformation, yeah, is such a it's such a key part of horror, and yeah, no one comes out the other if anyone, if any character comes out the side other side of a horror book having not changed, then something's gone quite wrong. Um, and obviously, you know, your most successful book or your most famous book, Intercepts, is you know, is is all it's completely about that and you know, exploring all of that, which is really interesting. So, when how did you come from writing as a you know, just a fan of writing, of just enjoying it, to kind of crafting that and going, I want that to be a career? How did you get there?

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Well, I always knew I always was on this writing track, and for the longest time I thought it would be screenplays and feature films.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

And so the first job I I moved down to LA and got uh you know any jobs I could get in the industry. I was a temp covering the reception desk at uh like some production companies. I was a production assistant, which is the entry-level position, it's the the guy who gets coffee kind of job. And uh I was working a lot with Castle Rock, uh Rob Reiner's company. And Rob Reiner, by the way, um was just a fantastic person.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

Like he was I mean, it's it's so and also just one of I mean, genuinely one of the best directors ever. Like, you know, like it just the the the breadth of what he achieved from j different genres is just insane. So I'm I'm sorry if you know if you knew him, then that I'm really sorry about what happened. That it's absolutely shocking.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

It was it is very, yeah, it was just I I can't even wrap my head around it still. He was really such a nice man, always had hi to be my name. He would always uh whenever he came into the offices and saw me, which is not a common thing for people of his stature to know the assistant's a temp assistant's name. Um, but I will say, so when you walked into Rob's office, or at least at the office that I was working at, he'd have all posters of all his movies around the walls of his office, and there were three behind his desk, and it seemed like these were the three that like he really wanted to feature that he was super proud of. And they were Princess Bride, Stand By Me, and Misery.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

And I think that's a fair, that's a fair set of picks as well. I mean, I love I mean, I think Misery is definitely for me the best adaptation of Stephen King book. I think it's like it gets it perfectly. Um, and so what was that like then as a temp working in the office of an incredibly talented and generous and warm person? Like, did that that must have been very inspiring?

SPEAKER_01 14:44

He told me to keep writing. I made no mystery about what my ambitions were, and he said that writing was one of his favorite parts of the process and encouraged me to keep at it. And so I started writing my first screenplays because I was in this castle rock world uh of you know the Harry Met Sally world. They were doing a lot of romantic comedies at the time, so I started writing with romantic comedies. Those that was the genre that I taught myself to write with. Uh yeah, and so it wasn't horror. I did not initially jump into horror. So rom coms.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Yeah, but yeah. Sorry, go on.

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Oh no, they're they're incredibly hard to write, and yeah, they're they're very challenging. And eventually I started realizing that I was making my rom coms incredibly dark and bringing concepts like death into these romantic comedy stories, and it wasn't connecting with people. And the the real the reality was that um I I married my high school sweetheart, and so the concept of the rom-com and the cute meet and all of that just stopped kind of working for me because I started to realize that romance for me at least was growing together with a person. And you have drama and issues, instead of going through shenanigans to solve it, you sit down and you discuss it as adults do. And the more comfortable I became in life and in that relationship, the more I started having fears. And that is what really drew me to horror. Is like the happier I got, the more it was like this could all this is all gonna get taken away from me because the world's an awful, horrible place that's out to get me. And that is where I really started to express myself with horror.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

That's so interesting. I mean, you're really reflecting a lot of aspects of my own personality because I've been with my wife for 11 years. Um, so obviously not as long as you, but I my thing is that the more I love my wife, the worse I know the end is gonna be. You know, like that's I'm I and it's a it's an intrusive thought, but it is like, so wait, I'm depositing all of this love into a person and I'm gonna get it back eventually. And obviously, I'm not saying it's all bad in the end, but it's just like, what am I doing? I'm building this thing that is gonna fall down and crush me eventually. That's what I feel, that's what my fear is. You know, I don't know how true that is, but that's what I fear. Sounds like what you were saying about.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Yeah, I totally agree. That it goes back to that mortality thing that's always in the back of my mind and sounds like your mind, that it ends. You know, and what it looks like on the other side after the end, we don't know. And that it's that's scary, and so that's something that I've been expressing in my writing, I think, is that fear of the next.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, but actually, I think in some ways, I mean, because uh rom-coms, they're kind of a body genre in the same way that horror is, in the sense that it's meant to elicit an emotional reaction, right? Like it's it's supposed to make you feel things. Um, uh, and so I can see how those that you kind of bridged through that and and how like the mature way that you were thinking about love and life and death has kind of yeah, came over into horror. Because, like you said, that thing of horror is about transformation, it is about confronting the unknown. So, at what point did you decide? Because it's very, by the way, it's very understandable that if you're in that environment, you're gonna be chasing after the thing which is popular at the time and you're trying to make it happen. So, choosing to switch lanes in a way, was that easy or was that hard?

SPEAKER_01 18:51

It was career-wise very hard, but creatively easy. Um that's what that's one of the lessons I've learned through life about writing is that we sometimes do things, we sometimes I've seen this with other writers and definitely myself, of like, well, writing needs to be hard. And so, therefore, if rom-comp hard to write, then that means I'm I'm doing it right. But on a certain level, writing should be easy, that it should be something that flows very freely from you, the story that you're telling, and that you work very hard to make sure that you're telling it the way you intend to, and it's being received by the audience through your intention. And so making that switch creatively, suddenly stories were materializing uh much faster. I actually had a little bit of career success in the romantic comedy world, and what that meant was I was getting sent into pitch on studio assignments for comedies, and I was awful at it. I had like I couldn't deal with the note of like, can it be funnier? It's like, no, I'm not a funny person on the page. I don't like doing the fancy story this way, and so uh switching just made so much sense for me, and it actually the lessons I learned in romantic comedies have carried over and made the war much stronger because all of my stories are about relationships, not romantic relationships, but you know, intercepts it's it's a father-daughter story at its heart. You could strip away all of the you know conspiracy theorist stuff, and it is like it's it's a guy and his daughter, it's a guy who it's their relationship, is what sort of the foundation of it all. And um, you know, she re-enters his life pretty much where the cute meat would be in a romantic comedy. It all this is just how I see story now, and I do feel romantic comedies are when they're good, they're really good, and they are so the best in some ways, yeah. Yeah, pretty iconic. Iconic right. Because you know, it's going back to what we're saying, just about humanity and art is just the human condition. We're trying to express it, and there's nothing more human than our relationships with each other, and so that's yeah, I know, I know that makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

And so you uh it sounds like you definitely in the kind of TV film industry side of things, how what was the what was the kind of what was the feeling that drew you towards wanting to write a novel?

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Failure.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Uh failure.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

I had been chasing the film TV uh bug for a long time and was having there there's a plateau that I had reached that I think a lot of screenwriters reach, where I wasn't in the writers' guild. Yeah. So I didn't have any sort of contract protections. But um getting enough meetings and attention, the producers would be saying to me, you know, hey, we love your writing, we love your voice.

SPEAKER_02 22:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

We can't buy your script because we got something similar. But we have this we have this idea, and we think you would be the perfect one to write it. We can't pay you. But if you write it and we sell it, then you'll get paid and you'll have this great career. And so I was doing a bunch of those, just free screenplays.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Libra.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

One experience in particular where a producer had the rights to a Stephen King short story, and he had a director, and they needed a writer. And so the director had a vision and they teamed us up. And I wrote this director's vision. We worked very closely together. He's a he was a great guy. It was a good creative experience to adapt the Stephen King short story, but it was five months of my writing life. And uh in that time, the producer producer had let the option lapse and it got picked up from somewhere else. And so I wrote this script. It's five months of my writing life. And as I say, I will be dead before I've told every story I was meant to tell. And of course, this was one that was now gone. Couldn't even use it as a sample, wasn't really read by anyone. And that was this real sort of internal break for me of just oh, this is not satisfying. I can't be here writing to make you know one director and one producer and happy at a time. And so then I did start, I had a friend who had self-published a novel and sort of demystified the process for me. So I started carving out time. And those became the next things that I I wrote is I started writing novels just because I wanted to reach an audience.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

Of course. And and so did you self-publish your first book?

SPEAKER_01 24:07

Yes. Self-published it uh in my father's basement was my first one, and it did it it beat my expectations. Um Intercepts was also self-published, actually, all three of them self-published.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

Uh yeah, yeah, of course. Oh, because I knew I I get, yeah, no, of course. I I remember, I remember because I was I was researching authors who would self-publish because I think it's such a powerful talk, horror authors specifically. Very many, very successful horror authors have started out self-publishing. And I think it's probably because the horror community is so strong and so hungry, and they love horror so much that actually, if it's good, they don't care if it's um, you know, one of the big four, you know, publishers have dropped it, or it's someone who's just, you know, bashed it out in their bedroom and then uploading it, you know, via Amazon or whatever. So that must have been good. Was it, was it, um, was it having had all of those, I guess, creative frustrations where clearly your heart was in the right place, but you were getting probably misled or slightly used by you know producers and stuff, which is what they do, let's be honest. Not all of them, but a lot of them. Like, was it really it must have been really nice to kind of take your creativity to the reader and and and see people's feedback, you know, like for the first time, people you didn't know, people who didn't want anything from you, you know, they're just people enjoying your work. What did it feel like?

SPEAKER_01 25:36

It was fantastic. Like, I can't express how life-altering it was, because what I realized after doing that was that while working in Hollywood, working for on screenplays for producers, for this very tiny audience, uh, I had grown to recent writing. Yeah, because it was just I it wasn't going anywhere, and I didn't like the process. And sitting down to tell a story suddenly wasn't feeling good. And then when I was able to write and deliver something to an audience, uh it it felt purposeful again, and that made me enjoy the process again, and I fell back in love with writing.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Yeah, and and the good thing about self-publishing is obviously you can have an editor, and you know, it's probably a good idea, but as in in this in a way, you can write the story you want to write, and maybe it won't be perfect, but if anything, that you know, the the problem with I think that a TV environment is there's a lot of anxiety about even after you've jumped through all the hoops of is the public gonna like it? And therefore all the edges are shaved off where possible, you know, to kind of put it right, you know, and that's not true of all TV, obviously, and film, but it's just like a lot of the time the anxiety of the process is many voices, many cooks going, I don't think that's right, I don't think that's right. And I mean, you work in a writer's room as well, so you'll know, you know, that there is a lot of voices and a lot of contributors. So working on your own and delivering your vision, that is that must be very satisfying. I can understand that.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

And the the irony of the whole thing is that once I had the books out and felt satisfied again creatively, uh, my I went in for one last open writing assignment pitch for a feature film, and I'd done many of these and never gotten them, and I went in for that last one. And I do think there is something about just having that kind of walk away energy is like I don't need this, I have the books.

SPEAKER_00 27:47

Totally.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

I got that job, and then I got that was like the little break in the career I needed on the film TV side, and I got more jobs than got staffed in TV rooms, and so the last book came out in 2020, and the reason I haven't had another book since then is I've been working in film and TV since. And now that I've seen the process, and it's exactly what you're talking about how there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen, you have big-time showrunners and creators and screenwriters who are also frustrated that they're not being able to tell the story exactly as they want to. Uh now pivoting back to books. And because I can see up the ladder now and be like, oh, you know what? I writing in TV is a it's a great job, it's the best job in the world. I also have experienced a better job, books, and being able to be in full control of the narrative uh is just so satisfying.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

Totally. And but I think it sounds like you've got, and obviously you've been doing this for your whole career, but like that being a creative or someone who is a writer is you know, your freelance and you have to hustle. And sometimes you, you know, in order to keep that joy, you do have to pivot. And you do, and you know, the more you learn, I think, to pivot, the less likely you are to become depressed, which is definitely what I think happens to so many people. And like you said, I think really interesting thing about looking up the ladder is you see you can spend your whole life life idolizing or wanting those people's positions, but they've got someone above them who are giving them shit. And you know, it's like it doesn't matter how much you get paid at the end of the day. If you're a writer and you've been a writer since childhood, ultimately you that's where you get your happiness. You need money, but you need to have that joy. Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 29:50

A producer, one one of the really nice ones I've met, uh, once told me that a lesson he learned early on was Hollywood will never make you happy. And that if you want you, if you want happiness, you need to find it outside of Hollywood. You need to find it on your own in your own life. But the it is not an industry that is there to create joy for the workers. Uh and you have to, but you can find joy in the work, and there are many wonderful people I work with, but yeah, those who define themselves by their career success, there's always someone who's giving a note.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

There's always oh god, yeah. Well, you must be, you must, yeah, you must be uh very note hardened, like uh throughout your life. I mean, that's why again, because you know, writing books must be, I mean, it must be dreamy in comparison to because I know in TV the amount of notes is honestly like brain scrambling can be how how intense and how rigorous. And again, and again, and one of the most frustrating things is when you have an idea and it kind of gets you know worn down by notes, and then a month or so later it suddenly pops up again and is this great idea that we've had all along. You know what I mean? It's just it is such a it is a grueling experience, I think. Well, you know, my experience of TV is is very intense in terms of notes.

SPEAKER_01 31:20

Uh same. One uh I like to look at it so with the books, you know, reviews come in and there will always be some one-star reviews. And I can read those reviews, and you know, sometimes they'll they'll pinpoint like bad habits of mine as a writer, and I'm like, I can improve that. I want to improve that.

SPEAKER_02 31:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:40

And often, oftentimes a one-star review is that the reader, uh, through no fault of their own, just wanted something different. Something that I had no intention of providing in that story. And it might be the ending, it might be profanity, who knows? They just wanted something different. And the thing with uh film and TV is you know, with books, I can set that aside and be like, you want something different? And that's great. Uh, if I had given you that, then these people who gave five-star reviews probably wouldn't like it as much. And film and TV, every note is essentially a one-star review that even if you don't agree with, you have to implement.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

Yeah, it's true. That's actually such a good way of putting it. And and and even though, I mean, TV, I think you can romantic anyone can romanticize the idea of working in TV and film. And this is not just writing, acting, anything, but ultimately it is just hard work. Like it, it's like any job. It's not, it's not necessarily fun all the time at all, like you said before. Like, and it doesn't make you happy. But as a writer, it's a fantastic outlet and it's a great way to get paid. So, but tell me, are you are you now working or have you be then been working on on um book uh on a book recently?

SPEAKER_01 32:56

Yes, I am working on another book. Uh, I'm I'm currently in a TV room and that's gonna wrap in March. Yeah, and I I've I've told my reps like I need to get another book out. Uh and so uh that's that's a process.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

Good, good. Well, once it comes out, I definitely want to talk to you about it. But um I want to just uh before we kind of like, well, as we kind of like come into our descent, uh I I want to ask about you know, bringing it back to the beginning of this idea of you feeling like uh I guess a bit of an outsider, you know, maybe being looking at everyone else and maybe overthinking too much, whatever it is, it's going, how do I be a person? You know, what's it like? How do you kind of match being an outsider and then your like enjoyment of horror? I mean, I know because it because horror seems to attract quite a lot of outsiders. And I know you talked about transformation and mortality, but like what else, what else does you know, it how does it speak to you as an outsider horror?

SPEAKER_01 33:59

I think some of the most uh my favorite and influential horror story or books and movies are things like The Thing, uh the Body Snatchers, Stepford Wives, I think is a fantastic book. Uh, and yeah, that this this paranoia that the world is going to turn on you, that that that person you're talking to is actually there to kill you or destroy you. Um and that is that's sort of how I've gone through life, unfortunately, is that with that fear. And yeah, yeah, yeah. That's that that that's where that outsider-ness like leads to horror, is you know, that that outlet. Like this is this this fear I have of people, of the world. And will it be all right? How will you deal with it? Uh, what does that that feel like? Some you know, in many ways, horror is this sort of immersion therapy of uh just taking your fears and and putting them on and seeing how you can wear them.

SPEAKER_00 35:17

Yeah, no, no, uh that that makes sense. And and what's so good about horror in the way is that there's so many people who feel the exact same way and I'm sure are drawn to horror for exact same reasons. And when you write something, you know that you're giving the readers the gift of feeling seen, of going like, oh, someone else understands how I feel. Do you do you are you conscious of like that connection that you have with your readers that you are kind of giving, you're you're showing them that you understand them as well?

SPEAKER_01 35:50

I I try not to live in that space consciously because I think then you start anticipating uh what a reader might want more than uh just living it yourself. I know one thing when you when you're learning to write and they're teaching writing, it's always you know finding your voice as a writer. And in in film and TV, people point to the strongest voices are people like Quentin Tarantino, Aaron Sorkin, Shane Black, and young writers, myself included at a time, felt that having a voice meant you know having wittiest sides in the action lines kind of stuff. But just how you phrase things is your voice as a writer. But more and more I've sort of realized that your voice as a writer is comes from those the million decisions you make in how to tell your story, what characters you're telling your story through, the world you're putting them in. And those decisions I start to feel come from that part of you that in middle school you thought was weird and you were ashamed of, and you squished down because you didn't want people to see that side of you, and you tried to fit in and conform, and uh you know, that was the part that you didn't necessarily like about yourself. And if you find that part of you and write into it, that becomes your and those decisions that you make based on that as a storyteller, that becomes your voice, and the world is so big that there are a million other people who felt that exact same way, that have that same part of them that's a little weird, and they'll feel the story.

SPEAKER_00 37:44

Definitely, and I think that's where the catharsis of horror comes in, and it comes in a lot, I think, through a shame, you know, or like that weirdness that you do try and push down in horror. It really kind of goes, look, we're all fucked, let's be honest, you know, and and and I think that's that's what that I think you summed it up perfectly there. That's a very good explanation. Um, final question is what I mean, you're living, and you can talk about this in in any way you want, but you're you're living your country is uh is definitely going through a crisis in existentially. I mean, you know, some people wouldn't say it's going through a crisis, obviously. Um, what considering you're in that, and it doesn't have to be related to the politics or anything, but what are you kind of scared of these days?

SPEAKER_01 38:30

You know, it goes back to the that kid walking through the halls of school, not sure if like the my friends are gonna turn on me or I'm gonna be bull of the thing, it's the invasion of the body snatchers, and there's this feeling in the United States right now of we don't know who anyone is, we don't know who we are, and like I think that is this this deep simmering fear, uh paranoia of who's whose side is anyone on? What are the sides? Do they have there the the have to be sides? And that you just can walk into a room and you just don't know who is going to turn and be out to get you, and uh that yeah, that we're we're all sort of kind of there's this fear we're all being kind of watched and hunted right now. Um that's yeah, it's very deep and simmering uh amongst everyone. And that that I think that it people are fearing different things, but I do think that a an experience, a feeling that everyone is having and is driving a lot of the division.

SPEAKER_00 39:55

No, I totally understand because I think that the you know, well, I would say that you know, call it the right, is you know, they they wokeness has been the thing which has demonized them, and you know, they you well, it's not okay to be white anymore, and all of that kind of stuff. And that's you know, I guess, I guess on one level you you kind of can understand it, but it but it's just all of these things, and on both sides are just so the it's the tension of not being able to of for whatever reason, it's the butting of heads and people scared now to say what they think because, like you said, no one you don't know what the other person is thinking. They can smile at you and they can nod, but maybe they're thinking different things. And it is uh, I mean, America is such a North America, USA is such a a young country, and it is built upon people who, when they went out there, not only was it backdropped to the horrendous genocide, but also you were basically on the frontier and you were having to kind of build from nothing. So it kind of feels to me from this side, from England, like looking over, I can totally understand that tension, and I'm sorry that it's happening. And I really hope it doesn't happen here, but it feels like it it could, you know, in a similar way. Um, so do when you when you think about these things, does this like you said, I mean, and again, it wouldn't be conscious, so that's flowing, I presume, into when you're writing and you're using your writing as a way of exercising these fears that you have.

SPEAKER_01 41:24

If I can embed those tensions that I feel into a story, and I never try to hit a political point because I do feel um the ones who agree with you wish you went further, and the ones who disagree with you are are going to be turned off. Like, and like you're just I don't feel I mean, some people can do it, it's just not the way I want to sort of find common ground with people and to get change to happen. I want to have the stories be about those fears on a deeper uh level and not on the surface level.

SPEAKER_00 42:07

No, I think that makes a lot of sense. I think it was like Tolkien was always saying, he was always really offended when anyone said, Oh, is it a metaphor? Is it an analogy for like what's gone on, you know, with World War II or anything? It's like, no, it's not, it's none of that. It's just this is just like deep truth of just, and I think that's where horror excels. I mean, you can obviously, in a way, making horror political, you know, there's always avenues to explore. You can explore queerness and identity and all of these things, but ultimately it's just it we're talking about like fundamentals. It doesn't need to be kind of this, yeah, like the superficial kind of like whose side are you on? It's like there are these things, horror should talk about things which unite us in in our fear, basically. Like you said, everyone in America is scared, maybe, but maybe of different things, but they're all scared of a thing that yeah. So I I to I totally understand that. Um, and I want to ask you as my last question, uh, what are you uh what are you reading right now?

SPEAKER_01 43:06

I have multiple books going right now, which I usually don't do because I'm not good at the multitasking. Uh, but it's just I happen to have like one on my phone, one on my Kindle, and one physical book on my bedside. So I this is just how it and so I've been uh busy and rotating through them. So right now I have uh Anya Omborn's uh seed going on. Um love it.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

That was self-published as well.

SPEAKER_01 43:36

That was self-published, I believe.

SPEAKER_00 43:38

Yeah, yeah, it's a great book.

SPEAKER_01 43:40

Isn't that a traditional publisher now? I might have gotten picked up. But anyway, like her career. Yeah, definitely a career. I'm like watching an MEC. She is so good. Um Have you read Brother? I haven't read Brother yet. That's next on the list.

SPEAKER_00 43:55

Brother is so good. It's one of those books where when I read it, because it's quite Of it's talked about very well, and I read it. I thought, come on, it you know, not that I'm a pessimist, but I was I was like, Oh, is it gonna be good? And it is brilliant, it is so good. So I'm looking forward to you reading that. So you're reading Seed? What else you what else have you got?

SPEAKER_01 44:14

Uh Paul Tremblay's Headful of Ghosts.

SPEAKER_00 44:18

Yeah, very good. Very good.

SPEAKER_01 44:20

Yeah, it's got a lot of similarities to Seed, to be honest, uh, which is probably bad to read the video at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 44:28

Uh I should probably they're both classics.

SPEAKER_01 44:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:32

Modern classics, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:34

And then Grady Hendrix's uh How to Sell a Haunted House.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

Oh, so you you're reading big hitters. These are all these are all like hitters.

SPEAKER_01 44:43

I'm I'm catching up. I'm actually a very kind of self-conscious of how slow of a reader I am.

SPEAKER_00 44:50

Um, don't be self-conscious. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 44:53

Uh but my my wife will fly through a book if uh I get a book to adapt, and I I'm I'll start reading it, and a week later I might pass it off to my wife, and I'm like halfway done, and she'll be done in a day. And I'm like, how are you doing this? Don't you have to like have your inner monologue read every line out loud and then start thinking about like as a writer how you would have handled this scene yourself?

SPEAKER_00 45:23

Yeah, that's but that's what it is, though. That's what it is. It's your your but it's like I I think that's true of like I, you know, musicians don't listen to music the way that music fans listen to music. Like you're not, it's a different, it's a different vibe. I mean, I'm quite similar to your wife. I but like except I I don't I read books very quickly, but I don't read constantly. So I'll read, you know, I read a lot, obviously, but I I could read a book in a day, especially if I love it. It's like because I just get obsessed and I start going, if I don't finish it, something bad's gonna happen. You know, I might you know, you know, that kind of slightly anxious thing about I need it to be, I need it to be over so that I can relax. So maybe that sounds a bit stressful, but um, but no, you don't feel self-conscious. I mean, there is a whole thing trend on TikTok of people where they read like 300 books in a year, like which I can't. I mean, all credit to them, but I have no idea how you'd do that.

SPEAKER_01 46:15

I wish I'm so envious. I like it's one of those goals. If I was physically capable, I would. But at this point, I've just sort of acknowledged the fact I read, I think just my style of reading is different. That my wife and I've talked about it with her. It's like, how are you doing this? And she looks at a sentence and just like it beams into her head or something. Whereas I like am reading the sentence, like I couldn't read faster than an audiobook could could read it.

SPEAKER_00 46:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. And then of course, that thing like of the if you love something that you've read, it's like as a creative person, you're like, wow, the how did they do that? And what is the thing, you know, and if you see something that you're that's not quite right, you know, so it's like all of that stuff's going on in the background. But no, that's great. Well, you're I would continue if you don't if you're not a fast reader, just continue reading books like that because those those are the those are the classics. Um, but yeah, thank you so much um for talking to me. It has been a massive pleasure. I I haven't said already, but I I absolutely love your writing. I think it's fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. This was this was wonderful. I love talking, I love talking horror.

SPEAKER_00 47:32

Well wonderful guy. Thank you very much uh to TJ for taking the time to chat with me. I wish him all the success with his re-release of Intercepts, now available in Hardback with the paperback coming out in 2027. Time is tight at the moment for me, um, but I will do my best to get everything out in a timely fashion, all of the interviews I have promised. Um but until next time, thank you very much for hanging out, and I will see you next time for more Horror Legends.