0:00

Hey, it's Latif from Radiolab. Our

0:02

goal with each episode is to

0:04

make you think, how did I

0:06

live this long and not know

0:08

that? Radiolab. Adventures on the

0:10

edge of what we think we know. Listen

0:13

wherever you get podcasts. You're

0:22

listening to all of it on WNYC. I'm

0:24

Kate Hines in for Alison Stewart today. This

0:27

year, prolific and acclaimed horror writer

0:29

Steven Graham Jones finished his Indian

0:31

Lake trilogy. It's a series of

0:33

slasher novels that focuses on one

0:35

alienated teenage girl. So for our

0:37

April Get Lit with Olivet Book

0:39

Club event, we decided to read

0:41

the first novel in that trilogy.

0:43

It's titled My Heart is a

0:45

Chainsaw, and it follows Jade, a

0:47

half indigenous teenager living in the

0:49

small town of Prufrock, Idaho. Jade's

0:52

mother is absent, and her father is abusive.

0:54

She doesn't fit in with the other kids

0:57

at school, and she struggles with suicidal ideation.

0:59

Her only comfort lies in an

1:02

unusual place, slasher movies. She can't

1:04

get enough of them. So

1:06

when real life people start turning up

1:08

dead around Prufrock, Jade becomes convinced that

1:10

a slasher has come to town, and

1:13

she's a little bit excited about it. After

1:16

all, it might mean revenge on all the people

1:18

who have wronged her, especially the rich new developers

1:20

who have moved in across the lake. Jade's

1:23

slasher fantasies really come to a head when

1:25

she meets a new girl at school, Letha

1:27

Mondragon. She has all the

1:30

qualities of a final girl. That's

1:32

the girl who survives at the end of a horror

1:34

movie. Jade thinks that

1:36

if she can just train Letha for

1:38

what's coming, the slasher plotline will play

1:40

out just as she suspects. But

1:43

as the killings continue, Jade starts to wonder

1:45

whether having a slasher in town was really

1:47

such a good thing after all. My

1:50

Heart is a Chainsaw is the first novel

1:52

in the Indian Lake trilogy, and earlier this

1:54

week, author Stephen Graham Jones joined us in

1:56

front of a packed crowd at our Get

1:58

Lit event. hosted by

2:00

all of it and get lip producer Jordan

2:02

loft here is part of her

2:04

conversation with Stephen Graham Jones So

2:12

on page 174 of this book,

2:14

you write horror is not

2:16

a symptom. It's a love affair. When

2:19

did your own love affair with horror begin? My

2:21

love affair with horror, man, that's a

2:23

good question. I think it, I think I'm about

2:28

it's a long story. Is that okay? Please. It's

2:30

maybe a trilogy. I don't know. I'm

2:34

about three, four years old and I had a, I

2:37

had a stepdad at the time who was really

2:40

into being not just the

2:42

music of Rod Stewart, but into being Rod

2:44

Stewart. So he grew

2:46

his hair out, tried to, he had brown hair, he

2:48

tried to dye it blonde like Rod Stewart. It went

2:50

kind of red, which is probably where Jade gets her

2:52

hair stuff from. And on Sundays

2:54

when he didn't have to work at the jean

2:56

store, like selling blue jeans, he

2:59

would take me out in his teatop transam

3:01

on highway 20 between big spring

3:03

and Midland Texas. And we just

3:05

zoom back and forth 140, 150 miles

3:07

per hour. And I'd stand in the passenger seat and

3:09

hold his tall silver beer can. And, and

3:12

it was, it was a great

3:15

time. We're just floating. And one of

3:17

those times he took a right that

3:20

I had not seen before and took us to

3:22

a Kalichi pit in West Texas. We have Kalichi

3:24

pits, which are these big chalky like quarries, I

3:26

guess you would call it. Kalichi

3:28

is a white chalky substance that doesn't

3:31

get wet. So it doesn't turn into mud. It would

3:33

get slick, but it won't, won't turn to mud. So

3:35

we use it for road beds. So

3:37

all over West Texas, Texas, these, these big

3:39

white holes in the ground and it's where

3:41

people go to throw their trash and everything.

3:43

And you always hear that monster coyotes live

3:45

in there. And he took me up to

3:47

the lip of this one. It was a really big one. Probably had a 60

3:50

or 80 foot drop. And, and

3:52

he like held my shoulder when

3:54

I leaned over, you know, get that weird feeling. And,

3:57

and then he said, watch this. And he handed me his beer.

3:59

and I held it in both hands because it was

4:01

so big. And he pivoted on his right foot and

4:04

dropped down off of that. And

4:06

I distinctly remember standing there crying and

4:08

crying because I'm three or four years old.

4:11

What am I going to do? I can't drive a Trans Am. And

4:15

soon enough, probably about eight or 10 minutes later,

4:17

he taps me on the shoulder. He can't stop

4:19

laughing. It turns out, all the high schoolers knew

4:21

this, that there was a place

4:24

on that cliff face that if you stepped off

4:26

and did it just right, you could grab on

4:28

about 10 feet down with your hands and

4:30

then walk over and come up a slope. And you

4:32

played jokes on people that way. So he

4:35

played that joke on me. And I had

4:37

an easy mark. I

4:39

was three or four. And

4:42

I think that is when I got hooked

4:44

on horror because I had that spike of terror followed by

4:46

that wash of relief. That's what you're

4:48

always looking for in horror. I

4:51

don't think people come to horror because they

4:53

want to be shriveled up in terror.

4:55

They come for an affirmation that they're

4:57

alive after the terror. And

5:00

that's what I got when I was that age. Is

5:02

that why Jade comes to horror too? Jade,

5:05

she's an outsider in her family, at her

5:08

high school, in her community, in all of

5:10

Idaho. She's been left

5:12

out in the cold by everyone. And she

5:14

has to find something to insulate herself. And what she

5:16

finds is horror films. And so she

5:18

wraps those around herself. And they become

5:20

her lens by which she processes the

5:22

world. That's how she understands the world

5:24

is through slashers. I

5:26

was interested too in your acknowledgments.

5:28

You thanked a particular video store

5:31

clerk in Texas in the 80s

5:33

for letting you guys rent some

5:35

horror movies. How would

5:37

that scenario usually go? And was there a

5:39

particularly memorable one you remember renting and having

5:41

an impact on you? Yeah, I mean, renting is

5:43

a kind word for it. She would actually smuggle us. She

5:46

would smuggle us six. And if we had him back by

5:48

10 in the morning, we didn't have to pay for him.

5:50

That was wonderful. But

5:52

yeah, the one that I remember

5:55

watching the most times is Friday the

5:57

13th, part 4. If You all

5:59

know that, that's where it looks. Tommy Jarvis takes a

6:01

machete, him shots an adjacent heard and

6:03

we would all chant in the just

6:05

one to counting other machete strokes and

6:08

am and where we would watch. Those

6:10

was my friend had our house way

6:12

on the trees and a separate grades

6:14

from that house and his dad at

6:17

sort of old ready couch, little thirteen

6:19

and Stevie in a Vcr and so

6:21

he and his wife with them, house

6:23

and as kids would go out there

6:26

and you know what, Michael, Jason, Friday

6:28

and about to in the morning. This.

6:31

Dad would. Not.

6:33

Like clockwork cause it was predict what

6:35

wouldn't be scary but he wouldn't steer

6:37

to Freddy glove. Freddy was in the

6:39

merchandising by them and he would come

6:41

out and stretch that gloves on the

6:43

metal door of the garage. and by

6:45

that time we probably watch like three

6:48

or four slashers. We're pretty jumpy and

6:50

we would just die about the side

6:52

door that garage and run through the

6:54

darkness. And I think that's why I

6:56

got addicted. Divorce was running of the

6:58

darkness, tears coming back from eyes but

7:00

smiling at the same time. and I

7:02

think that's what the. Slasher is made of.

7:04

It's made of like a coin flipping. That's

7:06

terror and and last for a scream and

7:08

allowed to scream. Alas and that that's where

7:10

I got hooked on the and also pretending

7:12

to have one hundred a chainsaw. We're.

7:15

Only safe from him. If.

7:17

We could make it to the creek and jump

7:20

in and stay underwater and so that's how day

7:22

that I used a safe from liquids. When

7:25

you decided you're going to write this

7:27

sort of oh my, says Slashers. What

7:30

were some tenants as slasher films? the

7:32

slasher genre that you knew you wanted

7:34

to have in there, and what were

7:36

some you thought you wanted to challenge

7:38

or a band or get rid of

7:41

altogether. one thing i wanted

7:43

to get rid of altogether was like

7:45

the disposability a women's bodies because that's

7:47

like permeates the whole slasher landscapes and

7:49

and then air and or was comfortable

7:51

with that and so that's why us

7:53

the victim pool in my heart is

7:55

a chainsaw as largely these media tycoon

7:58

to earth sixty years old the

8:00

opposite of a high school cheerleader, I guess.

8:02

And I also wanted to

8:05

come at our kind of collective notion of

8:07

the final girl, because ever since probably, I

8:09

don't know, Black Christmas, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the

8:12

final girl through all these retellings

8:15

has been put on a higher and higher

8:18

pedestal such that her

8:21

utility to us as an audience

8:23

has to me kind of gone

8:25

away. I think the purpose of

8:27

the final girl is to provide a model for how

8:29

we can push back against bullies. We're

8:31

supposed to be able to step into that identity

8:34

and push back against somebody at work or

8:36

a parent or an actual bully at school

8:38

or whatever it is. But

8:40

when the final girl is

8:43

a scholar, athlete, beauty queen,

8:45

kickboxer, everything, and she bottle

8:47

feeds kittens when she's perfect

8:49

in every single way, then

8:52

she becomes a space we no longer

8:54

feel that we can rise to and

8:56

inhabit. And so I wanted Jade to

8:58

be someone who is both

9:03

subscribed to that notion of the perfect

9:05

final girl such

9:08

that she thinks she can never attain that, but

9:11

she's got the heart of a fighter. And

9:14

that meant a lot to me. To

9:16

me, a final girl is not about how you

9:18

are on the outside. A final girl is what

9:21

you got inside of you. And so that was,

9:23

if I wanted to argue anything in My Heart

9:25

is a Chainsaw, other than slashers are great, it

9:27

would be that the

9:29

final girl is inside you and everybody has

9:31

one. But what's so interesting is

9:34

also in reading your acknowledgments, Jade wasn't originally

9:36

in the first draft of this book.

9:38

She came later. So what

9:41

was your initial idea about what this book was

9:43

gonna be and when did she come to you? When

9:46

I wrote My Heart is a Chainsaw the first time, it was called

9:48

Lake Access Only. I wrote it in 20, near the end of

9:51

2013, maybe it was 2014. And

9:54

it kind of was, I wrote

9:56

it because I couldn't stop reading Jeffrey Eugenides

9:58

novel The Virgin State. Suicide, which I think is

10:01

like one of the two best novels of the 90s,

10:03

the other being American Psycho

10:05

probably, and not surprisingly.

10:08

But I

10:11

would always come out of Virgin Suicides

10:13

and think, you know, that was pretty fun, but wouldn't

10:15

it be more fun if somebody had a machete? And

10:19

so I finally wrote what I thought was my

10:21

version of that, and it didn't

10:24

work, I don't think. And it probably didn't

10:26

work because Jade was not there yet. The

10:29

narrator was actually a little kid in an

10:31

iron mask, which doesn't make complete sense. And

10:34

so I put it on a shelf, and I

10:36

wrote a lot of other books. I came back to

10:38

it in about probably the end of 2017, maybe early 2018, somewhere

10:40

around there,

10:42

because I knew that the

10:44

Indian Lake was there, Terranova was there, Proofrock was

10:47

there, and I had this sheriff who was basically

10:49

modeled on Slim Pickens in the Howling, and

10:52

I thought I can build something here. And so because

10:56

I had no idea where this book could possibly

10:58

go, I started after

11:00

a big massacre. That

11:02

was this draft I was doing from the ground up. And

11:05

so there's a pier jutting

11:07

out into the lake, and there's bodies floating

11:09

face down in the water. It's July 5th.

11:12

And I was standing there writing

11:14

it all down, trying to get it done right.

11:17

And then it really was weird. I've never

11:20

had this happen. There's

11:22

a moment in Apocalypse Now, Martin Sheen, where

11:25

he's in his camo paint. He stands up

11:27

from the water real slowly. You all remember

11:29

that? And it's on the cover of the

11:31

poster too. And

11:33

I feel like that's what Jay did. She stood up,

11:35

and she had a notebook in a pen. She was

11:37

writing a book that was going to be her ticket

11:40

out of Proofrock. She was going to document this massacre

11:42

and solve the mystery of it. And

11:44

so that's how it went for about a year, year and a

11:46

half. I wrote so many different versions of it. And

11:49

I would give it to friends, and they would

11:51

say, back then it was three parts.

11:53

Jade narrated the first third. Sheriff

11:56

Hardy narrated the second third. Leta Mondragon

11:58

narrated the third third. And

12:01

I would give it to people and they would say, I

12:04

really liked it when Jade was talking. When

12:06

these other people started talking, it got a lot more boring.

12:10

And that's, you don't want to hear a lot more boring because that

12:12

means it's already boring in the first place. But

12:15

that told me that Jade was probably the center of this.

12:17

And so I went back and I made her the center

12:19

of it. And surprise, surprise, it worked. Why

12:22

is she so convinced that she could never be the

12:24

final girl? She doesn't think she matches

12:27

up with the

12:29

attributes the typical characteristics of a final girl. She

12:31

feels like she's been sullied. She feels like physically

12:33

she doesn't fit that mold. She doesn't feel like

12:35

she has a pure heart. She wears way too

12:38

much eyeliner to be a final girl. But

12:41

when she meets Lisa Mondragon, she

12:44

sinks immediately. Oh, yeah, that's it.

12:46

That's our final girl. This is the

12:48

new girl that's come to school. What

12:50

is it about her that makes

12:54

Jade almost a little obsessive? Yeah,

12:56

Lisa Mondragon, she's a daughter of Terranova. She's

12:58

a daughter of all these media tycoons who

13:00

have moved to this idyllic little lake in

13:03

the wilderness, as they would call it. And

13:07

Lisa Mondragon is a scholar, athlete, princess,

13:09

beauty queen, kitten, bottle feeder.

13:11

She is perfect in every possible way.

13:14

And so Jade identifies her immediately. You

13:16

are the final girl of not just

13:18

my dreams, but of a collective genre's

13:20

dreams. And how do you come

13:22

up with a name like Lisa Mondragon? And there are

13:24

other great ones too. There's nicknames like shooting

13:26

glasses. There are kids named Cinnamon and

13:28

Ginger. Like how do you go about

13:30

naming your characters and what are you

13:32

trying to achieve with those names? Especially

13:34

with someone like Lisa, who's a forehand to

13:36

the story. Cinnamon and Ginger actually comes from my wife.

13:38

When we first met 30 years ago, she said if

13:41

she ever had twins, she's going to name them Cinnamon

13:43

and Ginger. And so

13:45

I didn't know they were going to be so important in the trilogy.

13:47

I thought it was just throwaway names. But

13:49

Lisa Mondragon comes

13:52

from two people I knew in high school.

13:54

One of my friends' girlfriends was

13:56

named Leitha and she was pretty tough. And

13:59

I had an idea. I knew a dude named

14:01

Tony Mondragon. He had a really fast 1970 long

14:04

bed truck. And I really liked that truck, so I really

14:06

knew his name. And

14:08

I always thought it was, I grew up with

14:10

people with really cool names. I grew up with

14:12

a girl named Stone Cipher, a guy named Lawless.

14:14

Like people had so much, when you're a Jones,

14:17

you have a lot of name envy. You know?

14:21

You seem like, just even in this conversation,

14:23

the amount of references you've made to movies

14:25

and films and stuff from your own life,

14:27

it seems like you are just pulling from

14:29

everywhere. Is that a big part of your

14:32

writing practice, is also reading and watching and

14:34

taking from other things? Yeah, you know,

14:36

somebody asked me a few years ago, they said, tell

14:38

us about the landscape you grew up in. And the

14:41

only answer I could come up with was MTV. I

14:44

grew up in a media landscape, like a lot of us.

14:46

And so novels, comic books,

14:48

films, television, action figures,

14:50

all that, those are my landscape.

14:52

And so I think when I

14:54

do use those as explanatory models

14:56

or whatever, it's not that I'm

14:59

reaching for them, it's that they're the first thing

15:02

I touch when I reach in my head. Yeah.

15:05

Before we get to Jade, before we

15:07

get to Lisa, we have this incredibly

15:09

cinematic opening sequence with these two, this

15:12

Dutch couple, who decide to go for

15:14

a swim. And we know immediately that

15:16

is not going to go well. That's a terrible idea. If

15:18

you've ever seen a horror movie, you don't go for a swim

15:20

at night. Especially skinny-dipping. You don't

15:23

skinny-dip. Exactly. Why

15:25

did you want to start the novel there with these

15:27

two characters, instead of your protagonist or setting up the

15:29

town in some other way? It

15:31

never did start there. That

15:34

opening, which is a slasher opening, all

15:37

slashers open with some version of a couple

15:39

of kids at Lovers Lane who get packed.

15:42

That's just the standard, that's what you've got to do

15:44

pretty much. And that initially

15:46

came probably about 15, maybe 20% into

15:50

the novel. But when I was revising it, I

15:52

realized that if you're writing a slasher, dude,

15:54

you've got to build it like a slasher.

15:57

And so I had to tilt it such

15:59

that it slid to the front. And it

16:01

was, and also doing that gave me a lot of

16:03

license. It allowed me to like jump from person to

16:05

person a little bit. And, you

16:07

know, as you were talking about that, it

16:10

occurs to me like slashers are such

16:12

a visual medium. We're used to thinking

16:14

of slashers as movies primarily. What

16:16

are some of the challenges of getting

16:18

that sort of elemental, that goriness, that

16:20

terror that you feel while you're watching

16:22

a slasher, getting that onto a

16:24

page without the visual aspect? Yeah, you're right.

16:27

The slasher grew up at the box office.

16:29

You grew up at the theater. And so

16:31

a lot of it's techniques are baked in

16:33

from cinema. And so the trick

16:35

with writing a slasher novel,

16:38

which Grady Hendrick is here, he's written a slasher novel too. He

16:40

should be a peer answer in this as well, is

16:44

how are you gonna do

16:46

those film tricks and prose? And

16:50

I'm not sure what the answer is. I've done it a

16:52

lot of ways myself, but in My Heart

16:54

is a Chainsaw, the

16:56

way you build a scare is you have like a

16:59

long on-ramp and a lot of little branches off it

17:01

where the reader can say, oh, there's a scare, but

17:03

it's not there. And what the trick is, you have

17:06

to get the reader wrong-footed so that

17:08

you give them three cats in the closets and they're

17:10

like, it's just gonna be another cat in the closet

17:12

and it's the killer and they're scared. It's

17:14

hard to do a jump scare on the page because the reader controls

17:17

the pace. That's

17:19

why films can be jump scared so well because it's

17:21

moving at the same speed all the time. But on

17:23

the page, it's really tricky. And

17:25

maybe, I'm not gonna say it's impossible, but you don't

17:27

see it very often anyways. I'm not saying I

17:29

did it in this novel either. And

17:32

an important part of Jade's character that

17:34

we don't get to until about halfway through

17:36

is this idea that we start

17:38

to realize that her father may have abused

17:40

her. Why

17:44

was that a thread you wanted to add to the story and

17:46

to this character? I

17:48

didn't want to actually, but

17:51

that is how, I didn't

17:54

put Jade together. Jade, as I say, stood

17:56

up from the water and was her own

17:58

person. She had this resentment. against

18:00

the world, she had this distrust of other

18:02

people and so I had

18:05

to ask myself basically

18:07

why? Why does she distrust

18:09

the world? Why does she resent people? And so

18:12

it did lead into to

18:14

me dark spaces, uncomfortable spaces.

18:17

But in horror, if you're not broaching into uncomfortable

18:20

territory, then I don't think you're right in horror.

18:22

You've got to do the

18:24

things that aren't comfortable. That

18:27

was getlet producer Jordan Loff's conversation with

18:29

Stephen Graham Jones about his novel, My

18:31

Heart is a Chainsaw. It was our

18:34

April getlet with Olivet book club selection.

18:36

We'll have more of Jordan's conversation with

18:38

Stephen plus questions from the audience after

18:41

a quick break. Stay with us. You're

18:53

listening to all of it on WNYC.

18:55

I'm Kate Hines in for Alison Stewart.

18:58

We'll continue our conversation with author Stephen

19:00

Graham Jones about his novel, My Heart

19:02

is a Chainsaw. It was our April

19:05

getlet with Olivet book club selection. As

19:07

usual, our audience had some great questions for our

19:09

author. You'll hear some of those

19:12

in just a bit. But first here's

19:14

more of getlet producer Jordan Loff's conversation

19:16

with Stephen Graham Jones. When

19:23

we enter the story, Proofrock, Idaho is

19:25

undergoing this major change. There's this large

19:27

section of land across the lake. It's

19:29

being turned into a development called Terra Nova

19:32

by this group of very wealthy men and

19:34

their families. What

19:36

did you want to explore about gentrification

19:38

and land ownership and stewardship through

19:40

this Terra Nova plot line, especially

19:42

Terra Nova New World? I

19:45

have to imagine. There are some reasons

19:47

why you chose that name. Yeah, I

19:49

mean Basically, these Terra Novans

19:51

coming in to carve out a

19:53

piece of the national forest for their

19:55

little gated community, they're all Columbus. They're

19:58

all Christopher Columbus. Yeah. It's

20:00

kind of what I was taken as I

20:02

wrote it. that one Us Sen Joe Monte

20:04

Manager saga I think we're a talk on

20:06

the phone and just said oh it's a

20:08

novel Bajaj, Rick, Asian and so I stealthily

20:10

went to another tab and I typed into

20:12

an Isis and when I went to see

20:14

with allies for sure that I realize that

20:16

there's like this is different scale, there's colonization,

20:18

on the wide scale, transportation on the neighbourhood

20:21

level and enters possessing on the individual love

20:23

with all the same dynamic and I think

20:25

the beats work the same and all of

20:27

them. And there's a interesting since

20:29

you were the guys are set of practicing

20:31

they go. Here's a big speech to the

20:33

community in you know who have the park

20:35

that own lives you come into and maybe

20:38

we'll pay for your suicide Like these seem

20:40

to think that they're adding something. To the

20:42

communities yeah I think the some

20:44

poor dollars into the community to

20:46

wash away their sins basically and

20:48

I'm I think a lot of

20:51

corporations etc do have that suspicion

20:53

or they get that input from

20:55

their. Media. Handling

20:57

team anyway space. And

21:00

as we approach that final

21:02

sequence. It. Is long, It's bloody,

21:04

It's gory. I won't spoil too much as

21:07

people haven't finished that, but it it gets

21:09

a little nuts. and how how did you

21:11

know how far you want implicit in those

21:13

last as. The basis. I think our deposit

21:15

ten percent further than I thought I could.

21:17

That's what he was gonna do on a

21:20

six and page he can't Just like that's

21:22

my readers pay for the books there. there

21:24

were other land. Now I'm forty nine and

21:26

twenty seven. and on whatever it is because

21:28

this writer has gone further into territory that

21:31

they can go themselves and I think it's

21:33

a whore writers job to. Basically

21:35

we take the reader by the hand and will lead

21:38

them into a dark room and were held in a

21:40

candle. Him or like it's safe, it safe. come on

21:42

and come on. And and then we get to. Some

21:45

serious inky darkness. Them are like just a couple

21:47

more steps come on and we tend to tentatively

21:49

get them to go a couple steps more than

21:51

we bought a candle out and let their him

21:53

go. I'm stressed the job of the horror outer,

21:55

but the bad part is were stranded in as

21:58

same darkness and or it's not always comfortable. Oh

22:00

man it's like our say and if it's comfortable

22:02

than you not doing it right and I think

22:04

scenario. Is let our readers into the

22:06

darkness is a you have any any

22:09

questions. Yeah. So one thing that

22:11

I was really caught by. when I was

22:13

reading of Only Press the first month. But I'm. His

22:16

house artistic jade was

22:19

arm. As I'm autistic,

22:21

I study. Autism. And.

22:24

I was wondering like lick of her. Obsession with

22:26

Horror as very much like the artistic

22:29

special interest experience and are feeling of

22:31

being an outsider is very much enough.

22:33

No one can understand you and you can't understand it

22:35

as. Neurotypical. People either

22:37

side as one or like. Was that

22:40

intentional or that it just kind of

22:42

lakes? Just.

22:44

Come out the way it came out like data center

22:46

came out the way came up with the reason I

22:48

came out like the was because in order for me

22:50

to make Jade real on the page. I

22:53

had to make her. A

22:55

version of myself would have different colored hair

22:57

basically am I think I always liked. We

22:59

all probably think this but I think that

23:02

my brain works in us in a weird

23:04

way that nobody else is works you know

23:06

and I can't get out of that a

23:08

can get other had space that type of

23:11

thinking. So lot of my characters do think

23:13

like that. But

23:15

I for it as his books have done I'm

23:17

I've had a lot of readers say what you

23:20

just said you know and mm by consider that

23:22

the highest honor. Thank you. On

23:24

Pharmacies has really great soundtrack. Is there

23:26

a soundtrack? Ah A in harm is

23:28

it really speaks cheese and will you

23:31

are writing this? Is there Like music

23:33

or some type is going to your

23:35

head especially during the fight scenes. it's

23:37

you're running for a cinematic. I always

23:39

think a science. and i'm reading it

23:41

but he ramos know my favorite scoring i

23:44

mean this is an easy of a gerber

23:46

you an answer this but john carpenter's halloween

23:48

you know that five for time with other

23:50

minor uncomfortable towards he really gets under your

23:52

skin with the i'm but yes there was

23:54

a songs that was in my has his

23:57

i was writing this for all the novels

23:59

I write I rig up a playlist and

24:01

I only listen to that playlist in that

24:03

exact order While I'm writing that

24:05

novel I don't listen to it out in the world on

24:07

my bike anywhere else only when I'm writing that novel and

24:10

the result of that Is that every time

24:12

the first few bars of that song come

24:14

on? I'm immediately dropped into

24:16

like the emotional story space of this world and

24:19

I don't I don't have to warm up which

24:21

is quite wonderful when you have limited time and

24:24

the first song on The

24:28

my heart is a chainsaw playlist was Frank Wallens

24:30

up original So it's so cool that he's here tonight, you know

24:33

But still when I hear that song when it

24:35

shuffles up on my phone Just

24:37

up in the world. It drops

24:39

me right back into Indian Lake

24:41

and it's a weird experience always

24:44

It's gonna be so cool to share that experience with

24:47

you tonight when we get yeah, well not here in

24:49

just a moment Yeah, any other questions we've time for

24:51

me one or two more. I think there's one in the

24:53

back as a

24:55

clearly as a big slasher fan and creator

24:58

of slasher fiction Do

25:00

you have any thoughts about why in the

25:03

last few years? It feels like slashers have

25:05

kind of come roaring back in a way.

25:07

They haven't since the 80s

25:09

discounting the brief Scream

25:11

resurgence. Yeah, I think it's

25:13

that what if what a slasher is is

25:15

a justice fantasy and in a world distinctly

25:18

lacking justice We turn

25:20

to media to supply a sense of that

25:22

justice. I feel like so for

25:25

the last few years We've seen people doing terrible

25:27

things at podiums and out in the world

25:29

And then they just shrug and walk away

25:31

and they don't suffer any consequences But watch

25:34

a slasher and if you so much as

25:36

litter in a cemetery, you're getting eviscerated, you

25:39

know And and that's pretty

25:41

it's a brutal world to try to survive the

25:43

slasher world, but it does allow us

25:45

to imagine Fairness, you know,

25:47

and if we can imagine the fairness, I think that's

25:49

the first step to making the world fair And

25:52

when did you know this was gonna be a trilogy as we've

25:54

mentioned if you were really into what we just talked about There

25:56

are two more waiting for you. We're celebrating the end

25:59

of the whole trilogy When did that come

26:01

about? It came about when Joe

26:03

Monti, my editor here in the front row,

26:06

we were going through revisions, notes on My Heart is

26:08

a Chance, we'd done a whole lot of stuff to

26:11

it. Like number one, Joe and my editor, BJ Robbins,

26:13

had me shorten all of Jade's

26:15

Slasher 101 essays. She writes to Mr.

26:17

Holmes. They were all initially 10 or 12

26:19

pages, and they told me, dude, this is a

26:21

little much. And so I had

26:23

to dial all those back, which made it a lot better. And

26:27

then at the end of the notes session, Joe started saying,

26:29

you know, what if everybody didn't

26:31

die? And I was like, come on, these

26:33

people were built to die. That's why they're

26:35

there. And Joe just

26:37

kept, he never like makes me do stuff,

26:39

but he like plants seeds in my head.

26:42

And I can't help but

26:44

spill some water on them, and they start growing, you

26:46

know? And finally, after maybe a week

26:48

and a half or two weeks, just to prove that

26:50

it wasn't a good idea, I

26:52

opened up a side file and wrote an ending

26:54

where Jade didn't die and

26:56

two or three other people actually lived,

26:58

although grievously injured. And

27:01

it actually worked. And I was so surprised

27:04

that it worked. And it's wonderful

27:06

to work with like confident, experienced, intelligent people. That's

27:08

what everyone should have, I think. But

27:12

so when Joe and BJ came to

27:14

me after Chainsaw was coming out,

27:17

and they said, what's next? And I said, I'm going to

27:19

do book two. And they said, book two. And I said,

27:21

yeah, this is a trilogy. You know, it's always been a

27:23

trilogy. Yeah. Speaking of that,

27:25

what can you tell us about what you're working on next

27:28

now that the trilogy is complete? In

27:31

July, I have I was a teenage

27:33

slasher coming out, which is way different

27:35

than My Heart is a Chainsaw or

27:37

Don't Fear the Reaper or the Angel of India Lake. It's

27:39

about slashers, but not in the same way. It's set in

27:41

1989 in West Texas. This

27:45

the main character is 17 years old. I grew up in

27:47

West Texas. I was 17 years old in 1989. So

27:51

there's a lot of me in this book, probably

27:53

dangerously much as far as I'm concerned. And

27:56

I'm also working on the Buffalo Hunter Hunter,

27:58

a vampire novel I wrote. which is set

28:00

kind of at the turn of the last century,

28:02

more or less. It's a

28:04

Blackfeet vampire novel. That

28:07

was Get Lit producer Jordan Lofts conversation

28:09

with author Stephen Graham Jones about his

28:11

novel. My Heart is a Chainsaw. It

28:13

was our April Get Lit with Olivet book

28:15

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