Podcast appearances and mentions of Stephen King

Betty Buckley is a legendary, multi-award-winning actress/singer whose career spans theater, film, television and concert halls around the world. She is a 2012 Theatre Hall of Fame inductee and the 2017 recipient of  the Julie Harris Awards from The Actor's Fund for Artistic Achievement and received The Lifetime Achievement Award from The American Songbook Association in 2023. She won a Tony Award for her performance as Grizabella, the Glamour Cat, in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats and received her second Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a musical for her performance as Hesione in Triumph of Love. She received an Olivier Award nomination for her critically acclaimed interpretation of Norma Desmond in the London production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard, which she repeated to more rave reviews on Broadway. Ms. Buckley is featured in the film By Design, written and directed by Amanda Kramer, and it made its debut at The Sundance Film Festival in January 2025. She is also featured in the film Eternity for A24 Studios, starring Miles Teller and Elizabeth Olsen, released in November 2025. In March 2024, she co-starred in Imaginary for Blumhouse Productions and released by Lionsgate. She co-starred with James McAvoy in the M. Night Shyamalan hit film Split, one of the top international box office hits of 2017. She received a Saturn Award Nomination for Best Featured Actress for her work in the film. Her other films include her debut in Brian de Palma's screen version of Stephen King's Carrie, Bruce Beresford's Tender Mercies, Roman Polanski's Frantic, Woody Allen's Another Woman, Lawrence Kasdan's  Wyatt Earp and M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening. In 2024, The Mayfly, an animated short film written, produced and narrated by Ms. Buckley played the film festival circuit and won several awards, including Best of Festival, Best Director and Best 2D Character Based Animation at The Los Angeles Animation Festival. The film also won Best Animation at The Lady Filmmakers Festival in Los Angeles. A love letter to New York City and music, The Mayfly is a lyrical tale that was inspired by a true event at the Café Carlyle, with a score composed by seven-time GRAMMY® nominee Christian Jacob. Her other Broadway credits include 1776, Pippin, Song and Dance, The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Carrie. She headlined the first National Tour of the new Broadway production of Hello, Dolly! in 2018/2019. Off-Broadway credits include the world premiere of Horton Foote's The Old Friends, for which she received  a Drama Desk Nomination in 2014, White Lies, Lincoln Center's Elegies, the original NYSF production of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Eros Trilogy, Juno's Swans. Getting My Act Together and Taking It On  The Road. Regional credits include The Perfectionist, Gypsy, The Threepenny Opera, Camino Real, Buffalo  Gal, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Old Friends at Houston's Alley Theatre and Grey Gardens at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, NY and The Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles in 2016 for which she received an Ovation Award Nomination. In London, she starred in Promises, Promises for which she was nominated for An Evening Standard Award and in the 2013 British premiere of Dear World. On television, Buckley had a recurring role on Law & Order SVU for NBC. She co-starred in the third season  of AMC's hit series Preacher and has guest starred on the Fox/Warner Bros. TV shows: The Cleaning Lady, The CW hit Supergirl, the NBC Series Chicago Med and ABC Family's Pretty Little Liars. For HBO, she has appeared on Getting On, The Leftovers, The Pacific and for three seasons had a recurring role on OZ. She  starred as Abby Bradford in the hit series Eight is Enough. For more information, visit www.bettybuckley.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Abby Monteil bikes to Derry, NH with us to talk all things Stephen King and It (2017)!

It's been featured in Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments, it's been discussed by Stephen King in his book on the genre 'Danse Macabre', and yet somehow there are a lot of people who know very little about this 1967 classic. So let's dive into ableism, confidence tricks, and a heroin-stuffed MacGuffin with Audrey Hepburn and Alan Arkin in this underseen but brilliant film!

In this Q&A episode, Travis and producer Eric break down a powerful lesson from bestselling author Mark Manson on why discipline isn't about having more willpower—it's about eliminating distractions. Using stories from famous authors like Stephen King, Ian Fleming, and Jack Carr, they explore how changing your environment can dramatically improve focus, productivity, and creative output. If you've ever struggled to stay on task, procrastinated on an important project, or blamed your phone for your lack of focus, this episode offers practical strategies to help you get more meaningful work done. On this episode we talk about: Why environment matters more than willpower when it comes to productivity Mark Manson's "too many options" theory and how distractions sabotage focus Writing routines and productivity habits from Stephen King, Ian Fleming, and Jack Carr Practical ways to eliminate distractions while working from home How procrastination happens—and simple systems to overcome it Top 3 Takeaways Discipline is less about having stronger willpower and more about creating an environment where distractions are removed. Keeping too many options open makes it harder to focus. Closing unnecessary doors often leads to better results. Small, consistent progress beats waiting until the last minute. Build systems that make productive actions the easiest choice. Notable Quotes "You don't have too many distractions—you have too many options." "Set up something for yourself where it's easier to get the work done than it is to not get it done." "Don't shoot yourself in the foot just to see if you can walk." Connect with Travis Chappell:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/travischappell/ Other: https://travischappell.com/ A Word from Our Sponsors: - Visit DrinkAG1.com/TMM to get a free AG1 Travel Case with 7 free AG1Travel Packs in your Welcome Kit with your first AG1 subscription order while supplies last.  - Go to Leesa.com for 25% OFF select mattresses (through August 23, 2026) PLUS get an extra $50 off with promo code TMM, exclusive for my listeners  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to 10 hours of soothing English lessons designed to help you relax, fall asleep, and improve your fluency naturally. Just press play, drift off to sleep, and let your brain absorb clear English vocabulary and pronunciation overnight.☀️ Summer is the perfect time to level up your English fluency!Private 1-on-1 conversation sessions are officially back. Let's work together in a comfortable space to build your speaking confidence, sharpen your pronunciation, and fix common mistakes.

This past weekend we lost genre great Chuck Russell, who directed the best Nightmare On Elm Street sequel, one of the best horror remakes (The Blob), and introduced the world to Cameron Diaz in The Mask. Last year we had the great pleasure of interviewing him on this show, so in honor of the man and his legacy we're rerunning that chat this week.Most of the conversation revolves around his remake of schlockfest Witchboard and his early career collaboration with one Mr. Frank Darabont. He had a front row seat to Darabont's pursuit of Stephen King's books, including The Shawshank Redemption.Rest In Peace to Chuck Russell!

On this episode of The Hollywood Outsider podcast, we head back to San Diego to look at Comic-Con 2026 and debate the biggest news to drop out of Hall H and other locales such as: Numerous Marvel updates revolving around Avengers Doomsday, Ghost Rider, Black Panther 3, Reacher, Neagley, Silo, Spaceballs 2, Dungeon Crawler Carl, Mike Flanagan's take on Stephen King's Carrie, DC's Lanterns, and much more. All this, plus a report from Kyle Nolan with NoReruns.net, who was live on the ground at this year's San Diego Comic-Con! We hope you enjoy this entertaining and packed episode of The Hollywood Outsider! Discussed on this episode (0:00 – 1:23:30) San Diego Comic-Con - SDCC Breakdown (1:23:31 – 1:40:51) Whatcha Been Watching Time stamps may be affected by ad breaks Please support The Hollywood Outsider and gain immediate access to bonus content, including Patreon exclusive podcast content like our Bad Movie Night by visiting Patreon.com/ TheHollywoodOutsider Be sure to join our Facebook Group Subscribe on Apple Subscribe on Spotify Subscribe via RSS

Hey there, ya you, hi and welcome to our little show. This week we had a heck of a change in plans, kinda. Matt and Mike do chat about Motor City but not until the end of the pod. Ma did not get Motor City in the hood of SV so we changed the film to a thriller we missed last year, The Long Walk. Written by Stephen King and starring Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Garrett Wareing, and Mark Hamill. Extra special topics include Taco Bell, an amazing Blu-ray giveaway, and Philmont Scout Ranch. Next week we head back to the theaters to watch the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe film, Spider-Man: Brand New Day starring Tom Holland, Jon Bernthal, Zendaya, and Sadie Sink. You can find us on all things social such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X, and Bluesky. We also have an awesome community you can join, click here to check out our Facebook Fan Group so you can yell at Mike and Matt from the comfort of your keyboard while talking about films. Lastly we have an amazing website where you can watch trailers, read the host's bios, listen to the podcast, and get a ton more info on the movies we review.  Check out the link here https://www.ReelFilmNerds.com Thanks for stopping by and listening to our podcast, we appreciate each and everyone of you and we will be back next week with another incredible episode of the Reel Film Nerds podcast.

Stephen King's The Long Walk has finally made its way to the big screen, and we're breaking it all down.In this episode of Part Time Nerd, we discuss what the film gets right, where it falls short, the performances, the tension, and whether this adaptation lives up to one of King's most beloved novels.Whether you're a longtime Stephen King fan or just saw the movie, join us for our spoiler-free thoughts and let us know where The Long Walk ranks among your favorite King adaptations.

Eric on Blue Sky: @eric-hauter   Eric on Youtube.   Check out Gaming Nexus  Jeff can also be found on The Movie Draft House Jeff and Eric are on Letterboxd.  Just search JeffyPods and Eric Hauter.

Imagine being able to dig through Shakespeare's manuscripts and ask him about his writing process. Did King Lear survive in the first draft? What if Hamlet originally said, “To live or not to live?” While we can only dream about that opportunity, scholar and Everyday Shakespeare host Caroline Bicks experienced something close to it when she gained unprecedented access to the archives of another famous author: Stephen King. The Bard of Avon and the King of Horror have more in common than you might think. Both are popular and prolific authors who have been praised and derided for writing for the masses. But both also pay close attention to the sounds of words, the flow of names, and the rhythms of sentences. And sometimes, King's work even takes inspiration from Shakespeare himself. In this episode, Bicks draws fascinating parallels between Shakespeare and King and shares how she became the first scholar permitted to explore King's personal papers. Her book, Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King recounts her chance to live every scholar's dream—while surrounded by the stuff of nightmares. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published July 28, 2026. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Technical support was provided by Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Web production was handled by Megan Fraedrich. Transcripts are edited by Leonor Fernandez. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Nick welcomes The Hollywood Reporter TV critic Dan Fienberg back to the podcast to review several new shows, including Adult Swim’s President Curtis, the new Will Ferrell golf comedy The Hawk, Apple TV+’s Lucky starring Anya Taylor-Joy, and more. They also continue their bi-weekly coverage of Big Brother Season 28 with their latest thoughts on the houseguests and the game. Later, Esmeralda Leon joins Nick as they get ready for the LIVE edition of The Nick D Podcast at the Flashback Weekend Horror Convention. Along the way, they talk about tribute bands, the work of Stephen King, and more nightmare-inducing entertainment, including the unsettling 1972 documentary Future Shock, narrated by a truly terrifying Orson Welles. [Ep 476]

Federico habla con Andrés Amorós sobre Stephen King.

The beautiful boys of the Straight Chilling Podcast join Caitlin to cover 1993's The Good Son. It appears to have been a critical miss at the time, but a longtime fan favorite for genre lovers. We talk about child psychopathy, monstrous motherhood, 90s parenting, and more. Tangents include: Straight Chilling's upcoming 600th episode, evil children, a spooky FMK (and the resulting discussion on spectrophilia), Daniel Radcliffe vs Elijah Wood, Soju's beef with Elijah, Macaulay Culkin's name, Stephen King's Maine, DVD shopping, breakfast for dinner, sleeping with fans on, and fragrance.

Hey Everyone, Angela Bowen here, today I'm giving a Podcast Life Update for July 2026. The last time I came on and gave an update was April 2026. In the last few months I had a bumpy road ahead filled with doctor visits and took time away from my job to recover. In this podcast episode, I share some of my favorite books that I grew up with in middle school and plan to soon open their pages and rediscover them. I also discus what I'm currently reading, Stephen King's IT and a memoir Rescue At The Reef by Jameson and Mary Reeder. Movies I've Seen in Theaters: Young Washington Bad Counselors TV Shows I'm watching: The Chosen (Currently on Season 3) (Amazon Prime) The Chosen Adventures (Amazon Prime) Magic School Bus (Tubi App) I also get a little emotional as I discuss what has been going on in the last 3 months with my health and my current on journey Walking with the Lord. Thank you all for listening and following along with me on my journey! Stay tuned for updates in the future! if you'd like to send an email I'd love to hear from you even if I don't respond right away: lbomwonderyearspodcast@gmail.com or punkypowerpbpodcast@gmail.com If you'd like to leave a kind or uplifting review for either podcast on Itunes I'd love to see it! Punky Power (Search Punky Brewster) Or Looking Back On My Wonder Years

Hey Everyone, Angela Bowen here, today I'm giving a Podcast Life Update for July 2026. The last time I came on and gave an update was April 2026. In the last few months I had a bumpy road ahead filled with doctor visits and took time away from my job to recover. In this podcast episode, I share some of my favorite books that I grew up with in middle school and plan to soon open their pages and rediscover them. I also discus what I'm currently reading, Stephen King's IT and a memoir Rescue At The Reef by Jameson and Mary Reeder. Movies I've Seen in Theaters: Young Washington Bad Counselors TV Shows I'm watching: The Chosen (Currently on Season 3) (Amazon Prime) The Chosen Adventures (Amazon Prime) Magic School Bus (Tubi App) I also get a little emotional as I discuss what has been going on in the last 3 months with my health and my current on journey Walking with the Lord. Thank you all for listening and following along with me on my journey! Stay tuned for updates in the future! if you'd like to send an email I'd love to hear from you even if I don't respond right away: lbomwonderyearspodcast@gmail.com or punkypowerpbpodcast@gmail.com If you'd like to leave a kind or uplifting review for either podcast on Itunes I'd love to see it! Punky Power (Search Punky Brewster) Or Looking Back On My Wonder Years

Federico habla con Andrés Amorós sobre Stephen King.

Ryan welcomes acclaimed actor, director, and author Thomas Jane. Best known for The Punisher, The Expanse, and several Stephen King film adaptations, Jane has also become a prominent voice in the UFO community, recently speaking at Contact in the Desert and authoring the upcoming book A Human's Guide to Advanced Visiting Aliens.Jane reflects on his career in Hollywood before diving into UFOs, government secrecy, advanced alien intelligence, and whether non-human visitors may have been here all along. A fascinating conversation you won't want to miss. Join us at ANOMACON on September 12th: http://www.anomacon.com Send us a voicemail: https://www.speakpipe.com/SomewhereSkiesPod Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/somewhereskies ByMeACoffee: http://www.buymeacoffee.com/UFxzyzHOaQ Substack: https://ryansprague.substack.com/ All socials and books: https://linktr.ee/somewhereskiespod Follow Suzanne on X: https://x.com/csuzannelanders Email: ryan.sprague51@gmail.com Opening theme song by Septembryo Closing song by Per Kiilstofte Copyright © 2026 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. #Hollywood #HollywoodAndUFOs #UFOs #UAP #ThomasJane #ThePunisher #StephenKing #Alien #Aliens Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on The Halloween Podcast, we discuss the brand-new Resident Evil trailer, dive into Mars' fascinating 2026 Tricks, Treats & Trends Report revealing how Halloween has become a full season, and look at the first-ever television adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie. We also share news about new 4K releases for Sleepy Hollow and Practical Magic as Halloween favorites continue making their return. We also head Around the Crypt with Goodwill's first-ever Halloween pop-up store, the 60th anniversary celebration of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, one final season for a beloved Ottawa Halloween fundraiser, and a brand-new Hocus Pocus trolley tour in Salem. Plus, Meghan brings us the latest retail sightings in Code Orange, we look back at This Week in Halloween History, and much more. Story Links Resident Evil Trailer https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Resident+Evil+2026+official+trailer Mars 2026 Tricks, Treats & Trends Report https://www.mars.com/sites/g/files/dfsbuz106/files/2026-07/Mars%202026%20Tricks%20Treats%20and%20Trends%20Report.pdf Summerween Report Story https://wrnjradio.com/mars-report-finds-halloween-celebrations-starting-earlier-as-summerween-gains-popularity/ Carrie TV Series https://variety.com/ (or the article you used) Sleepy Hollow 4K SteelBook https://collider.com/sleepy-hollow-4k-steelbook-release/ Practical Magic 4K Release https://collider.com/practical-magic-4k-blu-ray-release/ Goodwill Halloween Pop-Up https://www.wnem.com/2026/07/23/first-ever-goodwill-halloween-pop-up-store-arrives-birch-run-aug-14/ It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown 60th Anniversary https://parade.com/news/great-pumpkin-charlie-brown-60th-anniversary-halloween-book Ottawa Halloween House https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-orleans-hallowen-house-fundraiser-future-2026-9.7281193 Hocus Pocus Trolley Tour (Insert the Salem Night Tour link you used.) Follow The Halloween Podcast Websitehttps://www.TheHalloweenPodcast.com Facebookhttps://www.Facebook.com/TheHalloweenPodcast Instagramhttps://www.Instagram.com/TheHalloweenPodcast YouTubehttps://www.YouTube.com/TheHalloweenPodcast EmailInfo@TheHalloweenPodcast.com Haunt Line731-400-0472 Support the Show on Patreonhttps://www.Patreon.com/TheHalloweenPod Happy Halloween! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

And finally, for your third new episode of MTP this week...Kevin and Roy are back with another special guest...horror author, Holly Knightley! Holly is celebrating the release of her new book, Cadbury House, and is here to talk about some Stephen King horror with us! This week, tune in as Kevin, Roy, and Holly sit down to discuss Holly's pick of 2004's Stephen King based movie, Secret Window! What did your co-hosts think of this movie? Find out now on episode 178 of The Midnight Terrors Podcast!Check out Holly's new book on Amazon:Amazon.com: Cadbury House: A Riveting Haunted House Mystery Thriller (Knight Time Houses): 9781958761793: Knightley, Holly: BooksCheck out MTP's Linktree:midnightterrorspodcast Official: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook | Linktree

Send us Fan MailReboots are risky, indie horror is thriving, and somehow we end up arguing about whether you'd survive a bear-sized pigeon. We start with a few unhinged warm-ups, then get real about the King Of The Hill revival: what still feels like Hank Hill, what changes actually work, and why voice actor swaps can instantly snap you out of the story. If you care about legacy animated sitcoms, nostalgia TV, or whether a reboot can age characters without losing its soul, we've got plenty to say.Then we pivot into two indie horror standouts and why smaller movies can hit harder than glossy blockbusters. We dig into Obsession, the creepy “wish” device that drives the plot, the lead's fast switches between charm and menace, and how smart lighting lets your imagination do the scariest work. Backrooms takes us into creepypasta territory, where liminal office spaces, internet lore, and slow-building dread turn a simple idea into a full-on fandom machine.After that, it's a grab bag of pop culture and real life: Toy Story 5 and the tension between toys and screens, dad stories from the grocery aisle, a debate over Stephen King's The Long Walk, and a deep dive on Dungeon Crawler Carl as a litRPG audiobook phenomenon. We talk Jeff Hays' narration, why loot-box pacing is addictive, and what a Peacock adaptation needs to get right to survive diehard fans. Wrap it all up with quick hits on Lanterns, Neuromancer on Apple TV, and the Insomniac Wolverine game's gnarly damage tech.Subscribe for more, share this with a friend who loves reboots or horror, and leave a review. What's the one reboot or adaptation you think absolutely got it right?Support the show

Photos, synopsis, bande-annonce et dates de diffusion pour la mini-série "Carrie" de Mike Flanagan ; Joe Hill et Stephen King dans The Last Podcast on the Left ; Illustrations de Gabriel Rodriguez dans "Other Worlds than These"......Tout ça et bien plus encore sont au sommaire de ce nouveau numéro de la Gazette du Maine, le podcast qui vous résume l'actualité de Stephen King ! Retrouvez toutes les informations de cette Gazette sur le site : https://stephenkingfrance.fr/Vous aimez la Gazette du Maine ? Vous aimez les contenus de Stephen King France ? Soutenez l'association Stephen King France sur Tipeee, recevez des goodies exclusifs et la newsletter mensuelle !Suivez Stephen King France sur les réseaux sociaux et rejoignez les communautés :DiscordTwitchInstagramFacebookBlueSkyThreadsX / TwitterHébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

In this week's episode, John King and Chad Coup discuss all of Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive, DVD Commentary style. This is a secret, so don't tell anyone.

The year was 1984, and while Big Brother may have been watching you, in his spare time he might have also watched this excellent movie adapted from a Stephen King novel, starring a cute 8-year-old Drew Barrymore.  No ordinary kid, of course.  She's got the pyrokinesis thing going, so any time she throws a tantrum, things burn down.  She can generate the greatest balls of fire Jerry Lee Lewis could ever dream of.  Goodness, gracious!  This has been a longtime favorite of mine, thanks to the stacked cast of great actors, lots of shit blowing up, and a magnificent score by German electronic music marvels Tangerine Dream.  Our hot topic for this podcast is Firestarter!  Can you take the heat?  

In our last episode we looked at Grace Kelly, whose career was cut short by her own choice. She was given the option to be treated like a princess, or to go out and actually be an honest-to-god Princess. She chose both love and duty, since you can't really Princess and be a movie star at the same time. Fair. In today's episode, we look at a career that was cut short because the actor, who was otherwise very bright and talented, couldn't reel in his demons. River Phoenix died at the age of 23, of an overdose on Halloween night in 1993, collapsing outside a club he'd just left. The first film we'll be reviewing is the second film in his filmography, Stand By Me, directed by Rob Reiner. (Please note that Sean and I recorded this episode before Reiner's untimely death, which is why it's not addressed here.) Stand By Me is an adaptation of a Stephen King novella called The Body, and manages to improve on the original, possibly because King wasn't obviously writing for an eventual movie audience (a reason I mostly quit reading his stuff). The story follows four boys over a couple of days during the summer before they got to high school, on a journey to recover the body of someone who'd gone missing. They find the body, but they also find a lot of insights in each other. In Part 4 we'll look at Running on Empty, a film Phoenix made two years later.

Summer Time Travel, not to be confused with summertime travel. Adam and Lexi talk about books with time travel which somehow includes Ascendance of a Bookworm, which you cannot escape.   Lexi meanwhile discusses Stephen King's 11/22/63.  They get into discussions about if they could time travel what would they do.  A rather short one, but still no less full of their classic tangents and gushings. So tell us your favorite time travel story!

From the vengeful Bell Witch to the lingering spirits of Gettysburg, America is packed with haunted spots that refuse to let go of their ghosts – whether it's eerie voices in old asylums, shadowy figures in historic mansions, or phantom footsteps in forgotten graveyards. If you're looking for a brush with the supernatural, these legendary (and lesser-known) locations won't disappoint.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/HauntedAmericaREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/36de8fpnLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“America's Most Haunted Places” by Troy Taylor and April Slaughter for AmericanHauntingsInk.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/582mh58k (used with permission)“America's Not-So-Famous Haunted Houses” by Troy Taylor for AmericanHauntingsInk.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p979tsv (used with permission)(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: January, 2022Weird Darkness tours fifteen haunted American locations, starting with the ones every ghost hunter already knows. The Bell Witch Cave in Adams, Tennessee, where a spirit claiming to be the witch of Kate Batts tormented the Bell family for years and, some say, retreated into a cave near the Red River. Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, where tuberculosis patients died in numbers large enough to require a body chute running down the hill and out of sight. The Myrtles Plantation, whose most famous ghost stories turn out to be false, though the apparitions on the grounds keep getting reported anyway. The Lemp Mansion in St. Louis, where four members of one brewing family took their own lives across five decades. Gettysburg's Devil's Den, the Stanley Hotel that inspired Stephen King, the Winchester Mystery House with its staircases to nowhere, Bachelor's Grove Cemetery outside Chicago, Yorktown Memorial Hospital in Texas, and the Villisca Ax Murder House in Iowa, where eight people were killed in their beds in June of 1912 and no one was ever convicted.Then the show turns to the houses that never made the lists. Nemacolin Castle in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, built on the site of a French and Indian War garrison and later a stop on the Underground Railroad. Tinker Swiss Cottage in Rockford, Illinois, a twenty-seven-room Swiss-style home on a limestone bluff where children's laughter is heard by staff who came in as skeptics. The McCune Mansion in Salt Lake City, where a little girl walks in and out of a mirror. Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, where a fired servant locked seven people in Frank Lloyd Wright's home in August of 1914, set it on fire, and killed them with a hatchet as they tried to escape. And Prospect Place in Trinway, Ohio, built by an abolitionist who used a cupola signal light to tell escaping slaves that food and shelter waited inside — some of whom never left.

The Avengers Doomsday trailer dropped this week and Doug has already watched it four times. The full reaction is here: what landed, what it means for the MCU, why the Russos coming back gives genuine reason for optimism, and why Thor not cracking a single joke in the entire trailer is one of the most promising signs this movie is going somewhere real. The biggest moments get the full breakdown. Captain America's return and the Mjolnir handoff. RDJ as Doctor Doom and the most logical in-universe explanation for why he looks exactly like Tony Stark. The Loki TVA card and whether the average viewer has any idea what that means. Shang-Chi showing up despite not appearing in a single piece of Marvel content since 2021. The Fantastic Four's involvement. Gambit getting a moment that made a 10-year-old lose her mind. And the theory that this film is essentially Marvel's version of Secret Wars, a way of pruning timelines, retiring legacy characters, and rebooting the X-Men in a way that actually makes sense. Speaking of the X-Men, Doug and Natalie watched all five original Fox X-Men films over the weekend specifically to prepare for Doomsday. The full post-mortem covers everything the franchise got wrong: Wolverine was never supposed to be the main character, Cyclops got done catastrophically dirty across every single film, Rogue never threw one punch in three movies, the X-Men never once fought as a team despite that being their entire thing, and Hugh Jackman looked completely fine in the year 2000 and we as a society did something terrible to that man over the next 24 years. Before all that: a Reddit question about socially acceptable life choices that are actually kind of insane when you sit with them. Spending money you don't have to impress people you don't like. Working five days a week just to get two days of freedom. Choosing your entire career path when you are 17 years old. Sports fanaticism and the double standard that exists between jersey-wearing adults and anyone who shows up to a convention. Gambling, specifically the rise of sports betting apps and why that cottage industry is genuinely sinister. Posting everything on social media compulsively. And the hokey pokey. The Urban Dictionary game returns. This round covers Gert, Yop, Opstopper, Cap-tain, Gup, and Poo Shuttling. Justin's definition of Poo Shuttling involves Colorado, underground pipe hacking, and a thriving East Coast black market. It is not correct. It is significantly better than correct. This week's recommendations: Justin: Good Luck Have Fun Don't Die (Hulu/Disney+). Sam Rockwell is extraordinary. Zazzy Beetz, Michael Pena, Juno Temple, Haley Lou Richardson. Weird, funny, and not far off from where we are headed. The third act gets away from itself slightly but the film is absolutely worth your time. Doug: The Long Walk (HBO). Stephen King adaptation. Dystopian future. 50 boys from 50 states walk until one is left alive. Dark as hell. Completely enthralling. Not a pick-me-upper. Go watch it. Subscribe: youtube.com/mindgappodcast  Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/T3HwyEw5v7  Listen everywhere you get podcasts  Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mindgappodcast Merch on Redbubble: https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/67768184

Fellow New Mexico horror writer T.L. Bodine comes onto the podcast to discuss her life and work, including her 2023 novel "Neverest" and her 2025 collection "These Kids Are Not Alright." She and Scotty talk about Stephen King, Clive Barker, fantasy, fairy tales, body horror, grief, children, mental illness, and more. They also talk about the 2015 indie film "They Look Like People" -- one of the most compassionate horror movies to come along in years. WARNING: This conversation has some spoilers for "They Look Like People." You can find T.L. online (and subscribe to her 'zine) at https://www.patreon.com/tlbodine You can find T.L. on BlueSky at tlbodine.bsky.social You can get your copy of "Neverest" at https://bookshop.org/p/books/neverest-t-l-bodine/e642ad04dbcb9376?ean=9781739611644&bkshp-astro=t You can get your copy of "These Kids Are Not Alright" at https://bookshop.org/p/books/these-kids-are-not-alright-t-l-bodine/e4f0cc105cfd1041?ean=9781737465034&bkshp-astro=t For more information on the Cottonwood Mall pop-up event, go to https://www.facebook.com/mitiekreations/photos/our-upcoming-shows-july-is-live-for-sign-up-august-will-be-coming-out-by-mondayi/978197965119744/ -- Be sure to tune in to Daniel Braum's YouTube series "Night Time Logic." The series focuses on the strange, weird, and wonderful side of dark fiction through readings and discussions with diverse authors from around the world. The next episode will be LIVE on April 11 at 7 p.m. EST, and will feature author Rudi Dornemann. Follow the Facebook event at https://www.facebook.com/share/1BYsJgFGwu/ You can tune in on Daniel's You Tube Channel, which is his name DanielBraum or @danielbraum7838. https://www.facebook.com/groups/429777132474382 https://www.youtube.com/@danielbraum7838 -- Albuquerque listeners: Join Rachel Eve Moulton and Scotty to celebrate the paperback release of Rachel's novella "Tantrum." The event will be at Books on the Bosque (6261 Riverside Plaza Lane NW, Suite A-2) and will begin at 5:30 p.m. MST. Go to https://www.booksonthebosque.com/botb-events-calendar for more information.

Would you spend the night in one of America's most famous haunted hotels?

How can organic writing and leaning into the pivot help your stories stand out? And how can you pitch a story as a discovery writer if you genuinely don't know what's going to happen next. Steven James gives his writing tips after more than 20 years as an author. In the intro, Better Than Free in an Age of AI [Kevin Kelly on Tim Ferriss; Kevin Kelly on The Creative Penn]; Future Vision XPrize; A Different Kind of Bucket List. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Steven James is the multi-award-winning and international bestselling author of 21 novels across thrillers, YA, and science fiction, with more than a million copies sold, as well as the author of non-fiction craft books for writers, a writing teacher, and the host of The Story Blender podcast. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes How to lean into organic writing, and what to focus on instead of plot How characters unfold on the page, and why an attitude beats a background Producing an outline for an agent or publisher when you genuinely don't know what happens next Don't pitch the plot, pitch the pivot The four choices you have in every scene, and why logic plus surprise is the engine of story Faith, moral clarity and big questions You can find Steven at StevenJames.net. Transcript of the interview with Steven James Jo: Steven James is the multi-award-winning and international bestselling author of 21 novels across thrillers, YA, and science fiction, with more than a million copies sold, as well as the author of non-fiction craft books for writers, a writing teacher, and the host of The Story Blender Podcast. So welcome to the show, Steven. Steven: Thanks for having me, Jo. Good to be here. Jo: Great to have you on the show. First up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Steven: Oh, gosh. Well, the thing is, when I was a kid, I fell in love with stories. My uncle would always, whenever we got together for the holidays—Christmas, New Year's and so on—he would take my sister, my brother and myself into a corner of the room while the other adults had coffee, and we would just sit there, and he would get this look in his eye and he'd say, “I'm going to tell you a story.” We were transported to another world. We were swashbuckling with pirates, or facing down a grizzly bear in Alaska, or flying over the desert on a flying carpet, or whatever. I fell in love with imagination and stories and everything. So I started reading as much as I could, mostly short stories. They had a programme at our library called the paperback book exchange, where you bring a paperback book and you leave it, and you can take any one of the paperback books that they had. You could keep it as long as you wanted. If you wanted it for your life, that's fine, or you could just bring it back as soon as you finished reading it. Anyway, I went crazy over the summers reading short stories, mainly. As I got older, I was like, “I think I want to be a storyteller.” So I actually got my master's degree in storytelling. Then I started to travel and tell stories, but I had three little daughters at home, and I was like, “I don't want to be gone 300 days a year when they are growing up.” So I ended up starting to write stories instead of travel, and then it just kind of shifted in that direction. That was in '97. Oh my goodness, that's long. '97, '98. So then I started to write books, and then eventually in 2007, I think, my first novel came out. Now, mainly, I've been writing novels ever since. Jo: It's so interesting. Was it a job, storytelling? Is that what you did before you became a book writer? Or did you have a different job? Steven: I mostly would go to events, conferences, schools and so on, and do a family-friendly storytelling show. So I would tell personal stories, some folktales reimagined. I would go to different events around the country. Mostly it was that. Then I started to shift. I wrote for magazines for a while—80 different magazines I wrote for over those years, a couple of hundred different articles, stories. I was like, “I'm just going to try to make a living telling stories.” So the shift has gone back and forth between actually telling stories and writing stories, but these days, I don't know. I'm still speaking. I'm still out there teaching. Jo: That's so interesting, because it's obviously a completely different thing to tell a story in person than it is to write a story. So when you decided to shift that way, what did you have to learn and unlearn? Because your thoughts on the page are so different to when you can make eye contact with an audience. Steven: That's a good point. I kind of started by telling stories back when I was in college, so I sort of moved from telling to writing. And you're right, there's so much that's lost, whether it's eye contact or pauses. On a printed page, there's always the same amount of space between every word—a space. But when you tell stories, obviously you pause for effect in different places, different areas, and so it's quite different. So if I have an idea for a story, I usually have to decide, is this going to be written or told? And then I do it in that medium. Then if I want to, let's say, tell a written story, I almost have to relearn it, or retell it very differently. You have gestures, body language. All of those things are obviously lost in text, so they are very different. I think for me it's been good, because when I tell stories, I hear different characters speaking, so that when I write, usually dialogue comes fast to me. I can hear what people are saying. I don't always know where they are. I don't always know the setting. I don't even know the scene necessarily, but I can hear the dialogue. Then it also helps me to step into the characters, like when I'm writing different points of view, so that I think I can do a good job of getting into that character's mind, as if I were that person. I think some of that comes from just telling stories. Jo: You've taught so many writers over the years, and it's interesting you said that you hear characters' dialogue. I see visual film in my mind. I don't hear any voice at all. It's all silent. I struggle with dialogue, but I do great world building. Do you find that this really is different by the author? I feel like we fall into these different groups. Steven: Yes, I do. I kind of feel like that's very true as far as what comes first, whether it's a description of a place, whether it's the action. I mean, basically a story has dialogue, narration—or we call it sometimes exposition—and description. Those three things. Every story has those three things, and those are the three that we use to tell a story, a novel. So some people tend to drift into one or the other as sort of their default setting: dialogue, description, or action. That's true. I think also something else that's interesting about writers is they tend to fall into either the camp of being a wordsmith or a storyteller. Not everyone, but I feel like some people are wordsmiths, where I read what they're writing, and I'm like, “Man, this is so powerful, evocative,” whatever. Maybe there's no story there. It's just really interesting writing. Other people just are natural storytellers, and they have to really work on the wordsmithing. I think that's me. I'm more naturally just a storyteller, but it takes me a long time to get the descriptions to where I want them, to choose exactly the right word. That takes me more effort. Some people have to build up the storytelling muscles. I have to build up the wordsmithing muscles. Jo: Well, part of the reason I wanted to talk to you is because you talk about this thing called organic writing in your book Story Trumps Structure, which is out now in a second edition. I call it discovery writing, so similar to you. But most people in the writing community seem to obsess about plotting and planning. So talk about your process of organic writing. You say in the book, “Trust the fluidity of the process.” Tell us more about that. Steven: Well, I remember in high school even, when my teacher got up front and he kind of got this very almost wise look on his face, and he goes, “A story is something with a beginning, a middle, and an end.” I'm sitting there in high school like, “Well, so does a bratwurst. What are you talking about here?” A description of a chair has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The sentence, “Preheat the oven to 450 degrees,” has a beginning, a middle, and an end. My view is that saying a story is something that has three acts is like saying that a pizza is something with three toppings. It might have three. It might have one. It might have five. So the idea for me is not to worry about structure, trying to tick off the boxes of a template, a formula you find online, a fill-in-the-blanks kind of a thing. But instead, to actually look at what lies at the heart of the story—the character, the tension, the struggle, the pursuit, the pivots and plot twists, and the payoff at the end. As you develop those aspects of the story, I feel like you need to worry less and less about following a formula. The more you understand what lies at the heart of a story, I feel like the less you need to plot and the less you need to write by the seat of your pants. A lot of people say, “Oh, you write by the seat of…” No, I don't write by the seat of my pants, because I know what a story contains, so I know that in a certain scene a character will make certain choices that are unpredictable but that escalate the tension, and different things like that. I'm a huge proponent of discovery, as you say, or organic writing. I won't get the quote exactly right, but Ray Bradbury said something along the lines of, “Plot is the tracks left in the snow after your characters have run by on their incredible destinations. It cannot precede action. It is the chart that remains when an action is through.” So he's saying plot is not what precedes action. After the action, you have plot. So the whole idea of trying to plot out a story before you write it is going about writing exactly backwards. Plot doesn't precede action. It's the result. So I always tell people, “Don't worry so much about the plot. I want you to look at the pursuit.” A plotter might say, “Well, what should happen?” And they'll just come up with something. But an organic writer—a pursuit-based question would be, what does the character want? Now, when I know what the character wants, I will know what should happen. So literally, it will lead me to the story. Focusing on plot will not necessarily lead you to the story. It might lead you down the wrong track. Jo: Then in terms of your actual writing process— Do you start writing without knowing the ending? Do you write in order? Is the organic side also in the process? Steven: I've never started a book where I know how it will end. So I usually start with either a character that's fascinating or, in some cases, a premise, a question. Then as I write, I explore the possibilities of where it might go. I've tried to outline a scene—like one scene, not a whole book—and it never works. I can't even outline one scene. I've tried, and I'm like, okay, that's… What I end up with is completely different from it, so it's just a waste of time and effort for me to try to outline or plot out a story. I'm much more interested in the pathway the characters will take as they face obstacles and setbacks in their pursuit. As the struggles and the tension develop, what choices will they make? That's how the story will unfold for me. Jo: I'm similar. Then I also wonder— Do you do character sheets and character bios, or do the characters also unfold organically? Steven: Absolutely, I don't do any of the sheets and bios and stuff. The characters really come to me as I write. I begin to get to know them. I always tell people, a character with an attitude is more interesting than a character with a background. So a lot of people will spend a lot of time on, like, where's this character gone to college, and what's their first pet's name, all that stuff. I'm not trying to dump on that idea. I get that that can be helpful. But I'm like, how would I know that until I've spent time with them? Then once I begin to spend time with them, I'm writing and I'm like, “Nah, this doesn't seem like what that character would really say or do,” so I have to go back and rejigger the story to hopefully make it fit with that character. Then I like to give the characters some sort of attitude. I'm not talking about a negative or judgy attitude, but an attitude about something that is unique or different, and that makes them not a template character, not an archetype or whatever, but unique. Sort of this constellation of unique traits, characteristics, maybe wounds, flaws and so on, that create a character where you're like, “This is a character like none I've ever seen before. I want to spend time with this character.” Jo: Then you're spending time with the character by writing what's happening, as opposed to writing loads of stuff beforehand and then starting to write. You're actually finding all of this out during the process of writing. Steven: Yes, and I think it's kind of like getting to know someone. If I were to say, “Okay, I'm going to write down Jo's bio,” or whatever—okay, I'm making stuff up, because I don't know you super well. If we were to spend time together, hang out, whatever, talk, over the course of time I would start to know, oh, she likes this, she doesn't like that. This is important to her. This is what she would weep or pound the table over—whatever, all of the things that come with time. It's like a friendship in real life to me. So I can't sit down and tell you what a character in real life would think and say and do if I don't know them, but the more time I spend with them, then the more I'm able to predict that accurately. I think the mistake a lot of people make is they think, “I'm going to get to know this character with a background,” and then they start writing it, and instead of looking at the context, they look back at the—I don't know what you call it—the background or something like that. I always feel like what you mentioned earlier is, like, hold it loosely in your hand. Trust the fluidity of the process. As you're writing, you have an instinct. “Ah, I think this character would say this or do this.” So trust that. Trust that instinct. Trust that moment in the story, instead of trying to go back to an outline, back to a character description, or whatever it might be. So I'm a big proponent of looking at the context—not just what happened, but what is the result? So looking at the impetus and the implication of the choices and the activities. When something occurs, what would the character naturally say or do or think or respond? Then what would that cause? What's the implication that that would have on the rest of the story, on the rest of the characters? So, really trying to keep your finger on the pulse of the story, and adapt as you move forward through it. Jo: I love all of that, but I also am very aware that you've been in traditional publishing for over 20 years, and one of the things with agents and publishers is that they often ask for an outline. So how do you manage that? Or how did you more earlier in your career, because I imagine they just trust you now. Earlier in your career, or people listening who want to pitch but they write in this organic way, how do we deal with that kind of thing? Steven: Well, okay, so there's two good questions. One is about producing an outline for an agent or editor or publisher and so on. The other is how to pitch a story. So the first: I would write the premise down, and maybe a paragraph or two, and then where I think it might go. Basically, I would focus on the questions that the characters will face, maybe the moral dilemmas, the sacrifices they have to make, the world they live in. I kind of know that stuff, and I can write a couple of paragraphs about that. But beyond that, I just don't know what's going to happen, so I can't really provide more. I'm looking at my shelf at the books that I've done, and mostly that's what I've done is kind of a couple of paragraphs focusing on the premise and the problem, the struggle, and so on like that. As far as pitching a story, I always tell people, “Don't pitch the plot, pitch the pivot.” I think that there's a screenwriter—I think that he talks about this a little bit. I've not read the book Save the Cat, but people have told me, “Oh, he kind of brings this up in that book.” The idea is to pitch the irony instead of what occurs. So sometimes when I tell people to pitch, or I give them ideas, one process that you can use is: when, must, before, or else. So, when this occurs, this character must do something before this, or else. So you have the character, you have the struggle, you have the inciting incident, you have the stakes, and you have the countdown. It works well for thrillers. So for instance, like Jaws. When a man-eating shark starts eating people in a small seaside village, the sheriff must stop him before more people die and the town loses its economy. So there you have when, must, before, or else. Now, no one's going to buy the story based on that, because there's no irony, there's no pivot. It's just a description of the plot, and that's what most people pitch. So I always tell people, pitch the part of the story that you wouldn't expect. So for instance, in there you might pitch: when a shark starts eating people in a small seaside village, the only one who can stop him is afraid of the water. Now you're like, “Oh, well, that's interesting. How does that happen? What happens there?” With my book Broker of Lies, the pitch was something like, when a high-level Pentagon redactor ends up on the run, he must stop a terrorist attack before he's neutralised by the people he trusts the most. So the pivot is that the people he trusts at the Pentagon the most are actually trying to neutralise him because he's on the run, and all that kind of stuff. So why would they be trying to do that? Well, that's interesting. So it's always looking for the irony, the pivot. Why is this character the last one in the world who would ever be equipped to tackle this problem or face this issue? So that's one way to do a pitch. Obviously there's lots of them, but I think your goal with a pitch is to get them to say, “Tell me more.” It's not necessarily to summarise the whole story. Jo: That's great advice. So you teach writers—I first saw you at ThrillerFest, I think it was 2012—and you do events, you run writing retreats. So you work with a lot of authors, and I wondered, what are the challenges that you see from authors with, say, five books? So not the beginner authors, because obviously there's a lot of challenges. But those who, let's say they've got the three to five books, things are going all right, but they're like, “How do I get to the next level?” What are the craft issues, or the business issues as well, that mid-list authors face? Steven: Well, business, I'm not the guy to ask. I could try to answer that, but I mean, basically: meet your deadlines and write something amazing. Try to be easy to work with, but also stand up for what you wrote as far as working with editors. It's sort of a fine line you have to walk. The one thing that over the last few years I've really noticed in a lot of writers who are in that space is that they don't have many pivots. They tend to write predictable stories, and that's why they tend to stay where they're at—whether it's because they're following an outline or a plot formula or whatever it is. So when I talk about a pivot, I mean a moment in the story where something happens that's both unexpected and inevitable. For instance, if you're reading a story, you want things to make sense. You want them to be logical. That's one thing. But you don't want them to be too predictable. If it's too predictable, it's boring. It's like, I'm not interested. So we also want surprises. We want these two things. We want logic, and we want surprise. When those two things meet and you have a moment in the story where it's like, “I didn't see that coming, but that totally makes sense,” that's what we want, and we want that in every scene. I feel like a lot of authors don't have that in every scene. Now, you might say, “Well, every scene?” Well, yes, because basically those two factors, logic and surprise, can only meet in four different ways. You could have something that's very logical but has no surprises. That's going to be boring. It's going to be too predictable. We don't want that. You could have something that is very surprising but not logical. It makes no sense. A lot of stuff is surprising, but that's not what we want, because it's unbelievable, and it's like, what is going on here? You could have something that has neither logic nor surprise, which obviously we don't want that. The only other option is to have a moment that is both logical and surprising. So you have a choice in every scene. You have four choices, actually. You can have it be predictable and boring. You can have it be nonsensical. You can have it be unbelievable. Or you can have a pivot. So I find myself trying to really coach people on pivots. They'll say, “Oh, well, do I need it in every scene?” I'm like, “You can choose, but do you want it to be predictable or boring or nonsensical, or do you want it to really drive the story forward?” I think it's because people have been taught structure and plot and three acts and all this kind of stuff, but they haven't been taught this idea—even though it's not something I made up. Aristotle, in Poetics, thousands of years ago, put it a little bit differently, but he said, “The reversal of the situation”—what I call the pivot—”is the moment at which the action veers around to its opposite”—that would be what I call surprise—”subject always to a rule of probability or necessity”—which is the logic. So he's basically saying the same thing in just a little bit different language, but you have these three factors. You have logic, you have surprise, and you have them come together in a specific moment. I don't know why it's not taught more. I have never found anyone who teaches pivots. I have not found any books, so I wrote a book recently about how to use pivots. It's so central, and I think great storytellers naturally do it. You'll read a book, or you'll maybe watch a show, and you're like, “Oh, I didn't see that coming. That totally makes sense.” I don't see anyone else out there really focusing on teaching that. So that's a huge thing for me, really, to help people move up in their writing, elevate it to a different level. Jo: Is that Delve, Pivot, Propel? Steven: Yes. That book came out a couple years ago. We just re-released it. I updated it some, but it talks pretty much in depth about pivots and how to actually use those to propel the stories forward. Jo: Maybe you could just give us one tip on how to do that, because going back to the organic writing—let's say I've been organically writing, and every time a character has a decision to make, I think at that point about what I want to write and I write it. Are you suggesting that we go back in the edit and look at the end of every scene and redo it? Because I can't imagine that I would get this right every time. I would need to do that in an edit, I think. Steven: I think for me, when I'm writing, I'm always asking myself a series of questions. One is, what would the character naturally do? I want to make it believable and natural. Let them do it. I want to escalate the tension, so I'll ask myself, “How can I make things worse?” Then I'll always ask myself, how can I add a pivot to this scene? So as I'm writing a scene—again, I don't know how it will end when I start it—but if I use the first idea that comes to mind, probably a lot of readers would guess that as well, because it's the first idea that comes to mind. It's probably logical and probably predictable. That's why most stories end up being too predictable. It's because we go with the first idea that maybe we had. So I try to discard that. Maybe the second idea, just discard it. Then I start thinking, okay, now if I've discarded the obvious, what is going on? What's below the surface? So to answer your question, I'm looking for what isn't what it appears to be, or who isn't who they appear to be, or a surprising way to bring together plot threads that I didn't see related before. So it's always looking for the unexpected, the surprise, because most of the time that is what we're missing. Now, if you have a great surprise, then you have to lean into making it believable. So you've got to move into that idea of, well, what would the character naturally do? You can't just have him do something ridiculous and then say, “Oh, it's for my twist.” No, you can't do that. You've got to play fair. So it has to be believable, causally related, logical, and surprising. That's what you're shooting for. Those are the questions going through my mind. So as I'm working on a scene, I'm like, “How could I end this?” Or include something that people won't see coming right away. The best ideas always come to me then. It's so interesting. A lot of people will say, “Oh, don't write organically,” or, quote, “by the seat of your pants,” whatever they'll say, “because then you might write yourself into a corner.” I'm like, “Yes, absolutely write yourself into a corner. That's what I'm trying to do in every scene.” And then you write yourself out of a corner in a way that's logical and surprising. The best twists I've ever come up with have been when I'm in a corner. So why would I warn people against going to the place where the best ideas await them? That just seems mean. Why would I do that? No, I want you to have the best possible ideas. So yes, look for corners, write yourself into them, and then write yourself out of them in a way that's both logical and surprising. Jo: I guess also it needs to be genre specific. We write mainly thrillers, and there is this fine line, isn't there? I love Stephen King, but one of the most unbelievable endings is Under the Dome. I still remember feeling betrayed. I don't know if you've read that one, but— Steven: Oh, no. Jo: I was like, “I'm sorry, you've just changed genre in the last chapter of the book. What is going on here?” Steven: That's actually interesting. The fourth question I ask… So I ask, what would the character naturally do? How can I make things worse? How can I add a pivot? But the fourth question is, what promises have I made that I have not yet kept? So genre, to me, is a promise. You build up a promise in your writing at the beginning of the book, and then I feel like as we write, we have to honour that. So if we bring something up that's super interesting, bring it back or whatever. Keep your promises. Keep your narrative promises. It's true of really any genre. Let's say you're writing a romance. You want to respect the conventions, but not fall into the clichés. So there's going to be a moment where the lovers meet, right? They haven't met before. I don't know what they call it, a meet cute or a cute meet. I think they call it a meet cute, I guess. Jo: Yes. They do. Steven: Anyway. So they're going to meet, right? And you're like, “Oh, I'll just have them meet.” Well, try to do it in a way we haven't seen before. Add something else to the scene. Add a third element, as my friend Bob Dugoni likes to say. Add something a little bit that we're like, “Huh, I've never seen that before.” We know they're going to meet, but let them meet in a way that we don't anticipate, that we can't predict right away, that isn't exactly by the numbers, and then you're going to be on the right track. Jo: So then, talking about reader expectations and genre, I wondered if I could also ask you about your Christian faith, because many people listening are people of faith, and some people want to write a Christian book. Other people want to bring their faith into, say, a mainstream type thriller in an authentic way. So how do you balance your faith and your writing? Because I think you have some series that are more sort of Christian than others. Steven: It's interesting. When my first novel came out—The Pawn, like a chess piece, The Pawn—back almost 20 years ago. Gosh, 20 years ago. Nineteen. But anyway, when it came out, someone wrote to me and said, “Is this a Christian book?” I'm like, “What would make a book not Christian?” I'm like, maybe if it has a lot of idolatry, or witchcraft, or maybe sexuality or graphic violence. Then I'm like, oh, wait, that's… No, that's the Old Testament. So it's interesting, because people have asked me similar questions over the years. My books are not sermons in disguise. I'm trying to write great stories that anyone of any background or faith will enjoy. I always ask big questions. I let my characters wrestle with questions that matter, I think. Do my choices matter? Is there hope? Is there a God? Is there no God? Do I have free will? Can I find forgiveness? Can I offer forgiveness? Can I extend it, or whatever? So I always try to base the stories on something deeper. I do believe that there is good and there's evil in the world. That's part of my worldview. So when people talk about moral ambiguity, I don't want to write or read something that's morally ambiguous. I want moral complexity, but I also want moral clarity. So whenever you write, the question is, what are you justifying and what are you condemning? And if you're justifying something that's morally—I would say wrong, actually—then I don't feel like that's the kind of book I would want to write. So I want to write stories that explore good and evil, that explore our world, human nature, in an honest way. I feel like when you write honest stories, people, no matter what their background or whatever faith, then they will connect with it. I think a lot of people, if they start off with an agenda—whatever that agenda might be, let's say it is a Christian agenda, like I want people to trust in Jesus, let's say—so they write a story. Well, what you're doing, you're actually starting your story with an answer, and drama is not built on answers, it's built on questions. So you're actually diminishing the amount of tension. You're also diminishing the possibility of a pivot, because we all get where you're going. It's predictable, but there's probably no surprise. You're diminishing the payoff at the end, because we're like, “I saw that coming. I exactly knew where you were going with this.” So instead, I don't start with an answer. I always start with a question, or in some cases a moral dilemma, like, what's more important, protecting the innocent or telling the truth? That's interesting to me. If I had to choose between the two, would I tell the truth or would I protect the innocent? It's interesting, because people might come down on different sides of it. They might say, “Oh, you should always tell the truth,” or they say, “You always should protect the innocent.” I'm like, okay, well, let's explore it. Let's literally ask the question. So I come from a certain worldview, but I've written characters who have very different worldviews from me. I'm always just trying to be honest with the character, ask big questions, tell a story that examines human nature and sort of the paradoxes of the human condition in a way that will resonate with really whoever the readers might be. Jo: And of course that worldview is part of your author voice and part of what readers come to you for. I also notice that you have some pretty diverse different series. How do you manage that diversity of series under your one brand? Do you find your readers move from one to the other, or do you have different readerships? Steven: You mentioned the B word—brand. That's what publishers are always telling me: “What's your brand?” I'm like, “I don't know. You tell me what my brand is.” I've done fantasy, science fiction, conspiracy. I've done spies and police procedurals and crime and suspense, thrills, whatever. So I would say the one thing that really ties all my stories together is probably just suspense. They are stories with suspense. Some are more high concept thrillers, some are more dark fantasy, but they're built around suspense. So I guess that would be intelligent suspense, maybe, if I was trying to come up with a brand. Something like that. Because I don't want them to be dumbed down. They're not dumbed down stories, so they're a little bit more complex than you might find in other places, but always built around the idea of suspense. Suspense to me is basically—my definition is apprehension born of concern. So we're concerned about a character, and we're apprehensive because there's peril around the bend, or right in front of them. So I want the readers to really care about a character, and then try to build the story and the suspense around that empathy or sympathy that we have for the character. Jo: I think it's really interesting, because again, you mentioned 2007—we're coming up on 20 years since first published. The publishing industry has changed a lot. So what do you think has changed most in publishing for you, and what are your thoughts on routes to market for new authors these days? Or even established authors who are finding that things have changed, which they obviously have. Steven: Well, I'm not a marketer, I'm not a businessman. I'm just a storyteller at heart. So I just keep writing stories that I would be intrigued with reading, stories that I feel like are resonant. Then I look for publishers for those. I've been to a variety of different publishers over the last decade. I've done some different types of stories. I feel like you have to just write the story instead of trying to write for a specific market trend or something like that. So I might not make as much as some of my friends, I might not sell as many books, but I feel like I have to write certain stories if they grab ahold of me. There's a Native American—I think the Pawnee tribe, anyway, in the United States—but they were saying that all the stories that exist are out there already, and when one finds you, it's your job to share it with the world. I think that's kind of interesting. Sometimes—maybe it's just true for you, I don't know, Jo—but it's like a story will grab hold of me, or an idea, and I'm like, “I can't shake it.” That's a story that I want to tell the world. I would say that stories are becoming shorter, dumber. People are trying to write faster. They're trying to write several books a year, and as a result of that, some of the quality has gone down. This is all unfortunate. I'm still sort of a dinosaur. I still tend to write longer, complex stories. But people have shorter attention spans and whatever, and they're not reading as much. The structure of stories, I think, is changing slightly, where people will have to spend more time on a hook to really grab the attention of the readers. Then there might be a longer slow period, or more info dumping, which I'm not a fan of. So they kind of look like, “I want to get readers hooked at the beginning, and then get them to flip pages.” So I tend to set up my stories a little bit differently than that. So I'm not the best guy to ask about marketing and sales and stuff like that. I feel like, write a story that will not let you go. And if you do that, I feel like that's the kind of story that will resonate with readers, because there's a deep honesty to it. You care, you're passionate about it. It's not just something you're trying to spin out just to sell books. That's my view. Jo: I guess I also feel that writers are doing other things. So you have non-fiction, you have your podcast, you do events. I see you sell books direct from your website. It's like the business expands into multiple streams of income, so that the art doesn't have to pay all the bills. Steven: That's interesting. I do love to teach writing at conferences, events, and speak at different things. So I guess if you think about it that way, my brand might be just story, or storytelling, or something like that. Really trying to get out there, and whether it's speaking or writing, just tell a great story. So it's so interesting when I work with publishers and they'll ask, “What's your brand?” Basically it's like, “What's your box?” is really what they're asking. What box can we stick you in that will make it easy for us to package you and sell you? I know myself, and just a lot of authors that I know, we don't think in a box. Every one of my stories is not boxy. It's not the same. They're different. I know a lot of authors like that too. So it's unfortunate. I get it, that it's part of them trying to market and sell the books. I understand that, but I think being honest, genuine with the story, doing the very best you can, writing a worthy book, and then letting them come up with a way to categorise it, is probably the best bet. I don't know. Jo: We're almost out of time, but this is obviously a podcast, and you have a podcast. So tell us about The Story Blender Podcast and what people might find over there. Steven: Yes, I appreciate it. Basically, I interview some of the leading writers and storytellers in the world every week, and the goal is for great storytellers to share the secrets of great storytelling. So I basically pick their brains, kind of like what you were doing with me today, and find out what projects they're working on, and really just try to get insights into storytelling. So it's tons of fun. I've been doing it now for a number of years, and I guess I've interviewed over 250 different authors and writers from around the world, and so I always enjoy it. It's a ton of fun. It's The Story Blender, and people can find it anywhere. Jo: So where can people find you and your books and everything you do online? Steven: Probably the best place is StevenJames.net. I think I'm on different socials @readstevenjames, so you can look me up there—Facebook, Instagram, X, and so on. I think they're all under readstevenjames. Check out the website, drop me a note. I always enjoy hearing from readers. Jo: Well, thanks so much for your time, Steven. That was great. Steven: Thanks, Jo. I appreciate it. Good luck. The post Organic Writing And The Power Of The Pivot In Fiction With Steven James first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Synopsis The late Sam Neill plays John Trent, an insurance investigator tracking down the whereabouts of Sutter Cane a famous horror novelist who has gone missing right before the release of his new novel. Trent suspects that the whole thing is a publicity stunt for the novel's release, but as he searches for Kane, he finds the line between Kane's fictional world and reality start to fray and overlap in disturbing ways. Review John Carpenter goes full Lovecraftian, melding his trademark independent film sensibilities and impressive practical effects with cosmic horror. If you look at his Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB ratings, you will also see that this is his last major film with significant critical and audience praise. It marks the end of an era where scrappy 80s gore and body horror was supplanted by slicker high budget meta narratives. This movie ushered in the new era with the likes of Candyman, The New Nightmare, and Scream. standing between two eras, this definitely has more of an esthetic aligned with the scrappy indy vibe of Romero and Carpenters previous work. The idea takes center stage and isn't handled preciously. It presents itself as a cool thing and lets the audience take a little ride without delving deep into the psychological or taking itself too seriously. Kind of like a Stephen King novel actually. I picked this one because of the passing of Sam Neill and he does a great job here being the everyman descending into, you guessed it, madness. We also get Happy Gilmore's grandma being freaky af, Vigo the Carpathian, and a very young Hayden Christiansen. Like I said before, it's a fun ride that doesn't take itself too seriously. My only criticism is that it does rely on some repetitive cinematic moves such as jump scares and arbitrary time loops. But it's all to service the films uneasy vibe and give impact to the singular moments of cosmic horror. Score 7/10

In this episode of Business Brain, we welcome a special third brain to the table for World Brain Day as Lisa joins Shannon and Dave with real questions about turning household clutter into a reselling business. We walk through the exact path we’d take: start by selling what you already own, research your market before spending a dime using eBay’s free product research, and register on every platform early so your accounts have time to warm up. From first-edition Stephen King books to collectible dolls, we get into where to sell, how to price with sold-listing data, and why the profit is always made when you buy, not when you sell. We dig into the reselling gold that never shows up in the how-to guides: buy with math and sell with emotion, work every deal backward from what it sells for, and lean into the one unfair advantage nobody can copy. People buy from people, so a credibility statement and a noble cause in your listing turn “eBay user 559678” into a real human someone wants to support. We cover sourcing from B-Stock, GovDeals, and BidSpotter, using Claude to crunch manifests, and setting a hard bidding ceiling and walking away. Small wins compound, personalization wins the sale, and that’s how we keep living the Charmed Life.We turn clutter into cash: reselling research, pricing with math, and why people buy from people on Business Brain. 00:00:00 Business Brain – The Entrepreneurs' Podcast #772 for Wednesday, July 22, 2026 July 22nd: World Brain Day 00:01:34 With a new business, learn the system Start with small wins! 00:04:35 Learn what your market is? Use eBay Product Research Learn from them. Add video if your market uses that! BStock.com Shannon Jean's Reseller Mastermind 00:10:11 For your listings Your credibility statement. One or two sentences at the beginning of your listing. A quick blurb that helps you stand out. What's your noble cause? (trying to get out of debt, lifelong learner, paying for a new car) People buy from people. 00:12:25 Scribe. Don’t get caught being the only person who knows how something works. For a limited time, book a demo at https://scribe.how/brain and mention BRAIN for your first month of Scribe Capture free. 00:14:18 SPONSOR: FanVue. Are you ready to start your own creator journey and make it big? Visit https://www.fanvue.com/ today and launch your career! 00:15:31 What sites to use…beyond eBay? Poshmark (mainly fashion, plus others) Facebook Marketplace Vinted Depop Tools: Comet Browser Claude Create your social accounts 00:18:17 All the profit is made when you buy. You never want to buy ANYthing until you KNOW what you can sell it for Buy with math and sell with emotion 00:22:15 Where do we buy? BStock.com GovDeals BidSpotter 00:26:20 Do Your Research! Work the deal backwards 00:28:25 Auction or Buy It Now? 00:30:18 This Episode's Big Takeway: People Buy From People. Bring Your Personality. 00:31:22 Business Brain 772 Outtro Check out Business Brain Blueprints Tell Your Friends! Business Blueprints Review Business Brain Subscribe to the show feedback@businessbrain.show Call/Text: (567) 274-6977 X/Twitter: @ShannonJean & @DaveHamilton, & @BizBrainShow LinkedIn: Shannon Jean, Dave Hamilton, & Business Brain Facebook: Dave Hamilton, Shannon Jean, & Business Brain The post Reselling, Unfair Advantage, People want to Buy from People – Business Brain 772 appeared first on Business Brain - The Entrepreneurs' Podcast.

The solo debut from the New York Times bestselling coauthor of Widow's Point: The Complete Haunting, a post-apocalyptic/survival horror novel written in the bestselling traditions of Stephen King's The Mist and Josh Malerman's Bird Box.A top-secret government project hits upon a revolutionary idea for transporting matter across the vast reaches of the universe, and it succeeds in bringing something back. Something alive. Soon, mankind's reign comes to an abrupt halt when a truck hauling a very special shipping container overturns and rolls off the highway, unleashing an otherworldly horror upon an unsuspecting New England countryside, where it cannot be contained…Several years later, an unidentified man emerges from the rubble of humanity, seeking other survivors and a shred of hope amid an eerie and lonely landscape. He travels by night up the rural East Coast, discovering Americana ruins and encountering monsters the likes of which no one has survived. Scarred and molded by the cruel horrors of this new natural order, he must face his own dwindling humanity and pray that any others out there have not become monsters themselves…Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/houseofmysteryradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dracula, The Hills Have Eyes, Nope, Maximum Overdrive, and Deep Blue Sea headline this episode of This Week in Horror History, covering July 20 through July 26. Summer horror gets seductive, sun-scorched, mechanical, extraterrestrial, and shark-infested as we explore gothic vampires, desert survival horror, reverse-horror gaming, Jordan Peele's terrifying vision of spectacle, Stephen King's killer-machine apocalypse, and genetically engineered sharks loose inside an underwater laboratory.  Inside this episode:July 20, 1979 — Dracula releases in the United StatesFrank Langella gives Count Dracula a dangerous combination of gothic romance, theatrical charm, and supernatural menace. This version of Bram Stoker's vampire proves that evil does not always need to force its way through the door. Sometimes it gets invited inside.July 22, 1977 — The Hills Have Eyes premieres in Tucson, ArizonaWes Craven turns an ordinary family road trip into a brutal desert survival nightmare. When a shortcut leaves the Carter family stranded far from civilization, the open landscape becomes a trap filled with heat, isolation, violence, and another family watching from the hills.July 23, 2020 — Carrion releasesThis reverse-horror video game flips the familiar monster formula by letting players become the creature. A growing mass of teeth, tendrils, and hunger escapes through a research facility while terrified scientists and guards discover that containment has completely failed.July 22, 2022 — Nope releases in U.S. theatersJordan Peele turns the sky into a haunted house in a strange and ambitious collision of UFO horror, creature-feature spectacle, Hollywood exploitation, western imagery, animal behavior, and the dangerous human need to capture the impossible on camera.Deep-Cut Spotlight — Maximum OverdriveStephen King steps behind the camera for one of the loudest and most gloriously unhinged killer-machine movies of the 1980s. After Earth passes through the tail of a comet, trucks, vending machines, arcade games, lawn equipment, and other everyday technology suddenly turn against humanity. At the Dixie Boy truck stop, a group of survivors becomes trapped by eighteen-wheelers that appear to have developed personalities, grudges, and a deep hatred of human beings. With a goblin-faced truck, massive explosions, diner panic, homicidal machinery, and AC/DC blasting through the chaos, Maximum Overdrive remains a greasy, absurd, and unforgettable piece of Stephen King horror history.Horror Birthdays This Week: Diana Rigg, Josh Hartnett, Willem Dafoe, and Lynda Carter enter the birthday roll, bringing connections to Theatre of Blood, Last Night in Soho, Halloween H20, The Faculty, 30 Days of Night, Trap, Shadow of the Vampire, The Lighthouse, Nosferatu, and The Initiation of Sarah.Weekly Recommendation — Deep Blue Sea Researchers inside an isolated underwater facility genetically engineer mako sharks while searching for a medical breakthrough. Unfortunately, making enormous predators more intelligent turns out to be a catastrophically bad idea. Packed with violent storms, flooding corridors, underwater laboratories, corporate hubris, giant sharks, and one of the most memorable shock moments in 1990s horror, Deep Blue Sea remains a fast, fun, and wonderfully ridiculous summer creature feature. From Dracula and The Hills Have Eyes to Carrion, Nope, Maximum Overdrive, and Deep Blue Sea, this week in horror history proves that summer terror can wait inside a gothic mansion, watch from the desert hills, escape from a laboratory, descend from the sky, take control of an eighteen-wheeler, or circle silently beneath the water.

Celluloid Heroes: Episode 19Film: Stand By Me (1986)In the 1980s the 50s were cool again, with Classic Rock, nostalgia-themed restaurants, and nostalgic movies leading the way. But the great Rob Reiner chose to commemorate the end of the 1950s in a different way, with a mournful and elegiac story about four friends embarking on a search for a dead teenager's body, and a search into themselves in the legendary Stand By Me. The movie that introduced Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Jerry O'Connell and Corey Feldman to the world at large, also introduced our host to the works of Stephen King as he settles into a new town, finds new friends, and reflects on the truth that you never have friends quite like the ones you have when you're twelve. Does anyone?Follow Celluloid Heroes on INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/TheCelluloidHeroesPodFollow Brad Abraham at www.bradabraham.comShare your thoughts with us! Send your comments to contact@longboxcrusade.comThis podcast is a member of the LONGBOX CRUSADE NETWORK:Visit the WEBSITE: https://www.LongboxCrusade.comFollow on TWITTER: https://twitter.com/LongboxCrusadeFollow on INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/longboxcrusadeLike the FACEBOOK page: https://www.facebook.com/LongboxCrusadeSubscribe to the YOUTUBE Channel: https://goo.gl/4LkhovSubscribe on APPLE PODCASTS at:https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-longboxcrusade/id1118783510?mt=2Subscribe on SPOTIFY at:https://open.spotify.com/show/3Hl0nrO7z1KYaHSDug9hsg?si=ee431b760c8c4a21Celluloid Heroes SPOTIFY Single Feed at:https://open.spotify.com/show/5G4VxlMzO0yy7Rub7MPUzx?si=389277ae77a84dd0We appreciate you joining us for this episode of Celluloid Heroes and hope you enjoyed listening!#film #cinema #movies #genx #nostalgia #1986 #StandByMe #WilWheaton #RiverPhoenix #JerryOConnell #CoreyFeldman #RobReiner

What happens when the first and only person allowed into Stephen King’s private archives sits down to talk about what she found? In this episode of Fascinating Nouns, host Daniel J. Glenn sits down with Dr. Caroline Bicks, author of Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King, for a wide-ranging conversation about horror, language, childhood trauma, and the secret sauce behind one of the most prolific writers in history. Dr. Bicks — a Shakespeare scholar and the University of Maine’s Stephen A. King Chair — was given unprecedented access to King’s full manuscript collection, including handwritten drafts of Carrie, The Shining, Salem’s Lot, Pet Sematary, and Night Shift. She shares what she found: margin notes revealing King’s obsessive attention to word sounds, the moment he almost put Pet Sematary in a drawer forever, how a concrete gravel liner changed the entire moral weight of the novel, and why the famous line “sometimes dead is better” was originally “sometimes death is better” — and why that one word change made all the difference. We also get into whether kids should be reading Stephen King (spoiler: it’s complicated), why Stephen King hated the Kubrick Shining, how Shakespeare and King are more alike than you think, the ghost question, and why Francis Bacon might actually be Stephen King. This one goes everywhere — and it’s a blast.

401 VelociPastor II Interview Jurassic Park Trivia Comic Con CarrieDoom Scrolling IntroThe Foos kick off the 400s with yard-work injuries, mosquito attacks, and the ongoing backyard project that may or may not destroy Joe's arm before it's done. Steph explains her mosquito bite allergy situation, Joe suspects he messed up his elbow trenching in 90-degree weather, and somehow this still counts as progress.Geeking Out starts with San Diego Comic-Con week: Marvel is expected to bring Avengers Doomsday heat to Hall H, Insomniac is showing off Marvel's Wolverine, DC is bringing Batman: Caped Crusader and Lanterns energy, Guillermo del Toro is tied to Pan's Labyrinth programming, and The VelociPastor II is premiering at the con with a double feature of the original movie.Then it's horror TV news: Mike Flanagan is bringing Stephen King's Carrie to Prime Video as a series, which actually makes sense given his track record with Gerald's Game and Doctor Sleep. The Foos also talk American Horror Story Season 13 bringing back a massive lineup of franchise favorites, including Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Angela Bassett, Kathy Bates, Emma Roberts, and Billie Lourd.In honor of Sam Neill, Steph runs Joe through Jurassic Park trivia focused on the original movie. There are correct answers, wrong answers, technical difficulties, a timer disaster, and the realization that the first dinosaur they see is not the Triceratops with the giant pile of poop.The main event is an interview with Jesse Gouldsberry, director of The VelociPastor II and producer/director of photography on the original VelociPastor. Jesse talks about how a fake title and college short became a real cult movie, how the first trailer went micro-viral and even landed on G4's Attack of the Show, the jump from the first film's tiny budget to the sequel, and why having more money doesn't mean losing the handmade chaos.They dig into the fake Australian trailer narration, the legendary “VFX: Car on fire” placeholder gag, balancing intentionally ridiculous filmmaking with actual story structure, the pressure of making a sequel to a cult favorite, and the DIY production choices that keep the movie feeling like community-theater grindhouse insanity in the best way possible.Jesse also talks about premiering The VelociPastor II in a 14th-century church in Prague, bringing it to San Diego Comic-Con, planning a roadshow, getting rights back to the first film, possible future streaming/distribution plans, and why fans should ask their local theaters to bring the movie to town.ChaptersDoom Scrolling IntroIntroMosquito bites skeeter syndrome and yard work injuriesBackyard project trenching granite sod and chaosGeeking Out San Diego Comic-Con previewMarvel Avengers Doomsday Hall H expectationsMarvel's Wolverine deep dive at Comic-ConDC Batman Caped Crusader Lanterns and Pan's Labyrinth programmingThe VelociPastor II Comic-Con double feature previewMike Flanagan Carrie series for Prime VideoAmerican Horror Story Season 13 franchise reunionJurassic Park trivia in honor of Sam NeillInterview Jesse Gouldsberry joins the showThe VelociPastor origin fake title college short and G4VelociPastor II budget sequel pressure and DIY chaosFake Australian trailer voice and VFX car on firePrague church premiere and San Diego Comic-Con screeningRoadshow plans streaming rights and future VelociPastor ideasOutro + Doom Scrolling OutroThe Foobar Show, VelociPastor II, Jesse Gouldsberry, VelociPastor interview, San Diego Comic-Con 2026, Avengers Doomsday, Marvel's Wolverine, Batman Caped Crusader, Lanterns DC, Mike Flanagan Carrie, Stephen King, American Horror Story Season 13, Jurassic Park trivia, Sam Neill, grindhouse comedy, cult movie sequel

The Summer of 86 at 40 is a weekly retrospective journey through United States pop culture surrounding the films released in May, June, July and August of 1986. Brandon Peters, Scott Mendelson and Aaron Neuwirth take a weekend by weekend look at the films released as well as the news stories, commercials, television and music that rounded out the general public’s lives as they lined the pockets of the box office to see these movies. July 25-27, 1986: Now THIS is quite the week! We’ve got Jack Nicholson & Meryl Streep’s first team up! Gene Wilder & Gilda Radner teaming up again! Stephen King directing his first movie! And Anthony Michael Hall trying his hand at being an action star! Its a loaded episodes and the results may surprise you! We’ll also be discussing the box office report, notable news stories, a 1986 commercial, the top 10 Nielsen rated tv programs for the week and the top 10 of Casey Kasem’s American top 40 from the week these films were released. Brandon Peters and the show are on Facebook and social media @brandon4kuhd. Subscribe to the YouTube channel for visual versions as well as 4k, Blu-ray, DVD reviews & additional material. Scott Mendelson is on social media @scottmendelson. Find his work on The Outside Scoop, The Box Office Podcast and Puck News Aaron Neuwirth is on social media @aaronsps4. Find his written work on weliveentertainment.com and podcasting at 2 Black Guys Talk Godzilla (@2blakckguystalkgodzilla) and on Out Now with Aaron & Abe (@outnowpod) Pres Maxson can be followed on social media @presmaxson and his novels are available on Amazon. More information and content available at thebrandonpetersshow.com. Please contact naptownnerd@gmail.com for any inquiries or opportunities.

Jeff McArthur is always an excellent guest!His book, Pro Bono is a true crime classic!In 1958, 19-year-old Charlie Starkweather went on a murder spree that paralyzed Nebraska, shocked the nation, and left 11 people dead. With him when he was captured was his 14-year-old ex-girlfriend Caril Fugate. The question soon arose, was Caril a kidnapped victim, or a heartless accomplice?Appointed to her case, attorney John McArthur initially accepted the assignment out of a sense of constitutional duty. But as he delved deeper, he found that the truth was far more complicated than anyone was letting on. Up against incredible odds, and with a strong conviction of her innocence, McArthur remained with Caril and fought for her freedom for 18 years. For this service, he took no pay, accepting the case pro bono.This book follows the long struggle of McArthur, his partner Merril Reller, and John's son James as they took on the Nebraska legal system and a public that had already determined Caril's guilt before ever hearing a word of testimony. The story continues through all it influenced, such as Stephen King, who became a horror writer because of it, Bruce Springsteen, who wrote a whole album about it, Terrence Malick, Oliver Stone, Martin Sheen, and Peter Jackson, who wrote his first major movie based on the Starkweather-Fugate incident.

Here's another bonus episode for you guys I'm sneaking in before Dead City S3, covering the new installment in one of my favorite horror series, Evil Dead. This is reposted from the long-dormant Evil Dead 'Cast, where my cohosts Rich, Chris, and I covered all the past Evil Dead movies and shows, and which you can find at podcastica.com/podcast/evil-dead-cast-an-ash-vs-evil-dead-podcast-baby --- Hello friends! Another Evil Dead movie has been spawned, and thus, we must podcast! Something a bit different this time, a little weightier, more dramatic. Is that good? Listen in and find out what we thought.  Mentioned: Trailer for Bruce Cambpell's upcoming new movie, Ernie & Emma: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lUAbQfKc94  Next up: We'll be back in 2028 for Evil Dead Wrath, and maybe we'll sneak in an episode or two in before that.  In the meantime, we've been really busy covering a bunch of other great shows…. Check out my (Jason's) other podcast, Wax Episodic, where friends and I cover our favorite current shows, like: It: Welcome to Derry, the horrific HBO series, prequel to the recent It movies based on the Stephen King book. Covered by me and Shawn of Strange Indeed. Alien: Earth, the heady, gross-out FX/Hulu sci-fi series based on the Alien movies. Covered by me, Randy, and Kara. Pluribus, the Twilight-Zoney Apple TV show from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, covered by me and Karen. Severance, the mysterious, mind-bending, amusingly strange Apple TV workplace thriller about identity, memory, and corporate control. Covered by me and Karen. (!) Fallout, the crazy, funny, retro-futuristic post-apocalyptic series on Amazon Prime Video. Covered by me, Kara, and Kasi. Available wherever you get podcasts, or at waxepisodic.com   And for Chris' coverage of all things The Walking Dead, check out talkingdeadpodcast.com.  You can show support and get ad-free episodes and a bunch of other cool stuff: patreon.com/jasoncabassi  Or go to buymeacoffee.com/cabassi for a one-time donation. Digging our podcast? A quick, free, and easy way to show support and help bump us up in the charts is to give us a rating or a review: On Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-walking-dead-cast/id382998388  On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/04adjunRhpuouj0kgB6DBW  Or just search for “Walking Dead ‘Cast” wherever you get podcasts.  Thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Reposted from Evil Dead ‘Cast, which you can find and subscribe to at: podcastica.com/podcast/evil-dead-cast-an-ash-vs-evil-dead-podcast-baby ⁠ --- Hello friends! Another Evil Dead movie has been spawned, and thus, we must podcast! Something a bit different this time, a little weightier, more dramatic. Is that good? Listen in and find out what we thought.  Mentioned: Trailer for Bruce Cambpell's upcoming new movie, Ernie & Emma: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lUAbQfKc94  Next up: We'll be back in 2028 for Evil Dead Wrath, and maybe we'll sneak in an episode or two in before that.  In the meantime, we've been really busy covering a bunch of other great shows…. Check out my (Jason's) other podcast, Wax Episodic, where friends and I cover our favorite current shows, like: It: Welcome to Derry, the horrific HBO series, prequel to the recent It movies based on the Stephen King book. Covered by me and Shawn of Strange Indeed. Alien: Earth, the heady, gross-out FX/Hulu sci-fi series based on the Alien movies. Covered by me, Randy, and Kara. Pluribus, the Twilight-Zoney Apple TV show from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, covered by me and Karen. Severance, the mysterious, mind-bending, amusingly strange Apple TV workplace thriller about identity, memory, and corporate control. Covered by me and Karen. (!) Fallout, the crazy, funny, retro-futuristic post-apocalyptic series on Amazon Prime Video. Covered by me, Kara, and Kasi. Available wherever you get podcasts, or at waxepisodic.com   And for Chris' coverage of all things The Walking Dead, check out talkingdeadpodcast.com.  You can show support and get ad-free episodes and a bunch of other cool stuff: patreon.com/jasoncabassi  Or go to buymeacoffee.com/cabassi for a one-time donation. Digging our podcast? A quick, free, and easy way to show support and help bump us up in the charts is to give us a rating or a review: On Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-walking-dead-cast/id382998388  On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/04adjunRhpuouj0kgB6DBW  Or just search for “Walking Dead ‘Cast” wherever you get podcasts.  Thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this sixty-first installment of fictional horror written and narrated by Dan Cummins, we return once again to St. Jerome, where Maggie Sambor gets enough evidence to accept that something terrible is truly happening inside of Peterson's Grocery. We also begin to understand why what is happening inside Peterson's is happening, while at the same time,  the mystery around it all deepens.   For Merch and everything else Bad Magic related, head to: https://www.badmagicproductions.com   Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Scared to Death ad-free and a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Between summer vacations and endless volleyball tournaments, we're running a little behind. But He Who Walks Behind The Rows revealed a great idea - why not let you listen to this Patreon Bonus episode where we try to make sense of the 1984 version of Stephen King's Children of the Corn? Along the way, we try to make sense of Issac's stupid plans, piece together what the economy of Gaitlin, NE must be now, and find new ways to make fun of Peter Horton. All this, plus corn field identification, making it Muppets, bad country fairs, drought resourcing, lousy elder gods, and a husky version of Choose Your Own Deathventure! So grab your ridiculously wide-brimmed hat and best pioneer chic for another episode of Kill By Kill.   Part of the BLEAV Network.Get even more episodes exclusively on Patreon! Join Patrick's new newsletter SCREAM SHARE for weekly new/classic/and "free to watch" streaming horror picks, and join him for a virtual watch party on the 3rd Friday of every month!! Check out Gena's newsletter on Ghost!! Artwork by Josh Hollis: joshhollis.com Kill By Kill theme by Revenge Body. For the full-length version and more great music, head to revengebodymemphis.bandcamp.com today!Join the new Discord Server Convo here! Click here to visit our Dashery/TeePublic shop for killer merch! Join the conversation about any episode on the Facebook Group! Follow us on IG @killbykillpodcast!! Join us on Threads or even Bluesky Check out the films we've covered & what might come soon on Letterboxd! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On the #amwriting podcast's Margin Notes, host Jennie Nash talks with Caroline Bicks, Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine and co-host of the Everyday Shakespeare podcast, about her book Monsters in the Archives: A Year of Fear with Stephen King. Bicks describes how she became the first invited into King's Bangor archives after King called to meet her, and how her sabbatical became a year of researching five formative works (including Carrie, Night Shift, The Shining, Salem's Lot, and Pet Sematary) to understand how horror language creates lasting fear. She explains choosing a first-person narrative that blends literary criticism, archival discovery, and her own anxiety, including eerie moments in the archive and insights into King's word-level edits, literary influences, and Shakespearean foundations, especially The Shining's ties to Hamlet.#AmWriting is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Read the Book* Monsters in the Archives by Caroline BicksTranscriptJennie: [00:00:00] Hi, I'm Jennie Nash, and you're listening to the #amwriting podcast, the place where we help writers of all kinds play big in your writing life, love the process, and stick with it long enough to finish what matters most. Welcome, everyone. This is Margin Notes, the part of the podcast where we're talking about the big decisions writers face in their work and creative lives.I'm here today with a super special guest. I'm so excited to speak with Caroline Bicks. She is the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine, where she teaches courses in Shakespeare, early modern culture, and horror fiction. And she's the author of all kinds of very cool books ... about Shakespeare, including one on cocktails.Um, and, uh, is the co-host of the Everyday Shakespeare podcast, and we are here today to talk with her about her new book called [00:01:00] Monsters in the Archives: A Year of Fear with Stephen King. Welcome.Caroline: Thank you. Thanks for having me.Jennie: So this is gonna be the strangest interview you've probably ever done. ICaroline: don't know.Because- I've talked to a lot of people around the world about this Stephen King book.Jennie: I couldn't read your book. I, I couldn't read it. I can't read horror. Yeah. Which listeners of this podcast are gonna laugh about, ‘cause I'm actually coaching someone live and they're writing gothic horror, and they're probably like, “All you talk about is horror, Jennie.”But, um, it's actually the reason why I wanted to talk to you, because you made a decision in the writing of this book that I thought was super cool. Mm. Which was you put yourself in it.Caroline: Yeah.Jennie: And you're a scholar.Caroline: Yeah.Jennie: And you've written scholarly books, and you approach this with a scholarly perspective, but you, you really put yourself in it.And, and so [00:02:00] I was reading it for that part of the story and I had to skip over huge chunks of, of the, of the work. Because what you're doing in this book is you're getting at this question of- W- what, what is scary in writing? Like, how does it actually work? How does it act- what is the magic or the function that makes us feel this thing?And you actually feel it yourself while you're going through it, and I found it quite terrifying actually. So, um, that's kinda what I wanted to talk about is how did you make the decision? Well, first of all, you were the first person, I wanna make sure I get this right, ‘cause this is very cool. Yeah. You were the first person who was invited to the archives, the Stephen King archives.Caroline: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a bit of a story, so I won't spend too much time on it, but just the mo- Oh, no, do. It's good ... when I ch- when I took this position... So I've been a Shakespeare professor my whole adult life, ba- as soon as I graduated from grad school in the late ‘90s, [00:03:00] and I was at Boston College for 15 years.I took this position at University of Maine nine years ago as a Shakespearean. Um, so it is an endowed chair in Stephen King's name because he's our most famous alum. So when I took the position, I, it was because I'm a Shakespearean, not because I'm a horror specialist. Um, I had always been a Stephen King fan since I read him when I was 12, and he scared the beje- Jesus out of me, um, with The Boogeyman story.Jennie: Right.Caroline: Um, so when I took this position though I was told, “You're never gonna meet Stephen King. Don't even make contact with him.” I'm like, “Fine, you know, this is still a great job. I'm excited.” Um- ThanksJennie: for the money. Yeah.Caroline: Thanks for... You know, no, it's a wonderful fund. It was funded by the Harold Alfond Foundation, and it's to support the public humanities, which is an incredible mission.So, um, I get to give money away to people. You know, it's a great, great position, but I was not a horror specialist. And particu- a- and as an adult, I actually wasn't reading horror because it scares me too much. You know? Yeah, yeah. Um, but it had grabbed me when I was a teenager. So it was about four years into the [00:04:00] job when I got a call at home from Stephen King, which just, uh, uh, my jaw hit the floor.And he said, “You know, I think it's time we meet.” I'm like, you know, I, I really fan-girled because I really, I have so much admiration for him and respect. Um, I invited him to come talk to our students. He was brilliant, generous, funny, kind, and I felt so at ease that I felt like I could ask... You know, and I got to know him professionally.We had a good professional relationship that developed from there. When I had a sabbatical year coming up the next year- I could have written another Shakespeare book. I had another one in my head. I've written a bunch of them but I knew that he and Tabitha had just collected all of his manuscripts and put them in a climate-controlled space attached to their home in Bangor, and I thought, “You know, this is an incredible opportunity.I would love to dig in there and be the first one in there, and just read those early drafts of the books that scared me so much when I was a teenager, and try to just explore why. Why were they sticking in my head still?” Um, again, I am not a specialist in... I'm not a cognitive scientist. I'm not a [00:05:00] specialist in horror literature, but I'm obviously highly trained in how to do literary analysis and how to do archival work, not Shakespeare, because we don't have any of his works, but, you know, I, I understand what that process is.So back to your question about why I wanted to bring myself into it, which was, you know, I had been experimenting with first-person storytelling after I got tenure. You know, ‘cause it's a long process, Kate. Right. And most of my writing had been academic writing, but I really had always loved storytelling And I got a piece into the Modern Love column.I started to have some success with publishing my first-person stories, and I was like, “You know, I love this.” So when I had this opportunity to go into his archives, they generously said yes, was amazing. I thought, “You know, I really wanna tell this story. I don't wanna write an academic book. I want this to be the story of a literature scholar, but really the story about a scared kid.”Jennie: Yeah.Caroline: You know, you, you never lose that scare, you know, I don't... This is the thing. Fear has stuck with me with those stories [00:06:00] for 40 years. So I was fascinated, and I just wanted to understand how he had crafted the language so that it was sticking in my head still. Because when I was talking to people around, you know, whenever you mention Stephen King to people, you know, if they've read him, they remember specific lines and specific words, and I was like, “That's an extraordinary, um, 50 years on to have that power.”So, um- Well- Anyway. Yeah. Go ahead. I, I could talk about this forever, so you tell me- Oh, no, it's- ... where you wanted to pick up from this.Jennie: It's so good. Well, I have to tell you this funny anecdote, which is that my college roommate was from Bangor, Maine, and babysat his kids in that house.Caroline: Oh, that's insane.Jennie: So when I went to visit her, she drove me by that house.There you go. And I was like, “Oh, hell no- Yeah ... would I ever babysit in that house.” Like, it's-Caroline: It's ‘cause it's like a gothic, it's like straight out of Haunting of Hill House ...Jennie: actually, and like these spiderweb gates that, and you describe that in the [00:07:00] book and, and the- Yeah ... archives are in that house. They'reCaroline: in the house.They're attached to the back. I know. And it, it was so, it was, it was insane. It was like a full-on 360 experience writing this book. Um, and I, I knew, like, so I did the research for a year. I didn't even know if this would be a book. I just knew I wanted to have the opportunity to be in there because it, I knew it was a great opportunity, and I was so curious, you know?Yeah. So I, I came out of the year with just tons of notes and observations, but I didn't have a book, you know? Yeah. And then I started experimenting with writing a chapter, and I just, the storytelling just came forward and then when I got an agent and she, you know, s- I, I, I was able to get a contract based on a proposal and that one chapter I had written and I was really fortunate to have a fabulous editor, David Ebershoff, at Hogarth, who is just such a wonderful writer himself, and he really encouraged me to bring my voice in and bring my story in even [00:08:00] more.Um, so that's- And- ... that's the story of that.Jennie: Was it hard for you as a scholar to do that?Caroline: You know what? It was so freeing and so fun that it actually wasn't, you know? Because I, I knew this wasn't going to be an academic book, so once I let go of that- Yeah ... um, I was like, wow, I have the, and yet I have this skill set I can bring forward, and I knew that's what would make this unique.Um, but I can combine my two favorite ways of writing, ‘cause I do actually love writing literary criticism. Like it's, I get a thrill out of it. I wouldn't be doing it this long if I didn't get a thrill out of it, but I also love telling my own stories and drawing a reader in. And so for me it was like just a circus carnival.Like it was so fun to be able to do it. Once I had the permission and I had a contract, I was like, fine, you know? I, I, who am I writing this book for? I'm writing it for me, you know? Like this is just something I wanna do because I'm so passionate [00:09:00] about it and I, and I love Stephen King. And, um, once I got into it that way and wasn't thinking about who's gonna criticize me for this, like how will academics view this, I was like, I don't care.I just don't care. I know I've got a great story to tell that people are gonna love to read because there's so many people that love not just Stephen King, but people who love reading about how great books get written, you know? Yeah. And so that was the audience I had in my mind when I, when I was crafting it.It was really, in my mind, anybody who cares about books and writing. It doesn't have to be... So when you say, you're not the first person who's said to me, “I can't read your book,” or, “I can't read-” Oh, I'm so glad. “... Stephen King books,” you know, and I'm like, “That's okay. You can skip, you know, the parts that really scare you,” because there's plenty about just like that first chapter I wrote about Pet Sematary, just his sticky notes back and forth with his copy editor, which is so fun I think.You know, it's just like, wow.Jennie: Totally. Yeah. But the thing that you do is you- Allow yourself to confront that fear-Caroline: Yeah ...Jennie: [00:10:00] that, that I feel that the people can't, that can't read horror feel. You know, anybody that even allows themselves to be scared feels. And-Caroline: Yeah ...Jennie: and you, you do some very specific things, um, which I, I found fascinating, including tracking down on eBay the original copy of that book you read as a- Yeah, I wanted-as a teenager.Caroline: Yeah, that was part of the process for me, was I wanted to make sure I was reading... So before I would go into the archives for each work, and I'd spent like two... I only picked five, because I wanted to... First of all, I knew I wanted to make this personal. Um, and those were the five that scared me the most when I was a teenager.So I grew up in the ‘70s and the ‘80s as a teenager, so for me, it was in real time when the books were coming out practically. So it was- Yeah ... Carrie, Night Shift, The Shining, Salem's Lot, Pet Sematary. Um, I'm forgetting one of course. Uh, but I went -Jennie: The other one.Caroline: The other one. Had a huge impact on me. [00:11:00] So it was those five, and I, I knew those were the ones I was gonna do a deep dive into, and that I wanted to really re-engage with, and bring my whole self to.So I wanted to find the copies that I had read in the ‘70s and the early ‘80s. And fortunately, it's pretty easy to find them. Uh, so yeah, but eBay sometimes I had to go on, or go into a used bookstore and, you know, find the like actual 1979 paperback, you know.Jennie: Um- I mean, that- Um ... I just, there's some, there's so much to say about that because-Caroline: YeahJennie: like, I just, um- We, we just had a new bookcase built, um, which is something I've wanted to do well for eight years in this house. But it's a thing I've always wanted to have, which is like a grand bookcase, and it just was finished last week, and we had all the books packed up in storage, and we brought all the books back.Then we went through this discernment process of what goes [00:12:00] on those shelves. And I, you know, I had all those books from when I was a kid, even when I was a kid-kid, and they're yellow, and moldy and falling apart, and the covers aren't on, and they're taped and-Caroline: Yeah ...Jennie: eh, but I cannot let them go-Caroline: Yeah ...Jennie: because those...that was the object.Caroline: That's the object. This is what I feel sad for kids now, because they're not gonna have those same memories, um, of books. Yes. You know? And I don't think they stick in your head the same way if you don't have the full sensory embodied experience with a book.Jennie: Right. You know? Even when you open...I read on Kindle, which I love for so many reasons. Yeah. But you don't even see the cover.Caroline: You don't see the cover, right. And for me, it's so much. Like, I remember going to the Scholastic Book Fair and being like- Yes ... “I'm getting Summer of My German S- Soldier because Christy McNichol's on the cover,” you know?Yes. Yes. So yeah, that was part of the journey for me was I did wanna just [00:13:00] reconnect with those books again, try to h- and as much as you can, you know, reexperience the feelings of f- like The Shining, I actually... the only one I still have from 1977 is the actual Shining that I read. Um, and that's, for me, that woman in room 217.Well, I know you haven't read it ‘cause you're probably... What? But, um, it, that particular one I still have from, from when I was growing up. Um, and I love that I still have it, and it still has the photo... You know, it's the version that has the photo inserts that includes the Kubrick film photos. Oh, okay.Jennie: Okay.Yeah, yeah.Caroline: And I read it before I saw the film, so I remember being- 15 reading it and then seeing the pictures and being like you know? And that's part of the experience, but it wasn't, it's different than seeing the film, you know? And I really, I wanted to write this book as a love letter to language and to books, and not to film.Like, there's, that's a whole other category I think that enters people's brains in totally different ways. It's a very different experience. For me it's about, like going back to your original question [00:14:00] about like why, why, why do stories cause fear, and like what's the value perhaps in that? Yeah. That was something I came to after this long journey really, and talking to people and thinking about why.And also by understanding and reading more about Stephen King's books and talking to him about them, and realizing for him how much these stories are rooted in personal experiences or fears of grief and loss. And- Yes ... that was really profound for me. And like The Night Shift, which is the ur-text that I start with, ‘cause that's the one I read when I was 12, and that's his first collection of short stories.It came out in 1978. It's 20 short stories. But he ends it with a story about his mother dying, and it's, I mean, it's thinly veiled autobiography. It's about a man who's watching his mother die in the hospital. Um, but it's clearly a mirror of his own experience losing his mother when he was 26. And I'm like, wow, what's that doing in a collection of horror stories?[00:15:00] And it's like, what? ‘Cause that is of course, at least for me and I think for a lot of people, that's the core fear we first have, is that where's mommy, right? Yeah. Right? You lose the person who's in charge of taking care of you, and if you're lucky, does it well and with care. Um, but even if it's not, like Carrie, you know, the more I was looking through the Carrie drafts, I was like, right, he's really homing in on Carrie calling out for her mother even though her mother's terrible and abusive to her, right?So it's, there's just this, I don't know. It's a long way around to say I think horror, and he writes about this really eloquently, is a way for us to metabolize our deepest fears. Um, and to look at trauma not head-on but sideways. Um, and he writes about that, um, a number of different places in a really powerful way.He's just such an extraordinary human. You know, he's been thinking about this and for so long.Jennie: Yeah. Yeah. So, so your willingness to [00:16:00] confront that, those particular fear, fears in your own self and on behalf of the reader, really puts you in it. I mean, like you, there's a really lovely moment where you are reading I think it's, I think it's Pet Sematary, reading the actual book, and you have to turn it over so you- Yeahdon't see, like on your nightstand so you don't see the cover. I'mCaroline: scared, I'm scared of the cover, right, still.Jennie: Yeah.Caroline: Yeah.Jennie: And then there's moments, se- several where you're driving And you're sort of holding your breath while you drive past a place that he writes about or, or- Mm-hmm ... you know, um, well you have to tell the story, I'm sure every interviewer asks you about the, um, the doorknob in the archive.You have to, like, I was-Caroline: Yeah, not too many people have asked me about that, but I'm like, that to me was the scary moment-Jennie: Wait, shut up ... the most, theCaroline: most sturdy. I'm like, wh- uh, why did that happen? But of course, I mean, there's a reason why it happened. It's, it's, it [00:17:00] automatically locks if, you know, the, if you- Okaydon't lock it So let's, let's play- So but it just happened that we were inside the archive room. It was me and, and Julie Ugli, who is their assistant, who was helping me through this whole process. And I know, and I was, like, literally holding the first page of the first draft of The Boogeyman, the story that had scared me so badly when I was 12, about a monster that comes out of closets, and we're like in this room.And the, the archive room, it actually, it almost feels like a closet. It's not huge at all. You know, it's just-Jennie: Yeah ...Caroline: top to bottom, ceiling to floor stacked shelving with, you know, boxes of materials. And yeah, and we were in there, and I'm holding the first page, and the lock closes on its own. It just goes...And I'm like, I'm looking at Julie, I'm like, “What is, what's happening?” We don't have our cell phones with us. I'm like, “Are we stuck in here? Like, what's gonna happen?”Jennie: In the scary archive- In this, I was terrified ... in the back of the scary house. Like-Caroline: I know, I know. It was like, you can't make this stuff up.That's why I was like, I [00:18:00] couldn't wait, when I finally got a chance to write the book and sit down and write, I was like, I can't wait to tell these stories, because they just... I, I'm not a fiction writer. Like, I, I have such mad respect for- I don't know about that ... well, I've m- We'll see I don't know. I have mad respect for people who can write fiction.For me, I only can write what I know and exper- So I'm like, ah. But these stories were just so amazing. Or like when I was reading The Shining, like the first draft of The Shining, which is crazy. I mean, it's so different from the published version. And like getting to the woman in room 217, and like reading th- and literally my head w- like I thought I was having a stroke.Like it was like, like... And it's like, and then I find an interview where Stephen King writes about how he was scared to go back to that scene when he was revising it, the book, because he was dreading it. And I was like, oh, my God, have I just like had some kind of telepathic experience with Stephen King?Like- Right ... across time, space, and yeah, it was amazing.Jennie: Well, yeah. I mean, [00:19:00] it's just, um, uh, I actually made myself go through the whole book skipping giant chunks.Caroline: I feel so badly I put you through this.Jennie: I know. I, I feel like why, I kept saying, “Why? Why did I think this was a good idea?” Um, and it- I mean, even just tangentially, I, I don't know.It's interesting. I have, I'm sure you have this too, anybody who reads a lot or spends a lot of time with words, you have a capacity to sort of pay half attention, if that makes sense.Caroline: Mm-hmm.Jennie: Um, like you c- could sort of look at it without letting it all the way in. Yeah. But I, I just was, I just was riveted by the thread of, of your story and your putting yourself through that as a scholar and a human.But, but then some really cool things happen, and I, and I have flagged, um... Do you, [00:20:00] w- would you mind reading a tiny piece? It's- No, not at all ... it's on page 82, and it's the p- the paragraph that starts, “These manuscripts.”Caroline: Yeah.Jennie: That would be amazing.Caroline: Absolutely. So this is actually the moment I just described to you, where my head was like, I got...Oh, actually, I had just discovered the last 150 pages of the original Shining manuscript in a random folder in the archives, and I was like, “What is this doing here?” And I was getting obsessive about the manuscripts at this point, clearly- Yeah. Yeah ... just like the main character in The Shining, Jack Torrance, who gets obsessed with the manu- with the papers in the basement of the Overlook Hotel.But here we go. “These manuscripts are definitely getting into my head, and not just its rational part. In his memoir, when King describes books as being a uniquely portable magic, he doesn't specify what kind of magic. What if manuscripts can absorb and store more than just ink and words? [00:21:00] What if their pages can pass on dark energy along with dark stories?Ghosts have more than one way of making sure their stories are heard, of ensuring that the past is not forgotten, but rather pressed into our minds, even if we wrench our heads off the pillow and refuse to listen.” And that last is a reference to my, I used to see a ghost when I was five, and I write about that in the book too.Jennie: I mean, when I read that, I was like, “That's, that's me.” Like, these ghosts and horrors are pressing themselves into my mind, and I'm refusing to listen, and they still, they still do. And, um, King's stories in particular are so iconic, you can't really escape them. Like, you, you know the scenarios, you know the characters, you know-Caroline: YeahJennie: you know. And, and so it was interesting for me reading this book that that described my [00:22:00] experience where I was both repelled and magnetized at the same time.Caroline: That's beautiful the way you just put that. I mean, I think that is exactly our relationship also, of course, to our own fears. You know, again, what makes these stories endure, and I didn't go into this book thinking like, “This is a book about promoting Stephen King,” and, you know- Rightlike, I don't work for Stephen King. I just want to put that out there. Right. He, you know, he graciously agreed to let me go into the archives. He's been very generous about answering all my questions I had about the manuscripts, but he never at any point was like, “You can't say this,” or, “This is how you're supposed to say this.”So, but what I came away with after this process was exactly what you're describing, why we need these stories, why they endure, actually, is because they tap into our very real human fears. It's not about the monsters. It's about the grief and loss that's coming for all of us if we live long enough, you know?So you, and you have to at some point confront that, you know? So if it's- Yeah ... you can [00:23:00] try to run away from it, but it's coming, and that's part of being human. That's the human experience, obviously. Not to be glib, but it's like-Jennie: Yeah ...Caroline: you will experience loss. You will experience grief. And if these stories help you metabolize that or have a cathartic experience with that feeling without having to actually experience your worst fear, right?Um, like Aristotle says, it's cathartic, right? It's you watch a play, a, a tragedy because you experience a catharsis.Jennie: And did you, did you get to that in your own process?Caroline: That's a really good question. Um- You know, I, I think I became more aware of it. You know, I am, you know, and I write about this very openly in the book, that I was an extremely anxious little kid, um, which is part of why I think the boogeyman triggered me in the particular way it did, you know.Um, and that I grew into a pretty [00:24:00] anxious adult, you know? Yeah. I think anxiety is one of those things that, you know, I... Again, I was born in the ‘60s, so we didn't have this language for this back then. Like, my parents wouldn't have known to call me an anxious child, you know? Right. They probably would've said, “Oh, she's shy,” or, “She's whatever.”Um, so I think I, you know, like, and I as an adult, I think I've, I've found ways to manage it pretty well, but I am definitely a control freak. Like, that's part of how I manage it. I shouldn't use that language, but you know, it's like I, I like to just control what I can control, and that makes me feel that I can put the anxiety at bay.So I will say I think it's been interesting for me, Nick, now when I have those moments that are my worst fear moments that sometimes still will creep up on me just even though when I think I've figured it out, like doom s- doom scenarios. I tend to go to doom scenarios. So, like, if I can't reach... Uh, I will say Life360 has been, like, the best invention on the planet for me-with my two kids [00:25:00] and my husband. I'm like, “I know exactly where everyone is.” Yeah. It has saved me a lot of worry. Sometimes Life360 doesn't work, or sometimes a person still doesn't answer the phone, and then I have to manage my anxie- And then it's like... So I will say it's been interesting going through this process and having to confront or revisit the core of what scares me and, like, why that impacts, you know, why certain moments come forward for me still.So I think, yeah, I think it has helped me to a degree. Like, I can recognize it more clearly now. I'm like, “Oh, right, that's why I'm scared of that,” you know? Um-Jennie: That's so cool.Caroline: Yeah.Jennie: And it feels like that's the, the, um, the transformation in the book is you're exploring how that actually works and the language and the stories.Mm-hmm. But you're, you're also exploring how it works in your own self, how it did when you were young, how it does now- Yeah ... these moments when you're scared. So it- Mm-hmm ... there's such [00:26:00] a depth to it and, I mean, I just, uh, even in my half reading of it, I just loved it. Thank you. And, um, there's something that happens That's kind of crazy, which is, so you're a Shakespeare scholarCaroline: Mm-hmmJennie: And I ha- I, I know from reading Steve, a- about Stephen King, from reading his book On Writing, of course, and, um, interviews and such that, uh, I'm, I'm probably gonna say this in a disrespectful way, and I don't mean it to be so, but the, the easiest way I can describe it is that he's always had sort of a chip on his shoulder that he's just a popular writer and not taken seriously in a literary way.Mm. I don't know if that's, if that is fair to say, but that's how I'm saying it. Uh,Caroline: yeah.Jennie: And, um, what, what I found incredible was that [00:27:00] here comes this Shakespeare scholar into his archives doing proper scholarly archiver, arch- archival work, and there's this moment when you begin to see Shakespearean themes in his, in his work, and you can't ignore it, and particularly in, in Carrie and- Yeahparticularly around exactly the thing you were wrestling with, which is like a young girl's- I don't know, sense of, of not being fitting in the world or, um-Caroline: Yeah ...Jennie: right? And so that, um, there's, on page, since you have the book in your hand, um, I think it's pageCaroline: 202. Mm-hmm.Jennie: And it refers back to that passage you just read about portable magic.It's the one that's I remembered.Caroline: [00:28:00] Right. Okay. So this is going back to when I first was, um, I was in the final round of the job for the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, and I was working on a book about Shakespeare's, the girls in Shakespeare's plays and world and teenage girls and their cognition.Like, the how were people during Shakespeare's day thinking about girls' brains? Yeah. So I'd been working on this for 10 years. Um, and then I was getting ready to give my job talk. This was the first time Stephen King and Shakespeare came together for me, and it was getting ready, and this, again, this is an authentic story, like write what you know.So I was getting ready for the job talk. I remembered that King's 1974 novel, Carrie, featured a 16-year-old girl whose telekinetic powers are unleashed when she gets her first period in the school shower. I started rereading it, and within a few pages came across an uncanny phrase. When she's walking home after being dismissed early, Carrie feels her brain flexing in a new way, [00:29:00] as if her powers have been waiting below the surface for her to reach, quote, “mental puberty.”I couldn't have wordsmithed this dynamic cognitive change better myself. In the last part of my job talk, I used the phrase to connect the brain work of Juliet Capulet, who's described as being two weeks away from seeing the change of 14 years, to Carrie's newly activated adolescent mind. It felt like a moment of pure portable magic between Stephen King, Shakespeare, and me.Jennie: Ugh, so beautiful.Caroline: Oh, thank you. Yeah. I mean, that was just so gobsmacking. Like, when that happened, I was like, I ca- I can't believe it, but yeah.Jennie: And then, now I may be getting some of the things wrong here, but then you- You realize, is it Carrie that, that you realize he was, you thought he was emulating a play, a Shakespeare play?Caroline: I think you're thinking of Shining. I mean, definitely at the end of the Carrie [00:30:00] chapter I return to, I did notice echoes of Macbeth, and I was convinced that that must have been what he was thinking about. And, and what's funny is, so one of the conversations I got to have with him, I mean, he's so generous with his time, one of my last conversations with him was about the end of Carrie, and that's a book that he actually doesn't like very much.You know, it was his first published novel, he was 26, and he's like, “I think that was written by a young man who thought he knew more than he did.” So he's, it's not a book that he goes back to. He recognizes it's important, and it's important to him, but, ‘cause it started his whole career, his whole trajectory.Um, but he didn't particularly, he hasn't returned to it. Yeah. So that was a fun chance for me to sort of talk to him and say, “Hey, you know what? I think you should maybe go back,” ‘cause it's it's, there's a lot of Shakespeare in there. Anyway, but the Shining chapter, what was fascinating, so there's this first draft, which I, I write a lot about, called The Shine, that's in the archives, with a totally different ending.Um, and when I looked at it, [00:31:00] he'd also divided it into acts and scenes, like Roman numeral acts and little- Mm ... Roman numeral scenes. And I was like, “This, what is this? This is like a Shakespeare play.” Like, that's what it looked like. And then sure enough, I found out he was imagining, he was thinking of a Shakespeare tragedy when he wrote The Shining.And that was the first moment where I was like, “What? This is insane.” Like, this- Yeah ... like, ob- obviously that became, for me, the story I wanted to tell about that particular set of manuscripts, was sort of uncovering, like, what's the Shakespeare play? Like, what's the tragedy? And I didn't wanna ask him because I didn't want- I wanted to go in with my mind clear, like, of any outside influence.I just wanted to see what my Shakespeare brain, because I'm so embedded in Shakespeare. I also have a Shakespeare podcast I do with my best friend. Like, we're, I'm always thinking about Shakespeare and how it relates to everyday life. You know, and so I'm like, “Well, how does it relate to The Shining?” Which is, like, an ur-American text.Like, this, like, say what you want about horror, [00:32:00] like- I'd be shocked if people don't know what The Shining's about, even if they haven't read it even if they haven't seen the film. Like, you probably know something about The Shining, right? Right. So I was like, if there's a Shakespeare tragedy at the foundation of this, you know.And here's the thing about Stephen King that I came to learn, again, reading all of his notes and finding these edits, and I did find traces of Macbeth in the first draft of The Shine, um, that he ended up taking out. So I was like, “Oh, is it Macbeth? It feels like it could be Macbeth.” There's so many things it has in common with it, with hallucinations and with baby bashing.And, you know, all of these horrible things that are in Macbeth are certainly in that book. Um, but I really wanted to go in, like, just on an adventure, like, see what I saw. So I didn't ask him which chi- tragedy until I was fully done with all my research and I felt like I had it all done. And that's when he drops that he was thinking of Hamlet.And once he said that, of course, it became so ... I mean, I [00:33:00] had seen traces, there were references to Ophelia that also didn't make it into the final published draft. So you wouldn't know this. This is the beauty of archival work, like you're gonna see things that other people will never know about unless you tell the story.That's why I felt so passionate about this. Like, “I need to tell people-” Yeah ... “that Ophelia was in the first draft, that he was thinking of Ophelia.” ‘Cause of course, you know, again, even if you don't know The Shining, the woman in the tub, the woman in the bathtub, like a drowned woman in a tub, like ah, Ophelia.Yeah. Like Ophelia's another one of those ur, like she's so, she's such a part of our cultural air, right? I mean, like no matter what country you're in. Right. There's a reason Taylor Swift has a whole, you know, song The Fate of Ophelia. Like people know what that means. Um, so I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is, this is incredible.This is even deeper than I thought it was gonna be.” Um, but also it made me appreciate how much that book is about intergenerational trauma. Um, and it's not ... So he doesn't like the Kubrick film [00:34:00] for reasons that, you know, a couple different reasons. One is that it flattens out the character of Jack Torrance, and Jack Torrance is an abused child himself, and he passes on that abuse to his son, Danny, right?Um, but you wouldn't know that from Kubrick's film. While Hamlet, of course, is about a father's ghost coming forward. Like, “The past is a ghost,” King writes, which is so f- powerful, right? Um, here's this ghost saying, “You need to kill for me.”Jennie: Yeah.Caroline: Yeah. And that's what happens to Jack. Yeah, so anyway, that's a long way to say that wasEach chapter was my favorite in different ways, but that one I loved being able to do the deep Shakespeare dive.Jennie: And was that ... You know, so I started that question by saying I, I had heard or understood or maybe inferred that, um, you know, King himself had this sort of desire- Okay ... to be taken more seriously.Was that, that must have been, I don't know, powerful for both you and him, uh, to [00:35:00] come to that? Not like, “Oh, you're the only person that's ever made him feel that way” or-Caroline: Yeah,Jennie: no,Caroline: I agree ... or agree with that, but. Like I, yeah. And, um, I mean, I will say I think part of the reason he was always really ... I mean, first of all, he's just so generous, and any writer who's ever worked with him has the same experience.Like he just gives his time. He just loves writing and writers so much that he will just, he'll just t- like any email I would send him, he'd write back in like an hour with a response. The part about how he feels about academia, you know, and I never directly asked him that because I didn't wanna ... You know, if he wanted to bring it up, great.But I think- Yeah ... my, after going on this journey with him, he clearly loves talking about- literature. He's the most well-read person I've ever met. I'm just gonna say that hands down. Like, the guy reads- Really? ... cons- constantly and if you read his early works, like even when he was 17, he wrote The Long Walk, okay, which just came out as a film, [00:36:00] and in that, he's citing T.S.Eliot, he's cit- he's citing Poe at 17. Okay? So he's, he, he, this, he comes by this honestly. He's not just trying to seem smart. Like, he literally is constantly reading and it's clear when you read his manuscripts or when you read his published books, he's making references to all, whether it's Shirley Jackson or Wallace Stevens or, you know, uh, he's so capacious in his knowledge of literature.And, like, just a couple months ago, he sent me an email, I don't, I can't remember, we were talking about something about Salem's Lot, and he was like, “Yeah, when I was writing Salem's Lot,” which again, this is 1975 when he's writing Salem's Lot, so that's a long time ago. He's like, “I was really into James Dickey's poetry.”Jennie: Whoa.Caroline: You know, who was an American no, you know, poet laureate. Uh, he's like, “And I was reading everything I could read of, of his and then I read Deliverance, and then I went back to his poetry, and that really impacted how I wrote the chapters [00:37:00] about the Lot,” which if you've read Salem's Lot, has some very lyrical, poetic chapters about the town, like, “The town knew about darkness.The town had its secrets and knew how to kept it.” And then he, like, sends me the entire poem that he was thinking about that James Dickey wrote. So I mean, it's, he's, and it's not performative. He's not, like, he has nothing. He doesn't need to prove anything to me, you know?Jennie: Right, to anyone, yeah.Caroline: He just literally loves, he loves literature.Like, this guy, he loves poetry. I mean, he actually writes poetry. He wrote poetry as an undergraduate. Uh, it was actually the core start for him of The Stand, was a poem he wrote called The Dark Man one day when he was, like, hungover in the school, like, cafeteria. Like, so it's like he, he's been thinking about literature and living with literature and, uh, since he was a teenager, if not earlier.His mom brought him, uh, Bram Stoker out of the public library when he was nine, so I mean, the guy- Whoa ... ‘cause he asked for it. He asked for Dracula. [00:38:00] I wasn't reading Dracula when I was nine. Were you? I mean-Jennie: No,Caroline: no. I was reading Little House on the Prairie. I mean-Jennie: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Wow. Wow. So- I mean, this book, again, it's called Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King by Carolyn Bicks.It's just incredible, whether you're a King fan, whether you're a horror fan, um, but for sure for all writers, which are all our listeners. If you can, if you can bear it.It's very specific, um, a very specific- specific exploration of, of how good writing works really. Yeah. Right. And, and how you... You know, there's always that perennial question of how do you get emotion on the page? How do you make your reader feel something? And you, you show it very specifically, and I wanted so badly [00:39:00] to, to get into the details, and I, and I, I just, I just couldn't.Um, maybe someday, but, um, I just, I just can't recommend it enough for, for, um, this audience and, um, you know, anyone who's interested in any of these things we've talked about.Caroline: Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And I will say, like, the Pet Sematary chapter, which is the first one, that was the first day I was in the archives.One of the things I discovered about him day one was how much attention he pays to word sounds. So I think for any writer interested in sort of doing a deep dive into, like, how one word change, right- Yeah ... can make a difference, you know? Yeah. And I didn't appreciate that about his writing until I went in there and saw his notes to the copy editor where he's like, “Nope, the word's clitter, not clatter.This is why.” You know? Like,Jennie: he's- There's a, um- Yeah ... yeah, there's a book I love, it's probably right behind me, um, called The Artful Edit by Susan Bell, in which she [00:40:00] shows examples of that kind of very careful change in, um, The Gre- The Great Gatsby and The English Patient and various works of, of literature, and your, your whole book is like that.It's, it's just amazing. Um- Thank you ... so is the next book gonna be the Shakespeare one you had thought of before? Or are you gonna- ... go in the, in the personal direction?Caroline: You know, it's such a good question. I think right now I'm just taking a break, you know, because I'm the kind... Like, I immerse myself in a project, and this has been so all-consuming.Um, and I'm back to doing my Everyday Shakespeare podcast, which I love and I missed. Um, so I'm doing that. And I, I really don't like to think too far ahead about what I'm going to write. I like to have it come organically.Jennie: Yeah.Caroline: Um, so I could go back into the archives. I could write another one of these kinds of books, but I don't know if that's the [00:41:00] right thing for me right now.Jennie: Yeah.Caroline: Um, I want to make sure whatever I write next- You know, I loved writing this book so much. It's my favorite... I mean, it's, it was such a powerful experience for me, um, because I could bring my personal experiences into it and my scholarly self into it. I don't... You know, it's gonna be hard to recreate that.Yeah. I think it can be done, but I don't wanna force it. Yeah. So I'm gonna wait and see what the next, what the next oneJennie: is. Don't you, don't you love the interviewer who's like, “Hey, congratulations. You wrote a book. What, what's your nextCaroline: one?” What are you working on now? What are you doing now? I know. And I get that.I'm like-Jennie: So mean ...Caroline: I'm just, I'm just reading books I wanna read. I'm doing my laundry. I'm getting to know my dog again. You know?Jennie: Oh, wow. Well, thankCaroline: you. But, you know, it's a fair question. Yeah.Jennie: Yeah, yeah. Thank you for coming and chatting about this, and for writing such a cool book. And- Thank you ... um, I'm looking forward to seeing what you do next.Caroline: Thank you, Jennie. It was a [00:42:00] pleasure.Jennie: Well, for our listeners, until next time, stop playing small and write like it matters.The #amwriting podcast is produced by Andrew Perilla. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output because everyone deserves to be paid for their work This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Trade snakes for free pizza! In Florida (of course). Speaking of terrifying wild animals, kangaroos have lots of secrets, and Bob has a hot take about sharks. Other Sarah followed her childhood dreams to Australia. The math on the World Cup halftime show is not adding up. There's always controversy in sports, but this complaint about the team doctor is a new one. What's the deal with this lettuce scandal? Taco Bell refuses to take the blame. Utah has banned multiple Stephen King books. Vinnie's telling us some of the best places to live.

Hour 1: It's a brand new day! Other Sarah is already off to a rough start thanks to a mascara incident. Could it be karma for stealing makeup as a teen? Spoiler Alert: Argentina pulled out the W at the last second. Grab you Purin tablets and settle in. It's time for Bob's Movie Club! Today, we're talking about Robin Williams and Nathan Lane in ‘The Birdcage.' Could this movie be made today? Maybe not, but we're happy it exists nonetheless. One of the children from Jon & Kate Plus 8 is coming back to reality TV. Is it right to put your kids on your TV show? A bunch of D list celebrities are joining Jaleel White (Urkel) for a new HGTV show. Vinnie deleted his data, per Scott Budman's recommendation. Check out privacy.ca.gov if you're interested! A follow up on the tragic boat accident in the San Francisco Bay on Tuesday. Hour 2: Trade snakes for free pizza! In Florida (of course). Speaking of terrifying wild animals, kangaroos have lots of secrets, and Bob has a hot take about sharks. Other Sarah followed her childhood dreams to Australia. The math on the World Cup halftime show is not adding up. There's always controversy in sports, but this complaint about the team doctor is a new one. What's the deal with this lettuce scandal? Taco Bell refuses to take the blame. Utah has banned multiple Stephen King books. Vinnie's telling us some of the best places to live. Hour 3: Matt Damon is proud of his FOUR daughters. Good thing they didn't know Vinnie as a teen. Check out Matty and Bob this Saturday morning for a good cause at Mirastar Federal Credit Union in San Jose. The fittest cities in the country might surprise you. A wild photo of Messi with a baby is going viral. Don't worry, it's not weird -it's destiny. Tom Cruise, Nicole Scherzinger, Jennifer Hudson are joining the World Cup Final celebration! In good news today, a dog retired from Disneyland, and a GoFundMe is helping an elderly man retire. Hour 4: It might be time to take a trip to Chicago - for Riot Fest 2026! Twenty One Pilots, Hayley Williams, and… William Shatner?? It turns out Anthony Hopkins is a secret musician as well. Humanoid robots are doing surgery. Let's eat some headlines. The Gilmore Girls house is for sale! Ariana Grande got some good PR with her Harry Potter impressions this week. Matty and Bob can't belive the lack of respect for La La Land around here.

One of the most common questions we receive here at The Kingcast is where to start. It's not an easy question to answer, especially given the mountain of work the author has put out and continues to add on to year by year.So Vespe and Breznican brought in acclaimed genre author Nat Cassidy (When The Wolf Comes Home, Nestlings, I Know A Place) to talk through different titles and determine what we think the best Starter King is.Is it a Short Story? Is it a famous book? How challenging is too challenging? And would we recommend the same Starter King to an adult as we would the parent of a tween curious about reading Stephen King? 

Mayor Tom Loftis wants to turn his struggling, New England island town into a thriving tourist attraction. But some residents believe Widow's Bay is cursed, and his efforts to boost it are stirring up its otherworldly forces. Tom is thwarted by his staff's bumbling ineptitude and a series of supernatural encounters that shake his confidence. As the skeptical mayor slowly becomes a believer, he works to break the curse in which any island-born natives die if they leave for the mainland. Emmy nominees Matthew Rhys, Kate O'Flynn, and Stephen Root star in the surprise hit Apple TV series “Widow's Bay.” The show is a balance of absurdist office comedy and part Stephen King novel. Can a misfit group of heroes decipher why their island community is haunted, protect its inhabitants, and reverse the fate of its native-born residents — including Tom's son? OUR SPOILER-FREE REVIEWS OF "WIDOW'S BAY" BEGIN IN THE FINAL 11 MINUTES OF THE EPISODE. In Crime of the Week: definitely not fooling anyone.  For exclusive podcasts and more, sign up at Patreon.Sign up for our newsletter at crimewriterson.com.This show was recorded in The Caitlin Rogers Project Studio. Click to find out more. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

While we wait for Dead City S3, here's a repost of the Jeffrey Dean Morgan panel from Walker Stalker Con Atlanta 2016. This happened just a few days after S7E1 aired, so it was fresh in people's minds, and it was JDM's first convention appearance as Negan. One of my favorite panels ever. JDM slips in and out of character, and quickly wins the crowd over. Let's see if he'll do the same for you :) We're also joined by Greg Nicotero, who directed the S7 premiere and gives a lot of great info on the thinking and logistics behind it. Enjoying the rewatch? You can show support and get ad-free episodes and a bunch of other cool stuff: patreon.com/jasoncabassi  Or go to buymeacoffee.com/cabassi for a one-time donation. Next up: Evil Dead Burn! You can email or send a voice message to talk@podcastica.com.  Or join our Discord where you can leave comments and chat with hosts and other listeners: https://discord.gg/6WUMt3m3qe  Or check out our Walking Dead Facebook group, where we put up comment posts for each episode, at facebook.com/groups/deadcast. Check out my (Jason's) other podcast, Wax Episodic, where friends and I cover our favorite current shows, like: Severance, the mysterious, mind-bending, amusingly strange Apple TV workplace thriller about identity, memory, and corporate control. Covered by me and Karen. (!) Fallout, the crazy, funny, retro-futuristic post-apocalyptic series on Amazon Prime Video. Covered by me, Kara, and Kasi. Pluribus, the Twilight-Zoney Apple TV show from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, covered by me and Karen. It: Welcome to Derry, the horrific HBO series, prequel to the recent It movies based on the Stephen King book. Covered by me and Shawn of Strange Indeed. Alien: Earth, the heady, gross-out FX/Hulu sci-fi series based on the Alien movies. Covered by me, Randy, and Kara. Available wherever you get podcasts, or at waxepisodic.com   Digging our podcast? A quick, free, and easy way to show support and help bump us up in the charts is to give us a rating or a review: On Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-walking-dead-cast/id382998388  On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/04adjunRhpuouj0kgB6DBW  Or just search for “Walking Dead ‘Cast” wherever you get podcasts.  Thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices