Zombie Book Club
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Zombie Book Club
Zombie Nerd and the Half-Term Harrowing with Author Jack Callaghan | Zombie Book Club Podcast Ep 52
Author Jack Callaghan joins us in a lively discussion as we unpack his thrilling young adult novel, "Zombie Nerd and the Half-Term Harrowing." Broadcasting from an underground government facility, Jack shares his creative process and the nostalgic childhood influences that shaped his vivid storytelling. Discover how unique swear words like "crumber" and "spooglet" add flavor to the narrative and why Jack believes young readers deserve engaging, thought-provoking material.
We also tackle some weighty societal issues, from political polarization to the harsh realities of modern bullying. Jack shares his thoughts on the importance of questioning societal norms and the power of language in building bridges. This episode is a journey of emotions, insights, and laughter you won’t want to miss!
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Zombie Nerd and the Half-Term Harrowing
https://www.amazon.com/Zombie-Nerd-Half-Term-Harrowing-Callaghan/dp/1916756042
Book Cover art by Ramiro Roman
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Welcome to Zombie Book Club, the only book club where the book is about a zombie nerd named Ronnie who's very bad at being a zombie. I'm Dan, and when I'm not hammering my spine to dust, driving a dump truck for a living, I'm writing a book about religious zealots, fascist militias and politicians empowering them and the rest of us just trying not to get eaten by walking corpses.
Speaker 3:And I'm Leah. And instead of watching the real-life horror show that is the US presidential debate that happened this week oh, wasn't that fun, I don't know because I didn't watch it, because instead I've been reading the book that follows Ronnie and his two friends on a quest to find out what the fuck if I can say that what the heck happened to create the zombie outbreak and why won't anybody talk about it. Today we are diving deep into the world of the novel Zombie Nerd and the Half-Term Harrowing, which is a kick-ass title. And we have a real treat for you and I surprise a conversation with the book's very mysterious author, jack Callahan. And if you haven't heard of Jack before, it's probably because he's been lurking in the depths of an underground abandoned government facility at an undisclosed location. We don't know where he's calling us from. We can't see him. It's very mysterious. He keeps his real identity under tight wraps. Welcome to the show, jack. We've been looking forward to this interview with you for a while now.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you very much for having me on. I've been looking forward to this as well.
Speaker 1:It's amazing that they let you broadcast from that government facility.
Speaker 2:I know it's very difficult to get a transmission out from here at the moment. It's a very strange place. When I first moved in, the first thing that I found out was it's a very hard water area. When I poured myself a glass, I looked at it and it looked so hard that I just handed over my phone and my wallet. I didn't want any trouble. You must have special clearance to have Wi-Fi down there. Oh, of course, yes. Only I know the password. It's a jack123, but my father should have said that.
Speaker 3:And what's the name of the-?
Speaker 1:Everybody forget that password. But, yeah, welcome. Before we get started, I should disclose that this is a book I haven't read.
Speaker 2:Shame on you.
Speaker 1:Shame. I agree, jack, but however, leah has Devoured it like a brain. Yeah, so we're going to ask some questions and Leah's questions will be very smart and informed and my questions will be very stupid.
Speaker 3:What if mine end up also being stupid? You really set me up for high expectations, Dan. Jack keep your bar low.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'll try to so let's ask some rapid fire questions. First thing that comes off the top of your head when I ask you these questions let's go. You know the stakes are very low. We will, uh, judge you based on your answers. Um, from this point on uh, number one do you prefer fast or slow zombies?
Speaker 2:oh I. I have a little place in my heart for the fast ones, because you never know when they're going to get you. But the slow, the slow ones are, of course, the classics as well yeah, I'd say, I'd have to, I'd have to go with the fast um, because, uh, I'm a big fan of 28 days later, 28 years, 28 weeks later and, we're hoping, 28 years later. Yeah, so no, I do.
Speaker 1:I do think the fast ones are far more exciting you know, uh, 28 weeks later doesn't always get the best praises from people, but that scene at the very beginning, when they're running away from the farmhouse and all the zombies come running up over the hill chasing them to the boat, that got me.
Speaker 2:It is. It's a fantastic scene with the brilliant Robert Carlyle yeah, as well, a fantastic British actor.
Speaker 1:You know, I guess let's just assume fast zombies at this point, would you choose the 40-hour work week or a zombie apocalypse?
Speaker 2:40? God, I work more than that now.
Speaker 3:Oh no, how many hours do you work?
Speaker 2:I am forced to come up to the surface at some point and work for my daily bread. Unfortunately, writing these books does not pay my bills. At the moment, I work 42 and a half. So is it? Is it a question of? Do I work less or get a zombie apocalypse?
Speaker 1:yeah, yes, yeah, you get.
Speaker 2:You get less hours do I still get the same pay? Yes, do I still get?
Speaker 1:that's made. That's made it even harder no, in the zombie apocalypse, you don't need the money you gotta scavenge for your things. Yeah, it's a different kind of work, but it's more honest of course, and of course I'm already in a safe space that's right, it's true, yeah, so yeah I'm gonna have to go for zombie apocalypse.
Speaker 3:Yeah, perfect, yeah. I think only one person is told is 40 hour work week and a 42 and a half inhumane. I think it should be none.
Speaker 1:You know, I work like 55 to 65.
Speaker 2:I was just about to say we make sure sound like nothing.
Speaker 1:Still, yours sound like nothing. Still, even if they're like, you only have to work 40 hours this week. I'd be like give me the zombies, I still don't want to do it. Maybe if they said 30 I'd do. Yeah, we have to wheedle it down, yeah 20. All right, uh, next question if you were in a zombie apocalypse, uh, what's your first weapon of choice? Oh, weapon of choice.
Speaker 2:Um well, you see, I have read, uh, the zombie survival guide by max brooks, and I know that he says the shaolin spade, which is a very, very interesting weapon, but if I had to go for something that I use in my own book and that I think is a very reliable weapon, it would have to be the cricket bat.
Speaker 1:All right, you know, I've never swung one.
Speaker 2:Good reach. It's got both a sharp face and a flat face.
Speaker 3:I guess that's a good point.
Speaker 2:So you can both crack and smack at the same time.
Speaker 3:Crack and smack.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Crack and smack.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like an oar, you know, and oars famously, have killed a lot of people Because a baseball bat, you see, you've got the swing, but it's very small, whereas with a cricket bat, you can give it the same force, but you've got a larger face for it.
Speaker 3:I feel like. I would have to say as a Canadian, I'm required to say I would choose the hockey stick over the cricket rack, cricket bat, cricket bat. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Cricket rack. We call it a rat over the cricket rack cricket bat, cricket bat, we call it a rat in the.
Speaker 3:UK. My noun retrieval always gets me alright, we got two more for you when you put a hockey stick in Leah's hands.
Speaker 2:That's when all of the fury comes out you put a hockey stick in any Canadian's hand and they're coming at you she leaves a trail of empty molson canadians behind her.
Speaker 1:All right. Next question it is the zombie apocalypse and you get to eat only one unlimited shelf, stable food item for the rest of your natural life. Uh, what do you choose?
Speaker 2:right, I already know this one.
Speaker 1:I I've already thought about it, because you're eating it right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, from your previous interviews, I'm a vegetarian.
Speaker 1:Oh nice.
Speaker 2:And there's a supermarket in Britain called Tesco and they have some own brand things and they do a tin of beans that has little tiny vegetarian sausages in it and they are absolutely delicious and they only cost £1.20 a tin and I could eat those for the rest of my life, because there have been times, as you say, Dan, where I have eaten those several days in a row.
Speaker 3:So no, I could survive on those for the rest of my life easily so no, I, I could survive on those for the rest of my life easily.
Speaker 2:Those sound wonderful you all over um the pond have much better options than us for vegetarian vegan things very obvious.
Speaker 1:Uh, those times in your life where you end up eating like one thing for a really long time really lets you know like what you're capable of eating for a long period of time I once ate them.
Speaker 2:I once ate them cold yeah yeah, it was.
Speaker 2:Um, while I was at university, um, I didn't know anybody. I moved into a house with 11 other people, wow, and. And I didn't know anybody. And I was so anxious to go downstairs and actually heat the damn things up that I thought, no, I'm going to stay in my room. And I opened them up and, like, pulled and put my fork in and they came up as like this great gelatinous lump and I was like, oh God, has it really come to this? And I put them in my mouth and went you know what?
Speaker 3:That's actually quite nice. I've eaten them cold several times as well.
Speaker 2:It kind of sounds like aspic it's not quite as dense as aspic, but it's still. It's still got that sort of wobbly dog food feel to it, but no once you get. Once you get them in the gob and down the throat, they're fine. Gotta get that. So, even even if I can't find a fire during the zombie apocalypse to heat the things. I can just eat them cold. I'll be great.
Speaker 1:All right. Last question, very important question If you had to choose between being a crummer or a spouglet, which would you choose, and why?
Speaker 2:Oh dear, A crummer or a spouglet. Which would you choose, and why, oh dear, a crummer or a spouglet?
Speaker 1:I'd probably be a Follow-up question. Please tell us what those things mean.
Speaker 2:I'd probably rather be a crummer than a spouglet. These are all actual words. They're real, they exist.
Speaker 1:That's funny because I googled spouglet. These are all actual words, they're real, they exist, you know, that's funny because I Googled spooklet and it asked me if I meant Google A spooklet.
Speaker 2:It's a Scottish term for what's known as the pluck from a carcass, which means like the lungs, the heart, kidneys, the liver, and it means and I've recycled it to mean something useless, something that you throw away. And all of these words are real, and the reason that I used them was, um, because I know that kids swear. Kids swear all the time. We've all heard them do it. But of course I can't have my kids swear in my book. I'd never get away with it. So I've sort of made up my own swear words. Crumb pretty much means shit, and a spoodlet is something that is useless, something that you throw away. So I think I'd rather be crumb than spoodlet.
Speaker 3:I think that's a good decision. We asked some folks just before this interview and one person chose crummer as a last check and everybody else said what is that? So we clearly need more British listeners.
Speaker 1:Apparently Scottish words haven't made it to Google yet.
Speaker 2:Apparently not.
Speaker 3:Or the algorithms are not showing you all the things. As we know, that is also the case, that's true. So let's get into zombie nerd and the half term harrowing. Can you tell us about your book why you chose a zombie apocalypse genre for young adult fiction specifically? That was really interesting to me.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's because the idea came to me following a conversation with some friends where we said if you were to write a book for younger readers, what would it be about?
Speaker 2:And I quite flippantly said it'd be, about the end of the world, but there'd be songs and poems in it, and I didn't really think about it for a long time after that, until it came to a point where I came to the realization that my for want of a better term, more serious writing wasn't going anywhere. It was like, okay, let's think about this again. And I think that this kind of material is something that younger readers should have access to and they should be allowed to engage with, but unfortunately, a lot of the stuff that is available isn't really something that's geared towards them, if you know what I mean. So I thought well, let's try and do it, let's see if it works and I'm not saying that I'm the only person that's done it, by no means.
Speaker 2:There's also a series in Britain at the moment called last kids on earth, and what happens in that is it's some kids who are surviving a zombie apocalypse. But I thought, what if the zombies aren't just zombies? What if they're the same as you and me? And what if I make my main character a zombie? How can that open things up? And from then I started writing and it just ended up turning into this much larger thing that I'd ever envisioned. It was only ever supposed to be one book. I'm now looking at six.
Speaker 3:I was actually going to ask that question.
Speaker 1:I'm very glad to hear that. Isn't that the way? Absolutely, I was actually going to ask that question.
Speaker 2:I'm very glad to hear that. Isn't that the way? Absolutely, and I think, I really do think that I'm onto something here and if that answers your question, I don't know.
Speaker 3:No, it does, because when I first looked at the cover, not knowing much and just a little bit From the jacket what it says it's about, I was like this is interesting. The zombie is the main character, and then you have this preamble in the beginning that explains the history of the world, um which I'll let you explain that in a moment. But I I think it's the first time I've seen a zombie as a main character, other than maybe that movie that like zombie love movie what is it called warm hearts or something no, no, yeah, um warm bodies, warm bodies, yeah warm bodies was a direct influence upon me, but, um, for the wrong reasons.
Speaker 2:But I, I love nicholas holt. I think he's fantastic and he's very good looking as well. Um, but let's face it, his character in that film. He's not a zombie, he's a pretty boy with some makeup on um, but there's, there was also a, a series in in the uk. Um, I, I can't remember for the life of me what it was called, but it did something very similar to what I'm doing now and I first thought, oh well, that's my book done. They've already done it, but they weren't doing it in the same way that I am. Yeah, and making the zombie the main character and making him have to question what it means to be a zombie instead of just being one, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Like yeah, I've, uh, I've. I've had a similar experience in my path where it's like I've read and watched a whole lot of things and like it's it's difficult to find something that really, truly scratches the itch, like some things get close and you're like, but it's not exactly what I want. Yeah, and sometimes the solution is you got to write it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got to do it yourself if no one else is doing it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the compulsion is there no-transcript.
Speaker 1:My world is obviously post-zombie apocalypse the zombie apocalypse has happened and it's over.
Speaker 2:The first line of the book is the zombie apocalypse was over and it has been for some time. It's a good starting point, so, and um, it's, it's more to do with uh, not the, the fighting and everything to do with that. It's more to do with the, the social things that would happen after something like that. Um, and one of the things that I've after something like that, and one of the things that I've been trying to put across maybe not as hard in this first book, but definitely in the next ones is a reversion to the past where, if all of our technology were to be taken away, we'd not only have to go back to a point, physically, where these things no longer existed, but we'd also have to go back to a point, culturally, where these things no longer exist. And it's why I use these strange words, why I use a lot of Anglo-Saxon language Like spuglet, like spuglet, like crummer, like langothriller, like scandlicker these are all real words, wow.
Speaker 1:That last one sounds Scandalous. Descriptive.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you got, it, you got it.
Speaker 2:Scandlicker is the root word of scandal. Yeah, and you see, that's what I'm doing. I'm using these things from the past and I'm using them in a setting which is essentially the future, to build a world that still feels very real, because one of the things that.
Speaker 2:I don't like when it comes to world building is I love deep and rich world building. I love to be drawn into a world and be made to feel that this is actually real, but I don't like it when people resort to nonsense, when people will say like um oh, this is the land of jumble and these are the willow wallows you. You're like oh really, is that all you can come up with? Whereas if you use things that are real, that are rooted in reality and that are rooted in history, and embed them into your world build, you can make it feel much more real, and I love the idea of somebody not knowing what one of my words are and then maybe googling it and going hang on, that's actually a real thing that's what I wanted to do, yeah instead of me just going.
Speaker 3:Oh, blah, blah, bibble, babble bum yeah, I wanted to google it, but I thought it'd be more fun to ask you because I knew I had that privilege. So I decided all right, I'm also in an air, even though I'm like scrolling it on my phone's kindle app. Like I'm in the era where I cannot Google things, I will wait to ask Jack.
Speaker 1:You know, actually you know, on on the topic of you know your world building, having real world places, I've I've read a series before that like kind of seemed like it was based in like real world towns but like much in the future, and I tried to do research to like see if I could figure out where it was, only to realize that it's most likely made up. And it was kind of disappointing. I was like I really wanted to see like where these places were on a map and like understand the scope of like the story that was being told. So like yeah, having like some real world anchors like helps enhance that story, I think on that note, jack I.
Speaker 3:I did google. That's the one thing I googled was is mickle sign? Tell me if I'm saying it incorrectly, you know. No, sorry, I knew it again.
Speaker 2:That's. It's a british term, it's an ang Anglo-Saxon term. Mikkelkeimer is how it's pronounced, and it means big, lovely.
Speaker 1:Oh, I like it.
Speaker 2:But of course the place that they live isn't big and it's not very lovely at all, which is a way that we name a lot of places in Britain. We give them wonderful names. We have places in Britain that are called scunthorpe. You want, do you want? Do you want to live in scum? I live. I live one train stop away from a place called spittle spittle, yeah, although that that's not only british. Um, I have a friend, um somebody who I've published short stories with over in america, who says that she lives on a street called chicken foot lane. That is wonderful.
Speaker 2:That is the most american sounding place and pretty much everything we do in britain is exactly the same we have just all of our place names are just as stupid when you go back and you and you look into the, the etymology of what they actually mean look into the the etymology of what they actually mean. Um, yeah, I mean places like manchester, manchester yeah, liverpool, I don't like it. I don't like it. Birmingham yeah, no, you have a birmingham we have all of them yeah, I mean, we technically live in new england yeah, yeah, you have. You have a new york, you have a manchester, yeah new jersey barry.
Speaker 3:Is there a barry in the uk?
Speaker 2:there is, but we pronounce it burry how do you spell it?
Speaker 3:b-u-r-y okay, yeah. No, we say here it's b-a-r-r-e, depending on where you go.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's in, as in barry, that's a guy's name oh, okay, and then in canada it's b-a-r-r-i-e, so b-a-r-r-i-e yeah, I don't know, we don't.
Speaker 3:We're not in charge of this stuff.
Speaker 2:We make it up I think about this stuff far too much, and you probably see it in the book as well, and people don't even care. I shouldn't even bother. But well, if it makes it if it makes it more enchanting, then why not yeah?
Speaker 3:it does it. It sinks you into a world and, like part of when I was reading, I was trying to figure out like what is the time that this is in and then I realized that didn't matter because they didn't have access yes, when.
Speaker 2:When does this take place? Where? In any point during this book do I tell you when the zombie apocalypse actually happened.
Speaker 3:You don't.
Speaker 2:I don't.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's what makes it interesting, because I'm trying to figure it out the whole time and I still don't know, actually, jack.
Speaker 2:Can I tell you a secret?
Speaker 3:Of course, is it going to be just for us, can I?
Speaker 2:tell you a secret. Is it going to be just for us? Well, I suppose everybody else who's listening as well. Okay, nobody tell anybody it's about 1995.
Speaker 3:Ooh, oh, that's fun. No wonder there's so many bullies. Yeah, I feel like 1995 is the era of bullies. It's the era of the bully.
Speaker 2:And why everybody listens to tapes and not CDs.
Speaker 3:Yes, I thought it was just because CDs are very prone to degradation.
Speaker 2:Tapes are as well, I suppose, but I think it's because when any writer writes about childhood, they inevitably write about their own childhood. Yeah, so I think that's maybe what I was doing a little bit there as well.
Speaker 3:I know you won't tell us much, but what was it like to rewrite a sort of alternate version of your own childhood?
Speaker 2:Fun, very fun. I grew up. I spent the first 10 years of my life in a big flat block that I wasn't allowed to leave because the area was too dangerous. And then, after that, my mother was able to my maternal care unit, was able to buy her own house and we moved into there. It was in a much nicer area, but it was also surrounded by let me list these off a railroad track, two demolished buildings, a sewage reclamation facility, an electrical substation and a junkyard oh, all within about like a mile square.
Speaker 1:Wow, all the things that children love to play in Exactly.
Speaker 2:I didn't feel oppressed by this. Instead, I flourished in it. I loved hanging around all of these places, which is why, when it came to writing this book, I was so able to write about places that were dilapidated, places that you don't really want to go junkyards, bin bags.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you've explored, them thoroughly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I could do it with such joy. I'm still ridiculously attracted to places like that now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my favorite thing to do as a kid was to go to the dump with my dad. Yeah, totally. I mean not the smell, but the finding of treasure in the dump.
Speaker 1:Oh, most of our frying pans came from the dump.
Speaker 3:Exactly yeah, you could always find a good pan at the dump. This is how you practice for the apocalypse dump scavenging.
Speaker 1:So I'm told that there are zombies and there are blood bags. Uh, what are those and why are they different?
Speaker 2:A zombie is a zombie. A blood bag is a survivor. That's the the derogatory term that zombies use for survivors. They call them blood bags.
Speaker 3:But your zombies are very unique, like one of the things where I was, uh, I was wondering, and then you answered at some point uh, and if this is a spoiler, you can tell us, take it out. Uh, was that ronnie, the main character? Like he's 13 years old, right? Yeah? And uh, I was like, how were you? Did you turn when you were 13? We found out that's not true. And then I'm like, well then he must be stuck as a 13 year old forever. But then you indicate that they actually keep growing, and so that's when I realized that this is not like yes, they're a zombie, as in, they're sort of not totally alive and things can fall off.
Speaker 2:Um, which was very fun and the goriest part of your book and can be sewn and can be sewn back on as well and still work, yeah, uh, but the fact that he could still grow up.
Speaker 3:What really fascinated me? I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like that before as a zombie, and it's it's just not the. This, I think, is a spoiler, so I'm not going to say it. I'll just give folks a reason to read it. The, the source of the zombie apocalypse, is not what you expect.
Speaker 2:I'll just say that that's right, yeah, I, I was just about to say, oh, this is why. But you've just said let's not say why so do you want to say why it's?
Speaker 1:your contaminated dinners no, it ruins it that's the thing I want people to buy. The damn thing, let's. Let's not ruin it, let's just give away all the secrets in this uh, plague doctors are alike.
Speaker 3:The boogeyman in your book is the boogeyman a thing in the uk?
Speaker 2:the boogeyman, yeah yeah yeah, we do know the boogeyman, but, um, as you've read the book, you know that they're definitely not the boogeyman.
Speaker 3:No, no, um, so without spoilers again, like what can you tell us about these plague doctors and what do they represent for you? Like why were they such an important part in your book?
Speaker 2:I became fascinated with the idea of the plague doctors, probably when I was around the same age as the people that I'm writing about. I watched a documentary about the two great plagues that happened in Europe the two great plagues that happened in Europe and they showed people in the dress that the plague doctors used to wear and said that they put like various herbs and stuff into the beaks of the masks. That's where we get the term pocket full of posies from. Oh wow, and ever since then it's always been this striking image of how they look. The uniforms that they used to wear have always been something that was stuck in my head, and when I first started writing the book it just seemed like a logical conclusion to include them in there as well. But I thought they can't just appear. They can't just be walking around town and doing whatever plague doctors used to do. Let's make them as mysterious and ethereal as the uniforms actually look.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you do a good job of that, and they're used as a form of social control I'm not sure with adults, but definitely with children. Both zombies and survivors are afraid of the plague. Doctor, right yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's right and that was really interesting because I think it alludes to the and this gets into your book a little bit more uh, that fear really is a way of maintaining power and control. And I actually, as a kid I don't know if this resonates for either of you, but as a kid I had a friend's dad tell me I should go to bed and go to sleep because if I didn't, the mugwumps were going to get me. And when I tell you, yeah, are mugwumps a thing that you know about?
Speaker 2:because I'd never heard before, um, well, I know um two things that mugwumps are oh, and I can. I can tell you right now they're not what you're thinking, okay, first of all, a mugwump is used in British politics. Oh, and secondly, a mugwump is something that appears in a book called Naked Lunch by William Burroughs.
Speaker 1:That is a very dirty book and don't go and read it, he said.
Speaker 2:But no, I never knew that mugwumps were supposed to be like monsters that came and got you or anything that's new to me.
Speaker 3:It was only this one, dad.
Speaker 2:But the problem was, he told me when I was maybe like six he probably, he probably read william borrow's book and said which is even more creepy now that I know, that I'm extra creeped out.
Speaker 3:But for years I would lie in bed, terrified, and I would hear the beating of my own heart in my ears. And I'm extra creeped out. But for years I would lie in bed, terrified, and I would hear the beating of my own heart in my ears and I'm like, oh, I mean, I don't think I said fuck when I was eight, but uh, like, oh, no, like the. I thought the beating of the my heart in my ears was the sound of them coming down the hall, and he never told me what they were. So thank you for finally letting me know. I can rest easy now.
Speaker 2:That's even worse, though the beating of the hog. Oh, it's the mugwumps. Because the mugwumps were in british politics.
Speaker 3:They were supposed to be tories so it's like the beating heart and the mugwumps are coming down the hall and, oh my god, it's boris johnson he's coming he's coming back but it's a messed up way to control kids, I think, to scare them especially with things that aren't real fear is a tried and true method of control.
Speaker 2:Yep, it's, it's.
Speaker 1:It's the way that we run our society yeah, I think we should bring back mugwumps, because I think that is like such a perfect word.
Speaker 3:Are we going to use it to describe like politicians here now not just boogeymen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean Trump for sure is a mugwump, oh definitely.
Speaker 2:I can think of a few nastier words.
Speaker 3:Oh, please tell us.
Speaker 2:These are see you next Tuesday.
Speaker 1:Hmm, if we have to use that, yeah, um, these, uh, see you next tuesday you mentioned, uh that, um, in your book you have songs and poems, yeah, that are featured quite a bit. Uh, how, how does that work in your book and like what, why, what made you want to put those in in there?
Speaker 2:um, songs and and things in verse have been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember, and I didn't originally intend to have any in the book. It never even crossed my mind. But a point came where I thought to myself a bit in verse, a poem would go really well there, and after I put it in I thought, well, it can't just be one. It doesn't make any sense just to have this one poem in the middle of a 100,000-word book. There has to be more.
Speaker 2:So I carried on and I carried adding them in, and it really opened up my writing process. It enabled me to say things that I wanted to say, to really condense things as well. You can say something in a poem that might take you 10 pages to do in prose, and as I did it, I found that it became much more fun. It became much more rewarding and it made me start to think a lot more properly about my poetry and to try and really really have things in this book that you don't see very often. I mean, it used to happen. Obviously, I'm a Tolkien fan.
Speaker 3:I was going to reference that.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm even told that there are certain people in the world who have the words from the Ring tattooed on their arm, but I don't know anything about that and as I started doing it, it made me want to do it more and I found that it it really added something to the book that wasn't there before, and I'm going to continue doing it. Yeah, and hopefully people like it I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean that kind of reminds me a little bit of how, like songs and things like that work in a lot of works of fantasy. So, like you like yeah, you might.
Speaker 2:You might just like stroll into a tavern and like some, some bard will be singing about some heroic thing the, the first written pieces of english literature, were originally supposed to be spoken out loud and sung, particularly particularly Beowulf, the first piece, what's called the first piece of English literature ever. If you go online and Google, a fellow called Benjamin Bagby he's an American actually he recites Beowulf in prose and verse from memory, the entire thing all the way through, and it is fantastic to watch and that was a big influence on me, including poems as well, and, like I say, I like doing it. I think it's fun and hopefully the readers think so as well and, from what I've been told, apparently the young people like the poems but the older people not so much.
Speaker 3:Do I count as an older person? Cause I like them. I actually read them out loud because I uh uh wanted to hear the rhythm, Cause I love poetry. Uh, and I think, Dan, this is your moment to tell your um the Odyssey story.
Speaker 2:Oh, the odyssey story. Oh, I think jack will. Yeah, I know you, I know your odyssey story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how much of it can you recite from?
Speaker 2:memory oh, none anymore, I think it starts with o it does. Um, I have a very similar story. Actually, when I was at university we studied, uh, the marriage of heaven and hell by william blake. But that poem it's very long was turned into an album by a band called Ulva from Norway and I went up to my tutor and I said I can recite this poem all the way through.
Speaker 1:And she said no you can't.
Speaker 2:And I said right, I bet you, I can do the first 10 plates. And she went, no, you can't, and I did. And she said how do you, I can do the first 10 plates? And she went, no, you can't, and I did. And she said how do you know that? And I said because this band did it and I've been listening to them for years yeah, you put it to music.
Speaker 1:Actually, I think that was my, my trick. The short version of this story is that I was failing english, um, and my teacher offered the class extra points if they needed to make up some points or to get higher grades at the end of the year, in order, you know, if they could memorize a poem and they would be given one point per page. And I had a 57 in that class and I was like you know what I'm going to memorize? The Odyssey, because that's a poem and I memorized 40 pages of it and then recited it in front of people who were trying to find all of the errors while looking in the book, and some of them tried to argue some errors that they saw, but I also pointed out that I was reading a different translation.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's how you get them. Yeah, I had the.
Speaker 1:Greek translation. I'm like check it in this book, asshole.
Speaker 2:But one other thing that's just popped into my mind. When we talk about the poems or do I say this? Yes, you do I will. There will be a zombie world album.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Once I've got enough of them, I will set them to music and put it out for free.
Speaker 3:Yes, we have a. We still have not officially released it, but anybody who wants to find it can we have a zombie book club soundtrack on Spotify, and it's basically every random song that I feel like sort of has a vibe or explicitly says the word zombie.
Speaker 2:I had to introduce you to Send More Paramedics.
Speaker 1:That's right, we have to add that still actually I listened to it immediately and I was like you know what I get it? This is a vibe.
Speaker 3:A very Dutch dance vibe. I love that band. Back to your book. I think that the other reason why I love the musicality of it is because music is one of the most human things that we do. Yeah, and I was reading recently that one of the theories of the origins of music is that because we had to walk. When we walk, we start to walk together in a synchronous way almost automatically, without thinking, in order to be able to hear other things around us, and a lot of the basic starting of music is the same sort of rhythm of walking. I was like that's wild, but it's also interesting because it's a world where we've gone quote unquote backwards in technology and now they have value Like that was really cool to me, jack, that your songs people would pay to just hear a song sung again the song economy yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, that's something that I was just thinking about is like the oral tradition of stories and just live music has kind of gone away with technology. It's like this lost profession of memorizing poems and stories. But in the future, after a zombie apocalypse, assuming society doesn't fire right back up again because we're humans and we're perfect that way, there's going to be a time where like that is going to come back and like I like, but the, the old, ancient stories, unless somebody has memorized those, probably won't be around anymore and maybe, well, you hear in some tavern 60 years after the apocalypse is somebody recounting the tale of the star war.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I bet he will. Um, have you ever seen a film called rain of fire? Yeah, yeah, yeah, where they do the star Wars thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're doing like puppet shows and like completely reacting star Wars.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, yeah, exactly that's. That's. That's exactly what I was trying to do. You hit the nail on the head you didn't even read it.
Speaker 1:Look at that you didn't even read it. That's. This is how I got through school. Now you know how I got through. Got my way through english class but I do.
Speaker 3:I just it makes me feel all smushy inside because I like thinking about my. It makes me think about my grandpa and how my grandpa always uh, had like rhymes and riddles and songs and limericks. He was a limerick king, he really was, and I don't remember any of them, but I have recordings of him because I just had this feeling like I can't lose this, even if At some point I will make a point of memorizing it myself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly that's what I was going to say. If you lost those recordings, would you memorize them? So you're the only person that can recount them to other people.
Speaker 3:I need to, but honestly, some of them are quite scandalous. What's the original?
Speaker 2:Oh, who cares? Scandlicer, you're a scandlicer, some of them are, and some of them are like, definitely not passing the test of time.
Speaker 1:It's like, grandpa, I don't know if you should be singing this to me, but okay, we're here you know that sidetracks me to, um, the last of us, where, uh, she has the book of puns and she's like committing to memory all of these puns because she wants to tell terrible jokes to people I've not.
Speaker 2:I've not watched the last of us yet, although I I have watched a playthrough of the game, but I've not watched the the series yet. But I have heard about the fun book yeah yeah, it's really great, highly recommend.
Speaker 3:Um. So this is one of my quote-unquote smart questions, per dan, but you can decide if it's actually smart. I don't think it's that smart, but it is. I am curious. Uh, there are a lot of real world parallels in your book and, yeah, while it is marketed to young adults, I want to be really clear, because we have a mostly adult audience. This is a book that you can pick up and really enjoy.
Speaker 3:Uh, even if it doesn't say fuck and it says crummer instead, you will actually get a kick out of crummer um and spookle it, which are now going to become and mugwump a official part of my vocabulary when I want to insult somebody. But I'm curious like you specifically talk about an apartheid between zombies and blood bags. And then this is what's really interesting to me the rewriting of history around the zombie outbreak and what happened, to the point where it's not that long ago Like there are people alive who went through it, but the children have no idea what actually happened. And I'm curious what compelled you to make that a part of this world that is technically a fictional world through the book.
Speaker 2:Whenever a younger person asks an adult a question, they're usually told we don't talk about it, and I think that is something that is a parallel to contemporary society, because there are a great many things that happen in the world that we live in right now that young people aren't told about, and maybe they should be told about, and all that I'm doing is kind of condensing it, if you know what I mean. Um, yeah, in in the book it only happened. I'm not going to say how many years, even though I just did earlier.
Speaker 1:Um, that was a secret. Nobody actually knows. They were covering their ears it's.
Speaker 2:It's still a parallel to the things that we face today. If a younger person were to ask an older person why do we believe the things that we believe or why do we live the lives that we lead, unfortunately, a lot of older people don't really have an answer. Unfortunately, a lot of older people don't really have an answer, and that's what I was trying to say. Um, especially with the the rise of the ways that things are at the moment, when we're told that we're not supposed to like certain people and if a younger person says well, why not?
Speaker 1:then an older person might just say well, just because yeah, yeah, or call them a spooklet call them, call them a spooklet or call them um any any other word yeah, yeah, you know, I got that a lot when I was in the army.
Speaker 2:Um I can imagine.
Speaker 1:So yeah, there's so many dumb things that you have to do and you have to do things that way. And it's like we're doing a task and we have to do it the dumbest possible way. Why?
Speaker 3:and it's like, uh, because, it's the 10th mountain division and that's how 10th mountain division does it this is the way that we do it were you a y kid jack a y kid a y kid like a kid who always asked why oh, oh, yeah, definitely did it annoy your parents.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, one of the questions that Ronnie asks in the book is why do things have to be the way that they are? What adult can answer that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, why? Why do they have to be the way they are? It's a question that people. Why, why? Why? Why this? Why that we want to know?
Speaker 2:No, of course, of course, there's no answer.
Speaker 3:Unfortunately, there is no answer, unfortunately there is no answer, I'd like to think that I give several hints throughout the book, but there's no answer, no exact answer, but I think I'm going to take a stab at my answer, and then I'd like to hear your answer and Dan's answer of why do you think things are the way they are? I think they are the way they are because we made it up, true.
Speaker 1:That's my answer. Yeah, I guess we can make something else up. I think they have to be the way that they are because it's easier than fixing it oh yeah, some people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's um, I'm gonna I'm gonna go off on a little one here, please do uh, as we said earlier, I know I'm pushing 40 now and I know that you guys are as well- yeah, we're getting there.
Speaker 2:We are a people manipulated through fear and even though that is, as I said before, it is a tried and tested method for control. As I said before, it is a tried and tested method for control. It also generates hate and violence and leaves us with no constructive feeling in life. And if we're able to break out of that to see that there really is nothing to be afraid of I'm not afraid of you, you're not afraid of me, it's only other people that are telling us to be afraid of each other Then we can finally be able to come together and hopefully make something bloody productive, he said, killing the mood.
Speaker 3:No, I mean, these are the kinds of conversations I wanted to have as a kid, actually that I get to have now as an adult. But I really resonated with Ronnie being sort of like the weirdo, because I was the poet and I was the kid who asked why, and I was the kid that wanted to have the conversations that we're having right now. And so as I was thinking about my younger self when I was reading it and just thinking like this would have been so validating to me to read. So I just want to say thank you for that, because the whole world is telling me don't question anything, it just do what you're told. And I was the very annoying kid, um, who did not respect my elders. So it actually was a little. I will get a little cheesy and say it was actually sort of like healing my little inner, inner leah, my inner leah, eight-year-old, that was pissed off all the time. Why are there mug wumps?
Speaker 2:did you like bridget as well? Did you like how pissed off she is?
Speaker 3:I do like it and. I'm very hopeful that she goes back to Necropolis because I feel like that's where she wants to be. So I'm excited to see what's going to happen in the sequel, Jack.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she's a wonderful character. I love it. She's probably one of the characters that I love writing the most. I think her most effective word is whatever, because whenever I found myself that I'd written myself into a corner and I'm like, oh, I don't know where to go from here, I just put Bridget in and she just goes whatever. And you're like, oh right on, we go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that fixes everything. It really does.
Speaker 3:And I do want to get to the core of what you said there briefly, because we are in this space in the us and I'm sorry to make it us centric, but it's an election year and it's just horrifying, uh, but a very interesting thing happened that made me think about you and this book, because it happened while I was reading it.
Speaker 3:Um, my ex-sister-in-law not getting into the long story behind that and I I are still connected on Instagram and we are wildly politically different. So she voted for Trump in 2016. I don't know what she voted for in 2020. But, anyways, she posted some things about the presidential election that are exactly how I feel and we messaged back and forth about it a little bit, and she's always someone that I've liked.
Speaker 3:But it's been very hard to talk about politics because we are polarized and this world that we live in directly tries to make us oppose each other. And I had this moment. I was like what if me and persons who's let's call her Cheryl what if me and Cheryl could actually get together and talk about just changing the system, even if we don't have an exactly the same vision for what that system does? We know this one doesn't work and we have been trying to just not talk to each other, just don't keep it polite, don't talk about politics, because it will be, especially with that family. It was a very, very violent, shouting match, but she knows it's not working, and I know it's not working and maybe there's something there that we could be connected on. So I think your message is really important.
Speaker 2:Well, I hope so, because we're having something very similar going on in the UK right now. We've got an election coming up. In less than a week we're going to get a new government. Fine, there's a very awful political party going around at the moment called Reform UK, and my mother said to me that she got into an argument with one of them, and you know, we have a lot of people immigrant people coming over across the English Channel in boats right now. They come across literally in rubber dinghies, wow. And apparently this guy said to my mom oh well, we should just bomb them, just bomb the dinghies. And you're like oh so we should just kill people, should we?
Speaker 1:Yeah, also, he doesn't know how bombs work.
Speaker 2:Well, exactly, yeah, they don't explode when they hit rubber dinghies.
Speaker 2:But she said like, oh, I just had to walk away from him in the end, I just couldn't take it anymore. And I said, well, no, you've, you've got to. You've got to confront these people. You've got to stick it to them as hard as you can stick it. But unfortunately and I think you're getting it in America at the moment with the same people who support Trump in America at the moment, with the same people who support Trump is, if you do stick it to these people, they're usually the kind of people who are most likely to smack you on in the mouth.
Speaker 2:If you yes, or if you try and argue with them or shoot you yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot of them wouldn't exert the physical energy to actually take a swing, but they'll pull the trigger.
Speaker 2:They just yeah, but no, you've got to confront it. You've got to stand up to it, and every time that you see it arise again, I'm bringing it back to the book. I say it in the book Every time that you see it emerge, you've got to confront it, you've got to call it out, otherwise this is a thing that will drag us down into perdition.
Speaker 3:We're basically there. I feel like over here we're in real trouble. I think that that is, um a really good point. And in your book you don't just like keep it rosy, like we can all just come together and everybody's gonna get along. If we can just see that, that we are all the same. I mean that there is that underlying message I think is really important. But you are also a realist about it, like, can you talk a little bit little bit about the young boy zombie horde and how they represent? Some of them anyways represent or at least to me the fact that we're not always going to be able to reach people and we have to have different tactics for figuring this out.
Speaker 2:What I was trying to say with that is bullies are bullies. Some people just suck. Bridget says it in the book. Some people are just rotten and there's nothing you can do about it. When I was a kid it was like you get the whole term of oh, they're just jealous.
Speaker 1:What the fuck are they jealous?
Speaker 2:of If they were jealous, they wouldn't just come and smack me one in the face. These people are just horrible and when you tell people, when you tell trying to get the words out, when you say things like that to kids, you're just lying to them. Some people are just horrible people and there's nothing you can do about it.
Speaker 1:My favorite is just ignore them and they'll get bored.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just ignore them. Oh, stop hitting me.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm ignoring you. Yeah, I mean, I've, I've got so many stories like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got my ass kicked more times than I can count Back at back at school. It always used to happen, but it's different now, though. Back when I was at school, people weren't bullying me on bullying me on social media which apparently now is a really big thing. Yeah, as older people, you'd say, well, oh, that's nothing like, oh, it's just, you know, it's just text, but no, apparently it really does affect these kids. And also on the more visceral side of it, um, I wasn't going to school and having people fully pulling knives on me, which apparently now happens as well um, so you know, it's bloody difficult to be a kid right now, and I won't say that it's not yeah, I mean yeah, there's no escape if it's, if it's on, if it's, you know, coming through your phone and happening in school, like there's no escaping it.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, I, I I think back sometimes to like, uh, people from from school and when I was a kid and I'm like if I saw that guy again, I'd knock him out, would you really?
Speaker 2:Yeah, if I saw him as an adult, I'd kick his ass, I would lay him down and it wasn't like that when you were a kid, was it?
Speaker 1:And I think I think recently, like I went back to my hometown and I'm pretty sure I saw one of my bullies now working at a gas station that I was getting fuel at and uh, and then I kind of just left feeling a little bit vindicated you know, but isn't it worse when you see them doing better than you? Yeah, then it's like they have to go down. I'm going to ruin this place.
Speaker 2:When you look up an old bully on YouTube and it's like on YouTube sorry Facebook you're like my God. He's married with two children and he's happy. He doesn't deserve to be happy.
Speaker 3:He's a piece of crap. It happens, yeah, but that's what this is.
Speaker 2:I have the answer. Do you want to know the answer? Yeah, what you want to do as a kid, if people are treating you like crap, don't start taking drugs and trying to rebel against everybody and drive your car really fast down the street and wrap yourself around a tree. Do you want to know what you want to do? Learn more, read more, write more, listen more, be more, become more than these people. That's the way that you beat them. You don't beat them through violence. Violence is their language and violence solves nothing. If you want to really stick it to these people, then become more than they are. That's the way that you do it that's a clip right there.
Speaker 3:We're gonna have to redo my intro so I don't say fuck, you're gonna have to bleep it out so kids can listen to this. We'll at least clip that one piece out for the kids so you know the, the bullies in your book.
Speaker 1:Um, do you think that they have like, uh, like what's, what's the depth of their stories? Like, are they deserving of redemption or compassion, or are they just the worst?
Speaker 2:Some of them are, and we find out in the sequel.
Speaker 2:He said he said him, but, but it ties back to everything that I just said um, that, um, throughout the narrative they learned that what they did was wrong. They're not necessarily forgiven, they don't necessarily find any sort of redemption from it, but they, they realize that it's it's. It's not the way that you're supposed to live your life, and most of them, apart from one skeletal-faced fellow, realizes that it's not the way to do things, and when they do things a different way, they realize that their lives are a lot better.
Speaker 3:That's really beautiful. I'm excited. When is the sequel going to come out?
Speaker 2:Hopefully by the end of the year. It's nearly done. Oh wow, that's soon, beautiful, I'm excited. When is the sequel going to come out? Hopefully by the end of the year. It's nearly done. Oh wow, that's soon. Yeah, the second book is nearly done, the third book is nearly done and I'm 25% into the fourth.
Speaker 3:This is incredible. I really hope that this replaces I'm just going to say it Harry Potter, and I don't know.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you, oh you.
Speaker 2:Thrice Blair. Thank you, oh God, do not even mention my name. With that wall, you've opened up a tin of worms.
Speaker 3:Okay, I want to pull a worm out. Tell me more.
Speaker 2:I despise that woman.
Speaker 3:And everybody says like.
Speaker 2:Oh, you can. You can like the books, but that doesn't mean you can like her. What am I saying? You don't have to like her, but you can like the books. No, I hate her and I hate the books.
Speaker 1:I think she's a misogynist.
Speaker 2:I think she's a dreadful turf and I think the books teach kids bad lessons. There I said it.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 1:I can get on board with that. I never read the books. I saw a couple of the movies. I thought they were all right?
Speaker 2:No, jk Rowling. When somebody's voice is artificially made louder, it is not magnified, it is amplified. No, jk Rowling. When it's so cold that you can see somebody's breath in the air, it's not because it has evaporated, it's because it's condensed. These are very simple things. But also all of her books are about power. Yeah, have more, have more money, be more powerful, be more popular.
Speaker 1:Be the special magic baby.
Speaker 2:Be the special man, be the chosen one yes, you, you actually allude to this in yeah, don't, I don't, I totally do.
Speaker 3:You directly say it and again, this was like these are the things I needed to hear when I was 12 um, but also still helpful to hear now. Do you want to say a little bit more about that? About, um, that moment with ronnie where there is an explicit statement it's not about being the chosen one, it's not about being the hero.
Speaker 2:Ronnie is told that the world doesn't need a chosen one, it doesn't need a hero. All it needs is enough people working together to do the right thing. And I can't put it simply. That's how I say it in the book and it can't be put more simple than that. And I think that's what more people need to hear, because it's this whole idea of the chosen one, this whole idea of the hero, that leads to I'm going to have to say it fascism.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah, follow the big man. The big man tells you what to do.
Speaker 3:No, thank you.
Speaker 2:I'm putting that sociology degree to use there.
Speaker 3:It only cost me 50,000 pounds. Did you go to school in the UK?
Speaker 2:I did yeah.
Speaker 3:And it cost 50,000 pounds.
Speaker 2:It cost me a lot of money to actually take it and it's been racking up interest ever since.
Speaker 1:Dang Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I feel very lucky, for I had um. It's not the same in Canada anymore, but I did have most of mine paid for. So I'm not. I have not experienced that and I just kind of assumed, because the UK has public healthcare, that it would be a little bit better.
Speaker 2:No, we've got public Public healthcare, but no public education.
Speaker 1:You know, something that I've been thinking all along through this interview every time, especially when you get especially amped about certain topics is that this is exactly what the zombie genre is supposed to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely about these things and putting, yes, taking it out of the world that we currently exist in and putting out a pedestal so that all that's left are all the rotten parts. The zombie apocalypse genre and I suppose the um, the post-apocalyptic genre in general is it's something that addresses very general anxieties, but most horror is to do with very personal fears, very insular fears. But what sets the post-apocalyptic genre apart is it's to do with more social fears, more collective anxieties, and that's something that I'm really interested in. The vampire is a parasite, the ghost is the outside other. Yes, I understand that and it doesn't really do anything for me, but the zombie genre, I suppose it's both a case of the outside other and also the invasion sub-genre, and they're both something that I'm really interested in, and I just wrote the bloody book.
Speaker 3:So and again you made the choice for the zombie to have be essentially human in terms of their cognition. Um, they're. They have feeling like they're human and for all intents of the world, except for biologically a little bit different. Yeah, and I think that's really important because sometimes I think the zombie apocalypse genre moves more towards and I know there's a place for gore. It's just not my favorite where it's like it's really about just othering the zombie as like an excuse to blow all of your rage onto them and, like you, push us to confront the fact that these folks are human.
Speaker 2:The zombie genre is just the invasion genre. It's the outside other that's coming to get you, whereas what I'm trying to do, what some other things try to do, what I'm told Path of the Pale Rider is starting to do as well, they have what's the word conscious zombies. Apparently, that is the way that we're going now and I think it's much, much, much more interesting.
Speaker 3:Why do you think it's evolved that way? The genre? Because I think you're right, we're starting to have a shift, and I appreciate it, because I can only watch a zombie be bashed in the head so many times.
Speaker 2:Because the outside other doesn't work anymore, because we're not scared of them or those we can think aren't scared of them anymore. We're more interested in what makes the other like us than what makes them different to us.
Speaker 3:Going to what you said, that there's more that is in common between us than different, common between us than different. We're still in your world, living in a place where, even though there was kind of like a tenuous piece, as in an absence of violence or less violence than the initial outbreak, there's still a ton of animosity, and that feels very real when you think about legacies of colonialism, of racism, of xenophobia Well, xenophobia is very active and all of those things are in their own way, but there are a lot of world parallels of people trying to figure out how to live together that have these legacies and I'm really curious what you think it would take You're going to answer really big questions here what do you think it would take for there to actually be real healing between people?
Speaker 2:Just just in general, in in the real world. Yeah, language, real world language. If you even know just how to say hello, how are you doing in another language? Then you can communicate with another person. One of the main things that we've got going on in the UK at the moment is they don't know how to speak our language. Well, why don't you know how to speak theirs? I speak in very small amounts. I'm not saying I'm fluent, but I can say hello. How are you in nine languages? Which ones? Some?
Speaker 2:of which are dead and as well English, german, italian, portuguese, latin, dutch, old English, russian and Ukrainian, which are technically the same, but don't tell any Ukrainian I said that they would be very upset.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that's it. That's it no big deal. That's it no big deal. Everybody seems to think that the whole problem with anybody who's An immigrant is they don't talk how I talk and they don't look how I look. They don't eat the same foods as us. They don't eat the same food. They don't eat bacon and eggs. Fuck them. Their clothes are different. If you can Speak to somebody, If you can have even that very basic Interaction with them, that it breaks down that barrier of the other. And I know Polish people who speak English better than some English people do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they've only been here for two years.
Speaker 2:These people are the same as you and me and they're sometimes coming over into our country to escape places that are absolutely terrible. They're not coming over just thinking like, oh, I'm going to go over there and get a house and take advantage of the NHS, yeah, I'm going to get some of that healthcare.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there are people that need to be here.
Speaker 2:I have never had to lift a finger in my life to be a British citizen, and I don't always think that being a British citizen is that great. So if someone is willing to cross the channel in a rubber dinghy, putting their lives, and sometimes the lives of their families, at risk, to come over here and get something that I don't think is that great, then maybe they should fucking be here. Yeah, and I will be happy for them to come over. If your country treats you like crap, come to mine. We've got your back.
Speaker 3:I appreciate that. I agree with that. I also think there's the. Have you ever heard of the movement of we're here? Because you were there? I think so. Yeah, basically it's a. Have you ever heard of the movement of we're here? Because you were there? I think so. Yeah, basically it's the. No one is illegal movement and it's about the fact that a lot of the time not all the time, but a lot of the time because of the legacy of colonialism and ongoing neocolonialism, imperialist movements, folks are in places that have been destabilized or really fucked up because of european and american what we did 200 years ago and yeah, and those things still continue.
Speaker 3:And I mean, frankly I can't speak to the uk, but I can speak to the us like we have very intentionally disrupted places that were starting to stabilize, who wanted to have a socialist type of leader that we deliberately assassinated or overturned and said that the the election was not legitimate, which was complete bullshit in the case of haiti, for example, um or ukraine yeah, exactly, and so I went in and bought up all of their cocaine so that we could sell it on the on the streets and inner cities.
Speaker 1:Uh, to pay for um weapons from iran in exchange for hostages, yeah, and I, and I agree.
Speaker 3:Like do I think it's that great to live in the United States. I had to say yes, a lot to get my citizenship.
Speaker 3:You're required to say it, but now that I can be a member of the Communist Party now if I want to be, not saying I'm going to be, but they will.
Speaker 3:I don't think they can kick me out now, but they cared a lot about that, in particular in my immigration questions. But my point is is that I think you're totally right that it's really not that great here in many ways, especially if you are in the working class, especially in the United States, if you are someone of color like, there's just automatically going to be things that are harder because of the way the system is set up. So why would we keep people from being here if their situation is that desperate? Frankly, they've worked a lot harder and even in my case there's lots of people who are crossing through the desert where there are signs, where it's like you're not going to see water for six days and they're just likely going to die, and that's how hard they're working to save themselves and their family, Even from Canada, you've got a fentanyl problem over in there that's killing people by the hundred every day.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, canada is not that. You know. America loves Americans love to tell me like, why am I here? And I'm like, I don't think you understand. Canada has got a lot of its own problems, sort of a mess in general. I think we need an overhaul, we need a redo button, we need zombies, we need Ronnie overhaul, we need a redo button, we need zombies, we need ronnie.
Speaker 1:You know not to get too far off track, but all of this is reminding me of um, of somebody that I knew a while back and, uh, you know, before we would, we would get to work doing stuff. We would always like have uh conversations. He was from the uk and uh, and I remember one time he was talking about a group of of immigrants coming to the uk. I won't say who they are because I don't really want to like breathe life into that uh, but his, his argument was so asinine because he's like, all they do is they come over here and you see them every day on the side of the river fishing and drinking it's like I'm like, uh, I mean, that sounds great actually.
Speaker 1:Um, wouldn't you want to be fishing and drinking? I don't understand the problem here. It sounds like they're trying to catch fish to eat and they're having fun doing it. So what's the problem here, um and you see that a lot just with people that have a problem with another group of people that, like, if they come and they have like an SUV that they buy and they're like, oh, they're on food stamps, but they can afford to drive a 15 year old suburban.
Speaker 2:Oh, heaven forfend, I work as I say. When I go up to the surface and do my job, I work. Most of the people who are on my team in my job are from Africa, one of which is working her ass off through a master's degree as we speak. But then you still get people who are like, oh, there's not enough jobs. Oh, they take all the jobs. Well, where are you getting off your ass and taking the jobs For real? Spent half my life with my hand down a bloody toilet. Jobs like well, where, where are you getting off your ass and taking taking the jobs for real? Um, spent half my life with my hand down a bloody toilet.
Speaker 1:don't see you doing it yeah, I, I know I know a dozen places that need people to hold signs out in the middle of the road and uh an american, an american guy won't do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and like because he? Because he thinks he's better yep, yeah, exactly if you.
Speaker 1:If you want the job that bad I'd they could, they'll hire you tomorrow yeah, that your job sounds like it fucking sucks.
Speaker 2:Dan, thanks, but it does, but you, but you do it. Um, are there? Are there any immigrants who are trying to take your job?
Speaker 1:No, no, no. And I mean, are there people that probably want my job? Probably, but like there's so many barriers, like getting the license to drive the vehicle and then being in the place to like, like living in an area where that job is available, like where I live, um, these types of jobs are very plentiful because most of the people who live here are rich retirees, so there's not a lot of people that want to do physical labor when the season ends, you technically become in become. Yeah, I'm totally unemployed. It's great.
Speaker 2:Does your employer kick you to the side and hire immigrants instead?
Speaker 1:No, the whole company pretty much shuts down.
Speaker 2:They hire you back, don't they?
Speaker 1:They do, they do. I see where you're going with this.
Speaker 2:No they haven't replaced me, they're though uh if it was really that bad, you'd be out on your ass yep, yeah.
Speaker 1:and then there's there's also the um, you know not to say that my, that, my boss is like this, but there's plenty of people in the work that I do that like if they see somebody and they don't have the right skin tone, they might not take them as seriously during the job interview. You reckon, you know?
Speaker 2:I think I see it here as well and it's not right, but what I was trying to say was there is nobody who is stealing your job.
Speaker 3:No, definitely not no, if anything, vermont needs more young people. We are younger than the average at 40 and 41 of Vermont.
Speaker 1:When did you know that you wanted to be a writer? When did you get the call? When do they call you and tell you to write? I can't remember not doing it.
Speaker 2:I can't remember not doing it. I think I wrote my first short stories when I was about 11, and I've just carried on since then. One of my biggest influences was when I read the Gorman Gas Trilogy by a guy called Mervyn Peake. Everybody listening. Go out and check out Mervyn Peake. It is the best stuff you'll ever read. Wow, I'm going to check it out now.
Speaker 2:It was the point when I decided reading's not enough. I think I need to actually start writing my own stuff as well. It's taken me 36 years to get published.
Speaker 3:Good for you, it's finally come full circle.
Speaker 2:I was actually. I went on holiday to the Channel Islands and I saw one of Mervyn Peake's paintings for real and I touched it.
Speaker 1:I touched it right on the corner.
Speaker 2:That is forbidden scandal liquor forbidden, but no, like I said, I can't remember not doing this. It's all I've ever done. I've made music as well. I've been in bands, but the one thing that I always come back to is writing. It's the thing that I love doing more than ever. It seems to be working right now. People like it. It's great. It's the thing that I love doing more than ever, and it's it seems to be working right now.
Speaker 3:People like it it's great, it's really great. Like I have had an obsession with 90 day fiance lately, which is not necessarily a good use of my brain, although I try to anthropologize it. Anthropologize it, um yeah 90 day fiance.
Speaker 3:I know, uh, it's a terrible reality show jack that, honestly, I think I'm re-watching because it triggers all of my trauma around my first marriage and immigration, um, but anyhow, um, it's so good. I stopped mid-season a 90 day fiance because I was like I just want to read this book and, I will be honest, that does not happen every single time. Sometimes 90 day fiance wins, so thank you for giving me something a little less vapid so zombie nerd beat 90 day fiance it did yeah, I'm gonna make, I'm gonna make that official you know, I'm gonna put that on the back.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna put that on the back of the next book. Have you been watching? The 90 day fiance have you been watching too much reality tv?
Speaker 1:that's an official quote from zombie book club. This, this book is better than 90 day fiance, yeah, I definitely feel. Feel that call you know, like, uh, I've had so many hyper focuses. I mean, I recently bought legos and I'm like like Legos are fine and all, but you know, that writing is what like tell a story.
Speaker 2:I paint Warhammer models.
Speaker 3:I've got other things to do.
Speaker 2:I've got little rat men to paint.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Instead of write this book. But for some reason I still sit down and write the damn thing, even though my little rat men look at me and go. Please paint us faster.
Speaker 3:We've been sat here for days have no skin tone please send us a picture of your little rats yeah, I want to see those rats if you're willing to no one wants to see my little rats.
Speaker 2:I want to see those rats if you're willing to show.
Speaker 3:No one wants to see my little rats I want to see them but I understand it is an undisclosed location, so I know you have to be very cautious. With kind, of photos.
Speaker 1:That's true, that's classified.
Speaker 2:I need to get the mask on again pretty soon, or else I can't breathe properly.
Speaker 3:Oh, no, okay, well, this. This will get me to the, uh, the most important question of the day, which is where can we find Zombie, nerd and the Half-Term Harrowing, and can folks at least find a version of you on the internet, if they wanted to find you?
Speaker 2:if you're in the UK, you can go directly to the publisher, which is Punk Wasp Publishing, or the easiest way to find it is on Amazon.
Speaker 1:unfortunately, they do make it easy.
Speaker 2:You can find it on both Kindle and a physical copy as well, on both the UK and the US sites as well.
Speaker 3:It is definitely worth getting. I got the Kindle because it was the quickest and easiest way, but I definitely need to add it to our collection of physical books. So that order will be happening soon. And the last thing I wanted to ask you was about the artist too, because the cover of your book is awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the cover was designed by a friend of mine who's called Romero Roman. If you go to skincubecom then you'll be able to find all of his links. He is absolutely fantastic. He not only did my cover for me, but I own several things by him. I own a t-shirt. I own one of his books. I own a load of his art prints as well. Please go to his site and give him some love. He's fantastic.
Speaker 3:That sounds fun, and we'll put all these links in the show notes too. So can you predict the very last thing we're going to ask you to do, jack?
Speaker 2:No, but I've got some things I'd like to show you.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay, please do that, and then we'll ask you our very last question.
Speaker 2:Usually, I know that visual jokes don't work very well on an audio podcast, but when I meet people I like to give them a little, a little present, so I thought that I'd show you first this I've got a drawing here that I've done of several little crabs. Just look at their little eyes, they're delightful. And I've got another one here you go oh, what's this? Knock, knock, who's at the door?
Speaker 3:it's yet more crabs. Knock who's at the door? It's yet more crabs. They're looking for you. For you, that's a lot of crabs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's too crabby for me.
Speaker 3:I don't know if I want that many crabs.
Speaker 1:I don't want to see crabs when they open the door. What?
Speaker 2:Jack's crabs. What's wrong with you?
Speaker 3:No, that's too intimate. I don't know if that joke carries over to the uk. Anyhow, thank you for that. Uh, listeners, you're just gonna have to use your imagination. And what was just displayed to us? It was wonderful. Um, jack, you said in our communications together when we were planning this, that if we did not ask you to make an evil magic chicken, zombie cluck, that you would be deeply offended, and I will. I hate to tell you that the competition is officially over.
Speaker 3:But I mean, I I did initially want a hundred evil magic chicken, zombie clucks, so there's a world where I could give up another t-shirt away, so I really want to hear it. Yes, this is what I'm hoarding.
Speaker 2:I thought it would always be better to give it a bit more throat. So you go Cock-a-doodle-do.
Speaker 1:I was not expecting that.
Speaker 3:Oh, that was truly wonderful. Thank you, this has made my day. I can't.
Speaker 2:Do you still have all of the recordings of the chicken cloaks?
Speaker 3:Yes, I've collected them into a single. Well, I've collected all my favorites anyways, into a single audio track.
Speaker 2:Send them to me, I'll set them to music. I'll write a song, I'll do a song, send me about like 10 on like a Dropbox or something, and I'll do a song.
Speaker 3:That's amazing. It's about six minutes.
Speaker 3:I'm sure I can cut it down and it includes people telling stories, so I don't know well, no, I just need the baguette I appreciate the gutturalness of your elam magic chicken zombie click. Thank you for that. Well, jack, it has been a true pleasure. Um, thank you so much for being on the podcast with us and, most of all, for writing something that I think is both really fun to read but the kind of things kids need to read and, frankly, I needed to read as a 40 year old adult. So may the world be a little bit of a kinder place because of the seeds you're planting in this book. I can't wait to see all six and have a blow up and fuck off JK Rowling. We need to know Jack Callahan.
Speaker 1:I can't wait to read it when I am able to use my eyeballs in the winter.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, it's going to get so popular, we'll have an audiobook. It's going to happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, audiobook next.
Speaker 2:I'm told there is going to be. My publisher has said that they're going to start doing audiobooks, maybe next year.
Speaker 3:That's really exciting.
Speaker 2:Jack, is there anything else?
Speaker 3:you want to say before we close off today no, that's great.
Speaker 2:It's been really fun speaking to you. Thanks ever so much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's been really great talking to you too. We're best friends now.
Speaker 3:Yes, we are.
Speaker 2:We are Zombesties, zombesties.
Speaker 3:I just love this. This is incredible Okay.
Speaker 1:Well, that was fun. That was fun, Leah.
Speaker 3:It was fun.
Speaker 2:I appreciate the time zone difference too, and the fact that he was willing to do this with us on a Saturday night.
Speaker 3:It was like we had a Saturday night hangout with Jack in his secret, undisclosed government location.
Speaker 1:It's very secret. You wouldn't believe the secretness of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is what you get when you listen to the Design Book Club podcast. You get a little bit of insight into the secret, top secret world.
Speaker 1:The places that nobody has clearance to go. That's where we go, yeah, and now us yeah.
Speaker 3:And we learn secrets about the time frame of the book too, which was super fun. Oh we did I forgot? Dan's brain is fried from work. I want to say like it was so nice to hear that jack had clearly been listening to the podcast and like seemed to genuinely care about your well-being.
Speaker 1:that made that made me happy, because you deserve that yeah, you know, um, every now and then, when people uh talk about um what my life is like, to me it sounds horrible and I don't know how to feel about that. But you know what I do feel good about. What Is that? Episode 55, we're going to be talking about the Remaining by DJ Mole. Yeah, baby.
Speaker 3:That's only three weeks away, yeah, you still have time to read it.
Speaker 1:We have time. I'll probably read it again in that amount of time.
Speaker 3:Honestly, I think you should read Zombie Nerd and the Half-Term Harrowing while also reading the Remaining, because they are an example of how broad the zombie genre can be. Oh yeah, and both excellent, but very different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. But yeah, if you don't know anything about the Remaining, it's a series that travels with Captain Lee Harden while he attempts to save America after a zombie apocalypse. He's got to rebuild it. You know, he's got the tools for the job and he's going to go out there and he's he's got, he's got the tools for the job and he's going to go out there and fix it, fix everything. That's wrong. That's why we should vote for him. Yeah, vote for lee, harden harden.
Speaker 3:There are actual t-shirts on dj website. Yeah, I don't know who that is. Yet I'm not far enough in the book.
Speaker 1:I still have got time, yeah, I mean you'd, you'd have to be well into, like the fifth or sixth book to know that who Darby is. He is mentioned in book one, but you don't know the impact that his name has until much later. It's a pretty wild series. I very much recommend it but, like Leah said, for a very different reason than the book that we were just talking about, it's completely different sides of the spectrum.
Speaker 3:I was worried when we first started this. I was like are we going to run out of anything interesting to talk about? Is there going to be enough like quality zombie literature?
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 3:Jack, I just did a really bad British accent. If you're listening to this, please forgive me or cancel Leah. Yeah, yeah, cancel me for my terrible accent. That's fair, uh, but yeah, it's um my brain's tired.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, I talked about this a little bit um in previous episodes, where it's like I, I thought I thought I knew all the books, I thought I knew them all. And then here comes ollie with a spreadsheet of like thousands and I'm like what, where do these come from?
Speaker 3:so many and it's still growing. Yeah, like ollie is zombie nerd and the half-term harrowing on there yeah, have you read it, ollie? We're talking specifically to ollie now we have one listener and their name is Ollie. No kidding, hello everybody else. Yes, send us your spreadsheet and then we'll mention you more often on the podcast.
Speaker 1:If you want to hear your name on our podcast, send us a spreadsheet.
Speaker 3:Honestly, I love a good spreadsheet, so if you send me anything that's a spreadsheet with the word zombie on it, I'll look at it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've also kind of fallen in love with spreadsheets over the years.
Speaker 3:They are very, very soothing. Yeah, they do cool things they do.
Speaker 1:You put numbers in one place and numbers in another place, and you do some different numbers in a third one, and then all of a sudden, it's doing math for you and you're like whoa, I don't even have to do math with my own brain anymore.
Speaker 3:What a dream. Yep, never good at math over here.
Speaker 1:You know, at work I made a spreadsheet for the dump truck loads. I had one value, that was my empty weight, and then all I had to do was punch in my fully loaded weight. As I rolled across the scales, it would automatically tell me how many net tons that my truck was, and people thought it was fucking witchcraft. I've never heard of this spreadsheet till right now. Yeah, I don't use it anymore because no one cares.
Speaker 3:Oh, I care.
Speaker 1:I want to see this spreadsheet. I don't have to pay attention to it anymore, so I stopped using it.
Speaker 3:But speaking of spreadsheets, back to the podcast. I have a list of authors who we have talked to or reached out to us a little bit of both that you know at this point in time, with the other obligations we have in life, we can't interview everybody and that's really a shame. But I've got a list of you all. I've got a creepy list of you who I want to eventually talk to, but in the meantime, we really want to share the opportunity to have you talk about your book with as many people as possible on this podcast. So if you leave us a voicemail at 614-699-0006, you have up to three minutes to send us your elevator pitch about your book and we could potentially put it on a future segment of the podcast and also share what people can go to buy your book could potentially put it on a future segment of the podcast and also share what people can go to buy your book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's kind of a new thing that we're doing, but I think it's a good idea and it's going to be great.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if this podcast has taught us anything, there are a lot of really cool people out there with great books.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's actually very surprising how many new and interesting people that we've met because of this podcast, and it's uh kind of awesome it is yeah, you know, we're meeting. We're meeting people that also love zombies, and that's that's uh, that's pretty great, but it's deeper than zombies. Um, yeah, I'm a zombie right now I have no response to that.
Speaker 3:You have to go edit the podcast that's coming out tomorrow, which is two weeks in the past from when you're going to hear this.
Speaker 1:Yes, I'm time traveling.
Speaker 3:We break the fourth wall frequently on this podcast. Don't forget to subscribe. Rate review. Help us spread like a virus.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're going to put that virus right in your ear holes. Sexy, just put them in. Infect your ears.
Speaker 3:I'm just picturing like zombie ooze coming out of people's ears after they listen to this episode.
Speaker 1:That's what happens when you take your headphones off.
Speaker 3:Must buy books. Buy books to get brains.
Speaker 1:Yeah, get those brains. Those books make your brains big and that's delicious.
Speaker 3:That's what Jack said basically today. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Those are his words, not ours. Thanks for listening. Follow us on Instagram and threads subscribe, rate and review. There's a link tree with all of the things in the description also links that are not in the link tree. It's a mess. Go to the description.
Speaker 3:It's hilarious yeah, and we love you. I love saying that every single time.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna get more and more creepy. I love you so much. Yeah, we love you. Bye, everybody, bye.
