Zombie Book Club
Welcome to Zombie Book Club! We're a Podcast that's also a book club! We talk about Zombie / Apocalyptic horror novels, TV and movies.
Zombie Book Club
"The Dead Weight" with special guest Jo Salazar | Zombie Book Club Ep 57
In this episode of the Zombie Book Club, we're joined by Jo Salazar, the brilliant mind behind the much-anticipated novel "The Dead Weight." Jo shares her remarkable journey from a career in social work to becoming a self-published author. From her preference for the zombie apocalypse over a mundane 40-hour work week to her insights on weaponry and survival tactics, Jo's anecdotes are as captivating as they are insightful.
Join us as we dissect the complexity of characters in apocalyptic settings, particularly focusing on Quinn, the 16-year-old protagonist of Jo's novel. Discover how Quinn's keen observational skills and lack of empathy make for a compelling and dangerous character, reminiscent of Dexter. From Jo's early horror inspirations to the challenges of querying literary agents, her experience with the Hilary Harwell controversy and the decision to self-publish, this episode is a treasure trove of advice and inspiration for aspiring writers. Tune in for an engaging discussion on the intricacies of writing, the importance of persistence, and the collective effort involved in bringing a story to life.
Jo Salazar's website: https://www.josalazarwriting.com/
Instagram: @_jo_salazar_
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Welcome to the Zombie Book Club, the only book club where the book is a canoe trip with all of your sociopathic besties while escaping hordes of the undead. I'm Dan, and when I'm not hauling 70,000 pounds up the side of a ski resort mountain like I'm playing a real-life version of Spin Tires, I'm writing a book that also has its fair share of mental illness.
Speaker 2:And I'm Leah, and I used to go canoe camping every year with my besties, and only one of them was a sociopath my ex-boyfriend.
Speaker 1:Today we are chatting with Joe Salazar, one of our Zombesties for the book club and, more importantly, the brilliant author of the soon-to-be-released one-of-a-kind zombie apocalypse story, the Dead Wait, Available for pre-order now, right.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:And Joe lives on the west side of Chicago with her husband and their very cute rescued dog, data. Jo is a licensed clinical social worker by trade and her new novel was inspired by the experiences she had while working in an adolescent residential treatment center during graduate school. Welcome to the show, jo.
Speaker 3:We're so honored to have you with us today to talk about the dead weight. How are you doing? Thank you so much and truly, the honor is mine. I'm such a huge fan of you both and it is just great to be here with you today, so thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it when people say nice things about us.
Speaker 3:Well, let me continue the niceness. I love that intro that was perfect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you made it easy. Your storyline gives us a lot of gold to work with. For the intro.
Speaker 1:We're going to start off with some rapid fire questions. These are just to warm us up. So, first thing that comes to your mind, just the first thing.
Speaker 2:And you may have heard these before For the first time interviewees we do these.
Speaker 1:You may already be prepared for these questions. For the first time interviewees, we do these. You may already be prepared for these questions. Uh, first question, the most important question, the most divided question, I think 40 hour work week or the zombie apocalypse I don't even have to think about this one.
Speaker 3:It is absolutely, absolutely the zombie apocalypse. I give me that all day, every day. I choose it. I'm confident in my answer.
Speaker 2:I'm confident, obviously, in your survivability. I like that, joe. I'm not confident in my survivability and I still pick it.
Speaker 1:I've always found that it's the promise of going back to a simpler way of life. It removes the technological aspect of our environment, a lot of many of the sociopolitical elements, but some of them still do remain, and I guess maybe it allows us to think more about the deeper concerns of life, instead of just the surface level material stuff that we have to fill our whole lives with just to survive.
Speaker 2:Couldn't have said it better. You forgot the first question, dan. What was the first question? Fast or slow zombies.
Speaker 3:Jo, that is also an easy one Fast or slow zombies, I'm always going to choose fast. If there's a caveat to this, I'm going to choose fast. If I'm reading it, if I'm watching it and if I'm writing it. If I have to live in it, please give me slow zombies. That definitely has a lot to do with my survivability. I can run for a long time, but I can't run fast, so I would always choose the slow zombies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you'd be good like in a marathon running away from the slow zombie horde situation. It sounds like yeah.
Speaker 1:Fast. Yes, that is me. I feel that because, like you know, I have the interest in the fast zombies. I like the action of it, but I have the spinal cord for slow zombies.
Speaker 3:Spinal cord that's great.
Speaker 1:If you were in the zombie apocalypse, what would be your weapon of choice?
Speaker 3:Okay, I may have given this away in the book.
Speaker 1:I'm actually going to choose.
Speaker 3:Well, first of all, let me say this I think the best weapon is a good hiding place. So, first of all, find a great hiding place. My backup, which is my weapon of choice, is going to be the machete. I think it's a super um it's, it's lightweight, it's um infinite, as long as you keep it sharp and also as long as you don't get it stuck in bone, like I feel like that's the the downfall of a machete.
Speaker 1:But overlooked fallback often overlooked.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but as long as you know how to use it, I think it could be the ideal weapon and, um, and also the weapon that I gave my main character, so makes sense it tracks.
Speaker 2:Do you have machete skills, joe?
Speaker 3:I don't have machete skills, but I do own a machete. It hangs in our bedroom just because you never know. That's very important.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's kind of. The advantage of the machete is that it's not. It doesn't require a whole lot of skill. If you can chop something and you're not afraid to swing your arms around, then you pretty much mastered it.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and they sell them at Home depot and nobody asks questions when you buy them yeah, that's a very good point and walmart actually funny story I was in a tractor supply and I bought a machete because we needed to clear some brush and the one that I bought just like can't like it didn't have a sheath, it just came off the shelf. It had a sticker on it. So I I was walking around the store and I came around an aisle and I almost bumped right into somebody and they saw me and they saw the machete in my hand and there was a moment of panic in their eyes.
Speaker 3:I can only imagine.
Speaker 1:Again, it's the zombie apocalypse and you only get to eat one unlimited shelf-stable food item for the rest of your life. What do you choose?
Speaker 3:One shelf stable item. I feel like this is tough. Okay, I'm going to take you on a little bit of a journey here. I'm going to talk about something that is non-stable, and then I'm going to get there.
Speaker 3:So, stay with me. There is a vegan restaurant in my neighborhood in Chicago. It is called Liberation Kitchen and they have this delicacy called vegan mac, or it's like. No, it's not vegan mac, it's called bacon mac, yes, so they serve this bacon mac in their restaurant and it is the best thing that is vegan in Chicago and this would not be an option in the apocalypse right. There's no Liberation Kitchen anymore. However, they do make a boxed version of this that you can like, stir up and make on the stove at home, and it's not as good as the original, but it would be a close second and I don't know how long it would be shelf stable, but it is shelf stable for some period of time. I don't know. But that would 100% be what I would pick. I would make my way to Liberation Kitchen, sweep the shelves and take it home. It's the perfect food.
Speaker 2:I feel like we're going to need to tag them if they're on Instagram.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we can use your promo promo yeah, now we have to go to chicago yeah, we do.
Speaker 2:That sounds really good. Uh, they should name the mac and cheese after you now joe's, joe's apocalypse mac and cheese, but just the box version, right?
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah exactly you're ever in chicago. It's. It is the place to go um. They've got these donuts that will blow your mind. It's, it's pretty great.
Speaker 2:A vegan donut. All right, we're on the way, okay.
Speaker 3:I got a place for you to stay?
Speaker 1:Last question, yes, and probably maybe the most pertinent question, considering the subject of your book how do you think you would cope mentally and emotionally in a zombie apocalypse?
Speaker 3:Mentally and emotionally. I don't know that anyone could really cope well mentally and emotionally in a zombie apocalypse, but I think I could do okay if and this is a strong if- I think it's wrong.
Speaker 1:Macaroni and cheese.
Speaker 3:Mac and cheese right, if my husband can live with me and if my dog can survive. I think if I didn't have those three things I could probably make it okay. But I can really see myself going downhill fast without my comfort person, and everybody needs their person in the apocalypse.
Speaker 3:But I think I could be okay and I have some, some evidence and background for this, because let me preface this by saying, like, covid was awful and it was terrible and I would not wish it on on any universe. But I found myself adapting suspiciously well to the isolation that happened during COVID, like I sat at home by myself and read books and watched movies and wrote, and I did okay, and so I think I could cope with some of the isolation that would come with a zombie apocalypse, but again, as long as I've got the people that I love.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I also coped in a similar way. I mean, I was, I was social distancing before COVID. So I mean if you look at what I was doing before that, I basically was quarantining since like 2014. So you're well practiced, if anything. I was like I was like, oh now I, now I have to do this.
Speaker 2:I like they're telling me to I liked it because, as an introvert like I'd have to explain to friends a lot, like I'm I have exactly one social outing in me a month, just one, and so if you don't get me this month, then I can't tell you what's gonna happen again. But please keep inviting me because I do want to see you. It's just it's a very low social battery, uh. So I resonate with that and I also really resonate with meeting your person and your dog. Do you think data would be? Do you think data would be a good like defender with zombies? Would they bark a lot? What would your dog be like in the zombie apocalypse?
Speaker 3:data in the zombie apocalypse might be a little bit of a disaster, because I I know she would bark at any zombie that shambled by the house, because she barks at every person who shambles by the house. So I think as um as an attractor of zombies, it would be a complete disaster. However, I think if a zombie ever were to attack me, I think that she would go for its throat, and she's like a sweet dog, but she also like loves her mama, so I think she would be protective if she were put in that position, but no, she would get us killed immediately. If I'm being honest, what kind of a dog is she? So we we did a DNA test. She's a rescue dog.
Speaker 3:She came from like the backwoods of Kentucky initially, so we had no idea what she was, but it turns out she is 56% German Shepherd, 15% Beagle, which only shows up in her bark as the attraction of zombies, and then everything else is what they call like super mutt, which means it's so mixed up that they have no idea. But she looks like a tiny German shepherd with a beard.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, she's very cute. Dan's brother came up with a really great idea that I want to pass on to you as a fellow dog lover and anybody else who has dogs, Because we have very barky dogs that often interrupt this podcast and Simon came up with the idea that if you could just train them to stand on top of like a pedestal that would attract zombies into some sort of like enclosed area, then they could actually be like a beacon to get all the zombies rounded up for you. But the dog would have to be somewhat outside of it and they'd have to learn to only bark in that context to be their outlet. Thoughts. What do you think?
Speaker 3:I kind of want you to go on and because okay, spoiler alert I'm writing two books kind of simultaneously. One is part two of the dead weight and another one is a scenario where, um, there, there is a dog involved and I'm like trying to think about how I can keep this dog quiet and still make it behave like a dog, and that is brilliant. I promise not to steal it, but I I'm getting ideas you are welcome to.
Speaker 2:I mean you just give simon credit.
Speaker 1:I mean you just give.
Speaker 2:Simon credit.
Speaker 1:It's my idea Something that I've thought about quite a bit is like maybe a lot of dogs probably wouldn't survive the zombie apocalypse because they're going to bark. Dogs be barking, but I wonder if maybe some dogs who realize that the barking is what's causing them harm might learn that and the dogs that survive will have the survival instinct to not bark. And those ones are the ones that you meet in the wasteland when you're a survivor. It's the other survivor dogs.
Speaker 3:It's a whole new natural selection. In like 10, 20 years you're going to have a whole different breed of dogs, A bunch of quiet dogs.
Speaker 2:Zombie dogs. Neither of ours would succeed in that way. Let's talk about your book. I have to admit something terrible and shameful, which is that this is the first time I've not gotten a chance to read a book yet and interview an author. And it is not because of how much I wanted to read your book, because I really do, especially when I learned from you that there was canoeing involved, because that actually is one of my favorite sports. But work has taken over my life temporarily. I've been working 12 plus hour days and I didn't have eyeballs at the end to look at screens anymore. So I am anxiously awaiting when the book gets to come out. I'm going to be pre-ordering. I've heard where there might be an audio book, so I'm just excited to hear about it. Dan's told me a lot and really I think this conversation is only going to make me more jazzed to read it. And, dan, you devoured this book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I started reading it on Monday, and the only reason that I was able to get through it, though, is because, at work, I was in a position where I had access to the Internet for most of my journeys, and I use a voice-to-text reader, but it requires internet access in order to do it, so like while I'm driving a truck. That's when I was listening to it.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow, okay, that is creative problem solving and no hard feelings whatsoever. I'm excited for you to read it, and you will read it in good time.
Speaker 2:No worries, I know I will. I'll just say plainly that Dan reads a lot of zombie books that I will never read, and this is one of the few that he's like. You should really read this one yeah, I think that says a lot of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you for taking the time to read it. I know you're both extremely busy and it it means a lot that you would go out of your way to to finish it and then read it.
Speaker 1:Thank you for that oh, oh, we, we try. You know, the to be read pile keeps getting taller and taller.
Speaker 1:It's kind of funny because, when, when we first started, we had to go looking for the books. We're like, what should we read next? But now, now we're meeting people like you who are, who have incredible stories, not just in book form but in in life form, and uh, and, like we, we want to read everything that comes across our plate and uh, some, some. Sometimes we just have to really make a priority. Um, and that was definitely this case where I was like I am going to know what this book is about when we talk to Joe.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So on that note, Joe, tell us what is the Dead Weight about?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:If it's okay, can I just read to you the jacket copy.
Speaker 3:Absolutely All right. So I think this will give you the best taste of it and won't have me wandering all over the place, because I can wander easily. So all right. So it's here. After failing out of multiple foster homes and narrowly escaping juvenile detention, 16-year-old Quinn is undergoing therapy and rehabilitation at a residential treatment center. When Quinn and her best friend Keisha sneak onto the roof of the treatment center to look at the stars, they have no idea they'll be getting a front row seat to the start of the zombie apocalypse. As zombies or carriers as the news calls them infiltrate the treatment center, escape becomes essential. Quinn and Keisha make a pact to leave together, but several unexpected tagalongs complicate their plans to leave together. But several unexpected tag-alongs complicate their plans as the girls battle the carriers and wrestle with their doubts about each other. Who will survive and who is just dead weight.
Speaker 2:Such a good jacket cover.
Speaker 1:Yeah, who is dead weight? Will we find out? We?
Speaker 3:have to find out. There are 12 girls, when this whole story starts, living in this treatment center together, and only a handful survived to nearing the end. So you'll have to read and find out.
Speaker 1:I can see so much in a character arc for who you've written in this story.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I hope it goes on Again if the world wants it. Book two is right up here.
Speaker 2:Point to my head. I think the world is going to want it, joe. Yeah, that's what I have to say. I mean again, every day Dan would come home and rave about your book. That happens. So I have a very foggy sense of what happens for Dan's reiteration of a few things.
Speaker 1:I tried my best not to spoil anything, but it's. It's hard when it's like you're going to love this part where they're in a canoe and then something happens.
Speaker 3:I can't tell you but you're going to.
Speaker 1:I mean, when this other thing, oh, this other thing, I can't tell you, and we're going to try to do that in this episode as well, because we don't want to give away the whole book, but it has canoes in it Spoiler.
Speaker 2:It sure does, joe. I know that you are also or your introductions, as you're a licensed social worker, and I'm really curious how that has informed the writing of this book specifically.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my early career has a whole lot to do with how this book really laid out.
Speaker 3:So I've been a licensed clinical social worker for about 15 years and I don't practice therapy anymore.
Speaker 3:I'm not a therapist, I work in leadership in a hospital but my early career gave me a lot of the tools that ultimately became necessary to complete this book.
Speaker 3:I needed to be able to put myself in other people's shoes really well, to take another perspective in other people's shoes really well, to take another perspective. I needed to be able to draw from a myriad of experiences and life outlooks and I think that my early work working in a residential treatment center, working with young girls, helped me to be able to put myself in the shoes of the characters that I was writing and get really creative and pull from multiple different perspectives and situations and life experiences to create them. And let me be 100% clear like none of the girls in this book are based on actual people and their actual experiences. They are kind of a combination of, you know, the people that I have met both in work and outside of work and me, and they are a work of fiction, but it was my experiences that helped me know how to create them and how to shape who they are yeah, I mean, that's that's how any any writer is going to write their characters.
Speaker 1:It's a combination of like themselves, because that's that's who you know best, but also people that they've they've met out in the, out in the world, like, I think, a lot of people. Um, they think that the, the ideas, come to writers uh, magically, through magical means, and that nothing, like everything has to be unique, but really it all comes from experiences, it's derivative of something else.
Speaker 3:Exactly. I mean, there there was one character in the book that was based on a real person. Can I think you probably know who it is? I did give it minor notes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did, I did a piece set together.
Speaker 3:But the farmer knows who he is and approves and and was excited to be part of the book.
Speaker 2:Can we share who the farmer is?
Speaker 3:You can share who the farmer is.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's your dad. It's so sweet to know that I even read it. I was like that's the sweetest thing First of all, like also farmer's kid here. So love, love will get to visit my childhood home and my dad my fictional dad.
Speaker 3:My dad would never actually do the things that he does in the book, but he would also do some of the things that he does in the book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he sounds like he's built to survive.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So, Joe, I think your dad and the farm is just one of many experiences that you draw on from your own personal life. What was it like to ground your story in the places you grew up?
Speaker 3:It meant a lot to me to ground the story in the places that I grew up, for a number of reasons. One, I think, as anyone in this community does, we all dream of what we would do in the apocalypse and where we would go and where the safe places are, and I'm no different. I'm up here in the city in Chicago, and this is not where I would want to survive this apocalypse. You're in danger. So I know exactly where I would go and, in fact, in our apocalypse cabinet in the basement, like, there is a map that leads to my dad's farm, and, by the way, my dad does not live on that farm any longer. He he moved away a few years ago.
Speaker 2:But but I'm going back and the people who live there now are just gonna have to welcome me, or else I mean, frankly, they're gonna be at an advantage to welcome you, because I doubt they have the same zombie apocalypse knowledge that you do. It'd be pretty impressive if they did so. You have a wait. You have a zombie cabinet. Tell us more about this zombie apocalypse cabinet, don't?
Speaker 3:we all, um, yeah, I mean, you've got to be prepared, you have to have, you know, water, you know a light, a light supply of weapons and food and dog food. It's basically like if the power goes out, but it's, but it does have. Like here. Here's where we as a family are meeting up and it is the farm meeting up, and it is the farm. And you know, if I am writing the zombie apocalypse and I'm thinking about, you know, the Midwest and Illinois, and where I would go, it would absolutely be the farm and I know that I would have to follow the Illinois River to get there.
Speaker 3:That's, to me, the safest way to travel. You're isolated, you are always close to a supply of fresh water and, although I'm vegan and would really not like to do so, there are fish in that river. So you could see it and it just seemed logical that that would be the place where my characters would go, and as they travel along the Illinois River, they get to see a lot of the places. That meant a lot to me and this is not a spoiler, it'll still be fun but they stop at the Riverside Botel that my mom was a waitress at. They stopped by my dad's farm. They stopped by the Riverboat Casino where I spent my 21st birthday, and they see a lot of the things and experience a lot of the nature that really formed who I became and it was fun for me to work that in and it's also the only way that I would know how to survive in a real apocalypse.
Speaker 2:That's really amazing and, honestly, very brilliantly thought out. I don't think we are that prepared. I mean, we have a few meeting spots. We certainly don't have maps.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when I was a kid I grew up in an off-grid cabin that my parents built on my grandfather's land. Uh, it's like it's it's miles back in the woods and, um, somebody else owns it now. Kind of like how your your dad's farm, uh, isn't, isn't in his possession, um, so it wouldn't belong to any of my family members, and the person who bought it bulldozed the cabin because he didn't want people squatting in there, I guess. But the woods in that area I know better than any other place that I've ever been, because I grew up playing in those woods. I have names for the different forests of different types of trees, I know how to get to the river and where the railroad track crosses through the land and all these other places. I know where to go to find wildlife and to find food. I'm more prepared to survive there than anywhere else, even if there's no building.
Speaker 2:For the characters in your book, joe. Are they familiar with this area or is one of them particularly familiar? And this is coming back to their own history and story?
Speaker 3:It's a really good question. And no, the woods, the river, southern Illinois it's completely foreign to them. The girls in my story have spent almost their entire lives institutionalized. They've been in foster homes and group homes and ultimately, this residential treatment which is a locked juvenile facility. They only go outside on the rare occasion where they've reached a certain level and they can go see a movie or can take a walk around the block because they've earned it. So getting out into the wild is is a completely foreign experience for them so they've never been in a canoe, never been in a wow.
Speaker 1:No, I really want to read it they've also done a lot of other other. Um, not done a bunch of other things either, like start a fire?
Speaker 3:oh, maybe some of them have that's right some of them have, but not in the way that you, uh, would need to to survive for other nefarious purposes.
Speaker 2:Oh my god, okay, this is getting. I'm getting stressed out just thinking about this. Now, that's how you know it's good. Yeah, what was it like to write about places that you love, but like in an apocalyptic fashion? Is there one scene in particular? I don't know if you can share anything that wouldn't be a spoiler, but just like what it looks like in real life versus how you picture an apocalypse, that was really fun for you to do. Oh, yes, there is.
Speaker 3:Okay, I have to think about how I'm not going to give a lot away, but there is a scene on the river and the Illinois River is a place where you know people boat, they have fun, they go swimming, they go fishing, but it is also a transportation channel and barges go down this river and barges are huge. They're like a floating freight train and there is a moment in the book that I got to write about that was probably the most fun for me. When they experience a barge for the first time and it's know it's something they've never seen before, they have no idea what they're looking at and chaos ensues. I'll leave it there. That was really fun to write.
Speaker 1:You know, in the same way that they are like inexperienced in a lot of ways. I found that also their various mental health challenges, as well as their institutionalization, has also made them hardened survivors for their entire lives. They've survived in ways that most people couldn't comprehend, so when they're thrown into a zombie apocalypse they almost don't even really seem like they're that phased by the apocalypse part of it. Just like we have to, we have to find things.
Speaker 3:We got to get stuff because we have no stuff important to me that I was writing characters that would seemingly have had every disadvantage in life and would seemingly be set up for failure, except the apocalypse changed. It just completely flipped the script for them and, all of a sudden, everything that made them vulnerable in the real world, everything that made them appear at a disadvantage, actually turned out to work in their favor. Right, the ability to turn off empathy, the ability to lie with flourish and success, the ability to just figure things out and be okay with change ended up being the thing that kept most of them alive, and that was important to me. I wanted the underdog to be the winner in this case, and so it was so fun to write characters in that way, yeah.
Speaker 1:Also, it's not really clear if they are the winners, the way that things go Like did they win, or are they their own worst enemies?
Speaker 3:Who will survive and who is just dead weight?
Speaker 2:Such a good line and a great title.
Speaker 3:Oh, thank you.
Speaker 2:What was it like to write these kinds of characters? What was your process for that? Thinking about the, you know the experiences that you've had and obviously it's important to you. I heard you say that it's important that you represent the folks that not literally the folks you worked with, the girls that were in the center, but their experiences in a broad sense accurately.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I wanted to do them justice accurately. Yeah, I wanted to do them justice. And I also wanted to take the personalities of the girls I was writing about to the logical extreme like how far can we push the extremes and who they are and what they think and how they feel. And I think I did that. It was difficult to write from the perspective of Quinn, who has a lot of sociopathic, psychopathic tendencies, because she thinks in exactly the opposite way that I think and so I had to really push myself to go there to be that cold. It was fun to do it, but a lot of times I had to think okay, what would get me killed in the apocalypse is empathy. I would feel sorry for the person on the side of the road, like pretending that they had a broken leg and then like ambush me and take all my stuff. I would die. Saving a puppy I would. I would believe a lie, I would get caught up.
Speaker 3:It would be the end of me. It would be the end of me. So I had to really turn that off and access the most selfish and self-centered parts of me to be able to write this character with any kind of authenticity.
Speaker 2:That sounds like a really fascinating exercise to do inside yourself and see what's possible if you take on that persona, because'm like you, I'd also die trying to save a puppy or somebody. I mean, I'm the most naive person. You can tell me anything I'll be like yeah, that's real.
Speaker 1:I'm not good at detecting lies, so I really like the, the mentality of it, like it's it's just spelled out so plainly in in their, in, in their thoughts, where it's like there's this one point where where she's just like um, I killed all these people, now we get their stuff. Wow, like we win. We won at the stuff game right, no remorse, no guilt.
Speaker 2:If they are not us, they don't matter yeah easier they don't matter and it sounds like a survival, like it sounds like they've had to do that probably for all of their life, to function and be okay, absolutely. Can you explain the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath, because I always get them confused?
Speaker 3:I think everyone does, and I think the lines are really super blurry and and I don't think it's clean. I think for me, when I was writing Quinn, I wanted to make sure that I didn't land on a formal diagnosis for her. You can't really tell what she is and whether she is. She has these tendencies, but she's also a person. She also has a lot of nuances and I think one thing I learned in my education as a social worker and in my experience as a social worker is that you know, the science of things is to like fit people into boxes within the DSM. But it's just never that simple. People are people and they're going to fit a lot of boxes, and so it was important to me not to box her in because it's just not clean, it's messy.
Speaker 2:People are people. What do you think the danger is of boxing people? And it sounds like we are more complicated than that, but it's true, like even I love to watch really terrible reality TV and I absolutely armchair diagnose everybody, knowing that I could be completely wrong. It's just part of my part of the one place where I feel like it's okay to judge people's reality TV in my own home. I don't comment on their social media, so I'm curious, like do you think that there are dangers to our tendency to want to put people like Quinn in boxes?
Speaker 3:I do. And let me be clear like the DSM and like the diagnostic manual has usefulness. It is useful to be able to understand a person through their diagnosis. It is useful as a means of communication. It is useful as a means of communication. It is useful as a means of treatment. But if you are not open to the fact that people are nuanced, if you're not open to the fact that everyone will have a different set of lived experiences and cultural experiences and feelings and perspectives, then absolutely it is dangerous to put someone in a box and only see them, as you know, bipolar, only see them as someone with depression, only see them as as autistic. You, you can't, you can't limit it. You can't limit a person to their diagnosis. You have to see the whole person, otherwise, yeah, it is dangerous.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I mean somebody can be autistic and clinically depressed and have anxiety disorders and you know a whole basket full of things.
Speaker 2:And they might also really love mac and cheese. Have a favorite TV show, have a crush on somebody.
Speaker 1:If they're autistic, they definitely have a favorite TV show.
Speaker 2:Some special interests. Yeah, I'm just saying I think I appreciate what you're saying because it is. I certainly can fall victim or not victim, I can. It's just easy to label people and then move on instead of seeing them as a whole person. So it sounds like you did a really good job with your characters in that way. I have another social worker question for you, because I love social workers. I think I've told you that before. I've got a lot of social worker friends. I am not one myself, but you talk a little bit about social and emotional development and behavior intervention. In an email we had back and forth that this was something that was important for you to know to write the book, and I don't know what that is. Could you educate us? What does that mean and what does that look like? How do those things show up in the book and with your characters?
Speaker 3:I love this question. Thank you for asking. So my background as a social worker primarily was around specializing in social and emotional development and social and emotional learning. And social and emotional development is the process through which we develop those core skills that make us who we are. So things like the ability to be self-aware, to understand your emotions, to manage those emotions in a socially appropriate way, to be able to walk into a room and read the mood, navigate social situations in a way that fits the context of the gathering, to be able to form strong, healthy relationships and, ultimately, be able to make responsible and ethical decisions like these.
Speaker 3:These skills happen, they develop throughout a lifetime and, of course, it starts when you're young, but we were all educable adults too. Like these are skills that we are learning for a lifetime and, uh, having a familiarity with, with how those skills develop and what kinds of things disrupt the development of those skills and, um, what those skills look like, um and sound like, was really helpful when I was writing these characters, because some of them are really well developed and some of them are missing key skills, and so being able to write with that in mind was really helpful to me as I was shaping the characters. I did get a little bit scientific there.
Speaker 2:I love it, but I would love an example, like what's something that one of your characters does that indicates that they have not developed something that we might expect that they would.
Speaker 3:This is a great one. So Quinn, our main character, 16 years old, has spent her life in an institution and basically's spent her life studying other people. She understands her own thoughts, she understands what other people are thinking. She she can read the room and, you know, she has the ability to make ethical and responsible decisions. It's just that she chooses not to. She's very small here, but she is missing empathy, a key part of social awareness. She's missing the ability to feel what other people feel. She can logically understand oh, this person must be feeling sad, oh, this person must be hurt and if I do this thing, it will hurt their feelings. She just doesn't care and she's got the whole spectrum of social and emotional skills, except that part, and it makes her unique and it makes her dangerous.
Speaker 1:When yeah, I noticed that as well, like I, I, when you first, when you start the book, she seems to be very uh, like a lot, like a lot more high functioning than a lot of the other people in the institution. And that's I mean, that's why, like you don't really know what's wrong with her. You just you just know that she's in there and she seems to be the only one. That's like, like you know, thinking about what's going to happen after the institution. You know, like, how does life go on? And I think, um, in a lot of ways, like I think she developed those skills in the institution as a survival mechanism because she had to think about, like, how am I going to get out of here? I have to act a certain way around the doctors. I have to do a certain amount of social interactions with other people and pretend like I care about them, so that it looks good on my chart, exactly.
Speaker 3:Yes, that's scary.
Speaker 2:I wonder, like, how well does she hide the lack of empathy? And obviously the zombie apocalypse maybe changes some things of what she does and doesn't have to do with that. But like, do people know that she has no empathy?
Speaker 3:You'll find out oh okay.
Speaker 1:That's fair, you know I I think there's a, there's a, a a quote from. They were called the Four Postmen of the Apocalypse. They're a musical band that makes comedy music and they said you can tell a lot about a guy by the way he's stabbing you. That's.
Speaker 2:Al.
Speaker 1:And I think that applies.
Speaker 2:I feel like there's some subtext here. I would I would stab tentatively, so it probably says that I'd probably be like I'd have to be in a blind rage to um or in a rage to, I think, really be good at stabbing anybody. Yeah, I like that. Your, your best weapon is to hide. I think that that's actually very smart and underrated as an option in zombie apocalypse media.
Speaker 1:I think a majority of people that don't understand that will probably be. You know, this is kind of how I view it. It's like you'll see people who have like a whole arsenal of weapons and what you're going to find is a bunch of spent shell casings, their bodies, a lot of blood and all of their guns sitting right in there, right in their safe, right where they left them, and the survivors are going to be the ones that pick through that after the first 72 hours of the outbreak.
Speaker 3:Yes. And I feel like the first few days after an outbreak are key, and you don't want to be out there fighting. You do want to lay low, like don't, don't be a hero hide.
Speaker 2:That's my strategy don't be a hero. Isn't that a zombie land rule too I? Think it is one that stands yeah yes, who was your favorite character other than quinn?
Speaker 1:oh boy, I don't know. Um, honestly, I kind of want to change my opinion about the farmer now Because, you know, when you're in the story you're like this farmer's an asshole. This farmer just won't just shut up and die, just wants to keep on coming back, causing problems for our main characters. Like you get in that headspace of like siding with the sociopath and like that's how it is in, headspace of like siding with the sociopath and uh, and like that's that's how it is in, like shows like dexter and like, um, uh, us, it's like you're like this person's a monster, but you're like, yeah, but I like them and I want them to succeed. And everybody who's just like defending themselves is a total jerk. But uh, I gotta say like he's, he's showing, um, he's showing how, how much he wants to hold on to life by like just refusing to die I love that answer that's not too much spoiler, just checking in in.
Speaker 3:I don't think so. No, it's no I. I I want people to love the farmer too, but I. What makes me really happy about your answer, and something that that I was a little bit worried about when I was writing this, is is anybody going to fall in love with, with Quinn? Are they going to be able to overlook who she is? And it makes me really happy to hear that that you liked her.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you know, um, I mean that's and that's kind of the pitfall of of writing. You know the monster, Um, but you know, maybe, maybe that's just something that comes in. Book two is like, maybe you're not supposed to like the main character, but then maybe there's some things later on that, uh, that change your opinion, an ever, an ever-changing opinion, which is kind of how shows like, like dexter, go. It's like, you see, you see them for the monster that they are, and then you love them, you love them again, and then they fall out of love with them, they love them again. It's just this roller coaster, this abusive relationship with a sociopath.
Speaker 2:I think a sign of a good book or a good show is always if I have strong feelings in either direction, like if I find someone really despicable. That also means something that I'm having that level of emotional reaction, whether I love them or hate them. It's not good when you don't care, that's when it's not good, so it's interesting. I'm excited to read more about Quinn and Keisha. Tell us a little bit more about Keisha, keisha.
Speaker 3:Guys, I love her. Oh gosh, I don't want to give away any spoilers. Keisha was my favorite character to write about and I constantly debated whether I was going to write from her perspective, like if it would be like a dual point of view book, and I really debated it but ultimately decided that it just fit better with a single perspective. But Keisha is the partner you would want in the apocalypse. She is a loyal friend, or is she? She can lie and con so fluidly. She walks through the world just being accepted implicitly. People believe her, people trust her and she can get away with just about anything, which makes her a really fun character to write and again makes her the very best partner for when the two of them together have absolutely lethal combination like a leader of people in the apocalypse and like they, they would basically just do anything that she asked them to do is she kind of like a governor to ask character in the sense that like incredibly charming and incredibly dangerous?
Speaker 3:oh okay, so in in the sense that she is incredibly charming and incredibly dangerous, yes, but does she have like villain characteristics, like mustache twirling villain characteristics? No, she does not. Okay, but she's a different kind of everybody's a bad guy. Everybody has their turn. That might be a spoiler. I don't think so.
Speaker 2:I think that's also real, because I forget who said it to me, but once upon a time. I think it's also real because I forget who said it to me, but once upon a time. I think it's just conventional wisdom that you're the bad guy to somebody in your life, right like every one of us is a villain to someone at some point, unless you're perfect. But I have not met one of those people and I know that I've certainly screwed up and probably hurt people, not probably have hurt people along the way um, I kind of saw her as two sides of the same coin with Quinn, because Quinn lacked empathy for everyone except who she was infatuated with and I think that Keisha is the same way.
Speaker 1:She's just. She just connects with more people.
Speaker 3:I think that's a great way to describe her.
Speaker 2:I I agree we talk a lot about media representation in this podcast, as you know. I think that's a great way to center women and girls, and especially ones that might have murderous intent and also be able to fall in love, Because again, that takes them out of categories and boxes than I might expect to see in one person.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you for this question. I think the characters in this book are almost exclusively girls and women. Only a few men make an appearance, and that was important to me because I have been reading in the zombie genre for years for almost my entire life and I love it. Nobody will ever call me a traitor to the genre. I will read books written by men, I will read books about men in the apocalypse and I will love them. But what I have really been craving over the last few years is a story that centers on a strong girl or strong woman as the main character, not as a main character who is also, you know, oh, in love with this guy and like driving his plot forward.
Speaker 3:I just wanted a book that was about a strong woman, not a strong woman in spite of, you know, being a victim of a man, not strong in spite of trauma, but just like strong. And so I wanted that story and I wasn't finding it as frequently as I had hoped, and so I wanted to write it, and that's kind of where that motivation came from. And it was also important to me that if I was going to write about girls in a residential treatment facility, I wanted to accurately represent the kinds of relationships that I saw when I worked in that kind of facility, and I saw all kinds of relationships. I saw girls become mortal enemies of each other. I saw big sister, little sister relationships that felt very real, like they would adopt one another, and we kind of see that play out between Keisha and Lucia that big sister, little sister relationship.
Speaker 3:But the girls also fell deeply in love with each other. They're spending all of their time together and seeing almost no one else aside from occasional visitors or the staff, and so the relationships that they built with each other were important to them, and when they fell in love, they fell in love deeply, as teenagers do, and so I wanted that to be represented here and I did kind of hesitate. I'm a straight woman writing from the perspective of a character who falls in love with another girl, and I wanted to be mindful of that, because I certainly don't want to step into an arena where I don't belong. But it also felt really wrong to erase the reality of what happens in those environments, and the reality is is that there's all kinds of ways that these girls are finding opportunities to feel accepted and that's, you know, the, the love that siblings have for one another, and and the love that can develop when you're a teenager. That just is wild and all consuming, and so that's that's what we find in the story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I definitely, I definitely agree on that. Like there's just, there is so little out there that tells the story of people other than you know what, what we see over and over again, you know, just the, the male hero fantasy of the zombie apocalypse and, um, yeah, I don't know if I don't, I don't know if I'm going to be doing anything different in that regard, but I also try to think about, uh, who, who else's voices need to be heard in this world, because there's more people out there than than, um, than just, you know, straight white men and uh, like, trying to get in the heads of people who are different from me is, you know, it's something that I'm, that I want to do, but I'm also very cautious because, uh, you know, I don't want to tell people how they feel, I don't want to tell people what their experiences are, but I also do want to include them in my story. So I imagine that that's probably what you were experiencing as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah it's, it's a fine line to walk, but um it, it felt worse to erase that part of reality than you know to to to take the risk of like what if I mess this up? Um, erasure felt worse.
Speaker 2:I'm really glad you did it. I mean, I haven't read it yet, but I will say there's a reason why there's the slogan love is love, and I know you are. You've definitely experienced love in your life. You have it now, and maybe some of the other aspects that are different, of course, but I agree with you. I think it's more important to do justice to the truth of things and to do your best in that and be vulnerable to messing up. I think that that says a lot about you as a person too, because it's more weird if you just pretend people don't exist. It's more weird when I read a zombie apocalypse book and it's just 98% white men and maybe two women who are also white, and it's like we've just forgotten that there are other people or other races, other sexualities. They're just not there because people are afraid to write them. I think I yeah, I admire that choice, even if it might feel risky at times. I think it's it's the better way to go.
Speaker 1:thanks uh, one. One more thing on on this, on the story aspect of it, is that I also felt, um, um, I felt like the? Uh the mental health ward was very reminiscent of my time in the army, in training, um, when, when I was in training, I was in training for a year and a half, uh, and the whole time it was basically basic training conditions. So, like you know, I I didn't have to earn shoelaces, but like I did have to do things to like earn certain freedoms, um, you know, like I wasn't allowed to have electronics or civilian clothes or anything, and if I wanted to move up into a phase that allowed me to have those things, like I had to like memorize, like the army song and sing it in front of a drill drill sergeant, and like and like read a whole like soldier's manual and like memorize certain um, uh oaths and things like that. Like I I had to do work and like I had to be on perfect behavior or else I would be punished.
Speaker 3:that's kind of what what the uh the hospital felt like yeah, when you, when you talk about behavior intervention, there it is, yeah, shaping someone for, for the future that you want for them, for who you want them to be, and yeah, that's, it's an interesting parallel, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I wasn't expecting that, but it makes perfect sense now. I mean, there there would be a lot of. You know, if your intention is to keep people under control, they would have a lot of similarities, especially if maybe they don't all necessarily want to be there and you have to convince them that they do want to be there and they do want to participate they do want to, to participate.
Speaker 2:I think it's. It's really cool that you, uh, first of all, you had that experience and could draw from it, um, especially with the training that you have, because that gives you the ability to think about people as people and not start like, if I was trying to write this book, I think I would not. Well, first of all, not a writer, but also you have like what maybe you were not somebody who was in those relationships. You have witnessed a lot in that time and it's not a space that I think I've seen a lot of people talk about or write about being institutionalized in that way, and they're kind of invisible people.
Speaker 2:My sister worked at a similar kind of facility, so I knew a little bit about like things that she had to do around, like she taught me how to do like special kinds of restraints, for example, if somebody would get really out of control, and just the things that folks were going through and how they ended up there.
Speaker 2:It sounds very difficult and it's the kinds of people that are just erased, I think, from general society's recognition, unless you know somebody who's working there or in there, and I think that's interesting all by itself. So I know another thing that you and Dan and a lot of the listeners to this podcast have in common is that you're writers, that you love writing, and then there's this intersection with the I liked I think it's okay to call an obsession with a zombie apocalypse that many of us have, including you, and in your longer bio, you share that what got you started was watching the Night of the Living Dead at a Friend's House when you were a little girl, and that you were not able to sleep alone for weeks. One. How old were you and what about? That movie just really freaked you out.
Speaker 3:Way too young to be watching Night of the Living Dead. I think I was probably I have no idea, but I think I had to have been like seven or eight years old and I saw it by accident, wandering into my friend's living room when, like I don't know, her big brother or big sister had rented the movie and they were watching it and it was absolutely horrifying. And I grew up in like the era where you know Gremlins and Chucky and Ghostbusters. Gremlins scared me, same Grandma scared me.
Speaker 1:Same.
Speaker 3:But it was different because those monsters were monsters, they weren't people. And this is the first time that I saw people turning into monsters and I was so bothered by it and I was so terrified that the people I love would turn into zombies. I could not sleep. I could not sleep. I could not sleep alone. Like my mom had to supervise me as I fell asleep for weeks, for that it was, but I never forgot it. It stuck with me forever and I ended up loving the thing that scared me to death.
Speaker 2:I think that's why I like a lot of reality TV shows. It's like re-traumatizing in a good way. They process stuff that has happened to me. I think sometimes that's where our loves come from. Oddly, were you afraid your mom would turn into a zombie too sometimes. Yes, horrifying. Yeah, I think that is a little too young. They say that you can't really understand the difference between fiction and fact until you're like eight or nine years old.
Speaker 1:So you'd have been just on the cusp a lot of times. Um, you know, our our minds seek these things out because it's trying to prepare itself and protect itself. So it's like it wants to learn more about the thing that it's terrified of so that it can better be prepared and protect itself.
Speaker 3:Isn't psychology cool? Yes, it is, I love that.
Speaker 2:At what point did you know? Okay, I don't just love zombie movies and zombie books, but I actually think I want to write a zombie book.
Speaker 3:It took a very, very long time. I came to fiction very recently. I'm 39, turning 40 this year, and it was like three years ago. I had no idea that this was my path. I've just been reading and loving and watching and loving the genre and it wasn't until very recently where I felt like, oh, I think I could do that and I think I have a story that's worth writing. But I didn't really get the encouragement at a young age that one would need to feel the confidence and have the permission quote unquote to write stories, and I ended up writing nonfiction for several years before it even came into my mind that I would write a zombie story were you actively like when you were a kid?
Speaker 2:were you just somebody who would write stories as a little kid or tell a lot of stories?
Speaker 3:yeah, I was. I I used to sit by myself for hours and write stories about horses I would make. I would like glue pieces of like ruled paper together and like draw pictures and write a story about a horse, and I would actually bring them to school and I would show my teacher my third grade teacher in particular, mrs Edlin, and I remember inside of one of those books she wrote and I'll never forget it. She wrote someday, when you're an author, I will read your books, and she's not alive anymore. But she was the first and last teacher I had that ever encouraged my writing, and so she means a lot to me.
Speaker 2:It just takes one person, and I'm sorry there weren't other people who saw this in you, because clearly it was something that you were compelled to do, and, I think, a lot of me. It just takes one person and I'm sorry there weren't other people who saw this in you, cause clearly it was something that you were compelled to do, and I think a lot of creators are like that. I also just going to say I think we would have been in the same grade and I absolutely would have wanted to be your friend. I feel like I want to read your horse story. I would have loved that.
Speaker 2:Why did we?
Speaker 3:grow up so far away. Why did we grow up so far away? I do feel like we would have been soul sisters.
Speaker 1:I agree. I think you would have also been into the horse stories.
Speaker 2:That's what I mean. I would have been like, can I, like you know, we could do a collab Six and seven year olds co-riding and drawing horses, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like I drew these horses. Can you make them?
Speaker 3:say things. I tried to make a club in third grade where the whole idea of the club is you draw horses and you talk about horses. Oh my gosh, I need to be part of my horse club.
Speaker 2:We were too far away. That is a tragedy. I am so sad. I would have been sad to join that club, but we found each other now. Yay, that's true. Yeah, it would have helped to know people like you existed. When I was a weirdo little kid, I tried to form an environmental club, but nobody wanted to pick up trash on the side of the road with me.
Speaker 3:It would be me. Just know, I would have been part of your club.
Speaker 2:Well then, we could have drawn horses after. It was perfect, and then eventually, we'd have talked about zombies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, do you know what it came in Like. I saw this movie this weekend.
Speaker 2:You're not going to believe me. People can become monsters and eat.
Speaker 1:you Do you know that when people die, they come to your house and try to break in?
Speaker 3:Yeah, break in. Yeah, and some of them are naked, I don't know why. So true, we don't know why, um, but that was, you know, that was third grade, me and I. I grew up and, um, I got to high school and I had some really terrible english teachers who just kind of broke my, my spirit when it came to writing. Like my, my freshman year teacher was, um, so awful. She was terrifying. She loved to berate and embarrass people in front of the class and, like, took joy in it. Um, and I remember I just spent the entire year trying to be invisible.
Speaker 3:Um, my, my sister was two grades ahead of me when I was a freshman. She was a senior and we had the same suite of teachers, and so, by this point, like, my mom knew who that teacher was, and I'm pretty sure that that woman made my mother cry. She was terrifying. And then my senior English teacher. He just finished a prison sentence for what he did to the kids that he worked with. So I did not have the teachers that I needed to really foster that skill and so I didn't really think about it. I decided when I got to college that I was going to be a social worker and I wrote about social work things and I kept reading and consuming literature, but I didn't see myself as a creator of that.
Speaker 2:When did you change your mind? What made you be like okay, no, I actually can do this and I'm going to do it?
Speaker 3:I think there were a couple of things that happened. One I wrote some nonfiction. I ended up writing a nonfiction book and I ended up self-publishing that book and it got to be pretty successful. It was ultimately acquired by an ed tech company and I will forever be grateful for that acquisition. They are taking this book further than I could have ever taken it by myself, and to have that success meant a lot to my confidence as a writer, as a creator.
Speaker 3:But also when someone acquires your work, you agree not to compete with it for a period of time. And there was a period of time where I can't continue writing in my genre, in my field, and what am I wrote fiction this time, or what if I wrote that story? That's kind of like been gnawing at me. And during that time I just so happened to be reading a lot of the books by Kate Elmery the Broken World series. I adore that series and I just adore Kate Elmery as a creator. And reading her and knowing that she was on a self-publishing journey got me thinking like maybe I could do this too, like she did it. She's a person and she's doing it, and maybe me too, and why not me? So I gave it a shot, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I gave it a shot. Yeah, kate has to be must be the most prolific zombie apocalypse writer. I like what does she have? Like 60 books.
Speaker 3:Like 60 books. It's phenomenal, and you wouldn't think that she is, like, all consumed by writing, but she's got this full life too. And not only that and I hope she wouldn't mind me saying this I reached out to her when I was working on my book and I just showed her some appreciation and said, like, hey, thank you for doing this. And I didn't ask for anything from her. But she was like, oh, let me read your first few chapters. And she gave me some really valuable feedback and she told me about the resources that she used for self-publishing. So, like, not only is she a good writer, she's a good human and she's a writer's writer. The writing community the zombie community is unbelievable and I feel so lucky to be part of it. It's just great to be surrounded by so many great people.
Speaker 2:We have to have her on sometime, and I think that is something that I love about this community is it's not about like why compete, especially when someone like Kate it sounds like Kate Elmery really paved the path right and was able to pass that on to you and share that knowledge instead of you having probably suffered through some of the things I imagine she might have had to on her own first. And that's really what surviving the zombie apocalypse would be about is helping each other out. So I like to think we're practicing in our little zombie community.
Speaker 1:here I've heard so many horror stories with publishing that I kind of don't even want to even try to ever be published and just start off from from scratch from the very beginning, just self-publish. I've seen a lot of people do that, and with very varying levels of success, of course. What was that path like for you and like, how did you come to that decision?
Speaker 3:Yeah, when, when I was writing my nonfiction, the decision to self-publish was clear, just because the thing that I wanted to produce was because the thing that I wanted to produce was not the thing that people wanted to publish, I did reach out to a few publishers and they were like, no, write us a book about social and emotional learning. But my thinking was like no, I'm making a workbook for social. This is a discussion series with workbook components, and that's what I think the world needs right now. And we just didn't see eye to eye. And I wasn't going to budge because I felt like I knew, and, luckily, my intuition was on, and so I did self-publish.
Speaker 3:And so I knew how to do it. I knew how to find a cover artist, I knew how to hire somebody to help me with a layout, I knew that I needed really great editors, and so I knew how all of the pieces fit together. And so when I finally had a completed manuscript, my gut instinct was, oh, I'm going to self-publish, of course. But I had some advice from my editors who said, hey, you should query this, I think it could be something. And so I decided well, what's the harm in trying?
Speaker 1:What is the harm in trying? What is the harm in trying?
Speaker 3:Well turns out, there was a little bit of harm in trying, but ultimately, you know, my gut was self-publishing and that's ultimately the path that I chose and I'm happy with my choice. I can't see myself doing it any other way. For one, I'm just and I want my book out now, like it's done. People need to read it. I don't want to wait years for it to to go through that process and you know, maybe you're trying to find an agent and you know, shaping your story around what the publishing industry is looking for, um, it's not all the sparkling vampires that they want.
Speaker 3:Right, Right, so it it. I'm not saying that I will never traditionally publish, but I am saying that for me, right now, that's not what I'm looking to do. It's, it's. It's not my journey. This isn't it.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's the case for you too, dan. You're not planning on at this time. Like for your first book, you're thinking you're going to self-publish, and more and more authors are doing that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:My, you know I, I don't know what the benefit of going through a publisher is. To be honest, like everything that I've ever seen them promise, like they're like um, you know we'll be, we'll be, we'll handle promotion and advertising. We'll get an editor We'll have you work with. You know they'll suggest changes, we'll get an agent. And what I, what I find most people experience, is that they don't do any of those things unless you are their top selling author and you still have to pay for the advertising. You still have to find the editor yourself. Well, sometimes they they suggest an editor, but like you know you you end up paying for this thing, that you are signing a contract to help so that they can make money off of you, and I just don't see what you benefit from going through the publisher right and I also feel like we we have such a niche genre genre and such a special group of people that love zombie fiction like it's.
Speaker 3:we are a community and right here and the most it's it's not mainstream, for a reason, and part of me worries and worried that running my story through the filter of the mainstream publishing world would take some of that spark out of it that I wrote specifically for people like us and the people listening to this podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the same way that you have the instinct of what your work, your field, needed, better than any publisher would, I think you have a better instinct of what readers like us are looking for than somebody who is not specializing in the zombie genre. That makes a lot of sense. I think there's especially a growing distrust of traditional publishing because of recent controversies, like what just happened in late June with the literary agent Hilary Harwell, who I know everybody around this virtual table knows, but Google it if you want to learn more. Hilary Harwell was fired from KT Literary for tweeting that she wanted a novel very similar to a query she just rejected from an author and actually gave the synopsis of the book in the tweet. And I'm going to read the tweet just so folks can get a sense of why this person was query. She just rejected from an author and actually gave the synopsis of the book in the tweet. And I'm going to read the tweet just so folks can get a sense of why this person was fired.
Speaker 2:Hillary says just read a query that was essentially the road meets deliverance hashtag YA. And now I want someone to write this for me, please Question mark heart face, eyes. Am writing, am querying. June 24th.
Speaker 1:Should also throw in a hashtag writing community in there as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the reactions immediately are not good. Like this person responds with respect, do you not see how it's actually kind of insidious for an agent with industry influence to reject a querying writer with no power and then try to get someone else to write their concept? But quote, unquote better, and there's a? There's a lot, a lot of pushback and I'm curious what your reaction was to this whole controversy with Hillary.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I did have a reaction to it. The whole thing just completely took me by surprise, and I didn't even know what was going on until after the whole thing had unfolded. And the very first thing that I saw related to this was the Instagram post from the agency saying that they had parted ways with the agent. And the whole reason that I was following that agency on Instagram to begin with is because I was like, oh, I queried someone at that agency, but, but I just scrolled right past it. It didn't leave my mind, though. It was there, just kind of like itching, and so curiosity eventually got the best of me. I started Googling, trying to figure out what happened, who was the agent, and when I learned that the post was about Hillary Harwell, I was like, oh, I queried her, I queried her recently and, um, but by this point, like I still, I still hadn't seen the tweet. Um, so obviously I couldn't help wondering what she did. So, uh, I Googled it until I found the tweet, and when I read that tweet, like my stomach just sank. It just, it hit me because she had called out three things specifically she called out YA, she called out the road and she called out deliverance and if you think about, you know my story and my characters. My characters are in the middle of an apocalypse and have to travel a long distance towards safety, like the road. My characters travel down a river in a canoe and encounter some bad guys along the way, which is a little reminiscent of deliverance and hashtag YA. I'm writing YA, so all three of those pieces really fit.
Speaker 3:But then I was like no, not everything's about you. Certainly she gets thousands of queries and I waited. I waited to see if anyone would claim the query and I waited and I waited and several days passed and like nobody was was coming out and saying like yeah, that was me. Um, so I I started digging through query tracker because that's that's how I queried her and you can open query tracker and you can do a lot of filtering and research about the agents and you can see how many people have queried them, what kind of genres they're getting, um, you can see when they're sending rejections, how many rejections and which ones they're getting. You can see when they're sending rejections, how many rejections and which ones they're accepting. So there's some data there and when I did enough filtering, I found that there were six YA horror queries that were rejected by her within a 60-day time timeframe of that tweet. Um, wow, and one of them was mine, and uh, so I so obviously I'm thinking like how many of them could have been an apocalypse on a river.
Speaker 1:Very low I think, something that I told Leah immediately after after after finishing the book, was that I've never read anything like your book, like the idea is so unique and fresh that, like it's it, it takes a whole new spin on the zombie apocalypse genre. Um, while also remaining true to like the core idea of what people want from a zombie apocalypse story, uh, and I'm and I I can't help but think, like how, what are the? What is the likelihood that of out of six people, you're not the person who has the most unique thing I've ever heard of in the zombie apocalypse genre, also in young adult classified as horror?
Speaker 3:I guess I the odds are I'll never be a hundred percent.
Speaker 3:Sure, it's tough first of all thank you for for saying that. That's, that's very kind of you to say and, um, you know, I I will never be 100% sure, but I did try and find out more. I talked to a friend and got some good advice of, like you know, just reach out to the agency and see what they say, and I did. And first let me say they were so freaking kind to me. They were very nice. I am not here to hold an entire agency responsible for the actions of one agent. They were good to me and I did reach out and I reached out simply to find out what happened. Help me understand. There were no threats, there was no anger. I truly just wanted to understand what on earth happened here.
Speaker 3:They did respond to me, they did assure me that the query was not mine, and then they actually offered to reconsider my manuscript, and another agent read the whole thing and they did ultimately decide to pass. They did give me a shot and I did appreciate that and and I also felt like it was kind of strange the, the amount of attention that that they gave me was was intense and if the query wasn't mine, you know they didn't owe me anything. I do appreciate it, though I do feel like I got a fair shot. But to me, like that, that question still remains. Like was was the tweet about me and I? Again, the truth is I I have no idea and I might never know, but what I do know is I was one of those six ya horror rejections between may and june and I I got some very kind treatment from the agency. And I think here's a thing If those other five queriers were to come together, I think we could be sure. I hope that we find each other. I do.
Speaker 1:I hope that if it wasn't me.
Speaker 3:I hope that that person comes forward and I think you know I read all of twitter after this all of twitter, the whole twitter, um and a lot of it hard. Twitter is a rough place these days right, right, oh, but I I think a lot of the the comments and they were well-meaning, but they were like oh, how embarrassing for that author.
Speaker 3:But but look like that agent read the first three pages of those manuscripts, the first three pages. And that, to me, does not make any manuscript a failure. It's not. It's not. And when I look back again, if I'm being really honest with myself, I did not write my book for her. I did not write my book for that agency. I wrote it because it was a story I wanted to tell and I thought other people like me would like it, people like the people who are listening to this podcast, this community.
Speaker 3:And again, I just want to say I will never know with 100% certainty whether that tweet was about me, but if it wasn't about me, I want that person to stand up and own it. I hope they do, because I'm going to support them, I'm going to cheer for them. It takes a lot of guts to work out there and to be judged and rejection hurts and this rejection in particular was just salt in the wound. And so you know, if it's you, come find me. And if it's me and you're one of the other five queriers or anybody in the writing community, like, still come find me, because I think we went through something together and I just think it's an opportunity to cheer for each other. But it ultimately had a lot to do with why I decided to self-publish and I'm at peace with what happened. I'm at peace with my decision.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to say you I could not be handling this with more grace and also bravery and humility. So thank you for sharing that experience, because it does sound really difficult to go through and process, and so I just want to commend you for sharing what you went through and also for calling on other folks and even just connect with you directly. Where can they find you, jo, if they want to reach out?
Speaker 3:Yeah, they find me on Instagram. I also have a website, it's joesalazarwritingcom, but I hang out on Instagram almost exclusively, so that's the best place to find me.
Speaker 2:Same, yeah, and all of Joe's contact information will be well, not, you know, we're not giving personal phone numbers, as much as some of you might like it, but all of their writing contact information. Instagram, will be in the show notes. Yeah, writing contact information.
Speaker 1:Instagram will be in the show notes. Yeah, um, yeah, I, I think it's. I think it is important to note that, like, the actions of the agent are not the actions of the publishing um company. So I think they did the right thing by like letting, letting hillary go immediately once they learned what happened, because it's I've read a lot.
Speaker 1:I've read a lot, as I'm sure you have, about this, about this exact thing, and a lot of people will point out that like idea, like there's no, there's no copyright for ideas, and while that's true and there wasn't anything technically illegal about her sharing this and then asking somebody to just write a better version of a book, um, it's, it's not a good look if you're somebody's, if you're trying to be somebody's agent, if you're just putting their other people's ideas out on the internet and trying to see if somebody will bring back something that appeases you.
Speaker 1:Um, and I've also, I've also read a lot about like other agents, um, not specifically hillary, but uh, you know agents that have been caught in similar scandals, um, some that were like in in, uh, in like groups on twitter that like agents that would share um, share their experiences together to mock writers that they didn't think were good enough, and it's like I don't understand how people like this. They see something and they're like this sounds like a really interesting book, but the first three pages didn't appeal to me. I guess I'll just reject them instead of saying, hey, how about you rewrite this in this way, and then maybe it'll be something?
Speaker 3:Right, that's the courtesy that we all hope for when we submit a query, but it's terrifying, and the vulnerability when you send out a work that you love is just off the charts yeah, off the charts. And that that fear that a lot of us have putting ourselves out there to, to have that fear confirmed in a tweet, is it's, it's scary and um and I can understand why why people are thinking that self-publishing is the path Um, yeah it was true for me.
Speaker 1:I also think she is entirely off base, like I, you know I, because, because I'd already read about this, this scandal situation, I'm like so where, where is where? Is this not strong enough? Opening that she comments about on Twitter. And I gotta say there's, there's nothing not strong about your opening, like I think it tells your story perfectly, it's I. I think the big problem is that this agent doesn't understand zombie apocalypse. You know, like it's classified as young adult horror, but I don't actually think that zombie apocalypse belongs in horror. It's not. Somebody who is who loves horror, um, isn't going to get the same thing out of the zombie apocalypse that they're looking for. And somebody who's looking for zombie apocalypse, if they're like you know what's better than the Walking Dead Friday the 13th? It's not the same thing. And somebody who wants the Walking Dead isn't going to watch Friday the 13th and be like, yeah, you're right, that was better.
Speaker 3:You are so right. It's again, this is a very special community for a special person with a special kind of taste. It is, it is not mainstream, although you know the walking dead is pretty universally loved, I think now it is, you know, but, um, but yeah it. There. There is a certain kind of person looking for this book and, um, it's, it's probably not going to be the big five publishers no, but it's a story that really needed to be told.
Speaker 2:I think what you said, dan, is all people need to know, which is what comes down to is. It's a matter of whether or not you know the genre, and for somebody who has read how many zombie books now, dan, I don't know For Dan to come home every day and tell me a little bit about this book and be so excited about it just speaks volumes about the quality of what you wrote, joe, and I don't understand how literary agents can miss that without just fully, just missing the genre completely. That's the only thing that makes sense, and I think it's really cruel.
Speaker 1:It didn't have a sparkly vampire in it, so yeah, I don't want a sparkly vampire. Maybe it wasn't like your three-act hero's journey that has a love triangle, a love pyramid with some magic warlocks or something.
Speaker 2:The women. Hell had names and were the main characters. Horrible. Who wants to read that? Who's going to buy?
Speaker 1:that book. Thank, you.
Speaker 3:Thank you for that.
Speaker 2:I can't imagine. It's a huge act of trust to send something you've worked so hard on and then did not only be rejected, which is part of the game, but like to then have someone be insulting by putting that kind of tweet out there, or these group of literary agents you just said Dan. Yeah, I'm really hoping that for the publishing industry, this is a bit of a wake up call that they need to treat authors with a lot more respect than they do industry.
Speaker 1:This is a bit of a wake-up call that they need to treat authors with a lot more respect than they do. It'd be great if there was a, if there was a publisher that's specifically focusing on zombie apocalypse novels, like I think. I think that could be like a perfect laser focus for a publishing agency not me joe, do you want to do it? I. I don't think I could, I could not be, I could not be an agent, I couldn't be. I just you know no.
Speaker 3:First of all, being inside. No, I would query Dan. If you became a publisher and focused exclusively on zombie fiction, you'd have my query it could be a job for you, Dan.
Speaker 2:I think that could be an interesting job.
Speaker 1:You'd have my query. It could be a job for you, Dan. I think that could be an interesting job. Well, you know, here's something that I will acknowledge is that to be a publisher and to be an agent, to be an editor, you need to really know your stuff. You really need to know what you're doing. You have to have a formal education that wasn't formed inside of a dump truck.
Speaker 2:What if your publishing agency is Dump Truck Books?
Speaker 1:Dump, dump, dump trucks yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, we're going way off topic. I want to talk about your self-publishing of the Dead Weight. How was that process for you and what advice would you give to authors like Dan, who is not going to create the dump truck publishing company, at least today, but will be self-publishing a zombie book? That's a great question.
Speaker 3:I would say this and this is just part of self-publishing. There are parts of it that can get really expensive. You can self-publish for free. That can get really expensive. You can sell published for free. Don't get me wrong. Anybody can put something on Amazon that they have put together themselves. But there are certain places where I found it really helpful to invest the funds to make it really good, and I think a couple of those places are your cover and your editing.
Speaker 3:I feel so lucky to have found Max Reed who did my cover. She did such a beautiful job. I am so happy with the way my cover turned out, so hats off to her. It's something I never could have done on my own. I never could have done on my own, so investing up front with her was really helpful.
Speaker 3:And second, with editing, I had a team of three editing for me, and that all started with my manuscript reviewer, who is Lillian Boyd, and Lillian was the first person to read my book from start to finish, and it was important to me that a complete stranger read my book because I had an editor that I had been working with since my nonfiction days and even before that, professionally, and I knew that I wanted her to be my line editor, but I was so afraid to show her the book I was so afraid that it was going to be bad that I was like, ok, let me just save myself the embarrassment, I'm going to have a stranger read my book and give me feedback before I show it to this person whose opinion really matters to me. And so I sent it off for a manuscript review, and I am so glad that I did, and I'm so glad that I found a manuscript reviewer that would understand the genre. So Lillian read the book and gave me some really encouraging feedback. Her words were so kind, her words were so thoughtful, and she did not have only good things to say. She gave me a lot of important structural feedback that I took to heart and ended up using to make my story better.
Speaker 3:But she was the kind of manuscript reviewer that just makes you want to be better. She doesn't tear you down, she builds you up and makes you better. And that was you can't pay for that. It's invaluable. And so Lillian was a key part of my self-publishing, and when Lillian gave me the confidence to pass it on to my editor, kay Kay Bailey, that's where we really got rolling, so investing in a line editor to really make sure that I, as a novice writer, was breaking up my sentences appropriately, like not starting the sentence with the same word over and over again. I do that so often.
Speaker 3:And like using the right version of a word like discreet and discreet are two different words with different meanings, Don't?
Speaker 2:ask me to ask.
Speaker 1:Wait, let's back up. We got to talk about discreet.
Speaker 3:No, you got to ask Kay. She is the one from college, but having someone with that eye was really important. And again, kay edited Better Together for me. She and I used to work together back in our nonprofit days and she would edit my work then, and so I have been learning from her about how to write for years. The high school education that I did not get, I got from her. That's amazing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so just having an editor that you trust, who will teach you along the way, not just correct you, but teach you Like. Here's why I changed discrete to discrete. Here's why I added a comma here. That was really informative and helpful. And then, finally, my. My third publisher was Lisa Gilliam, and she was my proofreader and made sure that I capitalized t-shirt. Which who knew? And she added I knew that.
Speaker 2:T-shirt is capitalized. Is it because it's like a T? Cause it's a? I don't understand. That's literally the only reason I can think that it should is capitalized. Is it because it's like a T? Because it's a T? I don't understand. That's literally the only reason I can think that it should be capitalized.
Speaker 3:Well, you missed there, but apparently it's supposed to be, it's a proper noun, oh Wow. And she added like more than a hundred commas, and I am so grateful to her.
Speaker 1:Oh, I do remember that in your acknowledgements. Thank you for adding so many commas.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if it was me they'd be removing commas. I'm the opposite.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, I use commas when I should be using all the other exclamations.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah. And then when did Kate Elmery read it? Like, at what point in the process was that she read it before?
Speaker 3:my editors read it and she only read the first three chapters, so she wasn't a whole reviewer, right. So she read after my manuscript review, but before line editing and for proofreading, and so she found a lot of quirks in my writing that I up, like preventing my editors from seeing which, again, everybody needs an editor. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, it's very important and I I read so many books that like, especially in self-published books, and there was, like there's always a lot of drama about this, like on threads and Instagram where, like, somebody calls out um, indie, indie, indie published writers for, like, having bad work or something.
Speaker 1:Um, which is not true because, like you said you, you you hired multiple editors, so what you have is a very polished uh, book at the end as if it were published uh, traditionally, um, but I've I've picked up books that had spelling mistakes on the front page and it's like this does not bode well for the rest of the book. Um, and it's so. It's so important to make that investment. It might be a lot of money but, like you know, if, if you're putting in that amount of time to write a book which, unless you had AI, vomit it out in three weeks' time and just stitched it all together, you're spending a lot of time. It's a huge time investment To make the investment in people, to actually make sure that when people read it, they don't think that it's terrible just because you don't know how to spell how to spell T-shirt, t-shirt You're like what a noob.
Speaker 1:Lowercase T on T-shirt. I'm not reading the rest of this. What an idiot it's. It's important to spend that money and like. I know that some people are like that's expensive and I can't afford it, but like if, if you want people to read it, you got to make sure that they can read it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you've really done that investment and I think it also shows that it does. Even in publishing, whether it's self-publishing or otherwise, it takes a community of people backing you and supporting you along the way, and it sounds like you've had some amazing supporters. That is well-deserved. Based on the story, you've told Andrew also doing an audio book. Tell us more about that as a self-publisher.
Speaker 3:I do have an audio book, so I'm patiently waiting for my audio files. Right now I have an amazing voice actor. Her name is Megan Sinclair, and I cannot wait to see what she puts out. That was a fun part of this and something that I wasn't sure I was going to do, but the act of auditioning the voice actors and finding the one where I was like this is it, this is the voice that was fun.
Speaker 2:That is really cool, and I also just want to say, as somebody who mostly reads with my ears, thank you for that investment as well.
Speaker 3:Oh sure.
Speaker 1:I know that that's also a really pricey part, because you're you know you're paying a voice actor to spend several, not even several hours, like a hundred hours, on your book and I absolutely want an audio book when I'm done with mine. But, like you know, I, as far as I know, all I know is like maybe I'll find one on Fiverr, you know.
Speaker 3:That's exactly what I did. This is not an ad, but they're not paying me for this. But there there is a platform called voices where you can hear and like audition voice actors Like you. You send in like a thousand words of your manuscript and people just hop on and they're like, ooh, I'm going to read this. And so they send you a recording during a specific timeframe and then you you pick your voice actor and hire them and they do it and they send you the files and you send them money and that's it.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. I love it. This is what's so cool about our day and age is that it is possible to do this on your own. Uh, with a little bit of ingenuity. Uh, how can we pre-order the dead weight? I believe it's available right now for pre-order and will be out published in October, right?
Speaker 3:Joe? Yes, it is available for pre-order and will be out published in October, right, jo? Yes, it is available for pre-order ebook. Only. The ebook is available for pre-order on Amazon, and if you search the deadweight Jo Salazar, you will find me, and then the official release date is October 3rd 2024.
Speaker 2:That's a good day. I can't wait. And when is the? Is the audio book coming out at the exact same time, or will it be a separate time?
Speaker 3:As long as all goes well, the audio book will be available at the same time of the release. Like pending disaster, I hate to say it for but Murphy's law, it applies.
Speaker 1:We got it, it applies.
Speaker 3:We got enough time I hope yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, as usual, I've enjoyed this conversation so much with you that we went over time and I didn't even notice. So I just want to say thank you, joe, for the extra time, and I just have one more question for you, which is what are you most proud of yourself in this experience? Because I think you have a lot to be proud of, gosh. Oh man, what am I most proud of yourself in this experience?
Speaker 3:Cause I think you have a lot to be proud of, gosh. Oh man, what am I most proud of? I think? I think the thing that I am most proud of when it comes to this book is that that I stuck with it because I I had no idea where the story was going.
Speaker 3:I'm I'm a discovery writer, or a pantser as some call it, and I knew who my characters are going to be.
Speaker 3:I knew where they were going, I knew what they were running from, but it wasn't until I got to the last maybe six months of writing where I was like, okay, every thread is in peace and I know where this is going and how it all ties together. And it wasn't until the last few months that I was able to put a bow on this. And I think that's really scary for a lot of writers, especially for a lot of new writers, to just like feel like you have this brick of text that like, is it going to work out in the end? Am I going to be able to make this into something coherent? And, yes, you will, and I think it just happens. If you persist and so I'm I am proud of myself for not giving up and just like being confident in myself, or like you're going to figure it out, it's gonna happen and I'm glad and I that would be also. He didn't ask for it, but there's my unsolicited advice for writers out there, you're gonna figure it out if you stick with it long enough.
Speaker 2:Persist, persist and believe in yourself. I think that's an amazing piece of advice and something you should be very proud of as somebody who starts a lot of projects. Hang in there and doesn't finish. Yeah, hang in there like the cat. Yes, well, we're going to we're going to close it out. Today Again, you can find Joe Salazar on Instagram. Today again, you can find Joe Salazar on Instagram, also on their website. Can you remind us what your Instagram username is before we go?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's got a lot of underscores because apparently there are a lot of Joe Salazars out there, but it is underscore J-O underscore, salazar underscore.
Speaker 2:You're underscored. I love it, and your website is JoeSalazarWritingcom Excellent, go check it out. Joesalazarwritingcom Excellent, go check it out. Go get the pre-order. I certainly will be. Can't wait to have it in my ears and eventually on my shelf. Thank you so much for your time talking with us, joe. It's been a real pleasure. Thank you both. That was awesome. I just can't believe how many amazing people we get to meet through this podcast yeah, through this podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really. It's getting better and better, and I think Joe Salazar was really cool and she wrote a good book.
Speaker 2:She did. I didn't read the book, but I really want to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, after this conversation and just hearing from you.
Speaker 2:Well, honestly, it's right around the river bend. Right around the river bend there's canoeing, it's focused on women and girls and there's some sapphic romance, it sounds like. And also, joe liked to draw horses as a kid. So there's no way I'm not going to enjoy this book I mean, I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't think that they draw any horses in the book. That's okay.
Speaker 2:Maybe in the sequel yeah, joe, that's our special request. Make somebody draw a horse. I don't even feel like that's going to fit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, never mind, don't take that terrible advice that we're giving you Open the book with the description of somebody drawing a horse line for line.
Speaker 2:What I want to know, joe, is do you have any pictures of those, or do you still have any copies of your horse drawings? I would love to see them. That would be super fun.
Speaker 1:People are going to be confused, thinking that she's just not talking to us. This is our outro. We're recording this after right, and don't don't forget you guys. You guys got some homework to do for episode 65. We're, uh, we're gonna read lindsey king miller's the z word it's uh, it's spicy, so keep that in mind.
Speaker 2:If you don't like spice, then we're sorry yeah, or just fast forward through those parts, or because it's extremely, extremely vividly written and you might love it, like me, you might not love it I've been informed that my three pepper spice rating was an under rating and it's actually five chili pepper spice yeah, five out of five, five out of three, actually five out of three.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's hyper spice, hyper spice, hyper spice. Yeah, actually, um, I forget if I already said this, but I'm saying it again. Uh, I mentioned that I was reading it in the affinity slack channel for the lgbtq plus folks at my work and then somebody else approached me and was like why don't we read that for our book club at work? And I was like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I regretted instantly that I mentioned I was reading it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, maybe I should. Maybe I should tell my family to read this.
Speaker 2:Perfect. Yeah, we can discuss it at christmas oh, that'll just be the best christmas I ever went to. I can't wait, you're invited yeah, but it's a great book if you love drag queens, if you love, uh, mysterious stoners named sunshine sunshine is the best part of the an ex-girlfriend named leah I do and current wife named.
Speaker 1:Leah, yeah, I married my ex-girlfriend. I'm both your ex and your wife. How?
Speaker 2:fun. You will love this book. Give it a check. Give it a check out.
Speaker 1:That's where I'm at in my brain power.
Speaker 2:It's written by Lindsay King Miller. You can find it anywhere where you can find books, and we're going to be interviewing Lindsay on our October 13th episode, which is also episode 65 of our podcast so far. And if you're also a writer or just somebody who wants to randomly tell us something or ask a question, you can ask us anything at 614-699-0006. You get up to three minutes to leave a message, or you can email us at zombiebookclubpodcasts at gmailcom. And the most important thing I can ask you to do is go and pre-order joe salazar's book the dead weight yeah, the one that we, that we've just talked about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, that's the thing you got to do if you're going to do anything. I also am pre-ordering the book for myself. Yeah, I can't wait till it's on our shelf me too.
Speaker 1:Uh, don't forget to subscribe yeah, rate, rate and review, give us, give us all those delicious stars, yeah and thanks for listening, thanks for being part of this community.
Speaker 2:It really does grow a little bit more every day and I feel like um, that green fuzzy guy who stole. Christmas once no, although that no, I feel like the Grinch. My heart keeps growing, oh yeah weirdly, my undead beating heart keeps getting bigger every time I meet someone else in this community the.
Speaker 1:Grinch, the original zombie.
Speaker 2:Sort of yeah, he's got creepy fingers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was the original Worm Bodies. They restarted his heart. Then he learned how to love.
Speaker 2:Wow, I didn't consider that. I don't think Ollie would agree that they're the original zombie.
Speaker 1:We should watch Warm Bodies and see how many other things it has in common with the Grinch.
Speaker 2:That's an episode right there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, but thanks for listening. Follow us on Instagram and Threads Subscribe, rate and review. There's a link tree in the description. There's a link tree in the description. There's all the links in the description.
Speaker 2:Thanks, somebody buy an Evil Magic Chicken Zombie t-shirt. Thank you, bye.
Speaker 1:Bye everybody, the end is nigh.
