Monsters Aliens Zombies Etc (M.A.Z.E.) with OllieEatsBrains (Oliver Grayson) | Zombie Book Club Ep 58

Ever wondered what it's like to be a millennial zombie from 2,000 years ago? Our latest episode of the Zombie Book Club promises belly laughs and mind-bending stories as we welcome back OllieEatsBrains (Oliver Grayson), the award-winning zombie chicken impersonator and author of the riveting online tale "M.A.Z.E." (Monsters Aliens Zombies Etc) Join Leah, Dan, and Ollie as they swap hilarious cybersecurity mishaps, share Ollie's evolution from a party disaster to a hidden gem of a Zombie Author, and explore the comedic yet poignant realities of integrating zombies into modern society.

Prepare for a wild ride with Ollie's jaw-dropping revelation — they're the 14th apostle and a miracle zombie resurrected by Jesus! From choking on an olive to an emo phase during the Dark Ages, Ollie’s whimsical journey through history adds a humorous twist to the undead narrative. We also tackle serious themes like social discrimination against zombies, or necrophobia, and the challenges they face in finding dietary alternatives to human brains.

Learn about the genesis of their story "M.A.Z.E.," which weaves together an eclectic mix of zombies, vampires, and magic, and meet Claire, the non-binary vampire-zombie hybrid who eats human arms like KFC drumsticks. Whether you're a fan of the undead, or simply in need of some zombie-themed fun, this episode is packed with engaging discussions and creative insights. Don’t miss out on the chance to explore the intriguing world of M.A.Z.E. and Ollie's ever-evolving brain-eating adventures.

OllieEatsBrains Website:
https://ollieeatsbrains.com

M.A.Z.E:
https://ollieeatsbrains.com/maze/

Ollie's Instagram
@OllieEatsBrains

Transcript

Zombie Author Chat

Speaker 1 0:20

Welcome to the Zombie Book Club , the only book club where the book is a website and it's called Maze , and if you get lost in it , you'll be eaten by zombies . Spoiler alert that's not what Maze is about at all . I'm Dan , and when I'm not electrocuting myself in my dump truck while climbing up a mountain long story I'm writing a book about people who are having also not a very fun time of their own in a zombie apocalypse .

Speaker 2 0:45

And I'm Leah and I'm writing a book . No one wants to read a salesforce user guide . When's it coming out ?

Speaker 1 0:48

uh , next week actually , and I have not everybody pre-ordered leah's self salesforce user guide and I'm ollie , award-winning zombie chicken impersonator and writer of maze ollie , you're back again .

Speaker 2 0:58

We just talked I am back .

Speaker 3 1:00

Yes , yeah , people , you guys haven't changed your passwords we gotta change our passwords .

Speaker 1 1:07

We got to change it from Nero and Ziggy one two . Exclamation point to Nero and Ziggy are cute . Exclamation point . Exclamation point one two .

Speaker 2 1:19

I think it's okay . I think it's time that Ollie gets a key to the house .

Speaker 1 1:23

He already had it . He's had it all along .

Speaker 3 1:26

You know , I don't think I would ever guess that password , so that's probably safe .

Speaker 2 1:30

John , no way , All of my . I'm just going to say it so I can get hacked later . Literally all of my passwords are some version of my pets , but in creative ways .

Speaker 1 1:42

All right , well , you are good .

Speaker 3 1:43

I'll have to change mine now Also , but in creative ways , all right . Well , you are good .

Speaker 2 1:47

Yeah , I'll have to change mine now . Also , I have been using the same password since middle school . Okay , that makes me feel better , ollie , because I actually did just get Verizon hacked and it was because I was using the same passcode and pin number . I've been using my entire life , since my first bank card as a kid , which I have now changed world , so don't try which .

Speaker 1 2:02

I have now changed worlds , so don't try . Speaking of our guest Ollie , quick story I was talking to my aunt a long time ago about cybersecurity and I told her that the easiest password to crack is somebody's pet's name , followed by one two exclamation point , somebody's pet's name , followed by one two exclamation point . And I said , uh , so that in your case that would be oliver one , two exclamation point . And my aunt looked at me and she said shit , I have to change my password but for the longest time mine was just one , two , three , four , five no one would ever guess that you know , know , my most creative password was QWERTY and then a few random numbers All right , that's a good one .

Speaker 1 2:52

Well , now that you know , all of our passwords today we're talking to Oliver Gray , a zombie story writer themselves , and they wrote a story called maze on their website Ali eats brainscom .

Speaker 2 3:07

Yeah , you can read it for free . It's just there , which is really awesome . We'll get into asking you why about that a little bit later , and it's also going to be about why and how you became a zombie . Zombie boy , ali . I want to know your story .

Speaker 1 3:18

Yeah , tell us your story . We'll wait , but thanks for joining us , ali , it's , it's . It hasn't been very long , but it's been too long since the last definitely way too long yeah , two weeks .

Speaker 3 3:32

I've just been sitting in silence for two weeks , just waiting for someone to talk to me again and ollie .

Speaker 2 3:37

When do we release episodes ? Uh , you release every sunday write something nice and make sure you smash that like button and subscribe yeah hit , ring the bell . Yeah , write me a review .

Speaker 3 3:46

That's nice , because I'm insecure follows on only fans uh we're still aiming for that 4.9 rating yes , exactly so , ollie .

Speaker 2 3:55

I've been wondering this for as long as I've known you , which is I don't . How long have we known you for now ? Six months , eight months ?

Speaker 3 4:02

oh yeah , it's been a little while a little while .

Speaker 2 4:05

When did you become a zombie ?

Speaker 3 4:07

oh , um . Well , to know that you have to go way back in time , that was , that was almost 2 000 years ago . Well , wow , yeah , just about 2 000 years ago .

Speaker 1 4:18

Um so I was at a party at my friend's house . Oh yeah , definitely I'm a millennial from like 2,000 years ago .

Ollie, the Miracle Zombie

Speaker 2 4:26

Are we talking like around the time of Jesus ? Are you Lazarus ?

Speaker 3 4:30

I am not Lazarus Did you know , him , though I'm the 14th apostle .

Speaker 1 4:36

The one that's just off camera .

Speaker 3 4:38

Yeah , the one that's just off camera , the one that's known Jesus since , like basically childhood , that he just doesn't want everybody else talking to because I know all his dirty little secrets .

Speaker 1 4:47

Oh , what kind of zombie are you ? Are you a fast zombie , a slow zombie ? Are you a plants versus zombies ?

Speaker 3 4:58

I am what I like to call a miracle zombie , not necessarily a fast zombie , but I move a little faster than a shamble same . So , like I mean , I can run if I want to , but the couch is just so much more comfortable yeah , you're a lounging zombie are you one of like really slow jogging people , zombies ?

Speaker 2 5:19

uh speed walker ah , okay , I can picture it now it's not like a like a mall zombie yeah , mall walker , zombie yeah you know jogging and running .

Speaker 3 5:29

That's just a little too harsh on the knees and I got kind of old knees so I like to , yeah , not put too much jargon jargon on there so you became a zombie .

Speaker 2 5:37

Two thousand years ago , did you say at your friend's house yeah , I was at a friend's party .

Speaker 3 5:42

Uh , I'm sure you've heard of him , jesus okay , name dropper I'm sorry , you know , it's just how the story goes . Uh , yeah , so I was over at his house and I had an unfortunate encounter with an olive um , just choked to death on that thing , uh . But jesus was there , it's his house , so he was present and he did manage to put out one of his first miracles . His first resurrection miracle was actually bringing me back . What , yeah , unfortunately , nobody thought to remove the olive , so I just died pretty much immediately . Wow , again .

Speaker 3 6:18

Fortunately , Jesus was still there , so he brought me back again . Yeah , they thought to take it out the second time brought me back , but you know it's still pretty new to Miracle , so it didn't quite land , right .

Speaker 2 6:27

Is there some sort of like hidden scrolls about this story out there , Ollie ?

Speaker 3 6:32

Yeah , we made sure to put all of the stories in the Library of Alexandria just for safekeeping .

Speaker 1 6:38

I think they're still there , so they're safe yeah .

Speaker 3 6:40

I'm pretty sure they're still there .

Speaker 2 6:42

And this is pre-Jesus becoming a zombie himself , right .

Speaker 3 6:45

Yeah , yeah , this was probably about 20 years beforehand .

Speaker 2 6:49

Wow , so you're the original . Are you the original zombie ?

Speaker 3 6:52

As far as I'm aware , I don't know any older than I am .

Speaker 1 6:56

So zombies are Jesus's fault .

Speaker 3 7:00

To a degree . I mean , like I said , I'm a miracle zombie . I'm not one of those bacteria or virus zombies , uh , which came much later in life , so I am an og miracle zombie so you have a lot in common with the magic chicken zombies I do yes except they're evil yeah , they're , they're evil . I'm I used to be evil , but I got over it .

Speaker 2 7:21

I got better around what year was that ?

Speaker 3 7:24

oh geez , I have no idea , honestly , that was good I'm .

Speaker 1 7:28

I have a guess was it during the renaissance ?

Speaker 3 7:32

yeah , I do remember the dark ages . Um , I did bite a couple people around there just to have fun because I was getting bored with life , uh , it was also known as ollie's emo phase . Yeah , I might have accidentally caused a plague . I'm sorry for that . And then after that I just said you know I'm tired of this , I'm just going to take a nap for a while and just crawled into my tomb for 100 years or so and woke up not too long ago . That's why I'm still a little tired .

Speaker 1 7:59

Yeah , I could crawl into a tomb right now . I know I know how you feel . I could crawl into a tomb right now . I know , I know how you feel . So you weren't always . You weren't always Ollie eats brains , or was that your name before he became ?

Speaker 3 8:12

a zombie ? Oh no , back then I was just known as Oliphant .

Speaker 2 8:15

Oliphant .

Speaker 3 8:16

Timothy .

Speaker 1 8:17

Yeah .

Speaker 3 8:19

Yeah , it's just an old , old , old version of Oliver .

Speaker 2 8:22

Is it really Sorry ? I'm going to . I just an old , old , old version of oliver .

Speaker 3 8:26

Is it really sorry , I'm gonna I gotta ask is that really an old version of oliver ? Yeah , yeah , it's .

Speaker 2 8:28

Uh , if I'm not mistaken , I think it's an old irish I feel , ollie , like you're the kind of person that would say these things and I'd believe you , and then realize later that you have just been totally because I was very naive as a child so okay , well , so you're always named oliver , and then you were killed by an olive yeah , just just the irony , and that is not lost on me I mean , isn't that how it goes ?

Speaker 3 8:52

yeah , so just uh on what you were just saying , lay . I'll let you know that when my co-workers introduce me to new people , or introduce new people to me , the first words that they tell are do not trust a word out of their mouth . Okay , that's good to know .

Speaker 1 9:11

Well then , I'm glad that we know you , knowing how unreliable your words are .

Zombie Societal Acceptance and Representation

Speaker 3 9:19

I am probably one of the most unreliable narrators in reality .

Speaker 2 9:24

That makes a lot of sense , based on the main character of Maze , which I can't wait to talk with you about , and I think you would have actually been a great member of my family , because you remind me of all of my great uncles and my grandpa , who loved to just make shit up and I believe everything they said . And my brother told me when I was , I think , eight or nine , that aliens had landed , and I believed him for a full day . Okay , this is before the internet , folks .

Speaker 1 9:46

I just want to say that you know , I I might've mentioned it on some episode of the podcast , but it back back before the 1900s , like 1800s , when , you know , when newspapers were a big thing , each town used to have what they called a liar's club , where people would meet up every week and they would try to tell the tallest tale , the biggest lie , and you go in with the intention of telling a lie . Everybody knows you're lying , but you win if your lie is the most convincing or most entertaining , and then they would print your lie in the , in the newspaper , in a section called the liars club . And I feel like you , you would have , like you would have been a very frequent um liars club , uh , participant oh , absolutely .

Speaker 3 10:36

If I was old enough to participate in those times , I probably would have . Yeah , but you were asleep , so , yeah , I slept right through that yeah are you still eating brains ?

Speaker 2 10:45

I mean , I know that your handle is ollie eats brains , but you also just did say that you're a nicer zombie now yeah , no , unfortunately , I do .

Speaker 3 10:52

Well , I guess fortunately for the rest of you guys I don't eat brains anymore . I'm mostly off of them , I only . I only eat brains now when I have writer's block and need a new idea how do you select a brain eat ? I just find somebody who seems like they've got a lot of odd stories in their head and just go for them .

Speaker 2 11:11

Oh , Dan , you're in danger .

Speaker 1 11:14

I was going to say if you're eating brains and you're looking for people's unique thoughts and perspectives , I feel like these times would be a really rough time to be a zombie .

Speaker 3 11:24

Oh , definitely I will say there are a lot of very rotten brains out there and they just taste disgusting . Yeah you gotta find alternatives so , uh , the best brains you'll find are probably hanging around libraries that's .

Speaker 2 11:37

Yeah , I I like that we have a librarian friend now that I'm offering her up , but I bet she's got a great brain yeah , delicious brains down there a little off topic .

Speaker 3 11:50

Uh my , my main character for our dnd campaign is also a librarian oh , that's amazing yeah , I created them specifically because my , my , uh dm has been running the same campaign for over 40 years and I know he's got a lot of backstory and a lot of side stories and a lot of history to his world and so I just wanted a character that would be interested in all of that and give him an excuse to really expound on what he's been creating .

Speaker 1 12:17

That's wild . I saw it was like a documentary series about a guy that had been running a D&D campaign for 40 years . I think he was running a non-magical D&D campaign or one that's based in the world that we live in now , so that he could basically just reuse all of history as the lore . He didn't have to make up a place , place that was like greece if he could just refer to greek mythology that's quick and easy yeah , well , I mean , he started back and back before .

Speaker 1 12:54

You know , wizards of the coast made a whole bunch of uh , new , new books with new monsters and new lore in it that makes sense .

Speaker 3 13:02

Before they had an entire world created .

Speaker 1 13:04

That makes sense yeah , he started with , you know , first edition , so he had to , he had , he had to find his own world at that time yeah , I like , uh , I like bringing silly real world things into my game .

Speaker 3 13:16

So I've got uh . So my character loves the books of narniana jones and sir lock of homes .

Speaker 1 13:24

Yeah , I , I want , I want to , I want to read those books for sure . Um , I , I imagine , I imagine they are tolkien-esque in their , uh , in their lore . Um , what's so ? What's the downside of eating brains , if any ?

Speaker 3 13:41

oh , there are a lot of downsides of eating brains . I first off , people don't really like to hang out with you when you have a tendency to just kind of crack open a skull and just start chewing on their insides . That tends to turn a lot of people off . You can't really eat in public . I mean , it's a real big taboo . Yeah , people usually have to excuse yourself from the dinner tables .

Speaker 2 14:02

You can't just eat with everybody . That sounds discriminatory .

Speaker 3 14:05

It is . It's a little necrophobic , I'll say that . You know as plant eaters , we get it . Yeah , I'm mostly on eggs and soybeans now . Oddly enough , they contain most of what a healthy zombie needs .

Speaker 1 14:23

What an amazing coincidence . Yeah , I was growing some cordyceps mushrooms and I had to make a nutrient broth for them to grow , and they basically want a solution that has all of the vitamins and minerals of a cicada , so I literally have a liquid supplement that I could send to you . That's basically like a human brain .

Speaker 3 14:44

Oh , that would be perfect , that would be great . I'm always trying to find better alternatives . You know I'd love to just be a bigger part of society , just kind of interact with people without all the extra you know negativities of being a zombie . I want to show the world that zombies can be good too .

Speaker 2 15:01

Yeah , I'd never heard of the the discriminate , like I've never heard of the discrimination that you call necrophilia sorry , necrophobia before . Yeah , it's referenced in your story . What is necro , I mean ? I can guess , but please tell me , this is a new thing I think we need to include in our uh discussions of zombie media .

Speaker 3 15:21

So tell us about it oh , it's just fear of the dead , it's , it's um being . What's the word ? Intolerant intolerance and intolerance of the dead .

Speaker 3 15:31

That's what it is wow , we have a big problem in the zombie genre then yeah , they don't even treat them like people yeah , in most movies that I see , they don't even wonder if there's a cure for it , they just say , oh , zombies start killing this is my excuse to do terrible things it's like yeah , it's exactly what goes on , like most people just seem to like they're perfectly fine with just slaughtering hundreds of people immediately after the zombie apocalypse begins so , but if you watch . If you watch movies like the cured , you see that sometimes you can get better I haven't watched the cure neither .

Speaker 1 16:07

What's that ?

Speaker 3 16:07

uh , it's a movie that takes place after they find a cure for the zombie virus . Oh , it's , it's , it's a pretty decent one .

Speaker 1 16:15

I bet that would mess with your head if you'd gone on several zombie slaughtering . Uh romps through the wasteland and then they cure it and they're like oh yeah , they're basically good as new now yeah , it messes with .

Speaker 3 16:29

Messes with everybody's head , because the people who are cured still remember everything that they did also , oh , wow , that's tough .

Speaker 2 16:35

I was . I'm wondering what it's like . You know there's not enough media out there that has positive representation of zombies . What's it like when you do get to see movies like that or books where they talk about zombies having human rights ?

Speaker 3 16:48

Oh , I love them . I love movies that have a good sentient zombie in it . Like , even like . Warm Bodies is just a much different take on how zombies can be perceived , and it's one of my favorites because it shows redemption arcs for zombies and their ability to get healthy again and become human .

Speaker 1 17:06

Yeah , also had Rob Corddry in it . Who's that ?

Speaker 2 17:10

Sorry , I never know . Is that the main character ?

Speaker 3 17:13

It's not Okay . Is that Lucio ?

Speaker 2 17:14

Yeah .

Speaker 1 17:17

So it'd be fair to say that zombies are kind of a bit of an obsession for you .

Speaker 3 17:23

If you've seen the spreadsheet , then yes , that's a very fair statement .

Speaker 2 17:27

I was thinking you're kind of a librarian . It actually just occurred to me in this episode that you are a librarian . You're a collector of zombie literature and movies .

Speaker 3 17:35

You know , funny enough . Also , when I came up with the name Ollie Eats Brains , I thought of it as an analogy for consuming knowledge . Yeah , but it's just also an analogy for being a zombie and eating people , but yeah .

Speaker 1 17:50

When did the obsessions start ? Oh ?

Speaker 3 17:53

well I know I first got into zombies way back with Resident Evil 2 on the PS1 . Yeah , because I used to sit and play on the floor and my mom would be watching over from the couch and it's one of the few decent memories I actually have with my mother .

Therapeutic Benefits of Writing and Gaming

Speaker 3 18:10

But zombies I don't think became an obsession until much later in life , when I started associating them with kind of all the issues I was having in life and I just like start assigning them to zombies , like I used to have anger management issues , and so I was like , hey , zombies are a perfect analogy for anger management . And then I had an eating disorder and I was like , hey , zombies are actually a pretty good analogy for eating disorders . And I started realizing that zombies are great analogies for a lot of problems that I had in my life , and so I started watching movies and playing games .

Speaker 3 18:38

I had to deal with killing and destroying all of those problems in my life . And then I started watching other movies and such where people started to just like again warm bodies , where people began to kind of learn to tolerate those issues and then start living with them also . And so I found that excessively helpful with some of my issues because , like you know , if they can live with the zombies , maybe I can start to uh , get better and learn to live with my own problems and manage them better . And then there were other movies starting to come out where they had like , uh , what was it ? The santa clara to diet , yeah . And uh , other similar films where they were sentient zombie beings who learned to live with the , with being a zombie , and I was like , okay , yeah , definitely , this is probably like , if they can make it work , I can make it work , and so I feel like zombies , just in general , helped me become a better person . Wow .

Speaker 2 19:33

That's like the most sweet love story of like origin of zombies and I like how it went from being like okay , I can kill my inner zombies to how do I live with them and how do I embrace them in a way I think I also had that same approach with with video games in general .

Speaker 1 19:46

Like I , I played a lot of grand theft auto . I made a career in grand theft auto for a while . Um and which version well , uh , when , when five came out but I've played all the versions um , but you know , I I had a lot of , a lot of anger and unresolved issues . So like being able to go into a world where all of my violent thoughts and feelings were okay to express and safe , without like fear of being thrown into prison or harming people that in the real world causing real world harm ?

Speaker 3 20:20

yeah , yeah like it allowed me to , to vent a lot of those , a lot of those , uh , frustrations I feel like that's something that a lot of people just don't understand about gamers , especially people who do not play games . Yeah , they don't understand that games are a very strong outlet for a lot of emotional distresses and such I just learned that right now .

Speaker 1 20:43

Yeah , leah hasn't played too many video games . She is a big fan of Snood , do you know ?

Speaker 3 20:51

Snood , I have heard , I downloaded it . I downloaded it because it was on your podcast .

Speaker 2 20:56

Oh yeah , what did you think ?

Speaker 3 20:58

It's okay .

Speaker 2 21:00

I like it because it requires little thinking , and at one point I became so obsessed with it that when I would close my eyes , I would see snoods . I would just see all the little snood faces .

Speaker 3 21:09

If memory serves , because I haven't touched it in quite a while it's basically a bubble popping game .

Speaker 2 21:15

Yeah , don't say that , but they're cute little faces .

Speaker 1 21:18

It's the original bubble popper yeah .

Speaker 3 21:21

Yeah , I have another bubble popper game that I've been playing for a very long time I think I'm like 600 something levels into it , and so it felt very familiar . But I'm already so dedicated to another Bobo Popper .

Speaker 2 21:38

Can't just switch Bobo Poppers . I never actually really thought about it like this . This is interesting . Snood came to me at a time when I was doing a job that was really stressful and it was my 80-hour work week job , and my colleague was like I play snoods , you should play snoods . And then it became the thing that I did to dissociate before going to sleep and it helped a lot .

Speaker 1 21:58

Yeah , this association is important when you have unresolved shit in your life that you don't have time to resolve , but you still need to sleep .

Speaker 2 22:07

Yeah , it sounds like . Isn't there like a therapy version now for video games , where you can actually get therapy and do video ?

Speaker 1 22:15

games . Yeah , a lot of times it's through games like Stardew Valley . So like you go in , it's a nice little quaint town , you farm some carrots and talk to your friends .

Speaker 2 22:25

Maybe it's worth doing like a resident evil therapy . From what I'm hearing , yeah .

Speaker 1 22:30

Project Zomboid therapy .

Speaker 3 22:34

Project Zomboid is basically zombie Stardew Valley anyway , so yeah , I have tried Farm some carrots , project Zomboid so many times .

Speaker 2 22:43

You're not into it .

Speaker 3 22:44

I love the concept and idea of it , but I I have . I started playing it when I started getting right back into mouse and keyboard gaming and I I couldn't get all the keys down properly , so and I haven't tried going back to it .

Speaker 1 22:56

I probably should you can map it to controller . If that's , yeah , it helps more . But yeah , I think there's it's , it's very . It has a vast amount of things that you can do .

Speaker 3 23:07

Yeah , and it was also because I I didn't bother looking up what all the keys did , and so I just threw myself into the game because that's what I do when I play a new game . I just throw myself into it and learn the keys as I'm playing .

Speaker 1 23:25

Project Zomboid is not a game that is forgiving enough to let you figure things out ? Absolutely not , and it and it doesn't , it doesn't . There's no tutorial . If you just join the game , like there's minimal amount of tutorial , that happens , um , there , at this point in time , now you can play a tutorial level that will teach you all of those things . But if you just jump into the game , it's like good luck , you're fucking dead . The game starts with the line this is how you died . And then it's like have fun .

Speaker 2 23:52

That's my experience of every single video game I try to play , except Snoots , yeah . That's why I can't use it as a therapeutic outlet , although , as I'm listening to you , I'm thinking that would have been good to have a healthy place to express my anger , instead of stuffing it really far down and pretending I wasn't angry ever until all of it came out one day . That wasn't fun .

Speaker 1 24:11

Just have a place where you express that anger , like Agritsuko . Agritsuko yeah , I'm probably not pronouncing it right , but it's an anime on Netflix about a raccoon that goes to work and hates her job , and then to vent her frustrations from work she goes to a karaoke bar where she gets a private booth and then screams death metal music . Nice . Let's talk about your writing , because you have been writing for a while . How long have you been writing ?

Speaker 3 24:46

uh , longer than I can remember honestly were you writing pre-zombification ? Oh yeah , definitely , uh , I I used to write fan fiction as a child , um so that's a great place to start because yeah , you already know your characters .

Speaker 1 25:06

They already have depth to you .

Speaker 3 25:08

So , like then , you just write their little adventures and helps you grow quite a bit so I do remember once in elementary school , uh , my teacher had given us all an assignment to write a single , one page short story and I had turned in three pages front and back and then asked for an extension because I'd only finished the first chapter . So , and then I went on to continue doing a fan fiction for a Star Trek , the next generation and Indiana Jones because that's what my mom loved at the time , yeah , and so I used to tell stories . All like , whenever I'd watch Next Generation , I always wonder where are all the kids ? Because , like , occasionally they show up and they tell you there are kids here , and then you've got them like blowing the ships up and such , and I'm like , well , where are the kids ? What are they doing ? So I'd write the fan fiction for where the kids were during all that .

Speaker 3 26:06

That feels that , and so I think mine , yeah , I , I remember . Uh , the only story I actually remember from then , because we've lost all of it , unfortunately uh was , uh , all the adults being captured and the ship basically being , um , emptied , and so only the kids were left , and uh , will will wheaton's character was actually leading the children on an , on a quest to rescue all the grown-ups on a ship , and yeah , that's the only story I actually remember yeah , it actually does sound like an episode .

Speaker 1 26:33

I feel like I've seen that episode .

Speaker 2 26:35

It could be one like I mean it could have been one yeah oh yeah , of course will wheaton .

Speaker 1 26:42

All of his pals , they probably like were in the holodeck at the beginning and the holodeck malfunctioned and will was barely a child .

Speaker 2 26:50

I never thought about that yeah that's like an evidence of early critical thinking that I clearly didn't have because I was just obsessed with um curly haired person , deanna yeah , deanna the therapist .

Speaker 1 27:01

Yeah , that's all I thought , deanna troy deanna troy .

Speaker 2 27:03

Yeah , I loved her and I wanted to be her slash . Be with her , and yeah , that was about all I thought about from Star Trek Next Generation .

Speaker 3 27:13

She was a very kind person .

Speaker 1 27:15

Yeah , so , yeah . So I mean , I remember drawing Next Generation comics when I was a kid as well . I got really good at drawing the ship , but drawing people not so much can't draw feet feet are hard .

Speaker 2 27:36

Dan are just staring each other blankly . After I said feet are hard and now I'm having flashbacks to the time where I talked about feet stuff too much . Let's talk about feet . No , okay , I do want to have a brief segue , though not segue sidebar , because , um , I feel like I forwarded this to one of you , maybe both of you , maybe none of you , but I saw a really brilliant way to get more followers on instagram page which was yes , it was like , if I get to a certain number , I'm going to show you my feet , and they would do these like little teaser feet , but just a little bit like a little toe here with some nail polish and I think they were a writer yeah

Zombie Author Discusses Maze and Writing

Speaker 2 28:13

.

Speaker 3 28:13

Do you start with the ankle and work your way down to the toe , or do you go the other way ?

Speaker 2 28:18

I guess . I mean , I don't have a foot , like what are people into ?

Speaker 1 28:22

I don't know , I think shooed and then deshoed . Oh , and then , you know , just remove articles of foot clothing until you have his feet .

Speaker 2 28:33

So like you'd have to have a few layers of socks .

Speaker 1 28:36

Yeah , just wear like five layers of socks .

Speaker 2 28:39

I do have a good sock collection . Maybe this is the way that we go viral , Dan .

Speaker 3 28:44

Every hundred followers take off another sock .

Speaker 1 28:48

It's like how many socks is this person wearing ?

Speaker 2 28:51

It's winter in Vermont and I don't have good circulation as a vampire , so I wear a lot .

Speaker 3 28:57

I can tell you , back in the 1800s , ankles were very scandalous .

Speaker 1 29:00

That's true . A lot of ankle scandals .

Speaker 2 29:03

Do you occasionally when you were eating brains and were you also eating other body parts ?

Speaker 3 29:09

Yes , probably not in the way you're thinking . No , I generally stuck to brains . They were the healthiest part .

Speaker 1 29:21

For nourishment .

Speaker 3 29:24

Oh for nourishment , yes , nourishment , yes , no , no , just brains there . Okay , the the rest of it . You know it's nothing else in the body that you can't just get off of any other animal out there . So the brains are the main , main source of what was required yeah , tasty , tasty brains .

Speaker 1 29:42

Um when , uh ? So when did you start like realizing that your writing was like something that you needed to do , like you needed to tell a story , and that you wanted people to read that story ?

Speaker 3 29:55

well , I've always had stories in me , but I never did have very supportive family members and trying to get those stories out , so I always had the . You know , I had those parents who would tell you that don't bother writing , because it's not something that you're going to be able to do in the future yeah , and unfortunately they . It remains true to this day . I still have not accomplished much with the uh , with it or not in any way financially .

Speaker 2 30:20

Yeah , uh , I mean , I did have a short story wind up published in a magazine , but other than that nothing else has come of it well , I mean , that's , that's something , and you know you're not done so yeah , no , no , I've still got a lot of story on there and also I , like I've increasingly come to separate money from success when it comes to creativeness and creations , and I I would be nice to have money but I think you've actually accomplished a lot , is that what I wanted to say ? Like you have a whole volume of stories on all eats brainscom and I've only read one and it's still not all of it , which we need more , but that's a whole . There's a lot there .

Speaker 3 31:02

My ability to start a story is is phenomenal . My ability to finish a story is is subpar .

Speaker 1 31:10

Yeah , by any chance are you diagnosed with ADHD .

Speaker 3 31:15

Undiagnosed yes , but anybody who knows me says it's obvious .

Speaker 2 31:21

I've had that discussion with people as well before I was formally diagnosed .

Speaker 1 31:24

You know I also suffer from that as well . You know I had like by like 2020 , I feel like I was writing six books and by 2021 , I realized either I finish one of these books or I don't finish any of these books , like I will just forever be just coming up with new book ideas , new genres , new obsessions , new characters , new this , new that , new everything , and if I don't commit to one thing , I will accomplish nothing that .

Speaker 3 32:01

Uh , that is exactly why I started writing maze . Uh , because I could not focus on any one story . Every time I started a story , I started wanting to write a different story , and so I got to this point where I just said you know what , fuck it , it's all one story . Now I'm just going to throw it all into one story , because I started writing , um , a zombie story , and then I started wanting to write a vampire story , and then I started wanting to write a vampire story , and then I started wanting to write a story with magic , and then I started wanting to write a fantasy story and I said yeah , no , no , I can't keep doing this . We're putting it all in one story . Everything is one story now and yeah , I could .

Speaker 1 32:36

I can see how that would work too , because I mean , if , if , if at the core this is a magic fantasy story , like zombies and vampires , of course , are going to show up , that's , that's , that's uh , necromancy stuff yeah , yeah .

Speaker 3 32:53

so the first chapter of maze was actually me just toying around and experimenting with how I would put vampires and magic and zombies and everything into a modern day setting . And it turned out really well , so I just kept writing it .

Speaker 2 33:11

I'm glad you did , because it's actually been , you know , for a while . Sylvester Barsey's Planet Dead was my bedtime story and now it's been Maze , but it's been off and on just because , again , my work . Well , all I've been doing is writing a Salesforce user guide with my personal time for the last little while , but- .

Speaker 3 33:26

I'm really looking forward to that .

Speaker 2 33:28

It's a nail biter .

Speaker 1 33:30

It's a real page turner . It really is , because you have to turn the pages to get to the end in order to finish the training .

Speaker 2 33:37

It's very important you do the naming conventions that we require for it to work . Anyhow , can I read the intro paragraph , because you had me at the first sentence of your story .

Speaker 2 33:48

I don't want to give spoilers , because I think people should go and read this , but I want to just read this first paragraph because it sets the tone for how you write , and I was , as a non-writer other than a user guide . I was trying to explain to Dan the main character , Claire , and I was using all these descriptor words and we'll talk more about them in a minute , but I feel like this just sort of already gives the flavor . So this is the intro . Everybody I'm going to do my best to give it justice . Ollie Two jocks a cheerleader and a priest walk into Bella Vista's Italian bistro and bar like it's some kind of joke . Priest isn't a part of this . They just happen to be there holding the door as the other three enter . As soon as they pass , he follows them in , then immediately breaks away , heading to a group in the opposite direction . The other three are vampires and they're heading my way . I had to not laugh while reading that it's's just . I think I laugh like at least every third sentence in this story .

Speaker 3 34:45

Well , that makes me happy .

Speaker 2 34:47

Yeah , it's just . It's really fun and gory and scary , Like there are moments where I very much have worried for Claire's well-being , but also in many ways like their mental well-being , their physical well-being . I'm still trying to figure it out their mental well-being , their physical well-being .

Speaker 3 35:06

I'm still trying to figure it out . Yeah , they , they , they definitely , um , they definitely get beat up a bit just a little .

Speaker 2 35:11

Can you for the , for the listeners , can you just give a synopsis of what maze is really all about for you ?

Speaker 3 35:16

um , I think I said it best when I I described it earlier as just a fuck it . This is every story . Now it's just an outlet for me to just try and get all my everything I want in a story into one place . I really enjoy a good sense of humor and I like a good bit of action . And just I don't know I've never been asked that question , how to describe it .

Speaker 1 35:47

I think that's a good explanation .

Speaker 2 35:50

I actually was going to challenge you to write your own zombie about maze , but I feel like it'd be super self-deprecating .

Speaker 3 35:56

Oh , most certainly . Yeah , I would just focus on everything that when I look back and I read I'm like , oh , why did I put that there ? Why did I write that ? I can't read my own stuff without just sitting there criticizing everything I do and wondering why I didn't go a different way with things . And then I have to remind myself , like we were discussing the last time I was on . I don't control these characters . They have minds of their own and they do their own things . Like I'll put them in situations and then they just kind of do their own stuff and like some things just pop up that I wasn't expecting to happen . Like I had no idea Claire was going to fall out of that chair . It just kind of happened , yeah .

Speaker 2 36:34

That was a really great moment . They're so awkward that was the word Dan finally gave me . I was like trying to describe Claire and I'm like they're really self-conscious . Uh , they're a little bit silly . They make terrible jokes and think that the people that they're making them for will like get it and understand the undertone , like with the bloody marys and dan will he just like , oh claire's awkward . I'm like , yeah , I guess , I guess that's the word I I like to think of claire as trying to be deadpool .

Speaker 3 37:06

Oh , trying and trying trying to be uh , one of those main anti-heroes that just constantly makes jokes and self-references all the time that makes a lot of sense , that they're .

Speaker 2 37:20

That makes sense . Why were they ? Why are they ? Because I don't want to tell the whole story , which , again , we don't have it all yet , um , although I did get a sneak preview of chapter five . Thank you , um . Why are they at bella ? Is it bella vista or bella vista ?

Speaker 3 37:34

bella vista bella vista .

Speaker 2 37:35

Why are they at bella vista's italian bistro um ?

Speaker 3 37:40

because they heard that . Uh , it was a popular hangout for the local vampires um being an italian bistro .

Speaker 1 37:49

Are the vampires concerned about garlic ?

Speaker 3 37:52

uh no , that is just a very common misconception . You got one vampire a couple hundred years ago who says oh , I hate garlic . And suddenly everybody thinks vampires hate garlic .

Speaker 1 38:02

It just falls back into that necrophobia , you know I kind of that kind of reminds me of this . I I forget where it came from some movie show or something it was . Uh , it's about werewolves or something , and um , and they reveal that the whole silver killing werewolves thing was actually made up by werewolves .

Speaker 1 38:23

So that people , so that , um , so that poor villagers wouldn't think that they had the means to fight werewolves , when really all they needed was wolfsbane that that makes a lot of sense , because the common villager would be like oh , I can't afford a silver bullet yeah , but you know if , if they knew that wolfsbane was the thing that they were allergic to , they'd be like oh that . Well , that just grows everywhere . Have you seen the mini ?

Speaker 3 38:51

series on , I think I want to say netflix with dracula , um , no where . Yeah , it's just a three episode bit . It's a really good series . Uh , absolutely loved it . But towards the end , well , if you haven't seen it and you want to watch it , I probably shouldn't spoil it for you then tell us how it ends so , um , he finds out he's , he , he's not actually allergic to the sun .

Speaker 3 39:15

That was just also uh , old wives tell that was told to make people think that there was safety in the daytime that he wound up eventually buying into himself because he's like I'm a vampire , I'm just not gonna go out there .

Speaker 2 39:29

That feels so yeah go ahead sorry I don't have a thought there oh , okay , I was just gonna say that that feels like , uh , a really excellent metaphor for cultural conditioning . Yeah , like , um , like I was told my whole life I shouldn't wear the color orange because I'm a winter , because apparently you can be seasons , I'm a season , yeah , so I should only wear like quote-unquote , royal colors . But I always loved orange and at some point I was like , what the I can put orange on my body , like it's possible if I want to .

Speaker 1 39:59

But that took me 40 years and you know like people's complexions and body types and hair and everything morphs over time . You know if somebody tells you only wear this color and you're like five years old , that's going to change Like . I remember having that done when I was a kid and I was , I was an autumn , I think .

Speaker 2 40:20

You're still an autumn , my love . Yeah , but I can wear other colors , yes , you can you also look good in royal colors , are you ? Do you know what season you technically are ? Ollie , did this happen to you as a child ?

Speaker 3 40:30

uh , no , unfortunately I was uh male at the time , when no one gave a crap oh , that sucks .

Speaker 2 40:37

That is the experience of being a male .

Speaker 1 40:41

Nobody cares about you .

Speaker 3 40:42

Yeah , nobody cares , uh , you , yeah , nobody cares , you can do whatever you want , basically .

Speaker 2 40:45

That sounds kind of sad , but like I don't know , can we meet in the middle somewhere ? No , I guess that's . Yeah , I don't know , that's terrible . Color is good . I try every day to get Dan to wear things that are fun .

Speaker 1 41:00

Yeah , I just wear black .

Speaker 3 41:01

And that's fun too . This is kind of on topic , but a little off . Uh , have you guys heard of the uh , the chimpanzee experiment with the bananas and the ladder ? No , so , um , I don't know if this is an actual experiment or if it's just an analogy for something , but , uh , there was a study a long time ago about how , uh , they'd have some chimpanzees in a cage with a ladder in the center and bananas on the ceiling , and anytime a chimpanzee would try to climb the ladder , they'd spray it with a hose oh , that's not . Or they'd spray the entire group with a hose .

Speaker 3 41:37

I think it was . And so it got to a point where , if somebody tried to climb the ladder , the rest of the group would pull them off and say , no , you can't do that . And eventually they started replacing the chimps with different chimps , and the new chimps would always try to climb the ladder and all the other chimps would pull them down and say , no , we can't do that . Until we eventually got to a point where none of the original chimpanzees who'd ever been sprayed with the hose were in there , and it was all new chimps who had never been sprayed , and they were still keeping up the tradition of not climbing the ladder , because you're not supposed to climb the ladder , even though the hose wasn't a threat anymore , and so it was supposed to be an analogy for how tradition just stays , even when the reasons for the traditions are completely outdated and irrelevant

Monsters, Aliens, Zombies, Oh My

Speaker 3 42:19

anymore .

Speaker 2 42:19

Yeah , Disturbing on so many levels . It reminds me of the mouse study they did . For we're gonna get back to maize . I gotta talk about the mouse study . It reminds me of mouse study that they they used to figure out if epigenetics was really a thing with generational trauma , where they would , um , basically just randomly electrocute mice . I think it was like if they stepped on a certain part of the floor of their cage they would get electrocuted and then over many generations of mice because they breed fast , same thing , like the descendants of those mice would just not go over there because they knew that some part of them knew that it was dangerous . Um , that's disturbing on so many levels . First of all , not very nice to other sentient beings , but also I would .

Speaker 3 42:59

I would like to think it didn't actually happen . I think it's just an analogy . Well , I mean but I haven't bothered looking it up because I don't want to know .

Speaker 1 43:05

This doesn't surprise me at all , because I was in the army . So I mean , that's basically what basic training is in the army , is they just ? Every time one person does something wrong , they make an example out of that person and then hope the rest of the group will now start to police each other is there any cultural conditioning that claire went through that they're undoing in your story ?

Speaker 2 43:29

I'm just throwing it out there .

Speaker 3 43:30

I don't know uh , not to my knowledge yet , but I haven't asked them we'll find out , I think I'm sure if there is , they'll tell me eventually um what ?

Speaker 1 43:41

what does maze stand for it's ?

Speaker 3 43:45

not an actual maze , is it ? No ? No , it is not .

Speaker 3 43:49

Um , I just , I just needed an anagram uh for uh something , so I just put it stands for monsters , aliens , zombies , etc yes , I got aliens right so I I was trying , I was working through a whole bunch of other things , trying to make some title out of all the other things like vampires and werewolves and uh other creatures and monsters that I intended to throw in there , and so monsters just kind of became a , uh , a collection , an umbrella term for all the vampires and everything , which is probably inappropriate on my part . But yeah , monsters , aliens , zombies , etc .

Speaker 2 44:30

I can't wait for the aliens to appear . Yeah , I really can't .

Speaker 3 44:33

Which they kind of already have .

Speaker 2 44:35

What Did I miss ? This Okay .

Speaker 1 44:37

Which comes first , the vampires or the zombies ?

Speaker 3 44:41

The vampires are there already . The zombies show up later how did where ?

Speaker 2 44:45

when are the eight ? Which ? Which chapter is the aliens ? How did I miss this ?

Speaker 3 44:49

uh , chapter one what , what ? At the bistro I need to go back and reread this if you , if you read the uh , so they're not like in in there , uh , but at the very Okay , this is going to be a spoiler . At the very end of chapter one , it's mentioned that Bella Vista explodes because it is struck by an asteroid that carries alien parasites .

Speaker 2 45:16

Oh see , this is what happens when you try to read things in between work hell I read chapter one this is also what happens .

Speaker 3 45:22

Yeah , this is also what happens when you read things that things in between work . Hell , uh , I read . This is also what happens . Yeah , this is also what happens when you read things that the author has not finished .

Speaker 2 45:29

That makes a lot of sense . Okay , so that actually leads me to my next question , which is like what type of zombies are they ?

Speaker 3 45:36

um , there are actually uh , multiple different types of zombies in here , because I wanted multiple different types of zombies because , like I said , I can never decide on one thing . I'm gonna have slow zombies , fast zombies , bacteria zombies , virus zombies , um , radiation zombies . There is uh parasite zombies , uh , but yeah , there's all of them . There's also , uh , one sentient zombie . Okay , I have a question and we might need to bleep this out , but I need to know , because I don't want to spoil anything is cla .

Speaker 2 46:00

I have a question and we might need to bleep this out , but I need to know because I don't want to spoil anything . Is claire also a zombie and a vampire yes , okay , okay , I was like I think . I think that's what's happening here , because they're also eating an arm like a drumstick so it can't just be a vampire ? Is it because they didn't get enough blood , vampire blood .

Speaker 3 46:20

Yeah , so they got just enough to turn . Cordelia's original plan was to turn them just enough and then leave them absolutely starved and hungry and then bury them so that they could just sit there and suffer and be aware of the fact that all of their food is walking right over their head and they're just sitting there starving and can't reach them . But yeah , so while the vampire blood was still taking effect , that's when they got their head and they , they're just sitting there starving and can't reach them . Uh , but uh , yeah , so while the vampire blood was still taking effect , that's when they got infected by the original um bacteria that came in off the meteorite that crashed in right next to them , and so both of them wound up affecting claire at the same time , and so they kind of became this weird hybrid .

Speaker 3 47:02

And uh , I do make a stupid joke later . Uh , when , uh , their blood is being tested and the scientist examining is like , oh my god , you've got like both . You're both a vampire and a zombie and they're both just kind of like coexisting in there , and claire just looks at him and says , is this like a common thing ? And the scientist just says no , this is like some silly convoluted

Character Healing and Resident Evil Inspiration

Speaker 3 47:25

concept . Some subpar author would come up to explain why their character is so special .

Speaker 2 47:33

Are we allowed to keep this or do we need to bleep it out ? That's your choice .

Speaker 3 47:37

You can keep everything , I don't mind .

Speaker 2 47:38

Oh okay , I think it'll make people understand . It'll come out eventually yeah , yeah thing I don't mind .

Speaker 3 47:42

Oh okay , I think it'll make people , it'll come out eventually , yeah , yeah , you know , I think spoilers to a degree uh , just make people want to get into a book and see how you got to that point . Some spoilers , anyway , I think there are some spoilers . I definitely give away the ending , but also , you want to see how they got there yeah , yeah , exactly , and it was .

Speaker 2 47:58

I'm glad that I was picking that up because I'm like okay , at first I was like , oh , I definitely thought that they were just a zombie because I thought it was about the blood , but now it all makes sense .

Speaker 3 48:08

Yeah , I like having this theory and idea that with certain zombies , if they manage to consume enough that their brains and bodies start to heal themselves , bodies start to heal themselves . Uh , so with claire they have the opportunity to both consume blood to heal themselves and , uh , brains and body parts to heal themselves , which makes them harder to kill than either vampires or zombies .

Speaker 1 48:34

And I like yes , uh , how much healing can they get from like a chicken wing ?

Speaker 3 48:41

from a chicken wing ? Probably not a whole lot . It does take a lot to eat to to heal up but I do like the idea point .

Speaker 1 48:48

Can you eat a chicken wing and get that hit point ?

Speaker 3 48:51

oh yeah , sure , one hit point , but um , go ahead . I I just kind of like the idea of that being a further explanation of why zombies are so resilient to damage and and such because their body has a natural healing factor that comes from consuming and a lot of them don't really .

Speaker 2 49:09

I think that's actually makes a lot more sense when I see zombies slowly rotting away . Uh , like well , how are you still here 10 years later ? But you're also rotting ?

Speaker 1 49:17

yeah , it's hard to believe that is claire , a nod to claire redfield from resident evil uh , yes , I did get the name from claire redfield .

Speaker 3 49:30

Like I was saying earlier , resident evil 2 was . It was the game that introduced me to zombies and , uh , to this day it maintains a special place in my heart yeah , I think I I remember seeing like on tv the , the , the trailers for resident evil 2 .

Speaker 1 49:45

I didn't even know that resident evil 1 existed at the time , but like the commercials would come on tv , you'd hear the sony like warm , and then uh , and then just resident evil 2 , and then it should like it was wild because it had the like the cctv type camera view and it like looked like you were like watching it like a movie , which was so bizarre , for back then you didn't see anything like that when did it come out ? Yeah , 1997 , late 90s .

Speaker 3 50:16

Wow , we were about children yeah , I remember playing it back then and just being absolutely the best at it , and I've I've tried playing it again since then and I cannot get the controls down oh , I tried to play the original resident evil um a few years ago back when I was doing youtube and I was just like I got really frustrated because I'm like these controls are ridiculous .

Speaker 1 50:39

How did anybody play video games ever back then ?

Speaker 3 50:43

it's kind of like trying to play octodad octodad octodad ? Yeah , is it a dad who's an octopus ?

Speaker 2 50:49

yeah , it is okay it's a game .

Speaker 3 50:53

It's a game where you have to control all of his limbs individually and they do not function very well . So you're sitting there trying to like just grab a glass of water and your arm is just flailing all over the place like you have absolutely no control of it and you're trying to like take care of your human kids while also maintaining the the cover that you are actually an octopus .

Speaker 1 51:15

Nobody else knows that you're an octopus . They don't notice that you have eight limbs no , because you're wearing a , you know a suit yeah , you're wearing khakis and a polo shirt yeah , you're wearing clothes like a human is octodad gonna show up in maze ?

Speaker 3 51:29

oh , that would be wild , I mean , but um if everything's , I do not have any plan you know , maybe , maybe they're the aliens yeah , yeah , and they and they are able to walk among us because they wear clothes you're just gonna be walking down the street one day , see an octopus wearing a suit and just go . Just think they're on drugs or something sir , what did I eat ?

Speaker 1 51:52

this is a wendy's . What do you want to order ?

Speaker 3 51:57

and then they're just like nothing with octopus in it , and go to mcdonald's get the .

Speaker 1 52:02

Uh , the mcfishing yeah the full of the filet-o-octopus . Claire seems to be a bit disappointed with the zombie apocalypse oh , definitely yes I feel is very realistic for your , for your story about magic and vampires and zombies and octodads getting Filet-O-Fishes at McDonald's . This feels very real because if there was a zombie apocalypse I'm sure it would be very disappointing .

Speaker 2 52:36

Yeah , but I think they wanted a zombie apocalypse . They're disappointed by this zombie apocalypse not what they were expecting .

Speaker 3 52:42

Yeah , they're disappointed by the fact that the zombies don't seem particularly threatening . Um and uh , that that is . That is another uh hint that claire is not necessarily human . Uh , the fact that they are also a zombie , uh , they , they , um , they register to the zombies as a zombie and so they're not being attacked yeah , my favorite

Evolution of Generational Humor

Speaker 3 53:05

.

Speaker 2 53:05

One of my favorite lines was claire said that they're kind of cool when you give them a chance , referring to the zombies .

Speaker 3 53:11

Yeah , I had a line in there . Yeah , there was a line in there , I think it was . I I can't remember it off the top of my head , but it was a line that was used by . I hate to say it , I stole the line from Donald Trump .

Speaker 2 53:25

Oh well , maybe you made better use of it .

Speaker 3 53:32

I think I made funnier use of it . Yeah , basically that they're not that bad once you get to know them , or there's good people on both sides , or something like that . And I hate saying that I took that from Trump , but yeah , I mean , he's a gold mine for crazy ideas .

Speaker 3 53:48

Um , definitely yeah not not to go off on another tangent , but for quite a while there I I used to go on to twitter and just say the absolute stupidest , most insane crap that I could think of , and I had to stop doing that because all of his followers would just agree with it .

Speaker 2 54:07

Oh no .

Speaker 3 54:08

And all the people who disagreed with that believe that . The people who would say such are so stupid that they would actually believe what I was saying , and so I had to stop saying that .

Speaker 2 54:18

This sounds very similar to you , Dan , in your experience with jokes .

Speaker 3 54:22

I watched .

Speaker 1 54:23

You have to evolve the yeah , you made jokes because of trump yeah , I I used to joke about things , but then I realized that I like sometimes people don't know I'm joking , even though to me it's plainly obvious and it's just like oh , am I just , am I just spreading misinformation ? Uh , there was , there was this uh , youtuber , he's around , he's still alive , he's still a YouTuber , he's still alive , he's still a person not a zombie .

Speaker 2 54:48

Who's this , John ?

Speaker 1 54:49

LeJoy , it goes by JacksFilms and a long time ago he used to make a lot of videos where he was like we're gonna make up fake news articles , put them on Facebook and see what people see . If people believe them , you know like and , and it was like . He was like you have to put in a little bit of truth and then something crazy . And it was funny , it was fun , it was hilarious to see the , the headlines that would come out of it . Um , but I I haven't been back to watch his channel in a long time and I wonder if he has regret about that , because basically he just was doing fake news .

Speaker 3 55:29

He was doing the misinformation , except he was doing it for jokes , but people just started believing it yeah , even even the onion had to evolve and rethink how they were doing things , because people just believed what they were saying .

Speaker 2 55:42

Yeah , yeah , I don't know what to think about that . One of my favorite comedians from way back in the day is Jean Lajoie , and they had a song called Show Me your Genitals , which is really a great song . Yeah , but it's the same thing . It's actually like a very clear , if you are paying attention , it's a critique of objectification of women in popular music . But a lot of people did not get . They either loved it because it they thought it was great to objectify women and tell them to show them your genitals , or they were offended . I was like it's not , it's not . He says it's not . Uh , it's not sexist if I'm saying it in a song . That's right , bitch , now take off your thong and show me your genitals . Yeah , how more clear could that be I ?

Speaker 1 56:25

it has a strong opening line . He starts with women are stupid and I don't respect them .

Speaker 2 56:31

That's right , I just have sex with them . Yeah , that song is ingrained into my brain forever .

Speaker 3 56:36

Now you have to put Jean .

Speaker 2 56:37

Lajoie in your story too .

Speaker 1 56:39

And then there's people out there that like they hear that and they're not hearing the joke . They're hear that and they're not hearing the joke . They're like yeah , I agree women are stupid , yeah , and I don't respect them , and I'm going to make a youtube channel where I debunk all people's worth based on this sole idea yeah , I put a .

Speaker 3 56:58

I put a joke on threads just a couple weeks ago , uh , mocking someone who uh basically said that you could live on $2,000 a year . And so I said , yeah , of course you can . I mean , if you can't make , you know , rent and bills and utilities and car payments and all like just went off on this massive list of things and I said , if you can't make all that work on $2,000 a year , then you need to stop paying for avocados all the time . And people just went off on me like they did not get the joke at all and a lot of people popped in there to agree with me also and I'm like , oh yeah , I gotta keep . I gotta remember that the world isn't the same . It was back when I started developing my sense of humor and I I can't make jokes like this anymore . I can't joke about the fact that you know you can live on $2,000 a year . That makes perfect sense . Yeah , is this ?

Speaker 2 57:54

millennial humor . I'm just realizing . Are we having to evolve Like was this how we joked about things when we were young and now it's like uncouth ?

Speaker 3 58:01

Ironic nonsense .

Speaker 2 58:02

Yeah .

Speaker 1 58:04

I mean , like Generation X was about , um , like edgy humor . You know your dennis leary's uh out there being saying that . You know , the problem is that everyone's just easily offended , um , and like we were an evolution of that , where we were like we're just going to say dumb , random shit .

Speaker 2 58:26

As a mockery of it . It's also sort of hipstery , yeah .

Speaker 3 58:30

Yeah , I used to point out stupidity through mockery and just completely insane concepts and thoughts , but nowadays , yeah , people either believe you believe that or they agree with it and then gen z .

Speaker 1 58:42

I think their approach might be to then take what we're we're saying , not see the um , the satire of it , and just be like look at these dumb millennials and the things they believe are true I think we need like a phone of gen z option in our podcast , like I really just want to phone my co-worker for rude right now who's a millennial , so they can translate yeah be like for rude .

Speaker 2 59:04

Tell us , tell us how this is uh aging .

Speaker 3 59:08

They would be honest about it , yeah I will say a few people saw the joke .

Speaker 2 59:11

I appreciate them good , I saw it , but also I'm realizing it's , it's our generation , uh-oh yeah , are you a gen z-er ?

Speaker 1 59:20

do you have nothing better to do on a saturday between the hours of 10 am and 5 pm eastern time sometimes some other random times depending on what's going on in our schedule and you just want to phone in and tell us what the young people are doing ?

Speaker 2 59:36

explain riz and why claire has it . Who is the rizzler ? I need a name . It's claire , actually . That's's the funny thing about Claire in your story is that they are incredibly charming and charismatic because they're so awkward . Like you , love them . I want to be their friend .

Speaker 3 59:54

Sorry , I felt like Googling something real fast and , yeah , I stopped listening . I'm so sorry .

Speaker 2 1:00:00

That is okay . Team ADHD , that's what we do for each other here .

Speaker 3 1:00:04

Did you say something I was supposed to respond to ? I'll respond .

Speaker 2 1:00:08

Oh , I don't even remember anymore . It's because I was talking . We all just tuned out .

Speaker 1 1:00:15

Yeah , we don't pass Do you know who the Rizzler is .

Speaker 3 1:00:20

I have heard the name . I am not familiar with the whole backstory of it .

Speaker 2 1:00:24

I was saying that Claire is the Rizzler .

Speaker 3 1:00:29

Okay , hold on one sec . Let me google risler so I can pretend like I know who that is . Oh yeah , the risler , I am familiar , I'm familiar with this person's work ? I believe I am familiar with a person who is not only efficient but a professional at picking up women . What ? Yes , I , I know that wait , no , that is not .

Speaker 2 1:00:49

What definition ? Are you looking at the riser ?

Speaker 1 1:00:52

dictionary no , that is wrong I don't know urban dictionary or dan , have you been telling me , as a millennial , you've been trans .

Speaker 2 1:00:58

Are you like having a little mermaid moment where you're calling a fork , uh , uh , thingamabob , yeah , thingamabob , and you brush your hair with it ? Have you been telling what risler hasn't been wrong this whole time ? Because , dan , you told me that risler means somebody who's very like , charming and charismatic and seductive . Yeah , okay , but yeah , that makes sense but the urban dictionary is telling us something different . Who's telling the truth ?

Speaker 3 1:01:23

yeah , well , I mean it does make sense if you if you I mean a professional at picking at women is somebody with a lot of charisma and charm , right ? That's true yeah , yeah , so I can see how that would translate I guess that's a type of rizzler or a convicted felon .

Speaker 1 1:01:38

Um , let's talk about the magic in your world . What , what is veritas , magic ?

Speaker 3 1:01:46

uh , veritas is a word , um , I stole from some really old dead language , uh , which basically translate to translates to verbal . It's verbal magic using uh words and uh proper names and such to to summon spirits and ancient elements and to manipulate the universe .

Speaker 2 1:02:11

And why does like ? You hinted this so far . So if this is a spoiler , you can say you have to keep reading Leah

Claire's Magical Abilities and Connections

Speaker 2 1:02:17

. But it seems like Claire , even pre being half zombie , half vampire , has some magical abilities as a vampire hunter and some connection to an entity called Gishban . Am I saying that person's or that entity's name right , gishban ?

Speaker 3 1:02:32

Yes , Gishban .

Speaker 2 1:02:33

Gishban .

Speaker 3 1:02:34

Yeah , that's another thing . I think I stole that one from Old Sumerian which was a word for like a fire . Okay , that makes sense , because they for like a fire .

Speaker 2 1:02:45

Okay , that makes sense , cause they do have fire magic .

Speaker 3 1:02:48

Yes , so I don't think I don't . I don't think I have explained that in the story yet . Gishbon is one of the original fire elements who's been in existence since the dawn of time and generally exists anywhere where there is fire , which is why , in the third chapter , claire notices that a car is on fire and they get the idea of going back and summoning Gishbon to help them out with the things , but with what's going on . But they don't have a proper sacrifice for it , and the sacrifice for Gishbon is knowledge and the sacrifice for Gishbon is knowledge .

Speaker 3 1:03:28

So I don't think I've gotten into it yet , but the original sacrifice Claire made was one of their journals that they set fire to while summoning Gishbon , and so they got the knowledge of the journal and got a nice story out of it , and so they're like , yeah , I'll hang out with you for a while , and as long as Claire just keeps making semi-regular sacrifices of of , um , not common books and knowledge and such , then gishbon will probably hang out and so claire is a book burner .

Speaker 2 1:03:57

Is what you're saying uh , they only burn their own books okay , I think that's fair , especially if it's to get magical powers . Good trade .

Speaker 3 1:04:06

Yeah , yeah , they sacrificed their old , old , uh early childhood journals .

Speaker 2 1:04:13

Oh , okay , Cause there's also a reference in your story to an uncle who seems potentially very magical and and , uh , if I remember correctly , there was journals that they had sent to clear .

Speaker 3 1:04:23

Yes , yes , uh . So , uh , the uncle who's ? Oh , geez , again , I can't remember my own story . Sometimes , uh , I can't remember the uncle's name , but uh , he , he is basically , uh , indiana jones , who runs around exploring the world and learning ancient secrets and ancient magics . Is he Ohio James ? Maybe I'll just go Narniana Jones on that one . Bring that into reality . But yeah , he is in trouble right now and he sent some items to Claire for safekeeping and again hasn't come up yet . But honestly , the way I write and the way I just go off on tangents and such , it's a chance that it will never be written , so I don't mind talking about it . But yeah , I sent a bunch of stuff over to Claire and through basically just digging through the journal and such , claire manages to find the name of Gishbon in there hidden secretly , because if you just write Gishbon's name in there , your books just burst into flames .

Speaker 2 1:05:31

Wow , I'm going to try that . Jinx Dan , I wouldn't mind if I held it officially .

Speaker 1 1:05:36

Yeah .

Speaker 2 1:05:37

The protagonist in your story , claire , is a non-binary vampire hunter who then becomes a half vampire , half zombie . Non-binary person ? Yes , and this is , I think , the first story that we've read that has a non-binary lead character . Can you think of any other ones , dan ?

Speaker 1 1:05:54

oh , I don't know , I feel .

Speaker 2 1:05:56

I feel like there's been at least one a main character like a main as in , like the main protagonist , like a r Rick of the world , because Claire is the Rick of maze .

Speaker 3 1:06:06

Good point . I can't think of a zombie story , but I do know that John Scalzi has a story called Locked In , where the main character's gender is never mentioned .

Speaker 2 1:06:18

That's amazing . Yeah , that's amazing , that's amazing .

Speaker 3 1:06:21

And if you go with the audio books , they have two different versions of the audio book One's read by Will Wheaton , actually , and the other one is a female narrator who , unfortunately , I can't remember her name .

Speaker 1 1:06:36

Are there any zombies in ?

Speaker 3 1:06:37

it Not really .

Speaker 1 1:06:40

Okay , Well .

Speaker 3 1:06:41

I'm I'll have to say no on that one .

Speaker 2 1:06:44

I feel like we're probably going to cut this out , because I don't remember which author this is , but I know that there is a black woman author who wrote a book similarly , where they don't reveal their race the entire way through the book and it actually reveals just how important race is , because you're constantly trying to peg what race the people are as you're reading it and I'm wondering if that's the same experience with this book , where you're like , okay , like , is that impulse to like , label and then assign all of these assumptions around them show up ?

Speaker 3 1:07:12

Honestly enough , I never even noticed that their gender had never been mentioned throughout the entirety of the story , until I was reading a review about it .

Speaker 2 1:07:21

That's really interesting . Do you think that's because of who you are as a person too that it wouldn't have come up for you ?

Speaker 3 1:07:27

That's a possibility . I mean , I can only perceive reality from my own perception , so I can't really say from other people's but for who I am . It just felt normal and natural to not even discuss gender .

Speaker 2 1:07:39

I kind of love that . Oh , gender-free world . I have a slight bias as somebody who's non-binary and I realize that gender is meaningful to a lot of people , but it's also not really how I see the world , except for unfortunate socialization . That's basically how I think about it at this point , but for zombies , I think this may be the first time I know you have 1,800 books or something like that now on your list .

Speaker 2 1:08:03

So maybe somewhere in there it exists . I know there's a trans main character by lm juniper's uh book uh , how we began and how we end but not a non-binary character trans . Main character in my story , uh zeds also oh , excellent , we're gonna have to read that one next I think I started reading zeds you did yeah , but it's been a while I don't remember it .

Speaker 1 1:08:24

Um , that was because maze didn't grab me right away , because I don't want to read about mazes , I want to read about zombies . I came here for the zombies , ollie , so I started with Zeds , but I didn't finish anything yet because I have to use my eyes , and my eyes have limited amounts of time I can use them .

Speaker 3 1:08:46

That trans character from Zeds did get transferred over to Maze also .

Speaker 1 1:08:50

Because Maze has everything .

Speaker 3 1:08:52

Maze has everything .

Speaker 1 1:08:54

Including characters from your other book .

Speaker 3 1:08:57

Yes , and I don't know if you've looked at chapter five yet .

Speaker 2 1:09:02

I just started to and then I fell asleep because I was tired . I'm sorry , there's a ridiculous part in there that I'm probably going to remove .

Speaker 3 1:09:04

Looked at chapter five yet , but I just started to and then I fell asleep because I was tired , I'm sorry there's a ridiculous part in there that I'm probably going to remove , um , because uh , uh , claire the uh , the main character of zed's , not claire the sub character from uh , or sorry , of maze , not the sub character other claire from zed's this is .

Speaker 2 1:09:24

They're two different .

Speaker 3 1:09:24

Claires to be clear yeah , okay , there's two claires that's very real . There are two claires in this chapter . Uh , and claire is actually extraordinarily excited to meet another claire , and there's a whole little tangent that go on with that . But um , they , uh I'll just say shanta claire , because that's claire's full name uh decides to just attack the other guy that's in the room and this creates a paradox that resets time back to before being attacked , because that character is in my other stories . That's a little further in the future . So they can't die .

Speaker 2 1:10:00

No wonder I understand why it's called maze now .

Speaker 3 1:10:05

And it's a ridiculous little joke in there . That's literally only there for me , because I don't think anybody else would have read Zeds also and made the connection that this character is the same character from that one also , but it so I'm not sure that's going to stay in there , but I thought it was fun and silly .

Speaker 2 1:10:22

It sounds like an important project to weave it all together . I mean that is the goal of maze .

Speaker 1 1:10:29

I think you need to leave it because that's a wonderful nugget when you get to it and that's a very dead pool thing to happen .

Speaker 3 1:10:32

Yeah , I'll try and find a better way of working it in because , uh , unfortunately this part that leads to it is the character is trying to sexually assault another character and I was thinking about the fact that there's always sexual assault with in these and I'm not sure I want to leave sexual assault in there . So I got to find another way reason for Sean to clear to want to kill this guy . But I mean , that just seems like the quick and easy way of just saying , yeah , he's worth attacking , but I'm not sure I want to leave that bit in there . I'll find another reason for it .

Speaker 1 1:11:02

Yeah , maybe he refuses to denounce um bill cosby his hero bill cosby it's like stop wearing the sweaters , stop doing the impressions he's a monster , or ?

Speaker 2 1:11:19

some other form of just like , uh , base level sexual harassment . Like I had a boss that , uh , when I was in my same-sex partnership , would like make jokes about me , either like getting together with my female co-worker , literally being like , oh you two would be hot together . Or talking about lesbian porn in front of me and I certainly would have loved to have killed him that's basically what it is .

Speaker 3 1:11:44

This character is just like your basic form of toxic masculinity . He was like , oh , step aside , little lady , I'll take care of the fighting and such . That's enough . And then , uh , he slaps her on the rear . And that's when chantecler steps out and he's like yeah , I'm done with this .

Speaker 1 1:11:57

I'm not dealing with that anymore yeah , you know , I think that's fair and I think so he .

Speaker 3 1:12:03

That's how we should all be moving forward , I concur I could also just flat out make the guy a nazi , and I guess punching him would be perfectly fine if he's a nazi , does he also have like 44 billion dollars in a social media platform ? I . I think he'd have to . He used to be . Uh yeah , we'll make him a former social media . Nope , hold on , there's a word in there .

Speaker 1 1:12:28

Tycoon , tycoon I don't know .

Speaker 3 1:12:31

I kept coming up with conglomerate and I'm like that's , that's not a right word . Tycoon , he's a former social media tycoon .

Speaker 2 1:12:39

How do you know when you're a social media tycoon ? When you own a social media platform , I guess oh , okay , I sorry I adhd'd and got lost and didn't realize we were talking about anymore well , if I learned anything from many tycoon games , um , you start off with a lemonade stand and then through um hours and hours of hard work , you upgrade that lemonade stand until you own Twitter . You forgot that you have to put on very special boots first .

Speaker 1 1:13:11

Yeah , you have to have boots .

Speaker 2 1:13:12

Yeah , you got to put them on which Claire has some very interesting boots . I love finding ways to segue .

Speaker 1 1:13:17

Nice segue .

Speaker 2 1:13:18

Claire has some boots , which gives me hope that Claire maybe will also climb the corporate ladder and be their own tycoon With her boots , their boots their boots ?

Speaker 3 1:13:26

Yeah , they were . They were definitely on their way there .

Speaker 2 1:13:28

Yes , yeah , Cause there . Can you tell us what the boots and are they actually available on Etsy ?

Speaker 3 1:13:32

Uh , to my knowledge , no , they are not available on Etsy . Uh , they are basically just your , your standard . Uh , cliche goss boots like combat boots that they've modified to put blades in the toes , so when you click the heel blade pops out .

Speaker 1 1:13:49

Well , I have news for you . Yes , they are available on Etsy . You found them .

Speaker 2 1:13:56

I found the boots . We need to put that in the show notes along with the website .

Speaker 1 1:14:02

Yeah , I was pretty sure they'd exist , but I never looked it up , so I couldn't say with absolute certainty they don't look comfortable to wear , though , because they basically just carve out part of the soul and put a knife in there and then , like , part of the soul is a flap that just flaps over the the knife and , uh , imagine , as you're walking on it , it's like it's like walking with a rock in your shoe . Probably it could probably it . It's like walking with a rock in your shoe , probably .

Speaker 2 1:14:26

It could probably work . If it's like a platform combat boot , yeah , make it nice and thick so there's like a slot in there for it .

Speaker 3 1:14:34

Nice six inch platform drag queen boot .

Speaker 1 1:14:36

Yes , you have a fishbowl in the back , knife in the front .

Speaker 2 1:14:42

A piranha bowl in the back so that when it breaks it becomes a weapon itself yeah , piranhas do you just like grab the flopping piranha and then like throw it at people like what do you do with a piranha ?

Speaker 1 1:14:54

you just kick them in the direction , but not with your , because then you're gonna stab it .

Speaker 2 1:14:59

You gotta kind of like grab it and float , throw it at somebody .

Speaker 3 1:15:01

I think oh if you use the side of your foot , yeah , it makes the piranhas extra mad , don't mess with the mad piranha .

Speaker 1 1:15:10

If you're going to throw piranhas at somebody , make sure they're mad first .

Speaker 3 1:15:16

Oh God Must anger the piranhas first . Maybe give them a little taste of blood , so that they're also bloodthirsty .

Speaker 2 1:15:21

Can piranhas become vampires ?

Speaker 3 1:15:23

Vampirana .

Speaker 2 1:15:26

That's another story . I feel like I'm just assigning you stories now , ollie , now write this . Write this for me . You're basically chatting BT , but better .

Speaker 3 1:15:35

While not written , I do have the story of Henry Shovel Guy .

Speaker 2 1:15:40

I'm very excited to read . Henry , do you want to just tell us the story of that in a future episode ?

Speaker 3 1:15:46

It's still growing and changing , but yeah , we can do that .

Speaker 1 1:15:49

That would be wonderful . Yeah , we'll send it to DJ Mole when you're finished .

Speaker 3 1:15:55

I tagged DJ Mole .

Speaker 2 1:15:56

I tagged DJ Mole in that episode and they did not respond and my feelings were hurt . You never know . I just want them to know we appreciate Shovel Guy . Yeah , I feel like this will be a shots fired situation . So Am I creating a beef on the internet now . But , nobody else cares , including DJ Mori .

Speaker 3 1:16:14

Maybe they like Johnny Depp and just don't like watching their own stuff or hearing the reviews about it .

Speaker 2 1:16:18

Yeah , that's fair , that's probably smart .

Sharing Stories for Free Online

Speaker 3 1:16:21

Only tell me good things , please , although I would like to hear what's wrong with my story so I can change and grow and make them better .

Speaker 2 1:16:28

The only thing I would say is make it easier to navigate which one's next .

Speaker 3 1:16:33

Yeah , yeah , I keep looking at my website and I'm like , oh , I got to add a button at the bottom . Like every time I log into there , I got to put a button at the bottom to click to the next one to make it easier , because right now I've got two versions of the story one which is the small chapterizations of it , and then I've got the uh , the bigger collection of them , which is like the entire first chapter in one page , instead of the entire chapter being broken up into 10 posts , and I should I should make that easier yeah , we can clip this out , but I that was that was literally my only feedback for you because I started reading the little ones and then I found the compendiums .

Speaker 3 1:17:06

I was like , oh okay , this is , this is really like I can just like keep reading it , although it did get me started the little ones because they are just easy , right like you got a little blip and then you can go on to the next yeah , I remember , um , when I first wrote zeds , the first time I wrote zeds and posted that online uh , somebody got back to me and said you know , you really need to keep this under like 500 words or so per post because people lose their attention spans , and so I just started making them , uh , 666 words , because it's just a fun number . Yeah , so I started making all my posts 666 words exactly .

Speaker 1 1:17:41

And um , plus , you also don't want the people that that trail off after 500 words , like you like , if you're . If you want them to read a large story , those aren't the people that you want , so just let them . Let them go .

Speaker 3 1:17:56

The ones that like a longer story will stick around for longer than 500 words yeah , also when it's online and if you close a page you lose your space , it is a little bit easier to go with the shorter versions and the longer versions , but I still like putting the longer versions out there , because then you get the whole story and it's not . You don't have to take those breaks in between it If you get caught reading it . You know it's easier to just keep reading than being caught reading it and then you're like oh well , I'll save this for next week .

Speaker 2 1:18:26

I did appreciate that as , like my bedtime story thing Cause then I would just be like I'm going to read just this little bit , and then I know that I will not fall asleep and have my phone smash into my face reading it that actually I forgot to ask you this what made you decide to put it on a website and let it be freely available for folks ? I kind of to put it on a website and let it be freely available for folks .

Speaker 3 1:18:47

I loved it . There's no barrier to enjoying it . I don't know if I've mentioned this , but I'm really bad at finishing stories Right . So I eventually just thought to myself I want to share my stories . I'm not necessarily looking for profit in all this . I just want to put my stories out there and start and get some feedback and talk to people about my stories . Like this , this right here , is the absolute dream for me to get to sit here and just talk non-stop about my work and my stories and everything going on to it , which seems like super self-centered .

Speaker 1 1:19:16

But hey , that's what I'm here for when you write up , when you write a story , you should be allowed to be self-centered for a little while yeah , that's . Because that's the reward of doing all the work .

Speaker 2 1:19:26

You're not writing a diary . That's the reward . Yeah , I get to talk to .

Speaker 3 1:19:30

Funny enough . On multiple occasions I've started writing Claire's diaries , just so I can have that out there too .

Speaker 2 1:19:38

I would enjoy Claire's diaries .

Speaker 3 1:19:39

yes , yeah , but yeah , I just want to put the stories out there , and if I ever actually managed to finish a story , there's a strong chance I'll probably take it off the website and publish it . But for the time being , until that happens , I just want it out there . I just want people to be able to read it .

Speaker 2 1:19:56

That makes sense . I mean creators . I'll speak for myself . I enjoy when people like my art , like I like getting feedback about it or how it could be better . There's nothing worse than the void of threads . So thank you , ollie , for every time you've liked something I posted because I'm like nobody . Nobody cares about my cats , but I true , yeah , I , I love that .

Speaker 3 1:20:14

Threads tells me how many people have seen my post and then I go back and check it and it says I got like zero likes and I'm like , okay , well 700 people have seen that's not a single , a single person like that .

Speaker 2 1:20:25

Yeah , that's not really good . It's not good for the mental well-being , but I love that you just share stories .

Speaker 3 1:20:31

Yeah , thanks for that .

Speaker 2 1:20:32

Because we should . We're storytellers by nature . I think we want to share them .

Speaker 3 1:20:37

Yeah , I feel like that's basically my whole purpose in life is just share stories . I wish I could profit off of that and live off of that , but for the time being it is what it does um one of one of my favorite books of all time , which has no zombies in it . Uh , john dies , are we discussing a different book ?

Speaker 1 1:20:57

the the author originally wrote , wrote them , wrote it chapter by chapter and uploaded it to a website . This was , of course , like 2005 , 2006 . So it was a different time , but they published after . That website gained a huge amount of traction because people found that there was a book on the internet that they could read for free . And then it became a really big name because of the book John Dies at the End became a movie . So I don't think that there's anything wrong with putting it out there for free , because you're allowing people to freely consume it , to enjoy it at their own time , without having to order it on Amazon and wait for it to show up or download it on their Kindle or wait for the audio book to come out like me , right .

Speaker 2 1:21:54

Well , frankly $3 is a barrier for a lot of people . Yeah .

Speaker 3 1:21:58

Yeah , even on Kindle .

Artistic Freedom and Escaping Reality

Speaker 3 1:22:00

Can I make one quick correction ? Yes , john Dies at the End does have a zombie in it .

Speaker 2 1:22:06

It does .

Speaker 1 1:22:07

That's right At the beginning .

Speaker 2 1:22:09

That means we can talk about it on the show .

Speaker 1 1:22:12

Yeah .

Speaker 3 1:22:13

It does also have the meat man , which I don't think counts as a zombie , but still it's very interesting .

Speaker 1 1:22:18

It's like a possessed pile of meat .

Speaker 3 1:22:20

Yeah .

Speaker 1 1:22:21

Yeah , the sequel titled this Book is Full of Spiders . Seriously , Dude , Don't Open . It is kind of a zombie apocalypse story that has like parasitic monster spiders that crawl inside of people's mouths .

Speaker 3 1:22:38

Yep , that's horrible . That whole series was just absolutely hilarious , and it's also an inspiration for the way I write .

Speaker 2 1:22:44

Well , I'm glad that it got brought up then .

Speaker 3 1:22:46

Because if you read those books , they're complete nonsense . I'll tell you that .

Speaker 1 1:22:50

Yeah , I can see that too .

Speaker 3 1:22:52

It's nonsense with a story and a purpose . But when you're reading that , you're just looking at some of the concepts and ideas and situations that are put in and you just sit there and you're like this is nonsense and that's what I like about that , which is also what I try to go with for Maze , because I want people to look at this and be like this is ridiculous .

Speaker 2 1:23:14

That's why it's great though .

Speaker 3 1:23:17

I think , ridiculous writing . I think it also helps people . Just , it helps people escape reality , and escaping reality is what a lot of fantasy and fiction is about . It's helping you get away from your life and put you into something that's a little more I don't know manageable . Even like horror stories . They're putting you in situations where you can be like I know this is just ridiculous enough for me to understand that it's not reality . But it's also an escape from from my reality into something different and new yeah , people are doing that in a lot of different ways these days .

Speaker 1 1:23:50

Uh , I recently read about how some people are just digging holes because they want to escape reality oh yeah , the phenomenon of digging holes is a whole thing apparently um , it's there's , it's an article . I think it's something like the um the masculine urge to dig holes I saw that exact article but yeah , um , you know , people want to escape , I want to escape , I , I want out . Let me out , ollie , let me out .

Speaker 1 1:24:18

I have the keys I'm doing my best and uh , that's the important thing as storytellers is offering an escape from reality , and we've been doing it since before there was written word it is fictional and it's an escape from your life .

Speaker 2 1:24:46

There's for me anyways . There's always something in a story that gives me some guidance or something to think about in my own life . That helps in in ways that you never expect . When you open a book or you don't really know because you don't know right there's like a moment of I have no idea what adventure I'm in for . The basic premise sounds fun and then , you know , in your book I start thinking about my own family trauma , for example , but like in an interest , but like in a , it's like one step removed . So it's easier to process in that way , and that's why I think like storytelling is yeah , it's just necessary for humanity and capitalism sucks and you should be able to share your stuff and have basic universal income , and I will always turn any conversation back to that simple fact Capitalism sucks , you're out of here .

Speaker 1 1:25:25

That's what Ali's book is about .

Speaker 3 1:25:29

Most certainly . If I could just focus more on writing and less on having to work 12 plus hour shifts for six days a week , I feel like I could probably manage to finish something .

Speaker 2 1:25:43

Honestly , that feels like a theft from you , but also from everybody else that doesn't get to read as much , or like doesn't get to read as much from you , or like the , the version of this , the longer term version of this , once you've worked it through and included things like piranhas , like we hopefully , like I believe you're gonna keep doing this . I know you said you start lots of new things . I do . It's taking that time away from you . I think that's like cultural theft . I don't know how else to say it . I'm always the Debbie Downer in these podcasts . I'm mad about it . Only , dan , you deserve to write . That's all I'm saying .

Speaker 1 1:26:19

Yeah , and not only that , but we've made it so that art has to have a transactional property to it . If you want to do this , you need to justify your time spent by receiving money from people who think it's worth their money and their time .

Speaker 3 1:26:40

That's how they fill it on everything .

Speaker 1 1:26:42

There's gatekeepers that want to tell you no , you can't do that . You have to do something else , because we already have somebody who we've decided their time is worth our money and you're not that person . Um , and that is absolutely stealing so much art and so many stories from us , because people who have stories to tell don't get to tell them because they're just trying to pay their bills and they have people in their lives telling them not you , because that's unrealistic . You can't be a writer , you can't be an actor , you can't make clay pots .

Speaker 1 1:27:17

You have to go to the job factory and get on the get on the conveyor belt where the paychecks come from , uh , to receive your very own paycheck at the end of the week so that you can feed paychecks to your screaming children you're both told basically that story yeah , yeah , and a lot of people are , and I think , I think that we're we're reaching a new sort of renaissance now with the internet , where we're able to reach people who we realize are also want to do this and are like us , and nobody , nobody , can really actually tell us not to absolutely .

Speaker 3 1:27:57

With the advent of the internet , you can't be stopped . Nobody can stop me now , and that is except for my internet provider . They could probably stop they can stop you ?

Speaker 1 1:28:06

yes , but then you can go to the coffee shop and use their internet , true , I guess ?

Speaker 3 1:28:11

there's always gonna do shut down the internet for everybody , just to stop me yeah , they're not gonna stop you .

Speaker 1 1:28:16

They gotta stop everyone .

Speaker 2 1:28:17

First this is starting to I'm starting to have dystopian visions yeah , no . Well , I have like 50 more questions for you about maze and I think we're going to have to do a part two . That's my hypothesis , because how long is this episode , dan ?

Speaker 1 1:28:33

Long yeah .

Speaker 2 1:28:35

Pardon , Pardon Holly .

Speaker 3 1:28:37

I think we're at two hours right now . I'll tell you I've got another two hours before I have anything planned , though .

Speaker 2 1:28:43

I actually have to go and put up bat houses , that I have been sitting on my front and uh and I have to edit this week's podcast for tomorrow .

Speaker 1 1:28:52

Well , there we go , everyone we'll we'll have to have ollie back when , uh when , when enough time has passed for us to absorb all the information in this episode yes , I think we ate a bit of your brains , ollie .

Speaker 2 1:29:06

Thank you for sharing .

Speaker 1 1:29:07

Thanks for sharing your brains , which were filled with other people's brains .

Speaker 3 1:29:10

Tune in next time for all of you .

Speaker 2 1:29:12

part two Very rich brains in this episode . That's amazing . I'd pay to go to that private university . There you go . That's a way to make some money , all of you .

Speaker 1 1:29:27

Ollie has consumed all of our brains at this point . So , uh , we're gonna , we're gonna call that our episode , and and come back and uh , when we've regrown our brains and ollie can feast on more of those brains but yeah , I've been lying to you this whole time .

Speaker 3 1:29:42

I'm not a zombie , I'm energy vampire , like what's his face from what we do in the shadows .

Speaker 1 1:29:47

Yeah , you know I feel that , but also I haven't had any caffeine in a while , so that might be part of it .

Speaker 2 1:29:54

It could just be the fact that we are hermit people . We never talk to anybody else but each other .

Speaker 3 1:30:01

I feel that one too .

Speaker 1 1:30:02

But in the meantime , everybody should grow their brains for Ali to feast on by reading the zombie homework we have for episode 65 . Lindsay King Miller's Z word . Ali , are you going to read the Z word ?

Speaker 3 1:30:20

I finished it two days after you told me about it .

Speaker 1 1:30:23

All right , so that's a yes yes .

Speaker 2 1:30:26

And do you recommend it ? Do we have your gold star of approval ?

Speaker 3 1:30:31

I will tell you , it's definitely a lot more spicy than I was expecting . We warned you .

Speaker 1 1:30:37

That's true , we should warn everyone . Well , I've been saying it's three pepper spice . Well , how many peppers would you give it , ollie ? Uh five five .

Speaker 3 1:30:49

I agree it's a full five I would give it a five out of three um , but yeah , lindsey , uh , she is a disaster bisexual horror writer , um , self-proclaimed disaster .

Speaker 1 1:31:06

Uh and uh . The z word is available as an audio book or a physical copy , whatever . Whatever floats your boat , whatever plucks your chili pepper , you can get it whichever way yeah , just read it in private if you like it in your eyes , or if you like it in your ears , oh , I like it in my ears .

Speaker 3 1:31:24

Yeah , don't listen to the audio book at work .

Speaker 1 1:31:27

That's very true . I did and it was okay , because I have headsets .

Speaker 3 1:31:33

I listen to it on the speakers with my work cameras in vehicle .

Speaker 2 1:31:38

Perfect . And also you should make sure you go to ollieatsbrainscom and start reading Maze and also Zed . It sounds like I got to start reading Zed for our next chat , zed is , it's a .

Speaker 1 1:31:49

There's an RV involved , ooh .

Speaker 2 1:31:51

They go camping . This sounds very Canadian , especially because it's called Zed's Camping , zed's .

Speaker 3 1:31:57

I did mention Zed's last time I was here because I think I brought up the fact that I had three characters that just completely vanished and I forgot about right and uh it was . It was in zeds . They were in that rv at the start of the story and then , by the time everybody came out for the little meeting , I'd completely forgotten about them yeah , so you gotta find out what happened to those characters .

Speaker 1 1:32:18

Maybe they disappeared and went into uh , went into maze uh , they're probably in the narrator yeah which is a whole other story .

Speaker 3 1:32:26

That that uh is is on my website um , but yeah , there we go , everybody .

Speaker 1 1:32:32

Uh , if you want to give us a call , you can . You can . Maybe you've got a book , you know , like like ollie , maybe ollie has a book and ollie wants to uh tell us what their book's about . And uh , you can call with an elevator pitch or just a question or just say hi , but you can call us at 614-699-00006 .

Speaker 2 1:32:55

There's only three zeros . You can also email us , which will get a reply all and probably end up DMing me on Instagram .

Speaker 1 1:33:00

Yeah , instagram's faster Email is a nightmare . Yeah , instagram's faster Email is a nightmare . Yeah , and voice messages we'll get them eventually . They'll get into our ears somehow .

Speaker 2 1:33:14

Yeah and Ollie , we hope to have you back soon . Keep surprising the people with your presence .

Speaker 3 1:33:19

Absolutely hope to be back .

Speaker 2 1:33:21

It's been an honor to be in the presence of a 2,000-year-old zombie . Thank you so much for spending a little bit of that time with us .

Speaker 1 1:33:28

Yeah easily the oldest zombie that I know of . Absolute honor being here . Don't forget to subscribe , always happy , rate and review , like Ollie did , I'm sure , and help us spread like a virus . Yeah . Help us infect people .

Speaker 2 1:33:42

Bite somebody .

Speaker 1 1:33:43

Let us give you an infection . Give them a little earworm . Help us infect people .

Speaker 3 1:33:46

Bite somebody . Let us give you an infection . Give them a little earworm .

Speaker 1 1:33:49

Yeah , Just like RFK Jr . Perfect . Thanks for listening everyone .

Speaker 2 1:33:53

Bye everybody .

Speaker 1 1:33:54

Bye , ciao , I'm dead .

Speaker 3 1:33:57

Au revoir .