interviews

Tomorrow night (5/4) at Brick and Mortar Books

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Tomorrow night at 6:30 PM I’ll be appearing at Brick and Mortar Books in Redmond, WA, to chat with author Alexandra Oliva about writing scary stories. If you’re in the area, we’d love to see you in the audience.

In related news, last week’s Reddit AMA was a blast. You can check that out here. Although the AMA is officially over now, I’m still keeping an eye on the thread, so if you’ve got a question that hasn’t already been covered, go ahead and post it and I’ll either answer it there or on the upcoming reader Q&A episode of the Destroyer of Worlds podcast.

And speaking of the podcast… I was in the middle of the Reddit AMA when I discovered that the WordPress podcast plugin I’d been using had stopped working. After some troubleshooting, I figured out that this was caused by an irresolvable conflict between the plugin and the software used by my web host’s servers. I managed to restore the podcast feed by switching to a different plugin, but that led to a new problem where the feed URL is now slightly different, and when I tried to update the URL on various podcast directories, a couple of them—looking at you, Spotify—stubbornly refused to accept the change. All of which is to say I’ve still got a few kinks to work out, but for now you can listen to the podcast here, on Apple Podcasts, on Amazon Music. or on Google Podcasts.

Ask me anything on April 26

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FYI: On Wednesday, April 26, I’ll be hanging out on the r/books subreddit, doing an Ask Me Anything session. The event will begin at noon Eastern/9AM Pacific and continue throughout the day. This will be my third Reddit AMA—see my previous appearances here and here—and it’s always a fun time.

And as mentioned yesterday, if you have a question you’d like to hear addressed on the Destroyer of Worlds podcast, you can leave it in comments here on the blog or post it using the Ask the Author feature over on my Goodreads profile page.

Got any questions for the podcast?

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Episode 3 of the Destroyer of Worlds podcast dropped this morning. I think it’s a particularly good one: we talk about the Lovecraft Country HBO series and contrast it with the novel, which gives me an opportunity to talk in-depth about storytelling choices, so if you’re at all interested in my thoughts on that, I’d recommend checking it out.

As we mention at the end of the podcast, our next and final episode will be devoted to listener questions. Please feel free to add yours in the comments below. While our main focus will be on Lovecraft Country and The Destroyer of Worlds, I’m happy to answer queries about my other books, my writing process, or pretty much anything else. My wife, Lisa, may join us for a bonus round, so if you’ve got any questions about research, feel free to add those as well.

Podcasts and more podcasts

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This morning I posted our first full episode of The Destroyer of Podcasts, in which co-host Blake Collier and I discuss The Destroyer of Worlds and related topics. You can find it here.

I’ve also been appearing on a lot of other people’s podcasts over the past couple weeks. Because I’m promoting a new book, there is a certain amount of inevitable repetition, but each of these conversations had its own flavor and they all went to different places:

For all Nerds Show — This was my third visit with the “Multicultural Maestros,” DJ BenHa Meen and Tatiana King, and as always it was a pleasure. They were early supporters of both the Lovecraft Country novel and the HBO show, so it meant a lot to hear how much they liked The Destroyer of Worlds. (I also learned that I am an agent of chaos whose appearance on the show causes weird things to happen in the larger spacetime continuum. Sorry about that.) Big thanks to For All Nerds alumnus Mellow Brown, who first got me on the show back in 2017.

The Virtual Memories Show — This was also my third time speaking with Gil Roth, whose podcast specializes in interviews about “books and life.” Be sure to check out his backlist of other author interviews, including a recent conversation with one of my personal favorites, John Crowley, whose name appears in the acknowledgments of The Destroyer of Worlds.

Talking Scared Podcast — A UK-based horror fiction podcast hosted by Neil McRobert, who lives somewhere out on the Manchester Moors and conducts remote interviews when his internet hasn’t been knocked out by the local werewolves. We go in-depth about the “white guy writing from multiple black perspectives” issue; Neil, who is incredibly polite, was worried I’d be bored by the topic, but as I never tire of explaining, one of the main joys of storytelling for me is that it lets me imagine how the world looks from other points of view. P.S., he’s got Margaret Atwood coming on the show very soon, so you’ll want to check that out as well.

Vox Vomitus — The one thing that did go right during my recent trip to Portland was this whimsical and freewheeling chat with Jennifer Anne Gordon and Allison Martine Hubbard. We went live starting at 3 PM, and you can see me tempt fate here by joking about the snow, not realizing that it’s going to stick and cause real problems in just a few hours. The subject of karaoke also comes up during the conversation, but fear not, I don’t burst into song.

Paul La Farge (1970-2023)

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I am surprised and saddened to learn of the death of novelist Paul La Farge. He was the author, most recently, of The Night Ocean, which offers a fascinating fictional take on the real-life relationship between H.P. Lovecraft and his young fan and collaborator Robert H. Barlow.

Because of the Lovecraft connection, the Los Angeles Review of Books asked me to interview Paul when The Night Ocean was published in 2017. A month later, when he came to Seattle on book tour, we met up for coffee. In my all-too-brief interaction with him, he came across as a smart, thoughtful, and incredibly friendly guy. I was really looking forward to seeing what he’d write next.

You can read my interview with Paul here. And you should definitely check out The Night Ocean. As I write in the interview intro, it’s “one of those impossible-to-categorize books that seems to constitute its own genre.” My favorite kind, and a good legacy to leave behind.

Discussing J.C. on the Fear of God podcast, plus Seeking the Extraordinary with Michael Nathanson

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My friends Reed Lackey and Nathan Rouse have been doing a John Carpenter retrospective on the Fear of God podcast, and they invited me on to discuss Escape From New York, The Thing, and Big Trouble in Little China. We also talked a little about my forthcoming Lovecraft Country novel, The Destroyer of Worlds. Links are below:

Part 1: Intro, a few words about The Destroyer of Worlds, J.C.’s top ten films, Escape From New York, and The Thing.

Part 2: More about The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, and rating the films on the FoG meter.

If you enjoy the podcast, you should know that Reed and Nathan now have a Patreon with bonus content, which you can subscribe to here.

Also: back in May, I recorded an interview with Michael Nathanson for the Seeking the Extraordinary podcast, in which we talked about my writing career and how it only took me thirty-five years to become an overnight success. Because The Destroyer of Worlds hadn’t been officially announced yet, I had to be coy on the “What’s next for you?” question, but it was a really fun conversation. You can listen to it here.

A visit to No Proscenium

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No Proscenium founder Noah Nelson, who was our guest on episode 7 of the 88 Names podcast, invited me and my co-host Blake Collier to come hang out on his podcast last week. You can listen to the conversation here.

If you haven’t already, I’d also highly recommend checking out the rest of the No Pro website. It’s an incredibly useful resource for learning about immersive technology and art, and now that the pandemic lockdown is almost over (fingers crossed), I look forward to experiencing a lot more in-person immersive entertainment.