On the Fear of God podcast, my friends Reed Lackey and Nathan Rouse are continuing their annual Spooky Season tradition of rewatching an iconic horror movie franchise. This year they are revisiting Wes Craven’s Scream franchise, and they invited me on, along with Brandon Grafius, to talk about the very first Scream from 1996.
This sort of nostalgia is catnip for me, especially coming on the heels of my birthday. One of the things about getting older is that you understand more and more how ephemeral culture really is: books, movies, songs, celebrities, and institutions that were once famous either fade into obscurity or, if they do manage to stick around, take on a very different meaning and significance than when they first appeared (hi, Miramax film logo!).
You can listen to our conversation here. And if you sign up for the Fear of God Patreon, you’ll get bonus content and well as early access to new episodes.
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.
Also, I’m still collecting reader questions for the final episode of the Destroyer of Worlds podcast. Feel free to leave them in comments here or over at Goodreads using the Ask the Author feature of my profile page.
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.
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.
This week I return to the Fear of God podcast, where Nathan Rouse and Reed Lackey have been hosting a month-long ’80s party. Join Nate, Reed, me, and fellow guests Blake Collier and Steve Beckley as we talk about the Chiodo brothers’ 1988 classic Killer Klowns from Outer Space and the latest season of Netflix’s ’80s nostalgia-fest Stranger Things.
You can listen to the podcast episode here. If you want more 1980s goodness, you can check out Reed and Nathan’s discussion of Lost Boyshere, and their take on Hellraiserhere. And they’ll be wrapping up the ’80s fest next week with a more in-depth look at season 3 of Stranger Things.
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.
Last week I made a return visit to the Fear of God podcast to talk about one of my favorite horror movies, Session 9. We also chatted a bit about the Lovecraft Country TV series.
You can listen to the interview here. I also have a follow-up blog post where I delve into some of Session 9 director Brad Anderson’s other films.
And if you missed my first Fear of God appearance last June, when we talked about the Lovecraft Country novel, you can find that here.
On this week’s special finale episode, Blake Collier and I close out the 88 Names podcast with a freewheeling conversation about virtual reality, what we learned from our guests on the ‘cast, and the very strange pandemic year we’ve all just lived through. Although this is the end of the road for this particular project, Blake and I will be teaming up again in a couple of weeks for an appearance on the No Proscenium podcast, hosted by Noah Nelson.
Today on the 88 Names podcast site, we have a written interview with Johanna Pirker, a professor and researcher for games and VR experiences at the Graz University of Technology in Austria. Johanna is also the director of the Game Lab Graz. In 2018, she was selected by Forbes for their 30 Under 30 list in Science. You can read the interview here.
