Show Notes
John and Kenric got to sit down and have a chat with fellow beard wearer Christopher Golden abouth is career in writing, working with Mike Mignola, working with Amber Bensen, and on how to create the greatest and most confusing book in history.
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Transcript by Steve, the drunk Robot (he's back on the wagon again)
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John - Christopher Golden Interview.output
[00:00:00] Christopher Golden: This is Christopher Golden and you're listening to spoiler country.
[00:01:00]Kenric: United armies. And it's part of ours or I'll come back to us for the country. I'm kinda Gregan that's mr. Hartley and today on the show. Well, it's Christopher Golden. Isn't it.
John: It is, it is, he was a fun dude to talk to you, man.
Kenric: Yeah, he's a cool guy. I really, really liked, uh, having, uh, having that chat with them. I want to, I want to talk to him again
John: Yeah. He was a lot of fun. He was a lot of fun.
Kenric: Yeah. He wrote he co-wrote some books with, uh, what's her name?
John: Amber Benson from Buffy. Tara.
Kenric: Benson from Buffy
John: They go
Kenric: the ghost of Albion. Yup. Which you can actually find online.
They did some, uh, some cartoon work with it.
John: Yeah, the BBC has some old, some, not all, but some. I guess they're all down. Cause it's flash animation, but you know,
Kenric: which is weird. I thought you thought flash was going to be like the next big thing. And then it was a flash.
John: We'll [00:02:00] flash. It wasn't a big thing for a while, until it became super exploitable. People start getting into viruses through it.
Kenric: Oh, is that what it was?
John: Yeah.
Kenric: They just have no way to lock it down,
John: Yeah. There's so many exploits in the flash and they keep updating it. But I mean,
Kenric: but no one uses it. Now. Now a lot of the, uh,
John: Bobby's block it.
Kenric: other brothers don't even support it
John: Yeah.
Kenric: Like, I don't think Chrome or Firefox supports it.
John: Yeah. Not, not the weight. Like they hit, they'd have to do it to do actual flashlight animation stuff, but.
Kenric: Anyways
John: He also worked with Mike Minola on, on Hellboy and Joe Golem and lady Baltimore coming
Kenric: Joke home is so good.
John: Yeah. And he's got a, For lack of a better term, a shit ton of novels.
Kenric: Yeah. Dude is very prolific, but let's get into it because. Christopher is a great guy to listen to, and he's a lot of fun. And if you listen to, if you are on Twitter, he's he tweets all the time and he's not scared to talk about his political views.
John: It's a lot of fun.
Kenric: So let's get into it. Let's listen to Christopher [00:03:00] Golden in his own words.
all right, guys, welcome back. And we're excited today because we have a special guest, uh, you know him from novels, such as the farrier man, , Joe Golem and the drowning city, snow blind Indigo was Charlene Harris. , hell but hell Bay. Really? They just say, hell Bay, hell
John: You did.
Kenric: The last army in Baltimore or the steadfast 10 soldier in the vampire with Mike Macola.
Christopher Golden. Thank you so much for coming on, man.
Christopher Golden: Hell Bay was the, uh, like, two thousands corn
Kenric: Yeah, it might've been lots of
John: the good version. Oh wait, just
Christopher Golden: Hey, Hey. Hey.
Kenric: It's Michael Bay's version of helmet, L boy.
Oh, that's hilarious, Chris. Thanks for coming on, man. This is awesome.
Christopher Golden: , it's my pleasure, man. I'm happy to be here.
Kenric: Yeah, you gotta, you are a [00:04:00] hard working, man. You look you up on Wikipedia or all the stuff that you have you for lack of a better word. You are super prolific.
Christopher Golden: You know what, dude, I have been writing full time since 1992. I quit my job in 1992. And, if I, if you look me up and I look super prolific, it's called making a living.
Kenric: I love it.
Christopher Golden: And it is true. I am super prolific, but it definitely is about making a living. It's also about having interests that, that take me into a bunch of different mediums and a bunch of different genres.
Kenric: Yeah. You're primarily known for horror or supernatural stuff, but what kind of
other,
Christopher Golden: that's where my heart
Kenric: yeah, well, it kind of helps growing up in Farmingham, right? So
Christopher Golden: Yeah. Yeah.
Kenric: help you with the horror stuff? Framingham. Did I say Farmingham?
Christopher Golden: Yeah. Yeah. Framingham, you know, Framingham actually was a [00:05:00] great place to grow up. , but it was the, it was the breeding ground for a million suburban horror stories.
Kenric: Yeah. So like Michael Myers.
Christopher Golden: Yeah. I mean, honestly, like the first time I saw Halloween, I looked at it and I was like, that might say Haddonfield, Illinois, but it looks a hell of a lot, like the street, like around the corner from me.
Kenric: we grew up in a small town called Bremerton, Washington. Uh, and it's a lot of the same things. When you saw the small suburban horror stories, like a nightmare on Elm street, it was like, Oh, there's an Elm street right down the street from my house. That's great.
So you're, you're a big horror fan, obviously a big Halloween fan. You told a great story of Halloween and the fake hand. And I'm hoping that maybe I can convince you to repeat it.
Christopher Golden: yeah, it's funny. When you talk about Framingham, my mom still lives in Framingham and my, my mom, my mom was born with, I can't remember the name of the condition, but you'll have seen it with, there is some professional [00:06:00] baseball players is a baseball pitcher. I've seen a couple of times with her left hand.
She has, not, she was born with not much of a left hand. and so, She was a performer on stage in college. She went to Marymount college in Tarrytown, New York, and she performed off Broadway in the city. and so her parents had, gotten her, made this sort of rubber or plastic prosthetic that would go over her hand so that when she performed it, wasn't something that would draw out the attention to the audience.
And as a little kid, I found this thing and she hadn't used it in years and years. Obviously when I found this thing, I was like, this is cool by the way. Can I swear on your show?
Kenric: can fucking swear
Christopher Golden: Okay, good. Cause it's, it's unnatural. I catch myself not wearing.
Kenric: don't trust people who don't swear. So, you know,
Christopher Golden: yeah. So, so anyway, so, so the hand was so fucking cool. And, and so what I did this one Halloween.
As I had a, Frankenstein's monster [00:07:00] mask. and I was probably, I don't know, 10 or 11 years old. I don't remember. and I put on a big coat, and I went out door to door to trick or treat. And every time I went to a door, I would go to, to shake hands with the person who would answer the door and when they would grab.
The hand that I extended, I would yank my arm back and scream when they were holding the prosthetic hand in their hand. and I, I think I almost killed mrs. Nigh, who was the woman who lived like two doors down from me.
John: That's
Christopher Golden: the living shit out of
Kenric: He's such a little fucker, man.
Christopher Golden: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it gave me such pleasure. You know, like I just, I really liked it. I liked the fact that I scared the shit out of her, but, and pure way,
Kenric: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Christopher Golden: I wouldn't have like, you know, gone outside her window and banged on it and like flashed a knife and then run away a cackling. there, been kids in my neighborhood who would do that, but it wasn't, it wasn't going to be me.
but it [00:08:00] was Halloween. That was the whole spirit of it. That was what it was all about. No.
Kenric: I love that story. I heard you, you tell it, but. I knew there was more to it so
John: That's awesome.
Kenric: I want, I so want to get a hand just to do that, you know? Cause I just, Oh my God. So called Jack the night, stalker I myself, as are you a huge fan of the show and it's kind of shocking to find how many people just don't know about it
Christopher Golden: Well, it's not shocking though. Really? I mean, I think that, you have to have lived, in a very narrow window of time. I've been a certain age during that narrow window to have seen the show. because then it came on later in, in reruns, but it wasn't something that was popped up a lot, until, X number of years ago for a while it was on Netflix. So I actually have this cold track and I stock her tee shirt [00:09:00] and I was in my local supermarket one day. And this girl who was probably. 17 or 18 years old saw my shirt. And she was like, Oh my God, great tee shirt. I love that
Kenric: Oh, that's
Christopher Golden: And I looked at her like she had six heads. I was like, how do you know this show?
And she's like, well, I watched all of the X files on, Netflix. And then when I finished it, It's suggested that to watch next. And so I watched it and I loved it and that just made me so happy. But unfortunately it's not on Netflix right now, but yeah, that was the show. look, you know, that there are certain components and I'm actually toying with the beginnings of, of a sort of career memoir.
there'll be like six people who want to read it, but that's fine. I mean, it's mostly for me. And one of the things I'm talking about in the section I'm working on now is just the few things that are really the sort of no central elements to the beginnings of me, you know, being passionate about this stuff and culture.
So my dad, my [00:10:00] parents split up when I was like 11, but call check was on. I want to say it was like in well, whatever year it was the following year. It only ran for one season. It was like 20 episodes. And the following year, they ran it at 11 o'clock at night, from beginning to end the whole, like, you know, every night at 11.
So, um, I had seen an ad for it and I convinced my dad to wake me up. So I go to bed at like nine, however old I was. And then he'd wake me up to watch culture at 11 o'clock and then I'd go back midnight. Um,
Kenric: a dad that see in the passion and his son inside says, all
right, I'm going to
Christopher Golden: You know, the thing is like, I think I, there are a lot of things that my dad fucked up. , but that's like a really good thing that he did for
Kenric: right. It's a nice memory.
Christopher Golden: yeah, it was a really, like, it was a thing where he definitely saw, like, this is the thing that's important to this kid and why not? Cause he was going to be so,
so why not? So [00:11:00] he would wake me up and I'd watch cold shack and, and go back to sleep. So culture and, Marvel comics, tomb of Dracula comic book series were two of the big sort of foundational elements.
Kenric: Do the two at Dracula is a great book. I I'm kinda, I wish they would bring that particular style back, you know, and habit it's, it's hard to, it's hard to pimp, you know, it's, it's hard to put a point on it. Like I have like, like one through nine, I don't have number 10 because it's just, I just can't afford it.
You know, I just, I just can't bring myself to spend the money on it. And then I
Christopher Golden: listen, you know, they're, they're collecting it now in, in, I mean there are the omnibuses, but they're collecting yeah. In the complete full color, you know? And that's a book that, you know, if you said to me, okay, you can only ever do one Marvel comic forever from now on.
Kenric: That'd be the
Christopher Golden: Uh, and you get to pick which one, anything you want.
[00:12:00] It would be that
Kenric: Did you see the animated version of that? That, that
Christopher Golden: I have the Japanese
Kenric: Yeah, it played. So we're close. We're close enough to Canada that in the eighties you would get KBOs, which was a local station in, out of Vancouver and it was channel 12 and they played that on Halloween back in like 1984, 85. And I remember sitting at my mom, so my mom's super religious, so I am.
12. No, I'm 10 84 and 10. So I was like, I was 10 or 11. I'm sitting in Obama's in my mom's room because her and my dad had a TV in there and I could go in there and watch TV. No one would be there, you know, so I could kind of get away with watching what I want. And I remember I would, I was like, that was on.
I was like, Oh my God, this is amazing. And I'm watching it. And every time. My mother came into the room, like switching it to channel 11, watching, like it was like taxi rerun, you know, and then she'd leave, switch it back. Okay. I didn't miss anything. And it was, it was crazy. And that took me forever to [00:13:00] find that.
And it wasn't until I was a manager at a video store in the mid nineties that I was able to just order that movie, you know, and have it come in and no one else even knew what the heck it was. And I was like, Oh, I gotta get this because I remember watching
Christopher Golden: I didn't know about it for years. , but what's really cool about it is that it's really faithful.
Kenric: Yeah.
Christopher Golden: You know, I mean, it's not necessarily the same story, but the whole look and feel of it
Kenric: Yeah.
Christopher Golden: is super faithful to the original comment.
Kenric: So how much is culture? Is there a lot of culture back in Joe Gollum? Was there a lot of influence
there?
Christopher Golden: you know, that's a good question. I mean, it looks so I would say. if you go back to my very first novel, which is called of saints and shadows and led into there's seven books in that series, but the first one is hugely influenced by both culture and, the character Hannibal King and children's drag, with Joe Golem, I [00:14:00] think there are, there are so many elements in that stew.
I mean, So we, I guess we have to say, start with the conversation about working with Mike because, you know, one of the reasons that Mineola and I have always gotten on well together and always worked well together is even though our frames of reference are very different. There is a lot of overlap, and our interests in folklore and all of that stuff really heavily overlap.
And so, Joe Goldman, the drowning city was Mike's idea. but when it came to write it, I did tap into a lot of the tonal stuff with, not necessarily culture. I mean, I can kind of see that, but for me, it's like, 1930s and forties, Hollywood movies. It's where you get the Joe character from, you know, and there's a reason he has the hat and the coat, and it looks like, you know, if Humphrey Bogart were a much [00:15:00] bigger dude and got punched in the face a bunch of times, it's kind of what Joe looks like.
Kenric: right.
Christopher Golden: yeah, he looks like a boxer who lost one too many fights, you know?
Kenric: I love that analogy. That's
Christopher Golden: and I think tonally that, that there is some culture and not to, you know what I mean? They're, they're all. You know, they, they swim in the same stream.
Kenric: Yeah. It just makes me want to go and do a cultural marathon. It's been a long time.
Christopher Golden: Yeah. I actually realized the
John: I've actually never seen Caltech.
Christopher Golden: my, my middle child, my son Dan is 24 and he's a graduate student and he's, he's quarantined will isolated here with us at home. And he's teaching and taking classes from home for his graduate degree. And he loves horror movies, and I realized that they were talking, he's never seen culture.
Kenric: Oh yeah. Johnny just
Christopher Golden: so I realized I've got to fix,
Kenric: Yeah, you gotta, you got to fix that.
John: Yeah, I plan. I've never I've, I've heard of it, but I've never actually seen it before. So now I want [00:16:00] to watch it.
Christopher Golden: Oh yeah. It's. Just the, just the whistling theme song alone and the, you know, the melodramatic performance of Darren McGavin, you know, one of the, I have only a few signed things in my office, but one of them is assigned a picture of, uh, of Darren McGavin as culture,
Kenric: Oh, that's cool. That's I found that not when I was a kid. But when I was a tester for Microsoft and I worked, yeah. I worked on doing what was on Vista with Xbox three 60. And it was streaming media from your Vista machine to your Xbox three 60. Right. That was the component that I worked on. And one of the scenes that we used was a culture cultural scene. And it was like the intro. It was like him typing on his typewriter. And then, and I was like, what is this? You know what I mean? I didn't know what it was. I was like, what is this
Christopher Golden: And [00:17:00] then you discovered it was the greatest thing
Kenric: Yeah. Right. Well, this guy does this, uh, this guy who came in and he goes, Oh, that's cool. Check the night stalker. And he was quite a bit older than me.
He was like, in his sixties, early sixties, he was like, it was on in the seventies. And it was only on for a season. It was, it was fun. You should check it out or you should try to find it. And then I made it my mission to try to find it online and.
John: So, if anyone wants to know, you can watch all 20 episodes on nbc.com. They're all up
Christopher Golden: that's great.
Kenric: There you go. nbc.com.
Christopher Golden: if you're going to do that, you have to first watch the two full length TV movies. They were written by Richard Matheson.
Kenric: I love
Christopher Golden: So the first TV movie is called the night stalker
Kenric: It's called the
Christopher Golden: and the second TV movie is called the night strangler. And then the 20 episodes of culture.
Kenric: There you go. I don't know if I've seen those movies.
Christopher Golden: was, I was a kid. I mean, I, I was born in 67. so I'll be 53 this year. And, and so whenever culture [00:18:00] came on, I can't remember what year it was, but I was kid, I was a little, you know, but it was the greatest thing ever.
Kenric: Oh my God. I didn't, you know what? I don't think I've ever saw those movies. I only ever saw the TV show.
Christopher Golden: Yeah. And, and the second movie by the way takes place in Seattle.
John: What.
Kenric: so going to go watch those now I've got to find them,
Christopher Golden: Yeah. It's all about the buried, the buried Seattle.
Kenric: uh, th the underground city,
Christopher Golden: Yeah.
Kenric: which isn't really all that much. Have you been to Seattle?
Christopher Golden: in, in the night strangler, it is, but you know,
Kenric: Yeah. Have you, do you come to Seattle often or ever like for some of the cons what's that.
Christopher Golden: I've never been there. I've always wanted to.
Kenric: Oh, you should come for Emerald city when they finally have it going. The Emerald city Comicon.
Christopher Golden: Well, you know, someday maybe they'll invite me, we'll say.
Kenric: God. We've got to send this to him and say, what are you guys doing? Just look at all this stuff. Look at all these people. What was it like working with Joe Hill? [00:19:00]
Christopher Golden: well, I've never worked with Joe. we,
Kenric: did the forward.
Christopher Golden: to his, First collection of short stories for his first book, actually 20th century ghosts and time. I, in fact, I just literally just wrote, the introduction to a new, like super limited edition of that book 15 years later. And so my, I wrote a new introduction to my introduction.
that's basically all about how, when I first met Joe, I didn't know that he was Stephen King's son.
Kenric: Yeah.
Christopher Golden: so we became friends, and went to the movies and hung out and went to dinner and did all kinds of stuff. without me realizing that it, I wrote the introduction to this book and, I had a, I had a barbecue sort of big, a bunch of writers and artists and editors and friends came over and, and Joe was here and my friend, Rick who's since passed away, unfortunately, came up to me and [00:20:00] he's, from Maine, he was a horror writer from Maine used to be referred to often as the other par writer from Maine.
And he went to college with Stephen King
and. And he was here. I mean, he knew Steven college and, and after Joe left, Rick came up to me and he was like, come on, man. That's joking. And I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, I'm telling you. And, um,
Kenric: You're like does Joe Hill,
Christopher Golden: Yeah, exactly. And I felt like such an idiot afterwards.
Um,
Kenric: you know, he probably appreciated it though.
Christopher Golden: Well, you know, he really did look, this is a guy you'll have to read my introduction, but,
Kenric: All right. Well, I want to,
Christopher Golden: the whole point of the introduction is basically me saying how important it was for him to begin his career in a space where it didn't matter that he was Stephen King's son, because then once all the people started to come in and they were just like, Oh, you know, he got this contract and all this attention and all this marketing [00:21:00] and blah, blah, blah, because he's Stephen King son.
and for a period, there were always those trolls who would come out and say shit like that. But now we've gotten to the point where it, once again, no law, it no longer matters. So it didn't matter at first. And it doesn't matter now. And I think that's a really important journey that he's taken. So that, you know, sure.
There's still going to be some people who say who can talk shit, but he has more than proven that he, he
Kenric: lock
Christopher Golden: his talents or his own, you know what I mean?
Kenric: Locking key is phenomenal.
Christopher Golden: Yeah.
Kenric: know he was Stephen King son. I saw Joe Hill. I read lock and key. I'm like, this is great. You know, no clue until I think Johnny told me, he says, come with Stephen King's son. I'm like, what?
Christopher Golden: Well, the thing is that Joe Joe considers himself, I think in some ways a comic book writer first,
Kenric: that's cool.
Christopher Golden: yeah, which I think is, I think is good. You know, [00:22:00] he just, he loves the form as I do, but, but yeah, so, no, he's, you know, he, I would say the one thing that everybody should worry about with Joe is that he's.
A little bit too obsessed with the movie jaws. So just be careful if you, if you run into him, don't say anything negative about jaws. Cause he might cut you.
Kenric: well, I would love to have a conversation with them because his work is, you know, He does some phenomenal stuff and it's, it's, it's cool to see the journey, how he got there. Hey, um, you have a similar view that I have, and I think Johnny has the same one is that you're not really into critique it as violence for violence sake.
And
Christopher Golden: Yeah. I mean, it has its place.
Kenric: And that's what that was. What one of my question was going to be. Is there a place for it? And if so, you know where, and when.
Christopher Golden: look, I think it just depends on, it depends on the tone that you're going for. You know, look Robocop, to go back [00:23:00] a
Kenric: Yeah. I love that movie.
Christopher Golden: you know, Robocop has a lot of really disgusting violence, but it's there for a reason. I mean, it's there,
Kenric: it's meant to be over the
Christopher Golden: purposeful, you know, and when you're reacting to it, the reaction that you're having is a reaction that Paul Verhoeven wanted you to have.
Kenric: That this role reaction.
Christopher Golden: Yeah. Yeah. And so like, you know, when the guy's head explodes like a fucking watermelon on the hood of a car or whatever it was,
you know, he intends for you for, he, he wants to shock you, but he's doing it, , in a, in a way that is, I hate it. It's a weird thing because I guess it's everyone to their tastes.
Right. But, A friend of mine who shall remain nameless. I used to go to these when I was younger, I would go to these writers conventions. I still do. but in the days of VHS,
Kenric: Yep.
Christopher Golden: Several writers, including [00:24:00] John skip and a bunch of other people you'd go to a convention and they'd be like, dude, I just got a bootleg of this thing that nobody's seen except blah, blah, blah.
And you've got to come upstairs to the room and watch it. So it'd be two or three o'clock in the morning and there'd be 20 people huddled in a hotel room watching his bootleg of whatever. And you know, whether it be like doji legend of the overfeed or. You know, like whatever it might be and one time it was Guinea pig and I don't think I've ever seen Guinea
Kenric: No.
Christopher Golden: Um, don't
Kenric: Thank you.
Christopher Golden: um, it's, you know, there's a scene in good in Guinea pig with this person is being, tortured and, and the, the guy takes a, a great fruit spoon, which has cerated on the end and digs out this guy's eyeball with it. and the thing is this movie exists for no reason other than to, to push that envelope.
[00:25:00] Kenric: Like faces of death.
Christopher Golden: Oh yeah. I never would watch that shit cause face of death. Yeah. I would never watch that stuff cause I just thought, I just think it's putrid,
Kenric: Yeah. Well, face the death. That's all it is. Is death. One death scene after another. And apparently some are real, but most of it it's fake and it was just, I remember my buddy got it. And we started watching it and I was like, I don't want to sit through this. This is a snuff film.
John: Yeah, that's
Christopher Golden: the thing it's like, it's that if that's the only reason that you're entertained, that's a problem,
Kenric: yeah. You got issues.
Christopher Golden: so I just think, but I, but I think that there's, you know, there's a lot and listen, I, I love a good Dory movie depending on the movie. No, you go back to the original Dawn of the dead and the scene where the guy's wife or the, the, the woman's husband, like, like she thinks she's got him back and she's hugging him and he takes a gigantic, bloody, disgusting bite out of her shoulder.
Kenric: Yeah.
[00:26:00] Christopher Golden: It's shocking for more reasons than just the Gore, you know? So. You know, so I'm not saying I don't like gory movies. I do, depending on, on what it's there. And then as far as violence is concerned, you know, like again, I go, I've got nothing against violence and movies. but depending on what it is, I, when I was in college, I interviewed Clive Barker.
Kenric: yeah. Who, what was that
John: Oh, cool.
Christopher Golden: And no, I know Clive he's a, he's an amazing guy. Always has been incredibly supportive, including when I was super young, I was like, well, I met him for the first time when I was probably 20 or 21. and I was interviewing him. he had just screened, Hell raiser. He was screening hell raiser at colleges around the country.
And I was interviewing him and I, I asked him about blood and Gore and its uses and all of that. And he said, he said he had just been at a screening of Robocop in Chicago, speaking of Robocop again. [00:27:00] And he said there was a couple in front of him with their eight year old child with them. And he, and he, and this is folks, this is Clive Barker.
Okay. and Clive said, I love Gore, you know, bloody chunks and hands being blown off is great, but not for an eight year old that's any. And he said, that's not cool. And I just feel like we've lost track of that. You know, when my daughter was in the fourth grade, she's 17. Now, when she was in the fourth grade, one of her classmates parents would let, this girl stay up and watch the walking dead with them in the fourth, you know?
And I'm sorry that that's not, I don't know. Anyway,
Kenric: I think it's okay to try to maintain some innocence, you know?
Christopher Golden: Yeah. I just feel like, I feel like there's gotta be a line,
Kenric: Yeah.
Christopher Golden: and, and, you know, I don't know. Anyway.
Kenric: Did you ever read the book? [00:28:00] Like one of my favorite horror books coming out of the eighties and there's a series of them called the Necker scope by Brian Lumley
Christopher Golden: Yeah, of course. Yeah.
Kenric: and man that book gets super violent and super gory, But I wouldn't let my, you know, and I wouldn't let my 10 year old or my six year old read it, you know what I mean?
Or read, read from it to them. But I love that book. I love that series.
Christopher Golden: judge. Yeah. But you judge by the kids.
Kenric: Yeah. Yeah.
Christopher Golden: You know what I mean? Like you can gauge by the kid. I mean, not a six year old, but you know,
Kenric: Right.
Christopher Golden: look my, of saints and shadows, possessive shadows is filled with absolute over the top Gore and sex and violence. And you know, I've done other stuff that's in the same vein.
The books in that series tend to be, and that's fine, but I'm not handing it to a kid. And if you made it into a movie, I wouldn't want it to be made for, I wouldn't want. No, if it's going to be that gory, it it's for the audience that it's made
Kenric: for, yeah. [00:29:00] Yeah. And, uh, in 10 minutes, You basically write one of your great fears out that politicians no longer care for lying or that we even know that they're lying. They don't care anymore. You think we're there?
Christopher Golden: Yeah. Uh, well, look, um, I was interviewed probably 10, 12 years ago. and we're whenever it was. And, and I keep coming back to this interview because it was that thing where like, Oh, there's another horror guy. We didn't ask him the same question. We asked every other horror person, which is what scares you.
Kenric: That's a canned question,
Christopher Golden: don't expect you to give them a silver, real world response. And my response was what scares me most is that politicians no longer feel like they have to pretend that they're not lying to you. And that was then, now, there's like no facade whatsoever. I mean, the lies are just like, [00:30:00] I mean, it's insane.
So you have like Trump right now saying, Or a few weeks ago saying we have 15 cases in a week or so it will be down to zero by April little by, in the beginning of April, it will all be over. And now you have him every single day, even though this is on video, right? I mean, he's, you've got them on video saying that all over the country, every news channel in the world carried him saying that, but now ask him, he bald faced just says, I never said that. So.
Kenric: Yeah. This is a bold face lie. It's like, come
Christopher Golden: I would say what scares me the most is not the lies. What scares me the most is that the lies happened and nobody blinks,
Kenric: Right.
John: So you said lies in is keeping compounded and more and more lies. And it's that people just forget what the truth is.
Christopher Golden: Exactly. The thing is like, I know. Well, I I'm. I sort of know a couple of people who are in [00:31:00] the white house press Corps, but I actually personally know one of them and I just wish, and I don't want this person to lose their job, but I wish somebody in the white house press Corps would just say, you are lying.
Sack of shit. You're lying to everybody right now. Just call them lies. They're lies. And I'm not just talking about Trump by the way. I mean, this is like it's endemic to yeah. Yeah. So it's not, and again, like I'm not, I make no secret of my politics. Anybody who follows me on social media knows how I feel about everything.
Cause I don't hide anything. People come get messages all the time, sometimes from other professionals who say, aren't you worried, you're going to lose readers. You're going to blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, you know what? Fuck it. I'm 52 years old. I've been doing this. You know, for 28 years this year for, you know, and, and so if people don't want to come and read me, then I'll find something else to do.
You know,
Kenric: You don't want those people reading you anyways?
Christopher Golden: you know, I'm just not, I'm not gonna, you know, [00:32:00] it's fine. I'll, I'll go. I'll I, I have friends who work as baristas at Starbucks. I'm not afraid to do the same. That's fine.
Kenric: I like
John: I love it.
Kenric: So. I got a question for you and you can tell him if you don't want to, if you don't, uh, if the beginning is you don't want to talk about, and it's fine, you've, you've dealt with Alzheimer's in your personal life and from a few different, you know, relatives and I'm. Yeah. And I'm curious, how has this affected your writing in how you look at life in general?
Christopher Golden: Well, I mean, so, we have various theories about this in my family, but I've lost. so, I lost my uncle rich, and just recently lost my uncle, Brian. I have other relatives who currently are dealing with it. and weirdly I think that. Mo those might those two uncles, rich was a dentist and Brian was a [00:33:00] doctor and they shared a, shared an office in an old house in Medford, Massachusetts.
And, when they were doing this, it was at a time when dental fillings still had mercury in them. and so it's been positive, at least that it's possible. That it was mercury exposure, but I don't know if that's a thing, you know what I mean? Because the people in my family who didn't spend time in that building don't seem to have
Kenric: Any
Christopher Golden: Alzheimer's disease as a thing. so it's a weird, it's a weird thing, but suffice to say, you know, both my novel, the boys are back in town and my novel Wildwood road. are both about your racial identity and the loss of identity and loss of self, and definitely spring from the horror of, learning what it means. I mean, and I don't want to say when [00:34:00] I love my uncles, but I didn't spend a lot of time with them.
I didn't, you know, I mean, I didn't see them that often growing up. I saw them enough to be, to love them, you know, but, but certainly not like, my cousins who were their kids, you know?
Kenric: You're closer to the cousins.
Christopher Golden: yeah, yeah. But no, but I mean, like I w there wasn't my dad, my dad died when I was 19. He died of cancer. , but so, so suffice to say that it's still at haunted me because I would see my uncle rich and I saw his debilitation there saw the way that he unraveled, you know, and I heard stories from my cousins and stuff like that.
And, and it really got, got under my skin. I've seen it enough that I have flat out and not in any, I want to be clear about this, not in any sort of a dramatic way or trying to be melodramatic in any way, but I told my wife that if I ever develop Alzheimer's and there's nothing that they can do for me.
the minute that I think I'm starting to really slide I'm outta here, I'm done. cause I'm not doing [00:35:00] that to myself. I don't want to live that life and I don't want to do it to my family. It is. It is. It is my number one. Horror.
Kenric: I think for me too, when I think about it, just losing myself in some way, it's like, I could deal like I, my leg got amputated or, you know what I mean? Or I'm incapacitated in some way physically. Okay. I still got my mind. I can still do things. You know, within myself then I'll, you know, I'll make it through I'll persevere.
Uh, but that is something that just really scares me.
Christopher Golden: when you get into an advanced state and Alzheimer's, you're, you're frightened all of the time.
Kenric: yeah. That's even more. Yeah.
Christopher Golden: you know, , it just seems to be living in terrorists in me and living edge. And also, you know, the torment that you put your family through, not that you, the torment that your family goes through because of your disease.
Not that you're putting them through that when you just clarify that. you know, so I, I definitely would find some way to check out by this, you know,
[00:36:00] Kenric: It's
Christopher Golden: know, Check out, put me in the cremation tube and I'm done. That's good.
Kenric: right.
I'd be right there
Christopher Golden: I don't say that to be dramatic. I'm just pragmatic about it,
Kenric: No, I feel the same way. I mean, if I'm slipping and I know from the day that that's, it. Man, give me that pill, you know, where's dr. Kevorkian.
Christopher Golden: Yeah, exactly. And by the way, um, Assisted suicide should be legal in all 50 States in this country. It's ridiculous to get
John: My a hundred
Christopher Golden: as you can tell, I'm not afraid of doing it's ridiculous. Yeah. It's absolutely ridiculous that you can't choose that, that you can't in full knowledge of what you're choosing, make the choice not to suffer.
That's it? It is insane. And one of the problems with the puritanical
Kenric: that's a great way to put it, to make the choice to not to suffer, you know, to not suffer. And it's like, how is that even? I mean, it should just be there. I mean, [00:37:00] we, well, I think watching the state. Is a right state for that. And I in Oregon is as well. So you can, you know, we can take a, we can take a trip
Christopher Golden: will. I will definitely, I will.
Kenric: peer visit and I'm just going to stay here for the rest of my short life.
Christopher Golden: Yup. I will visit. I will visit you guys. I'll get incinerated and then you can ship me back that X.
Kenric: There you go well overnight. Yeah. Just to make it easier. Hey, uh, prowlers is a book series of books that you did, which has a nice twist. Instead of humans turning to werewolves, you have animals that are disguising as humans to better infiltrate. Where the fuck do you come up with this?
Christopher Golden: Totally inspired by, DelToros mimic. and I think that, you know, what I always try to do is when I was, when I would do, when I did my one room zombie novel, when I did even go back to my first novel was say some shadows when I [00:38:00] did prowlers, which are, excuse me, which are werewolf stories.
I always try to find a different way in and, You know, growing up reading Wolf and by what the Strieber and watching American werewolf in London and watching the howling, which I actually got my son Dan to watch recently, you know, there there's great. and some great unknown, like, there's a novel called coral with the moon by JC Conaway from the eighties.
Great. Werewolf novel. so I have these, you know, I have those influences, but I would always think, you know, what. What's another way in, you know? and so yeah, prowlers was this idea of, you know, what, if these monstrous Wolf like animals develop the ability to appear human, to, to basically pass in the human world to help them survive.
So instead of getting exterminated. You know, 1500 years ago, they managed to live on, into the present day by merging or blending in with society.
[00:39:00] Kenric: mimicking.
Christopher Golden: Exactly.
Kenric: That sounds like it'd be a great movie.
Christopher Golden: I agree.
Kenric: I'm just, I'm just saying it just sounds like it'd be a great horror
Christopher Golden: Yeah. Yeah. We almost had it set up at Sox, years ago when it first came out and, unfortunately the guy. Who was the executive at Fox at the time? you know, he just couldn't get it into his head.
Kenric: Yeah.
Christopher Golden: we never actually he's never turned it. He never turned it down. He never gave us a yes or a no.
Kenric: he just strung you along for awhile.
John: Where.
Kenric: We had a guy do that on our, on our podcast every day. Oh yeah. I'll be there. And then the next day, the next day, the next day, it was six days of it in a row. And I was like, Oh man, you're killing me. Well, no, cause now we, we, we emailed him and then he came back and said, Oh yeah, I'm down. Let's do this. We're like you motherfucker, man. [00:40:00] He is, he is.
Christopher Golden: Every episode you should say, , 81 apologies to this person. We ran out of time. Just like Kimmel does to Matt. Damon. You should do it. Every
show
Kenric: I got to ask you working with Amber Benson. How was that experience and like, do you know if ghosts of Albion is going to be available? Cause it was on BBC for the flash animation, but there's no browsers that support flash too much anymore. And so you can't really go and
Christopher Golden: Interesting. I hadn't thought about that because I last, I checked. You could still watch it.
Kenric: Yeah. And I, I want to watch it. I've never seen it.
Christopher Golden: Oh, you've never
Kenric: No, I just heard all this cool stuff about it. And I just watched last year for the first time in my life sat and washed all of Buffy the vampire Slayer.
Christopher Golden: Okay.
Kenric: didn't watch it when it came out. [00:41:00] So I was like, okay, well, now that it was w
Christopher Golden: Well, you know, it's, it's funny because, so, you know, look, I've gotten shit from certain people over the course of my career for doing media tie-ins and doing other things. But, you know, I always look at it from the perspective of, 15 year old may. Right? So, my personal novels are more important to me in many ways, than anything else that I do.
It's more personal, it's more intimate. It's more, you know, so I'm, I get into that, but at the same time, two other things come into play. One is this idea of like, what 15 year old may be pissed at me. If I said no to this opportunity.
Kenric: Right.
Christopher Golden: Right. And if the answer is yes, then I do everything I can to make that thing happen.
And then the other part is that, you know, you have friends, right? And you make friends with when you're, when you're a rider, you make friends with other writers. [00:42:00] and so as a fan of a team of, you know what I mean, like I just always look at like this opportunity, like. You know, my buddy Jim Moore and I were on an elevator one time and while on the elevator, I don't know how it came up, but it was just like, Oh, you know, it'd be cool just in conversation, you know, it'd be cool.
It'd be cool if like the twister comes through, Kansas and, and all the Oz characters are vampires and they spill out of the twister and they overrun Kansas and kill Dorothy and her whole family. And we laughed about it. And by the time the elevator ride was over, we looked at each other and we were like, you know, we have to write that.
And that's the other way that stuff that isn't as sort of personal comes about. So with Amber, it was like, I was already writing these buckets, vampire Slayer, novels, and comics and stuff. As I loved the show and, a mutual friend of ours named Allie Costa, who, Had a, a website for Amber and did my [00:43:00] website for many, many years.
at the time, I was coming to LA for meetings and Allie was like, you know, you really need to meet Amber, so let's have lunch. So we all got together for lunch. Amber and I became friendly. The next time I went out there, we had sort of another, we had a big group dinner. and actually Amber, his mom was there.
There was a, there were a ton of people there. And Amber, his mother said to me, you know, Amber is a writer too. And I was like, what? And she's like, yeah, she's, she's written a number of stage plays. And I said, Oh, I'd love to read them. And then I said, you know, Hey, you know, Amber, like I had already written a, us by drew comic with James Marsters.
So I said, you know, if you ever want to write comics with dark horse, I'm sure that they'd love to have you do. Maybe we could do Willow and Tara. Then I went home and her mom sent me a couple of plays that she'd written. And I was like, wow, she's really talented. and then the more we got to talking and the better friends we got, the more I realized that actually writing was her thing.
You know? I mean, she [00:44:00] was an actress, but she wanted to direct and she wanted to write because she
Kenric: she had a passion for it.
Christopher Golden: leg. And so we became like really close friends. you know, still we're actually working on two TV pitch projects right now together. so we're always, we're always sort of working on, on various things together and, you know, she's, it's really weird too.
Go out in public with her and have somebody recognize her still because, I don't think of her as a person who was ever on television.
Kenric: She's just your friend.
Christopher Golden: Yeah. And it's just not like it's, you know, it's, it's amusing in many ways, you know? Like, I dunno. It's like, cause if you. You know, I don't know, for instance, like, I don't know, James Marsters that well, but we're friendly, you know, like anytime I see him or like when he's in Boston for a convention, I'll see him, you know, great guy, but you, you are never with James and don't [00:45:00] think don't realize he's an actor.
Kenric: right,
Christopher Golden: You know what I mean? And that's not a negative, not, you know, I'm just saying like, he's, he's always thinking about the fact that he's an actor and he has to be, he has to be aware of that, you know? And Amber has never given a fuck,
Kenric: right, right.
Christopher Golden: never. so yeah, I
Kenric: She's got no fucks to give.
Christopher Golden: when we were first getting yes, she has zero.
When we were first getting to be friends. her sister Danielle had like, had her head shaved down to just like buzz. and Amber and Danielle, if Amber was going to like an event in LA, she'd often bring Danielle with her. And Amber would wear whatever she felt like wearing, you know, like overalls, whatever.
And so a lot of people thought Danny was her girlfriend because they thought she was gay because she played a lesbian on TV. And then Danny had her hair shaved down to almost nothing. And what I
Kenric: hope she played that up.
Christopher Golden: she just didn't care like who fucking, she didn't care at all [00:46:00] about what anybody might make of that.
And, uh, and that's, I think why we became friends because I really admired the zero fucks that she gave.
Kenric: Yeah. I love that. I love that. Are you guys, so you guys are working on these TV pitches and good luck with that, by the way, I hope something comes about, but are you guys done doing any novels together or, cause you've done quite a few, but I couldn't find
Christopher Golden: the thing is that Amber, Amber had reached a point where she just decided she was done for a while, at least with novels. we had done the ghost of Alby and stuff, and then she had moved on to do her own, her own stuff. And then she kind of. I don't know, you'd have to interview her about that, but she had decided at a certain point, she wasn't really that interested in it.
for a while she still writes short stories occasionally, but most of what she's writing is TV movies. He's written a ton of them.
Kenric: Oh, nice.
Christopher Golden: Yeah. She's writing a ton of TV movies and getting paid a hell of a lot more money than she got paid for the novels that she was writing. So, but that's you, it [00:47:00] goes to the Albion question. Um, I'll have to look it up. I have it still. So, you know, the BBC would Sue me if I put it up on YouTube,
Kenric: Right.
Christopher Golden: you know, but, but it may still be available somewhere.
Kenric: Yeah. Yeah. I have to find it because I want to watch it. I, I didn't even know about it until I started doing research. I, I knew you through Mike Minola, which I'm sure you have a lot of fans that come through him. And then, and then I started doing research and I'm like, what is this? And then Amber Benson, or, you know, I really didn't know who Amber Benson was as a person, until I looked her up and I'm like, Oh, she was Taren on puffy.
And she wrote all this stuff. That is awesome. And then, you know, and then I started seeing all these reviews on ghost of Abby on and I'll be on. And it was, you know, For lack of a better term, a big success has a, has a cult following. So I was, and then there's all these games around it, like RPG games. And I was like, this is crazy.
I want to watch the original stuff. And then I finally found it on BBC. [00:48:00] I think it's bbc.uk.com or whatever the BBC website is. And it comes up and it goes, your browser must support flash. And I'm like, fuck. And I'm sure I can figure it out. You know, I can
Christopher Golden: No, the things I will say that the second one is not nearly as good for several reasons. One of which is that, the animation was done by somebody else. And you know, the first hour of the, the original ghost Albion, we did two of them, the original one. it's flash animation, dude. It's crude, crude, crude.
I mean, it's so, rudimentary, but I still love it so much and the performances are great. I mean, I don't know if you saw who's I mean, probably read these days, the carer, the actor in it was maybe best known as Rory Kinnear. who is, did you watch, God, I can't think of a penny dreadful.
Kenric: Oh yeah.
Christopher Golden: Is the Frankenstein monster
Kenric: Oh, cool.
Christopher Golden: and, uh, [00:49:00] uh, my friend Jasmine Hyde, who is she and Rory, a brother and sister, and goes to the Albion.
Jasmine just made this movie that was called the unseen in the UK, in the U S it's called something like amaurosis. And Jasmine's a star of that. She's terrific. I can't, I'd have to go through through the whole thing, but yeah, but it's so like Emma Sams, who was on dynasty when I was a kid, you know, like,
Kenric: He's had all these amazing
Christopher Golden: Daniels, C three PO Anthony Daniels is in it.
Um, and Amber directed the first one. And, and so we were there on set for the whole thing together and it was such a great experience. God, what a that's one of my, my favorite, like professional experiences is working on that.
Kenric: Did it kind of give you a for lack of a better term, the TV bug?
Christopher Golden: weirdly I had, when I was, when I was in high school, I was planning to go to film school. And then I decided that I wanted to get the best education that I possibly could just in case, that didn't work out. So I, I went to the best school I [00:50:00] could get into. and, while I was there while I was at college, I started writing in high school, but while I was at college, I started writing much, much more.
And my senior year I started writing my first novel. At that point, it
was like, you know what? I think I'm good. I think this is what I want to
Kenric: Yeah. This is what I got a passion for.
Christopher Golden: Yeah.
Kenric: Yeah. I have always tried to write
Christopher Golden: I'm a control freak. So
Kenric: Yeah.
Christopher Golden: writing a novel means I can do whatever I want.
Kenric: your God in all its wisdom.
Christopher Golden: Right. Exactly.
Kenric: Yeah, I've tried to write novels. I've had, like, I probably have like 10, 15 started, never finished. I always get to like a couple chapters in and then I just, I don't know if I lose interest. I think I lose drive. Maybe that's the same fucking thing. I don't know.
Christopher Golden: You know what, honestly, that's the way I was a million years ago when I was, and it changed when I was a senior in college, I was writing, I'd only written short stories. I'd thought about writing a novel. And then I [00:51:00] thought, Oh, you know, what if I treat. Every chapter, like it's its own short story with its own beginning, middle and end.
Kenric: yeah,
Christopher Golden: Before I know it I'll have finished a novel and that's what happened.
So back to it.
Kenric: Yeah. Yeah. Well, someday
John: I have half a novel written I've written half of one and it's touching my computer waiting for me to finish it. So
Christopher Golden: Well, then you guys can just put those together and you know,
Kenric: Yeah, we have, there you go, man. We can Frankenstein them together and it'll be good. It'll make no fucking sense.
Christopher Golden: you can take the, you can take the first two chapters of 10 different novels, put it all together, just called it stuff. I couldn't be bothered to finish.
Kenric: Right, right. It's somebody will be reading it and they'll get to the stop where you stop. And they'll be like, what the fuck happens, what the fuck happens. And then we'll start getting threatening letters and you must finish this story. Yeah.
Christopher Golden: Exactly. No. It's like, it should be like a choose your own adventure, you know, except you have to write the rest,
John: or [00:52:00] write your own endings?
Christopher Golden: two chapters in the rest of the book is lined paper. So whoever
John: It's an act. It's an activity
Christopher Golden: and send it back to you.
Kenric: It is an
John: Yeah.
Kenric: We're concentrating our podcast. Now we're having a lot of fun. We do have a comic book that we're working on and Johnny just released an anthology called the Eynes anthology and he set the first, he's got how many books in the series? Six.
John: Four bucks, four bucks.
Kenric: Yeah. And there's the first one got sent to the printer and then COVID-19 hit.
So. Where we're waiting,
Christopher Golden: Oh, this is a, this is an interesting time, by the way I am. I'm just busting your balls. You guys. It is, It is something that requires you to, to sit down and do it. And it, you know, you, yeah, you love it some days, but a lot of times it's drudgery. And I mean, I talk to people so often if you get my buddy Jim moron, he was someday, he's the guy you need to talk to.
Cause he will actually like [00:53:00] start haunting. You he'll stand outside the window and glare at you until you sit down and write. He'll threaten to break your arms. You think I'm kidding? He won't, he won't actually stand outside your window, but he will threaten physical harm.
Kenric: Nice.
Christopher Golden: you'd be astounded at how many people I know who finished their first novel.
Only under threat
Kenric: that's hilarious.
John: Hey, whatever works, whatever works.
Christopher Golden: exactly.
Kenric: whatever works. We have a new comp book that we're working on, though. We're really excited for it. We actually had a whole, brainstorming session on a podcast. And we do this series called we call them tots and it stands for a tangent, a tangent where we, you know, we get on and we just start talking.
And before you know, it, we've gone through 30 different fucking topics. You know what I mean? And they, and it's funny because we do a ton of interviews. Like we release like four or five episodes a week. And they're all. Yeah. And they're all interviews and we we've interviewed so many people. It's, it's, it's kinda crazy.
And, uh, [00:54:00] but every, but we get a lot of people saying you guys need to do more of those tots because whatever reason people love them, but we had this one where we started talking and we brainstormed this whole story. And so now that's, we're going to, we're going to actually going to write it and brainstorming fashion, using the podcast to drive it.
Christopher Golden: Oh, that's very
Kenric: Yeah, so we're, we're excited. So we got the first one done. Now we got to set up the second one where we're actually, we have like the general idea. Now it's time to really start mapping it out. It should be a lot of fun. So
Christopher Golden: cool. Hey, listen. I would be, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my podcast.
Kenric: do. I was just going to ask, what can we promote for you?
Christopher Golden: well, so, a horror writer, legendary horror writer, Brian keen, and I. Do a podcast every week, we just recorded episode 97 today called defenders defenders dialogue, and defenders dialogue started with me texting Brian, Brian and I are exactly the same age. And I texted him and I said, you know, we [00:55:00] should do a reread from issue.
One of the defenders that, you know, seventies and eighties version of the defenders from Marvel and, and. And talk about it every week and just record as a podcast. I said to him at the time, no one will listen to it. It will be the ultimate fanboy Wenk of all time. but, but it would be really fun for us.
And it's an hour every week that we don't have to think about the world ending, you know? And, and he was like, yes, we're doing it tomorrow.
Kenric: Okay. You're making me laugh.
Christopher Golden: So now we're on episode 97, we've gone through all of the defenders, the champions, black Goliath, the marble Godzilla from the seventies we're currently doing, currently doing a super villain team up.
We're going to do man thing. I think we do Marvel two in one. So it's just all bronze age, Marvel comics. and it's a blast.
Kenric: That's my jam. Yeah, I'm
John: awesome.
Christopher Golden: dialogue. And again, like it's I am, I. Every time, Brian, I don't know how many people listen to it. Not [00:56:00] many, but way more than I ever anticipated. Every time Brian tells me, Oh, this person listens to the show.
I'm like, why? So I do. I've just, I don't understand. So if you're out there listening to this and you think this sounds entertaining, I don't understand why you would find that entertaining, but if you do go listen to defender style,
Kenric: you guys have guests on?
Christopher Golden: the only time we've had, we had, we've had a couple of guests on only when they, when they tie into what we're covering. So like we've had Scott Edelman on a couple of times and we had a JMD Matea song. cause they both worked on the fenders.
Kenric: we had him on a couple of couple of months, like a month ago. He was awesome.
Christopher Golden: Yeah, that's great. And we've had my buddy, Tom has come on and sat in for Brian a couple of times, mainly because Tom hated the defenders.
so when Ryan was wasn't able to do it, I had Tom come in and join me to, you know, still we could [00:57:00] talk about, you know, what he hated about it, you know,
Kenric: Just railed against them. You have any new books coming out soon that people would need to be aware of.
Christopher Golden: Yeah, well, always, I did a book a few years ago called error at that won the Bram Stoker award. And, the second book, the Pandora room just came out in paperback a couple months ago. the third book and again, they're, they they're totally standalone. You can read them individually. You don't have to read them in order, but the third book is called red hands and that comes out in December.
Kenric: Oh, cool.
Christopher Golden: and I'm actually writing the, the pilot and the Bible for a TV series based on that character, the main character of those books right now, with ABC television, the people behind the world world show that's on right now, , and then the second volume, second omnibus of Baltimore, which I created with Mineola,
just came out, just, just hit comic shops, both comic shops.
Most of them are closed, but, if you can get it from your local [00:58:00] comic shop, get it from your local comic shop, but it is available Baltimore omnibus volume two. And as soon as the coronavirus is over, we have a new comic book mini series starting called lady Baltimore, which will be out from dark horse.
whenever this shit passes us by and, with, art by Bridget Canell, who is brilliant, she's doing such a fantastic job.
Kenric: That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, Chris, we've been over an hour. Can you believe it? it's what we do, man.
John: Make it so funny don't know.
Kenric: I know, dude, you have so much stuff out there. I want to get you to come back on. Can we do that? Can we get you to come back? Because yeah, no, this is, I love that because I don't have a problem talking. Matter of fact, if you and I just sat at a bar, we'd probably over-talk each other the whole time. And then.
Thinking that we both were like, Oh, that was great. I'll talk to you [00:59:00] later and then get in our cars and probably realize, I don't know what the fuck you said, because we were both just talking,
Christopher Golden: All right. Well, I'm going to go over time another minute. And, and
Kenric: right?
Christopher Golden: so, you know, you know, the comedian, Billy Connolly.
Kenric: Oh yeah.
Christopher Golden: so when I was growing up, I was a kid who listened to a lot of comedy albums and I'd be able to like, you know, uh, probably regurgitate half of what was on each one of those albums.
And I like, I would go see a couple of times I would see a comedian and I would remember so much of the show and be able to sort of spit it back to you afterwards. But, many years ago in like, I want to say 1991 or so Billy Connolly did a, an HBO special called pale blue Scottish person.
Kenric: Yeah.
Christopher Golden: And I laughed my ass off the entire time.
And at the end of the, of the special, he says, you know, you're all gonna go home and you've got to say that your friends are gonna say, what'd you do tonight? I want to see this comedian, Billy [01:00:00] Connolly. It was he funny. He was fucking hilarious. What did he talk about? And you're going to say I have no fucking idea. I swear to God, I never laughed so hard as I laughed at that joke because he was a hundred percent correct. I couldn't, I remembered one sheet fucking joke and nothing else. From the entire hour and a half or whatever the thing was.
Kenric: Oh, man. You're right. You're okay. So you're a up comedian fan, obviously, if you're listened to Billy Connolly, are you excited for Eddie Murphy to get back out and tour?
Christopher Golden: You know, I loved dolomite is my name.
Kenric: Oh my God. It was so good.
Christopher Golden: but I am dubious about whether Eddie still has the comedy in him.
Kenric: since Ben, since the eighties, man, that he's done it, but delirious. I wore that tape out. I, I wa I listened to so
Christopher Golden: I could still, I could still give you back parts of
Kenric: Oh yeah. I still quote a good at Google. What the fuck does that? [01:01:00] I, I still say stuff from fucking delirious and even, and even raw, you know, and it's just, ah, I'm so excited. I I'll
pay a thousand bucks to
Christopher Golden: is like, is like you have, If you see him, he seems like he is. he's. I don't know him obviously. And so who knows, he doesn't look like necessarily a guy who is, sparking with that kind of energy. And, and so I'm, so I'm super curious to see if he can, if he can be really funny,
Kenric: Yeah, I, well, yeah, I'm excited because he's my all time favorite comedian. Like I, you know, I can't help, I still quote his stuff and I saw him on comedian cars, getting coffee with Seinfeld on Netflix. And I think that's, what's got this ball rolling. Was that episode and
Christopher Golden: that because for me it's it's it's Eddie Murphy. It's George Carlin. It's Richard Pryor, [01:02:00] Steve Martin, Steven Wright,
Kenric: dude. Steve Martin talking about, does anybody have little cat cuffs? My, my, my, my cat, I need a quick cat because of my cat to the catamaran to go to Catalina. Oh my God. I lost it. I lost it. Uh, Chris, thank you so much for coming on. Let's plan it again. You know, I would love to go through and talk about, Baltimore. We actually just promoted your book, offer our website, spoiler verse.com and. Last month for it coming out for the omnibus. John just sent me the article that we had written for it.
He was like, wait, we had a pro cause we're on the press release for, for dark horse and Marvel and all them. So we, we pushed it out. So I'd love to have you come back on if you're interested and maybe go through the book and talk about how you, why you made, we do this thing called commentary tracks and where are our thought processes?
Let's do a DVD commentary, but for comic books, [01:03:00] And we had Frank Gogal on, he did a dead end kids. We did Stephan Frank. I don't know if you know who he is. He did silver. And we did, we had Kevin Joseph on who did tart and I think we're, I think that's it so far.
John: That's all it's really is. We have some more lined up to record
Kenric: Yeah. Stravinsky's coming on to do his new one. A
John: the
Kenric: was resistance. Yeah.
Christopher Golden: Cool. Yeah, no, I I'd love to do that. I mean, I'm sure I'll sound like a dumb ass, but I'm happy
Kenric: No. I mean, it's dude, you're going to sound like a dumb ass. Wait, we'll ask the questions.
John: right?
Kenric: So we really appreciate you coming on and we'll talk soon.
Christopher Golden: All right. Sounds good. Thanks
Kenric: yeah,
John: and rec.
Kenric: Yeah.
John: So it's got it's fun because he wrote lady Baltimore, which, which we ended up writing a review, not a review, but a, a press release for it, like a month before he came on. [01:04:00] And then we talked to them all. I didn't, we didn't know that when we talked to him that he had written that just all kind of like circled around,
Kenric: Yeah. Yeah. It was all organic,
John: Yeah. Yeah, he was fun. I hope we get them to come back on to talk about more stuff. Um, he, uh, uh, w we actually talked about having to come on to do another episode at the end of the show. It's not in the episodes. You don't hear them talk about it, but we have actually had, um, are, are, are a public license manager, Jeff hos. Reach out to them again, to have them come back on to talk about that hidden sectors. I'm not telling you about it. You have to wait till it comes out, but it's gonna be a lot of fun.
Kenric: there you go, man. Well, Johnny, that was a lot of fun. Thanks for joining me on talking with Christopher Golden,
John: Yeah, thanks for allowing me to talk on that one.
Kenric: allowing you to talk. Don't forget it. I will put you back in that closet.
John: I'll be good. I'll be good. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Don't hit me again.
Kenric: I told you to wash the car, not take it down to the grocery store. All right guys. We are out of here. That is a show. Thanks to Christopher Golden for coming [01:05:00] on. Hey, if you like what you heard and you want to hear more, go check out spoiler verse.com. There's a ton of stuff there for you to check out lots of articles and a whole bunch of other podcasts that have equally great content.
John: Yeah, and we have articles, reviews, and previews and press releases and blog posts from a plethora of people up everyday to checkout. And they have a store clerk store in the middle of there and go buy a tee-shirt by a hoodie, buy a mug, whatever, and support the show.
Kenric: Yup. You guys go. All right. We're out. So don't forget. There are notions of podcasts.
John: We are. Will do.
Kenric: I I've kept doing little compels you to do
John: We'll open the mind.
Kenric: and read more
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