Introduction
Welcome back everyone! I’m so excited for you to check out this author interview with my guest with this week.
You’re going to love this interview with Christopher Golden. As a veteran of the literary scene, he has decades of knowledge to share with us.
His new book: Road of Bones, is out now. I read it and LOVED it! If you’re a fan of thrillers or horror, this one is right in your wheelhouse!
We talk about:
- How to research books
- His new book Road of Bones
- Horror as an important genre
- The time Stephen King called him on the phone…
- Comic book writing
- What to look for in an agent
- How he got started writing
- And MORE!
Podcast
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Check Out This Preview of Our Conversation
Bio: Christopher Golden is the New York Times bestselling, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of such novels as Road of Bones, Ararat, Snowblind, and Red Hands. With Mike Mignola, he is the co-creator of the Outerverse comic book universe, including such series as Baltimore, Joe Golem: Occult Detective, and Lady Baltimore
As an editor, he has worked on the short story anthologies Seize the Night, Dark Cities, and The New Dead, among others, and he has also written and co-written comic books, video games, screenplays, and a network television pilot.
His work has been nominated for the British Fantasy Award, the Eisner Award, and multiple Shirley Jackson Awards. For the Bram Stoker Awards, Golden has been nominated ten times in eight different categories, and won twice. His original novels have been published in more than fifteen languages in countries around the world.
Transcript
David Gwyn: [00:00:00] First of all, I just want to say, I love your background. Usually people are in like a, an office with like a plain back and there’s nothing for me to look at. So I, I appreciate that.
Christopher Golden: my, my office is always a pig stye. I just, I delivered a book today.
David Gwyn: Oh, wow.
Christopher Golden: And and so now my office can be cleaned. Cause that’s usually what happens is that my office just accumulates crap you know, for months and months, and then I deliver a book and then I take a couple of days and I sort myself out and the office gets cleaned ,
David Gwyn: Will you do It, I mean, I imagine you do a ton of research having read some of your work. I mean, the, the locations you’re setting, I mean, I can’t even imagine how much research goes into
Christopher Golden: It, it depends on, on the book. I find, I find actually that I do,
I don’t want to do too much research. There’s a there’s a writer that I grew up reading who shall remain nameless, whose books. I absolutely love. But you could always tell [00:01:00] that she did so much research and fell in love so much with the things that she discovered that she felt like she had to include everything.
And and so on the other hand, there was a time many years ago when I was writing a book set behind the iron curtain during the cold war and a lot of it was Berlin related. And.
I was writing this book with zero knowledge of the Berlin wall and what the security was like and what it took to cross and all of that.
And I realized that I was just being a total jackass and this was in the days really before there was as much information as there currently is on the internet. So I stopped working on the book for like a week and a half and I went to the library and I got like half a dozen books and I just. And read.
So I’ll do what I need to do, you know?
David Gwyn: Yeah. Do you, do you have a process for your research? Like when is it that you feel like you have enough? Is it just like a gut feeling? Well,
Christopher Golden: it’s about having [00:02:00] enough research to feel like I am doing the job. For instance, my novel Ararat is set in Turkey. And it was published in Turkey and it did pretty well there. And I did two interviews with journalists from the two biggest newspapers in Turkey and both of them from reading the book assumed I had spent time in Turkey.
and you’d be shocked at how little research Created that illusion. It’s just about what you’re researching. Right? So for me, it was like with Ararat. It was mostly, I did speak to a mountain guide who guided groups up up Ararat at, I did talk to other climbers about altitude sickness and things like that.
I did speak to archeologists about, you know, various things having to do with archeology and what would happen at a dig. But when it came to the actual,[00:03:00] research into Turkey and what it would be like to be there, I only really needed to know. If you were going here, where would you fly into? What is the terrain like?
When you’re trying to go from this little, like, where would you stay if you were going to climb out our at where would you stay? What’s the nearest town. What’s it like to get from there to the mountain and everyone and their sister has a travel blog. You know what I mean? So you can find. And for me, it’s also about like, I’m a westerner.
The characters I was talking about were Westerners. So finding accounts by Westerners about their experience going in this case, you know? And it’s also sort of like I did these three shark novels under a pseudonym and. Conversations with researchers at woods hole. Were a blast because they love having these conversations and the conversations always go something [00:04:00] like, Hey, I need this to happen.
Can you tell me the most realistic way for me to do this and they would go, well, that would never happen. And I would say, no, no, no, no, no. You’re missing the I need it to happen. And I don’t need you expert on this to believe me, but I need everybody else to believe me, you know? And so, so that’s kind of what I look at.
I mean, it’s, it’s sort of. Piecemeal about what I’m doing for research. And also I try to do enough that that I never come off as being disrespectful to the people who live in the region that I’m writing
David Gwyn: Yeah. Yeah. And I do want to get to talking about.
your new novel, which is set in Siberia, but it’s funny that you mentioned Ararat and it’s funny how these things come together. So I took a class on horror, literature and literature and film, and I got interested in then the Lovecraft, not Lovecraft himself, but like Lovecraft’s influence on.[00:05:00]
On current texts. And I went from like Lovecraft to John carpenter’s the thing. And then someone mentioned your, your novel Ararat. And I ended up going in a different way with my final project, but it’s funny that I, so I read Ararat when I was thinking about doing the project and, and then I.
Saw that you had a book coming out and I was like, maybe he’ll talk to me about his new book. And like, here we are. So it’s just funny the way these things come together. And I, I do have a question about that. Can you talk a little bit about the, the book that’s coming out the end of January?
Christopher Golden: Yeah. So Road of bones is out on the 25th of January. And it was one of those things where, you know, usually like just today, I told you I delivered a new novel. And at this point what will happen is that I’ve got a few ideas for other things written down. I’ve got, you know, things I’d printed or, or scribbled wherever, and I’ll end up sort of going through all that and go into my editor and saying, here are a few ideas for things I might want to do [00:06:00] next.
The, do any of them particularly appealing? And with Rhoda bones, I had sent an email like that to my editor, and then I followed up with another email. That’s. said
David Gwyn: Also
Christopher Golden: by the way, I just ran across this article. I’d never heard of this place. I’d never known anything Road of Road of bones and I, I linked him to an article and a video and I wrote like four sentences and said, I want to do a novel that’s to this.
And his response was, we want to do that. And sometimes that’s what happens. I mean, it was the one that I. I didn’t do any selling on it. I didn’t like come up with a pitch or an outline or anything. But it was the one that, that really appealed to him and to the whole team there. But no, I, I, I read an article, but so the road of bones for people who are unfamiliar as I was, and most people probably are in a nutshell, inside Syria, in Northern Russia.
During the time that Stalin was running Russia or the [00:07:00] Soviet union at that time they had started to build gulags in Siberia. Gulags were prisons, but usually work prisons as well. And one of the reasons they started to do that is because they needed work. And they need workers because they decided they had been using the river that runs through that part of the world to transport people, but also goods from this city that’s in an area that I don’t know how they, I don’t know who decided, Hey, this is a great place to put a city.
And it had to just start started as a trading post. But during the winter, It’s impossible, really to get there until they built this road. And the reason they built the road is because they started to find uranium first. It was just timber and things like that, but they started to find uranium and other and precious metals and things like that, that they wanted to transport.
So they needed a road in the wintertime. So they decided they were going to build [00:08:00] a. 1200 miles long through the most inhospitable terrain, literally on earth where people live like, and nobody should live there during the summer. I don’t really talk about this in the book. It gets quite warm. You know, you can be perfectly fine there, but in the winter time, if you if you run out of gas on the road of bones and nobody comes along, you will die.
If you have a car accident. Or in any other way are broken down and nobody comes along to rescue you. You will die. You’ll you’ll freeze to death. If you shut your car off in an unprotected place, you will not be able to restart it because the engine will freeze. There is a, there are places there where it gets down to with wind chill.
Sometimes 90 degrees Fahrenheit below zero with the windshield. It is. It’s insane. And I, and nobody lives there who didn’t, who wasn’t born there. Right. I mean, it’s like, if you, if you live there, it’s because you were born [00:09:00] there. So I found it fascinating, because I buried the lead here, which is that in the construction of this road, hundreds of thousands of people died .
Almost all of them, prisoners at gulags to the point where, you know they would just arrest people. You looked at my wife wrong, therefore I’m I’m sending you to the gulags. We think you stole bread. We’re sending you to the Gulag. Mainly because they just needed to keep feeding the beast of building this road.
And the, the guess is anywhere between 200,000 to potentially as many as a million people died building this road and were summarily plowed under the permafrost. So when you drive this road, the Colima highway, you’re driving over the people who built the road which is really unsettling, but I also knew.
That 99% of the people who would want to write are horror writers who would want to write a book set. There [00:10:00] would write a zombie novel or some other book that was about resurrecting the dead underneath the road of bones. And I didn’t want to do that because to me, it was about the atmosphere. It was about the idea that you are it’s isolation, horror.
It’s, it’s horror. It’s folk horror. You are. The limit of human endurance, as far as where you can be. And you are so far from you know, safety from civilization, from help when you’re out there. That, you know, as I said, something goes wrong, you’re screwed. So that was all really appealing to me. And that’s what drew me to start coming up with this idea.
David Gwyn: That’s awesome. I feel like a lot of your novels have. The focus on setting and the way that the setting plays into the tension and plays into the horror and plays into the, the dread that you, that you build. Is that something that you think about going into a story like that? Where can I set this?
Because [00:11:00] it’s sometimes feels like the setting for some stories are like haphazard, right? It’s like random it’s it could be anywhere. But for yours, it’s for your stories, it’s very specific. Is that intentional?
Christopher Golden: Yeah. I think that a lot of them in, particularly in the latter part of my career, like sort of, you know the last like 15 or 16 years it’s really been something that’s been on my mind, I think partly because at a certain point you know, horror, horror is handicapped by technology. Right. So in order to get the reader to be afraid for the characters, you have to take away the help that the characters might otherwise get, or you have to make the characters stupid.
In which case the reader is not going to sympathize with them Right. And I think that that’s not what happened, but I think it all started when I had the idea for Snowblind originally, which came out in 2014, I think. I did the math wrong. So it’s really, it’s been about, it’s been about nine years, [00:12:00] I guess, since I’ve been in this mindset.
But I, I do feel like that really appeals to me. I think putting people in extreme circumstances not only does. Reveal what might be boiling inside of them so you have the interpersonal drama and revelations and stuff like that, but it makes the reader feel desperate. And so, you know, to me, that’s the key, right?
How are they going to get out of this? How are they going to survive this what’s going to happen? But also I’m just intrigued by. Like, I’m just intrigued by the idea that anybody would live there
David Gwyn: Yeah.
Christopher Golden: and stay there.
David Gwyn: Right. Right. And I think it’s so interesting that you, you kind of mentioned that like months like that kind of like what’s inside of us because I, So, I, I took this class on, on horror and it gave me a completely new appreciation and I’ve read some interviews that you’ve done. And it seems like you think really deeply [00:13:00] about the horror genre in a way that I really appreciate it.
And as someone. Not new to the horror genre, but new to the thinking of the horror genre in that deeply. And, and in one of the interviews you say like the, the, they asked you, like what, what genre you like to write in? You’re like, I stray here and there. I, meander, but like that horror people are your people.
And what do you mean by
Christopher Golden: Yeah. first of all, the first half of what you said, I, I, I love horror as a catalyst, you know, you, when you introduce horror and what it pulls out of characters. And what’s interesting to me is that sometimes I think there are characters that I’ve created that are not that interesting and readers will really respond well to them.
And I think it’s because they’re ordinary people put into this pressure cooker situation and then ordinary problems suddenly become much bigger. But as far as horror people are my people, I mean, look. [00:14:00] I’ve talked about this so many times over the years, my mom passed last year and I used to always, she used to always cringe when I would, when I would tell this story.
But
David Gwyn: to hear that.
Christopher Golden: no, thank you. But you know, I would always say that you know, at one point when I was young and I started writing, my mom said, why can’t you write something good? And by good, what she meant was why can’t you write something nice. Right. And the thing is I have in a lot of my books, there’s, there’s definitely a lot of romance.
There are relationship. There are a lot of person like in rota bones has a real, like serious male friendship at its core which was a pleasure to write about. And. I said to her, I’ve written science fiction stories and Western stories and romantic stories, and somebody always dies. But I think to me, it’s that horror was the stuff that really appealed to me from childhood.
It really got me fired my neurons and get my imagination going. And I think it’s because of that, I think it’s because you strip people, bear, you [00:15:00] know When you put them in these extreme circumstances. And that’s interesting to me. But as far as I also feel like people who really pay attention, who’ve been involved with writers of many different genres, including my agent.
Who’s been at this for decades and, and represents writers of all genres and literary writers and non-fiction and everything. He says the horror writers are the kindest. He said the horror writers make the least money, but they’re the most generous. And, and I think that that’s one of the things I love about my community.
And I think it’s because look, when people spend a long time thinking about this horrific shit, it’s, it’s often because we’re trying to process things in our own lives, you know? And so I think horror writers generally are really empathetic people usually And I love that and I love, you know, I just love that heightened moment of horror to.
David Gwyn: Yeah. Is that from your kind of [00:16:00] experience or how you see horror? Is that really what, why horror is so important to society? Because I feel like horror stories often reflect a lot of the like kind of societal concerns or anxieties at the time. Is that, is that really how you see horror?
Christopher Golden: there were so many, so many ways to explore that. I mean, horror. So firstly horror and comedy are twins, right? In that if you laugh really hard at something, when you finish that laughter you feel you have this cleansing, like you feel better, you feel relieved. And the same thing happens if you’re.
In a movie theater and you’re terrified, or you’re reading a book and it’s really scared and you close the book and you’re scary and you close the book and you’re like, oh, whew, safe. Right. So your physical response to horror and comedy is actually quite the same, quite similar anyway.
So I think that’s good.
So in that way, I do believe horror is healthy. I think it also is a safe way for people to explore. So many things that frighten us, [00:17:00] so many things that unsettle us or, or are otherwise haunting us. And I feel like it’s one of the reasons why we turn to horror in times that are themselves horrific, like the last five years.
But particularly since the beginning of COVID, is because it is a safe. To explore these feelings because you can turn off the TV, look away, close the book. There is a resolution at the end of the story. It does give you the feeling that whatever you’re going through at some point there will be an ending to it.
There’s a resolution. And so, yeah, I mean, I think horror has such value. I mean, there’s a reason why so many. Otherwise ordinary children’s books begin with the horrible deaths of the parents, of the kids who are the main characters, you know, because what the author is doing, whether they even realize that this is why they’re doing it or not is [00:18:00] isolating the main characters.
Right? So what I do in so many of these horror stories is isolate my characters. And, and all of these kids’ books, you could, we could spend forever listing them are about taking the protagonists away from the help. So we can automatically put them in jeopardy that has nothing to do with anybody trying to hurt them.
It’s just that they’re already in jeopardy, even before the bad guy shows up.
David Gwyn: Right. Yeah. It’s so funny. I, I have a young daughter, and so we’re like, kind of going back through some of the Disney movies and everyone I’m like, this is horrible. Like I’m the father and I am, I never turn out. Well, it’s never good for me as the dad of the story. It’s so it’s so rare.
Christopher Golden: It’s good for them though. It’s healthy for kids to you know, to be presented with that to a degree, by the way, like. I have friends who, who am, I love them dearly, but who would show their like nine-year-old daughter [00:19:00] 28 days later? I’m like, no, that’s not okay.
David Gwyn: It’s a little too far. Well, it’s funny that you mentioned that and, and kind of a horror in general. And then some of this stuff you’ve been talking about is, is one of the things that I, that my professor would always say is that the reason horror works is that it ends, Right. Like there’s a, the movie ends, the book ends.
The story ends like that. There is that definable end and that you can exist. Outside of the story. So just funny that you bring that up as somebody who’s doing it is, is recognizing that like that’s, that’s part of what makes horror great is that it ends and you get to go back to your life and live not in that story.
Christopher Golden: Yeah, well, and even if it ends horribly, you still close the book at the end, you know, and go home. Thank God that wasn’t me, you know?
David Gwyn: So I actually want to shift gears and ask you a question that has been, has been weighing on me since I saw the book cover for road of bones, which is so I know you’re a huge Stephen King fan and I am too. And so I noticed he [00:20:00] blurbed on the cover of Road of bones. And I know he’s done some, some other blurbs for you.
what does that feel like?
Christopher Golden: You know I’m 54. But I have a really good handle on what it felt like to be 20 it doesn’t feel like that long ago to me. And so I’ll tell you the story of the first time. So I, I had I had. Stephen King for two seconds in a bookstore, he happened to be in there buying books. He wasn’t signing.
I was in college at the time and that was great. That was amazing. Right. And I say all the time, as far as Stephen King is concerned, you know, like even now when I’m 54 and I know he’s just a guy, you know, there still is the, the childhood. Going it’s Stephen King. Right. Do you know what I mean? Like, so I always say his voice, his narrative voice is the narrative voice of my [00:21:00] youth.
The same way. If you watch stand by me, you have Richard Dreyfus, his voice like voiceover throughout the movie. To me, that’s like the narrative voice of my youth is Stephen King’s narrative voice. So basically I had been I, I knew Peter Stroud, Peter had given me a blurb, amazing guy, one of the greatest horror writers who will ever live.
And I knew
Marsha, who is the woman who ran Stephen King’s office. And I’d only met king that one time, you know, in the thing. And I think I had reached out to them a couple of times to, to get him to read a book, you know, and I was at an event that Peter was at and, and Peter Strauss said something to me about, oh, you know, he’s got his eye on you.
And I was like, well, that’s, that’s weird. And cool. And what is that about? And again, reads voraciously. So I know it’s not, it was not [00:22:00] unusual that he might have read or seen something, but why would, that was cool. And then
I was, I don’t know if I was talking to Marsha or messaging with her or something about Nikon, which is a convention that I go to every year in Rhode Island. It’s going to be in Massachusetts this year for the first time. And she happened to say to me, you know, if you ever wanted to send him something again, now it would be a good time.
And I think, I think it was because he had wrapped up a bunch of stuff. He was working on, maybe he was between books and he was trying to catch up on his reading or whatever. So I had finished my novel Wildwood road and it was past time where it was too late to have him do a blurb that would actually make it onto the cover.
But I was like, I’ve got this book. I sent it right away. And I don’t know how much time passed, but one day I was sitting at my desk, this desk and the phone rang and I answered it and I heard him say, Hey, Chris had [00:23:00] Steve king calling. And I don’t know if I’m, if I should be, if I can be profane on your
David Gwyn: go for it. I think, I, think this calls for it.
Christopher Golden: I, I almost said, fuck you. I was certain that it was just one of my friends busting my balls and I literally, I lit it was almost out of my mouth and then something tweaked. And I was like, oh wait, I did send him Wildwood road. Maybe this is really him. So literally almost came out of my mouth. And I, I do like to think sometimes about how horrible would have been and funny to everyone but me.
If I had said that. But but he was on his way down to a red Sox game and he was calling me to say he was halfway through Wildwood road. And he was really enjoying it. He was going to give me a blurb.
David Gwyn: Wow.
Christopher Golden: So I contacted the editor and I said, this is, this is happening. And the editor they actually [00:24:00] ended up putting like a sticker on every copy of.
David Gwyn: Really
Christopher Golden: Wildwood road, like a gold sticker on the cover with the blurb.
David Gwyn: The ultimate seal of approval, right?
Christopher Golden: Yeah, I’m not, I’m honestly not sure it did much at that time. Cause it was sort of late, but it did a lot for me. Like I felt great. I’m certain it helped, you know And then he blurbed snow blind. Which I think he really liked.
And it was good timing because we were having blizzards up here, but he was down in Florida. So he was he was enjoying that
David Gwyn: Nice.
Christopher Golden: and then move, Road of bones. I really think, I mean, I, I had contacted him to see if he’d be willing to look at it and, you know, he said, send it to me, but no promises. I’ve got stacks and stacks here, as I know he does.
But I really think that it was that about a week or two weeks after I sent him the book, the New York times ran an article about the road of bones and he emailed [00:25:00] me a link to the article and he said, Hey, look at this. I just, I just saw this article. And I, I really think that it was that he saw the article and he went, huh?
I wonder if that book is any good, you know?
David Gwyn: That’s awesome.
Christopher Golden: You know, on the one hand you do have this like business brain, that’s just like, obviously this is very good for business. And then he, he tweeted the cover, which was amazing. But the, the business brain, the practical brain recognizes that it’s, it’s great and useful, but it’s way more important to me to know that he, you know, and he said, I really did love it.
And You know, he, so he wasn’t just doing it to support the book or to try and be a good guy. He went out of his way to say how much he really loved it. And it just, you know, what do you say to that?
David Gwyn: Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s so cool. And, and it goes back to what You said. I mean, the, the horror writers are the, are the nicest ones in the business, right? I mean, it goes to show you that the fact that he would just call you up. I can’t even imagine your heart. Must’ve been [00:26:00] pounding.
Christopher Golden: I was like, I literally, I know this sounds ridiculous. It makes me look like such an ass, but I literally fell out of my seat. It’s the only time that’s ever happened to me in my life. I just was like, when I realized it was actually him and I had not actually sworn at him. I literally just pushed back. I was like, and I fell onto the floor and I laid on the floor and finished the conversation with him.
And I felt like such a dumb ass because I remember saying to him, you know, in all the times I ever thought what I would say if I ever spoke to you, I never thought we would be talking about my book, you know? Yeah, but no, but he’s, he’s a a really kind person, no question. And I think that comes through in the work and that’s probably why I’ve been so inspired by him for so long.
David Gwyn: Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. I want to shift gears cause I know you do a The bunch of different kind of writing. And so I do want to talk a little bit about the comic books that you do and the stories that you build there. Is that something that you [00:27:00] always wanted to do?
Something you kind of fell into?
Christopher Golden: Yeah, interestingly enough. I mean, I, I was a big comic fan when I was a kid. And then when I was about 13, I discovered girls and I stopped reading and collecting comics until I was a sophomore in college. And I lived with two guys and one night lights off, we’re going to sleep. And somehow we’re talking about various things and somehow comics came up and we we started talking about all the Marvel comics, characters.
We’d love. We were when we were kids. And one of my roommates for sort of sheepishly said, well, I still read. Comics. And he lived in Providence. He was like, the next time I go home, I’ll bring back a couple boxes of comics. And he did, and I started catching up on like the classic eighties X-Men and Daredevil and stuff like that.
And at that point I was totally hooked and I went into millionaire, picnic and Harvard square in Cambridge, which I think was the first direct market comic shop in the [00:28:00] country. And they were having a warehouse sale. Where they were selling all these back issue comics for a quarter. And I think I spent almost $300 in four days in quarter comics.
David Gwyn: Wow.
Christopher Golden: So needless to say that was it. I was completely hooked, so I wanted to write comics just like I wanted to write novels. And I had sold my first comic book script around the same time as I’d sold my first novel in 1992. But that did not end up getting published at the time.
That was an adaptation of Joe Lansdale as the drive in,
David Gwyn: Okay.
Christopher Golden: eventually would get published elsewhere. So yeah, but, but it was interesting because comics. Are very difficult, medium to get into difficult business, to get into as a writer. And it’s difficult to, of just stay in. I think,
David Gwyn: And why is that? Do you think?
Christopher Golden: You know, for many years it was very incestuous.
I don’t mean that literally, obviously. But I think unless you work in it, [00:29:00] it was hard to get in it. You know what I mean? And for years I stopped pitching, I didn’t pitch anything. And in fact, these days, I don’t, I mean, I haven’t pitched anything for a long time except with dark horse where I do all these comics with Mike Mineola both his Mineola verse stuff, the Hellboy universe stuff, and also the outer verse which we created together.
So, I don’t know. I mean, it’s, I just, I love comics. I love the medium. I love working with artists to see what an artist, is going to do with what you give them. It’s such a wonderful process, but, but it was fascinating to me is that I say all the time to writers. Please don’t assume that just because you can write prose, you could write comics.
So just because you could write comics, you could write a screenplay or et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Each of these things is its own discipline. It has its own structure. It’s a learning curve and you need to learn to do that thing. You can’t assume that just because you can do one thing, you can do the others.
David Gwyn: It sounds like[00:30:00] something that, that is very different from, from prose. And so when you’re, when you’re taking on projects, both your prose and comic books, I mean, how are you deciding, is your agent bringing you something? Are you deciding on something and pitching it?
Is it a different process.
for, for what type of writing you’re
Christopher Golden: I mean, it’s depends. You know, my look, my career has been knock on wood. My career has been wonderful and wonderfully diverse. But I always you know I always try to explain to people that I’ve never gotten to the point where I’ve broken through to the point where I don’t have to hustle. Right.
And so there are lots of projects that come to me and some of them, I say yes to, and some of them I say no to, and there are projects that come to me and I say, yes. And then the project goes away and never, you know, I was, I’m not going to say who, but I was approached for by the estate. One of the most famous writers of the 20th century to, to finish a novel of his last year.
And I was like, yes, of course, [00:31:00] I want to do this. This is fantastic. It’s right up my alley. Very cool. And then like two weeks later, they were like, actually we’re developing the movie version of this thing. We want to do that first. So we’ll get back to you so that happens too. But so much of what I do comes about because I pushed for it.
I went for it. So stuff does come to me, but most of the stuff happens because I pursued it.
David Gwyn: Right. Yeah.
that makes sense. So can we, let’s backtrack a little bit, just for a few minutes here. I’d love to hear kind of your, your origin story and how you got started writing and what that process was like. And, and, you know, a lot of people who listened to this are aspiring writers and, and we always are interested in, in those kinds of those tales.
Christopher Golden: Yeah. I will say, look, I mean, let’s be really clear. I am I am really cognizant of, and I think that anybody listening to this who wants to be a writer should be cognizant of the fact that. The world as it was when I [00:32:00] started writing is very different. I sold my first novel. I had done a nonfiction book before that, but I sold my first novel in 1992.
So 30 years ago and quit my job. And I’ve been writing full-time ever since, somehow by hook or by crook, you know? And and the world is very different and the. Writing Community and the publishing world is very different. What I will say is this. I think that the thing that is true as true now, as it was then is that you need to assume that you suck at it and that you need to get better.
And that the people like your friends and your parents and your sisters and brothers and girlfriends and boyfriends and spouses who were telling you how perfect you are. I just think back to American idol in the old days when they’d have these shitty singers on. Who would be told that they were shitty for the first time and you always hear about, my [00:33:00] mother told me I had a beautiful voice, you
David Gwyn: Hm.,
Christopher Golden: assume that you really need to get better than you are.
That’s the first thing. And the second thing is Yes, you need to have a business brain. You need to be practical about what you do, but if you go around just trying to schmooze people and you’re not there to actually get to know people it shows, you know, and so I definitely think that online and when things get back to whatever the new normal will be which I think maybe sooner than we think Go and meet people in person and get to know people who share your goals, your ambitions, or who are further ahead than you are, or further behind artists, agents, editors people who do other kinds of writing because building a real community of people who care for one another who have talent, you know is a huge part of, of trying to figure out which door.
Can open. yes, you [00:34:00] have to have a thick skin. You have to submit all the time and everywhere and search for agents and search for venues and markets and whatever. But I think making genuine connections with people who care about whether you do well is just as important now as it was then And opening yourself up.
Read as much as you can write as much as you can read diversely. So my origin story is, is a pretty simple one. I I went to ni con for the first time in 1989, right after I’d graduated from college, I was 22 and I met at econ. Most of the horror writers who had been my idol.
Throughout the eighties. And I also met the woman who would become my first agent and the woman who had become my first editor and sort of began those relationships. They obviously, they weren’t my agent and editor at the time. And you know, it just became a process of like, okay, I sold this non-fiction book of essays about horror movies.
[00:35:00] And. That same editor eventually bought my first two novels, ginger Buchanan and ginger bought a bunch of books from me over the years, but but she was the first. And so it really is that
David Gwyn: And when you I mean, when you’re thinking about your, your relationship with your agent and editors, I mean I know,
there’s like this common thread in unpublished writers where it’s like, get any agent out there possible and just work with that. Do you think, I mean, what is your relationship like with your agent and your editors?
Is it something that you feel like it’s more important to find the right agent than just any agent. What do you, how do you feel
Christopher Golden: Well, I mean, look, I would say that there were maybe three steps to the process, right? As far as agents are concerned. First, you go for the exact right agent, who is the ideal agent in your mind for you. And you make a list of, you know, the 10 or 12 agents who you think fit that bill.
And if they all shoot you [00:36:00] down, then the second step is any agent who isn’t shitty. And so finding out who the shitty ones are, is a, is a process in and of itself. And that’s why it helps to have a community you know, to sort of do, do due diligence, figure out who these people are. The number one.
That I will say. And I was so lucky because my job when I got out of college was in licensing. And so I knew contracts. I can read a contract and understand what it said and what it meant. The number one piece of advice that I give writers all the time. And usually it’s in retrospect and I’m beating them off about it is that you shouldn’t sign anything that you don’t understand and you shouldn’t sign anything that you are concerned about.
Without checking with somebody who knows better than you do. And so, yeah, so do due diligence on, on agents. And then if you still can’t find an agent. It’s better to have no agent than to have an agent [00:37:00] who’s going to screw you or take advantage of you or in, as in the case of one friend of mine discovered her agent was actually a had been convicted of sexual assault and changed his name.
So, so, you know, there, there are problems out there. I’m fortunate that I’m not in a position to, to have more advice for people as far as what to do to try to get an agent or, or to get the attention of an editor who might be accepting unsolicited manuscripts. I do know that places like Tor Nightfire have been having periods where they’re open to unsolicited manuscripts.
David Gwyn: Yeah.
Christopher Golden: So again, being included in having a community You know, building that is, is key.
David Gwyn: Yeah, no, that’s great. That’s really great advice. And I feel like too, one of the things that I’ve been after doing these interviews, one of the things that is so interesting to me that I hadn’t thought of before was the agent author relationship. Like, it felt very transactional when I thought about it from the outside, but the more agents and writers I talked to, the more I [00:38:00] realized, like there’s a.
Like, they just try to find that right. Fit for some of them it’s like very business and they’re just like, I, my agent does my business stuff. And then for others, they’re like, I’m really good friends with my agent and we go out for drinks. And it’s just so interesting to me because that relationship that I hadn’t really anticipated or really hadn’t really thought of before.
And so I, that’s why I always ask is I’m always curious about like, you know what that’s like.
Christopher Golden: you have to do the two brains, like I was talking about earlier. Right? You have to have your. Personal side where you, like, I have a great relationship with my agent. I respect him immensely. And I think I know him well, I understand him well, and I would say we are friends for sure.
the other hand, I also have to always be evaluating the agent author relationship and. Make sure that I feel that he’s doing the job. I need him to do, which he, he is for sure. But for instance, someday, if he ever retires it may be that there are other agents in his agency [00:39:00] who would want to take me on as a client.
I hope who knows, but at that point you have to, well, do I want to go with that person or do I want to go with somebody? Somebody else who has a different agenda, you know, and, but as far as the other half of the brain that I was talking about, you need to look at the agent relationship and remember that your agent’s responsibility is to all of his clients or her clients.
Right. My responsibility is to my family. I need to earn a living because I’m a full-time writer. I need to earn a living. I need to be able to pay tuition and I need to be able to pay for the supermarket. I need to pay my bills and the mortgage and all of that stuff. Right. So there’s a point at which there’s a, there’s a line, you know what I mean?
There’s a line where you can’t allow your personal affection for an agent or for a publisher or whoever it might be, or even a collapsed. You [00:40:00] know you can’t allow your personal affection to impact negatively your ability to take care of yourself and your family. That has to be first.
David Gwyn: Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. So,
in that, in that kind of same, same vein as we kind of wrap up here, what’s the best part of telling stories for a living.
Christopher Golden: I was getting some great direct messages from a reader on Facebook today. That was terrific.
When you, when you know that your peers have really, truly enjoyed something you did, and they’re not just telling you that because they’re trying to be kind to you or whatever. That’s lovely. But honestly, I would say that You know, like I had a reader early reader on Road of bones, tell me it was the most terrifying thing she’d read in 30 years.
And yet other readers have said they didn’t think it was scary at all, which is fine because it’s me. It’s not about that. But honestly, the two best feelings I’ve had in my entire career regarding my writing. The first is when I’ve made [00:41:00] people cry.
Because that’s real, somebody could say to you, oh my God, it was so scary. It may, you know, but it’s impossible to really evaluate that. What does that mean? How do you, how do you gauge what that means for them? Right. But if you made them cry, especially I’ve had people tell me that they were reading a book on a bus or a plane, and they cried in public reading a book that I wrote.
That’s fantastic.
David Gwyn: That’s
extra
Christopher Golden: feeling that is to know that you emotionally connected to a reader enough, especially because I don’t write books that are made to make people cry. You know what I mean? It’s not like a romance novel. And I, I say that with total respect because that is a really difficult thing to do and I can’t do it.
Although I love romance. So it’s not a romance novel or a literary novel. That might be constructed specifically to create [00:42:00] situations where people would cry reading them. Right. So for me, that’s the best and the other thing, and honestly, truly the top, the pinnacle for me is when I have written things that changed people’s lives and the sense of like, I wrote a lot of Buffy the vampire Slayer novels.
And I wrote a lot of young adult mysteries. I did a series called body of evidence with this character, Jenna Blake. I did 10 of those. And you have no idea how many emails I got during those years from young students. Usually girls, but sometimes boys as well, who said. They read because of me, but I had parents come up to me and books on this and say, I could never get my son to read, but he, I got him to read this book of yours and now he can’t stop reading.
He can’t put books down. He reads all the time. So that if I was the trigger to get a kid interested in reading or to get, [00:43:00] or to reawaken, I’ve got emails from people who said, oh, I hadn’t read anything in like eight years. And I read, I picked up this book on a whim and I loved it. Now I’m reading all the time.
I’m reading all your books. From kids who said like I didn’t read and my grades sucked, but now my dad wanted me to email you because I have an a in English. And he says, it’s because I’m reading and I’m reading because of your books and stuff like that. I also did, when my, when my sons, I have three kids, my daughter is much younger than the boys.
When my sons were in middle school, I directed middle school musicals for three years.
David Gwyn: Oh,
wow.
Christopher Golden: their school. And I run into those kids. Now they’re adults. Now I run into them and I hear about how that impacted them, doing those shows, impacted them. And it’s the same thing to me, nothing in my life, other than raising my kids will ever be better than knowing that you you created [00:44:00] positive change.
In the path that someone’s life was going to be on. I mean, what could ever be better than that?
David Gwyn: That’s really great. Yeah. That’s so cool. Yeah.
I’m a, I’m a middle school teacher, so I can appreciate how hard that must have been a play. I feel like it’s like herding cats, like people who don’t have experience doing it with middle-school teachers is like,
Christopher Golden: It really wasn’t it. Wasn’t
David Gwyn: oh, nice.
Christopher Golden: the benefit of I had the benefit of not, I mean, sometimes it was, but I had the benefit of not being the teacher in the classroom with them and I could come in and what I loved about it is I would come in and the first day I would always say, I would talk to them as if they were adults, you know, as far as like my expectations from them.
And I would say two things, I would say the first thing. When we get to the point where we’re putting this show on your parents and your families and everyone who comes to the show is going to expect it to suck. They’re going to [00:45:00] expect you all to be shuffling around on the stage, falling off the stage, knocking over the piano player, and we’re not going to do that.
And, and they’re going to be blown away and you’re not going to believe how good you feel that day.
David Gwyn: Yeah.
Christopher Golden: And secondly, I would tell them, I’m going to treat you all like adults. Because that’s how we get our work done. That’s how we all reach our goal together until you give me a reason not to treat you that way,
David Gwyn: yeah.
Christopher Golden: you know?
So, so don’t give me that. Don’t give me that reason. And and I loved it had such a good time with them.
David Gwyn: Nice. That’s great. So three quick questions to wrap up here. First, are there any, any books, movies, or resources you recommend or suggest for writers or readers?
Christopher Golden: Boy. I mean, you’re talking about to, to help writers or just in general.
David Gwyn: Anything. I mean, I imagine the people who are listening to this love your books. Wanna want to be just like you when they grow up, I mean, is there, is there something that really something that influenced you?
Christopher Golden: so [00:46:00] yeah, I mean, I’m voracious. You know what I mean? I read, so I have, I always have a million book recommendations and movie and TV recommendations. I’m currently watching Peaky blinders which is terrific storytelling, great character work.
I will say that movie wise, the one thing I will say, and this is very hard for younger people.
And the last few years, the last four or five years, I’ve gotten really into old movies, like golden age Hollywood, 1930 to 1960, like Turner classic movies stuff. And whether you’re just a, a person who loves storytelling or you’re a writer, I can’t recommend highly enough. Watch some of these films, you investigate, you get into it, especially the pre-code Hollywood movies for a whole other reason, which I won’t, because I feel like the melodrama that’s present in all of these movies.[00:47:00]
So much of it is stuff we don’t do in storytelling anymore. And actually. It’s really helpful. It’s really useful to see the dynamics and how, what was the shorthand of getting characters into circumstances quickly in those stories and how they ping-ponged off each other. And I love them. I love them so much.
And the dialogue in the, in the better ones, that dialogue is terrific. So I feel like I’m having a different approach to a lot of things. Because of the influence of these movies. And I feel like so many people, I was reading an article with a parent was saying that his kids say oh, is that was that made the 20th century?
I’m like, oh God. But but I would say like, don’t be afraid to go back. Yeah. But don’t but so I’m, I think there’s a lot to be learned from the past.
David Gwyn: That’s so funny. you’re not the first author who’s told me that I, I talked to Grady Hendrix a couple of months ago and he said the same thing that he, well, when he’s looking at like [00:48:00] monster horror and he’s writing a vampire or whatever he’s doing, he likes to go back to those early stories as a way to kind of whether it’s research or like kind of reinform the way he’s doing things.
I think that’s really interesting. really great. So.
Christopher Golden: Just talking about those movies though, too, I’m talking about like, you know, a screwball comedies and dramas and especially new our film noir and you know, all that. I love it all. But anyway, go ahead.
David Gwyn: No, that’s great. I, I, my, my last question is just you know, where can people find you? Where can people look you up?
Christopher Golden: I have a website, Christopher golden.com that has links to everything, but I’m also on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. And I’m very easy to find.
David Gwyn: Nice. I I’ll link to all that stuff as well in the show notes, if you, if you’re listening and you want to get in touch with with Christopher, definitely check that out. But I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much. I am dying to read Road of bones and I’m really looking forward to it.
So I can’t wait to check it out.
Christopher Golden: Thank you very much, David. I hope you enjoy it.
