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🗓 Previously…

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🎙 Interview

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📇 Biography

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📜 Transcript

Jason Rekulak

Jason Rekulak

David Gwyn: [00:00:00] Jason, Publishers Weekly called this book Garfield Meets Rosemary’s Baby. When you first had the idea for this book, did you know right away that it would blend humor and supernatural horror at the same time?

Jason Rekulak: I think so because the original germ of the idea was I, And it came out of like a… It- it’s the only time I’ve ever had an idea from a dream. I had COVID, I had a temperature, I was quarantining myself, and I run out of things to read, so I sneaked into my son’s bedroom and I grabbed, these like middle grade comic books “Big Nate” and “Calvin and Hobbes,” stuff like that.

So I was like: Oh, this is perfect, I don’t feel well. I’m just gonna sit here on the couch and read some good old “Calvin and Hobbes.” And I fell asleep, and then, when I woke up, I just had this idea for a story about a comic strip artist or a cartoonist whose work starts out very sweet and wholesome, but then turns dark and surreal and David Lynchian, that was the impetus for it all. And [00:01:00] so then as I began to think about, okay what would be like a fun comic to do that with? What should this person’s comic be? Should it be a superhero comic or a family comic? I’m like: Oh, it should be a cat comic. That’s perfect. That’s really fun. Cats are inherently funny, but if if a mouse gets into your house, they turn into like Hannibal Lecter, they are like little sociopaths, and you can’t bear to watch. I have rescued mice from my cats because I’m like, “Leave this poor thing alone.” to answer your question, I think once I understood that, I was like This idea is just like inherently funny, so it would be wrong to make it a very serious book, like a very nihilistic…

It would be wrong to make it “Obsession,”

David Gwyn: Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Rekulak: people are gonna go into this, they’re gonna see cat comic strips in the book. They’re gonna expect something funny and not too intense. So you know I wanted it to be scary and spooky, but I was like, “Oh, there’s gonna be like an element of like levity throughout the whole thing.”

David Gwyn: Yeah, it’s so cool. And, last time we talked when The Last One at the [00:02:00] Wedding was coming out, and during that conversation, you mentioned wanting to return to Supernatural and that you had an idea, but that you

Jason Rekulak: Oh, yeah.

David Gwyn: to share yet. And I’m

Jason Rekulak: Yeah, it was this idea.

David Gwyn: It was this one,

so that

Jason Rekulak: yeah

David Gwyn: I love to see that came through all the way. Like how much did it change from that kind of initial idea to where it is now?

Jason Rekulak: It didn’t really… there were little things but the core of it was there from the outset. I think the tricky thing was, I, and as I think back and try to remember, I’m sure a lot of it was… I know I was really stressed out while I was writing it. Now it all seems easy. I remember getting tripped on trip- tripped up on what is, is this cat really possessed by a demon?

And if so, what kind of demon is it? Because I knew, there’s pretty much there’s the Christian Roman Catholic demon where you need to bring in an exorcist. There’s that kind of possession. And then there’s everything else, where it’s you have to make up your own rules for this thing’s mythology.

And so I was like do I wanna have a priest in my book? Do I wanna include a [00:03:00] priest?” And I was like, “Definitely not.” I, that feels like a different kind of story and a different kind of fun. I’d say, a big thing that just I figured out along the way was, okay, what is my demon?

What is my antagonist? And what are the rules, and how do I introduce all that? And I don’t think I was anticipating there are these woodcut illustrations in the book. I don’t know if you can cut them into this podcast to show people what I’m talking about. But that was the whole impetus for those.

There’s this very 19th century illustration style, and I was trying to think about how do I explain the history of my demon, the rules of my demon? And ideally, how can I do that visually?” And so I happen to know a friend who can work with that style really well and I was like, “Oh, this is great,” ’cause it’s like a nice old-timey contrast to the comics, which feel very contemporary.

And it’s also slowly just seeding backstory and foreshadowing,

David Gwyn: Right

Jason Rekulak: All kinds of information about the nature of this thing

David Gwyn: Yeah, that’s so cool. And I feel like I wanna talk more about the illustrations in a little bit, but I, I have it in my [00:04:00] hands right here, and I know this will… So by the time people are listening to this, it will also be out. So before we go any further, I’d love if you would just give us like a quick synopsis so that people know a little bit more about the, the story and the book

Jason Rekulak: yeah,

David Gwyn: character.

Jason Rekulak: Yeah. Yeah, it’s, so it’s the story of this this young woman. She’s a– She has this comic strip. Her name is Penny. Her cat is named Popcorn. She has this very autobiographical comic strip called “Penny and Popcorn,” and it’s like the kind of book you would get at, like a s- at a Scholastic Book Fair.

It’s like these, if you have 10-year-olds, you know exactly what I’m talking about. And at the outset of the book, she loses Popcorn. Popcorn goes missing in a snowstorm, and she’s devastated. She’s lost her feline muse. Partly as a favor to her boyfriend, partly as a, plan to jumpstart her creativity, she agrees to pet-sit this cat that she doesn’t know.

And as soon as this cat gets into her house, s- this cat is not Popcorn. It’s a very strange animal. Strange things start happening. She she starts having weird dreams. She’s hearing weird sounds at night. And she finds that her own creative output is [00:05:00] just changing. It’s getting, stranger and darker and more surreal.

And it just gets weirder and weirder from there. And then to the point where she’s like, “I think this cat has a demon in it.” And of course everyone’s like, ha. Yeah, cats are crazy.” But everything she’s concerned about are just things that normal cats do. They bring dead animals into your house.

That’s just what they do. If you’re, if you’re taking a shower, they’re gonna scratch at the bathroom door until you let them come in and stand on the edge of the tub and watch you. That’s just what they do, right?

David Gwyn: Yeah. That’s so cool. I feel like there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of recent publishing trends where people are going for genre blends, and I feel like you throughout your career have already been doing this and doing this so well, like a, a mix of genres, part horror, part thriller, part mystery.

Like y- I feel like you’ve done this, and I’m really curious, are you consciously thinking what genres you can blend together? Or is this just like you tell the story how it comes to you, and if it happens to touch across a couple different genres that’s what happens?

Jason Rekulak: Yeah, I don’t ever think consciously about it. I think about what is the [00:06:00] story? And if it works together, that’s always exciting for me. I do mixing things up and like blending things and I read pretty widely. Like I read everything, I know a lot of thriller writers, they just read thrillers and you could read thrillers all year and not get to everything.

But I like to read different kinds of books and pull from, all different kinds of materials

David Gwyn: Yeah. It, people I interview on here obviously thriller, horror, mystery folk and I’m really curious now that you’ve written humor as part of o- one of these genres that you’re touching on, does the humor make the scarier moments easier or harder to get to? That lev- that levity that you’re bringing to the story, does, do you find okay, because you’re bringing that humor, it makes the, eerie, spooky parts easier, or does it make it harder?

Jason Rekulak: That’s a really good question. I don’t know. Like I, I’m not that strategic about it. I’m not someone who would like chart out like beats on a page and say, “Okay, this scene happens, now [00:07:00] this scene should happen, and the funny scene should be followed by a scary scene.” I, it’s all intuitive and I’m just like writing it.

And but it’s just something I’ve liked for as long as I could remember. I would cite, if you need… E- everyone’s talking nowadays about Jordan Peele ’cause like he has a background in sketch comedy and now he makes all these great horror movies. But I think my favorite example is someone like Roald Dahl ’cause I used to love to read his stuff when I was…

I still love to read his stuff. And think about Willy Wonka and like that chocolate factory and all the horrible ways those kids die. They’re really funny, but they’re also like horrific. And when y- when you’re a kid it’s like, “Oh my God, he like drowned in a chocolate river.”

But it’s funny. And so my favorite writers, and my f- I mean I, there’s a lot of horror that I like that just has a, you don’t think of them necessarily as funny. I don’t think people think of “Misery,” the Stephen King novel, as a funny book. It’s awful what happens to that guy. But she is a funny character, with like her folksy sayings and like she’ll make herself terrifying,

David Gwyn: Yeah

Jason Rekulak: So [00:08:00] I just I don’t know. I love it. I really enjoy- I just saw “Resident Evil,” which is hilarious. It’s such a good, scary movie. It is super scary, but it is probably the most I’ve laughed at a movie in a long time.

David Gwyn: Oh, how interesting. I–

Jason Rekulak: you gotta go. You would love it

David Gwyn: I definitely need to check that out. I just saw something about it recently and just how well it’s doing and how much people are loving it. I, I love a good movie recommendation like that. So me a little bit, when you’re… I think one of the things that I love about your work is how you kind of ratchet up tension as you go. It sounds to me that your writing process is, like you mentioned, intuitive, where you’re gonna write it from th- you’re gonna tell the story from beginning to end. You’re not gonna think about this. But when you’re going back, like just for writers who are listening to this and trying to write something similar to what you’re doing here do you find that you get to the end of a first draft and it’s has that, and you just have to kinda ratchet it up here and there?

Or are you going back after that first draft and saying, now I need to maybe move some things around. Maybe I need to make some significant changes”? Like, how close are you after that first draft to [00:09:00] having that kind of, th-that trajectory that you, that your books always have and how much of it is that ha-happening in revisions?

Jason Rekulak: Yeah, so one thing is like I don’t write– I never write like a whole draft before I go back and start revising it. I find that, you know There’s that metaphor of writing is like driving in a, on a dark road with the headlights on, and you can’t… You can only see a little bit in front of you or I don’t know what that metaphor– you know the quote I’m talking about.

And I think that’s true to a certain extent, but what I find is, like, when I get about a third of the way in, I know that everything I’ve written is so rough, and I’ve already decided to change 50 things in what I’ve just written, because as I’m getting further along, I’m like, “Oh, I gotta go back.

I gotta change that. I gotta change that. I gotta change that.” I have so many changes now to those first 100 pages, say, I can’t keep it all straight in my head. I don’t remember. I’m like, “Wait is what’s in chapter two true or is what’s in chapter four true?” So I just have to stop, get out of the [00:10:00] car, and just go back and do another pass of those first 100 pages. Then I’ll go a little further, and then I do the whole thing all over again. And and I’ll do that repeatedly. I have found the hardest part of writing any book is the first half. If you set the first half up really well, the second half comes a lot faster because you’ve made so many foundational decisions in the first half.

You’ve just… At that point, you know who everyone is in the story, right? Just things like that. You know what your point of view is. You’ve d- you’ve just set up everything. And so now the second half just becomes follow through. So I would never… I think it would be so much harder to write the second half without really having a firm grasp of everything that you’re setting up.

So I don’t even know how many drafts of a book I do. I feel… I don’t even keep track because I know that I’m constantly going back and starting over. The project I’m working on right now, the new book, I’ve probably written the first 75 pages three times [00:11:00] already. And each set is closer than the last, but I’m just changing tons of stuff, just trying to lock in on what is this?

Who is this about? Where are they? And I think I’m getting there, but

David Gwyn: Nice. And do you fi- do you find then that the last third or last half of the, the second half of the book becomes that much easier because you’ve gone back and done so much on the first half? Do you feel like that last third you’re like, “Okay, everybody’s locked in at this point ’cause I’ve gone over the f- the front half so much”?

Jason Rekulak: I find like writing the last third is usually pretty, is the easiest part. The middle can be a little tricky because you’re just I feel like with like the middle and like second acts, you’re, sometimes you have to make like sacrifices. You be like, “Okay, this subplot just is not paying off.

I’m just gonna get rid of this.” And, so the middle can be a little tricky. But but I generally find writing like the last 100 pages it’s so much easier than writing the first 100 pages.

David Gwyn: I would imagine listening to how your process how you’re going through your writing process, it does make sense that that stage, [00:12:00] you, like you s- like you mentioned, character voice, you’ve probably locked it in. It’s starting to become a little bit more intuitive to you.

It’s becoming a little bit more natural. You’ll be, being able to get in and decide how a character’s sounding, what a character would do. So it doesn’t surprise me, to hear that those last, for you anyway, the last 100 pages seem to flow, which is nice.

Jason Rekulak: Yeah, the, we, the, the– if there’s one thing I’ve learned about writing that is helpful to other writers is that everybody’s process is different, I made the classic mistake of here’s a writer I like and here’s what they do. I heard them talk in an interview, so I’m just gonna do what they do.

And you can’t write that way. You have to figure out your process, and the only way to do that is to write a lot . And you have to write more than one book because when you’ve written a couple, you’re like, “Okay, now I actually think I know how I approach a project that is of this scale,” even a, writing a short story doesn’t really tell you how you are going to be able to get through the marathon of writing a book.

David Gwyn: That makes total sense. That makes total sense. I want, I wanna talk a little bit about the illustrations that are in here. I think there’s more than 80 pages of art- artwork here. a little bit [00:13:00] about why that felt so important to the story, and then just kinda like what the process was like bringing those to life.

Jason Rekulak: Yeah. Two books ago I had a book called “Hidden Pictures,” which also had illustrations in it. And what I loved about that book was that book is about a babysitter. She’s watching this little boy who draws all this weird stuff, and she includes the boy’s illustrations in the book ’cause she thinks they’re telling some kind of story.

And and she’s trying to figure out, are these like clues to a mystery and so on. And and What I w- and when I wrote that book, I purposely didn’t describe the pictures she was finding. I wanted you, the reader, to see them and draw your own conclusions. And I think I hope that that’s created like a kinda, like a…

It makes the reader like an active participant in the story, more, more so than you would be, like, in a traditional novel because you can just pause the whole book and look at these drawings for 20 minutes, you can spend more time with them than the narrator does. And certainly in that book and this new one, there’s things in the pictures [00:14:00] that the narrator or the protagonist doesn’t see, that she misses but maybe you see, so you’re like, “you didn’t even notice.” “Look what’s under the chair,” “You didn’t even see it.” So I really enjoyed that. And the other part of it that’s super fun is I love collaborating with the, the two illustrators of “Hidden Pictures.” So because writing, as it can be this pretty solitary endeavor, and it’s so much fun to call someone up and say, “Hey,” I need this illustration to help me with this plot point,” blah, blah, blah.

It’s like, you have a team, a creative team. And so I wanted to work with them again, and it just took us about four years to… Four years? It might’ve been four years,

David Gwyn: Oh, wow

Jason Rekulak: to come up with another idea, because I didn’t wanna just do “Hidden Pictures 2,” and wanted to work the same team.

They’re super talented, multi-talented, but there is a limit to what they can do, if I said I want oil, I want, I need oil paintings now,” they’d be like, “I can’t do that.” But I knew that my friend Doogie could do comics ’cause he has his own middle grade series of comic graphic novels.

And I knew that my [00:15:00] friend Will could do the 19th century engravings because I’d seen examples of him doing that before from other things. He just has this vast collection of 19th century illustration, old newspapers, old magazines, old catalogs. And what he does is he actually… All of the art in this book, none of it he illustrated.

It’s all collage. He just stitches pieces together. So any one image could have source material from 12 different

David Gwyn: Oh, wow

Jason Rekulak: places, it’s pretty, pretty incredible. He’s amazing.

David Gwyn: Yeah. What does that process look like for you as the writer? Whe- when, when are the, are you bringing them in? Does it, is it feel important to you to be able to see the illustrations to put the finishing touches on the book? Or do you feel like your draft, your manuscript was, like, locked in and you just brought them in on the back end to, to help

Jason Rekulak: Yeah. No, I try to bring them in as early as possible for two reasons. One is it just makes me m- feel more confident in what I’m doing. I’m like, “Is this gonna work?” I can, I have like a, I can conceptualize what it should look like. But then [00:16:00] it, they’re just so good.

It just inspires me to get to their level, ’cause I’m like, as soon as I start seeing images, it immediately elevates the whole project. It also answers questions that I might have been, like, struggling with the whole time. For example, this was the first comic that Doogie did just as a test, I don’t think I’d written more than 50 pages before I had him just do one. And it established that, six panels on a page were gonna be, like, the optimal format, you know? Eight was too many, they were gonna be too small. Four was too few.I didn’t have enough space for jokes or whatever.

Let’s do six. And then with Will, the first engraved image he did, I think it was this one which we were trying to copy the, There’s this famous painting called “The Nightmare” by Henry Fuseli. I don’t know if I’m saying his name correctly, but that painting’s pretty similar to this.

There’s this demon crouching on this woman’s chest, very much like a cat. And so I was like, “Oh, like that, that is perfect.” And everything in this image, yeah, it comes from 12 different places. The [00:17:00] demon’s from one painting, the woman’s from another, a magazine, the candle’s from something else, the window’s from something else.

David Gwyn: That’s

Jason Rekulak: And he just Frankensteins it all together.

David Gwyn: I wish I had a s- that type of skill. It feels very foreign to me. I’m like, how– Where do you even start, right? Where do you even start with something like that?

Jason Rekulak: He’s in- he’s incredibly talented. It’s not even like it’s the least of what he’s doing right now. He does all of the covers for Dungeon Crawler Carl, these books. And I think like that series is now at, I just read it, that’s at 16 million books sold.

David Gwyn: Unbelievable. That’s

so

Jason Rekulak: imagine, it’s nuts.

David Gwyn: Amazing. you know, as we, as we wrap up here, I’m curious to hear if there’s something that you want readers to take away from after they read this book y- what do you think? If you were to talk to your reader r- right now, your kind of ideal reader, what are you hoping that as they finish the book, they’re kinda like, they put it down and they’re…

how do you think they’re feeling? What do you think they want… they should take away from it?

Jason Rekulak: Yeah, I think, after writing my previous book, “Last One at the Wedding,” [00:18:00] which, it’s not a sad book, but there’s some stuff in it that is just kinda sad. Like

David Gwyn: Yeah.

Jason Rekulak: it was a tough space to be in for two years ’cause you’re writing a lot about estrangement and things like that.

So I was like, when I finished that I was like, “Gosh, I just wanna write something that’s a little more fun, a little more upbeat, a little more comic,” and just, hopefully spectacularly entertaining. My touchstone was “Rosemary’s Baby,” the Ira Levin novel. If you haven’t read it, it’s amazing.

Masterclass in suspense, A++. I don’t know what he wanted readers to take away from “Rosemary’s Baby.” I don’t think there’s like a message to “Rosemary’s Baby.” It’s just a stunning work of suspense fiction. It’s just completely… It’s just, I love that book. I’ve read it probably 10 times. So you know, I- maybe this was me trying to write a book that was maybe just a fraction, that’s like a fraction of the power and impact of that book, and just entertainment

David Gwyn: It’s so funny you mention that ’cause think the last time we talked about “Rosemary’s Baby” and you recommended it, and you told me I should read it and I think I, I did after that recommendation. Phenomenal. It was a great recommendation, so I do appreciate that. So what’s next for you? What are you working on so that, two years from now or a [00:19:00] year from now we can talk about it and I can say

Jason Rekulak: Yeah, I’d love to. I’d love to come back. Yeah, unfortunately I’m gonna tell you the same thing I told you two years ago. Like it’s just, I don’t wanna say there’s a this is good advice to writers who are listening. Like you, you really shouldn’t talk about what you’re working on because I’ve heard people say it’s like letting the air out of a balloon.

You have all this pressure to tell this story and like that’s gonna fuel you to put it on the page. But as soon as you start telling people what it’s about you’re giving up all of that energy that you had, you know, that impulse to tell this story. So I tend to be pretty… I’ll tell my editor probably next week because I’m gonna see her and she’s gonna wanna know.

But otherwise I try not to tell anybody.

David Gwyn: I love it. Keep it close to the vest. I like that. That’s great. So my last question for you is just for people who are listening to this where can they find you? Where can they look you up?

Jason Rekulak: The best place is probably Instagram. It’s just my name, Jason Rekulak on Instagram. I, I– That’s where I put like the, all the details for like appearances and things like that

David Gwyn: Awesome. And I will do a quick plug. I think you have the [00:20:00] coolest website designer. Every book has a diff– I know every book you do has gives it a different refresh. It’s the coolest website, author website I’ve ever seen personally. So keep

Jason Rekulak: Oh, thanks. Thanks. Yeah he’s another amazing talent. I love to work with great designers. His name’s Dan Vecchitto, and I don’t know if his wife Jackie helps him or not. She works with him in other capacities. I don’t know if she did anything on my site. They also made an amazing video game called “Trombone Champ.”

If you haven’t played “Trombone Champ,” it’s so crazy. It’s so wonderful. Check out “Trombone Champ.”

David Gwyn: All right, good. I love I love that. And yeah, Jason, this is awesome. I always love chatting with you. I, I really hope people, if you’re listening to this, go out, get this book. It was a, a great read, so much fun and I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us.

Jason Rekulak: Thank you, David. Yeah, it was really great to be here. I appreciate the time