Mark Leslie is a multifaceted author, consultant, and podcaster with over two decades of experience in the literary world, specializing in ghost stories and paranormal fiction.
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Chapters
00:00 Start
8:15 The Economics of Book Sales
13:01 The Power of True Fans
16:46 The Rise of Audiobooks
20:52 The Role of AI in Narration
30:54 The Secret to Sustaining a Career
47:25 The Roots of a Horror Writer
54:35 Ghost Stories and UFOs
1:03:19 Werewolves and Cultural Myths
1:12:45 True vs. Untrue Ghost Stories
1:22:07 Personal Ghost Experiences
1:32:13 The Woman in the Hotel Room
1:36:01 Sensitivity to the Paranormal
1:39:14 Intuition as a Superpower
1:42:54 Creative Influence and Inspiration
Transcript
Music:
[0:00] Music
Mark:
[0:32] Is too many, too many ideas and too many books to write and not enough time. I've got an urban fantasy series, a Canadian Marvel series. Book seven came out last year and book eight was supposed to come out this year. And I just have not had the time to work on it because I'm working on so many other things. I just signed a contract to write a book of ghost stories of the Great Lakes. And so the goal is throughout the summer and the fall, circumnavigating at least Lake Ontario and Lake Huron. I'm not going to be able to do Lake Superior and Lake Michigan's all in the US. So I did get a grant from the Ontario government for research. But the research is kind of like the meant to be spent in Ontario travel.
Mark:
[1:19] But that's going to be a really fun one because as I'm gathering the stories, And a lot of the stories that are coming from other sources already, like books and articles, magazines and newspaper articles and, and, and going into the local libraries and digging into the archives. But when I'm at the various locations for when the book comes out, which is not coming out until next year, I deliver it to the publisher in December is I'm going to do some videos of myself on location at like, here I am in Cleveland, like by the haunted lighthouse or whatever. right. And it gets some video so that when the book comes out a year later, I have all these promotional videos that I can use. Uh, and maybe, uh, and I've done this before with free Friday frights on my, on my YouTube channel is I would, I would share like a, uh, a story from one of my books, you know, like, Hey, I'm at, I'm at the haunted, uh, Lavac mine up north of Sudbury, Ontario. And I'm going to tell you a story about haunted, you know, the haunted level, whatever. And that was always a lot of fun doing them on location but i thought i've never done that in advance of the book coming out like create the video now and then i have the promotional video so that when the book comes out i'm not scrambling and driving all over the place trying to get these videos done sure
Tyler:
[2:29] Yeah it's it's anytime you're in any sort of independent content creation, whatever that happens to be or i should just say independent job period you have to be constantly self-promoting it's 90% of your job so like like da Vinci, If he had a publicist or something like that, you know, you need someone who's telling other people about all your good ideas and not just,
Tyler:
[2:57] you know, your ideas, it'll stand on its own. Like, no way, you have to negotiate with people to be able to.
Mark:
[3:04] No, you've got to be out there, right? You've got to be in front of the right people, too. And it seems to be like this whole other. I know when I started in, in the book industry back in the early days before the internet and all that, uh, you know, the belief was that you would write a book and send it to your publisher and then you're done. All the magic happened. And, and now that's not the case, whether you're working with a publisher or whether you're self-published and I do both. Now I'm still doing, you know, 90% of the heavy lifting. You know, I have Mickey as a publicist to help me and get me in front of the right people like you but also um yeah i'm doing a lot a lot of stuff so there is no more days of you finish the manuscript and you're done right no
Tyler:
[3:48] That's go out and pimp it to the whole world um.
Mark:
[3:51] Yeah yeah
Tyler:
[3:53] My one of my friends is like a fine artist he's actually from uh like chicago and he was telling me about how one of the things that he he.
Mark:
[4:02] Transitioned in his 50s,
Tyler:
[4:05] Maybe late 40s really, from fine art to video game design. And he's like, the reason why I like games more is because you can just kind of put a game out and it will sell on its merit of how good people think it is. Whereas art, the fine art world is almost like you're just constantly networking. You're always at different shows with different people who have their little spats between them and how they You know, everyone will kind of just be competing with each other. And what you're really competing for is attention and not whether or not your art is really any better, if you could even measure that. And it's like book authoring is also kind of in between that space now where. It's never been easier really to publish a physical book if you want to, like you can spend a few bucks and have copies of anything that you want basically delivered to your door at this point, but then, you know, distributing them as the hard part. So yeah. What, what is that like? What does that seem like when you're, yeah.
Mark:
[5:15] Yeah. It's really funny because, um, I mean, I've, I've created a self-publishing platform here in Canada for Kobo, for eBooks, but I also consult for Draft2Digital, which draftdigital.com was founded in Oklahoma City and they merged with Smashwords, another self-publishing aggregator. And they started off with eBooks, but now they also have Draft2Digital print.
Mark:
[5:40] And if you have your manuscript ready to go, you know, edited manuscript in Word and even a simple cover design, but they also own bookcovers.com. So if you're looking for a cover design, you can find one from anywhere from $75 to like $500 depending on the designer and their custom, their prebuilt covers. So you can go in and say, oh, this is a good cover and then, and then replace the text with the text and change the fonts and stuff with your name and bam, you've got a cover, right? Uh, instantly a DIY version of the cover if you don't want to work with a designer, uh, cause these, some designers will put up these templates for you, um, that costs less because they don't have to do the extra, uh, lifting and.
Mark:
[6:23] The thing I love about being a writer now is I can do both. I can continue to work with publishers and get my books, you know, sign a contract and get my books out there, but I can also do it myself. I mean, I just launched a book, a nonfiction book for writers earlier this week on, it's called the podcast guest playbook and it's available in print and it's available in ebook and it's online everywhere. Right. And there's going to be very few bookstores that probably carry that book unless I have a relationship or I'm doing an event with them. But the joy is I, as an author, have the benefit of both. Now, with my traditionally published books, and most of my ghost story books are traditionally published, The publisher, I don't make as much money on those, but I'm working with publishers that actually have distribution. I've walked into bookstores throughout North America in Canada and the U.S. And found my bookstores on the shelves.
Mark:
[7:21] You know, Haunted Hospitals is probably one of the more popular ones that's going to be available throughout the States. And I remember randomly finding it at Barnes & Noble when I was walking in and going, hey, oh my God, they have my book. So that's a really cool thing. My self-published books are not readily available in bookstores, but they're all available online, like print-on-demand. And the challenge is I don't make as much money off my traditionally published books. I make way more money on the self-published books, but I also have the benefit of in-store distribution with trad. So I will give up some of the royalties that I earn on the stuff I do myself in order to have the privilege of having, you know, the publisher can get, I've got found my books in Walmart and Costco, uh, as well, which is a really nice vanity thing.
Mark:
[8:10] When you walk in and you see a skit of your books in a major store, that always feels good. But knowing that every book, once every book sells, I'll get a dollar a year later. Sure.
Tyler:
[8:20] Yeah.
Mark:
[8:21] Whereas, uh, you know, I sell an ebook for five bucks, you know, today and, and, you know, in a month and a half, I'm going to get $3 and 50 cents directly into my bank account.
Tyler:
[8:30] Yeah. it's a totally different business than when you're talking about like dealing with logistics. So like folks that thought it was going to be a great idea to invest in, you know, blockbuster at some point. Right. Yeah. The business of renting movies is virtually nothing to do with movies. It's about, it's all about like how good are you at warehouse logistics? Right.
Mark:
[8:53] Yeah. Yeah.
Tyler:
[8:54] In the, in the book world for historically, it's always been the same way. But yeah, having a direct to consumer, way of handling, you know, your transactions, eBooks really changed the mold with that.
Mark:
[9:07] Oh, for sure. And I do have, like, I have the pay up in the square account. So people come buy my eBooks online and it's eBooks and audio books are delivered immediately to a free app on your phone. The challenge of physical books, and I'll be honest with you, I've got the scale, I've got the stock because I do a lot of in-person events with both my trad books that I buy from the publisher, as well as the one I've made myself.
Mark:
[9:30] And, um, the logistics of packing and shipping is just a pain. I mean, here in Canada, we don't have a media mail. So I know in the States, it's really cheap to ship a book. In Canada, it's $15 to $20 just for one book to ship.
Tyler:
[9:44] So I had a, it was years ago, but I was sending all of like my Patreon supporters or something. I forget what it was. So I sent them all something in the mail. It was like a letter and a t-shirt and some other stuff. And it cost me less money to send to Auckland, New Zealand, than it did to send to Ontario.
Mark:
[10:05] Isn't that crazy? Yeah. When you think about how far it has to go, it's just, it's ridiculous.
Tyler:
[10:11] Yeah. I need it to go up the road and then right there. Yeah. But New Zealand was cheaper by far.
Mark:
[10:17] And it's so funny. So authors, I know I live about an hour and a half from the
Mark:
[10:21] border. I can get into New York state, like through Niagara Falls. And uh there are friends i know that pack up when they have to ship stuff to the states they'll drive across the border go to a u.s post office and mail it from there sure uh just to save them because even with the gas cost you're still saving money
Tyler:
[10:37] Yep no that yeah i wonder why that is but regardless the like it's never been a better landscape to be an independent creator for sure you know like so when that comes to you know books the indirect consumer even i think you could argue about music because like historically people made a lot of movie off or money off of album sales but now it's it's like you really just need to get popular enough that whatever town you're going to you can fill up whatever venue you're playing yeah.
Mark:
[11:13] You know exactly that's that's uh yeah and and it and sadly that's uh even with a major record deal that's where the most of the money was made right was
Tyler:
[11:22] The merchandise.
Mark:
[11:23] And filling those stands with people
Tyler:
[11:25] I think it was ice t was talking about like his whole philosophy on how he's handled his music career is like you know people have this like i need more i need bigger bigger bigger you know audiences and all this kind of thing and he's like you really just need like 500 people in every town that will fill up a club and you will make a living you know yeah.
Mark:
[11:42] Yeah exactly it goes back to um Yeah, well, the guy who created Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly, came up with 1,000 True Fans.
Tyler:
[11:52] Sure, yeah.
Mark:
[11:53] And if you have 1,000 true fans who will purchase every new thing you do, that can make a sustainable career. Yeah. And it kind of works out. I mean, now, 1,000 true fans buying a book at 99 cents in e-book format is not going to be a sustainable career. But if they're coming to events and they're seeing you and they're purchasing special editions, which we can easily make special editions of our books. I mean, my last horror collection that came out in October last year was a 20th anniversary celebration of the very first book I'd published back in 2004. It was this expanded edition. I spent over $1,000 US on original artwork to go inside of it. I had the regular e-book edition, the regular trade paperback, but then the hardcover and the special edition had like full, you know, full page art spreads and special binding and stuff like that. So the book's available in audio and e-book and regular trade paperback and regular hardcover. But then there was this special edition that was limited, you know, to only a hundred copies as well.
Mark:
[12:57] And so we have that power now as authors. We can, we can create these, you know, and platforms, as you mentioned, Patreon,
Mark:
[13:06] I have, uh, you know, Patreon supporters for my podcast that helped me with, with that, but also with the Kickstarter, I, you know, I raised $5,000 and I use that money. Cause I also put that book into traditional distribution warehouses. So that one, even though it's self-published is available through bookstores and you can walk into a bookstore and easily get it. Um, but that, that was a significant amount of lifting I had to do. I also have worked in the book industry since 1992. So I kind of know a little bit of the ins and outs of how that works.
Tyler:
[13:37] Yeah. It's, it's interesting though, just making the comparison again to games is so like, if I design a video game, it's, let's just say it takes me a year to make it. Mm-hmm . And put it out on steam, even in like something really low, like $3 or whatever.
Mark:
[13:54] Yeah.
Tyler:
[13:55] Like i don't have to make more of that game it's just you put it out one time and then it distributes itself and it's the same with ebooks but whereas when you're dealing with uh any physical media books especially you you do have to like keep up with it and then even if you're independent so this is i think something that you know like the normal person sitting you know there it's not in the book industry or the games industry or something like that they don't really think about how, there's a pretty solid chance someone else owns the copyright of your product in many cases, right? So, like a lot of video games that are just sitting on a shelf somewhere until they get like a remaster or something, it's not necessarily because people don't want it. It's because someone, like a publisher, retained the intellectual property at some point. It's the same thing in games, too. Or, sorry, it's the same thing in books as well, where if you you'd make a publishing deal and somebody else has the rights to your book and you can't just like so a customer comes to you i want a special edition of this other than you like yeah yeah unless you do it for by hand for them or something like that.
Mark:
[15:01] Yeah yeah so i mean that happened to me a few years ago um haunted hamilton was the first true ghost story book that i published so hamilton's kind of like pittsburgh steel town yeah man you were a lot of a lot of steel processing happens hamilton ontario between niagara and toronto for anyone is not familiar and that uh that book came out 13 years ago and about probably about five years ago just before the pandemic a company reached out to me called voice map and it's a gps enabled walking tour map and they they were interested in getting me to do a walking tour gps enabled walking tour of some haunted places based on the books now i signed over the audiobook rights to the publisher
Mark:
[15:45] So I don't have the audio book rights to the book, but I do have the rights to the IP for that. So the research I did to write the book, I still have all of those notes. I still have all of that. What I was able to do was readapt some of the stories from the book into a voice map walking tour. And I was able to leverage that. So even though I was bound in one particular format, this other format was an interactive walking tour. Where the GPS on your phone tells you where to go. Okay, well, it walks out through whatever. Now you're in front of the old Tivoli Theater and I'm going to tell you a story about that. So that was a way I got around being locked in. But that's a challenge when, you know, if somebody wanted, hey, like I wanted to even give a copy of the e-book of a book that is traditionally published, I don't have the rights to just give it to someone. I have to get the publisher to give it to them. Yeah. Because I've signed those rights over. yeah
Tyler:
[16:44] And not to mention the revenue split too it was like.
Mark:
[16:46] Figuring yeah exactly but with my own stuff like when somebody reaches out and i was like yeah yeah do you want the audiobook yeah here you go i'll just give me your email address and i'll fire it off to you and there's a you know free app on your phone you can listen to it and you'll have it in two minutes yeah
Tyler:
[17:01] Yeah now like audiobooks seem to be i'm not gonna say the number one but they're it's way up there and how people consume books. But I would say to some degree, it's not necessarily that it's replaced reading so much so is that people who would otherwise not read will do audiobooks.
Mark:
[17:21] Well, because you can do it while you're driving, while you're walking the dog, while you're going for a walk or a run, while you're washing the dishes, right? Yeah. I mean, and audiobooks expensive to make, but honestly, it's improved my ability to read more books. I usually have a physical book on the go. I have like a ebook on the go and then I have an audio book on the go all the time.
Tyler:
[17:44] I'm trying to figure out why audio books are expensive to me because.
Mark:
[17:47] Well, you pay for, you have to pay for the narrator. So you're paying anywhere from 150 to $500 an hour for a professional narrator. Oh yeah. And a typical book's eight to 10 hours, right? So that adds up.
Tyler:
[18:00] I think that there's a. Maybe some crossover between businesses such that so like from a independent video game standpoint, the cost of making out a book seems like a small budget but if you're used to your budget you know if your budget for your book is basically your time and research and nothing else yeah then all right well you can kind of do whatever you want but i guess if you're yeah, um let's just say like in my case right now i'm working on this this one game i've honestly been working on it for like five years it's going to come out yeah but uh i figure every person who's ever worked on that over time have to add up everything that they've ever been paid and then any tools that we use all that kind of thing like it's way more way like oh it's good.
Mark:
[18:50] For sure yeah yeah
Tyler:
[18:51] So i was thinking if you're if you're already a proficient podcaster or something like that i'm not saying like use my voice but you're familiar enough with the video editing side or the you just audio side of things and you um because we have tons of voice actors right yeah between the two trades so yeah people who are doing characters for for games or for animation and also who are like and i'll also read your audiobook and that's a large pool of people who are not in your 500 an hour range yeah.
Mark:
[19:25] No no it's huge yeah no it is huge yeah yeah
Tyler:
[19:28] So yeah it can't be that bad like it can't be that well i.
Mark:
[19:31] Mean honestly uh so at 150 bucks an hour which is a reasonable uh a very reasonable rate um that still adds up and the the earnings on audiobooks is still not as high as ebooks now the other thing i have done but here's the challenge i've got book i i prefer for my fiction i prefer to have them narrated by someone else not me by a professional narrator and i've got about, uh, six different narrators I've worked with over the years who are really good, very professional. They have the in-home studios and stuff. And, and again, the highest I've ever paid is $500 an hour. I'm usually paying about 250 an hour on average for most, uh, for most of those books. But I've done some of the nonfiction stuff myself. And the challenge there is I can do it. I have the professional equipment. I have the know-how. I have all of the stuff. I have Adobe, You know, the suite, I can do the editing with audition and other tools. You know, I've got sort of hooks in the ceiling and wall where I can hang blankets and muffle the acoustics to give it a good quality sound. The challenge is the time it takes. You know, to do a 400-page book would take me about 80 hours of work. And the challenge with me doing a million different things is I don't have that time.
Mark:
[20:53] And so that's the challenge. The other thing, because I'm a big nerd when it comes to testing out new technologies, is I recently, I have an AI voice of me.
Mark:
[21:05] Uh, you know, Mark Leslie LaFave, my full name, and I've, I've actually licensed my voice through 11 labs, AI, my AI voice, anyone can use and I'll get a cut for, I'll get a, you know, micropayment every time someone goes to use my voice. And I've used it myself when, when I have a, like I have a weekly podcast and sometimes for the intro, like the interviews, like yourself, I pre-interview and then release them later. But for the introductory matter and stuff if i'm traveling or i don't have a good mic with me or i've got really horrible acoustics or i have a lost my voice because i have a cold i'll use the ai mark and i'll identify myself hey this is the ai voice of mark um you know i'm in a crappy hotel room with bad acoustics uh so this is the ai voice doing the the read the introduction and and i've been using that for years but i thought okay and i've actually i've only made about 50 bucks off the voice so far but i'm thinking somebody wants to use my voice for an 11 reader they have an app where you can listen to audiobooks and you can choose what voice you want to hear it in yeah on the device and i was thinking well i want in on that action rick
Tyler:
[22:15] Rubin has done a bunch of really crazy interviews with like dead people um using ai voice generation and you know just like i guess that he has something review their entire body of work and come up with responses that you would think the thing is that he yeah when he publishes it it doesn't say dead person on there so like his conversation with jim morrison or something yeah um which is crazy how it's convincing it is nowadays but.
Mark:
[22:45] It reminds me of the old uh star trek next generation where they would have uh you know dead scientists come into the yeah come into their uh what what the heck did they call that?
Tyler:
[22:55] The holodeck. It was Jordy, the engineer of the ship, you know? Yeah.
Mark:
[22:59] Yeah. I was just, yeah, the engineer of the ship. Jordy gets to interact with her and solve a problem based on, on using all of the stuff that the
Tyler:
[23:06] Computer knows about her memory. And he falls in love with her too.
Mark:
[23:08] Yeah, of course. Yeah. Great.
Tyler:
[23:10] Great episode.
Mark:
[23:11] Yeah.
Tyler:
[23:12] No, yeah, it's just terrifying to, The implications. And as someone like, if you have a podcast or in your case, have been on a lot of things where your voice is recorded to, luckily you've already went ahead and given it to them. But it's not hard for them to use, you know, just.
Mark:
[23:30] Oh, it's out there. Yeah. There's probably a thousand hours of my voice over the last 15 years. Right. In my own podcast and various ones. So I was like, someone's going to do it anyways. I may as well make it easier for them. Yeah. You know, it's the same thing. it comes to authors get so upset with piracy and worried about, oh, someone's going to steal my book and stuff. Like, I'll be honest with you. If someone was going to steal it, they were never going to buy it. They were never going to pay for it. So you didn't lose a customer. You gained a reader. And I don't look at piracy as my enemy, but obscurity. And I'm quoting from Cory Doctorow there, but obscurity is a bigger challenge than piracy. Because if I'm big enough that people want to pirate my stuff, knock yourself out. I'm probably making enough money already.
Tyler:
[24:16] Well, if your shit is worth stealing, it inherently has value, right? Yeah.
Tyler:
[24:23] That's a proof that people want it. Yeah.
Mark:
[24:26] So make it accessible. I mean, I did a book, Campus Chills. It was a collection of horror stories set on campuses across Canada. I had 13 different authors do it. And we were using an espresso book machine to produce this book. I don't know. Have you ever heard of the espresso book machine?
Mark:
[24:43] It's a machine. there's only about 300 in the world right now, but this, I had the ninth in the world back in, in the, in the aughts and, uh, at a university bookstore in Hamilton. And, uh, it will print and bind a book from a digital file in about 15 minutes, right on the spot. And it looks just like a standard trade paperback. And so I wanted to show off, I had one at my bookstore, um, university of Edmonton bookstore had at university, Waterloo bookstore had it. So we created an anthology that was only going to be available at these three stores. And made it available and we did like simultaneous book launches you know the same day and had authors in the store and it was a just to try and show off this cool technology you know break a world's record that kind of thing but i had a story from kelly armstrong to a canadian horror author in there and because she was very very popular i found a copy of a digital file like somebody had scanned every page of this book and put it up on a bit torrent site and when that happened i was so excited that they wanted the book so badly i immediately rushed out and made the book available as a print on demand everywhere as well as an ebook everywhere so if someone wanted to get the book they could get it at a reasonable price because the effort to steal it
Mark:
[25:59] Was more than oh i'll just buy it for a couple bucks right yeah
Tyler:
[26:06] So is publishing other books, right? Like other people's work, the things that they've, you know, put their heart and soul into and everything is putting a lot of trust. I think the person who's does, who's handling all that for them or helping them do it.
Mark:
[26:23] Yeah.
Tyler:
[26:24] So in your experience, do you feel like folks sort of come to you as like, this guy knows what he's doing? Or do you still have to do outreach consistently with your?
Mark:
[26:39] I know a lot of people come to me to help with their publishing needs. Now, that particular project, Campus Chills, was one in which we had invested money. And I'd reached out to the authors and said, hey, if you write a story, I'll pay you professional rights for your story. And then you get the rights back. So you can use the story again in nine months.
Tyler:
[26:57] Right.
Mark:
[26:58] Um, uh, and so that was like, um, just like a traditional publisher, except without, they weren't locked into a clause forever. Um, but yeah, I, I, I have, I guess word of mouth is such a popular thing. So oftentimes, uh, cause I do consult with clients and publishers and stuff like that. And often it will be somebody who, who I worked with who had a really good experience and I helped guide them through the process. Okay. Here's how you do it yourself. You know, here's how you find a good cover designer. Here's how you find a good editor to help make the book as, as good as you can. Here are the tools, the free tools you can use to publish this book. And then I'll have, uh, clients recommend other clients. Um, so I had a shingle hung up at one of the, like a freelance, uh, it was a site to help people. But I had too much demand. I had to shut it off because I didn't have enough. Because, again, I'm trying to write my own stuff at the same time while helping others. So I have to divide my time up. And that's the biggest challenge is there's only 24 hours in a day. And I've got about 72 hours worth of stuff to do every day.
Tyler:
[28:04] It's one of the things that was told to me early on was that most businesses die of indigestion, not from starvation. So it's, there is no lack of work to be done out there. It's like, how much can you handle before you crack under pressure or can't spread your logistics such that you can manage other people to do basically your job while you supervise them or God forbid you don't supervise them.
Mark:
[28:33] No, no, exactly. Um, uh, I mean, I love, I love the fact that we have that choice. I mean, I left, I left full-time employment in 2017 because the, the income from writing and publishing and doing the consulting was,
Mark:
[28:48] was more than enough to keep a roof over my head and food on the table.
Tyler:
[28:53] Yeah and people a lot of people out there you know when they think of becoming i want to be an author you know i'd really like to do that or or anything they they tend to think you need to be like stephen king or something you know that you need to be the guy in every airport or something like that in order to just get by i'm like you can make a really good living and basically like be not famous at all you just i know yeah yeah.
Mark:
[29:20] I know i know thousands of authors who are making five six and seven figure incomes from writing books nobody i mean nobody's heard of them and yet they sell enough copies of their books this is independently uh right you usually if you're earning that kind of money as a traditionally published author usually your name is a bit more known because your books are visible in airport bookstores and stuff like that.
Tyler:
[29:47] Yeah. It's, it seems like the secret sauce, the supplies also in games, maybe, maybe to some extent now in music as well, is a high turnover rate. Because you're basically selling a body of work at any given time, right? Like you're going to be talking about whatever your latest book is. But the truth is that what we want is for someone who's interested in this book to go back and just read your entire library. And at that point, it's like, okay. But it's the same with games. Ideally, you just make as many games as you can, which is not what I've done at all. But ideally, you do. And then eventually, you get one that's a hit. And then people are like, oh, my goodness, that studio or that designer, that publisher, whatever it is, makes good stuff and then buys your whole library. And then for the rest of your life, you know, as you accumulate more and more of that, you kind of ideally can stay relevant, you know.
Mark:
[30:43] It stays sustainable. Yeah. Well, there's a methodology, Michael Anderle, who's a military science fiction writer or adventure science fiction,
Mark:
[30:53] space opera kind of stuff. He had uh had a book up on amazon that when he looked at how well it was selling and how much money he was making he said you know if i have 19 other books that make this much money i could make fifty thousand dollars a year so he created this movement called 20 books to 50k and the idea was that okay if every book earns but the challenge is not every book's going to earn that much money so sometimes it takes 30 books or 40 books or
Tyler:
[31:21] Sometimes one book is a hit it makes up for the loss on another book.
Mark:
[31:25] Exactly. So on average, your books are earning X number of dollars. I mean, I have what, 35 different books out there. Now, some of them, especially the traditionally published ones, you know, I mean, I just cashed a check from one of my publishers last week, which was kind of like, yeah, I made more on my self-published books last week than I made all year on those books because they will pay you in advance up front. And so that money, you know, I got up front, uh, as opposed to after the sales. And so it's, it's, uh, It's different, but I also look at my income as a writer from being, um, multiple small streams of income as they're running down a hill. And then they all come into this larger river that all make up this larger force of income. And you can lose one or two or three or four. It's not going to be the end of the world because you have all of these different streams of income. And sometimes this stream's really heavy and sometimes this one's dried up. And the same thing happens with books too, right?
Mark:
[32:26] So um that's but again it comes back to the same thing that you talk about in the gaming community i mean i mean i'll have a lot of people who just pick up one of my books and never come back because that's all they want to read i only want to read about haunted hospitals i don't want to read about haunted bookstores i don't want to read about haunted autumnal ontario i don't want to read about the ghost of the great lakes you know that's it but other people are like oh my god i love his ghost stories i'm going to read them all i don't care if i've never been to hamilton sure i just want to read about it um and you never know what you're going to get or they may say oh wow he's also written a werewolf series set in manhattan oh cool i'm going to check that out because i love werewolves you know you never know where that's going to go a
Tyler:
[33:07] Lot of authors nowadays are even doing like subscription models you know you mentioned patreon and you know people using especially like non-fiction like journalists type stuff yeah people who are putting out editorials and essays i mean you could make quite a sum of money just writing.
Mark:
[33:24] Um some stack as well right is another way of of having that sort of you can have the free and then you have the bonus content for those who pay money so
Tyler:
[33:34] Like in the in the games world why like why do these models make sense when they have free-to-play games with all these you know little micro purchases and everything but the reason is like you were saying earlier we could have one book that's not doing well and another one that makes up for it hopefully in the margin so you average out and they figured the same thing with game players it's like okay most people are going to download this app and never spend a dime but yeah the one out of a hundred that spends six hundred dollars in a month on skins for his characters and stuff like that and the season passes and all this like that one person means on average, we made $10 per person or something. And then they just figure it that way. And it's more sustainable because you can, like when you have a subscription model, you know how much money you have to work with.
Mark:
[34:26] Yeah.
Tyler:
[34:27] You know, you're kind of like, all right, this is, this is my bottom line. So I just need to keep it in this area. Yeah. It's, it's weird. I've thinking more and more how games don't, Like, you'll have an individual game that is a subscription service, but I have not seen any designers who will, like, if you subscribe to my thing, you'll just get every game, every prototype I make or whatever while I'm doing it.
Mark:
[34:55] Well, I mean, that would have to be a really high-end one, right?
Tyler:
[34:59] Well, I think that there are a lot of people out there who enjoy, like, playing the alpha versions of games.
Mark:
[35:05] Oh, for sure. yeah there's yeah because not only do you get to try it before anyone else does but you get to provide valuable feedback they want to be part
Tyler:
[35:14] Of the creation journey so.
Mark:
[35:16] Like yeah you feel proud of that yeah yeah
Tyler:
[35:19] And then they get their name in the credits and all that kind of thing but it's like yeah like you guys are the core kind of group of people who care about this obviously you're putting your money on the line so they basically become like a even in some professional companies now like a segment of your qa department it'd be like if your fans were your editors or something like that.
Mark:
[35:37] Well it's like the early reading team right so so often even after the book's edited or whatever and proofread you still send it out to early readers and they're going to catch other things or give you some feedback provide early reviews the same thing with gamers i imagine yeah and they're going to be passionate about sharing it because it's kind of like hey this game i was one of the alpha users oh yeah
Tyler:
[35:58] I was in.
Mark:
[35:58] A documentary
Tyler:
[36:00] For like 15 seconds and i Send it to everyone in the world Like I'm on TV.
Mark:
[36:04] Um Yeah Yeah
Tyler:
[36:06] Because people, me included, you know, people like to feel like they're part of something, you know, and they're hoping to create it. And I think that's true, especially in games, because it's interactive. I mean, if they're not having fun playing it, then what are we doing? You know, what service are we doing?
Mark:
[36:22] Well, you mentioned, you mentioned Patreon. So a friend of mine, Dal Wong, he writes Lit RPG, which is a huge, you know, tie-in for people who love reading those books that, you know, because it brings you into the game world and he has a patreon and he has some people who pay the highest possible level and they'll get access to his books early before they're available for the public and stuff like that but he was kind of reaching out to them saying well why are you giving me so much money it's way more than you're getting back in value and he's had people said i just want you to keep writing books because i love your stuff and so i want to support you by giving you money every month so that you don't stop right because again they they get enjoyment out of it so they're like no i mean it's similar with my own podcast i've reached out to people saying you're not ever taking advantage of the perks i give to my patrons it's like i i don't care about the perks i care about wanting to support you because you're doing really cool work that i know uh you know i needed at one point i don't really need it anymore but i want to support you and and it's just amazing when you get the right community the right gamers the right readers the right fans who just want to support you i mean that's that's so amazing now
Tyler:
[37:40] I've had the exact same experience in many cases where it's like you know somebody one of the games that we were producing i think there was a guy who gave a thousand dollars a month which was like way more than even our maximum tier he just manually entered in there and then it like triggered something in patreon that was asking for all this verification so i'm like oh i gotta go talk to this guy probably get him to fill.
Mark:
[38:03] Out a double yeah is this a stolen credit card like what is this yeah
Tyler:
[38:06] So i'm like you know dude uh you realize that you're offering a thousand dollars a month like we don't we don't need that like it's okay and yeah he's just like no dude i'm filthy rich and I'd really want to see your game get made. I'm like, yeah. And it's hard to remind people. I think a lot of people shortchange themselves when someone wants to come by. If you're a waitress or something and somebody gave you a $100 tip, I mean, the right thing to do is allow that person to give you whatever it is that they can afford to give you and want to give you. But there's this tendency to be like, oh, I don't deserve it. It's not even a matter of like, whether or not you deserve it so much so is that the value of money is different depending on who you are and how much you have so yeah if you have a friend who's a billionaire and he gives you a hundred thousand dollars to start a business um.
Mark:
[38:59] Yeah first
Tyler:
[39:01] Of all you know what does he want out of it but also yeah hopefully hopefully that's just something you make the best of and don't turn down the opportunity.
Mark:
[39:09] And that might be pocket change for him whereas you know a hundred dollars from someone else could be like well that's that means they're gonna have to go without something else right
Tyler:
[39:17] Yeah the other thing is like man if you can afford to do that like how much are you giving to charity like i want to ask those kinds of questions like or you know what yeah what better could we do than support a video game what could we do with this thousand dollars a month to make the world a better place.
Mark:
[39:31] And although although i'm gonna i'm gonna argue i i think the world is made better uh storytellers and and i i include storytellers musicians artists writers game developers designers etc we make the world a better place because we give people something fun to engage with we get them to think we get them to play we get them to we get them inspired yeah you know uh and and i think i know it's not practical like medicine or or or caring for other people or looking after whatever or providing uh you know people who need uh affordable housing and food and stuff like that but we also inspire the people by giving them something entertaining or inspiring and that in and of itself i do know that there's studies that say that those who read fiction for example are more empathetic right when you're playing a video game and you're in the role of another character another persona another person you're you're gaining these uh, additional skills that may make you a better human, in which case then that serves society in a positive way. So yeah. Um, yeah, that money, like, I hope you're giving money to charity or good causes, but I also think that, um, the world needs those storytellers, right?
Tyler:
[40:51] Yeah. No, I think that, I mean, for me as a kid, it was definitely books like that just took me away to another universe. And I think, yeah, I think that, uh like especially in fiction when you're reading someone's encounter with another person but you're getting the sort of meta point of view of like emotion and the details of like how i felt when i was about to say all of that stuff uh it stays with you you know it definitely sticks in your mind and i think games get kind of put into a certain category because of like first person shooters you know that kind of thing and i like first person shooters don't get me wrong but primarily what people see when they look at it is just shooting people's heads off and violence. Um, where they see the teamwork.
Mark:
[41:39] Do they see, do they see the strategy? Uh, right. Like there's a lot going on there.
Tyler:
[41:44] I would even say like, do they see the stories that are being told? And I'm not going to argue in favor of like call of duty necessarily and that kind of stuff. But yeah, I mean, if you're playing like you, you mentioned like role playing games, the RPGs and stuff like that. I mean, you could live it, have an emotional life journey happen to you, bring you to tears, you know, in front of a computer screen at certain points that I recently played this game that I think everyone, even if you're mildly interested in games, should try a Disco Elysium, which is a role playing game.
Tyler:
[42:18] But like the level of writing and storytelling and you know the the challenges that it asks you to think about while you're playing through this game um there's a few others maybe like, oh outer worlds or something like that where you never in your life other than in a game like this are you going to know what it's like to travel out into a solar system and pilot a ship and and go on this emotional journey of uncovering everything that's happened that led up to a supernova or something you know that can only happen in sort of in a simulated environment and and yet the the emotion that you experience is real um for in your case i mean it doesn't seem like you're really doing like shock horror or anything like that you're kind of documenting real life stuff but do you find people um do you find people like really emotionally reacting to some of the work that you've done yeah.
Mark:
[43:11] I mean uh probably my most uh my best selling i have One Horror Novel, which is very shock horror. And the collection One Hand Screaming, which is kind of like American Horror Story meets Black Mirror meets Twilight Zone. So it's somewhere in there. There's some disturbing things, but there's always some elements of thoughtfulness. There's always some elements of what you've learned or there's some sort of lesson or whatever. I mean, some of the stories, I have some people read them and go, oh my God, you're twisted. You're sick. Um, and it's like, no, I'm just exercising the demons. I'm just, I'm just, I'm just exploring a fear, you know, and, and I put, put all that in there. Um, but, but I've found for the most part, because with one hand screaming, um, At the end of the book, for every single story, I explain what inspired the story, the circumstances around it, like something I saw, something I read, I thought about. For example, one of my most award-winning ones was called Phantom Mitch.
Mark:
[44:14] And it was about the concept of a phantom Mitch. So, you know, folks who've lost an appendage will sometimes feel an itch on the hand that doesn't exist anymore. And so my, my premise with that story was, well, what if it existed in the other world? And so I had this guy who was in a car accident with his wife, his wife dies and he loses his left arm. And suddenly he's feeling his wife, uh, dead wife holding the dead hand that, that he doesn't have anymore. And he's trying to explain to other people like, no, I can, I can touch her. I can feel her. I can, and whatever. And there's this beautiful haunting love story with this premise based on this, I guess, phenomenon that happens. And we don't know how to explain what a phantom itch is. I'm like, I tried to explain it. And I came up with a story. And that was actually my first published horror story that received honorable mention in the year's best fantasy and horror that year. And continuing to this day, because most people have never read the story. When people read it, they're like, oh, wow. What a, like, it's a touching love story, but it's also disturbing. you
Tyler:
[45:18] It's really amazing how you have authors, even classical authors, Asimov or Philip K. Dick or something like that, where they have these huge reservoirs of books that they've written. And it's like, okay, somebody gets into The Man in the High Castle, and then the next thing you're talking about is some obscure short story that he published maybe years before or later in life or whatever. Um asimov you know like everybody knows irobot and foundation and all that stuff and i'm always like oh dude the last question was just the best freaking story of all time you know hidden away in nowheresville um and i think lovecraft is another author that gets dissected in the same way oh.
Mark:
[46:00] Yeah yeah and ray bradbury as well his short stories are just phenomenal um you know in terms of just like the places he took you as well. And there, there, I, and I grew up on those, I grew up on, on those classic science fiction tales, you know, the Philip K. Honestly, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, even Charles Grant as a horror writer. There's so many other, other, I guess, writers who've done really creepy, you know, short fiction as well that have been inspiring. I still love returning to short fiction. Now I'm, I'm a judge of the writers of the future contest, which is science fiction, fantasy, and horror. And so I'm very lucky that every year I get to read dozens and dozens of stories that get filtered and sent to me with like, I don't know who the authors are. And, and the quality of these stories is amazing. uh like there's still great short stories being being published um and written every year and and i guess i'm lucky that i already get um by the time they get to me they've already been filtered through uh jody lynn nye and a series of uh early readers so so the the judges are only like getting the best of the best and it's amazing what what people can do in you know two thousand to eight thousand words sure
Tyler:
[47:21] Um, and you're, you know, you're kind of particular niche. I reckon.
Tyler:
[47:26] Did you, did you decide to write about ghost stories and horror stuff because that's genuinely what you were interested in to begin with? Or was it like kind of chasing an audience?
Mark:
[47:37] No, honestly, um, I, I am a scared of the dark. I I'm actually always fascinated by the macabre and trying to understand like, what was that? You can't explain this. I'm always intrigued by that. So, so when I started writing fiction, I kept just turning to the dark side and I kept like just exploring and tried to write a normal story. And then all of a sudden something in the shadows would intrigue me and I go chasing after it. And I always thought that was maybe therapy. and i mean like one hand screaming the original version of that 20 years ago which is half the size was my very first book in 2004 um ironically my very first published uh story was a ya humor piece but my very second one was a horror and and it wasn't until uh well 13 years ago that i i released my first true ghost story book and i never i never knew i was going to do that when i When I was younger, I wrote a short story called From Out of the Night, which was about a middle-aged guy who spent his life writing about UFOs and Bigfoot and monsters and stuff like that. And I wrote it as a teenager, imagining this old guy trapped in a lifestyle of trying to write these scary stories. Little did I know I would become that middle-aged guy writing true ghost stories. And when I wrote Haunted Hamilton, I had moved to Hamilton, Ontario with my wife.
Mark:
[48:59] Went on a ghost walk and was so fascinated by the stories they told, because it also taught me a bit, I was new to the city, I learned a little bit about history of the foundation of the city and the different buildings and even the war of 1812, which was very prominent in that area of Ontario. And I learned that history, you can't tell a good ghost story without history. And so that was fascinating. It was the first time I was ever interested in history. And so, um, I talked to the folks cause I was a bookseller and a writer. I was like, you guys should write a book about this. This is so cool. And they're like, we're too busy running our business. Why don't you write a book and we'll give you access to our research. And I was like, well, that sounds cool. So they give me access to their files and the research and stuff like that. And I've got, I went on all the ghost walks and, and then I just pitched it to a publisher and I said, Hey, you know, no, there's a market for this. Um, I'd love to write a book. Uh, and then, and that's how it started. So it was my, I guess my. My desire and my passion for creepy tales and collecting stories like that. And I still do when I go to a new city, two of my favorite things to do. I will always seek out a local brewery. I'm a big fan of craft beer. But I'll, if there's a ghost walk and I'm in town when, when they're doing ghost walks, I'll see if I can book it because then I can learn more about the town or the city and I can, I can get creeped out.
Tyler:
[50:25] We need to get you down to Bisbee, Arizona. It's like one of the most amazing little towns in all of America. But yeah, they do. You know, they'll take you around on a golf cart to see all the mine chefs and everything. They have all these amazing ghost stories. And then, yeah. Sounds amazing. If you're into craft brewery, you should do it during the beer fest.
Mark:
[50:43] Yeah, no kidding. One of my favorites was in Portland in Oregon years ago. My partner and I, we went on a, it was a books and brews ghostly tour. So it was, it was craft beer and ghosts. It was like two of my favorite things. I'm like, I'm in baby. We did this, you know, haunted fisherman's restaurant. We'd tried a different beer there and we went to this haunted pizza place that had craft beer. And it was such a cool tour. Yeah. Like that, that's the best.
Tyler:
[51:13] I think Bisbee had like this thing that was called like the, the Bisbee 10,000 or something like that. Where, so the town is sort of in the mountains in Southern Arizona. Right. You show up, you run a marathon through the town, which includes all of the stairs. So they counted, I don't know, 10, whatever it is. 10,000 stairs. Wow. And then at the end of the run is this huge beer festival where all of the breweries in the area are there. So yeah, it's just one of those, I don't recommend people drink a lot. In my early 20s, yeah, I was in Arizona, and that's totally what I was saying. Let's go run this fucking marathon.
Mark:
[51:51] You run the marathon, then you throw up, and then you have room for beer.
Tyler:
[51:55] Fill yourself up with alcohol.
Mark:
[51:58] Maybe a little bit of water first.
Tyler:
[51:59] Well, so the thing is, most, you know, they give you, just for participating, they give you, like, a bunch of tickets, because you have to give a ticket for every beer that you get or, you know, whatever. And they're sample-sized beers, but still, most people don't use 20 tickets. So, on the way out, they're just handing them out to people. So you could be there all day.
Mark:
[52:17] I've taken advantage of that at some, I've done the warrior dash where they do that. And the people who don't want to drink, you would usually give me the chits because I'm wearing a costume and like, Hey, nice costume. And so it's like,
Mark:
[52:28] I never had to buy a beer all day.
Tyler:
[52:29] Just all day long. Yeah. I did that at an e-sports festival I went to in Sweden. I just, like I wrote the guys that were organizing the event and they had all this signup sheets and, you know, amounts you needed to pay for all the different things. And I was like, listen, I'm not bringing a computer. i just want to watch and observe and help out and that's all i'm gonna do so they i i just showed up, walked right in the front door and slept there for the entire weekend um and they gave me free meal vouchers and free beer vouchers like throughout the whole stay and i was like i think i landed on planet venus or something like this is just crazy um and then so we didn't know less so it's just a bunch of weird you know they're not only are they swedish they're also introverted gamers by swedish standards so it's just oh wow weirdest thing you ever saw, um now so with the you know that first endeavor into publishing a book you for now you know what your thing is you know you're going to be doing paranormal research and stuff so what's
Tyler:
[53:31] like the sophomore album you know you get a hit the first time what do you do after that oh.
Mark:
[53:37] Man uh was the first book I did was the, the, the horror stories.
Tyler:
[53:44] Right.
Mark:
[53:44] The second one I did, I edited a science fiction anthology for a small publisher in Canada. And that was more like reading submissions and getting it out there. So that was just more of a palate cleanser. Sure. Because it was not as much work. It was more reading and deciding which stories I thought were great. And then the next one was me doing my own anthology. That was the Campus Chills. And then, and then again, experimenting with some small, small collections of short stories like, oh, okay, I got some other short stories. Let's put them together in a, in a, and I call a digital, a chapbook, a little, you know, a hundred page collection of just three or four stories on a theme. And it wasn't, yeah. I didn't release, let me see the novel I Death, which is a horror novel that came out in 2014. By then I had published three books.
Mark:
[54:36] Um true ghost story books right like haunted hamilton and then i did spooky sudbury a city where i grew up mining the nickel capital of the world actually sure mining town i grew up in um and then there's always
Tyler:
[54:50] High strangeness around mines mine shafts anywhere where the earth.
Mark:
[54:54] Holes and also yeah and sudbury is is a hotbed of ufo activity especially in the 50s 60s 70s yeah um it was just i i thought there'd be a chance it was funny you plan out a book and like okay sudbury's got some haunted minds and haunted theater and haunted this and blah blah blah blah blah and and i thought well i co-authored this book uh with a journalist who was working for one of the papers up there at the time and i thought okay we'll have one chapter on ufos and i'll write that one because we kind of planned out what we're going to do and as i started doing the research and digging into the old archives of the newspapers and stuff like that And I was like, I ended up having four chapters on UFO activity in Sudbury. Uh, and there's different theories. Like, is there something in the nickel in the ground that is attracting alien? Uh, is, is there something, uh, is there something else? Like is the nickel in the ground affecting people's brains and they're seeing things in the sky? Like, you don't know what it is, but I do know. And it was, and I was alive for, for this. I was young when this happened, but in the early seventies, the. The U.S. Air Force actually sent fighter jets from Colorado up to Sudbury to intercept three unknown flying objects. Now, I believe they probably thought there were Russians coming in from the north, but it was over Creighton Mine in Sudbury, like a major nickel deposit area.
Mark:
[56:20] In the city. And I got a hold of some of the documents and the redaction on the reports for that are just like, it's all black with six words on the whole page that you can actually read. And so it was kind of like something weird happened that nobody's talking about over Sudbury in like 1974, 1976, something like that. And it was so impactful because it was three different reports from three different entities that reported it. And the U.S. actually sent Air Force jets up to Canada to intercept. Something's going on there. And again, what I love about that is nobody knows. Right. So you can share the story and you're like, well, we can speculate, right?
Tyler:
[57:01] Just something as simple as that, you know, the U.S. covers Canadian airspace for things like that. It's not widely discussed or talked about.
Mark:
[57:11] Yeah, well, I mean, we had this huge partnership in terms of looking out for one another, right? Like providing, collaborating on creating stuff, but also the protection was really important.
Tyler:
[57:26] Right. You got to send us maple syrup and we will guard your airspace.
Mark:
[57:29] Maple syrup and poutine, right?
Tyler:
[57:32] No, I was a weather forecaster for the Air Force for a long time. And one of our responsibilities was like Western Canada.
Mark:
[57:40] Yeah, keep an eye. Keep an eye. Yeah. Yeah.
Tyler:
[57:43] So, yeah. Western air defense. I mean, talking like military shit. So basically the entire West coast of, from Alaska all the way down, you know, is.
Mark:
[57:54] Is monitored. Yeah.
Tyler:
[57:55] A huge mission for the Air Force. Like it's anything enters this airspace. We put a million jets.
Mark:
[58:02] We got it. Yeah. Well, you also have Alaska up there too, right? Yeah.
Tyler:
[58:06] Every year on Christmas, Russia flies some jets right up to the coast of Alaska and turn around. Just to see what our reaction time is every year. Wow.
Mark:
[58:15] Yeah. Amazing.
Tyler:
[58:17] Yeah. And that's, you know, we kind of share that area. So we got to work together on that.
Mark:
[58:22] Keep an eye on that.
Tyler:
[58:24] So, you know, you're doing fiction and you're doing true ghost story stuff. And I wonder what's the writing process different, you know, from fiction to nonfiction, so to speak.
Mark:
[58:35] Well, so the fiction is interesting because, you know, You know, in my most popular series, the Canadian werewolf series, you know, I'm making stuff up. But the guy lives in Manhattan and he turns into a full-size, like a gray wolf during the full moon. So the research I'm doing isn't related to, okay, I need to find out what happened where, but I need to go, what are the cycles of the moon? Because I'm setting it at certain times. And when, what was the, what were the weather conditions in Manhattan on this day when, what was the moon cycle? So I have the, like the moon apps to figure out, would Michael turn into a wolf on this day or that day? Cause it's only when the moon is at 75% or more that he turns into a wolf. So that's like the 10 days.
Mark:
[59:21] And all of these logistics are similar in that I researched them just as heavily as I research, you know, looking into the stories of, of what happened and digging into newspaper reports and interviewing people. And stuff like that now there's even a scene in in one of my canadian werewolf novels i i think that might have been you know bright night's big city um or it was fear and longing in los angeles i can't remember no this is they were back in new york in this one so it was it was in manhattan and i and i had a scene where somebody ran into the washroom and somebody someone else needed to chase after them because they heard them yell yell like yell out and i needed to know this particular restaurant in manhattan uh where the bathrooms on the main level were they upstairs were they downstairs because i'd never been in there uh and so i had some photos of the place so i could get some logistics of what this diner looked like but i needed to get the research from somebody who had actually been there because i wanted it to be realistic just like dean kuntz used to say
Mark:
[1:00:23] Um, you know, if you, if you have a gun in a scene and, uh, and, and they operate the safety and the safety is in a different position than you describe it, you're going to lose the reader completely because they're going to get kicked out of the story. Cause somebody who knows that gun is going to understand that. And I take that very seriously when I have, uh, characters walking through streets in Manhattan or LA or wherever, even though I've been there, I still go on Google maps to the date and time. Cause you can kind of see what, what building was there. You know, was there a building there? What, what business was on that building? Uh, I need them to be realistic. I'm pretty anal about that. And like how long it takes to get, if you're in a taxi and you're heading from Midtown to, to Brooklyn, like how long is it going to take on a taxi versus a subway versus a bike? Uh, those are, um, I, I get really, um, I get really anal, uh, about that. So it's almost like, even though I'm making stuff up, because apparently werewolves don't exist, or at least do they, I haven't seen one myself.
Mark:
[1:01:26] I'm making stuff up, but I'm also wanting it to be as realistic as possible. So whether I'm researching for, you know, a ghost stories of the Great Lakes and I want to dig into details and interview people, I'm still talking to people, I'm still getting details. You know, I'm even speaking to police, you know, in this particular case, what would, what would the, what would a, uh, an officer's reaction be? What would a detective's reaction be? How would they interact with people? Those, those elements are really important for me.
Tyler:
[1:01:54] Do you, um. Do you find that, I mean, saying something like, you know, werewolves don't exist, right?
Mark:
[1:02:03] Yeah.
Tyler:
[1:02:04] Um.
Mark:
[1:02:04] I haven't seen one yet.
Tyler:
[1:02:06] Right. Yeah. Yeah. Do you find that working on all of these stories and talking to all these different people makes you believe more or less?
Mark:
[1:02:18] Both.
Tyler:
[1:02:19] Okay.
Mark:
[1:02:20] So here's, here's an example. uh one of the research i remember doing research and it was a story about victoria's i called it victoria's cabinet as old victorian cabinet where there was this young girl secret there yeah yeah victoria kept her secret and it was because it was a victorian uh cabinet and and it was like the mirror the ghost was often seen in this museum this little girl fixing fixing her hair on the bow and the minute she made eye contact with you the ghost would disappear So that was a really cool story. I never ended up putting it in any book because it didn't match any of the themes I was working on. But I wrote a short story inspired by that true ghost story. So I find that some of the stories I research, again, I have researched werewolves enough, the mythology of werewolves from different cultures.
Mark:
[1:03:13] Even, you know, World War II and the attempt to create super soldiers and stuff
Mark:
[1:03:17] like that with the Nazi army and all of that stuff. I've done a lot of the research into werewolves, um, and what, what they might be if, you know, in certain cultures of what, what could have caused this, uh, this element. But I haven't actually ever written about werewolves in a true paranormal book. I've only ever leveraged it for fiction. Um, but I, I, I, I'd still end up doing a lot of research. and sometimes the research goes into a true ghost story book or a paranormal book and sometimes I just it's fuel for fiction
Tyler:
[1:03:51] Yeah I find it's, Especially with things like werewolves, vampires, you have to keep things vague, right? So if you go full Twilight, where you start getting into the particulars about what the rules are of being a vampire and all that kind of thing, it takes a lot of the magic away from horror. I mean, you can still tell great stories like that, don't get me wrong.
Mark:
[1:04:17] Yeah, yeah, from the horror. Yeah, the horror is the unknown, right?
Tyler:
[1:04:21] Right. Like Lovecraft, when we brought him up earlier, was really, really, really in tune with the idea that like the less you tell someone about something, all he ever told you about anything he wrote about was you couldn't, I can't even put it into words, man. You wouldn't believe it. It was crazy. Like you just, I don't even have, yeah. And that for whatever reason, that just makes it all the more scary because you can't like identify, you can't make it in your head. Um i got really i got really fascinated with werewolves recently because i take i take vampires pretty seriously um at least from the standpoint of like they're i'm not saying there's people who literally suck people's blood although there are but i'm i don't i'm talking about as like a manifestation of something supernatural yeah yeah but the like the archetype of a vampire is a real thing like there are people who just want to drain you whether that be for money energy goodwill um Energy vampires.
Mark:
[1:05:14] Yeah, I think are, I've read a lot more about those and included those in some ghost storybooks. But I haven't actually, I haven't actually in my research encountered like actual blood, blood draining vampires.
Tyler:
[1:05:28] Well, the interesting thing about it is from the old stories when you talk about them sucking your blood or whatever, they didn't originally get out of the grave and literally bite your neck and stuff. Like we're talking medieval time frame bohemia and you know transylvania eastern europe in general uh the stories were like they're dead and in the grave and they're sucking your energy your literally your blood but i mean your life force yeah yeah the ether essentially and then over time that became you know dracula biting a woman's neck and all that kind of stuff but the archetype The meaning of that being that there are things, creatures, people, whatever out there who will take everything away that you have and drain your life, that is at least psychologically real. And then I never thought about vampires in that context until I was taking a class on astral travel. And it was, it was just the subject that it was, it wasn't like, we're going to learn how to astral travel. It was just like studying. Okay. Well, this is what Ledbetter said about astral travel or something. Yeah. Like scholarly standpoint, but you know, they brought up werewolves and I was like, man, I never thought about that. But yeah, like you were saying earlier, you go through all these different cultures all around the world and there's some form of like the canine cryptid thing.
Tyler:
[1:06:57] And so one of the questions I asked the teacher is like, okay, I think we all kind of get the vampire thing what what is a werewolf and that's that was a whole can of worms that never even went down um but it seems to be ubiquitous and worldwide like everywhere it is wolves and so.
Mark:
[1:07:14] Many different theories uh i mean even look at some indigenous um uh what's the what's the creature the oh my god um there's that the creature that's always hungry um oh my god i'm I'm blanking on the name.
Tyler:
[1:07:30] It's not coming to me either.
Mark:
[1:07:32] But it's kind of like almost like a ghoul that's based on like starvation and stuff, based on real things that have happened to people.
Mark:
[1:07:41] And that very similar to what the werewolf is. It's this hunger. It's this desire. But then there's also theories or elements of, and I've played with this in one of my books. So I have, Michael, he has no memory of when he's a wolf. He just turns into the wolf and he runs around in Central Park on all fours and blah, blah, blah, does all those things. He wakes up and he finds his clothes and he goes and tries to live his life, but he has superpowers as a human because it had to be interesting somehow. He had to have extra sensory stuff otherwise. Just living with the side effects is not enough. He had to have some adventures as a human. But I had an element where something was affecting him where he couldn't turn into a wolf. and the repression of this animal need to run around. And chase rodents and rabbits and kill rabbits and do all this stuff, turned him into a hostile person. And he's like, I described that, jokingly describe him as he's an alpha man, but a beta or alpha wolf, but a beta man. Right. So he's like this mild, he's this pushover Clark Kent kind of person, but as a wolf, he's like this tough alpha character. So when he represses the wolf and doesn't become the wolf, that manifests in his human form. And it almost beats somebody to death when he gets into a fight because he can't control the animal rage. And so there's some stuff in there about the werewolf legend that's this, it's this inner beast that we have to control by letting it out at certain times.
Tyler:
[1:09:10] Right.
Mark:
[1:09:11] That was fun. I had a lot of fun playing with that one.
Tyler:
[1:09:14] Yeah, there's that sort of Incredible Hulk factor to it where you're like, what's interesting about the Incredible Hulk is not the Incredible Hulk. It's Bruce Banner emotionally dealing with being the Incredible Hulk.
Mark:
[1:09:29] Exactly. And it's funny, I was thinking, it was weird, a lot of that character was based on the Bruce Banner, at least from the original TV series, more so, and even some of the stuff from Wolverine's special powers and features. So I had a hell of a lot of fun incorporating some of those elements into the books.
Tyler:
[1:09:51] What's the your own story aside what's the best werewolf media story it could be a tv show a movie book a short story whatever but just.
Mark:
[1:10:02] You know what there was a series on uh and i think it was it amy adams who was in it uh a wolf like me is that the that sounds familiar that was so much fun i really enjoyed that now um a friend of mine edo van belcom canadian horror author um uh his novels the wolf pack novels which were a ya series he published uh over 15 years ago those were amazing and they were turned into a tv series on paramount plus a couple years ago starring sarah michelle geller wolf pack they only made one season of it and i was so upset because they ended season one and you're like oh my god i can't wait to see what happens next and uh the series got canceled but it's about these four uh teenagers who were rescued wolf cubs when they were little in a in a massive forest fire by a forest ranger and he raises them as his own like he adopts them and raises them and keeps the fact that they turn into wolves hidden so as they're growing up they're they're not sure why and and they can't quite as the you know teenagers and hormones and stuff and
Mark:
[1:11:10] they suddenly turn into wolves, but they can do it at will. And, and honestly, I really, really love that adaptation, but even the novels were different, but really good too.
Tyler:
[1:11:21] Yeah. I really love American Werewolf in London. I think that's.
Mark:
[1:11:26] Oh, I mean, that's a classic.
Tyler:
[1:11:27] Yeah.
Mark:
[1:11:28] But it's horror and humor.
Tyler:
[1:11:31] It hits all the high marks too. Yeah. Tells a complete story. Whereas, you know, like. It does. The Wolfman.
Mark:
[1:11:38] You're right. That is a beautiful classic. That's one of the best, actually. It's why I named that one novel, A Canadian Werewolf in New York. Because I was riffing on this classic film.
Tyler:
[1:11:51] Yeah.
Mark:
[1:11:51] Which it still holds up to this day even the special effects were pretty significant for when you think about when that movie was the the
Tyler:
[1:11:58] Transformation scene in american werewolf in london and it may be the the closest other thing to it around that time frame would have been the thing like john carpenter you know.
Mark:
[1:12:08] Yeah yeah but the transformation is so painful yeah it's right and that inspired uh like i have my guy block it out he doesn't even remember the transformation that's how painful it is so it's like perfect it blocks it from his mind that's
Tyler:
[1:12:23] What's so crazy about it is that if you think about a werewolf very rarely are you thinking empathetically about what the werewolf is going through and then so like to tell the story from the perspective of like it's so painful when it happens and yeah i can't control the things that i want to do and all that stuff it's so different than that just it's a
Tyler:
[1:12:43] vague monster that we have to shoot with a silver bullet.
Mark:
[1:12:46] Yeah and that's yeah that's one of the things i liked about american werewolf in london too is you had that that empathy for the for the character sure as well how
Tyler:
[1:12:57] Do you tell a true ghost story from an untrue ghost story.
Mark:
[1:13:00] Oh geez uh that's so difficult i mean here's the challenge and even even true ghost stories this is so so true you take a kernel of truth and you wrap it in a bunch of storytelling aspects and, and you, and you exaggerate and play around because, because again, to tell a good ghost story, you've got to have the beginning, middle, and the end and the rising action and all those things that make fiction what it is. Right. So it's really difficult to tell a good one from, from a false one. The challenge I have as a, as a researcher is sometimes something just doesn't smell right.
Tyler:
[1:13:40] Mm-hmm.
Mark:
[1:13:42] You know, um, I remember writing, uh, Murder Mansion in Hamilton. I'll give you the story very quickly, but there was a mansion up on Hamilton Mountain overlooked the escarpment, overlooked the city down below, because that's where the Niagara Escarpment goes. And in the middle of the night, this man went into the shed, grabbed the axe, and he butchered his family. And then he went up to the widow's walk on the third floor and he hung himself. And as the story goes, the next family that moved into the house, teenage boy found the axe in the shed, did the same thing to his family. Now, this house is a house that had been abandoned for 20 years and finally torn down. There were stories that people had that they saw a woman look like her hair was on fire and she was running past the windows on the second floor, like being chased by someone. And there are all these stories and kids would not go near the house and stuff. And so when I found these stories, I started to do research. And as I'm researching it, I reached out to the police because I couldn't find any indication of an axe murder happening on Hamilton Mountain in any of the newspaper or anything. You'd think it would be in the newspaper, right?
Mark:
[1:14:51] Not only that, but I mean, it's only common sense that if an axe was used in a murder, it would probably be locked in an evidence closet, not be put back in the shed for the next family. So as I'm writing this chapter, I actually explained the three pages of research of what I did to disprove that this was obviously just made up, but it's a cool story. And I tied it into the fact that the stories came out, because this happens a lot. The stories came out around the time of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, where Jack is running around with an axe chasing his family in a remote, right? And, and I noticed, uh, even in a lot of the UFO stories, a lot of the stories that were shared around the time were based on pop culture things that were going on. Like we're, we're inspired by other things in our lives. So I.
Mark:
[1:15:37] For me, when I write a ghost story, if I find that I don't think this is real, I want to share that because I want the reader to have faith that if I can't explain something, I want to say, here's why we can't explain this. And that's what makes it fascinating. But if I can't explain it, I want to explain it. So I have a bit more credibility. And my editor said, you can't do that. And I was like, what do you mean? I want to be credible. Editors like, they don't want to ruin the suspension of disbelief. So I ended up cutting that down. I still explained that I couldn't find any evidence. I didn't break down all the details of what I found. And at the end, I ended and said, so it's probably not real, but still a cool story, huh?
Mark:
[1:16:19] And that's the challenge, you know, like to not include it or to share it and say, yeah, we actually found out that this is what caused that phenomenon. So it's probably not a ghost, but it's still kind of creepy, isn't it? I like Including those wherever I can
Tyler:
[1:16:35] Sure yeah it's It's really cool how You mentioned Pop culture influencing what people Report right and You know the age old question with that is Is, The phenomena Appearing to people in a way That they can understand or put words to Are the people Looking for things that aren't there That you know but Because they were influenced by TV or books or something like that. Yeah. And it's really weird. Like, Jung wrote a lot about flying saucers back in his time. You know, he's just kind of saying, like, this is going to become more and more of a thing. And, you know, in the 40s, after Roswell or something like that, people talked about seeing flying saucers and little green men. And then, you know, there are sort of these kind of stepping stones. It's like, is the thing changing? Is the way we're experiencing the thing changing? Or are we just fooling ourselves into, whatever it is that we want to see.
Mark:
[1:17:37] I think a little bit of everything. I, one of the most fascinating stories, have you heard of Dr. Stanley Persinger and the God Helmet?
Tyler:
[1:17:46] Yes.
Mark:
[1:17:47] So Sudbury, Ontario, where, you know, there's a chapter on him in, because he was working at Laurentian University and the God Helmet. And I was so fascinated by his research of, you know, so it's the helmet, the Skidoo helmet, the snow machine helmet with the electrodes, putting someone in like a dark isolation kind of room and then triggering certain parts of the brain right and it triggers the um uh the parallel being waking up paralyzed having uh either uh you know the stories of the old hag woman pressing on your chest and trying to take your breath uh aliens standing at your bed demons ghosts and is so fascinating that the study showed that Depending upon the person's preconceived notions of spirituality or the belief in extraterrestrials, whatever it was that they were triggering, the same thing triggered different responses.
Tyler:
[1:18:43] Yeah. That's a known thing in psychic research, though.
Mark:
[1:18:47] Yeah.
Tyler:
[1:18:47] That people superimpose something they can't understand over a book.
Mark:
[1:18:52] On this phenomenon. Yeah. So what is the phenomenon, but how do they interpret it? And it's interpreted based on those stories they already have. Right. How else can you understand it, right?
Mark:
[1:19:02] I was just fascinated by that because then I started looking at the East Coast stories of the old hag and that it's a phenomenon that happens from when we were in sleep paralysis and we wake up and there's still that that drug running through our system that paralyzes our bodies while we sleep so we don't hurt ourselves when we're dreaming. And it's kind of like when you wake up in that state where you're still paralyzed and you feel like there's something oppressive there um like that's a natural thing that happens to us but sometimes if other phenomena uh exist that can trigger potentially you know there's somebody standing over my bed and i'm sure almost everyone's experienced that in some way shape or form it's
Tyler:
[1:19:40] The same chicken and the egg scenario is like whether or not we were created as a you know universe where it's like okay well what happened before the big bang and then it's the same thing with sleep paralysis like oh okay cool that you've explained the chemical in my body that is causing me to be still when i wake up in the middle of a dream but that doesn't mean something didn't cause it to happen especially when you're.
Mark:
[1:20:02] Talking what caused me to wake up yeah yeah yeah that's the thing what caused me to wake up like i i know even in the house where we live in uh my partner, uh, she had said, um, remembering waking up and, and there was someone standing over in the corner and it was, and she's not one to believe in paranormal things. And she can't explain why, why it was that she was convinced there was someone standing over there, a human, you know, uh, with ill intention because you could feel it just oozing out of them. Uh, but it was like, that was a weird kind of experience. Uh, so, and, and again, she's not predisposed to to believe in paranormal things so when when when somebody's you know convinced that there was something there like what the heck was that yeah
Tyler:
[1:20:49] Well i mean you you, The only thing is to tell her the truth. It's like the shadow people are always around you and they always, you should take your iron pills, you know.
Mark:
[1:21:01] The boogeyman is under your bed. So be careful. So don't dangle. Like we don't even have an under the bed. We have the box spring and the mattress there because nothing can hide under our bed. Thank God.
Tyler:
[1:21:09] Yeah. You could just never be too careful with these things. Yeah.
Mark:
[1:21:12] No, exactly.
Tyler:
[1:21:13] I was telling someone, I have like iron railroad spikes in front of every doorway and stuff. There you go. Just in case.
Mark:
[1:21:20] Just in case. Yeah. That was salt.
Tyler:
[1:21:22] Yeah. There's certain things they don't seem to like.
Mark:
[1:21:26] Honestly, you know what? Better safe than sorry, right?
Tyler:
[1:21:30] That's genuinely how I feel about it too. You know, when I was younger, I was a lot braver. And I was like, I'm not scared of nothing like that. That'll never happen. The older I get, the more I'm like, you know, I'll put the crystals in the window.
Mark:
[1:21:44] When we go on ghost walks, I remember we were in Ottawa at one of the most haunted buildings. And, uh, it was like, um, an old jail, uh, you know, an old, old jail from back in the day. And we're doing the tour and, and Liz was so excited to want to go off and explore things about way from the group. And I'm like, no way I'm getting in the center of the group.
Mark:
[1:22:04] Cause if anything is coming and picking people off, I want to be protected by the rest of the hell. Like I'm, I'm genuinely terrified of things like that. So I'm, I'm not brave. I will hide.
Tyler:
[1:22:15] What in your own experience, like what's the most convincing thing?
Mark:
[1:22:19] You've seen so uh years ago liz and i we drove down to florida from ontario with a for romance writers conference because i speak at industry events all the time and and she works in education so she was off in the summer and we were driving down and on the way back i just released the book haunted uh hospitals which i co-authored with ronda parish and we've written about the um in west virginia and west and west virginia the trans allegany uh lunatic asylum sure beautiful old building.
Mark:
[1:22:50] And so on the drive back, we took a drive down and we did some beer places and haunted places along the way. Cause we took like four days to go down, but coming back, we wanted to do it in two days. So it was like a 14 hour drive from Miami or, um, yeah, uh, uh, Orlando, I should say up to, um, uh, Weston. And we get in around one in the morning and, uh, and she's driving and we're coming through the mountains in this, in the clouds. And the next day in the morning, there's a 9 a.m. Tour, uh, you know, the criminal, the tour with the criminally insane wing or whatever. And it was like, so excited to do that. Cause I wanted to take pictures with a copy of the book and stuff. Cause I had not researched that chapter. Rhonda wrote that chapter. So all I knew was the proofreading I did. I didn't have all the detailed research that didn't end up in the story. So we, at one in the morning, we pull in front of this one hotel and the parking lot's jam packed. I run out and run into the lobby. I was like, Hey, do you guys have a room? And they're like, nah, we're all full up and filled up. But there's an Econa Lodge just like a mile down the road. You'd be able to maybe get a room there. So we get back in the car and we go and I get to the Econa Lodge and parking lot's just jam-packed. And I go in and I said, do you guys have any rooms? And she's like, well, we have one. And it's the old, you know, we have one room, but they didn't say, but they said, but it's two double beds. It's two double beds. There's no Queens, no Kings. I was like, I don't care. We're just going to bed. We just need to sleep because we're getting up in the morning and doing a tour.
Mark:
[1:24:13] So we check into the room, we get there and Liz takes the bed beside the, um, the washroom and I take the bed by the door and I, it takes me a long time to fall asleep because of the monsters and stuff like that. It takes me a while. She just puts a hoodie on. She gets into the bed. She rolls over and she's out like a light. It takes me a while to get sleep because I'm all excited about whatever. And then I wake up at a certain point and I can hear these, this foot shuffling and I see Liz going around the edge of her bed towards the washroom. And I'm here that her foot shuffling and I see her disappear around the corner. I'm waiting for the bathroom light to come on. I'm waiting and waiting. And then all of a sudden I hear a snore come from the bed beside me. And I was like, holy shit, there's a woman in the room. And I sat up and I freaked out and I was like, oh my God, there's a, I just saw a woman walk. around the side of Liz's bed and go into the bathroom and she's laying in bed. Freaked out. So I, I, you know, I get my, my, uh, flashlight app on my phone. I'm walking around, I'm checking things out. Now I I've, I've, I've woken up Liz numerous times and scared the crap out of her cause I'm a big chicken. So I've stopped doing that cause I'll wake her up and that's not the thing you want to do. So I just decided to investigate. There's no one there. Um, the, the latch on the door is, is locked. I was like, here's what probably happened. I told myself.
Mark:
[1:25:33] I woke up. I saw Liz go to the washroom. I fell asleep. Five minutes passed. She's already out of the washroom, back in bed. I woke up thinking that a half second had passed, right? That happens all the time. Like time is weird when you're in a dream state. I said, that's all that happened. You're all excited about this haunted tour tomorrow. Go back to sleep. So I finally fall back asleep. Then the next thing I hear is sort of this on the table at the end of my bed, I hear this something moving around shufflings. Like, oh my God, there's somebody there going through my laptop bag. Is it my passports? Uh, our passports are there. My laptop bag is there. And I sat up again going, oh my God, there's someone going through our stuff. And I just checked the door still latched and, and, um, but the door connecting our rooms, maybe they came through there. And of course my, my bags on a, on a easel, uh, whatever, right in front of
Mark:
[1:26:24] the door and the door's locked. Everything's fine and i've convinced myself oh i probably heard a noise from another room
Mark:
[1:26:31] I finally get some sleep we wake up in the morning we're getting ready and i i said liz um did you did you get up last night middle night go to the bathroom and she's like no i didn't get up once uh i just you know i i didn't get out of bed at all i was out i said well here's what happened and i told her this story and as i was telling her this story again she doesn't believe in ghosts She's fascinated, but she doesn't believe in them the way I do.
Mark:
[1:26:58] Her face turns white and i said what she says well i thought this might have been a dream and i wasn't going to say anything but now that you shared that she said she woke up in the middle of the night and she felt someone standing over her and then she felt a hand touch her shoulder she knew it wasn't my hand it was felt like a woman's hand on her shoulder and she thought there was a woman in the room trying to do whatever so she's very feisty unlike me she steals herself up and she goes to uh nail her like just give her a good punch and there's nobody there and that kind of freaked her out and i was sleeping so she went back to bed and she's like oh it was just a weird dream but the fact that i saw a woman in our room uh heard someone doing stuff in our room and then liz felt a woman standing over bed and touching her i was like how the hell do we explain that and i honestly don't know and i've done research i can't find any stories from this hotel to back up that anyone else has experienced anything. But all I know is I don't know what we experienced. Was there a woman trapped in this room who was, you know, just doing her thing and we happened to be there one night.
Tyler:
[1:28:11] That whole area of the country is littered with weird, strange tales, stories, oddities between like the Hopkinsville goblin and then you're not too far from Point Pleasant. At that point, there's you know the so many different things to pull from if you.
Mark:
[1:28:30] Want to talk
Tyler:
[1:28:30] About that area but yeah it seems like there's something about the area between the Blue Ridge Mountains and that river that's just.
Mark:
[1:28:38] Something's going on yeah so and strangely enough it wasn't well it was eerie at the time in the morning we kind of got the chills and stuff but we didn't feel scared we just felt like oh there's a woman here that's it that's all we had yeah
Tyler:
[1:28:55] Yeah. I don't know. It's just, it's not scary enough.
Mark:
[1:29:01] No, I know. I know.
Tyler:
[1:29:02] I know. There's gotta be some kind of like action. So what do you do with, cause you have, you probably have tons of people that come to you with a, with a ghost story, right? Like, let me tell you a story. So from like the, the, this is what happened to me to the narrative version of the story. Like what, what do you do? What changes?
Mark:
[1:29:24] So i try to um i mean just because the story is usually relatively quick like this thing happened i want to try to set it up um i think one of the best examples of this was i had a form on my website when i was doing spooky sudbury and somebody had shared a weird ufo experience that had happened and all they had said is like yeah we were camping uh we were hunting in the late 70s and we woke up in the middle of the night and we just it felt weird because everything suddenly got dead quiet there were no noises no animal noises we all came out of the tent we looked up the whole sky was lit up like it was the middle of the afternoon and then
Mark:
[1:30:02] That was it and then the noises started again and that's all that happened i was like well that's whatever so i i email him back and i got a few more details i was like okay i need some more details so the first thing i do is i want i want more details like well tell me about this trip He's like, well, I was 17. It was my first hunting trip. I'm like, okay, I got, I got something there. And, uh, you know, everyone else was older. I was the younger brother. I was joining them, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then explained this a little bit more detail. And so then what I did is I wrote the story where I have, he's nervous. It's because I know this coming of age story. I remember my first hunting trip with the older boys, right? They're going to tease me. There's going to be fart jokes. They're going to be playing, drinking around the fire and teasing one another and mocking him and stuff like that. And then you build up this suspense of his nervous energy and then he wakes up with all the stuff and then i have the dialogue of them talking to one another what was that and stuff like that and then looking at each other's faces and the and the and the how they react to to the light um and then just describing the whole scene so i sent him this chapter and i said okay i've kind of elaborated a little and i've made up some things i need you to tell me if this is accurate or not and and i was thinking he was going to come back and go well nobody said that and this never happened and blah blah, blah, blah, blah. And he came back and he said, Oh my God, it was like you were there.
Mark:
[1:31:19] And I realized that I was able to take some more elements about what I knew to be true about humanity and incorporate that into the story, create this narrative of this nervous young guy having this experience. And that builds some tension that makes the story a little bit more interesting to read as a chapter rather than just a couple lines.
Mark:
[1:31:40] I try to do that. So when I do the research, I try to figure out what's the other story that I can lay on top of it that will make this person more human to a reader rather than just some guy who went hunting. And so that's an important thing that I try to do when I do my research is not just lay down the facts, but also try to paint the picture a little bit more so I can put people in that situation.
Tyler:
[1:32:09] What uh what do you think that woman in the hotel room was.
Mark:
[1:32:14] I don't know if if that was just uh a woman who uh was it was it was it the spirit of a departed person or was it some woman who left her spirit there that it was trapped uh because that's a theory i also go by is sometimes you can be haunting a place and you're still alive because your spirit's still there yeah um and i don't know but i felt uh sad for her that she was stuck there and it felt like she was stuck there and just kind of she had nothing better to do but to check out what the hell's going on in the room what
Tyler:
[1:32:48] What do you think like most of those scenarios are i mean there's there's like the idea of like someone leaving behind like a soul fragment or whatever like it's some some of these ghost stories where it's, it's like someone's just trapped in a loop right they're just doing the same shit over and over they don't really interact with the outside world.
Mark:
[1:33:10] Yeah yeah
Tyler:
[1:33:12] As opposed to you know like a thorough haunting or demonic activity or a poltergeist or something like that um yeah it's very interesting.
Mark:
[1:33:22] It's it's i think there's different um uh why does there have to be one right like why why can't there be a multiple um multiple types of hauntings as well i tend to be more open-minded uh about those yeah
Tyler:
[1:33:37] I think that people really want there to be like one answer though and yeah there's a lot of, more recent i should say research that sort of backs up the idea that it is all one cause like the the the umbrella of the paranormal experience whether that means you were abducted saw a ufo interacted with a spirit all that that it would be something akin to like what the i don't know what they would have called the fae or something like it's this thing that exists between our reality and something else yeah that can manifest in this world does try to screw with us but also tries to like lead us around and do things that for whatever its greater purpose is um you know and then that you know there's the other side of that coin where it's like folks genuinely think it's like that it's the devil trying to confuse you lead you astray trying to.
Mark:
[1:34:37] Get at us yeah Yeah. I mean, but then there's the almost scientific principle of multiverses and quantum realities is another reality suddenly, you know, like, you know, TV screen is like the ghost of some TV show showing up between, you know, when you're between channels and you can hear both of them or see both of them is like, are we experienced that temporarily? The other thing too is some people, some people can really experience these things and see things and have access to these and other people don't. And I equate that to the same thing as a, uh, as, as a, as a wine expert, right? Someone can drink a wine, they can lie, it has notes of this and that and the other thing. And they can tell all these things and I go, Ooh, it's a red, it's good. You know, because their palate is so conditioned to, to, to experience something that the average person can't experience. Sure. And I wonder if the perception of that otherness Um, if that's part of it too, that some people are just more preconditioned to be able to feel and experience it because they, they at least have a basis to understand what it is, or they actually see things that I can't see. Sure. And sometimes we catch, we catch a glimmer every once in a while, you know, in our brains in the right way. I woke up. So my consciousness is at right, just the right level to perceive something
Mark:
[1:35:58] that I can't perceive when I'm fully awake. I don't know.
Tyler:
[1:36:02] Sure. And that makes you think how much more is going on that you're not tuning into.
Mark:
[1:36:07] Exactly. I was doing an event once at a library. I was doing a talk about ghost stories of Hamilton and had somebody at the end, a psychic who was in a medium, who was in the back. And she was like, yeah, there's a guy standing behind you the whole time that I could see. And she described my father. And that kind of freaked me out. And I was like, whoa, holy shit. Like, you're just standing there just watching the whole bit. My dead father, of course. and so this was kind of like it kind of was like whoa now of course she could have done research and found pictures of my dad online and you know described this guy or whatever but it was kind of eerie that she was like hey I was just standing there watching you the whole time and you're like wow can she see something I can't see as Hamlet said there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophies so you never know right?
Tyler:
[1:36:58] I think that, the people who are you know subject to that kind of higher sensitivity we sort of think about it like it's like the x-men like we have like somebody has this superpower or whatever it was just you know and it's really in a lot of cases it's like an amalgamation of a lot of different input leads their intuition in a certain direction right so yeah you know you let's just so you take me and you into a room and ask us both to look at the same quilt and tell you what colors are on it i am going to be objectively worse at that most likely than you are because i'm colorblind and right you know so someone who can tell you something like i feel the presence of your dead father and they don't know who they don't even know if your father's dead you know for all you know whatever yeah it's like they don't necessarily have to go do the research but But if you're good at kind of like feeling a person out, understanding even intuitively, but just empathy and psychology, you can really guess a lot about someone pretty accurately. There are mentalists who could tell you what your pin code is for your bank card, right?
Mark:
[1:38:11] Yeah, yeah, I know. It's amazing.
Tyler:
[1:38:12] They'll tell you themselves. It's not like I'm a psychic. I'm not reading your mind. I'm reading you. like I'm looking at things that you do habits you have and coming up with a you know a reasonable guess and I've been wrong but I mean I'm pretty good at this it's just it's the same principle to me like I yeah you know someone starts talking about like I'm a seer and they walk into a room and they have like a whole make a show about their incense and you know all that kind of thing and they just at the end of the day they just want to sell me their book you could tell the difference between that and someone who's like, legitimately pursuing whatever it is with uh with an open mind and an open heart and cares yeah i think that that makes a big difference in how you perceive certain individuals and what's scary is the people who seem like hucksters and are also like undeniably really good because then you don't know like oh it's.
Mark:
[1:39:09] Yeah yeah you know no exactly um but yeah but there's this intuition that they have
Tyler:
[1:39:14] Sure uh.
Mark:
[1:39:15] Which which is is a power it's it's a superpower
Tyler:
[1:39:18] Most of the more convincing folks that i've talked to are not folks who think they're special like i have a special power they think that they're talking to something else that is guiding them yeah yeah giving them this information like yeah from an artist's perspective like the muse sort of thing or you know our friend bruce who's also or yeah his whatever's going on with him and who's to who's to deny that that's what.
Mark:
[1:39:44] Exactly i mean where do i get the ideas the ideas that come to me like is there a muse whispering over my shoulder and going hey wouldn't it be cool if this happened like where did it come from i don't know just happens man
Tyler:
[1:39:54] Yeah and whether you believe in that muse like literally or not if you interface with it that way that's a really good way to keep the creative juices flowing like i'm the same way when it comes to creativity i i have just accepted a long time ago that it can't be forced so i just yeah i treat it like it's waves on the ocean and i will be doing other things and then i'll just i'll stop in the middle of doing something like i've gone as far as i can with this i'm gonna wait until something else in my life inspires me to start rolling with this again and that and i just have faith that will happen, yeah um and don't put a lot of pressure on myself which leads to some slow script writing trust me It can.
Mark:
[1:40:36] It can, and it leads to projects that maybe get put aside for years before that you pick them up again. And that's happened to me too. But then suddenly the muse takes me and like Del Griffiths says in planes, trains, and automobiles, you go with the flow like a twig on the shoulders of a mighty stream.
Tyler:
[1:40:52] Yep. So what are you, what are you thinking? Do you get like with the 20th anniversary was last year for one of your books? And, you know, you've been doing this for quite a while now. Yeah. You're already giving back so much. I mean, like running the publishing side of things and helping other authors out and all that kind of thing. But like for, for someone who wants to get into this business, what can they learn from a guy with more than two decades of experience?
Mark:
[1:41:22] Well, actually, you can learn from me, but you can learn from almost anyone out there, right? We have to be open. Michael Connelly's character, Harry Bosch, has a catchphrase that I love, that everybody counts or nobody counts.
Mark:
[1:41:35] And so I think the most important thing is that be willing to learn, be willing to listen, be willing to talk to people about their own experiences. I can learn just as much about publishing in the book world from somebody like you who really knows game design and understands that world inside and out. I can learn things that'll help me as a writer, that'll help me in publishing. And so the other thing is there are so many resources out there that you have access to in order to get the answers. There's no reason to shortchange yourself by just learning a couple things and then quickly trying to rush through it your art and your creativity is so important it deserves putting putting an investment of more time so you can learn as much as you can to give it a really good shot because when you create something there's probably someone else out there even if it's one or two people that that thing is perfect for them and you suddenly made their lives better just by creating it, you have that power as a creative person to do that. And so please don't shortchange that beautiful stuff that you have the desire and inclination to create. Take the time to do a proper job because you can really positively impact the world.
Mark:
[1:42:52] I think we all have that ability as creators. Not everyone exploits it, but if you're interested in wanting to exploit it, Give it a shot. You never know what could happen.
Tyler:
[1:43:02] Are you still making a podcast?
Mark:
[1:43:05] Yeah, I do the Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing. I'm in year eight weekly podcasts, and I haven't missed an episode since I started. And I tend to, I interview folks, but then I reflect on what I learned from them. And not just writers, but I interview people from across the board, from every industry that I can.
Tyler:
[1:43:23] Right on. Yeah, well, people can find your work, everything that you're doing, I think, at marklesley.ca.
Mark:
[1:43:29] Right? Yeah. That's right.
Tyler:
[1:43:31] Awesome. We'll send people there. I'll have all that stuff in the show notes and links to some of your books and everything.
Mark:
[1:43:36] Thanks, Tyler. It was fantastic chatting with you.
Tyler:
[1:43:39] Yeah, man. I appreciate it. Talk to you next time. Let me know when you have some calls.
Mark:
[1:43:43] Take care.
Tyler:
[1:43:48] Thank you very much to Mark Leslie for being on the show. And thank you to all of you for listening. If you want to support the show you can go to inthekeep.com there are many ways there um become a patreon supporter where you'll get episodes early and uh whatever else i can give you i guess yeah and uh what else do we got going on i'm not sure because i'm like doing this, so uh so much earlier than this episode is actually going to be heard by you that i don't know what we're going to be doing at the time isn't that crazy anyway i love you god love you stay in the keep.
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[1:44:41] Music
