Bookwild - Slashers, Final Girls, and Mannequins: Interview with Stephen Graham Jones

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

This week, I talk with Stephen Graham Jones about his new short story Night of the Mannequins, and the many horror books he's also written. Listen to hear: A behind-the-scenes look at how Stephen Graham Jones writes horror: following first sentences, trusting surprise endings, and letting stories unfold without outlining or theme-driven intent. Insight into why teenage perspectives, slashers, and “final girl” narratives resonate in his work, and how horror can function as a justice fantasy in an unfair world. A deep dive into Night of the Mannequins, including its origin from a title and prank idea, plus a broader conversation on genre-blending, identity in storytelling, and why he writes to genuinely scare readers. Check Out Author Social Media PackagesCheck out the Bookwild Community on PatreonCheck Out My Stories Are My Religion SubstackGet Bookwild MerchFollow @imbookwild on InstagramOther Co-hosts On Instagram:Gare Billings @gareindeedreadsSteph Lauer @books.in.badgerlandHalley Sutton @halleysutton25Brian Watson @readingwithbrianMacKenzie Green @missusa2mba 

This week I got to talk with Stephen Graham Jones about his novella Night of the Manichens. It is wild. It is crazy horror. It is in the vein of like I was a teenage slasher. And my heart is a chainsaw. It's very fun. It has a wild ending. Here's the general gist. Night of the Manichens is a contemporary horror story where a teen prank goes very wrong and all hell breaks loose. is there a supernatural cause, a psychopath on the loose, or both? That is really all you need to know. The other, I guess, interesting part is the prank definitely involves a mannequin in a movie theater, which is kind of fun to know as well.

It is some psychological horror at its best. And again, if you read it and you get to that ending, you need to DM me because I need someone to talk to you about it. That being said, let's hear from Stephen Graham Jones. Well, I am a huge fan. I started working my way through all of your books sometime last year at some point. So I was super excited when I saw Night of the Manichens was going to be coming in as a short story. So yeah, thank you for being here.

I'm super excited to talk to you about it. Yeah, I'm thrilled to talk about mannequins. It was fun. It was fun to write, fun to live in. Yeah. So before I dive into that, you've written a lot of book. and comics and short stories. What was your journey to writing like? My journey to writing. I never planned to be a writer. I was just going to be a farmer.

That's all I ever wanted to be. And just through a series of completely arbitrary, ridiculous, random happenings, I ended up in graduate school, ended up getting a novel published and being a professor and writing all these books. But journey to writing, I'm thinking. I'm thinking. You know, I think that maybe the very first short story I wrote, I think it was defense against the world. I was 19 years old. I was, I was in a burn unit ICU. My uncle was there living and dying. And I'd been delivered there by some police officers. And because I was the only family they could find. So I stayed there for three days and three nights. And so I was all involved in his case, but also I got involved in the like situation of the

other family in the waiting room who this was Halloween who um this father who didn't live with his son had come and picked a son up to go trick-or-treating and they'd had a flat out on a country road outside Lubbock, Texas. They got slapped by a car or the dad got hit by a car dragged for a hundred yards so he was in terrible awful shape and he kept rising he kept rising from his bed and pulling on his cords out and everything and I got kind of involved in that and but then it was just a lot and I think to kind of insulate myself from all the stuff going on in this in this ICU. Yeah. I wrote my first short story, a ghost story.

Wow. That's all. That is some crazy circumstances all together. And I know you grew up in West Texas. How has that kind of like shaped the things that you do right? Oh, I mean, I think, really I think as writers, we can only ever know the emotional contours of a single landscape. Maybe some people are better than I am. They can know like multiple emotional contours of a lot of landscapes, but I've only got the capacity for a single one.

And for me, that's West Texas where I was born. You know, I've lived all over the place, but I still consider West Texas home. And I can write a story set on Mars and, you know, 2942 way in the future. But sure enough, somebody walks out past the dome, the pod, the spaceship, whatever, and they pull up that red soil. It's going to be West Texas underneath. There's going to be hornetodes and rattlesnakes. mesquite and oil and trash and all that. Yeah.

Yeah. That's a good way to stop. Yeah, the emotional contours part. Even as a reader, that kind of resonates with books that I read where it feels like the setting is like the character. So that makes sense. You do have to probably at least have lived somewhere for a little bit to be able to, like bring that part to life, I would assume.

Yeah, it's not so much. I mean, yeah, that's definitely true. Like, I was a teenage slasher. I know that, I know La Mesa, Texas of 1989 intimately, intimately well. And so it was hardly any work to get it onto the page. But it's not really about the difficulty of making it real for the reader. It's more about knowing it in a way beyond the flora of fauna, climate economy, all that stuff. You know, just knowing like the tone, the timber of it and just the little things.

things that are forever part of your own DNA that you kind of want to share, I guess, you know? Right. Yeah. That makes sense. When you, it's like when you get an idea, what is typically your process? Like, do you plot it out? Do you just start writing?

Or I know you've done lots of forms. So is it different? My preferred form and the way I've done it probably 95% of the time is I really have very little idea. I just like write a line and it becomes another line. That's how night of the mannequins happened. Well, what happened to Night of the Manichens was I had the title. I thought, that's a fun title.

I'll write a Night of Living Dead story. But instead of Zombies, it'll be mannequins. And then I sat down to write that story, which I thought was going to be, oh, people are stuck in a farmhouse trying to fight off mannequins. But then that first line piped up, and it was first person. And it was this kid talking about a prank. And I realized, oh, this is a slasher. And but a slasher told kind of slant at a different, in a different,

way than slasters are usually told. And so it just became something wildly different. And I had no idea where it was gone or what was happening or anything. I never, I never know anything. I just like follow and try to keep up. So there's kind of a reveal at the end. I won't say what it is. But like you weren't even like did you surprise yourself when you got to that. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That thing that happens at the end was going to happen. Yeah. But I do. When I get to the end of a story, like this happened with me back in the interior too. It happened with lead feather. Let's see. It happened with Oliggan Indians, chainsaw. I think it happens with most of my books really. Wow. I always have an idea, well, not an idea. As I get closer

to the end, I think I can see the threads kind of starting to shake like they want to touch, you know? Yeah. And I think, oh, that must be the end, but that's never the end. There's always a surprise waiting. There's always one final twist or one final escalation or one balloon to pop or something. And I've learned to just trust that it's going to be there. I think if I knew it was there, then I would telegraph it too, obviously, and it wouldn't be fun to read. Yeah, I've heard authors who kind of talk about it like this where they're saying like they have just as much fun because they surprise themselves in the end too. And I was like, I mean, that does sound kind of nice if you're able to. Yeah. I mean, I think if there's no discovery

on this end of it, how can they be surprised for the reader? I think discovery on my end translates to surprise for the reader. And I think that's good. Yeah, totally. I mean, it definitely worked in I haven't read all of your stuff I think I read for now um with mannequins so was it you said the idea was kind of like mannequins in general sounded interesting and then you said was that first sentence was kind of the inspiration for you then well I mean the first sentence I guess an inspiration more of like a I don't know like a like a like you know I hear in music like when sometimes when I'm watching someone play music they'll do like they'll strike that thing, that little fork, that tuning fork, and it'll make that noise. And they're like,

oh, we can go now. That's kind of how, that's kind of how these first lines work for me. It's like, and then I, then that sets the tone. It sets everything. And I can just walk into that tone and yeah, and write a whole story. But yeah, all I had was a title. And well, the title and I say a promise, a deadline. What happened was I had done mapping the interior in 2017. It got out and did what it did. And Ellen Datlow, who had edited that for a tour.com, said, hey, why don't you write me another one? That one did all right. So I said, sure, because mapping took four days, you know?

And I figured I got four days. But then it turned, I sat down to write it with that title. Yeah. Well, no, I didn't have the title at the moment. I sat down and thought, all right, let's write a novella. And I wrote a novel in accident in four weeks. And so I pushed it to the side, wrote another novel on four weeks, pushed it to the side and wrote something that was actually a novella.

But then called my agent, and she said, turned into a novel. So I turned it into a novel that became the only good Indians. And the previous book was The Babysitter Lives. And before that, it was a killer on the road. And they've all come out since then. And then finally, that title came to me, none of the mannequins. And I thought, I can do that. I thought this can be the most simple story ever.

It's going to be people in a remote farmhouse with a horde of mannequins approaching them. What can be easier than that? And then it became something all different. Yeah. Yeah, the first sentence, even when you were talking about that at the beginning, like, I even went to start reading it. I was like, my husband was home and I was like, Tyler, this is the first sentence of this story. And he was like, where are you going to have to tell me what actually happens then?

So it is cool that like, because they are such strong sentences. And sometimes I wonder, and I'm sure with some people it is where like they write the whole book and then knowing that they can write the first sentence. But that's kind of cool for you. Like you got it. It came to you. And then you're like, this is what I can build off of essentially. Yeah. I love that.

I mean, sometimes it happens like that with the long trail of Nolan Dugati from like, probably that's what, 18, 19 years ago. It worked like the first line of that is something like what I remember best about my father or the suicide notes. And that gave me the whole novel right there, you know? Yeah, I mean, it's good. Yeah, but sometimes I'll write what I think is the first sentence. And then when I do, when I'm revising, I will end up flipping the order of things,

such that that's no longer the first sentence. So, I mean, it's not like a carved and stone thing that the first sentence that I lay down is going to be the first sentence, you know? Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. How, are you able to tell going into it if it's an idea for a novel versus a short story? Or do you, like, approach them knowing already? Yeah, let me think. I'm trying to think if I've ever had a short story become a novel. I've had a novella become a novel with the only good idea.

Indians. You know, right now I have a, I tried to write a short story. I told somebody I'd give them a 10 or 11,000 words short story. And suddenly next time I looked up it was 14,000 words. And I was like, well, that sucks. And so I just quit and wrote them a different 10,000 word piece. But I've still got that, I've still got that 14,000 word thing. Oh, wait.

No, I don't. I just now turn it into a novella. I just wrote it into a novella. So it's now a 23,000. word novella. So yeah, that's one time in which a story became a novella. But I've never, it happens so, so rarely with me because usually like I can, I can feel the scope of it, you know, and to me that's the delimiter, that's the, I don't know, the controlling factor is the scope. But, you know, one thing that never happens is I've never, I don't think, had a flash fiction piece

become a story. Flash fiction always stays flash fiction. Okay, that's good to know. You were mentioning I was a teenage slasher and with mannequins, I was like this, the, the voice and the tone and also the fact that it's happening with high schoolers, I think is part of why it reminded me of teenage slasher and my heart is a chainsaw. And all of those, you have like a very specific. Each character feels different, but you do like embody the teenage voice pretty well, which you actually commented on in the acknowledgments versus like Buffalo Hunter Hunter was the first one. I read and really, really loved. And then the only good Indians. And I feel like those are like two very different versions of like your tone and like your purpose or what you, the purpose of the story.

So is there something that kind of draws you to like the really, really, really dark like more adult stuff? And then also they're still dark with teenagers. I think teenager is my default setting. And so whenever whenever I'm having to write something from an adult point of view, I'm like, well, better go into boring land, you know. That's funny. But I don't know why that is.

I just, I just think, I think like being 17 is such a magical time because when you're 17, like you remember when you were 15 and you're like, man, I was stupid when I was 15. And when you were 15, you look back to when you're 11, you're like, oh, just a little kid. When you're 11, you're like, I'm growing up now. I'm not five and five anymore. You have all these really distinct stages. But when you're 17, you have this feeling. that I've finished. This is who I am now.

I'm always going to wear my hair like this. I'm always going to have these pants, you know, and this is never going to change. You don't have any knowledge that by the time you're 21, you're going to think your 17-year-old self is completely embarrassing, you know? But I love that, I love that confidence that I'm done. This is who I am. Yeah, and you don't, you're not aware of your own mortality in a really solid way yet either. So, like, you also think you will be like, you. you'll feel young your whole life too, which is not the case.

Yeah, and not just feel young, but you also can't feel all the, I don't know, credit card bills and mortgages and jobs and all that weighing down on you, you know. Yes. Yeah, you don't realize how, you don't realize what the change is going to be like into adulthood. That's for sure. So you write in the horror genre, sometimes like speculative, sometimes like experimental is what I've seen some of it called. And I love, I have been like falling in love with horror for like two years, I think now.

And I, I, I, I just love the kind of stories that can be told through it. And then I know with yours especially, you tend to kind of hit on social themes, social critique, any of that with it. Is there, is there something about horror that you really love writing? Yeah, I just love to scare people. Like, I'm the kind of, I'm the kind of dog owner who, one of my favorite things. I love to put masks on and then hide around the kitchen counter for my dogs to trot into the room and just terrify them, like change their world. You know, that is the most fun I can even imagine having. And so, of course, I like to do that to the readers.

When readers tell me I couldn't turn the lights out or I haven't slept for two nights, I think, I think that's what it's about. That's why I'm doing this, you know. Yeah. I mean, speaking of that in dogs, I was, I was listening. I listened to Buffalo Hunter Hunter. I really love the audiobook for anyone who likes audiobooks. and then it was in the winter though so it was dark in the morning where I was walking and I had to I did have to stop listening to it because like I stepped on a branch and it like cracked

and I was like oh my gosh like I mean there's probably nothing happening where yeah yeah I did I was like all right I'm not going to keep listening to this one in the morning that's great well I mean art art can sensitize us to the world and in different like reorient us to the world in a wonderful way. Like I think one of the most amazing things to me that sums up how art works is like you go to a stage play. You know, you go to a venue to see it and you sit there for two hours and you watch everything happen on stage, all these acts and scenes and breaks and everything and costume changes. And it all like meshes together like clockwork, you know, and it produces this feeling or this argument or this thought at the end. And your eyes watching that like adjust like, oh, everything up there matters. Everything matters. And then. then when you walk out of that theater for 30 minutes maybe going home or wherever your eyes are still like that and you're seeing the world like everything matters and that's just amazing I think that's the best gift that art can give us I completely agree I love more I mean I love books too obviously but I love writing movies for that same reason and if sometimes you do feel weird like

walking back out and you're like okay this is the actual world I live in yeah yeah Um, you, the other thing that I really enjoy about your backlog is you also have, you have like final girl narratives. You have some revenge thrillers. You go into slasher's as well. Um, is there anything about those like themes that are interesting to you? Yeah. I mean, I'm, I think final girls are a model for all of us. They, they kind of illustrate, the proper way to push back against all the bullies in our lives, you know, be that family, spouses, bosses, politicians, you know, big people in line at Burger King, whatever, whatever it is, you know, we need to push back and tell and insist on our own importance, you know, that we matter. But in a larger sense, the final girl is in the slasher. And the slasher to me is all, it's a justice fantasy. So it's all about what is fair and the longing for a fair world. The slasher world is a brutal world, but it's a fair world.

And in today's, I say today is terribly unfair world. I'm not sure the world has ever actually been fair. But in the unfair world we live in, I feel like sometimes as brutal as it is, the slasher world feels more appealing. I know. There's a little bit more justice like you're saying. And the other thing, too, is that often you're like villains or your monster, or just the things in general that are like antagonizing are often like systems and like to what

you're saying things that in our current world actually do operate unfairly or even evilly. So is that one of those things when you start writing? Do you kind of know that's going to be your monster or are you still? Are you kind of just like following the first sentences you get? Yeah, I'm just following. I never have any sense of like theme or intent or meaning or larger purpose. Yeah. I don't think I've ever once thought about any of that.

I'm actually afraid. I'm afraid to think of any of that. I'm afraid that I might write towards it, you know? So if it happens, great. If it doesn't, I don't care. I just want to write about a scary grizzly bear, you know? And if that's scary grizzly bear stands for this or that for someone else, then I think what anybody gets from a story is what they need to get.

And that's fine with me. It doesn't harm my text any. you can really harm a text in that way. You can't, like, misinterpret it such that it damages it, you know? Yeah. That's a good point. Isn't it? Because we've, I've been talking with a, I have, um, episodes with readers too. And we've kind of talked about media literacy and how sometimes sometimes you're like that that's what you got from it. But I think you're right. It doesn't actually hurt the text when like someone thinks the great Gatsby is like, uh, aspirational instead of a cautionary tale. Doesn't really hurt the story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. kind of thought of it like that. Yeah. And what's neat too is like you can return to the great yes be again and again through your life and get different things from it each decade. Right.

Yeah, totally. With mannequins. So you said you thought it was going to maybe be in a barn actually. So was it just when you were writing it? Did you realize you wanted it to be in a movie theater? Or was there any reason for that shift? Well, once Sawyer said a prank, I realized that I needed a prank. And so the first prank I thought of, I thought it better involve a mannequin. That's my title.

And to me, that was hilarious to smuggle a mannequin into a theater, you know? But then I had to come up with why smuggle a mannequin into a theater. And it's because Shanna Sawyer's cousin is working there. And they've, and there's just all kinds of entanglements or kind of not entanglements like dominoes leading up to them doing this and only this. And yeah, it's just the way things always happen in my stories. It's like very mechanical. Like I think, well, if this, then it has to be that and that and that. And it's just obvious that it has to be that way to me. That's cool that it kind of comes to you that way. Have you ever scared yourself with what you've been writing?

Yeah, always, always. When I'm writing a horn novel, especially because I have to live in it so deeply. Yeah. I always forget. I like loose track of the line between real and story. And so I'm just like plagued by nightmares and sleep paralysis. And I go out to the world and I think that I'm going to see my characters, my monsters, my stuff. And so therefore I write really fast so I can get.

get back to the real world, as quick as I can. That makes sense. Do you, because you output a lot, is that how, like, do you have long periods where you aren't writing or do you just have like little breathers in between then? Pretty much breathers, yeah. I'm just, and sometimes not even breather. Sometimes, like, I'll finally finish a novel at 10.30 in the morning and then right after launch, I have to start into the next thing because it's already, like,

pressing, you know? Yeah. And do you typically just get like, it sounds like you get like a general idea. And then when you start writing, then you start to see where it's headed. But are you ever like needing to write towards something? Or is it kind of the point now where like you can just start what you're writing and you know you'll be able to pitch it to someone? Yeah. I never pitch.

I always have ever done that? I think maybe I have once. Maybe with this novel that's coming out. that you haven't. Maybe with Buffalo Hunter, Hunter. I'm out of with Buffalo Hunter, Hunter. But I'll just tell my editor, hey, I got a vampire novel coming.

Do you want it? He'll say yes, and that's the pitch. You know, so it's not that complicated. Yeah. And with this novel that's coming out, same thing. But I don't, I never feel like I, I do write towards things, but what I write towards are real people and real feelings and that kind of stuff,

you know, so I don't, like, I'm always, like, weirded out when people say they write with intent or purpose. or yeah that's just that i can't understand that it just doesn't compute to me yeah well it's i mean the main thing that i've said after uh interviewing authors for a few years now like what came what i started to really realize is there's not one way to write a book and there's not like a hundred ways to write a book there are like thousands of ways to write a book and so it is always fascinating to me that like some people your case you're like well i know it works for me and that means you start writing

Yeah, like Gene Wolf, the fantasy novelist, he was late in his career. He probably had 35 books or something at the time. And he got asked in an interview, they said, hey, Gene, you've written so many books. You've got to figure out how to do it right now. Do it by now. You can just stamp him out. And Gene Wolf said, no, you only ever learn to write the book you're writing. And I completely agree with that.

I think, or you can look at it like with horse breaking, you know. Like there are different technique. There are like a set of techniques. that tend to work to get a horse docile down so you can put a saddle on it. But still, you break each horse differently, you know. That's how novels are for me. You break each novel differently. But for me, I know one thing that doesn't work is having a plan or having an intent

or wanting to accomplish this or that. You know, that would always, I don't think I could possibly write a novel like that. Well, and you clearly have written plenty of novels. So, like, at this point, like, you know what works for you. So it's like, you definitely want to keep doing that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, what I do, the way I write in always, I just go in headlong and depend upon luck. That's all it is. I've found that trying to pretend like I have craft or muscles or ability or talent or any of that is useless. So I just gamble on luck every time. And I seem to get lucky. Yeah. That's really cool. That makes me wonder.

So like what I've seen from like other reviews and other people who talk about your books is how. you also weave like indigenous identity into your stories as well and is that something as well like you're just like writing it and because that's your experience is that where that it's you're not like trying to talk about yeah yeah I'm not trying to

weave stuff in it's just that's the default setting for me and so that's where that's where I write from you know back back in grad school this would have been 94 1994 I guess my first year of grad school yeah I was in a fiction workshop and we were all turning in our stories. I turned in my first two stories and they got chewed up, you know, like they should. That's what it should up in a workshop.

People were just like, that's terrible. That's also terrible and that's really bad, you know? Right. And so you leave with your tail between your legs and you try to do better. But then I wrote a story where there was this little small interchange in it where someone said, what are you? And he said, I'm blackfeet or something like that. And it was like an insulting kind of thing happening in the story. And anyways, when I came to class that day to get workshoped,

everyone treated that story so differently. Like they had like their sacred hours on and they were talking about this like it was special. And to me it was just the same as my other stories. The only difference was this story had actually said the character was Blackfeet. And the other two, I'd assume the character was Blackfeet. But I didn't feel like I had to say it because that was a default. But that taught me really early on to be really careful how you deploy stuff because the reader's impulse is to weird things up sometimes like that. You know.

That's a good way to put it. I know because it's making me more aware of how, like, I don't ask white authors about writing about the white experience. But you do hear it in other cases. And I always do want to be respectful because it is the case where some, like, black and indigenous voices don't, a lot of people don't know about that experience yet. So it's like that's where the fiction is so powerful too. But it's like on the flip side, I'm not asking like, just. Jessica about talking about having a white character. So yeah, I always wonder about that. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, the trick is you never want to like feel like you're selling your identity or culture just to move units, you know?

Right. And you also don't want to trade in the exotic. Like, like, ooh, I've got something that you've seen, so you're going to want to buy this. You know, like, I think those are those are two terrible reasons to traffic and storytelling. Yeah, and I really, in Buffalo Hunter Hunter, I really enjoyed that you did not explain like what certain words meant. Like you were like, this is what this vampire, this indigenous person who becomes a vampire. Like this is what would be going on in his head. And I thought that was, it was really fascinating in conversation with the halftime show that we just had that was in Spanish. People are like freaking out. And you're like, but it's.

exciting to get to be a part of a new culture. And it's like, I could look up those words and still enjoy your story. And the story can just like be its own thing. It doesn't have to be over explained or like made special. So. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think that if the story has to change its own delivery method to accommodate a set of readers. Yeah. Then I don't know. I think it's compromising itself a little bit. You know, I think I'll learn this. There's a book called Morning Dev from 1905 by a writer Jekala Shah. And in that book, she worked with an editor when she wrote that book. And the editor went in and put all these parentheticals and footnotes. Like every time she had mentioned some indigenous practice or something, there'd be a little footnote or something saying, you know, like an anthropological thing. And what that signals to the reader is that this is not for an indigenous audience. This is weird to you, you know. And so you need some sort of on-ramp to understand it. And that to me is just really off-putting and uncomfortable.

And so, yes, therefore, in the Buffalo Hunter, Hunter, I didn't include any kind of glossary or anything. No, and it was cool hearing the words because often I could still figure out what a decent amount of a meant. But then it was also fun to just, I never wanted to sound trivialized. But sometimes when I'm telling people to like the ups of reading outside of your own experience, is that you actually do experience like novelty and new things and you're like oh this is something I didn't know about so it kind of like keeps what you're reading fresh there's a lot of other reasons to do it but if you want a selfish reason it will feel fresh but yeah I really enjoyed that part of it and I still think of I can't remember I think was butter like hard yellow milk

was that what it was I still think of it sometimes when I get my butter out of the fridge and I'm like it is hard yellow milk Yeah, maybe, maybe, yeah, I wonder, I wonder if anybody's ever trying to coin the term like reverse colonization. I wonder if we're like doing the backwards channel. Yes, like truly decolonizing minds. Oh, that's amazing. Well, my only other question was, did you, did you grow up loving horror? Was that kind of the trajectory or did you just kind of find it when you started writing? Oh, yeah. I think I've, I think a first one. novel I've ever read. I was 11, a werewolf novel, The Wolf and by Whitley Stryber, the first horror movie I ever saw. I was in second grade. It was the Howling, Gary, and I'm

by Giudante, and I've stuck with horror ever since. Yeah, I've always been horror, but more than that, I've always been genre. I feel like, I mean, I love horror, I love science fiction, I love fantasy, I love westerns, I love spy, I love thriller, I love crime, and I like literary as well, you know? I mean, I just, I just like good writing and good storytelling and whatever I whatever form or delivery method or or like content rapper or whatever I find I find it in I'm thrilled yeah yeah and I feel like years are often it's a genre blend where like it's sometimes YA and it's horror and maybe it's slasher horror and then even like Buffalo Hunter Hunter is like historical fiction but it's also kind of horror and it's also

of our story. So yeah, I really enjoy genre blins. So it kind of, it does make sense. So that's kind of how you approach it. I do always ask, unless you're writing and not reading, but is there a book recently that you really loved or just like any book that you always recommend to people? Oh, the last two books I've read, I think, is it last two? They're both early. They don't come out for a while now. Paul Tremblay's Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep, which is kind of a screed against artificial intelligence, the propagation of artificial intelligence. And I'm in the last like five percent of Sarah Langen's trad wife, which is really good and creepy. I think it just came out. Oh, is it? Oh, it just came out. I thought it. It might be the trad mom. There are like three different trad books. There are. There's a

lot of trad books. So I might be wrong on that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're fascinating, though. They're very fascinating. Well, where can people follow you to stay up to date? Oh, my website. that stephen grahamjones.com is probably a good i don't know place um the only only social media i'm on is blue sky i guess i'm on goodreads too i don't know if that's a really considered a social place though maybe it is yeah it's social reviews something yeah yeah i can add the website to the show notes for everyone and thanks so much for coming by and talking thanks for talking it was a blast