The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Memorials by Richard Chizmar

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

Memorials by Richard Chizmar Amazon.com A group of students encounter a supernatural terror while on a road trip through Appalachia in this chilling new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the “unforgettable and scary” (Harlan Coben) Chasing the Boogeyman. 1983: Three students from a small college embark on a week-long road trip to film a documentary on roadside memorials for their American Studies class. The project starts out as a fun adventure with long stretches of empty road and nightly campfires where they begin to open up with one another. But as they venture deeper into the Appalachian backwoods, the atmosphere begins to darken. They notice more and more of the memorials feature a strange, unsettling symbol hinting at a sinister secret. Paranoia sets in when it appears they are being followed. Their vehicle is tampered with overnight and some of the locals appear to be anything but welcoming. Before long, the students can’t help but wonder if these roadside deaths were really random accidents…or is something terrifying at work here? About the author Richard Chizmar is the author of Gwendy's Button Box (with Stephen King) and A Long December, which was nominated for numerous awards. His fiction has appeared in dozens of publications, including Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and multiple editions of The Year’s 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories. He has won two World Fantasy awards, four International Horror Guild awards, and the HWA's Board of Trustee's award. His third short story collection, A Long December, was recently published to starred reviews in both Kirkus and Booklist, and was featured in Entertainment Weekly. Chizmar’s work has been translated into many languages throughout the world, and he has appeared at numerous conferences as a writing instructor, guest speaker, panelist, and guest of honor. Please visit the author’s website at RichardChizmar.com.

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Chris Voss Show. Come on. Ladies and gentlemen, you're the only singer that makes it official. Welcome to the show. For 16 years and over 2,000 episodes, when you hear the online singing of that mixing official, welcome to the big show. For 16 years and over 2,000 episodes, we bring in the Chris Voss Show. We're just going to keep doing it for another 16 years and 2,000 episodes, or maybe more. I don't know.

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It's rumored that the host is an idiot. Anyway, we have Richard Chismar. Let me cut that. Richard Chismar on the show with us today. He has a new book out October 22nd, 2024 called Memorials. And we're going to get into his new book, what the insights are and everything else. Richard Chismar is the author of Gwendy's Button Box with Stephen King and A Long December, which was nominated for numerous awards. His fiction has appeared in dozens of publications, including Ellery Queen's Mystery

Magazine and multiple editions of the year's 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories. He's won two World Fantasy Awards, four International Horror Guild Awards, and the HWA's Board of Trustees Award. His third short

story collection, Along December, was recently published to starred reviews in both Kirkus and Booklist. It was featured in Entertainment Weekly. His work has been translated into many languages throughout the world. He's appeared in numerous conferences as a writing instructor, guest speaker, panelist, and guest of honor. Welcome to the show, Richard. How are you? I'm good, man. Thanks for having me on. It's a pleasure to have you on, sir. Give us your your dot coms where can people find you on the interwebs i have a richard chismar.com but i'm also on facebook

instagram and whatever the heck it's called now twitter x x twitter bankruptcy next week so congratulations on the new book give us a 30 000 overview what's inside ah you know what it is it's my campfire it's my version of a campfire story it's three college students thrown together in a van doing a class project they're going on a road trip in their old volkswagen van now this sounds like a little bit like hemityville horror no it wasn't a real horror texas chainsaw massacre a little bit you know what it is a throw it's set it's set back in 1983 and it is kind of a throwback to the 70s and 80s horror suspense films like you know texas chainsaw and and even going back even further you know what is it ride with the devil you know the

old you know i think the guys in the camper and the loretta swit and it you know a race with the devil yeah that's what it's called but yeah it, it's just, you know, they're doing a class project for their American Studies class on those roadside memorials that you see that pop up at accident sites and that kind of thing. And what they're doing is they're doing a documentary kind of behind the scenes, the stories behind those memorials and what they call it, a study of grief and remembrance. And they want to shoot film and take still photos of various memorials that they run across and then they want to do some investigative reporting and find out the stories behind them and in a way you know trying to remember the families and the victims but what happens is they start noticing some disturbing similarities on many of these roadside memorials and you know curiosity gets the best of them and

next thing you know they're in trouble oh that's so that's how it always works it's fridays around here at the the that's wild so they go on the road trip you know i've often wondered about those memorials that on the side of the road we have them usually here for highway patrol folks or police officers that may have died in the duty you know you see them along the freeway when you're driving along and i've often wondered about them that's kind of that's kind of a great premise what what made you come up with the premise for the book i pretty much exactly what you just said i i started wondering about them you know i i at some point i realized that not only do they exist but they were everywhere yeah and i could not think back to, for the life of me, I could not

think back and try to, and kind of find that dividing point when they, you know, when they did not exist. So when they did, it just felt like they kind of sprung full bloom, you know, into existence. So I was always intrigued by them. I was always saddened by them. And I did think, you know, pretty much immediately I thought, wow, you know, there's so many stories behind each one. It was a bicycle accident or automobile accident or, you know, a setting for violence, you know, that kind of thing. And it just always percolated in my brain. And about 20 years ago, I thought I was going to write it as a as a script, you know, for a horror movie. And it just never got done.

And then came time to find an idea for a new book. And I was just like, you know what? horror movie and it just never got done came time to to find an idea for a new book and i was just like you know what i'm gonna write that sucker before somebody else does and i had a blast doing it i mean it ended up being this book is probably 40 longer than any book i've ever written and that was the reason why i just had a lot of fun doing it now you sent it in 1983 was the reason you chose that era? You know, I had written two books called Chasing. I had written a book called Chasing the Boogeyman. That was set in 1988, the year I graduated college. And in the case of that book, you know, you say you have the brightest guess,

and maybe until me, I had established myself as the main character in this book. And I wrote it in a true crime format. The reason I picked 88 is because that was the year I graduated college, and that's the same thing for this character in the book. You know, it made the writing easy. And with 83, that's the year I graduated from high school. So I knew the music, I knew the geography, I knew the, you know, the trends, the haircuts, that kind of thing. And I wanted to write about that period. I like the fact that technology, you you know was still on the down low you know it's like in fact it was

like the first really the first year that those video cameras you know were really readily available 83 and 84 and so yeah i i just i wanted the technology to not you know present an out for these characters but i also really wanted the music and the vehicles and just you know present an out for these characters but i also really wanted the music and the vehicles and just you know the political landscape all of it to be you know back in the day there was a fabric to that the 80s and i think there's probably maybe a fabric to every age but i maybe and maybe i'm partial because full disclosure i graduated high school in 1986. i thought it was cool i think it's stranger things the the show Things, kind of pays homage to a lot of this stuff, I think, from the 80s. I haven't ever watched the show, but from what I understand, they do that.

And I don't know. There's a fabric to it. It was an interesting time. Let's see. It was the worst of times. It was the best of times. You know what? I think you're right.

And I think, you know, I have two sons. One is 25. One's 21. You know, with Chasing the Boogeyman, where I wrote about 88. And then I went back further because I wrote about the town in which I grew up in. So they got to hear, you know, about my and they hear the stories, you know, firsthand from our second hand from my friends all the time, that kind of thing. But I they closed the book. And I mean, my oldest son, he's like, you guys were a bunch of street urchins man that is what it was like in the 70s and the 80s i'm like you know there were no cell phones so your parents couldn't text you you left the house you know you found your friends wherever you found them in their front yards down the street you know on the roof of the elementary school throwing rocks at something you know and then you you know as a pack you kind of you know travel the town and you knew the shortcuts you knew the hiding spots and you know a lot of stuff that the grown-ups didn't and that appeals to me in my fiction too there's those kind of secrets that

that you're privy to in your youth yeah that the grown-ups aren't yeah men used to tribe up more back then i mean i just realized that you know all my friends were guys and we did tribal men stuff together. You know, we'd go burn something or hunt something or you know, sometimes we'd hunt the pot guts that were digging in the yard and, but yeah, it was a special time and

I mean, it's just a great era. What was the joke I had for it? I guess it's lost. But they, evidently they venture into the Appalachian backwoods. So is is there is there banjos and kayaks you know what there's not there's not but one one character does that say that he says i hear one banjo yeah that's that's that's my punch ending chapters if i hear one banjo i'm getting hell out of there um but yeah appellation you know i i'm in maryland uh the last two books chasing the boogeyman becoming

the boogeyman were both set in my hometown area in maryland uh which is up north not far from the pennsylvania border so when it came time to write this book i wanted to be close to home again so i could kind of lean on my familiarity but i didn't want want it to be Maryland. I didn't want it to be my hometown. So I picked Pennsylvania. And again, a lot of reviewers have claimed, oh, Chismar was brilliant for the setting. And I'm just shaking my head thinking, another happy accident if they only knew. But yeah, I have relatives who live in Southern Pennsylvania and throughout. My father was raised in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. So I kind of know the state and that's where I put it. The more I learned about Appalachia,

just everything. The landscape, the geography, the traditions, the people. The more intrigued I was. You talk about a perfect setting for a horror film or a horror book and I mean that respectfully. It's just

everything from some of those you know just the idea that hikers could stumble upon an appellation you know little village of seven or eight houses that don't appear on any map and that doesn't even have a name you know and that this still occurs is is that in itself is enough to make you go yeah it's not a place you want to you know run into bad things you know and that this still occurs is is that in itself is enough to make you go yeah it's not a place you want to you know run into bad things you know well i'm the middle of nowhere yeah right yeah yeah exactly cell phone range but they didn't have cell phones back then so there and they still don't want them i mean that's the thing a lot of the appalachian people they do shun you know modern advancement it's not a stereotype in some cases that's not the case it's you know no different

than maybe amish people or whatever but yeah it's again it's all. It's not a stereotype. In some cases, that's not the case. It's, you know, no different than maybe Amish people or whatever. But yeah, it's, again, it's all intriguing. It's like a stew. You're mixing it together. And if you're a warped guy like me with a big imagination, you can kind of mold a good story out of that. A story of mystery, thriller, and suspense. I remember the joke I had. Yeah, you were talking about the technology, you know, that they didn't have a lot of back then. And so there was kind of a thing where people actually talked to each other and interacted. If you did the same story today, it would, like, have a Cybertruck in it

that would break down in the first five minutes. Oh, yeah. Here would be your dialogue in the novel. Jerry just stared into his phone, and Bob stared into his phone, and then the cyber truck broke down and they couldn't get cell service and Jerry got angry the end yeah after someone posted their whereabouts online and you know 50 allies and 50 enemies converged on themselves and you know had a battle at the campground where we were you know that that kind of thing I did, you know, I was able to do away with all that.

Good. It just probably made for a better story. I mean, life was better, I think, without cell phones and social media. Plus your mom could never find you unless you were within your shot. So you also wrote a book with Stephen King. Tell us a little bit about that. How'd you get that gig? That's he's written a book or two.

He's kind of, yeah, man is still cranking them out. You know, I started way back in college i my senior year i started a little horror magazine called cemetery dance and three years later i started publishing books under the cemetery dance imprint and the magazine has continued for 35 years and we're up you know probably almost 600 books that we've published um and my writing really took a backseat, you know, for a couple of decades because of all that. But what happened is I sent the very first issue to Steve up in Bangor, Maine. I sent it to his office. You know, I got a nice response back from one of his assistants.

And then, you know, I just continued to send a copy of everything we did up there. Very quickly, he was supportive of the magazine. You know, he sent us a great blurb for marketing. Year three, he sent us a brand new short story to publish, which really helped us on the map. And then you fast forward about 10 years, he allowed us to do a limited edition of a book called From a Buick 8. You know, a book like that, financially, spiritually, in every way, you know, enriched my

company. And then over the next, you know, however many years, we just, you know, there were a lot more projects. And instead of speaking with, you know, Marsha or Julie, his assistants, I was actually speaking directly with Steve. And then some point, we started texting, you know, baseball, dogs, family, movies, a ton about movies and books. But, you know, no business. All the business was still done separately. So, yeah, somewhere in that business relationship, a friendship, you know, was established. And, yeah, I mean, many, many years later, I think it was 2016, we were emailing, actually.

We weren't texting. We were emailing about collaborations and, and round robin books where you have 10 different authors contribute a chapter, that kind of thing. And he just mentioned he had a story called Gwendy's Button Box that he had never been able to finish and it was sitting on his computer. And I was like, I'd love to read it if you ever get a chance. Cause you know, that's one of the perks of being friends with Stephen King is you get to read stuff early a lot, you know,

he'll send me a script and say, let me know what you think. And that's, that's cool. In this case, I just kind of wanted to read it, you know? So it showed up the next morning via email and,

and it's do, do with it as you wish. And I was like, what the hell does that mean? You know, print it out and fold them all up and like little airplanes or what, you know? And then I'm like, he doesn't want me to finish it, does he? And so I emailed him back and he said,

if you think you can go for it. And that's how it happened. You know, we, it ended up as a novella. I published the first edition hardcover under my own company and you know, it became a New York Times bestseller sold to his, his mass market publisher, Simon & Schuster, and that led to a couple more, one of which I wrote by myself, but Steve edited because he was busy with another book. And then the last one, Gwendy's Final Task, we wrote together, and that's a full-length novel and just had the time of my life. So yeah, just very lucky.

Just got struck by lightning in a good way. Yeah. Built a great relationship, relationships are everything. We have so many authors on the show, they would all kill to write with steven king yes it's ridiculous people ask me all the time when i do a lot of press for it you know that's always the question is you know can you can you pare it down to one word what it was like and i'm just like for this you know a kid from edgewood maryland who used to walk around with stephen king paperbacks in his back pocket who decided he wanted to be a writer in 10th grade because he read stephen king's the monkey it's ridiculous that's my word it's ridiculous that it's me and grateful every day for it yeah while the journey

life takes us on you know like i said we i mean we've had we had we've had all the authors of tom clancy on except for tom clancy himself of course obviously and we're not that old of a podcast maybe he was alive when we were started i don't know but we've had all of them on and a lot of them grew up reading like you said the first book of of tom clancy's and falling in love with him and then end up writing with him and then writing for him. And this is a great honor and just amazing, you know, to be able to chosen for stuff like that. That's awesome. What, what, what got you into horror? Who hurt you when you were young? How did you grow up? What influenced you? Stephen King book? Yeah, I was the youngest of five, three older sisters that in some ways that's there. God bless them. I love them all. And they're wonderful. But three older sisters. Yeah, no, I you know what I for me, it was just this very organic thing. I, you know, I did tend to think of the dark side. Like I said, you know, as soon as I saw those memorials, I was thinking kind of about the somber side. And I was always one of those kids who's kind of very observant and aware,

you know, like I realized that, you know, going to church around the holidays, there are a lot of sad people around here, even though they're singing Christmas carols and supposed to be a happy time because I'm going to get, you know, like the evil Knievel motorcycle kit for Christmas, you know, at least I hope I am. There's a lot of sad faces. And so I always kind of saw that, you know, way before it was probably healthy to see that kind of thing and understand that kind of thing. But it was also just a normal, like I said, organic, you know, Wizard of Oz, you know, back then, you know, no VCRs came on once a year. It was a big event. You know, my favorite part, the haunted trees and the flying monkeys scared me to death.

Nightmares. My sister said, we're were not gonna let you watch it next year next time it was on there i am front and center going come on give me the flying monkeys give me a teeny bang man i'm still scared of that damn kidnapper with the net you know so it started that early and then it just continued you know i walk into a comic book store you you know, I wasn't always, you know, I wasn't the kid who was interested in the superheroes. I wanted the Twilight Zone and the Tales from the Crypt, you know, that kind of thing. And then Saturday afternoons, you know, I was an outside kid, you know, wiffle ball, kickball, playing marbles, trading baseball cards, you know, throwing stuff at cars, all that stuff. But 12 noon on Saturday, I was, I was like, see ya. I went back in my house, creature double feature, 12 to two and two to four, you know, the, some of the worst movies ever made, but man,

I was glued to the television. And so that's it. It's just, that was the path. And then, you know, never really, I wrote, I wrote a lot of stories when I was younger, you know, monster stories, war stories, try to sell them to my friends. They never would buy them. You know, I'm like, it's on sale today for a nickel. I'd get a middle finger and my mom's going to buy it. You know, my mom was my first audience. And then yeah, 10th grade, my English teacher, Richard Gallagher, who I still see and stay in touch with and still thank him regularly. He brought in photocopies of King's story, the monkey, which appeared in an early magazine gallery as a little chat book.

And God bless him. He, you know, he broke like 18 different rules, photocopied it, brought it in. And we read it out loud in class and, you know,

typical sophomore high school class, you know, a bunch of jackasses giggling, talking. But by the time we got to the end of that story, the entire class was quiet, scared, captivated. And I just thought to myself, this is what I want to do.

You know, I had already read a bunch of, of King by then. It was just kind of a reinforcement. And then at that point on, I was like, yeah, I want to do this. You know, he actually gets paid to do this. So yeah, that was, that was my path. And it was like I said, it kind of just grew naturally. That is awesome. What a, what a thing. what a thing what a thing so what what is coming how many books do you have total so we can get people to go check out your other oh you know what i'm not even i'm not even sure and you know what again if i was smart i would i would keep tabs because i get asked that question but you know what i didn't start writing novels still i was in my early 50s i'm 58 now

i was busy with the publishing company. There was like a 10-year period where I wrote a bunch of movies and was fortunate to have some made. That was almost going to be my first comment when you read my bio, which sounds so impressive. And I was about to say, yeah, but just to bring me back down to earth, I co-wrote Roadhouse 2, the movie. And most people's response is there's a roadhouse too and i'm like exactly but yeah you know so i've done a little bit of everything and then and tons of short stories that's all the collections that came out were very well received but you know you don't you don't make a living wage writing short stories and

just always you know the publishing company is what did that it's what sent my kids through school and paid the mortgage and then some point i was I was just like, you know, it's time to try. And then right around that period is when Steve asked me to write that story. And I was like, what a better launching point. So yeah, I'm, you know, I kind of, Gwendy's Button Box kind of helped become, helped me become an overnight success to some degree. And then, you know, fortunately I was able to kind of walk the walk and write some decent books myself and they've continued, the readerships continue to grow. Yeah. Very, very fortunate. Kick-ass taking names. What's the future look like? Anything working on the future? Yeah. You know, I'm about a week away. My oldest son, Billy,

his writer name is W.H. Chismar. He's been writing since college. They sent him home from college for COVID way back. And what he did is he sat out by the pond in our side yard and wrote a novel. Then he threw it in a drawer, went back to school, played lacrosse, the whole thing. And he rewrote it probably about a year and a half ago, sold it to a hardcover publisher for a limited edition. And then he recently sold it to a major publisher, which I can't really mention yet because contracts not signed. But so anyway, he and I, we wrote a novella way back then called Widow's Point about a haunted lighthouse. Again, we just, you know, we're just playing father and son. We, you know, we're both dabble.

So let's have some fun. Published it through my own company, sold a bunch of copies. Reviews were great. Ended up selling it to four or five, you know, overseas countries. And it was made into a movie, which is not a great movie, but it was made into a low budget movie. And we thought that'd be the end of it. We're like, wow, what a great experience. We'll have to do it again sometime. And then we both over the, you know, the next year or so, we both kind of came to the understanding that, you know what, that story's not done yet. There's more to go. So I pitched my publisher the idea of, hey, you know, let us use this novella as kind of the anchor, like the first 20% of a full length novel.

And we'll do something really scary. We'll do something really creepy about this lighthouse. And they went for it. So we're about a week away from turning that in and I'm assuming that'll be out sometime next year. And then I'll get to work on the third boogeyman book. You know, they've been, those, those books have been good to me. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, you know, I'm just going to keep writing novels and short stories.

My agent asked me all the time, you know, you, you know, are you interested? Do you want to be on board on this as a script writer? Maybe. And I'm like, Nope, been there, done that. I'm having too much fun, you know, kind of playing in my own sandbox and not having to listen to investors and producers. Yeah. I'm just going to keep writing, you know, short stories and books and having fun. It's been wonderful to have you on. Give people a final pitch out as we go out to order up your book and dot coms where people can find you on the interwebs? Yeah, you can find me, you know,

Richard Chismore. No fancy nicknames for me. Although everybody calls me Chiz, I should probably use that. Yeah, Facebook, Twitter X and Instagram and then my website, RichardChismore.com and yeah, come have some fun. Sounds good. Sounds good.

Thank you very much. We're coming on the show, Richard. We really appreciate it. Oh, Chris, thanks so much. I appreciate it. Thank you. And please come back for your future books. I will.

And thanks to my audience for tuning in. Order up the book wherever fine books are sold. Stay away from those alleyway bookstores. You might get a tetanus shot you'll need if you step on the wrong thing or get mugged. His book is out October 22, 2024, called Memorials. And check out his other fine library that he has there. Go to goodreads.com, 4sayschrisfoss, linkedin.com, 4sayschrisfoss, chrisfoss1, the TikTokity, and all his crazy plays on the internet.

Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. And that should have us out, man.