The Horror Returns - THR Bonus Interview: A Conversation With Editor Ellen Datlow

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

This week, we talk with Horror Anthology editor extraordinaire Ellen Datlow. Ellen discusses her upcoming anthology Fears, as well as working at OMNI magazine, what makes truly good horror, the thrill of winning editing awards, and how the industry has changed over the years. Thanks for listening! The Horror Returns Website: https://thehorrorreturns.com THR YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/@thehorrorreturnspodcast3277 THR Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thehorrorreturns THR Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thehorrorreturns/ Join THR Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1056143707851246 THR X: https://twitter.com/horror_returns?s=21&t=XKcrrOBZ7mzjwJY0ZJWrGA THR Instagram: https://instagram.com/thehorrorreturns?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y= THR TeePublic: https://www.teepublic.com/user/the-horror-returns SK8ER Nez Podcast Network: https://www.podbean.com/pu/pbblog-p3n57-c4166 E Society Spotify For Podcasters: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/esoc E Society YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UCliC6x_a7p3kTV_0LC4S10A Music By: Steve Carleton Of The Geekz

Regings victims, for those of you who delight and dread, who fantasize about fear, who glorify gore, welcome. You have found the place where the horror returns. Listeners beware. This podcast contains major plot spoilers. and the foulest of language. Join us in celebrating the old and the new, the best, and the worst in horror. Greetings, listeners, you found the horror returns.

And since that is the old intro, that means we get another bonus interview for you this month. And you guys know what a constant reader I am. We know the other guys don't read as often, but maybe we can influence them a little bit. But we do have a special interview today, and this one is with Ellen Datlow. I made sure I pronounced the name correctly,

because I don't always do that. Ellen's the editor of an upcoming. I believe it's upcoming. You can tell us about that. Anthology book, and it's called Fears. So thanks for joining us today, Ellen. Thank you for having me. I'm delighted to be here.

Yeah, going to have to dig into some of your other anthologies that you did. And I was a huge Omni reader. Like I would go to camp in junior high and high school and always had an Omni magazine. Well, I was a fiction editor for 17 years, so you mostly read

what I bought and edited. That's great. I love it. There was some great stuff in there. All right, so got some questions here for you. We'll get started with this one. You know, certainly we've considered this anthology to be horror in every sentence of the word. You and I talked a little bit about the book's introduction,

you know, going to that. But a lot of the standard tropes aren't present in these stories like, you know, ghosts or the afterlife or the supernatural. Seems to focus more on like the horrors of human nature. What made you decide to go in that direction with this anthology? Well, I've done several, isn't it all reprint anthology? So all the stories have been published before. and I've been doing reprint anthology with Takion for a few years now, and we're always trying to figure out a wide enough range of a theme that's brought enough to bring in all kinds of stories. And I can't remember if it was my publisher slash editor Jacob who suggested psychological horror,

or me. But, I mean, I've always considered psychological horror a subset of horror, Although some people only consider supernatural horror to be supernatural, well, books or stories with supernatural beings to be horror. And I just think that's wrong. I happen to love psychological horror, and I just thought it would be interesting to do a whole book of it. So actually, when I send out guidelines, what I do is I'll go at, I'll usually start with a few stories that I may know I want to reprint. I wanted relatively recent, like in the last 10 years, 15 years, although I do have a couple of classic, really old ones. Right.

But I'll usually go to the people who I know write that kind of thing or think might write that sort of thing and tell them exactly what I'm looking for. And initially I didn't, I don't think I came out right away and said absolutely no supernatural. I think I probably said something like there can be a supernatural. element, but it should be mostly psychological horror. And then probably if I got too many stories that had supernatural elements that are overwhelming. The story, I probably went back and said, nope, that's not what I want. I want psychological horror. So it's a difference. Yeah. And that's what we got. Like a couple of the stories sort of reminded me of the setup of like Stephen King's needful things. But of course, you know, he went way supernatural with that one. But like it's funny,

human nature is funny. Like sometimes we think someone's intentions are different than what they are, you know? Well, absolutely. It's just beautiful by him. But also, but I mean, you can have, I mean, there's a lot of, a lot of horrors both. I mean, without the human element, the supernatural isn't going to work. You know, so you have to have something human and the, what the supernatural, the supernatural effect on humans is also psychological. So, I mean, it's always intertwined. I don't think, I mean, you can't have a supernatural story that doesn't somehow impact on the human beings, which kind of makes it psychological to some extent. Sometimes humans are the scariest monsters out there. Oh, absolutely. And some of the stories that I reprinted here.

All right. So when you're deciding on an anthology to release, like to go a little bit deeper into that, like what typically goes into, you know, deciding the subject matter? Are you usually like, Do you get like inspiration? Like you read a story and like, oh shit, I want to find a whole bunch of stories on that theme or what's your process on that? It's difficult to say. I mean, I have my favorite stories that I read over the years. And, you know, if you want, if people want to know what are your favorite stories are the stories that I reprint over and over in different venues. Okay. So it's rare that I come to an anthology by first having the story. I mean, first of all, because. there's a difference between reprint anthologies and original anthologies. And original anthology would be all the stories that I would commission,

or not commission, but solicit from writers and ask for new stories. So that's a different process. The nice thing about reprint anthologies is you have all of history. You have the stories there, and also you don't have to edit them. So it takes away that one whole large aspect of putting together an anthology, not having to edit the stories. I'm trying to think of how, I mean, I think, as I, because I read so much for the year's best. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. You have to have tons of reasons.

I'm coming up with stories that, oh, I think I'd like to use that for this. But it's usually the things that comes first, then the stories, you know, that I want to use. I mean, once in a while there are stories that I know, yes, I want to reprint this. How can I use it? And that was an example of that is, a classic Charles Berkin, story called A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts, which I read, I don't know where I originally read it, but it's a horrifying story that's really old. I mean, it's like, I think it was written in the early 60s or something.

I forget. I'd have to look at the page. Okay. Well, really old. I mean, it's all relative, right? No, maybe even older than that. Hold on. I can actually, you know, I can look at my copyright page here and see when was it published.

It was published in 1964. So to me, 64 is not that old because I graduated high school. in 67, but that's pretty old, you know, that's a pretty old story. That's the oldest story in the book. And it was, whenever, when I read it, I think I may have reprint, me, republished it on, in side fiction. And sci fiction, when I was doing the side fiction website for sci-fi channel, I did like an original story a week, I think, in two reprints a month or something like that. So I was busy looking for classic what I liked of reprints from, you know, from the history of science fiction and fantasy and horror. And that probably, I think I published it in sci fiction.

And so someone must have recommended it or maybe I read it in an anthology or a collection. I just don't remember. But that was a story that stuck with me. And it's one that I really wanted to reprint someplace. So that was when I decided on the doing the anthology, that was one that came from. to mine immediately. And then there are a handful of stories that I read recently for my years best that either appeared in my year's bests or I didn't take them for it, but were on the shortlist. And those stories that I used, you know, and then, you know, then going after people when I, you know,

and then the other, the final part of that is when I go to all the writers who I, who's work, I appreciate and think can be on theme. I'll go to them and say, do you have, and I'll tell them, this is what I'm looking for, I'm not paying much, you know, I get that out of the way. Pay a penny award. I mean, for originals, I pay a lot more, but for real, it's just a penny a word. And do you have anything that might be appropriate. And so I get a lot of submissions.

Like I'm in the middle of doing that right now for another anthology, another report. print anthology and basically I'll say you can give me three stories at the most and let me see if they work you know and when I get the stories I can say okay they nailed it and I don't like the story it doesn't work for me or it's totally off theme I have to I have to refine the theme and tell people that they're not giving me what I need so okay so that's part of the process and as a yeah as the stories come in I also have a hone figure out well what do I need to ask for to get what I'm looking for. So it's gotcha. Yeah, and I hadn't even thought about the, I hadn't put two and two together with the sci-fi channel experience you had, but I wanted to know what it was

like working for Omni because you were there quite a while. Like I said, that was a big part of my young adulthood. It was great. I mean, it was, you know, it was a beautiful magazine. It was really a smart magazine. It was the first of its kind, really still the only of its kind, you know, that combined high production values with science fiction and science and futureism. And it was the first, I mean, I had worked in book publishing for a few years, getting nowhere slowly, as I would say. And that was my first magazine job, and it was a national magazine. And I hadn't been, I wasn't a fan or anything of science fiction.

So when I got to Omni, I mean, I, I mean, you know, there are fans and not fans. And I didn't get into science fiction in that direction. But anyway, it was fun to work there. And I also learned how to work in a big office. And dealing with other departments who were kind of icky. Yeah, they had their own cross purposes, right? Like politics. I learned office politics.

I mean, I did it when I worked in book publishing, but I was an assistant. But we're a fiction editor at Omni. You know, I had to deal with a brilliant, but not very easy to get along with art director. We had a copy person for a long time who was horrible. But you have to deal with these people. And you have to deal with a national advertising. I mean, a magazine, a national magazine,

a little magazine, you don't have to fit and cut and fit stories to go around the advertisements. In a big magazine, that's what you had to do. And before... Yeah, you'd get creative. computers a type setting was I don't know manual I guess or not manual exactly but it wasn't done by computers so we had to do cuts and ads every month which means I had to cut a story or add to the story you know the wordage which didn't mean I would cut I mean I had to cut like maybe 50 lines

which didn't mean all total lines but get rid of widows and get rid of paragraph breaks breaks and things like that and it was agonizing and sometimes I'm and sometimes we had a there was a liquor ad I don't remember it was a might have been for Kaluah, where the actual bottle was in the middle of the page. You had to set the type around it. Oh, great. For computers, it was effing hell. I'm not going to use the word.

Lots of spirit gum and erasers. And then, so, you know, it was like, I mean, I worked with Stephen King on the end of the, the end of the whole thing or something. I forget, it was a novel. Okay. The end of the whole thing, yeah. Yeah, something, it was, I forget the exact title, but something like that. And it took, you know, it was before email, that's my thing. And I had to go through his agent, Kirby McCauley, and it took three days to get there.

And on the phone, I had to go over 150 line cuts with him. As I said, they were not full lines, but word by word by word. Wow. To make it fit. Yes. And then, I mean, it's possible, thank God not with that. But with other stories, well, well, we lost the ad. now we need those words back.

I mean, another 50 words. Or, you know, the lines. It's like, oh, my God. You know, and then suddenly computers came in, and it was so much easier. I'm able to just jigger things around, so you didn't have to cut more than, like, two lines or something. So that was, but also working with money. I mean, that helped a lot of money.

And that was the first job. I mean, we have money to pay writers, and it's a very good thing. And it helps increase the market. For short fiction, it helps, obviously it helps writers. I mean, it stimulates everything when you have a budget to pay writers well. You know, Playboy and Omni paid the best at the time. Sure. For fiction.

And Penthouse published some fiction for a while. I forget how many years, but eventually they didn't. The penthouse was a sister, you know, magazine, Tommy. So they were both owned by Goochiani. Of course, Guciani. Yeah, I enjoyed working there, you know, and I had, luckily, I usually had the editor, who was the editor-cheap, but it was called editor. I mean, they're called different things at different magazines.

Sometimes the managing editor is the top, the publisher is the top, but we had the editors. We left every two years, the 17 years I was there. must have gone through five editors. Every founders, they quit or resigned or whatever. And usually they were easy to work with. And they mostly protected me from having to deal with anything with the Glucionis. Basically, I could do basically. Initially, I was constrained to do certain things or not to publish anything,

not to publish horror, but only publish science fiction or whatever. But it evolved, the job evolved. Because basically, no one cared as much about the fiction as everything else in Omni. I mean, the editors. They were all these non-fiction editors. And most of the editors didn't read science fiction, quote fantasy. Okay. And so I was left alone.

There was only like one, you know, there was maybe one editor who gave me a hard time. But basically, they protected me. You know, if the Guccione suddenly had a be in their bonnet about, well, we need to do this. we need we want to we do this usually yeah from that you you had to have somebody in there to walk that line for you right so i didn't have to deal with it too much gotcha well you said you didn't really grow up like into sci-fi that much so like what what were your passions as a you know as a young reader i read science fiction i just didn't okay that fandom i grew up reading science fiction fantasy and horror okay and i loved it all but i short stories mostly which is what i realized after

to the fact. I mean, when people ask, I said, I read a lot of short fiction. I read a lot of anthologies and collections when I was growing up, mostly anthologies. But I didn't know the magazines, the science fiction magazines existed until I got to, it must have been before Omni. So maybe in, when I was working in book publishing, I'm not sure. But a lot of science fiction editors, old ones, I mean older ones, earlier generations came from fandom, which is, you know they would go to conventions and they would all know about you know it was a boys club mostly mostly though they're sure sure i mean you know azimov and clark and and and uh hindline and fred poll they all came from well i think most of them came from fandom and okay my

generation of women shawna mccarthy um the ones who in book publishing betsy mitchell betsy walthy Well, Betsy Wollheim was born into it. I mean, a father was Donald Wollheim. But, I mean, Sheila Williams, we all came, we did not come from fandom. We came from different areas. I mean, Sheila Williams, I think, was a philosophy major. I don't know how she got to as much. Sean McCarthy worked for some Firehouse magazine.

So we came from different places, different from the generation before, which had been fandom. So that's what I mean. I always read science fiction and fantasy. Okay. This wasn't a fan, quote. quote. Was there any particular author that you would like follow no matter what they wrote? Like you've devoured every single thing they ever wrote?

Well, I, yeah, Harlan Ellison. I mean, I love stories. I read Harlan. I read Richard Matheson's shock series. I mean, he spoke shock, shock, shock waves, and shock two or something, which several of which were made into Twilight Zone episodes. Ray Bradbury, I loved. I didn't read the novels that much. I didn't read Richard Matheson's novels. I did not read. Well, Harley only wrote one novel, I think.

I didn't read Bradbury's novels, really, but they read their stories. And that's what I grew up on. All right. You also love Kraft. Lovecraft. The Valentine Paperbacks with the Great Monsters on them. I mean, I read those. You know, so I read, oh, sorry, I keep banging.

my ring on my, something. So I read a lot of, I mean, I grew up on Bullfinch's mythology. I grew up reading whatever my parents had in the house. Okay, that's a good answer. Well, it's true. I mean, I would read everything I try to. I mean, there's some very boring things, but. So you've won several awards in your career. Is there anything that like stands out? It's like a breakout moment for you, or I was most proud of this. Something that just like really got to you emotionally. I can't say. I mean, you know, the first award I ever got of many kinds of different kinds. I mean, Newgo Award was the first award I won. And it was several years after I was working at Omni. I mean, I didn't even get nominated the first

like eight years. I was there or something. So. Oh, wow. Okay. And I don't remember. I mean, I actually looked it up because, you know, people that, oh, you got, you know, you got all these awards. Yeah, but I didn't get them for like 10 years until Omni got respected. It takes a while. Accepted by the fans, you know. who didn't really like Omni on principle because it wasn't the science fiction magazine. So he had to get past that. However, several of the stories, I mean, stories won, but the magazine, you know, and the first editor, fiction editor was Ben Bova, so he'd come from Analog, so he had a reputation.

I came out of nowhere as far as the fields was concerned. So it took a long time to get known, I guess you can say, even though a lot of the stories that I published one. I mean, one year, Permafrost by Rogers Elasney, won for novelette and 10 by Greg Baer won for short story the same year, I think it was. I don't remember what year that was, and those were both bought for me. Before that, stories won by Georgia R. Martin, but I wasn't the editor, I didn't acquire Sand Kings. I mean, Ben Bova did, you know, okay. So, you know, in a way, I mean, that was the first what I ever got by Hugo, so in that sense.

But I love winning the awards. I mean, it never gets tired. It never gets old. It doesn't get boring. It's the icing on the cake, right? It is. What's awkward or weird is I've gotten a few several life achievement awards, and that feels strange because...

A little late premature maybe, right? I think so. I mean, it's like, okay, I'm really, really pleased that I got them, but it's like I'm not finished, you know, and I'm not going to... You still have work to do. I have plenty of work to do. all right um so look i'm sure you do tons of reading obviously and then you know you do some hands-on editing maybe not as much as in the day but oh i do other than that oh do you what do you mainly

do like do you meet with a lot of the writers personally like what's the day in the line edit when you edit someone you do it online these days okay you know you email them or i email though. I hear a door. Jack didn't even notice. Jack is my jerked at and he's lying here. He heard the dog, but his ears didn't even perk up. He doesn't care. He knows his master's his domain. When I, I mean, I edit everything that I accept, I mean, I don't edit the reprint anthology as much, although occasionally I have asked for minor, minor edits on that story that I was going to take for best the year or something else. But usually I don't. But for all original stories, all stories that I acquire, everything I acquire, I edit. And that's, you know, from, it's working with the author

over several revisions possibly. And then the final line edit. I mean, it's not copy editing. Copy editing is completely different. But if I catch something as I, I mean, as I do first read in something, if I think I'm going to buy it, if I catch something, I'll put a note and I'll mention it to the writer. I mean, I do more track changes that I used to do, but I, you know, track changing, you know, on Word, that's how you can add it that way. But I basically, I do copy and paste and email. So, I mean, I might have eight pages of email, an eight page, an eight page email with suggestions and questions for the author. So, no, it's a constant process. Back and forth, but it's more like done by computer now.

Yeah, but I mean, I do it, but yes, I just my computer. Okay. Yeah, I don't mean AI. I knew you were doing it. My pencil. I mean, no, and when you say it's done by computer, no, AI does not do it. The computer does not do it. Gotcha. But yeah, it used to be hands-on, like, literally with my pencil. So I don't have that many pencils anymore. But, yes, I do all the editing. The toys have just changed. Huh? The toys have just changed, basically.

Exactly. And the tool. And the editing, the editing I do from substantive to line editing is what happens before it goes into production. Once a story goes into production, then a copy editor looks at it. That's a different process. All right. Got to have lots of eyes on it to have a perfect product at the end. And even so you. Every once in. I mean, I was really annoyed because my mom found a typo. And Nathan Balland was the Atlas of Hell, the first page, the story when I published, it wherever it was originally published. And I hope it's been corrected. I mean, none of us caught it. It's like, oh, my God. I mean, it's so obvious. And I actually never checked to find out if it was fixed because we've printed a lot of times all over the place. So have faith.

Well, is there so in the different anthologies that you've put together, is there like any story that you can think of that really haunted you or got to you emotionally that stuck with you? Oh, yeah. Well, most recently. I mean, there are a lot of stories. that I have loved and worked, that reprinted and, you know, used over and over. But tiptoes most recent, I guess, by Laird Barron, which was in When Things Get Dark, my Shirley Jackson anthology.

That to me is an absolutely fantastic story that the more you read it, the creeper it gets. There's a story that I use in fears called England and Nowhere by... I think the author is Tim Nichols. and it's just weird. I mean, it's extremely subtle. I don't know if you read that one yet.

It's about this guy who meets these two people at a vacation, and he thinks they're, he doesn't know what their relationship is. Right. I mean, yeah, he doesn't have their brother and sister or lovers. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of awkward. Yeah.

And the thing is that also, the first one of it, The guy is deaf. Also, he's had, he has hearing problems. He's deaf. But you don't know that immediately. I mean, you know, it's all the subtlety in the story. And it's like, every time I read it, I mean, I published it in the years best many years ago. And then I reprinted it here.

Okay. Actually, I thought I found a type of, I thought I found an error in it because of something. I mean, I just, and I went back to the author. I said, what's going on? I think you made a mistake. I said, no, I didn't. It's like, oh, okay, wait a minute, let me read that line. But it's, you know, that's a story that haunts me because it's so subtly bizarre.

Mm-hmm. The relationships. And, you know, the woman, the woman is, well, maybe the ex-wife, the woman on the hill in the wheelchair. Yeah, and it's, and it's not paint by numbers. But read the story a few times, but boy, it's got, it's weird. Cool. Goes in a lot of different directions. at all, but put everything together and it's really creepy.

Yeah, for sure. Besides, well, first of all, Fears is coming out to the public. September. Is that right? September 10th is a pub date. September 10th. What else are you working on besides that? The year's best, as always.

The year's best. My misery, my misery always, you know, where I'm starting, I'm just started with number 17. I'm working on an original anthology I can't talk about. I don't talk about the original anthology as I'm reading for it because I don't want people sending me something unless I ask. All right, sure, sure. That won't be out until 20, late 2025, I would think. Maybe, I don't remember. And I'm working on, I am working on a reprint anthology for Tacky on another one.

Okay. So I, let me just put it this way. Lovecraft Sales. and sales and sales. So it's not exactly Lovecraftian, but it's because I, you know, my last one for them, that was Lovecraft,

I loved with monsters, was extremely successful. And it was illustrated gorgeously by, oh my God, John, oh, I've forgotten his last name, Colthard, Jonathan Colterter. And each monster had its own illustration. So I can't do that again because there are no more

monsters. You went through the monsters. Yeah. So it's like, well, what do we do? What do we do? Actually, it's going to be a cosmic horror. You know, I'll just say that. It's just, it's a reprimpment. That's always big.

More recent cosmic horror. And again, I always try to avoid the tentacles. And that's what I made a mistake when I didn't specify. I didn't want tentacles this time. And I never want the tentacles. So it's, you know, it's basically cosmic horror anthology. It's all reprint. I'm working on right now.

And also, I mean, I've got things coming out from tour. Excuse me, I acquired an edited Nathan Ballengro's scripted the moon spider. That's coming out the summer. That's ending up in the night fire. And he's starting to do publicity for it. It's gorgeous. The cover is gorgeous and I don't have it handy, unfortunately. Well, it wouldn't matter because you can't show it anyway.

But you could see it. Yeah, but we can see it. Yeah. And Sarah Pinsker's haunt sweet home is a really cool. Haunt sweet home. And it's about people who are ghost hunters going to different plate homes and creating the ghosts or not. You know, they're mostly creating the haunts, you know. And it's not exactly.

It's more, it's not even, it's, it's edgy, it's fantasy, but it's very moving. It's, I would say it's dark fantasy. It's not all that dark, but it's really good. It's about making the, how they make the special effects, and it's from the point of view of someone who feels like an outsider and she's working at his assistant. So it's really fun and moving. It's about family, too.

So, I mean, that one isn't horror, I wouldn't say. So those two are coming out this year. And I have more stories coming out. I have a Stephen Graham Jones story coming out from Tor.com. I can't remember it's this year or next year. Hold on. Let me see if it's this year. Hang on a second. That's the tour. Beetor.com on the website. Yeah. Reactor. I'm sorry. It's now called reactor.

Reactor. Okay. Yeah. Hold on. Let me see when that's coming out. I can't remember this year or next year. It's coming out in October. Okay. Yeah. So that's the next. Oh, just the horror story. Just the time for Halloween. Yeah. It's coming out on October 2nd. Actually, I bought a few stories, Horror Story. for Halloween that are coming out like within three weeks. October 2nd is Parthenogenesis by Stephen Graham Jones. They're the horror story by Emma J. Gibbon coming out October 9th.

And Brightheart's by Karen Warren is a horror story coming out October 16th. And then I have one coming out from Laird Barron, but that's coming out early next year, January 8th. So, yeah, I've been working on those. I mean, I acquired those. And I have, let me see you do I have any other novellas coming out? Oh, Nathan's next novella. Cathedral. Oh, my God, what's it called?

Cathedral. I don't know. But just been back and forth about it. Hang on a second. I can't what the hell is the title. Cathedral of the Drowned. His Crypto of the Moon Spider

is the first of three. books, three novellas, okay? The cathedral one is coming out next year and that's the second and the third one's only got a tentative title. They're all in the same world. Kind of. Oh, interesting. Kind of a combination of science fiction and horror. Yeah, I think it'll do well. Yeah. I think it makes sense that you have a lot of stuff coming around, you know, the Halloween season. That's seasonal, right? It is. Strike while the iron is hot. Yeah. So that's working on. Gotcha. I've always wondered, I've got a question for you, because I think I had told you that I was looking for this new one and didn't realize at that time it wasn't released yet, but I saw some of your other anthologies on Kindle. Do editors and writers usually have like a preferred method of how, you know, readers download this stuff or like, do you prefer old school book? Just read, right? Just read it.

I mean, I don't like, I do not read novels on electronically at all. I don't, sometimes with submissions for the year's best, I have to read things online or on, as an e-book. And I don't like it, but I, you know, I understand. But you do it. Well, if I have, you know, it depends on the context, the situation. The problem with reading magazines, I mean, I can read E-Pubs. And, you know, as long as a magazine or the anthology or the collection has links to each story, you know, so you don't have. have to go back to the beginning all the time.

Formatting on e-books can be really crappy. Yes, it can't suppose. If I have an sociology that someone sends me as an e-book or PDF, if I can't go back and forth, if I don't, it doesn't have running heads, a lot of things don't have running heads, which means you have no idea what story you read. Oh, wow, that's a nightmare. And then I have to go back, especially electronically. It's not like with the book I can go back to the table of contents, like just flip back.

I have to go back on the fucking PDF file, which, you have to go back. is hell. Sure. So that's why I don't like reading a lot of things as e-books because they're really badly formatted for that kind of situation. So I, but I just prefer, and I mean, I read big books. I mean, I'm in the middle of, I just started reading Kelly Link's Book of Love, and it's big.

And I read it. And I finished the Angel Lake trilogy, the Indian Lake trilogy, the Angel of and you like by seeing where you're into, I read that in bed. You know, when I'm reading actual books that are especially big books, I read like, I've tried to read 20 pages a night before I go to sleep. You know, so I don't have to lug them around. Yeah. I finally went over to the dark side about 10 years ago.

My wife got me a Kind of, kind of haven't looked back, yeah. But it's so easy with to just get on Wi-Fi and just buy all these books that you see over and over again. and then you got a big library and it's kind of cool you know oh there's one one final question i definitely appreciate your time but just one more one to ask you because this is one we it's kind of like our signature question we ask everybody we interview are are there any particular causes organizations uh you know charities anything like that that's near and dear to your heart and if so how how can we get involved yes actually um there's this guy neil harrison harbison um who's on

who lives in Thailand and he improves the lives of street dogs in Thailand. He feeds them. He has them fixed. He's building a hospital. And I've donated and he had a book about called Hope for one of his dogs. I mean, he feeds like 800 dogs. Is it 800 or a day? I don't know.

That's a lot of dogs. Say how much my dog eats, I can imagine. The people who help him make the food. And he goes along in his moped and drops off food for these hundreds of dogs every day. And anyway, it's called Happy Doggo. It's happydogo.com and you can donate. And he's one of the main reasons I'm still on Twitter because I go and look at what's happening every day. And he's building a dog hospital.

I mean, he's been sending some of the dogs get adopted. You know, he tries to get the ones that are healthy and are adoptable. Some go to Scotland. He was in New York a couple of times, and I'm just sorry that I couldn't get there. I mean, frankly, I'm a cat person rather than a dog person, but, you know, I love reading about dogs. And so, yeah, it's happy dogo. It's, you know, happy doggio.com. And you can see what he does.

And I support him wholeheartedly, and, you know, he's building this dog hospital for the street dogs. And he's trying to expand it around the world eventually. Right now, it's just a small part. of Thailand. Yeah, somebody. Is this that? Yep. And that's Tina.

Tina, I think that's Tina. Tina was a dog that he gets dogs. I mean, she was like breeding. She was a breeder and was in horrible for many years. She had no freedom. You know, she was just having babies. Right. He was able to acquire her and rehabilitate her and she was extremely happy and a wonderful dog.

And then she had died of cancer. cancer she like he only had her like nine months ten months and she died and so he you know and it's devastating but you know he's building a hospital on her name so and he in fact if you go check him out on he's probably on instagram he's on youtube i mean i just watch him on twitter but he's done a home how the hospital's going along so that's a may that's a very important donation to me also I mean, I'll also say the HWA has a diversity fund. And, you know, they have various scholarship funds, and those are really important. I just donated to the diversity fund.

They do it every year. And it's tax deductible because we're a whatever. Charitable organ is, you know, a 501, whatever, a 503 something. So, you know, HWA, one of the missions important is to help the HRA industry and the HRA community. and you can help that way by donating scholarship money. It's always a good way. Hardship money. You know, you can do it wherever you want,

but those two things are important to me. All right. Many. I was like, blah, you know. There's so many. I can list 10 more, you know, medicine. Yeah, no, that's. You know, everything, you know, we need help.

Well, that's two good ones. Nobody's ever mentioned either of those. So there you go. And the HWA, that's the horror. of America? Horror writers organization. It's Harrow Association rather, but I think it comes to Harrow. Okay.

Horror. Orr's on H.W. Harriiders org is the URL, but it's Harriors Association. It's not just America. We have member of the world. Okay. And it's growing. All right. Well, thanks for coming on the show.

So much for having me. I will say this. If you've got any links, anything you want to promote or anything that Casey wants to promote, send them on. I'll get them to Brian and we'll get them on all our socials. Thank you. Thank you very much.