Libro.fm Podcast – Episode 13: “Interview with Grady Hendrix”

In this episode, we sit down with author Grady Hendrix. Grady is the author of The Final Girl Support Group, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, and, most recently, How to Sell a Haunted House. We talk book inspiration, balancing humor with horror while writing, and more.

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The audiobooks we discussed

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Full transcription

[UPBEAT MUSICAL INTRO]

Craig Silva:

Hi, I’m Craig. Welcome to the Libro FM podcast where we talk to authors, narrators, book-sellers, and more.

Karen Farmer:

And I’m Karen. This month we had the opportunity to sit down with Grady Hendrix, who is the author of the brand new novel, How to Sell a Haunted House.

Craig Silva:

Grady Hendrix is awesome, Karen, I would say.

Karen Farmer:

Yes.

Craig Silva:

If you’re not familiar with his newest book, which makes sense, it just came out. He has also written Horrorstör, The Southern Bookclub’s Guide to Vampire Slaying, The Final Girls Support Group, among others.

Karen Farmer:

I have to say, spoiler alert, this was my favorite of his books, Craig. I loved this book.

Craig Silva:

I agree. I’ve really liked Grady’s books just because they’re all very horror-centric. I don’t mean just that, they’re horror books, they’re very like meta horror. They seem like they’re written for horror fans.

Karen Farmer:

I have to tell you, my favorite character in this book. I think about him still every day. There is a puppet named Pupkin and I love him and I want everyone to read this book so we can talk about Pupkin.

Craig Silva:

Karen, what about Pupkin do you like? I’m curious.

Karen Farmer:

Everything. First of all, but Pupkin also has a catchphrase, which if you keep listening, Grady Hendrix will actually say in his own voice, and it was a highlight of my week.

Craig Silva:

I love it.

Karen Farmer:

All right, well enough of that. Let’s talk to Grady. Let’s hear it from the man himself. Are you ready to start the interview, Craig?

Craig Silva:

Kind of. Before we start the interview, I want people to know that I had a microphone malfunction during this episode where for some reason Zoom decided not to take the audio from my good microphone and decided to take it from my $5 CVS headphones. So, it sounds fine, but it’s not as good as a typical episode, but it is listenable, I’ve been told.

Karen Farmer:

I think it’s fine. You’re being too hard on yourself. Everything is fine, don’t worry.

Craig Silva:

It’s fine. Enjoy the episode, everyone.

[SPOOKY MUSICAL INTRO]

Karen Farmer:

Grady, it is so nice to meet you. Craig and I are thrilled to have you on the podcast today. We’ve both read all of your novels and are big fans. And for our listeners, we’d love for you to introduce yourself and tell us a little about who you are and what you do.

Grady Hendrix:

Yeah, I’m Grady Hendrix. I write horror novels. I’m actually in South Carolina right this minute where a lot of them are set, although this is the last one set in Charleston because I’m sick of talking about my hometown. But yeah, I live in New York these days and all I do is write. That’s it.

It’s the only skillset I have. I’m glad this worked out because honestly, when I went sort of all in on this, it was like I was too old to do anything else. I’d been a journalist for a while and I was like, “It’s too late to go to law school. All I can do is type fast.”

Craig Silva:

Well, I’m glad it worked out for you.

Grady Hendrix:

God. Me too.

Craig Silva:

Well, speaking of it working out, congrats on the release of the new book. We both got it and we both loved it.

Grady Hendrix:

Well, thank you.

Craig Silva:

Yeah. It only came out January 14th, right? How does that-

Grady Hendrix:

Yeah. January 17th.

Craig Silva:

Oh, my gosh.

Grady Hendrix:

I don’t even think it’s a week old yet. I think today it’s a week old. Today, it’s officially a week old. But yeah. And it’s also, this book is, it took a long time to land this one. My editor and I both were kind of like, “It’s weird. It’s kind of small and personal, we’re just not sure. We’ll do better next time.” And so it was really wild, to me, that people are connecting with this book at all.

Craig Silva:

Yeah. I told Karen, so I had read I think all of your other books and when this one came out, I was intrigued by the name and ended up, honestly, I think it’s my favorite book so far.

Grady Hendrix:

Oh, thank you. I really appreciate it.

Craig Silva:

Yeah. How’s it feel for it to finally be out after the slog to get to here?

Grady Hendrix:

Really unreal, because usually my books take about a year, you know what I mean? From the time I start it to the time it wraps up, it’s about a year. And this has been 18 months, because I just could not crack this book and needed more time. And so I’ve lived so long with this book as a file on my hard drive that my editor and my agent read that it’s weird that other people are reading it. I feel like someone’s looking in my underwear drawer.

Karen Farmer:

Well, we are so glad that you wrote it. We’re glad that we have it.

Craig Silva:

We are happy to look in your underwear drawer.

Karen Farmer:

Absolutely. Craig and I both love horror, but I will admit that I am specifically a little bit of a wuss when it comes to hauntings. As we were preparing for this, I’m like, “Am I going to make it through this book? Am I going to have a meltdown? Will I be okay?” And I absolutely loved it.

Grady Hendrix:

Oh, thank you.

Karen Farmer:

And one of the things that really anchored me throughout it and made sure I didn’t have a terrified meltdown was that there’s so much humor in this book, and I-

Grady Hendrix:

Thought you were going to say gin.

Karen Farmer:

Humor I feel like is such a hallmark of your writing, and I think it’s really unique to see that with straight-up horror. And so I’d love to hear a little bit more about how that came to be, how that’s so important to you and how your writing style for novels evolved.

Grady Hendrix:

Well, I kind of write like I write. It’s sort of the only way I can do it. Well, I really feel like I can only write about what I see around me. And so I’m not doing science fiction or fantasy or anything that’s secondary world because I’m just not that guy. That’s not my skill set. I need a model, the reality model around me to see that and focus on it and have something to pull from. So, horror fits me pretty well.

And the thing that’s changed the most in my writing, if anything’s evolving, is I’m really minimizing my style. I’m becoming more and more an advocate of, I think when people read my stuff, they want my writing to be a clear pane of glass that they look through to see the story and the characters, and I just want to be as invisible as possible.

You know, read Charles Dickens and I love Dickens. It’s such a nerdy thing to say, and I feel precocious, but his authorial voice is really front and center. That narrative voice is really strong. I feel like, with me, I’m aspiring more towards the… And you read someone like Shirley Jackson where it’s so precise and so fine-tuned that you’re like, “Oh, my God, this canoe I’m in is beautiful. The way the wood joins, the grain just goes, you really might… ” And I’m leaning more towards, I think a Stephen King where you just want to disappear. You know what I mean? You just don’t want anyone noticing your prose and getting into the story. I found that, the more I do that, the better it works.

Karen Farmer:

Awesome. I love that you said that. Craig mentioned a couple of times as he was reading this book, Craig is a huge Stephen King fan and said, “This reminds me of Stephen King. I love it.”

Grady Hendrix:

Oh, thank you.

Craig Silva:

Yeah. I specifically like early Stephen King, the kind of absurdity of some of the scenes. I was like, “Oh, my God, I’m loving this.”

Grady Hendrix:

Oh, thank you. Yeah. I did a thing where I wrote a Stephen King reread for tour years ago, and I started out just like, “Oh, I’ll do the first 10 books.” And I wound up doing the first 34 or so. It took me five years and it had a huge impact on me. I did the first one right before I signed the contract to write Horrorstör, which was my first horror novel in 2014.

I finished up the reread in, gosh, right around the time I won the Stoker for Paperbacks from Hell, so a few months after that. It was about a five-year span. And so it was a huge change in my life. My life was changing an enormous amount and my work. The one constant thing was reading these big fat Stephen King novels and I really, I developed this little internal Stephen King who lived in my head and talked to me-

Craig Silva:

That’s terrifying.

Grady Hendrix:

No, he was a real comfort, actually. But yeah, no. It’s one of the best uses of my time.

Craig Silva:

Well, thanks for mentioning Horrorstör, ’cause it sets me up perfectly for this question. Like I said, I read and watch a lot of horror and a lot of the settings are a big gothic mansion or a cabin in the woods or spooky places. And one of the parts of your books that I love is that they tend to be set in more regular settings, like a book club in a suburban right setting or I know it’s not Ikea, but an Ikea type store.

Grady Hendrix:

It’s mostly Ikea, 99% Ikea.

Craig Silva:

What is it about those regular mundane settings that you find compelling?

Grady Hendrix:

It’s where we live. I am astonished at how ugly the world is sometimes. We have built an enormously ugly habitat for ourselves. I love it. I’m fascinated by it. But going through subdivisions and strip malls and downtown urban revitalization districts and all this stuff. I mean, you see the same McMansions cut and pasted, the same storefronts, and it’s really weird. And I love it, but it’s very anonymous. It’s very strange.

One of my favorite horror movies of all time is this 20 minute short called… Might even be shorter than that, called Unedited Footage of a Bear. And it’s on YouTube, Adult Swim produced it, and it starts as a pharmaceutical commercial and just sort of devolves into this suburban nightmare. And there’s another one, the same person did, the same team did called This House Has People In It.

They really maximize those sort of blah suburban spaces that take up so much of our lives. And there’s this idea of liminal spaces, right? Spaces that are in between. They’re neither here nor there. There’s a great horror short on YouTube called Backrooms. Make sure you get the original backrooms, but it’s really good. But it’s just, you feel like you’re in a conference center. And there’s an amazing Twitter video someone sent out where they got lost. They were staying at a hotel, they had a conference center attached and a convention center, and they decided to take a shortcut through the back of house stairwell and they got lost and they just started filming it and sort of how insane these almost cut and pasted environments were.

That liminal space used to be so important in horror. It’s neither alive nor dead. It’s neither here nor there. It’s the house by the cemetery. You know what I mean? And now we’ve turned everything into the liminal space. I work from home. I live over a store. I live in this manufactured neighborhood where I can walk to my favorite coffee shop and a business. We’ve created a world of spaces that aren’t here or there. And they’re very uncanny. Really uncanny.

Karen Farmer:

That is so true. I’m like picturing neighborhoods I’ve grown up in now and I’m like, they are eerie in their own unsettling way.

Grady Hendrix:

Yeah. My mom lives in this little subdivision. It’s just a single loop. And when I’m there, if I’m on the phone, I’ll walk loops around the loop. At night when you’re doing that, especially in the winter when no one’s out, you just start noticing the similarities between the houses and it becomes very, very eerie. This is where we live. It’s what we’ve built, it’s what we’ve designed. I feel like we’re building towards some kind of love-craftian super structure that we’re all just trapped in and non-euclidean angles.

Craig Silva:

I thought the answer to this question was going to be funny. I was like, “Oh, I’m going to ask him about Ikea,” then ended up being like, “Oh, I need to move to the woods now. I’m depressed.”

Grady Hendrix:

Well, that Ikea, all Ikeas are laid out on the same general floor plan. And so I wrote the book and I’d spent a lot of time in an Ikea and the book comes out 10 months after I write it, or so, somewhere in there, six months. And I don’t go to Ikea. There’s one in New York, it’s in the middle of Red Hook, which is Nowheresville. Some reporter thought it’d be fun to do an interview in an Ikea, and I’m like, “Oh, yeah, sounds fun.”

Well, I’m wasn’t going to say no to publicity. And so I went there and of course, it’s laid out like the Orsk in my book, which is laid out an Ikea. And as we walk through it, I’m like, I started to get panicky like, “I’m trapped in my book, I’m trapped in my book.” And I made some excuse halfway through. I’m like, “Oh, let’s do this out front. This will be so much more fun than the fresh air. Oh, my God, I’m dying on all these plastic fumes in here.” And really, I just wanted to get the hell out of there because I was starting to [inaudible 00:13:26]-

Craig Silva:

Before the undead came.

Grady Hendrix:

Yeah. While I still could.

Craig Silva:

Yes.

Karen Farmer:

Well, Grady, I have some puppet questions for you.

Grady Hendrix:

Who doesn’t?

Karen Farmer:

I’m sure you’ve been talking about this a lot lately. I am obsessed with Pupkin.

Grady Hendrix:

Oh, thank you.

Karen Farmer:

Pupkin is, in my mind, just an incredible star of the show in your new book. Can you tell us if there was any inspiration for Pupkin? How did this incredible puppet come to be?

Grady Hendrix:

Of course. Yeah, no, Pupkin is based very closely on Snokio, who is my wife’s childhood buddy. He kind of appeared in her crib when she was two and she’s had them all her life. And Snokio is a unique individual who provokes a strong flight or fight response when people meet him for the first time. But he’s with us to this day and he and I have a good understanding. I get along with the little guy, but I sometimes forget his qualities when someone new comes over and they’re like, “What the hell is that?”

Craig Silva:

You need to get rid of this immediately. I am scared for you.

Grady Hendrix:

Yeah, no, but he’s great. And Pupkin in the book, Pupkin’s just misunderstood. He just wants to have a good time. And there is a wild difference between marionettes and hand puppets. Like marionettes are very stately and elegant. Hand puppets, man, they are out of control. Punch from Punch and Judy started as a marionette and they migrated him to a hand puppet, and that’s when he became the puppet that beats his wife to death and throws the baby out the window and basically is a force of anarchy in the world.

Karen Farmer:

Interesting. A follow-up question. Pupkin has a catchphrase. Well, Pupkin has several catchphrases, but there’s kind of like a trademark.

Grady Hendrix:

Ka-ka, wey-wey.

Karen Farmer:

Thank you.

Grady Hendrix:

Although I’ve also heard, “Ka-ka, wee-wee,” which is fine with me too. I think he would say it either way. Tomato, tomato.

Craig Silva:

That’s the way Karen and I have been saying it for a month.

Karen Farmer:

But you answered my question. I was wondering if you could pronounce it for us, so I could make sure that when I yell it several times a day, I am saying it correctly.

Grady Hendrix:

Doing ka-ka, wey-wey, or ka-ka, wee-wee?

Karen Farmer:

Wee-wee.

Grady Hendrix:

Okay, I’m going to go with ka-ka, wee-wee because for the audiobook, they ask you to… And I think they go with ka-ka, wee-wee in the book.

Craig Silva:

They do in the audiobook and it’s amazing. [inaudible 00:15:49].

Grady Hendrix:

Good. Okay. I’m going to just do that from now on. Yeah, yeah. The audiobook should guide the way.

Craig Silva:

This next question can be fast. But I live in Boston, so I appreciated that a portion of the book took place here. I found myself being like, “I know where that is.” One thing that I did not know where it was, was this supposed big underground puppet scene in Boston. Does this-

Grady Hendrix:

It exists, or it used to.

Craig Silva:

I was going to ask, is this real or fabricated?

Grady Hendrix:

Oh, yeah. I worked for a radical puppet collective back in the early ’90s, and it was in Boston and Boston was puppet central because the big political puppet company in the United States is Bread and Puppet out of southwestern Vermont, out of I think Burlington. Burlington? Somewhere around there. And people will work for Bread and Puppet and go off and start their own companies. And often the next big city they migrate to for a theater scene is Boston.

Boston used to, in the ’90s, before all this stuff got cut, had a great arts funding. The state in Massachusetts and the city of Boston had a lot of funds available for the arts. And so it attracted a lot of companies. Of course, you’d get a puppet company and then a puppet company would split off from them and one would split off from them. I spent so much of my time in unfinished basements in the back rooms of bars watching puppet shows when I was there. So yeah, to me, Boston is puppet-ville.

Karen Farmer:

Awesome.

Craig Silva:

I was going to say, the description seemed too real. I was like, “This has to have been from something.” So, I’m glad to know that it’s basically just your experience.

Grady Hendrix:

Yeah. Early ’90s.

Karen Farmer:

Awesome. I just moved to a small town in Michigan and I haven’t been here long, but I noticed walking around, there is a puppet company here, so I’m going to have to… There’s a storefront for it, so I’m going to go learn more.

Grady Hendrix:

Awesome. Yeah, I’d like to learn more.

Karen Farmer:

I’ll bring my own Pupkin.

Grady Hendrix:

Well, it’s funny, the original draft of this book revolved around a puppet cult in southwestern Vermont because I went to school there for a year in Bennington. I would just say, watch out for that puppet company in case they turn out not to be a puppet company, but a puppet cult.

Karen Farmer:

Well, Grady, for this next part of the podcast, Craig and I have been doing this the last few episodes where we ask our guests a series of lightning round questions.

Grady Hendrix:

I’m in.

Karen Farmer:

It could be about anything or everything. No need to think deeply about these. I think we’ve got five or six and we’re just going to rapid fire them at you.

Grady Hendrix:

Come at me, come at me with a question.

Craig Silva:

All right. Do you think ghosts are real?

Grady Hendrix:

Yes. Well, you have to define ghosts and you have to define real. But within those parameters, a hundred percent.

Karen Farmer:

Awesome. Would you rather live with Pupkin in his crazed violent state for one year? Or would you rather never eat your favorite food again?

Grady Hendrix:

Never eat my favorite food again.

Karen Farmer:

Oh, interesting. What would that food be, out of curiosity?

Grady Hendrix:

Oh, man, this is embarrassing. I’m a southerner and I as a southerner, mayonnaise is one of your favorite food groups. It’s one of the major ones. And so mayonnaise and olives, or deviled eggs, pimento cheese, all that stuff. I can’t have it in the house ’cause I will eat it all. So, if I had to do without mayonnaise or any mayonnaise product for a year, that’s still preferable to the living in a situation where Pupkin slowly overwhelms my personality until there’s nothing left but Pupkin.

Karen Farmer:

A solid answer.

Craig Silva:

Yes. In the book, the brother and sister have this tradition. I mean, their family has their tradition, pizza and Chinese, which absolutely stealing. Love this. I’m curious, do you have any family food tradition? They don’t need to be mayonnaise related.

Grady Hendrix:

We don’t really. My mom was a bit like Nancy in the book, a very enthusiastic… She wasn’t very enthusiastic. She was a terrible cook, so I don’t really… But one tradition my wife and I used to have is we lived in a neighborhood in New York and the Chinese takeout place, and it was an old school bulletproof barrier that’s all scratched up in front of the register. And they did chicken wings and that kind of stuff along with Chinese food, real traditional. But one thing they had on the menu, and when we first saw it, we were like, “What?” Were pizza rolls, which were pizza toppings stuffed inside an egg roll wrapper and deep-fried and they were a $1.50 and they were amazing.

Craig Silva:

That sounds amazing.

Grady Hendrix:

We ate so many of those when we lived there. And in fact, there was one really embarrassing day when we were maybe on substances and we ordered delivery three times from that place, which was literally across the street from us. And each time our order was six pizza rolls and the guy was so sick of seeing us by the third time.

Craig Silva:

Oh, that’s amazing.

Karen Farmer:

I love that. What is the scariest movie you’ve ever seen?

Grady Hendrix:

Martyrs. The French movie, Martyrs.

Karen Farmer:

Craig mentioned that today.

Craig Silva:

Before we joined this call, I said that I’ve heard that’s the scariest movie. And I was like, “I need to see this.” So, it’s so funny that that’s your answer.

Grady Hendrix:

Oh, dude. Go into it without any expectations. Take it for what it is. It is intense.

Karen Farmer:

All right.

Craig Silva:

Well, now that I’ve had a good friend of mine and Grady Hendrix tell me that it’s the scariest movie they’ve ever seen, my terror level is piqued.

Grady Hendrix:

So, there’s a quick story. I saw it at the Toronto Film Festival. I’ve got family in Toronto and so they have this midnight slot and they showed Martyrs at midnight. It was like 1,100 people in the theater and the lead actresses were there and the director. Before the movie, one of the actresses was like, “I don’t want to be here.” She’s like, “I’m only here because I have to by contract. I don’t like this movie. I don’t like that I was in it. I feel exploited by this film. The end.”

And the movie goes, someone passes out during the film, someone threw up and a fight broke out in the Q&A section, two people yelling at each other. At the end of all of this, that actress got back up and the director of the program was like, “How do you feel about the movie?” And she’s like, “This is the first time I’ve seen it with an audience.” Really? And she’s like, “I feel better.” She’s like, “I still don’t like this movie. I still don’t like it and I wish I hadn’t done it, but seeing people engage with it,” and really engage beyond the fights and the throwing up stuff, she’s like, “Okay, this is a work of something. And I guess I’m happy to have participated in that, but I still didn’t enjoy it.”

Karen Farmer:

Wow.

Grady Hendrix:

So, prepare yourself, but also don’t let anyone hype you up too much. Go in cold.

Karen Farmer:

Okay.

Grady Hendrix:

He said after hyping you up relentlessly for five minutes.

Craig Silva:

Yeah. All right. I am absolutely going to watch that. I saw on your Instagram bio that you say you own way too many paperbacks. I would guess if you had to put a number, if you had to guess how many you own, how many do you think you have?

Grady Hendrix:

Okay, I can’t put a number on it, but I have, let me get… 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. And that’s 12. And then there’s six and six. So, 12 plus six is 18, and then you’re going to add three more, 21 and then two. So, 23, those banker boxes people have with the lids on them? 23 boxes of them.

Craig Silva:

Oh, my gosh. When you were counting, I was like, “Is he going to count them all?”

Grady Hendrix:

We’re starting at one. Yeah. That must have seemed insane. Like five hours later. 583. Oh, no, no, no, no. That’s two volume, so 581.

Craig Silva:

Perfect.

Karen Farmer:

All right, last lightning round question. Is there anything you’re able to share with us about Horrorstör, the film?

Grady Hendrix:

Oh, yeah. It’s got a director attached. We are taking it out to studios. I did the screenplay. I want to have words with whoever wrote this book because there are some deep structural problems that I had to deal with, which were not fun to handle. Excuse me. Funnily enough, not that you asked, but I just, I love talking.

One of the hardest things to show on screen, almost impossible, is someone thinking about something or someone making up their mind. And the two big moments in Horrorstör are Amy trapped in the chair thinking about her horrible life and basically giving up, and Amy making a big decision. Because you can’t do those on screen, the movie has a lot of differences in it because just to fix those two points required so much heavy lifting, but it actually wound up somewhere I think is not bad. So, I’m pretty excited about it.

Karen Farmer:

When will we be able to watch it in the public?

Grady Hendrix:

I don’t know. What we’re really hoping is… I don’t know, I don’t want to say it and jinx it, but it’s close. I mean, I think of the next two years, hopefully.

Karen Farmer:

Very cool.

Craig Silva:

Nice.

Karen Farmer:

Oh, I can’t wait.

Craig Silva:

Can’t wait.

Grady Hendrix:

Me too. I just want to walk around the set.

Karen Farmer:

Oh, that’s going to be incredible.

Craig Silva:

And then be like, “Actually, nevermind. I want to go outside.”

Grady Hendrix:

Help me.

Craig Silva:

Yes.

Grady Hendrix:

People are going to be watching the movie and see me wander by in the background going, “How do I get out?”

Karen Farmer:

I’m lost.

Craig Silva:

Our last part of the podcast that we usually end with is what we call Instagram story time, where we look at the guest Instagram and pick one photo and ask for the story behind it.

Grady Hendrix:

Okay.

Craig Silva:

And for you, it’s your newest photo, unless you’ve posted in the last two days or something.

Grady Hendrix:

Oh, what’s the photo?

Craig Silva:

But it is, you posted a photo of all these things pasted up on a wall. You called it your Wall of Crazy. And I would love for you to explain to us and the listeners what the Wall of Crazy is.

Grady Hendrix:

I live in a one bedroom apartment with my wife, and one of the things that will lead you to a divorce very quickly is trying to write books in a one bedroom apartment with your spouse. And so when I did Horrorstör, I started renting an office space and it’s tiny and it’s pretty… It’ll keep you anchored. One side of me is a driving school. The other side of me are people who process medical bills, across the hall for me is a passport office. It’s pretty down and dirty, which I love about it. And it’s tiny, no window, but I paid a little too much for it.

So, one of the things that was nice is I had to make my rent every month, I had to pay for this office. I was like, “I got to keep writing.” And I realized, well, if I’ve got this space, I’m going to indulge myself. And what I always wanted was I’m going to pin up all my references on the wall over the desk. Three things came from that. One is it became a nice ritual. I’d start a book and the wall would go up and the day the manuscript is accepted by my editor and there was no more writing to be done, it all comes down.

The other thing is, it’s really nice to have the reference right in front of you, like clothing reference and cars and things like that. I can just sit back and sort of be like, “Okay, okay, this is the minivan they’re in. I don’t know, it looks like it would be a dinged up. I bet a lot of trash piles up in there.” So, that’s always really nice.

And then the third thing is sometimes stuff goes up that doesn’t work, but it’ll stay up until another book. I have this photo that I put up around my Best Friend’s Exorcism of a little girl walking up a flight of stairs with a rubber mask of an old man on, and it just never popped up in a book. And other things would pop up from books or last for a book and then be used in the next one.

Finally, that became the real sort of part of the inception point for how to sell a haunted house. The idea of a little kid wearing a mask of an old person. So, it just became such a great resource. And actually, I’m moving offices right now, so the wall’s come down, but I’m working on my book for 2024 and I feel lost without my wall, which is the most precious thing for a writer to say, “I need my wall.”

Craig Silva:

I would suggest that listeners go find this photo because it is very clear why this does not belong in your one bedroom apartment with your wife.

Karen Farmer:

Awesome. Well, before we let you go, Grady, our very last question for you. Do you have any recommendations for our listeners in terms of things you’re reading or listening to right now?

Grady Hendrix:

Yeah. I mean, okay, so twofold. There is a podcast I’m going to recommend that I don’t want to recommend because I want to steal it. I actually tried to get in touch with a guy who runs it to option some of. It is genius and it’s not very popular and it doesn’t get updated anymore. It’s called You Are Haunted and it is the listeners send in hauntings, but they’re not listeners. It’s him. He writes all of them, and they are funny. And some of them are actually kind of fascinatingly chilling.

Just to give you an example, there’s one… And they’re usually quick. Each episode’s about 16 minutes and there’s usually three stories in there, but there was one that’s about these kids who are playing with the Ouija board and one of them has an uncle Chris, I think, who had passed away. And on the Ouija, they get Uncle Chris, and they’re like, “Oh, how?”

And he just says over and over again, “It’s dark, I’m scared. It’s dark, I am scared. Help me, help get me out of here.” And he just repeats it over and over and they get kind of like, “Okay, okay, we’re done with this.” But you have to, you know that legend that you have to sign off of Ouija board. So, they sign and he’s like, “No, don’t go. Don’t leave me here. Please, please, please, don’t leave me here, please.” And then they hang up on him and Uncle Chris is in hell forever.

Karen Farmer:

Oh, my God.

Grady Hendrix:

They’re so good.

Karen Farmer:

I’m in. This sounds great.

Craig Silva:

Yeah.

Grady Hendrix:

And then the other thing I’m going to recommend, also a listening thing is, this one takes a little hunting because I don’t think there’s a podcast for it, but there used to be… I don’t know if you guys know a sound audio guy named Joe Frank, but Joe Frank, he used to be on some public radio stations. He started out to around Boston and ended up in LA and I used to work at a Tower Records in LA, Tower Video actually, and I would drive home and on Sundays I’d go in for my shift and there was this bizarre show and I could not figure out what was going on and it was like a call in, but they were talking about people who turned their cars into sculptures, but then the sculptures would fall off on the interstate and people would hit them and die, but that was part of the art.

I was like, “What is this?” And Joe Frank, he is a storyteller and he just makes these hour, hour and a half long audio pieces. Some of them are these film collages kind of things. Some are scripted and there’s people talking and call-ins and things like that and the answering machine messages, all fabricated, and some are him just talking. And Joe Frank is a genius. You may listen to one and it’s not your thing. Try another.

Some of them are heartbreaking, some of them are fine. They’re all just weird, but they are really worth taking the time to find. He passed away several years ago and really never got… He was always recognized, but never was able to sort of cash in on this small amount of fame. He [inaudible 00:31:42] audio like, who cares? This is America. You know what I mean? We’re not England with the BBC radio. We don’t care.

Craig Silva:

This is a really good way to end the podcast [inaudible 00:31:52].

Grady Hendrix:

No one cares. But Joe Frank is really ripe for rediscovery, I think. And it’s even arrogant to me to say rediscover. I think he never went away, but Joe Frank and You Are Haunted. Those are my two big recommendations.

Karen Farmer:

Awesome. Thank you so much. I’m glad I saw Craig writing them down on a Post-It note, so we’ll be listening to both. Yes. Craig is holding up the Post-It note, listeners who can’t see this. Yes.

Craig Silva:

Yes. Well, Grady, thank you so much for the time and congratulations again on the book.

Grady Hendrix:

No, thank you guys for having me and putting up with my nonsense.

Craig Silva:

No, it was great. I have so many recommendations. Hot sauce, new podcasts-

Grady Hendrix:

Lao Gan Ma… Lao Gan Ma!

Craig Silva:

Yes!

Grady Hendrix:

All right. Bye, you guys.

Karen Farmer:

Bye, Grady. Thank you.

All right. Thanks for listening to our interview with Grady, everyone, we hope you enjoyed that. I will never get over finally hearing the author pronounce ka-ka, wee-wee, Pupkin’s catchphrase.

Craig Silva:

I was surprised that he pronounced it not ka-ka, wee-wee.

Karen Farmer:

We actually helped him decide how it’s pronounced.

Craig Silva:

I mean, it’s the right answer. It’s just the right answer.

Karen Farmer:

I agree. I’m thinking about setting that as my ringtone on my phone.

Craig Silva:

Wow.

Karen Farmer:

Him saying that. Yeah.

Craig Silva:

I think you should not do that.

Karen Farmer:

Well.

Craig Silva:

You’re going to be in a weird situation where that goes off and you’re going to be unhappy.

Karen Farmer:

I don’t think…I think I’ll be delighted. Okay, so Craig, I would like to know what you are currently reading. Please tell us.

Craig Silva:

Are you making me go first? Okay.

Karen Farmer:

Yeah.

Craig Silva:

I actually have a funny story about this, or it’s mildly funny. I am reading the new Brandon Sanderson standalone novel, but it takes place in the same universe as all of the other Brandon Sanderson things, like Mistborn, et cetera, which you know I’m a big fan of. It is called Tress of the Emerald Sea, and it is so good.

Karen Farmer:

Really?

Craig Silva:

It’s very funny and quirky, and I’m loving it so far. My mildly funny story is that I went into my local bookstore, the Brookline Booksmith, everybody, and I walked up to the book-seller and I said, I actually literally held up my phone and showed them the Libro app and it was like, “Do you have this book?” And they were like, “Oh, yeah, let me check.” And they’re like, click, click, click, click typing on the computer. And they were like, “Hmm, I can’t find it. Hold on, what’s the thing again?” And they searched it and they were like, “This book doesn’t come out until April. I was like, “Oh, I think I have it as an ALC.” And then I ran out of the store, embarrassed.

Karen Farmer:

Aw. Well, you could have used that opportunity to say, “You book-seller at Brookline Booksmith, you too could be listening to this ALC. Are you enrolled in our ALC program?”

Craig Silva:

I did not do that. I love Libro. I am an ambassador, but I was red-faced and ran out of the room.

Karen Farmer:

That’s the second time that’s happened to you, because I remember you were listening to the new Kevin Smith book, Now is Not the Time to Panic, and you said…

Craig Silva:

His name’s Kevin Wilson.

Karen Farmer:

Oh, my gosh.

Craig Silva:

Kevin Smith wrote Clerks.

Karen Farmer:

Wow. Okay. I have to quit my job now, everyone. It’s been a pleasure. However, you said, “I’m going to the bookstore to go purchase this right now,” and I said, “Best of luck. It’s not out yet.”

Craig Silva:

Yes, yes.

Karen Farmer:

It hasn’t been published yet.

Craig Silva:

The other thing that I just reread is True Biz by Sara Novic, because we just recorded a podcast with her and it was so fun to get to reread that book and talk to her again.

Karen Farmer:

Yes, I reread that as well for the podcast and I love that book. It was so cool to talk to Sarah. We have an interpreter with us in the video recording that we made of that one. So, really, really excited for that episode to come out.

Craig Silva:

Yeah, this will be our first episode that we ever put out as a full video. Not like a… I know, I’m nervous too.

Karen Farmer:

So anxiety inducing.

Craig Silva:

Yep.

Karen Farmer:

People will know what we look like.

Craig Silva:

I have a face for podcasts, Karen.

Karen Farmer:

I knew you were going to say that.

Craig Silva:

That’s my favorite joke. No, it was an amazing, awesome interview. Sarah is a gem.

Karen Farmer:

Agreed. Agreed.

Craig Silva:

Besides True Biz, what are you reading?

Karen Farmer:

Oh, I just started a new book. I got it from my local library recently. It’s brand new. I think it’s called The Survivalists. And it is by Kashana Cauley. It has a blurb from Samantha Irby on the cover. And if you have ever read anything by Samantha Irby, you will know how funny she is. I was delighted to see a recommendation right on the cover. I’m going to read you the tagline for this book.

Craig Silva:

Lay it on me.

Karen Farmer:

“A single Black lawyer puts her career and personal moral code at risk when she moves in with her coffee entrepreneur boyfriend, and his doomsday-prepping roommates in a novel that’s packed with tension, curiosity, humor, and wit from a writer with serious comedy credentials.”

Craig Silva:

Sold.

Karen Farmer:

It’s awesome.

Craig Silva:

Take my money. I’m buying this book.

Karen Farmer:

It’s really good so far. I cannot put it down. That is what I will be doing the rest of this evening is smashing through this book, that is The Survivalist by Kashana Cauley.

Craig Silva:

Love it. Cannot wait.

Karen Farmer:

Well, folks. If you would like to read the new Grady Hendrix book, How to Sell a Haunted House, or any of the other things that were mentioned on the podcast, you are welcome to sign up for your Libro FM membership using our special promo code, libropodcast, and you will get an extra free credit when you start your membership.

Craig Silva:

And as always, thank you for listening.