This is not don't expect to be life Daniel time straight. You'll find side
Cot. Hi, Aron, Welcome to side Quest, the in between episodes
we do when we're not on Fantastic Adventures. We're normally pitching about TV,
but sometimes we have cool guests. But before we get to the cool guests
today, who's the uncle guest? The usual guys, It's myself, Steve
Webl, It's recal Terry, and it's Robert Evan. Hi, guys,
Hello, franz Uh Introducing our next guest is probably going to take a while.
Formerly of Correct, I believe Bunny is currently of Reductress one nine hundred,
Hot Dog, the writer of the Trailer Park Boys comic book Many Things.
I think if you've heard of online comedy, you probably know Lydia Bug
also a previous guest at A and Dcon in Nashville, so you might recognize
it from there if you're especially cool. Hi, Lydia, Hi, thanks
for having me, Thanks thanks for joining us. Yeah, sort of a
broad net of internet comedy experience, it is. Yeah, I just have
a policy that I don't say no to things, so I've not just like
yeah, in any kind of like writing like Um, I mean I've done
copywriting. I've worked for Patreon, like as a company I've worked for.
I've written a romance novel that has like five hundred reviews on good Reads right
now for I written horror novels, and I do all kinds of different internet
comedy and sketch comedy. And I was on the Kolie Colkin's podcast doing like
podcast sketch comedy. So I'm just yeah, I've kind of done a lot
of stuff. Wow, just a level tradestay. I guess I've been very
busy for the last I've only been doing it for five years. Um,
but I've covered a lot of ground in that time. Yeah, you've got
a fuck lovelod more done than the rest of it. Actually start. How
did you get like into all of this, because you know, I've been
doing this for a little I've been like, you know, writing and stuff
like a dozen like a dozen years now, and I don't know anybody.
Maybe, I mean, maybe I have a reprehensible personality possible, But um,
I got into it through I know you talked to Jason Pargeon a little
bit about the Cracked forums and that's where I started. Um, like they
built those forums so that people who are kind of like, you know,
nobodies who had no industry connections who live in the sticks. I was in
Carbondale, Illinois, going to school, and you're like, well, now,
when I started writing for Cracked, I was living in Nashville, Tennessee,
but still like not someplace where typical writers live and meet people, you
know. But I pitched in the Cracked forums, and I remember Louis Pratt
I responded to my first post and was like, we've already done something similar,
but like, this is really funny. You should pitch again. And
then my second pitch they liked it so much. They were basically like,
if you can pitch three more things of this same quality, we're going to
hire you as a columnist. And I pitched one more and they liked it
so much that they were like, you're just a columnist now, and then
like after I'd worked for them for about a month, they shut down the
column workshop. Like I got in it Cracked right at the very end of
Cracked. People seem to think that I'm like og for some reason with the
Cracked crew. Not true at all. I snuck in. I was there
for like I think a month, and then Jack O'Brien and left, and
then everybody got fired from the video team, and I was like, oh
god, him, I'm like the Herald of places closing. Because the first
writing thing I ever did was win a contest and the prize was they'll publish
your novel, and the company after I won immediately closed. And then I
get into Cracked, and Cracked immediately starts to deteriorate, and I was like,
oh no, I'm a curse. Well this will be the fun pointing
out yeah for anybody listening, Yeah, well podcast. I have since been
been part of projects that were successful. I swear. I've been at Hot
Dog for three years now and they're going strong, building up every day.
But um, basically everything I did after that branched off of Cracked like the
peep because Cracked deteriorated, as we all know, and the very talented people
from there all went to different sites, and a lot of them took me
with them. Um not as like an editor. I cannot edit. I
actually have a learning disability and written language and grammar is really really hard for
me. I run everything through grammarly now, But like I'm a joke rider,
so I think the people that need a joke. Riders pulled me onto
a bunch of different projects, and you know, I work really hard and
have done a lot of stuff because of that. Just people being like,
Oh, I read Lydia stuff on Bunny Ears and it was funny. Do
you want to come work on the Trailer Park Boys comic? I read your
stuff over here and I liked it. You want to come work over here?
And I'm like, yeah, always I will never say no. Excellent.
So that is weird actually, because I think I was talking to Brendon
about that while you are the Naturville Con, because I did think Lydia Bug
is like a cracked name to me. And it's wild to me that you
weren't that at long, because it seems like you were sort of part of
the kind of og crew almost. I mean, I read it for eight
years, which is why I think I was able to come in and so
quickly like nail the voice and the tone of the site. Like that's one
of my strengths. Really, I worry about finding my own voice because I'm
so good at absorbing other people's voices. Like I think that's been a lot
of my career, is that having voice down right aways is like kind of
my thing. So like it's easy for me to write for someone who I'm
not a trailer park boy obviously, like I'm kind of a glam bitch and
so but I could pick up their tone from watching the show and I could
write for them. And that's a really good skill to have as a writer.
Oh that is cool. Well, you must have made an impression before
correct imploded horribly. I did. Yeah, I got in there at the
end and they were like, oh wow, she's really funny. And then
people, yeah, have just rewritten me into the history of crack, which
is really weird. Like, oh, I remember you reading you in college.
You do not, I promise, Yeah, but this is this is
a good red con though, you know. Oh yeah. I always appre
I would love to have like written with some of those guys, Like I
always am really excited when I get to work with someone that is og cracked,
Like I got to do a writer's room with Daniel O'Brien at Bunny Years,
and I was so like, yes, this is the kind of Mandela
effect you want to encourage. Just like styling yourself into a load of correct
photos. I'm just gonna start putting out their other shows that I've worked on,
and hopefully people will start to remember me on them, Like remember when
I was on Friends. You guys just gaslight into like a premium comedy legacy.
Yes, yeah, Tralia pot Boys. That's interesting. I'm a big
fan of the show. It's just wildly chaotic nonsense. How is that translating
into comic book format for you? Um? I love comics. I've always
read comics since I was very little, big X Men fan, and stole
all my dad's X Men comics when I was a kid, and he just
recently got rid of his collection gave it to me. So I'm all these
Chris Claremont X Men's that are just like, oh, they're so perfect.
So yeah, I was familiar with comic book format and how to write for
comic books because I kind of read constantly, and I read about like,
I don't know, I have bookshelves behind me. These are not even a
tiny percentage of my books. And even if I'm never going to like write
a screenplayer or whatever, I'll read a whole lass book about it. So
I actually had a book by Peter David who Sean and Brockway and I argue
about because they've made fun of his work on the site before, and I
love his run on X Factors so much. And I had read this whole
book about writing for comics, and Sean deepisqually, who was the head of
Bunny Years, was the editor for the comic book, so he was like
looking for former Bunny Years writers who might be interested in writing for The Trailer
Park Boys. And I had seen the show when I was like in high
school. I remember sitting at my friends trailers watching The Trailer Park Boys with
them and loving it. So when he brought it up, I was like,
man, I have not watched that show in like ten years, but
I'm going to marathon it this weekend and I'm gonna pitch you something. And
I looked up a list of like people's favorite episodes and watched those and then
pulled out my Peter David book and wrote a script. Nice, Yeah,
nobody sit on Peter David's a Spider Man twenty nine nine run. Peter David's
great. He seems like a nice guy. To his book. I forget
what it's called off the top of my head, but his book about writing
comics is is legit a very good book. Well there you go. We
shan't disparage him here. Oh I'd probably love that. Oh my god,
I probably read when it does. What a terrible thing to a mate on
the podcast. I read a lot of it Star Trek novels, and I'm
horribly not ashamed to say so. Yeah, but you're aggressive about these things,
right, I think you get some stick delighte from him. I don't
think there's shame in reading Star Trek novels, honestly, like I love,
I really enjoyed it. Yeah, if you get a chance. He wrote
one in the TNG era called im Zadi probably probably the best best Star Trek
novel out there. I'm gonna look that up because I like Peter David and
I love TNG. It's my favorite Star Trek. People come to side Quest
for solid media recommendations. I know I do. Yeah, I'm surprised you've
even heard of Star Trek that I used to watch Star Trek well next generation.
Uh not not like religiously or anything, but yeah, casually, because
this is way back in the days when to watch a show you had to
watch it when it was on, and uh so every now and again,
turn on the TV and that would be on and I'd get hooked on an
episode. I never I never caught season arcs or anything, but uh,
I enjoyed the show when when I caught it seven years and you've never once
mentioned start because I don't care that much. It was just something I enjoyed.
I just imagine, like Bob, just watch it look like smoking,
I deny. These clingons are fucking stupid ugly too. Wow? Wow they
all ugly. Well, anyway, le's not let's not get sidetracked about playing
on attractiveness. Um well, that's a surprise and delight bevin. I'm glad
to hear that. Future conversations about Star Trek. Now you've pinted yourself into
that going to my friend. Awesome. But back to the topic at hand,
which is the career of Lydia Buck not just article writing, not just
compack writing, but also novel writing with a recent release. Do you want
to tell us about that? Yeah? So I've been writing with a company
called script. They kind of build themselves as like Netflix for books, so
it's like you pay one fee and you can read as many books as you
want. And I've been writing with them for a long time. I don't
like two or three years. Um, like at a pretty pretty big clip.
I wrote a lot of romance de bellas. Then I wrote a full
romance book, and at first they were only interested in romance because, um,
romance readers are so prolific. Um. You know, romance readers are
reading like a high books a year. It's it's the biggest genre by fu.
Oh I wish I could write romance. It's it's fun. I like
it. I like doing rom coms, like I would love to be a
you know, a Nora Fron type or something someday. Um. But yeah,
like I have that book that has five hundred reviews, but a lot
of them say so I'm still working on the craft of it. Um,
I will take five hundred many day. You can you can write not comedy,
Oh, I can write. I can write anything. Yeah, that's
amazing. Um. Comedy I think is the hardest thing to write for sure.
Um. So that kind of makes everything else for me feel like like
a vacation. Like, oh, I don't have to be funny every paragraph.
Hoof people are like, oh man, I gotta make people care about
the fucking characters. I write the cross different genres, and yeah, it's
like the good thing about comedy is sometimes you can use comedy to cheat in
the plot, but when you're writing straight, yeah, you actually have to
think your way out of those situations you put characters. And yeah, Healthy
Choices was the first one I've ever written horror, and that was really different
for me. But it's you know, they're twins comedy and horror for sure,
and that you know, the tension and release of comedy is also there
in horror. So that was really interesting to experience. And I like,
I'm an anxious person, like I'm on anxiety medication, so I didn't I
was like, I don't think I want to write horror because like I'm scared
all the time of everything, and I don't want to like put my more
of my like feed my fear, you know. But then I saw a
get out and I really saw the value of using horror to express anger at
the world, and I was like, oh, that's what I can do.
I can put my anger into this, and that felt incredible. I've
been I was having a really bad time with like around weight stuff, which
is what Healthy Choices is about. Like my mom needed a surgery and they
wouldn't let her get it because she was overweight and they wanted to lose some
weight before she could get the surgery, and that pissed me off. And
I had a cousin who was going into rehab for an eating disorder, which
is a problem that runs in my family, and I was kind of just
thinking I was getting really stressed out, so I wasn't really eating and I
was losing a lot of weight and people were like, Wow, you look
so healthy, you look incredible, and I'm like, I'm actually not healthy
at all. I'm only eating bean soup every day for a week because I'm
stressed out and it's all I can handle right now. And I took all
of that anger that I was like not really processing and I put it into
healthy Choices and made this really beautiful book about what that feels like to have
the whole world tell you like, oh, you look so good, you
look so beautiful, but you're hurting yourself and like you're being hurt and people
don't realize that. So it's got like kind of a mad science vibe and
body horror, and it just it came out so well. I love it,
and and the cover I don't know if you guys have seen the cover,
but they put an artist on it who totally got it and took all
my notes and made something. I made a cover that was such shit and
I said it to her. I was like, I don't know something like
this, and she just like, I mean it was like a child's cartoon
cran drawing compared to what she did with the cover of the book. Oh,
it is a sweet cover, so I'll put it up in the edit.
Yeah, that's look intriguing and yeah, so you designed your cover fest
Yeah, I'm more intrigued with that. But this is kind of like,
was it just kind of a eat cover or um, well, just scribbed
has like a thing where they do they send you like a sheet and they're
like described to us what you want and you can add pictures and stuff.
So I just photoshop together like an open mouth with like kind of a gold
like cloud in it. I was like, I really wanted to be like
mouth centric, like like someone's maybe taking a bite, but they're also like
screaming. And the girl was like, nah, I'm not going to do
that. I was like, yeah, that was a good choice. She
had. She sent me three alts and one of them looked kind of like
mine, but it was very reminiscent of Silence of the Lambs, and I
was like, oh, I think I was just making the Silence of the
Lambs cover a little bit and I didn't realize it. Nothing nothing wrong with
her homage. You can I should get pretty pretty far with that. Yeah,
that's true. The best cover designers I've ever worked with were the ones
who weren't afraid to tell me when my ideas were stupid. Yeah, I
think we've all got homemade cover is in our history where everyone it would rather
be forgotten. Yeah. My favorite thing about working with artists is just like
saying you do to work please, and just trusting them to do it because
I'm lazy and like surprises. So yeah, that's what I'm going to do
from now on. I'm going to give you a vague idea. Please read
my mind. Yeah, read my mind and take my money. I want
as little problems as possible. Subscribe Netflix for books. That's that's wild,
because I haven't heard of that at all. Have you guys heard it at
all? Yeah, I'm heard of it. I'm passing. I just don't
I never knew what it was. I just started going wide again, like
about a week ago. And so, yes, some of my stuff is
actually on script. Oh nice script O subscribed script. I'm mispronouncing that.
We call it scribed in the UK. Oh maybe they do. Maybe that's
the official name. Maybe that does sound more, that sounds more classy.
It's script. I'm on inscribed. You will accept my aut It sounds like
the medieval version. I'm gonna start telling people that now when I'm at like
a fancy party, I'd be like, it's inscribed, actually inscribed. Actually,
yes, it sounds like bullshite. All right, Well apparently just I'm
the only guy that's slow on the uptake. Then, so if anyone's listening
to this and it's equally slow on the uptake, check out Script and check
out Healthy Choices while you're there. And the Script does audiobooks too. Now,
yes, there is an audiobook for Healthy Choices, and the girl that
reads it totally nails it. She's so good. Um. Yeah, this
was their first horror book. I think. No, they might have had
a couple more before this. I know Wendy Dally Rymple wrote some, but
they really believed in this book really early on. So they think kind of
gave me the best of what they had with the audiobook and the cover design.
Nurse sounds really happy about that. Nice good to hear. Yeah.
My favorite thing about or I think process is getting to audiobook stage so I
can laugh at my own jokes guiltfree. Yeah, because you can't remember the
people don't realize you write this stuff. You know, I wrote that like
a year ago or something, and then you listen to your own stuff and
you're like, oh, yeah, that was good. That's my least favorite
thing is because typically by the time I get the audiobook stage, I am
so sick of my own story. Not even listening to it just makes me
physically ill. Yeah, how dare this person read this story by this terrible
writer? I can definitely get like that too. It's been much easier with
comedy because I've forgotten all my jokes, and I like my jokes. The
only way I know how to write jokes is to try and make myself laugh.
So when I listen to that, I'm like, yeah, that's good.
But yeah, when I listened to narrative stuff, I definitely am still
picking apart, like I wish I hadn't done that, you know, that's
a that's a great point. I mean writing comedy. I know I take
a lot of shit in my household for like for laughing at my hope and
jokes. But that's the whole thing. It's like, if you can make
yourself laugh, you can make somebody else laugh, you know. Yeah,
why would I want to publish something that I don't like? Why would I
want to publish something in comedy that I don't think it's funny? I can
never not. Yeah, that's definitely my philosophy. The only difference being that
my bar is probably a lot lower than you guys. But yeah, I
made myself laugh all the time. But again, easy audience. Now,
speaking of making people laugh, one nine hundred Hot Dog three years. It's
been going now, did you say? Yes? I think I've been with
them for three years at this point. I've written like over one hundred articles
for them. Nice time flies, But yeah, I really appreciate it when
that came up. Is just kind of doing a lot of what they were
doing in kind of Golden Age correct just weird fun media. It takes and
I'm glad there's a home for that. Again. Oh they're so great.
I love those guys. And what they're doing is so like necessary. I
miss that old cract so much, and I miss long form comedy articles and
Sean and Brockway are both so funny. And when Brockway asked me to work
there, I was so excited. Like they asked me to just like write
a couple of articles at first, and I submitted two. And the second
one was on a Babyland general hospital where people pretend that cabbage patches are real.
It's supremely weird. And that's when they were like, do you want
to like have a weekly column? And it's been like my greatest joy for
the last three years. I love that place a right, speaking of hospitals
where they pretend cabbage patch dolls are real. This next question I'm about to
ask you might be redundant. What is the weirdest you've ever written? Oh,
that's tough. I wrote one about Poopsie slime Surprise, the getting unicorns,
which like they've become more known in the last year on the internet and
everyone so like people start talking about these shitting unicorns that like they had a
music video that was like I poop, I poop that was like I think
a Black Eyed Piece song and the Black Eyed Piece sued them for using like
being too similar to their song, and people were sending me this information constantly,
like people love that article. And the weirdest thing was that while I
was like looking up information about the company, I found their Instagram and Ruth
bader Ginsburg had recently died and they had a tribute to Ruth bader Ginsburg in
the middle of the poopsy slime surprise Instagram. So it's like Unicorn that shits
joke about shit, Unicorn that shits rist and pe Ruth bader Ginsburg. And
I don't know if I'll ever see anything funnier than the picture of that grid
layout of all of these ships jokes and then a black and white photo of
Ruth bader Ginsburg. A weird place to break character you, yes, um.
I also think nothing funnier will happen to me personally than the time Mountain
Dew ghosted me and I wrote an article about that where I was like begging
Mountain Dew to send me publicity emails and they were just like, absolutely not,
I can't. People like will unsubscribe, people will be like, please
stop sending me stuff Mountain Dew, and I'm like Mountain Dew. I want
to know what's going on, and they're like, no, you can't have
it. So I got ghosted by Mountain Dew. Like I was like,
I should quit. Now. What could you have possibly done to piss off
Mountain Dew. I don't know what I did. I'll never know. I
don't understand what any of the things like they're they're marketing emails. I tried
to sign up from their marketing emails and I got the confirmation. It was
like welcome to do Nation. It was very positive, like you're in,
and I was like yes. And my plan was I'm going to collect a
bunch of Mountain Dew newsletters and write a hotdog article about It'll be hilarious.
And I'm sitting there for six months waiting for one of these fucking dues letters
and I did not get a single news letter from Mountain Dew, thank god.
Ever, I'm imagining some some executive somewhere pissed off about like, you
know, an old Opuaman article, just like like fuck you, Sean baby.
Yeah, they took Mountain Dew's letter from me, Like I'm definitely being
punished for something for some past article somewhere probably. Um, that's my theory.
I think Mountain Dew has a personal agree. I don't know what this
is about, all right, No, I have no clue. Okay,
that's some Mountain Dew CEO out there. It's like, No, she's a
comedy riot. We take herself seriously here at the Nation, but we do
not laugh at the We're extreme and it's not funny. Ah, that's wild.
Yeah, all right, Well, I think you're the only person we've
had on the show that's pink ghosted by Mountain Dell. Yes, Bevan's tried
hard. I don't know that I haven't, but yeah, I mean check
your email. I mean you got go to Birkland Light. I mean they
canceled the entire beer. Yeah, it's the only product we ever endorsed.
They stopped making it. You pulled an absolute lydia burg on Kirklin Light.
You killed it, just like I do websites in publishing. Oh wow,
So that's pretty that's a wide net to cast. You've You've been on some
big names there, stuff that I personally read as a as a fan of
long form internet comedy, which, as you say, just doesn't seem to
have the home it used to have. No, it's so sad because I
was a fan for years before I was a writer. So yeah, it's
it makes me really bummed, Like what's happened to Cracked. I hate to
talk too much shit about them because I do know people who work. There's
still but like I mean, anyone can see it's not for comedy anymore.
It's more like factual stuff. Yeah, it's like regurgitation, you know what
it is. I think, I think, and I mean like you can
see this like a lot of cases of like you know, of early internet
comedy. It's like when it was owned and operated by the creators. That's
it's a day. And a lot of these places got like got picked up
and bought out by these big, bigger media companies and that's just yeah,
that that ends up being the kiss of death because the second your faiths in
somebody else's hands and you get some money man coming in who with no sense
of humors, It's like, hm, the bottom line, there is no
future for comedy. There's some people have tried so many different styles of making
a comedy site work, and it just seems to be really difficult for some
reason. Like even when I worked for Bunny years. That was all just
funded by McAuley Culkin. That was just him waking up one day and being
like, I'm going to fund a comedy site for a couple of years,
and that was amazing. But then eventually, you know, when he moves
on to other things, like then that's that's done. So it's not really
sustainable, but it's very fun. We need more nineties child stars just to
foot the bill for this soul thing. I agree, Devin Sawa, start
a comedy site and hire me. Oh no, well old yeah, some
Kirk cameras the subject matter. Yeah, we already have that. It's called
the Babylon Bee and it fucking sucks. So it's like, h it's like
the Onion if it wasn't funny. Yeah, basically, well there's a gap
in the market. I appreciate that, Muxie. That's all the sense of
humor of a Mountain Dew executive. Yeah. I mean, I keep like,
I'll be on Facebook, I'll get a link to an article that looks
promising. It is generally just like an amalgamation of things that happened of other
people's work. I rarely see kind of just decent long form comedy outside of
Hot belk to be personal, to be frank, but to be frank,
well, it's hard to do. Like people don't really I mean, Cracked
articles took forever to write, and a lot of our slack conversation at hot
Dog is kind of being glad that we don't have to do anymore. Yeah,
it's much easier to write a hot Dog article than a Cracked article because
the amount of research you had to do for a Cracked article was so substantial
to you find one funny thing and it's like, well now I got to
find four other things where this happens. Oh, Like I'm a pretty good
researcher, and it was very difficult for me to sustain that weekly. I
bet m I still feel for I'll say articles to say, like five surprising
twists in as horror movies, and they won't they won't be surprising. They
won't even be twists. It would just be a list of five horror movies
with like zero a sentence of writing, yeah, less crackting log I.
It was like it was like that. It was like a bunch of like
disregridgitated facts and in a list of ten, eight of them were by the
same person who didn't do a very good job. Yeah, there used to
be such a strong character voice. Yeah, there's just no time for that
year anymore. They're just they're not paying enough for people to I mean,
I think the majority of the people that work there now don't live in America
in English as our second language with like nothing's wrong with that, but they
just don't pay rates where you get afford to live in America and work for
crackt Like it's pretty bad. Well, as you said something, the language
barrier, like you can outsource, like you know, coding and programming outsourcing.
Comedy a little bit different because the comedy tends to be um it there's
a local element to it usually. Yeah, like it is like in a
way it's a universal language, but it depends, like it depends on the
topic, like do you have the knowledge of the topic, and sometimes people
don't. But I don't know. It's um it's still going, It's still
out there. I'm like, oh wow, Cracked is still a thing,
all right. So so look looking looking ahead. You just put up this
this horror novel, which is which is awesome. So what's what's next on
your plate um? I just actually talked to someone today about doing another horror
story. Uh, that is going to be a short story for an anthology
collection. Um so that should be fun. It's a former Cracked guy,
Eric Gumney is putting together a short story collection. Asked, maybe part of
it. So I'm gonna do horror again. You know. It's kind of
one of those things where when you start writing in a new genre, you
have one hundred thousand ideas immediately for that genre that you've never considered before.
I have like a long list of horror now. So I might dabble in
that for a while. I'll probably write something else for script this year at
some point, maybe another horror novella, maybe a full length romance. Who
knows, we'll see. Why not horror comedy, I don't know. I
mean I would consider healthy choices. I can't not write jokes like they're gonna
be in there, so to me, I guess everything I write is probably
in some way a comedy. But I wouldn't call it a horror comedy because
I feel like that makes a certain expectation in your head of like kind of
a joke a minute per thing, Like if I'm going to write comedy it's
gonna be a full ass comedy. I'm not gonna to me, but I
don't know. It's hard for me. Sometimes I don't even know when I
write a joke, Like I don't realize that what I'm saying is funny.
Like I remember turning one of my first Cracked articles and the editor was like,
yeah, that joke he made about skeletor renting his mountain because the mountain
looks like a snake and he's obviously a skeleton man, so he must be
renting it. Like I when I was editing, like I edit comedy all
day, and that joke made me laugh so hard, and I was like,
I was fully serious about that, Like I think skeletons renting that mountain.
Um, I think that's got be canon by now right, somebody's puts
hard into Why is it a snake? It makes no sense? Um.
But yeah, Like I probably will do horror comedy slash and I'm currently doing
horror comedy because like I have a really sarcastic, biting tone in my horror.
I'm it's very clear what I'm doing with the things that I'm doing in
the book. You know, in the metaphors that I'm making I'm not I'm
not not doing it. I don't like when books are like it's a metaphor
figured out and you have to like think for a long time. I want
to immediately be like, I know what this is a metaphor for. Yeah,
Bob Dracula. Oh no, I didn't know you guys were gonna savagely
burn each other during this the cram Stoker's Dracula, and oh god no,
because it is full of so much heavy forgetting metaphor. There's nothing, all
right, there's nothing you need to think about. But Evans just admitted to
watching Star Trek. I think we've we've made some steps. Let's not burn
down the only movie he's ever watched. Yeah, that's like a heavy one.
I've watched three more. Now. He's not going to tell us,
though, what those are. Not if you're going to burn him over it,
No, he's right, one spit and twice shy. Maybe not a
horror comedy, but certainly kind of it. And yeah, a comedian's tone.
Yeah, it's gonna have have a biting tone to it for sure,
and it's gonna be it's gonna be mean, like it's it's being mean to
something to some I don't know, to society, I guess, or I'm
really being mean. To doctors and healthy choices, it's a lot of conversations
about how doctors talk to women about their weight and their pain, you know,
and not acknowledging their pain and kind of gas lighting and stuff like that,
which is like an actual problem. And that's I always start when I
write with like a theme and what I'm gonna you know, that's like the
first idea, and then you kind of go from there, and then usually
I remember some weird thing, like for healthy Choices, I remember that I
learned that butterflies eat themselves in their cocoon, like you know, how they
turn completely into like a gel and then they reform as a butterfly. What
that is is their stomach insybs, absorbing their entire body. And then that
became healthy choices, like my anger the theme of like doctor's gas lighting women
and this thing about butterflies. And I had a whole novella and I wrote
it in like a ending two weeks like once, but I probably thought about
it for like five months before that. That's cool. I mean, you're
coming into a really good time for kind of social themed horror at a minute
is oh my gosh, yeah, blowing up in movies a lot. So
yeah, And I guess horror comedy doesn't. It's not always like Evil Dead
too. There are kind of more subtle, funny horrors out. It's just
hard, yeah, like to really scare someone and make them laugh, man,
you gotta be so talented, Like I don't. I can't read the
John Dies at the End books because they're too scary. So, like everybody
from Cracked loves those books, and I pretended to have read them for a
long time, like yeah, yeah, they're so good, and then finally
I was like, I'm sorry, they're too scary. I lied, I
lied a lot. I love the Zoe books that Jason also writes, but
I cannot read John Dies at the End. It scares the crap out of
me. That's true. It's a good example of something that manages to be
both existentially terrifying and ridiculously silly. Yes, on the same page. Sometimes
that is so hard, Like, yeah, I don't know if I can
do it, but I will certainly try, all right, stepping away from
work for for for a second, what do you like like Horror Rise or
anything wise, not just in general, like you know, when you finally
shut down for the day, like what are the things you you just are
into? Oh, I have a lot of hobbies. I used to play
roller derby and that was a big part of my life. Yeah, that
was really fun for a long time. Now. I retired because I am
old, and I realized after I turned thirty that twenty year old should not
be allowed to hit me. That was my That's like, I can't believe
I was twenty years old and like wailing on forty year old women for so
long and thinking that I was cool. Um, I paint very bad,
really bad painter, and it's really nice because I like to have a creative
hobby that I know I'm never going to make money off of and I'm never
going to try. You know, you're just doing it for the love of
it, and that's nice. That's I kind of miss writing just for the
love of it sometimes. Um, but you know, obviously I'm extremely privileged
to be able to write full time for a living, but like you know,
there's stuff that comes with that where you kind of have to write a
little faster, maybe a little sloppier than you want to um, and I
love painting. That's been my big joy lately. My clothes are all stained
with paint now, and I have paint on my fingers all the time.
And then people are like, oh, what are you painting? Like it's
gonna be really impressive. And then I show it to them and they're like,
that's uh wow, what is that like? It's a gnome in a
garden. I just like gnomes. I don't know, man, I'm a
weird little guy. Yeah, really gnomes are I don't know. My mom's
into gnomes, so I started paying them. I'm going to do one for
her for Mother's Day. So tell her about it, Bob. It's a
good one for your mom too. Okay, So this is this is where
we throw an art cheep plug. So we just we just well, we
haven't had the premiere you, but we just finished ire a crowdfunded movie called
Shingles. In the movie based on a book series we all write. I
saw that you were doing that. One of the stories is by Bob and
it is about a cocaine shitting gnome. Amazing. We're talking about theme,
Tara, this has no theme. The theme is cocaine. Shing No murders
people for fun and profit. That's also great for sustenance and sustenance. Maybe
there is a theme there. Maybe I'm just not ruminating on it deeply enough.
Find out. Go to Orphans and Dragons dot com to get your coffee
of shingles movie today. That's an amazing plug. I love that. Well,
we got a horror app sometimes. Yeah, sorry, sorry you mentioned
Gnomes. I had to say it. Oh no, that's fine. Yeah,
But like I read a lot too. That's the main reason I became
a writer is because I read about sixty fifty sixty books a year in every
genre, and I just I love reading. Just say no, that's a
book call. Let's say yeah, talking about whining down. I love reading
for fifty or sixty books a year, I'm lucky if I get through like
one a month. I gotta say writing all day kills reading for me.
I love reading, but I don't want to do it. I'll sit it
bed at night and be like, there's a book I really want to read.
I'm just gonna play Marvel snaps for this. I've had days like that
before, but it's pretty rare. I usually try to read in a different
genre that I'm writing and that kind of tends to help with it. Maybe
give that go. So it's all of your stuff available on Script there or
are you available elsewhere? Or yeah, all my books and stuff are all
Script exclusives. They own them for a year and then technically I get them
back and I can do whatever I want with them. But I am just
really bad at the business part of this job, you guys, I'm terrible
at it. I admire what you guys do so much, like getting yourself
out there yourselves because I don't know. It's a lot of buttons, man,
but I only have my stuff don Scribb at the moment. I but
Healthy Choices is the first one I've been so attached to that when the year
is up, it will probably be available at other platforms because I want to
get it out there. I love it awesome cool. Well, in the
meantime, I'm going to use this as an excuse to take my thumb out
of my ass and find out what script is. If you listen to this
and you haven't done that yet, it's also a good opportunity for you to
do so. I'm also going to take my clomb out off Steve's ass to
leave my thumbs where they are. Thank you very much. Okay, well
that's been enlightening exciting. I think we're coming up on the hours anything.
Is that anything you've forgotten The pluck Um we talked a little about one hundred
Hot Dog, but definitely check that out. Those guys are super fun.
They have a Patreon, but they also do cuck so many free articles a
week, sometimes too many, frankly when they really I think there was a
week recently they were like, we accidentally made everything free, so it's just
free now, I guess. But they really like something. They just can't
help themselves and so funny like they Jason Pargeon is constantly trying to get them
to do stuff with the site that's like more I don't know, profitable,
and they're just like, nah, we're gonna do We're gonna do our thing.
Um And I respect they're there. I don't know their attitude so much.
It's so funny. Um. Yeah, definitely like the frustrated step dad
of the podcast. Oh yeah, that's the vibe. That's the vibe for
sure. I mean he's just he runs his own empire, you know,
like with such a he's really good at the business side of it. That
man has one hundred thousand TikTok followers now like he had twenty k when he
was on your show. He's hit one hundred thousand at this point, and
he's not like your typical TikTok style welcome. Yeah, definitely because of the
platform that you guys gave him here on Authors and Dragons. Absolutely, his
career has shot off, and I'm sure mine will do the same. So
thank you so much for having me. I'm definitely going to clip that out
of context. But yeah, what is the article where the cabbage pet kids
are treated like real children? Is that for free? Update? Yeah?
Yeah, our first year. They made the whole first year free. Actually,
so um okay anything that immediately where I'm going? Yeah, baby Land
General Hospital in Georgia. It is so scary and still going today, I
believe if oh my god, yeah, we know where we're going to do.
Authors and Dragons can't twenty twenty four. You could, they rent they
rent conference rooms. You could and should do that. What a way to
go out, fellas, I will I will come for sure if you guys
have it at baby Land, I swear Okay, Well I can't really ignore
the segue again. Sorry, Authors and Dragons can't twenty twenty three. In
Portland's book Take Us Now, August eleventh through thirteenth. We're going to have
a blast. There's going to be writers there, there's going to be idiots
their books, podcasts, gaming cars, playing all the usual crap with us.
So book could take us now if you haven't already. I hope to
see you there. But back on topic, Lydia Bug, it's been really
interesting talking to you. Thank you for coming on side quests. We hope
to have you one again someday. Yeah, definitely, Thanks so much for
having me and it was fun, excellent. In that case, we'll say
goodbye and invite everyone to join us next time on Authors and Dragons. All
right, guys, goodbye, goodbye night, thanks for joining us. Goodbye
and friends. Aufors and Dragons brought to you under Creative Commons License, meaning
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