Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Castle Talk, where we talk to
Speaker 1: writers and creators of today's genre worlds. I'm your host
Speaker 1: Jason Henderson, publisher at castle Bridge Media, home of the
Speaker 1: Castle of Horror anthology series. Tonight, RI chatting with Christopher Michlos,
Speaker 1: author of and I love this title, Ticktown, which comes
Speaker 1: out this month from castle Bridge Media, which full disclosure,
Speaker 1: I am a publisher at castle Bridge Media, so I
Speaker 1: am instrumental in this. But I love this book and
Speaker 1: I love its icky content. It is the kind of
Speaker 1: paperback from hell I've been wanting to talk about for
Speaker 1: a long time. So here's the deal. In the book,
Speaker 1: I have this right in front of me. When a
Speaker 1: northern Wisconsin touristtown becomes the feeding ground for a giant
Speaker 1: band of mutant ticks giant ticks, a young reporter or
Speaker 1: copbex boyfriend and a newspaper man have to track down
Speaker 1: and destroy the Queen Tick and her nest before these
Speaker 1: monsters overrun and slaughter the entire town. It is grody,
Speaker 1: it is summary, and it is full of giant I
Speaker 1: can't stress this enough giant ticks. So welcome Christopher.
Speaker 2: Hey, thanks so much. Jason, I really appreciate it. You
Speaker 2: know it's funny.
Speaker 3: Oh. I just started the last I would say the
Speaker 3: last couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize what a perfect summer book it is,
Speaker 2: because especially here in Wisconsin where I am, there's ticks everywhere.
Speaker 2: And my daughter was My daughter's been convinced. And maybe
Speaker 2: it's just because I've had the advanced copies of the book.
Speaker 2: Later on, she's convinced she had ticks in her hair.
Speaker 2: We always think we've got ticks on the dog. I
Speaker 2: mean it's it's the summer brings ticks in Wisconsin, and
Speaker 2: so I didn't quite realize what great timing we were
Speaker 2: going to have in releasing this book.
Speaker 1: But these ticks are like the size of They're like
Speaker 1: when you think of Rob and Batman and Robin when
Speaker 1: Robin gets eaten by a giant clam.
Speaker 3: They're like that.
Speaker 1: They're like they are they are big, and so they
Speaker 1: can cleave a person and do cleave a person in half.
Speaker 1: And I okay, so let me ask you. You you've
Speaker 1: said that you had a distinct vision in mind basically
Speaker 1: that this was your ode to well, probably several things,
Speaker 1: because I think of like giant bugs, you know, like
Speaker 1: like you know James, like, uh, you know, Peter Graves
Speaker 1: versus the Big Ants, but also the the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: Paperbacks from Hell. So talk to me a little bit
Speaker 1: about about that, that gulash of inspiration.
Speaker 2: Well sure you actually earlier you used the phrase Paperbacks
Speaker 2: from Hell, and I read, you know, I would say,
Speaker 2: maybe five years ago something like that, the book Paperbacks
Speaker 2: from Hell, written by Grady Hendrix and will Ericson, which
Speaker 2: is this survey of seventies and eighties pulp paperbacks, so
Speaker 2: paperbacks in general, but a lot of pulp or paper
Speaker 2: and I had had very little exposure to to that,
Speaker 2: to those books and tell that.
Speaker 3: And as I read this book.
Speaker 2: I was just flabbergast about how wonderfully gonzo and terrific
Speaker 2: it all sounded, you know, these these crazy plot lines,
Speaker 2: these over the top.
Speaker 3: You know heroes, and on and on.
Speaker 2: And after I finished the book, I started picking up
Speaker 2: and reading some of these books. One of my first
Speaker 2: was was Knight of the Crabs by Guyane Smith, and
Speaker 2: I fell so in love with his his vision of
Speaker 2: these giant crabs terrorizing the Welsh countryside. And I think
Speaker 2: in part because it brought me back to the movies
Speaker 2: I loved when I was a young kid.
Speaker 3: I grew up on classic.
Speaker 2: Old horror, the Universal, Frankenstein and Dracula and Wolfman, all
Speaker 2: those yes, But I loved, loved, loved the giant creature
Speaker 2: feature of movies like them. From those were the paperbacks
Speaker 2: that I started to gravitate towards. And then I so,
Speaker 2: I'm a filmmaker. A couple of movies last night, small
Speaker 2: independent features, but I started to think that I wanted
Speaker 2: to I wanted to write a novel, and so it
Speaker 2: became clear that the kind of novel that I was
Speaker 2: going to write was going to be a pulpy paperback novel,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to do something that was somewhat of
Speaker 2: a mash up between those fifties and sixties sci fi
Speaker 2: movies and the seventies and eighties pulp horror paperbacks and
Speaker 2: giant mutated tics in Northern.
Speaker 3: Wisconsin ended up being the perfect the perfect mix of
Speaker 3: the two.
Speaker 1: So you've actually, you know, you've tried to kind of
Speaker 1: get people into the spirit of of you know, monsters
Speaker 1: in the summer, like sort of harkening back to that vision,
Speaker 1: like don't you have an event? Were you gonna be
Speaker 1: showing like some monster movies.
Speaker 3: Or something super excited.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the book comes out on Tuesday, June twenty
Speaker 2: fourth in paperback and kindle, and that next weekend on
Speaker 2: June twenty eighth, Saturday, June twenty eighth, my books launch event.
Speaker 3: Is going to be screening.
Speaker 2: I'm going a host of screening of the nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: four movie Them that I referenced at a local theater
Speaker 2: at Marcus Palace Theater. Have a loan Madison is going
Speaker 2: to introduce the movie and say a few words about
Speaker 2: the movie. We're going to have a screening, and then
Speaker 2: afterwards they have a nice lounge with a bar and
Speaker 2: food and that sort of thing right in the theater,
Speaker 2: and we're going to go over there and do a
Speaker 2: book signing and a reception and the lounge.
Speaker 3: And what is really.
Speaker 2: Fun about the event is the screening. The movie screening
Speaker 2: at four point thirty on Saturday afternoon. Your ticket to
Speaker 2: the event is going to be a paperback copy of
Speaker 2: So if you get a paperback copied of Ticktown you
Speaker 2: bring it to the event, it's worth two seats to
Speaker 2: the screening. So I'm going to be doing local media
Speaker 2: and pr you know, interviews and some other things locally
Speaker 2: to promote where here in Madison. There's gonna be several
Speaker 2: bookstories that are carrying the paperback of a book when
Speaker 2: it comes out on June twenty fourth. If people can't
Speaker 2: get that, you can't get their hands on that, they
Speaker 2: can always order from Amazon, you know, if they have Prime,
Speaker 2: they'll definitely get it by the weekend. And worst case
Speaker 2: scenario is that we'll have some books for sale at
Speaker 2: the event that people can get it.
Speaker 3: But I thought it would be a fun thing.
Speaker 2: I have a good relationship with the theater because of
Speaker 2: my film background, and they were just absolutely ecstatic about
Speaker 2: the idea, like super supportive. In fact, I'm going over
Speaker 2: there in the morning tomorrow to test out the movie.
Speaker 3: And kind of talk to them about logistics.
Speaker 2: So I appreciate you mentioning it because I'm just so
Speaker 2: excited about it.
Speaker 1: I really love that though. I mean that that because
Speaker 1: to me that those are those are memories. Like when
Speaker 1: I talk to my dad, one of his clearest memories
Speaker 1: of when he was a kid was going to some
Speaker 1: event where they were showing creature from the Black Lagoon,
Speaker 1: and and you know, he just has it, and you know,
Speaker 1: that just the community, community of Monster kids and the
Speaker 1: community of Monster movies is just to me one of
Speaker 1: those weird American things that that is just always worth celebrating.
Speaker 1: Especially I mean, I know I'm hitting the summer really hard,
Speaker 1: but it's so true, like in the summer, I think,
Speaker 1: at least since in my lifetime, at least since Jaws
Speaker 1: came out, summer is the time for monsters, you know,
Speaker 1: And and so I just love that you've sort of
Speaker 1: gone after that talk to me a little bit about
Speaker 1: like that's fantastic, But getting down to the nitty gritty
Speaker 1: of your process, how did you knock yourself into getting
Speaker 1: a book done? Like, how did it? How did it?
Speaker 1: How did it come together? Did you like have to say, well, Chris,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to sit down and knock out five
Speaker 1: hundred words a day, or I'm going to get this
Speaker 1: done by labor day, or or how did it come
Speaker 1: together for you?
Speaker 2: That's actually an interesting question because I wasn't really thinking
Speaker 2: of it in those in those terms. Even though I
Speaker 2: hadn't written a novel before, I've written several screenplays, and
Speaker 2: so the process for me of writing down and writing
Speaker 2: a screenplay is, you know, just kind of sitting down
Speaker 2: kind of you know, really roughly plotting it out and
Speaker 2: then just banging through it. I have a I have
Speaker 2: a daughter who's now eleven, and so during during the
Speaker 2: school year, I try to get up, you know, five
Speaker 2: o'clock five thirty because I worked best in the morning,
Speaker 2: try and knock out, you know, as much as I
Speaker 2: can for a few hours before I you know, get
Speaker 2: it ready for school. Then a couple hours after I
Speaker 2: get her off to school, and it was just a
Speaker 2: matter of trying to uh, you know, try to do
Speaker 2: it as as efficiently as I can. I was actually
Speaker 2: I started writing the novel because I was writing the
Speaker 2: screenplay that I was extremely excited about. I won't tell
Speaker 2: you too much about it. I want to tell you what
Speaker 2: it's about, but it's called Jingle Bell Chop, and it
Speaker 2: was I was. I was just loving writing.
Speaker 3: It was kind of a horror comedy, of holiday horror comedy.
Speaker 2: And I literally got to the halfway point and I
Speaker 2: just froze and I could not figure out where to
Speaker 2: go with it.
Speaker 3: Next.
Speaker 2: I plotted it out, but it just seems so suddenly static,
Speaker 2: and so I thought, oh my god, I've got to
Speaker 2: put this aside.
Speaker 3: You know, I can't go any further right now.
Speaker 2: I thought, maybe this will be a good time to
Speaker 2: start writing a novel, so I threw myself into Ticktown.
Speaker 3: It had been, you know, it had been germinating in my.
Speaker 2: Head up to that point, but I decided that that
Speaker 2: was going to be my focus. I would say I
Speaker 2: probably started in you know, February ish of or maybe
Speaker 2: maybe a little later March or April of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: I think it was done by the end of the year.
Speaker 3: Just in terms of the you know, the book itself.
Speaker 3: I go.
Speaker 2: I went through a couple of drafts, a few drafts,
Speaker 2: and then, you know what I'm really bad at is
Speaker 2: letting people read my stuff. But I had this book
Speaker 2: that had gone through several drafts. I took it to
Speaker 2: my best buddy, Jay, who reads my He's always my
Speaker 2: first reader with short fiction, and he's not that.
Speaker 3: Into horror at all. He's my code director on my
Speaker 3: horror movies, but he doesn't read horror.
Speaker 2: And I gave it to him and I said, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you're gonna like this at all,
Speaker 2: because it's not what you read. I don't know if
Speaker 2: it's any good. You know, the writing may suck. I
Speaker 2: have no idea. But I realized when I was done
Speaker 2: with it and when I was giving it to him,
Speaker 2: and I told him, I said, all that doesn't matter,
Speaker 2: because I realized that it was exactly.
Speaker 3: The book that I wanted to write.
Speaker 2: The tone, the pacne, the just kind of the approach
Speaker 2: of it, how it kind of read like one of
Speaker 2: these seventies eighties pulp horror things. It was just exactly
Speaker 2: what I had meant to write. So I told him,
Speaker 2: you take it. You know, I want on his feedback,
Speaker 2: but honestly, it's it's what I want. So that's good enough.
Speaker 2: You know, it was what I wanted it to be,
Speaker 2: and that was well good enough. But he was very encouraging.
Speaker 2: He said he had a great time reading it, and
Speaker 2: so that gave me a lot of a lot of
Speaker 2: confidence to pitch it to agents and eventually to publishers,
Speaker 2: and it was a it.
Speaker 3: Was a great process.
Speaker 2: I just you know, I was very lucky to find
Speaker 2: an agent pretty quickly. I was very lucky to get
Speaker 2: offers from people at castle Bridge Media. And I don't
Speaker 2: I don't I don't overlook or miss the fact of
Speaker 2: how lucky I am. You hit the right people at
Speaker 2: the right time, and good things can happen.
Speaker 1: Well, I I just sort of think it's it's when
Speaker 1: it's difficult because speaking as a publisher, it is exactly
Speaker 1: what it is intended to be. It is a celebration
Speaker 1: of this kind of story that I don't get to
Speaker 1: see enough of. Actually, let me ask you a question
Speaker 1: about that. Why do you think we gravitate to you know,
Speaker 1: because right now, everybody's worried about tariffs, and they're worried
Speaker 1: about the worried about the Middle East, and they're worried
Speaker 1: about they're worried about the four oh one K. Why
Speaker 1: does somebody go all right, I want to sit down
Speaker 1: and read a story about ticks eating people like like
Speaker 1: and some and a couple of good guys trying to
Speaker 1: stop them, Like, like, why why does that keep? Why
Speaker 1: are we like that? Why is this so interesting to us?
Speaker 2: I think I'd be extremely wealthy if I had an
Speaker 2: answer to that question, And to be honest with you,
Speaker 2: I will say that, you know, for me, it's just
Speaker 2: it's very nostalgic. Like I said, I I love these
Speaker 2: old horror movies. When I was a kid, I used to.
Speaker 2: I used to spend a lot of time with my grandparents.
Speaker 2: You know, my parents would love to go out on
Speaker 2: the weekends, and I'd go spend a night or two
Speaker 2: with my grandparents, and my grandmother always let me stay
Speaker 2: up with her and watch, you know, the local superstation
Speaker 2: that was showing you know, I don't even remember who
Speaker 2: the horror host was, but you know, one of those
Speaker 2: one of those goofy, undead horror hosts, and they'd play
Speaker 2: a lot of these movies and I have very fond,
Speaker 2: warm memories of watching those with my grandma. And it's
Speaker 2: a very nostalgic thing. And you know, I'm not I'm
Speaker 2: a new author, but I'm not a young kid, and
Speaker 2: I think that there is definitely something about that kind
Speaker 2: of nostalgic take you back to.
Speaker 3: When you were young, and when you were kind of
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Free spirited and and all those things that made you
Speaker 2: happy in a much simpler time.
Speaker 3: I'm, you know, someone.
Speaker 2: Who's very interested in the terrif issue, and he is
Speaker 2: very politically motivated. My background is political communication. I spent
Speaker 2: twenty years as a partner in a political media firm,
Speaker 2: do an advocacy and political media and working for candidates
Speaker 2: and organizations and all that. So that stuff is very
Speaker 2: important to me, but it ain't fun at all. And
Speaker 2: so sometimes you just want to have fun and you
Speaker 2: want to, you know, you want to just kind of
Speaker 2: put that stuff in the background and kind of indulge
Speaker 2: something that just makes you happy. A close friend we
Speaker 2: had some friends over for a dinner who we don't
Speaker 2: see very off and several weeks ago, and she was
Speaker 2: asking me about the book and she said, well, what's
Speaker 2: the what's the political you know what, you know, what's
Speaker 2: the political message of the book or you know, is
Speaker 2: it global warming or is it? And I was like,
Speaker 2: there's not any political message to this book. It is sheer, propulsive,
Speaker 2: nostalgic fun.
Speaker 3: That's all it is.
Speaker 1: It's so that's so funny. There's real joy that comes
Speaker 1: across in it. That's the funny thing Like that just
Speaker 1: sort of gonzo uh uh. You know, bedlam of the
Speaker 1: of of the book comes across as a real joy
Speaker 1: and it reminds me, you know, like Stephen King talked
Speaker 1: about Horror of Party Beach, basically where monsters are created.
Speaker 1: So because some dufices drop like some nuclear waste into
Speaker 1: this into the near the beach, and it makes monsters
Speaker 1: and they eat they eat bikini girls. And like those
Speaker 1: guys were not interested in nuclear power like that is
Speaker 1: not the creators of that movie didn't really care about
Speaker 1: nuclear waste. It was just it was just a handwavy
Speaker 1: thing to say, monsters, Right, So I love it. I
Speaker 1: think that's okay. Before we go, I want you to
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about your main characters because
Speaker 1: people want to know, all right, giant ticks, So who
Speaker 1: is tell us about about who the characters are that
Speaker 1: people can come to know as they're as they're bound.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 2: So the story takes place in a fictional town in
Speaker 2: northern Wisconsin, a small tourist town, kind of tucked in
Speaker 2: the woods.
Speaker 3: It's called Tomahawk Hollow.
Speaker 2: It doesn't exist, but it is, you know, very much
Speaker 2: the kind of town I imagine is that is all
Speaker 2: over the country, but it's definitely very much a Midway.
Speaker 3: A lot of people in the Midwest will recognize this town.
Speaker 2: A small population, you know, rural nestled in the woods.
Speaker 2: You know, you drive through them in Wisconsin all the time.
Speaker 2: There's usually a church, a bar, a school, and sometimes
Speaker 2: that's about it. Tomahawk coll is a little more developed
Speaker 2: than that. But the uh, the the story. The central
Speaker 2: characters in the story are Jackson and Emmeline. He's the
Speaker 2: publisher of a of a small town newspaper, and Emmeline
Speaker 2: is his cub reporter. She's a Native American, a young
Speaker 2: Native American woman who's been working for him, you know,
Speaker 2: for for a short period of time. Honestly, when I
Speaker 2: started to write Ticktown, I I I meant to make
Speaker 2: it kind of a somewhat of a commentary on the
Speaker 2: you know, the dying out of of local media like that.
Speaker 2: You know, you don't find these small town newspapers that
Speaker 2: much anymore.
Speaker 3: They used to be a big deal. They're not anymore.
Speaker 2: And I thought the idea of of of big media conglomerates,
Speaker 2: you know, swallowing up and you know, uh evolving and
Speaker 2: destroying the you know, the the smaller would be an
Speaker 2: interesting theme to you know, uh, to go along with
Speaker 2: giant ticks who have evolved, you know, to gobble up
Speaker 2: you know, local So there's a little bit of that
Speaker 2: in there, But I didn't go too far with it
Speaker 2: because I lost interest in that and started having fun
Speaker 2: with cleaving people in half. But Jackson and them line
Speaker 2: are they you know, they start hearing about local local
Speaker 2: livestock being slaughtered, they go to investigate it, and and
Speaker 2: you know, they discover, you know, that that there's not
Speaker 2: only giant ticks in the woods that but that it
Speaker 2: may be tied to a shady overseas organization that that
Speaker 2: owned the local pesticides plant. I learned very quickly and write,
Speaker 2: in reading the pulp horror stuff of the seventies and eighties,
Speaker 2: you gotta have vaguely Nazi characters involved in this. You know,
Speaker 2: there's got to be some sort of you know, nastiness
Speaker 2: out there. I'm there's Jaws in the DNA because there's
Speaker 2: kind of a corrupt mayor in Ticktown, which was who
Speaker 2: was a ton of fun to write, Mayor Cankerby, who
Speaker 2: is kind.
Speaker 3: Of a uh he's a.
Speaker 2: Cross between Mayor Vaughan from Jaws and Boss Hog from
Speaker 2: The Dukes of Hazzard. You know, that's kind of how
Speaker 2: I thought of him. But he was he was a
Speaker 2: ton of fun to write.
Speaker 3: Uh So, so those are the main characters.
Speaker 2: There's also a cop, the local chief of police, who,
Speaker 2: as he says at.
Speaker 3: One point in in the uh in the book.
Speaker 2: That it's a kind of a uh, it's kind of
Speaker 2: an uh, just an honorary title that goes to the
Speaker 2: only cop in town. He becomes the chief of police,
Speaker 2: so he's he's on his own, and he's got to
Speaker 2: figure out what's going on, not just these tics, but
Speaker 2: with this foreign company and these people who've come into
Speaker 2: the town. And this is all of course happening in
Speaker 2: amid the amidh the preparations for the big Fall festival,
Speaker 2: the Harvest Moon Jubilee, so you know, it's all very
Speaker 2: people will find it very familiar. The characters are very familiar.
Speaker 3: I interesting.
Speaker 2: This is my first book, so I don't know, I
Speaker 2: never knew what to expect from arc readers, but my
Speaker 2: ARC readers have been extremely enthusiastic. And what I hear
Speaker 2: a lot from the ARC reviews has been, you know,
Speaker 2: very tropy, but with an original twist. You're going to
Speaker 2: recognize the characters, but you're going to love the characters.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I think, kind of getting to what we talked about
Speaker 2: earlier about this nostalgic factor. I've heard a lot of
Speaker 2: that in the ARC reviews and in the traditional reviews.
Speaker 2: You know, people have have reacted to this idea that boy,
Speaker 2: this is all very familiar, but it's it's updated and
Speaker 2: it's more modern, and it's got its own twist to it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think I think people have and will
Speaker 2: like that kind of combination of nostalgic fun, you know,
Speaker 2: characters they recognize, but that are you know, that have
Speaker 2: cell phones, you know, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 4: So, uh, yeah, I that's what I think. That's I
Speaker 4: loved the characters and I felt like they were really
Speaker 4: well drawn. I mean, you know, I like the bad
Speaker 4: guys checking in at the hotel and everything.
Speaker 1: There's just wonderful details. And I did recognize this town.
Speaker 1: This is like this is like a dark shadow of
Speaker 1: a Hallmark movie, really, where you've got everybody knows one another,
Speaker 1: but they are ticks seating people. I just really love that.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: So I've been talking to Christopher Miklos. Tell us again
Speaker 1: about the date of your event and the release. The
Speaker 1: release is tuesday, but yeah, give us your dates and
Speaker 1: where can people find it?
Speaker 3: Sure? So the.
Speaker 2: Release date is Tuesday, June twenty fourth. My event is
Speaker 2: on the book launch event is on Saturday, June twenty eighth.
Speaker 2: My website is Christophermichlos dot com. It's my name, and
Speaker 2: I've got information about the book launch there. I've got,
Speaker 2: of course links where you can buy, and I've also
Speaker 2: got a running list of bookstores that are going to
Speaker 2: be stocking the book.
Speaker 3: I've been very excited.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of Wisconsin bookstore that are going to
Speaker 2: stock the book. I you know, as my publisher, you'll
Speaker 2: be interested, you know. I was reaching out to several
Speaker 2: several bookstores in the state and in the surrounding area,
Speaker 2: and I reached out to this horror bookshop in Chicago
Speaker 2: called Bucket of Blood and said, hey, you might be
Speaker 2: interested in this book, and they wrote me back and said,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, we've already had that on pre order now
Speaker 2: for a couple of weeks. So I was just thrilled
Speaker 2: about that. Hopefully there's more of that out there that
Speaker 2: I haven't come across, but I've got so I've got
Speaker 2: a Chicago bookstore, I've got some books that are going
Speaker 2: to be in Brooke and Mortar store in San Francisco,
Speaker 2: in Brooklyn and and all around the state here. And
Speaker 2: I'm still working it so I'm not done yet. So
Speaker 2: hopefully people will be able to find the book in
Speaker 2: some local bookstores. Definitely get it online at Amazon, Barnesonoble
Speaker 2: dot com, wherever you shop for your books. But come
Speaker 2: to my come to my website Christopher Michelos dot com,
Speaker 2: and you'll be able to You'll be able to see
Speaker 2: information about where it is and how you can get it,
Speaker 2: end where you can go to not just this first event,
Speaker 2: but other signings that I've got lined up over the
Speaker 2: next several months.
Speaker 1: Fantastic, Chris, it's been such a delight talking about this.
Speaker 1: I think it's such a fun book. I hope you
Speaker 1: have a wonderful event. I will talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, sir, thanks so much. We'll talk
Speaker 1: to you soon.
Speaker 3: Have a good night. Bye.