Pod of Whore and Other Lore, or Who Has Justice Pissed Off Now?

I interview horror writers, and I put those interviews into a little radio show-type thing and call it Pod of Horror. You can sample it on this very website. Just navigate here: http://www.horrorworld.org/poh.htm. Then make with the clicky. I’ll wait. Don’t worry about me. I can read Stephen King books on my phone.

Back already? If you listened to one of the shows, then at some point you probably thought Hey, why doesn’t Mark interview __________, my favorite writer?

That’s a question I get a lot, actually. There are two answers to this.

Number one, I just haven’t gotten around to asking your favorite writer yet

Number two, I have asked, and your favorite writer doesn’t want to be interviewed.

If your guy (or gal) falls under the umbrella of Answer Number One, then I will, in all likelihood, eventually get around to extending an invitation to him (or her) to be on the show. That’s how it usually works. Most horror writers are pretty accessible. If they aren’t, then I can normally dig up their contact information pretty quickly. I send off an email and get a response within a day or two. Most of them time, the writer is agreeable to be interviewed. After all, writers—at least most of them—want to be read. Spreading the word helps in that area. Also, it helps that I’m a fairly nice guy. I don’t yell at guests, ala Bill O’Reilly. I’m genuinely interested in what they have to say. Things generally work out well.

What about the non-guests who are covered by Answer Number Two?  I think there are a few reasons that keep a writer off Pod of Horror.

1)      The writer just isn’t comfortable being interviewed. This is a biggie, and I suspect it happens a lot. Some writers actually have told me this (i.e. “I’m more comfortable answering questions in writing. I’m afraid I’ll get tongue-tied in a live interview”). Other writers are probably not so comfortable admitting this.

2)      The writer isn’t comfortable being interviewed by me. Yes, as shocking as it may be, some people just don’t like me, despite my cuddly, huggable personality. That’s fine everyone is entitles to their opinion, wrong as it may be. We tend to sometimes be less than serious on Pod of Horror.

Occasionally our shirttail is untucked and we haven’t shaved and we laugh a little too loudly. For some people this equates to lowbrow and common, and they don’t want to be associated with, sniff, that sort of thing. I can dig it. And, for the record, the Goddess of Horror World shaves prior to every episode. So there.

3)      Our schedules just don’t synch up. There are a couple of writers I’ve tried to interview a bunch of times. For whatever reasons, the dates and times I can do it never work out with the dates and time they’re available. C’est la vie. Maybe it will happen one day. 

Hey, but don’t think a simple no makes me surrender. Mama Justice didn’t raise a quitter. A nerdy, non-athletic overeater, maybe, but no quitter.

One well-known, bestselling author repeatedly refused my interview requests. He never gave a reason. Did I give up? Did I acquiesce? No. I did what any man in my position would do. I called the Goddess of Horror World and asked her to flex her mighty influence. Soon, I was having a nice chat with the best-selling writer. It anchored a particularly well-received episode of the podcast.

On the flip side of this slightly-tarnished coin, we have a writer who burst upon the scene a few years ago. I really enjoyed his work and asked him to be on the show. He said he’d think about it and get back to me. Months passed, and there was no getting back. So I inquired again. I got nothing but silence. The Goddess of Horror World met this writer at a convention and asked him face to face if we could interview him. He gave her a resounding maybe. So I emailed again, and again, received no response. Finally, a publicist for the writer’s publisher offered us an interview with this writer. Finally, I thought, success! The publicist promised to arrange a date and time. A few days later, the publicist emailed to inform me that the writer had said unequivocally, “No way.”  So he won’t be on Pod of Horror. Yet.

On the other hand, the show has featured Clive Barker, Robert MacCammon, Peter Straub, Brian Keene, David Morrell, James Rollins, Tom Piccirilli, Harlan Coben, Mary Higgins Clark, Gary Braunbeck, John Skipp, Adrienne Barbeau, Brian Hodge, Duane Swierczynski, and a gajillion up and coming authors. So I’m more than a little pleased with our track record.

***

Okay, I’m going to wrap up soon. As usual, I am pushing this right up to the deadline. I just got a call from the Goddess of Horror World. She didn’t say anything intelligible. She just sighed and muttered in that scary, guttural horror movie voice, you know, the deep one that makes a sub-woofer sound like the tiny AM radio speakers in a 1968 Ford Falcon.

I got the message.

We have time for just one e-mail.

[email protected] observes:

“I listened to the latest episode of Pod of Whore and was quite disappointed to find almost nothing about whores. By the way, does that woman on the show cook and clean for you and cover her body?  Any chance future episodes will focus on man-camel love? Also, I cannot reveal my current location, but do you know where in Cleveland I can find a restaurant that serves a good Bazeen prepared by a woman named Buhjah?”

Uh, no. No, no, no and no.

But thanks for listening.

Mark Justice’s latest book is Looking at the World with Broken Glass in My Eye, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online sellers. You can reach him at Pod of Horror at AOL dot com.

He hates writing about himself in the third person, but what are ya gonna do?