43 – Joe R. Lansdale and Writing Like Everyone You Know is Dead

Send us a text Pour yourself a whisky, grab a seat and listen to the best voice in dark fiction tell you some stories.  Our guest is Joe Lansdale author of so many books I can’t even begin to list them. Oh, ok, I will. Edge of Dark Water, Paradise Sky, The Bottoms, The Thicket, Fender Lizard … “Bubba Ho Tep”, Cold in July … the entire Hap and Leonard series.  And he joins me to talk about his newest, Moon Lake. A tale of dark nostalgia, small town politics and murder set on the banks of a drowned village. It’s a sun-soaked, shadow-tinged summer read of the best, and most twisted kind.  As much as Joe is nominally on the show to talk about Moon Lake, he’s a hard man to pin down to mere self-promotion. He has tales to tell and opinions to offer and you’d better goddamn LISTEN!! We discuss blue collar youth, Texas attitude, and whether having some hardship in life makes you a better writer. He tells me how he comes up with his unique metaphors, and why he defended Stephen King when twitter turned against him. All in all, it’s a friendly conversation about the perils of tribalism, why we should all be a little bit more tolerant, and why choosing stupidity is scary as hell. This is a bucket-list interview for me. Enjoy!  Moon Lake is published by Mulholland Books on June 22nd. Other books discussed in this episode include: Edge of Dark Water (2012), by Joe R. Lansdale The Thicket (2013), by Joe R. Lansdale Paradise Sky (2015), by Joe R. Lansdale “Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Mans Back,” in High Cotton: Selected Stories of Joe. R. Lansdale “On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with the Dead Folks”, in The Best of Joe R. Lansdale (2010) “The Night They Missed the Horror Show”, by Joe R. Lansdale – originally published in Silver Scream, (1988) ed. By David Schow Great Expectations, (1860), by Charles Dickens The Only Good Indians (2020), by Stephen Graham Jones Mongrels (2016), by Stephen Graham Jones  Support the show on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPod Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices