The Reading Life of Stephen Graham Jones

Summary

Book Riot - The Podcast: The Reading Life of Stephen Graham Jones

Release Date: March 31, 2025

Introduction

In the latest episode of Book Riot - The Podcast, hosts Jeff O’Neal and Rebecca Shinsky delve into the literary journey of acclaimed author Stephen Graham Jones. This comprehensive conversation explores Jones's formative reading experiences, influential authors, and his evolution into a prolific writer. The discussion offers valuable insights for both aspiring writers and avid readers alike.

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Early Reading Experiences

Stephen Graham Jones begins by recounting his earliest memories of reading, highlighting the profound impact of specific books during his childhood.

“My very first book I read was in fourth grade... The Red Fern Grows, my selected book. I remember that final image of an axe stuck in a tree with a rusty lantern hanging on.”
[05:03] Stephen Graham Jones

This poignant moment not only ignited his passion for reading but also planted the seeds for his future as a writer. Jones reflects on how this book taught him the power of storytelling to both break and knit a reader's heart.

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Influential Authors and Genres

Jones discusses his diverse reading habits, particularly his fascination with science thrillers and horror genres during his formative years.

“I stumbled into science thrillers like Michael Crichton stuff... Everybody was trying to be Michael Crichton.”
[23:12] Stephen Graham Jones

He also shares his transformative experience with comics, particularly Marvel's Secret Wars, which served as a source of inspiration and resilience during his teenage years.

“In Secret Wars number 10... Dr. Doom did it. I can do it too.”
[16:03] Stephen Graham Jones

This blend of genres enriched his narrative style, allowing him to incorporate complex themes and diverse characters into his writing.

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College and the Turning Point

Jones recounts a pivotal moment during his college years that solidified his path toward writing. An unexpected incident led him to write his first story, which won a contest and opened his eyes to his potential as a writer.

“That was the moment where, like, a light went off and I was like, you mean people care about these stories?”
[35:10] Stephen Graham Jones

This affirmation from his instructors encouraged him to pursue creative writing passionately, ultimately shaping his literary career.

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Developing as a Writer

Transitioning from reader to writer, Jones explains how his analytical approach to reading influenced his writing techniques. He emphasizes the importance of clear communication and innovative form in storytelling.

“The first part of writing is communication. There can't be static. There can't be noise in there unless it's intentional.”
[49:35] Stephen Graham Jones

Jones also discusses his latest work, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, highlighting its epistolary format and nested narratives that challenge readers to engage deeply with the story.

“Nesting narratives and making each narrative have bubbled up through the previous lends the story itself indeterminacy...”
[54:08] Stephen Graham Jones

This structural complexity aims to enhance reader participation, making the storytelling experience more interactive and thought-provoking.

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Current Reading Habits and Recommendations

Despite his established career, Jones maintains a dynamic reading life, balancing professional obligations with personal literary interests. He expresses a longing for the spontaneous discovery of books that characterized his youth.

“I miss the wonder of falling into something completely unknown because that's something I don't really have anymore unless I make it happen.”
[44:29] Stephen Graham Jones

Jones recommends a variety of books that have left a lasting impression on him, such as Jim Dodge's Fup and Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine, underscoring their capacity to transform and engage readers profoundly.

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Teaching and Mentorship

As a mentor, Jones prioritizes innovation in form and clarity in communication when evaluating student writing. He believes that mastering the fundamentals of writing enables writers to experiment effectively.

“You can't write free verse until you can write form.”
[50:53] Stephen Graham Jones

Jones’s approach fosters both technical proficiency and creative exploration, encouraging emerging writers to develop their unique voices while adhering to clear narrative structures.

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with Jones sharing his enthusiasm for future projects and his ongoing commitment to exploring new narrative forms. His insights offer a compelling look into the interplay between a reader's early experiences and their development as a writer.

“Stories can make us choose. And when we choose this or that, that tells us something about ourselves.”
[54:27] Stephen Graham Jones

Final Thoughts

"The Reading Life of Stephen Graham Jones" is a captivating exploration of an author's journey through literature and writing. Jeff O’Neal and Rebecca Shinsky successfully highlight the influences and experiences that have shaped Jones’s storytelling prowess, providing listeners with both inspiration and a deeper understanding of the literary process.

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Note: This summary excludes advertisements and non-content sections to focus solely on the substantive discussions between the hosts and Stephen Graham Jones.

Transcript

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[Jeff]

Hey, y'all. Jeff is out this week reading on a beach, as we all aspire to do sometimes. And through a perfect storm of scheduling and editorial issues, we don't have a new episode for you this week. Instead, we are really delighted to share Jeff's recent interview with Stephen Graham Jones, the author of many wonderful thrillers, most recently the Buffalo Hunter Hunter. This is a really terrific conversation about Stephen, reading life, his origins as a reader, and I think you'll find it really inspiring and moving. So hope you'll enjoy it. To find more like this, visit the first edition podcast wherever you find your podcasts, and we'll be back in your ears on Wednesday with a new episode.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

So listen, this was going to be in two episodes. One a Reading Life episode with Stephen Graham Jones and another one that's something else. But I'm going to split them into two episodes, one coming out today and one coming out tomorrow, just so that they're a little bit easier to listen to. So today's episode, I've done a bunch of these reading live segments. I really enjoyed them. I've enjoyed every single one, but this one is really special. Stephen Graham Jones, the author of more than 35 books, novels, short story collections, novellas, done some comic books. His most recent book is the Buffalo Hunter X Hunter. Also, he's written of late, I was a teenage slasher, My heart is a chainsaw, only good Indians, a horror genre mystery master. And this is a really cool episode. So stick around, listen to it. He tells some of the best stories I've ever heard about growing up as a Reader. And then tomorrow we're going to do something completely different. But for now, let's go. All right, we're here. I was just noticing the bookshelves behind you, Steven. So we have a lot to talk about here. We're going to talk about, as we said before, your life as a reader. So I guess this is where I generally start is what are your earliest memories of books in your life? Were there people, specific places or titles that you know, when you go back and search the, the time capsule that jump out is like, oh, this is the one that. The first one that I can kind.

[American Express Representative]

Of remember, my very first book I read was fourth grade, so I must have been 10 years old. And our assignment project, I forget what it was. We had to check out one book from the library. Like we had a library day. We all went and found the book we liked and we had to read it. And we didn't have to write anything on it. We just had to successfully read the book. And it took me three, three checkout periods to read it because I was easily distractible, you know, and we, we had some sort of over classroom situation such that our classroom was in random desks throughout the library. And I distinctly remember getting finally to the end of where the Red Fern Grows, my selected book. And, and I remember that final image of an axe stuck in a tree with a rusty lantern hanging on. It's been there for 10, 20 years. And, and I distinctly remember sitting in my little desk and holding, Closing the book and holding it closed and thinking to myself, I can do that. I can stick an axe in a tree and hang a lantern on it and look away for 10 or 20 years. And I never had, like growing up, I never had any suspicions of doing anything with books because where I grew up, you either went into farming or you went to the oil field. Those are only two options. But so being a writer, being a reader was not even a little bit in my field of possibilities. But when I read where the Red Fern Grows, I knew that I could end things, you know, and, and that book, it just kind of like it, it breaks your heart, but it knits it back together. And I think that's one of the most important things you can do as a, as a writer. That's a wonderful gift to give to the reader.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Yeah, I wonder how many. I mean, I would guess you're fairly unique amongst readers of that book to remember the axe in the lantern. What, what was it about that image, like you just said that you could do that. Like, can you Say more about that and what, that.

[American Express Representative]

Yeah, it was. You know, in high school, I came to call that instant nostalgia. I thought I was coming up with a new. A new term, you know, but. Yeah, like instant karma, instant nostalgia. But. But it. It's the idea that you can load things with meaning and then leave them for people to find interesting. And that's what that lantern and the ax felt like to me. The whole book had been loading that image, and then it finally releases when the reader passes their eyes across it and it goes right into their heart. And it's the. It's the best thing ever. And that book, I think I've always been trying to write. Well, that book and a couple other books are always what I'm trying to do, if I can.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Well, maybe we'll try to. Now I'm intrigued by what those other couple of books are, but maybe we'll continue. We'll follow down the. The timeline and not. Not try to DeLorean ourselves back and forth in time A little bit too much, I guess. So in that moment, do you remember why you picked out there where the red ferdin grows in that particular. Like you're in the library, you're not really sure what to do. How did you. How did your hand and heart find that one?

[American Express Representative]

I'm pretty sure I selected that novel because it says something about hunting on the COVID Okay. And. And growing up, I mean, I was always hunting and just. It was. My life was all guns and shooting things, you know, and. And so I thought this is something that can maybe help me be a.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Better hunter, you know, I mean, I. I never really thought of it as an instructional manual, but I guess, you know. You know, I. I didn't know much about hunting with dogs, so I guess I probably learned something when I readr. Grown myself.

[American Express Representative]

Yeah.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

So that's your. It sounds like that' first strongest memory. So did that change your relationship to books right there at all? Or did you find yourself to be a more willing reader or did it take some time still?

[American Express Representative]

No, I was. After that, I was hooked forever. And I burned through all the. Like. Gordon Corman has these series of. The series of books called McDonald Hall. I think it's. I don't know those at all.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

What are those?

[American Express Representative]

It's these two boys, Bruno and Boots, at a boarding school, and they're roommates, and one of them always wakes up with a sneeze and they're. It's kind of like this hilarious hijink. It's not. Not like Hardy Boy's level of seriousness. And I reading. I was reading all the Hardy Boys as well, and all the, all the Nancy Drews as well, and all the Black Stallions as well. But Burrito and Boots was what I really connected with because it was such a fantasy world to me, this idea of boarding school.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Yeah.

[American Express Representative]

And I mean, at the time I had no idea of the history of indigenous people in boarding schools. I just thought boarding school was this wonderful place where you get to hang out with friends. Right.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

No parents, and you get to. You're done with school at 6 and you could just goof off. Right. Yeah, yeah.

[American Express Representative]

It seemed like the dream man. But. But, you know, so I'm plowing through like Cardi Boys, Auntie Drew, Bruno and Boots, all that stuff. But then totally randomly in fifth grade stumbled into Whitley Strieber's Wolfen and the werewolf novel. Or I mean, it's arguably a werewolf novel anyways. And there's chapters in Wolfen that are told from the grandfather wolf's point of view and his voice. And he's kind of the alpha wolf of this pack of Wolfen, which are these, like, side species. They're the ultimate predator. They're more than wolves. They're not quite human. And I would spend the next few years rereading Wolf and not the whole novel. I would reread the grandfather wolf chapters because that idea of being inside this amazing creature's head and hearing how it talked, that's like I said that I've been trying to write two or three books my whole life.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

That's one of them.

[American Express Representative]

That's one of them, yeah. Wolf. And it imprinted on me young. I was like. I was like Jacob in Twilight with Renew. I imprinted on it, you know, so you.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

I mean, it did. Is that sort of because you were into hunting and, and the idea of animals in the wild where you kind of cross identified. Right. With the predator or something like that at all?

[American Express Representative]

Yeah, I think it has something to do with that. Yeah. And. And like, so I would have been in fifth grade, I would have been 11 years old when I read Wolfen. And I spent a lot of my 12th grade year looking up every way I could become a werewolf and trying all the ways. I was like rolling in the sand naked at midnight. I was. I was doing everything I could to try to be a werewolf because I wanted to be a werewolf more than I wanted to be a kid.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Yeah. Instead of how to lose a guy in 10 days, how to, how to become a werewolf in 12 crackpot methodologies, so it sounds like somewhere you're browsing and finding these things. This is a school library, public library. Like, how are you actually encountering these books?

[American Express Representative]

It was. Well, that's. It was mostly the school library for fourth and fifth grade. And we didn't. Like, town was really far away for us. We would go probably every two weeks, maybe every three weeks. And my grandmother started taking me with her on her, like, Saturday outings to town. And there was a little used bookstore in Midland, Texas called Mrs. B's Books. And just like, you know, mounds of random mass market paperbacks, towering little stacks of them everywhere. And, and I could usually get like six books because they were a quarter each or something. Right. And. And I would do that. But to tell you truth, my real book hoard was when I was in. I think it was the end of fifth grade. I was 11 years old. Yeah, I was at one of my uncle's houses. He lived out there with us in the country. And, and he, he was a reader himself. He, he couldn't drive, and so his wife drove him everywhere. And he always had his. He would sit in the pasture seat, passenger seat, and read and read and read. Really? He always had a book. And. And so I'm over at his house one day and I'm sitting in the living room in some corner with a. Some sort of book I was reading. And he said, hey, you like to read, don't you? And I said, yeah. And he said, come with me. And he led me down his hall and he pulled open what was supposed to be the linen closet, but it was his library and it was front to back, side to side, top to top with mass market paperbacks and just like a big block of books, you know, like a telephone booth of books.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Like, like full, like, like you have to like, pull stuff out to get.

[American Express Representative]

Exactly. Okay.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Not like a shit shelf with three walls, just like everything. He was using every inch to hold that stuff. Wow.

[American Express Representative]

Yeah, it was. And, and he said, he said, if you like books, you can take three of these. When you read those, bring them back, you can have three more. And I went through his whole closet like that. And, and his taste, he had three main authors or three main types of books. He had Mac Boland books, all the, like, you know, men's adventure kind of things. And he had every Louis the More and every off brand, Louis Lamore, you know, Max brand, all of those. And, and he had a lot of all the Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Barbarian kind of wannabes.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Interesting.

[American Express Representative]

Yeah. And so I really Fell for Louis Lamour and Conan the Barbarian. I never fell for Mac Bolan.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

I would.

[American Express Representative]

I would read those because I had to, to get to the next book.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

The next book.

[American Express Representative]

Yeah. Yeah. But I went through his whole closet, and I always think, what if he had not done that? What if he had not showed me his linen closet? Where would I be?

[Stephen Graham Jones]

You know, I think a lot of us, that books have become important to us, have. It's not going to be your uncle's. It's going to be some version of that. Like, for me, my uncle, when he was leaving college, had, like, all of his college books that he just gave me, and they were uncurated. They weren't picked for me. They were just my own little exploration chamber. And I read Philip Roth and some classics and some more modern stuff, and I just kind of opened my eyes up to it, I think. Also, I don't want to put us necessarily in the same age group, but I'm guessing we're similarly aged. I think a lot of us had an uncle, a grandfather or someone who cared about Louis L'Amour. That there was a big. Like, my grandfather had a huge cabinet of Louis L'Amour. I don't think people get that. Can you talk about Louis? What were the pleasures of Louis L'Amour for you and others who. Who fell in love with Louis Lamore?

[American Express Representative]

You know, in looking back at my, like, love affair with Louis Lamour's novels, I think what I was finding in them was fathers or men who acted correctly, you know, and interesting that that was something I so needed in my life, was like, an adult man who would act correctly, you know, who would. Who would stand up for people and just do all the good things, like Louis. The Moore's heroes are. They're all like. They get shot and they always. They always win and they always are upright and everything. And, I mean, he stamped out the same book, like, 120 times. Names that. The names change, basically, you know.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Yeah.

[American Express Representative]

Either he or his tea or his team did. I never was sure if it was.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Him or, you know, I don't know that much about it. I should do some research into the Louis Lamour industrial complex.

[American Express Representative]

Yeah, exactly.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Made and everything.

[American Express Representative]

Exactly.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

I think the shorthand for people who know, like, Hollywood is sort of like they're kind of like John Wayne stories, honestly.

[American Express Representative]

Yeah.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

I mean, it's. Yeah, they really are shorthand. It's.

[American Express Representative]

Yeah. One of John Wayne's earliest films, wasn't it Hondo?

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Yeah.

[American Express Representative]

Where. And that was a Louis Lamore book, you know. That's one of Lula Moore's really early books and it's a pretty good novel and pretty, pretty. All right. Film.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Yeah. So you went from there. So you had, you went through all of those. Did you ever talk with your uncle about what you're reading? It was just sort of a nod and go back to the closet and find what you're going to find.

[American Express Representative]

It was pretty much a nod. We never really talked about it at all. And I didn't, I didn't exactly want to talk about it because some of those off brand westerns were like horse operas that were an excuse for extended sex scenes for dudes.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Right. Like for yesterday. Yes.

[American Express Representative]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

I haven't read those, but I know a little bit about those books. They're kind of lost to time. So you're like, yeah, they are. I don't, I don't want to. I can, I can see that it's my, it's like my, my daughter's friends or something asking me about fourth wing. Like that's not, that's not, that's not a good situation for anybody. So it sounds like this period of like 11 to 12 to 13 was super important to you as a reader.

[American Express Representative]

Like, it so was. And you know, it was. I'm just now realizing when I was 12, like I was saying, we went to town, you know, twice, twice a month. It was on a Wednesday afternoon where we go grocery shopping and it was such a long drive and our truck got such poor gas mileage that we would have to stop at this gas station halfway to town, which was called Pecan Grove. While my mom gassed up, she would give each of us kids 3/4. We could go in and buy a Coke or a Dr. Pepper or whatever, you know, because we never had those in the house. So it was a real treat. And one of those Wednesday afternoon drive to get groceries. I walk in with my three quarters. I've got the cooler in the back beelined. But suddenly there was something new that had not been in the store before. It was a spinning rack by the counter. And it was comic books. I had never seen a comic book. And, and I just turned that spinning rack in wonder looking at these gaudy, colorful images. And I finally picked one and I spent my 75 cents on Secret wars number four.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Oh yeah.

[American Express Representative]

Instead of a Dr. Pepper. And I was back every Wednesday trying to complete that 12 issue, you know, series. And I didn't get them. And I wasn't always the first of the rack, so I didn't always get them. But I still. I've read those inside out into tatters, and I really feel like Secret wars kind of saved my life. Because in number 10, you know the story.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

I do, yeah. I'm a little bit younger, but I had a spinner rack Marvel conversion for like, Extinction Agenda and Executioner Song. Like, you know, I think about eight years later. I think those came.

[American Express Representative]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But in number 10, Dr. Doom is coming at this cosmic entity to steal his power because he's Dr. Doom. He's power hungry.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

And.

[American Express Representative]

And this. This is like a God of another dimension. And Doom is coming at him. He's just immortal, but he's got this. He's built a suit that's supposed to be able to suck power. And anyways, Doom has lost a leg and an arm, and he's. He's like, mortally wounded. He's functionally dead, but he still has one arm. He's still reaching ahead to the light to get that. All through my teenage years, I was in all kinds of situations where giving up would have been the thing to do. You know, I shouldn't have pushed through. But I would always go back to that panel in Secret wars number 10 and think, you know, Dr. Doom did it. I can do it too.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

He's got one arm left. Just. You've got something to reach with. Reach with it, huh?

[American Express Representative]

Exactly. And I really think if I didn't have that comic book, then I. I would have given up, you know.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

That's amazing. So did you. I mean, I. You've written comics subsequently and, like, did you keep reading comics throughout your life? Like, how did that. I don't often get to talk about comics with people. Yeah, I did.

[American Express Representative]

I kept reading them. I mean, I even got a Spider man subscription. Somehow I cobbled the money together. And yeah, I was big on Spider Man, Big on Incredible Hulk. I was much more Marvel. Me too.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

I was an X Men guy. I was if X Men. And then if, you know, there's a crossover or something like that, I was always.

[American Express Representative]

Yeah, for sure. But, you know, I never gave up on comics either. In my 20s, of course, I was broke, had no money, but I figured out that libraries had, like, trade issues of everything. And so my 20s was all about reading. Just spending so much time at the library reading so many comic books.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

I do think about that because I had. I mean, not a dissimilar experience of going into. Call them quick trips in my. I grew up in Kansas. You know, a gas station, convenience store. You could get a Slurpee and A hot dog that's been there since, I don't know, the dawn of man. And one day I feel like they were. It must have been in the early 90s or late 80s where someone decided at Marvel or Diamond Distributors or whoever was doing this to put these spinner racks where teenage boys could find them. And I think you could draw a line between that and, like billion dollar movie franchises. I'm not sure that if that didn't exist, we have all of this stuff that goes on today. Spinner racks and gas stations and grocery stores.

[American Express Representative]

I completely agree. I have so many friends who, when I zoom with them, they've somehow found spinner racks and they put them. They have them back in the corner.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Oh, really?

[American Express Representative]

They put their single issues on.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

That's awesome. I haven't really thought to do that. My kids would get a kick out of that. I always. I've always wanted one of those just for, like, the magazines and like, what we're currently reading. So you can just find it so you don't end up all over the table and floor and everything else, like.

[American Express Representative]

Yep. Yeah. You know, I say I was. I mean, so I was always reading novels and comic books when I'm 10, 11, 12. But the other thing I could not keep my nose out of was National Enquirer and Weekly World News. They were so, like. I feel like they were priming me to Love X Files 10 years later.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Right. You know that boy, Real or myth? Yeah. And so were you at the. Were you while Grandma was checking out? Were you reading them that way? Were you buying them?

[American Express Representative]

Yeah, no, we never bought them, but never.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

I don't know who bought those. You just read them before you check out. You get behind someone who has a huge cart in front of you and that gives you seven minutes to check out what's in the tabloids.

[American Express Representative]

Exactly. Well, my. My mom, on those Wednesday afternoons, she would go to the grocery store and she had to get like two things of groceries because there were three boys and, you know, dad, and it had to last two weeks. And so she would be in the grocery store for two or two and a half hours. And also it was like a social thing because she had friends and they would all talk and talk and talk and. And all us kids would just get deposited at the magazine rack and we'd sit there on our knees and read mag magazines.

[Jeff]

This episode is sponsored by the Rag Picker King by Cassandra Clare. Stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from the audiobook edition provided by our sponsors at Penguin Random House Audio in the epic follow up to the New York Times bestseller Sword Catcher, praised by George R.R. martin as quote, everything I look for in fantasy, Lyn and Kel must chart a perilous course between love and lies. Kel Saren, body double to Connor, crown prince of the dazzling city of Castellane, is caught between two worlds in order to protect his beloved prince. Kell must find the culprits responsible for a massacre at the royal palace, and the only clues are held by the Ragpicker King, the notorious criminal who rules Castellain's underworld. The trail Kel follows leads back to the hill, where, among decadent nobles and glittering parties, a dark conspiracy to destroy the royal family has taken hold. A conspiracy headed up by the monstrous Ardell Grimund, the man engaged to marry the woman Kell adores. Again, stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from the audiobook edition of the Rag Picker King by Cassandra Clare, available now wherever books and audiobooks are sold.

[American Express Representative]

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[Stephen Graham Jones]

That's amazing. So you've discovered comics. You have. You have Uncle's Trove, his arc of the paperback that you can raid. What's next in your reading journey in high school, college? What's another inflection point or a meaningful point? Remember that was important to you?

[American Express Representative]

You know, probably around 14 or so at the Mrs. B's Bookstore in Midland, Texas. Used Books stumbled into science thrillers like Michael Crichton stuff. And although this. I mean he created like a whole little sub genre.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Absolutely, yeah.

[American Express Representative]

Everybody was. Everybody was trying to be Michael Crichton. And there's a lot of good stuff happening too. And every science thriller I could find inhaled over and over. I'd read those books over and over, just milking them, you know, because I thought there were ideas in there that I was going to need later, you know, for.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

For what?

[American Express Representative]

Yeah, no.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Are you not thinking. You're not thinking of yourself as a writer yet? I've read a little bit about you that you're.

[American Express Representative]

No.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Your idea to become a writer comes later than this.

[American Express Representative]

It does. Yeah. No, it wasn't. I wasn't. Think. I wasn't trying to get crazy.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

These are survival tips. When the cyborgs come. Okay.

[American Express Representative]

Exactly. Yeah. Or I mean, maybe. Who knows? I was thinking. I knew I was different and weird and I thought. I thought maybe like one of the books I read was Einstein's Brain where Einstein's brain is cut into six parts and put into six different people. You know, I thought maybe I have a little bit of Einstein's brain in me or something.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Or someone's brain. There's something going on with me, Right?

[American Express Representative]

Yeah.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

You'll find the skeleton key to explain the units of you. Yeah, that's really interesting. And so that was at the Mrs. B's Bookstore. So you would go and you would buy these or you'd read them there or how.

[American Express Representative]

You know, I'd buy them and they were they were so cheap they're practically giving them away. You know, and my grandma and she would support this. You know, I forgot there was a fifth thing I was reading when I was actually to go back.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Yeah, sure.

[American Express Representative]

I lived with my grandparents a lot growing up and they were way, they were way further out in the country than we were. And my grandfather had evidently fallen prey to a door to door salesman at some point. The past.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Oh, encyclopedias. I'm just guessing here.

[American Express Representative]

No, no, it was every National Geographic and Reader's Digest from 1957 to 1984. And in all that time out there with them with absolutely nothing to do, I read every issue of all those Reader Digest and National graphics from COVID to cover and all the condensed books too. Those, you know, the four novels in one package kind of thing. And, and that, that was amazing that I thought, I'm going to be a photographer for National Geographic. That's what I'm going to do.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

My grandparents also, I had similar experience and sort of, you know, we'd give. We. They didn't live close by, but we go every year for a week or 10 days and our Nintendo wasn't there. You know, we didn't have. All our friends weren't there. We didn't have a place to go kick the ball around. So it's like, okay, what are we gonna do? Busy ourselves. And they had a shelf of Louis Lamour, as I said, and a bunch of old National Geographics. Those old. And they felt like, they felt like transcriptions of a different universe, like something from 1937 and it's about Africa or Asia and like some of them are photos and some of like hand drawn. They're so, they were so. They were so strange and compelling. I remember that experience myself.

[American Express Representative]

Oh, it's so wonderful. And what's neat to me, not neat to my wife is that I've inherited all those Geographics and so I've got them all in the other room. It is so many books and you can.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

And I do find myself, even when we're like an antique place or at a flea market, you'll see a stack of them. And I'm always sort of tempted to acquire them for reasons unknown. Like they're important for me to have.

[American Express Representative]

Yeah, well, I had a similar experience at a flea market about three weekends ago. I was talking to this guy about some little weird, like welded together nuts and bolts he had on his table or something and like $3. And he kind of looked around and he said, hey man, I'm not telling everybody this. But under the table here I've got all, you know, believe the more I came out in those hardbound leather back, the golden lettering and all. He said, I've got all of those under this table. I will sell them to you for like 25. And I wanted them so badly, but I'm under strict orders to not bring stacks of books into the house.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Okay, well, we need to get to the. What. What are the customs official. It's your homes declaring as needing. Needing to be restricted goods. So in high school, a lot of people who read young can have a fallow period in their high school into 20s. Was that true for you or where did your reading path take you? Kind of after that.

[American Express Representative]

I was reading compulsively the whole way through high school and it did not like socially help me, you know, to always. To always be the guy with a Mac. With what. Who was I reading at the time? Like the Mickey Spillane stuff.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

You're doing hard boiled stuff?

[American Express Representative]

Yeah, I was doing a lot of that hard boiled stuff. And I was always had one of those little bitty. They're like thin paperbacks. The books had to be like 45,000 words long, if that, you know, and always have one of those stuffed into my back pocket or a comic book rolled up in my back pocket. And. And anytime all my friends were. We'd, you know, we had a cotton field or a lake or something, I'd sneak away and be reading a book. And you know, it didn't help me. But you know, when I was reading Thor comics, it didn't help me when I tried to talk like Thor on the playground either, you know.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

No, no. The by the power of Asgard doesn't help with the ladies when you're 14. No. Are you doing that? Doesn't work at all. You know, it is interesting to think about because like ever, most of the books we've talked about so far, I guess outside of where the word for ingrowns are mostly commercial enterprises. Right. They're mostly meant to. And again, there's nothing wrong with this. Sell books to people who I guess don't have an independent bookstore around them or a New Yorker subscription or, you know, some sense of prize winners and everything else like that. And yet it matters, right? It matters to have availability books. And I think that's one thing when you know, this is one of my hobby horses now. Making books more difficult for kids to access only hurts everyone down the road. And it's so hard to understand how this happens where at some point in most People's lives who. For whom books become important. They have access to some ability to choose books for themselves. Right. I mean, it doesn't have to be a huge selection, just like a closet or a used bookstore or school library where they can kind of explore and discover.

[American Express Representative]

Yeah.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

It really makes me sad when I. When I see stories about libraries closing or kids not having access to books in that way.

[American Express Representative]

Oh, man. I know. Where would I word words so many of us be if we hadn't had that access?

[Stephen Graham Jones]

So in. Were there. Did you ever. How were you as a reader of. Of stuff you were assigned in school? Did you enjoy that? Were there things that helped you? Were there teachers that stand out as being even sort of passively interested in you as a reader?

[American Express Representative]

There were. I remember in, let's see, in sixth grade, this is, this is just more about a teacher than a.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Sure, yeah, absolutely.

[American Express Representative]

My history teacher was taking us through like a, you know, the old style slideshow where you, you know, the wheel and everything.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

The carousel. Yeah, absolutely.

[American Express Representative]

Yeah. And she was putting stuff on screen and taking us through like, like Greek or Roman stuff. And, and I noticed that these BC numbers were going backwards. And I raised my hand and I said, I said her name was Mrs. Easton. I said, Mrs. Easton, I think this is messed up because the numbers are going backwards. And she says, you're the first student to ever notice that. But that's how it works, you know, BC goes backwards up to zero, then starts over. And, and that was like a really important infl. Like inflection moment for me because I was like, oh, I can be right about something. That just blew me away, you know, and, and, and a teacher can be impressed with me too. That was important. You know, I've been in. I mean, I've much trouble by that point. Like, I remember my mom had to come talk to the principal because I couldn't go back to English class because. And when she asked what did I do, the teacher said I was smiling. And. Yeah, I got sent to the principal's office for smiling. And, and I was acting all innocent, but tell you truth, I figured out how to push that teacher's buttons.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Oh, okay, right.

[American Express Representative]

I knew that if I smiled, she.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Would, like, flip out like a joker. Smile like one of those kinds of situations. Not all smiles are the same, I guess.

[American Express Representative]

No, they're not. And I had another teacher where I. The science teacher. I, I passed. I aced all of her quizzes, not because I remotely knew the material, but because I figured out when she gave us four choices Which. That's how all her quizzes were structured. She would always shape her lips like the right answer, like, just very slightly. And so I was. I figured out how to game. Game a lot of stuff.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Like you're reading pitches, like, sort of that way. Yeah, like that.

[American Express Representative]

Yeah, exactly.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Interesting.

[American Express Representative]

Yeah, it helped. It helped. But. But let me think. I was, you know, in high school also, so I was reading a lot of. Yeah, like the. The Hard boiled stuff and science thrillers. I hadn't discovered horror yet, but I was also reading a whole lot of physics. I don't. I never understood the math, but I remember lots of times I want to get busted for truancy. People would find me. I'd build like a little cardboard fort somewhere, and I'd be reading like. Like. Like chaos, like James Gleich's Chaos and stuff like that. Because I really thought I could figure the world out if I could just find the right key, you know?

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Well, it's kind of like trying to figure out if you have part of Einstein's brain in your brain. Like, what. What explains all this crap that's going on out here.

[American Express Representative]

Exactly.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Make some sense of this. I guess I. Even for people who don't turn into horror writers or fans, but they're readers, there's a Stephen King moment. Did you have a Stephen King moment?

[American Express Representative]

I did, yeah. I was. Must have been 16 or 17, I think this is 1988. And somehow, some random way, I got a hardcover of Tommy Knockers.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Okay.

[American Express Representative]

And I stayed up all night reading.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Yeah, you did, Did.

[American Express Representative]

It was. I mean, coming out of a science thriller, Tommy Knockers is absolutely perfect, you know, because it's got all these, like, egg cartons with D batteries making amazing. The alien inventions and everything.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Yeah.

[American Express Representative]

And Tommy Knockers completely hooked, man. Yeah. I fell into King after that, and I read everything I get my hands on. I probably didn't read the big ones, you know, the Stand and it.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Until.

[American Express Representative]

Until probably 1980.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Just because they were big or any particular reason?

[American Express Representative]

Yeah, I think. I think because they were big. Yeah. And kind of big to carry around, you know, And I was always carrying. Carrying stuff around. But. But also in high school at the same. The same exact time when I discovered Tommyknockers. When I discovered King, I was living in a house where there was just always all kinds of violence and all kinds of officials and law enforcement people. It was just a wild place to live and guns and knives all the time. And I went back to Louis Lamar. I would find Louis the Mars, like, for comfort, because they brought me back to being 12 years old and believing in that kind of stuff. And I would read those books, but I couldn't read them in the house because it was too wild of a place to be. So I would. We were living at the edge of the Air Force Academy, based in Colorado Springs. And I would take my book and either a lighter or a match and go far out into the trees and just lean against somewhere and read. And then when dark came, I would. When dark came, I would start tearing pages out and lighting them, and I would burn that page and read the next page. And I would go through the whole book like that, such that by the. It. Such as by the end, I just had ash everywhere and the book had evaporated. It was a really cool way to read.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Somewhere there's a tree being fertilized by those burnt pages of Louis Lamour. That's an evocative images if there ever was one.

[American Express Representative]

And those old, cheap, thin Louis Lamours, they burn really well.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Yeah, that paper probably had chemicals we don't even want to know about. There's probably hardly any actual paper in there. It's probably mostly plastic or rayon or something. Or something that's going in that way. So you. You go to college, right? And like you said, you didn't ever think a. A life in books was a possibility. At what point did that change for you? That maybe there's something here for you as a career, as a professional, for a life?

[American Express Representative]

Yeah, well, yeah, you're right. I never plan to go to college. It was completely random and arbitrary that I wound up there, but my mom said I need to be somewhere where book people were. You know, she said that.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

So she.

[American Express Representative]

Yeah, she.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

So she had been seeing you doing all this reading all your life, so the. It's now a thing. Steven's the reading kid and like, let's do something with that.

[American Express Representative]

Yeah. Well, what she did was I didn't graduate high school the traditional way. I had to, you know, go around the side because I got kicked out of so many schools.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

But, well, there's all the smiling. I mean. I mean, it's so much smiling.

[American Express Representative]

Exactly. But she took me out to eat, and she said. She gave me a suitcase. She said, you got to get out. You got to get out of this town. It's going to kill you. And she was right. And. And she also said, you've always been reading. You need to be among people who read. And she had saved up enough money for me to go to one semester of college, and I figured I can go. I can go to one semester of college. And. And so I went up there to Texas Tech, two hours away. And for the first time in my whole entire life, I sat in a classroom where a book had been assigned and everyone in class had read that book.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

I asked you about that, about your peers, like, because you kind of mentioned that you felt like an oddball for reading at all. So that must have been an extremely powerful experience.

[American Express Representative]

That was. That was amazing. Usually, I mean, I would. Like in high school, when we were talking about Beowulf or Canterbury Tales, the teacher would always call on me to read it because I can. I've always had a really. A knack for getting the meter down and reading stuff as it. As it maybe was meant to. To be read. And. And that never helped me. You know, people would, like, yeah, not that would catch a lot of stuff for that, but. But this college, which I had never imagined was completely different. It was a place where you were rewarded for doing that, you know, and so I was hooked, man. I was off to the races. It was the best thing ever.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Did that change your relationship? Did that change how you understand yourself or books or like. Or was your. I mean, how. How was that transformative to you?

[American Express Representative]

I felt like less of a weirdo, I think then that was. That was good, you know? I mean, you always. I mean, you kind of always want to be unique, I guess, right?

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Unique, but not weird, you know? Exactly.

[American Express Representative]

It's a very.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

It's a very fine needle to thread. Most of us are trying to. Trying to do.

[American Express Representative]

It definitely is.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Yeah.

[American Express Representative]

Right. But this. I had found a place where my ability to read books and understand books was something that was advantageous, you know, And. And I was a philosophy major. I was not an English major. I wasn't an English major until very last semester. But I loved reading. The harder, like, the more Heidegger something could be.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Oh, God. Okay. Yeah. All right.

[American Express Representative]

Yeah.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

You were. You weren't shying away. Well, that. You probably. You're probably prepped for that. By trying to understand the math of chaos theory, it's like, you know, it's easier than. Heidegger is hard, but it's easier than just equation after equation of chaos.

[American Express Representative]

It is. But I. Looking back, I think the reason I excelled in philosophy, it wasn't actually that I could conceptualize this stuff like, any better than anyone else, but I could regurgitate it and write it in a way that people could understand, you know, And. And so my real talent wasn't necessarily philosophy. It was Writing, I think I. I.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Was also a philosophy major, to begin that, switched to English. So I can. I can, you know, sympathize with that. What was the moment where you decided English was the way rather than philosophy? Was there a moment?

[American Express Representative]

It. Well, I guess what happened was this was probably my second semester at school. I'm sitting in the back of a monster classroom, which my advisor had said, do you want to take a monster class? And before he was even finished asking, I was like, yes, you know, and.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Is that a rhetorical question?

[American Express Representative]

Yeah. But when I showed up, I was so disappointed because I thought it was like werewolves and zombies and vampires. Monster at Texas Tech means like a 400 person class. It's the size.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

So it's a giant, like a chemistry lecture or something like that.

[American Express Representative]

It was. It was like a World lit two or something. And so I'm at the. I'm in the very back row of that one, like Wednesday or something. And I'll have. I have a tank top and some gym shorts and a spiral notebook and a pen. I'm taking notes on Canterbury Tales or something or, you know, and Fairy Queen from the professor talking. He's like an aunt two miles away, you know, and it's all dark and a couple of police officers come in and they lower their sunglasses and they're looking around and I'm going lower and lower in my seat because every time in my life the officers have been in the room, they're always there for me.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

They're looking for you.

[American Express Representative]

And sure enough, they were looking for me. And they pulled me out and I slouch out after them and I know this is going to be another ordeal, but turns out this, they weren't getting me for something I had done the previous weekend. That uncle who had given me all the books when I was 11, had been burned terribly over his whole body, and they had airlifted him to my town because we had the best burn unit in the region and I was the only family member they could find. And so they brought me to the icu. And for three days and three nights I sat in the ICU waiting for him to live or die. And all I had was that pen and notebook. And I got bored enough that I read a story. I read all the magazines. And so I wrote my first story when I was 19. And I came back on Monday after Michael did end up surviving. It was a long ordeal, but he's still. He's still kicking. But I came back Monday to my composition court clash class, and I had missed Wednesday And Friday, because I was in the hospital and I was supposed to have a personal essay written for that day. I did not have that personalized, but.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

I do have this. Yeah, yeah.

[American Express Representative]

And. And so we had to turn all our stuff in on the left corner of the desk, and everyone lined up to turn it in, and they all had typed out stuff. And I didn't have a word processor. Mine was just handwritten. Then I pulled it out of the spiral, and I've crimped it at the edges and left it there. And I figured maybe I'll get partial credit. But that instructor, she liked it enough that she passed it on to the creative writing faculty, who typed it up and entered it into a English department contest, which I won. And I got $50.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Oh, now we're cooking.

[American Express Representative]

Exactly. And that was, for me, that's the moment where, like, a light went off and I was like, you mean people care about these lies? And that blew me away, you know, and so I just kept on doing that all through undergrad, just writing stories and getting little publications and winning little awards and taking workshops. And coming into my last semester, my advisor said, you know, if you take one more creative writing class, you've got a double major. And I said, sure, let's do it. Wow. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game?

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that.

[American Express Representative]

Fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.

[Debbie]

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[Stephen Graham Jones]

You mentioned that story of, you know, a teacher saying, you know, never. No one's ever noticed that about the numbers in bc. You have this teacher that sort of sees something in you to cultivate. It is amazing how powerful that is for a student of any kind to have, you know, someone who doesn't have to like you, see something in you and do something about it.

[American Express Representative]

Oh, I know. I'm so thankful to that instructor in my College Composition 2 class, because if she had not accepted that off Assignment. Assignment. You know, then I probably just go home and farm.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

I. I suspect, you know what a sliding doors moment. That.

[American Express Representative]

That I know it totally is. And what I hate is that I can't remember her name.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Oh, really? Yeah, yeah.

[American Express Representative]

She was a. She was a graduate student teacher. And I just. She slipped away, man. And I never can find her.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

I had a second grade teacher that noticed I liked to read and sort of cultivated and fed me stuff. And I wish I knew her name. I don't know what I'd do with that name. Who knows? But I wish I knew it. I do wish I knew it. I can feel that.

[American Express Representative]

Exactly. But I mean, I had the other kind of teachers too, like.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Oh, sure.

[American Express Representative]

My very. My very last day I ever went to high school was the first day of my senior year where I was at a new school. I was always at a new school. And I was sitting in the back. It was a packed government class. And the teacher walks in and she kind of cases the joint, like, trying to get her bluff in. And. And she picks me to get her bluff in. And she says, you in the back, get your greasy head off my chalkboard. And so I just walked. I just walked out of high school and I was done with that.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Yeah, I mean, the less said about those teachers, the better, I guess. But they. They do there. It works the other way too, too. Once you started writing stories yourself, how did that. Did that change the way you read things? Were you starting to look for how things were put together at all or did it. Or how did it affect.

[American Express Representative]

I did. And I was really nervous too, because I realized I was becoming a different type of reader. I was kind of like what I consider, like a robber. Like someone who go in looking for stuff to steal. Right. And I was afraid that I was going to lose the magic of reading, that I was going to see it as a mechanical process or I was going to see the joints and the seams and everything, but have some. I think I'm lucky in that I still fall completely under the spell of everything I read, and I believe it. And I do read like a writer because I'm looking at technique. I'm looking at why do they.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

How did they do that? Yeah. Why that choice? Yeah.

[American Express Representative]

But I. I can do that. And I can also just be so under the spell of this.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

That's cool. That's really cool. As an adult. I don't want to take. We're already.

[American Express Representative]

I'm good.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

We're running out of the time here. I want. I want to Be careful of your time. But this is amazing. So let's move to like your current state, you know, because we can fast forward a little bit. As your life as a reader now, you writing career, you've been writing for, you know, multiple decades. How do you organize your reading life now? How do you decide what to read? Do you still read just for fun? Are you reading all over or are you reading horror? Sci fi genre? Like, describe your reading life as it exists right now.

[American Express Representative]

You know, it maybe sums up with a text I sent to a friend of mine last night, Paul Tremblay. Okay. One of his books had like a shelf talker at a bookstore I was at last night. I was on my way home from work out and there was a bookstore. And I'm like, you know, I better stop.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

You can sneak one into your coat or something. Like, that's not a whole chest of Louis Lamour leather. It's just one book. You can get through customs.

[American Express Representative]

Yeah. So I stopped and I saw that and I sent him a snapshot of that shelf talker or whoever was saying something nice on index card about his book. And, and he said, he said, what are you doing? Are you there signing books? And I said, no, I do this about once or twice a week. I go and just like, browse the magazine racks and the new, new. The new releases.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

And.

[American Express Representative]

And I was. What I told him was, I miss random readings so badly.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Yeah.

[American Express Representative]

You know, I miss just the, the wonder of falling into something completely unknown because that's something I don't really have anymore unless I make it happen. Because most of my reading is planned out for me by people who lean on me for a blurb for this.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Right.

[American Express Representative]

And it's wonderful. I read amazing, great stuff. I mean, I remember, like, I read Daniel Kraus's Whale Fall before, like, oh.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

My son just read this. He's been talking about it for like the last week.

[American Express Representative]

It's amazing. It's such an amazing novel. And his next one, angel down, is amazing too. He's a great writer. But. And I'm so. I'm not at all sad about what I read, but I miss random reading. I miss picking up something based on, well, why would an elf be on a spaceship? I better investigate this, you know?

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Yeah. And it's. I mean, it is. I. I think about this and I've talked to other people about this. When you're in a library or bookstore, especially as a kid, it's one of the few places a kid is given freedom to choose. Right. You know, I'm gonna do that and not that. And the stakes are. Adults think the stakes are low and they kind of are, but they're also totally not like it could. That something could change the redfern grows or something else can change your life. And I think because I'm like this too, I read professionally and it's. It's not same, but it's not the same. But it's similar where yeah, I could have all my reading mapped out for me just sort of practically and. But I do try to go out of my way and go to the bookstore and just sort of wander around and just sort of see some stuff because like, you work in books and I do too. You. We know a lot, but there's even stuff we haven't heard of. Right? Like there's stuff. Where the hell did that thing come from?

[American Express Representative]

I know it's, it's. And I'll listen to podcasts and people will talk about like a Booker Prize winner from a 2011. And I think I've got to read that book first thing, you know.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

And so you'll go back and do backlist like, you know, are there any patterns to what catches your eye? Or is the stranger the better? Or what do you notice about your own taste left its own devices?

[American Express Representative]

No, it's not. I don't think it's patterns. I do gravitate if my first two choices are generally science fiction and horror. Those are kind of my happy places. And I think the reason they're my happy places is because if I read a story about an accountant going through a divorce and it turns out to be a poorly written novel, I get to the end of it. There's nothing left in my hands. But if I read a story about a cybernetic werewolf, then at the end of it, if it's written poorly, then that's a disappointment. That is written poorly, but still I saw a cybernetic world. It's kind of cool, right?

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Gotcha. Yeah. Whereas a boring accountant book. Accountants are still boring. The end of that really didn't take you on a. A bad roller coaster ride is still a roller coaster ride.

[American Express Representative]

Exactly. But so. So I think I'm kind of like a. As far as a reader goes, I'm kind of like a raccoon. I like shiny things, you know?

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Yeah. Do you recommend books to people? Do people look to you for recommendations? Do you have. Do you have some go to's that you recommend to people you know?

[American Express Representative]

For. For a few years there it was Fup by Jim Dodge. I'd Recommend that to a lot of people. That's a. That's like a weird book that. It changes people. You don't come out of the book the same as you were, you know.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

No, that's true. That's a good one.

[American Express Representative]

I'm always. I'm always trying to get. I'm always proselytizing for Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine. That novel is just a magic to me.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

She's one that. As great as she is and as many awards as she won, still under known and underrated in America.

[American Express Representative]

I agree. Yeah, I totally agree. I don't understand it.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Yeah.

[American Express Representative]

But I love. What I really love is a book that makes my heart pound, you know, and like.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Like how? Like scared or just any. Any of the ways a heart can be pounding. You' take whatever. Okay.

[American Express Representative]

It's probably any of the ways. You're right. And like, one of my most pure reading experiences I can remember is what's his name? Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Oh, that was the TV show. But I never read the underlying thing. I didn't. I don't know.

[American Express Representative]

The first novel, I think is really good. It's a little. It's a trilogy. But the first one, I've read that book a lot of times. Oh, got some dogs barking.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

That's all right. Everyone adds to the color. People like it. It makes it feel real.

[American Express Representative]

It's those dogs from Redfern. I've got them.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Yeah. Wait long enough and then you can manifest best them.

[American Express Representative]

Yeah. But I've got a list somewhere of books that make my heart pound. And I do go back to them over and over and read them.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

So you are a re reader. You are.

[American Express Representative]

I am. Oh, I'm a compulsive rereader. I've read like, Jack Ketchum's the girl next door 13 times. I've read. I've read the Shining probably nine or 10 times. Yeah. I've read VALIS I don't know how many times. And the crying a lot. 49. I read. I used to read that book. So. With such regularity.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

So do you keep track? So you say. You say 13 times. So do you know that in your head, are you keeping track? Do you have a spreadsheet somewhere where you keep.

[American Express Representative]

I don't. I don't have any kind of spreadsheet. The only reason I remember Jack Ketchum's girl next door 13 times is because when I got to that 13th time, that felt like an unlucky number. And I was kind of scary because that's a book that when you read it, it's easy to feel like it's reprogramming you and making you, like, your worst self or something. It's like it's opening a door in your head you can't close. But that's also where the fun is. I think. You know the fun. It's like Bruce Springsteen says and Blinded by the light. Mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun, but Mama, that's where the fun is.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

That's where the fun is. Yeah. Well, you've. You've now come full circle because you teach writing, right? That's part of what you do. I don't need. I don't want you to put any students on blast or anything like that. But like, when you're reading student writing, what do you see? I mean, what excites you in a new writer? I mean, what. What are the kinds of things you're looking for? What, what opens your eyes and say, there's something here or something, or even. Even just a story to pursue?

[American Express Representative]

I guess it's two things that open my eyes. The first is innovation with form. I love, like, just yesterday I got to work story that a student had written as a quiz in a Cosmopolitan magazine, you know, and that I love. I love, forever love those kind of tricks. But my students don't love this about me, that what I also look for is correctness. Like, I think that the first part of writing is communication. And communication has to be clear. There can't be static. There can't be noise in there unless it's intentional. Like for different reasons, of course, but. And so you've got to get your, like, direct address commas right. You've got to punctuate your dialogue correctly. All those things you. If you don't do them right, then no one's going to care about your stuff.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

That's a really. I mean, I used to. I'd never taught creative writing, but I used to teach freshman comp. And that was always a light bulb moment for students when they realized that grammar and clear writing wasn't just manners. It was actually like a service to the reader. Like, you're trying to be understood. And if you screw something up or you don't know how to coordinate independent clauses, you're. The reader won't understand what you're saying. Like, that's just. That's just the part of the game. And if you're going to flout those things, you have to do it knowing what the effect of that flouting is going to be.

[American Express Representative]

Exactly. It's like the poets say, you can't write free verse until you can write form.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Yeah.

[American Express Representative]

You know, I'm. You know that the book I've read that has helped me so much in that regard as far as clarity goes, is that Steven Pinker book on style.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Oh, I haven't read that one.

[American Express Representative]

I don't know. I've read that book a few times and every read it, like every two or three years and it just reminds me, oh, there's still so much to learn. I've got to get better, you know.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Right. Yeah. I was reading a book for Katie K's audition, which is coming out next week, and one thing she does. Does is she. With dialogue, there's no comma, you know, there's no parentheses. There's no. It's just embedded in the paragraphs, which I don't like, like, as taste. But then what is she doing with that? Like, why is she flouting our conventions of how we'd normally understand dialogue? And then you can. That's the other thing as a reader, you can do. If you're conversant in the standards, then you can notice a divergence and sort of think about why they're doing that or what the net effect of those kinds of things are.

[American Express Representative]

You can. But although I always try to tell my students that, they always argue back with. They say, but Cormac McCarthy does it, you know, And I'm. And I always. I'm always sure to always call him Cormac McFancy pants, you know?

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Yeah. It's like saying, well, Steph shoots threes from half court. Well, you're not Steph Curry. Exactly. That's how that goes. Anything? Go ahead. Is there something.

[American Express Representative]

Oh, Steph. Steph Curry. Since his, like, meteoric rise a few years ago, every place I go where they have to put my name on a cup. I'm never Stephen anymore. I'm always Stefan.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

That's so interesting. He's. He's all the Stevens. Like, oh, no, what have you done to me? That's really. Yeah, I had some Christophers in my life and there's that actor, Topher Grace.

[American Express Representative]

Yeah, yeah.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

And they were all getting called Topher for a while and they're like, what's happening here? What's going on here? No one ever called me topher before that 70s show or something. It's amazing. The power. The power of. Of mass culture at this point. Well, you mentioned you mess with form and I. You know, you have the new book coming out and it's doing something with form. Like, it's taking. You want to describe, like with the setup and how you're messing with form a little bit. With the buffalo.

[American Express Representative]

Yeah, it's. I mean, it's number one, it's epistolary. I've done a pistol area before, but I've never done it. I've never done epistolary in this embedded narrative way, you know, like the Philip K. Dick nested narrative thing, or maybe Joseph Conrad, but with another layer on it, you know? Right. It's this guy, good stab, Blackfeet dude, born in 1833, telling his life story to a Lutheran pastor in 1912, as transcribed up from a journal in 2012 by that pastor's great great great granddaughter. You know, and there's vampires and there's revenge and there's blood. It's. It was really fun. It was kind of like a wish fulfillment novel. Like, because I really. It really just continually insults me and enrages me how all these people just shot whole herds of buffalo. And that just breaks my heart. And so getting to stick a vampire on them felt really, really good.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

So a vampire book, written epistolary forms, I mean, that's. I mean, Dracula has to be a specter over that. How much do you think about diverging or homage or how do you do something like that?

[American Express Representative]

Well, I wrote this novel coming right out of teaching a graduate seminar on the vampire. And what we kind of came away with from that class was, was that two of the most, I don't know, influential texts are of course, Dracula and Interview with a Vampire.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Yeah.

[American Express Representative]

And so therefore my Buffalo Hunter Hunter is epistolary, but it's also kind of an interview with a vampire.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

So did your students read Interview with a Vampire? Did you read all that together?

[American Express Representative]

Yes, we did.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

How do, how do modern students find that book? Do they like it or what? They do.

[American Express Representative]

They do like. They do like it. They really identify with Louis like, I don't know, guilty vampire life. You know, he doesn't want to kill that. That's what Anne Rice gave us that I think was really, really good. This, like, almost humanistic vampire. Right?

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Yeah. Who sort of has to, but doesn't want to. That's the conflict there is pretty amazing in terms of the. The text within the text and the metatextualness of it. What. What do you think that lends to it? I mean, I'm sure that's fun to do as a writer, but what, what do you think it actually does to a reader's experience of this story. Do you have some sense of the net effect of that?

[American Express Representative]

I do because what it does is it kind of makes the, the, the floor, the ground beneath their feet unstable. And like nesting narratives and making each narrative have bubbled up through the previous lends the story itself indeterminacy like you. And then, then the reader has to elect to believe in this or to believe in that and they become participants in the creation of the story and they invest in it in a different way. And I really think that's why I like Law and Order. The television series has lasted all these decades is because it's always about what somebody the story someone tells in an interrogation room or from the witness stand and it can be bolstered or undercut by the evidence and all that, but neverthele the audience has to say, oh, I believe them and I don't believe them. And we don't ever get those ridiculous flashbacks in black and white of somebody stabbing somebody. You know, those don't help at all. We don't need certainty. We like determinacy. We liked having to heaven, having to choose. And when we choose this or that, that tells us something about ourselves. And I think it's wonderful that stories can do that.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Thank you so much for joining me, Stephen. Best of luck with the book. This was a delight and a pleasure.

[American Express Representative]

This was a wonderful time. Thank you for having me.

[Stephen Graham Jones]

Thanks so much to Stephen Graham Jones for joining me and indulging us with those stories. What a treat. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is out now. If you feel up to it and you want to rate review the show on Apple Podcasts. Spotify really does help the show. I think we've got 81 ratings reviews on here. Apple love to get up to 100 by summertime. Let's make it happen folks with that. Got something else coming out tomorrow, so I guess till next time, you know, overnight read something great.

[Jeff]

Thanks so much for listening today. We hope you'll enjoy this excerpt from the audiobook edition of the Ragpicker King by Cassandra Clare, provided by our sponsors at Penguin Random House.

[Narrator]

AUDIENCE Audio Prologue Artal Grammont, heir to the Tea Charter of Castellane, had never much liked the ocean. It was the source of his wealth. Of course. The millions of crowns worth of tea and coffee that were carried in sleek ships across the seas to the Castellani port had made his family richer than gods. In theory, he appreciated the convenience of the sea. In actuality, he found it flat, featureless and dull. Then again, Gramont found most things dull. People tended to be dull and generally limited in their thinking. Most parties were dull. Being the son of a charter holder in Castellane with money but no real power, had been equally dull, and when he tried to make life more interesting, he'd been exiled, sent off by his parents to oversee the tea business in foreign climes. That had been exceedingly dull. Now, however, things were starting to get interesting. With his father dead, he had inherited the tea charter and been recalled to Castellan. His exile ended, he'd booked passage on the next ship leaving Taprobana Harbour, one of Laurent Aden's galleons, which at the moment was carrying a shipment of teakwood to Castellane. The ship had six tiny passenger cabins up near the stern, though the captain's vast quarters hogged all the windows. Gramont's room was little better than a closet, with a berth built into the wall and a table bolted to the floor to prevent it from sliding when the ship rolled. Dull, dull, dull. Gramont paced the floor of his cabin fretfully. There was nothing to do on the bloody boat, and his anxiety was building. When he got like this, he often had to do something to make himself feel better. It was a need, like other men felt for food or water. Alas, Laurent Aiden ran a tight ship and had little patience for Arthal's preferences. A young stowaway had been discovered last week after they'd left the port in Favar, but at least Artal had been able to have a little fun with her before Laurent found out about it and had the girl removed from Arthal's quarters post haste. Words had been exchanged that were not particularly polite, and Arthale had been given to understand that if he engaged in any more such business while on the Black Rose, he would be unceremoniously dumped off at the next port, charter or no charter. He did not know what had happened to the girl and did not care. She had gotten blood on his favourite jacket. It which had annoyed him, though not as much as being trapped in this cabin was annoying him now. Laurent had told him not to wander the ship, but fuck Laurent. Gramont yanked open the door of his cabin and made his way out into the narrow passage that ran the length of the ship. He plucked a glass wind lamp from a nail on the wall. Best if he strode purposefully, he thought, making his way across the ship toward the stairs that led up to the weather deck. A purposeful stride tricked people into thinking you were on important business. He passed the ship's galley, where the cook was asleep in a chair, a wooden bucket of half peeled potatoes at his feet. Thank the gods they only had a few days left at sea. Gramont was vilely sick of salt beef, boiled potatoes and suit it. Up on the weather deck the air was clear. The moon hovered close to the horizon, creating a white path that stretched along the water. Rope for the sails lay in neat coils like sleeping snakes. Some might have admired the view the stars picked out across the sky as bright as nail heads, the water like hammered glass. Gramont merely glared at it all. The sea was a barrier between him and Castellane, between him and reclaiming all he had lost in exile. The creak of a board underfoot alerted him to the fact that he was not alone. He turned and for a moment saw nothing. Then she appeared. Shadow evolving out of shadow. The first time he had seen her do this he'd nearly fallen over with shock. He was more used to her brand of magic now. She wore her assassin's gear. Every bit of her was covered with smooth black fabric. It rendered her faceless, which Gramont found unnerving despite the fact that he knew perfectly well what she looked like beneath the disguise. I came to congratulate you on your upcoming nuptials. Art I, Carl, she said. Her voice was low and husky. If he hadn't known her gender, he doubted he could have guessed it. I don't suppose there's any point asking you how you got here from the continent, he replied sourly. Flew on a bat, eh? She chuckled. You are amusingly bitter for a man about to make a very advantageous marriage. He snorted. You know I had my sights set higher than Antonetta Alain. I know your sights were set as high as Angelica of Kutani, but her family would never have accepted you. She is royalty, and royal blood demands royal blood to match with. I suppose you would know. She scoffed and sprang lightly to the railing of the ship. She balanced there easily, though the thought of the long drop to the water made Gramont Queen easy. Don't be sour, Gramont. I do hope you are not having second thoughts about our arrangement. Gramont felt a slight chill run up his spine. He knew she held magic, though he had grown up believing that all but small magics had died with the sundering.