In the last few years, with the advent of mp3 players and smart phones, the portability of media has led to a new medium in the realm of fiction – podcast fiction. Authors who want to share their work have serialized and even full cast dramatized their stories and released them for free to the masses. They do it for various reasons but many – if not most- hope to one day become published authors. And in that growing community, horror author Scott Sigler stands out as the gold standard to which most others aspire. Scott built a large and devoted audience podcasting over the last several years, and managed to work that in to a book deal with Crown, a division of Random House. His latest novel, Ancestor, about a genetically engineered beast wreaking havoc on a secluded island, is due out June 22.

There’s some internal dispute as to who was the very first author to podcast their fiction, but no one argues that Scott was one of the first when he began podcasting his novel Earthcore in 2005, after a publishing deal had fallen through. Though, according to Scott’s website he invented podcasting , along with the Internet (to be fair, Scott does recognize he collaborated with Al Gore on the Internet, but maintains he did most of the work himself), Ninjitsu, and the internal combustion engine, and made his first podcast in 1978. Recently, I talked with Scott and asked him how podcasting was possible in an age before personal computers and mp3 players.

“Well, the technology’s been around for a very long time. I’ve actually… I need to update that. I think we’re going back to 1954 now, is when my first podcast was. So we’re over half a century of podcasting, at this point.”

Though no birth date is listed on his website or Wikipedia page, there are pictures of the dapper Mr. Sigler and he doesn’t look that old. So I asked if he had been podcasting from the womb.

“Actually I’m sort of an evil incarnate type individual. So I’ve been around for an extraordinarily long time. Let’s just say I aged very well.”

I thought about asking which of the plagues had been his idea, but decided to keep the conversation focused on more recent works. His books are heavy on the science, and I wondered if Scott thought of himself more as a sci-fi or horror author.

“I consider myself what I call a hard science horror writer. It’s very different, as far as horror goes, because there’s not a lot of people writing what I consider to be pretty hard core heavy horror, but using it from a scientific bent. Most people are approaching it from the supernatural – you know it’s ghost stories, vampires, werewolves, etc. As far as people who are writing just straight on horror novels but with a really hard science background, outside Michael Crichton who I count in that camp, there’s Jonathan Mayberry is one that comes to mind, and not a lot of other people. So I do consider myself a horror writer.”

So what sets Scott’s work, with its rational science roots, apart from sci-fi?

“My goal with the book is to write a thriller that will scare you, but has a logical plot, a logical conclusion where everything is tied together within the novel and comes to fruition at the climax. And from there, the thing that separates it from sci-fi I think is that the vast majority of sci-fi is apocalyptic future or far future. It’s spaceships or the world destroyed and now vampires run amok across the face of the country or something like that. And all my stuff is modern day, its people like you and me, so it doesn’t really fit into the sci-fi camp very well.”

Ancestor, which Sigler wrote in the late nineties, and originally podcasted in early 2006, features a group of scientist who use a machine to create a synthetic genome based on the ancestor of all mammals in order to create a perfect donor herd of beasts with human transplantable organs. In the time from then to now, many of the scientific aspects of the story have crossed from the world of fiction to reality. I asked Scott what his thoughts were on these mirror events, like Craig Venter’s recent announcement that he and his team created the first synthetic life form.

“One of the concepts in [Ancestor] was the reverse engineering of the mammalian genome. Which is, if we’re digitizing all of these genomes we, theoretically, should be able to look at the genomes of all mammals, figure out what bits of DNA are unique in each mammal, get rid of all the unique stuff which is what makes each animal its own creature, and what should be left over should be pretty close to the original genome of all mammals. And Dr. – I think it was Gregory Haussler at the University of California Santa Cruz actually did that in 2006-ish, near the end of 2006 (EDITOR’S NOTE: The doctor’s name is David, not Gregory, and the project happened at the end of 2005.). So that was a trip. That was something I concocted just as science fiction… and it’s not like Haussler read the book or anything like that, but based on theoretical research that was going on at the time I’m like ‘Well, they should be able to do this some day’ and then it happened just a few years later. So between the genetic sequencing of the ancestor of all mammals and Craig Venter actually coming up with artificial life it makes Ancestor all the more plausible, all the more real, and hopefully a lot scarier.”

For Scott, the best part of writing these hard science horror tales?

“Getting to come up with all these crazy theories on what we could possibly do and then bouncing it off this battery of biology PHD’s I have that read all my stuff. And they will tell me ‘Well, that’s cool’ or ‘that’s totally inaccurate, that’ll never happen’. And more often than not they’ll come back and say ‘We just discovered this, go take a look at this.’ And they’ll send me a Wikipedia link. And I’ll like… that’s amazing. So I get to do… I get to learn a lot of stuff that is common knowledge but hasn’t quite gotten out to the popular culture level yet and kind of get to be one of the first readers of some of these things outside of the scientific community. So that’s very exciting and that’s where my ‘every morning is Christmas’ moments come from.”

Listen to the full audio of the interview below!

Scott’s website

Scott’s AMC Blog

 

 Episode 07 - A Visit from the Overlord [00:53:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

So I’ve been thinking lately… If you read Dean’s blog about Episode 06 – Material Components then you’ll know I had some qualms about the story as he initially presented it to me. Not about the story itself, so much as putting it out there in this age when there are lawsuits over Facebook posts. I wasn’t sure about taking a risk putting something out I was nearly positive people would react badly to (the subject matter, not the story which I think is excellant). Now, the story changed some since his initial idea, but the seed of the school shooting is still there. And yet we didn’t get one outraged response. So maybe I was over-reacting over a particular taboo I have.

I was in high school when Columbine happened and our school’s reaction was much like a lot of schools at the time, I’d imagine. They went in to lock down. No one was allowed to leave school grounds and then return for any reason what-so-ever, once you were off campus you were gone for the day. Every door was monitored. Random locker and backpack searches were done.

I was part of a group of friends who wore a lot of black. We listened to heavy metal or prog rock. We read horror and scifi/fantasy. Some people were in to cutting, branding, drugs, paganism, Satanism… it was high school, for a lot of us it was all about finding things out and exploring what worked for us. To a lot of people, we were the ‘weirdos’. And after Columbine, the usual looks we got became more intense. Rumors flew. People were questioned. It was not a fun time, to put it mildly.

So, maybe Dean’s right and I’m a little extra touchy about that particular subject. Which he then brings up after reading what I’ve got written so far for the next story on Trickster Moon Presents… He finds it interesting that I was concerned about how people would receive Material Components, but it didn’t really occur to me anyone may be bothered by the contents of Sleep, Baby, Sleep.

When asked what I write, I tend to self-describe as someone who writes body horror. My stories are very often rooted in the physical, and try and answer the question ‘What do you do when the unknown, the monster, is you?’ As someone who’s struggled with body issues most of my life, a lot of this comes from a very personal place. There has been a particular issue, or fear, that I’ve wrestled with since long before it was an issue that needed wrestling… conception, childbirth, and babies. These things will crop up in my writing quite a bit. Never to the good, though.

So, I’m fine with writing about horrible things happening to people’s bodies, even to the bodies of children and babies, but I was touchy about mentioning the possibility of a school shooting. Dean had two comments after reading the rough draft of Sleep, Baby, Sleep – one was “Are you going to have someone else read this, since it’s so personal?” and the other was “People are going to loathe you for this one.”

The answer to the first part is no, I will be reading the story because it’s so personal. And to the second part, yes I suspect that there may be people who will loathe me once they hear the story. It’s not a pleasant one. Although I hope anyone listening to our podcast knows that given our subject matter, our movie does take place during a zombie apocalypse after all, they’re not likely to get a whole lot of pleasantness.

But given this discussion, and Jenny Hudock’s blog from earlier this week about writing from personal experience, I have been wondering… Where is the line? Is there a line? If there is a line, when if ever is it okay to cross it? As authors, or readers, or just people, where do you think writers shouldn’t go? Or does that place not exist? Is it okay to go wherever you need to go as long as you try and treat the subject with respect and gravity, or should some things just not be written about? We all have buttons that, when pushed, make us angry or uncomfortable and think ‘How could they? They should have just left that alone!’ So what are yours?

**WARNING: This is a long one. And also, I get kind of sappy. So, please, bear with me. **

“The word “community” is derived from the Old French communité which is derived from the Latin communitas (cum, “with/together” + munus, “gift”)” – Wikipedia

Yesterday, the inestimable Jenny Hudock blogged about the first six weeks of the Creative Alliance. TCA is a great bunch of people, and the things the group has managed to do together in that fairly short period of time is pretty impressive. And it’s just the beginning!

What her blog really called to mind for me were all the things the various online communities I belong to, or have belonged to, have given me. When I was very little, we had a computer that I’m pretty sure we only used to play Pong. And maybe Frogger, but I think that was too advanced for my age at the time. I remember being more interested in painting and climbing trees and various other pursuits that intrigued my 7 year old mind.

Several years later, when I was maybe 14, my father got a used HP (I think from someone who he’d done some construction for) and we got AOL. That would have been around 1995. I did the whole chat room thing, and had fun with it. I even met someone that I had met online IRL! (No horror stories about axe murders here, but that’s all I say about that.) A few of my friends had the internet at that point, and I knew a couple of people who were really into being online… but it still wasn’t something we spent a lot of time doing or talking about, on the whole.

It was a couple years after that, when I returned from my all too brief sojourn to Niagara University, that I dove completely into the vast world wide web. I was still with AOL then, still doing the chat room thing, and even met several more people from cyberspace in the meatspace (I got this term from the hilarious Chris Hardwick, of the Nerdist podcast, and I love it). It was around this time that I started looking for writer’s groups online.

In high school I had had my English teachers and the people of Literary Magazine (I was a member in junior high, and all four years of high school as well) to talk about writing with, and to share my work with. In college (for the year I was there) I had a poetry circle I went to. But after that, I didn’t have a local group of peers to share my writing with, and be creative with. And for most writers, at least from what I’ve witnessed, and for me in particular, interacting with other imaginative people and sharing work helps keep those delicious creative juices flowing.

So it began with Triggerstreet. I had seen an interview with Kevin Spacey (who I’ve always had just a little crush on… I think it’s the dimples) where he mentioned starting this website for screenwriters and filmmakers, and I thought ‘Gee that sounds interesting!’ So when the site launched, I joined up and starting reading the scripts people were posting. Some were great, some were good, and some were all kinds of terrible. But something about the ease and approachability of it all made me think I could do it.

So I took a random thing I’d written in high school, mostly for the amusement of me and my friends, and turned it into a screenplay. I wrote it in Word, because I didn’t have any screenwriting software back then, and the formatting was kind of off (though not too bad, considering). And I just slapped it up on Triggerstreet, no beta readers or anything. Some of the reviews I got were just mean, but those were the minority. Many were very helpful in their critiques, and some were incredibly encouraging, despite what was likely a very bad first draft. I know I broke quite a few of the rules of screenwriting. But with the feedback that I got, I went and re-wrote it. And reposted it. And received feedback. And re-wrote. And re-posted. Repeat.

The people there were really great, and when they set up forums I started getting to know some of the people whose work I admired. I made some really good friends with some really talented people. I’m still a member at Triggerstreet, though I haven’t been active in years. I don’t know how the site may have changed, since I don’t spend time there. But if you’re interesting in screenwriting or short filmmaking I’d say check it out. The people were always very cool, and at the very least you get free access to thousands of scripts and short films and it can help you learn what works and what doesn’t in those arenas.

I have since lost contact with many of the people I became friends with there (though not all of them). And I miss them, even the ones who I knew only by a first name, or a screen name. Sabine, Jonathan, George, Ron, Austin, Jolene, PJ… wherever you are, I hope you’re well and wish I could find you! Through that site, and those amazing people, not only did my work get better and my ability increase, but I learned about other sites and communities. A sort of domino effect took place.

From Triggerstreet, I joined Zoetrope, and a Yahoo writing group that has since petered out but was a great help to me. It was in the forums on TS that I followed someone’s link to a blog about horror films. In that blog was a link to a list of horror websites. And on that list was a link to a forum of fellow horror fans. There weren’t many members. The site was fairly new and there were maybe 25 people there when I signed up. Even with the small group I was a little intimidated about jumping into discussions at first. Some of the people there had come over from yet another site, and had known each other there for years. So I was a smidgen shy. But about a week after I signed up, another member signed up and since he was new now, I felt totally comfortable talking to him. His screen name was Deanrockon.

I became really good friends with Deanrockon and several other people on that site. In fact, about seven months after our first online hello, Dean and I decided to meet in person. About three months after that, I packed my bags in NY and he came to move me down to Georgia with him. On our way, we stopped at NJ’s Chiller Theatre convention and met some of the other awesome people we’d only known as screen names until then.

That was in 2004. Since then, Dean and I got married (it’ll be 4 years in November). My maid of honor was a woman who has become a sister to me… and one I met in person for the first time at that Chiller. In 2006, when Dread Central broke from that other site, I went happily with them and have enjoyed every minute of working with them and writing reviews and all the other coolness that comes with being able to write about my favorite genre.

And through them, and the people I’ve met there since then, I’ve learned about other communities. Like the podcasting community. And though we’ve only just become a part of this amazing community, it’s already been incredibly rewarding. I’m getting to know wonderful people like James and Jenny, my other fellow TCA members, and a bunch of other crazy talented and fun people. I’m getting to share my work, which I love, and getting to share in theirs.

The online community as a whole, and the specific communities I’ve mentioned above, has given me so much already. And I am eternally thankful and grateful for that. My love for and belief in this community is part of what led me to suggest Dean and I try this crazy thing we’re trying. I’m counting on this community I’m proud to be a part of to help us fund Blood & Dust, to help us realize this dream we have. And it’s a scary prospect, to rely on a vast community of people who I may never see face to face (although I sincerely hope that’s not the case). But I’ve seen what we can do. And I have faith.

That definition I started this whole thing off with? The Latin has the right of it. This togetherness is a gift. I want to keep giving. I hope you do too.

XXX ~M