**** Producer's Note: The following is a general transcript of LCC Connect's weekly radio program. Contents include but may not be limited to podcasts, program imaging, announcements, and PSAs. More detailed and accurate transcripts of the podcast episodes featured in this broadcast can be found at LCCconnect.com or by following the links provided in the show notes of this episode. ****

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Now Spinning, the official podcast of the Lansing Community College Vinyl Record Club. We meet twice a month to listen to vinyl and talk about music. Stay tuned to learn about how you can get in touch with us and attend our meetings. Hello, everybody. Welcome back. In the room with me today I.

Have Noah Miller, Jacob Zokvic, Leo Ackerman.

And I am, of course, still Simon Medina.

Of course.

Of course. One of these days I'm not gonna be. And you're gonna be shocked. But anyway, today we have a very special topic, and that, of course, is Halloween.

Halloween.

This is gonna be horribly dated by the time this comes out. But the theme of this meeting was, of course, spooky Halloween music. And I think that today they did a pretty good job at keeping to the theme. Even though I missed this meeting, we nailed it.

It was creepy music. You do not need to play music that relates to the theme at our meetings. But every once in a while we get a theme that people are really into. And yeah, we. We blow it out of the park this time.

People love Halloween.

Yeah, but we were locked in.

Locked in, absolutely. And starting off today, we have a. I don't know if the song is quite creepy, but I think it does fits the theme.

It's cliche at this point, a little. Right. It's been used in so many movies and stuff. So the song is in the hall of the Mountain King from the play, opera, musical, whatever you want to call it. Peer Jind. It's by Edvard Grieg. Yeah, yeah. Norwegian composer that died, you know, at the turn of the 20th century. But, yeah, friend of the show. Friend of the show. If you don't know the song, go look it up. You'll hear the first two parts and go like, oh, yeah, this has been in cartoons, it's been in movies. It is the go to song for, like, we want to just amp up tension with just music. And it. Because it starts so slow and it builds into this just incredible crescendo where all the parts that were like, separate before are all playing in unison. And it just sounds intense. And yeah, we jumped in the meeting and we needed something creepy to play just to start it off. And I was like, three minute creepy classical music song. And yeah, I love it. And it's creepy and it builds in. And then we jumped right into our next song, which I don't remember.

What was Rest in Peace by. Was that Chad and Jeremy. I wasn't here for this one, but I do have heard of this album a couple times these Are like one of those, like, early, like, British Invasion bands. And they tried their best, I think, with this album, to try and hit the, like, the wave of psychedelia, like, you know, magical mystery to our sergeant Pepper, that kind of stuff.

Super. Like, they see.

Yeah, they did their best.

They push it a little far.

Yeah.

And some. It doesn't work, but I like it. It's pretty good.

Yeah.

The hook kind of got stuck in my head that my name is Matthew. I don't know.

It just got stuck in my head and it's there. Like, it's a.

Cool.

It is creepy, too. Like.

Yeah, it fits the theme, but. But the song after that. I've got a few. I've got a few words to say about this band. I don't know if anybody's heard of them. They're called Wayne Never. I talked about them a couple times in the show before. What a peculiar name. Peculiar band name. Yes. It's half a Halloween, right? You can't have Halloween without Wayne.

It's like. It's like two fifths of the word Halloween.

Don't let me have this. Yeah, this is the song. Spinal Meningitis got me down. It is a frightening song. It's not so much creepy as it is just kind of like weird.

Disconcerting.

Disconcerting. Yeah. Like you, like, you hear it and you just kind of look over and you're like, what is doing over there? But I love this song. It's very goofy. It's very creepy, but it's goofy at the same time.

That's so much a ween, though.

It's wean. Yeah. Chocolate and cheese. Great album. Great band. I've talked about them. Think quite enough for now. So let's move on to Halloween.

I'm gonna jump in here. So we played the song Halloween by the Misfits. And then we immediately followed that with a cover of that song by the band Orange Hell. So I don't know if we've ever done this. So obviously at a record club, played the original and then played the COVID So Misfits was a classic punk rock band, one of the really early pioneers. And like shock rock and punk, obviously. I mean, their influence is widespread. And they were creepy. Like, that was their whole gig. You've seen a misfit skull somewhere before, I guarantee it.

Spirit Hollow in there.

Not quite.

No, it was there. Wasn't there one there?

Absolutely there was one. And I almost bought it. And then we realized it was expensive. And I would rather just do the makeup like a true misfits. Family.

That's the spirit. Halloween experience.

Anyway, friends of the show. But yeah, so the original song, Halloween, very punk rock, quite fast, very simple and sound. So Orange Hell, the band is an anonymous band. We don't know who they are. I've got some theories, but they've never publicly come out like, this is who we are. This is our members and stuff. They're an anonymous band that releases like shoegaze esque covers of misfit songs. And so 2022, 2021, they released the full album of all the songs they had done. Orange Hell is the name of the album. I highly recommend it if even if you don't like the Misfits, it is so bizarre to hear a punk rock song played at like half the tempo with twice as much reverb and distortion.

Yeah.

And like, there's still this, like, creepy vibe to it. Halloween, the song feels very creepy and is one of the highlights of the album. Some of the other songs that Orange Hell did, they maintain this creepy vibe and that's about it. Like you. You hear it and it's so different and it's so cool to have a musician say, like, I love this thing, but I can turn it into something completely different. And obviously made with just a love of the Misfits, you know what I mean? It's awesome. I highly recommend you check it out. And it was creepy.

That's the goal. Moving on here we have Indiscipline by. By King Crimson from their album Discipline.

This is. Yeah, this is kind of just sort of going insane, kind of the definition of insanity. Repeating yourself. And, you know, you repeat yourself when you're under stress. A lot of this album is actually pretty creepy, but definitely this part in particular, it's just this sort of dynamic kind of brooding, like. Like the vamp there. And then it just careens into just noise and just like guitars are shrieking. The drums are just absolutely everywhere. Absolutely chaotic. Especially with live versions of this track. Like, Bill Bruford goes off, Gavin Harrison especially goes off. But yeah, it's just an insane track. Kind of, you know, depicting insanity through the character that it's talking about.

Adrian Ballou, I think, is an incredible narrator for that. Like you were saying across the entire record, he kind of plays this, like, neurotic character where he goes on long rambles and he like, shrieks and he makes animal noises with his guitar. And it's just a very disorienting atmosphere that's created especially on indiscipline.

Yeah. Makes his guitar talk like an elephant also gets into, like, different fights on the record and stuff. Phthalo and Ginjit. An amazing album. Amazing track. Amazing band.

My personal favorite King Crimson record.

I will. Okay, maybe I agree with that. It's between that and Red, but I'll say discipline right now just for the sake of friendship.

Incredible. Great song.

Yeah.

I would like to point out that in the Court of the Crimson King is absolutely a ripoff of the name. In the hall of the Mountain King.

Think they should think about it.

Everett Greek should sue.

He should sue. Yeah.

Just a thought. The connection was funny, so I thought it out.

So it's real. I think on the other side of the spectrum of British bands in that era, I'd say we have the who with Boris the Spider.

Is it the other end of the spectrum? Some of the who got pretty experimental.

Yeah. But like this song is this song, not this one, this goofy.

Yeah. And I love it.

So.

I was a kid the first time I heard this song. I remember listening this song over and over. My dad had a cd, a who cd. I would hear this, listen to the song over and over. And I was trying to figure out how to play it on guitar. Like, I didn't even know what a tab was yet. You know what I mean? I couldn't look it up. I hadn't figured that out. I adore this song. It's very different than most of the who songs, but it is very funny. It has a very creepy vibe. It's just so fun. Like, I think that's why I liked it as a kid. That's why I like it as an adult. Really? Is it. You hear it and you go, this is absolutely wild.

Of all the songs on this playlist, I feel like this one definitely fits. Just the Halloween creepy feel of it the best. Like, you could tell that they were just having like a fun time making this one. They just like take not taking it seriously at all. But, like, it just. It just works well for it, I think.

Yeah.

Next up, we have the band have a Nice Life with the song Deep Deep. Have a nice life. Two piece act started, I think in the mid 2000s on a budget of $1,000. Incredibly moody, noisy, nasty sounding, post punk song. It isn't necessarily Halloweeny, I don't think, but it's just like a really, I would say, almost industrial atmosphere. Everything is very sharp and ugly sounding. Especially given that they made the record with like a Mac and garage band and a thousand bucks. It's incredibly impressive what they were able to do. At least I Think so. I don't got much to say about have a Nice Life. They're one of those bands where they kind of pioneered their own sound, especially with, like. Like, black metal and shoegaze mixing. They were early pioneers of that. Great record. Great song.

Highly recommend. I put them on the list.

Next we got Profundo Rosso.

Yeah. So this song played by Sarah, but it is a soundtrack song from an Italian giallo movie, which, if you don't know, is like a precursor to modern slasher films. They're like horror thriller films. Like 60s and 70s were made in Italy. They are pretty intense. I recommend, like, Bay of Blood is a really famous one. Not for everybody. In fact, it's not for most people. I probably shouldn't even recommend it. But, yeah, this song is a perfect example of, like, using modern techniques in film scoring and getting the vibe exactly right. This song is so terrifying and it really builds tension. And I don't know how it was used in the movie, but I can tell it was very useful in that movie.

Definitely kind of reminds me of, like, Mort Garson's, like, side project. Mort Garson was the guy who did Plantasia, and he has this side project called Ataraxia which does, like. I have it, like, in my thing here. It is the album the Unexplained. And it's like impressions of the occult and like. Yeah, it's like. The first track is called Tarot and stuff like that. Profondo Rosso has, like, these sort of electronic elements and the acoustic elements as well. And it's just a kind of a really nice blend of that.

Cool.

Yeah. So the song that was played after that, now I'm feeling zombified by Alien Sex Fiend. Just outrageous. What would you call this genre? Kind of post, but more punk, really.

It's. It's like. Yeah, it's punk, but there's like, some industrial stuff in there.

Like a little bit.

Yeah, a little bit of, like, electronic, like, drum machine stuff in the background. I got, like, Viagra Boys vibes from it a little bit. Just like a little bit more, like, raw.

I actually got Misfits vibes from it. So there you go. Very similar, kind of. And that's. I think they're clearly trying to be creepy. They're clearly trying to be not silly, but something bizarre. And they nailed it. I'd never heard of this group before, and I went and listened to some of their other songs.

I was like.

It was a lot of fun. It's weird, but it's a lot of fun. I really like it.

Yeah. I mean, just with the band name like that, I could tell they were going for something. It seems like they managed to find it, though. That's good.

Yeah.

Yeah. Moving on after that one, though, we have a classic Halloween song, which is, of course Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath from the album Black Black Sabbath. I don't really know how much I can say about this one other than it's just the perfect, just like, spooky song. It's like one of the. It's basically where like, metal or doom metal and specifically got started right here. Yeah, this is ground zero for it.

This was actually kind of my first, like, time listening to the song all the way through. Like, I knew the motif, like, the boom. Like, I knew that, but I didn't quite realize that it went through just about the entire song. It really is, like a creepy song. Like, it's.

The vocals tell a pretty, like, harrowing story. I mean, there's a moment where Ozzy shouts, oh, please, God, help.

Yeah. Yeah.

You're like.

I was like, okay, yeah, that was. I heard that this song was inspired by. I forget. I think it's like this main songwriter for the band is like Tommy Iommi or something. Tony Omi. I can't. I'm bad with names. But anyway, he said that he was like. It was based off of like a nightmare he had about like a sleep paralysis demon. And you listen to this and you can like, it's. It's definitely there. It's just a very atmospheric song. The way it starts out with just like the rain and like the thunder and then just like the super ominous, like, riff just through the whole time.

And that riff, I think was actually inspired by Gustav Holt's Mars, like his Planet Symphony.

And it was.

Oh, my God. And I've never connected that. It's.

As soon as you say it, it's so obvious. I think the.

I think the bass player confirmed and was like, yeah, no, I was listening to that and I came up with this and they were like, yeah.

But, yeah, wow.

So it's even more oppressive when it's just like the Planet of War, just like, you know, being a sleep paralysis demon over your bed at night.

That's.

Yeah, that's a whole nother dimension to it.

Yeah.

Great song. Fantastic album as well. But this song especially is just. I don't listen to a lot of metal, but I want to say that it's probably one of the best metal songs I've heard in my life.

Yeah, they invent the tropes that everybody else uses.

Yeah.

Which is actually a fun song to talk about. A Black Sabbathism where Black Sabbath is the masters of coming up with, like eight different awesome riffs and then putting them all in one song. Whereas, like, a lot of bands come up with one good riff and, like, they would have eight songs out of that. But this song is very. Not Black Sabbath in that, like, the riff doesn't really change. They don't actually do a whole lot musically here. A lot of their other songs are a lot more complex. I just thought it's something interesting.

You're about to say Black Sabbath is the master of. And I would say the master of reality. But no, that's something. Something else. But moving on to another song after.

This, that a little dive more into doom metal, actually.

Yes. Satanic Rites of Dragula by Electric Wizard. I've heard a little bit about these guys.

Oh, yeah.

Especially Sabbath inspired from what I've heard.

Very prolific doom metal guys. Electric wizard, just like deviously heavy. Just almost punishingly heavy. I think when Sarah brought in the record, it was like. It's like 200 grams or something.

Like. Oh, wow.

Thick, thick.

I didn't know they support all the bass.

Yeah.

If you threw it like a Frisbee, it could cut someone's head, probably.

Yeah.

Break some ribs.

Throw it fast enough. Very, very Sabbath inspired. You really can hear the influence of Black Sabbath now that I'm thinking about it. It's very blatant. Great track. It's nasty, it's heavy. The Satanic Rites of Drogula, which is an awesome title. Yeah, I just think that's real fun.

And again, sounded very creepy. Fit the theme very well. Yes, it did.

They understood the assignment.

Very spooky. Very scary.

Powerful.

Do a little 180, though.

180. The Beatles. Surprise. It's been a, like, two of these since we've talked about them.

I think you thought we couldn't sneak the Beatles into the creepy episode. You were wrong.

But this is. We'll talk about that maybe later. But anyway, this song, though, is definitely. I think that maybe their creepiest song, and that is Blue Jay. Way off of Magical Mystery Tour, written by the one and only George Harrison. Cool guy. This song, it's very, like, atmospheric. Like the way it starts with just like the organ and then it just like moves into, like, just like very hazy atmosphere. Like the music video for this, I think, like, really, I mean, Magical Mystery Tour, like the movie is just like a bunch of music videos. But the segment with this one. And I've seen it, like, a couple times. It's very. It's very strange. It's just like he's, like, drawing on the floor with, like, chalk. And there's, like a. Just like a fog machine behind him. And he's just, like, immersed in it. Weird thing. Weird. But this song, is it worth the Watch the whole movie? I don't know. It's okay.

I've. What I've heard.

No, watch the music video parts and the rest of it. You don't really have to watch.

I'll think about it.

Yeah, it's a movie. Maybe it's a movie. But anyway. Blue Jay Way, it's such a creepy, atmospheric song. I don't want to say it's not like it's creepy, but, like, it's just, like, fascinating. Like, you're, like, creeped out by, like. You want to. You want to learn more, you know, like, intriguing.

It never goes all the way into being unpleasant.

Yeah.

And that's. I think you are very compelled to listen on.

Absolutely. And like, this song, people talk about the best Beatles songs, but this song rarely ever shows up on any. The Best of or anything like that. Which I think is kind of. It's a shame. Cause this is one of his better. I think one of George Harrison's more interesting songs he wrote in that band.

Though I think there's a certain amount of experimental Beatles stuff that people like, even Beatles fans don't like, because it isn't the Beatles sound.

Yeah.

But, like, they were pushing the limits of what you could do in a studio in just the most amazing ways. And, like, their experimental stuff is kind of some of the most important.

Oh, absolutely. And like, this song specifically, I think it's very interesting because a lot of, like, George Harrison's songs from the time are all, like, very heavily inspired by Indian music, Like, in terms of just the instrumentation of it. But this one, it's not quite like indie music in the way that it's, like, played with, like, Indian instruments, but there's a lot of that in there. But it's very much taking the themes of it, but translating it into just Western music, that kind of stuff. You know what I mean? It's a departure from what he was doing around the time. But it's very interesting the way he went with it. I think it's cool. Great song. Fantastic album as well, but great song. I love that one.

Back into the metal zone we have straws pulled at random by meshuggah yeah.

So this is a Swedish Gent band. It's spelled D J E N T. It's supposed to represent the percussive sound of the guitar's. Yeah, yeah. But they don't tend to like that particular label themselves. But people really just kind of point to them as like the sort of origin of the sound, which I tend to agree. And with this one they still do like the heavy like dynamic dotted eighth, like. Like those kinds of like heavy like polyrhythms that a lot of bands are doing. But they add this melodic bit at the end of it that really just kind of like soars it into something different. And the original production on this album, they wrote and performed it on seven strings and the guitars just weren't quite set up for that. So they went back and re recorded the album with eight strings. But during that re recording they also replaced the drums with samples, which I tend to not like. I really tend to prefer the original mix and this particular one with the melodic parts at the end and the riff at the end. It just pulls it together in such a better way than the remix there. But yeah, just super crazy heavy and melodic, percussive metal.

Nice. I want to briefly touch upon Thriller just to say that somebody played Thriller. It's Halloween. You can't not play Thriller. That's the law. The only thing I want to say about Thriller is that when I was a child, that bit at the end of the music video where he turns around, his eyes are like yellow and he's like muaha. That scared me a lot. And I did not like Thriller because of that when I was a kid. But I like it now. It's a very good song.

Yeah.

I will say I've heard my fair share of Thriller in my day, but I was recently rewatching the this Is it documentary, which is like. It's video footage of the concert that he was preparing to do before he died. Honestly, they were doing the Thriller bit and if I found myself at a Michael Jackson show and they start building up Thriller and then it like just like careens in with Burna. Dude, I'm in. Like, it just hits you so much in the body and it just like. You just can't not move to it. It's just such a good, foundationally good song.

Shout out Quincy Jones for producing that Rest in Peace. But yeah, moving on from Thriller, we have another little Halloween classic here.

The most important song of the episode.

What is that song? What is that song?

It's the Monster Mash by Bobby Boris Pickett.

Oh, boy. I've been waiting to talk about this one for quite a while now, actually.

Oh, goody. What do you got to say about it, son?

Well, I know this is a popular theory that's been going around for a while, but I just feel like it has to be repeated here. So the song the Monster Mash, it's about a group of monsters. They're doing the monster Mash. However, the song the Monster Mash is not the Monster Mash. It is a song describing these various people, monsters doing the monster Mash. But it is not the Monster Mash. That is some as of yet unknown song existing somewhere out there. Maybe it doesn't exist. It asks.

It's not for humans to hear.

No, it's for. It's the Monster Mash. It's.

It's a graveyard smash.

It's a graveyard smash. It's one of those mysteries that it.

Caught on in a flash.

Incredible. It's. It's one of those mysteries that we're never gonna be able to know. And I think that's for the best, because I don't think that we need to know.

I love this song. Since I was a little kid. How could you not? Everybody loves this song. It's.

It's.

It is Halloween. It is the Halloween song.

The Monster Mash.

Moving on from that, I just wanted to mention really quick. Julie Cruz's into the Night. Very creepy, very atmospheric song. Love it dearly.

I'll throw out this song. I did not know my favorite song. I did not know from the. From the meeting. We've mentioned that in podcasts before. And this. This is absolutely the one I would call out. It's awesome. As soon as I heard it, I went, yep, add that to the liked songs. Perfect.

Yeah. Beautiful stuff. Did you want to mention Curtis Mayfield real quick?

Curtis Mayfield.

Yeah. It wasn't really a creepy song. Played so much, but as closest to a creepy song as you're gonna get with Curtis Mayfield.

Sweet Exorcist. That's a title.

Awesome. Soul, R B, occasionally funk artist.

Super smooth.

Yeah. Did film scores, did solo stuff. Did some stuff with artists. Other artists. Just awesome. Dude, go check out some Curtis Mayfield.

Beautiful. Somebody played Psycho Killer again. Obligatory. You got to do it. It's Halloween. You can't not play Psycho Killer. Obviously. Talking heads. Wonderful artist. We talked about them a little bit, I think, maybe a while ago.

Almost every podcast episode.

That's because people keep playing them. It's not my fault. Even though it's mostly my fault about them. But not today.

This wasn't me we love you, David Byrne. Please come on the show.

I would appreciate it. If you're listening to us.

Next, we got Turn the Lights off by Tally Hall.

I actually got to see them open up for Antwan Stanley. Antwan Stanley does stuff for Vulfpack. He also has his own solo stuff. He's from Flint, Michigan. Go Michigan. But yeah, seeing them, it was kind of interesting. A lot of their fans were dressed up in like the white button down shirt and a tie. A lot of them had like black slacks and stuff like that.

Terrifying.

Can I interrupt real quick to ask, what year was this?

This was this year.

Oh, wow. Okay. So really recent. Okay.

Was Kelly Halbach?

Yeah, yeah, it was over the summer. Antwan Stanley, my girlfriend lives out in Ann Arbor there. They do this concert series in the summer called Sonic Lunch. That's every Thursday From I believe 11:30 to 1:00 clock in the afternoon. During the summer they have two bands come up and just play for an hour and a half.

Cool.

Yeah, super cool.

Tally Hall's back, was it?

I guess they are. I saw them there, they were selling that record.

I might just be out of touch, but like, this is the first I've heard of this. This is terrifying news.

Yeah, literally terrifying is the word I would use.

This is a lot to take in. I'm sorry. But it's a good one.

And finally, last song by one of my favorites, within the Mind.

But yeah, this was off of their third album, I believe in 1990 and it's off of the album Spiritual Healing. That album mostly focuses around religious groups basically telling someone that they're flawed in a way. And it's just kind of addressing the predatory aspects of megachurches and stuff like that and organized religion just kind of as a whole.

But real good album to show your mother. Oh yeah, I'm sure she'd love it.

Amazing. From Turn the Lights off into death metal.

Yeah, we hit some serious metal in this episode, as you'd expect because it's creepy. But yeah, death metal basically invented by the band Death. And we love them, coincidentally. Yeah, Therehere you go.

RIP Chuck Schlinger.

So that was our. That was our creepy meeting. We nailed it. Pretty much every song was creepy and if you're looking for creepy songs, this is a good one. Reference back to this one.

Absolutely. Great meeting everybody. If you're interested in coming to any of these meetings though, check out the link along with the podcast to our website. You're going to find there all of our meeting dates, our meeting themes, past episodes of the podcast. And anything else you need to know about the club. It's a very welcoming group of people. Whether you have no experience with vinyl at all and you're just a music fan, or if you've just been collecting for years and years and you want a place to show off your collection to other people, come on down to the Record Club. It's a very welcoming, friendly group of people. All music is welcome, even if it's not creepy. You can tell from this episode we've got quite a variety of people bringing their own unique perspectives in and we'd like to hear more of that from you. That does wrap it up for today though. Thank you for listening in. We hope to see you next time. Bye bye.

Love you.

Bye bye.

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LCC Connect voices vibes, Vision Washington Square on air is the audio town square for the Washington Square Review. Lansing Community College is literary journal. Writers, readers, scholars, publishing professionals, citizens of the world gather here and chat about all things writing. Hey there. This is Melissa Ford Luckin, editor of the Washington Square Review. I'm here today with Michael Feeney, whose piece across the River Styx is in our Summer 25 issue. Hey there, Michael.

Hi. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, for sure. Tell us a little bit about your piece, maybe give us a little summary for people who haven't read it yet and then let us know how you came to write it.

Okay, so across the River Styx essentially follows a married couple, Carrie and Travis, who are dealing with Travis's incarceration in a state prison. And prior to the events of this story, Travis has sort of found himself in trouble from a couple of different directions. He has gotten himself into trouble with people on the inside of the institution, and then his attempt to solve that has led him to find himself sort of between a rock and a hard place. So he is trying to find his way out of that trouble and possibly involving his wife and family in ways that might not be conducive to them. And so the genesis of this story is pretty old. Probably seven or eight years ago, maybe 2016, 2017, I was working in the state prison system out in Idaho. And for a period of several weeks, I was detailed to fill in as a visitation officer for the primary visiting officer. So that entailed the scheduling and facilitating and supervision of in person visits between inmates and their families. So that was interesting in that it allowed me to see these men on, like a. Interacting with people other than other incarcerated people or staff members. So sort of a different dynamic. And then in that time, I developed a decent rapport with a specific inmate. And then so, you know, you see their families, you see their kids. And so I met his wife and his son, who was about the same age as my son at the time. And then a few weeks after my tenure in visiting ended and I went back to the main line, the wife was actually caught bringing contraband into the institution in that child's diaper bag. So it sort of got me thinking about what that must feel like to be caught in between all of these forces and the pressures of family and what we're willing to do for people we love, even if we know it's wrong. So I wanted to explore that from a perspective that wasn't necessarily my own perspective from that incident.

One of the neat things about your story is the intense level of humanity. Each of the characters, the main characters is they're in a situation together, but we also get glimpses of their own separate lives. So there's tension in between them. But we can also get a sense of the tension of their own individual worlds. So there's kind of like three worlds, right? Their world together and then each of their worlds individually. Talk a little bit about how your experience as a correction officer in that particular context changed the way perhaps that you see those dynamics.

You know, I'm no longer a co, but when I was, I did about five years as an officer. And it does it. It forces you to see people at their worst. And, you know, it's. It's easy to. This is a population that's very easy, I think, for everyone to generalize. It's very easy to say in the word inmates and think of a total generalization, whereas the reality is that, yeah, every single one of them is an individual. And the same goes for officers and prison staff as well. Is there. Everyone has a life outside of the institution. And I think it's very easy to forget that when you're looking at numbers and uniforms and institutionalization. And so all these forces that kind of force people into blocks. I guess it's easy to lose track of that. But working, you know, every day, spending 50, 60 hours a week with these people, you have to see them as individuals. You know, you know them for years in some cases.

Did it change the way that you thought about their family life outside of the institution over time?

Yeah, you do have access to. Again, this is from a period of 2015 to 2021. So, I mean, things could have changed dramatically since then. But at the time I was working there, you did have access to presents investigations, and so you would be able to read about. You know, you have the dossier on them. So you also learn about their childhood, their upbringing, their things that they've done and things that have been done to them. And so you do have this kind of broad picture. And so then you. In dealing with that, you have to focus specifically on the individual in front of you, you know, and so it kind of. It really does simultaneously humanize and dehumanize. And so I really never wanted to be someone that sees just a inmate's green scrubs. You know, I always tried to see the person that they were and also.

Perhaps see beyond just the list of information that you're talking about.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I was interested in. In the dynamics of the story, like I said, in the way that you've managed to create these three different worlds on so few sheets of paper. So that. That, to me, was really fascinating and compelling. When you think about other creative writing that you've done, how does this one fit in? Is it quite a bit different? Similar?

I'd say it's pretty similar thematically. I'm very interested in solitude and connection and these. The connections that we form in dark places, whether that's mentally dark or physically dark. So I think it fits. It does. I like to write about people in places that I am unfamiliar with and that I don't see represented very often in literary fiction especially, you know, I feel like you tend to see a lot of. For example, in this story, you tend to see a lot of inmates and corrections officers and prison staff, but it's usually in genre fiction, and it's often very thin. And so I'm interested in exploring people in places that are usually sort of just glanced over or a stock character in a detective novel or something like that.

Why do you think that is?

Probably because for me, that's the life that I have lived and do live. And so I think it's easier to empathize for me with the you know, quote unquote, background characters, the people who would appear in the opening scene of a mystery and then disappear again after, you know, their statements taken or whatever. So, yeah, I try to see the humanity in everybody, and so I want to explore that humanity and people that would just disappear from the narrative. I think in most stories, you've let.

Me know that you're a father, and I'm wondering how that plays in to this desire to kind of look underneath and look beyond the usual.

I think that just makes me more aware that, yeah, every single person out there is someone's son or someone's daughter. And, you know, even the most forgotten person, even the person who's been institutionalized for 30 years, or even people who've been on the streets for 20 or 30 years, you know, at some point they were someone's son or someone's daughter, and hopefully, you know, hopefully they were loved and cherished and. But every person on this earth has that in common. That they were born to someone. Whether or not they were treated properly is up in the air. But we all have that in common. You know, everyone was someone's child at some point.

That's making me. Making me think about how each person is way more complex inside than what you see.

Yeah, absolutely. Every. Every person is this mass of history and emotions and feelings, and every human has millions of moments, you know?

Mm. Another thing that you and I were talking about before we started recording was your background in creative writing. And you let me know that you don't have a lot of formal training in writing, that you belong to a creative writing club, and that you did take some creative writing courses. Talk a little bit about those early writing experiences and how they propelled you.

Yeah, so I did. While I was an undergrad at Boise State, I was in the creative writing club. Developed very close friendships with some people there. And then I did take a couple of kind of Basic Fiction 101, Fiction 102 type classes with Nicole Cullen and Natalie Disney, who were both, I thought, excellent teachers. They were really the first people to kind of make me think about writing in a way that's not just, you know, telling a story, that you have to look at it from a perspective that's not just this happened, this happened, and then this happens. You know, they made us look deeper at the content of what we were creating. And so that.

How did they accomplish that? Do you remember? Because that sounds pretty amazing.

You know, I think it was just because it was the first time I'd ever been introduced to. I still Remember reading. I don't know how to say his name, but I believe it's Br C. DJ Pancake. We read Trilobites by him and a story by Anthony Dore. And I think it was just the first time that I'd ever really been introduced to the short story as a medium for doing anything other than just telling kind of a very quick, like, action story. I didn't really grow up reading a lot of literary fiction. When I was growing up. I tended to read, like, fantasy or mystery fiction and stuff like that. So it really was very interesting to see that. And that was also a greasy DJ Pancake. I hope I'm not just. Absolutely.

I don't know. Someone out there knows.

Yeah, he has a very. He. He wrote a lot of stories set in rural West Virginia in, I believe, the 70s. And he really only. I think he only had one collection. But after I read that story in class, I went and bought his collection. And yeah, he. He tells these stories from a. A perspective that's very much outside the literary, I think, norms. You're reading about characters that are rural and poor and not necessarily the kind of polished urbanites that I used to associate with literary fiction.

I could see how that would have left a really strong impact on you, given what we were talking about earlier.

You know, I just grew up. I guess I just grew up with this kind of misplaced idea that literary fiction is all just, you know, Henry James or very urbane and a little bit and sophisticated. And I always thought it was sort of too. Something that was too above me, I guess. And so it was cool to see a reality that I could recognize more easily.

So what happened next after the classes that you took?

Oh, gosh, almost nothing. When I graduated, I was taking the LSATs and I was looking at going to grad school and law school. I was interested in working for the Foreign Service, like working in embassies abroad. But then I had my son and I. There was sort of a paradigm shift there, and I just had to focus on the close in priorities. And that sort of led me to working in the prisons, which I don't regret. It certainly changed the trajectory of my life very much.

In what way?

I mean, I think certainly it changed me who I am as a person. In 2021, I left the Department of Corrections and I moved back to California, where I'm originally from. And while here, I met my fiance and I. None of that would have happened if I had gone to law school. And even if I had gotten to go to the foreign services, just a totally different trajectory and I think a totally different mind frame. So I'm. And I'm happy with the life I have now. So it's. Yeah, yeah.

So how did you come back to the creative writing? At what point did that start to happen?

I always did it as a hobby, as a way to process things and internalize things. Although I think I didn't really get serious about it. Like, I didn't actually start thinking about submitting pieces up until about two years ago. And I was finally, I think, in a place where I was just able to dedicate the time that it needed and deserved. And so, yeah, I actually dusted out a few old stories, this being one of them, and kind of took the bones of that and then was able to think more about the craft of it. And so the very end of 2023, I started submitting pieces and I started revising some old stories and creating some new ones and yeah, start sending them out.

Okay.

And it's, it's very scary and fun and satisfying and a bunch of different things. Yeah, yeah.

What makes it scary?

You know, it's. It's hard to get used to the rejections at first. That's still opening your email and seeing another rejection from such and such journal. But at this point, it's just kind of more exhilarating than scary at this point. You know, I. I get excited when I hit submit and so I have a word duck that's about four pages long of rejections. But then in there there's also a handful of acceptances and that definitely makes it worthwhile.

When you said it was scary, I was wondering, there must be people in your life that know that you're writing. And so how does it feel to have your stories out in the world and having other people read them, people that know you is what I'm thinking about.

Yeah. I think everyone who knows me well, I don't really hide who I am, I guess. So, like, I don't think that I don't necessarily write what might shock me. I don't worry about my son reading anything I've written when he gets older. But it's the people that I don't know that are a little, you know, that's, that's the nerve wracking thing, you know, sending. You always worry about how people might perceive it if people are going to take things as insulting, especially when you write from perspectives that aren't necessarily your own. I know that I can write authoritatively about the experience of the life I'VE lived. But for example, even in this story, I'm sure that people could pick that up and be like, that's not my experience as someone married to an incarcerated person. Or that's not my experience as an incarcerated person. So a lot of the stories I do write are seen through the eyes of people that I don't necessarily share the same reality as them because I'm interested in exploring those different worldviews and different realities and places. And so when I submit pieces, I try to portray it accurately and honestly. There's always going to be that the reality that that is not my lived experience. And so that's nerve wracking, I guess.

I think we've kind of wandered into a pretty complicated topic because it's something that all fiction writers deal with. After you've written, you know, X number of stories, maybe it's five, maybe it's 12, I don't know. But eventually you've written yourself out. You know, you've imagined yourself, your own perspective that you have in a couple different situations. But eventually you're, you're kind of be tapped out. And as a writer, like you said, you want to include other perspectives and look at other places and that I think, yeah, you've, you've raised a good point. How do you deal with that? When you're creating a character and you're creating a character that has an experience not from you in your life, do you do a little research, talk to people? How do you work that?

I do do as much research as I can about places and people. I try to talk to people who have lived something similar to that, even if it's not, you know, the reality of it. But it is. I try to just be empathetic about it. I try to look beyond the stereotype and I try to imagine myself in that situation. I guess I move pretty slowly and I try to think about how it might be perceived to someone who, for example, that is the life they've lived or something similar to that, you know. So, for example, one of the other stories I've had published, it's supposed to be coming out actually any time now in a magazine called Stonecrop Magazine out of Idaho. And it's about a wildland firefighter and it looks at class and climate change and a few other things sort of through that lens of that specific point of view. And in that one I talked to a friend of mine a lot about his own experiences as a wildland firefighter. But again, it isn't my reality. So I just do as much researches I can. And then I also think about how would I want someone to tell my story if they were writing about me or someone like me. So, yeah, just try to be sensitive, I guess.

What kind of stuff are you working on right now?

Oh, gosh, you know, I've probably got about 20 or 30 short stories split pretty evenly between traditional short story and flash fiction. I'm interested in flash just because I have recently begun reading a lot of shorter, like punchier novels. And I kind of like that, the ability to do that. And so trying to condense what I write and sort of get at the core of the experience and distill it down. And of course, you know, like every writer, I have the couple novels percolating and bouncing around. And I do have one novel that I'm working on that is set in prisons. And that sort of is difficult in that I think I'm able to write it a little more honestly now that I'm removed from that environment. Because trying to write it while I was in it just felt. It felt too much like a Romana clef or a autobiographical novel. And I didn't want that. And then so part of that is like, okay, how do I write one that's true to the experience, but fictional, entirely fictional. And then how also do I convince people that, oh, yeah, this isn't a Romanoclef or not a biographical novel? I promise that was something. When I have stories set from perspectives closer to mine, I have to kind of tell people like, okay, this isn't actually my experience. This is a fictional stories.

So, yeah, that can happen. People read your fiction and start to think, is that what he thinks? Is that what she thinks? Yeah, no, that's what the character thinks. I'm not the character.

Yeah. And that's. And that's kind of a thing I have to be wary of too. I have a story that I think I probably might need to reevaluate. Seriously. And this is set in an institution. And again, I don't. That's not everything, or not even a court or whatever I just said in the prisons. But this one is another story that I. I do have again, from an inmate's perspective. And it gets rejected in almost instantly everywhere I send it. So I'm like, okay, there might be something wrong with the story itself. And so I'm kind of again thinking like, hopefully that readers don't think I'm advocating for a certain behavior and mindset that the character has. And so again, it's one of those things where it's like, okay, maybe I need to evaluate how.

Maybe it needs a new opening.

Yeah, it needs a new. Definitely needs a new opening. It needs. It needs a lot, I think. But we'll get it sorted out someday.

Awesome. If people want to watch for you. You told me that you don't have social media yet.

I don't. I don't have any social media in terms of like a writing space. I really should. I only have a few publications either out or forthcoming. So yeah, I will hopefully get a writer's website up and running soon. I always felt like it was too early to do that without, I don't know, this X, Y or Z amount of publications under my belt, but maybe I should start thinking about that now.

All right, well, in the meantime, they can just look for your name in the literary journals.

Yep, look for my name in Stonecrop magazine, forthcoming in the Bookends Review next year. And of course, Washington Square Review.

Awesome. Thanks a lot for coming in and talking to us today.

Thank you very much for having me.

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