Less Than Pulp, Issue 45
Ghoulish Matters and Writing about Wrestling with Writing about Wrestling
From April 14-16, I was at the Ghoulish Book Festival in San Antonio performing, meeting readers, and sitting on panels. I shared a table with Eve Harms, and she gave me this awesome notebook she made.
Half an hour after I got to San Antonio, Shane McKenzie-who is very much alive and still writing-showed up with a bottle of Basil Hayden's. We did a couple of shots in our room, caught up on life stuff, and then headed down for opening ceremonies with guests of honor Johnny Compton, V. Castro, and Trevor Henderson. Max Booth III moderated the chat which centered on what it meant to be Ghoulish and the haunted history of San Antonio. I dug what everyone had to say. Compton’s personal history with figures like Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee resonated with me in particular. I’ve written about my history with vampires before, so I’m just going to link to that as I’ve a lot of ground to cover. Later, Compton and I would bond over The Fog and how that spooky little film is weirdly comforting.
I made my way down to the bar at Hermann and Sons where the festival was held. The bar itself was a cool, wood-paneled joint with low lighting and a game room. I found a corner next to a stack of board games and just drank some local Kolsch and people-watched for a while. Two women were sitting at a high table in the game room, occasionally getting up for refills or to play a game. These were Jes McCutchen and her friend whose name I didn’t catch. I didn’t interact with them because I assumed that, like me, they were just hanging out before they had to be “on” for the rest of the weekend.
I spent the rest of the evening getting caught up with RC Hausen, Ryan C. Bradley, Zachary Ashford and his partner, Danger Slater, Michael Louis Dixon, Jessica and Sean Leonard, Max Booth III and Lori Michelle, and John and Dez Baltisberger, and Bob Pastorella. We mostly talked shop, but occasionally, we drifted into how we were doing and what we were watching or reading. A few of these folks spoke positively about Make Your Own Damn Podcast, which was nice to hear. Jeff and I go hard preparing for those episodes, so I'm glad it's paying off.
When Shane and I went back to our room, we caught the end of Hereditary and part of Tusk. I've been unkind to Ari Aster over the years because I hate the pretentious discourse around so-called elevated horror (of which he’s a central figure), but damned if Hereditary isn't an effective film. I almost forgot how chilling (but also gloriously schlocky) those final moments are. And y'all know I love Tusk, right? Jeff and I even did an episode on it.
Shane and I fell asleep fearing we'd miss the mass author signing the next morning at 9, but we miraculously woke up at 7:30. I should say I woke up at 7:30, and my chattiness got Shane up and at ‘em. This was good because people were there, ready to buy books like it was their job. It was truly cool to see. Often, I sometimes worry that my audience consists solely of other writers. Nothing wrong with that, but it can sometimes feel a little incestuous. Events like Ghoulish and AuthorCon do a good job reminding me that my stuff is reaching people outside my usual circle.
The vending room was busy pretty much all day. Like last year, Max and Lori went all in on this event, and that includes the marketing they did for it. The only times I got up were when I absolutely had to for bathroom and meal breaks and when I sat on the gaming panel. I felt a bit out of place on that as I’m not much of a gamer, but due to my lunch coming out late, I got to entertain by eating a plate of spicy drunken noodle during the discussion. Now, before you think this was rude of me, I would like the record to show that this was done at Max’s encouragement.
Saturday night was the Ghoulish wedding, in which longtime horror power couple Max and Lori made it official. It was a fun ceremony, officiated by author and real-life vampire Andrew Hilbert, and I started crying thinking about how much better it would’ve been if Jay Wilburn was still alive to see it. I miss that guy more than I’ll ever be able to properly put into words.
After the wedding, I participated in the Campfire Stories Contest. I was…not prepared…and I fully improvised a tale about eating worms during a gaming panel (I wonder what inspired that). It went over well, though, and it’s made me want to improvise my readings more often. This is a hundred percent deserving of its own post, but I feel like it would do wonders to sharpen my writing and storytelling abilities.
I stayed out pretty late, kicking it with some of the people I’ve already mentioned. This time, I got to chat with Jes and her friend (goddamn it, I’m so sorry I didn’t get your name!). Jes runs a fun-looking horror press that publishes diverse, whimsical books too, so check her out.
The highlight of Saturday was talking in our room with Shane, Dixon, Angel Luis Colon, and Sean Leonard about how Clive Barker, more so than Stephen King, made us truly appreciate how boundless our genre could be. I’ve never met Clive, but I like to think my contemporaries (including some in that room with me) have made him proud. People always cite Hellraiser and Candyman, but those texts (as much as I appreciate them) are only the tip of the Barker iceberg. I expect I’ll be re-reading Imajica, Weaveworld, and The Great and Secret Show very soon.
I didn’t go to bed until 3 am, which made Sunday interesting.
I did sell out of books, though, and I bought a few I had my eyes on. I also moderated a panel on creepypastas with panelists R.J. Joseph, Trevor Henderson, Andrew Hilbert, and RC Hausen. What a great time! I always get nervous that I’ll run out of questions before the time is up, but thankfully, everyone was super-engaging (including the audience!).
Much like leaving AuthorCon, leaving Ghoulish was bittersweet. I’m recharged, but also, damn it! I wish I could see these folks more often. At least Shane, Max, John, and Dixon live somewhat nearby.
As readers of this newsletter know, I’m a longtime fan of professional wrestling. I feel it is storytelling boiled down to its most primordial components. A protagonist and antagonist both want the same thing, they have qualities to make them interesting, and compelling motivation; then, they collide. I’m not alone in this way of thinking, but besides my almost absurd level of fandom for the business (remember, it’s not a sport), I have no experience when it comes to writing angles or performing as a wrestler.
Ryan C. Bradley, on the other hand, has trained as a professional wrestler. And since his novella Saint’s Blood turned one year old on 4/21, I figured I’d tag him in to write a little about how training as a wrestler taught him a lot about writing. Here’s what he had to say about the very important concept of “Active Selling.”
For six months in 2019, I got clotheslined, power bombed, and gorilla-pressed three nights a week, and again on Saturday afternoons. I’ve always loved professional wrestling—the baby oil and spandex kind, not the Olympic sport—and at 29, I decided to step in the ring. Training tested me in many ways: my pain threshold, my cardio, and my fear of front flips. I was a terrible wrestler, but the practice made me a better storyteller and writer.
One of the most important lessons I learned was how to sell actively. In wrestling, “selling” is making an audience believe what they’re seeing is a real fight. So when someone hits you with a forearm, you make a face, shout, do something to make the audience believe that forearm hurt. Like most aspects of wrestling, I was colossally bad at it.
On one night in particular, I took a kick to the stomach and thought I did everything right. I timed my jump, a hop, with the boot to create the illusion that the kick had taken me off the ground. I hunched over and opened my mouth and made a sound like air whooshing out. And then I stayed like that, waiting for the next move, in that case an Irish whip. The coach that night—Lance*, a nineteen year old technical wiz who’d spent much of the last year wrestling in Japan—stopped us there.
First, he told me I looked like I’d eaten something sour, not gotten hit, which was true. Second, he told me that I was breaking the illusion by staying still. He asked me what I did when I got stung by a bee. Did I just grab at the spot where it had got me, or did I get away from the bee? For me at that point, selling was a single movement, but it has to be continuous. If someone had really kicked me in the stomach, I wouldn’t be waiting for them to hit me again. Even if it had been a hard shot, I’d move away.
This translates directly into writing fiction. It’s not enough for a character to have an immediate reaction in the sentence after something happens to them. If someone in a novel gets punched, they need to feel it beyond the initial moment. Being hit in the jaw hurts, and it’s worse if you bite your tongue or cheek, minor injuries that will annoy you for days, and having it annoy your character will give that punch weight. Throwing a punch bruises the punchers’ knuckles too, and they’re probably not used to that pain. You’ve got to actively sell whatever’s happening—be it physical, mental, or emotional—for your audiences to believe it.
Active selling does more than give a story a sense of verisimilitude. As our head coach Mitch came in to explain, it’s also about getting an audience behind you in a wrestling ring. When someone falls down and stays there, audiences stop rooting for them. As Mitch put it, nobody cheers for the fodder in Friday the 13th because Jason dispatches them so easily. When a wrestler keeps moving to get away as they’re getting their ass kicked, audiences identify with them and their struggle.
So your characters need to react to whatever pain they’re feeling, and they need to struggle to stop it from happening again. When I first drafted my novella Saint’s Blood which turns a year old this week and is available here (cheap pop!), I had the main character Ritchie taking all of the punishment he received. Sure, I wrote about how much it hurt, but he let it happen. His enemies could’ve overpowered him, and the book didn’t start working until I rewrote so they had to. Once I made Riche start actively selling, the book came together. Maybe active selling can unlock your story too.
*Fake name used to respect Lance’s privacy.
I love what Ryan had to say there. Active selling adds both realism and a sympathy to character and storytelling. Definitely grab Saint’s Blood and keep an eye out for future works. Dude knows what he’s talking about. He also owns one of the most impressive bookshelves I’ve ever seen.
This week’s episode of Make Your Own Damn Podcast is bound to get controversial, as we cover 2021’s exploitation horror film The Scary of Sixty-First. While I enjoyed the film, Jeff has some strong opinions about its writer/director Dasha Nekrasova. We discuss separating art from the artist, Rosemary's Baby and Repulsion, Eyes Wide Shut, anime girls, conspiracies, and the current push to make the Republican Party appeal to young voters. Weirdly enough, all of that is relevant to this strange slice of modern trash cinema. Conversation-wise, it’s one of our best—up there with our episodes on NIN’s Broken Movie, Cannibal Holocaust, and Bloodsucking Freaks, all of which you can check out in our archives. You can listen to our episode on The Scary of Sixty-First here or wherever you get your podcasts.
As always, if you enjoy these newsletters, you can support it by picking up one of my books. My most recent include the brand-new edition of The Final Gate and Bestial (a reprint of “Primitive,” which previously appeared in C.V. Hunt’s Horrorama).