Four years of ebooks, Amazon ads, and feeding the algorithm — and Dan is done with it. Not dramatically. Just honestly. In this behind-the-scenes episode, Daniel and his co-writer R.P. Howley take stock of where Devil's Rock Publishing actually is in 2026: four Twisted Tales novellas out, a charity anthology closing submissions, and a growing suspicion that the readers they've been chasing are actually paperback collectors who'd rather buy at a convention than click an ad.

This is a different kind of episode. No formal interview, no guest credentials. Just two people who talk daily, finally sitting down on camera to work through what's going well, what isn't, and what they're going to try instead. Rob is a marketing manager at a dementia charity, studying for his mortgage advisor qualification, waking up at 4am — and still co-publishing horror novellas. Dan is re-editing The Self-Publishing Blueprint for its 2026 update and relaunching The Writer's Room. This is what the indie author life actually looks like.

💀 What we get into:

* Why posting every day doesn't mean your followers are seeing it — and what to do instead

* How marketing a book and marketing a charity use exactly the same core principles

* The brutal economics of ebooks vs. paperbacks at events (and why in-person sales now make more sense)

* Why they accidentally built a series for paperback collectors while spending all their time on digital platforms

* The Hatching Season charity anthology — what they've learned from running submissions, and what "100+ entries" actually means for two people with no time

* Rob's testimony: what he got from writing sprints before he ever knew Dan properly

* The Twisted Tales series update: where books five and six are right now

* Why "can you just" are the two most irritating words in any marketing meeting

* The philosophy of not asking "what do I want?" but "what does the reader want?"

* What premium in-person experiences might look like — earrings, wax seals, experience boxes, and why none of it is happening right now

Links & Resources:

R.P. Howley: @rphowleyauthor (Instagram and Facebook)

Twisted Tales books: https://twistedtalesbooks.com

Devil's Rock Publishing: https://devilsrockbooks.com

Hatching Season submissions: https://devilsrockbooks.com/submissions

The Writer's Room: https://danielwillcocks.com/thewritersroom

Daniel's writer resources: https://danielwillcocks.com/writers

About Rob:

Robyn Howley has three requirements to function; black coffee in the morning, red wine in the evening, and writing in between.

He has the imagination of a six-year-old, the soul of a retiree, and dreams of one day making a full time income as a multi-passionate creative.

He currently lives in Southampton, England, and when he’s not writing, he’s nestled on his favourite reading chair, wine in hand, consuming books; podcasts and YouTube tutorials on all aspects of writing, publishing and entrepreneurship.

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Writer's block doesn't exist. That's not a provocation for the sake of it — Jasper Bark will tell you exactly who invented the term (a Freudian analyst who blamed it on potty training) and why the only cure for not writing is, stubbornly, to write. Anything. A laundry list. A page of you yelling at yourself. The words come.

This week Daniel sits down with Jasper Bark — author, former freelance journalist, stand-up, performance poet, and the mind behind Crystal Lake Publishing's Bark Bites Horror imprint. Jasper has written for franchises owned by DreamWorks and New Line, ghosted other people's voices for years, and then had a long dark night of the soul (and too much whiskey) when his wife pointed out she'd never read a single thing that sounded like him. Finding his own voice is where the real story starts.

The conversation runs from the brutal economics of the modern indie author (why he dresses as an Egyptian god at conventions) through the terror of self-censorship, the joy of throwing away a third of every sentence, and the sixteen-year journey of his new novel Harmed and Dangerous — a Southern Gothic thriller that began as a rejected comic pitch and finally arrived as a book he no longer cringes to hand over.

💀 What we get into:

• Why "writer's block" is a made-up excuse — and the one technique that breaks it every time
• How to actually find your voice when you've spent years writing in everyone else's
• The real reason no one ever has "editor's block" or "plumber's block"
• Why turning off every notification you own is the only writing advice that survives time and attention being your scarcest resources
• The shift from author-as-freelancer to author-as-artisan-trader — and what it means for how you sell
• Why cutting 30,000 words from a 120,000-word draft feels like scoring a winning goal
• How a song about Gary Gilmore's eyeballs seeded a paranormal Southern Gothic thriller
• Why horror is a healing, cathartic genre — and the two sectioned readers who proved it to him
• Plot vs. pants: when to outline and when to let the story drag you
• The "deathbed self" trick for beating procrastination

Links & Resources:

Jasper Bark: www.jasperbark.com

Crystal Lake Publishing https://www.crystallakepub.com

Daniel's writer resources: https://danielwillcocks.com/writers

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📚 About Jasper Bark

Jasper Bark is infectious - and there’s no known cure. If you’re listening to this then you’re already at risk of contamination. The symptoms will begin to manifest any moment now. There’s nothing you can do about it. There’s no itching or unfortunate rashes, but you’ll become obsessed with his books, from the award winning collections 'Dead Air' and 'Stuck on You and Other Prime Cuts', to cult novels like 'The Final Cut' and acclaimed graphic novels such as 'Bloodfellas' and 'Beyond Lovecraft'.

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Dan Howarth didn't set out to write a novel about far-right violence tearing communities apart. He set out to write what he knew — the north, the landscape, the idiotic magnificence of men — and the wound was already open. Lion Hearts is the book that nearly broke him during the writing, nearly got him an agent three times, and has now landed him on the 2026 British Fantasy Award shortlist for Best Novel. Sometimes the book that costs the most is the one that matters most.

Dan Howarth is a British author of gritty northern weird fiction published under his own Northern Republic Press. His work sits at the intersection of place, folklore, and the social fault lines running through contemporary Britain. In this conversation, he and Daniel dig into writing location with precision rather than excess, the case for the novella as the perfect literary form, what indie publishing actually costs (financially and creatively), and why knowing who you are as a writer takes longer than most people think.

💀 What we get into:

- Why Dan writes British, specifically northern British, horror — and how place becomes character in his fiction

- The screenwriting lesson that changed how he edits: if you can't say it in two lines, say it better

- Character passes vs plot passes — Dan's practical approach to keeping voice consistent across multiple POVs in Last Night of Freedom

- How both Territory and Drone accidentally became novellas, and why he thinks it's the perfect form for both writer and reader discovery

- The case for traditional publishers taking novellas seriously — and why Eric LaRocca's Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is the proof of concept

- Three to four years into running Northern Republic Press: what he'd tell his earlier self about brand identity, cover consistency, and knowing what you stand for before you publish

- Lion Hearts — the BFA-shortlisted novel that's not quite horror, not quite crime, and is one of the most politically raw things he's written

- Why being indie means the book you couldn't place anywhere is also the book that gets you on award shortlists

- The practical realities of self-publishing: proofreading, cover design, budgeting, and why there's no excuse for an unprofessional book in 2026

- What's next: another novella, The Beacons, and a pipeline of four or five books already queued up

Links & Resources:

Dan Howarth website: https://danhowarthwriter.com (verify exact URL)

Dan Howarth on social media: @DanHowarth20

Northern Republic Press: https://www.northernrepublic.co.uk

Paul Stephenson / Hollowstone Press: https://paulstephensonbooks.com/

Vicky Brewster: https://vickybrewstereditor.com/

https://danielwillcocks.com/writers

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📚 About Dan Howarth

Dan Howarth is a British author of gritty Northern Weird horror fiction with a strong focus on societal issues and tinged with folklore and the supernatural.

He is the author of Last Night of Freedom, Lionhearts (which was recently shortlisted for Best Novel in the 2026 British Fantasy Awards), Territory, his new novel Drone and the short story collection, Dark Missives.

His short fiction has been published in numerous places including Weird Horror Magazine, Chthonic Matter Quarterly, The Other Stories podcast and Motives Unknown: New Northern Crime from Dead Ink Books.

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Kayleigh Dobbs turned up to her first horror convention too nervous to speak to anyone, accidentally called Ramsey Campbell "Mr. Ramsey," and somehow came away with a fire lit under her that she hasn't stopped feeding since. Four years later, she has a short story in a Bram Stoker Award nominated collection, heads on semi-regular cake-and-coffee trips with Tim Lebbon, and is a well-revered reviewer of indie horror.

Kayleigh is a writer, proofreader, and the founder of Happy Goat Horror — a review website and YouTube channel dedicated to horror fiction with a particular focus on indie publishing. In this conversation, she and Daniel dig into what horror actually is and why it matters, the community that makes the genre unlike any other, the complicated relationship between reviewing and writing, and why the most important thing any writer can do is write the book only they could write. Plus: an unexpected Britney Spears confession, a defence of the word "fuck," and a recommendation you almost certainly haven't heard of.

💀 What we get into:

• Kayleigh's origin story — from metal-loving teenager secretly bopping to Britney, to discovering indie horror fiction barely four years ago through Chillicon and Sinister Horror Company
• Why horror conventions feel nothing like fan conventions for film and TV
• The Tim Lebbon tangent: how a chance ask at a convention became a semi-regular cake-and-coffee friendship, and why Kayleigh thinks he deserves to be far more widely known
• Joe Hill's articulation of why horror makes sense of a senseless world
• Horror as the genre that does the most for empathy: representation of women, queer voices, Latinx horror, and why the stats on female directors in horror vs romance will surprise you
• The origin of Happy Goat Horror
• Indie vs traditional: what Kayleigh actually sees as a reviewer who reads across both
• Why authenticity on the page is something readers can feel
• AI, trends, and the only real defence a writer has: writing the most authentically human book they can
• Kayleigh's novel she's determined to finish, a nonfiction project she's keeping firmly under wraps, and learning to stop being horrible to herself about productivity

Links & Resources:

• HATCHING SEASON: https://www.devilsrockbooks.com/submissions
• THE WRITERS ROOM: https://www.danielwillcocks.com/thewritersroom
• Happy Goat Horror: https://happygoathorror.com / https://www.youtube.com/@happygoathorror
• Tim Lebbon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u99-ttJBeus&pp=0gcJCSgLAYcqIYzv
• Jonathan Janz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNzvZpwubQo&t=2908s
• Jamie Flanagan Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6e-Jgykckc
• Joe Hill Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU2iM1LIDw8&pp=0gcJCSgLAYcqIYzv
• Writer Resources: https://www.danielwillcocks.com/writers

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📺 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@willcocksauthor 

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📚 About Kayleigh Dobbs

Kayleigh Dobbs is a writer and reviewer based in South Wales, with a focus on horror and comedy/horror. Her micro-collection The End, an apocalypse themed book of shorts from Black Shuck Shadows, was a 2024 Imadjinn Award Finalist for Best Collection. Her short story "TBR" is included in This Way Lies Madness, an anthology from Flame Tree that is currently a Bram Stoker Award Finalist and British Fantasy Award Finalist. She has a Masters Degree in Scriptwriting, though her focus shifted some years ago to more bookish formats, and she freelances as a proofreader and editor. 

Kayleigh runs Happy Goat Horror, a review website and YouTube channel for horror fiction, with a particular interest in indie horror fiction. On the YT channel, she posts reviews, themed lists, rankings, and creator interviews. Recent interviewees include screenwriter Jamie Flanagan and author Joe Hill.

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Dan Soule couldn't read properly until he was 11. He was profoundly dyslexic, functionally illiterate through most of his childhood. He went on to get a PhD in English and linguistics, spent seven years as a university academic, taught writing, quit — and then finally had enough free time to figure out how to write fiction. Horror wasn't the plan. It just kept buying his stories.

Dan Soule is a horror author based in Northern Ireland, born in England and raised in Byron's hometown of Southwell. His work spans literary fiction, science fiction, and horror, with short fiction appearing in Storgy, Shoreline of Infinity, Sanitarium Magazine, and Devolution Z, among others. His novels include Witch Hopper, a 150,000-word small-town folk horror rooted in Nottinghamshire mythology, and Jam, a tightly wound ensemble horror that asks what happens when a motorway traffic jam becomes something far worse.

This conversation covers the feedback loop that turned Dan into a horror writer, why he thinks of horror as the original master genre, the craft concept of "armature" and how it shapes every character in Jam, and why the indie/trad divide matters a lot less than whether the book is actually good.

💀 What we get into:

• From profound dyslexia to a PhD in English — and why writing never came easily even then
• How horror found Dan rather than the other way around: the magazines that kept buying his stories until he had to accept what he was writing
• Why Dan thinks horror is the master genre — older than any category we try to put it in, and leaking into everything
• Dean Koontz, Stephen Laws, M.R. Carey, Ronald Malfi, and Dan Simmons' The Terror — the authors who shaped Dan's taste for high-end pulp
• The three-category reality of modern publishing: indie, small press, and the big four — and why good and bad books exist in all three
• The "armature" concept: giving each character their own musical frequency, extended metaphor, and sentence cadence — and how Dan built this into Jam
• Where Jam came from: a tipsy thought on an empty Scottish motorway, liminal spaces, and a family lineage of serial killers
• Why ensemble horror — The Thing, The Mist — is the perfect structure for trapping a cast of strangers who'd never otherwise share a space
• Witch Hopper: Nottinghamshire's Green Man myth, vengeful grey ladies, and a father-son story built on local folklore
• Two book recommendations that aren't obvious: Scott Carson's The Chill and Easol Murphy's All of Me

Links & Resources:

• Dan Soule's website: dansoule.com
• Dan Soule on Instagram/Twitter: @writerdansoule
• Crystal Lake Publishing: crystallakepub.com
• Daniel Willcocks writer resources: danielwillcocks.com/writers
• Hatching Season charity anthology submissions: devilsrockbooks.com/submissions
• The Writer's Room (Tuesday writing sprints): danielwillcocks.com/the-writers-room
• Reedsy: reedsy.com

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📺 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@devilsrockbooks 🎧 Listen on your favourite app: https://pod.link/1829723468 💬 Join the community: https://www.devilsrockbooks.com/podcast

📚 About Dan Soule

Dan writes stories where ancient folklore crashes into the modern world—usually with devastating results. His work blends dark fantasy and horror, creating atmospheric tales that explore the messy intersection of myth and everyday life. Whether he's crafting vivid, unsettling worlds or diving into the complexity of human relationships, Dan's writing balances beautiful, lyrical prose with moments that will make you hold your breath. 

Growing up in Nottinghamshire, England, Dan fell in love with landscapes steeped in old stories and older mysteries—influences that run through much of his work. These days, he lives on the Antrim Coast in Northern Ireland with his wife and two children, writing stories that continue to explore the dark corners where past and present meet.

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Jonathan Janz didn't read a single book until he was 14. He'd convinced himself he wasn't smart enough. Then he picked up a Stephen King novel — one King himself doesn't particularly like — and was completely transported. He's now written over a dozen horror novels, been championed by Brian Keene, Jack Ketchum, and Joe Lansdale, and still pumps his fist alone in his office every time he writes something he's proud of. He encourages this in others.

Jonathan Janz is the author of more than a dozen novels including The Siren and the Spectre, Children of the Dark, and Wolfland. His work has been championed by Joe R. Lansdale, Jack Ketchum, and Brian Keene, and recognised by Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Booklist. He's also a full-time teacher — and that dual life shapes everything about how he reads, how he writes, and how he thinks about other people.

This is one of the most openly human conversations in the archive. Jonathan talks about self-doubt, mentorship, the mechanics of writing six hours a week during term time and going wild in the summer, and why the best advice he ever received was two words from a man who's no longer here to say them.

💀 What we get into:

* How a cold letter to Brian Keene in 2010 or 2011 became one of the most important relationships of Jonathan's writing life

* Jack Ketchum's two-word philosophy on fear — and why Jonathan returns to it every time he sits down to write

* Joe Lansdale's 90-minute phone call: the gut-punch of honest mentorship and why you need someone who tells you the truth in a Texas twang

* Why Jonathan still wakes up in the shower mentally cataloguing every mistake he's ever made — and what he does with that

* The Tommy Knockers, Robert McCammon, and how Jonathan learned that beautiful prose and immersive storytelling aren't mutually exclusive

* Writing six hours a week during the school year and still finishing a novel — the maths of constrained productivity

* Why first drafts are train wrecks and editing takes three times as long as writing

* Ryan Lewis, Josh Malerman, and the permission to celebrate the small wins without waiting for the big ones

* Reading diversely as a craft decision — and why Jonathan is honest about how narrow his reading used to be

* Using Marvel movies, Captain America, and Thor to have the conversations with his kids he doesn't know how to start otherwise

Links & Resources:

* Jonathan Janz's website: https://jonathanjanz.com

* Jonathan Janz on Instagram: @jonathan.janz

* Jonathan Janz on Twitter/X: @JonathanJanz

* Brian Keene: briankeene.com

* Joe R. Lansdale: https://joerlansdale.com

* Robert McCammon: https://robertmccammon.com

* Spin a Black Yarn (Malerman/Lewis): https://spinablackyarn.com

* Scares That Care Convention: https://scaresthatcare.org

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📺 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@devilsrockbooks 🎧 Listen on your favourite app: https://pod.link/1829723468 💬 Join the community: https://www.devilsrockbooks.com/podcast

📚 About Jonathan Janz

Jonathan Janz is the author of more than a dozen novels and numerous short stories. His work has been championed by authors like Joe R. Lansdale, Jack Ketchum, and Brian Keene; he has also been lauded by Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and School Library Journal. His ghost story The Siren and the Specter was selected as a Goodreads Choice nominee for Best Horror. Additionally, his novel Children of the Dark was chosen by Booklist as a Top Ten Horror Book of the Year. Jonathan’s main interests are his wonderful wife and his three amazing children. You can sign up for his newsletter, and you can follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Amazon, and Goodreads.

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Julie Hiner emailed Daniel years ago to ask if she could read one of his short stories on YouTube — in full Gothic makeup, to her own audience, for free. That's how they met. Now they're co-writing a novel together. It's a pretty good case study in what happens when you just reach out to people you admire and lead with genuine enthusiasm rather than an ask.

Julie Hiner is an author, storyteller, and self-proclaimed horror movie expert based in Calgary, Canada. She writes a fusion of heavy metal and horror fiction that is entirely her own — serial killers, demons, extreme violence, and the particular emotional logic of Black Label Society — and has built a fiercely loyal readership doing live events with actual bands. Her novel Infested won a Benjamin Franklin Silver Award. Her new novella Stella's Scream, published by Crystal Lake's Torrid Waters imprint, is out now.

In this conversation, Dan and Julie cover the long arc of building an audience for aggressively niche work, what seven years of in-person events actually looks like logistically, why Julie thinks extreme horror is therapeutic (and what the science says), and how her writing has gotten progressively more unhinged — in the best possible way — as she's stopped being afraid of what's on the page.

💀 What we get into:

• How Julie's first novel came out looking like 80s metal music videos — and why she decided to lean in rather than tone it down
• The mechanics of running in-person author events that don't bleed money: venue partnerships, pre-sold packages, and bringing the world of the book alive
• Why a dedicated niche readership shows up repeatedly and works its way through your entire catalogue
• Stephen Graham Jones sat alone at a conference breakfast while Julie worked up the nerve to ask him about eyeballs
• How music drives Julie's entire creative process — characters, scenes, and vibes all emerge from specific albums before a word is written
• What splatterpunk actually means, why it's distinct from gore-for-gore's-sake, and the feminist argument running through Stella's Scream
• Christopher Triana, Brian Bauer, Poppy Z. Brite, and Bridget Nelson — the authors shaping Julie's extreme horror education
• The therapeutic science behind horror fiction and why writers of dark content are often the sunniest people in the room
• Dan and Julie's long-gestating co-written wilderness horror novel — and the cover that existed before the book did

Links & Resources:

• Julie Hiner website: https://killersanddemons.com
• Julie Hiner on the Great Writers Share podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7YeWlA0IT4
• Julie Hiner on the Activated Authors Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvvEb_28aDY&t=825s
• Crystal Lake Publishing: crystallakepub.com
• Hatching Season charity anthology submissions: devilsrockbooks.com/submissions
• Daniel Willcocks author site: https://danielwillcocks.com

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📺 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@devilsrockbooks 

🎧 Listen : https://pod.link/1829723468 

💬 Join the community: https://www.devilsrockbooks.com/podcast

📚 About Julie Hiner

Julie Hiner is an author, storyteller, and blogger. She loves classic horror movies, books, and live music. Her favorite album to this day is Appetite for Destruction. Her favorite movie is Jaws.

Julie writes a unique blend of heavy metal and horror, weaving both psychological suspense and many types of rock and metal into a tapestry of musically infused storytelling.

She has published an 80s/90s metal murder detective vs serial killer series, a 90s nostalgic serial killer novella, a death metal demon possession novella, and co-curated a horror anthology. Several of Julie's horror short stories have been published in anthologies. Julie also had a deep sea horror novella published by Torrid Waters, a pulp and extreme horror imprint of Crystal Lake Publishing.

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What if the most important thing you ever do as a writer is something nobody else ever sees? Josh Malerman has 33 rough drafts sitting in a crate behind his desk. Nine are out in the world. The rest — finished novels, written and set aside — are what he considers the real work. Not the Netflix deal. Not the New York Times list. The crate.

Josh Malerman is the author of Bird Box, Mallory, Goblin, Unburied Carol, and dozens more. His breakthrough novel was adapted into a Netflix feature starring Sandra Bullock, and he's racked up Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson Award nominations along the way. He's also one half of the songwriting duo behind Detroit rock band The High Strung, whose song The Luck You Got serves as the theme for Showtime's Shameless.

In this conversation — originally recorded for Dan's earlier show and still one of the most resonant interviews in his nine years of podcasting — Josh talks about what it actually means to be an artist, why finishing is everything, how he wrote Bird Box in 26 days and Unburied Carol in 15, and why your body of work represents you far better than any single book ever could.

💀 What we get into:

• Why an artist is simply someone who finishes — and what it took Josh a decade to understand that
• The two-novel trick that finally broke Josh's finishing problem and produced his first completed manuscript
• Writing 91,000 words by hand in 28 days, in an all-night coffee shop outside Detroit in December
• Why Bird Box felt like his "flattest" novel — and what that tells us about the relationship between breakthrough work and personality
• The case for 500 words a day — and the maths that makes it genuinely staggering over 10 months
• How Josh wrote his 1,100-page novel Ghoul in the Cape at 1,000 words a day and why slowing down was the only way through
• "No V's in art" — why Josh refuses to let external success validate his work, and what that looks like in practice
• Why he gave away 60 free hardcovers of Bird Box at StokerCon — and why he thinks that was one of the best decisions he ever made
• The canon over the single work — why your body of work represents you in ways no individual book can
• What it was like to meet Sandra Bullock on set, under the lights, in full costume

Links & Resources:

• Josh Malerman's website: joshmalerman.com
• Carpenter's Farm (free novel): joshmalerman.com
• Bird Box (novel): available wherever books are sold
• Mallory (sequel to Bird Box): available wherever books are sold
• Goblin: available wherever books are sold
• Unburied Carol: available wherever books are sold
• Black Mad Wheel: available wherever books are sold
• The High Strung (band): @thehighstrung
• The Luck You Got — theme from Showtime's Shameless
• This Is Horror Podcast (Bird Box/Mallory deep-dive with Michael David Wilson): thisishorror.co.uk
• The Creative Pen Podcast with Joanna Penn (Dan's guest appearance): thecreativepenn.com

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📺 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@devilsrockbooks 

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💬 Join the community: https://www.devilsrockbooks.com/podcast

📚 About Josh Malerman

Josh Malerman is a New York Times bestselling horror author best known for Bird Box, which was adapted into a Netflix feature film starring Sandra Bullock and John Malkovich. He's written over 30 novels — nine of which are out in the world — spanning cosmic dread, psychological horror, and deeply strange fiction that resists easy genre classification. His work has been nominated for the Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson, and James Herbert Awards. He's also a working musician: one half of the songwriting duo behind Detroit rock band The High Strung, whose music appears in Shameless. He writes prolifically, finishes everything, and keeps the rest in a crate.

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KEY LINKS:

Devil's Rock Books: https://devilsrockbooks.com

Daniel Willcocks: https://danielwillcocks.com

Twisted Tales Books: https://twistedtalesbooks.com

SHOWNOTES

In this episode, Daniel sits down with C.M. Forest — award-winning horror author, atmospheric storyteller, and creator of deeply unsettling, isolation-driven fiction.

Together, they explore Christian’s unconventional path into writing, from studying animation and chasing a dream of comic art to discovering that storytelling—not drawing—was the real obsession. What followed was a decade-long journey into horror, experimentation, and ultimately finding his voice through short fiction and novels.

They dig into the origins of his award-winning novel Infested, the unexpected impact of adopting a pen name, and how his short story collection The Roots Run Deep and Other Stories came together almost by accident—revealing recurring themes of loneliness, dread, and existential fear along the way.

The conversation also dives into horror craft, from building atmosphere and sustaining tension to why slow-burn horror hits harder than shock value. Plus, Christian shares insights on the evolving horror landscape, the rise of indie creators, and why there’s never been a better time to be a horror writer.

This is a grounded, honest conversation about finding your creative lane, embracing what scares you, and building a career in horror on your own terms.

💀 In this episode you’ll discover:

• How writing in Tim Hortons became Christian’s creative routine

• Why switching to a pen name changed everything for his publishing journey

• The surprising origin of his short story collection and how it came together organically

• Why isolation, loneliness, and existential dread keep appearing in his work

• The importance of atmosphere and slow-burn tension in effective horror

• How authors like Nick Cutter and Adam Nevill shaped his writing style

• Why indie horror is thriving across books, film, and games right now

• The challenge of structuring a short story collection for pacing and variety

• His love of classic slashers like Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter and what makes them work

• Why atmosphere matters more than gore when it comes to lasting horror impact

Links & Resources:

• Official Website: https://christianlaforet.com/

• Explore The Roots Run Deep and Other Stories

• Discover Infested

Recommended in this episode:

• The Troop by Nick Cutter

• The Ritual by Adam Nevill

• The Acolyte

• Last Days

• The Terror

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💬 Join the community: https://www.devilsrockbooks.com/podcast

📚 About the Guest

C.M. Forest (Christian Laforet) is a horror author based in Ontario, Canada. He is the author of the Benjamin Franklin Silver Award-winning novel Infested, the novella We All Fall Before the Harvest, and the short story collection The Roots Run Deep and Other Stories.

His fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies across multiple genres, often exploring themes of isolation, dread, and the human psyche. A lifelong horror fan, he draws inspiration from film, literature, and the growing indie horror scene. When he’s not writing, he lives with his family—and his blanket-obsessed basset hound, Sully.

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In this episode, Daniel sits down with Matt Serafini — screenwriter, author, and one of horror's most compelling new voices, hailed by grandmaster Brian Keene as one of the best in the genre. Matt's books include Rites of Extinction, Feral, Under the Blade, and his brand new social media horror novel, Feeders.

Together, they dig into the obsessive joy of tracking down obscure slasher films, the nostalgia of video store culture, and how the algorithm-driven doom loops of modern social media became the seed of Matt's most ambitious novel yet. They talk about growing up on King, F. Paul Wilson, and Bret Easton Ellis, writing a teenage protagonist you'd never expect, and why Matt refused to change the last hundred pages of Feeders — no matter who asked.

The conversation also hits the pressure young people face online, the cynicism baked into performative outrage, AI slop flooding our feeds, and why Matt believes the best thing any writer can do is tell a story only they could tell.

This is a sharp, funny, and genuinely insightful conversation about horror fiction, social media, storytelling, and what it means to write something that couldn't have come from anyone else.

💀 In this episode you'll discover:

• Why Ogroff the Mad Butcher might be the most gloriously unhinged slasher film you've never seen
• The joy and consequence of video store culture — and what streaming has quietly taken from us
• How King, F. Paul Wilson, Michael Slade, and Bret Easton Ellis shaped Matt's voice as a writer
• What it felt like to receive a blurb from Brian Keene — and why "validation" is a complicated word
• Why Matt built MonoLife (the fictional dark web app at the heart of Feeders) from real frustrations with social media
• How working with college-age interns gave Matt an authentic window into Kylie's world
• The agent who told him to scrap the last hundred pages — and why he walked away
• Why the climax of Feeders was the most fun Matt has ever had writing anything
• What Matt hopes readers take away from the book (without prescribing the answer)
• Why authenticity — not productivity — is the writer's best weapon against AI
• A sneak peek at Matt's next project, which his agent called "couldn't be any more you"

Links & Resources:

Matt Serafini on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattserafini

Feeders by Matt Serafini: https://www.amazon.com/Feeders-Novel-Matt-Serafini/dp/1668060973

Devil's Rock Community Discord: https://www.devilsrockbooks.com/podcast

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📚 About the Guest

Matt Serafini is a screenwriter and author of horror fiction based on the East Coast. His novels include Rites of Extinction, Feral, Under the Blade — called "one of the best slasher films you'll ever read" by Film Thrills — and Feeders, a dark social media horror novel published in 2024. He has been hailed as one of the best new voices in horror fiction by Brian Keene.

Matt's short fiction has appeared in multiple anthology collections. His non-fiction writing on film and literature has been published at Dread Central, Shock Till You Drop, Fangoria, and Horror Hound. He has a background in marketing and spent years managing social media for a university — an experience that fed directly into the obsessions at the heart of Feeders.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.