Hello and welcome to Big Gay Energy.
I'm Caitlin. And I'm Fiora.
Come along with us while we dive into the fun and nuances of
queer media. Representation matters, and
we're. Here to talk about it.
Cheers queers. We are back with another super
fun interview today. Today we are talking to David
Reddish, the talented author of the Comic Con Chronicles.
Welcome to the podcast, David. Thank you, Caitlin.
Thank you, Fiore. I'm so excited to be here.
I love your show. Oh, we're so happy to have you
here. And seriously David,
congratulations on your most recent publication.
The final installment Sex, Drugs and Superheroes 3 The Wrath of
Comic. Con, thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
We were honored to be able to read it and talk to you today.
I quick question, though maybe not quick, we'll see.
What was the inspiration for this whole series that you came
up with? For the whole series, it goes
back a very, very long time, longer than I care to admit,
frankly. It's funny.
So, and I don't know if he remembers this.
I'm friends with a writer, director named Darren Stein.
You may know some of his work. He directed a film called
Jawbreaker. He directed a film called GBF.
I've known Darren a very, very long time.
And years and years ago we were having dinner and I had just
been to Comic Con and had had a great time.
And we were talking about, you know, what, what was I going to
be working on? What was I going to be writing?
And as I was talking about it, he said, this is this is your
movie. This is this is your story.
Like you, you have to go write this.
You're you're like, so inspired by it.
And it sounds like so much fun. So I thought, oh, OK.
And I tried writing the initial draft for of what became Sex
Arts and Superheroes was supposed to be a movie, and I
just could not nail it down. It was.
So it was too sprawling and it was too, there was too much, you
know, interior kind of monologue.
And so it just sat around for a good five years, 5-6 years,
maybe even longer than that. And when we had the big writers
strike out here in Hollywood in 2008, I knew there was no way I
was going to sell a script for at least five years.
So I said, well, I'll go write a book instead.
And that was at the top of my list.
And suddenly writing the story as a novel works so much better
than it did as a film, at least initially.
So it was I was off and running from there.
And as you were writing it, did you initially?
I guess it's since it's planned as a movie, I guess how did it
become a trilogy? Like did you?
Was the story initially that vast or like did it just like?
Evolve. So it's another, I'm gonna have
to drop another name here. My good friend Tyler Compton,
the author, he writes mystery novels.
When I was initially pitching the first book to publishers and
to agents just all over the place, he said, you have to
pitch it as a series. And I said, but this is a one
off. There's no way that it's it's a
self-contained story. He said, come up with something.
It doesn't matter if you ever do it, you got to come up with
something because right now the publishers only want series.
And to put this in like the context of history, this is when
Twilight was big, when The Hunger Games was really big,
when Harry Potter obviously very big.
All these these different novel series were really, really
taking off and the publishing world was starting to look at
their properties more like film, you know, the way film producers
would look at a movie of, oh, how many how, how far can we
milk this? Right?
Like, how many stories are there to tell?
So when I started having meetings with publishers, I
said, oh, yeah, it's part of a series, an ongoing series of
Comic Con stories. And The funny thing was, as I
was wrapping up the, the edits on the first book, it really did
start to, to just state in my mind the idea of, you know, I
think there is more I want to say about these characters and
about Comic Con and about geek life and, and all of that.
And so initially it was going to be a running series, then it was
going to be a trilogy. But I had an idea for like a
fourth kind of spin off book and then it became a trilogy as a
whole. And I don't plan to do any more
beyond this. But maybe I'm getting ahead of
us here. Do you think it'll ever be made
into a movie? Oh gosh, wouldn't I love that?
I mean, it's funny, I see all these other authors in
interviews and they're like, oh, I don't know, I think it's pure
as a book and it's like, oh, BS People like, of course you want
it to be a movie. Of course you want the paycheck.
Of course you want more people to read it.
Because if it's a movie, more people are just going to read it
anyway. It's going to sell books.
So the the movie conversation, it's funny.
I have it every few years. I would say somebody brings it
up. I've had producers interested.
I've had actors interested in playing some of the different
parts and some of the different characters.
It came, it came pretty close to happening about, oh gosh, 10
years ago, let's say 15 years ago.
I guess not quite that long, more like 12 years ago.
It came close to happening where a producer really did option it
and was interested in doing the entire series and bought the
rights to sequels. But then he got sued over
another movie he was doing completely unrelated to mine,
and so I didn't even get paid. So I'm not even sure that the
option had an illegal weight to it at that point.
But the movie never happened in that incarnation, which is too
bad. We were looking at screen tests.
We were talking about directors. I was really excited about it.
One day. One day.
At all, Yeah. Why was San Diego Comic Con the
perfect setting for this series? Well, I guess that's an
interesting question. I mean, Comic Con is very much a
character unto itself in these books.
The, the evolution of the convention and the different
forces that are at work shaping geek culture, shaping the
convention and how they're sort of at odds with one another.
Particularly that's true in this most recent story, I think.
So, you know, part of the, the genesis of the story itself was
that I wanted to write a story about Comic Con just in general.
But the other thing I, I think the corollary to that is Comic
Con is a place for creativity. It is a celebration of love and
of interest and of sort of shared experience and nostalgia
and all these different warm and fuzzy feelings.
But there's also just so much creativity on display, be it on
the page of a comic book, on on the movie screen, on the TV
screen, wherever it may be. And the gaming console is
another big component of that. And so I wanted to write a story
about creative people. Obviously Liquin, our main
character, is a writer. Kate's an aspiring filmmaker,
Windsor's an aspiring animator. And so I thought Comic Con would
just be a really interesting place to look at creative people
celebrating creativity #1 but also dealing with the kind of
insecurities that that breeds. I mean, when you're looking at
the most successful media franchises in history and Comic
Con is where they all live, it's, it's just how it is when
you're looking that in the face and you're saying, I want to do
that. I mean, yes, it's very
inspiring, but it's also extremely intimidating.
And it makes you extremely insecure about your own
abilities to tell stories and create characters and, and find
an audience. So I thought that the I thought
there was a lot of sort of conflict that just came with
that setting. And so it felt very organic to
me in a way to explore creativity and creative minds.
Yeah, I I enjoyed the like, like you said, like on the surface,
like seems like warm, happy, fuzzy fun.
But like, you're right, especially from being in like
Liquin's head, like you definitely get like his
insecurity of just like you're feeling intimidated, like you
said. And also there's like the
factions that go with it 'cause it's people.
So there's like factions and it is, it is a good setting for
conflict from multiple perspectives.
So yeah, I thought it was a good choice.
Yeah, it's about people. It's true, it's true, it's all
true. It is, it is Speaking of people.
So one of the point of views in this story.
OK, so the story is told from the perspective of Liquid's
journal, intercut with Ashland's witness testimony, which like, I
only read this book. So it was really interesting
coming into it and being like, oh, this is how I'm getting this
story. I found it so unique and so
engaging. Why did you decide to tell the
story in this particular format? Well, to add a little bit more
context to that, the other two books in the Comic Con
Chronicles, Sex, Drugs and Superheroes and Conquest of the
Planet of the Geeks, are both told in the form of Liquin's
journal. You're very much inside his head
and feeling what he's feeling and experiencing what he's, you
know, experiencing, which was by design.
Two things happened in writing Wrath of Comic Con that made me
integrate Ashlynn as a sort of counterpoint to him.
The first being, and I'm very embarrassed to admit this, I
initially when the first book was published, I had the next
two outlined and I had this sort of nebulous idea for what this
4th spin off book would be. And I think I even said this at
conventions at the time when I was interviewed or whatever
else. But what happened was when I sat
down to write the third one, you know, a a couple of years ago,
whenever I got started on it, I could not find my notes.
I could not find the outline to the third book.
And like, like you can't see it, but I have a whole shelf of my
notebooks back here. I went through every damn scrap
of paper on the shelf, could not find it.
I do not know to this day, it never did turn up my outline for
the, the original outline for the stories that was going to
happen. And so I'm going, Oh no, what am
I? What the hell am I going to do?
Like I remembered obviously the broad strokes of it and some of
this, you know, the, the, the subplots that were, that were
definitely going to be told and sort of the payoff from the
first two books. And I had all of that in mind.
So I initially started trying to put it back together and it
wasn't working. The other thing was that based
on what I remembered, I thought the story was going to be a
little on the thin side. And in fact, you know, if I'm
really honest, I feel like the second book is a little thin in
places. I thought that it maybe could
have used one more subplot. So in in sitting down to to do
this new outline for the wrath of Comic Con, looking at it, I
was like it. I really felt like it needed
something else. And so I, and at that point,
this is, this is such a pretentious thing to say.
So both of you and all your listeners, please forgive me in
advance, but it's the honest to God truth.
Writing sequels is hard. Like it's really hard because
it's like, haven't I said this before?
Like, what more do you do? Yes, I know where I want the
characters to go, but how do I make this feel like it's part of
the series and make it make the characters feel like they're
true to themselves, but at the same time do something very
different with it. So I'm not repeating myself.
And, and plus, and, and this, this is really gross to admit.
You know, I'm 10 years, 15 years older now than when I wrote the
first book. So getting back to who I was 15
years ago to get it, how I saw these characters and how I saw
Comic Con and what all of it meant was a really big challenge
for me, especially now writing the third one.
So as I was sort of mulling all this over and trying to get
organized, the character of Ashlyn was really banging on the
door in the back of my head going, hey, what about me?
Don't you want to tell my story? And I pretty much decided at
that point the third book was going to be the last book in the
series, at least for the foreseeable future.
I thought three was a great number, you know, beginning,
middle, end. And I wanted to work her in
somehow. And so then I had this really
wacky idea for what if I do a counter, you know, counter
narrative? What if I do 2 characters that
are narrating the same story that are completely opposed to
one another? So you're getting two different
points of view. And Ashlynn in many ways became
the key to that because she could be as cynical and she's
much older than Liquin in the book.
Obviously there are A twist to that we can go into in a second,
but she's a much older character.
She's a more cynical character, she's definitely more jaded.
She's sort of the anti illiquid in many ways.
And so I thought, wouldn't it be cool to put them in the same
story and wouldn't that flesh everything out so much more?
So I came up with this conceit that Ashlynn is living in 20.
What is it, 2047? Liquid's living in 2012 and
they're recounting the same events and they're describing,
you know, the evolution of this world in in different ways.
And so I was really inspired by Godfather Part 2.
If you've seen that film, it, it has two protagonists.
It has young Vito and it has Michael Corleone, you know, De
Niro and and Al Pacino and their stories comment on one another.
And these two people never meet. They're in different time
periods. And so I thought this is
something cool to try because I don't think I've ever really
read that in a novel before. So it was a way to push myself
as a writer and it was a way to sort of rein in all the the very
real world issues I was having in approaching the third novel.
Yeah, no, I, I what a journey to get there.
But truly like it paid off really well.
Like truly it it does, it gives it a very unique flavor.
And also, like it helps like flesh out so many things without
having to like, I don't know, expand upon the novel just like
the setting that Ash Ashland's in, Like it gives you a good
breath of like what? How did we get here?
And like, it just it wraps things up really nicely.
So it was an excellent choice. Thank you for doing that.
Thank you. Something that I enjoyed.
The book mentions a term called cross play, described as drag
but geekier. Yes, the main character is
liquid. Roxanne and Kate could cross
play. Who would they be?
Oh my Lord. Wow.
OK, well, I think for the sake of your for the sake of your
listeners, let's talk a little bit about the idea of cross play
first, which is something that has really, by the way, exploded
in the past few years. Maybe I'm like the most naive
person in the world, but it took me a good ten years to figure
out that a lot of the appeal of cosplay in general, dressing up
like a character from a show or a movie, whatever, and Comic
Con. And the queer vein, the very,
very beautiful, strong queer vein that has always existed
within convention culture. So much of it is built around
fetishism. It never occurred to me.
I just thought, oh, she really likes dressing up like Buffy and
oh, doesn't he look great in the spandex?
And, and no, it's because they get off on dressing up like
that. And more importantly, other
people get off on seeing them dressed like that.
And, and the sort of fantasy of, oh, let's pretend we're Hogwarts
students exploring our sexuality for the first time, or, you
know, whatever that may be. It's very, very real.
And and it's come to be something very celebrated in
convention culture now, the cross play.
I think it's a natural evolution of that, which is you dress like
somebody of the opposite gender. You know, you see a man dressed
up like Catwoman or whatever it may be, a woman dressed up like
the Joker, for one thing. It's like, well, well, we're
dressing up and we're celebrating our characters, so
who cares? And by the way, you did a really
stylish, you know, take on, oh, I see like a very feminized
Joker is actually kind of cool and maybe kind of sexy and maybe
kind of scary. And you know, it, it takes the
characters a new way and it puts a certain, I guess personal
stamp on them. But I think it's also, you know,
jumping off the fetishism idea. It is a way to explore gender
and sexuality. And so it's become a very
celebrated part of culture. If Liquin, Roxanne and Kate
could cross play, Oh my gosh. I mean, I feel like Liquin would
be Jean Grey from the X-Men, Marvel girl, the Phoenix,
because he obviously has a a great affinity for the X-Men.
He has a great affinity for that character.
Yeah. Kate, I think naturally would
dress up like Jean Grey if you if you said, hey, you have to
pick a costume. I think that's who she would
pick. So I think because of her weird
bond with like, when she would pick like Wolverine maybe, you
know, I could see her walking around in the yellow spandex
with the claws and making it kind of erotic, sexy, dangerous,
cool. Roxanne, I think Roxanne's a
little bit trickier. I mean, I could see her, oh
gosh, I could see her dressing up as like a Batman villain,
maybe like the Joker, or I could see her doing like a sexy Darth
Vader, like Darth Vader S like in high blacks, the stiletto
like come up to her thighs and like a mini skirt.
And like, I'm putting the whole costume together in my mind as
I'm talking to you, you know, the helmets and, and with the
lightsaber, she'd be carrying the Saber around and, and owning
the character that way. And I think I think they would
all have a great time doing it. It would be a lot of fun.
I agree. I think they're gonna have fun
and in those settings, like it's like they're, I like the
characters you chose cause like they're, they're like national
power dynamics can also. Like stay with.
The characters, I love that. OK, follow up.
Yeah, who would straighten this cross play as?
Oh wins are such a a funny character, isn't he?
I love him so much because he's so straight laced, hence hence
the name straightness. Who would he dress up as?
Whoever he dressed up as, it would be, you know, terrible
discomfort for him. He would he would be wildly
uncomfortable whether it be a male or a female.
I could see him dressing up like a Dalek, like from Doctor Who or
something like that, and just carrying the plunger around.
Like I could see him just carrying a plunger.
I'm the laziest Dalek of all time.
Something that sort of excuse gender.
And is, is somehow not a, a human being because I think he's
a little bit more comfortable thinking about himself that way.
Yeah, I, I think he would, he would probably be like a, a
Droid character, but he wouldn't, he would never be
C3PO. He would he would be like a
Terminator or something, a Cylon from Metal Star Galactica.
I like that. Yeah.
All right. Thank you for answering that
question. Just very curious and reading
out of like no. That's a great question.
You never thought about it like that before?
All right, on a more serious note, there is this.
There's a really great scene between Liquid and RAF when they
are discussing safe sex practices and, like, bring up
the horrific reality of the AIDS epidemic.
And the story deals a lot with like, the threat of dystopian
future. And I appreciate the
conversation that they they were having in like, quote, like the
present time in the novel, which reminds us that like the past
and the present can feel just as nightmarish, especially to like
marginalized groups. Why did you choose to like
insert this scene into the book? It's another really great
question here. Oh my gosh.
Well, there are a few reasons why.
One being that, yes, I, I thought of the book as a whole
on kind of a meditate as kind of a meditation on time and
personal evolution. The other is that because this
story is set in 2012, I wanted to put it in a proper historical
context to make the moment feel authentic and, but, but still,
you know, very tied to that time.
And in 2012 Prep, what we know now as Prep was starting to come
online, there were more and more studies initiated, including one
that I did. And we can talk more about that
if you're interested. It was, it was something that
was really coming online for the first time.
And the big thing for me personally, when I got on Prep,
I don't know if I've ever said this in an interview before.
So you're getting like the real low down here.
The thing, a few things happened when I got on Prep.
One was that I had never stopped to realize or consider how much
anxiety I really had around sexuality, around sex and my
sexuality personally. I am a man of a certain age and
someone asked me once what was the 1st, when was the first time
you saw an LGBT person on television or in the movies?
And I said, well, honestly, it was gay men dying of AIDS.
And I remember that as far back as I can remember watching the
news, Frankly, that was the only representation the community had
for for a good decade at least. And you know, I grew up in, you
know, Rent and Angels in America come out when when I'm a
teenager. And obviously, there was a lot
of talk about HIV, AIDS. And the thing that drove the
point home for me was when I was doing my study on Prep, I ran
into a man I used to date at the doctor's office, somebody.
It was wonderful. He didn't work, but we'd stayed
friends. And I really, really liked him.
And I thought he was, you know, an incredible artist and just a
wonderful, wonderful person. And he asked me, why are you
here seeing an HIV specialist? And I said, oh, I'm doing their
Prep study. He said, oh, that's good because
my last ex lied to me. And guess why I'm here?
And it's funny, I still get emotional thinking about it.
That just tore me to pieces because it's like, nobody
deserves that. But especially, you know, this
is someone I know and I love and he doesn't deserve this at all.
You know, I testified to God himself about that.
But it's what he has to work with now.
And part of the study I was doing, we had to go in and talk
to counselors to just talk about how the drug was affecting our
sex life and, and our partners and everything else.
And I went in the room and just started crying because I said,
and it was the first time I'd ever really stopped to consider.
I said to her, do you know any gay or bisexual men of a certain
age, say over the age of 60? And she said no.
And I said, me neither, because there aren't any anymore.
You know, we lost 2 1/2 generations of gay men and
bisexual men and trans women to this disease.
And so the reason I added this scene into the book was as a
sort of way for me to process all of that anger and grief and
relief and privilege and in a very strange way, survivor's
guilt, because I think this is what men of my generation really
do deal with. It's a very, very strange
reality. Now I know so many people who
are HIV positive. It it's a really frightening
thing for me to stop for just a few minutes sometimes and think,
how many people would I know? How many of them would be dead
right now? And the answer is, well, I know
X number of people with HIV and the answer is all of them.
And I think about what these people mean to me and how
they've affected my life. And so I don't want to put too
big a, you know, a thing on the on the scene, but it is a way
for me to confront the past of our community.
And I mean that on the level of the LGBT community and the
American community, you know, the way Americans looked at HIV
as a whole. And it's a way to look at the
future in a sense, to say we cannot let this happen again.
This cannot, this is not acceptable.
And we have to do everything we can to make sure it doesn't
happen again because the cost is just far too high.
And I always worried that that scene would maybe stand out too
much, that it wouldn't really gel with the rest of the story.
But in that part of Liquin's arc is he's confronting his own
sexuality in a new way. It just seemed like it fit and
it was something that I've never really seen done in another
another novel before where where a younger generation that now
enjoys the privilege of having prep and having a antiretroviral
drugs and having a unified community and the legacy of all
the people we lost during AIDS. I'd never really seen anyone
articulate it like that or confront it in such a way, and
so that was probably very honestly the most emotional
scene for me to write in the entire story.
Yeah, it it definitely felt very emotional, like reading it and
it just, it felt very real, which I think is why it stood
out to me. And I and I like that you said
that you know, his, he is somebody because of his time
period, somebody that enjoys the privileges of like new HIV
medications and preventatives and just the knowledge that came
from unfortunately the epidemic. And so I loved it too.
I am an infectious diseases pharmacist.
So AI liked it cause of that. But BI was like, this is it's
still important to have these conversations and like, it's OK
to be scared in like reality and like talk it through.
So I just really loved that scene.
It was just very real. Thank you for processing and
sharing. It was one of my favorite scenes
in the book, truly. Thank you.
Beautiful. Thank you.
I wanna just say thank you so much for sharing all of that.
Because. Both of us, but I know
especially I feel that education and awareness is so important in
to be like told through art and media because it's a powerful
tool to have someone be invested in something but then also get
something and like change their way of seeing a subject.
And it's just very beautiful. So I really appreciate you being
vulnerable with us and then also writing that scene in the book
'cause it was definitely important.
Thank you. OK, so next question.
One of Liquin's main motivations is a deep fear of being
forgotten or living a meaningless life.
I mean you know same. Liquin tries to find his place
like Comic Con and legacy his art.
As an artist yourself, do you relate to Liquin's journey?
Oh gosh, yeah, of course I do. And that journey is very, I
think it's a, it's a relatively unrefined reflection of my own
journey. This also I think relates to
being queer as well, a queer male, certainly I probably am
never going to have children. That's that's I, I chose a
career that is not known for being exactly super lucrative or
financially stable. I'm a person of a certain age
now. So, and obviously there are
obstacles if even if I found, you know, a man that I love very
deeply and we got married and lived happily ever after, there
are still financial and real world obstacles to our having
children is part of my life. So my work is what I leave
behind. That is, I think something that
artists have always felt, even those that do have children,
they will say, you know, my, my work, they, they will often
times spend far more time on their work than with their
actual children. And you can ask the children of
celebrities and they will tell you exactly that.
So there is this notion in Liquin's mind that this is his
legacy. This is all he can produce in
terms of progeny is, is his work, his stories.
And there's the idea, you know, of I think it's interesting.
My parents, you know, my, my nieces are five and three years
old and watching my parents go through the transformation from
parents to grandparents. And you kind of hear about, I
think we all kind of hear about this.
We have conversations with our folks who talk about their
relationships with with their parents and how much they change
when they become grandparents. And there are all kinds of
reasons we could cite for this. But I think having talked to my
grandmother quite a bit about this and having talked to my
folks about this, it's you see your own immortality in a sense.
You see it's going to keep going.
You know, the, the love and the values and the lessons and
everything I imparted it, it goes somewhere.
And you know, I love these, these children and so, and they
make the world brighter. And so maybe I've done something
wonderful. I relate to that in terms of my
work, as I say. And so one of liquin's big
insecurities is if I don't create something, I, I'm just
gonna vanish like I might, as you know, no one's going to
Remember Me in 100 years, in 1000 years, whatever it may be.
And that's the war of arts that I think all of us fight on some
level. It's always, this is the one
they've got to remember before. I've got to make this the best.
It absolutely can be. I've got to give the best
performance. I've got to write the Best Song.
I've got to, I've got to write the best book, make the best
movie because this is going to last forever when I, you know,
in the, in the ways that I cannot.
And in with Liquin, you know, the trilogy itself is based
around his Saturn return. So I think he's 27 or 28 when
the first book starts and then he's 30 or 31 when the third
book ends. And so it's his transition from
childhood and young adulthood to being a full blown adult and
middle-aged. And it's, it's something that I
think we all kind of naturally have to grapple with at a
certain point, a certain age. And so it, it felt, again, very
organic to his story, to me to include it, both because of his
age and because he has so much creative ambition, you know?
Yeah. I definitely agree.
It just, it feels very real, like growing up as a millennial,
that old this, that, like you need to be perfect.
You need to be successful. That stuff that like, it's baked
into you. So like, I could feel like
liquid's like pressure he was just putting on himself.
And like just at the con, he's like, this is my one chance,
this is it. And if not, like I was like, oh,
man, he feels like he's got a spiral.
Yeah. So it just, it just felt very
like relatable, his journey. I mean, it's based in reality,
certainly, you know, every, every time I put out a book,
it's like, oh, this is it. This has got to be the one.
This has got to be the one that transforms everything.
And sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't or it
always does, but not necessarily in the ways you would have
wanted or expected it to transform you.
It it's a very, very strange thing.
And I'm sort of living through that again with, with the third
book in the series coming out right now.
But it's a, it's also, I, I will say, I think it gets easier over
time as you build a body of work.
It's sort of like, OK, I don't need to stress because obviously
I've, I've done however many others and I know I can do more.
And it's just a matter of the time and the energy and the
focus to get it done. And maybe some of that's my own
maturity, I don't know. But Liquid's definitely going
through a struggle in the book that that was built out of my
own. All right, so we've talked about
there's, there's a lot going on in this book.
There's a lot to take away from it.
That's really fantastic. If what?
What do you hope the audience takes away from from the book
series? I mean, I so much right Like, I,
I, I hope they have a better question.
I, I, I hope first of all, they have fun.
You know, I, I wrote these books as a celebration of geek culture
because I had never really seen one that I thought was accurate
to real life. Even something like The Big Bang
Theory, for example, I, I feel like they're, which is
supposedly celebrating geeky people.
It's there's still, it still does it with like this error,
condescension, and I don't like that.
So I wanted to write a story from the bottom up where it's
sort of, you know, you're looking up at this is the geek I
want to aspire to be. There's something aspirational
about it, you know, So I, I want people to be more secure in
their identity. And I mean that identity as a
geeky, nerdy person. I mean that identity in terms of
their gender identity, in terms of their sexuality, in terms of
their race, in terms of everything, right?
Geek, you know, geek, geek dumb, like queerness knows no real
bounds. And so I wanted to draw the line
between those two in the popular consciousness because I think
that's always been there And, and the number of conventions
I've been to over the years where people are just like what?
There's so many out gay people here, queer people, you know,
transgender people. Why, why does comic, you know,
why do comic books attract this? Why does science fiction attract
these kinds of people? And I'm like, because it's the
same thing, man. It's, you know what, what a a
straight, CIS heteronormative person might get out of the
X-Men, for example, is what queer people will get out of the
X-Men and out of life. And it's just a matter of
saying, hey, you can relate to us.
You just have to understand this is the missing piece.
So I wanted to offer that missing piece to the reader.
I wanted to celebrate the, the incredible friends that I made
over the years going to different conventions and the
sort of silliness of it, the the excitement of it.
I and, and just the beautiful love and, and support that
they've given me, the inspiration, especially that
they've given me. None of the the characters in
these stories are really based directly on a single person, but
they are all based on real people in the sense that sort of
take facets and and and bits of everybody and pile them together
in in a way that's going to suit, I think, the character and
the story. Yeah.
I just want people to have a great time and to think, you
know, with the third book, especially think more about the
past and the future and just just not let you know in, in
terms of the creative journey to never stop fighting.
That's, you know, whenever, whenever I've had moments of
doubt or or moments of triumph, there's always this voice at the
back of my head going, never stop pushing.
You've got to keep going. You never stop pushing.
The only way you lose is if you stop wait, you know, be it on a
high note or a low note. So, so I want everyone to keep
pushing and, you know, be creative.
You guys have seen the Muppet movie, right?
The original Muppet movie. I hope Caitlyn's not nodding.
Have you not seen the Muppet Movie, dude?
They are seen everything. I've seen nothing.
Oh, my gosh. OK, well, this is your homework
for later. You're going to watch the
original Muppet movie directed by James Crowley from 1979.
Because it is. And this even plays a role in
the second book of the series. It's the best movie ever made
about creativity and creative ambition, in my view, in that it
shows the dark side and it shows the light side.
And ultimately what gets Kermit through that journey is, you
know, it's his friends, It's his relationships with people.
But the way that movie ends is in this very postmodern way
where the entire set collapses and Kermit just turns and looks
into the camera and says, you know, life's like a movie, go
write your own ending. And that's what I wanted to give
other people. It's it's tell your story.
It's really beautiful. It is really beautiful.
And you know, I, I could sing the entire song right now, but I
won't as a mercy to all of you, keep believing, keep pretending.
I mean, because we're sitting here and we're puppets and we
did it. You know, you're a human being.
Why can't you? You know, that's, that's what
I've always carried with me and that's what I want people to
carry when when they feel inspired.
That's beautiful. So I love it.
I hope that inspires people to go to conventions more.
I hope it inspires people to watch The Muppet Movie.
Caitlin. Oh my gosh, we'll watch it
tomorrow. It's.
Funny as hell. It is.
Yeah, I hope it inspires people just at conventions and and
people, you know, so many people want to tell stories.
I think I, I remember years ago reading a Series, A survey that
the number one ambition among Americans, the thing everybody
said they would really like to do is 82% of the population said
they'd like to write a book. So.
Wow, but. You know everybody get on it.
You know you have talk to text now it's easier.
Get on it. All right.
Well, I think those are all great, lovely messages.
One aspect of the book is that there is queer representation in
it. So how did you approach
representing queer characters authentically, and what role do
you believe literature plays in promoting inclusivity and
understanding? Oh wow, big questions.
Well, so this is a good way to talk about Ashlyn a little bit.
She is a character as I was developing her.
She's a non binary character in my mind.
And I wanted to write that for a few reasons.
One, because I am non binary myself, and another because in
the future I don't think we're going to get so hung up on
gender and sexuality the way we have tended to in the past or
even the present. So I, I, I, I wanted to approach
her in that way as sort of a suggestion of hope to everybody
that, you know, maybe we'll be able to relax in the future and
it'll be maybe not necessarily easier, but it'll be a little
bit more people just won't be so hung up on it.
In terms of writing her, I never call her nine binary in the
book. I felt like if she starts
proselytizing about identity, first of all, does anybody
really like that? You know, we do that in, in real
life, but it's like, OK, checklist, checklist, checklist.
Tell me who you really are. I think you know more about a
person based on what they do and what they say about other things
rather than the labels that they apply to themselves.
So I, I never wanted to be super didactic with any of the, the,
the gender sexuality exploration that I was, you know, using her
character to explore. I just wanted to feel really,
really organic. And so to the point about
representation, I always approach these characters,
whatever their gender, race or sexuality may be, as how would
this person really talk? Mike Nichols, the director of
The Graduate and Primary Colors, and who's Afraid of Virginia
Woolf? I remember seeing him in an
interview talking about how he guides actors.
He's one of the best directors of actors I've ever seen.
And he said there's only one question.
What is this really like? And so the question I always
came down to when I was writing a scene or writing a
conversation that was going to deal with these issues in
particular was how would this person really express himself?
How would she really describe this?
And so I don't think any of the characters would come out and
start throwing labels around and, and talking about all these
these higher sort of philosophical conundrums that we
deal with as part of representation of the community
today. I think these people would just
sort of say, this is who I am and and this is how I feel.
And that to me was the best way to express that on the page was
just just very, very organically to what would a conversation
sound like. The bigger question you're
asking is how does representation deal with that?
Well, you've already said, you know, learning about the
convention was so fun in this, in this way.
Because it's a story with characters that you relate to
and, and who are funny and who are adventurous.
And I think I, I, I'm a great believer in, OK, here's the most
pretentious statement you're going to get from me all day.
I apologize. Now look out below.
Here it comes. I care a great deal about art as
the place where we really explore and record the human
experience and a way to confront moral and ethical problems and
questions that we have to face in day-to-day life.
And I think this has always been true throughout human history.
I think, you know, in my view, you could argue that you will
find as much as many life lessons and as much morality in
a novel by Victor Hugo as you will in the Bible.
Or you will find that in a song by John John Lennon.
You will find that in a film by Scorsese.
Things that are right, things that are wrong, things that
don't have clear answers, things that are right.
But you know, you have to have the caveat, the things that are
wrong, but you also have to have to have this caveat, you know,
whatever it may be. And so I think when it comes to
representation, I approach it in the same way that I approach is
sort of the morality of it. I think people will will relate
much better if they see something encapsulated through
art because they will be able to feel something that way
experiencing it. You don't necessarily feel
things when you're sitting in social studies class like as a
freshman and you're talking about current affairs.
You feel it when you're talking about my friend is an immigrant
and he got deported. My friend is a woman and she
does not have autonomy over her reproductive system.
My friend is queer and he cannot protect his family, whatever
that may be. You feel it more when it relates
to your life and your own personal experience.
And so when I write be it characters at Comic Con, be it
characters in the 4th century, whatever it may be, I'm working
on a book about a graphic novel about witches right now.
So whether it be witches who are fighting in World War Two, you
get more if you relate to them. You get more when you can say I
identify with this character. And so suddenly I'm feeling and
thinking the way he feels and things.
And I had never thought about life this way.
I'd never thought about my morality this way.
So and pretentious statement, but there you have it.
Well said. Not not honestly not pretentious
at all. Like that is exactly how I feel
about art and why I think it's so powerful and I I could not
agree with you more. But also that comic book about
witches sounds amazing. Yeah, I size away like witches
in World War 2, Theora. Yes, all the yes to that.
We can talk about that a little bit in a second.
I'm really excited for it. And actually this morning I
just, the artist who's drawing it sent me an incredible page
from it. And I'm like, that's really
happening. Oh my gosh, it looks great so.
That's so great. Well, I'm happy to hear that
you're, you're working on your next project.
That's really exciting. That's actually all the all the
questions we have are almost at the top of our hour.
If if you want to mention anything about your new project,
that'd be great. Sure, the title is Witch Core.
Witch Core Volume one. It is going to be an ongoing
series, we hope. I am writing this with Joe
Phillips, who is a legendary comic book artist.
He's drawn Wonder Woman. He's drawn the X-Men.
He's been openly gay his entire career.
And he and I met it's, it's one of these weird Hollywood stories
where it's like, I remember seeing his work long before I
knew who he was as a teenager, long before who I knew who I
was. I remember going to Comic Con
the very, very first time and seeing his work and thinking,
oh, he's, he's queer. And he also draws erotic
comments and comics and oh, wow, I didn't know it could get that
big. OK.
And then seriously, he, he, he would endorse it.
Or that those could get so big because he likes big.
Anyway, we, Joe and I, got to know each other through mutual
friends and because sort of doing the different conventions
over the years, especially after I had written the first book and
it became tied to my own career and my own lifestyle so much.
You start to get to know people 'cause you kind of see a lot of
the same faces. And Joe and I got to know each
other and I just loved his work so much.
So every time we were in a convention together, I'd go talk
to him and I go look at all this new stuff.
And he he like, like me, has a great love of Hollywood and like
classic Hollywood. So he'll draw, he'll draw like
movie posters for like a classic, kind of like like
Superman, but it's Gregory Peck is Superman kind of thing.
Or it's it's what was the one he did like Judy Garland is Miss
Marvel or something like that. Like he draws like these classic
Hollywood that's awesome, like Benny Davis and X-Men as Jean
Grey, like he does where I think Mickey Rooney's like Wolverine
or something. And they're so cool.
They're so cool. Anyways, Joe and I were chatting
one day and I was just saying hi to him.
And he, he said, I have this idea.
I want to do a story about witches in World War 2.
And he, he sort of laid out what the whole idea was.
And I said, I think it's a great idea.
You should, you should go do it. Go do it, man.
I'd I'd read it. And then he said, would you
write it? And I said, well, first of all,
we've never worked together before.
Secondly, I've never written a graphic novel before.
I've written one that was never actually produced.
But so I, I know how the mechanics work.
But I said, are you really trusting me to do this man?
And he said, no, I think you're the, I think you're the right
person, so take a crack at it. So I went off and I wrote the
1st 20 pages of the book, sent them to him.
And he said, I was expecting notes.
You know, you never really know when you're collaborating with
someone else, particularly someone like me who's used to
always working solo, like writing a book, you know,
working in journalism, whatever it is, it's kind of a solitary
thing. I, I wasn't sure what kind of
reaction I was going to get. And he was like, no, you nailed
it. This is it.
This is exactly what what I like.
I love the pacing. I love the way you're writing
these characters. So it's, it's been a really,
really great experience. We have a great dialogue with
one another, I think in part because we both love the movies.
I can say, OK, this character, Henry Ford in 12 Angry Men, you
know, the look that he has, like, that's the way this
character sort of looks and moves.
And he goes, oh, my gosh, I know exactly what you mean.
And, you know, sends me pages back and it's like, oh, wow, you
know, there he is. So we're really excited about
it. I can't say too much more beyond
that about when we're releasing it and who's publishing it
because those are ongoing conversations.
But yeah, hopefully by the end of the year we can talk about
that one a little bit more and I can get a copy in your hands.
We'll see. We'll see.
Well, all of that sounds really exciting.
I'm glad you got things in the works and you have a new
partnership going on and we would love to talk to you about
that. Anytime, man, anytime.
When you can't, that'd be amazing.
But that's the end of the interview that we have for you
today. Thank you so much for taking the
time to talk to us. It was really great getting to
pick your brain on your novel and just getting to know you
better. Thank you.
I appreciate the coverage and the attention and your awesome,
awesome, awesome, awesome questions.
I can tell you actually read the book, which is more than I can
say for some interviews that I've done.
And I appreciate that, you know, you do a great show for the
community highlighting arts and and interesting people in it.
And it's it's a great honor to be on your show.
So thank you both so much. No, thank you, truly.
And that was very kind of you to say before we conclude the show,
how can our listeners at home support you or connect with you?
You can find all four of my books, the Six Drugs and
Superheroes trilogy, the Comic Con Chronicles trilogy, as well
as my other book that we haven't talked about, The Passion of
Sergius and Bacchus, which is a 4th century Roman epic about two
Christian and gay people. They're all available on Amazon
and at fine retailers. Sergius and Bacchus.
I have to do the shameless plug celebrating the 10th anniversary
this month and just came out in hardcover in a new anniversary
edition for the first time, so I'm really excited about that It
it was beautiful to hold it in my hands the first time.
All of that's on Amazon. You can get it fairly easily
just by looking at my name, David Reddish, or the titles of
any of the books. You can also find my
journalistic work on Wealth of Geeks.
That's my online magazine where I am managing editor and you can
connect with me on social media, on Instagram at the Gay Magneto.
That's Magneto. Like the X-Men, all one word,
the gay Magneto. I'm surprised Ian McKellen has
not sued me yet, but but so far we're going strong.
So he's the only person I would possibly see the title to,
right? Fair.
Fair, Yeah. Well thank you again David, this
was super fun. And to everybody listening at
home, please check out David's work and connect with him like
he said. And until next time, hydrate for
lesbian. Jesus and gate up all over the
place. Bye.
And with that, we've been big gay energy.
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