>> Jeniffer: Hello and welcome to the premise. I'm Jennifer

Thompson.

>> Chad Thompson: And I'm Chad Thompson.

>> Jeniffer: And I've got a little bit of a scratchy throat here today, folks. But bear with

me. It's going to be an awesome interview. In fact,

we're interviewing Keith Rozin for the second time. We

had him for his book Road seven, which was phenomenal.

Go get it. And that was episode 19, I

believe. Wow.

>> Chad Thompson: And then we skipped a book with him.

>> Jeniffer: We did.

>> Chad Thompson: And now we're onto this one.

>> Jeniffer: Well, two books, I think. Is that right? How many

books have you written since road seven, Keith?

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah, I did. I did the, story collection.

That's right. Trauma surgeons. And then I did fever

house.

>> Jeniffer: That's right.

>> Chad Thompson: Last year.

>> Jeniffer: Okay. That's right. That's right.

>> Chad Thompson: And this is every book. Nobody

expects that.

>> Jeniffer: You know, I totally would. Keith, we love you. We are huge

fans, and we would absolutely interview you for every

single book. You'd be like, mm m, I've done that

one.

>> Chad Thompson: Oh, the premise again.

>> Jeniffer: those people.

>> Chad Thompson: Right.

>> Jeniffer: So for our listeners, let's just tell them a little bit about Keith. Keith

Rozin is the author of the novels the devil by

name, which we're going to talk about today. Fever House,

smoke City, Road seven, and the Mercy of the

Tide, as well as the Shirley Jackson award

winning story collection, folk songs for trauma

surgeons. Short fiction has appeared

in Southwest Review, Nightmare, Cream City

Review, Pink, Redivider, December,

and more. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Keith Rozin, thank you so much for

joining us here on the premise.

>> Chad Thompson: Oh, I'm so excited. I really appreciate it. I had

so much fun last time, even though I

believe my laptop kind of

exploded and died the last time. We tried to do this a couple years

ago. So, it totally.

>> Jeniffer: It was like, yeah, for me, it was like one of the best

interviews we'd ever done. We were just having so much fun with you and laughing

and all this great stuff, and then your computer

literally died. It didn't. So, listeners, it didn't, like, the battery

didn't go dead. Like, the computer died

and we lost it.

>> Chad Thompson: I had to get another one.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah. M so we're rescheduled. And they were like, wait, did we talk about

this already today or last time?

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah, but it was still just arc, you know,

still good work was just.

>> Jeniffer: Oh, it's like, yeah, you just can't get it back. But you know what

we did, it was a great interview. And, I

love telling people about you. I love your writing.

And today we're talking about really, we're talking about two

books, because this is a duology. The devil by name is

the second book in the series with Fever House being the

first. And,

Stephen King recommended your book, which

is amazing. Tell us about

this.

>> Chad Thompson: You know, we. One of the crazy things

is, like, I did four books on an indie publisher,

Meerkat Press.

>> Chad Thompson: And the woman who runs Meerkat,

Trisha reeks. She and I pretty much

did everything together as far as, like,

design, editing,

promotion and all this stuff. And like,

she does 99% of that stuff all by herself,

you know?

>> Jeniffer: Wow.

>> Chad Thompson: And the wild thing about jumping to random House

is that they have teams worth of

people where it's their job to get your book

in front of people. And we tried and

tried and tried to get, fever house

in front of Stephen King and like, it just didn't

quite land and didn't happen for whatever reason.

But the nice thing is that it happened really organically.

Cause Joe Hill, his son, who's a tremendous

horror writer as well, read a copy of

it and really just has done

so much to boost the book, you know, that's

cool, that closeness. Stephen King

saw it. Saw, that, like, oh, I gotta get my hands on that

copy. And like, random house, of course, was ready to

go with that. So they got a copy in front of him and he

loved it.

>> Jeniffer: Nice.

>> Chad Thompson: And he has just pushed the hell out of it ever since.

Like, PBS did a thing where he was asked

books that he likes and he listed it and he's tweeted about

it multiple times. And I just. Tremendously

fortunate.

>> Jeniffer: It's so awesome. And you deserve it, man.

You're.

>> Chad Thompson: Oh, thank you so much.

>> Jeniffer: And that's the crazy thing is, you know, you do everything right

and it just takes that one thing that suddenly, like, tips it

over the edge, and now all of a sudden, it's taken on a

life of its own.

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah, it's so cool because, like, you know, with

the duology with the devil by name being out,

you know, the book fever house, they have a little bit of a longer

shelf life, you know, which is

great. But like, fever House is still going really

strong, you know?

>> Jeniffer: Yeah.

>> Chad Thompson: And, it's just, it's so cool to see a book have legs

like that, you know?

>> Jeniffer: Absolutely. Well, and you know what's funny

is I knew that it was

the second book, but I didn't know you had to really needed to read

fever house. At least I think so.

>> Chad Thompson: So I. Yeah, it's pretty. You will be

better served by reading fever house first, for sure.

>> Jeniffer: I mean, there was, there were things you did that, like, get the reader up

to speed if you didn't read fever House. But you are really

short changing yourself if you don't read that book first, because.

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah, totally.

>> Jeniffer: And I read them back to back. So I've been reading

horror for, like, the last two weekends and

evenings.

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah.

>> Jeniffer: I was like, okay, I'm doing this right before I go to bed.

It's the perfect time to read a horror book.

I love them both. And I, you know, we gotta be really

careful because there's so much I want to talk about, but I don't want to

give anything away to our listeners because

as it's, as it's revealed, it's like, so

fun. And so we, I'm not gonna take that away from our listeners. So we're gonna, like,

dance around some of the things that happen in this book.

>> Chad Thompson: And we also have the magic of editing we can work with, too.

>> Jeniffer: Oh. If we say things we shouldn't say.

>> Chad Thompson: Haha.

>> Jeniffer: Haha. Well, I gotta say, take that, listener,

right? You won't even know.

this is. So today is actually September 10,

which is your pub date, so

congratulations.

>> Chad Thompson: Oh, thank you so much. It's such a,

it's so weird, like, where it's

starting to feel a little bit old hat, which is just

absolutely insane to think about.

>> Jeniffer: Totally. That's awesome.

>> Chad Thompson: All this kind of emotional buildup for months and months and months,

right? And then it happens and it's like, oh, I

still am walking my kids to school, and the dog still

did what the dog did on the. You know what I mean?

>> Jeniffer: Right.

>> Chad Thompson: Like a human.

>> Jeniffer: Like, no one, no one knows. You're waving,

dear neighbors.

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah, right. It's cool. But it's not that big of a

deal all told, you know?

>> Jeniffer: Well, I mean, for those who don't know yet.

Yeah, exactly.

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

>> Jeniffer: But I'm curious, like, how does

random house differ to meerkat? Which was awesome.

I remember you saying her praises and that whole process.

But in terms of, like, them giving you information

about what's happening with the book, like, are they pretty communicative

about that?

>> Chad Thompson: Oh, absolutely. And there's this very dorky

thing, like an author portal where you. It's

updated, like, every single day

where you can go in and see, like, sales and all that

stuff. Like, And it's. It lags, like, maybe a week

behind, you know?

>> Jeniffer: Okay. Okay.

>> Chad Thompson: It's amazing. How was, how was that Stephen King

bump?

>> Jeniffer: Yeah.

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah, it was very helpful. It was the

bit like the PBS thing. And Jason

Pargan also did like, a TikTok video the

same day.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah.

>> Chad Thompson: and so, he's an author, right?

Yeah. Like, John dies at the end.

>> Jeniffer: Something about spiders.

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah, exactly. it was the best

sales week since first week.

>> Jeniffer: Wow.

>> Chad Thompson: So it did really well. Yeah. so I can't

remember where I was going with that, but, Oh, yeah. So as far

as random house goes, there, it's almost

like I have moments of, like,

not necessarily guilt, but like, trying to turn it into

gratitude because you recognize how

fortunate you are to be there to have this, like,

group of people who it's their

job to get your book in front of people, you know?

>> Jeniffer: Yeah.

>> Chad Thompson: And just how, fortunate you

are to be in that position, you know?

and they're like, it's a

little tricky because publicity,

all the publicity folks are rad and they

will approve about

20% of my ideas. You know what I

mean? Hey, let's try this. And they're like, yeah. Ah, I don't.

Yeah, Keith, we've run the numbers and, you know, it's not going to work.

Mandy, that's interesting.

>> Jeniffer: Can you give us an example? Yeah, I'm curious.

don't mean to put you on a slut.

Like what book?

>> Chad Thompson: events.

>> Jeniffer: Okay.

>> Chad Thompson: Like book tours and things like that.

post Covid, book of

tours have never really, they haven't really recovered.

and so logistically,

it makes more sense for a big publisher to use

the money that they would spend on, like, flying somebody

out on like a ten date tour.

>> Jeniffer: Right.

>> Chad Thompson: doing like, Amazon ads

and things like that, you know?

>> Jeniffer: Yeah.

>> Chad Thompson: where it's just kind of, it gets the book

more in front of people. More. Cause even if you

sell 20 copies at every bookstore,

you know, numbers wise,

it just doesn't quite pan out. But, you know, a lot of times

they'll do things, I think it's called like, author appreciation

or something, where they'll be like, ah, ah, let's send them on

a five day thing just to kind of, kind of

appease them a little bit, you know what I mean?

Feel good and all that. Yeah. So,

yeah, they. But again, like, they

have done this for so long that they know

what works, right. You know? So occasionally we

will politely butt heads about, like, I think this would be

cool. And, sometimes they'll say

yes, you know, like we get to do

devil, by name t shirts this time around to send out

to people for, like, in like, promo packages. And stuff,

you know, which was something

that I, had broached last

time. and so this time they're like, hell, yeah, we'll do

that.

>> Jeniffer: You know what I love the most are the zines and the

guitar picks.

>> Chad Thompson: I know. That was so fun. Again, it's. It's like

little, just little ideas. Those were both,

random house ideas, too. So, the zine

is full of little auxiliary things, that kind

of correlate to devil by name and fever house.

And the guitar picks are for a

band called the blank letters, which is a band that features pretty

prominently in the first book.

And so it's just neat little things like that, you know?

>> Jeniffer: Yeah. In fact, Chad and I want to get our hands

on those two items.

>> Chad Thompson: Oh, you know, I have sent all of them out.

I want to see what I can.

>> Jeniffer: Okay. Yeah, well, I saw it on, I

think it was on your instagram. And I was like, oh, my God, that's such a great

idea. And one of my questions, too, was, you know, I have the arc,

so I don't know what the final book looks like. And when we're looking at

the reports, like the government, top secret reports, the

zine makes them look really cool. Did

you. Does that same design land in the

final product?

>> Chad Thompson: No, it's very much like typeset. In the same

manner that fever house is where it's, like, it's

more functional readability.

the zine was really a cool way to just get.

Cause I'm a designer, too. and so I was able to

just get really dorky with top secret

layouts.

>> Jeniffer: Totally. I saw you all over that.

Well, that was gonna be one of my questions, is, you designed

your book covers for your past books. You had to relinquish that

over to random house. And how was that?

>> Chad Thompson: It was really hard.

and then they sent, the first version

of fever house over the first cover

with the devil hand doing the kind

of devil horns or whatever with the big claws at the

end. And I had a lot of

reservations about it because I felt like it was kind

of, like, making light of a lot of stuff in the book.

and then, like, we, you know, I talked about it,

and I showed people, and, my agent,

showed people and everything. And eventually, like, pretty

quickly, I changed my tune because it's so

the typography and the

design is so eye catching and immediate.

that, like, you see it amidst 20 books,

and it's like, that's the one your eye gravitates to. You know, you

see it across the room 100%.

>> Jeniffer: Like, yellow and red are the first two colors

that the eye sees when you walk into a room, and your books

are yellow and red.

>> Chad Thompson: Right. And so they. The designer really just

switched the colors for the devil by

name, but it's still very much the same, like,

design, you know, layout and structure with

the, type going,

down, going down, up and down versus

horizontal, you know. And, yeah, it was, this woman,

Ella Latham, who also did stuff

like, the only good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones.

>> Jeniffer: Oh, yeah, that's a great cover.

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah, she is a tremendous designer, and she just killed

it.

>> Jeniffer: It's funny because that is also that author, I believe

is from Portland, or in the Pacific Northwest, isn't

hedgest?

>> Chad Thompson: No, I think he's in, Colorado, maybe Denver.

>> Jeniffer: Oh, I got that totally wrong. Well, maybe it just reminded me

of home when I said people in all the

trees, because, listeners, I lived in Portland, Oregon.

I'm from the Pacific Northwest myself, and, of course, that's where Keith

is. So let's. Okay, let's

dive in.

Let's talk about these books. I read a

reviewer say that this was, like, a new genre that you've

pretty much penned, punk rock thrillers. And I

feel like that was kind of apt. That was on Goodreads.

There's. I love. I know that you love punk rock, and,

you know, your books are often steeped in that, but, man, did you

nail that in fever house. And it just is so great.

And so I have a couple questions. Number one,

is Catherine Moriarty? Is

she. Did you get her name

from, the gits from Steve

Moriarty?

>> Chad Thompson: I think subconsciously I did. And I hope Steve,

doesn't, you know, take me to court over

that. Yeah, I think so. Because I think, I think

the gits, bands like the gits and bikini kill

and a lot of, like, bands who lived through

the kind of nineties, major label

feeding frenzy of punk

were a big influence, you know?

and so, you know, there's a. There's a thing

where, like, I think names are so interesting

because once you get to a certain point, you realize, oh,

I used Nick last book. I gotta come up with a different

name.

>> Jeniffer: Right, right.

>> Chad Thompson: And I realized that, one of

the characters, in the book that's coming

out after the devil by name, that's coming out next year,

the bad guy, is the name of an author of

a book I've read, like, ten years ago.

>> Jeniffer: That's fascinating.

>> Chad Thompson: Straight up lifted from it.

Subconsciously, you know?

>> Jeniffer: Right. Yeah, I love that.

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah. So, like, names, are they,

like, they seep in. In a way that's like, it's

really hard to, hard to manage sometimes, but, yeah, I

think it's. I think totally, like, Steve and the gits and all

that, like, definitely played a part. Well, Moriarty is also

the villain, in Sherlock Holmes.

>> Chad Thompson: That is not intentional. So I'm

just saying, if you need, like, a legal wiggle room

in case. After you.

Yeah, yeah.

>> Jeniffer: Well, and I feel like you really

presented the punk rock world in such a great

way, like, total reality, you know, based

on your love of punk. And. And

I just wonder, too, if, you know, the paper letters

or the blank letters. My bad. isn't based on the

gits a little bit too? You know, just we've got the three guys and

the lead singer whose voice is just, like,

so powerful. Right.

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah. You know, I think, like I said, I think

they're a kind of amalgam of

the Gitz, bikini kill, a bunch of other

bands, but it's all kind of,

like, subconscious and run through the

colander of, like, my own. What's

going to hold my interest as a writer, you know, so, like,

doing, like, Gitz, you know,

a veiled Gitz biography or whatever would not

have been interesting to me as a writer.

>> Jeniffer: Right, of course. Yeah.

>> Chad Thompson: And it wouldn't have worked for this story, but there are

definitely elements of it, you know, and again, like,

just nineties punk stuff, you

know, is super threaded

throughout and prevalent,

>> Jeniffer: In the book and done so well. And you're,

you know, if I were to. I was trying to tell someone

recently, like, a couple days ago, you got to read these books. They're so good.

You're gonna love them. And I said, you know, it's really, it's,

it's horror, but it's so much more than that because the character development

is so good, your writing style.

>> Chad Thompson: Right. It's like,

distill a 450 page

book with, like, six main characters.

Yeah.

>> Jeniffer: You know, did you struggle with, like, the backstory,

you know, revealing too much or going too deep or, like, was.

>> Chad Thompson: That, you know, I.

So here's two little fun factoids

about fever House was one. I

had no plan to write a sequel to.

>> Jeniffer: Oh, my God. That was my next question. Really?

>> Chad Thompson: Oh, yeah. It was going to end with Cath or. Sorry. it was going to

end where it ended.

>> Jeniffer: Good job. Good job.

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah, totally. And, it was going to end where it

ended on somewhat of a

cliffhanger. And

when my agent. So the cool story

is on a Thursday,

my, agent and I had worked on the book, and he's like,

I'm going to send this out to, like, six editors. And

then we will, that was on a Wednesday. And then we

will send it out big on Monday to, like, you know,

25 other people or whatever. And so the

next day we get this. He gets an email

from the editor at Random House who says, oh, my God, is

there a sequel? And then the day

after that, yeah, that was a Thursday. The day after that, she has her

team read it over the weekend, and then on Monday, she

emails. My agent is like, I want to set up a call with this

guy. Tuesday,

she calls me, and she prefaces the call with

like, I don't have this conversation with people unless I'm really

willing to make an offer. Which is just like, that

just blew my mind, you know, because it was, like, life

changing.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah.

>> Chad Thompson: and then she's like, two questions. One, are you

willing to write a sequel? and I was like, I

will write cat food copy for you.

and I had kicked around the idea of a sequel, you know, but

it wasn't like, it was like, if it had just stayed at fever house, I would

have been okay with that, honestly. M.

And then, the other thing is, she's like, would you

add, like, 30,000 words

to it, including a lot of, character backstory?

And then what happens in Portland

once things really accelerate? And so it's

very rare to get so rare.

Add another 25% to this book, for

sure.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah.

>> Chad Thompson: Usually you have to cut it. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. And so a lot, that's where a lot of that, like, kind of

backstory and stuff came from, was like,

my editor, asking for more

versus less, and she sensed, what the hell

was I thinking? Why did I do that? You know? But did she

really? Oh, yeah. Well, she was just, I think

30,000 is a lot, you know?

>> Chad Thompson: I think she, she would have, in

retrospect, probably been like 15, maybe. You know what I

mean?

>> Jeniffer: Did you find that challenging to, like, did it feel like

you were adding fluff or did it come pretty easily?

>> Chad Thompson: No, it was great. It was, you

know, the thing with, with,

my agent, my editor is she's

tremendously good and

smart, and she makes me rewrite

books, which is such a

drag sometimes. So, like, in the

two books following Fever House, she's essentially said, like,

this isn't quite working. And I had

to go back and essentially rewrite I had

to rewrite the devil by name. Kept maybe

10% of the original material in it.

>> Jeniffer: Holy shit. Wow.

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah. And the vampire book that's coming out after

that next year had to go back and

rewrite that with maybe 10% of it.

And so with fever house, it was like,

just the idea of, like, building scaffolding and

adding more to the world was not hard. That was

fun.

>> Jeniffer: That's cool. It felt like you were having fun

with this book. I've, you know, I read road seven. I haven't

read all of your books, but. And I loved that book,

but this one just felt like, I don't know, like you were really in your

element, in your groove. It just. And I don't know, maybe that's, like,

the editing process and going back and polishing it, but it

felt so spot on to

me.

>> Chad Thompson: You know, it's weird. I wrote fever house.

A lot of it, like, during COVID

during, lockdown and

during, George Floyd

protests, you know,

and my kids were finally able

to start going to, like, preschool

and kindergarten and all that stuff, like, in very short bursts

because we were still, like, pretty, you know, cautious

with, like, schools were very reluctant to open up full

time at the time and everything. And so I had

little windows of time where I was able to

write. And, it was just like, I just wanted to write

something propulsive and fast as

hell and joy, you know what I mean? Joyous in my way, in the sense of

just, like, fun, making it fun for me.

>> Jeniffer: Okay, so here's something interesting. I've never

read horror before. I've never read Stephen King's fiction,

and I've always wanted to, but I've been, like, really afraid to do it.

And my sister, who, you know, Lily,

she was like, this is gonna scare the hell out of you. And I was

like, oh, really? I was like, oh, no.

So I really had to challenge myself to read these

books and 800 pages.

>> Chad Thompson: So your sister read it first, and she was like, it's gonna freak you

out.

>> Jeniffer: Totally. Yeah.

>> Chad Thompson: Oh, that's great. Right on.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah. She's like, it's gonna scare the hell out of you. In a good way.

And, it didn't, it didn't scare the hell out of

me. I found it to me to be exciting and super

fun. And, like, the parts that scared

me were, I mean, if you think about horror,

it's based on the ridiculous and the supernatural and things that,

like, aren't going to happen in the real world. You

know, I mean, good versus evil. But, like, this

book, specifically the devil by name, I feel like

these things could happen. Like, it. It

reflects on greed and

the government and the defense contractors and

all these things that could actually happen,

and just another pandemic could wipe out

humanity. I feel like you captured

that really well, and that scared me. But the horror

piece of it, I just found it to be really fun. And I'm like, oh, my God, maybe I

love horror and I have to read more horror.

>> Chad Thompson: You know, for one, I think you should give Stephen

King a shot, for one, because he does

this thing where the dude is just like,

it's not stream of consciousness, but it's so

easy to just plow through the pages

because his style is so

affable, you know? And

then he slips the, dread and

unease among that affability. And so you're

just plowing along and you're like, oh, I'm starting to get freaked out here a little

bit. Characters are so friendly, and, you know, he's written them

so well, and, so, yeah, and then I

guess, as far as the devil by name goes, like,

yeah, I don't think that the. I don't

think they're necessarily horror in the sense of, like,

I think they're more gruesome. Like, there's a lot of gore in

it, you know, moments of,

like, profound violence in it.

but I. Yeah, as far as. And, you

know, there are monsters and shit ultimately in it.

>> Jeniffer: Right, right.

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah. For me, it's like, it fits

in more in that nexus of, like,

yes, horror and supernatural stuff, but also, like,

crime and post apocalyptic stuff.

>> Jeniffer: Right.

>> Chad Thompson: And, like, that's the stuff that I personally

like. You know, I'll always, like, dip a toe in

horror, but, like, I love crime fiction, and I

love, like, literary fiction. And so it's

really, like a kind of combination of all

of those things.

>> Jeniffer: I think it totally is, which is probably why I like it so much

too.

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah.

>> Jeniffer: Because I'm.

>> Chad Thompson: And it's fun to write. It's entertaining. You know?

>> Jeniffer: You're entertaining yourself. Yeah,

go ahead.

>> Chad Thompson: Like, that's the thing, is, I've tried to write, like,

straight crime fiction 5 million times.

And one of the main characters, two of the main

characters, Hutch Holtz and Tim Reed from

Fever House, they started out

as main characters in this, a number

of crime novels that I've tried to write over the past couple

years.

>> Jeniffer: Oh, wow.

>> Chad Thompson: It just, like the first 25 pages of Fever House

until they find the hand in the freezer

straight lifted from another novel.

>> Jeniffer: Wow, really? That's great. Now,

I love those characters. Hutch in particular. I was

so fond of Hutch, and I love the fact that he was such a

reader. You know, like we, when we start to get into his

character, like, here are these two goons, essentially, who are,

like, doing mob boss work and, you know, they're

killers. They fuck people up for money. Right.

And yet I felt like, oh, I really had a

soft spot for Hutch. Where did. Yeah,

what was his journey initially? Like, where were

you taking him, do you think? Or do you know?

>> Chad Thompson: I mean, very similar. He also, like his, and

I earlier books, like, his father is like a Vietnam

veteran who, is like, succumbing to

dementia. And, so he's like, kind of staying at

home, taking care of him while

all these other events are going on in his life. But that's an old

book. so, yeah, he's just, he's one of those

guys where it's like, he just. And he's in

short stories and he just would

not leave me alone. And it sounds dorky

where when writers say, like, the characters tell

me what to do.

>> Jeniffer: No, they don't.

>> Chad Thompson: But he just loved me

so much and I kept coming back to him, and

finally I found a place for

him to shine.

>> Jeniffer: Nice. I love that.

Let's talk about the point of view in this book, because it's written in third

person omniscient. So we get the

perspective, the inside voice of the character

through the God voice,

if you will. And I really loved how much

we got, like, perspective on who that person

was as an individual, what they're thinking, their

snarkiness. so talk to us about how

you decided to choose that point of view. And

was that always where you were headed, or did you work on

that?

>> Chad Thompson: No, I think that's my natural

inclination out of, I've

written six books now. And, apart from short

stories, not one of them comes from a single

pov. So all of my books are like multiple

characters, even if it's just two. Like in road seven,

you know?

>> Jeniffer: Yeah.

>> Chad Thompson: And, I think for

me, that kind of like open

air, ability, world building

ability, ah. In third person just

works better, you know? one of

my challenges as a writer is I absolutely want to write

one goddamn character in a book. You know,

like, I want to put some novel out where it's just one

person from

page one to page, whatever. You mean like first?

>> Jeniffer: You mean like first person? You know, I mean, like, you only have one character

one character, like, really.

>> Chad Thompson: The same character that starts the book, ends the

book. And there's no, like, we're gonna bounce from this person to this

person to this person.

>> Jeniffer: Got it. Okay. Got it. So there's other people. It's just we're

following this guy. Right?

>> Chad Thompson: Just like. Yeah. yeah, sorry. Not one character, but from one

character's point of view.

>> Jeniffer: Right, right. Well, it gives you so much

more, I don't know, power to, like,

create emotions and that

sense of dread. I think you do it so

well.

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah. And that's like, again, I have to

entertain myself, and

it's, for me,

sustaining the narrative with any sense of

velocity to it. You gotta bounce around a little bit.

>> Jeniffer: Right. Well, in this book in particular,

when we're talking about the

supernatural elements and the

characters, it's really important for us to know as

readers what they are planning.

Also, as I was reading it, it bounces

around sometimes even in the timeline. We'll go back a little bit

and get someone else's perspective of something we saw other

people go through. And I just.

I was thinking to myself, what the hell does his writing

area look like? How do you keep track of this timeline and what

you have revealed and haven't? What needs to be revealed? And,

like, do you have a process for that? Or how

do you do that?

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah. Oh, my gosh, I love questions like this of getting into

the dorky minutiae of, like, how do

you write a. yeah, so I

keep. So I have the. It's all in

word, you know what I mean? But, like, I write, the

draft, whatever, 1st, 2nd,

fifth, and then I'll keep another document open that's

just notes, and it's like, people name places,

things to remember as far as, like, oh, this is a

motivation, or this guy only has three bullets left in his

gun. Remember that. All those details, you

know, and that can span,

like, a lot of pages. And then

I'll also dump, like, if I have to cut something, I'll just put it

in that document so I can refer back to it.

so it's pretty much this, just those two documents that I'm jumping

back and forth among. And then I'll do a

lot of, like, handwritten journal

writing, and just kind of freestyling about the

characters. And I found a lot of ways that,

a lot of times that will kind of loosen up,

the structure for me. And I can come up with ideas that

way that I normally wouldn't. Just typing things on a

computer.

>> Jeniffer: That is fascinating. I have heard this before, that writing

with a pen. Well, I guess depends on your

generation and how you grew up. But for us,

when you actually take a pen and write on a piece of paper, it

does something different. Your subconscious

is tapped into in a

different way, I guess. Yeah.

>> Chad Thompson: And it's, it's weird because it takes me a lot longer

to hand write something, and so

I'm less, almost less worried about it because I'm like,

okay, I've already got this, this idea mapped out,

but I need to finish it, finish writing it, you

know?

>> Jeniffer: Yeah.

>> Chad Thompson: And, it's just a way more,

like, relaxed kind of way of

loosening the scree of the plot and, like,

lifting rocks up and seeing what's underneath, you know?

>> Jeniffer: That's cool. That is cool.

I guess, as a writer myself,

sometimes, like, I find myself going off on these tangents, and I'm like,

what am I doing? And I stop myself. And I think that just

shows I'm a new, newer writer. But it sounds to

me like those take you to places, and following those

tangents is a really good idea.

>> Chad Thompson: And to me, that's like, that's 90% of the

fun. It's like coming up with something, being like, oh, shit, how

do I pull this off? Coming up with an

idea of being like, I want to do that, and then, what is the

connective tissue from where I'm

at now in the story and where I want to be? And

it's like, how do I make that happen? You know?

That is 90% of the joy in writing for

me, like, figuring out those little twists.

>> Jeniffer: Nice, you know? Yeah.

Where did you get the idea for fever house?

>> Chad Thompson: You know, like I said, a lot of it was just hutch and tim,

and I loved those guys, and I wanted to,

have them in there. And then clearly, the crime

angle, the straight crime angle, wasn't working. And I had this

idea of a severed hand

in a, like, cracked leather, like,

oldena doctor's bag, you know?

>> Jeniffer: Right.

>> Chad Thompson: With. Filled with money. and so those two

things were really the impetus where it was

like, that's where that kind of connective leap started,

where started happening. and I was like, how do I

make this work? So there's this guy who's a leg breaker, and then

this hand, and the hand does something. I don't know

what. and so it's really, like,

in, I think in misery, in,

Stephen King's misery, the main character is a

writer, and he plays this internal game that

I think is called can you, like, can you do this, as a

writer, how do you do it? How do you make it

happen? And to me, that. Yeah, it's just.

It's really like, how do I make this work between Hutch and this

severed hand? And so I just had to start

answering questions about, like, how does this hand

work? what are its powers? What are its

effects? And then I had to kind of

build the world from that.

>> Jeniffer: Wow, that sounds really fun.

>> Chad Thompson: It was so fun. Yeah. The devil by

name, I think, is, like, it's a strong book. And,

my God, it was so hard to m

write because I had built

such a kind of, like, puzzle

box by the end of fever house and all these

parameters.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah.

>> Chad Thompson: You know.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah.

>> Chad Thompson: That I had to solve all these different problems I had

to solve, to move forward

because it ends, like, you know, things are reasonably effed

at the end of Fever House, trying not to give anything away.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah. Yeah, reasonably effed. I like

that. I feel like there could be a book three,

honestly, you know, if we.

>> Chad Thompson: Ever get, like, tv and film stuff

moving forward, and it takes off, like, I could totally

see random house being like, do you think about a trilogy?

>> Jeniffer: Totally. Yeah.

>> Chad Thompson: Now there's just plans for the two.

>> Jeniffer: And as I was reading it and some reviewers said the

same thing, I kept thinking to myself, my God, this needs to be a

Netflix series. Like, I could totally see it,

right? But can they do it justice? I mean, I don't

know. It's just different, right? You have a different

storytelling way when it's a

screenplay or writing a series, so it's going to be different.

>> Chad Thompson: But I can't, I can't do

anything, say anything specific yet because contracts aren't signed.

But I did have a option, and then that option

was not renewed. and, you know, I think

the strike really, the writer strike really put a damper

on a lot of projects, and fever house

did not survive. and now we

are, about to ink a, ah,

contract for another,

another option for it. And I'm very excited about it. And it's

a killer team and a rad showrunner and.

>> Jeniffer: Nice.

That would be awesome.

I kept trying to picture some of the characters, and I thought to myself,

who does Keith envision? Like, Katherine, for

example?

>> Chad Thompson: Sorry. the closest I can think of, at least with Katherine,

is like, I think Kathleen Hanna would kill at

it. And, like,

she's the right age, as far as I know. She's interested in,

like, getting into more acting stuff. And I'm like, she'd be

fucking perfect at it.

>> Jeniffer: I don't know who she is. Who's Kathleen Hanna?

>> Chad Thompson: Oh, that's the singer of bikini kill.

>> Jeniffer: Oh, wait, she's going to be acting. That would

be amazing.

>> Chad Thompson: Well, no, what I've heard is she is interested,

in kind of broaching that world.

But I can't speak out of turn as how accurate that is or

anything, but when I envision a character for

Katherine, I think she would be really good at it.

>> Jeniffer: You know what? I just looked her up and I totally.

Yes. She would be perfect. She has the right

look. Everything about her looks. Right.

Kathleen, if you're listening, we have plans for you, lady.

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah, there we go.

>> Jeniffer: and then Nick coffin. Let's. Let's talk a little bit

about his character. he's a complicated

character. He grew up in a pretty.

Yeah, let's talk about him. Tell me how he came to be.

>> Chad Thompson: And, you know,

I think, it's so weird to be, like, where did you get

your idea?

>> Jeniffer: Yeah.

>> Chad Thompson: Because almost like, so much of it,

like, road seven. I don't remember writing a lot of road seven,

you know? and not like he was in a mad

fugue state and, you know, high on opium and

all that, but just like, you don't remember, like,

how that can. Those connective

acts in the plot took place, you know?

>> Jeniffer: Right.

>> Chad Thompson: And so where Nick came from, I think mostly

I just kind of had this image

of a, skinny,

like, mid twenties kid in very gangly

and in, like, combat boots, like, running

down the street. And that's where

that's, like, his first scene. Is he running to meet

Hutch somewhere?

>> Jeniffer: That's right, yeah.

>> Chad Thompson: And so again, and then it's like, okay, so you have

this character and this character and this character, and they want

this, or they're afraid of this. How do you make that

work? And so it's a lot of, like,

writing in my notebook and thinking about it when I'm doing

dishes and stuff. And, like, if it. If

things don't start to gel plot wise,

I've effed up and I either need to get super crazy with the

plot or I need to step back and

cut some. Cut some words, right. And get back to, like,

a simpler spot, you know? and that. I think that

happened a lot with Nick where I, wasn't quite sure where

he fit in, and I had to make a leap and just

be like, oh, he and Katherine. There you go.

>> Jeniffer: That's awesome.

How long did it take you to write the devil by

name?

>> Chad Thompson: that, I think, was probably 14 months, because I had

to. I wrote the first draft really fast,

and, it was way more focused on John

Bonner and the elements

inside the fever house inside Portland because

I wanted to try to recapture that kind of

crime element, to it. And

my editor, was just like, it's not working. It's

too insular. All these other characters

are like, they don't even really come in. They

don't meet. They don't all meet up until much m later in

the book. and so I had to kind of step back

and again rewrite it.

>> Jeniffer: I felt like John Bonner was, like, the main character. Like,

he was a really strong character. So I

felt that, like he was maybe intended to be, like,

the thrust of everything. But you did. You

pulled back on him. But it's great.

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah. It was hard because he was fun to

write. And that world, kind of like a

crime thing in post apocalyptic Portland

was really fun, and a challenge,

but ultimately, it just didn't cut the

mustard. And it's such a heartbreaking

thing. Like, the first couple days after you get notes from your

editor, and they always end it with, like, I'm happy to talk about

this whenever you'd like, you know?

>> Jeniffer: Yeah.

>> Chad Thompson: Oh, so much work to be done.

And then writer brain takes over,

and, you know, by the next day, you're like, how do I fix this problem?

>> Jeniffer: You just do it, right?

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah. and it's fun. Even when it's not fun, it's still fun.

>> Jeniffer: That's awesome. I'm so glad. I love that.

You are 100% writing now, right?

That's what you do.

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah. This is it, Mandy. This is it.

>> Jeniffer: That's great. And so your next

book.

Well, actually, is there anything else you want to tell our listeners about this

duology before we ask you our

final questions?

>> Chad Thompson: no, I think that, like, please just give it a shot

and probably want to read them in order. and,

yeah, I just, again, I feel tremendously fortunate to

a be on this show. Thank you very much. And to just

be able to do this. Yeah, I get to do for a

living. It's so cool.

>> Jeniffer: It's awesome. Well, we love having you,

and I just think you are the epitome of

what every author needs to

be. You have so much

gratitude, but yet you're such a badass. Like,

to me, it's, like, amazing because you're such a great writer,

and, you know, as previous listeners know,

you're technically legally blind. So you do have a bit of a

handicap when it comes to, you know,

working.

>> Chad Thompson: Right.

>> Jeniffer: but you push through and you do it with such joy. It's awesome. I love

it.

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah, totally. Yeah. So it's a weird

thing where, like, and I think that's one of the main reasons why

I'm not doing as much design and illustration,

as a blind guy, because there were all these various, like,

accoutrements that you needed, and you needed, like, your computer and all

these applications and a scanner and.

Or, you know, I haven't made the leap, being an older

person. and I say that with

air quotes, but, like, drawing from tablets. You know what I mean?

>> Jeniffer: Yeah.

>> Chad Thompson: Ah, there's a way you could kind of usurp all this by.

With technology, but I was just finding there are all these

trappings of, like, shit that I needed to use to

do illustration stuff. And

with writing, it's just a notebook or

a, you know, blank computer screen, and you go, right.

And that is tremendously freeing. I don't know

if it's necessarily as a legally blind or visually impaired guy, but

just as a person, I find that tremendously freeing.

>> Jeniffer: That's cool.

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah.

>> Jeniffer: So tell us about your next book. The bad guys. Is that what you

said?

>> Chad Thompson: No, it's called. It's a vampire book. set

in 1970s Portland,

shocking. And

throughout, like, Montana and North Dakota and

stuff. but it is

essentially true grit with

vampires.

>> Jeniffer: Sounds awesome.

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah, it's a Vietnam veteran and his

adoptive niece hunting a vampire

that slaughtered their family.

>> Jeniffer: Oh, okay. And does it have a title

yet?

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah, it's called Coffin Moon.

>> Jeniffer: Oh, nice. Okay. I don't know where I got the bad guys.

coffin moon. Very cool. And that's coming out in

2025 in.

>> Chad Thompson: The spring, or, I'm assuming summer

or fall.

>> Jeniffer: Okay, well, listen, we don't want to get too far ahead

of ourselves, people. You still have to read

fever house and the devil by name.

>> Chad Thompson: Excellent.

>> Jeniffer: Excellent books.

I have one more question. How are your girls? Last time we talked to

you, you just adopted two daughters.

>> Chad Thompson: Oh, God. Oh, yeah, they're great.

>> Chad Thompson: it's one of those things where at the time,

when I first started out as a kind of trial

by fire, dad, we adopted

two girls who were two and three, weeks after

Covid shut down the state.

And so not only were they like, why the hell are

we here? But also like, oh, and we can't leave, and we can't go to school

anymore.

>> Jeniffer: Oh, my God, we're stuck in the.

>> Chad Thompson: House with you guys.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah.

>> Chad Thompson: And it was very hard, you know, and

now, almost five years later,

four years later, it's just, we're just. This is

just life, you know what I mean? Like, it's

just we play, board

games before we walk to school, and we walk the

dog on the way to school, the dog poops in

the street, and it's a big ordeal, you know, because there's traffic

and. You know what I mean? It's just like, regular.

>> Jeniffer: That's awesome. Well, that's great.

I loved the dedication. I think it was the dedication

in fever house where you said, you know,

to my daughters, don't read this till you're old enough, or please don't

read this till you're 18.

>> Chad Thompson: I'm doing a book launch tonight because it's,

it's, you know, pub day for the devil by name. And

I'm like, yeah, so I don't know how we're gonna do this, because, like,

I'd like the girls to come, but they're seven and eight, and

I'm reading a scene from the devil by name that is just gnarly

as shit.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah.

>> Chad Thompson: And my wife's like, you know, they keep

talking about how they want to do horror stuff. Like, let's, you know, let's

try it. And I got about, she. Oh, and she read it

in her, like, funny reading voice that she does, you

know? she started reading the devil by name,

this scene, and they were like, yeah, I'm tapping out.

Fuck this. I cannot listen to this. It's too spooky.

>> Jeniffer: It's too much, right now.

Yeah, but they're interested.

>> Chad Thompson: They're not ready. They'll be reading Clive Barker by the

time they're twelve.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah, for sure.

>> Chad Thompson: Totally. I think I started Stephen King when I was ten or

eleven, so.

>> Jeniffer: Sounds about right. What is your

favorite Stephen King book?

>> Chad Thompson: I don't know. It really bounces around. I think he just

had a new collection come out, ah, three or

four months ago. Called you like it darker,

and it's great. there's even a

kind, of a cujo,

sequel where it's the main. The father from

cujo makes an appearance,

40 years later or whatever.

>> Jeniffer: Oh, that's cool. Cool.

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah, it's really cool.

>> Jeniffer: All right, well, thank you so much again.

We really appreciate your time. And this is your launch day, so I feel

really fortunate.

>> Chad Thompson: Oh, I appreciate it so much. Yeah. thanks for having me

again. We gotta do it 3rd, 4th, 5th time,

100%.

>> Jeniffer: You can come back anytime. We're all

loving watching you skyrocket and telling the

world about your great books.

>> Chad Thompson: Thank you so much. Don't forget about us humans back here on

earth.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah, right.

>> Chad Thompson: Totally. Yeah.

>> Jeniffer: Well, you can learn more about Keith

rozin@keithrozin.com

and follow him on Instagram at

rozinkeith, on Twitter

rosin and Facebook. I think it's Keith Rosin

seven. Is that right?

>> Chad Thompson: Yeah, sounds right.

>> Jeniffer: You can go to his website and his name is spelled r o s s n. I'm

sorry. R o s s o ndez.

>> Chad Thompson: There we go.

>> Jeniffer: Get it right, Jennifer, and just buy these

books. They're so good. What a wonderful way

to support authors. Read their work,

tell people about it. You're gonna love it. And like me, I had

no idea how much I would love this book.

And you will love it, too. This

has been another episode of the premise. You can

visit us online at, thepremisepod.com and

subscribe and rate or review the premise wherever

you get your podcast. Those reviews really help us get the

word out for people like Keith and the premise and

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folks. You can also follow me, your host, on

Instagram, enifergrace, or follow me on

Facebook, enifertompsonconsulting. Until

next time, thanks for listening.

Goodbye. Bye.