Author Interview: For the Road by Stark Holborn
- Fiction Fans
- 9 minutes ago
- 26 min read
Episode 225
Release Date: Feb 11, 2026
Your hosts are joined by Stark Holborn to talk about her novella For the Road. They discuss acid westerns, inspirational songs, and Gaulish mythology.
Find more from Stark:
Thanks to the following musicians for the use of their songs:
- Amarià for the use of “Sérénade à Notre Dame de Paris”
- Josh Woodward for the use of “Electric Sunrise”
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
Episode Transcript*
*this transcript is generated by Descript, please excuse the mess.
Lilly: 0:04
Hello and welcome to Fiction Fans, a podcast where we read books and other words too. I'm Lily.
Sara: 0:09
And I'm Sarah, and I'm so delighted to welcome Stark Holborn onto the podcast today to talk about for the road.
Stark: 0:16
Oh, hi. Hi both. Yeah. Thanks for having me back.
Lilly: 0:18
Well, before we jump into discuss your novella that came out, I believe last August. have a couple of quick intro questions starting with what's something great that happened recently.
Stark: 0:29
Well, I mean, it's, it's pretty tricky at the moment with sort of the state, the world's in. But the other day I asked people on blue sky just to send me kind of. Interesting, weird, quirky, homemade handmade things just because I was so sick of the sort of generative AI chat and that everything has to be productive and everything has to be perfect. And as a result, I just, people sent me the most amazing stuff. They sent me pictures of their crocheted ugly fish hats like games I'd never heard of. Like brilliant sort of glitchy zines and just so it was so nice just to see all of these very painstakingly, lovingly created projects that people have. Not, not because they're doing it for money, not because they're doing it to be productive, but just for the love of creation. And I think that's so important to remember at the moment. So yeah, if you're interested in any of those, go on my blue sky and you'll find a big list of weird stuff to check out.
Lilly: 1:21
That's wonderful. And why we asked the question. I think we started the podcast in, in the pandemic, so we were like, something good has happened.
Stark: 1:29
Yeah. Something must, something good must have happened. Yeah.
Lilly: 1:33
Sarah, how about you? How's your week been?
Sara: 1:35
So my good thing is, is not quite as wholesome as Starks. But I finished the garage clean out project that I started in December. My garage was just completely full of crap and unorganized and not very usable. And it is now beautifully empty and has has lovely shelving and I'm very pleased with it. It's not like, I mean, my garage still has holes in the walls. Like it's not a, it's not a great structure, but the inside is at least tidy you
Lilly: 2:10
And that's a great thing. Very
Stark: 2:12
ready to be filled up again.
Sara: 2:14
exactly.
Lilly: 2:15
I did a big hair chop this week. I got absolutely fed up and the idea of dealing with it another day was just exhausting. So I cut off like, like four or five inches. My hair is still quite long, so it doesn't make a big difference, but it feels much better. And what is everyone drinking today?
Stark: 2:35
I'm drinking some wine that one of my neighbors left around my house. But you know, you snooze, you lose. So it's, it's mine now. And it's, it is mostly because I'm feeling a little bit, little bit delicate today because last night another good thing because I went to a sort of queer MTV music night, which was fantastic. But yes, so I'm gonna need a little bit more fuel today.
Lilly: 2:56
wine that someone left at your house is the best kind, in my opinion.
Sara: 3:00
I agree. I think that this. Novella calls for either whiskey or black coffee. And it's a little early for drinking whiskey, and I don't like coffee, so I'm actually drinking tea instead.
Stark: 3:13
It's fine. Just pretend it's coffee out of like a tin mug or something and you know, no one has to know.
Lilly: 3:19
I am drinking coffee, but I don't live in the dust Bowl and it's Saturday. So it is a like, very indulgent, oat milk. Caramel sauce, like absolute nonsense creation. But it is coffee, so I'm counting it.
Stark: 3:34
No, no, it has to be, you know, black coffee, really gritty. Kind of like probably burns your throat. Yeah. With sand, extra sand.
Lilly: 3:43
Well, this is actually a book podcast. I have just been reading podcast books lately, so I have no answer for this question. But has anyone read anything good lately?
Sara: 3:53
The podcast books that I've been reading have been good, but they, they don't count for the purpose of this question. They're, they're not extracurricular. So I also don't have an answer.
Stark: 4:03
Well, I do actually I just, a couple of weeks ago I finished drafting a manuscript for a new book, which I can't really talk about at the moment, but, when I'm drafting, I, I kind of struggle to read fiction quite a lot, so I'm, I tend to sort of read nonfiction and read around the subject anyway, so I finish. It means I'm, diving back into novels again. I just read a, a good one called Bog Queen by Anna North. She wrote Outlawed, which came out a few years ago, which is a western, this one isn't a Western. it's about a body that's found in a bog and then it goes back and tells the story of the life of the person who actually. I was in the bargain in sort of very early Roman times in Britain. And yeah, I really enjoyed it. Great book. Not a great title. Great book though.
Lilly: 4:44
That sounds awesome. I'll add it to the TBR on the Ever-Growing to Be
Stark: 4:49
Oh yeah. The endless TBR.
Lilly: 4:52
Well, we did read for the Road by Stark Holborn, which I believe you're very familiar with.
Stark: 4:58
I mean, that's convenient because, uh.
Lilly: 5:00
Yes. So the promotional materials refers to this book as an acid western, and I had not heard of that sub genre before. what makes it acid, if I
Stark: 5:12
I, I think it's, it's mostly used in reference to cinema and film. So you had the revisionist westerns of the sort of sixties early sixties. People like Monty Helman kind of Turning all of the established stereotypes in their head and kind of re-looking at what the Western tropes should be. But then acid westerns are sort of a sub genre of revisionist westerns. So, I guess because they were being made during the seventies, a lot of them kind of the era of, you know, acid and LSD and, and trips and stuff they're quite existential, quite surreal, a lot of them. So sort of existential surreal westerns are. It could be class as acid westerns.
Sara: 5:49
Interesting. So the other books of yours that we've read, the Factus Trilogy also had some aspect of a Western to them. Like for the Road does. What about that genre in particular draws you to it?
Stark: 6:02
I'm completely fascinated by westerns and everyone I think assumes I grew up watching them and, and reading them, and I didn't. I, you know, if you'd told me when I was younger that I'd be writing westerns, I would've, said that was a completely mad thing to say, but I think I'm drawn to them because I find the genre it's, it's a very problematic genre. It's a new genre and it's, it, it was kind of. Created as, as the history was happening. And on the surface, I think a lot of people say, oh, I don't like westerns.'cause they're, you know, you assume they're the sort of John Wayne vehicle, ones like macho white guy, kind of, establishing sort of manifest destiny and, and all of that nonsense. But yeah, I think. Once I started looking into the genre, I, I kinda wanted to tackle it and wrangle with it because I find it problematic. So I wanted to kind of dig into some of the stereotypes and see, you know, see what I could do to, shake it up and to to reinvent the genre a bit. Because it's, that's what we can do as writers and that's what I hope all writers are doing is kind of, putting their own spin on things and yeah, taking, taking a genre apart and. Poking about in it and then putting it back together again in different way.
Sara: 7:07
Well, I definitely have loved everything of yours that I've read. I haven't read all of your, body of work not yet. But yeah, and it, it's really fascinating to see the different aspects of the western. That you have brought to the different series because for the Road is a very different in feeling from, you know, the, the Factus trilogy.
Stark: 7:29
It is, yes.
Lilly: 7:30
Unlike 10 Lo, this story takes place in the real world the Dust Bowl era United States. How is writing a story in a historical setting different from one that you've invented yourself?
Stark: 7:42
I mean, I started off writing historical fiction, so Nun Slinger, my, debut book is historical fiction. It gets shelved in sort of speculative fiction. I'm not sure why. Probably because, you know, westerns, especially in the uk, it's like no one knows where to put them. it gets put in crime sometimes it gets put, all over the place. But so yeah, I, I started off writing historical fiction. I'm quite comfortable in that genre. I, I love. The research part of it. I love trying to bring, I mean, it's a bit like with, world building and science fiction, right? You're trying to bring an era to life and the way to do that is to, is to get sort of the right details. Not tons and tons of detail, but just the right historical details to make it feel real and lived in.
Lilly: 8:24
Especially in a novella, you have very limited space to do that in. Yeah.
Stark: 8:30
Yes, I know. Well, this is the thing, I'm quite, again, I like novellas and I'm sort of trained in them because Nun Slinger is actually, even though it's a big chunky 180,000 word book, it's actually 12 novellas stuck together. So I was basically writing those as they were being published.'cause we did it in a sort of, you know. Penny Western Styles, every three months, another three would come out. So I was writing and editing these novellas every three months. And it was, it was a kind of whirlwind like it was a training ground for, for writing really. And you don't have a lot of space in novel villas. To tell the story. So yeah, you do have to be very selective about pace and about characters and, what you have the space to show.
Sara: 9:11
You mentioned in the acknowledgements of for the road that you first had the idea for this story while listening to music. Is that part of your typical process?
Stark: 9:21
No, not at all. No. I mean, I, I dunno, a lot of ideas, I mean. You probably hear this a lot, but you know, often you'll be reading something or, or seeing something and suddenly something will jump out and you'll be like, oh, that there's a story there. the only time this has happened, I was listening to Bob Dylan's one more cup of coffee for the road. And the lyrics are so fantastic and they just kind of, I found myself imagining like, what, what world this would, Who these characters were that he was singing about. And yeah, so it kind of all grew out from there. Really not, not my typical thing at all, but this, this is quite an atypical novella for me in quite a lot of ways, which we'll probably get into.
Lilly: 9:58
I swear about half of my annotations in this book, were just highlighting sections with a bunch of exclamation points because. In many moments there is a, a very mundane or straightforward image or thing that's happening, but the prose is telling me that I should be freaked the fuck out. And so can you tell us about creating that foreboding atmosphere with very typical events? The, the one that I pulled out as an example is Erta replaces the bottle with an identical one. Replacing a bottle on a shelf is not a strange thing to do, but when it happens in this book, and I won't talk too much about what's happening in that moment as a reader, I was like, something is going on and you clued us in just so elegantly.
Stark: 10:43
Oh, thank you. Yeah, I mean, I, I really wanted to create that atmosphere where everything seemed kind of normal, but was just off kind of a bit, a bit wrong. And one of the people, I mean, I'm, I'm a big fan of Philip k Dick. I've read a lot of his books and he does that extremely well. In a lot of his books, especially in uic, kind of everything just starts to seem not right. And I think that's actually more unsettling sometimes. than, you know, some big terrifying thing because, it's what we expect to be familiar, and suddenly it isn't. You think, well, if, if that's not familiar, then what the hell else is going on? Like, if, if even a bottle seems strange, like there's nothing to hold onto, then the whole, you know, fabric of reality could be disintegrating around you and there's nothing you can do about it.
Sara: 11:29
Yeah, we, we kept getting little clues and it was just, oh, chef's kiss.
Stark: 11:34
Thank you. Yeah, it was, it was quite fun to write, I won't, I won't sort of do a spoiler, but I will just say the egg is something that readers have have, have sent me messages about and said I put them off eggs for a while, so sorry about that.
Lilly: 11:48
Well, okay. No, we can't. Spoiler section. So before we get into that conversation I actually have a question for Sarah. Sarah, who should read this book?
Sara: 11:57
You should read this book if you enjoy westerns and want an atmospheric book that makes mundane imagery feel eerie.
Lilly: 12:09
This episode of Fiction Fans is brought to you by sotia.
Sara: 12:13
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Lilly: 12:20
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Sara: 12:28
You can find all the issues and more at patreon.com/fiction fans pod. Thank you for your support.
Lilly: 12:36
The remainder of this episode contains spoilers. The egg moment, I feel was the first concrete thing where we're being led in on like, okay, yes, something is happening here. It's not just Jesse, our main character feeling out of sorts. And I don't remember exactly when in the book that happens, but it, it was sort of just this nice, like, okay, we're officially here, there be monsters kind of thing.
Stark: 13:07
Yeah, it's, I think it's about halfway. Maybe it falls. Roughly halfway. I think it's his second morning there, or third morning or something. I mean, time is, is quite
Sara: 13:15
Yeah.
Stark: 13:15
in, Dawn's health as well. But yeah, the egg moment, I really wanted that to be kind of quite grotesque and, and horrifying. And the reason it's eggs is is because, you know, Dawn's health is a place. It's stuck. there can be no renewal and an egg is such a symbol of new life. kind of new beginnings and and birth. So I wanted it to be, it can't exist there. So that's kind of why I chose that to be, and that's when there's something quite horrifying. I think it's the horror of not of, again, something being expected and then being faced with something so, so awful instead,
Sara: 13:49
And we are, we are given warnings. I mean like the, the characters rose, Maritan and Navia say like, the eggs are bad. But I think that, that for me as a reader, like I didn't expect it to be that bad or bad in that way. So it was, it was that additional layer of, of shock, like, oh, when they said bad, they, yeah.
Stark: 14:12
Mm. There's something really grotesque about a bad egg. I'm trying to work out why it's, I think maybe it's because it does have the potential to be so horrible. And I suppose it's the unseen and the unknown as well. But yeah, I suppose that's kind of one of the, one of the horror ish elements that have come into this book. And some people have said this is kind of like, almost like a folk horror, which is you know, probably accurate as well.
Lilly: 14:36
I can see that there's definitely, like the folklore is strong. Um. I, I guess, well, I won't argue with you that it's not horror, but
Stark: 14:44
Horror elements maybe.
Lilly: 14:45
Yeah. Yeah. It's something about eggs because they look normal from the outside. Right. But you don't know what's happening inside. There's, there's a lot going on.
Stark: 14:52
Mm-hmm.
Lilly: 14:54
This book maintains a sense of mystery despite being from the first person perspective. Can you tell us a little bit about controlling that flow of information without cheapening Jesse's inner thoughts?
Stark: 15:07
I, yeah, I tried to write this one third person and it just didn't work. I just found I'd slipped back into first person without even meaning to, and, one day I'll write something in third person I will. I'm determined to, but at the moment I'm still sort of, it's kind of my go-to, thing to have first person, POV. It was tricky because again, we only sort of see what, what Jesse sees. And so I think the trickiest thing was wrangling with him not freaking out all the time, you know, because technically he should be freaking out all the time. But, so I wanted it to be just normal enough to kind of keep him there and then have that sense of, of being a bit spellbound and a bit enchanted and a bit sort of befuddled by the whole thing. so he isn't thinking clearly that, that was, I think maybe how I approached kind of the flow of information there. Just the idea that, that the, place itself is having an effect on him. And so he isn't kind of. Acting logically or thinking clearly.
Sara: 16:10
It's fascinating to think of this book. As originally having been envisaged in the third person, because I don't know if you would get that same sense of unsettledness. Like, I, I feel like you really need Jesse's perspective to, to convey that very like dreamy, atmospheric, folklore esque perspective.
Stark: 16:35
Yeah, because it's not it, it wouldn't have the same effect of the, kind of the airiness and, and the not knowing. I think the not knowing is a big part of this, but.
Sara: 16:43
Yeah, absolutely.
Lilly: 16:45
in a book with such. Limited characters. Limited in the sense that it's a novella, right? We don't have a cast of a hundred, we still get several brother relationships which I thought was very interesting. We have, of course, our main character, Jesse and his brother, who we don't meet on the page. Whose name I didn't write down? Andros.
Stark: 17:07
Yeah.
Lilly: 17:07
Andros, okay. And then we also have, the, the father of the homestead where he's staying in this sort of liminal space, crossroads location. And then we eventually find out his brother is, I'm gonna call the antagonist in a sense. Heck. And so I was, it feels like there's something there, but I am not quite able to articulate it because I did read this yesterday and haven't had enough time to sit and think about it, to figure it out. But brothers, there's so many brothers.
Stark: 17:37
Yeah, that's, that's true. I think it's, I think it's about power dynamics and, and kind of, close relationships that. Kind of accepting while still, you know, it's accepting that everyone is, is kind of a bit monstrous in their ways. And even if it's a close relationship like you would have with, with a brother or a sibling yeah, it's about sort of knowing, seeing that in someone else, seeing the monstrous and, and accepting it as well. That's definitely the case for, for Lucas or Lu and heck, yes. Who are based on Gaulish mythology. This whole this is a very weird combination of things. This book, it's kind of got, you know, Bob Dylan Dust Bowl and then Gish Mythology kind of rolled up together. So yeah, Lucas is, is based on Gish deity and so is heck. So they are sort of two, two sides of a coin really.
Sara: 18:25
Actually that, that perfectly answers the next question that I was gonna ask, because this is, this is a very folkloric book as, as we've talked about and there were some references that we caught like the coins to pay the, the ferry man, you know, Greek mythology. But, it felt like there was something else that I couldn't place. And yeah, Gish mythology would, would be it.
Stark: 18:49
Yes, Gish mythology is deeply weird. it's a religion of animism, so the, the land itself has power. So I thought that fit really well with this setting. Which is sort of, outta time and out of outta place. But then, yeah, Lucas, I mean in, in mythology he's a psychopomp, he fairies souls, a bit like charan. Lots of, there are lots of them in mythology. So I wanted to kind of reimagine, that liminal setting of sort of a purgatory space. And it's, it's almost, I'm, I'm, I'm spoiler if go going big on the spoilers now. But it's almost, it's almost a space that it, it looks that way because Jesse has imagined it. he's almost created it by his you know, the world he knows and the references he knows. So that's why it looks the way it does. But also is quite strange as well they exist. I think, you know, Lucas and, and Rose murder and heck, they almost exist it, the intangible concepts and he's brought them into being shaped that way.
Lilly: 19:45
So is the, the language that we see MTA and Lugo speak a couple of times in the book, is that based on an existing language.
Stark: 19:53
Oh, God. If there's any, if there's any like scholars of like, golish out there, I, I probably mangled it horribly, but it is my attempt at, at Golish. Which isn't really, doesn't really exist as a, a written language. There's very few sources. So I had to be a bit a bit spicy with how I did it, and it's probably horribly wrong, but I more, I, I more wanted to use it'cause I wanted the reader to be kind of taken aback and not know what language it was either. Jesse doesn't know, so I wanted it to be unfamiliar.
Lilly: 20:25
And it was very unfamiliar. it was very cool running across it and not even recog. I like, I wasn't even able to recognize the root words or like have an idea of what family of language it was from. Which is why at first I thought maybe this is fully invented, but reading along, realizing how much mythology was clearly at the core of this story, I was like, no, there's definitely, this is a real thing. I just don't know it, which does happen sometimes.
Sara: 20:53
So what was your research process like for this book? Because like you say, it is, it is. Deeply based on on real sources.
Stark: 21:02
Yeah, I mean it's, I wanted it to have the. Kind of quite, you know, elemental, earthy kind of quality to it. Just because again, in the song, to me, that's what the song has to it, it has these sort of archetypal characters almost. So I suppose that's why I gravitated towards, towards Gorish mythology. I mean, I'd been reading about it anyway, I think. I wanted the figure of a psychopomp, I wanted the figure of like a ferry person. So I started reading around and landed on, on Lucas and thought, well, okay, yeah, that, that really works for this. So, a lot of reading around the subject. I mean, the most, in-depth bit of research I did at one point Lucas plays like, a lap harp, which is has sort of strings on it and it's based on a finished canole. It's a five string laptop and it had exactly the right tone that I was looking for. And I got so obsessed with them. I ended up ordering one, and so I, now I, I'm learning how to play it. So that was my, my most useless bit of in depth research was learning how to play. A finished Canda lay and it's a beautiful instrument, very simple. Basically a piece of wood with five strings. And I've got it tuned to din so all I can really play is just very melancholy polkas. That's fine. I just sometimes sit and play a melancholy polka.
Lilly: 22:15
Okay.
Sara: 22:16
awesome though.
Lilly: 22:18
I have to say, I assume someone offhandedly saying, oh yeah, I picked up a whole new instrument for this book. That must mean you play instruments already that that can't have been the first instrument you've picked up.
Stark: 22:29
No, I, I do, I play a few things, but very badly. I don't play well. but it is only five strings. It's not hard to learn. So it's, yeah, it's, it was definitely not, not a particularly challenging one. And you know, it was a lot of fun'cause that's a legitimate business expense.
Lilly: 22:43
Yeah, there you go. During the process of writing the story, were there any scenes or moments that surprised you? I.
Stark: 22:51
I mean there sort of were I think I was surprised by the ending because I had no idea really where this was going at all. I wrote this in a very different, writing approach a very different way than I'd normally write anything. I wrote it in what can only be described as sort of vibe chunks, like chunks of just vi vibes. And then, then I had to sort of string it together into something that made sense. So it was a lot of vibe. And then I had to sort of fill in the connective tissue afterwards. So I really had no idea how this was. Gonna play out until I got there. Oh, yes. one of the bits that surprised me, and I've no idea where it came from, is like Lucas squeezing Jesse's heart in his hand until it turns to light and that, you know, becomes a knife and things, a very weird imagery like that. I think I was on a bit of a writing sprint that day and I was just. Deep it deep in it. And that came from sort of nowhere. So I suppose, yeah, it was the not knowing. Normally I have a, a slightly better idea of, of where I'm going with the book, but not with this one.
Lilly: 23:56
Do you typically outline your, your work quite a bit?
Stark: 24:00
Not really. I have, um. a vague system, which is, I kind of usually write a sentence or two about the main kind of theme. I think of my chapters as scenes rather than chapters. They're often, because I'm writing in first person, they're often quite concise. I like to be able to envisage the whole scene and for the scene to have a point to it. So. I write a couple of sentences of what the scene is about, and then I'll usually give it a star system. I have a star system, so red is action, yellow is character, green is description. And so when it's on the page, I can then see if I've got too much red or too much yellow or not enough green. And I started doing that when I was writing nun Slinger because, because they were very short chapters and very short novels, and I had to try and maintain. A kind of level of dynamic range in them. So it wasn't kind of action, action, action, action, action all the time. So that's kind of what I do really. I don't like outlining too heavily'cause I, for me it just sucks all of the joy out of it. And I get some of my best ideas when I'm mid flow.
Sara: 25:00
So you mentioned earlier that the point of view changed how different otherwise is the final product from the first draft.
Stark: 25:08
Not that different actually.'cause like I say, I kind of wrote it in in chunks and that's normally when I'm writing. I know the good bits, right? You know, there's this whole kill your darling thing and Yeah, sometimes you've gotta do that, whatever. But I think I, I usually know the bits, which I think are kind of the, the decent bits. And I think, you know, it was, it was, I was writing this a quite hectic time, so I really only was writing like the, the vibey bits. I think in, for the LA final draft, a couple of things changed and I had to do, you know, I had to make it a bit longer. It actually came in at 18,000. So I had to bulk it out a little bit, but that was fine because once I went back to it, I could, I could see the places that could do with a bit more flash on them. So that's really the only thing that changed.
Lilly: 25:54
It does not feel like it went back. You went back and added fluff. I'll say that.
Sara: 25:57
Yeah. No, it,
Lilly: 25:58
Yeah.
Stark: 26:00
It's possibly a little bit too bare bones before.
Lilly: 26:04
is there anything that you would like readers to take away from this book?
Stark: 26:09
I think, I think if you've never read a Western, then it's probably quite a good introduction to the genre. Hopefully might get people interested in other westerns like it which especially exist in film. And then I think, and the fact it's kind of a queer romance as well for me was like quite an important part of this. It's kind of combining, combining things that I, you know, feel, feel passionately about. And we don't get many queer westerns, so, I would like people to, to enjoy it for that reason and maybe seek out the mothers.
Sara: 26:40
Yeah, we haven't actually talked much about Rio and Jesse's romance, but it was such a beautiful like. Understated relationship, I thought. I, I really, and I typically am not a huge romance person for, for my books, but I thought it fit in perfectly and yeah, I, I really enjoyed it.
Stark: 26:59
Thanks. Yeah, it's, I think it's an important part of the book because it's. Is Jesse allowing himself to be seen and kind of, finally, you know, kind of doing, doing something for somebody else as well, not just himself.
Sara: 27:13
Yeah, I, I think we get to explore a lot of his character growth through, through the relationship that he has with Rio. So you, you give a list in the acknowledgements of some of the some of the, the songs that you listen to that informed this book. are there any other recommendations that you have for people who, like, do you have a playlist that people should listen to while they read this?
Stark: 27:36
Oh, yes, I do have a playlist. Yes. I mean, I had a Spotify playlist, but I'm coming off Spotify, so, hopefully I'll be able to share it on title instead, but I mean, in the back of the book, there's a list of artists and musicians who've inspired the writing of it. And I mean, I say in the acknowledgement, it's a, a book born from songs and it really is. It's kind of, I think I was trying to take. That feeling you get when you, you listen to a song that just completely captures you. And it's almost like it creates a world in miniature for that, you know, two minutes and 30 seconds or three minutes or however long the song is. And that's the kind of vibe I wanted the book to have. Really trans, trans can transportive even though it doesn't last for very long, so. Yet to me, I, I listed some of the, some of the artists I really like bands like Can we were talking about acid westerns earlier and there's a fantastic acid western that nobody's seen called Deadlock directed by Roland Click in the seventies. And it has a soundtrack by Can Who, a fantastic sort of psychedelic rock band. And so they, few of their songs very much informed this. This book and, you know, some folk musicians as well. And Nes Mitchell and Hades Town was a big influence on this too. I'm a huge fan. Yeah, every, everything from sort of, psychedelic rock to, to folk is in there. And yeah, in the acknowledgements, there's, a list, so you can go and go and check some of'em out.
Lilly: 28:55
Speaking of media recommendations, is there a, a queer western off the top of your head that everyone ought to try out?
Stark: 29:02
upright Women Wanted by Sarah Galey. Librarians. Queer. Queer romance. Queer love. And it's kind of a satire as well, so yeah, and it's also a novella, so
Sara: 29:14
I think I have that one on my shelf actually. I've not read it. But I really liked Gay Lee's American Hippo,
Lilly: 29:20
Mm-hmm.
Sara: 29:21
Which I guess also would, would fit in the queer Western.
Lilly: 29:24
It's technically not in the West, but
Sara: 29:28
yeah. But it's the same vibe,
Lilly: 29:29
yeah.
Sara: 29:30
but.
Stark: 29:31
We're vibes based. It's fine.
Lilly: 29:32
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. It has been wonderful diving into this. A little bit deeper. You mentioned that you just wrapped up a project that you can't talk about. Is there anything that you have coming up that you would like to talk about or can are allowed
Stark: 29:50
at, at the moment. I'm not really allowed to talk about anything. I'm hope, hopefully I'll be able to talk about the, the new book soon. But apart from that, you know, I work in video games and which are notorious for, for NDAs. I will say that, I am working on a game at the moment and it is one that me and some co co-writers who I met in a writer's room are making together. So it's the first time we've actually made our own game, our own project, not somebody else's. And that's very exciting.
Sara: 30:18
That's really cool. How, so this is a little, a little off topic. How would you say that writing for video games differs from like writing a, writing a book?
Stark: 30:29
I mean, it's completely different. Kind of style really, because you know, you don't have a lot of room in games. You know, maybe with a very narrative to text heavy game, you could get away with a bit more. But typically you only have a sentence or two or maybe a paragraph on, on the screen to hook readers. And to hook players. A lot of people will just skip past text otherwise. So you have to learn to be Yeah, no, I read everything. I
Lilly: 30:55
Illegal. Yeah.
Stark: 30:57
I know, but pe people do. Some people, I dunno who they, but anyway but so you have to be concise, you have to be really pithy. You have to you have to also understand that the writing sometimes isn't there to be the front and center. It's just kind of help steer the narrative or steer the player or, or support the gameplay. so it's just one aspect really of, of a much wider project. I mean, I think it has impacted my writing a bit. So Ninth Life, I mean, because it's told this, one of this, the third book in the the 10 Lo factor series. It's kind of told in lots of different forms and styles of writing, you know, so we've got a bit of a, a bit of a an unmade screenplay in there and, you know, a radio DJ and adverts and things. And that's I think, something that I, that I bought from games.'cause that's a lot of the work I did on Shadows of Doubt, which is the detective game I wrote was, was about world building texts and kind of trying to convey the narrative through those rather than in a sort of linear format.
Lilly: 31:53
I would play the hell out of a 10 low video game. Sorry. And now that's
Stark: 31:56
Yeah,
Lilly: 31:57
where my brain is. And it won't go anywhere else.
Stark: 32:00
I would love that. If anyone wants to make one, great. Don't make
Lilly: 32:04
programmers jump on in.
Sara: 32:06
So. I, you, you can't talk about your current projects, but where can you be found on the internet so that people can follow you and eventually hear about, hear about projects when you're allowed to talk about them.
Stark: 32:19
Well, I'm Star K on on, on everything really. So I am Stark K on, I'm on Instagram and Blue Sky. Like I said, if you are, if you are on Blue Sky and want to find that list of. Cool stuff that people will recommend me. That's one of the places where I sort of hang around. And I've got a Patreon as well, which if you're interested in, in what I'm doing, that's where I post up kind of, I hate posting unfinished work. I hate it, but I do because as a thank you to the people who who support me on there, they get to see things first. Things from behind the scenes that I haven't showed anyone. Kind of photos and, and things like that. I also post up every month I'll post up a, a list of film recommendations, things that are on streaming platforms that you might not otherwise find.'cause I hate crawling through trying to find things. So it's my kind of monthly recommendation list of cool things.
Lilly: 33:09
That's awesome. Why is it so different? I remember when you would go to a video rental store and browsing through videos or movies, that was fine. But now that it's scrolling through a screen, for some reason it is torture.
Stark: 33:22
Yeah, I think it's because there's just too much. And so you're faced with this sort of, you just can't pick anything and you can't, it's not tangible. You can't pick it up and read it and put it back and pick it up and so I don't know. I, I love video stores. We've got an amazing one. Here in Bristol where I live called 20th Century Flick, which is actually a video. You can go in and rent DVDs. It's great, but mostly you just go in for a chat and you come out with three DVDs you never heard of before and they're, they're brilliant. So, that's kind of what I try to do with my recommendation list as well. Just things you might not have of might not otherwise find. I try and take, take some of the pain of scrolling out for people.
Lilly: 33:58
Well, I am excited to go find that, which is what I'm gonna do immediately after we're done here. Thank you so much for joining us and can't wait to read whatever mysterious project you have coming up next.
Stark: 34:11
Thank you. Yeah, it's so nice to be back in and to talk about the book again, and this is quite close to my heart, this one. So yeah, I really appreciate it.
Sara: 34:18
Well, I absolutely loved it. And yeah, thank you so much for chatting with us.
Lilly: 34:26
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Fiction Fans.
Sara: 34:29
Come disagree with us. We're on Blue Sky and Instagram at Fiction Fans Pod. You can also email us at fiction fans pod@gmail.com or leave a comment on YouTube.
Lilly: 34:40
If you enjoyed the episode, please rate and review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and follow us wherever your podcasts live.
Sara: 34:47
We also have a Patreon where you can support us and find exclusive episodes and a lot of other nonsense.
Lilly: 34:54
Thanks again for listening, and may your villains always be defeated. Bye.
