Read Me A Nightmare

About Read Me A Nightmare

Season 2 of "Read Me A Nightmare" shifts its focus to conversations with writers, editors, and creators working in and around dark fiction — about craft, career, and the realities of making stories in the world.Visit www.fawns.ca to learn more. Please --if you enjoy the episode, leave a review! angeliquemfawns.substack.com (https://angeliquemfawns.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Angelique Fawns

Category

arts · fiction

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

2 May 2021

Latest episode

20 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

77 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   20 Sept 2026

   Fat Vampire & The Artisan Author with Johnny B. Truant

   The video of our chat is HERE. (https://youtu.be/hCzbs167wVw) What’s my number one goal? To sell IP to film and television. You know who’s done it? Johnny B. Truant (https://substack.com/profile/136828877-johnny-b-truant) Imagine my delight when I was contacted by my favorite horror writer in Canada, Mark Leslie Lefebvre (https://substack.com/profile/34479433-mark-leslie-lefebvre) and asked if I was interested in interviewing Johnny B. Truant about his upcoming Kickstarter. Ummm. HELL YES. Ps. Here is his Kickstarter i (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnnybtruant/fat-vampire-10th-anniversary-special-edition-2-volume-set)f you want the fanciest edition of Fat Vampire (on it’s thirteenth birthday) EVER. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnnybtruant/fat-vampire-10th-anniversary-special-edition-2-volume-set (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnnybtruant/fat-vampire-10th-anniversary-special-edition-2-volume-set) Here is his bio in his own voice: I’m the author of Fat Vampire (which became SyFy’s Reginald the Vampire), plus 100+ books across most genres. My books are layered, intelligent, and often funny. I love what I do, never cut corners, and would rather earn 10 true fans than sell 10,000 copies. AF: Let’s talk about Fat Vampire. You’ve had the book adapted into the TV series Reginald the Vampire. How did that actually happen? J.B.T: People say, “How do you make that happen?” I say: “I didn’t make that happen. I did nothing to make that happen.” The book existed in the world, and a producer who worked for the BBC, of all places, was getting on a plane and needed something to read. He found it on Apple Books. Then he told two of his friends, Jeremiah Chechik and Harley Peyton, “Hey, I think this is up your alley.” And then they read it and contacted me, and then they made the TV show. (Authorial note: I didn’t know those two guys, so… here you go: Jeremiah S. Chechik is a Canadian film and television director and photographer. His feature work includes National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Benny & Joon, Diabolique and The Avengers. Harley Peyton is an American screenwriter and television producer.[1] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harley_Peyton#cite_note-1) He worked in both capacities on Twin Peaks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Peaks) and was nominated for the 1990 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42nd_Primetime_Emmy_Awards) Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primetime_Emmy_Award_for_Outstanding_Writing_for_a_Drama_Series) for his work on the series' third episode (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episode_3_(Twin_Peaks)).) But that circumstance could never have been engineered. Even if I had pitched Harley and Jeremiah—which I didn’t—they had to be between shows, not working on something right now, actively looking. There’s just—everything ends up being luck at some point. But you can’t get lucky unless you have something to spawn that luck. Like having books in the world. AF: Did Reginald the Vampire translate into a big increase in your book sales? J.B.T: No. I would say that it’s good as cred. I got a good payday for the show and I got to go and be on it and everything. But has it made a huge difference in book sales? Not directly. It gives me a reference. It gives me social proof to be able to say that it’s a TV show, and that sort of thing is useful. It’s become kind of a keystone thing in that people do know it. It’s not like there was a big bump when it showed up. But maybe if the show had been bigger, then it would have been. AF: What was your experience like working with the production? J.B.T: The production was very gracious with me, and it’s no surprise. It’s Canadian production. Like, you’re just nicer up there. (Authorial note: Thank you! Sorry, I think we are very nice.) I was told that from end to end, the whole production was kind of a unicorn in that everybody was kind of nice. There wasn’t that kind of cutthroat culture that you hear about sometimes. AF: You were also quite involved in the TV show, weren’t you? J.B.T: I don’t think my experience was typical. I got to sit in the writers’ room a couple of times. I don’t think most authors get to do that, but I wasn’t precious. They’d ask about things, and I basically said, “I don’t care what you do. It’s your IP now.” It’s collaborative. It’s a different medium. It’s budget constrained. There were a bunch of decisions that they made because they had to make them because of budget. And I don’t have to worry about budget when I’m writing. I wish that more writers would understand that TV or movies and their books are a fundamentally different thing. AF: What changed? J.B.T: My Fat Vampire novels are third-person limited. So if Reginald, the main character, isn’t there and doesn’t hear it and see it, then you don’t know it. That doesn’t really work on TV. So they had to create all these other characters and all these POVs, and they needed to be able to shift from an A story to a B story. And that’s not the way books are written. You can’t adapt them one-to-one. Just because the audiovisual version is not the same as the book does not mean that it is screwed up inherently. They used the same premise to create something that worked for that medium. AF: You were part of a companion podcast for the TV show, weren’t you? https://johnnybtruant.substack.com/podcast (https://johnnybtruant.substack.com/podcast) J.B.T: Yeah. When I pitched this originally, it was maybe a month, maybe even less, before the first season of the TV show came out. I said, “I can do a companion podcast.” And so if it’s coming out every week and you can release a companion podcast to go with it and then put a trailer at the beginning or the end—“Watch the companion podcast. Listen to the companion podcast”—then that’s a great promotional vehicle. I was sending them articles about how companion podcasts are the thing and how they really help. AF: So what happened? J.B.T: The whole process took so incredibly long that I had gone to visit the set for season two before I even was able to line up interviews for season one. So season two hadn’t aired, but I was like, “Okay, it’s okay, you guys. We’ll just drop all the season ones.” They’ll be kind of weirdly homeless. Nobody’s going to know what to do with them. But then we can do it right for season two. Of course, the show got canceled. So I didn’t continue with season two. I ended up with eight of ten episodes fully produced, fully ready to go. And then I was like, “Well, what am I supposed to do with these?” So that’s what I’m doing now: putting them out. (https://johnnybtruant.substack.com/p/its-alive-the-unreleased-behind-the) The podcast is called Reginald the Vampire After Sunrise, because it’s like after dark, but they’re vampires, so it’s after sunrise. It’s on all the podcast places. It’s fun to go back and listen to my interviews with the cast and the producers and discuss the episodes, but also discuss what it was like to portray these characters and vampire lore and how it differs in different situations and stuff. It was cool. And I’m kind of sad that they went unlistened to for so long. AF: And now you’re bringing Fat Vampire back in a completely different form—a special 13th-anniversary edition. Why this particular project? J.B.T: For Fat Vampire, it’s 13 years old now, and that’s a witchy number, 13. It’s the 13th anniversary. I want to do a special edition of a book that already exists, that people already know about, which is a different animal than I’ve done before. I can’t just have it as a by-the-way. It needs to be like the main entrée. It needs to be the thing. I’ll offer audiobooks and ebooks and all that. They’ll be there for people who’ve never heard of the book. But the core audience that I’m trying to serve are the people who already know about it and like it and want this big tome. AF: And this is where Kickstarter comes in? J.B.T: It’s a huge gut check because I can’t do print-on-demand. I’m doing an overseas print run. This campaign has to bring in like, what, eight, nine, $10,000 before I can even do it. And in the past, that hasn’t been a thing. Technically speaking, if I were to set the goal accordingly and somebody bought one book, okay, I can sell that one book. I can do that in a print-on-demand culture. But this is a print run. I have to pull up the big-boy pants. So we’ll see. AF: You’ve done quite a few Kickstarters. What have you learned about them? J.B.T: Maybe not everybody should do Kickstarter. You have to ask: Do you have the right temperament? Do you have the right catalog? Are your books kind of optimized from a conversion and cover perspective? Are you good at talking to people? Do you have pitches? So in no way am I saying that Kickstarter is, quote, a good idea, full stop. But for me, it is. AF: You’ve said something similar about all the current “must-do” strategies in publishing—rapid release, Kindle Unlimited, live selling, social media. You seem pretty skeptical of the idea that there’s one formula. Authorial note: Johnny B. Truant wrote a whole book about finding sanity in the current rapid release, burn out culture in the industry. J.B.T: I refuse to give real definitive answers. There’s no shortcut to learning. The mentality should be making your own path rather than, “I’m going to give you a path.” I can retroactively draw you a map. This is what I did. But unless you start in exactly the same place as I am, a map only works if you start in the exact same place, facing the same direction, and have the same supplies and the same everything. That’s why I don’t give you the answers. Because it’s crap to do so. It really annoys me to death when you see people who are like, “This is the answer.” I’m not a fan of rapid release at all, but it works for some people. I’m also not a fan of Kindle Unlimited. But again, that’s for me. Then I see somebody like Matt Dinniman, where KU is a huge part of his success. He really praises KU. So that’s his genre. That’s him. And he’s a smart guy. It really just depends. AF: So what do you think is actually underneath all of this? What remains true regardless of the latest publishing trend? J.B.T: Finding a reader who likes your work is really all it’s about. It’s about finding the right reader in the right place at the right time. And that’s really all there is to it. AF: And that brings us back to luck, doesn’t it? J.B.T: Absolutely. The Reginald the Vampire thing didn’t make my books blow up, but it could have. It certainly was a payday, and it led to connections and it led to social proof. So that’s my piece of good fortune. But you can’t plan on that. You can’t engineer the guy getting on the plane, needing something to read, finding your book on Apple Books, telling the right people about it, and having those people be available and interested. Everything is luck at some point. Well… that was a thoroughly enjoyable conversation! One last time, here are his links. For the Artisan Author: https://buy.bookfunnel.com/ux3l6solvh (https://buy.bookfunnel.com/ux3l6solvh) For the Fat Vampire special edition: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnnybtruant/fat-vampire-10th-anniversary-special-edition-2-volume-set (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnnybtruant/fat-vampire-10th-anniversary-special-edition-2-volume-set) For all other things Johnny: https://johnnybtruantbooks.com/ (https://johnnybtruantbooks.com/) And if you are in to Kickstarters? I’m running one myself! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/angeliquefawns/the-roxie-vega-chronicles-a-space-opera-adventure-romance (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/angeliquefawns/the-roxie-vega-chronicles-a-space-opera-adventure-romance) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit angeliquemfawns.substack.com/subscribe (https://angeliquemfawns.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

2. 

   9 Aug 2026

   William Bernhardt & The Superman Wars

   I came into William Bernhardt’s orbit when he invited me to his Writer Con, (https://writercon.com)upcoming this September in Oklahoma City. (Anyone here going? Let me know! We can meet up.) We had an out-of-this-world talk about his new book, The Superman Wars. Almost everyone knows about the man from Krypton who, disguised as mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent working with the fearless Lois Lane, fights for the vulnerable and the oppressed. But few know the truth about this indelible character’s creation. From mobster tactics to decades-long courtroom drama, a beloved American myth was born, betrayed, and eventually reclaimed—almost eighty years after the character first appeared.New witnesses, unpublished manuscripts, personal letters, and more reveal the complex and dramatic history of Superman and his creator, Jerry Siegel. This is a David and Goliath clash with twists, turns, and devastating upheavals. An underdog tale of a creator who fought for his rights and finally found redemption in his battle for truth, justice, and the American Way. A story that has never been fully told… How did I not know about this? It’s fascinating to hear why William chose to tell this story. And we talk about way more than just this book. * We get into the true kryptonite that plagues writers, aka: take care of your IP. * The benefits of conferences * Indie versus Trad * Why I left my agent * Finding time to write * TV & Film optioning * And so much more Here is his bio: William Bernhardt is the author of over sixty books, including the Daniel Pike legal thriller series (#1 best-selling novel The Last Chance Lawyer). His previous works include the bestselling Ben Kincaid series, the historical novels Challengers of the Dust and The Florentine Poet, three books of poetry, and the Red Sneaker books on fiction writing. In addition, Bernhardt founded WriterCon Programs to mentor aspiring writers. WriterCon hosts an annual writers conference, an annual cruise, small-group writing retreats, a magazine, plus free bi-weekly e-newsletters and podcasts. Hey, if you prefer talking heads and visuals, there is a YouTube version of our talk! CLICK HERE (https://youtu.be/qu5N9iwqJzM) If you want to learn more about William Bernhardt, more places to click: https://williambernhardt.com (https://williambernhardt.com) https://writercon.com/ (https://writercon.com/) https://www.facebook.com/WriterConHQ (https://www.facebook.com/WriterConHQ) Angelique: Your newest book is The Superman Wars. What inspired you to write it? William: I thought this was an important story. Everyone knows Superman, but more importantly, this is the most pivotal creator-rights battle of modern times. Jerry Siegel’s struggle benefited countless creative people, not just those in comics. I wanted this story to reach a wide audience, so I decided it deserved a traditional publisher and a chance to be in bookstores. Angelique: I had no idea this drama existed in the background! William: You’re not alone. A lot of people remember the publicity campaign for Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1975 and think they know the story. They don’t. There were another fifty years of legal battles after that. Even many people in the comic book industry don’t know what really happened, and some of the versions that have been told simply aren’t accurate. I wanted to tell the real story. Angelique: I can’t believe this happened to the creator of the most iconic superhero of all time. William: It’s a cautionary tale. Don’t let what happened to Jerry Siegel happen to you. The threats may look different today, but there are still people and companies that would love to take your intellectual property. Every year at WriterCon, I meet writers who have lost thousands of dollars to vanity presses or other scams. Today we also have AI scraping and copyright issues. The lesson is simple: protect yourself. Don’t assume someone else will do it for you. Angelique: What’s the most shocking part of the story? William: Jerry Siegel knew from childhood that he wanted to be a writer. Like me, he started submitting work when he was very young. During the Depression, he desperately wanted to break into newspaper comic strips because that was where the money was. He and Joe Shuster spent years trying to sell Superman to newspaper syndicates, but no one understood the concept. Eventually they agreed to publish Superman through a comic book company. Unfortunately, just before Superman debuted, the company was taken over by Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz. (Authorial note for us Canadians: Joe Shuster was born in Toronto.) People often say Superman was sold for $130. That’s not exactly true. Jerry and Joe were paid $130 for the first thirteen-page story. Hidden in that agreement, though, was a clause transferring all rights to Superman to the company. Jerry signed it. I don’t think he fully understood what he was giving away. He was a young man without an agent, a lawyer, or anyone to advise him. Once Superman became an enormous success, he watched other people become millionaires while he received only a fraction of the profits. Meanwhile, Harry Donenfeld was calling himself “Mr. Superman,” wearing Superman shirts, and appearing at Superman Day while Jerry, the creator, was left in the background. Angelique: That is appalling. What did Jerry do and what happened next? William: Jerry was drafted during World War II. While he was overseas serving his country, the company took another one of his creations—Superboy. Jerry had deliberately created Superboy as something new that he hoped to own himself. Instead, while he was away, they published it without him. When Jerry returned home, he discovered they were making money from both Superman and Superboy, and he hadn’t been paid a single dollar for Superboy. That became the breaking point. In 1947, Jerry Siegel became the first American writer to sue his publisher. The lawsuit didn’t go well. He recovered some money related to Superboy, but he didn’t regain Superman. Even worse, he and Joe Shuster were fired from their own creation. Then something happened that I find morally reprehensible. DC removed Jerry and Joe’s names from Superman entirely. Even when older stories were reprinted, they’d paint over the creator credits. Legally, you can argue the contract, but erasing an artist’s name from their own work is simply wrong. Angelique: Way wrong. William: Exactly. Jerry believed the creative community would rally behind him. Instead, many people turned against him. But he kept fighting. After Jerry died, his family continued the legal battle. Together they established important legal precedents that have benefited creators ever since. That’s really what The Superman Wars is about. It’s about writers. It’s about artists. It’s about anyone creating original work today. Whether you’re writing books, drawing comics, or creating content online, you have to protect your intellectual property. Our interview went many more places, but I thought I would highlight the Superman story because it frankly blew me away. For the entire enchilada, watch the YouTube interview here! Or listen to the podcast, linked above. Thanks for reading. PS> You can still attend WriterCon. Register here! (https://writercon.com/about-writercon-2026/) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit angeliquemfawns.substack.com/subscribe (https://angeliquemfawns.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

3. 

   2 Aug 2026

   The Death of Sora & Surviving AI with Sylvie Soul

   Addicted to Sora… and then forced to go cold turkey. Prefer the full video interview? Click here. (https://youtu.be/2bh4T8tfejQ) What a conversation this was! I just love chatting with Sylvie, a new friend I met at the Toronto Indie Author Conference this spring. Do yourself a favour, and watch this VIDEO (https://youtu.be/_CVe75oYczc?si=JaeyVmFzuvx6aDGn) first, before you listen (or watch) the podcast. It’s a deep dive into Sophie’s Sora addiction. Not only is it hugely entertaining. (The (https://youtu.be/_CVe75oYczc?si=JaeyVmFzuvx6aDGn)motherfu@#*r day (https://youtu.be/_CVe75oYczc?si=JaeyVmFzuvx6aDGn)video is worth it alone) (https://youtu.be/_CVe75oYczc?si=JaeyVmFzuvx6aDGn) but it sets up some very serious concerns with social media addiction, the role of AI in our lives, and the usage of copyrighted property. Here is the link to all awesome things Sylvie Soul related. https://sylviesoul.com (https://sylviesoul.com) Love this stuff? It’s yours for free, but it takes a whack-a-doodle amount of time. Please help me keep sharing if you can! AF: You’ve been busy since our last chat in April. Spill?! SS: My first print sale! The Not Quite Write podcast (https://notquitewritepodcast.com/) ran a contest. I entered last fall, didn’t win -- but they reached out afterward and published my story anyway. A month later their first anthology was out, with me in it. It’s the first time I’ve had something you can actually hold. My husband took photos, and I posted them on LinkedIn and Instagram. I usually keep my writing separate from my day job, but coworkers saw it and wanted the link. And of everything I’ve written, this is the straight-up smut one. My pen name’s separate from my legal name, but there I am, downplaying it while everyone goes “share, share, share.” It’s hilarious. AF: It’s interesting that we can be embarrassed by our spicier or darker works. I’ve been battling with that myself. SS: I have even more respect for writers who are that candid. There’s a line from The Life of Chuck, the Tom Hiddleston film: “I contain multitudes.” You’re not just one thing. You can write flash fiction and speculative fiction and smut and historical and nonfiction. You don’t have to pigeonhole yourself for marketing. If you really want to follow your bliss, sometimes you have to explore and put yourself out there. AF: I hid my horror writing for years, worried it would clash with my journalism -- turns out people are more intrigued than judgmental. Speaking of exploring: I watched your video on the Death of Sora. (https://youtu.be/_CVe75oYczc?si=JaeyVmFzuvx6aDGn)And loved it. How long did that take to make? SS: It’s my longest video, and it took forever to edit. Most of my old videos were just talking-head pieces on craft, but I was so moved by the canceling of Sora that I had to create something on my foray into AI video. If I strung every clip together I created with the app, it’d be half an hour -- and nobody wants to watch a half hour of AI slop. I had the foresight to save the clips as soon as I knew Sora was going down. Now the site’s just gone. AF: I didn’t get a chance to explore it. Just as I discovered it, it was gone. SS: It’s fascinating to watch the rise and fall. Sora came out in full form less than a year ago. I played with it, then went all in -- I thought, this is the future, you can conceptualize anything. But at some point you step back and go: why am I feeding all my beautiful ideas into a large language model for them to keep? You have to be protective of your creativity. I value AI as a tool, but it’s easy to lose yourself taking creative cues from it. Disclaimer: I never, ever ask AI for help with my actual writing. My writing is my writing -- 100% human. Pangram, come at me. AF: The best thing in your video just might be the Motherf$@!* Day rap. SS: That’s the kind of weird thing that lives in my head. There was a feature where you could remix other people’s videos, so I’d find something trending and go, “okay, but do it with “Motherf$#@! Day,” and sneak it online. I was trying to force a meme. I think I was the only one who found it funny. AF: No -- it was funny. So, you did the deep dive and still came out preferring human-driven creativity? SS: I don’t like the way AI writes -- the metaphors are off, the cadence is wrong. It just doesn’t connect. For me it’s the word “you.” There’s an overabundance of it, because the AI is trying to inhabit your emotions -- “you’ll feel this, you feel sadness, not joy, only chaos.” And -- tinfoil hat on -- it’s not just the AI videos flooding YouTube. Now people are doing talking-head videos from AI scripts. It’s really them on camera, no avatar, but everything they say is hollow: generic lines engineered for emotional resonance with none of their own experience behind them. It’s an AI using a human avatar to spout slop. Watch for it -- people talking at you instead of relating to you. AF: “AI using human avatars” -- whoa. That’s very Matrix. SS: We’ve reached the singularity. It’s come full circle -- human-in-the-loop to serve the AI. It’s a mess. But what comes to mind for me is NFT art. Remember, two or three years ago, it was NFTs and crypto and blockchain consuming the whole culture? Then the crash came, and it turned out a lot of people didn’t know what they were doing, and the art was basically worthless. People spent fortunes on ugly monkeys that are worth pennies now. AF: I missed that craze. SS: I was briefly tempted, because they ram it at you: this is the future, you’ll need it for everything. And then it just... stopped. That’s how I think AI goes -- not a pin popping the balloon, but the balloon slowly deflating. This text is just a fraction of the stuff we dove into. Listen to the podcast, or watch the video (https://youtu.be/2bh4T8tfejQ) for the full experience! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit angeliquemfawns.substack.com/subscribe (https://angeliquemfawns.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

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Podcast Authority Score: 43 / 100

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