Hey, Detroiters! Welcome back to another Culture Canvas.
Franklin author Josh Malerman, best known for his book “Bird Box,” is hosting an event Sunday at Detroit Public Library to promote his latest, “Incidents Around the House.” But Malerman told me this won’t be a typical book talk.
The event will include members of his performance troupe Wow Town, which consists of Malerman, his fiancé Allison Laakko, musician Jim Byrne, stage actors Lilli Bishop, Atran Raikany and Jeannine Thompson, as well as film director/magician James Henry Hall, and voiceover artist Kristi Billings. Byrne will perform a live score, while Malerman and Billings narrate passages from the novel.
“Incidents” follows eight-year-old Bela and her family: Mommy, Daddo and Grandma Ruth. But there’s also an evil entity called Other Mommy lurking around the house that wants to take over Bela’s heart and is growing restless of the little girl’s unwillingness to give in to the request.
After the performance, the author will be available for a brief Q&A and book signing. Copies of Incidents Around the House from 27th Letter Books in Southwest Detroit will be available for sale. The free event starts at 2 p.m. and guests are encouraged to register on Eventbrite.
I talked with Malerman about “Incidents,” his love of writing horror books and what he’s working on next.
Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
BridgeDetroit: How did you get this idea of you and your troupe putting on a production for Sunday’s event?
Malerman: When “Bird Box” first came out, the publisher was like, ‘Now go around to a few bookstores and give talks or read from your book.’ I was like, ‘What does that mean?’ They’re like, ‘Just go to a store and stand at a podium and you read,” and I’m like, ‘That sounds so boring to me.’
So, it turned into me and my fiance, Allison (Laakko) saying, ‘What can we do?’ And we were like, ‘Well, the book has blindfolds. Why don’t we blindfold the audience and then we’ll play live music on stage while we read from the book.’
And it was just this innocent little idea, but it was infinitely larger than just being at a podium. And from there, every book was like, ‘OK, what are we going to do for this one?’
So, it’s not like you’re going to see a play, but what you’re going to see is hopefully more interesting than me at a podium. The excitement of having your friends who are actors and musicians and writers and filmmakers and to have them all in a troupe putting together a reading…I don’t think it’s going to be more fun than that.
BridgeDetroit: I know you’re a musician as well, but did you always wanted to write books, too?
Malerman: Yeah, I probably wanted to do that before music. Through childhood and middle school and high school, I was trying to write terrible poems and stories and comic books, just anything. At some point, my friends, who are all musicians, were like, ‘Hey, you write. We play.’ And it kind of started to mold together. And that’s 19-year-old logic, right? Well, it did lead to that, so in a way, they (songwriting and creative writing) both grew at the same time. I would say that writing has always come first, but that includes songwriting.
BridgeDetroit: What made you gravitate toward writing horror?
Malerman: Something struck me at a young age where I immediately fell in love with it because it just felt infinite to me, like any idea could be a horror story. I saw my first few horror movies and my mind was just spinning with all these ideas.
Later in life, in my 20s and 30s, a lot of people by then will have abandoned scary stories, right? Somehow it’s still retained. In a weird way, I see horror as the fountain of youth because you only expect a child to be afraid of all these things in a real way, but I have carried that ability to be afraid into adulthood and there’s something so thrilling about feeling that way.
One of the main pillars of writing the book (“Incidents”) was that the adults are just as scared as Bela, they don’t know what to do about this either. That’s maybe the most interesting part of the book. What would you do in reality if you went upstairs into your daughter’s room and you saw this thing sitting on the end of the bed talking to her?
BridgeDetroit: Were there any movies or music that influenced you when you were writing “Incidents Around the House?”
Malerman: I’ve written 40 books now, “Incidents” is my 13th published. Every single book I’ve written, I’ve had a soundtrack or music of some sort playing while I was writing. But for some reason with “Incidents,” I was struggling with that. This soundtrack felt too dramatic, that soundtrack felt too romantic. Finally I was like, ‘Why don’t we try a book that’s just like the cold silence of the house?’
I feel like that lack of music…you can feel that in the book. The only music I hear in “Incidents Around the House” is a cold wind coming through an open window. I hear the subtle creaking of Other Mommy moving about the house. I hear Bela breathing, waiting for Other Mommy to approach at night. This was the first time I ever did that and it was kind of creepy because I’m in a dark office at night. There’s a closet facing me in this office and there’s no music. And also we have cats, so instantly in the house, I would hear little movements here and there. It was freaky.
BridgeDetroit: Have there been any talks of turning “Incidents Around the House” into a movie?
Malerman: It’s pretty far down the road in that direction right now and we’ll see if it happens.
BridgeDetroit: What do you hope readers take from the book?
Malerman: I hope that someone thinks it’s really well written, but there is this side of me, the fan side of me, that ultimately wants it to scare the hell out of you. If somebody tells you that it scared them, there’s just no feeling like it.
BridgeDetroit: What’s next on your agenda?
Malerman: It’s all things “Incidents” right now and then next year, I have a non-fiction book coming out and I shot a documentary that we just finished. It’s a documentary on the writing of a novel…I filmed it over the course of a few months, and then laid down the soundtrack in the couple months after that. I can’t wait for this thing to come out and I imagine when it does, we’re gonna have a crazy screening around here for this.
I would post online, “I just finished a novel today” and I’m like, ‘Wait a minute. That does not encapsulate this experience, man.’
I was just with this book for months, and … How do I express in a richer way what it was like to get to the finish line of this book? And so, I started thinking, ‘Hey man, just film it.’ We already submitted it to a couple festivals. It’s got to come out sometime next year.
BridgeDetroit: It’s been 10 years since you released your debut book, “Bird Box” and six years since the Netflix film came out. Did you think it was going to become a success like it was?
Malerman: I’m a naturally optimistic guy in this way and I’m confident about the books I’m writing. So, it’s not like I was like, ‘How did this happen?’ It was more like, ‘Wow. I was just insanely grateful for it happening.’
Whatever happened with “Bird Box” is one of the most special things that’s ever happened to me, of course. But I also don’t want to look at “Bird Box” as being superior or better than another book just because it did really well. I want to see them all with their own story and their own work of art. So no, I wasn’t expecting that, but I also wasn’t stunned by it either because it was more like, ‘Well, that’s amazing. Let’s keep going.’
Have a great weekend!
Cheers,
Micah
This post was originally published on here
