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In this episode of Castle Talk, Jason chats with former Brady and Gidget Caryn Richman, who plays a key role as a psychic who may be in over her head in the new film The Puppetman on Shudder.
Posted in: Books, Podcasts, Pop Culture | Tagged: Castle Talk Podcast, Grady Hendrix, The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires: A Novel
Grady Hendrix on Bringing Dracula to the Southern 'Burbs
This episode Jason spoke to author Grady Hendrix about his new book The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, which is currently a New York Times Bestseller. The book has already been acquired for adaptation as an Amazon TV series. Hendrix explains that the book, which the publisher has pitched as "Steel Magnolias Meets Dracula," is an homage to the kids of women who kept suburban life humming in the late 20th century. The story takes place in 1993, where Patricia, a member of the titular book club, has her life turned upside down by the arrival of a dangerous new neighbor—a vampire hiding in plain sight.
The author has a lot of fun in The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires recreating the world of the early 90s. The women are all believable suburbanites, obsessed with true crime books and keeping their houses in order. Patricia's day-to-day nightmares are the same ones that Hendrix observed growing up in the South: Patricia's husband works too many hours, her mother-in-law has to move in when she can no longer take care of herself, her son has strange obsessions. And then into all of this comes a slate of mysterious disappearances in the poor section of town. When Patricia starts investigating, it's not long before she catches neighbor James in full Dracula mode, attacking a child in the woods. Then it's a challenge: can a group of harried and dismissed moms take down a vampire?
Hendrix has had a skyrocketing horror career in a short time. Per the publisher Quirk Books:
Award-winning author Grady Hendrix has written for various outlets from Playboy to the British Film Institute, and scripted award shows for Chinese television. His novels include Horrorstör, about a haunted IKEA, which has been translated into 14 languages; My Best Friend's Exorcism, which is basically Beaches meets The Exorcist; and We Sold Our Souls, a heavy-metal horror epic that Library Journal named one of the best books of 2018. He's also the author of Paperbacks from Hell, a history of the horror paperback boom of the 1970s and '80s, which won the Bram Stoker Award for "Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction," and has also been spearheading the Paperbacks from Hell/Valencourt re-issues, which publishes facsimile editions of old paperback horror novels with his own introductions. He is the screenwriter of horror films Mohawk (2017) and Satanic Panic (2019), a horror movie about a pizza delivery woman battling rich Satanists. He's one of the founders of the New York Asian Film Festival, which the New York Times called "one of the city's most valuable events."
You can discover more about Hendrix at gradyhendrix.com.
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Jason Henderson is the host of the Castle of Horror and Castle Talk Podcasts, the editor of the Castle of Horror Anthology series, and the author of Quest for the Nautilus: Young Captain Nemo from Macmillan Children's Books.
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