Tales From the Void - Behind the Scenes Podcast - Episode 07

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From the silence,

from the darkness,

from your nightmares,

from the void

Tales from the Void,

the Behind-the-Scenes Podcast

Welcome back to the Tales from the Void Behind-the-Scenes podcast.

I'm David Cummings, host of the No Sleep Podcast and one of the executive producers of Tales from the Void.

Joining me on this episode is author Travis Brown.

A native of Maryland, Travis is an experienced writer and communicator via his work as a staff writer for a newspaper, along with working as an information officer for various public and government agencies.

When Travis discovered the No Sleep subreddit, he quickly became a very popular writer, with many of his stories becoming that community's most popular works.

It was one of those stories, titled, Something Walks Whistling Past My House Every Night at 3.03, that caught the eye of Tales from the Void creator Francesco Loschiavo, who in turn adapted it for the series as the episode called Whistle in the Woods.

Travis has published two collections of his short stories, House with 100 Doors and How to Build a Haunted House.

I'll speak with Travis about his origins in horror writing and how the No-Sleep subreddit has become a creative outlet for his works.

And so, join me as we we delve into the dark world of the void.

Travis Brown, thanks for joining us here.

Tales from the Void behind the scenes.

And it's a thrill.

You are the author who wrote the story, Something Walks Whistling Past My House Every Night at 3.03.

That has been adapted for Tales from the Void as the story called Whistle in the Woods.

Thanks for being with us, Travis.

David, thank you so much for having me.

Now, one of the things about interviewing writers is that I think everybody is interested in kind of knowing more about them as people and what inspired them into horror.

So share a bit, if you will, about some of your bio information and let the audience know a bit more about you.

And I guess more importantly, how did sweet innocent Travis Brown discover a love of horror and telling the scary stories?

It's funny you say that because sweet innocent Travis was my nickname in college.

So I'm glad it followed me.

But I started with horror when I was just crawling essentially.

You know, I always found the creepiest kids' books that I could.

I remember the, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the, I think it's called Binocula.

It's the vampire bunny series, which were some of my favorite kids' books growing up.

So it, the hooks got in me pretty early.

And then I was always the one who would stay up after my parents went to sleep and I would watch horror movies on cable that I wasn't actually allowed to watch.

So I saw The Exorcist when I was like eight and that just was very awesome.

Still haven't told my parents that I snuck out to watch it.

But so that's how I got into horror.

And then with writing, I was an English major in college.

I just always loved it.

That led to being a reporter for several years in Maryland.

Following that, I got into public information and public affairs for the government, but I always kind of typed away on the side doing short stories.

But I hadn't written that much horror until I found No Sleep on Reddit.

And I remember the first story I ever read on No Sleep was The Left-Right Game, which is still one of my favorites.

It's absolutely a fantastic series.

Anyone who hasn't read it that's a fan of horror, please check it out.

But after that, and I realized how good this was and just how many amazing stories were being posted there, I was like, I would really love to write something for No Sleep, even if no one reads it, even if it's the most washout, awful thing ever.

And a few of the ones that I posted were, and it's very funny, No Sleep, anyone who's ever participated from the writing side can tell you that it's crazy.

There's nothing like it on the internet.

If you're a writer who's still just kicking around doing stuff for fun, and you might post something and have dozens or hundreds or thousand plus people read it, and it's just such a rush.

And then you'll post something the next day and have two people read it.

And it's still a rush because it's nice to have readers at all.

But that's sort of how I found No Sleep.

And once I got the bug there, I just couldn't stop and wrote tons and tons of horror stories.

And anytime anything scares you, it's just like, I can probably get 800 words out of this and see if I can post it.

So that's the quick elevator pitch bio.

Yeah, it is fascinating to see how the no-sleep subreddit has grown.

And somebody mentioned, this was years ago, and it holds true today, that no sleep is likely the world's largest repository of original short or not-so-short horror stories.

And so people are posting into this massive well of content and creativity.

And so was it daunting to you or were you just thinking, hey, I'm going to share this and there will be eyeballs on it.

But or were you thinking, hey, I'm going to get this out in front of, I guess there's now, what, over 18 million subscribers to that subreddit?

It's crazy.

And I think the first thing I posted was probably 2018-ish, 2017, 2018.

It was after I read Left Right Game.

And no, it was very daunting because you see so many stories at the time.

And it might even be more now.

I'm not sure where exactly it's at, but there were at least like 50 or 60 stories a day that you would just see popping up and rotating through.

But there are usually two to five that would be very popular for the day.

And, you know, they might have 500 upvotes or a thousand up votes or rare cases of more.

It's scary because you also read.

those stories before you ever post.

I don't know any of the No Sleep Writer friends that I have that have just jumped in hot and never taken a second to read.

And it's kind of intimidating because you're surprised at the quality of the work that is on there.

You know, it's for free.

It is, there's no barrier to entry to post or to read, but there's amazing work on there.

There's Baraska.

There's Left Right Game.

There's just all these seminal works that are astounding quality.

And it's so hard to think, like, should I even share a story when there's that kind of stuff out there?

So definitely intimidating, but fun.

Even with all of that quality stuff there, there's still room for anyone to try anything.

There's the most welcoming community possible of both readers and writers and moderators just posting things in there.

So once I started, once I got that first story in there, a lot of the scary stuff and anxiety fell away, but it all still returns.

And whenever I post anything, whenever you share anything with the world, it's just like someone going to send me a message and tell me how they just hated this or even worse, like it made them bored.

But luckily, as I said, everyone is so supportive.

You will find great comments.

You'll find just great people there.

And I think once you start and you get a little bit of feedback, it's hard to stop.

And my first one, I think I got very lucky with a good title and a good time.

And it had like six or 700 upvotes the first day.

And I was ecstatic.

I was to the moon.

I said, ah, this is it.

It's going to be my big break.

I'm going to take over.

And then the next day, I was so energized.

I stayed up and I wrote a second story.

And that's the one I actually, I think, had the lowest interaction with ever.

Even today, it might have like seven upvotes on there.

So it's very feast or famine.

And it's nice because as soon as you start to develop an ego, it just cuts right out of you.

But it's great.

Anyone who's interested in sharing their work, if it's horror, if it's appropriate for the sub, give it a whirl, give it a try.

It'll be so fun.

You'll meet the most amazing people around there.

That's so true.

And, you know, we'll certainly start touching on something walks whistling or something walks whistling.

Now, you talk about having the great title.

It's what's so funny is that when I was recording all of the post-show interview that I did with you, and I had to do these little tags, I had to always, you know,

you've been watching something whistling,

something goes past my house, and it was just, I could not.

There is whistling involved at some point.

There's whistling.

Something's whistling.

It's the middle of the night.

That's all I know.

So, you know, we're talking about the subreddit, and I noticed on your user profile page on Reddit, and you've got a great user profile name, Grand Theft Motto, which I love.

You have a pinned comment, and in that comment, you basically are very clearly laying out your stipulations for anyone who wants to adapt one of your stories, be it for audio or video.

I really thought it was very smart the way you were very clear about the rates that you expect and how you do expect to receive payment for the use of your IP, your intellectual property.

I'm curious, do you think that more and more these days writers are becoming savvy to the business behind putting their IP online, as you say, for anyone to see?

There's no gates that you have to clear.

You can just post it out there, almost risking it because you never know someone could steal your story, all this kind of thing.

But you especially, you have a very clear understanding of kind of the business of horror these days and adaptations of your work.

What motivated that very clear and very wise decision?

Thank you.

Well, it was definitely a trial by error.

So when I had originally started posting,

and I stopped for almost a year after those two stories, the one that did really well and the one the next day that flopped.

It's like, that's how much of a roller coaster it was.

I took a break.

But when I came back, connected to some of those other writers, we have little group chats on Discord.

It's nice.

It's almost like a just a community, a book club.

It's everyone working together to advance stories.

But as soon as I started posting prolifically, I immediately began getting messages from narrators and podcasts, YouTubers, and then TikTok as soon as I really took off asking to use the stories.

And I had no idea that there was such a large narration market for these creepy tales.

And there are a lot of fantastic channels and podcasts out there that are very professional.

And then there are quite a few more who some of them just don't know.

They don't really understand copyright.

There's definitely this common sentiment that I've encountered so many times when occasionally have to file DCMA strikes is that, you know, it's on the internet for free.

You can do whatever you want with it at that point.

And I think it's strange that writing gets that sort of dismissive view, whereas if you had posted original artwork on your Reddit profile or your DVD art, or if you posted original music on the SoundCloud or anywhere, you know, it is seen as a creative work.

You made it.

I can't imagine many people would just take it and be like, well, I'm going to use this forever I want.

Most of them would at least contact you for permission.

But for whatever reason, writing didn't have that inherent protection and respect, at least from my perception when I started.

So the first few months, I gave out a lot of stories for free.

It's very flattering to have someone reach out and be like, hey, I've got a YouTube channel with, you know, 200,000 subscribers.

Can I read your story in a spooky voice and put some thunder sound effects?

And like, that's freaking awesome.

I'm going to show everybody.

I'm going to show my dog.

That's great.

And then you realize that a lot of these platforms are also monetized and make quite a lot of money.

Some of the very large YouTubers have, you know, one, two, three, four million subscribers.

They'll do merch plugs in the beginning.

You know, the little part of me that was a reporter before, a little bell and office, like, I don't think that this is something where you want to constantly give material away for free.

See if there's, you know, people are willing to do a revenue share and just give you 5% of what the video makes or 10%.

And just coming from asking that and just advocating a little bit for myself, I found that all the reputable places were.

And they would be like, well, these are the rates that we have.

Or I had some YouTubers cut me in.

And whenever they do a brand deal or a merch plug, they'll be like, we'll give you half of that.

Through that, I just started doing more research and

took a bunch of commissions where people would actually want stories written specifically for their channel, which was a lot of fun and can be really neat to just have a topic come out like oh we're getting sponsored by taco bell this month do something weird with tacos so that kind of fun experience but it helped a lot and it turned it into a little bit of at least a a side job where you could make a decent amount of money as long as you were willing to stand up for your work and be prolific I'm still willing to stand up for my work.

I haven't been very prolific this year.

You know, having the kid on the way and everything else has been quite a bit.

But that's sort of where I got to the rates

working with a community of no sleep writers i think a lot of us have started standing up for that just being like there's no reason to supply something that was done creatively for free that someone else is going to make money on why not have part of that and one thing that i do like to see now is that i know a few other no sleep writers who started their own youtube channels and they're doing their own narration my friend jordan group does one and i think he's now surpassed like 60 000 subscribers so he's small but growing and it's neat and it's such a cool market and something about online horror fans, whether they're reading or listening, I'm sure that fans of the No Sleep podcast, they're just the coolest people on the planet.

Absolutely.

Objectively, I could say that objectively.

Yeah, absolutely.

And there is something about the horror community, as you said, that I always call it, and I say this very affectionately, but I call them this sort of group of misfits because horror fans are kind of unique.

And they're often, you know, the interactions I've had with them, they seem to be almost, I don't want to say marginalized people, but they're, you know, they're kind of the the weirdos of their, you know, whether they're in school or whatever.

And it's not just the stereotypical kind of goth kid with the black eyeliner and stuff like that.

But yeah, there's something about horror that draws in those kind of people, but they are, as you say, they're very passionate about

what they like in horror.

And

it's a great audience to have.

And I really appreciate the comments you have about protecting your writing, protecting your work.

And I know for me, me, as soon as this was many, many years ago, back in 2013, when I did the unthinkable back then, which was try to monetize a podcast or try to start to get a bit of revenue, I knew right from the very start that I wouldn't ever think about doing that without paying every single person who contributed to the podcast.

And so it's encouraging for me to know now.

11 years later, that not only are writers being more aware of their own worth and the worth of their content, but that it sounds like other than some of the more unscrupulous people, most of the professional ones are aware of the need to support the writers who provide the content that generates them their income.

Yeah, absolutely.

And there's a great overall group of people on Reddit for No Sleep.

The moderators are always very supportive of writers advocating for themselves.

There's Sleepless Watchdogs, which is very closely entwined with the No Sleep community.

They're the ones who will often find stories that were just taken without permission,

just used and narrated often by very quick AI voices and still getting, you know, hundreds of thousands of views.

It's very encouraging to see how popular horror is and remains, and I think it's still growing, which is amazing.

It's like we're in this golden age right now, but definitely hoping that writers will start to recognize that they have a lot of worth, not just artistic merit, but there is...

a financial positive to this.

Pretty much any narrator who's going to ask you for the use of your story or even steal it without asking you, they are telling you that that is worth something, that they see value in that, especially if they're already monetized.

They're like, this story will help me grow my business.

So writers should be like, okay, well, let's grow both of our businesses, both of our brands together.

Yeah, absolutely.

And so a number of years ago, you wrote a story and you posted it.

You called it Something Walks Whistling Past My House Every Night at 3.03.

I always love hearing from writers about the inspiration behind their stories.

This one, especially, it's this kind of this captivating blend of classic urban legend with a hint of that sort of breathless, creepy pasta style.

And so I'd love to know, how did you conjure up that story?

Was there something in your real life that inspired it?

So, absolutely.

That one, and also that title, every time I hear it, hurts a little bit because on No Sleep, it's one of those where you really want to get attention, especially when I was early on.

I didn't trust the stories themselves to

sell as in get people to put eyeballs on it.

So, a lot of it is you go for like a clickbait title.

That one isn't my most clickbaity, but I wish I just called it something walks whistling and kind of let people figure out what that is.

But however it went, the title did well on no sleep.

And the actual inspiration for it came from childhood sleepovers that I would have.

I grew up in a neighborhood where there were, I think, six other kids who were within two or three years of my age.

So we all were very close.

We did everything together.

It was the 90s, so we just ran amok and, you know, drank directly out of the garden hose and just that absolute chaos.

And we had a lot of, especially in the summer when school was out, slumber parties.

We just rotate whoever's house we were staying at.

And a lot of those actually were where we would stay up late and we would watch horror movies as they do in the episode, which I don't think is a spoiler.

That's just a little thing, but it was nice because it felt very familiar.

It felt very nostalgic.

And I think a lot of people who grew up as kids in the 90s will remember getting together with your friends and you go to Blockbuster and maybe stop at a convenience store and you get your snacks.

And then once your parents tell you to go to bed at like 11, you pretend to and then you get back up at two and watch horror movies until the sun comes up.

So, we would do that a lot.

And then we also took turns telling ghost stories.

And that was one of my favorite things.

And one of the reasons that I always wanted to get into writing horror is that we would make up these stories to try to scare each other.

And our neighborhood was very kind of out in the sticks, and it got super dark.

And there was just this depth of imagination that you come up with of what monsters might be out there because we were kind of out in the woods.

We would just scare the absolute heck out of each other late at night.

And something just struck me when I was trying to come up with an idea for a no-sleep story of just dredging through things that had always scared me when I was a kid.

Because I wanted to write a fairy tale.

I remember that was the only, the seed of the story before I knew anything about the whistler or the setting or basing it on those previous childhood summer nights.

I said I wanted to write a fairy tale, but make it kind of modern.

And it sort of grew out of what kind of story would I want to tell my friends to scare them, be like in a neighborhood much like this, on a night exactly like this, something walked whistling past the house.

From there, the story really just kind of took off itself.

It's not super long, it's not crazy short, but

it felt really good writing it.

I didn't expect anything crazy from it.

I actually wasn't sure if it was scary enough for no sleep when I posted it.

I'm still not sure.

It can be tough to tell, but it got a really good response.

And I think it reminded a lot of people who are probably,

you know, around my age of that exact kind of time period.

From there, it was just, it was so fun to experience all that again, writing it.

I've always kind of wanted to revisit it, but I also don't want to touch it.

I like it how it is and don't want to draw it out anymore.

But that's what it was based on.

It's my actual time as a kid.

And so you conjure up this story that, as you say, based on your past growing up.

And now you've had a chance to see the Tales from the Void screen adaptation of your story.

And obviously, we would love to know what you thought of it.

And I'm sure going into it, you probably understood that adapting a story like yours for a, I guess, 25-minute screen version, there's going to be some changes and tweaks made.

So you're seeing your story come to life on the screen, but you're also seeing it changed a bit or just adapted in ways that screenwriters do with stories.

So what was it like watching that story unfold in front of you?

Very surreal.

Very surreal.

And I think that the Tales from the Void team did such an amazing job.

I was very impressed.

The production is exceptional.

The acting is amazing.

And the actual adaptation itself, I was just blown away by.

It wasn't, you know, it's not a one-for-one.

And a lot of stories aren't.

And like you said, kind of stranger to translate what was on the page because so much of it is sort of that written fairy tale vibe.

But I was just so stunned by what they were able to do with it and some of the choices that they made.

And again, I don't want to spoil anything, but I was very happy with it.

And I watched it with my wife, and we had two of our good friends over.

I think this was like last week or so.

And at one point, like I think a good nod to it was that my one friend was trying to talk to me, just turned away for a second, looked at the screen.

And there was this perfect, it wasn't even a jump scare, it was just this insanely tense moment.

And she screamed and like threw the popcorn in a very cliched kind of way.

It's like they nailed it.

That's, that's exactly the reaction that you want.

That's the same kind of reaction that you want from those, those childhood sleepovers is that, ah, you know?

So, yeah, I really love what they did with it.

So wonderful to hear that.

And I was fortunate.

They filmed that episode about an hour north of Toronto, not far from where I live.

And so I was able to be on set for a couple of days when they were filming.

And yeah, I can't speak enough about the professionalism of the crew.

Francesco Losquiavo, the showrunner for the show, he has pulled together a team that is incredibly passionate about what they do and

the commitment to creating amazing art.

And they all have their roles.

And so the crew is incredible.

And then to meet with the actors, for those who will be watching this episode, maybe you've already seen it when you're listening to this, but there are a number of young actors in it.

There are kids in the story.

And it's just amazing to meet these kids.

You hear stories about, you know, Hollywood kids or whatever.

And they are so equal parts, super savvy of the business, but they're just so down to earth.

And they're teenagers, but at the same time, they can talk like they're 36 years old.

They're so in tune with everything.

So it's an amazing testament testament to the work that went into this.

So I'm glad it came across to you, especially on the screen, that you saw that, the quality that is there, which is, I found incredible.

Yeah, I think that Francesca, he just has a fantastic vision for all this, and there's so much style.

And I haven't seen the other episode yet, though I'm very much looking forward to it.

But even seeing some of the artwork for them, it's just got this vibe and gives off this aura of cool horror and throwback anthology.

And I just can't wait to see where he goes with just Tales from the Void and everything else.

I think he's going to have a huge career in horror.

And all those actors, too.

Like you said, especially the kids were just amazing.

They were quick and they were believable and they were selling it.

And you can see the passion from everyone involved in the final product.

And I'm looking forward to 20 years from now, even if I never sell another story, seeing them in major projects and being like, they were in something that I wrote.

And that's really cool.

Yeah, it really is.

And it's amazing, too.

Being on set, I'm sure people have seen behind the scenes from movies and stuff like that, but they're portraying horror.

These kids are involved in a perilous situation.

And when you realize that it takes take after take after take, try this angle, try that angle, and they have to bring the energy every time.

And so it's, it really is remarkable.

So with your story, again, not wanting to spoil anything, but it does involve teenagers and kids, young kids.

So it's a story where the kids themselves and even the parental figures in the story are dealing with this really terrifying situation.

And you did allude to the fact that you are soon to be a new father, which is wonderful news.

And so I'm curious, do you think now knowing that you're going to be a dad very shortly, do you think it's going to be harder or easier for you to write a story where children are kind of put in peril or where they could be the victims of whatever horrific situation arises?

I think much harder, actually.

And it's something where I am a big believer and you know you tell a good story, you tell it honestly and authentically, and you can write about all kinds of difficult topics.

But I already struggle with animal abuse because I'm a big animal lover.

My dog is my best friend.

And I, even when watching movies, have a hard time when there's an animal on screen that's in pain.

I remember, I don't know if you've seen Midnight Mass, but that's a fantastic series.

I think it was like the end, I don't want to give any spoilers for that, but there is an animal death like two episodes in, and I actually stopped watching it for like a month.

Not because there was anything wrong with it, but just because it was, that was, that was difficult.

And I wrote this story five years ago, six years ago, before I had even met my wife.

So now that I'm having a kid, my perspective has shifted again.

I don't think it's something where when I do become emotionally attached, I want to completely stop writing about it, but it will definitely inform the way I write about it.

And I think that I'll be less likely to be shock value gruesome just for fun and more trying to be authentic towards the fear that you feel because I'm already feeling that and the kid's not even here yet.

Yeah, it's it's funny too.

Now, I'm not a parent myself, but you mentioned, you know, animals.

Of course, it's always the, you know, the dead dogs that

always so many horror movies you will notice.

That's the first sign.

I'm like, why?

That poor dog should just leave, you know, get out of here.

Exactly.

Just leave.

They don't have to kill the poor thing.

Yeah, it's such a thing.

And I feel like I've interviewed some of our writers recently recently and some of the people for this series.

And I'm always drawn to writers where there are stories with children dying.

And so often it is people who are parents who write those stories because as horror writers, you write about what terrifies you.

And as a parent, nothing would be more terrifying than harm coming to their child.

So that's what they draw their inspiration from.

There's also people out there who are parents and they're like, no, that's a line I can't cross because it's a little too real and visceral for me.

So it's fascinating the different approaches.

It either inspires their deepest fear or they say that's a that's a line I'm not going to cross.

Well, Travis, thank you for taking the time to speak with me and of course for sharing your story with the Tales from the Void crew.

And I can't wait for everybody to watch it.

It's going to be coming out on October 27th, wide for everybody to see.

So make sure you tune in for that.

And again, Travis, thanks for joining me and all the best with the new child and your sleepless nights ahead.

David, thank you so much for having me.

I really appreciate it.

I want to thank Travis Brown for joining me and sharing how his writing within the no-sleep community has allowed him to grow as a writer.

Tales from the Void, the behind-the-scenes podcast, is a Creative Reason media production in conjunction with Envoy Entertainment.

Music by Alex Cuervo and Brandon Boone.

Thank you for being with us.

Join us next time for a deeper plunge into the void.

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