Season 4, Episode 4: A Lost Episode

Sara and Daniel interview author Kiersten White, author of the 2023 novel Mister Magic. As they explore ReadICT Category 3: A book about something lost or found, Kiersten shares her thoughts on what she calls "toxic nostalgia," problematic Punky Brewster episodes and how sometimes when you escape a cultish upbringing, you have to go write a horror novel about it.

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[MUSIC]

DANIEL PEWEWARDY, VOICEOVER: Hey, welcome to Read. Return. Repeat. I am one of your co-hosts, Daniel Pewewardy, adult programming librarian at Wichita Public Library here with --

SARA DIXON, VOICEOVER: Wow, it just kept going. I'm Sara. I am the other co-host of this wonderful podcast, Read. Return. Repeat. And I also work at the Advanced Learning Library if you didn't know that already.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: We might have new listeners.

SARA, VOICEOVER: That's a good point.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: Because this episode we're talking about one of the ReadICT categories, lost and found.

SARA, VOICEOVER: A book about something lost or found. And our books and author -- our author writes about books that do both.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: Yeah.

SARA, VOICEOVER: So what's like, what's a fun fact about lost or found items, Daniel?

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: I think a huge like -- we're talking library, I think one of the biggest lost and found items is water bottles, which I have done my considerable amount of losing.

SARA, VOICEOVER: I do it while I'm traveling, like I will always leave a water bottle, I would lose -- I would lose a water bottle, like on the train or I left one on a plane before.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: Water bottles and sunblock.

SARA, VOICEOVER: You can't actually go back on the plane to get your water bottle. They have to do it once you've disembarked.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: Yeah, I recently lost one of my favorite water bottles, it's a Nalgene. I got it at River Festival.

SARA, VOICEOVER: Classic, Nalgene is a classic choice.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: I remember leaving it in this like... I was at a film festival and I left it in a lounge and I had, it was like... and I had to walk up, down a hill. I remember figuring out I lost it and I walked up the hill how far to get it. I was like...

SARA, VOICEOVER: Would you ever like drink from a found water bottle?

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: No. I mean, maybe if I put it... okay, if I found like a legit Stanley right now like one of those --

SARA, VOICEOVER: Those are nice.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: -- not like my knockoff Hydro Flask one, but I might. I might. It has to be a nice water bottle.

SARA, VOICEOVER: You can run it through like a sanitization process or something. I don't know. It is a little bit weird. It's probably like intimate to drink from somebody's water bottle.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: Nalgenes, no because they get fuzzy. Have you ever... like they kind of get gross after... metal? Metal, yes. Plastic, no.

SARA, VOICEOVER: That's fair. That's a good place to draw the line probably. Well, hey, this episode is not about water bottles. It is about books.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: And authors that write books like Kiersten White, who we are interviewing today.

SARA, VOICEOVER: That's right.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: Kiersten White is a New York Times bestselling and Bram Stoker award-winning, critically acclaimed author of many books for readers of all ages.

SARA, VOICEOVER: Her books have been published in over 20 territories. And her novel Hide is currently in development with Universal Television and Peacock. So we're really excited. She's super fun to talk to.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: We're talking about Mister Magic, a 2023 novel. Let's go ahead and --

SARA, VOICEOVER: Let's just jump into it.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: Let's jump into it. Kiersten White, everyone.

SARA: We're happy to have you here today, Kiersten White, author of Mister Magic and Hide, and all the other ones that we listed in our introduction.

DANIEL: You write a lot of books, I was, I'm impressed.

KIERSTEN WHITE: I stopped recently in an independent bookstore on a road trip. And I was like, "Hey, do you have any of my books? I'd love to sign them." And she looked and she's like, "You're in every section."

DANIEL: So prolific.

DANIEL: So we're here to talk about Mister Magic today. And I thought it'd be cool if you could tell us a little bit about the book and the story and everything.

SARA: Yes.

KIERSTEN: Yeah, so the premise of Mister Magic is that Val, the main character, has been living and working on a ranch in Idaho since she was eight years old. And the day of her father's funeral, scary men show up out of the blue and claimed that they were all on a children's show together. They were actors on a children's show 20 years before, 30 years before -- I'm bad with numbers -- 30 years before, and there's been renewed interest in the show. It ended in tragedy, but people really still love it. And she's invited to come to a reunion in the desert in the middle of nowhere in Utah, and record a podcast.

SARA: That's not creepy at all.

KIERSTEN: It's not creepy at all. You should just always do them over Zoom, not in person.

[DANIEL LAUGHS]

KIERSTEN: As Val goes, she discovers more and more about this whole section of her childhood that's completely lost in memory. And they all begin to realize that the show is not what they remembered and was maybe more than a show and it wants them back.

SARA: Yeah, it kind of just goes off on this whole wild ride and yeah, we all really, really liked it. So -- and we haven't ever had done any horror before so this was a fun -- I don't think we've ever done horror on the podcast.

DANIEL: Yeah, I think this is, you're our first horror author. So congratulations.

KIERSTEN: Aww, I'm very honored. And also I feel like Mister Magic's specifically, if you're not a big horror reader, if your, if your horror tolerance is very low, this is a good one to start with.

DANIEL: Oh, it totally is.

SARA: I agree with that assessment.

SARA: One of our team members listened to the book and said that it was like the, especially during the interview portions, it was just like super creepy. Because I -- and I felt like because I was reading it, I didn't get it. You know, I got to make up what the voice sounded like in my head. But I agree. I think it's a very... it's horror, but it's like psychological. It's not like a slasher or any, it's not gory stuff.

DANIEL: No, I recently... I won't like say the name of the book but like there was like a horror book I was listening to on audiobook and I had to turn it off because of a body horror element.

SARA: Ew.

KIERSTEN: Yeah. And like, as, as a writer who writes horror, I totally get that. And I would never want somebody to read something past the level of the comfortable with. But that's the beauty of horror. It is such a broad genre, right? You've got everything from like, the most hardcore, gory, upsetting things ever to things more on the Mister Magic scale, where it's more, you know, it's creepy. It's eerie. There are some upsetting things, but like, you know, we're not leaning into body horror, or we're not, you know, slaughtering tons of people. Like in Hide.

[DANIEL LAUGHS]

DANIEL: I do like, I will say, without spoiling too much, I will... I hope this probably spoils it but your books I like because a good chunk of the ensemble in the stories make it to the end, which I do not like when I spent so long meeting all these characters and now everyone but one person's dead. So thank you for that.

SARA: But we are going to spoil a lot of the books. At least Mister Magic, we're gonna get into it.

KIERSTEN: Yeah, it's gonna be very spoiler-y chat, which actually, I'm excited about because I don't usually get to go very in depth on my books because I don't want there to be spoilers at like my events and everything, because I recognize that not everyone has read them yet. So I'm really, really excited to get into it.

SARA: Well, because we were very... like it just give us so much to talk about. So for instance, this is, we invited you for this particular episode because we wanted to focus on books that are lost -- or books about something lost or found. And your book, actually, both Mister Magic and Hide cover both of those things. You know, Val loses her memories, the kids kind of find what really happened on the TV show. And they had to kind of give up that... that memory that they had that, what, they remembered it being so nice and wonderful and the happiest time of their lives, in order to really find out the truth. And so our question to you is, is it worth it? Like, is it worth it to give up so much to figure out the truth like your characters did?

KIERSTEN: Yeah, which is just such a big question, right?

SARA: I know. A lot of these questions are loaded.

KIERSTEN: Which I love, I love getting into it. And for me, the answer is yes. Because for me if something is, something feels happy but actually it's a very sort of sinister, destructive core, if you can't, if you can't acknowledge that core and you can't process that, then it's gonna haunt you, right? And also I linked really a lot into the concept of toxic nostalgia, which is when we look back on things and we say things were so much better then. And maybe they were, but maybe they were just easier or simpler and not necessarily better.

And also, I think when you look back through that lens of "I was happier then," you shut out everything that contradicts that narrative. And you see that a lot. I'm a millennial, you see that a lot in millennial culture when we talk about the properties that we had when we were children. And we create -- we make them bigger than they actually were. My favorite example of this is Ghostbusters. So Ghostbusters was an extended Saturday Night Live skit, right? Like the movie is fun. I love the original movie. But it is not a great movie, right? It's not --

DANIEL: No, yeah.

SARA: We're gonna get some hate on this podcast, but go ahead.

KIERSTEN: Okay, again, I love the original Ghostbusters. Fantastic, phenomenal cast. Everyone's at the top of their game, but it is a deeply silly movie. It is, it is, you know, it is a movie-length Saturday Night Live sketch and that's why it works, right?

DANIEL: Yeah.

KIERSTEN: But because we all saw it when we were children, it has like an outsized place in our hearts. And so I think it's so fascinating looking at the reaction to the Melissa McCarthy reboot, which was very much in the spirit of the original where it was just like gag after gag after gag versus is the more recent reboot, which is like, this is the story about the importance of family.

DANIEL: Oh no, yeah. I'm actually like a big Ghostbusters fan, but not to where I'm like sending like the cast of the McCarthy one hate mail or anything. But like, but like, I don't like the new ones because it's like this isn't what Ghostbusters was at all. Like, it's like basically like J.J. Abrams made like... which is like it's all about... and they turn it into like Stranger Things or whatever. That's what I feel like, and it's like, this isn't Ghostbusters.

SARA: Wasn't the kid from Stranger Things, too?

DANIEL: Yeah, the kid from Stranger Things was in it.

KIERSTEN: Yes. And like, and it was so fascinating to me seeing the reaction to the Melissa McCarthy one versus the newer one because people have so much nostalgia, but it wasn't rooted in what the movie actually was. It was rooted in how the movie made them feel.

DANIEL: Exactly, yeah.

KIERSTEN: And how they feel can't be recaptured. Because you're not a child anymore, right? It's like how people hate whatever the newest Star Wars is because it doesn't feel like the Star Wars that they imprinted on as a child or a preteen, right? We don't want, we think we want the same thing over and over again. But what we actually want is to feel the way we felt when we were watching that for the first time. And we never can again.

DANIEL: I'm like, also a big Simpsons fan. And like Disney has like Disney-fied The Simpsons, and The Simpsons is good again. I'm like, "Yeah, The Simpsons is good again, but it's because it's designed that way by a company that's vested interest is making this rekindle the nostalgia." And it doesn't feel the same to me. But that you're totally right, sorry to go off on that.

KIERSTEN: Yeah. No. And that to me, that, to me is an issue when you can't engage honestly with things from your past because you're only engaging with the feelings that you had. And for me, I grew up in a very specific community with very, very rigid values. And there's a lot about it that's very idyllic, right, like, it looks like it's all about families and very nurturing and very wholesome. But there is so much in it that's deeply, deeply destructive. And until I could engage honestly with those parts of it, it was still doing damage, right? Because if all I was doing was acknowledging the good parts of it, the parts of it that on the surface are very wholesome and very nurturing and warm and loving, then I couldn't engage with the parts of it that weren't.

And therefore I couldn't engage with the parts of myself that didn't fit into their narrative. So it's a very sort of fractured way of living to me. So for me, even if it means giving up a lot of the sense of those memories, I think that it's worth it. I think it's worth it to find the truth at the core, because then you can really decide like, what if this has value? What if this is damaging? And what if it is just stuff that I don't need to carry with me anymore?

SARA: And way to circle it back around to the question, but yeah, absolutely. I think, I think I tend to agree with you that it's... you know, so I thought it was funny because it's like ignorance is bliss, right? Which is the name of the town.

KIERSTEN: Literally the name of the town, yeah.

SARA: So yeah.

DANIEL: I guess like, it's, I guess one of the creepier elements is like how like this book deals with like childhood trauma and like the children's childhood reflects in adult life, which goes into nostalgia comments. And like, like it's weird how like as kids our memory is way better than it is as adults that it's like... in the book, they always, she doesn't, she knows all these rhymes for like... the main character knows all these rhymes, and like, but she doesn't know where she got them from until she like uncovers and things and like, what like.. I guess the question would be like, do childhood experiences have a bigger impact on our memories and experience as adults?

KIERSTEN: I think they do. And I think a lot of it is because we don't necessarily have a source for that, right? I will, I will admit straight up memory comes up in a lot of my books because I have a really bad memory. It's, it's everything from inconvenient to deeply upsetting. And so I think things like songs, right? Like, my spouse and I grew up in the same time period and we will still sing, like, commercial jingles to each other. Like, why do I know a cereal song from a commercial when I was five years old, but asked me what happened last week and I'm like, mmm, not sure. And I think those things stick deep and they impact us in ways that we don't realize. Especially the ones with like moral lessons attached, right?

So when you're a kid, and you learn this... so there's a song that I was taught as a child in my religion, and I don't know if it's copyrighted, I'm not gonna sing it. But it basically says, if you're sad and you have a frown, turn it upside down, and that's going to be better for everyone. So basically, this song is saying being sad is negative and bad and you shouldn't do that, you should just decide to smile instead. And like, I get that it's this like cute song. But it's, but it's not a message to teach children, right? That some feelings are bad and not valid and you should always replace those with this other feeling. Like, sometimes you need to feel sad. And sometimes children need to feel sad. And they need to know that it's okay to have those big feelings and to feel sad. But when you get those messages repeatedly -- like when I was a teenager, I was really depressed, I struggled. I struggled very badly with depression. But I felt shame and guilt for being depressed because I wasn't supposed to be sad. And I didn't have a reason to be sad. Like, I felt like I needed to have an excuse or like, like a cause for being sad, because I didn't. It all just compounded into this weird shame where I didn't tell anyone that I was struggling or what I was feeling. I felt like I had to hide it because I wasn't supposed to be sad, I wasn't allowed to be sad. It's bad. It's a negative thing to be sad.

And I think things like that, messages like that, that we don't realize we're internalizing so much, but as a child, you know, you're just this sponge and you're pulling in everything. And if you're never given permission to reject messages that are coming from authority figures, then you never do and those things stay. So yeah, I definitely think that the things that we experienced and the things that were taught our children have an outsized impact later in life, which again, comes back to being willing to look at hard things and being willing to confront the truth. Because that's when we can really identify and be like, oh, you know, this this cute song I was taught as a child is actually not great.

SARA: But I feel like that is a message that a lot of us kind of got, right? Like, don't repress all the bad stuff, only feel the good stuff. And like, definitely qualifying all of our feelings in that way. And so I know we're gonna talk about Mr. Rogers and a little bit, because there's another question I want to ask you about, but I feel like he was the antithesis to that, right? Because he was like, you can feel your feelings. It's okay to be sad. Which is another thing that us Millennials -- tying you into that.

DANIEL: Yes. [CHUCKLES]

SARA: -- that we feel very deeply about, right? Mr. Rogers was, was our friend, our neighbor. And so I think... okay, I'm just gonna skip ahead. Because I think that it's really a great time to ask this question. And it's about parasocial relationships.

Which we, in your book, you know, the kids are in the circle of friends. And Mister Magic is the guy that comes in and, and helps redirect them and all of their feelings, and helps them to not be too much. It... yeah, wild stuff. Which I'm not even doing a very good job of describing. You should read the book if you haven't already. But with these parasocial relationships, it's like all of these people that also felt that they were their friends and Mister Magic was the one who was helping them learn how to be a good person. And so it made me think of Mr. Rogers. I mean, we think of Sesame Street. And while those are more positive, and Mister Magic is very controlling, do you think like we all felt like they were our friends, the people on Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers. Is that an ethical... I don't know, is it an ethical dilemma, right? Because is that okay to promote that to children? Or does it just turn into propaganda?

DANIEL: I thought about Barney a lot reading that.

SARA: Oh.

DANIEL: Yeah.

KIERSTEN: The idea actually started with Barney.

SARA: Okay. Not Mr. Rogers.

KIERSTEN: I'll get to the actual question, but yeah, Barney was the start of the idea. But not how you're thinking. My spouse was in the kitchen and said, "Wouldn't it be funny if you had a story where the kids who were on the cast of Barney reunited as adults and realized the whole thing was real?" And I was like, yeah, because one of them reaches out to the others and they all cut her out of their lives because she was so paranoid, but she says he's back, and they're ignoring her. But then her body is found with bite marks that could only have been delivered by the Cretaceous period dinosaur, and they all have to realize that Barney is back and he's not their friend anymore. And my spouse was like, "Why do you always make everything creepy?"

[DANIEL LAUGHS]

SARA: Barney's back and he's mad.

KIERSTEN: Exactly. So then it was like, "Okay, but what if, what if you did have a cast of a children's show and what if," and you know then, and that's where the idea came from. But for me, I think... I think that, you know, obviously, kids do need lessons, right? We teach kids, we teach kids how to navigate the world, how to engage with the world. And you can do that in a very open way like with Mr. Rogers, where the authority figures are kind and gentle and loving and accepting. And I think another really important thing about Mr. Rogers is Mr. Rogers was a deeply religious man but he didn't impose structures of religious belief onto his show. All he brought from that was compassion and love. And that's, that's what he was putting out into the world, which I really, really admire and respect.

And I think, you know, when people are like "it's creepy Mr. Rogers," and I'm like yes, but let's establish Mr. Rogers was not creepy. He was wonderful. And I think Sesame Street also is a really, really responsible program that acknowledges and respects kids' experiences. And I think if you look at the genesis of that show and the kids that it was designed for, I think it comes from a really, really thoughtful, careful place. Whereas if you look at other types of shows, particularly from the '80s and '90s, it very much was not that way, right? Like these were not careful shows, these were not respectful of children's experiences or feelings. It was just, you know, let's sell some merchandise. And so for me, it's not so much a reflection of those types of parasocial relationships, as it is the types of programming that literally want to program children, right?

DANIEL: Yeah.

KIERSTEN: The ones that say there's only one way to be a good child, these are the parameters with in which you can exist and be good and be approved of and everything outside of it is bad. Like I remember there was an episode of Punky Brewster. And her cousin comes, and her cousin is fat. And that's bad. And so it's a whole episode about Punky trying to help her cousin lose weight. And like, that stuff sticks, right? Like, we don't forget when we saw that as a child, and that being fat was equated with moral failures, right? That it needs to be fixed. And there's moral value and a moral judgment associated with that. And those types of things, I think, are the dangerous things.

And, you know, kids react to things and they relate to things and they, they engage with things on a more intense level, I think, which is why I'm so grateful that there are a lot of programs out, like I look at Steven Universe. Steven Universe has a song about trauma and about how, how when you have an experience that makes you feel shame, you want to look away from it, the instinct is to look away and to not engage with it. And it has a whole song about how you need to look at it, you need to accept it, and then you need to let it go. And it's about processing trauma. And I'm like, oh, gosh, like my kids are watching and they're like, this is a great show. I'm like, "This is an amazing show!"

DANIEL: I keep hearing people that watch Bluey, that's like how they're... [LAUGHS]

KIERSTEN: Yeah, and Bluey also is a very thoughtful one. And you know, I also write for children, I have a middle grade series. And I was very, very, very thoughtful about who my heroes were in this series, which kids got to be the heroes, and what their traits were and how those traits were depicted and how they were... how they were engaged with narratively because I take it very seriously, I view it as a huge responsibility. And I just think that there was a lot of material, particularly in the '80s and '90s -- and beyond -- that was deeply irresponsible, right? Not necessarily sinister, but just really wildly irresponsible.

DANIEL: I --

KIERSTEN: And, um... yeah, no, go ahead.

DANIEL: Oh, speaking of Punky Brewster, me and my brother both joke about how we have the "don't hide in a refrigerator" burned into our heads.

KIERSTEN: Every kid, every kid knows don't hide in a fridge, you will die.

SARA: I wasn't really allowed to watch a lot of television.

DANIEL: Okay, there's an episode of Punky Brewster where they're playing hide and go seek. And one of the kids hides in an old refrigerator and suffocates and like she makes it --

SARA: I must have the residual trauma from that because I feel like I have that. I don't remember that episode, though.

DANIEL: Which this all gets in the next couple of questions about how we have those core memories as kids and how like nostalgia and the internet like affects it. I really liked the epistolary elements of Mister Magic and it all taking place on message boards because I'm like a huge creepypasta fan.

KIERSTEN: Yes.

DANIEL: And there was like that one that's similar to Mister Magic, Candle Cove or whatever. And like, but the Punky Brewster thing is always like interesting because it's like, I can't tell you a lot about Punky Brewster at all because I was like very young when it was on, but I know a girl almost suffocated to death in a refrigerator.

KIERSTEN: Yes.

DANIEL: But I guess like my question, so like in the book we kind of see like the fandom of Mister Magic exists in the form of message boards and then there's like creepypastas and everything. And there's just kind of like, which there's also this whole lost episode creepypastas where they like, people will like, "Did you remember this episode of SpongeBob? Or this episode of Punky Brewster?" Like a good creepypasta will be like writing the episode where the girl died in a refrigerator.

KIERSTEN: Yeah, yeah.

DANIEL: But like why do you think, why do you feel like these like memories of forgotten TV shows that are so ripe for horror, like, especially like with Mister Magic and things, like is it just because of our childhood memories or like...?

KIERSTEN: Yeah, I think part of it is childhood memory. And also I think part of it is we have lost inaccessibility, right? Like for a long period of time, if you remembered some weird show that you saw part of at 3 a.m. in the morning on TBS, you're never getting that back. You're never going to be able to find it. You're going to describe it to other people and it's going to sound like you're insane, right? Like I used to, I used The Peanut Butter Solution as an example. Did either of you see The Peanut Butter Solution?

SARA: I don't think so.

DANIEL: People have asked me if I've seen The Peanut Butter Solution. Yeah.

KIERSTEN: Because it's one of those movies where it's like, did I really see that? I mean, there... so there are kids who are losing their hair, there's a magic guy who gives them a solution to make their hair grow, that then makes their hair grow too much. And then he kidnaps them and uses their hair to make magical paint brushes. And it's just like, just the weirdest plotline ever. And for a really long time, it was sort of this like, "Was that movie real? Did I hallucinate that once when I was home sick from school?" But now I think it's in the Criterion collection or something.

SARA: Are you serious?

KIERSTEN: Yes. You can go online, you can go on Wikipedia, there's a description of the plot, like you know that it was real. And but for a long time, you didn't have that, you just had these bits and pieces of media that you had seen or experienced. And you have no way of checking that it was real, or checking that what you remember happened actually happened. Because that's another thing, right? Like we change, our memories change. They're not, they're not reliable.

And so what I really wanted to lean into with Mister Magic and with the sort of the epistolary interstitials was this sense of this is the one you can't have. This is the one that had such an impact on so many children, they all have a really strong emotional connection to it. Those were their friends. Some of them might have seen the last episode and seen what actually happened, which was very traumatic, but they've never been able to confirm it. Right? They've never been able to see that it happened. They've never been able to, like, get any actual information about it because Mister Magic is just gone. There is no video. You can't find clips of it online. No one knows who wrote it. No one knows who the production company was. So all anyone has of this show is memories and feelings, the feelings that they had when they watched it. So it was really fun kind of playing with that sense of that combination of we now have the internet where we can access so many people and so many experiences and so many memories, and also evidence, but I take the evidence part of that away.

And it's funny that you mentioned creepypasta because I actually was not familiar with creepypasta. All I knew was that it was a thing that existed. So I actually make a spooky spaghetti joke in the book.

SARA: Noticed that.

KIERSTEN: But yeah, but I have since -- because yeah, there's an older person who's like, "You guys have your spooky spaghetti or whatever. Let us have Mister Magic."

KIERSTEN: But it's been fun since when I saw so many reviews mentioning specifically Candle Cove, I've looked into it and I've seen everything and it's very good and very fun. There's a movie coming out from A24.

DANIEL: Oh, I Saw the TV Glow.

KIERSTEN: I Saw the TV Glow. Yes. And it has a very sort of similar concept, right, that there was this weird show that these kids were really into. And then later when they're, when they're older and they're struggling, they realize maybe elements of the show were real. I don't, I don't know that much about it, I just have seen a trailer. And it was funny because I looked on the comments of the trailer and a lot of them were like, "This is, this is just like Candle Cove." And a lot of them were like, "Is this the Mister Magic adaptation?"

[DANIEL LAUGHS]

KIERSTEN: No, but I'm excited to see it because I think it's a really cool concept. I do think that we have such strong -- going back to the parasocial relationships -- we have such strong relationships with the media that we view and experience as a child and it's so ripe for horror, really.

DANIEL: I totally have one of these weird memories of being up in like late '80s watching... I watched, I remember it creeped me out because it was a solid black screen with like neon puppets dancing around and stuff. And like, there's tons of message boards devoted to this show and people will post videos and several like, "That wasn't it, that wasn't it." Like this whole thing, this whole like cultural phenomenon has always, like, I've been drawn to it. And I think it's like... and I don't think anyone's like taking from anyone else because I think it's a cultural phenomenon. And I will say real quick, my brother -- I went to the movies and the trailer for I Saw the TV Glow came on and my brother was like, "Is this The Ring for Zoomers?"

KIERSTEN: Yeah, it's also interesting looking at generational, right? Like I'm 40, I have a child who's 20. And, and they have grown up in an era where everything is accessible, right? Nothing's ever lost. Except, you know, things like the Willow series on Disney+, they immediately take down and you can never watch it again, I'm still bitter.

KIERSTEN: But so that that accessibility and that way to like, to confirm your memories, but also, they're lacking the experiences that we have where there just wasn't as much media when we were growing up. And so there were those shows that everyone watched. Everyone watched them. And that doesn't exist as much anymore. So Mister Magic definitely has to hit that sweet spot of this is the generation where every child would have been watching the same show just because there weren't that many shows on. But yeah, it is interesting generationally how media has changed, how the way that we engage with media has changed. It's all, I don't know, it's fascinating. I find it all super fascinating. Which is apparent, you know, when you read Mister Magic. I'm into that kind of thing.

DANIEL: That's, yeah, I like the nostalgia elements. And I like that you're critical of it. And it's not just like, "Star Wars was cool!"

KIERSTEN: Yeah, yeah. Which, you know, it was. But yeah, like, I think, you know, I look at the shows that I watched and there's my, one of my favorite things that I have in there is a woman who posts her proposed like thesis that got rejected.

SARA: Oh, yeah.

KIERSTEN: Yeah, she's breaking down shows and those were all shows that I loved, that I was super into that looking back, I'm like, "Oh yeah, that kind of sucked." Like, the way -- and it's almost always the way that they, you know, the role of women or the role of girls in the show, right? Everybody else gets to be a person and the girl is "the girl!" So yeah, it was, it was really fun getting to engage with stuff like that over the course of the novel.

DANIEL: So we kind of talked about fandom and you've written some media tie-in books. You've worked on Buffy books and Star Wars, which like, from a different point of view. So like you have experiences with these huge like fandom like, things that have cult followings. Like did any of your experiences with -- I hope all your like, working in those like has been good for you. Like I hope you've not had any like one getting mad at you because you like ruined the probe droid in Empire Strikes Back or something.

KIERSTEN: Well, it did write a novel about teenage Obi-Wan Kenobi. And I fortunately it came out right before I left the country for three weeks and turned off the internet. So that was a good choice on my part.

DANIEL: You write -- yeah, I was just gonna say they retconned because of the Disney buy or whatever, I was like, I was reading the synopsis. I was like, "I thought I read that as a kid," but it was like retconned from the old like canon or whatever.

KIERSTEN: Yeah, yeah, because there were there were Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon novels that are no longer canon. Which is also an interesting, that's, that's a whole other can of worms. But it is interesting stepping into a fandom's space as the creator. You'll always see the reviews that are like, "This is fanfiction!" Like it's not, it's officially licensed and I got paid.

[SARA AND DANIEL LAUGH]

KIERSTEN: And I had one experience -- yeah, right, like it's literally not fanfiction. I had one experience when I was on tour for the Buffy books where I had a woman get really upset with me in the Q&A portion. She was upset about not about the book itself, but she was upset because she asked about the research that I did. And I talked about, you know, rewatching the whole series, reading all the graphic novels, reading all of the like tie-in, like the monsters encyclopedia and all those things. And she was upset that I hadn't used Buffy academia, which because, you know, there's a lot of Buffy academia, and I was like, "Well, I didn't want to engage with outside theories and ideas about the show because I am writing as part of the show, right?" Like I'm writing as part of the universe. And that really upset her. And she kept getting more and more upset. And finally, I just had to say, "I'm a professional writer. They hired me to write a new corner of the Buffyverse because I'm a professional writer and I'm good at what I do. Next question."

And that's really kind of how I've had to... it ended up being fine. I saw her again the next year when I was on tour for the sequel. And she was great, she was lovely. It was just... and that's the thing is, when you're writing in those spaces, you realize these stories and these worlds mean so much to people, they mean so much to people. And I know that fandom can get a bad rap and that people will make fun of how much it means to people. But I respect it. Like I respect the passion and the intensity that people have for these properties. I don't respect when it turns into violent rhetoric, or attacking people. I think that's absurd. But I try as a creator to be very, very respectful. And when I'm writing for an existing universe, I try not so much to like, you know, recreate the characters, but to recreate the feeling, right? Because for me, I love Buffy, I love, you know, the characters. I love the writing. I love all those things. But when I was writing a new, a new Slayer in the Buffyverse, I wanted to capture the way that I felt when I watched Buffy. And so that was really what I leaned into. And people responded really, really well. Buffy fans are lovely, unless you say negative things about Spike. Don't say negative things about Spike. I'm not saying anything negative about Spike. Spike is great. Nothing negative here. I learned that lesson.

But it also changes the way that you engage when you're a creator in those universes, right? Like I will never post an opinion online or say an opinion out loud in a recorded setting that is anything other than, "I love Star Wars and I love the way that I feel when I watch it. I love Buffy and I love the way that I feel when I watch it." Like that's it. Those are the only opinions, that is I'm not gonna say anything controversial, I'm not gonna say anything negative, in part because again, I don't want to engage with people who the angry about that. But also because I want to be respectful of the meaning that those properties hold in people's lives. And like I imagine, like, let's say somebody read Padawan and they love my version of Obi-Wan Kenobi and it meant a ton to them. And they go online, and they see me saying something negative about something else in the Star Wars universe that means a lot to them. Like that, that's hurtful, right? And I don't ever want to... I don't ever want to be that person, I don't want to... I want fans who love the properties that I work in to either love the things that I do or be able to ignore them. Please just, if you don't like it, just ignore it.

SARA: Step one of conflict resolution. Use I statements, right? It's like you can't argue with how I feel.

KIERSTEN: Yeah.

SARA: Because I'm telling you how I feel. How you feel is different. So I think that's a very respectful way to like navigate all of that because people do get really, really intense about it.

KIERSTEN: Yeah.

SARA: I don't know that there's anything that I'm so intense about that I would get angry. Pride and Prejudice even. Like there's been so many Pride and Prejudice like re-adaptations.

KIERSTEN: And if you don't like that adaptation, you just don't engage with it. Let it go.

SARA: I even liked the one with zombies. I thought it was fun.

DANIEL: Our listeners are pretty cool. I have provoked them a couple of times because it's completely okay to call him Frankenstein is what I say.

[LAUGHTER]

KIERSTEN: You know, I also wrote a Frankenstein retelling.

DANIEL: I saw that! This is a Franken -- you don't have to call, we don't call it Ford's automobile, we call it a Ford, okay?

[LAUGHTER]

DANIEL: This is a Frankenstein-free podcast. That's the standard. We're also government sponsor, so this is through our job with the city we work for and it's just kind of like, we're kind of tied to that. But they haven't, the mayor hasn't called me in for taking the Frankenstein stance yet.

SARA: Good.

KIERSTEN: Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting how passionate people get. I find it fascinating. I like it. I mean, the fact that people are passionate about things that they love is part of why I have a career. But yeah, it was fun getting to write some of that. And like you see some of the fights on message boards, people getting mad about anyone implying there was negative things about the show or outright stating that there were negative things about the show, which again, you know, as somebody who has written in the Buffyverse, there are very negative things about that show. There were very bad things that happened on set. And I think you have to be able to engage with that, right? You have to be able to say, yes, the creator of the show had some really negative destructive behaviors that were very harmful to people. But the show was more than just him. It was the actors, it was the writers. It was the incredible costume designer and all of those things. And so like, I feel okay about still being a fan of Buffy. But if somebody were to say, "I don't engage with Buffy content because of what happened," I also respect that and I think, you know, I think if we could all just be like, "Yes, I can respect to your experiences and your opinions," we'd be better off.

SARA: Truth bombs.

DANIEL: I'm listening to the Marvel Cinematic Universe -- this is a funny coincidence, but I'm listening to the MCU like huge oral history of it that came out like in November, and they are about talking about the Buffy guy right now. Like, all this stuff that was like, wow, wow. Yeah, that's a kind of coincidence.

KIERSTEN: Yeah. And that's, you know, that's part of Mister Magic, right? Is saying like I loved Buffy, it was a hugely impactful storytelling for me. But as an adult looking back at it, I can recognize that there are problematic things within the characters and the scripts and the storylines. I can recognize that there are problematic things with the creator of the show. And I think it's important to recognize those things and to, to acknowledge them. I still allow myself to love the show. But again, yeah, like I understand if people want to remove it from their fandoms. Like, that's cool too.

SARA: Respect, just respect. It's like, don't worry yourself about other people's like, stuff.

DANIEL: Is there any fandoms you would want, like are there any properties that you want to like would love to work for like, out of all of them? I mean, like you've done, you're going in the public domain working with like Dracula and Frankenstein.

KIERSTEN: Yeah.

DANIEL: Is there anything that you want to tackle that you just haven't had a chance to yet or anything like that?

KIERSTEN: You know what, I tried so hard to get a Pokémon novel? Oh, so hard. When Detective Pikachu came out, I'm like, they're opening up the world. And so I had a contact at Scholastic which publishes Pokémon novels. And I was like, I want to write an original Y.A. Pokémon novel. And she was like, "Maybe. Write me a pitch." So I wrote the pitch, I was super excited about it, she took it up the chain, and Scholastic was like, "This looks great." They took it to the Pokémon Company, and the Pokémon Company was like, "No. If she wants to write a novel that uses characters and storylines for one of the animated series, she can, but we're not doing original content." And actually, like, I really respect that, I really respect a company that's like we, you know, as much as many adults love Pokémon, like it is a children's property. And they are very, very, very protective of everything related to it. And you know, in this world where you see a lot of properties just like work, we make a buck, Pokémon's like, nope. And I respect that. So that was, that was a bummer. But also, like, you know, props to Pokémon. They're, they have a lot of integrity.

DANIEL: "We don't do to that here. We don't do that here at Pokémon!" [LAUGHS]

KIERSTEN: Yeah. So Pokémon was off the table, which is fine. But yeah, I have a Dracula spinoff's coming out this fall called Lucy Undying. I have The Dark Descent with Frankenstein, I have Star Wars, I have Buffy. I don't know, there's a lot of things that I love enough that I feel like I could do really cool, I could work in that universe really cool. There are some comics and graphic novel properties that I love that I think would make really cool novels if they were ever interested. But, but I think that's also what makes me good about adaptation is, or working within existing universe is I'm not an encyclopedic fan, right? Like, I, my brain is all vibes, no details. So I'm not going to get, I'm not going to get caught up into the like, this thing happened in this version of this. And because of that, you have to include it. Like, I'm just not detail-oriented enough for that. So I think, I think it actually helps me when it comes to working within existing universes because I'm not, I'm not so married to everything that has ever happened that I can... you know, I can be a little bit more flexible in engaging with the story and the way that it's told. But yeah, that being said, I do like doing, I do like working in licensed properties. I think it's a really interesting challenge because it's like, how can I make a story that fits within this existing storytelling that makes sense that you've never heard that story before, but also feels like that story was always there, you just didn't know about it yet? Which is a really, really interesting creative challenge, and it's one that I really enjoy. So if you are a licensed property out there and you're like, "Hey, let's work with Kiersten, you probably can't afford me."

[SARA AND DANIEL LAUGH]

SARA: What about like a Jane Austen fantasy, hmm? That could be fun. Huh?

KIERSTEN: Yeah, yeah, I did, yeah --

SARA: Creepypasta mixed with Jane Austen.

KIERSTEN: Jane Austen. I actually do have my next adult that I just in the very, very early stages of is definitely sort of like a historical like very atmospheric romance, but with also horror elements. So that's always fun. Historical is the hardest to write by far, though. Like one, my biggest selling series is historical fiction verging on fantasy because it's, I take actual historical events and I change characters, and I compress time. But it's so hard to write and it requires... I mean, I did thousands of pages of research for that series and like months and months of research. So people are always like, "When are you gonna write historical again?" And I'm like, "It's like childbirth. You only do it again when you've forgotten how much it hurt and I have not forgotten how much writing historical fiction hurt." So yeah, that's, that's why I haven't touched Jane Austen because I don't want to do that level of research right now.

SARA: That's fair. Super fair.

DANIEL: Okay, I got a pitch. I got a pitch. So this is the year Mickey Mouse went into the public domain. So like, but Steamboat Willie, right?

KIERSTEN: Yeah, a few came up with horror movies coming out with Steamboat Willie.

DANIEL: But everyone's doing horror though, right? That's where everyone's brain's gone. Edwardian romance about Steamboat William.

KIERSTEN: Steamboat William! Yes, yes. Steamboat William!

SARA: And what was the villain's name?

DANIEL: Max, I think. I don't remember.

SARA: Okay, it's not a big deal. You know what, let's take a break.

DANIEL: Yeah.

SARA: Let's take a break. We could go off on this tangent forever. But we'll take a break. And then when we come back, we will keep going because we've still got a lot more to cover.

VOICEOVER: Did you know that the Wichita Public Library offers a large selection of digital magazines for free? They're easy to access and are now available to you on the Libby app. You can download Libby from your phone or tablet's app store, sign in with your Wichita Public Library card and start browsing immediately. Magazines can be found under the guide section on Libby and include popular magazine titles about news and politics, cooking, celebrity news, healthy living, and more. For additional information on Libby, please visit wichita.overdrive.com.

SARA: And we're back with Kiersten White, author of Mister Magic. We're having a great time talking about all the things. Daniel, I think you've got a question.

DANIEL: Oh, yeah. So if we kind of take a look like in Mister Magic about like the bigger picture at play, and it's these adults that are kind of like, basically like -- without giving it away, there's a lot of authority --

SARA: You can give it away. I think we just said we were gonna have spoilers so give it away.

DANIEL: There's an authoritarian element to the town of Bliss and how they kind of control everything. And so like, I guess, like this has every, like I feel like every... that you kind of bring it up with like these shows that were designed to sell things.

SARA: Yeah.

DANIEL: And like, I guess like, my question is like, why is it so dangerous for like people that have vested interest, especially like in children's television or something like, or just what like... yeah, so why is it dangerous for oppressive groups to control narratives as shown in your book, I guess?

KIERSTEN: Mm-hmm.

KIERSTEN: Yeah. I mean, that's a big question. But it's an important question. And for me, what it stemmed from was, as I mentioned, I grew up in a very insular, very controlling community that dictated... that didn't just want to dictate what you did, they wanted to dictate what you felt and how you thought. And they were also really big on gender roles, and very rigid gender roles. And so the messaging that I got was very different than the messaging that my spouse got. Like I would get, I would get like Sunday school lessons on keeping a clean house. And how if you're, if you're not clean, if you're not cleaning, a lot of you don't know how to clean, you're gonna make God sad.

SARA: And we know what to do with those feelings of sadness, right? We put them away.

KIERSTEN: Yes. My spouse, who is male, did not get any of those lessons. He got to go on Scout trips and learn how to build fires. So it's, I think that the issue for me, particularly with Bliss that I tried to capture is, there's a joke that the mayor makes where he said, "We're very excited to get back to programming quality children."

SARA: Oh yeah, caught that.

KIERSTEN: Children's programming. Programming all the adults.

KIERSTEN: And it goes back to this idea that you see a lot where people view children as property, right? Like, as a parent, your children are not individuals, they're not people in their own rights, they belong to you. And it is your right to create them and to create the way that they think and to control the way that they're going to be as adults, right? And I mean, so many creepy, weird things.

SARA: Very dangerous way of thinking.

KIERSTEN: Very dangerous way of thinking and a very destructive way of thinking, right? Because if you are actually a parent and you have children, you realize they are who they are when they're born, they just get more capable of expressing it and, you know, of moving into themselves and if you are at every stage telling them, "No, this is how you feel. This is how you think, this is the only way for you to be a person and to be a good person," like, it's so damaging. And it's so sad. And it's, you know, it's very, very destructive. And I think it's a very destructive mentality.

And it turns into things you see like the book banning that's sweeping the nation is parents saying, "I don't want my kid to be exposed to other points of view or things that might expand their world, and therefore no other kids should either." So then it turns into not just I'm going to control what my kids think and feel and do, I also need to control what your kids think and feel and do. And then it just kind of, it just kind of expands out from there. And Bliss is sort of the personification of that idea, right? That their way of thinking, their way of moving through the world is the only correct way. And it is their moral responsibility, but also their right, their absolute right, to push those ideas out onto children everywhere and to reshape every child they can in their own image.

And yeah, so that's kind of what I was trying to capture with Bliss, with this town, and what they're doing with the show, what they hope to do, again, with the show is this idea that it's not enough that I view my own children as property, that it's my right to create my own vision and ideals in them, but also your children.

SARA: Yeah. So I'm just gonna launch right into the next question because I feel like it's a good segue. You briefly mentioned also the kind of troubled teen industry, as it is known, one of your characters gets sent to after Mister Magic ends. And he's still not the perfect child that they envision. They sent him to, I believe what would be considered a gay conversion camp. Is that...?

KIERSTEN: Yeah, this one was not specifically a gay conversion camp. That was a very different, this was a behavioral remodification camp, which was a very big industry, it still is a very big industry. But particularly in Utah where I grew up, there were a lot of these because people who owned them and made money off of them had connections to state government. And so the state government let them do whatever they wanted and looked the other way. And so it's, I have a lot of feelings about that industry and the things that it's teaching children and showing children. It's basically like a lot of the times what happens is the parents, you know, pay for this service, men come into their teenager's room in the middle of the night, kidnap them, handcuff them while the parents are watching. And so the message is, "We are going to let this happen, we made this happen, and this is your fault. And until you can change and be what we want you to be, you can't come back." And this is different than like, you know, if you have a child who's struggling with addiction issues. This is not, this is not rehab. This is not, you know, this is not... this is not intervening to save a child's life.

This is telling a child you are not what we want you to be and we will allow you to be abused until you are. And so I, I have a lot of really big feelings about the industry. I think it's evil, I think the things that they do, and it's been interesting, because there was a documentary that just came out about one of these groups. And I saw a woman talking online, and she said, "You know, it's hard for me because I went to one of those camps. And I actually had a great experience. I feel like it saved my life. But as an adult looking back at the things that happened, it worked for me because I was able to fit into the program. But I saw kids that it didn't work for and how they were abused. And because it wasn't happening to me, I was okay." And I think that's, you know, that's important to acknowledge, right, that everybody's going to have a different experience with these types of things. But for me, having a character, Javi, who had gone through that was important, because you know, it's all that same concept, right? That you are my child, but you are my possession. And if you are not behaving the way that I think that you should, I will break you until you do. And that's what those camps are for, those camps are for breaking children until they give up and they agree to just be whatever their parents want them to be. And so yeah, that was, that was definitely one where you could have an entire book about that. And there are entire books about that. But I just, you know, in my ways of exploring all the ways in which, you know, we tell children that if they aren't what we expect them to be, they're wrong, that's one of the more extreme examples.

SARA: So do you think if Mister Magic had been able to continue as it was, not in the way that we get at the end, do you think that's kind of the direction they were, they were trying to head, the city of Bliss? The creepy mayor? He was creepy.

KIERSTEN: I'm not sure what, I'm not sure what you're asking,

SARA: Like, do you think that we were heading into a break the children to --

DANIEL: Mister Magic in his new form, was that kind of like where it was going?

SARA: Thank you for clarifying for me.

KIERSTEN: Oh, no, they view that as a failure, right? If you get to that point, your teenager's already a failure. So what they were heading toward was they wanted to expand the show, and because they gotta get the kids when the kids are young, right?

SARA: Right.

KIERSTEN: And that's another thing that I talk about in the book, this concept that innocence is somehow more valuable than experience. And that if you are an adult and you have had experiences and you've been through things, that you're somehow broken and wrong, and that it's more valuable to be a child with zero experience, that that's somehow a better state of being, whereas they're just, they're just different states of being. There's not one that's inherently better than the other. And so no, so for me, what Bliss wanted to do was restart that program so that they could really get in there with the kids, and fix the kids before they ever had to, you know, fix the kids before they ever had to intervene in ways like that.

SARA: Early Intervention.

KIERSTEN: Early intervention. Exactly.

SARA: Gross. Okay, so we've talked about the trauma, and in the afterword you even say that this book was your means of helping process some of that trauma. So, we were all just like, but why... like, there were so many different ways you could have done that. And you chose a children's TV show to process that. And so I thought, I wanted to know if you could talk a little bit about that, like, why choose children's TV?

KIERSTEN: That's a great question. I was just at the time, I was thinking a lot about, I had talked to someone who worked on a Disney program, a Disney Channel program, with an actor who went on to be a very big actor and then an incredibly troubled actor. And he was talking about he worked with this show when this kid, when this adult was 11 or 12. And he said, "That was when I realized I didn't want to work in Hollywood anymore, because I looked at this child and the way that the adults around him, were engaging with him and fawning over him. And it was such a weird, creepy dynamic because he was a kid, but they were making money off of him." And so they were very invested in continuing to make money off with him, and doing whatever they needed to stay in his orbit, and to keep him in the spotlight so that they could continue to make money off of him. And then, you know, came out years later that of course he was being abused by people on his team. He was being abused by his dad, like all of these terrible, terrible things, but nobody cared. And nobody protected him because they were making money off of him. And so that's kind of why I took it. That's kind of why I went with the, the television angle. Just because that's where my head was.

There existed a completely different version of Mister Magic, the first version, which is a different plotline, different characters, different setting. And it was like that one was about too many things. It was about child stardom. It was about parenthood. It was about childhood. It was about podcasts, it was about parasocial relationships, like all of these things. And then in the second version, I really kind of distilled it down to what I wanted it to be. Cut characters, combined characters, changed the setting. Just to really kind of sum, I go into every book with a question that I want to explore, an idea that I wanted to explore. And the problem with that first draft is there were too many, and I had to cut some of them and leave it down. So the children's program remained just because for me growing up in such a specific controlling religion, that's where they hit you the hardest is in childhood, because they've got to get those messages in. And so, so having adults looking back at their childhood and being like, "Oh, all those things that we thought were good and healthy actually, you know, have caused a lot of damage."

Yeah, and then just... and then, you know, again, it's a horror novel. So I'm like, that would be creepy. Like the concept of a children's show where, where there's Mister Magic in the background but nobody actually remembers what he looks like. And some people think he's just a puppet. And some people think he was CGI. Some people think he was a person, like, I just liked that... you know, I could lean into the like, creepy factor and the uncertainty factor.

DANIEL: I just want to say on a personal note, I did read this, you had written an article, I forgot which publication about you leaving your church and I just want to say that was a really well done piece.

KIERSTEN: Thank you.

DANIEL: And it had a lot of heart and compassion and like, it wasn't like a completely scathing teardown or anything.

KIERSTEN: Yeah.

DANIEL: You dealt with like how this part of your, this huge part of your life and how you let go of it, I actually thought that was a really good piece of writing.

KIERSTEN: Thank you. I appreciate that. And like it's important to me, like I respect people's faith and I respect the place that faith holds in people's lives, and I respect what people hold sacred. But at the same time, my experience and my anger and my feelings, I also hold those sacred and so I can hold respect for what people believe and the good that they're finding in, in organizations, particularly the organization that I left, at the same time that I can hold my experiences also valid. And the things that are wrong with it deserve to be talked about. So yeah, it's a fine line to walk because I do still have a lot of friends and family members and loved ones that are, that are in that organization and in that religion. But, you know, if I value their feelings and I respect them, then I expect that to go both ways.

SARA: Yeah, for sure.

DANIEL: I have a question about, like, the timeline of when you wrote Hide and Mister Magic, like which one did you write first? And then which one like, because there's like... yeah, we weren't sure. Basically, we saw some different dates --

SARA: Well, because Hide came out and then Mister Magic and then the Hide graphic novel, right?

KIERSTEN: Yeah, so Hide was actually, so Hide, the premise of Hide is that 14 kind of aimless 20-somethings are invited to an international hide and seek competition set in an abandoned amusement park. And they have to, if they can make it to the end, they win $50,000.

SARA: And no spoilers on that one because I haven't totally finished it. But I'm close to the end so no spoilers.

KIERSTEN: Yeah, so Hide was actually, it was an idea that I had in the works for several years, I read an article about the Nascondino International Hide and Seek competition that was set in an abandoned resort town in Italy. It was this resort town that they started building, then they ran out of money. And they held a hide and seek competition there. And I was like, oh, that sounds so murdery. But it wasn't, like the rules. And like... anyway, no one got murdered, which I guess is good.

[SARA LAUGHS]

KIERSTEN: But so that idea I thought was really creepy. And then I was thinking, you know about patterns, patterns that we live over and over again, and particularly generational predation, where older generations say, "I deserve what I have and what I think that I should have. And if the younger, the youngest generation has to pay the cost of it, I'm fine with that," particularly in America, particularly when it comes to gun violence. And so you know, as a mom, I have a lot of anger and a lot of despair about that. And that went into informing Hide. I took a run at it, I think in like 2018. My agent didn't particularly like it. So I set it aside, and then in 2020, when you know... you guys remember 2020? It was weird.

SARA: Actually, I don't. I just skipped right over it.

KIERSTEN: Right? [CHUCKLES]

DANIEL: 2019, then it's 2022.

SARA: It was like three years long? Weird.

KIERSTEN: Yeah. So you know, we're at home and I was so stressed out, I couldn't get into a place where I could create new ideas. But I had a couple of things that I had wanted to have time to work on and hadn't had time to work on. One of those was Hide and one of those was my middle grade series. And so I... yeah, we sent out Hide, and my publisher, the incredible Del Rey, my editor's Tricia Narwani. She's brilliant. She loved it and she bought it and it was a two book deal. So yeah, Hide was first and then I actually pitched her Lucy Undying next, and she was really in love with it. But then I got the idea for Mister Magic. And I was like, I think this one needs to jump in line and go next. And she agreed. So yeah, so Hide came out in... 2022? What are years? And then Mister Magic came out 2023. And the High graphic novel came out in fall of 2023 also, which was a super cool project. And the same team is doing a graphic novel for Mister Magic. So --

DANIEL: I was gonna ask!

KIERSTEN: Yes, yeah. I know you guys have questions about the graphic novel for High. It was a really, really cool process. Because you know, we, right, we love story, we love multimedia. I'm not a super visual person. And so it was really, really cool. My adapter is Scott Peterson. He's phenomenal. He went through Hide and he created the graphic novel script. And I gave editorial feedback on it. So like, you know, there was a moment where I was like, we need to linger on his feet a little bit longer. I think it's really important. You know, yeah, it's fine, we can lose that scene because it's, you know, translating it from a primarily... from an entirely text version to a primarily visual version, you just tell the story in a different way, which was really, I love adaptation, I find adaptation really, really fascinating. So it was cool being part of that process. And then same on the art. The artists were Veronica Fish and Andy Fish, they're incredible. The way that they capture movement, and it's just so dynamic.

And it was really, really cool seeing the characters because again, I'm not a visual person. I never see my characters. And so actually getting to see them was really a, you know, bucket list dream come true. They would thumbnail out the sections and send them to me and I would give editorial feedback. But most of my editorial feedback was like, "Oh my gosh, this is amazing!" Because I really like, I respect art of visual artists so much because it's not something that I'm good at and so it feels like magic to me even though I know it's actually representative of years and years and years of practice and work and experience to make it feel like magic. So yeah, it was a really, really cool process, definitely a bucket list item for me. And I'm so excited to be working with the same team again, because they just are so phenomenal at taking something that was, you know, in my head, and then turning it into something that everybody can look at. It's really cool.

DANIEL: I was listening to the audiobook for a bit. And then I switched to the graphic novel when we read it. And I was like, oh, it's the same thing. Like for like, because I like, I have like, issues with like reading because of ADHD and stuff. So like, I was really impressed with like, the adaptation because I felt like it didn't lose anything.

KIERSTEN: Yeah, it's a very... yeah, it's a very faithful adaptation. And I love that you mentioned that you were listening to the audiobook and then you read the graphic novel, like, and I think sometimes people have these attitudes that one type of reading is superior to another. And we know that's not true, right? Like audiobooks are phenomenal. And the fact that they give people access to books where maybe if you, if you struggle with dyslexia or ADHD, or you just drive a lot, like that you can experience books in a new way. And the same thing, graphic novels, particularly for children, I think they're the most incredible literacy bridge. And they build a different type of literacy, that visual literacy, because you have to engage with the story in multiple ways. And I actually feel as an adult, I've had to learn how to read graphic novels, because it's a very different, it's a very different type of literacy. And I really had to, like, teach myself how to understand or read graphic novels, whereas kids, when they're exposed to them young like that visual literacy is already there, which I think is so cool. And you know, yeah, I really love that.

You know, I have these very high quality audiobooks that are produced by Penguin Random House Audio, Kelly Gildea is the director of my audiobooks. And she's phenomenal. She always finds exactly the right people to work with. And then yeah, the graphic novel, like it's just as a storyteller and as a person who loves stories, I just nerd out over that because I'm like, yes, let's have all the formats, let's find all the ways to tell this story. And Hide is actually in development at Universal TV and Peacock with Sugarwitch Productions, Ingrid Escajeda is working on it. And who knows if it'll happen. But like, if it does, I hope they adapt it. And I hope they take enormous liberties with it. And I hope they tell the best version for television that they can, because I already told the best book version that I could. And my team already told the best graphic novel version that we could and so I'm like, "Yeah, let's just, let's just tell all the versions."

DANIEL: Speaking of literary formats, this is actually good lead-in for my next question. I'm currently doing Dracula Daily.

DANIEL: Which is like, if you don't know Bram Stoker's Dracula is epistolary in the form of letters, and it's in the form of like, correspondences and journals. And it starts at a certain time, which I think it's Sunday in late April, or May, it just started.

KIERSTEN: Yeah.

KIERSTEN: It's May, it just started.

DANIEL: Yeah, and today's May 9, which is when Mina writes to Lucy, and which goes into our next question is Lucy Westenra, who is a character from Bram Stroker's Dracula. And like, I love the version in the movie, the Coppola version, like she's like, really interesting character. In the book, it seems like she, that same character's there. And like, you did a standalone novel about her and kind of like brought her, like resurrected her literally.

KIERSTEN: Yes.

DANIEL: I just have a question if you want to talk about that, because I think it's really interesting and she's a cool character to do that with.

KIERSTEN: Yeah, and you know, going along with our talk of like, engaging with stories, right? So I love the novel Dracula. I've always loved the novel Dracula. But the treatment of Lucy has always really bothered me, right? Because Mina is held up as the sort of like paragon of orderliness almost, like she's devoted to Jonathan, she has all of these useful skills like she's useful, whereas Lucy is just like, flighty and beautiful and everyone loves her but she just kind of is... that's it. She's flighty and beautiful and everybody loves her. And the course, over the course of Dracula, her death is like so prolonged, so agonizing and it takes out any... she has no say, right? They don't tell her what's happening to her. They perform medical procedures on her without her consent or knowledge. And then once she's a vampire and she's no longer who they think that she is, they cut off her head because she shouldn't exist in a form that, you know, is in their minds corrupted. And so that always really bothered me that we hav,e you know, these like four paragons of Christian masculinity and they are, they are saving her but they are deeply incompetent, they are so bad at it.

And I just think she's such an interesting, fascinating character. And so I wanted her, I wanted her to have her own story. And also, you know, spoiler -- I have always read her as queer in the novel. She and Mina have a very intense relationship, they talk about kissing. And so I, you know, as a person who had to spend a really good chunk of my life closeted was like, you know, who would she have been in this time period if she had those feelings that she had no words for? Like she didn't, it wasn't even that she knew they were off limits, it was that she didn't understand like, why she was feeling that way or what she was, or you know, any of those things. And so I've used Dracula's jumping off point. And I reimagined a narrative for Lucy in which she, she does become a vampire. But she doesn't die. And it was really fun to write because I have a lot of references to Dracula. There's a lot of in-jokes. If you haven't read Dracula, it's okay. You will still understand it.

But if you have read Dracula, you'll be like, oh, Kiersten has some really specific theories and I do. And so you know, it was fun too because I got to have several storylines. So we have Lucy's journals from when she was a teenager before she was turned into a vampire. We have Lucy telling her life story to a therapist. I didn't do Interview with a Vampire, I did therapy with a vampire. So she's telling like her journey through the decades and then we have a modern day storyline of Iris Goldaming who's the Goldaming family heir going to explore a house she's just inherited in England which happened to be Lucy's house and then also Dracula who -- spoiler, didn't die either. And he's stalking a new victim. So it was really fun. It is funny though, because talking about Mister Magic and the sort of like documents and epistolary form, my initial version of Lucy was much heavier on epistolary form as an homage to Dracula.

DANIEL: Yeah, I was going to ask if that's... yeah.

KIERSTEN: Yeah, the original version was very, very much more epistolary. I had a lot of found documents from Iris is the heir to the Goldaming Life Foundation, which is -- or Goldaming, which is an MLM, a multi-level marketing company. And you know, those are inherently vampiric. So I was like, "Well, this is perfect." And so I have a lot of like the company documents and all of those things, which ended up getting cut because we really wanted to focus more on the love story at the heart of the book, because that was the whole reason I wrote it, right? Like I wanted Lucy to have a life, I wanted her to be able to have like, a full love in the way that she deserved. And so yeah, it was a really, really fun book to write, a fascinating book to revise because most of my edits like the story always stayed the same but it was like huge structural edits, changing it every time.

But yeah, it comes out September 10. The cover's gorgeous. If you haven't looked at the cover, go online and look up Lucy Undying. The artist was Audrey Benjaminson. And it is just the most stunning, glorious Gothic paranormal romance cover ever. Yeah, I'm excited. It's very different than Mister Magic, but if you like those themes of looking at the truth and fighting to figure out who you are and what you want. Like I said, I got a review once that said my horror is surprisingly heartwarming. And I hope that's true also in Lucy because, you know, I care about these characters and I care about my readers and I think those themes of self-discovery and learning to love yourself, too, are always present in my horror. Along with you know, a lot of blood.

SARA: You can't have horror without blood. Although, Mister Magic doesn't have a whole lot of blood, does it?

KIERSTEN: Mister Magic doesn't have any blood.

DANIEL: Yeah, yeah, no, I'm actually when I need a soft horror, like, I like Grady Hendrix and he's toned it down from a lot of things. But like, I read that Grady Hendrix, like he's got a dog in here. I don't know.

SARA: Oh yeah, no.

DANIEL: Because he's 50/50 on that and so, but like if I ever need like, if something is too intense, I'll see what you have out in the horror genre because she's not gonna like make me like, yeah.

SARA: What's your favorite genre to write in, then? Horror?

KIERSTEN: Middle grade.

SARA: Middle grade? Oh, that's interesting.

KIERSTEN: Middle grade because I can just be funny and absurd and playful. You can play with language a lot and do funny things with language. My Sinister Summer series is my middle grade series and I play a lot, I do a lot of wordplay. And it's, they're very funny. They're spooky but mostly funny. And it's such a nice palate cleanser particularly because here's the thing that I struggle with the most in writing young adult and adult: I just cannot think of any more ways to describe the feeling of being attracted to someone, like they were beautiful, I wanted to press our mouths together, like I don't know, guys, she's attractive. So it's really nice in middle grade I didn't have to do that at all.

But middle grade, I think is really joyful to write. Also, it's what I started out wanting to write. But I think it's much more difficult to write than young adult and adult. And so it took me several years of writing other things to figure out how to write middle grade. But it's the hardest market to break into and to have consistent sales in. So I mean, which is not to say that I don't love the other things that I write. I love everything that I write, otherwise I wouldn't write it because I have a really short attention span. But middle grade is the most joyful to write. Also, it's way shorter. You know what, it's a lot easier to write a 40,000 word book than a 150,000 word book. So yeah.

SARA: That makes sense. Yeah.

DANIEL: That's really cool. Yeah.

SARA: I haven't had a chance to check out any of your middle grade stuff, but we'll make sure to include those in our accompanying...

DANIEL: Show notes.

SARA: Show notes.

DANIEL: Show notes, yeah.

SARA: My brain stopped working.

DANIEL: Yeah, can you, you have any recommend, can you recommend three books you've enjoyed recently?

SARA: So that's what we're asking all of our guests, to recommend some books for our listeners?

KIERSTEN: Yes. And on the theme of last and found my first recommendation is Whalefall by Daniel Kraus. It's about a young man who's died, had a terminal illness and decided to die by suicide by jumping off of a boat into the water. And so this young man who was estranged from his father decides to take it on himself to go into the ocean on a dive trip in a very dangerous area in Monterrey to retrieve his father's bones to get back to his family. And in the course of doing this, in the most unlikely sequence of events that are still somehow completely scientifically accurate, he gets swallowed by a whale. And it is a survival story. It's a, if you don't like body horror or gore, maybe don't do this one. It is intense. But it is also like the most beautifully emotionally cathartic thing ever. I don't know how Daniel did it, but he did and it is a phenomenal read. So yeah, the bones are lost and maybe the father/son bond is found.

The next one is The September House by Orlando, I think the last name is Orlando. I'm sorry. I'm so bad with details. I want to say Karissa, Clarissa Orlando, but I could be completely wrong.

SARA: We'll find out.

KIERSTEN: Yes. So The September House, what the woman finds is the beautiful Victorian home of her dreams. But she also finds that it is deeply, deeply haunted. And she decides that she's okay with it. She can live it, she can survive anything. And it's one of those like, stuff books where it looks at the beginning, it looks like just this very like tongue-in-cheek sort of funny take on the haunted house genre. And by the end, you're like, this was the deepest gut punch of a book ever. But like, again, in a very cathartic, loving way. So The September House was phenomenal.

SARA: Was there body horror things in that one? That sounds fun. I would like to read it, I think.

KIERSTEN: Hey, I just have such a high tolerance for things, I don't, doesn't stand out to me. But it's, I don't want to say it's cozy horror, because it actually does have like a very upsetting, underlying theme. But again, like I feel like it's very, I feel like it's very cathartic. And I feel like it's a very compassionate book, if that makes sense. There's horror that's mean and there's horror that's compassionate. And this is a compassionate horror.

And then out of left field, The Murderbot Diaries.

SARA: Oh, I was talking about those with somebody, I think.

KIERSTEN: They're novellas so they're quick reads, they are the most fun. Murderbot is a... I can't remember how it refers to itself. It uses it pronouns. And it basically is an amalgamation of human parts and machine that was created to be a security unit that people could buy or rent, it's property essentially. And what it loses is its control aspect, it undoes the control code, so that it can actually be its own person, its own creature. And the stories are super fun, but also again, just like deeply compassionate and fascinating, fascinating ideas of, you know, what it is to be sentient, what it is to be a person as opposed to an object. Really, really fun, really good. I think there are five of them I want to say. But again, they're novellas so super quick reads. Really, really fun, Murderbot Diaries.

SARA: Okay, good.

DANIEL: Thank you for the recommendations.

SARA: Yes. Okay. Well, that's that kind of brings us to the end of this episode. It ran pretty long. But you were just so much fun to talk to, I didn't want to stop.

DANIEL: Yeah, it was really awesome to talk to you. Yeah, I really enjoyed it.

KIERSTEN: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you for talking to me about Mister Magic. Like I said, I don't often get to like really get into things. And so it was fun for me.

SARA: Well, good. You answered some of our questions, I think. And it was fun knowing where it started. But anyway, so thank you, Kiersten White. And... oh, you do want to do our cheesy thing? We have a cheesy thing we do at the end of our episodes this season. And so I'm gonna say thanks for joining us for Read, and then Daniel's gonna say Return. And then we're all gonna say Repeat.

KIERSTEN: Okay.

SARA: It's more fun if you have to tell people how to do it in the episode rather than just like launch into it.

Okay, well, and that takes us to the end of another episode of Read.

DANIEL: Return.

ALL, TOGETHER: Repeat!

SARA: All right, thank you, Kiersten.

KIERSTEN: Thank you.

VOICEOVER: Looking for an easy way to keep track of your ReadICT challenge progress? Check out the Beanstack app. With Beanstack, you can participate in library reading challenges, log reading activities, and even win prizes. You can access the app either through the Apple or Google Play stores or on a desktop computer by visiting wichitalibrary.beanstack.org. If you are participating in the ReadICT challenge, every month you log a book you will be entered into a drawing for a chance to win a cool bookish themed prize. For more information on Beanstack, visit wichitalibrary.org/beanstack.

SARA, VOICEOVER: We covered a lot of ground in that episode.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: Yeah, that was a really, she's a really interesting person to interview and she had so much to say about everything and I loved hearing every bit of it. So smart.

SARA, VOICEOVER: Very long episode, but I think it was, we just had to talk, we had to talk about it. We had to dive in, Daniel.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: Yeah, I was glad to, like was able to go over my abandoned refrigerator problem memory.

SARA, VOICEOVER: You never knew you were gonna need that ever. You never you never knew it.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: Yeah.

SARA, VOICEOVER: But let's, let's take this episode out. And thank everybody that needs to be thanked.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: Big shoutout to Kiersten White for being on our show. That was really awesome. And also shoutout to the podcast team for helping us with that. Thank you so much.

SARA, VOICEOVER: It's a big group effort. A list of the books discussed in today's episode can be found in the accompanying show notes. To request any of the books heard about today's episode, or TV shows or movies, go ahead and visit wichitalibrary.org or call us at 261-8500.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: To participate in the ReadICT reading challenge, please visit wichitalibrary.org/readict. Stay connected with other ReadICT participants on the ReadICT challenge Facebook page, find out what's trending near you, post book reviews, look for local and virtual events, and share book humor with like-minded folks. To join the group, search #ReadICT challenge on Facebook and click join.

SARA, VOICEOVER: And don't forget to log your books in the reading tracker app Beanstack. Each month that you log a book in the challenge, you're eligible to win fun prizes. If you need assistance signing up or you're logging books and you're having any trouble, just give us a call. You can reach us on chat or stop by your nearest branch.

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: You can follow this podcast through the Spotify app or stream episodes on whatever platform you listen to podcasts on. If you like what you heard today, be sure to subscribe and share with all your friends. Have a good one.

SARA, VOICEOVER: Bye!

DANIEL, VOICEOVER: Bye.