Interview: Shane Hawk and Ted Van Alst Jr. discuss Never Whistle at Night Part II: Back for Blood, along with growing up with horror, presidential reading rooms, and meeting Clive Barker
- Jonathan
- 15 hours ago
- 8 min read
Cover art for Never Whistle at Night Part II: Back for Blood Theodore C. Van Alst's headshot
Shane Hawk Ted Van Alst Jr.
This article continues an interview from a previous article.
This interview was edited slightly for clarity
The Horror Lounge: Going back to earlier, were there stories that were passed for the first book that made their way into Back for Blood?
Shane: Actually, no. We were going back and forth on that, you know? Whether to reach out and say, “Hey, is this still available?” But we thought there were so many in the new batch that we just have to say goodbye to the old ones and hope they land somewhere.
Ted: Yeah, we always encourage people. When they have these really great stories, I’m like, “You can send this somewhere! Somebody’s gonna buy this! It doesn’t fit in this collection, we don’t have the room, or whatever the case is. But you need to do something with this story.”
So, I kind of left it at that. I think people did, but it was tough.
Shane: I think I knew of a couple that actually got published elsewhere.
The Horror Lounge: Oh, great!
Shane: And we kind of figured, do we wait this long period of time if they get back to us at all, and we’re just chasing the story down? Or do we look at this new, beautiful batch? There’s 156 of them, so we’re going with the new batch.
The Horror Lounge: Haha! Makes you wonder how many there will be for the third book.
Ted: Oh my god…
Shane: Yeah, true. The first one’s exploding right now because of the Netflix thing and the Obama Presidential Center. It’s in their reading room now, officially. It’s pretty crazy.
The Horror Lounge: Oh wow!
Shane: Yeah! If you hadn’t heard about that, it was featured pretty prominently on this Netflix show called The Four Seasons with Tina Fay and Will Forte. There’s a character, I forget his name, but he's on the beach reading it and turning the pages. We can pretty much recognize it—if you’ve read the book. But later on, when he’s in bed reading at night, he’s holding it and the camera zooms in for like ten seconds straight!
Ted: Like a product placement. You couldn’t pay for better.
Shane: Yeah, that was insane. And then Ted found out that we’re in the presidential reading room at the newly opened Obama Presidential Center. It has a Chicago Public Library branch inside of it, but then inside of that branch there’s also a specific reading room with books hand selected by the Obamas and it’s in there.
Ted: Yea, it’s there. It’s a non-circulating room in the presidential library there, so I was like, “Wow.” Because I was looking it up and there’s dozens of copies in the Chicago Public Library, so occasionally I look and they’re all checked out with dozens of holds on all of them. But then I see this listing for one that says "Do not circulate" and I look and go, “Oh my god, it’s in the Obama presidential reading room.”
Then Shane reached out to the librarians—because librarians rock—and asked for a picture with it in the reading room and got it. [To Shane] Good on you!
The Horror Lounge: Awesome! Maybe put that next to a screenshot of that scene from The Four Seasons where he’s reading the first book!
Ted: There you go! Yeah.
The Horror Lounge: What was probably the most rewarding experience when selecting these works? That could apply to the first book as well with selecting the stories, publishing them, then seeing the feedback and the book gets talked about.
Shane: I mean, not to compare it to parenting, but it’s something you create. That you edit and curate. It’s separate from your own writing, right? But it’s so similar, and we both had this thing to kind of present. Then to just have it out there and have people react to it, whether it’s over the top or very excited.
In the first one there were 26 original stories, and 21 in this new one. It’s quite a few stories to get in there and have people talk about. It’s really fun from the very beginning when we send the acceptance, and how excited they are in the email with all the exclamation points.
To see them at events, when you’re reading together, or doing signings and just chatting online. It’s amazing to kind of sit back, and we also have our own works in there that we’re pretty proud of. But then it’s just extra cool to have all these other writers in there and then they get extra notice—not that any of the invitees need extra notice—but then people that might not have read them before will go to their back catalogue, and it generates a lot of hype and book sales for everyone involved.
Ted: Yeah, I have a bunch from Brazil now after they released that down there.
The Horror Lounge: Really?
Ted: Yeah, they released a Brazilian version of it, and the woman who wrote the intro for it tagged us in it, so I got all of them. Haha.
But for me... I think to watch a community around the world grow and to have that sort of core community; in our home places, where we’re from, our relatives, people buying the book. I’d drive and stop at Rapid City and she says, “I keep selling out!” So, then I personally contact our editor and she’s like, “I will make sure she gets them.” Because Rapid City bookstore just can’t keep it in there. Seeing it in rural Washington states in tiny towns who say, “We’ve sold 65 of these.” I always ask for the numbers.
So, from the core community to the larger one around it, it's just been really amazing to see this creation go out into the world and do real things.
And secondarily for me, referring to the academic thing... no one reads what you write! Two or three people will read that, right? But my youngest told me, “That story you wrote in the first one? There’s a whole Reddit on that!” There’s this really long thread about the story that I wrote, and people analyze it! “What do you think his motivation was?” Is he real?” or “Did junior actually commit the crime?” So, the little, stony academic heart goes, “Wow, look at that. People are reading my stuff!”
So that’s been a really cool secondary part of community. To create art and have it go out in the world and affect people. That’s what we’re supposed to do.
The Horror Lounge: Growing up, did you guys read or watch a lot of horror? What were some of your favorite works?
Shane: I didn’t really read a whole ton—outside of Goosebumps and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. I was more of a movie watcher. Watching all the scary movies at an age I probably shouldn’t have. So, I didn’t visit King or Barker or any of the greats early on, and then high school kind of killed my reading love. I came back to it in my 20s and then it just kind of exploded.
Watching Child’s Play as a little kid had me freaked out about toys trying to kill me. The Thing was a favorite. My dad pretended this VHS copy of The Blair Witch Project was from a garage sale, and he said, “Let’s check out what’s on this tape.” I think he had it fast-forwarded past the opening so it just kind of opens with them walking through the forest. As a kid I was blown away. That image of that guy in the corner at the end is still in my head.
Ted: Your dad was a genius, man!
Shane: I’ll have to do that tradition again with my daughter. But I just didn’t consume reading as much. Kind of regret it, but, you know, I got a lot of catching up to do.
The Horror Lounge: You definitely do a lot of reading now.
Shane: Yeah.
Ted: I’ve always been a reader. Even when I was little. I don’t remember not knowing how to read. Which means I read a lot of stuff I shouldn’t have at an appropriate age level. I was a pretty little guy, and I got in trouble for something—I can’t remember—and they put me in this room and they’re like, “Move these books around, or some stupid make-work shit, and so I found this anthology of short stories. I ended up reading The Tell Tale Heart, Monkey’s Paw, The Devil and Daniel Webster. I thought, “We’re onto something here…” I remember being 11 and reading The Cameron.
But I always watched movies, and my favorites are the Universal monster movies. Hands down! I like Frankenstein—it still makes me cry; I’ve seen it a hundred times. We had this cool theatre in the neighborhood—this older couple owned it and did not care how old you were. I saw The Exorcist, which had an X-rating, when I was like 10.
We saw The Exterminator, Friday the 13th, and Halloween all the time. They were the third run or whatever, you weren't getting the first run stuff for just a buck. But I saw I Spit on Your Grave when it came out. I mean, all that kind of stuff I think deeply affected me because I was a reader, so the sort of neural pathways are open to a lot of things, and the combination of all that, and then reading King at 12, and getting to meet Clive Barker in ’83 or ’84!
Me and one other guy in this bookstore. It was great—Clive Barker is a real one, man. The other dude in the shop was like, “Could you sign my book?” and he said, “Can I see your jacket?” The guy had a leather jacket on. He goes, “Yeah!” and Clive Barker just signs it! A huge Baphomet on the back. All this stuff in a silver paint pen. I was like, “Oh my god!” I wished I had another leather jacket because I’d go, “Here you go!”
So, the sort of community that comes out of horror, and horror itself; that’s the goods, man. You can do anything with horror. Once you realize that, all bets are off. You could do anything.
The Horror Lounge: I think with horror, too, the fright is kind of a given emotion when it comes to that genre. But it can encompass so many things. Horror and humor go together so well. Horror and emotion, like what you mentioned earlier with Frankenstein. It’s gothic horror, but at the same time has a lot of emotion to it.
Ted: Tons of it, yeah. The humor thing is mine! Horror is funny. Crime is funny. That shit is funny! So that’s what I write. Those are my things; horror, humor, and crime.
The Horror Lounge: You guys have said that you’re fairly confident that the third book will happen?
Shane: Yeah. 99% sure.
Ted: Yeah, there you go. 99.9% sure.
The Horror Lounge: Do you guys already have any ideas for who you’d like to invite for submissions?
Shane: Yeah, we already have the list compiled and sent. Our publisher already has the whole thing. We’re switching it up in the next one… I’m not sure how much we can say publicly.
Ted: Not much!
The Horror Lounge: I really want to thank you guys for your work facilitating these two books and the third one—which is 99.9% happening—and hopefully the ones after that.
Shane: Yeah man, it’s been a great time.
Ted: For sure. Absolutely, man. Thank you for reaching out and for having us.
Never Whistle at Night Part II: Back for Blood is available from Vintage.
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