Mentally Oddcast Transcript: Carson Fredriksen
An audio version of this podcast can be found here.
More from Carson Fredriksen here and here. Check out a free short story from him here.
00:00:01.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
You are listening to The Mentally Oddcast. My name is Wednesday Lee Friday, and we are brought to you by Sometimes Hilarious Horror Magazine. Find us on Ko-fi.
00:00:12.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
Today's guest is Carson Fredrickson. Carson Fredrickson is a neurodivergent writer from Calgary, Alberta. He enjoys rummaging through his dark, albeit unique imagination to enhance his mundane life. Mundane and Alberta, come on, man, you're making that up. His previous short stories have appeared in, let's see, Communal It, Rooster Republic Press, and Howling Wolf Press.
00:00:38.66
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah His short your biggest fans was named honorable mention in tales from the moonlit paths Halloween challenge in 2022 Wow, that all sounds very impressive Welcome Carson.
00:00:51.20
Wednesday Lee Friday
Thanks for being here Sweet sweet So, you know We like to get started by asking guests to tell us the story of the first horror movie that they remember seeing so let's have it
00:00:52.51
Carson Fredriksen
ah It's very good to be here.
00:01:04.83
Carson Fredriksen
Okay, I remember when I was about seven years old, my brother made me watch Friday the 13th, part eight, Jason Takes Manhattan. And it was back in the days when it was on VHS and the clamshells from the video store. And they had the little stickers on them that told you what the genre was. So it was horror.
00:01:25.13
Carson Fredriksen
And I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this, but that movie actually really scared me as a kid. I thought Jason Voorhees was just absolutely terrifying because he's just like this undead terminator, basically.
00:01:38.40
Carson Fredriksen
you know he yeah he's He's a zombie Jason, yeah, basically.
00:01:38.69
Wednesday Lee Friday
By that point, yeah, he absolutely was.
00:01:43.06
Carson Fredriksen
so And there was a couple times I remember I had to leave the room a few times because I got too scared. But I always came back in and and I did watch the rest of it. And then I watched it again recently and I'm like, this is so cheesy.
00:01:56.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, it is, but like that one also has like adults that are bad.
00:01:57.06
Carson Fredriksen
So.
00:02:01.63
Wednesday Lee Friday
There's like the teacher, the principal, whatever. And he's just like that guy who's a huge dick that endangers everyone else with his like dickishness.
00:02:10.69
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, yeah, and that that seems to be a thing in almost every one of those movies.
00:02:14.13
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and that's all, there's also the, that crazy scene with like the punks trying to like give the girl heroin or something like, yeah.
00:02:23.83
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, yeah.
00:02:23.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
that movie is like for actually, that's like one of the more twisted movies because that has a lot of really weird stuff in it that a lot of because there's also the student that's like trying to blackmail the the teacher into like, thats yeah, that's that's a wild one.
00:02:42.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
And you said how old were you?
00:02:44.50
Carson Fredriksen
About seven, actually.
00:02:45.87
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, okay.
00:02:46.71
Carson Fredriksen
my My mom was clearly doing something else at the time, so...
00:02:49.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
like Yeah, I know some of my guests like their parents super did not want them to watch horror movies and they had to sneak around. My parents were not like that at all.
00:03:01.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
I saw I don't know if you're familiar with Mother's Day, but I saw a horror movie called Mother's Day when I was like 10 or 11. And if you are familiar with it, absolutely not.
00:03:09.31
Carson Fredriksen
ah Yes, i I am aware of it, yeah.
00:03:13.42
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, yeah not not a kids movie, not a family movie. Like I'm not sure I'm old enough to watch that movie now. Honestly, it's a little much. So given that that was your early experience with horror movies, what drew you to write horror?
00:03:32.65
Carson Fredriksen
Well, you know, growing up, uh, I was very lucky because growing up in Canada, there was all these great shows like, are you afraid of the dark and goosebumps and freaky stories.
00:03:40.80
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
00:03:42.82
Carson Fredriksen
And I basically like, they came on freely on TV all the time and I watched them and I was often scared by them, but I was always like intrigued by them.
00:03:52.83
Carson Fredriksen
I always kind of loved being scared when I knew there was no like actual physical danger to it. And then when it was over, I could catch my breath and be like, Ah, good, I handled that. Like, it was so great. And then eventually, though, I found, because later, you know, of course, with my condition, and of course, I also have anxiety disorder, too, I learned that when I was able to handle such, like, scary negative emotions, it kind of helped me deal with, like, the real negative emotions in real life and all the horrors that exist in real life.
00:04:27.06
Carson Fredriksen
and i just always And with writing, I always just kind of really enjoyed it. um Back then, I never really thought I was very good. I just thought, oh yeah, I could write something. And I wrote fan fiction for a few years. But I thought, oh, well, anyone could do that. I'm not especially talented. But then I just started writing my own actual short stories.
00:04:49.45
Carson Fredriksen
when the whole pandemic was going on and I realized I really enjoyed writing them and especially with the horror genre I think there's just a whole multitude of different ideas and it's always the most fun to write because you could write about horrors you see in real life or you could write about something completely imaginary or in a different solar system or under the ocean or anywhere so I've always just kind of found it's a whole well of inspiration for me and I just actually really enjoy scaring people with it and whenever people say they're freaked out by it that's the biggest compliment I can get.
00:05:27.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's awesome. And I think you really hit on one of the things that I think makes horror have the most value is that it teaches you how to deal with things that you may not encounter in your life.
00:05:42.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, you watch Jaws a whole bunch of times, and then seeing a barracuda in the water isn't very scary, which, you know, normally it would be, but you've you've warmed yourself up to it.
00:05:49.81
Carson Fredriksen
ah Exactly.
00:05:53.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
um Yeah, i I love that. And I think, because I think horror You know, I talk a lot about it. It's my genre of choice as well. um And I think that it's still like, like romance is one of the more malign genres and one of the, the kind of genres that if you are passionate about it, you are more likely to be judged for it than if you say that you love dramas or comedies or action movies.
00:06:18.69
Carson Fredriksen
exactly
00:06:21.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay. So apart from horror, what else do you read?
00:06:27.17
Carson Fredriksen
um I like to read in a whole multitude of different genres because I always like to expose myself to different elements and come up with new ideas, but mostly I really love works in the fantasy genre such as Aaron Morgenstern's The Night Circus or especially Matt Haig's The Midnight Library, which I consider to be like one of the best books written this century.
00:06:51.70
Carson Fredriksen
But I also really love mystery and thrillers because it's always something that, especially when it's done well, that it's something that you have to read to the end. Like you can't just be like, oh, I'll read for a bit and put it down. It's like, no, I have to know like what's going on and where does this lead to. So it always keeps my attention. It always makes me flip the pages, which is what a good book should do.
00:07:14.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
No, absolutely. Cool. So I'm aware that you've published a lot of short stories, but you have a debut novel coming out and I was ah looking it up. It's actually like a monster under the water thing, right?
00:07:30.87
Carson Fredriksen
It is. It is coming out um actually on the 25th of January now, so...
00:07:36.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, wow. Nice.
00:07:38.26
Carson Fredriksen
and it's called Beyond the Deep and what it's about is it's about a kid whose family in the early 90s stops at this local motel somewhere deep in the woods and he sees that they have a pool and it's in this outside sort of shack really and he sees this fin rise out of the deep end and he soon learns that anytime his feet aren't touching the deep end It creates a portal between our world and this other world where this creature lives. And although he's fortunate to escape, some of the others are not so lucky. And then years later, he learns that a new recreation center is being built on top of the land that once housed the motel. And of course it has a pool, and he begins to wonder if it's possible that creature has come out of hibernation and is seeking fresh victims.
00:08:31.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I bet it is, right?
00:08:34.71
Carson Fredriksen
That's what I thought because it basically just goes into hibernation and it just yeah realizes it's awake when it begins to hear voices from up above because it can see into our world. It can't go into our world if somebody is standing on the deep end, but it can always see into our world.
00:08:54.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, yikes. So that that hits on a lot of primal fears, because there's always just fear of water in general, fear of the deep end in particular, and fear that things that we don't know about might be watching us.
00:09:09.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
So that's that's a lot of pressure points right there.
00:09:12.90
Carson Fredriksen
Oh yeah.
00:09:13.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
what What's the title?
00:09:15.25
Carson Fredriksen
Beyond the Deep.
00:09:17.06
Wednesday Lee Friday
Beyond the Deep. And would you say that you're inspired by any of the people that Like a lot of your famous underwater writers, you know, you're
00:09:26.87
Carson Fredriksen
ah Well actually it was more I was inspired because I also saw Jaws as a kid and I absolutely loved it because when I was a kid I was absolutely ah obsessed with sharks and shark movies especially.
00:09:41.21
Carson Fredriksen
And me and my cousin used to just watch them all the time, like Jaws and Deep Blue Sea and all these movies. We used to just watch and love them all the time. And it got to a point when when we went swimming in the hotel's pool, she was afraid of swimming in the deep end because she always thought, oh, there's a shark in the pool. And we were always like, oh, really? And she's like, well, is this in the deep end?
00:10:06.75
Carson Fredriksen
And it was funny at the time, but it was just one of those ideas that just stuck in my head and just rummaged around. And I kind of thought, what if it was possible that something like that could actually exist in a pool and only did exist in the deep end?
00:10:22.00
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay. Alright, so I am gonna guess that you're also a fan of B-movies about sharks.
00:10:29.42
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, of course.
00:10:30.63
Wednesday Lee Friday
I know not everybody loves like the super hokey ones. I'm a great fan of those. I now watch Santa Jaws every, every Christmas. It's one of my regulars, but I mean, there's so many good ones.
00:10:42.86
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like I was actually fortunate enough as a kid that like my parents were also into horror movies and shark movies. So we saw the ultimate squalow in the theater during that two weeks stint that it was legal to play it in the United States before Spielberg said, Oh, hell no.
00:11:00.06
Carson Fredriksen
ah Oh, yeah, that oh, yeah, that was that great white great shark movie wasn't yeah.
00:11:04.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
great white Great White is the ah the American release name, but it's an Italian movie.
00:11:06.56
Carson Fredriksen
Yeah
00:11:09.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
And it's got it's got ah James Franciscus from Planet of the Apes in it. And then Vic Morrow is the, like, the quint kind of character.
00:11:17.13
Carson Fredriksen
The quints basically of that movie, yeah.
00:11:18.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. And there's a helicopter death in it. And, like, it' and it's so funny. It actually is is one of your funnier B shark movies, like ah like Shark Attack 3, Megalodon, the one that has John Barrowman in it.
00:11:33.15
Carson Fredriksen
Oh yeah, that's definitely one of my favorites. That's like one of my favorites so bad it's good movies.
00:11:35.80
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I've just, well in it, that one in particular, it I suspected that it was like a directing major's final project and he was showing off how he could use Final Cut Pro to make it look like a shark was swallowing a lifeboat full of people, just swallowing it whole.
00:11:47.15
Carson Fredriksen
ah
00:11:56.20
Carson Fredriksen
Even though you can clearly tell it's just a shark coming out of the water and the raft is like superimposed into there with the people.
00:12:01.86
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and they were using so much stock footage. Like if you watch Shark Week, you've seen a bunch of that movie already because they're taking that same stock footage and just putting screaming people into it. But like the Go Shark movies, like Go Shark 2 is frustratingly well written. It's like, okay, this guy can actually write a script. So why the hell is he writing Go Shark 2?
00:12:28.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
Then again, you know, Thunder Levin is also a super serious screenwriter with, like, actual talent, and and yet he wrote the first four Sharknados, so...
00:12:39.77
Carson Fredriksen
Exactly.
00:12:41.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and the thing is, if you watch the whole series, the whole Sharknado series, it's apparent when he left, because the movies got progressively more ridiculous after the fourth one, but they really stopped being funny, you know?
00:12:55.72
Carson Fredriksen
Yeah, no, they totally did. I kind of feel it was like they were trying to make them so bad. They're good movies, but I personally think that the best ones of those are like when they're unintentional, like they actually thought they were trying to make something really special and amazing, but it's clearly just a piece of crap. So.
00:13:13.80
Wednesday Lee Friday
Sounds like you've seen Doll Shark.
00:13:16.11
Carson Fredriksen
um Yeah, or cocaine sharks.
00:13:19.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah Yeah, and that that really is one of those, like, Carnosaur, like, just jumping on the bandwagon because you heard something else was coming up. Cocaine shark. Because those weren't really even sharks. And I i don't think that was actually cocaine either.
00:13:36.44
Carson Fredriksen
yeah yeah
00:13:36.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, not even in the movie. Like, they weren't even interpreting it as cocaine. Although, I must say, I'm kind of excited for Krak-kun. I haven't seen that one yet.
00:13:46.84
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, I haven't heard of that one.
00:13:49.20
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, it's it's kind of new, um because, you know, there's a couple of good, like, non-Shark movies that you want to keep your eyes on. Like, they're making another Velocipaster.
00:13:58.23
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, I see.
00:13:59.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
Now, have you seen the first Velocipaster?
00:14:02.15
Carson Fredriksen
No, but I'd certainly heard of it, though.
00:14:04.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, you really need to. Um, the thing about it is it honestly has one of the most spectacular special effects I have ever seen because there is no special effect.
00:14:16.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
They literally show you a shot of the street and underneath it, it says FX car explosion.
00:14:23.66
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, geez.
00:14:24.73
Wednesday Lee Friday
And then they cut to a guy on the sidewalk, like falling backwards or surrounded by debris because of the car explosion that did not in fact appear. Plus Voltaire plays an exorcist in that movie.
00:14:38.11
Wednesday Lee Friday
And that's, you know, you you you can't beat that.
00:14:38.52
Carson Fredriksen
oh and Nope, you certainly cannot.
00:14:45.55
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, well, what about under under Paris?
00:14:46.06
Carson Fredriksen
and
00:14:47.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
What did you think of under Paris?
00:14:49.76
Carson Fredriksen
That one, well, I actually really enjoyed that one. um That I actually didn't even think it was a B-movie. i actually felt I was actually really impressed by how well done it was and how it wasn't about like just trying to get as many shark attacks as possible in a few minutes.
00:14:57.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
No, I would agree with that.
00:15:08.64
Carson Fredriksen
like It actually felt like they really wanted to build the suspense to like when they're diving into the thin river, it's so murky and you can't see anything and it's like anything could just be lurking in there. And I actually got like pretty like suspenseful and I actually had to like hold my breath a few times because I thought something was going to happen. And then sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't be either way. It was just like, Oh, wow, it's so amazing.
00:15:34.82
Carson Fredriksen
And yeah, I was impressed with the work on the gore effects and that I thought the acting was pretty solid. And yeah, I always find those ah kind of movies are always like hit and miss as opposed to if you're going to enjoy them or not. But yeah, I was actually super impressed with it.
00:15:53.24
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I agree. I thought it was quite excellent. And I certainly did not see that ending coming because that's something my husband and I joke about a lot is like pretty much every movie of that type.
00:16:04.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, well, how does it end? Oh, it ends with them killing it. What do you know? and But ah but yeah, spoiler alert, that's not how under paris ends, folks.
00:16:13.37
Carson Fredriksen
Uh, no, it doesn't actually. It's, uh, and I was actually pleasantly surprised. It's like, wow. It's like one of those horror movies that actually just goes with the whole, uh, bad ending, basically.
00:16:24.18
Carson Fredriksen
So.
00:16:24.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, it's yeah, it's very much like a zombie movie ending, you know, or or the mist, one of horror's most notorious bleak endings.
00:16:31.81
Carson Fredriksen
Oh yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:16:35.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
um Okay, yeah, because I definitely would put Under Paris as on par with, like, Open Water or 47 meters down, like, the ones where they're really trying and manage to come have just a lot of suspense. I mean, you care about the characters just enough that like, wow, I would rather not watch them get eaten alive. Oh, oops.
00:16:57.39
Carson Fredriksen
yeah And i've I've noticed in a lot of horror movies, especially slashers, they tend to make the characters either like really, really stupid or really unlikable or just really bland because it's like, oh, well, we don't need to develop these people because they're going to die anyway. But yet in this movie, it's like, yeah, I actually did like these people. And yeah, it was actually like a pretty positive experience and there. And even like that one girl who lures all the people down into the catacombs.
00:17:25.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
00:17:25.37
Carson Fredriksen
like is trying to save the shark and it's like and I'm an animal lover too and I definitely want to protect sharks so it's like I could kind of sympathize with that but at the same time it's like yeah it's still a stupid idea but it's like I could understand it at least and that definitely helped out oh well thank you that's great to hear
00:17:40.09
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep, yep, agreed. So I read your short story called When Mom When's Mom Coming Home? And it was creepy as shit, man. It was it was super creepy.
00:17:53.27
Wednesday Lee Friday
um And but like, I'm also a fan of like family centered horror. So I have a couple of questions about this. One, do you have siblings?
00:18:04.23
Carson Fredriksen
I do, I have an older brother.
00:18:07.57
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, you you said that they were having you watch, ah watch horror movies with you. Okay.
00:18:11.94
Carson Fredriksen
Oh yeah.
00:18:12.11
Wednesday Lee Friday
And so, so I assume that this is inspired by your own family, but or would you rather not say?
00:18:16.80
Carson Fredriksen
no oh Oh no, it is actually. This is also kind of a funny experience. So I think around that same time, maybe when I was about like seven or eight or so, ah me, my older brother, and my great aunt, because my mom was out at the time, we watched the first scary movie. And this is even more embarrassing than it, but I actually was scared of that movie just because I thought Grossface was like super creepy looking.
00:18:44.90
Carson Fredriksen
Like, even in a comedy like that, I still thought he looked scary.
00:18:47.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
You're not wrong. You are not wrong.
00:18:49.79
Carson Fredriksen
And I actually got so scared, I actually decided I couldn't watch it. I i could handle Friday the 13th of 48, but I couldn't watch Scary Movie. So I literally excused myself, ah because we were watching it upstairs in my mom's bedroom, and I went down to the kitchen, and I sat at our island,
00:19:07.57
Carson Fredriksen
And I stared out through her screen door, and I just waited until she got home. Because I knew, like, okay, once mom's home, I'm safe. Like, nothing can hurt me. Because that's what you believe as a kid, is that your parents can do anything. They can save you from anything. And it was funny, because this memory popped in my head a few years back. And, of course, my horror mind was like, oh, what if my mom did come home? But it, like, it wasn't my mom. It was someone or something else.
00:19:37.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
00:19:37.60
Carson Fredriksen
and And so yeah, that was just, and I just kind of wrote it and it was just like a nice short story. I didn't feel like I had to go on too long about it. And I was very impressed with how it came out. So.
00:19:50.61
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I mean, it's it's a tight little tail. We'll actually have a link to it in the description um because it is available online. and um Family-centered horror in general, is that a subgenre that you focus on?
00:20:06.85
Carson Fredriksen
um I kind of like to do all kinds of different sub-genres of horror. um I always kind of go with the stuff that scares me more, so anything apocalyptic or anything related to ghosts or demonic possession.
00:20:21.95
Carson Fredriksen
scar or even AI. like That scares me personally, so I tend to kind of focus on that. But family-centric horror, um I think, is also very scary and can be done very well. In fact, I even wrote another story that's actually going to be published in October, actually. That's also a family-centric horror story.
00:20:43.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
Cool. Well, and the thing about that subgenre is that there's so many different kinds of families. You know, cause it's, it doesn't always have to be like the tight knit loving family that goes on a great vacation and something awful happens.
00:21:00.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
There's, you know, a whole world of like wine moms and angry dads and, you know, right.
00:21:05.06
Carson Fredriksen
And just a whole bunch of dysfunctional families, which can also lend itself to that absolutely.
00:21:11.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and that's the thing. Is the dysfunction coming from, like, inside the family? Is it an outside threat? Is it a combination of things? There's, like, so much you can do with it. Plus, it's always relatable.
00:21:22.66
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because everybody has a family, and everybody has a person in their family that is kinda sus. Little bit sketch, you know?
00:21:30.85
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, don't I know it.
00:21:32.66
Wednesday Lee Friday
That mysterious, like, yeah, we don't say those things in front of that relative kind of relative. So um I was looking over your questionnaire, because you know we have everybody do questionnaires, and you describe yourself as having high functioning autism. And I have lots of questions about that, because that's what they're saying about me these days. I have high functioning autism, and I'm like, I don't know what high functioning means, because I'm still kind of a loser at this late date.
00:22:04.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
um But I've heard high functioning autism described as you're just great at masking and you're great at getting by without accommodations. Is that your understanding of the term?
00:22:19.89
Carson Fredriksen
as a kid um i definitely didn't feel like i was masking because i never really thought there was anything different about me like i just acted the way i thought everyone acted and i said what was just on my mind and it came freely And thankfully, I got the support and accommodations I didn't need. But really, it's only in recent years, I've kind of done some masking, but only like socially as the social norm, though, because I think everybody masks to some extent, you know, we smile and nod when, we you know, we don't agree with what people say. We laugh at things that aren't funny, but we try to be polite anyway.
00:22:58.94
Carson Fredriksen
we sometimes agree with people's opinions because we just don't feel like getting into a fight with them or sometimes we say that we've seen or done something even though we've done no such thing because we don't want to be the odd one out so I feel like I do a little bit of masking but in terms of like my condition I'm much more comfortable with it and I think it's just one of the many things that makes me unique so
00:23:24.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
and Okay, but how old were you when you were diagnosed with autism?
00:23:28.36
Carson Fredriksen
I was three years old and at that time it was called, ah i well, they diagnosed me with Asperger's syndrome. So back then that was the thing, but then eventually I think now it's just kind of grouped in under autism or I guess more under the high function autism term.
00:23:49.38
Carson Fredriksen
But yeah, that's basically when I was diagnosed. So growing up, i my mom always mentioned it to me. And she you know God bless her soul. She was so patient with me. And thankfully, she was actually a ah teacher at the same elementary school I went to.
00:24:05.59
Carson Fredriksen
So she was able to you know check up on me and you know talk to the teachers and see how I was doing. So i luckily, I did.
00:24:12.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, that is such a gift. I mean, have people aware of it at that young an age because I mean, I'm in my fifties and I found out two years ago that I had autism.
00:24:14.31
Carson Fredriksen
I know, it totally was.
00:24:23.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
So.
00:24:23.26
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, really?
00:24:24.20
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I need people to go back and adjust a few report cards because I need accommodations. No, it's, well, and yeah I also have ADD, but as a girl who grew up in the 70s, they did know about ADD, but not only was my mom like super resistive to me being tested for anything, they didn't really know how to diagnose autism or ADD in girls.
00:24:48.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
They only knew how it presented in boys. And so if girls weren't presenting that way, they assumed they didn't have it. And now that they know how to diagnose it in girls, it's real, real obvious which girls had it.
00:25:01.68
Wednesday Lee Friday
So there's this rush of women in their forties and fifties that should have been diagnosed 20 or 30 years ago that just weren't and had to, you know, just kind of do the best they can.
00:25:12.82
Carson Fredriksen
No, absolutely.
00:25:13.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
So that is. That's, that's a pretty amazing thing that you were able to be diagnosed at that early age. And it sounds like you didn't really have a, like a stigma and a carry with you with regard to that, that people were not extremely demonstrative about it.
00:25:30.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, did, did you feel like you blended in?
00:25:30.47
Carson Fredriksen
ah No. Uh, I did. Um, I think I was definitely different, but I think most kids, uh, really, uh, kind of loved me or liked me at least because I was so different. i had I had a couple bullies here and there, but I mean, kids can be cruel in general sometimes. So I, uh, I kind of like to think of it more as just, you know, it wasn't really anything about me or my condition. It was just like, you know,
00:25:57.25
Carson Fredriksen
this kid it was, especially back then in the 2000s, like early 2000s, especially, it was like, oh, this kid's different, let's pick on him. But yeah, eventually, especially when I got to like junior high in high school, I pretty much fit in and everyone accepted me for who I was, which was great.
00:26:15.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, that's handy. That's handy. Yeah. I was a fat, weird girl with a dumb name. So I i didn't really have that experience, but that's, I mean, so, so when did you start writing with an eye to publication?
00:26:31.96
Carson Fredriksen
with an eye to publication?
00:26:34.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
00:26:34.88
Carson Fredriksen
um Well, I think it was like right after the pandemic started. um And I realized that and it was sort of one of those light bulb moments because before then I was totally lost on like what I wanted to do with my life and wanted to be in my life.
00:26:51.56
Carson Fredriksen
I initially thought i well actually growing up I had a whole multitude of different things I wanted to be like one day I wanted to be an astronaut the other I wanted to be a janitor the next I wanted to be an actor and then a voice actor but then once the pandemic hit and I sort of had that silvering moment I was like oh I never got to write all the stories I wanted to write and so then I was like oh maybe I could just start writing them and at first I never had an idea I never knew that like people were actually going to accept my work like I just wrote just because I really enjoyed it and it was just kind of a nice
00:27:25.54
Carson Fredriksen
like fun break from reality and especially after work I could just do that but yeah now uh yeah four years uh and that was about four years ago I started writing that so and I'm very happy with the way things have turned out lately my imagination goes a lot deeper than I realized for one thing
00:27:41.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
So let me ask you this, what have you discovered about yourself since you started writing fiction?
00:27:54.35
Carson Fredriksen
But also that I, words really had the power to affect people and I could bring my own fears to the table and face them head on and kind of help deal with them in real life. But I've also learned it's just such a great, like I said, break from reality. And it was just a fun thing I could do. And it kind of was like sort of my decompression time where I could just, you know,
00:28:21.54
Carson Fredriksen
forget about my problems or what's going on in the world and just, uh, focus on my characters and the stakes involved or what I could do to make something scary or beautiful or anything like that.
00:28:34.04
Carson Fredriksen
For example, like my, I had a cat Chevy who sadly, um, I had to put to sleep four years to ago because she was getting old and, you know, had problems with her bowels.
00:28:44.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
Aww.
00:28:44.61
Carson Fredriksen
So I know, but I wrote a story in which, uh, a man's cat also dies. But it comes back to him as a ghost and basically shows him all the realities this cat could have lived and says that despite you know my un time untimely death, I'm still happy I got to be with you. So writing that just I think just helps me with emotions like that. So that's I think one of the best things I've discovered with writing.
00:29:12.06
Carson Fredriksen
so
00:29:13.23
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, yeah, I mean, writing is such a ah vital coping tool, especially for people that are less demonstrative about their thoughts and emotions.
00:29:25.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, people that aren't as a vocal or outgoing tend to use writing ah that way, you know, as a way to to cope with things or to get your emotions out.
00:29:38.24
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's a good like venting tool. And it's interesting.
00:29:40.41
Carson Fredriksen
Yeah, exactly. Cause it's, it's their voice. Like, it's like probably their strongest tool really. Like, you know, their voice and their words and their power do have power.
00:29:51.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep, absolutely. Well, and you also mentioned fanfic, which is something that like I had to learn about. I was initially really down on the very concept of fanfic. I, I actually referred to it once as literary masturbation, and I took a lot of heat for that, even though I'm very pro-masturbation, um, that, uh, that I was, I was real snooty and judgy about it not being, you know, quote unquote, real writing.
00:30:18.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
and and I really had to like learn and adjust about that because what I discovered is that a lot of people do fanfic, they they write fanfic and and read fanfic because not only do they want more of these properties that they love, you know all these different IPs that people do the fanfic in, but also it's a way to explore feelings and situations and characters without having to Do a bunch of world building, you know, because everything is already set up for you. You know, these people, I hate to use the turf as an example, but like, we know who Harry Potter is. We know what Hogwarts is, you know.
00:31:00.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
if you say, you know, they went to Diagon Alley, we already know what that is. You don't have to spend three pages telling us everything about it, because it's all there. And you can just get to the part where you're wrestling with the emotions and, you know, dealing with the situations.
00:31:17.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
So, yeah, I i ah eventually figured out that Fanfic had a lot to offer people that use writing as a coping tool.
00:31:27.41
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, no, absolutely.
00:31:27.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
So,
00:31:28.53
Carson Fredriksen
And I know it gets a bad reputation as cringy or stupid and there definitely are some...
00:31:33.63
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, it and it can be, but so can original stuff.
00:31:37.00
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, absolutely.
00:31:37.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, it's not like, oh, please go ahead.
00:31:37.84
Carson Fredriksen
But you know, when I... Oh, sorry. No, I just learned that like when I really dug deeper, I learned that there was actually a great deal of very well-written fan fiction, even I think stuff that is better than some of the properties it's based off of.
00:31:54.40
Carson Fredriksen
And yeah, it really, and in hindsight, it was a great thing. I learned that because that really, I think helped me, uh, as a writer, because obviously they tell you, uh, Oh, like and when they you say, Oh, I want to be a writer, what should I do first? The first thing they say is read more. So reading such great work like that really did help me, uh, to write better. And especially after I wrote more of my own stuff, uh, my own fiction like that.
00:32:20.01
Carson Fredriksen
And I got more and more positive reviews and people saying like, wow, like this is so well written and felt like I was watching the deleted scene.
00:32:25.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
Cool.
00:32:27.81
Carson Fredriksen
It was just like, wow, like that was the first time I was like, wow, I'm actually good at this. Like I actually could do this.
00:32:34.74
Wednesday Lee Friday
Nice.
00:32:34.89
Carson Fredriksen
So that's been monumental in my help. So.
00:32:39.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, I just had the best idea. I think we need to take a bunch of B-Shark movies and like fanfic them, but the fanfic should be like super incredibly serious.
00:32:49.72
Carson Fredriksen
Yes, right.
00:32:49.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like ah like a doctor that decides to dedicate his life to understanding how Sharknado's happened. And his wife just doesn't understand it. And they have all these huge arguments about it because she's trying to wrap her head around why.
00:33:04.21
Wednesday Lee Friday
He would dedicate his life to stopping Sharknado's and he's like, well, but they're Sharknado's.
00:33:10.16
Carson Fredriksen
is she Yeah, it's like they could happen anywhere.
00:33:14.29
Wednesday Lee Friday
We must save the Velocipaster.
00:33:18.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right, so I'm like frantically writing that down so I don't forget. Don't you hate that when you have an idea and then you can't remember it later because you weren't able to write it down?
00:33:24.14
Carson Fredriksen
and Okay.
00:33:29.10
Carson Fredriksen
Yeah. Thankfully I got, I got this app on my phone that's basically just like a big word pad. And usually, uh, usually like when I'm stoned or something or drunk, like when these ideas come to me, um, I initially, I pull up that app and I'm just like, Oh, I type it all down. And then I'm like, I'm so glad I did. Cause I totally forget about it either. Like a few minutes later to like the next day. And then I look it up and I'm like,
00:33:53.34
Carson Fredriksen
Oh yeah, right, that was a good idea. And sometimes I act on it, sometimes I don't. But either way, it's like I'm glad I at least thought of it, so.
00:34:01.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah I have this weird thing where actually not all the ideas I have when I'm stoned are as brilliant as I think they are at the time.
00:34:10.06
Carson Fredriksen
yeah They're fun and creative, but yeah, it's like they're not always viable. Like you don't know if you could actually write it, so.
00:34:14.85
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
00:34:18.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
Um, so let me ask you this, um, but how do you think that your autism influences your output at all?
00:34:27.52
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, absolutely. um I find that when I'm, because I am super passionate about writing nowadays, and I certainly do want to get more stories out there and, you know, hopefully write some more novels. So yeah, I find that when I dedicate myself to Because my my writing goal, I try to either finish a chapter or try to write 500 words. So I find because I'm so dedicated to it and I'm so passionate about it, I just have this laser-focused guidance that just makes me just write out anything. Even if I have that nagging voice, of course, that tells you, ah, this is crap. This is never going to work. So that definitely helps, I think.
00:35:08.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
Interesting. So what about in terms of subject matter? Do you think that the the kind of awareness that you develop as an autistic person, does that impact the subject matter?
00:35:19.89
Carson Fredriksen
Sometimes, I think because because speculative fiction in general is all about seeing things from a different angle or things completely removed from reality.
00:35:27.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
00:35:30.06
Carson Fredriksen
And because my brain is just naturally wired differently from a lot of people, it just allows me to see the world in a different way and kind of allows me to think of these ideas that kind of exist outside of reality.
00:35:42.74
Carson Fredriksen
And mostly, especially in horror, I'm just like, oh, what if it was like this, but darker? What's the flip side of that? Or, oh, what could be some scary, dark thing to come from this event, let's say.
00:35:53.36
Carson Fredriksen
So no, I think that's definitely like my biggest asset. In fact, I would even say that's like my competitive advantage, really. So um I do.
00:36:01.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
o um Wait, so do you have a day job right now?
00:36:06.55
Carson Fredriksen
I work in a warehouse as a laborer. And it's a very physical job. I do a whole lot of different tasks ranging from receiving items and skids that come in to picking order to even loading and unloading trucks and trailers. But I'm, I find that it's ah not only, it's ah helped me to keep very physically active, but I find at the end of the day when I go home, ah I'm more able to just like relax and just like flex my creative muscle. Cause it's like, okay,
00:36:42.02
Carson Fredriksen
My body's done enough work. Let's let my mind do some exercise now. So usually I'm able to do that. so
00:36:48.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and I would imagine that while that work does sound physically exhausting, it does not sound emotionally exhausting because I know
00:36:56.53
Carson Fredriksen
ah No, I know exactly. Yeah. No, it certainly isn't until it's ah very predictable I'd say for the most part like I know like what I have to do What where you where most things go on the shelves and yeah, especially what's required of me and Yeah, the people are great and they're super supportive of me. And yeah, I fit right in so I
00:37:19.66
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's pretty cool because I know I spent a lot of years doing ah like retail, food service, fast food management, stuff like that, despite having a degree. But I talked to a lot of writers that when they have like front facing jobs, they are so emotionally exhausted at the end of the day that they just don't because I mean, dealing with the public is fucking exhausting.
00:37:29.17
Carson Fredriksen
this is Yeah.
00:37:43.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
Particularly like turns out if you're autistic and you don't know that it's even more difficult because it it I think that people Like like you were saying earlier people don't always have a handle on how often politeness and and decorum in society means that you lie and
00:38:04.47
Carson Fredriksen
yeah to Yeah, to an extent, so.
00:38:05.09
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah And if you have like ah an innate sense of like justice or or truth, not even in like a Superman way, but just in a, well, why would I say that if that's not true? That doesn't make any sense, make it make sense. you know Whether it's like explaining to to people at at a customer service desk, like oh, well, we actually didn't make a mistake. You didn't read this very clear thing right here, and that's why you didn't know what happened.
00:38:33.11
Wednesday Lee Friday
but you can't say that to people. You have to coddle everyone and protect them.
00:38:36.96
Carson Fredriksen
Yeah, no, which it which thankfully in my job, because it works as both a warehouse and a retail environment.
00:38:38.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
you know
00:38:44.39
Carson Fredriksen
Because in the front, we have a retail section where customers can come in and request things and they they go to the back of the warehouse, which is where I work. But thankfully, because I work in the warehouse, I don't really interact with customers or people that much.
00:38:57.90
Carson Fredriksen
And especially if I'm just doing stock, I'm just left completely by myself. Like I just like I'm left alone, I'm just left alone in my own thoughts, and sometimes that's where ideas come from, or I just kind of think about a story I'm working on. and Yeah, it just kind of gives me this whole space to just think of new ideas and think of different scenarios my characters could go through, or even just some random ideas. No, that's definitely ah very helpful.
00:39:26.31
Carson Fredriksen
so
00:39:27.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's really interesting because I talk to so many, not just writers, but musicians and and visual artists and filmmakers. And more than anything, they just want to make enough money at the creative side of their life that they can quit their day job. And it doesn't really sound like that's on your mind.
00:39:46.82
Carson Fredriksen
um it is on my mind but i'm just kind of i guess i guess and to some extent i'm ah a bit realistic because i know like i'm not success doesn't happen overnight and you know i certainly uh like i i i do have a book coming out now but i know it's probably not just going to make me instantly like steven kane overnight like i know It's like a very ah marathon, not a sprint. So I just, uh, I would, I would absolutely love to just like write full time. That's definitely like my dream job, but it's kind of in the same vein of like, Oh, I would really like to win the lottery, but I know it's probably not going to happen. So I'm just happy that I would love to keep writing, keep entertaining people and just keep enhancing my craft.
00:40:32.06
Wednesday Lee Friday
Nice. Nice. Well, that leads me to a question I was planning to ask, which is what is, is there something like maybe a specific sales goal or an award or, uh, you know, a review from a specific person, something that would make you feel like you quote unquote made it as a writer.
00:40:53.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
Is there such a thing in your mind?
00:40:54.83
Carson Fredriksen
Well, as a well as a horror as a horror writer, I think if I had a glowing review from Stephen King, that would be like you know winning the Academy Award. That would just be amazing.
00:41:05.61
Carson Fredriksen
like that' that To me, that's like you really made it as a writer.
00:41:05.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
00:41:10.00
Carson Fredriksen
But otherwise, like, no, I think it's kind of just reflecting what I just said a few seconds ago. um No, it's mostly just ah I would just love to if I knew that I could just sustain myself on writing, then I really knew I made it as a writer because I don't feel like I need to win a Pulitzer Prize or have like a street named after me or like have a short story contest named after me.
00:41:33.92
Carson Fredriksen
It's like I don't really need any of that.
00:41:35.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, dude.
00:41:35.64
Carson Fredriksen
I just want to keep I just want to like keep writing and keep working at it. And then hopefully if like I could make a living off of that, then I could sit but back and be like, wow, I have like officially made it.
00:41:48.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
Nice. Nice. Well, I have to say, dude, um you have the same last name as a character in one of my all-time favorite movies. It's not even a horror movie. um Well, you know, Mr. Fredrickson from Up.
00:42:02.01
Carson Fredriksen
Oh yes, ah although it is spelled differently, which is very interesting because a lot of people when they say Fredericton, they think you spell it with a C in between the I and the K, but it's like, no, it's just R-I-K at the end.
00:42:15.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:42:18.37
Carson Fredriksen
So, but yeah, no, I did share.
00:42:19.52
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's German, right?
00:42:20.82
Carson Fredriksen
yeah Oh, yeah. Well, my dad's side was Norwegian, so.
00:42:26.29
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:42:28.17
Carson Fredriksen
So, but yeah, no, it was funny though because
00:42:28.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right.
00:42:31.19
Carson Fredriksen
because his first name's Carl, and I actually had a grandfather named Carl, so yeah. I actually can say that.
00:42:41.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
Cool. So we um we do often ask our guests with consent um to talk about a time when they felt ah genuinely in fear for their life. And you indicated that you do have something that you want to share about that. So please do.
00:43:00.40
Carson Fredriksen
and Okay. Well, um, I guess, yeah, essentially just when the whole pandemic officially got declared by the WHO, that was a really terrifying moment. Cause I realized, um, I, being because I was born in 1994. So I like pretty much grew up like pretty peaceful and happy. And like, I didn't even have to worry about like the cold war or anything like that. So it was like very peaceful. And then.
00:43:30.32
Carson Fredriksen
Suddenly there was this big thing where this thing that we thought was just going to be a little problem became a big problem. And again, as in my condition, I always like certainty. I like to know what's going to happen and how I'm going to handle it. And this was just like pulling the rug out from under my feet and having no idea what was going to happen. I didn't know if I was going to get sick. I didn't know if my family was going to get sick. I didn't know if I would still have a job throughout everything. I was worried about like how.
00:44:00.10
Carson Fredriksen
other people in the world were doing because I'm very empathetic. I kind of take on a lot of other people's problems and worry about it. So, you know, and I feel bad for them and that makes me feel bad.
00:44:08.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow, you must be having a hard time right now, my goodness.
00:44:12.07
Carson Fredriksen
Yeah, well, that's ah I'm trying to like just remember to, yeah, like definitely support your sympathy, but definitely don't carry everyone's weight on your shoulders. so And so, but basically, but basically though, it was like, anyway, so it was that one time when I realized that I was like, I had no idea what the future was going to hold for me.
00:44:23.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
00:44:35.53
Carson Fredriksen
But yet there was like a ah positive or a glimmer as like my mom likes to call them, uh, that came out of it. And it was just like, yeah, I just discovered I really enjoyed writing.
00:44:45.86
Carson Fredriksen
And it was like, I found out it was a coping tool. It was something that was a lot of fun. It was something I loved doing. And it was, I knew that it was something that I wanted to do for the rest of my life, because even after rejections, cause I've gotten plenty of rejections, uh, and even after all the rejections and after all the, uh, ideas that sometimes don't come with fruition or some stories that I write that I abandoned because they didn't work, which I have a few of those too.
00:45:02.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm.
00:45:15.56
Carson Fredriksen
I even started work on one book that I got about 71 pages in. before I was just like, if this isn't doing it for me. So and but even despite all that, I was like, you know what, I'm glad I did it anyway, because I'm having so much fun with that.
00:45:29.36
Carson Fredriksen
So it was definitely the time I was most afraid for my life. But at least I'm I can kind of look at the flip side and be like, okay, like, what did this teach me? What did this ah make me realize?
00:45:39.98
Carson Fredriksen
And it it kind of made me realize I'm actually a lot more resilient than I give myself credit for.
00:45:46.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, that's a great lesson.
00:45:46.57
Carson Fredriksen
and So, you know,
00:45:47.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
and
00:45:47.99
Carson Fredriksen
Absolutely, so and especially in this day and age. It's just something that just keeps reminding me of that so.
00:45:56.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned you didn't want to talk religion or politics, which is a huge hunk of what we do around here. So I actually like, I was super stressed about it. I'm like, wait, so I can't take any question in that direction.
00:46:10.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
What do I do? like Well, cause you know, I'm, I'm super progressive and super out loud and proud about it. And so, and, and I'm also, you know, like, like you, I'm, I'm empathetic and injustices.
00:46:25.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
I like focus on them and they make me furious. And it just feels like everything in our government is one giant injustice right now.
00:46:35.34
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, yeah.
00:46:35.66
Wednesday Lee Friday
So yeah, it's, it's a little much.
00:46:37.23
Carson Fredriksen
but But, you know, yeah, and I do a bit of a doom scrolling, too. Like, I try to look up some positive news, but then it ends up just getting worse and worse and worse. so
00:46:46.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, my God, if you're on any meta platform, that's all you're going to get because that's what they want.
00:46:47.34
Carson Fredriksen
ah again
00:46:51.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
They want everyone angrily responding to everything. So they're only showing you things that are going to be upsetting.
00:46:57.04
Carson Fredriksen
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, thankfully, I was able to mostly distance myself from social media because I didn't really enjoy it much anyway. But especially nowadays, I think especially after 2020, I was just like, yeah, I think I'm done.
00:47:12.31
Carson Fredriksen
Like I do have a LinkedIn account, but I mean, that's mostly business. And thankfully i' I'm actually subscribed to this one group that is about writing and it always has these like positive mantras and quotes on it.
00:47:24.63
Carson Fredriksen
So it's actually kind of nice to like pull it up and be like, wow, that's a nice thought actually. So I'm just going to keep it like that. So, so thankfully I was able to kind of take a break from all that because I just realized, uh,
00:47:32.15
Wednesday Lee Friday
Now I'm...
00:47:36.95
Carson Fredriksen
It wasn't making me happy and I would probably be better without it. so And I knew that would probably be a detriment to, you know, my possible success as a writer because I knew like a lot of writers have social media, but I was like, you know, it's a small price to pay for having better mental health and being able to sleep better.
00:47:57.17
Carson Fredriksen
So I definitely don't regret it. So.
00:48:00.69
Wednesday Lee Friday
So what's your marketing plan then?
00:48:03.23
Carson Fredriksen
My, martin um. Well, I like to be interviewed on podcasts. That's always a good start.
00:48:09.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, if you find some fool to unw invite you.
00:48:09.84
Carson Fredriksen
so
00:48:12.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
um
00:48:12.75
Carson Fredriksen
ah and But no, I do have a website, though. CarsonFredrickson.com. where i It's like my blog, basically, where I try to post things on there.
00:48:22.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:48:24.07
Carson Fredriksen
so And yeah, I mostly post on there, and I mostly just, like I said, just keep writing, keep sending stuff out there. And yeah, I get invited to interviews.
00:48:34.62
Carson Fredriksen
This is actually the first interview I've ever had, but hopefully I'll get more in the future.
00:48:38.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, no way.
00:48:40.29
Carson Fredriksen
So yeah, no, this is the first one I've ever been interviewed for that's not been for a job, so.
00:48:48.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow, too bad we're not hiring.
00:48:49.70
Carson Fredriksen
I know, right?
00:48:49.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
um So if you ah wanted to offer advice to people with autism who want to become writers for publication, what kind of advice do you think you would have to offer that is unique to you?
00:48:50.62
Carson Fredriksen
that is So.
00:49:08.48
Carson Fredriksen
I would say if you have an idea in your head just write it down. Just get it out of your head and get it onto the page or even the paper if you prefer to write it longhand because even if you like don't worry about what people might think of it. Don't worry about if it's going to sell or not. Don't worry about like what direction you want to take it in. Don't worry about like what kind of genre it is or if it's a mix of genres or even something completely different. Just write it down on the page because honestly, you'll probably be more likely happier that it's actually on the page instead of just stuck in your head and possibly forgotten, which is possibly the worst thing to do.
00:49:52.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
i would Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. um Have you ever done the NaNoWriMo?
00:50:00.72
Carson Fredriksen
I attempted it, ah actually, like the first book that I mentioned that I wrote, I tried to do it that way. And then that kind of petered out. So I was just like, if no, thanks like that.
00:50:12.32
Carson Fredriksen
And that was like a tough decision. But at some point, you're just kind of like, ah yeah, I'd rather just put my energy towards something that I am passionate about and I want to see come to an end as opposed to something you're only like mildly interested in or only slightly interested in.
00:50:25.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
No, sure, sure.
00:50:27.84
Carson Fredriksen
And so there was that. But I also, you know, but other times, like Beyond the Deep, that was one I actually started to work on in November, because it was one of those ideas, like I said, that's just been rummaging around in my head. And I was like, oh, I can make it into a book. But then, of course, there's always that, you know,
00:50:48.34
Carson Fredriksen
devil's advocate of your brain that says, Oh, well, you know, might not actually be long enough to be a book or might not actually work out, or you might not have like good characters or pacing might be off. And it's like, you've never written a book before. You've only written short stories. How good could it be? You know, you know, shit like that. And so basically, but then eventually I was just like, you know, what the hell, I'm just going to start writing it anyway. And I never did finish it in November. It took me about a, about four months to complete but either way it was a good excuse just to like get an idea down on the page and just keep writing and that's actually one of the more fun things I've learned about writing is just the rough crappy draft like your first draft because you don't have to worry about if like the story works or if the plot works or if it's consistent it's just like okay this happens then this happens then this happens because of this and then yeah you just wrote it
00:51:42.76
Carson Fredriksen
And I found that nine times out of 10, what I wrote was actually better than I thought it would be.
00:51:48.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, it's always nice when you have that like, I mean, I like to write something and then set it aside for a while and go back to it. And cause I always remember everything as sucking and not like matching what I'm trying to do in my mind.
00:52:04.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
But sometimes when you go back, it's like, wait, this isn't as bad as I remember. This is actually quite competent, you know?
00:52:10.76
Carson Fredriksen
Yeah, that's a great feeling when that happens.
00:52:13.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
Totally, totally. so um So if somebody is unfamiliar with your work, um but what where would you say is the best place to start?
00:52:24.19
Carson Fredriksen
I would suggest going to my website or even just googling my name, Carson Fredrickson, and then finding, because that's what I find a lot of people do nowadays, is that if you're wondering who someone is, you just Google them, and then it's like, oh, they're this and this person.
00:52:36.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
00:52:38.90
Carson Fredriksen
so
00:52:39.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, don't ask chat GPT because they will lie to you about who people are.
00:52:42.47
Carson Fredriksen
Yeah, exactly. But no, I would suggest that going to my website or, like I said, googling my name and looking up my short stories because I find that horror works the best in a shorter format.
00:52:55.62
Carson Fredriksen
And I've had quite a few stories already like published online so far. And you're familiar with Camp Crystal Lake publishing.
00:53:04.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh yeah.
00:53:06.28
Carson Fredriksen
They do the Flash Fiction Contest.
00:53:09.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
00:53:09.71
Carson Fredriksen
And a couple of my stories have actually been ah honored as nominations, actually. I've never gotten the first, second, or third place, but I have actually gotten honored, though, and I've gotten people liking and commenting on it, which was amazing.
00:53:25.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's awesome.
00:53:26.00
Carson Fredriksen
So I would suggest, that yeah, no, so I would suggest starting with that first, and then maybe if it's their cup of tea, they could check out my book.
00:53:35.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
OK, and and you said that drops next week.
00:53:37.83
Carson Fredriksen
Uh, yep, on January 25th, so a week from today, yeah.
00:53:40.23
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, so it will have dropped by the time this episode airs.
00:53:43.26
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, yes, and, uh...
00:53:44.15
Wednesday Lee Friday
So you can get it now, now, now.
00:53:46.79
Carson Fredriksen
Exactly.
00:53:47.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
um After you're done listening to the episode, obviously.
00:53:47.27
Carson Fredriksen
as Oh, yes, of course. so um But, yeah, no, it's, uh, yep, it'll be coming out on Amazon, and thankfully it'll be both a paperback and an e-book copy.
00:54:01.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
Cool. Cool. Who did your cover?
00:54:04.43
Carson Fredriksen
Uh, Mia Dahlia. if that name rings a bell.
00:54:09.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
Actually, yes, she's gonna be in our magazine next month.
00:54:13.99
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, yeah, no, she's definitely a talented writer. In fact, one of her stories actually got featured in the Camp Crystal Publishing Shallow Fiction Contest, which was amazing.
00:54:26.01
Carson Fredriksen
And yeah, and and thankfully I kind of, after, cause I sent it out to a few places, but then I sent it out to my publisher right now and and they actually accepted it and it was incredible.
00:54:26.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
00:54:39.92
Carson Fredriksen
And after that, I kind of figured, oh, they'll probably ask me for a cover. So I literally drew this kind of idea that I had of like somebody's leg in a pool and then this like, uh,
00:54:52.02
Carson Fredriksen
you know, thin hand cloth thing is coming out from the depths to, depths to grab them. And so I drew it and then Mia, who, you know, was amazing to work with, uh, took that and turned it into something really creepy and memorable and even gave my name like a cool, like white and red text to it.
00:55:11.39
Carson Fredriksen
And I was just like, wow, this is incredible.
00:55:11.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, sweet.
00:55:15.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
Cool. Yeah, actually, it's funny because she did send us a great story, which which I accepted. um It was like a perfect fit for the issue. And then when I sent the contract, I had spelled her name wrong because I, you know, spelled it like the flower and like, whoops.
00:55:32.94
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, really?
00:55:33.85
Wednesday Lee Friday
And she was so cool about it.
00:55:33.90
Carson Fredriksen
Wow.
00:55:35.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and the thing is, I get pretty salty when people spell my name wrong because my name is Wednesday, Lee Friday, and everyone should know how to spell those things right now. You know, if if you're an adult in the work world, Wednesday should not be something that you still can't spell.
00:55:48.84
Carson Fredriksen
Yeah. Yeah, people.
00:55:51.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
So then when,
00:55:52.09
Carson Fredriksen
Yeah. You know, it's like people ah like misspelled my last name, like all the time. It's kind of a joke, like, you know. If I had a nickel every time it happened, I, you know, wouldn't have to work anymore.
00:56:02.65
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, i I definitely checked it twice because that's.
00:56:03.00
Carson Fredriksen
So. Yeah. So, but I mean, but at least I could understand why people might say, uh, put a C in Rick or even spell it S O N cause it's Frederick's son.
00:56:12.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
00:56:14.53
Carson Fredriksen
And they don't think, Oh, an E goes there, but it's like, and they don't think, Oh, there's an O that goes there, not an E, but it's like, yeah, no, it's Fred Rixson. In fact, one of the places that published my story actually spelled it, uh, Fred er Rixson.
00:56:28.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
Ah.
00:56:28.82
Carson Fredriksen
So it's like, oh, that's just my alias now.
00:56:33.69
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I have a friend actually who, um her her actual name and her ah pen name are really close, but her pen name is basically the way that people typically misspell her name.
00:56:47.55
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, really?
00:56:48.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
So yeah, she just used it as a pen name instead of like, correcting people over and over and over again. And she she actually um got picked up by a major publisher because of fanfic she was writing a bunch of sherlock fanfic and uh an agent side and was like wow you're really talented would you like to you know have an agent and yeah she did so so yeah another reason to get into fanfic too so uh so what are you looking forward to in terms of books and movies that are coming soon well what's what's coming up
00:57:17.53
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, absolutely. I never know what might happen.
00:57:27.95
Carson Fredriksen
ah Related to horror or just kind of like any movie in general?
00:57:30.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I mean, I would think a lot of it would be horror, but in general, you know, what, what are you looking forward to?
00:57:35.74
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, yeah. Well, I really am definitely looking forward to Osgoode Perkins, The Monkey, coming out next month.
00:57:42.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, I was just going to say, I hope he brings up the.
00:57:45.69
Carson Fredriksen
Because I saw long legs and it was unbelievably creepy. like It was so good. And I realized this guy was so good at writing horror.
00:57:52.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
Dude.
00:57:56.30
Carson Fredriksen
And then I found out, wow, he's adapting one of Stephen King's short stories? ah Yeah, I'm interested.
00:58:01.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, that's the thing.
00:58:02.25
Carson Fredriksen
so
00:58:02.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
When I first saw a thing, I'm scrolling on Facebook and I see Osgood Perkins, James Wan, Stephen King. And I'm like, this is a prank. There's, there's no possible.
00:58:14.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, and it's coming out in February. Yeah. Shenanigans. There's no way that's real. That's too perfect. And then there was a trailer.
00:58:23.21
Carson Fredriksen
oh Yeah, and it was like yeah super creepy. So yeah, I'm definitely excited for that and I'm also excited for the Hard Eyes movie that looks like a fun Valentine's Day flasher Nice dad have another one Right.
00:58:34.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, yeah, it's got real My Bloody Valentine vibes.
00:58:38.25
Carson Fredriksen
It's like it's nice to have another one on the shelf for those movies. So and oh and especially I think the biggest one though I'm excited for is 28 years later and
00:58:49.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, yes.
00:58:49.44
Carson Fredriksen
because I've loved the other movies and the fact that Danny Boyle once again is returning for this and I actually saw Nosferatu in the theater and the trailer for that movie ah was like before the actual movie and yeah seeing it in like a theater was like wow okay this is amazing so yeah that is probably the one I'm most excited for
00:59:09.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right on. Cool. Well, yeah, I definitely want to talk some more about Osgoode Perkins. So you said you saw Long Legs. Have you seen any of his other stuff?
00:59:18.30
Carson Fredriksen
I have not, actually, but I think I will now, though.
00:59:22.43
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I would, I would ah recommend it highly. The one, uh, you know, the one, I forget the title now with the girl school and devil worship and stuff. He's, he's very into the scary Satanism thing, which I think
00:59:37.33
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, he- Absolutely.
00:59:39.15
Wednesday Lee Friday
I think that turns off a lot of people because it's so like not based in real life Satanism, but i i just like i'm ah I'm a member of Satanic Temple. I give them money regularly because I think they do good work.
00:59:54.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
But I also appreciate like Satanism as a genre. Like you don't have to believe vampires are real to to watch a vampire movie and enjoy it. So to me, that depiction of Satanism is just as, you know, it it's a genre.
01:00:11.70
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's not any sort of like depiction of real life.
01:00:14.63
Carson Fredriksen
Oh yeah. Oh absolutely. But I think especially just Osgood Perkins is just kind of one of those people that just like really understands horror and what makes good horror and like how to like and also how to make a good horror movie too.
01:00:27.74
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, he certainly got the pedigree for it, my goodness.
01:00:32.68
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean...
01:00:32.88
Carson Fredriksen
So yeah no definitely excited to see more of his work and it's also great that just studios like A24 and Neon are Producing these independent horror movies now because I sort of feel that's more what people want to see nowadays than movies.
01:00:47.41
Carson Fredriksen
So I'm also yeah, I'm also proud it was filmed in my home province, which is great it was filmed in Edmonton actually
01:00:48.29
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and the thing is, even if a experimental movie is not to your taste, like I did not enjoy Skinema Rink, but I'm really, really glad it exists because I'm glad that people are funding movies that make those kinds of choices. You know, I... Oh, really? Neat. Oh, I forgot, they filmed like everything in Canada. I found that out when The X-Files was a thing.
01:01:15.17
Carson Fredriksen
Oh yeah, and The Last of Us 2, because they actually, some of those, actually, one part of the episode was actually filmed in my hometown, actually. And it was actually filmed kind of like down the street where I grew up, which was amazing.
01:01:28.70
Wednesday Lee Friday
Neat. Neat.
01:01:32.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wait, so I was going to say something. Oh, I was going to, I was going to talk more about Osgood Perkins, I think. Cause, um, well, you know, he was in, um, he had that little cameo in psycho two playing the young Norman, which I don't know.
01:01:38.88
Carson Fredriksen
Oh yes.
01:01:47.17
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, yeah, he was, wasn't he?
01:01:48.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
Have you, have you, have you seen all the psycho sequels? Cause some people would say there's too many, but I think there's just enough.
01:01:51.86
Carson Fredriksen
I have. ah Oh, yeah. that and No, I have, actually.
01:01:59.11
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, it's it's so neat because Mick Garris, the who directed Psycho IV, is actually pretty active on the meta platform.
01:01:59.30
Carson Fredriksen
So.
01:02:05.55
Wednesday Lee Friday
So I've gotten to actually talk to him about Psycho IV several times.
01:02:09.60
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, yeah, he's very sociable and outgoing and willing to talk about his movies or even any other movie in general.
01:02:17.57
Wednesday Lee Friday
and And I actually didn't know that and I talked some absolute trash about the ending of his version of The Shining and he saw it and And it's a drag for me because my name is is memorable.
01:02:25.08
Carson Fredriksen
Oh. let
01:02:32.20
Wednesday Lee Friday
So people tend to remember when I say something insane online. So yeah. but But yeah, I was always a ah fan of Anthony Perkins, not just for the Psycho movies, although I love them all.
01:02:48.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
He always had such a good handle on playing mentally ill characters. You know, like, Fear Strikes Out is just pitch perfect, and I will always, always hate ah the movie reviewers that bashed it, because ah
01:03:04.03
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, really?
01:03:06.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, that's like my whole like hatred for Gene Siskel and Richard Roper and like all those guys are just like, nah, you know, get to say Fear Strikes Out is a bad movie because Anthony Perkins doesn't, you know, that he obviously didn't play baseball.
01:03:17.62
Carson Fredriksen
Yeah.
01:03:22.36
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's not a movie about baseball any more than like, you know, that's like saying, you know, the guys on Walking Dead don't look like they've ever actually shot a zombie.
01:03:24.60
Carson Fredriksen
Yeah, exactly.
01:03:31.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like that's not that you don't have to like.
01:03:33.63
Carson Fredriksen
Yeah, exactly. You know, they just kind of pick it apart like that. So and it's kind of the I was like, it's like this one joke I heard where it's like, I feel like it was almost illegal for critics to give good reviews to horror movies back in the day, because they were always trashing them.
01:03:48.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
01:03:50.67
Carson Fredriksen
But of course, people were like, Oh, I want to go see it because you hate it so much.
01:03:55.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, Cisco and Ebert hated slashers. Like, they both seem just personally offended by the entire genre. All the Halloween movies, all the Friday the 13th movies, they just bashed and bashed and bashed. And even as a kid, I was like, well, why do you go see it then? No one's making you.
01:04:13.82
Carson Fredriksen
and Actually, there was this one cool story, though, I read, that this guy actually worked with Roger Ebert, and his son um wanted to say to his dad, like and his dad was like, oh, like you know my son really loved your show, but he totally disagrees about your horror movie reviews.
01:04:31.68
Carson Fredriksen
And Roger Ebert actually wrote back to him, saying, disagreeing is good. It means you know your own mind. And I was just like, wow, that's cool. like That was amazing.
01:04:40.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
Nice. ah Yeah, I would agree. That's, that's pretty positive. Nice. Nice. All right. I'm just looking over my list, making sure we covered everything. Was there, uh, was there anything that you wanted to talk about that we did not get to?
01:04:59.79
Carson Fredriksen
Um, no, I think that was about everything. I mean, I might think of something, I might think of something later being like, oh, I should have brought that up, but.
01:05:03.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, you know, right.
01:05:10.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, you know, what you actually mentioned, um, smoking weed and getting drunk.
01:05:13.59
Carson Fredriksen
Uh, I use, I, I used to smoke weed, but then it was kind of like not so good for my lawns.
01:05:15.11
Wednesday Lee Friday
Um,
01:05:20.81
Carson Fredriksen
I didn't really enjoy it. So nowadays I'm actually more into the edibles now, which now they come out with drinks now.
01:05:25.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah okay.
01:05:27.63
Carson Fredriksen
And which I actually think are more effective because they they kick in a lot faster and there's a lot of great flavors, whether it's like soda or tap water or sparkling tap water, basically, or even just like.
01:05:41.15
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I saw Amazon had like weed soda, but I haven't bought any yet. It seems kind of expensive and I didn't think it would taste good.
01:05:47.98
Carson Fredriksen
And now that's the downside. But then it's like, and then you look at the flip side and it's like, Oh, maybe this is teaching me that I shouldn't do so much of this. Cause you know, it hurts my bank account and it's like, Oh yeah, you got a point.
01:05:57.80
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah Yeah, there's that.
01:05:59.78
Carson Fredriksen
Cause I'm doing a dry January right now, uh, which I try to do every year. And of course it's like, Oh, like some days it's like, Oh man, I wish I had a drink.
01:06:10.80
Carson Fredriksen
And it's like, Oh yeah, I'm not drinking. So it's like, Oh, just do one of these cannabis drinks instead. So.
01:06:17.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I don't drink very often, but I'm pretty sure I'll have a drink on Monday. um Just because, you know.
01:06:25.87
Carson Fredriksen
ah Oh, yeah, absolutely. So.
01:06:28.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I think the last time I had i had I had two drinks on election night. and because like I was a Kamala ambassador, so I was like super, super pumped to take at least Michigan.
01:06:39.29
Wednesday Lee Friday
even it it It really did not occur to me that it it could go down like it did.
01:06:44.11
Carson Fredriksen
Yeah, so.
01:06:44.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
like i i I just didn't think it was possible. But then I started getting nervous and I ended up having a couple drinks. But let me ask you this. um What is the relationship for you between between writing and smoking and weed or in taking weed in whatever form?
01:07:02.26
Carson Fredriksen
Um, um, well, well, I think it differs for a lot of people.
01:07:02.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
Is is there one?
01:07:08.14
Carson Fredriksen
Um, I think for me personally, it just kind of, uh, Mo for the most part, like, especially when I'm just like Netflix and chilling, it just kind of relaxes my brain. And I find that the best ideas come when you're not really thinking of anything or not really trying to think about writing or trying to solve a story dilemma.
01:07:29.31
Carson Fredriksen
And you're just sitting there and just randomly a thought comes in your head and you're just like, Oh yeah, that would be a really good story. And despite what I said earlier about like trying to get everything down on either paper or my app, sometimes I do just kind of let ideas, uh, come and go. Cause sometimes it's just like, wow, that's a really good idea. Maybe it'll be something someday.
01:07:50.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
do Do you have like a big idea file with where you keep all your ideas together?
01:07:54.36
Carson Fredriksen
Uh, kind of. Basically, it's just a bunch of different notes on my app, so yeah. And sometimes I go through and I'm like, oh yeah, that was pretty good. Or, oh yeah, I did that. Or, uh, no, that doesn't work, so.
01:08:08.57
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay. So do you have any questions for me? Because I do like to give guests an opportunity to ask me something if they want to.
01:08:17.02
Carson Fredriksen
Uh, yes, I do, actually. um I understand that running your own independent publication takes a lot of time and effort, but what's the one thing that makes it really rewarding for you and makes you glad you did such an independent publication like sometimes Hilaria Tor?
01:08:37.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
um My favorite part is ah telling people that they got accepted, um selling ah sending people their first contract. people i mean that's you know Publishing people that are being published for the very first time is super exciting.
01:08:53.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
and the fact that we I say we're able to pay people. Right now, I'm like selling off collectibles to pay our writers. but you know I really believe in what we're doing. The stories that we're getting are so good and it gives me such joy to not only help these writers feel more legitimized because they're getting paid for their work and it's getting published and more people are going to see it, but also just to be able to to share so much great work with people.
01:09:24.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
that like that's why I really wish we could you know grow the audience more. It's not so much like, oh, I want people to pay me for this magazine, but the work is is so good and everybody is just so passionate about what we do.
01:09:37.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
There are writers from all over the world that are sending me work. I'm publishing guys from like Poland and Ukraine. And it's great because, you know, we we pay ah for for unpublished stories, we pay $25 a piece, which means that any writer that we publish is able to then join the Horror Writers Association as a ah as an affiliate member. Like that's that gives them the requirement to do that if that's something that they want to do.
01:10:05.73
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, really?
01:10:05.87
Wednesday Lee Friday
and It makes me so happy to be able to to provide that opportunity for people.
01:10:12.26
Carson Fredriksen
ah Well, that's great. That's very nice to hear.
01:10:16.22
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. and And it's just, I mean, I'm so proud of it because really I started sometimes hilarious horror as a Patreon for myself. And the point was to keep me writing short stories on a regular basis because I would be accountable to people.
01:10:30.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, and accountability is a big motivator for me.
01:10:31.81
Carson Fredriksen
ah Right, yeah.
01:10:34.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
And then I was trying to think of ways to make it more valuable so that people felt like they were getting their money's work and worth. And I said, well, I'll just turn it into a magazine. And then I, you know, the magazine itself, like the design was good. We got a great logo.
01:10:51.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
and And I said, well, this is stupid. I shouldn't have a magazine just for me. I need to be publishing people. I know so many great writers. And it just kind of grew from there. And once people found out that we were a paying market, I just got deluged with all these wonderful submissions. We actually had to close submissions. They're closed right now until I get the next issue out next week. It's actually the same day as your book. It's the 25th.
01:11:16.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
so um
01:11:16.92
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, wow. Yeah.
01:11:18.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, so so once the next issue comes out, I can open up submissions again. we're We're full for the issue after that, but we will be looking for stuff to publish in the fall. And we are also we also um are looking for cover art as well.
01:11:28.97
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, cool.
01:11:32.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
We we um can only pay $25 for cover art, which is certainly not considered a professional rate. Um, so we we want to be real upfront about that. that We can't pay a ah professional rate for cover designs, but it is still kind of cool to have your work on a magazine cover.
01:11:49.73
Wednesday Lee Friday
So, and well, and we've also, we've had some great artists too.
01:11:50.12
Carson Fredriksen
Oh absolutely.
01:11:53.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
We had, um, we had Grayson Wilcox do a cover and they are just. But yeah I mean everybody does these wonderful little horror things um Queen Rowan Dex has done a couple of covers for us now And they are wonderful So we're really fortunate in that way and in fact now that I know that that Mia Dahlia does visual art I'm gonna hit her up for a cover too.
01:12:15.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
I think Hey Sweet sweet I will definitely pester her about that
01:12:16.60
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, I would recommend that. She's done an amazing job with it. so
01:12:25.95
Carson Fredriksen
yeah and She's very good with corrections too, because when she did the cover initially, ah that nails or the claws of the creature were white, but I wrote it to be black and I just adjusted it to her.
01:12:38.25
Carson Fredriksen
And she was like, oh, no problem. I made him creepily black. And yeah, it looked amazing. So I would definitely hit her up for some art suggestions.
01:12:43.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
cool sweet sweet because i mean my husband does like graphic design so he does that part of the cover but for the actual art like we in this house are not illustrators we need people to do that sort of thing for us all right man
01:13:01.37
Carson Fredriksen
So yeah, no, I am definitely not an illustrator either. So not professional anyway.
01:13:06.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
I attempted to do a comic at one point about ah two serial killers that are roommates and it's hilarious but it is not visually appealing.
01:13:13.56
Carson Fredriksen
oh wow
01:13:17.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh it's actually really cool because one of the killers is like an extremely normal looking Joe average guy and he likes to kill women and make them into soup and then the roommate is a clown who during the day drives an ice cream truck And he actually likes to kidnap and kill children and turn them into marionettes, but he's called the puppet man.
01:13:37.30
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, wow.
01:13:39.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
And it drives people crazy because there's a difference between a marionette and a puppet. And so it's like this constant vein.
01:13:44.72
Carson Fredriksen
ah Yeah, I know. yeah They're used interchangeably, but they actually are different. so
01:13:51.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
Exactly, exactly. Just be glad Jim Henson was not alive to hear people mix those two up.
01:13:57.81
Carson Fredriksen
Right? so All right, I love Mad Libs.
01:13:59.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right, man. So I hope you're ready for this because it is time for the Madlib. Sweet. All right. Well, then give me a noun.
01:14:12.33
Carson Fredriksen
i Painting.
01:14:18.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right. And a person in room mail, that will be you. ah So I need another noun.
01:14:27.82
Carson Fredriksen
o Basket.
01:14:32.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
OK, and a number.
01:14:34.17
Carson Fredriksen
42.
01:14:39.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah Good one. A verb past tense.
01:14:44.20
Carson Fredriksen
verb fingernail okay hey I will do
01:14:50.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right, I need another noun.
01:15:00.74
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right, you know what? I need one, two, three more singular nouns.
01:15:12.14
Carson Fredriksen
All right, I will do shampoo, dog food, and Ferrari.
01:15:22.27
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, see, I thought maybe you were just looking around the room and saying things you saw, but there's probably not a Ferrari in the room with you.
01:15:29.50
Carson Fredriksen
and No, I wish there was, but there is not.
01:15:29.65
Wednesday Lee Friday
um
01:15:32.14
Carson Fredriksen
so yeah Mustaches.
01:15:33.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
I need a plural noun.
01:15:44.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right, and another number.
01:15:51.02
Carson Fredriksen
21.
01:15:53.09
Wednesday Lee Friday
OK, and I need one, two, three adjectives.
01:15:59.62
Carson Fredriksen
Lumpy, hairy, smelly.
01:16:07.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right, and a verb.
01:16:12.29
Carson Fredriksen
Jog.
01:16:15.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
A type of liquid.
01:16:19.74
Carson Fredriksen
Whiskey.
01:16:22.50
Wednesday Lee Friday
And one more type of liquid.
01:16:28.87
Carson Fredriksen
rubbing alcohol.
01:16:33.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right, so this is called Truth or Dare, and it's a part one, but we're only doing the first part.
01:16:35.33
Carson Fredriksen
that
01:16:41.64
Carson Fredriksen
Okay.
01:16:42.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
Let's play Truth or Dare. First, some truths. Question, what is the name of the painting you like? Answer, Carson.
01:16:55.27
Wednesday Lee Friday
a Question, what is the one basket no one knows about you? Answer. When I was 42 years old, I galloped like a fingernail in front of 21 people. Question. If you were stranded on a lumpy island, what three things would you bring with you? Answer.
01:17:20.23
Wednesday Lee Friday
I couldn't jog without my precious shampoo in my smelly dog food and, uh, and oh, and my hairy bottle of whiskey. Oh my goodness. Um, question. What is the strangest Ferrari you have ever eaten? And the answer is mustaches dipped in rubbing alcohol.
01:17:46.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
See, now that is how you mad lib.
01:17:48.56
Carson Fredriksen
oh Yeah, I love them. I love them so random but Yeah,
01:17:51.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, me too. I'm a big fan. Well, because you can do a Madlib with anyone. You can do it with all of your filthy-minded friends, or you can do it with a room full of kindergarteners, and it's probably going to be equally funny either way.
01:18:03.09
Carson Fredriksen
and also ah because I used to play those as a kid and it taught me actually taught me like what a noun verb adjective and all those things were so I
01:18:11.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I would imagine it's, ah you know, pretty tight with ah Hooked on Phonics and Schoolhouse Rock in terms of teaching you things that you say with you forever.
01:18:18.42
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, yeah, that too.
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01:18:22.29
Wednesday Lee Friday
Carson, man, I am so glad you could be here. This is a great interview. I really enjoyed having you.
01:18:26.75
Carson Fredriksen
Oh, it's very nice to be here, and I'm glad I got a chance to talk with you.
01:18:30.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
right on. I want to remind all of our listeners that we will be back next week, and that if you want to support us, the best way to do that is on Ko-fi. You will find us at Sometimes Hilarious Horror, which is who supports the monthly podcast. So thanks so much, everybody. We'll see you next week.
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