PopHorror Let's Get Scared
If you’re an indie horror fan, you’ve probably heard of Author Gage Greenwood. His first book, Winter’s Myths, has made it to the top of many readers’ Top 10 lists since its release on June 5, 2022. The second book, Winter’s Legacy, was released only 7 months later, and fans couldn’t have been happier. To get a taste of what they’re so excited about, check out my review for Winter’s Myths below:
Dystopian Horror Tale ‘Winter’s Myths’ By Gage Greenwood – Book Review
Just recently, Greenwood announced yet another book to be released this year called Bunker Dogs. This one does not follow Winter and his girls, and the horror is cranked up even higher than before.
Synopsis:
Don’t just fear what you’re hiding from, fear what you’re hiding with.
Cassie’s night of babysitting goes to hell when bombs explode in the distance, planes fly overhead at low altitudes, and alerts on her phone tell her to seek shelter. Luckily, the boy she babysits tells her his father has a bunker in the yard.
When they make their way to this underground shelter, they soon discover they aren’t alone. Something is living in the bunker, lurking in the walls, and it’s hungry.
What started as a normal night of babysitting quickly descends into a psychological and claustrophobic nightmare.
I am a HUGE fan of Gage Greenwood. His stories are compelling and relatable and scary in ways I’d never thought about before. I honestly cannot wait for more of his work to be released. And he’s a really nice guy to boot. I was thrilled to get a chance to chat with him about his books, his inspirations, and his journey so far.
PopHorror: Hey, Gage! It’s great to finally talk to you.
Gage Greenwood: Hey, Tracy. How’s it going?
PopHorror: Awesome! Let’s talk about your journey so far to get to where you are now.
Gage Greenwood: Well, my mom was a poet in the ’80s. She writes, and I wrote for a very long time but never really did anything with it. She had a very tough publishing journey. It was the ’80s, so you submitted, and you waited. And then 6 months later, you were finally rejected, and you tried again. She had some success with getting published, but this was poetry in the ’80s. There was no internet to find your market, so she never really found a fan base much for sales. So it all seemed really bleak to me. The writing was fun for her but the publishing was not. So I didn’t consider those things for a long time. It was the early 2000s when you started to see more self-publishing, and authors started coming up on their own.
Then, when I sobered up, I started writing very heavily again just to have something to do. Something to put into my head that wasn’t the real world. I immediately found a small publisher for a novel I had written, and I got a short story published in an anthology with some pretty big names. And then both of them didn’t come to fruition. The publisher for the book ended up closing completely. I wasn’t left with a lot of offers. It was a bust. And then the anthology, the guy said he just wasn’t going to do it. And right after that, my won was born. so I gave up on it again. I had to get a real job as the Vice President of an escape room company. And then the pandemic happened.
At first, I didn’t even consider it. At the escape room, I was working like 60 hours a week. Even on my days off, I was answering phone calls, emails and stuff. I needed some time with my son. I spent good time with him and really enjoyed it. And then people started heading back to work. My girlfriend, we crunched the numbers. She makes a lot more money than I do. So me going back to work would actually cost us money because she could get more done if I was home with our son. So she said, “Why don’t you just take a year and try this writing thing you’ve always wanted to do. See what happens with it. Let me know when you’re reading about how to start publishing. It’s always a direct to market. Write the story to where you want to pitch it, and stick with one genre.” I was like, “I only have a year. I’m going to publish the story I want to tell.” And I think no one is going to buy it, but no one would probably buy it if it was a regular genre thing, either. But people did buy it. I found a small fan base. The people who love it love it. And it’s propelled me to do this for longer than the year I had planned on, that I could survive a little bit doing it. And it just went from there.
I started trying to connect with reviewers. If I saw someone post about it, I would message them about it or Instagram their reviews of it… So when I started publishing, I wanted to build something that the readers felt very connected to and to me if they wanted to be. That’s why we have a 50 person chat on Patreon. I want people to know me. When I have a win, I want people with me to celebrate these things. Writing is a solo journey, but publishing is a team effort. I’m here with my third book coming out, and each book seems to do better than the last. It’s a small fanbase, but it’s a really dedicated fanbase.
That was the longest answer ever!
[Both laugh]
PopHorror: When you decided to publish Winter’s Myths, you didn’t just write everything out and publish it as one big book. You posted chapters at a time, right?
Gage Greenwood: Yeah, when I first started, I was using Kindle Vella, which was brand new at the time. It was an Amazon serial platform. I had already written Winter’s Myths. It was going to be a standalone novel. I’d written it the year before during NaNoWriMo. Then I started publishing it as a serial. Because it was new, it was easy to stand out. Those bonues from Amazon helped a lot. Before that, I self-edited. I designed my own cover. I wasn’t happy about doing it, but I had no other choice. I published the first season as a book a year later in June. Then the second season came out.
PopHorror: Tell me about Winter’s Myths, like where you got the idea for the story and the characters.
Gage Greenwood: Sure! Winter’s Myths came from a lot of different places, and I just shoved a bunch of stuff together. I thought, “If everyone on Earth disappeared right now and aliens came down, what the hell would they think about our society based on what they were seeing?” I wanted to answer that, but I didn’t want to tell an alien story. Then I was driving to work and listening to Neil Gaiman’s audiobook, Norse Mythology, and it got me thinking about how people would use stories like this to explain the world around them. So I thought it would be interesting to answer the question of what aliens would think about us and what mythology they would create around it. But I still didn’t have the characters. But I did have a different story about a father and his two daughters who were raised underground in a bunker and then have to come up to Earth for the first time. Then I realized that that was perfect.
PopHorror: Your teacup found its handle.
Gage Greenwood: Yes! So the story is about Winter and his two daughters, Violin and Candlestick, as they try and understand Earth and survive.
PopHorror: What changed when you decided to write the second novel, Winter’s Legacy?
Gage Greenwood: Like I was saying before, I had originally read Winter’s Myths as a standalone novel. The hotel part was going to be much more involved and they were going to become this little community. There was even a part where Brian and Corey try to introduce them to Thanksgiving. It was a really lovely story, but I ended up having to cut it because that wasn’t where I wanted the story to go anymore. When I decided to make it a long story, I decided I wanted to focus more on Violin and Candlestick, in particular Violin. To me, coming to a planet you’ve never been to before and trying to make sense of it, to see that from a coming-of-age perspective. When you’re that are, you still don’t really know who you are… as you get older, you explore your own upbringing and the things you’ve been taught. I really wanted to explore that with Candlestick and Violin, two characters who both lived in the same world and had the same experiences but ended up at two totally different people.
PopHorror: And then there’s what they can do, which makes them seem not human.
Gage Greenwood: I wanted the reader to question that. Are they human or are they not human? And even when that question gets answered, it’s still not clear. And it’s not clear to them either. I think it’s how everyone feels actually.
PopHorror: The journey from the first book and into the second where we really start to find out their history… it’s almost like it becomes an entirely different story. Did you know where you were going with it or did you just write it and go with it?
Gage Greenwood: A little bit of both. I knew that last line of the entire series before I even started writing it. To me, that last line is going to sum up everything I’m trying to say in these books. It’s not very long, but it gets the point across. When I had originally written the first book as a standalone story, that line was at the end, but it happened in a different way. So I need to get to that line, but from a different person, actually. But I’m always like, “Oh, you know what would be cool? If this random character did this!” And I start zigging and zagging all over the place. I consider myself a pantser. I don’t really plot things out. I have pinpoints that I know I want to hit as I go.
PopHorror: You just recently published a new book called Bunker Dogs. How is this story different from the one you’re telling in the Winter’s Myths books?
Gage Greenwood: Winter’s Myths is the story of people who grew up in a confined space and their horror is having to experience the vast openness of earth. Bunker Dogs is the opposite. Cassie’s world keeps getting smaller and smaller, and the horror is in the claustrophobia. If Winter’s Myths explores the inability to adapt to the world and the people around the characters, Bunker Dogs is about Cassie exploring herself and being able to come to terms with who Cassie is to herself.
PopHorror: Are your characters based on anyone you know?
Gage Greenwood: [laughs] Ninety percent of them are based on me, or a different part of me, a portion of my life or based off certain emotions that I have. At least the min characters. Although there are certain people in my life who have influenced characters like Brian and Corey. I know this really nice couple, John and Mark, who are stand up comedians, and they’re just the nicest people. They sort of defy the cliches of a gay couple. Mark is a Southern boy, an old country music-listening guy. And John, he’s a preacher. I just really love them. They heavily influenced the attitudes of Brian and Corey. But they’re also very different.
PopHorror: Do you have any weird idiosyncrasies when you write? Do you listen to music or keep lots of snacks around or anything like that?
Gage Greenwood: I used to have a lot. But now I have a son, so I have to be a little more flexible. If I do listen to music, it’s instrumental stuff. Movies scores and stuff like that. If I listen to anything with lyrics, it just gets distracting. And for the longest time, I was writing on my couch. But now I get sleepy when I do that, or I get distracted. So I have to actually sit at a table. I like to sit at my kitchen table next to a sliding glass door where the sun comes in. I used to only write at night. Like three or four in the morning. But now I have a son who I have to get up and get ready for school, so I can’t stay up that late anymore.
PopHorror: You and I grew up around the same time when everyone wrote with a pencil or pen, before they learned to type on a keyboard. Do you prefer pencil and paper or would you rather type?
Gage Greenwood: I used to use a pencil. But I refused to give up the pencil for the longest time. I had a typewriter when I was a kid, too. But man, those things are a pain in the ass. I never understood how a guy like Stephen King wrote out a thousand page novel on a typewriter. How do you go back and fix all the errors? But now I write everything on the computer. I actually have trouble keeping up with my brain, so I type really fast. And my method of writing is to just type, type, type, and then go back and fix it later.
PopHorror: So far, you’ve written in the horror genre. Would you call yourself a horror fan?
Gage Greenwood: Yes, I’m definitely a fan of horror. I do read other genres as well, but I’ve always liked dark and depressing, and I always seem to find that in horror. I also like the fun side off horror, the campy slashers and that sort of thing. I’ll write about anything… except for romance. That never happens.
PopHorror: What is your favorite horror trope?
Gage Greenwood: I’m not exactly sure what you would call it, but when little kids face evil and then come back and fight it again as adults. Like Black Mouth by Ronald Malfi. For some reason, I like coming of age stories.
*cue discussion on our favorite coming-of-age books*
PopHorror: Last question… what’s your zombie apocalypse weapon?
Gage Greenwood: Oh, jeez. I don’t know if I trust myself with a zombie apocalypse weapon. I’d like to say a sword. But I’d probably cut my own arm off.
PopHorror: Plus they’re so heavy!
Gage Greenwood: Yeah, I would definitely go light. Can I say a car? Maybe it would be a car. No, because then you’d run out of gas.
PopHorror: And with no electricity, you wouldn’t be able to pump more gas.
Gage Greenwood: You know what? I guess we’ll go with Daryl and his bow and arrow.
Thank you so much, Gage, for taking the time to chat with us!
Get more info on Gage and his books at his website, GageGreenwood.com You can purchase his books and other merch there or check him out on Amazon:
Winter’s Myths
Winter’s Legacy
Bunker Dogs
You can also join his Patreon and have access to this entire interview, which includes questions asked by other Patreon members. There are also Patreon only stories, a private chat group with the author and his other Patreon members, and insider info you can only find there. Check it out!
