Bretigne Shaffer: The Honest COVID Story No One Will Publish
KEY MOMENTS
0:00 – Intro: Bretigne Shaffer braves a cold
0:58 – The stomach bug that took down Lou's whole family
2:16 – Elixir of Fear: a COVID fable in children's horror
3:35 – The "budgie flu" and how fear campaigns work
4:50 – John Bellairs and scary-but-not-too-scary stories
6:04 – Why write fan fiction you can't sell?
8:12 – Procrastination and the pain of writing
10:07 – Where's the great art about COVID?
12:26 – "It wasn't a big deal": the lockdown memory hole
15:07 – When COVID skeptics couldn't say a word
17:00 – Alligator: her first short story collection
17:10 – Mailing stories to literary journals
19:31 – Tin House, Fiction, and Mark Jay Mirsky
20:37 – Short stories as Hollywood IP
22:07 – Libertarian film studios and fleeing California for Kentucky
22:54 – Halloween, B-movie monsters, and Alligator (1980)
25:09 – Real horror vs. gore: The Exorcist
26:47 – Why she self-publishes
30:07 – Annabel Pickering and Urban Yogini
31:28 – Davy Sunshine and the Big Pandemic
32:53 – Writing for kids vs. adults
34:26 – The Lady and the Unicorn tapestry
36:20 – Do female unicorns have horns?
37:14 – Molière's The Imaginary Invalid
38:46 – Where to find Bretigne
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Writer Bretigne Shaffer, who self-publishes children's horror, superhero graphic novels, and dark comedy about COVID, joins Lou to talk about why no traditional publisher (or Netflix) will touch a story critical of the pandemic response, her Halloween story Elixir of Fear, and why great art about COVID hasn't arrived yet.
We also get into a patent-medicine salesman who's also a wizard, the "budgie flu," people now pretending lockdowns "weren't a big deal," her family's move from California to Kentucky, the lost world of literary journals, short stories as Hollywood IP, B-movie horror vs. gore, The Exorcist, her collection Alligator and novel Davy Sunshine and the Big Pandemic, and whether female unicorns have horns.