Author Matt Betts sits down with talented creators to discuss the background and inspirations behind the content that we all love.
Interview #1
Timestamp: 2 Minute Mark
Guest: Mac Gagne
Guest Website: https://adventuresandalgorithms.com
Guest Bio: Madeleine Gagné is a graduated senior at Duke University and a rising Operations Research PhD student at North Carolina State University. As of this year, she's been named a 2021 Brooke Owens Fellow, and will be working as a Space Systems and Operations Research intern at Northrop Grumman during the summer. She's also an aspiring pulp and science fiction author.
Description: Cryptids and Coffee - We'll drink coffee and talk about bigfoot. Movies, books, and some of cultural touchstones of the most famous cryptid.
Interview #2
Timestamp: 19 Minute Mark
Guest: Mercedes Yardley
Guest Website: https://mercedesmyardley.com
Guest Bio: Mercedes M. Yardley is a whimsical dark fantasist who wears stilettos, red lipstick, and poisonous flowers in her hair. She is the author of many diverse works, including Beautiful Sorrows, the Stabby Award-winning Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love, Pretty Little Dead Girls: A Novel of Murder and Whimsy, Detritus in Love, and the BONE ANGEL trilogy. She recently won the prestigious Bram Stoker Award for her story Little Dead Red. Mercedes lives and creates in Las Vegas with her family and menagerie of battle-scarred, rescued animal familiars.
Mercedes is a member of the Horror Writers Association and co-chair of the Las Vegas HWA Chapter.
Explain this To Me - Discussing a few strange headlines of the day with Mercedes Yardley.
Article Links
Punching Octopus - https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/639172/octopuses-punch-fish-silly
Half Eaten Sausage - https://www.insider.com/german-police-solved-2012-case-using-dna-half-eaten-sausage-2021-3#:~:text=Police%20in%20a%20town%20in,to%20a%20man%20in%20France.&text=Schwelm%20police%20told%20the%20Guardian,consequence%20in%20the%20robbery%20case.
Fried Pickle Corn Dog - https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/disney-fried-pickle-corn-dog/
Interview #3
Timestamp: 31 Minute Mark
Guest: Sarah Gormley
Guest Website: https://www.sarahgormleygallery.com
Guest Bio: Sarah Gormley Gallery operates from the belief that owning original art can be a source of joy for everyone.
Founded in Spring 2019, the gallery connects emerging and established artists with first-time art buyers and long-time collectors through a shared appreciation for original art…and its power to stir us from within.
Description: Sarah Gormley Gallery - art gallery, how she picks exhibits, how the pandemic affected shows.
Host Overview
Host website: http://www.mattbetts.com
Host Bio:
Matt went to college to study communications, specializing in broadcasting. He signed on with the campus radio station as a news anchor and reporter not long after he arrived at college – before he took his first communications class, in fact. After graduation, he worked for a number of radio stations as a DJ, a reporter and anchor. More than any other format, Matt worked at Oldies stations, which fed his love of Elvis, the Beatles and other great early rock icons.
Matt Betts was born and raised in Lima, Ohio and went to college in Toledo. He currently lives in Columbus with his wife Mackenzie, and their two wonderful boys. Growing up, Matt consumed vast amounts of pop culture. He read comics, watched cartoons, listened to various popular music, regularly viewed the old monster movies on weekend television and read everything he could find.
Further feeding his love affair with pop culture, Matt also worked as a waiter in a Toledo comedy club while attending college. This allowed him to see how famous comics built and fine-tuned their acts. For comedians, like authors, the ending of a story is just as important as the beginning and vice versa. If a comic couldn’t sell the setup, the audience most likely wouldn’t stay with them for punch line. Over the course of a week, it was possible to see a comedian transform a decent joke into a better one through slightly different wording or different delivery.
Matt met and interviewed comedian and actor Larry Miller one night at the club. Larry gave some advice that stuck with Matt long after. Larry was a classically trained musician who still played regularly and when asked if it was all too much, Larry suggested that creativity is creativity. You don’t have to do just one thing. Whether you’re writing a poem or a script, that creativity feeds the other things you do. It helps you be a better actor, musician, etc. It is advice Matt has applied to his writing career from the beginning, allowing his love of pop culture to infuse and inform all of his work, including poetry, short fiction and his longer works.
Matt’s short and flash fiction has focused a lot on humor and horror. His work appears in Arkham Tales, Ethereal Tales, the Triangulation: Taking Flight anthology, Bizarro Fiction! The Journal of Experimental Fiction 37, A Thousand Faces and Cinema Spec: Tales of Hollywood and Fantasy.
Matt’s poetry has been published in numerous venues, and his poem “Godzilla’s Better Half” was nominated for a Rhysling Award, the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s highest honor. His poetry has appeared in Star*Line, Escape Clause, The Book of Tentacles, Illumen, the 2010 Rhysling Anthology, Kaleidotrope and others. One of his pieces was also mentioned in a New York Times article on zombie poetry.
Ship It Studios
Website: https://www.shipitstudios.com
Description: We are Jedis. We are Wizards. We are Avengers. We are Time Lords. We are Tributes. We are the Knights Watch. We are Ship It Studios.
Ship It Studios is a content company dedicated to providing the world’s biggest fans with the content they deserve. We revisit your favorite fandoms through reviews, interviews, debates, power rankings, and fantasy drafts.
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