Writing with Ghosts: These Walls Still Talk, Part Two | The Grave Talks

0:00Today on the Grave Talks, part two of writing with ghosts. These walls still talk. A conversation with author Brian Pione. When I started reading the book and you were talking about the get haunted investigation, I was like, well, that's a real company. That's really interesting to me. And then as I'm reading the book, all of the things that you mentioned because I have done a deep dive into the penitentiary and we did an episode a couple of years ago, what you're saying in the book is accurate. And so I really appreciated that because you really do feel like this is what the paranormal investigation at the Missouri State Penitentiary would be like. Right. And then some. Yeah. And the other thing that I did too, if you, in the Kindle version, I'm sure it's in the paperback it absolutely is. But before page one, before chapter one is a map of MSP and the buildings are numbered.

1:07So as you're reading, you can flip back and you know where the characters are at that point in the book. And something that I did in Reese, she's one of the tour guides at MSP. She read the book, one of her first things she texted me and she thanked me for keeping MSP looking exactly like it doesn't real life. I didn't add or take away anything from it. I didn't, I didn't like add a scary, you know, whole somewhere that doesn't really exist. I didn't, I didn't add a staircase somewhere that doesn't exist. I didn't, I didn't take away a floor because it didn't work for the plot. I, you know, Reese was very impressed with the fact that it's described exactly how it exists in real life, everything. And Reese is in the book. You have her character in the book. Yeah, the tour guides made the book.

2:07You know, they are fictitious versions of themselves, but I used their real, what I did was I, if I used their first name, I never used their last name and if I used their last name, I never used their first name. And that was, you know, just so it wasn't truly them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a borrowing there. Kind of a fictionalized character based on this person. Based on that person. Yeah, like Jenny, Jenny is a firecracker in real life. You know, but I did exaggerate some of her just because she's funny, just to make it funnier because she has some comic relief in it. You know, Duncan, who's the police officer, because they always have a uniform police officer at MSP during the free roam because there are people just wandering around, right? Duncan is a tour guide at MSP now, but he used to be Jefferson City police who used to be the uniformed officer during their go-sense. And when he retired, they hired him as a tour guide. So I put him back in uniform as a pop in the book, right?

3:11So I did stuff like that with the characters. I tried to keep it as close to them in real life as possible, but then I also fictionalized them as well. You know, they're not truly those people, but they are those people, right? They're inspired by those people. But yeah, Reese was very impressed with how she's like, so it can so many authors embellish or change the locations, you know, facade to fit the plot. You know, but what I did was I made the plot revolve around the buildings as opposed to the buildings revolving around the plot. I was going to ask you because now that after I read the book and I have a bigger picture of it, and now talking with you, did spending time in there by yourself writing at some points changed the direction of the book by how you felt there, maybe experiences that you had there. Did those also come into play in the book? You know, I've been asked that before and I feel like the answer that everybody would

4:14want is me say, yes, I think because I came up with the idea in MSP during an overnight, the tone kind of always stayed the same. It did. Yeah. Maybe if I had come up with the idea on a sunny day, you know, driving along the beach, you know, and then I went to MSP and it was at night alone trapped in a cell writing, then I think maybe it would have changed, but I think because I concocted the idea at 2 a.m. inside A-Haul during a ghost hunt, I always, I kept that, I think I, the tone started the way that I wrote it. I do want to say that the property started to feel less and less foreign every day that I was there writing. It felt less and less, I felt less and less like a guest and more and more like I belonged there. And the more comfortable I got, maybe the more the story started flowing because I felt

5:22at ease writing alone inside, you know, I felt it to in the morning. I think that's just crazy. I don't think I could ever feel comfortable alone in a place like that, but then it also gives you that inspiration for what you're writing. Yeah, but I meant too. So I think, I think what happened was that my inspiration never waned. I never got writer's block. So maybe that's an appropriate answer to that question. I think this being there in the building, in the building's writing prevented me from getting writer's block or prevented me from losing touch with the tone that I always wanted. So I was able to keep the tone through the whole book. Yeah, because do you think the book would have been much different? Had you written it at home in your office? You know, you've been there a few times. Yeah, absolutely. You would know, but it would have been a different book. Well, I'll tell you what, and here's like a good example.

6:25I'll try to walk you through like a couple of moments I would have. There were times I would be in A-Haul writing and I had a writing desk right in the middle. And there were times where I would fold my arms and I'd kind of lean back in the chair and I would just look up at how huge that building is and look at all the cells. And I would just take a moment to kind of reflect and look around. And it was almost like recharging my battery and I would go right back to writing. I think if I wasn't in the building and had those moments, the book may have been different. I may have gotten a different result. I think if I was home in my right, because I have a writing office or writing space in my house, I think if I was in my house, you know, it was two in the afternoon with my cup of coffee and the sun was shining through my blinds. And I didn't have the ability to pause and look around and see MSP at, you know, that

7:25may have taken me out of taking my head out of the game, you know. So I think I kept my head in the game. I was never allowed to not have my head in the game because every word of that book was written in there. I did not leave and only have three fours of the book written and then finished it at my house. The every single word of that book from word one to word end was written on property. I didn't write a single word off property. I made sure that I didn't even write a single word back at the hotel I was staying at. If I had an idea, I would write it down in my notes, not in the book itself, because I wanted to be able to come on shows like this. I wanted to be able to be on webcasts. I wanted to be able to talk to people at my book signings and I wanted to, with full honesty and transparency, look at people in the eye and say every word was written inside MSP. I don't think I would be able to, like, be able to lie if I knew the last chapter was

8:27written somewhere else or like chapter six was written in the hotel room. You know, I wanted to be able to say nope every single word. The same thing with the ditto house. When I go to the ditto house in two weeks to write book two, I want to leave with the book finished. I want to be able to look at people and be like, yep, and every single word of that book was written inside a house where there are giggling children who crawl into bed with you at night. That's the thing it's known for. One of the things it's known for, which terrifies me to no end. But I want to be able to say that. I didn't want to lie and say that sentence. I would know that I was lying. So yeah, every word was written inside in one of those four buildings. In spending that kind of time there, which is a lot of time, outside of the people who give the tours, there's nobody who spent that kind of time in there. And prisoners, I guess, go way back. Prisoners and staff. But did you feel the presence, you know, so after eight weeks where you like this place

9:35is haunted? I did. I also, I also felt that the longer I was there, I would also talk to whatever energy was there out loud when I would show up every day. I'd say hello as if I was walking into work and saying hello to coworkers. I would walk into a hall because that's where my writing desk was. That's where I would start writing every day. And then I would kind of then move around the property, you know, as I kind of got antsy or sketchy or wanted to, you know, a different scenery. But I would always start the day hall. So that was always step one. And I would, you know, open that big metal door and it creeps and echo through the whole like, okay, can't make this up. And I would walk in and I'd be like, hey guys, I'm back. You know, what happened? Anything happened when I was gone? You know, got to finish chapter three today. You know, you guys, you want to come out and say hello? I'm here, but I'm going to go right. And I would talk as if they were there.

10:36I found that the longer I was there, the more I was seeing and feeling things. It was almost like they were getting comfortable with me. And Jenny was convinced that they started to know my schedule and were expecting me because I was seeing things much quicker after arriving than I was in the beginning. MSP is known for what they call the Peekers. They even have a shirt that says don't fear the Peeker. I have it. It's awesome. It's a historical thing. But Peekers are shadow figures that kind of come out of the cell and like come to the railing really quickly and then disappear or they dip back into the cell and they're everywhere. And the Peekers would be, it was like they were just always out when I was writing. And they got more and more comfortable with me. This is in my diary. I talk about too much that's in my diary because the goal is for people to buy the book. Exactly. It is a very interesting read. Just to go just to kind of add to it, you know, the question, my last night there, the

11:40overnight was over. I was clearing out A Hall with Jenny I think or Lisa, I forget which tour guide. And I looked at who I forget which was but I looked at them and I said could I just have like 90 seconds to say goodbye. Right. It was my last night. And they were like, yeah, yeah, sure. Just you know, just lock up or whatever when you leave because we were locking up the buildings for the night. And I stood where my student in front of my writing desk and I kind of just announced to A Hall as a whole. I was like, well guys, I thank them. I said, thank you for letting me into your space. Thank you for letting me create here. You know, I hope I did right by you and some of the stories because some of the real stories of MSP make it into the book. And I swear to God, a hand somebody grabbed my elbow, but not in a yanking way. It would be like if somebody copped your elbow with their hand like almost like a carrying way, like in a carrying way. It was so palpable.

12:42It was so real that I snatched my arm and looked down. I thought maybe like Lisa was back and someone had like telling me to come on. It was Palm Five Fingers on my elbow and I jumped out of my skin. So it's moments like that where I think they knew who I was, right, that I was there. When I went back, now you remember I went back last month, last month was the big book release party. And I was curious if what type of reception I was going to get. I'll tell you, I wasn't in A Hall for 50, for more than 15 minutes and they knew I was there. Really? I felt it. They just felt the place come alive. And in a good way, I know a lot of people talk, people talk about the bad energy there and the, and though, you know, I felt nothing but welcoming there. And I just felt like A Hall was just accepting me again. I just felt like whatever energy exists in that building remembered me. It was like, oh, shit, you're back, you know.

13:45And it was like a homecoming for like something I couldn't see. You know, so many people who do paranormal investigations at the same locations or they manage a theater that's haunted, they say they feel the same way. Like they, like they know them, the spirits know them. And I never were to thought I would ever say that. You know, like I said, if you, if you went to 14 months ago, Brian and you played this interview back for him, I'd be like, what the hell did you crap, right? I do. You know, it's, but yeah, it's just, the whole experience has just changed me and changed, changed my, you know, offering projection. Now something that we are very adamant about, my editor, my publishing company, myself, for my career and my brand, I have been published since 2007. My debut novel came out 18 years ago. I have spent 18 years building a career in my brand.

14:47The last thing I wanted was for me to turn into the author that writes at haunted locations and write horror novels, right? I have built a fan base who expects and enjoys the fact that I write in all these different genres. I didn't want this to define me. I didn't want this to be who I became after 18 years of hustling as an author to just now pigeonhole myself into this little niche. What we've decided to do is the, these get haunted tale books are going to be somewhat indefinite at this point, but they will absolutely always be another novel in between the get haunted tale books. That way my readers and me as an author, I'm not going to be just doing this. So my next book that's coming out because these walls still talk, you know, came out last month. So my next book is a comedy about a, it's a, this is spinal tap type comedy about a werewolf

15:52movie from 1986 that goes horribly wrong. Oh my god, I want to read that. So that's my, well, it's, so it's a mockumentary where it's actually the anniversary of the movie. So the book is all these fake interviews with the cast. I love that concept so much. It's the interviews with the cast who made this really crappy werewolf movie from 1986. Now this movie doesn't exist in real life, right? So it's, it's spinal time. You know, spinal tap wasn't really a band. So in, in my book, it's about a movie that isn't real, but in, in my book, it's real, but it's not in real life. But it's told by the, through the eyes of me, interviewing the, the crew and it's like this cult movie now. Like they do screenings like Rocky R picture show, like people throw like silver at the screen and it's turned into like this cult phenomenon, but it's awful. And so the book is, each chapter is a scene from the movie.

16:53You know, obviously I wrote. And then after the scene, I interview one of the crew members about all the crap that happened on set for that scene and you know what a co-head the director was and like it just, it goes off the rails. So I love that so much. So that is such a great idea. It's, it's, it's, I'll plug it. It's called Howlers, H-O-W-L-E-R-S Howlers. And I think pre-orders are going to start August 15th for that. So that's going to be my next book. And so that was fun to write. But and then the Ditto House get haunt, which will be get haunted book two will be next. And then after the Ditto House, that is when I'm going to write that the book I was telling you about with the telephone. Which also is a great idea. That's a really good idea too. Thank you. I appreciate that. I'll be after book two get haunted. And then I have ideas for the get haunted book three.

17:56But then after that, I'm going to have to write something else. So as you can see, we don't want to do two back to back because we want to show my readers that I'm not just going to stay doing that. Like we want, you know, so if you could care less about the get haunted tales, then there's something else for you. There's something, there's something else coming, you know, so, but the Howlers book was so much fun. It was so much fun to write because I've never written anything mockumentary or comedy-wise. There's a lot of comedy in my books. There's a lot of comic relief in all of my novels. But I've never written a like setting out to write something that would be a comedy, you know, from start to finish. You know, they're on like their sixth stunt double, you know, because all the stunt doubles keep dying from like absurd accesses, you know, kind of like spinal tabs drummer who keeps pulling off, you know. So it's very, very much in the vein of spinal tab. It's the best way I can describe it, but as a werewolf movie. I do have to ask you because when you went to Missouri to start this whole thing that kind

19:00of changed, you know, added a whole other series into your life, you were going, you were taking these, what it like continuing an education to be a detective. Well, yeah. So I got like a detective. Are you a detective now? Yeah, yeah. So I graduated. I got my certification September 20th, something of last year. So I've been doing it now almost a year. How do you find time? That's what people ask me all the time. I know. You just do. And I have four kids between the ages of eight and 17. And so between the kids and the writing and being a detective. And I do a lot of book festivals and conventions and I speak at a lot of writers conferences. Let me say this. I don't have time to like sit down and binge watch a Netflix show. No, you don't.

20:00I don't. Right. So like my son and I are watching the last of us right now, but it's literally one episode like every third day because that's all I have time for. To me, writing the book in eight weeks, I think is impressive because you know, some people, I know people have been writing a book for five years. Right. But that's all I did when I was in there. I had a word limit goal every day, right? I said, you know, I need to hit this many words every day or I'm not going to make it. And I think it's it's focus and determination. You know what it was? It was fear of failing because Sheila and MSP were giving me this, like I said, this like golden, like really wonk is golden ticket. If I didn't come away with a novel, I didn't just fail myself. I failed a lot of other people who let me do that. Yeah, I see that. I see that. So I think the not I want to use the word fear, but I think the drive to not drive.

21:03That's what it is. Not drive to not disappoint MSP, like the staff and Sheila and the people who have been following me on social media through the process. But I think that the drive to not let them down kept me hyper focused to while I was to write. It made me not get distracted. It made me not, you know, want to keep checking Facebook every two minutes, right? It was like no, like you you have so many people expecting this now. You know, more than any other novel, I think that I've ever written. Although, yeah, probably more than I mean, the first moonlight city drive we did a really big pre release push on where my book release party for that was in Cleveland. I got to the point on that where that got scary where I didn't think I was going to make the book release party and time the book was going to be done in time. This I was going to let other people down. I was going to let people who stuck their neck out for me, who went to bat for me, who was letting me do something that they're never going to let another author do ever again.

22:07And if I came up short, I would not have been able to live with myself. So I think that and now going to the Ditto House this month, it's kind of the same thing, although it's a little less pressure. I think Ernie and Denise, Ernie and Denise basically told me they're the owners of the Ditto House. You know, they very, very clear, very, very clear said, Brian, if you get to the, if you get to your last day here and you haven't finished the book, just come back. Like at MSP, I couldn't go, I couldn't go back. Like, so there was, there was pressure of that. Like, there was a, there was a definitive end date for me at MSP. And if I didn't finish the book, then I was finishing it at my home. There was no going back to MSP to finish. The Ditto House, Ernie and Denise have said, hey, you know, if it's your last day, because the reason why it would be my last day is because I can only take off so many days from work. Right. So there's a day I have to leave because I have to go back to work because I ran out of

23:09leave. But they said, hey, if you leave and you haven't finished, just come back for a long weekend. And that gives you three more days. Or, right? So they're very, very open to me. So the pressure is somewhat off a little bit with this one. I can, I have in the back of my head where it's like, well, if I don't write the whole book during the time that they're, that I'm took leave from work, it's okay because I'll just go during like, you know, a three day weekend or something like, you know, like it's cool, you know. So that's making me feel a little bit better about this, about book two, writing it on location. Please keep me posted too when that one comes out because I would love to chat about it again and how that went and what your experiences were like there. But I just, I thought that this book was very interesting and it gives people an idea of the Missouri State Penitentiary, what it's like to do an investigation there.

24:11And it really paints the picture very, very well. And so once I read the book, I could see how you writing it there, the picture was painted so well. Yeah. You know what I mean? I think if, I think if I had never gone to the Get Honored event and they did those breakout groups where we did the rotations, you know, the four stations, I don't know if I would have been able to come up with that on my own because I'd never done a ghost hunt before. I think I, it wouldn't have been as authentic. I would have been doing what maybe I thought happened during them or maybe what I'd seen on TV or movies, right? And then I would be hollow withizing it. But I think doing an actual Get Honored event where I did that those rotations, I, the

25:12book, I was able to just write it like it happened. But then of course, I added in all, I added in the extreme stuff that happens, right? Because as you know, in each of four stations, something like happens to one of the characters that is way above and beyond what really happens during these, right? But I need, it's a horror book, right? It's trying to, I'm trying to freak people out. So, but I don't think I would have gotten like the core of what really truly happens if I hadn't done one and been involved in one. And I did the S.E.'s method in the gas chamber. And I'd never done that before, right? So during the Get Honored event, I volunteered to do the S.E.'s method in the gas chamber. So when I wrote that scene in my book, you know, my two main characters are Hannah and Christian, you know, they're the, the guests. And I basically just made Christian think feel how I thought and felt during when I did it, you know? So it was so much easier to, you know, put that on him as a character than if I had never

26:14done it. And I was trying to think of what it might feel like. So I definitely think there was some authenticity to my book because I physically did these things before I wrote about them. And you're writing it inside there, you know, like because you said, you said that, you know, you had a word count you wanted to get to every day. And you know, because when you write, because I write plays and when you write, it's so easy to get distracted, you know, you can look at Facebook. I can't imagine sitting in that place and going, I think I'll look at Facebook for a minute. What I mean, it's like the atmosphere would, it would just be so intense and different. It was. It was. But I think that, I think that intensity, I used more as fuel than this distraction. Exactly. And it really, really works. Now I got the book on Amazon. I just downloaded it to my Kindle. So that was super easy. But if you go to your website, they can see all of the books that you've written.

27:19Is that the best way to get the books or is it someplace like Amazon? So I'm still let everybody know who's listening, all 11 of my books. And then including howlers, when that comes out September 13th, if anybody sounds like, that sounds like a good book. So we'll put howlers into the next. So all 12 of my novels are available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook. I'm also distributed wide, which means that every single of my paperback, ebook, and audiobooks are available everywhere those are sold. So we're talking Barnes and Noble's books, a million, Walmart, Audible, Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, of course. Then I was put this as a caveat at the end. If you go to my website, which is myname.com, right? So it's it's brinepeowny.com. There's no anything else. It's super easy. I bought my don't name back when my second novel came out in 2010. If you go to my website and you order any of the paperbacks from my website, one,

28:21not only do I get all the royalties now to share them with the store, two, I sign every book, paperback that's ordered through my website, and I sign it. The day the order comes in, I do not have a box, pre-signed books that I just reach in and grab and ship. I sign it and personalize it for that the day of the project. Oh, that's so cool. So you know that Brian signed this the day you bought your book. I don't like authors. I know a lot of authors that go order a hundred copies of each of their titles. They sign the inside cover on all of them and then they put them in the closet and then when an order comes in, they just reach in, throw it in the mailing envelope and out it goes because they're all pre-signed. I like my readers to know that they got their signed for them the day of their purchase. You can also buy the e-book and audio book from my website on all of my novels. And again, I get 100% of those royalties, so I'm not sharing with Amazon, I'm not sharing with iTunes,

29:24I'm not sharing with Spotify, I'm not sharing with Churup or Findaway or all the other places that audio books are. Same thing with the e-book. The audio book is downloadable, it's an MP3 format. So if you can listen to MP3s on any of your devices, you can buy any of my audio books from there. I also priced them cheaper than you can get in any of the, I undercut all of the stores that carry my audio book, only because I get all the royalties, right? And it drives traffic to my thing. E-book, all of my books are available for e-book on my website. If you don't want to go to Amazon or Barnes and Nobles or any of those, and you have the option for two different formats, you can even download the PDF because some people read e-PDF, say like PDFs on there, on their computers. Or you can download the e-pub version, which is the Kindle. So there is a Kindle version of it downloadable from my website. And I will put a link in the show notes to that. Perfect. One last thing I'll touch on is the riots, the 1954 riots.

30:27Yeah, because you mentioned that in the book. Yeah, the riots that happened at the Missouri State Fund essentially were one of the most violent riots in American history in a prison. It was so bad that they had police officers coming from over 100 miles away responding because they were so underman when the riot broke out. It is such a core part of MSPs history and kind of what makes it what it is that I did so almost research on the riot because in my book, the riot takes place again, but as a residual haunting. And I wanted to make sure that everything that happens in the riot in my book is what actually happened during the riot in 1954 in real life. That scene in the novel is almost word for word, what really happened at MSP. I just made them ghosts doing it and then I threw my fictional characters in the mix.

31:32So you read the books. You know, when they go into the guards room to go through the door, to go down the cell to get that prisoner, that all honest to God really happened. I say that because my book, even though it's horror and it's a ghost hunt gone wrong, it actually is more historical horror too. Because I didn't change any of the facts of the history of MSP. Seeing I think that's for me what I really appreciated about the book, if you could write, I mean, you're a very good writer. You could create a prison environment that I would be wrapped up in, but knowing and doing an interview with them before. So I'm pretty familiar with that location, even though I've never been there, but you paint a great picture of it. It really lends this cool credibility to the book because there's several things in there that, you know, even the way you describe it, the four rooms, the four places you can

32:36go, that's where you actually would go. And so I just thought that was really interesting how you were able to tie in the actual history and what has happened within those walls into your book. Thank you. And if anybody listening ever feels like taking a trip, MSP is a place to go. The staff, everybody, their ghost tours, their ghost hunts are amazing. This is a plug for them, not just because they let me right there, but they truly are the amazing group of people. And that property is beautiful. Take out the paranormal stuff. It is beautiful. It's limestone. It looks like castles. Yeah, it does. The property is just so gorgeous. And if anybody listening ever does find their way to MSP, and even if you're on a historic tour, because I even made friends with all those tour guides, tell them Brian sent you. And by the book and the gifts, or by the book before you go and read it, that way, you can be like, that happened there.

33:38And I know Hannah ran up the stairs there. Yeah. The shadow figure came out of that cell and ooh, that person died over there. No, I think that's the way to go, because then you do get a better picture of it. So you can buy another book and give it to someone as a gift. There you go. Yes, gifts. Gifts all around. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat. This was great. Thank you so much. In that wraps up our conversation with author Brian Peony about his latest book, These Wall Still Talk. You can buy his books wherever books are sold, and you can get more information at his website BrianPeony.com, and you can find that link in our show notes. If you'd like access to all of our episodes, including the Archive and Advanced episodes, everything commercial free, then become a grave keeper.

34:39Sign up on Apple Podcasts where you can try it for three days free, or you can also sign up at patreon.com slash the Grave Tox. I'm Carol, he is in for all of us here at the Grave Tox. Thank you very much for listening.