On this week’s episode we talk to horror author Lisa Meehan about her debut novel Killian Farm and how her past as a filmmaker informs her current work.

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Here’s the transcript:

David Dylan Thomas: Hey everybody, welcome to the White Meat Podcast. I’m your host, David Dylan Thomas. I’m the writer director of White Meat, a movie with the following premise. Underneath Washington Square Park in Philadelphia lie buried the bodies of hundreds of enslaved people. What if one night they came back from the dead as zombies, but they only ate white people?

So we are in the final days of a Kickstarter for a movie called White Meat: Appetizer, which is a short film. That’s kind of a microcosm of everything that happens in the feature white meat. And it’s going amazingly. Y’all are amazing. We’ve got four days left and we’re currently at like 73 percent funded.

And we’re like a hair’s breadth away from being at $44,000 raised. This has been an incredible journey. So this is the last episode coming out before the Kickstarter is over. So this is your last chance to get that money in. Go to whitemeatmovie.com. You’ll see a direct link to the Kickstarter from there.

And just make those donations. Get us over the hump. Get us to that 60k goal. March 2nd is the last day that you can make a contribution. So please, please, please get that in and and also spread the word. The more people who know about this, the more likely we are to succeed. But so far, y’all have been amazing.

It’s been an incredible journey. I just want to thank you for that.

This week, our guest is Lisa Meehan, a friend of mine used to do some filmmaking with her myself, and she has transitioned from film to novel. This is her first novel called Killian Farm. It’s a horror novel. We’re going to talk about what it’s like to, you know, write your write and publish your own novel versus what it’s like to make it and kind of publish your own film.

We have just a great conversation about all of that. So here it is my conversation with Lisa Meehan.

[musical interlude]

David Dylan Thomas: Welcome everybody to the White Meat Podcast. I’m your host David Dylan Thomas. And today we are talking to Lisa Meehan. Lisa, tell the good folks here what it is you get up to.

Lisa Meehan: Recently what I get up to is writing my first book Killian Farm. Which I just spent the past three weeks making it go out into the world. So.

David Dylan Thomas: Congratulations. So, so tell me about this process. Is it self published? Did you work with a publisher? How did that work?

Lisa Meehan: It is self published. I’m going indie publishing on this. So I’ve been listening to podcasts on how to indie publish for two years and felt fully prepared.

But I was not. So I’m publishing the paper book on IngramSpark just because I’ve, from research I’ve done, that’s the highest quality way to go for the paperback itself. And then for the ebook, I’ve published it on Draft2Digital, so it’s gone wide.

I’m trying to avoid allowing Amazon to control my life.

So I just wanted to put it out there. To make it as convenient for people as possible.  

David Dylan Thomas: So, and you’ve previously, you were doing a filmmaking again, kind of more in the indie world. Have you noticed any similarities between trying to like indie publish and indie make movies?

Lisa Meehan: I think a lot in the writing process.

Yeah. I mean, there was a lot of similarity similarities for me there. As far as the publishing process goes, I feel like it’s easier to publish a movie to put your movie out in the world than it is the book.

David Dylan Thomas: I wouldn’t have expected that. Can you tell me more about that?

Lisa Meehan: Sure. I mean, I make a, I make a short film.

I upload it on YouTube. I send a link out to people.

David Dylan Thomas: Right.

Lisa Meehan: Or, or I’m doing the 48 hour film festival or something. Where the process is kind of handled for me. On the publishing end, there was a lot more form filling out than I was expecting. There was. And I don’t, and I don’t know how much of this has come down to like the, the influx of AI publishing, but there was like validating that I was in fact the person who created the content you know, filling out the copyright form, that kind of thing.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah, I can see how that would be more of a danger for a book than a movie, AIs will be making movies soon enough. So tell me a little bit about the journey. Going from because when we first met you were sort of more into filmmaking. You’ve worked a camera actually one of my projects once. So tell me a little about that journey going from being a filmmaker to an author.

Lisa Meehan: So on this project Killian farm actually started out as a screenplay. I had an idea so I you know busted out my Save the Cat and put together a screenplay outline and then I realized I I don’t really have the wherewithal to, or the gumption, unlike you to produce a, like a feature length film.

So what am I going to do with the screenplay once I’ve finished it? I’m not a networking person. I’m not out there talking to people. I’m not going to be able to sell my script. So I decided I’ll just turn it into a novel. Like, you know, and get out there that way.

David Dylan Thomas: So, so yeah, and let’s, let’s tell the folks, what is Killian Farm about?

Lisa Meehan: Killian Farm is about a struggling single mom who finds out not only has her violent ex husband been released from prison early, but he’s tracked her down. So, she needs to escape and the only resource she has is to head back to the family farm that she hasn’t been to since she was like seven years old after her mother just abruptly took them away, her and her brother away from the farm one day without explanation and she hasn’t been back there since. And when she returns with her kids she’s starting to get the idea why her mother took her away and the strange things are going on around the farm.

For, for me, for me, like the whole project was, I kind of wanted to explore the consequences of fear.

David Dylan Thomas: Mm.

Lisa Meehan: And that is where I’m going with the, with the book itself.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah, and it’s, so we set this up pretty quickly, so I’ve only had a chance to get through the first few chapters, and I can tell you already, it’s, it’s, it’s riveting folks should definitely check this out, but it’s interesting you say this started as a screenplay, because reading it, it’s very visual, your writing is super visual, it feels like it could come from a screenplay.

Lisa Meehan: Yeah, I, I, I think that’s pretty much the way my brain works visually, so that was where I think my prose kind of goes as well. And also I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to use sound effects the way that I do in a novel, but it just worked for me. So I put them in.

David Dylan Thomas: No, it’s great too. And it’s funny. I was watching Sinister last night. I’d never seen it before. And that movie has amazing sound design. And so much of the scares are actually not visual. They’re, they’re aural. They’re, they’re, they’re in your, in your, in your head. So I noticed that reading, there’s a lot of thuds and like, no, I think that’s, I think that’s great. One thing I do kind of want to talk about if this is a trend you’ve noticed. Like I’ve noticed that in horror cinema and I think in, in, in the horror novels I’ve read too, there’s a trend where the character, the main character. Who’s about to go through something horrible is already traumatized, right? Like they’re recovering from the death of a loved one or they’re running from a violent ex or like there’s some kind of baked in trauma to begin with that they’re then actually going to be working through, through this horror they’re about to encounter.

I don’t know if that’s a trend you noticed or one that you deliberately leaned into here, but it’s, it’s something I’ve noticed.

Lisa Meehan: I mean, I did kind of make things suck from, for my main character from the start on purpose. I was kind of like looking at Danse Macabre, the, the stuff that Stephen King wrote about, and he was talking about why movies hit home so hard when they do.

And it’s not really about the horror. It’s not about the otherworldly things that are occurring. It’s about being able to sympathize with the character for the real world issues that they’re going through as well. And then it’s kind of cathartic when they get to work through these other issues. So I was trying to bake that in a bit.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. And that makes sense too. Cause as I think about even the movies where it isn’t some kind of like visceral oh, my child died in a car accident or my father just passed or whatever. If it’s like a couple, it’s clear they’re having problems. Like you never see an actual happy couples or teens that are actually well adjusted go through a horror movie.

There’s always something under the surface where it’s like, even if the slasher didn’t come for you, you, things were not going to end well for you.

Lisa Meehan: Right. Gotta have that character arc.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. So, so one of the things I noticed, like I said, I just started reading, and early on in the acknowledgements, you mentioned your Nana kind of helping you get into horror.

Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Lisa Meehan: Oh yeah, sure. Like, our family’s a little bit twisted in, in that way, like that it was very fun for them to frighten us as children and apparently it was equally fun for their grandparents to do it to them. So it’s just like a family tradition. But my Nana was always very much into reading into into reading horror books and I spent a lot of time with her.

So it was just kind of like a natural progression for me. She got me into reading as well. She’d be handing me down her, her paperbacks as soon as she was done with them. And I was gobbling them up. You know, it was, it was a nice tradition. There’s actually a funny story I have for her. So, you know, it was the seventies or might’ve been late sixties.

I don’t know. Like, so they were all into the, like the spiritualism thing again, which kind of keeps coming around. And her and her sister, would every Friday night get together and play with an Ouija board. So they’re playing with it one night, and it says, open the door. So they’re, they’re in this shotgun house, so shotgun row home.

So they go to the front door, open it, come back to the board. It says, open the door. So they opened the back door. And finally, they come back to the board, it says, go home. It was just done with them, and it wouldn’t, it wouldn’t talk to them anymore after that. So, a few years later, my grandmother is reading The Exorcist.

And she gets to the part where Regan is playing with the Ouija board, and it says, open the door. And she throws the book across the room. And she swears the only reason she was never possessed was because she was too stupid to follow instructions.

David Dylan Thomas: Oh, that’s fantastic. Yeah, I feel like Ouija boards are just sort of inherently creepy and part of it’s just the aesthetic, right?

Like if it was like, you know plastic laminated Monopoly board because it was a board game like it was it’s right, but it feels that this old wooden kind of like gnarly wiccan kind of feel to it that’s like feels ancient, you know. And then but it’s like anything it says because it’s a Ouija board sounds sinister It could be like make some coffee and you’re like oh my god, you know, that’s awesome. So what were some of the books you grew up reading?

Lisa Meehan: So probably the book I read the most when I was younger was The Stand. I like my my cover fell off of that one. I read it so many times. There were like some Dean Koontz books, like I remember Whispers. Those kind of, Poppy Z. Brite. I got into her for a while when I was a Dean. And God, I can’t, Clive Barker. This stuff was really good, too.

David Dylan Thomas: How old were you when you were reading this stuff?

Lisa Meehan: No, I progressed to Clive Barker.

David Dylan Thomas: I was gonna say, it’s like, Clive, I’m like 50 and I only just recently am able to stomach Clive, so. No, I got to Hellraiser late.

No, that’s, that’s kind of, that’s kind of it. So, how would you say those novels have kind of influenced your writing and your creation?

Lisa Meehan: I think just, I mean, everybody kind of goes back to Stephen King. I love the way he, he gives you characters to care about and then does terrible things to them. So it’s just kind of like, it makes you invested in what’s going on in the book.

So that, I wish I could remember more from like the Poppy Z. Brite books because I remember they were so good, but I just can’t remember what was going on in them. I read them, so. But while I was writing Killing Farm, I, I discovered Stephen Graham Jones. I don’t know if you’re familiar with him.

He’s amazing. Like you know, he could write the back of a cereal box and it would sound fantastic. But his writing is not only just like really pretty to read, but it’s also kind of raw and very visual. You should definitely check him out. Like, Indian Lake Trilogy is great if you, if you enjoy slashers.

David Dylan Thomas: Mm.

Lisa Meehan: But probably, he’s best known for a book called The Only Good Indian. And I’m going to, yeah,

David Dylan Thomas: I have heard of this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Lisa Meehan: And he’s Native American and all of his books kind of stem from his experiences there. Mongrels is also a fantastic book too. Not actually a scary book, more of a family drama about werewolves, but it’s, it’s so good.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah, I noticed a lot of really good horror, like you could strip the horror out of and you’ve still got like the core of a good story. Like a lot of, um, I’m blanking on his name now, but the guy who did Midnight Mass and

Lisa Meehan: Mike Flanagan,

David Dylan Thomas: Mike Flanagan. Yeah.

Lisa Meehan: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: A lot of his stuff, when you really boil it down, are just really compelling family dramas that are just heightened by the fact that there’s this supernatural element.

But at the end of the day, the real, the real rough stuff is actually these family interactions.

Lisa Meehan: And I think that’s key.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. So I want to talk a little more. So tell me more about your kind of like film background and kind of like, you know, what, what you’ve learned there, what you’ve maybe taken from that into your writing.

Are you going to keep up with both? Like, tell me about your creative journey in that sense and kind of your film history.

Lisa Meehan: So I was briefly a film major, which was fantastic. I should have stuck with that. But I mean, you go and you watch movies and then you talk about movies. It was great. But I wound up becoming a software engineer.

So that kind of. derailed that. But then it became a lot easier to start making your own film. So I started recruiting friends. I’m sure Mo has made you watch some of the ones that I forced him to be in. And for me, it was just kind of the ability to tell the stories that I want to see, just have that creative control over the stories.

But when it comes down to kind of translating like filmmaking to writing, it, writing a novel, a story is a story. Like the, the same components go into it regardless of your medium. So if that kind of felt like a natural transition, that wasn’t too difficult for me. The, the big issue with becoming a, with taking it from a script outline to a novel was the writing itself.

I, I really sucked . So it was what you’re reading is like draft number or, or version number four with like a gazillion edits, so right,

David Dylan Thomas: Right, right, right. No, I had a similar. So I did a, a nonfiction book Design for Cognitive Bias. And for me, the transition was giving talks to writing a book. And that was again, like I, the first draft was just, Hey, here’s the talk and I’m just like typing everything I would have said, but working with an amazing editor Lisa Maria Marquis. She was like, okay, that’s cool. But this is a book, here’s what you got to sort of change. And it was like, that was the, that was the hard part was the second and the third and the fourth draft of like, okay, let’s actually make this a book now, not a talk.

So, yeah, it is, it is interesting translating from one text to another.

So I’m curious. So again, just early in the book, I’m already feeling all the Philly vibes because this is set in Pennsylvania. It starts out in Philly, it moves into the country. So, and I just love sort of seeing, and she pulls into a Wawa parking lot, and I’m like yep, that’s my Philly protagonist.

But I’m curious, is Killian Farms based on a real place? Is, is, were you thinking of very specific places when you wrote this?

Lisa Meehan: I was trying to keep that vague like it’s, I’ve definitely been inspired by places, like the, the, the drive to Killian Farm and kind of where it exists was pretty much in, like, I knew I wanted it to be remote, but then we did a, I did a drive to like Cherry Spring Park like last year, I think, and that drive is just like black, you know, trees that you see only what you can get with your, you know, with your headlights can reach that. That was kind of like the drive there for me. And as far as like, being in Philly, I’ve experienced enough places in Philly that I could kind of amalgamize that into like a crappy place to live for her.

Not that I’m saying Philly is a crappy place to live, but there are definitely pockets that you just. are, are not as nice as others, so.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah, and Philly is as much a vibe as it is specific locations in Philly.

Lisa Meehan: Absolutely, absolutely, yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: Well Lisa, thank you so much for talking to us. Tell us a little bit more about where we can get the book, where we can learn more about you.

Lisa Meehan: So my website is l m m l m meehan.com and the book is pretty much everywhere, like you can get it off of Amazon or Kobo. Basically, if there’s a place that’s selling ebooks in English, you can probably get it there.  

David Dylan Thomas: Excellent. And have you thought about what’s next? Going back to film, writing another book, just taking a break?

Lisa Meehan: I’m already working on the next book.

David Dylan Thomas: Excellent.

Lisa Meehan: Yeah, I’m kind of psyched for this one.

David Dylan Thomas: Awesome. Well, good luck with that, and thank you so much for being on the show.

Lisa Meehan: Thank you for having me.

David Dylan Thomas: All right, we’ll talk again soon. And for the White Meat Podcast, I’m David Dylan Thomas, and we will see you next time.