You are listening to the USDN on the
DFPN.
Thanks for watching!
what is up everybody and welcome to the
united states department of nerds where we
are for the people by the people and
of the people and tonight from secret
government experiment experiments
encrypted folklore to ethical horror
rooted in reality mark burton crafts
stories that feel terrifyingly possible on
this episode of the usdm podcast we dive
deep into the
Arakoon?
A chill-encrypted horror novel centered on
a genetically engineered prehistoric
raccoon unleashed in western Pennsylvania
and the human cost of science gone too
far.
This isn't just monster horror.
It's conspiracy, survival,
ancient knowledge,
and government secrecy colliding in the
woods.
The Council of Nerds is now in session.
mark welcome to the united states
department of nerds my friend you're
welcome thank you thank you for having me
hey anytime uh again i apologized earlier
about uh not getting back to you right
away we were on a little little christmas
holiday and but i'm glad we were able
to get you in and get you scheduled
you're the last of twenty twenty five my
friend
Awesome.
I appreciate it.
So let's jump right into it.
What was the original spark that led to
the creation of the haricoon?
The original spark actually came out of
COVID.
Back then,
we were in lockdown up here in
Pennsylvania,
and my daughter's school went virtual.
And I was working remotely at home.
So in the mornings,
I would be on with her classes online.
And then after that was done,
I would go and do my day job
and get that done.
And their curriculum at the time was all
STEM-based, science, technology,
engineering, mathematics.
And I got this idea about writing a
book that
you know, the science behind, uh,
everything in the book actually would be,
you know, legit,
like this would be stuff that you could
do in the real world.
And, um, it just went, uh, went,
went ahead with that.
And, you know, the, the raccoon creature,
I mean, if you've know your conspiracies,
uh, you know, you know,
the government has, uh,
used anything from dolphins and rats and
dogs, uh, to, to, uh,
for military purposes,
and a raccoon would be exceptionally adept
at that purpose because it's got five
fingers, it could hold a weapon,
it's a natural problem solver.
Just scale that up a little bit and
you have an animalistic soldier to work
with.
So this one kind of went off the
rails and grew a little bit too big
and escaped,
but that was the whole genesis of the
story.
That is so freaking awesome.
So why a prehistoric raccoon?
And how did you shape this into something
truly terrifying?
In the book, we scaled it up.
I scaled it up to about fifteen feet
tall.
They say in the book it's about the
size of a small bungalow.
It made its way out of a lab
on Plum Island up in Montauk and crossed
through New York down into Pennsylvania
and made its way through Western
Pennsylvania.
It is nocturnal,
so they had a hard time trying to
find it.
Nobody really knows where it went in
during the day, you know,
whether it burrowed or caved or whatever.
But it made its way to western
Pennsylvania.
Along the way,
it caught a case of rabies.
And, you know,
then it went on the warpath.
And so it really goes off the rails
at that point.
Could you imagine, though,
taking the trash out of a grocery store
at night and finding that big old thing
eating out of your trash bin?
It's eating out of your trash bin,
you know, tearing off your arms,
your legs.
This thing's got a grip, you know, so.
That's one of those where you open the
door and it's sitting there eating out of
your trash.
You just close the door, go back in.
I ain't taking the trash out.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Plum Island has a real-world reputation
for secrecy.
How much research went into grounding that
aspect of this creature?
Everything was researched.
You know, the Plum Island part...
You know,
that was early stages of the book.
Kind of, you know,
it ties in the Montauk monster in that
people, early ones that got escaped,
prototypes, if you will, that escaped,
turned out to be what the Montauk monster
really was,
was one of these raccoons that got out.
And then the geography through Connecticut
all the way down through New York.
I mean, you know,
there was a lot of studying maps and
finding there was a particular waterfall
where the military thought they disposed
of this thing.
That was in New York.
And, you know,
the creature went off the side of the
falls and they never found it.
So they assumed it was dead.
Mm hmm.
Um, the geography in Western Pennsylvania,
I took a little bit of Liberty with,
um,
because I needed a place that kind of
had a college town nearby and state
college is a few hours away from
Pittsburgh.
So I kind of brought state college closer
to Pittsburgh and that's the, uh, the, uh,
uh,
territory where this whole story takes
place.
But, uh, there's coordinates in the book.
Um,
that line up to actual places.
If you go into Google Maps and look
these places up, you can find them.
There's a state hospital in the book.
There's a side story where this kid tells
us a backstory about this cannibalistic
stuff that goes on in an old mental
hospital.
And that was based on Dixmont State
Hospital,
which is right outside of Pittsburgh in
the suburbs.
It closed down in
But it was a creepy place that they
finally tore down.
So, but yeah, the genetics of everything,
the rabies as a virus, you know,
researching rabies was very detailed
because, you know,
you think you get rabies from a bite,
but there were some studies done in the
late seventies and early eighties that
found,
I think it was the University of Kansas,
that found that you can actually get
rabies from ingesting carrion, you know,
rabid carrion, den animals that had it,
vector animals.
So, you know, everything is,
I tried to keep everything what I call
myth busters plausible.
And so, you know,
the science may drift here and there,
but at the end of the day,
everything in the book I think could be
done, you know,
if you had the ingenuity and the know-how
that these kids in the book had.
I like it.
So did your journalism background
influence how you approach the realism in
the story and the government cover ups?
Oh, yeah.
I just mentioned Dixmont.
I covered Dixmont State Hospital for about
four years with the Pittsburgh Tribune
Review.
And that was part of my territory.
And over my time of covering that,
the owner gave me
pretty much unfettered access to the
property and grounds.
So I went up and I took all
kinds of photos, found the cemetery,
found the tunnel system that went under
the property.
um, and dispelled with a lot of the,
the urban myth, uh, people come up with,
with abandoned mental hospitals.
I mean, it wasn't,
it wasn't a place of torture.
It was a place of healing.
It's just that the,
the healing at that time seemed barbaric
due to twenty, twenty six standards.
So, so yeah, I mean that, um,
researching the different conspiracy
theories, um,
that take place in the book.
I have a sort of like a men
in black team that is like the cleanup
crew.
And so, you know, bringing these guys in,
it's all over the place.
But yeah, the researching,
all these places, the geography, the lore,
the cryptids, you know,
that were out there,
and weaving these into something that was
kind of a new story using existing things,
plus the Native American aspect of it as
well.
I'm glad you just brought that up.
That was actually the very next question.
So Mingan Jones introduces the indigenous
folklore and herbal knowledge into the
book.
Did you refer or work with indigenous
people to kind of own that aspect of
the book?
No, and not anybody in particular.
But what I tried very hard to do
was to research these stories and the
tribal affiliations and not appropriate
anything, not passing it off as my own.
Anything that's in the book is referenced.
It's out there.
It's in the world.
There's a rich history and mythology that
every tribe has that's unique.
So, you know,
bringing that into this book and having
that representation was important.
I didn't want to have like this magic
medicine man, shaman, you know,
stereotype, you know, character.
I wanted to have a believable character.
representation of an actual Native
American person.
Unfortunately,
Pennsylvania has no tribes left.
We are- Oh, I didn't know that.
Yeah.
I think the closest tribe,
you have to go over towards Ohio or
up into New York.
That's wild to think about because there's
so much woodlands in Pennsylvania still
that you would think that there would
still be some tribal influence there.
And it's crazy to think about that there
isn't any.
Not nothing.
Pittsburgh had a council,
the Council of Three Rivers,
I believe it was called at one time.
And that was just ancestors, you know,
people would have Native American blood,
you know,
they would kind of associate there.
But we used to be,
where I'm located in Pennsylvania,
we're on Shawnee land,
but there's no tribes here.
Oh, wow.
That's crazy to think about.
I would never think that of all places,
Pennsylvania wouldn't have that.
But how important was it for you to
balance modern science with the ancestral
wisdom that your character Mingan provided
in the story?
He he provides a lot of backstory.
And again,
I took these these myths and I kind
of repurposed them.
uh, for this particular, uh, story.
Uh, the balance, it was, it was important.
Like I said,
I didn't want to appropriate anything.
I didn't want to steal anything, um,
or be accused of it.
You know, I just, I wanted to, uh,
more or less highlight this stuff and
highlight my science background and, and,
uh, um, you know, and like I said,
stick to that STEM thing and make this,
make this a book that's accessible for.
anyone really.
My publisher is based in the UK.
Which is wild to me that it's based
in the UK.
In England,
they consider this book young adult,
but here in the States with our
puritanical history,
this is definitely an adult horror book.
So it's just take that
It's crazy to see how like the,
the two different countries look at the
book, you know?
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
I mean,
at one point I approached our local school
district and I said, you know,
cause I like, I'm,
I'm a joiner, I'm a volunteer,
I'm on the board of directors with our
public library here.
And I tried to involve community in
things.
And I went to the school district and
I said to the art teachers, I said,
do you think we could have a little
contest for a cover for the book?
And the publisher was cool with it and
everything.
and so they said well what's the book
about and i said it's about this giant
raccoon i said but you know there's some
mild gore you know there's some uh mild
drug references there's a few f-bombs here
and there and they're like uh i think
we'll pass so that's um but imagine how
cool that would have been for the uh
for the kids though
yeah yeah yeah you know you do what
you can and you know you work with
what you have and you know i i
respect your decision at the end of the
day it's a really cool cover i don't
know if like there were different covers
produced for the book or not but the
one that you sent over to me i
thought was really cool because it's like
you're like i know this is about a
raccoon a giant raccoon but what's with
the cute raccoon on the cover
I know.
That was my publisher, uh, Ray.
She's, uh, she came up with that concept.
I kind of tweaked it in Photoshop and,
um, you know, you know,
brought it all together, but, and then we,
we went back and forth and there were
a couple of different,
a couple of different, uh, takes.
One, I believe was a, um,
If you were laying down on your back
and you took a photo of a tree
canopy looking straight up,
that would have been a cover.
She wanted to show a creature on there.
I trust her judgment.
She sells books and I just write them.
It's a really cool concept of a cover
because it's not at all
what you expect it to be.
I mean, it is, but it isn't.
You imagine, like, oh,
it's about a mutant raccoon.
It should be, like, huge, you know?
But it's not.
It's just a little cute raccoon walking on
a tree canopy.
And you're like,
I like it because it's like it works,
but it shouldn't work.
Yeah.
And I like it, too,
because one of my favorite,
all-time favorite horror stories
stories is Frankenstein.
And, you know,
I grew up in that era where like,
you know,
the Boris Karloff black and white in
nineteen thirty one was on, you know,
our Saturday suspense theater,
what we had here in Pittsburgh.
And so I grew up with those movies
and, you know, he's grown to me.
Frankenstein and the Hulk, you know,
are like the two
most tragic figures,
I think in all of horror history,
maybe Candyman, but you know,
you have this figure that's,
that's so misunderstood.
And I think, you know, that, that,
that subtlety that, that, that she,
that she brought into that raccoon on the
cover, you know,
kind of gives that feeling that, you know,
it's not the raccoon's fault.
You know,
this thing was never meant to be born.
It was,
it was created and it's not its fault
that it's a monster.
I like that thinking on that.
So do you see folklore as a counterweight
to unchecked scientific ambition?
We're getting a little philosophy.
Yeah.
Yeah, seriously.
I don't see it as a counterbalance to
it.
I see it as having a wisdom on
how to use power and science is a
power.
Uh, it's, it's,
it's a power that we all have access
to, um, in, in, in, in folklore mythology,
you know, even not just native American,
but your,
your go back to your Greek and Roman
mythology.
It's it's interactions.
It's how do people, um,
handle power appropriately, ethically,
morally, and survive.
And science is that power in this case,
in this story that people have to wrestle
with.
And of course, you know, you know,
science is,
is what gave us the Manhattan project.
It's, it's what gave us, uh,
such a good movie and even better book.
Yeah.
It gave us, it gave us project echelon,
you know, it gave us all these massive,
massive government projects that, uh,
you know,
loads of conspiracy theories have been
based on and, you know,
it has gone unchecked and you know, these,
these old stories tell you, you know,
at their, at their core,
how do you handle this power?
How do you, you know,
whether it's a gift from the gods,
you know, like a Prometheus type of thing,
or, you know, you know,
how do you responsibly, um, treat this,
this gift that you have as a,
as a species?
Yeah, no, that answer was perfect.
Like, damn, that was good.
So the Eric Kuhn explores ethical limits
of experimentation.
Do you kind of see this as a
cautionary tale?
of like, kind of like where,
where does advanced in science like begin
in like ethics stop kind of,
or how far do you have to bend
your ethics or scientific ethics to go to
that next level?
So how do you see that?
Do you see it as like a cautionary
tale?
It's a cautionary tale.
It's, it's both.
I mean, you know, you,
you seem like you're probably,
you and I are probably in the same
age bracket.
Um,
Growing up,
they would do testing on monkeys.
They would do testing for cosmetics on
rabbits.
All these controversies that have come out
over the years that we've lived through,
everything in the book is me.
It's how I see the world.
It's my filter in this story.
Everything that I've absorbed as a human
being living on this planet for
know has come to the that that point
you know and it's it's it comes out
in my writing so all these characters that
i have are different facets of me you
know and and how i perceive things um
you know sometimes you have to twist them
around uh to make the narrative work but
but still i mean you know you have
uh you have uh these these these um
issues that we have to deal with on
a day-to-day basis so
I'm sure somewhere there's unethical
testing going on.
Oh, sure.
To this day.
Yeah.
We just haven't heard about it yet.
And there's other conspiracy theories
about that.
I mean,
you can look up things about Nestle and
how people think that Nestle is trying to
control the water supply.
So that's one that's out there that people
can look up if they're curious.
But
There's all kinds of things in this world
that we've seen movies, we've seen books,
we've seen comics where mankind has been
on this trajectory of taking over the
world in some form or another,
whether it's like some kind of Terminator
future where it's through computers and
robots or whether it's controlling natural
resources to a point where
People like you and me can't go to
our tap anymore and get a glass of
water.
I mean,
it's just this type of black in your
world that we're all headed towards in
some way.
So which who's going to make it to
the finish line first, you know?
Yeah.
If Mother Nature has taught us anything,
she eventually flips that script and
self-corrects that course anyway.
Yeah.
So within this book,
government agents linger in the
background.
They appear to be scarier than the actual
creature itself.
Was that done intentionally or like what
was like?
How did you come come to that?
You know,
they're actually scary in their reach.
They have access to all of this,
you know,
the full strength and power of the federal
government, you know, they have access to.
But in the end, I mean,
they're kind of comic relief in a way
in that the main man in black,
you know, his name, his code name,
or they refer to him as R-One,
as in, you know, clean up in R-One.
And they're the cleanup crew that comes
in.
and uh fixes these things when when you
know science goes awry and if they have
escaped raccoons if they have a montauk
monster that gets out this is the cleanup
crew that they send in and um you
know they they use their their resources
to fix things and i don't want to
give away
Because it's kind of the tail end of
the book,
so I don't want to give away too
much of that for spoilers.
Yeah, no, let's not spoil it.
Make sure that everything is nice, neat,
and tucked.
Yeah, but they tuck it away,
and they put it to bed,
and they make sure that the public doesn't
know what's really going on.
No, I like it.
I like...
I like books like this because you get
your real world stuff that could actually
happen.
And then you get your sci-fi that kind
of intertwines through all of it.
And to me, it just makes fun stories.
But speaking, well,
this is not really fun,
but do you believe secrecy is necessary
for security or inherently dangerous when
it comes to these instances that we could
have?
Like a fifteen foot raccoon escaping its
laboratory.
Definitely makes for more fun.
You have to have secrets as a country.
Um, I think, you know,
man's drive to turn everything into a
weapon of war.
Um, maybe that's my filter.
I mean, I grew up with, you know,
twilight zones and, you know,
broad sterling was extremely anti-war.
Um, yeah.
And so, you know, it's like,
and so it's like some Alfred Hitchcock in
there and everything that goes,
that's a great weekend right there.
Um,
twilight zone and but you know everything
that uh everything that's good or whole
everything that's good you know that it
seems like you know man has a way
of corrupting and uh you know how can
we turn it into a weapon and uh
and get a leg up on somebody else
and you know i think i think that
if you know people would work together a
little bit more um and have a little
bit less secrecy in the world and just
say hey we have these
amazing things we could show you.
Oh, yeah, a hundred percent.
We could solve a lot of problems in
this world.
But it's got to be about the first
one to fits it.
The first to fits it gets the paycheck
for fits in it, right?
Yep, yep.
So how did your time as a journalist
shape your storytelling?
The dialogue was definitely one.
uh, one way, um,
creating believable dialogue is extremely
difficult, uh, for any writer.
Um, so, you know,
having just people talk naturally and
sound, you know,
like they're talking like you and I are
here, uh, was one way that, that, uh,
that, that, uh, come in, came into play,
uh, researching,
knowing where to find information, uh,
knowing how, how to use information, um,
know all those things having them a
backlog of stories that i've covered
throughout my career that were just uh
some of them you know were just mundane
you know what's the council doing the
night others were you know really horrific
um you know you're on a scene a
crime scene where where they find a body
that's been melted into the couch for
three months in august um
You know,
it turns out the guy was dead.
You could smell dead bodies.
Yeah, you could have smelled it.
It was about fifty yards from the building
and you could smell it.
And the guy, you know,
it turns out he was he committed suicide,
but he was going to go on a
rampage.
He was surrounded by shells and guns.
And, you know,
he was loading his own and, you know,
nobody missed him.
He was just that type of guy that
he didn't get along with anybody.
And, you know,
so those are the types of stories that
you come across as well.
And you also find that life is not
black and white all the time.
You know, I did a story early, early,
early on in my career,
right out of college on a guy that
worked for a gas company.
And he saved his co-workers life.
He pulled him out of a ditch where
the gas was leaking.
And as soon as he pulled him out
of the ditch,
the whole thing went up in a flame.
And so he was getting all these accolades
for that.
Well,
flash forward a year and a half and
the guy's on the run.
There's a manhunt in Pittsburgh.
He killed his wife.
He killed his son.
He booby-trapped his house for the police,
and he went through multiple jurisdictions
throughout Pittsburgh on a day-long
manhunt,
and he ended up dying in one of
those concrete sewer tubes.
But I shook hands with this guy.
I congratulated this guy.
I wrote this guy up as a hero.
But you never know.
A year and a half later,
he's on a killing spree through
Pittsburgh.
That's wild.
But it just goes to show,
do you ever really know your friends and
neighbors?
Exactly.
And what,
speaking of your friends and neighbors,
yum thing says, shout out to you.
But you know, it's, you know,
what's that trigger that can turn somebody
from that,
that nice guy that can save your life
into that,
that guy that you just don't know.
You don't know what's going to trigger the
nets, you know, one, one bad day.
Yeah.
I mean there's been plenty of movies like
that
So your previous books,
Ditzmont State Hospital and Moon Township,
also kind of blend history with unease.
Is this kind of like your signature that
you use in your books,
or is it just pure coincidence that both
these other books kind of carry that
theme?
It was coincidence.
Those were my first two,
and they're historical.
They're those sepia-colored ones you see
in the airports and, you know,
local towns.
And...
They were just projects that I had going
on.
And then I kind of went dormant,
you know, as far as writing.
I mean, the Dixmont, I think,
was two thousand seven that came out.
And then, you know,
I didn't do anything until Eric came
around and I really had the time.
COVID afforded us all the time to work
on so many projects.
Yeah.
So.
So, yeah, I mean, it's it's I think.
I think my signature, if, if,
if somebody had to pin me down would
be, yeah, the history a little bit,
but the science, uh, the, the truth and,
and, and just having lovable characters,
you know,
characters that you can relate to is to
be like, you know, Zen and Bill in,
in, in the book.
Um, you know, these, these are kids you,
you would have gone to high school with,
you know, they, they're,
they're friends that we all had.
growing up and i'm glad you brought up
zen and bill because they are kind of
thrown into chaos without any type of
warning why did you choose them at as
your like entry point to our raccoon eric
they were me i mean there was uh
me and my best friend in high school
you know you just you have those lazy
days where it's like hey let's just pick
up and go somewhere for the weekend
go fishing you know let's let's let's go
hike you know let's uh that was us
like we would go hiking through the woods
after school you know right when we get
off the bus just like drop our stuff
on the front door and set off through
the woods and be back in time you
know for dinner exactly and you know it's
like we had those days and i think
everybody has those days uh so you know
it's it's um
It was that childhood bringing that
feeling back, that nostalgia.
And they bump into this game warden
slaughter,
and they bump into another game warden,
Monique McKesson, and Minion,
and the whole cast.
And so people ask me what it's about,
and I kind of say it's almost like
Stand By Me meets an episode of The
X-Files.
so those are like two great things right
there yeah this is my guy right here
in the in the chat donald great guy
check out his comic book powerscape if
y'all haven't already it just is also
making its way into stores right now so
if you're in albuquerque go hit up your
local comic shop
His comic book is now popping up in
stores, hopefully nationwide here soon.
So shout out to Donald.
But he used to study the Lenny Lenate
growing up in Jersey.
He is kind of heartened to read from
someone else who knows the indigenous
history of that area.
So shout out to Donald, man.
Yeah.
How you doing?
We we came up with our library.
Like I said,
I'm on the board of directors there.
And we actually formed a sister library
program with the Shawnee tribe.
in Oklahoma.
And so, you know, it's,
it's not very active.
They,
they had a really tough time of COVID
but we established this, we,
we put the roots down and hopefully we
can circle back to that and you know,
make that thrive a little bit more in
the, in the years to come.
But, but yeah, it's, it's,
I appreciate that comment.
Thank you.
So Doug Slaughter,
I'm glad you brought him up cause he
was literally my next one.
What was your plan with him?
Cause he kind of seems intentionally
unreliable to,
He's unreliable because he's tracking this
thing in secret.
And so he bumps into the kids,
and he's looking for clues of this animal.
He knows it's in the park,
and so he wants to keep them safe.
He's got all kinds of motives going on,
but he wants to figure out what this
thing is and where it's going to go
to next.
So he tracked it all the way from
Griswold, Connecticut,
down to Western Pennsylvania.
And that's, you know,
his story is kind of short in the
book.
But yeah, yeah.
But he gives the backstory.
He knows the history of it.
He knows the conspiracy.
And I think if he – it's no
spoiler.
I mean he gets off early on.
But I think if he had survived to
the end of the book,
he would have been taken care of in
another way because he knows too much.
Oh, yeah.
So let's talk about Monique McKesson.
She is the warden in the story.
How important to you,
what was important to you when you were
writing her character in particular?
Not to have somebody post me in Reddit
on how not to write women.
Did that happen?
there's a whole subreddit on how not the
right women.
And it's, it's just like, uh,
excerpts of books, you know, and, uh,
yeah, that are total cheese.
There's a Reddit for everything.
Yeah.
So I, uh,
I was trying to stay out of there,
but I wanted her to, you know,
be strong.
Um,
She's a daughter of a single dad.
She's African-American.
I wanted her to be in a position
of leadership.
I wanted her backstory to be believable.
I wanted her to be a example for
young women to show them.
Again, the STEM stuff,
the whole thing originated with,
It was my daughter schooling and trying to
get women in science and women in
engineering fields.
And so keeping in with that theme,
I thought it was natural to have a
woman warden who had these leadership
capabilities and this strength inside of
her that could become heroic at a moment's
notice.
And she does.
I like it, man.
And I know you keep bringing up the
STEM program.
My daughter in middle school and part of
high school went to a magnet program.
So I know exactly what you're talking
about.
It was during the COVID timeframe as well.
Yeah.
Now she's a pre-med student.
So kind of wild.
It feels like, it feels like yesterday,
but it was,
it's been a hot minute now since COVID
and it's just wild.
Yeah, it goes by so fast.
My daughter's twelve now.
She'll be thirteen in May.
Mine will be twenty next year.
It goes fast.
And she's got driving school in like two
weeks.
Got that in the middle of the day.
What draws you to locations that are kind
of like dark and for God?
I know if you're like me,
I kind of like those.
I like the history of those types of
places.
And I'm too old to explore them anymore.
But if I was still in my youth,
I would be like the first guy like
trying to like there's got to be a
window.
We can Jimmy or something to get into
this place.
Yeah,
I'd be that guy in the horror movie,
you know?
Yeah, I'm you know,
it's I don't believe in the paranormal.
So I willingly go into these places that
have this creepy history or this creepy
background.
And I appreciate it for what it is.
If it was a house where a tragedy
took place or if it was a Gettysburg
battlefield or something like that,
I don't go there looking for ghosts.
I go there trying to absorb what I
can from the site and to internalize that.
and really delve into the history of how
horrific these things are that take place.
But yeah, people ask me all the time,
especially when the Dick's Bump book came
out, it's like,
do you see any ghosts up there?
And it's like, no, it didn't.
People would go up all the time,
local radio stations and things would
spend Halloween night in there and
broadcast from there.
And, you know, people would say, you know,
yeah, I mean, the owner was super chill.
I mean, he was like, you know, just,
just do what you want.
Just don't get in trouble.
Yeah.
That's like some old country stuff right
there.
He's like, yeah,
I don't mind if you go back there,
but just don't be breaking shit.
Yeah, and he did everything.
I mean,
he filmed car commercials up there.
He let people hunt up there.
You know, anybody,
it was four hundred and seven acres.
So if you had some use for that.
Yeah.
So if you had to use for it,
he'd let you do it.
So is there any more to explore with
the air raccoon?
I bring back Mingan and Bill.
I'm working on the sequel right now.
That book has a working title of ghost
mother.
It's it's, it's a little bit darker.
It's a little bit more supernatural.
I, I,
I tell my publisher this all the time
is like, yeah,
that the young adult title that you put
on Eric Kuhn, you know, it's like,
I don't want to be,
known as a young adult writer,
which is nothing wrong with that,
you know, but you know, it's, it's,
you don't, you don't see like,
you don't see any Clive Barker or Stephen
King, you know, or Dan Simmons,
young adult books.
Yeah.
So it's like, I wanted to,
I wanted to like kind of stretch my
wings a little bit and, uh, take the,
take the gloves off for the next one.
And probably still one of my favorite
books.
Clyde Barker's book of blood.
Yeah.
Still one of my top ten.
Yeah.
All the time.
But excellent.
I mean, he's he's he's he's phenomenal.
And, you know,
Jack Ketchum and all these guys, you know,
that really take it.
They push the limits and they still tell
a good story.
And that's the important part is is is
making sure the story is there and
So this next one, you know,
there's a little bit more body horror.
Um, there's a little bit, um,
there's a little bit more science
involved.
Um, and there's,
there's a little bit more, uh,
native American, uh, lore involved, but,
uh, but not as much as Eric Coon.
but it's Mingan's there.
So you have to bring something in with
him, but, but yeah, it's,
it's it's just should come out, you know,
I should be done with it hopefully early
next year.
Okay.
And that was actually my very next
questions was that are cryptids and
conspiracy themes,
something that you plan to revisit anytime
soon.
And well, there we go.
Yeah.
I, I, I really didn't expect that.
this to happen, but I mean, people,
you know,
really love these characters and that's,
that's wonderful.
And now that I have them, you know,
I can do all kinds of things with
them that I never,
never really thought of when I was writing
Harakun.
so you know i can take them in
different directions so this one is just
like a little side story you know ghost
mother's a little side story with bill
mingen and um you know mckesson and zen
and uh you know the the uh bring
in the men in black in this one
as well but
Um,
the other characters are kind of just like
doing their own thing.
You know,
they're not involved in this one,
but I could bring them back, you know,
and,
and do a Bill and Zinn story again,
or I could do a Monique story or
I can, you know,
take them all these different directions.
And it's, it's really, um,
freeing as a writer to have that base
already written.
Now I can draw from it and, and,
and take them all in all these different
directions.
So as long as people still like the
characters and the stories, you know,
that's, that's, that's great.
Um,
I got a review on Amazon earlier this
month, and the reviewer said, you know,
this was a really fun read.
And I think at the end of the
day, I mean,
that was the highest compliment.
That's the goal, right,
is to have something really fun to read.
You enjoyed this story.
You had fun with it.
Exactly.
Yeah.
You know,
just have something that people really
reverberates with them.
So I'm a big comic book guy,
and this actually reminded me of two
different comic books by the same writer
of James Tinney and the Fourth.
He has the Department of Truth.
It's all about conspiracy theories.
And then he's also he's working on.
He's got a cryptid story called Let This
One Be the Devil,
which is about the Jersey Devil.
But that's supposed to be like the start
of his cryptid series.
It just so happened he started with the
Jersey Devil.
So it's kind of like a, a,
a podge of those two stuck together with
the, the Arakoon.
And I think that's really dope.
Cause that's two of my favorite comment
posts right there.
Just kind of like smashed together into
this story.
So it's, it's really cool.
And one of my favorite authors too,
with James Tinian.
Nice.
Yeah, it's, it's, you know, there's,
there's so much out there and, you know,
what's amazing too, is we've,
we've done as a family, um,
we went to a different, uh,
a couple of different local conventions.
We did, um, halfway to Halloween.
Um, we did mall and we,
and we did a Krampus Fest right before
Christmas and the fans.
The people that come to these shows are
just so incredible and so open minded and,
you know,
just so willing to try something new and
just roll with it.
And, you know,
it's it's it's amazing to see that open
up as well.
You know, people just, you know,
willing to take a chance on this this
book and this guy they never heard of
before.
It's wild.
And you see the responses,
you see the reviews pop up.
And it's wild that it could just be
a spark, you know, and they're like, oh,
wow, I like this, you know.
And actually,
you'll surprise yourself with the number
of people who will see that and go,
you mean to tell me there's a fifteen-foot
murderous raccoon with rabies out there?
Hell yeah, let me get that.
Because I would be that guy.
I'd be like, oh, damn,
you've got a story about a fifteen-foot
raccoon?
Hell yeah.
It's a hard sell.
I tried going through agents and
publishing companies here in America for
two and a half, almost three years.
And I got to a point where I
was so dejected,
getting rejection after rejection on this.
I told my wife, I said,
I'm going to put this on shelf for
a while.
And then that's when I found Roswell
Publishing.
And, you know,
it's a small publishing house in, in,
in great Britain, in England.
And she, uh, she loves niche weird stuff.
Um, but yeah, you're exactly right.
I mean, you tell somebody you like, Hey,
this is a, a foot raccoon with rabies,
you know, on a rampage.
And people are like they either roll with
it and they're really cool with it or
they're like, you know,
that's kind of too far out of my
comfort zone.
It's out there for somebody, you know.
And that's what's great about writing and
not just books,
but comic books and these types of things.
There's literally somebody or something
out there for everybody.
And eventually it will catch on.
Like the friend will go, yeah, man,
you got to read this book.
He's like, yeah, it's about this,
but you got to read this book.
It's good.
And it's crazy because I'm familiar with
Marcosia, which is based out of the UK.
They do comic books.
And I get a lot of those guys
on here on through the podcast.
And the UK does a lot of great
stuff over there when it comes to
publishing,
especially independent type of stuff.
So I think that's really cool that
Roswell, shout out Roswell in the UK,
for publishing this because...
It seems like you have a good book
on your hands,
and I'm going to be picking it up
myself, to be fair.
I appreciate that.
So I know you said that the one
thing that you wanted people to take away
from this book is that this was a
fun read.
But what else would you want them to
feel as they get to that last page
and go,
I know for me, it would be like,
I hope there's another one coming like
this because I like those types of niche
books.
You're breaking up a little bit.
I was just asking,
I know you said you wanted people to
fill.
Yeah, I'm here.
Are you still good?
Are we having audio issues again?
I'm here, yeah.
I just missed that last question.
Oh, no, you're good.
I was just saying,
what do you hope readers feel when they
close the final page?
I know you said you wanted them to
think, oh, damn, this was a fun read.
But what else would you want them to
fill from this book?
Hopefully, you know,
it checks off a nostalgia box for them,
you know,
that brings back their childhood.
that it brings back those,
those summer days where, you know,
summer seemed to last forever.
You didn't want to go back to school
that you could tell yourself a good ghost
story, you know, in, in,
in scare your friends, you know,
that type of thing, you know,
but just have them walk away from it,
you know, having, having a good time,
take a trip with me, you know,
let me sit down by the campfire,
tell you this story,
And it's a quick read.
And that's what this does feel like.
I've read it a million times just going
over it.
It feels like a campfire story.
That's what's great.
Yeah.
So, you know, I –
just hope that people,
it resonates with people and, you know,
brings back some memories and, you know,
maybe they might get interested in some
science fields.
Maybe they might get interested in,
you know, some local history.
Maybe they might, you know,
look at things a little bit differently.
Or maybe, maybe it's that one, you know,
one thing that leads them down a road
into conspiracy theories and, you know,
in looking into all that lore.
So,
You know, yeah, I mean,
it's it's everybody has a catalyst for the
interest in their lives.
You know, for me,
it was those old black and white movies.
It was in search of with Leonard Nimoy.
You know,
it was Unsolved Mysteries as I got a
little bit older with Robert Stack.
You know, so all these.
Yes.
It's like these these all kind of like.
you put these in your pockets and you
carry them with you as adults.
And, you know,
I think the older we get,
it's harder to talk about those things.
And, you know,
we lose that wonder and that openness that
we had as kids, you know,
to just say, hey,
You know, did you hear about, you know,
Montauk Monster?
No, tell me about it.
You know, it's it's that's that's gone.
Now people are like telling me, you know,
you talk about when's payday and,
you know, and, you know,
how much overtime this week.
Did you see that TikTok?
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
So, you know,
hopefully it opens up these venues for
people and lets them at least sit down
and read something, you know,
and use their brains a little bit.
That'd be something.
But before I let you go,
what is your final message to horror fans
discovering your work for the first time?
Your final message to horror fans.
Repeat that again.
Yep.
Your final message to horror fans reading
your work for the first time.
Yeah.
Um,
go with it you know um i've read
horror like we mentioned clive barker
where you really get taken for a ride
you really have to expand your mind a
lot to to accept some of the premises
that he puts in in the writing um
you know so you have uh he wrote
a story in the hills in the cities
which talked about uh all these people
getting together for a battle you know
that these two cities and they form these
giant
um humanoid creatures and it's just people
you know stacked on top of one another
and you're like how would that work but
i mean he pulls it off so when
you hear about something that's really way
out of there um out of that comfort
zone out of that normalcy that everybody
expects you know and maybe a fifteen foot
raccoon isn't so uh far-fetched so you
know just keep an open mind and and
you know look look for new things
Shane M gives you another shout-out.
Thank you.
Appreciate that.
You know,
it's funny that you brought up that Clive
Barker story in particular.
I don't know if you're familiar with the
TV show Grimm.
Yeah, yeah.
There was an episode called The Rat King,
and one of the – how The Rat
King is formed is actually by the –
these human rats would tangle themselves
together to form a giant rat.
Hence the term, the rat King,
which was a, you know, a foot rat.
Yeah.
It's you use your imagination to go in
any direction you want.
And, you know,
this was a simple story that I put
together.
You know,
anybody can do something like this if they
have the will and the tenacity to just
get it out there.
And it's what's great about books and
comics.
And, you know, I could see this,
I could see Raccoon being a graphic novel
easily.
That'd be really cool.
You know, I don't think any movies would,
movie studios would take it.
But, you know, I could dream.
We did get Cocaine Bear.
yeah yeah well you know what right as
uh the book was at the publishers it
was over with roswell and my daughter was
flipping through youtube and there was a a
trailer for this movie called krakoon
And my heart, my heart dropped.
I said, Oh my God, I said, stop.
We have to watch this because, you know,
it's like, it was the same thing.
Yeah.
And I was like, I was like,
I can imagine like your heart just
dropping out of your chest from like,
you gotta be shitting me.
Right.
Yeah.
And I watched his trailer for this thing
and I'm like, okay, that's, that's,
that's, that's, that's, that's, that's,
I'll never get back.
But,
you know thank god it had nothing to
do with my book you know or anything
you know because you look at you look
at the world and you're like you have
jaws you know comes out and then you
have like you know orca you know the
killer whale and you have all these like
knockoffs orca was really good though
orca was good i have to i have
to admit you know and then now you
know twenty years thirty years later you
have the meg and you know all these
all these different uh yeah it's a
spin-off type things but it's it's never
going to be jaws no never it just
seems like these movies come out
simultaneously i don't know if there's
like moles on the set that like you
know say hey there i'm sure let's put
you know i'm sure but but i i
had that uh that that nightmare that uh
kraken was going to be something uh close
to what i did thank god it wasn't
thank god it wasn't man
Mark, before I let you go,
tell everybody where they can find your
book and where they can find you.
It's on, well, if you do Amazon,
it's on amazon.com.
If you don't do Amazon, it's bookshop.org.
You can order it through your local
bookstore there.
Bookshop.org supports local bookstores.
It's not in the Amazon network.
My website is markburton.com.
I'm on Facebook, Instagram,
all these social medias that I try to
keep up with.
But yeah, and in the UK,
if your audience stretches over there,
Waterstones.
It definitely does.
Waterstones in the UK carries it.
They have their own Amazon copies,
but anywhere Amazon touches is probably
the easiest place to get it.
That's awesome, Mark.
So Mark's Facebook is Mark Burton author,
and you can find him on Instagram and
threads at frog Elitzer,
just as it sounds frog Elitzer in blue
sky at markburton.com.
I appreciate we everybody has that put
that out there for you.
And it will also be tagged down below
this video on YouTube and Facebook.
Mark
It's been a pleasure, my friend.
You too.
I appreciate the opportunity.
Thank you so much.
So this has been another deep dive into
the strange, the dangerous,
and the unknown.
Because here at the United States
Department of Nerds,
we investigate the stories that haunt you
after the credits roll.
The Council of Nerds are now convened.
This has been the United States Department
of Nerds podcast,
where indie comics come to life.