The Proud Boomer Podcast - Part of the Proud Boomer Dispatch on Substack

Episode Overview In this episode, we dive into the chilling short story “The Sweetest Mouth” by John Harris. We explore the terrifying concept of a supernatural entity that moves effortlessly through the physical world to feed on a highly specific and abstract diet: human faith. We unpack the story’s tense climax, the horrifying implications of unanswered prayers, and the dark irony of a monster d...

Episode Summary: In this episode, we dive into “The Old Hunger,” a chilling horror story originally published in The Proud Boomer Dispatch . We explore the terrifying twist of fate that occurs when a ten-thousand-year-old monster—a creature that has consumed ten thousand children over the millennia—enters a modest home to feed, only to discover that the five-year-old girl inside is an even older,...

The town of Punta Seco isn’t on most maps. The ones that do show it spell it wrong. This episode is about why I went there anyway. This week, I talk about why I started writing fiction, what Florida actually looks like from the inside, and how a sixty-one-year-old woman running a bait shop in a town nobody’s heard of became the most interesting character I’ve ever put on a page. Also: a manatee na...

What We’re Talking About Writing fiction for a newsletter audience is a weird bet. Most people follow a writer on Substack because they trust that person’s take on something specific. Health, politics, money, whatever. Then you show up with a short story set in a bait shop on US-1 and half your subscribers look at it like the menu just changed languages. This episode is about that bet, and why I’m...

Episode summary John gets honest about the specific frustration of writing dark fiction on a platform built for newsletters about morning routines and market trends. Substack rewards frequency and broad appeal. Disturbing fiction requires neither and delivers both badly. This episode is about what happens when you stop trying to solve that problem and start writing for the readers who were always...

Episode summary John talks about the craft behind writing disturbing fiction and why the darkest material is almost never invented. It comes from the locked drawer. The 2 a.m. thought you didn’t share. The moment you handled it badly and filed it away. He traces the line between shock and dread, explains why the scariest thing in horror fiction is usually the writer, and uses his own Substack stor...

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Nobody went into the Blackpine Forest after dark unless they had a death wish or a secret pact. Bram Weller had both. The moon hung bloated and full above the treetops, like an unblinking eye. Fog snaked through the underbrush and crawled up the trunks of the ancient pines like something alive. Bram’s boots crunched dead leaves. Every step echoed louder than it should have in the hush of the curse...