[laughs]

I can go.

Um, so yeah, for me, uh, I, I was a junior in college in 2020, um, when COVID first really hit the fan and, uh, March, I remember it was a Thursday, I was in early American women writers class, and, like, everyone's phone buzzed at the same time.

Look- everyone looked at their email.

We got...

We, we got an email on Thursday that said, you know, because of the pandemic, we had to be moved out by, um, by Monday.

So everyone in the class was just, like, immediately, uh, besides themselves, and no one got any work done for the rest of that weekend.

I love that genre.

How does the character deal in a sort of isolated environment where your life is on the line every day? What is it we learn from them as they're going along this journey?

Yeah, I think one of the most powerful moments of the story for me is when he's repairing a radio.

Our main character, he just happens upon a radio in an abandoned house, and he sees that the batteries are corroded and thinks to himself, well, that's easy enough.

It's been a few months since I've tried a radio.

Maybe I'll hear something different.

the very first thing he hears is uh... is just a radio station that someone uh... out in the hills of virginia has rigged up with a solar power solar panel or something to uh... to just keep playing this same playlist over and over again looping for you know as long as he can and it's uh... you know recorded message so were to assume this radio dj's dead and you know his last will and testament is uh... you know, a bunch of Tom Petty and Pearl Jam songs just playing on loop.

More than anything, hits the main character because, you know, it's the closest he's come to communing with another person in years.

What is it about horror, sci-fi horror, that makes people keep coming back and finding it interesting and people like you to write fascinating books about it?