52. ANDREW DUPLESSIE: From 'American Horror Story: Freak Show' victim to writing horror short stories for teens

There are a few ways you might recognize Andrew Duplessie. He appeared on 'American Horror Story: Freak Show' in a brutal killing, he made headlines for selling a tech company at 26 years old, and now, he's added author to his list of accomplishments. His debut novel "Too Scared to Sleep" is a  horror short story collection for teens, but features a unique twist.

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Transcript

00;00;04;02 - 00;00;33;12
Speaker 1
Hi and welcome to the Literary Hype podcast. I am Stephanie, your literary hype woman and today's author Conversationalist Andrew Duplass, who wrote to Scared to Sleep. This is a Y, a short story collection that is more horror based, but it's got some really cool features that we're going to talk about. This is not a normal book concept. So without any further ado, here is my conversation with Andrew Duplass from New York Comic-Con Welcome to Literary Hype.

00;00;33;12 - 00;00;36;10
Speaker 1
Thank you. We got to meet last year in this very building.

00;00;36;15 - 00;00;39;00
Speaker 2
It was very exciting. This is I'm glad to be back.

00;00;39;08 - 00;00;46;25
Speaker 1
Yeah. So you're doing a game this time instead of a book panel? Yes. So talk a little bit about what this game is and what you're playing.

00;00;46;27 - 00;01;09;08
Speaker 2
So one night werewolf It's kind of a I actually didn't know about it until about two weeks ago, but I played it with my family to try to get good at it. I get the sense to be good at it. You kind of have to be. Yes, a little bit. And so I'm going in with a plan of, you know, trying to trick my opponents and pretend I'm super excited to meet and play with the authors going.

00;01;09;08 - 00;01;11;18
Speaker 2
They all seem incredible. So I'm excited.

00;01;12;02 - 00;01;16;13
Speaker 1
How does being an author play into your strengths for this game?

00;01;16;17 - 00;01;30;28
Speaker 2
Good question. I think that ooh, I don't know. I mean, we make stuff up, right? That's what we do all day. And so hopefully we can do it on the fly. I don't know. It's a very it's a lonely job in a way. So I don't I don't know how we're going to do around people, but we'll try.

00;01;31;14 - 00;01;32;19
Speaker 1
Are you big into gaming?

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Speaker 2
I love gaming. I mean, it's a dream to be here. I mean, I love all types of games, board games, you know, any kind of game. So I would say, like Peyton said, there's a kitten is probably my game, but yeah.

00;01;44;09 - 00;01;47;02
Speaker 1
What's your favorite video game?

00;01;47;02 - 00;01;53;14
Speaker 2
Video game. That's tough. I have so many. I mean, super smash on a switch. I'm easy.

00;01;54;03 - 00;02;09;03
Speaker 1
This is like a really good place for you to be because you also are in the Hollywood space as well as the books. Basically, you're kind of covering all of the areas. So let's talk a little bit about your Hollywood saga. I know I asked this in the panel last year, but the camera didn't work, so there's no record.

00;02;09;06 - 00;02;09;14
Speaker 1
I was.

00;02;09;14 - 00;02;11;21
Speaker 2
Wondering what happened to the OK now I know.

00;02;11;23 - 00;02;13;14
Speaker 1
It recorded 3 seconds.

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Speaker 2
Oh, good.

00;02;13;28 - 00;02;15;12
Speaker 1
The picture I sent you was a freeze frame.

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Speaker 2
That's amazing.

00;02;16;05 - 00;02;16;25
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's all I had.

00;02;16;25 - 00;02;17;18
Speaker 2
We tried as hard as we can.

00;02;17;18 - 00;02;21;02
Speaker 1
We tried. There's only so much I can do when I'm moderating. I can't remember.

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Speaker 2
Fair enough.

00;02;23;16 - 00;02;30;29
Speaker 1
So you got your start with American Horror Stories. So talk a little bit about that role and how that has kind of launched your writing career.

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Speaker 2
I was crazy. I was in college at Tulane in New Orleans, and between classes, I would go on auditions for fun, and I got the American Horror Story one, which I was pumped about because I love the show and showed up one day at the shot I didn't expect so many people to watch me die on camera. I know.

00;02;50;05 - 00;03;07;08
Speaker 2
I think I checked recently. It's like one of the most viewed deaths of all time. My mom hates it, but it was absolutely amazing. I got to work with, like, the best, you know, directors and creators on the show. And that was sort of yeah, that started a path I didn't think I'd end up on, but yeah, now we're here.

00;03;07;15 - 00;03;11;08
Speaker 1
Have you ever seen anybody cosplay as your character from that death scene?

00;03;11;09 - 00;03;30;27
Speaker 2
I have. I mean, it's been a while, but you know, like when it right. When it happened, like a week after when I would walk around people like you just got brutally murdered on TV by this six foot seven clown. I'm like, Yeah, but I have seen a few probably not anymore. But in general, the American Horror Story, you know, fanbase and community is amazing.

00;03;30;28 - 00;03;39;05
Speaker 2
I love every aspect of it. I know Daniel Valentine's on the panel or the game tonight, so I'm excited to meet her, you know, from the delicate season. But yeah.

00;03;39;21 - 00;03;45;18
Speaker 1
What is your reaction when you see someone dressing up as a character you play? Oh, man.

00;03;45;22 - 00;04;01;18
Speaker 2
I would say I think it's amazing. I think it brings a smile to my face. I think it's absolutely amazing. I think that's why we're all in it is to create these stories that people care about and characters that people attach to and and, you know, maybe find find things in common or just it's more of a spectacle.

00;04;02;00 - 00;04;05;06
Speaker 1
And that also led to writing for you. So you to write for TV.

00;04;05;08 - 00;04;05;18
Speaker 2
It did.

00;04;06;04 - 00;04;09;13
Speaker 1
So what is it about American Horror Story that you love so much?

00;04;09;20 - 00;04;28;27
Speaker 2
I like that. I think in general and horror, it's a community that sort of has like an open door policy to everyone. And I really admire that about the genre. I've always felt at home in the genre, and I've always felt like it's a safe place to just create an American horror story. I think captures that in a really good way.

00;04;29;10 - 00;04;42;01
Speaker 2
Like you jump from such random seasons, like Freak Show, The Cove, into Asylum, like they really will hip hop, like kind of everywhere. And I appreciate that about them. And it's just a weird, safe space to create. And yeah, I love it.

00;04;42;24 - 00;05;05;25
Speaker 1
So now you've done some producing for American Horror Story. Yes. Yeah. There you go. Not not story. Story is plural. So what have you learned from writing television and short form television, like in that capacity? You wrote a book about short stories. I do work on stories, which is smaller than the anthology show. Talk about that connection.

00;05;06;05 - 00;05;09;10
Speaker 2
And I by the way, I got a longer book coming for you. OK, good. 400 pages.

00;05;09;12 - 00;05;11;12
Speaker 1
Ooh. Short stories. Oh, we'll talk about that, too.

00;05;11;18 - 00;05;35;14
Speaker 2
Let's go. OK. Writing for TV's interesting high def, you definitely get a little bit of a different zone. Sometimes. When I write for TV, I listen to music, like, instrumental stuff. You know, like Hans Zimmer, for example. And you really try to visualize, like, what the scene and what the characters would be doing in the scene. I think that the short story format is a really fun place to play in because you don't have to explain yourself.

00;05;35;28 - 00;05;55;28
Speaker 2
Like, you could just do a story and finish it, and that's it. Like, this person died or that person is this person, you know? So I like the short story space, and you can just try stuff that, you know, you can just try stuff and fail. Maybe it hits or it doesn't like backdrops. For example. It's a very weird concept and no one's really taken a shot on in linear television.

00;05;55;28 - 00;05;57;01
Speaker 2
But yeah, stuck.

00;05;57;01 - 00;06;05;08
Speaker 1
A little bit about your book, Too Scared to Sleep and how that came about. Yeah. And how you decided what short stories went into that book.

00;06;05;11 - 00;06;30;15
Speaker 2
Totally. You know, I was a finance and math major in college and I was always fascinated with with writing. My friend had a story app where there are short stories on it called Yarn. And I wrote a short story called Mystery Dog. And it was about a human who was sewn inside of a dog suit. And this guy who was kidnaping dogs and humans around the neighborhood and doing this kind of weird thing, it went totally viral.

00;06;30;24 - 00;06;48;01
Speaker 2
And I was like, whoa, that's that's crazy. I like I got to keep trying to do this. And so all I did was just post short stories on my Instagram and see how people reacted and some are really bad and some are OK. But I just tried to test test my product and and iterate from there. And that led to the book, really.

00;06;48;09 - 00;06;54;28
Speaker 1
And in this book, it's a very unique thing. I think there's only one other book that I've seen that has you argued QR codes in the book.

00;06;55;00 - 00;06;55;09
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00;06;56;00 - 00;06;57;22
Speaker 1
So talk about what those QR codes do.

00;06;57;29 - 00;07;22;10
Speaker 2
Yeah. So, yeah, Dirty Short stories and dirty short movies, as you know. It's funny. Now, a year later, after it's come out, there's over a hundred thousand scans of the codes in the books. I think people really like them or share them and essentially what you do is when you scan that you are code after you read the short story in my book, it goes to a short little animated movie and it, it's like ten, 15 seconds of, you know, what may what it might look like.

00;07;22;22 - 00;07;28;19
Speaker 1
And you started in tech. Yes. So what was your role like in creating these little videos?

00;07;28;20 - 00;07;50;19
Speaker 2
To your point about writing for TV, essentially you wrote 15 second little TV scenes. And I worked with an amazing animator, Shaun out of New Zealand, big shout out to him And he had created each one of these. And that was really the process. It took quite a while because it's 30 of them. But yeah, when I think I think people really enjoy it and it, it adds an extra scare effect, I think.

00;07;51;03 - 00;07;56;20
Speaker 1
And working with Ryan Murphy on American Horror Story, what did you learn about writing horror that has helped you write your short stories?

00;07;56;27 - 00;08;19;13
Speaker 2
Oh, I think there's certain things you can avoid. I think I think I learned what not to do. I think an oddly specific one, I think would be that like when when you're when you're doing something to someone in a horror book, like you're killing them or imprisoning them or doing something awful to them, you don't want to just make it quick and painless.

00;08;19;13 - 00;08;35;01
Speaker 2
You don't want to just like, you know, do a quick kill. You want to trap them in something that's like horrible. And it sounds awful to say that, by the way, out loud. But as you're writing horror, you have to think about this kind of stuff. For example, if you've seen Jordan Peele's. Nope. Or Get out.

00;08;35;10 - 00;08;36;15
Speaker 1
Get out. I did see that's.

00;08;36;15 - 00;08;52;25
Speaker 2
A prison forever. That's a forever prison that you're kind of locked in. And I think I learned that, you know, during the process of working on TV and producing television, just because the cheap way would just to be to to remove them. But the best way is to do it, kind of. But Jordan Peele didn't get out.

00;08;53;05 - 00;09;01;01
Speaker 1
And with writing so many short stories, for one. But how do you approach keeping them straight and figuring out what order they need to go in?

00;09;01;03 - 00;09;20;19
Speaker 2
That was a tough one in my book, Too Scared to Sleep just broke up into different sections based on the general vibe of the story. Some are more tech focused, some are traditional horror. And so I think that that was our best guess of of doing it because it was really kind of a hodgepodge collection of stories. I think in the future I would probably even go more niche.

00;09;21;01 - 00;09;26;11
Speaker 2
You could do it around like an event, kind of like American Horror Story, a time period, anything like that. But that's what we did.

00;09;26;26 - 00;09;30;04
Speaker 1
So tell me about this 400 page book that you have.

00;09;30;07 - 00;09;30;26
Speaker 2
OK, all right.

00;09;30;26 - 00;09;32;13
Speaker 1
All right. What can you tell us?

00;09;32;13 - 00;09;34;20
Speaker 2
I actually don't know what I can tell you, but.

00;09;34;27 - 00;09;36;20
Speaker 1
No one say to police, you can say whatever you.

00;09;36;20 - 00;10;02;20
Speaker 2
Want. Yeah, like my publishers, you have paper. OK, so I finished it. It's out for sale. So it's going around different publishing houses. And they're reviewing it. So I'm not sure who we're going with, but it's getting good feedback. It is sci fi and it's set on this really unique platform that I that doesn't exist but is like a theory of the Stanford tourists.

00;10;03;01 - 00;10;14;11
Speaker 2
And essentially it's a ring in space that rotates really slowly and people live on it. And so I've sort of used that as my my base to the story, and I've built some fun characters around that. Yeah.

00;10;14;16 - 00;10;17;15
Speaker 1
So you're making the switch. What made you switch genres?

00;10;18;04 - 00;10;35;06
Speaker 2
I know after all that, after all my praise for horror, I don't know. I mean, like, I at the end of the day, I'm a huge nerd and I love tech and I love technology. And it's really fun to research like space stations and what's, you know, kind of like The Martian, for example, like really getting in the weeds of like what's possible and what's not possible.

00;10;35;10 - 00;10;43;21
Speaker 2
I think that's probably what, you know, brought me over. But, you know, horror still is my, you know, my, my first love. But yeah, I'm excited for this.

00;10;44;02 - 00;10;47;10
Speaker 1
What did you learn from your tech career that has helped you with writing?

00;10;47;11 - 00;11;11;19
Speaker 2
That's a good question. I think like, for example, like the car codes in the book that that do short movies. I think that I'm going to do something like that in this book, but it's going to be more around like maybe like a digital gift or something that unlocks future things. You know, future releases I think I always want to intertwine technology somehow on my books just to make it another level of of interactive interactivity.

00;11;11;20 - 00;11;14;24
Speaker 2
Like, I think to me, that's the coolest part of it of.

00;11;15;02 - 00;11;19;24
Speaker 1
Yeah. Last question we always ask on literary hype. Yeah. What books are you hyped about?

00;11;19;25 - 00;11;34;15
Speaker 2
Oh, my God, what am I hyped about? There's so many. And I'm I'm in a backlog of books I haven't read. To be honest, the book I'm hype about right now is by Project Hail Mary by anywhere. I'm like halfway through. I'm like, have you read it?

00;11;34;24 - 00;11;39;25
Speaker 1
I have it, but I haven't gotten to it yet. As we have discussed, I have a problem with acquiring.

00;11;40;19 - 00;11;42;19
Speaker 2
A good problem, though. You could trust Xavier.

00;11;42;20 - 00;11;47;18
Speaker 1
Xavier acquiring books, reading books and talking about books are three separate hobbies.

00;11;47;18 - 00;11;54;24
Speaker 2
I know, I know. It's get scary. I have a scary pile, and I'm sure you do too. But yeah, I'm working my way through that book, so I'm looking forward to that.

00;11;55;13 - 00;11;57;03
Speaker 1
Well, thank you so much for talking to literary hype.

00;11;57;05 - 00;12;01;09
Speaker 2
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'll see you next year. I mean, if they'll have me down.

00;12;05;19 - 00;12;24;12
Speaker 1
Thanks to Andrew for taking time out of his Comic-Con schedule to talk about his kids short story book, Too Scared to Sleep If you'd like to get a hold of Andrew's books, the links to do so are in the show notes for you, as well as where to find him on social media. If you enjoyed this conversation, don't forget to subscribe to Literary Hype podcast Give us some stars and share it with a friend.

00;12;24;21 - 00;12;27;09
Speaker 1
Thanks so much for listening to the Literary Hype podcast.