Hi, I'm David Barkley, and welcome to episode 600 of Geeks Guy into the Galaxy.

If you're a longtime Geeks Guy into the Galaxy listener, you'll know that every 100 episodes, we do a special behind-the-scenes show.

In episode 100, our friends Matt Lundon interviewed John Joseph Adams and me about how we started Geeks Guy to the Galaxy.

In episodes 200 and

300, we heard from some of our longtime listeners. In episode 400, I interviewed my parents. In episode 500,

we celebrated the release of my short story collection, Save Me Pleased and Other Stories.

And now in episode 600, I'll be interviewing my wife, Steph Grossman. Her short fiction

appears in Joyland, Salamander, and Kraft, and her articles on books and pop culture have appeared

in Bookish, The Masters Review, and Paste. She's the co-host of the Basement Girls' Horror

podcast, and she teaches English and creative writing at Texas State University.

And now here's her interview with Steph Grossman.

All right, so we're here with Steph Grossman. Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me back.

Okay, so I was just looking over your bibliography, and I noticed that you've written articles

about Harry Potter, Goosebumps, and Stephen King.

So would it be fair to say that those were some of your formative influences?

I mean, there are definitely some of them. I feel like whenever someone sits down to write

nonfiction in particular, you really have to go with the things that interest

you. And so, yeah, in my case, you know, Harry Potter was something I grew up with. It was definitely,

it wasn't the first book series I read, but it was definitely the book series that I think made me a true reader.

And then sort of later on, you know, I started getting into Stephen King. And then I think with

Stephen King, the essay you're referencing is about how I read his book on writing when I was 16

...