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Jeff Waldridge Answers 3 Irrelevant Questions

Jeff Waldridge, co-author of The Haunting of a Bourbon Town and caretaker at The Anderson Hotel.

Jeff Waldridge has been a Paranormal Researcher for over twenty years. He is a well-respected historian in his hometown of Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, where he gives ghost tours highlighting the Ripy Mansion, the Anderson County Courthouse, and one of the most haunted buildings in Kentucky, the Anderson Hotel.

He currently working on The Anderson Hotel Haunted House and promoting his first book The Haunting of a Bourbon Town. He’s also getting ready for Cryptidcon, a fantastic monster-themed convention coming up in November. He was also the co-creator for Scarefest in Lexington KY, and he’s documentary filmmaker whose credits include the gritty deathmatch wrestling film Hardway.

But that’s not important right now.

Jeff Waldridge is the first of my weekly guests I’ve invited to answer three irrelevant questions. Each week, I’ll be inviting another creative talent to answer these same questions, highlighting authors, filmmakers, actors, artists, and more.

So here we go.

What is your favorite guilty pleasure movie, and what defense do you have for it? 

Lost Boys! It’s the ultimate movie that screams “horror movie” of that era. So cheesy but huge stars.

If you had a full day of access to any animal at the zoo, what would it be? 

Gorillas, because they are very smart.

If you were hungry and could fly or drive anywhere right now for the perfect snack or meal, where would you go? 

Let’s see, a lot of options here. I could go to Texas for Whataburger, California for In N Out Burger, Philly for a cheesesteak, or Jersey for a hoagie.

Want to tour a haunted house with Jeff Waldridge? Visit Jeff’s website with all the details.

And don’t forget your signed copy of The Haunting of a Bourbon Town by Jeff Waldridge and John Cosper. Order direct by clicking on the book cover below.

The Haunting of a Bourbon Town by Jeff Waldridge and John Cosper

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People of Dead Park: Baby Kills-A-Lot

Baby Kills-A-Lot from Dead Park Estates.

My father didn’t care for dolls. Blame it on Rod Serling, whose Twilight Zone episode “Talking Tina” left a lasting impression on him. Dad thought they were creepy, and if there was one thing worse than a doll, it was a doll with teeth.

Baby Kills-A-Lot from Dead Park Estates. After hearing a rant about dolls with teeth, my sister Dawn drew one. She called her Baby Kills-A-Lot. She had sinister eyes, raggedy hair, and teeth. Nasty teeth. Scary teeth. She was everything my father hated about a doll.

Still, my father kept the art work, and in the coming years, he used it to haunt my sister. She received Baby Kills-A-Lot items every Christmas. Mugs. Christmas ornaments. My dad even made wrapping paper with the frightening doll on it. It was funny. It was one of a few gags the two of them had, the other being a dickie, inspired by Christmas Vacation and Designing Women.

Then, my sister had children.

It was her second child, Alex, who suffered the most. He was terrified of the doll, and rather than discourage him, my dad doubled down on springing Baby Kills-A-Lot on his daughter and her dear, sweet babies.

Readers of my books and this blog know my dad was posthumously the impetus behind the creation of the Dead Park series and Dead Park Books in general. So it’s only fitting that, with my sister’s permission, Baby Kills-A-Lot joins the franchise. You’ll find her in book four, Dead Park Estates, in a creepy yet funny take I believe my dad would have enjoyed.

You can purchase signed copies of all the Dead Park books right here, or click here to buy the whole series on Amazon Kindle for less than $12.

Dead Park: The Series available on Kindle

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For My Dad

 

Several summers ago, I attended Fright Night Film Festival in Louisville. The inside of the hotel was almost as sweltering hot as the exterior, but that didn’t stop a few hundred of us from jamming into a ballroom to listen to horror master John Carpenter answer questions about his career.

One exchange really stuck with me. A very goth-looking young woman asked Mr. Carpenter what advice he would give to someone who wanted to follow in his footsteps and become a horror director in Hollywood.

“Well, I went to Hollywood to make Westerns,” said Carpenter. “So I wouldn’t know what to tell you.”

I can relate to that statement more today than ever. I never set out to write books about pro wrestling, but I’ve written more than twenty. And if you told 8 year old me I would one day write HORROR? I never would have believed you.

I was the biggest fraidy cat you can imagine. I did not like scary stories or scary movies. My nightly prayers included asking God to help me not be afraid of everything that ever scared me on TV: from the weekend’s Sci-Fi Cinema to the Terrible Tunnel episode of Fraggle Rock.

I loved science fiction. Specifically, I loved STAR WARS. So how did I, an aspiring screenwriter and author of science fiction flights of fancy, turn to horror?

It’s my Dad’s fault.

Dead Park Plaza and its growing list of sequels would not have happened without my dad. My dad loved horror. Not all horror, mind you, but a good chunk. He liked a good scare, but he also liked horror-comedy. He’s the one who introduced me to William Castle, Ed Wood, Army of Darkness, and many of my favorites.

My dad had a direct influence on one of the stories in Dead Park Plaza. One morning in mid-February of 2021, I heard my phone buzz. I was still in bed, but my Dad was already up and texting me. He had dreamed something he thought would make a great horror story, a story that took place in an office setting, and he wanted to share it with me. It was a clever idea, and I think (I hope) I replied back and said so. I wasn’t working on any fiction at that time, so I kind of put it out of my mind.

It was one of the last texts my Dad ever sent me. It might have been the very last. A few days later my mother rushed him to the hospital. Nine days later, after transferring to rehab and then back to the hospital, he was diagnosed with cancer on his birthday February 28.

A week after that diagnosis, he was gone.

Four months later, Dad’s story idea drifted back into my mind. I didn’t see potential for a full novel, but it felt like a great short story. That’s when I started connecting the dots, from Dad’s story to a few others I’d been mulling over – stories that took place in an office.

Today, I have a job for a virtual company that allows me to work from home, the coffee shop, the library, or wherever I feel like. I work with incredible people and two amazing bosses who actually believe in me. For the first time in my life, I look forward to starting work each day.

But in 2021?

In 2021 I was still getting up every morning and driving to an office that, at the time, was refusing to acknowledge that I’d been given a promotion, dragging their feet backfilling my old role.

I spent most of my adult life, more than 20 years, driving to an office, working in cubicle,  being forced to make new “friends” on a recurring basis as people left or were let go (including me, a few times), working with good and not-so-good people, working for great and TERRIBLE bosses left a mark.

All that “work experience” fostered story ideas. Little fragments taking up real estate in my imagination, just waiting for their moment. “What if,” I thought, “These stories all took place in the same office building? You know, like Sideways Stories from Wayside School?”

One story became a group of three, then five, then seven.

The first book literally came together in a month. A scattered group of half-cooked stories all came together in the most remarkable way. I recently published book four in the series, and books five, six, and seven are in the works.

And all because my my Dad’s crazy idea about a man starting a new job and discovering a message warning him he’s in grave danger.

Without that text, there would be no Dead Park Plaza and no Dead Park Books. The whole identity of my fiction publishing would not exist without that germ of an idea he sent me.

I was still in denial about my Dad’s passing when the first book was published, and as I write this (revised) blog post, I’m still pretty much in the denial stage about my Dad’s passing, by the way. Wondering if I’ll ever move on from that, but grateful that he gave me the gift of a story, a book, and much more.

Click here to order your signed copy of Dead Park Plaza.

Kindle Reader? Click here to get the full Dead Park series at a special price!

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Dead Park Records: Emily’s Bad Day

Many years ago, a friend of mine told me about a friend of hers. His job was to fulfill rider contracts for major recording artists when they came to town to do a concert. Most of the items in the rider had to do with creature comforts, like the meals backstage and the accommodations in the dressing room. You can Google some of these and read what your favorite artist used to demand. Some of them are pretty outrageous.

My friend went on to tell me that her friend often had to fulfill some off-the-book requirements. You know, picking up things you couldn’t ask for in a legal document. That led to a short story that I called The Rider. That in turn led to a screenplay, also called The Rider.

And then, Dead Park Plaza happened.

A year an a half ago, I realized I’d written a Dead Park Plaza story long before I dreamed of the place. That story is now in print as Dead Park Records, the third book in the Dead Park trilogy.

What’s more, a character I introduced in the teaser for the first book, has become one of the focal points of this story. Remember Emily?

This sweet little thing wasn’t even in Dead Park Plaza. But thanks to her involvement with Cale, someone now wants her dead.

I had a ton of fun putting together a series of teasers for Dead Park Records with actress Christina Cannon and Lisa McConnell, who both appeared in the Dead Park Plaza trailer. Watch the short films below, then click here to get your signed copy. 

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Scary Movies I Made With My Kid

During the 2020 Summer of Covid, my son Sam and I started a weekly tradition. We’d go out every Saturday morning to have breakfast and play tennis. We still have breakfast every Saturday, but in deference to our being artsy types and not athletes, we no longer play tennis. The rackets are still in my car should we ever get the urge, but it’s been a good while. And it’s winter now, so…

Sorry, I digress.

One morning over a round of badly played tennis, we started spitballing ideas for short horror films. Not the kind you normally see at film fest, mind you, but the kind you’d see if people on horror films had something called Common Sense. You know. Common Sense  tells you not to open doors that say, “Keep out.” Common Sense says, “Don’t hunt vampires during the day.” Common Sense says, “Run out the front door, not upstairs where there’s no escape.”

We had six or seven ideas by the time we left the courts that day. In the coming weeks, we ended up with fifteen. I started reaching out to actors on Facebook, asking folks to film themselves and send us footage. (Covid, remember?) We cut them together on my trusty ol’ MacBook, the one with iMovie HD because I still to this day refuse to learn the newer versions. (It’s just easier, okay?) And we released them one at a time on YouTube.

The World’s Shortest Horror Films is a fifteen part series featuring the talents of many old friends and new. I made a lot of short films in my day, but few make me prouder. I mean, I made them with my kid. We wrote them. We cut them together. We even appear in one. Well, I appear in it; you can hear his voice. (Spoiler alert, I am not opening that door!)

Sam and I went our separate ways creatively after Covid. I’m back to writing, and he’s in a killer school of rock band called Abstract Agenda. He plays keyboard, bass, guitar, and saxophone. As a matter of fact, I was in quarantine with Covid the day he brought home a saxophone for the first time in July. He went from the usual beginner squeaks and squawks to accurately playing the opening solo from “Careless Whisper” in less than two hours. Kinda makes you sick!

Maybe one day we’ll collaborate on another short. Until then, I’m proud of the one series we assembled together.

You can watch the whole series, all 15 short films, in the video below. It’s only an eight minute commitment, so give it a whirl, will you?

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On the Beat with Johngy – September 28, 2022

John Wroblewski and I have become good friends the last few years, even though we’ve never met in person. We have regular visits to talk about writing and pro wrestling. And the Chicago Bears, though we tend to keep our frustrations about the Monsters of the Midway out of the public broadcast.

I’m sharing this visit here because we spent a lot of time talking about Girl Most Likely to Kill You and my soon to be released horror novella, Zombies of Oz. And yes, we talk a little wrestling too.

Enjoy!

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A Story 18 Years in the Writing

It’s kind of fitting the events of my new book Girl Most Likely to Kill You take place over twenty years. It took almost that long to get the story into print.

Girl Most Likely to Kill You didn’t start life as a novel, though. It began as a movie idea. Back in the early 2000s, my prime creative goal was to become a film maker or, at the very least, a screenwriter. I’ve still got a file on my laptop with nearly two dozen screenplays in various stages of completion. White Trash. The World According to Dallas. Must Do No Harm. Grade Expectations. Facade. Beachhead.

Girl Most Likely started out under the title of High School Sweetheart. It’s a love story about a guy who wanted to tell his best friend he was in love with her on prom night. The girl vanished on prom night, and he doesn’t hear a word from her for twenty years. When she comes back into his life, he’s a divorced dad with a teenage girl of her own, and all seems to finally be right in his world.

That is, until a conspiracy theorist student in his class warns him: your girlfriend might be the world’s most wanted assassin.

Girl Most Likely is not the first of my screenplays to transition to a novel. That honor belongs to the sci-fi adventure Martian Queen. It won’t be the last either. I have a second that will be released shortly, and a third is about to become the third book in the Dead Park series.

This is one of my all time favorite stories, combining humor, romance, intrigue, and something I’ve always loved but never written much about: spy stuff.

You can pre-order Girl Most Likely to Kill You now on paperback. All pre-orders include a free copy of the ebook version sent to your email address. And if you prefer to shop Amazon, well, you can buy it at this link.