Links to previous Q&A transcripts:
Q&A #1 (January 2021)
Q&A #2 (May 2022)
Instagram link: https://www.instagram.com/johnajvidelin ... YApe1Cude/
YouTube link:
00:00:00
The event started about 10 minutes late due to various technical issues which JAL's son Fritiof helped him fix.
00:01:30 What made you start writing horror specifically and why do you think horror is important?
Well, I don't have the faintest clue about whether horror is important, but horror was simply the genre that was the easiest for me. I tried to write plays and novels, but nothing turned out very good because I was so preoccupied with becoming an "Author" with capital A. But I'd read huge amounts of horror in my youth and watched a lot of horror films, and then at one point I got the idea to try writing a horror short story, and that was the first time I felt that: "I know this, I know how to do this". It's just about making it tense and creepy, I don't need the capital A, it's just about tinkering together a nice story. And that was a 20-page short story, so I figured I'd try writing a whole novel in the same way. I wrote a note: "Something scary comes to Blackeberg and then we'll see what happens." And that turned into Let the Right One In, my first book.
But as for why horror is important ... I think it is some kind of shock therapy, a bit like riding a rollercoaster. I get really happy from watching really darn good and frightening horror movies. It's like some kind of purifying bath. To have undergone something horrible and survived it, albeit at a screen's distance. Like a dress rehearsal for death and getting to come out the other side with your life intact. Therefore I think horror can for many people—not everyone—be very functional. That it works in that way.
00:03:26 Is there any chance that anything will ever come of the TV series Ajvideland?
Well, that one was something me and Kristian Petri worked on for quite a long time with SVT and other producers and such, and I'd written screenplays for four of the short films. "Eternal/Love", "Hair", and a couple others. Um ... I don't know. I think it's lying in one of these ... moth-proof bags. All of a sudden the moths can start fluttering. You never know. It's lying there somewhere. So I don't know.
00:04:00 How does it feel that Thomas Vinterberg is making a TV adaptation of The Brothers Lionheart?
Not everyone knows this, but me and Tomas Alfredson worked for quite a long time on making a film adaptation of it. I have a screenplay which has gone through twelve or so revisions, and which is very moving. I don't think it would've left a single eye dry if we'd gotten to make it. But there were different ... American producers came in. They wanted very large amounts of money, and when American producers come in it's going to cause trouble. And it did, two times over, but I can't get into it further.
Thomas Vinterberg is a terribly good director that I really appreciate, so I don't even need to be diplomatic to say that I'm sure he's going to do something great. But no one's given me a call concerning this, but I'm sure it'll turn out good with Saudi money, heh.
00:04:52 (Nerd question) Who was it that sent the letter to the police at the end of "Let the Old Dreams Die"?
No, that I don't know. It was some random person that had taken a picture. To be honest, I should've looked this up in the short story since I don't remember. All I knew was that I simply wanted to let people know how things turned out for Oskar and Eli. They at least got to Barcelona, that much we know.
00:05:15 Did you and Thea Hvistendahl have any specific idea with all the swifts [birds] in Handling the Undead?
[shrugs] No clue. No clue. That was Thea's decision. My screenplay has nothing about any swifts. I also have to point out, it says "screenplay by John Ajvide Lindqvist in cooperation with Thea Hvistendahl". Thea Hvistendahl has done pretty major changes to the screenplay I wrote and made it her own film, which I appreciate, but she made a lot of decisions that I wouldn't have made, but I still like the film's total originality. There's no zombie film like it. But I had nothing to do with the swifts specifically.
00:06:00 Which are your top three Håkan songs?
Håkan is one of those. You only need to say "Håkan" and then you know. "Lasse", is that enough for Winnerbäck? Nah ... maybe "Uffe". Lundell, that is. Anyway, my top three Håkan songs. My number one is "Du är snart där", number two is "Jag vet inte vem jag är men jag vet att jag är din", number three is "Brännö serenad" or "Jag utan dig". Yep. That's that.
00:06:30 Do you have any advice concerning discipline? I have a thousand ideas and hundreds of first pages to various stories, but have worthless self-discipline when it comes to completing them.
Well, my advice there is that the worst habit you can acquire as a writer is the habit of giving up. Therefore it's a lot better to start by writing shorter stuff, but completing them. In general that's the crux: you have to make sure you complete things. It's easy to start things, harder to complete them. I don't think ... not to brag, but I don't think I've started any serious project and then not completed it, even though I've maybe felt during the process that it's not turning out very good. But I finish things, and sometimes it turns out good. But I think that that giving up thing, of only writing so-and-so many pages and then quitting, that's not a good habit. Write short stuff and complete them, and maybe you'll get the confidence to write longer stuff as well.
00:07:30
Then we have someone talking about how all my characters talk to each other, "retorts and quick replies, elaborate answers, I can sometimes get the sense that that's how I would like it to be with me and my friends. Does the way you write come from yourself and how you and your acquaintances and friends act when you're together?"
I mean, I don't have a ton of friends. I have, I guess four. I have many acquaintances, on the other hand. No, actually, I have more [friends], I exaggerated. Six, I think, or seven. No, I just make it up. It's entirely possible I borrow expressions. I've taken a couple expressions from my dad, for example. He's dead since many years back, though. But no, I wouldn't say that me and my friends talk the way people in my books do. I don't think we're nearly as witty or funny or ... [laughs] interesting. I mean, there are people who ... I know I'm very late to this, but I've started listening to Filip & Fredrik's podcast. I'm on episode 724, I've listened to twenty episodes. I think those two have an incredibly quick, fun, bouncy back-and-forth dialogue between them. They have, so to speak, pulled it off in "real life", albeit in a podcast, but ... yeah. No. Me and my friends don't talk like that. We probably talk slower, I'd think.
00:08:55 In The Room in the Ground, Irma talks about her book The Pigs, where a character uses a meatgrinder to get rid of a corpse. Is it mayhaps a hidden sneak peek at your own upcoming book of the same title?
No, there isn't actually anyone who's killed via meatgrinder. In my book The Value, which I'll complete eventually, characters die in many very different and scary ways, but in The Pigs ... there's one person that gets deep-fried in a deep-fryer intended for pork rind. Gets lowered down in one of these baskets into boiling oil. [laughs] Yes, I laugh at those kinds of things. That was the point where my wife no longer wanted to hear the story. First time it's happened. But The Pigs is finished. It'll be released eventually, probably with some kind of warning sticker on the cover, because it's really grotesque in places.
00:09:45
I also want to tell you all while we're here, for those who don't know ... those of you who are here maybe already know, but on Thursday, May 2, it'll be the big 20th anniversary for the publishing of Let the Right One In, so there'll be a grand party at Brygghuset in Stockholm. All the information's on my website if you want to buy tickets. They're a little expensive, but ... a lot of people have been hired in. I'll be talking to a lot of different people on stage, for example Sara Bergmark Elfgren about writing books, with Amy Deasismont about music, with Tomas Alfredson about film, with Bob Hansson about kindness, and with my son Fritiof—who was here earlier—about humor. So there's a bunch, and music in-between with covers of some of the songs I've used in my books. I've forgotten the name of the artist right now, but I listened a little to them today, and it's real good. So it'll be a great evening, if you're in the mood for it and have the time.
Now I've reached the end of your questions ... oh, right! I should also say that at this event ... I shouldn't spend too long advertising it, but Let the Right One In is being released in an anniversary edition with loads of extra material: short stories, newly-written afterword, the film screenplay I wrote. And it'll be released in 300 copies in a special edition in a really nice-looking box with a bleeding Rubik's Cube on the cover. And 100 of those copies will be sold on Thursday, for about 100 kronor cheaper than what they'll cost online. And you can get it signed as well. But there'll only be 300 copies. If you want that you'll save a little on the entry ticket since that will be cheaper [laughs].
00:11:48
[in English] OK, so I didn't mention this, um, that if there are any questions in English, I will answer them in English, and here is a question in English. [says in Spanish and Italian he can't answer in those languages] But English I can do.
00:12:07 Will there be an adaptation of Little Star and if so, will there be changes to the year the book was set?
Well, OK, that's a difficult question. There are several movie and TV projects from my stuff going on, I think seven at the moment, and I can't really talk about any of them. There's definitely interest for doing Little Star, so it's possible, and I definitely think if it will be made, it will not take place in 2010. It will probably be in the present day, so there will be more stuff with smartphones and so on. I guess.
00:12:56 What writers have inspired your writing?
Yeah, well, I can't really get past Stephen King, because I've read so much about him, so I think his writer's voice is embedded in my head somewhere. Clive Barker for a more "literary" way of writing horror. Uh ... Samuel Beckett for this bleak existential view on life. Gabriel García Márquez for his way of constructing sentences, which I will never achieve. And quite a lot also Selma Lagerlöf, the Swedish writer, for her way of constructing tension. In many of her novels, each chapter is like a short story, with a beginning and an end and a cliffhanger towards the next thing. She's always, you know, pushing the story forward, forcing you to read on, to immerse yourself in the story. I think she's a great structuralist in writing prose. So she's a big inspiration too, and I was ... happy and extremely surprised when I received the Selma Lagerlöf Award.
00:14:08 What are your favorite film[sic]?
My favorite move is ... what's it called in English? Pan's Labyrinth by Guillermo del Toro. The Labyrinth of the Faun? I don't know. That's my favorite movie. It has all the elements that I love in a story, with this real-life setting within the fascist regime in the '30s and all the bad things happening there, and then a strong fairy tale element within that very realistic and brutal reality. I heard that he was very inspired by another Spanish movie, Spirit of the Beehive, El espíritu de la colmena. I've been unable to find it anywhere, but one day I will see it. So Pan's Labyrinth, that's my favorite. My favorite horror movie is ... Halloween. [shrugs] Simple as that. Or Hellraiser, but Halloween, yes.
00:15:15
[in Swedish] Hans-Åke has said that I should mention the anniversary book and party. I have, haven't I? I think you can say that I have.
00:15:40 How much of yourself and your experiences are in your books?
Look, this is completely unfiltered. I just get the questions, I don't even have time to check if I want to answer it. I just read it and then I'm forced to answer. But this one's totally fine. Um ... well, since I've never experienced anything I'd categorize as supernatural or any kind of visitor from the other side, there's absolutely nothing of that aspect. I don't believe in that stuff. Although if people tell me that they've had an experience, like if they've seen a ghost that's said or done something, I say "OK, entirely possible". It's not like I'm an atheist or totally non-believing. It's just that I've personally never experienced anything like that. So that part I make up. Then ... primarily in Let the Right One In, that one's like a half-autobiography plus a vampire. There's A LOT of myself in Oskar. And that's pretty fun, since this anniversary edition, in case anyone's seen it in an online retailer or such, the cover artist Vincent Chong has, without any instruction from me, made Oskar super similar to me at that age. I looked almost exactly like that when I was twelve. Coincidentally.
So there's loads in Let the Right One In. In I Always Find You there's also loads, I also tried to become a magician, but I had to change the timeframe slightly so it would align with the Palme assassination. And then, I don't know how true it is, but people say that all of the characters in a writer's stories are really the writer themselves. And I guess I pour enough of myself into every character so that I can understand them, know how they talk, be interested in them, and be able to empathize with them.
Take a prime example: Håkan, this ... horrific person. But the click for me when it came to figuring out how to depict him was that he does it out of a strong belief in love. For this he goes around killing youths and taking their blood. That made him interesting, since I also have a strong belief in love. Life-long relations, giving up everything for each other ... I've been together with my wife Mia for 32 years, so I have a strong belief that love is a real darn good thing. And it was only when I gave Håkan that kind of motive that I thought he became really interesting. The first version of him was some kind of Patrick Bateman figure who did it to get sex and money and power, and it wasn't any good. But to make him, at the same time as he's a horrific person and pedophile, a spurned lover. That made him interesting. And that aspect of Håkan is somethign I can identify with, make use of, and let him reflect and think about.
Then, for example, a character like Theres in Little Star. In that case there's not a lot, she's just made up. Whereas Teresa has loads of traits from me, which I'm sure you can recognize from Let the Right One In. Then I have, with time ... I thought that Harbour, my third book, was kind of my last, because then I'd told everything I knew. I'd told my childhood in Blackeberg, my childhood with Dad, I'd used my background as a standup comedian in Handling the Undead. After that I didn't have anything more. And then with Little Star I realized: "What the heck, I can just make things up". Two ... what are they, Theres and Teresa? Thirteen or fourteen or something? Two young girls. I'm not a young girl. But I make up what it's like to be a young girl, and use, primarily in Teresa's case, parts of myself. And then it works. And after that I realized that I can write more books and make up other things as well.
00:19:50 What advice do you have for someone who's completed a short story which she (read: I) wants to send in to a certain horror podcast, but who never feels that it's good enough? How do I know that the horror is good enough?
Well ... let others read it. Read it aloud to someone. See if it works, if they get scared. I mean, I have the incredible privilege of having very intelligent beta readers. I read aloud to my wife as I write. After I've written maybe 10 or 15 pages, these days maybe even just 4 or 5, I read it aloud and see what she thinks. Most of the time she thinks it's good, but then she can have objections. And there's another woman in the family, Anna-Karin, as well as my son since many books back, who read it at an early stage and have thoughts and opinions. So that ... Knowing that the horror is good enough, that's very difficult to know yourself. So I would quite simply recommend, if you dare to, to let somebody else read it.
00:21:00 What's going on with your voice? Sometimes it gets darker and slower. Are you possessed?
[laughs] No, I'm not possessed. I don't know. I guess it's modulation. Certain modulatio- nevermind, no one's going to get that reference. No, it's maybe some habit from narrating audiobooks, that there has to be some variation in the voice so you don't [in monotone voice] only talk in the same tone all the time it ends up pretty boring to listen to if there's no form of modulation, [talks normally] right? So I guess it's mainly that, and all these years when I was standing on a stage, first as a magician, later as a standup comedian. This thing about modulating your voice, it's ... and, oh god, when I did magic on the street and had to capture and retain people's interest. I did that for many years, I must've done over a thousand shows on the street. And that's a lot about grabbing hold of people using your voice, followed by the magic tricks, but yeah. I suppose it simply comes naturally to me.
00:23:14 Will there be any more short stories involving Swedish folklore?
Well, I have ... where did I put it? Bengt af Klintberg's Swedish Folktales. There it is. I've been picking them off pretty diligently. I've done tomtar, I've done mylingar, I've done ghosts ... I don't know, I think I've kind of run out. [laughs] And that one's not really in Swedish mythology[sic] either. When I was writing the novel before my latest, The Summer of 1985 ... I was going to show off The Room in the Ground which is my latest novel, but unfortunately my phone's standing atop it. Anyway, The Summer of 1985 was a case where I thought that I have so many short stories at this point that I almost have enough for a collection, but I'll need another longer short story. And so I thought, "What folkloric creature haven't I written about yet?" And eventually I decided on mermaids. I'd never written about a mermaid and it'd be fun to do a, so to speak, realistic mermaid, an ocean-dwelling humanlike creature. To have a story about one of those. That'll be great. But then I unfortunately became way too interested in the story and came up with too much fun stuff so it turned into a whole novel instead. But, as mentioned, mermaids aren't ... merfolk of course exist in Swedish mythology, absolutely, but not mermaids in that way. So I don't know. What folkloric creature would it be, in that case? I mean, a lyktgubbe [will o' the wisp]? No, I think I've done all of them. Is what I say now, until I come up with how I'm going to write a story about Odin's hunt, for example. That's another mythological motif from Swedish folklore.
00:25:23 What's your favorite animal?
[laughs a little] That's like a Kamratposten [children's magazine] question, but that's totally fine. My favorite animal is the king penguin. Many years ago when I was in my twenties ... I traveled a lot when I was young, when I was a standup comedian and made quite a lot of money and was able to travel. I traveled to Argentina solely to look at king penguins, which were supposed to live in the very south in Tierra del Fuego. They of course also live on the South Pole, but there were supposed to be some in Tierra del Fuego too. But I never got that far. But I got to see a right whale instead. I got to take a ride with a boat and look at a right whale. It was really big. But my favorite animal is the king penguin. All the males just stand there curled up atop their eggs in the cold. I think they're beautiful. That's my favorite animal.
00:26:23 When will "Sigge" be released?
"Sigge", yes. I exaggerated a little when I said that it was done. It's not done, but I've written three pages. I think it'll be maybe seven in total. It'll take me a day to write the rest, it's just that I have so darned much other stuff I'm busy with. But "Sigge", yes. It's kind of a little ... appendage to I Am the Tiger, in which it turns out that ... I won't spoil too much, but there's a pretty major thing that happens at the end of I Am the Tiger, and that event is in reality only part of something even bigger relating to Sigge. But it's on its way. As mentioned, The Summer of 1985 didn't end up as a short story that could've motivated a new short story collection. I need eighty or ninety pages more, two or three short stories or a single very long one. And "Sigge" will be included in that, as will a little favorite of mine which I wrote solely because I became so very fond of a song titled "Misty" by the band Vasas Flora och Fauna. It has really bloody strange lyrics set to dansband-like accompaniment. It was my most listened-to song on Spotify last year. The lyrics are so mysterious, there are so many blanks that have to be filled in in order to understand what's really going on in it. And so I wrote a whole short story called "Misty" that fleshes out the story in Vasas Flora och Fauna's song. I can really recommend it.
00:28:09 How do you feel about your critics and the criticisms you've gotten?
That's a fun question. I've been so unbelievably ... well-handled by the critics. I almost can't understand it myself, how someone who writes horror and fundamentally mainly wants to entertain, can be so cherished by critics. It was ... not a sensation, but a bit unexpected when my novel I Always Find You was nominated to the August Prize. I still can't really understand how everyone can be so nice to me- Not everyone! Not everyone. I remember the bad ones too. But I don't attach much importance to them. But I read reviews. I read what people write online, I read on Goodreads, I read the user reviews on Storytel and the other audiobook services, what people are saying. I read it all the time. And there people are also consistently very nice and like it.
When it comes to audiobooks, I would say that four out five say that I narrate audiobooks really well. Oh, how much they want to hear my voice. And one out of five is: "What a bloody awful narrator." [laughs] What can you do? So I take it as encouragement, I'll keep narrating my own books. And it's such a good way to say goodbye to them as well. Because I never reread my books, unless I'm doing a film screenplay and need to remind myself of things. But I never reread them so I can go "ooh, what a good writer I am", absolutely not. But I reread them a final time when I'm sitting in a studio with headphones, and it's a nice goodbye to the book, even though at that stage I'm oftentimes far along on my next book. But no, I'm ... I'll have to say "grateful". Critics of course don't write nice things to be nice but because they genuinely like what I'm doing, and I'll have to be grateful to some other entity [gestures at the ceiling] or something. So yeah, I'm very happy and grateful.
00:30:10 Have you had any idea that some of your books take place in the same universe, that is to say that certain events or people could meet each other?
Yeah, absolutely. That's almost a decision I have to make whenever I write a book. Which of my other books exist within the frames of this story? I mean, Let the Right One In, there's of course a couple sequel short stories to it, but also in a story called "Vertical Village", a pretty good short story in my opinion. Lacke[sic] from Let the Right One In appears in that one, for example. The island Domarö from Harbour appears in The Summer of 1985, and so on and so forth. I still haven't ... in some book or another I considered going: "OK, in this story, the events of Handling the Undead have happened in this universe." Or: "In this story I'm writing, there was a big massacre at Sing-Along at Skansen in 2010", and then I could allude to that. So yes, there are cross-references, but there's no big shared universe. There are maybe three or four different ones, so to speak, with some stories of course being completely independent.
Or I give a little wink to the fans. In my latest book The Room in the Ground, which I can't show since my phone is standing atop it, at one point the protagonist Julia is meeting a representative for a far-right party, and he agrees to talk for as long as it takes to walk through the Brunkeberg Tunnel. When Julia enters the Brunkeberg Tunnel, she for a brief moment thinks that she's on a vast green field. That's of course not really because the events of I Am Behind You have happened in that world, it's because ... those who get it, get it. I have a bit of fun. Good question, by the way, about how different universes are connected.
00:32:27 Will there be a book about Tropicos?
Yes, there will! As soon as I've finished writing The Spirit in the Machine, which is the third part of the Bloodstorm trilogy, I've already finished a book called The Pigs of about 100 pages. It's a novella. But it's entirely about Tropicos. Their tour bus gets hijacked by two grotesque pig farmers who have very eccentric ideas about what they want to do with Tropicos. As previously mentioned, it's REALLY disgusting. And my son—who as mentioned was here before—think it's by far the funniest book he's ever read. And so do I, I think it's really funny. But several people who've read it don't think it's funny whatsoever. [laughs] So yes, the book after the next one, if Ordfront in the end dares to publish it. It's about Tropicos, with Roland and the whole gang.
00:33:28 [in English] What countries have you been to or would like to travel to?
Oh shit. I've traveled a lot, especially in my youth, so I've been to I think almost every country in Europe, um ... half of the countries in ... what do you say? Mesoamerica? Mellanamerika? Guatemala, Nicaragua, Mexico, all of those. And quite a few countries in South America and Asia, been to Australia, New Zealand. Yeah. I've been around. Partly due to my books, of course, been invited, and also just for traveling. But it's less these years because we don't want to fly too much. You know, flightshame. But we're planning on taking our—electric!—car to Wales in the near future.
00:34:33 [in Swedish] What's the scariest jumpscare/horror scene you carry with you from a movie?
I actually sat ... My wife and I have been together for 32 years, and for the last 28 years I don't think we've been apart for longer than ... two nights. Except one time, when she left because one of her children from an earlier marriage, who has children of their own—we have six grandchildren, not mine biologically but they're basically mine as well—they lived in Shanghai, and my wife Mia went there for a week to be with them while I stayed home. And that time I did a close study of jumpscares and how they work, mainly via James Wan's film The Conjuring. And I thought that the way a jumpscare works is that something scary pops up and then immediately BAM! No. In an effective jumpscare, the scary thing appears first, and then after a delay of half a second you hear the sound. That's when the jumpscare happens.
And the one that got my heart to jump up into my throat is from The Conjuring, the "Look what you made me do" scene, the mutilated woman. That's what I would say. Or ... I don't think anything's made me jump as high in the movie armchair as the American The Ring with the woman sitting in the wardrobe. When they look in the wardrobe and see this woman with the scared-to-death face in a real "BAM!" scene. I don't think I've ever literally hopped up in my movie armchair like I did then. But other than that I'd say that The Conjuring is one of the few movies that's actually made me scream out loud a couple times when I saw it in the theater. Amazing movie, in my opinion, but it's damned scary. Especially toward the end. How they've managed to maximize so many jumpscares and so much scariness at the end of The Conjuring is completely amazing. I'm a big fan of James Wan.
00:36:46 Bumped into you in Spain when you sat in a movie jury. What do you think about the job and can you mention some of your favorite movies?
I'm guessing that was in Sitges where I sat in the jury. It was really fun. It's so maxed out, to be so flooded with movies. It's a huge auditorium, loads of movies. At its most extreme I think I saw seven movies in one day, and it's mostly horror and fantasy. To watch a movie for one and a half to two hours, go out to smoke a cig and drink a cup of coffee in a fifteen-minute break, then go back in and take the next movie. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. You write a couple notes, of course, about the movies you've just seen. I think it's super fun. I think I've been in both Sitges and Strasbourg to sit at the table as a jury member, Strasbourg wasn't as hectic, but I think it's lovely. It's really an escape from reality from on high. To sit there and simply be flooded by cinematography. It's wonderful.
00:38:02 What happened to The Brothers Lionheart? Is it screwed?
I don't know. I think so. I mean, now with Thomas Vinterberg I'm guessing it's probably screwed, which I think is really a bummer. I had so darn fun with Tomas Alfredson when we worked on that screenplay. It's very fun to work with Tomas. He's a very fun person to be with. We of course did Let the Right One In, then we did a theater play called An Informal Conversation About the Current Situation together, and it's always a joy to get to bounce texts back and forth and talk with him. He has a pretty raw sense of humor, raw and dry at the same time. So yeah, I think it's a real bummer, because it was a very good screenplay that we created to boot. I was the one writing but Tomas had a lot of thoughts and ideas. But it's probably screwed, yes. Considering Vinterberg's version it's as good as certain.
00:39:00 You seem to have a lot in the works, but what do you think will come first? The Spirit in the Machine, The Pigs, something else?
Nah, there you have it. First The Spirit in the Machine, then ... I mean, The Pigs is finished. I could theoretically release it if God and Ordfront want, but I want to wait until after the crime trilogy is done before I kind of ruin my reputation with The Pigs and The Value, because it's really a return to the horror, which I long to come back to. I think it's been really fun writing these crime novels, but I long to come back to the horror. I long to get to scare people again, and both The Pigs and The Value should do that well.
Then I probably quite want to write ... For those who've read The Summer of 1985, there are two little girls named Lovisa and Melinda, and I think they're so darned fun. They were so darned funny. In general, I like writing about tough little girls with a lot of confidence and sharp tongues. They're are among my favorite characters. So I want to write a sequel titled The Summer of 1986, where Lovisa and Melinda, whom I think have turned 11 at that point, will be the main characters. And it'll start ... this was my wife's suggestion. The Summer of 1985 of course starts with the line: "It was that summer. The summer of 1985. The Live Aid summer." The second one will start: "It was that summer. The summer of 1986. The Chernobyl summer." When people were afraid of radioactive fallout and the Palme assassination had happened. Lovisa and Melinda will, among other things, play-pretend the Palme assassination. I'll probably write that one, I think. Then I have something which I think, I hope will be my masterpiece, called We Played Here. But I have a lot to write, and it's a lot of film screenplays and it's a lot to do. So I have a lot in the works.
00:40:56 Which is the best Depeche song?
I mean, it's "Somebody". It's a very un-Depeche-y Depeche song, just a piano accompaniment and some train noises to a beautiful ballad. But no, I can't say anything else. I like "Precious" a lot, uh ... "We'll Be Ghosts Again", the newest one. Not particularly fond of the rest of the album, but I think that one's ... whew, really back to form. Darn good song. And then I'm also unreasonably fond of "See You". That'll have to do for an answer. But it's "Somebody", ultimately.
00:41:45 Where's your primary focus for the future, horror or crime novels? Hoping for the former.
Yeah, I've seen a couple comments along the lines of "How long is he going to be doing this shit?" [laughs] But you should all know that it's very income-generating! In some countries I've gotten ten times the advance payment that I've gotten for my horror novels, and they've sold in far more copies. So it's partially economic incentives making me write crime novels. Plus that I had an idea for a trilogy, I had a whole plot arc for three books, so what the hell, then I had to complete it. Complete things, as previously mentioned, even if it's a trilogy of novels.
But after The Spirit in the Machine the focus will absolutely be more on horror, with The Pigs and The Value. The Summer of 1986 probably won't be very scary, but I have a couple other pretty scary ideas too. So there'll be more horror in the future, absolutely. And, oh, I wish I could tell you. One of my books is probably ... it's looking really good. I can say which one it is. I just finished writing the film screenplay for it. Reality. I think it'll be so darn good. I think the screenplay is slightly better than the book. So that'll be great, I think. But you never know in this business, you never know. There are several other things too, but that's the one I have high hopes for.
00:43:12 [in English] What made you want to study Spanish?
I wanted to study Spanish because I didn't want to study French or German. [laughs] Those were the options you had in, what's the equivalent, high school? In Sweden. And there's a lot of people speaking Spanish in the world, so it's a good language to learn. And also, I think I already then, yes I was, I was a big fan of Gabriel García Márquez.
[brief interlude of having to charge his phone]
So no, it's just because it was a very useful language and I was interested in Latin America. I was a big fan of Gabriel García Márquez and Julio Cortázar, and I wanted to be able to read them in the original language. So I had several reasons. I mean, I've read One Hundred Years of Solitude I think three times in Swedish, two times in Spanish. So yeah. It's been useful. And right now I'm reading Nuestra parte de noche, Our Share of Night by Mariana Enríquez, which I think is the greatest horror novel ever written, and I'm happy to be able to read it in the original language. And I'll have a talk with her in Lillehammer in one month or something.
00:44:56 [in Swedish] Yes, keep narrating your books!
That was a bit of encouragement. Thank you. I like doing it. It's like I say, a goodbye to the book. I've sat narrating quite a few of my books in our bedroom wardrobe lately, but now, finally, I've found a nice sound studio in Norrtälje, which is only 25 kilometers from where I live. Sound & Vision. It's been great narrating there, so from now I'll be narrating all my books there. It's very nice.
00:45:32 Which of your novels or short stories would you like to see as the next film?
As previously mentioned, there are a lot of things in the works, but ... well. Harbour, The Summer of 1985, Reality, Eternal/Love, I Am Behind You are all in the works, in various stages of production. I know a lot of people don't like it that much, but Reality is one of my favorite books I've written, even though I know a lot of people disagree with me. I like the whole tone in it, that it's so darn concentrated.
00:46:42 Do you ever change anything in a text while you're narrating an audiobook?
Yes, it happens, but it's very rare. But I can feel ... the audio technician might point out "That's not what the text says" but I go "No, it's more natural that way, I'll say it that way instead". It can be compared to when I was writing parts of a TV series called The Commission many years ago, and there was a funeral director character with five lines. I asked to get to play that part. And then we were on set with SVT to record it, I heard that "This doesn't sound good to say" and asked if I could say it in a different way and the director said "Sure, that's fine". But then I felt "Nah, this isn't a very good line either" and asked if I could say it in yet another way. "Sure, that's also fine." And I thought, "Shit! What if all my screenplays for this series are like this?" I wrote four or so episodes for it. And this was the little segment where I was going to be in it and I realized that it wasn't any good.
00:47:50 Are there any plans for more theater plays to be produced? We saw Fulet and it was so good.
Well, I didn't write Fulet. I wrote the story it's based on. But yeah, that one was good, I saw it when it was shown on TV and it was a really nice production. Um ... I've started writing another play, and I've finished another play that's coming. If everything works out as intended, there's a play called A Heart in the Situation of Today, which will be performed on a tour by the National Swedish Touring Theater next autumn. If it gets made. But you never know, but it also looks promising. So it's that. But it's great, it's ... a monologue I rewrote into a dialogue, but nevermind, that's not very interesting.
00:48:42 Do you have any plans to write a pure monster novel?
You're thinking something like Rawhead Rex? That's a short story, admittedly. Um ..."pure monster novel". I guess the closest I've gotten is Tjärven, a zombie story. To write it so straight, it's just a shitload of monsters. It's not about psychologizing the monsters or understanding how people have become monsters, it's just fucking zombies that come out of the sea and want to eat people's brains. I guess that's the closest thing to a monster story I've written, and it's like a novella. But no, I don't really have a good monster. I guess there's Sigge, and he's so ... [laughs] He's so unclear. But I don't actually have an idea for any pure monster novel, no.
00:49:37
I mean, Hans-Åke Lilja, a small round of applause for him. [applauds] He's sitting there and watching this and managing everything. This wouldn't work without him. He's so good. To think, how many great people I have around me.
00:50:04 Are there any annoying factual errors or other mistakes in any of your novels that you've discovered after the fact and that ride you like a mare at night? I know there's one in The Kindness I think about sometimes.
Ohh ... [laughs] OK. Color me intrigued. I mean, I have people who fact check and edit and such. I have a lot of people who read it before it's published, but things do slip through the cracks. Earlier today, an attentive reader sent me an error in my latest, The Room in the Ground, which I can't show for aforementioned reasons, where I've actually messed up with the time. That the timespan is all wrong and doesn't work. So I've redone that part for the ebook and future paperback editions, but it'll still be there in the audiobook and hardcover versions. And I mean, it's annoying, but what the hell. It's not that important.
It's worse when ... my son has teased me about this a couple times. A couple times when I've been in author panel discussions, I have often for some incomprehensible reason talked about a person and claimed that they're dead even though they aren't. [laughs] That's something I can beat myself up over a little. But not really anything I've written, no. If there are any mistakes, it's ... pfft. [shrugs] It doesn't ruin the book. I mean, I don't do enough research. I think my crime novels are probably brimming with factual errors. I do my best at looking up how police work works, how trials work, how prosecutor's decisions are needed for this and that, but it's probably inaccurate. It's probably in the ballpark, it's close to how it really is. It's not completely wrong, but it's probably wrong. But not very many people have had objections, strangely enough.
00:52:00 Have you met Stephen King?
No, I haven't met Stephen King. I have a buddy named Gunnar Rehlin, who used to be a film critic on TV and such, and he did an interview with Stephen King in which [King] mentioned that he had read and liked my books and that he thought it would be fun to meet at some point. And so I wrote a mail to his ... person, the one that's the middleman between Stephen King and reality and said that "We're on Cuba once a year, I know you live in Florida in that time of year, so we could come over and meet up if you want". But I got no reply. So, nope, I haven't met Stephen King.
00:52:52 Do you still play video games? Have you played Alan Wake?
Of course I've played Alan Wake, what did you think? We actually replayed the HD remake of the old, original Alan Wake to prepare for ... me and my wife play together. We swap the controller between us, or else she sits and keeps an eye on where items are or solves puzzles since I suck so much at it. But you have to have a PS5 for Alan Wake 2, and we haven't bought one yet. But once we get a PS5, I'll play it. Fantastic game.
00:53:32 Will there be a new short story collection soon?
Yes, as previously mentioned, I have ... I have both a couple newly-written ones, and also short stories that have been published in other anthologies or magazines or radio or been released only as an audiobook. So I have 220 or 230 pages' worth of finished short stories, including some new ones. There's one called "The Darkness Out of Which the Heart is Beating", which is one of my favorites and which I wrote for radio. But I have to pull myself together and write two or three short stories more, then I have enough for a collection, which I think will be called Misty. Or The Darkness Out of Which the Heart is Beating.
00:54:20 [in English] Are there plans to release Our Skin, Our Blood, Our Bones in English?
That's of course a line from a song by Morrissey. "There's a Place in Hell Reserved for Me and My Friends": "All that we hope / Is that when we go / Our skin and our blood and our bones / Don't get in your way / Making you ill / The way they did / When we lived." Hence the title. Anyway, I really don't know anything about that, no. I know The Kindness was out in English, this big fat novel of about 700 pages, and I know that the Bloodstorm trilogy is coming out in English. The Writing in the Water, The Room in the Ground, The Spirit in the Machine. Those are coming out in English, I know, but new short story collections I don't know, no.
00:55:33 [in Swedish] [speaking of factual errors] You missed that the barbell's own weight of 20 kilos is included in the total weight.
What the heck, does a barbell weigh 20 kilos? Oh, you're talking about that part [in I Am the Tiger] with Tomás at the gym where they have that guy pinned by the neck ... It's a pretty cool scene, but OK. I don't think I mention at any point how much weight there is.
00:56:03 What's in the basement in "Special Circumstances"?
No clue. I ... don't know any more than what I write. There were a lot of people asking what happened afterward in Let the Right One In, after Oskar and Eli have dipped. I had no idea, so I had to write a short story in order to find out. But I don't know any more than I write. I don't know what's in the basement.
00:57:02 My favorite out of your books is Little Star. You really managed to make me feel empathy for her even though one maybe shouldn't. How did she come to you?
Um ... I assume you mean Theres and not Teresa. [gets distracted by question in live feed]
00:57:24 Why didn't you want to write the screenplay for the movie about Aquanauts?
They asked if I wanted to do it, but I said that I didn't have time right now, but I think it's an interesting project. I think it's a really cool exhibition.
Anyway, Theres. She came to me when I was going to take a shower one day a very long time ago. I got an image, which was topical in some way at the time due to Idol, of young girls getting exploited by slimy managers making money off of them and potentially also molesting them, but primarily simply exploiting them. And I thought, OK, imagine a young girl like that who's a very talented singer. She has a manager, and it looks like he's sucking the life out of her. But it's the other way around. She's some kind of creature who can live off of other people's life energy, and this manager is becoming more and more a hollow version of himself. And that was the basic idea. Then it didn't quite turn out that way in the book. But that was how Theres came to me. I also got the image of an infant that can sing in sinus tones, perfect tones, which someone with good pitch perception can hear is the voice of an angel. Primarily I had the image of a plastic bag buried in the ground, a person digging up this plastic bag, grabbing hold of it, and then a little hand comes out and grips his finger. That was where Theres started. And then ... yeah, that's the origin of Theres.
00:59:13 When you're actively working on an idea, do all the other ideas disappear or do you balance everything?
No, but I often make sure to concentrate on a single project. But no, I have loads of things in my head at the same time, to the point where I sometimes get all tired and can't sleep. There's a lot scrambling around in there. It's a lot of ideas, and in the best of cases two of those ideas collide and merge and become something else. A short story needs maybe two good ideas, a novel seven or eight or so. And I have a terrible amount of images rolling around in my head. I'm happy when those ideas and loose images manage to get together.
01:00:20 [in English] What inspired you to create the characters of Eli and Oskar?
Well, Oskar is very much an image of myself and Eli is like my dream of the fantastical helper that I myself would've had at that age.
01:00:35 [in Swedish] Have you and Mia ever talked about writing something together?
We're working on it! We're working on a novel. We've written around 60 pages of it and it's called The Little Shop that Refused to Die. And it seems promising, but we're taking it at a slow pace.
01:00:52
Good. I think we'll simply call it quits there. It's so strange, there are still people joining the event, but I don't know, I guess you can watch this after the fact somehow. "People have sent a request to be in your live video." What does that mean, do you want to be background dancers? [laughs] I'm not very good at this kind of thing. But no, listen, everybody. Thank you very much for watching. Lots of fun questions. I'm very glad that you follow this and sometimes give encouragement on Instagram and such. I read all of it, sometimes I comment, but I read all of it and it often makes me very happy. So ... until next time we can meet in this way, thank you for tonight. Have a good one. Goodbye.