Coming to you from the dining room table at East Barbary Lane. Welcome to a special episode of Full Circle the podcast. I am your host, Charles Tyson Jr. And I am delighted to be sitting down with our guest today. He is a wonderful author of science fiction in the young adult milieu Escoor, and his new book is delightful. It is called The Brightness Between Us, and it is a sequel to what I feel is going to be an ongoing saga. Elliott Schefer is in the building. Hi, Elliott, how are you?
Hi? I'm great, Thanks for having me.
Thanks for being had by us.
That's a sophisticated set of grammar, right there, nailed it.
So, Yes, So, your new baby is entitled The Brightness between Us, and it is a sequel. But first, why don't you tell us what's in store for us in the story overall and in this particular installment.
Yeah. So, The Darkness Outside is a science fiction novel I wrote back in twenty twenty one. It is a romantic, gay science fiction story about It takes place four hundred years in the future, and the first astronaut to settle
a moon outside of Saturn has gone missing. Her distress beacon went off and then no one has heard from her, and so the two remaining countries on Earth scramble rescue mission to go rescue her, and it's may have to put one astronaut from each of these warring countries on board. So these two boys are enemies of each other, sworn enemies of each other, but stimate they have to work
together to do this rescue mission. But as they approach the moon of Saturn, they discover that the ship has been lying to them and that their mission is not at all what they were told, and that it's actually something much different. And so by the end of the book, these two boys have traveled across the Milky Way to settle a new planet, and they are the future of humanity because war is destroyed Earth, and at the end of the first novel they settle on this planet and
begin a new life, to begin new civilization. So it's kind of like a literal version of it's Adam and Steve, not Adam and Eve. And then the brightness between us picks up sixteen years in the future and they are now thirty something dads, these two boys, and they have two sixteen year old kids, Owl and Yarrow, and they're trying to scramble together a life on this distant planet.
But there's more than they like. We don't we haven't met any aliens or other creatures around, but there's plenty to be discovered on the other side of the mountains around their settlement about what's actually going on in this planet.
I love it. Yeah, the book has a constant sense of wonder and discovery about it, and it's it's very cool. I dig it. One of the things that warmed my heart. I just love how the kids referred to their parents as dad and father. I was like, it's a nice way to to navigate that.
Yeah. Originally I had them using their parents' first names because they're at their point of view characters, and they kept calling them Kodiak and Ambrose, and it just felt weird, you know, just like when kids first named their parents, Like it can sort of startle you, right, But yeah.
Okay, what drew you to science fiction? Have you always been a fan?
I've been a fan of science fiction, and yes, when I was a teenager, I loved two thousand and one
and its follow up novels. I am a huge fan of Battlecar Galactica, the reboot that started in two thousand and four, And I think, you know, there's just something science fiction does, this crazy thing which it takes things that were concerned about like social social questions that we have about how we relate to each other in our contemporary world, and it puts them in a new context where you can kind of see them a new and
reassess it. And I think that's always been a really powerful selling point of that genre, just like how Star Trek back in the nineteen sixties was a way to talk about race for a country that was unwilling to talk about race. They were doing it through this diverse crew that was meeting, like Captain Kirk kept falling in love with various aliens, you know, and so it was like, you're like, the first interracial kiss was on Star Trek.
And I think there's a way in which it kind of can push forward and in a way that contemporary aratives not necessarily aren't equipped to do, can actually look and really examine what's going on. And I think for me reading these science fiction stories, I never even hoped to find an LGBTQ character in them, right, And that felt like a real kind of loss, like I would have loved to see myself in one of these stories.
And so in the darkness outside us and the brightness between us, it's very much trying to like fill a hole that was there, not just around LGBT representation, but also, you know, sci fi kind of deservedly gets a reputation sometimes as being a little bit chilly, like it's kind of all about the ideas and not about characters and feeling. And I wanted to kind of also as much as I could, like just create characters and a romance that
would really pull people in. And so there's a way in which these boys are each other's only the only other humans in each other's lives because they're trapped on a spaceship together, and so there's a way in which they discover that connection is the only way to survive. And I think that's we all live a version of that story where you realize even with all your armor and you're saying, like I'm good, I'm fine on my own, I don't need anyone, screw my families, screw my friends, whatever.
Like we all learn like you do need someone, it doesn't have to be your family that you were born with but you do we are we only exist in emotionally healthy ways if we're in a relationship with someone of any sort not romantic.
Yeah, that's that is one thing that you know. I also am a fan of science fiction, and you're right, it does tend to be a little cold and clinical and sterile at times, and that is an element in your work that I do appreciate, that sense of emotional awareness and intimacy, and you know, yeah, I think it is safe to say that that comes directly from you know, our queer sensibility and the longing for connection and belonging and togetherness and family, et cetera, et cetera.
Yeah, we have to work, you know. We all had to survive and upbringing where we weren't necessarily able to
be our authentic selves, or most of us did. So a lot of our adulthood is about, you know, keeping whatever armor is useful, but also removing whatever pieces we can to become vulnerable to each other and not you know, not always because I think you know, I certainly if you look at like the wreckage of all my relationship from my twenties, I just was not ready to like sort of say like, oh, I need you, I need help,
you know, like those kind of things. I was like just always trying to like, no, I'm fine, Like you're emotional, but I'm not feeling anything right now. And that was all the result of growing up in the closet and feeling like I had to like be walled off from needing people, relying on them, or being my full self with them. And a lot of my work as an adult was figuring out how to become authentic again, Like I needed to do that early on in my life to survive, but I don't need to now, So it's
a it's very much. Something I wanted to talk about in the book too, is to explore how we connect with other people. And it's like the hardest task of our lives, I think, to really get full connection. Like I think human relationships are simple on one end and really tricky when you look at it through another end, Like there's a lot to You're always learning about how to be a good partner.
Whoever you're with, and there's never just one answer, and that one answer doesn't always stay the same.
Answer yep, yep, absolutely.
And you know then there's also that whole like you know, feeling of where the importance of love is. And you talked about like, you know, building the armor and breaking down the armor, and sometimes there's elements of like, you know, well, if they love me, then what does that say about them?
And oh, yeah, I had that relationship too. Was that There's some quote I think it was Whatody Allen and said, I don't want to be a part of any club that would happen to.
Me as a member. Yeah, exactly right.
And definitely you know like some people like if someone loves them, then there must be something wrong with them, right, so they find a way to talk themselves out of that relationship. And that's a really self defeating mindset, it is.
And when you said relationships in the twenties, a part of me just cringe because the entire ones, the mistakes we made. It's a wonder I'm still here.
But when you don't even know what mistakes you're making, that's part of the problem. Like once you're conscious of you're trying not to make, but you're making all the subconscious ones, you know.
So and how do we learn from our mistakes when we think we already know every damn thing. Yeah, it's a wonder we make it out a lot. Well, actually we don't.
Well yeah, well, and the darkness side is I don't want to reveal the plot to us, but it has half way through as a major thing happens where the boys mission is not the actual mission and they end up kind of like in a situation where they can restart their relationship with each other after thousands of years go back, and so they leave messages to their future selves about how to be good partners for each other.
And that was partly about you know, when you think about some of those people before I was equipped to be a good relationship partner. You know, I looking back, I probably knowing what I knew now, it could that relationship could have worked out. You know, I've been with my husband now for fifteen years, so I'm not actively seeking any of that, but I think back on some of those and like, it was me. It wasn't him. It was me in some of those situations, and like,
but the scar tissues there. There's often you can return to relationship, but sometimes the hurts go too deep and you just can't. And I was kind of thinking about, like what if you could have a redo And not to reveal too much, but the story of darkness outside is kind of exploring that, like, what, let's give it a second go and see how we can be better.
Nice and you know, going to dig into that little bit more in a moment, but but yeah, I was just thinking, like, you know, there are a lot of stories that are quote unquote universal, but I'm sitting here thinking there's just some stories that can only be told from a queer sensibility and a queer point of view, you know, because not everyone really has that shorthand and and that approach to relationships and the emotional intelligence that
can come through it. And it's interesting when other people try to tell our stories and it just doesn't feel right. You know.
The legacy of science fiction too, where we have these astronauts who don't have emotional needs like they are Like our own Space program was we just drafted our first astronauts for all Air Force pilots that were just swapped over to become astronauts instead, and really they were taught to like be unemotional, to like drive out emotional needs, and it was thought that that's what made the perfect astronaut.
But now like we have a very different approach to it, and you realize like they're trapped in this environment, in close quarters and high tension environments with other people, and like, having emotional intelligence is crucial. It's not like that's something that we have to avoid emotions. It's instead it's about being expressive and being in touch with what you're feeling
and also what other people are feeling around you. And I think it's it's kind of time science fiction caught up to the fact that, like, it's not like emotions are secondary to survival. They are crucial to surviving.
Right, because otherwise, you know, we could just have an entire story about robots.
Yeah, or robotic people, which some of the sci fi classics they are like their characters, but they're not really like they're just you know, sort of automatons going through this storyline exactly.
So something very exciting your Your first book, The Darkness Outside Us, is in development to be a feature film. Yeah, that's one exciting thing. And the other exciting thing is it's in development with Elliott Page's production company, Page Boy Productions, which that's so many cool things wrapped them inside of each other.
Yeah. I was delighted when I got that call, because you know, Page Boy Productions is doing really exciting stuffy. They're looking to make commercial, broadly accessible movies that are from and about marginalized people and getting as many people on the team who are you know, trans gay by and just really shaking up who's making movies and who movies are about. And so it's been really exciting to
work with them. And then we do I can't get it going to the detail because I've been announced, but there's a major studio that's stepped up in a big way to fund it. So that's you know, I sort of feel like Charlie Brown with the football round film stuff. I'm sure I'll run towards it and Lucy will find a way to like pull the football away. But right now it looks really promising that we will actually have a movie of darkness Outside is sooner rather than later, so that would be super exciting.
I love that. Have you gotten a chance to have direct conversations with Elliott?
So I've been talking to the head of Page Boy Productions, Matt Jordan Smith, and he's been my main, my main go to I'm going to be in la next month, so it's possible that I'll be eating with Elliott, But so far we haven't had a chance to have a conversation. I'm not sure what a group of Elliott's is called. It's probably some collective noun for it, but we do spell it differently. I'm one L and Elliott is two ls, so.
In my head it's elle Ocean.
But I like it. Yeah, that's good.
Yeah, I love I love that. I love that mission statement of the production company. And you're definitely fits right in there. Especially in this time of I get so tired of hearing about hearing people say why do we need to care about the sexuality of the characters, Why do we need to know? Why do we need to care? Why does sexuality have to be put put on display as it were, to which I usually then just post screenshots of their fase, you know, kissing like Batman and
Catwoman and things like that. It's like you're not thinking about it, but trust me, it's always there.
Yeah, Like straight is a sexuality. It's not like that is a an empty space that isn't a sexuality. It is a different one.
You know, I mean, judging from stories of a lot of women, I know maybe you know, but but no, that's wonderful. Yeah, talk to me, Yeah, talk to me a little about your feelings on that, because you know representation is crucial.
Yeah, well so I was. You know, I don't love the phrase like the character just happens to be gay or buyer trans I think it's not.
That's so dismissive.
No one just happens to be their sexuality, right, like it influences who you are and how your life is. But at the same time, I definitely there's a place for books that are about being LGBTQ. But Darkness Outside As and Brightness between Us isn't about that as much as it's just part of these characters' lives and who they are. And I think we need both kinds of stories, one where it's about that identity in other words, that
is less central. And I actually, with the screenwriter for Darkness Outside As, we did a co project where we read this book on the making of two thousand and one, sort of thinking about other sci fi movies and what we could learn from it. And I was reading that book and Arthur C. Clark, who wrote the novel two thousand and one, was gay and live with a man in Sri Lanka.
I don't think I knew that.
I know I didn't either until I read this and I realized, like the characters in two thousand and one to two men on a voyage, and they're not really you know someone one of them has their wife back home, but it's not really their sexuality is and part of their characterization. And I see this kind of artful dodge that Arthur cy Clark did in the sixties when you wrote two thousand and one to sort of neither make them gay but also like not have their straight sexuality
a big part of their characters. But as a result, it sort of feels like there's like a little missing piece somewhere in that story of this human connection. And so you know, I would love to think of the sort of gay version of two thousand and one. And in a way, Darkness Outside is kind of is you know, this front tense experience of being locked into a spaceship, like you can't leave right there is no like I'm out of here, we're done, Like you're like then you're
in the vacuum space and it's not good for you. Yeah, they really have to figure out their relationship and their and their love. And I have two different the main characters, like one of them is very kind of progressive and really sort of comes from a country where they speak they don't even use, you know, labels for people's sexuality or sexual identities. It's all just much more fluid. And the other one is from a much more repressive, patriarchal
old school society and he's more buttoned down. And so just to give us sort of different ways of looking at how we approach our own sexualities through these two characters, to see, you know, we all have varying relationships and of comfort with our own who we are as people.
Yeah, and that's that's an interesting dichotomy with people because we have those of us that are like, why do we need labels? Why do we need to make things a thing? Why can't we just be? And then other people like, but if there's no order, then then how do I know how to be?
M h. Yeah, Well it's I find I have both feelings at the same time, you know, like I don't want to have to self identify or to to think of the label for other people. But it's also a really quick shorthand that's useful in a lot of circumstances to be able to say, like, here's who I am, and here's here's my descriptors. It is it can catch people up really quickly, whereas it takes more work if you're going to avoid labels to really get across your identity.
Yeah, and now that I said that, I am thinking about like the new generation and it does get a little chaotic. It's like, you know, I have to learn a whole new language, and it's like I am always going to be respectful of my people, but you know, certain things like do I really have to say Zen's are? Can I just say your name?
Yeah? That one is it's hard for just the brain to process it. But I do appreciate, you know, the ways in which sort of these very specific identities like sort of allow people to to quickly identify even if they're their sexuality or their sexual identity is really complicated. Right.
I think it's useful and it's it's good to have a broader set of terms, but it does mean, you know, there will always be a term that I'm not familiar with, right, So I just hope for patients and grace from people that are teaching me about how they identify when it when I don't yet know what they're what their.
Adjectives mean, right, and then you have people that are like, my gender is a warm summer night, and it's like, no, we're not doing that. I'm sorry, log.
Off, but well, I think I think there's like two sides of you want gender to be really like sort of taken seriously, and sometimes it can feel like it's not. It's being taken not seriously, but at the same time, like it's great to be playful or on gender too, right, like have you know like that we can have it doesn't have to be a serious concept all the time, right, Like we can we can kind of screw it up and be fluid and gender queer.
And I think pro hopefully, Yeah, definitely. And of course, and to backtrack real quick, I was thinking about two thousand and one and the queer sensibility behind it that I didn't realize was there. Hall is kind of a shady queen.
Absolutely, you're all seeing eye of hell.
Yeah, no, now that I think about it, yeah.
Yeah, And I rewatched it and they're they're very handsome astronauts too that on that voyage. I mean, Kubrick the director wasn't wasn't gay from anything I can tell or buy, but there definitely wasn't interest in casting very beautiful people for those roles.
Yeah, and you know two thousand and one is a visually striking world. Oh anyway, speaking of how so AI is a very present component of your work in these stories. So how much of that concept do you put what you want to see? And how much like where we are? Because the whole concept of AI for me is very fraught.
Yeah, I think it is for a lot of us. I you know, writing Darkness Outside as I wrote it in twenty nineteen, and at that time a I was being mentioned. But I was a little leery of having even saying that the phrase artificial intelligence in the book because I was worried it's going to be like a fad that we wouldn't be talking about it. And then obviously now we're really talking about it a lot more.
That was not a worry I needed to have. But I think at this point, because of our diet of other science fiction stories, we're very ready to have the kind of evil AI interpretation. And I definitely play with it in the Darkness Outside as there's the ship's operating system they call it OS is shady and it's their true mission is kept a secret. From them by the ship.
But once they know the true mission and they are heading off to settle this new planet, the AI becomes an ally and it becomes when they land, it becomes kind of the third parent for their kids. It's just like sort of gentle gardener of this new civilization. And I kind of liked playing with our expectations around it that it doesn't have to be Skynet and Terminator. That there is a way in which AI might be as it gets more and more complicated, might be emotionally complicated too,
and capable of good things and bad things. And we've kind of see that in our every day there's you know, a lot of us are worried about the influence that'll have on this information, and you know, students plagiarizing essays from chat GPT. But at the same time, it's, yeah, I mean, it'd be hard to resist. But at the same time, it's you can see all the small ways in which is facilitating everyday life and useful, useful ways.
So I think it can be both at the same time. Right, we have to kind of be able to hold both those in our head. It might be force a good.
Imbad exactly, and you know, I am all about the advancement of science and technology. In fact, I'm low key obsessed with it. And you know, part of me is very excited with the way that AI is integrating itself into our real life. And then part of me is like, you know, the people that are creating these things, I know they read the same books and saw the same
movies that I did. So it's like, why are we trying to like do certain things to prove that we can when we already have a not good example of what could happen. You know, it's like, why are we doing this to ourselves? And why do we have that impulse to do that to ourselves?
Yeah, when it's this a mad scientist approach where because you can do it, you should do it, which you trust that someone else will step in the way if it's going to do wrong, that it's not your responsibility as the creator of these things. And I think we're realizing that governments have been slow to get a handle on how to put guardrails on AI, and in a lot of ways it might be might be too late.
Yeah, That's why whenever I ask chat GPT to write something for me, I always make sure to say please and thank you.
Because you want to survive the robot apocalypse.
I'm one of the good ones. Please thank you.
That's right. I was just learning today that people give names to their rumpus, and I've never named my robot vacuum. So I think I'm worried that I'll be killed during the robot uprising. Son, I'm gonna name it really quick so that it keeps me alive.
Oh, now you have manners, uh huh, now that it's useful. I love it. I love it.
I love it.
So what do you do? You see the brightness between us being part two of an ongoing saga, I think.
So I'm a little leery around sequels in general, because for every good sequel, there's probably four or five really terrible sequels out there. And you know, I actually got in trouble yesterday for naming Greece Too is a terrible sequel, which apparently a lot of people really love Greece Too.
That is so controversial.
Apparently. But like, let's say, Speed to right. So Speed was an amazing movie, and they were like, let's just make the bus and cruise ship and do it all over again, and it just didn't work. And I think when a sequels doesn't have its own thing it needs to say what it's just like a follow up without really a lot of thought behind it, it can be
kind of terrible. So I was I dragged my feet about writing any follow up to Darkness Outside Is until I realized I had more to say and a story that could stand on its own, and so that's when I wrote it. And so I think I am interested. I think this world has more stories in it to tell that I would like to tell. But I'm waiting to find a storyline that can stand on its own and not just rely on the other two for three. So if that, if, and hopefully when that comes to me,
then I'll work on it. But I don't want to make a speed to or agrees to. The model for me of like a perfect sequel was Aliens after that, because Alien had this amazing creature, an amazing lead, the Sigourney Reaver, and it was basically a slasher movie, just in a spaceship ye And then Aliens kept the Aliens kept the main character, but the tone of the movie changed. It became more like a war movie instead of a
slasher movie. It was like Platoon or something but with the Aliens, and I thought that was so clever because it was a follow up. It felt like a sequel, but it didn't follow the beats the original alien because it was the whole tone was different. And I think that's that for me, is like a gold star about what a sequel could do. And it's something I kept in mind with the brains between us.
Yeah, like the first movie was a horror film, the second movie was science fiction, and then it expands right there and from there, and I think that's tone is very important. I'm a huge fan of the trilogy, especially the second installment in a trilogy, because typically in the second installment of a trilogy a there's not a happy ending,
which is always interesting to me. And also you drop right into the action, you know, because we've got all the world building and all the character exposition and everything from the first film, so now we just jump you right in the middle of the action and we just story story, story, story story. That's usually like, uh, Empire strikes back, Matrix reloaded, Like that's that's.
Usually your Matrix reloaded fan. That's also a controversial one. That's not a purist that want to just rolled. Its just the first movie. Oh, interesting, like two Towers? Is that one?
Two Towers exactly? Yeah, fire yep.
Follow up. Yeah. I do like the feeling of not having to do the work of getting to know the characters, because that is there is a lot of work we writers ask of readers is to spend the time putting the pieces together to figure out who someone is in the book. And sequels are great because you already know they're all friends by now, so you know exactly who everyone is.
But see the other side of that, though, is then that puts so much pressure on the third installment because now you've got to wrap this whole thing up in a satisfying way, and that doesn't happen as often as i'd like. Case in points the third Matrix film, well, yeah, I.
Mean the very few people are fighting for that one unfortunate. But then like Return of the King, that was an amazing right, and that was the one that won the Academy Award for the Lord of the Rings. Yeah. I think for me, the tricky one is the second one, as on the writer side of things, because often those
are just treading water. Like the first book had the amazing beginning and set up the premise the last one is going to finish everything, and the second one is like more stuff happens, you know, it's just like the middle stuff. And so I think it's it's hard to make those interesting on their own, right.
But at least with your approach with these books, you don't have that pressure on yourself because you're not thinking of it in terms of a trilogy. You're thinking of like a satisfying story in this installment, and it is what it is for this moment. So that's that's good for you at least.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not sure how how far this will go. It'll stop once I feel like we've told of all the stories that needed to be told in this universe, but I'm not sure when that'll we so I guess we'll just find it out as we go.
I mean, you know, part of me doesn't know what to root for, but like, you know, you might get to the point where when the film is a huge success and then they start backing the big money truck up to your house and now you're like, okay.
Right, right, Well part of it is, you know, you see what happened with something like Game of Thrones, where the TV series got out ahead of the books, and so it was, you know, it seemed like there was infinite amounts of material for them to adapt, and then all of a sudden they were the schedule was getting ahead of Georgia R. R. Martin's, so part of it, you know, writing the sequels does mean that I would be able to set the terms of where this storyline would go.
Whereas if I kind of if the movie did take off like k Not Come, would they would if I, if I weren't in the follow ups, they would be harding a screenwriter to write it. So if I want to tell the story, I better get in there, get.
Working exactly, because I've seen too many examples of properties where they want the money, they want the capital TV, they want the cash cow of the next part of the of the story, and the original screenwriter or the original writer isn't involved usually because you know, they don't freaking want to. You know, this is not what I want to do with my work, and.
It's not good. Yeah, one TV series you see off from the showrunner who's kind of the head writer, is there for a season or two and then moves on to other projects, and the series takes a nose dive. Once there, their voice is out of the room.
Yep. Like right now, there's all this conversation, and I mean mostly on the internet in discussion groups, but like, do you remember Lovecraft Country that was on HBO. Lovecraft Country was a novel which essentially was like a bunch of short stories stitched together with one overarching plotline, and they made this brilliant series on HBO and like the show had its own like had an accompanying syllabus because there was so much, so many references with books and poetry,
and it was just stunningly perfect. And when the series ended, like it there was just the one, the one season, and people are like, we want season two, we want season two. But my whole thing is there was only one book. They did the series on the book. So if they do a season two, now they have to start making up new shit without the author. I don't want to see that.
Yeah, who knows, maybe they'll come up with something that's out Lovecraft's love Craft, but it's hard to imagine.
Yeah. Yeah, it's like you don't know what to root for it. It's like, I'm not done loving this show, but no, I don't want you to mess it up.
At the same time, though, I think, you know, I'm really interested in not being too heavy in the room if when they adapt, if they adopt, get to the point where they we're getting ready to make the movie, because I think I've said my piece for four hundred pages. I've I've said everything I want to say about the characters in the storyline, and I'm kind of interested in someone else's take and what they what they want to modify, and what they would do. And I don't want to
get in a way of that. I'm afraid that, you know, it's the writer I would it's like, no, you shouldn't be wearing a yellow shirt, be a green shirt, like right, right, right, just become insufferable to them. So I would much rather have a lighter hand help where I can, and then someday sit in a movie theater and the lights go down and I get to just see what they did with something that was once just a word doc on my computer.
I love it. Yeah, And that's interesting when, like you know, when an author lets go of the rains and it ends up being different than their vision and they're experiencing it for the first time with the rest of us like, what must that feel like? Like, do you recognize your baby at all?
Yeah? Right, hopefully you do. But then if they make a muck of it and it's a trible movie, at least I can just say, like, I didn't do it right, I did it, you know. But there's a ways in which you know movies are different, you know, because I can get a lot of tension and story out in the internal narration in a novel. In a movie can't really do that, So they have to sort of prove through the visual medium what characters are about and what
they're thinking. And that's a very different art form than what it's a novelist I have access to. So I think I'll leave it to the experts to figure out how to translate what at times can be a more internal story in the novel into something that is works well for cinema.
Do you like I mean, right now, I know the answer because you're in the middle of getting your work into a film. But do you like film adaptations better than series adaptations? What do you think about those two?
I don't know. I think there's so many films that I've loved in TV series that I've loved. It's hard to hard to know. I think it's just keeps changing
so much. Which are getting the best productions and the best directors, Like it's used to be that like film is considered a cut above, but that's those days are long gone and you have some of the best digital entertainment is on TV now, So I think it's I can see a version of like where a whole season would be the darkness outside is in the whole season
would be the brightness between us. But I think with the movie you have like the total clarity, like we know exactly where it's going to end, because the screenplay has already gotten there, and it's just a really neat arc where it's a TV series ends up a little more open ended and I think has more room to play, but it can be a little less tight than a movie can be. So I'm certainly open to both. But right now we're thinking of it as a movie, right.
Like there is that like it can become a big, sprawling thing if you let it go over the course of the season. But at the same time, it can be like you said, like you can delve more into the internal struggles and the personal journeys of the individual characters. Like the example that's in my head the total random
comparison is Dear White People. Like there was the movie and it told the story beginning, middle end, but then they redid it for the series, and that was interesting in that each episode was told from the point of view of a different character, so they still, over the course of the series of the first season anyway, told the exact same story that the movie did, but you got so much more out of it because you got to see it from this complete three sixty point of
view because you're seeing it from all of the different characters. And that's one of the things I love about expanding properties into series that you can go as deep as you want, but then it really depends upon how seriously you take the work, because it can easily go go astray, like American Gods, for instance, Oh my god, they the minutia that they paid attention to. And because I was so excited to see American Gods turn into a series because I love that book. I have never been so
bored by a story that I loved. You know, it's like we're five episodes in and we're only like twenty pages into this book. I don't understand, you know. So, yeah, there is a two sides to that coin. So who would you say are your biggest literary influences.
Well, for these books, I think Arthur C. Clark is a big one. I do love like storytelling wise, I think Susanne Collins did an absolutely amazing job in the Hunger Games trilogy, and I think as a model of getting a tense thriller kind of story with a high concept world like She's she really mastered the way to do it. My favorite book of all time is a book called Howard's End by Iam Forster, which you know, I was set in nineteen oh eight London, but he
was you know, Forster was a gay man. It wasn't revealed until he died in nineteen seventy and he had this gay novel, Morris, that was only published then. But Howard's End, yeah, it was this like straight characters but written by gay man with a gay sensibility. And as a gay teenager, I saw the movie and then read the book and felt like kind of seen by it and that I understood him, and I felt a kindred spirit in Iam Forster, and so that book has always held a really close place in my heart and I
reread it pretty regularly. It's like my comfort read. It's a really great book.
You seem to like period pieces, like yeah, I think so.
I like learning about somewhere else. In general, I like to feel like I've gone far away from where I am.
It's like you're influenced by stories set in a fixed point in the past, and then you write about things that take place far into the future. It's interesting.
Either, you know, sort of like having a good exploration where I'm running from humping in the President who knows? I love hmm explore episode two.
Here's a question. Do you have a soundtrack when you when you write or do you write in complete silence?
No? I usually have music going. Yeah, I tend to write to sort of vapid pop. That's like a good match for me because it's got energy but the lyrics that don't require too much attention. And so I definitely like wrote a whole album to you know, Kelly Clarkson another one too. I don't know.
Interesting, I never.
Never wrote to Katie Perry, but I do like like an album that I know and love that I can put in the background and feel the energies. But it's not like new music that I'm actively processing, Like that's the perfect writing music for me.
Okay, all right, I love that.
I love it. I love it.
I love it. So what do you what is your your hope for your your career? Like, say, where do you see yourself? Pie in the Sky in in five years? The movie's been out, it's a huge success.
I like this. I like this, future sounds great.
Like what do you what's on your your dream board?
Oh well, I'm toying around with the idea of a novel for an adult novel, not erotico, just a novel that's audience as adults. But I was asked on a panel, you know, what's the time period that you'd be interested in writing about that you've never written about? And I realized I'd always thought about, like what would what would I have done if I were born in the Middle Ages as a gay man, Like what would I I'm with myself when there is no stone wall, you know,
there's no like gay awakening. And I realized I would probably have become a monk. I don't believe in God, but the idea of living on like in some monastery with a bunch of other guys and brewing beer and illuminating manuscripts and doing astronomy and stuff, singing chants, and it sounds great. So I'm imagining a novel about a monastery in the twelfth century where it turns out not one or two, but all the monks are gay. It's
like a gay monastery. So I'm not sure where to go with it story wise, but I think that's probably the next project for me down the pike.
Be honest, Fabulous Monastery ever.
That's right, that's a good title. I mean, you'd want to crack an open, right, unless the Ebulous Monastery ever?
I mean, hey, well, Elliott Schrefer, thank you so much for sitting and chatting with me. I'm so glad that I got to talk to you about your wonderful work, and I look forward to being able to sit in the theater and watch the film based on your work, because you've got a unique point of view that I think people need to need to check out, need to be exposed to.
Well thanks, yeah, yeah, I would love that experience too, So maybe we'll be communing across from two different cinemas thinking about that. But this has really been a great conversation. Charles and I really appreciate your having me on and I've really really enjoyed it.
Thank you. What's your favorite way to get people to buy the book?
I love you know. It should be in most independent bookstores, your local small bookshop, so please check it out there if you do want to buy it. I've signed the copies in three different bookstores, Books of Wonder, Red Balloon Bookshop, and Blue Willow Bookshop, so you can order from any of those and they'll send you a signed copy, or you can get it from your general chain store too. That's all fine, fabulous.
So the book is The Brightness Between Us by Elliott Schreefer, and I implore everyone that is within the sound of our voice to get yourself a copy and immerse yourself in this wonderful world that he has created. Elliots, thank you so much, and I hope that this is not the last time we talked to each other.
Yeah, that sounds great. Let's do it again.
Yes, take care now.
Thanks.
Full Circle is a Never Skured Productions podcast hosted by Charles Tyson Junior and Martha Madrigal, produced and edited by Never Scured Executive Produced by Charles Tyson Junior and Martha madrigal. Our theme in music is by the jingle aries. All names, pictures, music, audio, and video clips are registered trademarks and or copyrights of their respective copyright holder.
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