Evil in Me by Brom

Credit: TOR Nightfire

Peter Biello: Coming up in this episode.

Orlando Montoya: We meet her when she's cleaning toilets at the YMCA as part of this probation. So she starts out in a very fragile place, and then she's possessed by a demon.

Brom: You know, it is a very palpable power that you can feel when when you have a large group of people singing together.

Peter Biello: Imagine his dating profile. You know, when not drumming for bands full of humans, I'm eating rats.

Orlando Montoya: Yeah. So —

Peter Biello: This podcast from Georgia Public Broadcasting highlights books with Georgia connections, hosted by two of your favorite public radio book nerds who also happen to be your hosts of All Things Considered on GPB Radio. I'm Peter Biello.

Orlando Montoya: And I'm Orlando Montoya. Thanks for joining us as we introduce you to authors, their writings, and the insights behind their stories mixed with our own thoughts and ideas on just what gives these works the Narrative Edge. All right, Peter, we're back from the Savannah Book Festival. Did you have a great weekend?

Peter Biello: Had a great time. Yeah. It was it was nice to be surrounded by, first of all, so many books, but also, you know, authors. It was cool to talk to the authors.

Orlando Montoya: And book people.

Peter Biello: Book people.

Orlando Montoya: A lot of book people. And we're back now with our first podcast from that weekend.

Peter Biello: Yeah, I'm excited to hear who you spoke to.

Orlando Montoya: I spoke to Brom. Brom, he is from Seattle. He moved to Savannah about five years ago. He's a graphic artist and he moved into fiction, mostly dealing with monsters and spirits and mysticism. And his book is called Evil in Me.

Peter Biello: Yeah, I saw his name on the list of Savannah Book Festival attendees, and he's just got the one name, Brom.

Orlando Montoya: Brom. He does have a real name, I suppose, but this is his nom de plume.

Peter Biello: Okay, so for the purposes of this conversation, Brom, Madonna, Bono, one name,

Orlando Montoya: you got one.

Peter Biello: So in Evil in Me — so, it's a horror book?

Orlando Montoya: Yes. It's about a troubled young woman named Ruby who is possessed by a demon, stalked by a psychopath, pursued by a bounty hunter, ostracized by her peers, misunderstood by her family, and somehow has to use song magic to save herself and her immortal soul.

Peter Biello: Apart from the song stuff, I thought that would be an average weekend for you.

Orlando Montoya: That is a tough, tough life there.

Peter Biello: Yeah. So the song magic. We'll get to that, but it sounds like Ruby's in real danger.

Orlando Montoya: Ruby is in danger. And I told the author this. I said, Brom, you should have called this book "Ruby is in danger."  She is 23 years old from Enterprise, Ala. Story takes place in the 1980s and Ruby is kind of a punk rock artsy kid, outspoken so she doesn't fit in with her peers in Enterprise, Ala. She's on medication to control her emotions, and she had a drug offense, so she's on probation. And we meet her when she's cleaning toilets at the YMCA as part of this probation. So she starts out in a very fragile place, and then she's possessed by a demon.

Peter Biello: So how possessed? Is she like hearing voices?

Orlando Montoya: She is hearing voices. And you kind of have to suspend your belief at this point in the book, because we're talking about actual possession. Like a demon takes control of her, can talk through her, can move her body, and all of a sudden, you know, Ruby is saying, "I am Beel, lord of Sheelbeth" — "I am Beel, servant of Lord Sheelbeth," you know. And so this demon makes her do things that get her in trouble and eventually put her in the eyes of the law.

Peter Biello: So there's no doubt that the possession is real and not just a figment of her imagination. Or is that in doubt?

Orlando Montoya: Well, other people think it's a figment of her imagination. But it is real in the book.

Peter Biello: And the demon's name is Beel.

Orlando Montoya: Beel? Isn't that a great demon name?

Peter Biello: It's so weird. It's, like, simple and weird. Great demon name.

Orlando Montoya: The other main demon in the book is Sheelbeth and Sheelbeth is kind of like the main demon here, and he goes into where these demon comes from and sort of the mythology, all of all that. And that's interesting too, but it really centers about about Ruby.

Peter Biello: Okay. So what kind of things does Beel make Ruby do specifically?

Orlando Montoya: So I'm not going to answer that question.

Peter Biello: Oh!

Orlando Montoya: Because not — not because I don't want to give anything away, but because this book is so action-packed. Every chapter in this book has something new going on. There's 16 chapters, it's a 12-hour audiobook, and every chapter, there's a new twist, a new turn. And it's usually bad for Ruby. So if I went through each and every one of them, it would be counterproductive for our — for our interview. What I'll do is I'll give you kind of the overarching plot structure, all right. And what Ruby has to do to save herself and her mortal soul, is to get her old band back together and get thousands of people to sing her magic song, and that will defeat the evil demons, that will defeat the real-life psychopath who's stalking her and release the power that will heal her.

Peter Biello: Okay, the magic song. What is it? How does it work?

Orlando Montoya: So I don't know exactly how it works. Maybe it's vibrations. Maybe it's spiritual energy. But songs do have the power to create a force greater than ourselves. And this is where I'll introduce our author, Brom.

Brom: I think most of us have experienced that to some degree. If you're at a concert where everybody's singing along to a song, or if you're in a choir and in church, you know there's so much song and chanting is involved in religion, and I feel that, you know, it is a very palpable power that you can feel when when you have a large group of people singing together. So that's part of what is played upon, is for her, she needs to get enough people singing the song with her heart and soul to make the magic work.

Orlando Montoya: And the cool thing is, this song is an actual song.

Peter Biello: Oh, OK.

Orlando Montoya: And we're going to hear it now. I'm going to play a clip. It's from Savannah-based band called The Maxines. It's a real-life band. They're an all female, grungy, punky, metallic, high-energy four-piece. One of Savannah's best rock bands.

MUSIC

Orlando Montoya: When Brom was writing this book, Brom's wife, who is a friend of the band's, said, "hey, wouldn't it be cool if we brought this book to life with some music and made it real?" And so Brom co-wrote the lyrics, that song. And so this book has aspects of music, art, illustrations that I'm going to share in a minute and a story. So what do you think of the track?

Peter Biello: I mean, very '80s, right? It's this book takes place in the '80s. I was wondering how strongly the '80s vibe would come across like, you know, Stranger Things-esque. That is the first thing that came to mind was like, this has a Metallica sound. I could see how this would fit in that, that era.

Orlando Montoya: And this song comes up over and over again in the book, at least as I experienced it as an audiobook after it's introduced. When we hear the song, it comes up in little, little snippets like what I played there. It's really catchy and it's another thing that I love about the book.

Peter Biello: Okay, so you mentioned that Ruby has to get thousands of people to sing the song, right? So how does she do that? Is she planning to do that in any particular way in Enterprise, Ala.?

Orlando Montoya: Not in Enterprise. Not much — not much crowd there in Enterprise, Ala. So the action moves to Atlanta. And Ruby has a friend in Atlanta, Tina, who was her former high school bandmate, and Tina got out of Enterprise. They had a falling out. But she goes to Atlanta. She, Ruby goes to Atlanta to reconnect with [Tina]. And so we get into Atlanta's Grant Park neighborhood. We get into Little Five Points, which as you know, it's sort of the punky, grungy, oh yeah, if you're going to have a punk band, that's where you're going.

Peter Biello: Home of Wax 'N' Facts and Criminal Records. So great music scene there.

Orlando Montoya: So that's where they're shacking up. They get the band back together. And so in order to get people to sing the song, they gotta book gigs, they gotta get their music played on the radio. They gotta record their songs, so they gotta get a recording studio and — and it goes into all of this and, and eventually they actually storm into the studio WREK 91.1. And what I will put in a little plug for them, they're sort of the weird college station in Atlanta, the one that plays all kinds of music, Georgia Tech station. So you kind of have to suspend your belief at some point as to how within a matter of days or weeks, they become like a smash sensation in Atlanta.

Peter Biello: Well, if you've already bought that a demon has taken her over in the first few pages of the book, I suspect then this seems like an easier sell.

Orlando Montoya: Yes. And then we get to the fun part. One of the funnest parts for me was their newest bandmate because Tina and and Ruby can't do it alone. Their newest bandmate is a demon named Vutto.

Peter Biello: Okay. Demons play music too, I suppose. 

Orlando Montoya: I mean, demons are demons aren't just in the mind in this book. They can manifest themselves physically into our universe.

Peter Biello: And most of them went to Berkeley.

Orlando Montoya: They did, I don't know. Not all demons are evil, either. And this this this demon, Vutto, he's just trapped by his circumstances. And you know, I don't want to overemphasize the role of this character, Vutto. He's actually a minor character. But it brought me joy because, you know, it's just the idea of this, of this demon, this short little demon playing drums, you know, with talons.

Peter Biello: A short little demon playing drums with his talons. Does he have the same number of hands as a human, or is he.

Orlando Montoya: Well, I can show you in the in the book there.

Peter Biello: I've got a copy here.

Orlando Montoya: A bookmark where you can see an illustration by Brom of the demons in the book. And there is Vutto.

Peter Biello: There's Vutto!

Orlando Montoya: Yeah. So they kind of they kind of have to disguise him. And he looks kind of like a — like a short little rock star there.

Peter Biello: Yeah. OK. So let me describe for people who who can't see this. He's got sort of a stovepipe hat with a flower on it. Some like his skin looks green. He's got these long hands with, like, clawed fingers. For some reason, he's holding a rat.

Orlando Montoya: Oh, he eats rats. As long — you know, as long as he's playing the drums, he's doing good. But sometimes he'll just eat rats.

Peter Biello: Imagine his dating profile. You know, "When not drumming for bands full of humans, I'm eating rats."

Orlando Montoya: Yeah, so he could be. He could be found out if he's eating rats. Or he could be found out if the evil demon Lord Sheelbeth takes control of him. So there's this danger element. There's this comic element that's kind of absurd.

Brom: I love the absurd. You know, there's a lot of that in my writing. Then there's this little demon who basically just wants to do his own thing. Did bring a certain element of, of of, you know, of horror, but also, you know, it was — it was funny, you know, to have him interacting with the characters with similar goals. But his his pathway to, to achieve those goals were always to kill and eat whatever was in the way.

Orlando Montoya: And I should say that this book really needs some lighthearted comic elements, because if you're looking at the other illustrations there, some of the other demons are quite bad, and there's a lot of really, really dark and sad and violent stuff in this — in this book.

Peter Biello: Okay. I want to hear about some of those. What's the darkest element of this book, in your view? Maybe the most uncomfortable? Can you even say it? Would it spoil it?

Orlando Montoya: I — I'll say it because it comes up right at the beginning and it is throughout. It is the character named Richard. Richard is the psychopath who is stalking Ruby. He is not a demon. He is not possessed. He is fully aware of his actions, a human being, a serial killer who abducts and tortures women for fun. He appears at the beginning, but we don't really find out his connection to Ruby and the other characters until somewhat later. So he's kind of this background menace. It brings us air of darkness about the book that just pervades the entire book, and makes you wonder, how do you even come up with a character like that? I mean, I'm sure Stephen King and all horror writers are asked this question. And of course, I put it to Brom: You know, how could you come up with such an evil character?

Brom: One of the themes of so many of my books is that there's very gray morality. It's exploring what evil truly is. You know, if — is a vampire truly evil? If a vampire needs blood to live, is it not just — are people just not its source of food? Just like a lion is not evil because it will eat people if that's what it does. It's in its nature. So, so often the demons and the characters in my books, they have a motivation, they have something they need. And humans are just, you know, their food. They're just something in the way. It's not like they're doing something just for the pleasure of — of harming and torturing. So with — with Richard, what was interesting, I wanted to create a character that was truly evil and what was truly evil — to be truly evil, you had to be completely self-aware of your being evil. It couldn't be a mental illness. It couldn't be something that would be, you know, due to your environment. It had to be somebody that was 100% saying that had a very, very good life, that decided to just be evil. So his whole theme here, you know, he's just this normal, otherwise wholesome fellow, except for the fact that he tracks down, you know, young women and he kills them. And it was, I thought, the — the, the, the scariest, darkest character I've ever written.

Peter Biello: That's interesting because my feeling mostly about the — the antagonists in books like this is they don't view themselves as evil. They have some kind of self-justifying motive that makes it all worth doing. But this kind of turns that on its head.

Orlando Montoya: Well, Brom was saying that, you know, when he reached his midlife, that he kind of found that the testosterone level went down and that he was just bored with everything. And he kind of thinks that Richard is fulfilling that boredom by killing people.

Peter Biello: Huh. OK.

Orlando Montoya: It's awful.

Peter Biello: Yeah, that seems pretty awful. So on the scale of like, the Joker, Voldemort, Hannibal Lecter, you know, Mr. Hyde, how does Richard rank?

Orlando Montoya: I mean, he's right up there.

Yeah?

Orlando Montoya: Unfortunately. And he's the reason why I don't read more horror. I mean, you may have noticed that this is my 21st or 22nd selection for this podcast, but I've never done horror before.

Peter Biello: You don't like horror?

Orlando Montoya: It's just the descriptions of violence, torture, psychopathic behavior. They just make me uncomfortable.

Peter Biello: It's supposed to.

Orlando Montoya: It is. I mean, I have to turn it off sometimes. So, you know, there is a warning with this podcast. Sort of stay away if you're — if you're uncomfortable or don't want to read about that. If this book were centered around Richard, I wouldn't read it. But fortunately, this is a book centered around Ruby, our protagonist, who we're really rooting for. We — we're, we're rooting for her. Even the demons in the book are kind of humanized. We kind of understand their circumstances and and their backstory. So I think that this is — it's just a great book.

Peter Biello: Well, I like horror. I'm a huge fan of Stephen King. I tend to read his new books whenever they come out. What I tend to like about Stephen King books, though, is that they're not always super gory and that the bad guys are often humans that, you know, lurk around the corner. And books, I think, are a safe way for me to digest gore, because if it's in a movie, like, I turn away.

Orlando Montoya: Well, I can't stand the sort of, you know, Middle Ages or 18th-century kind of torture stuff on TV and in movies. I'll — I'll skip ahead of those part.

Peter Biello: Yeah. Yeah. Same. I'm not I'm not into that but. Well, I have a question for you about this book because you listened by audiobook. But this book has also — like, it has illustrations in it.

Orlando Montoya: Oh yeah. So Brom, as I said, is a graphic novelist who went into writing and yeah, he's a really talented guy. And look at all that artwork there.

Peter Biello: Yeah, I'm I'm checking it out. Vutto Demon, who I guess is Vutto, without his drummer costume on it, looks like he's got a giant toothed mouth in his — where his stomach is.

Orlando Montoya: Yeah, and look at Sheelbeth.

Peter Biello: Sheelbeth is oddly hot. I have to say.

Orlando Montoya: Yeah. Sheelbeth is — it's a female demon, and she actually controls worms inside of her body that are former souls of people.

Peter Biello: Oh, creepy.

Orlando Montoya: Yeah.

Peter Biello: Well, so. So after reading the — after listening to the book, you went back and look through the images. And I guess that changed the way I would read it, right? Because if you have this book, the temptation is to open to the center and look at the visual depictions of all the characters. But you didn't have that as you were listening, did you?

Orlando Montoya: No, I didn't get the book until I showed up at the festival. So I had these characters all in my mind. And —

Peter Biello: And did you imagine them quite differently from what they appeared?

Orlando Montoya: They were less dark.

Peter Biello: Your imagination protecting you.

Orlando Montoya: They were more human, guess.

Peter Biello: So overall, what gives this book the Narrative Edge?

Orlando Montoya: Well, it opened my mind to horror. I want to say thank you, Brom, for giving us a sympathetic main character. A story that involves art and music. So it's — it gets you, get you thinking, you know? What's real and what's not. You know who's really in control? Do we — do we really have demons out there or spirits? What's evil? And I also like the scene-setting around Atlanta with the '80s punk scene and the rock 'n' roll venues. You know, the '80s was a time when everyone was afraid that punk and metal music was going to destroy children. You remember that?

Peter Biello: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Orlando Montoya: There's always some music that's going to destroy children. And so that's that was a great scene setting as well. We do we do have to sort of suspend our beliefs to find out if the song magic really works. I won't tell you if it works in the book, but it works for me. I certainly know that by singing karaoke.

Peter Biello: Oh, yeah. Yeah, you're a big karaoke guy. So could you do that? I mean, could you scream like that?

Orlando Montoya:  Yeah, as a matter of fact, in the book festival, I went back to my old karaoke place in Savannah and nearly lost my vocal cords singing one of those high metal songs. But yeah, when the crowd is, you know, singing along with you, it's magic.

Peter Biello: Well, this is cool. The book is Evil in Me by Brom — one name, Brom. Orlando, thanks so much for sharing this with us.

Orlando Montoya: Thanks for listening to Narrative Edge. We'll be back in two weeks with a brand-new episode. This podcast is a production of Georgia Public Broadcasting. Find us online at gpb.org/narrativeedge

Peter Biello: You can also catch us on the daily GPB news podcast Georgia Today for a concise update on the latest news in Georgia. For more on that and all of our podcasts, go to GPB.org/podcasts