Daniel Kraus has written a number of novels, including Rotters, a great horror novel I’m reading now. What puts him front and center right now is his work with Guillermo del Toro on the Oscar-winning story for The Shape of Water. Kraus had the idea years ago that he might want to do something about a love affair blossoming between a creature and an employee of a lab. He was already working with del Toro on the Trollhunters book, which became the series on Netflix. He mentioned the idea to del Toro, and that got the ball rolling. You’ll hear more about that in the conversation.

That opened up the opportunity for Kraus to work on his own version of the story in novel form. He used the backbone from the script and expanded the backstory and mythology to paint a fuller picture of the characters, most notably the heavy, Strickland, and his initial relationship with the creature. That was a large chunk of the conversation, but Kraus is currently working on another collaboration of sorts, finishing off a novel that George Romero had been working on that would span the history of his zombie movies. We also got to talk about horror in a more philosophical way, how the concepts of humanity and beauty work within that frame. Find out more about Kraus on www.danielkraus.com.

After the conversation, our featured track this week is “Let’s Fool Around Til the End of the World” by 6 String Drag from their new album Top of the World. This has been a great year for 6 String Drag fans. Not only did they release a remastered 20th anniversary version of their classic rock and roll Americana album High Hat, the put out the all-new album. You’ll hear more about that next week, when 6 String Drag’s Kenny Roby will be the interview guest. You can find the music at their website, https://6stringdrag.com.

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