In this episode of Horror Heals, Corey and Kendall sit down with an emerging horror author, Dacre Black, who knows all about turning real-life trauma into terrifying tales. Growing up, Dacre faced relentless bullying, but instead of letting that define him, he found healing in both martial arts and writing. His mother gave him powerful advice that would shape his future: "If the world isn’t treating you right, create your own reality." This became the foundation of his career as a horror writer.

Dacre is now the author of the Afterlife series, blending '80s nostalgia with supernatural suspense in books like The Campground, which is now available. We discuss how his experiences with bullying, the therapeutic value of martial arts, and his love for horror movies from the '80s all played a key role in crafting his unique writing style.

Join us for an inspiring conversation about the intersection of horror, healing, and the creative process.

Key Themes Discussed:

Using Horror to Heal:

• The episode starts with our guest’s backstory—how bullying throughout his childhood led him to seek escape and healing through creative outlets.
• His mother’s advice to “create your own reality” was pivotal. Writing became a way to escape the harshness of reality and to build a world where he could have control over the narrative.
• How horror became a tool not just for escape, but for processing his emotions and finding strength.

From Bullying to Martial Arts:

• Alongside writing, our guest took up martial arts, specifically Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, as a means of self-defense and building confidence.
• He discusses how martial arts helped him rebuild his self-esteem after years of bullying and gave him the tools to physically and mentally defend himself.
• Martial arts continues to play a role in his life today, influencing both his personal growth and his writing style, as his characters often display the same resilience and strength.

The Power of His Mother’s Words:

• A powerful moment of the episode highlights the advice his mother gave him during those tough years of being bullied. By encouraging him to write, she helped him find a way to channel his pain into something creative and healing.
• He shares how this advice has stayed with him throughout his life and career, becoming the foundation of his work as a horror author.

The Birth of the Afterlife Series:

• His Afterlife series was born out of his love for 80s horror movies, paranormal stories, and his personal experiences. The 80s setting, with its absence of modern technology, heightens the suspense, making his characters rely more on their instincts than on gadgets.
• He talks about the development of his latest book, The Campground, which blends haunted campgrounds with paranormal thrills, all tied together by that classic 80s vibe.
• We also get a sneak peek into his upcoming books and plans for the series, which will eventually span 13 novels.

Horror as Therapy:

• The episode touches on the Horror Heals theme as our guest reflects on how writing horror helped him process trauma from bullying. Horror became a way to confront the "real monsters" of his childhood and turn them into something empowering.
• He shares insights into how horror offers both catharsis and a sense of control—two things that are essential for healing from emotional scars.

Real-Life Influences in His Writing:

• From his experiences as a martial artist to his love for 80s pop culture, we learn how real-life events and challenges shape the characters and plots in his stories.
• He discusses the importance of creating relatable characters who, like him, face real-world struggles but find strength in unexpected places—whether through fighting off supernatural threats or their personal demons.

Takeaways for Listeners:

• Horror can be more than just entertainment—it can be a powerful tool for processing trauma and finding healing.
• Writing and other creative outlets are effective ways to confront and manage emotional scars.
• Martial arts, or any form of self-defense, can help rebuild confidence after facing adversity like bullying.
• Supporting emerging authors, especially those with meaningful backstories like this one, brings a deeper connection to the stories they write.

Where to Find the Author:

• Instagram
• The Campground on Amazon

Hello, boys and girls. It's your old pal, John Cusir, the voice of the Crypt Keeper. And I want to welcome my good fiends of the Horror Heals podcast. Is horror good for mental wellness? But of course it is! I delight in the delicious deaths of pitiful people on the silver screen.

So get ready for a hell of a good time with my new fiends Cory and Kendall on the Horror Heels Podcast.

Welcome back to Horror Heliacs. Today we've got a killer episode lined up for you. We're diving into the world of horror fiction with an emerging author who has one of the most powerful backstories we've heard in some time. His name is Dacre Black and his new book The Campground is out now as part of his Afterlife series. But before we get into the scoopy stuff, let me tell you what makes Dacre's journey so special. Like a lot of us, he dealt with bullying growing up. And instead of letting that break him, he found a way to fight back.

Not just through martial arts, although he's a total pro at that too, but by creating his own reality through writing. His mom told him something amazing. If the world isn't treating you right, you can build your own world in stories. And that's exactly what he did. So, from bullying to martial arts to writing his own horror stories, Dekker has taken the tough stuff in life and turned it into something creative and something healing. Horror is more than just scares, right? It helps us face the monsters, both real and imagined.

Daker, welcome to Horror Heels. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. You're actually our first fiction author that we've had on the podcast. So we're thrilled about that. Kendall and I are both avid readers and love the scary, spooky, weird stuff. Well, that makes me really happy to hear that. I didn't know I was your first fiction author. It puts a lot of pressure on me. I have to set the bar. So all the others have to compare themselves to you now. Exactly, right?

You get Steven Spielberg and Tobe Hooper together and you know, you're going to, there's going to be a masterpiece. Can you talk a little bit about why you set your series in the 1980s? I've been writing for a long time. started writing in 1994 and I published a book of short stories, a book of poetry. published a novel and it was all in general, like general fiction. There was just a very generic genre. I would think that the novel that I wrote was the closest to genre that I could say it was.

probably southern fiction and just nothing was taking off. I would love to be able to do this for a living. I think any author probably would. Whenever I started self-publishing my books, something that I noticed that was selling a lot was not only serialization, you know, where you have like many, many sequels and there's a character that people become comfortable with and want to see succeed, but also sub-genres. I know that the eighties are really, really popular just across the board.

older movies and there's a rotary phone. Whenever I was researching the details that I added in, I had to dig really deep. But for example, something that a lot of people remember from the 80s is when you would go to a restaurant at in particular, like a pizza joint, like Pizza Hut or something like that, and you would get those paper cups and they would have wax on them. I would like scrape it off with my teeth whenever I was a kid.

like little details like that that I'll add into the stories to make it more 80s. That's the main reason that I chose the 80s was because I wanted it to be a little bit older. I really also wanted, I like the aesthetic. know, the neon lights, the neon spandex, the crop tops, the tight acid wash jeans, all that stuff. Well, kudos for doing the research. I think those details are so important and they really, you know, kind of pull us in like...

Just as you were describing the wax cup and like immediately I flashback to being a kid and for some reason like that McDonald's Coca-Cola and that wax cup was the best tasting soda, you know, and that just, you just took me back to like, you know, be at five years old. Yeah. Well, it's funny that you bring up the lack of technology because I'm reading a mystery slash thriller right now and I'm not going to name the author cause I'm not sure if I like it yet.

But it is interesting that I was happy when she made the main character lose her cell phone because at least some of the action is happening outside of the internet. it's been much more, I'm much more engaged I know than I would be if everybody could click and get their answer in three seconds. Well, let's continue flashing back to the eighties. What was Young Dacre's first exposure to anything horror?

I had an aunt that passed away a couple of years ago from kidney failure and she was basically like my second mother. And I grew up with her son. He's basically like my brother. His name is Brad. And him and his little brother introduced me to the three franchises from the 80s, horror franchises from the 80s. Halloween, Fred at 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street.

I would say my earliest memory of watching anything quarter was the opening scene of Friday the 13th part six Jason lives whenever he takes that rod and shoves it. I think it was part six. He shoves it through the tent and rips that woman in half. That was probably my earliest exposure to it that it wasn't really I'm not like triggered by it or anything that you know being a kid and seeing gore like that made me feel like I was getting away with something.

Yeah, for me it was what, Scary Stories in the Dark or whatever that series is. That might not be the exact name, but yeah, that was my like, aha! know? And then, although I was probably reading Human King at the same time. Yeah, and Scooby-Doo, obviously, in the 80s, watching Scooby-Doo, the Beetlejuice cartoon, just anything that was in that realm. I loved Halloween too, just Halloween time, because, not just because of the candy, but because I really liked

kind of escaping my own reality because I was bullied a lot. That's actually why I started writing was because I was bullied as a kid. I was severely bullied in middle school. And my mother told me, my mother told me that like I would get awards and receive accolades in English class for the short stories that I wrote. And my mother told me that I could create my own reality to escape the world that I actually live in.

and create my own characters and my own heroes. I would say that's why I started writing scary stories, especially to escape the horrors in real life. So I was really excited whenever you reached out to me because I have two careers, one that I'm working on that's writing, but my other career is actually martial arts. I've been teaching great. I've been teaching Gracie Jujitsu and Judo for I was under a hoist Gracie.

from people that study martial arts and practice is that it can be very therapeutic on many levels. That kind of makes sense to me. Yeah. Yeah. And I over the, over time, you know, the, reasons that I do it stack up, they don't really go away. But what you said, therapeutic, I do it more so now for other people's health, like it's for self-defense, obviously. I mean, that's a, that's the backbone of it. But when I started it, it was to protect myself. And then as a teenager, I wasn't really into ball games.

I was more into like theater and writing and I really liked the competition aspect of it because it was the closest that I could get to a fight without actually being in a fight. So that way I could go into these competitions and practice. And then whenever I got a little bit older, like I said, I was born in 82, so I'm 42 now. As I got a little bit older, I started teaching more and seeing how that really helped out other kids that were in the same position that I was in being bullied, know, building their confidence and

Now that I've been in the game for a while, I'm starting to realize how much it can affect a person's health. Not just coming in and like doing pushups as a warmup, the way that it bleeds out in other areas of people's lives. Let me step back for just a moment and say thank you for opening up about being bullied as a kid. And your mom gave you such amazing advice. I love that. Love that. Love that. I was getting chills as you were speaking. They're still like, you know, lingering with the...

martial arts a couple of questions there. One, how do you address, you know, when you can censor or find out that a kid, one of your students is being bullied, like what kind of advice do you give them? I give them some personal advice just kind of based on the way that they're being bullied. I'll give them examples of what happened to me, but we also have a protocol that we call talk, tell, tackle. It's the three T steps. And this is more for little bitty kids. My general advice would be ignore the person, walk away.

And if they keep bothering you, then go and tell someone. So this kind of leads to the talk, tell, tackle. First, you talk to the bully and you tell them that you don't talk to them that way, so they shouldn't talk to you that way. And then if it persists, because that's what bullies do, it's not just a one-off, like one-time thing. If it persists, then you go and tell someone like the guidance counselor or a teacher and request to remain anonymous. And then if it persists again,

then there are two types of tackles. There's the first verbal tackle, and that's when they should ask the bully, do you want to fight me? So it gets a bit aggressive because they won't stop. So something needs to happen. The talking didn't work. The telling didn't work. And if they agree, then comes the physical tackle, which is when their actual martial arts skills, which looks kind of like wrestling, the style that I teach, their martial arts skills would come into play. But if the bully says, no, I don't want to fight you, then say,

Okay then, leave me alone. Great, great. The other question I've got is have you introduced martial arts into your fiction? yeah, actually in this series, the Afterlife book series, the first one is titled The Gatekeeper, the second one is titled The Neon Mall, and the third one is titled The Campground, and I'm actually publishing it at midnight tonight. Because with Kindle Direct publishing through Amazon, it goes through about a 24-hour phase of review.

and then it will be uploaded and go what they call live, which means that it's published. And I really liked the idea of putting it out on October 13th because, you know, 13 is synonymous with the macabre, which is also the reason that I chose the last name black. But there was a, there's a woman in the campground after like the campground named Artemy Murdock. And she has a background in judo and she names her stallion Kano and Yagoro Kano was the, the founder of judo.

Yeah, that was my, my promise to myself at this podcast was don't use it to push my books, even though deep down I wanted to. I on. That's I mean, that's, Hey, self-promotion is fine. Absolutely. Yeah. I why do you think people go on talk shows? George Clooney's not going on Jimmy Kibble just because he says my Leo right here. Yeah. Do you guys have a favorite? If you had to pick.

one or top three horror movies or books or books do you have some that are your go-tos? You can share our favorite or we have a favorite horror movie. It's a problem. mean, I think you're thinking what I'm thinking that I'm a sucker. Friday the 13th is my favorite franchise and the first installment is really, really good. But I know what Corey and I are talking about is The Exorcist. We're huge fans of The Exorcist.

Did you like the Friday the 13th remake with Jared Padalecki? All of those movies have their have their know pluses and minuses. It's like we don't necessarily go back to that one as frequently but you know we're old school. I we watch I bet we watch the original at least three or four times a year or we'll start them over and we'll do them all in order you know so it's definitely got its charms to it you know. I just hope that they are able to work out these legal issues because it's been so long since we've had

anything, you know, legit, like licensed Friday the 13th and kudos to the fans out there who are making fan films and fiction and all of that stuff. It's all good. But, know, come on, let's get something official going again. You know, they were going to do, hopefully that show is going to still happen next year. We had Adrienne King on as one of our first guests and she was supposed to be part that reboot series. I, hopefully she still will be, but yeah, we want to see something official. mean, like the last thing that I remember

which they got rid of was the game. know, like I'm not a big gamer at all, but we bought an Xbox because when we found Kendall's family, one of our nephews that was hanging out with us a lot is a huge gamer. So I'm like, okay, I guess I got to get an Xbox. So we got something to do with this kid when he comes over. And then I had to get the Friday the 13th game. And so that was something that he and I bonded over, playing that together. My cousin had that game. It's, it's, I really liked it. I'm not a gamer either. I like Nintendo. That's about it. Like old Nintendo ones, but.

They come home with notes from their teachers about the stories that they've written in class and how good they are. So that makes me really proud. they're not too fond of the horror aspect of my books. So in my books, you'll see unusual elements that typically are not in horror that I threw in there for my kids because I needed to tell them. I wanted to be able to tell them something about my books. So for example, in

Afterlife the neon law which is the sequel the main character dick Draven comes across a jar of unicorn tears and that was obviously for my daughter and There is a dead cat. It's a ghost of a cat named Ichabod. He drank the unicorn tears that's how he died so his his spirit kind of floats around like a flying squirrel and He's he actually becomes more prominent in future books. He's kind of like the sidekick, but I put that in there for my daughter

So I can talk to them about my books a little bit, but I mean, there's some really terrible, gory parts that I threw in there for that most hardcore, like, terrifying part three Rob Zombie style fans too. Right. Yes. Wow. What a cool dad you are. That's awesome. So are you, we've got a twin niece and nephew and we took them to their first haunted attraction back when they were like 12. They're 22 now.

So have you thought about exploring the whole creepy twin thing in your world? You know, I've thought about us I kind of given away a little bit of the storyline here, but there is a supporting character in the first book named Genesis Jackson and she's a clairvoyant and In the second book her I'm trying to figure out how to say this without giving away the her her twin sister who is deceased

Her twin sister's spirit, vengeful spirit is after her in the sequel and she ends up in the very first chapter she ends up going into Haitian Voodoo purgatory and the main character's job is to try to get her out and get her to go to the Wiccan afterlife because she doesn't belong there. So it's kind of like a rescue story but all along the way that twin sister's spirit is after them and then it

they finally kind of face off in the third book in the campground. So I definitely explored that my kids were definitely the re- that's the result of me having twins, I think. I really want to do it or that. And I think I did a pretty good job at it, but I'm also pretty biased. But I saw an interview- do you guys know who Rick Rubin is? I saw an interview with him once. He's probably said it many times, but he said, make music for you, not the audience. So-

Whenever I started writing these books, I wrote all, I've been writing all of them for me. And I'm not saying that I'm being rude and ignoring the audience, but I wanted to write what I didn't get out of horror movies. Like if I watched a horror movie, I was like, man, I wish they would have done this or that. That stuff is what I put in my books. What I feel like is missing, the good parts that are missing. The reason that I started writing them was because I, during COVID, the martial arts school was shut down.

And I was looking up at the TV at Rick Moranis and I had this idea. What if there was a, like a paranormal investigator that was kind of clumsy like his character. So, so that's when the idea of the afterlife book series was born was in that moment. And then I, took it from there and I've been building it out and now I'm working on the fourth book and they're going to be, they're going to be 13 total. cool. I'm super intrigued just by the little teasers that you've given us where,

I'm are you doing audio versions as well? I toyed with it. Kindle Direct Publishing allows you to do audiobooks. I toyed with it and I got one sale in Australia. But that was all that happened in that three year period so I nixed it. I might do it again later if they ever like genuinely take off. I feel like it's a pretty good franchise and I'm doing it with that intention. Like I want it to be, I to get merchandise and all kinds of stuff. But I'll do that later on. I want to focus on the writing right now.

Very, very, very cool. The last question that we ask every guest on Horror Heals is, who is your favorite final character in a horror movie? gosh. I know. I wonder if y'all would ask something like that. And I thought about it and now I'm drawing a blank. I want to say the main character in my books, but that would be really cheesy and selfish. I did write for me. I would say me in a horror movie, probably Laurie Strode.

Definitely Borgstrød. Halloween, That's such a... the first movie. By the way, I'm not sure if other writers do this. I've never really looked into it, but I've been involved in filmmaking for about two decades. I've been in many short films and I've done a 48-hour film festival in my hometown. I played Stevie Ray Vine in an extended short film about his recovery from alcoholism. But having said that, all of the books that I write

especially this afterlife series come from the point of view of a filmmaker. I mean, I think that's really important because, you know, I'm sure you would love to see your creation on the screen, right? Yeah, that's one of the reasons it's so heavy in imagery. But yeah, I write it. I'll think of like the angle that the camera would be in and then I'll build the scene around that. whenever I describe a gory sound, I'll listen to Foley art. Foley art, if you guys don't know, Foley art is

is the people that make, F-Holi artists are the people that make the sound effects for horror movies, for any movie really. But I'll listen to F-Holi art, like how do you make a brun, the sound of a bone breaking. And it was someone using a dowel rod on a piece of celery on a pillow. So I'll literally describe that in the book for the sound. I take elements like that from filmmaking and weave it into my stories. Nice. Well, it really sounds like you're doing this stuff the right way, which, you know, just gets us really excited and

You've offered us a lot of surprises today. So I hope this being your first podcast experience was a good one, you know? Definitely. So you got to promise us then when the book series takes off and all of a sudden you're a New York Times bestselling author, you got to come back on. Don't forget the little guy. I told myself that, you know, it's, I believe that the people that build you up are the people that you should carry with you. Yeah. We've always felt that way.

Like I said, I was really nervous. did. I've listened to a few podcasts in the past, but this is the first time me doing this and you guys made me feel really comfortable. And I really appreciate that. Thank you. We appreciate that. I mean, that is definitely our goal. You are fantastic. By the way, because I've been talking about this podcast to people that I know it would not surprise me. Like the concept of this podcast, it wouldn't surprise me if you guys like shut off like a rocket and it became huge.

Cause I think it's a really cool concept and something that people like and it's, it can, I feel like it can, in a way it can kind of be therapeutic for some people, especially people that have gone through some really serious trauma.

Your mom's advice to create your own reality is such a perfect example of how horror can be an outlet for healing. And to our listeners, the campground is out now. And if you haven't picked it up yet, what are you waiting for? Dacre's blending of 80s nostalgia and paranormal mystery is the perfect escape. Plus, supporting an emerging author with such a meaningful backstory, you can't go wrong. Dacre, we are officially Afterlife fans now, and you've got a promise to come back when your next book drops. We're rooting for you.

Alright Horror Heliacs, that's it for this episode. But remember, when someone asks, horror is good for mental wellness, you tell them, of corpse it is. The Horror Heals podcast is produced and presented by How the Cow Ate the Cabbage LLC.