Morbid Book Club: Killing The Boogeyman by Richard Chizmar

Episode Overview

• Blending Memoir with True-Crime Fiction: Morbid podcast co-hosts Ash and Alaina (an author and former autopsy technician/morgue worker) interview horror/thriller author Richard "Rich" Chizmar about how he combines small-town nostalgia, personal family history, and staged multimedia elements to craft his meta-fictional Boogeyman trilogy (Chasing the Boogeyman, Becoming the Boogeyman, and Killing the Boogeyman, releasing October 6th).
• The Evolution of a Horror Publishing Career: Chizmar traces his trajectory from founding Cemetery Dance magazine in college in 1988—earning 47 cents an hour in his 20s and surviving cancer twice at ages 29 and 30—to building a major independent book publishing house and collaborating directly with his lifelong idol, Stephen King, as well as his own son, Billy Chizmar.
• When Fiction Collides with Reality: The conversation explores the uncanny overlap between Chizmar's fictionalized life and the real world, including corporate legal pushback against his "Blair Witch" marketing plans, readers driving by his actual home to photograph landmarks from the book, and disturbing parallels with real-life homicides.
• Disclosed Commercial Ties and Sponsorships: The episode is sponsored by Ashley (Ashley.com), which Ash claims is the largest furniture store brand in North America and notes provided the green "Ravine Lakes" sofa and loveseat in their studio ("the pod loft"). Chizmar's commercial ties include authoring the Boogeyman trilogy (published by Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, and edited by Ed Schlesinger), co-authoring Widow's Point with Billy Chizmar, co-authoring the Gwendy series (Gwendy's Button Box) with Stephen King, and founding/publishing Cemetery Dance magazine and book publishing (which publishes limited editions of Stephen King's books). Alaina's commercial ties include authoring The Butcher and the Wren and two sequels (currently working on book three of her series).

Key Concepts

• Universal Specificity in Storytelling: When writing Chasing the Boogeyman as a memoir of his youth in Edgewood, Maryland, Chizmar worried that hyper-specific personal details about himself, his parents, and his childhood friends ("the Hanson Road boys") wouldn't matter to outside readers. He discovered that intimate, sensory memories—like popping tar bubbles on a hot road, a friend's dad whistling to call him home, standing on a snowy hill after sledding at age 14 or 15 realizing childhood was ending, or walking up to the top of Bayberry at age 6 or 7 smelling his father's aftershave and holding his hand to see Christmas lights—are what make a story universal because they unlock the reader's own forgotten childhood memories. (At a book club with 35 to 40 older women, one woman doubted he actually had those profound thoughts at age 14 or 15, though Chizmar insisted he did because he had been writing stories since age 8 or 9; he also notes some readers felt the book didn't pick up until around page 60 due to the heavy dump of town history at the beginning.)
• Constructing the Meta-Fictional "True Crime" Illusion: Everything in Chasing the Boogeyman is written as Chizmar remembers it using real names, except for the fictional murders and his sidekick Carly Albright (whose non-existence disappointed many readers, and who is an amalgamation of his wife Kara and his three older sisters, who exposed Chizmar—the youngest of 5 kids—early to the Bay City Rollers and the Bee Gees). To heighten the realism across the trilogy, Chizmar placed staged photographs at the end of each chapter rather than grouped in the center like traditional true-crime books; he and his son Billy took most of the photos using lifelong friends in thrift-store clothes and actors from their short films. In Becoming the Boogeyman, he even included a fictionalized text from Stephen King alongside texts from real-life friends and his sister Nancy (who sends 4, 6, or 14 texts at a time).
• Corporate Legal Boundaries vs. "Blair Witch" Marketing: Chizmar's original marketing plan for Chasing the Boogeyman was to "Blair Witch the audience completely" by presenting the story as 100% real, complete with a fake website that looked like it stopped updating in the mid-1990s, fake newspaper articles, and a scripted 3-part fake true-crime podcast featuring himself and an actor playing the detective. Although Chizmar was thrilled when his son warned him the plan would drive down property values in Edgewood and terrify dog-walkers, the legal department at Gallery Books / Simon & Schuster immediately shut it down during phone conferences due to the risk of lawsuits. Furthermore, editor Ed Schlesinger insisted on putting a disclaimer at the front of the book stating it was fiction; Chizmar refused to write it himself, so Schlesinger wrote it.
• Organic Series Expansion and Standalone Architecture: Chizmar hedges on the initial demand for a sequel to Chasing the Boogeyman, stating that while the first book was a surprise hit, "no one was like banging down my door saying, 'We need a second one,'" and there was never supposed to be a second book. However, he conceived the entire first chapter of Becoming the Boogeyman in a 5-minute span while mowing the lawn, after which Schlesinger told him it had to be a trilogy (Chizmar's original title for the first book was simply The Boogeyman—kept in his back pocket alongside The Altar—while Schlesinger came up with Chasing the Boogeyman and likely Becoming the Boogeyman, and Chizmar titled Killing the Boogeyman). Because Schlesinger required the sequels to work as standalones, Becoming the Boogeyman opens with fake newspaper, magazine, and online articles summarizing the first book's plot regarding killer Joshua Gallagher. Chizmar hedges on whether the series is truly finished ("Three books is enough, but you never know") and on whether he actually kills the Boogeyman in book three ("Yes, no, maybe... And it's an honest answer").
• Real-Life Repercussions of Writing Yourself into Fiction: Using his real life and home created unexpected consequences. His wife Kara (his high school sweetheart of about 45 years) hated being written about—especially with Becoming the Boogeyman set in modern day—and refuses to read it so she can honestly tell people at signings she hasn't read it. Chizmar also contrasts the action-hero version of himself in the books with reality, joking that he checks his phone step counter and is happy when he hits 600 steps a day, and hedging that the only thing fictional Rich did that real Rich wouldn't is walk his 4 dogs as much as his family does. Because he used his real house in the book, strangers still drive by to photograph the fire hydrant where he finds a garbage bag in Becoming the Boogeyman, an acquaintance admitted to Kara in the grocery store that she drives by their house 2 to 3 times a week, and when Chizmar and Billy used water-washable paint to spray-paint "The Boogeyman's Back" on their real fence for a book photo, two passersby stopped—one offering to call the police and another asking if they had been vandalized.
• Ambiguity Between the Human and the Supernatural: In Killing the Boogeyman, Chizmar intentionally pushes readers to the edge of a blurry line by hinting that killer Joshua Gallagher might be supernatural—incorporating large hands, nods to Michael Myers and the Halloween franchise (Chizmar's favorite horror movie, quoting Tommy Doyle's "You can't kill the boogeyman" and citing Tommy looking out the window seeing Myers carry a body as its scariest scene), and changing height/measurement records in prison. However, Chizmar hedges within the text so those clues could either be supernatural or simply a bored prison physician copying numbers down wrong. In real life, both Chizmar and Alaina hedge on definitive proof of ghosts or the afterlife: Chizmar notes no one knows what happens in the afterlife (and hedges that his childhood memory of hiding in a playground tunnel and smelling local legend "the Rubberband Man" was "I think it was real"), while Alaina describes herself as both Mulder and Scully—trying to disprove paranormal claims first and accepting it might be a ghost when she can't 9 out of 10 times. (Chizmar lives in a 250-year-old house whose cellar has stone walls, complete 250-some-year-old trees with bark as ceiling beams, and handprints and names on a cubbyhole wall; he and Billy got so scared watching Paranormal Activity at night they had to finish it the next day in daylight, whereas his wife Kara and younger son Noah thought it was "kind of dumb," and Chizmar once pranked his son's terrified friend Gavin on a Gettysburg ghost tour by pretending to summon spirits into Gavin's body until Gavin prayed in a corner.)
• When True Crime Eclipses Horror Fiction: Chizmar notes that his fishing guide, retired homicide detective Kenny Penrod, told him real-life true crime blows away anything horror writers can invent. The speakers discuss real-life serial killers who felt like "boogeymen," including Ted Bundy (with Chizmar naming Ann Rule's The Stranger Beside Me the scariest book he ever read for a long time, citing the firewood bark left in the Chi Omega sorority house), Gary Ridgway / the Green River Killer (referencing a past Morbid episode detailing stones/objects left in/on a victim's body), Richard Ramirez / the Night Stalker (chased down and beaten by a neighborhood), and Joseph James DeAngelo / the Golden State Killer (who snuck into homes ahead of time to leave lengths of rope, eat food, and stack dishes). Alaina also recalls her past career working in a morgue doing autopsies on children and babies, and covering the Moors Murders on Morbid (where the song "Little Drummer Boy" played during a crime, ruining the song and an episode of The Office for her). While Chizmar says the most disturbing scenes he wrote in his trilogy involved a detective's story in Chasing the Boogeyman about a row home full of mannequins posed on the toilet, in the shower, and making love on the bed, a mannequin scene inside his own home in Becoming the Boogeyman, and describing the wounds and bruises of young female murder victims, reality struck uncomfortably close about 2 years ago when a young woman was murdered on a walking trail in his current town of Bel Air, Maryland, and Chizmar discovered the victim had sent him a Facebook friend request a few months prior. Similarly, Alaina and Ash share that Gabby Petito posted on Instagram about listening to Morbid before she was murdered, making it feel "too close" to cover immediately.
• Persistence, Entrepreneurship, and the Stephen King Connection: After founding Cemetery Dance magazine in 1988 in college, Chizmar mailed issues to Stephen King's office in Bangor, Maine, getting to know King's assistants Shirley and Marsha. In 1991, King's New York editor/agent Chuck Verrill sent a postcard asking if Chizmar had looked at King's 30-page story "Chattery Teeth" sent a month earlier; Chizmar dug through a 3-to-4-foot-high stack of unsolicited submissions in his closet, found and accepted it, and returned from a Baltimore Orioles game (where he and Kara spent $20) to a message from King on his microcassette answering machine. He later met King in person at the 20th-anniversary party for Carrie at Tavern on the Green in NYC (where the invitation read "P.S. Jeans and t-shirts are fine") and recalls Maine's 207 area code from King's first text. Years later, after King mentioned an unfinished story called Gwendy's Button Box, King emailed the manuscript to Chizmar on a Friday morning saying, "Do with it as you wish," and replied "If you think you can" when Chizmar asked about finishing it. Starting Monday, Chizmar wrote 10,000 words in 2 days, though King rejected Chizmar's original ending as "too dark," saying Gwendy deserved better—a change that enabled the Gwendy sequels. In a Simon & Schuster audiobook interview, King explained he chose Chizmar after reading his collection A Long December because Chizmar writes everyday people and settings (people who eat dinner at Cracker Barrel) so well. Today, King (who is "almost 80" and still believes in the hand creeping out from under the bed at night) emailed Chizmar the manuscript of his new book You Like It Darker (also referred to alongside Other Worlds Than These, releasing the exact same day as Killing the Boogeyman) 6 months before the ARC came out, and while Cemetery Dance sells 1,500 to 2,000 copies of King's new books out of their warehouse, Chizmar still buys his own personal copy at Target, Barnes & Noble, or an indie bookstore. (Alaina notes she and Ash sent her debut The Butcher and the Wren to King's people, who sent a polite note that he didn't have time to read it, and when her book debuted at #2 on the New York Times bestseller list, King was #1; she also mentions author Patricia Cornwell appeared on Morbid and blurbed her book, and both hosts note actor Devon Sawa tweeted his fandom of Chasing the Boogeyman and followed Alaina on Instagram, while Chizmar mentions his best friend is actor Johnathon Schaech, formerly married to Christina Applegate.)
• Craft, Genre Pigeonholing, and Generational Collaboration: Chizmar spends 9 months writing a novel, hedges that he never knows if a book is good until readers respond (joking he hopes they don't decide they hate it until after spending $29 on the hardcover), and notes that even a week before going to print, final page proofs for a 350-page book can have corrections marked on 110 pages (while Alaina jokes editors tell her she doesn't need to describe something for 4 pages in a row). He also notes genre pigeonholing: his novella The Girl on the Porch is suburban suspense in the vein of Harlan Coben and John Sandford, yet people categorize it as horror. In family life, Chizmar went from being so nervous changing diapers when his older son Billy was a baby that Kara came home to find Billy in three stacked onesies (while Alaina recalls having twins first—now 10, turning 11 soon, with a youngest who just turned 7—where one twin weighed 5 pounds at birth) to bonding with Billy for 3 hours at a time over $14.99 Barnes & Noble bargain-bin coffee table books on "The Unexplained," showing him Stephen King's Silver Bullet as his first R-rated movie on New Year's Eve alongside his brother Noah (4 years younger, who went to UVA in 2021, played lacrosse for 4 years, and finished a year and a half ago), and letting Billy watch Signs around age 10 without warning him about the birthday party alien and cornfield scenes (whereas Alaina's kids were unfazed by Return to Oz at age 5 or 6 and Coraline). After crying for 2 weeks before dropping Billy off at college as a freshman, Chizmar's collaboration with Billy on the found-footage horror novel Widow's Point (expanded from a novella, featuring mannequins, and described as "Scooby-Doo for grown-ups") began when Billy texted him from his college library while supposed to be writing a paper, suggesting they write an old-fashioned ghost story together.

Quotes

• At 0:01:35 - "Yeah, especially cuz there was never supposed to be a second book." - Chizmar explaining that Chasing the Boogeyman was originally conceived as a standalone novel rather than the start of a trilogy.
• At 0:02:00 - "I was mowing the lawn one day, as crazy as that sounds, and like in a five-minute span, I had the idea for the entire first chapter of Becoming the Boogeyman." - Describing the sudden burst of inspiration that led to writing the sequel.
• At 0:04:51 - "So I knew I wanted photos, and I knew I wanted to put them at the end of each chapter." - Explaining his structural decision to place staged crime and setting photos at chapter breaks rather than grouped in the center like traditional true-crime books.
• At 0:06:23 - "Well, the original idea for Chasing the Boogeyman was to Blair Witch the audience completely." - Revealing his initial plan to market the novel as a 100% genuine true-crime event before Simon & Schuster's legal department shut it down.
• At 0:06:57 - "I'm like, 'But I have a fake website to post online that looks like it got updated to like the mid-90s and then it just stops.'" - Detailing the multimedia materials he wanted to use to convince readers the murders were real.
• At 0:10:21 - "He told me really early on, he's like, 'We got to put this disclaimer in the front.' And I was like, I'm like low maintenance, but this was like the only time I was like, 'No, I'm dying on this hill.' I'm like, 'If you want it in there, you have to write it.' So he did." - Recounting his refusal to write the fiction disclaimer required by his editor, Ed Schlesinger.
• At 0:20:14 - "Everything—I wrote about everything as I remember it, except for the murders, which I mean, and everyone's names are all my true friends' names, my parents' names; it was a memoir in a lot of ways." - Explaining how closely Chasing the Boogeyman mirrors his actual childhood in Edgewood, Maryland.
• At 0:21:14 - "The most disappointment from the first book was that Carly Albright wasn't real, my sidekick." - Noting reader reaction to finding out his investigative partner in the book was a composite of his wife and three older sisters.
• At 0:22:53 - "And she's just like, 'Well, I'm not going to read it. That way when people at signings and stuff ask me about it, I can just say I haven't read it.'" - Explaining how his wife Kara handles being written into the modern-day sequels against her preference.
• At 0:27:01 - "The first book for me was about that loss of innocence, not only in myself, but in my—that's the reason I opened the book with so much history about the place, is because I think for a lot of people, particularly when you're younger, it's your safe place." - Clarifying why he front-loaded the novel with extensive hometown history before introducing the crimes.
• At 0:36:55 - "During our signing tour, I kept referring to it as Scooby-Doo for grown-ups." - Characterizing the tone of the found-footage horror novel Widow's Point, which he co-wrote with his son Billy.
• At 0:46:50 - "A really valuable lesson I learned right away was that it was never about me in the first place; it was about how they related to it." - Reflecting on why hyper-specific childhood memories (like playing on a friend's green-screen Commodore 64 or stealing poker money back from a sleeping friend's pocket with a flashlight and tweezers) resonate universally with readers.
• At 0:51:06 - "That's how we actually started writing, is one of those times from the library, he's like, 'We should write something together.' And I was like, 'Let's just do something old-fashioned,' and that's Widow's Point; we're like, 'Let's do a ghost story.'" - Describing how a college library text from his son Billy launched their professional writing partnership.
• At 1:07:00 - "People still drive by my house, by the way, and take pictures of the fire hydrant that the bag was next to." - Highlighting the real-world consequence of using his actual home and street in Becoming the Boogeyman.
• At 1:11:08 - "I wanted to push them just to the—right to the edge of that blurry line." - Discussing how Killing the Boogeyman introduces ambiguous clues suggesting the killer, Joshua Gallagher, might be supernatural.
• At 1:21:48 - "And it was extra weird because she had sent me a Facebook invite like a few months before she was murdered." - Recounting the unsettling connection to a real-life murder victim on a walking trail in his current town of Bel Air, Maryland.
• At 1:30:23 - "I think it said to the effect, 'A month ago, I sent you a manuscript, Chattery Teeth by Stephen King. He's a big fan of Cemetery Dance and would love to see it appear, and we wondered if you'd had a look at it yet.'" - Paraphrasing the 1991 postcard from Chuck Verrill that sent Chizmar digging through a 3-to-4-foot stack of slush pile manuscripts in his closet.
• At 1:34:05 - "Next morning, I wake up to an email that says—that has Gwendy's Button Box attached, and it says, this is the whole email: 'Do with it as you wish.'" - Sharing how Stephen King handed over the unfinished manuscript that became their first co-authored novella.
• At 1:36:32 - "I wrote the original ending; he actually wrote back and said, 'Rich, this is too dark,' which I thought—" - Revealing that Stephen King rejected Chizmar's initial ending to Gwendy's Button Box because King felt the character deserved a better fate.
• At 1:44:56 - "He said, 'And he does everyday people so well, and everyday settings, and I thought if anyone could finish Gwendy, it would be him.'" - Recalling Stephen King's explanation in a Simon & Schuster audiobook interview for why he chose Chizmar to co-write Gwendy's Button Box.

Takeaways

• Anchor fiction in specific sensory memories to create universal resonance: Don't shy away from hyper-local or deeply personal childhood details; specific sensory moments are what trigger readers to recall their own youth and emotionally invest in your story.
• Use multimedia formatting to control pacing and immersion: If writing faux-true crime or found-footage fiction, experiment with placing staged photographs at the end of each chapter to act as visual cliffhangers, and use fictionalized news articles at the start of sequels to catch up new readers without bogging down the narrative.
• Consult legal counsel before launching "real-world" viral marketing: If you plan to market a work of fiction as a real event (such as creating fake news sites or podcasts set in a real town), vet the campaign early to avoid legal liability or public panic, and be prepared to include a fiction disclaimer.
• Protect your personal privacy when blending memoir and thriller: Consider the real-world boundaries of your home and family before publishing photos of your actual house or street landmarks, or turn the resulting curiosity into something positive—like Chizmar's plan to install a Little Free Library stocked with weird fiction/horror and a memorial plaque by his fire hydrant so passersby can stop safely.
• Respect your loved ones' boundaries when fictionalizing family life: Recognize that even well-intentioned portrayals (like writing a spouse into a modern-day thriller as a love letter) may make family members uncomfortable, and give them the space to opt out of engaging with the publicity.
• Adapt your outlining process to the material: Even if you aren't naturally a heavy outliner, pause to write a roadmap outline if a flood of memories or plot points hits you 75 to 100 pages into a draft (as Chizmar did on Chasing the Boogeyman) so you can capture the momentum and finish the manuscript quickly.
• Leave a plausible rational explanation when teasing the supernatural: To keep grounded thriller readers engaged while nodding to supernatural horror tropes, pair seemingly impossible details (like changing physical measurements) with mundane explanations (like clerical errors by a bored prison doctor).
• Build long-term industry relationships through consistent quality and courtesy: When starting an independent publication or project, send your work consistently to the creators you admire and treat their staff and assistants (like Stephen King's assistants Shirley and Marsha) with warmth and respect.
• Organize and monitor your incoming opportunities: Don't let unsolicited submissions or correspondence pile up unchecked—Chizmar nearly missed a 30-page original Stephen King story buried in a 3-to-4-foot closet stack until a follow-up postcard prompted him to dig it out.
• Commit to the long game in creative entrepreneurship: Be prepared to reinvest your time and forgo luxuries early on—such as Chizmar working for an effective 47 cents an hour in his 20s and skipping $400 ski trips—while expanding from low-margin periodicals into higher-margin products like books.
• Stay open to editorial pushback on tone and length: Whether it is Stephen King advising that an ending is "too dark" for a character who deserves better, or an editor trimming 4-page descriptions and marking corrections on 110 out of 350 pages in final proofs a week before print, embrace collaborative editing to strengthen the final book and keep future sequels possible.
• Nurture creative partnerships at home through shared media: Spend unhurried time exploring curiosities with your children—whether flipping through $14.99 bargain-bin books on "The Unexplained" for 3 hours or watching classic horror movies—as those shared touchstones can organically evolve into adult creative collaborations like Widow's Point.