Where this was said
Paul Tremblay's Background: Math Teacher to Full-Time Horror Writer
At 12:35 · chapter starts 8:08
One of the episode's most surprising revelations comes early: Paul Tremblay was a high school math teacher for 30 years at a local Catholic boys' school before finally going full-time as a writer. The hosts react with stunned delight. Paul explains that the teaching job was his 'artistic safety net' — it meant he could write weird books without financial pressure, say no to publishers, and experiment without fear. He traces his path to horror through a college English class where Joyce Carol Oates' 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?' made him say aloud, 'I didn't know people wrote things like this,' and then through reading Stephen King's The Stand in graduate school. He also discusses the current horror renaissance — citing Publishers Weekly data showing 25% year-over-year growth in horror acquisitions — and credits Get Out as the cultural turning point that forced mainstream reviewers to take the genre seriously, while crediting an exciting new wave of own-voices horror authors.
Publishers Weekly reported horror novel acquisitions were up 25% year-over-year, two years running, signalling a potential bubble.
Paul Tremblay is a lifelong scaredy-cat: he sleeps with a desk lamp on when alone, still runs up the basement stairs too fast, and admits to having a 2% belief in the supernatural that wakes him in the night — even though the other 98% of the time he's a card-carrying skeptic atheist.
Paul Tremblay wasn't even a big reader until a mandatory freshman English class in his senior year of college, where Joyce Carol Oates' 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?' made him say aloud, 'I didn't know people wrote things like this.' His wife then gave him The Stand, and the rest is horror history.
