(eerie ritual music) (spooky music) - If you wanna come up to the cabinet or like above this and wave, there's your opportunity.

- Yeah.

Yeah, it's been a great ... You know, my wife has been involved with this every step of the way.

We've been able to not only, you know, involve ourselves in the animal welfare world and the animal rescue world, but she's been a great team member in this whole thing.

And things just kind of work.

And it's like, we look at this, it's like, okay, what's gonna happen today?

We have no idea, but we're in this together and for the long haul.

- [Producer] Alright, we're finally ready.

- [Jonathan] Cool.

- [Producer] Briefly introduce yourself.

- Okay.

(chuckles) Hi, I'm Jonathan Rand, author of "Michigan Chillers" and "American Chillers", and a bunch more spooky, scary books.

I was in first grade when I wrote "Henry the Coin Collector", and it was just, I mean, it was complete plagiarism and you know, I guess I would've called it fan fiction, but I was so in love with the characters created by Beverly Cleary in those series, and Henry Huggins in particular.

And so that was just a short two page story, but there was something that sparked that.

I think ...

I think I just all of a sudden started to connect the stories that I read with stories that were in my head and I thought, you know, hey, I can kind of do this.

This is something that is a lot of fun.

When I was growing, I was born in Pontiac and growing up in Waterford, and I loved being outdoors.

And I knew at a very, very early age, kindergarten or even before that, I wanted to be in the conservation field.

I just love being outdoors, and that really is what Michigan means to me.

I love when I see these signs and I hear the promotion, you know, you hear Pure Michigan and you know, it's like I am pure Michigan and my friends are pure Michigan, and where I live is pure Michigan.

It is such a wonderful place, and I've been all across the country and I've been, there's some terrific, you know, places.

And I'm not putting any of them down there.

I love lots of different areas for many different reasons, but Michigan always seems like it is home to me.

I love the changes of seasons.

I love, you know, everything that it has to offer.

(upbeat music) Well, growing up I was always fascinated with like ghost stories and, you know, books about werewolves and haunted houses and things of that sort.

But when I read "Salem's Lot" by Stephen King, that was something that just really stuck me.

That was the first book that just really, I mean, I'd been scared as a kid with the, you know, the covers over my head and the flashlight, you know, reading stories after dark.

But when I read "Salem's Lot" as an adult even, it was something that really terrified me.

And I was like, wow, this is just, I mean, it was just over the top.

And I really enjoyed it too.

It was something that was a lot of fun.

With the first book, "The Laurentian Channel", I was like, okay, what am I gonna do in the meantime?

And I had this idea for a book called "Saint Helene", and it was about this lighthouse and the very real island and a very real lighthouse west of the Mackinac Bridge.

And I thought that would be a great setting for a ghost story.

And I didn't know exactly what to do with it, but I thought it'd be fun to do an audio.

And I pitched it to a lot of different publishers, and most of them were thought, you know, that's kind of a cool idea, but you know, we should probably have a novel first and then go to an audio book.

A lot of companies thought it was a neat idea, but you know, you think, okay, you've gotta have the studio, the writing and all this.

And I was like, well, you know, I've got my own studio, I've done my own narrations, I could do it all.

And I think they just kind of rolled their eyes and like, you know, like, yeah, sure you can, you know.

And so I decided to do it on my own.

And it was, the audiobook came out, I narrated it, I created, you know, my music, sound effects, did everything in my studio in the middle of the woods on a a half inch eight track tape, mastered it onto cassettes, did my own duplication on those cassettes.

This was kind of before CDs were, I mean, it was at least CD production wasn't really something that you could do.

And I went from there, but I formed a corporation and I called it Audiocraft because I had mostly intention of doing just audio books.

Well, then the following summer I, or when that summer came out, St. Helene came out in 1998 and after the summer the, a lot of the bookstores had contacted me and said, you know, a lot of people picked up your audio book and they put it down.

They were looking for a novel and you had you ever thought about doing it as a novel?

So I did it in reverse.

In the summer of 1999, I released "St. Helene" as a novel, as well as the other book "Ferocity", which is about a giant musca lens that lives in Mullet Lake and eats people.

And that was under the umbrella of Audiocraft publishing.

And of course, "Ferocity" was where I got the idea for the "Michigan Chillers" series.

And I just kept everything under that Audiocraft Publishing Incorporated umbrella.

- I had been working on an adult fiction novel called "Ferocity" and the fictitious town in it is called Corville.

And what I wanted to do is, I wanted to create a metaphor for a beverage.

Like if you took everything about Michigan and you took, you know, the clean air and the fresh water and the beautiful forest, and you put it into a bottle and you sold it as a beverage, what would you call it?

And ultimately what I settled for in my book, I called it a Corville Cooler, but one of the names I'd come up with was a Michigan Chiller.

And that name kind of stuck with me all that summer.

This was back quite a while ago.

This was back in summer of 1998.

And I kept thinking about that, and I thought, you know, that just sounds kind of cool.

And I thought, you know, I could create these spooky, scary stories that I used to, you know, read when I was growing up.

But I could have like different themes from different locations around Michigan, so that if a kid was from that city or maybe they lived there, maybe they were visiting, they would know a little bit about it and it might have that familiarity there.

And I thought, you know, I could pick some places that a lot of people were familiar with.

So I chose Mackinac Island for my, my first book in "Mayhem in Mackinac Island."

And I just had so much fun.

It just, the entire process of writing the story just kind of, it took me back to when I was reading those kind of scary stories and those fantasy adventures when I was growing up.

And one thing led to another and the reception for that book was really good, as well as the the second book.

And it just kind of carried on from there.

Yeah, it's fun because, you know, the "Michigan Chillers", the "American Chillers" , I mean the theme is obviously this kind of horror theme.

And Goosebumps is obviously very renowned in that series.

And I would go as far as to say, you know, if there hadn't been, if there hadn't been a series like "Goosebumps", there might not be a series like "Michigan Chillers" or "American Chillers".

But on that same note, I would also say that if there hadn't been a Ray Bradbury or if there hadn't been some of these other authors that I was really influenced by, and I think that's what what I try to focus on, is I try to make, I try to create stories with my own unique flavor and my own unique difference.

And that's kind of where, you know, the "Michigan Chillers" started and then on into the "American Chillers", which fed off that.

I was, my legal name, my real name is Chris Wright.

And I had been on the radio as a DJ and radio commercials as Chris Wright and for a number of years.

And I went to work at a radio station at KHQ Radio based in, the studios were in Charlevoix.

And at the time, there was another gentleman on the radio, competing radio station, and his name on the radio was Wright Wilson.

So he had the first name of Wright and the last name of Wilson.

And I believe he was up against him in the same kind of time slot as I was going to be.

And my general manager at the time, Tim Moore asked me, he said, you know, just out of a professional courtesy, would you consider, you know, changing your name, which is obviously something that happens quite a bit in entertainment.

And I said, nah, it's cool.

And so I said, how about just slightly changing it to Chris Knight or you know, Christopher Knight?

And that was fine with him and it worked.

And so when I started writing adult fiction, I wrote three adult fiction novels first, and I wrote them under the pen name of Christopher Knight.

And those did pretty good regionally.

And when I came up with the idea for the "Michigan Chillers", I wanted to have a different name because I didn't want there to be any confusion.

I thought, you know, I don't want parents thinking, 'cause Christopher Knight mainstream adult fiction, adult situations, and I don't want those books to be in the hands of third graders or fourth graders.

So I thought, I can create this persona, this Jonathan Rand, and that will be that kind of that kid tested, mother approved type material.

"Mayhem on Mackinac Island" was pretty much really an immediate success, you know, statewide anyway.

And along with "Terror Stalks Traverse City", "Poltergeist at Petosky" and "Aliens Attack Alpena", those kind of came out in kind of a quick succession.

But right around the time, right around the time book number five was being released, "Gargoyles of Gaylord", I had started getting more and more letters from kids, not only in Michigan, but from kids in different states.

And they'd say like, Hey, I live here in, you know, you should write a book about my state.

You could write about this or this.

And I thought, you know, this is exactly, this is exactly what I would've been thinking, but you know, these kids are almost like coming up with ideas for me.

So I just thought, okay, I'm gonna write 10 books in the "Michigan Chillers" series.

I'll launch the "American Chillers" series, get a few books out there, go back and then do a few more books in the "Michigan Chillers" series.

So there's 20 books out right now, 21 books out in the Michigan Chillers series, and there will be one for every state in the "American Chillers" series.

Not quite done yet.

I've got a few other series that I'm working on.

- I start off with, especially in the "Michigan Chillers" series and the "American Chillers" is what I like to do, is I come up with a setting, I come up with a place, and then I just kind of brainstorm titles.

And when I finally hit that title that I really think is something that's kind of fun or exciting, that's what gets me excited.

And I remember the first time when I came up with "Dinosaurs Destroy Detroit", I was like, oh my gosh, this is, you know, I mean, it didn't even really matter at the time what the story was going to be about.

I just thought, this is so cool.

My imagination starts going into, you know, overdrive.

And I start thinking about these dinosaurs and stomping vehicles and buildings on fire.

And so what I'll do then is kind of through a series of questions that I ask myself, it's like, okay, what are these dinosaurs doing?

What's the the real problem they're creating?

And how did they get there?

And who is the main character?

And how do these dinosaurs affect that main character?

And what does the main character do about it?

How does that main character become the hero of the story?

And then what I'll do from there is after I've kind of brainstormed about it, then I'll script it out in kind of an outline.

And to me, it's important to do that because I like to know where I'm going with my stories.

And I talk to kids about that and you know, I talk to so many people who they write stories or I'll ask, you know, when do my writing workshops, I'll ask, you know, how many of you have ever started writing a story and you've never finished it?

And I'd say most of the room, almost 99% will, they'll raise their hand.

And the reason is, I think is because a lot of people get great ideas, great ideas are a dime a dozen, but they don't really think them through.

And it's like, okay, you started writing for a day and then two days and it's going really well, and then the third day you don't really write as much, and the fourth day you don't write at all.

And it's kind of like you run outta gas.

You really don't know exactly where your story's gonna go.

And it shouldn't surprise you if it really doesn't go anywhere.

So what I'll do is I'll make sure I have a pretty good idea of where that story is going to end up and how that main character is gonna solve that problem.

And in most instances, when I do that I'm able to finish the story.

That doesn't necessarily mean that I'm done.

I go back, I love the rewriting process and I go back and I will change things and take chapters out and get different ideas, even while while I'm editing and rewriting.

But it enables me to get everything down, you know, get it onto that plate and see what happens from there.

(upbeat spooky music) Hi, welcome to ChillerMania.

I'm Jonathan Rand, first time here?

Very cool, I'll tell you what I'll do.

I'm gonna give you a quick tour.

These are all of the books that I have written and we'll kind of get to it, but I'll kind of take you around here, show you.

This is a series called "Nightmare Nation".

The first book is called "Village of the Dolls".

And it's pretty cool.

You see this baby up here.

This is something that, we don't know exactly how he's able to just kind of float in the air like that, but he is possessed.

But I don't know how long that's gonna be for, because I did not pay my exorcist so they're talking about repossessing him.

I'm not sure about that.

Chillermania came about in 2004.

And it's kind of a funny story about that because we'd been growing and I had kind of a manager, I had a couple different people that were like, you know, one was helping me book my speaking engagements.

We had, of course distribution of the books, the "American Chillers" were getting more and more popular.

We live in a little town, it's pretty easy to find out where we live.

And so people were coming to our house quite a bit and knocking on the door saying, Hey, we'd like to get a couple of books or a couple, it's like, we didn't really have these at the house.

And at that time we were like, I mean we kind of laugh at it now.

And because that was one of the things we're like, okay, maybe we're onto something.

If the books are this popular that people are seeking us out, we really need a place for the manager.

we need a place for storage, we need something.

So this place here was actually a used card dealership in that way.

And it kind of makes it a destination for people to come.

It's got, obviously it's only my books, which kind of makes it pretty unique.

But we have people come from, you know, from all across the country which is pretty cool.

Over here, this is my adult fiction.

I write books for adults under the name of Christopher Knight.

"Ferocity" is about a giant fish in Mullet Lake that that eats people.

That's an actual, people think that's a tarantula.

That is not, that is actually a northern striped wood spider.

With my first editor Marty McLaughlin, I was down outside of Atlanta, Georgia and we'd gone out, we had like talking about different things all day.

And this was back with one of my first books.

And so I wanna say 1997, maybe 1998.

And we'd been, I think the place where we were is Decatur, outside of Atlanta, walking around the street.

And we found this place that were selling hologram glasses.

And we saw this pair and I put 'em on and I looked at 'em, I'm like, "Those are kind of cool."

They're like, for 10 bucks.

So I bought 'em and I took 'em home and I showed 'em to my wife and she just rolls her eyes.

And so I put 'em in the kitchen drawer and I just kind of forgot about them.

And over here we have the, this is all the "Michigan Chillers" series here, starting with number one and then going up to ... Don't pay attention to the snake.

We don't ... We don't have any snakes here or anything like that.

This is "Mackinac City Mummies."

And of course going up to here, up to number 18, "Sault Ste Marie Sea Monsters".

Number 19, now a lot of people don't know this.

This is "Drummond Island Dog Man."

And this is a true story.

This happened to me when I was up there several years ago.

I barely escaped with my life.

I'm very lucky to be here today.

And I don't lie to children.

People think that I do and I never would.

And I think that's really terrible.

But, you know, you gotta watch a lot of authors that do a lot of signings.

And I know a lot of these guys, they will lie to you like you wouldn't believe.

They'll look you square in the eye and lie to you, try to tell you something is true and it's clearly not.

Personally, I wouldn't do that and I had better parents than that.

So a couple of years go by and the "Michigan Chillers" all of a sudden start to get popular.

And we get a phone call from a friend of ours named Sarah Bonin.

She was a teacher at the local elementary school.

And she's like, Hey, all, all of my kids and everybody in the school's reading this book, "Mayhem on Mackinaw Island", would you come and talk to us about it?

And I was kind of like, well, yeah, but you know, what do you want me to say?

And she was like, oh, it doesn't really matter.

Just talk about your books.

Talk about reading, I think they'd really enjoy it.

"Dollar Store Danny" is for kids that are kind of like getting out of picture books, kinda like a first chapter book.

A kid that goes into a dollar store and has all these kind of really super crazy adventures.

This is the newest book in the "American Chillers" series.

Number 45, "The Giant Jack 'O Lantern of Georgia."

Very fun book, great book for, kinda takes place around Halloween, but you can certainly read it at any time of the year.

Of course, we've got a few shirts here.

The "American Chillers" numbers, starts with number one here, kind of works on its way around over here.

We've got a few more of these little babies up here.

"American Chillers" continues around the room over here, all the way to, and this is a really fun series.

"Freddie Fernortner: Fearless First Grader", with "The Fantastic Flying Bicycle" there's 13 books in that series, kinda like a step up from "Dollar Store Danny", and then of course, from "Freddie Fernortner: Fearless First Grader", kids kind of choose to go up to the "Michigan Chillers" or the "American Chillers".

That morning when I went to go visit the school, I don't even know why it happened.

It was just like an afterthought.

I remembered I had those glasses and I looked in the kitchen drawer and sure enough they were there.

And I thought, Hey, these are kind of cool.

So when I walked in, I walked in and they introduced me, I went into the gym and they introduced me in the gym and I saw this sea of kids and they were all just like (inhales) And that's pretty much the tour.

Oh, except for this is "Morticia" Morticia is a West African tarantula.

And I don't think ... Mrs. Chillers, Morticia ... Morticia got out again.

She's out, she's not ... Somebody left the lid up 'cause I don't ... Mrs. Chillers, I mean, you never know ...

I could bring my wife in here, you'd expect better help in that, but you know, you can't really expect what's gonna happen here.

So anyway, that's your tour.

Look around.

If there's anything that you'd like, I'll be happy to autograph it.

Or if you just wanna browse, it's a bookstore, I'd be happy to acquiesce for that too, so ... And I realized that it was the glasses and it just had that effect.

And I thought, man, this is kind of cool.

And that was it, it was just from that day forward, they kind of became, they just kind of became my thing.

(upbeat music) If you wanna be a writer, here are my two pieces of advice.

(upbeat music) Number one to is to write every single day.

I think that's really important.

The more you do it, the better you'll be become.

You can't develop the skills that you're gonna need by, you know, by just reading, by just watching movies, which is very important 'cause you do, you learn to develop your own idea or your own storylines.

But writing every single day is like carpentry.

It's like, you know, being a mechanic, the more you do it, the better you'll become.

And one of the things that I tell kids, it doesn't really matter.

You don't have to sit down and write for two hours a day or three or four hours a day, if you can sit down and just discipline yourself, you know, five or 10 minutes can be really effective.

And then as well, read every single day.

If you're going to, you know, if you wanna write fantasy, read fantasy and don't just read, you know, if you get a favorite author, great.

Burn through your favorite author's books, but then read more and then read outside of that genre.

Read, you know, horror, read adventure books, read mysteries, read as much as you can.

And what happens is, is that you will develop your own unique author's voice.

And you can't do that if you're just pigeonholing yourself into one particular author in one particular genre.

I think it's important to get a real wide array of literary experience that way.

(upbeat music) You know, it was a long time ago, I had to really, I had really kind of seriously consider what I was in this for.

Because it's enormously, it's frustrating.

It's anything that's good and successful, there's a lot of hard work.

And I realized that first and foremost it was, I was able to do what I wanted to do with my imagination.

And I was able to create these stories.

And if, you know, I really felt that having that independent creative spirit was the most important thing.

I liked having it as my own business where you know, I was free to earn or not earn you know, the sky's the limit.

But around 2000 and really 2002, 2003, all of a sudden it really, it really clicked with me that, you know, the kids were really enjoying these books and I wanted to continue.

There were several other instances, things that happened with, I had a woman that sent me an email that solidified everything for me.

And my wife I, she traveled with me at that time, and we'd been gone for quite a while.

Typically, I would spend time every night responding to emails.

And I would get, I mean, literally, you know, at that time it was a hundred, now it's even more.

But a lot of the kids and the kids, they're all from kids and they're all great.

They're all like, you know, Jonathan Rand, you're my favorite author and my favorite book is this.

And you know, it's really super cool.

And so here I was, I'd gotten back, I just got back, it was late at night.

I was going through my emails and going back with these kids and this email comes up and she's like, "Jonathan Rand, I just love your books" and you know, "I just read 'Michigan Mega Monsters' and I think it's like the all time favorite, it's my favorite book."

And she went on to say it was that she was, she said, "My name is Linda and I'm 52 years old and I have never read a book in my life because when I was growing up, I had a learning disability and people told me that I would, you know, I was never gonna read and I would never read books."

And she said that a couple of weeks prior, she'd been into Friends and she saw one of my books, the "Michigan Mega Monsters" on the Shelf.

And she said that she's, even though she'd tried reading so many times throughout her life, there was something she wanted, she wanted to try again.

And she did.

And she said, "I read that book and it's the very first book that I read cover to cover.

And I just wanted to say thank you."

And .. And that just realized, I realized at that point that I really have an opportunity, I really have an opportunity to make a difference.

And that changed the course of everything, everything I did.

(lively music) Mrs. Chillers, is there anything I didn't mention?

- [Mrs Chillers] I think you covered it all, dear.

- I mentioned ... - [Mrs Chillers] Good job.

- How supportive and wonderful my wife is and through it all so ... Well, thank you very much.

I appreciate having the opportunity to share my experiences of the "Michigan Chillers" and the "American Chillers", and "Chillermania is in Indian River, just off exit 3-13 and hope I get a chance to see you here sometime.

(gentle eerie music)