Just Another Girl at the End of the World w/Brian Wrestler

Welcome And The Book Elevator Pitch

Welcome to In Other Worlds. I am your host Jess, and today we are sitting down with Brian Ressler. Brian, how are you?

I'm well. How are you?

I am fantastic and still very tired from convention. Uh, so you are a debut author, and your novel is just another girl at the end of the world. Give us a quick rundown of the book.

The fastest way to explain it is uh it's a smuddy magic treehouse. The the longer method of explaining it is a girl uh avoids the zombie apocalypse by slipping into a magical library. Uh, the magical library houses the system AI, and the AI gives her these worlds to explore every time she opens a book. She can have a survival quest, or she can have uh an activity, or sometimes it's a puzzle, and she never knows. It gave me a lot of opportunities to uh to bounce around from from story to story within the story itself. And every time she completes one of these things, the library expands.

Which was super interesting, and I think during convention, I described it as like Isekai meets zombie apocalypse with some action, a little bit of smut, uh, in a library with a surprisingly cozy ending.

Yeah, yeah. I I took every trip I could find and uh roll it into one. That's actually how the story started. I would uh go into these podcasts with Rec and with Pop Pop, and there would be somebody on, and I would just be trolling from the audience and like, oh, you you do library, KT was on, you do library. Well, what about library harem? Like, is this something that could happen? And eventually I had this list of uh post-apocalyptic zombie pumpkin spice reverse harem lit RPG, and somebody, it might have been BJ, I'm not sure who it was, was like, um, you need to write this. And Brianna started out as Brian with an A and then got fleshed out into Brianna. Um, and as that character evolved and she had more reason for having the name, and she became more real, and I really wanted to tell her story.

Yeah, and you you made all those tropes work. It was it was good. So

How A Trope Joke Became A Novel

I do we are gonna spend some time talking about the book, but I kind of want to talk about you first for a little bit. So I have a very, very important question for you, and it's kind of a long one, so I had to write it down.

Okay.

Uh all right, so you grew up in a family of puppeteers, you wrote award-winning plays in high school, okay, you worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and you wrote werewolf comedies, like romantic werewolf romantic comedies.

Let me let me back up. Um, so my family wasn't solely puppeteer. Um, so it was something my my father was an aeronautical engineer, my mother was a teacher.

Okay.

Um and so as as we grew up, my father like my mother uh built these uh paper mache puppets with my father, and uh like the marionette style with the wires and then the the finger puppets, and and my father built this uh fold-out puppet studio, and we used to take it to like the church bazaar and the library and any like field day type of things, and we would do these stories that my mother had sort of turned into plays, like mother goose stories, and I was like this little pup, but I had like the the little fingers of uh little ducklings following the mama goose and uh little goslings, and uh it was it was such a magical portion of my life growing up. It it seems like so fantastic now, but yeah, um, so that was my uh my puppeteering. Um, I wrote plays for high school, I was no longer in high school. I lettered in theater at my high school when I was 29. So I was uh doing lights and sound for uh Shakespeare and the Grove. It's a big uh big outdoor Shakespeare festival in Tidewater in Chesapeake, Virginia. Um and one of the actors came up to me and was like, Hey, I hear you're a writer, and I'm like, Yeah, I mean it's on my license plate, but you know, sure. And uh he's like, I want to do a play, and I'm like, Well, my editor said that I should do a book that's just dialogue, and a play is like the same thing, right? And he's like, Yeah, I want to do Gilgamesh. I'm like, Okay, that's all of like Babylonian mythology, so you want to narrow it down. He's like, Well, I want to do it. Um, there's one caveat, it has to be done in 45 minutes. And I'm like, Oh, this is impossible. I'll do it.

So this can't be done.

I took like all the copies of uh like Gilgamesh I could find, children's versions of the story, and I like went through and I found a story in the the the legend of Gilgamesh, and uh put that on as a a play with a lot of like dance like movement and like you know, sort of tribalism things, and and we uh we took it, he was a high school teacher, we took it to Virginia Theater Association, a competition for one act plays, and it won. They hadn't seen anything like it. Um, and we went to Southeastern Theater Conference, SETC, which I think everybody knows the big regional uh theater conference for professionals, for colleges, for high schools, for everybody, and had like a really amazing experience, like putting it on there and and working with them. And then it was like every summer, like, hey, uh, can you write something like this? I'm like, sure. So I uh I've written, I don't even know how many plays, I have like four or five of them in my uh in my Google storage, but I did uh one called Troubled in Mind that was uh based on coal mining in West Virginia in the 1920s.

Wow.

Um, I did uh a retelling of the Frankenstein story from the perspective of Igor, who was not part of the original novel, he was added in in the movie. Oh and so I thought that was really interesting. That here's this character that's not canon, but is part of the history of the story. So I made a trial where Igor is being examined, and and the guy has obviously got some deficiencies, he's got some health problems, got some mental problems, but he's like telling the story the best he can from his own memory, and there's a little twist in the end where you find out there absolutely was no Igor, it's uh Dr. Frankenstein who lives. Ooh, I know, super exciting.

Um I mean, it's funny how he's not a character in the original novel, but he's become so ingrained in the story that he basically is canon now.

Yeah, yeah. And uh funny, that one has been so popular. I was doing my day job standing beside a sewer line being installed, and uh I got a phone call from uh a high school director in Northern Virginia and I was like, Hey, I saw this done in 2012, I want to do it. Do you mind? I'm like, not at all. So this show was put on again. It uh it went to SETC, I think.

And uh That's amazing.

It was really, really a wacky sort of roller coaster of a ride. And while I was in college, the uh Royal Shakespeare Company did their first visit to the United States and worked with my college and uh did workshops, and so I got to uh to play actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and it was really neat.

That is very, very cool. And then and then you've got your

Puppets To Award-Winning One-Act Plays

werewolf romantic comedies.

Where yes, werewolf romantic comedy. So uh this is I I got out of writing for a really long time. Um, I had personal issues going on, I didn't have space for it in my life, and I really didn't have the confidence to uh to get back into it. And so after LitRPG Con the first year, I was talking with Rec and Rex like, hey, my publishing company is doing an anthology of spooky stories, you should submit something, and I'm like, I mean, okay. And I started writing something and I really had fun with it, and I submitted it, and uh, I didn't hear back, didn't hear back, didn't hear back, and then finally I got the message that was like, okay, out of like 185 people, you were in the top five. Select it. And I'm like, oh wow. So I uh of all the spooky, scary stories that were in that, I did the romantic comedy of how bad a first date can go with a werewolf.

So what made you decide to go like funny romantic comedy with werewolves versus just a normal spooky story?

I think that's just how my brain works. Like I mean, that it was can you do spooky? Can you do what what trope can you do? You know, cryptids, and I'm like, well, cryptids need love too. So I uh I put the story together of Tyler, an awkward boy going on a first date with the girl Savannah, and uh the date goes really well, and they're making out, and the amulet she wears around her neck slips off in the tussle, and she bites him playfully, but it's enough.

Um no.

So it's so funny.

Well, I think that sounds fantastic, but I also like funny stuff. So I enjoy it.

I I am a very, I think, very quirky personality, and I think that comes through in in my storytelling.

It does. It does. So what made you decide to do a lit RPG as your first published novel?

I really enjoy the mechanics of uh not only going through all these different tropes, but exploring exploring the crunch of a main character who doesn't understand her own crunch. Okay, I thought that would be hilarious. So she early on she's uh the the AI is somewhat new. There is a system in place, but there's a new update to the uh the AI that someone has forced. And so she has to accept a class, she's uh surviving, and she's getting all these points, and she has no idea what to do with them. And so she's doing the math. She's like, I should probably be at level four, and she cashes in all these points and she's level five. She's like, Oh, I didn't see that coming.

There are not many zombie apocalypse lit RPGs out there. What made you choose that particular not necessarily trope, but like theme for the book?

I'm a big science nerd, and I think the uh the fact that there are like the the cordyceps, the the wasp zombie things with uh, you know, doing the the ants bidding or or whatever, doing the fungus' bidding. Like these things are are real, and uh you've seen it in like The Last of Us was one take on it. But I wanted to sort of play with that science and make it like realistic enough to make the story plausible-ish.

Yeah, because that's not your typical virus necessarily in the book, it's started by mages who are warring with each other, right? So does it end up spreading like a normal virus? Can you get it from being bitten?

You can. So, yes, you can. Um, it it's a combination of infections. Um, and uh in the book, spoilers, uh, you find out that it's uh the carrier for the the new AI system. So they were using these like modified diseases like CRISPR Cas9 that we use in the real world, they were using unstable things to push this uh modification to the human brain in this world. And it yeah, we we have uh we have documentaries about why you shouldn't do it's bad.

And now Brianna talks about so the zombie apocalypse happens while she's alive. She's part of a dance troupe, traveling around, zombie apocalypse hits. She talks about how she does run into other people after it happens, but there are no other people that she runs into while the story is going on, right? Um she one of the last is she like the last person?

Is that she ends up being the last survivor of the world, yes.

Ah, that'd be horrible.

And it's it's not, I don't think I really spelled it out, but it's gotten to the point where, you know, not only are the uh the zombies attacking, and and she hopes that, you know, I hope my parents were among the dead and not among the undead, you know, things like that. Um as she is she gets this notification that there's something she needs to follow. It's just a little indication in her uh her overlay. And she's following this arrow and it's going north, and winter is coming, but she's she's persisting, she's she's not prepared for it. She's going to Fantasy Chicago, and uh she encounters people on the road, but people are turning on each other, and so even if the zombies aren't taking them out, other people are. So because she's persistently following this indicator, she does end up being the last survivor. Just the odds.

Because I know another kind of spoiler alert, but it's I think mostly towards the beginning of the book. Uh, the it does mention that the AI also kind of feeds on people like a zombie, and it's basically starving because there are so few people left.

Well, yeah, all the sentient brains like give the AI energy, and uh, once you infect it, you disconnect.

Oof, yeah.

So yeah, the the sickness hits, you get a fever, there's some side effects that happen, and uh we find out from uh another character, Carla, that there is a possibility to survive. Turns out if you're a vegan, you can survive the initial infection.

And uh I mean, is it because she's a vegan or just because she doesn't eat anyone after she's infected?

So at least in my mind, the uh the prions in the brain need additional animal proteins to replicate, and she doesn't have any of those. Okay, she survives off of uh coffee, beans, and dark chocolate.

And she's quite the barista.

She is quite the barista.

Quite the barista.

Almost a Travis Baldry level barista.

So that's impressive.

Here we uh fish through the tropes yet again.

So now is it that she's actually that she actually fights off the virus or just that it kind of goes dormant because she can't eat?

Because I mean from a medical standpoint, the the prions that evolve from damaged nerve cells can be taken care of by the immune system unless you're feeding them. Because she has not fed them, she chains herself up so she doesn't attack anybody. Uh the library shuts down around her, she ends up surviving the initial infection and then fighting off the secondary infection.

Yeah, I liked her as a character, she was fun. So, what made you choose a library?

Building A Zombie LitRPG System

Katie Hanna does her library system apocalypse, and that was one of the things that uh I was I was trolling in the chat. Okay. For a serious book, they're very not serious origins.

It's uh no, all right. So let's go over these these tropes that you've stolen from people. All right, so I mean, I'm not gonna say stolen because uh it's not like they belong to someone, and there's always books that are gonna be similar to other people's books.

Right.

But okay, so we've got magic library. Magical library, we've got little coffee shop, yes, we've got zombies, zombies, yes, we've got uh other dimensions, we've got isekai isekai portal, yeah.

There's uh a little element of maybe time travel, but you know, not so sure. Yeah.

Yeah, there is a little bit of that. What am I am I missing any other major ones?

Well, there is no plucky animal sidekick.

Well, not really.

Not not really, but you do have a cat.

There is a cat.

There's a cat.

Um why did you bring in the cat if he's if the cat's not gonna be because the cat was just kind of a side like he's just there a little bit, then he goes away.

Amelia Furhart was supposed to have a much bigger role.

Uh great name.

So yeah, I wanted to to build the tension first long while in the library as things are slowly expanding. Brianna's alone. And except for when she opens up, you know, a story and she's in a like a rumple stillskin-esque fairy tale, or she's uh rescuing a trapped cat person.

Um which was my favorite book. I don't know what that says about me.

Well, I mean, the AI was listening to what she wanted.

So it's her favorite book, also.

Her favorite book, also.

Yeah, I don't know what that says about either one of us.

I mean, it could say so much about me that I have a You're the one who wrote it. I I wrote a yeah, a semi-saphic love story. I wanted to have her, I wanted to give her some company. I wanted to give her someone to take care of, something to take care of. And I had Amelia Furhart, and I was like, oh, I can't, I can't put her in yet. I can't put her in yet. She hears her and she like she knocks over the the drink that she has. Like she's around, but uh she doesn't realize that there's a cat around until much later. And very much like my own life, I have a an outdoor feral yard companion. Um, her name is Jesus, you scared me. I call her scaredy for short. She uh just shows up and scares the crap out of me when I come home. She yells at me from under the car, feed me.

That's hilarious.

So I I wanted to have a little bit of that neuroses in there. And they do rescue the cat. They they take the cat with me.

What made you decide to go with like a normal cat versus like a magical cat that can talk?

I think that's been done. And by better.

So so have libraries and coffee shops. Right, right.

Now, I did have in the exclusive con edition,

Library Tropes Coffee Shops And Cats

there is a section where one of the books she picks up to pull her into another magic world happens to be one that we are all familiar with. And if you'd like, I could read a little excerpt of this.

That would be fantastic.

For those who are buying this on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or at their local bookstore and won't have this.

And this will not stay in the edited episode. This is gonna, this is gonna come out. This is gonna stay a con exclusive. Stacy's in here. She has she picked up the con exclusive, she said it's excellent.

So I tried reaching out to Matt Deniman's people, uh, sent emails. I I tried the uh the website, and with a name like Wrestler, I'm quick to go into a junk mail folder.

Yeah.

So I decided that I wasn't gonna put that in the general release. And uh I left it in the exclusive con edition. I took a copy to Matt before the con. I'm like, hey Matt, uh, so I stole your IP. This whole thing happened, you know, here's a please don't sue me copy. And he gave me this look like I just let down the bowling team and said, I can't accept this. And like everything in me just like turned cold and sank to the ground. And he pulls out a pen, click, he didn't sign it.

And I'm like, he's a good dude.

So he has a signed copy of uh the exclusive con edition of my book. Um, with uh Matt, we love you.

Scribble, scribble, scribble.

So that is fantastic. Well, I mean, the people watching live just got a treat, and my non Patreon subscriber. Or miss it out. Well, unless you picked up the con edition, then you've got it.

Yeah, yeah. That'd be a shame if people knew that this was happening and uh didn't have one of those copies.

That was a shame. Do you have copies of the con edition left, or did you? I do.

I do. I uh I ordered 200 books for con. I got about 80 books in people's hands. So I still have to go.

That's fantastic.

I still have 120. Um, and there are a couple cons in Virginia that I'm gonna take them to over the next year.

Nice. Will you be at Dragon Con?

I will not be at Dragon Con. Uh, just timing, but uh probably Jordan Con next year.

What made you decide

The Con Exclusive Cameo And IP Panic

on magical books? So I really like the way that the library gets back opened up, right? So she has to go into these books, she has to play out the scenario in the book, and then once she completes that scenario, another wing or section of the library opens up. How did you decide that as the mechanism to open the library back up?

I I don't know. I think I'm batshit crazy. And uh it seemed like a really good idea at the time. I thought it was a really neat mechanic that the books were the portals to what's the story wishbone, you know. Like all these all these uh the this kid shows that I watched when I was younger that had, you know, the the magic tree house, the the the worlds opening up in the book. Like I loved listening to uh like when I was very little, listening to someone read the Indian in the cupboard, which is like sort of like this world within a world thing. And and that that sort of stuck with me. Just something neat to do, you know.

And what made you decide to add spice to it? Because it's not it's not very, very spicy. It's just got a little, it's got a little bit, you know. You've got a little bit of love, a little bit of spice. And I think if I recall correctly, it was mostly fade to black. It was very light on the spice and mostly fade to black.

I call it fade to purple. Because there's there's definitely some some spicy language, but um I I had a conversation with Rose Reynolds, and she was like, Oh no, that's not spice. Spice is like when you have angles and how people are breathing. I'm like, oh, okay, then it's fine.

That's just a different level of spice. There are different levels of meat.

So yeah, um, when we sold at the the Rogue Authors Guild, the Indie Authors Table, we had a cheat sheet made up, and uh I got assigned four out of five peppers. And I'm like, oh honey.

That is not that I would give you a solid two out of five.

It's like yeah, if you like spice, it's two. If you are afraid of spice, yeah, it's it's unattainable. Um but but that was uh uh the guys at the table had such a great time saying, Oh, you don't want to buy that book, that's spicy.

It was every time it was a different story of of what was in there that was so spicy. So people would naturally be like, Okay, well, I'll take this.

I mean, obviously.

But yeah, I think the uh the spice level. I think I initially had a spicier book in mind, and as she as the character matured, I uh I mean she she wants to have a romp, she wants to have some frolic. She thinks at the time that it's just a fantasy that they're NPCs.

And so wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Is she are these books not so these books are not just stories? Are they taking her to alternate universes? I know it happens. My word. I know that changes everything, right? That's naughty.

Very naughty. Wow, that changes to have fun, like it's her thing, whatever.

That changes everything. That puts a whole like that puts a whole new feeling about the cat person. Now it just feels wrong when it's a when it's a s when it's a fictional story. It's you know, it's not real, it's it's whatever.

It's just yeah, it's just it's like oh my gosh. Yeah.

My mind is blown now. Man, because you don't say that in the book.

I don't make it explicit in the book.

I didn't pick that up in the book. I thought they were just stories. Oh my lord. No, okay, no, but it kind of makes sense because in the last book that she goes into, she meets okay, no, that makes sense then.

Yeah.

I'm trying not to give too much away. The time loop, but it makes sense. Okay, now that checks out.

Man, I did not pick up on that.

I did not pick up on that. Okay.

So

Spice Levels And Real Alternate Worlds

there is also, not really relating to Spice or other worlds, there is an Audible. I'm talking with people about getting an audio book done. So hopefully, hopefully, in the next couple months, we'll have the listen along version.

So that would be fantastic, right? So have you just started talking to Audible about that?

I have been talking with voice actors. Uh, I haven't been talking directly with Audible because I want it to have a little more creative control.

Who would be your ideal narrators? So Or if you don't want to say because you don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, that's also totally okay.

No, actually, um I really I tried to get in touch with Katie Wetch, who does a lot of like anime dubbing to see if she was interested in it. Um, she was uh she's a former student, so I uh reached out to her and I haven't heard anything back, but she's doing shows and stuff. Um I had casually talked with Jessica Thret about doing it. I gave her a copy. I'm like, if you're passionate about this, let me know. Um my ex-sister-in-law reached out to me. She's like, I'll do it. I'm like, oh um, can you read spicy scenes without your voice having subtitles? And she she auditioned with the masturbation scene. And I'm like, oh okay. That's a hell of an audition.

Yeah. Yeah. Especially for someone who I don't, especially for someone who you used to be kind of related to by marriage. That would be awkward, I would think.

Well, I mean, we were we both came up in the same acting program, and so we've known each other for a really long time. It's just I didn't think she would be interested in uh in doing that. And so we're talking. It's nothing cemented yet, but the well, I'm excited for the audio. The ball is rolling. We'll see.

Good, good. So what uh what's what's next?

Audiobook Plans And Dream Narrators

What do you now that this book is out and you're working on a possible audiobook? Yeah, what other stories you got coming?

Um, I have a sort of uh portal slash isakai tower series that I'm working on. Um book one of the Labyrinth will be out in uh spring.

Ooh. Is that one hush hush, or can you tell us what that one's about?

So the the premise of the story is a uh New York City club kid goes out to a club, sort of hooks up with this daddy at the bar, and like gets drugged, sort of like comes to in the bathroom of what he thinks is the club as he goes out into the the club where the dancing is. He realizes oh, he's not in the club anymore, and it's a different kind of like party happening, and uh he realizes that he is now in the underworld and he has to make his way through this labyrinth to uh to get out, and as he's going through, bits of his humanity are stripped away.

So that would suck, yeah.

Wicked dark, unhinged underworld Isekite tower thing.

I mean, if the writing is gonna be the same kind of as the your first book, count me in. I'm in.

It's all in on it. It will have a plucky animal sidekick. Well, uh not really animal, more of a cockroach.

Okay, okay.

One of those really big ones, like the palmettos.

Uh, fly.

Yeah, yeah. The ones that don't care about the dark and light, they're just like, you know, they'll fly right into you.

No. Yeah. Gross. Yeah.

People I don't like end up as bugs.

Yeah, that's that's gonna be a first. Cockroach companion. I don't think I don't think I've seen that one yet.

Well, I mean, the cat, the the croc, the uh the the car jock, they were all taken.

So it happened.

There there is even a a roided out rat. So, you know, what's left, cockroach?

There you go.

Next Series Underworld Labyrinth With Roach

So uh I do not have any more questions for you as I hit myself in the face with my microphone. Was there anything that you wanted to talk about that I didn't ask about?

Oh, you're putting me on the spot. This is like an interview or something.

I know, I know.

Uh see, what makes you qualified to be a writer? I don't know. I didn't get around it.

What was the biggest lesson you learned from writing your first novel?

Don't stop. Like oh my god, it is it is grueling. It is uh some days you get 350 words done, some days you get 3,000. It's uh, I mean, people that have been doing it a while make it look easier. Like Jay Krause is uh like you know he's inhuman. We can't even get a book and a half since we started talking. That's just you know how he does it. But he's got that writing survival instinct, and and he's been been grinding at it, you know. That's amazing. I don't have that, and I I struggle, I I pre-write everything. I I have like stories going on in my head, and I'm like, now I have to chisel them out of this stone. And uh, I think the biggest lesson I learned is don't stop. I have in my uh online storage, I have a novel I wrote 20 years ago that's just sitting there. Um I've got several chapters started of other things. I just locked into this, and like this is me, this is mine, this is where I'm going. And so I did it, and now it's done, and now I'm like, well, I can't just sit back. I gotta, I gotta keep writing.

Writing Lessons Standalone Ending And Themes

So my initial idea for uh just another girl at the end of the world was they would have sort of dominion over the library and be able to hop between worlds um after that, but I think it's just gonna be standalone. I I think I'm happy. Like Brianna had a happy ending, Carla has a happy ending, and it just felt right to leave it at that.

It did. I think I think it's a perfect standalone novel. I think it was it was ended, it just the way that it was ended was just nicely wrapped in a little bow, and I think if you wrote more, it would almost be too much. Yeah, I think it was it was perfect. It's a perfect ending for a book.

Pasha.

I just I read it and I put it down, and I was like, I feel very satisfied by this ending. There's never like sometimes you'll read a book and you'll say, Well, I wonder what happened here, and I wonder what happens there, and you know, do they end up doing this? Do they end up doing that? But with this one, I finished it and I put it down and was like, that was that was it. That was good.

I I was sitting at Starbucks, right? I I don't usually go to like the coffee shop and write because I don't like to be perceived. But I wanted coffee one day, and I was like, I don't want to be in the house, I just want to finish this.

And I started writing the uh the epilogue, and I'm like, I have tears like coming down my eyes from my like I'm just like and this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens, and I'm just like almost in hysterics, and I'm like, I need more coffee.

No, I I couldn't have imagined a better way for it to end. Yeah, it was good.

I'm glad I'm glad. Yeah, I uh I really enjoyed exploring the the ways to tell a story, the ways like a person relates to like funnily enough, the the uh bathing in this was like transformational. Like every time she gets the opportunity to take a bath or take a shower or something, something is changing in her life. And so I I could almost make the chapters just that.

Like, yeah, every time she gets I mean, if you're living in a zombie apocalypse, yeah getting a shower or a bath would be transformational.

Oh, absolutely, yeah. Sleeping on its own, sleeping in a hayloft wrapped in a wool cloak in Chicago in winter. Like it's fantasy Chicago, it's Oaks, not Chicago, but I knew what it was.

Yeah. All right, well, that is everything that I had

Closing Banter And Leveling Up

for you. Thank you so much, Brian, for coming on and hanging out.

I shall see you on the Wertle field at dawn.

I mean, we uh butted heads today. We we matched each other today. Neither one of us won today, but there's always tomorrow.

We both won. We beat everybody else.

So we did beat everybody else.

And that's what's important.

That's the real, that's the real win right there.

Absolutely. Bye, everybody. Thanks for jumping in.

Thank you everyone else for sticking along and uh keep leveling up.