Game Talk - Joe X Young

If ever there were an individual to be described as a genre visionary, Joe 'X' Young would be in the running. For members of both the Get Writing Horror and Get Reading Horror, his passion and commitment are undeniable. Always with an eye on the big picture for horror writers to gain both traction and mileage in the genre, how could we not talk game?

1. For those who don't know, who are you?

My name is Joe X Young and I am the shadow on the wall of the horror author community. I’m the author of over sixty published short stories, hundreds of reviews and articles, and dozens of illustrations in books and magazines. I’m a Gen-X ‘old fart’ and ‘early adopter’ on the internet having hosted over fifty author groups on the Yahoo and MSN networks through the mid-1990s onwards and was prominent on ‘BBC Get Writing’ before it closed and I was headhunted to run ‘Writer’s Dock’. Nowadays I own dozens of Facebook groups and have a presence on many other platforms. More recently I built joexyoung.com, a social media platform intended as a safe space for the horror community. Packed with resources it helps creatives to find information, and readers to find the perfect book in a welcoming environment free from the problems of mainstream social media. I’m a British ex-pat living in Germany with my amazing wife Annett who, despite not really being into horror, fully supports my passion for the horror community.

So, now that’s out of the way, the question on people’s lips is usually “What does the ‘X’ stand for?”, well, the ‘X’ in my name doesn’t stand for anything; it’s inserted so people don’t mistake me for the plethora of other Joe Youngs out there as well as for a ‘Mighty’ 15-foot ape from the movies (it happens). Had I have known what Twitter would be renamed as I would have chosen ‘Z’.

Workwise, among others I’ve been a Chef, a Circus Clown, a professional artist, and an antiques/collectibles dealer. I’m a semi-retired househusband (I’ll never truly retire) and largely thanks to Asperger’s Syndrome demanding that I fill my head with as much info as I can cram into a cranium, I’m an entrepreneurial ‘Jack of all trades’. I never stop learning, and excel at ‘joining the dots’, finding that what applies to one area of knowledge often has value for others. Fuelled by abstract thinking and broad-spectrum learning, as well as a flair for marketing, my ‘use’ relative to the horror community, is my experience as a business consultant.

In the 1980s I was mainly a business strategist, helping individuals, companies, and charities to achieve goals through individually tailored action plans, and getting them out of trouble when necessary. I still take on the occasional job but avoid the corporate bullshitters with their legalese and NDAs. Decades of problem solving while respecting privacy is why I’m “the shadow on the wall”.

Behind the scenes of the horror community I do personally tailored mentoring, helping create opportunities for a living wage. I mentor for free but as my website takes a lot of my time I have scaled down on mentoring, choosing instead to put my knowledge on my site to reach more people with actionable basics.

Within the public-facing aspect of the horror community I host groups as well as being an Admin for a few other people’s, which is really the most visibility I allow myself, but I use that to connect people with things, people with people, and give a lot of promotion for those who are unaware I’m doing it. For example, before starting my website I shared over 10,000 indie horror author books on Pinterest but never told the authors. I don’t do what I do for praise or money but because I love seeing people get the help they needed, or the reach-out connection they never thought could happen. A recent example was that I listened to a podcast during which the host said they would love to interview a specific publisher but was nervous about approaching someone so influential, saying that if anyone knew them and could put in a good word it would be appreciated. I don’t know the publisher personally, and I doubt he would know me if he was pissing on me (and no, I’m not into that sort of thing). However, I contacted him via Facebook Messenger, providing text extracted from the podcast transcript and a link to the episode, which took me about ten minutes to do, culminating in the podcaster getting that all-important industry connection, a bunch of free books, and the desired interview, which even led to another interview with one of the first publisher’s colleagues. The podcaster has no idea who hooked them up.

My ‘interfering’ is only ever positive, I don’t get involved with online arguments, politics, dogpiling sessions and so on, and I usually only help those who publicly request it, even if not requested of me specifically.

On the topic of ‘Game’, I’d much rather promote others discreetly than bang my own drum (I’m only spilling the beans now because it’s you, and you asked so nicely). I move around the community a lot and it became a regular thing for me to encounter promises of the horror community ‘One Stop Shop’ and have awaited their opening only to discover that they either failed to open their doors, or if they did open them, the shelves in their ‘One Stop Shop’ only had a few resources from their buddies rather than being the ‘Game Changer’ everyone was promised. With that in mind, I have been determined to create something that is worth the community’s while.

One of the reasons I accepted your offer to talk ‘Game’ is that it’s forcing me out of my comfort zone in the shadows. I know you said, “Feel free to be as expansive and expressive as you'd like”, but you must be careful what you wish for, as you might just get it, because even in a reply this big there’s a vast amount I’ve left out.

2. Game talk – how do you organise and manage your game? How has it evolved?

Organization and management are haphazard. Over the past few years, I’ve tried ‘author assists’ using notebooks, Post-its, voice recordings, even the popular ‘Second brain’ stuff such as ‘Notion’, just so I can write about them on the site. But I rarely consult them. To me they’re a time-consuming redundancy as everything I need is stored in my head, and I can ‘cross-reference’ that, accessing everything I know, rather than being so tightly focused on specific notes that there’s no room left for creative thinking.

Management is a case of discipline, which I sorely lack. I don’t have to nail my butt to a chair for a 9-5 job, but even so, my typical day involves waking up around 5:30, washing, dressing, having breakfast, and then I’m mostly going to be online from early morning throughout the day until around 8 pm, with breaks for such things as preparing my Wife’s breakfast and lunch, or whatever else is required. I don’t watch TV, or play video games, so most of my time is spent expanding my knowledge base through working on my website, as that’s what brings me the most satisfaction, apart from spending quality time with my wife who is literally the only human being I talk to in person (other than medical staff when needed).

Evolution:  The website had its roots on Facebook. When I decided to retire and write horror stories, I joined every horror writing group I could find, which at that time was 86 groups. It soon became apparent that none of them were helpful. One of the biggest was actively discouraging people from writing horror, with its resident troll running the show and insulting everyone while members were rubbernecking the ensuing arguments. The only viable exception on Facebook was Jim McLeod’s ‘Gingernuts of Horror’, through which I spent five happy years, mainly as a film reviewer, but generally assisting on his GNOH site. Because of the overall dearth of available help on Facebook, I created the ‘Get Writing Horror’ (GWH) group, which offers writing/business advice to anyone who needs it, and a sister group ‘Get Reading Horror’ (GRH) so those complaining that GWH doesn’t allow self-promos could put their ‘buy my book’ posts in that group instead.

Over time, the members found GWH so useful that I received regular requests to create a Get Writing Horror website. I always replied “it ain’t happening”, and the opinion from many was that it couldn’t really be done on any meaningful scale as it would take considerable time, effort, and a boatload of money to just build a resource site like that, never mind the ongoing investment of time and money in running it, and nobody would be crazy enough to put their life on hold to even try. There had already been attempts at creating community sites, guilds, forums etc, but they’d crashed and burned for various reasons, leaving the community with the aforementioned ‘One Stop Shops’.

Unfortunately (for me) I started rethinking it. I knew that it could be done because I spent around 16 hours a day 7 days a week overseeing Writer’s Dock’s dozens of forums, multiple chatrooms, and thousands of very active members. The downside was that it would mean shelving my cosy retirement plan of writing horror. However, I saw the bigger picture because I have ongoing medical issues, and while I was once more facing possible extinction in a hospital bed, I wasn’t available to help anyone, which pissed me off. I figured it would be tragic to take knowledge to my grave that could have helped thousands if only I’d made it accessible, so I began writing things down in a word document so I could make a guidebook. The requests from my groups and seeing the needs of others in the community made me choose to start building the website as my ‘Brain Dump’ instead. I dug my old domain name out of mothballs, as calling the site ‘getwritinghorror.com’ would give the impression that it’s only about writing when it’s really about the entire genre and most importantly about the community.

3. Talk us through one of your biggest achievements in your game – give us the story behind it. How did it play out?

With the horror community in mind the website is perhaps my biggest achievement. The site has evolved into over a dozen ‘Facebook style’ groups, and over 200 bulletin-board forums covering around 2,000 topics with over 6,000 posts so far, about a dozen of those are guest review posts from Carmilla Voiez (Hi Carmilla!), but the rest are my own work. Obviously, I can’t talk about all 2,000+ topics here, just that if I thought something might be useful, I added it. If you want a list of publishers, I have one, if you want a list of mythical creatures, I have one, and if you want to know how to set up an author website, I have a step-by-step guide. The site is already encyclopaedic, and if there’s something I don’t have, I’ll gladly add it if possible.

As for success, well that’s out of my hands. I gave it a ‘soft launch’ last year for a few people to join and give feedback, which was all positive. joexyoung.com is already available to anyone interested in checking it out, but a full public launch is happening this year during which I’ll be bringing as many people there as possible. I know that the paraphrased ‘Field of Dreams thing of ‘If you build it… They will come’ is bullshit, and that my site is really still in its infancy, but I believe it’s worthwhile as it’s a free of charge safe haven with no A.I. interference, no bigotry, no religion, no politics, no trolling, no arguments, no algorithms to appease, and none of the other enshittification that taints mainstream social media these days such as the restrictions on language essential to the promotion of horror in all of its forms, so there won’t be such bullshit as “unaliving” or use of asterisks required. It’s the kind of site I wish existed when I was taking steps toward horror writing.

I cannot put my hand on my heart and say there’s no gatekeeping, because while I treat (almost) everyone as an equal, I do have gates to keep the trolls and other assorted assholes out (hence ‘almost’). I think those are acceptable gates worth keeping.

4. You mention building a safe haven without the likes of trolling or arguments. It reminds me of the Mike Tyson quote, “Social media made y'all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.” Have you directly encountered any such people while on this journey and, if so, how have those interactions evolved over time?

Sadly, I agree with Iron Mike, I’ve have seen far too many arguments (One is one too many), and had several direct encounters, such as back in the early days of the GWH group. My crime was simply and politely asking someone to clarify if they paid for submissions to the magazine they were promoting. Apparently, they’d had problems with being called out for such things before, so their friend, (I won’t name names) accused me of trying to destroy their business and of being a ‘Cult Leader’, and said “Whatever it takes… I will take you down”. I was actually quite flattered as cult leaders are usually seen as being charismatic and powerful, neither of which I lay claim to. I’m still running the group (and still not leading a cult).

Another instance… I was called a ‘Nazi’ by a member of the LGBTQ community who was attacking someone else and wanted me to get everyone I know to help him by reporting that person to Facebook and the FBI for something they were not even doing. He said that FB, the Police, and the FBI had already rejected his report but that if a lot of us reported the same thing they’d have to take action. When I looked into it for a couple of days I found out what was really happening, and said there was nothing I could do that he hadn’t already done, and I wasn’t prepared to help him fight a battle he had instigated, especially as he had been publicly trashing others for not doing his bidding. He threatened to get the LGBTQ community to rise against my friends and I and to expose us via YouTube videos as ‘Pro-Bullying’ and ‘Anti-LGBTQ’. I said, “bring it on”, and… Nothing happened.

There’s also the troll infested group I mentioned earlier. When the head troll came at me with his usual “You’re never going to be a successful writer…” I told him that I hardly attended school, have limited English skills, and write because I love it, so I’m not expecting to make a career of it, and am happy just plodding along. This left him with no argument against me, so he moved on to someone else. As for the group itself, it served no purpose for me so I left to create a group with actual value for horror authors, but before I went I suggested that instead of giving headspace to the trolls and oxygen to the group’s dumpster fire, maybe the members could get together and create an anthology, as for many in the group it would be their first published piece and is a much better use of their time than arguing with arseholes or rubbernecking the fights. Many of them listened, resulting in the group’s first anthology. The group’s owner initially distanced himself from it, but the group members still made it happen (the owner then decided to get involved by illustrating it), and although I haven’t looked into it recently I believe that even though the trolls are still hassling people there, the members are now on their third or maybe even fourth group anthology.

The biggest fight I had on Facebook was with a guy who was attempting to create his own ‘Empire’. Unfortunately, over the past few years I’ve seen several other overblown egos, building their extreme personas as the ‘Saviour of the Horror Community’, and promising things they’ll never deliver before leaving a lot of destruction in their wake. I had seen this particular guy’s growing involvement within various groups and websites, telling everyone of the fantastic things he was going to do while getting his feet firmly under their respective tables. He created new banners and logos for them using his own style, so that anything he had an affiliation with looked as if he ran it. I was already wary of him and was ready when he attempted to get GWH members to share GWH stuff using backgrounds he’d made, which I quickly prevented him doing. Unfortunately, he had already shared a GWH newsletter created by one of the GWH Admin with around 100 free books offered on it as if it was a gift from him, having taken all identifiers from it that tied it to GWH and using his own header. He was, of course, thanked for his generosity by the community and was gracious with his responses, y’know “It’s the least I can do for my community’, that sort of thing, until I pointed out that he should credit the true source and thank the GWH admin who compiled it, instead of taking credit for it by passing it off as his own. He claimed no wrongdoing and that he was only trying to help.

He had also at that time requested access to the ‘horror contacts directory’ I was creating which is now part of my safe haven. I refused as I believed that his intention was yet again to copy it and present it as his own work. He left GWH, which led to him and his group attacking me publicly, saying (rightly so) that nobody has exclusive rights to having a directory. I explained that I wasn’t spending my time and effort working on such a huge project just to have him steal it and that if he wants a directory that badly he should bugger off and make his own. He didn’t bother creating one, and not long after our ‘arguments’ he closed his intended resource ‘Empire’, and I never heard directly from him again. I know that he briefly ventured into publishing, initially successfully, only to give the company to someone else and ‘allegedly’ run off with around $9,000 of the company cash meant for paying authors and artists. I say ‘allegedly’ as I believe there are ongoing legal issues there, and a lot of angry people seeking restitution. I do feel somewhat vindicated regarding not trusting him, but sad for those he successfully ripped off.

I see corporate social media as being on a downward spiral with hostilities happening on a daily basis (none directed at me lately), but I keep my distance from it as I believe that the platforms are now irredeemable, with conversations having given way to rage-baiting and fears for the future, especially as a lot of the ‘people’ others argue with aren’t even people but are A.I. constructs pushing a given narrative toward politics, religion, and consumerism. I tend to mind my own business more nowadays, just help people when I can, run my groups as best as possible, and focus on the ongoing stocking of good value content on my ‘safe haven’ website where decent people who want to focus on becoming horror authors without other people’s bullshit can exist in harmony, and where I can prevent scammers and trolls from even accessing the platforms. Should any dumpster fires start, I know they are going to be quickly extinguished along with the access of those responsible for lighting them.

5. It's great if things go according to plan. Tell us about when it didn't; how did you handle it? What were/are those challenges?

Aside from intending to retire and write horror novels, one of many examples of what didn’t go according to plan was creating a section of the site which is basically like YouTube but for mostly horror books and writing related topics, only to find a security glitch in the premade template that prevented me from making alterations, and then finding that the vendor had gone bust, which meant scrapping the entire Audio-Visual section, losing a vast amount of work hours, and tens of thousands of linked videos. I will of course rebuild that from scratch, but I’m in no rush.

Another example: I had transferred over 2TB of files onto a 4TB drive to take with me to another location so I could upload work to the site while away from home for three months, only for the external drive to short out on day one, leaving me 200 kilometres from home, with a couple of years of work inaccessible, most of which I hadn’t got backups for as the 4TB actually WAS the main backup. A lot of the files were content for entire sections such as articles and collated lists, and all of the hand created artwork for the forum headers (so for now they mostly don’t have any). I know I could replace them all in days with A.I. but I’d rather go without them than to start shoving that crap on the site.

How do I handle things like that? Well, I shed a quick tear, shrug my shoulders with a heartbreaking sigh, and get to work on finding solutions and rebuilding the losses. It’s not as if I lost everything I’d worked on, as the site still has thousands of pages of valuable content.

Another example, this time not causing a huge loss (quite the reverse), would be my ‘Women in Horror’ section. Every time ‘Women in Horror Month’ came around, I saw people putting out lists with a few dozen names on them of people they know personally, or who have already been mentioned several times in the same thread. Anyway, as it’s generally assumed and often lamented that there aren’t many women in horror, and those who are get no visibility outside of women in horror month, I set out to create a more comprehensive and permanent list. An easy enough task at first, but what I expected to be a couple of hundred women now stands at over six and a half thousand. Don’t get me wrong, my list isn’t a failure, just an example of how a single misconception develops into a gargantuan task. I know that even at 6,500+ names I’ve still not listed all women in the genre. The ones so far are mostly authors, but I promised myself I would leave nobody out, so I believe my list will likely double as I’m adding those working across the entire horror industry.

There are plenty more examples of unexpected issues I’ve had along the way, but I don’t care much about looking back, I’m more concerned about now, and where I take things from here. The horror landscape is mostly uncharted waters, but we’ll eventually have a decent enough map.

Challenges?

First one was figuring out how to create the site. My prior ‘Webmaster’ experience was Serif ‘drag and drop’ websites that came on a disc. I then upgraded to ‘Adobe Muse’. No sooner had I created my author site then Adobe terminated all support availability and hosting, meaning I’d have to start again, so I didn’t bother, hence my domain name being mothballed. Over a decade later I knew the new site I had in mind would need to be infinitely scalable and relatively ‘futureproofed’, so I had to learn enough to make that happen. Not an easy task (for me at least), but I’ve succeeded. No I.T. helpers, no A.I., no shortcuts, just one old man’s time, dedication, and determination.

I still have a lot more challenges ahead involving such things as indexing, cross-referencing, and adding live links to everything on the lists etc, as well as covering the increasing costs of such things as maintenance and hosting. I’m trying to avoid Corporate Advertising as I would rather have the site remain ‘on topic’ than to have it festooned with random ads for Bitcoin, Casinos, and ‘Women in your area who are seeking a date…TONITE!!!’.

6.  Give a pep-talk to someone on game in your field.

If you’ve read this far, gruelling isn’t it, so well done you! The following advice and pep-talk applies to all fields: As you know by now I’m nothing exceptional, I’m an old fart with multiple disabilities and daily obstacles to face, but in typical Gen-X fashion, while I still have a breath in my body I refuse to quit, because there’s so much left to do that I know I’ll enjoy doing which can benefit others.

My advice, make of it what you will, is to never make it all about the money. Seriously, it’s truly not worth it as your focus should be on being a happy creative, not on a supposed route to easy money that will invariably leave you frustrated. There are far easier ways to make money than through writing, so create for joy, find the help you need to make what you create marketable, and you never know, you may end up not only successful, but far more fulfilled and happier. 

As for the Pep-Talk… Take chances! That pinkish blancmange in your skull is capable of incredible things, but you won’t know that unless you’re willing to persuade the ‘what ifs’ to become actions. I’ve had struggles, and you will no doubt face some too, but what helps define your worth is what you do to overcome them, so even though things may seem difficult, don’t deny yourself the opportunities to create amazing things or even to become extraordinary, because your legend has yet to be written, and that’s the task of others. YOUR task is to make sure that when they speak of you, yours is a tale worth telling.

7. Promo for website / links

Website: https://joexyoung.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MrJoeYoung

Get Writing Horror: https://www.facebook.com/groups/102493563434400/

Get Reading Horror: https://www.facebook.com/groups/304096703908288/

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