Spotlight – An Interview with Matt Betts

Hey, this is Steve Bloom, and you are listening

to the Geekcast Radio Network. You are tuned

in to Steve Megatron on Altered Geek. Hello,

and welcome to Altered Geek. I'm your host, Steve

Megatron Phillips. Today, I'd like to welcome

to the program Matt Betts, a former radio on

-air personality and newscaster, writer, poet,

and huge pop culture junkie. Welcome, Matt. Hi,

Steve. Thanks for having me. No problem. So,

as I mentioned briefly off air, I see you've

had a very diverse career. I think that's a polite

way of putting it. Yeah, I've kind of been all

over the place, I guess. Yeah, yeah. I mean,

when I went to college, I thought, you know,

this has been a while ago. 20 -ish years ago,

some years ago. And I thought it'd be fun to

be on the radio. I thought that'd be a blast.

So I went into college my first week, and I said,

oh, they've got a radio station here. So me and

two other friends, we went there and said, hey,

can we get some kind of training? We'd love to

be on the air sometime. They go, yeah, you'll

start Monday. This was like a Thursday or something.

Oh, wow. Yeah, so they didn't really give us

any training. there they just kind of threw us

in there so you know i did news for for for uh

college station for a while i also ended up you

know doing uh you know being a dj uh for a metal

show for a little while and uh so i really you

know you kind of got thrown into it you learned

a lot of things you learned about production

and you learned you know uh you learned you know

how to handle yourself in an interview you have

how to interview others and uh yeah so it was

all a pretty quick learning process. And so I

was at school anyway for broadcasting and I ended

up doing a lot of radio and doing a little bit

of news here and there, you know, it was whatever,

whatever sort of was available. But it was kind

of weird because I was, you know, I was there

and I was, it was, you know, the big sort of

alternative time, you know, it was when Seattle

bands were big and grunge was just hitting. I

ended up working for oldies stations. So, you

know, I was, you know, driving to work, listening

to Nirvana and I get there and I'd be playing

Elvis and Roy Orbison. And so it was, which was,

you know, it was fine by me, but it was just

a really weird time for me to be absorbing all

this culture. And I think that's where I kind

of, you know, part of the reason I, you know,

consider myself a pop culture junkie is that

I had this infusion of just sort of a little

bit of everything. And I ended up working for

another oldie station later on when I came back

to my hometown, Lima. And yeah, so so, yeah,

I kind of had a varied track with that. I, you

know, I've done a lot with publishing. I've done

a lot of writing. I publish poetry as well, speculative

poetry, so I have horror poetry out there. I

interned at a TV station for a while. I worked

at a comedy club as a waiter, which was probably

one of my favorite jobs ever. Not the waiter

part of it, but to go into these comedy clubs

at the time and just have people come in and

do their acts for a week. And you could watch

these people, these comedians, develop a joke.

You either had the people that came in that were

trying to do stuff or the people who had their

act. and did it and got out, you know. But over

a week, you could see the good ones are the ones,

you know, who really paid attention to the audience.

You know, take that kernel of a joke and mess

with it and see how people reacted and things

like that. So, yeah. That had to have been fun.

It was. Yeah. I mean, I met a lot of, you know,

a lot of really good comedians at the time. And

it was a pretty big deal for comedy at the time,

too. So, you know, it's in the early 90s and

like every cable show had their own comedy special

or comedy night or whatever. And so you got to

see a lot of people coming in and doing stuff.

And, you know, it's it's it's kind of like, you

know, when you're writing a book or when you're

writing poetry or whatever. taking that idea

and trying different things with it and I think

I learned a lot from them just by seeing how

some of these really good comedians took an idea

and ran with it. That's awesome. Just to be kind

of a fly on the wall just to kind of see how

their process works had to be part of the fun

of developing your own stuff. Yeah, it was. And,

you know, I think, you know, radio is a really

great job, especially the, you know, when I was

a DJ, you know, doing the nights or whatever,

because you really were on your own. You got

to, you know, really work on something or you

got to just go live and say whatever. And you

had to have it, you know, it had to have some

sort of rhythm to it. You couldn't be stuttering

like I am now. You had to be smooth and get in

and get out. And a lot of the comedians were

like that. You could tell by their demeanor whether

they were comfortable being on stage or whether

they were new or whether they were trying something

new and weren't quite comfortable with the joke.

So yeah, it was an interesting way to learn things.

I did that for like two years. And like I said,

a lot of great people came in and out of there

that I got to watch them with their acts. So

yeah. Terrific job. What were some of the biggest

people you get to see come out of there? Well,

see, when I say my favorite big person, people

go, oh, I don't know who he is. You know, it's

kind of hard to say this, but I don't know if

you know Larry Miller. He's an actor. He's in

tons of stuff. He was in Pretty Woman. He was

in, you know, so all the way back there, he was

in 10 Things I Hate About You and stuff like

that. And he also was a comedian and he, long

before he was doing the acting. Um, and I, it

was one of the last, uh, last times I was at

the club, I was, uh, you know, moving on, I got

another job and they let me come back and interview

him for a class I was doing. And he just had

all kinds of great advice and he was just a terrific

guy to sit down with. And, um, you know, he gave

me, you know, just as I was interviewing him,

gave me advice, you know, great advice about

myself as I was going through, you know, I was

this college student with somebody I really looked

up to. And I said, you know, I'm really sorry

that I'm not really prepared. And he kind of

said, you know what, you don't. You never have

to tell someone you're sorry about showing up

and being you, I guess. He kind of put me at

ease talking to somebody I was kind of flabbergasted

around. I don't remember exactly how he put it,

but he said, you do the best you can be, more

or less. Just a lot of other things he said stuck

with me. Like I said, he was in movies. He was

a comedian. And he went to school. I didn't know

that until I interviewed him to be a musician.

So he was like a concert pianist or something.

And I said, wow, you know, that's a lot of...

creative stuff going on. And he said, well, one

thing kind of feeds into the other. If I write

a piano piece or I practice this piano piece,

it helps me be creative when it's time to write

or when it comes time to be on stage or in front

of a camera. Just one thing leads to another,

and they all sort of help each other and feed

each other and make each other better. So it

was kind of neat that I felt pulled, obviously.

describing my career careers i guess um i've

always felt kind of pulled in different directions

because i would love to do you know i'd love

to write short stories i'd love to write poetry

i'd love to write this and that and he just sort

of said you know it's okay to do it all you know

as long as you do the best you can at all of

them and eventually they're all gonna you know

feel like one big creative hole i guess that's

that's really a great way of looking at it just

feeding the creativity Yeah, like I said, it

was a terrific interview. I probably still got

a copy of it somewhere. I forget what I got in

the class. I don't think I got an A on it, but

I enjoyed doing it. That early on really was

something that spoke to me, I guess. Awesome,

awesome. Switching gears a little bit, what's

a comic book or cartoon property that's been

kind of... because we kind of focus heavily on

cartoons and comic books on this network, but

that's been kind of instrumental in your writings

or in your career as a whole. Well... cartoons

and comics you know growing up i mean i miss

having saturday morning cartoons you know even

though i'm you know i i i never had the chance

to sit down with my kids and say all right it's

saturday morning we're gonna go watch you know

whatever that schedule used to be let's see gi

joe's on at this time uh uh you know uh godzilla's

on and then the uh super friends it just isn't

the same now that it's all streaming you know

it's like it kind of took what you could get

back then, you know, and you liked it. And it

just isn't the same now. But I wrote a, I talked

about some poetry I do, speculative poetry. I

wrote an entire book of poetry based on the Godzilla

Saturday morning cartoon from the 70s, 70s and

80s. Eventually we got ready to publish it, and

the publisher got a little worried about getting

sued by Toho and by NBC. They're very litigious

about Godzilla, apparently Toho is. So I had

to go back and sort of redo it. But to write

that, originally the concept was that I was going

to, that I did write actually, I think it was

five poems for each episode. One of them was

like a haiku, and the rest all were just revolved

around that particular episode from the first

season. And the title of each poem was a line

of dialogue from that cartoon. So this was, you

know, five or six years ago, but they had the

whole first season of the Godzilla cartoon on

Hulu at the time. So I sat there and watched

all of these episodes over and over of Godzilla,

you know, these really sort of cheesy Godzilla

cartoons to the point where I'd be sitting there

watching cartoons and my my oldest son. would

sit there and go, Dad, are you really watching

this again? We've seen this episode. And I go,

yeah, but it's research. I'm working on something,

you know. So basically I had 13 episodes, and

I must have watched each of those episodes, I

don't know how many times, you know, within a

couple months span writing this book. And, I

mean, when you're a little kid, you're probably

five or six at the time, when he gets sick of

cartoons, you know you're obsessed or you've

got a problem, you know. But I remember that

so fondly from my childhood. And then when I

sat down to do this project, I was kind of disappointed

that it wasn't as awesome as I remembered. You

know, it was a very 80s cartoon or a very 70s,

80s cartoon. But I still was obsessed with it

and I still, you know, I still love it. So that's

one of them. And, you know, I mentioned G .I.

Joe. I love that cartoon, too. You know, Super

Friends was very a very big deal for me because,

you know, that was that led to a lot of other

things. But it also led to other D .C. you know

characters coming into their their show to be

like oh i know who that car you know who that

guy is and i know who that villain is you know

so those three were pretty big for me and you

know spider -man the cartoon they had for a while

there was pretty big too for me yeah i i can

definitely relate to things not living up to

the glory of your childhood right uh yeah we've

gone through on on a couple of our podcasts reviewing

uh either multiple episodes per podcast or an

entire series in a podcast episode. And we're

like, wow, this just doesn't hold up. Right,

right. Well, we also, we were doing a, I was

at Dragon Con for the first time this year. We

were having some panels. We started talking about.

cartoons that were made from rated R properties,

but made into children's cartoons. They had a

Rambo cartoon for a while. The kids weren't old

enough to actually go see the movie, but they

decided maybe a Rambo cartoon would be a good

idea for them. I think they may have made a...

I can't think of the other one is, but we're

just talking about all these properties that

were you were just thinking, why would anyone

consider this a good idea for a kid? You know,

but I remembered some of them. I remembered Rambo

very briefly, but there were a couple others

that were just, you know, they were not child

friendly, but they they made them into a kid's

cartoon. So, yeah, cartoons were a pretty big

deal. Like I said, I mean, I remember a lot of

the Hanna -Barbera stuff, Laugh Olympics and

things like that when I was a kid. And, you know.

These days, you don't really see them much. I

mean, we were talking the other day, some friends

of mine about Bugs Bunny. You know, they used

to watch them, you know, Saturday mornings, but

they also used to have them like in syndication.

You could see them constantly. And kids today

just don't see that. A lot of the ones that we

used to see just aren't even available anymore,

you know, because they were, you know, taken

out of circulation for various reasons that,

you know, I can't even show my kid a certain

one that I loved when I was younger, you know.

So, yeah, I mean, they were huge. And when I

write some of my books and, you know, and especially

a poetry, not just that one book, I do bring

a lot of that back. I mean, one of my favorite

poems that was nominated for an award of mine

that was about Godzilla. And it was sort of,

you know, not just remembering the cartoon, but

remembering, you know, some of the movies that

I loved when I was a kid, too, that, you know,

back when before the time of cable. I lived in

Lima, Ohio, which is sort of midway between Toledo

and Cincinnati. So when we watched TV, we could

get if we were lucky, our antenna would pick

up sometimes from Detroit as far as Detroit.

But usually it was Toledo. It was Dayton. and

uh maybe columbus and if i was very careful on

the weekend i could get a channel i think it

was for detroit that showed a monster movie every

weekend or had two or three you know it's like

their weekend creature feature or whatever and

i remember you know desperately trying to get

the fuzz out so i could you know actually watch

you know rodan or whatever so they were a big

part and i worked for that you know so so i was

very satisfied to get to watch those movies after

a while because you know i i knew what time they

were on i had to get that antenna line just perfectly

and If the wind was blowing, I could watch just

about the whole movie. So those were pretty important.

That's awesome. Yeah. So what's a comic series

or comic collection that you have that's the

largest, whatever that may be, character -wise?

You know, it's hard to say. I mean, I collect

a lot of things that I have trouble picking up

now because I stopped for a while and then I

thought, well, I want to try and finish this

series. I mean, things like the original Marvel

Godzilla series only had like 24 or 25 issues,

but I'm still having trouble finding a few of

them here and there. I used to love Avengers.

I have some pretty old ones that are in. terrible

condition but they're still you know like some

of the original giant size annuals of avengers

uh like i think the number number five or something

it was pretty early on i honestly don't remember

the number right now but um i loved i loved avengers

i loved daredevil i was more of a marvel guy

than a dc guy um i've just about the whole early

run of gi joe up to a point uh micronauts was

a huge one that i loved and star wars was probably

one of one of the first comics that i collected

i bought the uh the movie tie -ins from you know

the original star wars and then i just kept collecting

and it made sense to keep collecting because

it was you know star wars was a huge deal for

me when i was a kid and uh to be able to read

these continuing adventures which probably aren't

canon anymore um was was great i mean they had

some really super weird stuff that i just wouldn't

see anywhere else um you know just different

aliens and different you know concepts they tried

to run with um that you know i really enjoyed

reading that for quite a while and then after

you know i forget how many a hundred or so a

little more than that i kind of got bored with

it because they were excuse me turning in on

themselves and doing the same ideas over and

over so but i love the star wars marvel comics

and i've read some of the other series before

uh i mean some of the other ones like dark horse

and things and i like those too but those marvels

were so immediately after the movie And it was

funny because they would have these runs and

then they would hit a movie and they'd have to

figure out how to work around that movie or how

to, you know, retrofit what they'd written in

with the movie. And, you know, like I think they

originally had Jabba the Hutt was this skinny

sort of fish guy in the comic books. And then

when they suddenly showed up on screen as this

giant slug, you know, they had to hastily change

the guy. And yeah, it was like I said, it was

kind of one of those things where everything

sort of connected together in my childhood. Loved

the movie, so went straight for the comic book,

and they did a great job for quite a while. So

if we're looking at some of my bigger things,

probably the Star Wars. I read Iron Man for quite

a while. It's kind of in and out of a lot of

the Marvels for a while, depending on who was

drawing, who was writing, and what the storyline

was. I read Iron Man for a long time. X -Men,

I picked up about the Brood series. I guess all

I covered was excited about that. So that's where

I started reading that. Stayed with them for

quite a while. All over the place. There wasn't

one thing that really struck my fancy. It was

just good storytelling. And if it was a good

story that I really enjoyed, I stayed with it.

Nice, nice. Yeah, that's kind of how it was for

a lot of my comic collecting, too. Nowadays,

it's just mostly because I like the cover art

more so than anything else. Right, exactly. Yeah,

it's the same way. I mean, if it's a great cover,

I'm more likely to pick it up and read it. The

story was so -so, you know? Yeah, yeah, I can

think of a few. The X -Men, and then there were

a couple of Daredevils, and I think I got started

with Daredevil, and it was mainly because the

covers were terrific. And that brought me in.

And after that, they had that good story. So

I hung around for it. So what are some projects

that you have upcoming that you can kind of tell

the listeners about? Well, my first book was

this sort of steampunk action -adventure thing

with a little horror and a little of this and

a little of that. And it was called Odd Man Out,

and that came out in 2013. And my publisher liked

it enough that I got three more books with them.

But one of the books had to be a sequel. And

I've done all the other books. So I'm writing

the sequel for that one. So it's actually done.

It's with the editor right now. And we're going

back and forth on edits and changes and things.

So probably, hopefully later on this year, I'm

betting usually it'll come out. Usually they

come out about... July or August. But it's hard

to say. I haven't seen their schedule for the

year. I'm very excited about that one. It took

a while to figure out where I wanted to go from

the original story of Oddman out. I kind of took

a tangent and ran with it for that. It's kind

of a combination of this... uh steampunk adventure

but i've added in this sort of mission impossible

vibe to it because there's a confederate spy

it takes place during the civil war uh there's

confederate spies sort of front and center for

the sequel who wasn't at all in the first book

so um i had a lot of fun writing that i i i got

to do research i'm putting air quotes around

that by watching um all the spy movies i could

get my hands on so i went back and watched mission

impossible i watched a bunch of james bombs and

you know i just um a few other ones that just

came out not too long ago i i were part of my

research for that um because i i i like to take

the tropes that are in there and the things that

everybody expects from a spy movie or a spy novel

and kind of turn a little bit you know try and

take it in a different direction so you know

i had to watch all those movies or i just wouldn't

be doing my job So that won't be out later. I've

got another book from an Australian publisher

called the publishers called Severed Press. And

I've got a book coming out with them that's basically

I don't want to say it's it's not monsters on

a train like snakes on a train on a plane, but

it's it's something like that. There's some genetically

modified Bigfoot creatures that are vex some

people who are trying to. get out of a snowstorm,

and it doesn't quite go so well for them. So

I'm in the middle of writing that one. Odds are

that'll be sometime later this year it'll come

out. But a lot of fun. I mean, that's what I

like about writing. You can take all these things

that you loved reading about or watching on TV

and find a way to put your own spin on it and

take off. I mean, I was a big fan of cryptozoology,

only they didn't call it that when I was a kid.

It was basically Bigfoot books and Loch Ness

Monster and ghosts and stuff. So to be able to

take all that stuff and just have fun with it

now is just a blast. I can totally relate to

having fun with writing. For a college course,

I had to write a TV show pilot screenplay. Oh,

wow. Because I took an overarching media class,

and they would have us write little short bits

in these stories, but what I was using for my

character basis for it was I took this edx .org

course on... basically the function and like

designing your own superhero universe and so

uh I took those characters that I made in that

and had to make kind of a light premise and then

I took the class again the next year and so when

I went into my my college course we mixed I mixed

the two and so one wasn't taking place in the

future one was in the past and then I kind of

connected it with like a weird time travel aspect

and created all my own uh and and the teacher

and everybody in the class is like, that sounds

really complicated. I'm like, it doesn't, it

doesn't like, uh, it made perfect sense, but

I really like. anything with time travel. So

it's, it's a lot of fun to sit there and play

with the tropes there. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, when people ask me to describe some of

my books, I, you know, I always find it hard

to do cause I, I want to, I crush a lot of things

up into the book, you know, it's like, you know,

it's a zombie, uh, steampunk, uh, uh, adventure

or sci -fi novel. And, but don't worry, it all

comes together. Well, I promise, you know, it

all works out. I just can't explain it, you know?

So no, I know exactly, you know, what, what you

mean? We had, um, We were supposed to do a newscast

in college and produce our own newscast, write

the script and all this stuff. And instead of

doing a regular newscast, I did like a weekend

update or something like that. Something that

was more fun and with more, you know, just strange

little cues here and there. And I had a lot more

fun with it than I think other people did. You

know, they were doing it very straight. And I

decided to introduce a bunch of other. They may

have enjoyed doing it, but I enjoyed writing

it and putting it all together even back then.

So, yeah, I know exactly what you're saying.

That's very cool. So definitely looking forward

to hearing more when those come out. So how can

the listeners get a hold of you and find out

more about or interact with you online? Sure.

My website is mattbets .com, just M -A -T -T

-B -E -T -T -S dot com. My Twitter handle, someone

had already stolen Matt Betts, at Matt Betts,

so it's at Betts underscore Matt, if you want

to find me on Twitter. And I'm also on Facebook

at Facebook dot com slash Matt Betts writes.

You can find me there. I'm trying to scale back

my social media, but I can't always do that,

you know? When I get bored, I just can't help

but dive back in and tweet stuff and retweet

stuff. It's a sickness, really. Yes, yes. They

make it like that by design. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

they know. They know that we're going to do that.

That's very cool. Yeah, I have all kinds of fun.

I'm always out there at cons and stuff too. I

love attending sci -fi cons. Like I said, I went

to Dragon Con. I'll just randomly run into people

that I've met at other cons. I live in Columbus,

Ohio now and I went to Dragon Con down in Atlanta.

I was walking up the stairs and literally ran

into a guy that lives not too far from me. And

I had no idea he was going. He had no idea I

was going. Out of all those thousands of people,

somehow we just bumped into each other on the

stairs. Nice. In fact, we hadn't met in Columbus.

We met at another con in Chicago. So it's just

this whole circle of wandering around and finding

people and finding like -minded people. The cons

have just been so supportive of my books. I do

panels sometimes and I do workshops. People are

just – terrifically supportive of other authors.

If they're writers trying to learn something,

they're always happy to compliment you if you've

taught them something. I love going out to cons.

Cons are definitely a lot of fun. Yeah, absolutely.

I'm going to StokerCon in a few... I don't know

if we want to plug this since I don't know how

far out we'll be, but StokerCon is the Horror

Writers Conference, and that's always a blast.

It's in Grand Rapids, Michigan this year. The

last time I went was in California on the Queen

Mary. So that was a blast. Nice. Yeah, that's

like an hour and a half for me. Oh, yeah. Yeah,

up in Grand Rapids. I'm going to drive from here.

It should be a lot of fun. Again, I'd like to

thank you for taking the time out of your busy

schedule to hang out with me on Altered Geek

here. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate

it. No problem. No problem. So until next time,

get altered, get geeky with the Altered Geeks.