Q&A: Writer/Showrunner Eric Rogers Talks About His New Horror Book & The State Of Hollywood

Hundreds of writers working in Hollywood are doing great work that you probably love - even if you don't necessarily know their names. 

Writer and showrunner Eric Rogers has a resume that includes writing for a wide range of shows, from NYPD Blue to Polly Pocket. He was a staff writer on Futurama and most recently was the creator and writer for the Prime Video animated series Angry Birds: Mystery Island.

And like a lot of talented people in Hollywood, Rogers is encountering a slowdown in available work right now. So he's taken the approach that this is a good time to try some new things and maybe take control of his destiny with some original works.

One way he's doing that is with the publication of The Dryer, a horror-themed work that is described this way by the publisher:

"When Tim and Mary decide to pull off the road and buy a used dryer from a mysterious old woman, the young couple gets much more than an appliance. After a simple use, they discover that the dryer not only dries clothes but also produces oranges at the same time – oranges that are so delicious that Tim and Mary decide to start a side hustle of selling the citrus to their neighbors. But word spreads fast, and soon, people from all over town are lining up to get in on the action. The supply can’t keep up with the demand… and some are willing to do whatever it takes to secure a clutch of the fruit. As Tim realizes that becoming orange dealers was a horrible mistake, Mary becomes addicted to them – so much so that everything else in life comes a distant second to doing nothing but eating oranges all day long.

A tale of greed, violence, and obsession, The Dryer is the story of what happens when a simple dream of financial freedom turns into a nightmare of human depravity."

On Wednesday, I spoke with Eric via Zoom about the book and the current state of Hollywood TV industry. The conversation has been very lightly edited for clarity (mostly mine).

I get the sense from your social media that this book and some other stuff you're working on was driven by just the sucky aspects of Hollywood right now.

Yeah, one of the biggest things that's been hard for me personally over the last several months is just the lack of any work at all. I've had down periods in my career, but I don't know if I've ever had a stretch where I haven't been paid as a writer for this long. We finished production on Angry Birds Mystery Island season one - season one, I say hopefully, there's a season two - last August. 

And I have not worked. I have not been paid as a writer since then. I just today signed a contract to start doing some YouTube shorts for a company that I will talk about publicly soon. 

But that launch call, that contract just came through literally today. 

So you're talking about 10 months of just hitting the pavement. Looking everywhere for writing gigs and taking - if I'm being super honest - really lowering my standards just to take care of my family and pay my bills. I've applied for everything. 

And I barely ever get anything more than the rejection email. I barely had any success getting past the initial, "Hey, check me out. Here are my writing credits. Here's my resume, whatever you want to call it."

So that being said, Rick, I've never been busier. I keep myself crazy busy working on all my own stuff. 

I've been pitching animated series, I had a live-action sitcom pilot that was in the hands of a pretty big-name actor, and his company ultimately passed on it. And I don't write a lot of live-action TV. But this was a script that was near and dear to me. 



So I dusted that off. And I got that out. And then, like I said, I had a little bit of success until it stopped. 

I've been writing a lot of features, and continuing to do that. And that's been rough, too. Because even if you have a producer who loves working with you, they can only take on so much work and so many scripts to put out on your behalf. 

So I purposely stopped writing screenplays, because it didn't make sense to me to write another one that just isn't going to be seen. For example, I have one right now, that is very near and dear to me. And it's very John Wickian, and I think it works really well. But I can't get it read. 

Because I don't have a film agent, I don't have a film manager. And anyway, that side of the business is also just gummed up, just in the mud and the wheels are spinning. So I stopped myself from writing new screenplays. I just felt like, "You've done enough, you got enough out there." I mean, what's the point of writing another one that's just going to sit and gather dust? 

But I have also been reading in the trades about writers having unpublished short stories or novels, novellas, having those optioned up by production companies and then being made into films before their book comes out. So I thought that was fascinating and a really cool way to maybe trick the town into the whole IP thing. It's still original, because it's a book. But because it's a book, it is an IP. 

So I had this story called "The Dryer."

And I kid you not, I wrote it over 20 years ago, I didn't realize I wrote it that long ago until I told my wife what was going on. I told her, "I've got this thing, this book out to some publishers. And I got one indie publisher who's super into it and wants to do this with me." 

And I said to her, Oh, I must have written that maybe 15 years ago. And she reminded me that when I wrote it, we were living in this condo, this was our first home together. And we moved out of there at least 20 years ago. 

I had written it at some point when we were living there. So I dusted this thing off. And in a previous life, but also in, maybe the next phase of my life, I want to be Stephen King. I grew up a Stephen King fanatic, his writing made me the writer I am today. He made me want to be a writer. 

There's a lot of his DNA in everything I do. And this story is very Stephen King, it's very much putting normal people in a supernatural situation, and just watching the wheels fall off the car. And people do things that they never would dream they would do, when their backs are put up against the wall, or, you know, crazy things are happening around them. 

And that's what the DNA of this story was. And because I had written it so long ago, it was as if I was reading someone else's writing. I had not read it in so long that when I started reading it, I'd forgotten what happened in the plot. I'd forgotten the twists and turns, I forgot the ending. 

And so I'm reading it and I'm kind of removed from Eric Rodgers the writer. I'm Eric Rodgers, the reader at this point.  I'm thinking, holy crap, did I really write that? Oh, my God, did I put these characters in this situation? And then I get to the end of reading it. 

It's 70-plus pages long, which isn't very long at all. But I was just thinking, "Does this count as a novella? Would that be something worth pursuing and trying to find a publisher to do this thing with me? 

And so then I simply Googled "horror publishing companies that specialize in horror novellas and novelettes." And I started cold-querying all the ones that sounded interesting to me. Lo and behold, two days later, Evil Cookie based out of Florida, sent me an email saying, "I love this manuscript, I'd love to work with you on it." 

"We have a pretty basic contract, the deal that we do with our writers. And if you're into it, let's chat." And that is how this whole thing got going. 

It happened so fast. And then, Evil Cookie put their foot to the gas and came up with the cover art and the layout. And so now this thing is coming out on June 6th. 

So it's crazy. I'm not expecting to get rich off of it. I don't think any writer writes with that in mind. 

But it's just cool to have another piece of work out into the ether and something that's so very different than what you see on my resume and my IMDB page. You know, you see all that kid's stuff, especially lately. And, like I said, I like to write horror screenplays. 

And I think there's been some pushback slash confusion from producers sometimes when they see my resume and they see cute little Polly Pocket and The Littlest Pet Shop and Skylanders Academy. And then they realize, wait, this guy wants to write slasher movies and things where people bleed? And my answer is, "Yeah, because that's who I really started out to be as a writer." 

I wanted to be Stephen King. So it's kind of a full circle moment with this whole thing.



You were talking about the IP thing and I wondered, obviously the disadvantage of working in animation is even at the showrunner level, you're a gun for hire. You're not getting residuals, you don't own anything, you just do it and you're gone. Where, at least with this, yes, you're not getting a lot of money upfront, but if something happens with it, you get a taste of it. You're going to have at least a little bit of control of your destiny.

That's right. And the more you work in this business and the more you do the different types of deals, the more you learn, hopefully. And you're able to say, I don't want to do that. I don't want to take a deal like that anymore. 

I understand when you're working in IP - I've worked with Activision and Rovio and Hasbro, and I completely understand their point of view. These are their babies and they're going to make all the money off merchandising and all that good stuff. But as a creator, you do reach a point when you do want to own your own thing at the end of the day. And if there's a way to get your work out into the world, out into the world in a fashion like this. If it were to be made into a movie or something like that, that's a different new sort of deal for me where anything that's ancillary can go to me and that would be refreshing, to say the least.



You mentioned doing YouTube stuff. And I thought of you going into today's talk because I was looking into the history of this Divorced Dads YouTube channel. And the guy has spun it into a huge Divorced Dads gaming card business and a bunch of other side projects. And I bring it up because I watched a six-minute animated Christmas special they did last winter. It's not high-end, but it sort of looks like the average Adult Swim cartoon. It had some stop-action, and a lot of flashy graphics. 

And I was just wondering, do you see there being a market and ability for people to do that? Obviously, someone's not going to be able to self-finance Angry Birds-level animation out of their pockets, but it feels as if someone could maybe do that Adult Swim level of animation and control it themselves. 

Totally.

I am very intrigued by that idea. I've got a couple of things brewing on the animation side that I haven't been able to push over the goal line with the bigger studios. And I don't want to let these things go because I know they're really fun. And I think maybe that indie-style animation, making them as shorts, might work. Establishing proof of concept and at the very least getting the product out there. Maybe a few people end up watching and the end game could be that one of the bigger studios or the streamers or whatever comes along and goes, "Hey, we, we dig that. And we'd love to make a deal with you."

But for me, first and foremost, with at least a couple of things that I think would work in that regard, it's about getting the work out there, as opposed to just sitting and waiting. Thinking that I have to wait for Netflix to get excited about this. I have to wait for Nickelodeon or, or whoever it is.

So why don't I find some indie, some animators to work on this stuff with? And let's see if we can put little shorts out there. And as you said, the animation doesn't have to be mind-blowing. What matters is that it's unique and looks fun, and the stories are good. 

I think that stuff finds success. So it's a market that I'm thinking about a lot more. It's a way to reverse engineer the whole IP situation and try and sell your original thing.

The Dryer is available now at the links below.