I’m obsessed with Murder on Sex Island. For the obvious reasons: that great title, it’s a murder mystery set in a Love Island–flavored bacchanalian reality television show, the fact it’s not much more than a book read-aloud with just a touch of production. The plot is fun, too, hooky and sticky in the way you generally want these mysteries to be and filled with lovingly rendered reality-television archetypes and behind-the-scenes intrigue that tickles the same part of the brain once energized by the first season of Unreal. Murder on Sex Island is a Venn diagram that feels made just for me, except the overlap probably applies to plenty of other people too.
And then there’s Jo Firestone, who’s reason enough alone to get excited about a project. The comedian-podcaster-TV writer traffics in a quiet, anxious, often surreal humor, and as someone who’s admired her work for a long time — from her other podcasts, Dr. Gameshow and the now-defunct Everyday Decisions, to live shows she’s started up, like Punderdome 3000, to her turns on Joe Pera Talks With You — Murder on Sex Island makes for a particularly interesting addition to her already idiosyncratic body of work. She started working on the book after Ziwe’s late-night show, which she wrote on, was canceled back in April. And when the writers’ strike kicked off a month later, the potential for work opportunities dried up ever further, so she kept writing.
In the podcast’s preamble, Firestone has an extended bit about how her decision to self-publish the book and the podcast was driven by the fact that nobody wanted it. Turns out, it isn’t a bit. She is, indeed, self-publishing the book, which she commemorated with a live show-slash-book party at the Bell House earlier this week. And the podcast is meant to entice people to buy the book, though, she tells me, she’s only beginning to grok how giving the book out as a podcast for free might disincentive people from actually buying the book. You live and learn.
What prompted you to pick up a murder mystery?
Oh, I love reading mysteries. Because when people see you reading a book, they’re often like, “Oh, you’re an intellectual,†but with mysteries, it’s like a secret trick where you don’t have to be an intellectual to read these things. It’s basically looking at your phone, but better for you.
I was also unemployed and had a lot of time. Then I thought, “Maybe I’ll write a mystery,†so I took a class and wrote this and was like, “Maybe this will be a big hit, maybe it’ll be so huge I won’t have to look for a job ever again.†You know, the Judy Blume lifestyle, Key West, and so on. Then I wrote it, pitched it around, and nobody wanted it at all.
So then I was like, “I wrote this whole freaking book, so I guess I’ll self-publish it.†Which I did, but now I’ve done it really the wrong way. The actual book is coming out a month after the audiobook, which is coming out for free. I thought that would tantalize people to buy the book. Now I think it’s actually just a way for people not to buy the book. But that’s okay, I guess.
One thing that really is kind of a problem, though, is that I didn’t Google the title before I chose it. Every time you search the title, Jeffrey Epstein comes up. So it’s just one thing after another, but that’s okay.
How are you finding the response at this point?
I don’t know how many people are listening, but it’s fun to put it out there. This woman I used to work with at a restaurant in St. Louis — she reached out to tell me she’s intrigued, she’s been listening, and that’s great. I don’t think she would’ve texted me if I didn’t write this book.
Tell me about taking a writing class.
Oh, it was such a great class. Everyone should take this class. It’s with the Gotham Writers Workshop. It’s not in person. You don’t even have to be on camera, there’s no Zoom element. The instructor just emails out essays, and you submit through a portal, and then other people in the portal judge your work. You never have to show your face. I loved it.
If this was school, I would’ve been thrilled not having the pressure of a group of people who did not know me reading my work. It’s enough pressure to try and make it as good as possible. And as a comedian, I’m always looking for instant feedback, and while this isn’t necessarily instant, it was a way to get feedback on which direction I was going.
I might read a lot of mysteries, but I really didn’t know how to write one. So learning structures and conventions was helpful. Like, did you know that if you’re going to do a mystery, you have to kill. They really prefer you to kill.
As opposed to?
Steal a car.
Well there’s Dude, Where’s My Car?
Well, obviously there are exceptions. But on the whole, you have to kill. Then we learned that plot is king, and basically, whenever you mention something, it has to be because of the plot. You can’t just say, ‘It was a beautiful dresser.’ Something has to be in the dresser for you to mention the dresser; if not, people will get mad. I know, these are probably basics for most people, but I was like, “Oh wow, of course.â€
You’ve been doing comedy and writing for television for a bit. Was it tough to go to a class and learn something from scratch?
No, it was great. It’s great to learn. I don’t know — with comedy, I think there are some rules, but not really. With a murder mystery, there are always rules. It’s pretty formulaic: You take the protagonist and put them through hell and in the end they hopefully solve the case. With comedy, it’s more like… “Make ’em laugh.†Sure, but, like, how? “Surprise them.†But how? HOW? With a mystery, there are all these rules, and it’s nice that you can get creative within those rules. And the whole goal is to get people invested however you can. I think everybody should take a mystery class. It’s a really good use of time. Maybe not the book rejection so much; I don’t recommend that. But I do recommend to work on your own stuff and be your own judge.
You mentioned reading a lot of murder mysteries. What are your favorites?
I just read the new Rebecca Makkai book, I Have Some Questions for You. That was really juicy. I love the Thursday Murder Club books, that’s a little more lighthearted. It’s not as scary. I also love Mary Higgins Clark. It’s like water — you don’t even know what page you’re on, and you’re just like, “I need to finish this.†I just read Where Are the Children? It was really, really disturbing, and let me tell you: Where the children were is Not Good, you know what I mean?
What draws to the genre?
Well, I’m, like, a nervous person and I really want people to be okay. If you start off the first two pages where things are not okay, you’re like, “But when will they get okay?†So you’re kind of zooming through trying to make sure everything’s okay, even though it won’t be for another 275 pages.
You’re chasing closure.Â
Yeah, kind of.
This might be a ham-fisted question, but do you see any relationship between comedy and murder mysteries?
I bet there is. I’m sure there’s a similarity. In theory, comedy is about building up tension and releasing it, right? I guess mysteries are kind of like that as well. That makes sense to me. But I also think I really don’t try to solve mysteries. I’ve never solved one as I’m reading them. I find I can’t think while getting sucked in. But I would say that other people — not to speak for them at large — when they read a mystery, I think they prefer to try and solve the mystery as they’re reading. Personally, I have the same relationship with mysteries as with comedy. I like to be taken out of my head and just be delighted and sucked in.
So, as a comedian, when you watch other people’s stand-up, you’re not anticipating the punchline before it happens?
I tried to do that when I was younger, but it felt really unsatisfying. It did not feel good. It’s actually a way to be, like, “How do I not enjoy this as much as possible?†This is how I ruin things for myself. That’s bad.
The other major aspect of Murder on Sex Island is the fact that the mystery takes place within a reality-television setting. Did that pairing feel natural to you?
You know, I do think reality dating shows feel a little like murder mysteries to me. I want things to get resolved, I want them to be happy, but they’ll never be happy.
Like a murder mystery without a culprit?
Yes! It basically is. They’re gonna keep messing up, but hopefully, the series ends on a note where somebody wins money or something.
Do you have a favorite flavor of reality television?
Well, I do love Love Island, but dating shows do tend to make me pretty anxious in that way because they’re usually, like, 850 episodes long and people keep hurting each other. But I think my favorite flavor is Real Housewives.
Anyone in particular?
[quietly]Â Beverly Hills.
I’m more of a Salt Lake person.
Oh that’s a fun group of people. I also like Potomac. I’ve been trying to get into the new New York, but for some reason, I don’t know what’s going on — every time I turn it on my dog starts physically shaking. I don’t know if it’s a frequency thing, but it happens every single time.
Huh.
I keep trying to start a new episode, and the dog starts shaking. I turn it off, the dog stops shaking.
So Beverly Hills stays your go-to, then?
Oh yeah. But I do have this problem where every time I spend a lot of time watching, afterward I’m like, “I need to get plastic surgery,†and that’s not really what you want to be feeling after watching.
What should you feel after watching Housewives?
That these producers are very good at their jobs. That the edit is working hard. That these housewives are working hard on their appearance, and they have a lot of money. But my own instinct is, like, “I look bad,†and that’s maybe not the right interpretation. So I usually have it on when I’m doing something else. Like, if it was a podcast, it would be perfect.
Are you a Love Is Blind person?
Oh, I do watch that. I like Fuckboy Island a lot. That one is really fun because it’s a little more tongue in cheek. It’s refreshing that way. I think my whole thing with reality television stemmed from watching Elimidate and Next. I like that style of show. I remember watching it when I was maybe two to three years younger than the people on them, and now I’m watching it, and I’m like, “These people are so young. They have to go back to high school.†And I love how they treat people who are 28 years old like they’re just the oldest creatures who’ve ever survived.
So the podcast is coming out weekly, and the book drops October 17. Does this make you want to write more murder mysteries?
Well, the thing is, I’ve, uhm, spent a lot of money on this. This is the part of self-publishing that’s … like, so you’ve spent the money on this, which is totally cool and good, but if I could break even, then I’d write another, but if not, like, if this one is a flop and then I try to write another one, I’d need to go through some real confidence training, you know what I mean?
It was really fun to be focused. It was really fun to create a story. Perhaps that story is not good. Perhaps there are several typos in the book — and if you find all seven you win a prize — but I would say if people enjoy the book, and it feels like a story that people connect to, then it’ll help me feel motivated to do another one. I’m a person that tries a lot of different things to figure out what feels right. I’m always trying these new projects to be like, “Is this what I’m supposed to be? Does this feel like this is the thing?â€
It felt good to do, but if it turns out I could make a clock out of wood and that felt good to do, I’ll keep doing that instead. But, if it turns out it looks like shit, who knows.