Virtual Rebel J.Z. Pitts Unwraps His Christmas Demons

J.Z. Pitts doesn’t posture, pretend, or pose behind “author brand” theatrics. He comes on the Factory floor to pod with Mookie Spitz, where they tell the truth about what it costs to write, to fail, to get back up, and to self-publish when the world is drowning in content and nobody’s handing out golden tickets.

In this episode, Pitts walks us through Virtual Rebel, his YA sci-fi novel about a teenage girl fighting through a virtual-reality dystopia: equal parts Ready Player One, coming-of-age, and “wake the hell up” critique of soft, digital tyranny. He breaks down how Ava, his protagonist, isn’t some chosen-one cliché; she’s a kid who has to decide whether freedom is worth wrecking her own comfort. And yes, the parallels to our dopamine-addled online lives are intentional, all while he stubbornly refuses to preach.

Pitts and Spitz then go dark and human with The Christmas Demon, his Bavarian-Alps novella born out of a brutal period in his own life. Pitts lays out how the story started as pure character work, riddled with addiction, grief, marital implosion before he realized he could thread it all through the mythology of Krampus himself. Not the goofy, Loki-lite version—Pitts went full folklore demon. He talks craft: tension that suffocates one paragraph at a time, horror that hides in the walls until you can’t ignore it, and the payoff that only works when the characters’ internal fractures are already cracking.

They also get real about the indie grind: the disappointment after a launch that doesn’t match the fantasy, the predatory swamp of “book marketing services,” the Amazon ads treadmill, the endless content burden, and the emotional crash no one warns new authors about. Pitts doesn’t sugarcoat it, as he tried all the tricks, learned what was bullshit, and landed where real writers land and kept going, is writing the next book, building community, and not chasing Hugh Howey’s ghost.

By the end, Pitts and Spitz are knee-deep in the raw stuff: why we write, why stories matter, why characters eventually grab the steering wheel, and why holding your own printed book is a quiet, defiant middle finger to a world obsessed with metrics.

The conversation is indie authorhood without the Instagram filter, a bruised, determined, funny, anxious, honest, and absolutely worth hearing exchange between two writers with heart, grit, and tons of imagination.

The Guest

J.Z. Pitts crafts stories where hope and danger walk hand in hand. In Virtual Rebel, the fight for freedom begins in a world too eager to give it up. In The Christmas Demon, survival means facing the darkness outside—and within.