Talking Scared

Listen at your own peril this week. I spoke with Ian Tuason and Nina Kiri, the director and star of Undertone – billed as “the scariest movie you’ll ever hear!” It’s the story of an isolated podcaster, who makes the terrible mistake of listening to some very unnerving audio files…which then start to bleed into her own life. You can imagine the number it did on me! Ian and Nina talk about the movie’s roots in Ian’s own experience of late-life care for his parents, and the responsibility of portraying that on screen. We discuss how the film weaponises sound, how the internet is a scary, fascinating place, and even a little exclusive heads up about more to come in this universe. Enjoy Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Corporate culture is a nightmare, but getting out of the office brings its own problems in Carter Keane’s debut novella – Morsel. It’s a story about monsters and eldritch beings, about killer cults and evil law-enforcement, about wellbeing scams and a boss from hell – but it’s also a springboard for a whole conversation about the cons (many) and pros (debatable) of capitalism. Carter indulges my devil’s advocacy, before we get back to the matter of strange forest disappearances and horrible shit that happens with bears. It’s a whole range of ways to feel scared of the world. Enjoy! Other books mentioned: The Ritual (2011), by Adam Nevill Last Days (2012), by Adam Nevill All the Fiends of Hell (2024), by Adam Nevill The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion (2017), by Margaret Killjoy Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1989), by Frederic Jameson Debt: The First 500 Years (2011), by David Graeber Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist (2017), by Kate Raworth The Cold Vanish: Seeking the Missing in North America’s Wildlands (2020), by Jon Billman Rust Belt Femme (2020), by Rachael Anne Jolie Night of the Grizzlies (1969), by Jack Olsen Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nat and I stick around in the shadowed recesses of Black House for another half hour, to discuss all the things that Chris got right and wrong – and to make some entirely unfounded claims of our own. It’s overflowing with spoilers for the whole Dark Tower series, so don’t listen if you’re a newbie. We start to ask who is the Crimson King? Would Roland and Jack have gotten along? And we get very grumpy about certain wolves in a certain town further down the road. Enjoy. Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Bluesky @talkscaredpod.bsky.social on Instagram/Threads, or email direct to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Time to whet our appetites for the Dark Tower again – this time with an extra serving of ass cheek! After three months away, we’re picking up with travellin’ Jack Sawyer after we left him in The Talisman. We find him in a sleepy Wisconsin town, where the dimension-hopping, child-eating Fisherman is plying his awful trade. Yep… it’s time for Black House. The book in which King’s universes collide. Nat, Chris and I argue – about where we see the spirit of King and Peter Straub in this story, about the believability of characters and the RIGHT amount to mourn a fallen hero. But we also agree about the beauty of theprose, the sublime depiction of the deepest horrors, and the sheer joy of one of the Dark Tower’s nastiest villains. It’s as much fun as you can have with a book about so many dead kids. Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Bluesky @talkscaredpod.bsky.social on Instagram/Threads, or email direct to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After seeing an early screener of Something Very Bad is Going to Happen I immediately thought it was going to be huge! So I leapt ahead of the curve and invited writer and showrunner, Haley Z Boston to come talk scared about weddings, soulmates, David Lynch and Danish horror, and what it’s like to work with the Duffer Brothers. This show has been my whole personality for two weeks. Ihope you watch, listen to this interview, and love it all. Enjoy Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tamika Thompson talks me through the great American curseof the 21st Century on this week’s episode. No, not Tangerine Cthulhu … but the plague of gun deaths that is coring out the country. That’s the focus of her new novel, The Curse of Hester Gardens, which asks whether the deaths gunning for the young men of an inner-city housing project are criminal, or something much weirder! Yeah, that’s right. Listen to a cossetted little English guy try and keep up in an conversation about gun crimes and street life. Enjoy! Other books mentioned: The Rats (1974), by James Herbert The Ghosts of Sleath (1994),by James Herbert Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century (2022), by Kim Fu Mystery Lights (2024), by Lena Valencia “How to Do Diversity When You’re Lazy, Ignorant and/or Malicious” (2018), by Tamika Thompson – Link HERE Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some stories just boggle your mind and boil your imagination. Such are the ideas in Annie Neugebauer’s You Have to Let Them Bleed, and her logic-shattering novella The Extra. The Uncanny Valley, obsessional thoughts, dangerous knowledge, mothers who aren’t mothers and a camping group that destroys the workings of math and memory… these are just some of the inexplicabilities we discuss in this week’s episode. If this episode gives you an existential crisis, ontological collapse, or just plain migraine nightmares – well, I can’t and won’t be held responsible. You’re all adults. Enjoy! Other books mentioned: “If Those Ragged Feet Won’t Run” (2018), by Annie Neugebauer Things We Say in the Dark (2019), by Kirsty Logan Silent Nightmares: Haunting Stories to Be Told on the Longest Night of the Year (2026), edited by Chuck Palahniuk and Michael C. Bailey There is No Antimemetics Division (2025), by qntm House of Leaves (2000), by Mark Z. Danielewski Delbert Judd (2014), by Dan Hammond Jr. Incidents Around the House (2024), by Josh Malerman Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Time for sex and seances this week on Talking Scared. Our guest is Avery Curran and her debut novel Spoiled Milk. It’s a story of spiritualism and sapphic desire, set in a 1920s boarding school where death, rot, haunting and much worse things (patriarchy!) runs rampant. Avery is a specialist in the history of spiritualism (with a brand new PhD to her name) and this conversation is a deep and deeply enjoyable route through all of her books haunted classrooms. It’s one of those episodes when we ALL learn something, listeners. Enjoy! Other books mentioned: The Wells of Loneliness (1928), by Radclyffe Hall “The Female World of Love and Ritual” (2006,) by Carroll Smith-Rosenberg Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985), by Eve Kososfky-Sedgewick IT (1986), by Stephen King The Haunting of Alma Fielding (2021), by Kate Summerscale Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower (2020), by Tamsyn Muir A Canticle for Liebowitz (1959), by Walter M. Miller Jr Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This Off Book episode is a trip into the deep dark woods, for a very special playdate! Our guest is Rod Blackhurst, director and co-writer of the new retro horror movie, Dolly. It’s a film about a very scary house in the woods and the even scarier person who lives inside…and who wants nothing so much as a new toy of her own. Rod and I talk about the tone, gore and influences behind the movie – from 16mm classics to New French Extremity. We discuss the pathos of a truly great horror monster, and the physical performance that brings Dolly to terrifying life. I’m really cheering for this movie. It was so much more than I expected. Enjoy Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we’re sharpening our swords and checking our armpits for boils! Christopher Buehlman is the guest, author the hugely-acclaimed 2012 medieval horror fantasy, Between Two Fires – now being reissued for a new, wide audience. It’s a book that everyone has been screaming at me to read, and I’m glad I did. Christopher and I get hellishly geeky, talking history, plague, angelology and demonology, Biblical reference and epic poetry. But he also tells us about his past career insulting drunk people at ren-fairs. Enjoy! Other books mentioned: Those Across the River (2011), by Christopher Buehlman The Blacktongue Thief (2021), by Christopher Buehlman The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death (2005), by John Kelly Angel Down (2025), by Daniel Kraus The Starving Saints (2025), by Caitlin Starling Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Clap your hands twice if you believe in Catriona Ward! Cat is back on the show this week, to talk Nowhere Burning – a horror novel informed by everything from Peter Pan (it has its own Tinkerbell), to certain disgraced megastars, and even the CIA checklist on what constitutes a cult! It’s a lot, and we talk about all of it, as well as various weird mysteries, the grimmest cult we’ve ever heard of, and Cat’s various brushes with fame over the years. This little precise may have you thinking WTF? – but the way I see it, that’s the perfect set-up for a Cat Ward novel. Enjoy! Other books mentioned: The Last House on Needless Street (2021), by Catriona Ward Looking Glass Sound (2023), by Catriona Ward Peter & Wendy (1911), by J. M. Barrie Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah (2005), by Colm A. Kelleher and George Knapp Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings (2020), by Neil Price Tradwife (2026), by Sarah Langan Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When is a zombie not a zombie? I don’t have a punchline to that joke. But something…something … revenant! Brennan LaFaro’s The Denizens is about a small southern town with a very unusual relationship with death. What precisely is the nature of the corpses roaming the woods, and what do they want with the living. You’ll have to listen to find out. What is certain is that this book gives Brennan and I a launchpad for a conversation about writing action-horror scenes, the ethics of suffering and pain, what comes after death, and all the horrible little small towns that inspired his own. Enjoy! Other books mentioned: On Sundays She Picked Flowers (2026), by Yah Yah Schofield Pet Semetary (1983), by Stephen King Knockemstiff (2008), by Donald Ray Pollock The Devil All the Time (2011), by Donald Ray Pollock Donnybrook (2013), by Frank Bill The Complex (2016), by Brian Keene The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch (2015), by Daniel Kraus Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This Valentine’s week, come for a walk up on t’moors with me and Agatha Andrews. I’ve invited Agatha, my friend and sister-in-Gothic, host of She Wore Black podcast, for a conversation about Wuthering Heights. It’s known as “the greatest love story ever told,” but that’s such nonsense. Instead we talk about mania and melancholy, hate and power, cannibalism and necrophilia… and we also look ahead to the Hollywood adaptation with bated (but amused) breath. Enjoy! Other books mentioned: David Copperfield (1850), by Charles Dickens The Brontës (1994), by Juliet Barker The Gabriel Hounds (1964), by Mary Stewart East of Eden (1952), by John Steinbeck The Vampyre (1819), by John Polidori The Favourites (2025), by Layne Fargo Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A bit of chaos on the show for the weekend. We start with one guest and end with two. And there’s a dude with an alligator’s head running amok! Mama Came Callin’ is the slasher/cryptid/mystery/noir graphic novel written by Ezra Claytan Daniel and illustrated by Camilla Sucre. It’s set in the swamps of Florida, amongst murky waters and dirtier histories. The three of us (eventually) talk about the horrendous racist truth underpinning the story, we discuss how two creatives can bring their distinctive skills to a singular vision. We hear about the joy and hustle of a multidisciplinary career, and Ezra gives us some insight into the writing room for the TV show Severance. Enjoy Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re tiptoeing towards the sci-fi end of things this week, with Justin C. Key and The Hospital at the End of the World. This is a techn-othriller about AI run amok in the medical establishment, and the junior doctor who must navigate a shadowy conspiracy, a fatal (and horrific) disease, all whilst making time for class at the sole human-led teaching hospital left in the country. It’s a lot. And a lot of fun – when it’s not ambushing me with one of my greatest medical phobias!!! Justin and I talk about the real horrors of his medical school experience, what he’s learned about human connection from his work in psychiatry, and we have that rare thing – a genuinely nuanced conversation about the role of AI in society. Enjoy! Other books mentioned: The World Wasn’t Ready for You (2023), by Justin C. Key On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000), by Stephen King Insomnia (1994), by Stephen King Ender’s Game (1985), by Orson Scott Card Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming (1994), by Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold The Curse of Hester Gardens (2026), by Tamika Thompson Nuclear War: A Scenario (2024), by Annie Jacobson Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After our loose, freeform chat about the high strangeness of The Talisman, Nat stuck around to Palaver a little more behind Chris’ innocent back. In this spoiler-filled 35 minutes (do not listen if you haven’t finished The Dark Tower) we get into some firmer connections between King’s magical worlds, we look at the order of books to come, weigh our saddest deaths in King stories…and even after all these hours we’re forced to ask, “what the f*ck is the Talisman anyway? Enjoy. Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Bluesky @talkscaredpod.bsky.social on Instagram/Threads, or email direct to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re on the road again with our Dark Tower journey, running through adjacent worlds, lighting out for the Territories. Our latest side-quest takes us to The Talisman, the 1984 epic dark fantasy, co-authored by Stephen King and Peter Straub. It’s a wild, hallucinatory ride, that contains my favourite King character of them all! Nat, Chris and I talk about that dude, as well as discussing where Jack Sawyer ranks in the league table of King’s childhood heroes. But mostly we try to pin down the connections between this mad story, and Roland’s great quest. Do we succeed? Do we just make up all manner of wishful thinking nonsense? You decide. Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Bluesky @talkscaredpod.bsky.social on Instagram/Threads, or email direct to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're Southbound for monster-loving this week on Talking Scared. Georgia writer, Yah Yah Schofield comes to discuss her Southern Gothic debut, On Sundays She Picked Flowers – a story of monsters, spirits, swamps, and generational trauma. There’s a very bad mama and a very haunted house. Yah Yah and I talk about mother-daughter relationships, the difference between ghosts and haints, the influence of elders, and why the rules are different for Black ‘weird girls.’ Plus, in Yah Yah’s own words – we discuss tongue-kissing monsters. Enjoy! Other books mentioned: The Haunting of Hill House (1959), by Shirley Jackson Haints: American Ghosts, Millennial Passions and Contemporary Gothic Fictions (2011), by Arthur Redding The Colour Purple (1982), by Alice Walker Beloved (1987), by Toni Morrison Sula (1978), by Toni Morrison In the Dream House: A Memoir (2019), by Carmen Maria Machado The Lamb (2025), by Lucy Rose We Are Here to Hurt Each Other (2022), by Paula D. Ashe Between Two Fires (2012), by Christopher Buehlman Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Imagine you’re back in high school – but worse! The shuffling idiots actually want to EAT you! That’s the premise of Courtney Summers’ This is Not a Test, her 2012 zombie novel of teen despair amongst the undead, now reissued in a fresh ‘definitive’ version for 2026. When better than a time in which the mindless, greedy and brutal are running amok in the real world. Courtney and I talk about zombies in 2012 and now, we discuss optimism versus despair, we track the challenges of writing a survival thriller with a suicidal protagonist, and she offers advice on rapid character building and writing teen dialogue. It’s a good one. Enjoy! Other books mentioned: The Project (2021), by Courtney Summers Room To Dream (2018), by David Lynch and Kristine McKenna The Stand (1990), by Stephen King Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The year may have started with more real-world horrors from old white dudes, but here on Talking Scared they get their comeuppance – in the form of Kristi DeMeester’s Dark Sisters. Kristi returns to the show for the first time since 2022, to talk about her novel of religious hypocrisy, patriarchal control and feminine revenge. It’s a three-timeline story of curses through the century and the dark magic that underpins everything. She tells us about her own childhood in the fundamentalist church, we look back at the cruelty culture of the mid-noughties, and we revel in the wrath of witches with nothing to lose. Enjoy! Other books mentioned: Such a Pretty Smile (2022), by Kristi DeMeester Itch (2025), by Gemma Amor Gather the Daughters (2017), by Jennie Melamed Grey Dog (2024), by Elliot Gish Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

No need for a big intro this week. You know what this is about. The year is over, and it’s time to offer my thoughts on the best books that made it bearable. Here’s my top-10 favourite horror novels of 2025. I invite comment and debate. The polite kind. Don’t make me set Ted on you. Enjoy. Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In our sixth Let Us Palaver, Nat and I try to clean things up a bit after the dirty deep dive into Wizard & Glass. We get spoilery, so this is for Tower Junkie’s only. It will make no sense to anyone else anyway – as we get deep into the metatextual elements of what is to come, who WE think put those red shoes in the road, and we begin to question which books we should read next. Not a dirty joke in sight. Enjoy. Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Bluesky @talkscaredpod.bsky.social on Instagram/Threads, or email direct to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After a summer of diversion and detour, we’re back with the main Ka-Tet for Christmas. What better time for a tale of heartbreak, lost love, and cabin-bound masturbation. Yes, we’re covering Wizard & Glass. Some would call this the high point of the Dark Tower series (for me, it’s certainly up there) – and it gives us chance to talk in depth about how Roland became the man is he, and how love made us the men we are! Yeah… if you’re ready for 2+ hours of middle-aged male nostalgia and dick jokes, this is the episode for you. Thankfully, it also offers literary analysis, Stephen King lore, and the greatest love of all, between a witch and her snake. Enjoy. Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Bluesky @talkscaredpod.bsky.social on Instagram/Threads, or email direct to [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices