Talking Scared

Send us a text This week we’re doing something different. No author and no single book. Instead it’s a roundtable discussion, with Sadie Hartmann (AKA Mother Horror) and Emily Hughes, the genius loci behind Tor Nightfire. Together we look back over the last six months – the highs, the not-so-many-lows and all the endless twitter controversies – to address the state of the horror nation at the midpoint of 2021. All three of us talk about the books we have loved the most so far this year, what else we are looking forward to in the months ahead, and what our hopes are for horror writing in general. We also address the concerns around trauma, trigger warnings, twitter subtweeting and the endless, vice-like grip of Goodreads. If you want to get a true sense of the breadth and depth of the horror being created right now, then this is designed for you. Also, if you just want to listen to three horror nerds talk about scary stuff whilst you do the ironing, then it’s also for you. Basically, it’s for everyone. Cos I’m a giver. Enjoy! Emily Hughes’ list of horror books to be excited about in 2021 is HERE. The (huger-than-normal) list of books mentioned in this episode includes: The Picks Hearts Strange and Dreadful (2021), by Tim McGregor Goddess of Filth (2021), by V. Castro Last One at the Party (2021), by Bethany Clift Children of Chicago (2021), by Cynthia Pelayo Star Eater (2021), by Kerstin Hall Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke (2021), by Eric LaRocca Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy (2021), by Hailey Piper In That Endlessness, Our End (2021), by Gemma Files Coming Soon Immortelle, by Catherine McCarthy - July The Book Of Accidents, by Chuck Wendig – July Come With Me, by Ronald Malfi - July Revelator, by Daryl Gregory – August The Glassy Burning Floor of Hell, by Brian Evenson – August Chasing the Boogeyman, by Richard Chizmar - August My Heart is a Chainsaw, by Stephen Graham Jones – August Cackle, by Rachel Harrison – October Reprieve, by James Han Mattson – October Nothing but Blackened Teeth, by Cassandra Khaw - October Something More Than Night, by Kim Newman - November Assorted Others The Library at Mount Char (2015), by Scott Hawkins The Last House on Needless Street (2021), by Catriona Ward Rawblood (2015), by Catriona Ward A Head Full of Ghosts (2015), by Paul Tremblay The Twisted Ones (2019), by T. Kingfisher Starving Ghosts in Every Thread (2020), by Eric LaRocca The Family Plot (2016), by Cherie Priest Boy’s Life (1991), by Robert McCammon Support the show on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPod Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text This week I have been forced to up my game. Our guest is Carmen Maria Machado, and her works is not for the lazy or faint-hearted. From her dizzying collection of short fiction, Her Body and Other Parties, to her one-of-a-kind memoir, In the Dream House, Carmen’s writing forces a humble interviewer such as me, to question how we talk about books, author, character, truth, fiction and all the messy space in between. In the Dream House deconstructs what a memoir is and can do, and I had to really think about the questions I wanted to ask, and how to ask them. It is, nominally, a narrative of domestic abuse in a same-sex relationship, but Carmen chooses to tell that story using every literary tool in her (and everyone else’s) toolbox. The result is electrifying. We talk about privacy versus public, what it’s like to write about sex you’ve actually had, hypochondria, double-standards and the lure of horror and gothic as a way to tell a real-life story of violence and trauma. It’s not all dark though. We laugh a lot. Mostly at my awkwardness. Enjoy! Her Body and Other Parties and In the Dream House are both published by Greywolf Press in North America and Serpent’s Tail in the UK. Other books discussed in this episode include: The Argonauts (2015), by Maggie Nelson The Ghost Variations (2021), by Kevin Brockmeier A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip: A Memoir of Seventh Grade (2014), by Kevin Brockmeier Proxies: Essays Near Knowing (2016), by Brian Blanchfield Monster Portraits (2018), by Sofia Samatar The Hot Zone (1994), by Richard Preston The Haunting of Hill House (1959), by Shirley Jackson The Bloody Chamber (1979), by Angela Carter Support the show on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPod Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text It’s a dirty, grim, glorious time on Talking Scared this week. After a last-minute schedule reshuffle we have Eric LaRocca, here to talk about his word-of-mouth sensation of a novella – Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. Gotten worse is quite the understatement. This book goes so far beyond the pale in terms of horror’s usual comfort level these days. It’s a simple tale of online love, BDSM and self-mutilation, all tinged with some wonderful early noughties nostalgia. This book does for MSN messenger what the Blair Witch Project did for the woods. Eric and I talk about all of that, as well as transgressive fiction, the beauty to be found in disgust, and our shared love of books and movies that have achieved legendary status as things that you probably shouldn’t experience (if you know what's good for you)! Enjoy!!Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is out now from WeirdPunk Books. Other books discussed in this episode include: The Sluts (2004), by Denis Cooper Crash (1973), by J.G. Ballard Haunted (2005), by Chuck Palahniuk We Need to Do Something (2020), by Max Booth III Support the show on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPod Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text Pour yourself a whisky, grab a seat and listen to the best voice in dark fiction tell you some stories. Our guest is Joe Lansdale author of so many books I can’t even begin to list them. Oh, ok, I will. Edge of Dark Water, Paradise Sky, The Bottoms, The Thicket, Fender Lizard … “Bubba Ho Tep”, Cold in July … the entire Hap and Leonard series. And he joins me to talk about his newest, Moon Lake. A tale of dark nostalgia, small town politics and murder set on the banks of a drowned village. It’s a sun-soaked, shadow-tinged summer read of the best, and most twisted kind. As much as Joe is nominally on the show to talk about Moon Lake, he’s a hard man to pin down to mere self-promotion. He has tales to tell and opinions to offer and you’d better goddamn LISTEN!! We discuss blue collar youth, Texas attitude, and whether having some hardship in life makes you a better writer. He tells me how he comes up with his unique metaphors, and why he defended Stephen King when twitter turned against him. All in all, it’s a friendly conversation about the perils of tribalism, why we should all be a little bit more tolerant, and why choosing stupidity is scary as hell. This is a bucket-list interview for me. Enjoy! Moon Lake is published by Mulholland Books on June 22nd. Other books discussed in this episode include: Edge of Dark Water (2012), by Joe R. Lansdale The Thicket (2013), by Joe R. Lansdale Paradise Sky (2015), by Joe R. Lansdale “Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Mans Back,” in High Cotton: Selected Stories of Joe. R. Lansdale “On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with the Dead Folks”, in The Best of Joe R. Lansdale (2010) “The Night They Missed the Horror Show”, by Joe R. Lansdale – originally published in Silver Scream, (1988) ed. By David Schow Great Expectations, (1860), by Charles Dickens The Only Good Indians (2020), by Stephen Graham Jones Mongrels (2016), by Stephen Graham Jones Support the show on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPod Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text Maybe it’s the heat but this week we’re getting angry on Talking Scared. Our guest is V. Castro – author of Goddess of Filth and her newest, Queen of the Cicadas – and she’s full of rage. Thankfully, it’s not directed at me, despite my hideous attempts at Spanish pronunciation. Queen of the Cicadas is about identity, folklore and the residue of a decades-old crime that stands as representative of all crimes against Latinx people by an uncaring world. The death of a young girl brings forth the wrath of a violent goddess from the Aztec past …. and stuff goes DOWN!! V (short for Violet) and I talk about rage, and hate and blood and myth, which all sounds deeply profound. However, we also talk about sex and Candyman, and we put the boot into some other books, so rest assured we don’t take ourselves too seriously!! But yeah, this is one to get your blood up. Enjoy! Queen of the Cicadas is published by Flame Tree Press on June 22nd. Other books discussed in this episode include: Goddess of Filth (2021) by V. Castro Sed de Sangre (2020), by V. Castro “Cucuy of Cancun” (2020), by V. Castro, in Worst Laid Plans: An Anthology of Vacation Horror, ed. Sam Kolesnik. 2666 (2004), by Roberto Bolaño American Dirt (2019), by Jeanine Cummins Camp Slaughter (2019), by Sergio Gomez Coyote Songs (2018), by Gabino Iglesias Into the Forest and All the Way Through (2020), by Cynthia Pelayo Support the show on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPod Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text It’s not often you speak to the author of a book that EVERYONE has heard of. This week I got the chance. Max Brooks. Max-freaking-Brooks, author of global bestseller World War Z is here. But rather than the undead, we’re talking hairy things in the woods, technological dependence and woke hipsters being eaten. Max’s latest novel, Devolution, regales us with the lives (and deaths) of an eco-community living deep in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Stranded by a disaster, they fall prey first to their own inadequacy and then to the very adequate hunger of roaming sasquatch, We’ve talked Bigfoot and cryptozoology a lot on this show in recent weeks. But this is the big bad daddy of them all. A satire, a found-footage document, an adventure story, but also a blood, guts and claw-filled horror novel. It’s much grimmer than you may expect. As well as monsters, Max and I discuss hokey documentaries, primate research, driverless cars, the cursed legacy of Steve Jobs and skewering our own liberal echo chamber. But it all centres on how patently unprepared our society really is for crisis. Enjoy. Devolution is published in paperback on June 10th by Del Rey. Other books and documentaries discussed in this episode include: Bigfoot: The Mysterious Monsters (1976) directed by Robert Guenette Night of the Crabs (1976), by Guy N. Smith World War Z (2006), by Max Brooks The Harlem Hellfighters (2014), by Max Brooks My review of Devolution in the UK Guardian can be found HERE. Support the show on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPod Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text If you’re returning to the office any time soon and you’re really bummed about it – this week’s guest will make you feel better …. cos it could be so much worse. Zakiya Dalila Harris is the author of the much-anticipated debut, The Other Black Girl. It’s been touted as Jordan Peele’s Get Out meets The Devil Wears Prada and that’s true, there is white conspiracy and awful bosses aplenty, but I’d also suggest more than a little of the paranoid frisson of Rosemary’s Baby and the toe-curling embarrassment of The Office. Basically, it’s a big, fun book all about workplace prejudice, micro-aggressions and the thin veneer of equality – but, this being Talking Scared, rest assured it’s more than the sum of those everyday parts. It also goes into some weird and wicked places. Zakiya and I talk about her own career as the ‘only black girl in a publishing house’, the way well-meaning comments can do the most damage, and I express my anxiety about asking her ALL the questions about Blackness, like the awkward white guy at the party who insists he’d have voted for a third Obama term. Oh, and we get into hair care. Something that’s more than a little important in this book … and y’know, in life I love this book and insist you all read it. Enjoy! The Other Black Girl is published June 1st by Bloomsbury in the UK and Atria in North America. Other books discussed in this episode include: All Her Little Secrets (2021), by Wanda M. Morris Rosemary’s Baby (1967), by Ira Levin The Stephen Graham Jones open letter “from the Indians no longer in the background of a John Wayne movie” can be found HERE. Support the show on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPod Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text Josh Malerman, bestselling wunderkinder of horror, author of Birdbox, Malorie, Unbury Carol and now Goblin, has graced Talking Scared with his presence. We’re talking about Goblin specifically, his new ‘novel in six novellas’ detailing the lives and losses of people in the weirdest small-town west of Castle Rock. It’s got monstrous owls and more monstrous police, an impossible hedge maze, things in boxes that MUST NOT BE OPENED, and the fear of fear itself. As Josh points out (and I hadn’t noticed) the book is about all the different kinds of obsession that make up a life and a town. And we get into Josh’s own obsession with writing, from his ridiculously prolific output, to writing whilst touring with his band. We talk about how he got published, an odd route involving a friend from school and a stoned conversation with a lawyer. Plus, he tells me all about the time he saw a ghost or something in his house after listening to his mom’s taped sessions with a psychic (scary story!). He’s a little bit rock n roll and a little bit culture-geek, and the conversation follows suit – with me essentially trying not to gush “thank you for talking to me” over and over again. I love this interview. Enjoy! Goblin is published May 18th by Del Rey Other books we discussed include: Unbury Carol (2018), by Josh Malerman Birdbox, (2014) by Josh Malerman The Loney (2014), by Andrew Michael Hurley Wanderers (2019), by Chuck Wendig Support the show on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPod Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text This week the Queen of black horror is Talking Scared. Tananarive Due is bestowing her patronage on little ol’ me and I’m not quite sure what to do with myself. Tananarive ranks amongst the most respected horror writers of the 21st Century, from her breakout effort, The Between, to her British Fantasy Award winning collection, Ghost Summer and her magnum opus (so far at least) The Good House. She took the time to talk me through her career, from breaking free of the MFA fixation on white guys and their naval-gazing, to the time she used good old rock ‘n’ roll to coerce Stephen King into blurbing her book. We also take in the volcanic impact of Jordan Peele and why black horror lit is ready to follow in film’s footsteps. If you are interested in horror generally then this is not a conversation to miss. Especially when Tananarive gets into her forthcoming novel, The Reformatory – seven years in the making, and inspired by her own ancestry and the bloody history of a brutal prison. Enjoy Books mentions in this conversation include: The Between (1995), by Tananarive Due The Good House (2003), by Tananarive Due Ghost Summer (2015) by Tananarive Due My Soul to Keep (1997) by Tananarive Due Dark Dreams (2004), edited by Brandon Massey “The Comet” (1920), by W.E. Dubois Support the show on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPod Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text Do you ever feel you’re being watched? Ever caught a flicker from the corner of your eye that you can’t explain? Do you run out of milk more than you think you should? Maybe, just maybe, there is someone living in your house. It’s a worldwide phenomenon (just check google) and this week’s guest has turned it into a genre-bending novel that’s tipped as one of THE Gothic reads of 2021. A.J. Gnuse’s debut, Girl in the Walls is a literary chiller about grief, loneliness and what the word HOME really means. He joined me to talk through how the book came to be, why a conclusive ending was needed and how the spectre of Hurricane Katrina haunts his fiction. He also tell an especially creepy anecdote about a hidden door in his own home. Oh, and I tell a story about a woman who lived inside a stranger’s kitchen cupboard for a year. You can see the chilling footage of her reveal HERE. Enjoy! Girl in the Walls is published in the UK Fourth Estate and in North American by Ecco Books Support the show on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPod Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text Jeff VanderMeer is our guest. Need I say more? First things first though, rest easy, the episode title doesn’t refer to either me or Jeff. We both make it out alive. Not everything does though. Listen on for the most on-the-nose display of savage nature, so perfect a backdrop to a conversation about animals, ecological crisis and the horror of extinction. What starts with the brave little hummingbird could end up killing us all. Jeff’s new novel, Hummingbird Salamander is an eco-noir, an accelerating ride to a point “ten seconds in the future” at the end of the world. It’s a deeply challenging book, both in style and message, and in a rare moment of seriousness, it brought our shared ecological plight and our wrongdoing home to me like nothing before. Jeff and I talk about how humanity can live with the peril of ecological disaster hanging over our heads, and how fiction can help bring that reality home. In lighter moments Jeff also tells me about how he thinks up stories involving giant flying bears, gives a lot of info on his upcoming collection of horror novellas, and horrifies me with the reason behind his phobia of cockroaches. Seriously … JESUS CHRIST JEFF!! Oh, and I introduce my new Patreon membership perks. Trust me, you wanna! Enjoy! Hummingbird Salamander was published in the UK by Fourth Estate Books and in North America by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on 6th April. Books discussed include: Annihilation (2014), by Jeff VanderMeer Borne (2017), by Jeff VanderMeer The Rain Heron (2020), by Robbie Arnaut Support the show on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPod Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text This week, I bring you MOAR monsters!!! Our guest is Christina Henry, whose new novel, Near the Bone fits so nicely as the unofficial second part to a cryptozoology-inflected series that began with Danielle Trussoni last week. Don’t worry, I’m not talking about the Loch Ness Monster for an hour, but the novel does feature a monster, some cryptid hunters and the very violent evils of both man and beast. Christina does manage to get me off the subject of monsters for a while, to give some insight into her surprisingly relaxed approach to writing, to her love of the outdoors and running (and how that provides a backdrop for her horror stories. And we even dip a toe into the pressing question of the age – CAN HORROR TAKE PLACE IN SPACE?? We ask who determines what a horror novel is, and whether YouTube and the discovery channel have changed monsters forever. Oh, and I get the chance to reminisce about the time I nearly got eaten by a bear (sort of. It looked at me at least!) Enjoy! Near the Bone was published by Titan Books on April 13th. Other books discussed in this episode include: Ghost Tree (2020), by Christina Henry The Girl in Red (2019), by Christina Henry Leave the World Behind (2020), by Rumaan Alam Earthlings (2018), by Sayaka Murata The Girl With All the Gifts (2014), by M.R. Carey Christine (1983), by Stephen King Eyes of the Dragon (1984), by Stephen King Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text When was the last time a story took you completely by surprise? Danielle Trussoni’s The Ancestor ambushed me into loving it. What seems a standard Gothic fiction turns into something wholly weirder … and wilder … as a young American woman inherits a creaky European castle, and the monstrous baggage that comes with it. Dani came on the show – somehow finding time between writing her new novel and being the New York Times’ horror columnist – to talk about The Ancestor’s paperback release. We tiptoe around the book’s many, many secrets, and somehow find ourselves all the way to a discussion about Bigfoot. It’s that kind of chat. We also discuss how her own roots and heritage inspired the novel, why there are so many double standards about women authors and horror, how she fits existing myth and lore into her stories so well … and I regale her with one of my favourite pieces of British legend. She’s kind enough to pretend that she doesn’t obviously know more about horror than me – and she also exposes me as someone who mentions that I have a degree a little too much. It’s interesting, enlightening, and more than a little bit shocking. Enjoy! The Ancestor is out in paperback from Custom House on April 13th. Other books we discussed include: Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places (2016), by Colin Dickey The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters and our Obsession with the Unexplained (2020), by Colin Dickey Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011), by Yuval Noah Harari Flowers in the Attic (1979), by V.C. Andrews The Historian (2005), by Elizabeth Kostova Support the show by donating: https://ko-fi.com/talkingscaredpod Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text Welcome to the Green Mountain State, lovely, liberal . . . haunted!! Our guest is to ghost-stories what Ben and Jerry are to ice cream – Vermont’s resident ghost-writer-in-chief, Jennifer McMahon. Her new novel, The Drowning Kind takes us back to the small towns, local stores and eerie histories typical of her fiction, but with an added turning of the screw – it’s not the house that’s haunted, it’s the pool out back. If that sounds cheesy, it ISN’T. The Drowning Kind is an alternative type of ghost story – how alternative, and whether what lurks in the pool is even a ghost – are both subjects we dive into. Jen tells me about why she finds such darkness in Vermont’s pleasant green hills, and I get very excited to talk to someone about the state’s folklore! Oh, and there are index cards. Many, many index cards. For the technique-geek, or the aspiring novelist, this is some serious insight into the creative process of a master plotter. As promised in the show, here is some further detail on her system. Enjoy! The Drowning Kind is out from Gallery Books on April 6th. Other books we discussed include: The Invited (2019), by Jennifer McMahon The House Next Door (1978), by Anne River Siddons The Haunting of Hill House (1959), by Shirley Jackson We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962), by Shirley Jackson “The Monkey’s Paw” (1902), by W. W. Jacobs Come Closer (2003), by Sara Gran Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text Does your child draw pentagrams? Have you noticed the neighbours hanging their robes over the washing line? Worst of all, have they started listening to …. HEAVY METAL?? You may be experiencing a satanic panic. Worry not, our guest, Clay McLeod Chapman can diagnose this for you. Clay’s new novel, Whisper Down the Lane is both a homage to the horror of the 80s, and an exploration of how that decade's battle with truth, memory and Satan(!!) lives on today. His story riffs on the very real scandal at the McMartin Preschool, as well as the wider hysteria that led to people being sacked, vilified and even imprisoned based upon absolute bulls*t. As you’ll hear, it’s a darker tale than I had imagined, but it’s also jam-packed with references, easter-eggs and allusions to the horror that made the decade. Along the way Clay talks to me about how the satanic panic never really went away, how it ties into our very modern sense of ‘truth’ and he tells me why he never wants his kids to read his stories. On my part, I tell him the world is ok and other unconscionably optimistic things! Oh, and I’m convinced that Clay orchestrated Lil Nas X’s ’Satan Shoes’ to help him sell more copies. Enjoy! Whisper Down the Lane is published by Quirk Books on April 6th 2021. Other books we discussed this week include: Rosemary’s Baby (1967), by Ira Levin Geek Love (1989), by Katherine Dunn Nothing But Blackened Teeth (2021), by Cassandra Khaw Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text We’ve covered our share of plagues on this show during our all-too-real year of sitting indoors and waiting for the pandemic to sod off. Do you have the guts for one more? You should, but you may empty them. Our guest is V.L. Valentine and her debut novel The Plague Letters transports us to London in 1665. The Great Plague is scouring the population, with only the barest medical expertise to hold it at bay. Into this ghastly furnace comes a killer, hiding in plain sight. It’s a fantastic premise for a novel and Vikki does the idea great service. In this episode you’ll hear my general dislike of historical detective fiction – and how The Plague Letters is a very different beast. We also talk Ebola, c-sections, lockdown ethics, and the problem with passive characters – as well as wondering what the serial killers are doing during social distancing. This is not for the faint-hearted, or the weak of stomach. Enjoy! The Plague Letters is published by Viper Books on April 1st, 2001. Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text This is a big one. The Last House on Needless Street may be the best pure horror novel I’ve read this decade. Okay, the decade is only 3 months old, but check back with me in 9 years and I may still be saying the same. I’m delighted to speak to the author of this latter-day classic, Catriona Ward, about secrets and lies and how the hell you begin to describe a book that is one big spoiler! Once Cat and I work out how to even talk about the novel without ruining for everyone, we then spend a happy hour navigating the nooks and crannies of the book and its titular house. We start with Ted Bundy, end with Ed Gein, and in between we cover why cats are inscrutable, how you write mental illness responsibly, and Cat tell us about the times a ghost pushed her out of bed. It’s been a long wait to discuss this book, and I’m delighted I finally can. If you have read it get in touch. I’m dying to know what other’s think. Enjoy! The Last House on Needless Street is published by in the UK on Mrch 18th by Viper Books. It will be published in North America on Septmeber 28th by Tor Nightfire. Other books discussed in this episode include: Rawblood (2015), by Catriona Ward Little Eve (2018), by Catriona Ward The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (2019), by Hallie Rubenhold Spider (1990), by Patrick McGrath Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there was a young woman, bad men, and some homicidal mermaids. It’s fairy tale time. Our guest is Angela Slatter, who’s new novel All the Murmuring Bones turns the fairy stories that comforted you as a child, into a horrid tale of murder, inheritance, death, sex and entrapment. In this world Hansel and Gretel would be a very tasty pie-filling. Angela has spent years studying the fairy tale tradition and turning it against her readers. All the Murmuring Bones is her first full length novel taking place in the dark world he has created. This conversation is half about her book, and half about the tradition as a whole. Think of it as a compact university course without the fees, the homework or the risk of STIs. We talk about the darker versions of old tales, why all fairytales seem inherently feminist, and why they are coming back into force. I also make a big mistake about mythical creatures that makes me sound more than a little creepy, until rectified. Enjoy! All the Murmuring Bones is published by Titan Books on March 9th in Australia and North America, and on March 29th in the UK. Other books mentioned in this episode include: Sourdough and other Stories (2010), by Angela Slatter The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings (2014), by Angela Slatter The Once and Future Witches (2020), by Alex Harrow Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins (1993), by Emma Donoghue The Bloody Chamber (1979), by Angela Carter The Faery Handbag (2004), by Kelly Link From the Beast to the Blond: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers (1994), by Marina Warner Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text Isolation is a bitch, but it could be worse! Our guest is Bethany Clift and her debut novel is Last One at the Party – a pandemic novel that reminds you that at least we have Netflix, facetime and the chance to call our friends. Beth’s novel follows an unnamed woman, the last survivor of a global plague that has emptied out the world in just a few weeks. As she struggles through the ruins of a posta-apocalyptic Britain, she also confronts the wreckage of her life in the ‘before times’. If that all sounds dreadfully grim, and not at all what you want to read in our current plight, then remember three things: 1) WE have a vaccine (and it’s working) 2) This book is also laugh out loud hilarious 3) There is a dog called Lucky that you will love with all your heart. Beth and I have a bit of laugh on this one – perhaps inappropriately so considering we’re discussing the end of the world – but we also cover what it’s like to actually write about Covid-19 in retrospect, why ‘stroking the dog’ is not a euphemism, but a very clever trick, and whether we still have space for apocalyptic glee in our reading. Forgive the title of the episode, all will make sense when you listen … and read the book. Enjoy! Last One at the Party was published in the UK by Hodder on 4th Feb 2021 and will be published in other territories soon. Other books discussed include: The Stand (1978), by Stephen King The Long Walk (1979), by Stephen King I Am Legend (1954), by Richard Matheson The Road (2006), by Cormac McCarthy Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text If you’ve been homeschooling, in labour, or generally responsible for the life of a small human during lockdown, then this episode is for you. There are people out there, writers with great skill and empathy, who share your pain, and know how you feel. This week’s guest is Julia Fine, the author of Bram Stoker Award Nominated What Should Be Wild, and now the postpartum nightmare, The Upstairs House. Julia’s novel is about new motherhood, societal expectation, the horror of lost self, and ghosts. Really weird ghosts, of literary figures who demand she write their story, or else they may take her child. During our conversation we cover a whole host of things, from the lack of literary representation for postpartum sufferers, to the haunting legacy of famous children’s authors … oh, and I also inadvertently compare Julia’s child to my puppy – and I await the rage of any listeners with a new baby. But yeah, this is a good book that raises a lot of questions, and a good chat that answers some of them really well. Enjoy!The Upstairs House is published on February 23rd by Harper. Other books discussed in this episode include: The Bloody Chamber (1979), by Angela Carter The Yellow Wallpaper (1892), by Charlotte Perkings Gilman House of Leaves (2000), by Mark Z. Danielewski Fever Dream (2014), by Samantha Schweblin Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text Hands up who wants a holiday! Sarah Pearse’s The Sanatorium could be just the thing to purge your lockdown travel desires. It will either transport you to the ice-white peaks of the Swiss Alps, to luxuriate in the views inside your mind. Or, it’ll make you never ever want to stay in a hotel again. The Sanatorium is Sarah’s debut thriller, a novel that sits uncomfortably (in the best possible way) between crime, mystery and horror – with a hospital-cum-hotel that would rank VERY low on TripAdvisor. Cleanliness = 5* Location = 5* Facilities = 5* Chance of survival = 1* Sarah and I discuss the tussle to define a debut novel, we share stories of living in Switzerland and ponder what it is about all that beauty that chills the bone, and we pick apart the comparisons to Stephen King and Agatha Christie. The Sanatorium is published Feb 2nd in North America by Pamela Dorman and Feb 18th 2021 in the UK, by Bantam Press. Stick around after the interview to hear all the big news about what’s coming to Talked Scared later this year. I’m excited, I hope you are. Enjoy! Books discussed in this episode include: The Shining (1977), by Stephen King The Little Stranger (2009), by Sarah Waters Thin Air (2016), by Michelle Paver Dark Matter (2010), by Michelle Paver Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text Have you ever had a book scare you so much that part of you wishes you hadn’t read it? That’s the experience I had reading Gemma Files’ latest collection, In That Endlessness, Our End. I don’t know how Gemma does it, but with each story she finds a psychological pressure point that feels specifically mine, and the presses down on it hard with her pen. On more than one occasion I had to stop reading this book because it freaked me out too much. And I mean that as the highest praise. In That Endlessness, Our End is full of stories of multimedia gone mad, sensory overload, mad gods and strange houses, and an alleyway that may take your child and give you something else in return. Gemma is a wealth of fact and opinion on horror. In our conversation we go deep, into the mechanics of horror writing as well as the inspiration behind some of the tales. We get into night terrors, how you evoke panic on the page, and how neurodiversity informs her unique brand of horror. But despite all this fear and intensity, we also have a good laugh. Gemma even takes the time to tell us as fairytale!! Enjoy! In That Endlessness, Our End is published by Grimscribe Press on 15th February 2021. Other books we mention include: The Elementals (1981), by Michael McDowell Ancient Images (1989), by Ramsey Campbell Every House is Haunted (2013), by Ian Rogers Burnt Black Suns (2014), by Simon Strantzas Grotesquerie (2020), by Richard Gavin Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text When your guest calls herself the “Master of the Bitch” you do wonder what you’re getting into. Courtney Summers, by her own admission, wants to upset people. Yet she’s a delight! To kick of Women in Horror week we discuss her new novel, The Project, which follows a young woman as she investigates the New York based cult that has swallowed up her sister. This is FAR from your standard cult novel. As Courtney explains, she wanted to get away from the exploitation and the obvious horrors and instead consider why people search for belonging in such dark places, and whether we would be impervious to The Project’s allure. We also talk about her penchant for ‘unlikeable’ female protagonists, and whether there’s a double standard in how fiction treats challenging women. We celebrate Biden’s inauguration, I tell her about my worst ever spider encounter, and she takes me to school for dissing YA fiction. Enjoy! The Project was published by Wednesday Books on February 2nd 2021. Other books mentioned include: Sadie (2018), by Courtney Summers Redder Days (2021), by Sue Rainsford The Children of Red Peak (2020), by Craig Di Louie The Need (2019), by Helen Phillips Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text Let’s get Gothic! Our guest this week is Laura Purcell, doyenne of the dark, heiress of historical fiction (and other alliterative titles). Laura blew away the cobwebs wrapped around spooky period fiction with her breakout smash, The Silent Companions in 2017. She followed up with The Corset and Bone China and now she’s back with her newest Gothic novel, The Shape of Darkness. The novel examines all the wrinkles and crannies in the Victorian underbelly, from spirit mediums, to mesmerism, and the uncanny art of silhouette portraits. Trust me, you’ll want one for yourself. We talk about the line between gothic and horror, why writing historical fiction can be a way to sneak your horror under the radar, and whether the stereotypes of the period make it frustrating to write about Victorian women. After all, how many times a day can a woman swoon? In an unrelated anecdote, Laura also divulges her secret terror of sloths. Oh, and I waffle on about the history of gothic fiction cos I just can’t resist lecturing people. Other books discussed include: The Residence (2020), by Andrew Pyper The Haunting of Alma Fielding (2020), by Andrew Pyper Shadowland, or Light From the Other Side (1897), by Elizabeth d’Esperance “The Blue Lenses,” in The Breaking Point (1959), by Daphne du Maurier “The Mezzotint”, “A View From A Hill” and “Oh Whistle and I’ll Come To You My Lad”, found in The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James Enjoy! The Shape of Darkness was published by Raven Books on January 21st 2021. Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text In a week in which the White House becomes a little less orange, it’s hard to dwell on the nasty side of life. But this is Talking Scared and we can find the grim and creepy on even the most optimistic days. Our guest is C.J. Tudor – the current queen of the British thriller. She sits quite comfortably on the cusp of horror and crime, and we get into the subject of exactly where that borderline is. Her new novel, The Burning Girls continues her blending of the fast-paced American thriller, with the folk-tradition of the British horror story. A tale about a vicar, who moves with her daughter to a small Sussex town, with a terrible history of child sacrifice, and a more recent taste for murder and suicide – what’s not to like? C.J and I talk in depth about the perils of causing offence in your fiction, how to write a vicar protagonist, and what it felt like when Stephen King said he liked her book! Oh, and I may cause a bit of controversy when I give Kubrick’s adaption of The Shining a good kicking. The Burning Girls is published by Michael Joseph Books on January 21st 2021. Other books discussed include: The Chalk Man (2018), by CJ Tudor The Other People (2020), by CJ Tudor The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (2018), by Stuart Turton The Last (2019), by Hanna Jameson If It Bleeds (2020), by Stephen King The Shining (1977), by Stephen King Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text Ready for the first GREAT book you’ll read this year? Our guest this week is Will Dean, calling all the way from the middle of a Scandinavian forest to talk about his new novel, The Last Thing To Burn. I’ve been banging on about this book since I read it in December. It’s a latter-day masterpiece, a read-in-one-sitting, this-has-to-be-a-movie kind of book. Think Misery, think Room and then think how much worse could the horrors be. The truth, a lot worse. Will and I talk about off-grid living, both his bucolic existence and his protagonist’s torment. We talk about the difference between writing the English and Swedish landscapes, and why the English fens are much scarier than the Scandi woods. We also talk about how you capture a monster’s voice, and whether you know you are going too far in a novel. It’s a great conversation, and you’ll end up inspired you to quit your job, build a house, and live in it! If you want advice on how to do it, or just to peer into his idyllic life, you can find Will on Youtube @ Will Dean Forest Author Along the way we discuss a range of classic novels, including: Misery (1987), by Stephen King On Writing (2000), by Stephen King Room (2010), by Emma Donaghue The Collector (1963), by John Fowles The Road (2006), by Cormac McCarthy Asylum (1996), by Patrick McGrath Enjoy! Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing and Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text I like this year better than last year already. Ok, we may be plunged back into lockdown 3.0 and it may be cold, and the cinemas may still be shut. But we have a vaccine, Trump looks like he’s got nappy rash … and there’s a whole year of horror fiction to look forward to. Unfortunately for you, there’s no guest this week. Instead, you’re stuck with me as I talk you through the highlights and predicted hits of horror fiction 2021. I’ve already read two books that are fighting their way into my ALL TIME BEST HORROR list, could there be more. We have new books from the likes of Grady Hendrix, Stephen Graham Jones, Christina Henry, Cassandra Khaw, Laura Purcell, Catriona Ward, Richard Chizmar, Zoje Stage, Zakiya Dalalila Harris, Chuck Wendig and more. Listen, consider, argue, rant, email me and tell me I’m wrong. But get ready to take the horror out of the nightly news and back into your bedtime reading. Enjoy! Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing and Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text 2020 is nearly behind us (woohoo!) but we have time for one more interview with a master of horror. Our guest this week is Michael Marshall Smith the genre polymath and man of a thousand pseudonyms (all of them involving ‘Michael’.) He is joining me to discuss his new career retrospective, The Best of Michael Marshall Smith, published in a beautiful volume by Subterranean Press. It’s a huge collection of stories, covering Michael’s 30 years of writing, from his recent work, all the way back to his debut story “The Man Who Drew Cats” – which won the British Fantasy Award. Along the way we talk about living and writing on both sides of the Atlantic, our shared love of Stephen King and why Michael writes about cats so much. We also establish that I’m a dog person. And just to make sure we cover all the bases, we also devote a few minutes to discussing the orange baby currently tantrum-ing his way out of the White House, cos it is 2020 still, after all. Lastly, if that isn’t enough for you, I run through the first “Talking Scared Top-Ten Horror of the Year” list. Next year there might be prizes, who knows. It’s been an astonishing year for horror and the first few months of this show have exposed me to writing and thinking that I may otherwise have missed. I can only hope it’s done the same for some of you. So, see you in 2021, when the skies will be blue, the birds singing, and the ghosts moaning a bit more cheerfully. Enjoy! Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing and Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text Merry Christmas and/or time-off-work-week! For all of you currently freezing your asses off in cold climes, this week’s episode may make you feel a little too warm under the collar. Our guest is Gabriel Bergmoser, an author who exploded onto the horror scene in early 2020 with The Hunted, a pulpy, violent, visceral hell ride through the Australian wilderness in the company of very human prey and predators. Considering the amount of people hanging from hooks and suffering violent deaths in his fiction, Gabriel proves to be a thoroughly charming guest. We talk at length about the problem of masculinity down under (and, as it turns out, everywhere else!). Gabe’s thesis includes anecdotes from Australian history and the time that he was personally chased down the street by a kid with a nail-studded cricket bat. The Hunted is an EXCEPTIONAL horror novel. It flaunts its genre credentials, allowing us to get back to the blood and guts basics of the genre. At the same time, though, it’s got a lot to say about a lot of things. You’ll read it in one night and still think about it months later. The Hunted was published in May by Faber and Faber Oh, and a listener asked me to finally flesh out the list of my top-ten horror novels of all time. You don’t have to ask me twice, so at the end of this episode you’ll get some extra bonus content (whether you want it or not) whilst I indulge myself in banging on about books I love. I get quite pretentious in parts. Red Dragon (1981), by Thomas Harris The Golden Age (1985), by Louis Nowra Soon (2017), by Lois Murphy A Head Full of Ghosts (2015), by Paul Tremblay The Haunting of Hill House (1959), by Shirley Jackson Lunar Park (2005), by Bret Easton Ellis The Terror (2007), by Dan Simmons Beloved (1987), by Toni Morrison Ghost Story (1971), by Peter Straub The Little Stranger (2009), by Sarah Waters Swan Song (1987), by Robert R. McCammon The Stand (1978), by Stephen Kind House of Leaves (2000), by Mark Z. Danielewski IT (1986), by Stephen King Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing and Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text This late into 2020 we are all craving a) a holiday and b) time with friends. Our guest this week may cast a slightly different perspective on both. Rachel Harrison is the author of The Return, a novel that looks into the dark heart of friendship and asks “do you REALLY know who your friends are?” The book was published all the way back in March, by Berkley in the US and Hodder in the UK. I finally found time to catch up with Rachel and to tell her why this book scared me so badly. Yep, this may be the single most unnerving novel I’ve read in 2020 (and that includes a couple of fictional pandemics in the middle of our real pandemic). The Return presents female friendship in all its complexity, compassion and cruelty. As you’ll hear, I didn’t always get on with the women in this book, but they left a lasting impression on me (and on Rachel). Plus, it prompts Rachel to tell me hew own personal ghost story. It’s a lot more benign than the one in her story. Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing and Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text Stand back! Our Guest this week is Christopher Golden, author of all manner of horror, adventure and generally freaky fiction. His latest book is Red Hands, the third featuring Ben Walker, action-hero and expert in the batsh*t weird! I have used the words ‘relevant’ and ‘prescient’ more than ever in 2020 – this being, after all, the year that all our horror stories became true. Even by that standard Red Hands is creepily on the money though. It’s the story of a plague that is transmitted by simple touch, and kills in seconds. That may sound like grim reading right now, but trust me, it’s a hell of a good time. Action-packed and surprisingly philosophical in approach, it also features a KILLER first chapter. Christopher and I talk about our shared love of historical mystery and folklore, the pros and cons of writing series fiction, and how you balance pace and character in a book that wants to raise your pulse and make you care. Red Hands would have been too horrible to bear a few months ago. Now, with a vaccine on the way, it is the propulsive popcorn read that may perfectly pair with your holiday. Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing and Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text This week our guest is Sam J. Miller, author of The Blade Between - a novel for anyone who loves or loathes their hometown. It’s a story of small-town ghosts, hidden hatreds and sudden violence. And behind it all looms the issue of gentrification, in all its ugliness and beauty. Listening to Sam talk, you may think differently about that cute little bistro that’s opened down the street. Y’know, the one that took over from that local place that had been there for years . . . Sam’s previous works include The Art of Starving (2017) and Blackfish City (2018), both novels that take no truck with easy ideas of genre. They, like The Blade Itself are freewheeling stories, and as you’ll here, Sam is more than willing go down some weird alleyways and to spill his own blood on the page. He’s also got a lot of things to say about queer identity in horror, about how no-one ever thinks they are the villain in the story, and the worry of how people in your hometown may feel when you savage it in your story. The Blade Between was published December 1st 2020, by Ecco Books. Books we mentioned include: The Art of Starving (2017), by Sam J. Miller Needful Things (1991), by Stephen King Drawing Blood (2010), by Poppy Z. Brite The Cabin at the End of the World (2018), by Paul Tremblay Plain Bad Heroines (2020), by Emily Danforth A Spectral Hue (2019), by Craig Lawrence Gibney Never Have I Ever (2021), by Isobel Yap Homesick (2019) and Finna (2020), by Nino Cipri Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing and Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text If you’re a fan of podcasts and horror (and of course you are!) then chances are you’ll recognise our guest. Jonathan Sims is the author of Thirteen Storeys, but you may know him (or his voice) as the creator and narrator of The Magnus Archives. Yep, that’s right, I’m interviewing The Archivist himself. Thirteen Storeys takes a lot of what makes The Magnus Archives great, and blends it with contemporary social realism to create a book that’s horrifying in more ways than one. It’s an anthology novel that comprises … well … thirteen stories, all about the haunted corridors of an inner-city tower block. Horrible things happen to good and bad people and, true to form, stuff gets very, very weird! Jonny is every bit as good an interviewee as you’d expect from someone who does his day job. We get into all sorts of nooks and crannies about both the book and the show. We discuss how to create a singularly horrifying image, why M.R. James is still the man, and delve into the birth and forthcoming end of The Magnus Archives. Oh … and Kenny Loggins makes an appearance. Enjoy!Thirteen Stories is published by Gollancz on November 26th, 2020. Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text Things get a little cultish this week on Talking Scared. Our guest is Craig DiLouie, author of the brand-spanking-new creepy commune novel, The Children of Red Peak – released November 18th from RedHook Books. It’s a tale of crazy goings-on in the desert, of ritual mutilation and lasting trauma. All that fun stuff! Craig immediately has me in his thrall, even without the Kool-Aid. (interesting fact, it was actually Flavour Aid that the Jonestown cultists drank). We talk about the difference between a religion and a cult, how to capture the spiritual essence of music in prose, and we also get deep into what is so scary about religion and faith tipping over into something darker. On top of that, Craig confronts us all with one of the big moral questions – how many arms would YOU feed to a shredder if you had to? Along the way we mention some other books, including: It (1986), by Stephen King Kin (2011), by Kealan Patrick Burke Last Days (2012), by Adam Neville Suffer the Children (2014), by Craig DiLouie Hater (2006), by David Moody The Power (2016), by Naomi Alderman Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text This week Rumaan Alam presents us with a wholly ambiguous end of the world. Rumaan’s new novel, Leave the World Behind has taken the publishing landscape by storm. Reviews are everywhere and critics are shouting its name from the rooftops, with good reason. Leave the World Behind is a strange, uneasy tale of the world going wrong. What begins as a family getaway to Long Island spirals into fear as strangers arrive, bringing news of a blackout in New York City. From there, things only get worse as the possibilities of what is actually happening become terrifyingly limitless. We spend a good hour talking crises of masculinity, why kids are better equipped for apocalypse than their parents, and why literary fiction needs to get the chip off its shoulder a little. We also both realise that we’d be functionally useless in any kind of real crisis. A few books mentioned in this episode include: Swimming Home (2011), by Deborah Leavy. Never Let Me Go (2005) by Kazuo Ishiguro Pet Sematary (1983) by Stephen King Enjoy!Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text If you are feeling nervous today, or just want something to distract you from the doomscrolling, then welcome to our Election Day special. Our guest is Andrew Pyper whose latest novel, The Residence, is an historical tour around a White House under siege from a demon. This particular spirit is arrogant, spiteful and determined to use the Oval Office for dire purposes – but he’s not orange at least! Andrew is no stranger to creepy, spirit-infested fiction. His previous work includes The Guardians (2011), The Demonologist (2013) and The Damned (2015), amongst many others. We talk about the nature of evil, both personal and political, and consider the sex life of a president (no, not this one!) Andrew also takes us on a tour through the intriguingly haunted history of Pennsylvania Avenue. Who knew the White House had so many ghosts? Enjoy! Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text It’s Halloween and in lieu of any trick and/or treating this plague year, I offer you a conversation with Colin Dickey, mystery-maestro and curator of the creepy. Colin is the author of Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places (2016) and The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters and our Obsession with the Unexplained – books that plumb the depths of the human mind and our fixation on the creepy things at the margins of the known world. In this wide-ranging discussion, we touch upon the remnants of lost civilisations, cryptozoology and the link between wonder, fear and the conspiracy theory. I also offer my favourite (and fool proof) theory as to why all photos of Bigfoot are blurry. I hope you all have the best Halloween possible in current circumstances. It’s been great creating this podcast so far and, today, on a horror-fan’s favourite holiday, I hope you are all well and enjoyably scared. Enjoy! Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text Where do you stand on horror and comedy? Can a book be too funny to be scary, or too terrifying to raise a chuckle? Our guest this week would argue not. T. Kingfisher is the author of the critically-acclaimed The Twisted Ones (2019) and her brand-new release The Hollow Places. Both are scorching horror tales, with some hideous imagery, exquisite world-building and nightmare-fuel ideas . . . but they are also both laugh-out-loud funny, at least to us sickos anyway! T (short for ‘The’ or ‘Terrence’, depending on her mood) and I discuss the world’s maddest museums, the practical issues with making your own golem, and whether America is really overrun with phantom kangaroos! We also manage to sneak in some ‘serious’ conversation about how the genre works, and why she finds classic tales such an inspiration. This one will put a smile on your face as October draws to an end. Some of the books discussed in this episode include: “The White People” in The House of Souls (1906), by Arthur Machen “The Willows”, in The Listener and Other Stories (2007), by Algernon Blackwood It Will Just Be Us (2002), by Jo Kaplan From a Buick Eight (2002), by Stephen King The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman Coraline, by Neil Gaiman Firefly Rain (2008), by Richard Dansky Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text This week Emily Danforth takes us back to school. Her new novel, Plain Bad Heroines has a lot to say about the history of queer women, the price of fame, and whether found footage horror is any good. Plain Bad Heroines features heavily on all the best-of lists for the season, and it’s an early reputation that’s well deserved. This tricksy, twisty novel spans centuries to tell the tale of a very peculiar school and the horror film made about it two hundred years later. If you have any interest in experimental fiction, queer writing or American Gothic then, somehow, this book covers all those bases. Emily also tells one hell of a story about why she’s frightened of home invasion. Come, gather round the teacher’s desk and listen . . . Books mentioned in this episode include: The Fingersmith (2002), by Sarah Waters The Little Stranger (2009), by Sarah Waters Ghost Story (1979), by Peter Straub Haunting of Hill House (1959), by Shirley Jackson House of Leaves (2000), by Mark Z. Danielewski The Return (2020), by Rachel Harrison “The Talent of the Room”, by Michael Ventura Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text Kate Summerscale is our first guest working in the realms of non-fiction. Her back-catalogue proves that the real world is every bit as dark and terrifying as the inside of Stephen King’s head. She’s covered murder in the famous The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (2008) and now she’s back with a more spiritual crisis in The Haunting of Alma Fielding. The book examines a very odd case of poltergeist activity in the London suburbs between the wars. Famous ghost hunters get involved, much crockery is thrown, jewellery is stolen (all by ghosts honestly!) and terrapins are manifested out of thin air. If all that sounds truly bizarre to you, then trust me, it’s the tip of a very spooky iceberg. Kate is definitely the one to take us through the story. Her research is meticulous, and her historical contextualisation paints a compelling portrait of a nation, a household, and a woman under threat of attack. Books mentioned in this episode include: “Chemical”, in Shocks, by Algernon Blackwood (1935) Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places, by Colin Dickey (2017) The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and our Obsession with the Unexplained, by Colin Dickey (2020) The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson (1959) Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text Ahoy mateys! My guest this week is the locked-room-murder-maestro himself, Stuart Turton. In 2018 Stu burst onto the scene with his genre-splicing triumph, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. It won awards and melted some brains with its maddening twists and turns. Stu’s follow-up is equally intricate but this time it’s also seaworthy. The Devil and the Dark Water is a murder mystery set on a 16th Century trading ship, but in true Turton-esque (is that a thing yet) style, it’s also about a dozen other genres too. There is horror aplenty, as the titular demon begins to reveal himself in the shadowy corners of the ship. We discuss all sorts this week, from the depravity of sailing vessels, to the agony of first novels, and we seriously question whether Sherlock Holmes is a d**k? Yep, this week there is swearing! Enjoy. Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text This week we get visceral – with the extreme body horror of Robert Jeremy Johnson and his new novel THE LOOP. Jeremy speaks to us from Portland, Oregon, where he’s busy watching the forest fires and working on ways to weaponise his words for good. THE LOOP is a novel all about conspiracy theory, medical mishap, and a class war raging through a small town. Think your favourite 80s teen comedy (with its guts spilling out) mixed with a little bit of 50s pulp Americana and smeared with 2020s political frenzy. That’s THE LOOP and man, it’s a trip!! Oh, and we hear some VERY alarming claims about the octopus! The books we discuss in this episode include: The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton (1967) Survivor Song, by Paul Tremblay (2020) IT, by Stephen King (1986) Boy’s Life, by Robert McCammon (1991) Summer of Night, by Dan Simmons (1991) A Collapse of Horses, by Brian Evenson (2016) Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks To Terry Smith Audio for sound editing. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text This week’s guest is up-and-coming horror extraordinaire, Jo Kaplan. Jo’s new haunted house novel, It Will Just Be Us is a tour-de-force of chills, thrills and things that kill. It’s got everything you could possibly want: creepy old house – check, mysterious locked room – CHECK, a witch who lurks in a swamp – CHECK!!!! It’s also got some of the best female relationships I’ve read in horror for a while, enough to pass the Bechdel test with flying colours. Jo and I talk about Freud’s uncanny and the infamous Winchester House, how to research her locations (or not), and how to make a ghost feel like something new. This chat feels like getting in at the ground floor of what will be a skyscraper career. Listen now, and you can say you were there at the start! The books we discussed this episode include: The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson (1959) “Jordan’s End”, by Ellen Glasgow, in The Shadowy Third (1923) The Gone World, by Tom Sweterlitsch (2018) House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski (2000) Don’t Turn Out the Lights: A Tribute to Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, edited by Jonathan Mayberry (2020) The Only Good Indians, by Stephen Graham Jones (2020) Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno Garcia (2020) Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod or email direct to [email protected]. Thanks To Terry Smith Audio for sound editing. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text This week we’re in conversation with Silvia Moreno-Garcia, the author of Mexican Gothic - 2020's twisted publishing phenomenon. We discuss the novel's roots in British soil, and whether a book can be considered 'too' Mexican or not Mexican enough. Along the way we also consider the classic Mexican horror cinema of Enrique Taboada, why not everything has to be magic realism, and why all aspiring writers should learn to keep their receipts. Silvia has fiery words for those who think every damn book that comes from Mexico needs to feature the day of the dead. It's an intense conversation - challenging and thought-provoking. Just don't dare call Mexican Gothic a romance! Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod or reach out direct to [email protected]. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text In the second episode i'm in conversation with John Langan, contemporary literary horror superstar and all round scholar of the genre. John is the author of the Bram Stoker Award-Winning classic The Fisherman and his latest collection is Children of the Fang and Other Genealogies. We talk about great influences and literary ventriloquism, what makes a great horror title, and what it's like to be part of the coolest club in the horror community. There are few writers out there with a better understanding of their own genre than John, and this interview is a primer in horror writing for newbies and aficionados alike. Books mentioned in our conversation include: Robert E. Howard - Wolfshead, and Other Stories Stephen King's Christine, Cujo and Skeleton Crew Laird Barron - "More Dark" in The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All Laird Barron - The Isiah Coleridge series (Blood Standard, Black Mountain, Worse Angels) Clive Barker - Books of Blood, Volumes 1-6 Stephen Graham Jones - "Raphael" in The Ones That Got Away Henry James · What Maisie Knew Peter Straub - Ghost Story Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod or reach out direct to [email protected]. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text In the first ever episode of Talking Scared we speak to horror megastar Paul Tremblay, author of the modern classic, A Head Full of Ghosts and this year's virus-shocker Survivor Song. There are musings on pandemics real and imaginary, the terror of sharks, and the terrible truth at the heart of horror fiction.Books mentioned in our conversation include: The Stand – Stephen King Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus – Bill Wasik & Monica Murphy Things We Lost in the Fire – Mariana Enriquez 2666 – Roberto Bolano “The Colonel’s Son” – in The Secret of Evil by Robert Bolano Come talk books with us on Twitter @TalkScaredPod Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices