Back on the trails for a mind-melting trip this week. Wendy Wagner is in the hot-seat, playing shaman as we discuss The Girl in the Creek – her brand new novel of fungoid-terror, eco-thrills and psychedelic strangeness. It’s a beautiful, bewildering hallucination of a book. Wendy’s inspirationsrange from cutting edge science to the antics of Scooby…

This week we’re talking about my Roman Empire. BIGFOOT!! But this time I have good reason to get geeky – my guest is Giano Cromley, hairy-hominid enthusiast, certified wildlife tracker, and author of the deeply charming American Mythology. It’s the story of a group of lost souls, joined in their search for the fabled ‘squatch of the North American …

I’m coming to you from the heatwave from hell – and I’ve never been more burdened by my body. And that is exactly the topic that this week’s guest has written all about. Rose Keating is an Irish writer, whose debut collection, Oddbody, presses enquiring fingers deep into the bizarre meat of our lives. These stories are about the inherent disgust of…

Time to talk righteous violence! S.A. Cosby is a writer on a meteoric rise. After the insane success of Razorblade Tears, and the Gothic horrors of All the Sinners Bleed, he’s back with a fresh crime epic of titanic brutality. King of Ashes is the tale of a family under threat from criminal forces, and the shocking depths they will go to in their f…

Sometimes monsters are real! This week’s episode is a foray into non-fiction, but no less scary for it. I’m talking to Pulitzer-winning Caroline Fraser about Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers This is no grotesque revelling in death and sadism,however. Murderland examines the extreme violence that plagued her native Pacif…

Vampirism is time travel. It’s also tragedy and freedom and Queerness, and sex anddeath. We talk about all of these thing with V.E. Schwab, when we sink our teeth into her new epic novel, Bury our Bones in the Midnight Soil. It’s the story of three women who lead complicated, violent, sensual lives across the centuries. The interconnect. They love.…

The third Let Us Palaver minisode (though this one is not so mini) – in which Nat and I reflect on The Waste Lands in full spoiler mode…and say REALLY mean things about Chris and his hurtful opinions. If you’ve been to the Tower before, I hope you dig this. Unlessyou agree with Chris about [redacted], in which case you’re dead to us. Support Talkin…

We’re finally on the path of The Beam. The Dark Tower Readalong reaches the land of wonder and ruination, in Book 3, The Waste Lands. Accompanied by Nat and Chris, we battle the great bear, get dirty in the speaking ring, and brave the streets ofLud. But we also have the first quake in our Ka-tet, when Chris offers the most egregiously wrong opinio…

John Connolly is, in my opinion, the greatest living writer working in the overlap of crime and horror. His long-running series of novels—focused on the Strange cases of his haunted detective, Charlie Parker—is now over twenty books strong. The latest, The Children of Eve is a pivotal instalment, so this seemed a good time to get John on the show, …

It’s a week of sadness and hilarity on Talking Scared. The happy stuff comes courtesy of Sarah Pinborough, author of Weird domestic gothics, like Behind Her Eyes and the brand new ghost story (or is it?) We Live Here Now. We talk about confounding expectations, about the rules of the psychological thriller, about the British horror scene then and n…

Talking Scared goes live! In April I was invited to chair a conversation between Michelle Paver and Ally Wilkes at the Oxford Literary Festival. I duly leapt on a train and bundled my way there – to ask the two survival horror queens about their stories of haunting and isolation in the coldest parts of the world. We talk about handling the Victoria…

Send in the clowns! In this Off Book episode I talk to Eli Craig, director of cult-classic Tucker and Dale vs Evil, and the man who put Clown in a Cornfield up on the big screen. After crowbarring my way into his press day, I asked him what drew him to the project, what else there is to ‘do’ with scary clowns and slashers in cinema, and what this m…

Let’s get grim and dark with Lord Grimdark! Perhaps the greatest benefit of having a book podcast like mine is the opportunity to speak to my very favourite authors. I’ve been reading Joe Abercrombie’s violent, world-weary dark fantasy for TWENTY years! And now he’s on the show. Consider me excited. His new book may be called The Devils, and it may…

Brian Keene has written so many damn books! …and I had never read any of them. This absolute horror faux-pas (and my embarrassment) is the reason that it’s taken so long to get Brian on the show. But I set a week aside and read as many Keene books as I could and here we are… on a leisurely stroll through Brian’s life and career,both of which he has…

I’ve been looking forward to releasing this one… Nat Cassidy comes to Talk Scared about When the Wolf Comes Home, his new novel that I –and people like me – are already calling out as one of the Best Books of the Year™. It’s a shaggy, undisciplined, sprinting beast of a book that obeys no rules. You may think it’s a werewolf novel, and you may be r…

Back to the 80s this week for one of the most singular horror movies of the year – now streaming on Shudder. Dead Mail is an ode to the era, but there are no neon fonts or leg warmers (or Olivia Newton Johns) here. Instead we’re in the drear of the decade, for a story about a synth-obsessed man who keeps his business partner captive in his flock-wa…

In the week that the world changed, we’re talking about the last time things got this crazy. Katherine Arden is the author of The Warm Hands of Ghosts — a novel set in the trenches of the First World War and on the borderline between horror and fantasy. It’s a Faustian pact made in No-Man’s Land, where our memories are the price we pay for keeping …

This week we go from Edinburgh, Scotland to Nashville, Tennessee, in the company of crime author Tariq Ashkanani. Tariq’s The Midnight King is a tricky, quasi-metafictional murder mystery about cursed manuscripts, familial secrets and the most heinous murders. It’s also a love letter to the kind of occult-tinged American crime epics that both he an…

Time to throw ourselves around. We’re covering Punk Goes Horror. The anthology of stories inspired by punk and alternative rock songs came out just a few weeks back. It brings together a mosh-pit full of authors, both new and established, to transmute their favourite songs into nasty little stories. I invited the anthology editor, William Sterling,…

The second Let Us Palaver minisode – in which Nat Cassidy dig into the things we couldn't say about The Drawing of the Three, and give MAJOR SPOILERS about whole Dark Tower series. We're really start to wonder if Chris is punking us. Support Talking Scared on Patreon Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch Come talk books on Bluesky …

The Ka-tet picks up exactly where we left off: on the beaches of Midworld, with Roland Deschain. (If none of that makes any sense to you, go listen to episode one of the Dark Tower Deep Dive immediately) Nat Cassidy, Chris Panatier and I gather for a long, philosophical, expletive-littered conversation about Book 2: The Drawing of the Three. We get…

It’s always great when Stephen Graham Jones comes to Talk Scared with us – but for once we aren’t talking about slashers! No, this time, we’re talking vampires! Or are we? Stephen’s new novel, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, is his best yet. Or at least the one that I love the most. It’s an epic and brutal saga of American history and shame, told throug…

Saddle up for a weird west week on Talking Scared. The start of a loose trilogy of sorts. This first instalment features Alex Grecian, talking about his fantastical vision of the Old West (and East) in 2023’s Red Rabbit and the brand-new follow-up, Rose of Jericho. We cover western inspirations, the melancholia of ghosts, Kansas legends and surpris…

No one is doing dystopia right now like Agustina Bazterrica. After Tender is the Flesh made us all consider vegetarianism, now she’s back for a long hard look at patriarchy, religion and populism in The Unworthy. It’s a quiet end of the world, set almost entirely in the confines of a strange convent, and the cult who will do anything to maintain th…

The latest Off Book episode has me facing my demons. My guest is Scott Derrickson, one of the best horror movie makers to ever do it. He scared us with Sinister, moved us with The Black Phone, marvelled us with Doctor Strange, and ruined my life with The Exorcism of Emily Rose. He’s back with The Gorge, a mad genre mashup, starring Anya-Taylor Joy …

Ready to hear a conversation about some devastatingly dark things? Sophie White and I have got you covered! In this expansive chat, we talk about her calculatingly distressing novel, Where I End – in which an isolated island community plays host to the worst, cruellest kind of loneliness. And that books is a springboard for others things, psychosis…

The title speaks volumes this week. It’s a mission statement. Kirsty Logan is the master of certain kind of edgy, on-the-margins fiction, Queer in every meaning of the word. She can be witchy and folkloric, or contemporary and cutting edge – and all of that range is showcased in her new collection, No & Other Love Stories. We talk about female desi…

Time to misbehave. Virginia Feito’s new novel, Victorian Psycho, is all about good behaviour, positive standards and polite conduct…and what happens when you flout all that, by – I dunno – slaughtering a houseload of people. It’s a much buzzed about book that takes the psychopathy of American Psycho back to the straightlaced, be-corseted world of t…

Are you hungry? Depending on your…erm… tastes, the next hour of conversation will do strange things to your appetite. Our guest is Lucy Rose, whose debut novel, The Lamb renders muscle and fat and sorrow down into a rich stew of cannibalism and rural Gothic. We talk about how rooted this book is in the landscape, history and folklore of Northern En…

Here is the first Let Us Palaver minisode – in which Nat Cassidy and I kick Chris off the call, and get to grips with the inner workings of The Dark Tower, without spoiling anything for him, or any of you on your first trip through these books. If you still listen after this spoiler warning and the two I give in the first few minutes of the episode…

Rich Duncan and Shane Keene in conversation with the author of THE DAUGHTERS OF BLOCK ISLAND and BENEATH THE POET'S HOUSE.

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the podcaster followed…” Welcome to the start of what is sure to be an epic journey. Step by step, over more than a dozen episodes, Talking Scared will be following the beam all the way to the Dark Tower – that mad edifice at the heart of Stephen King’s opus. Maybe it’s the heart of every story ever tol…

The latest Off Book episode takes you out to the American desert and leaves you there, cold, alone and confused. We’re speaking with Dutch Marich, the surprisingly lovely mind behind the most terrifying found footage I’ve seen in years – The Horror in the High Desert series. These films are full of a particular kind of fear. Never obscure, but alwa…

Tyranny is the key this week on Talking Scared this week. How fitting. Susan Barker’s Old Soul is a globe-trotting, decade-spanning supernatural tour of autocracies, from behind the Iron Curtain to contemporary China. If that isn’t frightening enough, it also features an ageless woman who curses anyone she meets, a grand cosmic entity, and the exhi…

It’s a collegial week on Talking Scared. ‘Cos I’m talking dark, occult academia with someone very local to me. Kate van der Borgh’s debut, And He Shall Appear is basically a sinister version of my own life. It’s about a young working class lad, like me, who goes to a prestigious university, like me… but there ours paths diverge, as he meets a fello…

Welcome back and Happy New Year. 2025 looms ahead. Frightening. Uncertain. Crazy!! Our first guest of the year has written the book that best captures this mad future we’re living in. Clay McLeod Chapman returns to Talking Scared, to talk about Wake Up And Open Your Eyes – his new novel of mass demonic possession, transmitted through poisonous medi…

Send us a text How else to end 2024 than with an entirely subjective list of the best things I’ve read over the year? How many of you will guess the number one spot? I bet none of you will guess the number two? Let me know your thoughts – what you loved, and what you think I missed Enjoy! Support Talking Scared on Patreon Come talk books on Twitter…

Send us a text It’s that time of year again. When I celebrate the winter solstice by getting some horror authors to come and talk in deep, emotional detail about a scary book that we like. This time the Christmas Special Deep Dive kicks the tires and looks under the hood of Stephen King’s most underrated novel: From a Buick 8. My friends on this we…

Send us a text … and we’re back! Just in time for this seasonal tradition. The State of the Horror Nation 2024 – our expert-led review of the best that the year had to offer in terms of horror writing and pen-and-ink nightmares. I’m joined, as ever by my stalwart co-host for this gig, Emily Hughes, author of Horror For Weenies (go check her mammoth…

Send us a text This is the last way-back episode before the show returns with a scream next week. But this is an episode worth remembering – my first ever conversation with Catriona Ward, about her game-changing The Last House on Needless Street too! This was a big ask for a novice interviewer. How the hell do you talk about a book that hinges on s…

Send us a text A chance to revisit one of my favourite books and favourite ever conversations this week. Zakiya Dalila Harris’s The Other Black Girl came out in early 2021, and for once I was ahead of the curve! Right from the start, I adored this novel of workplace micro-aggression and satirical horror in the publishing industry – and I’m glad to …

Send us a text I’m feeling Gothic this week. Must be the weather. In lieu of a new episode, I searched the vault and found this cracker from January 2021, in which Laura Purcell — doyenne of the contemporary British Gothic — talked me through her Victorian spookshow of mesmerism and haunted silhouettes, The Shape of Darkness. We also get into the s…

Send us a text This From the Vault episode is not quite so dusty. Gemma and I recorded this in 2022, but it’s more pertinent than ever. One because Gemma’s great uncanny novella The Folly is being reissued this week, and two, because the world is a mad place right now, and we all need to take care of our minds. This conversation is all about that. …

Send us a text Still on a break – still releasing episodes “From the Vault.” But this week’s was carefully chosen. In a time of darkness and doom-laden days, laughter is the best thing I can lace your horror with. And thankfully T. Kingfisher exists in the world. The funniest horror writer I know. We spoke WAAAAY back in October 2020, in episode 9,…

Send us a text I’m on a break – but couldn’t resist releasing something. Especially on today of all days, when lovers of democracy require audio sustenance whilst they wait in line to preserve America. For the first From the Vault episode, I’ve gone back to December of 2020, for an interview with Michael Marshall Smith. We talk about his 30 years o…

Send us a text Halloween has finally arrived. I’m marking it in grim, macabre style. For this Off Book Samhain Special, I’m joined by Kaelyn Moore, host and creator of Heart Starts Pounding – a podcast for the darkly curious, which offers up a new true-story of horror, hauntings and mystery every week. Kaelyn is a treasure trove of haunted anecdote…

Send us a text Things are heating up as we approach Halloween. I’m joined by a good friend of Talking Scared – Rachel Harrison – to talk about the hot kind of immortality Her new novel, So Thirsty, does much more than that though. It weighs the weaponization of beauty culture, it asks how women can navigate a world in which youth seems to be everyt…

Send us a text As we gear up for Halloween, we get all gussied up in Gothic. Del Sandeen joins me to talk about the curses, colorism, and all the many influences in her Southern Gothic debut This Cursed House. It’s a novel that twists the sub-genre’s typical reliance on race, for a more subtle, pernicious form of prejudice. But it’s also chock full…

Send us a text Things get disinhibited on Talking Scared this week, when CJ Leede joins us for a conversation about her new novel, American Rapture. The novel plunges middle America into a torrid apocalypse, as a sexual plague spreads across the nation, creating “lust hell on earth.” In this framework, C.J crafts a story of sexual awakening, sacrif…

Send us a text Hold hands, we need to stick together. This week’s episode plunges us into the impossible and endless dark, with Sofia Ajram and her experimental, existential headf*ck of a debut novella, Coup de Grâce. It’s the tale of a man who gets lost in an endless subway station – and the monsters inside (and inside himself) We talk about every…