Talking Scared

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. A...

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 a...

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...

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 influen...

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 z...

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 dar...

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 tal...

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 j...

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...

It: Welcome to Derry has just reached its Season One conclusion and the theories are flying as to where the show will go next.   I have something like an answer for you. Maybe. Perhaps. Cos the creators, Andy and Barbara Muschietti, are on Talking Scared for a conversation about the show, the movies and how they work within King’s story.   They talk about their childhood relationship with the book...

Welcome to the now sixth annual State of the Horror Nation.   This is the mega-episode, in which I gather a darkly-inclined supergroup of horror fans and commentators—a horror cabinet, if you will—to cast their informed eyes and minds over the year’s best horror.   We talk trends, generation gaps, terrifying moments, and pick what they consider to be their favourite scary books of 2025.   I am jus...

It’s all about memory this week.   Remember that time literary superstar Carmen Maria Machado came on the show? No? Well here’s your chance to catch up on what you missed.   Carmen spoke to me about Her Body and Other Parties and In the Dream House – the former a collection of folktale and fable, spun to hideous effect; the latter a piercing fictionalised memoir of abuse and haunted relationships....

Jeff VanderMeer and I did not fall out!!   This is a myth that has arisen since Jeff came on the show back in 2021, to discuss his eco-espionage crisis thriller, Hummingbird Salamander.   Well, this trip back to the Vault will hopefully dispel that rumour.   Instead what you’ll hear is a conversation with the Emperor of Weird fiction, talking about conservation and climate catastrophe, about plans...

Revisiting a true highlight this week!   Will Dean’s The Last Thing to Burn is one of very few 10/10 books i've ever featured on this podcast. It’s a flawless study of isolation, survival, exploitation and the most toxic of masculinities – all about a Vietnamese immigrant, trapped in the home of her ‘husband,’ the monstrous Leonard.   Will is an amazing writer, with an amazing life. He’s creating...

This flashback episode takes us to early 2021, when I was joined by Courtney Summers – the boundary-pushing author of dark YA fictions for a corrective lesson.   Courtney came on the show to discuss The Project, a novel of sinister elite cults, evil charisma and radicalisation. At the time Trump had just been kicked out of office, so those things seemed safe to talk about.   Alas… they are maybe s...

Time for a classic haunted house.   I’m on a short break from the show, to recoup, read without pressure and generally try not to implode. So we’re heading into the vault for some older conversations that new listeners may have missed and long-termers may enjoy anew.   Where better to start that in a haunted house with a Queen of 21st century horror – Ms Tananarive Due!   This was our first conver...

Here be dragons!   I’m celebrating Halloween week on Talking Scared with the very cream of the bucket list. Joe Hill is finally on the show!   The author of Heart Shaped Box, NOS4A2, “The Black Phone” and Lock & Key is back with his first novel in nearly a decade, and it’s a beast!   King Sorrow is an epic of dragons, diabolical deals, decade-spanning friendships, love and hate and everything in b...

In our fifth Let Us Palaver, Nat and I dally a little longer in ‘Salem’s Lot to hunt down a few more vamps and follow up some threads mentioned in the main episode.   This is where we get spoilery, so this is just for those who have been to the Tower already. But we talk about Chris’s predictions for Father Callaghan, discuss the moral arc of King’s entire fictional project (no big thing right!) a...

‘Salem’s Lot is FIFTY years old this month. Hellfire, how did that happen? We’re gonna celebrate the bloodsucking and small town shenanigans for all they are worth!!   But some of you know that the Lot sits just to one side of the Path of the Beam – so this is also a key zig in our endless zagging towards The Dark Tower. You may just not know why yet? And neither does Chris, so no one tell him.  ...

Joe Lansdale is here to give us all a smack upside the head.   We are talking about The Essential Horror of Joe R. Lansdale – his brand new career-retrospective, collecting the stories that have defined him for decades as one of the most edgy, provocative writers of the grim and grotesque.   We cover some of the classics, like “Bubba Ho Tep,” “Mr Weed Eater” and “On the Far Side of the Cadillac De...

Mine isn’t the only Good Boy released into the world this week. You may have heard of a little film that shares my books name.   I joke – Ben Leonberger’s Good Boy is everywhere, and rightly so. It’s a haunted house movie told from the POV of Ben’s dog Indy (playing himself). It’s a magic trick of filmmaking and puppy eyes.   Ben came on the show for a generous chat about making the movie. He tell...

Ah the arrogance of writers. Now I am one, officially, I thought I’d better do something fitting.   So I set up a whole episode of my podcast to talk about my own book – Good Boy! My debut novella about small English towns, the bonds between men and dogs, and a battle between bravery and monsters.   Thankfully, I have friends who will facilitate this type of nonsense, so thanks to Nat Cassidy and...

Another day, another episode about the weird-arse end of nowhere!   We remain in the North of England for this second part of a weeklong celebration of the Northern Weird Project – six novellas published by Wild Hunt Books (including one by yours truly!).   This time it’s conversation with Matt Wesolowski, about his train-bound folkloric horror, Don’t Call Mum, Jodie Robins, with her magical seasi...

It’s grim up North.   But thankfully, it’s also weird. Deliciously, darkly, disturbingly weird!   This week we are celebrating the Northern Weird Project – six novellas published by Wild Hunt Books (including one by yours truly!). In this first roundtable, I’ve gathered two of the writers and the genius behind the project, Ariell Cacciola, to talk about Northern literary culture in the North, haun...

What’s even real anymore?   Some of the best horror writer’s ask that question. Some, like Michael Wehunt, live in the spaces in between.   Michael’s new novel, The October Film Haunt bends reality in fascinating ways, in a story about online legend, digital demons and analog horror  – all the stuff that keeps me awake at night.   We talk about all of it, as well as formative found-footage movies,...