Talking Scared

Send us a text Are you a Weenie? Don’t be offended. I am.    Weenies are the curious-but-nervous. Those of us who love horror, but who never feel safe from its power to ruin our sleep (and a week of our life). If that’s you, or if you know someone who suffers from Weenie-ism, then Emily Hughes is here!   Emily’s new book, Horror For Weenies: Everything You Need to Know About the Films You’re Too S...

Send us a text Anna Bogutskaya is one of the UK’s most prominent film critics, with a penchant for horror. She knows her scary onions. And in her new book, Feeding the Monster, she asks an important question (well, important to the likes of you and me) – Why does horror have a hold on us?   In concise but free-ranging essays, she looks at the prominent themes that sets the horror oft the last deca...

Send us a text Send in the clowns. Tell them not to forget their crossbows and chainsaws.   This week our guest is Adam Cesare, who’s Clown in a Cornfield trilogy reaches a climax (I won’t say end) in Book 3: The Church of Frendo. I read all three books in one mad rush and they confounded all of my horror-savvy, slasher-weary expectations. These books are a State of the Nation story for the ages –...

Send us a text Literary or genre fiction? Dumb question.   This week’s guest showcases just how dumb! With her debut collection of stories, Mystery Lights showing that horror is literary and literary is horror. These tales of the American desert are full of hauntings, monsters, killers, and other oddities, yet they take a non-typical approach to the strangeness. They care more about the human in t...

Send us a text This week’s guest on Talking Scared: Off Book scares children.   I mean… that’s not his main job or intent (I don’t think) but he does it anyway. Trevor Henderson is the internet’s favourite horror artist. He creates digital nightmares that have become the fuel for a new generation of nightmares. Trust me, in the few moments that Gen Z aren’t being terrified by climate change or the...

Send us a text Finally, Gabino Iglesias is on the show.    I tried, and failed, to get him for his break-out Stoker-winning smash, The Devil Takes You Home. Now he’s here to talk about his brand new barrio-noir, House of Bone and Rain. It’s an amalgamation of brutal street violence and Lovecraftian otherness – all taking place in the sweltering eye of a Puerto Rican hurricane.   Gabino and I talk...

Send us a text Remember those books you read in the summer when you were young? Kids fighting evil in their small town? Bikes, and blood brothers and promises to keep?    If you love those kinda stories then you’re in good company. This week Jonathan Janz joins me to talk about the coming-of-age horror in his ongoing epic, Children of the Dark. Book One was rereleased earlier this year, just in ti...

Send us a text Why is Adam Nevill so scary?    I don’t know. Do you? He’s a nice guy – as you’ll hear in this episode. Yet he tells stories that crawl under your skin and stay there. Stories that squat in your subconscious.   His latest novel, All the Fiends of Hell is no exception. Same elusive nightmare mystery, but expanded to a whole epic end-of-the-world canvas. And when Adam says end of the...

Send us a text Part One was epic. Part Two is just as good. In that way, it’s much better than the adaptation of IT!   In the second part of this celebration of King short stories, a whole other roster of Constant Readers come along to talk about their favourites. We have writers for all ages, a fellow podcaster and a filmmaker with important updates.    All of them united by one thing – their lov...

Send us a text What’s your favourite Stephen King story? Everyone has one.   Hot off the back of the recent interview with the man himself, it seemed a neat idea to get a few friends on the show to talk about their own preferences from King’s huge back-catalogue of short fiction.   I am the architect of my own doom!   What was supposed to be a small side project grew, like Grey Matter, or unnatura...

Send us a text Stephen King is back!   What other intro do you need?   Okay, fine. He talks to me about the stories behind the stories in his new collection, You Like it Darker. I had the audacity to ask him “where he got some of his ideas.”    He also updates us on the potential of a third Jack Sawyer book, to follow The Talisman and Black House. He hints at what’s next from him, and Holly Gibney...

Send us a text 200 episodes! Madness. Who knew there could be so much to say about horror?    I knew. You knew. And here we are.   It turns out that the real cursed treasure was the friends we made along the way – and how better to celebrate the bicentennial, than by inviting some of the Talking Scared nearest and dearest, to tell us their scariest story?   I called, they answered – with tales of...

Send us a text My unpaid cohost returns. Josh Malerman ladies and gentlemen.   Josh has been on the show many times before, but never have I been so excited to speak to him. His latest novel, Incidents Around the House is about as good a horror book as I’ve ever covered on this show… or possibly read in my life. It’s the story of a young girl, her family, and the entity pursuing them, but – as you...

Send us a text In the second Off Book episode we get out of our armchairs and go on a real adventure. Well, not really – but we talk to two people who do.   Danielle and Cassie are the hosts of National Park After Dark – a podcast catering to the “morbid outdoor enthusiast.” They have skyrocketed to success, with well-researches stories of murder, maulings and mad incidents out in the world’s nati...

Send us a text Paul Tremblay returns to Talking Scared on a long orbit, like that fabled Planet X that’s going to kill us all.    He’s back after two years for another discussion of horror aesthetics, introspective terrors and mixed-media nightmares – this time in Horror Movie, his meta-take on cursed cinema and lethal creativity.    Horror Movie is about young filmmakers and the shoot that marks...

Send us a text Elle Nash’s Deliver Me ruined my week. In the best possible way.   This book, about a woman so desperate for a child that she does truly terrible, no-good things, contains some of the bleakest, most brutal scenes I’ve read in a while. And it’s not even really being treated as a horror novel.    Elle and I talk about that.   We also talk about the hot-button topics of the novel, the...

Send us a text Todd Keisling can write the hell out of a short story. So well, in fact, that they may convince you to resist a bully, stop going to church, or tell your boss to f**k off!    Cold, Black and Infinite is full of liminal tales of the between-places. Cosmic “Otherness” that defies religion or belief. Corporate soul-hells that take everything you have…and more.   Weird then, that they a...

Send us a text Something new for me this week. A bold venture into uncharted territory.    The graphic novel!!   As is proper, I’ve started with one of the best. Emil Ferris joins me to talk through the creation of her landmark epic, My Favourite Thing is Monsters. Volume 1 came out in 2017 to rapturous acclaim, and now, Volume 2 picks up exactly where that story of cute werewolves and cherished m...

Send us a text Believe it or not, there is more to life than just books. Very little, granted… but there is more.   Talking Scared: Off Book is a chance for this show to spread its wings a little. To fly further, wider, deeper into the world of horror and come back carrying different kinds of guests in our bloody beak!    (ok, I may have stretched that metaphor too far).   Basically, I’ll be talki...

Send us a text We return to Australia for the second time in a month, to find that (once again), home invasion isn’t the worst thing to happen on a typical day.   Alan Baxter’s Blood Covenant is a violent, thrilling story of a threeway battle between an innocent family, a nasty criminal gang of bogans (see, I’m learning!) and an otherworldly force that is even worse! Think, what if The Strangers t...

Send us a text A charming man approaches. With dark secrets to tell you.   Yeah, that L.P. Hernandez. Author of the novella In the Valley of the Headless Men and the forthcoming collection, No Gods, Only Chaos. Both are great; both are entirely different. One of them will expand your horizons. One of them will shrink you in horror.    I’ll let you find out which.    We talk about both books in thi...

Send us a text Opinions are like assholes, they say. Everybody has one.   The subtext of that, is that you shouldn’t show them to people.   Well my guest and I don’t hold back on ours this week. Robert Ottone joins me for a conversation about his debut novel for adults, The Vile Thing We Created, which is almost exactly one year old.    I loved it, which is more than either of us can say for the o...

Send us a text Ah the madhouse. The loony bin. The ASYLUM!!   A classic horror location. One of my favourites, but problematic as hell in the wrong hands. Thankfully, I have the right author for the topic. Christ Panatier has the talent and the sensitivity to ensure that his novel, The Redemption of Morgan Bright can engage with the tropes without perpetuating them. He brings something as old-as-t...

Send us a text We all love a good spooky house. And most of us enjoy a terrifying home-invasion ordeal (or at least, I know I do).   What happens when you put them together? Kaaron Warren’s The Underhistory is the answer, but it’s nothing at all like what you’d expect.   This new novel by the award-winning Australian writer is a story of memory, of rooms and architecture, of violence and misogyny,...

Send us a text I bite off a lot this week, in a five-way conversation with editors and contributors to the ever-so-of-the-moment anthology The Black Girl Survives in This One. That’s a promise right there on the title page, but as you will find out, survival is not always the same thing as living happily ever after.    Saraciea J. Fennell, Desiree S. Evans, Monica Brashears & Eden Royce talk to me...