The ARC Party

Pre-Order all of these books at my Bookshop page. It’s that time of year, where I am graced with the presence of two of Horror’s biggest and most esteemed advocates to talk about what books we’re looking forward to in the next half-year. Becky Spratford is gearing up for a massive launch for her non-fiction essay book WHY I LOVE HORROR: Essays on Horror Literature - an excellent collection of 18 e...

Preorder here! Preorder here! Back in January during our 2025 Horror Preview, Emily Hughes picked GIRL IN THE CREEK by Wendy Wagner as one of her June books that she was looking forward to. So that’s when I first saw the cover, heard the pitch. Man, it sounded good. Cut to I’m taking a quick business trip to Phoenix and need something to read on the plane. Well, I just got this ARC in the mail - t...

Buy Sam’s Books and preorder GALLOWAY’S GOSPEL Something’s Wrong in the Hudson Valley Guys, if there’s one thing I’ve been consistent on when it comes to author Sam Rebelein, it’s dragging my ass — to my own detriment. Back when his debut novel EDENVILLE released last about a year ago, I heard great things about it, listened to Sam talk about it on podcasts, and failed to actually read the thing....

Preorder signed copies here! Hey, neighbor! When I heard Todd Keisling — an author I knew as a writer of Appalachian horror/cosmic horror — was writing a book about a widower moving to a retirement home… I couldn’t resist. There was no way this was going to be anything but awesome. And I was right, but Todd also plunged his hand into my chest and ripped my still-beating heart out. Which is to say...

Preorder directly from This Is Horror I was on ‘Naked Attraction’ Michael David Wilson has established himself as a horror institution over the last decade and a half, and so naturally when there’s a new novel out with his name on it, it’s gonna be horror right? Nah. But don’t let that deter you, horror heads, because this is a dame fine read even if it’s lacking in vampires or werewolves. DADDY’S...

Buy this book and support the podcast! This guy walks into a bar… Nick Kolakowski has been in the writing business for a long time, and his come up has been sort of split between horror and crime. He’s got impressive credentials in horror and crime anthologies and magazines, as well as his own published works. The book of the hour, however, is solidly, fantastically a crime book. Detective, to be...

Buy Jon’s Books! Reunited after all these years The last time I interviewed Jon Bassoff about a book, Barack Obama was president. Yeah. Jon has had a rewarding career of great book releases since then, and when I saw the synopsis for THE MEMORY WARD, I knew I had to read it and get him back on a call to catch up. This book is going to invite comps like crazy, to stuff like Stepford Wives, Truman S...

Get your copy of Death on the Swayback (hopefully) Shop for Chris’ other books on my Bookshop page Love At First Day of the Convention I want to tell you a story about a boy and a boy. It all started one afternoon in the most romantic of locations, the Renaissance St. Louis Airport Hotel. I was attending Authorcon 4, my first Authorcon. And there, across the sea of tables filled with horror books,...

Preorder Special Backstage Package from Truborn Preorder the regular edition from Truborn Punk is horror. Horror is punk. Though there seems to be a particular empathy between punk music and horror, the concern could be, if you were to collect a bunch of horror stories themed to punk rock songs, wouldn’t they all just be the same thing - more or less? Not when William Sterling and his band of scri...

Preorder THE STAIRCASE IN THE WOODS Five friends go into the woods, four come out. I’ve been reading Chuck Wendig books since the early 2010s, when he had back to back releases of BLACKBIRDS and MOCKINGBIRD, the first two books in the Miriam Black series of (six) books. Since then, I’ve read piles of his stories adding up to thousands of pages. Psychics, AI, Jedis, Pandemics, Serial Killers… he’s...

Introducing: Three Chapters a Day with Ryan McRae My good friend Ryan McRae is an avid reader like myself, but he goes in for a different type of story. While I’m mucking around in horror and crime, Ryan is traveling to other worlds and universes and realities in the pages of Sci-Fi and Fantasy books. Recently, Ryan had an opportunity to get an early look at the new book by TJ Klune, called THE BO...

Streamin and Dreamin In the looming orange-tinged shadows of the current political situation, six lovers-of-story got together to have a chat about books. Why? Because first of all: they love books. Second of all: Because books shine light on darkness, give voices to those silenced, record history for those erased, recognize those unseen, and punch fucking nazis. So, six people, ten books each, tw...

Buy THE CONTORTIONIST’S HANDBOOK here! Craig Clevenger is a hell of a writer. But don’t take my word for it. Chuck Palahniuk has praised The Contortionist’s Handbook. Irvine Welsh has. Jordan Harper has, Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly has, Stephen Graham Jones has, Paul Tremblay has… many people have. And for good reason. It’s a fucking great book. And what follows, in my humblest, is a fucki...

Preorder Here At Dark, I Have Hope It may seem like a contradiction that someone who can write such brutal things is such a lovely and sweet human being, but I think that in this episode, we tapped into a possible reason that it’s not a contradiction at all that Eric Larocca will destroy you with the most stark and frightful words, and smother you with happy thoughts when you talk to him. The trut...

Get Clay’s books here! Welcome to my new show, Couchsurfing Critics! The ever-talented and amazing Clay McLeod Chapman has returned for another epic round of conversation with yours truly. This time, we’re smashing duration records and defying interview conventions. It is, I would say, the closest to just us grabbing coffee and chatting that we could have hoped for, and I am very pleased with the...

Welcome to 2025! This is the semi-annual Horror Preview episode, with my treasured guests Becky Spratford and Emily Hughes. Every six months, we gather to share with you all the extensive list of books we’re looking forward to in 2025. As is tradition, we talk about six months at a time, so I’m so excited to share with you all 36 books that we talked about in this episode, covering January to June...

It’s been a big year for the Stephen Graham Jones fans out there. It started with a couple of new novels, and then it was a reissue. Then it was five more reissues. Then there was that short story on Tor. And it just kept going. So, I convened the SGJ nerd triumvirate to talk about all of the goings on in 2024… and beyond. Presented more or less chronologically, we cover the deep dive episodes we’...

I’m not going to give a beat by beat, but I want to start by sharing how I got involved with Scare Up The Vote. I am driving in highway traffic when I get a text from Becky Spratford. It just says: “Can you talk. It’s big. Call when you can.” I never thought of myself as an awfulizer, but a vague text like that gets me nervous. So I immediately called back Becky and when she answered I asked the o...

Order your copy here! The ages-old tradition. The last night as a free man. Some of us have participated in this tradition. Some, more than others. Usually it’s going to include some booze, some lewd behavior, some macho nonsense, and maybe the drunken utterance “I’d die for you, man.” But. Would they? In this book, Dan Howarth marries (heh) the concept of a bachelor/stag party with a fabricated s...

THE DEVIL BY NAME I know, I know. You’re wondering why I’m posting an interview with Keith Rosson after the book is already available. Sometimes in life, plans change. In this case I was originally planning to talk to Keith several weeks earlier, but circumstances changed plans, and as we’re busy important folks, it took us a while to get a new date on the books. But there was no way I was going t...

PREORDER REST STOP Nat Cassidy was kind enough to join me once more on the podcast to talk about his upcoming novella, out on Shortwave, called REST STOP (preorder link above the cover image). While REST STOP is a quick read, and pretty chock-full of violence and creepy crawlies, we managed to get pretty deep into a conversation about generational trauma and survival - themes that are present thro...

Pre-Order HERE Content Warning: In this episode, we discuss suicide, depression, and self harm Sofia Ajram joined me to talk about COUP DE GRÂCE, her upcoming novella, an intense, personal, existential, liminal nightmare that will make you think deeply about what life is all about. In our talk, we cover myriad topics including liminal spaces and stories and how things like depression can be limina...

David James Keaton is a brilliant and hilarious author. He’s put out a hefty stack of books, and created some of the most entertaining podcast moments I’ve captured in the thirteen years I’ve been doing this. For this episode, we’re looking at his upcoming release, SHALLOW ENDS , which may or may not ask “what would you do if you were on the back of a fire truck party bus and you realized that thi...

So many podcasts! I thought I could make one podcast episode where I talked to some folks who podcast about horror, and it would be a one-stop-shop for folks looking for a new favorite commute time killer (hmm. commute-time killer? commute time-killer?) Well, as is often the case, it wasn’t until I was in the middle of it that I realized two things: * There are so many podcasts talking about horro...

So many podcasts! I thought I could make one podcast episode where I talked to some folks who podcast about horror, and it would be a one-stop-shop for folks looking for a new favorite commute time killer (hmm. commute-time killer? commute time-killer?) Well, as is often the case, it wasn’t until I was in the middle of it that I realized two things: * There are so many podcasts talking about horro...