Talking Scared

Love is very very real on this week’s episode. The man, the myth, Chuck Tingle returns for a conversation about his latest novel, Fabulous Bodies – a story of body horror, influencer culture, artistic integrity and glam rock graverobbing.   We talk about all of that, as well as the different rules for famous people, combining humour and extreme violence, we get some nuggets of info about Chuck’s y...

This week we’re putting the boot right into the ribs of the AI Industry, but doing it in horrific style, with Paul Tremblay and Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep.   It’s a story of a young gamer, tasked with piloting a man’s comatose body across the United States using AI tech. But deep inside, the man is still conscious, and what he’s experiencing is nightmarish.   Dark stuff, but surprisingly...

Part Two of my Scaredy Boy special, in which I quiz my friends in fear, Damo, Sean and To—AKA the Scaredy Boys themselves—about what they’ve seen and suffered through in their podcasting mission to conquer horror movies.   We talk number one examples of dread, disgust and despair. We pick our favourite horror villains. We talk about the films we’ll never watch again and those we’re too scared to w...

Would you rather die or live on and on and on and on…   That’s one of the questions at the heart of Tom Lin’s Babylon, South Dakota. It’s a novel about a Chinese family who inherit an American farm, and whose lives are forever changed when the US military build strange missile silos on their land. It’s weird, inexplicable, deep, epic, sad and joyful and all the other things that make a good book....

The first of a two-part special with the Scaredy Boys, my brothers-in-cowardice from Down Under. Damo, Tom and Sean are famously and unashamedly terrified of horror movies, and started a podcast to face their fears. Since 2020 they’ve been watching and analysing a horror movie every week – so now they’ve probably seen more than most of us.   I got them onto Talking Scared to discuss their insane p...

I dunno if this week’s episode is a dystopian nightmare or just a realist thriller.   Naomi Krtizer, multi-award winning author of sci-fi and horror, join me for a conversation about her new novella, Obstetrix. It follows the struggles of doctor, kidnapped by a cult to work as their in-house OBGYN. What follows is a balance between personal survival and the obligation to the women in her care.   N...

Horror’s reigning Queen of Extreme returns to the show!   CJ Leede is the author of Maeve Fly and American Rapture, and if you’re abreast of contemporary horror you’ve heard of her twisted take on Americana.   She’s back to talk about her third novel, Headlights, in which people are waking up from fugue-like states, to find themselves draped in the flayed skins of other people. What’s going on? Wh...

Melissa Albert’s novel may be called The Children, but it’s certainly not for kids.   This is a story about the dark creativity behind bright make-believe, about the pretty lies of childhood and the brutal truths of growing up. It’s about writers and writing and as you’ll hear me point out, it does for fantasy fiction what Stephen King’s Misery did for Gothic romance.   And by god do we talk about...

Off to Old Dublin Town to have creepy tales pumped direct into our earholes this week. I’m joined by Peter Dunne, the writer and director of Petrified — Ireland’s premier horror drama podcast.   It’s a horror show with a vein of Irish humour, but it’s not afraid to get really nasty when the chance arises. Across dozens of episodes, Peter and the team have offered serial killing parents, haunted li...

Disgust, despair and belly laughs on the show this week – with Neena Viel and her new novel, I’ll Watch Your Baby.   It’s a dense, troubling tale of child theft, social horror and demons, with plenty of putrid feet to give you a summertime ick! But if the book is a sickener, the author is a delight. Neena makes me do a proper full-on guffaw (has anyone EVER guffawed?), whilst we talk about urban-v...

A little more chat as the last of the starkblast fades.   In this bonus Palaver episode, Nat and I stick around to dissect Chris’s disproportionate love for The Wind Through the Keyhole. We talk about what, if any conclusions can be drawn from this book, and then we get onto King’s intersections with Lovecraft and Tolkien – and some deep cut Dark Tower references elsewhere in the canon.   Enjoy. B...

Whilst the wind and world howls outside, we can all hunker indoors for the latest Dark Tower Deep Dive into King’s 2012 novel-of-stories, The Wind Through the Keyhole.   To some, this could be an inessential pitstop, a mere nostalgic coda, written long after the climax of the main saga. To others it’s a testament to Stephen King’s raw storytelling chops, which shed a little more purpling light on...

Trad wives are taking over horror in 2026 – but I predict none will be more frightening and more gorgeously WEIRD than Sarah Langan’s novel.   It’s the tale of a young woman in the dying era of journalism and the YouTube influencer who offers her hope, and much worse things…. I absolutely loved it.   Sarah and I talk about the trad wife phenomenon, where it comes from, what it means, and how it’s...

Kaelyn Moore returns to talk scared, straight from the helm of Heart Starts Pounding – her mega podcast of mysteries, murder and the macabre.   She watches a lot of dark documentaries for research. I asked her to come talk about a few that recently inspired her (or disturbed her). We cover serial killers, cursed objects and a relationship that will give you serious ICK! But of course, this being T...

This week is full of muck and murk and mushrooms. We flit amongst the trees, we bed on moss, we howl at the moon. Daisy Pearce is entering her bog witch era! The author takes us to her native Cornwall, for a story of haunting and imprisonment, small town baggage and creepy houses in the woods. We talk about the oppressive landscape and the mythical texture of the place. We ask whether anyone in a...

This week we host one of the most exciting horror filmmakers of the decade – Damian McCarthy, the twisted mind behind Caveat, Oddity and now, Hokum.   It’s the biggest film in Damian’s career so far, with his biggest star, Adam Scott playing Ohm, a deeply flawed American writer who travels to Ireland, to spread his parent’s ashes. Whilst staying in a creaky old hotel, he stumbled across dark human...

Cognitohazards abound this week, as Marcus Kliewer joins me for a conversation about the reality-shredding We Used to Live Here and his new novel of obsessional rules, The Caretaker.   In both books, there are things that should not be known, and certainly not questioned. Yet questioning is my job – so we get into the expansive and weird universe Marcus is building, and the process of playing game...

A conversation about codes of honour and the rules of haunting in this week’s episode – as I’m joined by Kylie Lee Baker, author of 2025’s incredible Bat Eater, and the brand-new Japanese Gothic.   It’s the story of a very particular haunted house, a brutal samurai family, and a murderer who can’t remember his crime. It’s exhilaratingly weird and Kylie leads me through its many strange rooms.   We...

When Stephen King tells you to have a guest on your podcast – you listen!   That’s how I came to meet Caroline Bicks, the inaugural Stephen E. King Chair at the University of Maine, and author of the Monsters in the Archive – the first full-length study of the King literary collection.   It’s part memoir, part literary biography, part granular exploration of King’s editorial process – but ALL fun....

Listen at your own peril this week.   I spoke with Ian Tuason and Nina Kiri, the director and star of Undertone – billed as “the scariest movie you’ll ever hear!”   It’s the story of an isolated podcaster, who makes the terrible mistake of listening to some very unnerving audio files…which then start to bleed into her own life. You can imagine the number it did on me!   Ian and Nina talk about the...

Corporate culture is a nightmare, but getting out of the office brings its own problems in Carter Keane’s debut novella – Morsel.   It’s a story about monsters and eldritch beings, about killer cults and evil law-enforcement, about wellbeing scams and a boss from hell – but it’s also a springboard for a whole conversation about the cons (many) and pros (debatable) of capitalism. Carter indulges my...

Nat and I stick around in the shadowed recesses of Black House for another half hour, to discuss all the things that Chris got right and wrong – and to make some entirely unfounded claims of our own.   It’s overflowing with spoilers for the whole Dark Tower series, so don’t listen if you’re a newbie. We start to ask who is the Crimson King? Would Roland and Jack have gotten along? And we get very...

Time to whet our appetites for the Dark Tower again – this time with an extra serving of ass cheek! After three months away, we’re picking up with travellin’ Jack Sawyer after we left him in The Talisman. We find him in a sleepy Wisconsin town, where the dimension-hopping, child-eating Fisherman is plying his awful trade.   Yep… it’s time for Black House. The book in which King’s universes collide...

After seeing an early screener of Something Very Bad is Going to Happen I immediately thought it was going to be huge! So I leapt ahead of the curve and invited writer and showrunner, Haley Z Boston to come talk scared about weddings, soulmates, David Lynch and Danish horror, and what it’s like to work with the Duffer Brothers. This show has been my whole personality for two weeks. Ihope you watch...

Tamika Thompson talks me through the great American curseof the 21st Century on this week’s episode. No, not Tangerine Cthulhu … but the plague of gun deaths that is coring out the country.   That’s the focus of her new novel, The Curse of Hester Gardens, which asks whether the deaths gunning for the young men of an inner-city housing project are criminal, or something much weirder!   Yeah, that’s...