Talking Scared

Send us a text We’ve covered our share of plagues on this show during our all-too-real year of sitting indoors and waiting for the pandemic to sod off. Do you have the guts for one more? You should, but you may empty them. Our guest is V.L. Valentine and her debut novel The Plague Letters transports us to London in 1665. The Great Plague is scouring the population, with only the barest medical exp...

Send us a text This is a big one.  The Last House on Needless Street may be the best pure horror novel I’ve read this decade. Okay, the decade is only 3 months old, but check back with me in 9 years and I may still be saying the same. I’m delighted to speak to the author of this latter-day classic, Catriona Ward, about secrets and lies and how the hell you begin to describe a book that is one big...

Send us a text Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there was a young woman, bad men, and some homicidal mermaids. It’s fairy tale time. Our guest is Angela Slatter, who’s new novel All the Murmuring Bones turns the fairy stories that comforted you as a child, into a horrid tale of murder, inheritance, death, sex and entrapment. In this world Hansel and Gretel would be a very tasty pie-fillin...

Send us a text Isolation is a bitch, but it could be worse! Our guest is Bethany Clift and her debut novel is  Last One at the Party – a pandemic novel that reminds you that at least we have Netflix, facetime and the chance to call our friends.  Beth’s novel follows an unnamed woman, the last survivor of a global plague that has emptied out the world in just a few weeks. As she struggles through t...

Send us a text If you’ve been homeschooling, in labour, or generally responsible for the life of a small human during lockdown, then this episode is for you. There are people out there, writers with great skill and empathy, who share your pain, and know how you feel. This week’s guest is Julia Fine, the author of Bram Stoker Award Nominated What Should Be Wild, and now the postpartum nightmare, Th...

Send us a text Hands up who wants a holiday!  Sarah Pearse’s The Sanatorium could be just the thing to purge your lockdown travel desires. It will either transport you to the ice-white peaks of the Swiss Alps, to luxuriate in the views inside your mind. Or, it’ll make you never ever want to stay in a hotel again. The Sanatorium is Sarah’s debut thriller, a novel that sits uncomfortably (in the bes...

Send us a text Have you ever had a book scare you so much that part of you wishes you hadn’t read it? That’s the experience I had reading Gemma Files’ latest collection, In That Endlessness, Our End. I don’t know how Gemma does it, but with each story she finds a psychological pressure point that feels specifically mine, and the presses down on it hard with her pen.  On more than one occasion I ha...

Send us a text When your guest calls herself the “Master of the Bitch” you do wonder what you’re getting into. Courtney Summers, by her own admission, wants to upset people.  Yet she’s a delight! To kick of Women in Horror week we discuss her new novel, The Project, which follows a young woman as she investigates the New York based cult that has swallowed up her sister.  This is FAR from your stan...

Send us a text Let’s get Gothic! Our guest this week is Laura Purcell, doyenne of the dark, heiress of historical fiction (and other alliterative titles). Laura blew away the cobwebs wrapped around spooky period fiction with her breakout smash, The Silent Companions in 2017. She followed up with The Corset and Bone China and now she’s back with her newest Gothic novel, The Shape of Darkness.   The...

Send us a text In a week in which the White House becomes a little less orange, it’s hard to dwell on the nasty side of life. But this is Talking Scared and we can find the grim and creepy on even the most optimistic days. Our guest is C.J. Tudor – the current queen of the British thriller. She sits quite comfortably on the cusp of horror and crime, and we get into the subject of exactly where tha...

Send us a text Ready for the first GREAT book you’ll read this year? Our guest this week is Will Dean, calling all the way from the middle of a Scandinavian forest to talk about his new novel, The Last Thing To Burn. I’ve been banging on about this book since I read it in December. It’s a latter-day masterpiece, a read-in-one-sitting, this-has-to-be-a-movie kind of book. Think Misery, think Room a...

Send us a text I like this year better than last year already. Ok, we may be plunged back into lockdown 3.0 and it may be cold, and the cinemas may still be shut. But we have a vaccine, Trump looks like he’s got nappy rash … and there’s a whole year of horror fiction to look forward to.  Unfortunately for you, there’s no guest this week. Instead, you’re stuck with me as I talk you through the high...

Send us a text 2020 is nearly behind us (woohoo!) but we have time for one more interview with a master of horror. Our guest this week is Michael Marshall Smith the genre polymath and man of a thousand pseudonyms (all of them involving ‘Michael’.) He is joining me to discuss his new career retrospective, The Best of Michael Marshall Smith, published in a beautiful volume by Subterranean Press. It’...

Send us a text Merry Christmas and/or time-off-work-week! For all of you currently freezing your asses off in cold climes, this week’s episode may make you feel a little too warm under the collar. Our guest is Gabriel Bergmoser, an author who exploded onto the horror scene in early 2020 with The Hunted, a pulpy, violent, visceral hell ride through the Australian wilderness in the company of very h...

Send us a text This late into 2020 we are all craving a) a holiday and b) time with friends. Our guest this week may cast a slightly different perspective on both.   Rachel Harrison is the author of The Return, a novel that looks into the dark heart of friendship and asks “do you REALLY know who your friends are?” The book was published all the way back in March, by Berkley in the US and Hodder in...

Send us a text Stand back! Our Guest this week is Christopher Golden, author of all manner of horror, adventure and generally freaky fiction. His latest book is Red Hands, the third featuring Ben Walker, action-hero and expert in the batsh*t weird!  I have used the words ‘relevant’ and ‘prescient’ more than ever in 2020 – this being, after all, the year that all our horror stories became true. Eve...

Send us a text This week our guest is Sam J. Miller, author of The Blade Between - a novel for anyone who  loves or loathes their hometown.  It’s a story of small-town ghosts, hidden hatreds and sudden violence. And behind it all looms the issue of gentrification, in all its ugliness and beauty. Listening to Sam talk, you may think differently about that cute little bistro that’s opened down the s...

Send us a text If you’re a fan of podcasts and horror (and of course you are!) then chances are you’ll recognise our guest. Jonathan Sims is the author of Thirteen Storeys, but you may know him (or his voice) as the creator and narrator of The Magnus Archives. Yep, that’s right, I’m interviewing The Archivist himself.   Thirteen Storeys takes a lot of what makes The Magnus Archives great, and blen...

Send us a text Things get a little cultish this week on Talking Scared. Our guest is Craig DiLouie, author of the brand-spanking-new creepy commune novel, The Children of Red Peak – released November 18th from RedHook Books. It’s a tale of crazy goings-on in the desert, of ritual mutilation and lasting trauma. All that fun stuff! Craig immediately has me in his thrall, even without the Kool-Aid. (...

Send us a text This week Rumaan Alam presents us with a wholly ambiguous end of the world. Rumaan’s new novel, Leave the World Behind has taken the publishing landscape by storm. Reviews are everywhere and critics are shouting its name from the rooftops, with good reason. Leave the World Behind is a strange, uneasy tale of the world going wrong. What begins as a family getaway to Long Island spira...

Send us a text If you are feeling nervous today, or just want something to distract you from the doomscrolling, then welcome to our Election Day special. Our guest is Andrew Pyper whose latest novel, The Residence, is an historical tour around a White House under siege from a demon. This particular spirit is arrogant, spiteful and determined to use the Oval Office for dire purposes – but he’s not...

Send us a text It’s Halloween and in lieu of any trick and/or treating this plague year, I offer you a conversation with Colin Dickey, mystery-maestro and curator of the creepy. Colin is the author of Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places (2016) and The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters and our Obsession with the Unexplained – books that plumb the depths of the human min...

Send us a text Where do you stand on horror and comedy? Can a book be too funny to be scary, or too terrifying to raise a chuckle? Our guest this week would argue not. T. Kingfisher is the author of the critically-acclaimed The Twisted Ones (2019) and her brand-new release The Hollow Places. Both are scorching horror tales, with some hideous imagery, exquisite world-building and nightmare-fuel ide...

Send us a text This week Emily Danforth takes us back to school. Her new novel, Plain Bad Heroines has a lot to say about the history of queer women, the price of fame, and whether found footage horror is any good. Plain Bad Heroines features heavily on all the best-of lists for the season, and it’s an early reputation that’s well deserved. This tricksy, twisty novel spans centuries to tell the ta...

Send us a text Kate Summerscale is our first guest working in the realms of non-fiction. Her back-catalogue proves that the real world is every bit as dark and terrifying as the inside of Stephen King’s head. She’s covered murder in the famous The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (2008) and now she’s back with a more spiritual crisis in The Haunting of Alma Fielding.  The book examines a very odd case of...