Talking Scared

Some stories just boggle your mind and boil your imagination.   Such are the ideas in Annie Neugebauer’s You Have to Let Them Bleed, and her logic-shattering novella The Extra. The Uncanny Valley, obsessional thoughts, dangerous knowledge, mothers who aren’t mothers and a camping group that destroys the workings of math and memory… these are just some of the inexplicabilities we discuss in this we...

Time for sex and seances this week on Talking Scared.   Our guest is Avery Curran and her debut novel Spoiled Milk. It’s a story of spiritualism and sapphic desire, set in a 1920s boarding school where death, rot, haunting and much worse things (patriarchy!) runs rampant.   Avery is a specialist in the history of spiritualism (with a brand new PhD to her name) and this conversation is a deep and d...

This Off Book episode is a trip into the deep dark woods, for a very special playdate!   Our guest is Rod Blackhurst, director and co-writer of the new retro horror movie, Dolly. It’s a film about a very scary house in the woods and the even scarier person who lives inside…and who wants nothing so much as a new toy of her own.     Rod and I talk about the tone, gore and influences behind the movie...

This week we’re sharpening our swords and checking our armpits for boils!   Christopher Buehlman is the guest, author the hugely-acclaimed 2012 medieval horror fantasy, Between Two Fires – now being reissued for a new, wide audience. It’s a book that everyone has been screaming at me to read, and I’m glad I did.   Christopher and I get hellishly geeky, talking history, plague, angelology and demon...

Clap your hands twice if you believe in Catriona Ward!   Cat is back on the show this week, to talk Nowhere Burning – a horror novel informed by everything from Peter Pan (it has its own Tinkerbell), to certain disgraced megastars, and even the CIA checklist on what constitutes a cult!   It’s a lot, and we talk about all of it, as well as various weird mysteries, the grimmest cult we’ve ever heard...

When is a zombie not a zombie?   I don’t have a punchline to that joke. But something…something … revenant!   Brennan LaFaro’s The Denizens is about a small southern town with a very unusual relationship with death. What precisely is the nature of the corpses roaming the woods, and what do they want with the living. You’ll have to listen to find out.   What is certain is that this book gives Brenn...

This Valentine’s week, come for a walk up on t’moors with me and Agatha Andrews.   I’ve invited Agatha, my friend and sister-in-Gothic, host of She Wore Black podcast, for a conversation about Wuthering Heights. It’s known as “the greatest love story ever told,” but that’s such nonsense. Instead we talk about mania and melancholy, hate and power, cannibalism and necrophilia… and we also look ahead...

A bit of chaos on the show for the weekend. We start with one guest and end with two. And there’s a dude with an alligator’s head running amok!   Mama Came Callin’ is the slasher/cryptid/mystery/noir graphic novel written by Ezra Claytan Daniel and illustrated by Camilla Sucre. It’s set in the swamps of Florida, amongst murky waters and dirtier histories.   The three of us (eventually) talk about...

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...