The ARC Party

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...

Pre-Order HERE I say it in the episode, and I’ll repeat it now. I’ve been ride-or-die for Zoje’s writing career since I read BABY TEETH in 2018. I think Zoje’s writing voice is so charming and consequential and relatable. At some level, I’d always hoped to hear what’s been going on with Hanna since BABY TEETH, but I never pushed it into he arena of hope. I guess Zoje has been so good at making all...

It’s a hell of a time for horror stories, and it seems like camp slashers are especially making a comeback. Josh Winning is out with his latest book, HEADS WILL ROLL. Set in a digital detox camp, it’s a story of a sitcom star who gets cancelled for an off-color tweet, who decides to get away from the scandal for a little bit. What she’s not aware of is that this may as well be called Camp Cancelle...

PREORDER HERE First, I have to acknowledge that there were some serious technical difficulties with the recording of this episode. After a couple failed attempts to use the platform I regularly use, we finally switched to some old school Skypin’. Thankfully, I was able to cobble all of the various recordings together and it sounds really good. What we did talk about is Josh’s upcoming novel, LETTE...

2024 is still here! I know I’ve been planning my reading for the year for a while now. How about you? Are you in need of some recommendations? I have just the thing! It’s MORE of The ARC Party’s Horror Preview! The reason this episode exists is because Emily Hughes aggregates a ton of information about forthcoming horror books every year, and posts a comprehensive, and frankly amazing list of them...

Clay McLeod Chapman, for me, arrived at a time where I was in-between podcasts, and going through some health things, etc. Which is to say that I kinda missed his emergence onto the scene. So, I heard him on podcasts talking about his then-new book GHOST EATERS, and I became interested. Last year, it didn’t work out to interview Clay for WHAT KIND OF MOTHER, which was disappointing. SO, when I cau...

What happens when a group of friends get their hands on a VHS tape that, when viewed, teleports you six feet away - arriving with a feeling of intense euphoria? SO much! The Third installment of Shortwave’s Killer VHS series has a lot. Stoners, teleportation, urban myths, feral junkies, government agencies, creepypasta, friendship! It’s a super-entertaining, quick read. In this episode, I chat wit...

Josh Malerman and Wow Town got together while I was up in Michigan, for a rehearsal of their June 23 performance commemorating the release of Josh’s book INCIDENTS AROUND THE HOUSE. I was there, I recorded it, and now I’m sharing it with you all. For the YouTube folks (no video! Audio only): Quick note This recording was made at a racecourse, so you will regularly hear racing engine noises in the...