Send us a text This week is an orgy of horror. There are four of us. That makes it an orgy right? (I’ve never been to one – never got the invitation). Ahem … sorry. I'll start again. This week I am joined by not one, but THREE guests. John F. D. Taff, Livia Llewellyn, and of course, Josh Malerman. We could call them stars from the firmament of horror. Dark Stars perhaps. That would be fitting, considering that’s what they are here to discuss (amongst many, many things). Dark Stars is a benchmark...
Mar 22, 2022•1 hr 33 min•Ep. 84
Send us a text Hey horrorfam – ready for a good ol’ murder mystery? Y’know, with ghosts… Our guest is Simone St. James, the doyenne of ‘Supernatural Suspense’ (as the marketeers love to call it). Her 2020 smash hit The Sundown Motel put her name up in lights, and her latest – The Book of Cold Cases keeps it there, shining cold and bright. It’s a tale of murder, media and misogyny – told in the classic dual-timeline manner that seems to feature in all good supernatural suspense novels – and it fe...
Mar 15, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 83
Send us a text Are you ready for another apocalypse? Covid and nukes not enough for ya? Well here you go then. Something slightly different. Mike Meginnis’ Drowning Practice is an odder than usual end-of-days. It’s a book in which everyone knows that time is up, and yet they just don’t seem to care. There are few (I won’t say zero) ravening lunatics in this book – but the more chilling realisation is that even at the end of the world, you still have to go to work. Mike and I talk about art and N...
Mar 08, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 82
Send us a text Tyler Jones’ Burn the Plans reminds me of the first time I picked up Stephen King’s Night Shift. I didn’t know who this King guy was, only that his stories were varied, scary, funny, awful and sweet and sweetly awful. In short, a great time. Burn the Plans is the same. The collection dashes from an ever-so-American-Gothic farm to a bloodsoaked art gallery, CIA psychic experimentation to invisible Frankensteinian limb-monsters. Tyler’s imagination runs amok and breaks the crockery....
Mar 01, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 81
Send us a text Have you ever wondered what fresh testicles taste like? No? I don’t believe you. Our guest this week wants to get you thinking about it … well, that and many more important things. Gretchen Felker-Martin is the author of Manhunt – potentially the most buzzed-about horror novel of 2022. The story follows a pair of trans- protagonists through a blighted landscape of monstrous men and militant feminists – with the prized scrotal orbs being the key to continued life, and the pursuit o...
Feb 22, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 80
Send us a text February’s focus on the best new Women-in-Horror continues with Leon Craig and her debut collection, Parallel Hells. Leon is a North London writer with a globalised imagination. She’s been published all over the place, but is also a member of the Future’s in the Making, Queer writer’s collective. That perspective is inescapable in this collection. Wherever her stories take us, from an Eastern European pogrom, to a Viking settlement, or a BDSM dungeon frequented by denizens of the ...
Feb 15, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 79
Send us a text This week is my personal Everest. Thomas Olde Heuvelt, bestselling Euro-horror whizzkid author of HEX, joins me to to talk about his newest novel – Echo. It’s a story of mountaineering, and madness, and monsters of the soul. If you follow me on any form of social media you may have seen that this book utterly distressed me. I can’t even say why myself; it just tweaked a nerve. Echo is a wonderfully easter-egg-laden novel, full of references to other horror masterworks. As you’ll h...
Feb 08, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 78
Send us a text In space no one can hear you read! This week our guest is S.A. Barnes – who’s new novel Dead Silence answers the (stupid) question, once and for all, of whether horror can take place in space. It’s a tale of a blue-collar crew, who encounter more than they reckoned for when salvaging a fabled spaceship. You think you’ve seen this play out before, I know. You haven’t. Stacey and I talk about all things “space-horror”, from the looming shadow of Alien and Event Horizon, to the most ...
Feb 01, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 77
Send us a text Is it cold where you are? If so, do I have the book for you. Our guest is Ally Wilkes, whose debut novel, All the White Spaces was my pick for the most anticipated horror novel of early 2022. I was NOT disappointed. The book takes us to Antarctica in 1919, just months after the end of the First World War, in the dying years of the Heroic Age of Exploration. There, trapped in the frozen ‘overwinter’ the team of men are forced to confront a malignant presence that draws them out int...
Jan 25, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 76
Send us a text This week it’s time for good girls and bad girls to unite. Our guest is Kristi DeMeester whose new novel, Such A Pretty Smile sinks its teeth deep into the raised hand of misogyny. It’s a tale of violence and viciousness and vivid nightmares – and a whole new apparatus to explore the evils that men do. At this point I assume we’ve already weeded out the guys who roll their eyes at #metoo!? That’s for the best cos this is a feminism-heavy week. We talk about how horror treats women...
Jan 18, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 75
Send us a text Kicking off the New Year right, by interviewing one of my favourite living writers. John Connolly is the author of the bestselling Charlie Parker series, a 19 book odyssey that takes us from the Maine coast to the darkest corners of the USA (and elsewhere), in the process, transmuting hardboiled detective noir into cosmic horror. After two decades of reading about Parker, you can be sure I have plenty to ask John – about writing American horror as an Irishman, Maine’s hostile spac...
Jan 11, 2022•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 74
Send us a text It’s just me this week – sneaking one last episode in to talk about my own personal top-10 horror novels (or horror-ish) from the last twelve months. It’s been a stellar year, and picking just ten books was a nightmare all of it’s own. But these things must be done. The world MUST know what one more straight, white guy thinks about culture, or society will collapse. I hope you enjoy this as I get more and more animated as things go on. It’s a good job I’m taking next week off – I’...
Dec 30, 2021•49 min•Ep. 73
Send us a text Well, we made it to the end of this nightmare of a year. And though there has been plenty of horrific stuff along the way – war, plague, corruption … literal armed insurrection, at least the fictional horror has been fun. To commemorate a special year in horror, I’m getting the band back together. Sadie Hartmann, AKA Mother Horror, and Emily Hughes of Tor Nightfire (and various other parishes) join me to talk about the stuff they have loved from the second half** of 2021. **if you...
Dec 28, 2021•1 hr 55 min•Ep. 72
Send us a text This week I bring you a ghost story, as befitting the season. Though it’s a little more lurid than Charles Dickens would have liked. The guest is A.J. West; the book is The Spirit Engineer. It’s one of my very favourites of 2021. Set in Belfast between the sinking of the Titanic and the outbreak of war, it’s a tale of science and the supernatural. Of William Crawford, a man who wants proof of the beyond, and will risk everything to grasp it. It’s actually based on real people and ...
Dec 21, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 71
Send us a text This week I am going to utterly ruin your festive mood! My guest is Ross Jeffery – author of Juniper, Tome (for which he was Bram Stoker nominated) and numerous short stories. His work is grim, gritty, gory and other words beginning with G - but they are nothing compared to the sheer horror of his latest work, Only the Stains Remain. Yeah, this is one of those special episodes in which I feel duty-bound to roll out the trigger warnings. Only the Stains Remain is about child abuse,...
Dec 14, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 70
Send us a text I know it’s the middle of winter but this week the book in question is taking us back to summer. And not our current plague-summer – but the halcyon days of 1989. Think kids on bikes, running wild, fights and first loves, demonic deer gods … wait … what? Our guest, Wendy N. Wagner is the editor-in-chief of the prestigious Nightmare Magazine, and the author of epic coming-of-age horror The Deer Kings, as well as the ‘Sawmill Gothic’, The Secret Skin. We talk about both books and ho...
Dec 07, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 69
Send us a text If you are feeling depressed, what with OMICRON emerging like the worst villain in some direct-to-streaming video game adaptation, then do I have the tonic for you. Josh Malerman is back for his second bout of Talking Scared, only 6 months after he was last here. This time, more than ever, he brings joy, wonder, inspiration and a 700 page book that will work your triceps as well as your mind and soul. Ghoul n’ the Cape is Josh’s magnum opus, so far. So far! It’s the truly epic tal...
Nov 30, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 68
Send us a text And now for something a little different. This is a show about scary stories and writing horror… but that doesn’t mean everything has to be on the page. Our guest this week is Richard Maclean Smith, host and producer of Unexplained Podcast, the best show out there on the creepy, mysterious and mystifying events that people like me spend hours reading about on Wikipedia. There is everything from true crime to strange disappearances, ghosts and demons, monsters and UFOs, as well as ...
Nov 23, 2021•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 67
Send us a text For over three decades Ellen Datlow has been at the centre of the horror community. She is the queen of editors, the doyenne of anthologisers, the person who gets to declare what is the Best Horror of the Year. And she has come back to talk to me after I lost the conversation file the first time around…! That major mishap may have been a blessing in disguise, as since then she has published two standout anthologies, dealing with very different branches of horror. Body Shocks is a ...
Nov 16, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 66
Send us a text This week I’m feeling warm and fuzzy (don’t worry it won’t last). Halloween is over, the weather has turned dark, we’ve all got the central heating on and are hunkering down for the end of the year. What better time for a slightly more cosy read? Our guest this week is Mark Stay, author, screenwriter, and one half of the quite wonderful Bestseller Experiment podcast. Usually Mark is in my chair, asking author’s all about how to be a successful writer – but this week I’ve literally...
Nov 09, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 65
Send us a text Halloween is over for another year but there are still plenty of monsters to go around. Our guest this week is Kim Newman, the writer, critic and encyclopaedic authority on horror, pulp and the dark recesses of cinematic history. You may know him as the author of the Anno Dracula series, but that’s only the tip of his imaginative iceberg. Kim’s new novel, Something More than Night, takes all of that arcane knowledge and puts it to use – transporting us back to the Hollywood of the...
Nov 02, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 64
Send us a text Normally we talk books - but horror movies are a Hallowe’en staple. Turn the lights down, wrap yourself in a blanket, choose your snack of choice and then torment yourself terribly. It’s what we do. Now, Mark Kermode knows a thing or two about scary movies. The UK’s most prominent film critic has a special fondness for horror movies, as well as a grounding in the books that inspired many of the best. I asked him on the show for this Hallowe’en special episode, to talk about his fa...
Oct 30, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 63
Send us a text Perfect places breed hideous crimes – that’s my understanding at least. If you like The Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, or Twin Peaks (or anything by David Lynch) then you’ll get a kick out of Catherynne M. Valente’s Comfort Me with Apples. Despite being a novella of less than 130 pages, it crams in everything from the whole rotten tradition of awful things – from the book of Genesis, via fairytales and the Gothic, all the way up to the most cutting-edge dystopian sci-fi. This tiny t...
Oct 26, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 62
Send us a text I’m on holiday but I still give you goodies. ‘Cos that’s the kind of all-round good guy that I am. And what a dark treat of a trick we have this week. The guest is Cassandra Khaw and their novella Nothing But Blackened Teeth will use it’s liquorice-stained smile to chew you up. The book transports us to a crumbling mansion in Japan, where a hideous spectre haunts a group of utterly loathsome tourists. Honestly, you’ll want them dead for their taste in music alone! Despite the slim...
Oct 19, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 60
Send us a text Hello kids. Wanna see a magic trick? Rather than pulling a rabbit from a hat, I offer you Caitlin Starling, author of The Luminous Dead and her new Gothic chiller, The Death of Jane Lawrence. Caitlin’s novel takes a familiar Gothic set-up and kicks it around until it is only recognisable from the colour of its blood. Dilapidated house – check. Deceitful husband – check. Magical rites, mysterious walls and ghosts that feed on shame – yeah that’s new! We talk all about magical rites...
Oct 12, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 60
Send us a text Welcome to Hallowe’en ’21. If ever a year required us to find the fun in all things grim, dark and depressing then this is the absolute best year since last year. Appropriately for the lead-in to Spooky Season, our guest this week wrote a book all about fear as an attraction. James Han Mattson is the author of Reprieve – a mouthwatering prospect of a novel set in an extreme, full-contact, haunted house escape room. What could go wrong, right? Well, as you’ll hear, James’ novel is ...
Oct 05, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 59
Send us a text Vroom vroom! This week’s book is automatic, systematic, highly dramatic … it’s G…G…G…G… Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo. That painful Grease reference is due to the fact that this book marries teenage angst with fast cars and hot boys – with or without the quiffs. In reality though, it’s closer to a Springsteen Song – all tortured youth, broken hearts, racing the in the street and darkness on the edge of town. It tells the tale of Andrew – a sexually confused young man who relocates to...
Sep 28, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 58
Send us a text Oh eck! This week I get very northern and my working class roots come to the fore. It’s all my guest’s fault. Tina Baker, the author of Call Me Mummy, is an infectious presence. My typical transatlantic restraint falls away and I follow Tina down endless rabbit-holes – her time as a TV presenter, her childhood mishaps, her cats! Thankfully, her book is fantastic, and gives us something to focus on at least a little. Call Me Mummy is a dark psychological tale of stolen children, to...
Sep 21, 2021•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 57
Send us a text Growth is good, right? That’s what they tell us. Our guest this week might have other ideas. Aliya Whiteley’s is a novelist, short story writer and poet, whose writing is all about growth. In her strange worlds people, plants, entire worlds sprawl and mutate, but often the change is anything but wholesome. In her new collection, From the Neck Up she introduces us to disembodied heads, fleshy scarecrows, parasitical towns, dark ecology and violent agricultural rites. These stories ...
Sep 14, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 56
Send us a text Our show this week is part interview, part homage, all zombie! Daniel Kraus, the author of zombie magnum opus, The Living Dead is in the hotseat. But he isn’t alone. Both he and his novel are accompanied by the spectral presence of the master himself, George Romero. When Romero passed in 2017, he left behind years of work and ambition in telling the whole story of his zombie uprising in novel form. It’s a project that was passed on to Daniel, and he joins us to talk about that boo...
Sep 07, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 55
