On episode 18 of Our First Fears, NY Times and USA Today bestselling author, Daniel Kraus joins me in a conversation about Fangoria Magazine – the tentpole horror movie publication that debuted in the late 1970s and quickly became a shocking staple on magazine stands and in bookshops due to the gory horror makeup effects and grody titles displayed …

On episode 17, WE ARE BACK . . . this time, chatting with writer and horror podcast-rock-star, Neil McRobert about a movie that made him cry when he was just a wee lad - James Cameron’s 1984 science-fiction classic, The Terminator. Our conversation runs from ideas of cyborg body horror, to the trope of the unkillable thing that chases you, relentle…

On episode 16 of Our First Fears, NY Times bestseller, Tracey Baptiste reveals the map of her childhood village where her friends and family banded together to protect themselves from jumbies, the creepy creatures that haunt the Caribbean nation, Trinidad and Tobago, in the dark of night. We discuss the secret things that hide inside the stories we…

On today’s episode, author Sara Farizan chats with me about the 1982 cult film Halloween III: Season of the Witch. We also tie the film’s themes pretty tightly to her recent YA horror novel, Dead Flip, which is set in the late 80s and early 90s and revolves around a possibly haunted pinball machine. We get into the pop-culture of cursed objects and…

On episode 14 of Our First Fears, author and illustrator, Derrick Chow joins me in appreciation of the genius and creativity of beloved actress Shelley Duvall’s possibly-accidentally-terrifying television show from the 1980s, Faerie Tale Theatre. Together, we explore the connection between slasher-film final girls and faerie tale heroines, what mak…

We’ve reached lucky episode 13 of Our First Fears, and today, I get to talk with author Russell Ginns, or R. U. Ginns, about the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Together, we dig into how artists use elements of unease to create a sense of paranoia for their audiences. We talk zombies versus pod-people, cults of the 1970s, how much w…

Episode 12 of Our First Fears is a conversation with Bram Stoker Award finalist Ally Malinenko about Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and several other classic terrors. We talk about unreliable narrators, teaching horror to kids in classrooms, childhood perception of time, and what truly lies behind Poe’s “pale blue eye,” as we…

On episode 11 of Our First Fears, Pushcart Award nominee, Joe Vallese shows me the path beyond Stephen King's Pet Sematary and up into the haunted hills where the buried-dead have a tendency to rise and wreak havoc on the living. Together, we explore how certain aspects of stories that frightened our childhood-selves can end up being quite differen…

On episode 10 of Our First Fears, debut novelist and creator of monsters, Trevor Henderson and I head to the rear section of the video rental stores of our youths to paw through some of our favorite, and freakiest, VHS horror movie cover art. Specifically, Street Trash, Zombie, The Stuff, The Gate, Suspiria, Alligator, and Fright Night. We talk abo…

On episode 9 of Our First Fears, Bram Stoker Award Finalist, Lora Senf and I explore childhood memories of our early love for John Bellairs’s classic novel, The House With a Clock in its Walls, how this book inspired us to tell our own kinds of stories, why Bellairs’s work has sparked a modern cult following, and how writing horror - for kids in pa…

Today, rockstar author Lamar Giles joins me to explore one of the most notorious neighborhoods in all of horror cinema. Elm Street! With this episode, we've begun Our First Fears's first discussion of Wes Craven's classic film series, but with the second sequel, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. Wait . . . What? We talk about how we both…

Have you heard of Ophidiophobia? The fear of snakes? Tough-guy action hero, Indiana Jones had it, and so does my wonderfully funny friend, author Elizabeth Eulberg, who is more scared of snakes than anyone I’ve ever met. Throughout her life, she’s somehow managed to continuously encounter dangerous snakes in places where they’re not supposed to be.…

In Episode 6 of Our First Fears, novelist and illustrator Ethan M. Aldridge shares their own personal tales of growing up in a supposedly haunted house in Utah. And I chime in with some stories about my own experiences as a haunted pre-teen in north-central New Jersey. We talk about ghosts as metaphor, visit some familiar haunted tropes from favori…

In Episode 5 of Our First Fears, designer and bestselling author/ illustrator Jay Cooper takes us on a tour of his night-terrors, which leads us down some dark paths of 1970s and 80s children’s entertainment. He takes us through the magic of Smurf-land, into a Labyrinth haunted by David Bowie’s goblins, past the island where Maurice Sendak spent ti…

In Episode 4 of Our First Fears, No. 1 New York Times Bestselling author Libba Bray takes my hand to ring the doorbell of the Bramford Apartments in New York City, where Rosemary Woodhouse lives with her husband Guy and, possibly, a cabal of evil cultists, in Roman Polanski’s 1968 film, Rosemary’s Baby. Our chat ranges from recent US supreme court …

In Episode 3 of Our First Fears, animator and author Rob Renzetti digs with me through the very old graves of Tod Browning’s Dracula and James Whale’s Frankenstein, both from Universal Pictures in 1931. We revisit our introductions to these classic characters when we were kids. We examine how both films have been reinvented and their horrors possib…

Episode 2 of Our First Fears is a conversation with prolific novelist and anthologist Ellen Oh, who is also one of the co-founders of We Need Diverse Books (WNDB), a non-profit dedicated to fostering diversity and inclusivity in children’s literature. Ellen’s first fears were introduced by her parents, who took her to horror movies at a VERY young …

For the first outing of Our First Fears, I’m talking with author Anica Mrose Rissi about one of the pillars of horror fiction for kids: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated by Stephen Gammell. This collection of American folk-tales has been so impactful since its first publication in 1981—so creepy for the generations…