Send us a Text Message. My unpaid cohost returns. Josh Malerman ladies and gentlemen. Josh has been on the show many times before, but never have I been so excited to speak to him. His latest novel, Incidents Around the House is about as good a horror book as I’ve ever covered on this show… or possibly read in my life. It’s the story of a young gir…

Send us a Text Message. In the second Off Book episode we get out of our armchairs and go on a real adventure. Well, not really – but we talk to two people who do. Danielle and Cassie are the hosts of National Park After Dark – a podcast catering to the “morbid outdoor enthusiast.” They have skyrocketed to success, with well-researches stories of m…

Send us a Text Message. Paul Tremblay returns to Talking Scared on a long orbit, like that fabled Planet X that’s going to kill us all. He’s back after two years for another discussion of horror aesthetics, introspective terrors and mixed-media nightmares – this time in Horror Movie, his meta-take on cursed cinema and lethal creativity. Horror Movi…

Send us a Text Message. Elle Nash’s Deliver Me ruined my week. In the best possible way. This book, about a woman so desperate for a child that she does truly terrible, no-good things, contains some of the bleakest, most brutal scenes I’ve read in a while. And it’s not even really being treated as a horror novel. Elle and I talk about that. We also…

Send us a Text Message. Todd Keisling can write the hell out of a short story. So well, in fact, that they may convince you to resist a bully, stop going to church, or tell your boss to f**k off! Cold, Black and Infinite is full of liminal tales of the between-places. Cosmic “Otherness” that defies religion or belief. Corporate soul-hells that take…

Send us a Text Message. Something new for me this week. A bold venture into uncharted territory. The graphic novel!! As is proper, I’ve started with one of the best. Emil Ferris joins me to talk through the creation of her landmark epic, My Favourite Thing is Monsters. Volume 1 came out in 2017 to rapturous acclaim, and now, Volume 2 picks up exact…

Send us a Text Message. Believe it or not, there is more to life than just books. Very little, granted… but there is more. Talking Scared: Off Book is a chance for this show to spread its wings a little. To fly further, wider, deeper into the world of horror and come back carrying different kinds of guests in our bloody beak! (ok, I may have stretc…

Send us a Text Message. We return to Australia for the second time in a month, to find that (once again), home invasion isn’t the worst thing to happen on a typical day. Alan Baxter’s Blood Covenant is a violent, thrilling story of a threeway battle between an innocent family, a nasty criminal gang of bogans (see, I’m learning!) and an otherworldly…

Send us a Text Message. A charming man approaches. With dark secrets to tell you. Yeah, that L.P. Hernandez. Author of the novella In the Valley of the Headless Men and the forthcoming collection, No Gods, Only Chaos. Both are great; both are entirely different. One of them will expand your horizons. One of them will shrink you in horror. I’ll let …

Send us a Text Message. Opinions are like assholes, they say. Everybody has one. The subtext of that, is that you shouldn’t show them to people. Well my guest and I don’t hold back on ours this week. Robert Ottone joins me for a conversation about his debut novel for adults, The Vile Thing We Created, which is almost exactly one year old. I loved i…

Send us a Text Message. Ah the madhouse. The loony bin. The ASYLUM!! A classic horror location. One of my favourites, but problematic as hell in the wrong hands. Thankfully, I have the right author for the topic. Christ Panatier has the talent and the sensitivity to ensure that his novel, The Redemption of Morgan Bright can engage with the tropes w…

Send us a Text Message. We all love a good spooky house. And most of us enjoy a terrifying home-invasion ordeal (or at least, I know I do). What happens when you put them together? Kaaron Warren’s The Underhistory is the answer, but it’s nothing at all like what you’d expect. This new novel by the award-winning Australian writer is a story of memor…

Send us a Text Message. I bite off a lot this week, in a five-way conversation with editors and contributors to the ever-so-of-the-moment anthology The Black Girl Survives in This One. That’s a promise right there on the title page, but as you will find out, survival is not always the same thing as living happily ever after. Saraciea J. Fennell, De…

Send us a Text Message. I’m in literary hero territory again … at least this time it’s sunny! My guest is Scarlett Thomas, the groundbreaking writer of PopCo, Oligarchy, The Seed Collectors and the (post)modern speculative classic, The End of Mr Y. She’s one of my favourite writers, who has never seen five or six separate genres she can’t mash toge…

Send us a Text Message. Carrie White turns 50 years old today! April 5th, 1974 – the day King’s debut came out, and the world of horror we know live in changed forever. To celebrate such an auspicious anniversary, there are only two people I could invite to this party. Step up Nat Cassidy and Ally Malinenko – writers who understand King and that bi…

Send us a Text Message. Alas, we come to the end! Stephen Graham Jones’s The Angel of Indian Lake brings the most important horror trilogy of the century to its conclusion. For one last time we return to Proofrock, Idaho – to watch Jade Daniels do battle with monsters in the wood and the demons in her head. SGJ also comes back to Talking Scared to …

Send us a Text Message. Chi-Town!! We’re heading to the midwestern metropolis this week, for a conversation with Cina Pelayo – all about murder, mystery, history and strange things in the water. Her new novel, Forgotten Sisters is a heady, dreamlike concoction of Chicago lore and much older horrors. It features a pair of very wyrd sisters and a hou…

Send us a Text Message. Never mind the floor is lava. This week the ground has teeth. Joshua Hull is our guest, to talk about his obsession with dangerous, weird holes. He wrote one into his hilarious, grisly horror movie, Glorious (on Shudder) and now he’s given a hole a whole personality in his debut novella, Mouth. It’s a grindhouse, b-movie cel…

Send us a Text Message. Time to get liminal and haunted. Gwendolyn Kiste comes back to Talking Scared for another high-concept twist on the Gothic. In The Haunting of Velkwood, and entire street turns ghostly overnight. Yeah, I can’t explain that any more clearly, we’ll leave it to Gwendolyn. Despite this being a book centered on trauma and angst, …

With hosts Shane Douglas Keene and Rich Duncan. This episode features John F.D. Taff and Josh Malerman talking about their books, respectively, Plastic Space House and Incidents Around the House

Send us a Text Message. Sometimes you meet someone who just gets you. Like Tim Lebbon. A man who writes riotously good adventure-horror novels, and also likes running outrageous distances up big hills. What a pleasure it was to speak to him. The main topic of conversation is his new novel eco-horror novel, Among the Living. A story of ancient burie…

Send us a Text Message. Back from a too-short break, but ready to delve into the greatest haunted house of them all! Shirley Jackson’s Hill House. The place where the scary things walk alone. Thankfully, I am not alone. I’m joined by my own group of creepy ghost-hunters: Paul Tremblay (A Head Full of Ghosts, Cabin at the End of the World), Johnny C…

Send us a Text Message. Yes I put sex in the title to make you download it. Did it work? It shouldn’t be necessary, ‘cos this week’s guest is an absolute literary icon. Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club, Haunted, Lullaby, Choke, and last year’s Not Forever, But For Now – a writer who helped shape the nihilism and extremity of 90s and noughties …

This week, we're excited to welcome Neil McRobert, host of the Talking Scared Podcast to the show to talk all things Horror! Talking Scared Podcast is described as "Conversations with the biggest names in horror fiction. A podcast for horror readers who want to know where their favorite stories came from . . . and what frightens the people who wrot…

Send us a Text Message. Are you hungry? If so we have a chewy, salty, deeply flavoured feast for you this week. Ally Wilkes returns to Talking Scared to discuss the icebound horrors of her new novel, Where the Dead Wait. It’s a tale of Arctic exploration gone very wrong, complete with haunting, human suffering and the morbid fascination of cannibal…

Send us a Text Message. The first new book coverage of 2024 – and it starts us off on suitably horrific footing. Jenny Kiefer’s debut novel, This Wretched Valley, has been getting a huge amount of early buzz in horror circles. It’s the story of four unlucky adventurers, who head into the Kentucky woods and meet all manner of nasty sh*t. It’s a tigh…

Send us a Text Message. To kick off a new year of Talking Scared, I’ve gone and hooked us a big guest, with a whopper of a story. John Langan is the author of The Fisherman. It’s one of the great works of supernatural fiction written this century, but its story doesn’t end at its back-cover. The strange mythology of The Fisherman extends beyond, sw…

Send us a Text Message. Another year done. We squeaked through without another plague or a nuclear apocalypse (don’t tempt fate Neil!!) and along the way, oh the stories we read! The only thing left to do after mopping away the chalk pentagrams, is to run you through my very favourite books of the year. The so-called Best Horror Novels of 2023, as …

Send us a Text Message. Dickens said that Christmas Eve was a time for ghost stories, and who am I to argue? It is my show though, so I get to pick the ghost story – and I picked Peter Straub’s classic novel of the name. A tale of old men with horror in their youths, seductive evil and a town besieged by winter and… worse things. It’s a slippery be…

Send us a Text Message. And so we come to the end of another year in horror. Time to look back at the best that 2023 has had to offer, as determined by three of the best in the business. My trusted horror chancellor, Emily Hughes joins me ­– alongside C.J. Leede, the author of this year’s gloriously transgressive Maeve Fly, and the maestro of the m…

Send us a Text Message. We’re going up in the world this week – longitudinally and latitudinally, with the GOAT of endurance, adventure Gothic, Michelle Paver. Michelle joins me for a big conversation about her novels Dark Matter and Thin Air – two of the most effective ghost stories of the 21st century. One takes us to the Arctic, the other to a H…

Send us a Text Message. Last time Gemma Amor came on the show we had a good ol’ chinwag about our haunted brains. This time around we get to some other ghosts, in her new novel, The Folly. It’s a sharp slice of coastal Gothic; Cornwall’s answer to The Shining if you will. The story follows Morgan and her aging father to the weird structure of the t…

Send us a Text Message. We’ve had Cowboys versus Aliens but have you ever considered a threeway fight between gunslingers, vampires and weird cosmic cultists to an Elder God? If not why not? What do you even think about when you are washing the dishes? But fear not, C.S. Humble has you covered. His weird western trilogy, That Light Sublime is packe…

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 …

Send us a Text Message. Sometimes two words can make a jaded horror reader sit up straight. Ghost is one, Dinosaur is another. Ghost. Dinosaur. Have you ever heard a more beautiful combination, a sweeter symphony of syllables. If “Ghost Dinosaur” doesn’t make you go squeeee and shake your fists in excitement, I don’t know how to help you. Anyway, t…

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…

Send us a Text Message. Horror is about finding light in darkness. That’s the mission statement of this podcast, at least. And it’s never been truer than in this week’s episode. Tyler Jones re-joins us on Talking Scared to talk about his new novel, Midas. We cover its original mix of western tropes, Gothic fantasy and cult horror, but it’s family t…

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…

Send us a Text Message. History is haunted. Ghosts are injustice persevering. So many horror stories hinge on that idea, but for Tananarive Due it’s more personal than that. Her new novel, The Reformatory, is borne from the ghosts hidden in her own family history. The story takes place in a hideously cruel juvenile correction facility, in a racist …

Send us a Text Message. Sometimes when you’re doing something scary good company can be a blessing. Nat Cassidy is good company. And this week he talks me through the haunted hallways and avenues of his New York horror ode, Nestlings – but he also helps me tackle the very real world horror that is turning our newspapers into nightmare-fodder and th…

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…

Send us a Text Message. Some stories are just too big for one podcast. Some stories should be too big for one book. Sam Rebelein’s Edenville is one such story. This 300-something page novel has more crammed into it than your average fantasy trilogy. There is backstory upon backstory, a cosmic framework, and enough different monsters to fill Guiller…

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…

Send us a Text Message. Some stories are too short, some are too long, but some stories are just right. It’s the Goldilocks zone: the novella. What is the secret to crafting a longer story but not letting it run away from you? How do you sustain the terror beyond the shortest form? How do you know what to keep in and what to cut out? This is the ar…

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…

Send us a Text Message. This week is a special roundtable episode. An exciting, challenging and very very thought-provoking tour of contemporary Black horror, in the company of three writers at the bleeding edge. Nnedi Okorafor, Maurice Broaddus and Lesley Nneka Arimah are just three of the contributors to Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New B…

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…

Send us a Text Message. Come home!! We have to come home!! The House is calling us. Yep, this week we are going back to the most haunted house of all. Hill House. Shirley Jackson’s classic bad place. And we’re going in the company of three-time Shirley Jackson Award Winner, Elizabeth Hand, whose new novel is the first ever sanctioned sequel to Jack…

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…