Talking Scared
216 episodes - English - Latest episode: 6 days ago - ★★★★★ - 192 ratingsConversations with the biggest names in horror fiction. A podcast for horror readers who want to know where their favourite stories came from . . . and what frightens the people who wrote them.
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
14 - Jonathan Sims and the Haunted High-Rise
November 25, 2020 00:00 - 1 hour - 42.6 MBSend us a Text Message. If you’re a fan of podcasts and horror (and of course you are!) then chances are you’ll recognise our guest. Jonathan Sims is the author of Thirteen Storeys, but you may know him (or his voice) as the creator and narrator of The Magnus Archives. Yep, that’s right, I’m interviewing The Archivist himself. Thirteen Storeys takes a lot of what makes The Magnus Archives great, and blends it with contemporary social realism to create a book that’s horrifying in more way...
13 - Craig DiLouie and the Cult of the Shredder.
November 18, 2020 09:00 - 50 minutes - 33.8 MBThings get a little cultish this week on Talking Scared. Our guest is Craig DiLouie, author of the brand-spanking-new creepy commune novel, The Children of Red Peak – released November 18th from RedHook Books. It’s a tale of crazy goings-on in the desert, of ritual mutilation and lasting trauma. All that fun stuff! Craig immediately has me in his thrall, even without the Kool-Aid. (interesting fact, it was actually Flavour Aid that the Jonestown cultists drank). We talk about the difference...
13 - Craig DiLouie and the Cult of the Shredder
November 18, 2020 09:00 - 50 minutes - 33.8 MBSend us a Text Message. Things get a little cultish this week on Talking Scared. Our guest is Craig DiLouie, author of the brand-spanking-new creepy commune novel, The Children of Red Peak – released November 18th from RedHook Books. It’s a tale of crazy goings-on in the desert, of ritual mutilation and lasting trauma. All that fun stuff! Craig immediately has me in his thrall, even without the Kool-Aid. (interesting fact, it was actually Flavour Aid that the Jonestown cultists drank). We ...
12 - Rumaan Alam and the Apocalyptic Rorschach Test
November 11, 2020 00:00 - 1 hour - 42.4 MBSend us a Text Message. This week Rumaan Alam presents us with a wholly ambiguous end of the world. Rumaan’s new novel, Leave the World Behind has taken the publishing landscape by storm. Reviews are everywhere and critics are shouting its name from the rooftops, with good reason. Leave the World Behind is a strange, uneasy tale of the world going wrong. What begins as a family getaway to Long Island spirals into fear as strangers arrive, bringing news of a blackout in New York City. From ...
11 - Andrew Pyper and the Demon in the White House
November 03, 2020 00:00 - 54 minutes - 36 MBSend us a Text Message. If you are feeling nervous today, or just want something to distract you from the doomscrolling, then welcome to our Election Day special. Our guest is Andrew Pyper whose latest novel, The Residence, is an historical tour around a White House under siege from a demon. This particular spirit is arrogant, spiteful and determined to use the Oval Office for dire purposes – but he’s not orange at least! Andrew is no stranger to creepy, spirit-infested fiction. His previ...
10 - Colin Dickey and the Obligatory Halloween Special AKA Why We Believe in Monsters
October 31, 2020 17:00 - 58 minutes - 39.4 MBSend us a Text Message. It’s Halloween and in lieu of any trick and/or treating this plague year, I offer you a conversation with Colin Dickey, mystery-maestro and curator of the creepy. Colin is the author of Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places (2016) and The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters and our Obsession with the Unexplained – books that plumb the depths of the human mind and our fixation on the creepy things at the margins of the known world. In this wi...
09 - T. Kingfisher and Does the Dog Die in This One?
October 28, 2020 08:00 - 57 minutes - 38.6 MBSend us a Text Message. Where do you stand on horror and comedy? Can a book be too funny to be scary, or too terrifying to raise a chuckle? Our guest this week would argue not. T. Kingfisher is the author of the critically-acclaimed The Twisted Ones (2019) and her brand-new release The Hollow Places. Both are scorching horror tales, with some hideous imagery, exquisite world-building and nightmare-fuel ideas . . . but they are also both laugh-out-loud funny, at least to us sickos anyway! ...
08 – Emily Danforth and “The Blair Witch X Lesbians”
October 20, 2020 23:00 - 1 hour - 41.8 MBSend us a Text Message. This week Emily Danforth takes us back to school. Her new novel, Plain Bad Heroines has a lot to say about the history of queer women, the price of fame, and whether found footage horror is any good. Plain Bad Heroines features heavily on all the best-of lists for the season, and it’s an early reputation that’s well deserved. This tricksy, twisty novel spans centuries to tell the tale of a very peculiar school and the horror film made about it two hundred years later...
07 - Kate Summerscale and the Shoplifting Poltergeist
October 13, 2020 23:00 - 56 minutes - 37.3 MBSend us a Text Message. Kate Summerscale is our first guest working in the realms of non-fiction. Her back-catalogue proves that the real world is every bit as dark and terrifying as the inside of Stephen King’s head. She’s covered murder in the famous The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (2008) and now she’s back with a more spiritual crisis in The Haunting of Alma Fielding. The book examines a very odd case of poltergeist activity in the London suburbs between the wars. Famous ghost hunters get...
06 - Stuart Turton and How To Plot a Very Clever Murder
October 06, 2020 23:00 - 1 hour - 38.3 MBSend us a Text Message. Ahoy mateys! My guest this week is the locked-room-murder-maestro himself, Stuart Turton. In 2018 Stu burst onto the scene with his genre-splicing triumph, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. It won awards and melted some brains with its maddening twists and turns. Stu’s follow-up is equally intricate but this time it’s also seaworthy. The Devil and the Dark Water is a murder mystery set on a 16th Century trading ship, but in true Turton-esque (is that a thing ye...
05 – Jeremy Robert Johnson and Where Did That Octopus Come From?
September 30, 2020 08:00 - 57 minutes - 39.5 MBSend us a Text Message. This week we get visceral – with the extreme body horror of Robert Jeremy Johnson and his new novel THE LOOP. Jeremy speaks to us from Portland, Oregon, where he’s busy watching the forest fires and working on ways to weaponise his words for good. THE LOOP is a novel all about conspiracy theory, medical mishap, and a class war raging through a small town. Think your favourite 80s teen comedy (with its guts spilling out) mixed with a little bit of 50s pulp Americana...
04 - Jo Kaplan and What Makes a Great Haunted House
September 22, 2020 23:00 - 50 minutes - 32.6 MBThis week’s guest is up-and-coming horror extraordinaire, Jo Kaplan. Jo’s new haunted house novel, It Will Just Be Us is a tour-de-force of chills, thrills and things that kill. It’s got everything you could possibly want: creepy old house – check, mysterious locked room – CHECK, a witch who lurks in a swamp – CHECK!!!! It’s also got some of the best female relationships I’ve read in horror for a while, enough to pass the Bechdel test with flying colours. Jo and I talk about Freud’s uncanny...
04 - Jo Kaplan and What Makes a Great Haunted House?
September 22, 2020 23:00 - 50 minutes - 32.6 MBSend us a Text Message. This week’s guest is up-and-coming horror extraordinaire, Jo Kaplan. Jo’s new haunted house novel, It Will Just Be Us is a tour-de-force of chills, thrills and things that kill. It’s got everything you could possibly want: creepy old house – check, mysterious locked room – CHECK, a witch who lurks in a swamp – CHECK!!!! It’s also got some of the best female relationships I’ve read in horror for a while, enough to pass the Bechdel test with flying colours. Jo and I t...
03 - Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Mexican Gothic, NOT Romance
September 16, 2020 00:00 - 56 minutes - 33.1 MBSend us a Text Message. This week we’re in conversation with Silvia Moreno-Garcia, the author of Mexican Gothic - 2020's twisted publishing phenomenon. We discuss the novel's roots in British soil, and whether a book can be considered 'too' Mexican or not Mexican enough. Along the way we also consider the classic Mexican horror cinema of Enrique Taboada, why not everything has to be magic realism, and why all aspiring writers should learn to keep their receipts. Silvia has fiery words for...
02 - John Langan and Writing Under "The Influence"
September 08, 2020 23:00 - 1 hour - 48.7 MBSend us a Text Message. In the second episode i'm in conversation with John Langan, contemporary literary horror superstar and all round scholar of the genre. John is the author of the Bram Stoker Award-Winning classic The Fisherman and his latest collection is Children of the Fang and Other Genealogies. We talk about great influences and literary ventriloquism, what makes a great horror title, and what it's like to be part of the coolest club in the horror community. There are few writer...
01 - Paul Tremblay and Why It's Not the End of the World
September 01, 2020 16:00 - 57 minutes - 34 MBSend us a Text Message. In the first ever episode of Talking Scared we speak to horror megastar Paul Tremblay, author of the modern classic, A Head Full of Ghosts and this year's virus-shocker Survivor Song. There are musings on pandemics real and imaginary, the terror of sharks, and the terrible truth at the heart of horror fiction. Books mentioned in our conversation include: The Stand – Stephen King Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus – Bill Wasik & Monic...