Talking Scared 70 – Ross Jeffery and Disturbing the Comfortable
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, and it pulls no punches. Feeling festive yet, Ho Ho Ho, etc. The novella is a savage revenge-trip of blood and guts in which awful things happen – but thankfully – often to awful people.
So, you’ve been warned.
But also be reassured. Neither the conversation, nor Ross’s book goes into exploitative details – and we manage to talk about a surprising number of very jolly things - from why Ross is drawn to such extreme projects, why writing for shock alone never really works, what it was like to be Bram Stoker-ed out of the blue, and what the members of Ross’ church make of his writing.
It’s a mix of the horrific and the wholesome this week. Which could describe most of my Christmases.
Enjoy
Books discussed in this episode include:
- Boys in the Valley (2021), by Philip Fracassi
- The Girl Next Door (1989), by Jack Ketchum
- Haunted (2005), by Chuck Palahniuk
- Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke (2021), by Eric LaRocca
- Ghoul n’ the Cape (2021), by Josh Malerman
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