Talking Scared

Send us a textAfter much recent politickin’ and metaphor – we’re back with a good old-fashioned, honest-to-goodness ghost story. And from a friend, no less.V. L. Valentine came on the show last year (ep.31) to talk about her debut medical horror whodunnit, The Plague Letters. Now she’s back with her sophomore novel, a ripe Gothic treat called Begars Abbey. It plays with the tropes beautifully. There are secret rooms, sinister histories, mad old relatives, torture, crypts, sinister servants and lots of ghosts. Why the shift, from surgeons to spooks, you may ask.Well, Vikki and I talk about that. As well as what she learned between book 1 and 2, the elements of pacing, writing problematic women in the age of twitter, the macabre history of old dungeons and the perilous evils of Downton Abbey (ok – that last one is more my soapbox).Also, Vikki takes me to task about not yet finishing my own novel. Consider me chastened and now writing!Enjoy! Begars Abbey is published on April 26th, by Viper.Support Talking Scared on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPodCome talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, and TikTok or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com Download Novellic on Google Play or Apple Store.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textI promise this week isn’t a pandemic novel. I know … we all need a break.No, Malcolm Devlin’s And Then I Woke Up IS about a disease, but not one that makes you cough, vomit or melt. Instead it’s a disease (drum roll), OF THE MIND!! But even then, it’s not what you think – no rage monsters here. Well, not really.Instead, this novella is a perfect allegory of how narratives can infect, distort and corrupt. How reality is contingent, and how the truth is more elusive by the day. All that, with zombies (sorta) Malcolm is a very polite man. So polite that he lets me use his book as a jumping-off point for all manner of cracked pseudo-philosophical theories. I basically forget the first rule of podcasting – DON’T talk more than the guest.Sorry.But when I give Malcolm chance to speak, he says great things. We talk about everything from the power of story and culture, to the problems with zombie narratives and how, in times of horror, Left and Right wing doesn’t necessarily mean what you think. Plus, we reminisce about the blue/gold dress illusion, the Bath Salts Cannibal, and other great noughties memes. Enjoy! And Then I Woke Up is published on April 12th, by Tor.Other books mentioned in this episode include: Unexpected Places to Fall From, Unexpected Places to Land (2021), by Malcolm Devlin The Wake (2013), by Elizabeth Knox “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling”, by Ted Chiang – found in Exhalation (2019)  Support Talking Scared on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPodCome talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, and TikTok or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com Download Novellic on Google Play or Apple Store.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textAlan Baxter is the Lord of Weird Australia. I said it before, he liked it, so I’ll say it again. Alan Baxter is the Lord of Weird Australia.Perhaps nothing he has written is as weird, or as Australian as the stories set in and around the town of Gulpepper. He took us there in The Gulp and now he’s taking us back in The Fall, the second collection of linked novellas outlining the town and its weird inhabitants.Bear in mind, when I say nothing he’s written is as weird or as Australian – this is a man who wrote a book about a homicidal kangaroo!So yeah, The Gulp and The Fall are weird. Weird as hell. Weirdness on toast (with or without vegemite). We talk about that weirdness, about how to make it work and when to reign it in or let it ride. We talk the beauty and threat of Australian wilderness and the monstrous potential of the ocean. We talk winging it when it comes to mythology and how even Alan isn’t sure where Gulpepper goes next.We talk about all sorts of things. It’s a blast. Enjoy! The Fall: Tales from the Gulp 2 is published on April 12th.Other books mentioned in this episode include: The Gulp (2021), by Alan Baxter The Roo (2020), by Alan Baxter The Fisherman (2016), by John Langan The Great and Secret Show (1989), by Clive Barker The Grief Hole (2016), by Kaaron Warren Support Talking Scared on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPodCome talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, and TikTok or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com Download Novellic on Google Play or Apple Store.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textImagine it’s just you and two other people stuck in a single building for weeks on end. Everyone’s bad habits on display. How long would it take you to turn murderous?That’s just one of the possible questions asked in Emma Stonex’s The Lamplighters. Inspired by the real-world vanishing of the Flannan Isle Lighthouse keepers, but full of incident and weirdness all it’s own, The Lamplighters is equally poetic and paranoid, gentle and cruel, haunting and horrifying. It may be the best thing I’ve read this year.It will either make you want to move to a lighthouse immediately, or never again set foot anywhere but dry land. Emma and I talk about the sea, about bad places and lonely buildings, and we come back again and again to the inexhaustible metaphor of the lighthouse.It all gets very lyrical, but we do also use the word “bonkbuster” at one point, to puncture the profundity.This is a truly fantastic book, and a great conversation with someone who shares our love for the windswept, memory-stained places of the world. Enjoy! The Lamplighters is published in paperback on March 1st in the US and March 31st in the UK.Support Talking Scared on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPod Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, and TikTok or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com Download Novellic on Google Play or Apple Store.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textThis 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 spook fest. An anthology of fiction that attempts to set the tone for where we are in our collective horror moment. John is the editor, Josh and Livia are contributors – amongst nine other names from the very forefront of the genre. Each story is different, with few tropes, little tradition and zero constricting theme. It’s just a collection of darkness, depravity and delight.John, Livia and Josh are old friends, old battle-companions from the horror vanguard. As such I’m essentially redundant this week. I just turned the show over to them and got out of the way. I make an attempt at order and structure – we talk about making horror weird as hell, about drawing fiction from life, about how we use and abuse tropes in this new horror landscape, but mostly it’s about community, friendship and weird, perverse joy in being creepy together.Oh, and Josh and I talk bad drug experiences, whilst Livia joins my fight to put sex back in horror!Enjoy!Dark Stars: New Tales of Darkest Horror is published on May 10th by Tor Nightfire in the US and Titan in the UK.Other books mentioned in this episode include: Dark Forces: New Stories of Suspense and Supernatural Horror (1980), ed. Kirby McCauley The House Next Door (1978), by Anne Rivers Siddons Rooster (2021), by John C. Foster Dark Factory (2022), by Kathe Koje Every Dead Thing (1999), by John Connolly Ghoul ‘n’ the Cape (2021), by Josh Malerman Support Talking Scared on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPodCome talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, and TikTok or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com Download Novellic on Google Play or Apple Store. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textHey 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 features a female serial killer (or is she?), a haunted house (or is it?) and a VERY millennial true crime blogger (or is… yes, yes she is!)It was exactly the kind of story that I needed to blow the nuclear cobwebs off in our freshly frightening times. Simone and I talk about the struggle of plotting, and its rewards for enjoyable stories. We wonder why we don’t get more female serial killers in fiction and the complexity of flipping gender roles within genre. We also tussle with the troubles of setting horror in Canada.…oh, and I try to convince her to start a podcast.Enjoy!Support Talking Scared on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPodCome talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, and TikTok or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com  Download Novellic on Google Play or Apple Store.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textAre 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 NFT monkeys, about poisoned capitalism and how his book mirrors our own pre-apocalyptic malaise. We also talk about the link between depression and creativity, and we have a friendly disagreement about whether the protagonist of this book is a deeply sinister character.This is a gentler end-of-days than most, but no less horrifying in its implications.Enjoy!Drowning Practice is published March 15th by Ecco Books. Other books mentioned in this conversation include: The Men (2022), by Sandra Newman Never Let Me Go (2005), by Kazuo Ishiguro Lunar Park (2005), by Bret Easton Ellis Support Talking Scared on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPodCome talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, and TikTok or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com  Download Novellic on Google Play or Apple Store.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textTyler 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.We talk about small presses and self-publishing, the discipline of being your own editor, the writing from the POV of kids and the problems with perfect prose.We also discuss the collection’s theme – that life isn’t safe, that we should learn to expect the unexpected, be ready to live with (and survive crisis). That message has never been so clear as in recent news … and if you listen to this episode, please stick around for my outro as I have something to say, and dedications to make.Enjoy! Burn the Plans was published February 28th by Cemetary Gates Media Other books mentioned in this conversation include: Criterium (2020), by Tyler Jones Almost Ruth (2021), by Tyler Jones The Bone Clocks (2014), by David Mitchell The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010), by David Mitchell Consider This (2020), by Chuck Palahniuk From a Buick 8 (2002), by Stephen King Support Talking Scared on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPodCome talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, and TikTok or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com Download Novellic on Google Play or Apple Store.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textHave 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 of happiness.Quite a lot to chew on, right (I’ll stop!). On top of that pulpy set up, the book goes deep, turning the end-of-the-world into the perfect allegory for anti-trans thinking, but also sparing much empathy for the confused, the ignorant and the self-loathing. It’s an angry book, but a thoughtful one. Gretchen and I talk about love and hate, about the fear of involuntary transitioning, about victimhood and caring and fighting back against facism. I went in expecting a polemic but ended the conversation feeling strangely better about the world.I hope you do too.Enjoy!Manhunt is published February 22nd by Tor NightfireOther books mentioned in this conversation include: Tell Me I’m Worthless (2021), by Alison Rumfitt “The Screwfly Solution” (1977), by Alice Sheldon IT (1986), by Stephen King Gretchen’s interview with Heat Death can be found here.  Support Talking Scared on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPodCome talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, and TikTok or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com Download Novellic on Google Play or Apple Store. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textFebruary’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 underworld – Leon maintains an outsider’s eye and a clear knowledge of the deliciously Gothic possibilities of Queerness.We talk Jewish folklore, emotional angst, mid-20s ennui, and the bright, healthy, happy side of sadomasochism. All that with some demonic-inflection and a good dose of the odd and downright weird. What’s not to like?Enjoy!Parallel Hells is published February 17th by Sceptre Books.Support Talking Scared on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPodCome talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, and TikTok or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices