Talking Scared

Send us a textWhy isn’t there more horror about marriage?Think about it. You marry someone. Spend your life with them. But do you really know them, or what they are capable of.  Ronald Malfi’s Come With Me pries open these secrets, sending the protagonist on a tailspinning road trip in pursuit of the truth about the woman he has loved and lost. It’s a big, satisfying, chunky summer novel packed full of murder and monstrosity and motel-stays in the creepier corners of the country. You’ll love it.Ronald joins me to talk about the book, about writing grief and the very real tragedy that underpins Come With Me. Despite the absurd heat at either end of the conversation, we soldier on heroically, taking in local lore, the link between leaded petrol and serial killers, and why ecology may be the new haunting. And yes, we talk about how marriage should be a bigger theme in horror! Next time your wife, or husband, or significant other gets up in the night – think about that. What are they up to in the bathroom? Could be the usual. Could be something evil. Mwah ha ha!Enjoy.Come With Me was published by Titan on 20th July. Other books mentioned in the show include:  December Park (2014), by Ronald Malfi Snow (2010), by Ronald Malfi The Only Good Indians (2020), by Stephen Graham Jones I’ll Be Gone in the Dark (2018) by Michelle McNamara Support the show on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPod Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textWeather this hot demands the cool balm of a book, and do I have one for you.The Book of Accidents is the latest horror-epic from Chuck Wendig – the seeming literary successor to King, Straub, McCammon and Barker. Wendig’s books take you in their embrace and say “you’re mine now” or maybe “we all float down here.” Here, in this case, being a mineshaft in the rural vacancy of Pennsylvania. There is plenty of hype around The Book of Accidents and I’m delighted to say it’s all earned. This is quite simply the kind of big, bombastic storytelling you don’t get much of anymore, a steak-and-lobster-with-ice-cream for after sort of novel that fills you up and leaves you satisfied. The book is so big, and the ideas so grand, that Chuck and I end up forgetting to talk much about the actual story. Instead we discuss what it has to say about society – good and bad – about kindness, and love and the comfort of horror that we all-too often ignore in favour of the viscera. In short, it’s a wholesome conversation about a wholesome book, about a very unwholesome scenario. Oh – and Chuck tells us all about the very real haunted house that inspired it. A house he happens to have grown up in.Enjoy! The Book of Accidents was published by Del Rey on 20th July.Other books mentioned in the show include: Blackbirds: Miriam Black #1 (2012), by Chuck Wendig Wanderers (2018), by Chuck Wendig The Three (2014), by Sarah Lotz Road of Bones (coming 2022), by Christopher Golden Support the show on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPod Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com.Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textHello fellow horror-fiends. This week we’re going retro, to the heyday of horror, when men wore masks and women checked basements in their negligee. Our guest is Grady Hendrix, a writer perpetually interested in taking tropes, only to stab them, kill them, and resurrect them as something new. He’s done it with exorcisms, vampires, the devil and … erm .. IKEA.Now he’s taking on the slasher and his counterpart, in The Final Girl Support Group. A novel that takes the bloody, weary body of the female heroine, and gives her the chance to kick the hell out of the monster chasing her. It’s meta, funny, wry and ironic – but it’s also a story with heart. I enjoyed it immensely.Grady and I talk about our favourite slashers (and final girls), why we’re obsessed with nostalgia, what it means that we enjoy films about killing women, and I – once again ­– give away too much of my own psychological frailty. This time it’s my all-consuming terror of Freddy Kruger.This is a book and conversation that will REALLY please the true horror lovers.Enjoy! The Final Girl Support Group is published July 13th by Berkley in North American and Titan in the UK.Books mentioned in this episode include: Paperbacks From Hell (2017), by Grady Hendrix We Sold Our Souls (2018), by Grady Hendrix The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires (2020), by Grady Hendrix Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (1992), by Carol J. Clover The Last Final Girl (2012), by Stephen Graham Jones Final Girls (2017), by Riley Sager The Tribe (1981), by Bari Wood When Darkness Loves Us (1985), by Elizabeth Engstrom Support the show on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPodCome talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com.Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textThis week we’re doing something different. No author and no single book. Instead it’s a roundtable discussion, with Sadie Hartmann (AKA Mother Horror) and Emily Hughes, the genius loci behind Tor Nightfire. Together we look back over the last six months – the highs, the not-so-many-lows and all the endless twitter controversies – to address the state of the horror nation at the midpoint of 2021.All three of us talk about the books we have loved the most so far this year, what else we are looking forward to in the months ahead, and what our hopes are for horror writing in general. We also address the concerns around trauma, trigger warnings, twitter subtweeting and the endless, vice-like grip of Goodreads. If you want to get a true sense of the breadth and depth of the horror being created right now, then this is designed for you. Also, if you just want to listen to three horror nerds talk about scary stuff whilst you do the ironing, then it’s also for you.Basically, it’s for everyone. Cos I’m a giver. Enjoy!Emily Hughes’ list of horror books to be excited about in 2021 is HERE. The (huger-than-normal) list of books mentioned in this episode includes:The Picks Hearts Strange and Dreadful (2021), by Tim McGregor Goddess of Filth (2021), by V. Castro Last One at the Party (2021), by Bethany Clift Children of Chicago (2021), by Cynthia Pelayo Star Eater (2021), by Kerstin Hall Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke (2021), by Eric LaRocca Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy (2021), by Hailey Piper In That Endlessness, Our End (2021), by Gemma Files Coming Soon Immortelle, by Catherine McCarthy - July  The Book Of Accidents, by Chuck Wendig – July Come With Me, by Ronald Malfi - July Revelator, by Daryl Gregory – August The Glassy Burning Floor of Hell, by Brian Evenson – August Chasing the Boogeyman, by Richard Chizmar - August My Heart is a Chainsaw, by Stephen Graham Jones – August Cackle, by Rachel Harrison – October Reprieve, by James Han Mattson – October Nothing but Blackened Teeth, by Cassandra Khaw - October Something More Than Night, by Kim Newman - November  Assorted Others The Library at Mount Char (2015), by Scott Hawkins The Last House on Needless Street (2021), by Catriona Ward Rawblood (2015), by Catriona Ward A Head Full of Ghosts (2015), by Paul Tremblay The Twisted Ones (2019), by T. Kingfisher Starving Ghosts in Every Thread (2020), by Eric LaRocca The Family Plot (2016), by Cherie Priest Boy’s Life (1991), by Robert McCammon Support the show on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPodCome talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com.Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textThis week I have been forced to up my game.  Our guest is Carmen Maria Machado, and her works is not for the lazy or faint-hearted. From her dizzying collection of short fiction, Her Body and Other Parties, to her one-of-a-kind memoir, In the Dream House, Carmen’s writing forces a humble interviewer such as me, to question how we talk about books, author, character, truth, fiction and all the messy space in between.In the Dream House  deconstructs what a memoir is and can do, and I had to really think about the questions I wanted to ask, and how to ask them. It is, nominally, a narrative of domestic abuse in a same-sex relationship, but Carmen chooses to tell that story using every literary tool in her (and everyone else’s) toolbox. The result is electrifying.We talk about privacy versus public, what it’s like to write about sex you’ve actually had, hypochondria, double-standards and the lure of horror and gothic as a way to tell a real-life story of violence and trauma. It’s not all dark though. We laugh a lot. Mostly at my awkwardness. Enjoy! Her Body and Other Parties and In the Dream House are both published by Greywolf Press in North America and Serpent’s Tail in the UK.Other books discussed in this episode include: The Argonauts (2015), by Maggie Nelson The Ghost Variations (2021), by Kevin Brockmeier A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip: A Memoir of Seventh Grade (2014), by Kevin Brockmeier Proxies: Essays Near Knowing (2016), by Brian Blanchfield Monster Portraits (2018), by Sofia Samatar The Hot Zone (1994), by Richard Preston The Haunting of Hill House (1959), by Shirley Jackson The Bloody Chamber (1979), by Angela Carter Support the show on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPodCome talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com.Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textIt’s a dirty, grim, glorious time on Talking Scared this week. After a last-minute schedule reshuffle we have Eric LaRocca, here to talk about his word-of-mouth sensation of a novella – Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. Gotten worse is quite the understatement. This book goes so far beyond the pale in terms of horror’s usual comfort level these days. It’s a simple tale of online love, BDSM and self-mutilation, all tinged with some wonderful early noughties nostalgia. This book does for MSN messenger what the Blair Witch Project did for the woods.Eric and I talk about all of that, as well as transgressive fiction, the beauty to be found in disgust, and our shared love of books and movies that have achieved legendary status as things that you probably shouldn’t experience (if you know what's good for you)!Enjoy!!Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is out now from WeirdPunk Books. Other books discussed in this episode include:  The Sluts (2004), by Denis Cooper Crash (1973), by J.G. Ballard Haunted (2005), by Chuck Palahniuk We Need to Do Something (2020), by Max Booth III Support the show on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPodCome talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com.Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textPour yourself a whisky, grab a seat and listen to the best voice in dark fiction tell you some stories. Our guest is Joe Lansdale author of so many books I can’t even begin to list them. Oh, ok, I will. Edge of Dark Water, Paradise Sky, The Bottoms, The Thicket, Fender Lizard … “Bubba Ho Tep”, Cold in July … the entire Hap and Leonard series. And he joins me to talk about his newest, Moon Lake. A tale of dark nostalgia, small town politics and murder set on the banks of a drowned village. It’s a sun-soaked, shadow-tinged summer read of the best, and most twisted kind. As much as Joe is nominally on the show to talk about Moon Lake, he’s a hard man to pin down to mere self-promotion. He has tales to tell and opinions to offer and you’d better goddamn LISTEN!! We discuss blue collar youth, Texas attitude, and whether having some hardship in life makes you a better writer. He tells me how he comes up with his unique metaphors, and why he defended Stephen King when twitter turned against him.All in all, it’s a friendly conversation about the perils of tribalism, why we should all be a little bit more tolerant, and why choosing stupidity is scary as hell.This is a bucket-list interview for me.Enjoy! Moon Lake is published by Mulholland Books on June 22nd.Other books discussed in this episode include: Edge of Dark Water (2012), by Joe R. Lansdale The Thicket (2013), by Joe R. Lansdale Paradise Sky (2015), by Joe R. Lansdale “Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Mans Back,” in High Cotton: Selected Stories of Joe. R. Lansdale “On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with the Dead Folks”, in The Best of Joe R. Lansdale (2010) “The Night They Missed the Horror Show”, by Joe R. Lansdale – originally published in Silver Scream, (1988) ed. By David Schow Great Expectations, (1860), by Charles Dickens The Only Good Indians (2020), by Stephen Graham Jones Mongrels (2016), by Stephen Graham Jones  Support the show on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPodCome talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com.Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textMaybe it’s the heat but this week we’re getting angry on Talking Scared.Our guest is V. Castro – author of Goddess of Filth and her newest, Queen of the Cicadas – and she’s full of rage. Thankfully, it’s not directed at me, despite my hideous attempts at Spanish pronunciation. Queen of the Cicadas is about identity, folklore and the residue of a decades-old crime that stands as representative of all crimes against Latinx people by an uncaring world. The death of a young girl brings forth the wrath of a violent goddess from the Aztec past …. and stuff goes DOWN!!V (short for Violet) and I talk about rage, and hate and blood and myth, which all sounds deeply profound. However, we also talk about sex and Candyman, and we put the boot into some other books, so rest assured we don’t take ourselves too seriously!!But yeah, this is one to get your blood up.Enjoy!Queen of the Cicadas is published by Flame Tree Press on June 22nd. Other books discussed in this episode include: Goddess of Filth (2021) by V. Castro Sed de Sangre (2020), by V. Castro “Cucuy of Cancun” (2020), by V. Castro, in Worst Laid Plans: An Anthology of Vacation Horror, ed. Sam Kolesnik. 2666 (2004), by Roberto Bolaño American Dirt (2019), by Jeanine Cummins Camp Slaughter (2019), by Sergio Gomez Coyote Songs (2018), by Gabino Iglesias Into the Forest and All the Way Through (2020), by Cynthia Pelayo Support the show on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPodCome talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com. Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textIt’s not often you speak to the author of a book that EVERYONE has heard of. This week I got the chance. Max Brooks. Max-freaking-Brooks, author of global bestseller World War Z is here. But rather than the undead, we’re talking hairy things in the woods, technological dependence and woke hipsters being eaten.Max’s latest novel, Devolution, regales us with the lives (and deaths) of an eco-community living deep in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Stranded by a disaster, they fall prey first to their own inadequacy and then to the very adequate hunger of roaming sasquatch, We’ve talked Bigfoot and cryptozoology a lot on this show in recent weeks. But this is the big bad daddy of them all. A satire, a found-footage document, an adventure story, but also a blood, guts and claw-filled horror novel. It’s much grimmer than you may expect.As well as monsters, Max and I discuss hokey documentaries, primate research, driverless cars, the cursed legacy of Steve Jobs and skewering our own liberal echo chamber. But it all centres on how patently unprepared our society really is for crisis. Enjoy.Devolution is published in paperback on June 10th by Del Rey. Other books and documentaries discussed in this episode include: Bigfoot: The Mysterious Monsters (1976) directed by Robert Guenette Night of the Crabs (1976), by Guy N. Smith World War Z (2006), by Max Brooks The Harlem Hellfighters (2014), by Max Brooks My review of Devolution in the UK Guardian can be found HERE.Support the show on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPodCome talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com.Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textIf you’re returning to the office any time soon and you’re really bummed about it – this week’s guest will make you feel better …. cos it could be so much worse.Zakiya Dalila Harris is the author of the much-anticipated debut, The Other Black Girl. It’s been touted as Jordan Peele’s Get Out meets The Devil Wears Prada and that’s true, there is white conspiracy and awful bosses aplenty, but I’d also suggest more than a little of the paranoid frisson of Rosemary’s Baby and the toe-curling embarrassment of The Office. Basically, it’s a big, fun book all about workplace prejudice, micro-aggressions and the thin veneer of equality – but, this being Talking Scared, rest assured it’s more than the sum of those everyday parts. It also goes into some weird and wicked places. Zakiya and I talk about her own career as the ‘only black girl in a publishing house’, the way well-meaning comments can do the most damage, and I express my anxiety about asking her ALL the questions about Blackness, like the awkward white guy at the party who insists he’d have voted for a third Obama term.Oh, and we get into hair care. Something that’s more than a little important in this book … and y’know, in life I love this book and insist you all read it.Enjoy! The Other Black Girl is published June 1st by Bloomsbury in the UK and Atria in North America.Other books discussed in this episode include:  All Her Little Secrets (2021), by Wanda M. Morris Rosemary’s Baby (1967), by Ira Levin  The Stephen Graham Jones open letter “from the Indians no longer in the background of a John Wayne movie” can be found HERE.  Support the show on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPodCome talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com.Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices