Talking Scared

Send us a text2020 is nearly behind us (woohoo!) but we have time for one more interview with a master of horror. Our guest this week is Michael Marshall Smith the genre polymath and man of a thousand pseudonyms (all of them involving ‘Michael’.)He is joining me to discuss his new career retrospective, The Best of Michael Marshall Smith, published in a beautiful volume by Subterranean Press. It’s a huge collection of stories, covering Michael’s 30 years of writing, from his recent work, all the way back to his debut story “The Man Who Drew Cats” – which won the British Fantasy Award. Along the way we talk about living and writing on both sides of the Atlantic, our shared love of Stephen King and why Michael writes about cats so much. We also establish that I’m a dog person. And just to make sure we cover all the bases, we also devote a few minutes to discussing the orange baby currently tantrum-ing his way out of the White House, cos it is 2020 still, after all. Lastly, if that isn’t enough for you, I run through the first “Talking Scared Top-Ten Horror of the Year” list. Next year there might be prizes, who knows. It’s been an astonishing year for horror and the first few months of this show have exposed me to writing and thinking that I may otherwise have missed. I can only hope it’s done the same for some of you.So, see you in 2021, when the skies will be blue, the birds singing, and the ghosts moaning a bit more cheerfully.Enjoy!Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com.Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing and Adrian Flounders for graphic design.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textMerry Christmas and/or time-off-work-week! For all of you currently freezing your asses off in cold climes, this week’s episode may make you feel a little too warm under the collar. Our guest is Gabriel Bergmoser, an author who exploded onto the horror scene in early 2020 with The Hunted, a pulpy, violent, visceral hell ride through the Australian wilderness in the company of very human prey and predators. Considering the amount of people hanging from hooks and suffering violent deaths in his fiction, Gabriel proves to be a thoroughly charming guest. We talk at length about the problem of masculinity down under (and, as it turns out, everywhere else!). Gabe’s thesis includes anecdotes from Australian history and the time that he was personally chased down the street by a kid with a nail-studded cricket bat.The Hunted is an EXCEPTIONAL horror novel. It flaunts its genre credentials, allowing us to get back to the blood and guts basics of the genre. At the same time, though, it’s got a lot to say about a lot of things. You’ll read it in one night and still think about it months later.The Hunted was published in May by Faber and FaberOh, and a listener asked me to finally flesh out the list of my top-ten horror novels of all time. You don’t have to ask me twice, so at the end of this episode you’ll get some extra bonus content (whether you want it or not) whilst I indulge myself in banging on about books I love. I get quite pretentious in parts.Red Dragon (1981), by Thomas HarrisThe Golden Age (1985), by Louis NowraSoon (2017), by Lois MurphyA Head Full of Ghosts (2015), by Paul TremblayThe Haunting of Hill House (1959), by Shirley JacksonLunar Park (2005), by Bret Easton EllisThe Terror (2007), by Dan SimmonsBeloved (1987), by Toni MorrisonGhost Story (1971), by Peter StraubThe Little Stranger (2009), by Sarah WatersSwan Song (1987), by Robert R. McCammonThe Stand (1978), by Stephen KindHouse of Leaves (2000), by Mark Z. DanielewskiIT (1986), by Stephen KingCome talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com.Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing and Adrian Flounders for graphic design.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textThis late into 2020 we are all craving a) a holiday and b) time with friends. Our guest this week may cast a slightly different perspective on both.  Rachel Harrison is the author of The Return, a novel that looks into the dark heart of friendship and asks “do you REALLY know who your friends are?” The book was published all the way back in March, by Berkley in the US and Hodder in the UK. I finally found time to catch up with Rachel and to tell her why this book scared me so badly.Yep, this may be the single most unnerving novel I’ve read in 2020 (and that includes a couple of fictional pandemics in the middle of our real pandemic). The Return presents female friendship in all its complexity, compassion and cruelty. As you’ll hear, I didn’t always get on with the women in this book, but they left a lasting impression on me (and on Rachel). Plus, it prompts Rachel to tell me hew own personal ghost story. It’s a lot more benign than the one in her story. Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com.Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing and Adrian Flounders for graphic design.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textStand back! Our Guest this week is Christopher Golden, author of all manner of horror, adventure and generally freaky fiction. His latest book is Red Hands, the third featuring Ben Walker, action-hero and expert in the batsh*t weird! I have used the words ‘relevant’ and ‘prescient’ more than ever in 2020 – this being, after all, the year that all our horror stories became true. Even by that standard Red Hands is creepily on the money though. It’s the story of a plague that is transmitted by simple touch, and kills in seconds. That may sound like grim reading right now, but trust me, it’s a hell of a good time. Action-packed and surprisingly philosophical in approach, it also features a KILLER first chapter. Christopher and I talk about our shared love of historical mystery and folklore, the pros and cons of writing series fiction, and how you balance pace and character in a book that wants to raise your pulse and make you care. Red Hands would have been too horrible to bear a few months ago. Now, with a vaccine on the way, it is the propulsive popcorn read that may perfectly pair with your holiday. Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com. Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing and Adrian Flounders for graphic design.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textThis week our guest is Sam J. Miller, author of The Blade Between - a novel for anyone who  loves or loathes their hometown. It’s a story of small-town ghosts, hidden hatreds and sudden violence. And behind it all looms the issue of gentrification, in all its ugliness and beauty. Listening to Sam talk, you may think differently about that cute little bistro that’s opened down the street. Y’know, the one that took over from that local place that had been there for years . . . Sam’s previous works include The Art of Starving (2017) and Blackfish City (2018), both novels that take no truck with easy ideas of genre. They, like The Blade Itself are freewheeling stories, and as you’ll here, Sam is more than willing go down some weird alleyways and to spill his own blood on the page.He’s also got a lot of things to say about queer identity in horror, about how no-one ever thinks they are the villain in the story, and the worry of how people in your hometown may feel when you savage it in your story. The Blade Between was published December 1st 2020, by Ecco Books.Books we mentioned include: The Art of Starving (2017), by Sam J. Miller Needful Things (1991), by Stephen King Drawing Blood (2010), by Poppy Z. Brite The Cabin at the End of the World (2018), by Paul Tremblay Plain Bad Heroines (2020), by Emily Danforth A Spectral Hue (2019), by Craig Lawrence Gibney Never Have I Ever (2021), by Isobel Yap Homesick (2019) and Finna (2020), by Nino Cipri Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com.Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing and Adrian Flounders for graphic design.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textIf 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 ways than one.  It’s an anthology novel that comprises … well … thirteen stories, all about the haunted corridors of an inner-city tower block. Horrible things happen to good and bad people and, true to form, stuff gets very, very weird!Jonny is every bit as good an interviewee as you’d expect from someone who does his day job. We get into all sorts of nooks and crannies about both the book and the show. We discuss how to create a singularly horrifying image, why M.R. James is still the man, and delve into the birth and forthcoming end of The Magnus Archives.  Oh … and Kenny Loggins makes an appearance.Enjoy!Thirteen Stories is published by Gollancz on November 26th, 2020.Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com.Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textThings 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 between a religion and a cult, how to capture the spiritual essence of music in prose, and we also get deep into what is so scary about religion and faith tipping over into something darker.On top of that, Craig confronts us all with one of the big moral questions – how many arms would YOU feed to a shredder if you had to?Along the way we mention some other books, including:  It (1986), by Stephen King Kin (2011), by Kealan Patrick Burke Last Days (2012), by Adam Neville Suffer the Children (2014), by Craig DiLouie Hater (2006), by David Moody The Power (2016), by Naomi Alderman Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com.Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textThis 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 there, things only get worse as the possibilities of what is actually happening become terrifyingly limitless.  We spend a good hour talking crises of masculinity, why kids are better equipped for apocalypse than their parents, and why literary fiction needs to get the chip off its shoulder a little. We also both realise that we’d be functionally useless in any kind of real crisis.A few books mentioned in this episode include:  Swimming Home (2011), by Deborah Leavy.  Never Let Me Go (2005) by Kazuo Ishiguro Pet Sematary (1983) by Stephen King  Enjoy!Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com.Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textIf 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 previous work includes The Guardians (2011), The Demonologist (2013) and The Damned (2015), amongst many others. We talk about the nature of evil, both personal and political, and consider the sex life of a president (no, not this one!) Andrew also takes us on a tour through the intriguingly haunted history of Pennsylvania Avenue. Who knew the White House had so many ghosts? Enjoy! Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com. Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textIt’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 wide-ranging discussion, we touch upon the remnants of lost civilisations, cryptozoology and the link between wonder, fear and the conspiracy theory. I also offer my favourite (and fool proof) theory as to why all photos of Bigfoot are blurry.I hope you all have the best Halloween possible in current circumstances. It’s been great creating this podcast so far and, today, on a horror-fan’s favourite holiday, I hope you are all well and enjoyably scared. Enjoy!Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com.Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing.Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices