Talking Scared
Talking Scared features in-depth conversations with the biggest names in horror fiction. The show digs into where their most famous stories came from and what genuinely frightens the authors themselves. It's a compelling listen for horror readers who want to understand the real-life fears behind the fiction.
Episodes
300 – Dorian Ravenscroft & Finding Love in a Hopeless Place
The 300th author interview is here. And I’m delighted it’s with a debut author, about a truly wonderful book.
Dorian Ravenscroft’s The White North Has Thy Bones is a supreme slice of Polar Gothic and Queer Horror alike. It’s the story of a disastrous 1860 expedition to the Arctic, and the competing stories of brutality and survival told by the few who make it home. Despite all the bloodsh
Off Book #24 – Whalefall, with Brian Duffield & Daniel Kraus
Happy Whalefall Weekend!
Brian Duffield’s incredible adaptation of Daniel Kraus’ novel is now in cinemas. I was lucky enough to see an early screening and even luckier to get time with Brian and Daniel to talk about how the hell they made something so audacious.
We talk daddy issues aplenty, whale stomach sets, practical FX and the toll they took on the star, Austin Abrams. And
299 – Will Maclean & Uneasy Islands in Time
In Solace House, Will Maclean takes us back to the 90s for a drug-fuelled trip through some mindbending architecture. It’s a chance to get nostalgic for a more innocent time, when the clothes were baggy, the music was better, and you could spend a summer spent renovating an old asylum without needing to put in on TikTok.
It’s all fun and games until the existential terror kicks in and the
298 – Stephen King & The Final Turn of the Big Combination
This episode needs no attempt at a witty introduction. Stephen King is back to talk about Other Worlds Than These – the concluding volume of The Talisman saga, begun with Peter Straub 45 years ago.
We keep it spoiler-free, but we talk about Jack Sawyer’s journey and how it entwines with The Dark Tower. We reflect on The Talisman and Black House, on Wolf and my heartbreak. We discuss Peter
297 – Kyle Winkler & Roll For Your “F**K You” Stats
Leaning into absolute high geekery this week – with Kyle Winkler’s novel of how family game night can go badly wrong!
The Ship of Death is about a cursed (and I mean CURSED!) tabletop role-playing game and the unlucky couple who choose to play it. Or, as Kyle describes it “Dark Jumanji.”
It prompts a conversation about games in life and fiction. Epistolary structure and found-fic
296 – Deena Helm & Horror Says Free Palestine
This week’s episode shows what a good haunted house can do.
Deena Helm is a mixed American-Palestinian author, who’s
debut novel, Our Cut of Salt, puts all the power of the Gothic to use in
framing the occupation and oppression of Palestine. It takes place before the ongoing genocide, but offer a chance to consider how horror fiction can play its part in framing that obscenity.
295 – Chris Panatier & If These Walls Could Talk
Home is where the horror is this week, with Chris Panatier and Worry Box!
This latest offering from Panatier’s uniquely strange mind is a complete revision of the haunted house as we know it. It’s a house that means well, but understands little. Couple that with a family in flux and a child suffering intrusive thoughts, and you have a recipe for terrible, no-good disaster.
In sho
294 – China Miéville & A Million Dreaming Words for Ghost
There are big books and big books. This week we cover a HUGE book.
China Miéville is the guest. The award-winning author of Perdido Street Station, Embassytown, The City & the City, and other modern speculative classics – and he’s back with a book two decades in the making.
The Rouse is an epic of true proportions, a 1300-page saga of the twentieth century, rife with war, atrocity, trag
293 – James Tynion IV & How to Draw a Dismembered Child
James Tynion IV is a modern master of the horror comic. He’s the maniac behind so many contemporary classic series, but perhaps none are such
pop-culture behemoths as Something is Killing the Children.
I mean… with a title like that, how could it fail?
With the new omnibus collection out right now, and an in-world novel (co-authored with Kiersten White) coming in October, I thought now was a goo
292 – Chuck Wendig & Little Vulgar Hell-Babies
Wendig is here!! The man my wife refers to as “Chuck Apples”
(as opposed to “Chuck Fight Club) is back to talk about his most fun, yet
nastiest book to date. The Calamities is what would happen if The Godfather
had cenobites, if Logan Roy had made a pact with monsters, it prompts me to ask the questions “who’s your favourite demon Chuck?”
That kinda book.
Chuck tells us how the s
291 – Natasha Pulley & No Priests Were Harmed in the Making of this Podcast
No one let the Pope listen to this week’s episode.
Our guest is Natasha Pulley, genre-defying author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, The Bedlam Stacks, The Kingdoms, and now, in the The Salt King she pits the Vatican and Catholic Doctrine against something much, much older, lurking in the salt mines of the world.
It leads us to a conversation about faith of many kinds, abou
Off Book #23 – Are We Doomed? A Cheerful Guide to Apocalypse, with Ben Bradford
Happy Friday! Let’s talk about the end of the world.
Our guest is Ben Bradford, creator and host of Are We Doomed? – the new hit podcast examining the existential risks facing humanity.
“Dammit Neil”, I hear you say “Are we not suffering enough.” To you I
reply … sure, Ben and I make talk nukes and rogue AI, climate change and supervolcanoes, but believe me, you’ll feel more optimistic
290 – Liam Higginson & Awful Things in Lonely Farmhouses
Finally, we dare venture to the darkest land of all. Wales!
After years of avoiding the terror of the Valleys, Liam Higginson takes us to The Hill in the Dark Grove – his debut novel of isolation, folk-memory, and things unearthed from the soil of a mountain farm.
We talk about the link between folklore and nationalism, about marriage and madness (not linked) and why it’s always men who go barm
289 – Annie Jacobsen & Be Afraid… Be Very Afraid
This may be my scariest episode ever!
We’ve covered non-fiction before, but rarely is the truth more frightening than the stories we tell. This week it just might be… cos Annie Jacobsen is here with Biological War: A Scenario.
It unveils a narrative of speculative reality, in which an engineered pathogen escapes a lab, and runs rampant through our civilisation. Cities fall, milli
Let Us Palaver #10 – Wolves of the Calla Debrief
In our main Wolves of the Calla Deep Dive, we came within touching distance of the Dark Tower’s biggest secret yet. Chris doesn’t know
what to think, which is just where Nat and I want him.
So we stuck around to talk in full-spoiler terms about all the stuff Chris is yet to discover, and our own thoughts on books to come, on choice lines from Calla, and just what that reveal in the final pa
The Dark Tower Deep Dive #10 – Wolves of the Calla
Hallelujah, come commala, we’re back together!
Finally, after stopping for side missions with Jack Sawyer, and a pair of stories of Roland’s younger days, we’re back in Midworld’s here-and-now to push on towards the Dark Tower. It’s time for Wolves of the Calla, a novel of old friends, new enemies…and a quite surprising amount of boobs.
This is also where certain things start to
288 – Danielle Giles & A Spoonful of Skulldust (Makes the Medicine Go Down)
Time for a horrid history lesson.
Daniell Giles is the author of medieval gothic Mere (2025), and the brand-new Restoration horror-show, Gentle Things. In this episode she talks about the nightmare of research, the similarities between the 1660s and our own sh**ty decade, and how much we both love Sarah Waters.
But mostly it’s a guided tour of a dirty period in history, of murder
287 – Megan Bontrager & The Cave of Cosmic Narcissism
I hope you have your headtorch this week – cos we’re going to some deep, dark places.
Megan Bontrager’s debut novel, The Sea Hides its Dead, is a story of a mysterious cave, an unprepared expedition, and the monstrous secrets they find within. It’s shadowed by Lovecraft, it has big freaky monsters, and a whole deep mythology to unpick.
In short it’s my kinda story. The exact leve
286 – Chuck Tingle & Kill the Vegan Rockstars
Love is very very real on this week’s episode. The man, the myth, Chuck Tingle returns for a conversation about his latest novel, Fabulous Bodies – a story of body horror, influencer culture, artistic integrity and glam rock graverobbing.
We talk about all of that, as well as the different rules for famous people, combining humour and extreme violence, we get some nuggets of info about Chuck’s
285 – Paul Tremblay & Eternity at Bernie’s
This week we’re putting the boot right into the ribs of the AI Industry, but doing it in horrific style, with Paul Tremblay and Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep.
It’s a story of a young gamer, tasked with piloting a man’s comatose body across the United States using AI tech. But deep inside, the man is still conscious, and what he’s experiencing is nightmarish.
Dark stuff, but surprisin
Off Book #22 – Scaredy Boys & The Coward’s Guide to Horror Movies (Part 2)
Part Two of my Scaredy Boy special, in which I quiz my friends in fear, Damo, Sean and To—AKA the Scaredy Boys themselves—about what they’ve seen and suffered through in their podcasting mission to conquer horror movies.
We talk number one examples of dread, disgust and despair. We pick our favourite horror villains. We talk about the films we’ll never watch again and those we’re too scared to
284 – Tom Lin & Who Wants to Live Forever?
Would you rather die or live on and on and on and on…
That’s one of the questions at the heart of Tom Lin’s Babylon, South Dakota. It’s a novel about a Chinese family who inherit an American farm, and whose lives are forever changed when the US military build strange missile silos on their land. It’s weird, inexplicable, deep, epic, sad and joyful and all the other things that make a good book
Off Book #21 – Scaredy Boys & The Coward’s Guide to Horror Movies (Part 1)
The first of a two-part special with the Scaredy Boys, my
brothers-in-cowardice from Down Under. Damo, Tom and Sean are famously and unashamedly terrified of horror movies, and started a podcast to face their fears. Since 2020 they’ve been watching and analysing a horror movie every week – so now they’ve probably seen more than most of us.
I got them onto Talking Scared to discuss their insane
283 – Naomi Kritzer & It Could Happen Anywhere
I dunno if this week’s episode is a dystopian nightmare or just a realist thriller.
Naomi Krtizer, multi-award winning author of sci-fi and horror, join me for a conversation about her new novella, Obstetrix. It follows the struggles of doctor, kidnapped by a cult to work as their in-house OBGYN. What follows is a balance between personal survival and the obligation to the women in her care.
282 – CJ Leede & Peeling Back the Skin of the World
Horror’s reigning Queen of Extreme returns to the show!
CJ Leede is the author of Maeve Fly and American Rapture, and if you’re abreast of contemporary horror you’ve heard of her twisted take on Americana.
She’s back to talk about her third novel, Headlights, in which people are waking up from fugue-like states, to find themselves draped in the flayed skins of other people. What’s going o
281 – Melissa Albert & The Howling Strangeness
Melissa Albert’s novel may be called The Children, but it’s certainly not for kids.
This is a story about the dark creativity behind bright make-believe,
about the pretty lies of childhood and the brutal truths of growing up. It’s
about writers and writing and as you’ll hear me point out, it does for fantasy
fiction what Stephen King’s Misery did for Gothic romance.
And by god do we talk
Off Book #20 – Petrified, with Peter Dunne
Off to Old Dublin Town to have creepy tales pumped direct
into our earholes this week. I’m joined by Peter Dunne, the writer and director of Petrified — Ireland’s premier horror drama podcast.
It’s a horror show with a vein of Irish humour, but it’s not afraid to get really nasty when the chance arises. Across dozens of episodes, Peter and the team have offered serial killing parents, haunted
280 – Neena Viel & Go Heinous or Go Home
Disgust, despair and belly laughs on the show this week – with Neena Viel and her new novel, I’ll Watch Your Baby.
It’s a dense, troubling tale of child theft, social horror and demons, with plenty of putrid feet to give you a summertime ick! But if the book is a sickener, the author is a delight. Neena makes me do a proper full-on guffaw (has anyone EVER guffawed?), whilst we talk about urban
Let Us Palaver #9 – The Wind Through the Keyhole Debrief
A little more chat as the last of the starkblast fades.
In this bonus Palaver episode, Nat and I stick around to dissect Chris’s disproportionate love for The Wind Through the Keyhole. We talk about
what, if any conclusions can be drawn from this book, and then we get onto King’s intersections with Lovecraft and Tolkien – and some deep cut Dark Tower references elsewhere in the canon.
Enj
The Dark Tower Deep Dive #9 – The Wind Through the Keyhole
Whilst the wind and world howls outside, we can all hunker indoors for the latest Dark Tower Deep Dive into King’s 2012 novel-of-stories, The Wind Through the Keyhole.
To some, this could be an inessential pitstop, a mere nostalgic coda, written long after the climax of the main saga. To others it’s a testament to Stephen King’s raw storytelling chops, which shed a little more purpling light o
279 – Sarah Langan & The Mask Eats the Face
Trad wives are taking over horror in 2026 – but I predict none will be more frightening and more gorgeously WEIRD than Sarah Langan’s novel.
It’s the tale of a young woman in the dying era of journalism and the YouTube influencer who offers her hope, and much worse things…. I absolutely loved it.
Sarah and I talk about the trad wife phenomenon, where it comes from, what it means, and how i
Off Book #19 – Dark Documentaries, with Kaelyn from Heart Starts Pounding
Kaelyn Moore returns to talk scared, straight from the helm of Heart Starts Pounding – her mega podcast of mysteries, murder and the
macabre.
She watches a lot of dark documentaries for research. I asked her to come talk about a few that recently inspired her (or disturbed her). We cover serial killers, cursed objects and a relationship that will give you serious ICK!
But of course, this be
278 – Daisy Pearce & Bog Witches of the World Unite!
This week is full of muck and murk and mushrooms. We flit amongst the trees, we bed on moss, we howl at the moon.
Daisy Pearce is entering her bog witch era!
The author takes us to her native Cornwall, for a story of haunting and imprisonment, small town baggage and creepy houses in the woods. We
talk about the oppressive landscape and the mythical texture of the place. We ask whether anyon
Off Book #18 – Hokum, with Damian McCarthy
This week we host one of the most exciting horror filmmakers of the decade – Damian McCarthy, the twisted mind behind Caveat, Oddity and
now, Hokum.
It’s the biggest film in Damian’s career so far, with his biggest star, Adam Scott playing Ohm, a deeply flawed American writer who travels to Ireland, to spread his parent’s ashes. Whilst staying in a creaky old hotel, he stumbled across dark hum
277 – Marcus Kliewer & Rules Help Control the Fun
Cognitohazards abound this week, as Marcus Kliewer joins me for a conversation about the reality-shredding We Used to Live Here and his new novel of obsessional rules, The Caretaker.
In both books, there are things that should not be known, and certainly not questioned. Yet questioning is my job – so we get into the expansive and weird universe Marcus is building, and the process of playing ga
276 – Kylie Lee Baker & Swords Make Everything Worse
A conversation about codes of honour and the rules of haunting in this week’s episode – as I’m joined by Kylie Lee Baker, author of 2025’s incredible Bat Eater, and the brand-new Japanese Gothic.
It’s the story of a very particular haunted house, a brutal samurai family, and a murderer who can’t remember his crime. It’s exhilaratingly weird and Kylie leads me through its many strange rooms.
275 – Caroline Bicks & The Stuff Too Dark for Even Stephen King
When Stephen King tells you to have a guest on your podcast – you listen!
That’s how I came to meet Caroline Bicks, the inaugural Stephen E. King Chair at the University of Maine, and author of the Monsters in the Archive – the first full-length study of the King literary collection.
It’s part memoir, part literary biography, part granular exploration of King’s editorial process – but ALL
Off Book #17 – Undertone, with Ian Tuason and Nina Kiri
Listen at your own peril this week.
I spoke with Ian Tuason and Nina Kiri, the director and star of Undertone – billed as “the scariest movie you’ll ever hear!”
It’s the story of an isolated podcaster, who makes the terrible mistake of listening to some very unnerving audio files…which then start to bleed into her own life. You can imagine the number it did on me!
Ian and Nina talk a
274 – Carter Keane & Working Ourselves to Death!!
Corporate culture is a nightmare, but getting out of the office brings its own problems in Carter Keane’s debut novella – Morsel.
It’s a story about monsters and eldritch beings, about killer cults and evil law-enforcement, about wellbeing scams and a boss from hell – but it’s also a springboard for a whole conversation about the cons (many) and pros (debatable) of capitalism. Carter indulges
Let Us Palaver #8 – The Black House Debrief
Nat and I stick around in the shadowed recesses of Black House for another half hour, to discuss all the things that Chris got right and wrong – and to make some entirely unfounded claims of our own.
It’s overflowing with spoilers for the whole Dark Tower series, so don’t listen if you’re a newbie. We start to ask who is the Crimson King? Would Roland and Jack have gotten along? And we get ver
The Dark Tower Deep Dive #8 – Black House
Time to whet our appetites for the Dark Tower again – this time with an extra serving of ass cheek!
After three months away, we’re picking up with travellin’ Jack Sawyer after we left him in The Talisman. We find him in a sleepy Wisconsin town, where the dimension-hopping, child-eating Fisherman is plying his awful trade.
Yep… it’s time for Black House. The book in which King’s universes coll
Off Book #16 – Something Very Bad is Going to Happen, with Haley Z. Boston
After seeing an early screener of Something Very Bad is Going to Happen I immediately thought it was going to be huge!
So I leapt ahead of the curve and invited writer and showrunner, Haley Z Boston to come talk scared about weddings, soulmates, David Lynch and Danish horror, and what it’s like to work with the Duffer Brothers.
This show has been my whole personality for two weeks. Ihope yo
Episode 273 – Tamika Thompson & The Shadow of the Gun
Tamika Thompson talks me through the great American curseof the 21st Century on this week’s episode. No, not Tangerine Cthulhu … but the plague of gun deaths that is coring out the country.
That’s the focus of her new novel, The Curse of Hester Gardens, which asks whether the deaths gunning for the young men of an inner-city housing project are criminal, or something much weirder!
Yeah, th
272 – Annie Neugebauer & The Colour of a Terrible Thought
Some stories just boggle your mind and boil your imagination.
Such are the ideas in Annie Neugebauer’s You Have to Let Them Bleed, and her logic-shattering novella The Extra. The Uncanny Valley, obsessional thoughts, dangerous knowledge, mothers who aren’t mothers and a camping group that destroys the workings of math and memory… these are
just some of the inexplicabilities we discuss in this
271 – Avery Curran & The Naughtiest Ghosts in School
Time for sex and seances this week on Talking Scared.
Our guest is Avery Curran and her debut novel Spoiled Milk. It’s a story of spiritualism and sapphic desire, set in a 1920s boarding school where death, rot, haunting and much worse things (patriarchy!) runs rampant.
Avery is a specialist in the history of spiritualism (with a brand new PhD to her name) and this conversation is a deep
Off Book #15 – Dolly, with Rod Blackhurst
This Off Book episode is a trip into the deep dark woods, for a very special playdate!
Our guest is Rod Blackhurst, director and co-writer of the new retro horror movie, Dolly. It’s a film about a very scary house in the woods and the even scarier person who lives inside…and who wants nothing so much as a new toy of her own.
Rod and I talk about the tone, gore and influences behind the m
270 – Christopher Buehlman & One Seriously Epic Road Trip
This week we’re sharpening our swords and checking our armpits for boils!
Christopher Buehlman is the guest, author the hugely-acclaimed 2012 medieval horror fantasy, Between Two Fires – now being reissued for a new, wide audience. It’s a book that everyone has been screaming at me to read, and I’m glad I did.
Christopher and I get hellishly geeky, talking history, plague, angelology and
269 – Catriona Ward & Where Children Fear to Tread
Clap your hands twice if you believe in Catriona Ward!
Cat is back on the show this week, to talk Nowhere Burning – a horror novel informed by everything from Peter Pan (it has its own Tinkerbell), to certain disgraced megastars, and even the CIA checklist on what constitutes a cult!
It’s a lot, and we talk about all of it, as well as various weird mysteries, the grimmest cult we’ve ever h
268 – Brennan LaFaro & The Darkness on the Edge of Town
When is a zombie not a zombie?
I don’t have a punchline to that joke. But something…something … revenant!
Brennan LaFaro’s The Denizens is about a small southern town with a very unusual relationship with death. What precisely is the nature of the corpses roaming the woods, and what do they want with the living. You’ll have to listen to find out.
What is certain is that this book give
267 – Wuthering Heights, with Agatha Andrews (from She Wore Black)
This Valentine’s week, come for a walk up on t’moors with me and Agatha Andrews.
I’ve invited Agatha, my friend and sister-in-Gothic, host of She Wore Black podcast, for a conversation about Wuthering Heights.
It’s known as “the greatest love story ever told,” but that’s such nonsense. Instead we talk about mania and melancholy, hate and power, cannibalism
and necrophilia… and we also look
Off Book #14 – Mama Came Callin, with Ezra Claytan Daniels & Camilla Sucre
A bit of chaos on the show for the weekend. We start with one guest and end with two. And there’s a dude with an alligator’s head running amok!
Mama Came Callin’ is the slasher/cryptid/mystery/noir graphic novel written by Ezra Claytan Daniel and illustrated by Camilla Sucre. It’s set in the swamps of Florida, amongst murky waters and dirtier histories.
The three of us (eventually) talk ab
266 – Justin C. Key & Don’t Scroll Before Bed
We’re tiptoeing towards the sci-fi end of things this week, with Justin C. Key and The Hospital at the End of the World.
This is a techn-othriller about AI run amok in the medical establishment, and the junior doctor who must navigate a shadowy conspiracy, a fatal (and horrific) disease, all whilst making time for class at the sole
human-led teaching hospital left in the country.
It’s a lo
Let Us Palaver #7 – The Talisman Debrief
After our loose, freeform chat about the high strangeness of The Talisman, Nat stuck around to Palaver a little more behind Chris’ innocent back.
In this spoiler-filled 35 minutes (do not listen if you haven’t finished The Dark Tower) we get into some firmer connections between King’s magical worlds, we look at the order of books to come, weigh our saddest deaths in King stories…and even after
The Dark Tower Deep Dive #7 – The Talisman
We’re on the road again with our Dark Tower journey, running through adjacent worlds, lighting out for the Territories.
Our latest side-quest takes us to The Talisman, the 1984 epic dark fantasy, co-authored by Stephen King and Peter Straub. It’s a wild, hallucinatory ride, that contains my favourite King character of them all!
Nat, Chris and I talk about that dude, as well as discussing w
265 – Yah Yah Schofield & Pretty Words for Ugly Things
We're Southbound for monster-loving this week on Talking
Scared.
Georgia writer, Yah Yah Schofield comes to discuss her Southern Gothic debut, On Sundays She Picked Flowers – a story of monsters, spirits, swamps, and generational trauma. There’s a very bad mama and a very haunted house.
Yah Yah and I talk about mother-daughter relationships, the difference between ghosts and haints, the infl
264 – Courtney Summers & Dead Is Not Better
Imagine you’re back in high school – but worse! The shuffling idiots actually want to EAT you!
That’s the premise of Courtney Summers’ This is Not a Test, her 2012 zombie novel of teen despair amongst the undead, now reissued in a fresh ‘definitive’ version for 2026. When better than a time in which the mindless, greedy and brutal are running amok in the real world.
Courtney and I talk ab
263 – Kristi DeMeester & The Purity of Anger
The year may have started with more real-world horrors from old white dudes, but here on Talking Scared they get their comeuppance – in the form of Kristi DeMeester’s Dark Sisters.
Kristi returns to the show for the first time since 2022, to talk about her novel of religious hypocrisy, patriarchal control and feminine revenge. It’s a three-timeline story of curses through the century and the d
262 – The Best Horror Books of 2025
No need for a big intro this week. You know what this is about.
The year is over, and it’s time to offer my thoughts on the best books that made it bearable. Here’s my top-10 favourite horror novels of 2025.
I invite comment and debate. The polite kind. Don’t make me set Ted on you.
Enjoy.
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Let Us Palaver #6 – Wizard & Glass Debrief
In our sixth Let Us Palaver, Nat and I try to clean things up a bit after the dirty deep dive into Wizard & Glass.
We get spoilery, so this is for Tower Junkie’s only. It will make no sense to anyone else anyway – as we get deep into the metatextual elements
of what is to come, who WE think put those red shoes in the road, and we begin to question which books we should read next.
Not a di
The Dark Tower Deep Dive #6 – Wizard & Glass
After a summer of diversion and detour, we’re back with the main Ka-Tet for Christmas. What better time for a tale of heartbreak, lost love, and cabin-bound masturbation.
Yes, we’re covering Wizard & Glass.
Some would call this the high point of the Dark Tower series (for me, it’s certainly up there) – and it gives us chance to talk in depth about how Roland became the man is he, and how
Off Book #13 – Welcome to Derry, with Andy & Barbara Muschietti
It: Welcome to Derry has just reached its Season One conclusion and the
theories are flying as to where the show will go next.
I have something like an answer for you. Maybe. Perhaps. Cos the creators, Andy and Barbara Muschietti, are on Talking Scared for a conversation about the show, the movies and how they work within King’s story.
They talk about their childhood relationship with the
261 — The State of the Horror Nation 2025, with Emily Hughes, Anna Dupre & George Dunn
Welcome to the now sixth annual State of the Horror Nation.
This is the mega-episode, in which I gather a darkly-inclined supergroup of horror fans and commentators—a horror cabinet, if you will—to cast their informed eyes and minds over the year’s best horror.
We talk trends, generation gaps, terrifying moments, and pick what they consider to be their favourite scary books of 2025.
I
[From the Vault] Carmen Maria Machado & Passing Literary Kidney Stones
It’s all about memory this week.
Remember that time literary superstar Carmen Maria Machado came on the show? No? Well here’s your chance to catch up on what you missed.
Carmen spoke to me about Her Body and Other Parties and In the Dream House – the former a collection of folktale and fable, spun to hideous effect; the latter a piercing fictionalised memoir of abuse and haunted relation
[From the Vault] Jeff VanderMeer and Our First On-Air Murder
Jeff VanderMeer and I did not fall out!!
This is a myth that has arisen since Jeff came on the show back in 2021, to discuss his eco-espionage crisis thriller, Hummingbird Salamander.
Well, this trip back to the Vault will hopefully dispel that rumour.
Instead what you’ll hear is a conversation with the Emperor of Weird fiction, talking about conservation and climate catastrophe, abou
[From the Vault] Will Dean & The Two Faces of Off-Grid Living
Revisiting a true highlight this week!
Will Dean’s The Last Thing to Burn is one of very few 10/10 books i've ever featured on this podcast. It’s a flawless study of isolation, survival, exploitation and the most toxic of masculinities – all about a Vietnamese immigrant, trapped in the home of her ‘husband,’ the monstrous
Leonard.
Will is an amazing writer, with an amazing life. He’s creat
[From the Vault] Courtney Summers & The Master of the Bitch
This flashback episode takes us to early 2021, when I was joined by Courtney Summers – the boundary-pushing author of dark YA fictions for a corrective lesson.
Courtney came on the show to discuss The Project, a novel of sinister elite cults, evil charisma and radicalisation. At the time Trump had just been kicked out of office, so those things seemed safe to talk about.
Alas… they are ma
[From the Vault] Tananarive Due & Black Girls Doing Magical Things
Time for a classic haunted house.
I’m on a short break from the show, to recoup, read without pressure and generally try not to implode. So we’re heading into the vault for some older conversations that new listeners may have missed and long-termers may enjoy anew.
Where better to start that in a haunted house with a Queen of 21st century horror – Ms Tananarive Due!
This was our first
260 – Joe Hill & The One About the Dragon
Here be dragons!
I’m celebrating Halloween week on Talking Scared with the very cream of the bucket list. Joe Hill is finally on the show!
The author of Heart Shaped Box, NOS4A2, “The Black Phone” and Lock & Key is back with his first novel in nearly a decade, and it’s a beast!
King Sorrow is an epic of dragons, diabolical deals, decade-spanning friendships, love and hate and everythi
Let Us Palaver #5 – ‘Salem’s Lot Debrief
In our fifth Let Us Palaver, Nat and I dally a little longer in ‘Salem’s Lot to hunt down a few more vamps and follow up some threads mentioned in the main episode.
This is where we get spoilery, so this is just for those who have been to the Tower already. But we talk about Chris’s predictions for Father Callaghan, discuss the moral arc of King’s entire fictional project (no big thing right!)
The Dark Tower Deep Dive #5 – ‘Salem’s Lot
‘Salem’s Lot is FIFTY years old this month. Hellfire, how did that happen? We’re gonna celebrate the bloodsucking and small town shenanigans for all they are worth!!
But some of you know that the Lot sits just to one side of the Path of the Beam – so this is also a key zig in our endless zagging towards The Dark Tower. You may just not know why yet? And neither does Chris, so no one tell him.
259 – Joe Lansdale & Our Desperate Need to Be Less Dumb
Joe Lansdale is here to give us all a smack upside the head.
We are talking about The Essential Horror of Joe R. Lansdale – his brand new career-retrospective, collecting the stories that have defined him for decades as one of the most edgy, provocative writers of the grim and grotesque.
We cover some of the classics, like “Bubba Ho Tep,” “Mr Weed Eater” and “On the Far Side of the Cadill
Off Book #12 – Ben Leonberg and Good Boy
Mine isn’t the only Good Boy released into the world this week. You may have heard of a little film that shares my books name.
I joke – Ben Leonberger’s Good Boy is everywhere, and rightly so. It’s a haunted house movie told from the POV of Ben’s dog Indy (playing himself). It’s a magic trick of filmmaking and puppy eyes.
Ben came on the show for a generous chat about making the movie. He
258 – Neil McRobert & My Four-Legged Ode to Bravery & Joy
Ah the arrogance of writers. Now I am one, officially, I thought I’d better do something fitting.
So I set up a whole episode of my podcast to talk about my own book – Good Boy! My debut novella about small English towns, the bonds between men and dogs, and a battle between bravery and monsters.
Thankfully, I have friends who will facilitate this type of nonsense, so thanks to Nat Cassidy
257 – Northern Weird (Part Two), with Matt Wesolowski, Jodie Robins & Stephen Howard
Another day, another episode about the weird-arse end of nowhere!
We remain in the North of England for this second part of a weeklong celebration of the Northern Weird Project – six novellas published by Wild Hunt Books (including one by yours truly!).
This time it’s conversation with Matt Wesolowski, about his train-bound folkloric horror, Don’t Call Mum, Jodie Robins, with her magical
256 – Northern Weird (Part One), with Gemma Fairclough, Katherine Clements & Ariell Cacciola
It’s grim up North.
But thankfully, it’s also weird. Deliciously, darkly, disturbingly weird!
This week we are celebrating the Northern Weird Project – six novellas published by Wild Hunt Books (including one by yours truly!). In this first roundtable, I’ve gathered two of the writers and the genius behind the project, Ariell Cacciola, to talk about Northern literary culture in the North,
255 – Michael Wehunt & What If A Horror Film Broke Into Your House?
What’s even real anymore?
Some of the best horror writer’s ask that question. Some, like Michael Wehunt, live in the spaces in between.
Michael’s new novel, The October Film Haunt bends reality in fascinating ways, in a story about online legend, digital demons and analog horror – all the stuff that keeps me awake at night.
We talk about all of it, as well as formative found-footage m
254 – Philip Fracassi & The Fresh Young Heart of Old-School Horror
This week brings a bumper episode, cos Philip Fracassi never stops.
Since he and I last spoke, in 2022, he’s published a wealth of amazing, terrifying, heartfelt horror, emerging as a major voice, and one of
my favourite writers.
First we spend a good hour on Philips’ new novel, The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre – talking about geriatric slashers, elderly protagonists and how Phil
253 – Keith Rosson & The Real V-Word
Do you like your vampires slick and suave or rugged and raging?
If it’s the latter, you’ll very much enjoy KeithRosson’s Coffin Moon. It’s a 70s-set bareknuckle revenge road trip of a book, with some of the meanest vampires you’ll ever meet (and love).
Keith is back in the show for the second time in a year, to talk all about it. We get into his problem with ‘classic’ vampires aesthetics, th
Off Book #11 – JT Mollner & The Long Walk
It’s walk or die this week on Talking Scared, as we’re joined by the screenwriter of The Long Walk.
JT wrote and directed 2024’s cult-hit Strange Darling, and now he’s brought his pen to bear, in finally bringing Stephen King’s beloved early novel to the screen. Along with director, Francis Lawrence, JT has created one of the best King adaptations EVER(!!) and he joins me to talk about exactl
252 – John Langan & Water, Water Everywhere
School is back in session. Professor Langan is here!
No-one gives good literary conversation like John Langan – and this week he returns to Talking Scared to discuss the watery influences, metafictional experimentation, and snake-legged women in his new collection: Lost in the Dark and Other Excursions.
It’s my favourite collection of John’s so far, and as ever, he merely used it for a jum
