The title speaks volumes this week. It’s a mission statement.

Kirsty Logan is the master of certain kind of edgy, on-the-margins fiction, Queer in every meaning of the word. She can be witchy and folkloric, or contemporary and cutting edge – and all of that range is showcased in her new collection, No & Other Love Stories.

We talk about female desire and monstrous fantasy, formal experimentation and the personal logic of stories…and some reassuringly unsettling focus on the erotics of human flesh and menstruation.

Don’t say we shy away here at Talking Scared.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:

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Time to misbehave.

Virginia Feito’s new novel, Victorian Psycho, is all about good behaviour, positive standards and polite conduct…and what happens when you flout all that, by – I dunno – slaughtering a houseload of people.

It’s a much buzzed about book that takes the psychopathy of American Psycho back to the straightlaced, be-corseted world of the 19th Century, then let’s rip. We talk about glorious violence, the humour of extremity, Charles Dickens and Bret Easton Ellis…and have a deeply amusing conversation about infanticide.

Queen Victorian would be appalled.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:

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Are you hungry?

Depending on your…erm… tastes, the next hour of conversation will do strange things to your appetite. Our guest is Lucy Rose, whose debut novel, The Lamb renders muscle and fat and sorrow down into a rich stew of cannibalism and rural Gothic.

We talk about how rooted this book is in the landscape, history and folklore of Northern England – and we also talk a lot about eating people. How to make it sound gross… how to make it sound weirdly poetic.

This is a book that’s gonna get people talking.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:

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Here is the first Let Us Palaver minisode – in which Nat Cassidy and I kick Chris off the call, and get to grips with the inner workings of The Dark Tower, without spoiling anything for him, or any of you on your first trip through these books.

If you still listen after this spoiler warning and the two I give in the first few minutes of the episode… well, you only have yourself to blame.

But for seasoned ‘slingers. I hope this is fun.

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“The man in black fled across the desert, and the podcaster followed…”

Welcome to the start of what is sure to be an epic journey. Step by step, over more than a dozen episodes, Talking Scared will be following the beam all the way to the Dark Tower – that mad edifice at the heart of Stephen King’s opus. Maybe it’s the heart of every story ever told… time will tell.

Unlike Roland Deschain, I don’t go alone. I’m joined by author and fellow King-nut, Nat Cassidy (Mary, Nestlings, When the Wolf Comes Home) and absolute newbie, Chris Panatier (The Phlebotomist, The Redemption of Morgan Bright) and in this first ever episode we tussle with the tricky, dusty, thorny opening that is Book One: The Gunslinger.

What follows dives deep into the book, but is 100% spoiler free about anything beyond it. So if you’ve only read The Gunslinger, you’re good to go.

I hope you enjoy our wanderings. I hope you tinct. I hope you darkle.

Other books mentioned:

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The latest Off Book episode takes you out to the American desert and leaves you there, cold, alone and confused.

We’re speaking with Dutch Marich, the surprisingly lovely mind behind the most terrifying found footage I’ve seen in years – The Horror in the High Desert series.

These films are full of a particular kind of fear. Never obscure, but always hidden – leaving you as fascinated as you are scared. It’s the kind of weird, collective storytelling that used to set internet forums alight!

In this 100% spoiler-free conversation, Dutch and I talk about withholding answers, we discuss the scary side of Nevada and his fascination with unexplained disappearances. And he even tell us the tenuous connection between his movies and Stephen King’s Desperation.

Plus, if you’re a fan of these movies, you’ll find out a little info on what’s coming in the next instalment.

Enjoy!

Sign Dutch's petition

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Tyranny is the key this week on Talking Scared this week. How fitting.

Susan Barker’s Old Soul is a globe-trotting, decade-spanning supernatural tour of autocracies, from behind the Iron Curtain to contemporary China. If that isn’t frightening enough, it also features an ageless woman who curses anyone she meets, a grand cosmic entity, and the exhilaration and terror of deep time. 

Heady stuff, and Susan and I talk about all of it – and just why she likes to write about as many times and places in each book as she can.

Enjoy.

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It’s a collegial week on Talking Scared. ‘Cos I’m talking dark, occult academia with someone very local to me.

Kate van der Borgh’s debut, And He Shall Appear is basically a sinister version of my own life. It’s about a young working class lad, like me, who goes to a prestigious university, like me… but there ours paths diverge, as he meets a fellow student who perhaps has diabolical powers.

It’s a twisted, obscure, psychological study of unreliable memory, inescapable guilt, and the haunting of not-knowing oneself. Kate and I talk about all of that, as well as the class divide, northern accents, the terror of infinity, favourite ghosts stories, and memories of underrage drinking in the same bars.

The book is great. I’m delighted to help celebrate it.

Enjoy.

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Welcome back and Happy New Year. 2025 looms ahead. Frightening. Uncertain. Crazy!!

Our first guest of the year has written the book that best captures this mad future we’re living in. Clay McLeod Chapman returns to Talking Scared, to talk about Wake Up And Open Your Eyes – his new novel of mass demonic possession, transmitted through poisonous media, and the destruction of families and communities.

It’s… disturbing.

It’s also gross as hell. Deliciously so. And we talk about that urge for the the ick! As well as his motivations in writing this book, his anxiety over releasing it, and the sadness that underlies our political echo chambers.

It’s a hell of a way to kick off a wild, weird year.

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Send us a text

How else to end 2024 than with an entirely subjective list of the best things I’ve read over the year?

How many of you will guess the number one spot? I bet none of you will guess the number two? 

Let me know your thoughts – what you loved, and what you think I missed

Enjoy!

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