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This is the last way-back episode before the show returns with a scream next week.

But this is an episode worth remembering – my first ever conversation with Catriona Ward, about her game-changing The Last House on Needless Street too!

This was a big ask for a novice interviewer. How the hell do you talk about a book that hinges on such a huge secret. Somehow we managed to walk that tightrope, whilst also talking about cats (feline) serial killers, and the haunted bedroom of Cat’s (author) girlhood.

It’s fun to retread this grim path.

Enjoy!

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A chance to revisit one of my favourite books and favourite ever conversations this week.

Zakiya Dalila Harris’s The Other Black Girl came out in early 2021, and for once I was ahead of the curve! Right from the start, I adored this novel of workplace micro-aggression and satirical horror in the publishing industry – and I’m glad to see the world has since agreed.

It’s a high-concept thriller that blends the paranoia of Rosemary’s Baby with the bite of Get Out – and for once it’s a story that deserves those comparisons. Zakiya talks about her own background in publishing and how it informed this nightmare. We talk about discussing racism in fiction, and (in a slightly meta way) we discuss how interviews LIKE THIS ONE may actually perpetuate a degree of othering. In short, I tie myself in white millennial knots, but Zakiya is wonderfully generous.

God I love this book. Some may say it’s not horror. I’d disagree so much that I stuck it on my list of best horror novels ever. Let’s see what you think. 

Enjoy!

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I’m feeling Gothic this week. Must be the weather. 
 
In lieu of a new episode, I searched the vault and found this cracker from January 2021, in which Laura Purcell — doyenne of the contemporary British Gothic —  talked me through her Victorian spookshow of mesmerism and haunted silhouettes, The Shape of Darkness.
 
 We also get into the social nightmare of Victorian England – when life was even more gothic than it is now, believe it or not!
 
 Enjoy!
 
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This From the Vault episode is not quite so dusty. Gemma and I recorded this in 2022, but it’s more pertinent than ever. One because Gemma’s great uncanny novella The Folly is being reissued this week, and two, because the world is a mad place right now, and we all need to take care of our minds.

This conversation is all about that. An epic conversation about the issue of mental health as creators and consumers of dark stories. We dig DEEP into our own neuroses, and talk about how great horror comes with great responsibility.

Yes, there is difficult, challenging stuff to churn through —  but there’s also chat about the Uncanny Valley, Men in Black, Creepypasta and Black Mirror. And the ethics of vandalising racist statues.

Enjoy!

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Still on a break – still releasing episodes “From the Vault.”

But this week’s was carefully chosen. In a time of darkness and doom-laden days, laughter is the best thing I can lace your horror with. And thankfully T. Kingfisher exists in the world.

The funniest horror writer I know. We spoke WAAAAY back in October 2020, in episode 9, when The Hollow Places had just come out. 

Yes Ursula and I talk about that book, and The Twisted Ones (2019) and how they twist Weird classics into fascinating new shapes. But we also cover building your own Golem, the homicidal value of pig farmers, and the anxiety of being a frog biologist. 

I dunno guys… just liste! Hope it makes you smile.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:

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I’m on a break – but couldn’t resist releasing something. 

Especially on today of all days, when lovers of democracy require audio sustenance whilst they wait in line to preserve America.

For the first From the Vault episode, I’ve gone back to December of 2020, for an interview with Michael Marshall Smith. We talk about his 30 years of writing horror, fantasy, science fiction and assorted dark imaginings – captured in his career-spanning Best Of collection.

Michael gives us all the good stuff about where ideas came from, why he writes the way he does, and all those details that literary voyeurs like us, want to know.

It’s also a trip back into the weirdness of the pandemic, and the dying days of the Trump presidency. Have your trauma shields up just in case. 

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Halloween has finally arrived. I’m marking it in grim, macabre style.

For this Off Book Samhain Special, I’m joined by Kaelyn Moore, host and creator of Heart Starts Pounding – a podcast for the darkly curious, which offers up a new true-story of horror, hauntings and mystery every week.

Kaelyn is a treasure trove of haunted anecdote and freaky facts. We only touch the tip of her knowledge in this conversation, but still manage to cover the grimmest deaths at Disneyland, a South American Nazi cult, the most cursed book in history and Kaelyn’s own family history with an early American serial killer.

All that, plus a lot of recommendations for movies and the gruesome true-crime reading.

Stick around for the afterword, and plenty of updates on the future of Talking Scared,

Enjoy! Happy Halloween. 

Books mentioned:

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Things are heating up as we approach Halloween.

I’m joined by a good friend of Talking Scared – Rachel Harrison – to talk about the hot kind of immortality

Her new novel, So Thirsty, does much more than that though. It weighs the weaponization of beauty culture, it asks how women can navigate a world in which youth seems to be everything, and it illustrates the sheer social awkwardness of immortality.

Plus – it prompts a frank reckoning with just how badly I would cope in an orgy. 

This is a fun episode, a deep episode, the perfect kind of bookish sign off for a few weeks whilst I take a break. And maybe a good hour of respite from the manic news cycle.

Enjoy.

Other books mentioned:

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As we gear up for Halloween, we get all gussied up in Gothic.

Del Sandeen joins me to talk about the curses, colorism, and all the many influences in her Southern Gothic debut This Cursed House. It’s a novel that twists the sub-genre’s typical reliance on race, for a more subtle, pernicious form of prejudice. 

But it’s also chock full of all the haunted house–cursed family–secret rooms–and weird incest that you could want from a truly Gothic novel. It’s a damn good time, as is this conversation.

We talk about New Orleans hauntings, the inspiration of Del’s grandmother, forgiveness as a theme, and the relative ickiness of incest.

Consider this your starting gun for spooky season.

Enjoy.

Other books mentioned:

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Things get disinhibited on Talking Scared this week, when CJ Leede joins us for a conversation about her new novel, American Rapture.

The novel plunges middle America into a torrid apocalypse, as a sexual plague spreads across the nation, creating “lust hell on earth.” In this framework, C.J crafts a story of sexual awakening, sacrifice, found family, hypocrisy and cruelty.  It’s a book that is both extreme and comforting in equal measure.

We talk about that crazy balancing act, about the threat of fundamentalist thought, the terror of demons, the delights of Americana, and the cathartic power of killing your characters. 

Oh…and gear up for some very forthright opinions on religion. 

Enjoy.

Other books mentioned:

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