Introducing: Three Chapters a Day with Ryan McRae

My good friend Ryan McRae is an avid reader like myself, but he goes in for a different type of story. While I’m mucking around in horror and crime, Ryan is traveling to other worlds and universes and realities in the pages of Sci-Fi and Fantasy books.

Recently, Ryan had an opportunity to get an early look at the new book by TJ Klune, called THE BONES BENEATH MY SKIN and chat with Mr Klune about it. It was Ryan’s first time conducting an author interview, and if you ask me he killed it.

The Bones Beneath my skin is available today! Buy it HERE

Support Ryan!

If you’re into conversation with great sci-fi and fantasy authors (more to come soon!), advice on reading and writing, and more, you should support what Ryan is doing, and here are a few ways you can do that:

Subscribe to his Substack: https://substack.com/@ryanmcrae

Subscribe to his YouTube: Three Chapters a Day

For the folks who prefer YouTube:

Streamin and Dreamin

In the looming orange-tinged shadows of the current political situation, six lovers-of-story got together to have a chat about books.

Why? Because first of all: they love books.

Second of all: Because books shine light on darkness, give voices to those silenced, record history for those erased, recognize those unseen, and punch fucking nazis.

So, six people, ten books each, two hours and fifteen minutes. Strap in folks, because it’s a massive download of information in a relatively short amount of time, and you’re going to want to pay attention, because you’re getting recommendations from some of the most refined palates in the world of book tastemaking that are making taste these days:

* Sadie Hartmann (Mother Horror)

* Haley “Spoonie Reads”

* Peg/Marguerite Turley

* Tiffany “Conlibros” Gonzalez

* Greg Greene (igreggreene)

* and… myself. Robb Olson

All The Books Mentioned

Order all these books!

* VICTORIAN PSYCHO by Virgina Fieto

* THE LAMB by Lucy Rose

* THE CONTORTIONIST’S HANDBOOK by Craig Clevenger

* ROSE OF JERICHO by Alex Grecian

* BETA VULGARIS by Margie Sarsfield

* THE LEAST OF MY SCARS by Stephen Graham Jones

* THE CRIMSON ROAD by A. G. Slatter

* WHEN THE WOLF COMES HOME by Nat Cassidy

* THE POORLY MADE AND OTHER THINGS by Sam Rebelein

* THE THIRD RULE OF TIME TRAVEL by Philip Fracassi

* THE COVEN TENDENCY by Zoe Hana Mikuta

* THE ONES WHO GOT AWAY by Stephen Graham Jones

* THE LIBRARY AT HELLEBORE by Cassandra Khaw

* THE HAUNTING OF ROOM 904 by Erika T. Wurth

* THE LEAST OF MY SCARS by Stephen Graham Jones

* BREATHE IN, BLEED OUT by Brian McAuley

* FREAKSLAW by Jane Flett

* THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER by Stephen Graham Jones

* BLOOD ON HER TONGUE by Johanna Van VeenEat

* THE ONES YOU LOVE by Sarah Maria Griffin

* NIGHT OF THE WITCH HUNTER by Patrick Barb

* ANGEL DOWN by Daniel Kraus

* THEIR MONSTROUS HEARTS by Yigit Turhan

* MAPPING THE INTERIOR by Stephen Graham Jones

* THE POSSESSION OF ALBA DÍAZ by Isabel Cañas

* POLYBIUS by Colin Armstrong

* THE SUNDOWNER’S DANCE by Todd Keisling

* VANISHING DAUGHTERS by Cynthia Pelayo

* BAT EATER AND OTHER NAMES FOR CORA ZENG by Kylie Lee Baker

* KILLER ON THE ROAD/THE BABYSITTER LIVES by Stephen Graham Jones

* THE LAMB by Lucy Rose

* FEEDERS by Matthew Serafini

* THE STAIRCASE IN THE WOODS by Chuck Wendig

* ANOTHER FINE MESS by Lindy Ryan

* BURY OUR BONES IN THE MIDNIGHT SOIL by VE Schwab

* LOST IN THE DARK AND OTHER EXCURSIONS by John Langan

* THE BEWITCHING by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

* THE BUTCHER’S DAUGHTER by David Demchuk

* EL DORADO DRIVE by Megan Abbott

* ARTIST OF BLACKBERRY GRANGE by Paulette Kennedy

* THE FACELESS THINGS WE ADORE by Hester Steel

* CATHEDRAL OF THE DROWNED by Nathan Ballingrud

* THE UNSEEN by Ania Ahlborn

* PLAY NICE by Rachel Harrison

* FIEND by Alma Katsu

* FERAL & HYSTERICAL: MOTHER HORROR’S ULTIMATE GUIDE TO DARK AND DISTURBING FICTION BY WOMEN by Sadie Hartmann

* MOONFLOW by Bitter Karella

* LITTLE HORN: STORIES by Gemma Files

* THE GHOST WOODS by C. J. Cooke

* THE UNWORTHY by Augustina Bazterrica

* THE NIGHT THAT FINDS US ALL by John Hornor Jacobs

* NIGHT BIRDS by Christopher golden

* THE MEAN ONES by Tatiana Sclote-Bonne

* FIEND by Alma Katsu

* JULIE CHAN IS DEAD by Liann Zhang

* MAYRA by Nicky Gonzalez

* CATHEDRAL OF THE DROWNED by Nathan Ballingrud

* THE LONG LOW WHISTLE by Laurel Hightower

* CRAFTING FOR SINNERS by Jenny Kiefer

* THE AUTUMN SPRINGS RETIREMENT HOME MASSACRE by Philip Fracassi

Order all these books!

For those of you who prefer YouTube:

Buy THE CONTORTIONIST’S HANDBOOK here!

Craig Clevenger is a hell of a writer. But don’t take my word for it. Chuck Palahniuk has praised The Contortionist’s Handbook. Irvine Welsh has. Jordan Harper has, Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly has, Stephen Graham Jones has, Paul Tremblay has… many people have. And for good reason. It’s a fucking great book.

And what follows, in my humblest, is a fucking great conversation. We talk about the book, we talk about life, we talk about struggles, we talk about families, we talk about the Waffle House. We talk about things that we are out of our depth talking about, but we talk about them because there are some struggles where, even if we can’t experience them, we can recognize them. We can say “I don’t know what that pain feels like, but I’ve had some pain that tells me that what you’re going through is fucked.”

But it’s not all the doldrums. There’s some great writing advice sprinkled about, and you’d better fucking pay attention because if there’s one thing Craig knows, it’s how to make words work.

I’ve been reading this book for years, and each time I get to read it again, I like it more, and that’s got to mean something, right? When it’s not old, or stale, or outdated. When it has a timeless poignancy to it, that’s a book you keep special. That’s an author you keep special. I hope you enjoy this conversation with a man I call brother, and I hope it inspires you to buy his books, inspires you to try a little harder to make the words into music, and inspires you to find a way to get out the things that you so bad want to keep inside, because maybe that’s a little bit like healing, and maybe that’s a good thing.

For those of you who like the YouTube version:

Preorder Here

At Dark, I Have Hope

It may seem like a contradiction that someone who can write such brutal things is such a lovely and sweet human being, but I think that in this episode, we tapped into a possible reason that it’s not a contradiction at all that Eric Larocca will destroy you with the most stark and frightful words, and smother you with happy thoughts when you talk to him.

The truth is, we all have these dark, extreme thoughts in our minds. We have all been driving down the road and envisioning that moment where we intentionally swerve into oncoming traffic to disastrous results. It lives in all of us, these intrusive thoughts. It’s what we do with those thoughts that speaks to our character.

And I’d argue that it’s terrifically healthy to take these thoughts that we all have, and to have a discussion about them, or to cause ourselves or others to think about them, and to understand them, and to process them.

So, while a story like this book tells isn’t necessarily for everyone all the time, it’s a crucial story to be told, and nobody is doing it better than Eric does.

And while we originally planned to talk about a book with a plot about a character that performs live burial rituals to give hopeless people a chance at rebirth, what we ended up talking about was far more human, and far more healing, and it was still about this book, because I think at the heart of this story is someone who hurts so much and cannot conceive of anything other than the weight of his own misery.

High Praise for Subtle Giants

Eric dedicated this novel to Daniel Kraus, and we started the episode talking about that. I love how Daniel has had such a positive impact on Eric’s career and Eric as a person. I share my observation about Daniel, which is that he casts a far bigger shadow than his humble shape suggests. So if you don’t know much about Mr. Kraus, I suggest you start researching. I particularly enjoyed Whalefall (read it, then listen to my interview with Daniel HERE), but he’s written dozens of books including two posthumously finished coauthorings with George freakin Romero.

Coming Soon

I had a small panic attack today as I was corresponding with folks, and just kept replying to emails. And kept replying. And kept replying. Suddenly, I feel quite busy as a podcaster.

You can count on a discussion soon with Craig Clevenger about his reissue of THE CONTORTIONIST’S HANDBOOK.

Other authors in the next few months include: Chris Panatier, Sam Rebelein, Chuck Wendig, the folks from PUNKS GOES HORROR anthology.

I’m also having conversations about featuring Jon Bassoff, Cynthia Pelayo, and also having Jesse and Greg back on for more Stephen Graham Jones talk!

So, lots in the works that hopefully will be reaching you soon.

For you YouTube folks:

Get Clay’s books here!

Welcome to my new show, Couchsurfing Critics!

The ever-talented and amazing Clay McLeod Chapman has returned for another epic round of conversation with yours truly. This time, we’re smashing duration records and defying interview conventions. It is, I would say, the closest to just us grabbing coffee and chatting that we could have hoped for, and I am very pleased with the result.

For those of you looking for a concentrated discussion of Clay’s delicious upcoming release WAKE UP AND OPEN YOUR EYES, might I direct you elsewhere. But! If you want to know what we think about some of the best authors working today, our thoughts on looking at people’s book shelves, and some getting really serious about cancer and the pitfalls of belonging to a family, I’ve got just what the doctor ordered. (and apparently for Nat Cassidy the doctor ordered some Beano, because he is certainly labeled a car farter in this episode. Sorry Nat. I think it was out of love?)

In addition to Clay’s amazing examination of the culture of radicalization in contemporary America, I would like to recommend that you listen to his top quality podcast called FEARMONGERS. He gets on the best of horror guests, has delightful conversations, and even cajoles them into reading for us all. It’s a great little library-backed bit of entertainment.

Coming up on The ARC Party

I’ve got a lot on the books for the next few weeks. I will be recording a discussion with Eric LaRocca in a few days to support the release of his new novel AT DARK I BECOME LOATHSOME, which everyone needs to read. It’s grief horror done so so so so so so so well.

Also, I’ll be talking with Craig Clevenger about the reissue of his debut novel THE CONTORTIONIST’S HANDBOOK. I’m really stoked about this one, as it’s been one of my favorites for a while now.

I’ve just recently confirmed with Chuck Wendig that he will be joining me at some point to discuss THE STAIRCASE IN THE WOODS, which I loved!

I am planning something called MALERMONTH, where I have on a guest or guests to talk about some awesome Josh Malerman novels, including hopefully DAPHNE, PEARL, and maybe another. GOBLIN? We’ll see.

I’ve also started talks with Cynthia Pelayo’s representation, and have some tentative plans with Joshua Hull, and many more.

I’m also very excited for Shortwave Publishing’s first quarterly shipment for 2025 to its Kickstarter backers. The box looks insane and I’m so excited! I’m so scared!

Finally for you YouTuberssssss:

Welcome to 2025!

This is the semi-annual Horror Preview episode, with my treasured guests Becky Spratford and Emily Hughes. Every six months, we gather to share with you all the extensive list of books we’re looking forward to in 2025. As is tradition, we talk about six months at a time, so I’m so excited to share with you all 36 books that we talked about in this episode, covering January to June of 2025.

Emily and Becky are the guests for these episodes because they are unrivaled in knowledge of horror literature. Emily as the legendary curator of her annual list of horror publications (CLICK HERE), and Becky because she’s the Horror Maven of the library world. She often hears about it first, reads about it first, and talks about it first. She’s no oracle, she works so hard to anticipate, read, and shout praise for all of the books that are changing the world of horror (CLICK HERE).

Buy These Books

Preorder all of the 2025 Horror Preview books on Bookshop.org.

The List

January

Witchcraft For Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix

At Dark I become Loathsome by Eric LaRocca

Wake Up and Open Your Eyes by Clay McLeod Chapman

Our Winter Monster by Dennis Mahoney

The Contortionist’s Handbook by Craig Clevenger

Metamorphosis by Ross Jeffrey

February

Listen To Your Sister by Neena Viel

The Poorly Made and Other Things by Sam Rebelein

Beauty in the Blood by Charlotte Carter

Junie by Erin Crosby Eckstein

The Pink Agave Motel by V Castro

Little Mysteries by Sara Gran

March

Vanishing Daughters by Cynthia Pelayo

The Haunting of Room 904 by Erika T Wurth

rekt by Alex Gonzalez

The Unworthy by Augustina Bazterrica

The Memory Ward by Jon Bassoff

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter boy Stephen Graham Jones

April

When The Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy

The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig

Freakslaw by Jane Flett

The Cut by CJ Dotson

The Sundowner’s Dance by Todd Keisling

Senseless by Ronald Malfi

May

The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling

The Butcher’s Daughter: There Hitherto Untold Story of Mrs Lovett by David Demchuk and Corrine Leigh Clark

Below the Grand Hotel by Cat Scully

Overgrowth by Mira Grant

The Night Birds by Christopher Golden

MaXXXine by Tim Waggoner

June

The Nut House by Patrick Barb

I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness by Irene Sola

Ecstasy by Ivy Pochoda

Girl In The Creek by Wendy N Wagner

The Small Hours by Bob Pastorella

King of Ashes by SA Cosby

Buy These Books

Preorder all of the 2025 Horror Preview books on Bookshop.org.

I hope you enjoy this episode! 2025 is going to be packed with exciting new books, so get out there and start reading. If you have a book you’re excited about, let me know! Comment here, or on social media. I love to share things, so I love to hear about new things.

Finally, if you’re more of a YouTube type of listener/viewer, this link is for you:

It’s been a big year for the Stephen Graham Jones fans out there. It started with a couple of new novels, and then it was a reissue. Then it was five more reissues. Then there was that short story on Tor. And it just kept going.

So, I convened the SGJ nerd triumvirate to talk about all of the goings on in 2024… and beyond.

Presented more or less chronologically, we cover the deep dive episodes we’ve done, all of the releases this year, SGJ Day, the Scare Up The Vote stream, and Greg’s trip to Texas Tech to view the collected papers of Stephen.

It’s all about sharing the story

We’re big fans, and we collect stuff, and we search online, and we share things, and we talk and talk and talk. And maybe that could seem like it doesn’t amount to much. And hell, to some people it probably doesn’t.

But as we talk about in this episode, sometimes great things come from the fandom and the talking and the research and…

And just doing the thing. I knew that this was a different kind of year in the SGJ universe. So did Jesse. So did Greg. And out of that hatched SGJ Day, which got tons of attention. And next thing you know, we’re in Fangoria and Publisher’s Weekly.

And then as things are dying down a text leads to a call leads to oh shit me and Greg are running Tech for Scare Up The Vote.

So yeah. My big squishy message about everything that’s happened for me in the book world recently is that if there’s something you care about, do something with it. It’s not likely that someone is going to come along and give you permission to do the thing. Just go for it, and maybe something cool with result.

Finally I’ll say that you better get your wallets ready, because 2025 is looking like it’s going to be just as wild of a ride for the SGJ fans of the world.

For those of you who are into the YouTube thing:

I’m not going to give a beat by beat, but I want to start by sharing how I got involved with Scare Up The Vote.

I am driving in highway traffic when I get a text from Becky Spratford. It just says: “Can you talk. It’s big. Call when you can.”

I never thought of myself as an awfulizer, but a vague text like that gets me nervous. So I immediately called back Becky and when she answered I asked the obvious question “Big good, or big bad?”

I’d seen Tananarive tweeting about how there should be a horror community stream for Harris/Walz, and in my mind I agreed. Horror is a great community, and can really come together for a cause, because horror people care.

A few days after Becky’s text I was sitting in the parking lot of a book store, on a phone call with Tananarive Due talking about how to put on a live stream. There were some vague ideas and a lot of positive energy. I told her I would love to be involved in tech in whatever capacity, and when we hung up I got started researching.

From there, I was the tech team for this stream. Tananarive had pulled together a committee to run the event, including Linda Addison, Christopher Golden, Maxwell Ian Gold, and Cynthia Pelayo.

And we had two weeks to go live time.

That two weeks is a blur of Zoom calls, emails, advice from respected peers, nerves, successes, and a very minor amount of failures. It was all momentum and enthusiasm, and practice practice practice.

The guest list blossomed from a dozen or so awesome names to over twenty. The tech team responded in kind. I brought on someone who brought on several other someones. Tananarive brought in several amazing folks who had experience with cons and streams and who are brilliantly talented.

Everyone contributed their skills, experience and knowledge to make this stream something I was terrified to say for fear of jinxing everything (until we finally ended the stream): a huge fucking success!

Folks, if that stream looked nearly flawless, and felt like we really knew what we were doing, it’s because it was and we did. This team that got pulled together in the small window of time that we had executed essentially perfectly.

Some of them didn’t get added to the team until the day of the stream!

The guest speakers similarly crushed it.

Spooky writers telling scary stories, entertaining, informing, inspiring. Folks of all variety of backgrounds and experiences, coming together because sometimes the scariest story is real life.

But as Rachel Harrison said, we will be battered, bloody, crawling through the dirt wielding whatever weapon we can find - and the weapon we have now is our vote.

I think another weapon we have is each other. And the more we talk about it, and come together, and make noise, the more power we will see that we truly have.

The “me” of this election cycle is starting to feel a lot like “us”, which gives me hope.

But back to the stream.

Stream day was me sitting at a desk for 13 hours, consistently communicating with the team, guest speakers, etc. Skipping lunch, drinking way too much coffee, and generally feeling anxious. Fearing the worst.

But the worst never came, and fifteen minutes before the scheduled launch, I started pre-roll. Nearly three hours later, twenty six (I think) passionate folks had spoken their mind, and aside from a muted mic in the beginning and shifting two guest spots, more than 1,300 people had watched, and our little operation raised over $21,000.

Thanks are due to all of the committee and volunteers. Everyone worked hard, and it wouldn’t be the production it was without everyone’s effort. I’m especially grateful for my friend Greg Greene, who I asked to hop on a call for some advice running a stream. Not only did he join the team, his organizational and planning skills were crucial to the flow of the event. He also brought on Jason Ragosta to do a lot of the art, and Amber Reu to run the green room.

There are countless beautiful moments in the stream. One of my personal favorites, as a massive fan of the TV show Hannibal, was Bryan Fuller’s rebuke of Trump on the topic of Hannibal Lecter. Chef’s kiss, Bryan.

Order your copy here!

The ages-old tradition. The last night as a free man. Some of us have participated in this tradition. Some, more than others. Usually it’s going to include some booze, some lewd behavior, some macho nonsense, and maybe the drunken utterance “I’d die for you, man.”

But. Would they?

In this book, Dan Howarth marries (heh) the concept of a bachelor/stag party with a fabricated small town’s generations-old tradition of a new groom earning his nuptials by hunting and killing a prize. The twist? The hunted are another stag party.

And it’s great! It’s a twisted, rural, dirty, nasty race to a gruesome end, and along the way, this terrified group of hunted groomsmen fight to survive while old cracks and fissures in their friendships threaten to sabotage their chances.

I highly suggest picking this book up, and especially using the direct link here, to buy it from Dan himself.

For those of you who prefer YouTube:

THE DEVIL BY NAME

I know, I know. You’re wondering why I’m posting an interview with Keith Rosson after the book is already available. Sometimes in life, plans change. In this case I was originally planning to talk to Keith several weeks earlier, but circumstances changed plans, and as we’re busy important folks, it took us a while to get a new date on the books. But there was no way I was going to miss a chance to talk about this book just because the timing doesn’t fit my usual format. So here we are.

During this conversation I hit on a point with Keith that is resonating with me. He is doing something that I really don’t see other people doing. FEVER HOUSE and THE DEVIL BY NAME are an epic horror stew of rock n roll, zombies, supernatural entities, crime, secret government agencies, and lots of evil. It’s not a wonder that Stephen King has been raving about them.

So it’s easy for me to encourage you folks who haven’t checked out these books yet to do so at your earliest convenience. They are well-told, entertaining stories, and under all that gristle is a hearty amount of heart, humanity, and hope.

SGJ Day

At the time of writing, it’s a little less than two weeks from #SGJDAY! What’s that? Well, it’s the day that Open Road Media is releasing five reissued books by Stephen Graham Jones. All five books are long out of print, and their return is a boon for fans of Jones. These include extremely rare books such as IT CAME FROM DEL RIO, and THE LONG TRIAL OF NOLAN DUGATTI.

Celebrate SGJ Day by picking up these books, and follow the SGJDAY hashtag on social media for other exciting things such as limited edition button sets, giveaways, and more.

For the folks who prefer YouTube: