Release your inner child!  …I mean through reading, not by letting it burst out of your stomach like some horrible sugar-coated xenomorph. Lora Senf can help. Her Blight Harbor Trilogy is a pi...

More devilish fun on Talking Scared this week when an old friend returns to talk about god, angels, demons and other things out there in the cold reaches of the universe. Johnny Compton is the author of The Spite House

Keith Rosson is our first guest to be personally recommended by Stephen King!  And the praise doesn’t stop there. Keith’s Fever House was one of the biggest hits of 2023, and now he’s back with the sequel, T...

Laird Barron is on the podcast. This feels like cause for celebration.  Not only is Laird Barron a phenomenal writer. Not only is it wonderful that he’s back to writing and talking about writing. Not only am I lucky to b...

Are you a Weenie? Don’t be offended. I am.  Weenies are the curious-but-nervous. Those of us who love horror, but who never feel safe from its power to ruin our sleep (and a week of our life). If that’s you, or if you kn...

Anna Bogutskaya is one of the UK’s most prominent film critics, with a penchant for horror. She knows her scary onions. And in her new book, Feeding the Monster, she asks an important question (well, important to the likes of you and m...

Send in the clowns. Tell them not to forget their crossbows and chainsaws. This week our guest is Adam Cesare, who’s Clown in a Cornfield trilogy reaches a climax (I won’t say end) in Book 3: The Church of Frendo...

Literary or genre fiction? Dumb question. This week’s guest showcases just how dumb! With her debut collection of stories, Mystery Lights showing that horror is literary and literary is horror. These tales o...

This week’s guest on Talking Scared: Off Book scares children. I mean… that’s not his main job or intent (I don’t think) but he does it anyway. Trevor Henderson is the internet’s favourite horror artist. He creates digital ni...

Finally, Gabino Iglesias is on the show.  I tried, and failed, to get him for his break-out Stoker-winning smash, The Devil Takes You Home. Now he’s here to talk about his brand new barrio-noir, House of Bon...

Remember those books you read in the summer when you were young? Kids fighting evil in their small town? Bikes, and blood brothers and promises to keep?  If you love those kinda stories then you’re in good company. This ...

Why is Adam Nevill so scary?  I don’t know. Do you? He’s a nice guy – as you’ll hear in this episode. Yet he tells stories that crawl under your skin and stay there. Stories that squat in your subconscious. <...

Part One was epic. Part Two is just as good. In that way, it’s much better than the adaptation of IT! In the second part of this celebration of King short stories, a whole other roster of Constant Readers come along ...

What’s your favourite Stephen King story? Everyone has one. Hot off the back of the recent interview with the man himself, it seemed a neat idea to get a few friends on the show to talk about their own preferences from King’s...

Stephen King is back! What other intro do you need? Okay, fine. He talks to me about the stories behind the stories in his new collection, You Like it Darker. I had the audacity to ask him “where h...

200 episodes! Madness. Who knew there could be so much to say about horror?  I knew. You knew. And here we are. It turns out that the real cursed treasure was the friends we made along the way – and ho...

My unpaid cohost returns. Josh Malerman ladies and gentlemen. Josh has been on the show many times before, but never have I been so excited to speak to him. His latest novel, Incidents Around the House is about as go...

In the second Off Book episode we get out of our armchairs and go on a real adventure. Well, not really – but we talk to two people who do. Danielle and Cassie are the hosts of National Park After Dark – a podcast catering to...

Paul Tremblay returns to Talking Scared on a long orbit, like that fabled Planet X that’s going to kill us all.  He’s back after two years for another discussion of horror aesthetics, introspective terrors and mixed-medi...

Elle Nash’s Deliver Me ruined my week. In the best possible way. This book, about a woman so desperate for a child that she does truly terrible, no-good things, contains some of the bleakest, most brutal scenes I’ve ...

Todd Keisling can write the hell out of a short story. So well, in fact, that they may convince you to resist a bully, stop going to church, or tell your boss to f**k off!  Cold, Black and Infinite is full of li...

Something new for me this week. A bold venture into uncharted territory.  The graphic novel!! As is proper, I’ve started with one of the best. Emil Ferris joins me to talk through the creation of her l...

Believe it or not, there is more to life than just books. Very little, granted… but there is more. Talking Scared: Off Book is a chance for this show to spread its wings a little. To fly further, wider, deeper into the world ...

We return to Australia for the second time in a month, to find that (once again), home invasion isn’t the worst thing to happen on a typical day. Alan Baxter’s Blood Covenant is a violent, thrilling story of a threew...

A charming man approaches. With dark secrets to tell you. Yeah, that L.P. Hernandez. Author of the novella In the Valley of the Headless Men and the forthcoming collection, No Gods, Only Chaos. Both are grea...