“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:

• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000), by Stephen King
• It (1986), by Stephen King
• The Jerusalem Man (1988), by David Gemmell
• The Book of the New Sun (series, 1980-1987), by Gene Wolfe

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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!

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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.

• Incarnations (2014) by Susan Barker
• Sayonara Bar (2005), by Susan Barker
• Ghostwritten (1999), by David Mitchell
• Number9Dream (2001), by David Mitchell
• Slade House (2015), by David Mitchell
• House of Leaves (2000), by Mark Z. Danielewski
• Under the Skin (2000), by Michelle Faber
• Audition (1997), by Ryū Murakami
• The Denial of Death (1973), by Ernest Becker
• The Three Body Problem (2006), by Cixin Liu
• You Like it Darker (2024), by Stephen King
• Starve Acre (2019), by Andrew Michael Hurley
• Barrowbeck (2024), by Andrew Michael Hurley
• The Ritual (2011), by Adam Neville

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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.

• The Sense of an Ending (2011), by Julian Barnes
• The Little Stranger (2009), by Sarah Waters
• The Pallbearer’s Club (2022), by Paul Tremblay
• We Were Villains (2017), by M. L. Rio
• The Secret History (1992), by Donna Tartt
• “All Souls,” in The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton (1973), by Edith Wharton

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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.

• What Kind of Mother (2023), by Clay McLeod Chapman
• Ghost Eaters (2022), by Clay McLeod Chapman
• The Deluge (2022), by Stephen Markley
• Come Closer (2003), by Sara Gran
• The Stand (1990), by Stephen King
• Found: An Anthology of Found Footage Horror Stories (2022), ed by, Andrew Cull and Gabino Iglesias
• American Rapture (2024), by CJ Leede
• Feast While You Can (2024), by by Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta

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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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It’s that time of year again. When I celebrate the winter solstice by getting some horror authors to come and talk in deep, emotional detail about a scary book that we like.

This time the Christmas Special Deep Dive kicks the tires and looks under the hood of Stephen King’s most underrated novel: From a Buick 8. My friends on this weird-ass-road trip are Ally Malinenko and Nat Cassidy. I asked them to do it for a coupla reasons. 1) They are lovely 2) hey really get King, and 3) they can speak to this book’s focus on grief and loss.

And oh boy do we talk grief, loss, afterlives and everything else. Turns out it’s not just a book about a car after all.

Don’t worry though, Ally is charming, Nat is snarky and together we’ll make you laugh. 

And Christmas is supposed to be tinged with melancholy isn’t it…

Enjoy!

Other Books Mentioned

• Matterhorn (2009), by Karl Marlantes
• Hearts in Atlantis (1999), by Stephen King
• The Colorado Kid (2005), by Stephen King
• “The Night Flyer” and “Popsy,” in Nightmares and Dreamscapes (1993), by Stephen King
• Nestlings (2023), by Nat Cassidy
• This Appearing House (2022), by Ally Malinenko

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… and we’re back! Just in time for this seasonal tradition. The State of the Horror Nation 2024 – our expert-led review of the best that the year had to offer in terms of horror writing and pen-and-ink nightmares.

I’m joined, as ever by my stalwart co-host for this gig, Emily Hughes, author of Horror For Weenies (go check her mammoth 2025 anticipated horror book list at ReadJumpScares.com)

Our special correspondents are Anna Dupre, reviewer and interviewer at Anna Rose Reads, and Stephani Gagnon of the landmark, can’t-be-beaten horror podcast, Books In the Freezer

They pick their books of 2024, and we talk about the things that have defined the year, whilst also looking forward to what’s next.

Enjoy!

Anna's Essay on IT

https://filmfreakcentral.net/2024/10/terrifier-3-2024/

Books Picked

The Eyes Are the Best Part (2024), by Monika Kim

Cuckoo (2024), by Gretchen Felker-Martin

American Rapture (2024), by C.J. Leede

Woodworm (2024), by Layla Martinez

Horror Movie (2024) by Paul Tremblay 

Night’s Edge (2024), by Liz Kerin

So Thirsty (2024),  by Rachel Harrison

Model Home (2024), by Rivers Solomon

I Was a Teenage Slasher (2024), by Stephen Graham Jones

Books Anticipated

Victorian Psycho (2025), by Virginia Feito

The Poorly Made (2025), by Sam Rebelein

The Unworthy (2025), by Augustina Bazterrica

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (2025), by Stephen Graham Jones

Bat Eater (2025), by Kylie Lee Baker

Sick Houses: Haunted Homes and the Architecture of Dread (2025), by Leila Taylor

The Haunting of Room 904 (2025), by Erika T. Wurth

8114 (2025),by Joshua Hull

When the Wolf Comes Home (2025), by Nat Cassidy

Senseless (2025), by Ronald Malfi

King Sorrow (2025), by Joe Hill

And He Shall Appear (2025), by Kate van der Borgh

Nowhere Burning (2025), by Catriona Ward

Girl in the Creek (2025), by Wendy Wagner

The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre (2025), by Philip Fracassi

The End of the World As We Know It: Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand  (2025), edited by Brian Keene and Christopher Golden

Old Soul (2025), by Susan Barker

rekt (2025), by Alex Gonzalez

Wake Up and Open Your Eyes (2025), by Clay McLeod Chapman

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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!

Other books mentioned:

• Rawblood (2015), by Catriona Ward
• Little Eve (2018), by Catriona Ward
• The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (2019), by Hallie Rubenhold
• Spider (1990), by Patrick McGrath

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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!

Other books mentioned:

• All Her Little Secrets (2021), by Wanda M. Morris
• Rosemary’s Baby (1967), by Ira Levin

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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!
 
 Other books mentioned:
 

•  The Residence (2020), by Andrew Pyper
•  The Haunting of Alma Fielding (2020), by Andrew Pyper
•  Shadowland, or Light From the Other Side (1897), by Elizabeth d’Esperance
•  “The Blue Lenses,” in The Breaking Point (1959), by Daphne du Maurier
•  “The Mezzotint”, “A View From A Hill” and “Oh Whistle and I’ll Come To You My Lad”, found in The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James

 
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