This Off Book episode is a trip into the deep dark woods, for a very special playdate!

Our guest is Rod Blackhurst, director and co-writer of the new retro horror movie, Dolly. It’s a film about a very scary house in the woods and the even scarier person who lives inside…and who wants nothing so much as a new toy of her own.  

Rod and I talk about the tone, gore and influences behind the movie – from 16mm classics to New French Extremity. We discuss the pathos of a truly great horror monster, and the physical performance that brings Dolly to terrifying life.

I’m really cheering for this movie. It was so much more than I expected.

Enjoy

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This week we’re sharpening our swords and checking our armpits for boils!

Christopher Buehlman is the guest, author the hugely-acclaimed 2012 medieval horror fantasy, Between Two Fires – now being reissued for a new, wide audience. It’s a book that everyone has been screaming at me to read, and I’m glad I did.

Christopher and I get hellishly geeky, talking history, plague, angelology and demonology, Biblical reference and epic poetry. But he also tells us about his past career insulting drunk people at ren-fairs.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:

Those Across the River (2011), by Christopher Buehlman

The Blacktongue Thief (2021), by Christopher Buehlman

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death (2005), by John Kelly

Angel Down (2025), by Daniel Kraus

The Starving Saints (2025), by Caitlin Starling

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Clap your hands twice if you believe in Catriona Ward!

Cat is back on the show this week, to talk Nowhere Burning – a horror novel informed by everything from Peter Pan (it has its own Tinkerbell), to certain disgraced megastars, and even the CIA checklist on what constitutes a cult!

It’s a lot, and we talk about all of it, as well as various weird mysteries, the grimmest cult we’ve ever heard of, and Cat’s various brushes with fame over the years.

This little precise may have you thinking WTF? – but the way I see it, that’s the perfect set-up for a Cat Ward novel.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:

• The Last House on Needless Street (2021), by Catriona Ward
• Looking Glass Sound (2023), by Catriona Ward
• Peter & Wendy (1911), by J. M. Barrie
• Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah (2005), by Colm A. Kelleher and George Knapp
• Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings (2020), by Neil Price
• Tradwife (2026), by Sarah Langan

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When is a zombie not a zombie?

I don’t have a punchline to that joke. But something…something … revenant!

Brennan LaFaro’s The Denizens is about a small southern town with a very unusual relationship with death. What precisely is the nature of the corpses roaming the woods, and what do they want with the living. You’ll have to listen to find out.

What is certain is that this book gives Brennan and I a launchpad for a conversation about writing action-horror scenes, the ethics of suffering and pain, what comes after death, and all the horrible little small towns that inspired his own.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:

• On Sundays She Picked Flowers (2026), by Yah Yah Schofield
• Pet Semetary (1983), by Stephen King
• Knockemstiff (2008), by Donald Ray Pollock
• The Devil All the Time (2011), by Donald Ray Pollock
• Donnybrook (2013), by Frank Bill
• The Complex (2016), by Brian Keene
• The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch (2015), by Daniel Kraus

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This Valentine’s week, come for a walk up on t’moors with me and Agatha Andrews.

I’ve invited Agatha, my friend and sister-in-Gothic, host of She Wore Black podcast, for a conversation about Wuthering Heights.

It’s known as “the greatest love story ever told,” but that’s such nonsense. Instead we talk about mania and melancholy, hate and power, cannibalism and necrophilia… and we also look ahead to the Hollywood adaptation with bated (but amused) breath.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:

• David Copperfield (1850), by Charles Dickens
• The Brontës (1994), by Juliet Barker
• The Gabriel Hounds (1964), by Mary Stewart
• East of Eden (1952), by John Steinbeck
• The Vampyre (1819), by John Polidori
• The Favourites (2025), by Layne Fargo

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A bit of chaos on the show for the weekend. We start with one guest and end with two. And there’s a dude with an alligator’s head running amok!

Mama Came Callin’ is the slasher/cryptid/mystery/noir graphic novel written by Ezra Claytan Daniel and illustrated by Camilla Sucre. It’s set in the swamps of Florida, amongst murky waters and dirtier histories.

The three of us (eventually) talk about the horrendous racist truth underpinning the story, we discuss how two creatives can bring their distinctive skills to a singular vision. We hear about the joy and hustle of a multidisciplinary career, and Ezra gives us some insight into the writing room for the TV show Severance.

Enjoy

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We’re tiptoeing towards the sci-fi end of things this week, with Justin C. Key and The Hospital at the End of the World.

This is a techn-othriller about AI run amok in the medical establishment, and the junior doctor who must navigate a shadowy conspiracy, a fatal (and horrific) disease, all whilst making time for class at the sole human-led teaching hospital left in the country.

It’s a lot. And a lot of fun – when it’s not ambushing me with one of my greatest medical phobias!!!

Justin and I talk about the real horrors of his medical school experience, what he’s learned about human connection from his work in psychiatry, and we have that rare thing – a genuinely nuanced conversation about the role of AI in society.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned: 

• The World Wasn’t Ready for You (2023), by Justin C. Key
• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000), by Stephen King
• Insomnia (1994), by Stephen King
• Ender’s Game (1985), by Orson Scott Card
• Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming (1994), by Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold
• The Curse of Hester Gardens (2026), by Tamika Thompson
• Nuclear War: A Scenario (2024), by Annie Jacobson

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After our loose, freeform chat about the high strangeness of The Talisman, Nat stuck around to Palaver a little more behind Chris’ innocent back.

In this spoiler-filled 35 minutes (do not listen if you haven’t finished The Dark Tower) we get into some firmer connections between King’s magical worlds, we look at the order of books to come, weigh our saddest deaths in King stories…and even after all these hours we’re forced to ask, “what the f*ck is the Talisman anyway?

Enjoy.

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We’re on the road again with our Dark Tower journey, running through adjacent worlds, lighting out for the Territories.

Our latest side-quest takes us to The Talisman, the 1984 epic dark fantasy, co-authored by Stephen King and Peter Straub. It’s a wild, hallucinatory ride, that contains my favourite King character of them all!

Nat, Chris and I talk about that dude, as well as discussing where Jack Sawyer ranks in the league table of King’s childhood heroes. But mostly we try to pin down the connections between this mad story, and Roland’s great quest.

Do we succeed? Do we just make up all manner of wishful thinking nonsense? You decide.

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We're Southbound for monster-loving this week on Talking Scared.

 Georgia writer, Yah Yah Schofield comes to discuss her Southern Gothic debut, On Sundays She Picked Flowers – a story of monsters, spirits, swamps, and generational trauma. There’s a very bad mama and a very haunted house.

Yah Yah and I talk about mother-daughter relationships, the difference between ghosts and haints, the influence of elders, and why the rules are different for Black ‘weird girls.’

Plus, in Yah Yah’s own words – we discuss tongue-kissing monsters.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:

• The Haunting of Hill House (1959), by Shirley Jackson
• Haints: American Ghosts, Millennial Passions and Contemporary Gothic Fictions (2011), by Arthur Redding
• The Colour Purple (1982), by Alice Walker
• Beloved (1987), by Toni Morrison
• Sula (1978), by Toni Morrison
• In the Dream House: A Memoir (2019), by Carmen Maria Machado
• The Lamb (2025), by Lucy Rose
• We Are Here to Hurt Each Other (2022), by Paula D. Ashe
• Between Two Fires (2012), by Christopher Buehlman

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Imagine you’re back in high school – but worse! The shuffling idiots actually want to EAT you!

That’s the premise of Courtney Summers’ This is Not a Test, her 2012 zombie novel of teen despair amongst the undead, now reissued in a fresh ‘definitive’ version for 2026. When better than a time in which the mindless, greedy and brutal are running amok in the real world.

Courtney and I talk about zombies in 2012 and now, we discuss optimism versus despair, we track the challenges of writing a survival thriller with a suicidal protagonist, and she offers advice on rapid character building and writing teen dialogue.

It’s a good one.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:

• The Project (2021), by Courtney Summers
• Room To Dream (2018), by David Lynch and Kristine McKenna
• The Stand (1990), by Stephen King

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