Talking Scared

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85 – Emma Stonex and the Light That Never Goes Out Mar 29, 2022

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Imagine it’s just you and two other people stuck in a single building for weeks on end. Everyone’s bad habits on display. How long would it take you to turn murderous?

That’s just one of the possible questions asked in Emma Stonex’s The Lamplighters. Inspired by the real-world vanishing of the Flannan Isle Lighthouse keepers, but full of incident and weirdness all it’s own, The Lamplighters is equally poetic and paranoid, gentle and cruel, haunting and horrifying. It may be the best thing I’ve read this year.

It will either make you want to move to a lighthouse immediately, or never again set foot anywhere but dry land.

Emma and I talk about the sea, about bad places and lonely buildings, and we come back again and again to the inexhaustible metaphor of the lighthouse.

It all gets very lyrical, but we do also use the word “bonkbuster” at one point, to puncture the profundity.

This is a truly fantastic book, and a great conversation with someone who shares our love for the windswept, memory-stained places of the world.

Enjoy!

The Lamplighters is published in paperback on March 1st in the US and March 31st in the UK.

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84 – Dark Stars Roundtable, with John F.D. Taff, Livia Llewellyn & Josh Malerman Mar 22, 2022

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This week is an orgy of horror. There are four of us. That makes it an orgy right? (I’ve never been to one – never got the invitation).

Ahem … sorry. I'll start again.

This week I am joined by not one, but THREE guests.

John F. D. Taff, Livia Llewellyn, and of course, Josh Malerman. We could call them stars from the firmament of horror. Dark Stars perhaps.

That would be fitting, considering that’s what they are here to discuss (amongst many, many things). Dark Stars is a benchmark spook fest. An anthology of fiction that attempts to set the tone for where we are in our collective horror moment.

John is the editor, Josh and Livia are contributors – amongst nine other names from the very forefront of the genre. Each story is different, with few tropes, little tradition and zero constricting theme. It’s just a collection of darkness, depravity and delight.

John, Livia and Josh are old friends, old battle-companions from the horror vanguard. As such I’m essentially redundant this week. I just turned the show over to them and got out of the way.

I make an attempt at order and structure – we talk about making horror weird as hell, about drawing fiction from life, about how we use and abuse tropes in this new horror landscape, but mostly it’s about community, friendship and weird, perverse joy in being creepy together.

Oh, and Josh and I talk bad drug experiences, whilst Livia joins my fight to put sex back in horror!

Enjoy!

Dark Stars: New Tales of Darkest Horror is published on May 10th by Tor Nightfire in the US and Titan in the UK.

Other books mentioned in this episode include:

Dark Forces: New Stories of Suspense and Supernatural Horror (1980), ed. Kirby McCauley
The House Next Door (1978), by Anne Rivers Siddons
Rooster (2021), by John C. Foster
Dark Factory (2022), by Kathe Koje
Every Dead Thing (1999), by John Connolly
Ghoul ‘n’ the Cape (2021), by Josh Malerman

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83 – Simone St. James and Good Time, True Crime Mar 15, 2022

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Hey horrorfam – ready for a good ol’ murder mystery? Y’know, with ghosts…

Our guest is Simone St. James, the doyenne of ‘Supernatural Suspense’ (as the marketeers love to call it). Her 2020 smash hit The Sundown Motel put her name up in lights, and her latest – The Book of Cold Cases keeps it there, shining cold and bright.

It’s a tale of murder, media and misogyny – told in the classic dual-timeline manner that seems to feature in all good supernatural suspense novels – and it features a female serial killer (or is she?), a haunted house (or is it?) and a VERY millennial true crime blogger (or is… yes, yes she is!)

It was exactly the kind of story that I needed to blow the nuclear cobwebs off in our freshly frightening times.

Simone and I talk about the struggle of plotting, and its rewards for enjoyable stories. We wonder why we don’t get more female serial killers in fiction and the complexity of flipping gender roles within genre. We also tussle with the troubles of setting horror in Canada.

…oh, and I try to convince her to start a podcast.

Enjoy!

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82 – Mike Meginnis and Things You Should Do Before You Die Mar 08, 2022

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Are you ready for another apocalypse? Covid and nukes not enough for ya?

Well here you go then. Something slightly different.

Mike Meginnis’ Drowning Practice is an odder than usual end-of-days. It’s a book in which everyone knows that time is up, and yet they just don’t seem to care. There are few (I won’t say zero) ravening lunatics in this book – but the more chilling realisation is that even at the end of the world, you still have to go to work.

Mike and I talk about art and NFT monkeys, about poisoned capitalism and how his book mirrors our own pre-apocalyptic malaise. We also talk about the link between depression and creativity, and we have a friendly disagreement about whether the protagonist of this book is a deeply sinister character.

This is a gentler end-of-days than most, but no less horrifying in its implications.

Enjoy!

Drowning Practice is published March 15th by Ecco Books.

Other books mentioned in this conversation include:

The Men (2022), by Sandra Newman
Never Let Me Go (2005), by Kazuo Ishiguro
Lunar Park (2005), by Bret Easton Ellis

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81 – Tyler Jones and Old Eyes in Young Faces Mar 01, 2022

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Tyler Jones’ Burn the Plans reminds me of the first time I picked up Stephen King’s Night Shift. I didn’t know who this King guy was, only that his stories were varied, scary, funny, awful and sweet and sweetly awful. In short, a great time.

Burn the Plans is the same.

The collection dashes from an ever-so-American-Gothic farm to a bloodsoaked art gallery, CIA psychic experimentation to invisible Frankensteinian limb-monsters. Tyler’s imagination runs amok and breaks the crockery.

We talk about small presses and self-publishing, the discipline of being your own editor, the writing from the POV of kids and the problems with perfect prose.

We also discuss the collection’s theme – that life isn’t safe, that we should learn to expect the unexpected, be ready to live with (and survive crisis).

That message has never been so clear as in recent news … and if you listen to this episode, please stick around for my outro as I have something to say, and dedications to make.

Enjoy!

Burn the Plans was published February 28th by Cemetary Gates Media

Other books mentioned in this conversation include:

Criterium (2020), by Tyler Jones
Almost Ruth (2021), by Tyler Jones
The Bone Clocks (2014), by David Mitchell
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010), by David Mitchell
Consider This (2020), by Chuck Palahniuk
From a Buick 8 (2002), by Stephen King

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Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, and TikTok or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com

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80 – Gretchen Felker-Martin and Bustin’ Everyone’s Balls Feb 22, 2022

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Have you ever wondered what fresh testicles taste like? No? I don’t believe you.

Our guest this week wants to get you thinking about it … well, that and many more important things. Gretchen Felker-Martin is the author of Manhunt –potentially the most buzzed-about horror novel of 2022. The story follows a pair of trans- protagonists through a blighted landscape of monstrous men and militant feminists – with the prized scrotal orbs being the key to continued life, and the pursuit of happiness.

Quite a lot to chew on, right (I’ll stop!). On top of that pulpy set up, the book goes deep, turning the end-of-the-world into the perfect allegory for anti-trans thinking, but also sparing much empathy for the confused, the ignorant and the self-loathing. It’s an angry book, but a thoughtful one.

Gretchen and I talk about love and hate, about the fear of involuntary transitioning, about victimhood and caring and fighting back against facism. I went in expecting a polemic but ended the conversation feeling strangely better about the world.

I hope you do too.

Enjoy!

Manhunt is published February 22nd by Tor Nightfire

Other books mentioned in this conversation include:

Tell Me I’m Worthless (2021), by Alison Rumfitt
“The Screwfly Solution” (1977), by Alice Sheldon
IT (1986), by Stephen King

Gretchen’s interview with Heat Death can be found here.

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79 – Leon Craig and the Queerness at the Bottom of the Well Feb 15, 2022

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February’s focus on the best new Women-in-Horror continues with Leon Craig and her debut collection, Parallel Hells.

Leon is a North London writer with a globalised imagination. She’s been published all over the place, but is also a member of the Future’s in the Making, Queer writer’s collective. That perspective is inescapable in this collection. Wherever her stories take us, from an Eastern European pogrom, to a Viking settlement, or a BDSM dungeon frequented by denizens of the underworld – Leon maintains an outsider’s eye and a clear knowledge of the deliciously Gothic possibilities of Queerness.

We talk Jewish folklore, emotional angst, mid-20s ennui, and the bright, healthy, happy side of sadomasochism. All that with some demonic-inflection and a good dose of the odd and downright weird. What’s not to like?

Enjoy!

Parallel Hells is published February 17th by Sceptre Books.

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78 – Thomas Olde Heuvelt and the Mountains of (My) Madness Feb 08, 2022

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This week is my personal Everest.

Thomas Olde Heuvelt, bestselling Euro-horror whizzkid author of HEX, joins me to to talk about his newest novel – Echo. It’s a story of mountaineering, and madness, and monsters of the soul.

If you follow me on any form of social media you may have seen that this book utterly distressed me. I can’t even say why myself; it just tweaked a nerve.

Echo is a wonderfully easter-egg-laden novel, full of references to other horror masterworks. As you’ll hear in this conversation, that is no surprise. Thomas knows what he’s doing. He knows how to twist the knife (or the climbing axe) for maximum effect.

We talk about mountains, of rock and of the mind. We talk about the role that those grand peaks play in horror through the ages, and how his own relationship with the mountains is one of both fascination and terror – whereas, for me, it’s just the latter. We also discuss writing horror in translation, about the role of erotic love in horror fiction, and the creepy mountain stories that led to the creation of this nightmarish book.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned on the show include:

Into Thin Air (1997), by John Krakauer (a phenomenal non fiction account of disaster on Everest)
Touching the Void (1988), by Joe Simpson
The Raw Shark Texts (2007), by Stephen Hall
Maxwell’s Demon (2021), by Stephen Hall

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77 – S.A. Barnes and Every Direction is Down Feb 01, 2022

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In space no one can hear you read!

This week our guest is S.A. Barnes – who’s new novel Dead Silence answers the (stupid) question, once and for all, of whether horror can take place in space. It’s a tale of a blue-collar crew, who encounter more than they reckoned for when salvaging a fabled spaceship. You think you’ve seen this play out before, I know.

You haven’t.

Stacey and I talk about all things “space-horror”, from the looming shadow of Alien and Event Horizon, to the most truly terrifying thing you can now encounter in orbit: a tech bro.

We also talk romance in horror, Scottish ghosts, classic X Files episodes, what makes for a great haunted house (corners, amongst other things), and we both lament our shared anxiety when we hear a sound we can’t recognise.

This is just a pure fun book, and delightful conversation that boldly goes … etc, etc.
Dead Silence is published on February 8th by Tor Nightfire.

Enjoy!

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76 – Ally Wilkes and Good Reasons to be Afraid of the Dark Jan 25, 2022

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Is it cold where you are? If so, do I have the book for you.

Our guest is Ally Wilkes, whose debut novel, All the White Spaces was my pick for the most anticipated horror novel of early 2022. I was NOT disappointed.

The book takes us to Antarctica in 1919, just months after the end of the First World War, in the dying years of the Heroic Age of Exploration. There, trapped in the frozen ‘overwinter’ the team of men are forced to confront a malignant presence that draws them out into the cold.

Did that give you a shiver? The good kind? Yes!

Ally’s book is the springboard for a great conversation about exploration and hauntings. We debate over what the thing in the darkness is. Is it a ghost, a god, an evil sense of anti-human geography?

But beyond that we also get into all kinds of meaty, chewy topics, such as how her novel unpicks and deconstructs the long-celebrated ideas of masculinity, heroism, nationhood and empire.

Yet, despite all that, the Daily Mail still gave it a good review. It’s THAT good a book.

Enjoy!!

All the White Spaces is released in the UK on January 25th by Titan Books, and on Mach 22nd by Atria in North America.

Other books mentioned in this episode include:

Tell Me I’m Worthless (2021), by Alison Rumfitt
Dead Silence (2021), by S. A. Barnes
Echo (2021), by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
Road of Bones (2021), by Christopher Golden
The Terror (2007), by Dan Simmons
Dark Matter (2010), by Michelle Paver
The Worst Journey in the World (1922), by Apsley Cherry-Garrard
Who Goes There (1938), by John W. Campbell Jr. (basis for the 1982 movie, The Thing)

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Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, and TikTok or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com

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