Talking Scared

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65 – Mark Stay and Cosy Pagan Dread Nov 09, 2021

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This week I’m feeling warm and fuzzy (don’t worry it won’t last). Halloween is over, the weather has turned dark, we’ve all got the central heating on and are hunkering down for the end of the year. What better time for a slightly more cosy read?

Our guest this week is Mark Stay, author, screenwriter, and one half of the quite wonderful Bestseller Experiment podcast. Usually Mark is in my chair, asking author’s all about how to be a successful writer – but this week I’ve literally turned the table on him.

Mark’s latest novel – Babes in the Wood – is the second in his Witches of Woodville series. It continues the small village exploits of Faye, magical ingenue, budding witch, and all-round take-no-nonsense-from-nobody heroine. As the second world war rages over the sea, the tiny village of Woodville comes under attack once more from dark, sorcerous forces (this time it’s NAZIS!!)

Told you it sounded cosy!

No worries though. Aside from the inherent darkness beneath Mark’s whimsy, we also pack in enough nightmare fuel with a lengthy discussion of the most horrifying 80s kids’ TV characters, the all-too-real horrors of nostalgic nationalism, and I ask Mark for some gossip about the author’s he’s spoken to.

There’s a lot to enjoy here. Get the kettle on!

Babes in the Wood was published on October 28th by Simon & Schuster

Other books mentioned in this episode include:

Jack’s Game (2021), by Andrew Chapman
Nella Last’s War: The Second World War Diaries of ‘Housewife 49’ (2006), by Nella Last, edited by Richard Broad and Suzi Fleming

Trailer for Mark’s new horror-movie Unwelcome

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64 – Kim Newman and Truly Universal Monsters Nov 02, 2021

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Halloween is over for another year but there are still plenty of monsters to go around.

Our guest this week is Kim Newman, the writer, critic and encyclopaedic authority on horror, pulp and the dark recesses of cinematic history. You may know him as the author of the Anno Dracula series, but that’s only the tip of his imaginative iceberg.

Kim’s new novel, Something More than Night, takes all of that arcane knowledge and puts it to use – transporting us back to the Hollywood of the 1930s when fascism is on the rise and it’s hard to tell the movie monsters from the real madmen. Cue the pairing of horror-icon Boris Karloff and gumshoe writer Raymond Chandler, who unite to confront some very strange goings on behind the scenes.

In between educating me on the finer points of Hollywood history, Kim talks about the enduring legacy of Frankenstein, imitating Chandler’s unique style, writing novels in a connected universe - and we realise just how similar he is to Quention Tarantino.

This one is an absolute blast.

Enjoy!

Something More than Night was published on November 2nd by Titan Books.

Other books mentioned in this episode include:

Anno Dracula (1992), by Kim Newman
Anno Dracula 1999: Daikaiju (1999), by Kim Newman
Nightmare Movies: Horror on Screen Since the 1960s (1988) by Kim Newman. (latest expanded edition, 2011)
The Dark Country (1982), by Dennis Etchison
Hollywood the Haunted House (1967), by Paul Mayersberg
An Illustrated History of the Horror Film (1967), by Carlos Clarens

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63 – Mark Kermode and Angels, Demons and White Eyed Kids (AKA, the Hallowe’en Special) Oct 30, 2021

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Normally we talk books - but horror movies are a Hallowe’en staple. Turn the lights down, wrap yourself in a blanket, choose your snack of choice and then torment yourself terribly. It’s what we do.

Now, Mark Kermode knows a thing or two about scary movies. The UK’s most prominent film critic has a special fondness for horror movies, as well as a grounding in the books that inspired many of the best. I asked him on the show for this Hallowe’en special episode, to talk about his favourite book-to-movie horror adaptations.

No one who has ever heard Mark speak for more than ten minutes will have any doubt what his number one is – but the others may surprise you. At the very least, you’ll came away with suggestions for books to read and movies to watch over this most frightful of weekends.

Oh, and if you like Mickey Rourke, then just hold out for the last five minutes…

Enjoy!

Books mentioned in this episode include:

The Exorcist (1971), by William Peter Blatty
Falling Angel (1978), by William Hjortsberg
The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), by John Wyndham
The Haunting of Hill House (1959), by Shirley Jackson
“Don’t Look Now”, in Not After Midnight, and Other Stories (1971), by Daphne Du Maurier
The Exorcist: BFI Modern Classics (1997), by Mark Kermode
Ghost Story (1979), by Peter Straub

Link to the Guardian Article on the state of the horror novel – https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/29/chapter-and-curse-is-the-horror-novel-entering-a-golden-age

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62 – Catherynne M. Valente and the Homeowners Association from Hell Oct 26, 2021

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Perfect places breed hideous crimes – that’s my understanding at least.

If you like The Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, or Twin Peaks (or anything by David Lynch) then you’ll get a kick out of Catherynne M. Valente’s Comfort Me with Apples.

Despite being a novella of less than 130 pages, it crams in everything from the whole rotten tradition of awful things – from the book of Genesis, via fairytales and the Gothic, all the way up to the most cutting-edge dystopian sci-fi. This tiny tale of a perfect small town and a perfect marriage, all undercut with the sour tang of wrongness.

Catherynne talks in detail about the various strands that she has knotted together into this story. We cover religion and the potential for evil within, Disney towns and cartoon police, and we discuss why Bluebeard and his locked cellar door is such a key and recurrent trope in domestic horror.

And, as ever, I take the chance to go off on a frothing political rant.

Enjoy!

Comfort Me with Apples is published by Tor on November 9th

Check out Mark Kermode’s rant about the movie Entourage – to prepare for the Hallowe’en special.

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61 – Cassandra Khaw and Stories to Tell Death Oct 19, 2021

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I’m on holiday but I still give you goodies. ‘Cos that’s the kind of all-round good guy that I am.

And what a dark treat of a trick we have this week. The guest is Cassandra Khaw and their novella Nothing But Blackened Teeth will use it’s liquorice-stained smile to chew you up.

The book transports us to a crumbling mansion in Japan, where a hideous spectre haunts a group of utterly loathsome tourists. Honestly, you’ll want them dead for their taste in music alone!

Despite the slimness of the volume, Cass packs a lot into this book, just as we pack a lot into this conversation. As well as discussing the novella specifically, we also talk our fear and fondness for Ellen Datlow, the rich heritage of South East Asian ghost stories and the haunting house as colonised space.

She also gives perhaps the best ever answer to the question “what really scares you?” It is a life lesson.

Excuse my whining about my dog.

Enjoy

Nothing But Blackened Teeth was published on Tor Nightfire on 20th October

Books discussed on this episode include:

Queen of the Cicadas (2021), by V. Castro
When the Reckoning Comes (2021), by LaTanya McQueen
The Only Good Indians (2020), by Stephen Graham Jones
Sandman Slim (2009), by Richard Kadrey
What Moves the Dead (coming 2022), by T. Kingfisher

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60 – Caitlin Starling and Emotional Torture Porn Oct 12, 2021

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Hello kids. Wanna see a magic trick?

Rather than pulling a rabbit from a hat, I offer you Caitlin Starling, author of The Luminous Dead and her new Gothic chiller, The Death of Jane Lawrence.

Caitlin’s novel takes a familiar Gothic set-up and kicks it around until it is only recognisable from the colour of its blood. Dilapidated house – check. Deceitful husband – check. Magical rites, mysterious walls and ghosts that feed on shame – yeah that’s new!

We talk all about magical rites and occult practices, but before things get too esoteric and in-the-weeds, we also discuss Hannibal the TV show, whether there is life after death, and how best to incorporate neurodivergence into a dark gothic fantasy.

You’ll come out of this one, entertained, entranced AND with a whole new reading and viewing list.

Enjoy

The Death of Jane Lawrence was published on October 5th by St Martin’s Press.

Unexplained podcast episode featuring Aleister Crowley:

http://www.unexplainedpodcast.com/episodes/2016/6/18/episode-10-the-spaces-that-linger

Books discussed on this episode include:

Jane Eyre (1847), by Charlotte Brontë
Wuthering Heights (1847), by Emily Brontë
Under the Pendulum Sun (2017), by Jeanette Ng
Vita Nostra (2007), by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko

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59 – James Han Mattson and the Fear Fetish Facepalm Oct 05, 2021

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Welcome to Hallowe’en ’21. If ever a year required us to find the fun in all things grim, dark and depressing then this is the absolute best year since last year.

Appropriately for the lead-in to Spooky Season, our guest this week wrote a book all about fear as an attraction. James Han Mattson is the author of Reprieve – a mouthwatering prospect of a novel set in an extreme, full-contact, haunted house escape room. What could go wrong, right?

Well, as you’ll hear, James’ novel is less interested in fake blood and rubber axes than it is in the very real damage caused by prejudice and discrimination. That’s what Reprieve has been likened, in yawn-inducing fashion, to Get Out. In fact, it’s something much more interesting than just another social horror satire.

James and I talk about a whole lot of heavy stuff, from racial fetishization to the psychology behind liking to be afraid. Meanwhile, I repeatedly seize the chance to put my foot in my mouth with some untypically (according to you guys) dumb questions.

Happy October. The fun starts here.

Enjoy!

Reprieve was published October 5th by William Morrow in North American and Bloomsbury in the UK.

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58 – Lee Mandelo & Playing Out with the Boys Sep 28, 2021

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Vroom vroom! This week’s book is automatic, systematic, highly dramatic … it’s G…G…G…G… Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo.

That painful Grease reference is due to the fact that this book marries teenage angst with fast cars and hot boys – with or without the quiffs. In reality though, it’s closer to a Springsteen Song – all tortured youth, broken hearts, racing the in the street and darkness on the edge of town.

It tells the tale of Andrew – a sexually confused young man who relocates to a Tennessee University town in the wake of his friend’s death. What, and who, he finds there changes his life and his understanding of who, exactly, he is. And it’s all haunted by a fearsomely possessive phantom that just won’t leave Andrew alone.

Ghosts aside though, Summer Sons still packs a punch. Lee blends the two sides of southern gothic fiction. On one hand, there’s the supernatural, on the other the very real drama of history and violence that permeates the genre. It also showcases modern masculinity in all its ugliness, with a few strands of beauty, and refracts the whole thing through a dark version of the campus novel.

Lee and I talk about how white masculinity often escapes critical appraisal, how academia is the perfect setting for horror, the thrill of living lives that span the class barrier, and we try to pin down exactly what we mean by ‘Southern Gothic’.

Oh, and we both complain bitterly about the nightmare that is postgraduate study.

Enjoy!

Summer Sons was published September 28th by Tor.

Other books mentioned in this episode include:

The Secret History (1992),by Donna Tartt
The Lecturer’s Tale (2001),by James Hynes
Black Chalk (2013), by Christopher Yates
The Devil All the Time (2011), by Donald Ray Pollock
The Blade Between (2020), by Sam J. Miller

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57 – Tina Baker and the Working-Class Chips on Our Shoulders Sep 21, 2021

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Oh eck! This week I get very northern and my working class roots come to the fore.

It’s all my guest’s fault. Tina Baker, the author of Call Me Mummy, is an infectious presence. My typical transatlantic restraint falls away and I follow Tina down endless rabbit-holes – her time as a TV presenter, her childhood mishaps, her cats!

Thankfully, her book is fantastic, and gives us something to focus on at least a little.

Call Me Mummy is a dark psychological tale of stolen children, toxic media, mental illness and class warfare. That’s a lot to fit into one book but, as you’ll hear, I think Tina pulls it off with aplomb, and delightful black humour.

A warning, this episode does feature discussion of infertility and miscarriage. Tina, of course, delivers her own personal experiences with typical good humour, but it is worth mentioning.

We also talk about ideals of parenthood, social media trolls, alcoholism, welsh nuns, babies with horns, and the particular British disdain for the middle class

Enjoy!

Call Me Mummy was published in paperback on 2nd September by Viper

Other books mentioned in this episode include:

The Last House on Needless Street (2021), by Catriona Ward
Shuggie Bain (2020), by Douglas Stuart

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56 – Aliya Whiteley and Strange Growths Sep 14, 2021

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Growth is good, right? That’s what they tell us.

Our guest this week might have other ideas. Aliya Whiteley’s is a novelist, short story writer and poet, whose writing is all about growth. In her strange worlds people, plants, entire worlds sprawl and mutate, but often the change is anything but wholesome.

In her new collection, From the Neck Up she introduces us to disembodied heads, fleshy scarecrows, parasitical towns, dark ecology and violent agricultural rites. These stories sit on the cusp of a world gone sour, and peel back the curtain to show us how the past and the present may (ahem) grow into an awful future.

Before you go thinking these are just run-of-the-mill apocalypses though, be warned and reassured that Aliya’s writing is anything but normal. She blends horror, science-fiction, fantasy, the surreal and absurd and even a sprinkling of dark comedy – all transmuted into something she calls the strange.

We try (and fail) to pin her stories down. We talk about how she crafts her stories, where they start and why the often end where we least expect. Along the way we take in the climate crisis, ecology and evolving change, the history of science fiction, the future of folk horror, and the legends of her native Devon.

Enjoy!

From the Neck Up was published by Titan Books on 14th September

Other books mentioned in this episode include: