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I’m on a break – but couldn’t resist releasing something.

Especially on today of all days, when lovers of democracy require audio sustenance whilst they wait in line to preserve America.

For the first From the Vault episode, I’ve gone back to December of 2020, for an interview with Michael Marshall Smith. We talk about his 30 years of writing horror, fantasy, science fiction and assorted dark imaginings – captured in his career-spanning Best Of collection.

Michael gives us all the good stuff about where ideas came from, why he writes the way he does, and all those details that literary voyeurs like us, want to know.

It’s also a trip back into the weirdness of the pandemic, and the dying days of the Trump presidency. Have your trauma shields up just in case.

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Halloween has finally arrived. I’m marking it in grim, macabre style.

For this Off Book Samhain Special, I’m joined by Kaelyn Moore, host and creator of Heart Starts Pounding – a podcast for the darkly curious, which offers up a new true-story of horror, hauntings and mystery every week.

Kaelyn is a treasure trove of haunted anecdote and freaky facts. We only touch the tip of her knowledge in this conversation, but still manage to cover the grimmest deaths at Disneyland, a South American Nazi cult, the most cursed book in history and Kaelyn’s own family history with an early American serial killer.

All that, plus a lot of recommendations for movies and the gruesome true-crime reading.

Stick around for the afterword, and plenty of updates on the future of Talking Scared,

Enjoy! Happy Halloween.

Books mentioned:

• The Man From the Train: The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery (2017), by Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James
• The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine (2017), by Lindsey Fitzharris
• I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer (2018), by Michelle McNamara
• The Devil’s Rooming House: the True Story of America’s Deadliest Female Serial Killer (2011), by M. William Phelps

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Things are heating up as we approach Halloween.

I’m joined by a good friend of Talking Scared – Rachel Harrison – to talk about the hot kind of immortality

Her new novel, So Thirsty, does much more than that though. It weighs the weaponization of beauty culture, it asks how women can navigate a world in which youth seems to be everything, and it illustrates the sheer social awkwardness of immortality.

Plus – it prompts a frank reckoning with just how badly I would cope in an orgy.

This is a fun episode, a deep episode, the perfect kind of bookish sign off for a few weeks whilst I take a break. And maybe a good hour of respite from the manic news cycle.

Enjoy.

Other books mentioned:

• The Return (2020), by Rachel Harrison
• Cackle (2021), by Rachel Harrison
• Such Sharp Teeth (2022), by Rachel Harrison
• Black Sheep (2023), by Rachel Harrison
• Nestlings (2023), by Nat Cassidy
• Reluctant Immortals (2022), by Gwendolyne Kiste
• The Militia House (2023), by John Milas
• The Unsuitable (2020), by Molly Pohlig

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As we gear up for Halloween, we get all gussied up in Gothic.

Del Sandeen joins me to talk about the curses, colorism, and all the many influences in her Southern Gothic debut This Cursed House. It’s a novel that twists the sub-genre’s typical reliance on race, for a more subtle, pernicious form of prejudice.

But it’s also chock full of all the haunted house–cursed family–secret rooms–and weird incest that you could want from a truly Gothic novel. It’s a damn good time, as is this conversation.

We talk about New Orleans hauntings, the inspiration of Del’s grandmother, forgiveness as a theme, and the relative ickiness of incest.

Consider this your starting gun for spooky season.

Enjoy.

Other books mentioned:

• Voodoo Dreams (1993), by Jewel Parker Rhodes
• The Good House (2003), by Tananarive Due
• Beloved (1987), by Toni Morrison
• The Vanishing Half (2020), by Brit Bennett
• Sing, Unburied Sing (2017) , by Jesymn Ward
• When the Reckoning Comes (2021), by LaTanya McQueen
• “A Rose For Emily,” (1930), by William Faulkner
• “Jordan’s End,” in The Shadowy Third (1923), by Ellen Glasgow
• The Elementals (1981), by Michael McDowell
• The Conjure Woman (1899), by Charles W. Chesnutt
• The House Behind the Cedars (1900), by Charles W. Chesnutt

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Things get disinhibited on Talking Scared this week, when CJ Leede joins us for a conversation about her new novel, American Rapture.

The novel plunges middle America into a torrid apocalypse, as a sexual plague spreads across the nation, creating “lust hell on earth.” In this framework, C.J crafts a story of sexual awakening, sacrifice, found family, hypocrisy and cruelty. It’s a book that is both extreme and comforting in equal measure.

We talk about that crazy balancing act, about the threat of fundamentalist thought, the terror of demons, the delights of Americana, and the cathartic power of killing your characters.

Oh…and gear up for some very forthright opinions on religion.

Enjoy.

Other books mentioned:

• Maeve Fly (2023), by C.J. Leede
• American Gods (2001), by Neil Gaiman
• Bury Your Gays (2024), by Chuck Tingle
• Camp Damascus (2023), by Chuck Tingle

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Hold hands, we need to stick together.

This week’s episode plunges us into the impossible and endless dark, with Sofia Ajram and her experimental, existential headf*ck of a debut novella, Coup de Grâce. It’s the tale of a man who gets lost in an endless subway station – and the monsters inside (and inside himself)

We talk about everything from the mythical history of mazes, to legends of the early internet, the mystery of Elisa Lam and what Sonic the Hedgehog has to tell us about the readers role in a story. Plus, a fair bit of chat about mental health, depression and suicidal ideation.

That makes it sound a lot less fun than it is, but only fair to warn you.

This is an episode for the adventurous and terminally online.

Enjoy.

Other books mentioned:

• I Am the River (2018), by T.E. Grau
• Water Statues (1980), by Fleur Jaeggy
• Misery (1987), by Stephen King
• House of Leaves (2000), by Mark Z. Danielewski

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I started Off Book so that I could speak to some of the brightest dark stars in the wider universe of horror.

This week that plan comes to absolute fruition – ‘cos Kate Siegel is Talking Scared!

Yes, Kate Siegel, scream-queen of our generation, horror maven, acting superstar and now director of extraterrestrial found-footage nightmare (!!) ”Stowaway.” (a segment from the new V/H/S Beyond)

Kate talks to me about the steep learning curve of making that short, the camera techniques she uses to disorientate, bewilder and horrify. She talks about her approach to finding character, especially in her collaborations with her husband, Mike Flanagan – and she talks about the horror stories she loves most in the world.

She also calls me out very early on. How the hell did I recover??

Enjoy!

V/H/S Beyond is streaming now on Shudder

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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 piece of magic, an umbilicus of imagination between the tired old grump that you’re halfway to becoming, and the wide-eyed wonder you once were.

Lora and I talk about the challenge and reward of writing horror for kids, we talk about the influence of M.C Escher and his mad architecture, we talk about Bradbury and King and other inspirations (including the tiny role that I played in this story). And we also talk about the profound heartsick sorrow of loneliness.

Enjoy.

Other books mentioned:

• The Hike (2016), by Drew Magary
• The Library at Mount Char (2015), by Scott Hawkins
• “Kaleidoscope,” (1949), by Ray Bradbury
• All Summer in a Day (1954), by Ray Bradbury
• “There Will Come Soft Rains” (1950), by Ray Bradbury
• The Foghorn (1950), by Ray Bradbury
• Pet Semetary (1983), by Stephen King
• Misery (1987) by Stephen King
• Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962), by Ray Bradbury
• Coraline (2002), by Neil Gaiman
• The House With a Clock in its Walls (1973), by John Bellairs

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