Talking Scared

After seeing an early screener of Something Very Bad is Going to Happen I immediately thought it was going to be huge!

So I leapt ahead of the curve and invited writer and showrunner, Haley Z Boston to come talk scared about weddings, soulmates, David Lynch and Danish horror, and what it’s like to work with the Duffer Brothers.

This show has been my whole personality for two weeks. Ihope you watch, listen to this interview, and love it all.

 

Enjoy

 

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Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch

 

Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]
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Tamika Thompson talks me through the great American curseof the 21st Century on this week’s episode. No, not Tangerine Cthulhu … but the plague of gun deaths that is coring out the country.

 

That’s the focus of her new novel, The Curse of Hester Gardens, which asks whether the deaths gunning for the young men of an inner-city housing project are criminal, or something much weirder!

 

Yeah, that’s right. Listen to a cossetted little English guy try and keep up in an conversation about gun crimes and street life.

 

Enjoy!

 

Other books mentioned:


The Rats (1974), by James Herbert


The Ghosts of Sleath (1994),by James Herbert


Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century (2022), by Kim Fu


Mystery Lights (2024), by Lena Valencia

“How to Do Diversity When You’re Lazy, Ignorant and/or Malicious” (2018), by Tamika Thompson – Link HERE

 

Support Talking Scared on Patreon

 

Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch

 

Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some stories just boggle your mind and boil your imagination.

 

Such are the ideas in Annie Neugebauer’s You Have to Let Them Bleed, and her logic-shattering novella The Extra. The Uncanny Valley, obsessional thoughts, dangerous knowledge, mothers who aren’t mothers and a camping group that destroys the workings of math and memory… these are
just some of the inexplicabilities we discuss in this week’s episode.

 

If this episode gives you an existential crisis, ontological collapse, or just plain migraine nightmares – well, I can’t and won’t be held
responsible. You’re all adults.

 

Enjoy!

 

Other books mentioned:

“If Those Ragged Feet Won’t Run” (2018), by Annie Neugebauer


Things We Say in the Dark (2019), by Kirsty Logan


Silent Nightmares: Haunting Stories to Be Told on the Longest Night of the Year (2026), edited by Chuck Palahniuk and Michael C. Bailey


There is No Antimemetics Division (2025), by qntm


House of Leaves (2000), by Mark Z. Danielewski


Delbert Judd (2014), by Dan Hammond Jr.


Incidents Around the House (2024), by Josh Malerman

 

Support Talking Scared on Patreon

 

Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch

 

Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Time for sex and seances this week on Talking Scared.

 

Our guest is Avery Curran and her debut novel Spoiled Milk. It’s a story of spiritualism and sapphic desire, set in a 1920s boarding school where death, rot, haunting and much worse things (patriarchy!) runs rampant.

 

Avery is a specialist in the history of spiritualism (with a brand new PhD to her name) and this conversation is a deep and deeply enjoyable route through all of her books haunted classrooms.

 

It’s one of those episodes when we ALL learn something, listeners.

 

Enjoy!

 

Other books mentioned:


The Wells of Loneliness (1928), by Radclyffe Hall

“The Female World of Love and Ritual” (2006,) by Carroll Smith-Rosenberg


Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985), by Eve Kososfky-Sedgewick


IT (1986), by Stephen King


The Haunting of Alma Fielding (2021), by Kate Summerscale


Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower (2020), by Tamsyn Muir


A Canticle for Liebowitz (1959), by Walter M. Miller Jr

 

Support Talking Scared on Patreon

 

Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch

 

Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

 

Support Talking Scared on Patreon

 

Check out the Talking Scared Merch line – at VoidMerch

 

Come talk books on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram, or email direct to [email protected]
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices