Talking Scared

272 – Annie Neugebauer & The Colour of a Terrible Thought

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 talkingscaredpod@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

271 – Avery Curran & The Naughtiest Ghosts in School

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 talkingscaredpod@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Off Book #15 – Dolly, with Rod Blackhurst

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 talkingscaredpod@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

270 – Christopher Buehlman & One Seriously Epic Road Trip

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   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 talkingscaredpod@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

269 – Catriona Ward & Where Children Fear to Tread

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   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 talkingscaredpod@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices