Talking Scared

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

 

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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

 

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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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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

 

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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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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 [email protected]
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When is a zombie not a zombie?

 

I don’t have a punchline to that joke. But something…something … revenant!

 

Brennan LaFaro’s The Denizens is about a small southern town with a very unusual relationship with death. What precisely is the nature of the corpses roaming the woods, and what do they want with the living. You’ll have to listen to find out.

 

What is certain is that this book gives Brennan and I a launchpad for a conversation about writing action-horror scenes, the ethics of suffering and pain, what comes after death, and all the horrible little small towns that inspired his own.

 

Enjoy!

 

Other books mentioned:

 


On Sundays She Picked Flowers (2026), by Yah Yah Schofield


Pet Semetary (1983), by Stephen King


Knockemstiff (2008), by Donald Ray Pollock


The Devil All the Time (2011), by Donald Ray Pollock


Donnybrook (2013), by Frank Bill


The Complex (2016), by Brian Keene


The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch (2015), by Daniel Kraus

 

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]
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