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This From the Vault episode is not quite so dusty. Gemma and I recorded this in 2022, but it’s more pertinent than ever. One because Gemma’s great uncanny novella The Folly is being reissued this week, and two, because the world is a mad place right now, and we all need to take care of our minds.

This conversation is all about that. An epic conversation about the issue of mental health as creators and consumers of dark stories. We dig DEEP into our own neuroses, and talk about how great horror comes with great responsibility.

Yes, there is difficult, challenging stuff to churn through — but there’s also chat about the Uncanny Valley, Men in Black, Creepypasta and Black Mirror. And the ethics of vandalising racist statues.

Enjoy!

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Still on a break – still releasing episodes “From the Vault.”

But this week’s was carefully chosen. In a time of darkness and doom-laden days, laughter is the best thing I can lace your horror with. And thankfully T. Kingfisher exists in the world.

The funniest horror writer I know. We spoke WAAAAY back in October 2020, in episode 9, when The Hollow Places had just come out.

Yes Ursula and I talk about that book, and The Twisted Ones (2019) and how they twist Weird classics into fascinating new shapes. But we also cover building your own Golem, the homicidal value of pig farmers, and the anxiety of being a frog biologist.

I dunno guys… just liste! Hope it makes you smile.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:

• “The White People” in The House of Souls (1906), by Arthur Machen
• “The Willows”, in The Listener and Other Stories (2007), by Algernon Blackwood
• It Will Just Be Us (2002), by Jo Kaplan
• From a Buick Eight (2002), by Stephen King
• The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman
• Coraline, by Neil Gaiman
• Firefly Rain (2008), by Richard Dansky

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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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