257 – Northern Weird (Part Two), with Matt Wesolowski, Jodie Robins & Stephen Howard

Talking Scared

Another day, another episode about the weird-arse end of nowhere!

We remain in the North of England for this second part of a weeklong celebration of the Northern Weird Project – six novellas published by Wild Hunt Books (including one by yours truly!).

This time it’s conversation with Matt Wesolowski, about his train-bound folkloric horror, Don’t Call Mum, Jodie Robins, with her magical seaside lament for lost youth, The Off Season, and Stephen Howard, who has sent the uncanny home into a whole new paroxysm of sorrow, withThis House is Not Haunted But We Are.

We moan about the weather. About trains. About southerners. It’s all very northern and grim.

But there are also ghosts, monsters, mad circuses and VAMPIRE RABBITS!!!

Other books mentioned:

• Wuthering Heights (1847), by Emily Brönte
• “Rawhead Rex”, in Books of Blood Volume 3 (1986), by Clive Barker
• Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962), by Ray Bradbury
• The Iceman Cometh (1940), by Eugene O’Neill
• White is for Witching (2009), by Helen Oyeyemi
• Mr Fox (2011), by Helen Oyeyemi
• Skin Thief: Stories (2023), by Suzan Palumbo
• Nowhere Burning (2026), by Catriona Ward
• Quest for the Hexham Heads (2012), by Paul Screeton

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