19 - Michael Marshall Smith and Goodbye to 2020

Send us a text 2020 is nearly behind us (woohoo!) but we have time for one more interview with a master of horror. Our guest this week is Michael Marshall Smith the genre polymath and man of a thousand pseudonyms (all of them involving ‘Michael’.) He is joining me to discuss his new career retrospective, The Best of Michael Marshall Smith, published in a beautiful volume by Subterranean Press. It’s a huge collection of stories, covering Michael’s 30 years of writing, from his recent work, all the way back to his debut story “The Man Who Drew Cats” – which won the British Fantasy Award. Along the way we talk about living and writing on both sides of the Atlantic, our shared love of Stephen King and why Michael writes about cats so much. We also establish that I’m a dog person. And just to make sure we cover all the bases, we also devote a few minutes to discussing the orange baby currently tantrum-ing his way out of the White House, cos it is 2020 still, after all. Lastly, if that isn’t enough for you, I run through the first “Talking Scared Top-Ten Horror of the Year” list. Next year there might be prizes, who knows. It’s been an astonishing year for horror and the first few months of this show have exposed me to writing and thinking that I may otherwise have missed. I can only hope it’s done the same for some of you. So, see you in 2021, when the skies will be blue, the birds singing, and the ghosts moaning a bit more cheerfully. Enjoy! Come talk books with us on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com. Thanks to Terry Smith Audio for sound editing and Adrian Flounders for graphic design. Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices