The CinemaChords Podcast

Howard Gorman
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  • TV & Film

Bringing you up close and personal with the voices shaping film, music, and storytelling today. Each episode dives into candid chats with filmmakers, actors, musicians, and authors — from rising talent to industry icons — as they share the stories behind their work, the challenges they’ve faced, and the sparks that keep their creativity alive.

  1. 6d ago

    #70: Cassandra Khaw Interview: When Death Comes Calling as a Black Dog | The Year's Most Vital Horror Novel 'Find Me Where It Ends'

    What if Death came to your door not bearing a scythe, but as a black dog — and turned out to be rather good company? That’s the moving, melancholy premise at the centre of Cassandra Khaw’s latest novel, Find Me Where It Ends.The story follows Antigone, who is no stranger to death. For the women in her family, it has always arrived as a black dog, and when her own spectral companion finally appears, she invites it inside. What begins as an unsettling encounter gradually becomes something much more intimate, as Antigone is forced to reckon with the life she has lived, the parts of herself she has hollowed out for others and the bone-deep exhaustion that has followed her through it.Find Me Where It Ends makes a strange companion of Death, turning the black dog at Antigone’s door into something less like a harbinger than a confidant. Khaw’s real sleight of hand is to make survival feel tangible: not some grand revelation, but a messy accumulation of people, memories and tiny reasons to keep going.CinemaChords spoke to Cassandra Khaw about the new book, the folklore and symbolism behind its central black dog, the complicated relationship between mortality and the people who keep us here, and why the smallest details of a life can sometimes provide the strongest reasons to stay.

    #70: Cassandra Khaw Interview: When Death Comes Calling as a Black Dog | The Year's Most Vital Horror Novel 'Find Me Where It Ends'

  2. 6d ago

    #69: She wants to devour him. She’s also falling in love with him: Gillian Daniels on Horror Novel ‘Jenny Will Eat You Now’

    What happens when a centuries-old river monster meets a human she desperately wants to eat — only to find herself falling in love with him instead? Gillian Daniels’ debut horror novel Jenny Will Eat You Now revolves around Jenny Greenteeth, a centuries-old river dweller who has made her home beneath the streets of Boston and regards humans with a mixture of contempt and appetite. But then she meets a handsome academic and, for reasons she doesn’t entirely understand, finds herself slightly more intrigued than hungry. Romance, body horror and folklore collide with gloriously impolite results in Jenny Will Eat You Now, which turns the conventional monster story on its head and then cheerfully bites into it.  Jenny may be a murderous water spirit with a taste for human flesh, but it turns out that falling in love presents an altogether more complicated problem: how exactly do you maintain a healthy relationship with someone who remains, quite literally, on the menu? To celebrate the book’s release today, September 29, CinemaChords sat down with Daniels to discuss creating Jenny, blending horror and romance in equal measures, the fun of putting a centuries-old river monster in contemporary Boston, and the particular challenge of writing a protagonist who can quite happily eat a person but has absolutely no idea what to do when she starts falling in love with one.

    #69: She wants to devour him. She’s also falling in love with him: Gillian Daniels on Horror Novel ‘Jenny Will Eat You Now’

  3. Sep 28

    #68: Jennifer Thorne Talks New Horror Novel ‘Newbourne Park’: where the country-house weekend goes feral

    Jennifer Thorne made quite an impression with Diavola, turning family dysfunction, Italian sunshine and supernatural horror into one very bad holiday. Now she’s back with Newbourne Park, swapping the Tuscan getaway for 200 acres of extremely expensive English countryside.  Worn out from years of caregiving, 26-year-old Martha Shaw reluctantly agrees to a secret weekend escape at a lavish country estate. It sounds idyllic enough. Then the rightful master of the house returns under cover of night, and Martha finds herself fighting for survival against a vicious, hungry presence stalking the grounds. A deliciously nasty collision of Gothic horror and class warfare, Newbourne Park gives the werewolf myth a distinctly contemporary makeover. Thorne turns familiar tropes inside out to ask whether escaping the food chain is quite the same thing as refusing to join it. To celebrate the book’s release (September 29), CinemaChords spoke to Thorne about class and privilege colliding with Gothic nightmares, the appeal of placing an utterly contemporary protagonist inside an old-fashioned horror story — and the fun of taking familiar Gothic and werewolf trappings and giving them a thoroughly nasty twist.

    #68: Jennifer Thorne Talks New Horror Novel ‘Newbourne Park’: where the country-house weekend goes feral

  4. Sep 22

    #67: Living (& Dying) for the Likes: Brian Asman Talks #VANDEATH and the Fatal Illusion of Performing Your Life Online

    Thinking of trading your mortgage for a converted Mercedes Sprinter and a portable espresso maker? You might want to hold off on listing the flat just yet. If Instagram algorithms and curated lifestyle reels are to be believed, packing your life into four wheels, cruising off into the sunset, and posing casually by a cliffside campfire is the ultimate modern triumph. But as author Brian Asman exemplifies in his latest desert-set shocker novel, #VANDEATH, the aspirational dream of off-grid freedom has a nasty habit of swiftly spiralling into a desolate death trap. Following the success of Man, F*ck This House (And Other Disasters), Asman’s new novel centers on Morgan and Jasper: the golden couple of social media. Beautiful, perpetually mobile, and adored by a million digital voyeurs, they appear to have conquered the rat race. Behind the pristine filters, though, the reality is far uglier: their relationship is falling apart at the seams, their finances are in ruin, and their online followers are teetering from admiration into dark obsession. When a secluded trip into the unforgiving terrain of Death Valley turns all kinds of awry, the illusion collapses entirely. Harried by a mysterious black van and a masked killer with miles of desert in every direction, the pair find themselves locked in a violent struggle for survival—where the performative romance they’ve been touting to their band of followers faces its ultimate, brutal reckoning. In celebration of the book releasing today, we spoke to Asman about the fragile boundary between authenticity and performance, the compromises inherent in making your lifestyle your livelihood, and the central, absurd paradox of #VanLife: the obsession with vanishing off the grid, while ensuring a million glowing screens follow your disappearance into the dust.

    #67: Living (& Dying) for the Likes: Brian Asman Talks #VANDEATH and the Fatal Illusion of Performing Your Life Online

  5. Sep 22

    #66: Size Matters: Henry Herz and Jonathan Maberry on Why ‘The Big Bad Book of Kaiju’ Is the Ultimate Remedy for Modern Anxiety

    What happens when the beasts grow larger than the myths we construct about our own control? Released today, 22 September, and edited by Henry Herz and Jonathan Maberry, The Big Bad Book of Kaiju gathers an original compendium of skyscraper-sized creatures, leveled cities, and humanity scrambling through the fallout. Featuring contributors such as Tananarive Due, Alma Katsu, Christopher Golden, Seanan McGuire, Scott Sigler, Cynthia Pelayo and Luke Dumas, the anthology offers a right royal monster mash of formidable beasts and cataclysmic reckonings. At the same time, kaiju fiction has always offered far more than simple destruction. There is a sobering pleasure in reading about humanity abruptly getting knocked off the top of the food chain — and a surprisingly cathartic thrill in seeing the old world demolished to make way for whatever comes next. Far from mere B-movie schlock, The Big Bad Book of Kaiju proves that giant monster fiction is the ultimate, soul-cleansing elixir we desperately need right now. To mark today’s release, Herz and Maberry spoke to CinemaChords about why giant monsters are so uniquely compelling to bring to the page, what guided their selection of writers, original creatures, and sui generis narratives, why these titanic beasts remain so adept at puncturing the human ego, and why, so often, the best remedy for modern anxiety is simply letting a giant monster paint the town red—quite literally.

    #66: Size Matters: Henry Herz and Jonathan Maberry on Why ‘The Big Bad Book of Kaiju’ Is the Ultimate Remedy for Modern Anxiety

  6. Sep 22

    #65: Mobsters, grief, and ancient dread: Keith Rosson Talks His genre-blending triumph, Crone

    Keith Rosson’s trajectory has been defined by a sharp convergence of gritty crime fiction and speculative horror—stories characterised by structural violence, emotional depth, and systemic decay. With his latest novel, Crone, Rosson pushes these stylistic bounds further, fusing the investigative noir thriller with folk horror to expose an ancient, insatiable threat: A decade after his daughter’s sudden disappearance, former detective Eli Lamp is a shadow of his former self, scraping a living as a mob enforcer. A shot at redemption arrives with a dark caveat: clear his debts by solving the brutal execution of his boss’s son. Reluctantly partnered with his missing daughter’s former best friend, Eli begins pulling at a thread that leads back decades, straight into the core of his own unresolved grief. But the local underworld is only half the problem as a vengeful, clawed entity looms large over the case and the deeper Eli and his companion dig, the clearer it becomes: the past isn’t simply catching up with them — it’s actively hunting them down. Brimming with brutal atmosphere and pitch-black dread, Crone is an absolute knockout of a genre hybrid. Rosson anchors skin-crawling terror in authentic human tragedy to deliver one of the most compelling horror novels of the year.  To mark the book’s release today, CinemaChords spoke to Rosson about his hybridisation of noir tropes, supernatural horror, and regional folklore, his recurring thematic interest in addiction, and how he handles real-world violence: delivered in authentic, unpredictable shocks guaranteed to knock the wind right out of the reader.

    #65: Mobsters, grief, and ancient dread: Keith Rosson Talks His genre-blending triumph, Crone

  7. Sep 22

    #64: Sometimes I Scare Myself: Jeneva Rose Talks Her Terrifying Triptych of Uncanny Horror

    When author Jeneva Rose is at the helm, a standard night out is already a terrible idea. Case in point: Sometimes I Scare Myself, a razor-sharp horror triptych takes benign, familiar setups — a birthday toast, a suburban housewarming, a brief highway pull-over — and plunges them headfirst into worst-case scenarios. Instead of relying on cheap jump scares, the collection weaponises the uncanny: A séance goes alarmingly off-script, a dream house starts whispering, and a seemingly harmless highway pull-over comes with a curse. Across these three very different nightmares, Rose explores the moment fear gets right under your skin — and what happens when you let it take the reins. Serving up the deliciously satisfying, bite-sized shocks of an EC Comics or Creepshow-style anthology, it’s easily one of the most effective entries in modern horror this reviewer has read all year. To mark the book’s release today, CinemaChords spoke with Rose about the “misbehaving thoughts” that birthed the trilogy, the psychology of letting fear take ownership of the mind, and the connective tissue binding these three dark fables together.

    #64: Sometimes I Scare Myself: Jeneva Rose Talks Her Terrifying Triptych of Uncanny Horror

  8. Sep 21

    #63: Alma Katsu on New Novel ‘Incarnate’: We Have a Tragically-Desperate Compulsion to Measure Our Lives Against Illusions

    From the Donner Party to the Salem witch trials, Alma Katsu has built a reputation for reshaping history and classic lore through a lens of psychological dread. Now, she’s taking on Oscar Wilde. In her new novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray gets a terrifying internet-age reboot—dragging Wilde’s classic into a world of algorithmic clout, deepfake beauty standards, and manufactured perfection that refuse to stay confined to the internet. In her chilling new novel Incarnate, Katsu explores the pressures of modern visibility and the sinister point at which our curated online identities begin to shape us rather than the other way around.Incarnate centers on Dorothy Wagner, a woman who has spent her life desperate to be seen. After failing to build a viable audience as an influencer, she takes a job at a company developing cutting-edge deepfake technology. Working in secret, she creates Isabella—an impossibly beautiful digital avatar who becomes an overnight global social media phenomenon. But as Isabella attracts millions of obsessive followers, lucrative brand deals, and a life of her own, Dorothy finds her grip slipping over the digital creation that was supposed to grant her complete control.To mark the book’s publication this September 22, CinemaChords sat down with Katsu to discuss her new novel, the sinister psychological implications of our digital footprints, and our doom-eager habit of measuring ourselves against manufactured illusions of perfection.

    #63: Alma Katsu on New Novel ‘Incarnate’: We Have a Tragically-Desperate Compulsion to Measure Our Lives Against Illusions
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About

Bringing you up close and personal with the voices shaping film, music, and storytelling today. Each episode dives into candid chats with filmmakers, actors, musicians, and authors — from rising talent to industry icons — as they share the stories behind their work, the challenges they’ve faced, and the sparks that keep their creativity alive.

Information

  • Creator
    Howard Gorman
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    70
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Howard Gorman
  • Show Website
    The CinemaChords Podcast

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