Bean and Dan are joined once more by one of our good friends of Chronscast, Tade Thompson, to discuss the great director's towering masterpiece, Mulholland Drive. Lynch is one of our favourte filmmakers, and his films continue to astound and bewilder like no other director's can. We wanted to do an episode to give our own small tribute to the great man, so you can imagine our delight when our old pal Tade told us of his own love for Lynch.

We decided to talk about Mulholand Drive, as it is probably the man's greatest work, arguably his most successful and influential, and often cited as one of the reatest films fo the 21st century. At once a poison-pen letter and a love-letter to Hollywood, the film reflects lynch's own highly complicated relationship with the moviemaking machine in Los Angeles.

It follows the story of Betty, whose own nightmarish descent through the Dante-like hellish circles of Hollywood, encompassing ambition, fame, envy, murder, corruption, glamour, sex, and betrayal is portrayed in an ever-expanding web of intrigue, (self)-deceit and guilt.

The film pulls off some of the greatest sleights-of-hand in cinema during the scene at Club Silencio, and even skirts the fringes of horror. We will be discussing spoilers as usual, but with a film like Mulholland Drive, that arguably doesn't even matter. What matters is that you go and watch it.

Tade Thompson is the author of several modern science fiction hits, including the award-winning Rosewater trilogy, Far From The Light Of Heaven, and other works such as The Murders of Molly Southbourne, and Jackdaw, which itself is a nightmarish descent into madness worthy of Lynch himself.

Join Bean, Peat and Dan as we talk about our various works in progress, our own writing styles, triumphs, and what listeners can expect from our next few episodes.

On the menu are: commercialisation versus art and independent literature, the late great David Lynch, short fiction; what are the rules and whether or not to break them. We talk about shared fictional universes. We talk about our various progresses with our work, whether or not to self-publish.

Elsewhere, Bean drinks some tea, Dan talks about his cat, and Peat talks about bastards.

Following our last episode with Richard Sparks on The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, in which we must have mentioned The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy at least, ooh, I don't know, at least three times, and after which we lost radio contact with Brian Sexton after he was devoured by the Black Sinkhole of Sligo, we decided to plough on with the second half of the interview.

So, on a tight schedule (Richard had tickets for the opera, meladdo) we delved into his debut novel, New Rock, New Role, an epic fantasy derived from Richard's own love of gaming, It's a funny and touching tale of finding purpose, friendship and adventure later in life, when all the signs tell that life may have finished dishing out adventures.

This was pertinent to Richard as he wrote this novel, his first, in his seventies. So we talk about the convetions of gaming, the friendships you make, the conventions of fantasy and the comfort and community it brings.

Elsewhere, Captain Halfmilkcarton gets the shock of his life when he's joined by an unexpected but remarkably familiar guest...

Hi!

Hi!

Hi there!

Wow.

Wow.

Wow!

This is beautiful.

This is so beautiful.... I might just buy it.

Dan and Brian are joined by - DON'T PANIC - the comedy writer Richard Sparks about Douglas Adams' seminal SF comic masterpiece, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Hitchhiker's Guide has influenced the culture in innumerable ways, but no one really knew it was going to be such a smash hit.

Neither Adams nor Sparks, contemporaries in the late 1970s/early 1980s comedy scene in London, predicted how big the book would be. Richard talks to us about his experiences of working with Adams, how the book was born of the early alternative comedy scene, and why it still resonates today.

Richard Sparks is a comedy writer who cut his teeth on various TV shows, working for HTV (Wales) ITV (Southern and Central) and the BBC . He's written for the stage, both original plays and adaptations of Goldoni comedies), and done a lot of freelance script editing. He now lives in Los Angeles, and has recently turned his hand to MMORPGS and writing comic fantasy novels, beginning with his gaming-based series, New Rock, New Role.

We're back! For our newest episode Pete and Dan are joined by Aparna Verna, the author of the breakout fantasy novel The Phoenix King, published by Orbit. Originally Aparna was invited onto the show to talk about Neil Gaiman's 1996 hit novel and TV show Neverwhere, but in light of the recent allegations against Gaiman, we've decided not to release that episode, though we may do so in the future as events play out.

In this interview we talk to Aparna about how the Phoenix King came to be, about its evolution, its fusion of western fantasy structures and Indian mythological frameworks, and it crosses romance, adventure and fantasy to create a new angle on centuries-old storytelling conventions. We talk about Aparna's excellent social media game, one of the contributing factors to her book's success, and her successful leveraging of crowdfunding to self-publish the original novel on which The Phoenix King is based.

Aparna Verma was born in Rajasthan, India, and grew up in the United States. She graduated from Stanford University with Honors in the Arts and a B.A. in English. In 2021, she self-published The Boy with Fire, which quickly went viral on TikTok, and was later republished by Orbit Books as The Phoenix King in 2023.

When she is not writing, Aparna likes to lift heavy (arm days are her favorite), dance to Bollywood music, and find cozy cafes to read myths from ancient worlds. You can connect with Aparna on TikTok at @aparnawrites, and Twitter and Instagram at @spirited_gal.

We're joined once more by filmmakers Gregg Hale and Eduardo Sanchez, the brains behind The Blair Witch Project, V/H/S, Lovely Molly, and many more.

Gregg and Hale talk to us about their new podcast-based audio drama Black Velvet Fairies. It's a tour de force meta narrative that plays with the found footage medium that gave them their big break, but also features real-world interviews with paranormal experts, dissections of EVP phenomena, and a descent into family history that reveals dark creatures and ancient secrets waiting to be let into the light.

We also discuss where BVF sits in the wider dark fantasy universe they're creating, known as Emerald Anvil, set in the world of Hada. This is a multimedia beast, featuring novels, board games, podcasts, and online interactions. The world was born out of Gregg and Ed's passion for storytelling, but also their frustration at the Hollywood studio system, which is becoming more innovative in terms of visual effects, but also more risk-averse and conservative.

Lastly, we discuss the pair's plans for the 25th Anniversary of The Blair With Project, still one of the most innovative and disruptive horror films of all time, and which has spawned a lucrative franchise of its own.

You can listen to Black Velvet Fairies from all your favourite podcast provides, and if you want to support Ed and Gregg in the construction of their Emerald Anvil universe, you can do at https://emeraldanvil.com/

You might be forgiven for thinking that us saying we had two of the horror genre's most distinguished filmmakers on the show would be an April Fool's joke, but you should know by now we never, ever joke about our guests (except for RJ Barker, who will forever be known as the Goth King of Leeds). Today we're joined by Gregg Hale and Eduardo Sanchez, who burst onto the moviemaking scene in 1999 with one of the most audacious, innovative and greatest horror movies of all time, The Blair Witch Project.

Gregg and Ed have chosen to talk about one of their favourite movies, Jonathan Glazer's 2013 science-fiction horror sleeper Under The Skin. It stars Scarlett Johansson as a mysterious visitor to Earth who inhabits the body of a beautiful young woman, who then drives around Glasgow in a ratty old white van looking for young men to seduce and prey upon. The movie flopped upon release but quickly won a reputation for being one of the great arthouse science-fiction films of this century.

We discuss the difference between male and female predation (and the excessive/ monstrous versions of the male and female), chaos versus order, the strange similarities with Snow White, the black goo, and ask who exactly is the bloke on the motorcycle? Plus, Gregg and Ed give their admiration and opinions on how Glazer made such a great-looking film on a shoestring budget, something they know quite a bit about.

Elsewhere, Lieutenant Bungalow visits Earth to investigate ghosts. Or was it phantoms? Or was it John Jarrold? It's definitely something to do with spooky goings on in forests...

Join us next time for the second part to the interview, where we discuss Gregg and Ed's forthcoming epic multimedia fantasy project Emerald Anvil, consisting of a novel, an audio drama, a video game and even NFT artwork, and they'll be talking to us about their plans for the 25th Anniversary of The Blair Witch Project.

Find out more at https://emeraldanvil.com/

Christopher and Dan are joined by horror writer John Langan, whose great horror novel The Fisherman finally is out now in the UK, an inexplicable seven years after being first published in most other territories.

John talks to us about the health and wellbeing of Laird Barron, one of the other members of the modern horror brat pack, who suffered recent well-publicised ill-health.

We also talk about the methods and madness of writing short stories, touch upon a few of John's acclaimed short fiction, and the relationship between geography and horror.

Elsewhere Lieutenant Bungalow returns, enlightened, from a trip to Olympus Mons where he found the Salmon of Insight (insight, insight, insight). Captain Halfmikcarton, however, remains unconvinced.

Join us next month when we'll be joined by filmmakers Gregg Hale and Ed Sanchez, who'll be talking about Jonathan Glazer's masterful 2013 horror film Under The Skin, as well as their forthcoming project Black Velvet Fairies. They'll also be chatting to us about the 25th anniversary of one of the greatest and most original horror films of all time, The Blair Witch Project.

Image credit: Andyp89 of deviantart.