Our Episodes

Why choose? – with Elizabeth Helen

Why choose? – with Elizabeth Helen

It seems like these days you can’t go into a bookshop without seeing a display of romantasy books. It’s a broad term that applies to everything from secondary fantasy worlds with devilishly handsome princes to witches running cafes and falling for the leader of the...

Pacifism and principles – with Maithree Wijesekara

Pacifism and principles – with Maithree Wijesekara

We live our lives burdened with responsibilities, and expectations of how we should act. Those expectations are placed on us by society, by family, and even by ourselves. However, fiction allows us a space in which to examine what would happen if we stepped outside...

Women on trial – with Grady Hendrix

Women on trial – with Grady Hendrix

We are back for 2025! We took a hiatus during the second half of 2024 due to our lives becoming that much busier. But loving what we have built with the show over the almost 10 years we've been running (!) we wanted to find a way to continue with BtGS. To that end,...

Writing horror comics with Corissa Grant

Writing horror comics with Corissa Grant

We have a lot of authors on our podcast, talking about their books, what inspired them, how they’ve written them etc. Quite often they’ll get drawn into the TV series or films that inspired them [*coughs* Star Trek]. But a medium we don’t often touch upon is comics...

The poetry of space – with Oliver K. Langmead

The poetry of space – with Oliver K. Langmead

When we say the word “novel,” most of us think of a book written in prose, split into chapters and possibly parts. But every now and again, we come across novels that defy our expectations. Pratchett’s early work not only eschewed chapters - instead presenting the...

Secrets and killers with Kaaron Warren

Secrets and killers with Kaaron Warren

A few decades ago, if you said the word “Gothic haunted house novel,” the phrase would very definitely have brought to mind something with a rambling Victorian mansion, tortured heroines, mad women in the attic, sombre men, and wailing ghosts. It probably wouldn’t...

Keeping it short – with Gianni Washington

Keeping it short – with Gianni Washington

A short story isn’t just a novel in miniature form. It isn’t even a shortened novella. It is a creature of its own devising. There’s only time for a snapshot of reality, and in the space of a few thousand words, you have to be able to draw in a reader, make them feel...

Secret societies & the occult – with S.T. Gibson

Secret societies & the occult – with S.T. Gibson

The literature of our past is littered with casual gender biases. You describe someone as a “witch” and the natural assumption is that they are female. But according to Diane Purkiss, while mostly women were accused in the English witch trials, in some of the...