The Damocles Files Volume One: Ragnarok Rising.

 Just over three years ago, my very good friend Benedict J Jones approached me with an offer to co-write some stories with him based on the exploits of a secret government organisation during World War Two whose remit was to investigate and combat the occult machinations of the Axis powers. I, of course, leapt at the chance. We’d already collaborated on the Dark Frontiers series of horror western novellas and know each other’s writing inside out, it was a real no-brainer for me.

So we began writing. As usual, Ben already had a huge array of characters ready formed to throw into action along with tons of background information on the organisation he had called Damocles. Using that as my starting point I launched myself into the writing, creating my own characters (and appropriating one I’d already used in some short stories).

It was soon after we’d started writing that the idea came to create an overarching storyline and present the stories as a novel with a fractured narrative rather than a straightforward collection. Which only made the project more exciting as far as I was concerned. And more of a challenge, it has to be said. There was a degree of retro-fitting going on once the stories were finished and one story in particular was re-written four times to adapt to the evolving narrative.

I loved every moment of it. I can honestly say I’ve never enjoyed a writing process as much as I have creating The Damocles Files. The solitary nature of writing appeals to my hermit-in-training lifestyle and outlook on life but the whole process of co-authoring was amazing, with ideas sparking back and forth between us and, I have to admit, generating a sense of competition - seeing who could come up with the next plot twist or development in the narrative.

On the whole, we would write the individual stories on our own but on a couple of occasions we co-wrote a story. Most notably we did this for the novella that concludes the novel which has four different timelines running simultaneously. From what began as an idea for a collection of shorts, a 110,000 word epic has emerged and I couldn’t be prouder of the final product. I think it contains some of Ben’s best writing (and one of his darkest, most compelling characters), and I’m really pleased with what I contributed too.

The history has been meticulously researched and a number of real life events (and people) are featured in the storyline. It’s an unabashedly pulp novel full of derring-do, grand heroic gestures and noble sacrifice. It also has werewolves, undead Vikings, ancient mariners and ghost ships. There are twenty two stories in total, plus an epilogue, which range in length from a few hundred words to the aforementioned novella and cover the entirety (almost) of the war.

The artwork which graces the cover of the book is provided by Peter Frain of 77Studios, the creative genius responsible for (amongst many others) the covers of the Dark Minds novellas. His idea knocked the hugely unimaginative ones I’d had into a cocked hat and what he’s come up with is a perfect encapsulation of the feel of the book. The nods towards the design of a famous comic are done with love and respect as well as a huge amount of skill.

The novel will be available this summer. By way of whetting people’s appetites, and introducing Damocles and some of its employees, we decided to write a short story which we’d make available prior to release. As these things do, the short story became an 18,000 word novella… Wings in the Darkness is an expansion of one of the stories in the novel and will be released on May 21^st. It’s available for pre-order now at the bargain price of 99p.

I loved working on The Damocles Files and hope the end product is as enjoyable to read as it was to write. And yes, this is Volume One – we’re 80,000 words into Volume Two which follows the same format but focuses on an entirely different theatre of the war. There'll be standalone short stories and novellas to come too. Exciting times!

The Devil's Brew - a few words with Benedict J Jones.

Me and Ben Jones go way back. Well, a dozen or so years at least, having first encountered each other on a now defunct horror writers forum. In that time we’ve both battled our way through the world of small press publishing, trying our best to get the stories in our heads out onto paper and into the hands of discerning readers.

I’ve strayed from the path a little bit, dabbling in reviews and publishing but the latter gave me the chance to work with Ben on his novella Slaughter Beach which very successfully launched the Dark Minds novella series and his collection of weird westerns, Ride the Dark Country. That collection was a joy to work on, westerns being a particular favourite of my own choices of reading material and our work together on it ultimately led to us creating the Dark Frontiers series featuring weird western novellas. Volume 1 is out there and work has already started on Volume 2.

As well as horror and westerns, Ben can knock out a brilliant war story and also writes a great deal of crime fiction, much of it featuring his character Charlie Bars. Charlie has already appeared in a number of short stories, the novella Skewered and a novel, Pennies for Charon. Tomorrow sees the release of the second Charlie Bars novel, The Devil’s Brew (published by Crimewave Press) which – much to my delight, transplants Charlie from his home in London to mine, the wilds of Northumberland. To celebrate the release, I thought I’d ask Ben a few questions about the book and the writing process itself:

For anyone who has yet to experience Charlie Bars, tell us a little bit about the character, where he comes from, how he came to be where he is…

Charlie Bars is an ex-con with three strikes to his name from south-east London. After the last stretch inside he swore to go straight (well as straight as he can…) and tried to make a living with his art. Failing that he ended up working in his uncle’s kebab shop where he hooked up with private detective Mazza Toshak. The two became partners after the events in my novella “Skewered” and from there they ended up in a heap of trouble in the occult-tinged “Pennies for Charon”. “The Devil’s Brew” is, in part, the mental fallout from the earlier stories and the toll it has taken on Charlie. When I first started writing the stories I wanted to stick as close to reality as I could (in some of it anyway…) and with that I wanted to depict the real damage, both mental and physical, that comes from violence.

I like to think that deep down Charlie is a decent man; he has done bad things but when stacked against some of the people he comes up against his shades of grey are just that little bit lighter. He really isn’t a hero by any means but when it gets down to brass tacks he can normally be relied on to do the right thing – however contrary that may be to the law.

Previous stories have all been set in London with the city almost becoming a character itself. Were you worried about taking Charlie out of the city?

I’d be a liar if I said that it didn’t worry me. Charlie is a hugely a product of his environment, from his speech and outlook to the ways in which he acts. To take him away from the backdrop which had always been a big part of all the previous stories, another character if you will, was a big jump to make. But I found that the countryside became every bit as much of a character as the city.

It was actually really useful to put Charlie in a position away from his geographical comfort zone. In London he has a support network of sorts whereas out there he doesn’t have that. It made me, and Charlie, ask some serious questions and I hope it helped the readers to connect with him in a different way.

I know you enjoy a good western – and have written a few yourself. I think Devil’s Brew is a western, albeit one set in Northumberland, would you agree?

At its heart, yes. One of my favourite non-western westerns is “Cop Land” and I think there are some shades of that towards the end, which I hadn’t even thought of until you asked that. The elements are all there for a western if you changed the setting and gave Charlie a big hat. That isolation that you get in a lot of westerns, the lone lawman miles from help, was something that I actively sought out. I considered a few different settings but Northumberland just fitted so well. From chats that we have had before I remembered you describing the remoteness out there and as soon as I started in on it I knew it was the right place.

Pagan rituals and folk horror have a big part to play in the novel. Was that an area you were interested in already? Did you do much research?

Yes, the initial spark of an idea came from reading about a series of horse mutilations out in Dorset a few years back and it got me thinking what kind of person could do that to an animal – and why. I’m a huge fan of rural noir and folk horror and that all started to feed into the story once I got going.

I sat down and re-watched a number of films as I was working on the book; “The Wicker Man”, “Straw Dogs”, and several others. As well I re-read Robert Westall’s “Yaxley’s Cat” which I first read two and a half decades ago and has always stuck with me. I think that was where the bill hooks came from and the cat…

I love the research part of writing – I’m guessing you do too..?

I do! I find it easy to get so lost in the research that I forget to actually write the story and end up going down all sorts of strange pathways. History is absolutely fascinating to me and the more of it I look into the more I find I want to know. At the moment I’m lost in researching the later Holy Roman Empire for a story that will end up being about six thousand words… But one of the things I like the most about researching stories is that I normally end up with a load of other ideas from things that I stumble across.

Do you prefer to have a whole story mapped out in advance or is it a case of just start writing and see where it takes you?

On the whole I don’t have it all mapped out. I tend to have a few scenes in mind, perhaps an idea for the ending and the beginning, but a lot of the fun for me is getting from point A to point Z; what comes in between tends to be new to me as it hits the page.

The problem with this method is that I can get bogged down in between… I might get ten thousand words done and then not know how to bridge it towards the end. It is all a learning curve really but I could never imagine myself plotting a novel out to every last detail before I started on it – that would feel too much like work…

Does the muse constantly whisper in your ear or is there a time when you’re not thinking of stories?

I’m always thinking of stories but writing them is another thing. I do like to have a bank of story ideas that I dip in and out of. There have been whispered ideas that have stewed in my brain and in some cases on paper for years before I actually write them in a way I am happy with.

In a lot of ways when the stories first come to me that is just for me when I walk along and think “what if…” Then I tell it to myself, research it a bit, retell it and then think about writing it down, then if it has legs I might actually write it properly.

Looking to the future, what can we expect from Charlie Bars and from yourself?

From Charlie there is a “long-short” that I’m hoping to see released and I’ve recently finished the third novel which is tentatively entitled “The Gingerbread Houses”. There’s also a half dozen shorts with him I really should finish with topics ranging from Rwandan war criminals to lost dogs to flashers to Nazi gold. I’ve also been thinking a couple of the supporting characters might deserve their own shorts (although Mrs Shandy already got one!).

Apart from that I am working on a pair of world war two era horror tales that might make it to novel length. One set in Paris and the other in the Indian Ocean.

As well as that I’m looking forward to putting out another volume of Dark Frontiers because I do love a horror western!

I was lucky enough to read an advance copy of The Devil’s Brew and can confirm it’s another hard-hitting thriller, with some action set-pieces definitely not for the faint-hearted and a significant nod towards the supernatural. Imagine if you can Get Carter meets The Wicker Man and you’ll have some idea of what to expect.

You can buy Devil’s Brew here.

Skewered and other London Cruelties.

 I first encountered Ben Jones on a now defunct horror writers forum. As is the case with many forums, despite the membership being in triple figures, there were only a few members who actually spent any time posting stuff up there. I was one and Ben was another and through the board we developed a virtual friendship as we both seemed to be singing from the same hymn-sheet as far as most of the discussions were concerned. That friendship moved from virtual to real when work would occasionally take me down to London – Ben’s home town - where we finally met up in person and spent many an evening talking about our shared enthusiasm for writing (and reading) as well as generally putting the world to rights. Alcohol may have been involved at some point.

The forum had a board where stories could be posted up for comment so I’d read a lot of Ben’s work before I’d met him and had been impressed by what I’d seen. It was clear he was destined for success and over the years he’s achieved that with publications in the small presses. It was only a matter of time before a collection was released and now that’s happened with Skewered and other London Cruelties from Crime Wave Press.

To celebrate the release of the collection, I thought I’d abuse the relationship we have by asking Ben a few questions about it and his thoughts on writing in general:

AW: The collection opens with Skewered , a novella which has plenty twists and turns. Did you have the ending sorted before you started writing and then work backwards from it or did the story develop as you were writing it?

BJ: Well, I had some of it sorted. In the early drafts a large portion of the end of “Skewered” was actually at the start as Charlie Bars explains how he’s ended up in a certain situation. I had a general idea of where I wanted the story to go but nothing was set in stone. That’s probably how I write a lot of the time; I’ll have a blurry idea for an ending and hope it becomes clearer as I work towards it. 

AW: Real Estate also features your character Charlie Bars – and I know you have plans to feature him again. Did you ever consider writing a crime story from the perspective of the police?

BJ: I’ve written things from a police perspective before, but none of them have seen print. Although they’re usually not your ‘straight arrow’ type of copper. On the whole though I prefer to try and write from a different angle. I’m a big fan of certain crime novels that come from the view of the police; Chester Himes’ “Harlem Cycle”, Ken Bruen’s “R n B” novels but I feel that it is too easy to fall into clichés which we see time and time again. I don’t think I’d rule out writing from any perspective but I think if I was to be from the police angle then I would have to be struck by something that I considered ‘different’. Although, that said, I am about to re-draft a horror piece about a group of corrupt London police officers being pursued by creatures summoned by West African witchcraft – does that count?

AW: I think it probably does, it could even be the start of a new sub-genre. You once pointed out to me the spot where a taxi driver had been beheaded… How important is location to you – do you regard London as a character in your stories?

BJ: I remember, suicide by beheading – not sure that’s the best way to go! Odd little macabre stories seem to crop up all over the city, and in other towns, cities and places I am sure. Sense of place and location is massively important to me. I’d like to think I manage to catch the city as a character but I’m not sure I always do. For me London is an ancient, living entity that has its own habits, strange rites and most importantly stories to tell. So many of my stories have been given to me by the city, in things I’ve heard, seen and read that it would be rude not to try and pay homage in some fashion. I really that capturing the city’s character is something I will be able to do more in the future.

AW: I know you’re a big fan of historical settings for your stories and I’m guessing that’s part of the appeal of writing your westerns. Do you enjoy the research that’s required to make them authentic?

BJ: Even when I was younger it irked me watching a western set during the American Civil War and everyone was carrying 1873 Colt Peacemakers or other firearms from two decades after the Civil War was over! So in terms of that I do try and make sure things are ‘correct’. A lot of the research books I read are things I read for pleasure anyway so I like to think it’s all just knowledge and enjoyment and if it gets used in a story then so be it but if it doesn’t then I’ll have enjoyed learning it. The other thing with reading, what some might term, ‘research’ books are the amount of story germs and ideas that you stumble across.

AW: Hungry is the Dark has supernatural overtones to it and I know you also write horror fiction. What’s your take on the current state of the horror genre?

BJ: It seems people have been saying this for years but I believe it’s going through a real revival. Horror novels are once again pushing into the mainstream with people like Adam Nevill and Alison Littlewood’s books being easily available and in the public eye. The quality and variance of styles across the genre is also at a peak. Plus with new small presses like Crystal Lake Publishing really pushing forward it seems like a great time to be a horror fan.

AW: You also write westerns. Do you go through phases, moving between genres, or is it a case finding the best vehicle for a particular story?

BJ: Normally the genre and story come to me at the same time or I’ll start thinking about wanting to write, say, a western today. But I do seem to run in phases knocking out a couple of stories in each genre at a time. With the fact that I do mix genres in can get a bit blurred… for example most of my westerns do have elements of horror in them so it isn’t a massive leap to move to a straight horror piece and then because a lot of my non-western fiction is London based stepping from a ghost tale into a dark crime story isn’t, again, a huge jump. 

AW: What’s your writing process? Do you just spill all the words out onto the page and then edit and refine or do you edit as you go?

BJ: Well I think it has changed over the years. These days I like to draw up a little plan and then plough through a first draft, sometimes long hand but mainly straight onto computer now. Then I’ll print it, have a read adding edits by hand and then redraft. After that it will either get drafted again or I’ll send it to a few people to read over and see what they think. Now and then, of course, I’ll deviate from this process perhaps because an idea strikes me and I want to see where it will take me or I’m trying to go with a ‘train of thought’ style piece.

AW: Have you any plans to write a novel? I think the shorter formats work best with horror but could definitely see the potential for a Charlie Bars – or even a Tomahawk Val western – novel from your good self…

BJ: I agree in terms of horror – a truly terrifying horror novel is a rare beast indeed. I am working on something longer in the horror genre but that is more a collection of shorts dealing with overarching themes and ideas. There is a Charlie Bars novel in the embryonic stage at present – I’m hoping to really get going on it in the next few months. I’ve just finished a horror western novella which I enjoyed writing immensely and have an idea for a ‘straight’ western that might be a novella or might be something a little bit bigger… Tomahawk Val is rather strange as he’s a character that came into being in a story that hasn’t even been picked up yet! So I have two long shorts, another half-finished and a shorter piece about him. The idea is that once more of this stuff has been published and I’ve written a lot more I’d like to try and put together ‘The Ballad of Tomahawk Val’, but as always we’ll see what happens.

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My thanks to Ben for taking the time to answer all my questions.

Skewered and other London Cruelties is a brilliant collection of hard-hitting crime stories with a lovingly created sense of noir and the odd supernatural flourish. It’s a great showcase for a talented writer who is destined for bigger things to come. You can, and should, buy it here.