Pedy had once told Billy about a film he'd made in the late seventies. The offer had come through to the North Soho News Agency to smear Harold Wilson. 'We'd got the old Trot out of Number Ten,' Pedy explained. 'But we needed to ruin his legacy. The clients involved had requested something really nasty. … Continue reading Late Seventies
Author: Daniel Bennett
I'm a writer and poet. My first novel, All the Dogs, appeared in 2008, and was described by Niall Griffiths as 'a stirring debut, a compellingly written tract on the importance of finding a place on the earth.' My fiction has appeared in London Noir, Crimewave, Black Static and 3AM. I live in London, where, amongst other things, I teach Creative Writing for the Open University. https://absenceclub.com
Weather
Now that I have moved to the tower, I'm positioned closer to the weather, pushed up against the atmosphere and affected by its changes. Even though I live in the city, and look over the skyline from my vantage point, I feel remote and outcast, as though I've renounced my urban life for some sort … Continue reading Weather
Bad Media
'What should I do?"Watch lots of television, particularly game shows and soaps. Go to porn movies. Ever see Nazi Love Motel? They've got it on cable, here. Really awful. Just what you need.'What was he talking about?"Quit yelling and listen to me. I'm letting you in on a trade secret: really bad media can exorcise … Continue reading Bad Media
Cappuccino Leather
The black car squatted on Stockwell Road. Billy Vehement clocked it on his way back from Brixton tube station. The regular gang stood outside the Portuguese delicatessen across the road from his flat, swapping jokes over bottles of Super Bock. Traffic tore up the tarmac; a rogue gull dawdled over the skating park. Billy could only … Continue reading Cappuccino Leather
Tentacular 6
My poem 'After The Beach' is now live on Tentacular Magazine. Black rock parts the sand,sleek as porpoise finspoised for the depths or launched from prehistory.We buried ourselves here,accumulated like time or metal work, the sandshuffled out of geography.The ship on the horizon pulls us into its nets.Neither of us drew the map:here be dragons, … Continue reading Tentacular 6
My First London Dream
https://youtu.be/7DpQHs8G1K8 My crime novel, My First London Dream, is now available on Kindle. Hack actor, ex-convict and ex-agent provocateur, Billy is hired by his mentor Peter Priest, a retired director of schlock, who had been advising Felix on the film industry in the weeks before his disappearance. Set in 2007, months before the financial crash, … Continue reading My First London Dream
The Novelist
At this time of year, as summer builds and I head to the coast, I remember my old ambition to be a novelist. This usually comes with a sense of embarrassment and regret. I've written a few novels, and they've been mostly unsuccessful, although I'm lenient enough on myself to think of this as a … Continue reading The Novelist
The Man Who Fell To Earth
The first book I ever featured on this blog was Walter Tevis's Mockingbird. An old friend passed on his copy to me, after we'd met up after a few years apart. At the time, I'd fallen out with fiction, and part of the reason I started this blog saw me pick through how I'd come … Continue reading The Man Who Fell To Earth
The Aesthetics of Breath by Charles Lauder Jr
My review of Charles Lauder Jr's The Aesthetics of Breath has been published on The High Window. 'In some ways this manifold debut— taking in, as it does, historical figures, family lives, the problem of evil, and how an element of fantasy and danger is never far from our perception of those we treasure and … Continue reading The Aesthetics of Breath by Charles Lauder Jr
Her Lost Language by Jenny Mitchell
My review of Jenny Mitchell's debut collection, Her Lost Language, has been published by The High Window. 'In the age of social media, we’re accustomed to communicating when, perhaps, we don’t have much to say. Everyone does it; it’s the currency of our time. Probably, this has influenced the way we think of poetry, where … Continue reading Her Lost Language by Jenny Mitchell
Absence Club 