The website of writer and poet Daniel Bennett
I'm very pleased to have launched a new paperback edition of my crime novel My First London Dream, now available here. The novel follows the adventures of hack actor and accidental detective Billy Vehement as he searches South London for the missing filmmaker Felix Link. My First London Dream is the first in a series … Continue reading My First London Dream
In what has been a hugely busy beginning to 2024, where work and family life have pretty much overwhelmed my ability to write, I'm really grateful to have Gareth Jelley of Interzone publish another one of my stories. This one is called 'Drink The Kombucha!' and you can read it as a further adventure in … Continue reading Interzone 297
'The sheer profile of the city is intricate and uneven. Above the walls appears, naissant, armorial and unreal, a high hatched outcropping of huddled balconies, black rufous brown vermillion and white; the upper stages of wicker towers; helmet-like hoods of tinted stucco; tamarisks; the smaragdine and olive of tropical vegetations; tinselled banners; gigantic grey sea-green … Continue reading Charivari of Roof-life
Good to see this extensive reference to Burial Ground, everyone's favourite schlocky Italian horror film in Sammy Harkham's Blood Of The Virgin. There were better scenes to pick, mind you...
'How far do the landscapes of one's childhood, as much as its emotional experiences, provide an inescapable background to all one's imaginative writing. Certainly my own earliest memories are of Shanghai during the annual long summer of floods, when the streets of the city were two or three feet deep in brown silt-laden water, and … Continue reading An Inescapable Background
'Epochs drifted. Giant waves, infinitely slow and enveloping, broke and fell across the sunless beaches of the time-sea, washing him helplessly in its shallows. He drifted from one pool to another, in the limbos of eternity, a thousand images of himself reflected in the inverted mirrors of the surface. Within his lungs an immense inland … Continue reading Oceanic Volumes of Water
If you subscribe to the digital edition of Interzone 294 you'll receive my story 'Benji the Killbot' as a free extra, with artwork by Martin Hanford. 'No one really knew who ran the killbots. For about a year or so, this fleet of drones had added to the insane sense of precariousness to life in … Continue reading Benji the Killbot
'But every so often... once or twice a weeks (or perhaps once or twice a year) came the muffled thud of a distant explosion. The concussions were startling enough to distract Foyle from the furnace of vengeance that he stoked all through the silences. He whispered questions to the invisible figures around him in Sanitation. … Continue reading Blue Jauntes
My story 'Vines' is currently free to read on Interzone Digital, beautifully illustrated by Alex Maniezo. 'These were the late days after the Work Lottery, what we thought of as a great rebalancing. To align society along a spirit of fairness, the population earned a set wage, and we found ourselves ascribed our lifelong careers … Continue reading Vines
Interzone 294 is now out and I'm hugely pleased to have my story 'The Coming of The Extroverts' included alongside lots of amazing work. Thanks also to Alex Maniezo, who also did the artwork for my story 'Vines', for another great illustration.
Absence Club 