A Scary Interview with Jeff Wood

The Black Beacon Book of Horror 2 will be released on the 1st of October, but in the meantime, the Kindle version is available for pre-order at just $1.99 instead of $3.99 and you can add the anthology to your Goodreads TBR list. To get you pumpkin-spiced up for an unforgettable Halloween 2026, we’re interviewing the contributing authors. Step into the corridors of their dark minds, if you dare!

Hi Jeff,

That classic question to get started. Do you have to be a horrible person to write horrible things?

I won’t speak for others, but I think there’s a certain amorality to writers, horror or otherwise. I’m not saying writers have no morals (although…), but rather, a writer is willing to examine all possibilites and motivations, no matter how dark (or light). In other words, a writer doesn’t let morality blind them of their darkest notions. They explore everything.

Which horror writers do you admire—old or new, famous or hidden gems?

He’s not a horror writer, but Ray Bradbury has an ability to start you off in the everyday world, and subtly twist the details so that mundane objects and events take on fresh meanings. He inserts the uncanny into the everyday. It’s magical realism, even if no one ever calls it that. A huge influence.

Can you describe your perfect horror-themed night in, out, or away?

I like the weeks just before Halloween, when horror books and movies dominate conversation and media. You’re allowed to binge three horror movies a night on your safe, comfortable couch next to your wife.

Are there any urban legends, folktales, or real-life tales of horror that happened (just maybe) where you live or grew up?

I grew up in Iowa, with cornfields everywhere. Cornfields look pretty, but they are genuinely scary places. Animals (including lots of rats and who knows what else) are scurrying around making unsettling scuttling noises. You can’t see them, only hear them. Corn itself is said to make a rustling sound at it grows. In addition to the sounds, by mid-July the cornstalks are so high you can’t see what’s right in front of you, and it’s difficult to walk. So: can’t see well, mobility is limited, and you are surrounded by unidentifiable noises. Deeply liminal, disturbing places.

Do you have any writing rituals?

Sit down with my laptop to write every morning, after coffee. Doesn’t matter where. Just show up, every morning. I don’t get ideas about writing unless I’m actively writing.

Would you share something about yourself that your readers don’t know yet?

I once hitchhiked from Iowa to New York City, by way of Canada and the Great Lakes (that’s a really long distance, if you’re not from here!). A true adventure.

Where can we find you online?

My Substack, The Oort Cloud, can be found at
https://jeffwood.substack.com/
My website is at https://jeffmwood.com/

How the Pandemic Started with Sam Dawson

We asked Sam Dawson, author of the forthcoming medical thriller, INDEX CASE, what inspired him to write a novel about a pandemic. Here's what he told us...

Back in 2000 I was on a study weekend with a number of people who had worked or volunteered in Civil Defence and the Royal Observer Corps, back when nuclear war was the threat that transfixed mankind. Several were now involved in disaster planning, and they were reminiscing about the old days. "You know what scares the life out of me now?" one asked. "Avian flu".

Several years later I was on a similar expedition, with similar people. Only now they were coming out of retirement as the British government realised too late that it had thrown away almost all of its priceless Cold War protected infrastructure - everything from the public warning network to the fleets of Green Goddess fire engines and countless bunkers. It was a post-9/11 world where it had been noticed that the perpetrators of those attacks had also explored driving tankers of chemicals to reservoirs and sought licences to fly crop-dusting planes. Suddenly, under the name 'Resilience', emergency planning exercises were being shoehorned into exposed council offices to run simulations on how, with no personnel beyond the over-stretched emergency services and a few civil servants, the threats of flooding, climate change, terrorism and dirty bombs could be handled. Too late and too little, money was being spent. Quietly, every fire service local area received a hazmat vehicle capable of dealing with the results of nuclear, biological and chemical incidents.

The emergency planners were talking again. They all agreed on one thing: that despite all that had happened in recent years, the threat that they saw as certain to materialise, sooner or later - the one that literally kept them awake at night - was bird flu.

That was when I began to write INDEX CASE.

Sam Dawson 
https://www.sam-dawson.co.uk/books/

The Black Beacon Book of Horror 2 - Proof Copy

Look what rocked up today! The proof copy of The Black Beacon Book of Horror 2, out this October, is here and it's looking fantastic. Grisette, our familiar, simply can't keep her paws off it! With cover art by the steadfast Greg Chapman and seventeen stories from the darkest imaginations penning horror fiction today, Halloween 2026 won't be worth celebrating without the latest anthology brought to you by Black Beacon Books.

Pre-order your Kindle copy today for just $1.99.

Fortitude and Courage - We Have a Winner!

WE HAVE A WINNER!

Our congratulations go to Pam Maag.

The answer to the competition question:
In London, on the 28th of June, 1826, Margaret Graham was the first British woman to make a solo balloon flight!

She would have loved Karen Bayly's novels of gravity-defying heroines!

Pam has scored herself a print copy of both "Fortitude" and "Courage" by Karen Bayly.

Double Trouble: Two Submissions Windows in 2026

Black Beacon Books will be open to submissions for two anthologies later this year, Lighthouses 2 and Tales from the Ruins 2, and the talented Greg Chapman will be making his mark once again by providing the cover art.

Check the submissions page for the full guidelines, and if you haven't read the first volumes, we highly recommend doing so. We'll be on the hunt for original and exciting mysteries, thrillers, and horror tales that fit the theme of each anthology. Get writing!

Fortitude and Courage Competition - June 2026

Do you like your fiction full of adventure, intrigue, and with strong female protagonists? That's what Karen Bayly does best! For your chance to win a print copy of both Fortitude and Courage, simply send the answer to this question to blackbeaconbooks@gmail.com before the date in question.

What remarkable event took place in London two hundred years ago on the 28th of June, 1826?

Novelette Announcement: Torched by Benedict J. Jones

Black Beacon Books is pleased to announce that the third Kindle-only novelette for 2026 will be published on the 2nd of June. 

Forget shopping sprees at Harrods and high tea at The Ritz, Benedict J. Jones serves you London at its hottest and hardest in TORCHED, the latest crime caper featuring ex-con private eye, Charlie Bars.

This Kindle-only novelette from Black Beacon Books strips Benedict J. Jones bare and exposes him at his hardboiled best. If you're no stranger to London's underbelly, you'll feel right at home with Charlie Bars in The Big Smoke's dodgy pubs, greasy burger and kebab joints, and dirty warehouses. If you've never seen beyond the veneer of Buckingham Palace and Notting Hill on a spring morning, brace yourself for this butcher's hook at the metropolis as you've never glimpsed it in your wildest nightmares, for the world of Charlie Bars is as bent as a nine bob note, innit?

The first fire was down the Blue, then the Dickens got hit, and now a mansion block near Dock Head has been set ablaze. An arsonist is targeting a Face’s "business assets" and Charlie Bars has been hired to track The Torch down before London goes up in smoke like 1666 revisited.

Be warned, TORCHED is a Molotov cocktail of a crime caper, recommended for hardened noir thugs only. If you can't take the heat, get out of Jones' kitchen!

New Release - You Only Fall Once

YOU ONLY FALL ONCE by Bruce W. Most is out now as an ebook from Amazon 

Available with Kindle Unlimited

New York City detective Ray Sanford hates heights. He doesn’t even like to fly. When assigned to investigate a murder at one of the world’s tallest residential buildings, he’s freaked out to discover that the victim is a window washer hanging dead on the outside of the building—97 floors up!

YOU ONLY FALL ONCE, a Kindle-only novelette, is the latest mystery thriller from Bruce W. Most. To solve the murder in this short mystery, Detective Sanford must push aside his acrophobia to answer two baffling questions: Why would someone kill the window washer while he’s dangling outside the building? And how did the killer manage to commit the impossible murder and escape unnoticed when access to the high-security apartments involved a daisy-chain of elevators and restricted key cards?