A Scary Interview with Mike Adamson

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 Mike,

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

Interesting point! I would say there is no call to be a horrible person to write horrible things, but I would have to ask whether some such things would ever be welcome in a mind that wasn’t at least touched in some way by darkness. Writing horror, as surely as painting horror, can be used to exorcise dark things that would otherwise take hold and damage the mind. But all things are relative. Horror is a spectrum, after all, and a very wide one at that, and one can dabble in it without wading hip-deep in the mire, as it were.

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

I recently explored the writings of Arthur Machen, which was certainly interesting—one sees where Lovecraft got some of his inspirations. Charles Dickens and H G Wells could each have quite the streak of horror about them at times, more than is popularly associated with their names.

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

Oh, you mean like The Witch-Tree of Trinity Churchyard? I was born in the northeast of England, and not far from where we lived was an old church with a spreading tree right outside its front doors. Legend said that it was a witch who, hundreds of years ago, was pursued by torch-wielding peasants. She ran to the church to appeal for sanctuary but was refused, and on that very spot she transformed herself into a tree to escape her tormenters. The interesting corolary to this is that vandals torched the church in 1987 or so, and it’s a burnt-out ruin to this day. The only thing that wouldn’t burn—was the tree. She had the last laugh!

Do you have any writing rituals?

I do my writing on a laptop, in a rocking chair in the corner of the lounge—it’s the quietest place in the house, and I’m one of those writers who needs peace and quiet. I develop a narrative from notes, including a rough run of scenes, which helps me keep the material under control and properly paced. I log my wordage daily, and record the start and end dates for every story, as a way of tracking my productivity. I keep an organised list of my fiction output.

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

Forty years ago I trained as a scuba diver, worked briefly with dolphins and soon after went to university to be a marine biologist. My writings at the time were centred on cetacean intelligence and underwater futurism, but being a professional writer was only a distant dream. Nevertheless, my first published short story was underwater SF on a cetacean theme and appeared in the long-gone Australian magazine Underwater Geographic, for whom I was, for a while, their marine mammal correspondent.

Where can we find you online?

The best place for all things Mike Adamson is my flag-carrier website The Worlds of Mike Adamson. It has pages for all my writing areas—science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery and so forth, with special pages for my copious Sherlock Holmes output and my epic sci-fi Tales of the Middle Stars universe. Find it at https://dream-craft.com/mikeadamson/

An Interview with Mike Adamson

In the lead-up to the launch of The Black Beacon Book of Mystery in June, we’ve asked our contributors to answer a few questions so you can get to know them better. Let’s unravel the mystery behind the stories together.

First question, inevitable perhaps considering the pandemic...how are you coping?

Staying inside, it’s been weeks since I spoke to anyone but family, except electronically. Fortunately, South Australia has one of the best responses to the epidemic in the world, and we’re feeling pretty confident so far that numbers will remain low.

Is there a story behind your contribution to The Black Beacon Book of Mystery?

The title “The Vicar of Sexton’s Deep” had been at the back of my mind for ages, the iconic image of the old, gothic church in the wild-wood, with strange things happening, and when the time came the storyline gelled very quickly. Discounting the still-incomplete opening adventure, this is the earliest of the Inspector Trevelyan stories, and I was still feeling my way. By the time it was finished, I better knew the Inspector and his world and have since finished two more tales, plus a cross-over with Sherlock Holmes which will be appearing in Weird Tales later in the year.

What inspired you to write this mystery? 

I was intrigued by the combination of real-world and occult elements, and found it very satisfying from a storytelling point of view to set up an overtly occult/satanic scenario and then deconstruct it, reducing it to an everyday explanation. This is the Holmesian formula, but, at the same time, I provided a chilling thread of the supernatural quite distinct from the overt element. It was experimental in this sense, but the experiment seemed to work!

What literary pilgrimages have you gone on?

None to date, I’d have to say, unless you count seeing one of the handful of surviving copies of the Magna Carta in the chapterhouse of Salisbury Cathedral, in 2006. It’s the basis of British law, and might perhaps be considered literature!

What are the key ingredients for a ripping mystery story?

My impressions: A crime of some subtlety, a strong motivation, characters the reader can relate to or at least understand readily, and an unimpeachable chain of logic by which it is solved—I feel it would be very unsatisfactory if the detective made too great a leap of intuition or otherwise came by the facts too easily.

Do you have a favourite fictional sleuth?

The Prince of Detectives, Sherlock Holmes.

What are you writing now?

I write mostly genre material, SF, fantasy, horror, historical, mystery, and adventure. I’m currently writing a short story which concerns small dinosaurs which survived the great extinction, have evolved intelligence and are scientifically uncovering the facts of their ancestor’s demise! I guess you’d call that SF! And I have a couple of Sherlock Holmes pieces to write in the near future for new markets opening up.