This week to celebrate the release of his new horror novel, I’m delighted to have a sit down, put my feet up and hand over the blog to my esteemed author colleague and guest poster, Will Macmillan Jones. Take it away Will.
I’m primarily, at least in my own mind, a comedian. Certainly my ex, not noted for giving praise, was quite happy to describe me in that way. Mind you, she might not have meant it in the way I thought, so perhaps we had better move on.
Now one thing about comedians – we are all drawn to the Darkness that lies within. Anxiety, depression, alcoholism – these are all challenges that seem to line up with depressing (that again!) regularity for those of us who love making people laugh. The list of famous comedians who have succumbed to these ills is endless. So endless that the hidden tears behind the mask of a clown has become a cliché. That is in itself depressing, isn’t it?
But the Darkness need not always be a curse. Many of us find answers to it in unrelated activity, although I do think that taking up golf is a step too far. There should be a special hell designed for whoever invented that game. Simon Cowell; and anyone else who bears any responsibility for X Factor and/or the relentless stream of talentless wannabe boy bands and girl bands can join him or her there for eternity, in my view. Sorry, I digress.
I have seen and touched my darkness within, I’ll freely admit. So how is it that I am still here to bore you all rigid with my ramblings? Well, I embraced my Dark Soul. And turned to writing horror, or in my particular case novels that I class as Paranormal Mysteries. Yes, there are some purely dark short stories and poetic pieces around too:
Darkness drifts down the river of the night.
Not crashing like a Tsunami:
But sleek and silent as a Predator
Sorry about that, another digression.
Black humour is an old tradition, a quintessential British tradition in fact. Take an awful event or catastrophe, or especially a terrorist incident, and within minutes we are cracking gags about. In the best possible taste, of course, as the late Kenny Everett would say. Now, I like black humour and employ it in my horror as a counterpoint to the fear and dread to (hopefully) exacerbate those features, but it isn’t the point of the books. The point is to scare, to frighten, to provide that frisson of terror that will return every time to haunt a reader every time a storm rattles the windows with rain, or an unexpected shadow falls across a familiar wall, or the wind howls in the eaves and there are strange scratching sounds coming from a loft or a cellar…
Writing horror is just like writing humour, I have found. The intent is to draw from the reader an immediate reaction. When out performing, I have had as much satisfaction from seeing the audience nearly throw up at the end of a horror piece as I have from seeing them laugh at the punch line of a joke. It is no wonder to me that the word ‘gag’ has more than one meaning, and I like using both of them. In fact I am mildly surprised that more comedians do not end up writing horror: not least because it is so much fun!
I’ve discovered the joy now of having twin ambitions: one is to write a gag that makes someone fall off their chair. The other is to write a scene that makes someone actually gag in fear and horror.
Just as comedy has its dark side, so do writers of comedy – and I am having the time of my life letting it out to run free.
*See what I did there?
Will’s latest book, Demon’s Reach, has just been released. Here’s a little more about it:
Grab your copy here
Demon’s Reach, by Will Macmillan Jones
All families have secrets or skeletons in the cupboard, hidden away from view. Most of those secrets are better left undisturbed, for very good reasons. When Mister Jones agrees to deal with the Estate of a recently deceased cousin, he finds that the secrets hidden by his family are very dark indeed, and that the skeletons in this cupboard are very real – and not yet entirely dead.
Drawn once more by Fate into a world where magic and myth are all too real and danger lurks at every turn, Mister Jones confronts a past that seeks again to become the present, and to plunge his future into a rising Darkness.
Can he escape the Demon’s Reach?
When Mister Jones discovers that he has been asked to be executor of the Estate of a cousin he wasn’t aware he had, he thinks that the request is innocent, a family matter. But when he travels to his late cousin’s home, he finds that the local village is a dark place, full of mistrust of his family and with unsettling whispers of a dark past.
Indeed, his arrival is enough to spark of an attempt by the villagers to destroy part of his late cousin’s home – and the first death. The mystery deepens as another lost relative finds Mister Jones – but is she all that she seems?
His first visit to his late cousin’s house is almost his last, for Mister Jones finds first evidence of Black Magical Rituals among the effects in the house, and then discovers that a Demon still walks the grounds. The Demon makes herself known to more than just Mister Jones, and the body count rises. Joined by another relative stranger who reveals that she is his half sister, Mister Jones struggles to unravel the web of deceit and mystery and uncover the truth – only to discover that his half sister is more involved than he believed and that the plot centers around his presence, there in the house. He is to be a sacrificial victim, in a Ritual that will restore his long-lost father to life – at the expense of Mister Jones’.
Can Mister Jones’ half sister bring herself to sacrifice the brother she doesn’t know, for the father she fears?
About the author.
Will Macmillan Jones lives in Wales, a lovely green and verdant land with a rich cultural heritage. He does his best to support this heritage by drinking the local beer and shouting loud encouragement whenever International Rugby is on the TV. A lover of blues, rock, and jazz he has just fulfilled a lifetime ambition by filling an entire wall of his study with (already overfull) bookcases. When not writing he is usually lost with the help of a satnav on top of a large hill in the middle of nowhere, looking for dragons. He hasn’t found one yet, but swears that it is only a matter of time. His writing credits include an occasional award, and a lot of more frequent near misses covering his chosen genres of Horror, Fantasy, Children’s, and Flash Fiction.
His major comic fantasy series, released by Red Kite Publishing, can be found at:
www.thebannedunderground.com
and information on his other work: horror and children’s books and poetry and stuff in general at:
www.willmacmillanjones.com
And Facebook https://www.facebook.com/william.macmillanjones
And Twitter @macmillanjones
His next comedy, set in The Banned Underground collection of comic fantasy novels, and called A Teacher’s Lot will be out in the summer of 2018.
M T McGuire Authorholic 
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