Final foray into a war-torn medieval world

Today sees the publication of my fourth historical novel, THE DARK ARMY. It’s something of a celebration. ‘Happy Publishing Day to me’, as they say. But it’s also a sombre occasion, because while I’ve enjoyed writing in this genre, this will probably be my last venture there. If you stay with this blog, you’ll see what I mean by that …

The bulk of my professional writing career has been spent in the twin realms of crime/thriller fiction and horror. I have occasionally ventured out of those confines into science-fiction (Dr Who etc) and fantasy (two of my early novels, STRONGHOLD and DARK NORTH, while they’re technically set in the Middle Ages, are out-and-out works of sword and sorcery).

But I was seriously diverted into one of the great loves of my life, historical adventure fiction, during the Covid crisis. Though my most successful books by far have been contemporary crime thrillers, and that’s the path I’ll continue to follow doggedly, during those awful years of lockdown I found myself, as so many of us did, having submitted work and waiting for long periods of time – much longer than I was used to – for a response. To fill these hours, I speculatively began to write a novel that I’d pitched neither to my agent nor any publisher, called USURPER.

It was an idea I’d had since I was a teenage wannabe but which I’d never done anything with. Its central character was Cerdic, a young Saxon earl, a boy really, whose holdings are overrun in 1066 by Harald Hardraada’s Viking insurgents during what eventually becomes the Norman Conquest of England. His family are all killed and he himself is taken prisoner after he fights in the battle of Hastings … but Cerdic is determined that this won’t be the end of it.

Through various machinations, turning Viking against Viking, and even Norman against Norman, and through numerous of the most intense combat sequences I’ve ever written, Cerdic works his way back to a position from where he can strike to reclaim both his title and his ancestral lands.

As I say, I completed the book during lockdown, but was a little surprised when I saw that its final length came to 180,000 words … which though some historical novels are twice the size of books in other genres, suggested that it might prove a difficult sell. However, my agent, the wonderful Kate Burke, came up with the idea to cut it down the middle, in other words transform it into two novels. So, I did, and the second book, BATTLE LORD, was born. This second phase of the saga literally commences the day after the events on the last page of USURPER and is pretty well a direct continuation of the tale.

A more manageable package, we were then able to sell the two-book series to Canelo, part of the Penguin publishing group. Canelo opted to publish the titles as THE WULFBURY CHRONICLES under the author name, PW Finch, just to put a little blue water between these and my more familiar crime novels. But they enjoyed the duology so much that they commissioned another two in a similar vein, though, at my own instigation, not in the same series.

It was my view that Cerdic’s story had been told to completion in the first two books. Instead, I pitched Canelo THE DEVIL’S KNIGHT, another action-packed medieval yarn concerning the same family of minor Anglo-Saxon nobility, though a hundred years had now passed and they’d been absorbed into the feudal Anglo-Norman culture of 12th century England. They’re not so much powerful barons in this second series – all the Saxon nobles lost their titles in due course after the Conquest – but landed knights, expert warriors whose duty is to fight and kill the king’s enemies in return for his favour.

Before I’d even put pen to paper on this one, I’d sketched it out and saw that this one too could only be told fully at formidable length, again somewhere between 180,000 and 200,000 words. And so, yes, again it seemed right to divide it into two. As before, Canelo were happy to oblige.

THE DEVIL’S KNIGHT, the first of the two books, was thus published in 2025, and told the story of Thurstan Wildblood, a descendent of Cerdic and a man raised entirely in the martial household of a great marcher-lord, and who has now fought his way to pre-eminence in the equally warlike court of Richard the Lionheart.

When Richard embarks for the Holy Land, on what will later be called the Third Crusade but which at the time is known simply as the Great Pilgrimage, Thurstan goes with him in command of a company of elite warriors.

Of course, when the crusade gets underway, it’s a nightmarish ordeal: the heat, the dust, the flies, the endless killing, the back-stabbing among so-called allies, and the limitless numbers of Muslim soldiers who continue to pour into the theatre from North Africa, constantly, bolstering Sultan Saladin’s armies, so that no matter how many of them Richard decimates, there are always more to come.

When Richard is forced to make a treaty with Saladin so that he might return home, where his treacherous brother, Prince John, and King Philip of France are now carving up his domains between them, the wily Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury-in-waiting, sees a way to offset the inevitable accusations of failure that will follow. Thurstan is charged with abducting a Coptic Christian girl, Melinda of Jerusalem, from her Muslim captors. Melinda reputedly has the power to pray over wounded men and instantly heal them, and so if Thurstan can return her to Canterbury, where the English Church can proclaim her a living saint, she’ll be deemed one of the greatest prizes that any crusader king could ever have secured.

The problem is that this abduction and cross-continental odyssey must be done in complete secrecy and therefore by land. Even as great medieval quests go, this one is virtually impossible.

First of all, the desert-begirt St Hildegard’s Tower, where Melinda is being held, is all but impregnable, but even after the excessively bloody rescue/kidnapping succeeds, Thurstan and his small company of hand-picked companions face a journey of staggering distance.

To make matters worse, in the Land of Demons that the Middle East has descended into, it proves impossible to conceal this information, and very soon, all manner of enemies are on their tail, seeking to acquire the saint for themselves, not just lawless bands of battle-scarred knights, but Saladin’s most zealous and fanatical followers, the sect of Assassins, and even Christendom’s own elite corps, the Knights Templar, who wish to take her to Rome instead.

But Thurstan has one advantage over all these others. Earlier in the war, while trapped in a fever dream caused by an infected wound, he was confronted by an arch-devil, Belphagor, the so-called Bishop of Hell, who was drawn to him by the vast toll of lives Thurstan had already accounted for but who in payment for the knight’s soul, offered him complete and total invincibility in battle. When Thurstan recovered from this near-death experience, no one took his vision seriously. He was dreaming, they said. But now, mysteriously, even Thurstan, who was always massively adept in combat, appeared to have improved beyond all recognition. He was literally unbeatable with sword in hand. As the war proceeded, he won fight after fight, but secretly, has been haunted ever since by concern that his soul might indeed be forfeit, that he might be damned to eternity in the chasms of Hell.

And yet now, from out of nowhere, he’s been presented with this possibility. If he can save this living saint, surely his soul will also be saved?

Might it even be prophetic? Is there maybe a reason he has been granted this unnatural physical prowess... if indeed there is anything unnatural about it at all?  

Either way, the problem is that lethal obstacles now face them. The tormented knight’s comrades fall one by one, leaving only Melinda and his young squire, Pandulf, by his side. Against the unsurvivable scale of threat they now face … to save this saint, Thurstan must again become a devil.

And thus begins THE DARK ARMY ...     

So, why ... ?

... will this be my last foray into this genre? Well, it’s a hard but straightforward truth: we can’t just take our readership wherever we’d like it to go. For me, writing fiction is all about entertaining the masses, and ‘my masses’ are primarily interested in dark contemporary crime thrillers. Some have crossed over and enjoyed these blood-soaked medieval romps, but others have commented politely and then asked in the next breath: ‘But when is the next Heck novel coming out?’ ‘When is the next Lucy Clayburn coming out?’ ‘When are we going to get another stand-alone urban noir, filled with psychotic criminals and hardened anti-hero detectives?’

I can’t stand against that tide, so that’s where I’ll be focussed from now on.

I’ve had a lot of fun writing these medieval actioners. In truth, I’m bursting with further ideas for them, but reality is reality. Hopefully, those who are interested will enjoy the four that are already out there – USURPER, BATTLE LORD, THE DEVIL’S KNIGHT and, of course, today’s publication, THE DARK ARMY (the second and final part of the Thurstan Wildblood series) – and please feel free to tell the world if you do. There’ll certainly be nothing lost in that.

Thanks for the image at the top to Stockcake.com.

Start the ghosting season with a Devil's duo

Well ... the spooky season beckons. Long, dark nights, misty mornings, reddening leaves in the still and silent woods. October is upon us with all the eeriness it promises. Halloween isn’t far off, the night of goblins, sprites and other mischievous spirits, followed closely by Bonfire Night, when we celebrate the long ago death of a traitor with drinking, feasting and the annual, ritual burning of his effigy. And then we’re into the Ghosting Season proper, autumn transitioning into winter, the landscape dead and frozen, Christmas the only light in the long darkness ahead, though Christmas itself of course is intricately interwoven with terrors of a very specific sort.

Myself, I’m seeing in these scary months with two special collections of stories: Volume 17 in the TERROR TALES series, which, somewhat appropriately after that melodramatic intro, is TERROR TALES OF CHRISTMAS, and a bunch of my short chillers, IN THE FOREST OF THE NIGHT.

Keep on reading for artwork, full tables of contents, back cover blurbs for both, and of course those ever popular juicy snippets.

First up …

Ah, Christmas! A holy feast, and a riot of fun and frolics. Candy canes, mistletoe, firelight glinting on the tinsel. But it’s an eerie time too, the woodlands dead and filled with frost, the darkness of the longest night unending. Old enmities resurface, ancestors return, dire warnings echo from beyond, and ancient beings lurk in the grey and icy mist, measuring men by the goodness of their souls, and often finding them wanting …

The savage hunt in Île de la Cité
The cannibal hag of Altstadt
The patchwork horror of Alsace
The festive impalement in Prague
The uninvited guest at Stanwick
The murderous toys of St Petersburg
The dark tormentor in the Tower of London

Includes terrifying tales by Peter Coleborn, Joanna Corrance, Raven Dane, Steve Duffy, Jan Edwards, Paul Finch, Christopher Harman, Sheila Hodgson, Keris McDonald, Reggie Oliver, Tony Richards, Rosie Seymour, Sarah Singleton, Benjamin Kurt Unsworth, Ian Whates and Gavin Williams.

Its publisher of course, is the indefatigable TELOS PUBLISHING, while the cover art is always provided by the way-too-talented Neil Williams. 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Silver Key by Reggie Oliver
The Blackest Christmas
Little Lotte by Keris McDonald
Hans the Scarecrow
Table Manners by Joanna Corrance
Sermon of the Dead
Come, Follow! by Sheila Hodgson
The Mistletoe Bride
Nine by Jan Edwards
The Christmas Hunt
The Last to be Found by Christopher Harman
On a Dark Christmas Knight
The Butterfly House by Ian Whates
The Nutcracker
The Door in the Door by Sarah Singleton
The Christmas Haunting
The Children in the Woods by Tony Richards
Slaughter of the Innocents
Palfreyman’s End by Steve Duffy
The Bloody Feast of Stephen
The Grotto by Gavin Williams
Elfland
The Mistle Thrush by Rosie Seymour
The Sodder Mystery
Polaroids by Peter Coleborn
The Yule Cat
Final Farewell from an Ice Cold Heart
by Benjamin Kurt Unsworth
Premonition
All That Glisters by Raven Dane
Special Kinds of Ghosts
The Icy Realm by Paul Finch

TERROR TALES OF CHRISTMAS is available for pre-order right now. But just in case you’re still not persuaded, check out, as promised, some juicy excerpts …

‘There were musical boxes, and all kinds of mechanical toys: furry drumming monkeys, capering clowns, brightly coloured birds under glass domes that twittered when you wound them up to set them going. They were all in immaculate condition, but, even then, I recognised that they were antiques. They were not the toys of my time; they were the relics of childhoods long gone, ghosts of infancies past. I’m sorry, I’m being fanciful. I wondered at them, I even coveted them, but I did not quite like them …’

The Silver Key

Reggie Oliver

‘Saplings have been jammed between the rock faces overhead to create beams, and from iron hooks hang sides of meat, and garlands of hands, and limbs ending in small, pale feet. Smoke wreathes upward from a low fire, over which a cauldron is suspended. A heap of blue-green entrails sits on a platter …’

Little Lotte

Keris McDonald

‘He blundered round and plunged back the way he’d come … only to rebound from a huge, solid object. Alex tottered away, winded. But when he wiped the flakes from his eyes, he saw that it wasn’t a tree trunk, as he’d thought. It was a figure. Covered in snow, but standing stock-still in the grey-white murk, the face under its pulled-up hood completely wrapped with ragged old scarfs. Alex might have been more horrified had he not now been so agonised by the chill. The grotesque shape remained motionless, towering over him …’

The Icy Realm

Paul Finch

For those who aren’t aware (and shame on you!), TERROR TALES has been running for fifteen years now, and is a series of themed horror anthologies, each title speaking for itself. They are crammed not just with original fiction from some of the best horror writers around, but contain the odd classic reprint here and there (generally those that readers are not overly familiar with) and also hit us with a range of ‘true’ tales of terror, anecdotes drawn from real history, legend and folklore.

The series originally commenced way back in 2011 with TERROR TALES OF THE LAKE DISTRICT, and it proceeded that way for quite a few years, each new volume focussing on a different corner of the British Isles. They are not entirely folk horror-oriented, though folklore is a regular theme throughout, but all the stories stay absolutely loyal to the title of the book in which they appear. If, for example, you acquire a copy of TERROR TALES OF CORNWALL, all the stories you’ll read in there concern Cornwall. I think you get the picture.

However, not every entry in the series now is built on a specific geographic location. Sometimes we’ve thrown the net wider. We’ve had TERROR TALES OF THE SEASIDE, for example, TERROR TALES OF THE OCEAN, and last year, to coincide with World Fantasy, we published TERROR TALES OF CHAOS.

This hasn’t been, as some have suggested, exclusively a commercial decision. The books have sold well all over regardless of their particular locations, but the wider an anthology’s scope, the more writers you interest and the wider the range of subject matter. That doesn’t mean that we won’t visit more locations in the UK in the future. Of course we will. There are several we’ve yet to explore. But if we go further out into the world as well, and further into culture, the options become limitless.

Anyway, on an even more personal note, now onto my second collection of stories in this second half of 2026, and one you might already be aware of …

This is the first collection of my short fiction to hit the bookshelves in quite some time. It’s been published by BLACK SHUCK BOOKS, and again is available for order right now.

I may be better known professionally as a crime or thriller writer, but I’ve always had a love of horror fiction, particularly short form horror, and I continue to write horror stories whenever my schedule permits. (It’s also been stated that I tend to bring a lot of horror into my crime novels … well, guilty as charged; I make no apology for that).

Therefore, in IN THE FOREST OF THE NIGHT, I’m delighted to be able to get some more of my horror out there. It contains five chillers, four of which are reprints, though most current readers are unlikely to be familiar with them, and one brand new novella.

Enough hyperbole, though. Here, for your delectation, are some more excerpts …

‘There were owls in these woods; if one of them would only hoot now – give voice to itself in the warm darkness – it might make him jump, but at least it would provide companionship of a sort. Not that he was really lacking in that. There were all sorts of nocturnal creatures in this environment. These woods were teeming. The leopard could take its pick. Why would it come after him?
     “There is no leopard,” he told himself through tight-locked teeth, striding forcefully on. That boss-clown, or whatever he’d been, had insisted on it. That fat, shifty-looking hobo of a boss-clown, who’d been greased with a sweat of inexplicable fear …’

In the Forest of the Night

‘At the bottom, it was sepulchral in its dankness. The walls were moist and covered with fungus. Broken planks littered the dusty floor. Directly in front of them, an open doorway gave through to a single, straight passage. The light filtering down the stairs revealed the first few yards of that passage, but little else. Vic knew what it looked like. He could envisage it clearly without even stepping into it. It ran for at least a hundred yards, and all the way along it, to the left and right, there were entrances to adjoining rooms – to the dying rooms. And at the far end of it there was a mortuary and a furnace, both black and filled with soot and debris …

Down in the Dying Rooms

‘They were side-on to the motionless shapes, none of whom were actually distinguishable because they were covered by crumpled polythene sheets. But even in the dimness of the tent, it could be seen that the one at the far end was about six feet tall and of solid, heavy build, while the one in the middle was somewhat shorter, about five and a half feet, and the one at the nearest end shorter still, no more than two and a half. Still, they didn’t move, though that was hardly surprising. Even before Phil stepped forward and tore away the sheeting, it was obvious they weren’t real figures, just crude, granite effigies.’
     Lorraine yanked back her hood. “What the heck is this?”

House of the Hag

‘Cameron walked up to it, fascinated. Many country towns in England maintained their stocks as curiosities for visitors. Here and there on lonely crossroads, there was even a gallows or gibbet, a leftover fragment of the arcane past. But seldom, if ever, had he heard of a pillory being preserved. Felons would have been forced to stand here for hours at a time, sometimes days if their offence was deemed serious enough, and local people would shower them with rotten food and animal dung. Of course, it was debatable whether or not this was an original. If so, it might be the very same structure on which Alice Fairwood was beaten to death in 1634, though in truth it looked too new for that. Its wood was smooth and solid, and in keeping with the rest of the village style, had been painted black. Its ironwork – its hinges, the steel facings within the clamps – bore no mark of corrosion.
     A replica then. But an impressive one all the same …’

Words

‘Clearly, Insect hadn’t realised that his target was armoured under his anorak. The bastard now lowered his weapon and with a hoglike chuckle, advanced until he was only a couple of feet away. At which point Haygarth snatched out with his one good hand, hooking his Winchester’s trigger guard, so that it fell forward, then plunging its trigger. The flash was blinding, the boom ear-shattering, and where his assailant’s right foot had been, all that remained was a chunky mass of red, meaty pulp.
     The guy remained upright for a second, rigid with disbelief, before a protracted, wailing scream broke from his mask. He tottered and fell heavily onto his buttocks, his pistol, a SIG Sauer 226, flirting from his grasp, bouncing towards Haygarth who caught it cleanly, swung it round and fired a single shot through the middle of the skew-whiff insect mask.
     Bone and bloody hair spattered both sides of the corridor …’

Beyond the Sea of Pain

There you go. As I’ve already said, you can acquire TERROR TALES OF CHRISTMAS and IN THE FOREST OF THE NIGHT by following the links.

Enjoy the spooky season ahead. Happy ghost and goblin hunting.

The picture at the top of today's blogpost comes to us from its creator, Martina Stokow / PublicDomainPictures.net