User:Pauline Mary Francis

= Mike Bennett (Author and Podcaster) = Mike Bennett is a author and podcaster. He has written and podcast a number of novels including A, B, C, D and E

Life and work
Mike Bennett originally hails from Catford, South East London. At the age of ten, he moved with his parents to Windsor, Berkshire. He left school at sixteen to work in a foundry, and there, with his hands occupied and his brain atrophying with boredom, he discovered the joy of books on tape. Once he’d exhausted the stock at his local library, he started making his own audiobooks using a cassette tape recorder and stories by H.P. Lovecraft, P.G. Wodehouse, and Charles Bukowski, amongst others.

Throughout the 80s and 90s, he worked in a string of jobs, including postman, video shop assistant, dustman, a few stints at Windsor Safari Park, and as a part of the promotions team at legendary Windsor music venue, The Old Trout, at the height of the Britpop and grunge era.

Mike started writing fiction in the late nineties while studying as a mature student at the University of Brighton. While still at uni, he wrote and published his first novel, One Among the Sleepless in 2002. Though the book sold well, he found the experience of self-publishing frustrating, and in the summer of 2002, he gave up writing and moved with his wife to Ireland to focus on a new career teaching English as a second language. He taught for thirteen years in all, working at schools in Ireland, Spain, and England.

In 2006, while living in Dublin at the advent of the podcast age, Mike returned to making his own audiobooks when he podcast his first novel, One Among The Sleepless. He quickly gained a worldwide audience of listeners which he built upon when he podcast his short story collection, Hall of Mirrors between 2007-2008. Also at this time, inspired by an earlier period of living in rural Andalucia, he wrote his second novel, Underwood and Flinch, which he subsequently podcast from 2008-2012.

Underwood and Flinch won the Parsec Award for Best Small Cast Story (Long Form) for two years running in 2012 and 2013. Its sequel, Blood and Smoke, won the Parsec Award for Best Novella in 2014. Mike also won Parsec awards for his reading of HP Lovecraft’s The Shadow over Innsmouth in 2013, and for his zombie apocalypse novella, After the Plague, in 2016.

The third book in the Underwood and Flinch saga, Underwood and Flinch: Underground, was powered by Mike’s supporters at Patreon, where he has been podcasting to a loyal listenership since 2015.

Mike Bennett now writes and podcasts in Wexford, Ireland, where he lives with his wife and two rescue dogs. He became an Irish citizen in 2021.

Awards
Parsec Award winner in [relevant years] After the Plague in 2016, Underwood and Flinch Blood and Smoke in 2014, The Shadow Over Innsmouth by HP Lovecraft and Underwood and Flinch in 2013, Underwood and Flinch: A Vampire Novel in 2012

The Underwood and Flinch Saga
''All David Flinch ever wanted was a normal life. But when you’re a member of the Flinch family, normal has never been easy''.

For hundreds of years, the eldest male Flinch has been servant and guardian to the vampire, Lord Underwood. While the Flinches have changed through the generations, Underwood has remained eternal. David had hoped to be spared the horror of serving his family’s lord and master, but when he is summoned to the Flinch home in Spain by his dying older brother, he knows his luck has run out.

After fifty years of slumber, Underwood is to be resurrected from the grave in a ritual of human sacrifice, and David, by right of succession, is to be his resurrector. But there is another Flinch, one who craves the role of guardian to the vampire: David’s sister, Lydia. It’s a job she means to have, even if it means making David’s the first blood shed in this new age of Underwood and Flinch.

One Among the Sleepless
A killer has come to town. The victims are connected; each pointing to the next, as if in answer to the question: Who is The One?

Is it Peter Reynolds: mild-mannered office clerk pouring petrol through his neighbour’s letterbox in the middle of the night? Is it Wayne Dolan: a man whose sexual fantasies about his neighbour spiral into dangerous obsession when he learns of her secret life as a dominatrix? Or is it Gaz: leader of three friends who love nothing more than sex, weed and partying? All women are easy prey for his charms. All except Sally. And the one who doesn’t want him, is the one he has to have – whether she likes it or not. Mick Nixon has to find the connection, because people are disappearing - and if he and Sally are ever going to share more than just lunch, he’d better hurry up, or they could be next. Is it Peter Reynolds: mild-mannered office clerk pouring petrol through his neighbour’s letterbox in the middle of the night? A dark, funny, and at times horrific ride, One Among the Sleepless is a thriller set just below the surface of suburban existence. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll throw it through your neighbour’s window tied to a house brick!

“A tale that’s harder to put down than a delicious bad habit.” Walt Kolenda. Examiner.com

Hall of Mirrors - Tales of Horror and the Grotesque
From award-winning author, Mike Bennett, comes The Collected Edition of Hall of Mirrors.

In these pages you’ll find stories of Hell and damnation, ghosts, madness, murder, vampires, bizarre hair restoration disasters, and... pigeons, among other things.

Hall of Mirrors is a collection of modern gothic tales with a nail of dark humour hammered through its heart."“This is the way horror audio should be done: Mike Bennett's podcast storytelling is an exceptionally generous free treat for the ears and the mind. Listen to the Hall of Mirrors, and you'll feel his dark and twisted imaginations fingering their way into your ear canals, his remarkable voice prying into your brain in the most creepiest and unforgettable of ways. Hall of Mirrors is a refreshingly fun experience, that's well worth downloading -- you'll love every strange and grotesque moment!”Michael A. Arnzen, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Proverbs for Monsters"

After the Plague
A hotel on the outskirts of London in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. A brutal couple, Lee and Mandy, arrive in a van with two captive women. Lee and Mandy think the hotel is abandoned, a place to find food and shelter. However, Terry, a former employee who has made the hotel his own, has other ideas.

After the Plague is a novella by five-time Parsec Award-winning author, Mike Bennett. It contains scenes of explicit violence and very strong language.

The Underwood and Flinch saga :
Underwood and Flinch Season 1

Underwood and Flinch Season 2

Underwood and Flinch Season 3 etc

Stand-alone novels and novellas
OATS

After the Plague

Disturbing the Devil (an Underwood and Flinch novella)

The Breakfast Service (an Underwood and Flinch novella)

Short Stories
Hall of Mirrors: Tales of Horror and the Grotesque 1

Hall of Mirrors: Tales of Horror and the Grotesque 2

Anthologies
Podthology (link to ISBN only, maybe the relevant podcast short story from HoM?)

The Underwood and Flinch saga series
Underwood and Flinch

Blood and Smoke

Stand-alone novels
One among the Sleepless

After the Plague

Short story collections
Hall of Mirrors: Tales of Horror and the Grotesque 1

Hall of Mirrors: Tales of Horror and the Grotesque 2

Podcast readings of classic fiction (with links to podcasts)
Dracula by Bram Stoker, - unabridged

The Shadow over Innsmouth by HP Lovecraft - unabridged

Saki etc