31 years ago, when I was 16, I signed my first book deal, with HarperCollins. By that point, I was already 2 years into my career. That was bonkers - but it was the 90s! Then this happened. It's now March 2026.
Comma Press editor David Sue hailed the book’s "strong and timely themes” with “expertly plotted story beats, characterisation and world-building [in] the very real though off-kilter world whose slightly distorted, unsettling reality feels so prevalent."
The book is done and dusted but we're not sure of the exact publication date at the moment. The Amazon pre-order page says end October 2026 but that's a placeholder date - as is the mooted '160 pages'. Let me reassure that it's the standard 300 pages! So please check back for updates on these specifics.
Warning Signs offers readers seven fantastically lurid psychodramas to sink their teeth into. All seven tales of the unexpected are set in contemporary England:
• A distinguished post-Covid NHS grief counsellor who’s obsessed with tales of the paranormal goes on a ghost-hunting reality TV show.
• A homeless teenager finds herself in the clutches of a UFO cult in a picturesque rural tourist village.
• A mild mannered woman runs a kitsch, death-themed museum offering strange rituals in the basement.
• A clickbait online content producer goes to a psychic medium to find out her internet stalker's intentions.
• A housemaid for a venerable family suspects there might be something more to them and their ever-faithful servants than meets the eye.
• A wealthy businesswoman who develops military surveillance technology finds herself tempted to cross a line.
• A refugee in a drug-addled seaside arts community is befriended by a totally normal children's theatre troupe.
I had a blast crafting Warning Signs, going large then cutting down and polishing carefully to dish up only the good stuff: exciting, tangy drama with strong protagonists and vivid settings. If I can transport and enthrall people for the length of a train journey, I’ll be happy. I haven't exactly been away from public life - quite the opposite, I admit - but in terms of releasing a full length volume of all-new fiction, it's been a minute. Or a quarter of a century.
Warning Signs offers broad excitement and dark dynamism, a dash of greasepaint and limelight, a lot of fun, a little bit of cheese and some hair raising moments with rich and complex characters, sincere protagonists and strong endings.
It follows my short film series Aurora (2020-2023), first short film An Impossible Poison (2017), my fifth book Asylum and Exile: Hidden Voices (2015) and the essay The Future of Serious Art (2020). You can find my overall career stuff and job factoids right here if you must.
If you want to support me as a writer right now, my fourth book Beyond the Wall: Writing a Path Through Palestine (2012/2025) has just been updated and reissued and can be ordered here. I haven't given any interviews or done any events around the reissue as I don't like it when individuals push themselves to the front at times like this.
Warning Signs is my sixth book. It contains shock events, extreme emotions and cathartic rituals - but it won't leave you despairing or depressed because frankly... have you seen the headlines? I wrote this to provide escape and relief. The seven stories feature intelligent and well-rounded people in the real world, some of whom very much want to believe in legends, myths and the supernatural, while others scoff at things like that. The stories tackle and overturn superstitions, sacrifices and shared delusions. We see social ostracism, exploitation and stigma taken to phantasmagoric ends as everyday life gives way to extreme and heightened environments. Recognisable reality, psychedelia and paranormal archetypes mix together, fantasy figures and unmet desires are made flesh and dolls and effigies feature as figures of mourning or yearning. Many of the scenes show marginalised individuals fighting for escape, recognition and survival but let me reassure you that everyone has a blast, including the reader.
The book would be ideal for lovers of early Stephen King, Twin Peaks, Daphne du Maurier, Jane Schoenbrun's films, Jordan Peele, R F Kuang, Anna Biller, Italo Calvino, Valley of the Dolls, Alan Moore, Julia Ducournau's films, Angela Carter, Diana Wynne Jones, The Stepford Wives, The League of Gentlemen, Sinners, Marina Warner, Alan Garner, Susan Hill, Saltburn, John Carpenter, Shirley Jackson, The Wicker Man, Black Mirror, It Follows, Blumhouse's films, Late Night With The Devil, The Last Broadcast, Censor, the BBC’s Ghostwatch, Edgar Allen Poe, Michael Haneke, Shudder’s films, Irma Vep, Karyn Kusama’s The Invitation, the TV series Atlanta, 2000s Japanese horror movies, The Babadook, M Night Shyamalan, Stranger Things, the first Twilight film, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Dario Argento and other Italian giallo cinema, Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, exploitation shock schlock and B movies, Ana Lily Amirpour, Possessor, Anne Rice, Hammer Horror and all contemporaries, spin-offs, spoofs, satires and jokey tributes thereof.
I am so happy to confirm that illustrator Ben Jones has agreed to create original cover art for Warning Signs. He brings his unique style, developed through projects with everyone from The Economist, The New Yorker, the BBC and The New York Times to Politico, Prospect and History Today. Ben illustrated The Folio Society edition of The Clockwork Orange and The Secret Agent as well as creating campaigns for luxury brand Hermès (you know I love that) and projects for the Wellbeck Museum of Witchcraft, making him the perfect gothic hipster polymath to collaborate on this landmark publication.
I've already collaborated with Comma Press on three original fiction anthologies in recent years:
• Resist (2020). In the story ‘Occupied Territory’, a warrior woman in Roman-occupied ancient Britain joins Boudica's liberation army and proceeds to slash and burn through the country.• The Cuckoo Cage (2022). In the story ‘Lady Swing’, a seemingly meek household staff member allegedly descended from witches terrorises a modern day country estate alongside a community of secret rebels and a mythical beast.• Collision (2023). In the story ‘Afterglow’, ambition-crazed nuclear scientists jockey for fame, funding and Nobel Prizes at CERN, with truly bonkers consequences.
Now a bit of career cringe backstory...
I began my career in 1993, when I was 14 and 15 (my birthday's in the middle of the year), working for some very nice style and arts magazines including NME, i-D and Dazed & Confused and doing lots of fun extra stuff in art direction, the art world and any radio, film, TV and presenting and commentating that came up. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THE 90s WERE LIKE. I've worked in the mass media for the entirety of my career.
When I was 16, in June 1995, I signed my first book deal with the Flamingo imprint of HarperCollins, after a chain of events - I was on the cover of a magazine that February 1995 because of my journalism, in the accompanying interview I mentioned that I wanted to write a book, Jonny Geller at Curtis Brown noticed the quote and got in touch asking if I had anything on my desk and as luck would have it, I did.
Upon the announcement of the book deal there was a ton of worldwide press, all now happily lost to pre-Internet history, ha ha! All I can say is that Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls was remarkably sanguine about the whole thing, including BBC outside broadcast vans parking by the music block and tabloid journalists coming by for an interview...
That early book deal is to be credited fully to Jonny Geller. His instincts, his drive, his clarity and capability are second to none. My first editor for Seahorses was John Saddler (now an agent) and my next was Philip Gwyn Jones (also now an agent!). The PR and marketing lead was Karen Duffy. They're all legends, and they were at the time too.
So, that's the story. It looks phenomenal from the outside and it also reflects the opportunity, optimism, fun and possibility of the era. But it's not the whole picture. I enjoy public life in the sense of being busy and eonnected but I didn't like being famous and found the personalised focus violating and unpleasant.
I am a classic networker-communicator type. I love to stay busy, matching up gifted people with great projects, powerful stories, fascinating ideas and interested audiences, whether those audiences come to us via a page, mic, screen or stage. My entire body of work, whether related to language or images, is solidly within the mass media.
The first novel, Seahorses, came out in 1997 when I was 18 and in my first year at Oxford. It did well. After Seahorses I published the literary thriller Too Fast To Live (2000), then focused on narrative non-fiction with Venetian Masters: Under the Skin of the City of Love (2008), Beyond the Wall (2012, updated in 2025) and Asylum and Exile: Hidden Voices (2015). You might want to look at my Royal Literary Fund interview here, or my interview with Renaissance One here for some comments on writing.
From 2000 onwards I accepted fiction commissions for short story anthologies only. I'm so happy that things have come around and that I've found my groove in mainstream psychodramatic fiction with an exciting B-cult edge. I intend to continue publishing fiction when opportunities arise and inspiration strikes.
My sole ambition for Warning Signs is that readers really, really enjoy it.
FINAL DETAILS:
Warning Signs will be promoted as a Comma Press lead title, with press, reviews, interviews and events - watch this space. As soon as I have times and dates, I'll update.
- I am happy to be contacted directly at bidisha.contact@gmail.com for work purposes only. Please read the legals.*
- Ben Jones’s Instagram handle is Ben Jones Illustration and his website is here. As you see, his work is brilliant.
- The text on this page is an extended version of the press release which is being sent to peers - please check back for details and updates.
*LEGALS: There is no mutual privacy or confidentiality agreement regarding emails, letters or messages sent to me. Messages can be circulated, shared, publicised, published, quoted or cited in legal action unless there is a separate agreement otherwise, in writing, by all senders and recipients. Please observe norms of professional, respectful and appropriate behaviour.
