Exclusive: Luke Arnold tells us about his new fantasy novel, Dead Man in a Ditch

Black Sails star Luke Arnold talks to us about his new urban fantasy novel, Dead Man in a Ditch, set in a world that combines fairy tales with film noir.

While he’s best known for playing Long John Silver on Starz’s hit show Black Sails, Luke Arnold is a man of many talents. Last year, he released his debut novel The Last Smile In Sunder City, an urban fantasy about a Man for Hire named Fetch Phillips, who is tasked with finding a missing vampire. Set in a world filled with magical creatures who, due to a cataclysm called the Coda, have lost all their magic, The Last Smile was an exciting fantasy noir mystery, and incredibly unique. The book combined a harsh, Sin City-esque locale with mythical beings drawn straight out of fairy tales, all of it delivered in a way that would make any fan of The Dresden Files salivate.

Now, Arnold is back with the sequel, Dead Man In A Ditch. Set shortly after The Last Smile, the second book finds Fetch gaining renown as the ‘guy who’s trying to bring the magic back,’ despite his firm insistence to the contrary. The book is fantastic, and a huge leap forward over the first. You can find our full  review of the book here.

I was lucky enough to get a chance to talk with Luke about Dead Man In A Ditch. He spilled about the story’s origins, making the transition from acting to writing, and all sorts of other interesting topics.

WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA – NOVEMBER 10: Actor Luke Arnold attends the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and InStyles Celebration of the 2017 Golden Globe Awards Season on November 10, 2016 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo by Todd Williamson/Getty Images for InStyle)

DANIEL DEVITA: To familiarize readers who might not be aware of your books, can you talk a little bit about where Fetch Phillips came from? Was this a project you were working on during Black Sails, or did you begin writing it afterward?

LUKE ARNOLD: I’ve been writing versions of this idea since I was in high school: a jaded noir detective in a fantasy world without magic. Every few years, I’d start a short story or the beginning of something bigger, maybe draw a few character designs, but never turn it into anything substantial. This happened again while I was working on Black Sails. One weekend, I wrote a short story about a Man for Hire in Sunder City searching for a missing Vampire Professor. Some friends gave it a read (including a few of my fellow pirates) and they were positive enough in their feedback for me to begin expanding it into the book it is today.

Black Sails was such an all-consuming process that I couldn’t really start work on the book until the end of season four. As soon as we finished shooting, I started writing and haven’t stopped.

What has the transition been like to go from acting to writing novels?

The main difference to me is that you can’t act alone, but you must write alone (with a few exceptions). I’ve been lucky to work on some incredible projects as an actor but with every new gig, you never know what you’re getting yourself into. When you actually manage to get cast in something that has potential, you often sign on before you know the people you’re working with, where you’ll be living, what the scripts will be like after the first couple of episodes, how it will be promoted, etc, etc. It’s a huge leap of faith and no matter how it turns out, your job is to serve their story. Within that, there are many creative choices you can make, but the actors’ influence on the overall production is often quite small (a blessing and a curse sometimes).

As an author, I don’t have to wait for permission to do my job. I don’t have to wait for someone else to create something interesting before I can be a part of it. It’s all in my head. It’s really empowering after years of auditions. But it’s also great when someone else writes something amazing, gets a group of incredible professionals together, and asks me to come play. If I can keep doing both, I know I’ll never be bored, and hopefully each career will inform the other.

Sunder City is such a fleshed-out locale, you can almost taste the grime of the Sickle and Georgio’s perfect cup of coffee. The city is such an unpredictable melting pot—something that’s only made clearer as we see more of the world beyond Sunder’s limits, and find out just how unique it is.  What has it been like to craft such a deeply nuanced setting? Are there any real-life cities that you drew on for inspiration?

I didn’t leave Australia until my mid-twenties, so my early ideas of Sunder were influenced by the depiction of America that I’d see in classic films and crime novels: a stylized and mythologized version of the real USA. It was a great place to start because Fetch Phillips comes to Sunder as an outsider. Then, once the magic fades from the world, everyone becomes immediately nostalgic for what was lost, idealizing the version of the city that they grew up in. I’ve had the privilege of traveling a lot over the last decade. There’s plenty of New Orleans and Amsterdam in Sunder City. A dash of Cape Town. Some Chicago. Paris. London too. I can’t ignore the Australian influence either. Sunder is a relatively young city, compared to the rest of Archetellos. It’s still going through the growing pains, trying to find itself. I often think of my home country in the same way.

One thing I’ve loved about the Fetch Phillips books so far is all of the different magical beings you introduce. You have a serious knack for taking mythical creatures that many readers will be familiar with, and then successfully putting your own spin on them. Do you have any favorites?

The Unicorn that makes an appearance in Dead Man In A Ditch was a fun one. Every time I bring a new creature into the world, I have to work out why they’re here. Every magical being must be connected to the magical river beneath the planet. The fun is working out how that happened, and what would become of those creatures when the link to the magic disappeared.

I think the Unicorns have the clearest, saddest answer to that question.

Dead Man In A Ditch is an incredible leap forward from The Last Smile In Sunder City, in terms of the size, the scope, the personal stories and big picture. How has the experience of writing this second Fetch Phillips novel been different from writing the first?

Dead Man In A Ditch is the first time I wrote a book, knowing that I was writing a book. The Last Smile started out as a bit of fun, then a short story, then a novella, and then many drafts and many edits attempting to knock it into shape. The scars of that process are still visible in the first book but I kind of like that. Tonally, it feels authentic for where Fetch Phillips is when we meet him. DMIAD was outlined before I started, and it mostly played out the way I planned it to.

I finished DMIAD before the first book was released, so I was also still inside my little writing bubble while I worked on it. There hadn’t been any reviews, so I was still following my instincts, relatively uninhibited by outside influence (other than my incredible editor Jenni Hill, and trusted beta readers).

Now that it’s out in the world, things might change, but I feel like the first two books really are a tight little partnership.

Was there any one scene in particular in Dead Man In A Ditch that you were really looking forward to writing?

This book goes through many different stages. It starts out like another crime caper but then becomes a kind of western for a few chapters. All that was great fun but, without spoiling anything, there’s a point about halfway through the book where everything changes. You’ll often hear that the middle of a novel can be the hardest part to write. With this one, I got to the halfway mark and it suddenly felt like I was setting out on a whole new adventure. It pushed me forward while writing it, and so far the readers seem to be enjoying it too.

Fetch has lived through several pretty major changes in Archetellos by the end of the second book, both in terms of the Coda and current events. I can’t think of a single other book I’ve read that handled the introduction of new technologies and their societal ramifications quite as well as Dead Man In A Ditch. Was this always something you had planned for this sequel, or did it grow organically as you were writing the book?

A little bit of both. The aftermath of the Coda was always going to be a major part of Fetch’s life and the first book really is about dealing with such a catastrophic event. We meet characters who are clinging to the past and others who are trying to move towards an uncertain future. This is a process that we go through individually many times in our lives, but I had no idea that it would feel so relevant to our world in 2020.

When change is forced upon us, we can either try to cling to the old world any way we can or learn from what happened, look forward, and create something better.

There probably was a time when I thought that this melancholy, listless energy could have continued for longer. That Fetch would have to rise above the global depression if he wanted to set things right. But that’s not how things work. When things disappear or become obsolete, something or someone always comes in to fill the gap. We are nostalgic, but we are all compelled to look forward. We keep building. We search for opportunity and salvation. Unfortunately, the forces that swoop in after a tragedy aren’t always honorable, and often fill the space with something far worse than what was there before, but it’s rarely black and white. You can’t put the industrial world in one box. It saves us as it kills us, so we all need to keep tinkering with it, removing parts, adding others, and watching the dials closely to make sure it doesn’t blow up in our faces.

Throughout Dead Man In A Ditch, Fetch is pretty insistent that he is not looking for ways to bring the magic back, despite the fact that most everybody in Sunder City believes he’s on the case. That reminded me a lot of Long John Silver’s rise to power on Black Sails, specifically how Billy noted the crew’s deepening respect for Silver long before Silver acknowledged it himself. Black Sails was pretty much a masterclass in storytelling, so I have to ask: Are there any particular lessons or concepts you’ve been able to take from your time on the show, and apply to your own writing?

There are certainly echoes of Black Sails that have unintentionally found their way into my books. Usually, by the time I notice them, they’re already woven into the fabric, and pulling them out would be catastrophic.

You’re right. Black Sails was a masterclass and I was so lucky to be a part of that show. I hope I absorbed as much from those storytellers as possible. Most of it was probably subconscious, but the show really explored the way we see ourselves compared to the way we’re seen by others. A lot of stories that deal with big themes, leaders, heroes and villains can forget that we all live our lives stuck in the frustrating mess of our own minds. Historic acts of change were deeply personal for those who enacted them, and every person who experienced them in the present moment. No matter how big the story gets, how cool the set piece or how dazzling the action, it should never drown the choices and emotions of the individual.

You narrated the audiobook for The Last Smile In Sunder City, which is the sort of thing that not every author could manage. Was your experience as an actor helpful when you went into the studio to do that? Will you be back for the audiobook of Dead Man In A Ditch? Because I can’t lie, it’s pretty hard to imagine someone else pulling off Fetch’s voice as well.

Thanks! And yes, I actually start recording in a couple of days. As soon as I finish this interview I’m going to listen to the first audiobook to get myself back into the world. I always read my books aloud when I edit them, because it’s all dialogue. I want these stories to feel like Fetch is telling them to a friend at a bar, so if the words don’t roll off the tongue, then something is wrong. I felt quite prepared when I went into the studio for The Last Smile (even though I had a cold that you can kind of hear for the first few chapters) and I hope the sequel is just as much fun.

What’s next for you, and for Fetch Phillips? Do you have more books planned?

Fetch and I both plan to continue down our unpredictable, ever-changing paths. I’ll be bouncing back and forth between acting and writing as opportunities arise. There are certainly plans for more Fetch Phillips adventures and hopefully I’ll be able to speak more on that soon.

Lastly and on a lighter note…if you were marooned on a desert island and could bring only three books, what would they be? Provided, of course, your crew was kind enough to supply them.

The Toa Te Ching by Lao-Tzu (translated by Stephen Mitchell). It’s not the biggest book so it won’t be useful if I ever need to burn it for warmth, but it’s a book I always try to keep at my side. There’s something magic about this one. The first time I read it, I felt like I was being reminded of things I knew before I was born.

When We Were Very Young/Now We Are Six by A. A. Milne. Sublime nonsense and nostalgia.

Ulysses by James Joyce. Because then I’ll finally finish the bloody thing.

Thanks again for taking the time to talk shop and spill some details on this awesome series that you’ve been working on.

Thanks so much!

Dead Man In A Ditch releases online and wherever books are sold on September 22.

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