My new supernaturally tinged mystery thriller novel, A Thorn in Winter, is out now! I’m thrilled to finally share this nail-biter with you, and I hope you find it suitably page-turning.
Here’s a bit of a plot tease, from the back cover:
Bored council worker Leila is restless in her marriage. Secretly relieved by the sudden death of her husband’s best friend, who’d been blackmailing her over an affair she’d had with a local TV news presenter, she is alarmed to discover a link between the blackmail and a decades-old unsolved murder. What’s more, she bears an uncanny resemblance to the victim.
With the affair still threatening to destroy her marriage, an encounter with a tarot card reader pushes Leila into further investigation. With every discovery she makes, Leila becomes less certain who she can trust. A myriad of secrets lie along her perilous path to a terrifying truth that could cost her life.
Also, for good measure, here’s the bio about yours truly, also from the back cover:
Simon Dillon is a prolific author, primarily of thriller and horror novels including Death Nest, The Irresistible Summons, Spectre of Springwell Forest, and his latest, A Thorn in Winter. An avid advocate of page-turning mystery and suspense, he lives in southwest England with his wife and children, deriving endless inspiration from his surroundings, local history, folklore, and mythology. When he’s not exploring the moors and coasts or submerged in a book, he’s probably at the cinema.
Over the next few weeks on this site, there will be further articles exploring different aspects of the novel, excerpts, and even a short documentary exploring this novel in more detail (but without spoilers). Watch this space.
Paperbacks and ebooks of A Thorn in Winter are now available directly from my publisher, Ring of Culture. Additional retail outlets will follow later, but for now, you can order the novel here.
(Header image created by author in Canva. Novel cover courtesy of Ring of Culture Creative Services.)
A Thorn in Winter: A young woman being blackmailed discovers a link between the blackmail and a decades-old unsolved murder. What’s more, she bears an uncanny resemblance to the victim. Is she being targeted by the same mysterious killer?
Death Nest: A widower fears his young son is cursed when he shows disturbing behaviour akin to that of the widower’s younger brother, before he vanished twenty years previously.
The Irresistible Summons: A television producer who debunks the supernatural encounters a genuine haunting in a London office block.
The Birds Began to Sing: An aspiring novelist enters a mysterious writing competition at a sinister mansion.
Phantom Audition: The grieving widow of a famous actor begins to suspect a supernatural hand at work in his apparent suicide, linked to his final acting role.
Spectre of Springwell Forest: A mother comes to believe her young daughter is cursed, after discovering a mysterious painting in her attic containing a gradually revealed figure, which only she can see.
The Thistlewood Curse: A detective and her paranormal consultant suspect supernaturally assisted murder after the sudden heart attack of a Lord’s son on Lundy Island.
Children’s Adventures
Uncle Flynn: A timid boy gradually overcomes fear and mollycoddling as he searches for hidden treasure on Dartmoor with his enigmatic uncle.
Dr Gribbles and the Beast of Blackthorn Lodge: A monster, a mad scientist, and a haunted house… That’s just the beginning for a boy who finds himself caught between spy factions near the end of the Cold War.
Echo and the White Howl: A exiled young wolf seeks revenge after his Alpha father is murdered by a pack rival.
The George Hughes Trilogy
The Martian Inheritance, The Titan War, and The Neptune Conspiracy: Teenager George Hughes unexpectedly inherits the planet Mars. He finds himself the target of covert assassins, hostile aliens, and even darker forces. But he also comes under the protection of a mysterious secret agent, and finds friends in unlikely places.
Other Novels
Children of the Folded Valley: A man looks back on his past when he grew up in a mysterious cult cut off from the rest of the world.
Peaceful Quiet Lives: Forbidden lovers fall foul of laws in both nations that emerged following the Second American Civil War.
Love vs Honour: Teenage lovers pretend to convert to Islam and Christianity to appease each respective set of parents.
Ravenseed: As a teenage girl reads a mysterious account of two knights in the Dark Ages attempting to break an enchantment, her face is gradually disfigured. But she is obsessed with discovering the outcome and unable to stop reading.
A Thorn in Winter is available from Ring of Culture publications here.
All other titles are available from Amazon here (in the UK) and here (in the US).
If you enjoy my novels and short stories, please consider supporting my writing on Patreon or Ko-fi. Thank you.
Yours truly, in a screengrab from A Thorn in Winter: A Look Inside. Credit: Gajmo Productions
As some of you may be aware, I recently caught the filmmaking bug again. After my last project (a short, no-budget psychological horror film called Safe Space, which you can watch on YouTube here), I turned my attention to A Thorn in Winter, the mystery thriller novel I’d managed to persuade Ireland-based publisher Ring of Culture to roll the dice on. I wanted to make a short documentary to provide more insight into the novel and bring it to life a bit, but how would I go about it?
The limitations of shooting with no budget on an iPhone once again proved a challenge. However, I wasn’t exactly inexperienced. In my previous television job, I’d produced and directed documentary pieces promoting other novels (not mine) or stories featuring dramatic recreations. Of course, in those days I had production budgets. Not to mention professional camera operators, editors, sound recordists, and audio post-production engineers who did the hard work, whilst I flounced around barking instructions. But on this project, since I was the subject, I had to rely on family members for any shots that featured me on camera.
My wife and my children were troopers in this respect. However, directing from in front of the camera is never easy, and this led to setbacks. For example, I opted for a total reshoot of both the main interview and my first set of links out and about in various locations from the novel. In the former, the eyeline wasn’t quite right. In the latter, I’d stupidly worn an unflattering T-shirt that clung to me, adding far more pounds than any camera is legally permitted to pile on. Normally, I wouldn’t care about such things, but I needed people to pay attention to what I was saying, rather than be distracted by unflattering excess chunkiness.
In any event, that reshoot was the first of many, as other spanners were thrown into the works. For instance, I shot this over the summer whilst going back and forth on book edits with the publisher. When it was pointed out that the name Leila Williams had been used for a character in one of the Fifty Shades novels (which I haven’t read), I realised I’d neglected my usual task of googling all the names in my book to make sure there weren’t any unfortunate coincidences. Of course, a name cannot be copyrighted, but the publisher quite rightly expressed concern that we didn’t want readers visualising a character from Fifty Shades whilst reading my novel. Thus, Leila Williams became Leila Wilmond. Unfortunately, I’d shot a bunch of links mentioning the original name, so they had to be reshot. Again.
In my experience, it’s tougher filming a drama than a documentary. However, if you plan the production thoroughly, shooting all the coverage you need (as was the case with Safe Space; no reshoots required), it’s a joy to edit. In contrast, a documentary may be easier to film, but it’s much harder to wrestle into a coherent final cut. I’d initially planned something about 30 minutes long. Yet the more I looked at the material, the more I realised I needed to cut it down drastically. In my judgement, at this point, no one particularly cares about my life story, as I’m not famous (yet). But I did need to get viewers interested in A Thorn in Winter. With that in mind, I ditched almost all the autobiographical footage and kept the focus on the narrative.
The main interview got hacked, slashed, and re-ordered multiple times. Much of what I shot on location ended up on the cutting room floor. Several additional reshoots occurred as the edit evolved. Sometimes I had to reshoot for technical reasons (such as the sound not being up to scratch). Other times, my delivery was wrong (again, it’s extremely difficult to direct oneself). However, one production element did go relatively smoothly: The dramatic recreations set to readings from the novel. For these, I once again persuaded the excellent Abi Stevens, who starred in Safe Space, to play both the aforementioned Leila Wilmond, the main character, and the victim whose murder from decades earlier Leila is investigating. We managed to film all the recreations in one day.
Ultimately, A Thorn in Winter: A Look Inside turned out reasonably well, despite being rather rough around the edges. The final cut clocks in at twelve and a half minutes, and I think it’s pacy enough not to outstay its welcome. In fact, it probably all looks deceptively straightforward, but believe me, a lot of agonising went into deciding what to include, what to cut, and the order in which the various items appear. I hope you find it compelling as something to whet the appetite, and I also hope you enjoy seeing a little bit of southwest England. I should add that whilst the plot is discussed to some degree, there are no ruinous spoilers. You can watch by clicking the embed below.
A Thorn in Winter is out now. Paperbacks and ebooks are now available directly from my publisher, Ring of Culture (click here). Additional retail outlets will follow soon.
With just one day to go before the release of a short documentary on my new supernaturally tinged mystery novel, A Thorn in Winter, here’s the final teaser image. A slightly zoomed in detail of a famous town by the River Dart estuary in South Devon. Which one? All will be revealed in the documentary.
Continuing the countdown to the release of the short documentary about my new supernaturally tinged mystery thriller novel, A Thorn in Winter, here’s the penultimate teaser image. A zoom in of a frame grab showing some excitable wild (technically semi-wild) Dartmoor ponies.
Continuing the countdown to the release of the short documentary about my new supernaturally tinged mystery thriller novel, A Thorn in Winter, here’s the next teaser image. A mysterious dark figure.
Over the next few days, I’m publishing one teaser image per day from my upcoming short documentary A Thorn in Winter: A Look Inside, ahead of its release on YouTube next Friday. These teaser images are frame grabs from the documentary, sometimes zoomed in quite a bit to give more of a “tease”.
Here’s the third teaser image: A zoom in to the background of a shot where I am presenting to camera.
Over the next few days, I’m publishing one teaser image per day from my upcoming short documentary A Thorn in Winter: A Look Inside, ahead of its release on YouTube next Friday. These teaser images are frame grabs from the documentary, sometimes zoomed in quite a bit to give more of a “tease”.
Here’s the second teaser image: The main road through a sleepy little town in southwest Devon that I’ll identify in the documentary.
For next few days, I’m publishing one teaser image per day from my upcoming short documentary A Thorn in Winter: A Look Inside, ahead of its release on YouTube next Friday. This documentary provides an introduction to the story of the novel (without major spoilers). It features an interview with me, a look at some of the locations in southwest England where the story is set, and a few dramatic recreations set to readings from the text.
These teaser images are frame grabs from the documentary. Most of these are zoomed in a little or a lot, so you’re not quite seeing the whole picture, and there’s more of a “tease” to it (in the same way I offered a tease preview of a section of the novel cover before revealing it in full).
Here’s the first teaser image: A Dutch angle of a church building.
Following the recent teaser image of the cover for my new supernaturally tinged mystery thriller novel, A Thorn in Winter (published by Ring of Culture), here it is, finally revealed! Full release details will follow soon.
(Image courtesy of Ring of Culture Creative Services.)
As you may know, my new mystery thriller novel A Thorn in Winter is out soon (precise released date to be announced). I’ve been going back and forth with my publisher, Ring of Culture, preparing for this release. Here’s a tiny tease of the cover, which I’ll reveal in full soon.
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