My new novel Phantom Audition is a nail-biting gothic mystery. It encompasses a wide variety of themes, including being in love with something that doesn’t exist, abuse of power, how artists can become narcissists who think that moral codes do not apply to them, the dangers of tampering in the occult, obsession, madness and much more.
Here are a few snippets from initial reviews on Amazon and Goodreads:
“Phantom Audition is one of the absolute best books I have recently read… A brilliant mystery… with plenty of suspicious characters, you will be enticed to turn each page as you travel through this mystery to its surprising conclusion.” – Sue Marie.
“Stole my sleep for two nights… I know I’ll be thinking about so many of the characters, twists and turns, and emotions I came across on this reading adventure… I can’t say that I’ve ever read anything remotely similar to this plot.” – Kelli Pizarro.
“I love this story with all of its puzzles and strong emotion. Mia is a complex main character who is lost in grief after her husband’s death. She is searching not only for answers, but also to be able to own her own skin again. She feels lost in her husband’s shadow and is determined to come into her own. The way Simon weaves the side characters into the plot, revealing more and more secrets to the puzzle is genius. The setting also felt like an additional character, which I loved so much. I will be rereading this book many times, as I do only a few books that I also love.” – Rowan Thalia.
“Left me wanting to re-read it right away — like the feeling you get after watching an M Night Shyamalan film — where you suddenly realise maybe you were asking the wrong questions all along! A thoroughly enjoyable, page-turner read.” – Sara Meg Seese.
“PAGE-TURNER! I thoroughly enjoyed Phantom Audition… Dillon is a skilled storyteller; his characters all convey their backstories and humanity through their natural/believable dialogue and actions, that their motives are always clear. Every single piece fits into the puzzle perfectly.” – Ximena Escobar.
“A fantastic, page-turning, supernatural mystery! Thrilling from start to finish, with plenty of intrigue, Phantom Audition will have you on the edge of your seat… Had me guessing again and again how it was going to end, all the way until it actually ended… Reminded me of how much I love the mystery genre and how badly I need to read more like this.” – Antonio Gonzales-Rodriguez.
Phantom Audition is published by Dragon Soul Press. Click here to get it on Kindle or in paperback.
The Little Stranger – Sarah Waters’s sublime gothic mystery was a key tonal influence. Throughout the promotion of Phantom Audition, I’ve been very keen to emphasise that this isn’t a story that’s interested in terrifying the living daylights out of readers like some of my more overt horror stories. It that respect, it is akin to the psychological drama of this very clever ghost story, which whilst being page-turningly gripping, isn’t necessarily going to cause nightmares. The ghost story here belongs to a more old-school tradition, wherein the protagonist entering the haunted house ultimately discovers themselves within, in a manner of speaking.
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte’s masterpiece is a clear inspiration in many areas, most tellingly in the way Thornfield Hall intimidates Jane, and has hidden secrets. In my novel, the dark secrets of Steven Yardley (a sort-of Rochester figure) haunt the protagonist Mia from beyond his grave. His Jacobean family mansion also intimidates Mia, and holds a few hidden secrets of its own.
Don’t Look Now – Daphne Du Maurier’s stunning short story (and Nic Roeg’s equally stunning film adaptation) were definite thematic inspirations. Don’t Look Now’s themes of grief and obsession are mirrored in my novel, along with certain plot themes (including the mediums). Incidentally, Du Maurier’s Rebecca was also an influence, but then again, that novel has influenced so many of my works that it’s getting a bit tedious to keep listing it.
Sleeping Murder – Act one of this Agatha Christie mystery remains a superbly unsettling opener, as a young married woman finds her dream home was once laid out with the exact refurbishments she wants to undertake. Every detail – from garden landscaping, to where she would put a door, to her chosen wallpaper – are already there, beneath the surface. This mess-with-your-head mystery is tonally something I adopted in my novel.
A Fantastic Woman – This Chilean film, which won Best Foreign Film at the 2018 Oscars, might at first appear an odd choice as an influence on Phantom Audition. Nonetheless, it actually provided the initial inspiration. The story concerns a transgender woman dealing with the death of her partner, and finding herself isolated and ostracised by his family. The film has a dreamlike, magical realist quality to it, and even at times becomes a bit like a thriller (there’s a mysterious key which her partner left, for example). Moreover, there is something of a descent into the underworld/death and rebirth metaphor in the film, a story arc which is very much echoed in my novel. One image particularly leapt out at me – that of a ghostly vision of the dead partner staring out at her from a crowded nightclub dance floor amid strobe lights. It’s an image I actually nicked, sorry, “paid homage” to.
Death and the Maiden – Another Chilean influence of sorts, in that Chilean playwright Ariel Dorfman wrote this blinder of a stage play (later adapted into a film by Roman Polanski). The plot concerns a woman called Paulina Escobar who becomes convinced her husband’s house guest is actually the man who kidnapped, tortured, and raped her several years previously. Paulina’s lawyer husband isn’t convinced, but she is determined to torture a confession out of the man who might be her former tormentor. However if he confesses, is his confession true, or simply a desperate attempt at escaping his predicament by telling her what she wants to hear? How this play influenced my novel, I will not explain, but it will become apparent when you read it.
Much of my recent focus has been on my latest novel 
More psychological thriller/mystery than horror, and if it were a film, probably wouldn’t be rated stronger than 12A (that’s PG-13 for our American cousins). Yes, there is plenty of page-turning suspense, with our imperilled heroine wandering spooky corridors at night, but let’s put it this way; my notoriously easy-to-scare mother braved it, and managed to reach the ending unscathed. It’s only a notch up from something like Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca.
This begins more like a whodunnit, develops into a supernatural thriller, and really only segues into horror during the finale, in quite a gradual slow-burn. Yes, the bodies do pile up a bit, but in scariness, only a notch or so up from The Birds Began to Sing.
A properly full-blown ghostly gothic horror mystery, most akin to something like an MR James short story, or The Woman in Black. It is a slow-burn, but it does build to a properly spine-chilling finale that will test the nerves, so I’m giving this one a higher scariness rating.
For the most part, I’d argue this is a supernatural conspiracy thriller. However, the final act is undoubtedly in clear horror territory, in a pretty full-on manner. Comparison texts would be something like Coma crossed with the more horrific elements of Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom.
Simon Dillon Books 
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