Over the past seven weeks, the wonderful people at Medium publication Fictions serialised my fantasy novella Bloodmire. The plot concerns a Dark Ages knight undertaking a quest to rescue the young woman to whom he is betrothed. She has been captured by a mysterious Beast and taken into a mysterious and dangerous uncharted forest. On his quest, the knight encounters bandits, witches, and strange supernatural beings, journeying ever deeper into the forest, and ever deeper into himself.
Sounds trope-tastic? I can assure you Bloodmire is not a straightforward tale of damsels in distress. In fact, it’s a narrative designed to invite different interpretations and perspectives. Inspiration wise, it draws on everything from Arthurian legend (particularly Sir Gawain) to Heart of Darkness. It is also intended as a companion piece to my upcoming novel Ravenseed and features one of the supporting characters. However, I stress Bloodmire requires no prior knowledge of Ravenseed. It stands entirely alone.
I’ve had some terrific response and comments so far, so do check it out. Part One of Bloodmire can be found here, with links to subsequent parts at the end of every instalment. I hope you enjoy it.
I’ve had a highly unusual year in 2021. For one thing, I’ve made the awkward transition to full-time writer. Much remains uncertain. However, I don’t intend to bore you with the cycle of fear and self-doubt that are the inevitable concomitant of any writer who takes such steps. Instead, I’ll dive right in with what I’ve been up to over the past twelve months.
Perhaps most excitingly, this collection of scary shorts was released. Infestation: A Horror Anthology included a six-chapter science fiction horror novella – the eponymous Infestation – along with five other short stories: Once in a Lifetime, Spinner, Regression, Influencer, and White Horse. The latter two are exclusive to this volume, and White Horse is a standalone prequel to my gothic mystery novel The Irresistible Summons.
Infestation is set in the near future, at a time when mysterious giant spider nests have appeared. No one knows where these nests came from, but nations are adjusting to the challenge of living alongside dangerous oversized arachnids. A mercenary desperate for money to purchase medical treatments that can save his wife is hired by an influential businessman. His objective: Infiltrate a spider nest on a mission of vengeance.
For information about the plots in the other stories, simply click on their respective links, and it will take you to articles about each of them. I’ve had some very positive response to this story, and to the collection in general, which is encouraging. At 77,000 words, I feel this anthology represents a good value selection of my shorter horror pieces.
Gothic Mystery New Covers
Some of my gothic mystery horror thriller novels were reissued with new covers. Check them out below.
Work in Progress: Sequel to The Faerie Gate
The Northern Lights feature in The Faerie Gate. Photo by Vincent Guth on Unsplash
Yes, I know I’ve not yet released my very dark and scary children’s 2015 novel The Faerie Gate, despite talking about it a great deal on this blog. However, in early 2021 I started writing not one but three sequels. It is a hugely ambitious project that in some ways is The Lord of the Rings to The Faerie Gate’s The Hobbit. I’m very pleased with it so far, though I halted once I completed the first of the three sequels. I have a very clear plan for the remaining novels, but there are other projects I wish to complete first. Since I am acutely aware of the dangers of “doing a George RR Martin”, I’m going to hang on to the three sequels until all have been fully written. However, The Faerie Gate I may well release before that, since it stands entirely alone.
Medium
Yours truly, in a rare smiling photo (as seen in the interview mentioned below).
As part of my expansion into full-time writing, I am building an audience on Medium (currently 1.6 thousand followers and climbing). I’ve proud of the many articles I have on that site, often placed in prestigious publications. If you have a Medium subscription, please consider following me. In addition to articles on film, music, literature, television, and the odd rant, I have published a number of novellas and short stories there, and will continue to do so.
Here are a few Medium pieces from the past year of which I am particularly proud.
Leave – One of several short stories written and published this year. Life takes an unexpected turn for a young wife desperately missing her royal marine husband during the recent Afghanistan War.
The principles for penning a passionate, sinister, satisfying page-turner. (Apologies for the use of American English; The Writing Cooperative publication insists on it.)
I shudder to think of anyone discovering these for the first time on the small screen.
And just because I can’t resist including it, here’s my interview with The Writing Cooperative: Write Now with Simon Dillon
The Guardian
I also managed to get an article published in The Guardian this year, which makes a nice addition to my writing CV. It’s a short, slightly tongue-in-cheek piece exploring why so many of my childhood films are having their BBFC ratings upgraded from PG to 12A in the UK. You can read it here.
The Tangent Tree
Finally, for those of you wondering what has happened to film podcast The Tangent Tree (which I co-host with Samantha Stephen), I hope this will be resurrected in 2022. Various spanners in the works this year prevented the creation of new episodes.
To finish, I want say a big thank you to all of you, for your ongoing readership and support. Thank you so much for reading my novels and short stories. I hope you enjoyed them. Also, thank you for leaving reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, and elsewhere. For those of you who follow me on Medium, thank you for reading and supporting me there too. It has been a tumultuous year, but there are exciting things ahead. I will revealing my plans for 2022 on New Year’s Day, so watch this space.
I’m interrupting my series examining each short story in my most recent release Infestation: A Horror Anthology to draw attention to another recent short story of mine, published in Medium publication Fictions.
Leave isn’t a horror story but a romantic tale, involving a young wife desperately missing her royal marine husband during the recent Afghanistan War. Life takes an unexpected turn for her, though I don’t want to say too much more about the plot.
Hopefully this story will be an agreeable respite for those among my readers who aren’t partial to horror. It features an underlying mystery of sorts, so is more akin to earlier romantic stories of mine such as Papercut.
Medium publication Fictions recently published my sci-fi horror novella Infestation.
Set in the near-future, Infestation concerns the mysterious appearance of giant spider nests across the globe. Exactly where they came from is unknown, but despite the initial terror, life has settled down somewhat, especially in the UK, where humans have learned to keep away from cities lost to the spiders.
Against this backdrop, covert ops mercenary Jonah Seymour leads a dangerous and unpleasant mission of revenge into a large spider nest, at the behest of a wealthy, influential businessman. Jonah agrees to this potentially lethal assignment because his pay will ensure his wife gets the urgent medical treatment that will save her life. But the deadly ordeal that awaits is beyond anything Jonah could possibly have imagined.
All six parts are available for your reading pleasure on Medium:
I recently had a short story published in Fictions on Medium that I’m rather pleased with. It’s entitledApocalypse 1983and is inspired bythe real-life 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident, which you can read about here. I won’t spoil my take on this alarming historic incident, but I will say my story was a response to a writing prompt from Fictions that specified the story be set in 1983 and feature a radio at some point.
Apocalypse 1983 is a good deal shorter than my usual short stories (just north of 2,000 words as opposed to the usual between 10,000 and 15,000 words), but it packs in quite a lot. I hope you find it interesting. You can read it in full on Medium here.
Set in the near-future, Infestation concerns the mysterious appearance of giant spider nests across the globe. Exactly where they came from is unknown, but despite the initial terror, life has settled down somewhat, especially in the UK, where humans have learned to keep away from cities lost to the spiders.
Against this backdrop, covert ops mercenary Jonah Seymour agrees to lead a dangerous and unpleasant mission of revenge into a large spider nest, at the behest of a wealthy, influential businessman. Jonah agrees to this potentially lethal assignment because his pay will ensure his wife gets the urgent medical treatment that will save her life. But the deadly ordeal that awaits is beyond anything Jonah could possibly have imagined.
The remaining five parts will appear on Medium soon, and I’ll add another post here once the serial is concluded.
I’ve been very active on Medium over the last month. I’ve even started my own publication entitled Simon Dillon Cinema for the film reviews you see on this blog, to get them to a wider readership. Obviously they will continue to be available for free here.
To the matter at hand, here are some articles that you might have missed, in various Medium publications. Check them out by following the links below. Please “clap” generously by clicking your mouse on the “clap” icon, as that is a huge help to me, trying to get the Algorithmic Overlords to distribute my work further. Thank you.
Difficult to craft but brilliant when well-written.
DISCLAIMER: The Writing Cooperative submission guidelines require I use “US English”. I know this will upset my fellow Queens-English Brits, hence the “trigger warning” (if you’ll forgive my use of an obscenity).
Call the Number On Your Screen is a new short story by yours truly, available for your reading pleasure in Illumination, a publication on Medium. It concerns a corrupt televangelist who takes extreme measures to find his blackmailer. Satirical of a certain kind of American televangelist, it also draws inspiration from hard boiled noir crime fiction. As such it’s a little outside my usual genre, but writing it was a fun experiment. Besides, the themes – corrupt religious figures, abuse of power – will be familiar from my other works.
Trial Period is the latest short story by yours truly, available for your reading pleasure in Illumination, a publication on Medium. It concerns a former publisher and his young female subordinate, who form an unlikely friendship whilst working for a herbal remedy company. (No, nothing sexual happens, so if that’s what you’re after, look elsewhere.)
Instead of doing the usual thing of publishing it in chunks (it’s just over 10,000 words), Illumination have published it in full, mainly as a stats related experiment I won’t bore you with. However, in my view, having it all in one hit like this makes for a more satisfying reading experience, instead of needing to click from one part to the next.
This is a bit of an offbeat piece for me, but some of it reflects my present predicament. The protagonist isn’t me (he can’t be, as he doesn’t like horror) but he’s one of the closest characters to me that I’ve yet written. Speaking of horror, this isn’t a scary tale so anyone can read it, although it does have a supernatural tinge at one point.
Spinner is a new short story by yours truly, available for your reading pleasure in Illumination, a publication on Medium. It concerns a young woman trapped in an abusive relationship during lockdown, who investigates a malevolent supernatural force in her basement. Yes, I’m back in horror mode here, so proceed at your own risk. Gripping, disturbing, spine-tingling terrors are most certainly involved.
Simon Dillon Books 
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