Tag Archives: Short Film

Update: July 2026

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This is turning out to be quite the bumper year for yours truly. As I announced last month, my supernaturally tinged mystery thriller novel A Thorn in Winter will be published this autumn by the Ireland-based Ring of Culture. I’m immensely excited about that and can tell you all is progressing well in terms of finalising the manuscript, preparing covers, and so forth. I’m remaining fairly tight-lipped on the plot, but it involves a young woman initially caught in a web of blackmail, only for her to uncover something much more sinister when a tarot card reading links her situation to a decades-old unsolved murder case. She discovers an alarming personal connection to the victim and consequently finds herself in deadly peril.

Elsewhere, I’ve been busy working on the first draft of my latest novel, the second I’ve written this year in my newly embarked-upon supernatural thriller series. Well, perhaps “newly” is the wrong way of putting it, since I wrote the first in the series last year, and by the end of this year, there will be three manuscripts sitting on my shelf, in a series that could end up featuring as many as a dozen instalments. It’s a hugely ambitious project, and I’m greatly enjoying working on it.

Beyond that pleasing surge of literary productivity, I’ve recently rekindled my love of filmmaking. Safe Space is a short psychological horror film that is now available on YouTube for your viewing pleasure (see below embed). It’s an amateur, no-budget, rough-around-the-edges piece, shot on an iPhone, but it features a splendid central performance from the up-and-coming Abi Stevens. The plot concerns a frustrated wannabe novelist who enters an existential nightmare (no, it’s not wholly autobiographical). Do check it out.

That’s about it from me for now. More updates soon, especially regarding A Thorn in Winter. There’s a lot more information coming (including the publication date), so watch this space.

(Please note: The header image, created by yours truly in Canva, is not official artwork for the novel from the publisher. In fact, rather amusingly, the novel itself is set in summer, not winter, and does not feature literal thorns. There’s another reason for the title, which I obviously won’t reveal here.)

Death Nest: The Disappearance of Simon Dillon

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Coming up with imaginative ways to publicise my novels can be a challenge. In the case of my supernaturally tinged mystery thriller Death Nest, I’ve run a gamut from the serious (how this is my most personal novel) to pranks (such as this fake interview that I’m pleased to say tricked a few readers, based on the comments). My latest attempt, a short film, is more in the latter category. Death Nest: The Disappearance of Simon Dillon is a meta-mockumentary that imagines the White Nest, a sinister and dangerous organisation within the novel, is real.

Also, this version of the film is slightly different to the version I previously uploaded on Patreon (if you saw it there already). I’ve made a couple of minor changes. Let’s call this version the “Director’s Cut”. We can even start a rumour that I didn’t get to finish it properly originally due to “studio interference”, if you like, instead of the more mundane truth that I wanted to add a couple of cutaways and a scary additional visual tweak at the end (that I won’t spoil).

The film pretends that because I recklessly detailed what they do in the book, the White Nest decided to silence me. Tommy Rogers, a private investigator looking into my disappearance, interviews former colleagues and friends. It degenerates into cheesy pseudo-Blair Witch style nonsense in the finale, but I thought, why not go the whole hog? With any luck, it will intrigue those of you who haven’t read the novel into picking up a copy. It will also make a great Christmas present for that difficult-to-buy-for relative. Here’s the film in full. I hope you find it entertaining.

Death Nest features a gripping central mystery, a romantic subplot, coming-of-age drama, and moments of horror and humour. To further whet your appetite, here’s the blurb from the back of the book.

From the author of Spectre of Springwell Forest and The Irresistible Summons… A nail-biting new mystery.

After his young son Ben writes a disturbing story about murdering a boy in a forest, widower Nick Unwin is alarmed by eerie parallels between his son’s behaviour and that of his younger brother Jason, prior to his inexplicable disappearance twenty years previously. This tragic past returns to haunt Nick when he sees an image of his long-lost brother in a newly released film.

Fearing history will repeat itself, Nick decides to investigate, along with Tanith, an old flame from his early teenage years, with dark secrets of her own connected to Jason’s disappearance. But as they delve deeper into the labyrinthine mysteries of their past, long-buried memories resurface. Nick is forced to face the terrible fear that has plagued him for decades: Was he responsible for the death of his brother?

A riveting coming-of-age thriller exploring traumatic sibling relationships, parental fears, and the misleading nature of memory, Death Nest is Simon Dillon’s most gripping novel yet.

Additional potential Christmas presents can be found in other published novels from my back catalogue. These include horror, thrillers, children’s adventure stories, dystopian sci-fi tales, and my recent forays into fantasy with my novel Ravenseed (about which I have written here) and a companion piece anthology, The Dark Forest Within (about which I have written here).

Death Nest is available in paperback or on Kindle from Amazon here (in the US) and here (in the UK).

(Header image created by author in Canva.)