My new novel has now been published! A follow up to the book I released last year, and the second book of the Dark Harbour Tales, The Tale of the Night Shiner is about a brutal supernatural creature that is haunting the town and killing off all the losers and the wasters. Our antiheroes at the local vigilante organisation, Halo of Fires, are called upon to somehow succeed at the impossible task and slay the beast, but they’re not so keen to take on the job as they’re busy chasing down abusers and bad boys themselves. So yeah, a real feel-good story as you can tell.

The book is a cross between the legend of Spring-Heeled Jack and one of my all-time favourite films, Jaws, and I think it’s an even better read than my first book. A lot of the original characters return for the sequel, with even more twists and turns and surprises to be revealed. The series takes an even darker tone in this installment, so it’s a definite Empire Strikes Back of the trilogy.

Anyway, please check it out, even if you haven’t read the first one. I really think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written and I’m looking forward to hearing people’s thoughts on it.

Recently I also recreated my author profile photograph as I stood beside a ghost train in a certain seaside town… Okay, yeah it wasn’t Dark Harbour because there is no such place (in our dimension), but can you guess where I am? It’s a certain resort that has inspired this series of books, and I make one or two oblique references to it. Clue: there used to be a cool helter skelter there.

Ah yes, about time I made an update here… So recently I went to a mystery location in America which you’ll never guess, but here’s a visual clue to help you work it out:

Richard Dutton with a big apple in the Big Apple.

Yes, that’s right, I went to New York. What you may not know is that I actually live near New York… the one in Lincolnshire, that is. I bet you never knew that, did you? That there is another New York somewhere in the world. I’m not sure how it got the name. I think New York City was already established by the time New York Hamlet was established, but it could have been named after York (of Yorkshire), whereas NYC was named after the Duke of York (so says Wikipedia). Whether some 19th century fen farmer was having a joke naming this tiny place after NYC, who knows?

Anyway, two weeks before we travelled to America, I was driving to Skegness with my partner and saw a sign to the hamlet of New York. I’d known about this place for ages but had never actually been. To be honest, there really isn’t that much there. It’s a hamlet. Hamlets are small. The antithesis of a metropolis. The two New Yorks couldn’t be any more different.

I bet you’ll never guess which New York I’m filming in here.

Anyway, as we knew we were visiting the Big Apple soon, we thought it appropriate to visit the Small Apple too, so on the way back we stopped off there to have a look, for curiosity’s sake. Whilst we were there we also shot a little video, a guide to the sites and sounds of New York, which I intended to resume a couple of weeks later… The results of this video can be seen below. We shot this on the fly, so the sound isn’t great, unfortunately. And I rather did feel a tad self conscious talking all this Lincolnshire-related nonsense while I was over in the big city! But I hope you still enjoy it. It sure was fun to make!

It’s all change here now at www.richarddutton.co.uk and I hope you enjoy the new website.

You’ll find information about my films and books and other creative projects, as well as random updates and blogs, so stay tuned and something might happen here, hopefully more so than it did at the last place!

P.S. “stranger in the shadows” refers to the film I made, Shadows of a Stranger, not that I’m a creepo stalker… or am I? No, no, it’s okay. I’m really reasonably normal. Trust me.