Dan Soule

Dan Soule crafts immersive narratives that blend dark fantasy with horror elements, creating richly atmospheric worlds where myth and reality intertwine. Born and raised in Nottinghamshire, England (a landscape that prominently features in his storytelling), Dan now lives on the Antrim Coast in Northern Ireland with his wife and two children.

Where are you and what can you see through the nearest window?

Rain. The farm across the road. Fields of said farm. Larne Lough beyond that.

You live on the coast of Northern Ireland. Does the proximity of the ocean influence what and how you write?

Not in any direct way. I wasn’t born and raised here, so I find it isn’t part of my imaginative landscape the way small-town rural England is. Still, my latest novel, Across the Dunes is set in a seaside town, but it is an English town, and the idea was born on a holiday on the Suffolk coast.

Your books sit comfortably on the horror/supernatural shelves. What's your attraction to this type of writing over others? Are there things you can do or explore in the genre that you can't do in others?

I always say that horror found me. I’d love to write in other genres more, because I think they’d be more lucrative. In our current climate, horror is rather the leper of the genre fiction world. As for the attraction, I’m sure I could rationalise it around the flexibility of the genre or how it is most at home with metaphor and allegory. But in truth, I just want to write fantastic tales in all senses of that polysemous word. Two things I hate about certain popular writing trends in horror are metafiction and unreliable narrators. Personally, I think there is nothing more philosophically trite as a story that plays with “textuality”. It’s intellectually vapid navel gazing. Similarly, unreliable narrators can be great, but I think it is a trope that has worn so thin you can see the author’s giggle bits. One particular critically acclaimed book last year innovated by having two unreliable narrators. It didn’t pull it off. I think this fetish is because after the hollowing out of horror from the big traditional publishers in the mid-90s, which seemed to only leave King and Koontz standing, horror authors started to think they were literary authors. Certainly, the sales reflect that. But what this really means is that too many authors play with the unreliable narrator because it means their books can be classed as thrillers, because the supernatural angle can be put down to protagonist psychosis.

I believe horror’s true heart lies in pulp fiction. This doesn’t mean the writing has to be bad, nor that there can’t be levels of meaning to the story. But the author should bloody well have a great plot populated by interesting characters exploring a story world full of imagination.

You're also a prolific writer of short stories. Do you prefer this medium to long-form novels?

I started off writing a lot of short stories because, like a lot of us, I read Stephen King’s On Writing and he recommended it as a way to learn your craft. So that’s what I did. It allowed me to explore lots of different types of stories in different genres and find my voice. It’s also a good lead into publishing. You can send out lots of manuscripts and get used to rejection, as well as get paid sometimes.

I haven’t written any short stories for a few years now. I keep meaning to go back because they are fun and don’t take very long. However, most of my ideas seem too big to be contained in five thousand words or under. I like to do expansive world-building and explore character, so that usually takes a bit of space. I also like scene weaves and using that thriller technique of ending a chapter for plot line A on a cliff-hanger, then switching to plot line B to do the same and then switching to plot line C before returning to A and repeating. That way, the tapestry of the narrative becomes rich and propulsive at the same time.

Much of your writing deals with folklore, and there have been several recent movies (Alex Garland's Men, for example) rooted in the same subject. Why do you think we have such an obsession with ancient myths seeping into the present?

Anthropological evidence reveals shared mythological motifs across seemingly disconnected cultures, with the story of a she-bear fleeing hunters and becoming a constellation appearing remarkably consistently among Greeks, Siberian natives, and North American Indigenous peoples. These parallel narratives feature nearly identical core elements—a maternal bear escaping danger, leaping skyward, and transforming into stars (usually Ursa Major)—despite these cultures having no known contact for millennia. Such widespread storytelling similarities suggest our ancestors shared foundational narratives long before recorded history, with these ancient tales surviving through oral tradition across continents despite geographical isolation. Like the globally prevalent flood myths, the celestial bear story demonstrates how humanity’s earliest stories travelled with our ancestors as they migrated across the planet, persisting in our collective consciousness for thousands of years.

But actually, it is more than this. Stories were our first stores of cultural memory, millennia before the invention of writing. They were the original memory palaces, layering important information, everything from religious beliefs, ideas of shared origins and identity, through to an ability to navigate and track the passing of the seasons. The latter would have been important for nomadic hunter-gatherers and early farmers alike.

Over such long spans of time, we can imagine a kind of natural selection for the most memorable and useful stories.

If you were asked to do a straight-up story (no ghosts, witches, or robots), what do you think you'd write about?

I’ve a few working ideas along these lines. One is a monster horror, but with jellyfish set in Cornwall against the backdrop of a hot summer for holiday makers and a fishing family facing losing their business and the father agreeing to help drug smugglers, but of course everything goes wrong.

And there is a big page-turning thriller I have in mind based around a natural disaster in the UK, told in real time as the disaster unfolds.

I’m never short of ideas, but always short of time to write them. 

Fear is a powerful emotion. What scares you?

Nothing much for me personally. My genuine concern would be something happening that leaves my wife and kids worse off. That inevitably bleeds into my writing. Despite current horror trends pointing elsewhere, I find myself repeatedly drawn to family narratives—mother-child dynamics, father-child relationships, generational burdens. I don't see this as fear-driven so much as acknowledging that families are the crucible where life's most significant moments—good and bad—unfold. These themes feel universal, which is why I'm passionate about horror reclaiming its mass appeal.

As for other fears? My philosophy is straightforward: fuck it! Life demands living. You probably get one shot at this simulation, so you might as well try to play the game of life as well as you can.

Alright, one confession—sharks. They can absolutely piss off. But that's entirely rational. They are, without question, actual monsters.

I have an ongoing obsession with a short story called Mute by Gene Wolf. I am certain that I will wake up screaming one night having finally realised what it's about. Has any book or story stayed with you like this?

Probably Pet Semetary by Stephen King. My kids were younger when I read it, and given the subject matter, it chilled me like no other book.

Where did the idea for Witchopper come from?

I grew up in a cathedral town with carvings of the green man everywhere and a stone’s through from Sherwood Forest. That, combined with the myriad local legends of grey and white ladies. These are always rather sad tales of put-upon women. I had a sort of what-if idea. What if one of these women came back as a vengeful spirit? And following that train of thought, what would have to happen to someone to turn them from a beautiful soul into said vengeful spirit? All this, and I wanted to write a small-town story, and I wanted an excuse to return, at least in my head, to where I grew up.

My ideas form at odd moments, often in the dark. What keeps you awake at night?

My bladder😊. No cups of tea allowed after 8 pm when you’re forty-six and your wife is a light sleeper.

Do you write every day? When's your favourite time to write?

Yep. I think I’d pick the morning if I had a choice. But I don’t, so I write whenever I can. It’s about fitting it in around work and family.

Like me, many of your books are self-published. How have you found the journey so far?

It’s a mixed bag. I’ve had some nice successes. Checking my Amazon author dashboard, I can see I’ve sold over 45,000 copies of my five self-published novels and they have over 1.5 million Kindle page reads. Which, I suppose, sounds kind of good. Not that it’s made me any money. I think maybe I’ve broken even. I haven’t cracked that nut, working out how to scale my sales.

Currently, I’m trying to sell direct to readers, which is an exciting thing to do through technology like PayHip or Shopify. I love that I can now sell my ebooks and paperback straight to readers and cut out middlemen and the pound of flesh they take. The only issue is that I still have to get people to find my store. But I’m patient.

I have one book with a good small press, but mostly I’m an indie, and generally I think that means you carry around something like a bad smell or a leper bell. I know I outsell some ‘critically acclaimed’ authors, but getting through the podcasting, social media gatekeepers is still very difficult. This sounds like a bit of a whine, and I suppose it is, but you asked – lol. But I don’t think most readers care. The problem is getting readers to buy our books. With all the competition out there, I’m always surprised when someone does. And grateful too.

Seriously, though, the business side of being an indie is not always the thing that authors thrive on. Lots of traditionally published authors look down on indie – Bill Bryson would be a recent example. But I don’t see traditional authors paying for all their editing, and cover design, and advertising. I’ve never signed away almost all of my royalties for the rest of my life plus 75 years. If someone offered me a big enough check, I sure would, though. My point is that a traditionally published author has very little power in their business relationships. In fact, I don’t see many of them running themselves like a business at all. People have a bit of a rose-tinted view of publishing, like it’s this beautiful endeavour with a higher purpose. When the truth is, and you’d know this better than most, it’s brutal and cutthroat, and kind of psychopathic that it’s done with a smile and a façade of moral rectitude.

Where does that leave us? Publishing, however you do it, seems to be a tough business that sits in contrast to the magic of creating the stories. But all magic has a price, which is as it should be. I figure, if I want to be an author (not just a writer of stories but someone who publishes them), then the graft of marketing myself and my books is the price that must be paid.

Do you query agents as well? If so, how have you found this?

Yes, I spent last year querying agents for my new novel Across the Dunes. The most I got was an automated reply.

I’m releasing the novel independently on 23^rd April. So, I guess querying agents could have gone better. But given the above, I figure it’s their loss.

What are you writing at the moment?

I’ve just finished a short werewolf-cum-Russian-mafia novel called Wolf’s Bane, and I’m returning to another manuscript that’s 95% finished called House of Teeth. It’s a British police procedural murder mystery, with a touch of the supernatural, enough to make the lead detective an unreliable narrator. I plan to query agents with this one.

You teach research writing to PhD students and university researchers. Have you found that you’ve developed a cluster of advice nuggets which have stood the test of time?

Yes, quite a few. Here are a few of them:

Writing is as much about what you leave out as what you put in.

Most writers are in love with the idea of being a writer rather than writing itself. These types of writers don’t write very much or very well.

Writing isn’t supposed to be easy, so learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable.

No one wants to read your shit. (I got this one from Steven Pressfield).

Be a professional. (see ‘No one wants to read your shit.’)

Amateurs have amateur habits. Professionals develop systems and processes. But more importantly, they think of themselves as professionals and act accordingly.

Write for you the reader, not for you the writer. Impress yourself.

Write for busy readers. Don’t waste people’s time (see ‘No one wants to read your shit.’)

No one cares about your work in progress, and nor should they until it is finished.

Don’t wait for the perfect writing environment. It’s just an excuse not to write.

Don’t wait for the mood to strike you. It’s just an excuse not to write.

Your job is not to write a book. Your job is to build a book-writing workshop, the outputs of which happen to be brilliant stories. (see ‘Professionals develop systems and processes…’)

I have some more. But you get the idea.

I believe anyone who continues to create, regardless of the outcome, can call themselves a successful artist. What's your measure of success?

Money, baby! Only joking, though it would be nice, wouldn’t it? See the above writing advice: “Your job is not to write a book. Your job is to build a book writing workshop, the outputs of which happen to be brilliant stories.”

Any tips for budding authors?

See the above advice, plus:

Priests didn’t build cathedrals. They were built with the brawn of artisans who toiled in all weathers. As a writer, be the latter. Take a blue-collar approach to writing instead of gazing forever into the eternal wonder of your belly button fluff and espousing its great depth.

Finally, what are you currently a) reading, b) listening to, c) watching?

Actually, I’m just finishing off The End of the World Survivor’s Club by some hack called Adrian J Walker. Only joking. It’s great. It’s the last of your books I haven’t read. I’m also listening to Fahrenheit 451. I love Ray Bradbury and return to him often for lessons in how to be a better writer of prose. And I’m on the final season of rewatching Star Trek Voyager.

Thanks, Dan

Dan's novels include Neolithica, Witchopper, The Ash, Savage, and The Jam, as well as over 30 short stories published in various magazines and anthologies. He has also published a collection of scary stories for children, The Spooks. See http://payhip.com/dansoulebooks for more details.