There is a hashtag called #werewolfwednesday, and on social media some of us have tried to leverage that to find readers. Well, you also find other authors who revel in the more furry, fangy (?) monsters. One such is Simon Steele and the first novel in a planned saga, Wolfblight.
Simon, what’s your deal?
My name is Simon and I have been a writer and author for five years. I have always enjoyed writing, even when I was a child. When I was eleven, I wrote a two page horror story for a compilation novel, the Young Writers of Wales 2003. One of the reasons I write is that it helps me to relax and is a great way to escape from the pressures of life. As someone who is neurodivergent, I find writing has a positive effect on my mental health.
Tell us about Wolfblight. It’s certainly more traditional than Johnny Lycan.
My book is named Wolfblight, it is an adult horror novel with a dark fantasy twist. It is the first of a six book series known as the Wolfblight Saga, of which four have been released. The story is about a young woman named Ulva who lives in Norway during the time of the Vikings. Whilst grieving the loss of her unborn daughter, she is thrown into tragic and extraordinary circumstances one night when she is bitten by a werewolf. Unlike the classic werewolf lore, Ulva is unaffected by the full moon and instead turns into a monster every night when the sun goes down, only to turn back to normal come sunrise. The affliction is meant to worsen as time goes on, with the ultimate fate being permanent transformation.
The story of Wolfblight involves Ulva going on a journey to find a cure for her affliction, which involves finding an artifact known as Fenrir’s Bane. She is joined on her quest by her husband John, her brother Einar and her friends Brenna and Kit. Brenna is a lycanthropist who studies werewolves whilst Kit is one herself, albeit she can control her turnings since she was born with lycanthropy. The villains of the story are the Cult of Fenris, an evil wolf-worshipping cult who want to destroy Fenrir’s Bane and plunge the land into darkness and chaos. They are led by Fenrir, the wolf from Norse mythology who created the affliction now plaguing Ulva, which is known as the Wolfblight, hence the title of the book and series.
What inspired the story? Where’d it come from?
The story has roots heavily inspired by Norse mythology. I not only wanted to incorporate such a mythology into my work, but I wanted to give readers something fresh to read since a lot of current werewolf fiction tends to be set in either in the present day or the last 250 years. I wrote Wolfblight because I was unsatisfied with the current state of werewolf/lycanthropic fiction. There are many great books out there involving werewolves to be sure. But as amazing as these works were, they left me wanting more and so I decided to write my own werewolf novel, one that would contain everything I could ever want in such a book.
I always like to know who inspired you. Who do you read?
There are many great authors out there that I enjoy, from G.R.R Martin and J.R.R Tolkien to Roald Dahl and R.L Stine. I read copious amounts of their work when I was younger. In terms of werewolf books, I have read many fantastic works, including Kelley Armstrong’s Bitten, Dylan Altoft’s Beast Born, Stephen King’s Silver Bullet, W.A Edward’s Hunter’s Fated Wait, Kat Kinney’s Dyrwolf, M.L White’s Shifter Awakened, Adrian Lopez’s Lycaon Bloodlines, Mark Runte’s Eve and Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber. Each of these authors gave their own unique spin on the werewolf mythos in the same way that I gave my own unique spin in Wolfblight and I am delighted to be counted amongst them.
Where can we learn more?
Wolfblight and its sequels are available on Amazon in three forms, paperback, hardcover and Amazon Kindle. There are plans in the future to adapt the Wolfblight Saga into audiobooks, but I am unsure of when that will be. As an author, I am on Twitter, Instagram and Goodreads under the name Simon Steele. I currently do not have an author website, though I have plans to eventually create one. In terms of future writing plans, the series is in the midst of having their covers redesigned by the talented Stardust Book Services and there are two books left to write, which hopefully will be available in 2025/2026.
If you hate starting series that aren’t complete, consider starting the Johnny Lycan: Werewolf PI series. The grand finale, Johnny Lycan & the Last Witchfinder is available now on Amazon and from Black Rose Writing.
“I’ve been a fan of this series since the beginning, and while I’m slightly devastated that this is the end of it, I LOVED The Last Witchfinder.” S G Tasz
This final installment in Johnny’s saga is perhaps the weirdest, most baffling of all… Author Jill Hand