About Simon
Hello — I'm Simon Rudd, a writer and painter from Portsmouth, on the south coast of England.
I write the kind of stories I like to disappear into: cosy mysteries, gentle gothic fantasy, and quiet science fiction where the stakes are human-sized and the settings feel like places you could live. If a book can have a lamplit window, a harbour at dusk, or a shop that's slightly stranger than it first appears, I'll probably find a way to put one in.
The Books
My catalogue wanders across a few shelves, but they all share the same heart — warmth, mystery, and a touch of the uncanny:
The Blackwater Quay Mysteries — cosy crime in a Cornish harbour town, where secrets wash in with the tide.
The Orrowmere Stories — a seven-book cycle of literary cosy gothic fantasy, for readers who like their magic melancholy and their villages just a little haunted.
Amethyst Eyes & Velvet Paws — a cosy vampire fantasy series. Yes, cosy vampires. It works, I promise.
A Manual for Accidental Gardens — cosy science fiction about growing things in unlikely places.
Gothic standalones — including The Antique Mourning Shop, Sea Glass Girls, The Night Gardener of St. Edda, and The Archivist of the Abyss, for when you want something darker but still humane.
You'll find my books on Amazon in Kindle with most available to read free in Kindle Unlimited.
more of my books can be found here
The Paintings
When I'm not writing, I paint. My work covers a range of styles and subjects — seascapes, abstracts, and the same cosy-gothic moods that run through my fiction. Prints of my paintings are available in a range of sizes through my eBay shop, PaintingsBySimon, where there's usually a Buy 3 Get 3 Free offer running.
The two halves feed each other: the paintings often start as scenes I couldn't fit into a book, and more than one story has begun as a picture I couldn't stop thinking about.
Say Hello
If you've read one of my books, thank you — genuinely. Reviews mean the world to independent authors, and even a sentence or two on Amazon helps new readers find their way to these stories.
Happy reading, Simon