The Journey to Silhouettes: What it is and why I wrote it now

Dale Hurst

A stack of six books with the title SILHOUETTES in the centre of the front cover and down the spine, sitting on a glass coffee table.

It took a bit longer than planned, but I finally released my first-ever anthology. Silhouettes, a collection of short stories and poems, hit the electronic shelves on Sunday 16 November. A learning curve in many respects; not least from publishing with IngramSpark for the first time. But, among the questions coming from my modest circle of regular readers, one keeps cropping up. Why did you write it now?

I’ve been working on my third historical novel, a thriller set in a Berlin hotel during World War II, even while studying MA Creative Writing and Publishing at Bournemouth University. So, it confused, even frustrated several readers when I chose to lay that novel aside in favour of a short story collection called Silhouettes. For the following reasons:

1) It has been AGES since I last released something

I published my last novel, The Berylford Scandals: Sin & Secrecy, back in 2020. So I’ve gone nearly five years without anything brand-new to shout about. Five years without a new product, if we’re to adopt the all-important business mindset. From a marketing perspective, that’s far too long to go without advancing the narrative, without giving your customers something new to talk about.

Meanwhile, I had all these short stories and poems lying around, without much success in competitions. That is, apart from fan favourite and Bournemouth Writing Prize longlistee Sunday on the Boulevard (with my pet lobster). So I thought, why not pull them together, add a few new pieces in there to flesh it out, and release it as a collection?

2) My mental health

Without going into too much detail, my mental health took a massive dive last year, during which I was meant to redraft, polish and prepare the World War II novel for querying with agents. This did not happen. So with the novel going nowhere fast, and again, considering I hadn’t published anything in years, I needed to change tack. Work on something different. The idea for Silhouettes arose. I could write fresh stories. Explore new styles, genres and voices. It ticked all the right boxes, and it was the change I needed. While Silhouettes was with the beta readers, I felt able to pick the novel up and completed a full redraft earlier this year.

What is Silhouettes?

The collection comprises nine short stories of varying length and genre, from literary pieces to gothic horror, domestic saga and psychological drama. In addition, 14 poems, again on a range of themes: surrealist ones following animals to emotive ones dealing with painful subjects. The plan was to have something for everyone in the anthology, rather than serve one demographic in particular.

So, Silhouettes is now available in print, either from IngramSpark, Amazon, or from my own website (dale-hurst.com). However, Kindle and audiobook editions are also in the works — more information on that in due course!