This, That and The Other : The Web Novel : IMPORTANT Announcement

If you are already a free subscriber on Substack, thank you for showing your support!

Allow me to apologise for my lack of finesse with that platform. I’ll try to explain where I am and what to expect going forward on Substack – and it would be wonderful if you choose to come along for the ride. The writer’s journey can be a lonely one, but it doesn’t have to be. Nowadays, with interactive platforms, the readers can play a more active role with comments and questions. I’d love to be part of something like that! 

This, That, and The Other is my epic Web Novel currently publishing on Substack with a new chapter every fortnight. This is where my heart lies, what I’m enthused by the most, and what will become part of any meaningful literary legacy I create. My fantasy fiction is what I consider to be my ‘serious writing’, with considered narrative structures, character development propelled by the dynamics of their experiences, carefully planned pacing, meticulous research and attention to the craft. This is where you may see evidence of my MA in Creative Writing, though I really hope not as any ‘technique’ should be subtle enough to remain invisible.

On the other hand, I write articles about art, film and folklore which I publish on Medium. So if that’s the content you’re enjoying here, please consider subscribing to Medium where I will continue to add to the 600 or so articles I have already published there. Most of what I write is historical and contextual critique that has a long shelf life and often gains relevance with age. With a Medium membership, you don’t just get my writings but also have access to all the other content hosted on that proudly egalitarian platform. 

Read Remy on Medium

On Substack, I will wind-down publishing much else except my ongoing Web Novels, which have been written with constant guidance from my creative consultant and first reader, Zel Cariad. The overall arc is planned as a nine volume work and ‘book one’ is already nearing its cliff-hanger climax. This first part will remain free to read for those who have yet to discover and join the magical adventures of Rietta and Carla. 

Paid subscriptions will be switched on this Summer Solstice and chapters publishing afterward will be paywalled. I have made this decision because the story has value, in both entertainment and cultural terms, and I believe it worthy of support to ensure its continuance. I will also be adding special content for subscribers, delving into the historical, geographical, and folkloric origins behind the story, and profits from subscriptions will go into funding this new bonus content.

If you are a free subscriber on 21st June 2026 you will be offered a very special, significantly reduced subscription rate. If this is something you would like to take advantage of, please make sure you have subscribed to the correct Substack feed for This, That and The Other: 

HERE [https://threerealms.substack.com/]

So, again, thank you for your support so far. I sincerely hope you continue supporting and sharing the epic adventure of Rietta and Carla, after all, things are only just getting started and I know there’s plenty of excitement, beauty, surprises, peril and fun yet to come.

“You have more power than you know.”

Hope to be seeing you - on the flipside!

With kind regards and appreciation,

Remy Dean  

back covers of the (out of print) first editions in paperback, published by The Red Sparrow Press, with one of my character concept sketches on each showing (left-right) Scrufty, Jack, Smugly, Lucky.

This, That and The Other

A fantasy trilogy written by Remy Dean with Zel Cariad, This, That and the Other, is imaginative storytelling on an epic scale. The story follows the special friendship between two girls who embark on a magical adventure together, across the three realms. A modern fable inspired by fairy tales and folklore, in the tradition of The Neverending Story, The Box of Delights, The Chronicles of Narnia...

IMPORTANT: Please note that there has been no Gen-AI involvement whatsoever in the creative process and writing of these web novels.

“Highly readable... The characters are great and the sense of magic is very real.”
- Lu Hersey (author of Deep Water)

They say, “What you don’t know can’t hurt you,” right? Well, of course that’s not really true. They also say, “Knowledge is power.” Well that’s not always true either… because, somewhere between not knowing and knowing, there lies imagination. That’s the key… the key that unlocks secrets.

It did, once upon a time, and it still does today…

“This is a delight to read. A lovely depiction of friendship and of course there’s magic involved!”
- Kim Vertue (author of Welcome to the Dragon Café)

It began a long time ago, but for Rietta, it really began when she met Carla, another very special and extraordinary person, and realised that they shared the same dreams.

Or perhaps it all started when Rietta and Carla found the severely injured dog in the woods, becoming firm friends as they tried to nurse it back to health and happiness.

Then there was the thing that they glimpsed watching them from the shadows, and the mystery of the missing standing-stone… but when they find the key to another realm, well, then things really start happening!

“Imaginative Fantasy at its best... Wonderful work. Heartily recommended.”

- David Williams (author of the Ken Frane adventures)

This, That, and The Other by Remy Dean with Zel Cariad is published in the UK by The Red Sparrow Press which also manages global rights. All rights reserved.

Why subscribe on Substack?

Firstly, it is more important than ever to support independent creatives and your support will not only be hugely appreciated, but will send a clear message and go some way to help ensure human-driven creativity remains championed in literature.

Secondly, it is my intention to add notes about the folklore and local histories that had inspired and informed the writing of these novels. This bonus material will be added in the notes and comments sections and will only be available to paid subscribers.

Subscribe to get full access to the web novel as it publishes and publication archives.

P.S. Any illustrators or graphic novel creators interested in collaboration?
Please feel free to get in touch.

Inside the Cave of Wild Humphrey Kynaston

Shropshire Council's Great Outdoors website have kindly used my text about Wild Humphrey Kynaston in their new virtual walk-through of his cosy cave abode. Thank you, Folklore Thursday for first publishing my article titled, A Real Robin Hood: Tales of Wild Kynaston and his Satanic Steed, Beelzebub, in which I retell some of the surviving tales about the Shropshire outlaw and highwayman, whilst looking at the real historical backdrop to his life. 

Nesscliffe Hills and The Cliffe Countryside Heritage Site is steeped in 3,000 years of human history, an Iron Age hillfort, saw pits where trees were planked by hand on site, World War II trenches, squatters cottages, an observation post, a terrace where archery competitions were held two hundred years ago, and Kynaston's Cave - hideout of Wild Humphrey the Highwayman. A new online walkthrough takes you inside, accompanied by my text commentary...

 

You can make a virtual visit via this link - scroll down the informative article to find VR compatible, 360° walkthroughs of the Nesscliffe Hill Camp dig - conducted during the summer of 2021 by Southampton & Oxford University Archaeology Departments; and a look inside the small but, for the time, well-appointed hideout of Kynaston’s Cave - a Scheduled Monument, situated high up and cut into the vertical quarry face of distinctive red sandstone, accessible only by a long flight of treacherous steps that are not safe for public use! 

THIS is complete!

This Part Four : This Fair Land, Wherein Dreams and Magics Meet is now published and concludes Book One of This, That and The Other.

This parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 by Remy Dean with Zel Cariad

PART FOUR : THIS FAIR LAND, WHEREIN DREAMS & MAGICS MEET

Time is running out.

After their narrow escape from the besieged Citadel, Rietta and Carla must finally fulfill their promise to the Fair Ones. Using powerful magics stolen from the Elfyn empire, they seek to protect the Three Realms by reciting an ancient and dreadful spell...

They soon learn that things are not as they expected. As hopes of their safe return home are consumed in fire and darkness, the girls realise that there are dire consequences. Now, more than ever, they must rely on each other and the magical friends they have made on their journey.

But is everyone who they appear to be in the final, thrilling instalment of This?

This That and the Other is imaginative fantasy, on an epic scale. The story follows the special friendship between two girls who embark on a magical adventure together, across the three realms. It is a modern fable inspired by fairy tales and folklore whilst remaining relevant to today's most important issues, in the tradition of The Neverending Story, The Box of Delights, The Chronicles of Narnia…

All of This is now available in paperback and e-book formats published by

  The Red Sparrow Press 

readers who are new to This can join the adventures of Rietta and Carla below
🡇

Unus Multorum 2020 Online Festival

Plas Bodfa, based on the Isle of Anglesey, North Wales, is hosting a series of brave and exciting arts initiatives.

Last year, I was fortunate to be selected for the inaugural 'artists takeover' under the banner of Sui Generis - an ambitious project that brought more than 60 international artists together to respond to the location that has been many things including a family home, a steakhouse, a care home, a tapestry studio with visitor centre, and is now in transition once more into a family home with attached studios and arts centre!

Participants from across Europe, Australia and the Americas all contributed some amazingly varied work and Sui Generis was listed among the Top 10 art events in Wales for 2019.

My two, linked contributions were, In Lieu (of All We Are) - a text-based installation in one of the several bathrooms, and Corridraw: Escape Route, which featured large-scale gestural writing, drawn directly onto the walls of the passageways, and brought together concepts I have been exploring in the Writing to Escape and 360 series.

This year, artist-instigator-curator Julie Upmeyer decided to do something even bigger that would involve more than 100 creatives. This 2020 event was titled Unus Multorum and followed a similar, installation-driven format, whilst integrating the launch for 'Plas Bodfa Objects' - a selection of exclusive artists' multiples.

Due to the lock-down in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the way that the art was to be revealed to the public had to be re-imagined. So, instead of an 'open-house' approach scheduled for April-May, the exhibition has morphed into an extended global arts festival with a series of virtual events including regular uploads of online galleries that showcase the work already installed and some of the work-in-progress that was intended for inclusion. There is also a programme of monthly video live-steams, each linked by a broad theme and featuring some of the artists talking about their work.

Along with Fiona Davies (joining us from Australia), Sian Hughes and duo Stanley & Bould, I was a guest for the first live-stream in May, with the theme of 'House', and here I talk about my contributions to the Unus Multorum 2020 Festival which are Corridraw: Continuum - an extension to Escape Route already near-complete when lock-down was brought in for Wales, and the Plas Bodfa edition of 10 new Cicorcs - the lucky cork sea-dogs...


click to play (my section begins at 50 minutes in this recorded live video)

Unus Multorum 2020

monthly themes  

May 

House

June 

Exhibition

July 

Freedom

August

Sustenance

100 Film Reviews

Dario Argento's Inferno (1980) is forty years old and still seems fresh to me! So, I've written a retrospective review of what is one of my favourite horror films of all-time - which is only fitting to mark the 100th review I've penned for the online movie magazine, Frame Rated.

I can still clearly recall writing my first review for the (free to read) top-notch cinema and television review site... that was back in 2017 and it doesn't seem like nearly three years ago since I enjoyed a re-watch of John Woo's action movie game-changer, Face/Off (1997) ...fantastic fun watching Nicolas Cage and John Travolta trying to out-act each other!

I tend to write fairly in-depth, long-form reviews, usually around 2,000 words, though some are considerably longer... Which means they add up to over 200,000 words... That's equivalent to a few novel-length books! About three book's worth of writing in the time it's taken me to write... well, three books, as it happens!

(In case you didn't know - parts one, two and three of This are out now - scroll down previous posts ↓ to find out more and, during UK Schools Closure 2020, you can read part one as a Freebook on the Medium platform HERE.)

It's only when you look back on things as a writer, that you realise that every word set next to its neighbour to grow into a sentence that works with the next sentence to create mood, milieu or meaning, has almost alchemically combined to tell a story, to flow toward a conclusion, to build a body of work. Writing is certainly a kind of magic, a distillation of thoughts, memories and time...

So, perhaps, like me, you are in corona lockdown? Considering what movie to watch next? Have a scroll though my back-catalogue of film reviews at Frame Rated - there's a good range of classics, dating back to the 1920s, right up to current releases. If you love cinema, you may well enjoy them - I work quite hard at the research stage and endeavor to include info and observations you won't easily find elsewhere... Pretty much any genre you like will be at least touched upon - there are Westerns, Noir, War, Martial Arts, Mystery, Suspense, Action, Thriller, Comedy, Courtroom Drama, Historical Epic, Art-House, Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror!

... and then, check-out all the other great film writing at Frame Rated... which celebrates its 5th online anniversary this year, in June.

...and here's my 100th review:

Since his directorial debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), Dario Argento became known as a prominent proponent of the Italian giallo. Except for the historical satire, The Five Days (1973), his first five films and two television shorts all helped to define and consolidate this important new sub-genre. Their domestic box-office success earned him a degree of celebrity in his Italian homeland, where he also became known as a director who enjoyed challenging expectations and playing with established tropes—even those he’d established himself. But, it wasn’t until he broke away from giallo with his first full-blooded supernatural horror that he gained any substantial international traction.

On the strength of its Italian success, the US distribution rights for Suspiria (1977) were snapped-up by 20th Century Fox. They immediately ran into resistance from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), who refused it certification. It was unlike anything they’d seen before and the explicit, though artfully balletic, murder scenes were deemed gratuitously violent. Fox decided to distance themselves from it and resubmitted it through International Classics, their subsidiary company dealing with foreign and arthouse fare. After trimming eight-minutes of the more extreme gore, they were granted an R-rating and, although it wasn’t released until August, it ended up being Fox’s seventh highest-grossing release of 1977. Of course, their biggest movie that year was Star Wars!

...continue reading at Frame Rated


*  *  *

Incidentally, my latest long-read article for Folklore Thursday also published this week and you can read that HERE :

All the very best for 2020 !

UPDATE

This (part 3) is now available 

HERE - as an e-book

and as a paperback - HERE

2019 That Was...

...so, looking back on the year, it seemed a bit 'front-loaded', starting off with three major creative projects: YMYL-2-EDGE was already underway and bridged nicely from 2018 into 2019 with my mentoring of nine artist-makers as they innovated their practice by exploring cutting-edge tech at Pontio's fabLAB in Bangor, culminating in the exhibition and associated programme of events - you can remind yourself of all that entailed HERE...

Then there was the Lead Creative Schools Project at Rhos Street School, in Ruthin, which I helped to facilitate, mostly 'behind-the-scenes' this time as the Arts Council of Wales Creative Agent. I think it went really well and developed naturally from initial concept to final outcomes with the pupil group really taking ownership and steering it all to success with the expert guidance of our Creative Practitioner, Elfin Bow - if you want to see what I consider to be a great example of Creative Learning through the Arts watch the short video below, and if you want to know more about what the Lead Creative Schools initiative is achieving, then you can read all about it HERE...

Around the same time, I was also taking part in a major 'artists takeover' at Plas Bodfa (more on that HERE) and producing work for my solo exhibition INTER⁁VERBA as part of the BBC Get Creative Festival and incorporating a Pop-Up Museum with Storiel at Blaenau Ffestiniog Library and Oriel Maenofferen Gallery. Some of the work premiered as part of that exhibition is now featured in the selected archive of Art Projects HERE, or click on the thumbnails below for some examples...

 

The Red Sparrow Press published the first two parts of THIS in paperback and then the latter portions of the year were mostly consumed by writing and restructuring the 'final' installments (see top of this post). Illustrations for THIS were featured in the exhibition 'Folklore and Fairy Tales of North Wales' at Oriel Ty Meirion (see previous post HERE) and the books were a focus of several creative workshops and storytelling appearances at the wonderful RSPB Conwy... where there were badges!

...and talking of badges - I was chuffed to be recognised with a 'Top Writer in Art' virtual 'badge' for my work editing, and writing for, The Signifier, an arts publication for the Medium platform - you can check that out HERE 

Same Plas, Another Time...

The current exhibition in the Stable Block at Plas Tan y Bwlch, Maentwrog, includes a selection of my responses to the Creative Residencies I have undertaken there. More related works will be shown later this year, in a solo exhibition at the Canolfan Maenofferen Centre, in nearby Blaenau Ffestiniog.

Remy Dean talking about his art at Plas Tan y Bwlch, part of the Gwynedd Helfa Gelf 2017 Arts Festival 
(photographs © Kim Vertue)

You can read  more about these Residencies HERE