Updates

Update: Preparation in the Moment

So, not much happened in the last two weeks. My intention was to see if I could do at least minimal writing and posting while away from home. I couldn’t. Popular wisdom says this is why you have to have a buffer of episodes written when you start posting a serial because readers respond well to regular scheduling. But I have found that popular wisdom only tracks not necessarily because it is wisdom but because it is popular. And popular means a belief held by many, not necessarily a correct belief. No, I don’t have evidence to the contrary. But […]

Run Toward Ruin YA serial novel cover
Run Toward Ruin, Serial Novels

About Kissing

Run Toward Ruin – Chapter 8 At breakfast, the questions pile up fast — why didn’t the old man see this coming? — but the answers are stranger than anyone expected. Some of them are vanishing. Not for long. Just long enough to land in their parents’ pasts, walk through moments they were never meant to see, and come back changed. One kiss that shouldn’t have happened. One warning nobody wants to hear. And a boy who has to decide how much to tell his grandfather — before the meeting starts without him, and before someone gets stuck somewhere they […]

Updates

Update: August Schedule

The August schedule of fiction posts will be less robust. I am travelling during August. I don’t travel much and normally work from home. This is already causing disruptions to my work schedule and with that my writing. New chapters of Run Toward Ruin will be published when they are completed. Completion will take longer because everything takes longer when you are on the move. I will still schedule them for Tuesdays or Thursdays. In the background I am also preparing a new cover design system (which is why my Simile Press site looks so bland), I am ramping up […]

Run Toward Ruin YA serial novel cover
Run Toward Ruin, Serial Novels

Drowned Omen

Run Toward Ruin – Chapter 7 When they debate the comet Darius half-remembers an old name. The debate is cut short when Cora vanishes, then reappears soaked and shaking, a drowned omen. 7. Drowned Omen Hass was back on his feet, arms crossed. “I’ve steered by the sky on three crossings, I know what moves up there and how fast, and that was something different.” A pause as the others nodded, listened. He had said it like somebody who’d actually been trusted with a wheel and a compass, which shut them up for a second. “So what was it, then?” […]

Updates

Update: Slow Momentum

The story of Darius and his woes carries on. But my first reader said things must start happening now. I hope it has now in Chapter 6. Chapter 7 will bring even more. But that is specifically what I am working on, to get my writing to turn over faster. I can meander a lot before I drop a bomb. I have a short story planned to upload in between my serial novel but the planning took up all my time. No, I lie, I did a ton of other things and did not get enough writing done this week. […]

Run Toward Ruin YA serial novel cover
Run Toward Ruin, Serial Novels

A Late Night Sky

Run To Ruin – Chapter 6 On a lantern-lit terrace above a still, black lake a boy who’s had enough. A shooting star that doesn’t fall.  One dinner, one old grudge, and a green light in the sky that changes everything. 6. A Late Night Sky There was a spot beside Sabina. He dropped into it and settled himself at the low table. She glanced at him—took in his face. “How bad was it?” she asked. He had hurried to get here and now he wasn’t so sure he wanted to be here anymore. Darius picked up some bread. “Father […]

Run Toward Ruin YA serial novel cover
Run Toward Ruin, Serial Novels

Before Dinner

 Run Toward Ruin – Chapter 5 As Darius wrestles his grandfather Oswin into his suit before dinner, Oswin’s son Neven presses him on contested accounts and a succession agreement bent past its limits, only to be cut down with contempt and thinly veiled threats. Darius glimpses the weight of what’s hidden in his grandfather’s briefcase. 5. Before Dinner Despite his earlier argument that he wouldn’t, Oswin had fallen asleep, clutching some papers to his chest. Darius sighed as he slowly worked the papers from his gnarled grip. They looked like letters marked with the Prince’s seal. They should have been […]

Updates

Update: Novel Serial launched

I have launched my first serial novel. The planning took almost two months. The first months to convince myself to give this a serious go. The second month to plan the first serial. The convincing myself part was to take it to Royal Road first. I have tried doing serials on just my own before and every time I petered out. This time I added the pressure of a real public commitment. I also mapped out forty chapters of a complete story arc, that would make a whole novel when done. I cannot yet commit to an ongoing serial. I […]

Run Toward Ruin YA serial novel cover
Run Toward Ruin, Serial Novels

In The Yard

Run Toward Ruin – Chapter 4 Duty calls, and it costs him. Darius just wants some time before he’s dragged back to mind his grandfather’s temper—but a truck in the wrong place in the yard and a servant with all the time in the world stand between him and the terrace lights. Rook won’t hurry, and he won’t stop talking, needling at the cracks in Darius’s carefully kept composure: his grandfather’s cruelty, his own uncertain place in the family, the truth he’s never said out loud. 4. In The Yard For the first time that day the drive happened in […]

Run Toward Ruin YA serial novel cover
Run Toward Ruin, Serial Novels

A Careful Catalogue

Run Toward Ruin – Chapter 3 Seventeen-year-old Darius is handed an impossible gift: the power to travel back in time and undo the injury that crippled his grandfather. It should have fixed everything. Instead, it breaks the present for everyone else. Still bound to the old man’s ruthless ambition, Darius must unravel a fractured timeline and a sinister plot—before the broken past hardens into a horrible present. 3. A Careful Catalogue Cora came inside with Flawia. Piers fell into step behind them. It might have been late afternoon, but it was hot and the forecourt was baking. And Oswin Pochron’s […]