This years is a big one for me, because I’m finally going to complete Tales from the Triverse, the weekly serial that I’ve been publishing since September 2021.1
By far the largest project I’ve ever attempted, the story is now over 330,000 words and would be a chunky 1000 page+ novel if it were printed. To celebrate where I’ve got to and where I’m headed, I thought I’d go back to the beginning with a reading of the opening chapter.
If you’re intrigued and would like to read more, the whole thing is currently free and can be found here:
Tales from the Triverse story index
If you’re looking for my non-fiction writing guides, video tutorials and community discussions, you can find the most popular articles here!
I did this as a live stream last week for a select bunch of people who dropped by. A few bits I’ve noticed while doing these, which might be of use to anyone else thinking of trying live streaming:
You don’t need to do something fancy: you and your phone gets the job done.
I’m using Substack, which makes it all very easy. It’s currently extremely limited in terms of functionality, but it’s very simple to go live on your own or with other people. I fully expect rapid iteration on the live streaming functionality throughout 2025.
Don’t hold the camera in your hand. It’ll make your viewers sick.
Take the time to set up a decent camera angle. You don’t want to go too low, as you’ll end up with Nostrilcam. Too high and you get Foreheadcam, and end up looking tiny. I was quite happy with the framing I did for this one.
To get that framing I used a gorilla tripod, which can hold a phone and be attached to pretty much anything. I positioned a very low table on top of the dining room table, then attached the tripod to the each of the low table. That made it head-height, at whatever distance I wanted.
Watch out for unwanted background sounds, such as household appliances. A bit of ambience is fine, but you don’t want it distracting from what’s being said.
A live stream made using the Substack app is automatically recorded and prepped as a post (hence this post today). You can also put it out as a podcast and to your YouTube channel, in a couple of clicks. That’s a lot of useful material from a single live session.
Meanwhile.
Writing a weekly newsletter for three years results in a lot of stuff. It’s increasingly difficult to find articles that I’ve written, as the archive continues to expand.
As such, I’ve been doing a lot of behind-the-scenes restructuring and tagging, and it’s now a lot simpler to find things via the website. This is all made possible by the creation of curated packs, which I’m including here for convenience:
Some of these packs are also represented on the home page as featured blocks. If you’ve got a long-running newsletter I do recommend taking the time to package things up so that it makes more sense to new and old readers alike.
OK, thanks for reading and watching. See you all later in the week.
Yes, I’m aware that I’ve said things like this for the last two years. But this time it’s true! 🙄
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