Two conversations about serial fiction

And a preview of my next big serial

We’re all deluged beneath an infinite amount of stuff, so I try not to bombard inboxes more than twice a week. This writing newsletter on a Monday, fiction on a Friday.

Today’s post is therefore a round-up of fun things that have happened on other days which you may have missed, because I don’t always send out a new post each time.

First up, Orna Ross 📚 invited me to have a chat about serial fiction. You can listen to the replay here:

You may well have heard of Orna due to her work with the Alliance of Independent Authors, which she founded in 2012. While Orna is new to Substack and serial fiction, she clearly knows her way around writing books — her questions were very on point, which makes the recording a concentrated hour of craft tips.

Next up, I had a long overdue chat with Eleanor Anstruther, which you can watch here:

Got to love that auto-generated thumbnail. Thanks Substack.

We’d been planning to have this conversation more than a year ago, when we were both on the final approach with our books. Turns out that Tales from the Triverse took me another year to wrap up, and Eleanor’s Fallout then went on an exciting journey from serialisation to traditional publication with Empress Editions.

Fallout is about the Greenham Common protests (among other things), which I distinctly remember driving past as a five year old and being very confused about what was going on. Because life is weird and full of synchronicities, I was playing Broken Sword last week, having just spoken to Eleanor, and encountered this line:

What are the chances of my playing that game for the first time, and reaching that line of dialogue, in the exact week that I was talking to an author who has just published a book about Greenham Common?

Coming up this week:

As a heads-up, this Wednesday I’m talking with S.E. Reid in the first part of a mini-series all about serial fiction. You can add it to your calendar here.

It’s going to be a lot of fun, not least because every interview or chat I’ve had about serial fiction tends to end up being a bit rushed: we either end up skimming the highlights, or the episode would have to be five hours long.

The intention with Sally is that we can have some breathing space and take our time. This first session will be talking about the concept of serial fiction: where did it come from, what are its historical moments, and what does form does it take in 2026? Don’t be surprised if Charles Dickens, comics, radio, TV and more are mentioned.

Subsequently, we’ll then be digging into the craft and going step-by-step from idea to finding an audience.

---

Meanwhile.

Part of the reason for today’s post being a round-up is that I’m gearing up to start a new serial! It’s taking up quite a bit of my time.

This will go out on Fridays, one chapter per week. Long-term readers might remember The Mechanical Crown from my old Wattpad days. This is going to be a reforged edition, improved and updated (possibly expanded) for 2026 and beyond. Exactly what that ends up meaning we will find out as the project unfolds.

As a result, this is the first time I’m going to be serialising a project where I have already completed the manuscript. Even with my intention to make changes and improvements, it’s a very different process to my usual technique of writing and publishing as I go.

The Mechanical Crown is a very different beast to Tales from the Triverse. It’s firmly in the fantasy genre, rather than being sort of crouched across the entirety of speculative fiction. It operates in a sort of low-fantasy setting, with lots of politics and intrigue.

A lost explorer. A child slave. A princess.

An ancient shame that must remain secret.

A society on the edge of collapse.

The Mechanical Crown: Reforged

Coming soon (woo)

More on that soon. Hopefully I’ll have a cover to share in not too long.

Right, have good weeks and hopefully see some of you for the live chat on Wednesday.