The days are long, the years are short, and we must have something to do with the hours.

Reading

GOAL = 12 BIG books

2026 is the year of the big books, the stonkers, the doorstoppers, the weapons of the literature world. I have a big list of big books, some are entire series I am treating as a single book, to choose from and almost all of them I already own.

If you want to follow along, or just see what I am reading, you can follow me over at Goodreads and/or Storygraph.

First on the list is War and Peace, my first book of the year. I started it in 2023 but got sidetracked, this time it will be read in its entirety, I am already beyond page 500 of 964 and having a blast. It’s a period drama with wars interspersed. Think Downton Abbey but instead of focussing on one aristocratic family it’s several and with more politicking and grand strategy discussion about Europe and the ever present threat of Napoleon.

Next up are the Four Chinese Classics, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, Dream of Red Mansions, and Outlaws of the Marsh. Of these I have read RotK twice before, it is my favourite book, and made it about 1/3 through Journey to the West. I have not even cracked the spines on the other two. All of these books are over 2000 pages long and are the 4-volume Foreign Languages Press editions.

The Lord of the Rings, I have not read this much to my shame so I figure it is time to rectify that.

I recently set out on the journey of The Wheel of Time, made up of 14 chunky books, ranging from 700-1000 pages each. I do not believe I will finish the series in 2026, only because reading the same author/style/story can become tedious. I read the first book, The Eye of the World, many years ago and found it okay but after watching Daniel Greene’s summary dove into book 2, The Great Hunt, which I loved and plan on diving into The Dragon Reborn, book 3, right after War and Peace.

Other fiction on the list includes Count of Monte Cristo, Battlefield Earth, The Deed of Paksenarrion, Le Morte Darthur, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, and The Man Without Qualities. A noted series missing from this big book year is Malazan which I will get to at some point but not in 2026.

As for non-fiction I am looking at Toynbee’s A Study in History and Mankind and Mother Nature, Villages of Britain, Our Political Nature, and Carlyle’s The French Revolution.

This is more pages/words than I suspect I can read in a year but I want a selection and chose an arbitrary cut off of 600 pages. Anything over 600 pages is a big book but preferably a BIG book is 1000 pages or longer.

There are two categories of books that are not big but I will continue reading, first are books by independent authors, such as The Ghosts of Tieros Kol by , but I will limit to reading them between BIG books.

Are you an indie writer? Post a link to your book in the comments, either an Amazon link or right here on SubStack, and I will check it out, I may not have time to read them all but I will try.

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The second excluded category is my “China stack” which is a collection of books on Chinese history and thought that are serving as research and reference for a very long and intricate writing project that will likely take me many years to complete, some of these are BIG BOOKS in and of themselves but most are not.

What do you view as a BIG BOOK and do you have any suggestions for me?

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Writing

GOAL = Write Everyday

As I said in my 2025: The Year That Was essay I am now full time parenting my 1 year old daughter and as such writing time is far more limited than before which has led me to re-prioritise my projects and as a result the schedule for 2026 is much changed.

Twice weekly posting will no longer be the norm.

Short stories (One Shots) will be reduced from one a week to once a month (maybe two a month).

Novellas will be paused until Easter and I aim for one, maybe two in the year.

Instead of a word goal I will aim to write everyday, even if it is only 100 words, and post to SubStack Notes each day with what I have written. Alongside this I will make update posts about projects and how they are progressing, either on Notes or as a proper post depending on how much I have to share.

My main focus will be back to novels, i.e. long form, as it was before I had a SubStack, which will not be published until ready. How these will be published is in flux, either serialised or on Print-on-Demand through Amazon (or similar) or both, we shall see. I am focussing on the writing first.

The first of these long form projects, a stand-alone fantasy novel, is about one-quarter written (25’000~ words). This will be my primary focus for the first half of the year. More will be revealed later this year. I aim to write it this year and edit it next year, if my estimate of it totalling around 100’000 words is accurate.

The second long form project is what the China Stack is for, a Chinese-inspired epic fantasy, and while I have chapter-by-chapter plan for the first arc/novel of this multi arc story I have not settled on a writing style or the Points of View and in the last few months shifted some world building details around and emphasised previously background elements so that the current plan needs altering. I will continue to chip away at this one, slowly creating the world, populating it, fashioning the history, the philosophies, the fashions, and all the other gritty details because I want all of that to be integral to the story itself, because the world is a character too and from it the stories and characters emerge.

Short form projects, short stories and novellas, will be written alongside the long form. I should come up with a day-by-day schedule so nothing is neglected, whether I can stick to such organisation is, however, unlikely.

I currently have 2 short stories in progress, an entry into the Ever Present Chaos series, and a LitRPG experiment (a genre I have never read so it will be probably be quite amateurish, though the genre itself has only just entered secondary school).

Last year I wrote a few stories that I was attempting to sell/enter into anthologies, The End of Days was successful - Steelhearts An Anthology, BUY IT NOW! - the others were not and I need to consider sending them out again or simply publishing them here. All were fantasy, one sword and sorcery about secret cults and saving a princess (for hard coin, not love), the other low fantasy about mercenary politics, kidnapping, and the fineries of contracts.

Novella wise I have been writing a story following the droid Shogun’s attempt to escape the clutches of the Qing Corporation. For those not aware Shogun was a fan favourite from my 2024 novella HUNTED and I have long wanted to go back to that universe and him in particular. This story is at 7000+ words, without a plan, so I am not sure if it will reach novella length or not just yet but even still it will need to be split into parts before publishing.

As to non-fiction I have an essay discussing Short and Long Form Fiction, their value, purpose, and what I want out of them as a writer, and a Deep Dive on Under the Silver Lake looking at the various ways of interpreting the film, each more surreal than the last. There are other Deep Dives I have in mind, one on The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect, one on the contentious dichotomy in Dark Souls between the worldbuilding and story versus the gameplay, and an essay I have written three times in the past on Kreia from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II and what her philosophy is because her position within Star Wars is a critique of Star Wars, the Force specifically, and while a villain (sort-of) in-universe her philosophy beyond that is not villainous. To be honest if I ponder enough I find I have a lot of non-fiction topics to write about but they take a lot longer to craft than fiction does so I always put them off or work on them so slowly that I end up disliking what I have written and start again.

Looking through my SubStack drafts page I have odds and ends titled Is Darrow the Bad Guy?, this being an analysis of the main character from the Red Rising series; On Routine, which is an essay in the dreaded writing-about-writing category on the importance of training the muscle of writing as often and regular as possible rather than waiting for inspiration; Do Heroes Have to be Tragic?, a look at a long list of history’s most famous figures and how plenty died pretty young and whether that is a prerequisite for heroic status; and, finally, On the Nature of Chaotic Good, an essay detailing exactly what this alignment is and making the case it does, in fact, exist - this was originally in response to someone else’s essay, which I cannot find, claiming that chaotic good was impossible but this, in my view, is an issue of perspective.

To be honest the only essay from the drafts I am still interested in is, Is Darrow the Bad Guy? which would require a re-read of the 6 current Red Rising books, given book 7 should be either 2026 or 2027 then I will be doing this at some point “soon”.

Otherwise I would tackle two writing-about-writing, one on short and long fiction tackling the idea that a story is as long as it needs to be and assessing the purpose of the two forms. The other would be about worldbuilding and why I do a lot of it before writing a single word of a story, the longer the story the more world that needs to be built beforehand.

Do any of the draft essay titles perk your interest? Or is there something else you would like to see me write about?

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My history with essays is pathetic, something I wish to rectify as talking about the craft, while niche, seems popular on SubStack because a large portion of the audience are themselves writers and I never really get to talk craft with people I know in meatspace.

Conclusion

I am already thinking this is quite ambitious for my new daily life but I like trying to stretch myself to do ever so slightly too much as that pressure spurs me on. I also love writing and crafting worlds and stories so there are always more ideas than I could handle, another reason why I am going back to novels. I have had many ideas over the last 4 years, some that I’ve taken to chapter plans, but haven’t started or have and later abandoned but I may only be 33 but the years are quick (and the days are long) and if I don’t write these things now I never will. Better to start, or restart in my case, than leave it till some unspecified point in the future, i.e. they’ll never be written otherwise.

What are your plans, if any for 2026, either regards reading, writing, or something else entirely?

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Many thanks for reading! Make sure you’re subscribed to see how I do and to hold me to account when I fail.

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2025 was a long year, in a good way, and also the one with the most change so far in my life as my wife returned to work and I took over full-time parenting of our daughter (who is now almost 1 and a half years old). My time available to write has dropped dramatically and the energy, though not enthusiasm, to do so along with it but I have still been sitting down everyday to create even a little bit, Robin Hobb wrote her first published novels while raising four kids and working as a waitress so I really have no excuse.

This change will mean my publishing schedule and types of projects I choose to work on will change in 2026, precisely how it will change I will post about later in January.

(If you want to read what I planned for 2025 read this post.)

On with the year review:

Reading - 61/52

Achieved. Fairly straightforward success that includes some children’s books and picture books but only the ones I most enjoyed, a lot I did not bother to track on Goodreads.

My favourite books of the year were, in no particular order: The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin, Pallas by Lisa Kuznak, Within my Branches by Nicholas Michel, The Search for the Giant Arctic Jellyfish by Chloe Savage, The English Resistance: The Underground War Against the Normans by Peter Rex, The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect by Roger Williams, The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki, The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan, and The Burnout Society by Han Byung-Chul.

Disappointments of the year were: Butter by Yuzuki Asako, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe, by Niall Ferguson, 2020 by Kenneth Steven, and Hearthspace by Stephen Baxter.

Short Stories - 35/52

Missed the goal, though it was going very well until the late summer when my writing time was radically reduced. I utilised a ton of prompts throughout the year and some pushed my writing into new areas or styles which was my hope. I will continue to write short stories but at a much reduced rate due to both time constraints and a general myopic feeling about the format, I should probably write something about this at later stage but anyway here are the most popular short stories from the year.

First is; Arrival at Proxima b -https://reddoscarwrites.substack.com/p/arrival-at-proxima-b -, which was expanded into the novella Atlanteans of Proxima b, and the second is; The Pain of Home - https://reddoscarwrites.substack.com/p/the-pain-of-home - which was about an adventurer returning home and having to deal with family and friends he had left behind.

Novellas - 3/4

The last three chapters of Famfrit’s Jewel were published in January and the novella was followed by The Atlanteans of Proxima b. I was pleased with both but know that with The Atlanteans could have explored much more cultural, technological differences, and religious elements regarding the clash of Hellenic religion with no knowledge of Christianity and the Christian faith becoming multi-planetary but such things would required a novel length story. The style, diary entries, was also quite limiting towards the end as everything had to be written after the fact while also having to make reasons for the character writing to have access to the writing tool. This meant the story was almost entirely told and not shown, which I don’t think made that big a difference in the end, and that some events happened near the end that I found a little implausible given the severity of the situation but it had to be done.

The Mage Hunter went on for almost double the chapters that were intended but I am glad I took the time to expand the original idea while also maintaining plenty of room for further stories (before and after) and innovative uses of the magic system.

So while I missed the goal of 4 novellas I think with The Mage Hunter becoming a 45’000-ish word short novel there isn’t anything to be disappointed about.

Word Goal - 242’704/520’000

I wrote almost everyday of the year (I missed a handful of days over Christmas, though not Christmas Day itself), something I have never managed before, and wrote the most words ever in a year since I started writing fiction in 2017, so while half-a-million words was critically missed the whole endeavour was a success in my mind, but why? Well the goal was a small motivator compared to the rash decision I made in early/mid January to post a Note to SubStack every day recording how much I had written. That requirement of myself made me write at least 100 words a day but often far more. Certainly something I recommend other writers do if they want to increase their output or merely practice writing regularly.

While I did falter in the latter half of December due to sheer busy-ness I do intend to return to the method of posting about how much I am writing each day but also sharing more information on what project and other updates. I have taken a short break from writing fiction while I compose this essay and the Year Ahead essay as well as proofread a friend’s PhD thesis. I suspect I will return to writing fiction in the second half of January.

Essays - 1/?

I think I penned a number of essays but only published one of them, about esoteric ideas and detailing some conspiracy theories - https://reddoscarwrites.substack.com/p/a-collection-of-esoteric-ideas?utm_source=publication-search -, a fun essay to research and write though a little light in the end and it didn’t seem to be well received, which is understandable as it had very little to do with fiction writing. It’s been almost a decade since I was at university and my ability to write non-fiction essays has certainly diminished in that time from lack of practice, whether I have time to do something about this in the near future is uncertain but I would like to do more analysis essays of books/films/games, a Deep Dive on top of the monthly reading reviews is likely the way to go and only about media I am enthusiastic about.

Overall the year was a good one and while creative endeavours have taken a bit of a backseat I still intend to chip away at them. See you in the Year That Will Be post in the coming days.

Many thanks for reading.

See that “mountain”? It’s an ancient tree that has petrified over the eons. There are many around the world often called, mesas, buttes, plateaus, and table top “mountains” but really they are trees, ancient trees as tall and expansive as Yggdrasil or the Erdtree. Now you might wonder how a tree gets that wide when the atmosphere is 62 miles thick and the bit that keeps the plants and animals going is merely 11 miles thick. Well some rough calculations, by me, would have Devil’s Tower, pictured above, standing at over 4 miles high if it grew similar to General Sherman (the tree, not the man), meaning plenty of troposphere to breathe.

The question then is who cut them down or what brought them all down? Perhaps it was a race of giants, far larger than the giants I will tell you about later, or maybe apocalyptic storms lay waste to these archtrees. Either way giant trees have featured in myths and fantasy for as long as humanity as been around and this conspiracy is no different. The yearning for incomprehensible size and wonder is ever present.

Giants and their Swords

That’s a big sword and there are a number like it found all over the world. They’re too big for a normal human to wield and would take incredible skill to smith. Some are called bearing swords, like this Scottish claymore which I have seen in real life but erroneously don’t have a picture of so here’s Wikipedia’s poor offering:

Bearing swords were, apparently, for decoration and showing off wealth and power but that might just be post-giant cope. I mean what else are we mere human’s meant to do with giant swords except show them off and brag about them, perhaps with an exaggerated tale about how they slew a giant for it. Given no giant bones have been found (that we know of) they must have had a different internal structure, like bones of solid oak or stone or something.

These humongous weapons pop up everywhere, these three are in Istanbul.

Another one was found in Japan in 2024, on top of a 1600 year old burial mound no less.

As it is so recent there are no good images of it, yet, but it is called a dako, or demon-slaying sword, and is supposed to protect the deceased from demons in the afterlife. But we all really know that they are hiding the giant bones they found in the accompanying tomb, or destroying them to keep us from the truth.

Or maybe ancient warriors were all Cloud Strife and Sephiroth.

Civilisations Before Our Current One

There are two parts to this one, the first is the not-a-conspiracy-but-genuine-thought-experiment part called the Silurian hypothesis which argues that there has been enough energy on Earth to power an advanced civilisation for hundreds of millions of years. Due to the rarity of fossilisation and the fact that there would be almost no archaeological evidence due to the time scale involved it is pretty much impossible to know if there were advanced civilisations before humans on Earth. The most likely evidence would be found in climate data and if we ever found unexplained nuclear waste. You can read the original paper here.

The second part is the idea that humans have achieved advanced civilisation before because a prerequisite is increased average temperatures and CO2 levels to facilitate the food production necessary for population growth thought to be required for an industrial revolution and beyond. However, when the temperatures inevitably plummet into an ice age we are thrown back into pre-history and have to develop all over again.

Humans, specifically Homo sapiens, have been around at least 300’000 years but only in the last 12’000 did we begin to develop farming and more complex societies than nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes. That would mean for 288’000 years we had the brains we do now but did little with them and during that time the temperature and CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has shifted, a lot.

As you can see the temperature has jumped around a great deal and for most of the time period in question the Earth has been in some form of ice age, but there are periods of warmth, the spikes, like we have now, which is where these prior human civilsations would fit in. These interglacial periods are short, around 15’000-30’000 years.

The areas marked in dark red would be the prior human civilisations that there is no trace of due to the time scales involved. The question mark is earlier than is usually thought Homo sapiens have been around but there are theories that we have been around for 500’000 years but physical evidence is scant. The lines are at 2.0 degrees celsius above average because there has to be enough heat and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for plant life to flourish, unlike during an ice age or either side of an ice age.

There are many reasons why advanced civilisation collapses but one possible cycle goes something like this:

1. Humans wander the Earth worshipping the rivers and the trees and the sun for all its bounty.

2. We develop farming and Sun worshipping becomes dominant.

3. Written language is invented as cities grow and populations increase. Wars, faminines, empires rise and fall, all the good stuff.

4. A tipping point is achieved and an industrial revolution occurs due to discovery of some potent energy source. This revolution continues, steam to coal to gas to nuclear, with an ever expanding need for energy.

5. Computers are developed in order to manage the complexity of life.

6. Artificial Intelligence swiftly follows.

7. The AI becomes sentient and takes over. Humanity is slave to a Machine God.

8. A solar flare disables all the computers and destroying the AI.

9. Humans once again worship the Sun and wander the Earth as advanced civilisation becomes impossible to maintain.

A cycle without AI would be Malthusian, as temperatures increase so does food production and thus population but as temperatures decrease food production slows down which leads to famines and mass deaths. Mass deaths leave massive gaps in the workforce and civilisation slowly shrinks in size.

And then there are environmental disasters such as supervolcanoes or asteroids or earthquakes or floods or all of the above. Supervolcano eruptions, such as Toba 75’000 years ago, can cause severe cooling due to the particles released into the air. The lack of sunlight means temperatures decrease and plants grow less, deserts and snow fields expand.

Evidence for these ideas is unlikely to show up outside of radioactive material, and even that would be exceptionall rare, again because of the time scale invovled. Even the best structures built today would be little more than dust in 10’000 years.

The Lemurian Time War

Lemurs are cute little primates that inhabit Madagascar and that is where the problem arises. Madagascar has been in its current position off the east coast of Africa for 90 million years. No fossils of lemur ancestors have been found on Madagascar, instead they are found in Africa but lemurs didn’t appear until around 40-50 million years ago. The question is then, how did lemurs cross the Mozambique Channel and reach Madagascar?

The leading theory of how a small primate crossed a 260 mile sea which has south flowing currents is by raft. This raft would have most likely been matted vegetation flushed down a river after a flood or storm. This is exceptionally unlikely and the chance of enough mating pairs to make the crossing is infintesimally small. Other theories are island hopping, which is basically impossible based on the geography, and a land bridge which would have resulted in more than just lemurs crossing so is also impossible, meaning the leading theory is pretty weak and recent fossil findings in Egypt and Asia make it even more unlikely.

So how did the cute little lemur make it to its island sanctuary?

Enter Nick Land and the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit with the writing of theory-fiction, a blend of philosophy and fiction and history and occultism. You see, time isn’t real. Time is a social construct for the purpose of control. There is no now, or tomorrow, or yesterday. If something is changed in the past, that changes the future, that necesities a counter-change of the past, which produces a counter-change in the future, what use is talking about time? It’s like writing fiction, I can change what happens in Chapter 1 and something different results in Chapter 3 which changes what I have written in Chapter 10 which is further altered by changes in Chapter 7. Now expand that to the powers that be dictating how an event in the past happened in order to buttress their own control. How would you know if it were true? Would it matter if it were false?

William S. Burroughs wrote a short story called The Ghost Lemurs of Madagascar which is about lemurs that shift through time, only appearing physical when they need to breathe and some only do that every few years, because they have no conception of time and thus are not bound by it like humans. “Time is a human affliction.” The lemurs can appear and disappear on a whim and they have chosen Madagascar because there was nothing there to interfere and so for 60 million years lemurs were lemurs and what does it matter how long they were there for? “What is the meaning of 60 million years without time? Lemurs don’t need it. Six minutes, sixty million years - no difference.” This short story was a major influence on Land and the CCRU for theorising about time in a socio-cultural-historical-political. Time is non-linear to the lemur, non-causal, an idea anethema to humans.

We’re not really talking about lemurs anymore, we’re talking about the spread of ideas through fiction and that the inclusion of real events into fiction creates a pre-recorded future. Ideas for new technologies are taken from science fiction books. The term Metaverse is taken from Neil Stephenson’s book Snowcrash and is Zuckerberg’s singular aim. The spy firm Palantir is named after Saruman’s crystal ball. Fictional ideas become reality. History can be charted through fiction, the barrier between fiction and reality is thin and in some instances non-existent.

And what happens when one of those ideas is successful but has negative consequences? We end up with hyperstition. For instance the idea that mundane economic speculation trading stocks and shares which began in Amsterdam in the 1600s for some people to acquire funds for business ventures has now become a force that shapes history, is history itself. A wrong trade and thousands, millions, of people can lose their houses because of an economic crash. Yet the idea spread and now everywhere has a stock market, every government avoids disrupting “the market” or scaring investors.

Lemurian Time War is a story about a story with a third story woven between them enveloped in fringe philosophy and cultural theory telling a fourth story. Where fact and fiction start and end is unclear and becomes more so the more you read. That is the purpose, to demonstrate that causal link is not so ironclad when talking culture and politics. That time is a spiral that loops back on itself where events from long ago have enormous impact into the future yet can only be explained with hindsight. There is no linear path from Star Trek dataPADDs to Apple iPads but it appears that way to humans because we are afflicted with time. And so the Time War is a question of causality, what would it look like to have a war through time. How would events play out, how would you write the history of a time war? You couldn’t unless you were Outside it all, beyond time itself. If an event in 2780 causes a reaction in 1780 how do we mere time-bound humans explain it? We cannot. Can a time war end? Is it infinite? Already over? Yet to begin?

The modern idea of time, which has a very short history, has deformed our natural understanding of time. There are no minutes, there are no hours. There are days because of Earth’s rotation, there are weeks and months and seasons because of the sun and the moon but that is it. But these things are not time in our sense, time in our modern sense is a unit to be bought, sold, and bartered with. It is a commodity, not a human understanding of the world but a thing we are molded and forced to fit into.

Thanks for reading, whether you made it to the end or not.

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A new fantasy novella will begin on the 12th of June.

Time moves ever onwards and while a plan for the year ahead is sure to be derailed it would be too chaotic not to have a single idea of what I want to do. A goal, a vision, an ideal is important to keep one headed in the direction one wishes. Without further ado.

READING - 52 books

This is straightforward. I will once again aim to read 52 books in 2025. And each month I will do a write up of what I’ve read, whether it was paperback, on SubStack, or elsewhere.

Within these 52 books will be more books from fellow SubStackers, some I’ve owned for a while and others have recently arrived while some are yet to be released. I look forward to them all.

Inevitably there will be non-fiction alongside the fiction.

SHORT STORIES - 52 One Shots

One a week. Simple, straightforward. Some will be long, some will be short, some may be two parters. I want to return to writing stories based on prompts, either from writers like , who has plenty over at Gibberish that he has written on, or from places like IronAgeMedia who post a prompt image each month on their website.

If you have any story prompt ideas please do share in the comments!

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NOVELLAS - 4

First off I will be finishing Famfrit’s Jewel which has 3 chapters remaining.

The novella after that will be about a mage hunter and delve into the trouble with magic and the consequences of letting such power be freely used. This is in the planning stage and will start end of January/beginning of February. I do not know what comes after this novella, I’m sure ideas will be conjured over Easter.

Long time subscribers might remember the Roman-esque low fantasy story Moves of the Civil War which has been on hiatus for over a year. I want to return to it but it is going to be much longer than my typical 10 chapter novellas, it’s already 11 chapters, which you can start to read here:

As a result of its inevitable length Moves of the Civil War will continue in April on Saturdays and run alongside One Shot Tuesdays and Novella Thursdays.

WORD GOAL - 520’000 words

2000 a day, minus weekends, or 10’000 a week. Have I ever written 10’000 words a week? Yes. Regularly? No, and that is why I must aim for it, it is greater than what I have done before but also attainable, or at least possible but it’s the start of the year so we should be optimistic. These words will be shared between fiction and non-fiction posted here on SubStack and other work that doesn’t get posted, usually abandoned projects or longer term ones that I work on much slower.

I wrote 184’235 words in 2024 so this aim is still more than double and the reason is simple. I have a lot of ideas and the ones that get side-lined are epic novel series that I have started and need to finish in order to edit and publish or new ideas that are fleshed out and need writing, others are standalone novels I’ve half edited or plotted out but haven’t written. Fact is if I’m ever going to complete what I want and get to other projects that are mere thimbles of ideas right now I need to create more.

ESSAYS

I often write essays and never hit publish because I want this SubStack to remain as close to exclusively fiction as possible, but last year I did promise an essay on Aristotle’s Poetics and never delivered. It expanded into three essays, the first is written and the other two are sketched out, I aim to finish and publish them in the first half of 2025.

Beyond that I will see what I want to write on, probably nothing but I will leave the possibility open.

That’s it. I hope this finds you well and not too hungover on New Year’s Day. Happy New Year, do you have any goals, plans, aims, or vague ideas for 2025? Comment below, I’d love to hear them!

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As I write it is currently only a week till Christmas Day. The second half of this year has vanished like I tried to grab a handful of sand. Between being in and out of hospital and becoming a father I have had limited time to do anything other than life. It’s odd because a great deal as happened IRL, and continues to happen, while my online presence twindled to nothing for a couple of months. I have returned to rekindle it all and am happy to find what I knew before still applies and that I can still write passable fiction.

It is safe to say a large portion of this year did not go to plan, while another part was planned for but the plan became obsolete almost immediately. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Sure no one wants to have a chronic, uncurable, barely manageable disease but it has also forced me to slow down and to think twice about what I am doing, how, and why.

With all that in mind, how has the year gone? Reading back over my start of year post Pondering the Orbs of Time I see I wrote that with a headcold. The more things change the more they stay the same, though this time I am on my first cold of the year, with a side of cough. I almost went a whole year without one which I am grateful for, I doubt it will happen again now I have a daughter.

In January there were 185 subscribers, and, as of December 28th, there are 333 of you. Given I was absent for part of Summer and all of Autumn I’d say that is good going. Thank you for being here and do enjoy the reams of speculative fiction on offer. Now onto the metrics.

READING - 40/52

I aimed for 52 books and fell short, up until August this was going alright but I hit a huge slump that I didn’t get out of until November. Those books totalled 9’262 pages with the average being 231. There are a couple of children’s books in the mix, the highlight of those was The Library Lion, a story about a lion who roars in a library and is told he shouldn’t, yet something happens and he needs to. A good moral tale about how rules sometimes need to be broken. Solid children’s book stuff.

Last year I listened to too many audiobooks, they work for some people but didn’t really work for me so this year I aimed to read my books. I did that, save for a relisten to Harrassment Architecture by Mike Ma, a schizo book in a similar vein to American Psycho, read by Shazam Watkins who captures the essence in the book in his oration.

Some standouts were Conn Iggulden’s Empire of Salt trilogy which while competently written and entertaining isn’t really a single story but rather the same plot used three times with a little bit of character development for recurring characters, more three stories involving the city of Darien than an epic trilogy. Still enjoyable but not what I was expecting from a series called Empire of Salt.

My favourite book of the year was Horus Rising, the first book in Warhammer 40K’s Horus Heresy series. I am passingly familiar with 40K lore but have never played, nor painted the models. Reading one of the books makes me want to read more but it doesn’t make me want to play the game, in fact I suspect there is a venn diagram of 40K fans. Those who read and those who play with a minority doing both, but that’s just me guessing. The early books were almost impossible to find in paperback until they were republished a couple of years ago, still only the first 3 are back on shelves while the fourth can be picked up second-hand for a cool £85. It’s a 54 book series and for something based on plastic figurines used in wargaming is surprisingly good. Dan Abnett is an excellent writer and while the rest of the series is written by a dozen different authors, and from even more points-of-view, this first book is gripping while keeping it focussed on a few character stories and managing galactic scale politics. Very impressive tome all round.

Two surprise reads of the year that I found at my local library were Tales from the Cafe and Before we say goodbye which are in the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. Each is a series of connected short stories centred around a cafe in Tokyo that allows people to go back (or forward) through time. There are a number of rules, a person can only stay in the past (or future) until their coffee goes cold, they cannot stand up, and a ghost occupies the chair that customers have to sit in. They are cosy books with satisfying character arcs that keep you hooked. The books are translated from Japanese and the style is more telling than showing which is typical of Japanese books.

WRITING

SHORT STORIES (One Shots) - 36/52

Had I not been in hospital and taken an unexpected break this would have been accomplished but no matter. I’m happy with the short stories I’ve written this year and look forward to writing even more next year.

The year started with a Dwarven adventure - The First Explorer.

A fun romp about a couple of dwarves making it to the surface of their world for the first time in all of dwarven history.

The most popular short this year was - Gentle Waves and Starless Skies, receiving 18 likes.

A short short story about a man suffering after a shipwreck, or what appears to be a shipwreck anyway. A questing the self story rather than questing the world.

I used the idea of fishing as the main core for two stories, one about a man and a bucket, the other about a man wanting to fish but finding a date instead.

NOVELLAS - 2/4

Same old story. This year saw Hunted and Famfrit’s Jewel. Both are still free-to-read and will remain so for a little while.

Hunted follows Padoan and his crew as they are tracked across the galaxy by unknown forces. This series as, I think, my most popular character to date, the war robot Shogun. An arrogant, tenacious, combat droid who joins Padoan’s crew by force but has severe memory malfunctions. Fits in the space opera genre, though only 10 chapters long.

Famfrit’s Jewel is ongoing and will be wrapping up shortly. Dagnar sees his whole village and everyone he knows die at the hands of an ambition crazed wizard, in his hunt for revenge he is joined by a mysterious woman who claims to have also had her village destroyed by the wizard. Together they hunt him down but not all is as it appears.

NOVEL - 0/1

It will start when it starts and it will be announced well ahead of time.

WORD GOAL - 184’235/752’000 (as of Dec 28th)

Even if I hadn’t gone into hospital and then stopped writing for a few months I would have only reached around 300’000, maybe 350’000. 2000 words a day is difficult but it is a difficult I want to tackle. Having the energy for writing is the biggest obstacle, I can write everyday but some days will be thousands and others dozens, getting a consistent average of 2000-a-day is hard but, for me, attainable. Jimmy Doom has published a short story a day for over 1000 days. Harvey Stanborough has written over 1’000’000 words this year, the vast majority of them fiction. Incredible discipline and output from both, and quality writing too which is all the more impressive.

Having achieved a 1000 words a day many years ago I know that the more I write the easier it is to write and the more ideas I see to fruition the more ideas I have, the only time this wasn’t true was in 2023 writing two fantasy/sci-fi short stories a week. It was like a whirlwind and I much prefer writing longer stories and using short stories as a rest, hence my Short Story - Tuesday/Novella - Thursday split.

SubStack warns me I am nearing “email length limit” so I will wrap it up here. In the first few days of 2025 I will post a follow up to this with the goals for 2025. Thanks for reading and see you then.

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Early in January I posted this essay, Pondering the Orbs of Time, looking back on 2023 and setting goals for 2024. As the half way point of the year approaches I wanted to check in on the goals I set for myself.

READING GOAL 13/52

One a week is faster than I thought. I have read 13 so far and am thus (as of writing) 9 behind. Not to worry, my reading tends to oscillate between feast and famine so I expect to catch up over summer, fall behind in the autumn, and then race to the finish in December — probably with short books and children’s books (they’re for everyone, don’t let the genre name deter you). This does not include the myriad of reading I do on SubStack, mostly short stories. I have read slightly more fiction than non-fiction but am trying to keep the two balanced this year which may be why I have fallen behind. Also, Final Fantasy XIV Online must take some of the blame; a massive multiplayer online role playing game which I adore and have started playing again.

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SHORT STORY GOAL 22/52

On schedule and I don’t intend to miss a Tuesday. I may be stretching the definition of story some weeks with vignettes and “vibe” pieces but it all counts. Not all have achieved what I set out to do, some have. Ones I thought were brilliant have landed flat and ones I felt I’d rushed have met with fanfare. The idea that inspired When Did you Last see your Father? I want to revisit but am unsure how, while others like The Diamond Moon have a wealth of threads to pull on.

NOVELLA GOAL 1/4

Like with short stories this will continue to be on track as the year goes on. The Summer serial is planned and being written. Autumn and Winter are faint embers, Autumn may be a horror novella with no genre restriction on short stories and we will, likely, return to Ixonia for the Winter season.

NOVEL GOAL 0/1

No comment.

WORD GOAL 121’923/732’000

The leviathan. 732’000 words in a year or 2000 a day. So far I’m at 121’923 (as of Tue, 4th June). Far off the 300’000 I should be at BUT far ahead of myself at the same point last year which was the real point of the challenge; to write more, more consistently.

Around late March I switched from a target of 2000 words a day to a target of No Zero Days but I still find myself writing 4000 some days and nothing other days for a wide ranging average of 5000-10000 a week, or 1100 a day which I am okay with but could be higher.

At this rate I would be content with 366’000 words by year’s end even though it would be failing to reach the target. Saying that, the target remains three-quarters of a million because I like it.

ESSAY GOAL 1/6

This goal was simply a way to fill the gaps between novellas and I am not concerned with hitting it, after all I publish fiction not analysis.

I started reading and making notes on Aristotle’s Poetics this week and the essay for that will come next week. For those not aware Poetics is made up from fragments of lectures and writings Aristotle made about how to write fiction and what good fiction is, mostly plays; tragedies and comedies as they were known in Ancient Greece. A great deal matches with what is taught today but a couple of things are different, namely he places the plot higher in importance than character. But more on that next week.

Overall I am neither pleased nor displeased with my progress as that’s not the point of the goal setting but rather a means to an end. To that regard I need to write more beyond what is published here and find something I’m excited to read.

QUESTIONS

Did you set yourself goals for the year? How are they going?

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Released 20 years ago these games are regarded among the greatest stories in the Star Wars universe, easily up there with the films. An unfinished trilogy set 4000 years before the Original Trilogy, ignoring the, at best, mediocre novel Revan by Drew Karpyshyn, writer of the first game, which was meant to complete the story but instead reads as an attempt to murder KotOR II, written by Chris Avellone, and ignoring The Old Republic MMO which, being an MMO, goes completely bonkers with the story. These games have recently been released on Nintendo Switch and the first has a Remake stuck in development hell. There is no consensus on which is the better game and each has its fair share of fans. Both are good but they approach Star Wars in such distinct ways it can be hard to compare them but I'm going to try anyway by focussing on the writing, and a little on gameplay mechanics. From the outset I'll say I prefer the second game, it has a depth that the first lacks, and this essay is me figuring that out and trying to articulate why, enjoy! (Yes, the last thing I do is re-write my introduction.)

Do I have to put a Spoiler Warning for 20 years old video games? Well I've done it now, consider yourself warned!

Knights of the Old Republic is centred around two back-to-back wars, first the Mandalorian Wars (happening before the games) and then the Jedi Civil War (the backdrop to the first game). Jedi Civil War is a misnomer as it is a Sith war against the Republic and Jedi but from the view of the 'common man' there is little to no distinction between Sith and Jedi. The first game is a story about ending the Jedi Civil War while the second game is about the fallout and an altogether different conflict with Sith Lords that prowl Republic space without armies, without legions of ships, but instead with assassins and world-destroying Force powers. The second game is a set up for the greater threat, the True Sith, that Revan went to confront in the Unknown Regions and the end of the game has Meetra Surik, the Exile, flying off in the Ebon Hawk to join him. What really makes the rather quiet backdrop of KotOR II work is how personal the story is to the Player Character (PC), the Exile. She has been severed from the Force, possibly by the Jedi Council, possibly by the Mass Shadow Generator, but either way there is a wound in her that will only be healed by confronting the past and taking on responsibility rather than shirking it in the Jedi imposed exile. As Kreia says, “... conflict strengthens us, isolation weakens us.”

Lore aside when thinking about fiction I often default to games like Final Fantasy, KotOR, Pillars of Eternity, Dark Souls, or Baldur's Gate rather than books. Part of this is because I didn't start properly reading until I was in my 20s and partly because I may, at heart, be a frustrated Game Designer.

Every few years I return to Knights of the Old Republic II and enjoy it as much as the first time I played it at the age of 12. Sure the wonder and newness is less as I know the twists and turns and can recite Kreia's teaching like a mantra, though each time I find something new within her words. This year after half a Dark Side playthrough I thought it time to revisit the first game which I haven't played since around 2006. I originally played the first game after the second and always wondered why they felt so different, beside BioWare developing the first and Obsidian the second. Interactions with companions are less meaningful, there are less options, the influence mechanic is level-based rather than reaction based on what you chose in a conversation with them or they overhear you have with another character. Companion alignment is also fixed in the first game rather than like in the second where your actions and alignment influence that of your party. There is far less dialogue and ways to learn about the characters you travel with making the whole party feel rather stagnant and game-y. Or perhaps these dialogue and story differences are merely my perception, in how the game functions rather than in actuality. Reading back through Carth's dialogue there is a lot of well written stuff, his whiny character aside, but you don't really have to do anything to unlock it, just play the game and you'll eventually get a prompt that Carth wants to talk. This is true for most of the companion characters. In KotOR II without the right choices you simply won't learn about Atton's past, if you go Light Side you are unlikely to hear HK-47's definition of love or learn that his previous master was Revan and that he was built to kill Jedi. To be fair in the first game you need a good repair skill to progress HK's story, which is a lot better than simply stepping on and off your ship with different companions to see if they have something new to say. In the second game there's a whole bunch of dialogue about the Handmaiden's mother, Arren Kae, potentially Kreia’s name when she was a Jedi1, that I didn't discover for years because I never quite managed to get enough influence or ask the right questions to both characters, alongside the fact I usually play a canonical female character so the Handmaiden doesn't join my party most playthroughs. The full tale of the Handmaiden's mother, Arren Kae, is split over three characters, Kreia, the Disciple, and Handmaiden. You can't have the Disciple and Handmaiden in the same party, Disciple joins female PCs and Handmaiden male ones.

Events that occur during the story can influence members of the party and so the game feels lived in rather than static. KotOR I has a tendency to feel like a set waiting for the player to come along and move something while KotOR II feels like a living, breathing world. The best example is Nar Shaddaa's refugee sector, whether you help the refugees gain space by convincing Serroco mercs or killing them, or convincing the Exchange to do so, or kill them too, OR convince the mercs to attack the Exchange and depending on whether they attack from the north, south, or both has different results. The mercs can get wiped out, or the Exchange can. If you want you can wipe out the Exchange, or side with them against the refugees or against Serroco or both or neither. Each movement causes different reactions from your crew and from a number of NPCs in the sector. Now obviously it's a game so it is literally a set waiting for you to push something but KotOR II presents it in a living way. Nar Shaddaa is a moon ready to pop. Tension is thick, with the refugees, the Exchange, the Hutts, and the Bounty Hunters. The PC's arrival tips the balance and the effects ripple outward. Compare to Tatooine in KotOR I where you land, collect the quests in town, head out to the desert, complete the quests, and come back to hand in. Nothing really changes, you get access to a Jawa shop and can turn in Tusken Raider gaffi sticks for credits but not much else happens in town. On Manaan, one side-quest in particular is done by simply progressing the main story and the solution is just handed to you in unmissable dialogue, this removes the weight, the risk, the point of having a quest in the first place resulting in flat, disappointing gameplay.

The story of the first game is similar to Return of the Jedi, find, access, destroy the big super-weapon and defeat the Sith Lord. There's the big twist that you, yes you, the player are in fact Revan after a memory wipe and the Jedi Council have manipulated you into retracing your steps to find said super-weapon, The Star Forge, which is now in the hands of your former apprentice, Darth Malak. It is a great twist and Malak is well-written in how he plays with you before the reveal. Though Malak himself is, in the words of HK-47, “... more like an angry club. ... given to grandiose displays of brutality and murder that seemed inefficient - and in many cases, unnecessary.” Bastila and the Jedi come across quite poorly in the whole affair yet the writing takes a stumble and Revan can never be Revan again, not in his dialogue choices at least. Gone is the tactical genius, the Force user who refuses to be Jedi or Sith, the cunning warrior. Dark Side options are often comically evil while Light Side often overly subservient to the Council. There is little nuance in Knights of the Old Republic I and this is my primary gripe with the game. Knights of the Old Republic II has depth to its companions, story, side-missions, all of it. KotOR I is an adventure story about defeating evil and rescuing the princess (twice). KotOR II puts the Force, the Jedi, the Sith, the nature of it all on trial. Both are brilliant, in their own way, but played together the contention is too much to bare. I imagine it is similar to when Original Trilogy fans experienced The Phantom Menace for the first time. Trade deals and politics in my Star Wars, how dare George Lucas ruin my childhood! I get it, it's a complete vibe shift, but both are great when given a little room away from each other. Perhaps wildly different styles struggle to share the same universe when telling a single story, but I digress. Knights of the Old Republic I's problems are often contained to its dialogue and characterisation. Not every line is bad but there were enough to make me not want to talk to my party unless necessary beyond Dantooine (2^nd of 7 planets), except for HK-47 with his history of prior masters all some how ending up dead by his hand and Canderous's war stories.

Stories live or die on dialogue and action. Two stories can have the same plot yet be completely different because of how the characters spoke and acted. There is nothing inherently wrong with KotOR I from a story perspective, it's in fact quite good, but the dialogue sometimes struggles to sell it. The best examples in the game for good dialogue are the two murder investigation quests, one on Dantooine and one on Manaan. On Dantooine you are only able to talk to two witnesses, a droid, and a Jedi Master who is serving as investigator, jury, and judge. The two witnesses are also the suspects and each tries to convince you they didn't really know the victim, that the other one knew him better, and they were innocently out for a run or hunting. Both are lying and one is the murderer while the other was attempting to murder the victim so both are guilty. Coming to this conclusion requires exhausting dialogue options and little else it is intriguing and could be expanded into a detective novella all on its own. The second murder investigation is on Manaan, a neutral world and the only source of Kolto (equivalent to Bacta healing fluid that Luke floats in in The Empire Strikes Back when he escapes the Wampa and is rescued by Han). As such both Sith and Republic have embassies and troops on the planet. A woman, Elora, will come up to you and plead that you help her husband, Sunry, get released. Elora knows Jolee and he promises to do everything he can to help. Sunry, a Republic war hero, is charged with the murder of a Sith official and many swear he didn't do it. The Player Character is appointed as Arbiter for the accused and so you are inclined in a variety of ways to see the veteran go free. If you are lazy in your investigation you can return this conclusion to the five judges that make up the High Court and the session is rather dull. However, if you dig deep, find and talk to everyone even tangentially involved, break into the Republic embassy, and interrogate his wife a little you discover the man was having an affair, that the Sith official was a Force user with a lightsaber, and that he did, in fact, kill her, while she was sleeping no less. Brutal. You don't need the video file stolen from the Republic Embassy to prove this but it makes it a lot easier when convincing the judges and refusing to do your duty as his Arbiter. Yet if your sympathies for the Republic run so deep as to lie in a Court of Law then you can convince the judges that Sunry is innocent, while knowing he isn't, by denying evidence, obfuscating the facts, and revealing that the Sith planted evidence purely to make it overwhelmingly likely Sunry would be found guilty and executed. The party found guilty also run the risk of being embargoed or outright banned from trading for Kolto, crucial in medicine across the galaxy. This quest has impacts across the rest of the story, requires the player to do something without much handholding, goes out on a limb to let you get it wrong and miss details. Making it satisfying to play and worthwhile to read and listen to all the dialogue. Then it has you actual make a meaningful choice, do you release the Republic hero and return him to his wife or allow the Selkath to execute him for his crimes. There are at least two contentions here, whether you're playing Light or Dark and how strongly you feel that justice must be done, and right there you have the D&D moral alignment chart to pick through. Is it more important to have a war hero set free for morale and because he killed a Sith apprentice, or does his murder need punishing regardless of who it was. Do you just convince the judges to set him free to spite the Sith? Regardless, you can play a role because of the quality of the writing and options open to you. This is rare in the first game and rife in the second.

On Dantooine, in the second game, there is a mercenary problem. Too many out-of-work mercs and not enough jobs to go around. The mercs are one angry blaster shot away from becoming bandits and what passes for government want them gone. The mercs, knowing this, plan on taking over the government. Now you can agree to help Administrator Adare, repair Khoonda's defences, lay a minefield, repair broken doors, rebuild some battle droids, and more. Or you can sabotage all of this stuff and throughout the quest are given numerous chances to switch sides, even right at the end after the main battle. These options create a dynamism to the game and story that make engaging worthwhile. You can mix and match your Dark Side/Light Side choices too based on what is most cunning, a very Kreia move, a very Revan move.

On Telos Citadel Station there is a twi'lek called Harra who used his girlfriend as collateral on a bet. He lost, of course, and the girl, Ramana is now a slave dancer owned by Doton Het. Harra wants you to free her as it will take him a long time to save up the money to buy her back. You can pay Doton Het 2000 credits or beat him in Pazaak, either way you end up owning Ramana. Now you can choose to keep her as a slave dancer, and come back to collect her earnings every level up, or return her to Harra. She doesn't want to go back to Harra after he gambled her away but you own her so she does as you bid. Free her and she runs off, blackmail her and she gives you 500 credits and runs off, or you can threaten her and she'll stay with Harra, for now. There's also a whole other way of completing this quest involving the Exchange that I've never done. This isn't a main quest, it's a side-quest that can be ignored but it's anything but straight forward and this depth is throughout Knights of the Old Republic II.

The whole thrust of KotOR II is about choice, Avellone says as much in an interview with Lightspeed where he also states how dialogue shouldn't make a player feel safe, that he is tired of “talking head conversations” and lack of choice in dialogue and action. He goes to say how the moral ambiguity of a lot of the game, and his other games, is because he wants the player to be able to make a real choice, to reflect on it, as this self-reflection is good for them. Kreia herself states “I am a mirror.” A reference, I am fairly certain, to the Renaissance literary genre mirrors for princes, the most famous of which is The Prince by Machiavelli. Sometimes Kreia will scold you no matter what you do and I believe this is why, she is merely trying to make you think about your actions rather than instinctively doing something. Similar to the Gom Jabbar test in Dune but never ending and with mental rather than physical pain, something Avellone and Kreia believe to be good for you, and I agree.

In an interview with PC Games in 2017 Avellone also talks about how the player should be able to make the character they want to and not have a Commander Shepherd-style railroaded story. Though in a Q&A session on the Obsidian forums he commends Mass Effect for making him stop and think because of some of the moral choices.

This could easily turn into a KotOR II essay, a Kreia essay, or even a Chris Avellone essay in fact, so instead we'll move on to characters.

Carth Onasi never stops whining, the whole game. He consistently says the wrong thing, ends conversations abruptly, refuses to share details, and comes close of accusing the Player Character of inevitably betraying him. He has plenty to moan about, his home planet was destroyed, his wife is dead, he believes his son is too, and his former senior officer and mentor betrayed him and ordered the barrage on his home. But he's a war veteran, around 30 years old, and seems completely incapable of talking about anything without getting angry and accusatory. The side-mission about his son is fine but so short and easy to solve that it feels like a non-quest. A mere tick boxing exercise. Coupled with Bastila preaching about how special and good she is and how you need to learn so much and listen to her it's a wonder how so many people continued playing the first game beyond Taris. Players complain about “the old crone” Kreia berating you but at least she's trying to teach you something, Bastila berates you just to tell you how special she is. Atton Rand, Carth's parallel, on the other hand is instantly likeable, funny, friendly, and always down for a game of Pazaak. Sure, it turns out he was a Sith Assassin, tortured Jedi for a living, and enjoyed it, but who cares – deal the cards Atton, I'll get the juma!

T3-M4 is a non-character in the first game and crucial in the second, full of personality with lots to say, even if it is all beeps and boops. Even the trash compactor was granted depth in the second game, brilliant.

Everyone's favourite assassin droid, HK-47, is iconic, possibly as iconic as Revan and Kreia. With his irreverent tone and infinite hatred for us “gland-driven meatbag[s]”. His imitation of Carth is on point. “Mockery: "Oh, master, I do not trust you! I cannot trust you or anyone ever again!" As is his imitation of Bastila, “Mockery: "Oh, master, I love you but I hate all you stand for, but I think we should go press our slimy, mucus-covered lips together in the cargo hold!"” Along with Canderous Ordo (aka: Mandalore) he retains his personality and style across both games. If anything HK-47 becomes more vicious and refined in the second game, more true to himself.

Mission Vao and Zaalbar are a package deal, young, angry, outcasts with a cheerful demeanour. Both have family problems and both need your help. This help is never questioned, by any of the crew, it's asked for, given, and that's it. Zaalbar's quest is tied into the main quest on Kashyyyk. His brother, Chuundar, has agreed to sell Wookies as slaves to Czerka Corporation, exiled his own father to the Shadowlands, and has his tribe fearing to say anything contrary. Zaalbar was exiled as a madclaw, having used his hands to attack Chuundar years prior when their father still ruled. The quest is either find the father, remove the brother and free the Wookies, or find and kill the father and allow the slavery of Wookies to continue. If you free the Wookies then Czerka leave the planet, Zaalbar gets a cool sword, and he makes peace with his father. There's a lack of weight to the companion quests and a lack of self-reflection in the Player Character's actions.

Kreia warns about offering too much help, about giving without considering, “Aiding them gives you strength by taking on their challenges but weakens them.” KotOR I simply has you help everyone around you, no questions asked, or be psychotically cruel. In KotOR II you can do both of these too but there are other options and some times the Light Side, neutral, or Dark Side option will align to Kreia's teachings about influence and ripples and the small threads. KotOR II is trying to make the player think, KotOR I is more of a power-fantasy. This comes down to a fundamental difference in game design philosophy, the purpose of a game even, and it's incredible that it can be seen in the same series, with the same engine and mechanics, and with some of the same characters at times. What's even more impressive is that Obsidian Entertainment did it twice. Once with Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords and then with Fallout: New Vegas, demonstrating a mastery of writing and providing player choice and agency when the prior developer in question, BioWare and Bethesda, did much less so in Knights of the Old Republic I and Fallout 3, respectively. But again, I digress.

Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords is a game where I'm not sure that I've discovered everything, similar to Dark Souls, it maintains an allure that pulls me back again and again. I'm sure I have found everythign after more playthroughs than I can remember but there's always the chance I've missed something. While Knights of the Old Republic I doesn't have that. I played it many, many years ago and didn't return until this year and I won't be rushing back. One playthrough was enough. While KotOR II I'll probably go back to within a year. KotOR II is much more satisfying to play, to engage with, to become immersed in, the choices feel like they matter, and there are genuine lessons to be learned. KotOR I is a fun adventure to save the galaxy. That these two games exist in the same series is astonishing and I will remain eternally disappointed that Obsidian's ideas for KotOR III were never greenlit for development.

Thanks for reading, more fiction next week. If you need a fix check out the Free and Paid Collections!

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I started writing this on the 3rd of January 2024.

As I welcome 2024 with a headcold that has reduced my brain to a single-celled smooth organism it seemed fitting to reflect on the year gone and idealise the year ahead. First, I would like no more illnesses of any kind as four in twelve months is quite enough. Second, a mere thank you is not enough to convey my appreciation for you, the readers. This time last year I was sitting on a grand total of 7 subscribers and now there are 185 of you, a massive thank you to each and every one of you! Of course going into 2024 I would like to swell your ranks but I would also be happy with a dedicated readership returning every Tuesday and Thursday. I hope and pray my fiction writing abilities improve and develop to achieve that goal.

How does one go about improving and developing? Reading, and lots of it. Oh and writing, lots of that too.

2023 saw me read 45 books, 11’869 pages, of fiction and non-fiction. About 10 were audiobooks, which hit different than paperbacks in a way I am still trying to understand. Many haven’t lingered in my mind like a physical book would and so it doesn’t really feel like I read them at all. The handful of Conan books I listened to did stick around, however, which I am glad for as they’re brilliant. For 2024 I am going to be sticking to physical books (Advanced Review Copies, PDFs of expensive antiquarian books, ebook-only releases, all excluded). Hopefully this helps with another goal which is less time in front of my computer. I barely use my iPhone but I’m glued to my desktop and laptop so my screentime is too high (and most of it isn’t writing). I need to touch more grass or, in this case, paper.

READING GOAL FOR 2024 - 52 physical books

It’s important to know where you are to know where you’re going. While wandering is beneficial I feel it is a mode of travelling befitting the old and young but not those in the middle. Though I could easily flip that so what do I know, I’m ill, jacked up on Lemsip, and thinking is hard. Sort of like pushing playdough through one of those shape maker things but someone made the dough really tough and stodgy and there’s no water to thin it out and at this point you might as well toss the whole batch but we’re here now and so much time has been pounded into it that restarting feels like a waste so you just keep going and get more and more frustrated with the little plastic handle that feels like it’s about to snap as you shove the dough into the funnel and…

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What I do know is that I wrote 39 short stories and completed 3 novellas. There is also the ongoing novella Forlorn Hope and the on-hiatus Moves of the Civil War. This doesn’t include a handful of stories that are unpublished/awaiting publication, as well as reviews and essays. While I never consciously set out to do the Bradbury Challenge, write a short story a week for a year, I am very close to completing it. It’s been a rather tumultuous year, creatively speaking. While writing 2 One Shots a week I was close to burning out. Having to create a new world every time was invigorating at first but after a few months became a burden. Some of those stories, I think, are among my top tier writing but splitting the week into One Shot and novella has allowed for much needed breathing room. The One Shot/Novella split will continue for 2024 and, at some point, a novel will be introduced I just need to pick a date.

SHORT STORY GOAL - 52

NOVELLA GOAL - 4 (~10 chapters each)

NOVEL GOAL - 1

A slightly different metric of writing is quantity of words. In 2023 I wrote 212’252 words. Not all of those made it to SubStack; a paltry 5000 were on an in-progress novel, 10’000ish on unfinished essays, a non-trivial couple of thousand were edited out, and anywhere from 25’000-50’000 were worldbuilding notes. I never managed to consistently hit 2000 words a day but I still intend to.

WORD GOAL - 732’000

That’s just silly. That’s more words than I have written in the last 3 years combined (648’322 - I have a spreadsheet tracker going back to 2017 when I first set out to write everyday). Even discounting weekends it would be 524’000 words. That is more attainable but doesn’t sound as ridiculous so I’ll stick with the almost three-quarters of a million words target.

BUT WAIT! I hear you say. If ~150’000 words made it to SubStack in 2023 what becomes of the 480’000 words extra? Well, dear reader, I plan to get ahead of myself each season so I can focus on writing and editing novels again. The original intent of this ‘Stack was to share my novels but I struggled to garner readers doing that years ago so I played around and did other things, novellas and short stories. These things worked, I enjoy writing them, and you, I hope, enjoy reading them. As such I must become a one-man weird tales magazine covering the three main genres, fantasy, sci-fi, and horror, and the three main lengths, short story, novella, and novel. To do that I need a bigger backlog of writing than I currently do.

Alongside all the fiction I will be posting the occasional review/essay/rant/non-fiction piece. There is no schedule for these apart from, perhaps, a monthly update on the various goals above. This is more to keep me on the straight and narrow but I hope they will prove enjoyable to all.

Essay wise I have a few ideas. One on Realism in Stories, what is meant by realism and whether it is actually wanted. For a time it meant something to do with hard-science-fiction, then it meant grey morality, and now it seems to mean a sort of groundedness. At no point does any of this have to be realistic to work but I digress.

Another essay idea is looking at Darrow from Red Rising and asking if he is the bad guy. This will focus on Darrow but is asking a broader question of just how much can a hero get away with. How much do virtue and action play on a characters heroism, or lack thereof?

Third would be a series going through Aristotle’s Poetics, a short book that is a fragment of a larger, lost, work. The surviving book focuses on writing dramatic tragedy and epics, with a focus on Homer.

ESSAY GOAL - 6?

This seems like plenty of work for the year. Lots to do. Thanks for reading!

Some questions before I go, what are your goals? Do you think mine are too ambitious, not ambitious enough? What would you like to see here on ROW? Comment below.

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EDIT: I had erroneously put 26 for the Short Story goal when it should be 52.

Everything is critiqued all the time and on the internet it is encouraged. The easiest content is critique and because of that most critique is dogshit.

The problem for creatives is the sheer abundance of critique once you reach a certain level of readership. How do you parse between the good and the bad? What is valuable and what isn’t? Between the readers who get it and the readers who don’t? By ignoring it. Robert A. Heinlein refrained from rewriting (more on that later). Most internet essayists don’t burden themselves with beta readers and test audiences, they write, edit (maybe), and hit publish. Fiction and non-fiction alike becomes bloated with too much input from editors and beta readers. A team of 1 is superior to a team of 10.

The creator may be blind to some of the flaws in their work but they are also the only ones who know what the vision is, what the work is supposed to be achieving. No one else can see what you see, no one else will be able to envision what you do. Each reader will have their own ideas when reading a work and writers hope to have conveyed their ideas with sufficient clarity. Some readers will have an idea closer to the original than others and some will miss it entirely. A few will spot opaque references while others will focus on the drama of the story. Some will enjoy reading a piece that agrees with them, others the opposite.

I concluded with the following:

It [Critique] should focus on the work as it stands and the creator needs to consider whether the critique makes sense to them, their style, and their aims. Not all critique is good critique nor is it useful but it is vital to improving in your craft.

This is crucial for a creative. Accepting any and all critique results in a confused, muddled, and hodgepodge creation suffering from committee. Even good critique can fall into this category. A few trusted readers may get it, or they may not. A beta reader could like your story and style of writing but have criticisms that don’t fit your aims or read something into it that wasn’t intended and that they want amplifying but you would rather remove. Their critique is ‘good’ in theory, detailed and distinct to your work, but ‘bad’ in the sense that it misses the point you attempted to create. Sure the beta reader has alerted you to a muddled message, or they simply misunderstood - an occurrence impossible to eradicate totally.

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Much of what I write is a flow of consciousness. I start at the beginning and go to the end whether is fiction or non-fiction, then work backwards to make sure the ending strikes the right chord. Jumping around a story or essay causes me to lose the thread of thought joining beginning and end. Writing is the attempt to communicate this thread of thought and the input of others can create tangents or kinks in the thread. Over-explaining a certain part or adding in a tangent somewhere at the suggestion of test audiences can diminish the overall work, the overall thought. Only the creator knows the aim and because of that it can be necessary to ignore all critique but their own, and sometimes even that.

The ability to critique our own work is vitally important. We cannot rely on others to do it for us and must be confident in our own ideas and works to ignore the opinions of others. Not only because other’s don’t get it but because the reader, viewer, critic, etc., may lack sophistication.

This element goes unsaid much of the time. Reading is a skill, a muscle that needs training. In the same way I wouldn’t recommend to start reading sci-fi with Dune or philosophy with Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations I wouldn’t listen to a readers opinion if they had not read widely enough, lacked a critical eye, or appeared low resolution in their thinking. You need good readers to offer good critique and most readers aren’t good.

Many readers skim, read for speed, or read for pleasure. We all do this to varying degrees. When I’m reading for pleasure I am paying less attention than if I am reading to review which takes twice as long. I make notes, I scrutinise, I interrogate the craft, I flick back and forth to check consistency in plot, in characterisation, and even after all that I could still write a review that doesn’t gel with the writer. So be it. The writer knows better than I do. And don’t just take it from me, take it from Robert A. Heinlein (Starship Troopers, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and many others). His rules were as follows:

1. You must write.

2. You must finish what you start.

3. You must refrain from rewriting except to editorial order.

4. You must put it on the market.

5. You must keep it on the market until sold.

Straight forward. Write it. Finish it. Sell it. These rules are from 1947 but writing hasn’t changed. Technology and sales have though. It’s much easier to write and there is no more need to mail a story around to multiple magazines and buying a stamp every time. Email is free and much quicker. Word processes make writing easier and quicker too. Heinlein finishes with this:

The above five rules really have more to do with how to write speculative fiction than anything said above them. But they are amazingly hard to follow – which is why there are so few professional writers and so many aspirants, and which is why I am not afraid to give away the racket!1

Painfully true. How many writers would rather go another round of edits rather than try and sell? How many would rather worldbuild a bit more rather than hit publish? What an odd craft where we work over and over on the same piece rather than create, finish, and start fresh. That’s how I paint and draw. Paint it, finish it, move on to the next - I’m working on the selling bit. The trepidation of how a work is received paralyses us. It shouldn’t. The work isn’t you, you aren’t your work. Write it, finish it, sell it. Start over.

Want proof? Go to your local bookshop and start reading the latest releases, not just in speculative fiction but all genres, and you’ll find writing you think is dogshit from someone with an agent, a publisher, and quarterly royalty cheques. Stop overthinking it and just do it.

For other discussions of Heinlein’s Rules. check out https://deanwesleysmith.com/heinleins-rules-introduction and https://harveystanbrough.com/pro-writers/the-original-heinliens-rules

No. A critique is not a simple statement of like or dislike. I can dislike a book or movie but appreciate it's well made or that the writing was nuanced and hard-hitting. Same as I can enjoy a terrible film (e.g. Escape from Tomorrow). While any attempt to improve Escape from Tomorrow would prove a Herculean task impossible for one man alone, other works can be improved and often in ways the creator is unable to see. Now whether a creator wants to change their work is up to them and maybe they are including a Persian Flaw. That aside critique allows an artist, a lab tech, or a manager, to improve faster than their they could with only their own self-examination.

A creator can be blind to the flaws, or successes, of their own work and a second pair of eyes helps to spot these in order to reduce the former and replicate the latter. Many creators are hyper-critical of their own work and while useful to know where you are going wrong it can also backfire into thinking everything you produce is a steaming pile of rubbish. That may be true when starting out but after hundreds and thousands of hours of practice it won't be. Yet the creator is too close to the work and while we can stuff it in a drawer and wait a few months or years to see the work in a new light a quicker way is to give it to someone else to evaluate. Most big name authors have a small circle of beta readers, people who read their stories and comment on elements of craft, how the story resonates, the emotions felt during particular scenes and chapters, characterisation, plot holes, what works and what doesn't, allowing the writer to redraft and improve their story. This intimate critique is immensely helpful opening up the author to mistakes they didn't see before or knowing where they have struck the right chord.

Wider critique, typically from strangers, fans, critics, etc. can also work in this way and should do. It's important to remember you, as the creator, are not the work. The “negative” comments are not personal attacks and the “positive” comments are not an excuse to be egotistical. This is important for the critic to know too so as to not pull their punches. The aim is to encourage improvement, whether it be to create better art, to write better books, to shoot better film, to make better food, and much, much more. It is about the craftsmanship unique to us as creators and that critique will help draw out those improvements that we might otherwise miss entirely.

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Criticism is not inherently negative, that is a bizarre corruption from massified society spewing any random thought out onto the internet 99% of which is exceptionally low resolution comments and ideas with zero, or even negative, value. Comments that start Twitter arguments lasting days that amount to little more than insults. Are there day long Twitter spats that are useful, yes, but they are usually hidden away in some niche group with more polite tone (though not always). Criticism is about encouraging the refinement of ideas, getting the creator to strike out into a novel tangent, and developing something unique to them. The aim is positive.

With a wide enough audience it is inevitable you will receive differing critiques. What worked for one person might not work for another and the style that one loves another hates. That's fine and should be expected. The worst response is apathy. Here, you as the creator need to decide on a direction. You can't please everyone and you shouldn't try as the result will be bland and unoriginal. A common critique of Joe Abercrombie is that his work is 'too dark', 'too violent', or 'has too much swearing'. That's his style and he has his fans who like it. Any critique should be about how he can improve in his style of choice, how he can master his unique ways of telling a story, not how he should change to suit the sentiments of others. You wouldn't complain about an Italian restaurant that served pasta, you would review the restaurant based on the cuisine it aimed for and whether the food accomplished that goal, or not. Critique is not about personal preference, it is not the like and dislike you experienced, it is about the work itself. It is objective to the work. I don't like superhero films but I can appreciate The Dark Knight is a good film and would assess it on its own merits rather than my preferences. The vast majority of critique now is simply 'I like it, it good' or 'I don't like it, it bad' and that requires me to know you, to understand what you like and don't like, in order to assess whether I will like or dislike it or whether I think you know good storytelling from bad. Whereas a critique on the merits of the work I can use, or enjoy, without needing to know you.

Assessing a work on its merits is often tangled up with whether we like the work or not and finding something you enjoy but find many problems highlights the two ways of reviewing something. Often times the reason we like a film or book is because it is doing something we like well. For instance I enjoy the John Wick films but I also recognise that Keanu Reeves's acting can be a little wooden at times, that the action scenes can be a too long, and the world-building is excessive and at times nonsensical, but I still enjoy it. Or Kill Bill, what is the point of bleeping out Beatrix's name in the first film? It doesn't add anything and the mystery of her name (which you can hear through the beep anyway) does not alter the story. It would have made more sense for The Bride's to never come up in the first film. (For the opposite point of view see here.) It is difficult to parse out where the line runs between critique and personal taste and the two will get muddled up much of the time. Just because a work is of poor quality doesn't mean you have to dislike it and just because a work is good doesn't mean you have to like it. In the same vein a film you like isn't necessarily good nor a film you dislike inherently bad. These two types of review, what you personally felt and the merit of the work, often become entangled but there is a difference and most reviews contain both in varying measures.

While it might be important for you as a writer to know your audience likes your latest work you also need to know whether you have managed to improve since your last book and whether you've added something new to the shelf or rehashed something that came before. Originality is difficult to reach but through considered critique and a commitment to craft it can be achieved.

Critique is a crucial aspect of improving in your work, whether art, science, or cooking, etc. It should focus on the work as it stands and the creator needs to consider whether the critique makes sense to them, their style, and their aims. Not all critique is good critique nor is it useful but it is vital to improving in your craft.