Good evening to you from Ravenstone, and thanks for joining me once again. I have experienced a lot of rejection this week. As authors, we all must, yet it is almost always shrouded in secrecy. The author wants to move on from their rejections, and the editor will be banking on that so that their decision isn’t scrutinised. I believe that both parties must own these decisions, and that is why I created The Returned on my website, which I talk about in the News section. My rejections, unvarnished. Take a look.
I finished reading The Black Company, and my Goodreads review sets out my thoughts. It got four stars from me. I moved on to The Dying Earth by Jack Vance and DNF’d it fairly quickly. It’s a turn-based RPG made into a novel for me. Can’t recommend it. I’m now on the quite mystical Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, and I’m quietly hooked and waiting for the twist. The audiobook is really well voiced by Chiwetel Ejiofor.
I went to a regional branch meeting of The Society of Authors this weekend and met some excellent people writing in a range of genres. Afterwards, I was left deciding whether to join them and pay for membership in the national body. It’s a hard no. I wasn’t aware of this before, but it is effectively a trade union and brings with it campaigns against things, especially any and all use of AI for anything whatever. And of course, left-wing politics driving views about what writing should be and who it should be for through a lens of rights and culture. I don’t need it, and I could never give it money, even for the privilege of being around other authors. I’m interested in writing, not chanting outside the Houses of Parliament or Meta's offices.
Greetings from Ravenstone. I’m reading The Black Company by Glen Cook at the moment. I recall DNFing it back in the eighties. It wasn’t epic enough for me back then. My tastes have evidently changed. I will finish it this time. I still can’t visualise the place and find myself dissatisfied with his idea of a wizard, yet I appreciate it more now that I know Cook was himself a Vietnam War veteran. The camaraderie and brutality of Croker and the rest also strongly remind me of the Sven Hassel books about German soldiers fighting in the squalor of World War 2. Squalor is good, folks. Were-leopards, hmm, not sure.
Chelle Honiker writes a wake-up call for the Anti-AI zealots this week, which I found quite instructive. In “You Already Said Yes to the Index,” she argues that the permission question has been settled and that we have moved on to retrieval. I think she is correct. I still don’t think AI can produce a worthwhile finished work without massive assistance and isn’t worth the effort, and I don’t want it to. Yelling ‘Fuck AI. Fuck the data centres’ isn’t advancing the debate, though.
Edge-Lit is bringing the 12th horror, fantasy, and science fiction day to Derby QUAD, which is a half-hour drive from me, taking place on September 19th. This year, the event will feature five Guests of Honour, with acclaimed folk-horror author Thomas Olde Heuvelt, multi-award-winning fantasy and science-fiction novelist Adrian Tchaikovsky, bestselling ghost-story author Laura Purcell, and Clarke Award-winning science-fiction writer and popular fantasy novelist Frances White all joining for headline interview slots. I’m in.
Greetings from Ravenstone. Cooler, more windSwept and rain-soaked than we could have imagined just two weeks ago. Spectacular lightning a few nights ago. I was outside for that! I have been working on the runway to publishing The Shivering Vale this week, and I have deployed a new category interface to get you into Tales from the Woldwood, and also engaged a cover design and formatting company in the US. I have also settled a decision I have been mulling over for 18 months now. To Amazon or not to Amazon, that is the question. The slings and arrows of their platform have frankly lost out, and I take arms against the sea of selling direct instead. It is a business decision. If you have run businesses, as I have, to hand your product to them for such a pathetic royalty, with no access to your customer data and pressure to discount and give away books for free, seems nuts to me. I’m in the Edvane BUSINESS, and their model does not align with good decision-making. It is also a demonstrably woeful discovery surface, partially reliant on a ridiculous review-count system that seems to enslave everyone. I will be selling both the eBook and the novel directly on edvane.world come December.
And on that note, goodbye summer from me and my beautiful little forest elf, who has gone back to school.
Greetings to you from Ravenstone. I am a day late this week, but it is not tardiness. It was deliberate. One of my stories was due for publication today, and I wanted to include the link in this issue; you can find it below. Also, I attended the Medieval Festival at Bosworth Field this weekend, where the Tudors offed Richard III and launched their dynasty under Henry VII, a man famed for being a good accountant and tax collector. They also set about creating the future Shakespearean Richard as a bitter, twisted hunchback weirdo. I joined the Richard III Society while I was there. I don’t necessarily want to campaign for the rehabilitation of his reputation; they’re just a decent medieval interest group. Next week I should have the new interface for the forty Tales from the Woldwood in place so that you can select the starting point that interests you most, whether that be magic, objects, people or realms.
Greetings from Ravenstone on another humid Saturday. Last weekend I attended the Robin Hood Festival in Sherwood Forest. Candidly, it’s more of a cosplay event than a celebration of the merry men. I went as a wizard, who most assumed was Gandalf, although that was never my intention. I try to stay away from Tolkien’s grave as much as possible. My companion was my daughter, who made a convincing forest-elf for a nine-year-old. The whole thing gave me cause to recall some research I did many moons ago into the Robin Hood legend and a story outline that emerged, unfinished, and blinking in the sunlight. This week I worked on that, became immersed in it and produced The Tayle of Robyn Hode. Sorry Nottingham, it’s in Yorkshire.
James Blatch is in New Zealand at the moment, and he wrote about sinister goings-on at a Romance writers’ event. We really do need to push back against this garbage.
I noticed another victim of Hollywood in the fantasy genre this week, and it seems to have become a tradition that when the film guys get their hands on your story and rights, they can do whatever the hell they like. The Author is nice to have, but not essential. George Martin has had his public bust-ups with show-runners, and now Temi Adeyemi has abandoned and publicly decried her own project, Children of Blood and Bone, leaving it in the hands of Paramount. I do wonder how things will turn out for Brando Sando. At least he is writing screenplays, I suppose.
Good evening from Ravenstone. Not a fictitious castle, the actual village where I live, and man, the writing room is hot.
Things have now officially quietened down for me. Why, you may ask. Well, let me tell you. You may or may not be aware that my major dark fantasy project is the first book in a series. That book, The Shivering Vale, is slated for a December 2026 release. Ahead of it, I have published forty short stories, known as the Tales from the Woldwood, to preface and introduce the characters, places and tensions of the world I have built. The stories can be read and enjoyed independently of the book. The book is a self-contained first instalment that does not rely upon the stories in any way to be complete and unambiguous in its ambition.
The purpose of doing it this way was to introduce my world and characters to you at no cost, thus giving anyone and everyone access to the place. The bargain we make is that if any reader wants the book, then it will always be available for sale. I will never give it away or discount it. That is the deal.
Good afternoon, everyone. In the Yewdeep, there is a hall where the dead are kept. Our old friend Wryke tends them. That is The Hall of Bearing, the lead Woldwood tale this week, and it opens a part of the Marchlands that has been sealed until now. Alongside it, Nineteen Lies. Two foresters buy twenty flasks of Frostfire Winterbrandy from a stranger on a road. Or did they? A new Edvane Stories post this week, Streindarke - To Shy From The Rain, inspired by a song that impacted me, as usual. A man whose job is escorting people away from their lives receives a warrant bearing the name of a woman the city separated him from years ago. On the Dark Hearth, a post about folklore and who it belongs to, from choughs at Tintagel to counting rhymes in the Midlands. News this week brings the completion of all forty Tales from the Woldwood, and a quiet home for stories that magazines rejected but readers wanted. And at the end of this issue, a little girl standing between the rails, and a driver who should not have stopped.
Two tales this week. One opens a sealed chamber. The other opens a purse.
Good evening, everyone. Something is waiting in the trees on the road to Duskdale, and every traveller chose the shortcut. That is the vss365 flash fiction at the end of this issue, and it has been my most-read of them this week. Before you get there, two new Marchlands tales. One trapping an ogre in The Shivering Vale, which refuses to let him fight his way out. The other asks what happens when creatures who survive by staying hidden one day decide to be seen. A new Edvane Stories post publishes my sadly rejected Big Finish submission, a First Doctor (Who) story set in Paris on the eve of one of France's worst nights. News this week brings a story acceptance, a craft milestone, and something significant arriving in August. On the Dark Hearth, a post on one of the least common or well-executed techniques in fantasy writing. The object as narrator, telling its own story. Oh, and Substack deploys Pangram - what I think.
An angry monster and a collection of slimy creatures. Each needing to escape for entirely different reasons.
Good afternoon, everyone. Two new tales this week, and both take you somewhere hidden. An Elder Law drops you at the threshold of Serafall, the fae lands, with a man from Lenth who has spent his family name one choice at a time and finds a door that reads him more clearly than he can read himself. Ulth's Exchange takes you beneath a forgotten shop in the town of Pryth to a market where magic is traded like cloth and rope, and where an apprentice must learn the difference between what fear wants to buy and what work actually needs. Over at Edvane Stories: Odd Man Dodd. 1780s Shropshire. A parish midwife. Three deaths. A rhyme the children learn before anyone thinks to ask where it came from. My second VVD Expert Series piece is live, and a new craft post on folk horror can be found at the Dark Hearth this week. New from this issue, a flash fiction challenge I participate in most days, #vss365 on X and BlueSky.
An Elder Law Feritt Nash is a man from Lenth who has spent his family name one choice at a time. Caught in rain on the road, he takes shelter in a cave and stumbles through a portal into the threshold of Serafall, the fae lands. Guards Daraen and Musto demand a name and a voucher he cannot provide. Judge Preena, a sylph who reads him in moments, finds him to be no more than ash that pretends to be soil. The portal closes. Nash walks back into the rain knowing the slope is still beneath him.
Ulth's Exchange Shak Mallory, an Elk Ridge apprentice, is sent alone to the town of Pryth to buy his first wand-shell from Ulth's Exchange, a market hidden beneath a forgotten shop. Ulth gives him a borrowed wand and walks him in. Two sellers offer what fear wants rather than what work demands. Hedda, at a plain table with no display, shows him a shell with a knot that does not flatter. Shak takes it and leaves with nothing more, which is exactly what he came for.
Good afternoon, everyone. This is the first weekly Dispatch. From today, it arrives every Saturday rather than once a month. The same coverage, just closer to the work.
Good morning. I hope everybody is well. Despite my desk being the least appealing venue for focus, due to the heat we have been experiencing in the UK, June was the busiest month the Marchlands has had. Nine tales published, the archive now standing at thirty stories (nine to go), and the world is wider than it was a month ago. There is also publication news worth sharing, a change to how this Dispatch will work going forward, and a great deal happening on the Dark Hearth. All of that is below.
Welcome to the first edition of the Edvane Dispatch.
If you are reading this, you found your way here through Substack, through edvane.world, or through one of the other places where the work lives. However you arrived, thank you for being here at the beginning of something.
A note for those who subscribed elsewhere and were transferred over: you should have been informed of that move, but if you would rather not receive this newsletter, the unsubscribe link at the bottom of every edition will handle it cleanly. Your Substack subscription, if you have one, is separate and will not be affected.
