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.

An Ogre Denied
An ogre enters The Shivering Vale through a gate with a raiding party. The Shepherds of Aurivath destroy his companions. He survives by hiding, but the Vale will not release him. No gate home. No enemy his strength can break. No way to remember what winning felt like.

The Krivvian
Drenn Falkor enters Krivv seeking solitude and finds it populated by dozens of small, scaled, venomous creatures who test him, bite him lightly, and ultimately use him as transport back through the gate into the Yewdeep, clinging to him and refusing to let go.

A First Doctor (Who) story set in Paris on one of the worst nights in France's history. A note on why it ended up here rather than with Big Finish.

Good Luck, Old Man
A First Doctor story set during the canonical gap in The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve TV Series of 1966. The Doctor encounters a fellow Time Lord named Thessa in a Paris alley. Together they track and evict a temporal predator called the Corvax that has nested inside a fixed point in history. Submitted to Big Finish's Paul Spragg Memorial competition, not selected, published here.

On one of the least commom techniques in fantasy writing. The object that narrates its own existence without knowing what it means.

How to Let an Object Tell Its Own Story
On the object-as-narrator technique, using The Yellowstone Ring as the example. The ring has no perspective, no grief, no case to build. It only records. The reader supplies the moral judgements. I also reference Tibor Fischer's The Collector Collector, from which I took the idea, and John Crowley's Little Big.

A story accepted, a milestone passed, and something arriving in August that will not wait much longer.

• By the end of July, all 40 Tales from the Woldwood will be published. edvane.world will be updated with new discovery pages for characters, magic and the world ahead of the novel.

• Worldbuilding Must Carry Silence, the VVD Post collaboration, has passed 1000 likes on Instagram and is the most-read craft piece I have ever written.

• The Advancing, submitted to Space and Time magazine and rejected, has been accepted by Hall of Sleeping Stories on Substack. My thanks to Audrey Penn for letting it rest with their collection.

• The Dark Hearth X-Space launches in August - a weekly discussion of dark fiction.

• Novel publication date announcement coming very soon.

A Note on AI detection on Substack

Substack has introduced AI detection via Pangram. I left a comment on the post. My view is that this panders to a noisy minority and will blight the platform. Human discernment has always settled the quality question and always will. The loudest anti-AI voices demanding detection tools are doing something that needs calling out. They are outsourcing their own judgement to an algorithm to prove that algorithms cannot be trusted. That is cognitive dissonance at best and willing hypocrisy at worst.

A daily prompt. My favourite this week.

The signpost named Queen's Reach, the city behind them. Ahead, the road promised Duskdale in five miles. A second arm pointed through the woods. DUSKDALE — TWO MILES. Every traveller chose the shortcut. The thing in the trees licked its teeth.

Discover my other #vss365 posts on X and Bluesky.

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Thankyou for your support, and remember, Stay Dark. JBE.