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.

The Dispatch comes out monthly. It covers the Marchlands novel in progress, new tales from the Woldwood and Edvane Stories, craft notes from the Dark Hearth, and any publication news worth sharing.

Last Month in the Marchlands

Nine tales published in May, taking the free archive to nineteen stories and counting.

13 — The Fall of Wyndeborne Heights. Wyndeborne Heights is a place where dangerous knowledge is held under containment. High Magister Ficeren discovers the containment is failing, and what follows is a story of transformation, sacrifice, and the cost of preserving separation between worlds that no longer consent to it.

14 — Lights of the Yewdeep. Tyd Shel is a mortal who found shelter in the Yewdeep after being used as a conduit. He tends the sap-lights there, which means enclosing living sprites in orbs of hardened sap. A story about harm that arrives as order.

15 — The Lady and the Laggard. A noblewoman leaves a castle and everything she knows. Two hired escorts deliver her to the edge of the Woldwood and go their separate ways, one walking away, one not quite able to.

16 — Elrinaris. In the town of Pryth, a student of the Verdicrence school of magic names a wand shell and burns her hands on the answer. Her master discovers what she named, and what it means. A story about power that refuses to be tamed by patience.

17 — The Mint at Fressalt Hoo. A northern lord arrives at a coastal town to have his gold struck into lawful coin and commission three ships. A study in how power moves through procedure, and how consequence travels quietly alongside it.

18 — The Farewell Chamber. Deep in the Yewdeep, a custodian tends a room built for parting words. The promises spoken there have begun to accumulate, and the room is learning a limit it did not know it had.

19 — One. A Rootkin in the Yewdeep develops the first thought no member of its kind has ever held. A story about what happens to a system when even its smallest part begins to remember itself.

20 — A Word Best Left Unsaid. Tibbit Hashweal is fourteen, new to the work at the Crooked Mare, and believes questions are harmless. One word spoken aloud at the wrong table, and he learns what silence actually costs.

21 — The Court of Serafall. Cylaen Silvershadow stands before the Arbiter and is found misaligned and exiled. She walks out carrying only a braided cord and the knowledge that the court's verdict and the truth are not the same thing.

Access the full, free archive at edvane.world.

Last Month on Edvane Stories

Five stories published in May at edvanestories.com.

Doctor Who and the Bells of Winvaulx Abbey* — a long-form fan fiction in eight parts. A paramedic is drawn into the TARDIS after a temporal wound leads the Doctor to Winvaulx Abbey, where impossible bells, vanishing memories and a ruthless military project threaten to erase lives from history.

The Return of the SS Strumble — a Victorian lighthouse keeper faces the impossible return of a ghost ship carrying machinery that may alter the future.

The Magpies of Hagley Stile — seven dark folk tales built around the old counting rhyme, each magpie bringing a different consequence. One for sorrow, two for joy…

Arrange the Symmetry — in the city of Streindarke, where unrest is detected before it is permitted to begin, a story about the machinery of civic control and those who move within it. Inspired by the song The Staircase (Mystery) by Siouxsie and the Banshees

The Seven Blessings of Cecily Scratcher — at St Mildred's, every blessing has a shadow. Cecily waits beneath the lychgate to tell seven old warnings, each one about what children are made to carry that adults should not. Based on the days of the week folk-rhyme ‘Monday’s Child is Fair of Face’ etc…

A new story publishes every Saturday.

News from May

The Dark Hearth is open. My craft blog launched on 29 May with the first post, How to Write Dark Fantasy Without Just Adding Blood and Misery. Find it at edvane.world/dark-hearth.

The PING Anthology is published. I have a story in PING, an anthology of tales based on a brief to write a story about an App that tells you how others feel about you. I flipped the brief and submitted a gothic ghost story which was voted the most imaginative story by the ARC team. Live now on Amazon, free on Kindle Unlimited, with a paperback edition also available.

My sincere thanks for your support. The Edvane Dispatch will be back on July 1 2026

_{* Doctor Who is the property of the BBC. This is an unofficial fan work, not affiliated with or endorsed by the BBC, made purely for fan enjoyment. No commercial benefit is either intended or implied.}