Headed Futureward
Today is January 1st, 2025.
I have made some decisions about future projects that will ensure that by January 1st 2026, I am a full-time author / comedian / poet / artist.
In this post I’m going to tell you about them.
Earthloop
In 2020 I published Who Built The Humans?, a collection of thematically interconnected short stories and novellas which was big enough to house eleven universes. One of those universes was called THE FURUKAWA UNIVERSE, named such after one of the main characters, physics professor Nori Furukawa, who is tasked with rebuilding a broken time machine by a letter sent from Swamphenge by Bill Bines, soldier at the Swamphenge military research facility, and brother of Betty Bines, who vanished in the 1950s after multiple UFO sightings.
Nori is chosen because he’s one of precious few people who is open about the real-world possibilities of time travel and aliens who has the resources and knowhow to work on the tech. Everyone else is compromised, and Nori is just young enough to live his way back to the present, too, if anything goes wrong.
The novella in WBTH hinted at a wider universe, and that wider universe became The Earthloop Trilogy, which was almost fully funded as a Kickstarter in 2022. I could have cheesed it and threw in the rest of the cash myself, but that felt wrong. So, I shelved the project and let it grow. It’s weirder now, there’s now four books I am working on for the ‘trilogy’, the first of which follows one of the aliens around before they land on Earth.
You can expect to see at least that first book in 2025.
The X-Files
I’m not a writer for the X-Files, but I’d like to be. To start this side quest, I am rewatching every single episode. I started a few days ago.
I will be writing about them here on a new dedicated subletter. It will be on an opt-out basis, meaning you’re already on it, but I think you’ll like it.
It’s going to have poems and jokes.
Minecraft
Some of you will already know that I’m doing okay as a Minecraft content creator lately. I want to put more time into that, so I’ve downloaded Davinci Resolve and hope to use the software to edit my videos so they are more entertaining.
I may also invest in a better webcam, but that’s not really a thing for Youtube.
Poetry
This one is pretty obvious. My last post was about poetry, and I’ve talked to some of you about the shape the future books should take, and I’ve settled on something I like and I think you will like too. A paperback should be out in 2025.
Reality
There are things in the real world which affect me and which I want to talk about, but I’ve never felt this is the right place to do it, apart from in satire. For example, my comedic article about censorship and Roald Dahl books that was picked up by WrongSpeak last year.
When my talk show comes back, I won’t shy away from talking about difficult topics, but I want to focus more on finishing the fiction and doing the entertainer thing this year.
Comedy
I’ll be doing more gigs and maybe learning how to drive so I can get to them. I don’t know if I’ll do Beat The Frog as I don’t think my material is fast enough to keep that crowd going, but I could be talked into it if I wrote something new and punchy.
At 00:01 today I submitted a standup contest entry to an Omid Djalili comedy competition, so that’s how I started 2025.
I may also try to do another Fringe show this year.
Seven Stories about Time/Space/Astral travel
This trilogy of short story collections announced in 2022 has been shelved for a while as I turned my attentions instead to Who Killed The Humans? and The Stephanie Glitch, but it will return. I’m going for Time Travel first, and they’ll be a mix of published and new stories, packaged in a way so that new readers might more easily find my stuff.
The Stephanie Glitch
Stephanie has Synaesthesia, a neurological condition that translates one sense experience into another. She can see smells, hear colours, and see sound. This isn't normally a problem unless someone in college wants to ask her annoying questions about it, but when her crosswired brain comes across a sensory input that human beings have not yet evolved to process, her synaesthesia translates it for her, turning a dark alien signal in an otherwise ignorant brain into a bright flash of sound and colour.
This is no migraine, this is a warning.
Someone out there in the universe needs her help.
And Stephanie is the only person who can hear them.
In this starting novella, two universes come dangerously close to a collision as Stephanie prepares for university, trying to live a normal life in spite of the cosmic warning ringing inside her head.
This story, told through several novellas, is Phillip Carter's weirdest adventure yet. And if you've read Who Built The Humans? you'll know how much of an achievement that is.
You can get the first novella today on Amazon, though it will appear in more retailers soon.
Who Killed The Humans?
Releasing March 5th 2025, WKTH is going to be my primary focus for the next three months. My very new day job has been spiritually exhausting and I’ve already had to put the book back once, but I don’t think I’ll need to do it again.
It’s a punchier, funnier collection of stories than WBTH was, and feels like a good natural end to that project. On top of polished and never-before-seen stories that didn’t fit into the first book, there are lots of new universes to explore, and returns from some fan-favourite characters that work whether or not you’ve read the first book.
I would really like to get 100 pre-orders for this one on Amazon. I am currently at 14.
The retail price will be increasing shortly after the release date, so if you want to lock in the lower price, you have to do it now.
This is an offer I am extending to anyone who pre-orders it, because pre-orders are basically the only thing which can guarantee a book will sell well on Amazon. No fancy advertising packages, no viral tiktoks, but pre-orders.
Pre-orders show the algorithm that people want the book.
If you’ve got a sense of humour and think aliens are cool, you’ll like it.
UK link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CWMW2Z98
USA link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CWMW2Z98
Thank you for being here in 2024.
2025 will be weirder.