Hey you, yeah you. Come over here. I got human stories. The organic stuff.
Fancy some human-generated writing for a change?
I’ve got you covered.
Below are two books you can buy which will turn up by Halloween, and afterwards a little note on WHO KILLED THE HUMANS?
52 Weeks Of Horror
I have just republished 52 WEEKS OF HORROR, Halfplanet’s human-written creative writing prompt book. If you’re in the vanishingly small group of people who still want to write their own stories with their own brains, this is the book for you.
This is a book that is as good for beginners (or even non-writers) as it is for experienced authors.
There are 52 prompts in each book in this series because I wanted to make a chilled out, slow-paced writing book series. Too many books make you feel bad for having a life outside writing, and I’ve got a solution for that.
At the end of each month, you get a reflective task which asks you to reconsider how you wrote the four stories that month. This means you’re not just writing, you’re thinking about WHY you wrote the stories a certain way.
And there’s a hack for visualising the shape of a story, too.
For years I wanted to bring back my uni writing club (which I founded and chaired for a few years before graduating) but I realised one issue with in-person workshops is that, if you’ve not got a university to mooch off of (including pinching unwanted sandwiches from nearby socials) you’re going to struggle. I graduated and realised very quickly I did not have my own venue to run classes in, nor did I have a convenient coffee shop.
About that. You can buy this book for around the price of a modern coffee, so 30 billion dollars or less.
I condensed a lot of my ideas for the class into this series of books. Turning classes into books means I can reach almost anyone with these prompts and ideas. It’s not the same as a class, but it’s a mini workshop you can carry around with you all the time, even if the wifi goes.
https://books2read.com/52weeksofhorror
Right now there is also an amazon-exclusive paperback, but the paperback is in pre-production with other retailers.
Macabre Multiverse
Halfplanet’s dark fiction answer to our earlier Sci-Fi Comedy anthology The Cosmic Comedy Collection, Macabre Multiverse brought a much-needed seriousness to proceedings last year.
The book released on Halloween, and all contributors are cut in for the proceeds, so every sale pays the writers, editors, and artists I hired for the book. That’s five authors (including myself) plus two artists and an editor who all get paid every time you buy this book.
That’s the Halfplanet model, to collaborate and share our wins.
https://books2read.com/macabremultiverse
If you order today, there’s a decent chance it will show up for Halloween.
My story, THE SAVIOURS, is a dark exploration of the tropes of cosmic horror and post-apocalyptic science fiction. It features the run of the mill incomprehensible tentacle monsters, with a twist.
And everyone else’s stories are fantastic too.
And, if you grab 52WOH alongside it, you will have access to 52 ideas for stories, plus twelve months’ worth of reflective creative tasks to upgrade and mutate those stories, which will see you through until Halloween 2026.
Who Killed The Humans?
I am currently editing down the fluff before beaming it to my editor. I am now at 81,000 words, and 17,000 words through the third book in the series as well. I am just working on the sinew that binds the otherwise disparate universes and timelines of WKTH together. If you’ve read WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? you’ll know what I am talking about. These are more than collections.
Comedy
I’ve got some proper footage from a proper gig coming soon. When it’s ready, I’ll link it here on the COMEDY tab.