I am filling your bookshelf with my brain juice.
(audio version included) A sneak peek into what's happening on my 31st birthday.
The future looms, some manic hyperobject of surreal story and heavy concept.
Beep Beep.
Your starship wakes you up… But it isn’t speaking in its usual voice…
“It’s been a long while, captain.
Let’s test your memory.
Do you remember this banner?”
“I… I mean… Phillip used it to signal something ahead of time. It’s nearly here… Two weeks.”
“Two… weeks…”
“TWWWWOOOOOO, WEEEEEKS.”
The talking stops. You look outside the starship window, seeing my giant floating head. This isn’t too unusual, it happens at least once a week. But then, my head flips open, revealing the Numan inside (New Human, not to be confused with Gary Numan). It’s a gleaming chrome robot with copper eyes that stare through you, stare directly into some weird, parallel reality.
Before you have time to react, an announcement is beamed forth from the holoprojectors behind my eyes. Eight digits rotate around a central point.
0 9 0 8 2 0 2 3
What could it mean?
Well. I’ll make it easy for you. 09/08/2023 is my 31st birthday.
And I am celebrating in a way only I would celebrate:
I am bringing out new books.
Yes, plural.
Book 1
WHO BUILT THE HUMANS?
DELUXE EDITION HARDBACK
It took a while to find the perfect printer, but I managed. This luxurious hardback will contain exclusive bonus stories, extra content, chapter headings for each main setting and character created out of Lego (in partnership with my alter ego Grumblebricks), and a brick-built (yes, seriously) map of the entire multiverse from the Fragmented Multiverse series. Including new locations.
I’m currently working on other things to sneak into it as well.
The deluxe edition WBTH hardback will launch on Crowdfundr on 09.08.2023 and any orders for it will automatically be added to the total goal for another, bigger project.
Can you guess what that project is?
Book 2
WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? TWO
- Hologram Kebabs and Hungry Horses
Now, I’m not settled on the subtitle, but there are hologram kebabs and hungry horses, so it gives people a good sense of the tone.
Coming out in Hardback, then eBook, and hopefully Audiobook, this sequel/prequel/everythingquel to WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? somehow manages to be more strange. It grabs the existing formula I invented, adds some shiny things, mixes it with some temporal anomalies, rattles the mixture, throws it in the air like a fancy cockail, and then brings it back down to Earth, where you can experience it. If you thought WBTH1 was weird, prepare yourself.
Cyrstal Susan returns, as does Barry Binbag, who was definitely in the first one.
Those strange fellows called Humans (who I invented) are bungling and scrambling and slumping their way through the pages of another epic tome. And, if you’ve been here on my Substack for a while, you’ve already seen glimpses of their adventure, for WBTH2’s top secret pen name was once Hologram Kebab, named after its first story.
I am already 60% through the writing and the editing of it. I can confirm that it is deranged. How deranged, you ask?
THE STORIES SO FAR
A poem so boring that the narrator couldn’t allow it to be in the book, and instead just narrates how many people die during its debut appearance at a poetry recital, which goes on for so long that the universe ends. The story then follows what happens after the universe ends, and the kinds of characters who survive the poetry-death of all time and space
A magical horse that shits out scarves with government secrets knitted into them, as well as worrying cries for help
Self-replicating machines having an identity crisis
Talking mushrooms, and not the ones from Mycelial (but those too)
A secret society of clockwork conspirators
A surprise appearance from my pen name, the erotic wizard genius ROD GRASPER, who will assail your mind with stories about cattle mutilation
A time travelling cow (not related to the above story, honestly)
A time travelling tardigrade
A time travelling God, the God you met in WBTH1. Yeah, he survived the explosion, sort of, but not really. You’ll see
A parody of 1950s Sci-Fi called THE EVIL WILLY FROM OUTER SPACE which is exactly what it sounds like it is
A magical adventure to find a well-endowed elf princess called Buxomina, who sadly died long before the narrator got the job to narrate the story about her failed rescue
A story about a dimension-hopping kitten that isn’t funny, but actually one of my most emotional stories. It wouldn’t be a WBTH if it didn’t suddenly surprise you by being quite clever in between jokes
An action story with so much action, the book might rattle itself out of your hands and explode into glitter or something
A short story about a tribe of gorillas outsmarting aliens
But that’s not all. Since publishing the original WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? in 2020, a small crowd of people have been asking me ‘what happens next’ for various universes. Well, the answer is not far away. WBTH2 also includes:
A sequel to the ARCHITECTS universe from WBTH
A side story in the FURUKAWA universe (tie-in with EARTHLOOP)
A side story from the STEPHANIE universe
In the run-up to WBTH2 I will be releasing the smaller SEVEN STORIES SERIES book by book, to keep you all entertained whilst I do the chiselling. Each of these will contain one story that will later show up in WBTH2, as a way to advertise the epic collection to new readers. These three stories will take on a new shape in WBTH2, as they will be framed by (and will interact with) the other stories in the collection.
As it stands, I am 63,000 words in.
THAT’S STILL NOT ALL
And there’s a change to the formula. WBTH2 will still be navigable in almost any order, but on top of that, you’ll be able to pick the tone of the next story you read.
I will propose an idea, such as ‘what if mushrooms were sentient?’ and you, dear reader, get to pick whether to read a silly or serious response to the idea.
It’s bold. It’s weird. It’s never been done before.
Will it work? My top secret group of seven beta readers says yes.
You can be added to that group soon, if you join the upcoming pre-order campaign. Launching, predictably, on the 9th of August, alongside the WBTH1 special edition hardback, on Crowdfundr.
Both books will have an audiobook tier as well. Audiobooks aren’t easy to make, so I don’t know if I’ll reach the goal for them, but I hope I do! I’ve already had about 40 hours of practice in my home studio.
Things you’ll find on the tiers:
eBook
Hardback
Audiobook
And if you’re more into paperbacks, there will be an additional tier for a signed copy of WBTH1, in case you’ve not already got it. All purchases will be added to the total for WBTH2, even if they’re off-site. So, if you’re impatient, you can get one now by clicking the picture here.
I’ve restocked!
(If you know a cheaper postal service, let me know)
WBTH2, the WBTH1 DELUXE HARDBACK, and WBTH1 signed paperback will all collect their funds together into a single crowdfunding pool that will create WBTH2. If that pool reaches a certain depth, I will most certainly be beaming audiobooks your way. If not, I’ll try applying for a business loan again, but as nice as I might look in suits, this is the best job for me.
I’m good at it. I make the weird thing. You buy the weird thing. I spend money on making the next weird thing. Sometimes I give you a free weird thing to say thanks, sometimes that free weird thing connects to the other things.
It’s a good system.
So, that’s two books. But I promised you three.
We now enter NSFW comedy territory…
THE COSMIC COCK’S
INTERGALACTIC COMEDY BOOK.
As some of you may have noticed, I brought my comedy content back onto this main Substack because I got over that weird feeling that people who like my books might not like my comedy. I mean come on, my first (and so far only) big book is at least 50% jokes. So what was wrong with my brain?
Science has yet to answer that question. So let’s ask another.
Q: What is this new book?
A: It’s a collection of comedy short stories, by Sci-Fi and Comedy authors.
A top secret project for a long time, this book was actually first concieved in 2015 as ‘Planetary Overlap’ (a title I have since taken for my own use). I put it down because I didn’t know any funny Sci-Fi authors at the time, instead focusing my efforts on the very first Halfplanet project, a collection of art and poetry (and the odd short story) from students and professors at my uni. It was groundbreaking, weird, new. It placed established writers alongside newbies, giving both the confidence to look at their work with new eyes, knowing it was not just publishable, it was desirable.
Privately I am planning more like it, this galactic comedy book is the beginning of something quite large.
It took a long time to find the perfect writers for it. There’s a lot of contrast, a lot of talent, and an unreasonable degree of jokes. This is not a book to read if you need the toilet, but it is a book to read if your partner is asleep next to you and you want them to be grumpy in the morning because you woke them up by laughing, or going to the toilet in the bed.
Trust me, that might happen. I already know one reader who suffered that fate with WBTH, now imagine if I was very picky, hunted down other funny people, and made them write brand new stories to make you laugh.
That’s right, every single story in the galactic comedy collection will be NEW.
That was the only rule.
Oh, and they had to be funny as well.
TWO RULES.
So that’s it. That’s the end of this newsletter. I’ve announced three books. I’ve not mentioned Earthloop or The Stephanie Glitch or those reprints of my Sci-Fi Poetry books or the Rod Grasper short story series or the Comedy night I just founded or anything else. I’ve been well behaved. I’ve stayed on track.
Hopefully you’re feeling almost overwhelmed, but in a good way, like a child holding a Lego store bag that’s bigger than they are.
There’s actually more, but I’m at Substack’s email limit.
Yes, there’s that much content on the way that it’s making Substack creak.
See you soon.
There will be more…
Bionicle