Ridley Park – Page 4

Editing is a Vicious Sport

July 25, 2025July 25, 2025Posted in Book, Ridley Park, WritingTagged author blog, book editing, books, creative writing, editing, editing a novel, editing struggles, fiction, how to edit a book, indie author, left brain right brain, literary editing, novel, publishing, self-publishing, word count tracking, Writing, writing motivation, writing process, writing tipsLeave a comment

Measuring progress is far simpler when you’re writing. You can count words. Or characters, if you’re a sadist. Sure, half of them might be drivel. Whole chapters may end up ceremonially executed by draft five, but at least you’ve done something. There’s a metric. A tally. A sense of movement.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.

You can even see your progress, pages stack, paragraphs grow fat with promise. And if you still write on physical media (bless your nostalgic heart), you get the added catharsis of crumpling your failures and lobbing them at the bin like a disgruntled poet. It’s theatre. It’s progress. It’s delusional.

Editing, by contrast, offers no such cheap thrills. The word count doesn’t so much creep as collapse. One minute you’re a literary demi-god sitting on 80,000 words. The next, you’re scraping along at 74k and wondering whether your “tightening” has amputated a limb.

Yes, the prose might be cleaner. Punchier. Less like a whisky-soaked rant and more like a distilled insult. But does it feel like progress? Not in the way dopamine understands it.

As I’ve written before, editing takes me five – maybe ten – times longer than drafting. It’s a full hemispheric shift: from right-brain dreamscapes to left-brain bureaucracy. Creativity gives way to spreadsheet logic. Grammar. Timelines. Continuity. Did she sit before she spoke, or after? Is this line meant to be his? Why is this in past tense? Is this in any tense?

And so, the grind.

Yes, there are flashes of satisfaction – a retooled transition here, a twist landed just-so there. But mostly, it’s a long, slow crawl through self-loathing and misplaced modifiers.

I’ve spent most of my adult life toggling between left-right hemisphere roles. And frankly, the left side still gives me hives. The corporate world, bless its hollow soul, tried to stuff me in a logic-shaped box. A coffin of metrics, meetings, and “measurable outcomes.” I’m still recovering.

So why not outsource editing? Why not let someone else swing the machete through this jungle?

Two reasons:

I secretly enjoy the act of refinement. It’s masochism, but it’s my masochism.
I operate on a margin so thin it’s practically theoretical. A Schrödinger’s budget – simultaneously there and not.

Still, the margin’s probably winning.

On the Rails and Off the Map: The Editing Mind

July 24, 2025July 24, 2025Posted in Book, Ridley Park, WritingTagged biographical fiction, books, character-driven fiction, compressing time in fiction, editing, editing fiction, experimental writing, fiction, hybrid narrative, Iain McGilchrist, indie author blog, left brain writing, literary fiction, narrative timeline, nonlinear storytelling, novel, novel editing, pantsing vs plotting, plot matrix, Ridley Park, right brain creativity, story structure, stream-of-consciousness fiction, Writing, writing process, writing tipsLeave a comment

I’m editing what I expect will become my next novel. Editing, for me, is a fundamentally different headspace than writing. When I’m drafting – especially when pantsing – I lean into a stream-of-consciousness flow. Iain McGilchrist might call this right-hemisphere activity. I don’t steer so much as ride shotgun, scribbling while the character drives.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.

(Side note: I’ll share the tentative cover art soon, but this post is about process.)

Editing, by contrast, is all left hemisphere – angles, order, logic, connection. When I’m writing, I don’t worry if a detail makes sense. That’s future-me’s problem. In this project, future-me discovered that the protagonist had been pregnant for over thirteen months, undertaking activities most wouldn’t attempt in that state. In a nonlinear story, this might slip past many readers – but not past my editorial self. I mentioned this in a prior post.

I used to devour writing advice, but I don’t write like other people. Most advice seems geared toward genre fiction. I’m not opposed to that, but I lean literary and experimental. Templates don’t work for me.

I know the Hero’s Journey. I’ve read Save the Cat. But I don’t write about heroes – or even anti-heroes. That’s not the kind of story I’m telling, nor the kind I usually read.

I don’t much care about strong characters for their own sake. I care about what they allow me to explore philosophically. That said, this project is different. The main character is strong. So are the secondaries. And while it’s still fiction, it’s rooted in real people and events – compressed, reshaped, but recognisable.

I’ve condensed two decades of experience into a seven-year arc across ~200 pages. The first three years are flashbacks, brushed in for colour. The rest unfolds more or less in sequence. This time, I didn’t give myself free rein. There are rails. And while I occasionally jump them, I still need to land somewhere coherent.

The structure is a four-phase design. The book opens in media res and stays there for a few chapters. Then we rewind. And rewind again. Eventually, the timeline catches up, and the final half moves more linearly.

To tame this beast, I turned to spreadsheets. I built a plot matrix – numbering each section twice: narrative order (as written) and chronological order (as lived). I had to find the earliest flashbacks and stitch the rest together like some temporal jigsaw. It felt like Inception at times. Where am I? What layer is this?

From there, I started tracking time: days, weeks, months. That’s when I uncovered the 13-month pregnancy. Realistic for an elephant, not a human.

The root problem? I sequenced the conception too late and compressed the birth too early. I also omitted two earlier pregnancies to streamline the plot. To fix it, I reinstated one and used it to restore character depth that had been left on the cutting room floor. It worked – but it added new complications. Now I’m back in spreadsheet land, scanning for widows and orphans – narrative orphans, I mean – where scenes dangle or disconnect.

This is where editing diverges from writing. Writing is dreaming. Editing is retelling. And retelling demands coherence. Dreams ignore time, cause, and logic. Retelling insists on them: this happened before that, and then…

So-called “plotters” operate almost entirely in the left hemisphere. Structure first. Logic forward. Details coloured in after. It’s a valid approach – but one with fewer degrees of freedom. Creative constraints come with the template. You still get unique results, but you’ve narrowed the space. Stephen King’s version would differ wildly from JK Rowling’s – but both would be channelled through the same scaffolding.

You can argue that creativity happens in the choosing of the structure. Fair. But unless you’ve invented something truly novel, you’ve still chosen from a shelf of precedents. The story begins where freedom ends.

And yet, there’s value in that too.

Literary Fiction vs Commercial Fiction

July 21, 2025Posted in Ridley Park, WritingTagged art versus commerce, bestseller culture, book culture, book marketing, book review, books, commercial fiction, fiction, fiction writing, genre snobbery, high art, literary elitism, literary fiction, literary satire, low art, podcast, publishing industry, reading, Writing, writing craftLeave a comment

Welcome, dear reader, to the eternal skirmish between Art and Entertainment, or as the marketing departments like to call it, Literary Fiction vs Commercial Fiction. This is not just a genre squabble; it is the ideological showdown between truth-seeking masochists and market-savvy optimists.

Literary Fiction: Starving Artist Chic

Literary Fiction is what happens when someone spends ten years writing a novel that doesn’t sell but gets shortlisted for an award no one outside The Guardian has heard of. It is the sanctum of character studies, of prose polished until it cuts glass, of metaphors so dense they require footnotes and a whisky.

It doesn’t have to be inaccessible, of course—it just often chooses to be, on principle. Plot is optional, punctuation negotiable. The point is to mean something. To explore the human condition. To examine alienation in a post-industrial neoliberal hellscape, not to entertain your aunt with a beach read.

It’s not that Literary Fiction hates readers. It just isn’t convinced they’re entirely necessary.

Commercial Fiction: Mass Appeal on Tap

Enter Commercial Fiction: the cheerfully formulaic cousin who makes six figures ghostwriting romance under three pseudonyms while sipping cocktails on a cruise. It values clarity, pace, and payoff. There is a beginning, a middle, and—brace yourself—a satisfying end.

It’s written with the audience in mind. The actual audience, not the imagined one you conjure during your third espresso in a North London café while reworking the opening line for the sixth time.

Commercial Fiction exists to be read. Literary Fiction exists to be discussed. Possibly in a room full of mirrors. Possibly after death.

The High-Low Culture Divide

If this were the Renaissance, Literary Fiction would be frescoes in a cathedral—revered, roped-off, and best viewed with your neck craned in discomfort. Commercial Fiction would be the travelling puppet show outside: rowdy, raucous, full of cheap laughs and bawdy jokes. Guess which one brings joy to the masses and which one gets preserved by UNESCO.

There is still this Victorian hangover about high art and low art, as if prose needs a monocle and a trust fund to be taken seriously. Literary Fiction clings to its moral high ground, publishing monographs on the death of the novel, while Commercial Fiction’s out here resurrecting it one bestseller at a time.

Intention Matters

Let’s be honest: some literary writers stumble into the bestseller lists. It’s not beneath them—it just wasn’t the point. Conversely, when a commercially-minded author attempts “Art,” the results are often embarrassing—like a stand-up comic trying Shakespeare in clown shoes.

Approaching from a commercial angle and achieving something artistically resonant? That’s the alchemy. That’s the rare bird. But the reverse—starting with art and accidentally making money—is a tale as old as Joyce (who, let’s remember, died broke and banned).

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

No.
Just kidding. Sort of.

Yes, there is crossover. Yes, The Road is both. But let’s not pretend that Twilight and To the Lighthouse are playing the same game. One is trying to build a fanbase; the other is trying to dissect perception itself. And while both may involve vampires, only one is metaphorical.

In Conclusion

Commercial Fiction is a warm bath. Literary Fiction is a cold shower that leaves you questioning your life choices. One sells. The other sulks. One entertains. The other enlightens (maybe). You can love both, loathe both, or—if you’re cursed with a literary soul—you can write one while envying the other.

Either way, don’t pretend they’re the same. One is art. The other is commerce. Sometimes they shake hands. Occasionally they snog. But more often, they glare at each other from opposite ends of the bookstore, muttering into their blurbs.

Writing Props

July 21, 2025July 20, 2025Posted in Art, Awakening, Book, Everlasting Cocksucker, Hemo Sapiens, Propensity, Ridley Park, Setting, Sustenance, Tarot, WritingTagged book review, books, editing, fiction, literature, memories, poetry, props, reading, WritingLeave a comment

Does anyone else use writing props to help immerse yourself in adjascent fiction?

This unicorn image is from a poster. I am using it as a reference for a current project. It’s already seared into my brain, but it renders it somehow more real.

This unicorn poster hung on the wall of the inspiration for the protagonist of an upcoming novel, Needle’s Edge. It featuers prominently – almost has a speaking part.

Maps

Hemo Sapiens: Awakening is set in near-future Manchester, UK, so I had maps of Manchester at the ready. It helped me to add some realism. Because a trip from a nearby town into the city only took 15 to 20 minutes, I had to edit down a scene I was hoping would fill an hour. I could have used a location further away, but it wouldn’t have made sense to the plot, and I hate those sorts of plot gimmicks.

Sustenance is set in Iowa. I not only had a map of Iowa, I had resources on flora and fauna, so I could name-drop. I’ve visited parts of Iowa, but I couldn’t have drawn these details from memory—and I mightn’t have known the names or the onomonapoeia fascimiles.

Temporal Babel is set in New Mexico, so besides a map for highway references and distances from landmarks—towns, cities, and reservations—, I saved image resources of local photographs, landscapes, plants, buildings, attire, and so on. It really helps we with the description, something that is not otherwise my forte.

Propensity is set in no place in particular, so I used no maps, but I studied interiors of institutions, prisons, laboratories, and the like.

This is another unicorn sticker that was in the house of the protagonist, but it doesn’t make the cut. It still makes me chuckle.

Another unfinished novel, Everlasting Cocksucker, is set in Philly. I spent severl years in and around there, so I know the lay of the land. Still, I find maps useful.

I put this project ont he backburner because I received so much hate over the subject matter. I decided to concentrate on other projects. But, I created a physical shadowbox as a reminder of the protagonist.

**Image**: *Reconstruction of a shadowbox*.

In this story, this represents her life habits: Newport Menthol 100s in a box, Red Bull, Maruchan Ramen, and tarot readings. The Hanged Man is relevant to the plot. When I return to the manuscript, I’ll have this as, let’s call it, inspiraration.

If I wrote genre fiction, this wouldn’t work as well – Sci-Fi or Fantasy and whatnot. It might work for historical fiction though.

Do you have any habits that help you to write?

Writing is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

July 20, 2025July 20, 2025Posted in Book, Ridley Park, WritingTagged author, author burnout, author life, book launch, book marketing, book promotion, books, cover design, editing, formatting, independent publishing, indie author, mental health for writers, publishing, publishing iceberg, publishing tips, sales management, self-publishing, Writing, writing iceberg, writing motivation, writing process, writing strugglesLeave a comment

I hate to be the bearer of bad news – especially if you’re still slogging through a draft of your first manuscript. You know what some people say about writing a book is the hard part.

Lies. Damned lies. That’s the frothy, twinkly nonsense parroted by people who’ve never published anything beyond a social media post, probably only a comment.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.

Let me tell you the truth. The actual, bloodstained, coffee-fuelled truth:

Writing the book is the easy part.

It’s the visible tip of the iceberg, smugly floating above the surface, soaking up the praise and admiration. Meanwhile, everything else – the sleepless nights, the decimal-point royalty statements, the unpaid invoices to your own soul – is lurking beneath, waiting to sink your mental health like the HMS Delusion.

So here it is, for posterity and pity:

Post-Writing Gauntlet: The Real Job Begins

1. Editing (Five Times, If You’re Lucky)

Developmental editing – “Is your plot a plot or a pile of wet spaghetti?”
Line editing – Making your sentences less embarrassing.
Copyediting – Catching your consistent misuse of ‘affect’ and ‘effect’.
Proofreading – The last defence against the typo apocalypse.
Beta feedback – Friends who suddenly vanish when asked to read a draft.

2. Formatting and Typesetting

Print vs digital layouts. Word crimes meet paragraph crimes.
EPUBs that break for fun.
That one widow on page 243 you didn’t notice until the proof copy arrived.

3. Cover Design

DIY, Fiverr roulette, or mortgage your cat to hire a professional.
Matching tone, genre conventions, and market expectations.
Spelling your own name correctly. (Don’t laugh, it happens.)

4. ISBNs and Metadata Hell

ISBN purchases (if you’re not relying on Amazon’s identifiers).
Title, subtitle, BISAC categories, keywords, blurbs, author bio — all rewritten seventeen times.

5. Publishing Platform Setup

Kindle Direct Publishing, IngramSpark, Kobo, Draft2Digital, Smashwords — pick your poison.
Print proofs, bleed settings, trim sizes, the baffling difference between matte and gloss.

6. Marketing (a.k.a. Screaming Into the Void)

Author website & blog (SEO: your new religion).
Social media presence — the façade of charm over existential dread.
Newsletter with a totally non-spammy freebie opt-in.
Ads: Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, Google. Burn money to test the water temperature.

7. Book Launch

ARCs, blog tours, launch events, or at least pretending you’re doing those things.
Coordinating reviews before anyone has read the damn thing.
Press kits and media outreach — basically shouting “LOOK AT ME” with tact.

8. Ongoing Sales Maintenance

Price promos, countdown deals, boxed sets, bundling — keep flogging the corpse.
Monitoring sales dashboards like a Victorian ghost watches the wallpaper peel.
Adjusting metadata because one reviewer didn’t understand it was satire.

9. Audiobook Production (If You Hate Money)

Narrator auditions, contracts, studio time.
Alternatively, read it yourself and discover your own voice is intolerable.
Or muddle through with an AI speech companion. Hullo, ElevenLabs.
Distribution through ACX or Findaway, both of which will pay you in dry leaves.

10. Accounting and Legal Fuss

Tracking royalties across platforms.
Filing taxes as an “author-publisher-entrepreneur-marketer-entity”.
Copyright registration, contracts, intellectual property trolls under the bridge.

11. Dealing With Readers

Responding to fan mail (both lovely and deranged).
Ignoring 1-star reviews that say “not what I expected, didn’t read it”.
Navigating book clubs who want a discount because they’re “doing you a favour”.

12. Mental Health and Motivation

Impostor syndrome, burnout, elation, despair — the writer’s buffet.
Rewriting your author bio weekly because you don’t know who you are anymore.

Optional Add-Ons (for masochists)

Translations and foreign rights – Because English isn’t the only language in which you can fail to sell books.
Merchandise – T-shirts nobody buys, mugs that mock your financial situation.
Public speaking / readings – Summon the courage to read your sex scenes aloud in a room of pensioners.

**Image**: *Publishing iceberg poster in all its glory*.

Spreadsheet Says No

July 19, 2025Posted in Book, Ridley Park, Software, Status Update, WritingTagged author blog, book review, books, editing, editing fiction timeline, Excel for writers, fiction, fixing plot holes, how to revise a novel, non-linear narrative tips, novel, novel revision process, plot matrix template, story structure problems, Writing, writing pregnancy timelines1 Comment

I was feeling smug. Fourth revision pass. Plot matrix built. Columns for chapter, scene, POV, date, time, location, word count, and emotional arc – because I’m that kind of monster. I even added colour-coding.

And it worked. Mostly.

After pruning and polishing, it finally felt ready to ship. Just a couple cosmetic tweaks. A trim here, a varnish there. Run a lint roller over the dialogue. Call it done.

Except.

The matrix – traitorous little bastard – exposed a structural fault so elegant I’d almost admired it. The problem? Pregnancy. Not mine, the protagonist’s. (Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.)

Turns out, I’d compressed over a decade of real-life events into two years of narrative space. Bold. Efficient. Reckless. I’d wrung out the filler, reshuffled a few puzzle pieces, and declared the thing plausible.

Only it wasn’t.

When I sorted the scenes chronologically, the matrix coughed. The story broke like a cheap lawn chair. There she was: visibly pregnant while also, somehow, gallivanting about in scenes that would’ve required a different physiology entirely. Not an Olympian, but the metaphor holds.

And that’s when it hit me: time may be a flat circle, but gestation is not. No amount of POV tricks or narrative backflips can make a third-trimester body do first-trimester things. Biology, the ultimate killjoy.

So now I’m doing surgery. Not delicate surgery, either. I’m sawing out whole sections, rebuilding connective tissue, and laying down scar tissue where the timeline used to be. I’ll need new plot scaffolding to support the pregnancy and its repercussions. It’s fine. It’s good. It’s hell.

This is revision. We go in thinking we’re buffing up the finish, only to discover we paved over a sinkhole.

Lesson of the week: spreadsheets don’t lie.

They just lie in wait.

New Book Release: Temporal Babel

July 18, 2025July 18, 2025Posted in Book, Ridley Park, Status Update, Temporal Babel, WritingTagged babel, book review, books, communication breakdown, contact story, contemporary surrealism, desert fiction, fantasy, fiction, future English, indie author, language mystery, linguistic sci-fi, literary fiction, new release, philosophical fiction, phonetic drift, Ridley Park, Speculative Fiction, Temporal Babel, time displacementLeave a comment

An unsolved literary mystery where language fails first.

I’m thrilled to announce the release of my latest novella, Temporal Babel, now available in paperback and hardcover. It’s a story about a man who arrives with no language the world can understand—and the woman who tries to name him anyway.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.

Set in small-town New Mexico, Temporal Babel is not a thriller. It’s not about saving the future or rewriting the past. It’s about the weird middle ground where things don’t quite translate—linguistically, temporally, emotionally.

If you’ve ever wondered what it would feel like to encounter someone truly out of place—where even the word where doesn’t land—you’ll find something resonant in these pages.

What’s it about?

A young woman discovers a man on the roadside.
He’s naked. Marked with strange blue scars.
And the words coming out of his mouth aren’t quite English.
Or anything else.

No memory. No ID. No history that the town of Anika can decipher. But as he begins to recover, the sound of his voice becomes its own riddle.

Some readers may call this speculative fiction. Others might shelve it under linguistic noir. I just call it a contact story—minus the aliens, or is it?

Why read it?

🔹 If you enjoy novels that refuse to explain themselves, this one’s for you.
🔹 If you like language play, phonetic drift, and dialect as plot, this one delivers.
🔹 If you like stories where the weirdness builds slowly, quietly, without fireworks—you’ll feel right at home.

“Dis kē?” he asks.
What is this?
No one knows. Not even the narrator.

📖 Temporal Babel is available now in paperback and hardcover.

Read it for free with KindleUnlimited.

You can explore the book page here or head straight to your favourite indie or online retailer.

Thank you for reading, for puzzling, and for letting mystery have the final word.

—Ridley

Book Review: The Emotional Craft of Fiction

June 28, 2025June 28, 2025Posted in Character, critique, review, Ridley Park, WritingTagged book review, books, creative-writing, Donald Maass, editing, fiction, recommendation, Writing, writing tipsLeave a comment

Not Charlotte’s Web.

Instead, The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface by Donald Maass.

I just finished this book. I’ll say it’s good and even recommend it, but it’s not really for me. I wrote a blurb recently before I was even halfway through, and my opinion hasn’t changed.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.

If you like to write in typical, character-driven stories, this should be right up your street. Besides character depth, the author also pushes moral righteousness. Thanks, but no thanks.

All of this said, I did gain some benefits from it, because although my writing is not heavily centred on characters, it does contain them, and I want them to feel alive. I want the world to feel lived in.

Personally, I think in schemes and threads – big ideas, deep ideas. Once all of this is roughly in place, I take a second pass for details. This is where Maass can help.

Full disclosure: Some people adopt a plotting approach to writing, whilst others adopt a pantser approach. I fall somewhere in between. Moreover, I might write something from one perspective and the next from the other – and I might flip-flop back and forth.

As a plotter, I might have waypoints that I want to hit, ideas I want to explore. Sometimes, I write these down on paper, in a spreadsheet, or somewhere to keep myself honest. Other times, I have these plot points in mind, but I take a stream-of-consciousness approach, simply discovering the story as it unfolds under my fingertips. I may even plot half a story and “pants” the rest of it. No telling.

As a pantser, I might have a kernel of an idea, and I just want to ideate on the page. So, I write. I lock myself in my room, throw up a “Do Not Disturb” sign, and head down to write until the well of ideas runs dry. At this point, I might put the idea aside or step back and consider plot points.

Looking back on this post, it’s not so much a book review at all. Apologies. That said, if you write characters and enjoy mainstream writing approaches, I think you’ll find the ideas in this book helpful. Many of the better ideas are presented early on, but it’s a short read. He offers some authors, titles, and excerpts you might find interesting. I found them to be a mixed bag.

Dispatches from the Publishing Trenches: A Field Report

June 25, 2025June 25, 2025Posted in Book, Generative AI, Ridley Park, Software, WritingTagged AI writing tools, author, author advice, author journey, Beta readers, book editing, book marketing, book sales, books, cover design, editing, Generative AI, independent publishing, indie author, novel, publishing, publishing industry, Ridley Park, self-publishing, traditional publishing, Writing, writing processLeave a comment

I, Ridley Park, am an independent author and publisher. Before this literary turn, I did time as an economist, business analyst, and management consultant – none of which prepared me for the peculiar economics of modern publishing.

Much like traditional music in the Digital Age, traditional publishing has lost a bit of its lustre. Its gatekeeping function remains, but the gates are now rusted, and half the guards have been made redundant.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.

From a business standpoint, the Independent™ must ask: Is the distribution reach of a traditional publisher or third-party distributor worth the revenue share they demand? It’s tempting to cast them as parasites feeding off your creative lifeblood—but statistically, the average indie author sells only 60 copies of their book. Yes, that includes the five you bought yourself and the ten your mum distributed among reluctant neighbours.

Could you sell more than average? Possibly. Less? Almost certainly. Better to sell 100 copies and earn a pittance than to earn 100% of nothing. But if the publisher can’t move your book either, and if they’re not investing in you as an author, you may well find yourself in the red. Especially if you’re the one paying them for the privilege of being published. That’s not publishing – that’s vanity cosplay.

Publishers also offer (read: upsell) services like editing, formatting, and cover design. As an Independent™, you either pay for these à la carte or do them yourself. Or, if you’re like me, you cobble together a mixed strategy of DIY, AI, and professional outsourcing – whatever the project demands.

For Hemo Sapiens, I did everything except the typography for the title and byline on the cover. That part I outsourced; I know my limits. The rest – cover composition, layout, typesetting – I handled. I also brought in beta readers, who offered some valuable copyedits and corrections.

With Sustenance, I went end-to-end solo, with AI in the wings for flow and proofing support.

Propensity followed a similar path – except I made the rare (some might say perverse) choice of hiring a beta reader after release. Heretical, I know. But the feedback was so incisive I’m now considering a mid-edition revision, particularly in the middle third, where things get a bit heady.

As for Temporal Babel – still unreleased – I’ve done everything myself thus far, but I’m leaning toward bringing that same beta reader back for another round of bruising clarity.

Beta readers, it turns out, are worth their weight in snark and red ink. I’ll save my ruminations on them for another post, which I promise will be full of revelations and at least one semi-poetic lament.

I could say more here, but there are other things demanding my time – and no publisher breathing down my neck.

Bless MidJourney for the cover art based on this prompt:

beautiful woman wearing glasses and a sheer top, holding a red pen, reading a book, office setting

Simulacra: A Screenplay Inside a Novel

June 22, 2025Posted in Book, Character, Propensity, Ridley Park, Setting, WritingTagged books, experimental, novel, screenplay, WritingLeave a comment

Chapter 26 of Propensity shifts form once again.

Much like Chapter 10 (Memorandum), it functions less as narrative propulsion and more as an aperture, fleshing out character psychology and relational tension. But unlike the bureaucratic memo of Chapter 10, this one adopts the cinematic grammar of a screenplay.

Three teens. One post-collapse flat. No script but survival.

Teddy, Lena, and Jamal, three of the few who’ve retained volition after the global cognitive outage, attempt to negotiate the boundaries of self, sex, and something like ethics. The world has gone silent. Behavioural modulations have zeroed out the rest of humanity. What’s left is not exactly freedom, but the residue of agency.

Teddy wants to dominate; he flirts with tyranny and the post-moral indulgence of the moment.

Jamal wants to refuse the cycle; he recognises the scaffoldings that led to collapse and hopes not to rebuild them.
Lena wants… something else entirely. Survival, perhaps. Or at least integrity.

Their conversation, unfolding through stage direction and dialogu, wrestles with autonomy, desire, and disgust. What counts as a violation in a world where the victims cannot resist? What norms persist when no one is left to enforce them?

This chapter doesn’t tell the reader what to think. It lets the contradictions breathe. And for a few pages, the novel becomes a film that cannot be watched, only read.