metafiction – Ridley Park

Why Sustenance Reads Like It Does

August 25, 2025August 25, 2025Posted in Status UpdateTagged author reflection, book review, book-reviews, books, experimental fiction, fiction, fiction without closure, genre fluidity, horror, language philosophy, literary fiction, metafiction, narrative instability, novel, postmodern literature, reader frustration, rural noir, Science Fiction, Sustenance, unconventional prose, Writing, writing processLeave a comment

2–3 minutes

People ask why my books don’t look like “normal” books. Why the titles twitch, why the prose refuses to march in straight lines, why I lean into formatting that makes copyeditors twitch. The answer is both simple and evasive: the story demanded it. Subversion is my key motivator – language, culture, genre, whatever stands too smugly, I want to knock it sideways.

Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.

Take the paratext, those pages most readers skip. I didn’t want a safe little disclaimer to pat anyone on the head. I wanted the opening to feel unstable, already compromised, as though coherence itself were optional. The dedication isn’t reassurance; it’s a warning label.

The prose had to wobble, too. One moment rural realism, the next lyric intensity, the next something uncanny seeping in. Stability is the lie. If I’d written Sustenance in straight realist mode, it would have betrayed the book’s core.

As a language philosopher, I treat manuscripts as sandboxes for showing how language falters. Words crack, meanings slip, syntax betrays us. Fiction is my way of rubbing readers’ noses in that insufficiency.

I don’t hate genre fiction, but I refuse to be bound by it. In Sustenance, I swerve deliberately:

realism → horror → first-contact science fiction → rural noir

It’s genre fluidity as method. I know this puts off readers who want neat tropes and templates. But those readers are welcome to their factory-sealed shelves.

Did I intend to frustrate? Yes, a little. Not out of malice, but because too many books behave like obedient products. I don’t want to hand readers a smoothie. I want them to taste the grit, to feel that the novel might collapse under them. In fact, it does. The refusal to “pay off” is deliberate. Closure is a consumer demand, not a literary necessity.

So why did I write Sustenance this way? Because it’s not just about what happens. It’s about how information fails, how language decays, how coherence itself becomes suspect. If the book looked and read “normally,” it would have been lying to you.

Motivation: This reflection isn’t meant as a commentary on Sustenance’s plot. My intent here is to discuss the meta — the formal and philosophical scaffolding — rather than the story itself, so as to avoid spoilers. I’ll engage with the work more directly, in more traditional fashion, elsewhere.

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Ridley Park

On Chapter 28: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Standardised Test

July 29, 2025Posted in Art, Book, Ridley Park, WritingTagged absurd literature, avant-garde fiction, book chapter PDF, book review, books, creative writing twist, experimental fiction, fiction, fiction with structure break, fictional standardised test, free chapter download, free literary content, indie author, literary fiction, metafiction, narrative experimentation, narrative structure, novel, postmodern novel, Propensity novel, Ridley Park, standard tests, standardised test chapter, unconventional storytelling, weird fiction, Writing, writing tipsLeave a comment

The novel Propensity is divided into three sections, each with fifteen chapters – because symmetry is pleasing and my OCD deserves a biscuit. The first third plays it straight. More or less. A novel in the classical sense. You know – plot, people, dialogue, the odd existential quip. The middle third begins to fray at the edges, like an overstretched cardigan at an avant-garde poetry slam. And the final third? Well, it abandons form like a cult member in a cornfield, embracing the experimental, the elliptical, and the structurally suspect.

Chapter 28 is where the wheels come off. Or rather, where we slap on entirely different wheels – hexagonal ones. It takes the form of a standardised test. Yes, a literal test. Multiple choice. But fret not – there’s no grade, no timer, no Scantron sheet. Just questions. Absurd ones. Possibly even meaningful ones, though that’s above my pay grade.

Is it serious? Not remotely. Does it “advance the plot”? Hardly. Does it offer deep character insight? Not unless you’re profiling the author. But it does serve as a playful rupture in the narrative – a breather, a jab, a meta-giggle at the expense of structure and expectation. And let’s be honest: if you’ve made it to Chapter 28, you probably deserve a bit of a reward for tolerating everything prior.

As for spoilers: yes, technically, there are some. But without context, they’re like IKEA instructions written in Sanskrit. You might glimpse the shadow of something meaningful, but you’ll have no bloody idea what you’re looking at. No harm, no foul.

You can view Chapter 28 (along with several other amuse-bouches) for free on the Propensity book page. It’s downloadable as a PDF. No catch. No mailing list sign-up. I don’t want your email. I want your confusion.

Now, go take the test. Or don’t. It’s not graded. But it is a chapter.