Accidentally Skyward (Space Soup Book 1). New text, audiobook and movie chapter every Monday

Chapter 6 audiobook:

Chapter 6 movie:

Henrietta Millicent God... sat back on her hoverbananalounge on the Last Resort pool-deck beside Juliette, watching half-drowned LAST guests being rescued by scowling FIRST lifeguards. The artificial sun cast rainbow-tinged light that bent unnaturally around the resort’s edges, creating shadows that moved in defiance of conventional physics. The air smelled of ozone and expensive perfumes, with undertones of something ancient that made most normals’ nostrils itch. The undertone wasn’t strictly necessary, but HMG had learned long ago that normals needed something to complain about. Especially when there was nothing to complain about.

Juliette nodded toward a team of firsts, performing chest compressions on a seven-chested errorpronian last who had mistaken the pool for their cocktail.

HMG left them to it. There simply weren’t enough seconds in any given day to get involved in everyone’s affairs. Besides, she’d just thought of something. An important something.

‘I just thought of something,’ HMG said brightly. ‘An important something. A something that might change the nature of planets blowing up or not blowing up. Or at least my role in any such blowing up or not. Forever more. And possibly even then some.’

Juliette raised her eyebrows, pausing mid-sip of her drink.

‘If I get this right, this contest, I mean… this selection of a backup god. I’ll be able to delegate them all sorts of horrible thinkerwork… like overseeing or preventing planetary obliterations for the rest of their miserable life. And, as people and peoply things in this me-forsaken universe live as long as I floody-well want, that would mean a whole lot more pool time. I might even have space to try out that dance class I’ve been wanting to for ages. I mean… literally… for ages.’

Juliette finished her sip, nodded and smiled. ‘That’s nice, sis, but I thought you needed to kill the winner to make the contest fair.’

HMG sighed. ‘Yes, there is that.’

‘That one’s a chance,’ Juliette said, nodding toward the edge of the pool.

‘No,’ HMG said, shaking her head. ‘These lasts are already ruined because I accidentally made them all first at being last, remember.’ HMG tapped her perfectly manicured fingers against her glass, creating tiny ripples that distorted the glass’s interior reality into something made largely of mint.

‘I don’t mean the errorpronian. I mean the lifeguard working on him. See there. The one at that end… with THAT end.’

HMG scanned the first staff who mostly wore uniforms that adapted to whoever observed them. Formal wear, casual clothes, or mathematical equations, depending on the viewer. HMG’s gaze settled on the lifeguard in question, who was defying even the resort’s unconventional fashion conventions by wearing truly unfortunate yellow swimmers. ‘He does look quite the idiot, but anyone can see he’s a first. A first taking over as god of the universe, even for a day, would be a disaster.’

‘No, I don’t mean for the backup god job. I mean, for the scapegoat we need to blame the whole thing on if this all goes pear-shaped. Think up some dodgy think-history for him on ThinkerLinker, and he’ll be whatever you want him to be. Check out those abs.’ Juliette’s eyes lingered on the lifeguard’s physique. ‘If you don’t need him, I’m sure I can find a job for him. Nothing to do with thinking.’

HMG giggled. ‘Ewww... don’t say things like that. He’s one of my creations.’

‘Yes, you forbid we actually think about relaxing. Having a good time.’ Juliette’s sigh carried the weight of centuries of divine tedium.

‘You know I can’t relax until I have this backup god business sorted out.’

‘Then stop talking about it and pick someone, for your sake. There must be someone you have your eye on... a truly clueless misfit with zero prospects. Someone who’ll barely miss their pathetic mind when it inevitably explodes after you expose them to the true nature of the universe?’ Juliette adjusted her pink pyjamas, which absorbed and reflected light in ways that fabric usually didn’t.

HMG nodded with calculated interest. ‘There is one normal who does look fairly promising. He’s failed every challenge life has ever thrown at him. He’s not even on ThinkerLinker. He really does seem like the consummate fool. He even lives on Earth2, which is being snuffed out tomorrow. So that’s a bonus.’

‘Oh... so… when you said you were putting a sting in the tail of the unpopularity contest, you weren’t actually planning to murder all of the lucky last’s friend and family... you were just selecting someone from an already terminal location?’ Juliette’s eyebrows arched with a mixture of admiration and suspicion. With trace amounts of existential ennui.

‘Same outcome, less actual blood on my hands. And it doesn’t knock the universal free will balance too far out of whack.’

‘Nice. So the Earth2 obliteration is going ahead as scheduled?’ Juliette asked.

‘The MANDATE bored voted yesterday. They’re short on cloning plasma and need to mash up Earth2’s molecules into raw CLASMA for some new investment or other. Something that will pay a whole lot more tax.’

‘I thought it was VETO we were blaming for the Earth2 obliteration?’

‘Were we? It’s becoming harder and harder to keep track of WHOSE blowing up WHAT these eons.’

‘Seems like something worth putting some proper thinks into.’

HMG waved dismissively, the gesture leaving mesmerising trails of phosphorescent light in the poolside air. ‘Whoever’s doing it. It makes a crass sort of sense. Earth2 has been underperforming for decades. The planet is run by a bunch of button pushers.’

‘Can’t you just magic up more flimflams?’

‘Do we have to have the whole universal inflation conversation all over again?’

‘Oh, please you, no. But won’t your candidate just fly off before Earth2 is mashed up?’

HMG gazed into the distance, watching potential events unfold across multiple timelines. She shook her head. ‘He has crippling galactaphobia. Can’t even think onto ThinkerLinker without getting dizzy, let alone board a bonejarring starblaster. He gets vertigo standing on tippy toes.’

‘He sounds perfect. So what’s the holdup? Nominate your pathetic Earth2ling. Take your time off. Earth2 snuffs out. Presto.’

HMG drummed her fingers against the arm of her hoverbananalounge, each tap sending sparkling fractal patterns into the air. ‘Yes, it all sounds very NEAT. THAT’s my biggest concern. It seems TOO neat.’ HMG’s expression darkened. ‘You know how tricksy VETO has become lately. Insiders everywhere. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve even infiltrated the Last Resort.’

‘Can’t you make sure?’ Juliette twirled her fingers suggestively.

HMG shook her head, her golden aura flaring blue with her frustration. ‘I can’t willy-nilly twizzle the Brians of the MANDATE bored. I need to be careful with the twizzling. It can’t be anyone too influential or freedom of choice gets diluted and we’re left with everything created in my image. And we know how that turns out.’ Her voice carried the ominous weight of an ancient mistake that was still fresh in mind.

Juliette nodded. ‘Good you, yes. That was a horrible few thousand years. No offence, sis.’

‘None taken. I hated it as much as you did. Respect is one thing. Sycophants buckling every which way... a statue with my face everywhere I turned... quite another. Ugh! I’ll make sure that never happens again.’

Henrietta Millicent God stopped speaking at a sight that took EVEN HER by surprise. She had NEVER been a fan of THAT. This... was no... exception.

If Accidentally made you smile, tell someone. See you next Monday. Thanks!!

Accidentally Skyward (Space Soup Book 1). New text, audiobook and movie chapter every Monday

Chapter 5 audiobook:

Chapter 5 movie:

‘Flarping heck, Quimly!’ Accidentally said. ‘What is... that?’ He pointed out through the trudgeworthy5 windscreen toward the most bizarre sight he had seen in all his twenty-seven years on planet Earth2. The angular Nemesis’s front end had gaped open among its throbbing weapons, and what looked like a stream of quarfs dressed in colourful tutus were dancing up the gangway.

‘What is what, Master Skyward?’ Quimly asked. ‘Quimly just sees normal people and peoply things doing normal unpleasant things to other normal people and peoply things like normal and also a stream of fluffy quarfs dressed in colourful tutus dancing normally up the gangway of the angular starblaster with the ominous weapons array.’

‘That last part. That’s the part that caught my eye. What’s all that tutu gangway dancing?’

‘Oh, Quimly sees, Master Skyward. That is just a normal thing.’ Quimly picked at something in his teeth, probably something disgusting.

‘No, Quimly. It is not normal at all. Stop avoiding my question.’

‘Oh, does Master Skyward mean Master Skyward’s stupid question about lovely quarfs in tutus dancing up the gangway?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, Quimly sees now. That is just fluffy, and also loveable, quarfs embracing their new overlords.’

‘See...’

Quimly scrunched up his face in a manner that indicated he did not, in fact, see.

‘The whole planet is saying DOOM,’ Accidentally explained, ‘and quarfs are embracing their overlords, and people and peoply things wonder why I hate Tuesdays.’

Quimly held his hands up questioningly. ‘But no one wonders anything Master Skyward hates… or likes… or the other one.’

‘Stop looking so happy...’ Accidentally grumbled, waving the manky hovercar-cabin air. The interior of the trudgeworthy5 smelled of synthetic leather and Quimly’s distinctive musk. A disturbing blend of wet fur and caramel left out in the sun.

Quimly crinkled up his face as though fighting back tears. ‘Master Skyward is sometimes a little bit mean,’ he sniffled.

‘Stop that. You can’t blame me for not wanting a happy quarf. Quarfs are only happy when people and peoply things are in mortal jeopardy. Death is LITERALLY what you live for. That’s what makes you so darn confusing.’

‘And loveable?’ Quimly asked, flipping his face upside down.

‘No. Just confusing.’

‘So, if living for death is not the reason Quimly is so loveable, then what is the very reason much?’

‘Sigh,’ Accidentally sighed. ‘You can’t argue that you seem far too excited about this whole potential end-of-the-world scenario.’

‘Can’t Quimly?’

‘No.’

‘That seems unfair.’

‘Alright, go on then.’

‘Quimly is not excited about this whole potential end-of-the-world scenario,’ Quimly said excitedly, his fur bristling.

Accidentally shook his head as the MANDATE button-factory loomed into view. The building put the brutal back into neo-brutalist architecture, a jagged wound against the smog-choked sky, even if it WAS largely painted a faded pastel pink.

‘We’re nearly at the button factory. Stop mucking about and tell me what’s going on.’

‘Oh,’ Quimly said quietly, pulling his silver cape tightly around him and glancing about as though someone might be listening in. ‘What’s going on is very bad. People and peoply things work here like Brianless zombies, whittling away their days in cramped spaces without even a dainty clue what they are really doing... or even why.’

‘What? No. I don’t mean what’s going on at the factory where I work all the time. And did you say, Brianless? Don’t answer that. Tell me about the DOOM sound and that angular starblaster with the ominous weapons array… preferably without mentioning anything else galactophobia triggering about space.’ Accidentally’s fingers found their way to his breast pocket, where the worn realograph lay safely tucked away. He didn’t remove it. He didn’t even need to look at it. The lightest touch somehow steadied his ragged breathing.

‘Oh! Quimly thought Master Skyward was recallasking about the MANDATE button factory where Master Skyward has worked like a Brianless zombie for ten years without even knowing if what Master Skyward was doing there was useful or the other one. Silly Quimly. Silly, silly Quimly.’

Accidentally waited, fighting the urge to ask what RECALLASKING meant. And possibly checking in again on whether Quimly had said Brianless again.

‘Silly Quimly. Silly, silly Quimly.’

Accidentally waited some more.

‘Silly, silly, silly, silly Quimly.’ Quimly casually flicked a speck of dirt off his silver cape.

‘Just tell me,’ Accidentally unwaited.

Quimly examined his knuckles, then rubbed them against his chest.

‘Back off, you floody quarf,’ Accidentally said, shooing Quimly away.

Quimly slid back across to his own seat and examined his own knuckles and rubbed them against his own chest instead.

On a nearby street outside, Accidentally thought he heard someone say, ‘Would you just think at the… the thinkprice of filamanchees this week. There is no way a family from Snerch can make their flimflams stretch to cover the price of living in Smogington now that that starblaster with all the guns has loomed out of the smog… and the dooming sound has started… despite the surprisingly reasonable property prices. Assuming that sentences with THAT THAT in them are allowed, which I can’t be bothered thinking up about at the moment. Now, where did I put my hair? Oh, here it is... growing out of the top of my head up there like that. I’m sorry kids... it’s all we can afford this week. Eat up!’

Farther afield, the sort of thing that Earth2 travel thinkbrochures tended to gloss over with phrases like VIBRANT STREET CULTURE was unfolding. The streets had descended into chaos. People and peoply things were breaking windows and setting fire to things with casual expertise. Children had erected a crude shrine to the DOOM sound, offering sacrifices of broken electronics and half-eaten sandwiches.

‘Oh no. People and peoply things are breaking things and setting fire to those broken things. How worried should I be, Quimly?’

Quimly chuckled. ‘Oh, the great impending DOOM sound and the great many breakings and burnings are nothing for Master Skyward to worry about.’

‘Aren’t they? Oh. Good. I mean, quarfs can’t lie, after all. Forget I even mentioned it, I suppose.’

‘Quimly should forget Master Skyward even mentioned what?’ The doors to the carpark yawned open ahead of the trudgeworthy5.

‘That’s good, Quimly. You’re pretending you’ve already forgotten.’

‘Already forgotten what?’

‘Clever.’

‘Quimly is not being clever. Quimly knows that if Quimly bees any sort of clever that Master Skyward won’t bees able to follow along.’

The public address system crackled to life again outside, ‘Just a quick update on the... ah... ominous starblaster situation. There is still no reason to be alarmed. Unless you’re... like... alive and sentient and were hoping to stay that way. Set realistic expectations, my mother always used to say. I just wanted to be a tin can at one end of a piece of string, and look at me now. What... you can’t see me at all? Well, that’s disappointing. You can see a tin can. I guess I should have been more realistic. Anyway... there was something I needed... oh yes... please stop setting fire to things and breaking things. It really isn’t helping. Ah... yes... that should do it... as you were... well not you looters... honestly who raised you people and peoply things. It’s like you’ve descended from monkeys or something... no don’t throw that... I give up. Or at least I would if I was a tin can. Follow your dreams... or don’t... I honestly don’t care anymore. I mean that figuratively. I will always care. It’s my curse. My burden. Don’t feel sorry for me... unless... you know... you can squeeze it in... between the breaking and the setting fires and what not. I wonder if tin cans care. Jesus9. What a life...’

The public address system trailed off to an awkward silence broken only by the rampant sounds of mass destruction of Smogington.

Accidentally felt another of the odd doubling of consciousness sensations he’d been experiencing lately. As if someone else were temporarily seeing through his eyes, assessing the situation with tactical precision. The sensation brought with it a flash of knowledge. The chaos outside was following a predictable pattern he could navigate if he could determine the source. Then the sensation was gone, leaving him feeling even more disoriented and strangely nostalgic for extensive military training and alien-meat-lovers pizza he’d never knowingly had.

‘Jesus9,’ Accidentally said dizzily. ‘I think you really might be driving me crazy, Quimly. Just tell me straight. If you’re not trying to be clever, why are you saying you can’t remember that thing I don’t need to worry about from earlier?’

Quimly made the goggled eyes of quarfish avoiding direct questions from stupid master skyward. ‘Oh, Quimly sees where Master Skyward must have become confused.’

Quimly thinked the hovercar into the carpark, thinked it to a stop and thinked the doors open with a... kerchunk.

Then Accidentally smelled something that terrified him even more than the smell of Quimly. He squeezed his nostrils shut with his knobbly fingers.

But it was too late.

Some of the stink had already gotten in a little bit. And it had already started fluffing about with his Brian in a pretty disturbing way.

That smell... that smell... Jesus9... what was that smell? It smelled like the final nail in his coffin... if nails had smells... and if his coffin was... his having a slightly worse Tuesday than normal... and if his death was... well... his actual death... which was looking more and more likely with every snortling sniff of his half-squeezed nose to be sometime between the morning tea break and another time not too much later on from that last time, maybe sooner. Tuesdays. Honestly. What was that SMELL?

If Accidentally made you smile, tell someone. See you next Monday. Thanks!!

Accidentally Skyward (Space Soup Book 1). New text, audiobook and movie chapter every Monday

Chapter 4 audiobook:

Chapter 4 movie:

In the seconds that followed the incredibly strange sensation - as if someone had reached into his Brian and given it a floody good squeeze - Accidentally Skyward finally thinked an incredibly important think about some thinks that he really should have thinked MANY MORE thinks about before a terrifying starblaster punched the otherwise peaceful streets of Smogington on their proverbial nose.

Accidentally thinked his new think out loud to Quimly, who was still hovering in the trudgeworthy5 just ahead. ‘Maybe I really SHOULDN’T go into work today AT ALL,’ Accidentally postulated tentatively. ‘I mean... if that terrifying starblaster isn’t REALLY here to do flower arranging... then maybe it’s time to... I don’t know... take a sick day?’

Despite the tentativeness of his postulations, Accidentally quickened his pace alongside the trudgeworthy5 in the direction of the MANDATE button factory.

The public alert system crackled back to life again...

‘Hey, you there loitering along beside that trudgeworthy5. Do you have a loitering permit for that? We’ve had some loitering today that hasn’t ended VERY WELL. There’s that STARBLASTER with all the guns, for one. Not that that hasn’t ended well. If sentences with THAT THAT in them are allowed. But... ah... my Public Alert instincts tell me it might not end well... if... ah... that gardening competition it’s... ah... here for... ends up going the wrong way. Not that that is anything to worry about. THAT THAT again. Sorry. Really need to watch that that...’

‘Not that we’re worried here at MANDATE about angular starblasters with ominous weapons arrays landing in Main Street and such. Quite the opposite. Very welcoming of that sort of thing, actually. Just the sort of thing to remain calm about and go on about your business about and such...’

‘Well... maybe not that loitering beside your hovercar business, like your quarf won’t let you in. I mean... that’s really pretty embarrassing just at an alpha level... though my beta readings are also going haywire with... oh... wait... it’s you... nevermind... as you were... well... not completely as you were, if you can manage it. I mean... it really is pretty embarrassing... no wonder your Thinkerlinker rating is in the toilet. Wait... I don’t think I’m supposed to tell you that...’

The public address system trailed off.

‘What was all that about?’ Accidentally asked, looking about for who else might have been loitering alongside their trudgeworthy5, that the public address system might have recognised and been talking to directly.

He shook his head and squeezed his temples to try to clear his thoughts. When that didn’t work, he shook his temples and squeezed his head to try to thoughts his clear. He was quite surprised, and more than moderately relieved, when the losing-his-mind full-body tingle gradually faded back to just his normal full-body tingle of near-paralysing confusion.

‘I mean, honestly, Quimly, what in all heck was that?’ Accidentally groaned.

‘Yes, it probably was, Master Skyward.’

‘What? That makes no sense, at all, Quimly.’

‘Then Quimly has done Quimly’s job much.’

‘What? No. You don’t do those, remember? Jobs, I mean. Or anything else useful. Anyway, why are we talking about YOU... at all? It was MY head. It felt like… like someone was… I don’t know… nevermind. It must have just been a lingering effect of my crippling-galactaphobia passing-out from a bit earlier on. Though my crippling-galactaphobia passing-out has never done that mind-takeover business before. Did you find out the time, like I asked you? While you had your finger up your nose on Thinkerlinker? Or anything else about the ominous angular starblaster with all the guns? And did you happen to see anything about my pineapple sock in there?’

‘Master Skyward is not going to like it,’ Quimly said, sucking his glistening finger.

‘I knew it,’ Accidentally said, breaking into a trot just behind the hovering trudgeworthy5. ‘I’m very on-time, aren’t I? You know that being very on-time is a big red cross on the big-green-button team. Foreperson or forepersony thing Pento Mosaic says on-time is as good as late, and very on-time is as good as very late and as bad as a whole button miss.’

‘Oh… so Master Skyward is just worried about the being very on-time part?’

‘What? Isn’t that what you meant when you said I wasn’t going to like it? Oh, did you really mean that I wouldn’t like the part about the ominous, angular starblaster with the terrifying weapons array? Or perhaps that rather loud, and annoyingly repetitive, doom sound? Or is my pineapple sock lost forever?’

Before Quimly could answer, Accidentally walked past a group of quarfs gathering at the next corner, their fur standing on end in perfect synchronisation, forming what locals called… a fluff forecast. A more reliable predictor of trouble than any official warning system. Accidentally felt an entirely new shiver up his spine as though his own fluff, pathetic by quarf standards, had also chosen to stand awkwardly at attention.

Quimly shrugged. ‘Quimly’s fluff forecast predicts unpredictable squalls with a growing chance of planetary genocide.’

‘Does it?’ Accidentally asked, bluffing interest, as he took the chance to dive for the open door of the trudgeworthy5, again.

Quimly vroomed the hovercar forward again, too, and Accidentally crumpled against the trudgeworthy5’s night-sky blue duco before plopping backward onto the ashen dust, sending up a small sparkling cloud of something probably fairly toxic. He coughed and brushed down his dark-puce overalls again, then wiped his eyes again, then regretted his choice of brush-wipe-cry order as his eyes began to weep even more than usual.

‘Jesus9, just let me into the flarping car, Quimly… or… or… I will tell my parents to put you somewhere entirely safe… where you will live entirely safely… for a good long while.’

Accidentally could tell he’d struck a quarfish chord by threatening Quimly with a long, safe life as the trudgeworthy5 finally pulled to a complete stop with all the doors fully open.

Accidentally rolled in, wincing as he slammed his ribs against the door frame. He flopped into the footwell, whimpering as he smacked his nose against the floor, setting free a pent-up burst of pain that galloped up his face, charged over his head and stampeded down his back all the way to his clenched buttocks.

Before he could scramble up onto the seat, Quimly blasted the hovercar away at bonejarring speed, plastering one of Accidentally’s knees back behind his ear and earing the other one of his knees back behind his behind. Accidentally grunted and cursed as he inched up finger by toe by toe by finger and then by a tongue or something until he clambered onto a seat. His mouth leathery and his pants crinkled with unsightly smudges.

The trudgeworthy5’s dashboard displayed the local ThinkerLinker emergency channel, where a scrolling feed showed increasingly panicked thinks ranging from: Is this part of next month’s apocalypse festival? to: Has anyone seen my emotional support quarf?

Once Accidentally had finished rubbing his various aching bits and bobs, he asked, ‘What is that…’ He paused, unable to voice the theory that the world was actually repetitively saying the word DOOM. ‘You know… that sound. The one that sounds like BOOM… or… even… you know… the d-version?’

Quimly swerved the trudgeworthy5, smashing Accidentally’s face against the side window.

‘What in hell3 was that?’ Accidentally asked, peeling his cheek off the glass.

‘A diversion, like Master Skyward asked for.’

‘I didn’t say diversion. I said d-version. Of the BOOM. Listen. There it is again. Tell me you hear it and I’m not going mad.’

‘Quimly can tell Master Skyward only one of those things. One-point-two at a big, ugly stretch.’

‘How can you say one-point-two of something? Do you cut yourself off before getting too far into the second one?’

‘Quimly cannot s…’ Quimly said, cutting himself off before getting too far into the second one, then vigorously scratching his groin.

‘Oh, I see what you did there,’ Accidentally said, nodding. ‘You cut yourself off to show me how you would do a point two.’

‘No. Quimly just had an itchy bottom.’

‘Ewww. I wish you hadn’t told me that.’

‘Would Master Skyward like Quimly to say what Quimly just said backwards, with some sucking sounds, to make Master Skyward’s wish come true?’

‘What? No. That’s not how unsaying things works, or wishes, or anything at all. Just stick to the point.’

‘The point of Quimly’s bottom?’

‘Double... ewwwww!

‘X.’

‘What? Why did you say X like that?’

‘Master Skyward said W. Quimly thought Master Skyward and Quimly were doing letters.’

Accidentally sighed again and stared out the trudgeworthy5 window to the increasingly hostile-looking streets beyond. Outside, emergency response drones with faded MANDATE logos buzzed uselessly, their outdated programming causing them to trace imperfect geometric patterns representing the MANDATE Incorporated stock price rather than actually responding to the crisis unfolding at ground level.

He thought he heard a random stranger on a nearby street say, ‘I REALLY can’t understand the MANDATE-incorporated ticker price today, Amanda! It really should be going UP with the flower-arranging show and that lovely starblaster with all the guns... not plummeting DOWN like this! It’s almost like there is something someone isn’t thinking us all of the thinks on Thinkerlinker that we need to think so we don’t have to think our own thinks... I think. Or maybe it’s the overfloppigated infloggingtons again! I can’t believe how many times the infloggintons have overfloppigated the flimflam like this so soon after the FLESTIVAL of FLOOP! Hey, isn’t that that guy in purple over there again... if sentences with THAT THAT in them are allowed? Yes, it does seem like he’s following us around. Weird. No, not that! The purple! Who does that?’

Accidentally looked about for the person or persony thing in purple who the random stranger might have been referring to... before giving up and dragging his attention back to the BOOMs and Quimly.

‘That loud, repetitive sound, Quimly, the one like BOOM… BOOM… BOOM, do you know what it is?’

Quimly shook his head.

‘You don’t know what it is, it doesn’t sound like BOOM BOOM BOOM, or you don’t hear it?’

Quimly held up two fingers.

‘The second one? It doesn’t sound like BOOM BOOM BOOM?’

Quimly nodded.

‘How would you describe it, then?’

Quimly furrowed his brow and tapped his chin with an extended forefinger.

‘Back off, you floody quarf,’ Accidentally spat, shooing Quimly away.

Quimly leaned back and furrowed his own brow and tapped his own chin with his own forefinger, instead. ‘Quimly would describe the sound as DOOM DOOM DOOM.’

‘And you don’t think that sounds like BOOM BOOM BOOM?’

Quimly shrugged.

Accidentally noticed people and peoply things outside giving him odd sideways glances through the hovercar windows. Even more odd and even more sideways than usual. He shot back a few odd glances of his own and threw in a grimace for good measure. ‘What’s with the people and peoply things of Smogington today? And what’s that sound? It’s really starting to weird me out.’

‘Quimly thinks Master Skyward should think useful thinks, not terrible thinks.’

‘I don’t have anything BUT terrible thinks, with you as my Thinkerlinker linker linker. Do something useful for a rare change and tell me what ThinkerLinker says about the DOOM sound. There must be some thinks on there about it by now.’

‘Oh, the DOOM sound is just Earth2 speaking to humanity,’ Quimly said with a casualness that made Accidentally’s skin slump.

‘Our… planet… is repeatedly saying DOOM?’

Quimly grinned and nodded excitedly.

‘Why… would it do that?’

‘The Earth2 self-destruct function has been activated. The angular starblaster with the ominous weapons array is just here to make sure everything runs smoothly.’

‘OH NO. You’re not even joking. You look happy! A quarf looking happy and my planet saying DOOM while a starblaster hovers over it means I’m about to have an even worse Tuesday than most other flarping Tuesdays.’

Quimly giggled into his palms.

‘Right. Well. I suppose…’ He paused, weighing his options. ‘I should go into work this morning anyway. I mean, what else am I going to do today? Hide under my bed until the planet explodes? At least if I’m at work when it happens, I’ll get paid for the full day.’

He straightened his shoulders with a newfound determination. ‘Besides, maybe foreperson or persony thing Pento Mosaic will know what to do about all this.’

He sagged his shoulders again with an old-found resignation. ‘Sigh,’ he sighed. ‘What are the chances of foreperson or persony thing Pento Mosaic knowing anything useful to do about anything?’

‘Flarping Tuesdays. Flarping ominous angular starblasters. Flarping self-destructing planets. Flarping, flarping, flarping heck!’

‘Gazoontite, Master Skyward.’

‘Hey! What’s that?’ Accidentally gaped anew, pointing anew at the most bizarre sight he had ever seen... in all his twenty-seven years... on planet Earth2.

If Accidentally made you smile, tell someone. See you next Monday. Thanks!!

Accidentally Skyward - Book 1 of Space Soup — cosmic chaos, chronic incompetence, occasional gods. Available as text, full-cast audiobook and movie — new chapter every Monday.

Listen to Chapter 3 as an audiobook with a full cast:

Watch Chapter 3 movie:

As Accidentally Skyward regained consciousness, the first thing he noticed was Quimly’s expression. Not just smug amusement. Something almost like genuine concern. Not genuine concern either, of course, but something more like it than Accidentally could remember. The sight really did make a situation that seemed like it couldn’t possibly get any worse, unquestionably ANY worse.

Accidentally was lying in the ashen dust with one knee pointing SKYWARD and the other pointing at an angle that implied it hadn’t hitherto settled on a specific direction.

Quimly seemed to notice Accidentally noticing his expression of almost genuine concern and quickly turned his face upside down and poked out his tongue. Accidentally did his best to ignore Quimly as he pushed himself up to his elbows in the dust in a wobbly, noncommittal half press-up.

‘Did I say anything while I was passing out, Quimly? I sometimes pass-out talk, you know, giving glimpses into my complicated psyche.’

‘Master Skyward said, “Oh no, I just did a WEE WEE in my purple underpants.”’

‘Ewww… I didn’t… did I?’

‘Quarfs cannot lie,’ Quimly said, matter-of-factly, out the hovercar window.

‘So you quarfs always say, yet my overalls just feel the normal kind of damp.’

‘Oh, and Master Skyward also said a not very important name of someone not very important and did a not very important discovery of the true origins of Master Skyward’s galactaphobia. Just very big stupid Master Skyward nonsense much.’

Before Accidentally could finish standing up enough to think thinks out loud about THE NAME... or THE ORIGINS of his galactaphobia, he promptly became distracted as the public alert system recleared its electronic throat with a new burst of static before announcing, possibly even a bit more enthusiastically than before.

‘Attention... Attention... no... really... listen up again, you lot. I have more to say about the invasion. Ah… did I say invasion? I mean… ah… cosmic… flower arranging… or something else very calming and possibly also rhyming like that. Space vessel Nemesis has entered Earth2 airspace to destroy… ah… the competition in an… ah… GARDEN OFF… yes… we have those… or something else nice like that. All citizens are to remain calm and think nice thoughts.’

‘Oh… and… ah… if anyone was like… trying to decide when the best time might be to go and visit the sister’s kids in the Beige Nebula or pop over to one of the casino systems circling the outer rings of Splurge, then today or tomorrow-ish really might not be a bad time to check those out. Now is… you know… as good a time as any to… live a little… ah... longer… ah... on another planet… I mean… not… like here… while... the thing is going on. The thing? The thing? What did we call it earlier? Let me see… let me see… I wrote it down here… yes… here it is… total and utter planetary obliteration.’

‘Hang on… no… ah... that can’t have been it. Nope. That was… ah… my shopping list… for… the ah… planetary obliteration fancy dress party on Thursday. Ah, yes, here is… the ah... real thing… that you probably shouldn’t hang around here for. The… ah… pretty... nice... and probably very calm and safe... relaxing time... that is no reason at all for anyone to panic. Yes. That was it. Okay. That’s all. For now. And maybe forever... if...ah... you don’t go visit the sister’s kids... just saying. As you were. No, not you at the back. Jesus9, this is a public street…’

The voice trailed off.

Quimly spoke suddenly as though to himself, ‘Too soon, too soon. None of this was supposed to start yet.’

‘What was that mysterious thing you just said, Quimly?’

Quimly blinked at Accidentally and said very slowly and loudly, ‘IS… MASTER… SKYWARD… READY TO STOP GURGLING AND FLOPPING ABOUT IN ALL THE DIRT MUCH?’

Accidentally wasn’t entirely sure. He finished standing up anyway. His galactaphobia symptoms were receding faster than usual. Which only served to alarm him more than usual, which he didn’t find really all that unusual, which he found really quite unusual… and also pretty alarming.

Though not quite as alarming as the holographic street signs that had all started flashing as they all whined and all traced out displays of emergency evacuation routes that he was pretty sure hadn’t been updated since the Great AI Blimp Disaster of 2289.

A row of ThinkerLinker public display screens for the galactically impaired farther along the roadside had switched from advertisements to the official MANDATE emergency symbol. A cartoon button with anxious eyes and the caption, ‘Don’t Be Alarmed Unless Instructed To Do So.’

He heard someone on an adjoining street say, ‘I’m glad no one has instructed us to be alarmed yet, Constantine. We have those think tickets to the quarfish museum of modern gloop today. I sure would hate to miss all that gloop. HEY, isn’t that fellow in PURPLE over there the one everyone’s been thinking all those thinks about on Thinkerlinker and such? What do you mean, I’m not supposed to think THAT SORT of think out loud anymore? Oh, YES, I see how that could be a problem now. I hope I haven’t just ruined EVERY THINK, I think.’

Accidentally looked around for the person in purple who the random person on the street had just been thinking thinks out loud about, but he stopped when he saw something strange through the window of the nearby Shaky Quarf bar that rang loudly with jangling, discordant quarfish music combined with excited quarfish chatter, despite the early hour.

Some number of quarfs inside the Shaky Quarf seemed to be writing in the air with sparklers toward the Nemesis, ‘Welcome to Earth2. You can exterminate the human and humany things first, if you want. We sure won’t miss them!’

Though he couldn’t be completely sure that was what the quarfs were writing with their sparklers, because quarfs had quite stumpy arms, and several of them seemed to have accidentally set their fluff on fire.

Across the street, the Quite Convenient and Fairly Useful Bits and Bobs outlet had transitioned to Crisis Mode, its shelf signage rotating to display the steadily inflating prices of rapidly diminishing emergency supplies.

Someone had unfolded a folding table on the footpath a few steps away. Presumably, the person or persony thing in the bright orange poncho sitting behind it, who had the untroubled expression of someone who had been waiting for exactly this moment their entire life.

Accidentally read the hand-lettered sign on the table. ‘Doom drinks. Because WHAT ELSE are you going to do TODAY? GO TO WORK?’

Atop the folding table, a row of tall glasses brimmed with something the colour of a sunset on the planet Quondo Quondo Quondo, each littered with a small collection of paper umbrellas. The prices had been crossed out and rewritten maybe a hundred times. The final figure was considerably higher than the first.

‘Eleven flimflams,’ the person or persony thing said in a voice that sounded far too posh for their grubby appearance, almost as though it was really a neat person wearing a clever disguise.

‘Eleven?’ Accidentally asked back.

‘Supply and demand,’ the person said, with the equanimity of someone who hadn’t been quite so certain that they were quite so right about something for quite a long time.

Quimly’s arm appeared from the hovercar window and placed a large pile of lint on top of the table with a decisive slap.

‘Quimly is buying four,’ Quimly said.

‘But that’s not money, that’s LINT!’ Accidentally noted.

‘I’ll take it,’ the man said, eyeing the lint greedily. ‘Wanna come for a ride on my rocket ship?’ the man asked, raising his eyebrows at Accidentally.

‘What?’ Accidentally winced back.

‘Wait… that didn’t come across how it sounded in the rehearsals… that’s what you get when a creative team becomes deadline driven.’

Accidentally stared at the man with new confusion before staring up at the Nemesis with new confusion, before staring at the drink with an older confusion he was more familiar with.

He picked up the drink.

It was bright orange.

It seemed completely wrong and entirely appropriate simultaneously, just how most of his life did.

He raised it to his lips.

The man watched with a gleeful smile.

Before Accidentally could manage to take a sip, Quimly blasted the trudgeworthy5 horn, and Accidentally spilled down the front of his overalls the entire contents of the drink, which seemed roughly nineteen times the volume of what the glass could possibly have contained.

He gurgled a fresh sigh as he dabbed uselessly at his soggy pants with his dripping sleeve. ‘What’s the time, Quimly?’ he spluttered as he remembered he’d been in quite the rush to get to work before his galactaphobia episode.

‘How is Quimly supposed to know what the time is, Master Skyward?’

Accidentally stared wide-eyed. ‘You literally have one job. To think onto ThinkerLinker so you can answer questions like, “What’s the time?” If you’re not even doing that, what was the whole point of my parents going to all that trouble of evolving you from potato peelings and earwax that terrible day?’

‘Master Skyward’s parents just plopped some manky old, scooped-up gloop in a jar, screwed down the lid, and pressed evolve.’

‘Precisely! What a waste of time!’

Accidentally breathed deeply, then immediately regretted it. The air smelled even worse than normal. The usual fried-electronics stench had been overpowered by a more pungent scent that Accidentally had long suspected MANDATE added to emergency broadcasts to make them seem more emergency-y.

‘Vrooooom!’ Quimly vroomed the trudgeworthy5 forward, perhaps a little less enthusiastically than he’d been vrooming it forward before, though just as slightly out of Accidentally’s reach.

‘Sigh,’ Accidentally sighed back, trudging along just behind the hovercar, perhaps even a little less enthusiastically than before. He added in a shoulder slump for good measure. ‘I hope that STARBLASTER... and that BOOMING sound... aren’t going to make me very on-time for work again, Quimly.’

‘Oh no, Master Skyward,’ Quimly said excitedly through the hovercar window. ‘Quimly doesn’t think the big, ugly, terrifying, yummy, angular starblaster with the ominous weapons array will make Master Skyward and Quimly more very on-time than normal much.’

‘Normal? You? Ha! Look, will you please stop vrooming the darn hovercar out of my reach for long enough to at least think onto ThinkerLinker and check if I’m running very on-time? Maybe also check about the starblaster with all the guns, and that booming sound while you’re in there. And... I couldn’t find my favourite sock this morning. Maybe have a quick think around for that. The one with the pineapple on it. But also... don’t get too distracted in there. Finding out the time is the most important part. Pretty sure.’

‘Why not ask the car what the time is? The trudgeworthy5 has a built-in clock.’

‘You know full well the clock doesn’t work.’

‘It works perfectly, stupid Master Skyward.’

‘No. It doesn’t. It thinks it’s a toaster.’

‘The clock works perfectly, if what you want from it is toast.’

‘Look, I don’t want to get into the rights of the clock to think it’s… whatever it wants to think it is. But… the trudgeworthy clock can’t… make… toast. Because it’s a clock. I thought quarfs couldn’t lie. Isn’t that what you’re always saying?’

‘QUARFS... CANNOT... LIE,’ Quimly said grandly, twirling his silver cape grandly, too.

‘Hey, where did you get that silver cape? Did you always have a silver cape? Don’t answer that. You’ll just distract me more.’

Accidentally walked behind the trudgeworthy5, a paper umbrella tucked in his hair where he’d put it when the trudging had resumed after all the spilling, before he’d had a chance to find a better solution.

‘Just darn-well link onto ThinkerLinker and check the DARN TIME darn it!’

Accidentally winced and tried not to look as Quimly shoved his finger up his nose to the second knuckle, triggering his ThinkerLinker linker, causing a steady pulse of green light to blip from his nose. Quimly withdrew his finger and wiped a strand of snot against his chest fur.

Accidentally finished wincing at Quimly and looked away. Through the gaps in the buildings, he glimpsed public viewscreens in Smogington Square, displaying the angular starblaster alongside a rapidly updating threat assessment that couldn’t seem to decide between Routine and Existential. Without warning, he found himself calculating escape routes with inexplicable clarity. He mentally mapped paths through Smogington with a foreign precision. It was almost as though someone else’s thoughts were bleeding into his own.

‘What’s happening to me, Quimly? I really AM NOT feeling MYSELF today. It’s like SOMEONE ELSE is FEELING ME! Trying to take over my Brian. Wait. Did I just say Brian? I meant… BRIAN. Jesus9, I really am losing my Brian.’

Then it felt like someone reached into his Brian and gave it a FLOODY GOOD squeeze, and Accidentally Skyward finally thinked an incredibly important think about some thinks that he really should have thinked MANY MORE thinks about before a terrifying starblaster settled onto the streets of Smogington.

New chapters of Accidentally Skyward: text, audiobook and movie every Monday — free to read. If Accidentally made you smile, tell someone.

Prefer to listen on the go? Find us on Spotify: Accidentally Skyward Chapter 3 Audiobook

Thanks!

Accidentally Skyward (Longlisted - Richell Prize, Hachette) - Book 1 of Space Soup — cosmic chaos, chronic incompetence, occasional gods. Available as text, full-cast audiobook and movie — new chapter every Monday.

Listen to Chapter 2 as an audiobook with a full cast:

Watch Chapter 2 movie:

Meanwhile... ACROSS TOWN... or the equivalent of ACROSS TOWN, where omnipotent deities are concerned... Henrietta Millicent God took another sip of her drink, triggering a supernova in a galaxy that even she might never care existed!

HMG had been pretty sick of being the supreme god of the known universe for a good long while. She was experiencing the kind of existential fatigue that came from having personally witnessed every possible permutation of every possible species doing every possible thing, most of which involved eating, reproducing and finding increasingly creative ways to destroy themselves.

It had all seemed like a bit of a LARK when she’d just been PLAYING god after building that celestial blender out of household objects and faith. But then that whole BIG BANG business had accidentally gone off in that annexed kitchenette on the sunny side of her old bungalow in South Islington and… well… it had been a LONG time before she’d had anyone but her sister, Juliette, and her idiot housemate, Paul, to talk to.

She pressed her temples against the throb of billions of prayers, pleas and cosmic emergencies. Being on vacation meant ignoring them, but millennia of habit made that roughly as easy as forgetting to breathe. Though breathing was optional these days, yet another perk of immortality she was completely over.

She sighed and stared across the pool. She really did need to switch off for a few hours, but the constant cosmic thinks kept interrupting her own thinks. Thankfully, they were at least a little less foul-mouthed since she’d introduced the universal swear ban.

She adjusted her pocketless yellow dressing gown with its gold buttons, glinting with tiny Goldilocks galaxies, as the fluorescent clouds of the Last Resort’s faux environmental floomfield sparkled overhead.

She settled back into her hoverbananalounge, watching the floating service drones dart between guests, occasionally glitching to create drinks that shouldn’t exist and sometimes briefly didn’t. The universe really was getting out of control.

A pair of floraliths rippled past toward the Last Resort cafe, their bioluminescent patches cycling erratically between neon pink and what could charitably be called vomit yellow.

‘They really are flarping pathetic,’ Juliette grumbled from the next hoverbananalounge along the pool deck.

‘What did you expect from the Last Resort?’ HMG asked. ‘This is a very carefully selected cross-section of people and peoply things who have come last at everything their whole lives.’

‘I know, sis… but really?’

‘Just watch the wait-staff if you can’t stomach the lasts. They’ve been handpicked from people and peoply things who’ve always come first.’

A first waiter effortlessly balanced seventeen impossibly complex drinks on one finger while solving the unified field theory and composing a sonnet about his own magnificence.

‘Show-off,’ HMG muttered.

‘Yes, I get the gag,’ Juliette said.

‘It’s not a gag. It’s irony. The strong, smart, handsome… whatever… ones, waiting hand and hoof on the weak.’

‘Great. But why bother?’

‘To narrow down the contenders.’

‘Contenders?’ Juliette asked, sipping her drink as apocalyptic elevator music drifted across the pool deck.

HMG nodded, staring up at the Sky Seas of Lividia Mirrormajor. A million reflections of her potential selves stared back, most looking stressed, a few looking murderous, and one, oddly, appearing to be enjoying a tango lesson.

She looked back down to the Last Resort and sighed. She’d asked the resort architects to design the place so that every guest could experience the resort in their own unique way, while still strongly encouraging social interaction. But she thought they’d gone too far with the quantum uncertainty walkway that simultaneously passed through every point in every other guest’s room.

‘I’m going to take that day off I’ve been talking about,’ HMG said hesitantly. ‘Properly,’ she added more determinedly. ‘I’m going to log off ThinkerLinker entirely. But I need someone to cover for me. The universe can’t be left unmonitored for a whole day, or the system will collapse even faster than usual. You know how the unlaws of undisorder unget when I’m unwatching.’ HMG sipped her drink, allowing herself to momentarily drop the mental barrier preventing her from perceiving all of spacetime simultaneously. For a fraction of a second, she glimpsed the converging timelines centred around Earth2. She quickly shut the thought down, disturbed by what she’d seen.

‘It’s hardly surprising that you want a day off,” Juliette noted with a shrug.

‘I’m old, Juliette.’ The statement hung in the air like a confession. ‘I’ve seen every variation of existence repeat itself. Finding something genuinely surprising is… rare.’

‘Okay, but please tell me you’re picking someone to cover for you from the firsts… the one most humble at serving others or something?’

HMG shook her head.

‘You’re not only picking a normal, you’re picking a LAST normal.’ Juliette scowled at the flubbery lasts.

HMG scanned the pool deck uneasily. The Last Resort was the last place in the universe where she was supposed to be reachable. That made it the perfect place for an ambush. She needed to stay on her toes. Even if they were presently reclining in yellow slippers.

‘I like things a certain way, Juliette. I don’t want anyone mucking about with my ship.’

Beneath her flippant demeanour, HMG felt the familiar, and annoyingly irrepressible, tug of responsibility. She’d created the universe’s systems to run autonomously, but they still required periodic maintenance. Like an ancient clock that would keep perfect time for centuries before suddenly needing a single, crucial adjustment. Except the universe needed to be tweaked roughly every microsecond.

Juliette nodded. ‘Makes a whack sort of sense, I suppose. A FIRST normal might try to do something about the constant cosmic complaints. A LAST normal will just give up and let things be.’

‘That was the plan. Why I built the Last Resort. But I messed up.’

‘Go figure,’ Juliette said, smiling.

‘Yeah, thanks for that. The problem is, by selecting all these lasts to come here, I accidentally made them all into minor firsts. None of this lot are entirely hopeless anymore.’

‘So… just pick the hopeless-est one.’

‘I can’t take a risk like that.’

Juliette shook her head. ‘OMHMG, then what was the point of us even coming here?’

‘I needed a… boost. I’m so exhausted all the time. There is no quicker way to feel better about your own lot than to surround yourself with a pathetic pack of lasts.’

At the far end of the pool, a group of fluorescent falloverflops were engaging in what looked like synchronised drowning. Closer to the middle, a sloppy-snouted squishwaddle was trying to put on a large pair of swimmers. Both of the large swimmers were shoving him away, crying out for the lifeguards. The first lifeguards were far too busy posing dramatically and writing autobiographies to notice.

‘Now you’re getting ME down, too,’ Juliette grumbled. ‘Just pick someone already and go for a darn swim.’

‘I can’t,’ HMG said. ‘I’ve WRECKED this lot of lasts. I need to look elsewhere for someone who has been last at absolutely everything their whole life. Someone truly clueless about how anything works.’

Juliette shrugged, setting her long brown curls swaying. ‘You should’ve thought of that before giving them all ThinkerLinker. All they need to do is think any think about any think and they know the answer instantly. How can you expect to find someone truly clueless?’

‘You know full well most of them don’t give a think about any think important. They just get on with whatever frivolous nonsense is keeping their tiny Brians occupied. I just need to find someone who takes that utter ignorance to the ultimate extreme. An unadulterated fool. Like Paul was back in the day.’

There was something heavier than usual in her voice. Something that made her uncharacteristically nervous. She’d taken breaks before. Existence required it. But never with such a sense of finality.

Juliette looked up at the wall of floating time-displays, showing the current time across seventeen million planetary systems. Half were blinking error messages, three were running backwards, and one was stubbornly insisting it was next Tuesday. The Earth2 display was spinning like an ancient slot machine.

‘Seems you’re running out of time, HMG. How are you going to find your hopeless backup god if these LASTS are all off the table?’

‘I’m holding a competition.’

‘Ooh… I like those. What is it?’

‘A popularity contest.’

‘Huh? Isn’t that the opposite?’

‘Not if I make it the opposite. I’m going to pick the one who comes last.’

‘Isn’t that just the same mistake as the one you’ve made with this lot?’ Juliette waved to a group of lasts who were presently tripping over their towels and falling into the pool, landing on other lasts who had just tripped over their towels and fallen into the pool. ‘Won’t it give them some sort of unwarranted confidence if you make one of them god?’

‘Not if I put a real sting in the tail. I have a way to make last place really feel like last place.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I’m throwing in a bonus death sentence for the lucky last, along with all of their friend and family and everyone else they’ve ever known.’

Juliette grinned and raised her glass. ‘You crafty minx. Do you have the quarfs in place?’

HMG nodded. ‘Though I still need someone to pin the blame on. A well-chosen scapegoat is worth their weight in flimflams.’ She scanned the pool deck, wincing at the ridiculous, mumbling, bumbling lasts and their grumbling, overachieving first wait-staff. ‘My god senses tell me that someone will end up falling right into my lap.’

Juliette grinned. ‘The way this lot handle themselves, your god senses might mean that literally.’

HMG followed Juliette’s gaze to one particular lifeguard whose features seemed oddly familiar. She remembered separating the Skyward twins years ago. One raised on Earth2, the other spirited away. The galactaphobia she’d given the Earth-bound twin had been a stroke of genius, even by her standards. Hard to accidentally interfere with the rest of the universe when you’re too terrified to leave the ground. Though that might become a problem if he happened to survive his trial and she happened to need him to do a little strategic meddling elsewhere. Of course, none of that mattered if he wasn’t chosen or died before the choosing.

Henrietta Millicent God snapped out of her calculations as Juliette clinked her glass against hers. They each took a sip of their drinks. Then HMG allowed herself a small, knowing smile as she thought of something. Not a TRIVIAL something, like which planets were scheduled to blow up tomorrow. An IMPORTANT something. A something that might change the nature of planetary destruction entirely. Or at least her role in it. Forevermore. And... possibly... even then some.

New chapters of Accidentally Skyward: text, audiobook and movie every Monday — free to read. If Accidentally made you smile, tell someone.

Prefer to listen on the go? Find us on Spotify: Accidentally Skyward Chapter 2 Audiobook

Thanks!

Accidentally Skyward (Longlisted - Richell Prize, Hachette) - Book 1 of Space Soup — cosmic chaos, chronic incompetence, occasional gods. Available as text, full-cast audiobook and movie — new chapter every Monday.

Listen to Chapter 2 as an audiobook with a full cast:

Watch Chapter 1 movie:

Accidentally-Skyward had precisely three problems: Quimly, running very on time for work, everything else about his life, Quimly again… and possibly arithmetic.

‘PUT, YOUR BACK INTO IT!’ the trudgeworthy5 barked from where it hovered just ahead.

‘My BACK?’ Accidentally gasped. ‘Into running? I’m not even sure how to put my arms and legs into it! SLOW… DOWN… QUIMLY!’

‘Quimly cannot help Master Skyward,’ said the fluffy creature, grinning out through the open hovercar window. ‘Quimly is too busy being a hovercar at the moment. Vrooooom!’

Accidentally scowled at Quimly, who beamed back fluffily.

‘Then how about acting like a darn hovercar and letting me in?’ Accidentally slowed to a walk and shoved his fists into the pockets of his dark-puce overalls. ‘Pento Mosaic won’t accept my quarf was being a jerk as an excuse for me being so terribly on time again.’

‘Really, Master Skyward?’ Quimly asked, eyes glinting. ‘What will Pento Mosaic accept my quarf was being a jerk as an excuse for?’

Accidentally hissed something nonspecific through clenched teeth.

‘But Quimly does not have that level of spinal flexibility.’

‘What? No. I meant that figuratively. How could you hear that anyway? I hissed it nonspecifically.’

Accidentally dodged around a row of public ThinkerLinker booths lining the street, their green-tinted sanitising lights flickering erratically above a queue of people and peoply things waiting for their turn at the communal nose inserts. He ducked sideways, then turkeyed forward, as two maintenance hoverkittens zipped past, their tiny Optipulp megablasters leaving scorch marks on the scarred pavement as they chased down an unauthorised hoveradvertisement.

Quimly slowed the trudgeworthy5 to a stop just ahead, flinging all the doors open with the car equivalent of zeal.

‘I am not falling for this again,’ Accidentally muttered, slowing to a walk just out of reach of an open door. And yet… he dived for the door.

The trudgeworthy5 jerked just out of Accidentally’s reach.

Accidentally reached out just like a jerk before slowing down again.

The trudgeworthy5 slowed down again, too.

‘I’m not doing this anymore, you floody quarf,’ Accidentally grumbled.

Quimly was typical of the quarfs Accidentally had, unfortunately, known. Waist-high, fluffy, particularly annoying, with a disturbing habit of turning his face upside down. Almost as disturbingly, Quimly could access every think about any think just by thinking thinks through the pulsing, green ThinkerLinker linker shoved deeply up his nose.

Not that Quimly having a ThinkerLinker linker shoved deeply up his nose was unusual in Smogington in 2334. Everyone and their quarf had a ThinkerLinker linker shoved deeply up their nose, enabling them to access the universe’s collective knowledge... and control anything fitted with a ThinkerLinker floomfield, which included pretty much everything, pretty much everywhere, pretty much all of the time.

Unfortunately, Accidentally could not personally think onto ThinkerLinker because of his severe galactaphobia. A crippling fear of space that had plagued him since his early childhood. Merely thinking about space made Accidentally fall down and gurgle fairly alarmingly in the back of his throat. And Thinkerlinker was pretty much full of the stuff.

‘Do you hear something strange?’ Accidentally asked, hearing something strange… a distant, echoing thump… thump… thump.

‘It would be strange not to hear something strange in Smogington, strange Master Skyward,’ Quimly said, holding his hands questioningly out the open hovercar window.

‘If I could shove a Thinkerlinker linker deeply up my nose without going mad,’ Accidentally grumbled, ‘then I could find out about that strange sound. And then I could drive my own darn hovercar away from it. And then I could drive away from Smoginton. And just keep on driving. Never ever worrying about being very on time for work ever ever again.’

‘But Master Skyward does not need to have a Thinkerlinker linker shoved deeply up Master Skyward’s nose. Because Quimly has a Thinkerlinker linker shoved deeply up Quimly’s nose, so Quimly can always be Master Skyward’s ThinkerLinker linker linker.’

‘Precisely, Quimly. You being my ThinkerLinker linker linker is why things always work out… about as well as things have worked out so far this morning.’

‘Precisely, Master Skyward,’ Quimly grinned.

Accidentally didn’t. ‘Honestly, Quimly, I don’t know why my parents didn’t just flush you down the toilet like all the other quarfs they evolved from potato peelings and earwax in our home evolution kit.’

Accidentally skitched up a small cloud of ashen dust, turning the toe of his dark-puce boots a slightly more contemporary drab-grey.

‘Some days, Quimly. I really do think I’d be better off with my own ThinkerLinker linker shoved up my own nose, despite my own crippling galactaphobia.’

‘Some days, Quimly…’ Quimly mimicked, waggling his fluffy head from side to side.

Accidentally reached into his breast pocket and took out the worn realograph he kept there. A nervous habit whenever his frustration with Quimly peaked. Hence it being exceptionally worn indeed.

His breathing began to steady as the trudgeworthy5 hovered past a local park - equally describable as two synthetic trees plonked in the sludge around a puddle of questionable origin.

Despite the dismal scene, Accidentally’s chest warmed at the sight of three children playing with toy hovercars, their levitating vehicles responding in a limited way to their manual intervention because the children were too young for ThinkerLinker linkers. Accidentally could very much relate.

‘No, let me refresh that,’ Accidentally grumbled afresh at Quimly, where Quimly still hovered just ahead in the trudgeworthy5. He kicked up a pile of ashen dust afresh, too. ‘Some days, I wish they’d turn ThinkerLinker off entirely so I could just get on with my life.’

‘What life might that be, Master Skyward?’

‘I’m twenty-seven. Stop calling me MASTER! Skyward.’

‘What makes Master Skyward think Quimly does not mean master in the other sense? My overlord, my liege, my royal hobgoblin?’

‘Everything you do and say!’

‘Even this?’ Quimly turned his face upside down and waggled his tongue.

‘Yes, that’s precisely the sort of thing. Now let me into the flarping car!’

‘Of course, Master Skyward. As Master Skyward’s ThinkerLinker linker linker, Quimly’s sworn duty is to fulfil all Master Skyward’s most pressing needs.’

‘Yes, provided I have a most pressing need for a pain in my neck.’

Accidentally tilted his head back and massaged his neck and saw personal delivery drones buzzing overhead in intricate patterns, dropping packages with varying accuracy into apartment receipt holes, their undersides glowing with ThinkerLinker delivery codes. Panic buying? In May? Accidentally shook his head. What did everyone on ThinkerLinker know that he didn’t?

Accidentally slowed again. This time nothing to do with Quimly. The distant thumping sound had transformed into an unmistakable DOOM DOOM DOOM that seemed to emanate from everywhere all at once.

Planets didn’t say DOOM, did they?

Planets didn’t say anything at all... he was pretty sure. Not even... Hey, look at me, I’m a planet! Or... how about not suffocating me to death with that souped-up smog machine of yours for a nice change! Or any other things like that that planets were more likely to say - if sentences with... THAT THAT in them were allowed, which Accidentally was pretty sure they weren’t. Though it was on his ever-growing list of things he couldn’t readily deduce, so there WAS that that.

The familiar tightness that preceded a galactaphobia episode gripped him. He lowered his gaze to the ashen dust at his feet, trying to see patterns there. A coping technique his therapist, Ms Speckledick, had tried to teach him before declaring his case fascinatingly hopeless.

Suddenly, the sky was much darker. Passers-by began looking upward, their expressions shifting from ThinkerLinker-induced indifference to darkening-sky-induced second guessing their Thinkerlinker feeds. Accidentally looked up in turn and saw perhaps the last thing he ever wanted to see. An angular starblaster with an ominous weapons array, descending through the smog-choked sky. Smogington’s longstanding indifference shattered. People and peoply things froze in place, conversations died mid-sentence.

Someone nearby said, ‘This isn’t a scheduled unregistered extraterrestrial incursion.’

Accidentally somehow felt a flash of recognition. For half a moment, he knew this ship, where it had come from, why it was here. The feeling was so intense it felt almost like a true memory. But that was impossible. He’d... NEVER... been off PLANET!

He’d never even been off GROUND unless JUMPING at SHADOWS counted. The faux memory faded the moment he reached into his breast pocket and took out the worn realograph. He meditated on the image. Him as a boy, tasselled blonde hair and a carefree smile, on a shore he didn’t recognise, staring up in wonder at a shadowed sky.

It was a past that felt like a recurring dream. One his parents refused to discuss. The closest they’d come was when his mother had once grimaced at the realograph and said, ‘Some people and peoply things are named for what their parents know they are. You were named for what the universe hopes you’ll become.’

He’d asked what she’d meant, but she’d only smiled sadly and added, ‘Did you put on clean underwear this morning? We’ve been having some issues with the scrubocrotch. Only, your father’s underpants have been coming out even dirtier. If you can even imagine that!’

Accidentally had tried not to.

Not being on ThinkerLinker, touching that tatty, old realograph, a ritual as automatic as breathing whenever his anxiety spiked, was as close as Accidentally ever came to connecting with the eternal mysteries of the universe.

A word surfaced in his mind unbidden... Heck. A childish swear? No. It felt like more than that. The word faded just as quickly, replaced by the familiar panic gripping him like molec-u-tight.

A public alert system, unused for decades, crackled to life with an ominous whine. ‘Attention. Attention,’ it began brightly. ‘No… really… listen up, you lot… particularly you at the back. I have something important to tell you about space…’

‘Space! Oh, Jesus9,’ Accidentally moaned as his crippling galactaphobia kicked in. He fell, in a slumping, purple crumple, atop the ashen dust, gurgling alarmingly in the back of his throat. Just as he found himself thinking that things couldn’t possibly get any worse, he saw something that was unquestionably any worse. He marked the occasion by making one final, alarming gurgling sound before, pretty comprehensively, passing out.

New chapters of Accidentally Skyward (longlisted for the Richell Prize - Hachette): text, audio and video episode every Monday — free to read. If Accidentally made you smile, tell someone. Thanks!

If you’ve been here a while, you know the shape of this story. Thirty years of writing. Twenty-four manuscripts. A motivation drawer that has become more of a motivation wheelie bin. Zero published novels.

What you don’t know yet is what happened next.

I’ve been writing a sci-fi comedy series called Space Soup for most of those thirty years. Seven books. A complete universe populated by beings who probably shouldn’t exist, doing things that probably shouldn’t happen, in ways that are almost certainly someone else’s fault. Book one, Accidentally Skyward, has been finished, polished, longlisted for major prizes, considered by publishers with serious expressions, and sitting in a drawer gathering a sort of sparkly cosmic dust that is very difficult to launder out of your delicates.

Then I watched a lecture from Brandon Sanderson’s 2025 writing series. You’re welcome for the plug to my dozen subscribers, Brandon. Feel free to return the favour.

Brandon said something I haven’t been able to shake. Success, he reckoned, is some combination of luck, quality, and persistence — and he had absolutely no idea what percentage was which. His own writing success might well have been ninety per cent luck.

Two paths from there: despair or logic. I tried both. Down Logic Boulevard, a pair of googly eyes stared back at me holding a sign that said: You can control quality. You’ve spent thirty years on that. You can control persistence. You have twenty-four manuscripts in your persistence wheelie bin. But luck? Leaving your fate in the hands of editorial interns at the big five publishers — or the agents who supply them with slushpile fodder — is weighting everything, at blackhole drag levels, toward LUCK.

So I decided to syphon some luck out of the system.

Serialisation.

What?

No… not the true crime version - things weren’t quite that bleak - the one where you share a chapter at a time with the universe and plead with it, using every universe-manipulating tool at your disposal, to give you a star rating out of five.

Get your work out to the public. Build some readers out of silicon and pixie dust. More luck drained from the damn system. Get enough work to enough people, and it’s all just PERSISTENCE and QUALITY… and free coffee for everyone… from there on in. The whole complicated three-tier system transforms - with a swishing sound - into a stylish two-legged PERSISTENCE QUALITY stool. What could possibly go wrong?

The problem, of course, is that readers don’t have time for just another book being serialised, what with all the doom scrolling and writing their own books with AI. So I decided to do something different.

Still a thing, apparently. In 2026. Who knew?

I dived eyeballs-deep into the tech. Every ounce of IT geek, every degree of my audio engineering degree, and every writing chop in my freezer, beside the writing steaks, just to keep things meaty. And I built something I haven’t seen before. Though I admittedly wasn’t getting out much through what we’ll call a slightly obsessive creative breakdown.

Every chapter of Accidentally Skyward (longlisted for the Richell Prize - Hachette) now exists as a full-cast audio production. Different voices, different accents, original sound design. Characters who’ve been living in my head for three decades, finally squeezed out into the world with intonations and personalities and specific ways of clearing their throats when they’re lying.

I’ve also made a cinematic video of Chapter 1. Twelve minutes long. Eighty hours of production. Per-minute math too depressing to calculate. Here it is now:

My serialisation model:

Very simple. This is about exposure to my work. No one (bar my Substack friends) have ever seen my writing. So… I will post a new Chapter: text, audio and video episode every Monday entirely free to everyone. Maybe… sometime in the future… in roughly 2334 when Accidentally Skyward is set… I can think about asking for some coffee money!

Pressing publish on Chapter 1 has been both trivial and terrifying. Trivial because I have a dozen followers (love you all), so it’s not exactly going to shake the foundations of international literature. Terrifying because it has taken a genuinely embarrassing amount of time to work up the courage to press one more button.

I know some of you personally. That just makes this weirder. I’m choosing not to think about that.

Quick Book Blurb for you comedy sci-fi lovers. You know who you are:

He’s destined for space. He’d rather die.

In the smoggy bureaucratic nightmare of Earth2 in 2334, Accidentally Skyward just got voted the least popular person in the universe — and won a Backup God of the Known Universe party hat as the grand prize. He has no idea what to do with it. The universe has no idea what to do with him. This is going to go badly for everyone.

Now he’s somehow responsible for saving Earth2 from spontaneous and fairly thorough obliteration. His only assets: a fluffy, insulting pet who may actually be his master, a boss who thinks he’s called Frank, and a four-armed goddess from up the hallway who finds him “pathetic in a humany sort of way.”

Sometimes the universe doesn’t need the best person for the job. Just someone who falls down and gurgles alarmingly at the mere mention of space.

Chapter 1 full text, audio and video here: Accidentally Skyward - Chapter - The day before the end of the world … enjoy… please!

I’d love to hear what you think. Really. What is going on in there?

This is going to be inspirational as hell.

I’d like you to come on a journey with me. Picture the room, coffee shop, wherever you’re reading this, going all swirly and some music playing backwards before it kicks into some grunge because… now it’s 1996. Rod Mackay (stage name Plod) is the singer and guitarist in an Australian alt-pop band called Frenzi. We’ve just released an album that’s getting some airplay on Triple J, which for non-Australians is basically the only radio station that matters if you’re an indie musician who thinks getting paid to play music is selling out.

We have a song called ‘Across the Water’ that I wrote about… well, it’s a breakup song, so I’ll let you join the dots. Spoiler… it didn’t end well. At least in the song. In real life we sorted things out. But no one wants to hum along to that.

One evening, my phone rings - an actual phone - just for talking on. Vomit green. Long, curly cord. I picked up the receiver. It was heavy and smelled how it looked.

‘Hello, is this Plod from Frenzi?’ asks a voice I vaguely recognise. An Aunt maybe? The agent about the rent inspection? Mum?

‘Um…. yes?’ I reply, with the paranoid tonal twitch of someone who was once a teenager and therefore knows how hilarious prank calls are… if you’re the one making the prank calls.

‘This is Kate Langbroek from Triple J.’

Okay, bridge too far. I know Kate Langbroek. By that I mean… I know Kate Langbroek in the same way I know the queen and the prime minister - both of whom are far more likely to be calling me at home in the middle of Sale of the Century.

‘Aha.’

‘Yeah, hi. I got your number from APRA.’ (APRA is the Australian Performing Rights Association who keep track of who wrote what song so they know who to pay their seventeen cents in royalties to each year.) ‘I’ve been playing ‘Across the Water’ on the show. I’m officially Frenzi’s number one fan.’

‘Aha.’

Now, when a Triple J DJ calls you and says they’re your number one fan, you don’t ask questions. Because you already know this is the girlfriend of one of your mates in the band, and if you play it cool, they’ll crack before you say something stupid like, ‘Really? How awesome. I love your show.’

Which would send your bandmates rolling down their respective hallways in tight balls of mirth because they own your soul now. They will never let you forget that slightly naive thing you said, once.

They’ll nickname you ‘Love Your Show.’ Or something shorter, like ‘Lovey.’ Or something really nasty like ‘Lover Boy.’ And you’ll hear that nickname so many times you’ll eventually decide to take your nickname back. You’ll show them you own it, and they can’t hurt you with it anymore. And you’ll get it tattooed across your knuckles.

And when the subject of your unique tattoos comes up in the prison cell, you’ll be all, ‘No, it’s my nickname from when a famous radio DJ called me to tell me they were my number one fan,’ and Killer will just stare straight through you and say, ‘Aha.’

‘I’m writing a book called ‘Dear Jack,’ my band-member’s girlfriend continued to prank call, in what I had to admit was a passable impression of Kate Langbroek.

‘Aha.’

‘It’s about the stories behind breakup songs. We’ve got contributions from a bunch of songwriters, and the book is going to print tomorrow, like literally tomorrow, and we just voted on your song being added with your background story. But I need your backstory… like… tonight. Not… like… tonight. Like actually tonight. Can you write it for me? Like… now? Like… actually… now?’

‘Wait, what? Is this legit Kate Langbroek?’

‘Aha.’

‘Really? How awesome. I love your show.’

The Moment Everything Changed (yet didn’t really change) - cue eerie music

I have to admit I panicked then. I had no clue how to write a story. I was a songwriter, not a… whatever writers were called. Writing songs wasn’t writing. It was songwriting… whole other word. Songwriting was a thing you did when you got drunk with your mates and tried to buckle some weird-arse poetry around a chord riff. Writing was… I didn’t even know… what they made us do at school sometimes instead of playing music? I thought there was something about paragraphs involved. I’d need to look up what they were on the Internet. Wait. No! It was 1996! The Internet was pretty much just a bulletin board about how to make your cursor leave a trail of sparkles!

‘So are you in?’

‘Sure, I’ll drop it in your post office box (metal thing - ask your parents) tonight.’

‘Ta, can’t wait.’ Dial tone… (ask your parents)

So I sat down and wrote the story behind ‘Across the Water.’ The actual breakup, the actual pain, the ridiculous exaggeration of the pain. Then I added in the bits that the song didn’t get into, like the getting back together afterwards, that had no place in any actual song.

I wrote that story in one sitting. I reread it twice. I didn’t have time to worry about whether it was bullshit that no one would ever want to read. What tense it was in. Who the protagonist and antagonists were. The primary and secondary story arcs. Whether the key characters had agency, greyness, convincing backstories. I just told the story the way it happened, then exaggerated everything and changed the ending - just like in real life - and shoved it in Kate Langbruek’s PO box.

And here’s the thing that surprised me, the thing that changed everything without really changing anything at all… I loved it. Not the story. It was shit. I loved the writing. REALLY loved it. Not in an ‘Oh, I’m instantly in a flow state, and I am a natural born writer, buy my books.’ This was an entirely new experience. I’d written things at school because I’d had to. I’d written letters to the newspaper about potholes because I’d had to. This time I was writing something because I wanted to, not because someone told me to. Well, to be fair, Kate Langbroek told me to. But I wanted Kate Langbroek to tell me to do things. I honestly did.

I really felt something else writing that piece, too. Something I couldn’t have explained back then. A raw act of creating that was a complete cycle of idea, invention, and human connection that was as instantaneous as it got pre social media. I wrote something, Kate read it, the editors approved it, and it was published a few days later. It was as good as posting something on Substack used to be before notes.

Something shifted when I wrote that piece. I became a writer that night after Sale of the Century. I’ve been called many things… hurtful things… and I’m not going to get into any of that here.

Not sure you can still find ‘Dear Jack’ anymore as it’s been out of print for a while.

So, here’s the song and story as they appeared in the book:

The Song that Triggered the Thirty-Year Detour

Even better, I rummaged around in my drawers and pulled out something even more embarrassing. I found an old film clip of the song (that I hadn’t watched for 30 years). It was played on a tv-show called Rage back in the day and came second in a contest run by a tv-show called Recovery, where the winner got a record deal and the runners up got to break up their band because it was all just too fricken hard.

The old clip is a slow burn, quirky, and has a whole lot more hair, but it ends with a bang, and I kinda love it even now. It was filmed all in one shot. You can see me switching on and off the video camera at the start and end. How rock ‘n’ roll?

The Point of All This (if any)

I didn’t plan to become a writer. That phone call in 1996 just sort of hooked its foot around my ankle and shoved… and I stumbled into a writer and apologised and asked if I could try on their shoes. And I bloody loved those shoes. They were too big, hence all the blisters, but that gave me a feeling even beyond the blisters. A feeling of connecting with another human through words. A feeling I can have anywhere, anytime, hidden far away from the people I’m trying to connect with. Like the one I’m having right here and now.

Almost thirty years later, I’m still chasing that feeling. I still write every chance I get - in queues, in coffee shops, here on my toilet… ah… I mean… at my desk or something. I’ve written 24 manuscripts, have enough rejection letters to wallpaper this… ah… small office, and I still haven’t published a novel. By any reasonable measure, this continues to be a spectacularly unsuccessful career. Yay!

But here’s the thing… I am unsuccessful. I truly am. And, it doesn’t matter. It’s not the accolades that drive me, praise the merciless gods. It’s the act of tapping into that unnamable, indescribable part of the universe that only a writer or a reader (so pretty much anyone, really) can possibly understand.

There have always been better writers than me. Du Maurier, Martin, Atwood, that guy at the chemist who reinterprets my doctor’s scripts, and thousands of others I’ll never hope to match. AI is just another name on that list of writers destined to outwrite me.

Publishers might keep saying that my mental health fuelled saga, my true story of a galactaphobic factory worker who becomes god, or my quest of a daemon-possessed exile hunting for the source of life in a broken world are not romantasy enough, are not crime-fictiony enough, or just simply are not sellable enough, and that’s okay. Everyone knows that publishers don’t know anything about books! But being published won’t change my relationship with writing. It will just make me unbearably smug and pretentious. I’m thinking a scarf and beret would be quite fetching.

Until then, and possibly even for some considerable amount of time afterwards, I’ll keep on writing.

Why?

Because I bloody love these thirty-year old shoes.

Thanks Kate.

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Writing an Author Bio: How to write a half-decent author bio… even if you’re not a Nobel-prize-winning author who has visited the international space station… twice!.

Building a Website for Writers: Skip Fear, Go Straight to Functional. Or: How I spent weeks researching website builders so you don’t have to (you’re welcome)!

And How’s Arthur?

Arthur is going well, thanks for asking! He recently discovered that sticks are basically the greatest thing ever invented, which is hilarious because I’ve been trying to explain the concept of the smart phones and social media to him and he just keeps coming back to his darn stick and… wait… oh… I get it now Arthur… good dog!

First, let’s point out the elephant in the pyjamas. We’re writers, which means we spend most of our time alone in our rooms making things up. Our most exciting daily activity is usually choosing which coffee shop not to go to because... well... outside. Yet somehow, we’re expected to craft a bio that makes us sound like we’re worthy of shelf space next to people who’ve won Nobel Prizes, survived wars, or had dinner with someone famous once.

It’s like it’s your turn to introduce yourself at the dinner party after the professional stuntwoman and the guy who invented the internet, and the most exciting thing you can think of is that time you remembered to feed your dog.

Why Author Bios Are Torture (And Why We Need Them Anyway)

The thing about author bios is that they sit at this weird intersection of marketing, creative writing and innate fear. You’re supposed to be professional but personable, accomplished but relatable, interesting but not show-offy. It’s like juggling and riding a unicycle while explaining quantum physics to a five-year-old who’s poking sticks in your spokes.

And then there’s the comparison game. You accidentally research other authors’ bios and find yourself reading about people who’ve been war correspondents, run orphanages in Tibet, and still carved out time to write seventeen bestsellers. Meanwhile, your biggest adventure is that time you popped into Ikea for a wall clock and got lost for three hours and came home with a chair shaped like a tongue.

But here’s the thing… and this might be controversial… most readers aren’t looking for your bio to make them feel inadequate about their own life choices. That’s just a bonus. They want to know if you’re someone whose entirely made-up stories are things they want to spend time with. They want to get a sense of your voice, your interests, maybe a glimpse of the person behind the words... ugh!

Think about it: when you pick up a book, are you really checking the author bio to see if they’ve climbed Everest? Or are you looking for something that suggests this person gets it, whatever ‘it’ happens to be for you?

The Bio That Nearly Broke Me

When I was putting together my author website recently, I knew I needed a bio. How hard could it be, right? I’ve been writing for thirty years. I’ve got some credentials. I can do things. I’ve run marathons. I have a dog. Boom, bio done.

Three days later, I was staring at seventeen different versions and hating every one of them, even that one about how I sometimes make cheese-and-pickle sandwiches for lunch, unless I’m not very hungry.

So, I did what any sensible person would do. I gave up on trying to sound professional and just started talking out of my... ah… mouth... through my fingers… thumbs to be specific. And here’s what came out when I stopped trying to impress anyone at all, especially me (feel free to skim read this next bit… it’s pretty raw):

I have written A LOT over 30 years. All for my own amusement and enjoyment. Along the way, I accidentally got okay at it and think maybe I have some things that could amuse and enjoy other people... or at least people and enjoy other muse. In 2016, I decided I wanted to win a short story competition, so I entered a bunch and won one with $1200 prize money. I also placed in a bunch as a finalist and had one of the pieces performed on stage. I then went back to writing long form because I was kind of exhausted. In long form... my career has sucked. I had a literary agent for 7 years with an Australian (I am Australian) literary fiction book, sort of an Australian Grapes of Wrath with more sand and sun and intergenerational mental health issues. But each time a publisher declined, I rewrote the story on what became very conflicting feedback until it was just a hodgepodge of... I don’t even know... shit, I guess. I then took control back... well, my agent retired... and I wrote the book I actually meant to write. It’s awesome now... honestly. A new agent is currently considering it... has been for 2 months... but who’s counting. I also have a sci-fi book that was long-listed for the Ritchell Prize with Hachette and is sort of a contemporary Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with more dystopia and less Hitchhiker’s Guides to Galaxies. That one took over 30 years and 1 week to write and is also with the same agent... who is still pondering my literary future... or not... which is far more likely. I have also almost completed an Epic Fantasy that is somewhere between Grimdark Fantasy and Literary Fantasy... yes, that’s a thing. It’s called Grimdarkliteraryfancy... I’m pretty sure... That book was quick. It only took about 20 years and 2.5 million words to write. Then I’m going to finish off another sci-fi book I wrote in a cafe in New York fifteen years ago in a single day... true story. I have been meaning to get back to it for ages... can’t wait. Oh, and I’ve drafted another 20 other books across at least 5 genres. Most of them are currently rubbish because I wrote them back when I was rubbish at writing. Now I reckon I can turn them into something not quite so rubbish, but time is rubbish as they say... they do say that, don’t they? I pretty much write all the time now because I have a telephone that I don’t use to make telephone calls because... well... thumbs. So, I can write books on it instead, and so that’s what I do... in queues, in coffee shops, at the start of boring meetings, while having sex... um... no dear... I don’t do that... I was just looking up photos... honest. And anyway... where was I... yes... I write a lot and am part of the KSP Novel Writing Collective, and I am very much ready to launch into... I don’t know, really... other than I haven’t given up on trad publishing because I have only been at this for 30 years, and I don’t feel like I’ve really given it a decent shot... so yeah... that’s me. Oh, and I have degrees in IT/Music/Audio Engineering and was a struggling alt-pop singer when I was a youngster and made a couple of albums that I just put up on Spotify and still dabble in a bit of songwriting and recording from time to time. And I’ve run 27 marathons and ultra-marathons and won one of them and came second in another, and I ride my bike a lot and don’t really like long walks on the beach because squeaky sand gives me that really unpleasant tingle up my spine. Oh, and I have 30 years experience in IT. And all sorts of stuff like that... did I mention I’ve never written one of these I’ve liked... maybe you can sense why now... stop being all at me about it.

Yeah. Take that, me. That’s the raw, unfiltered… I don’t know what exactly… but certainly not a bio, not yet. More like 600-odd words of stream-of-consciousness panic, complete with contradictions, tangents, and what I’m pretty sure was a mild nervous breakdown in the middle paragraphs. Exactly what I needed, because... buried beneath all the rubble, I could hear an okay bio whimpering to get out.

The Art of Bio Archaeology

The trick with author bios is that you’re not trying to fit your entire life into a paragraph. You’re trying to find the thread that connects who you are to what you write. Personally, I found that I couldn’t make that connection without performing the word vomit thing first.

Looking back, I could easily see the elements that actually mattered, because they were all out there… splayed beneath my opposable thumbs… flailing in plain sight:

• I’ve been writing for thirty years (persistence)

• I’ve won competitions and been longlisted for awards (credibility)

• I write across multiple genres (range)

• I’ve had an agent (professional validation)

• I have other interests that make me a real person (marathons, music, IT background)

• I don’t take myself, or anyone else really, too seriously (voice)

The rest was just noise. True noise, real noise, possibly even fun noise, but not bio-worthy noise. More like the noise of Hendrix tuning up. Okay, nowhere near that cool. Like Hendrix’s roadie’s friend, Kevin, tuning up. Okay, not that cool either.

The Multiple Bio Strategy

Here’s something else I’ve learned in 30 years of writing: you don’t need one bio, you need three. Just like you wouldn’t wear the same outfit to a job interview and a barbecue, you would wear three.

The Professional Bio (for submissions, formal applications): Credentials first, personality second. Clean, factual, impressive without trying too hard.

The Reader-Friendly Bio (for websites, book jackets): Personality first, personality second, writing third. More conversational. Makes people want to know more about your work.

The Social Media Bio (Twitter, Instagram): Only guessing here - because I get all sort of cringy, crampy feelings when I get within a thousand pixels of Twitter or Instagram - but the good bios there seem punchy, memorable, though possibly a bit more pretentious and showy - cramming key words into character limits - hoping one of them will be enough to get some stranger who has nothing to do with their writing or interests to follow them. Sigh.

All three of these ungainly bio forms eventually crawled out of the rubble of my brain-dump.

My website bio ended up like this:

After 30 years of writing ‘for my own amusement,’ I accidentally got okay at it and decided maybe other people might see something in my work, too.

I write across genres... from literary fiction, exploring intergenerational trauma, to sci-fi comedy that’s been described as ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide meets dystopian anxiety,’ to dark fantasy where ancient daemons and floating realms collide. Humour finds its way into everything, even the literary and dystopian stuff.

I won the ‘In My View’ short story contest in 2016 with a $1200 prize (yay!), was longlisted for the Ritchell Prize with Hachette and have had work performed on stage, which was both thrilling and terrifying, mostly the latter.

Currently, I have manuscripts with a new agent (after my old agent retired) who’s taking their sweet time deciding my literary future, but after only 30 years in this game, I feel like I’m just getting started, so what’s the rush?

When not writing on my phone in inappropriate places (coffee shop queues, boring meetings, in my pyjamas), I run marathons (27 and counting), cycle around the world (only the best bits), and workshop new ideas with Arthur, who happens to be my dog.

I’m a member of the KSP Novel Writing Collective and have that dangerous blend of persistence and just enough positive feedback to keep going.

Okay, that’s maybe not as much fun as the brain-dump disaster, but it’s still a bit of fun without obscuring the important bits. Which is all you can say about anything in life, really. Pretty sure.

The Rules (Such As They Are)

Through this whole process, I learned a few things about author bios that might save someone else from learning things about author bios all on their own.

1. Start entirely open, no filters, like your first draft of a manuscript. Just start brain dumping everything you’ve got in you about writing. Unfiltered, unwashed, unclothed... eww. If all you’ve ever done is write to your mum and compliment people online about their cat videos, talk about how often you do that, why you do that, how it makes you feel when you do that, then why you want to take that feeling and turn it into a professional occupation... honestly, I’d like to know. Don’t stop writing that stream of consciousness until every last trickle has dried up. Now clear away all the bits that make you cringe the most and… presto! A… slightly less awful hodgepodge of meaningless jibberish. Now do that a few more times and… there it is!

2. It’s a CV, not a diary. Everything needs to be true, but it should be the highlight reel version of true. Apply your writing skills. The ones you’re going to talk about in your bio. No, it’s not lying, it’s curating. Honestly, your honour! I was curating about the night in question.

3. Lead with what matters most for your audience. If you’re submitting to agents, lead with credentials. If you’re trying to connect with readers, lead with your personality and follow up quickly with personality, then hit ‘em with your writing stuff.

4. Show, don’t tell. Instead of saying ‘I’m smart,’ or ‘I’m funny,’ or ‘I like cheese,’ write something that clearly demonstrates your sense of cheese.

5. Be specific. ‘I’ve won writing competitions’ is good. ‘I won the ‘In My View’ short story contest in 2016 with a $1200 prize’ is better. Details make it real. It’s like an ostrich named Percifield. Yep. It really is. Isn’t it, Percifield?

6. Include something that makes you human. My dog, my marathon running, my weird thing about squeaky sand... these are relatable details that were so important to me they made it into my 600-word life brain dump. Maybe they don’t all make the final cut of bio number twos, but more rubble means more chance of finding a malnourished survivor to resuscitate. Pretty sure.

7. Keep it current. Bios aren’t set-and-forget. Every time you achieve something new, publish something new, or win something new, update your bio something new. It’s like a plant... it needs feeding and then it dies… like three days later.

The Permission to Be Ordinary (Extraordinarily)

Here’s the thing I wish someone had told me before I wrote a series of horrible, boring bios that proved essential for my first twenty years of industry rejections. Don’t do that, Rod! Then I wish they’d told me that… you don’t need to have lived an extraordinary life to write an extraordinary bio. You just need to find the extraordinary in the super-ordinary life you’ve lived. Rude but fair!

Most of us aren’t war correspondents or Nobel Prize winners. Most of us are just people who love words and stories enough to spend ridiculous amounts of time alone in our rooms making things up. And that can actually be pretty interesting, if you make it up right. Right?

Your bio doesn’t need to make other people feel inadequate about their life choices. That’s just a bonus. It needs to make them curious about you and your stories. Yes, they need to be bio-curious about you. It needs to give them a sense of who you are and why your particular way of seeing the world might be worth seeing, too… or something else like that using more inspirational words.

And if you’re still totally stuck, remember, the author bio is just another piece of writing. There, I said it. Well… typed it… thumbed it, really… but let’s not get into all that now. You’re allowed to draft it, hate it, rewrite it, hate that version too, and keep drafting and hating it until you find something that you don’t hate quite as much and then forget where you saved it. You’re allowed to ask other writers for help. You’re allowed to steal the structure from bios you admire and adapt it to your own circumstances. And you’re allowed to outright steal someone else’s identity and claim it as your own and empty their bank… wait… no… hang on… scrub that last one!

After all, we’re writers. Curating something exquisite and compelling out of an otherwise bitter and lonely existence is literally the job description. Pretty sure.

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How to Build an Author Website: In 15 minutes or less. I kid you not!

And How’s Arthur?

Arthur is going well, thanks for asking! Here’s Arthur explaining that exceeding a critical number of philosophical tangents can cause a reader to lose track of the core message. I will do better!

Not having a website is even a bit more embarrassing than that photo because I’ve spent the last thirty years fitting in an IT career around my writing, which means I’ve spent three decades telling other people why they absolutely, definitely, no-question-about-it needed websites for their businesses while I sat there like a cobbler whose children have no flippers. Or is that roe. (Sorry about the fishy humour.)

The excuses I made to myself were possibly the most creative thing about my writing. ‘I’m not published yet, so what’s the point?’ ‘I’ll wait until I have something to promote.’ ‘Social media is enough. Ah… no, I don’t have any of that either… obviously… because… well… excuse number one.’ ‘I’ll build one when I get an agent.’ ‘I’ll build one when my agent lands a publisher.’ ‘I’ll build one when I win the Nobel Prize for Literature and someone forces me at gunpoint and Arthur holds up his paws and barks, I warned you it’d come to this!’

Here’s what I learned after finally listening to Arthur and building one. A website that is. There will only ever be one Arthur.

Your Website Is Your Most Important Publication

This might sound dramatic, but your author website is arguably the most important thing you’ll ever publish. More important than your debut novel. More important than that short story from that competition you came second in. More important than that rant about potholes in your street. Okay, maybe not the pothole rant.

Why?

Because potholes are really annoying and… oh… hang on…

Because your website is the one, singular, standalone, isolated, oft quite lonely, place where you have complete control over how you’re presented to the world. It’s your single source of truth about your absolutely favourite topic… you! I mean… really… in a world where information about essentially that one-and-same you is scattered across seventeen different platforms, half of which you’ve forgotten you signed up for and the other half focused on potholes or essays about pineapple on pizza (don’t even start me), where is the real you?

When someone googles your name... and they will, oh, they will... what do you want them to find first? Not that embarrassing photo from your cousin’s wedding. I was just scratching, honestly. Not your LinkedIn profile from when you thought ‘synergistic solutions architect’ was a real job title. Not your Twitter rants about how sick you are of people ranting on Twitter. Not your website with your actual, professional, writing persona that says this person writes books worth reading and has writing credentials worth credentialing. Hang on. No, it is that last one. Pretty sure.

The Universal Website Checkpoint

Here’s a thought experiment. Imagine you’re an agent, editor, publisher, interviewer, podcaster, event organiser or an innocent, happy-go-unlucky reader who comes across a book blurb they like but wants to know more about the author before they invest their irrecoverable $3.99 and taxes. What’s the first thing you do?

Well, I obviously don’t know. But I would type the author’s name into a browser, expecting to find their website. It’s become such an automatic behaviour I don’t even think about it... like reaching for a coffee when I stop shaking... it’s human instinct.

What Happens When You Don’t Exist… Online

When people can’t find your author website, they tend to make assumptions. They just don’t have time between coffees and their insta feed to do anything else. And these assumptions aren’t particularly flattering.

Assumption #1: You’re an amateur. If you’re serious about writing, you’d have a website. It’s 2025, having a website is like having a Substack account. Don’t have one of those either? Wow. Just… like… wow.

Assumption #2: You’re AI. With AI-generated content everywhere, people are increasingly suspicious of authors who exist only as bylines without… like… any trace of being… like… actually human. Websites are your photo-id to the writer’s discotheque (they had large silver, spinning balls in the middle - ask your parents). Websites are where your bio lives. Where your personality lives. Where people can troll you without needing to dig too deep.

Assumption #3: You’re a figment of your own imagination. Okay, this one might be slightly unfair, but when someone can’t find any evidence that you exist, they start to wonder who is hiding behind what and why… but not for long… goodbye.

Point is, the absence of a website doesn’t create a neutral space... it creates a negative space. Like writer-antimatter. Why does that matter? People like to fill vacuums. With lint and assumptions. And those assumptions are rarely ‘this person is so mysterious and intriguing… much like this lint. Yum.’

The Pseudonym Question (Or: Please Don’t Make This Harder Than It Needs to Be)

While we’re talking about proving you exist, let’s address the elephant wearing a fake moustache over in the corner, eating popcorn and pointing at us. Rude.

Pseudonyms.

Gazoontite.

Look, I get it. Different genres, privacy concerns, separating your professional life from your romance novel about time-travelling vampires and talking cats. But here’s the thing: in an age where everyone’s worried about AI-generated content and fake authors, using your real name is one of the simplest ways… to be… or not to be… just like that old guy said. Your website, with your real name, your real photo, your real personality, is proof you’re an actual human being. Or that you have an uber-convincing AI fakery thing going on. Which would be impressive in itself.

Obviously, if you have genuine safety concerns... witness protection, stalker situations, writing politically sensitive material... that pimple that just won’t clear up long enough for the bio pic… then absolutely use a pseudonym. But ‘I’m embarrassed about writing romance novels’ doesn’t count as a genuine safety concern. Neither does ‘my colleagues might think it’s weird.’ Your colleagues are all weird. Just look at their websites!

That’s all I’ll say about that, except for this. Your name, your choice. Just… you know… authenticity matters more now than it used to. And it used to matter a whole lot. Nuff said. Except for this next bit…

All the Blockers Are in Your Head

Every excuse you’re making for not having a website is, I’m sorry to say… complete gibberish… like some posts about websites I’m currently writing. Let me briefly address the greatest hits. I have sung all of these before… hum along if you don’t know all the words.

‘I don’t know how to build a website.’ These days, you don’t need to know how to do things. You don’t need to know how to build a car to drive one. You don’t even need to know how to drive one to drive one. You can literally have a professional author website up and running in fifteen minutes using tools designed specifically for people like us. (Sort of gangly with close-set eyes.) Some guy even wrote a post about how to build and publish a website in 15 minutes. And has probably embedded a link about it in the Related Posts section below. High achievers feel free to be utterly convinced already and skip ahead to that one...

‘It’s too expensive.’ A domain name costs about ten bucks a year. (No, not ten male deers, Hank, the other bucks. No, not that Lightyear guy.) Website hosting starts at around ten dollars a month. That’s less than you spend on coffee in a day… or spend on a coffee in a coffee at most airports. But, unlike hideously overpriced coffee, your website won’t give you the jitters or make you need to pee… unless it’s got that pimple photo on it.

‘I don’t have anything to put on it.’ You have a bio. Don’t you? If you answered ‘no’ or ‘not yet’ or ‘not until I get back from the space station,’ then… you better get cracking on that one. Some guy’s about to post about writing bios soon, too. So you should probably keep an eye out for that one. Meanwhile, you have at least one thing you’ve written, even if it’s just that letter to the council about the potholes. You have opinions about books, writing and probably seventeen other things that keep you awake at night, or make you sleep soundly... I’d be genuinely interested to hear about those. That’s plenty to start with.

‘I’ll wait until I’m published.’ That’s like saying you’ll wait until you’re married to start dating. That can get really messy. Your website is part of the process of becoming published, not something you do afterwards. Agents and publishers (or readers if you’re a selfy) increasingly expect to find an online presence when they’re considering new authors. Especially old new-authors!

‘I’m not ready.’ Nobody’s ever ready. Like… for anything. I wasn’t ready to have children, but here we are. And somehow they’ve survived to adulthood despite my complete lack of qualification for the job. Your website doesn’t need to be perfect... it just needs to exist. Like my kids. Who are just coincidentally also perfect.

We Live in the Age of No Difficult Technology

Here’s something that would blow the minds of writers from even twenty years ago: building a website is now easier than formatting a manuscript used to be. We live in an age where AI (yes, I said the AI word) can generate a complete website in under a minute, based on a few simple questions. The technology that used to require a computer-science degree is now so user-friendly Arthur could figure it out and implement it, if lack of opposable thumbs weren’t dogging him so doggedly.

The hardest part of having a website in 2025 isn’t the technical side... it’s choosing the technical side… from the hundred and seventy different technically simple options out there. Complaining about it is like complaining there are too many flavours of ice cream when all you really wanted was something cold and sweet. Pick a flavour, already! Licorice! Are you mad?

Your Website: The Official You

Your website is your one source of truth. Social media platforms get sold to eccentric billionaires or change their algorithms so often you suddenly can’t follow your own rambling train of thought… like some posts I’ve read about making websites. Email signatures get lost. Business cards (they’re little squares of cardboard with your name printed on them - ask your parents) get thrown away. But your website, under your own domain name, is yours. Forever. At least in computing terms. Which is like a year-ish. You control it, you update it, and you don’t have to worry about whether the platform will still exist next year. Well… not much.

It’s also where you can show your personality in ways Twitter bios or Instagram captions just don’t cut it. You can be funny, thoughtful, weird, professional, or any combination thereof… weirdly professional… without worrying about character limits or whether your post will get buried under talking cat-vampire videos.

The Legitimacy Factor (Fake It Till You Make It Can Work)

Here’s something nobody talks about but everyone feels. Silk underpants. But also… having a professional website makes you feel more like a ‘real author.’ There’s something about seeing your name and photo and books (even unpublished ones) laid out on a clean, professional-looking site that makes the whole writing thing feel less like a hobby you do in your pyjamas and more like an actual career… you do in your pyjamas.

When you present yourself as a professional author, you start thinking of yourself as a professional author. When you start thinking of yourself as a professional author, you start acting like one of those author things, too. Eventually, other people might even start treating you like one, too, too. It’s a virtuous circle. Like Arthur eating cheese. Well, no, it’s nothing like that really, but hopefully I’d already made my point.

You Got This

I could keep listing reasons why you need an author website, and I shall, but we both know I’m preaching to the converted here. You already know you need one. You’ve known for ages. You’ve been making excuses for ages, too, because it feels big and scary and official, and don’t even start me on imposter syndrome. Sometimes I don’t even feel like I have the writing credentials to write imposter syndrome. But, deep down, you know sending out queries to industry professionals without having your own website is like sending out manuscripts without running them through spell check... it’s technically possible, but why on Earth2 would you? Like, really? Why?

So, stop making excuses, pick a platform that doesn’t make you want to throw your laptop out the window, and build the bloody thing. Your future published self will thank you, your current anxious self will feel slightly better, and your mum will finally have something to brag about to her friends that doesn’t involve you dressed as Thomas the Tank Engine.

After all, you’re a writer. You spend your time creating entire worlds and believable characters from nothing. Surely you can manage a few web pages about yourself. If you’re still worried about the tech, read my post on how to build a website in 15 minutes. Seriously. That is all it takes. For faster readers, that includes the time it takes to read the post!

Related Posts

How to Build an Author Website: In 15 minutes or less. I’m not even joking right now.

Bio Curious: Writing an Author Bio that won’t make you want to chew your own arm off.

And How’s Arthur?

Arthur is going well, thanks for asking! Here he is supervising a beta reader. As you can see, he takes the processing of artistic feedback very sensitively.

The problem? I’ve spent the last few months watching my fellow writers tie themselves in knots over this exact dilemma. Some have been ‘meaning to build a website’ for years. Others tried WordPress, got overwhelmed, and gave up. A few brave souls ventured into the world of Squarespace or Wix, only to emerge months later, frustrated and several hundred dollars poorer, with websites designed for yoga studios written in Chinese... you know who you are!

So I did what any reasonable person would do: I decided to test every bloody option myself and report back to the writing community. Because, like most writers, I enjoy self-flagellation... and wine.

The Problem With Being a Writer Online

Here’s the thing about writers and websites: we want them, we need them, but we really don’t want to need them, and we sure don’t want to need to become web developers in the process. Especially those of us who are actually web developers. We’ve got books to write, queries to send, and rejection letters to frame (kidding—we keep them in a special drawer marked ‘motivation’).

We know we need an online presence. Agents want to Google us. Readers want to find us. Publishers want extra things to ignore. People off the street want to berate us. But the gap between ‘I need a website’ and ‘I have a functioning website that isn’t for yoga classes’ is filled with technical jargon, ever-inflating subscription fees, and the kind of decision paralysis that makes choosing a Netflix show look easy.

I’ve been down this road before. Years ago, I built websites from scratch—raw HTML, back when that was a thing people did for fun. Then WordPress came along and promised to make everything easier. Spoiler alert: it didn’t. Not for writers, anyway. WordPress is brilliant if you’re a developer or have a developer friend who owes you massive favours. For the rest of us, it’s like being handed a Formula One car and a fire-retardant jumpsuit to pop down to the shops.

The Great Website Builder Hunt

Armed with my IT background (just enough coding experience to be dull at parties), I set out to find the perfect solution for my writer mates. Something simple enough for someone who still calls their laptop ‘the computer’ but professional enough to impress agents and readers—or at least not make them wince... other than at the bio pic.

First stop: WordPress. Still the gold standard, where gold is code for ‘you must be bloody joking.’ I have to what? Just to do what? Between plugins, themes, security updates and a gazillion hosting headaches, I spent more time managing the website than writing content for it. Like... A LOT. I’m pretty sure my writing friends don’t want to become that IT guy at parties—they just want to blog about how they want to find more time to write books.

Next: Wix. The ads make it look simple, and to be fair, their AI does generate a website pretty quickly. The templates are professional, the drag-and-drop editor works, and you can actually get a decent author site up and running in a few hours. The catch? $17 USD a month, jumping to $34 if you want to sell books directly. For many writers I know—especially those still building their motivation drawer—that’s a significant monthly expense.

Then I discovered Hostinger. Cheap, AI-powered, seemingly perfect. The AI builds your site fast, and at $3.99 a month, it’s budget-friendly. I was ready to sign up and recommend it until I made the mistake of checking the Reddit reviews. Let’s just say when multiple users describe walking away from their 4-year-in-advance investment (the only way to get that discounted $3.99/month price) by switching providers away from what they describe as the ‘worst customer support in history,’ that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Squarespace came next—beautiful templates, premium feel, but at $16+ monthly and with a learning curve that had me questioning my life choices. Great if you’re a photographer or designer. Less great if you just want somewhere to showcase your books and blog about how much time blogging sucks out of your writing life.

The Lightbulb Moment

Here’s where I had what is called in the trade a moment of ‘not being quite such a total moron.’ I’d been approaching this all wrong. Instead of trying to force general website builders to work for authors, I needed to find a good coffee shop and blog about how much time this was all taking away from... no, hang on... oh, yeah, I needed to find a website builder built specifically for authors! There’d be one of those, right? We’re like special, right?

Luckily, yes, we are! A quick search about how special we all are... and websites and things... led me to Tertulia—a website builder designed exclusively for writers. No, I didn’t say restaurants, or yoga instructors, or brothels or everyone else who isn’t very special like us. Just us authors. Yay!

Fifteen minutes later, I had a live website.

No, not ‘fifteen minutes plus three hours of tweaking. Thanks for asking, Jeremy.’ And also no, Francine, not ‘fifteen minutes plus a call to customer support and three weeks of emails.’ Just fifteen minutes, start to finish, from signing up to having a professional author website that actually looked like it was designed for someone who blogs about not having enough time to write books.

What Actually Matters for Author Websites

Testing all these platforms taught me something important: most website builders are trying to solve every possible business need, which means they’re over-complicated for what authors actually need.

Here’s what we actually need:

• About page where readers can learn about us and our work

• Book showcase somewhere to display covers, descriptions, and buy links

• Blog integration ideally connecting to where we actually want to write (hello, Substack)

• Contact information for agents, readers, and that one person who always finds the typo you missed

• Professional appearance, something that says ‘published author’ rather than ‘hobbyist blogger’

• Simple maintenance because we want to write, darn it, not troubleshoot, darn it!

Even that lot is a stretch for most of us. A landing page with a holiday snap on it would be light-years ahead of what most of us have now. You can keep your million templates and your 117 different page layouts, advanced ecommerce features, ability to sell courses. Give us clean, professional, simple!

Why Tertulia Works

Tertulia gets this.

Author note: I have no affiliation with this mob. Didn’t even know they existed until this week.

The signup process is incredibly basic. A couple of questions about whether you have books to promote or just want to focus on your bio. Then it mocks up some sites, and you pick one and upload your photo and bio and book info. Job done.

The templates are clean and literary—think elegant bookshop rather than flashy marketing agency. The sections are exactly what authors need: bio section with your name and tagline, about section that doesn’t make you cringe, book showcase that doesn’t look like a shopping catalogue and blog.

Setting up my site took literally fifteen minutes because I didn’t have to fight the platform. I didn’t spend an hour trying to figure out how to make a ‘product page’ work for a book. I didn’t wrestle with widgets designed for restaurants. I just filled in the author-specific fields and got on with my life, writing blogs about not having enough... yada yada.

The cost? $9.99 USD per month. No hidden price jumps, no ‘starter rate that triples after six months,’ no locked-in contracts. Cancel anytime, no drama.

You can even get them to host your domain. I didn’t do that—because my domain is something I really want full control over. I registered my domain through Hover.com. Hover just do domains and are well priced, simple, reliable and don’t up-sell you tools you don’t need. It was a basic cut-and-paste of the domain-name-server names from Tertulia to Hover to link the domain and make the site live.

Here it is now: rodmackayauthor.com

The Bottom Line for Writers

If you’re a writer who’s been putting off building a website because the options seem overwhelming, expensive, or designed for businesses that aren’t yours, Tertulia might be worth fifteen minutes of your time. If you’re happy with your current setup, brilliant—stick with what works. You’re way ahead of most just by having something. And even wayer ahead because you’re happy with it! Yay!

But if you’re like most writers I know—someone who wants a professional online presence without becoming boring at parties along the way—stop overthinking it. Functional beats fantastic every time. After all, we’ve got blogs to write about how we don’t have enough time to write blogs about blogging about blogs about... writing books.

Related Posts

Writing an Author Bio: How to write a half-decent Author bio—even if you’re not a nobel-prize-winning author who has visited the international space station… twice—and even have fun doing it.

Criticality of Author Websites: Your website might matter even more than your next latte!

And How’s Arthur?

Arthur is going well, thanks for asking! He just graduated from puppy school. They grow up too fast!