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?
Yay! You’re published! And in your own unique way.
Go Rod 👏🏻
Rod, you are an inspiration. And I'm sure you don't sleep. I'm looking forward to going on the Accidentally Skyward journey. Thanks for sharing it and all the best with it.