C J Charles | Updates

Figmental Friday

C J Charles — Fri, 8 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Tropes, Brain Fluid & Love That Defies Death

A story involving intimacy, two people meet and form a union.

I could describe Pride and Prejudice, or the one where a plumber drops his toolkit to work on the pipe, and the lady drops her drawers.

These are polar opposites.

I’ve opined before that fiction is all fantasy, and why I prefer the older terms Sword and Sorcery / Science Fiction, and noted that stories enjoyed by folks who would never admit to liking either will enjoy the fantastical science of a popular thriller. It’s a matter of degrees. Back in 1986, in Red Storm, Tom Clancy featured the F-19A, a very fictionalised version of the still-secret F-117 stealth fighter.

Degrees of difference matter, and creating a tale of romance and adventure will, by necessity, use familiar ideas, oft called tropes. These are a kind of meta-word, a recognisable construct, “tall, dark and handsome” Random Hero can come in many shapes and sizes. Like a random hound, but these are all variations on a kind: a noble guardian shepherd, a wily herding dog, a friendly retriever, a plucky wee terrier.

Stringing together tropes of various sorts is not so different from putting together words or notes to create a melody that becomes a hook, a brainworm.

Part of the craft is explaining how things happen, or choosing not to.

A friend noted that Extra Sensory Perception or psychic powers are a frequent trope in science fiction, even though they are practically magical. Sometimes there’s the old chestnut, we only use 10% of our brains, thrown into the mix as a reason why… which isn’t strictly true, I say strictly because there are some very interesting cases of severe hydrocephalus recorded by John Lorber, where brain mass gets compressed to ~10%. Yet, in one case, a mathematics degree student possessed an IQ of 126.

The Spectral Detective is a story that dances along this line between fantasy, religion, and science fiction. It is Raiders of the Lost Ark, meets Daredevil, by way of Sam Spade.

The Chimera Cycle is Frankenstein does Dracula. I borrow from everywhere; I strive to include all the recognisable monster tropes that are familiar in such tales. Both stories are fantasies and are science fiction, but without interplanetary travel and lasers.

Pemberley is a fantasy, but its time and place do not need explanation.

Explanations aren’t always necessary. George Lucas, in his first prequel tried his hand at technobabble to explain how the Force worked. Yet the audience, who accepted laser-swords, aliens, and interplanetary travel without explanation, didn’t need it, because these things already felt familiar. The challenge is whether the story needs midichlorians to explain things that are even more fantastic still.

Not everyone likes the same thing. Others like many things. There is a polar difference between a classic tale of romance ending in the consummation of the marriage, where the author fades to black, versus the short-on-story encounter, that jumps the pipe wrench to go right to the complexities of human plumbing with all the delicacy of a workshop manual.

I, for one, like explanations. I prefer to know how and why things happen in a story. For example, I like Conan has a time and place. It bugs me that Westeros doesn’t. Familiar miracles—the Force, the Ark of the Covenant—need less explanation because they echo old beliefs and everyday wonder, and here’s why I think that is.

It’s familiarity: these are old tropes, exaggerations of people’s everyday experiences and beliefs. Where are explanations needed?

When the fantasy does something more unusual.

I find John Carter’s trip to Mars a speed bump. He falls asleep in a cave and wakes up on Mars. It felt wrong to me. What happened? How, why? Yet when the kids go to Narnia through the wardrobe, it works—because there is a door. There is familiarity—like a book has a cover. It feels like a tiny room, and imagination makes it a secret gate, a magical portal to somewhere else.

What speed bumps or shark jumps have broken your suspension of disbelief? And which familiar tropes or beats have swept you happily into another world?

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Fanfare Friday

C J Charles — Fri, 1 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Well, without further ado, let me announce that King in the Dark: Part 2 — Swan’s Song is available to buy on Amazon!

The author would like to thank his friends for their kindness and support; without diligent beta-readers, this series would not be possible.

I have written about the writing process and word-building for King in the Dark across several newsletters. For the uninitiated, this is a historical novel-meets-urban fantasy.

It began as a prequel concept that spawned its own prequel, an expansion of the first chapter. It became a full-fat novel, of two parts, together totalling around one hundred and thirty thousand words, where, dear reader, you will find a lot of exciting things happen.

I settled on the real-world Wunderwaffe called the Vampir—Zielgerät 1229, a WWII infrared night-sight, as the template for the prize my characters — heroes and villains — would chase.

A story that developed a life of its own, deciding to be a novel and not a novella.

The Spectral Detective posed some interesting challenges: the protagonist is physically blind, and his Spectral Perception, while arguably a kind of superpower, isn’t a direct replacement for sight.

Writing about a character that “leans into his other senses” to make up for the loss of one—eyesight, while discovering a sixth, means for King’s Point of View, colours do not work, he sees some that resemble reality in a noir negative or white lines on black. Colours appear, but describe the invisible supernatural reality, and not the physical world.

Regular novel-like descriptions, when in King’s point of view, such as “the lady wore a red dress,” do not work without breaking these rules. He can see the lady has a bloody heart—anger burning red within her, but not the colour of her outfit. King’s idea of the physical world is a sketch; chalk lines on slate. Animated caricatures of reality rather than accurate photorealistic images.

It allows for wild descriptions of people’s characters; their desires and motives appear as symbolic images. However, like figments of a dream, they require interpretation. Spectral Sight demands that King be a detective within his own imagination to grasp what his mind’s eye is seeing.

Every hero’s journey should come with a learning curve. King’s is steep, adjusting to physical blindness and Spectral Sight, while getting back into shape after weeks of bed rest. I wanted his story to feel earned.

The next novel will pick up where this story ends. There are plenty of unresolved questions, not only about King himself but also about his friends and enemies. After the tumult of VJ Day, and King’s own personal adventure on a flat roof with a clear line of sight to the Capitol steps, and another man who can, in his own way, see in the dark.

For those who prefer a physical book, I intend to bundle King in the Dark, parts one and two, into a single print volume, opening with the free-to-read prequel—Into Darkness.

I foresee two related series: the e-books and the collected print editions.

In other news!

I have focused almost all my efforts on the Spectral Detective over the last few weeks, but my other project, the Chimera Chronicles, is very much ongoing. You can pick up the free-to-read prequel for this series by following the link.

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Fantasy Friday

C J Charles — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Fantasy is all made up.

Whether a story is set yesterday in a close approximation of reality or if the author invents Realtown in Real County, complete with a realtor who is really good at their job. Comfy or cosy, chaotic or catastrophic.

For this reason, I look fondly back to when, as a boy, I perused the Sword and Sorcery section of my friendly neighbourhood bookshop, because I knew what this meant—a fantasy about swords or some sort, with magic of some kind.

Times change, and so do fashions, and marketing, as a philosophy, identifies niches; these reflect needs or wants, and people do not always know about them until someone fills them.

I read a post somewhere noting that most Fantasy—Sword and Sorcery—ahem—has a European medieval character. That reflects the culture from which most fiction written in English arises.

I am not sure why the world switched to the more confusing fantasy label, perhaps to distance works held to be literature, like The Lord of the Rings (LoTR), from those considered less literary, say, Conan the Barbarian.

Tolkien’s fantasy imagines what the ‘lost to history’ English mythos could have been.

Robert E. Howard gave Conan a time and place, a science-fiction reason for the world, set before the deluge, in antediluvian times.

Whether I knew this and forgot it when I first sat down to write my first novel attempt, I can’t say, but at the time, I thought it a more original and satisfying idea.

That original concept? On the third try, I managed to self-publish a book, then revised it again, and received a free-to-read prequel.

All fantasy sits on a spectrum with science fiction and myth, and labels serve readers more than writers

Conan’s Hyborian Age works because Howard gave it pseudo-historical weight: a world 12,000 years before Sumer, where civilisations rose and fell. Recent finds like Göbekli Tepe make that premise feel less like wild speculation and more like inspired guesswork.

I have less trouble with the label Urban Fantasy because, like the related steampunk or diesel-punk labels, it describes technology beyond the sword but still with sorcery or adjacent supernatural elements.

These labels help as we surf the digital bookshops of the C21st; they allow us to find interesting mashups, as authors combine classic genre titles.

I’ve mentioned in an earlier newsletter that much of what people consider straight fiction is, in fact, subtle science fiction. James Bond, especially in the cinema, is a great example of that. When you have a character like Robin Hood who is exceptional at something, unerring accuracy with a bow, it’s fantasy.

So mash-ups are as old as dirt; however, we’re better at seeing them, and there are more examples in print.

My own Spectral Detective series is historical urban fantasy, as it is set in a version of the real world, not quite alternative history, as events in 1945 play out as history records, but includes fantasy, given the hero’s ability to see a supernatural world.

My read-through is ongoing; I still hope to launch the latest e-book soon.

As a writer, I think about how to label ideas, if only to act as signposts to the reader. Another poster asked, in the most niche way possible: “What genre are you writing?”

For My Boy Jack, I landed on Dark Science, Fantasy, Horror, Historical Fiction, Gothic, coming-of-age, adventure.

In the end, all I can do is tell the best story I can and hope the reader enjoys it.

What about you? What’s the most delightfully niche—or absurdly long genre label you’ve used—or would love to see someone try?

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Finishing Friday

C J Charles — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Three times around… Re-reading King in the Dark Part Two, before launching the book. A necessary work.

So what does that look like?

Every author develops their own way of doing things. I reckon, absent a randomised controlled trial... that two people could have almost identical approaches, and create very different works. Tone, style and genre. I’m just as sure another pair might create similar stories using diametrically opposing methods.

Methods are often defined this way: by the seat of your pants, or pantsing versus planning, that is, plotting.

This newsletter, dear reader, is being pantsed. That means I am sitting down and just winging it, it’s not quite true ‘sit down with a blank page and mind,’ I have a frame: what I have been doing since my last newsletter.

That slides the pointer a little to the right towards plotting, because I have a vague idea of where I am going with this…

Plotting begins with writing those initial ideas down and then expanding on them.

King in the Dark started with a dream. A blind detective, a noir hero vibe, a female partner, and a Nazi agent as a client.

As a writer, I began my first attempt at a novel-length story as a pantser, making things up as I went along, but that only took me so far. Plotting helped be get to the end of my first book.

I find working out what happens at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end to be a creative virtuous circle…

Five W questions… who, what, when, where, why, w’how?

Character bio(graphy)s for who, and location bio(graphy)s for where inspire new ideas; they also give me guardrails, something I found out when I drew and painted, the more things and colours I threw at the page, didn’t result in a prettier picture.

The plot skeleton needs fleshing out; the writing part. Here, I find the pointer slides back towards pantsing, as I make things up and find a new, better idea.

When I wrote the conclusion to King in the Dark, I thought my ‘act three’, my ending well thought through. However, when I came to write it, sorting out who is doing what, when, and where, proved more complex.

Word processors flag most spelling and grammar mistakes by underlining; it’s easy to fix them on the go. When I complete a chapter, I run some basic writing checks, such as flagging repeated words.

Some jiggery-pokery goes on with the earlier chapters as I finish the later ones.

It’s fair to say that if I counted how many times I’ve read individual chapters... it would be tens of times!

Still a full read-through of the whole demands I get to “The End” that is a first draft of the book!

Re-reading... I expect to lose about 10% of the total word count. That’s a net count, as I am rewriting, adding new material, and cutting.

Distance helps. Sometimes lines of text feel right, and yet days or weeks later, this “darling” seems clunky or even inane.

I don my Mr Delete Hat and go for it.

My first re-read of the whole is more about the quality of the writing. The second re-read is less brutal in terms of changes. Edits themselves can introduce errors, so a second look re-polishes.

If I’ve done an okay job of one and two, three is error checking with minimal cuts and rewrites.

What this means, dear reader, is King in the Dark Part Two — Swan’s Song is really coming soon. Thanks again to my beta readers; you know who you are.

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Frank Friday

C J Charles — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Friday Newsletter, or Trusting the Reader (Even When AI Doesn’t)

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.Respect your reader’s time—make every moment count.

The first rule of ‘write club’, according to Kurt Vonnegut.

Often called his “Creative Writing 101” his advice totals eight, however, I’ve been working through these rules like a beauty queen’s results—in reverse order,

So at last dear reader, we’re finally at rule one.

The Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Respecting the reader, amounts to this.

In a way, this is the ring to rule them all, the other seven rules.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for. Give the audience someone to care about and invest in emotionally.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water. Desire drives characters and keeps the story moving. No one should feel passive.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action. Cut anything that doesn’t serve these purposes. No filler.

5. Start as close to the end as possible. Jump into the heart of the story quickly; minimize unnecessary setup.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of. Test your characters through conflict to reveal their true nature.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia. Write for a specific audience (even if it’s just yourself or one imagined reader) rather than trying to appeal to everyone.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible, as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages. Be generous with context early on—clarity and understanding trump artificial mystery.

By this I mean that each subsequent rule is about how — to respect the reader — in a more specific way.

The first, or golden rule, becomes a measure by which all other rules can be judged, not only Vonnegut’s eight, but other examples of writing advice, which there are many, and I’m sure I’ll pontificate about the advice or more successful and adored authors than me, again.

There’s another source of advice in the modern era, which I’ve been using in its nascent form since Word first started underlining my waterlemons with red for spelling, and later blue and green… tools that’ll paint my text in a rainbow.

However, that’s old-school already, as the new kid on the block is Artificial Intelligence; these Large Language Models can, by comparing my writing using pattern recognition, create the illusion of intelligence and provide textual analysis, not just correction but criticism.

I’ve tried a few… but I’ll cut to the chase.

They don’t respect you, the reader, not in my estimation. Don’t get me wrong, they can offer good advice, but it’s a mixed bag; as varied as AI image generation—where you can find a great image among a bunch of ones that aren’t.

It’s crucial, if you use AI for text-checking, to be confident enough in your own vision to disregard the bad takes, while being humble and self-aware enough to recognise when the criticism lands.

Perhaps AI will soon get better, making this critique obsolete, but we’re not there yet.

So, how does AI fail to respect the reader?

It just doesn’t get it. Often, the same issues crop up; more often, it misses why something must be a mystery to the reader, or why something magical happens, flagging these core plot devices as plot holes.

AI is not human; it’s not sapient; it can’t read text like a soul can.

I wrote a short story in 2023, revisited it, checked for waterlemons (there were a few), and asked the best analytical AI, in my estimation, Grok, what it thought.

It identified a section as clunky; I asked, out of curiosity, “How would you fix it?”

The resulting text read flatter; for me, it felt dumbed down, albeit easier to read—perhaps, but something else happened… A key plot point—deleted, the entire flash fiction story hung on a premise that terraforming Mars would take centuries, so the ‘powers that be’ sought a faster solution; the rewrite excised this reveal.

Revus’s brows narrowed. “Politics demands results; waiting generations for terraforming... is difficult to sell, Lieutenant Bennett

The AI prioritised a simpler structure for a dumber reader over the story itself; it didn’t trust them to navigate the more complex text. Dialogue, interspersed with a basic description of an on-screen environment, all while deleting a single line which supported the tale’s logical core.

For a writer, trusting you, dear reader, means taking risks; it means I have to believe in you!

You’re smart; you will pick up on the subtext, and you’ll understand subtle cues. That you will appreciate a story that reveals as much as possible as soon as possible, but does not reveal all straight away.

My calling? That’s making sure I’m not wasting your time, so you turn the page.

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Fateful Friday

C J Charles — Fri, 3 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

From Iceberg to Heartfelt.

It’s Good Friday once again. A week hath passed, the draft of King in the Dark: Part Two — Swan’s Song is being polished—again, second read through… and so again I pause.

March: “In like a lion, out like a lamb” or vice versa.

While March is over, the ‘lion’ is late, the genteel ‘lamb-like’ start to last month, as the proverb warns, promises a ‘lion-like’ end, and Storm Dave hits this weekend. What’s a few days between friends?

Right now, it’s just a bit grey and damp. Not the weather to root for? However, better than what is promised to come.

Kurt Vonnegut’s second rule from his list of eight that grace the introduction to a short story collection called Bagombo Snuff Box, reads:

Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for. Give the audience someone to care about and invest in emotionally.

I’m a fan of heroic fiction. Comic books, television, and film shaped me as a boy. Morally good heroes don’t need to be simplistic; their stories can be rich with morally complex themes.

Today is Good Friday.

The Gospel story centres on an absolutely morally good man—Jesus—yet it is far from simple. He is without sin, but surrounded by confusion, betrayal, and denial from his own disciples. Even Pilate, the Roman Prefect, is torn between expedience and justice. The crowds shift from waving palms to crying, “Release Barabbas.”

Not every story needs to be messianic in tone; grey, complicated characters are interesting because they are human. Take Peter: he draws a sword to defend Jesus, then denies knowing him three times around a fire—until the cock crows.

Rooting for a dull, wet day because it’s better than the promised Storm Dave is another kind of story. Robin Hood becomes an outlaw. James Bond is a “blunt instrument” according to Fleming, licensed to kill for Queen and Country. Sherlock Holmes operates outside the law and prioritises logic over emotion; Watson grounds him. Star Trek would invert this with Kirk and Spock.

However, there’s more to Vonnegut’s rule than simply having someone to root for. We want Elizabeth Bennett to succeed because Austin is writing about human experience. Today, Pemberley is a world removed in time and space. It’s about caring—emotional investment.

That demands a world more complicated and rich than the words on the page describe, one that exists in the writer’s mind—or possibly supporting notes.

To imbue a character with rootin-tootin pull, to get a reader care and invest, I need to hold in my mind a “sim” of greater depth and detail. Withholding all but the salient details from the page.

For Arthur Raphael King, there are glimpses, visions of babe-come-boy-hood, call backs to missions, shown at length or briefly told.

In Into Darkness and King in the Dark, the things I know about his backstory are just touched on, and how these affect the story in the future are only hinted at.

Have I succeeded in creating a character that you, dear reader, can root for, care about and invest in emotionally?

Read the free Prequel, pick up Part One, and the soon-to-be-released Part Two—and let me know!

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Fleshed-Out Friday

C J Charles — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It’s Friday once more. A week hath passed, the draft of King in the Dark: Part Two — Swan’s Song is being polished.

I’m at chapter 89 of 128 in King in the Dark. Part two commences with chapter 50. So, 39 down, 49 to go...

I pause to march backwards through Kurt Vonnegut’s list from the preface to Bagombo Snuff Box.

Rule #3: Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

Vonnegut’s rules are impactful in part because they are a tad hyperbolic. Every character? Say everyone in a busy train station? A crowd of a hundred, of thousands? Okay, I can lean into hyperbole too, but even in, say, a crowd waiting to board a train, or cars emptying their passengers, there’s a want, at least as basic one, to get where they are going.

Passengers spilled onto the platform in a rolling surge. Sailors laughed. A woman scolded a child who dragged his feet. A man in a straw hat barked orders at a sullen porter. Then the girls appeared. Their youth, fear and desperation collected together in a hot, sweaty bundle. As a group, they stepped down from the train. Thin dresses wrinkled from hours in seats. Shoes scuffed raw at the toes. Cheap perfume fought the heat and lost. One girl clutched her handbag tight to her ribs as if it anchored her.

Chapter 72: Union Station, King in the Dark: Part Two — Swan’s Song

That raises the more complex question: how much of a character’s motives and desires do I actually need to explore on the page? If they want a glass of water, do I need to explain why they are thirsty? Or is this simple human need self-explanatory?

Have you ever read a novel, met a character and wondered why the author didn’t bother to name them?

For me, this can puncture my suspension of disbelief. More of a slow puncture than a blowout, so not like that time Fonzi jumped the shark, but enough to bump me out of the story.

Often it’s one of two things. Either the character has revealed motives, which then feels odd because I don’t even know who they are. Or they are both faceless and motiveless. Different tensions, but both create a discordant note.

Not every character needs a name, however. Say Random Hero drops by at Random Bar, in Randomton, in Randomshire, and orders a beer from the barkeep, there’s no solid reason for RH to know the innkeeper’s name. It’s worth noting that wants can be negative—maybe the innkeeper doesn’t want to sell RH a beer?

The more involved the action and dialogue, the greater the need to create a fuller character becomes.

Still, it can be apt for Lord Knobhead not to care about the stablehand’s name, calling him boy. However, Lady Goody Conscience might be expected to know, even if only to share a handful of words.

My solution lies in character biographies and also location sketches for significant places. I tend to create a bio when a character dialogues—even if only briefly.

For example, for King in the Dark, I created a halfway house for King after his discharge from Walter Reed Military Hospital in Washington D.C., called Albion House, and people to staff it.

Among them are…

Charlton Redmond, Superintendent: Age 54. Former hotel manager, retained. Keeps the books, enforces rules, and liaises with Walter Reed. Gruff, organised, fond of routine.
Samuel “Sam” Pryor – Gardener/Handyman: Age 62. Retired groundskeeper. Tends the yard and vegetable patch. Quiet, pipe-smoker, with a fondness for telling war stories from 1918.

As it happens, Sam didn’t make the cut for the novel; it doesn’t matter because, as per Hemingway’s Iceberg principle, his existence remained below the water line.

The question becomes how much to include…

The only way I rationalise it is how I tell stories in real life, talking to my friends and family, say, telling them an anecdote about what happened to me when I went to get fuel, or buy a loaf of bread.

What do I include in my account, and what would I naturally omit? I cut the obvious things; the story is about what is remarkable, worthy of remark. Not how to pick up a loaf of bread and pay at the till.

“I saw two hawks fighting, as I filled up my tank.”

That’s the flipside of the coin: the more information we invent, the greater the temptation to overload the story. I remember reading Stephen King last century and being frustrated by the meandering backstories of secondary characters; I wanted to know what happened next.

Maybe that’s the final takeaway: it’s not only a glass of water, but a simple, relatable and accessible want. A motive that doesn’t need a novelette to explain. It’s a Goldilocks problem, enough heat to be palatable, not too much to burn their interest, or too little so the story comes off cold.

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Flourishing Friday

C J Charles — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

As my long-suffering, irregular readers might remember, I began working backwards through Kurt Vonnegut’s famous list of 8 rules for creative writing, which appeared in the preface to his 1999 short story collection Bagombo Snuff Box.

After a two-week hiatus, it’s a fitting time to return, and in reverse order, the next rule is #4

Every sentence must do one of two things: reveal character or advance the action.

Why so apt?

Well, I’ve completed the second part of King in the Dark. Here’s a preview of the cover.

This is something of a perennial discussion among writers, often framed as ‘show, don’t tell’, then qualified, because most advice, writing or otherwise, is a general rule with exceptions.

I don’t think in principle it’s really complicated, complications, well, that happens when the fingers hit the keys, and the scene evolves on the page.

Some simplistic solutions offer: you can do both; writing isn’t screenwriting; and great writers in the past, in both successful and critically acclaimed works, often relied on ‘telling’.

While valid observations, these lack nuance. Reproducing a writing style from fifty, hundred, or more years ago is brilliant if that’s your desire and intention; however, how accessible that is to a modern audience is a different question.

In King in the Dark: Part Two — Swan’s Song, King is trapped and has to fight to escape his captors, a classic scene in any adventure story. Having shown him fight “…tucked in, jabbed upward…” describing the action, involving the gratuitous use of furniture, what happens next is more prosaic, I don’t quite tell, I let King’s dialogue do that, “Those knots are nice and tight. I can tell you’ve done this kind of work before.”

I could have described, i.e., shown, the captives being tied up, and described a ‘handcuff or hobble knot’, over many sentences, but that would have slowed the story’s momentum and burst the tension the fight scene creates before the escape.

The power of telling, I think, can be harmed by overuse. In much the same way, if every other word is a four-letter expletive, the impact of the curse is blunted by familiarity.

As a reader, I want to be shown what’s exciting and told about the mundane. I want the sentence to reveal character or advance the action, so I can revel in both without being bored by either.

If you press me for metric, I suspect, like many things, this is an 80/20 rule; again, there will be exceptions, with a thriller benefiting from show and something more introspective benefiting from more tell.

An important exception is that brevity of telling can create impact. Here, telling can be the polar opposite of mundane. “Jesus wept” can be more impactful than sentences describing tears rolling down cheeks and splashing on the parched earth.

Here’s where the advice hits the page: in the end, no amount of good or bad advice can make anyone a writer; only by writing can we go on an adventure to discover character and action, to tell a story that engages with the reader’s imagination.

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Flummoxed Friday

C J Charles — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When the outline meets reality and politely asks, ‘What now?’

As a writer, I’m a plotter; it means my answer remains…

For the reader, there’s no sense of this effort. The number crunching, the miles per minute. As it should be, reading the story should be like watching a duck swimming on the surface of the pond, serene and elegant, smooth and certain. Yet under the surface, the writer is doing the work of plotting and planning. I’m then like the unseen and unseemly duck's feet paddling madly.

“The same thing we do every night, Pinky... Try to take over the world!” — Pinky and the Brain (recurring gag from the animated series, 1995–1998)

“No plan survives contact with the enemy.” — Paraphrase of Helmuth von Moltke the Elder (Prussian Field Marshal)

“The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.” — Aldous Huxley

“The best-laid plans of mice and men oft go awry.” — Robert Burns

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Filing Friday

C J Charles — Fri, 6 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Stacking my files in the digital age doesn’t look like a warehouse in Indiana Jones, which inspired a wacky TV show; it’s file trees in the drive, and oh boy, how have they changed, right? |

Still, I started on Substack, and it’s fun to get back on the horse, as it were, with another social network.

This being a newsletter, what’s the news? Well, sometimes it falls into this: ‘news to me,’ or, in internet speak, ‘this days old when I learned that…’ In England and her colonies from 1155 to 1751, New Years day began on 25 March.

In my defence, this historical datapoint of interest is buried under the subheading ‘New Year’s Day’ in the Julian calendar Wikipedia article. You might think noting when the year begins, as defined by the calendar used by the English-speaking world for an important chunk of its history, is an important headline.

Did I suffer from Too Long Didn’t Read (TDLR)? To my embarrassment, yes. Worse, I compounded this error by relying on AI, and so fell foul of a newbie mistake—specificity. I hope you would forgive me for thinking that being specific ought to be helpful, but in tandem with AI’s preponderance to summarise, it isn’t. At least not to start with.

On summarisation, I have found that, if left unchecked, collating research can lead to AI deleting important information. Including in plotting exercises—stuff I made up about characters and events.

Simply asking, ‘in England, what day of the week did 14th July 1643 fall on’, or ‘day date for Easter 1650’, most of the time, resulted in a long-winded answer boasting about the math… an essay later... the one word I wanted.

Worse, AI often didn’t give me the right answer when I first asked questions like this—last year. After running an ‘anachronism check’, it admitted, ‘oh, sorry, that’s the wrong ‘mushroom’.Yes, I have been dealing with the calendar conundrum for this long, among other things, like Spanish Ladies in Jamaica. |

Still, in all that time, neither ChatGPT nor the newcomer to the block—Grok, in their answers regarding my Julian calendar questions, included a key detail that is important to any human user—by the way, officially, the year begins March 25th—Lady Day—and did so until 1752.I just asked Google ‘Julian Calendar’, and its AI answer also omitted this detail. I pointed out ‘you missed a key historical detail when the New Year began in England and her colonies’, Google ’fessed up, thus: “You’re absolutely right; that transition is a massive point of confusion in historical records.”

| | For example, Charles I’s execution was dated 30 January 1648 in contemporary parliamentary records, but you’ll almost always find it listed as 1649. |

So what should I have asked?

It’s hard to know because, frankly, over the last eighteen months or so, I moved from experimenting with AI to using AI on balance a tad more than a search engine; AI’s various providers have all changed radically in terms of performance and ability in this time.I can't know if a simpler, broader question would have helped me almost a year ago.

In hindsight, I can see the signs. From the start, AI did not default to answering my English question in an English-speaking context; instead, it waffled on around the world. I had to stop it, and add—in England.

However, today, if I ask, “What should I know about the Julian Calendar in England?” I do get the important data point “Key facts include the New Year starting on March 25th (Lady Day) rather than January 1st.”Still, this just happened, “Dates between Jan 1 and March 24 pre-1752 were often double-dated (e.g., Jan 1648/9) to clarify Old Style vs. historical year.”

| | If you read this sentence, you’d be forgiven for thinking double-dating was a thing, that in my fiction, My Boy Jack, Dr Adler might write in his journal...

‘Jan 1648/9’,...

...only he wouldn’t, as 1648 began March 25th and ended March 24th. January 1648 came after March 1648. Double-dating is a later practise introduced by historians and others, for clarity, after the calendar switch commencing 1752.

What does this all then say about me?

Well, I’m writing and speaking English. I bring an English-Speaking World bias to my thinking and questions, and, when speaking in English to another competent English-Speaker, my lived-experience is this expected common ground. For reasons, AI operates in a way that tries to be blind to such things—I suspect —and this, combined with my learned proclivities, created the trap I fell into.

Have you tripped over similar quirks in your reading/writing/research?

Or had AI omitted the ‘obvious’ cultural detail?

Share in the comments—I’d love to hear.

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Formentous Friday

C J Charles — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Hey, and hello to new subscribers and regular readers.

In the previous three Newsletters, I’ve mused on Kurt Vonnegut’s famous list of 8 rules for creative writing, one at a time, starting with 8,— 7 and 6. So, in reverse order, the next one is…

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

Those ardent fans who hang on my every word will remember I mentioned this rule before. There’s a related advisory that goes something along the lines of ‘Avoid opening with birth, childhood, school days, or long “how we got here” explanations—jump to the moment where the character’s life is disrupted, or the conflict ignites.’

Mark and John versus Matthew and Luke.

Vonnegut’s “8 Basics of Creative Writing” comes with a caveat; they preface a collection of short stories—Bagombo Snuff Box.

I would argue that this rule’s importance is magnified when the space is minimised. It’s because a short story, or flash-fiction, shorter still, is constrained by word count.

Novels allow the author to tell more of the narrative, but that alone doesn’t justify this choice.

I didn’t start Arthur Raphael King’s story until adulthood, but fighting to keep a truck on the road in ice and snow—chased by the Secret Police across the Pyrenees. Heroic journeys often start when greatness is thrust upon the hero by tragedy. King’s service in WWII exemplifies this.

Starting his story as a babe in arms doesn’t make sense. It continues in King in the Dark: Part One: Duty Calls

Jack, however, is a different kind of character. In mythic traditions, the hero's birth isn't preamble—it's prophecy fulfilled, destiny ignited.

Perseus slays Medusa to save Andromeda from the Kraken because he is the son of Zeus. King Arthur’s legend begins because he is born to his role.

As Bill puts it in Kill Bill Vol. 2, 'Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he’s Superman.’

When a narrative is as well-known as this, a writer can get away with the shortest of stories. “Doomed planet. Desperate scientists. Last hope. Kindly couple.” — Grant Morrison, All-Star Superman #1

The Chimera Chronicles is full of familiar tropes in a Harry Potter kind of way, which is another example of an infancy story. J.K. Rowling begins with a fifteen-month-old Harry, a not-so-kindly couple, and more evil step-parents than the compassionate Kents.

I begin with Jack’s birth —because in My Boy Jack the mark of power, and the otherness are present from before their first breath. When your supporting characters are functionally immortal—vampires and other monsters, and your backstory dates to the dawn of humanity, the untold part of the mythology is vast.

When Rowling starts with a baby Harry, she is starting as close to the end as possible to introduce a lore-rich fictional universe. Not only does the reader get to see how the character becomes an adult hero, but the complexities of the “Wizarding World” are explored through the protagonist’s experience.

It’s not a pedestrian tale of dirty nappies and missed homework, because the challenges the child faces are far from everyday; they are life-defining, and in The Chimera Chronicles, some have very pointy, life-ending teeth.

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Fabled Friday

C J Charles — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Hey, and hello to new subscribers and regular readers.

Kurt Vonnegut’s famous list of 8 rules for creative writing appeared in the preface to his 1999 short story collection Bagombo Snuff Box.

Like many observations about life, these are general rules, and there are always exceptions.

Vonnegut pointed out that Flannery O'Connor, a prominent short story writer of his era, often disregarded these rules, except for the first one. He observed that "Great writers tend to do that."

Exceptional situations and people are stories in themselves, but for the sake of argument. I’ll talk in generalisms…

In the previous two Newsletters, I’ve covered rules 8 and 7. So, in reverse order, the next rule is…

Rule 6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

I kind of did that out of the gate with Arthur Raphael King. I take his friend, then his eyesight, and then his job, and make him think he’s probably losing his mind, because he’s still “seeing” things while being physically blind.

The Spectral Detective

Free to Read Prequel! : Into Darkness!

Then read!

Book 1: King in the Dark—

Part One: Duty Calls

Mr Vonnegut’s Rule 6. I think it is well written, and I feel it falls into the so obvious category; it needs to be said because, like common sense isn’t common, this rule isn’t so obvious.

Going with ‘be a sadist’ catches the eye; it’s harsh, stark, and a tad hyperbolic, which short, sharp, mind-engaging writing often is. It pays to advertise, and most advertisements declare this, or that is bestest-ever!

Heroism isn’t functional invulnerability, innate or earned—it’s choosing the hard right over the easy wrong, even when it costs you. As Jerry Siegel wrote in Superman #1, “This great strength…" “...you must use it to assist humanity.”

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Fedora Friday

C J Charles — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Last week, I pontificated on Kurt Vonnegut’s famous list of 8 rules for creative writing. You can find them and last week's Newsletter over at my blog here.

Or rather, I concentrated on the one that bothered me the most.

Rule 8.

"Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages."

My takeaway? Well, the TLDR — is “as possible” means as much information as I can deliver while keeping the story both exciting and engaging.

This week, now I’ve started in reverse order, let's look at rule 7.

"Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia."

Rule 7. takes the adage ‘you can't please all of the people all of the time'—and marries it to the idea of a person.

Mash-ups are fun, but Pride and Prejudice and Zombies won’t appeal to everyone.

So, who is the person I should write for?

On one level, every writer is in it for themselves. Two weeks ago, I quoted this... “Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, then for a few close friends, and then for money.” — Molière (attributed).

A writer must write for the joy of it, but in doing so, they draw from themselves. Sometimes called “prostitution of the pen,”—even when crafting stories set in times and places impossible to know firsthand, I am still pouring out something of myself.

Visceral lived personal experience is powerful, but writers also reveal themselves in the stories they choose to read. I consider myself lucky, as my tastes are eclectic: I read and enjoy a wide range of genres.

When making stuff up, how others have told their stories of derring-do or loves lost and found is part of my creative process as much as, and sometimes more than, my parochial existence.

So yes, in many ways I am writing for myself; if I didn’t enjoy the story, I wouldn’t immerse myself in the telling. I run different scenarios in my head to find the path that works for me. I slay a lot of casual affections, if not quite darlings, on the way.

However, Rule 7. addresses the world outside the writer’s imagination, and since I’m inviting you, dear reader, to engage with me, it talks about you.

Much like rule 8. rule 7. is hyperbolic in some respects. Vonnegut, by juxtaposing one person versus the world, and throwing in pneumonia as a chronic or even terminal condition, underlines in bold that we can fail by trying to please everyone.

Sure, I can write for one person in a literal sense. However, I can also apply this idea to a community or collective. A legion of fans! But still keep it personal.

To do so, I am personifying “Science Fiction” buffs or “Detective Fiction followers ” by creating a fictional persona in my head that embodies, i.e., simulates, my target audience.

When I impose walls in my writing regarding explicit sex, violence, and language, I’m writing for that imagined person.

And here is the rub. Even my idea of self is imagined, drawing from memory. My idea of who you are, even if I know you, is also imagined. I take the things I remember and create, in effect, a simulation. 'If I ask Bob to do this this way, Bob will say yes!' What’s more, I can feel surprise and distress if my Sim of Bob falls foul of reality.

This Newsletter is a long-winded way of saying I really appreciate those of you who read my work, review it, and especially those precious few who are stalwart beta-readers, spotting my 'waterlemon' spelling and typo errors. Without you, I couldn’t be as effective as I am.

In other news... writing is going well.

I’ve made good progress in King in the Dark Part Two. Things are heating up, and all the parties are on a collision course on VJ Day. So 5/6ths complete. So the second half of the novel as an e-book is... coming soon.

At the same time, I’ll bundle the Prequel, Into Darkness, and King in the Dark, part one and part two, into a single print version for those who want a physical copy.

The Chimera Chronicles is going well, too, but not for Jack; that kid can only find himself in deep water... If you’re interested in beta-reading this SF tale of monsters and vampires in the 1600s, let me know.

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Fathoming Friday

C J Charles — Fri, 6 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Hey, and hello to new subscribers and regular readers.

Kurt Vonnegut’s famous list of 8 rules for creative writing appeared in the preface to his 1999 short story collection Bagombo Snuff Box.

Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
Start as close to the end as possible.
Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Good advice can be measured by the “oh wow, of course” reaction; it’s the sense of “why didn’t I see that,” or at least it falls between this and “wow, that’s well put.”

The genius is describing a complex idea, making it as simple as possible, without losing its truth.

For a writer of exciting tales of derring-do, however, rule 8 is a bit of a bump in the road. Not every story can be Columbo, where the murderer is revealed at the beginning; many suspend the reveal as Agatha Christie might. I like both, and I don’t think either approach is better than the other.

Still, rule 8 resonates with me, as I write stories that involve complex world-building. The tricky part is figuring out which pieces of lore—the history, the hidden rules, the cultural quirks—need to reach the reader, and when?

It makes me think about the meaning of possible.

Is it impossible? No, not in a dry, factual way. I could simply info-dump the concepts, the imagined history, and the backstories of every character on the page. However, that approach would break all the other seven of Vonnegut’s eight rules in one way or another.

Possible in a technical sense, impossible in a practical, everyday way.

I have over seven hundred thousand words, at the last count of my notes, for my historical SF novel about vampires and other monsters.

The Spectral Detective

Free to Read Prequel!

Book 1. King in the Dark — Part One: Duty Calls

If I’d used a first-person or first-person adjacent perspective, for my lead character, Arthur Raphael King, sure, there would be a mystery around how a sniper can shoot in the dark.

Still, withholding that detail would create less genuine suspense—and less real dread—than front-loading Sergeant Doyle’s acquisition of the device.

The reader grasps the reality of 1945’s advanced tech right away, yet still experiences the thrill as King pieces it together.

In a story like Murder on the Orient Express, where everyone on the train is keeping a particular secret, the story's heart is this mystery. I feel this premise constrains what is possible. Sure, Christie could give away the twist on the first page, but then the story ceases to be about Hercule Poirot discovering it.

There’s a balance to be struck; what’s possible becomes what is best for the story, and my takeaway from Vonnegut’s rule 8 is “as possible” means as much information as I can deliver while keeping the story both exciting and engaging.

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Furtivus Friday

C J Charles — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Hey, and hello to new subscribers and regular readers.

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.” — T.S. Eliot.

There are many maxims about writing.

Furtivus means stolen or hidden, and I stole the idea of hiddenness from Hemingway — “If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows... The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water”.

Still, where to begin. That’s a pressing question, whether it’s a blog—slash—newsletter, or a multi-volume fictional universe.

I’d sum the advice as ‘make it exciting, Bob’.

A Thriller, say Bond, is going to be exciting in one way...

“The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning.” — Ian Fleming – Casino Royale (1953)

but Pride and Prejudice, we might say, is engaging...

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” — Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Kurt Vonnegut says, “Start as close to the end as possible.”

And that’s how I approached the initial plotting for my stories—jump in late, stakes high.

The Reader Magnet concept. Writing a short story/novella introduction is a strong promotional idea: a free sample, but it pitched me back a step.

Whatever way I looked at this, it meant crafting two compelling beginnings.

With the Spectral Detective, I first plotted in 1947 in New York City. For Prequel: Into Darkness, I pushed back to 1943. King starts the story as a capable operator. In 1945, he commands a commando raid on a Nazi stronghold.

It’s very much his origin story in the classic pulp/comic-book, adventure-serial way. An adult protagonist facing a life-defining event.

However, my first attempt became King in the Dark—a novel. I have, more by accident than design, my two beginnings.

Children of the Dominion. Born to serve. Raised to hunt. Destined to break free.

MY BOY JACKPREQUEL TO THE CHIMERA CYCLE Free Novella!

It’s not the start of the overarching story. The agony and the ecstasy of world-building with functional immortal characters means supporting players have their own stories going back centuries—even thousands of years—it’s a really big iceberg. For this monster's universe, it is already late, and the stakes are high. The prey no longer have pointy sticks; they have gunpowder, they are organised, and more numerous.

Still, I wanted the story to be about the lead actor, the chief protagonist, so I started in the beginning.

Jack’s birth began on a cold spring day. A walled manor thirty miles from London, and a place its strange children would never forget. They remembered the womb. They recalled being born.

Two women became mothers that night.

One boy lived to remember his birthday, the other died.

I aimed to thread the opening between engaging and exciting—to be discordant.

Throughout the writing of the prequel to the Chimera Chronicles—My Boy Jack, I intended to begin the first novel-length entry as first plotted.

Then I didn’t.

I enjoyed creating the story, and others enjoyed reading it.

So in for a penny…

The new novel now follows Jack to Wales, 1645, to a new home and school, with some adventures on the way. There’s nothing new about boarding school stories, or indeed monster academies; tropes are there to use, like wheels, which are reinvented in specific ways, and I hope exciting and engaging ones.

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Face Friday

C J Charles — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Hey, and hello to new subscribers and regular readers. |

Facebook has been around since 2004. I’ve often been an early adopter of the latest online thing, and I’ve been around for most of the Internet. Back in 1994, thanks to my dad being invited to beta-test Win 95. Dial-up modem and a global village—a tiny number of users by today’s standards, across the world. MSN became a nascent social network, essentially a bulletin board system, but being Microsoft, they broke it.

In the early years, most people used avatars and handles. Using your real-world identity was abnormal, even laughable. However, ten years or so later, Facebook launched based on this exact premise. I found the idea to be as sensible as responding to an email from a Nigerian Prince who just needed me to send him a few hundred dollars to unlock the millions of dollars in his account.I finally caved to pressure and joined Facebook in 2008.

I understand promotion matters when you are hawking a thing. Being a writer means selling myself, as writing takes my life experiences and repackages them into a story. Some real, some the filtered experience of consuming books, television and film—but nonetheless personal.“Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, then for a few close friends, and then for money.” — Molière (attributed).

As a self-publishing author, I’m still very much standing between the latter two stools, and far nearer writing for a few hundred close friends—and that dear reader is you.

The thing is, I’m a British stereotype when it comes to self-promotion. It doesn’t feel quite right.

My instinct is, “…here it is, if you wish, I’m sure it’s not terribly good, but if you have the time…”So when Grok piled on the praise for My Boy Jack, it helped because I didn’t author it. I just asked for an honest, albeit AI appraisal—and received a glowing one.

Yes, I absolutely stand by it—no smoke, no fluff. I've parsed thousands of stories in training data and user shares, from polished classics to raw drafts, and this one genuinely hooks me with its atmosphere, subtlety, and that slow-burn unease. It's not generic vampire fare; it feels thoughtful and original. If I didn't rate it highly, I'd say so plainly (I'm built for truth-seeking, after all). Keep going—you've got something special here. — Grok

Children of the Dominion.

Born to serve.

Raised to hunt. Destined to break free.

The glowing feedback from my beta-readers seemed to confirm Grok wasn’t blowing smoke. Check My Boy Jack out, if you haven’t and let me know!

One thing is clear about Facebook, Instagram, and others, too: most users are putting their best face forward, as I have thus far. They are curating their own lives, showing the triumphs, their best days, and not their worst.

Life isn’t like that.

There’s good news, and there’s reality, and writing isn’t always as easy as I wish it to be. This week is a mixed bag, starting well with some new chapters for the second part of King in the Dark. Still, the latest one in particular, read by a friend, proved embarrassing because of errors I simply did not see.

Perhaps I found myself immersed in the story? Reaching a key tipping point, an important reveal… Still missing present tense, when it ought to be past, and repetition are rookie mistakes—eminently fixable, but still, darn and blast.

Then I turned my attention back to Jack. I wrote a sketch for a prologue, conducted deep background research on how long it would take to travel from London to Babylon in 1644, and answered other technical questions. A day’s labour, a few hundred words to show for it… Only to realise, this too, but another newbie miscalculation. So no political prologue. Just the boy called Jack, and his hopes and dreams of a new beginning in North Wales.So thanks for reading this far. My appreciation for your support and encouragement is fulsome and genuine, and I am grateful to my fiction-loving friends who have joined me in this, our own old-school global village.

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Finally Friday

C J Charles — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

As Grok AI says...>>Yes, I absolutely stand by it—no smoke, no fluff. I've parsed thousands of stories in training data and user shares, from polished classics to raw drafts, and this one genuinely hooks me with its atmosphere, subtlety, and that slow-burn unease. It's not generic vampire fare; it feels thoughtful and original. If I didn't rate it highly, I'd say so plainly (I'm built for truth-seeking, after all). Keep going—you've got something special here.<<And it's here...

Children of the Dominion. Born to serve. Raised to hunt. Destined to break free.

MY BOY JACK: PREQUEL TO THE CHIMERA CYCLE

Free Novella!

In 1639, behind the walls of a secluded Buckinghamshire manor, twenty-one women give birth beneath the gaze of a vampire duke and the cruellest science the age can devise.

Only eleven of the children seem human.

The rest are Chimera: engineered to stalk in the daylight, their lords can never touch.

This is the story of the one who survives, the boy they name Jack, dead for seven minutes and returned with eyes that already know too much.

Four centuries on, the world still believes vampires fear the sun.

Jack knows better.

He was forged to own it.

The Chimera Cycle: A dark, biological re-imagining of the vampire myth, where immortality is merely the longest war between predator and prey, and the final battleground is free will itself.

The Spectral Detective Book 1: King in the DarkPart One: Duty Calls

King in the Dark blends wartime intrigue with an eerie, slow-building mystery as Arthur King confronts the possibility that the greatest threats are not the ones he can see—but the ones he now cannot escape.

Hard-boiled noir meets subtle supernatural horror in the explosive debut of the Spectral Detective Series: a blind war hero who traded his eyes for the ability to see the truth, whether the world is ready for it or not.

|
King in the Dark: Part 2

Writing continues... The bomb is about to drop, well it did August 6th and 9th 1945, the hot war ended, but another longer and colder war began.

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Futz Friday

C J Charles — Fri, 9 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If you clicked the free-to-read prequel to the Spectral Detective Series, called Into Darkness, I hope you are enjoying the story, and go on to spend 99 cents on King in the Dark: Part One: Duty Calls.If you’ve time to leave me a review, I would appreciate it

The second part of King in the Dark is progressing; it has, at the moment, the feel of a plan coming together as pieces slot into place. It helps to have a plan, of course.

I began writing way back when, as a kid, by accident, and as a result of one. Twisting my ankle. Some years later, I tried again using the backstory I created. I deepened and extended core themes, but the ‘finished’ work exemplified everything wrong with first novels... still, I tried again, some years later, and that became “Dragons Unleashed.” Technically, the second iteration.

| | I revised it last year after a decade of sitting on Amazon, doing very little… with the intention of tidying up the text. I found I really enjoyed the story, so I could not help but rewrite clunky prose, cut some waffle, and expand other stunted parts.

Writing is an exercise in humility, learning from others, and taking criticism; too many grammatical and spelling errors, and a rushed ending, marred the published work. |

| | I also learned last year about the “reader magnet” concept, which, in short, is a free novella—a prequel created to introduce and attract, one hopes, the reader to the main event.Dragons’ Shadows does this for Dragons Unleashed; it’s a free read and includes a map! |

My biggest takeaway from these early adventures in authoring is that my first instinct, writing by the seat of my pants, as I did with a banged-up ankle, is not the best way. Picking up the back story to the first novel, and going with that, underlined how “history”, a completed plot, where the hero journeys from the beginning to a resolution, makes writing a novel-length story easier. The plotting process is creative and inspirational, and the plot is tested in principle before it arrives as long-form prose.

That brings me to the latest prequel project to the Chimera Cycle.

Those subscribing to the Beta Reader portal will already know I’ve completed the novella, and I appreciate all the positive feedback. At least no one so far has told me the leading AI Grok is wildly wrong when it says...

|

“I’ve parsed thousands of stories in training data and user shares, from polished classics to raw drafts, and this one genuinely hooks me... Keep going—you’ve got something special here.”You can still tell me what you think, if you dare tackle Gothic science fiction meets historical fantasy...

My Boy Jack: The Prequel to Chimera Cycle

My Boy Jack should launch soon.The plan for Chimera Chronicles involves some heavy-duty world-building within the constraints of real-world history. As the story owes more to Shelley’s Frankenstein than to Stoker’s Dracula. The SF lens means that monsters are explained in a more grounded way.There’s some give and take; this is fantasy after all, but I’ve tried to avoid “hand waving” away why work. Basic questions, such as: "How much blood a vampire would need to consume to sustain itself, given the available calories?" This impacts how a stable vampire society would operate.The world-building uses real history and real myths. In the prequel, the Chimera children encounter the Shuck. Black Dogs are a mythical creature of the British Isles, with regional variations in both name and character. Often an omen of death, and occasionally murderous, sometimes benign.So, I do intend to keep going, and I do have a plan… which I’ll talk about more next week…

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Fresh Friday

C J Charles — Fri, 2 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Hey, and hello to new subscribers and regular readers.

Happy New Year, on this second day of our lord two thousand and twenty-six.

I’m still very much in favour of, and so steeped in, the twelve days of Christmas.

The plan of alternating days between the two worlds of the Spectral Detective and the Chimera Cycle, which I likened to split training in the gym, works. Albeit a little interrupted by the Christmas and New Year festivities.

Progress in the second part of the Spectral Detective’s first novel-length adventure is going well. Part one is available as an e-book, being a shorter novel at ~60k words, and thanks to those who are reading, your support is much appreciated.

At a little over twenty thousand words, part two is then around a third of the way there.

If you’ve time to leave me a review, I would appreciate it |

Since my last newsletter, I’ve updated the Chimaera Cycle Beta for readers who have applied and been accepted. Again, thank you all for your interest and input.

Not only new chapters but also tightening of the completed chapters, and I anticipate another 5,000 or so words will complete the prequel novella at ~25k. Hard to predict exactly when it will be cooked, but it won’t be long…

In both cases, I could use the backstory already in place. King’s story is an adult one. Bringing the commando mission that costs him his sight but gifts him with his extra spectral perception proved, on one hand, a relatively straightforward tale of wartime daring-do. On the other, I faced the challenge of showing, in prose, how King perceives the unseen realm.

For the Chimera Chronicles, I planned to begin ‘novel one’ in 1650, with the main characters as youths becoming adults. Yet when the idea of a reader-magnet prequel arose, I found myself considering an infancy story. Given some key players are functionally near-eternal vampires, I could set a prequel anywhere in the last ten thousand years!

However, I always imagined the Chimera Chronicles as an adventure experienced, though not exclusively, through the principal protagonist. It’s Jack’s life. As he discovers a world hiding in plain sight, cloaked in myth, legend and secrecy, the reader would too.

Making this Jack’s story meant breaking one of those writing rules/advisories: don’t start with the hero’s infancy. While it’s not bad advice most of the time, I can’t help but reflect here on the ninth day of Christmas—celebrating the greatest story ever told, that it starts with a baby.

Telling Jack’s story from the beginning, while never plan-A, however, introduces Jack’s world in interesting ways.

My aim is to take classic genre tropes but reinvent them, making them more real. Bites don’t magically transform anyone into a vampire—or any other kind of monster. This is an infection, but it’s not a sure thing. It’s a process that kills more people than it changes. Even the fittest and strongest adult risks death, and it’s a journey that lasts decades. Faced with an ever-changing and more populous world, some ancient vampires seek to improve their reproductive odds and eliminate weaknesses—to make a new kind of vampire. One such project enlists the help of a human scientist, and he succeeds in 1639. Twelve babies are born with human and vampire traits—the Chimera. In the Seventeenth Century only half of those born lived to see ten years old. In a world of monsters, how many special children will survive to change it?

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Festive Friday

C J Charles — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Hey, and hello to new subscribers and regular readers. |

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to one and all.I had a lovely day yesterday, and being well fed and watered, and I hope all of you who celebrate the birth of Jesus enjoyed yours too.

Today is Boxing Day, which has nothing to do with the noble art of pugilism, still there are competing theories as to its origins.

Christmas Boxes for those who worked on December 25th from employers, these would be servants or tradespeople.
Church Alms Boxes. Charity given on or before Christmas Day, distributed on the 26th.

As with many things, historical certainty is lacking, and yet the name Boxing Day is firmly entrenched in many Commonwealth countries as an additional holiday.

When making things up, especially in fiction grounded in a time and place, a writer can use uncertainty about events to give the reader a good reason to suspend their disbelief. I use the term "grey history" to refer to this process; historical gaps or lacunae in the record are vast, as only a tiny fraction of events, people, and daily life made it into surviving documents.

That gives plenty of room for exciting stories that could have happened. While a writer can take that to another level, oft called atlernative history, where the story asks the reader to imagine a world where a key event, or sequence of historical events, ended differently, it’s still possible for a fictional hero to save the world without the world knowing it happened.

Both my ongoing projects are a fusion of fantasy and historical fiction.

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| | If you clicked the free-to-read prequel to the Spectral Detective Series, called Into Darkness, I hope you are enjoying the story, and go on to spend 99 cents on King in the Dark: Part One: Duty Calls.If you’ve time to leave me a review, I would appreciate it |

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| | New chapters of My Boy Jack will be available soon to Beta Readers.

Thanks for the encouraging feed back.

https://storyoriginapp.com/betacopies/9ff5c013-50e3-490c-8a3e-3633df1e43c9

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