Announcing Stylus Mang: a Substack Serial Novel

The anti-hero will be in your inbox on Saturday morning.

Dear Friends,

I hope you’re all doing well as summer peters out and a new season emerges, whatever such a season entails for you. Autumn and winter are my favorite months, personally. College football, hints of Christmastide, and the rolling back of the world into three months of gray and cold are all welcome!

In any case, snow or sun, thank you for reading my work and being part of the Battle the Bard community. I’m excited to continue promoting song amidst the noise, story in the age of the algorithm, and friendship in the age of the “follow.”

For the past year, I have been pondering what sort of material to promote here on Substack. After watching a provocative TedTalk on the return of the serial novel by successful Substack writer and novelist Elle Griffin, I think I found my answer!

Griffin points out that in times past, books from the likes of Charles Dickens were released episodically through newspapers. Like a streaming TV show, audiences would read a new chapter every week. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy was released as a serial novel, for instance, as was Of Fire and Sword, a massive novel by Nobel Prize-winning Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz.

Since April, I’ve been working hard on a new manuscript about a character named Stylus Mang, a seven-foot-tall deviant who roams a the outskirts of a modern-day Babel called Pearl Proper. Mang has been orphaned since birth, but is ultimately captured by the authoritarian elites where they use him as a human subject for experimental bio-longevity drugs. The story follows Mang’s escape, the journey of Julian Morrow, a young rebel organizing a mass exodus from the city, and the redemptive arc of Charis Lord, daughter of the city’s utopian (dystopian?) leader.

It's a thriller, a love story, and a speculative tale about transhumanism—and what staying a mortal human being in such a world might cost.

If that sounds like a story you’d be interested in reading, I’m excited to announce that I’ll be releasing chapters of the novel starting tomorrow for the next few months! Each Saturday, a new chapter of Stylus Mang will be available. The first two chapters will be free to all subscribers, but after that, a $5 monthly paid subscription will be required to continue reading the book.

The first draft of this novel is almost complete, but it’s far from being finished. Part of why I’ve decided to release this particular project through Substack is to get feedback from thoughtful readers like you. If something doesn’t make sense, or you have issues with a character, or notice a gaping plot hole, please leave a comment! I hope to get feedback and advice on the project and revise accordingly as I wrap up drafting and go into the editorial phase. However, I want to make it as good as possible before releasing, so mainly, I just hope you enjoy the story.

Thanks again. The Stylus Mang era of Battle the Bard starts now.

Photo by Christian Keybets on Unsplash