I first had the pleasure of interviewing Neill Cameron back in 2021, when I was hosting the Writing Life podcast for the National Centre for Writing. He’d just published a new book, Freddy Vs School, a spin-off from his long-running MEGA ROBO BROS comic.

Zip forward to 2025 and he’s published many more books for young readers, including the final volume of MEGA ROBO BROS. Neill serialised that story over ten years in the UK weekly comic The Phoenix (and I thought I’d been working on Triverse for a long time!).

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When I was in the early stages of preproduction on Tales from the Triverse I ran into a problem. The serial is structured as crime fiction, with each storyline focusing on an investigation by the detectives. Sensible crime fiction writers set their novels in the real world, so that they can borrow from reality for their world building. Here's how I developed the setting without falling down rabbit holes.

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This week I'm pondering word counts, prompted by the superb micro fiction work of Mata Haggis-Burridge in 'I Could Gobble You Up'. Read it here: https://open.substack.com/pub/matahaggisburridge/p/micro-fiction-i-could-just-gobble?r=3rwg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

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Bird by Bird is a book about writing that is also about its writer, Anne Lamott. It’s as much an autobiography as it is a writing guide, shifting back and forth throughout. By making it about the writing life, Anne gives context to everything else. It elevates the book from a list of useful tips to something far more impactful, moving and — yes — useful.

On today's episode I'm joined by ZK Hardy and T K Hall to discuss the book.

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This years is a big one for me, because I’m finally going to complete Tales from the Triverse, the weekly serial that I’ve been publishing since September 2021.

By far the largest project I’ve ever attempted, the story is now over 330,000 words and would be a chunky 1000 page+ novel if it were printed. To celebrate where I’ve got to and where I’m headed, I thought I’d go back to the beginning with a reading of the opening chapter.

Read more here: https://simonkjones.substack.com/p/how-to-read-tales-from-the-triverse?r=3rwg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

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Apologies for the plumbing metaphor in the subject. Writing is an incredibly difficult thing to do, especially if you want to write consistently and to a not-entirely-rubbish quality. And sometimes, the words: they do not come. Today is all about tips for getting over that hump.

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It’s been a while since I’ve written about AI in detail, largely because it’s overhyped and dull. There is value in keeping an eye on it, though, and I want to be open to new developments. So here we are.

Dr Jeremy Silver's article on the Creative PEC

Made with human intelligence badge

Third Information Crisis on BBC

A Love Letter to LA music video

Behind the scenes

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Toady's episode is all about the differences between the novel and the serial.

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It’s not unknown for this newsletter to go off on various tangents, but the central core is always in the name: Write More.

While I do occasionally stray into how to write good fiction, it’s not my focus. There are plenty of teachers and authors who are far better positioned than me to help you improve your writing, in terms of its artistic quality.

There’s a missing piece of the puzzle, though. You can go to university and study creative writing, take endless online courses, read all the classic books about writing — but none of it is going to make a difference if you’re not actually doing the writing.

Here's that other post on calculating 10,000 hours: https://open.substack.com/pub/simonkjones/p/10000-hours?r=3rwg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

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On Saturday evening I had an impromptu conversation with Ben Wakeman and Eleanor Anstruther. We each read a piece of our writing, and then have a good old chat. Today’s video is a slightly edited and whittled-down version of that conversation.

The readings:

* An excerpt from ‘The Writer’ by me, from Tales from the Triverse. You can read the whole thing here.

* An excerpt from In Judgment Of Others by Eleanor. You can buy it here.

* An excerpt from The Memory of my Shadow by Ben. More on that one here.

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