Write More with Simon K Jones

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I started writing Tales from the Triverse in the summer of 2021 and didn’t finish until January this year. Four and a half years working on a serial, with each chapter building upon what came before. This month, I began working on my first post-Triverse fiction. You'll find a reading of an extract of it at the end of this episode.

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The Koettlitz family motto was nils sine labore, which translates to ‘nothing without labour’. In the 19th century, travelling the globe and enduring Antarctica certainly required not a small amount of labour.

That motto feels increasingly relevant, 110 years after the man’s death. We live in an age of acceleration, of shortcuts and lifehacks. All that matters is end product, is content, is having more. The joy of making recedes day by day, as the process of creation is deemed unnecessary. We have become transfixed by the spot of light on the wall, thinking it to be the light itself, forgetting that it is only a by-product. We cede our agency and innovation, and being in such a rush to reach the end we forget to live.

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I’m reading Cory Doctorow’s book Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse And What To Do About It. I’m only a little way in, but it has got me thinking about the online platforms that I still use. Specifically, Substack, which powers this newsletter.

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Tales from the Triverse is done. After four and a bit years of running the weekly serial, the story is complete. I always say that publishing a weekly serial is closer to running a TV show than it is to writing a novel — not least because it’s a lot easier if you surround yourself with good people.

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Today I’m outlining the various hardware, software and services I use to write and publish. There’s nothing particularly revolutionary in here, but I’m hoping that having it all in one place might be useful for anyone else doing similar work.

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Towards the end of last year I got wind of a plan being hatched by Erica Drayton. There was an idea, to bring together a group of remarkable people, to see if they could deliver a weekend of live readings that would together form a mini online writing festival.

A couple of months later and the weekend has come and gone. You can find out more over on the Top In Fiction newsletter, including links to many of the other readings. I’m posting the recording of my reading today.

I had originally thought to read the prologue to Tales from the Triverse, because that’s the first chapter of the serial. It was a touch over the word count Erica had set, which prompted me to think of an alternative. I considered ‘Work parties’, but it’s frankly just a bit too grim and unrepresentative of the series as a whole. Choosing ‘The Koth’ made sense, as it functions almost as a second introduction to the series — if the prologue is the ‘pilot’, then ‘The Koth’ is the proper episode 1.

Thank you to everyone who showed up to listen to me witter on, including Ben Wakeman, CB Mason | YA Dystopian+Sci-Fi, Tell Me a Mystery, Daniel O’Donnell, Minna, Mike Miller and many others.

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More than any other type of influence, novels are the trickiest one to pick out. Every book I‘ve ever read sloshes around in my brain, influencing my own writing in subtle and undefinable ways.

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The truth is that everything I have ever experienced goes into my writing, whether I like it or not. Things I’ve done, places I’ve been, people I’ve met — as well as all the books, comics, movies, games and music I’ve enjoyed over the years.

This is part one in a short series of posts on the foundational texts that informed and inspired my writing of Tales from the Triverse. Today I’m thinking about core television influences.

There are four shows I’m going to be poking at: The Wire, Bablyon 5, The Expanse and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. Those first three are probably quite obvious to anyone who has read Triverse, while the last might be raising a few eyebrows.

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As Tales from the Triverse reaches its final conclusion after four and a half years, I’ve been thinking about the influences that contributed to its early development and design. In this video I take a closer look at some of them, including:

* The Wire TV show

* Gotham Central comic

* Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels

* Kim Stanley Robinson’s work, especially the Mars trilogy and Galileo’s Dream

* The Expanse TV show and novels

* Crime fiction generally, and the Noirwich festival

* Babylon 5 TV show

* The 1980s UK Transformers comic, specifically Simon Furman’s work on it

* She-Ra and the Princesses of Power Netflix remake, showrunner ND Stevenson

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