As many of you know, I publish serialized fiction—the Welcome to PHU serial on Pillowfort and Tumblr. It’s currently on hiatus, but when running, novels are posted in serialized format, usually with weekly updates.
The serial is available freely, but I am also publishing the collected and edited novels with Duck Prints Press. The third book of the first trilogy is being Kickstarted now, and the first two books are available for immediate gratification from the press, or through the Kickstarter.
ANYWAY.
I’ve been thinking about… why did I want to write a serial? What inspired me to do so? Who should I be thanking here?
And this is a many faceted answer. In the modern day, I often refer to writing about the world of PHU as writing fanfic of the characters who live in my mind. Many of the characters that attend Pine Hills University (or the neighboring school, or live anywhere around the area) are based on characters I’ve created over decades. Thinking about it as fanfic of my own brain makes it fun. 😀
But why serialization?
Well, I was inspired by three things/people:
1 – My friend in high school who published a weekly zine that was an ongoing serialized story.
2 – Cecilia Tan and her serial Daron’s Guitar Chronicles.
3 – Posting longfics chapter by chapter on AO3.
The first one goes back a solid four decades at this point (yes, I graduated high school in 1986, I’m old, it’s all good).
During my junior year of high school, I learned that one of my friends (Michael, a sophomore) was publishing his epic space opera as a weekly zine. He wrote each episode, then printed it at home, photocopied it double-sided, and distributed it. He used a small font and two column formatting in order to keep costs down. I can’t remember how much each zine cost, but the price was set to cover the copying expenses.
I’d been writing at that point since I was twelve, and I looked at his work and thought “I could do that” and I started thinking about what kind of story I wanted to tell. I also thought about how I could get my best friend writing a serialized story as well, and whether we could also do an occasional zine with short stories and art and poetry. Yeah, we were ambitious.
My English teacher from sophomore and junior years encouraged us—in fact, she made it a class assignment during my senior year for her students to subscribe to one of the three serials—mine, Michael’s, or Julie’s.
I published thirty chapters that year, which turned out to be a damned long book when I was done. Somewhere I have a printout of most of it—I thought I knew where it was and had been going to share how bad my writing used to be. Like. I can look at it and still tastes like my words, but wow, I was young. I had blatant self-insert characters, wish fulfillment… and y’know what, I had a blast writing it, that’s what matters. I learned a lot over that year and best of all, I learned I could write an episodic story and bring it to a proper end.
I was eighteen when I finished that novel. I didn’t finish another one for twenty years after that, and it was much, much shorter.
So, fast forward to adulthood, and my fun habit of starting and not finishing so many massive projects (yes, these are the spaces in my mind that I farm for ideas for PHU). During that time, I started writing fanfic, and I also was reading Ctan’s Daron serial.
My brain started working again. I thought, “I could do this…”
I started with fanfic, writing serialized book-length fics, and developing habits of how and when I wrote, edited, and posted the stories. I learned how to stick to a schedule, do just-in-time plotting, and bring a story to conclusion. I learned how to listen to my subconscious, and trust that it knew the plot even if I didn’t know it consciously (much like when I ran tabletop RPGs as the GM). But my brain kept brewing on the idea that I wanted to write more original work. I loved fic, but I wanted to find my voices, too.
I reached out to Ctan and quizzed her on how she handled Daron, and all kinds of technical details. I thought about where to post, and looked at various serialized fiction platforms online, none of which were quite right for me.
In early 2016 I started drafting Commit to the Kick, the first of the PHU novels, and I made a decision that it would be posted on Tumblr. I had hoped that by posting it in a space where chapters could be reblogged, readers might discover and share what they were reading. A couple years later, I mirrored everything on Pillowfort as well.
I started posting in fall of 2016—Alaric’s first semester of college coincided with dropping my daughter off at RPI for her freshman year. Commit to the Kick is the first book of the Twinned trilogy, then Missed Fortunes started in spring 2018, and Into the Split began in August of 2019.
Posting serialized original fiction isn’t the same as posting fanfic chapter by chapter—there isn’t an easy, centralized location like AO3, and there aren’t comments on every post. But it’s a fantastic way to keep a schedule, and learn to write consistently and create a chapter or two a week.
The seventh book in the PHU ‘verse began posting in August 2021 and completed in August 2022. I’ve been on hiatus since then, because another thing I’ve learned is that my editing brain and my writing brain aren’t very good friends, and editing likes to sit on writing and say “nope” so… while the trilogy was being edited for publication, writing didn’t happen much.
Serialization is fun. Editing is hard work, but worth it. 😀
The eighth book is coming. I’ve been outlining it, and trying to figure out how to make it better than the other books. Nate’s ready for his story to be told.
But in the meantime, you can either check out the original serial on Tumblr or PiIllowfort, or better yet, get the edited, cleaned up versions of the first three books along with cool merch (represent your favorite fictional college!) on Kickstarter now—the campaign is running until the 27th? 28th? Math is hard… the campaign is 90% funded so the books will be yours if you order them.
And thank you, however you choose to read.