The Past and Future of Wolf
or, what to expect here in the months and year to come
I’m e rathke, the author of a number of books. Learn more about what you signed up for here. Go here to manage your email notifications.
It’s almost September which means it’s almost the two year anniversary of this newsletter!
Feels like it’s been many months since I’ve communicated with all of you outside of an essay. There’s a lot going on right now and there’s a lot coming up, which I’m very excited about. So let’s chat.
Despite the hundreds of thousands of words written here, you may be surprised to discover that I don’t like to talk about myself and generally do as much as I can to avoid talking about myself. Maybe most shocking of all: I don’t think I’m particularly interesting or smart. I often think I used to be a lot smarter and my brain has slowly degraded over time.
I mean, there’s some physiological truth to this since I’m now over thirty (sorry for the bad news, oldsters). But what I have now that I never had before is what my wife calls discipline and I call a very stupid compulsion to write.
Anyway, let’s talk about where we’ve been before we get to where we’re going.
where we’ve been
At my first anniversary, before substack had these nice features, I counted about 100 essays written and published over that first year. Well, my two year anniversary arrives on September 21st and I should have over 240 total published pieces by then (don’t ask me about my Drafts). Now, these aren’t all essays because sometimes I post updates or serialize Emrys the Fool or whatever else I do here, but I’d imagine that it’s safe to say that I’ve written and published about 100 new essays over the last year.
That’s a lot! By wordcount, I’d estimate that’s about 180,000 words to 230,000 words.
other projects
Along with that, I’ll just lay out some of the other projects that began this year:
Wolf Storytime - a podcast where I serialize the story I’ve been narrating to my four year old. Once I come to the end of this first storyline (maybe by the end of the year?) I’ll be hopping into the other story I’ve been narrating for him. These come out weekly.
The Dadpod Gamescast - a podcast where my good friend Joe Owens and I discuss gaming and parenting. In each episode, we tackle a single game as the main focus. These come out bimonthly.
Emrys the Fool - the steampunk novel I’ve begun serializing weekly here on substack, which is now about 40,000 words, which is the length of a short novel. While I’ve pitched this as a magic school novel, it’s going to take a surprisingly long time to get there, as it turns out. So far, only about a week of the story has happened and the bulk of the novel takes places over a single night so far. By this point, I thought I’d already be deep into the magic school stuff! But I’ll get there. This novel is something I plan on writing for years and years, so taking my time with it has felt right. And besides, when time expands this way it’s usually because I got a real good idea.
publications
So I have a lot going on, and that’s not to mention the novels I’ve published in the last year, which I’ll lay out right here:
Glossolalia - A Le Guinian fantasy novel about an anarchic community dealing with a disaster
Sing, Behemoth, Sing - Deadwood meets Neon Genesis Evangelion
Howl - Vampire Hunter D meets The Book of the New Sun in this lofi cyberpunk/solarpunk monster hunting adventure
Colony Collapse - Star Trek meets Firefly in the opening episode of this space opera
The Blood Dancers - The standalone sequel to Colony Collapse.
Iron Wolf - Sequel to Howl.
I nearly forgot: You can get the paperback for $9.99 for these novels until the end of September. After that, they’re returning to their previous price of $13.99.
So get them now!
On top of that, the third novel in The Shattered Stars is coming on September 21st. I’ll have more to say about that before that date. We have the first seven novels already written and ready to publish, so the quarterly format we’re on is something we have in the bag until next September, and the eighth book will likely be written before the end of this year.
And then I’ve had or will have a number of short stories published.
A Forbidden Affair in Rorei’s Court - Ballad of the Distant Reaches
Another Fool in Pearl’s String - Ballad of the Distant Reaches
All My Heroes are Russian Folksingers - Untold Stories Anthology (forthcoming)
He sleeps with garlands woven in his hair - Into the Forest Anthology (forthcoming)
New Trees - Hyphenpunk Magazine (forthcoming)
And then a few essays published elsewhere:
Negative Reviews are Good - Broken River Writers’ Collective
the open hand of worldbuilding - Broken River Writers’ Collective
I also published a few essays by other people:
And I began an interview series here:
Check out the substacks of
and and and !I was also on a few podcasts to discuss various things:
Along with all this, I’ve been cooking in the background. But more on that down below.
goal for my second year
I began my newsletter to remind people that I was alive so that I could hop back into publishing fiction. Writing hundreds of thousands of words of nonfiction may seem like a bad onramp to fiction, and it kind of was and kind of wasn’t! But I am, as I said, an idiot and this seemed like a good path.
So the big development in my second year was to begin publishing fiction again. And I did all right!
But I had another goal, though it’s related to the first.
Last September, I was nearing my first 100 subscribers. Considering I’m not really on social media and don’t have another avenue to promote this newsletter, 100 felt good. It felt healthy.
Even so, I had an absurd goal: I wanted to hit 1,000 subscribers by the end of 2023. It honestly was kind of a joke for me. I mean, I wanted to get there, but I didn’t see any real way to get there.
But I sit here now well on my way to 1,500 subscribers and I am truly thankful and shocked that so many people are here now. I never really expected to build an audience but I am grateful. Which has led me to developing so many other projects and, if you can believe it, accelerate publishing books even further.
I’ve enjoyed writing the various series I’ve done here, though these tend to be fairly unpopular. But for those who have enjoyed my series on A Song of Ice and Fire and Wong Kar Wai and Cormac McCarthy and Harry Potter, expect similar projects ahead!
If you skip every one of these essays, I guess I don’t know what to say. You can skip the next ones too. Of course, if anyone has any thoughts on what they’d like me to dive into, I’m wide open.
But, really. I cannot thank you enough. Especially those kind souls who are paying subscribers. I never anticipated anyone paying and I made it as clear as possible upfront that there was no need to pay for what I do here.
Over the last year, I began giving you free ebook copies of my novels, but I’ve decided to give you a bit more in the next 12 months. More on that below.
where we’re going
The big plans keep coming! I’m going to try to lay out everything here, though I may think up some mad project between now and the end of the year. Despite publishing essays here every week, I’m not always the best at keeping people abreast of what I’m up to.
As I announced recently in my Weekly Roundup, I’m delaying the release of my novel The Adventures of Horus and Motherfucker, but for a very good reason! It’s getting illustrated.
Anyway, what that means is that I no longer have a novel coming out this October like I planned.
But fear not! I’ve found a solution.
upgrades for paying members
Paying members will continue to receive an ebook of every book I publish and you’ll receive them early. So even though Horus and Motherfucker is getting delayed, I’ll still be sending out the ebook to paying subscribers this evening.
On top of that, you get early access to Emrys the Fool. Right now, you get chapters two weeks before everyone else. Starting soon, you’ll get them a month early.
So you have that and you’ve had that for most of the year.
But starting September, you’ll receive one post per month that is exclusively available to you. And this first month is a doozy! So I hope you’ve enjoyed my Harry Potter reviews, because my review of The Deathly Hallows is nearly the length of the previous six reviews in the series combined.
Because of the length and the work that went into it, I thought this a fitting essay to be paywalled.
Every month from here on out, there will be a new paywalled essay. Not all of them will be so long, but they’re essays that I suppose took a bit more out of me to produce.
And on top of everything else, I have another idea but I need to see the feasibility of it. We’ll see how many paying subscribers I have by the end of 2023.
subscriber drive
For the month of September, I’m going to be offering steep discounts on subscriptions. Free subscribers will receive an email next week that outlines the different offers.
publications
We’ll begin with the rest of 2023:
Sleeping Giants (Episode Three of The Shattered Stars) - 9/21
The Collected Harry Potter Reviews (not the final name) - 10/31
Broken Katana (Book Three in the Howl series) - 11/28
Libertatia; or, The Onion King (Episode Four of The Shattered Stars) - 12/21
You read that correctly. I’ll be publishing my first nonfiction book and it will be a paperback version of my Harry Potter reviews. The essays will be rewritten to some degree so that they work better inside a book. I think I’ll also add a short essay about each movie in the series as well. Paying subscribers will get an ebook but no other ebook version will be available since six of the seven essays will remain available here for free.
But if you really want the Deathly Hallows review, you can either subscribe or buy the book. I’m going to keep the cost low so don’t fret too much.
Anyway, I have big plans for 2024, which is the ten year anniversary of Noir: A Love Story and Twilight of the Wolves and Girl with Ears & Demon with Limp. Some of you probably read at least one of these way back when.
They’ve been out of print for years but they’ll be newly available with new artwork and some other little bonuses. Especially Twilight of the Wolves, which will regain its original title of To Live and will be substantially rewritten. Which is fun.
I’m very excited for this, honestly. But here’s the publication schedule for 2024:
Noir: A Love Story - January
Ash Cinema - February
House of Ghosts (Episode Five of The Shattered Stars) - March
Book Four in the Howl series - April
To Live - May
Gnashing Teeth (Episode Six of The Shattered Stars) - June
Book Five in the Howl series - July
Be Careful, My Children - August
The Wicked Flee (Episode Seven of The Shattered Stars) - September
The Adventures of Horus and Motherfucker - October
Girl with Ears & Demon with Limp - November
Episode Eight of The Shattered Stars - December
Now, some of this is subject to shift a bit here and there, but I fully intend to publish twelve books next year. Only The Shattered Stars are set in stone, but I think this will be fairly close to what we end up with next year.
It’s possible I’ll also collect the 100 word short stories I’ve been writing on Notes this year into a collection and release that as well or in place of something else.
Something I’m very excited to announce is a new magazine for original fiction and artwork that I’ll be starting with the Broken River gang.
The idea behind Flatline is quite simple:
A paying magazine for longer short stories (3k-8k words)
One story per month (think One Story Magazine)
Specializing in cyberpunk, in all its many permutations
We’ll be launching a kickstarter early in 2024 but submissions will open up very soon for paying subscribers (paying subscribers will not get preferential treatment with regard to acceptance, just more time to submit). There’s a lot more to say about this but I’ll wait until we’re a bit more prepared to launch. I’ll make an announcement when that’s ready. Most likely, before the end of September.
what else?
There’s a lot going on in the background. Besides everything outlined up above, I’m also writing a trilogy of books for my nephews. Not sure if or when I’ll publish that, but the goal is to give it to them for Christmas, so I’m in a bit of a mad dash for it. Then there are the various books I’m writing for my son.
I’m also, for truly inexplicable reasons, working on writing a TTRPG that I’ll talk about if it ever becomes a real thing. Right now, a few potentially strange choices that go into the design: No experience or leveling, only three stats (though I’m toying with none?), an Old English inflected cyber/solarpunk setting.
Recently, I lost all my notes for a few different boardgames I was working on developing, so now I’m going to just work on a different one. My wife has some great ideas, too, and I’m trying to help her bring one or two or three of these ideas to fruition (one of them is more or less ready for prototyping). Again, I’ll announce this if it ever becomes a thing worth announcing.
I’m planning on doing more in-person events. If you live here in the Twin Cities, you can come see me at the Twin Cities Book Festival this October and possibly a few more places. The Broken River gang is also going to be at AWP in Kansas next year, which will be my first time going there in nine years.
I’m still tinkering around making maps for a videogame I will someday make if I can ever find the time to do anything besides all the many things I’m already doing every day.
onward to year three
Thank you for indulging me with this overly long email about what I’m doing, what I’m planning, and what that means for you.
For the most part, you won’t notice much difference. I don’t know if I’ll publish another 100 essays over the next twelve months, but I was telling myself that I’d slow down to one essay per week for this second year.
Well, look at me now, MOM.
I hope you’ll stick with me and I hope you spread the word. I no longer have a subscriber goal to meet, but I bet it would be nice to have a clean 10,000 subscribers. Not that that seems very achievable, but who knows!
I still can’t believe there are over a thousand of you here.
More soon.
Wolf.
Howl.
Some free books for your trouble:
Wow--congratulations on so much excellent work and the 1500 subscribers! I’m looking forward to your Deathly Hallows essay because I have very much enjoyed your previous Harry Potter reviews.
All good things!!! I remember you sending me Noir: A Love Story to read back in 2011 ! I may need to re-read that and Ash Cinema next year...