Worldbuilding is an essential part of creating your universe and enables you to create your setting, but sometimes people like to create more than just an initial outline and a plot, and create some vast and rich information that really colours in their world.

These people are the worldbuilders.

I’m one of these people. My passion is detailing, describing, and creating vast documents and plans that give you the deepest look into what I write. There’s language, religions, politics, economics, and all kinds of social commentary that create a treasure-trove of information about my worlds. One of the most famous worldbuilders is Iain M Banks who wrote ‘The Culture’ series. He is famous for detailed drawings, documents, and created a wealth of writing that you never really saw - but it did make for an outstanding place to base his writing. His worldbuilding presented him with possible stories and made his writing richer.

Perhaps you’re one of these people too?

Useful Services and Software

(None of these links are referral links, just recommendations and ideas to help you)

Scrivener

A lot of people are already aware of Scrivener, but if you aren’t, here are a few pictures to look at and how I have used it before.

There are features in the software that allow you to collect your research and worldbuilding documents. Perhaps you want to put a collection of documents relating to how characters relate to each other, or maybe you want to document all of the worldbuilding for a particular location. Scrivener gives you the ability to do that.

I’m not going to review the software but it’s available for Mac OS, Windows, and iOS. I use it on Windows, but be aware that it doesn’t have a backup service built-in so you have to make sure you do that yourself - they suggest using Dropbox because Google Drive can make the backups go funky for some reason.

Check out their website here

Metos.app

Metos is what I would describe as a nerdgasm for worldbuilders who want to create every single little thing about their worlds down to the smallest detail. Unlike Scrivener it’s specific and focused. There’s sections for religion, politics, characters, species, objects, almost everything. You can use it for whatever reason you’re worldbuilding as it isn’t geared towards authors like Scrivener is.

I have started using Metos myself but it is a good repository for all of the information I want to put down and it gives me a central place to do it across my devices. It saves me creating putting everything into my Google Drive and misplacing things (something that unfortunately happens a lot).

Check out Metos.app here

Google Drive/Docs

It’s not likely that people don’t know about these so I don’t need to introduce them too much. I use Google Drive to sort documents out that I need to share, or for my long-term storage if I’m moving between services. Google Docs is used a fair bit by people who write their novels as it’s useful for beta readers to be able to access your work - in actual fact, it’s what I use when I’m doing exactly that.

I tend to write my actual work in something like Scrivener though rather than Google Docs but some people swear by it. If you do write your novel in it, be sure you split your chapters into sub-documents as Docs isn’t really meant for large documents. You may end up killing your browser or having it perpetually load due to buffering, so make sure you’re clever with how you do it. Save losing your work to the void.

You can save all of your documents into folder within Google Drive so that Docs saves all of your work in the same place. My setup is to make folders within folders so you don’t lose things. Treat it like your filing cabinet.

Check out Google Docs here

How I build my worlds

I’m a great believer in putting as much detail in as I can. With my universes in Science-Fiction in particular I have documents that list details on a species language, its syntax, grammar structure, and how it evolved. I’m no conlang specialist, but I think language is intrinsically tied to culture so it helps with what I’m trying to achieve.

Although AI is a crude tool I use it to define what I’m trying to do. Take creating planets for example. One of the locations in one of my books takes place on a moon that’s tidally locked to the planet it orbits. I use AI to help me make it believable. I give it precise instructions and questions so I can get onto paper what I’m trying to achieve. These documents then go into my worldbuilding box so that scientifically the moon makes sense.

This is what it’s useful for.

NB: For the love of god don’t ask AI to write prose for you - It is dreadful. No matter what any AI writing services tries to sell you, you will be a better writer every single time. AI sucks at writing books.

Moving on.

I gather pictures, ideas, little scribbles, and I put them all into Metos. The more information and worldbuilding I have, then the easier I find it to write but I try to make sure I don’t get stuck on the details. A lot of worldbuilders can be serial procrastinators, so make sure you don’t turn the process into a way to stymie your writing. If something you’re writing doesn’t strictly follow your sources, who cares?

Adapt the worldbuilding to fit it. Do that later.

With all of the worldbuilding materials I’ve gathered stories will often begin to present themselves. Characters, plots, and subplots will rise to the top and be obvious so you can pick them out. This is what worldbuilding is good for, and why I love doing it as a primary aspect of my writing.

Can we see your worldbuilding for ourselves?

In the future I full intend on releasing all of my worldbuilding documents on websites that are specifically for the series I’m writing. They’ll be tied into my site you’re reading this on, and accessible to subscribers for a nominal fee. Worldbuilding documents can be a really interesting way to understand a writer and their intentions, or even if you want to learn about another writer’s process. Of course some of it might be spoilers for parts of books but you’d expect that if you’re diving that deep into the universe and understanding the motivations of specific characters but when the time comes, I’m sure there will be notifications alerting people to that if they hadn’t guessed it for themselves.

If you want to see how Iain M Banks did his worldbuilding there was a book recently published called ‘The Culture: The Drawings.’ You can check that out and buy it if you like. He was a prolific worldbuilder and a useful writer to check out regardless.

Buy it here, or look for it wherever you buy your books

I hope some of this was helpful. Worldbuilding is such a fun thing to do whether it’s for fiction, games, films, or whatever the medium. It’s fun to imagine the world and universes that could exist, and writing them all down happens all over the world for a myriad of reasons. If people are interested I’ll write more about this and include some of my own examples, so if this has helped in any way, or you’re curious about my own worlds then let me know in the comments.

I’ve been editing my first book and there’s no getting around it - editing is hard. I’m tackling it two chapters at a time and interspersing it with firing up a game to play a couple of rounds of something, but editing and going through things is difficult.

It’s only been a while since I graduated from my Masters in Creative Writing and I’ve been trying to get down to it and get producing but it’s the editing bit that gets me. I love finding my creative flow and putting down about 5-6000 words a day when I’m ‘in the zone.’ Some might consider that too little or too much but I know it’s very dependent on someone’s stamina but when it comes to having to line edit and kill off the crap?

Ugh.

How do you do it? I am absolutely happy to listen to tips to see what might help but how do you make it interesting? Am I supposed to find it interesting? Am I broken if I don’t?

This is a short piece but I felt this needed to be a proper post instead of a note.

Fellow writers. Please help!

Oh and when can I call myself a writer? When did imposter syndrome lay off or does it ever?

Some of you may or may not know of a famous game called ‘EVE Online’, but this game was a decade of my life, and is one of the most famous sandboxes in the world. If you do know of it then some of this may sound familiar to you, and if you don’t then let’s just use Star Wars as a grounding for your expectations.

Humanity extended into the stars long ago and found a stable wormhole that allowed them to move to a distant galaxy. As humans colonised this new galaxy with settlements and outposts, the presence of humans grew, becoming their own group away from the decay and bureaucracy of earth. Nobody knows how or why but the wormhole disappeared, scattering the settlements to the winds and leaving them to fend for themselves. They entered a new dark age, cut off from each other and their progenitor they lost all ties. Each civilisation grew from their settlements and became distinct, and then re-emerged into the galaxy and vied for control.

The book series is intended to cover many different things, from the religious hegemony and zealotry of sects and religions, to government, miliary, and corporate interests. I won’t reveal any of the races, but there are four main ones that are descended from a common humanity, and then there are others that you would consider the native species of the galaxy. The series explores the tension between these civilisations as they navigate power struggles and the diplomacy between them, as well as a shared threat and opportunity that it brings.

I’ve mapped out the books to be somewhat a 10 book series, but aren’t intended to necessarily ‘wrap up.’ The way I’ve structured them there are subplots as well as an overarching plot that threads between them all, but I don’t want it to have this tidy ‘ending’ you would expect. Humans are messy, fractious, and imperfect, so there will be mini endings and plot wrap-ups that make people happy enough that things are moving in the right/wrong direction, but not that everyone is suddenly attaining Buddhahood and have given away all their imperfections.

When will the first book be ready?

I’ve been aiming to get at least the first book ready for some time in 2026. I’m also working on my fantasy project alongside it, but I can easily see that within the next year they will be ready for publishing. I will begin writing the next book in the series immediately, and it will give you a different perspective and switch between the races. Each book has numerous points of view and switches between characters around the galaxy, however the main characters will shift, and the main race telling the story will shift as well.

Once I’m happy with the way the first chapter looks I will put it out for free on here. Each proceeding chapter will be released on here but only to paying subscribers. I want to make sure there is a print version of each book, and I will be funding that work by the paid subscribers that want to support the work and read the chapters as they arrive. I will also permit annual subscribers access to be able to be beta readers, which will give you direct access to where I write and a way for you to add notes, suggestions, and feedback. Not every subscriber will get access to this though as I can’t let in monthly people as I may end up drowned in notes and comments that slow me down (sorry guys).

How does this differ from other things like EVE Online or Star Wars?

Good question but nobody ever said that you weren’t allowed to take an idea and make it your own. EVE was such a magnificent part of my gaming life, and spanned alliances, planets, and whole regions of their fictional galaxy, that I can’t help but copy some of their ideas with my own twist. There will likely be a lot of comparisons but I want to tell the stories, lives, and personal struggles alongside the galactic conflict and struggle for dominance. In EVE there is a lot of talk about the four races trying to reign supreme, but I see my galaxy as a lot more nuanced.

There is diplomacy, there are families that have people from the different races, there is conflict, disagreement, but there is also compromise and togetherness. It may be a bleak galaxy but there are bright moments and beauty within it. I think that is what sets it apart. Star Wars also has the kind of grit and conflict you’d expect from galactic war and politics but due to the nature of the beast there is a lot more focus on the tension and the conflict. You get beautiful moments and scenery from the shows, such as the awesome vistas of Coruscant, or the cloud city of Bespin, but what is missing are the real lives and how they all weave together within the galaxy.

That’s where this differs. That’s where I’m trying to take my work whilst also setting it in the grand space opera I know I want to write. That’s what I’m after.

Will you give us more information and looks at what you’re intending?

Absolutely. One of the things I like the most as a writer is building up a compendium or codex of lore. It’s something I’ve learned from gaming, and also from Dungeons and Dragons, and it’s something I put into my writing. A lot of us get really into the lore and the information about worlds we like. It’s the same in Game of Thrones, World of Warcraft, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and many others. As I’m writing and putting out the books, I will also put together pieces that speak about the planets, science, politics, racial adaptations over the millennia, and how it all slots together.

I will also create websites that are specific to each series. For this particular series there will be drawings, technical documents, memos, religious texts, and a great manner of things I will make over time to add to it. I love writing in this way because it helps me writing stories and it helps people to feel more connected with the universes they like the most. This will take time but this is a long-term goal for people who want to use all this information in things such as game campaigns, lore discussions, and many other things.

How will these books be published?

I will publish directly as eBooks in all of the usual places you would expect, but I’m intending on making paperbacks and eventually hardback copies available. The physical versions will have a bigger expense due to cover art, styling, and editing, and I am considering setting these up on Kickstarter. I will then have the money to make these available and won’t have to skimp on making a good product you would be happy to own. It’s quite established to do it this way and means I don’t lose money by having large print volumes made if the book doesn’t sell.

Sensible.

Right, I think I’ve said enough. If any of this interests you then I beg of you, just like this article so I know you’re out there. I want to write this for myself because my head is full of this galaxy and writing it will be like opening a tap, it would just be good to know if people are interested in reading it.

I hope you like it. Feel free to ask me questions as we go along, and look out for information and teasers of chapters, people from the galaxy, and lore snippets I will write.

Dear home,

I’m sorry I didn’t really get to speak with you whilst I visited recently. It was a hectic, whirlwind of a time, and I knew you’d understand. You’d probably forgotten the feeling of my feet anyway, and the few footprints I’d left on your sand had long since been erased by the tides. I thought I’d write instead, seeing as no sooner had you spotted me emerging from the train carriage than I was leaving again from your station platform.

You know, I rarely know what to say when I’m actually there beyond expressing my sheer frustration. Your buses haven’t become any more frequent—a minor miracle of stasis—and the cars are absolutely everywhere, clotting your veins. You feel, somehow, like a city that lacks the basic convenience of being one.

Have you thought about seeing someone about that existential crisis?

Still, at least the weather was good.

Perhaps you tried to make a tense and upsetting visit a little more bearable, so thanks for not raining on me like you normally do. A small, but appreciated, gesture of goodwill.

You know, it’s been over two decades now that you haven’t technically been my home, but I still reflexively refer to you as ‘home.’ That weird, clumsy way you use the word when someone asks where you’re from, and you don’t know what to respond anymore. I traded you for London, and although the capital doesn’t have its original sheen anymore, at least I feel a genuine sense of belonging here.

Home, home, home.

It’s a word with too many meanings when you don’t feel completely connected, but you kind of do at the very same time.

I ended up being a reluctant conductor for my cousin whilst we were there. He grew up elsewhere, and I grew instantly frustrated with his insistence on using the satnav, resorting instead to gesturing wildly at the windscreen like a frustrated orchestra director. I still know where I’m going.

I. Don’t. Need. Maps.

I felt that familiar, superior little rush of arrogance that comes with being difficult to confuse. Your streets weren’t my own anymore, but I still knew exactly where they were, and I knew their names by heart. The knowledge of a local never truly leaves you but makes you feel awesome when you can march around like the yesterdays.

Have you been well?

What’s new with you?

I tried to see if I could spot anything new, but it looks like precious little has changed. The same grey, flecked stonework still dominates the centre, and yet more housing estates are swallowing up the last scraps of greenery. It’s surprising you’d allow any more of it, really. You can’t get around the town as it is and your infrastructure long since stopped screaming in pain. Why bother screaming anymore? I think it’s dead, Jim.

I’d wanted to wander around some more and really take in what had changed, maybe find some unexpected place I once knew, or a cherished shop from my childhood that hadn’t closed its doors. It was warm enough to play on the pier actually, but I was immediately assured it was pointless. Apparently, you charge now just to go on it, and the beloved two-penny machines are mostly gone. You replaced them with a depressing collection of weirdly chosen rides. I miss your noisy, glorious chaos. The arcades, the sounds, the smell of chips and candyfloss on the seafront, and the bustle of the pier before you burned it down. I’d liked to have taken Peter to see that version of you. I don’t even have it on video.

Perhaps I’m just being hopelessly nostalgic. We’re both older, and I look back at the postcards and the pictures of your youth—the Victorian Age, your grand, expansive boulevards and winding backstreets full of sepia-hinted colours. Later the colour photographs from the ’70s, awash with perms, flags, and day-trippers.

Where have they gone?

I actually listened for the sound of the Welsh—they were always there on warm days, pouring off the coaches, but not even they were day-tripping this time. The silence felt strangely pointed, and a lot less Welsh.

Oh well. Perhaps we’re better off apart anyway.

I spotted a Reform poster when I was there. Someone had put it pride of place in their window, and I wondered how many people would put one up if they had one. I knew I’d see something like it, but to see it so deliberately positioned in someone’s lounge gave me the scent of puke. I could only imagine the stomach flips seeing more of them. What did those lot ever do for Weston?

Funny though. Like so often happens when I return, I was called ‘condescending,’ a term I absolutely loathe. It’s a word I only ever hear when I’m with you, and it always arrives in the same weary way.

‘It’s how you speak. You’re so condescending....’

I never realised how dependent on area that trait was. I’m never condescending in London—at least, I’m not told that I am—but apparently I’m always condescending in Weston. Somehow, I go past Swindon on the train and instantly switch from relative normality to utter obnoxiousness. I don’t think the problem is me, if I’m honest. I think it’s the location.

I think it’s you.

Anyway, I’m not entirely sure what this letter is for, but I wanted to let you know that I’m thankful for the sunshine, and that I think I probably won’t be back for a while, if ever. I used to daydream about finally moving home, but now I think I’m happy to visit you only via the telephone, saving my obnoxious condescension for ‘the London lot.’

Thanks for having me, and thanks for holding the fort.

Hayden

The Sharp Reminder of an Empty Space

I don’t really know how to write this, and to be honest, I’ve deleted it several times. I keep starting, then stopping, because committing the words to the page feels like acknowledging a future I desperately want to avoid.

My nan is still here, thank God, but spending those long, frightening hours with her in the hospital while she fought sepsis was a very sober, gut-punching reminder that 88 is much closer to the final curtain than it is to the opening act.

Nan has always been my favourite—even more than my Mum, which I know sounds terrible to say out loud, but it’s true. She’s my anchor. I’d call her at least once a week, telling her every mundane detail of my life. Even if it was boring — which, let’s face it, it usually was - she would listen, really listen, and tell me how happy she was just to hear my voice.

There was nothing I wouldn’t tell her, and nothing she wouldn’t hear. We’d speak on the phone for at least two hours, a feat no one else in the family could ever manage to stretch past five minutes. When I was a little boy she taught me how to dance. I was a clumsy kid with two left feet so she’d wmake me stand on top of her own, and then she’d lead the steps to the music playing softly on Radio 4. Grandad would watch from his chair in the dining room and then tell me all about the great dances they’d go to at the old music hall in our town, spinning these glorious black-and-white stories for me, and getting out albums of friends long since passed.

The fragility of her age really hit me at a wedding recently.

It wasn’t a gradual thing; it was a sudden, unwelcome awareness. Her balance was gone, and she had to hold my arm as we walked, her grip surprisingly weak. She kept getting confused, calling people different names all through the evening. I’d have to gently correct her, sometimes three or four times, but she wouldn’t realise she’d been getting it wrong. I’d asked family if this was becoming normal but a lot of them waved it off or didn’t want to take me seriously, a usual thing unfortunately.

The Battleaxe and the Private War

My experience of people from the 1930s are shaped by my grandparents. Both sides of them are or were intensely private, especially about their health. They don’t talk about illness; they treat it like a personal failing. We didn’t know for many years that Nan had been seeing a heart specialist because they were worried about her.

When I eventually found out and asked, I was instantly shut down, the conversation topic changed with a brisk finality. These weren’t questions for me to ask and nan was more open with me than anyone else. She didn’t want your fuss or your pity and you’d get snapped at if you pushed. That’s how I knew how serious it was when I was told she’d called family for help.

She’d once broken her leg in a fall but continued walking on it and doing the shopping. Grandad had locked her out of the house to force her to go to hospital with him.

She had to be in a cast for three months.

By the time my stepdad had arrived after she’d called, Nan was mostly yellow and could hardly move. She was quickly collected by an ambulance and admitted to a ward in our local hospital.

It was the first time in my life I had seen her look so utterly small. When I arrived, the whole family was there — my cousin handling the paperwork as power of attorney, my aunt, a retired registered nurse, stepping in where needed. The curtain was drawn around her bed, and I could hear commotion: they were trying to turn her and give her a wash. Nan herself was silent. The simplest and most accurate way I could describe her is a ‘battleaxe’ — a formidable, bossy, and fiercely capable woman. For her to be silent, to not protest the indignity of a wash, was terrifying and heartbreaking.

I spent every single day with her while I was home. I’d go over in the afternoon and stay at her bedside long past visiting hours. The nurses on the ward were so used to our family being there that we were never disturbed, never asked to leave. I gave her water, marked the charts to track what little she had eaten or drunk. In those early, desperate days, when she woke up and managed to speak, she looked at me and asked me to help her die. I felt like I’d been run over but I kept it all squashed into the core of me and told her to do better or I’d just keep talking at her and give her no peace.

That moment hurt in a way words can’t touch. I wiped her brow; told her she was doing better (she was) and that she needed to be patient. Nan doesn’t like her age being mentioned but I did, and she accepted that she was getting old and needed to accept the help she needed rather than try to push it away.

One night, I sat there as nan writhed in pain in her sleep, and I felt a single, hot tear begin to run down my cheek. I’d been on antidepressants for so long, and of course, nan had chosen to become this critically unwell right as I was tapering them off. I don’t know how I didn’t completely crack. I felt like an onion that had gained layers instead of losing them, hardened by the need to hold everything together. I quickly wiped the tear away and mentally scrunched myself smaller, making the feeling go away. I couldn’t be emotional. I couldn’t show her just how much this upset me. She needed to see me being strong; any less and I would have broken her in half when all she needed was a reason to hope.

The Champion I Will Lose

Towards the end of my time at home, nan started to do better. She still couldn’t eat anything solid, surviving only on calorie replacement shakes, but her colour had returned, and she was awake more often. Conversation was slow, but I was able to make her laugh, and eventually, she regained the use of her limbs. I’d been feeding her and giving her water, so seeing her able to lift a bottle to her mouth — even if she still couldn’t undo the lid felt like a monumental victory.

While I sat there, I had too much time to think. Nan was asleep a lot, and there were only so many times I could tidy the area or walk the hospital grounds. And the thoughts kept coming back to one unwelcome certainty: I knew I would be expected to write and deliver the eulogy if she died.

What do you write for someone who has been your absolute champion? I don’t fit my family, and I never really have. I’m the black sheep, the one who moved to London and lived around the world; when I come home, I feel like an alien in a working-class environment. What do you say about the one person who clapped for you when everyone else was ready to pull you down?

I don’t really know what I’m going to do without her. It frightens me to think that I won’t have a translator for my family, someone who talks me up when everyone else is prepared to talk me down.

What do you say about a woman like that? What words are enough?

I’m just not ready.

The notifications are coming thick and fast at the moment for the people unfortunate enough to be friends and family. Updates to pieces here, a repost there, some inane observation shortly after a deep-dive and researched piece into the human mind. One of the things that many have to do when they move their work or for others begin to write it, is that you end up with a site that looks like a city sign in a no gun control area.

There are holes - everywhere.

I’m currently powered mostly by determination but slightly by caffeine so you’ll see posts arriving in pairs. Need to see what the masonry (that’s the way the site looks itself in post sections) looks like?

Write a post.

Need to fill up a section to see where the menus and sidebars should go?

Write a post.

Want to try and keep your sanity so you don’t look at the site and think it’s crap, then ultimately delete it and start again?

You got it.

Write a post.

I’ve put on some of my university pieces and mostly in their unedited state. I think it’s often better to show the process than the product, especially seeing as I’m not expecting to start swinging carrier bags out of the door, and books off the shelves. Sure, some of it is rough and ready but that is ok. Really.

You’ll see there’s a bit more of a mix of work on here than you could realistically try and pare down and I’ve never been a fan of segmenting things anyway, just like I hate doing it to myself. There’s LGBT stuff, fantasy, journals, science-fiction (coming soon as of this post), and it’s all just being flung into the one place. Pick what you like, discard the rest.

Oh, also, if you don’t like the LGBT stuff (just real life from my perspective) then I’m pretty sure you can distinguish what’s what, if you were fragile enough to have to.

Anyway, this post should have served its function. I’ve put on paid for some things but most of it is specifically unpaid. I don’t see things going paid really until I’m some monstrous millionaire with an ego to match, but in all seriousness having the function turned off precludes someone making the decision to become a paid subscriber, just to make my day.

For the rest of you. As you were.

Enjoy x

“You up?”

The phone screen’s blue light was the only thing cutting through the dark. I’d opened Grindr that night, not for sex, but because I was gut-level lonely. His message was a jolt. We’d met once, months ago, and it had been fine, but he’d been cold and distant whenever I’d messaged him since. I’d been locked in my room all day writing my dissertation and couldn’t stand another minute of it. I had to get out, and I desperately wanted someone to hug.

“Yeah, I’m awake. You okay?”

I checked the time: 3:17 AM. I hadn’t slept, running on coffee and energy bars. People up this late on Grindr were usually high. I asked him his poison, just to gauge if I was still interested.

“Been doing coke. Just a few lines.”

Coke I could deal with, though not for myself. High guys were typically a mess: rambling, unwashed, and full of nonsense. I avoided anyone who touched crystal meth or GHB. My ex-boyfriend’s drug use had scarred me—the slow descent into addiction, the horrific behavior, the gaslighting and abuse. I finally called it quits. My one defining memory of that relationship was him shooting up in a random Swiss Cottage kitchen, stark naked, being groped by old men who’d bought his drugs. I was not getting pulled into that environment again, even if I was just watching.

“I’ll get my shoes on and head over.”

Within minutes, I was showered, dressed, and out, climbing Crouch Hill, heading up the terraced streets. My breath misted in the cold, making me feel like a dragon as I hauled myself up the steep streets toward his flat. I checked my directions now and then, though I mostly remembered the route. I didn’t want to buzz the wrong door. I’d gone over a few months ago for sex, and we’d actually talked—about his Caribbean background, his job, and my studies.

I pressed the buzzer. As the latch buzzed and unlocked, I stood there straightening my hair. He lived in the loft. I made my way up, expecting a smile, but the door was on the latch, and I could hear music inside. I walked in and closed the door behind me. It’s funny looking back, but I can’t remember his name. Maybe my brain erased it. I’m not even sure I could pick him out of a lineup. I suppose that’s how trauma works.

“Good to see you. How’ve you been?” I asked. He stood at the entrance to his bedroom in just his underwear, groping himself through the fabric. He gave me a short smile and a few clipped words before stripping off his underwear and lying down on the bed. I undressed while he watched, making small talk to break the tension. I was happy to fuck, sure, but I was happier for the company and the break from my writing. We spent the next few hours having hard, intense sex, twisting me into all kinds of shapes. He was handsome, muscular, and very good in bed. It got hot, the window closed. His skin was shining with sweat—not just from sex, but from the coke. Every so often, he’d pull out, walk to the bedside table, and prepare another line.

I was used to people doing drugs, so I just lay there, enjoying the glow of the sex. After his second line, I asked what he was celebrating. People often buy coke with the excuse of a party or a ‘night out,’ but it’s easy to spot the addicts versus the casual users. He told me about a success at work, a promotion, and that he’d bought “some powder” to have fun. He must have mistaken my interest as a request, because he picked up the mirror, brought it to the bed, and offered me a line, credit card poised. “No thanks,” I said, smiling, politely shaking my head. I wasn’t there to judge; I was there for sex. Drugs had never appealed to me. I’d done coke once when I was young and hated the next day. Never touched it again.

He popped the mirror back on the side table and lifted my legs again. The coke was hitting him hard; his sweat was running down onto my chest. After we came again, I tried to be affectionate, trailing my finger over his abs and cuddling up. I knew better than to show too much interest, even though I’d been smitten since we first met. I decided to roll away from him for a while so I could rest and maybe prevent him from doing another line. I took the opportunity to get the affection I’d actually wanted.

We spoke about random things—my degree, living in London, why he was single—but many of my questions felt needy. I almost blurted out, “Wanna go on a date?” but caught myself, biting the words back. He understood. He rolled toward me, looked me in the eyes, and gave a diplomatic answer—it didn’t cut me down, but it didn’t build me up either. Then, he swung his legs off the bed, picked up the mirror, and did another massive line. The conversation was over, and so was any affection, however fleeting.

Hours passed. Dawn began to creep through the curtains. I was exhausted, and his smell had gone from manly sweat to hot and ripe. “I need to go home and get some sleep,” I said, trying to end things. “No, stay a bit longer, I want to cum again.” I wasn’t keen. He’d been thrusting for a while, the lube was wearing off, and after hours of it, my ass was begging me to stop. The coke was making him limp, but he was too high to care, using a condom from the drawer as a cock ring to try and keep the blood in his dick. It wasn’t working. I repeated that I wanted to leave, smiling, and started to slide down to the end of the bed.

That’s when he changed. “No, I want to fuck again. You can’t go yet.” He pushed me into the mattress and straddled my face, shoving his cock in my mouth and down my throat with his fingers. He tightened his legs, pinning my arms down. I couldn’t breathe. He shuffled up and continued to stuff, but he was soft, and he rocked back and forth on my face to make me suck. His cock smelled foul, bitter and sweaty. Hours of sex on drugs had made it intolerable, and combined with the choking, I started to vomit. Sick ran out of my nose and around my mouth; I was almost inhaling my own vomit. In a desperate attempt to break free, I wriggled hard, trying to push him off, but he held up a clenched fist and threatened me. “You’re making me fucking angry,” he yelled, winding his arm back as if to punch my face.

I managed to push his cock out and gasp for air, my face covered in snot and vomit. The slickness allowed me to slide out from underneath him. I stood up, wiping my face, trying to catch my breath. I felt strangely, terrifyingly calm. I silently started putting on my jeans, facing away so he wouldn’t react to my face or start again. When I pulled my t-shirt over my head, vomit smeared the inside as my head pushed through the neck. The smell of the room and now my own sick clung to me.

“Are you okay?” he asked, kneeling on the bed, watching.

The fury was gone, replaced by a wide-eyed, manic concern. Underneath him, the sheets were soaked in a puddle of sweat. I mumbled something short like “I’m fine,” and started putting on my shoes. I’ve learned that in sexual assault, your brain works differently. Instead of logic and emotion, it makes you placid and subdued to help you avoid further harm. My amygdala took over, flooding me with hormones and opiates, making me calm.

The only sound in the room was the birdsong and me tying my shoelaces. I picked up my things and looked at him, indicating I was ready to leave. He gestured for me to follow and led me to the door. I still didn’t say much, and neither did he; the atmosphere didn’t allow for jokes or the usual “thanks for coming” small talk. As I walked through the open door and stepped one step down the stairs, he blurted out, “I’m sorry,” and slammed the door.

I walked down the hill, watching the kaleidoscope of twinkling London lights through the glassy prism of my tears.

I closed my front door and went straight to the bathroom, spending a long time scrubbing my face with the nail brush to remove the smell and the sick. I avoided the mirror; I didn’t want to see my reflection. Once clean, I crept into my room. I ripped off my clothes, throwing them into the corner—they stank, my t-shirt stained. I didn’t want them near me, so I moved a box over them to try and trap the smell. I switched off the computer, got into bed, and went to sleep.

I woke in the afternoon. I could hear noise in the house, but I didn’t want to see anyone. I ate the few snacks I kept in my room and waited for people to leave the kitchen so I could sneak down unseen. All I wanted was to stay alone in my room and play computer games. The voices moved away, and I heard the front door close. My chance. I went down to get drinks and headed back upstairs.

I told nobody. I didn’t want to.

I’d always trusted guys. I went over every detail I could remember. Should I have just said yes? Did I give the wrong signal? Was I an idiot for going over? I ping-ponged between reassuring myself it wasn’t my fault and blaming myself. Over the next few days, my memory became clouded. I couldn’t remember his name. Years later, I learned that trauma impairs memory: when the amygdala takes over, the prefrontal cortex—the part that deals with logic—shuts down, flooding the body with hormones to make quick, instinctual decisions. It waters down the memory to protect you.

I picked up my phone and systematically removed and shut down my profiles on Grindr and every other app I used to meet guys. Then I deleted all the numbers and messages from guys I’d been talking to, and ghosted anyone who messaged me. If one guy could do this, maybe others could, too? I’d been lucky, but I wasn’t taking any more chances.

After a week of seclusion and many missed seminars, my housemate knocked on my door.

“Can I come in?” asked Peter.

“Sure.”

He looked around the room: the drawn curtains, the empty food cartons on the table, me in my pajamas in the middle of the day. He knew something was wrong. He stepped in and closed the door so the landlady couldn’t hear.

“You don’t seem alright. What’s happened?”

I hadn’t planned on talking to anyone, but I just blurted it out. Peter and I were good friends.

“I was sexually assaulted.”

It stung to say it. I felt small. I could trek through the Sahara, hang off trains in Morocco, and survive sleeping rough, but some guy I met online managed to assault me. I felt powerless. I told him what happened, minimizing the details. “It wasn’t a big deal,” and “Oh, I’ll be fine, it’s okay” came out of my mouth, but Peter frowned.

“You need to speak to the police about it. That’s not okay.”

“I just want to forget it ever happened.” My excuse was that I had university work to do, and I didn’t want to deal with the police in the middle of my dissertation.

Peter left. I switched on my PC and started up EVE Online. I’d played it for years; it was my sanctuary. EVE was set in the fictional galaxy of New Eden, where mankind, trapped by a collapsed wormhole, formed four unique races. I played as the Gallente, a democratic society that believed in freedom and the right to live without fear. It mirrored how I saw life. I began to doubt myself.

I Googled ‘gay male sexual assault’ and felt sick that I was now one of the 45% of gay men who’ve experienced it.

The figures shocked me:

12,000 raped a year

76,000 sexually assaulted,

but only 4% ever go to the police.

I felt ashamed and guilty, wondering if this guy had done it to anyone else, but I was also scared of the police. I’d been on police bail for the first two years of my degree due to a fraud case, and once I was cleared, I wanted nothing to do with them. What was I going to say? They’d ask if I went there willingly, I’d mention the drugs, and some officer would probably laugh and say “you deserved it.”

I wasn’t going to sit in an interrogation room again.

I flew around in my spaceship, pretending to be someone else. In the game, I was Mino Noud. People would comment on my journalism for the game, commending my writing and thanking me for my work. I was respected and listened to. I played for hours, immersing myself in New Eden. Cutting myself off from reality was better than sitting in the dark under the duvet. I was happy here.

It had been a while since I’d been to uni. I made an effort one morning: showered, put on my best clothes, and headed to Elephant and Castle. I was apprehensive all the way, my hands slick with sweat, rubbing dark patches onto my light blue jeans. I got out of the tube, blocking out the noise of everyone else, retreating into my headphones. Since that night, I struggled to go out, avoiding crowds. Shopping for food was difficult, so I’d started ordering takeaways and shopping at quieter times. Being in a crowded tube station was horrible. I looked down, trying to avoid people’s eyes.

I’d missed the morning lecture, but I planned to arrive just before lunch to catch the afternoon lectures and a seminar. I crossed the road, approached the front of the university, and froze. The great open door felt like a maw that would swallow me whole. I couldn’t make myself walk in. I knew people would ask where I’d been, friends would ask what was wrong, and I’d either clam up and be weird, or overshare, cry, and be weird. I started having a panic attack, turned around, and headed home as fast as I could. The lectures weren’t the most important, but the seminars were crucial for the dissertation.

The tube ride home was awful. My skin was crawling, the noise made me dizzy. I closed my eyes, trying to disappear into my music. I’d never felt this way before. It was alien, awful, and unlike me—I was always so in control. This arcing electric feeling zapped my senses and made me sick. I almost ran from the tube to the house, marching so fast I was out of breath, but it was better than being outside, around people.

I shut the door and climbed the stairs, creeping so I wouldn’t be heard. Peter occasionally offered me food; I would reluctantly agree, but I was losing weight, and he kept telling me how thin I was. Peter’s company was okay; I felt safe around him. He was the only person I saw for weeks.

One day in EVE, I had a breakthrough. The small space empire I was building got a helping hand from a massive alliance called TEST ALLIANCE PLEASE IGNORE. They helped us claim our first systems and made us their only +10, the highest level of friendship. It felt good to achieve something, to feel in control for the first time in a while. I focused hard on the game; it gave me power when I felt I had none in the real world.

“Hey Mino!” A bunch of voices said as I logged into the TEST voice chat. I was becoming a minor celebrity on their comms, telling outrageously sexual jokes and threatening people with a “good old fisting.” The laughter was encouraging, and I used my humor to deflect any personal questions. I kept my headset on, using their voice chat as a way to feel attached while simultaneously detaching from everyone else. I wasn’t the best pilot or the richest, but I had a gift for diplomacy, which I used to strengthen bonds.

The alliance, which I created with Sapporo Jones, the leader of TEST, was named ‘Sock Puppet Federation’—a subtle joke about how we were their pets. I was realistic; I couldn’t have achieved it without their help. I threw myself into planning the alliance, recruiting, and setting up our architecture, spending every day online. By this point, my best friend at uni had sent me a few ignored messages. Linh and I were always together.

“Where are you? Are you not coming to uni anymore? Why won’t you respond?”

I picked up my phone, knowing I couldn’t keep fobbing her off.

“Hey, I went to uni today but didn’t feel like it so went home. Shame I didn’t see you! X” I lied, hoping she’d accept it. But the dots flashed—she was replying. I flew into a station, docked up, and got ready to deal with the real world.

“Do you want to come for food with me? I’ll take you for Vietnamese. I miss you!”

I reluctantly agreed. I met her outside uni the next day. We sat down in the brightly colored restaurant. She spoke to the waitress in Vietnamese, then turned to me.

“Why haven’t you been at uni? People have been asking about you.”

I squirmed, giving a flippant answer that made her screw up her face. Linh was direct. She immediately called me out.

“What’s happened?”

I knew she’d just get annoyed if I kept dodging, so I started talking, giving her enough detail without telling her about the sex. She didn’t need to know that part. Over our noodles and bubble tea, I explained how he had turned violent and how worried I was about myself. I looked down at my food and took a deep breath.

“You didn’t try and do something? Why didn’t you hit him?”

“Erm, Linh, he was really big and I was scared of him.”

She shook her head and stuck her chopsticks into her food, breathing through her nose and exhaling like a dragon. “You shouldn’t have gone over. You were stupid for doing that, so it’s your own fault really.”

It stung me like a wasp. She berated me for my decision, asking why I would meet the guy in the first place. I shrunk into my seat, imploring her to drop it. I knew she wasn’t being vindictive, just insensitive. Linh was a strong woman, traditional in some ways, and she sometimes forgot about real-life situations like being pinned to a bed. She’d never been assaulted, but she’d often yell at people who gave her unwanted attention in the street.

I sucked hard on my bubble tea. I managed to move the conversation on to our mutual dislike of a girl at uni, and she launched into a rant. I put on my best painted face, shifting my discomfort to the back of my head, laughing at her jokes. I promised I’d go to uni more. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough, hiding my disappointment at having shared. For some reason, the trip home was better than the last time. My anxiety had been replaced by annoyance and anger as I replayed the conversation. It was my companion all the way home, running it line by line, wondering if I had just been sensitive and silly.

Eventually, I returned to uni. A chorus of people were surprised to see me; many thought I’d quit. I started seeing a university psychologist who recommended I resit my third year. After one session, I left and emailed my course director, explaining that I needed to stop and come back next year. I was declined. The short response was: “You’re so close to the end so I’m afraid you cannot retake your third year.” That was it. I didn’t have the fight left in me, so I handed in my dissertation and waited for the inevitable fail. Thankfully, my panic attacks had subsided after I started antidepressants. I felt more like myself. I could untangle the mess of my feelings. I even felt brave enough to reinstall Grindr and put my picture back up. I still didn’t trust guys, often suggesting coffee instead of going straight to theirs, but it was progress.

I gradually started playing EVE less and reconnecting with people. As I felt happier, I wanted to spend time with guys again. I sent messages to guys I liked and chatted with others. As I slipped into bed that night, my phone buzzed. The Grindr sound pinged from the table.

It was him. His face sent with his first message.

“Hey, how’ve you been?”

I read it, astounded that he would even message me. I’d blocked him the night it happened, but my new profile let him message again. My stomach flipped, my fingers flew across the keyboard.

“Why the fuck are you messaging me? You assaulted me and I said I didn’t want to. You are a rapist.”

My breathing was fast, my skin clammy. The upset rose up my throat.

“What? I can’t believe you’d say that to me. My mind is blown.”

“Do not ever message me again. I do not want to see or hear from you at all.”

I blocked him and burst into tears, hopping out of bed and turning on my computer to start EVE. I dried my eyes, put on my headset, and turned on Mumble. I joined the voice channel and said hello, telling a dirty joke. Familiar voices responded, “Hey Mino! How’ve you been?” offering the kindness I so desperately needed.

Graduation came around at the Royal Festival Hall. I considered not going, but my Mum and Stepdad really wanted to, so I went. My time on the stage was brief. I collected my degree and slipped outside onto the balcony above the river. Classmates celebrated around me as I looked down at the river, lost in thought, trying not to cry. Before long, a hand pulled me away from the wall and into a hug.

“Don’t worry about the grade, you finished. Most people would have given up, and you didn’t. You should be proud of that.”

Peter was right, as usual, jostling my shoulder to make me smile. When we think of trauma, we often say, ‘It’s alright, I’ll get over it,’ but we never really do. We carry trauma with us like invisible scars, just more baggage. I’d never understood why people minimized their experiences of sexual assault, but now I knew they were just coping. The oft quoted saying, ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’ isn’t true. Just as bones can be broken and put back together, we’ll never be exactly the same again. We learn to cope.

He sobbed and wailed, tears rolling down his face like beads of sorrow as he held his head in his filthy hands. His world was this cell, a box so removed from reality that it could have been hurtling across the universe.

With an effort, he heaved himself up and steadied himself against the cold stone wall, using his free wrist to wipe his face. He’d been crying for a while. Tears had begun to drip from his chin and down his bare chest, creating streaks like tributaries as they washed away the dirt on their journey to the ground.

His sole respite from the darkness was a small slit high up in the wall—not big enough to look through and far too high to reach. It allowed a single, solitary beam of light to shine across the room. The beam stalked across the cell like a sundial, reaching its zenith halfway across the floor and then fading into nothing as the sun moved. It must have been a full moon, as the light across the floor had a brilliant, silver glow.

He shifted his weight, stuck out a leg, and tried to inch his toes toward the light. He was determined to feel it on his skin, but his shackles made it feel impossibly far away. Ignoring this, he pressed on, stretching further and further, teetering, outstretched toward the beam. He had almost reached it when his foot slipped against some straw, sending him crashing to the ground. His wrist pulled violently against the chain, cutting deeply into his arm.

His wail was loud.

He clambered back up from the icy floor, nursed his bleeding wrist, and smashed away his food bowl in anger. It skittered across the floor like a whippet and smashed against the opposite wall.

“Hey, what the fuck are you doing? That almost hit me, and now I’m covered in that shit they pass off as food,” growled a voice from across the darkness.

He bolted upright, surprised to hear a voice; he thought he had been alone all this time.

“Hello?” he whispered at the void, expecting no reply.

“...And stop your fucking crying. It’s pathetic. Nobody wants to listen to a grown man cry,” the voice replied, the guttural sound of throat clearing punctuating the end. This new voice was gravelly and hoarse, like a well-worn instrument that hadn’t been cared for in years.

He stopped rubbing his wrist, opened his eyes as wide as possible, and peered into the darkness. He could almost make out the faint shape of a person sitting against the opposite wall, but he couldn’t see more than an outline.

“I’ve been trying to get out of this place since forever, and your whining is going to attract attention. Not to mention it’s fucking annoying.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know I wasn’t alone. I’ve no idea how long I’ve been here. Who are you?”

The response came like the crack of a whip and just as fast.

“It doesn’t matter who I am, and I don’t give a fuck who you are. Misery will eat you alive if you let it, so you better shut your mouth and stop crying.”

It was like being scolded by a father—stern, paternal, and strict. The voice in the darkness stopped and was replaced by the sound of shifting and scratching.

“What are you doing?” he whispered across the room.

A deep grunt came back without a response. The scratching noise was now accompanied by the occasional sound of stone hitting against stone.

“Hello? Answer me!”

There was a loud sigh and then the voice replied, “I’m hitting the wall. I’ve found a loose stone, and I’m trying to push it out, but I need to chip away the mortar. I think my chains are attached to the outside wall of whatever this cesspit is they’ve put us in...”

“...Stop talking!” he hissed as the sound of footsteps approached the cell.

They both went silent as a golden filigree of light danced under the door from one side to the other. The light wasn’t enough to illuminate the cell, but it was just enough to see the silhouette of his cellmate on the other side. The footsteps stopped outside their cell, an eternity passing as the occupants held their breath, frightened that their plan had been overheard. With a shuffle of feet, the light continued its way down the corridor and disappeared.

They were alone again.

“I want to help, but I can’t get free of this restraint,” he said, jangling his chains as if to demonstrate their existence.

The chains made a horrible sound, like the rattle of a thousand ugly chimes as they clattered and banged together—a reminder of his bondage and his inability to even stand freely. The sound of the chains seemed to stir something in him though, something he’d thought lost, giving him the strength to try and prise them from the wall. With a significant effort, he angled his body weight, braced himself against the wall, and pulled with all he had. He wanted to find some weakness in the metal, some imperfection he could exploit to free himself, but the chains would not relent.

“It is no use. We’re going to die, we might as well be dead already. The rats will eat us!” his voice manic and angry.

His mind swam with anger, frustration, and exhaustion. Fresh tears began to make their way down his face as they matted his beard and dripped to the floor. He huddled into his corner of the cell, sobbing and flicking away tears. For the brief moment that his tears crossed the moonlight, they looked like shooting stars against the dark, bringing a momentary beauty to this pitiful scene.

“How long have you been in here?” he sniffled, half expecting his cellmate to chide him for crying. He was met with nothing but a grunt and more sounds of stone on stone.

He swaddled himself in what rags he had to keep warm and sat in contemplative silence against the corner of the wall. All conversation had stopped. The exertion of struggling against his chains and the loss of water from crying made him tired. He began to close his eyes, the tapping of stone like a metronome from the opposite side of the room, the cold lulling him to sleep and chilling his breath.

He slowly opened his eyes, the crust of sleep heavy on his lids. He was on his side, his arm aloft and shackled at the wrist. He scrabbled at the filthy floor and pushed himself up, steadying himself against the wall and pushing upright.

The cell was eerie, silent, even more silent than it had been before. The sound of silence was deafening, and even the sound of rats was gone. Where was the tapping?

“Hello? Are you there?”

There was no reply. He shuffled to try and peer again into the darkness to find the comforting shape, but his eyes were bleary from sleep and he couldn’t see a thing.

“Answer me, are you still here?” His voice was getting shriller and more desperate.

As his heart pounded, a wave of nausea washed over him at the thought of being alone. Where did he go? Was he taken in his sleep? Is he dead? His mind raced at all the ways he could have disappeared.

After an uncomfortably long time, there came a reply.

“Where do you think I’ve gone? Floated away or something? I think you’d have known if I’d escaped or been taken away, as you can’t be that deaf.”

“I was worried that something had happened to you, that you’d died or something, or they’d taken you. I don’t know.”

“I was resting my eyes, okay? It’s taking a lot to get this stone loose, and I’m starving!”

“Have you managed to get it loose yet?”

“We wouldn’t still be here if I had, but I don’t think I’m far from getting it out.” His voice was immediately accompanied by the rhythmic tapping of stone.

He wanted to feel the walls for himself, scrabbling his hand in the dark across the smooth stones and the mortar between. The wall where he sat had a polish from years of prisoners’ backs wearing down the surface from their sweat and the friction of moving against it. He could feel the mortar in between the stones, running his finger across the edges and feeling its roughness in the dark. Some of the mortar fell off in his hand, brittle and dry like sand that was too far up a beach to be touched by a wave.

The sound of chipping across the room was louder now, insistent, less concerned about the guards and more concerned about breaching his box. He wanted out and he was going to get there. He smiled as he thought of fresh air, living, and being free. He’d be able to go back to his life, even if it was just a homeless life of begging for food. Anything would be better than this cell, its smell that raped your nose and stabbed at your lungs like poison. He shifted his weight to sit up and jangled at his chains, his hand still firmly restrained against the wall.

It dawned on him.

“Wait, how am I going to follow you?” he said worriedly. “I’m chained to the wall, and you are too.”

“Shush, will you? Why do you have to talk so loudly? Someone will hear you!”

He struggled against his chains as panic began to settle in. He could be left alone at any moment whilst his cellmate managed to escape, unable to follow him to freedom. Why was this fair? All he’d done was take some old food thrown from someone’s house—some moldy bread and vegetables that the guards accused him of stealing. He couldn’t even remember when it happened, but he remembered the fury of being imprisoned giving way to the emptiness of being alone, the feeling of isolation that gnawed at your very being.

The sound of scratching and chipping from across the room continued with a sound of labored breathing. His unwilling companion was clearly finding his pace and had got the rhythm right to get out of here, but with every chip the panic rose that he would be left alone. Two nameless people, trapped in this freezing cell, and soon there would be just one of us. His heart rate picked up and he pulled at his chains, trying to tear them from the wall.

“Hey, stop that!” the voice from across the room called out. “You’re going to get us killed!”

He wasn’t listening, pulling ever harder and hitting the wall with his palm, incoherent babble coming out of his mouth as he strained to free himself.

“I won’t be left here to rot; don’t you dare leave me!” His emaciated wrist strained against the metal of his restraint, cutting into his flesh and causing blood to run down his arm. “I’m not being left here. You’ve probably managed to get your cuff off somehow, and I’m not having you get out of here whilst I rot in here, forgotten. Why won’t you help me!?”

His tone had become accusatory and paranoid, his words spitting out of his mouth with anger and contempt. I deserve to be free more than he does, he thought. He wouldn’t be left here by himself in this cell.

There was a loud crunch of stone grinding against stone and a loud thud. Air rushed into the cell, dispelling for a moment the foul stench of their surroundings.

“I’m out of here!” he shouted as the sound of chains rattling filled the cell, him continuing to rip his hand against the cuff as the other man somehow escaped his own.

“DON’T YOU LEAVE ME“ he bellowed, kicking his feet and flailing around, spit flecking from his mouth, wild with anger. “I’m not rotting in here alone, you bastard!“ he screamed with furious spit shooting from his mouth. He strained at his chains and pushed against the wall as if he was trying to drag it to the other side, teeth gnashing and spittle shooting from his mouth as he shouted obscenities and tried to get to the other side of the cell.

With that, the door to the cell flung open and torchlight flooded the room, making him close his eyes as brilliant light blinded him after being in almost complete darkness. In the doorway stood a solitary guard, his torch held aloft as he looked down on him, a pitiful scene of a near-naked man made of nothing but sinew and bone thrashing with anger.

“Quit your yelling. You’re not going anywhere,” he growled.

The torchlight flickered about the room.

“HE’S NOT GETTING OUT IF HE’S GOING TO LEAVE ME BEHIND!“ he screamed, thrashing his leg toward the opposite side of the room as if he was trying to kick at something.

The guard swung his torch to the opposite side, casting light on the side that he couldn’t see. Sat there was a corpse, long since dead but shackled to the wall just the same as he was.

“You think he’s trying to escape, old man?”

The guard laughed and turned around, muttering to himself about madness.

“Yeah, he escaped alright,” the guard snorted to himself and made his way back out of the cell, slamming the door behind him and putting back the bolt.

He was truly alone.

I know it’s funny, and people are welcome to tell me in the comments so, but I’m spending all my time sorting out how the site looks. I know I could just leave it so that it’s nothing but a naked Substack, but I want to make sure that everything that is here makes sense. I’ve been hunting around for all of my work I’ve posted over the years and thankfully, I found out how to change the dates on the posts. No more will rants about Brexit feel like they’re orphaned in the current day.

I still have a lot to say about it, but at least it now fits the right time period.

What I’m trying to do is make the site a little more navigable than it is now. I write a lot of stuff, and I’m not sure people who come to read about fantasy and dragons want to have to wade through a mess of opinion, books, stories, work-in-progress chapters, and finally, fantasy. You should be able to see I’m sectioning things on the main page, and I may put very important sections into the header navigation. I just don’t want to make it look too ‘vast.’ I am just one man after all and I don’t want to make it look like my site is as large as The Guardian. I just don’t have that much in me.

Oh, I’ve also make a tag so you can see my daily witterings. I used to have a blog, plus another site for writing stuff, and all kinds of miscellaneous stuff but I’m putting it all into one. You can just tune this out if you want but it’s all going to be here, and writing one every day should make sure I’m interacting with the site and therefore doing my writing.

That’s today’s update. Sorry about the mess. It’s going to take a while.

I am deep into writing the first book in my fantasy series that follows the lives of the young people of Backwater and Maravin. I’m purposefully not going to go into a lot of detail because I have a big mouth, and don’t want to ruin a story that people will be able to read in the new year. The story is full of fantasy, magic, the sickness of a world, and the coming-of-age story of the main characters.

Fantasy has always been a huge interest of mine. I remember being a teenager and working my first job at a supermarket. When it was quiet and there were no customers, I would sit and read. I read all of Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and many others. Sometimes I would be told off for reading but these early years of reading did a lot to help with the worlds I create today. My earliest writing when I could hold a pencil and scribble on a pad my Mum gave me, was all about witches and cats.

Whispers in the Magic is really my first proper, edited, and formed novel. It’s meant to be part of a trilogy of books for the main story, however there will be stories that branch off from the main one. Each book is meant to flesh out the universe of TCOM and provide more material for me to work from. In time, I may adapt some of these books or original materials into books that can be used for gaming groups that might wish to use the universe and characters in a DnD campaign.

Anyway, there’s an introduction to what this is. High fantasy, vast worlds, different lands, people, countries, and good guys and bad guys. I’ll give updates and perhaps the first chapter when I feel that it’s edited enough for me to show it.

This post is likely just filler but I’m going to write it anyway. I procrastinate. I always have, and I think I probably always will. I don’t think I have any wonderful new ideas or sudden ‘gotcha’ to help anyone - although many idiots on platforms like this try and peddle you something along with an eBook you can buy for 99p.

I think we’re all just broken, me included.

For a while now I’ve been moving my writing around to one place or another. WordPress, Ghost, Substack, Medium. I always think I might be able to write ‘better’ somewhere else, or more consistently, but it always ends up being exactly the same circle. Driving myself silly with details but forgetting the whole point of why I’m even there in the first place.

Throughout the years I’ve invested in different software, devices, services, and subscriptions that are supposed to help you write, but I’ve always failed at them one after another. I’m not beating myself up, but I think it’s a coming-clean that many of us need to have.

Just write the damned thing even if it’s with your finger in the dirt.

I’m going to do my best to stick to putting my writing in here. If it’s thoughts, opinion, shortform; it’ll go here. Will I be editing like mad to make sure it’s absolutely perfect? No, I won’t. Will there be mistakes. Probably. Is that ok?

YES!

I hope that if you read things that you’ll look beyond the occasional mistake as just my wish to write. If it’s very important I’ll edit it but I need to get into a habit and not keep stopping to tidy things up. I’ve been writing books and instead of focusing on my writing I focus on branding, image, cleanliness, editing, and making sure that everything hits ‘just right’, but from now on I’m just going to try and get to it. My favourite lecturer on my MA would often say to me

“Just get on and write it and fix it later. You can’t edit what you haven’t written.”

Thanks Julia, I keep trying to make that my internal voice because perfectionism is a bitch. My recent therapist picked up on it IMMEDIATELY when I mentioned my writing and how I like to make things ‘just right.’ Even she encouraged me to just write. Don’t think about it, don’t wait for the moment, just put pen on paper or fingers on keys.

So that’s what this is.

Will it sometimes be shit? Holy fuck yes. Should I care less? Absolutely.

Here’s to attempt 1,222,243,533.

Welcome to my journey to stop taking the first step, but rarely the second.

Here’s to the procrastinators.

I’ve seen ‘culture fit’ mentioned in ever increasing amounts across job adverts, websites, and the ever-nauseous fist pumping of the start-up VC hive mind. The flavour of the month seems to be ‘culture fit’.

So why am I so negative about this new fad you see in recruitment?

Because it’s shit.

Recruiting primarily for culture gets you a flat and lifeless team. Take for example small companies. The founder is usually still trying to run everything and will be very much involved in the day to day hiring and firing. Recruiting for culture is often a photocopy of how the founder sees themselves, or a lazy way they want to market their company to potential employees. “We have an amazing culture” or “everyone takes a vote on whether they like the new hire” where nobody votes ‘no’ because you’d have to question their judgement (or perhaps their lack of). Cringe.

Here is a succint reason why using ‘culture fit’ as your defining recruitment process gets you terrible results:

1. It systematically dismantles and removes the thing that makes teams work best; individuality.

2. Your team becomes beige and uninteresting because you push out diversity.

3. Creativity and ability is discouraged and people with ability to push will feel suffocated.

These are a few of the reasons why you may want to reconsider and view your recruitment as a skills and strengths exercise rather than a popularity contest.

“But what about making sure your team is harmonious and works well together?”

Sure, of course you want a well functioning team, but you don’t achieve that by trying to recruit new friends or people you reckon you can drink with. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve had conversations with founders or hiring managers that don’t grasp the basics of group dynamics and how they work.

When you recruit someone just because they fit in, or because they look like you or sound like you, you end up with dull and uninspired work.

The people that went far in history were the ones who wanted to change things and shake up the status quo, not the ones who said “I don’t want to make a fuss”.

You should try to harness lightning, not grab a bucket for the rain.

It’s been a long time since I worked in recruitment and have long since moved into marketing and creative, a wholly more interesting and fun industry where I get to imagine campaigns, write, and share fantastic ideas.

There have been campaigns I’ve worked on that have introduced entire new products to a company, live events that have wowed hundreds and gathering heaps of press, and community events that have turned my groups into digital darlings within gaming. I just wish we’d stop trying to beat creativity out of our industry with low-effort managerial mumbo-jumbo.

Culture fit does not work.

It is anaethema to creativity, art, self-identity, diversity, and expression.

It just fucks things up.

I relent.

After saying all this we can all agree that culture is an important thing to value when used in the right way. Culture should be used as a measure of someone’s work-style and whether they would mesh well with the people you already have, not that they’re a replica of what you already have. Difference should be celebrated after all, rather than shunned.

If you want to do your business a favour, or if you’re a hiring manager or someone involved with bringing in new talent, ask yourself a few things.

1). Are you recruiting to fit a mould?

or

2). Are you looking for people to add to your strengths?

Recruiting for diversity is supposed to avoid your office feeling ‘samey’, or the formation of damaging cliques that alienate others.

Let’s all celebrate diversity for what it is, the celebration of difference.

Culture fit is dead. Long live variety!

NB: I wrote this about a VC funded company that eventually killed itself. This is just a repost to bring everything into one place.

Do you even Linux bro?Perhaps you’ve heard of this operating system called ‘Linux’. Strictly speaking Linux isn’t an operating system so much as it is an architecture that allows coders to create an operating system, using the Linux platform. It’s of the most famous opensource projects out there and is possibly the operating system running on your phone, that is if you have an Android. Apple’s iOS is a cousin of Linux but that’s a story for another time.

Opensource software is everywhere and it’s proliferation in computing is only increasing. In the past large businesses used technology from companies such as Oracle, Amazon, and Microsoft, who dominated enterprise solutions for large organisations.

So what changed?

To better explain let’s go back to the beginning and look at why and how Linux was started. Linux was started in 1991 by Linus Torvalds who had grown disillusioned by the dominance of Microsoft and IBM and didn’t want to feel forced to use Windows to use his PC.

Linus started coding his own operating system, eventually creating the Linux kernel that enabled him to use his PC without Microsoft or IBM’s involvement. Linux grew from this kernel into an operating system he could use and from this point Linux was born and people began to work together to add to the codebase.

Linux has grown massively over the years with many thousands of people around the world contributing code, morphing into many different flavours and distributions. Linux has become so much more than a home computer project and now provides the operating system for purposes as different as connected devices, home computers, enterprise servers, and networking devices. The list goes on.

The opensource community as a whole is responsible for many advancements in the technology you take for granted; not just within server technology but within areas as distinct as databases and information centralisation, communications platforms, but also extending into gaming. Two of the most famous opensource communities sprung up around Minecraft which brought server technology for open worlds to the game, and the Grand Theft Auto modding community that introduced FiveM so that you could run your own GTA worlds for players to participate in.

One of the unsung heroes of opensource is within the unsexy world of databases. You’d be forgiven for thinking that a database is just a simple and boring Excel document that stores information like contacts, financial data, or graphs but it’s a lot more than that. Databases are the backbone of Internet technology, providing the context for complicated websites and programs to actually function as intended. Without a database you wouldn’t be able to watch your satellite TV services, Netflix, browse Reddit, or all the fun things we like to do.

Some of the largest databases in the world are in areas such as healthcare. Take ‘The National Health Service’ or The NHS as it’s known. The NHS provides healthcare to over 70 million people.

That’s a lot of data.

Health professionals are able to access the data they need with a user interface, but it’s all held in complicated databases that store petabytes of information, which the database will present to the user without making it a mess. What they don’t know is how it does it.

In a thoroughly simplified way Postgres works like a well-staffed library. Every library has lots of books, on lots of shelves, in lots of places. What Postgres does is have librarians that watch every book that comes in, every book that goes out, and any places that a book has been put where it shouldn’t have been. The part that makes it so durable is that the librarian can leave and you’ll still know where the books are. You can’t ever damage it that bad that the relevancy of the shelves is lost.

Postgres has become one of the most prominent database solutions with an active and committed opensource community. It has after all been around 24 years and still maintains an active community that work on it and improve it. The Postgres community built Postgres in a way to be able to take a hit and still be left standing. Its longevity as a database solution shows how well that has done.

Companies have sprung up around opensource projects like Postgres, supporting enterprise clients who may look at ways to reduce their IT spend on legacy plans with Oracle by replacing them with opensource technology. One such business is EDB that offers data migration from legacy solutions into Postgres. CEO Ed Boyajian had this to say:

“Postgres is bigger than any one company. It’s a movement. Our new tagline, ‘Power to Postgres,’ captures both the spirit of that movement and our commitment to it,” says EDB president and CEO Ed Boyajian. “We’re database fanatics, and for our customers, a trusted partner with the energy and expertise to supercharge Postgres and help them overcome their challenges.”

Private enterprise’s involvement in opensource software and solutions is a logical step in the evolution of the opensource ecosystem, providing ancillary services to clients looking to take advantage of reduced overheads, leveraging a vibrant and diligent coding community, combined with a business that adds into the codebase for the opensource and free versions of Postgres themselves.

We’ve come a long way from IBM and Microsoft’s dominance in tech with Linux now running on 100% of the top 500 supercomputers, with AWS running on a Linux kernel, and Google Cloud providing instances with their own version of Linux.

Business is booming in enterprise opensource,

and the only way is up.

I was born in 1984, an ironic year to be born whilst we’re in a present day Tory government which eschews the truth for Boris-isms and a fervent reworking of the facts.

We’re in the age of ‘post-truthism’, where we’re led to believe that manifesto pledges and promises aren’t to be taken at face value, and that the political manoeuvring of ‘The Bullingdon Boys’ to facilitate the trashing of our political processes is ‘the will of the people’, albeit less than half of them.

Brexit has happened. We’re in the here-after of the process and many of us who voted to remain are looking to the leave voters for them to indicate what we actually won with this whole mess. For years leave voters kept crowing about how we were going to be a free and ‘sovereign’ nation again (we already were mind you) and that we’d be kicking out all of these undesirable EU people who had come here to simultaneously “take our jobs” and “abuse our welfare state”. These were things they could could conveniently point to over the horizon and say “you’ll see I’m right”, but we’re here now and looking around I don’t see a lot of the things they promised.

Take my house as an example. I live with a Romanian couple who both work, an Italian woman who is currently studying, and two British artists. According to Nigel Farage we were supposed to be sending all of the EU people back but they’re all still here. If you voted based on immigration and returning EU citizens, you didn’t get what you voted for.

What about the money we’ve saved to be able to put into The NHS; £350m a week apparently. This was actually walked back on the same day by Nigel Farage who said this on ITV’s Good Morning:

“No I can’t [guarantee it], and I would never have made that claim. That was one of the mistakes that I think the Leave campaign made.”

This wasn’t even 24 hours after the result and after Nigel Farage had sped around the UK using the red bus as a backdrop and made the £350m a week for the NHS claim numerous times.

In 2018 the amount we contributed to The EU was £11bn. The UK Govt spent £864.9bn in 2018 so our EU contribution (this included our rebate) is 1.27% of total expenditure.

To put into perspective how tiny our payments to The EU are, Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon has a personal fortune of $193bn.

It’s been reported that in January exports and imports to The EU are down by 40% which should be of great concern. Our largest trading partner was and is the EU and no amount of waving trade agreements with Belize will make up for this shortfall. One can only hope that Covid has had a chilling effect that has squeezed the real figure and will recover once lockdowns cease and goods can flow.

A lot of was said about remain voters and organisations stoking up ‘Project Fear’ but what was derided by many Brexiters as lunacy has come home to roost but let’s talk about what has been lost as nothing has been gained.

I had always intended on moving back to the continent. I left Madrid in 2010 not because I wanted to leave but because I had no choice. I was a casualty of the 2008 economic downturn which bankrupted banks and lost people homes. As a business English teacher I was especially hard hit.

When large businesses like Sage and Deutsche Bank want to cut costs the first thing to go is training. Unfortunately that training provider was me. I wasn’t alone; many in my school had their hours reduced being forced to take work from different schools to make ends meet. I scrimped by for months with the help of my school and finished my contract for the year and returned to London.

As Madrid disappeared below the cloud level on my last flight out of Barajas Airport I had no idea that that would be the last time I would be in Spain as an EU Citizen.

It had always been my intention to return to Spain, or at the very least another European country for a new adventure. I’d planned on saving up to buy an apartment to split my time between London and the UK and wherever my home would be. This isn’t a new phenomena of home-ownership as there were 784,900 people living in the EU excluding the UK and Ireland in 2017. I wanted to retire to a relaxed life in the sun and return to the slower pace of life I’d enjoyed during my time away.

Now there are issues. Rental income tax in Spain is 19% for EU nationals which would have made it profitable to rent out my Spanish property whilst I wasn’t living there but as UK people are no longer classed as EU nationals the tax rate is 24% which amounts to thousands more. The effect of this is magnified with smaller budgets and cheaper house prices which may force me to have to live in Spain permanently. The problem with this is that I can’t do that either. I can only be in Spain for 90 days every 180.

You should see the issue as plain as I do.

So much was messed up for so many people for so few legitimate reasons. No doubt people all had their hill they were happy to die on with this referedum but I will never understand the motivations for damaging the rights utitlised by people like me. I was content to use my free movement to explore Europe and live wherever I wanted but I can’t do that anymore. All of the EU people I heard people mention on TV are still here but the real effect of this is that I can’t leave.

You didn’t make a castle to keep out the hordes, you made a prison to keep us all in.

Repost update: I can’t believe people are taking this cretin seriously again.