Serial Fiction: WAR FOR THE WHALE-ROAD Begins Next Week

I finished my Battle for the Wastelands tie-in novel War for the Whale-Road over the summer with plans to serialize it on Substack and on my Patreon this fall. When it’s done, the plan is to use Kickstarter to fund production of a completed book in the spring like I did in 2024 with The Walking Worm.

It’s not going out on Saturday mornings like my newsletter usually does in order to keep it a separate thing. Furthermore, after a certain point — probably around a quarter or a third through — only my paying subscribers on both platforms will get the chapters. This will reduce inbox clutter for everybody else.

The first installment will premiere August 12th. Expect new installments of around 2,000 words weekly — this means some longer chapters will be coming in two parts. In the meantime, here’s the plot.

Two hundred years after the Fall, Sejera is a land divided. Ten realms vie for supremacy, while the Republic of Everett pulls the strings and rules the seas. A young warrior follows a jarl who dares challenge the Republic on the water, while an Everetti spy connives with monsters on land.

Young Ulf Torson joined his village’s war-levy in battle against Everett and the Sejer lords who take the Republic’s coin. From the newly-conquered island of Kroksey, Ulf and other warriors from the jarldom of Abuarik battle the Everetti and their most powerful ally, the vicious shaman-king Leif Heilagr.

But sly Everett has more cards to play than just its navy and gold-bought rival jarls. The Republic’s Unified Security Bureau dispatches agent Ronald Lewis into the wild mountains of Sejera to make a pact with the sinister “troll-men,” predators human enough to be terrifying.

As the troll-men raid Abuarik from their mountain lairs, Ronald must weigh just how far he’s willing to go to serve the Republic. Meanwhile Ulf, his fellow warriors, and a spirited young woman he’s befriended steel themselves for the coming of Everett’s terrifying Old World fleet.

This post-apocalyptic steampunk military fantasy novel takes place approximately two hundred years before Battle for the Wastelands and can be read independently.

Enjoy!