The rise of the fanon canon: when fan fiction influences original fiction

It was once a guilty secret: some writers honed their skills on fan fiction, sharing stories in the corners of the internet before stepping into the world of publishing. 

Now, fan fiction isn’t a detour en route to “real” literature; it’s a workshop, a movement, and a testing ground for the next generation of writers. The fanon canon, as it’s called online, is transforming how stories are written, shared, and sold.

Minor works, major joy: Why we should read authors’ lesser-known texts

Not every literary treasure announces itself with a full-page review or a Booker Prize shortlist. Some arrive quietly, tucked into the back of collected editions or discovered decades after their author’s death.

These are the misfit texts: the ghost stories, experimental fragments, and one-off essays that never quite made it into the canon but hold a strange power all their own. They’re small, sometimes imperfect, but full of clues. In them, we catch glimpses of writers unguarded, playful, or restless, working things out before the world was watching.

Dark Academia, Deconstructed: beyond the aesthetic

Tweed blazers. Ancient libraries. A murder among the privileged. Dark academia has become a cultural moodboard, spilling across TikTok, Instagram, and bookshop displays. 

It’s all candlelit study sessions, whispered debates about Greek tragedy, and the intoxicating smell of old money and old books. But what happens when we look past the velvet curtains? Is dark academia simply an aesthetic, or does it say something sharper about literature, class, and longing?

Where have all the epics gone? A revisit to Lonesome Dove

I’ve just finished reading Lonesome Dove. Again. Though technically a reread, it felt startlingly fresh – like coming back to a place you used to know but seeing it in a different light. It hit me harder than I expected.

Some novels haunt. Others entertain. Lonesome Dove does both, with a vastness that’s hard to put into words. It’s a story that spans thousands of miles and even more emotional terrain. And despite its 850-plus pages, it rarely drags. Larry McMurtry pulls us along with wit and grit, and a deep affection for his characters – all of whom feel maddeningly, painfully real.

When writers go serial: The fiction newsletter Renaissance

Somewhere between a Dickens cliffhanger and a Substack subscriber list, a curious thing is happening. Fiction is going serial again.

Once the domain of Victorian magazines and pulp weeklies, serialised storytelling is seeing a new wave of popularity, only this time, it’s landing directly in readers’ inboxes. From Substack to Beehiiv, Ghost to Revue, platforms once reserved for thinkpieces and hot takes are now hosting fictional universes, unfolding one email at a time.

Unfinished business: the allure of the incomplete novel

There’s something magnetic about the unfinished novel. These are books that gesture towards a whole, yet never quite arrive. They end mid-thought, mid-sentence, or mid-dream. 

And rather than leaving us cold, they pull us in. Think of Kafka’s The Castle, Sylvia Plath’s Double Exposure, or David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King. Each offers a kind of literary excavation site. We don’t simply read, we speculate, sift, and imagine.

Books that broke the internet: when novels go viral

In the past, a book’s success was measured in reviews, literary awards, and maybe, if the stars aligned, a TV adaptation. 

Now, a novel might become a global sensation because someone sobbed over it on TikTok, annotated every page with pastel highlighters, or declared it "life-changing" in an Instagram caption. From Fourth Wing to The Song of Achilles, some books seem almost genetically engineered to break the internet.

What writers can learn from pop stars

It might sound a little unexpected to set Dua Lipa and Helen Garner on the same page, yet both demonstrate something fundamental: how to build a voice. 

Garner paints scenes with sharp observational detail, sunlight catching on chipped teacups, the quiet despair in a suburban living room. Lipa delivers lyric hooks that lodge themselves in your bloodstream. They're instant and irresistible. Both are storytellers.

The annotated life: Why marginalia is back in style

Marginalia, you either love it or hate it. Once considered the mark of a disrespectful reader, someone scribbling on the pristine pages of novels, marginalia has returned with an unexpected flourish.

Instagram is full of annotated pages, complete with underlines, post-its, and impassioned scribbles. On TikTok, readers film themselves reacting in real time, pen in hand. Even published authors are weighing in, sharing how marginal notes shaped their early reading lives.

This ain’t no cowboy song: writing through grief with music

This is a bit left-field for this blog. Usually, I’m writing about books and fiction. But creativity doesn’t always stay neatly in its lane. Sometimes it spills out in unexpected ways.

A few months ago, I wrote a song. Not just a throwaway lyric or a fragment of melody, but a fully formed country ballad. It’s called “This Ain’t No Cowboy Song”.

Genre-blending that defies labels: From Romantasy to experimental fiction

What do you call a novel that blends gothic romance, dark academia, political allegory, and a magic system based on linguistic theory? 

In 2025, the answer might be: a bestseller. Genre boundaries are increasingly porous, and today’s readers are embracing the hybrid. Welcome to the era of genre-blending fiction, where labels are looser, rules more elastic, and expectations deliciously disrupted.

Why men read less than women — And how to change it

It remains a sad truth universally acknowledged that women read more books than men.

Twenty years ago, Ian McEwan remarked that ‘when women stop reading, the novel will be dead’. I found myself thinking about that last week, sitting by the pool on holiday. 

The women — myself included — were all reading novels. The men, almost without exception, were staring at their phones. Doom scrolling. A small snapshot, perhaps, but one that reflects — and still reflects — a broader reality.

When cosy meets cathartic: the revival of WWII family sagas

There is something quietly astonishing about returning to a decades-old series and finding it not only still relevant, but newly resonant. That's precisely what is happening with the revival of Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles. I have loved reading these.

It’s no wonder Hilary Mantel said these were the books she told everyone to read, and wondered why she wasn’t as widely read as Jane Austen. Mantel suggested, in a Guardian article, that part of the reason Howard was underrated and underread was because she was a messy modern woman and was judged for it. 

Beyond genre: experimental and alt-lit’s bold new directions

Genres are meant to be helpful. They signpost where to look on the shelves in bookshops and libraries, offering a comforting sense of what to expect. But what happens when a book won’t stay put? 

When its narrative is fragmented, its form elastic, and its voice deliberately hard to pin down?

Eco-fiction and cli-fi: why climate-centred narratives are more crucial than ever

Not long ago, a story about climate disaster might have been shelved neatly in the realm of science fiction. Now, it reads like realism with a sense of urgency. 

As global temperatures climb and natural disasters become routine news, climate fiction, often shortened to "cli-fi", has shed its speculative skin and settled into something uncomfortably close to home.

The quiet power of slow books

Some novels refuse to be hurried. They ask for patience, not because they’re difficult, but because they move differently. You don’t tear through them. You live in them.

I was thinking about this as I slowly make my way through Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry. It’s that kind of book. There are, of course, plenty of others.

Why we keep coming back to the same books over and over

There are books I’ve read two or three times, and picked up more times. Not out of duty, but from a pull I can’t quite explain. 

They’re not always my favourites in the traditional sense. But they know something about me, or I know something about them. That's the power of rereading. 

Why the Literary western endures — and what’s driving Lonesome Dove’s TikTok resurgence

There’s something quietly electric about Lonesome Dove’s return in the BookTok universe: the dust-swept epics and tender, layered characters suddenly feel urgent again. 

In a time when TikTok scrolls through bite‑sized narratives, this sprawling western reminds us that sometimes we long for horizons—not just on screen, but in story. 

Reading for Joy: How to escape a reading slump and embrace comfort in 2025

It happens quietly. It has happened to me. The pile of unread books grows taller, the will to open one grows thinner, and suddenly reading—this thing we once loved—feels like homework. We tell ourselves we’ll get back to it.

When things slow down. When we’re more focused. When we finally feel smart enough for the Booker-longlisted doorstop. But maybe the way out of a slump isn’t through discipline or guilt. Perhaps it’s a return to softness. To stories that ask nothing of us except to enjoy them. In 2025, perhaps the kindest thing we can do is let reading be easy again.

How to write like Joan Didion

What makes a Joan Didion sentence unmistakable? It’s not only the vocabulary or the rhythm. It’s the control. The precise needlepoint balance between distance and emotion, between clarity and chaos. Her prose doesn’t shout; it slices.

In her best work, Didion captures a moment so cleanly that the emotional aftermath lingers longer than the reading itself. Consider this line from The Year of Magical Thinking:

"Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it."