Read First

Contents, author's notes, introduction

Dronikus, a novel set on a burning planet called Earth.

Malevolent technology. Morality. Survival. Love. 

Dronikus tells the story of a man who stands up to the cynical destruction of our human and natural worlds. 

Set in a not too distant future, Dronikus is a fast-paced yarn, unfolding in a world that is so familiar, a world of love and hope, of pain and sorrow, peopled by heroes and villains. By imagining a future just beyond the horizon, the novel evokes questions and choices that are all too present in our minds today. It’s an exciting, thought-provoking, read.

Welcome to the serialisation of DRONIKUS.

If you subscribe, using the button below, it will be sent as a free weekly newsletter to your inbox by email every Monday. You can unsubscribe at any time.

This page lists the chapters of the novel — 1 through 61 — for easy reference at any time. It will be pinned to the Dronikus homepage of the Hey, what’s that sound? Substack.

This page will help you navigate your way through. At the end of every chapter you will find buttons to navigate to the next or previous chapter or back to this page.

Note: only those chapters that have gone live will be available to read.

(I should also say that not all the 61 chapters are yet listed here. They will be as and when I format and upload them.)

Chapters

One: Mr Tertius

Two: The brasselleur

Three: Towards the heavens

Four: In clearer water

Five: The old canal, the city

Six: He arises from the dead

Seven: Rators, rebe

ls and glo-slime

Eight: No going back

Nine: Primus, Secundus, Tertius and Leilu

Ten: Once it starts moving

Eleven: How are my dear brothers?

Twelve: The Smiling Rip van Winkle

Thirteen: She was a hero

Fourteen: There was no blood

Fifteen: The size of a large rat

Sixteen: What now?

Seventeen: This is Ballie

Eighteen: Blows strike, bodies fall

Nineteen: An early twentieth Century colonial country gentleman

Twenty: My valley

Twenty one: Bibik

Twenty two: The autotrain

Twenty three: Shangdu

Twenty four: I will take you to her

Twenty five: We didn't kill them

Twenty six: Pandoke does Dronikus

More to follow

Why subscribe to Hey, what’s that sound?

I hope that you are inspired by the contents of my Substack, enough to encourage you to subscribe and help it and my writing grow and develop.

Subscribing will give you full and free access—by weekly email newsletter and online—to every chapter of my novel, Dronikus.

At any point you will be able to go into the archive and read all chapters of Dronikus up to this week’s. Click here:

Liking what you’re reading? Don’t want to wait to see what happens next? You can read the full book now by purchasing a digital or print copy of Dronikus from:

• AndAlso Books (print edition)

• Amazon (epub), Smashwords (epub), Apple Books (epub), Barnes&Noble (epub) and others.

Founding member benefits

If you would like to support my writing more long-term you can subscribe as a Founding Member. In recognition I will send you a signed print copy of Dronikus to your nominated address. In addition, should you wish, I will give you a quarterly update on my next novel, provisionally titled: Memory Harvest.