Ian C Peake

A black Labrador sits at a ferry porthole, gazing out at the sea with the focused expression of someone who has important nautical contributions to make.

Planning a euro trip on the ferry early June. Belgium, Netherlands, Le Touquet. Echo has opinions (pro cheese mostly), but limited geographical knowledge. What's unmissable with a dog? Anywhere we shouldn't bother with?
#DogsOfBluesky #Belgium #Netherlands #France #travel

A billboard reading GABBO IS COMING. No further context provided. None needed. This is fine.

We had a contextless yellow van with 'potatoes' stenciled on the side driving round my neighbourhood in the 80s. No phone number, no name, just the assumption you'd what- flag him down to access the potatoes?

Also this:

What about Papillon by Henri Charrière?

If you haven't seen the film already- even better: first read the autobiography, THEN watch the film (NOT the 2017 remake 💀), THEN go down the controversy rabbit hole if you want.

A short story about your body betraying you, the harshness of the frontier, and what we hold onto longest as the world starts to fade.

#LiteraryFiction #HistoricalFiction #DogsOfBluesky #WritingCommunity #BookSky #ShortStory

Dakota Territory, USA · 1885 — Dog Years Dakota Territory, 1885. A wagon's wheel. A stray bleeding out in the grass. The sky pulling harder.

"The wheel catches her hindquarters and she's down hard, muzzle in the dirt, tasting dust and her own blood. She sees it coming for a good half-second, long enough to know her stiff hips won't turn, that her body has finally, decisively, failed to be fast enough."

thesearedogyears.dog/packless.html

#WIP #SpeculativeFiction #ScienceFiction
#Dystopia #CliFi

A man sits strapped in a chair wearing a metal helmet, facing a masked figure in a clinical setting. A still from Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985).

My brain's writing a novella set in a corporate climate refuge in 2038 when I only asked it for a short story.

Your dog's violated the terms of employment/residence/existence and the clock's ticking.

I think it shares DNA with Terry Gilliam's Brazil, but nobody gets the luxury of going mad. #WIP

Thank you! Built it with no clue what I was doing, so that means a lot 😄

Screenshot of four pages from an indie website hosting stories from a collection about dogs and humans across deep time.

Honestly I wasn't setting substack alight.

But since leaving and building a wee site of my own (with no idea how), I found the fringe benefit of not having to pick your aesthetic from a limited menu.

The page itself becomes part of the story, not just a container for it.
#indieweb #booksky

Isn't she? 🥰

A black Labrador sat on a Scottish beach with the harbour wall and fisherman's cottages visible in the background. Her snout is sandy.

'Why Dogs?' #3

Writing stories across different times and places needs witnesses. Dogs are perfect for that.

Here's Echo from the Fife coast this weekend, fresh from everyone's business.
#DogsOfBluesky #booksky #amwriting

Spring themed art doll with bulb head in green and yellow hues

SPRING SENTINELS 🌱🌞

Two new characters inspired by the coming of Spring, emerging new growth and bulbs flowering. Made from reclaimed/recycled materials.

xphaiea.bigcartel.com

Thanks for all the love and comments on these two!

#xphaiea
#textileartist
#artdolls
#magick
#spring

Ah, but the trick is
I am a dragon poet.
My words can destroy.

#haiku
#senryu
#poetry

dragon poets know
word-flames raze dead wood only
so word-shoots may grow

I've been writing a dystopian short story set in 2038. Now I'm wondering if I need to bring it forward a few years, or just raise the stakes. Possibly both.

Reality outpacing pessimistic imagination.

#HistoricalFiction #FinDeSiecle #Vienna #DogsOfBluesky

Vienna, Austria · 1898-1914 — Dog Years Vienna, 1898-1914. A black Labrador. An empire collapsing. Loyalty until the end.

"If I must be a relic in an attic, at least let the attic be my own."

History is running hot in the early days of the twentieth century. In Vienna an aristocrat, his dog, and an empire are all on borrowed time.

Read the story here while the Mahler plays:
www.thesearedogyears.dog/herrengasse.html

As Dog Years grows I'm wondering about structure. The collection spans from the Paleolithic to the far future, so should the future stories publish together as a bloc, or threaded through everything else in order of when I ship them? 😅
Genuine question. I have thoughts but I'm curious about yours.

I grew up on spoken word vinyl discs like HCA's Snow Queen, with voice acting, snowstorms, hoofbeats etc.
That's why I'm risking hokeyness to put optional ambient sounds with the Dog Years stories.
Nobody has to use them. But if they do, I hope they feel like bedtime stories for grown-ups.
#indieweb

A freaking gorgeous black Labrador taking a moment to sniff snowdrops with her snoot.

Dogs arrived before we had a fixed home to offer them. Before we had reliable food to share. In many ways before we'd done becoming recognisably human. They were just there, and up for it.
Whatever we both are, we became it together.
So umm, yeah, that's why dogs. Wait where'd you go?
#dogsofbluesky

Horses: maybe 6k years ago, when we'd decided to do wars and long distances. They've been with us for extraordinary moments, but they're flighty one-tonne prey animals, aren't easy to read, and when the day's misadventures are done they go back to the stable, not the foot of the bed.
3/4

Cats showed up 7k-10k years ago, once we'd built settlements and filled granaries. They came for the mice, stayed for the worship... and like, have we even domesticated them yet? ( #catsofbluesky amiright?).
They're totally worth their own chronicles, but their adventures tend to be their own.
2/4

POV: we're in the kitchen at someone's party, you've made the mistake of asking about my writing project, and now you want to know why I couldn't have picked cats or horses instead of dogs for my 35k-year time-hopping short story thing.
Buckle up. 🧵
1/4

Left me with a furrowed brow.

I'm not sure I could've left the pipers either.

She never remembers to put the flowers in a vase. Of course she doesn't 🥺. Great stuff.

Writing a story set in a 2038 corporate enclave, with a millennial protagonist in his mid-40s.

How do we think millennials are going to read as characters by then? What will the tells be: the verbal tics, the specific exhaustions, the things they couldn't quite shake?

Asking for a man and his dog.

A black Labrador looking lit af on a Scottish hillside in winter.

Haha thanks 😄 Yeah, exactly- when you list the 'standard dog attributes' you basically get a recipe for coolness: live in the moment, enjoy your people, show love freely, hold few grudges, embrace dumb joy. Conclusion: cool guys, worth writing about forever.
Thanks for the repost too!

Yellow River Valley, Shang Dynasty China · 1200 BCE — Dog Years Yellow River Valley, 1200 BCE. A grandfather's story. A ratter named Shu. The tomb that could not see.

A boy, his grandfather, the grandfather's grandmother, and the dogs they refused to let the priests lead away.

Next, Dog Years visits Bronze Age China.

“The ancestors demand much... but they do not know one dog from another.”

thesearedogyears.dog/shu.html

#ShortStories #HistFic #DogYears

I'll always remember where I was when I read that alt text.

"...official psychopomp of the British royal family..." ☺️

The challenge isn’t a single conflict so much as proximity. They have an hour where old narratives are available to them, and the work is choosing what not to do with that access. The dog keeps them uncomfortably close- and keeps the cold war from turning decisively hot.