A black dog silhouetted in the shallows against a vivid pink and orange sunset over the Firth of Clyde, Arran in the distance.

Scottish winters can be relentless. Stormy, cold, wet and dark. If you like the outdoors and you work and commute, you can end up living for the weekend. Hoping for dry weather on your day off.

Then the day arrives when you realise the 9-5 has left you enough light, and the world is wide again.

Prairie / Sky / Myth · 1885 / Never / Always / Now — Dog Years A prairie stray's last breath. Thunder on the horizon. The Hunt rides.

2/2
What if something has an eye on the balance?

The Wild Hunt arrives for her.

The storm is moving over the prairie, and the tingle in your spine says things are about to get weird.
thesearedogyears.dog/wildhunt.html
#booksky #DogsOfBluesky

This is now.

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

1/2
Packless: a stray's life on the Dakota frontier. Loyal, abandoned, surviving, alone.

Animal lives can be hard. Even (maybe especially) the ones who get close to us.
thesearedogyears.dog/packless.html

A full-screen carousel card for the Dog Years stories page. A sepia photograph of a stray dog on a dusty frontier street. The title 'Packless', date '1885', location 'Dakota Territory USA', and a gold-outlined 'Read This Story' button.

The stories page was a list. Functional and... fine.

The problem: each story lives in a completely different time and place. A list flattens that. So I rebuilt it as a carousel: one story, one image, one world at a time.

thesearedogyears.dog

#webdev #booksky #amwriting #indieweb

#DogsOfBluesky #booksky #amwriting #shortstories #literaryfiction #history

Dog Years Standalone stories about humans and dogs across tens of thousands of years, with optional sound and images.

I'm not a historian or a futurologist, so I'm not your guide to the ancient world, or an oracle on potential futures.

I just want to go to these times and places and be immersed. Not just what happened, but what was it like?

thesearedogyears.dog

Come see where we go next.

A black Labrador turning toward the camera in the foreground, mouth open, ears alert. Behind a metal farm gate, a group of cattle stand in mud backlit by a low winter sun. East Ayrshire, Scotland.

Dogs have been everywhere that humans have, but didn't try to narrate it or give their hot take.

They just caught the scent of joy, heard mischief on the hill a mile off, felt danger coming along their spine. That makes them the perfect comrades for adventure.

Here's Echo this weekend.

#DogsOfBluesky #LabradorRetriever #BlackLab #EastAyrshire #Scotland #DogWalk #GoldenHour

A black Labrador stands on a muddy farm track at golden hour, silhouetted against a low winter sun breaking through bare trees at the field's edge. Tractor ruts score the ground around her. Her tail is raised.

Beware the false spring.

#dogwalk #haiku #poetry #buzzard #Scotland #EastAyrshire #NaturePoetry #BirdsOfPrey #CommonBuzzard #WildScotland

A common buzzard soars against a cloudless deep blue sky, wings fully extended, primary feathers splayed at the tips like open fingers.

wing's tip carves the sky
mastery needs no witness
the buzzard just is

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