The Coarse Animal

Next in our series of short stories is “The Coarse Animal” by Simeon Ewing, performed by Mark Bateman and produced by Bill Thomas. For a show set in the 1870s it’s taken us a surprisingly long time to include Queen Victoria herself, and it’s galling that Sim beat the main show to it with such a splendid story. Sim’s other credits include his career-defining performance as Banjo and producing Chris Bogle’s short film The Rocket Ship. 

We highly recommend picking up a copy of the book it’s taken from, The Casebook of the Aletheian Society, not only to enjoy reading the rest of the stories, but also for Catherine Ramsay’s fabulous — and meticulously historically researched, especially for this story! —  illustrations. And watch this space — we’ll be putting out a call for submissions for volume 2 very soon...

Posted on Patreon on 06/03/2020. Read on Patreon »

Brighton Baroque

…and now for something completely different…

Just over a year ago, we had the idea to assemble an anthology of short stories based in the world of the Aletheian Society, largely as something “quick and easy” to keep Jude and Chris busy while Stoo worked his audio production magic. 

How wrong we were…

We put together a pretty awesome table of contents with some amazing contributors (including Stoo, who rather than taking a break from relentless society business decided to write some truly excellent horror instead) and cover art by the fabulous Daisy Abbott, then began the extended business of editing, typesetting, proofreading and assembling the book itself. Somewhere along the line we had the idea of asking the astonishingly talented Catherine Ramsay to illustrate the stories, and the results are outstanding. Then, finally, once we had the volume roughly kicked into shape, we uploaded it to Amazon’s publishing service…

There’s been a lot of swearing since then. 

However, we can now reveal the book in all its glory, available through Amazon in both print and Epub versions. We are also putting together audio versions of the stories contained within it, with the eventual plan of releasing them as an audiobook. 

So here is one of the first to be recorded: Brighton Baroque, by Liam Spinage, read by Allan Relph and produced by Bill Thomas, a charming tale of the Brighton theatrical demi-monde.

You’ll never look at seagulls the same way again.

Posted on Patreon on 28/02/2020. Read on Patreon »

Rough Beast

I started writing the story that “Rough Beast” works as an epilogue to when I was working on my Tales from the Aletheian Society anthology submission. About ten lines in I knew it was going to be far too much work, and shelved it in favour of the Petheram Hall tale I ended up with.

Many of the major beats of that story still exist in this epilogue, and one day I may get round to writing it. It's pretty obviously a pastiche of an adventure experienced by an entirely different Victorian detective, but as it might have happened if well-meaning but quarrelsome investigators from the Aletheian Society had been involved.

I'm a big fan of the Society and its world. It doesn't take Victorian Britain too seriously, and gives plenty of scope for messing around with sacred cows (my first pitch for the anthology was a retelling of Dracula with some serious gender swapping because of course it was). Plus I can add as many tentacles as I like, which always makes me happy.

As to the audio... Bill Thomas asked if he could record it along with some of my other stories over the New Year, and I was blown away by the result and also well-chuffed when the Aletheian Society offered to post my glorified fan fiction on their feed.

I'm not done with the Aletheian Society. While Professor Champion is probably off to explore the lost worlds of South America, Mrs Fletcher and Alex at least are likely to turn up again in future stories. I might even get round to writing “The Aletheian Society and the Mystery of the Black Dog” some day. Maybe for the next anthology.

Andy Raff works for Profound Decisions, where he writes stuff. He also has a Patreon.

Posted on Patreon on 31/01/2020. Read on Patreon »

And we're back!

It's been a quiet couple of months at the Aletheian Society. It's LARP season, which always gets in the way of productivity, and the team have been working on a few other projects of their own. Jude and Chris both have short stories coming out in a variety of anthologies, including the wonderful Haunted Voices Anthology of Scottish Gothic Storytelling (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hauntedvoices/haunted-voices). Meanwhile, Stoo's been working on his splendid new tabletop RPG  Aegean (http://www.aegeanrpg.com/), as well as the rewards for our Season 3 kickstarter.

Suddenly, though, it's time for Season 3! The episodes are coming together nicely, and we're seeing a real difference in the sound quality as a result of our proper studio recording. We've got a mini documentary about the making of Season 3 to release, and we're presently writing the scripts for our upcoming live show for Tabletop Scotland (https://tabletopscotland.co.uk/). And if that wasn't enough, we've finalised the lineup for our anthology of short stories set in the world of the Aletheian Society, and it's looking pretty damn exciting. We'll be sharing a little bit more about our authors and their stories over the coming weeks, and as always our lovely Patreons will be the first to know!

Jude

Posted on Patreon on 11/07/2019. Read on Patreon »

Season Three Teaser Trailer: Objects in Motion

Some of the Society’s darkest secrets are about to come to light, with disastrous consequences for the rules of time and space.  Will the residents of Hunter House be able to avoid being dragged into yet another awful, sanity-shredding mystery, or…-  no, who are we kidding?  They’re definitely going to get dragged in, like it or not!

Enjoy the new teaser for Tales from the Aletheian Society, Season Three: Fearful Symmetries!

Posted on Patreon on 21/06/2019. Read on Patreon »