They've let me write another book
Ryan falls through time
First order of business: I’ve got a new book coming out in January 2026. It’s called George Falls Through Time. Preorder it now so I don't get made fun of. Preorder it at least twice.
I’m never quite sure how these things happen. Back in 2020 I was sitting in the middle of Hyde Park, back when London was completely shutdown and I could sit there and not see or hear a single soul. There were no airplanes, no cars, no tourists, and most people in that part of the city had fled to second houses or home countries. I remember once hearing a door slam and it came from the opposite end of the park, down two streets, too far away than seemed physically possible. And I remember thinking to myself: this is probably what London used to sound like centuries ago.
That was the trigger.
I spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about that new kind of silence I had heard and wondered if I could pinpoint the last time London had been so quiet, what kind of world it would have been like—would it be preferable to ours? How would the average person spend their days? Would it just feel like camping? I like camping. I hate cars.
I told myself I wasn’t going to write a time travel book. No way. I’ve got nothing against the idea of time travel—when it shows up in literature or film, it tickles something in my brain no matter how crudely done, no matter how great a scientific leap—but I knew (or at least I thought I knew) that it wasn’t for me simply for fear of overindulgence. The device’s sugary kinks would kick in and any authorly-airs I think I might possess would devolve into a kid-in-a-sandbox “And then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened!” I’m a snob, basically, and snobbery masks insecure gluttony.
So like a good little author, I ignored the creative spark and worked on another book, I published another book. I played a lot of Skyrim to try and flush the medieval fantasies out of my head but I think that only made them worse (dragons!). I watched Attack on Titan and Evangelion and gained a new appreciation for over-the-top, big swings of melodrama. Some of the most groundbreaking advancements in storytelling are happening in anime/manga and I feel like literary fiction needs to catch up. We’ve got so many books that are about Big Feelings and nothing else, no movement, no stakes. That was where my head was at when I finally bit the bullet and tried—just tried—to dip my toe in and see how I’d go about this medieval time travel romp.
Did it have to be time travel, you ask? Why not just write a story set in medieval time without the fantastical eleme-… I’m already asleep.
Speaking of anime, there’s an old episode of Speed Racer that imprinted on me when I was a kid. I’ve never been able to find proof this episode exists, but I have a memory of watching a sequence where Speed Racer drives so fast that he causes time to shift. The key thing I remember is how painful the accidental time travel was, more like a natural reaction to compounding stress, being torn in multiple directions at once, with all of Speed Racer’s buddies screaming at him, split-screen reactions. That’s always been my vision of time travel—something accidental, primal, and certainly not fun.
Later on, I’ve had moments in my own life of extreme stress—being pulled in multiple, impossible directions at the same time—and that Speed Racer vision enters my mind. I think to myself “I’m so stressed out I feel like I could time travel.” Luckily (or perhaps unluckily?) it hasn’t happened yet.
George enters the picture with all that in tow. The kind of stress he’s under at the start of the novel is relatable, almost silly, but goes deeper, it’s built up, backed up, and hints at something he feels is truly broken inside him. The world rejects him. Time flushes him out.
What happens next? Well, you’ll have to read to find out. But in large part this is just George living in a strange new world. It’s escapism and like every indulgence, there’s a punishing downswing. Medieval life isn’t easy! No timeline is free from relationship hangups, frustrating bureaucracy, war, ennui, bad food. He encounters all of it.
I may have gotten greedy throwing some historical figures in there. Research led to some fun stretches of historicity, which I’ll cover in another post. There was a lot of serendipity landing in the time period I landed and a lot of historical grace I extended to myself, delusionally. I definitely got greedy with the dragon.
George Falls Through Time is out January 20, 2026, the day after my birthday. That feels both too far away but also feverishly close. Either way, that gives you ample time to preorder it several times over. Just do it three or four times, totally fine.