Dispatch
Some truths are built to stay hidden. This one isn't.
My debut speculative thriller, The Serpent and the Staff, is coming soon — here is what it is, why I wrote it, and how to be first to read it.
If your favourite thrillers are character-first and pressure-driven, stop scrolling.
After a long time writing in private, my debut novel is almost ready to meet the world. The Serpent and the Staff is a near-future British thriller — gritty, human, and edged with quiet dread. This is the book I wanted to read and could never quite find on the shelf.
What the book is
This is a thriller about chosen family under pressure: the promises you make, the lies you miss, and the moment you realise the danger was closer than you thought. It reads like a heist novel and hits like a character study.
Not every dystopia is loud. Some are quiet, procedural, and terrifyingly normal.
Why I wrote it
I wanted to write something tense and fast-paced, but not cold. Speculative, but grounded in real human weight. Set in Britain — my Britain — not a sanitised version of it. North Yorkshire, motorbikes, and the kind of friendships that become family are all in here, because they are the things I know.
The world
In a city held together by fear and routine, one question becomes impossible to ignore: where do the vanished go, and who benefits when no one asks? Near-future York has normalised its disappearances. Wet streets, fractured infrastructure, rumours in every pub — and walls papered with the faces of people no one is supposed to mention.
The characters
Cim is a mechanic-drifter who belongs nowhere by design. His crew is a chosen family held together by loyalty and small jobs — until one job stops being small. It is a gritty speculative thriller about chosen family, buried truth, and the cost of survival, and every alliance in it is fragile.
How to read it
Start with the world, then meet the crew. Follow the teaser posts for spoiler-free dispatches, and tell a friend who likes their science fiction sharp, human, and edged with dread. The launch date is still to be announced — sign up to be first to know when it goes live.
The Serpent and the Staff — a novel by Amelia Swanney. Coming soon.