The Mouth Of Winter is open (and I'm slightly terrified)
So it's December 1st and that means it's time for my annual advent calendar release.
This is year five. I've been doing this since 2021, releasing something new every day from December 1st through the 25th. Usually it's serialised TTRPG adventures released a piece at a time. You can grab all of those in a bundle here if you're interested.
But this year I'm doing something different. This year it's fiction.
What's The Mouth Of Winter?
It's a 25-chapter dark fantasy novella that I've been writing for the past couple of months. One chapter releases every day until Christmas. Here's the pitch:
A mercenary company takes a winter contract to guard a remote monastery. They arrive just in time to watch thirty prisoners escape into a blizzard, and they efficiently cut them down. Turns out those prisoners were the annual sacrifice to the thing living at the bottom of a shaft beneath the monastery. Now that thing is waking up, and it's very, very hungry.
It's grimdark. It's uncomfortable. I'm leaning into the violence that I really crave from standalone dungeon fantasy. There are no good choices, only bad ones and worse ones. Everyone slowly becomes a villain. The monster, it turns out, is probably the most reasonable character.
You know, Christmas stuff.
Why Fiction Instead of Games?
Honestly? Because that's where the work has been pulling me for years now. Each year the advent calendars have gotten more story-focused and less game-focused. This year I finally stopped fighting it and just wrote the story I actually wanted to write. It turns out when you give yourself permission to follow where your creative practice is leading instead of where you think it should go, you end up somewhere interesting. Who knew.
How Do I Read It?
Chapter 1 is live right now at loottheroom.itch.io/advent2025. New chapters drop every morning through December 25th. The first chapter is available as a free demo, and then it's £3.99 for the whole thing. Or more, if you're feeling generous.
If you're a patron over on my Patreon, there's a prologue up there now that gives you a bit more context on the world and sets up some of the backstory. Plus there'll be bonus posts throughout the month - behind the scenes stuff, deleted scenes, that sort of thing.
I'm doing that thing where I've made something and now I'm releasing it into the world and trying not to think too hard about whether people will like it or not. Chapter 1 is up. Come read about mercenaries making terrible decisions on a frozen mountain. See you tomorrow for Chapter 2.