So I sat down to write an article for my Substack last weekend, and I got caught up in a completely unrelated random thought.
What I meant to do was write down the idea on my notepad for later and get back to the article. But we all know that isn't what happened.

What did happen was a full-on short story project of a completely original idea that took over the next 6 days of my life.
First and Second drafts are down. Tell me hyperfocus isn't a thing...😳

Below, I'll share the synopsis with you all, an excerpt from the story, and a call for anyone interested in being a beta reader and reading the full story.

Unlike my first novel, this one clocks in at around 122 pages with a word count under 17,000. If you are interested in being a beta reader, message me on Discord!

Synopsis:

STANDARD PROCEDURE

Gustavo "Tab" Ruiz survives by staying small. In a city where corporations own the air, the food, and the genetics of every child born inside its walls, being the man nobody notices twice is the only survival strategy worth having.

It stops working the day his augmentation starts failing.

The only repair pathway runs through a missing tech specialist named Marek Vulkan - and the trail to find him is too clean, too deliberate, too perfectly designed for someone exactly like Tab. The deeper he follows it, the more the job stops looking like a job. The corporate powers running what's left of the world are older than their buildings. Their interest in Tab is older than he is.

He was hired to find one man. What he finds instead is the truth about who built the City, who built him, and why the machine was never as impersonal as he needed it to be.

Excerpt:

The Desk called at noon.

"Recovery job." The voice was filtered. It always was. Eleven years and Tab still couldn't say with certainty whether it belonged to a man or a woman or something else entirely. "Priority tier. A technical specialist named Vulkan has dropped off the network. Marek Vulkan, Vulkan Foundry, independent contractor status. Last confirmed location: industrial sub-tier, grid seven. Find him, confirm he's operational, report back."

Tab was sitting in a transit car heading toward Tier 2. He watched the city scroll past the scratched window. "Vulkan Foundry is Tier 1."

"Correct."

"My bracket is Tier 2 and below. You know that."

"The bracket is adjustable." A pause. "Given appropriate compensation."

"Who's asking?"

"Quicksilver is asking. On behalf of a client whose name isn't part of this conversation."

Tab thought about that. A Tier 1 specialist going dark was a corporate matter. Corporations had their own recovery infrastructure, their own people, their own ways of handling it quietly. Quicksilver didn't subcontract this kind of job to a Tier 2 fixer unless the corporate channels were either too visible or too compromised to use. Neither option was comfortable.

"Not interested," he said.

The number The Desk offered next was enough to cover fourteen months of contractor fees.

Tab looked at it for a moment. "I'll call you back."

Hey friends,

I want to start with a genuine thank you.

2025 has been a lot. It started out with a diagnosis of MS, which sent me into a mental spiral about my own mortality. It led me to start checking off some of my bucket list - writing my first novel - a psychological horror about someone trapped on a ship in deep space.

I poured my mental anguish, rage, and fears into my music. A pair of Act of Corrosion albums; synthwave and cyberpunk music projects; another novel project in the works... so much creativity flowing that I am thankful for.

Between life, health, and MS doing what MS does best, I’ve missed streams I wanted to be present for. Through all of that, you stayed. You supported. You checked in. You kept this space feeling like a community instead of an obligation.

I don’t take that lightly. Thank you.

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions.

I do game plans.

Resolutions pretend the body and brain will cooperate on command. A game plan accepts reality and works with it. That matters a lot when MS is part of the equation.

So here’s the current 2026 stream game plan, to the best of my ability. Not much is expected to change in relation to times, but I am adding one more stream on Thursday evenings.

• Sunday at about 2:30 pm. General hangout, community catch-up, you decide the vibe
• Wednesday at about 2:30 pm. Coaching or themed mental health discussion stream
• Thursday evening at 7:00 pm. Bonus gaming stream (most likely Elite: Dangerous)
• Friday at about 2:30 pm. General hangout and community catch-up, you decide the vibe

The goal is consistency. The reality is flexibility.

Some weeks I’ll be solid. Some weeks, my body will say “nope.” When that happens, I’m not going to disappear or push through until I crash harder. I’ll communicate clearly so nobody is left wondering.

If a stream changes, I will do my best to make sure you’ll see one of these updates in Discord.

• Still on, normal start time
• Delayed, new start time
• Body said no, rescheduling to another day
• Body said no, no makeup stream, I’m resting

No drama. No guilt. Just honesty. (Something I am still struggling with, but doing my best)

Looking ahead, I want to make this space even more community driven. More “you pick what we do.” More polls. More hanging out without everything needing to be heavy or high effort.

For patrons specifically, I want to lean into a few things more consistently.

• Patron polls for stream topics, games, and themes
• Behind-the-scenes updates on what I’m working on
• Occasional work in progress drops. Writing, music, and other chaos

And yes, the book is still happening.

Slowly. Intentionally. On my terms.

If there’s interest, I’ll start sharing small snippets or progress updates here first so you get the early look before anything goes public.

Thank you again for being here. For the patience. For the support. For understanding that some days, showing up looks different.

I’m grateful for this space and for all of you.

Tyler

As I sit here, trying to keep my thoughts collected, I’ve been testing a few new visual styles lately.
Call it self-portrait therapy through AI.
Each one feels like a version of me that exists somewhere else.
Maybe in another universe. Maybe just through the looking glass.

One’s trapped under neon rain, trying to outwalk the noise... back when I could.
One’s wired into the machine, too far gone to tell where the metal ends.
One’s staring into the void, stars bleeding through the skin.
And one’s still wearing the armor, heavier every year but still standing.

Maybe this whole set is about identity.
What you keep. What you shed. What you try to rebuild when no one’s looking, even when your fingers tremble.

These aren’t characters from anything specific.
Maybe they’re sketches for what’s coming, fragments of CINDER.exe, Fablepunk, or whatever happens when I mix sci-fi with self-reflection.

If you’ve got a favorite shot, drop a comment.
Who knows. I might build a story around it next.

— Ty

Hey friends,

Quick little update for you all—because you’re my inner circle and deserve to know what’s been going on behind the curtain.

First off: health stuff. It’s been rough. Between the pain and the fatigue, I’ve had some days where getting out of bed has been hell. I had to kybosh Sunday's stream because I could barely function and ended up napping most of the day. I’m still learning to pace myself, but it’s a grieving process too... still adjusting to what my body can and can’t do right now. I want to be honest about that, because I know many of you stick around not just for the art, but for the human behind it.

Now, on to some brighter news: the new computer is mostly alive and kicking ass!
After three straight days of updates, restarts, and more coffee than I should admit, the beast has been up and running. It’s already chewing through tasks my old machine would’ve cried about. I even managed to wrangle most of my drives back into place, though my poor music drive decided to go full diva on me. BitLocker randomly locked it, and it’s been a whole ass nightmare trying to get my decade's worth of samples and countless projects accessible again. (Don’t worry, nothing’s lost yet, I’m just re-learning the fine art of patience while tech does tech things as the lovely pace of snail shit in January.)

Here’s the part I’m excited about: once that drive is back in order, I’ve got plans to dive into some brand-new techno and hardstyle sample packs I picked up. Fresh toys, fresh sound design, and a machine that can actually keep up with me—it’s going to be fun to see what comes out of it. You’ll be the first to hear the experiments when they start rolling, naturally.

I don’t really have a “big shiny reward” to hand you this time, but I do have this: you’re the first people I’m telling all this to, and the first ones who’ll see what this new setup can really do once I start pumping music and projects through it. Patreon/Fourthwall Members get the sneak peeks before anyone else, so in my books, that’s worth more than any polished file drop.

Thanks again for being here and making all of this possible. Through the rough days and the geeky victories, your support means I can keep creating—even when life keeps throwing boss battles my way.

Stay tuned. The machine is alive, the music is coming, and I’m not done yet. 💜

— Tyler