Welcome to The South Hertling Chronicles, the serial novels where low fantasy meets high soap opera.
Somewhere in the depths of Australian suburbia the Handy Pavilion, a big-box hardware store drifts towards war with its rivals in the DIY Barn. Join the eccentric Pavilion employees as they live, learn, mangle the very nature of causality and love. A fantasy, superheroes, scifi, romance, suspense, comedy, Western action series, and I’ll probably get around to adding self-help, Japanese cuisine and naval history eventually. Got to hit all of those Amazon categories.
The South Hertling Chronicle is listed on the Web Fiction Guide. If you like the story, why not go over there and give me a review or an upvote on topwebfiction.com. Or if you don’t like my story, you can still go to those sites, and you’ll probably find something that’s more to your tastes. It’s all good.
Characters Cheatsheet – Contains spoilers.
Book 1 — Do It Yourself (Complete)
In the peaceful Australian suburb of South Hertling, two big-box hardware stores drift towards war — a war that may threaten everything we know about stuff, and whatnot.
Do It Yourself – Table of Contents
Book 2 – Clocks and Boxes (Complete)
Can two middle-aged shopkeepers find love the dark times following the Hardware War, without destroying all of time and space?
(Disclaimer: this one probably won’t make a lot of sense if you haven’t read Do It Yourself.)
Clocks and Boxes — Table of Contents
Book 3 – Trilobite Park (ongoing)
A new threat has arrived in South Hertling, in the form of a new aquarium full of resurrected trilobites, thanks to a scientist who was so preoccupied with whether or not they could, he didn’t stop to think whether he should bother.
(This one should be a little more stand-alone, and ought to be comprehensible to new readers)
Prelude: Agent Valerie’s Lambo
Chapter 1: Things Start Out Suboptimally
Chapter 2: The Kids are All Right?
Chapter 8: Continuing Difficulties
Chapter 10: From Worse to Worserer
Chapter 11: No Improvements Here
Chapter 14: The Trial of Metamorphosis
Chapter 16: The Doom that Came to Room 12a