Newsletter No. 1 · September 2026
The first letter from SheldonKornyk.com—about books, recovery, works in progress, and whatever happens between the first sentence and the finished story.
Welcome.
This is the first newsletter from SheldonKornyk.com, which means I probably should begin by explaining what you’re doing here.
For a long time, my writing lived almost entirely in documents on my computer or handwritten on paper. Some of those pages became novels. Others became memoir. Some are still changing faster than I can keep track of them.
Eventually there were enough stories, enough finished manuscripts, and enough new ones underway that I needed one place to bring everything together. That became SheldonKornyk.com.
And now, apparently, it has a newsletter too.
From the Writing Desk
A strange collection of worlds.
My writing currently lives in two places that could hardly look more different.
One is filled with starships, ancient technology, first contact, distant worlds, and doors that sometimes should have remained closed.
The other is much closer to home—recovery, family, rebuilding, relationships, humour, mistakes, and the ordinary work of learning how to live again.
Right Now
So, what am I working on?
Quite a bit, apparently.
The Silence We Broke
THE SILENCE WE BROKE is now complete at approximately 84,000 words.
It begins with a secret buried for forty years: an alien survivor held inside a hidden American facility. When a distress signal finally reaches home, a rescue fleet arrives and Earth is forced to answer for what happened in the dark—or face annihilation.
It is a first-contact story, but at its heart it is also about grief, responsibility, justice, retaliation, and what happens when two sides meet carrying very different versions of the same history.
Discover The Silence We Broke →
Origins of the Fold
I have also returned to the universe that began with BEYOND THE FOLD.
Four novels in the series are complete, and ORIGINS OF THE FOLD is now underway as book five.
Returning to that world has been an interesting experience. The universe is larger now. The alliances are larger. The consequences are larger. And some of the questions being raised reach much farther back than anyone in the Fold Alliance expected.
Okay… I’m Sober. Now What?
And then there is the book that is happening almost in real time.
OKAY… I’M SOBER. NOW WHAT? is about the part of recovery that comes after the dramatic part. Treatment ends. The door opens. Eventually you have to figure out groceries, appointments, family, money, responsibility, loneliness, routines, cravings, relationships—and what exactly you’re supposed to do with an ordinary Tuesday.
There is no dramatic soundtrack for most of that. Sometimes progress is simply showing up, cleaning the apartment, making dinner, answering the phone, or getting through a difficult moment without returning to the thing that nearly destroyed you.
Between the Pages
Why a newsletter?
I don’t want this to become another email that arrives because someone decided Tuesday at nine o’clock was a good time to remind you they exist.
I’d rather write when I actually have something to share.
That might be a finished manuscript, an excerpt, a publishing milestone, something unexpected happening in a work in progress, or a story from recovery that somehow managed to become funny after the fact.
Some letters will probably lean heavily toward science fiction. Others may never leave the real world. Most will likely land somewhere in between.
One final thought.
One of the strange things about writing is that so much of it happens alone.
You sit with an idea long enough that eventually there are characters, worlds, memories, mistakes, arguments, spaceships, hospital rooms, bad decisions, second chances, and occasionally something that resembles a finished book.
Then comes the slightly terrifying part where you let somebody else read it.
So if you’re here at the beginning of this newsletter, thank you for reading.
There is plenty more coming.
Sheldon
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