Writing Desk · September 17, 2026
Returning to the Fold
Four completed novels were never supposed to make the universe feel finished.
When I finished LIBERATING THE FOLD, the fourth novel in the BEYOND THE FOLD series, I had reached a milestone I once wasn’t sure I would ever see: four complete novels set inside the same universe.
BEYOND THE FOLD began with a survey mission to Haven, an abandoned world filled with ancient cities, buried machinery, and a network of Roads capable of connecting worlds across impossible distances. What started as one story kept opening doors—sometimes literally—to larger questions about who built the network, who inherited it, what happened to the civilizations that depended on it, and what responsibility comes with controlling something no single world fully understands.
By the end of LIBERATING THE FOLD, the universe had grown well beyond Haven and Earth. Alliances had formed. New worlds had entered the story. Old assumptions about the Fold had been challenged. And, perhaps most importantly, there were still questions I wanted answered.
So I’m going back.
Work has now begun on ORIGINS OF THE FOLD, the fifth novel in the series.
The title says a great deal about where my attention has turned. The Fold has always carried a sense of history beneath the immediate adventure. The Roads were old long before the characters in BEYOND THE FOLD discovered what they were. The technology has rules, failures, missing pieces, and consequences that reach much farther back than anyone living in the present fully understands.
ORIGINS OF THE FOLD gives me the opportunity to push further into those questions while still keeping the story where I want it: with people facing danger, impossible choices, discovery, conflict, and the consequences of decisions made long before they arrived.
A Glimpse at Book Five
The Roads may not be the oldest thing in the Fold.
Eleven years after the Fold Alliance was formed, life around Haven has changed. Crossroads Station has become a city in orbit, ships travel between sixteen connected worlds, and a new generation has grown up believing the Roads are simply part of everyday life.
Then Hope Mercer discovers a pulse moving through systems nobody on Crossroads installed. It repeats with impossible precision, travels inward through Haven’s oldest infrastructure, and appears to be counting something the Alliance believes it already understands.
At the same time, evidence recovered far from Haven points toward a material older than the Builder technology wrapped around it—a substance found inside ancient Fold machinery, beneath Giza, and in places where unknown ships have begun harvesting it from dead worlds.
For Evan, Mara, Hope, Naomi, Gabriel, and the worlds of the Fold Alliance, the question is beginning to change. It may no longer be who built the Roads.
It may be what existed before them.
The Fold Universe
Five novels. One expanding universe.
BEYOND THE FOLD, DEFENDING THE FOLD, EXPLORING THE FOLD, and LIBERATING THE FOLD are complete. ORIGINS OF THE FOLD is now in development.
The fun part is not knowing everything yet.
One of the things I enjoy most about writing science fiction is discovering a world while I’m building it. I know where the larger story is heading, but there are always moments when a character, a piece of history, or a consequence opens a door I didn’t expect.
That’s happening again with ORIGINS OF THE FOLD.
There is a much larger history behind the network than the characters currently understand, and returning to this universe means I get to explore more of it without losing the relationships, humour, danger, and human stakes that made me want to keep writing these characters in the first place.
There is more to discover.
And apparently, I’m not quite ready to leave the Fold behind.
