TatTle 2026 #3

The newsletter for Tall and Tiny Tales

‘Precipitous Bluff’ by Steve Fendt. Pen and watercolour pencil on Bristol paper.

Hi, folks!

I thought I’d do a recording to go with this edition of TatTle. Which reminds me: if you click on that ‘Listen’ button in the app next to the title, you’ll get the horrid AI voice instead of the lovely authentic readings that Susan and I labour over every week.

So, yeah, please don’t do that. Go for the one below the picture: that’s the genuine article.

Now, where was I?

Farewell to The Devil’s Chord (ending 26 May) …

We’re coming to the end of The Devil’s Chord very soon. I wrote the text in the weeks before Christmas 2025, with November’s Mountaingrass Festival still fresh in my mind. It’s a nice feeling – and an unusual one for me – having a whole novella-length story written before I start to publish it here.

It’s also been very satisfying to revisit the story weekly, to do the recordings with Susan, record the songs and banjo tunes, and see the chapters roll out here on Substack.

It’s been a project dear to my heart, what with those banjos and all, so I hope you’ve been enjoying it.

… and hello to The Poynduc Podcast (starting 2 June)

I like to set myself new challenges with every fresh story on Substack: new themes, new locations, new voices, new storytelling techniques, new illustration styles.

And so the next story will also break new ground for me.

The Poynduc Podcast is a novella set in the magical region of Poynduc, otherwise known as Port Davey, which I wrote about in the last edition of TatTle. It’s where I spent a good part of March this year, on board the traditional wooden sailing vessel Kerrawyn.

Poynduc is the Aboriginal name for the area. It’s a labyrinth of waterways amidst heath-clad highlands – protected by its National Park status and more so by its brutal climate.

My story is a foray into speculative fiction, set in the very near future. The protagonist and narrator, Mitch, is a marine biologist setting up an environmental survey in Poynduc with his wife Maya, an electronics engineer.

However, the cosmos has other plans, and the couple soon find themselves faced with a life-or-death dilemma.

‘Why has he called it The Poynduc Podcast?’ you say. ‘That’s just going to confuse people, if it’s a novella.’

Ah, well, I’m glad you asked …

Mitch likes to plan social media posts as he paddles around the pristine waters of Poynduc, collecting samples and tending to his network of sensors. The narration of this story is a ‘sandbox’ in which he composes and rehearses the next weekly episode of his podcast, addressed to an increasingly hypothetical audience.

I’m thinking that The Poynduc Podcast will be the first of at least two, possibly three Poynduc novellas, each with its own protagonist and its own plot, set in a different time and probably told in a different narrative style. I may or may not run them consecutively on Substack.

Paying subscribers will know that a few weeks ago, I was considering a rather different Poynduc story. That idea is providing inspiration for the second novella.

Having continuity of place gives me the chance to do some extensive world-building, which I think Poynduc deserves. The novellas might eventually form a novel.

At least, that’s the plan …

Oh, yeah, the illustrations. Having explored the use of AI-generated artwork in The Devil’s Chord, I thought it would be fun to go traditional and analogue with The Poynduc Podcast, so they’ll all be pen-and-wash sketches like the one above from my sketch pad.

Yes, it really is called Precipitous Bluff. And it really does have that extraordinary profile.

Thanks for reading!