The HRP Turns One — and A Forest Sound You Can’t Place

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Hey everyone!

Writing to you from our beautiful balcony in Berlin Adlershof, surrounded by flowers and trees humming in the late-summer sun. Gotta enjoy the warm days before fall rolls in… and with it, a bunch of book news (and a micro story at the end!).

HRP turns one 🎂

October 19th marks the one-year anniversary of The Human Relief Project, and one year of me being a published writer. Woohoo! To celebrate:

I’m refreshing the cover, folding in what I’ve learned this past year and setting the stage for my future author style.

I’m releasing a hardcover edition.

I’m doing a small website overhaul alongside it.

And I’ll use this moment to make some noise about The Human Relief Project and reach new readers.

Of course, subscribers here will be the first to see the new cover. 🙂

Birthright : choosing the indie path

My three-month literary-agent window closed with rejections and silence. That’s okay — I was prepared for it (maybe even a little glad, since it means I won’t have to wait years for Birthright to come out 😉).

Hybrid publishing was another option, but after speaking to a few firms and reviewing offers, I’ve decided to self-publish rather than go hybrid. Why:

I can put more of the budget into the work itself (line editing, cover and layout design, launch promotion) instead of a package fee.

I want more hands-on involvement to keep tight control over quality and build long-term partnerships: bookstore outreach, promotional work, and creator collaborations.

I’ll still work with a small team of pros: a copy editor, a cover designer, and a layout designer.

Launch is locked for Q1 2026 🚀 I’ll share the exact date once a couple of pieces click into place. This one should be a (hopefully!) big step up from the HRP launch: higher production quality, hardcover from day one, audiobook from day one, and a real push to get it into bookstores.

Book 3: SAINT

Time to let you in on a little secret: the new book’s working title is SAINT 😌. I’ve just finished the plot revision, and work on the manuscript will kick off next week. It’s the most challenging project I’ve attempted so far. Very near-future, research-heavy, subtle yet complex worldbuilding, messy human stakes, and characters and a story I can’t stop thinking about — I’m sooo excited for it.

If momentum holds (while juggling the HRP anniversary, Birthright prep, and, yes, the day job), I’m hoping for a first full draft toward year’s end 🤞

Story time (with Ursula)

In August, I ran myself through writing exercises from Ursula K. Le Guin’s Steering the Craft. She’s one of my favorite sci-fi authors, and I highly recommend her books — start with The Dispossessed if you haven’t read one of hers. You’ll think about anarchy in ways you never have before.

Her writing exercises were just as eye-opening as her books and helped me level up my craft as a fiction writer. Over the next few newsletters I’ll share some raw practice pieces. Today it’s Exercise One, which leans into sound: rhythm, noise, breath on the page. I wrote two short pieces; here’s Part I.

A Forest Sound You Can’t Place

Arthur brushed a pine branch away from his face, the dark-green needles gently scratching the back of his hand like the nails of an affectionate lover, and almost stumbled over Jess who was kneeling on the forest floor, staring into the clearing ahead. He was about to reprimand her for choosing such an unfortunate spot to stop, but before the lecture he’d given to countless students on research trips could leave his mouth, the tension in her body caught his attention.

Something wasn’t right.

Jess slowly turned her head and smiled at her father over her left shoulder, a childish grin running ear to ear. The silence around them was so absolute he could have heard a pine needle drop. Yet it wasn’t a needle that broke the hush but a muffled nnnghh that sounded both foreign and familiar. Jess’s wide eyes locked on him for a heartbeat, then flicked right, and his gaze followed her lead to the center of the clearing.

Arthur held his breath.

He knew there were wild ones roaming these parts of Canada now, but he’d never seen one in the wilderness — let alone a cow and her calf. The scene was so picturesque one could think the mother and her young were posing. Her head was held high, towering five meters above the ground where a steady breeze ruffled her hair; the late-morning sun bathed her entire body, every shade of brown in her deep fur vibrating in the bright light, sharply contrasted with the ebony of her massive tusks. The calf’s head barely reached the mother’s belly, and it was fully covered by her shade, as if the sun were something to be protected from. While the little one’s trunk kept moving, busily grabbing clumps of tall grass and shoveling them into its wide-open mouth, the mother stood frozen, alert to dangers lurking in the forest’s depth.

This most majestic of mammals had returned to the world with none of its former foes left. The great beast’s early memories — yes, they remember — knew no discomfort, no pain, no fear. In her rebirth grounds there had been nothing to be afraid of: food and water had been plentiful, the calves safe, the herd growing, and despite the usual skirmishes between the young bulls, it had been a time of bliss and peace. Yet one day a swarm of gray mosquitoes the size of birds, their wings flashing in the sun and their skin tougher than the hardest rock, had appeared in the herd’s paradise. After circling over them for mere seconds, they had descended and stung one tribe member after the other.

If she knew today’s world, if she spoke our language, she would tell us of the terror, of the sound of bone drills all around her that still haunted her at night. The mother, the herd’s matriarch, had been the last to be stung, and she had to watch in horror as her tribe, one after another, sank to the ground and slipped into a deep sleep. When she herself, after first swooshing one of the mosquitoes away with her tail, its impact against her skin surprisingly painful, had finally found herself melting to the ground with her lids closing, she saw a group of strange two-legged monkeys on the horizon, walking toward the herd across the far plain.

Her instincts told her these monkeys were behind the mosquitoes, and when she awoke again in the Canadian wilderness, it was this instinctual certainty that told her to steer clear of any two-legged monkeys, should they ever cross her path again.

Even without packs of Smilodons roaming, Earth was not a safe place for mammoths.

This piece was inspired by the visionary work of Colossal Biosciences.

Thanks for reading and for being here. I’m curious: what are you most excited about right now? The new HRP cover and hardcover? Birthright launching in Q1 2026? Or SAINT taking shape? And how did the little writing experiment land for you?

Hit reply and tell me.

Until next time, keep reading (or listening),
Max

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