July 2026 marks 5 years since the first Orpheus Files book dropped, 2 years since the final book dropped and the point where real life catches up to the fictional timeline of the books. So, it feels like the perfect time to reflect a bit on where this series has taken me.
I published Resonance in June 2021 after working on it solidly since 2019. I’d just started a new part-time job as a marketing assistant for an online furniture retailer, and my new colleagues were all, very kindly, incredibly enthusiastic about it when they learned of its publication. The Directors of the company even bought copies (nothing like your bosses reading your first full-length novel for a bit of the ol’ crippling self-doubt). The question I got asked the most was: “What’s it about?”
Trying to explain The Orpheus Files is as hard now as it was then. “It’s Sci-Fi but not really hard-core Sci-Fi,” I’d tell them, “since there are no aliens and most of it takes place in Bristol.” “In Bristol?!” They’d say incredulously, because Bristol is not generally renowned for its sci-fi goings on (unless you count Turbo Island on a Friday night). I’d remind them that Dr Who was filmed here for years. The original Being Human, too. But it’s not the sort of city most people equate with mystical quantum woo-woo. Food, music, hot air balloons, Wallace and Gromit, sure. And yet there’s something about this city that has a sort of undercurrent to it, a pulse. Bristol is a city that vibrates with its sounds and its art, its past and its future all at once. And maybe moving here was one of the very first seeds planted for what would grow into The Orpheus Files.
Bristol, City of A Thousand Bikes. (Harry Kessell via Unsplash)
And here we are, 5 years later with the trilogy now complete, and it’s still a weird sort-of-sci-fi series set in Bristol. And Wiltshire, and London. And Malta and California and Arizona and a bunch of other places in between. And it’s about music, and the universe and quantum physics. And it’s a love story and a ghost story and a found family story, and it’s a thriller and a mystery and… you get the idea. The Orpheus Files has always struggled to be just one thing, and I think that says a lot about me.
Research Rabbit Holes
Writing this series taught me so much. Not just from the sheer amount of research I did, though the research is probably still my favourite part of the whole process. The joy of writing a story that doesn’t quite know what genre it’s meant to sit in means no topic is out of bounds.
Music is such a huge part of Orpheus, so of course, I learnt about music theory and why music makes us feel so much. Then there was all the rock history/mythology and which musicians reportedly sold their souls. The quantum physics blew my tender little brain and I needed a lay down after trying to understand what fractals are. I learned about Neolithic religions, Deaf musicians, spooky urban legends about Black Eyed Children and The Hat Man, and archetypes in the Collective Unconscious.
I watched David Lynch lectures on Transcendentalism, and deep dives into the history of Hell Fire clubs, true crime podcasts into cults, and video essays about the strange, apparently immortal Count of St. Germain, an alchemist and musician described as “otherworldly and hypnotic”, and who was friends with both Casanova and Mozart. There were so many little scientific tidbits (often theoretical and probably grossly misunderstood by me) along with a ton of fun pseudoscience and general Weird Shit that made its way into the folds of this story. Everything I researched for this series was fascinating.
The Count of St. Germain, the inspiration for the original Vortex-Born (public domain)
I also think the (probably neurodivergent levels) of curiosity that led me down all these research rabbit holes created in me a deeper love for the world, the universe, and for people. I don’t think you can be that curious and not love the places all those things come from. Even if that’s weird ghost hunting videos on YouTube at 3am.
Upping My Game As A Writer
I learned a lot about the skills and art of writing, too. This was the biggest creative writing project I’d ever undertaken, and it was a challenge. Not just the vast amount of notes I made, wrangling the scope and plot into something that made sense (hopefully); it stretched my skills as a writer. Trying to convey so many big ideas and small personal emotional points wasn’t easy. Looking back now, I see things I think are messy, especially in the first book. There are sentences I’d change, sections I’d write differently, but I’ve decided to draw a line under it – it’s done and out of my hands now. The series is a snapshot of who I was during each book.
“The Future Writer” (public domain)
Learning About Myself
I don’t think it’s far-fetched to say that the writing of Orpheus Files changed my outlook on the world, my understanding of my place in it, and how I move through it. I knew I wanted to write about how music connects us, but I’ve come out of the other side of this series with a firm belief in the interconnectivity of all things and how a small action can, butterfly-effect style, change things on a much larger scale.
It’s probably cliché as hell, but it’s true that I have unravelled so much of myself through the writing of Orpheus. These characters helped me peer into a lot of dusty corners of myself. And, amazingly, I’m reflecting on how this story has brought people into my life who have become great friends. What a gift to find community from sharing a story about how connected everything is.
Perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned through the writing of and subsequent understanding of what The Orpheus Files means to me is that this story, underneath it all, is a big part of how I’ve processed my dad’s death. I know this is maybe a little too “it’s the friends we make along the way,” but I didn’t know this when I started out writing the series; I discovered it only during Book 3, quite suddenly: “Ohhh. This is about Dead Dad stuff, isn’t it? Shit.” Writing this series has truly been about figuring myself out in the aftermath of loss. Sure, it’s about music, and the universe and quantum physics and love and all that. But it’s also about how our memories are ghosts and how we haunt ourselves, how nothing is ever really forgotten; it just changes into something new.