Chapters Between Chapters Archives - Charles Mandrake Books

Chapters Between Chapters #011 — Labs and Agar Plates

Release Date Jan. 18, 2026 Coming 01.18.2026 Early Access for Members Only: Release Schedule We want to make sure everyone has a chance to catch up with the trio in the Chapters between Chapters. Here is how you can read this entry: Member Preview (Patreon): Starting Jamary 18th, all Patreon members will have early access to the full text of Chapter 011. If you can't wait to read it, head over to the Patreon page. Public Release: On Febuary 1, the chapter will move to the main site as a permanent addition to our Free Chapters section. In Labs and Continue reading

Greg Thomas

chapter 9 featured image for homework at mels diner

Charles

Chapters Between Chapters #009: Homework at Mel’s Diner

There is a specific kind of quiet that only exists in a diner on a school night. It’s not a true silence; it’s a hum made of clinking silverware, the sizzle of a flat-top grill, and the rhythmic scratching of pencils against paper. In East Bay, that sound has a name: Mel’s. I am excited to announce that the latest installment of our journey, Chapter 009: “Homework at Mel’s,” is ready for release. For those who have been traveling with us Across the Portal in the jagged, unpredictable landscape of Skelderheim, this chapter might feel like a sharp turn. But Continue reading

Charles

Anna

Chapters Between Chapters #010 – You Only Can Do What You Do

Entry #010 - You Only Can Do What You Do If you have ever walked into a room and felt it in your shoulders before anyone said a word, you already understand what this entry is about. Some places make people decide fast. Some people decide faster. They look at you, they take one detail, and they fill in the rest on their own. Sometimes it is flattering. Sometimes it is unfair. Sometimes it is dangerous. Most of the time, it is not about you at all. It is about what they need you to be in their head so Continue reading

Anna

Chapter Between Chapters #008 – Faith and Belief

Release Date Jan. 04, 2026 Read the Story Early Access for Members Only: Skelderheim Journal #008 - Faith and Belief The tavern was already quiet when the day finally caught up with me. Emera was wiping down the last table, moving the way someone does when the work is finished but the thinking is not. I sat for a moment longer than I meant to, listening to the room settle and letting the warmth stay where it had landed. Some days leave you with answers.Some days leave you with better questions. This was the second kind. What Emera shared with Continue reading

Anna

Charles

Chapters Between Chapters #007 – The Merchant’s Corridor

Entry #007 - The Merchant's Corridor I started weekly lessons at the Skelderheim library. It feels like sitting down in a good class for the first time. You show up with a vague idea of what you want to learn, and then someone who actually knows the subject hands you the right starting point. You leave with your head full, and you realize how much you did not know five minutes earlier. The Librarian agreed to teach me. He does not waste time. He shows up when he says he will, brings the right books, and speaks in plain terms. Continue reading

Charles

Ira Finch

Chapters Between Chapters #006 – The Things I carry

After hours at Dockside, the yard lights are off and the tide is dropping, but Finch keeps a burner going on the dock. He feeds Charles, Anna, and Todd mackerel fresh off the pier with vegetables Anna grabbed from Pier Street Market, and he talks the way he rarely does when the shop is open. Finch starts in Vietnam, with a woman named Thuy and a memory that still catches on the way out. Then the story turns hard: a busted op, over half his unit gone, the rest scattered, and Finch alone with a satchel and the kind of Continue reading

Ira Finch

Myles Pibbles

Chapters Between Chapters #005 – A Lesson In Business and Finances

Business is work, risk, and numbers learning to live on a page together. That is what I am trying to teach the three of them. Most people think profit and loss belongs to merchants and shipowners. They picture crates in a warehouse, fees at the dock, wages in calloused hands. That is part of it. A ledger can tell me whether my warehouse in Skelderheim is carrying its own weight or quietly sinking under the cost of rope, wages, and lamp oil. Without that, I would only be guessing, the same way a fisherman who never counts his fuel or Continue reading

Myles Pibbles

picture of a ink pen and ink on parchment paper

Anna

Chapters Between Chapters #004 – Quill And Ink

Pens at home never asked much from me. You pick one up, you scribble, the ink forgives you. In Skelderheim, the librarian puts a quill in my hand and suddenly every tremor in my fingers, every shortcut in my thinking, shows on the page. Izrah stands guard over a table of parchment and ink like it’s a battlefield, and the librarian tells me to start with my own name, then the other name this city has given me. This entry is about learning to write in a world where words are treated like permanent records instead of notes in a Continue reading

Anna

Todd

Chapters Between Chapters #003 – Fishing with Finch

Finch once signed me onto a fishing boat for three days of hard work and “deck rate” pay. At the time it felt like a one-off job: cutting bait, hauling traps, trying not to lose my breakfast over the rail while Ray watched to see if I was worth the space on his deck. I thought I was just learning how to stand steady on a moving boat and coil rope the way Finch liked it. This journal entry is me looking back at that trip from the far side of the portal, realizing how much of Skelderheim’s Dock Ward Continue reading

Todd

Charles

Chapters Between Chapters #002 – Food, Windows, and the People at the Table

I kept trying to write this one like one of Anna’s field reports and it kept breaking on me. Meals don’t fit into “conditions, actions, results.” They just happen, and then months later you still remember the chipped bowls at Mel’s, the tavern stew in the Market Ward, the buns at Klebbers, and who was across the table when you ate them. This entry is me tracking the bowls and cups that stuck: chowder in East Bay when the observatory stopped being my private project, stew in Skelderheim when my body finally believed that world could feed us, coffee in Continue reading

Charles

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