Detour: The golden Griddle
Why I Shifted Focus from Ace to The Golden Griddle Employee Handbook
Every story universe reach that point where it ask you to slow down and build the foundations. For me, that moment came while I was deep in From Odyssey book 1. My ideas were getting bigger with cosmic mythology, a fractured reality, and I realized I was building skyscrapers on soil I didnt fully map yet.
So instead of doing a retcon what already existed, I decided to step sideways. The Golden Griddle Employee Handbook became that space I needed. a self-contained story that lets me establish the world before Ace ever arrives on the scene.
Why the Shift Was Necessary
World-building, not rewriting
I didn’t want to erase or rewrite my boy ,Ace but I wanted to clarify the stage he was walking onto. The Handbook grounds the technology, culture, and quiet weirdness of the world so when I return to Ace, his journey feels earned and not improvised.A Future That Looks Functional but really isnt
Humanity in the Handbook is still pushing forward: same grind, new gadgets, old anxieties. The result is a future that runs on habit and denial. The tone is familiar, funny, and slightly broken but it is exactly the undercurrent I needed to define the wider series.Scale and Setting
The story begins in my home town in Western New York, a region that often gets left out of speculative fiction but carries the right mix of rust-belt realism and quiet surrealism. From here, the series can expand outward and upward: from diners and illegal pay terminals to cosmic architectures and fractured timelines.Autonomy and Completion
The Handbook stands on its own. You can read it without knowing Ace, and it still delivers a full narrative one year before his events. It’s a workplace comedy, a dystopian satire, and an introduction to how reality itself malfunctions in this universe. Its a hog pog of failed outlines and plots and characters I have already scrapped and it’s almost complete.
What Comes Next
Finishing The Golden Griddle Employee Handbook will give the entire series a stable spine: tone, geography, and better philosophical direction. When I return to Ace, his story will unfold in a world that already feels lived-in.
