Welcome to
It begins with 1973. It continues under the dome.
Substance is a house for long arcs, stories written with breath, care, and resistance.
From small-town Australia to the sealed colonies of Arrow-Far, each serial traces what it takes to survive, to belong, and to build a life that means more than the minutes we’re given.
The Worlds
A Man Of Substance
A boy at the edge of silence, caught in the weight of harm and hunger, writing his way into survival. Each month, each chapter, each year unfurls. 1974, 1975, and onward. A life drawn tight, then slowly let go.
This is not memoir, although the breath of it comes from lived weather. It is not spectacle, and never the sexualising of minors. It is witness. It is restraint. It is a record of what it takes to live through.
Here, history threads with bruised poetry. A town, a body, a silence. Australia in the seventies, the world in the 80’s and beyond. Music on the turntable. Notes in the archive. A boy who will not vanish.
One year. Then the next. Until the story is no longer about escaping gravity, but about building substance.
The Minute Economy
Under a glass dome on Arrow-Far-09, comfort costs minutes and kindness is a liability. Verity Dunn, a Coil systems tech with tidy hands and untidy principles, learns to weaponise petitions, steam, and laughter to break a ledger that prices hope.
Political heat with human tenderness. Club lights, valve etiquette, petition mirrors, and small mercies that travel faster than policy. Each chapter gives a win that feels real, at a cost that bites later.
Under the dome, minutes buy comfort. Verity buys time for everyone. The riot begins with a petition and a band night.
The planet keeps laughing. We keep paying.
Under His Name
The door bears no hours. Only the faint outline of letters, half-erased by weather and time. Inside, the air hums with current, the whisper of machines, the breath of candles, the weight of devotion. Every week, one man sits in the chair and lets memory pierce the skin. Every stroke of the needle is prayer, every drop of blood an offering.
He is not trying to forget.
He is trying to bring something back.
Under His Name is a gothic love story told through fifty-two sessions of ink and resurrection. It begins with grief and ends with transfiguration, charting the slow, luminous descent from body to myth. The marks change. The room changes. The world itself begins to listen.
And by the final hum, what remains is not a man mourning the dead, but a body that has learned to speak the language of eternity.
Together, they form a ledger of endurance, three bodies, centuries apart, learning the price of tenderness & truth.
Ink & Bone
This is not where the old drafts lived. It’s where they were held. Whispered to. Waited for.
For decades, I wrote without sharing, not because I wasn’t ready to publish, but because I wasn’t ready to let go. Ink & Bone is a slow unsealing, a lifting of the curtain. A glimpse behind the stories I carry. How they began. Why they stayed. What they meant before anyone else could read them.
Here, the first breaths of my worlds return.
Where Elias lingered long before His, Theirs, Enough.
Where Mira reached for something dark before Let the Dark Take Me had a title.
Where Gunther watched.
Where Christian breathed through graphite and grief.
Where Rowan, Marlo, Plain, and R.J. first sharpened their teeth.
This is not nostalgia. It is not memory for memory’s sake.
It is the anatomy of how stories are made, and why some take a lifetime.
Ink & Bone is the archive of becoming. The place where silence learned to speak.
What You’ll Find on Substance
🔓 FREE – The Witnesses
For those who want to glimpse the voice before stepping further in.
✍️ Ink & Bone tender, memoir-driven prose from R. J. Thornwell
🔑 PAID – The Companions
For those who choose to walk each year as it unfolds.
📖 A Man Of Substance the saga continues from 1973 onward, one month at a time
📖 The Minute Economy set beneath the domes of Arrow-Far-09.
📖 Under His Name A gothic love story of memory, ink, and resurrection.
📚 Full Archive every chapter, every note, every year collected in one place
🕯️ Reader care clear content notes, resources, and thoughtful moderation.
Who is R. J. Thornwell?
R. J. Thornwell writes in the language of witness. His work looks at boyhood, silence, and survival, not as spectacle but as truth. A veteran of uniform and order, he learned early how to hold his breath, though not how to forget. Writing became the place where memory could breathe again.
R. J. is one name among several.
Rowan Thornwell writes literary queer erotica.
Plain Smut tells unapologetically filthy stories.
Marlo Sin writes what scares and seduces.
R. J. Thornwell remembers the long ache of becoming.
Four names. One body of work.
From the literary to the filthy. Visit my author store FleshPrint for the full library, including Tethered, Bleached Palms, and more.
💌 Why subscribe?
To stay close to the ache.
To read what lingers. What bruises. What knows your name.
To remember that your pleasure is worthy of reverence.
Each week, you’ll receive writing that arrives without noise…
Ad-free, algorithm-free, and aching with intention.
Subscribers unlock the full archive, the uncensored work, and the pieces I only share with those who choose to stay.
