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hiddenschools.bsky.social
The Hidden Schools
@hiddenschools.bsky.social
220 followers 400 following 1.9K posts
I love the Craft Sequence, and you should too. Go read em. And order DEAD HAND RULE, out now!

www.thehiddenschools.com
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hiddenschools.bsky.social
A week of sun, sangria and stories awaits
View out of an aeroplane window, with the wing taking up the lower part of the frame, and a sunset beneath clouds over water filling the rest.
November 18, 2025 at 10:11 PM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
This is my love language
Screenshot of a WhatsApp conversation. The white bubble on the left reads "Please pressure me to restart Three Parts Dead when I'm home." The green bubble on the right reads "Ahaha ok"
November 13, 2025 at 8:19 PM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
And @maxgladstone.bsky.social's reaction:
Screenshot of Max Gladstone's instagram story, with a photo of an orange cocktail next to a copy of Dead Hand Rule, with a blue background. Text reads "Elias Eells made the Toxicity from Dead Hand Rule. Do you think god stays in heaven because he too lives in fear of what he has created here on earth."
November 12, 2025 at 8:44 PM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
Ohhh the books look so good together!

(Photo from dany.alvy on instagram. Alas paperback doesn't come out here until December)
Screenshot of Instagram. Post from @dany.alvy, featuring the 3 Craft Wars books (Dead Country, Wicked Problems, and Dead Hand Rule) by Max Gladstone standing up and slightly overlapping. The caption is cut off but starts "The time until the end-times is ticking away. If the world has any hope of surviving, it-"
November 3, 2025 at 5:53 PM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
Iconic. I need more from Sister Muriel.
Screenshot of an ebook page. Text reads: The ball-hammer struck ribbon and parchment with the sickening sound of nails pounded into flesh. OOOAZX$%KKKK877332332MAKE-THE-SCREAM-STOP Ash drifted from Abelard’s cigarette to the carpet. “Is that supposed to happen?” She ignored him, or tried to. MURIEL, DO YOU COPY? The carriage revolved and again the machine thrilled to life or something like it. SEVEN-SUNS-RISE-OVER-DESSICATED-PLAIN-THE-PYRAMID-BURNS-THE-WATCHERS-WITHIN-TWIST-AND-SCREAM-THEY-KILL-GODS-THERE-DONT-THEY “No,” she said. “Unless Muriel’s having a very bad day.” *** Sister Muriel’s days were never bad as such; sometimes, though, they were interesting, and what a woman in charge of maintaining the boilers and power couplings that illuminated six million people’s nights called “interesting,” others might term catastrophic
November 1, 2025 at 2:40 AM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
Launch day newsletter from @maxgladstone.bsky.social and this is such a tease for the next (and final!) book...

In the meantime, get reading DEAD HAND RULE! Then talk to me about it!
Screenshot of an email. Text reads: As for what comes next: I have a complete and detailed outline for the final book, and the outline rocks. I don’t always write with an outline, and even when I do there’s often a time when the outline needs to be re-worked¹, but I have a good feeling about this one, mostly thanks to the number of scenes I can’t wait to dig into. I’m about thirty thousand words into the draft, having had to put it on hold for a few other important projects over the last couple months. But now the road is clear.
October 28, 2025 at 7:36 PM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
meme spotted

(She meant this one, which I am not familiar with)
A classic painting, with rows of men watching as two robed men strut down an aisle that might as well be a catwalk.
October 28, 2025 at 6:15 PM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
My friend is not quite liveblogging at me, but she has sent the notes she's making on her ebook of DEAD HAND RULE and given me permission to share. No context, spoilers (mostly names) will be redacted.

First up:

once you've been killed without your knowledge, you never know what might happen
October 28, 2025 at 5:49 PM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
HAPPY DEAD HAND RULE RELEASE DAY TO ALL WHO CELEBRATE
Screenshot of the kindle app, with three book covers from the Craft Sequence showing: Dead Hand Rule, Four Roads Cross, and Wicked Problems, all by Max Gladstone.
October 28, 2025 at 12:14 AM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
Screenshot of a quote from GOOD OMENS, reading: "The ducks in St. James' Park are so used to being fed bread by secret agents meeting clandestinely that they have developed their own Pavlovian reaction. Put a St. James' Park duck in a laboratory cage and show it a picture of two men—one usually wearing a coat with a fur collar, the other something somber with a scarf—and it'll look up expectantly. The Russian cultural Attachés black bread is particularly sought after by the more discerning duck, while the head of M19's soggy Hovis with Marmite is relished by the connoisseurs."
October 25, 2025 at 4:22 PM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
Jeeves and Wooster, but make it Craft Sequence.
Three screenshots of an episode of Jeeves and Wooster. Wooster says "Yes, well I'm going back into that sitting room now, Jeeves, and I'm going to fo some pretty intense thinking." Jeeves replies "very good sir, shall I wake you at six?" Wooster agrees "er yes"
October 23, 2025 at 12:41 AM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
We get the appearance of one of my all time favourite words, omnishambles, from a character rather less angry than Malcolm.
October 21, 2025 at 4:07 PM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
Chekhov's skull.

(Unrelated, I am seeing both a Chekhov and a Shakespeare at Stratford next year. Not, however, Hamlet.)
David Tennant in a production of Hamlet, holding Yorick's skull and staring into its eye sockets.
October 21, 2025 at 1:40 PM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
There is a subplot that I can only describe as Ferris Bueller's Day Off featuring Elle Woods, with a sprinkling of Monty Python.

And a bit of necromancy on top, of course.
Poster of the film Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Screen grab of Elle Woods from Legally Blonde, bedecked in pink and holding her chihuahua as she looks up at Harvard. Screen grab from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, with a Knight pretending to ride a horse and his servant running behind him making the sound of horses hooves with coconuts.
October 21, 2025 at 12:31 PM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
Love concerts but absolutely cannot keep still. Tried sketching at the orchestra today, and you know what? Kinda pleased with these.
Rough pencil sketches of various members of the orchestra- a violinist, a double bassist, a pianist, a French jorn player, and a saxophonist.
October 15, 2025 at 10:23 PM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
I saw the Next to Normal proshot in cinemas yesterday and I remain absolutely FERAL for this show.

Had the luck of seeing it on Broadway when I was 18, but then it didnt transfer. I even looked at getting the rights to try and put it on at uni. I saw it twice in London. Now the proshot. Emosh.
Two theatre programmes and a script for the musical Next to Normal are fanned out on a rug.
September 15, 2025 at 7:23 PM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
Semi-regular reminder that the Conspiracy Wall ™ is a permanent feature of my living room, and that sometimes I forget it's in the background of a call until a colleague asks what it is, and I need to explain oh, I decorated my room with string connecting book characters, nothing abnormal here.
In the foreground, a yellow blanket lies over the corner of a yellow sofa, with a multicoloured cushion to the left. In the background, there's a colourful print of an elephant to the left, an open glass door to the right, and in the middle a diagram of red and blue string connecting characters from the Craft Sequence.
September 8, 2025 at 10:27 PM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
Honestly never had a bad view in this theatre.
Picture of the stage at the Lyric Theatre from quite high up. The stage is set for Hadestown, with musical instruments at the side, a balcony at the back, and chairs stacked on tables in the middle of the turntable
September 3, 2025 at 6:15 PM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
This is for writers of their own works, but of course I had to quote this bit from FOUR ROADS CROSS:
Yellow highlighted text from an ebook of FOUR ROADS CROSS by Max Gladstone, reading: “I need your archive. Your old records.” “I don’t have anything like that.” “Impossible.” Seril shrugged. “I was never the bookish type. I lived in shadow and claw and moonlight. My children were poets and mystics and warriors, not accountants.” “You must have left some scripture, some trail.” “Why would I need scripture? My children are living sermons.” “In case you ever wanted to prove your claim to what you own.” “If I have a thing, it is mine. What does a claim matter?” “Gods,” Tara said. “Clearly.” "You can’t possibly be this dense.” “Excuse me?”
August 24, 2025 at 5:02 PM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
Please take a moment to appreciate this frog ring. The joy it has brought me in the past hour since I found it is indescribable.
A ring shaped like a green frog on someone's finger against a terracotta background
August 18, 2025 at 4:01 PM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
My friend doodling while I talk about Craft Sequence. I give you cuntified Abelard, featuring I ❤️ AC crop top and cat eye sunglasses.
Very sketchy outline of a human torso and head. There are scribbly cat eye glasses, a smouldering cigarette, ans a crop top reading I ❤️ AC, with the heart aflame. Next to it is written "cunty Abelard"
August 13, 2025 at 5:23 PM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
Let's try this again...

Thats a good one! I'm using that quote in my next essay (or at least it's in the outline and notes)
Screenshot of a page from Max Gladstone's TWO SERPENTS RISE: A god lay in the pit. No statue, no graven idol could compare to this imperial thing. Spread-eagled, suspended in dark water, he was the size of a mountain. His massive lips, softly parted, bared teeth as large as carriages. His eyes were sails, his chest broad as a pyramid. Legs and arms thick and long as magisterium trees hung limp in the dark water that lapped at his sides. Unconscious, his silence was the silence of the sea. His slow indrawn breaths were the rolling tide, the sleeping twitch of his hand a hurricane. Eons past, in deep time, the first Quechal had looked out over the ocean, seen chaos, and given it form, and name, and life. Qet Sea-Lord was not dead, but not alive, either. His closed eyes did not move like the eyes of a dreaming man. Thick metal pipes protruded from his arms, his chest, his neck, his corded thighs, to join the hive of plumbing below the surface of the water. Silver bands circled his chest. Screenshot of text from Max Gladstone's TWO SERPENTS RISE: “I thought it would be like the Serpents,” she said. “But it’s worse.” “Yes.” “They’re beasts, however big they are. Terrors. But that’s a God. Not a half-conscious spirit like the ones we bound in Seven Leaf. Qet ruled us, once. Loved us. And we loved him.” “Yes.” He traced ripples in the water in front of them. “He’s not … dead.” “No. Not exactly.” “I heard he lived somewhere, in chains.” She sounded strangled and slow, as if every word had to be won from her throat by single combat. “ Screenshot of text from Max Gladstone's TWO SERPENTS RISE: "Those are chains,” he said, “of a sort. Qet fought the King in Red during Liberation. The Sea-Lord was broken on his own altar. But he didn’t die.” “He didn’t survive, either.” “Yes. He’s not strong enough to have a mind anymore. Flashes of awareness at most, on high holy festivals. Once in a while, he cries out, or babbles nonsense. But his power remains.” “And so you use him. In pain.” “We use what’s left of him. He was the bringer of rains from the ocean, Father of the Green Beside the Desert. We pump saltwater into his heart, and as the water runs through him, he removes the salt. He didn’t have such a physical form, before—like most gods. What you saw was a salt statue grown in his image. Pipes and pumps draw purified water back into the reservoirs of Dresediel Lex. Whenever a tap is opened or a glass raised in this city, Qet is there. Or what’s left of him.”
August 5, 2025 at 9:52 PM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
Maybe this?
Yellow highlighted text from an ebook: “Is that accident in the sand flat really … alive?” “What do you mean when you say ‘alive’? It eats. It defends itself. It’s hungry and simple and nasty, but you could say the same about a raccoon. Most accidents don’t reproduce, but some can. That’s one reason we’re reluctant to clean places like this up, even though they’re dangerous. The ethics are uncomfortable. Even for us.”
August 5, 2025 at 4:21 PM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
Snort laughed reading this in a KJ Charles book last night.

As a Scot in England, this is the perfect encapsulation of many of my colleagues' perspective of Scotland. When they find out I grew up a good four hours drive north of the border they nearly collapse in shock at the remoteness.
Screenshot of black text highlighted in yellow, reading "or do I run away to-to SCOTLAND" He said, as the most remote location he could think of"
August 4, 2025 at 7:44 PM
hiddenschools.bsky.social
In case you miss it in-thread:
White text on a black background reading "what kind of gay ass yearning nonsense IS THIS"
July 31, 2025 at 1:33 PM