Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 17/08/2026I hope someone enjoyed the Grebe or Water Rail their phone mistook for the pigletty sound of my wet crocs on grass this morning. #dogsofbluesky #birding #Scotland 060
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 16/08/2026"You must throw the stick. ...You may not touch the stick. You must throw the stick." -Echo #dogsofbluesky #labrador #Scotland 070
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 14/08/20261972 Norwegian Arctic. Strøm mushes his dog pack, the past mushes him, while something colder and darker than the polar night waits out on the ice. thesearedogyears.dog/anomaly.html #shortstory #booksky #horror #dogsofbluesky 040
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 22/07/2026I hurdled, she limboed. We shared the wild raspberries on the other side. #DogsOfBluesky #Nature #Scotland 070
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 19/07/2026thirty miles of good clean air between our hill and someone else's mountain tonight 010
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 30/06/2026I have a Dog Years story I want to share for Pride. Just in time! It's set a long time ago, with a wolf who finds herself drawn to strange creatures and their fire, and the pack who scent the difference in her. Part of a series, come and see. thesearedogyears.dog/crossing.html #Pridethesearedogyears.dogAurignac, Southern France · 32,000 BCE — Dog YearsA wolf at the treeline. A fire in the dark. The moment everything changed. 020
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 19/03/2026Scottish winters can be relentless. Stormy, cold, wet and dark. If you like the outdoors and you work and commute, you can end up living for the weekend. Hoping for dry weather on your day off. Then the day arrives when you realise the 9-5 has left you enough light, and the world is wide again. 2170
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 12/03/20261/2 Packless: a stray's life on the Dakota frontier. Loyal, abandoned, surviving, alone. Animal lives can be hard. Even (maybe especially) the ones who get close to us. thesearedogyears.dog/packless.htmlthesearedogyears.dogDakota Territory, USA · 1885 — Dog YearsDakota Territory, 1885. A wagon's wheel. A stray bleeding out in the grass. The sky pulling harder. 161
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 10/03/2026The stories page was a list. Functional and... fine. The problem: each story lives in a completely different time and place. A list flattens that. So I rebuilt it as a carousel: one story, one image, one world at a time. thesearedogyears.dog #webdev #booksky #amwriting #indieweb 050
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 09/03/2026Dogs have been everywhere that humans have, but didn't try to narrate it or give their hot take. They just caught the scent of joy, heard mischief on the hill a mile off, felt danger coming along their spine. That makes them the perfect comrades for adventure. Here's Echo this weekend. 293
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 07/03/2026wing's tip carves the sky mastery needs no witness the buzzard just is 100
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 06/03/2026Planning a euro trip on the ferry early June. Belgium, Netherlands, Le Touquet. Echo has opinions (pro cheese mostly), but limited geographical knowledge. What's unmissable with a dog? Anywhere we shouldn't bother with? #DogsOfBluesky #Belgium #Netherlands #France #travel 051
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 05/03/2026"The wheel catches her hindquarters and she's down hard, muzzle in the dirt, tasting dust and her own blood. She sees it coming for a good half-second, long enough to know her stiff hips won't turn, that her body has finally, decisively, failed to be fast enough." thesearedogyears.dog/packless.htmlthesearedogyears.dogDakota Territory, USA · 1885 — Dog YearsDakota Territory, 1885. A wagon's wheel. A stray bleeding out in the grass. The sky pulling harder. 100
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 04/03/2026My brain's writing a novella set in a corporate climate refuge in 2038 when I only asked it for a short story. Your dog's violated the terms of employment/residence/existence and the clock's ticking. I think it shares DNA with Terry Gilliam's Brazil, but nobody gets the luxury of going mad. #WIP 110
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 03/03/2026Honestly I wasn't setting substack alight. But since leaving and building a wee site of my own (with no idea how), I found the fringe benefit of not having to pick your aesthetic from a limited menu. The page itself becomes part of the story, not just a container for it. #indieweb #booksky 151
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 02/03/2026'Why Dogs?' #3 Writing stories across different times and places needs witnesses. Dogs are perfect for that. Here's Echo from the Fife coast this weekend, fresh from everyone's business. #DogsOfBluesky #booksky #amwriting 1110
Reposted by Ian C PeakeXPHAIEA @xphaiea.bsky.social · 27/02/2026SPRING SENTINELS 🌱🌞 Two new characters inspired by the coming of Spring, emerging new growth and bulbs flowering. Made from reclaimed/recycled materials. xphaiea.bigcartel.com Thanks for all the love and comments on these two! #xphaiea #textileartist #artdolls #magick #spring 0153
Reposted by Ian C PeakeKarmic Mishap (breaker of Law) @karmicmishap.bsky.social · 23/09/2025Ah, but the trick is I am a dragon poet. My words can destroy. #haiku #senryu #poetry 910013
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 26/02/2026"If I must be a relic in an attic, at least let the attic be my own." History is running hot in the early days of the twentieth century. In Vienna an aristocrat, his dog, and an empire are all on borrowed time. Read the story here while the Mahler plays: www.thesearedogyears.dog/herrengasse.htmlthesearedogyears.dogVienna, Austria · 1898-1914 — Dog YearsVienna, 1898-1914. A black Labrador. An empire collapsing. Loyalty until the end. 120
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 25/02/2026As Dog Years grows I'm wondering about structure. The collection spans from the Paleolithic to the far future, so should the future stories publish together as a bloc, or threaded through everything else in order of when I ship them? 😅 Genuine question. I have thoughts but I'm curious about yours. 010
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 24/02/2026I grew up on spoken word vinyl discs like HCA's Snow Queen, with voice acting, snowstorms, hoofbeats etc. That's why I'm risking hokeyness to put optional ambient sounds with the Dog Years stories. Nobody has to use them. But if they do, I hope they feel like bedtime stories for grown-ups. #indieweb 020
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 23/02/2026POV: we're in the kitchen at someone's party, you've made the mistake of asking about my writing project, and now you want to know why I couldn't have picked cats or horses instead of dogs for my 35k-year time-hopping short story thing. Buckle up. 🧵 1/4 140
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 22/02/2026Left me with a furrowed brow. I'm not sure I could've left the pipers either. 020
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 21/02/2026She never remembers to put the flowers in a vase. Of course she doesn't 🥺. Great stuff. 110
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 20/02/2026Writing a story set in a 2038 corporate enclave, with a millennial protagonist in his mid-40s. How do we think millennials are going to read as characters by then? What will the tells be: the verbal tics, the specific exhaustions, the things they couldn't quite shake? Asking for a man and his dog. 151
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 19/02/2026A boy, his grandfather, the grandfather's grandmother, and the dogs they refused to let the priests lead away. Next, Dog Years visits Bronze Age China. “The ancestors demand much... but they do not know one dog from another.” thesearedogyears.dog/shu.html #ShortStories #HistFic #DogYearsthesearedogyears.dogYellow River Valley, Shang Dynasty China · 1200 BCE — Dog YearsYellow River Valley, 1200 BCE. A grandfather's story. A ratter named Shu. The tomb that could not see. 181
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 18/02/2026Working on a story with a marriage ending- it's all terse words in the dog park at handover time. The question: how do you make it compelling/fun, and not just mean/sad? Hepburn and O'Toole have the masterclass. Goldman's words. Merciless wit. Irresistible, consummate cruelty. #WritingCommunity 160
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 17/02/2026"I went from zero website to one website in four months and it hasn't made me a penny." ...is exactly why I don't have a productivity substack going gangbusters BUT I made a cute retro little online home for my stories AND learned a bit about coding which turns out to be kinda creative. #IndieWeb 041
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 16/02/2026"Why dogs?" #1 We teamed up so long ago that we're like friends who've been close since kindergarten. There's no imagining either one without the other. We're a Gordian knot at this point. Anyway here's a pic of Echo from the weekend. #dogs #dogsofbluesky #writing #literaryfiction #history 1491
Reposted by Ian C PeakeEdmonds Scanner @edmondsscanner.bsky.social · 21/01/2026Some advice: - be kind - tip well - stay weird - festoon your antlers with moss & wildflowers - disappear into a malevolent fog at least once a month - become a haunted horror at the dark heart of the forest 415957
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 12/02/202634,000 years ago a boy sits sulking at the edge of the firelight. "The creature lifted its nose to catch the boy's scent: smoke, earth, milk-tooth breath, and something in it eased. It lowered itself to the ground, watching. Staying." Welcome to Dog Years thesearedogyears.dog/aurignacian.htmlthesearedogyears.dogAurignac, France · 32,000 BCE — Dog YearsAurignac, France, 32,000 BCE. A boy at the edge of firelight. A wolf-shape in the dark. The first choice. 020
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 11/02/2026Working on a Dog Years story with a separated couple sparring in a dog park. Shooting for Lion in Winter vicious/tender (with a dog obvs) How do you write reflex legacy care, threaded through with raw fresh spite? Fun finding out. #WritingCommunity #AmWriting #CraftNotes #Dialogue #EmotionalTruth 020
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 10/02/2026-Smaller -Slower -Weirder -Kinder That's how my stories get to be when they're relaxing in their own space, and that's why I've been learning basic code stuff and building a website for them. Someone said it feels like circa 2002 internet and I'm absolutely chuffed with that. 010
Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 09/02/2026I've been writing a collection called Dog Years. They're stories about humans and dogs across tens of thousands of years. Why? Dunno. But I'm having fun, and dogs are cool (and many other things too). Nine stories so far. More coming. They live free on my website www.thesearedogyears.dog 27527