A beginner’s guide to the Maggieverse

It’s no secret that the majority of my fiction takes place in a loosely connected shared universe, and as said connections come more into focus with each new book I get more questions about what counts as part of the mythology, what the reading order is, and exactly how they all connect.
 
So I thought I’d write a bit of an explanation.
 
Firstly, while I do catch myself referring to this as the ‘Maggieverse’, including in the title of this blog, there’s nothing really meaningful or significant in that. My books (and other work, we’ll get to that), don’t form some kind of Marvel-esque interconnected story where each instalment is to some degree needed to understand the inevitable Avengers style team up at the end. There’s no grand plan or intended culmination here. I started linking my stories and crossing over characters because I thought it was fun and I kept doing it because I liked the storytelling opportunities it afforded. For all intents and purposes we’re talking about a bunch of standalone stories that have a few recurring characters and plot threads running through them. You don’t need to have read The Hunted to read The Hitchhiker, or The Caretaker to read next year’s High-Rise. But if you are familiar with several of them you’ll have a different experience when it comes to the crossovers or easter eggs. It’s up to you how much that kind of thing matters to you.
 
But for the curious, here is what you might want to know about those connections.
 
The Maggieverse essentially encompasses any work I’ve done in the crime/thriller sphere since 2020. It currently includes three novels, two audio dramas and a web series. In the next year it will add another novel, another audio drama and a short film. Effectively, it’s everything I’ve written except the Boone Shepard and Andromache Peters books, which take place in their own shared universe that has nothing to do with this one.
 
There are, to date, four main plot threads that run through the Maggieverse. The first is the ongoing hunt of fugitive drafter Maggie for her long-lost mother, which takes centre stage in The Hunted and The Inheritance. The second involves the complicated relationship between rogue ex-cop Jack Carlin and his estranged daughter Morgan – this kicked off in my in 2020 lockdown web-series The Pact, was built out more in audio drama The Consequence, and will wrap up in next year’s action/thriller novel High-Rise.
 
The third involves the ongoing rampage of an avuncular serial killer whose M.O is finding vulnerable, desperate people and subjecting them to his warped version of a self-help programme. This story plays out across audio drama (and soon to be novel) The Hitchhiker, last year’s The Caretaker, and will conclude in audio drama The Lodger later this year. Maggie and Jack Carlin also feature prominently in some of these stories.
 
The final thread is the least explored but the biggest. It runs through the background of The Consequence and The Caretaker, and involves a Machiavellian power struggle over the Melbourne criminal underworld centred around ruthless but charismatic drug dealer Dominic Ford and his various rivals and allies. But so far I’ve only scratched the surface of that one.  
 
As you can see, there aren’t exactly clear delineations between all of these plotlines. Yes, you can loosely characterise certain stories as belonging mostly to one corner of the universe, but in truth plot points and characters cross over so much that it’s a bit murkier than that. As I’ve said before, my philosophy has long been that every one of these stories needs to work as both the first and last time you might see these characters, as a standalone work rather than part of a greater whole. This is partly for artistic reasons, partly for pragmatic ones. I hate the idea of anything I write being a piece of a puzzle rather than a complete work in its own right, but also I need to ensure that if story X flops terribly then I haven’t left a heap of unsatisfying loose ends that might never be resolved.
 
There are a bunch of Maggie and Jack Carlin short stories I’ve written that fall into this continuity but don’t have any huge impact on overall plotlines. The same goes for The Retirement Plan, a short film I wrote which releases later this year and features Jack. It’s 100% part of the universe and if you like the character you’ll probably enjoy it, but it’s not his story, isn’t crucial to his journey and is in no way intended solely for those already familiar with him. Then there’s The True Colour of a Little White Lie, which technically takes place in the same universe but given it’s a teen coming of age dramedy, it includes no major cameos from or references to my various psychopaths and antiheroes.
 
I do maintain a pretty detailed timeline of what takes place when. Chronologically, the order of the most pertinent stories written so far goes: The Pact, The Consequence, The Hunted, The Inheritance, The Hitchhiker, The Caretaker, The Lodger, High-Rise.
 
I don’t want to create the perception that everything I write for adults will further this continuity. For example, I’m currently working on a new crime novel idea that will, like True Colour, take place in the Maggieverse but have no bearing on ongoing storylines and feature no familiar characters. But keeping everything under the same narrative umbrella means I have an increasingly rich arsenal of characters and storylines to draw on when it comes to anything new I begin to develop. That’s not to say I always will, but it’s good to know I can.
 
Again, and I can’t stress this enough, there is no grand plan. It doesn’t really matter what order you consume the stories in, if you read one or three or skip a couple that aren’t for you. There’s no homework required here. Just some links that, if you like my stuff, might be fun. 

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