Welcome to the New Year (and a New 5AM StoryTalk)!

A reintroduction to this arts newsletter and a preview of the exciting cha-cha-cha-changes coming its way in 2025

Happy New Year, my friends. I hope the holidays treated you and yours as well as they did my family!

Now that 2025 is upon us, I wanted to take this opportunity to do two things:

The first, introduce myself to relative newcomers to 5AM StoryTalk and, for regular readers, reboot our relationship a bit given how I feel my Substack’s mission has evolved over the past year — both in terms of what I’m getting out of it and what I hope you’re getting out of it.

The second thing I want to do today is tell you about some exciting changes to this newsletter, as well as what else you can expect from it during the coming year. I think free subscribers are going to find plenty of reasons to upgrade their memberships.

“THEY CALL ME MR. HADDON.”

Well, not really. Haddon is a nom de plume, but it’s what most people have called me for two decades now. You can call me Cole.

I’m a full-time screenwriter and novelist. I’ve sold far more film and TV projects than most people I know, but I’ve had far fewer projects produced than most people I know. It’s a mystery of the business, but, hey, I pay my bills and I love what I do. You may have seen my TV series “Dracula” (2013), which I’ve written quite a bit about here; if you like horror stories, dive in. My debut novel Psalms for the End of the World was published in 2022 by Headline Books and Hachette Australia; readers and critics alike seem to like it, which is nice. Dark Horse Entertainment, amongst others, have published my graphic novels.

Long story short: the arts have been very good to me.

WHAT IS 5AM STORYTALK?

5AM StoryTalk is a place to talk about stories in all their forms, the craft that goes into them, and the role art plays in our lives. Film, novels and short stories, television, music, fine art, comic books – it’s all on the table here.

As for its name, it’s inspired by my favorite part of long nights out with friends in high school, but especially at university. Around 5AM, we would roll up to a diner — in Detroit, this often meant Coney Islands — and order plates of greasy food and, of course, coffee. While I wasn’t a big drinker even back then, my friends were. Still drunk, we’d dive into lively debates about whatever art we were most excited by that week. We’d spend hours and hours of our lives on this kind of late-night/early-morning discourse every month.

5AM StoryTalk is an attempt to recapture some of that magic!

But that said, this Substack has evolved since it was launched and, I expect, will continue to do so as more time passes. I’ve struggled with how to articulate what I mean by this, but I do know the change started when I stopped hiding my own struggles with enduring the 21st century, middle age, anxiety — you get it.

In response to this honesty, I began to receive regular messages from my readers telling me what my openness had meant to them. I made people feel seen, validated, less crazy on their own creative and personal journeys. My wife reads some of these messages, your notes, your comments and gets misty over them. I don’t think she expected anything I wrote here to impact anyone that much.

The truth is, neither did I.

Over time, I’ve leaned more into this role, or whatever you want to call it, here at Substack. First and foremost, I am here to explore our culture through the lens of art and storytelling, yes, but I’m also here, as it turns out, to defiantly add something positive and even beautiful to your lives in this increasingly shitty world — hence why I began publishing “The Search for Beautiful Things (and Creative Inspiration)”.

There’s enough ugliness and hatefulness, isn’t there? That’s why I tolerate neither at 5AM StoryTalk, even in how people in my Notes and comments can discuss art. We celebrate what we love here; trolls determined to spend all their time shitting on others’ work and joy are not tolerated for long.

As you continue to read — especially the next two sections — bear in mind how we’ve impacted each other in this conversation we’ve all been having here. How you’ve impacted me has certainly influenced some of the changes to this Substack in 2025. Thank you for your part in that.

WHAT I WANT YOU TO TAKE FROM 5AM STORYTALK

I want you to enjoy art. No, I want you to fucking love it. I want you to love it as much as I do.

I want you to learn how to better appreciate art and, in turn, better understand our culture.

If you aspire to create art in any way or are already somewhere on that journey, I want you to hear about, be challenged by, and learn from others about how they create.

And if you hope to one day earn an income from your art, I hope to provide you some lessons to help you protect your mental health, secure your financial future, and retain as much creative integrity as possible along the way.

The goal is never to tell you how to do anything, though sometimes language does lean that way because talking about art can sometimes sound like instruction. The real ambition is to provide you with tools and real-world parables about all things related to art and let you take from them whatever is appropriate to you.

With any luck, you’ll be inspired by all of this wherever you are on your journey. You should also feel supported by me, the artists I invite to join me at 5AM StoryTalk, and the readers who are part of this community we’re building here.

CHA-CHA-CHA-CHANGES

The reality is, I love this Substack and I love spending time with all of you. The reality also is, I need to be stricter with the time I spend here (I tend to get carried away, as you’ve probably noticed) and I need to mix things up to keep this creative endeavor exciting for me.

For example, my artist-on-artist conversations. These are a foundational part of 5AM StoryTalk, sure, but they require a profound amount of work to set up, research, conduct, and then write. I can’t keep doing that three to four times a month without fatigue setting in and questions starting to feel like retreads.

So, the solution is we’re going to cut back to two written feature interviews…but don’t worry, that doesn’t mean you’ll get less time with amazing filmmakers, authors, and comic book artists. I’m adding video conversations into the line-up, at least one a month. I’ll be chatting with one or more brilliant minds about a variety of creative subjects. Seriously, I have some really cool ideas about what I can do in this format.

Oh, and in a spin on the past eighteen months of 5AM StoryTalk, I’ll also be inviting top film/TV producers, studio execs, and agents, book editors, and comic book publishers to discuss their industries with me, how you can break into and conquer them, and why I’m their favorite screenwriter/novelist/comic book writer. (Just kidding about that last one…maybe.) For example — as long as scheduling holds — I’ll be having a three-way chat in February by Oscar-winning producer Blye Pagon Faust (Spotlight) and Erica Lee (producer, John Wick series). While I’m generally averse to anything that smacks of how-to, it’s beginning to feel unfair to not share broader insights about how to navigate the professional side of these businesses.

Lastly, I’m also shutting down some monthly features that just weren’t working for me and, I think, weren’t exciting readers as much as I hoped. “Coffee Reading”, “Double Features”, and “Reflections” are all going away; they might come back at some later date, who knows?

In their place, I’m going to focus on things that will make me happy: the “In Search of Beautiful Things (and Creative Inspiration)” photo essay series, as well as a brand-new feature called “Songs to Live By” that I’m very excited about. Once a month for all of 2025, I will explore a different song about our struggle to lead good and meaningful lives in a confusing, increasingly grim modern world. I’m going to do this by subjectively dramatizing them for you, which will make more sense once the first one shows up in your inbox in a few weeks.

THE NEW PUBLISHING SCHEDULE

Here is what you can expect in 2025. In all cases, morning means 9am PST.

Monday morning: Feature article available to all subscribers. These will be a mix of deep dives into pieces of art (typically a film or TV series), personal essays about culture, art, and life, and educational resources for artists.

Wednesday morning: Feature article exclusive to paid subscribers. This will be a mix of artist-on-artist conversations, video interviews, and other unique interrogations of popular art.

Friday morning: Weekly Question, in which I pose an arts question for us all to discuss. Available to all subscribers. This is the beating heart of the 5AM StoryTalk community, I think.

First Saturday of the month: “In Search of Beautiful Things (and Creative Inspiration”, a community photo essay by the readers of 5AM StoryTalk and curated by me. Available to all subscribers.

Third Saturday of the month: “Songs to Live By”. This new feature, available to all subscribers, will run throughout 2025.

Occasional Saturdays: Bonus issues of 5AM StoryTalk might show up once every couple of months for free and/or paid subscribers. If surplus inspiration strikes, this is how I will share it with you.

Once a month: I will host a Chat exclusive to paid subscribers during which you can ask me anything about art and I will do my best to answer you. I’ll do my best to invite an artist-friend along for each of these, so you can ask them questions, too. For example, in November I was joined by NY Times bestselling crime author and comic book writer Duane Swierczynski and this past month I was joined by filmmaker Christopher B. Derrick who was a writer on Seasons 2 and 3 of “Picard” and the upcoming season of “Magic: The Gathering”.

Every day on Notes: I will continue to share with you my collection of photographs of artists, quotes about creativity from artists I think worth your consideration, my thoughts on cultural developments, and other opinions about the world and humanity through the lens of pop culture.

WHAT COMES NEXT

The first three months are shaping up to be an exciting time at 5AM StoryTalk.

Amongst the deep-dives-into-art features coming to your way, I’ll be joined by an avalanche of brilliant filmmakers, authors, and comic book creators. First up is Zak Penn, whose screenwriting credits include Last Action Hero, X2, Behind Enemy Lines, The Incredible Hulk, The Avengers, Ready Player One, Free Guy, and many more. He’ll be followed by Brian Duffield, whose screenwriting credits include The Divergent Series: Insurgent, The Babysitter, Underwater, and Love and Monsters, he created the TV series “Skull Island”, and he wrote and directed Spontaneous and No One Will Save You.

HOW YOU CAN BECOME PART OF THE CONVERSATION

Easy. Just become a free subscriber.

Or, even better, become a paid subscriber. This is the best way to support my writing here, but especially the time, effort, and care I put into them. I like to think I get you some pretty intimate access to some of our best working artists, especially filmmakers. I can do more of that with the time your paid subscriptions provide, it’s really that simple.

If you’d like to support 5AM StoryTalk, but aren’t interested in an ongoing subscription, you can always “buy me a coffee” (a one-time gift) here at this tab. This option has the advantage of costing me much less in fees than I pay here at Substack, which I very much appreciate.

And, of course, another way to support me is to just share my articles here or elsewhere on social media. The more people we can get to join this conversation, the better. I know this sounds like base self-promotion, but if you’re a regular 5AM StoryTalk reader, tell me the experience today, with a more robust readership, isn’t dramatically better than it was a year ago.

We’re all in this together, as I like to say here.

IN CLOSING

You’re all amazing. Thank you for being here. Thank you for loving art as much as I do. And thank you for being part of 5AM StoryTalk!