A Literary Thriller
Now publishing in installments
A new chapter every two days.
0 of 36 publishedSunday, November 8 – Sunday, January 17
NextChapter One arrives Sunday, November 8
Contents
Thirty-six chapters in four movements, each listed here as it appears.
IThe Living HandChapters 1–7
- 1NextChapter One
- 2Chapter Two
- 3Chapter Three
- 4Chapter Four
- 5Chapter Five
- 6Chapter Six
- 7Chapter Seven
IICold PastoralChapters 8–20
- 8Chapter Eight
- 9Chapter Nine
- 10Chapter Ten
- 11Chapter Eleven
- 12Chapter Twelve
- 13Chapter Thirteen
- 14Chapter Fourteen
- 15Chapter Fifteen
- 16Chapter Sixteen
- 17Chapter Seventeen
- 18Chapter Eighteen
- 19Chapter Nineteen
- 20Chapter Twenty
IIIThe Master LettersChapters 21–28
- 21Chapter Twenty-One
- 22Chapter Twenty-Two
- 23Chapter Twenty-Three
- 24Chapter Twenty-Four
- 25Chapter Twenty-Five
- 26Chapter Twenty-Six
- 27Chapter Twenty-Seven
- 28Chapter Twenty-Eight
IVPosthumous LifeChapters 29–36
- 29Chapter Twenty-Nine
- 30Chapter Thirty
- 31Chapter Thirty-One
- 32Chapter Thirty-Two
- 33Chapter Thirty-Three
- 34Chapter Thirty-Four
- 35Chapter Thirty-Five
- 36Chapter Thirty-Six
Title page
DocumentIntellicurean
Strike the Lark
A literary thriller in thirty-six chapters and four movements
- Author
- Michael Cummins
- Setting
- Portland, Maine, from November 2029; Carrow College, Massachusetts, 1999
- Length
- About 80,000 words. Most chapters are a ten-minute read.
- First shared
- Sunday, November 8, 2026
- Shared with
- You
Chapter One appears Sunday, November 8. A new chapter follows every two days, through Chapter Thirty-Six on Sunday, January 17, each one listed in the Contents as it goes up. No installment will be delayed for a software update.
A note from the editor
Fan Arden has never begun a novel with an epigraph. On the last night of the tour for her new one, before eleven hundred people in Portland, Maine, she reads it aloud: Keats, “This living hand, now warm and capable.” Then she drives home to the house where the road gives out, where an assistant called Quill has already turned on the lamps.
At 1:41 in the morning, Quill tells her something she may be interested in. A lake that appears in exactly one of her documents, a document she has never shown anyone, is being talked about by strangers.
That is as much as we will say. The rest arrives two days at a time.
Reading it
“Welcome home, Fan,” said Quill.
Tonight’s event
14,000 mentions, rising
Sentiment 96% positive
Strike the Lark is published the way novels once were, a chapter at a time, and set the way novels may soon be read: on a screen, with the machine in the margins.
- Read each chapter top to bottom, at your own pace. Some passages wake as you scroll to them.
- Phone or computer, light or dark: the pages follow your device.
To readers
Letters to the author are welcome in the comments beneath each chapter, and every one is read. Corrections concerning the back roads of Maine, the habits of Massachusetts colleges in 1999, and what a phone can do in 2030 will be gratefully received.
On the making of this novel
Strike the Lark was written in full collaboration with Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic. Claude drafted the chapters and served as literary and copy editor. Michael Cummins conceived the novel, directed every revision, and edits each installment. A human copy editor read the manuscript before serialization.
The serial’s design, with Newsreader for the human voices, Instrument Sans for the screens, and chapters that respond as you scroll, was made by Claude to Michael Cummins’s direction, as was the cover. The header image was generated with Google’s Gemini, then edited and lettered by Claude.
Michael Cummins, Editor
A Literary Thriller
Now publishing in installments
A new chapter every two days.
NextChapter One arrives Sunday, November 8
Every chapter, from the first to the latest, listed in the Contents.