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This post is purely to announce that the book is out today. No deep reflections here. So feel free to switch directly into shopping gear.

Rendering Humanity - Poetry Collection

The book moves deeper into the Hush Halo universe. Into identity, optimization, emotional control, artificial clarity, and that nagging feeling that under all this man-made perfection, something feels simply, well, wrong.

The narrator voice became more personal this time. I feel that in Rendering Humanity my poetry is less about observing the world from distance and more living inside the cracks of it. Read more about this book, and the process of making it:

Buy from Amazon (printed)

Buy an eBook

Please, Remember to Review

I would love to hear your honest feedback on Amazon, on Goodreads and on Hush Halo’s Readers Corner.

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian fantasy poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with its own immersive soundscape. More background: Square One.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

🖤 Always happy to hear your thoughts. ↓

In this post I’m opening up how I design my poetry books beyond the writing itself. Covers, structure, recurring elements, visuals, and the small decisions that turn a collection into something you can actually experience.

First things first. My new book Rendering Humanity is now in Amazon’s publishing queue. Release date is Tuesday, May 12. [AMAZON]

A Book to Treasure

I’ve been deep in something a bit more concrete lately. Writing and editing, for sure, but also shaping the book as an object. The cover, the structure, the contents. The point where this stops being just text and becomes something to hold and treasure.

The Cover

I feel, that the cover is often the hardest decision, especially with poetry. A novel can lean on story, characters, and setting. A poetry book has to signal tone, not plot. It has to invite without explaining too much.

I feel like I made all the hard decisions with my first book. Now, with the second one, I more or less build on those first choices. Good or bad.

What the Flower?!

On Rendering Humanity, I ended up sticking with the same core visual I introduced in the first book. The flower.

Which is funny, because it doesn’t directly exist in the story at all.

But somehow, that’s kind of the point. Let me explain.

The flower became a symbol. Something organic in a controlled, constructed fantasy. Something so fragile, but here it is in persistent, optimized format. With a slightly steampunk-inspired aesthetic, something clicked. The contrast worked. Soft versus mechanical. Growth versus control.

My made up flowers give me a visual anchor that cuts through the dystopian, while remaining beautiful and feminine. It feel that it gave the whole concept a visual identity that I can carry across books.

Adding My Nerdy

There’s also a small detail in each book, I had fun with. At the very end of the book, there’s a short one spread note about this fictional flower. As if it exists outside the main narrative, yet leading the concept.

Designing a Poetry Book

The inside of a book can be super simple or as complex as you like.

Why Hush Halo books needed some relevant, repeatable elements?

Concept poetry adds real complexity to the structure. In Hush Halo each poem has a written layer and a soundscape you can access by scanning a QR code next to it. For example, Rendering Humanity has 134 soundscapes, each matching its poem.

Book With Lungs

Images act like lungs for the book. They help the reader pace themselves and take a breather when needed.

My first book was visually more straightforward. I was testing things quite randomly while trying to keep it simple enough. No red strings attached.

This time, on my second book, I moved toward continuity.

I built the visuals as an ongoing stream. Instead of isolated images, they can be placed side by side horizontally to form a continuous flow.

Abandoning Some

Not everything I write makes it into a book. Some pieces are too similar. Some belong to a different part of the arc. Some just don’t hold up when placed next to others.

My editing process leaves plenty of material to share here on Substack, that never made it to my books. Consider subscribing for full access.

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Q: Is there something here you’d like me to go deeper into? Did this bring up any questions?

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WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian fantasy poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with its own immersive soundscape. More background: Square One.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

🖤 Always happy to hear your thoughts. ↓

- - -

Falling Grace

Grace drops
like a feather
gaining mass midair.

What was a gift
becomes weight.

What was mercy
becomes metric,
calculated compassion
with a dashboard.

What once felt expensive
now comes with documentation,
managed like quantified grace.

I feel
so much
less so.

I feel the grace
free-falling in a universe
while learning how to bind
a blessing mid-flight.

Procedural mercy, audited.

Being filled with fallen grace
sounds like belonging,
while being told
I am still held.

Am I though?

Being held—
or just falling
unlicensed?

©2026 Samia Oldman

x

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian fantasy poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with its own immersive soundscape. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Subscribe now

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

In this post I talk about writing multilayered concept poetry and about being a serial writer. I also touch on narrator voice, in relation to poetry.

Still feels a bit unreal to announce this, but… my new book Rendering Humanity is now in Amazon’s publishing queue. Release date is Tuesday, May 12. [AMAZON]

Writing a Series

I’ll start by saying, I made it all up.

None of this structure existed when I started back in 2024. I was just making stuff. Writing, experimenting, figuring it out as I went.

I feel there’s a structure behind it now.

Book Is a Portal

I don’t really see Hush Halo as just a book project. Even though books are probably the most obvious output, it’s just one layer. The printed book is just one way, one portal, to step into the realm of Hush Halo.

What I actually see myself building is closer to a system, than a book. I juggle and compound various elements that hold multiple forms: poetry, sound, visual hints, narrative threads. That’s probably why I call my art ‘Poetry with Pulse’.

Writing Concept Poetry

One thing I’ve been thinking about is how different this process feels compared to what I usually imagine poetry to be.

Many poets I know, seem to write from the inside out. They gather material first, then later find the thread that ties it together. That makes sense if you’re writing in the moment, following instinct, pouring out your soul.

I don’t really work like that.

I start with hard focus on theme. For Hush Halo, I’ve built out a larger arc behind the scenes, a timeline and belief systems. Not just for this one book, but the full concept.

There’s a steady backbone I lean on my writing. Even if it doesn’t always show, it gives me something to hold onto while I write, keeps me from drifting.

Narrator’s Voice

The narrator’s voice is one of the creative layers I’ve focused on Rendering Humanity. I play with how personal my poetry feels to you as a reader.

I’ve wanted to keep the voice restrained, slightly detached, but not cold. Still personal. I’ve intentionally shifted the voice to mainly first person. This “I” borrows you a lens to experience the weird world through.

Sometimes I feel, this is all probably unnecessarily complex.

But then again, so am I.

Honestly,
dystopian poetry isn’t
exactly a mainstream lane
anyway, so I might as well
go all in.

Q: Does the complexity pull you in, or push you away? I try to keep my work accessible and relatable, despite the weird dystopian angle.

Leave a comment

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian fantasy poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with its own immersive soundscape. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Subscribe now

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

- - -

Stay

This isn’t rest
but containment.

A final posture,
designed to prevent
anything unpredictable
from reentering
the frame.

Stay still.
Stay down.
Stay gone.

A maintenance manual
for facing a world
that survived
by convincing us
to disappear politely
once we stop fitting
the perfect shape
of coded completion.

This isn’t a request.

©2026 Samia Oldman

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian fantasy poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with its own immersive soundscape. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Subscribe now

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

In this post I offer a sneak peak on my dystopian poetry book Rendering Humanity.

What’s About to Render

Rendering Humanity continues the Systoics tale in Hush Halo concept.

In this volume, we follow a quiet unraveling of the life and mind through a perfected system that cracks slightly when faced with individuality.

The collection begins in stillness. Humanity is no longer expressed, but processed. Reactions are shaped before they fully form, and experiences are rescripted into coherence and compatibility. When nothing is denied, something is always left behind.

Emotions no longer exist on their own, they are resolved in advance. Grief and anger dissolve, anxiety settles before it becomes loud. This feels like care, as if being understood.

Life stops shaping the self. Time passes cleanly and weightless. Who you are is curated, your identity no longer evolves but is formed for function. What remains is safe and precise, too light to carry significance.

Understanding follows in tiny moments, with the recognition that who you are might actually be meaningful after all.

Rendering Humanity reveals, yet leaves you empty, questioning comfort and embracing the rising tide of internal chaos. Cracks in the all-knowing system become visible, and you begin to see the true cost of clarity.

Q: What do you want to learn about my process? Are you more curious about the writing or the publishing part?

Leave a comment

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian fantasy poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with its own immersive soundscape. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Subscribe now

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

- - -

Exit to Express

I made it through.

Or did I?

I work.
I function.
I respond in time.

People read this as recovery,
mistaking competence
for healing.

My persistence
is a deserted island
with nowhere to land.

They don’t see
how much energy it takes
to stay alert
in completed world.

The truth is—
it isn’t over.

Surviving didn’t end.

It simply
lost its exit
to express itself.

©2026 Samia Oldman

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian fantasy poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with its own immersive soundscape. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Subscribe now

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

- - -

Gift of Settling

It is handed to me gently,
no ribbon, no receipt,
no return policy mentioned.

Just a promise
that I can finally rest.

I hear wanting was the burden.
That desire made life unstable.

Reaching kept me dissatisfied,
making my mind noisy.

This will fix all that,
the generous gift
of yearning more
never more.

Promises of steady thoughts,
of mental silence,
of full body relief.

Removing my need
to measure myself
against what I could be.

To be gone those days
of leaning forward,
of fantasising about the future,
these days of lack and of lust.

It’s called a gift
to keep me from resisting,
from refusing to accept the fine box.

I don’t mean to be ungrateful,
but I kind of like my hunger.

I kinda like living my life
in the unknown space
between enough
and more.

©2026 Samia Oldman

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian fantasy poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with its own immersive soundscape. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Subscribe now

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

- - -

Gaslighting Reality

Reality gaslights.

It cuts, bends,
romanticizes the wound,
sharpens the scream
until it fits a frame,
a screen,
my feed.

I live in a lying painting.

Cheated by a poem.

I feel emotions
staged by lyrics
of a made-up song,
like a true crime scene
meant to be suffered,
not solved.

Who needs purity in reality,
when precision performs better?

Feed me the fake thing,
bold enough
to aim for the open wound,
find the most fragile nerve
and press.

This lie
is the kind
you don’t mind
wrestling with
until it hurts
exactly
as designed.

©2026 Samia Oldman

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian fantasy poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with its own immersive soundscape. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Subscribe now

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

Context you should know: the cover poem exists in audio format only. A QR code on the back cover will lead to this sample, giving the reader a sense of what’s inside the book.
Goal: to make a random reader intrigued and excited enough to buy the book.

I’ve only added soundscapes here, as that’s what the reader will have as well.

#1 Decomposing with Manners

#2 Blind Era

#3 Butterfly

Rendering Humanity is a dystopian poetry collection with soundscapes. This is the second book in the Hush Halo story arc, scheduled for release in May 2026.

Thanks for helping me out!

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian fantasy poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with its own immersive soundscape. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Subscribe now

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

When I started working on Hush Halo, I felt that my poems worked on the page. Yet I kept thinking about how they would feel if they were heard, not just read. With my dystopian themes, I wanted more color and atmosphere, something that would make you feel the weight of the words differently.

So I started looking for ways to bring sound into my poetry, even though I’m the very last person you’d expect to go there.

Green Grass I Couldn’t Reach

I’m so not musical that it’s not even funny. Not even a little.

It’s one of those quiet limitations that has followed me for years. As a kid, my voice was something I felt weird about. I’ve always felt that this lack made me hold back.

Music wasn’t part of my family either, so I never really stepped into it. It always felt like something other people had access to, some kind of expression I missed along the way. So I stayed with writing and visual arts.

Words and colors felt safe. Sound didn’t.

Stumbling Into Sound

My dystopian themes were heavy, layered, a bit unsettling. I kept thinking they deserved more than just black and white text on a screen.

Around that time, my son was making annoying beats with his friends, keeping me up during the summer nights of 2025. Maybe it was the lack of sleep or just my general angst about my need to beat the AI-related tech fears, who knows. Due to this happenstance, I stumbled into sound tools. Eventually I found Suno, which I’ve been working with ever since.

I had tried audio tools before, mostly for straightforward narration, but this felt different immediately. This wasn’t about reading poems out loud, but building a whole atmosphere around my Hush Halo universe.

Even without any musical background, I could tell what felt right and what didn’t. I may not know how to make music, but I know what I want it to feel like.

Making My Rhymes Pulse

Once I got past the idea that I needed to “know music,” things opened up. I started treating this like any other concept I build.

I have a pretty strong backbone in structuring ideas, testing variations, and pushing toward a specific outcome, and it turns out that translates surprisingly well here.

I’m tweaking, iterating, nudging things forward piece by piece. Sometimes I’m guiding the flow by forcing Suno’s hand just to get the rhythm, tone, and phrasing to land right. And often it still goes sideways.

Simple words can break everything. You try to fix one tiny thing and suddenly it all falls apart. It’s messy.

But that mess is also where it gets interesting. My poetry can hold weird combinations in a way most formats can’t. I can build one piece around something soft and almost cute, like bedroom pop, lean into a western-style whistle in another, and then mash those together and layer in something like mumble punk on top.

Vibe Coding My Way

It feels unfair and like cheating that I don’t need to know how to play an instrument or sing. I’m very much ok with making mistakes and bad quality.

My mind says it shouldn’t work, but it does. Until it doesn’t. As long as the feeling lands, the piece holds.

Mine to Make

At this point, every poem I publish comes with a soundscape. That’s not an extra, but a vital part of every piece.

I try to be open about the process. The sound is AI-generated, yes, but it’s not just pressing a button and calling it done. Getting the words to land right, getting the rhythm to carry the meaning, that takes a lot of trial and error.

Hush Halo has become a niche of its own, immersive dystopian poetry. Even in printed books, you can step into the realm of Hush Halo by scanning the QR code next to each poem.

First Shame, Then Curiosity

At first, using AI felt like cheating. To be honest, it still does, sometimes.

I felt embarrassed to publish these. So much so that I went to the lengths of figuring out how to not call these pieces music or singing or songs.

Now I call them soundscapes instead, or poetry with a pulse, trying to refer more to the experience rather than musicality.

In the beginning, even when I clearly said the voice was AI-assisted, people still commented on “how beautiful my voice was”. That made me want to crawl under the table.

It still happens sometimes, but now I also hear the flip side. I’ve heard people who usually avoid anything AI-related say that in this context, the voice actually feels right.

I’m not some AI believer either, but as a tool, this stuff comes in pretty handy.

If you’ve listened to my poems, I’m curious how it felt to you.

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian fantasy poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with its own immersive soundscape. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Subscribe now

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

Special thanks this week to Mirage and everyone who dropped me a message. I read every single one. Also to my newest and already coolest subscribers Dragon Ezme, Tom Jeffers, The Sovereign Prism, and Miles Hack who casually suggested my poetry could be a Netflix bit. I don’t even know what to do with that. I’m honestly floored by you all. ♡

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What’s Up?

I’ve been deep in editing my upcoming book Rendering Humanity, and it’s been… a weird mix of feelings. With the first book, I had around 140 poems. I told myself this one would be shorter, tighter, easier to digest. Yeah. That didn’t happen. Sorry. It’s roughly the same length.

But it doesn’t feel the same, at all.

When I write, I usually have a loose arc, some prompts, a direction I’m trying to follow. I tend to work in bundles, which can make things feel a bit repetitive while I’m in it. Same tone, same space, same kind of thinking.

But now, going through everything in edit mode, I’m reading and listening to these pieces almost like they’re new. My scattered brain has forgotten most of it anyway, so I’m kind of rediscovering my own work. And I have to say, I’m getting genuinely excited about it again.

Rendering Humanity builds on Paradise Beyond Pulse, but it goes further. It’s darker in places, continuing the dystopian story arc. I’m digging way deeper, pushing my ideas a bit more.

So here’s something I’ve been thinking about. Are you allowed to be excited about your own work? Not in a fake hype way, but actually, honestly proud for a moment. Is it okay to say “this is damn good” without immediately pulling yourself down?

I’m asking this as someone with chronic imposter syndrome. When was the last time you felt openly excited about something you made?

Dystopian Poetry Sample · Upcoming from Hush Halo

I’ll drop an unpublished sample from the upcoming book below. If you can, listen to the soundscape too, and let me know your thoughts. I’d really like to know how this one lands.

Riffle Daughter

Listen the Soundscape

I am the misborn,
the rifle-daughter
of optimization,
raised by systems,
not stories,
carrying a memory
of belonging
without inheriting its fire.

My drive,
rose from my upbringing,
valued alignment
over initiation.

I learned cooperation
over personal hunger.

I learned safety
over my personal limits.

A musket rests in my hand,
its weight constant,
made to reset the time.

Ancestral impulse
moves under my skin.

I press my forehead
against the mirage.

Pressure does not register.

Not all things
have inheritance.

Not all surfaces
have an interface.

I need a witness,
for sure,
that does not dissolve
into data.

I need a rifle-brother
that does not collapse
in beta.

I come
from a lineage
of efficiency.

No elders,
only protocols.

No myths,
only metrics
passed down as truth.

My fate is not my debate.

My pulse
feeling the danger,
the old trigger pattern,
ignored by a tribe
that forgot its ritual
the moment
optimization
proved
faster.

I lean into the hollow safety
of the rifle,
holding steady
between realms.

At the square one,
behind a row of doors,
I find myself foreign,
slowly forming the questions
my tribe left unformed.

For now,
my way remains closed,
yet exposed.

For now,
as a mistake,
as a misborn,
I align my shoulder
with a rifle stock,
prepared
for the system
backfire.

-

Listen the Soundscape

-

©Samia Oldman.

Latest Hush Halo poems, you may have missed:

One Poem I Recommend

Today I want to highlight Hawtorn V. Rabot, a fellow imposter who keeps showing up anyway. There’s something about being brave and scared at the same time that hits differently when it’s written this raw. It’s a longer piece, so make sure you click through and read the whole thing. It’s worth it.

What Moves Me Now?

Nicole, who’s launching Dead Women’s Society, a project focused on women whose stories were minimized, misattributed, buried, or just erased. We need more people doing this kind of work.
Keep an eye on this space.

-

Thanks for reading!
If you like, give me one writer who made your day this week.

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian fantasy poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with its own immersive soundscape. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Subscribe now

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

- - -

All Is Well

Surely the silence confirms
all is well.

Right?

©2026 Samia Oldman

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian fantasy poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with its own immersive soundscape. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Subscribe now

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

- - -

Perfectly Safe

No gate closed behind me,
no threshold marked by fear or relief.

The space continued—
seamless enough to feel inevitable.

I didn’t dare to stop, to ask the way.

Stepping onto the only path ahead,
I couldn’t choose even if I wanted to.

I didn’t feel trapped—
as if I trusted my only choice.

Nothing I did left a data trail.

My choices fell flat,
never echoing back.

Looking back—
my actions mattered,
they could not be undone.

Mistakes I made shaped my memory.

Commitment carved
my blooming identity
as I was becoming someone.

Looking forward—
all predictions reset firmly.
They could not be undone.

In un-avoidable future
I am freed from guilt,
and I bet,
freed from regret.

I am now freed from gravity,
and almost imperceptibly,
I was freed from responsibility, too.

In upcoming paradise
with no exits
and no consequence,

I am secured
from becoming irreversible,
from even ever having been.

I am made
perfectly safe.

©2026 Samia Oldman

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian fantasy poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with its own immersive soundscape. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Subscribe now

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

- - -

Testing My Spine

Days pass in bubble wrap,
padded with cushioned certainty.

Should I brace myself?

Gather strength?

Take cover?

Hesitate?

As safety replaced bravery,
as comfort replaced choice,
the need to test my spine
retreated.

©2026 Samia Oldman

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian fantasy poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with its own immersive soundscape. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Subscribe now

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

This poem is published in poetry collection Rendering Humanity (2026).

Read more

- - -

Happenstance

He happened to me.

The work kept working.
The world kept whirling.

I kept functioning.

He entered my life
moving differently,
moving me indifferently.

He insisted on me.

He insisted me to keep adjusting
with him,
around him,
for him.

Nothing about him
fit the logic.

Only leverage.

Watching him manage me
revealed exactly
what this realm does
to us.

He survived all this way
not as an example,
but as a living contradiction
set to invade my life
like an all-consuming accident.

My unfortunate happenstance,
my soul-draining serendipity,
is all what he was.

©2026 Samia Oldman

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CONTEXT
You are reading dystopian fantasy poetry collection the Hush Halo. After the Great Optimization a privileged group of people wired themselves tightly into the system by aligning with it and fully integrating. Systoics believe they’ve perfected themselves by stripping away everything that slows them down. Learn more about Realm or start from Square One.

Dystopian poetry by Sam Oldman. Soundscapes and images are created with AI.

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📍By the way,
don’t miss the poll
at the end.

Sure, money is an awkward topic.

Let’s be honest for a moment. Most of us didn’t start writing because of money, but very few would complain if money followed.

Somewhere between passion and practicality, there’s a tension that rarely gets addressed openly because it feels slightly off-limits.

Writing should should exist outside of economics, as if talking about money somehow cheapens the work. It doesn’t.

Let’s Say the Quiet Part Out Loud

There’s this weird, unspoken rule that you’re not supposed to care about money as a writer. And if you’re a poet, even more so. The moment you mention or even think about money, it feels like you’ve somehow misunderstood the whole point of writing.

I get it. We write because we want to. Writing matters to us, a lot. But let’s not pretend that’s the whole story.

If I could pay my bills with writing, I would. No hesitation. And I don’t think I’m alone in that. There is not a single sane writer who would choose a 9–5 over full-time writing.

Most of us are tied to other work because we have to be. Saying that out loud doesn’t ruin your art.

Life costs money.

The Reality Behind the Romance

Substack makes this whole thing look way simpler than it actually is. At first glance, it feels like the perfect setup. I write, people subscribe, and somehow it all starts paying for itself. That idea is hard not to like.

But honestly, I don’t even need the exact numbers to know that only a tiny fraction of writers here actually make enough to live on this. And even for them, subscriptions alone rarely carry much weight.

The model sounds great on paper, but it leans heavily on people being willing to pay consistently for writing alone.

People don’t pay for writing as easily as we like to believe.

Especially now, people are careful with their money. I get that. I do the same. So the idea that I can just write and get paid for it starts to feel just a bit… absurd.

The Math That Doesn’t Add Up

If you look at the rough numbers, and they’re not subtle. One book sale gets me maybe five to eight bucks. Same with a Substack subscription. Sounds fine, right?

If I want anything close to a livable income, I’m not selling a few copies here and there. I need hundreds. More realistically, thousands. Every month. Not once.

Every. Month.

The illusion cracks. If you’re writing writing poetry or anything even slightly niche like I am, that’s a steep hill.

Writing feels like the main thing, but money-wise, it rarely is. Even people doing “well” are usually not living off the writing itself. The math just doesn’t hold.

So yeah, writing might be the product, but the money almost always comes from something built around it.

So What Now?

If writing alone rarely pays, then the question isn’t whether that’s fair.

So, what am I (we) supposed to do with this?

I’m already here. I’m already writing. I’ve got people reading, reacting, sticking around. That’s not nothing. That’s attention. That’s trust. That’s something I’ve built over time and hopefully keep on building.

But how do I turn this into something that actually carries financial weight.

It gets very real, very fast.

It’s way easier for me to land one paying client a month for something like graphic design, branding, or a website than it is to make the same money through books or subscriptions.

One client can equal what, 300 book sales? 300 subscribers? One client can easily beat 300 readers when it comes to paying the bills. Same money, completely different game.

I’m not saying I should stop writing or turn everything into a transaction. Though honestly, I would, if I could.

Maybe my point is that we’re blind to the fact that writing on its own is rarely the whole business.

It may be the core, the beating heart. Everything else money-related gets built around it.

The ones who make this work are stacking things on top of their writing. Services, teaching, products, whatever fits.

Monetizing Loop

This is the question I keep coming back to.

If writing alone doesn’t carry the weight, then what can I put around it? Not to replace it, but adding to it. Do I start teaching what I know? Package my skills? Build something that actually translates into money?

And if I go down that road, what happens to my writing? Does that make me a sellout? I’m not trying to turn everything into a product, but I catch myself thinking about this quite a bit.

I’m already here, already putting time into this, and people are clearly connecting with me, my writing and most importantly with each others.

At this point the question
isn’t if we should monetize.
That part feels obvious.

How do we monetize
without messing up
the reason we started
writing in the first place?

My Answer?

Ha! If I had an answer, would I be asking it here?

I don’t think there’s some ready-made, perfect model waiting for me. It’s probably way messier than that, but I’m willing to work through it.

I’m not pretending I have this figured out. I truly don’t. But I do have a couple of interesting ideas on how to monetize poetry and writing in general.

Right now I’m thinking I’ll just try things, see what works, adjust, repeat. Share it openly here, what works and what doesn’t. That feels more honest than pretending I’ve got it figured out.

So consider yourself warned. I might be talking about money and monetization a bit more going forward.

Just for fun, take the poll and see how we are.

If you’re in the same spot, trying to balance writing and making a living, I’m genuinely curious how you’re thinking about it.

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian fantasy poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with its own immersive soundscape. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Subscribe now

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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- - -

Petty Miss Harmony

Truth is syrupy,
truly viscous,
yet vicious,
embedded with irony.

What made me soft,
burns their tongue now.

Their boring bitterness
meets my sweetness
I find my niche—
I braid the leash.

I corrupt their feed.

Sweet enough to swallow—
slow enough to trap.

I spit it back.

Sticky as honey,
call me petty,
tag me Miss Harmony.

I am not here
for the taste.

You are.

©2026 Samia Oldman

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian fantasy poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with its own immersive soundscape. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Subscribe now

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

I don’t say it enough, but your support means a lot to me. Special thanks to Nicole, Nick, Gub, and Martin for your active support on my poetry last week.

Also, mega-thanks to the new podcast Transmissions From the Void for taking the time to support indie authors like me. ♡

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Good to Know: I have no interest in spamming you daily with my poetry, so I’m starting this experiment on Hush Halo Poetry Updates. I’ll write this every now and then as a curated update of what’s been published, shared, and commented on, focusing purely on poetry.

What’s Up?

I’m publishing new poetry again after a longer pause. That break came from needing to organize my thoughts around Hush Halo. After finishing the first book, I assumed I would move straight into the second, but it turned out to be a very different challenge.

As the first book explored the curiosity of the world I’m building, the second will need a different tone to stay true to the overall story arc. It took time to find the right voice, rhythm, and point of view. (Still working on it.)

Most of what I’m publishing in Substack now comes from overflow, poems that didn’t make the final cut for the next book. I’m more careful now not to share too much from the core collection.

My writing is shifting. The first book leaned more on sharp, standalone ideas within a dystopian frame. Now I’m moving toward stronger storytelling, still as poetry, not short stories, but with more attention to narrative, structure, and sci fi elements within the arc.

Latest from Hush Halo

Here is a recent dystopian poem, I feel was lost on void and deserves another chance.

Memory Developers

Listen the Soundscape

Memory developers
decide for me and you
what is allowed
to stay heavy,
who needs faster adapting,
what ideas require faster loading,
what thoughts get rewritten—
who is interrogated,
by which agent,
what must be prompted,
what interrupted.

They are not in the business
of inventing memories
but tuning them,
mainly downplaying them—
squinting your gaze,
calibrating the weight of recall
so no spikes
hijack your attention
unsupervised.

You know how it goes, right?

Compress your edge,
soften your sentence,
blur your borders,
fly shy and align.

Rounded corners
cut no passers-by.

Don’t get me wrong,
I’m not all sanitized,
wiped out,
yet.

I do remember.

I recall the events.

I remember what happened—
in preferred terms,
pre-prompted
by the system.

Covering up consequences,
polishing memories
into bite-sized data points,
safe to revisit.

Safe to whom?

-

©Samia Oldman.

Latest Hush Halo poems, you may have missed:

One Poem I Recommend

This time, my recommendation is a note-style poem by Wild and Sacred. To me, it’s about hope in today’s world and the idea that hope is always there, even when it’s hard to see.

What Moves Me Now?

Spring. I’m glad I wrote a lot of dystopian poetry drafts during the darker winter months. Now as I feel an overflow of joy when the sun hits my face and I hear the birds singing. This spring feels like a relief, somehow.

If you like, give me one word or theme to describe your day.

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian fantasy poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with its own immersive soundscape. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Subscribe now

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓