The Hofflebrock

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The Hofflebrock

Stories, systems, and films by J Nicholas.

The work begins with an ordinary arrangement, then waits to see what it has been hiding.

Fiction

The interior of a vast orbital station. A maintenance corridor opens onto a public concourse, and one technician stands still among people continuing their routines.

Paradise

Novel

A maintenance worker dies with the station and wakes at the start of the same day, alone in remembering it.

A long institutional corridor at night. One figure stands engulfed in flame that ignites nothing around it.

On Fire

Short fiction

People burn without smoke inside a church-run institution, and everyone there has an explanation.

Inside an immaculate commuter train. Passengers sit motionless in the same posture while one man turns toward a distant standing figure in a red tie.

Compulsion

Novella · Haven prequel

Carl’s implant schedules his day. It has no category for the murder he witnessed.

A dim investigation room with seven empty chairs. Six show traces of recent occupation. The seventh sits in deeper shadow before a pale monitor.

Sunday

Novella

Sunday has no face, no voice, and no body. Sunday may be the only one telling the truth.

An immaculate enclosed garden ringed by identical white buildings. One man studies the architecture while an attendant approaches behind him.

The Walled Garden

Novella · Haven, Book One

Patrick wakes in a hospital where every request is granted except the one to leave.

Nonfiction

JUNE 2026Operator Dispatch – June 22Operator Dispatch – June 21June 17 – MarketsJune 17 – GeopoliticsJune 17 – Energy

Operator Dispatch

Daily syntheses · June 2026

A month of daily syntheses reading what people argued, sold, repeated, ignored, and changed.

Systems

Dense ivory topographic contours cross a black field beneath red fault lines. Faint buried structures show below the surface.

The Geography of Conflict

Book and working atlas

Two characters can stand in the same room, looking at the same object, and be living in two different stories.

An immense kraken beneath dark water. Its tentacles hold ordinary objects from a life while one limb rises toward a narrow opening of light at the surface.

Bathys

Pocket book

Some days, the ability is there. Some days, it is still there but out of reach.

Films

A claymation family crossing from coastal Florida toward rural Kentucky. The father is rendered with a faint robotic cast the others do not share.

Moving

Short film · Silent claymation

A family leaves coastal Florida for rural Kentucky. The move is wanted. The father experiences it differently.

Field Notes

  • The Meter

    The bias isn’t rare. Everybody runs it. What’s rare is an environment that makes the judgment hand you a receipt. The sales floor gave me one. The rest of my…

  • When Thinking Stops Paying Rent

    The decision took months. The stall took two hours. What I built in that gap was not research. It was anxiety wearing the clothes of my competence.

  • Read the Floor, Not the Flyer

    The mission statement is written to be read. The objective is written to be run. Six places to find the real one, none of them on the wall.

All projects · All field notes · Process