So I went radio silent without so much as saying goodbye, so my apologies for that. Anyway, November was… certainly a month. A fun month, but also an incredibly frustrating one.

When I first came up with the idea for N I G H T W A V E S, it was envisioned as a more realistic, darker tale. Subsequent worldbuilding exercises reminded me that I don’t particularly like “realistic”. So the world depicted in this novel is a proto-cyberpunk Florida, in particular, Miami.

I’m particularly interested in cyborgs and futuristic cities, but also didn’t want to tell another cyberpunk story (I’d written one in November 2016 and one in July of this year, after all). A proto-cyberpunk setting gives something that I find interesting to work with, in particular the beginnings of the future and the traces of the past giving way. I was also hoping to inject a bit of my style of humour into the novel instead of making it excessively dark.

I had also intended to have two separate narratives, one in the past and showing backstory for the main characters, and then the main conflict itself.

Regrettably, things didn’t turn out anywhere close to what I had envisioned, and even if it’s just a rough draft I’m still… disappointed.

Currently, N I G H T W A V E S has an absolutely incoherent plot (I had intended for a bit of a confusing one, but this is just a mess so I failed miserably), and the two plots clashed horribly in tone, with the main conflict being far more comedic and meta than I’d originally intended, and the more somber tone of the backstory plot looked like it belonged in another story next to it.

Well, the first draft is always the worst.

At any rate, I’m going to set N I G H T W A V E S aside for awhile, but already I think I’ve got an idea of how I’m going to handle the rewrite. Rearrange the chapters, properly develop the main plot (I mostly was a pantser for it, which worked terribly), and try to make the tones of both plots more consistent with each other.

I also think I understand what, exactly, I want from this story. I want it to have a bit of a… Saturday morning action cartoon feel. Particularly 90’s even if the story itself takes place in the future. Light-hearted, but serious when the plot stands for it.

It’ll be tough to strike that balance, but I’m not worried. We’ll see how it goes.

And now, I prepare for Camp 2018 and NaNo 2018 itself…