Wastelander: First Draft Finito

The first draft of Wastelander is finally finished!  It took a lot longer to finish than I thought it would.  I’ve been told first books are like that.  To highlight this point, here is a post from June 13, 2016 where I thought I would be done with the book in just a few weeks.  Whoops!

Now it’s time to shelf the beast and forget it exists.  When I come back to it in six plus weeks, I will do a one sitting read through (83,723 words), blast it with red ink, and rewrite the whole book all over again!  In the meantime, here are the things that will be happening:

• I should be getting my cover art in the very near future.  Michail is doing great work.
• Drafting of The Wastelander Survival Guide has begun.  This is the complementing novella to the book.
• The Wastelander Survival Guide is illustrated so I need to make a story board for this and search out a good line/ink artist for rough illustrations (the drawings are created by teenage character from the main book so they shouldn’t be too spiffy).
• I have a stack of books on writing query letters and I’ve already got a “shortlist” of agents to contact.  It’s time to start writing and polishing query letters.  Look forward to posts about this.
• I have pre-generated a series of teasers for the book. I’ll talk about this below.
• I have two short stories outlined that I want to write and submit to literary magazines.  One is science fiction and the other is popular culture.  I’m looking forward to writing outside of the Wastelander universe for a spell.
• I am picking up a new client (maybe even two) in September on the business side.  So I’m looking forward to jumping into to some new worlds.  Two clients is pretty much my monthly limit as general editing consumes a bunch of time.  Especially when we are working on novel sized projects.
• Raising my son (the tiny Thor) and helping my radioactive wife fulfill her military obligations.
• (Oh yeah, I write a daily blog post too…)

I mentioned above I have already generated some teasers for the book.  Here is the strategy I have decided to implement with releasing information about the book.  I didn’t want to release straight excerpts from the book.  Some publishers/agents frown on this and I’m attempting to publish traditionally.

My solution was Wasteland Wednesday.  This will be a series of shorts (under 1000 words) covering different elements from the book.  I will also be offering some graphic creations as well.  Some of the shorts will be little vignettes about characters, and some will provide you background/historic information regarding the world they live in.  I will share some of my character sheets, world building tools, and “behind the scenes” information as well.  Spoiler information will be redacted.

You’ll learn a lot of things about the wasteland universe through these.  However, none of it will spoil the book for you; it should enhance it.  I’m creating a new category for these shorts titled “Wastelander.”  This will keep it organized for current and future readers.  I’m redirecting most of my Wastelander universe content to this category for housekeeping purposes.

Most of us know that only about ten percent of what we know about our universes, characters, and cultural histories make it into the book.  This will allow me to share those aspects, and give me a place to compile them into a wiki of sorts.

That’s pretty much all the gears that are in motion right now.  I’m sure some monkey wrenches will start raining down from the heavens soon.  No worries though!  I’m wearing a viking helmet/hardhat.  I hope some of you are excited to learn about the Wasteland!  I’m thrilled to share.  Until tomorrow, keep reading, keep writing, and as always – stay sharp!