It’s a project close to my heart and the most complex thing I’ve done so far; it’s a gift to the cyberpunk genre, it’ll be free, and I’m toying with the idea of releasing chapters weekly as PDF or image files until the whole thing is finished.
I’ve spent this year writing a book not because I wanted to write one, but because I couldn’t find any other way to publish my story.
I’m very visual in my thinking; it’s written in an atmospheric style, ‘show, don’t tell’ is my motto. The dialogue largely explains the world, and each protagonist has their own colour to make it easier to tell them apart in fast paced action scenes. Each chapter has a (synthwave) soundtrack you can listen to; I nicked the idea from Stephen King to get round copyright issues.
I wanted to go further than the typical ‘low life, high tech’ versus ‘corporations’ narrative.
It’s more of a revolution led by broken anti-heroes against an Orwellian superpower in a megacity; it also takes place in Earth’s orbit, in the deep sea, and in a sort of ‘Badlands’ the remnants of a nuclear war.
At its heart lies not only monumental, Emmerich style action, but also its sense of liminality within this dystopia. At first glance, my protagonists are classic action archetypes from the 80s and 90s, but I don’t want to show that side of them; rather, I want to show what they’re like when the camera’s gone and they let their guard down and also their ugly human side.
If I had to squeeze it into a genre, it would probably be 80 per cent action thriller and 20 per cent romance, though it isn’t really a romance.
It’s often morally grey, but it also raises uncomfortable ethical questions.
For example, what is a human being, and what do we recognise as human if it wasn’t born?
I’ve written about 160 pages (arround 200 complete) so far; I’m currently finishing the third story arc.
What do you think of the topic and my approach?
Iam happy to answer any questions i build a complete Lore for my Universe.
Thanks