Bodacious & Sundry #8: First Draft Completed!

Bodacious

I finished the first draft of Bodacious Creed: a Steampunk Zombie Western last night. It came in just short of my 140,000 word estimate at 139,898 words. Click the link to learn more about the story, characters, and setting.

This two year first draft adventure has been amazing. I really enjoyed essentially co-creating this story with my characters. I love editing and rewriting, too, because that’s when I get to make sure everything fits, that the prose is polished, and that readers will enjoy this trip into an alternate 1876 as well.

For those of you unfamiliar with my work on this novel, here’s a summary. Bodacious Creed started as the premise for my 3D modeling MFA thesis. You can see the demo reel here. I came up with a background story and characters that I could create to show off my modeling and texturing skills.

As a writer, I knew it could also make for a great novel. So, two years after I graduated, I ran a Kickstarter campaign to fund that novel. It was more than that, though. The campaign also allowed me to get fan involvement. Some of the characters in the story are either based on real people who backed the project, or co-created with them. Part of the advantage of coming into this project as an experienced novelist was that I knew I’d be able to craft a story using this input. (It probably also helped that I used to do improvisational acting in college.)

The project was successfully funded in August, 2013. I took notes and worked on plotting until November, and started writing the actual novel during NaNoWriMo that year. After that, I kept up with it, but had so much going on in my life that I wasn’t able to put the kind of time into it that I wanted to. I got to about 80,000 words from November 2, 2013, to October 31 this year. So, I decided to use NaNoWriMo 2015 to give me that extra push to finish the book. From November 1 to 30 I wrote about 50,400 words, but still had a bit more to go. Over the last week, I wrote the final 10,000 words.

I think Bodacious Creed is an exciting adventure with some cool steampunk ideas and great characters. This month, I’ll jot down revision notes as they come to me, and in January, I plan to start the gargantuan task of revising the longest novel I’ve ever written. I already know it’s going to go through several distinct revision phases, and that I’ll be calling for beta readers in the next few months.

Going into NaNoWriMo 2015, I thought I’d maybe have it done and published by December 2016. Now, I think I can have it out by August, maybe sooner.

I also plan to write a sequel, and have left the story open for that.

By the way, if you want to experience my steampunk Wild West world, join the mailing list and you’ll get to read my first Creedverse short story, The Obstructed Engine, for free. I plan on writing more stories set in this world, all leading to the launch of the novel, and the mailing list members will get every one first, and for free. Later, I’ll put them together in an anthology that will go up on Amazon.

Sundry

With the first episode of The Mostly Steampunk Podcast live on my YouTube channel, of course, I’ve been looking forward to doing them regularly. I thought it would be great to have some actual steampunk things in the background. I have a short bookshelf in my room, visible in the background when I make videos. Now, other shelves in my living room have their own themes. One is primarily Star Wars, another has pictures of my son, and another pictures of my daughter. The one for the videos will have a steampunk theme.

I bought these art supplies at Michaels tonight and will create a painting some evening soon just for that.