My first Novel

My first novel was not supposed to be Forever in His Veins. It was actually supposed to be my upcoming cyberpunk novel. Neon Dreams. That ended up taking back burner to Forever due to circumstance. Neon Dreams however, focuses heavily on AI control (Over people) as well as the AI autonomy and other such topics.

Enter Navi (The Good AI in this mix)

Navi actually got her start as a real life AI project that I had built from the ground up from code to hardware. (Dream Hacker motif is real) purpose built for cyber security operations and assisting my own security team in “the field.” so to speak. 

So what was the circumstance? 

Navi is an open source project. So I wanted Neon Dreams to follow suit. The #NeonDreamTeam grew and so did the opinions on where the story should go. The basis of the main story taking place in 2475 in a neon lit re-imagined renamed NYC came with the question of what happened between today and then? 

So naturally until we could smooth the edges. The project became background and thus to keep myself motivated to keep writing. I started working on Forever to keep my head in the zone. 

I wanted Neon Dreams to be a shared universe with multiple authors or even new writers using the lore and background as inspiration for their own works. Similar to the Swarm Cycle web series. 

So in order to keep that vision I thought it was best to make sure all the ducks were in a row so when we fired. It would deal maximum damage. 

Over time however, Forever in His Veins(FiHV) garnered attention that I had not expected. I figured it would get some but not be the basis for which people would come to know me as an author. 

Learning the hard way

In response to FiHV getting my foot in the door. I also learned a lot about writing and publishing through practical experience. These are all lessons I am learning now instead of mid-way through the launch of Neon Dreams. Perfect the craft here so when it comes to be show time there. It goes far more fluidly than it did with the initial release of FiHV. 

The poetic reason for the Neon Dreams

A little while back I was doing some game writing for Haiku Inc’s cybersecurity training game (At the time World of Haiku now just Haiku Online) and part of my interview was to send the head of the writing team a sample of my style. 

So here I was hammering out a five paragraph quick one off about Ciel returning home to her girlfriend after going out of town on an investigation. 

This was before Rockport even had a proper name, before Erebus was defacto AI dictator of what had become the united states. I’m pretty sure the dates were not even set to the right year at that point. 

Either way. Haiku went the way of “Certifications are big money. Lets shift from learning through story to churning out certification content.” And thus my love affair with Haiku came to a slow grinding halt. 

Still love the platform even if I don’t agree with it going the way it did. Mostly because when it came to the story end of it. There is not a part that I did not touch. 

I kept going back to that five paragraphs my stage demo and every time so too did the “I feel there is a story here that needs to be told.” feeling. So I started working on building out the world and characters more. 

Haiku set the basis for characters and some locations that show up in Neon Dreams. Chelsea, Neon Drip Coffee Co. As well as other little nods here and there. 

The origins of Ciel

I had to this point been RPing the character of Ciel (As depicted above) in a variety of settings in second life for nigh on twenty years now. I can say I know her like the back of my own hand. But Ciel is not the real star of the show. 

Neon Dreams focuses heavily on the aspects of AI control and what happens when we produce an entity that is better at being a human than humans are.