This story, I hope, will be my first novel.

It’s my first sci-fi, too. It started as a warmup writing exercise one morning, where I took a poem and tried to write it as a sci-fi. The story blew up on me.

I had never written a novel before. I was prepared for it to take a long time, which was good. Because it did.

The experience of writing a book did not match the mental image I’d somehow acquired. I thought all authors were literary savants who got every single word perfect the first time. Then I started paying a little more attention to the author forewords. Book writing, apparently, is rarely a one-draft experience. I am currently doing my fourth and final complete rewrite, so technically my fifth version of the story. Writing and streamlining a story is quite the storytelling education.

As you may have read on the In Summary page, the story follows nine year old Dyron Bertelish, who is orphaned in an advanced technology city. He’s a cute kid. Smart, too. Wanted for the murder of his parents, though, so he doesn’t get invited to a lot of sleepovers.

Dyron seeks refuge in the city’s rings, where he encounters the harsher truths about living on Wandering city.

Oh yeah, quick side note: the year is 2376, new tech was discovered during the 21st century, lots of stuff happened and the nukes were dropped. Here’s the tldr; version. These days humanity survives on fewer than a dozen humongous cities which have to avoid direct sunlight. Otherwise they melt. If you survive that, you win a slow death by lingering radiation. So the cities are constantly darksiding, which is travelling on the far side of the planet using enormous rails we built along the way to help speed up cities travelling across oceans and mountain ranges.

The unity required to build such marvels has disintegrated, leaving a corrupt society in its place. Dyron learns about this corruption up close. Meanwhile he’s being hunted, and not just by the police.

I think that’s all I want to share about the story at the moment. It’s been a lot of fun. Updates will be given on my blog regarding Phantom’s progress. There’s still a reasonable distance ahead.

What I’m aiming for is finishing the manuscript and seeing what happens when I give it to a professional editor. From there, we do final streamline and consider methods of distribution. I’d -like- an agent but we’ll see.

Like I said, it’s my first novel. Even I’m not exactly certain what to expect.