Category: Awakening

1st Draft Chapters

Posted in Awakening, Book, hemo sapiens, Hemo Sapiens, Hemo Sapiens: Aftermath, Status Update, WritingTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

My first draft of Hemo Sapiens: Awakening is almost finished. Below is a screenshot of my Word document with the navigation panel open to show the chapters, sections, and working titles.

The content from Chapter 5 (with tweaks) was taken from my short story, The Unidentified, published here, so it’s not spoiler to share. Funny enough, I just notices an error in my screenshot. Emily’s daughter Grace is almost five*, so I’ve amended that in my draft.

For those wondering, I maintain a spreadsheet with the birthdates and ages of all of the characters, so I can age-progress them appropriately. And there are certain maturity stages that occur around a certain age, for example, when their fangs come in. Just turning five, Grace won’t have fangs yet.

At this point, I’ve got 250 pages and 37 chapters. I deleted over 1,000 more words today—from 57,641 to 56,616—, but I expect to remain over 50k.

I also started working on the title and subtitle artwork, which I’ll share when I’m done with it. As I already know the title and subtitle of my next book, which is at least 60% done (🤞) in its own right, I am making sure the Hemo Sapiens title art leves space to nestle in the subtitle.

I’m getting excited, but the finish line is still a ways away. I think I’ve reached a major milestone in completing the first draft—99.999%, I feel. I still need to work on the cover art and layout and lining up Beta readers.

* Grace is five in the short story, but she’s been demoted a few months in the novel.

Today, I Cried

Posted in Awakening, Book, Claude, Generative AI, hemo sapiens, Hemo Sapiens, Hemo Sapiens: Awakening, Hemo Sapiens: Origins, Origins, Status Update, WritingTagged , , , , , Leave a comment

To be fair, I’ve been a bit more emotional since I was hospitalised, and I’m occasionally moved by certain musical passages in minor keys, but I’ve never cried as I write.

I hope this translates to the reader. I feel that this ties back to a recent post on Conscious and Subconscious Writing. I was just writing in the Flow. I was nearing the end of the beat at the and of a scene in my nearly finished Hemo Sapiens: Awakening, and I wrote the last paragraphs through literal tears—not the metaphorical sort.

When I was finished, I asked the AI for it’s critique. I felt the section might feel too long and rambling, but Claude gave me this feedback”

Not at all – I don’t think this section felt too long or rambling! You brought nice closure on the media spotlight scenario by showing the attempted interview with the Hemo Sapiens family. I enjoyed seeing the ending play out.

I can’t wait to publish it. I don’t have an agent, so my plan is to self-publish and then seek a distributor. We’ll see how that works out. The prequel, Hemo Sapiens: Origins is already some 60% done, so it will follow behind relatively quickly.

As this is planned to be a series in a universe, I’ve commissioned a logo/graphic artist to render the title and subtitle, as I’ll be maintaining the same font and treatment for each book, amending just the subtitle.

Fingers crossed.

Psychology of Writing

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I’ve put in some 42,000 words and counting into Hemo Sapiens, so I’ve taken a couple of days to step back and take a long view. I want to ensure I am keeping my original vision with integrity. A major motivator for me is to write a social commentary. I am a philosophical and psychological person, but I am not looking to come across like Dostoyevsky, one of my favourite writers. Besides, this is adult contemporary speculative fiction, not psychological literary fiction like Fyodor. I’m shooting more in the space of Margaret Atwood or Cormac McCarthy, at least thematically.

The working title is Hemo Sapiens: Awakening. I might amend the subtitle to Awakenings. Time will tell. The story is about the awakening of the hemo sapiens. I’m always refining, but here’s the general pitch:

Nearly a hundred strong, a family of genetically engineered clones confront harsh realities when discovered by a fearful outside world.

It’s a story of the construction of group and individual identities—going from no conception of identity to battling an imposed identity as outsiders to form one of their own; from no individuation to a semblance of personal identity.

I hope to pay homage to Erikson’s stages of identity formation and Kubler-Ross’s stages of dying. Kubler-Ross gets double duty, as I wish to personify characters with each of her stages: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.

It will also serve as a critique against post-Enlightenment Modernism. Whilst I agree that change was necessary and inevitable at that time, the direction taken was not necessarily for the better. As a so-called Postmodern™, this is my default position. As Rousseau notes, promises of freedom abound, yet most remains enchained. Or in the lyrics of Mad Season’s River of Deceit,

My pain is self-chosen…

Anyway, back to writing.

Client Confidentiality

Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Awakening, Book, Claude, Generative AI, Hemo Sapiens, Software, WritingTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

Claude 2.1 was analysing my current project. I had just added a bridging section and asked for an evaluation. It returned three suggestions including this one:

Suggestions:
Steps could be taken to protect identities when analyzing client content.

This made no sense to me given the context, so I enquired: I don’t understand this statement: ‘Steps could be taken to protect identities when analyzing client content.’

Claude responded:

Protecting identities:
I should not have made this assumption. Please disregard this comment, as you have no obligation to anonymize names or details in your fictional narrative. I erred there.

What caused this? We’d been discussing and analysing this all evening. Sometimes Claude just goes off the reservation.

40,000 Words and Counting

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W00t! I’ve finally reached 40K words in my Hemo Sapiens: Awakening novel. This was a minimum word count, but I’ve still got more ideas to incorporate as well as some fat to trim. For now, it yields me some 164 pages*, a number that works for me.

This is a milestone I’ve been waiting for. I have almost 40K words for my Hemo Sapiens: Origins novel, but I put it on hold, opting to release this in media res before revealing the origin story.

If you’ve been following, Hemo Sapiens: Awakening is a compilation of 5 short stories coalesced with new content to bridge and provide continuity. Given the longer story form, I had to give some characters addition depth and a story arc that spanned the longer work. Time will tell if this was successful. I’m having fun.

Anyway, back to the writing mines. Need to excavate some more material.

* 164 pages in an 8″ x 6″ form factor. Vertical spacing for chapters has not yet been accomplished, but I am not interested in how far I can pad it.