Work In Progress Update: Live and Impersonated

It’s September 9 as I write this and I’m due to submit a finished draft of Live and Impersonated to my editors on September 30th. They tell me that they may have a deadline in front of me that’s getting pushed about a week, so it’s possible I’ll get a little extra buffer, but the agreement is that I’ll be getting them something before October unless I just can’t make it happen.

I’m making it happen.

In a way, I’ve written this book half a dozen times. The oldest draft I can find is a ‘backup’ file from 2020, but it’s possible I started it before then. I left it and returned to it many times since then. The first draft started with an info-dumping prologue like so many science fiction novels do, then jumped into an epistolary-style journal entry from the protagonist, a UPS driver named Tom Oberlund, before dropping into the action finally with a 3rd person limited point of view chapter starting with him being late for work! Heck, I’m bored just having written about it. I’m glad only a couple people have had to read it!

The latest draft has a new set of dual protagonists: Reggie, an ass-kicking female close protection officer and Tom, a bold and often goofy administrative worker who is trying to bring back live entertainment in the drab life of citizens of the United Nations Labor Union.

Life under the dome is safe from the fallout of global nuclear war but a message from outer space drops a bombshell of cosmic revelation: the earth will soon be obliterated, along with the other inner planets of the solar system, thanks to a hyper-velocity star called White Horse. It’s on a collision course with the Sun and its arrival means humanity’s extinction unless they do something.

With the news comes Passage, a means of time travel, and the advice to use it to pull the best of humanity from its past, dropping in placeholders, packing a colony ship, and heading for Alpha Centauri with fingers crossed on finding a suitable exoplanet for a second chance at human life. They have a plan and are about to execute when rogue elements of the UNLU attempt to steal Passage for their own nefarious purpose: destroy humanity’s hope of escaping White Horse by destroying humanity’s past.

Now Reggie and Tom must go back in time to protect one of many rogue faction targets, Reggie hoping to prevent his murder—Tom ready to replace him indefinitely if Reggie fails. Who is this target? An entertainer and recording artist named Elvis Presley.

I enjoyed writing that description much more!

I’ve been actively studying creative writing over the past six months and I can confidently say, I’m a much stronger writer than I was before. The editors I’ve learned from made that possible.

What this growth and consulting meant though was that Live and Impersonated needed a full reboot. It was a painful decision, but this story was the one that made me want to finally finish writing a novel—and I did! It just wasn’t one that was worth publishing despite years of work on it.

The new and improved Live and Impersonated is the first book in a series and is about half-way done. I don’t know how much polishing I’ll be able to do on it before I turn it into my editors, but I’m hopeful that their notes will be on the order of polishing recommendations. I worked with them on creating an outline of scenes and I have those scenes 51% drafted according to the spreadsheet.

Using the strategies I’ve learned, I’m writing at lightning speed and enjoying every minute of it. When I finish it, I’ll have to decide what to write next: White Horse Book 2 or something different to give my brain a break from time travel? What do you think?