Phew.
It’s been so long since I’ve written one of these.
If you’ve been with me for a while on here, things’ve changed.
First and foremost, I have a really, really hard time writing “cool stuff” these days. Comics, badass heroes, rad weapons–all of that takes a backseat to intent now; I focus way more on what I’m saying with a story and way less on how awesome its parts are.
It feels a little unfortunate, but it’s the surgery’s fault; losing a few years right as I entered middle age made me realize I have way less time to experiment with cool, fun plots than I thought. Or, rather, I have a limited amount of time to be here, on this planet, writing, and I don’t want to use that time trying to write Iconic Characters or simple, cathartic revenge plots. Instead, I want to write what I feel and what I believe is important for me to say. Might be a little grim, but that’s where I am. Life is short and unpredictable, and if I can get anything published, I want it to be things that really matters.
Which means–and this is not meant to throw shade–I might not be a Fantasy writer anymore. Not because I don’t love Fantasy, but because that genre is very indulgent for me; I need to do extra work to justify that indulgence instead of going with a genre that best suits a story idea.
So, yeah, TL;DR: I write all kinds of Speculative Fiction now.
Let’s get into where I’ve settled at the moment:
Memory
Oy.
So, Memory: A Shadow of the Lord Sun, my second novel, which I was super excited about, ultimately didn’t sell.
And that’s fine. I think I know why.
I NaNoWriMo’d the first version of that novel almost a decade ago. The problem is not NaNoWriMo, to be clear–the problem is that I discovery wrote the first draft.
And I’m really, really not a discovery writer. Which I know because of that experiment I ran the one time; the one where I was like, “Let me discovery write Memory for NaNoWriMo.”
Santiago Pro Tip: If you want to figure out if you’re a pantser or plotter, figure it out with short stories. Or a novella. Or anything shorter than a novel.
When I pantsed Memory, I wound up improvising all of it instead of doing solid worldbuilding first because I wanted to participate in NaNo. As a result, I went for characters who were fun and a plot that was cool instead of looking for a strong, clear, consistent heart (my term for my personal motivation for telling a story–the root of its theme).
I eventually rewrote Memory because I knew there was a lot wrong with it, including that lack of heart, but in the end, I just wound up shuffling ideas around on the same framework because I loved that framework. The better move would have been completely killing my darlings and going back to the worldbuilding phase.
At any rate, it is now on the backest of backburners. Just all the way back there.
In the end, there is a heart in that story, though–an experience I want to convey–but I’m giving it as much time as I possibly can for worldbuilding. It’s going really well so far, but it feels like a ‘rerewrite’ would be such an extreme indulgence that I really need to justify it to myself. If I ever manage that and the worldbuilding is solid and I’ve adequately forgotten the older versions so I can start with a clean mental slate, I’ll try again.
But, in the meantime, I have other, newer projects I want to finish.
“American Made”
A Sci-Fi short story that looks at the dark future of the American healthcare system through my personal lens.
I wrote an early version of this story years ago, but it had fundamental flaws that I’ve corrected with a rewrite.
The weird thing is, I’d always planned to rewrite it, but I wasn’t sure that would be worth it. My thought process in late October, 2024: “I dunno. Will this be relevant anymore as healthcare gets better?”
Heh . . . *sigh*
This one is already finished but it also already got rejected (in, like, two days–new record), so I’m currently doing a little tweaking and looking for somewhere to submit it.
“Vivir sin la Música”
A Fantasy short about the complicated relationship between traditional, cultural norms and progressive, artistic expression in Latine society, specifically as I’ve experienced them growing up in the Bronx.
I’ll be real: I wasn’t sure I could/should get this one published. It’s inspired by noisy neighbors, so it comes off as fun, but it ultimately touches nerves that might be too tender–in a way that maybe isn’t gentle enough. And, if you’ve grown up as a Latine in New York (particularly if you’re a Puerto Rican kid who can’t speak Spanish), you know there are some nerves that’ll always be too tender.
Still, the contention between tradition and artistic expression–specifically non-musical artistic expression–is really important to me, so I finished “Vivir” in about a day, edited it for a few weeks, and already sent it out.
I don’t really have high hopes because I think it might be a little too contentious, but it’s still good to have an auxillary-submission happening in the background while I finish “American Made.”
Sci-Fi/Horror Novel
This is the one I’m most excited about.
It’s an idea that came to me in a dream two years ago (and if you’ve been coming here for a while, as all eight of you have, you’ll know my dreams can be really weird).
But this dream was so fucking bizarre and beautiful that I just had to do something with it.
So it’s now a Sci-Fi/Horror novel I’m currently worldbuilding and plotting. It’s going really well and I hope to start writing prose in a few months. With my normal writing schedule, that should mean it’ll casually be done by mid-to-late 2026. I’d love to finish it sooner, but, as I learned with Memory, it’s just better to not rush things. I’m going to start working on that novel when I’m sure the character motivations, world design, themes, and heart are all set and I won’t have to jump through hoops to make it all work.
After that . . .
I have a bunch of stories I want to tell but, much like with Memory, I’m trying to figure them out first. The current shortlist:
- A short story about meeting yourself in an alternate reality.
- A short story about a god of death.
- A novel-length continuation of “Aixa the Hexcaster.”
- A merging of graphic novel ideas; I’ve had an idea for a Spider-Man graphic novel for ages, but then I realized, “Why waste this on Spider-Man?” Like, I like Spider-Man, but, “Why don’t I just take that plot and combine it with the emotionally compromised, weird superhero I created ages ago and make something of my own?” So that’s what I’m doing.
- A Dark Fantasy novel about death–tentatively called “It Is Not Alive.” It started as a simple reimagining of my first novel, but it’s becoming something completely different that’s blowing my mind.
- Possibly take another swing at Memory.
If I finish Memory again and get the new version of that published, I’ll officially be in, “I can write whatever the fuck I want now,” territory. But chances are, that’ll be in 2035 and I’ll probably have a bunch of new ideas I want to write by then.
The Current Project Schedule
- Finish editing “American Made” and start shopping it again.
- Keep my fingers crossed with “Vivir sin la Musica” and be ready to send it out again the moment I get my first rejection.
- Continue fleshing out the elements of the Sci-Fi/Horror novel. Start writing it the moment it’s ready.
Wish me luck this time around. And if you have projects you’re excited about, let me know in the comments. I know I haven’t asked for engagement on this site in ages, but if anyone is excited about something they have cooking, I’d love to host that excitement here. I seriously think we could all use that kind of excitement these days.
Coming up…
Next week, I think I have to talk about how the hot, new game is obviously written by AI. And how bad that might be.
If you’d like to check out some of my fiction…
“Aixa the Hexcaster” was published at Mirror Dance Fantasy in 2016: http://www.mirrordancefantasy.com/2016/09/aixa-hexcaster.html.
“A Facet of That Faceless Death” is available to read, for free, on this site: https://louissantiago-author.com/short-fiction/a-facet-of-that-faceless-death/. However, it was initially performed on the NoSleep Podcast in 2024 (be advised, my story is one of the two on the pay-walled, members-only section of the episode; to hear it, you would have to get a $5 membership to NoSleep): https://www.thenosleeppodcast.com/episodes/s21/21×11.
Until next time, take care and put a teaspoon of sugar in that unsweetened almond milk. Seriously, as a man who is on-board with acquired tastes, unsweetened almond milk is, like, ‘the sorrow of a cold, winter’s day’ in drink form.
Inktrap 
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