Treated Transcript

Here is a cleaned-up, highly readable version of your transcript tailored for a blog post. It retains your authentic voice and military-insider perspective while organizing the thoughts into clear, engaging sections for your readers.

Novel Update: Bureaucratic Dread, Coding Bootcamps, and a 10,000-Word Preview

Hey everyone, Keith Hayden here.

If you’re new around here, welcome! I’m a novelist currently working on my fourth book, Cereus & Limnic: Escape from Okinawa: Type B.

I’ll admit right off the bat: this update was supposed to be weekly, but here we are three weeks later. There has been a lot going on, and at this rate, I might not finish by the end of the year. If you head over to my website, keithhayden.net, you’ll see that I’m only about 15% done with the edits—which is 33,000 words into a massive 219,000-word manuscript.

It’s a slog, and it’s slow going, but I am incredibly happy with the section I just finished. Here is what's been happening behind the scenes.

Real Military Investigations vs. Sci-Fi Horror

When I was an agent in the military, we often had to deal with cases that were way outside our scope of knowledge. Depending on the circumstances, we would reach out to specialized consultants—scientists, doctors, or technical experts—to get more fidelity on what we were investigating.

I remember one specific case I was working on while stationed in Japan. We requested a consult, and some forensic scientist egghead over at headquarters sent back their report. I remember reading it and just being utterly confused. They had included a mountain of information—some of it relevant, most of it not. I couldn't tell if all the fluff was a strict requirement or if they were just trying to sound impressive. It didn't help me at all. I just sat there scratching my head, reviewed it, and moved on with the case. Sometimes, it’s just a step you have to take in a bureaucracy.

For Cereus & Limnic: Escape from Okinawa: Type B, I have recreated this exact phenomenon.

The book is a military sci-fi horror epistolary novel about three brothers on Okinawa trying to escape. But in the course of the investigation, things get covered up and murky. I wanted you, the reader, to feel like the investigator receiving this bizarre expert report. If the circumstances of the case weren't weird enough, the scientist’s story within the report is even stranger.

Alert: If you like math and science, I really dig into physics and thermodynamics here. It is highly technical and very dense. I might not be making a good sales pitch—this is not a casual read! But if you love grounded, twisted sci-fi horror, this is for you.

A Brand New 10,000-Word Preview is Live!

Because this section is so unique, I’ve done something I’ve never done before: I’ve posted a massive 10,000-word preview on my website right now.

Moving forward, my plan is to do this for every part I finish. You’ll have a chance to read the current section while it's up, but once I finish editing the next part, this current preview will be taken down to make room for the new one. So go check it out while it’s live!

Inspiration and the Challenge of "Bureaucratic Dread"

The formatting for this novel is incredibly slow because of its structure. The book is presented as a giant report. It is heavily inspired by Mark Z. Danielewski’s famous mind-bending novel, House of Leaves, combined with my real-life time living in Okinawa and my background in the military.

This is my second horror novel. My wife accused my last one of not being all that scary. I don't know how scary this one will be in a traditional sense—I don’t really do the typical Stephen King style. Instead, I try to introduce a layered, creeping sense of bureaucratic dread. If you've ever worked a rigid, hierarchical government or military job, you know exactly the kind of dread I’m talking about.

Life Updates: Coding & Early Mornings

So, why the delay?

Aside from doing a lot of editing on my phone during a very busy end of May, I started an official coding bootcamp at the beginning of June!

This is my first official bootcamp, and it’s a massive, full-time commitment. It’s been amazing to finally learn to code in a structured classroom setting, building legitimate projects alongside budding engineers and professionals, rather than just tinkering on my own with AI projects, FreeCodeCamp, or The Odin Project.

Because the bootcamp takes up my entire day, I’ve been waking up at 5:30 AM to use my mornings exclusively for writing and pushing the novel forward. The next sections are actually pretty much done; I just have to tackle that slow, tedious formatting.

Let's Connect

My email is finally working properly again! If you have any questions, want to talk books, or just want to hit me up, you can reach me at:

keith@hacstudios.org

Make sure to check out the video update that goes along with this post, and grab that preview link below! Hopefully, it won't be another whole month before the next update.

Take care,

Keith

Check out the link below this video to read the exclusive preview of Cereus & Limnic: Escape from Okinawa: Type B!