Antonisha,
How are you today?
I spent most of my morning listening to the sounds of a crew installing a brand new air conditioning unit at home, while I submitted the first 10K words of my novel to a contest.
Details below.
Happy Wednesday!
-Keith
Session 1: Coding (15 mins)
Build a Final Exams Table (Workshop)
Session 2: Writing (Contest Submission) (3 hours)
224 words written
I submitted the first 10K words of Cereus & Limnic: Escape From Okinawa Type-B to a contest through Spoken audio, an AI narration service.
I've dabbled with AI audio narration before, but Spoken is one of the best I've used.
Listen for yourself here.
As part of the submission, I also had to write the story of the story. As in why I wrote it and how it came together.
Here's what I wrote:
The idea for this novel came to me back in 2022. At the time, I was living in Okinawa, Japan and traveling to many of the various smaller islands that make up the Ryukyu chain. Each island had its own unique spin on Okinawan culture, its own story to tell. So I thought that I wanted to write a story that gave me an excuse to visit as many of the islands in written form as possible.
I began writing the initial draft of the novel in early 2025. I always knew I wanted it to be a prequel to my debut novel "Cereus & Limnic", primarily because it allowed me to relive my experience as a young military officer living in Okinawa in the early 2010s. I completed the initial manuscript in May 2025.
But I wasn't really happy with what I'd written. I used a lot of AI to speedrun the writing, and though it wasn't bad, I felt I wanted to tell a more personal story with the novel.
So after a 5 month break to write my 3rd novel, I returned to the project in September 2025. I had been going through some family drama with my brothers and decided to start the project over again through this very personal lens of three brothers trying to escape Okinawa during a war. That was all I had for the original idea.
I also knew I wanted it to be a sort of case file type presentation. I had recently read "House of Leaves" and really enjoyed the trippy way it was presented. I thought: what would happen if I combined that creepiness with an investigative frame? I'm a former federal agent who worked for the military, so I knew I could unite both of those skills to bring this story to life.
When I listened to the Spoken audio of the first 10K words, I knew I'd succeeded. Just like a real intelligence investigation, the testimonials are distinct and at times disturbing with how they don't always directly link to each other. I loved that puzzle solving aspect of investigative work. I hope future readers of this novel look forward to discovering it as well.
Usually when I begin a writing project, I write everyday and chip away at it until it's done. But this novel presented a unique challenge because it's so personal. I kept procrastinating and putting it off, because I just wasn’t ready to go “there” with my feelings about these ongoing family beefs. I really had to dig deep to bring out the relationship struggles I've had with my brothers, channel their respective voices, and come to grips with how witnessing the early death of my father when I was 16 affected our entire family. I wanted to do this, while making this story a faithful prequel to my first novel, which meant following a strict continuity for existing characters and aspects of the world of “Cereus & Limnic.”
The other factor was including Okinawa itself in the narrative. As you can tell, it's not just an exotic historical setting. I wanted to tap into aspects of the culture in the ways that I encountered them in the 5 years that I lived there. That meant including a touch of the spooky and unexplained in there, which is where the majority of the horror happens in the narrative.
Geopolitical strife, family drama, Japanese and Chinese culture, and Okinawan folklore— though this might seem like a lot to balance in one story, it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Primarily because the characters really set the frame for how the reader experiences the story. Some characters are closely connected to the island, while others like the brothers and the narrator Jinhua, only know it intellectually. Playing with perspective in this manner, helped me avoid the info-dump research trap that many authors fall into when writing about a place that they're not very familiar with.
Finally, after I decided to start the project over, I looked at my first draft of nearly 120K words and thought it would be a shame to throw that much effort away. So I decided to make it an alternate version of the events that happened in Okinawa. That's where the "Type-B" in the title comes from. Type-A is the original draft. A completely separate story focused on Li Ma, while Type-B heavily focuses on the three brothers. Which one is the true record? You'll find out at the end of the novel (maybe).
Another big inspiration for this book was the Metal Gear Solid video game series. Hideo Kojima is known for blending genres with exceptional character work. Metal Gear Solid (1998) is a sci-fi political thriller with horror elements, and (I'll admit) the at times cheesy action of a 1980s movie. I had recently replayed the first two games in the series and thought about how I could create my own story using similar DNA. Thus C&L: EFO was conceived.
Ultimately, Cereus & Limnic: Escape From Okinawa Type-B is my most daring novel yet. It's extremely personal, told in a unique manner, and explores themes like the limits of humanity, brotherhood, and evolution (among many others). The Spoken AI audio turned out really well. And even though I normally prefer to record my own vocal performance, I could see myself using it to possibly bring the rest of the project to life in audio form.
Session 3: Drawing (10 mins)
