I’ve reached the 20,000-word mark for Cereus & Limnic: Escape from Okinawa Type-B, continuing the update rhythm I’m trying to keep every 10,000 words. This 10K stretch took longer than expected— about another month— which showed me that I haven’t been as focused on the project as I’d like. Other writing projects and life distractions came in, but I feel like I’m finally getting back into a rhythm.
The main reason progress has been slower is that this project requires a lot of supplementary material outside the main manuscript. Some of that side content will not be required reading for the novel, but it will deepen the experience for readers who really get into the story. Writing, editing, and refining those pieces takes time, and I’m not even counting all of it toward the main word count.
The second major slowdown is formatting. Normally, I separate editing and formatting: I read the manuscript aloud, edit the text, then format later. This time, I’m formatting as I edit, which is something I usually try to avoid. But because the book is designed to feel like a bureaucratic government record— with dividers, headers, spacing, graphics, and official-document texture— I think doing it now will save me trouble later. Google Docs makes this painfully slow, though. It works well for drafting, especially across mobile and desktop, but it becomes frustrating when handling heavy formatting.
Despite the slower pace, I feel good about where the project is. I still think finishing by the end of the year is realistic, and that pace makes sense for a book with this much layered material.
The biggest creative breakthrough came during a recent trip to New York City. While visiting the 9/11 Memorial Museum gift shop, I saw an origami book that included folding papers, and something about its format immediately clicked. That was the “eureka” moment for how I want to package this novel. I don’t see Escape from Okinawa Type-B as a conventional bound book. I see it as something more unusual, physical, and artifact-like— scaled up from that origami-book inspiration into a format most readers probably haven’t encountered before.
If Prompted Hearts & Grief Algorithm pushed the idea of the dual-cover book, this project is taking that instinct much further. For now, these updates are staying mostly local on my website, without much promotion, because the project still has a long way to go and I don’t want to create external time pressure before I’m ready. But for readers interested in military science fiction and unusual book formats, this is one to keep an eye on.
