Tag: Neo Robot

Just About At The Midpoint Of The Second Draft Of This Scifi Dramedy Novel I’m Writing

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m cruising towards the midpoint of the scifi dramedy novel I’m writing. And, I have to admit, the speed I’ve had doing all of this comes in no small part to being “AI First.”

I’m doing a lot — A LOT — of work, but I am amplifying and enhancing all that hard work with AI. I continue to do most, if not all, of the actual writing, but on a structural basis AI has really helped.

And that doesn’t even begin to account for the fact that I’m going to make one last pass on the second draft to make sure absolutely as much as possible of the actual written text of the novel is mine and now AI.

I’m already feeling a little insecure from everyone who’s read the first chapter saying how great it is. Usually, people either don’t tell me what they think or say it sucks. But, like I said, I am actually doing all the heavy lifting and AI is more like an enhance spell checker than anything else.

I think very soon, once Christmas is actually here, I’m probably going to be in neutral for a few days then bounce back into writing again. But I really am going to have to work hard in the second half of the novel — the second half is not nearly as actually written out as the first.

So that is going to slow me down.

I still hope to wrap the beta draft of the novel up by spring 2026, and, yet, even if I do that, because of post-production issues, it could be Sept 1st, 2026 before I actually start to query.

That will suck, but, lulz. I just want to see how far I can get in the querying process.

No One Listens To Me

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

And the race is on.

I think 2026 is going to be the year of a flood of Hollywood projects about androids, probably specifically androids as I imagine them. This is both unsettling and exciting.

It’s exciting because…maybe I might have fire in a bottle with this novel and unsettling because, well, no one listens to me. I could have a really good premise to a novel and because no one takes me seriously, lulz, it’ll be a moot point.

But I still believe in this novel. I just have to do the hard work. I just have to throw myself into it and hope some sort of unexpected disaster doesn’t strike. My natural inclination is to tell everyone what’s going on — and I have contacted a few people about this — but I also realize that generally no one listens to me so until I can “produce paper” for people to read, it’s kind of a moot point.

Anyway. I really, really need to work hard on this novel. I really need to get it done by sometime in spring 2026.

The Neo Robot Or: Spring 2026 Is The Sweetspot to Query This Scifi Dramedy Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s rare that one of my predictions comes true. Well, it seems as though the whole premise of my scifi dramedy has been proven to have some validity to it with the advent of the Neo Robot.

It makes me wonder if, maybe, I’m…ahead of the curve? I’m sure every screenwriter with any ambition is writing a spec script which touches on many of the same themes and ideas as the scifi dramedy novel I’m working on at the moment.

The more I learn about the Neo Robot, the more I don’t know if I should be ecstatic or unsettled. The premise of my novel takes the concept of the Neo Robot and runs with it, takes it to its logical conclusion.

So, it’s sort of like if your Neo Robot looked like, and functioned much like, Pris from Blade Runner. That’s not an exact 1-to-1, but it gives you some sense of what I’m working with.

I have to steel myself for the inevitable — just as I’m about to query this novel in, say, April 2026, a movie will come out that totally blows me out of the water. So, I think I am — for one brief, shining moment — kind of in the pole position as to my general premise.

The reason I decided on this specific novel idea was I looked at all the android movies being made and not one of them addressed the specific question I wanted answered. Now, obviously, i should be reading scifi novels since this is a novel, but, lulz, again, I generally don’t read a lot of novels and I’m too old to start to write screenplays.

So a novel it is.

If I was going to comp this novel to another novel in vibe, if nothing else, it would be Andy Weir’s stuff. That’s my dream, to write a novel that was so accessible that you could literally sit down and read in an afternoon.

Anyway. Now I definitely have a reason to write as fast as possible. If I could have some sort of first mover advantage with this novel, that would be pretty cool. BUT, and this is a huge fucking BUT, I’m old(er), I’m a loudmouth crank, I live in the middle of nowhere and even if I stick the landing it could take a year or more to successfully query this novel.

Sigh.