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Two Navy Guys Send a SITREP

Welcome back to Two Navy Guys and a Novel, the place where you can watch two ex-Navy guys co-write a military-political thriller. If you’re new or you missed an episode, visit the webpage to get caught up.

SITREP – military slang for situation report; a shout out to let the guys back at HQ know what’s going on in the field.

Today, our post is a sitrep of Weapons of Mass Deception, and our status is BEHIND SCHEDULE.

Not dramatically behind our plan, but a few things have happened that have caused us to revisit our plan—again.

Editor Availability

I love my editor. I love my editor so much I actually reviewed her book about editing. I’ve known for several months now that she was going to be unavailable in DEC/JAN timeframe. We knew it, it was part of the plan. However, in this last week, we came to the conclusion that our manuscript was not going to be ready when she was available, so we’re faced with a decision: find a different editor or rewrite the plan.

The thought of finding a new editor makes me want to assume a fetal position under my desk, so we’re going to make a few changes to the timeline.

Fact-Checking Takes a Lot of Time

I’m finding there’s a big difference between writing sci-fi and an authentic military-political thriller. In sci-fi, I am in control of the world-building in my story. In a modern day thriller that uses real events as part of the story there are facts to check—lots of them. And it takes time—lots of time. Do you want to know about Iranian shipping ports? I can tell you, and our story will be better for having that information.

The Story is Growing

We’re about a week off pace on the drafting process for a number of reasons that have to with life getting in the way. More importantly, though, we can see the finish line…and it’s a few miles further away than we thought. Our 90K word novel is looking more like 100K words for the first draft. You can check out our progress using the handy Writing Progress-o-Meter I have on our website.

Timing of Beta Readers

A big checkpoint for our novel will be getting it read by our beta readers. We have a number of real-life scenes that we want validated by “been there, done that” kind of guys, including a few that are still on active duty. Our current plan of record is to recruit this team in November and send them the manuscript in early DEC, with a goal of feedback by the first week of JAN 2015.

Inclusion of an Audio Book in the Book Launch

One of the reasons I’m writing this book is so my former business colleagues can see what I do for a living now. Well, it turns out a lot of those people listen to audiobooks. Also, I participated in a book marketing seminar this past week that changed my thinking about how to launch a new book.

The Bottom Line

All this is a long way of saying that the projected launch of Weapons of Mass Deception is now tentatively planned for the week of May 23, 2015. You can see the detailed schedule HERE. The delay hurts, but that’s the price of quality.

David Bruns is the creator of the sci-fi series  The Dream Guild Chronicles, and one half of the Two Navy Guys and a Novel blog series about co-writing the military thriller, Weapons of Mass Deception. Check out his website for a free sample of his work.