I’ve been tapping away at some early scenes in Deviant Earth’s first book (formerly Excision, currently titled Scrap Parts) This is a book I wrote damn near 90k words in a few years back and barely left the first third of the plot I’d written down. It was bloated, but this feels leaner and meaner.
That said, I think I’m going to immediately jump in and tweak a few things. I kinda want it to be a blend of magic and cyberpunk, when it was originally just post-zombie-outbreak fiction with some mutations and different kinds of zombies, like flying ones. I’m going to keep what I’ve written in a backup folder because I think it’s pretty good. It has the spirit of the original Rankin Flats novels, but it’s going to be much more action packed.
As for what direction the series will take, I think each book will center on a different part of the universe, similar to what I had in mind for Journey of the Caged. It’s still super early yet in the writing phase, but that’s what I’ve plotted out.
If you’re still reading this, sound off. What do you think? Post-apoc magic/cyberpunk, or post-apoc straight adventure?
The Rankin Flats Observer 
Personally I’d go with Cyberpunk and Adventure. I just don’t think a technological dystopian future world needs magic, at least of the traditional kind. Technology is a magic in and of itself, so it feels kind of redundant to me. That said, Cyberpunk *the RPG* added magic in a later supplement, and Shadowrun, the more popular Cyberpunk knockoff, had magic from the get go. So other people must think it’s a good fit, just not me.
But yea, I love me some Cyberpunk. A thing that is rarely done, and even more rarely done right. I like the whole “Humanity keeps making the wrong choices over and over again, and things just keep getting worse,” aspect of the Cyberpunk genre. Unlike most post apocalyptic fiction, there does not need to be an apocalypse, we just keep doing what we have been doing and we end up there just the same anyway.
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