Those first drafts were personally satisfying to write, but they made for boring reads. They felt more like the framework of a world than anything coherent. I needed an anchor, someone to center the story around, but I didn't really know how to do that yet. So, the story sat dormant until about the middle of 2023. I'd been working on Have Gun, Will Reincarnate for about a year at that point. I had more experience doing character work. My dialogue had improved dramatically. So, I decided to give Project Legacy another go. 

And it still didn't work. Something was missing. 

I stumbled across the secret sauce entirely by accident. I sat down and watched a few episodes of Justified on a whim, and it all started to click. 

What if, rather than using the scientists as my characters, I used the people who protected them? What if, instead of dumping mountains of lore on the readers, I told the story through conversation?

Project Legacy is an attempt to tell a story in a style I'm wildly unfamiliar with. It owes more to Elmore Leonard than Alfred Bester. I'm still not entirely sure I pulled it off, but I guess there's only one way to find out. 

With that in mind, Project Legacy is going to be dialogue-heavy. Maybe too much for some folks. If it's not your cup of tea, no worries. The characters and the relationships matter as much as the scientific mumbo-jumbo, maybe more. If you vibe with the characters, you'll probably vibe with the story. If you don't, you'll probably bounce off it, and that's okay. 

That's not to say there won't be action. There's a fair amount, and if you're the sort who likes your fight scenes neat and sanitized, this isn't the book for you. There are no saints in these pages. The bad guys are truly heinous, and the good guys aren't far behind. There's no plot armor, either. If someone gets hurt, they won't magically get better in the next chapter. Bad things will happen to characters you like, and the repercussions will still be felt years or even decades later. 

As far as spicy content goes, there's a bit of sex, but not as much as in some of my other stories. I wanted to focus more heavily on the relationships than the spicy bits. If it does happen, I'll be sure to put a warning at the top of the page. 

If that sounds like something you're into, then I hope you enjoy Project Legacy. It was a lot of fun to write, and I hope to keep writing it for a good long while. 

Cheers, 

Rusty