Waldo Rodriguez-Santiago ’19
Tell us a little about yourself!
I am a nerd from Puerto Rico that’s lived all over the US and I did not at all intend to become a writer. My original plan was to go into Information Technology to pay for a Game Design design degree, which I got through UCF, and writing was just something I did for fun on the side to keep my sanity.
When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
It wasn’t so much becoming a writer as much as wanting to create worlds. As long as I can remember I wanted to do that and the initial goal was through making games. But after working at an indie studio prior to going to UCF, I was told I was really good at the writing thing and I should give it a serious try. I laughed and thought they were crazy. But when the job market wasn’t playing along I figured I’ve got nothing to lose so YOLO. It’s worked out pretty well since.
What’s your writing process? What inspires your writing?
Besides being a hermit, my writing process is pretty simple. First I come up with the overarching series. Depending on how big that plan comes out to I’ll break it up into arcs. Once that’s done I go down to the book level and I lay out five milestones I need to hit to get the story to where I want it to go. Sure I’ll make an outline after that but lets be totally honest here. I’m making it up as I go and my best moments and characters come from that chaos. Also I just treat writing like a job rather than a hobby, even if people can’t seem to understand that it is, in fact, a real job. As for what inspires me, lots of things. Too many to list here really. But I grew up on 90s action movies and classic scifi like Dune and Starship Troopers along with Fantasy like Conan The Barbarian and Lord of The Rings. Throw in a healthy dose of anime and video games and it’s easy to see why my stories tend to lean heavily into the LitRPG and Progression Fantasy genres with a sci-fi fantasy blend to their settings.
What was the biggest thing you learned during your time as a Knight that you apply to your life today?
Group projects in which you are not allowed to hold others accountable are terrible. So I work for myself and I can quickly cut off anyone who refuses to stop being a problem from a project. Like an artist that takes the deposit for a book cover then decides they’re not going to do it then comes back later looking for work. Much like several artists in game projects I had in the school which weren’t doing their job came begging for second chances after they’ve had third and fourths. Only I was able to cut out the problem in the real world where the school projects refused to let me do so even with documentation lol.
What was a class or club at UCF that helped you grow as a writer?
I thought about going to classes or clubs but classes cost money and since I was paying my way through school I wasn’t going to spend a penny I didn’t have to. Clubs I didn’t find any I was interested in until I was way too busy with game projects in school. As much as I wanted to do awesome stories for those games, they were always going to be way over scope for the time we had. So now, without those constraints, I get to write as much as I want. Which has led to accidental extra books. On the bright side that means a bigger, richer world and story for readers to explore.
Who are some of your favorite authors or books?
From the classics? Dune, Starship Troopers, Lord of The Rings. From modern works, Dungeon Crawler Carl, Immortal Great Souls, the first book of Warformed: Stormweaver because the second one becomes a high school teen drama for some reason but damn is that first book great.
If UCF had a time machine, what moment on campus would you go back to?
I’d honestly be too paranoid of the Butterfly Effect to risk going back in time and changing the future in unforeseen ways lol
If your UCF experience were a meme, what would it be?
The JoJo danger meme.
What are you currently working on right now?
Getting books 9 and 10 of my Reclaimer series ready to publish. They’re just missing their covers as of this answer and Book 10 just got back from line editing so I’ll be going through revisions here pretty soon. Why don’t I do them now? Because I’m trying to finish book 2 of a new series before the weekend hits so I can start planning the next book in October and see if I can hit Rising Star status on Royal Road with it.
Anything else you want to share?
Probably that by the time the UCF Book Nook happens I should have Reclaimer: Tournament Arcanum ready to launch by the end of November.
