What The Fuck Am I Going To Do About Finding An Editor For This Novel?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Jesus Christ. I’m really beginning to fear that because I’m a kook and broke that finding someone to edit my novel is going to be a real fucking struggle. It’s going to be a lot more of a struggle than I could have possibly imagined going into this project a number of years ago.

But, here I am.

The same fears I have about liberal white women literary agents being non plussed about my kooky behavior on social media are there when it comes to how I’m going to find an editor.

Add to things how fucking broke I am and….oh boy.

But, if nothing else, I’m well on my way to wrap this novel up in a few months then I can piviot from the delusional dream land I’ve been in for the last few years into the bitter, cruel world of editing and querying.

Nathalie Emmanuel pretty much looks literally like my heroine in this picture. So much so I’m worried someone is going to steal a march on me creatively!

And, yet, as I keep saying, I would rather just never be published than self-published. I would rather fail in a monumental, catastrophic way than do the co-out of self-publishing. I totally validate self-publishing, it’s just not my scene and not my vision for any novel I may write.

Just…*About*…At The Midpoint Of The Alpha Release Of The Third Draft Of My First Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Editor: I need a stiff drink. Too bad I’m sober.

Anyway, I’m just a few scenes away from reaching the midpoint of the alpha release of the third draft of my first novel. This novel is a lot — A LOT — more spicy (and funny!) than Stieg Larsson’s original Millennium series of books. And while I just am not as good as he is when it comes to structure and POVs, I do think that, in general, the story flows a faster clip than The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Nathalie Emmanuel pretty much looks literally like my heroine in this picture. So much so I’m worried someone is going to steal a march on me creatively!

And, in a sense, I do feel that I’ve finally, FINALLY, developed and written a novel that has the same vibe as The Girl Who Played With Fire. It’s not fan fiction — it’s its own thing — but the influence that novel has on my work is pretty obvious in the sense that if you pick up my novel after having read the original Millennium series of books you’ll think, “Oh, I get it, this is like a Stieg Larsson novel set in America.”

That is the general goal of things in my mind.

But, in real terms, my novel is creatively its own thing other than a few stylistic choices and a few Form Follows Function things I was kind of forced into doing because of the genre.

My heroine has a sleeve tattoo like Megan Fox sports now, even though I thought of the idea first!

In fact, the biggest difference between my work and Stieg Larsson’s is something pretty basic — our personalities. He seems like he was way more serious than I am and had a far more twisted creative sense than I do. I love to laugh and socialize and it’s a real struggle for me to stay serious — or think about dark things — for too long.

Anyway. No one cares.

The Curious Case Of Sydney Sweeney

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The fact that Sydney Sweeney is so popular at the moment definitely gives one pause for thought. We have to think about the meta of it all. I seem to recall the idea that in good economic times — or at least a good stock market, more “full figured” women are popular in mass media.

Sydney Sweeney

The thing about Sweeney is she is MAGA coded, as much as she tries not to be. So, in a sense, she may be one of the few young “four quadrant” Hollywood stars out there. She can “play” like a Blue center-Left cultural figure, but all the MAGA knuckle draggers know her background and know she’s actually one of them.

Or something. Something like that. What the fuck do I know.

My Vision For My First Novel: An Old Brown Shoe For Stieg Larsson Readers

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now, let me put the following in context — the Millennium novels not written by Stieg Larsson after his tragic death continue to be published and I can only assume are doing reasonably well. So any quibbles I have with them can easily be seen as just my usual crackpot delusional rantings.

My dream is to write a heroine as compelling as Lisbeth Salander.

But having said all that, I will give you my first impressions of the latest novel featuring Lisbeth Salander, “The Girl In The Eagle’s Talons.”

I’ve only just begun reading and I’m taken aback by how the novel doesn’t feel like a Stieg Larsson novel. The chapters are a lot shorter. The author doesn’t use surnames to refer to people. The novel just feels like it’s…there. It’s just like any other novel you might pick up, at least so far.

At the moment, I have potentially seven(!) novels that I want to write set in the same place populated by pretty much the same characters. I want my novel to feel like a Stieg Larsson novel the moment you pick it up. There are some obvious caveats.

I’m not nearly as good on the structural backend as Larsson was, for one thing. But I have studied one of his novels, The Girl Who Played With Fire, a lot and I believe I have a sense of how to make my first novel an old brown shoe to anyone who knows the original Millennium novels.

Nathalie Emmanuel pretty much looks literally like my heroine in this picture. So much so I’m worried someone is going to steal a march on me creatively!

When you pick up my novel, I want you to glance at the first page and “get” that this is meant to be an homage to the original Millennium novels, even if it’s totally and completely different outside of a few elements of style and some form follows function elements.

Anyway, I’m being very, very delusional. I’ve not even begun to query yet and it’s very possible because of the following issues that I will never succeed in becoming a published author:

My Crazy Drunk Behavior in Asia
I was kind of a wild animal in South Korea back in the day. And it’s not like I’ve hidden how bonkers I was. It’s just not in my nature to do such a thing. So any liberal woman women literary agent worth her wine is going to smoke out how bonkers and crazy I was back in the day. And that, unto itself, may be enough to steer them clear of me, no matter how much I’ve changed since then.

My Not Doing Anything For About 20 years
This is another tough issue for me to have to address during the querying process. I have not done _anything_ of note since late 2011. That’s….a long time. But, here I am, wanting to bootstrap myself out of this particular situation by writing a break out hit novel. Yet I suppose it’s possible that, by definition, could be the thing that prevents me from getting published. I could write the fucking Bible and because I’m a nobody, I just won’t be taken seriously as an aspiring novelist — and never will be.

My Being Bonkers
I’m kind of a kook. And the more due diligence is done on me by the typically liberal white women who are literary agents the more they’re going to think, “Uh, no.” There remains a lot of a taboo about having mental health issues, despite what everyone wants you to think when you’re bonkers, so…I dunno. Though I SUPPOSE it’s possible that could be used in some sort of marketing campaign for the novel, “bonkers author makes good,” that sort of thing.

The Nature of The Novel Offending Liberal White Women
I got nothing against liberal white women, it’s just I worry that the nature of my novel — that of a part-time sex worker who wants to own a community newspaper — may be a little too much for them to stomach in the context of being my literary agent. If I was a transgendered, undocumented woman, rather than a smelly CIS white male, it would be different, but I “don’t have a lot going for me demographically” as one woman recently mentioned when I wanted her to look at the first chapter of my novel.

Am (Almost) Querying: When Failure Is An Option

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I lurch towards the querying process, which can be quite brutal from what I can tell, I have to let sink in the fact that I could very well, uh, fail. So, let’s go through the reasons why this might be.

My Crazy Drunk Behavior in Asia
I was kind of a wild animal in South Korea back in the day. And it’s not like I’ve hidden how bonkers I was. It’s just not in my nature to do such a thing. So any liberal woman women literary agent worth her wine is going to smoke out how bonkers and crazy I was back in the day. And that, unto itself, may be enough to steer them clear of me, no matter how much I’ve changed since then.

My Not Doing Anything For About 20 years
This is another tough issue for me to have to address during the querying process. I have not done _anything_ of note since late 2011. That’s….a long time. But, here I am, wanting to bootstrap myself out of this particular situation by writing a break out hit novel. Yet I suppose it’s possible that, by definition, could be the thing that prevents me from getting published. I could write the fucking Bible and because I’m a nobody, I just won’t be taken seriously as an aspiring novelist — and never will be.

My Being Bonkers
I’m kind of a kook. And the more due diligence is done on me by the typically liberal white women who are literary agents the more they’re going to think, “Uh, no.” There remains a lot of a taboo about having mental health issues, despite what everyone wants you to think when you’re bonkers, so…I dunno. Though I SUPPOSE it’s possible that could be used in some sort of marketing campaign for the novel, “bonkers author makes good,” that sort of thing.

The Nature of The Novel Offending Liberal White Women
I got nothing against liberal white women, it’s just I worry that the nature of my novel — that of a part-time sex worker who wants to own a community newspaper — may be a little too much for them to stomach in the context of being my literary agent. If I was a transgendered, undocumented woman, rather than a smelly CIS white male, it would be different, but I “don’t have a lot going for me demographically” as one woman recently mentioned when I wanted her to look at the first chapter of my novel.

What Claude 3 Thinks Would Happen If The American Government Knew An App Like Tik-Tok Could Read Our Minds

If a foreign-owned video app was found to have the technological capability to read or monitor the thoughts and mental activity of its users in the United States, there would likely be tremendous backlash and outrage, though perhaps not quite as extreme as mind control.

Some potential reactions could include:

  • Public anger over a massive intrusion of privacy and violation of civil liberties on a national scale by a foreign entity.
  • Demands for the app to be immediately removed from app stores and banned until its mind-reading capabilities are verifiably removed.
  • Calls for investigations by Congress, the FTC, and other authorities into how this was allowed and what user data was accessed.
  • A rush of lawsuits and legal action against the company by users, consumer groups and state attorneys general.
  • Intense scrutiny and criticism of any U.S. companies/platforms that enabled the foreign app’s mind-reading capabilities through lack of oversight.
  • Push for much stricter data privacy laws and regulations around emerging mind-reading/brain-computer interface technologies.
  • Loss of trust in the entire video app and its parent company, potentially tanking its U.S. userbase.

While not an direct hostile act like mind control, the ability for a foreign corporation to secretly read Americans’ minds would be seen as an unacceptable privacy breach and abuse of power. There would be immense pressure to shut it down and regulate against such capabilities until proper rules are established.

Why Anyone Would Care About ROKon Magazine At This Point Is A Deep Mystery

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

ROKon Magazine started in late summer 2006 when I met the now-late Annie Shapiro. The whole saga / drama lasted until about 2008, if I recall correctly. If you want to read the whole messy booze-fueled drama from my POV, here it is:

The story is pretty damn interesting, if I do say so myself. But it was all a long, long time ago — nearly 20 years now, and there’s really no reason for anyone, even me, to be interested in it anymore.

I mean, I daydream about someone like Phoebe Waller-Bridge wanting to write a screenplay based on the story, but, lulz, that’s just a daydream. And I do draw upon what happened back then a GREAT DEAL for the novel I’m writing. But I just find it very curious that anyone — ANYONE — would be interested in ROKon Magazine.

And now that I’m on the cusp of querying, I wonder if white liberal women literary agents doing due diligence on me are going to be really into all my bad behavior back then. All I can say is — I’m sorry. It was a long time ago and I’ve grown so much as person relative to what happened back then that it’s like I’ve had a brain transplant.

Otherwise, you’ll just have to accept me for who I am.

We Have To Take Trump’s Continued Stochastic Terrorism Seriously

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Trump is a curious historic figure because he’s so stupid that he can’t even put enough brain cells together to do the most basic of sneaky tyrannical things when given his first opportunity, while at the same time is wily enough to destroy everything whenever he gets a second chance.


So the latest thing that Trump has done is to yet again dip into the stochastic terrorism well. We have to take this seriously because he knows exactly what he’s doing — putting the idea of a “bloodbath” into the mind of his supporters if he doesn’t win later this year.

This is something I have been talking and writing about over and over and over again. We have to worry about Trump causing a civil war if he wins OR if he loses. He’s such a weird, divisive figure in our political history that just by existing — and acting as the avatar for the MAGA fascist movement that he is very, very destabilizing.

It all boils down to one issue — if we’re pushed to the bring, are we going to stop yelling at each other and start to…shoot at each other? I really don’t want any political violence of any sort, but I am very, very worried.

I Really Need To Do Something With My Backup Scifi Pandemic Concept

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I work my way through the third draft of my first novel, it becomes clear that there is a real chance it will not be ~100,000 words, but, rather ~140,000 words. That is just too long for a first novel, no matter how good it might be. But because I work in terms of scenes rather than words, I…just don’t know how many words this thing is going to be.

The heroine of my novel looks like Morena Baccarin.

And there is a real good chance that when I do the secondary run-through to tighten the the third draft of the novel down and get it ready for some sort of editor that…it will get even longer. And it doesn’t help that I’m doing all of this in a vacuum because I’m a freaky weirdo that no one likes and / or wants to have anything to do with me on a professional basis.

It is definitely going to be interesting, regardless, to see the fate of the first novel.

But I do think the second track pandemic scifi novel is really compelling. I just have to figure out how to balance my attention on the first novel with similar attention on the secondary novel.

They Shoot Writers, Don’t They?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The issue of finding an editor for my first novel is now beginning to weigh heavily on my mind. I find myself wondering how difficult is going to be to get one.

The heroine of my novel looks like Morena Baccarin.

Three issues are at the forefront of my mind. The first issue is can I get one if they do due diligence on me. I’m afraid, like with manuscript consultants, they they will take one look at me and think I’m too much of a crank for them to want to have any professional relationship with me.

Another issue I’m worried about is, well, am I going to have the funds necessary to pay for an editor in the first place. It’s going to take me months to find enough money to pay for an editor, which will delay things a great deal.

My heroine sports a sleeve tattoo much like the one Megan Fox now has, even though I thought of the idea first!

The third issue is how long it will take the editor, once I get them, to clean up my copy and fix any editorial errors on my part. It’s definitely looking like I could finish the novel by my deadline of July 22 and it will STILL be sometime next year before I can query.

Wish me luck.