Every once in a while, I will do a major reset of this novel I’m working on and I just finished one. Now, the structure of this novel has nothing to do with Stieg Larsson’s “Girl Who Played With Fire.”
It’s now completely it’s own thing.
Now, I’m going to go through the outline and sketch out each individual scene and then write them. I’ve added one more layer to development, so that’s slows me down with development but speeds up the actual writing once I get around to it.
I’m growing tired of writing about this. But the United States is running on political fumes at the moment. At I think the thing that would spark a civil war in roughly the 2024 – 2025 timeframe will be how the center-Right hides behind the United States being a “constitutional republic” to avoid the tough task of adopting their policies to the realities of modern America.
They would rather use autocracy as a crutch than mellow out or try to figure out how to appeal to non-bonkers white people.
The reason why this is important is should Republicans steal the election but still technically stay within the Constitution, the center-Left will grow so enraged that the “Great Divorce” that MTG keeps babbling about will happen not when the GQP leave the Union, but when Blue states – probably starting with California, do.
Then everything — and I mean everything — will come crashing down. A civil war will start and that will prompt WW3. The “Great Reset” that insane, bonkers Right wing nutjobs believe will happen…will happen. But not because of any conspiracy, it will happen because white people are afraid, in the abstract, of being “canceled” simply for being conservative.
Or we simply have one last democratic death spasm and slip peacefully into autocracy. And if it happens, initially nothing will change but gradually, over time, we’re going to politically become identical to Russia.
Both of our potential options suck so fucking bad. We just won’t be able to muddle through like we have the last few decades. Something’s gotta give.
It occurred to me last night that I really needed to re-work the first novel of this five book project. So, I lopped off pretty much 30,000 – 40,000 words and started the story as late as absolutely possible.
This has led to a huge hole in the second half of the second act, but I think if I just chill out for a few days, I should be in position to start writing again with vigor around January 3 or so.
Anyway, I’m pleased. It’s just is all a lot more work that I could ever have imagined.
Very, very few people look at this Website on any given day. Maybe about a 300. Add to this my two decade obsession with Webstats and it’s really easy for me to get some sense of who’s looking at this site.
All I know, at best, is someone’s ISP and location. That’s it. And even then I think technology has changed so a lot of people view this site and I don’t even know anything about it.
But, moving along…two people from Moscow looked at this site today. They didn’t look at anything specific, but they came in such a way that it seemed like they new this URL, there was no referring link.
It’s very curious. What could I possibly have written that would make two people in Moscow look this site up? If you really wanted to get all paranoid, you might say they were doing a lookieloo at the site to get some sense if I was aware of something the Russians are up to in say, Ukraine.
But that’s real stretch. It could have been anyone for any reason. All I know is where they were coming from and Moscow is a huge city. But that’s why Webstats are so addictive to me — I just never know.
I still think if there’s going to be a major war between Russia an Ukraine, the next deadline is Orthodox Christmas on December 7th. After that, it’s Orthodox New Year, and after that there’s no particular reason to do it or not to do it. It will start to get warmer soon enough and Russia could just strike at any moment in the spring.
I do not believe any of this is really happening, but it is entertaining to think about. I have a lot of questions about how feasible it would be to hide Queen Elizabeth’s death for a few months.
Who knows.
The Crown could have used deep fake technology for the Queen’s Christmas Address. And, really, if they wanted to shut people up, all they would have to do is wheel her out and let her wave a little bit in public.
It seems like there are two scenarios in this possible conspiracy theory.
The Queen is just really, really ill In this scenario, the Queen is lingering on her death bed, or is bed ridden and what the Crown did was have her give her address then use deep fake technology to make her look far more well than she really is. So, her voice was real, but her image wasn’t.
The Queen is dead. In this scenario, the whole thing is a lie.
How they would get away with that last one is anyone’s guess. But I would propose that unless they’re willing to start murdering people to protect such a secret, that it would inevitably come out at some point — and result in the destruction of the Royal Family.
Outside of a few things here and there, I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. The vast majority of them don’t make any sense or are poorly thought out. But, let’s play pretend and imagine one conspiracy theory that is at least interesting to think about.
Is Queen Elizabeth II dead?
The only reason why I think this is even something to consider is her public appearances have dropped off dramatically, and her last public address was recorded. And, authorities have said that her life will “change” in February — which is also when the 70ths anniversary of her being on the throne happens.
The theory is that the Crown REALLY wants QE2 to make it to 70 years on the throne, to the point that they would hide her death between now and February. Or it’s even possible she’s already dead and the address she gave was some sort of uber deep fake.
For me, the only weakness to this theory is how, exactly, they would keep something so huge a secret and how long they would wait between the 70th anniversary and the announcement of her death.
I don’t believe this is really happened, but it is an amusing concept.
One of the reasons why conspiracy theorists suggest that the government may be hiding the existence of alien life from us all is the prospect that we would all freak the fuck out.
And, yet, I would suggest that under almost all reasonable methods of us discovering that We Are Not Alone, it would all be a lulz. Let me explain.
Right now, as you read this, we know for a fact that the US military has repeatedly over the years run into very strange drone-like things that seem to exhibit technological abilities that are far beyond what we assume humans can do.
And yet…it was barely a blip for one news cycle.
As such, we could discover absolute proof of alien life in the universe and outside of very online people and science nerds… the average person probably wouldn’t care that much. And if they did start to care, then the very dynamic we see with global climate change and vaccines would kick in. If people really started to have to confront the implications of humanity not being alone in the universe, they would think up ways to dismiss it for political reasons.
So, the case could be made that there is only one way First Contact would matter to the average person — “hard” First Contact. We’re talking huge alien spaceships over major cities like in Childhood’s End.
But if it’s a “soft” First Contact that’s not sexxy, then, lulz. It, too, would be important on Twitter for little more than a few hours. Given how clear that is, I think we may be surprised what we learn in the next few years. The Powers That Be probably have figured out how hard it would be to actually scare people about evidence of ETs, so they won’t care if some happens to appear. No reason to hide it if no one cares.
I fucking hate the fucking Bechdel Test. I hate it because it’s a dumb self-avowed “half-joke” litmus test that progressives with their heads up their asses use on art as some sort of Leftist virtue signaling. And it comes from a comic of all things? I am being put through hell because of a “half-joke” proposed in a comic. What has this world come to.
In other words, I don’t come down to their office, knock the cocks out of Leftist cultural critics mouths and tell them how to do their job.
I hate the idea of their being some sort of ideology for storytelling. Just tell a great story. If two women happen to talk to each other about something other than a man, so be it. Ironically enough, I’m fleshing about a scene right now in the first novel I’m working on which would, in fact, pass the fucking dumb Bechdel Test.
It is now embarrassing how many Twitter liberals think that this or that boom, or angry Twitter thread or even a timely, unexpected indictment is going to save us. We are totally, completely fucked, fucked, fucked. We are beyond the event horizon for Something Bad happening at some point between now and January 2025.
If you indict Trump, you either turn him into a martyr or you knock him out of the 2024 election…only to have a different would-be Republican autocrat take his place.
Remember, by definition, our next Republican president will be an autocrat. Our democratic goose will be cooked. As such, the only alternative is a civil war. It would be high risk, but high potential reward. Millions would die. World War 3 would happen at the same time. And there would be no assurance that of what the ultimate endgame would be.
The one thing that won’t happen is Biden (or any other Democrat) be allowed to win without serious conflict, up to and including a civil war. Half the electorate now believes that the only legitimate election is one in which their candidate wins.
How do you fix THAT problem?
I guess what I’m trying to say is — enjoy this twilight of democracy while you still can. We are so fucked in the near future. In fact, The Day After Tomorrow is just one huge tragedy.
I honestly don’t see how I don’t endup dead in a ditch eventually at the hands of an ICE agent if any Republican becomes POTUS. I say this because I simply refuse to shut up about what a fucking piece of shit President Pompeo or DeSantis is. Fucking cocksuckers either one of them.
I’m just the type of guy to get drunk in a bar in 2027 and start ranting about what a fat fuck President Pompeo is. Next thing I know, I’m being tortured to death by ICE. I really think that is a possibility.
THEN the the Traditionalists in my family my sit up and take notice about why I was right that they should have made temporary common cause with Liberals instead of MAGA.
I can still remember exactly how it came about that I started the process of going from writing two books to now five books. These first two books were meant to be a direct homage to the Millennium series that Stieg Larsson wrote before his tragic death of a heart attack. I was lying on the couch, thinking about both the novels and the fact that Trump turned out to be so fucking lazy and stupid that he could not even do the most basic of autocratic things to stay in power.
I rolled over in my mind the strange little town that I come up with — which was meant to be something of a thinly vailed allegory for Trumplandia, when it occurred to me that I had this huge backstory as to how a small Southern town might endup in such a bizarre situation.
I thought about how Trump was no longer president and how the context of the two books would change. Then it occurred to me, why not tell the very compelling story of the two major events that led up to the opening of the then first book in the series.
So, a bit later, I sat down and began to sketch out the plot for these two prequels and I was very pleased. What I did not realize was how hard it was going to be to finish even a first draft of the first book. Along the way, I saw Mare Of Easttown and it occurred to me that THAT was the vibe I wanted for the first prequel. (Which readers would not immediately know was actually a prequal because my intent is to sell the novels in chronical order.)
Then, even later, it occurred to me to split the first book in two, so now I have five novels to work on.
But back to the first book. In the back of my mind, I keep thinking about how great Mare of Easttown is and how I want to write a novel that is as good as that show was. I really enjoy developing and writing female characters because I find them so much more of a challenge and also I’m irritated that people like Olivia Wilde and Jessica Chastain apparently think men, by definition, can’t write well developed female characters. Or, at least, it’s a lot more difficult for them.
Anyway, I’m finally working on the second draft of the first novel. I hope to wrangle me a literary agent by the end of 2022 (or, at least the fall querying season.) But I’m also working on the other four books as I work on this first book. So, it’s at least theoretically possible that I will have additional novels in the series complete when I try to find a literary agent.
I’m have a lot of fun now because I am really into the groove of things now. I have figured out how *I* develop and write novels.
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