Month: June 2020

WW3: Trump as ‘War President’ or ‘A Fish Rots From Its Head’



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have long thought Trump wants a war or major terrorist attack. That’s the only way I can explain his callus disregard for our national security. Well, he may very well have his chance to be a “War President” after all if the worst happens in Asia.

I don’t really expect any of this to happen. North Korea just wants some attention as it occasionally does. What’s going on between India and China right now is far more rare, but to date, it’s still kind of a so-what situation. But let’s suppose the worst happens and there are several regional wars that occur at the same time that are marketed as “World War Three.”

What happens?

Well, initially, Trump’s popularity will skyrocket.

Then everyone will realize, again, what a moron Trump is and it will go back down to where it is now. A conventional war between the United States and the DPRK would be a short, bloody affair. It would probably be about three months long.

That’s the best case scenario. If it went nuclear, then, well, goodbye LA, NYC and DC. The DPRK, meanwhile, would be nothing more than radioactive sludge.

But, again, I just don’t see that happening. Everything is going to calm down and things will go back to “normal.” Trump’s still never leaving office for any reason, though.

Locking Things Down #AmWriting



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m locking things down with the outline of the novel I’m developing. I still have a huge gaping hole in the second half of the second act, but nothing I can’t fix in about two weeks (I hope.)

I have a lot of thinking to do right now.

I have to figure out a way to have some of the scenes I’ve been thinking about for about two years. I also need to have, like, an investigation. Right now, I’m a little worried that things kind of drift and don’t really talk about the actual investigation that much.

But I still have time to change that.

I’m going to spend the next two weeks reworking and filling out the outline (and reading a huge amount) so when I actually start writing again just after the 4th of July Weekend that things will go very, very fast. That’s been the point of all this development, measure twice, cut once and all that.

Anyway, that’s what I’m going to focus on the next two weeks or so. I really, really want to change gears and start writing the first draft seriously around the end of the 4th of July Weekend.

My Webstats Suggest Someone Is Developing a ‘Big Chill’ For The #COVID19 #Pandemic #Trump Era



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I wish I had the resources to do it, it’s so obvious — a quickie, updated version of The Big Chill set in NYC during the current COVID19 Pandemic. The plot writes itself — a group of six 40th somethings (and one younger person) come together for a series of COVID19-related funerals and talk about the modern world.

Pretty much all you have to do is find a decent screenwriter and some high-end movie equipment and you have a movie. It could be super timely and it would give you the opportunity to explore — and maybe have some catharsis — about the current fucked up Trump Era.

I say someone is producing this movie because twice in the last few weeks someone has looked at a post I did two years ago suggesting such a movie. But now that funerals are starting up in NYC, well, it’s very easy to see an indie movie about what I’m proposing popping up.

You could do it really, really fast and maybe even get a well-known actor to be a producer and pay for the whole thing as well. You need six people. I tried to come up with a dream cast, only to realize if everyone (expect one person) is supposed to be in their 40s, you’d have to think about who would play which character and I’m not really into putting that much energy into this post.

Anyway, good luck people who are writing and producing the movie I thought up two years ago.




Edging Closer To Wrapping Up Development On The First Draft Outline



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I talked to a FBI PR person today and it was a lot — a LOT — of help. He really opened my eyes to some things I was totally missing when it came to the actual meat-and-bones of why you would read a story like this: the actual investigation.

He didn’t like it much when I mentioned The Company, even in fiction. That was a tense, awkward moment in an otherwise very pleasant and informative hour-long conversation. Talk about power. The Company is a very, very powerful organization within the Federal government.

Anyway, even The Company would likely get a kick out of how I’m portraying they and the NSA in this story. I’ve come up with something that resembles a Donald Trump waking nightmare after he’s had one too many Diet Cokes before bedtime after having watched the latest James Bond movie. This whole thing is meant to be rather pulpy and with a dab of magical realism to it than anything else. Or, put another way, you might see it as a Coen Brothers interpretation of Stieg Larsson, if you will.

So the next few days I’m going to plunge into the outline I’m working on. Hopefully, I will finally wrap it up by just after the July 4th weekend. I really need to root around the story on a structural level to make it clearer some of the aspects of the investigation and where things stand when the FBI character appears at the midpoint of the plot.

Wish me luck, I guess.

Trump’s Misogyny, Kim Yo-jong & The Potential For War


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m the Brian Fellows of armchair observations about North and South Korea. I don’t know anything, but I do have opinions. It seems as though the NORKs are about to saber rattle a little bit in some way (maybe) and if they do, then it seems pretty obvious that Trump is such a misogynistic moron that he may bungle it. All simply because he hates women and it would be Kim Yo-jong, not Kim Jung-un that he would be facing eyeball to eyeball.

The key thing is Trump simply can’t handle strong women — even if they’re nasty, vicious women like I suspect Kim Yo-jong probably is — and if she does some saber rattling, Trump may endup causing an esclation such that LA or NYC is vaporized by a nuclear-tipped NORK ICBM.

But I don’t know, I just don’t know.

It seems as though things have died down. I think we’re safe for the time being. Maybe the recent weird statements out of Pyongyang were simply the usual bullshit.

Let’s hope.

North Korea is such a blackbox that it could mean anything. Maybe they’re about to freak out on us in a big way, and maybe they’re not.

Things Are Going Well For (At The Moment) With The Novel



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Well, things are moving fast with the novel right now. I hope to wrap up the outline no later than around the July 4th weekend. After that, I will start writing against in earnest.

I’m doing a huge amount of reading as well.

I probably have about 30 books to read and it’s unlikely I’ll read all of them, even if I read really fast. But I’m glad that I am, at last, doing what you’re supposed to do — if you’re writing, you’re reading.

There’s so much I don’t know about the process of actually getting a novel published. Maybe someone is going to “steal” my concept, or steal a march on me. That’s all very possible. But I know enough about how to tell a story now that after I stop sulking, should that happen, that I can use what I’ve learned to dive back into a new story pretty quick.

But I love, love, love this novel’s concept. I love the characters and I love the “big ideas” that it’s going to address.

I am still very nervous that someone is reading this blog with the hopes of “cherry-picking” what they can from it for their own, similar project. But, for me at least, what I’m doing on this blog is part of the developmental process of the project. You’re not supposed to be totally miserable when you create art, at least, not if you can help it.

Scenario: Trump As ‘War President’ In A Conflict With The #DPRK



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have no special insight and I can’t predict the future — at this point, I seriously doubt the DPRK is going to do anything out of the ordinary in the next few days.

But, just for “fun”, let’s run the scenario of Trump being a “war president” because of some shenanigans on the part of the DPRK. I think the key thing we have to understand is how bad Trump is at his job.

When the war was won — and it would be won by the USA — it would be despite Trump, not because of him. And the economy, already in recession, would be pushed into a pretty deep, short depression if all of the ROK was knocked off of line because of a war with the DPRK.

In fact, what I think would happen would be it would be Trump himself who would bungle the war with the DPRK if it ever came in the sense that what any normal POTUS might simply see as the usual DPRK bullshit, Trump might see as an opportunity to win re-election.

He might rapidly escalate things in a way that he shouldn’t and pop goes the world.

I hope that doesn’t happen. I really don’t.

Worst Case Scenario: The DPRK, Russia, Ukraine & The Whole Shebang



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Things just keep getting worse this year.

The thing about war is one you let slip its dogs, instability suddenly whips around the globe at an alarming rate. So, in a sense, if the DPRK really did flip its lid and attack the ROK on some meaningful way, that wouldn’t be the end, it would be the beginning.

It’s likely several hotspots elsewhere around the globe would flare up rather abruptly and violently. I’m thinking Russia-Ukraine and India – Pakistan. Though India and China have been eyeball-to-eyeball the last month or so as well.

I honestly don’t expect such a dire situation to happen, but there’s one thing I know about the Koreans — however the two Koreas are united, it’s going to be in a really weird manner.

Like, historically surreal.

We under estimate how weak the United States probably looks to people like the NORKs. Whatever border goals they might have, now is a put-up-or-shut-up kind of moment for them.

I have no idea what is going to happen. But I don’t like how things have suddenly gone, if not 0 to 100, at least 0 to 40 extremely rapidly.

DPRK, WTF?



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Out of the blue, I’m hearing a lot of chatter about the DPRK doing something against ROK. What it could possibly be, I have no idea. In fact, it’s not so much them doing something at this point but WHY would they do something against their brothers to the south?

The Sister
Kim Yo-jong may, somehow, in an unexpected position of power. The DPRK is a blackbox, so the idea that Kim Jung-Un is actually secretly dead is not a weird as you might think.

Trump
It’s possible the DPRK can see what we all see — that Emperor Trump I is an invalid moron — and they may feel it’s now or never. If they don’t strike the ROK now and try to get some sort of border adjustment, it’s just never happening.

Covid19
Maybe things are a lot worse in the DPRK with Covid19 than we know and this is kind of a deathrattle freakout.

But there are some problems.

All of them involve the U-S-A.

Trump is just too both moronic and bonkers. If he felt he might be able to win re-election as part of a Rally Around The Flag war against the DPRK, he would likely go at it with great gusto.

And, then, well, things escalate and NYC, or LA are vaporized in a limited nuclear exchange between the two nations.

I just don’t see any of that happening.

It’s just another time where the DPRK wants some attention.

Of My Novel’s ‘Tone,’ ‘James Bond’ and ‘Mission: Impossible — FallOut’



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I am not, by nature, a very dark and serious person. In fact, the fact that I’m writing a thriller meant to be an American answer to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is something of a fluke. It’s just that about two years ago, I came up with a really cool plot rather out of the blue and decided I loved it so much I was willing to put the energy into it to see it to completion.

So, here I am, getting ever-closer to wrapping up development and plunging back into actually writing the novel.

I find myself drawn a lot more to James Bond and Mission: Impossible than Stieg Larsson. I guess I’d rather write really accessible spythriller stuff than dark and scary police procedural. And, yet, I have a vision and I’m sticking to it. I’m going to write something of a police procedural, even though that’s not really what I’m all that good at for no other reason than at the moment I know nothing about it.

I say all of this because I’m listening to the soundtrack to Mission:Impossible — Fallout. I like how bombastic and accessible the music is. The thing about the novel I’m working on is I want everyone to have a good time. Maybe not MAGA, of course, because they’re American Nazis and can eat shit.

But otherwise, I want everyone to have a good time.

Anyway, the point is, I want this novel to be a lot of fun. It, hopefully, will present some “big ideas” in a manner that is so breezy that you won’t feel you’re being preached to. That, at least, is the goal.