by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The movie that is the closest “comp” to my novel is the horror-thriller movie Companion. But I continue to be intrigued about how there hasn’t been a direct competitor to my novel that deals with the practical elements of actual romance with an android.
Everyone is so busy thinking of the absolute worst case scenario that no one — but me so far — has wondered about a more nuanced romantic scenario.
Anyway, I continue to edge closer and closer to wrapping this draft of the novel up. I’m, at the moment at least, breezing through the third act. Then, I’m going to take a deep, deep breath and do “open heart surgery” on some of the structure of the novel. And THEN, I’m going to going to “color correct” the novel’s content on a more nuance basis.
I still am weighing leaning into having AI being my editor and having it “gently” the novel to give it some consistency as well as query-level content. My only fear, of course, is because everyone is hateful that they will just roll their eyes and say “AI wrote the novel,” when that will not be the case at all.
Anyway. I’m growing more and more uneasy about what happens when I get to the querying process. I’m really nervous about due diligence on the part of mostly liberal white women who make up literary agents (in my imagination.) I’m a kook and always have been and I’m afraid they will “cancel” me even before given me any sort of chance with the novel.
I have three books about querying I should be reading, but just can’t bring myself to do it. But there will come a point when I absolutely have to.
