Category: From The Editor

Rebooting Characters

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve decided to spend some time re-writing about the nature of character in novels. I have yet AGAIN re-arranged things and, as such, I need to contemplate about the nature of character and how I can take some of my “mood” characters to the next level.

My heroine is a part-time (for fun) sex-worker.
I have a limited amount of time, so I need to hurry. Having a sense of urgency is the key thing that is going to make or break my efforts to get the third draft of this novel done by around April 1st.

Things are improving with the third draft by leaps and bounds, but yet I still have a long ways to go. I really need to flesh out some characters that to date simply haven’t had a lot going on. I hope to at last have the first three chapters of the novel done pretty soon — ASAP.

But only time will tell. I can’t keep spinning my wheels. I need to accept that this third draft isn’t going to be perfect, no matter how much I work on it. The key thing is to just get it finished on a structural basis.

I’m Kind Of An Asshole When I Edit Other People’s Writing

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I think I may have hurt a young woman’s feelings when I read some of her writing. She’s a much better writer than I am — I’m really bad at spelling and grammar — but I felt her storytelling….lacking.

But I told her up front how harsh I was going to be. I fear that may not have helped anything. I think she got really, really upset at how brutal I was in my comments. But I could not help myself.

I’m brutal to my OWN STUFF and I thought she wanted to be a better writer. So I applied the same metrics to her storytelling as I did my own. But she ghosted me soon after she read my comments.

Oh well. This is a prime example of the “kook tax.” I just have no friends and no one likes me. I sometimes feel I could walk off the face of the earth and no one would notice or care.

Why Trump Is So Fucking Popular

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about major historical events is the individual has no fucking clue what’s going on while it’s happening. It’s sometimes not until decades later that people have enough perspective on things that there some sort of cohesive narrative as to what the fuck just happened.

Having said all that, here is my personal hot take on why Trump is so popular. The people who are so obsessed with Trump love the “idea” of Trump the fighter. They could care less about his personal bad behavior. They see him as an avatar, a vessel, for the bent up rage of disaffected, “disenfranchised” white Christian (men) who feel as though the woke cancel culture mob is just moments away from ruining their lives.

As such, they hate liberal-progressives SO FUCKING MUCH that they gladly will hand over their democratic birthright. They *want* an autocracy and if Trump uses the military to “own the libs” with the U.S. Military, all the better. They are so blind with rage about the elites and the transitions to a minority majority nation that they are totally blinded by the consequences of doing such a thing.

These are all macro trends that are coming to a head in late 2024, early 2025. Either we turn into a hybrid MAGA autocracy / military dictatorship or we defeat the “bad guys” of MAGA and establish some sort of Third Republic. I fear at this point, there’s absolutely no middle ground.

I’m not advocating anything, of course. Just pointing out the obvious.

The process of figuring out what the fuck we’re going to do starting in late 2024, early 2025 could cost the lives of billions because of a Civil War / Revolution / Third World War. I’m known for my hyperbole and “hysterical doom shit” so, since I can’t predict the future….who knows?

Regardless, we have to take all of this seriously. We can’t dick around anymore, thinking someone is going to “save us.”

Let’s Rock

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Things are beginning to stabilize with the third draft of the novel. Though, I found myself talking about it today and I realized there was a huge plot element that I had not yet formalized and I felt rather insecure.

My heroine looks like Corrie Yee in my mind.

I *think* I have that fixed.

My fear is that the novel will be seen as a jumble of different genres to the point that it isn’t focused. And, yet, I also think my implementation of a variety of genres is interesting enough and seamless enough that there won’t be a problem with focus.

I hope.

I’ve decided to lean into a somewhat “supernatural” element to the novel that I think will make it really thought provoking. I am also flipping the script on some of the darker elements of Stieg Larsson’s stuff so while it may seem familiar to fans of his work, my specific interpretation of such behavior is totally different and not nearly as…problematic.

But the subject is so loaded that just using it as a plot point could cause some readers to either blanch or chuckle. But being a good enough writer that I can pull of such a risky move is why they pay me the big bucks, right?

I have *got* to lock down the first few scenes (or, even better yet, chapters) of this novel so I can start to progress into the second act. Things are getting much, much better and I’m just about to do just that — I am still on track to wrap up the third draft around April 1st, 2024.

But I have GOT to stop futzing with everything. It’s never going to be perfect. I have a great premise and if I won’t stop tinkering with it until it’s “perfect” the Fourth Turning could happen and I’ll be too busy dodging bullets or weaponized ICE agents to try to query the damn thing.

The Coming Of Trump’s Tyranny Has An Air Of Inevitability To It At the Moment

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As of late 2023, at least, it seems we’re doomed. Trump will win in 2024, consolidate power in 2025 and that’s it — we’re a hybrid of autocracy and direct military dictatorship.

What I think we’re feeling is the culmination of any number of macro political and economic trends that none of us have any control over. This is it. We’re just about to reach the “then all at once” part of the Hemmingway quote about going bankrupt.

Or, if you want to be REALLY OPTIMISTIC, you could say that “chaos is a ladder” and there is now a chance that all of reforms that we need to implement could happen once we somehow, through a lot of hard work depose Trump at some point in 2025. (Not that I’m advocating anything!)

So, I suppose anything is possible. No one can predict the future, least of all me. Keep the faith.

King Trump For a Day

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

What are we to make of this? There are two things to take into consideration. One, Trump lies all the time, so it seems as though it may be more than just “one day’ that he wants to be a tyrant.

Meanwhile, in the past at least, Trump was too dumb and lazy to actually do some pretty basic autocratic things. That may have changed, however, for various reasons. It could be that Trump could very well do all the autocratic things that he promises to do — “on day one.”

This brings up the issue of my own personal exposure. While I think I’m *fairly* safe — at least at first — my concern if we really are transitioned into a military dictatorship that things could get…hot…for me where I live. I could become one of millions of American who flee my home to somewhere that better fits my own personal politics.

But, it gets worse.

Virginia where I live is actually two states one Blue, one Red, fused together who hate each other. If there is any sort of “National Divorce” or even a “Glorious Revolution” Virginia is going to implode into intra-state civil war. The whole thing would be a massive clusterfuck with no ready endgame.

And, yet, here we are — it definitely seems as the moment that a Trump second term, with all its hellscape elements, is now inevitable.

There’s Nothing More Unnerving Than Being Blocked On Twitter By Someone You’ve Never Interacted With

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It happened again. I am blocked by someone I’ve never interacted with on Twitter. And, this time, it’s even more unnerving because it’s someone I ostensibly agree with politically.

There are a few possible reasons for why this happened:

  1. For You Page
    It’s possible that because I showed up on their For You Page on Twitter they blocked me because I re-tweeted a hot chick or something. Something where I was being harmless but they reacted to what they saw in a way that caused them to block me.
  2. Mueller, She Wrote
    They could be friends with the hyper-sensitive Mueller, She Wrote and she is bad mouthing me to everyone she can find.
  3. “Hysterical Doom Shit”
    It could be that they just don’t like all my “hysterical doom shit” that I peddle about Trump.
  4. They think I’m a kook.
    This could be just another example of the “Kook Tax” at work. I’m being punished for being “colorful.”

Trump’s Destruction of The Free Press May End Not With A Bang, But With a Whimper

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about Trump is he is easy to both overestimate and underestimate. You just never quite know what the fucking tyrant is going to do. It’s the same way with the free press. It could be that he is able to rub his two brain cells together in such a way that the average person won’t even notice that the United States no longer has a free press.

Behind the scenes, he will use a combination of plutocrat shenanigans and pressure to subtly shift the tenor of American press coverage of his tyrannical administration. We’ll just wake up one day and late night talk shows will have been purged and strangely the new hosts wont talk about politics in their monologues anymore and if they do, they simply sound like something you might see on Fox News. SNL will be cancelled simply because Lorne Michaels has retired and that will be that.

That’s if we’re lucky.

If we’re NOT lucky, Tyrant Trump will be far more direct and ham-handed in his attack on the free press. If Tyrant Trump goes about things THAT way, then…oh boy. We’re going to the show. Because to attack the free press in a direct way would bump up against American self-perception of “living in a free country” AND it would provide ready media-friendly martyrs.

Remember, all of this would be happening the context of Trump strangling lady liberty in an already rather brazen manner. So…lulz? I don’t know what to tell you, folks. Keep the faith. Things could get pretty bumpy starting in late 2024, early 2025.