Category: From The Editor

I’m So Old (To Be About To Query A Novel)

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There are times — like these –when feel pretty insecure about my age and my looming querying of this scifi dramedy novel I’ve been working on. While I’m still in my early 50s, that’s way older than most people when they try to sell their first novel.

I’ve wasted so much of my life brooding over a failed magazine for expats in Seoul. And now I have to live with the consequences. There’s just no going back, I’m afraid.

I have to make do with where I am in life.

My only hope, I suppose, is the technological Singularity happens and instead of being mid-middle aged I will be a spring chicken as we all get to live to be 500 or whatever.

But I have my doubts.

And my age is just one of numerous other headwinds I face when querying. I’m something of a conspicuous kook. Enough of one to potentially scare off your typical liberal white woman literary agent.

And there’s the issue of my native, innate writing ability. I could just suck. And there is the lingering problem of political instability in the United States. It could be that, lulz, a civil war will break out and I won’t be able to survive, much less successfully query a novel.

Only time will tell, I suppose.

Gird Your Loins

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I suspect we’re about to lurch into a more dramatic time in Trump’s second term now that he’s sending armed troops into Portland. I say this because even though Antifia doesn’t even exist, there are some scallywags in the city who might use the rubric of the organization to throw a Molotov Cocktail at troops.

And then they fire back, people die and suddenly the entire country has protests. Which Trump, of course, will possibly use as justification for martial law.

That’s been the point of sending troops into Blue cities all along. Trump is itching for an excuse to take things to the next level so, lulz, no one seems willing to stop him.

Trump would have two options if someone did throw a Molotov Cocktail in Portland. The Insurrection Act and martial law. I’m thinking martial law because there is a off-term election about to take place a in a few months and, who knows, maybe he might use some isolated violence in Portland to cancel the elections to prove a point.

Maybe.

Anyway, I’m sure someone is going to narc on me and I’ll find myself in some ICE camp. I hope it has wifi.

What’s Next? Pushing People Out Of Windows?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The indictment of former FBI Director James Comey on trumped up charges enrages me. If ever there was proof that we’re not going to have free and fair Federal elections in 2026 and beyond, I think there you have it.

I really feel like contacting people close to me who are MAGA to ask them if there is any sort of red line. Would they mind, would it be a bad thing, if Trump ordered people like Comey to just be pushed out a window? If we did reach that point then, of course, the MAGA people in question would probably feel too afraid of the state to say anything about it.

So, we’re in something of a condundrum.

As it stands, we’re still — in the minds of many MAGA people — in the “both sides” area of things. I’m sure the talking points have already been written for how this is all just Trump doing to his political opponents what they did to him or some such. They probably won’t say it those words, but that will be the sentiment.

Anyway, I say we’re in a conundrum because by the time we get around to being in a severe enough crisis that the MAGA people I know sit up and take notice, it will be too late. They’ll just want to keep their head down — and they’ll probably demand I do the same thing.

Fuck that. I’m riding this pony to the bottom, even if it means I get pushed out a window.

Really Interested In Seeing PTA’s ‘One Battle After Another’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

But for the fact that I’m flat broke at the moment, I would go see Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” this weekend. It seems like it is kind of my creative sweetspot of just the type of movie I might like.

Yet, of course, I’m also known for walking out of movies on a pretty regular basis. So, who knows. I’m so finicky about movies. I go into them all excited and then too often just about at the inciting incident, when I get a sense of what the movie is going to be about, I bounce.

We’ll see, I guess. Maybe this go round things will be different. I’m hearing really great things about One Battle After Another and there’s a chance that word of mouth will be enough to make it a success.

Of course, given the themes that I’ve heard that the movie addresses, there’s always a chance that it will catch a stray from Trump and that, unto itself, will be the thing that juices its box office numbers.

Curious

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Something curious is afoot with the Department of Defense. For some reason, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is demanding hundreds of top military officials from all over the world come to D.C.

My fear, of course, is he’s going to demand they all pledge personal fidelity to Trump, like the Nazis did with Hitler with German military back in the day. That would be the first step, if successful, towards establishing an actual fucking military dictatorship in the United States.

You think I’m an vocal asshole about MAGA now, just wait until we’re a military dictatorship. I’m a man of peace, a man of ideas — and I fucking hate guns — but that doesn’t mean I can rant at an even higher degree about what the fucking fascists are doing to the country.

Now, obviously, getting them to swear personal fidelity to Trump would have no legal weight, but I suppose that would not be the point. The point would be to smoke out “disloyal” elements in the military.

Man, are things fucked up.

A Now, For A Momentary Pause

I’ve wrapped the first act of my sci-fi dramedy’s second draft. The milestone feels significant enough to warrant stepping back before plunging into Act Two’s deeper complications.

My plan is straightforward: read through the complete outline, then review what I’ve actually written. This should give me the perspective I need to tackle the rest of the novel with clarity rather than momentum alone.

I’m also considering character studies for the major players. It’s foundational work that often gets skipped in favor of forward motion, but might be exactly what this story needs.

The pause brings up familiar anxieties about craft. I can construct a solid narrative, but there’s a persistent sense that I’m missing something—some technique or insight that separates competent storytelling from compelling work. It’s the kind of self-doubt that either paralyzes or motivates, depending on how you channel it.

I’ll use these few days for broader reading too. Sometimes the best thing you can do for a project is step away from it entirely and let different voices and perspectives shake up your creative approach.

The timeline is loose but intentional: back to full-time writing by late September, possibly early October if the reflection period proves more valuable than expected. The key is recognizing when the pause has served its purpose rather than letting it drift into procrastination.

Sometimes the work requires working. Sometimes it requires not working. Learning to distinguish between the two might be more important than any particular writing technique.

I Continue To Feel Rattled By The Prospect of Querying In Spring 2026 The Scifi Dramedy Novel I’m Now Writing

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t know what to tell you. Not only am I demonstrably bonkers, I’m old and I don’t handle stress well. So, here I am, contemplating the prospect of querying this scifi dramedy novel I’m hard at work on.

I am going to go into the querying process totally blind. I am going to try to read as many books as I can, but, lulz, that isn’t really going to prepare me for the real thing.

The whole point of working on a novel all these years has been to see how far I could get in the process before it became clear I just wasn’t good enough to get published traditionally.

Looking back at how I got into this specific situation of being, for all intents and purposes, too fucking old to do any of this and one thing is clear — I think I would have wrapped up a novel worthy of querying had I had a wife or girlfriend in my life.

A wife or girlfriend not only might have been a “reader,” she might have also kind of told me “publish or parish.” As it was, I just kind of drifting year after year towards my goal. Then, I actually finished a thriller novel, only to real it just was not good enough to query.

But now, with the rise of AI, I think, no I KNOW, that this novel is going to be good enough to query. And, yet, there are some pretty significant headwinds. I’m old. I’m bonkers. And I can’t promise you that everything I’ve done online will pass the “smell test” of your typical liberal white woman who probably makes up the vast majority of your literary agents.

And, yet, this novel is not nearly as “spicy” as my previous attempt to write a good enough to query. Although, of course, it is kind of white, which is something I worked so hard to prevent with my previous efforts at a novel.

It’s kind of ironic.

Anyway. Wish me luck, I guess.

On The Cusp Of Finishing The First Act Of The Second Draft Of This Scifi Dramedy I’m Working On

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I continue to zoom through the outline for the first act of the second draft of this scifi dramedy I’ve been working on. The novel itself is pretty good. At least in my opinion.

As I keep saying, I’m something of an “AI first” novelist in the sense that I use AI to help me with development. I’m doing everything in my power to not use AI to actually write anything, especially now that I’m in the second draft.

I’m so paranoid about people thinking AI has written *any* of this novel that I may give the novel a final once over before I turn it over to Beta Readers to make sure that there is absolutely no reason to believe that I didn’t write everything.

I will admit that I use AI to help me with scene summaries. But that’s it. I kind of learned my lesson with the first draft. It was too easy to just defer to AI to actually write the narrative, given that the first draft was intended to be a “vomit draft” that no one but me would see.

But the second draft is different. I intend to actually show other people it once I finish it. And the last thing I need is people dismissing me as “one of those people” who is too lazy to do the hard work of actually writing the fucking novel.

Anyway, like I said, I’m really pleased with how things are going with the novel overall. I hope to enter the second act of the novel pretty soon. Maybe by the end of the week, early next week?

Maybe. It all depends on my mind. I can be a moody motherfucker when it comes to actually sitting down and doing the work of writing.

The Great Irony

The strange irony of this novel—at least right now—is just how white it is. After years of laboring over a thriller where I bent over backwards to make the cast as inclusive as possible, somehow I’ve landed here.

I keep turning it over in my head, asking myself if there’s a character I could reimagine as non-white. But the nature of the story itself makes that a minefield. It’s not that I don’t want to go there; it’s that the themes I’m playing with are already volatile. If I layered race onto them, that might overwhelm everything else. Instead of engaging with the questions I want readers to wrestle with, the conversation could easily veer into a very different debate.

So I’m in this odd place: tackling heavy issues with a lighthearted touch, but deliberately leaving race out of it—not because it’s unimportant, but because it would dominate in ways that could drown out the other signals I’m trying to send. Is that the perfect solution? Probably not. But for now, it’s the one I can live with.

Emrata, Call Your Agent. (Eventually. Maybe.)

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

In a move that I *hope* Emily Ratajkowski won’t think is creepy, I’m using her as my muse and pretty much basing the female romantic lead of this novel on her. She’s long been a celebrity crush of my mine and as I was developing this novel, I realized I knew enough about her details of her life that I could scramble things around a little bit and use her as the basis of my female romantic lead.

Emrata

After a bit of spinning in place the last few days, things are again beginning to move forward at a nice little clip.

My dream is that this novel will evoke the same vibe as The Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind meets, say, Ex Machina with a dabble of Annie Hall. I hope. That’s the dream.

I still seem to be on course to wrapping this baby up by the end of the year. Maybe. It’s possible. Not probable. If I do, however, then I can use the first part of 2026 to sort of sort things out with beta readers and such.

As I’ve said before, if I was 25 years younger, I would be in LA right now, writing this thing as a screenplay. I love movies and as an adult, I’ve found that watching movies has inspired me more than any novels I’ve read.

I kind of hate that about myself. I used to read fiction like crazy when I was a kid, but something happened once I got older. And I know they say if you have time to write you have time to read.

It’s just…a real struggle.

But, if I was to compare the vibe of this novel, it would be with The Martian or Project Hail Mary. Those are two really influential novels for me.