Be The Power
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
A few days ago, I suddenly though really hard about an actress telling the story of how she wore the wrong type of dress to a James Bond audition. Well, wouldn’t you know it, today I got pushed by Tik-Tok the exact video segment I had been thinking about.
Crazy, man, just crazy.
I don’t really think that Tik-Tok can read our minds, but, sometimes, it’s just so fucking spooky.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’ve been zoning out for about a week now when it comes to my writing. I just haven’t been in the mood, primarily because I’m rewriting some scenes that I believe, in general, are good enough.
Naomi Scott as Union Pang, the heroine of my novel?
But I want to go for “good enough” to “great” so I’m rewriting them.
The novel is pretty interesting, all things considered, even if the one relative that I use as a “reader” couldn’t read the last version of it because it was “too spicy.” He had a point and I moped for about a year because of it.
But that wasn’t all that was wrong with it — the stakes of the novel just weren’t that high. The novel, at it’s heart, was a character study that simply established the universe for the other five novels in the project.
NOW, however, the stakes are a lot higher — there’s a murder mystery to be solved.
And, what’s more, an interesting dynamic between two women is established that will have a pay off in the fourth novel. (I’ve compressed the planned six novels down to four.)
Anyway, tomorrow afternoon (as I write this) I hope to really get back into working on the novel. I may even tinker around with the subsequent novels, as well, since I have some sense of what the first novel is ultimately going to be like.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
We’re slowly getting into the point of the year when I have my annual run-in with a famous person in some way. One year, it was me going to a strip club and later, after I left, thinking maybe I met Zendaya stripping (for a role?)
This year, meh. Someone potentially connected to the Smile 2 movie followed me on Twitter recently, so that might be it for this year. And I’ve been getting the occasional ping from people in NYC and LA…I think about the novel. (Which could be both good or bad, all things considered.
I’m going to throw myself back into writing tomorrow afternoon, I think. I have re-arranged the outline some of the first half of the second act.
Anyway.
It would be fun if something fun-interesting happened that was low stakes, something that put a little pep in my step and made me feel like I wasn’t living in oblivion so much.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I have the worst luck when it comes to getting help from people to improve this first novel I’m working on. Some of it comes from the fact that the heroine is a part time stripper and some of it is that well, lulz, people just think I’m a kook.
Naomi Scott as my heroine, Union Pang?
And, you know, maybe I am.
I suppose the dream of every artist is to be judged on the merits of their work, huh.
It’s going to be really interesting to see if I can get any literary agents to take me seriously at all. You know what will happen, of course — they will do due diligence on me, find this Website and laugh and laugh and laugh at what a huge fucking kook I am.
I call this the “kook tax.”
I just can’t help that I’m…different. I’ve always been different, but it’s really disheartening that “serious” “normal” people can’t lower themselves to at least read my novel to help me improve it.
Fortunately, I have AI now. That is really helping me get a little further in the process of improving the novel because the AI doesn’t judge me, even if it locks up whenever I ask it about particularly “spicy” scenes.
I just want this novel to be interesting enough that people finish it and want more. I have two more novels set in the same town and universe. If I manage to miraculously sell these novels, the fifth novel will be set in Asia, I think.
I’ll be 70 years old by the time that one comes out, though. Ugh.
I hate being old. I wanna have fun. I sell my novel, it be a huge success and then run around New York City drinking too much, banging hot 24-year-olds and staying up all night partying.
But, alas, that’s just not in the cards I don’t think. Even though I could probably do those things still, the whole context would be different to the point that it would give me pause for thought. People would look down their nose at me and think I was a creepy weirdo.
Sigh, sigh, sigh.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
For a long, long time, I dreamed of writing six novels in the same universe, set in the same small town. But just recently I’ve managed to cut that down to four. But I’ve changed the first novel in the series so much that it’s going to be interesting to see what happens to the other three.
Naomi Scott would be perfect to play Union Pang, the heroine of my first novel in any movie adaptation.
I finally — finally? — have some sense of what happens in the first novel to the point that I can begin to game out the rest of the novels. I have the beginning of the second novel fleshed out in outline form, but for one thing — the hero, the son of Union Pang now grown up — is too passive.
But the premise of the novel — we see the daughter of the murder victim in the first novel try to escape a cult — is really fun and cool. I can do a lot with it. I imagine this young woman to be a Zendaya-type woman.
By the time I actually finish everything and it sells, however, I’m afraid Zendaya herself will have aged out. It’s going to be awhile before I get to the point where I can really take working on the other three novels in the series seriously. But it is fun to daydream, I suppose.
The last two novels in the project are the closest to being a direct homage to Stieg Larsson’s work. I worked and worked and worked on the two novels (which are one big story connected by a cliffhanger) for ages and then Trump lost the first time and I realized I had all this backstory I wanted to write about.
While Zendaya would be perfect to play my version of Lisbeth Salander, she’ll probably be too old by the time I actually finish and sell the novel.
That’s how I ended up writing a my first novel being set in the mid-90s. It otherwise would be a prequel, but I wanted to start at the very beginning of the life of my Lisbeth Salander-type figure. She’s meant to be an American Lisbeth Salander and the way I’m going about it, you, the reader, will get to see first hand what the weird life of the character was like.
Because the four novels are set over the course of 25 years, I can do some really interesting things with the characters on a macro basis.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I think I may have written about this before — I vacillate wildly about who should play the heroine of my novel in any hypothetical movie adaptation — but I got followed by someone connected to Smile 2 (I think) on Twitter so I found myself thinking about it again.
Naomi Scott as my heroine, Union Pang?
I realized, again, that the protagonist of that movie, Naomi Scott, would be perfect to play Union Pang. I first remember seeing her in the most recent Charlie’s Angels movie and I, even then, thought she would be a good fit for Pang. She’s just about the right age, too, since Pang in the novel is 32 as it opens.
Anyway, this is all fantastical and a daydream. I keep being so fucking moody about writing that it’s probably going to be the spring querying season before I actually start to query. I would *prefer* to query starting Sept 1st, but I just don’t know.
I believe I have enough time to between now and September 1st to wrap up yet another version of the novel, but…I don’t know. There are too many variables for me to know for sure.
But, in general, if you want to know what Union Pang, the heroine of my novel looks like as I write it, she looks like Ms. Scott.
Pang has a 16-year-old son and that plays a big part of the novel. And Pang is a role I could see any number of actresses really wanting to play because she’s a very, very flawed woman. She’s a part-time sex worker (stripper) and also runs a alternative weekly.
She’s obsessed with buying a small town newspaper…then a murder happens and she is hell bent on discovering the truth.
I would be greatly helped if, like, people took me seriously. But I have no friends and no one likes me. So all I have is my gut. I just write what I think would make for a good novel in the context of The Girl Who Played With Fire as my “textbook.”
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
When Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, he — and everyone else in Europe — pretty much knew the world was round. What Columbus got wrong was the exact shape — he thought the world was pare shaped because he had no idea that there was a whole continent (and Pacific Ocean!) between Europe and Asia.
Anyway, the point is — I think modern scientists down-low believe the universe is full, absolutely fucking FULL of life, much of it intelligent, but they just don’t have the proof to turn to the public to tell them.
I, for one, think the reason for the Great Silence is most intelligent life in the universe is machine in nature and, lulz, it just doesn’t care all that much about biological life, intelligent or otherwise.
Of course, the case could be made that plenty of aliens have whizzed around Earth skies but, for some reason, they just would prefer not to make contact until….what, the Singularity? I do think that the Singularity is important enough that maybe THAT is what will cause us to see all the life in the universe, at last.
But, for the moment, that’s all rather fantastical.
It does make you wonder what will happen when we have absolute soft-contact proof of alien life — of any sort — not on earth. Will anyone care? I have my doubts. I think it will cause a lot of bruhaha at first, but, then, everyone will forget it.
Soft First Contact just isn’t as sexxy as little green men landing on the front law of the White House. So, while a lot of nerds will get excited…in general, the average person will just turn back to their every day problems without a blink of an eye.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I was talking to a conservative relative recently when he went on a long tirade about, essentially the “woke cancel culture mob” and how this swarm of woke people can ruin a person’s life.
So, that is evidence that long after everyone else has moved on, the fear of the “woke cancel culture mob” continues to linger with a lot of people.
The key issue to me is there is something of an orthodoxy about certain elements of society that the “woke cancel culture mob” simply can not comprehend someone not adhering to. They are so potent within the Blue alliance that they really alienate people with their unpopular agenda.
There is a reason why fucking Hitler-Trump presses the pressure point of the transgender movement in such a gratuitous manner — he knows he got a lot of votes from people who should know better because they’re afraid of being “canceled” when they get someone’s pronouns wrong.
Blues need to do some introspection. But, in a sense, it’s too late. We’re an autocracy now and we’re never — or at least as long as I’m alone — going to have another free-and-fair Federal election again. Good luck.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’m demonstrably bonkers, so this is something of a daydream, but I do idly like the idea of backpacking across Southeast Asia at some point. There are many — MANY — reasons why I just will never be able to this. But, that doesn’t stop me, on a conceptual basis, gaming out how I might do it.
I first became away of the idea of backpacking across Southeast Asia from the woman who told me about teaching in South Korea for the first time. It wasn’t until just recently — about 20 years after the fact — that it occurred to me how cool it would be to do it.
I like the idea because there would just be so many different things to think through. How much money I would need. What to put in my backpack. Where to start and end, all that type of stuff is fun.
Of course, I’m old now and even if sell a breakout hit novel, I could be about 60 before I would have the funds to do such a thing. And that doesn’t take into account that I’m totally bonkers and there would be a lot of risks involved with a crazy person like me walking across the vast landscape of Southeast Asia by my self.
So, for now, it’s just an idle daydream.
by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The United States is now an autocracy. And, yet, some of the last vestiges of the Before Times continue to linger. While Trump continues to do everything in his power to end free speech, Americans — at the moment at least — still have the ability to speak as they like and to peacefully protest.
It is only a matter of time, of course, before Trump and his MAGA Nazi toadies come after our basic rights in a full boar effort to finish the job they’ve started. I suppose we’re kind of in a liminal political space at the moment where it’s dusk, but nightfall as yet to officially arrive.
But arrive it will.
And that’s when the real test of the American populace will arrive. Trump is going to push us to the breaking point to see if we just give up or if we fight back in some way.
And, right now, I honestly doubt anyone will notice that we’ve become a legalistic autocratic state like Russia when it happens. I think the whole process will gradually happen in fits and starts to the point that in about 20 years we’ll be a Russian-style autocracy and a whole generation will assume that’s the way it’s always been.
I just don’t see Americans doing what would be needed to end this nightmare — we need a General Strike organized with the clear objective of ending MAGA tyranny once and for all. If that means we have a Second Revolution, so be it. (Not that I want that, because if it was successful, a Second Civil War would happen immediately.)
So, I continue to hope I sell a breakout hit novel so I can get the fuck out of this country and never come back. It’s inevitable that me ranting about Trump and the MAGA Nazis will come back to bite me.
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