Category: Media

A Risky Decision

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have a number of reasons for splitting the novel I’ve been working on into two stories. The now two different stories can be written faster. The two of them now are a lot more coherent. And, what’s more, each story will be about ~100,000 words if things work out the way I hope.

I hope my heroine is as interesting and compelling as Lisbeth Salander.

But there are risks.

One is, who wants to read a novel that is, for the most part, a story about a woman struggling to own a newspaper? So, in a sense, my first novel would be if The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was about a power struggle over the Millennium magazine, rather than solving a decade’s old murder.

But I do think that because the story will be really interesting, character driven — and does have a murder in the third act — that it could be interesting enough to be successfully queried. And, what’s more, because of how I’m splitting the novel, I have the original murder mystery story that I can write out pretty quickly.

(L to R, foreground) DANIEL CRAIG as a stranger with no memory of his past and director/executive producer JON FAVREAU on the set of an event film for summer 2011 that crosses the classic Western with the alien-invasion movie in a blazingly original way: “Cowboys & Aliens.”

So, rather than one novel done this year, I could have two.

And, given that I want to write a third novel, a scifi western, I could soon have three novels to pitch in some capacity within the next year.

That, at least, is the plan.

I Don’t Know What To Make Of Emrata

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

On a personal basis, I really want to like Emily Ratajkowski, or Emrata. I continue to believe she’s the best looking public woman in the world. In general, I’ve found her personality to be endearing and languid.

Emrata

And YET.

She has a tendency to be coy and say “who, me?” things.

She knows damn well that she’s a sex bomb and that that is why anyone pays any attention to her. And, from what I can tell, she is, in general, fairly smart. But then she turns around and makes Tik-Tok videos bemoaning that people won’t take her seriously because she shows cleavage.

Jesus Christ, woman, what else do you expect is going to happen?

But I will agree with her on one issue — women with bigger chests are not taken as seriously as their less buxom counterparts. It shouldn’t be so difficult for us, as a society, to allow a fuller-chested woman to both show some cleavage and to be taken seriously.

But, then, I’m an old man.

Anyway.

Hard MAGA Power Vs. Soft Woke Power

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One thing I’ve gleaned from talking to my far more conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — is their abject fear of some future tyranny coming not from the hard power of the state but the soft power of “woke corporations.”

Of course, they’re complicit in the rise of the American fascist corporate state because not only do they not take the looming fascism of MAGA seriously, but they because they, in general, agree with that fascism it would all be a lulz.

Not until the hard power of the MAGA fascist state is used to not only deport 20 million undocumented people — which they want — but to also murder me in cold blood — which they don’t want — will they take notice of how there is a definite difference between hard and soft power.

So, what happens is, conservatives would far rather conflate issues and get REALLY WORKED UP over the “abuses” of the woke than they would have to give serious answers to questions like, “What happens when the massive infrastructure built out to deport 20 million people is used to murder people you love?”

They usually either don’t answer, make a joked to change the subject or piviot to the latest conservative talking point.

It can be very, very frustrating.

The rise of a MAGA fascist state in the US is not an abstract to me — I’m really beginning to worry that if Trump becomes POTUS again that I’m going to be murdered in cold blood by an ICE agent — or whatever — because I simply will not, can not shut the fuck up about how I think Trump is a fat fuck cocksucker.

But my conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — just lulz all this. As long is those brown families are torn asunder at the border they’ll be content. As long as a stray trans person doesn’t get a free can of But Light, they will be content. As long as the social safety net is gutted and only fools and poors pay taxes, they will be content.

The list goes on.

It will be interesting to see what my fate is. If I’m lucky, I will be able to escape the country should Trump win re-election later this year.

Dune 2 & The Crisis Of Masculinity

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about Dune 2 that I think it will make it a lot more popular than you might first realize is, as a man, I found myself really getting into the “dude stuff” elements of it. I have read the books that the movie is based on and I found myself remembering what a bad ass Paul Atreides is.

Paul Atreides

He is a very male archetype, the type that dudes want to follow into battle.

And I think, given how we’ve all decided men should be wussies, that a lot of traditional dude’s dudes will find Paul Atreides a very appealing pop culture figure.

Now, having said that, I found the movie itself…meh. It was too long and did not have the storytelling snap that it could have had if it was closer to two and half hours.

Or, put another way, I would have done the entire franchise differently by making it an at least three picture concept from the beginning and being sure that the first movie wasn’t just a pretty one that was just very long and boring at times.

But, you work with what you got and I really liked Dune 2. I think it’s going to be a huge hit.

A Reimagining

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I finally did what I’ve been talking about and cut this thriller into two novels. But the way I’m doing it, they will be two separate stories as well as books — no cliffhanger needed.

My first novel is now much more a publishing thriller than murder thriller.

You will finish the first book thinking that the murder investigated in the second book has been solved.

This decision both speeds things up and makes the novel more pitchable because I’m going to be in the ~100,000 word sweetspot now. But one problem is I don’t know what to “comp” my novel to because the murder doesn’t happen until the third act.

The rest of the novel is about something different.

But the point is — the new version of the story is much more character driven and focused than the previous version. I have a lot more build-in wiggle room to talk about things than I did before.

AND, I HOPE, if I do a really good job that I might be given a lot more words to play with in the second novel. The second novel may also be about 100,000, but I’m not as sure about that because I’m REALLY going to have to totally re-imagine things.

But we’ll see. This is the second or third time I’ve done something massive like this to the project. But I do think that this decision will significantly speed things up so I can query a lot sooner than I might otherwise.

A Darkness At Noon: What If Trump Goes Full Tyrant in 2025?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I keep saying — I can’t predict the future. So there’s every reason to believe that Trump will lose later this year and we’ll punt our problems down the road another four years.

And, yet.

I like to make my abstract fears concrete, so, I worry. I worry a lot. Specifically, I worry about what is going to happen if Trump wins and then goes “fully tyrant” in 2025. Will there be any reaction at all if Trump is literally snatching his opponents off the street in broad daylight?

That, specifically, is the thing I just can’t game out. It could be that nothing happens and it could be that Trump will be so ham-handed in his autocracy that he single-handedly causes those rarest of American political creatures, the “Radical Moderate” to pop out.

Radical Moderates only appear in times of great crisis — like the Civil War, The Great Depression or WW2. And usually they don’t last long. The calm down and go back to being just regular old centrists.

I just don’t know. I have no idea what to tell you about events going forward.

Am Querying (Eventually): Not Dead Yet

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Sometimes, I feel like I should just lie in my bed, twiddle my thumbs and wait to die. I’m old and I’ve wasted way too much of my life grieving over a dumb zine in Seoul. But every time I get into this mood, I immediately think, “Well, once more unto the breach.”

I hope that the heroine I’ve come up with is as interesting as Lisbeth Salander.

It’s just not my nature to give up, even though that’s exactly what I should probably do — give the fuck up.

So, I’m going to keep going with this novel as well as a back up novel. All I can say in my defense is I’m an eccentric and, as such, I willing to throw myself into something which objectively will never happen successfully — querying my first novel.

But I just refuse to self-publish, no matter what. I would rather fail on a spectacular level than self-publish because to me self-publishing is a huge co-out. I need and crave the validation of a third party — in this case a literary agent — so I can turn to people who have told me I suck as a writer all these years.

I can turn to them and tell them to fuck off.

I can prove them wrong.

So, I keep moving forward.

The End Of Coding(?)

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As a liberal arts creative person, I sometimes absolute fucking loathe smug tech bros whose answer to every problem is, “learn to code.” Fuck that and fuck them.

So the news that it’s at least possible that the blackboxes that are LLMs might, in the future, made the programming profession moot…fills me with a delicious liberal arts joy.

But I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon. And the moment there was some sort of threat of that happening, there would be a lot lobbying for human carveouts and my dream of a world dominated and controlled by creative arts people will be prevented from happening.

Oh well. 🙂

‘Carveouts’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It seems clear to me that we’re going to need legal carveouts for humans in the near future when it comes to much of the jobs that are available. Or we’re going to have to implement a Universal Basic Income.

One of the two.

The natural progression of capitalism is to economically screw over as many people as possible and what could be better — for a select few plutocrats — than for there to be NO jobs because a combination of AI and robotics made (humans) doing the jobs moot.

I am know to be hysterical and I’m not known for being able to predict the future. So, lulz, who knows. But the point is — we need to start thinking NOW about what we’re going to do when AI and robotics take all our jobs.

I still believe it’s possible that the far Left and the far Right may fuse into the next stage of MAGA, which would be anti-technology — a neo-Luddite movement, if you will. One thing is for sure — things are moving really, really fast.

I May Have To Split This Story In Two & Connect It With A Cliffhanger

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve decided to just write the story without worrying about word count. Once I actually finish the novel, I will assess things. I will either split the story in two and have it connected by a cliffhanger, or I will try to pitch a backup novel that is the “proper” length.

I hope my heroine is as compelling as Lisbeth Salander.

I just don’t know yet. It could go either way.

But I am really interested in a scifi-Western. I think that is going to be my backup story. It shouldn’t be too difficult to bone up on how to write a Western then use the scifi universe I’ve thought up in the same story. The Western element would allow me to have a number of ready-made plots that I could fuse with scifi elements.

(L to R, foreground) DANIEL CRAIG as a stranger with no memory of his past and director/executive producer JON FAVREAU on the set of an event film for summer 2011 that crosses the classic Western with the alien-invasion movie in a blazingly original way: “Cowboys & Aliens”.

I do know I have to hurry up, though. I can’t keep screwing around. I now have just about six months to wrap up this third draft of my first novel, regardless of how long it turns out to be.