The Trick Is To Keep Breathing

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m now formally sketching out again the “bad guys closing in” portion of this latest first draft attempt. And the thing I’ve noticed is the last time I did this I crammed a lot of big events right next to each other.

Olivia Munn is what I imagine the heroine of this first novel looking like..

The thing I’ve slowly getting the hang of is how you have to let your novel’s structure breathe a little bit. You need an ebb and flow to how things roll out so you have a big event, then a few scenes that reduce tension some and then repeat.

I’m still at a loss, in some respects, as to what makes up the investigation of the murder this novel is about. Thankfully, to date I’ve just had to distract myself and I’ve figured out how to move things along. I may have a lot — maybe a huge number — of faults, but usually when I find myself in a creative corner I’m able to weasel my way out of it and think of some new direction, some new angle to take that lets me keep going pretty quickly.

Actually, imagine Olivia Munn looking a little closer to this. Similar, but not exactly.

Really, at this point, the only issue I have is how many times I’ve done this. I’ve written and rewritten this first novel a number of times. But at least each new attempt has been significantly better than the one before. The key issue now is to try to wrap things up on a second draft by spring 2023 so I can turn around and begin querying during the autumn 2023 querying season.

One thing I’m still concerned about is this novel, while interesting, doesn’t have some of the jolting events that your usual modern thriller has. It’s just not scary (or brutal) in the way that the audience for such a genre pop novel might expect.

But I believe I can fix that particular issue in the second draft. The point of the first draft is just to get the story down pat so you can turn around, rewrite it and fix all the issues. I really have to stop daydreaming and just drifting towards my goal, however.

I need to be a lot more focused.

What’s With All The Russian Propaganda On Twitter These Days?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m a Very Online person and just in the last few days — maybe 24 hours even — I’ve seen a huge uptick in my exposure to bullshit Russian propaganda about Ukraine. It could be that Twitter has tweaked it’s interface a little bit so I see more Right wing echo chamber bullshit.

Which, in an ideal world, would be good because it would force me to leave my own center-Left echochamber. But what I’m seeing on Ukraine just pisses me off and I mute the person so I don’t have to tolerate it anymore.

If what I’m seeing on Twitter from the Right wing echo chamber is any indication of what is being said on the other end of the political spectrum about Ukraine….oh boy.

The MAGA Right is all-in being appeasers and apologists for the Russians. No good will come of this. If, God forbid, the Republicans take control of the House, then every moment it’s not impeaching someone in the Biden Administration for some bullshit reason it will be figuring out ways to stymie any continued military support of the Ukrainians.

Anyway, things are weirdly dark politically in the United States right now and are bound to only get better as we approach a potential “Fourth Turning” in late 2024, early 2025.

A Biden Counterfactual

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I was listening to a podcast recently that had the well-respected op-ed columnist George Will on it talking about his ambivalence about the course of the Biden Administration. Will, a very traditional conservative, bemoaned what he felt was Biden’s banking Left once he was in office.

What if Dark Brandon didn’t exist?

I struggle with any scenario where Biden didn’t do just that because he felt he needed to “dance with the one who brung him” as the old saying goes. I can only assume that Biden made a strategic political decision that MAGA was a lost cause and, as such, he wrote the entire Right off.

As such, it’s not like Will had gotten his way and Biden was a real centrist that anyone on the Right would have noticed outside of a sliver of the Right that isn’t MAGA. If Biden had tried to be a Statesman and governed straight down the middle, all that would happened is MAGA would have ignored it and the progressive base of the Democratic Party would have freaked the fuck out.

So, yes, on paper it would have been great if Biden had governed, essentially as a #NeverTrumper….that just wasn’t practical for him. The vast majority of the conservative movement is a lost cause and no amount of governing from the middle would have changed that.

The Appeasement Sentiment Of Tech Bros Is Alarming

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I suppose it’s been so long since we had to fight fascism that the Smartest Guys In The Room think more about the cold, hard metrics of what’s going on in Ukraine with the Russians as opposed to what is just and right.

While they’re all obviously far more successful than me and probably a lot smarter, Tech Bros continue to come across as appeasers. They want Ukraine to just give up and let Putin take at least 20% of the land if not more. And, really, using Tech Bro logic, the United States should just become Fortress America, gut the social safety net and make only the Poors pay taxes because they’re rubes who don’t realize taxation is theft.

It’s all very annoying.

It’s annoying because Tech Bros should know better. They should realize that sometimes in global affairs, you have to take a stand against tyranny even if it comes at a cost.

And it was, after all, Russia who invaded Ukraine. They started and just because Ukraine is going on the offensive, doesn’t mean the United States should just throw up its hands and give up. Yes, the risk of nuclear war has increased of late, but who’s to say if we don’t support Ukraine that Putin might not go after the Baltics next, and then where are we?

We definitely would have a WW3, then, because NATO would get involved. So, there is no easy solution to what’s going on with Ukraine and Russia. The reliance on cold, hard metrics that serves Tech Bros so well, falls apart when you’re dealing with geopolitics.

Are The Russians About To Nuke Ukraine?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While there are some alarming signs that something is brewing, I find the idea that the Russians would actually use nukes of any sort on Ukraine very dubious. Yes, a few of Russia’s close allies have told their citizens to get out of Ukraine, but that could mean anything. It doesn’t mean that something as dire as the use of tactical nukes against Ukraine by the Russians is imminent.

If the Russians did use tactical nukes on Ukraine, what would that look like?

I am not an expert, but just a back of the envelope scenario would suggest that if Russia was going to go through the trouble of breaking a 75 year taboo against the use of nukes of any sort, they would probably strike Kyiv pretty hard in an effort to decapitate the Ukrainian government. You could make the argument that what might happen is this: Russia nukes Kyiv a few times and then the Belarusian army would swoop in and take control of the city, demanding the Ukrainians sue for peace.

Also, logically, they would use a number of tactical nukes up and down the existing front line in an effort to soften it up. And, the Russians would likely, while they were at it, strike a number of other major cities across Ukraine in an effort to get their point across.

The use of any WMD by the Russians would probably start WW3 because it would set off a cascading series of events where other simmering hotspots across the globe would flair up rather dramatically.

If this all happened before the 2022 midterms, it could really change the political dynamic going into November in a rather dramatic fashion. There would be a “rally around the flag” type thing, which would probably help Biden’s poll numbers significantly.

Anyway, I don’t think we have anything to worry about.

‘Gaylor:’ Is Taylor Swift Queer?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Is Taylor Swift gay? The simple answer is, no, what the fuck are you talking about? The more nuanced answer is: she’s probably had sex with a few women and she’s such an emotional blabbermouth that she can’t keep her queer lust to herself and so she writes songs about said women.

Now, the key thing you and I as Poors and rubes have to appreciate is within the rarified heights of power and wealth that Tay-Tay inhabits same-sex relationships — especially between women — are so normalized and commonplace that, lulz, you’re telling on yourself if you think Taylor Swift fucking Karlie Kloss means squat.

Remember, the key to this particular situation are the songs that Tay-Tay swift wrote that definitely seem to be about a woman, not a man. The song “Dress” comes to mind, specifically, as a song that my gut instinct is — she’s talking about fucking Karlie Kloss.

The reason is — the song doesn’t give any sort of gender designation to the person it’s addressed to AND there is a lot of emphasis on “dress.” My writer’s mind tells me that if you were someone like Tay-Tay and you wanted to run around emotionally naked in your art banging away at the word “dress” in your lyrics is exactly the way you would convey the idea to your fans that the person you’re talking about fucking isn’t a man.

But the key thing that proponents of “gaylor” have to remember is just because Tay-Tay probably fucked a few women doesn’t mean she’s gay. She was just having fun, maybe experimenting. And that moment in her life is over now. She has a boyfriend and Kloss is married.

It’s too easy for Poors — like me — to get way, way too excited about someone as all-American as Tay-Tay banging a woman. Just because she’s experienced the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name, doesn’t mean you should expect her to start publically dating Cara Delevingne.

Now, obviously Tay-Tay’s “people,” and her publicity machine have decided it’s in her best interests to mind fuck her fans by leading them to believe that she’s “queer” when she’s nothing of the sort. Tay-Tay seems quite content with her boyfriend and that’s that.

This Novel Has Gone In An Unexpected Direction

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I still pretty safe in believing that I will have a beta version of this novel done by spring 2023 and that I can begin to query it as part of the fall 2023 querying season. That, at least, is the goal.

Sometimes, it feels like I’ve made every mistake possible as part of the process of working on this first novel in what is projected to be a six novel project. I suppose I should be grateful that I’ve at least gotten to the point.

Just in the last few days, I’ve figured out a really cool new element of this novel, something that is not at all what I expected for my heroine when I started this new version of the first draft. But it gives the story an edge that I think audiences will really enjoy.

To get this point, however, I’ve been forced to give really, really deep in to some of them more obscure things that happened to me way back when in Seoul. Say what you will about my adventures in South Korea, it was definitely a net plus given all the weird situations and experiences I was given in my creative toolkit.

What I imagine my heroine looks like as I write this first novel.

So, in a sense, this six novel project is really me writing my extended autobiography in a very garbled way. I suppose that’s part of where the energy to write these six novels is coming from — I’m writing about ME. The other source of energy, of course, is my white hot rage against MAGA and Trumplandia.

One thing that is interesting is this first novel is going a lot smoother because I know, in general, how this six novel series ends. I was working on the last two novels in the project when dingus Trump lost the 2020 election and I realized it might be quaint for me to rant about Trumplandia if it didn’t exist anymore.

But Trump is lurking in the darkness, ready to pop out again and steal the 2024 election, so I feel pretty confident that if we manage not to have a civil war that i’m going have more than enough energy to finish the six novels that I hope will comprise this project.

This Novel Is Getting Spicy

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As expected, my mental log jam broke when it came to the “fun and games” portion of this novel. I’m not completely out of the woods yet, but I feel a lot better about cruising into the “bad guys closing in” part of the novel without too much of a delay.

Hopefully, I won’t croke like Stieg Larsson should I sell these novels.

And, much to my surprise, I fixed the problems I was facing by making the novel far more spicy than I originally expected it to be. I have figured out a way for something really interesting to happen to my heroine that is not only sexxy, but definitely progresses the plot.

It’s rather amusing that for someone as self-conscious about being a CIS white male writing about a woman’s life from a female point of view despite being a smelly boy…I keep wallowing in the very things that are most likely to the “woke cancel culture mob” angry that I’m writing it.

But I’m not writing a YA novel and modern mystery-thriller audiences expect a certain amount of spiciness in such novels. I’m going to try to be as methodical and conservative in my depiction of that spiciness, but now I’ve figured out a way to do it in the context of the overall plot I’ve come up with.

I’m slowly beginning to feel a lot more confident that I’m within shouting distance of writing a novel that at least, at a minimum, won’t embarrass me and I might even get published — hopefully before I get so old that my age is all anyone wants to talk about.

Why Is Fascism So Popular In The United States?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While from first hand experience, I can tell you that fascism is very, very popular in the United States, the question remains, why? Why are millions of American chomping at the bit to give away their democratic birthright?

A lot is going on at the same time. Too much to really get into in a blog post, but in general, there are a few things to focus on.

One is, I think we’re probably going through something akin to a “Soft Singularity.” Technology is changing society so fast, that we can’t keep up. We don’t really think about it being a Singularity because we aren’t, like, uploading our minds into a big database, but the issue of technology shifting society fast remains.

This Soft Singularity has caused the usual generational changes in expectations to happen far more abruptly than we’re used to. What is the “woke cancel culture mob” but really the difference between what Zoomers expect and what the Olds like me expect. Throw in the changing nature of gender roles, growing income inequality and how expensive a good education is these days and you have a lot of angry white Christian men who are ready to be Red Pilled.

And, I think if we were honest with ourselves –which, of course, Americans never are these days — I think we would understand that the vast majority of people who support fascism in America these days don’t even realize what they want. All they know is they are alarmed by the “woke cancel culture mob” and the only through watching Fox News and listening to Right wing podcasts can they get some understanding as to what to think about it all.

These very same people conflate the soft power of the “woke cancel culture mob” with the hard power of the state where MAGA continues to grow in strength. And if we had a functioning democracy, then probably many, if not all, of the problems we have at the moment could probably be sorted out without a civil war, military junta or a MAGA-themed autocracy.

But we’re not even a democracy anymore, we’re an “anocracy.”

So, in short, we’re fucked. Fascism is acendant and sooner or later — probably in late 2024, early 2025, we’re going to have to figure out if we’re going to slide peacefully into a fascist MAGA-themed autocracy, or not. Are we going to lose our American democratic birthright, or are we going to have a National Divorce?

At the moment, I just can’t tell you. Good luck.

Struggling With The ‘Fun & Games’ Part of The Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So, I’m deep within what is called the “fun and games” part of this novel and it’s a real struggle. It’s a struggle because, lulz, I have no idea what I’m doing. I need a few more scenes featuring investigation into the murder near the beginning of the novel and I’m really grasping at straws as to how to do that.

My inspiration.

I just don’t know.

I think this is going to be solved like it’s always solved — by me pausing for a day or two to distract myself. They say writers find inspiration via “BBB” — bed, bath and bus. And I’ve found this to be very accurate. I get some of my best ideas while I in the shower or driving around thinking about something else.

Fortunately, I have several different characters I can use to do this investigation, so it’s just an issue of figuring out who and what they’re going to investigate.

I keep moving scenes around at an alarming rate, but, thankfully, I’m also writing a lot of scenes, too, so it’s not like I’m actively avoiding writing or anything.

What I imagine the protagonist of this first book looks like as I write.

What I have been actively avoiding, to date, is reading. I hate that. I know I can make this novel so much better by really throwing myself into reading all these books I have in my small and growing library….but I don’t wanna.

I don’t wanna read. I just want to daydream, develop and write. It’s just really hard for me to consume media when I’m totally consumed by producing media. But at some point I’m going to get over myself and start reading. They say if you have time to write you have time to read.

So, I have to start reading.

I have to stop punting on the reading front. I know this first novel has a lot of potential and the only way I’m going to take it to the next level is to, a minimum, flesh out my characters by doing some much needed reading to give them some sort of world view that isn’t just an expression of a side of my own mind.

I want to make my heroine have a very specific ideology that isn’t just mine in drag and that’s going to take forcing myself to go outside my comfort zone and read up on some things I just don’t believe in so SHE will believe in them.

But, in general, things are going well. I only have, in real terms, a handful of scenes I have to figure out before I can get down to writing and hopefully finish the “fun and games” portion of the novel and get into the “bad guys close in” portion of the work.