A New Phase In This Novel Project


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Things are going really well with this first novel, to the point that I’m beginning to encounter resistance from people who are resentful about this very thing. I knew this was inevitable, but I didn’t expect it to start even before I finished the novel.

But, here we are.

I was talking to someone I knew at a bar about where development was and the moment it was clear that I was well on my way to finishing the first draft, they rather abruptly changed the subject. It was very jarring and conspicuous.

Anyway, I still don’t know what I’m going to do once I finish the first draft. The logical thing to do would be start a second creative track that was shorter so I could see about using what I’ve learned since I started developing these five thriller novels to write a shorter “calling card” of sorts that might be easier to sell.

But, alas, I’m so wrapped up in these five novels that I don’t know if I have it in me to divert attention from the main project to do such a thing. Only time will tell, I guess.

What The War In Ukraine Can Tell Us About A Possible Future Second American Civil War


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I still believe we’re going to slip peacefully into autocracy. Gradually at first with accelerating speed. But it hasn’t happened yet, so I suppose it’s possible that we might have a civil war.

The chief thing we have to factor in is how mobile everyone will be during the whole process. It’s very possible that Canada will be overwhelmed with American refugees. And that doesn’t even begin to address the few million wealthy Twitter liberals who will flee the country because they’re fucking cowards.

But there are differences from what’s going on in Ukraine — the primary one being it seems to me obvious that WMD will be used by both sides from early on in the conflict. So, we won’t have any idea what the fuck is going on.

The whole thing will be a clusterfuck. And it’s possible once the country collapses there won’t be any clear endgame. We’ll just collapse and that will be that. Some form of Trumplandia will be formed and millions of center-Left people will flee its creation, which will even jiggle the demographics of what was once the United States even more.

Any Second American Civil War is going to be a quantum leap worse than what’s going on in Ukraine at the moment.

At The Midpoint (Now What)


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m now at the midpoint of the first draft of the first book in a projected five thriller project. I now find myself struggling with that I’m going to do next. Here are my options.

  1. Keep going and pray.
    With this option, I just keep moving forward, regardless of how long the novel ultimately becomes. Right now, this thing is careening towards being well past the sweetspot of about 100,000 words. In this scenario, I just write the story and let the chips fall where they may.
  2. Start a second creative track.
    The next option is to finish the first draft, but while I’m in the process of doing this I start working on a second creative track. There are a number of different stories I could use as part of this second track. Whatever this second track is, it would be a way to have a calling card of sorts for the thriller. If I could pull it off, it would be way to at least prep the way for a novel that might otherwise be too long to sell for a first time, untested novelist. But the problem would be it would be a struggle to divert my attention away from the main project.
  3. Finish the first draft then edit things down.
    In this scenario, I finish the first draft, give myself about a month to reflect on things and then I write the second draft. The hope in this instance would be that the second draft will be short enough to fit in the sweetspot.

    Which of these three options I ultimately do, I don’t know.

Tik-Tok Consistently Pushes Me Videos That Make Me Think It Can Read My Mind


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now, I’m the first to admit that the idea of Tik-Tok being able to read our minds is pretty fucking bonkers. It’s just not something the average person can process as a serious concept. If you broach such an idea, people are going to laugh at you or roll their eyes or think you’re nuts or all three.

And I honestly can’t say I blame them.

But, I don’t know, man. Some of the videos that Tik-Tok pushes me are very, very specific to me. And then happens all the time. The latest incident was when I got pushed a video about why it is that it’s easier to accidently fall asleep on the couch than to intentionally fall asleep in your bed. I sleep on the couch all the time and this is an eerie insight into my interior monologue.

In fact, just in the last few days, I’ve given the idea of sleeping in a proper bed a lot of thought. And, then, there you go, I get pushed a video about that very subject.

Spooky. Spooky. Spooky.

But I have no proof and there’s no reason to believe that all of this isn’t just co-incidence.

Just About To Reach The Midpoint Of The First Draft Of The First Novel In This 5 Thriller Project


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I shouldn’t talk about anything to do with this novel project, but I’m 100% extroverted, so here we are. Think of this as just a really long tweet. Anyway, I’m very close to reaching the midpoint of this first novel in a projected five novel project.

There are some problems, however.

One is, I really need to hurry up and get something done. If I don’t wrap this first novel up within, say, about a year, I’m going to be creeping into “Wow, you’re so old” territory. I will no longer be “in the prime of life,” I’m just going to be fucking old.

I think about this all the time.

I wasted so much of my life dwelling on the past and having grief over something I couldn’t fix — the fact that everything wrong with ROKon Magazine was my fault — that I let slip past a number of “prime of life years.”

There’s a risk, of course, that now I’ll have grief over those lost years and be back to where I started. I can’t change how old I am. I have to accept that I’m no longer cute in the same way I used to be and even if I magically win the publishing lottery and sell this first novel that what I want to have happened — to be be young in NYC or LA, just isn’t going to happen.

I’m going to be judged in accordance with my age and people will say, “Wow, you were a loser for much of your life, how does it feel to suddenly be a success when you’re nearly a corpse?” I’ve reached the point where any success I have at this point will be relative to how fucking old I am.

This is something they don’t tell you when you’re growing up. They don’t tell you that there is a sweetspot for success age-wise and if you are past that point, well, too bad for you sucker. You’re an Old.

I’m so old.

All I can say is, what am I supposed to do about it? I can’t help that I’ve always been a late bloomer. All I can do is, should the occasion arise and I have the means to do cool shit in a very public way, I’m going to squeeze every moment out of that brief flicker of time before I get so old and decrepit that I can no longer be seen in public at all.

Anyway. Like I said, I’m just about at the midpoint of the first draft. Once I finish the first draft, I’m going to throw myself into developing the second novel for maybe a month, then turn my attention back to the first novel and rework it as necessary so it’s good enough for Beta Readers to take a look at it. There remains a lot of things — mostly having to do with the police procedural aspect of the story — that I just don’t know anything about.

But you have to keep the faith. You have to believe in yourself and believe that somehow, someway you’ll manage to fix those problems to the point that you can get an agent and then sell the novel.

Believe.

The MAGA New Right Is Ascendant


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I keep saying, enjoy these last few months of living in a Western democracy. Things are going to change rather abruptly in January 2023 when Republicans take control of Congress. All they’re going to do is go on fishing expeditions looking for some reason, any reason to impeach both Biden and Harris.

And it is well with the realm of possibility that we may face a Speaker Trump at that point, too. If that happens, then the United States is going to grow far, far more unstable.

The thing that so many Twitter liberals are oblivious to is how ascendant MAGA is. The MAGA movement is so ascendant that there is a reasonable reason to believe that Trump (or whomever is the Republican nominee) will win outright and there won’t be any need for them to cheat — even though obviously they will just because that’s who they are.

A key element to all of this is the rage of conservative white men over what they feel are “radical” social changes over the last decade or so. Or, put another way, something about Obama’s second term fried their minds. They’re now just rage machines who will stop at nothing to establish an autocracy. They are very clear that they no longer believe in democracy and fuck you lib.

You see this everywhere these days. White Christian men in the United States feel very alienated and disenfranchise and, as such, they look forward to autocracy. They are so blinded by their orthodoxy, in fact, that they don’t really think through the implications of what happens once they get what they want. I say this because I know that I, specifically, will likely be in the crosshairs of a newly weaponized ICE whenever that should become a reality.

My divided family won’t be alone — families all over the nation where some members are MAGA and some aren’t are going to have to confront a internal division so severe that the civil war was the last time anything like it has been experience.

A lot of people think all of this is “hysterical doom shit,” but I struggle to see any other endgame. And, barring a civil war, our transition into a Russian-style autocracy may take long enough that a lot — and I mean a lot — of people will laugh at me in the meantime.

But at the end of the process I’ll be proven correct.

Well, That Happened


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

This is an instance where I don’t know what the fuck is going on. I went into the movie “Everything, Everywhere All At Once” with extremely high hopes. There was white hot buzz about the movie on Tik-Tok and I watched the movie as soon as possible so I could go into it knowing as little as possible about it.

Now that I’ve seen it, I’m very confused.

I won’t say I fucking hated it like I did Booksmart, but I was extremely bored for most of it. It’s not that there wasn’t a lot going on that was interesting — there was — but I didn’t have any emotional attachment to the characters until way, way, way into the movie.

And, even then, it was the elements of the movie that could have been an entire movie until itself. I found the movie very muddled and so peripatetic as to be overwhelming.

There was so much going on that there wasn’t much time to establish characters or to make you — or at least ME — care. There was all this bouncing around going on and just kept rolling my eyes, thinking, “So what?”

Having said all that, I could definitely see how the movie could be very influential and be part of a broader “vibe shift” in American pop culture. But nothing about that movie was so good as to warrant it all the glowing praise on Tik-Tok. Nothing. The movie was not nearly that good.

I’m so annoyed with how bad Tik-Tok is at reviewing movies, I think I’m going to lay off using it for a while. I feel suckered. I struggle to figure out what the Tik-Tok reviewers saw that I didn’t and vis-versa.

There were elements of the third act that were pretty strong. And, like I said, you could have cut those elements out of the movie and made a separate, stronger movie with them. But there was just too much going on with this movie.

Was it a kung-fu movie, a scifi movie, a fantasy movie or a movie about the family bonds of immigrants? If the screenwriter had just picked one or two of those elements, the movie would have been much, much better. There was a great movie lurking somewhere in EEAAO, but what I saw wasn’t it.

It was long and irritating.

But I guess I could see how someone younger than me, who had different expectations, might like it a lot. I guess?

If The ‘All-In’ Podcast Represents Silicon Valley, We’re Doomed


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m of the opinion that you need to expose yourself to ideas you don’t agree with so you build up the mental antibodies necessary to be self-confident in what you believe in. And, yet, here I am being irritated by some of the comments I’ve heard on the “All-In” podcast.

I have nothing against any of the guys on the show and it is interesting and informative. It’s just the more I think about it, the more angry I get at how a number of the participants have thrown their lot in with MAGA. They should know better, and, yet, they apparently want Trump back because they believe in the fascist “leadership principle.”

It’s amazing to me to hear intelligent, well educated people advocate for an orange ding-dong like Trump. What the what? I guess money can’t buy you taste. But it doesn’t stop there.

They also believe the MAGA New Right has the right to spread disinformation on everything from COVID19 to Trump numerous and well documented crimes. Again, I just don’t get it. And they’re so self-assured and smug about supporting fascism.

They cherry pick the data points of the Trump Era that fit their needs, totally ignoring what a massive clusterfuck it was otherwise. It’s staggering how it’s possible any self-aware person could willfully buy into such bullshit.

There is no excuse for supporting MAGA for any reason. But I guess if you want an autocratic fascist state where you, as a billionaire, get to play the role of American oligarch, then the idea that tyranny will have descended across the land of the free is a lulz.

It’s Like We’ve All Given Up


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t know how much of this is the final Big Shrug before we either have a civil war or turn into an autocracy and how much of it is we’ve passed the event horizon for the Fourth Turning — but America feels pretty fucked right now.

Every day, Republicans prove that they have, on a systemic, existential basis become radicalized to the point of being old school fascists. They no longer believe in traditional American democracy and, as such, they will abuse any power they regain to ensure that they never give it up.

There are two upcoming events that will definitely give us some insight into our ultimate fate.

  1. The End of Roe V. Wade
    In the next few months, the Roe decision is either going to be gutted so as to be moot or overturned altogether. If this gets a lot of women woke and there are massive protests across the country, that will be sign to me that we’re more likely to have a civil war than slip peacefully into autocracy. But there is a lot of grumbling, but ultimately nothing of note happens — autocracy it is.
  2. January 2023
    Another datapoint that will give us a very good sign as to our fate is how much Republicans abuse the power afforded them by controlling Congress again. If they go nuts and we have Speaker Trump who leads multiple impeachments of both Biden and Harris — we’re probably going to have a civil war. Or, more specifically, if they’re hijinks are so extreme that this leads to a radicalization of the center-Left…we’re going to have a civil war. If the center-Left continues to sleepwalk through history despite Republicans going nuts, then we’re just going to slip peacefully into autocracy.

But the fact remains that American politics grows more and more extreme by the day and there will come a point when either we get a Republican autocrat in power who becomes an American Putin or…we have a civil war. Some pretty big things would have to happen for us to have a civil war in 2024 – 2025 at the moment.

We’re just not there yet.

I still think that most Twitter liberals are just going to leave the country. The seething rage of MAGA will become the bedrock of autocratic rule and things will go from bad to worse at an alarming rate.

And while I know my far more conservative relatives think it’s laughable to think that they’re going to have to face a person decision about my fate when we become an autocracy, I still believe this is the case.

I simply will never shut up — I don’t even know if I could if I wanted to — and, as such, they’re either going to have to turn me in or suffer the consequences of being associated with me.

I have no idea how that’s going to play out.

I’ll Put A Move On You


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I like to think of myself as a friendly, interesting person who has a very Larry King type of personality. I’m 100% extroverted and I generally believe everyone has a story to tell.

The late Annie Shapiro and me back when I was cute and putting a “dent in the universe” with her in Seoul.

Then something happens that causes me a great deal of self-doubt. I start to wonder if the way I perceive myself is not at all how others perceive me.

Over the course of this multi-year novel writing project, I’ve on occasion bought some time with manuscript consultants to varying degrees of success. Some of the people I’ve spoken to were unserious charlatans, while others were really, really good.

I’ve noticed something alarming about the better manuscript consultants I’ve worked with — they don’t think much of me. They either snub me outright, or they have a session or two with me then ghost me.

It all makes me question myself a great deal. What am I doing that turns these professionals off so much? I really struggle to figure out what’s going on. Maybe some of it is basic culture clash because I don’t really have the traditional novelist personality? Is that what it is?

I did notice how cold and distant these better consultants were, as if they wanted to make absolutely sure our relationship was strictly professional. Is there some sort of general fear among such people that the aspiring novelists they consult will want to date them?

It’s all very strange to me.

Anyway. “Normal” people have a tendency to underestimate me. I have five solid novels in me, I know. But I have a limited amount of time to prove this to the haters and naysayers who think I’m just a bonkers Internet crank. I still think there’s a possibility that if I ever find myself in LA, people might be significantly more receptive to my personality quirks.

I still want to have a second creative track of some sort, maybe a novel that’s a little shorter so I can use it as a calling card. But I gotta put up or shut up very soon.

I’m not getting any younger.