After a bit of self-doubt recently, I’m again working hard on the third draft of this novel. I have printed out the first half of the second act and I hope to get through it pretty quickly.
Believe.
I still have a fair deal of writing and rewriting to do, but I’m confident that I will get to the midpoint of the novel a lot quicker than I had thought. What really keeps me going is not only what an interesting story I’ve come up with, but how the novel tells a cogent, coherent story.
It’s not at all the story I had expected to tell when I started this journey several years ago, but it’s A Story, which is all that matters.
And I’m aware that the story is “racy” at times. And, yet, I don’t think there’s anything about the story I can’t finesse through editing. But just introducing the idea of my heroine owning a strip club introduces an element of “raciness” that I just can’t avoid.
My heroine has the same phenotype as Corrie Yee.
There’s not much point in introducing such a unique element to the story without leaning into it and exploring as many weird angles as possible. I am also very aware that if I magically manage to successfully pitch this novel that the “part-time sex worker” angle of things is all anyone will want to talk about, especially in marketing of the novel.
And that element of the novel might make the “woke cancel culture mob” very, very angry with me. Of course, if I was an undocumented trans woman, they would praise me for how I was showing women using their sexuality in an empowering manner. I just can’t win. I can’t help who I am and I try my best to be as empthetic as possible to the female experience.
But I’m a smelly CIS white male — and a middle aged one at that! — so I should just twiddle my thumbs in bed and stare at the ceiling until I drop dead.
Lulz.
Anyway. I hope to zoom through the first half of the second act and reach the midpoint of the novel pretty soon.
The worst thing anyone else said about me was that I am a “delusional jerk with a good heart.” That was said to me by the late Annie Shapiro while we were in the process of untangling our hearts and minds from each other at the end of ROKon Magazine.
The late Annie Shapiro and me in better days back when I was cute.
She had a point.
But, I’ve had a brain transplant since that statement, said many moons ago. I’m a much more humble, stable person.
And, yet, here I am, about to plunge into the cold, dark waters of querying — in a few months, maybe more — and I am worried about what the liberal white women who make up the vast majority of agents will think of me and my novel.
The novel itself is problematic because even though it’s really good, the idea that a smell CIS white male would write such a novel might make some liberal white women blanch.
My novel is about a part-time stripper obsessed with owning a rural community newspaper in Virginia.
Or not. I just don’t know. I can’t help how the story I worked itself out of my emotional system. It has a lot of spicy scenes but it does, in fact, tell a compelling story about one woman’s obsession to own a small town community newspaper.
It tells a complete, compelling story. And, what’s more, it leaves you wanting more. It is written in such a way that the audience will want to know what happens next. I have a second novel in the series in the hopper — I just have to write the third draft. So it’s at least possible that I may have TWO novels done this year, ready to query.
But that’s a little bit down the road. I need to chill out for a little bit today then sit down and start writing again. It sucks so bad that I have to do all of this sober, and yet, that’s the reality I face.
There are some basic things I just don’t know about my novel yet, one of them being how long it is. The metric I use for the length of the novel is scenes, rather than word count, so it’s not until the very end of the process that I really know how long the novel is.
The heroine of my novel has a sleeve tattoo similar to the one Megan Fox now sports, even though I thought of it first.
The last time I did this, with the Beta Draft, I undershot my goal of 100,000 words by 20,000 words. Now, however, I have a pretty good sense that once the entire process is complete and I have a Beta Draft of the Third Draft of the novel that I’m going to come in closer to about 140,000 words, which is way, way too long.
But I don’t know yet. It’s possible that I will totally misjudge things again and the story will be closer to 100,000 words, which would be great! I just don’t know right now. I probably should think about adding up my words now as I approach wrapping up alpha release of the third draft, but I don’t wanna.
One thing I’m really concerned about is how the “woke cancel culture mob” is going to react to some of the elements of this novel. I mean, I am a smelly CIS white male writing about a same-sex relationship between two women and that’s just not supposed to happen. And my heroine occasionally strips, which is also going to freak them out.
Corrie Yee has the phenotype of my heroine.
I am well aware that “the demographics aren’t on my side,” as someone recently told me. But, lulz, so what. I know I have a great story on my hands and it’s just a matter of finishing it as soon as possible.
It definitely will be interesting to see if the liberal white women who make up most the vast majority of literary agents will blanch at all of this non-woke behavior on my part in my writing. But I can’t help what I’ve gotten myself into at this point.
I do, however, have a scifi novel rolling around in my mind. It would be one that better fits the expectations of the modern fiction world.
Of course, all of this is happening the context of the rise of AI and the potential Fourth Turning. So, I dunno. Wish me luck, I guess?
Now, let me put the following in context — the Millennium novels not written by Stieg Larsson after his tragic death continue to be published and I can only assume are doing reasonably well. So any quibbles I have with them can easily be seen as just my usual crackpot delusional rantings.
My dream is to write a heroine as compelling as Lisbeth Salander.
But having said all that, I will give you my first impressions of the latest novel featuring Lisbeth Salander, “The Girl In The Eagle’s Talons.”
I’ve only just begun reading and I’m taken aback by how the novel doesn’t feel like a Stieg Larsson novel. The chapters are a lot shorter. The author doesn’t use surnames to refer to people. The novel just feels like it’s…there. It’s just like any other novel you might pick up, at least so far.
At the moment, I have potentially seven(!) novels that I want to write set in the same place populated by pretty much the same characters. I want my novel to feel like a Stieg Larsson novel the moment you pick it up. There are some obvious caveats.
I’m not nearly as good on the structural backend as Larsson was, for one thing. But I have studied one of his novels, The Girl Who Played With Fire, a lot and I believe I have a sense of how to make my first novel an old brown shoe to anyone who knows the original Millennium novels.
Nathalie Emmanuel pretty much looks literally like my heroine in this picture.So much so I’m worried someone is going to steal a march on me creatively!
When you pick up my novel, I want you to glance at the first page and “get” that this is meant to be an homage to the original Millennium novels, even if it’s totally and completely different outside of a few elements of style and some form follows function elements.
Anyway, I’m being very, very delusional. I’ve not even begun to query yet and it’s very possible because of the following issues that I will never succeed in becoming a published author:
My Crazy Drunk Behavior in Asia I was kind of a wild animal in South Korea back in the day. And it’s not like I’ve hidden how bonkers I was. It’s just not in my nature to do such a thing. So any liberal woman women literary agent worth her wine is going to smoke out how bonkers and crazy I was back in the day. And that, unto itself, may be enough to steer them clear of me, no matter how much I’ve changed since then.
My Not Doing Anything For About 20 years This is another tough issue for me to have to address during the querying process. I have not done _anything_ of note since late 2011. That’s….a long time. But, here I am, wanting to bootstrap myself out of this particular situation by writing a break out hit novel. Yet I suppose it’s possible that, by definition, could be the thing that prevents me from getting published. I could write the fucking Bible and because I’m a nobody, I just won’t be taken seriously as an aspiring novelist — and never will be.
My Being Bonkers I’m kind of a kook. And the more due diligence is done on me by the typically liberal white women who are literary agents the more they’re going to think, “Uh, no.” There remains a lot of a taboo about having mental health issues, despite what everyone wants you to think when you’re bonkers, so…I dunno. Though I SUPPOSE it’s possible that could be used in some sort of marketing campaign for the novel, “bonkers author makes good,” that sort of thing.
The Nature of The Novel Offending Liberal White Women I got nothing against liberal white women, it’s just I worry that the nature of my novel — that of a part-time sex worker who wants to own a community newspaper — may be a little too much for them to stomach in the context of being my literary agent. If I was a transgendered, undocumented woman, rather than a smelly CIS white male, it would be different, but I “don’t have a lot going for me demographically” as one woman recently mentioned when I wanted her to look at the first chapter of my novel.
As I lurch towards the querying process, which can be quite brutal from what I can tell, I have to let sink in the fact that I could very well, uh, fail. So, let’s go through the reasons why this might be.
My Crazy Drunk Behavior in Asia I was kind of a wild animal in South Korea back in the day. And it’s not like I’ve hidden how bonkers I was. It’s just not in my nature to do such a thing. So any liberal woman women literary agent worth her wine is going to smoke out how bonkers and crazy I was back in the day. And that, unto itself, may be enough to steer them clear of me, no matter how much I’ve changed since then.
My Not Doing Anything For About 20 years This is another tough issue for me to have to address during the querying process. I have not done _anything_ of note since late 2011. That’s….a long time. But, here I am, wanting to bootstrap myself out of this particular situation by writing a break out hit novel. Yet I suppose it’s possible that, by definition, could be the thing that prevents me from getting published. I could write the fucking Bible and because I’m a nobody, I just won’t be taken seriously as an aspiring novelist — and never will be.
My Being Bonkers I’m kind of a kook. And the more due diligence is done on me by the typically liberal white women who are literary agents the more they’re going to think, “Uh, no.” There remains a lot of a taboo about having mental health issues, despite what everyone wants you to think when you’re bonkers, so…I dunno. Though I SUPPOSE it’s possible that could be used in some sort of marketing campaign for the novel, “bonkers author makes good,” that sort of thing.
The Nature of The Novel Offending Liberal White Women I got nothing against liberal white women, it’s just I worry that the nature of my novel — that of a part-time sex worker who wants to own a community newspaper — may be a little too much for them to stomach in the context of being my literary agent. If I was a transgendered, undocumented woman, rather than a smelly CIS white male, it would be different, but I “don’t have a lot going for me demographically” as one woman recently mentioned when I wanted her to look at the first chapter of my novel.
I’m well on my way to finishing the third draft of my first novel. The novel will tell a coherent, cohesive story. It’s not the story I thought I was going to tell when I started this process a few years ago — but it tells a story. And, what’s more, it ques up a number of successor novels in the same universe that will be really compelling.
The heroine of my novel looks like Morena Baccarin.
At least, that’s what I believe.
I am soon going to wrap up the “actively delusional” part of this journey and enter the world of reality where I have to convince liberal white women who make up the majority of literary agents that I can tell a good story about a part-time sex worker who is trying to buy a community newspaper.
At least I can explain the story a lot easier than before. It used to be that the story was a lot more muddled and difficult to explain. Now, I understand what the story is about.
But there are A LOT of problems.
Like, what novel do I “comp” this novel to? What genre is this novel, since the murder doesn’t happen until well into the second half of the story. I just don’t know. And, when you add how bitter people seem to become whenever they enter into the land of querying, well, lulz, oh boy.
My heroine sports a sleeve tattoo similar to the one that Megan Fox now has, even though I came up with the idea first.
I’m going to have to shift gears bigtime once I finish the novel and start to query seriously. So much so, that I don’t even know if I can continue to write, even though I know I have to. Querying is a job and struggle unto itself, it seems.
But I do have a number of other stories I want to work on while I query the first novel. And I hope to have the second novel in the series I’m working on — one that is a traditional murder-mystery-thriller done pretty soon as well. It will have most of all of the same characters as the first novel and a few new ones.
It will definitely be interesting to see how things work out. I’m sure I’m going to make many, many, many, many mistakes and probably have already made a lot by just being me.
Oh boy. I can’t change who I am. I can’t change what I’ve done — or not done — with my life over the years. I’ve always been a kook. I’ve always been a late bloomer.
So, there’s every reason to believe that if literary agents — many of whom will be liberal white women — can get past my age and dissipated life, that they may not be thrilled at what a kook I’ve been my entire life.
I’ve already had a problem with some snooty literary types not being willing to work with me because…I don’t honestly know. They’re snobs? They’re arrogant? But the key issue is I have to stop being so delusional. The moment I start to query my first two novels (if I can finish them both by July 22 like I hope) I have to leave delusion behind.
I have to start to deal with the cold hard facts of life.
I’m a middle aged man who can tell a good story. But that, alas, is all I got. I’m broke. I’m a smelly CIS white male. As one person told me recently, “the demographics aren’t on your side.” Ugh.
But I refuse to give up. I am going to keep going forward. I’ve decided to give myself five years from the moment I start querying before I will “give up” and self-publish.
By that point, if I’m not a published author — or close to being one — I will be about 56 and I might as well just self-publish to get it out of my system. And, yet, I’m not so sure I’ll actually do that. I have a huge fucking chip on my shoulder and I want the validation of getting past the gatekeepers so I can rub it in the face of people who have told me my writing sucks my entire life.
Fuck those people. I’m good enough, I’m smart enough and I *can* get published traditionally.
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