Ugh. I’m bumping up against 50 scenes for the “bad guys closing in” part of this scifi dramedy novel I’m working on. The only upside to things is that I have some wiggle room still about how long the individual scenes will be.
So, even though I have about 50 scenes for the second half of the second act, that doesn’t mean they will each be 1,000 words. But I’m definitely going to go through and make them longer when I go through the pre-beta draft of the novel before I give it to Beta Readers.
Anyway.
I am really pleased, in general, with what I have on my hands with this novel. I just really need to focus on getting shit done. I still want to try — TRY — to begin querying this novel in late spring 2026.
But it will be interesting to see how that works out. My life is set to change rather dramatically between now and then so…lulz?
One issue is I just don’t know what draft I’m working on with this novel. I think this is a beta-ish version, but it might be a first draft. But I think if I just don’t overthink things, this can be a beta draft that I just do a lot of work to on a technical basis before I show to other people.
Really, the only issue so far is sometimes I’ve gotten impatient and leaned into what AI has generated a little bit too much. That’s the thing I have to fix before I show it to anyone else.
I have to go in and rewrite all the “AI-talk” out of the text so people won’t just roll their eyes and assume that any of the good parts that exist AI wrote. Just doing that could take me a month or more of hard work to fix all the instances of em dashes and so forth.
But, in general, I really have written most of this novel myself. I’ve just used AI — specifically Claude LLM — to guide me towards what I probably would have written already.
One thing I’m a little bit uneasy about is how saucy this novel gets at points because of the whole sex worker element to it. That was a big obstacle to getting anyone to take seriously my previous novelistic efforts.
But, thankfully, the whole stripping part of this novel happens way, way, way later in the game in this novel than the other thriller novel I was working on.
This happened before, with the other novel I was working on — it is very clear that absolutely no one believes in it but me. I continue to be rather embarrassed about how long it’s taken me to get to this point with this novel.
But things are moving a lot faster because of AI.
Not as fast as I would prefer, but faster than they were for years. Oh, to have had a wife or a girlfriend to be a “reader” during all the time I worked on the thriller homage to Stieg Larsson. But, alas, I just didn’t have that, so I spun my creative wheels for ages and ages.
And, now, here I am.
I have a brief remaining window of opportunity to get this novel done before my life will probably change in a rather fundimental way and the entire context of me working on this novel will be different.
Anyway, I really need to wrap this novel up. If I don’t I’m going to keep drifting towards my goal and wake up to being 80 and still not have a queryable novel to my name.
Ok, I have to admit that there is an element of sex work in this scifi dramedy novel I’m working on. Figuring out exactly where to introduce it and put it has been the toughest structural part of working on this novel.
These days, I’m imagining my female romantic lead of this scifi dramedy looking like Rachel Sennott.
The key thing was that I initially introduced it too soon it — stripping — too soon and it kind of was a downer, specifically how I introduced it.
But gradually, with a lot of help from AI as my manuscript consultant, I finally figured out the best way to approach things. I’m punting the spicy stuff until the second half of the novel, specifically the “bad guys closing in” part of the novel — the second half of the second act.
I’ve pretty much nailed down the first half of the novel, but the second half continues to be very much in flux for various reasons.
Now, in the past when I had stripping as part of the plot of a novel — specifically the Stieg Larsson homage I worked on for years and years — I couldn’t even get an actual human literary consultant to look at it. The moment they realized what I was doing with the novel, they pretty much told me it was trash and why was I even doing it to begin with.
But this go round, I’m hoping that at least, should I figure out where to find the money, that I can get them to at least read the first few chapters. Maybe?
I have my doubts. Literary types just refuse to take me seriously because they think I’m a drunk kook. And I will admit that at times in the past I have resembled that remark. But I’ve sobered up a great deal. The kookiness, however, remains and I just can’t help who I am.
If I were forced to think of an “elevator pitch” high concept for this novel, I would say, “Annie Hall meets Her meets Ex Machina with a dollop of The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”
That, at least, is the goal.
My writing, even augmented by AI, is only so good. So, lulz. I have to accept that I going to fall far short of my goals in some respects. And I know that I’m “comping” this novel to three movies. I just love movies and don’t really think in terms of novels when working on a novel.
And, to be honest, if i was 25 years younger, I probably would be in Hollywood, slaving away as a screenwriter. But, alas, that is not to be. I’m stuck where I am at the age I am.
I look back over my life and I sometimes wince. I’m not perfect. No one is, but I worry that maybe my wild life in Seoul may come back to bite me in the ass if I should happen to somehow, magically “make it big” via this scifi dramedy I’m writing.
I didn’t do anything THAT BAD in Seoul (or otherwise) but we live in a very touchy world and some of the things I did do, if seen out of context, might…uhhh…not exactly help me going forward.
But the old Shakespeare quote about it’s better to have loved and lost than never loved at all comes to mind. I’d much rather have a taste of success and have it taken away from me for a dumb mistake in the past than never experience it at all.
The only reason why I even bring this up is I’m kind of pumped about this scifi dramedy I’m working on. It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely shaping up to be good enough to query.
I just hope my life doesn’t collapse before I at least have a shot at querying this thing. It really is that good.
I don’t know what to tell you. Not only am I demonstrably bonkers, I’m old and I don’t handle stress well. So, here I am, contemplating the prospect of querying this scifi dramedy novel I’m hard at work on.
I am going to go into the querying process totally blind. I am going to try to read as many books as I can, but, lulz, that isn’t really going to prepare me for the real thing.
The whole point of working on a novel all these years has been to see how far I could get in the process before it became clear I just wasn’t good enough to get published traditionally.
Looking back at how I got into this specific situation of being, for all intents and purposes, too fucking old to do any of this and one thing is clear — I think I would have wrapped up a novel worthy of querying had I had a wife or girlfriend in my life.
A wife or girlfriend not only might have been a “reader,” she might have also kind of told me “publish or parish.” As it was, I just kind of drifting year after year towards my goal. Then, I actually finished a thriller novel, only to real it just was not good enough to query.
But now, with the rise of AI, I think, no I KNOW, that this novel is going to be good enough to query. And, yet, there are some pretty significant headwinds. I’m old. I’m bonkers. And I can’t promise you that everything I’ve done online will pass the “smell test” of your typical liberal white woman who probably makes up the vast majority of your literary agents.
And, yet, this novel is not nearly as “spicy” as my previous attempt to write a good enough to query. Although, of course, it is kind of white, which is something I worked so hard to prevent with my previous efforts at a novel.
You just can’t escape yourself, you know. Or, as my mom would say, “You take yourself wherever you go.”
So, in that regard, I’m kind of saddled with being a freaky weirdo in a very demonstrable manner on the Internet. I bring this up because once I start to query this scifi dramedy novel I’m working on — probably in late spring 2026 — any literary agent worth their snuff is going to search for me online.
This leads me to blanch. I just can’t help who I am and I can’t help what I may have written online over the years. I call this the “kook tax.” It’s the tax that only kooks like me have to pay.
Anyway. I just can’t help who I am. For better or worse, I’m unique and that’s probably going to turn off some of the liberal white women who probably make up the majority of literary agents.
Though, in my defense, most, maybe nearly all, of my political views fall within the spectrum that liberal white women would find agreeable. And, yet, I also know virtually no one takes me very seriously these days for various reasons and so, lulz, kook tax.
I think I’m brooding about all of this because of general insecurity about what it’s going to be like to query. Just from my occasional interaction with literary consultants, it seems as though some literary people — even pop literary people — take themselves a tad too seriously.
But a lot of that probably comes from…they’re just normal? They take the querying process really seriously and, what’s more, the entire querying infrastructure is designed to prevent people like me from succeeding in teh first place…so…lulz?
I’m going into querying totally, and completely, oblivious as to what to do. Whenever I start to query, all I will have is a finished novel and that’s it. I have a general idea of some of the elements of querying, but, in general, I have no idea what to expect.
Well, actually, I do know what to expect — it’s probably going to suck.
There are a lot of reasons to believe this. I’m too old. I’m demonstrably a kook as my writing on this Website can attest. The list goes on. Also, the closest novel I know to “comp” my novel to is about 20 years old now.
As an aside, I have noticed that the most recent novels put out by the Stieg Larsson estate seem specifically designed to be as marketable as possible…even though I’ve not managed to get through any of them.
Anyway, that was the whole point of starting this process all those years ago — I wanted to see how far I could get before I had to give up and or piviot to a different novel. I’m not getting any younger, so I should be working on a backup novel right now…but what I’m probably going to do is start work on a second novel once I start to query this mystery-thriller.
I write because I have to, not because I want to, so there.
I’m determined to start querying this novel either this fall or next spring. I’m tried of writing and rewriting things and I’m prepared once this version is done to call it The Final Version.
As such, I know that the first thing any literary agent who is actually interested in this novel will do is search my name on the Internet.
I just can’t help who I am — I’m something of a kook and that’s just who I’ve always been. So I have to work under the assumption that I could write the great American mystery and, lulz, literary agents will think I’m too big a kook to take seriously and that will be that.
But that’s not going to stop me from trying. I’m going to query this novel anyway and see what happens. It will be fun, in its own way, to watch people who are clearly literary agents that I’ve contact poke around this Website at some point in the future.
It will be “fun” in the sense that I will at least be able to see in real time why it is I can’t sell the novel in the first place.
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