Oh boy. In the name of not throwing too much at the reader at one time — and to made the first act more manageable, I’ve decided to yet again change the beginning of the novel in a dramatic fashion.
Now, a lot of things are either alluded to or happen “off camera” so things are smoother and not so overwhelming. But I do think I’m probably going to have to do a lot more rewriting than I would prefer.
And, all the same problems that this novel has relative to modern expectations still exist — I change POVs within chapters, etc. But my hope is that people who remember Stieg Larsson’s work will read it and say, “Oh, I get it, this is just like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.”
That’s the hope, at least.
And this remains a passion project. I really, really need to piviot some of my free time to the other, more traditionally marketable novels I’m working on. But there comes a point when I just have to shrug and say, “Either you like this passion project and want to read it, or you don’t.”
I have my vision for the passion project and I’m sticking to it, come what may.
As it stands, I’m going through the latest version of my passion project at a nice little clip. So fast that it’s at least possible that I will finish this fourth draft soon enough to query in about a year.
That is, of course, unless the Singularity happens and or Trump’s stupidity causes the country to collapse into chaos.
But as all of this is happening, I continue to realize I probably need a backup novel that is a bit more marketable and maybe doesn’t have stripper elements to it. I have a number of scifi novels done to varying degrees and pretty much all I need to do is just sit down and burrow through an outline and finish something, anything — at least a first draft.
And, yet, the call of the passion project thriller is just too strong most of the time.
I really want this homage to Stieg Larsson to be my first novel. And, yet, I know I probably can write a really good scifi novel if I just get over myself and focus. It’s all very difficult for various reasons.
I think what I may do is edit the first act of the thriller then with that as a place to pause, I will piviot to one or several of the other novels and use that distraction to clear my head.
The one book that has been my guiding light, my true north throughout the years and years I’ve been working no this thriller is The Girl Who Played With Fire. I’ve studied it every which way.
It took me forever to figure out its structure and, in fact, it wasn’t until I learned it was mean to be one huge novel with its successor that I understood what what was going on. (The two novels are connected by a cliffhanger.)
I bring this up because I’ve printed out the first act of the novel so I can edit it and it’s kind of long at about 63 scenes. (I have no idea how many words it is, I go by scenes, not word count.) But The Girl Who Played With Fire’s first act — if you include a longish prelude-like part is about 70 scenes, so I don’t feel so bad about it. And I’m still at a point in the process when if I somehow get an editor they could probably figure out how to cut a lot from the first act.
Once I read over the first act, then I’m going into the first half of the second half and that’s where I have to begin to bring in the second draft of what was supposed to be the second novel in the series. I’ve decided to make the first book in the series a more traditional murder-in-a-small town novel as opposed to something that is clearly just setting up a bigger universe.
I still have A LOT of work to do, but I’m feeling pretty confident that I will be in a position to query the novel in about a year, maybe. Of course, my life could totally be turn upside down by this or that unexpected event — and I’m going to be really old to try to get a first novel published — but, lulz.
There is also the issue of the name. I have pretty accessible name I want to use, but it’s so generic that I’m SURE someone else has already published a novel by that name. I have a more unique name, but it’s not as accessible and at least one person has rolled their eyes when I told them what it is.
I just don’t know on that front. I think for the time being I’m going to assume I’m using the less accessible name unless I get an agent and they tell me it just won’t sell.
As we grow closer to malignant ding-dong Trump being sworn in again, I realize my anger — which generates creativity — is growing. As such, I think once Trump is back in office I will be forced out of my creative neutral.
Four years ago, I made a strategic decision — I was going to tell the origin story of my heroine. Little did I know that this would cause what was going to be a trilogy into a six novel project.
But now that Trump is back, I really want to throw myself back into the novel I paused four years ago. And, yet, I also want to tell all those stories that lead up to the last two novels in the series.
Ugh.
As such, I think I’m probably going to throw myself into the whole thing. My fear is that if I don’t game out the entirety of the series from ground zero that inconsistencies will arise that I can’t overcome.
Anyway. I definitely feel my creative juices beginning to flow again out of my white hot anger over ding-dong Trump being president again.
It seems as though I’m going to continue to drift like always towards my goal of being a published author, but maybe in a little bit more aggressive manner. It seems as though I’m going to bounce around the six thriller novels I have planned so I can maybe have some sense of what’s been established in the universe as the novels progress.
Or something. Something like that.
And this doesn’t even begin to address how I have a scifi novel I’m also working on. Actually, it’s a few scifi novels.
I suppose, in a way, I’m trying to make the best of my tendency to not be very focused. But I’ll be happy as long as I am heading in the right direction of getting something, anything actually finished to the point that I can pitch it to a literary agent.
Of course, the issue of me just being too fucking weird could be a problem on that front. It’s enough to make me think about creating an whole identity out of whole cloth, like, I don’t know, a trans undocumented immigrant or something.
But, sadly?, I just don’t have the energy to do such a thing. Just accepted me — or not — for who I am. I just can’t continue to mope so aggressively as I have for months now.
I really want to write an homage to Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series books. But there are some structural problems that I could never have known about when I originally began work on this idea a number of years ago.
Apparently, people want single-POV narrators who fit the gender of the author. And they definitely don’t want POVs that bounce around within a chapter. And they want short chapters.
Ugh. It’s so frustrating.
I guess what I will do is work on both the scifi novel I’ve begun and this thriller. The scifi novel will be very much written with an eye towards marketability, while the thriller will, as always, be a passion project.
But the key issue is moving forward creatively. I can’t just keep staring out into space for the rest of my life. And I need to really lay off the booze. It’s time to go as sober as possible and let energy drinks be my lone vice for the time being.
One reason why I’ve picked the fourth novel in the projected six novel project I’ve envisioned is I have already gamed the novel out some, especially the beginning. So, all I have to do is “just write.”
And, yet, I also need to, I think, go back to the drawing board about certain elements of writing. I need to reread some books on character and plotting so I nail down some elements of the story before I even begin.
Also, I’m going to try to lean into using AI to be something of a “literary consultant” in the sense that it can guide me towards what I want to do with the story.
But, as always, the key thing is I’m not going to live forever. I really need to hurry up and get something, anything done.
I was flipping through Tik-Tok today and saw a still from the Hollywood version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo movie. That got me to thinking — I still want to write a novel like that.
So, I sat down at my computer and did some quick thinking. I realize that there is a way for me to get what I want immediately — rather than going back to the novel that has left me so burnt out (for the time being) I can start work on the fourth novel in the series that allows me to dive directly into an American Girl With The Dragon Tattoo-type situation.
There is one problem — I still haven’t really nailed down what happened in the first three novels. But I think as long as I’m moving forward, then at least I’m being productive.
In my imagination, MY “Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” looks a lot like Zendaya. Though by the time I actually fucking finish the damn novel and have it published, she may have been aged out of the role.
But they do say that “black don’t crack” and she continues to play really young characters so…lulz? Regardless, in general, my version, my American version of the “Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” looks a lot like Zendaya in my imagination.
There are plenty of young women in Hollywood who look like Zendaya floating around, so if I somehow win the lottery and sell this novel –when I’m old as fuck — there will probably be any number of women able to play the role.
I wish I was 25 years younger — I would skip the middle step and just write a screenplay — after I moved to Hollywood, of course.
I think I’m just about ready to get back to working on a few novels. The one novel I’ve been working on the longest — the one that is meant to be part of a six-novel project — is set to be reworked significantly. The chief reason is that the stakes simply aren’t very high at the moment.
The novel is just about one woman’s obsession with owning a small town newspaper. That’s it. But I’ve decided that by leaning into an already-there scifi element of the novel that I can significantly raise the stakes. And, to a certain extent, I can give the novel something of a trick ending, cueing up the next novel in the series. (Which, at the moment, is much more of a traditional murder mystery.)
As part of that, I’m going to have to sit down and rewrite a whole lot of the novel, which is going to slow me down. My goal is now to query something, anything about a year from now.
Ultimately, the six novel series I’m working on will produce an American Lisbeth Salander.
Of course, there continues to be the issue of stripping being a big part of the novel. This is going to make a lot of literary agents blanch, I’m afraid. But that’s my vision for the novel, so there you go. And, what’s more, I still have a few other scifi novels rolling around in my mind that I my piviot towards if all else fails.
Something that doesn’t have the spicyness that the main, passion project novel currently has.
But I am well aware that if I don’t hurry up, I’m going to be in my 60s before I become a published author, if I ever do. And I am well aware there are many, many, MANY reasons — on the face of it at least — why I will *never* get published.
I’m too old. Too bonkers. The list goes on.
Yet, you have to have hope, you know?
One thing I continue to worry about is, of course, the whole Trump situation. I refuse, however, to just be in neutral until the election. I have to get something, anything done. So, starting today, I’m going to stop mulling things so much and start to read, watch and write what I can.
So. But for how my “readers” balked at the amount of sex in the third draft of the novel I’ve been working on, I would be about to query it. But, alas, I apparently was too much of a hornytoad and, so, here we are with me rewriting things AGAIN.
And, the more I work on this novel again, the more I realize there was some structural problems that I can address now. The novel has a darker tone now because I give my heroine a reason for doing some of the more….controversial…things she does: she’s an alcoholic.
I’ve come to believe that because of weird hangups so many people have about booze and sex that the only way to justify my heroine doing some of the things she does is to throw up my literary hands and say, “Ok, well she’s a drunk, ok!”
This is the general phenotype of the older heroine I have for a number of the novels before the heroine that will populate a new series is an adult.
And, I’m taking this opportunity to really rework and pair back some of the sexy time in the novel. I want this to be as mainstream a novel as possible. So, lulz, can’t have as much sex as I did before. It’s kind of annoying.
Of course, there is another element to this novel that makes it a vanity project — it’s about a woman’s obsession with owning a community newspaper. It’s kind of an origin story for two women who will be really important for six novels — at least.
The older heroine of many of the six novels I’m working on has a sleeve tattoo like Megan Fox sports here.
I’ve come up with a really interesting way to intertwine these two women’s lives over the course of 25 years. It’s just going to take a lot — A LOT — of work (and a number of years) to get it all worked out.
But the more I think about it, the more I realize how much I love all six of these novels and how much I am determined to write them all. You’d be surprised how snooty people with in the “writing community” can be when it comes to this dream — they think I’m nuts.
I’ll put a move on you…
They just can not, will not take a “long hair leaping gnome” like me seriously when it comes to such an ambitious project. This only causes me to dig in my heels more.
But, I will admit, I do have a few scifi novels that I want to work on, too. So, I think, in general, the point is — I need to use my time more wisely. I have to stop dicking around.
Now, let me be clear — all of this is just a dream. And I’m so old that it’s highly unlikely that what I want to have happen, will happen. As it’s going I’ll be very lucky to get *one* novel written and published before I croak, much less six novels that begin a series about an “American Lisbeth Salander.”
Lisbeth Salander.
It just takes a lot of time and six novels is a lot of work and words.
But the dream I have is — I want to show the audience why my “American Lisbeth Salander” is fucked up by showing in a series of books that depict about 25 years of her personal history the events that lead up to what would otherwise be the first two books in the series about her.
This happened in large part because Trump managed to lose in 2020. I had two novels (joined together by a cliffhanger) that I wanted to use as an allegory for the Trump era (Trumplandia, if you will) but he lost and so…I felt a bit forlorn.
Then I realized I had so much backstory about this character I loved that I might as well go backwards in time and show, exactly why she is so fucked up like Salander.
The heroine of many of the novels in the six novel series I plan is older than Lisbeth Salander and has a sleeve tattoo like Megan Fox does here.
I have a vague idea of making sure that my heroine is in the same universe as Lisbeth Salander so, I don’t know, maybe if things went great there might be a crossover at some point? That would be pretty sweet.
My heroine is, if I have the ages in my head right, a bit younger than Salander is supposed to be. But she’s a very, very, very different person other than how fucked up she is for reasons that the reader will be intimately acquainted with by the time she really appears and becomes front and center in the series.
I think, ultimately, my “American Lisbeth Salander” will kinda sorta look like Corrie Yee in my mind. Maybe. Not a perfect 1-to-1. But sorta.
I think what I need to do is start to work on the other novels in the series, too, so that might speed things up some. There is one book that if had any resoruces at all I would write but, alas, I just don’t think it’s going to be possible. So, I think it’s going to be six ~100,000 word novels in the same universe that I will have an open ending so we can expect more from my heroine.
It’s all a lot of fun.
And I would be about to query at this point, but for the fact that the third draft was a lot more “spicy” than it should have been and my readers balked flat out reading it after a point. So, back to the drawing board. Now, I think I won’t query this novel until the spring — that’s the goal, at least.
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