by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’ve picked up a thriller that’s very much in the milieu of the four novels I’m developing and writing. It’s obviously, just like my project, very influenced by Stieg Larsson’s original Millennium series. What’s interesting is how different people take different things away from the series.
This book’s author obviously is leaning into the vigilante aspect of Lisbeth Salander’s personality. The novel is very well written, and, yet, it’s sufficiently different from what I’m working on that I don’t feel that threatened. The novel is, so far, pretty much a generic thriller that wants to create an American Lisbeth Salander.
I want to do that, too, but my interpretation of the Salander trope is dramatically — and I mean dramatically — different. In fact, now that I’m writing four novels, for the time being Mare Of Easttown is a bigger influence than Larsson.
And, I will note, that if you study The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Salander isn’t really the hero of the story — that’s Mikael Blomkvist. The author of this book I’m reading wants to get straight into the story of his Salander-type character. And, what’s more he definitely seems to want to appeal to Jack Reacher fans, to the point that he has a quote from Lee Child in support of the book.
But a key element of Salander is she had a very weird upbringing that we gradually get to learn more about over the course of two books. With the book I’m reading now, we’re just plunged straight into the character’s vigilantism. One of the rules of thumb about writing a successful novel is, “Tell a old story in a new way or an new story in an old way.”
And, of course, there is the very real notion of “There’s nothing new under the sun.”
As such, I have to get over myself. If I was to come up with something that was completely and totally unique, a publisher wouldn’t know what to do with it marketing wise and it would turn readers off because they wouldn’t have anything to compare it to.
So, I need to chill.
It’s ok if someone has written something vaguely in the same vein as what I’m working on. It’s inevitable that someone would want to create an American Salander. For the time being, at least, it definitely seems I’m safe in continuing to develop and write these four novels. Each of the four novels is a very compelling story, enough so that I’m willing to throw my entire life into finishing them.
What’s more, the novels I’m working on are far more character driven than what I’ve read so far of this novel. From the first two chapters, it definitely seems as though the author is more concerned with the action adventure thriller elements of the Millennium series as opposed to the character elements that I find interesting.
Another thing — the thing that got me writing a novel — now novels — in the first place was my white hot rage against Trumplandia. That rage was always the thing that generated the energy necessary for me to write a novel. That need to address the bullshit of the Trump Era is another thing that definitely makes what I’m working on different than this book.
I’m obviously working against the headwinds of being older, not being formally educated in creative writing and not having gone to an Ivy League school, but lulz, fuck the haters.
