by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
So, when I started this project I was going to write an epic scifi novel. Then that ballooned into six, then nine novels…and the whole thing collapsed because I just was not prepared to go back to college to be able to tell that particular story the way I wanted.
Then I realized there was one book I could read and re-read and that was Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire. So, I decided to use it as my “textbook” to write my first novel. Of course, what I didn’t realize was that book was the second book in a trilogy and, as such, wasn’t exactly what I needed.
But it served it’s purpose. It gave me a starting off point. And, so, combined with a huge amount of rage over Trumplandia, I thought I was going to write an allegory about the Trump Era.
And then Trump was a big dingas who wasn’t a good enough autocrat to steal the 2020 election…so I decided to use the huge backstory I had come up with to write two novels that explained how the little, weird town I had envisioned came to be.
And THEN, before you know it, I had two thematically connected trilogy on my hands, the first of which dealt with not a Lisbeth Salander type person, but sort of a journalistic equivalent of Mare of Easttown.
It’s been a very interesting journey so far. And now I’m in the process of transitioning from the first to second draft. This is the furthest I’ve ever gotten and it’s both a lot of fun and very hard work.
I’ve decided that the only way I’m going to get this done is to treat all this as what it is — hard work. A job. For once, my obsessive personality is paying benefits instead of annoying people.
