by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
A number of things have happened over the last nearly-decade of development and writing I’ve been doing on this thriller to delay things.
One thing is I really have had no idea what I was doing and so I made just about every mistake you can think of along the way. What’s more, I was doing all it in a vacuum, so I had no idea if anything I was doing was any good, other than what my gut might tell me at any particular moment.
Another thing that happen was I kept spinning off novels or re-imagining the whole thing in a new way to the point where I was pretty much starting over. So, in a sense, I’ve actually written a number of novels over the years, just no one novel was good enough to actually query.
And, as if to stress this point, last year about this time I did, in fact, finish a novel. But none of the usual suspects that I gave my novel to over the years liked it. The biggest complaint being it was too oversexed — a lot of people did not like the new stripper element that I’ve put into things.
But AI has come to the rescue, to some extent. I’m really leaning into AI to help with development with the latest version of the novel. I hope to wrap this version up by spring 2026, if I haven’t been pushed out a window by ICE or the FBI for ranting about what a cocksucker Trump is. (It could happen, the way things are going.)
Anyway. I finally believe in the novel again and I’m pressing forward. I have half a dozen other novel and short story ideas, but none of them really have made me all that excited. Or, at least, not excited to the point that I want to work on them instead of the thriller.
So, we’ll see.
